RTHK: US steps up sanctions on Russian oligarchs

The United States on Thursday imposed fresh sanctions against Russian oligarchs, including on those active in the oil and real estate sectors, as Washington takes aim at those close to Russian President Vladimir Putin in response to Moscow's military operation in Ukraine.

The United States imposed full blocking sanctions on eight oligarchs and officials, as well as some of their companies, the White House said, targeting Russia's super-rich who US officials say have amassed fortunes and political influence through their close ties to Putin.

"We want him (Putin) to feel the squeeze, we want the people around him to feel the squeeze," White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki told reporters.

Washington has so far imposed several rounds of sanctions, including against Putin and the central bank.

Washington imposed sanctions on Alisher Usmanov, a Russian tycoon and founder of Russian mining company Metalloinvest, whom the White House described as a one of Russias wealthiest individuals and a close ally of Putin.

The move blocks his property from use in the United States and by US persons, including his luxury yacht that the White House said was seized by Germany, and his private jet.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, whom the White House accused of being "a top purveyor of Putins propaganda," was also targeted.

Nikolay Tokarev, the chief executive of energy giant Transneft, was also designated along with his wife, daughter and his two luxury real estate companies. Billionaires Boris and Arkady Rotenberg and several family members were also hit with sanctions.

The United States will also impose visa restrictions on 19 Russian oligarchs, their family members and associates, the White House said in a statement, and will also issue sanctions against Russian entities and individuals who enable the country's spread of disinformation.

The action helps bring the United States in line with measures the European Union took earlier this week.

Thursday's measures come after the US Justice Department on Wednesday launched a task force known as "KleptoCapture" aimed at straining the finances of Russia's oligarchs. (Reuters)

This story has been published on: 2022-03-03. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
RTHK: Nato rules out no-fly zone to stop Russia bombing

Nato on Friday rejected pleas from Ukraine to impose a no-fly zone to halt Russia's bombing, but Western allies said they were eyeing more sanctions on Moscow as it presses on with its war.

Foreign ministers held emergency meetings at Nato and the European Union in Brussels, on the ninth day of Russian President Vladimir Putin's invasion of his pro-Western neighbour that has upended the global order.

Ukraine's leadership has appealed desperately to the West to help stop Russian jets raining bombs on their country as Moscow's military encircles key cities.

"Act now before it's too late. Don't let Putin turn Ukraine into Syria," Dmytro Kuleba tweeted after making an impassioned plea to the alliance via videolink.

But Nato chief Jens Stoltenberg said the alliance would not intervene in the conflict over fears of a direct clash with Moscow that could spiral into a nuclear war.

"The only way to implement a no-fly zone is to send Nato fighter planes into Ukraine's airspace, and then impose that no-fly zone by shooting down Russian planes," Stoltenberg said after the urgent meeting.

"If we did that, we'll end up with something that could end in a full-fledged war in Europe, involving many more countries and causing much more human suffering."

Nato members have rushed thousands of troops to eastern Europe to bolster the alliance's flank closest to Russia and are sending weapons to help Ukraine defend itself.

Kyiv has said that if Nato is not willing to shut Ukrainian airspace then the allies should supply it with warplanes and air defence systems to help stop Russian air attacks.

Western nations have so far said they will not deliver planes and most arms deliveries have focused on light weapons, and anti-tank and shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles.

As Nato rebuffed calls for a no-fly zone, the West is weighing fresh sanctions after hitting Russia with unprecedented punishment that has sent its economy into turmoil.

Kyiv has demanded more sanctions in the wake of the shelling of a nuclear plant by Russia's invading forces.

"We are faced together with what is President Putin's war of choice, unprovoked, unjustified and a war that is having horrific, horrific consequences," US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said.

"We're committed to doing everything we can to make it stop."

Some EU nations want the bloc to toughen its sanctions by cutting more banks from the global SWIFT interbank messaging system and begin targeting Russia's key oil and gas exports.

But there is reluctance from key economic powers like Germany to cut off a supplier responsible for 40 percent of the bloc's gas and 10 percent of its oil.

Yet "everything remains on the table," EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said.

"Today, what we see is the ugly face of war erupting again in our borders and the Russians are bombing and shelling everything."

Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney said that the EU was already preparing a fresh round of sanctions against Moscow and that they could be agreed soon.

"We're not signing off on a new package of sanctions today, but that's clearly underway," he said.

"I suspect, we'll be agreed in the early days of next week." (AFP)

This story has been published on: 2022-03-04. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
Airbus Defence and Space will demonstrate live the mission-critical features of its interoperable communication technologies for the defence community at the World Defense Show (WDS) in Riyadh from March 6 to 9, 2022.

Airbus Secure Land Communications will take part in the global event to highlight how its intelligent solutions can support the armed forces in their military operations. Its participation comes amid reports of the Mena regions stabilising defence spending.

Selim Bouri, Head of Middle East, Africa and Asia Pacific for Airbus Secure Land Communications said: Our interoperable and agile communication and collaboration solutions can support combat systems across land, air, sea, space, and cyber operational domains. WDS is a strategic event for us to exhibit our capabilities and expertise in the field of defence while highlighting our role in reshaping the industrys future in this century. It is vital for all stakeholders to collaborate more effectively amid the evolving threat landscape worldwide, and the show will provide that important platform to tackle existing and emerging challenges and opportunities.

Furthermore, by participating, we are reaffirming our support for the Saudi Government's bid to become a leader in the area of future defence technologies, in line with the kingdoms Vision 2030. We look forward to engaging with key figures in the international defence community during the gathering, Bouri added.

WDS will be staged as the kingdom, one of the worlds top spenders in the defence sector, seeks to localise 50% of its domestic military expenditure. It will bring under roof industry thought leaders, governments, decision-makers, policymakers, and many more, to provide insights and technological innovations that will impact the regional and global defence industries.

At Airbus Secure Land Communications exhibition stand, Airbus team of specialists will display the companys array of mission-critical collaboration and communication technologies, including Tactilon Agnet, TACteam, Workflowmanagement, Everus Manpack, and Tactilon Dabat.-- TradeArabia News Service
CHICAGO  A suburban Chicago man has been charged in a January hit-and-run crash that killed a retired Chicago police officer.

Ted Plevritis of Palatine is charged with reckless homicide in the the death of Richard Haljean, the Chicago Sun-Times reported. He is also charged with failure to report an accident involving a death and aggravated use of a communication device.

Plevritis was to appear Thursday for a bond hearing, and it was not immediately clear if he has an attorney who could speak on his behalf.

Haljean, 57, was crossing a road on Jan. 20 in Chicago's Edison Park neighborhood when he was struck and killed by a vehicle Plevritis, 62, was driving, Chicago police said.

A police accident report states that Plevritis "did not stop to render aid" to Haljean and continued driving and fled the scene.

A passerby administered CPR to Haljean, 57, but he was pronounced dead after taken by ambulance to Resurrection Hospital, according to police.

Another witness told police he saw "the entire chain of events," while a third person provided video of the accident, according to the police report.

Emergency crews also recovered the front license plate of the Jeep at the scene.

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Weekly fish fries during Lent are a much-anticipated gathering for many in Central Illinois, and we want to help readers find them.

Lee Enterprises' Central Illinois newsrooms  The Pantagraph, Herald & Review and Journal Gazette/Times Courier  are compiling a list and map of events across the region.

If you're the organizer of such an event, please help us out. Our online submission form is at: https://bit.ly/ILfishfries

Contact Allison Petty at (217) 421-6986. Follow her on Twitter: @AllisonAPetty

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The impact of the 2020 census cant be underscored enough.

As reporter Brenden Moore chronicled last week, the constitutionally mandated decennial census gives us a deeper look at the demographic movements taking hold.

Some of those plot lines are familiar  the biggest being a troubling statewide population loss dating back years.

Not only are people leaving the state, but fewer are moving in, especially compared to states like Utah, Washington and Texas.

For Illinois, that means fewer reimbursements and grants from the U.S. government. About $400 billion is apportioned to states based on population numbers.

So severe are the changes that weve lost a seat in Congress and endured a political battle to redraw the district boundaries.

The gap is likely to widen.

As Moore reported, there are also deep concerns about areas with universities, which were dealt a nearly impossible puzzle during the last census count.

The population count in communities with schools  such as Macomb, Carbondale, Urbana, Normal and Charleston  depend on student numbers when the census is taken. Students count as residents, and residents count on the census.

However, COVID meant students werent on campus to be counted. Then outreach efforts stalled as the pandemic took hold.

Despite extended deadlines, many areas with colleges took big hits during the most recent count. (An exception was Normal and McLean County, which saw a slight uptick.)

Those communities are now left to sort out how to move forward. They can opt to conduct a special census to get a more accurate count, but those cost money. Essentially they have to weigh whether its worth spending more to fight being shortchanged.

How this has played out has been frustrating to watch.

Communities have been undercounted. And thats not in the spirit of what the census is mandated to accomplish.

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At least a dozen facilities that supply public drinking water in North Carolina are at risk from future natural disasters fueled by climate change, according to a newly released report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office.

They are among dozens of potentially vulnerable government and commercial operations statewide that make, use or store extremely hazardous chemicals in amounts that could harm people, the environment or property if accidentally released, the government watchdogs report says.

Nationally, the GAOs analysis found that more than 3,200 such facilities are located in areas where they face damage from sea-level rise, storm surge, wildfires and flooding caused by heavy rain.

Water plants serving Davidson County and the city of Wilkesboro  both of which draw from the Yadkin River  are among the North Carolina facilities identified by the report as facing the highest flood potential.

Treatment plants are often vulnerable to flooding because they typically are located near rivers and lakes that supply the water.

Thats always been a concern because of chlorine, said Stan Meiburg, director of Wake Forest Universitys graduate programs in sustainability who also spent nearly four decades at the Environmental Protection Agency and was the EPAs acting deputy administrator from 2014 to 2017. That can be nasty.

The EPA permits the use of chlorine to treat drinking water. The disinfecting chemical is safe if used in proper amounts but can be hazardous to people and the environment if released in large quantities.

That happened in 2020 near Lake Charles, La., where tens of thousands of residents were forced to shelter in place when damage from Hurricane Laura caused a leak of chlorine gas from a chemical plant.

As a general rule, (utilities) keep chemicals well secured, Meiburg noted. But they can get in trouble when they think they have everything covered and they dont.

Several North Carolina wastewater treatment plants also are named in the report.

On-the-job experience

The Davidson Water facility in Lexington has already been challenged by the impact of extreme weather.

In November 2020, torrential rains from Hurricane Eta sent the Yadkin over its banks, severely flooding Davidson Waters river intake pump station. But the facility continued to produce 10 million gallons a day without interruption and required only minor clean-up after the floodwaters receded, the company reported.

The GAO identified a handful of commercial facilities in the Triad that deal with significant amounts of potentially hazardous chemicals and face exposure to climate-related flooding:

Two Harris Teeter distribution centers near Piedmont Triad International Airport in Greensboro

Harcros Chemicals Inc. in Thomasville

Kao Specialties Americas in High Point

Statewide, the report named more than two dozen facilities that face the risk of wildfires, but none in the Triad.

Natural hazards

Nationally, the GAO analyzed the locations of more than 10,000 factories, refineries, water-treatment plants and other facilities that manufacture, store or use dangerous chemicals and found that 3,200 of them were in areas where they faced damage from weather-related events expected to worsen as climate change continues to drive warmer temperatures.

Recent natural disasters have demonstrated the potential for natural hazards to trigger fires, explosions, and releases of toxic chemicals at facilities, the report says.

That trend is expected to continue.

Climate change is altering the characteristics of many extreme weather events, the report explains. Some of these events have already become more frequent, intense, widespread, or of longer duration.

In North Carolina, the primary threats are high-tide flooding along the coast, and extreme rain events and wildfires statewide.

In its report, the GAO calls on the EPA to adopt new regulations or offer guidance to operators of facilities where hazardous chemicals are present on how to incorporate natural hazards and climate change into risk-management plans already required by the agency.

Meiburg, the former senior EPA official, called the recommendations reasonable and sensible.

The GAO is very credible, he added. They dont run around with their heads on fire waving their arms.

The challenge will be finding the resources to implement the recommendations, Meiburg said.

In a response to the report, the EPA said it generally agrees with the recommendations and a multi-year timeline for implementing them.

N.C. water plants

Here are the North Carolina water facilities identified by the GAO as facing the highest flood hazard as a result of climate change:

J.D. Mackintosh Jr. Water Treatment Plant, Burlington

City of Cherryville Water Plant, Cherryville

Davidson Water Inc. Water Plant, Lexington

Robert A. Harris Water Plant, Eden

Elizabeth City Water Treatment Facility, Elizabeth City

Town of Hillsborough Water Treatment Plant, Hillsborough

City of Lincolnton Water Treatment Plant, Lincolnton

Marion Water Treatment Plant, Marion

Shelby Water Treatment Plant, Shelby

Smithfield Water Treatment Plant, Smithfield

Waynesville Water Treatment Plant, Waynesville

Wilkesboro Water Treatment Plant, Wilkesboro

John Deem covers climate change and the environment in the Triad and Northwest North Carolina. His work is funded by a grant from the 1Earth Fund and the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation. 336-727-7204

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LEXINGTON  Witnesses saw a thick cloud of smoke trailing the engines of a plane just before it crashed into the rear of a tractor-trailer on Interstate 85 last month, killing the pilot and closing the highway for hours, a preliminary report released Thursday from the National Transportation Safety Board said.

The twin-engine plane, a Beechcraft Baron, had just taken off from nearby Davidson County Airport on Feb. 16. At 5:07 p.m. that day, the plane slammed into the rear of a tractor-trailer traveling south on Interstate 85 during the afternoon rush hour.

The pilot, Raymond John Ackley, 43, of Charlotte, was killed in the crash. Barrin Lamont Davis, 41, of Concord, the driver of the tractor-trailer, and a passenger who was not identified, were treated for minor injuries at Lexington Medical Center. The crash happened less than a mile from the airport and caused the tractor-trailer to ignite and overturn.

Three witnesses who were on the airport ramp saw part of the planes takeoff. One of those witnesses, who has flown for a major airline, said that the planes right engine spewed thick white smoke that the airport security video did not accurately show. Airport security video captured white smoke trailing the airplane about the time the plane rotated and then went out of sight about halfway down the runway, the report said.

Witnesses also reported hearing engine gyrations. One of the witnesses said he interpreted those to either mean that one of the engines was failing or that the engines were out of sync, according to the report.

A witness took a photograph, which showed showed the plane in a climb and the landing gear extended with smoke trailing the right engine.

As the flight continued, the landing gear retracted, the right engine quit, and the propeller stopped, the report said.

When the landing gear retracted, one of the witnesses reported seeing white and blue smoke coming from the left engine and that the airplane had lost power, the report said. Another witness reported seeing just white smoke coming from the left engine.

The plane banked left, stalled and disappeared behind the terrain, according to the report. A witness who was found a quarter mile north from the crash site told investigators about seeing the plane departing and said that the engine wasnt turning.

He observed the airplane descend, followed by a loud sound, then saw smoke, the report said.

Investigators were able to obtain video from a truck on Interstate 85 at the time of the crash, the report said. It showed the plane in a very slight nose-up attitude immediately before impact. The video did not show the crash but did show the resulting fireball and heavy black smoke, according to the report.

The video showed the tractor-trailer rolling onto its side and other vehicles stopping or maneuvering to avoid a collision.

Davis, the driver of the tractor-trailer, told investigators he was driving 65 mph and he felt contacted by something. He and the unidentified passenger were able to climb out of the truck on the passenger side.

The southbound lanes of I-85 between exits 87 and 91 were closed for hours. This was the second fatal plane crash that week in February. On Feb. 13, eight people died in a crash off the coast of North Carolina.

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Gov. Roy Cooper and public safety officials spoke this week to five chancellors of historically black colleges and universities in North Carolina that received bomb threats recently.

Cooper and state public officials talked in a private phone call to Chancellors Elwood Robinson of Winston-Salem State University, Harold Martin of N.C. A&T State University in Greensboro, as well as the leaders of N.C. Central University in Durham, Fayetteville State University and Elizabeth City State University, said Jody Donaldson, a spokesman for the N.C. Department of Public Safety.

Through their spokespersons, Robinson and Martin declined to comment about the matter. Jackie Torok, a spokeswoman for N.C. A&T, referred questions about the bomb threats to the FBI office in Charlotte.

The FBI is investigating 58 threats at HBCUs across the country, the N.C. Department of Public Safety said in a statement.

The five HBCUs targeted in North Carolina are North Carolina A&T, North Carolina Central, Winston-Salem State, Fayetteville State and most recently, Elizabeth City State, which received a threat on Feb. 25.

ECSU officials evacuated their campus after receiving the bomb threat, issuing an alert telling students and employees to leave campus immediately and stay away from the area.

WSSU received a bomb threat on Feb. 16, but university officials determined that the threat wasnt credible enough to evacuate their campus buildings. However, local law enforcement officers searched all campus buildings.

College campuses should be safe places to learn without fear of violence, and it is particularly disturbing that these threats are happening predominantly to our HBCUs, Cooper said. Were fortunate to be home to many distinguished HBCUs in North Carolina and will use every tool to protect the safety of students and faculty on these campuses.

Secretary Eddie Buffaloe of the N.C. Department of Public Safety said that his agency is taking these threats seriously.

And (we) have zero tolerance for hate crimes that cause such fear and terror within our community, Buffaloe said. I can assure you that our law enforcement agencies and homeland security personnel within the Department of Public Safety are working with our federal partners and will utilize the resources we have to assist in the investigations.

The chancellors, their universities police departments, security teams and emergency management personnel were briefed by DPS law enforcement and homeland security officials, followed by an open discussion about these ongoing threats, the department of public safety said.

The bomb threats have been made in phone calls, emails, instant messages and anonymous online posts, the FBI said in a statement. FBI agents are conducting hundreds of interviews and gathering a variety of electronic evidence for analysis.

The FBI is investigating these cases as racially or ethnically motivated extremism and hate crimes, the FBI said. No explosive devices related to the threats have been found.

We recognize the fear and disruption this has caused across the country, and we will continue our work to make sure people feel safe in their communities, schools, and places of worship, the FBI said.

Anyone with information regarding these bomb threats should report it to local law enforcement agencies or call the N.C. Information Sharing and Analysis Center at 888-624-7222. Its email address is ncisaac@ncsbi.gov.

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If youve seen the recent headlines about higher education, youve probably noticed that a lot of colleges seem to be in trouble.

The nations universities have lost one million undergraduates in just two years because of the pandemic, a robust job market and rising college prices. Worse, demographics wont rescue higher education this time around. After two decades of steady growth, the population of high school graduates is projected to peak within the next several years before leveling off in North Carolina and falling most everyplace else.

These declines wont hit all colleges and universities equally. Elite institutions like Duke and UNC Chapel Hill will have no trouble attracting students thanks to their high profile, well-known brands, deep-pocketed donors and multi-billion-dollar endowments. However, these demographic trends represent an existential crisis for the rest  small private colleges with few financial resources and public regional universities that serve a vast and diverse student population.

Regional public universities  like UNC Greensboro  are too important to ignore. They produce the teachers, nurses, accountants, computer scientists, lab techs, counselors and many others who are crucial contributors to the economy and society. In fact, UNCG provides more first-generation and lower-income students with paths to prosperity than any other public university in the state. We build the people that make North Carolina better for all.

Consider this: Of UNCGs 19,038 students, 92% are from North Carolina and represent almost all 100 counties. More than half of our students are racial and ethnic minorities. Among those, 13% are Latino, giving us the largest Latino student population of any of North Carolinas 16 public universities. Nearly half  49%  are the first members of their family to attend a four-year college. Moreover, 75% of our students receive financial aid, and 48% are eligible for Pell Grants because they come from homes of severely limited or moderate means.

This fall, 96% of our first-year students came from Tier 1 or Tier 2 counties  the most economically distressed regions of North Carolina. Whats even more impressive: 73% of our graduates return to those counties to live and work. We also serve large numbers of non-traditional students: Nearly 20% of our undergraduates are 25 or older, and many have jobs, families and children of their own.

The demographic changes that have been taking place across North Carolina for years are plainly evident on our campus. We saw these changes coming and built the right academic and advising programs to best support a student body that looks much different than it did a generation ago. As a result, not only have we increased graduation rates for all students, but weve also closed the achievement gap between white and minority students.

Heres one more thing to remember: Access to higher education doesnt have to come at the expense of academic excellence. For the past 32 years, UNCG has been recognized by U.S. News and World Report as one of the Best Colleges in the nation. We prove that strong regional public universities play a vital role in providing a quality and affordable education that graduates students and helps them find good jobs. In this regard, UNCG continues its legacy of excellence building on the foundation of the historic Womans College.

The critical student support systems that make these outcomes happen are not inexpensive. Many of our students come from families where graduating from college isnt a foregone conclusion. Many need tremendous amounts of academic and social counseling and financial assistance to stay on track to earn their degrees. It is here where the generosity of our donors makes the biggest impact.

Moreover, we need to prioritize continued investments in the support systems that help more of our states students transform untapped potential into prosperity, particularly (but not exclusive to) those from underrepresented and lower-income groups.

Despite the gloom you might have heard around higher education, were getting the job done at UNCG  and we remain laser-focused on providing a more prosperous future for our graduates and for North Carolina. We hope that you will join us as regional universities like ours put thousands of North Carolina students on their paths to prosperity.

Franklin D. Gilliam Jr. is the chancellor of UNC Greensboro.
The world woke up to a nuclear scare as a fire broke out in a building at the largest nuclear power plant in Europe during a clash between Russian and Ukrainian forces.

Ukranian emergency services said they've managed to put out the fire at the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant, said a Reuters report.

US Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said there was no indication of elevated radiation levels at the Zaporizhzhia plant, which provides more than a fifth of total electricity generated in Ukraine.

A video feed from the plant showed shelling and smoke rising near a building at the plant compound. The plant itself wasn't affected but it was feared that the fire could spread if it wasn't quickly contained.

Ukrainian emergency services said initially they were blocked from getting to the scene. But at 05:20 local time, firefighters were finally able to start tackling the fire, the report said.

It was extinguished about an hour later, Ukraine's Emergency Services said.

Mayor Dmytro Orlov of nearby Enerhodar had earlier said the fire was caused by "continuous enemy shelling"

Granholm said the reactors at Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station "are protected by robust containment structures and reactors are being safely shut down".
Consequences

Elections have consequences. If you voted for Joe Biden, don't complain about high gas prices, high food prices or the horrific killing of innocent men, women and children in Ukraine. You caused this. And it is highly likely that your IQ is as low as Biden's approval rating.

Ron Joyce

Lewisville

Biden's strength

President Biden, to anyone who knows his life story, obviously has a great deal of strength. He has endured some terrible tragedies in his life and continues to be resilient.

He was strong enough to win the 2020 election from an incumbent president, which is difficult under the best of circumstances.

Yet as he faces off with a foreign foe, Republican legislators, even as they condemn Russian President Vladimir Putin, just cant resist getting in some kind of dig about Bidens supposed lack of strength. People in Ukraine are dying and Republican legislators cant stop playing politics. They cant stop campaigning.

There was a time when American politics stopped at the border. But with the election of extremists and flamethrowers like Sen. Tom Cotton and Sen. Ted Cruz, that standard has been eroded to the point that its now non-existent.

Note to Republicans: Keep your eye on the ball. The enemy is Putin.

Bethany Pare

Winston-Salem

Stop Russian oil

It is just inconceivable that the U.S. is funding the Russian war against Ukraine and the Ukrainian people by continuing to purchase Russian oil.

While gasoline prices have gone up about 40% in a year under President Biden, I feel that his administration is reluctant to discontinue the purchase of Russian oil because of this being an election year and to take such an action would drive gasoline prices up even more in the U.S. May I suggest that the federal taxes of 18 plus cents per gallon be eliminated until this war is over and go ahead and stop importing Russian oil. This would help alleviate the projected higher cost of energy for the American consumer and at the same time keep us from funding such a horrible and terrible war against Ukrainian people.

To continue to purchase Russian oil is to be a participant in this war crime. Americans are better than this.

Ray Branch

Bermuda Run

As we go to press, bills are being drafted in the Senate that propose stopping the import of Russian oil.  the editor

Climate measures

Is climate change good for the economy? Seems like some Republicans and business groups think so.

On Feb. 27, the Journal ran an article about the Biden administrations effort to put a cost on the damage caused by burning fossil fuels and the resulting change to the climate ("As climate change costs mount, Biden seeks to price damages"). A federal judge blocked that effort at the urging of Republicans and business groups (who) argued the emphasis on future damages would hobble the economy. I wonder, do these Republicans and business groups think that more storms, floods, wildfires, heat waves, droughts and rising sea levels will be good for the economy? If so, maybe they should read the report issued in January by Deloitte, the large, pro-business accounting/consulting firm.

In Turning Point: A new economic climate in the United States, Deloitte predicts that if fossil fuel emissions are not reduced, $14.5 trillion and millions of jobs will be lost from the economy between now and 2070. On the other hand, transitioning to a clean energy economy will add $3 trillion to GDP and create jobs.

It would be nice to hear from Sens. Richard Burr and Thom Tillis and their Republican colleagues about this. Do they think climate change will be good for the economy? If they agree with Deloitte that climate change will be bad for the economy, what measures do they support to spur the transition to clean energy?

Bill Blancato

Winston-Salem

Right?

Have I got this right?

President Biden offered assistance to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky without threatening to extort him first?

Times sure have changed.

Buddy Osborne

Winston-Salem
A century ago, change was on the horizon above downtown Lincoln.

A succession of high-rises  100 feet tall or higher  was beginning to overshadow its traditional lower-slung structures. The 11-story Capital Hotel, the 10-story Security Mutual Building, the First National Bank, Sharp and Terminal buildings.

The Chamber of Commerce looked up, and it took note. Their slogan was, A new skyline every morning, said Ed Zimmer, the citys former historic preservation planner. It was a boom era for downtown buildings.

If they werent hotels or department stores, the new buildings were stacked with offices. Floor after floor of bankers, doctors, lawyers and lenders.

The city revolved around downtown, with a hub-and-spoke streetcar system that reached out to its far-flung neighborhoods and converged at 10th and O streets  the Terminal Building.

A century ago, Lincoln worked downtown. It shopped downtown. It spent its days downtown.

But it didnt spend as many nights downtown as it does now.

Most of the citys apartments were closer to the Capitol, though there were some beds in the business district. Students and spinsters and those who couldnt qualify for mortgages rented apartments above storefronts.

Those with means  professors, even governors  lived more luxuriously as long-term hotel guests.

Fast-forward 100 years.

Many of those early offices  the Stuart Building, now University Towers; Security Mutual, now Centerstone  emptied and were converted to condos. Hotels became apartment buildings. Warehouses were walled off. The federal building? Carved up and rented out.

By 2010, the Downtown Lincoln Association counted 754 residential units and a population of about 1,200.

But that was just the start.

Since then, developers began building from the ground up, changing the horizon again. People now sleep, or soon will, above the ghosts of former downtown institutions. On what used to be the railroad tracks that helped build the city; and Bakers Hardware, Lincolns oldest retailer; and the Journal Star; and P.O. Pears. Even the short-lived Applebees is yielding to the 20-story Lied Place Residences.

Add it all up  whats been built, and whats under construction  and downtown will soon be home to about 3,800 apartments and condos, said Todd Ogden, president of the Downtown Lincoln Association.

Its population will rise, too, from about 6,400 now to more than 10,000  rivaling the sprawling Near South population, and bigger than the East Campus, Havelock, Belmont or Malone neighborhoods.

At the same time, the number of downtown hotel rooms has nearly tripled in the past decade, from 554 in 2013 to 1,388, said Jeff Maul, executive director of the Lincoln Convention and Visitors Bureau.

Its clear the dynamics of downtown Lincoln are shifting quickly, Ogden said. But that means downtown Lincoln has to change its rhythm  and some of its infrastructure  to accommodate its new role as a proper neighborhood.

The area needs to embrace those who live there, he said, and not just those who work there.

Were changing from an 8-to-5 business center to a 24/7 neighborhood thats becoming more livable, walkable and commutable. We have to keep up with the trends that are going on.

* * *

Randy Hawthorne moved into an apartment near 14th and P more than two decades ago  and he never left.

Why would he? He can walk to the Lied Center for Performing Arts. He can walk to Pinnacle Bank Arena. He can walk to work and to lunch and to dinner. He only drives his car about once a week.

Ive thought of moving over the years, he said. But this is so convenient.

Earlier, after the downtown workforce clocked out and went home, his neighborhood seemed emptier in the evenings. But the last decades housing boom changed that, and then the pandemic served as an amplifier.

When much of the workforce started staying home, Hawthorne started realizing how many familiar faces  downtown residents, like him  he was seeing on his walks.

And the best part? Many were holding leashes. The pets have come downtown with the residents, he said. Theres a lot more dog-walking than when I first moved downtown.

Hawthorne is a member of the Downtown Lincoln Associations Residential Council, which provides feedback and guidance to the association, and advocates for the thousands of people who now spend their nights downtown.

We talk about things that could be done to provide more safety, or the feeling of safety, in certain parts of downtown. We make sure residents are being thought about.

They requested better lighting along N Street, for instance, and lobbied for a downtown dog run, which is now included in plans for the South Haymarket Park, tentatively planned to open in 2025. They pointed out the need for a nearby grocery store, and finally got one in 2018.

And they should expect more changes.

A couple of years before COVID-19 altered how  and where  people worked, the Downtown Lincoln Association partnered with the city to initiate a downtown master plan.

They called it The Center of Opportunity.

It recognized in 2018 what the pandemic would ultimately bring into sharper focus  that the traditional 8-to-5 office model was tilting toward a more balanced live-work lifestyle.

People didnt want to be in their offices all day. But they didnt want to be home all the time, either. They wanted flexibility, and things to do.

Ogdens association is hoping to embrace that. We want to position ourselves downtown so its the perfect spot to have this hybrid workforce. We need to be aggressive in becoming a lifestyle center that is an attractive place to live and work.

That means a community library, which is planned for the Pershing Center block. It might mean a convention center, which is being studied. It means more coffee shops. It means friendlier sidewalks, with more seating, greenery and traffic-calming devices.

It means restaurants that can adapt to a changing schedule; instead of traditional lunch rushes by office workers, their demand might be spread out around the clock. It means more fitness centers, hair stylists and other services. It means more events at Tower Square and the Railyard.

All of that could mean more business, Ogden said. The more people you have that are spending money downtown, the better our retail and restaurants are going to do.

And that can be self-perpetuating. A downtown thats lively all the time  and not just during events  can serve as a recruiting tool for a company like Olsson, which employs about 250 people at its Haymarket headquarters.

When we host recruits to come to our office, being part of the energy and the buzz that happens down here in the Haymarket and downtown in general can be a plus in the candidates eyes, said Jeff McPeak, the engineering companys Lincoln office leader.

A downtown thats livable helps, too. Many of Olssons interns rent student apartments, and the proximity is convenient for the odd hours they work. But its not just students.

McPeak asked around at work recently. He learned his full-time employees who lived downtown belonged to one of two camps  younger, up-and-coming professionals, or established veterans who were downsizing, and could afford some of the pricier units.

* * *

A century ago, many downtown dwellers couldnt afford to live anywhere else.

Not anymore.

A 2,500-square-foot condo at Lied Place Residences was assessed at nearly $1 million. A lower-floor, one-bedroom unit in the same building was listed at $545,000. Two-bedroom units at University Towers and Centerstone  both former office buildings from the 1920s  were about $370,000.

And a 600-square-foot, one-bedroom apartment at the upcoming Ten40 Building  in what used to be the Lincoln Electric System headquarters at 11th and O  was listed at $215,000.

These arent homes of last resort.

Todays downtown buyers and renters are single, young professionals, downsizing couples, western Nebraskans who want a place to stay on Husker gameday, or parents of college students.

It amazes me, the diversity, said Craig Gies, whose company, BIC Construction, is creating nearly two dozen modest-sized condos  averaging about 800 square feet  in the former LES building.

Before that, his company had focused on the Haymarket, filling the Raymond Bros. and Schwarz Paper warehouses near Eighth and O with condos a few years ago. But century-old Haymarket properties ripe for renovation are getting harder to find, so it expanded its search.

The sustained downtown housing boom is both alarming and inspiring, he said. The Ten40 project is a block east of the Terminal Building, part of which is also becoming condos, and two blocks from the former Journal Star site, which is being replaced by an apartment high-rise.

But the market remains strong. Ten40 already has some of its condos under contract, Gies said.

I think theres always a concern with the saturation level, but I think theres a good mix between hotels, apartments and condo-type places.

Future housing projects, though, might be more on the fringes of downtown  the Telegraph District to the east, and the South Haymarket area, he said.

Now its time for the neighborhood to serve its new population. It could use another grocery store, he said. A park. And more retail opportunities.

Gies is old enough to remember when the city revolved around downtown.

We never shopped anywhere but downtown, he said. That doesnt exist today.

Reach the writer at 402-473-7254 or psalter@journalstar.com. On Twitter @LJSPeterSalter

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After 32 years and a half-day, Tom Brookhouser walked out of the Lancaster County Sheriff's Office on Wednesday  his last day at the agency where he's spent his entire law enforcement career.

Brookhouser, 56, was sworn in as a rookie deputy March 1, 1990, seven years after the O'Neill native graduated from Lincoln High School.

By 1 p.m. Wednesday  after a decades-long career that included stints as a narcotics investigator and the commander of the department's Tactical Response Unit  Brookhouser was at home, reflecting on the job he walked away from.

"I know a handful of guys locally that never made it to retirement," he told the Journal Star.

So Brookhouser turned in his badge and gun Wednesday, leaving the profession while he's healthy enough to travel with his wife, he said. They plan to visit their daughters in California and Colorado.

"Some people might consider (my retirement) early," he said. "I think 32 years of wearing a gun belt is long enough. But we want to get out and enjoy it while we still have our health and can do it."

Brookhouser, who studied criminal justice at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, worked as a deputy for seven years before he was promoted to sergeant in 1997.

He held that rank for 16 years, working in the courts and patrol divisions before serving on the Metro Fugitive Task Force. He was promoted to captain in 2013 and has commanded the office's patrol division since 2017.

Brookhouser spent much of his career on the department's Tactical Response Unit, the agency's version of a SWAT team. He first joined the unit in 1992 but left it in 2001, after he was activated as a member of the Nebraska Air National Guard in the wake of 9/11.

He was a part of the Air National Guard's 155th Security Forces Squadron from 1984 until 2004. After 9/11, he served a stint in Saudi Arabia.

He returned to the Tactical Response Unit after his active military tour finished. Brookhouser is the only member of the Tactical Response Unit to have served as operator, assistant team leader, team leader, team coordinator and team commander, according to a news release announcing his retirement.

"I've certainly been fortunate, I guess, to be able to accomplish and work in the areas  the specialized areas  that I have, that I've wanted to all these years," he said. "I've got nothing but appreciation for my 32 years there, and I'm very satisfied how the career played out."

Brookhouser in 2014 received the sheriff's office's Gallantry Star Award for what Chief Deputy Ben Houchin described as his "bravery in an officer-involved shooting incident."

Along with then-Sgt. Tommy Trotter, Brookhouser fired five shots at Doug DaMoude, who had aimed an unloaded rifle amid a struggle over the weapon as deputies tried to evict him in May 2014.

DaMoude, who had returned to the home after being evicted a month before, died at the scene. Both Brookhouser and Trotter were cleared of wrongdoing by a grand jury.

Brookhouser seemed to reference the incident Wednesday as he reflected on his career.

"I was involved in a couple critical incidents over the years, and those certainly have an impact on law enforcement officers," he said.

"People don't join law enforcement to make a lot of money or have a lot of benefits. They do it for the purpose to help people and try and keep the community safe, and that's certainly one of the reasons I wanted to be a cop my entire life."

Reach the writer at 402-473-7223 or awegley@journalstar.com. On Twitter @andrewwegley

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Cameron Hall, a Lincoln businessman, is running for the District 1 seat on the Lancaster County Board of Commissioners.

Hall, a Republican, is a residential home builder and a member of the Lincoln Independent Business Association and the Home Builders Association of Lincoln.

He will challenge incumbent Sean Flowerday, a Democrat, in Novembers general election for the district that covers the southwest portion of the county.

As a member of the LIBA Elected Officials Forum, Hall said he has learned how decisions elected officials make impact families and businesses. He said he would use his experience listening to customers to understand how to best serve constituents needs.

As a lifelong resident and business owner in Lancaster County I am excited about the opportunity to serve this district, Hall said. I look forward to meeting voters throughout the district and listening to their concerns about the county and the qualities they are looking for in their next commissioner.

One focus, Hall said, would be on spending taxpayer money responsibly.

As a business owner, we dont spend money we dont have, and the county should be following the same model, Hall said. We need to invest taxpayer money to benefit the people of Lancaster County.

Hall and his wife, Sydney, built a home in south Lincoln and were married in 2021.

Reach the writer at 402-473-7226 or mreist@journalstar.com. On Twitter @LJSreist

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WASHINGTON  State attorneys general have launched a nationwide investigation into TikTok and its possible harmful effects on young users mental health, widening government scrutiny of the wildly popular video platform.

The investigation was announced Wednesday by a number of states, led by California, Florida, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Nebraska, New Jersey, Tennessee and Vermont.

U.S. lawmakers and federal regulators have criticized TikTok, citing practices and computer-driven promotion of content they say can endanger the physical and mental health of young users. The platform has an estimated 1 billion monthly users and is especially popular with teens and younger children.

Last month, Texas opened an investigation into TikToks alleged violations of childrens privacy and facilitation of human trafficking.

Our children are growing up in the age of social media  and many feel like they need to measure up to the filtered versions of reality that they see on their screens, California Attorney General Rob Bonta said in a news release. We know this takes a devastating toll on childrens mental health and well-being."

Bonta said the investigation aims to determine if TikTok is violating the law in promoting its platform to young people.

Government officials and child-safety advocates maintain that TikToks computer algorithms pushing video content to users can promote eating disorders and even self-harm and suicide to young viewers.

TikTok has said it focuses on age-appropriate experiences, noting that some features, such as direct messaging, are not available to younger users.

We care deeply about building an experience that helps to protect and support the well-being of our community, and appreciate that the state attorneys general are focusing on the safety of younger users," the company said Wednesday. "We look forward to providing information on the many safety and privacy protections we have for teens."

Early last year, after federal regulators ordered TikTok to disclose how its practices affect children and teenagers, the platform tightened its privacy practices for users under 18.

As its popularity has swelled, TikTok has come under a barrage of criticism from state officials, federal regulators, consumer advocates and lawmakers of both parties. Republicans have especially homed in on the companys ties to China. TikTok is owned by Beijing-based ByteDance.

TikTok threatens the safety, mental health and well-being of our kids, Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington, the senior Republican on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said at a hearing Tuesday.

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State of play

The Legislature must redraw political lines every decade based on the latest population figures from the U.S. Census Bureau. In 2011, Republicans, working in secretive conditions, drew maps that packed Democratic voters into lopsided districts and spread out rural and suburban Republicans into districts with solid, but narrower, majorities. The maps allowed the GOP to hold more than 60% of legislative seats, even when Democrats won all statewide elections in 2018.

Gov. Tony Evers set up the court battle over the states next decennial maps when he vetoed GOP-drawn boundaries in mid-November. The governor had championed boundaries drawn by the Peoples Maps Commission, but those maps failed to get universal support among legislative Democrats, with some criticizing the boundaries for potentially diminishing black and Hispanic representation in the Legislature.

After the state Supreme Court ruled in favor of a least change approach, Evers submitted new maps that made fewer changes than the Republican proposal, while also slightly reducing the projected Republican advantage in the Legislature.

Predictions

By applying the average of six statewide elections since 2016, Evers new maps would elect 44 Democrats and 55 Republicans in the Assembly, and 13 Democrats and 20 Republicans in the Senate. In Congress, Republicans would maintain five seats to Democrats three, according to Evers office.

Republicans currently hold a 61-38 majority in the Assembly and a 21-12 majority in the Senate. Five of the states eight congressional districts are held by Republicans.
Lots of claims. Very little evidence, at least for some of them.

Thats what was in the interim report from the taxpayer-funded probe of the 2020 election that was released Tuesday.

I thought the report was brash and rambling, Barry Burden, University of Wisconsin-Madison professor of political science, said during an online panel hosted Wednesday by the Bipartisan Policy Center. It touched on a lot of issues but didnt really solve or resolve any of them. It mainly raised questions and made a number of allegations that I think were not well established in the facts.

Two unsubstantiated claims

The report claims there was 100% turnout in 12 Racine County nursing homes, 30 Milwaukee County nursing homes and 24 Dane County nursing homes.

But the report doesnt identify any of those 66 nursing homes, or where exactly the data came from, or provide any substantiating documents or evidence to support the claims, which were made in bold red type.

Without knowing what nursing homes the claims are being made about, its hard to rebut them, state Rep. Mark Spreitzer, D-Beloit, said in a phone interview Thursday morning.

Members of the Wisconsin Assembly Committee on Campaigns and Elections, upon which Spreitzer sits, was given the report minutes before hearing testimony by Michael Gableman, the former state Supreme Court justice leading the probe. As such, committee members had little time to educate themselves on Gablemans claims before he spoke about them and answered questions.

Gableman and the report itself admit the data is incomplete, but made claims based on that data anyway.

Milwaukee officials have already countered the nursing-home claims with actual data, indicating the reports assertions are wholly inaccurate.

Among the apparently false claims was one that asserted federal law requires lists of non-citizens be provided to local elections officials and that that did not happen before the 2020 election. But multiple clerks said this is not true; there is no such thing as a non-citizen list.

The Journal Times requested data and clarification from the Office of the Special Counsel, led by Gableman. No reply was received.

Gableman: Decertify Biden's win only In an online panel Wednesday regarding the interim OSC report released Tuesday, Barry Burden, University of Wisconsin-Madison professor of political science, pointed out an "inconsistency" in Michael Gableman's assertions. Gableman asserted the potential for fraud specifically in the presidential election but not other elections held at the same time, such as the one won handily by Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, who ordered Gableman's investigation, and the rest of the Republicans who held onto the vast majority of seats in the Assembly. Gableman also recommended the Legislature look into decertifying President Joe Biden's election win, but made no recommendations for the other elections on Wisconsin ballots. It was striking that the end of Gableman report suggested decertifying the presidential election but it did not recommend decertifying all the other elections that happened on this same day, on the same ballots, on the same machines in 2020," Burden said. "There's some inconsistency there."

Nursing homes

Racine County does not have exactly 12 nursing homes, so unless the OSC releases more information, its impossible to know upon what the reports claims are based.

Depending on your definition, Racine County has six nursing homes, or somewhere between 14 and 17, or dozens, or more than 200. But not 12.

The report does not deny this, saying that its assertion of 100% voter turnout (reportedly 348 votes cast out of 348 registered voters in 12 unidentified Racine County nursing homes) reflects voting at the nursing homes that the OSC has been able to vet to this juncture. There are more facilities in these counties, and after auditing the votes from other facilities, the above percentages may change.

Gableman noted Tuesday, regarding turnout rates at nursing homes: I havent fully investigated that yet.

By releasing the incomplete information, Gableman and Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, the Racine County Republican who ordered the investigation, have contradicted what they said when the probe launched; at the time, they said it was important to not release any information until the investigation is complete.

According to the state designation of what a nursing home is, there are six in Racine County:

The Bay at Burlington

Oak Ridge Care Center, Union Grove

Ridgewood Care Center, Mount Pleasant

Lakeshore at Siena, Caledonia

Wisconsin Veterans Home-Boland Hall, Town of Dover

The Villa at Lincoln Park, Racine

That count of six was confirmed by Andrew Goetz, a spokesman for the county, who indicated he likewise was confused as to how Gablemans team came to its conclusion.

If you are to include both memory care units and residential care apartment complexes, the number increases to somewhere from 14 to 17.

Include community-based apartment complexes, the number rises to more than 50.

If you include adult family homes, the number rises to more than 300.

In Milwaukee County, Gablemans report claims there were 1,084 votes cast out of 1,084 registered voters in 30 nursing homes.

But Milwaukee elections officials disclosed data that contradicts this. In an email Thursday morning, Milwaukee Election Commission Executive Director Claire Woodall-Vogg said that in the November 2020 election, there were 579 ballots issued to SVD (special voting deputy) voters; 389 ballots returned; 67.2% return rate, in the City of Milwaukee.

That return rate is actually down from the 2016 presidential election, when there were 810 such ballots issued, with 633 of them being returned, for a turnout rate of 78.1%, according to the data Woodall-Vogg provided.

Asked about the discrepancy between Gablemans numbers and Milwaukees actual election data, Woodall-Vogg said: It is not clear if Mr. Gableman understands this, but SVD voters are those who have requested an absentee ballot and are in nursing or assisted living. Voters in independent living  which comprises quite a large number  can vote via mail or with the SVDs. It is their preference.

The numbers Woodall-Vogg provided, she said, indicate the requests we had on file for voters in care facilities who were in nursing or assisted living and would have voted with a SVD if SVDs had been dispensed in 2020, which they were not.

Using the states strict definition of nursing home, there are 32 nursing homes in Milwaukee County.

Non-citizen

Gablemans report states outright: WEC is also legally required under federal law to distribute to the States municipal clerks lists of wards and incapacitated person so as to prevent these ineligible non-citizens from Election Day registration and voting.

This is wrong, said Dane County Clerk Scott McDonell and Caledonia Clerk Joslyn Hoeffert.

The report does not cite any specific law from which it drew the conclusion that such non-citizen lists must be provided.

Of the claim that there is some sort of non-citizen list mandate, thats a lie, McDonell said. Thats a complete lie. That is made up. That is, theres no legal cite, of course there isnt one, he cant provide one and no one else does. So, if it were a federal requirement, someone would be doing it.

Local election officials do get lists of felons and others barred from voting from the state; Waterford Village Clerk Rachel Ladewig called it an Ineligible Voter List. But theres no such non-citizen list.

We get a list of the felons, which I think is from the state  its definitely not a non-citizen list, Hoeffert said.

The report further stated, Wisconsin election officials failed to prevent non-citizens from voting in the 2020 presidential election  casting doubt on the election result. However, the report does not even claim or point to any case in which a single non-citizen voted in the 2020 presidential election.

Misinformation already spreading

Preventing the potential spread of misinformation was ostensibly the reason why Gablemans work and documents associated with OSC were to be kept secret. As such, it is not clear why these unsubstantiated claims and incomplete data sets are being released now, breaking from the assurances that were made by Vos and Gableman at the outset of the probe.

The claims Gableman made Tuesday have already led to the spread of misinformation.

Wisconsin has an estimated 92,000 people living in nursing homes. As such, Gableman implied that supposed election fraud in nursing homes could have swayed the election in Bidens favor, since 92,000 is bigger than Bidens margin of victory, which was 20,682 votes.

92,000 is a lot of votes, he said.

But Gableman ignores the fact that that 92,000 is the total population of all Wisconsinites living in nursing homes, and he did not even assert that there were 92,000 ballots cast out of the nursing homes.

To allege that there could be 92,000 fraudulent votes connected to nursing homes implies that there was a ballot cast for every single nursing home resident in the state  which did not happen  and that, somehow, all of these ballots were fraudulent, which would imply that not a single resident of a Wisconsin nursing home voted legally. It also implies that every single nursing home resident in the state is a registered voter, which is not accurate.

The investigation conducted by the Racine County Sheriffs Office  which looked into alleged election fraud in a single Mount Pleasant nursing home and has been heavily cited by Gablemans team  effectively disproves Gablemans implication that 92,000 votes connected to nursing homes could have been fraudulent.

The RCSOs investigation found that eight people whose family members said should not have been able to vote and would not have consciously wanted to vote did vote at Ridgewood Care Center. But 42 votes were recorded from Ridgewood, with no concerns being raised about 34 of them. Additionally, Ridgewood has a capacity of 200 residents.

Burden, the UW-Madison professor, said Wednesday: I think the report suggesting that there are 92,000 people at risk of being coerced or breaking the law is mostly innuendo.

Still, state Rep. Tim Ramthun, in a release titled Vindication, claimed his doubts of the legality of the 2020 election were confirmed by Gableman. Ramthun is a Republican gubernatorial candidate who has tried to have Wisconsins electoral votes somehow recalled 15 months after the fact, something Gableman now asserts is possible even though the Legislatures attorneys and election officials say would be illegal, since once the Electoral College votes were tabulated on the evening of Jan. 6, 2021, the proceedings were finalized. (tncms-asset)f75edb9e-9b32-11ec-9676-00163ec2aa77[8](/tncms-asset)

Those in Donald Trumps camp likewise are still claiming Biden did not win the 2020 election, and they are citing Gablemans flawed report as purported evidence backing up those claims. Boris Epshteyn, an attorney who is a current advisor to Trump, spoke about Gablemans report at length in a podcast hosted by former Trump advisor Steve Bannon, with Epshteyn falsely asserting that the interim report proves the election was stolen. Epshteyn predicted a mushroom effort in the drive to decertify the 2020 election.

Reporting from Alexander Shur of Lee Newspapers is included in this article.

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A day after the Wisconsin Supreme Court adopted Democratic Gov. Tony Evers proposal for the states 10-year congressional and legislative district maps, the Wisconsin Legislature filed a motion with the court for a stay on the ruling pending appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Legislature intends to request an appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday, the motion states, after it maintained Friday that Evers maps violate federal law by moving too many people around to create majority-minority Assembly districts. If the U.S. Supreme Court doesnt take the case, the states ruling will remain in place.

The Legislature in its motion focuses on Evers decision to include seven majority-Black Assembly districts in Milwaukee, all of which include about 50% Black populations. The states high court, the Legislature argues, never decided whether those districts were required by the Voting Rights Act, referencing the majority opinion Thursday that the justices had good reasons to believe they were required.

There can be no good reasons for maximizing the number of majority-minority districts by dialing down the existing Black population in the existing majority-Black districts to a 50-percent, as the ordered plans indisputably do, attorney Kevin St. John states in the 18-page motion.

The Legislature called for the stay Friday arguing that its appeal, built upon the allegation that Evers districts cannot be justified by any reasonable interpretation of the Voting Rights Act, would likely be held up by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Asked for comment, Evers spokesperson Britt Cudaback referred to the governors statement from Thursday, which said the maps I submitted to the Court that were selected today are a vast improvement from the gerrymandered maps Wisconsin has had for the last decade and the even more gerrymandered Republican maps that I vetoed last year.

The Legislature in the motion states that moving forward with racially gerrymandered maps would create irreparable harm, while the state Supreme Court issuing a stay would not.

Part of the harm, St. John writes in the motion, would be the money and time state officials put into implementing and enforcing Evers plan that the U.S. Supreme Court is likely to reverse. The federal high court would probably alert the state Legislature within three weeks of its emergency relief request filing on whether it would accept the appeal, St. John said.

The Republican Legislature filed the motion one day after the court issued a 4-3 split decision adopting Evers boundaries that would maintain Republican majorities in the Legislature but likely prevent them from claiming a veto-proof supermajority.

Conservative Justice Brian Hagedorn, a regular swing vote on the court, sided with liberal justices Rebecca Dallet, Ann Walsh Bradley and Jill Karofsky in the ruling.

The ruling Thursday came months after Hagedorn and the courts conservatives ruled 4-3 that they would follow a least change approach from the current maps, which are considered some of the most gerrymandered in the nation.

The Legislature in the motion Friday states it had repeatedly argued that Evers maps were unconstitutional despite Hagedorn writing in Thursdays majority opinion that nobody suggested the maps violated the Voting Rights Act or Equal Protection Clause.

The Republican Legislature added that seven is the maximum number of majority-Black Assembly districts possible in Milwaukee.

A redistricting plan cannot survive strict scrutiny based on a partys mere assertion that an additional district is possible, the motion states.

Evers set up the court battle over the states next decennial maps when he vetoed GOP-drawn boundaries in mid-November. The governor had championed boundaries drawn by the Peoples Maps Commission, but those maps failed to get universal support among legislative Democrats, with some criticizing the boundaries for potentially diminishing Black and Hispanic representation in the Legislature.

After the state Supreme Court ruled in favor of a least change approach, Evers submitted new maps that made fewer changes than the Republican proposal, while also slightly reducing the projected Republican advantage in the Legislature.

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The images of residential blocks hit by Russian missiles or artillery fire in Kiev, Kharkiv and other Ukrainian cities brought back memories of similar scenes from cities in Syria some years ago. Initially, it was news that something like that had happened. Then it became a commonplace, the lines of who did it  the Syrian government, the rebels, which rebels, an intervening government?  got blurred and the cities got reduced to rubble, so nothing much left to be spectacularly destroyed live on TV or on social media.

Some months or a few years forward and the same widespread destruction may well be witnessed in Ukraine, the European Syria-in-the-making. Would it be the Russian Army with its continued operations that would remain the primary culprit or would this title be claimed by one of the Russian-speaking separatist groups cooperating with the Russian Army, or the Ukrainian Army gone underground after the destruction of its main installations by the initial shock and awe operation of Russia, or the anti-Russian guerilla groups funded and supplied with armaments by the West?

Would the answer to the above really matter to the millions of refugees flocking into the West, and the few hundred thousands going eastwards? Would it matter to the dead and the maimed? Would it make a difference to the reality of a European country with advanced infrastructure being reduced to a black hole sucking a lot of the bad blood and destructive energy of Europe? And what about the burden on the EU and its member states from this refugee influx from a dissolving country that is bigger in population and closer geographically than Syria? What about the incidents of terrorism or high-intensity criminal activity that would start to happen more frequently first in the East and later also in the West of the EU, with ammunition that would have been provided to the Ukrainian resistance, some of which would have gone rogue? Not to mention the high energy prices and perhaps the shortage of fuel while the EU is still trying to switch to other providers and to renewables, the latter for the climate and its own strategic independence from imported fuel.

If you think that such a scenario is far-fetched, think again. Syria was quite a modern and functioning even if authoritarian state before the war started. Is that impossible to happen to Ukraine too? You can always say that this is Europe and things are more civilized here, but the very invasion of Ukraine by Russia and the messy response it elicited disproves that. Note also that NATO may be holding its fire as Ukraine is not a member of the alliance and because nobody wants an even bigger confrontation that can go nuclear, but that does not mean that special forces from some of its member states are not arming, training and occasionally accompanying the Ukrainian resistance fighters. The Syria-like dystopia is around the corner and can soon prove Europes newest and most intense nightmare

How did we get to the current dire situation in Ukraine, with the even more dire prospects? It was one more instance of a disaster foretold but not averted, quite the opposite. An explosive mix of Russian  or is it Mr. Putin and his teams?  dreams of imperial revival combined with deep-rooted insecurities about advancing Western European armies, in this case NATO incorporating former Warsaw Pact members and even former Soviet republics (which has happened in recent years). Add to the mix a systematic effort to win Ukraine over to the West, tilting the balance in internal politics and shunning the option of Ukraine serving as a bridge between the EU / the West and Russia.

Does this explain and justify what is happening in Ukraine now? Explain it may, justify certainly not. Mr. Putins decision to invade a sovereign state that he had already started to carve up in previous years has no legal basis and deserves every condemnation and punishment. This could happen, symbolically, at the court of global public opinion or better also at the International Criminal Court (ICC) or another special court that may take up the case, since neither Russia nor Ukraine (nor the US) are members of the ICC. The fact that in the meantime the suffering of the Ukrainian people will continue and possibly intensify, and that the average Russian citizen will also be suffering from the Wests tightened sanctions, should not be forgotten.

Can there be a peaceful way out? That would require a very complex face-saving exercise that one wonders if there is anybody currently in the world that could perform it. Could it be the UN Secretary-General and/or a high-level representative that he would appoint? Could it be Israel, as requested by Ukrainian President Zelensky, in view of Israels good relations with both Ukraine and Russia? Could it be some other country like China or India, both of which abstained in the UN Security Council vote on the US-sponsored resolution that would have deplored the Russian invasion? Or some non-state actor like Pope Francis or The Elders? Let it be any or all of them, and/or others too who believe that blessed are the peacemakers. The deterioration of the situation should not be considered inevitable and this new Syria on the European continent should not be allowed to materialize.

The Executive Board of FOGGS  Foundation for Global Governance and Sustainability puts before the FOGGS and Katoikos.world community the following petition that we hope will receive your approval. To add your signature to the petition please click here.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) announced yesterday (March 1) that it would release 60 million barrels of oil reserves in a bid to stymie the relentless rally in oil prices following Russias invasion of Ukraine.

"At face value, whilst welcome, the magnitude is insufficient. The response is limited as we believe it only represents an only ~1 month offset to the prospects of around a one-third (~2m b/d) loss of Russias 6m b/d oil exports," says a MUEF Global Markets Research report.

The current self-sanctioning of Russian oil (and broader commodities), with buyers and shippers skittish to move Russian barrels despite energy carve-outs in sanctions (be it for uncertainty about precisely whats legally permissible, concerns surrounding reputational repercussions or merely for moral objections) is creating a large production distortion in global oil markets, it says.

The immediate rally in oil prices is a testament that markets are already looking through the announcement and remain squarely focused on the extreme state of shortage oil markets are in today corroborated by the super backwardation levels with Brent crude prompt timespreads currently trading ~USD5/b above the next month  an unprecedented level that indicates trades are paying huge premiums to secure more immediate supply, the study pointed out.

Furthermore, it is critical to state that the since the last ~80 million barrel coordinated SPR release in November 2021, strategic reserves have in fact only fallen by 27 million barrels. Thus, the initial tranche would have to be absorbed before the second tranche hits global markets.

In short, 60 million barrels is far below what levels that could jolt todays supply constrained market. As a one-off crude release, it is dwarfed by the extraordinary magnitude of Russias export disruptions. The markets critically depleted inventories and thinning spare capacity levels in the face of a record long unresolved deficit ultimately leaves one lever to rebalance oil markets  demand destruction.

"This has been our central premise we advocated in early February as the mechanism that can slowdown demand growth so that the physical flow of oil can balance. That is the cure for high oil prices is higher oil prices  a self-correcting process.

All eyes will be on Opec+ when it meets today (March 2) to discuss its output levels for April crude deliveries. There is intense pressure on the group to increase output more aggressively given the unprecedented geopolitical tensions and a powerful bullish price environment.

The consistent rhetoric in recent days, which has been reinforced by the groups Joint Technical Committee (JTC) on March 1, suggests that Opec+ will stick to increasing output by 0.4m b/d. This is premised on their current assessment that the current high price environment is being driven by the paper oil market taking a precipitous level of long positions to reflect geopolitical risks  rather than physical supply and demand imbalances.

With this, anything more than 0.4m b/d would be a surprise to the market which could led to a knee-jerk bearish move lower. Though such potential weakness will ultimately prove short-lived given the relentless forces keeping oil prices elevated anchored on the simultaneous blend of depleting inventories and thinning spare capacity amid a dearth of structural underinvestments.

"Of more concern has been the groups struggle to keep pace with its 0.4m b/d monthly increase in target. The latest data from the group signalled that they were collectively increasing output by ~0.28m b/d  that has not changed much in the past six months. Even if Opec+ does find a way  predominantly through the few countries where spare capacity exists  namely Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Iraq  to actually pump closer to their collective output target, that raises its own challenges.

With most Opec+ members already pumping at maximum levels, the cushion of spare capacity even amongst these three countries is shrinking  this tapering of shock absorbers will rattle investors in the months ahead, in our view," the report said.

Thinning spare capacity is increasingly nerving markets

"As we recently catalogued, our bottom up country-by-country modelling analysis points to spare capacity falling to distressingly thin levels by this summer  below 2m b/d by July 2022 and remaining below this level throughout H2 2022. This has historically been a threshold wherein a small temporary supply disruption, caused by a geopolitical or weather related event, would cause acute price spike

risks to the upside. This has historical precedence. In 2004, the exhaustion of spare capacity triggered a significant rally in long-dated crude oil prices from $25/b to $65/b. At the time, the surge in long-dated prices created demand weakness that allowed inventories to build, creating a precautionary inventory cushion to buffer the oil market from a lack of spare capacity. We could very well witness a similar dynamic playout in oil markets this year. In short, capacity matters much more than Opec+ baselines at the current juncture, and it looks to get more scarce," it said.

Opec+ optimisation is for backwardation and has been successful

Beyond spot prices, the supply tightness in oil markets is being shown up in futures markets wherein prompt timespreads  which are one of the best indicators of market tightness given they price fundamentals and not expectations  corroborate with this market tightening. They remain in super backwardation  which are bullish structures where near-dated contracts trade at a premium to later-dated ones (signalling acute market tightness). This strikes at the heart of the Opec+ optimisation strategy in achieving fiscal stability through higher revenues and market share. In essence, backwardation favours Opec+ as it eliminates the financial incentive to store oil over time and discourages US shale producers from locking-in prices for future production (as low deferred prices through the backwardation structure can restrain higher cost producers ability to secure future cash flows and attract funding).

Furthermore, backwardation maximises low cost producers (namely, Opec+) revenues relative to higher cost producers (such as shale) that hedge, as they instead sell higher production levels at spot prices. "Key to this view is our belief that backwardation can rationalise shale growth by reducing returns expectations and increasing leverage expectations, both of which drive funding costs higher and slow capital allocation," the report says.

Uber-bullish oil price forecasts being played out

"The sheer dizzying of the oil price strength in recent weeks has even surpassed our above consensus bullish thesis anchored on the narrative that oil prices have ecome so disconnected from the marginal cost of supply that they are marching to the level where demand erosion becomes prevalent. We estimate this at $100-115/b and hold conviction that oil can rise up and register inside these

levels consistently for the coming quarters ahead.

"This is anchored on the narrative that when the simultaneous deficit of depleting inventories, thinning spare capacity and structural underinvestments blends towards extremely distressed levels  as continually corroborated by futures in acute backwardation (signalling market tightness)  then demand growth needs to slowdown so the physical flow of oil can balance. This in effect is carving out a scarcity premium.'," it said.

It is important to state that this narrative has little to do with the geopolitics of the day, which is merely turbocharging the severe supply story. Such is the state of severe depletion in oil markets today, that the system is highly susceptive to even the smallest shocks  precisely what we are witnessing in Russia-Ukraine crisis today with markets increasingly pricing in losing Russian oil supply outright. Whilst it is not in either sides interest to use oil (and broader commodities) as a tool, the market is

having to price in the consequences of even an unlikely and mild disruption with large asymmetric upside price moves  such is the extreme shortage state of oil markets today. Succinctly put, geopolitical risks are on the rise in an oil system with no slack.

"With this context in mind, we reiterate that seldom has the strategic case for being long oil been this strong and we remain highly convicted that the price appreciation potential is substantial in 2022 as well as for the first half of 2023. With this our Brent average forecasts point to an average of $96/b in 2022 and $112/b in 2023," said the report.

"We envisage demand destruction through a slowdown in the global economy being realised by next summer with Brent peaking at $121/b  thereafter we see a correction to the downside in H2 2023 as markets begin to rebalance themselves to a more normalised equilibrium."

In the immediate term, the only potential short-term supply response would need to come from Opec+, as a surge in Saudi Arabian, Emirati and Iraqi production as well as a potential easing in Iranian crude sanctions leading to ~2m b/d increase in supply by the summer, with the 60m barrels in coordinated global SPR release helping bridge the gap. While such an manoeuvre becomes increasingly likely, the more Russia is shunned from the global economy, driving core-Opec+ (Saudi Arabia and the UAE), Iran and the West closer together, it would nevertheless come at the expense of a complete depletion of the global oil markets spare capacity  still meriting much higher oil prices. We are not at maximum pain yet, says the report. -TradeArabia News Service
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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.

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Killeen, TX (76540)

Today

Variable clouds with strong thunderstorms. Damaging winds, large hail and possibly a tornado with some storms. High 78F. SSW winds shifting to WNW at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 100%..

Tonight

Mostly clear. Low 61F. Winds N at 5 to 10 mph.
KEARNEY  The owner of the shuttered Cinema 8 theater in south Kearney had good news to share with motion picture fans in Kearney on Thursday.

We FINALLY got our remaining HVAC systems in. Supply chains are starting to flow in our favor, tweeted owner Bobby Wilson.

He has been working with contractors and suppliers since July 9, 2020, when a wind and rain storm severely damaged his theater and sent audience members and crew scrambling for safety.

High winds peeled away the roof and then rainwater gushed into the theater. Wilson and his employees herded their movie audience to a safe spot in the inner part of the building and prevented any injuries, but they couldnt prevent damage to the theater. Since that date, Wilson has repeatedly reassured his movie fans in Kearney that hes been working with his contractor and equipment suppliers, but progress has been mostly stalled because of supply chain disruptions.

That situation eased a bit this week, allowing Wilson to share some encouraging news.

Wilson said in February that just about everything sustained damage  seats, sound system, projection equipment  so its difficult to decide how to recover and whether it will be an opportunity to upgrade the theaters equipment or other features, such as furniture.

Cinema 8 is affiliated with a theater in Paragould, Arkansas. The Kearney theater opened at 300 S. Third Ave. in 2007. Since then Cinema 8 has weathered several catastrophes, including the 2019 floods, the COVID pandemic, the 2020 storm and now the supply chain delays.

I wish I had some solid answers about when the theater will be reopening. As soon as I have something solid to talk about Ill call you, he said in February.

The July 2020 storm left Kearney with just two theaters: Golden Ticket at Hilltop Mall and The World Theatre in downtown Kearney.

Cinema 8 wasnt the only location in Kearney where the storm struck.

At various locations around Kearney the storm uprooted trees, knocked down powerlines and flooded low spots.

Wilson had a complicated challenge just to assess damages to his eight-screen theater.

Finally, on Thursday he was able to announce a glimmer of light has appeared at the end of the long tunnel.

We are SO EXCITED! Wilson tweeted. We will now be working on new seating and high-tech equipment. We want to thank you all for your patience. Exciting things are coming soon.
KEARNEY  The University of Nebraska at Kearney political science department will host a fireside chat today in person and via Zoom.

The fireside chats topic of discussion will be A New Cold War? What the Russian Invasion of Ukraine Means for the World. The event will be facilitated by professor Chuck Rowling from 12:20-1:10 p.m. in Room 320 in Copeland Hall.

On Feb. 24, Russia launched a large-scale invasion of Ukraine. Roughly 200,000 Russian soldiers, backed by heavy artillery, missiles and bombs, attacked Ukraine  a country of 45 million people  from the north (Belarus), the east (Russia) and the south (Black Sea).

The significance of this event cannot be overstated. It is the largest war in Europe since World War II.

More than 368,000 refugees have fled Ukraine to neighboring countries. Russian President Vladimir Putin has raised the specter of nuclear war. And countries all over the world have responded by punishing Russia with unprecedented sanctions.
The Vernon County Health Department announces there will be free drive-through community testing for COVID-19 in Viroqua during the month of March.

Testing will take place at the old highway shop, 602 N. Main St., March 8, 15, 22 and 29 from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Testing is available for those 12 months and older, even for those without symptoms of COVID-19. Please pre-register at https://register.covidconnect.wi.gov/en-US/ Lines may be long; be prepared to wait. The health department also requests that people remain in their vehicles.


The riots in February 2020 left 53 people dead. A majority of them were Muslims

Muhammad Raafi | TwoCircles.net

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NEW DELHI  Muhammad Vakeel (53) is blind and his face is disfigured. As he recalls the events that led to his scarred face and spoilt eyes, tears roll down his cheeks.

Two years have passed since the right-wing Hindu mobs allegedly stormed through the Muslim neighbourhoods in New Delhis congested Shiv Vihar area leading to the worst communal riots in four decades in the national capital. Hundreds of Muslim homes, establishments and some mosques were pillaged and later set ablaze by the rioters.

Vakeel operated a grocery store from his house in the area. On the intervening night of February 26 and 27, 2020, I saw a mob entering the alley leading to my house. They wielded iron rods, chains and spears. Vakeel hurried his family onto the terrace of the house before locking the main door with an iron chain.

The angry mob chanting Jai Shri Ram slogans started pelting stones on Vakeels house and made attempts to barge in. Before that, they had set neighbouring houses and shops on fire. There was a brief lull, recalled Vakeel, I tried to calm down my wife, three kids and relatives before combing for a safe passage.

As Vakeel stepped out into the alley, the mob heaved a bottle of acid hitting him in his head. It felt like a thunderstorm piercing into my eyes and crashing into my face, he said.

Days of rioting in the heart of the country led to the killings of 53 people, mostly from the minority Muslim community, and damages to properties (mostly Muslim) worth crores.

Fawaz Shaheen, an activist with the Quil Foundation, recounted how Muslim homes and businesses were targeted with precision. He called the violence pre-planned and said the riots were micromanaged.

Shaheen was speaking at an event organized by civil society groups on March 1 at the Press Club of India, New Delhi that also saw the survivors of riots recollect the horrors they lived with and the injustices meted out to them during and in the aftermath of the riots. People who spearheaded the violence against Muslims are associated with the ruling party (BJP) leaders, he alleged.

Asif Mujtaba, the founder of Miles2Smile, an NGO, said shops of Muslims were burnt while those of Hindus remained unscathed. It is important to remember what occurred in northeast Delhi two years ago. The Muslim community was at the receiving end of the violence, but we see that majority of the cases have been registered against Muslims only, he said.

The international rights groups have called on the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party-led government to prosecute those members who were involved in instigating violence and communal violence in northeast Delhi instead of prosecuting and silencing its critics.

On February 23, 2020, local Bharatiya Janata Party leader Kapil Mishra reportedly called for forcibly dispersing protesters demonstrating against the CAA and other issues. Mishra had exhorted his followers to clear Muslim crowds, who were protesting against the discriminatory citizenship law, and teach them a lesson.

The Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), passed by the Modi government in December 2019, offers citizenship to migrants from neighbouring countries living in India but excludes Muslims.

The independent Delhi Minorities Commissions investigation found that the violence perpetrated against the minority community was planned and targeted and that some policemen actively participated in the attacks on Muslims.

Another survivor, Sameer, who received a gunshot wound in the spine, recalled how the violence left his life upturned as his lower body has been paralysed. I was in class 9 at that time. I am ruined. My family had to sell our plot in our hometown to pay the hospital bills for my treatment. The government only gave two lakh rupees as compensation. What will I do with it? I wont even be able to work and earn for myself.

The activists also hit out at Delhi Police for allegedly colluding with Hindu rioters during the violence and then running a shoddy investigation implicating the activists who were key organisers of anti-CAA protests that preceded the riots. The police have filed more than 1100 FIRs in the Delhi pogrom.

The activists regretted that two years after the riots, justice remained elusive to the victims. 18 Muslim activists, largely students are falsely framed for instigating violence against their community. On 26 February 2022, Ishrat Jahan and Khalid Saifi completed two full years in prison, while those who openly exhorted violence against anti-CAA protestors remain at large. Not even an FIR has been registered against them. This raises serious questions on the increasingly Kafkaesque nature of the criminal justice system, they said.

A video showing the polices anti-Muslim bias during the riots also gained media attention. In the video, several policemen could be seen forcing five grievously injured Muslim men lying on the street to sing the Indian national anthem to prove their patriotism. One among them, 23-year-old Faizan, died hours later.

He was denied medical aid during 36 hours of his detention despite being badly injured, the activists said.

None of the policemen involved in the incident has been brought to account for the cold-blooded murder, they said.

Zafarul Islam, former chairman of Delhi Minorities Commission said that there should be a proper judicial commission to look into the Delhi violence. There must be an investigation against people like Kapil Mishra, Ragini Tiwari and others who incited the violence. And if we fail to speak on such matters, injustices will keep on happening.

As long as Modi is in power, Vakeel said, he feels he has no chance of getting justice. The situation of the minority Muslim community has worsened since BJP took power. The scope for justice is minimum, he added.

Muhammad Raafi is a journalist based in New Delhi. He tweets at @mohammadraafi
Having worked as a registered nurse (R.N.) and certified nurse midwife (C.N.M.) for close to 50 years, I have some thoughts about our current, severe nursing shortage.

As a student nurse in the 1960s I had a complete scholarship including tuition, room, board, and a monthly stipend from the Department of Mental Health in Illinois. This covered my four years of college for Bachelor of Science in Nursing (B.S.N.) degree completion. I owed the Department of Mental Health three full years of employment to repay my scholarship which I did in community mental health.

Today many nursing students go into debt to study and they often have major family responsibilities when they do this. One young nurse told me his education debt was $50,000! In this time of desperate need for nurses perhaps hospitals and clinics could consider offering a scholarship like the one I had. Or perhaps there could be more colleges like Berea College in Kentucky where academically qualified, low-income students are involved in a work/study program, where they work at least 10 hours per week and do not pay tuition. Young people, particularly women, have many more options for careers today than they did in the 1960s, especially during our pandemic time.

A former colleague of mine is still teaching nursing in a large Wisconsin city. Through a great expenditure of effort and time she recently completed her nursing doctorate. Her employer reimbursed her nothing for this additional education. This does not appear to me to be an equitable manner in which to treat a valued, experienced employee.

Additionally, I worked once with a capable and caring R.N. who after I had left the position began taking narcotics from the unit for her back pain. Anyone who works with controlled substances is at risk for stealing these drugs, whether that be a pharmacist, doctor, nurse, or dentist. (Years ago I was seeing a dentist who overdosed on nitrous oxide and died.) This nurse was jailed and last I saw her, she was clerking at a convenience store.

I know a retiree from the west who told me that in California a nurse who has been taking controlled substances from a work place is fired, of course, however is not jailed, but put into drug rehabilitation. How much more sensible and compassionate a solution! And a skilled medical worker may be salvaged to societys benefit.

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Cotter Schools senior Sajida Mirzada wont let the Taliban stop her from becoming a doctor, even as they threaten her and her familys safety and success in life.

Mirzadas dreams for her future took shape during her childhood in Afghanistan, where she grew up in a small village with her family, which includes five brothers and one sister.

I learned a lot from my family, especially from my parents, said Mirzada, who is the Winona Daily News Cotter Schools Above & Beyond scholarship recipient. an e.

She said that she learned how to stay positive no matter what from her mother.

As for her father, Mirzada learned from him how to look forward to and plan her future.

She has already taken one big step in the plans she made as a child.

It was my dream to come to the United States to study, Mirzada said.

Her goal was to study to become a doctor here, as she had witnessed a lack of medical staff in her hometown area.

She wanted to be able to help people, especially women and children in Afghanistan who lacked access to proper, timely medical services.

Mirzadas path in life and education hasnt been easy, though.

The Taliban attacked her home area in 2015, she recalled.

Her rights were taken away, as classes such as English and biology soon stopped at her all-female school, and the curriculum was replaced with only Islamic books.

Mirzada remembers how the Taliban treated the women in her school. They were punished and threatened, which led to her coming home crying after school.

Mirzada recalled the Taliban telling her, Were going to kill you.

Eventually, her school was shut down. Mirzada, along with other women and girls, was forced to stay at home and couldnt go outside unless they had someone to protect them.

Although Mirzada was stuck in her home the vast majority of the time for almost three years, she didnt let the laws stop her from learning.

Im not going to accept it, Mirzada recalls thinking during this time. (The Taliban is) not going to stop my dreams.

She learned English and other topics using her brothers books.

Additionally, she was able to learn English at a local class in the village that was separate from her school.

Eventually, Mirzada wanted more than just staying in her home all of the time. She ended up moving to a city with one of her brothers, where she was able to resume her English studies.

She soon learned about Cotter Schools through one of her brothers friends.

After connecting with the school, she received a scholarship in 2019 that enabled her to move to the U.S. and live in the Cotter dorms as she studied there.

Mirzada has thoroughly enjoyed the community and winter in Winona.

She said shell miss the Cotter community, which has given her a support system that includes staff and fellow students, when she graduates in a few months.

She plans to attend college in the area to continue on her path to becoming a doctor. So far, she has been accepted into Saint Marys University, but is still considering other colleges.

Most of Mirzadas family remains behind in Afghanistan, but she does have one brother in Zumbrota, Minn., who now serves as her guardian.

Hes my biggest, biggest supporter, and Im so grateful to have him in my life, Mirzada said.

Its not easy for her family members that are still back in her home country. They are hiding in Kabul from the Taliban, Mirzada shared earlier this month, and they face the choice of either leaving the country or dying.

The Taliban has harmed her family in the past. Mirzada said that in 1990 they hung her father from a tree and shot him three times.

Im so glad that he is still alive, Mirzada said.

One of her brothers also experience violence at the hands of the Taliban, who nailed his ear to a wall.

While her brother and father survived, her uncle died in another attack. After trying to protect a villages people and their education and freedom, he had his hands tied to a water wheel and was killed.

Mirzadas family, whom she hasnt seen since she came to the U.S. three years ago, continues to be a targe of the Taliban, as one of her brothers worked for U.S. troops for a few years before becoming a medic for the Afghan National Army.

The Taliban is attempting to track him down because of this. Mirzada knows that if they find her brother, they will likely kill him.

Because of this, her family is no longer able to live normal lives. They are currently working toward moving to the U.S., with a GoFundMe titled They Left Everything Behind in Afghanistan now set up to help support their journey.

Mirzada said she has been able to power through the struggles shes faced and the challenges for her family by continuing to stay strong and do whatever is best for other girls.

She says talking to people back in her home country, especially her female classmates, gives me so much power to use this opportunity to improve and, in the future, help them.

She pushes herself along in hard moments by remembering that she does not want to go back to a life in Afghanistan, where she has no rights and is at the mercy of the Taliban.

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Individuals across the globe are being encouraged to Break the Bias in honor of International Womens Day, with the 2022 celebration calling for a world free of stereotypes and discrimination.

Since 1911, International Womens Day has brought together citizens to celebrate the achievements of women and promote equality, and this year organizers hope to further the mission of diversity, equity and inclusivity for a gender equal world.

La Crosse area residents are invited to take part in a local, virtual celebration and forum from 7 to 8:30 p.m. Tuesday, which will follow the theme of #BreakTheBias. Three panelists will discuss how women are celebrated in their country of origin, and their experiences as females in the U.S.

In advance of the event, community members are asked to take a selfie in which they are crossing their arms into an x, the pose representing breaking the bias, and email it to mpanzer@uwlax.edu to be featured on International Womens Day social media feeds.

The event is sponsored by the American Association of University Women, the League of Women Voters of La Crosse, UW-La Crosse, Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration, North Woods International School, the Womens Fund of Greater La Crosse, Viterbo University, and the International Womens Group.

Panelists will include Sandra Balangoy Mpemwangi representing Congo, Oresta Felts representing Ukraine, and Thanh Bui-Duquette representing Vietnam. Here, a look at the speakers:

Thanh Bui-Duquette

Bui-Duquette was born and raised in Ha Noi, Vietnam, moving to the U.S. in 2001 to attend college at UW-La Crosse, where she went on to earn a bachelors degree in math and masters in public health. After working at UW-Madison for a year, Bui-Duquette returned to the La Crosse area, where for the past decade she has served as Head Start director at Western Dairyland Community Action Agency.

Being an international woman in a leadership position and working in rural Wisconsin has brought its challenges and helped shape my resilience and perseverance, says Bui-Duquette, who lives in Holmen with her blended family. In her free time, she enjoys hiking, biking and traveling, and prior to the pandemic made biannual visits to Vietnam to spend time with relatives.

It has been three years since I last saw them, and words cannot express how much I miss them, Bui-Duquette says. Thankfully, the advanced technology has helped me stay connected despite the geographical distance. I hope we can finally travel to Vietnam this summer so I can hug my nephew and baby niece in person.

In an interview with the Tribune, Bui Duquette shared her thoughts on International Womens Day and its significance, explaining that to her the theme Break the Bias means celebrating our resiliency, perseverance, and strength to overcome the challenges and barriers many women face here in the U.S. and other countries.

In Vietnam, womens empowerment are demonstrated by the availability of affordable health care, including family planning, access to higher education, well paying jobs, and six months of paid maternity leave, she says, noting I was surprised to find out that there is no paid maternity leave in the U.S. and how expensive the cost of child care was when I had my daughter. 

Bui-Duquettes greatest hope for the next generation  including her daughter  in terms of gender equality and inclusivity is equal pay, access to affordable health care and higher education.

I hope that we see more women in leadership positions and STEM fields that men usually dominate, she adds. To quote the Honorable Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Women belong in all places where decisions are being made. It shouldnt be that women are the exception..

Oresta Felts

Felts was born and raised in Lviv, Ukraine, where she earned her bachelors degree in teaching English/translation from Ivan Franko National University. Felts first came to the U.S. in 2000 for a year as an exchange student before returning in 2003 and earning her masters degree in communications from Western Illinois University.

Felts works at Winona State University as interim director of International Student and Scholar Services, and lives in La Crosse with her husband and two children. They are currently hosting a high school exchange student from Italy, Simone.

Sandra Balangoy Mpemwangi

Balangoy Mpemwangi was born in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of The Congo, and in 2009 left to attend Liberty University of Brussels, where she was in the complementary master of commercial law program. While in school in Brussels, her first child resided with her while her husband stayed in Kinasha, and Balangoy Mpemwangis brother urged her to move to the U.S. Hesitant to restart life again and without a Green Card, she declined.

Her brother suggested the DV-Lottery (Diversity Visa Program) which allows up to 55,000 persons from nations that are historically underrepresented in terms of migration to the U.S. to qualify for Green Cards. Balangoy Mpemwangi and her son were among those selected to come to the U.S., and while staying with her brother she took English classes at Western and UWL. After learning the English language, she attended Viterbo University and earned her masters in business administration and masters in servant leadership.

She and her husband welcomed two more children, and Balangoy Mpemwangi works as an Ampersand Professional, helping connect those entering the professional workforce with employers.

To register for the International Womens Day virtual celebration, visit shorturl.at/gBDSV.

Emily Pyrek can be reached at emily.pyrek@lee.net.

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Dr. Nawal Nour (1966-present) is the chair of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Brigham and Womens Hospital. She holds the Kate Macy Ladd Professorship at Harvard Medical School.

Nour established the world-renowned African Womens Health Center, which provides appropriate holistic health and outreach programs to the African community in Boston. Nour was honored as a 2003 MacArthur Foundation Fellow for creating the countrys only center of its kind that focuses on both physical and emotional needs of women who have had or undergone female genital mutilation or cutting (FGM/C).

She has also published several articles related to womens health, including HIV and Pregnancy in Resource-Poor Settings.

Dr. Nour was born in the Sudan and raised in Egypt and England. She came to the United States to attend Brown University. She received her medical degree from Harvard Medical School, completed an OB-GYN residency in Obstetrics and Gynecology at the Brigham and Womens Hospital and an MPH at Harvard School of Public Health. Dr. Nour has developed and studied defibulation, a surgical process to alleviate some of the negative effects FGM/C has on womens health.

Her work aims both to educate doctors caring for women who have undergone FGM/C and to eradicate the practice.

Sponsored by AAUW La Crosse, researched by Erica Koonmen.

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A convoy of potentially 500 semitrucks and other vehicles is expected to drive through Wisconsin Friday into Saturday and will likely cause an influx in traffic along Interstate 90 and 94, authorities said.

Two groups of the American Truckers Freedom Convoy  which is protesting against mask and vaccine mandates and in support of health freedom, according to the convoys website  plan to meet in Oakdale Friday afternoon, then drive along I-90 through Portage and South Beloit, Illinois, according to the convoys route and the Monroe County Sheriffs Office. The truckers are headed to Washington, D.C.

The route passes through Dane County, but its unclear exactly what time the truckers will get there. The State Patrol said the timing is variable because the convoy is sometimes behind or ahead of schedule.

The State Patrol said the truckers plan to be in Wisconsin Friday into Saturday, but did not provide a more specific time. The State Patrol is working with local law enforcement to monitor the convoy.

Officials are prepared for any potential incidents, but do not anticipate major traffic disruptions, the State Patrol said.

Other officials have said they expect some disruptions.

The Monroe County Sheriffs Office said its planning for an influx of traffic around Oakdale, where the two groups are meeting.

The Tomah Area School District, which is near Oakdale, said it plans to have a district-wide early release because of the logistical concerns and interruption to normal traffic flow. School is being let out two hours early, but after-school activities will still take place.

The district said Wednesday that estimates suggest there could be upwards of 500 semis in the area from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. Plans call for the truckers to spend the night around Portage, which could put them outside Madison around 9 a.m. Saturday.

In Dane County, the DeForest, Marshall and McFarland school districts said they have no plans to change their schedules. The Dane County Sheriffs Office said it doesnt have anything specific planned for the convoys arrival, and that the State Patrol is the agency focused on responding.

One of the trucker groups started its route in North Dakota, while the other is coming from Washington, according to the convoys website. When the Washington group left Spokane earlier this week, it had about a half-dozen semis and roughly 75 other vehicles, according to The Associated Press. Its unclear how many vehicles are coming from North Dakota.

Several convoys have cropped up in the U.S. after truckers formed blockades and caused other disruptions in Canada to protest COVID-19 restrictions.

The Monroe County Sheriffs Office and the State Patrol said their main priority is keeping truckers and residents safe as the convoy passes through.

WisDOTs primary goal is to make sure everyone is able to travel through the state safely, the State Patrol said.

State Journal reporter Elizabeth Beyer contributed to this report.

Editor's note: This story has been updated to correct the approximate time the convoy will be passing by Madison, which is around 9 a.m. Saturday morning.

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The Wisconsin Supreme Court issued a split decision Thursday to adopt Democratic Gov. Tony Evers least change proposal for the states 10-year legislative and congressional district maps  boundaries that would maintain Republican majorities in the Legislature but likely prevent them from claiming a veto-proof supermajority.

The states high court issued a 4-3 ruling in favor of maps proposed last year by Evers, with conservative Justice Brian Hagedorn, a regular swing vote on the court, siding with liberal justices Rebecca Dallet, Ann Walsh Bradley and Jill Karofsky in the ruling.

The ruling comes months after Hagedorn and the courts conservatives ruled that they would follow a least change approach from the current maps, which are considered some of the most gerrymandered in the nation.

In a statement following the courts ruling, Evers said, The maps I submitted to the Court that were selected today are a vast improvement from the gerrymandered maps Wisconsin has had for the last decade and the even more gerrymandered Republican maps that I vetoed last year.

Asked about the courts decision, Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, said he was still analyzing it.

Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu, R-Oostburg, criticized Evers for coming up with new maps without a public input process.

The majority of justices concluded that maps proposed by the governor most align with the least change approach.

No other proposal comes close, Hagedorn wrote on the matter of core retention of districts. The Governors proposed Senate and Assembly maps produce less overall change than other submissions.

With regard to congressional districts, Evers maps move a little over 324,000 people into new districts  about 60,000 fewer than the next closest map, which was drawn by congressional Republicans.

Conservative justices Rebecca Bradley, Patience Roggensack and Annette Ziegler dissented, with Ziegler writing that the majoritys opinion demonstrates a complete lack of regard for the Wisconsin Constitution and the Equal Protection Clause.

The majoritys decision to select Governor Tony Evers maps is an exercise of judicial activism, untethered to evidence, precedent, the Wisconsin Constitution, and basic principles of equal protection, Ziegler wrote.

Evers set up the court battle over the states next decennial maps when he vetoed GOP-drawn boundaries in mid-November. The governor had championed boundaries drawn by the Peoples Maps Commission, but those maps failed to get universal support among legislative Democrats, with some criticizing the boundaries for potentially diminishing Black and Hispanic representation in the Legislature.

New maps

After the state Supreme Court ruled in favor of a least change approach, Evers submitted new maps that made fewer changes than the Republican proposal, while also slightly reducing the projected Republican advantage in the Legislature.

The new maps hand Democrats a marginal win, but they still keep many districts impenetrable for the party, UW-Madison political science professor Barry Burden said.

I think it tells us what the politics of the state Legislature are going to be like for the next decade, Burden said.

Democrats expressed some relief at the decision.

Thanks to Governor Evers and Justice Hagedorn, Wisconsin will have fairer maps, said Senate Minority Leader Janet Bewley, D-Mason. My Democratic colleagues and I will continue to fight for nonpartisan redistricting, but fair-minded people can breathe a little easier knowing the Supreme Court has rejected the Republicans efforts to stack the deck.

Advocates for nonpartisan district lines said the courts decision to follow a least-change approach made it near impossible to undo gerrymandered districts drawn a decade ago, the first time in decades the maps were drawn by a single party without a courts intervention.

Let me be clear: this fight is still far from over, and those who worked to rig these maps will be held accountable for ignoring the Constitution and the law and for ruling against the people of Wisconsin in implementing a least-changes map that continues the gerrymander, Fair Elections project director Sachin Chheda said in a statement.

The partisan maps adopted today, which intentionally disenfranchise a majority of Wisconsin residents, are an unfair and poor outcome in this case and pose a serious threat to representative democracy in our state, Chheda said. Its deeply upsetting that early in this case, extreme, activist, right-wing judges ignored the law and the Constitution to rig the process to maintain their Partys grip on power.

By applying the average of six statewide elections since 2016, Evers new maps would elect 44 Democrats and 55 Republicans in the Assembly, and 13 Democrats and 20 Republicans in the Senate. In Congress, Republicans would maintain five seats to Democrats three, according to Evers office.

Republicans currently hold a 61-38 majority in the Assembly and a 21-12 majority in the Senate. Five of the states eight congressional districts are held by Republicans.

Over the next 10 years, under the Governors maps adopted today, the people of Wisconsin will have a renewed chance for competitive elections and for their will to be reflected by their elected officials, Chris Walloch, executive director of liberal advocacy group A Better Wisconsin Together, said in a statement.

Core problem

UW-La Crosse political science assistant professor Anthony Chergosky said the courts ruling doesnt resolve the Democratic Partys core problem of voters clustered in urban areas while Republican voters are spread throughout the state, but it does raise the stakes going into Evers reelection.

His veto pen will remain powerful should he get reelected because this map really makes it hard for Republicans to achieve their long-held goal of attaining a veto-proof majority, Chergosky said.

Chergosky added that the maps will still give the Republican Party a comfortable but not overwhelming majority in the Legislature.

The Supreme Courts decision may not be the final word on the matter. Advocates for nonpartisan maps could try to take the matter to a pending case before the U.S. Supreme Court that was filed by Democrats. Whether the federal court takes up the case likely hinges on whether the maps chosen by the state Supreme Court comply with requirements in federal law, such as the Voting Rights Act.

Roggensack criticized the majoritys opinion, accusing the justices of engaging in racial gerrymandering contrary to the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution.

It is my hope that the United States Supreme Court will be asked to review Wisconsins unwarranted racial gerrymander, which clearly does not survive strict scrutiny, Roggensack wrote.

The Legislature must redraw political lines every decade based on the latest population figures from the U.S. Census Bureau. In 2011, Republicans, working in secretive conditions, drew maps that packed Democratic voters into lopsided districts and spread out rural and suburban Republicans into districts with solid, but narrower, majorities. The maps allowed the GOP to hold more than 60% of legislative seats, even when Democrats won all statewide elections in 2018.

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The Wisconsin Elections Commission  targeted for elimination by a Republican review of the 2020 election  struck back Friday against chief investigator Michael Gablemans recent report, saying it contains erroneous claims and lacks context.

The commission pushed back on several claims in the former Supreme Court justices sprawling 136-page report, including that the millions of dollars of private grants allocated to cities to help administer the election amid the pandemic constituted bribery.

The commission noted that courts have repeatedly rejected that claim, adding that a federal judge concluded theres no state prohibition on local governments accepting private money to run elections.

A ban on private grants would require a new law to be passed, the Elections Commission said.

In a sweeping critique of current election rules, Gableman on Tuesday called for the elimination and dismantling of the bipartisan Wisconsin Elections Commission after it instructed clerks in 2020 that they did not need to send election workers into nursing homes to assist with absentee voting after many were turned away due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The bipartisan group noted Gablemans report omitted evidence to support some of his conclusions, including his claim that some Wisconsin nursing homes had 100% voter participation.

The report does not provide a list of specific nursing homes, nor supporting evidence, nor a methodology, for how he calculated the turnout rates for particular nursing homes, the Elections Commission said.

The commission provided contrary Milwaukee data showing a smaller percentage of voters in nursing homes returned absentee ballots in November 2020 than in November 2016.

The Elections Commission also disputed Gablemans description of how the commission makes available for purchase voter registration data, sells that information for $12,500, but doesnt make the information available in real time and doesnt charge special interest groups.

Every claim above is false, the commission stated, adding that the median transaction cost for customers purchasing voting data sets was $55 and that no fees are waived for anyone.

The Elections Commission also rejected Gablemans claim that it issued guidance enabling clerks to open envelopes before the statutorily mandated deadline, stating it had actually never issued guidance, rules or other directives to that effect.

Also, the Elections Commission corrected Gablemans claim that the commission unlawfully encouraged voters to register as indefinitely confined, thus allowing them to avoid the photo ID requirement to vote. In fact, the commission advised the opposite, and noted the Wisconsin Supreme Court agreed with its guidance.

Gableman said Tuesday that his review was not complete and that his contract, which expired months ago, remains valid, though he has not provided more updated terms.

All reasonable people can now see this is a thinly veiled effort to undercut the publics confidence in our state electoral system, said Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway, whom Gableman had threatened to jail if she didnt comply with a list of demands.

For all of their bluster and allegations of wrongdoing by Wisconsins public servants and voters, Gableman and (Assembly Speaker Robin Vos) are the only actors in this saga who have been found in violation of Wisconsin law and fined by a court, Rhodes-Conway continued. On Wednesday, a Dane County judge ruled that Vos, R-Rochester, and Gableman arbitrarily and capriciously denied or delayed access to public records related to the GOP-ordered review of the states 2020 election.

Artifice fades

Gableman reviews partial focus on decertifying the 2020 election has been previously shot down by the Republican Partys leadership, and embraced especially by one fringe Republican lawmaker and recently announced gubernatorial candidate, Rep. Timothy Ramthun, R-Campbellsport.

The Marquette Law School Poll found Republicans are growing more confident in the accuracy of the election, with 38% saying they are confident compared with 29% who said the same in August 2021.

A recount and court decisions have affirmed that President Joe Biden defeated former President Donald Trump in Wisconsin by almost 21,000 votes. Reviews by the nonpartisan Legislative Audit Bureau and the conservative Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty found no evidence of widespread fraud. Multiple court rulings have also found no evidence of irregularities.

Gablemans office administrator, Zakory Niemierowicz, declined to comment on Gablemans behalf. Vos spokesperson Angela Joyce didnt respond to a message seeking comment.

Ad campaign

In another sign of pushback against Republican attempts to undermine the states election system, a coalition of groups representing local government officials is set to launch an ad campaign to reassure Wisconsin voters that they can trust election workers.

The League of Wisconsin Municipalities, the Wisconsin Counties Association and the Wisconsin Towns Association said the ads will appear on television and radio stations statewide as well as on multiple digital platforms beginning Monday and run through the April 5 election.

The spots feature town of Neenah Clerk Ellen Skerke, village of Kohler Deputy Clerk Cindi Gamb and village of Cobb Clerk Lisa Riley. The clerks tell viewers that election workers are Wisconsin residents neighbors and family members and can be trusted to run fair contests.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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My taste is a mix of highbrow and lowbrow, and that applies to just about everything I do.

I love prestige television dramas, but I also make time for mind-numbing reality TV. My makeup bag is a mix of name-brand products and drugstore finds. And for our most recent anniversary, my fiance and I paired Popeyes chicken sandwiches with a nice bottle of prosecco.

So, naturally, when we became homeowners last summer, our plans for furnishing our home were similarly mixed.

While Im a fan of the concept of slow decorating  not rushing to make design decisions until you get to know a space  there are some things you just need immediately to feel at home.

I may not be an expert, but I do love a bargain. Here are a new homeowners musings on which home items are worth investing in, and which ones you can get thrifty with.

Worth it

Bed frame

For most of our time renting, my fiance and I had a hand-me-down full-size bed. When it felt like wed never pull off a home purchase in 2021s red-hot housing market, we decided to upgrade to a queen while still in our rental. I foolishly purchased a cute, trendy frame from Wayfair.com for about $200. Im surprised our wedding is still on after the trauma of trying to piece that thing together with instructions that had more room for interpretation than Mona Lisas smile.

To make matters worse, the flimsy wood slats the bed came with were all slightly off  some were too big to properly fit in their slots, and others were too short to stay in. As I got into bed on our second or third night with the new frame, I heard loud pops beneath me before I sank a few inches; the slats underneath us began to pop out. I tried getting into bed more gingerly, my own little evening game of Russian roulette. I tried securing the slats with duct tape. Finally, I put a large Tupperware bin of clothes underneath our mattress to support our weight, which was as comfortable as it sounds  not very.

When we purchased our home, it wasnt even a question that wed invest in a better quality bed frame. I opted for a significantly more costly model from the brand Thuma, which uses Japanese joinery to connect the beds pieces in just a few places  think Lincoln Logs. Its sturdy and beautiful, and I have no doubt it will last us decades.

Shelving units

My fiance and I collect records, and before moving, we stored our collection on $30 Big Lots shelves that bowed terribly. We grew used to living life on the edge, but one night we returned home to find about 50 records on the floor. Luckily nothing broke, but this was a wake-up call to invest in better shelving. We chose a 5-by-5-square Ikea Kallax shelf. The cube construction helps add to each segments overall strength, and weve even got room to grow. And at $179, it didnt break the bank.

Towels

Until we moved, I was still using cheap towels from my college days  one of the many things I waited to replace until we purchased a home. This didnt make a lot of sense in hindsight, as its a simple upgrade if you have it in your means. My favorite are ultra-plush towels from Targets brand Threshold. Look for the ones that are bath sheets, which provide a few more much-appreciated inches of fabric. And at $14 each, they arent a significant investment, but one worth making.

Save your cash

Picture frames

Some people are minimalists, loving the space and freedom a blank wall provides. I cannot relate. I love having my walls covered with concert posters, art by friends and family photos. Because of my maximalist tendencies, that meant we were  and still are  in the market for a lot of picture frames.

When I looked online and in traditional stores, I was horrified at how expensive frames  especially large ones  cost. Instead, Ive been having luck at area thrift stores, especially for larger frames. When I get home, I deconstruct the frame, give it a thorough cleaning, and then put my own art inside.

Some of our walls are brick, which means Im not eager to drill through them. For these walls, Ive been enjoying lightweight teakwood poster hangers, which snap together with magnets and are easy to hang from a single nail on a string. Theyre about $13-$25 each on Amazon, depending on the size. Because Im averse to creating a crumbly brick mess, Ive been using Command Strip hooks, which do the job just fine.

Dressers and wardrobes

There are some wonderful, talented craftspeople in our county, and one day I hope to patronize them. But it just wasnt in the cards for us financially to purchase brand-new furniture for every room. Instead of trashing our old, scratched-up dressers, which my parents purchased secondhand in the 80s or 90s, my dad walked us through refinishing them. It was empowering to put in some elbow grease, and I loved being able to pick the paint color and hardware to my specifications. There was a cost to purchase supplies, of course, but the total was a mere fraction of what a piece from Pottery Barn or West Elm would cost. And, of course, I love that for as long as the dressers are with us, Ill look at them and remember my dad helping us earn our DIY stripes.

The closets are nearly microscopic in our city home, so I needed more than just our existing dressers. I found a 90s Ikea wardrobe for $30 at a Habitat for Humanity ReStore while visiting family out of state. Its a fun, funky lime green. The best part: Because its from Ikea, it easily came apart, which proved useful in getting the piece up our narrow stairs. We disassembled it, carried the pieces upstairs, and reassembled it once it was in the room where it would live. Reassembling it took roughly 20 minutes  a fair trade for not scratching up our walls trying to clear a tight corner.

Glassware

Theres something to be said for a nice, matching glassware set  but Im not the one to say it. Our cabinets are a mishmash of different sets, from the pink goblets I pull out for girls night to vintage Pennsylvania firehouse mugs from my fiances family. Ive also enjoyed thrifting glassware, too. I found chic coupe glasses for just 50 cents each at the Willow Street Goodwill a few months back, and they made New Years Eve at home feel that much fancier. And when you or a guest inevitably breaks something, there are no hard feelings, as it was never a major investment. Maybe Ill change my mind one day, but for now, cheap glassware is for me.

Either way

Rugs

I found that rugs had one of the widest price ranges of any of the pieces I looked at. I chose a cost-effective rug from Walmart ($80) for our high-traffic dining room. Much like the glassware, I wont be heartbroken if theres a spill or muddy tracks. I also found great runners for our kitchen and hallway from At Home for about $20 each. I ordered online, and picked them up at the Fruitville Pike location. However, I spent about $300 on an extra-plush, 7-by-10-foot rug from Overstock.com for our bedroom, knowing wed rarely have guests step foot in the room or wear shoes in there ourselves. Its nice to feel it under my feet first thing in the morning  especially after a night of sleeping on a bed that didnt fall apart.
An Ephrata man told police he was under the influence of methamphetamines when he was trying to flee from two officers, eventually hitting both their cars with his vehicle before he was arrested, according to West Earl Township police.

Trevor Lamont McNeil, 31, successfully fled from Northern Lancaster County Regional Police shortly before 9 p.m. on Thursday, police said. Officers spotted him shortly after, near Newport Road and Oregon Pike in West Earl Township.

When police tried to pull him over, he slowed "as if the vehicle was pulling over, then tried to speed away," police said. McNeil struck both officers' cars during his effort to escape, before eventually being boxed-in by police cruisers.

A child was in McNeil's vehicle during the chase, police said. EMS evaluated the child before releasing them to a family member.

Police didn't release the child's age.

McNeil is charged one felony count each of endangering the welfare of a child, fleeing or attempting to elude officers and flight to avoid apprehension, according to court dockets. He's also charged with two misdemeanor counts of accidents involving damage, one misdemeanor count of driving under the influence, one misdemeanor count of resisting arrest and two summary traffic offenses.

He is currently in Lancaster County Prison on $150,000 bail.

A preliminary hearing is scheduled for 9 a.m. on March 15, in front of District Judge Jonathan Heisse.
A former Penn Medicine Lancaster General Health nurse fired for refusing to get a flu shot lost her religious discrimination lawsuit.

In dismissing Shyanne Aukamp-Corcorans suit last month, a federal judge rejected her claim that her Christianity led to her opposition and said no reasonable jury would find she had a sincere religious objection.

Aukamp-Corcorans attorney is asking for a reconsideration, arguing the case should go to a jury because its not for a judge to assess witness credibility.

Penn Medicine began requiring flu vaccines in 2012, and Aukamp-Corcoran, of Pequea Township, got them through 2016.

But, according to Aukamp-Corcorans suit, she began attending a church and researched potential vaccine dangers in early 2017. She had a miscarriage and then became pregnant again that fall, her suit says, and came to believe that her body is a temple of the Holy Spirit and that she is to honor God with her body.

Aukamp-Corcoran turned to a Facebook anti-vaccination group for advice and members suggested she seek medical or religious exemptions, according to filings.

Aukamp-Corcoran asked for both exemptions, which the health system denied. Hers became the hospitals first denial of a religious exemption request. Penn Medicine fired Aukamp-Corcoran in January 2018 and she sued in Pennsylvanias Eastern District court in December 2019.

It is undeniable that both the circumstances and timing surrounding (Aukamp-Corcorans) request for a religious-based exemption to (Penn Medicines) vaccine requirement are suspicious, U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Schmehl wrote in his Feb. 17 opinion. ... She did not request a religious exemption until after she unsuccessfully petitioned her midwife and her medical doctor for a medical-based exemption from the vaccination requirement, and she admitted that she harbored a medical objection to vaccination at the time that her religious exemption request was submitted.

Schmehl, in finding Aukamp-Corcorans religious claims insincere, agreed with Penn Medicines assertion that her tattoos and piercings didnt align with her claim of Biblical purity.

And Schmehl rejected Aukamp-Corcorans argument that granting her a religious exemption would not be an undue hardship for Penn Medicine.

Schmehls opinion cited Penn Medicines vaccine expert, who said that each unvaccinated employee potentially weakens overall staff immunity, which in turn could heighten the risk of an influenza outbreak at its facilities.

Penn Medicine has granted at least 81 medical and 24 religious exemptions, according to Schmehls opinion, but a timeframe isnt given. Exempt employees must wear a mask when within six feet of any person during flu season.

A Penn Medicine spokesman declined comment, citing the ongoing litigation. The health system is seeking $2,998 in court costs from Aukamp-Corcoran.
A Lancaster city man was sentenced to up to 10 years in prison for illegally possessing a firearm, the Lancaster County District Attorneys Office announced Thursday.

A jury convicted Rajeem Brown, 38, on Jan. 5, 2022.

Brown  who has a criminal record going back to at least to 2002, according to Pennsylvania Common Pleas dockets  is not authorized to possess a gun.

On April 11, 2019, members of the Lancaster City Bureau of Police Selective Enforcement Unit served an arrest warrant for Brown, who was wanted on two counts of delivery of a controlled substance.

A loaded .45-caliber revolver was found in a safe during the search of his residence on E. Clay Street.

Assistant District Attorney Deborah Greathouse prosecuted the case.
Pennsylvania System School Assessment results for 2020-21 are finally in and, as educators feared, overall scores dipped from pre-pandemic standards.

Scores, however, will not factor into Pennsylvania school evaluations. Variability in testing periods, reduced student participation rates and other factors tied to the COVID-19 pandemic would make any comparisons between schools and across years inaccurate.

Noting those issues, the percentage of students statewide scoring proficient or advanced in English learning arts and literature, mathematics and algebra, and science and biology dropped from 60.9%, 42.4% and 68% in 2019 to 55%, 37.3% and 63.7% in 2021, respectively.

Nonetheless, there were wide variations among districts and even schools in the same district.

In Lancaster County, for example, the School District of Lancasters lowest scoring school, Hand Middle School, scored 12.9%, 1.2% and 9.5% respectively in English, math and science while one of Manheim Townships highest scoring schools, Nitrauer School, scored 79.5%, 66.9% and 95.5%, respectively. Results for each Lancaster County school are available online at Future Ready PA under state assessments.

Brian Barnhart, executive director of the Lancaster-Lebanon Intermediate Unit 13, said the biggest surprise for him is that people are surprised about lower test scores.

I mean we all knew the scores were gonna be lower, he said. I mean weve had a hell of a school year with quarantine, parents being afraid to send their kids, schools being disrupted. I think if anyone was surprised by lower test scores, they really havent been paying attention.

Barnhart said the data is skewed because more students were out of school for quarantine or other reasons. The data, he added, should be evaluated more closely on an individual level than on an aggregate level.

Were on dangerous grounds if we start saying oh my the scores are so much lower. Whats going on?, Barnhart said. Our school districts here in Lancaster-Lebanon county are going to be just fine.

School District of Lancaster Superintendent Damaris Rau said students took the PSSA tests just nine days into the start of the 2021-22 school year because the district wanted to prioritize instructional time over assessment in the spring of 2021.

Due to the pandemic, many of our students had not attended school in person for over a year, Rau said in an email. The adjustment back to the school setting coupled with the immediate assessment was challenging for students. We cant look backwards. Our teachers have been focused on meeting students where they are both academically and emotionally and helping them grow as quickly as they are able.

Using this years data to determine what went wrong in education doesnt fit the definition of standardization, Barnhart said.

State Department of Education Deputy Secretary for Elementary and Secondary Education Sherri Smith also acknowledged that this years test scores were far from the norm.

Historically, standardized assessment results have been an important part of understanding school performance and our work to close achievement and opportunity gaps, Smith said in a news release Friday. But this years results are anything but standard.

We recognize that the global COVID-19 pandemic brought tremendous challenges to the school year, impacting students, teachers and staff alike, as we worked to protect the public health and safety of everyone in our classrooms, she continued. As Pennsylvania reports this federally required data, it urges caution in interpreting results given the unique learning conditions over the past few years.

Because districts were given flexibility to administer tests between the traditional spring window and September, the release of PSSA scores were months behind schedule.

In a letter sent to PDE Secretary of Education Noe Ortega on Feb. 18, House of Representatives Speaker Bryan Cutler of Lancaster County and House Education Committee Majority Chair Curt Sonney called for an explanation for the delay.

Individual results had been released to students and parents by local school districts as early as November, according to the letter.

When scores were finally released Friday, Cutler was not satisfied with PDEs response.

After a multi-month delay, our worst concerns have been proven true, he said in a statement. "Pennsylvania students at all levels are struggling to recover from the many disruptions to their education and the proof is in the scores finally released today.

He disagreed with the departments emphasis that results should be interpreted with caution.

We should be worried because these tests confirm what we have seen with our children over the last two years, Cutler said. No parent should have to wait a year to find out if their student is struggling in school.

Now pressure falls on teachers, administrators, parents and other school leaders to work with policymakers to fill in the gaps, Cutler added.

The proof is clear. The learning loss our children have experienced, by no fault of their own, is immense and very real, Cutler said. We owe it to our children.

Each year every Pennsylvania student grades three through eight are assessed in English Language Arts and Mathematics while every student in grades four and eight is assessed in science. Students were not tested in 2020 due to the pandemic.

Students are not the only ones being evaluated by these scores, though. The PSSAs are a tool to review teacher performance.
Alexander Kachkovskyis childhood dream was to come to America from his native Ukraine.

That dream came true in 2021, when he came to Lancaster County as part of the Mennonite Central Committees International Volunteer Exchange Program. He lives with his host family in Leola.

But as Kachkovskyi volunteers at Forest Hills Mennonite Church in Leola and visits residents at Fairmount Homes in West Earl Township, he said his family more than 4,500 miles away in his hometown of Slavuta is trying to keep life as normal as possible amidst the conflict of war.

Slavuta is located a little more than 200 miles west of Kyiv, Ukraines capital and the target of a Russian military attack launched by Vladimir Putin on Feb. 24.

My town is a little bit safer than some areas, but often they hear sirens indicating they must go to the basement, and they dont know what could happen, he said.

With a gentle voice and quiet demeanor, Kachkovskyi, 29, talks about a swirl of emotions he experiences as he worries for his parents, his sister and her husband, other relatives living there, and the future of his country.

My sister was staying underground at a train station while her husband was near the capital city of Kyiv since all the men were called to help protect the cities, but she decided to go back home to Slavuta where my parents are, Kachkovskyi said.

Meanwhile, his mother, who is a nurse, and his father, a factory worker, are still going to work as usual, but watching closely for suspicious activity.

My time here has helped me find balance between how and when to rise, and when to stay at peace, Kachkovskyi said.

Im praying that God will help me

Kachkovskyi is scheduled to return to Ukraine in July, when the visa he used to enter the United States expires.

Im praying that God will help me because I dont have a clear picture of what to do next, he said.

Andrea Geiser Leaman, coordinator for MCCs International Volunteer Exchange Program, said her organization would work to help Kachkovskyi remain in the U.S.

Obviously, we dont know what will be happening in Ukraine when he is ready to go, but we will work with the government to find ways to extend his visa so he can continue with his assignment if needed, Geiser Leaman said.

During COVID, for example, the (Department of State) made special arrangements for people so their visas could be extended because they couldnt get back to their countries, she said. When it was safe for them to go back, we got flights for them to go home.

Kachkovskyi said his thoughts are about how to bring his family to the U.S., but, he said, its better to concentrate on helping others and my work rather than the situation at home and the emotional crisis. It helps me stay focused.

Kachkovskyi volunteers with the children, youth, pastoral, and media ministries at Forest Hills Mennonite Church.

The church has benefited from Alexs positive attitude, his commitment to faith, and his willingness to help wherever needed, said lead pastor Jon Carlson.

Kachkovskyi, Carlson said, has had a few opportunities to share about Ukrainian culture with the church.

During Advent, he prepared and shared a presentation on Ukrainian Christmas traditions. Weve also had many conversations about religion in Ukraine and Alexs own evangelical faith, Carlson said.

At home, where Kachkovskyi taught English and French at schools, he earned a Bachelor of Pastoral Ministry degree from the Ukrainian Baptist Theological Seminary, in the city of Lviv in western Ukraine. Lviv is located about 170 miles west of Slavuta and nearly 350 miles west of Kyiv.

I am impressed by the peaceful and friendly community, and the unity of people in spite of their religious or even political views, Kachkovskyi said of his Leola neighbors.

Yet that sense of peace and harmony, Kachkovskyi said, sometimes conflicts with his feelings about the potential dangers his family might be facing.

For the time being, Kachkovskyi is taking it all in and although he is not sure of what his future holds, he is grateful for the experience and lessons learned so far, and the support he has received from the local church.

The church family supports me, prays for me and my family. I find comfort in prayer  and drinking a lot of mint tea, Kachkovskyi said.
Gov. Tom Wolf visited Lancaster city on Thursday to stump for his proposal to use $1.7 billion of one-time federal COVID-19 relief funds to aid small businesses, help health care organizations recruit caregivers, support a property tax rebate program and pay for conservation projects.

But hell need the Legislature to agree, and he came to Lancaster to help send a message to lawmakers: Dont let this money sit.

Wolf spoke to the press from Nicole Taylor Boutique, a retail store on North Queen Street, to stress the urgency for action, as state, county and local governments have until the end of 2024 to spend their federal COVID-19 recovery dollars or return unspent funds to the U.S. Treasury.

As part of the 2021-22 state budget, lawmakers last year put away $2.5 billion of the $7.3 billion it received in federal stimulus dollars into the states rainy day fund, a step they said would help offset future budget deficits. But Wolf said its time to put that money to work, as the state is currently sitting on $8.8 billion in unspent money, split between the rainy day fund and current surplus tax revenues.

Mayor Danene Sorace, who appeared with Wolf along with state Rep. Mike Sturla, echoed the need to spend the surplus funds now.

Theyre sitting there and they need to be spent, Sorace said. We dont want to send them back.

Wolf wants to use $225 million of the unspent federal relief funds on reviving the states small business assistance program. Eligible businesses could apply for grants ranging from $5,000 to $50,000.

Wolf said Thursday small businesses continue to need help recovering from the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The federal government has said, You don't have to give it back to us until 2024, but I think we need it now, Wolf added.

Nicole Vasquez, the boutique owner who received a $20,000 small business grant early in the COVID-19 pandemic, said that money helped offset losses and expand the stores staff from two people to six. Now, shes worried about rising costs.

Prices on everything are going up, thats hard for us to maintain, Vasquez said. This money would definitely help us.

Sen. Scott Martin, R-Martic Township, was not at Wolfs event on Thursday, but he said the state should hold off on spending federal stimulus dollars until our finances continue to grow in the right direction.

Martin, who represents the southern half of the county including Lancaster city, said hed need to be sure Wolfs proposal amounted to one-time expenses.

One example Martin said hed favor would be using some of the remaining federal COVID aid to help address the states commitments to the Chesapeake Bay clean-up effort, which would cost approximately $250 million.

During his Lancaster visit, Wolf said his spending proposals are a starting point for discussions with the GOP-controlled Legislature. The two sides are not actively negotiating this at this time, he added.

Im open to conversation about how you want to spend it, but lets just say their one option is to do nothing Wolf said. That should be off the table. We should do something.
A new study finds that nearly half of school district superintendents are either considering or planning to leave their role in the next two to three years. I am one of them. I shall tell you why.

I am the superintendent of the School District of Lancaster, which serves roughly 10,300 students, 90% of whom are students of color and economically disadvantaged. After seven years serving as superintendent, I plan to retire after the end of this school year.

Many of my colleagues are leaving because of the pressures that COVID-19 exerted on education. New teaching models had to be rolled out, technology had to be bought, and teachers needed to be trained in remote teaching and learning. Superintendents had to navigate conflicting guidance from the government and medical institutions, putting us in impossible positions. The debate over masks became a matter of politics rather than safety. These are all valid reasons, but some of us have other reasons, too. We are leaving education because we are tired.

We are tired of inadequate and inequitable state funding for school districts that serve primarily economically disadvantaged children of color. We are tired of fighting for sufficient resources to prepare our students for college and careers; tired of not having the funds to renovate schools and to ensure safe learning environments for our students and staff. We are tired of a system that discriminates against children of color and creates schools that are still separate and unequal.

Why we are tired

We are tired of watching our students hurting as they hear the reports of so many Black men like George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery murdered nearly every day. How do you explain racism and racial injustice to our Black and Latino students, especially our boys? How do you explain why innocent children like Trayvon Martin are killed because of their skin color? How do you explain to them the fear their mothers and fathers, grandmothers and grandfathers, aunties and uncles have every day, wondering if their child will come home? We are tired of attending memorials for our children, our friends, our neighbors and our family members who were killed by gunfire.

We are tired of the raging culture wars that continue to divide our country. We are tired of defending the concepts of diversity, equity and inclusion. We are tired of the history of race in America being whitewashed, and of anti-racism education being attacked. We are tired of government leaders writing legislation that urges students and parents to spy on teachers suspected of teaching about race or gender issues in their classrooms. We are tired of people claiming that discussing holistic views of multiethnic heritage is a racially divisive view of American history.

We are tired of people calling for banning books by Black and Latino authors about Black and Latino people and other marginalized groups that they havent even read. We are tired of the ridiculous dogma that teaching about Black leaders and civil rights hurts white children. When we deny children the opportunity to learn about the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Ruby Bridges or President Barack Obama, we deny them the opportunity to know and understand about the culture and histories of leaders who were Black, Latino and from other marginalized groups who have helped shape our nation and our culture.

We are tired of the backlash against our LGBTQ brothers and sisters and its negative impact on their mental health. We are angry that restricting LGBTQ childrens access to certain books, sports, locker rooms and bathrooms has led to significant increased risks for depression, anxiety and suicide attempts by these children.

We are tired of fighting every year for the right to vote. Thus far in 2022, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, at least 250 restrictive voting bills are pending before 27 state legislatures.

And we are tired that the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by extremist far-right groups was characterized as legitimate political discourse by patriots, but the Black Lives Matter protests for racial and social justice were branded riots by thugs.

I am tired, but I am not giving up.

Why Im grateful

Even once I retire, I will continue to stand up for people who are not in the room, and I will continue to support people doing the hard work for all of us. People like the attorneys who are fighting on behalf of six poor school districts (including mine) against legislators, state education officials and Gov. Tom Wolf to ensure equitable education funding in Pennsylvania.

I am also grateful for those who dedicate their lives every day to removing obstacles faced by all our brothers and sisters.

I am thankful for the people who show up every day in our schools  from building leaders to bus drivers, teachers and custodians, specialists in all areas  despite the difficulties and stress.

I am thankful for the POWER Interfaith Lancaster Education Justice Team, which has been a consistent partner in demanding equitable and adequate funding for children across Pennsylvania.

I am thankful for organizations that stand up to decry legislation that limits teaching and learning about history and racism. These organizations include the American Educational Research Association, the African American Intellectual History Society and the American Historical Association.

Finally, I am thankful for businesses and other organizations that take real action to support equity, diversity and inclusion and do the real work of anti-racism. That work goes beyond writing op-eds and issuing internal memoranda. It means having leaders at all levels who represent the diversity of the workforce.

It is OK to be tired, but it is not OK to give up. To quote the great Rev. Martin Luther King: The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.

We all need to stand up now.

Damaris Rau has been the superintendent of the School District of Lancaster since 2015. This column originally was published on the blog of the Southern Education Foundation; its slightly abridged here.

Note: This column briefly mentions suicide. If you or someone you know is in crisis and needs immediate help, contact the following organizations:

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, suicidepreventionlifeline.org,

800-273-8255.

Those who are deaf or hard of hearing can contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline via TTY at 800-799-4889.

Lancaster Crisis Intervention, 717-394-2631.
Man Pleads Guilty to Murdering Philanthropist Jacqueline Avant

Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascon announced that a man pleaded guilty today to murdering Jacqueline Avant and attempting to kill her security guard during a robbery at her Beverly Hills home in December.This crime continues to shock the conscience. Mrs. Avants death was a tragic loss felt by our entire community, District Attorney Gascon said. In this case, the defendant is facing 170 years to life in prison and is ineligible for elderly parole. Our Bureau of Victim Services will continue to be in contact with the family and their representatives to offer trauma-informed services.Aariel Maynor (dob 2/1/92) entered an open plea to one count each of first-degree murder, attempted murder and possession of a firearm by a felon as well as two counts of first-degree residential burglary with person present. He also admitted an allegation that he used an assault long barrel pistol during the crimes.Maynor is scheduled to be sentenced on March 30 in Department W31 of the Los Angeles County Superior Court, Airport Branch. The judge has the discretion to sentence him up to 170 years to life in prison.On December 1, Maynor broke into Avants Beverly Hills home and fatally shot the 81-year-old victim. He also shot at a security guard who was not injured.Later that night, Maynor allegedly shot himself accidentally while breaking into a house in the Hollywood Hills, prosecutors said.Case SA105722 was investigated by the Beverly Hills Police Department.

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The Cherokee are a large Native American tribe. Many live in Cherokee Nation, a huge reservation in the state of Oklahoma. Others live farther east, in places like North Carolina and Delaware.

The Cherokee language is considered endangered, or at risk of disappearing. The majority of people who speak the language are old. Recent efforts involving technology, however, might help speakers use the language more in daily life.

Last week, Motorola introduced a Cherokee-language operating system on its newest phones. Phone users will be able to find apps and explore settings using the written form of Cherokee. The system, or interface, will appear on the companys Edge Plus phones when they go on sale this spring.

By itself, the Cherokee interface will not be enough to save the language. But it might be a step toward immersing younger tribal citizens in the language.

That is the hope of Principal Chief Richard Sneed, a leader of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians. The tribe is one of three federally recognized Cherokee tribes in the country. Sneed hopes that more inclusive technology will help keep the language alive. He and other Cherokee leaders spent several months working with Motorola to make the Cherokee language interface possible.

It is not the first time a technology company has offered the Cherokee language on their products. Apple, Microsoft and Google already offer users a choice to use Cherokee on computer keyboards. But the Cherokee experts who worked on the Motorola project said they tried to include the culture as well as the language.

For example, the start button on the Motorola phone has a word that, in English, means just start. It reminds language expert and Cherokee, Benjamin Frey, of how older tribe members speak.

It could have said lets get started in many different ways, Frey said. But it said halenagwu  just start. And thats very Cherokee. I can kind of see an elder kind of shrugging and saying, Well, I guess lets do it. ... It reminds meof how the elders talk, which is pretty exciting.

Frey is an American studies professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Motorola had the goal of developing an interface in a language that is considered endangered. It also wanted to work with a language that has an active community of experts.

We work with the people, not about the people, said Juliana Rebelatto. She is chief linguist for Motorolas mobile division. We didnt want to work on the language without them.

Motorola designed its Cherokee project based on a similar Indigenous language project that Rebelatto worked on in Brazil. Frey and Sneed say they recognize that some Cherokee will have concerns about tech companies using their language.

I think it is a danger that companies could take this kind of material and take advantage of it, selling it without sharing the proceeds with community members, Frey said. But, to him the good the technology could do was worth that risk.

Frey did not grow up speaking Cherokee. That is partly because of his grandmothers experiences as a child.

For more than 150 years, Indigenous children in the U.S. and Canada were taken from their communities and forced into boarding schools. The young people were barred from using their native language.

Freys grandmother and others of her generation were beaten for speaking the language. They were told that English was the only way to get ahead in the world, Frey said. Freys mother, as a result, did not learn Cherokee.

Only about 225 of the 16,000 members of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians spoke Cherokee as their first language at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Now I think were down to 172 or so, said Sneed, the principal chief. So weve lost quite few in the last couple of years.

Frey hopes the new Motorola phone tool will be a conversation-starter between older Cherokee language speakers and their grandchildren. But he added that it will take more involved language efforts to really make a difference.

If the youth today are watching TikTok videos, we need more TikTok videos in Cherokee, said Frey. If theyre paying attention to YouTube, we need more YouTubers creating content in Cherokee.

We do have to make sure that the language continues to be used and continues to be spoken, said Frey. Otherwise, it could die out.

I'm John Russell.

And I'm Ashley Thompson.

The Associated Press reported this story. Ashley Thompson adapted it for VOA Learning English.

Words in This Story

reservation - n. an area of land in the U.S. that is kept separate as a place for Native Americans to live

immerse - v. to make (yourself) fully involved in some activity or interest

keyboard - n. the set of keys that are used for a computer or typewriter

button - n. a small area on a computer screen that you click on to make the computer software do something

linguist - n. a person who studies linguistics (the study of language)

indigenous - adj. produced, living, or existing naturally in a particular region or environment

(take) advantage (of) - n. to use (something) unfairly for personal gain

proceeds - n. the total amount of money or profit that is made

conversation - n. an informal talk involving two people or a small group of people : the act of talking in an informal way
Scientists have long warned that extreme weather would cause major disasters in the future. But in South America, that future is already here.

In the past month, there have been deadly landslides in Brazil, wildfires in Argentine wetlands and flooding in the Amazon.

In just three hours on February 15, the Brazilian city of Petropolis received over 25 centimeters of rainfall. That is the most recorded in a single day since officials began keeping records in 1932. The resulting landslides killed more than 100 people and left nearly 1,000 others homeless.

A recent report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) found that global warming is changing the strength and frequency of extreme weather events. These events have also become more difficult to predict, the report said, leading to additional damage.

An historic drought of the Parana River dried out much of Argentinas Ibera Wetlands. Its waters are at the lowest level since 1944. The area has had many severe wildfires in the last two months.

Recently, 70 percent of the city of Jordao in Brazils Amazon rainforest was underwater because of flooding from two rivers. The floods have severely affected the lives of thousands of people in the area, including 32 native Brazilian communities.

The entire Amazon rainforest stores between 150 and 200 billion tonnes of carbon in its plant life and soil, says Carlos Nobre. He is a Brazilian climate scientist who has studied the Amazon for more than 30 years.

Nobre told The Associated Press, If you lose the forest, this carbon dioxide goes into the atmosphere. It is very important to maintain the forest.

But most governments across the area have failed to consider the IPCCs warnings and stop the destruction. Many South American leaders have not spoken about illegal logging and mining activities in at-risk areas.

In Colombia, a recent increase in forest fires led more than 150 international researchers and activists to send a letter urging the government to do more to prevent them. Local lawyers and police officials have said the area is more and more dependent on activists for preservation.

Alejandra Boloqui supervises a private protected land area in Argentinas Ibera Wetlands. She has been helping firefighters fight against wildfires there. Recently, she recorded 12 alligators fleeing the fires and walking down a dirt road in search of water.

When I started filming them, I cried. I felt they were saying to me: Ive been left without a home, Im leaving, Boloqui told the AP. It got my attention seeing so many alligators moving together during the day. ...They are very slow reptiles who move at night to avoid heat.

The alligators and many other animals found shelter in a nearby body of water that had dried up due to lack of rain. It has since been refilled using water pumps powered by the sun.

Local officials say the fires started with the burning of farmland for raising cows. That practice has been banned since December. IPCC experts say in the report that droughts make it easier for fires to spread quickly.

Last year, Brazils south and southeast areas faced their worst droughts in 90 years. In Manaus, the largest city in the Amazon, rivers rose to levels not seen in over 100 years of record-keeping. Flooding of streets and houses affected about 450,000 people in the area.

The IPCC report says changes in the timing and strength of rainfall, along with extreme temperatures, are affecting agricultural production across Central and South America.

Im Jonathan Evans.

Diane Jeantet, Mauricio Savarese and Debora Rey reported on this story for the Associated Press. Jonathan Evans adapted this story for Learning English.

Words in This Story

global  adj. worldwide

frequency  n. rate of repetition

drought  n. a long period of time during which there is very little or no rain

maintain  v. to keep in a particular or desired state

logging  n. the activity or business of felling trees and cutting and preparing the timber

preservation  n. the effort of keeping from injury, loss, or decay
Russian forces captured Europes largest nuclear power center in southern Ukraine early Friday. The intense gun battle led to a fire that raised concerns about the safety of nuclear reactors at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Station.

After speaking with Ukrainian officials, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Rafael Mariano Grossi said a Russian projectile hit a training center during the battle causing a fire. And Reuters news agency also confirmed a video showing one building at the nuclear center burning after being hit by several shells.

Russian defense officials, however, blamed Ukrainian saboteurs for the attack without providing any evidence. Ukrainian officials said the fire was put out and the safety of the center was not affected although there was damage to the area.

Grossi said the reactors had suffered no damage but only one of the six reactors was working. He added that the monitoring system for radiation was working normally and that no release of radioactive material had been found. And Ukrainian workers were continuing to operate the plant while Russian forces controlled the area.

Zaporizhzhia nuclear center

The Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Station is designed differently from the Chernobyl plant, which suffered the worlds most severe nuclear disaster in 1986. The area is closed off to the public and radiation levels there are still high. Russian forces seized Chernobyl on the first day of their invasion.

Although there have been no reports of radiation leaks at Zaporizhzhia, the IAEA has warned that fighting in and around the area presents extreme risks.

One big concern is that fighting could interrupt the power supply to the nuclear plant. Plant workers would then have to use diesel fuel generators for electricity, which are less dependable. A failure of the cooling systems could lead to a meltdown of the reactor. That is what happened at Japans Fukushima nuclear plants after the earthquake and tsunami of 2011 damaged cooling systems there.

Ukraines president Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the threat to Europe was extremely big and urgent action was necessary.

If there is an explosion, thats the end for everyone. The end for Europe, he said in an emotional speech.

Jon Wolfsthal was a security advisor to former U.S. President Barack Obama. He said the reactors have thick containment domes that can protect them from fire and even shelling. However, he told the Associated Press We dont want our nuclear power plants to come under assault, to be on fire.

Nuclear safety in a conflict

Ukraine is highly dependent on nuclear energy. It has 15 reactors at four stations that provide about half the countrys electricity. Now, both the Chernobyl area and the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Station are surrounded by Russian troops.

Park Jong-woon is an engineering professor at Dongguk University in South Korea. He told Reuters there was no immediate threat presented by the seizure of the plant. But he added that Russia might block the public from studying radiation information from the plant.

They can make people wonderand spread fear, he said. Park helped build nuclear reactors for state-run power operators in South Korea.

Earlier this week, Ukrainian officials appealed to the IAEA that the Russian military was forcing workers at Chernobyl to work long hours and they were extremely tired.

IAEA chief Grossi then appealed to Russia to let the Chernobyl workers do their job safely and effectively.

James Acton is with the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He said the simple way to keep nuclear centers safe is to immediately end any military operation around them.

Mitsuru Fukuda is a professor at Nihon University in Tokyo. He said the attack at Zaporizhzhia raises questions for all countries.

He said many people did not expect the incident at the nuclear reactor.

Now that (Russian President Vladimir) Putin has done it, not only Ukraine but the international community, including Japan, should reevaluate the risk of having nuclear plants as potential wartime targets, he said.

Im Mario Ritter, Jr.

David Rising reported this story for the Associated Press. Mario Ritter Jr. adapted it for VOA Learning English with materials from VOA News and Reuters.

____________________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

projectile n. something (such as a bullet or rocket) that is shot from a weapon

saboteur n. a person who destroys or damages something deliberately : a person who performs sabotage

assault n. a military attack

reevaluate v. to judge the value or condition of (someone or something) again

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Ukraines capital, Kyiv, is the cultural and spiritual heart of the country. But the citys important cultural places are at risk as Kyiv prepares for more attacks by Russian forces.

On Thursday, the head of the United Nations cultural agency, Audrey Azoulay, called for protection of Ukrainian cultural heritage as the conflict continues. UNESCO said it will organize meetings with the countys cultural officials to mark important places with an internationally recognized sign for protection.

Among the sites at risk are the nations most important Orthodox shrines. Some of the shrines, or places of religious observance, are nearly 1,000 years old. They have stood since the early days of Christianity in the area.

The sites are of religious importance to both Ukrainian Orthodox and Russian Orthodox forms of Christianity. They serve as powerful symbols in the dispute over whether the two groups are parts of a single people  as Russian President Vladimir Putin has claimed  or are separate but related ethnic Slavic nations.

The sites include the golden St. Sophias Cathedral and the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra  a huge underground and above-ground complex also known as the Monastery of the Caves. Others include the St. Michaels Golden-Domed Monastery and St. Andrews Church.

On Tuesday, Ukrainian officials said Russian forces damaged another monument  Ukraines main Holocaust memorial, Babi Yar.

What will be next if even Babi Yar (is hit) asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Wednesday. What other military objects, NATO bases are threatening Russia? St. Sophias Cathedral, Lavra, Andrews Church?

There is no sign that the Russians targeted Babi Yar on purpose. There is also no confirmation that the Russians plan to target any of the sacred sites in Kyiv. But civilian buildings have already been hit in other cities.

For example, the Assumption Cathedral in Kharkiv, Ukraines second-largest city, was damaged in the recent attacks. Its windows were reportedly broken and other parts of the structure were damaged. The cathedral was once Kharkivs tallest building.

The risk is even greater in Kyiv.

Were talking about a very old city, said Jacob Lassin. He is a researcher at the Arizona State Universitys Melikian Center for Russian, Eurasian, and East European Studies. He said of Kiev, The center part is densely packed. Even if youre trying to hit one thing, you could easily hit something else.

The symbolic value of the shrines is powerful even to people who do not share the religion the shrines are connected to.

The idea that the main symbol that stood in your city for 1,000 years could be at risk or could be destroyed is very frightening, Lassin said.

Babi Yar is where more than 33,000 Jews were killed within 48 hours in 1941. At the time, the city was under Nazi occupation. It was one of the largest mass killings at a single place during World War II, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum says.

The oldest parts of Kyivs Orthodox Christian shrines date back to the medieval Kievan Rus kingdom, soon after the area became Christian in the 900s.

Putin has claimed that the kingdom is the common ancestor of todays Russia and Ukraine. Ukrainians answer that they are a separate nation now under attack from a Slavic neighbor.

The cathedral and nearby underground complex represent a masterpiece of human creative genius, said a report by UNESCO, which lists both places as World Heritage Sites. The Kyiv cathedral, built about 1000 years ago, was modeled after the Church of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, modern day Istanbul. The cathedral includes artwork up to 1000 years old. The Monastery of the Caves was influential in spreading Orthodox Christianity, said UNESCO.

If Kyivs sites are damaged or destroyed, could it potentially damage morale? Yes, Lassin noted. Could it potentially galvanize people to be more united? Absolutely, he stated.

Im Ashley Thompson.

Peter Smith reported this story for the Associated Press. Ashley Thompson adapted it for VOA Learning English.

We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments section, and visit our Facebook page.

____________________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

heritage n. the traditions, achievements, beliefs, that are part of the history of a group or nation

site n. the place where something is

symbol n. a place, action, object, or event, that expresses or represents a particular idea or quality

morale n. the feelings of enthusiasm and loyalty that a person or group has about a task or job

potentially adv. possibly

galvanize v. to cause (people) to become so excited or concerned about an issue, or idea that they want to do something about it
LEXINGTON  The opening statements and first witnesses were heard from in the trial of an Omaha woman accused of killing her husband, Joshua, in June 2020.

Kathleen Jourdan, now 33, of Omaha, is charged with second-degree murder and use of a deadly weapon to commit a felony. She has claimed she acted in self-defense.

She pleaded not guilty to the charges in June 2020.

Dawson County Attorney Elizabeth Waterman is prosecuting the case. Brian Davis and Brian Copley are representing Jourdan.

In her opening statement, Waterman told the jury, consisting of 10 women and four men, that Kathleen and Joshua were married in 2012, but they had a troubled relationship, marked by strife.

She stated Kathleen had traveled to Scottsbluff, with her two children, from Omaha to look for housing as she would be continuing her medical residency there. However, her vehicle broke down and she had to call Joshua to pick her and the children up in a pickup.

Returning to Omaha, Waterman said the couple argued, As they often did. She said later Kathleen and Joshua were not kind to each other, in fact, they were pretty horrible to each other, often in front of their two children.

On the side of the road, in Dawson County, Kathleen shot and killed her husband, said Waterman, with his own gun.

She noted their youngest son, was looking forward to his fifth birthday the next day.

The weapon was in the center console of the pickup, Waterman said Kathleen knew it would be there. Waterman said Joshua said something that offended Kathleen, she retorted and, according to Kathleen, he pulled off the road raised his arm, gave her a look and was in fear for her life.

Knowing the gun was loaded and at the ready, she shot him twice in the chest, the two children were in the back seat.

A 911 call was placed by Kathleen and Waterman told the jurors to play close attention, that she claims four times Joshua was striking her. She also claimed in the call it was self-defense saying she, Couldnt do it anymore.

He wont stop telling me he is going to take the kids away, was something else Kathleen said during the call, Waterman said. She said this was said at the moment Joshua was dead or dying.

Kathleen was also recorded on a policemans body camera saying, I just wanted out, Waterman said.

Waterman said in subject interviews with law enforcement, Kathleen changed her story, saying Joshua was going to hit her. She also said during the interview she had thought about killing him at other times since 2013, Waterman said.

She claimed she thought about it as an intellectual curiosity, Waterman said. Later in the interview, Kathleen states she is, relieved, Joshua is dead.

A few days prior to the shooting, Kathleen spoke with a friend on Facebook, about how to commit the perfect murder, Waterman said, it gives you a window into the thinking of the defendant.

The couple was meant for divorce, Waterman said, Joshua was planning on leaving her and taking the boys with him. Waterman said (Kathleen) was not going to let that happen.

Joshua was not going to move with Kathleen to Scottsbluff and she knew it, Waterman said he paid for that decision with his life.

She asked the jurors to keep two words in mind throughout the trial, fear and rage. Waterman said this killing was not about fear.

Brian Davis made the statement for the defense.

He said Kathleen has admitted from the beginning that she fired two gunshots that killed Joshua.

Davis noted Kathleen suffered Joshua striking her multiple times over their relationship and the comments about him hitting her in the vehicle were cut short and may have not referred to anything in the vehicle.

Davis said the evidence will show how many years she wanted to get out of the relationship. He noted she was a battered person and pointed out the difficulty these individuals have when trying to leave an abusive situation.

Davis said she waived her right to a lawyer and was interviewed immediately after the incident.

As for the conversation about getting away with murder, Davis said the timing is unfortunate but the evidence will show the comedy being attempted, by Kathleen and her friend.

He said the trip to Scottsbluff, Kathleen got to spend a short time with just her two boys, something she always enjoyed. But her car broke down and she had to call the one person she didnt want to call, her husband, Davis said.

Davis said the abuse started almost immediately, he said the trip was, transformed. He said the pickup didnt contain a single handgun in the front seat; there were a total of five firearms present.

During what would be their final argument, Davis said Joshua suddenly hit the brakes and pulled the car over to the side of the road. He raised his right arm and, for what exact purpose, I dont know, Davis said.

Davis said Kathleen has suffered through an abusive relationship for years, an incident in 2015 in Grenada, where Joshua strangled Kathleen to the point she thought she would die and had to seek medical attention. This was in front of one of their children, Davis said.

Another incident in 2017 in Georgia, occurred when Joshua punched Kathleen in the face with a closed fist, this resulted in Joshua being charged and convicted of domestic assault, Davis said.

He told the jury they will hear from Kathleens parents and Jessica Jourdan, the ex-wife of Joshua.

Davis opinions that Joshua was actually excited about the move to Scottsbluff and it being more rural than Omaha, Davis said, he would often return to his native Washington where his family lived.

He also added Kathleen had filed for divorce in the past and gotten temporary custody of their children, a death wasnt necessary.

Davis concluded by saying, this was not rage, this was fear and this was a reaction. He said the jury will get to hear from Kathleen herself, as she testifies in her own defense, you will hear her story from her mouth.

The first witness called by Waterman was Mike Dowling, a criminal investigator with the Nebraska State Patrol. The 911 call that Kathleen made to Dawson County dispatch was also played.

In the call, Dowling said she sounds, distraught, between sobs and heaving breaths she repeated, Im sorry, multiple times.

Dowling later interviewed Kathleen after the shooting and learned of the history of abuse, including the incidents in Grenada and Georgia.

He also reported on receiving reports from a pathologist about the gunshot wounds to Joshua.

The next witness was NSP trooper Carlos Trevino, a 24 year veteran. He said he was returning to North Platte from Cozad when he received the report of a, hysterical female and a possible weapon involved.

He arrived at the scene of a Ford pickup pulled over on the side of the road and approached issuing verbal commands, but due to the noise of the interstate and the wind on that day, he wasnt sure he was being heard. Due to the tinted windows of the vehicle he could not see well inside.

He then returned to his patrol truck and used the PA system to issue commands. Trevino said, at the time he was unaware anyone had been shot because the NSP is a different radio network from Dawson County.

Cozad police officers arrived on scene and joined Trevino. He said he then saw a female exit the passenger side of the vehicle with red, bloody hands. The two children were retrieved from the back seat of the pickup and Trevino observed an unresponsive male in the drivers seat.

Another trooper checked the males pulse and determined he was deceased, this was later confirmed by members of the Cozad Rescue squad.

He also told the other officers they needed to confirm the relationship of the children and the adults in the vehicle and not assume they were the biological children of the couple.

Trevino testified that he first saw a handgun being moved by another officer and it was placed on the running board of the pickup.

The third witness was Cozad Police Department Sergeant Garrett McArdle.

McArdle said Cozad police heard the call separately and went to the scene to offer assistance. He said they arrived just behind Cozad Officer John Peden and observed a NSP trooper issuing commands from his trucks PA system.

A female did exit the pickups passenger side holding a cell phone to her ear, but placed it back in the pickup and came back with her hands up, as she had been ordered. McArdle said there was blood on her hands, but he wasnt sure who it was from.

McArdle said Kathleen, who he identified in court, was brought to him. She responded to his questions saying she wasnt injured, but her children and husband were in the vehicle. Of her husband she said, he was dead, she had shot him.

McArdle said Kathleen stated to him, He raised a hand to me and I couldnt do this anymore. He then detained her for everyones safety, McArdle said he still wasnt entirely sure about what was fully going on.

McArdle said he later spoke with the children in the car, made sure they were not injured and took him to his patrol vehicle where he remained with them throughout the rest of the time until he took them back to Cozad.

During cross examination, McArdle said Kathleen fully complied with law enforcement commands.

The trial was then recessed and further testimony would be heard Friday morning.
Lapwai, ID (83501)

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Partly cloudy this evening, then becoming cloudy after midnight. Low 52F. Winds SE at 5 to 10 mph..

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Partly cloudy this evening, then becoming cloudy after midnight. Low 52F. Winds SE at 5 to 10 mph.
The first female was named to the position of chief criminal investigator for the Santa Barbara County District Attorney's Office, a spokeswoman announced on Thursday.
Lompoc City Fire Department recently installed an exhaust extraction systems in the engine bays at both fire stations in an effort to improve firefighter safety by reducing toxic fumes that can cause cancer.
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AC celebrates 'one-of-a-kind' Public Health Resource Center

JOEL ANDREWS/The Lufkin Daily News Angelina College president Michael Simon, center with scissors, cuts the ribbon outside Hudgins Hall officially opening the Public Health Resource Center Thursday afternoon.

Angelina College now offers more than an education with its new on-campus health care center.

AC staff, community members and representatives from the Angelina County & Cities Health District gathered at Hudgins Hall Thursday to celebrate the grand opening of the schools Public Health Resource Center.

The center is a partnership between AC and the ACCHD that has provided health and well-being services to the colleges staff and students since October 2021.

Students have access to chronic disease screenings, STI/HIV testing and treatment, basic family planning services, birth control, emotional well-being referrals, basic acute care and sick visits and prescriptions for low-cost medications. AC staff members can access chronic disease screenings and basic acute care and sick visits.

Because the health center also is a collaboration with Burke, students have access to well-being services, stress wellness, virtual counseling options and substance use services from 8 a.m. to noon on Thursdays.

AC president Michael Simon said when first stepped into the role, he sent out an email to all the employees at the college asking what AC was doing well and what could be improved upon.

One of the first concerns that was expressed is our students need more support in that public health arena and also with mental health support, so of course having The Burke Center be a part of this center certainly helped to address that, she said.

Simon and health district administrator Sharon Shaw began talking about creating the center in 2018-19, she said.

We were looking around the campus for spaces, talking about how we could fund something like this and what are the needs, she said.

The project was put on hold due to the pandemic, but AC and ACCHD maintained their relationship as the college helped greatly with the health districts mass vaccination efforts, Shaw said.

They came beside us and showed us the collaboration was there, the partnership was there, and through CDC funding for enhancement of public health infrastructure, we have put this project together, and here we are with a Public Health Resource Center on the campus of Angelina College, she said.

Shaw described the facility as one of a kind. She polled other public health contacts statewide, and none of them knew of anything similar to the center, she said.

I told them what we were doing and asked if anybody else had a partnership like this, and not another health department in the entire state of Texas has a partnership with a community college to bring public health clinical services and emergency preparedness resiliency opportunities, she said.

The partnership also is a unique one for the college, Simon said.

This is one of the first examples of us being able to reach out into the community and form a partnership that is mutually beneficial for everybody, especially for our students, she said.

Anndrea Pickett, campus coordinator, said the center definitely benefits students as it takes away some of the stress of being sick at college, she said.

From what I understand, its been a while since theres been a nurse on campus, she said. When theyre here, theyre already under stress; for them to not have to worry about leaving to go to the doctor when they have a runny nose or a sore throat  they can stay on campus and be seen and treated and then re-evaluated if needed.

Working with the students thus far has been a joy, Pickett said.

Our office is a non-judgment zone, a very welcoming place to be  we want them to all feel comfortable coming in, so thats very important, she said. I love seeing their happy faces. They welcomed me, and going forward, I hope that the word gets out that were here and that were available and that we can continue to be a resource.
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A convoy of potentially 500 semitrucks and other vehicles is expected to drive through Wisconsin Friday into Saturday and will likely cause an influx in traffic along Interstate 90 and 94, authorities said.

Two groups of the American Truckers Freedom Convoy  which is protesting against mask and vaccine mandates and in support of health freedom, according to the convoys website  plan to meet in Oakdale Friday afternoon, then drive along I-90 through Portage and South Beloit, Illinois, according to the convoys route and the Monroe County Sheriffs Office. The truckers are headed to Washington, D.C.

The route passes through Dane County, but its unclear exactly what time the truckers will get there. The State Patrol said the timing is variable because the convoy is sometimes behind or ahead of schedule.

The State Patrol said the truckers plan to be in Wisconsin Friday into Saturday, but did not provide a more specific time. The State Patrol is working with local law enforcement to monitor the convoy.

Officials are prepared for any potential incidents, but do not anticipate major traffic disruptions, the State Patrol said.

Other officials have said they expect some disruptions.

The Monroe County Sheriffs Office said its planning for an influx of traffic around Oakdale, where the two groups are meeting.

The Tomah Area School District, which is near Oakdale, said it plans to have a district-wide early release because of the logistical concerns and interruption to normal traffic flow. School is being let out two hours early, but after-school activities will still take place.

The district said Wednesday that estimates suggest there could be upwards of 500 semis in the area from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. Plans call for the truckers to spend the night around Portage, which could put them outside Madison around 9 a.m. Saturday.

In Dane County, the DeForest, Marshall and McFarland school districts said they have no plans to change their schedules. The Dane County Sheriffs Office said it doesnt have anything specific planned for the convoys arrival, and that the State Patrol is the agency focused on responding.

One of the trucker groups started its route in North Dakota, while the other is coming from Washington, according to the convoys website. When the Washington group left Spokane earlier this week, it had about a half-dozen semis and roughly 75 other vehicles, according to The Associated Press. Its unclear how many vehicles are coming from North Dakota.

Several convoys have cropped up in the U.S. after truckers formed blockades and caused other disruptions in Canada to protest COVID-19 restrictions.

The Monroe County Sheriffs Office and the State Patrol said their main priority is keeping truckers and residents safe as the convoy passes through.

WisDOTs primary goal is to make sure everyone is able to travel through the state safely, the State Patrol said.

State Journal reporter Elizabeth Beyer contributed to this report.

Editor's note: This story has been updated to correct the approximate time the convoy will be passing by Madison, which is around 9 a.m. Saturday morning.

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A Madison man who as a teenager in 2020 caused a crash on Madisons West Side that killed a former Madison School Board member and National Merit Scholar was sentenced Thursday to 10 years in prison.

The sentence for Maurice M. Chandler, 20, will begin after Chandler finishes serving a sentence for being a party to armed robbery. The armed robbery case was pending on Sept. 17, 2020, when Chandler, driving just over 90 mph on Mineral Point Road and high on marijuana, ran a red light and smashed into a car at Grand Canyon Drive driven by Anthony M. Chung, 22, a 2016 graduate of Memorial High School who was a senior at Georgetown University.

While in high school Chung served as student representative on the Madison School Board.

In December, Chandler pleaded guilty to homicide by driving under the influence of a controlled substance and two counts of first-degree reckless injury  one for Chungs girlfriend, Rory Demick, the other for a passenger in Chandlers vehicle.

In court Thursday, Demick described her long and painful road to physical recovery and her ongoing efforts to cope with the death of Chung, her boyfriend of six years and someone with whom she planned to have a future.

The moment that I learned of his death shattered my heart into a million pieces, she said. In that second, as I lay in the ICU with multiple broken bones, my heart hurt more than the rest of my body.

Circuit Judge Nicholas McNamara sentenced Chandler to 10 years in prison and five years of extended supervision for each of the three convictions. But because they all occurred from the same constellation of bad decisions, he said, the sentences must be concurrent.

By law, the maximum sentence for each conviction is 15 years in prison followed by 10 years of extended supervision.

The armed robbery sentence Chandler is serving will end on Sept. 26, 2023, when the crash sentence begins. Chandler received the sentence for his role in the December 2018 robbery of a McDonalds restaurant on Madisons North Side.

Before the crash, Chandler was free on bail and under home detention, but was out smoking marijuana and driving a rental Jeep that at age 18 he was too young to sign for. Police also found a gun in the Jeep after the crash, but did not identify its owner. Assistant District Attorney Lexi Keys said the Jeep also may have been stolen.

Its hard to imagine a more selfish, self-centered set of choices, McNamara said.

He challenged Chandler to figure out how to change the course of his life that since age 14 has led him to where he is now.

I dont know how youre going to do it, he said, but you need to change this path youre on.

While Chandlers family wont like that hes away, McNamara said, they can talk to him and they can go see him.

But these folks cant, McNamara said, gesturing toward the other side of the courtroom seating. Youve taken that person from them.

According to a statement written by Chungs parents, he was their only child.

Words cannot describe the horror and despair his sudden and tragic passing has plunged all the members of our family (into), they wrote.

He was just about to finish his senior year in college, they wrote, a little anxious whether he would be able to find a job in this pandemic era, but also eager to finally be able to be self-sufficient since he kept saying he was so appreciative and grateful of the opportunities we have given him.

Chungs parents are outside the U.S. and did not attend Thursdays hearing. McNamara said arrangements were made for them to watch it by videoconference, but it was still too painful for them.

Chandler said he hoped for forgiveness.

I truly apologize for my actions, and all the pain I put the families through, Chandler said. I take full responsibility for my actions and every day I think about what I did, and I have to live with that disaster I caused for the rest of my life. Im not a bad human, I just made a bad choice that day.

After seven months of hospitalizations and rehabilitative therapy before she could return to work full time, and nearly 1 years after the crash, Demick said she still feels physical pain that will likely be permanent. She still sees a grief counselor.

Not only do I mourn the loss of my partner of six years, the man I love, my soulmate and my best friend, she said, I also mourn the life we were supposed to have together, the dreams we had together and our plans for the future.

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State officials say toxic forever chemicals have contaminated fish in one of southern Wisconsins premier fishing destinations.

The Department of Natural Resources and Department of Health Services issued a health advisory Thursday warning anglers to limit consumption of trout from Black Earth Creek, a popular but vulnerable Class 1 trout stream in western Dane County.

The agencies said fish collected in 2020 near Cross Plains had elevated levels of PFOS, one of many fluorinated compounds that can cause cancer and other ailments, and cautioned people not to eat the fish more than once per week.

The advisory includes the entire 27-mile creek from Middleton to the confluence with Blue Mounds Creek near the Wisconsin River.

The DNR did not indicate a potential source of contamination.

According to publicly available DNR data, the highest concentrations of PFAS in surface waters were found in the headwaters in Middleton, which is also near the former Refuse Hideaway Landfill, a 23-acre Superfund site on Highway 14 where industrial waste was dumped in the 1970s and 80s.

But Issac Ross, the DNRs spill team leader, said PFOS  the substance that triggered the fish advisory  was not found in monitoring wells around the former dump when they were sampled in 2019.

We dont think its a source of PFOS, Ross said.

Ross said the DNR is now reviewing other potential sources in the Middleton area, but couldnt provide a timeline for the investigation.

Not just PFAS: DNR board vote scrapped years of work on 2 dozen other groundwater contaminants There was no discussion of new or modified limits for about two dozen other substances, including Trichloroethylene, a common dry cleaning chemical known as TCE, and chromium-6, a carcinogen made famous by Erin Brockovich.

Andy Morton, who serves on the board of the Black Earth Creek Watershed Association, said the group was disappointed and saddened to learn about the advisory on a creek that attracts anglers from across the state and beyond and is also popular with paddlers.

Its a highly-valued resource, Morton said.

Kyle Zempel, a fishing guide and owner of Black Earth Angling, said Black Earth Creek is one of the closest trout streams to Chicago and is easily accessible to Madison anglers.

The resource itself is extremely important, he said. To have a trout stream within a short distance of a major city is really, really special.

Though most trout anglers return their catch, Zempel said the consumption advisory is another knock against the creek, which was once considered among the best trout fisheries in the nation but has been degraded by urban and agricultural pollution in recent decades.

One thing after another keeps happening, he said.

Utilities say Wisconsin Constitution does not bar long-term leases for solar, non-ag uses Attorneys for the WEC Energy Group and Madison Gas and Electric say opponents misunderstand the constitution and that their outlandish interpretation would upend nearly 200 years of real estate law.

Thursdays announcement is the states second PFAS-related consumption advisory issued this year. In January the agency said people should limit consumption of rock bass from Green Bay and its tributaries.

PFAS advisories are in place for all but two of Madisons lakes  Mendota and Wingra  as well as Starkweather Creek.

The DNR has also issued PFAS consumption advisories for smelt from Lake Superior and trout from Silver Creek in the Fort McCoy Army base in Monroe County. PFAS advisories were previously in place for fish caught in three pools of the Mississippi River.

The DNR publishes advisories for specific species from around the state in an annual guidebook available on the agency website.

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The Dane County Board voted late Thursday night to dole out another $16 million for a scaled-back, "compromise" plan for the County Jail project instead of putting an additional $24 million toward the original, over-budget plan.

The plan was approved on a 29-7 vote with one absence, despite objections from some supervisors who said the measure was too last-minute. It was introduced just one day before Thursday's meeting.

"This seems to be just sloppy work. We really can do better," Sup. Elizabeth Doyle, 1st District, said, noting that it was "disrespectful to the community" to approve a proposal without giving them adequate time to understand it. "This is not democracy in action."

But Sup. Carousel Bayrd, 8th District, said the county has been discussing the jail project for years, and the ideas in the latest iteration "are nothing new."

"If we postpone this for two weeks, I dont think much is going to change," Bayrd said. "This is a compromise that everyone is satisfied with. I think it is good work."

Sups. Doyle, Anthony Gray, Sarah Smith, Heidi Wegleitner, Mike Bare, Cecely Castillo and Yogesh Chawla voted against the extra $16 million for the jail, many citing the rushed timeline of the new proposal. Sup. Elena Haasl was absent. The same County Board members  along with Sup. Patrick Miles  voted to delay the decision earlier in the meeting, but they were overruled.

The county has already allocated $148 million for the consolidation of the jail, but skyrocketing construction costs have pushed the project an estimated $170 million or more over budget.

The original plan for the project would close two of the countys jail facilities  the 1950s-era jail in the City-County Building and the aging Ferris Huber Center  and build a new seven-story tower behind the countys third jail facility in the Public Safety Building. The new jail would have 922 beds  fewer than the 1,013 beds spread across the current jail facilities.

A proposal that failed would have stuck to that plan by authorizing an additional $24 million in borrowing to close the budget gap.

The compromise proposal will cut the tower to six floors or fewer and keep the Ferris Huber Center open for a total budgeted cost of $164 million, an increase of $16 million in capital borrowing. It would have a total of up to 825 beds.

Architects still need to work on making the changes to the design, and the County Board will likely need to approve change orders in the future to account for the project's new direction.

'Ridiculous amount of money'

Roughly 15 members of the public spoke on the resolution at the meeting, with most opposed to putting any additional funding toward the jail, a handful in support of the $16 million and a few in support of the $24 million. Another 80 people people registered in support of the millions without speaking, while 20 registered against.

Brian Tuescher, a representative from the Dane County Deputy Sheriffs Association, said while law enforcement would prefer the $24 million option, the scaled-back plan is a "compromise that my membership can live with."

Kay Galuska said the millions are a "ridiculous amount of money" to spend on the jail. Tyson Vitale said the resolution was poorly written and that he was disappointed with the board for only giving the public one day to look at it.

The newest proposal was tacked onto another resolution, meaning it didn't go through the county committee process. Thursday was the first time members of the public got to comment on it.

Amendments offered

Sponsors say the new plan is a compromise that achieves three goals: closing the 1950s jail in the City-County Building that law enforcement has called inhumane and a lawsuit waiting to happen, ending solitary confinement and providing mental health and medical services.

Board members spent more than two hours making six amendments to the resolution that make minor changes, such as deleting some background information, having staff provide more robust data on jail population trends and hiring a criminal justice research group to conduct a study on how the county can decrease its jail population.

One amendment opened the door for architects to decrease the floors in the tower further if needed, although county staff said it would be hard to fit the needed beds in an even smaller tower.

Another amendment directs the Dane County Criminal Justice Council to work with the board to eliminate the Huber work release program by March 31, 2025 and replace it with a human services system. The previous language urged that change.

While the change seems to add more teeth behind the countys intent to replace its Huber program, any changes to that system would be up to the sheriff. Dane County Sheriff Kalvin Barrett said hes open to having conversations about reforming the Huber system, but said he would need more information before committing to a change.

Deadline looming

In addition to concerns about the rushed timeline, Wegleitner said it doesn't make sense to put millions more toward the project when the county still doesn't know how much it will cost. At this point, the costs are just projections and could increase even higher as architects continue to finalize the design.

Were guessing. We very well could be back here again, Wegleitner said. I dont know why we want to make under-informed decisions like this.

But Sup. Andrae Richelle, 11th District, said it's best for the county to adapt its plan due to the rising costs and an upcoming deadline.

The board needs to get a construction contract in place by January 2023, or else the county will lose the ability to spend the original $148 million that was approved.

During public comment, former Dane County Sheriff Dave Mahoney, who spent years working on the jail project, said the county needs a new jail so it can improve conditions for inmates.

"I believe the time is now to act on this issue. Weve studied it. We restudied it," Mahoney said. "If we study it anymore, well need to build a floor just for the bookcases of three-ring binders of worthless reports that weve completed. I ask you tonight  move this project forward.

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The Wisconsin Supreme Court issued a split decision Thursday to adopt Democratic Gov. Tony Evers least change proposal for the states 10-year legislative and congressional district maps  boundaries that would maintain Republican majorities in the Legislature but likely prevent them from claiming a veto-proof supermajority.

The states high court issued a 4-3 ruling in favor of maps proposed last year by Evers, with conservative Justice Brian Hagedorn, a regular swing vote on the court, siding with liberal justices Rebecca Dallet, Ann Walsh Bradley and Jill Karofsky in the ruling.

The ruling comes months after Hagedorn and the courts conservatives ruled that they would follow a least change approach from the current maps, which are considered some of the most gerrymandered in the nation.

In a statement following the courts ruling, Evers said, The maps I submitted to the Court that were selected today are a vast improvement from the gerrymandered maps Wisconsin has had for the last decade and the even more gerrymandered Republican maps that I vetoed last year.

Asked about the courts decision, Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, said he was still analyzing it.

Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu, R-Oostburg, criticized Evers for coming up with new maps without a public input process.

The majority of justices concluded that maps proposed by the governor most align with the least change approach.

No other proposal comes close, Hagedorn wrote on the matter of core retention of districts. The Governors proposed Senate and Assembly maps produce less overall change than other submissions.

With regard to congressional districts, Evers maps move a little over 324,000 people into new districts  about 60,000 fewer than the next closest map, which was drawn by congressional Republicans.

Conservative justices Rebecca Bradley, Patience Roggensack and Annette Ziegler dissented, with Ziegler writing that the majoritys opinion demonstrates a complete lack of regard for the Wisconsin Constitution and the Equal Protection Clause.

The majoritys decision to select Governor Tony Evers maps is an exercise of judicial activism, untethered to evidence, precedent, the Wisconsin Constitution, and basic principles of equal protection, Ziegler wrote.

Evers set up the court battle over the states next decennial maps when he vetoed GOP-drawn boundaries in mid-November. The governor had championed boundaries drawn by the Peoples Maps Commission, but those maps failed to get universal support among legislative Democrats, with some criticizing the boundaries for potentially diminishing Black and Hispanic representation in the Legislature.

New maps

After the state Supreme Court ruled in favor of a least change approach, Evers submitted new maps that made fewer changes than the Republican proposal, while also slightly reducing the projected Republican advantage in the Legislature.

The new maps hand Democrats a marginal win, but they still keep many districts impenetrable for the party, UW-Madison political science professor Barry Burden said.

I think it tells us what the politics of the state Legislature are going to be like for the next decade, Burden said.

Democrats expressed some relief at the decision.

Thanks to Governor Evers and Justice Hagedorn, Wisconsin will have fairer maps, said Senate Minority Leader Janet Bewley, D-Mason. My Democratic colleagues and I will continue to fight for nonpartisan redistricting, but fair-minded people can breathe a little easier knowing the Supreme Court has rejected the Republicans efforts to stack the deck.

Advocates for nonpartisan district lines said the courts decision to follow a least-change approach made it near impossible to undo gerrymandered districts drawn a decade ago, the first time in decades the maps were drawn by a single party without a courts intervention.

Let me be clear: this fight is still far from over, and those who worked to rig these maps will be held accountable for ignoring the Constitution and the law and for ruling against the people of Wisconsin in implementing a least-changes map that continues the gerrymander, Fair Elections project director Sachin Chheda said in a statement.

The partisan maps adopted today, which intentionally disenfranchise a majority of Wisconsin residents, are an unfair and poor outcome in this case and pose a serious threat to representative democracy in our state, Chheda said. Its deeply upsetting that early in this case, extreme, activist, right-wing judges ignored the law and the Constitution to rig the process to maintain their Partys grip on power.

By applying the average of six statewide elections since 2016, Evers new maps would elect 44 Democrats and 55 Republicans in the Assembly, and 13 Democrats and 20 Republicans in the Senate. In Congress, Republicans would maintain five seats to Democrats three, according to Evers office.

Republicans currently hold a 61-38 majority in the Assembly and a 21-12 majority in the Senate. Five of the states eight congressional districts are held by Republicans.

Over the next 10 years, under the Governors maps adopted today, the people of Wisconsin will have a renewed chance for competitive elections and for their will to be reflected by their elected officials, Chris Walloch, executive director of liberal advocacy group A Better Wisconsin Together, said in a statement.

Core problem

UW-La Crosse political science assistant professor Anthony Chergosky said the courts ruling doesnt resolve the Democratic Partys core problem of voters clustered in urban areas while Republican voters are spread throughout the state, but it does raise the stakes going into Evers reelection.

His veto pen will remain powerful should he get reelected because this map really makes it hard for Republicans to achieve their long-held goal of attaining a veto-proof majority, Chergosky said.

Chergosky added that the maps will still give the Republican Party a comfortable but not overwhelming majority in the Legislature.

The Supreme Courts decision may not be the final word on the matter. Advocates for nonpartisan maps could try to take the matter to a pending case before the U.S. Supreme Court that was filed by Democrats. Whether the federal court takes up the case likely hinges on whether the maps chosen by the state Supreme Court comply with requirements in federal law, such as the Voting Rights Act.

Roggensack criticized the majoritys opinion, accusing the justices of engaging in racial gerrymandering contrary to the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution.

It is my hope that the United States Supreme Court will be asked to review Wisconsins unwarranted racial gerrymander, which clearly does not survive strict scrutiny, Roggensack wrote.

The Legislature must redraw political lines every decade based on the latest population figures from the U.S. Census Bureau. In 2011, Republicans, working in secretive conditions, drew maps that packed Democratic voters into lopsided districts and spread out rural and suburban Republicans into districts with solid, but narrower, majorities. The maps allowed the GOP to hold more than 60% of legislative seats, even when Democrats won all statewide elections in 2018.

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The Wisconsin Elections Commission  targeted for elimination by a Republican review of the 2020 election  struck back Friday against chief investigator Michael Gablemans recent report, saying it contains erroneous claims and lacks context.

The commission pushed back on several claims in the former Supreme Court justices sprawling 136-page report, including that the millions of dollars of private grants allocated to cities to help administer the election amid the pandemic constituted bribery.

The commission noted that courts have repeatedly rejected that claim, adding that a federal judge concluded theres no state prohibition on local governments accepting private money to run elections.

A ban on private grants would require a new law to be passed, the Elections Commission said.

In a sweeping critique of current election rules, Gableman on Tuesday called for the elimination and dismantling of the bipartisan Wisconsin Elections Commission after it instructed clerks in 2020 that they did not need to send election workers into nursing homes to assist with absentee voting after many were turned away due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The bipartisan group noted Gablemans report omitted evidence to support some of his conclusions, including his claim that some Wisconsin nursing homes had 100% voter participation.

The report does not provide a list of specific nursing homes, nor supporting evidence, nor a methodology, for how he calculated the turnout rates for particular nursing homes, the Elections Commission said.

The commission provided contrary Milwaukee data showing a smaller percentage of voters in nursing homes returned absentee ballots in November 2020 than in November 2016.

The Elections Commission also disputed Gablemans description of how the commission makes available for purchase voter registration data, sells that information for $12,500, but doesnt make the information available in real time and doesnt charge special interest groups.

Every claim above is false, the commission stated, adding that the median transaction cost for customers purchasing voting data sets was $55 and that no fees are waived for anyone.

The Elections Commission also rejected Gablemans claim that it issued guidance enabling clerks to open envelopes before the statutorily mandated deadline, stating it had actually never issued guidance, rules or other directives to that effect.

Also, the Elections Commission corrected Gablemans claim that the commission unlawfully encouraged voters to register as indefinitely confined, thus allowing them to avoid the photo ID requirement to vote. In fact, the commission advised the opposite, and noted the Wisconsin Supreme Court agreed with its guidance.

Gableman said Tuesday that his review was not complete and that his contract, which expired months ago, remains valid, though he has not provided more updated terms.

All reasonable people can now see this is a thinly veiled effort to undercut the publics confidence in our state electoral system, said Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway, whom Gableman had threatened to jail if she didnt comply with a list of demands.

For all of their bluster and allegations of wrongdoing by Wisconsins public servants and voters, Gableman and (Assembly Speaker Robin Vos) are the only actors in this saga who have been found in violation of Wisconsin law and fined by a court, Rhodes-Conway continued. On Wednesday, a Dane County judge ruled that Vos, R-Rochester, and Gableman arbitrarily and capriciously denied or delayed access to public records related to the GOP-ordered review of the states 2020 election.

Artifice fades

Gableman reviews partial focus on decertifying the 2020 election has been previously shot down by the Republican Partys leadership, and embraced especially by one fringe Republican lawmaker and recently announced gubernatorial candidate, Rep. Timothy Ramthun, R-Campbellsport.

The Marquette Law School Poll found Republicans are growing more confident in the accuracy of the election, with 38% saying they are confident compared with 29% who said the same in August 2021.

A recount and court decisions have affirmed that President Joe Biden defeated former President Donald Trump in Wisconsin by almost 21,000 votes. Reviews by the nonpartisan Legislative Audit Bureau and the conservative Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty found no evidence of widespread fraud. Multiple court rulings have also found no evidence of irregularities.

Gablemans office administrator, Zakory Niemierowicz, declined to comment on Gablemans behalf. Vos spokesperson Angela Joyce didnt respond to a message seeking comment.

Ad campaign

In another sign of pushback against Republican attempts to undermine the states election system, a coalition of groups representing local government officials is set to launch an ad campaign to reassure Wisconsin voters that they can trust election workers.

The League of Wisconsin Municipalities, the Wisconsin Counties Association and the Wisconsin Towns Association said the ads will appear on television and radio stations statewide as well as on multiple digital platforms beginning Monday and run through the April 5 election.

The spots feature town of Neenah Clerk Ellen Skerke, village of Kohler Deputy Clerk Cindi Gamb and village of Cobb Clerk Lisa Riley. The clerks tell viewers that election workers are Wisconsin residents neighbors and family members and can be trusted to run fair contests.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Michael Gableman, the Inspector Clouseau of right-wing conspiracy politics in Wisconsin, is urging the Legislature to take a very hard look at decertifying the states presidential election.

Lawmakers should take a very hard pass instead, given how stale and tiring the endless rehashing of the 2020 vote has become, and given that legal experts across the political spectrum call Gablemans suggestion impossible and unconstitutional.

Moreover, instead of eliminating and dismantling the Wisconsin Elections Commission, which Gableman sanctimoniously demands, the Legislature should eliminate and dismantle Gablemans probe, which is wasting $676,000 of public money and likely more the longer his wild goose chase continues.

Careful election tallies, a recount, nonpartisan audit, independent review and  most important  our court system have found over and over again that President Joe Biden beat Donald Trump by more than 20,000 votes, without any widespread fraud that could have changed the outcome.

Gablemans interim report on the last presidential election, released Tuesday, rehashes longstanding Republican suspicions about election irregularities while mostly ignoring why those inconsistencies occurred: because Wisconsin was in the middle of the worst pandemic in a century. Obviously, voting was going to be different with public health officials urging voters to avoid crowds  including at the polls  so they didnt catch COVID-19, which has killed more than 12,000 and hospitalized 59,000 in Wisconsin.

Thats why 430 communities set up drop boxes for easy and safe voting outside municipal buildings. Gablemans boss, Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, who hired Gableman to conduct this redundant review, supported drop boxes back when the election was approaching. But now that former President Donald Trump has lost his reelection bid and childishly wont concede defeat, Vos isnt saying if he still supports drop boxes, fearing a backlash from conservative conspiracists.

If Gableman is so certain that drop boxes violated Wisconsin law  even though state law is silent on them  maybe Gableman should subpoena Vos to testify at Gablemans private strip-mall office in Brookfield, rather than threatening the mayors of Madison, Green Bay and Racine with arrest. Vos could explain under oath why he backed them, and whether he favors them now.

Those mayors, by the way, have been willing to testify in public. They just wont submit to Gablemans questions behind closed doors, which Gableman doesnt appear to have the legal power to require. Thats because hes acting on behalf of the state Assembly, which must follow its own authority to subpoena witnesses to open hearings.

After Gablemans nearly three-hour presentation last week before the Assembly Elections Committee, where he crowed about his thin findings, its clear why hes not a fan of doing things out in public. His show was a dud.

Gableman claims the Elections Commission broke the law by allowing local clerks to send absentee ballots to nursing home residents without voting assistants present. But the commission  including Vos appointee, a former Republican lawmaker  permitted this unusual exemption because some nursing homes were restricting visitors during the pandemic. Commissioners also feared voting assistants might spread COVID-19 to elderly residents, who are the most vulnerable to the disease.

Gableman claimed every registered voter cast a ballot in some nursing homes, but his report didnt back that up with documentation. The Elections Commission is skeptical of the claim. Videos that Gableman released of a few nursing home residents struggling to understand questions doesnt prove much, either. He suggests those residents shouldnt have voted because they were mentally unfit. But only a judge can determine that, under state law. And does he really think more than 20,000 such people voted  all of them for Biden  in a nefarious plot? Please.

Gableman claims Democratic-leaning cities such as Madison, Racine, Kenosha, Milwaukee and Green Bay engaged in election bribery by taking money from a Facebook-funded group to help administer and encourage safe voting during the pandemic. But lots of rural communities that favored Republican candidates took the money, too. Why isnt Gableman going after them? Politics, obviously.

A judge appointed by former GOP President George W. Bush refused to block the grants in 2020 because nothing in state law prohibited the donations. An appeals court agreed. The Wisconsin Supreme Court wouldnt take a similar case.

So game over  but not for Gableman, according to him. Though he was supposed to wrap things up last fall, Gableman says his work is far from complete.

We sure hope hes wrong about that, too.

At least Inspector Clouseau, thanks to Hollywood screenwriters, managed to bungle his way to recovering a rare and stolen diamond in one of those old Pink Panther movies. Gablemans problem is that hes plodding about for something that doesnt exist  a grand conspiracy to steal the last election. His interim report should be his probes closing credits.

Wisconsin State Journal editorial board The views expressed in the editorials are shaped by the board, independent of news coverage decisions elsewhere in the newspaper. STAFF MEMBERS SCOTT MILFRED, Editorial page editor PHIL HANDS, Editorial cartoonist COMMUNITY MEMBERS JANINE GESKE SUSAN SCHMITZ WAYNE STRONG
Democracy in Wisconsin is dying.

The Electoral Integrity Project at Harvard University has studied the quality of elections worldwide since 2012. It has also issued biannual reports that grade U.S. states on a scale of 1 through 100. In its most recent study of the 2020 elections, the integrity of Wisconsins electoral boundaries earned a score of 23 -- worst in the nation.

This loss of democracy is evidenced by Wisconsin voters handing Democrats every statewide race in 2018 and 203,000 more votes for the state Assembly -- but the rigged Republican maps gave Republicans 63 of the 99 seats.

Since the regime of Gov. Scott Walker took control of the state government in 2010 and gerrymandered the maps, I as a progressive am no longer represented in state policy issues. I am also not represented fairly in the United States Congress due to boundary tilts.

If Republicans have better ideas, why do they need to rig the maps to stay in control ? As a citizen of Wisconsin and a taxpayer, why am I not fairly represented? We need to have answers to these questions before democracy in Wisconsin passes away.

Janice Antoniewicz-Werner, Madison
TWIN FALLS  Walking past cages, Debbie Blackwood points out the dogs found dumped in remote corners of Twin Falls County.

This is one of the two golden lab-hound crosses that was dumped in the Lily Grade, she said. Its a very remote location on the far west of our county near Castleford. Its a heck of a place to be abandoned.

Blackwood gives each dog a smile, tells them they are a good boy (or girl) and then continues down the row.

Every single kennel is full, a few containing two smaller dogs.

People for Pets, Magic Valley Humane Society Inc. is used to overcrowding, but the current situation feels different.

Dogs are coming in by the droves, Blackwood said. And why? I cant say.

Many of the animals have been in pairs, leading her to guess they might have come from an accidental litter.

The shelter had seven huskies at one point, a very active breed that has a tendency to escape and wander.

We go far and wide to find them homes. We transfer them to Montana and Challis, trying to a place for these kinds of dogs, she said.

Some of the animals need expensive medical care. A chocolate Labrador named Brutus arrived recently with entropion, a condition where the eyelids roll inward causing immense discomfort.

To help dogs like Brutus, the shelter hosts Furrball, an annual fundraiser where all proceeds go directly to the medical care fund.

Each week from Feb. 1 till March 5, a drawing is held on Saturdays for a variety of prizes, including Apple products.

Raffle tickets are 5 for $25 and the last drawing, where the winner will receive an Apple iPad, is on Saturday.

Our number of animals coming in is around 4,000 a year, Blackwood said. Not all 4,000 need medical but a certain percentage does and we just really want to take care of them.

In addition to donating, the public can help out by making sure their animal is microchipped and licensed. The city of Twin Falls requires a license for every dog. Licenses need to be renewed each year in January.

Microchipping pets is fantastic and it just moves us up a level, she said.

People for Pets hosts a weekly microchipping clinic on Wednesdays. The cost is $25 per pet.

Blackwood also encourages residents interested in a dog to visit the shelter soon. Getting dogs adopted quickly helps to prevent disease spread and stress for the animals.

We are under constant bombardment, Blackwood said. What really bothers us, of course its hard labor wise, but its hard on the animals to be that crowded.

Residents missing a dog are encouraged to stop by the animal shelter first even if its far from their home, she said. People tend to assume their animal didnt end up in Twin Falls if they live in Jerome for example, but that is not always the case.

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BOISE  A bill that would have required drug testing for substitute teachers in Idaho died in the House on Thursday.

The bill, introduced by Rep. Judy Boyle, a Midvale Republican, was shot down in a narrow, 38-31 vote.

The bill would have barred people who fail a drug test from working as a substitute in any district in the state for one calendar year. A substitute who failed a drug test three times within three years would have been barred from working in any Idaho district for five years.

The bill did not include funding or outline how school districts would have paid for the additional mandate.

During debate on the House floor, Boyle said the bill was an attempt to protect children in the state. She acknowledged the difficulty in finding substitutes, but she said it was important they were tested before working in schools to keep children safe.

Its different with teachers. They have a certificate and years of education to protect, she said. Substitutes come and go. Most districts have no qualifications other than, youre 18, you want to sub, lets go for it. This provides a horrid opportunity for people who want to either solicit drugs to our children, or are on drugs themselves.

Lawmakers raised concerns about drugs coming into Idaho and said the drug testing requirement would be an easy addition to the process before people can substitute in Idaho schools.

But opponents of the bill said they didnt see the need for the requirement and noted that substitutes undergo background checks before working in schools.

In a committee meeting last week, Boyle told lawmakers substitute teaching is a very easy way to access children and sell drugs to them. Law enforcement officials had told state legislators that they didnt know of any examples of substitute teachers selling drugs in Idaho.

Im speaking on behalf of the two school districts in my district, who see this as just another enormous burden in their attempt to get substitutes in their schools, Idaho Falls Republican Rep. Gary Marshall said.

Other opponents pointed out that the vast majority of substitutes are people who are planning to enter the profession.

Lawmakers said the shortage of substitutes became even clearer this year during the COVID-19 pandemic, when some schools shut down because so many staff members were out sick and districts couldnt find enough substitutes to fill their spots.

No profession is perfect. No occupation is perfect, Rep. Matthew Bundy said. But substitute teachers are highly qualified, very skilled at what they do and very proud of what they do. And we couldnt function without them.

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BOISE  Republicans in the Idaho Senate on Thursday passed a bill on party lines that would allow family members of a pregnant woman to file civil lawsuits against medical providers who perform an abortion after cardiac activity is detected in the embryo or fetus.

The body debated Senate Bill 1309 on the floor for about an hour, ultimately deciding on a 28-6 vote to send the bill to the House for consideration.

Bill sponsor Sen. Patti Anne Lodge, R-Huston, said the Senate will also consider a trailer bill in the coming days of the legislative session related to the main law. The trailer bill would make additional changes to the burden of proof for damages that must be met by the person filing the lawsuit, as well as legal options for the medical professional if the lawsuit is found to be frivolous.

During debate on the bill on the Senate floor, Sen. Grant Burgoyne, D-Boise, cited an opinion from the Idaho Attorney Generals office that says the bill would likely violate a pregnant womans constitutional rights under existing federal law.

(Senate Bill) 1309 would effectively prohibit almost all abortions in the State of Idaho beginning at about six weeks gestational age 30 days after enactment. Should a court adjudicate a challenge to the law on the merits of the restriction on abortions, it would likely be found unconstitutional, Deputy Attorney General Brian Kane said in the opinion.

Proponents of the bill, including Sen. C. Scott Grow, R-Eagle, said it provides protections and advocacy for those who cannot protect and advocate for themselves.

If it is not human, what is it? If it is not alive, why does it require outside intervention to be terminated? he asked during debate of the bill.

Opponents of the bill, including Senate Minority Leader Michelle Stennett, D-Ketchum, said with such a short six-week timeline, the bill could prevent nearly all women from accessing abortion before they know they are pregnant. She said the bill also interferes with Idahoans right to make health care decisions in private with the guidance of their doctor.

I find it pretty surprising that in some instances, we want to make sure that we (dont) have a government overreach  on vaccinations and masks and all kinds of things, but somehow its OK to do it here, she said.

Idaho law similar to Texas legislation that went before U.S. Supreme Court

Burgoyne urged senators to consider the potential constitutional violations the bill could create and court challenges against the state that taxpayers would have to pay for should the legislation be signed into law.

The proponents have been very candid in their hope and belief that the mere passage of this legislation into law will stop abortions in Idaho and set up a Texas situation, he said while debating against the bill.

In September, the U.S. Supreme Court did not grant an injunction that would have kept a similar law in Texas from going into effect because the law relies on enforcement through private action rather than through the government.

The Texas law goes further than Idahos version, because it allows individuals to sue medical professionals who perform abortions or anyone else who might be aiding and abetting abortions after six weeks, such as a partner or ride share driver who takes the person to an appointment. Under Idahos bill, only the abortion provider would be subject to litigation.

Idahos law would include exceptions for medical emergencies and for women who have become pregnant through rape or incest  the Texas law does not include those exceptions. Under the Idaho bill, however, the woman must report the rape to law enforcement and provide a police report to the physician.

The Idaho law would allow a lawsuit to be brought against a medical professional up to four years after the abortion was performed.

Sen. Christy Zito, R-Hammett, said human life should be protected at all stages during a pregnancy.

Now life isnt perfect, it can be ugly and it can be dirty and it can be brutal, she said. It can be vicious. But the greatest beauty and the greatest glory is that of human life. And for us to protect that and to watch out for those babies is the greatest thing that we can do.

The bill will next be heard by a House committee and must be passed by the full House before it heads to Gov. Brad Littles desk for consideration.

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BOISE  The Idaho Legislatures House State Affairs Committee advanced a bill Thursday that opponents say could criminalize librarians for disseminating material harmful to minors.

Rep. Gayann DeMordaunt, R-Eagle, sponsored House Bill 666.

For a long time, many years, I have been concerned about the obscene and pornographic material that finds its way into our schools and libraries, DeMordaunt told the House State Affairs Committee. While likely this is inadvertent, the increasingly frequent exposure of our children to obscene and phonographic material in places that I as a parent assume are safe and free from these kinds of harmful materials is downright alarming.

If passed into law, House Bill 666 removes an exemption in existing state law protecting schools, colleges, universities, museums and libraries and their employees from prosecution for disseminating material harmful to minors.

Testimony during the public hearing on the bill Thursday was mixed.

Several parents and concerned residents named and even brought with them several books that feature LGBTQ+ characters or storylines, arguing those books are obscene. One parent was upset that her daughter encountered a library book that depicted a romance between a prince and a knight who slay a dragon together and are supported by their community.

Books mentioned included An ABC of Equality, Lawn Boy, Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic and Gender Queer: A Memoir.

How did we go from Pollyanna to drag queen for the kids? My daughters innocence was violated, parent Kara Claridge told legislators. But what happens when kids start acting on these graphic behaviors put forth in these books?

The sad reality is children are being taught to be confused about their gender and even groomed into lifestyles they wouldnt have chosen otherwise, Claridge added, saying the childrens library is no longer a safe place to take her children.

Librarians who testified said the bill is dangerous and the language in the bill about materials that are harmful to children is too vague.

We walk down the slippery slope of censorship of constitutionally protected speech when we have a bill like this, librarian Erin Kennedy told legislators.

Other librarians said the bill wouldnt even address parents concerns about material in books available in the library.

Everything that we have been hearing on this bill, I would just like to point out that this bill is not to get the books out of the library, this bill is to criminalize library workers. We are not talking censorship and removing these books; we are talking about criminalizing library workers if minors get these books, librarian Huda Shaltry told legislators.

Shaltry also said the books parents mentioned during the hearing are available at the library but are not located in the childrens section of the library.

DeMordaunt denied the bill would criminalize librarians.

But substitute Rep. Holli Woodings, a Boise Democrat and City Council member who is subbing for Rep. Chris Mathias, said it was clear the bill criminalizes librarians because the bill cites Title 18, which is the criminal code for the state of Idaho.

If my daughter brings home Twilight, which has explicit material in it, can I then go and press charges against my librarian for allowing her to check out Twilight and potentially put them in jail for a year or give them a $1,000 fine? Woodings said. This is a slippery slope. It does not correct the problem that it is seeking to correct. We had many people come and testify today on books that had various social topics. Not pornography, not explicit material.

Shortly before the vote, two legislators condemned libraries after looking through packets that contained examples from the books parents mentioned during the meeting.

I am absolutely appalled, I feel dirty, said Rep. James Holtzclaw, R-Meridian, garnering loud applause from several in the crowd at the hearing. I cannot believe that our children can look at this stuff. And I cant believe we fund the libraries to allow this to happen.

Rep. Brent Crane, R-Nampa, said trash is being placed in front of our children.

The House State Affairs Committee voted along party lines to send House Bill 666 to the floor of the Idaho House of Representatives with a recommendation they pass it. To become law, the bill still needs to pass the Idaho Senate and be signed into law by Gov. Brad Little or allowed to become law without Littles signature.

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BOISE  When Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin contacted Boise Rabbi Dan Fink in January asking if he would be interested in joining a task force to fight antisemitism in Idaho, Fink wrote back saying he wanted to sit down with her and talk about the idea. When he heard nothing back, he wrote a longer letter explaining his thoughts on antisemitism across the state  but still received no response.

On Feb. 25, Fink received another letter asking if he wanted to be part of a task force, with no acknowledgment of his previous writings.

Hours after receiving the letter, Fink learned McGeachin had appeared via recorded message at the America First Political Action Conference, which is hosted and attended by white nationalists who express antisemitic views and deny the Holocaust ever happened.

In the message to the conference, McGeachin congratulated the attendees on the third annual event and told them to keep up the good work fighting for the United States.

The whole thing is mind-boggling to me to the point that I can only kind of laugh about it, because its just absurd, Fink said.

McGeachin, who is running for governor in the Republican primary in May, could not be reached for comment on Wednesday.

She said in a statement over the weekend that she does not support identity politics or discriminatory views that seek to divide us and not unite us. She told KTVB she did not know who the conferences organizer, Nick Fuentes, was when she recorded the message. Fuentes describes himself as an American nationalist and has been banned from YouTube for violating the companys hate speech policies. He also discussed the idea of killing legislators who did not vote to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election two days before the Jan. 6 attack at the U.S. Capitol.

Fuentes also said at the conference that he has his eye on state governments in several states, including Idaho.

Political action groups Take Back Idaho and The Idaho 97% have called for McGeachins resignation, and the Idaho GOP issued a statement saying white supremacist sentiments have no place in the Republican Party. The Idaho Democratic Party also called on the Idaho GOP to condemn McGeachins participation in the conference.

To be clear, Lt. Gov. McGeachins courting of U.S. Capitol insurrectionists, white nationalists, and radical extremists is not a one-time occurrence, it is a pattern of alarming behavior, said Deborah Silver, acting chair of the Idaho Democratic Party in a statement. Just this month, she touted an endorsement from Michelle Malkin, a right-wing commentator with links to white supremacy groups, antisemitism, and Islamophobia, and posed for pictures with white nationalist and Holocaust denier Vincent James Foxx at a campaign event.

McGeachin asked rabbi and director of Wassmuth Center to join task force

In her January letter, McGeachin asked Fink if he and Dan Prinzing, director of the Wassmuth Center for Human Rights in Boise, would be willing to work with her office to update and strengthen the definition of antisemitism in law.

As a Christian, I am called to support the people of Israel, McGeachin wrote in her letter. The rise in antisemitism in our country is alarming, and I am most anxious to help curtail such activities in our state.

She included a letter sent to Gov. Brad Little in October asking for an update on investigations into vandalism at the Idaho Anne Frank Human Rights Memorial in Boise and a bill passed in the 2021 legislative session prohibiting Idaho from contracting with certain entities that engage in boycotts of Israel or its territories. She also included an article from Intermountain Christian News featuring her efforts.

Fink said while he appreciated the sentiment, McGeachins criticisms focused on antisemitism within the political left, but he is far more concerned about white nationalist groups that seem to be Idahos most overwhelming problem. He said he is bothered more by legislators who compare mask mandates to the Holocaust, or people who wear yellow Jewish stars to protest COVID-19 vaccines.

Fink said he is unsure why McGeachin reached out to him since he has been public with warnings about her candidacy and advising people to vote against her in the primary.

I suppose she sought my help because she thought, OK, hes a rabbi, if I tell him Im against antisemitism, hell immediately see me as a friend, Fink said. That seems unbelievably foolish and naive to me.

Second letter from McGeachin said to fight antisemitism, we need to understand it

Ten days after sending his first response, Fink wrote again to say he had more time to think about the idea and said he wasnt comfortable joining a task force because Israel was not his primary concern regarding antisemitism in Idaho.

Stunningly absent from the materials you sent me is a clear and unequivocal condemnation of extremist anti-government and white nationalist groups that my community and I consider the most dangerous antisemitic threat in this very conservative state, Fink wrote.  You give succor to those groups when you refer to the United States as a Christian nation, as you do repeatedly in the  materials attached to your letter.

Fink added that McGeachins focus on Little led him to worry she was using antisemitism as an exploitative tool to enlist his community in her campaign efforts.

The letter sent back, which was dated Feb. 16 but Fink said he received on the 26th, was a longer explanation of McGeachins thoughts on antisemitism, but nothing that addressed Finks concerns.

To fight antisemitism, we need to understand it. Meaningful action against antisemitism requires a consensus driven definition that reflects the lived experience of the Jewish community, McGeachin wrote.  My hope is that you will consider joining me in this effort to define, expose and call out antisemitism in whatever form it takes.

After learning of her participation in the conference on Friday, Fink said he wrote one more brief email to McGeachin saying, People who are serious about combating antisemitism dont court the support of racist antisemites.

Fink said he decided to make the exchanges public because if there is one thing he learned from Holocaust survivors in his congregation, its that much of what happened in the Holocaust happened because people didnt speak up for too long.

I think she is an extreme danger to democracy and decency in our state, and I think people need to speak out with their voice and their voices, Fink said. And if we dont send a clear message now that courting the support of white nationalist antisemites is not OK, were going to find ourselves in a terrible place. I think I have an obligation to speak out because Im speaking for my community and Im speaking, I hope, for all decent people in this state who dont want us to become the homeland of white nationalist America that I think a McGeachin administration would go a long way toward creating.

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Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin has again put the national spotlight on Idaho. This time it was not for issuing fake executive orders on two occasions when Governor Little temporarily stepped out of state. McGeachin garnered nationwide headlines for participating in a conference of the America First Political Action Committee (AFPAC) on February 25. AFPAC is an extremist organization founded by Nick Fuentes, who has compared himself to Adolf Hitler and praised Vladimir Putins invasion of Ukraine.

McGeachin defended herself, claiming that she did not personally attend the meeting, but merely sent a video with prepared remarks. Every responsible politician checks out the views of an organization before agreeing to speak. Otherwise, you wouldnt know the nature of the group or the topics to speak about. McGeachin need only have Googled AFPAC to find that Fuentes is a white supremacist who has expressed anti-semitic views and Holocaust denial and is opposed to womens right to vote.

If one Googles Mr. Fuentes it only gets worse. At the conference, he asked for and received a round of applause for Russia. The crowd responded with a chant of, Putin, Putin. Fuentes has called Putins invasion of Ukraine the coolest thing to happen since 1/6. At the conference, he praised the Capitol attack as awesome.

McGeachin told those in attendance that she was pleased to have been invited to participate in the conference. Any decent person who had done even the briefest inquiry into the groups racist, misogynist views, would have rejected the invitation. If she failed to do any homework and learned only later that Fuentes admired both Hitler and Putin, she should have immediately issued a full-throated denunciation of his views.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), who also spoke at the conference, also claimed to have known nothing about the groups ultra-extremist views. But she did have the presence of mind to strongly denounce Putin for trying to subjugate Ukraine. Nevertheless, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo roundly criticized Greene for associating with anti-semitic neo-Nazis and playing footsie with Nick Fuentes.

If nothing else, McGeachin should have denounced Fuentes statements on Ukraine and Putin. Governor Little and both of Idahos Senators have not hesitated to condemn Putin for his criminal attack against the Ukrainian people. Little called Putins attack an assault on democracy. Risch denounced it as a flagrant and premeditated act of war. Crapo urged crushing economic sanctions.

Putin is a murderous, America-hating dictator who wants to reconstitute the Soviet Union, which was dedicated to the death and destruction of the United States. I can never forget that the USSR was responsible for the deaths of many of my fellow soldiers in Vietnam, thanks to the sophisticated Soviet missiles and other lethal hardware it furnished to Communist forces. Yes, McGeachins silence on Putin and Russia is deafening.

And, so it goes. Each day seems to bring more ugly publicity of this nature to the Gem State. McGeachin and her sidekick, Lt. Gov. wanna-be Priscilla Giddings, brought national disrepute on the State for their failed inquisition on student indoctrination. She exhibited her untrustworthiness and brought the national spotlight to Idaho by sneaking the two executive orders behind the Governors back. By election day, our dear State will be a national laughingstock of political dysfunction, thanks to McGeachins determined efforts.

Jim Jones is a Vietnam combat veteran who served eight years as Idaho attorney general (1983-1991) and 12 years as justice of the Idaho Supreme Court (2005-2017). He is currently a regular contributor to The Hill online news. He blogs at JJCommonTater.

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The first year-class of white sturgeon reared in the new Niagara Springs Sturgeon Hatchery recently underwent genetic testing to ensure that all fish released into the Snake River are capable of reproducing. These fish are unique from a typical hatchery fish, like rainbow trout, which are typically sterile when they are stocked so they cant successfully spawn with wild fish.

The main goal of sturgeon conservation efforts at the Niagara Springs hatchery is to ensure sturgeon populations in the Snake River are healthy and can continue to support recreational sport fishing.

Eggs for this hatchery program are collected from natural spawning sturgeon in the Snake River between Bliss Dam and CJ Strike reservoir. Once collected, the eggs are brought back to the Niagara Springs Sturgeon Hatchery where they are reared for one year.

Prior to release, all sturgeon raised at the hatchery are marked by removing a single scute, or bony plate on their side and a small PIT tag is inserted under the skin. The mark will identify the fish as having a PIT tag which will give biologists, who may handle the fish years later, information about their age, stocking date and size at stocking.

During marking, blood is drawn from each fish that will allow biologists to determine the ploidy, or sets of chromosomes the fish has, which then determines if the fish is capable of reproducing or if the fish is sterile.

Sturgeon with 8 sets of chromosomes are capable of reproducing, which helps ensure the sturgeon hatchery achieves its conservation goal. While sturgeon with 10 or 12 sets of chromosomes can still reproduce, the majority of their offspring will either be sterile or future generations of fish from these adults will be sterile.

After testing, 13 of the 1,613 fish tested had abnormal ploidy levels and were culled. Although this is a very small percentage, it is important to remove these individuals from the population given the long life span of sturgeon and the high survival rates of stocked fish in some of the Snake River reaches.

By only stocking fish with normal ploidy levels we will ensure that if these hatchery fish spawn naturally in the coming years, that their offspring will be viable, meeting the conservation goal of a healthy white sturgeon population in the Snake River.

The majority of the sturgeon will be stocked at one year of age into the Snake River after they have grown to a size of one foot or longer and weigh at least 7 ounces (200 grams).

The Niagara Springs hatchery, located south of Wendell, is a partnership between Idaho Fish and Game and Idaho Power Company. The hatchery, which came online in 2021, is designed to provide additional fishing opportunity to anglers who enjoy fishing for these native fish in the middle sections of the Snake River where natural production is low, and to build sturgeon populations so that additional reaches of the Snake River will have naturally reproducing populations.

For more information contact the Magic Valley Regional Office at 208-324-4359 or visit the Idaho Power Company website idahopower.com/fish.

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In collaboration with Manhattan College's board of trustees, president Brennan O'Donnell, Ph.D. announced that he will begin a long-planned sabbatical in July 2022 ahead of transitioning to the role of president emeritus and professor at the College.

Brother Daniel Gardner, FSC  who currently serves in Academic Affairs in the Center for Graduate School and Fellowship Advisement  will serve as interim president during the search for ODonnells successor.

President ODonnell, Manhattan Colleges 19th president in the Colleges 169-year history, joined the private, Catholic liberal arts college in 2009 and guided it through a critical period of transition and growth as well as the challenges of the COVID-19 environment.

I am proud of my years here and all that our community has accomplished during my 13-year tenure. I have loved my time leading this great institution, but I am also excited to return to the work of teaching, scholarship, and service that first attracted me to higher education, ODonnell said.

William Dooley, the Colleges chair of the board of trustees, said ODonnell initially approached board representatives a year ago to explore his options to complete his current term in June 2022 prior to a sabbatical ahead of transitioning to the faculty. The board chair and the president agreed to postpone the decision while addressing anticipated challenges of the approaching school year.

We appreciate Dr. ODonnell accommodating our request that he delay his decision and continue to serve fully invested as President as we navigated the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, completed the colleges once-a-decade Middle States self-report process and identified an ideal standout candidate to serve as Interim President ahead of launching a national search for a permanent successor, Dooley said.

This was not an easy decision, but after much reflection and prayer, I knew that the time was right, said ODonnell. The future is bright for Manhattan College, and I am confident that the College will be in good hands with Brother Daniel guiding the ship while the search for a new president moves forward.

We celebrate Brennans many achievements during his 13-year tenure. In that time, Manhattan has consistently ranked high in academic-quality surveys such as US News and the Princeton Review, while distinguishing itself especially as a top college for return on investment and for supporting military veterans. He has spearheaded the building and opening of both the Raymond W. Kelly 63 Student Commons in 2014 and the Patricia and Cornelius J. Higgins 62 Engineering and Science Center in 2021, Dooley said.

On his watch the College developed many new academic and student-support programs, including the reestablishment of the MBA program in the OMalley School of Business, the Arches first-year living-and-learning community, and the Career Pathways program, which integrates academic support, advising, and career development programs. He provided leadership for the Invest in the Vision Capital Campaign, which has surpassed its $165 million goal years ahead of schedule. During his time as president, the Colleges endowment grew from $40.4 million in 2009 to $148.2 million in 2021, Dooley said.

In announcing the appointment of Gardner as interim president, Dooley pointed to his commitment to the Christian Brothers tradition of carrying out Saint John Baptist de La Salle's mission of uplifting lives through education and his dedication to living out the Lasallian core principles and values as primary factors influencing Brother Dans decision to step up in this interim period.

We are deeply grateful that we have two leaders as committed to the Manhattan College community as Dr. ODonnell and Brother Dan Gardner. Their dedication to the college, its staff, students, and faculty cannot be overstated, Dooley said.
A Richmond woman has died and a Max Meadows man sustained life threatening injuries Wednesday evening in a crash in Henry County.

The Virginia State Police are investigating a single vehicle wreck involving a 2006 Harley-Davidson motorcycle that claimed the life of Melinda Dawn Kingsley, 42, who was a passenger on the bike at the time of the crash, a release stated.

Dillard Ray Scott Fleming, 36, was operating the motorcycle and both he and Kingsley were wearing helmets at the time, the release said.

The crash occurred just off of Commonwealth Boulevard, east of its intersection with Memorial Boulevard, at approximately 7:10 p.m. when the motorcycle ran off the right side of the roadway and struck a guy wire attached to a utility pole throwing the two from the motorcycle, the release stated.

Kingsley died at the scene and Fleming was flown by helicopter to Carilion Roanoke Memorial Hospital where he is being treated for his injuries.

The release did not specify what those injuries were.

Police say they are unsure what caused Fleming to run off the road while heading westbound on Commonwealth Boulevard, but when he did the motorcycle struck the guy wire and then rolled down an embankment before slamming into the side of a parked car in the Roses Discount Store parking lot.

The motorcycle careened off of the passenger side of the car and then struck the side of the Roses building before coming to rest on its side.

There did not appear to be anyone inside the parked car at the time of the crash, but the impact caused significant damage to the car.

The Collinsville Volunteer Fire Department, Fieldale-Collinsville Rescue Squad and Henry County Public Safety responded to the scene and the Virginia State Police investigated.

The crash occurred in Henry County about 500 feet beyond the city limits of Martinsville.

Bill Wyatt is a reporter for the Martinsville Bulletin. He can be reached at 276-638-8801, Ext. 2360. Follow him @billdwyatt.

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After a hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic, members of the Rotary Club of Marion returned to local schools to participate in Read Across America 2022.

For years now, Rotarians with the Marion club have participated in Read Across America, which is an annual reading motivation and awareness program sponsored by the National Education Association (NEA). It calls for every child in every community to celebrate reading on or near the birthday of beloved childrens author Dr. Seuss. The author of The Cat in the Hat, How the Grinch Stole Christmas and Green Eggs and Ham, Theodor Seuss Geisel was born on March 2.

To celebrate Read Across America, Marions Rotarians volunteer by visiting elementary schools in McDowell County where they read Dr. Seuss books to the students. Rotarian Elizabeth House, who is retired from the McDowell County Public Library, coordinates the Rotary Clubs participation in this event.

Last year, Read Across America had to be held virtually in McDowell County because of the COVID pandemic. Rotarians with the Marion Club were still able to volunteer by video recording themselves reading a Dr. Seuss book and these recordings were sent to the schools.

But now with COVID vaccinations and the loosening of restrictions, several Rotarians were able to go back to the schools and read the books to the children in person.

On Wednesday, Rotarians Steve Bush and Bill Warren visited West Marion Elementary where they read Dr. Seuss books to the young students. Likewise, Rotarians Bob Hunter and Steve Hunter went to Glenwood Elementary where they read to the students. Rotarians Joe Tisdale and Ron Brauer traveled to Nebo Elementary and read to the students. Rotarians Onee Pressley and Courtney Intres went to Marion Elementary where they read Dr. Seuss to the kids.

Some Rotarians chose to make a video recording of themselves reading Dr. Seuss and these were sent to the schools like it was done last year. They were Club President Brandi Behlke, Steve Pierce, Mike Conley and Chip Cross.

By doing this, the Marion club embodies Rotary Internationals motto of Service Above Self. They are living out the saying: Youre never too old, too wacky, too wild to pick up a book and read to a child.
The new Dominos in Marion is now ready to serve the local community.

The new store opened for business on Monday, Feb. 28, at 909 N. Main St., according to a news release.

For many years, Moondoggys was located there and it was a popular restaurant in Marion. After it closed, Advantage Powersports took over that building and sold ATVs, go-karts, scooters or mopeds and dirt bikes. But in recent months, the site has been totally renovated to make way for the new Dominos.

We were advised years ago by Marion native Dr. Gene A. Holland, the father of our vice president of marketing (Ryan Swanson), that we should open a location in Marion, said Mack Patterson, Marion Dominos franchise owner. After years of searching, we feel our new location will service Marion residents well. We are dedicated to the Marion area and are excited to get to know the residents. We hope the community will give us a try as we are eager to offer our delicious products, exceptional service and innovative ordering technology.

Dominos offers contactless delivery and carryout, as well as Dominos Carside Delivery to those who prefer it. Dominos Carside Delivery gives customers the option of staying in their vehicle while a team member delivers their order to them, making for a convenient, contactless carryout option. The store also features a drive-thru window for carryout customers to pick up their orders and indoor and outdoor seating available, according to the news release.

Dominos in Marion is also looking to hire delivery drivers, customer service representatives and assistant managers.

We know that people are looking to get back into the workforce  and Dominos has a lot of great jobs to offer that often turn into careers, said Patterson. We want to continue serving this area, but we also want to help those who are looking for a great opportunity with a great company. Many people do not know this, but more than 95% of Dominos franchise owners started as delivery drivers or pizza makers. Theres tremendous opportunity to work your way up the ladder. There is also strong tip earning potential for delivery drivers, not to mention flexible shift scheduling  making it easy to balance your life outside of work.

Those who are interested in applying for a job may do so at jobs.dominos.com. To place an order from Dominos in Marion, customers can visit www.dominos.com or call 828-583-0300.

Founded in 1960, Dominos Pizza is the largest pizza company in the world, with a significant business in both delivery and carryout pizza. It ranks among the worlds top public restaurant brands with a global enterprise of more than 18,800 stores in over 90 markets. Dominos had global retail sales of nearly $17.8 billion in 2021, with over $8.6 billion in the U.S. and over $9.1 billion internationally. In the fourth quarter of 2021, Dominos had global retail sales of over $5.5 billion, with over $2.6 billion in the U.S. and nearly $2.9 billion internationally. Its system is comprised of independent franchise owners who accounted for 98% of Dominos stores as of the end of the fourth quarter in 2021. Emphasis on technology innovation helped Dominos achieve more than half of all global retail sales in 2021 from digital channels. In the U.S., Dominos generated more than 75% of U.S. retail sales in 2021 via digital channels and has developed several innovative ordering platforms, including those for Google Home, Facebook Messenger, Apple Watch, Amazon Echo, Twitter and more. In 2019, Dominos announced a partnership with Nuro to further its exploration and testing of autonomous pizza delivery. In mid-2020, Dominos launched a new way to order contactless carryout nationwide  via Dominos Carside Delivery, which customers can choose when placing a prepaid online order, according to the news release.
Two special events are scheduled this weekend to honor the memory of those who have died from both COVID-19 and overdoses.

The Marion East Community Forum will host a candlelight vigil at the Marion Train Depot (45 Depot St.) on Saturday, March 5 from 6 to 9 p.m. This vigil, called Remembering Our Loved Ones (COVID-19), will recognize family members who have been lost over the past two years.

Regardless of how your family member left us, you are welcome to join us to honor and celebrate their life, reads a news release.

Attendees will light a candle in the courtyard of the Marion Depot for the vigil and receive a rose of remembrance. Guest speakers and advocates will be available to give support to community members in regards to grief or loss of loved-ones.

You are encouraged to bring a 4-by-6 inch photo copy of your loved one who passed away during the pandemic. But you should not bring the original photo, according to the news release.

This event is supported by Marion East Community Forum, Old Fort Community Forum, West Marion Community Forum and Centro Unido-Latino Americano.

For more information, visit Marion East Communitys Facebook Page at www.facebook.com/MarionEastCommunityForum and click on the Events tab.

The next day on Sunday, March 6, the Marion East Community Forum and McDowell Mission Ministries will host Black Balloon Day.

It is a day recognizing the tragedy of overdose, with awareness of those lost and the effects of overdoses on the local community. In McDowell County, there have already been three deaths attributed to overdose in 2022, and many people who were having overdoses were saved through the administration of Narcan to overdose patients, according to a news release.

To remember a loved one for Black Balloon Day, contact Debora Workman by emailing dworkman309@gmail.com or call the womens shelter at 828-659-6490. Give her the name of the loved one you would like to recognize. Their name will be put on a black balloon and placed in various locations through McDowell for others to recognize, acknowledge and remember.

For more information, visit Marion East Communitys Facebook Page at: www.facebook.com/MarionEastCommunityForum and click on the Events Tab.

The Marion East Community Forum is a meeting space for neighbors to gather and build relationships, address shared challenges, and empower community members to build a bright future for everyone in the community. Members work together to identify locally driven solutions to issues such as healthy eating and active living, youth and intergenerational engagement. Community members share a vision for the future of Marion East (Clinchfield, East Marion, and Stumptown)  a vision that includes a safe, walkable, and unified neighborhood, celebration of diversity, inclusion, elimination of substance use, living wage jobs, and engaged youth leadership.

The West Marion Community Forum, Inc. is supported by five working groups who focus on the following social determinants of health: housing, transportation, child care services, healthy food options and youth engagement. The purpose of each group is to share, learn, and strategize to address community priorities. The forum meets the fourth Thursday of each month at Addies Chapel United Methodist Church, from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Dinner and child care are provided. Learn more here: https://www.westmarion.org/

The purpose of the Old Fort Community Forum is to build relationships among members of the community, learn about resources to strengthen the community, and support the following priorities: engagement of town leadership, strengthening the local economy, healthy eating and active living, transportation, substance misuse, youth empowerment, and community engagement. Learn more here: https://www.westmarion.org/

Centro Unido Latino-Americano (CULA) is a non-profit organization that offers services, programs, and connections with other agencies to assist the Latinx community in need. Learn more here: www.culawnc.org/

McDowell Mission Ministries offers emergency shelter, housing programs and street outreach to individuals throughout McDowell County. McDowell Mission Ministries addresses issues ranging from domestic violence, homelessness, to addiction. Learn more at mcdowellmissionministries.org/
Twenty-four hours after his inauguration as President of Faso, Lieutenant-Colonel Paul Henri Damiba chose Dr. Albert Ouedraogo to lead the future transitional government.

The new Prime Minister is an economist, a specialist in business development and management, and has solid experience in the management of public administrations, development projects and private companies.

According to his biography published by the National Television, he has conducted several studies on the development of the private sector, on the economic and financial feasibility of creating companies and organizations, on the development of strategic plans as well as missions of organizational audits and development of procedure manuals.

Since 2007, he is the director of IPSO Conseils, a consulting firm specialized in economic studies, organizational audits and human resources audits. Before heading this firm, Dr. Albert Ouedraogo was Director of the Consulting Department of Deloitte Burkina from January 2003 to March 2007.

The new Prime Minister taught in public and private universities from October 1996 to December 2002.

Dr. Albert Ouedraogo was born on April 6, 1969 in Dori, in the Seno province. He is married and has two children.
A well-known Timbuktu radio host and blogger was arrested and detained 24 hours after proclaiming himself president of the country, which has been plugged for years in a serious security and political crisis, in a humorous video.

He announced himself Wednesday evening to have been released on his Facebook account.

I take the firm decision to proclaim myself president of the civil transition as of tomorrow, February 28, said Tandina Elhadj Beytallah in a video posted on Facebook on February 27, in which he appeared before the camera, wearing a scarf in Malian colors.

He solemnly invoked the seriousness of the situation in his country and the lack of vision of our authorities. He waited until the end of this recording of less than two minutes to specify to the authorities of Timbuktu that it is just a comedy.

Dont send the police after me, he concluded with a laugh.

The blogger was inspired by the recent declaration of a little-known personality, Ainea Ibrahim Camara, who has been in the news since the end of February when he declared himself president of the Malian civil transition from abroad.

The authorities, dominated by the colonels who took power by force in August 2020, have taken the matter seriously and opened an investigation against Ainea Ibrahim Camara. They call themselves transitional, awaiting a return to civilian rule at a date still unknown.

The authorities also took seriously the pastiche of Tandina Elhadj Beytallah, arrested on Tuesday.

Tandina Elhadj Beytallah, a radio host who proclaimed himself president of Malis civilian transition, is in our custody for investigation, a Timbuktu gendarmerie official confirmed Wednesday.

Another Timbuktu resident was in turn arrested for saying he was ready to be the Prime Minister of Tandina Elhadj Beytallah in a comment on his video, he added.

Tandina Elhadj Beytallah and his Live on social networks, as soon as an event occurs in Timbuktu, are very followed in Mali.

The DoniBlog community of bloggers was moved by his fate. It argued that he was not the first to make fun of Ainea Ibrahim Camaras statement.

But, she added in a statement, the precision on the parodic character of his video was cut in a version that circulated on the Internet. A manipulation with unknown objectives, she said.

She denounced an arbitrary arrest and demanded his immediate release. A word-diary #freebeytallah had been launched.

In a climate of tension with part of the international community, the junta has been stubbornly insisting on national sovereignty in recent weeks and has multiplied messages on the need to support it.
A high-ranking visit of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), scheduled for Thursday in Ouagadougou, has been cancelled after the adoption of a Charter for the transition in Burkina Faso where the army took power at the end of January, according to a statement from the organization.

This visit of the President of Ghana and current chairman of ECOWAS, Nana Akufo Addo, accompanied by the Head of State of Niger, Mohamed Bazoum, initially scheduled for Thursday, March 3, 2022, has been canceled following the adoption of the Charter of the transition, said the statement.

It does not specify the reasons for the cancellation of this visit, which had not been publicly announced in Burkina Faso, but adds that a ministerial delegation will travel to Ouagadougou in the coming days.

ECOWAS suspended Burkina Faso from its membership after the January 24 coup led by Lieutenant Colonel Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba, who overthrew elected President Roch Marc Christian Kabore, who has been under house arrest since.

In its statement, ECOWAS said it remained very concerned about the continuation of his detention and again demands his immediate release.

Lieutenant Colonel Damiba signed on Tuesday a Transitional Charter providing for a period of three years before elections for a return to constitutional order, which ECOWAS had hoped would take place within a reasonable period.
Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain

Results from a new study published today in Child Development provide the first longitudinal evidence about the trajectories of sensory reactivity patterns during early childhood among a large community sample with diverse developmental outcomes.

Many autistic children have particular preferences for specific sensory stimuli, like focused interest on the flicker of fluorescent lights, pronounced discomfort from a scratchy T-shirt tag or deep cravings for bear hugs, for example. And yet, while every child with autism has a unique sensory pattern, there is little research, either at the individual or population levels, documenting how those patterns shift throughout the stages of early childhood.

In 2013, a team of researchers from the University of Southern California and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill began following a cohort of more than 1,500 children, measuring their sensory patterns as the children grew from infancy to school age. Now, the researchers have generated insights into the associations between those sensory changes and various child and family characteristics, including the eventual emergence of autistic symptoms or an autism diagnosis once the children were six or seven years old.

"It's a prospective study, which means we followed each child over six years to track their individual development," said Yun-Ju (Claire) Chen Ph.D. '21, the lead author of the Child Development article. "At the beginning, we didn't know which children would develop autism. So it's incredibly interesting to see that, once they were school age at the end of the study, autistic children's sensory patterns followed very different trajectories, compared to children with neurotypical outcomes or those with other developmental conditions."

For infants, sensory issues may be earliest signs of autism

For six years, as part of the North Carolina Child Development Survey project, the researchers followed more than 1,500 children born in North Carolina in 2013. Parents were asked about their child's sensory behaviors during three childhood stages: at infancy (916 months old), at preschool (34 years old) and at school-age (67 years old). Parents were also asked about their child's autistic symptoms, about various developmental concerns and whether or not their child had received any diagnoses.

Data analysis showed that the sensory patterns of autistic children, as well as children with autistic traits (but who had not been diagnosed with ASD), tended to grow stronger over time. In comparison, non-autistic children's sensory patterns, including those with parent-reported sensory issues, were relatively steadier across development. That finding may have significant implications for the ways in which scientists conceptualize, identify and study autism, as well as how therapeutic interventions are designed and delivered, beginning in early infancy, to promote developmental outcomes and provide better supports for families.

"We used to think that social communication differences were the most important behavioral markers for identifying autism in infancy," Chen said. "But we found that sensory differences may emerge earlier than social communication differences in infants who later developed autism, and these early sensory differences may cascade into more definitive features of autism, including social-communication differences, later in life. This means that sensory processing functions may be much more important in early detection than we have previously thought."

Chen is currently a postdoctoral research fellow at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada, where she is working with the MacART McMaster Autism Research Team and the Pathways in ASD Study, one of the world's largest and longest-running longitudinal studies of the development of autistic young children and adolescents who live in Canada. While at the USC Chan Division, she completed her occupational science Ph.D. in the Innovations in Neurodevelopmental Sensory Processing Research laboratoryalso known as the insp!re labled by Associate Dean and Chair Grace Baranek. Chen and Baranek previously worked together at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and after coming to USC in 2016, continued using the North Carolina dataset and collaborating with their UNC colleagues.

Baranek is a co-author of the article, as is Research Professor John Sideris, USC Chan's director of instrument development and psychometric/statistical analysis.

Chen notes how the study's longitudinal design honors the individuality and variability of sensory development, regardless of diagnosis.

"Previous studies have tended to compare sensory patterns across different age ranges by aggregating all their cross-sectional data, which makes it hard to draw conclusions about any one specific participant," Chen said. "But we know that every child has their own trajectory, so our type of data analysis really is a more person-centered approach."

Parental education level tied to more stable childhood sensory patterns

The researchers also discovered that children of parents with higher educational levels tended to show more stable or improving sensory patterns. While cautious not to misinterpret that finding, Chen says it may underscore the impact of early interventions upon children's long-term sensory behaviors.

"My guess is that kids with more highly educated parents may have more access to resources, so that once they are identified with sensory challenges, they are more likely to get timely help from professionals," Chen says. "Of course, we need to do more to decrease disparity for those with lower education levels. But I think this is a promising result because, in comparison to other variables that cannot be changed, early detection and intervention are variables that we can do something about, and that can make a really big difference in children's and families' lives."

The research team is next studying how the launch of a new screening tool can improve the early identification of autism across diverse populations, including Spanish-speaking families primarily of Hispanic/Latino/a ethnicity living in the Los Angeles area.

"The earlier we identify infants at elevated likelihood for autism and begin intervention, the greater the potential for every child to grow to their fullest capacity," Baranek said. "That hinges on the work we are doing at the insp!re labmobilizing the most sensitive tools and new findings so that our care systems can provide families and children with access to the best possible individualized supports, and deliver them early, when they matter most."

Explore further New study clarifies sensory processing in autistic children

More information: YunJu Chen et al, Developmental trajectories of sensory patterns from infancy to school age in a community sample and associations with autistic traits, Child Development (2022). Journal information: Child Development YunJu Chen et al, Developmental trajectories of sensory patterns from infancy to school age in a community sample and associations with autistic traits,(2022). DOI: 10.1111/cdev.13745
Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain

In fall 2020, when college students across the nation returned to their campuses after the COVID-19 pandemic shutdown the previous spring, many worried that the influx of people would put the surrounding communities at risk. But new research, conducted in Centre County, Pa., home to the Penn State University Park campus, and in the surrounding communities, reveals that despite a rise in cases among returning students, the use of behavioral interventions protected the local non-student population from experiencing a similar spike in cases.

"Our research challenges a lot of the assumptions that were made about the COVID-19 risks to non-students in college communities following a return of college students to campuses," said Nita Bharti, Huck Early Career Professor and assistant professor of biology, Penn State. "Ultimately, Penn State's return to campus operations did not cause excess COVID-19 cases per capita in non-student residents around the university."

In fact, she added, non-student residents of Centre County experienced fewer COVID-19 cases per capita than neighboring counties, likely due to the community's self-imposed stay-at-home behaviors.

Bharti explained that about 30,000 students returned to campus in fall 2020, down from about 40,000 in the year prior to the pandemic. Penn State provided COVID-19 testing for these students from August 7, 2020, onward and reported anonymized cases in a public dashboard. The researchers compared these data to publicly available, county-level COVID-19 cases from the Pennsylvania Department of Health for Centre County, as well as the six adjacent counties.

In addition, the researchers compared movement and activity patterns derived from mobile devices within Centre County to the neighboring counties. Specifically, they used SafeGraph's mobile device-derived daily visit counts to certain points of interest, such as businesses or attractions, within the counties to obtain an estimate of mobility outside the home.

The results were published on Feb. 28 in Scientific Reports.

According to Bharti, in Centre County, COVID-19 cases increased in the student population soon after students returned to campus in August 2020.

"This increase among students was not surprising given the challenges students faced with distancing and quarantining," she said.

Interestingly, she added, the outbreak among students did not result in an outbreak in the local community above what would be expected, given that the pandemic was rapidly spreading throughout the U.S. at the time. By contrast, the neighboring communities experienced higher case counts, even though they do not contain large universities.

Bharti said the lower case counts in Centre County were likely due to the fact that non-student residents restricted their movements to a greater extent than residents of the surrounding communities.

"Self-imposed stay-at-home behaviors among Centre County residents may have limited transmission between students and non-student residents of Centre County and slowed transmission among non-student residents," said Bharti. "Students, on the other hand, had a higher rate of cases per capita because they weren't able to distance and quarantine as effectively as non-students. Our findings are important because they clearly show that applying the same restrictions and guidelines to different populations will not be equally effective."

Other Penn State authors on the paper include Brian Lambert, programmer/analyst, Center for Infectious Disease Dynamics; Cara Exten, assistant professor of nursing; Christina Faust, postdoctoral scholar in biology; Matthew Ferrari, Huck Career Development Professor, and director, Center for Infectious Disease Dynamics; and Anthony Robinson, associate professor of geography.

Explore further Traffic and mobile phone data predict COVID case counts in rural Pennsylvania

More information: Nita Bharti et al, Large university with high COVID-19 incidence is not associated with excess cases in non-student population, Scientific Reports (2022). Journal information: Scientific Reports Nita Bharti et al, Large university with high COVID-19 incidence is not associated with excess cases in non-student population,(2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41598-022-07155-x
Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain

Researchers from the School of Biomedical Engineering & Imaging Sciences and the Glioma MR Imaging 2.0 (GliMR) initiative, have released a two-part position statement summarizing evidence for use of advanced MRI techniques as brain cancer monitoring biomarkers in the clinic, highlighting the latest bench-to-bedside developments. They also discuss emerging topics and indicate the evidence gaps, strengths and limitations. The statement is a result of a joint effort of researchers from eight European countries and the US.

Published in Frontiers in Oncology, the first publication contains imaging relating to brain cancer blood flow as well as structure on a microscopic scale. The second publication contains imaging techniques related to tissue chemical composition as well as the processing of multiple images resulting from different techniques.

The lead on the position statement, Dr Thomas Booth who is a Senior Lecturer in Neuroimaging at the School of Biomedical Engineering & Imaging Sciences and Consultant Diagnostic and Interventional Neuroradiologist at King's College Hospital, said the researchers sought to make a position statement regarding advanced magnetic resonance imaging in brain cancer that is of sufficient rigor to be the "go-to" reference that remains relevant for the next decade.

"In our position statement, we summarize the current readiness highlighting how the individual techniques are ready or not in terms of technical development and also whether they are ready or not for the clinic."

Dr Booth said standard MRI is typically used to monitor brain cancer in the clinic. However, the images are not specific which means that the same MRI appearances could show either the presence of growing tumor or that the tumor has been treated effectively.

"Standard magnetic resonance imaging is not fit for purpose. We cannot tell if someone is responding to treatment or not. That has motivated the proliferation of research into advanced magnetic resonance imaging."

In the first publication, the researchers show that considerable progress has been made in the development of monitoring biomarkers of blood flow and structure.

Many techniques are still in their infancy such as advanced microstructure imaging techniques, whereas others have generated a larger body of evidence for clinical application like dynamic susceptibilty-weighted MRI, a blood flow imaging technique.

The analysis also highlighted the need for optimal acquisition protocols and mode of processing analysis. Also, the parameter of highest diagnostic value and optimal cut-off points were highlighted as needing to be established.

In the second publication, the researchers summarize advanced MRI techniques that assess chemical composition of tumor tissue and show that these techniques hold huge promise in treatment response assessment.

The researchers' clinical readiness analysis highlights that most monitoring biomarkers require standardized international consensus guidelines, with more facilitation regarding technique implementation as well as steps to enable seamless reporting in the clinic.

Two comprehensive position statement publications were required to pool the expertise of established, as well as up and coming, leading researchers across Europe and North America. As magnetic resonance imaging works so well in the brain (compared to many other parts of the body), these advanced imaging techniques are typically first finessed in the brain which means there are plenty of state-of-the-art advanced imaging techniques to describe.

Some of the emerging techniques include multi-echo perfusion sequences which make less corrections after imaging necessary. Fractional tumor burden dynamic susceptibilty-weighted MRI maps may translate to the clinic and give a more nuanced interpretation of how tumors respond to treatment. Blood flow measurements such as dynamic contrast-enhanced MRI or arterial spin labeling benefit from higher MRI field strengths via increased signal-to-noise ratios. Moreover, arterial spin labeling allows for blood flow measurements without an injection of contrast agent, which has great potential for clinical use.

Longitudinal methods to determine treatment response, i.e. digitally comparing a new image to an old image, are becoming more established in simple microstructure imaging techniques. More advanced microstructure imaging techniques aim to simultaneously incorporate flow in blood vessels or reflect actual tissue compartments, such as the extra-axonal or extracellular space, intra-cellular, or intra-axonal space, and fluid, such as oedema or cerebrospinal fluid.

Spectroscopic techniques at ultra-high field strength are now better equipped to measure metabolites such as glycine and glutamine. Nuclei other than protons also show promise in spectroscopy or imaging such as phosphorus, deuterium, carbon and sodium. Labile protons on endogenous proteins can be selectively targeted with chemical exchange saturation transfer imaging which is in a state of rapid development.

Multi-modality techniques where different advanced MRI biomarkers are combined with each other or with radionuclides are also promising for determining response to treatment. Other ways of using MRI data once it has been acquired relates to machine learning techniques of augmentation, transfer learning, and techniques to "learn with few examples". Additionally, federated learning, aka bringing the code to the data, instead of the data to the code, may be a more practical way to help with the problem of having a relatively low incidence of glioma and having few useful datasets.

Dr Booth said the next steps for the research will be for clinicians, engineers, and physicists with expertise in this field to convene through the European Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST) Glioma MR Imaging 2.0 initiative, a pan-European and multidisciplinary network to better inform and enhance development and application of advanced MR imaging.

Explore further Improved ultrasound techniques for cancer diagnostics

More information: Otto M. Henriksen et al, High-Grade Glioma Treatment Response Monitoring Biomarkers: A Position Statement on the Evidence Supporting the Use of Advanced MRI Techniques in the Clinic, and the Latest Bench-to-Bedside Developments. Part 1: Perfusion and Diffusion Techniques, Frontiers in Oncology (2022). Otto M. Henriksen et al, High-Grade Glioma Treatment Response Monitoring Biomarkers: A Position Statement on the Evidence Supporting the Use of Advanced MRI Techniques in the Clinic, and the Latest Bench-to-Bedside Developments. Part 1: Perfusion and Diffusion Techniques,(2022). DOI: 10.3389/fonc.2022.810263
Are you managing a chronic health problem, be it obesity or diabetes or heart disease or asthma?

There's likely an app for that.

Health apps are becoming more and more sophisticated, offering smartphone users help in dealing with chronic ailments, said Dr. David Bates, chief of internal medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, and an internationally renowned expert in patient safety and health care technology.

"It varies quite a lot by app, but some of the apps have been demonstrated to result in benefits," Bates said during a HealthDay Now interview. "Some of the weight loss apps really do help people lose weight. Similarly, some of the diabetes apps can help you control your [blood] sugar more effectively."

Unfortunately, it can be hard to figure out which app is best, given the baffling assortment available to the average person.

In 2020 alone, more than 90,000 new health apps became available on the Apple and Google app stores.

"There are actually several hundred thousand on the marketplace, which is just bewildering as a patient," Bates said. That means many folks with chronic illnesses aren't taking advantage of these new tools, according to a recent HealthDay/Harris Poll survey.

About 61% of people living with a chronic condition said they use some sort of health app, but only 14% said they are using an app specifically geared towards managing or tracking their specific health problem, the survey found.

One-third of people with a chronic illness said they don't bother with an app because they don't feel the need to constantly track their health, the poll results showed. And a quarter of people with chronic conditions said they're concerned about the privacy and security of medical information they share with the app. About 17% said they just can't afford health apps, and 14% said they find them too complicated.

Bates' own research into health app usage uncovered similar trends.

"There's reasonably widespread use among a variety of age groups, but they're particularly popular among people who are young and tech savvy," Bates told HealthDay Now. Here's the full interview below:

Bates pointed to one recent study among people with either language barriers or little education. It found that "everybody wanted to be able to use the apps, but many people struggled with doing even simple tasks, like as a diabetic entering your blood sugar [numbers]," he said.

Privacy concerns also figure into people's resistance to health apps.

"The privacy issues are a real concern, and the apps are not doing as good a job as they might in terms of protecting our privacy," Bates said. "That's something we need to continue to focus on. Much of this kind of data is not that private, but some of it is."

People in the market for a health app should know that online ratings in the app stores "aren't necessarily a really good predictor of how good the app is going to be for you," Bates said.

Bates and his colleagues have suggested that an independent third party start rating health apps, so people will be able to find quality products that suit their needs.

"We need to do something to limit the amount of choice, because when you have that many options people often just can't choose. It's too hard," Bates said.

Limiting the number somewhat would be really helpful, he suggested. "For example, in England they have about 60 apps that are endorsed nationally and promoted. There's a lot of competition to get into that group, but that makes it much easier to pick which ones might be relevant for you," he explained.

With the advent of telemedicine, apps are becoming even more important, Bates added.

Patients often have to take their own vital signs and track their own health data, so they can report their findings to their doctor during a telemedicine visit.

"Typically, there's a lot more responsibility placed on the patient to manage things themselves, and an app can help you a lot," Bates said. "It can help you watch some of the various things you should be watching, like your daily blood sugar levels or your weekly exercise sessions."

Eventually, Bates believes that health professionals will start "actually prescribing apps. You'll go to your doctor and they'll recommend that you use an app. Things will be set up so that the data can come back to them, and they can see how you're doing. If you're doing well, they'll congratulate you, and if you're struggling a bit they can help you out."

But for now, he warns that there are drawbacks to some apps out there. In particular, Bates is concerned that apps aren't great at notifying people of life-threatening conditions.

"For many apps you can say your blood sugar is 10, which is life-threateningly low, and the app won't necessarily tell you that you need to do something urgently," he said. "I'd like to see the apps do a better job around warning you if there is a serious situation."

More information: The National Council on Aging has more about The National Council on Aging has more about managing chronic conditions

 2022 HealthDay. All rights reserved.
Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

When people set personal fitness goals and establish their physical exercise routines, there's a group of cuddly individuals that is often left outinfants.

Historically, infant active movement has been perceived as a personality characteristic. It's assumed that infants are plenty active on their own, without needing adult intervention to encourage movement.

However, research is revealing that the choices, behaviors and everyday habits of adults have a big influence on how much infants move.

I'm a physical activity teacher and researcher. For the past five years I've conducted several studies exploring infant movement, seeking to identify what supports the development of lifelong physical activity habits.

I've learned that many parents and other caregivers want to encourage infants to actively play and move. However, they often don't know for sure how much physical activity an infant needs, nor do they often recognize how their own behaviors might be limiting an infant's physical activity. Fortunately, there are several easyand funways to add more physical activity to an infant's daily life.

Why infants need movementand how much

Study of infant movement is a relatively new field, so there is still a lot to learn. However, one of the field's foundational studies was published in 1972, and it found that increased infant physical activity can improve motor development. More recent research shows that increased infant movement can improve bone health and personal-social developmentskills related to improving their independence or interacting with others, such as feeding themselves or waving goodbye.

The World Health Organization suggests that infants should be physically active several times a day, especially through interactive floor-based play. Similarly, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends opportunities for interactive play throughout the day, along with at least 30 minutes of "tummy time" with an adultwhich I'll talk more about below.

Yet half the parents participating in our research reported that they hadn't heard of these recommendations and did desire more specific guidelines on encouraging active play.

What are the barriers?

While research is ongoing, I and other researchers have identified three major barriers to infant active movement: screen time, restrictive devices and "gendered play"gender-related stereotypes, beliefs and practices in relation to how children play.

The American Academy of Pediatrics and other organizations discourage allowing infants any screen time other than video chatting. However, a recent review found that children ages 0 to 2 years may be getting between 36 and 330 minutes of screen time per day. A 2019 analysis of data gathered between 2008 and 2010 found that children's screen time increased from 53 minutes a day at age 1 to more than 150 minutes per day by age 3, which suggests that screen time habits begin taking shape at very early ages.

Furthermore, the World Health Organization suggests that infants should spend no more than one hour at a time in a restrictive device. Yet many adults overuse car seats, strollers, high chairs or other "containers" that constrain movement. For instance, in a 2018 study of child care centers in the U.S., Canada and Australia, only 38% to 41% of the facilities followed this WHO guideline.

Research into adult physical activity consistently shows that males are more active than females, regardless of age. Our research suggests this gap may begin during infancy and be related to gendered play.

In our 2020 study exploring infant motor development in relation to parents' promotion of play, we found that parents of male infants more often encouraged play that promoted gross motor skills: movement involving the large muscles that support activities like walking, running or kicking. Parents of female infants more often made statements that promoted fine motor skills, which involve smaller movements of the hands and arms and support activities like reaching and grasping. We found that females had significantly higher fine motor skills than male.

We've documented additional barriers as well, including time spent eating, tending to the infant's sleeping schedule or other care needs; a need to baby-proof surroundings; or weather and other environmental concerns.

How to support infant movement

Fortunately there are many ways to break down these barriersand none requires buying expensive baby gear.

To help motivate us, my family is taking the 1,000 Hours Outside challenge, a project encouraging both kids and adults to spend at least as much time outdoors as we do staring at screens.

Finally, it need not be up to parents alone. Research has linked social support by siblings and peers, child care providers and teachers with increased physical activity in children.

Trust me: As both a physical activity researcher and a working mother of three, including an 11-month-old just learning to walk, I can attest that when adults and older children play with my baby, it gives me an opportunity to accomplish something on my to-do list, and provides my infant with more opportunities to enjoy moving.

Explore further Baby up at night? Inactivity may be a culprit

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
An Assyrian Genocide, a Russian Revolution, an Indian Grandfather

Bottom left to right: Susember's daughter Norah and Susember Rasho on their way to visit Susember's sister, Rapka, in Donetsk, Ukraine. ( Shabnam Samuels) I was born and raised in the early 1960s in the sleepy delta town of Cuttack in Odisha (formerly Orissa) between a confluence of three rivers. Not many had heard of our town, let alone the rivers Mahanadi, Kuakhai or Kathojori. I remember returning from boarding school on the train and being asked, "Where is Orissa?"

The world might not have known who we were, but we knew the world! The world and its wars were an integral part of our Indian household because of my grandmother, who was European and had lost her family to genocide.

The Sayfo or Seyfo, also known as the Assyrian Genocide, began in 1914. It was the mass slaughter and deportation of Syriac Christians in Persia's Azerbaijan province, committed by the Ottomans and the Kurds. Born in Urmia, in the West Azerbaijan Province of what is now Iran, my grandmother was nine or ten years old when the genocide started.

Fleeing to safety, they found themselves in Tbilisi, Russia. A family already fragmented, they suffered yet more losses when their mother died giving birth to their brother. The baby also died. The family, persisted, now with just the father, two daughters, and a son. My grandmother, Susember "Susan" Rasho, was the middle child.

Tbilisi is where they might have stayed on if not for the 1917 Russian Revolution. With no further protection from the Soviet Soldiers, who were now embroiled in their own revolution, my grandmother and her family were once again targets of persecution. World War I had also begun in 1914, and the world was raging with turmoil in every direction. Once again, with no homeland and no place to call their own, my grandmother, and what was left of her family, began their trek out of Russia.

The British were at the front and center of the war. Red Cross Camps had been set up in and around Baghdad. The British were gathering up people who were left without homes and persecuted because of their religion, and helping them make their way to the camps and to safety. The Rashos, along with thousands of other Assyrians, started preparing for their journey.

I still remember my grandmother's stories, her lips quivering as she spoke of the snow, heat, horses, hunger, thirst and deaths along this mountainous route. A hundred-and-five years ago, there were no roads -- no easy way to travel. She never knew how long it took them to reach the camps outside Baghdad. "It could have been months," she used to say.

Left to right: Rapka and Susember reunite in Donetsk, Ukraine, 1980. ( Shabnam Samuel) While they still lived in Tbilisi, her older sister, Rapka, who was fourteen and of marriageable age, was sent to Donetsk in Ukraine. Friends there were tasked with finding a groom for her.

The decision to leave Tbilisi for safer grounds was sudden, and the family had no time to wait for Rapka to come back from Donetsk. That was the last time the two sisters saw each other until 1980.

Father, daughter, and son began their arduous trek out of Russia to Baghdad. Tragedy struck once again when their father was shot from behind and killed. My teenaged grandmother was now the sole guardian of her eleven-year-old brother Nicholas.

On the other side of the world, a young Indian soldier of the British army, Edward Benjamin Samuel (my grandfather), was also heading to Baghdad to fight for the British.

My grandmother and her brother found refuge in a camp which housed Assyrian and Armenian refugees. A year into their stay at the camp, Nicolas disappeared.

As part of the YMCA, my grandfather was assigned to to conduct prayer meeting at the camps. There, he met my grandmother. At the time she spoke only Aramaic and perhaps some broken English. My grandfather spoke Oriya, Bengali, Hindi and English. The two fell in love over sign language and married at the Red Cross Camp in 1922. She headed to India with her new husband a few months later, not knowing once again where she was going, not knowing the language, just going, because she had no options. As a romantic, I hope it was because she loved my grandfather!

Susember Rasho and Edward Benjamin Samuel on their wedding day, March 10, 1922, in Baghdad, Iraq. ( Shabnam Samuel)

Eventually, my grandmother would learn to speak Oriya, Bengali, Hindi and English. Sadly, though, as she gained skill in these languages, she started to forget Aramaic. We think that this could be in response to her multiple traumas; in order to survive, she had learned to disassociate from everything Assyrian.

In 1978-'79, an aunt who lived in Germany (my grandparents had seven kids together), with the help of the Red Cross, tracked down both of my grandmother's surviving siblings.

Rapka was still living in Donetsk, Ukraine, and now had thirteen kids, and Nicholas was married and settled in Baghdad, Iraq.

I was raised by my grandparents, and I will never forget my grandmother's emotion when she found out that her siblings were alive, and that she was headed to Donetsk to meet Rapka. In 1980, my grandmother, along with one of her daughters, flew to Moscow, and then on to Donetsk to meet Rapka. It had been sixty-three years!

Susember and Edward with their granddaughter Shabnam Samuel at the Cuttack Railway Station, 1981. ( Shabnam Samuel)

Her first time on a plane, in her late seventies, my grandmother was headed to a region she had called home for the first decade or so of her life. She was going home to people who looked like her, dressed like her and talked like her. I will never forget her face when she boarded that flight. Sadly, Aramaic was lost to my grandmother, and she was forced, once again, to communicate with a loved one via sign language.

Earlier, in 1977, Nicholas and his wife Azadoui flew to India and had an emotional reunion with my grandmother. Azo knew a smattering of English, and she was able to help the siblings communicate.

I have always wondered why this European woman chose to stay and make a life in a tiny river town in India. My answer came to me when I was writing and researching for this article. Assyria, her homeland, was once an ancient empire, commonly referred to as the Mesopotamian Empire--from the Greek word "Mesopotamos," meaning in the midst of rivers. The three rivers, The Tigris, The Euphrates and the Great Zab! The three rivers in Cuttack must have soothed her, embraced her and I am sure reminded her of the home she was forced to leave behind.

A hundred years have passed since my grandmother and her family were fleeing from war, from destruction, trying to find peace, trying to survive. A hundred years later, it seems like nothing has changed.

Shabnam Samuel, the award-winning author of the memoir, A Fractured Life, heads the Washington, DC based Social Lite House, LLC, which works with the underprivileged. She is also the founder of the Panchgani Writers' Retreat, an international writing retreat based out of Panchgani, India. Shabnam teaches writing via Creative Corporate Workshops. She also hosts a local TV show called Dew Drops and Words that broadcasts to 6.1 million viewers on the WJAL LATV network in the Washington, DC area. To find out more about Shabnam, click here.
Mindfulness meditation can reduce guilt, leading to unintended negative social consequences, a UW study found. Credit: Andrew Haimerl/Unsplash

Mindfulness meditation is a stress-management practice with ancient lineage that cultivates nonjudgmental awareness of the present moment, often by directing attention to the physical sensations of breathing. Initially inspired by centuries-old Buddhist practices consisting of philosophies and meditations together, today a secular version of mindfulnessconsisting of meditations aloneis becoming increasingly popular.

There are phone apps that help generate self-awareness and many big corporations are folding mindfulness training programs into their curriculums. But there may be an unanticipated downside to secular mindfulness meditation practices, according to new research led by the University of Washington's Foster School of Business, and published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

"Meditating can reduce feelings of guilt, thus limiting reactions like generosity that are important to human relationships," said lead author Andrew Hafenbrack, an assistant professor in the Foster School who studies mindfulness.

Researchers wanted to know how mindfulness meditation reduces negative emotions, like anger and guilt.

"Negative emotions may not be pleasant, but they can help us navigate social situations and maintain relationships," Hafenbrack said.

"If someone gets really angry and they yell at their boss, or something, and they get fired or make people feel unsafe, then you know that's a bad thing," Hafenbrack said. "Not all negative emotions are the same in terms of the kinds of behaviors that they queue up, though."

When people feel guilty, it tends to make them focus outward, on other people, which can promote reparative actions.

"Meditating for short periods of time is a tool that can make people feel better, like popping an aspirin when they have a headache," Hafenbrack said. "We have a responsibility as researchers to share not only the many positive effects of meditation, but also the inadvertent side effects, such as the potential for it to occasionally relax one's moral compass."

To better understand meditation practices, the researchers conducted eight experiments with more than 1,400 participants in the U.S. and Portugal. Participants varied for each experimentsome were U.S. adults recruited online, some were graduate students attending a university in Portugal, while another group was mostly undergraduates at the Wharton School of Business.

In their first study, the researchers demonstrated that mindfulness does reduce feelings of guilt. Participants were randomly assigned to either write about a past situation that made them feel guilty or write about their previous day. Then, they listened to either an eight-minute guided mindfulness meditation recording that instructed them to focus on the physical sensations of breathing or an eight-minute control condition recording in which they were instructed to let their minds wander. Participants who listened to the mindfulness recording reported feeling less guilt compared to those in the mind-wandering control group. This was true whether they had written about a guilty situation or their previous day.

The team then ran six other experiments to test whether mindfulness meditation would influence prosocial reparative behaviors, like making up with a friend after doing something that caused harm.

For example, in two experiments all participants were asked to recall and write about a time they wronged someone and felt guilty, before being randomly assigned to meditate or not. After that, they were asked to allocate a hypothetical $100 between a birthday gift for the person they had wronged, a charity for African flood victims, and themselves. Participants who had meditated allocated approximately 17% less to the person they had wronged compared to those who had not meditated.

The psychological process behind these allocation differences was reduced guilt. These and three other, similar experiments established that mindfulness meditation reduces the tendency to make amends for harming others.

"This research serves as a caution to people who might be tempted to use mindfulness meditation to reduce emotions that are unpleasant, but necessary to support moral thoughts and behavior," said co-author Isabelle Solal, an assistant professor at ESSEC Business School in Cergy-Pointoise, France.

While focused breathing meditation is the most popular form of meditation, used in mindfulness programs such as the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction approach and Google's Search Inside Yourself, the study also explored loving kindness meditation, which appears in those programs as well. Loving kindness meditation consists of imagery exercises in which one evokes other people and sends wishes that each is happy, well and free from suffering.

In the final experiment, participants once again wrote about a time they wronged someone and felt guilty, before listening to either a focused breathing mindfulness meditation recording or a loving kindness meditation recording. Participants in the loving kindness group reported higher intentions to contact, apologize to, and make up with people they had harmed compared to participants in the focused breathing meditation group. The difference was explained by participants' increased focus on others and feelings of love.

"Our research suggests that loving kindness meditation may allow people to have the stress-reduction benefits of meditation without the cost of reducing repair, because it increases focus on others and feelings of love," said co-author Matthew LaPalme, who was a research scientist at Yale University and now works at Amazon.

Explore further White people trained in mindfulness were three times more likely to help Black people in staged scenarios

More information: Andrew C. Hafenbrack et al, Mindfulness meditation reduces guilt and prosocial reparation., Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (2021). Journal information: Journal of Personality and Social Psychology Andrew C. Hafenbrack et al, Mindfulness meditation reduces guilt and prosocial reparation.,(2021). DOI: 10.1037/pspa0000298
A quick guide to some upcoming arts and cultural events happening around Missoula in the coming week.

P.E.S.T. releases EP

(Out Friday, March 4)

Members of original-era Missoula punk bands have teamed up for a new EP revisiting the thrash-punk style of the '80s.

P.E.S.T. includes, on bass, Jeff Ament of Pearl Jam, who played in a group called Deranged Diction before departing for Seattle. Dave Parsons of Humpy, Sasshole, the Juveniles and more, handles vocals. On guitar, you have Charlie Beaton, of the Damned, and his VTO bandmate and back-up vocalist Erika Fredrickson. Matt Bainton of Shot Stereo and Voodoo Horseshoes handles the drums.

The EP is out Friday via BandCamp and physical release on 7 vinyl through Ear Candy with appropriately bug-eyed skate-punk artwork.

Emo Night at ZACC

(Friday, March 4)

Dead Hipsters Emo Night takes over the ZACC Show Room. The bleeding-heart menu for evening consists of DJ sets by Dead Hipster Chris Baumann and Noelle Huser of No, and party pictures by Abi Baumman, the longtime Dead Hipster photographer.

Doors open at 7 p.m., the show starts at 7:30 p.m. All ages welcome, $10 cover.

Wood Brothers at the Wilma

(Saturday, March 5)

Chris Wood, of Medeski, Martin and Wood, and his brother, Oliver Wood, and Jano Rix bring the family band and its free-form way with American roots music to the Wilma. Their opener is Katie Pruitt.

Tickets are $29-$36, available at logjampresents.com. Doors open at 7 p.m. and the show starts at 8.

Symphonys Our American Voices

(Saturday-Sunday, March 5-6)

The Missoula Symphony Orchestra will span time periods in surveying the many voices of American composers. Samuel Barber, one of the most popular of all time, is represented by his Violin Concerto No. 1, with guest soloist Yesong Sophie Lee. William Grant Still, a pioneering Black American composer, wrote the Masterworks selection, his Symphony No. 1, also known as the Afro-American Symphony. A contemporary composer, Jessie Montgomery, wrote Strum, a string-oriented piece in which she references folk music.

The concert times are on Saturday, March 5, at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday, March 6, at 3 p.m. They take place in the Dennison Theatre at the University of Montana. A streaming option is available for home viewing. Go to missoulasymphony.org or call 406-721-3194 for tickets. Masks are recommended.

Straight No Chaser

(Tuesday, March 8)

The nine-member a cappella group is finally having its long performance on the University of Montana campus, on the heels of its COVID-era holiday album, Social Christmasing.

The shows at the Dennison Theatre at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $33.50-$53.50 plus fees at griztix.com.

Organ recital spotlights women composers

(Tuesday, March 8)

UM music professor Nancy Cooper has lined out a program in honor of International Womens Day.

The organist will perform unpublished works by German Baroque composer Wilhelmine von Bayreuth and early 20th-century French composer Yvonne Desportes. Youll also hear selections by Black composer Florence Price, and 19th-century British composer Elizabeth Stirling, French composer Cecile Chaminade, and a contemporary work by British composer Cecilia McDowall.

The concert is at 7:30 p.m. in the Music Recital Hall. Tickets are available at Griztix.com under the pick what you pay program.

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As New York City forges ahead with its recovery, the pandemic is leaving lasting imprints, especially on city roadways: less room for cars and more space for people. As the COVID-19 outbreak ravaged New York City two years ago, one of the worlds most congested and bustling metropolises found itself transformed into grids of mostly deserted streets and sidewalks as businesses shuttered and virus-wary denizens shut themselves in. Now the city is drafting new rules that would allow eateries to make outdoor dining permanent, although the policy is being challenged in court. The city is also announcing plans to close off even more streets to vehicles on Sundays so pedestrians have more room to roam in warmer months.
FRIDAY, March 4, 2022 (HealthDay News) -- Your blood type may strongly influence your risk of severe COVID-19, new research suggests.

After screening more than 3,000 blood proteins, scientists linked six with an increased risk of severe COVID-19 and found eight that could help protect against severe disease.

One of the proteins (ABO) linked to severe illness determines blood type, suggesting that blood types (groups) play a major role in whether people develop severe forms of COVID-19, according to the authors of the study published March 3 in the journal PLOS Genetics.

"The enzyme helps determine the blood group of an individual and our study has linked it with both risk of hospitalization and the need of respiratory support or death," said study co-author Christopher Hubel. He is a research associate at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience (IoPPN) at King's College London, in the United Kingdom.

"Our study does not link precise blood group with risk of severe COVID-19, but since previous research has found that [the] proportion of people who are group A is higher in COVID-19-positive individuals, this suggests that blood group A is a more likely candidate for follow-up studies," Hubel noted in a college news release.

The researchers also identified a causal link between three adhesion molecules and a lower risk of hospitalization and need for respiratory support. The three adhesion molecules are involved in the interaction between immune cells and blood vessels, so this new finding supports previous research suggesting that late-stage COVID-19 is also a disease involving the linings of blood vessels.

This is the first study to assess such a large number of blood proteins for their connection to COVID-19, and the findings could lead to new ways to treat and prevent severe illness, the study authors suggested.

Co-author Alish Palmos, a postdoctoral research associate at IoPPN, said the team used a purely genetic approach to establish causal links to development of severe COVID-19.

"Honing in on this group of proteins is a vital first step in discovering potentially valuable targets for development of new treatments," Palmos said.

And co-author Gerome Breen, a professor of psychiatric genetics at IoPPN, added that the study provides a short list for the next stage of research.

"Out of thousands of blood proteins we have whittled it down to about 14 that have some form of causal connection to the risk of severe COVID-19 and present a potentially important avenue for further research to better understand the mechanisms behind COVID-19, with an ultimate aim of developing new treatments but potentially also preventative therapies," Breen said.

More information

For more on risk factors for severe COVID-19, go to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

SOURCE: King's College London, news release, March 3, 2022

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FRIDAY, March 4, 2022 (HealthDay News) -- Crowdfunding helps some U.S. cancer patients pay bills, but it can trigger shame and other negative feelings in some people, a new study finds.

"Young adults are at that point in life where they are beginning to achieve financial independence and finding career employment," said study first author Lauren Ghazal, a postdoctoral nursing student at the University of Michigan, in Ann Arbor. "When a cancer diagnosis hits, it can really impact that young person's financial well-being."

For the study, Ghazal and her team surveyed 46 young adult cancer survivors who turned to crowdfunding to help cover their medical and living expenses during treatment. Crowdfunding involves raising money from family, friends and others.

The average amount raised by study participants was $3,500, and half said they did not meet their goal.

But patients said crowdfunding was "a lifesaver" because they might not have been able to afford treatment or daily expenses without it, according to findings published recently in the Journal of Cancer Survivorship.

At the same time, patients also said they were uneasy and humiliated about having to turn to crowdfunding.

"Asking for help is difficult. It's even harder for a young adult who just got diagnosed with a serious illness. This is not something a young adult cancer patient does lightly. And it's not something that necessarily should be expected  that they immediately have to disclose their whole history on a social media site to pay their bills," Ghazal said in a university news release.

While crowdfunding helps address immediate needs, the authors said it is "the epitome of treating symptoms without attention to their root causes."

Ghazal noted that crowdfunding is an individual solution.

"We need to look at broader interventions to reduce financial toxicity and increase social support for young adult cancer survivors," she said.

While the study focused on young adult cancer survivors, misgivings about crowdfunding could apply to cancer patients in other groups and to people with other serious medical conditions, the study authors noted.

More information

The American Cancer Society offers advice on managing cancer treatment costs.

SOURCE: University of Michigan, news release, March 3, 2022

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FRIDAY, March 4, 2022 (HealthDay News) -- Sleep apnea may be linked with joint pain and fatigue in postmenopausal women, a new study suggests.

"This study highlights an opportunity to increase identification of women with OSA [obstructive sleep apnea], which is underdiagnosed in women who often present with vague symptoms such as insomnia, fatigue and morning headaches. According to these findings, joint pain may be another symptom that should prompt consideration of a diagnosis of OSA in women," said Dr. Stephanie Faubion, medical director of the North American Menopause Society (NAMS).

Sleep apnea is 4.5 times more common in postmenopausal women than in premenopausal women, perhaps due to a decrease in sex hormones after menopause. Postmenopausal women also have higher rates of joint pain, which is also associated with hormone changes.

Previous studies have shown a link between the severity of hot flashes and the risk of sleep apnea in middle-aged women, but the connection between sleep apnea and other common menopause symptoms has been unclear.

This study found a significant association between sleep apnea and joint pain. This may be because joint tissues have estrogen receptors, and estrogen plays a role in the health of tissues such as cartilage, ligaments and muscles, the researchers said in a NAMS news release.

Larger studies are needed to verify the findings, but the results suggest the need for research of sleep-disordered breathing in women with severe joint paint and fatigue to help identify women with sleep apnea, according to the study published online March 2 in Menopause, a NAMS journal.

Preventing and treating sleep apnea in older women is also important because it's a risk factor for high blood pressure and diabetes, which can contribute to heart disease, the leading cause of death worldwide.

More information

There's more on sleep apnea at the U.S. National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.

SOURCE: North American Menopause Society, news release, March 2, 2022

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FRIDAY, March 4, 2022 (HealthDay News) -- A cat in Pennsylvania that turned out to be infected with the Delta variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus is the first known case of the variant occurring in a domestic feline in the United States.

Whole-genome sequencing also revealed that the variant was nearly identical to those circulating in people in the area at the time, according to the University of Pennsylvania team that made the discovery.

The 11-year-old female cat was brought to the university's Ryan Veterinary Hospital in Philadelphia in September with gastrointestinal symptoms. The owner had COVID-19 and had been isolating from the cat for 11 days before it was brought to the hospital. Another member of the household had been looking after the cat.

The researchers obtained a whole genome sequence of the cat's virus and found it was the Delta variant. They did not have a sample of the virus from the owner, but the cat's virus was a close match to those circulating in people in the Philadelphia region at the time.

"When we looked at a random sampling of human sequences from our geographic area, there wasnt anything dramatically different about our cat's sample," said study senior author Dr. Elizabeth Lennon, a veterinarian and assistant professor at UPenn's School of Veterinary Medicine.

"So, our takeaway was that the cat was not infected by a virus that was somehow highly different," she said in a university news release.

The study was published recently in the journal Viruses.

Since the start of the pandemic, the coronavirus has infected a range of wild and domestic animal species, leading to concerns that jumps between species could lead to new mutations and harmful new variants.

"SARS-CoV-2 has a really incredibly wide host range," Lennon said. "What this means to me is that, as SARS-CoV-2 continues to be prevalent in the human population, we need to watch what's happening in other animal species as well."

Lennon noted that the cat's infection was only identified by testing its fecal matter. A nasal swab did not reveal the infection.

"This did highlight the importance of sampling at multiple body sites," Lennon said. "We wouldnt have detected this if we had just done a nasal swab."

More information

For more on COVID-19 and pets, see the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

SOURCE: University of Pennsylvania, news release, March 1, 2022

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Partnership Health Center recently launched a new community care team to provide mobile medicine and other health care services to people experiencing homelessness in Missoula.

The team will reach out to those living in Missoulas authorized camping site, temporary safe outdoor space and the emergency winter shelter on Johnson Street, among other places, according to a news release.

The medical team consists of a registered nurse and a rotating resident physician from the Family Medicine Residency of Western Montana, who visit each site weekly and address any medical needs residents may have. The medical services they provide vary depending on the needs of each individual. When a higher level of care is required, the team connects patients with Partnership Health Center clinics or local hospitals, as appropriate.

Were walking from tent to tent or shelter to shelter and will do everything from wound care to answering questions about COVID-19 to helping folks with medication management, said Abby Berow, registered nurse on the CCT.

In finalized form, the CCT will also consist of two tenancy support specialists, a peer support specialist and an outreach administrator.

Our goal is to build trusting relationships in an authentic and culturally sensitive way, said Miranda Sanderson, tenancy support specialist with the CCT. Building that trust is essential for us to meet our goal of helping people get housed, which in turn serves the ultimate goal of creating health and well-being.

In addition to addressing medical needs, the CCT also focuses on helping people get housed.

Being safely housed is an essential component of creating and sustaining good health, said Anna Nilles, CCT program administrator. Simply put, housing is health care.

Partnership Health executive director Laurie Francis said the community care team reflects a more comprehensive approach to health care championed by community health centers.

While access to health care is critical, it is insufficient to reach high levels of health and well-being, Francis said. Barriers to health and sustainable housing include the intersectional issues of racism, poverty and discrimination of all types.

These factors, Francis added, have much more to do with structural issues in our society than with individual choices.

The CCT works closely with the Poverello Center, St. Patrick Hospital, Western Montana Mental Health Center and Hope Rescue Mission. These groups communicate frequently through Missoulas coordinated entry system, with weekly meetings and other tools to ensure efficient and effective use of resources. Missoula County and the city of Missoula provided American Rescue Plan Act funding to start and sustain the team.

By improving health and access to care, the CCT aims to drive down emergency room visits, incarceration rates, police interactions and the demand for behavioral crises facilities. The team will carefully track these metrics and others to evaluate their impact. Berow said shes already seen progress on this front.

Just the other day we helped someone who was diabetic and hadnt had access to insulin for three months, and last week a patient likely avoided either or foot or leg amputation because they became housed and were able to have their basic needs met, Berow said.

This work matters on so many levels. The cost savings to our community are huge, but on the human level, it can transform lives.

News media can contact Anna Nilles at Nillesa@phc.missoula.mt.us or 406-258-4364 for more information. Laurie Francis can also be reached at francisl@phc.missoula.mt.us or 406-258-3360.

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Sculptures Vandalised By ISIS Return to Ancient Assyrian City of Hatra

The ancient city of Hatra has been on Unesco's World Heritage in Danger list since 2015, when it was occupied by Isis militants. ( Hadani Ditmars) The ancient city of Hatra, one of Iraq's most important historic sites that was ravaged by Isis in 2015 and added to Unesco's World Heritage in Danger list, is going through a reawakening seven years on.

Iraqi dignitaries including the culture minister Hassan Nadhem attended a private ceremony held at the site last week to celebrate the restoration of three severely damaged sculptures. The best-preserved example of a Parthian city founded in the third century BC, Hatra was occupied between 2015 and 2017 by Isis militants who used it as a training camp.

A troupe of dancers performed a traditional folk dance in colourful regalia at the event in Hatra's sanctuary, where Saddam Hussein once had his name inscribed in the ancient bricks, while guests took in the ruins that testify to the city's fusion of Greek, Mesopotamian, Canaanite, Aramean and Arabian religions. Known in Aramaic as "House of God", the temple complex served as a location for the opening scene of the 1973 film The Exorcist.

The destruction that unfolded when Isis used Hatra's edifices and depictions of deities like the sun-god Shamash and the goddess Allat for target practice has now been mitigated by a "first aid" restoration project funded by Aliph, the International alliance for the protection of heritage in conflict areas. Initiated in 2020, it facilitated work by Italy's International Association for Mediterranean and Oriental Studies (ISMEO) in co-operation with the Iraqi State Board of Antiquities and Heritage. The project undertook a survey of the damage to the site and secured damaged sculptural decorations.

According to the lead archaeologist Massimo Vidale, the artefacts revealed at last week's ceremony included "two giant human face-like sculptures, which had been hammered down and smashed into pieces by Isis militants". These were fully restored by his team and returned to their original locations in 2021. Fragments of a third giant mask were collected, stored in security and "will be the subject of another restoration as soon as possible", Vidale says.

Italian and Iraqi restorers have collaborated on a joint restoration project funded by Aliph, the International alliance for the protection of heritage in conflict areas. ( Hadani Ditmars)

The joint efforts of the Italian and Iraqi teams have borne fruit in a relatively short space of time. Milestones include clearing debris from the site--which was damaged not only by Isis but by 12 years of neglect when sanctions bankrupted Iraq--including the detritus of war and three unexploded bombs. Specialists have also conducted a thorough documentation of the 700-hectare site via drone imagery and digital 3D scanning, enabling the virtual reassembly of key pieces.

Further fragments of vandalised sculptures have been recovered and secured, including the large, sculpted heads that once decorated the facade of the temple of Shamash, whose brutal destruction was shared on social media by Isis. The larger pieces fit together perfectly, and the heads were returned to their original positions. Other recovered fragments depict a mermaid-like creature blowing a trumpet. Hopefully, she heralds a new era for the long-suffering site, where foreign tourists are slowly starting to return, and locals still flock for weekend picnics.

One of the recovered fragments depicts a mermaid-like creature blowing a trumpet. ( Hadani Ditmars)

Sheikh Ahmed Abu Harrush, a local dignitary whose father was killed by Isis, tells The Art Newspaper how much the restoration of Hatra means to Iraqi people. "It is the return of the Iraqi soul," he says.
Nearly 150 people attended a protest Thursday at the University of Montana in front of Main Hall to call for the firing or resignation of a business professor who made racist remarks in private communications.

The protest was the latest of many efforts by UM students to have Clayton Looney removed from his position on campus for using racial slurs against Black people and Muslims, as reported by the Daily Montanan.

The university launched a Title IX investigation into the matter, but deemed it a non-workplace issue earlier this fall.

In the private communications, Looney used the "n" word, made jokes about Muslims wearing "towel wraps," and other racist remarks.

Many of the students at Thursdays protest expressed their disappointment with the lack of action by the university.

How much longer do we have to deal with racism, Islamophobia and xenophobia on this campus? asked Ajaysia Hill, who first brought the matter to campus administrators nearly a year ago. When will it be serious to you guys?

I deserve to feel as safe as everybody else standing here, she continued later.

Several campus administrators were in attendance, including President Seth Bodnar. Bodnar was invited by students to speak at the protest, and accepted.

He noted that he didnt intend to speak at the protest, but rather to listen and learn and that when he reads racist comments it makes him very angry and upset.

It hurts me in a way that I can never understand how it hurts you differently, my lived experience is different, but it makes me angry, Bodnar said.

The university is taking steps to address issues of racism on campus and promote inclusion, Bodnar said. For the first time in its history, it is creating a diversity equity inclusion plan.

I want to acknowledge that this focus does start from the top and this is something we care about here, but we also have to learn from it and today for me is about learning more and I want to continue in that process, Bodnar said.

Throughout his remarks, students batted back and expressed that the universitys response has not been adequate.

Put your angriness towards actions, take immediate action, thats all you have to do, said one student in response. Its so simple.

Some attendees displayed signs saying racism doesnt belong on our campus, re-open Title IX investigation and do the right thing.

Eventually, the crowd began a series of chants.

Fire! shouted Mia McKinney, who helped organize the protest.

Looney! shouted the attendees in response.

They also engaged in another chant saying: Hey, hey! Ho, ho! Clayton Looney has got to go!

A group of four Associated Students of the University of Montana senators attended the protest together, but noted that there were not there on behalf of the governing body but rather as individual students.

The issue was first brought to their attention at an ASUM meeting a few weeks ago during public comment, they said. Alyssa Curry, who is white, noted that it was her privilege that brought her to participate in the protest.

"The fact that with my skin color I can feel safe coming here," Curry said. "I think my privilege brought me here so I can be a voice for other people don't have that opportunity."

Cassie Williams shared similar sentiments.

"I feel really constrained by the processes that we work within in ASUM and the university," Williams said. "Sometimes this is what it takes."

Ultimately, Looney is racist and shouldn't be on campus, Williams said.

University spokesman Dave Kuntz said, The racist words used by a university employee are reprehensible. We support students in using their voices to express their concerns.

He explained that as a state agency, the university cannot take action based on Looneys comments that were made in private to a family member. However, the university can and will continue to collaborate with students and employees to eradicate racism on campus.

Hill asserted that it is the universitys responsibility to make sure that students and staff are safe on campus because no one wants to work in a place where their colleagues are using the n word or referring to Muslim people as slurs.

Someone said that they couldnt do anything because its freedom of speech, Hill said. But what happens when your freedom of speech compromises the safety of other people?

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A Whitefish man who falsely claimed to be a former Force Recon Marine and CIA operative to defraud a Montana investor of $2.3 million was sentenced in federal court Thursday.

Matthew Anthony Marshall, 51, pleaded guilty last November to an indictment charging him with wire fraud, money laundering and tax evasion. He was handed a six-year prison sentence to be followed by three years of supervised release, according to a news release from the U.S. Attorney's Office.

U.S. District Judge Donald W. Molloy presided at the sentencing.

Mr. Marshall devised an elaborate scheme layered in lies to defraud the victim, said Special Agent in Charge Dennis Rice of the Salt Lake City FBI.

Like most fraud cases, Mr. Marshalls motive was simply greed. The FBI's Salt Lake City Field Office would like to acknowledge the many special agents across the country, the intelligence community, and witnesses, who worked together to hold this accomplished fraudster and manipulator accountable and seek justice for the victim.

Marshall began working for the victim in the spring of 2013. In a scheme involving lies, fake emails and texts, he convinced the man that he was a former CIA agent and member of an elite Force Reconnaissance unit in the U.S. Marine Corps who had been part of covert missions around the world, according to federal court documents.

Marshall asked the man if he would fund off the books CIA-backed rescue missions, which Marshall said would involve assault teams he would lead in foreign countries. The victim wired Marshall a series of at least six payments, totaling about $2,355,000 between 2013 and 2016, all under the guise of funding five missions.

Marshall also forwarded the victim fake texts from Cofer Black, a former CIA officer and director of the CIA counterterrorism center. Marshall used a phone application called "Burner" to log two numbers with Virginia area codes to make it look like they were associated with Black. He then sent himself fake messages, purportedly from Black. Black has never been associated with either Virginia number Marshall used with the Burner app and does not know Marshall, the release said.

Marshall was never associated with the CIA in any capacity and never served in an elite Force Reconnaissance unit in the Marine Corps. He did however receive an other than honorable discharge from the Marine Corps Reserve in November 1999.

The money Marshall defrauded from the victim was used on personal expenses, loans and gifts to Marshall's friends. He did not use it for any missions. Marshall also failed to report the cash in his 2013 taxes, resulting in tax evasion of $356,756, according to the release.

Marshall promoted a fantasy world filled with fake missions carried out by fictitious operatives for clandestine agencies in faraway lands for phony purposes. It was all fake, but unfortunately it was paid for with real money from a real victim. And the money never went anywhere except to Marshalls personal accounts, U.S. Attorney Leif Johnson said.

The lengths to which Marshall went to carry off this fraud can hardly be overstated. He used a phone application to send fake text messages; he created false emails; he sent the victim prayer beads collected during a fake mission; and he got a tattoo to falsely signify that he was a member of Force Recon.'"

Judge Molloy ordered a total of $3,254,327 restitution, with $2,355,000 to be paid to the victim and $899,327 to be paid to the IRS.

Tax evasion and fraud of this magnitude, and with this degree of dishonesty and deceit, deserves to be punished. I applaud the investigative efforts of our agents and federal law enforcement partners in uncovering this elaborate scheme and bringing Mr. Marshall to justice, said Andy Tsui, IRS Criminal Investigation Special Agent in Charge, Denver Field Office.

Todays sentencing serves as a reminder to others that operating outside of the law and failing to pay taxes on income gained through legal or illegal means has severe consequences.

Assistant U.S. Attorneys Timothy J. Racicot and Ryan G. Weldon and Trial Attorney S. Derek Shugert, National Security Division, U.S. Department of Justice, prosecuted the case, which was investigated by the IRS Criminal Investigation and FBI.

Judge Molloy accepted a plea agreement in the case and dismissed eight other counts. Marshall was allowed to self-surrender to the Bureau of Prisons.

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The Montana State Parks and Recreation Board on Thursday advanced a pair of management proposals and a bump in application fees for the Smith River.

Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks is updating the management plan for Smith River State Park, citing increasing use of the river and a need to mitigate those impacts. The board voted to advance rules that will prohibit overnight camping at the launch site at Camp Baker and require pack-out of human waste in approved containers. The board also voted to increase application fees from $10 to $15, with the increase going to fund a human waste collection system at the Eden Bridge take out.

With Thursdays vote the proposals now go out for public comment from March 4-25 at www.fwp.mt.gov, with a final vote expected at the board's May meeting. Changes go into effect for the 2023 season.

The Smith River is Montanas only river requiring a permit to float. Each year a lottery awards launch permits for the multi-day trip through stunning limestone canyons and camping at designated sites along the bank.

But demand for the river has increased significantly over the last 15 years, from about 5,000 applicants to a record of more than 15,000 in 2021. This year applications were down but remained the second highest on record at a little under 14,000.

Over the same time period the average group size has increased as well. Each float party is limited to 15 people, but the increasing difficulty in drawing a permit has correlated with floaters finding their way onto the river through bigger groups.

In 2011 the average group size was 6.4 people. In the record year of 2021, that surged to 8.7. In terms of raw number of floaters, that equates to a 65% increase from about 4,000 to more than 6,600.

Vice Chair Mary Moe of Great Falls participated in the advisory council that helped push some of the changes. During the process she kept hearing the same phrase: Were loving it to death.

I hope we take care of it because its such a beautiful thing, she said Thursday.

Moe touted the diversity of the board from landowners to outfitters to recreation groups who rolled up their sleeves and quickly came to consensus on the waste management issue. That will replace the long-running latrine system that is unique to permitted rivers in the Lower 48.

I thought it was going to be a lot harder sell than it was, she said of agreement on moving to a pack-it-out policy.

Limiting camping to day-use only at Camp Baker aims to mitigate what had become a challenging situation for managers. The site was not designed for overnight camping and had become increasingly crowded with large floating parties, vehicles and trailers.

Neighboring landowner Ty Wells told the board that after FWP moved to prohibit camping in 2020 due to the pandemic, many of the issues including damaged fences and trespassing quickly waned. He voiced opposition to a carve-out in the rules that would allow camping during hunting season from Sept. 1-Nov. 30, saying he was concerned about campfires causing a wildfire. Staffing the site could alleviate some of those concerns, he indicated.

Former Smith River Park manager Doug Haberman highlighted the controversy that came as the state decided to start limiting floating and said the proposals were on the right track in terms of concentrating on conflict areas. Managing the Smith is really about social science, he said.

Youre managing people, and thats not a bad thing, thats a good thing on the Smith, he said.

The proposals also saw support from Colin Cooney with Trout Unlimited, who also praised the proposal process as a member of the advisory committee.

Some other proposals that came out of the planning process were not recommended by FWP at this time, but could come back to the board in the future. Those could include ways to decrease the number of floaters by incentivizing smaller group sizes in some way, as well as limiting floating during the early muddy season which tends to beat up campsites. Another proposal calls for changes to the permit lottery system to help those who have waited the longest to draw a permit, such as a bonus point system to increase draw odds.

Tom Kuglin is the deputy editor for the Lee Newspapers State Bureau. His coverage focuses on outdoors, recreation and natural resources.

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Roughly two years ago Montana paid nearly $25,000 for an independent review of the state psychiatric hospital's geriatric wing that found staffing there was as low as one third of comparable facilities.

It's a problem that has resurfaced publicly in recent months as the facility in Warm Springs now risks losing its federal funding.

State lawmakers will meet Friday to ferret out potential solutions to correct the dangerous conditions outlined by federal investigators at the Montana State Hospital, some of which were mirrored an independent review of the Spratt Unit in 2020, the facility's geriatric wing.

That report delivered recommendations for improving conditions there, like increasing staff. Despite actions by the state hospital to implement some of these recommendations, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services last month identified four deaths tied to the hospital's failures to keep patients safe, in part because there were not enough staff.

In 2019, then-Gov. Steve Bullock called for an independent review of the Spratt Unit at Montana State Hospital in response to a series published by the Montana Standard in which doctors and advocates raised the alarm about the facility's ability to manage the patients housed there. Released in 2020, the report found "no significant deficiencies in patient care," but recommended a wide range of changes to Spratt's operations, such as hiring more staff and potentially hiring an outside contractor to provide hospice services.

The report also found the staffing situation at Montana State Hospital to be "significantly below" other state psychiatric hospitals used as comparison for the study, echoing the severe staffing crisis raised by employees in recent months. The report compared the ratio of occupational and recreational therapists to 22 other psychiatric hospitals in western states and found the bed-to-staff ratio at Montana State Hospital in 2019 had approximately "only one-third of the average ratio for the other state hospitals."

In the years since the report, the state hospital has augmented staff with traveling nurses who carry out the same tasks at a much more expensive rate. According to the state, the hospital used 29 traveling staff at the facility in 2019, compared to 136 in 2021.

At the heart of many issues in the 2020 report was the reality that the state hospital is forced to provide both skilled nursing care and inpatient psychiatric care because so many patients who would otherwise not be candidates for the facility are committed involuntarily through the courts. The state hospital serves as the "safety net" inpatient psychiatric hospital provider in Montana, the last stop when these patients have nowhere left to go.

"MSH and Spratt unit staff have done an outstanding job of caring for individuals on Spratt, given staffing and resource constraint, and having to adjust practices to care for both populations," the report states.

The report from the Western Interstate Commission on Higher Education  commissioned by the state for $24,656  and its recommendations were released in January 2020. At the time, COVID-19 was rapidly reaching across the globe, and within two months Bullock had ordered a statewide stay-at-home order as the priorities of the world and all its medical institutions ceded to the pandemic. Before long, the Governor's Office had changed hands, along with a new director of the Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services, which operates the state hospital.

Still, DPHHS spokesperson Jon Ebelt said this week the report did not fall through the cracks. The department had implemented as many of those 11 recommendations as possible. Some of those changes are still being considered, while others were implemented immediately, such as developing a process to address barriers between patients and their ability to be discharged to long-term care facilities, like nursing homes.

"This recommendation was immediately acted upon and there has been significant effort during the last two years to not only identify barriers but also act upon such," Ebelt said in an email on Wednesday. "We continue to work at this recommendation."

The recommendation to explore a contract with a local hospice provider would have been a minimal cost to the state hospital if the facility could meet its share of the CMS hospice certification requirements, the report states. Ebelt said the hospital had entered into ongoing negotiations with a hospice provider, but the talks were thwarted by the COVID pandemic.

"The MSH has begun evaluating our local ability to establish a hospice program on-site," Ebelt said Wednesday. "MSH has recruited an external hospice coordinator as a nurse manager and she is currently assigned to Spratt."

The hospital is still evaluating its ability to manage a hospice program versus contracting with a hospice provider and intends to finalize this decision with the next few months, Ebelt said.

Other recommendations have been accomplished at the state hospital in recent months. The first recommendation in the report urged the state hospital to strengthen its psychiatric provider medical record documentation process. The state hospital hired a psychiatrist with a geriatric background in September 2021, Ebelt said.

Some recommendations, Ebelt said, are still in the works, like ensuring patients with dementia receive appropriate pharmacological treatment within current medical best practice.

The hospital's efforts to remain in compliance with federal health rules have been stymied by an exodus of employees, which is largely due to the working conditions and an unresponsive administration, current and former employees have told the Montana State News Bureau. Ebelt this week pointed to pay raises for direct care staff, but did not respond to a question asking if the department had requested funding for additional employees in the 2021 legislative session.

One of the report's recommendations was increasing the number of full-time occupational and recreational therapists. Within a month of the report's publication, the hospital hired one occupational therapist, although that position was vacant as of this week, Ebelt said.

"However, in the meantime, we continue to provide these services with current staff," Ebelt said.

As of Wednesday, 9% of the state hospital positions were vacant. The workforce includes a mix of permanent and traveling staff, Ebelt said.

Another recommendation urged hospital administrators to strengthen active behavioral health treatment for Spratt Unit patients. Ebelt said multiple group sessions were added, along with individual treatment options, and the hospital took steps to increase recreation, rehabilitation and behavioral health activities from five days a week to seven. Asked if current staffing levels allowed for this volume of treatment, Ebelt responded, "Currently, yes."

The Children, Families, Health and Human Services Committee meets at 1 p.m. Friday at the Capitol.

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The phone rang early in the predawn hours of a midwinter morning. The deadpan voice on the line uttered only two words  lariat advance  then click.

I sprang out of bed, hastily donned my uniform and boots, and bolted out the door into the cold, dark night, grabbing my "go" bag on the way.

This was the mid-1980s in Germany. I was a young lieutenant in the Armys 1st Infantry Division. The code phrase meant my platoon of 44 soldiers and four armored vehicles had to be ready to roll out the gate of a base called Panzer Kaserne, fully loaded for war, in less than an hour.

It turned out to be only a drill, a drill that would repeat itself many times in the course of a three-year tour. The specter of a Russian invasion of Europe dominated our lives. We practiced relentlessly, snow or rain or shine, how to stop tank columns in their tracks if they came thundering across the German border. Deterring that threat was our sole reason for existence.

We feared  and trained for  fighting the Russians house to house in the streets of German cities. We feared even more  and trained for  the enemy using nuclear, biological or chemical weapons.

Thank God those fears never became reality.

Those memories of a darker, more pessimistic time  the Cold War  came flooding back this week while reading the accounts of Ukrainian soldiers and civilians fighting Russian president Vladimir Putins invasion of their country.

The Ukrainians are living the nightmare that haunted our waking dreams more than three decades ago.

Some are armed with only rifles, pistols and Molotov cocktails  glass bottles of gasoline, alcohol and perhaps some motor oil, usually lit by a burning cloth wick. Those simple, homemade weapons splatter flaming gas on the outside of a tank, seep into the turrets and other openings, ignite the fuel and ammunition inside, and incinerate the crew.

The luckiest Ukrainians have American-made Javelin portable antitank missiles, which can kill from much farther away. Early reports suggest they have been effective, with burning Russian armored vehicles littering Ukraines streets and roads.

Later in the 1980s, I commanded an anti-armor company in the Oregon Army National Guard. We had Tow II missiles, wire-guided weapons that can destroy a tank at a range of more than 4,000 meters, mounted on humvee all-terrain vehicles. We became experts in every detail of warfare against tanks  their blind spots, where the thinnest armor is, how to disable the tracks and render them sitting ducks, and how to misdirect them so as to expose the back exhaust grills of their engines, the surest spot for a fatal shot up the rear end.

The Ukrainian army likely studied those same tactics. Ukrainian volunteers have had to learn them on the job. It takes a special kind of courage (insanity, really) to get close enough to a tank to take it out with a Molotov cocktail. But getting close is the point  a tank commanders worst nightmare is dismounted infantry running around in his blind spot.

A new Cold War?

The United States military was still at least partially focused on Russia when I left the Army in the mid-1990s, well after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

The theoretical enemy units we practiced against in our war gaming exercises were still modeled on the Soviet order of battle  we just called them Krasnovians or some other moniker instead of "Russians." I learned more than I will ever need to know again about the march speed of a Russian motorized rifle division on the move, and the operational characteristics of a T-80 main battle tank.

We didnt fully pivot away from that until the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, followed by our preemptive wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, demanded our full attention.

Now Putins aggression, and his dreams of resurrecting Russian glory, combined with the rise of China, presage a terrible new world order. The drawdown of our military presence in Europe might have been a bit premature.

Putin cannot back down. The resulting loss of face would mean his downfall. I believe he will bring whatever force to bear that is necessary, even if it means leveling Ukraines cities. Russias Cold War doctrine, modeled on what worked in World War II, was to line up tanks and artillery axle-to-axle along a broad, miles-long front and unleash hell, wreaking destruction on anything in its path.

Putin has been relatively restrained so far, but make no mistake, he will do whatever it takes to win. Just look at what he did in Aleppo (Syria) and Grozny (Chechnya) to envision what he is capable of. They were reduced to ruin. We have already seen signs of this in Russian bombardments of residential areas in Ukraines two biggest cities, Kyiv and Kharkiv.

It's hard to see how this ends well for the Ukrainians, no matter how bravely they fight.

Prepare for pain

People too young to remember the Cold War are going to be very surprised about how fundamentally their lives are going to change from here on.

The possibility of thermonuclear war has again risen its ugly head, with Putin dusting off Russias arsenal, putting his nuclear forces on high alert and threatening retaliation against the West. Those of a certain age remember sheltering under our desks during school drills, hoping that the threat of mutual assured destruction would save us from the unthinkable. The nukes never went away when the Cold War ended. And now, hypersonic technology allows them to travel to their targets faster than ever before.

Sending our sons and daughters off to fight in distant corners of the Earth against overmatched third-world opponents, while we go about our daily lives as if nothing is happening, will no longer be sufficient.

Russia and China are entirely different propositions. Prepare for more economic conflict, more fights over precious natural resources, more proxy wars, and massive military buildups as these nuclear-armed, authoritarian superpowers seek to impose their will on the rest of the world.

Alarmist? Perhaps a little, but the trend lines are clear. Ask the good citizens of Taiwan how safe they feel, with China studying the Wests response to the invasion of Ukraine.

Americans will soon face hard choices, such as absorbing more economic hardship or authorizing war in Europe. Winning the Cold War required shared sacrifices and unity of purpose that are sadly nonexistent today.

Jim Van Nostrand is executive editor of The Missoulian. Reach him at jimvan@missoulian.com

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Thirty-seven-year-old Melissa Trumpy, pictured here in an undated photo, was last seen on Oct. 26, 2021, in Shannon, Illinois.

Friends and loved ones of Melissa Trumpy believe her boyfriend may know what happened to the 37-year-old mother of three, who hasnt been seen in four months.

The problem, they say, is Trumpy's boyfriend, Derek Hammer, is in jail facing charges for guns, drugs and domestic abuse, and since those charges involve Trumpy, they fear he'll never help find her.

He wont ever cooperate, said Benny Affrunti, the father of two of Trumpys children.

Hammer, 35, posted a $2,500 bond last week in Stephenson County, where he was being held on other drug charges.

Related: Sister fears Monticello woman who was last seen in late October is dead

After being released from the Stephenson County Jail, he was immediately transferred to Green County, Wisconsin, to face several offenses, including illegal gun possession, operating a drug house and domestic abuse.

Hammers Green County allegations relate to an incident last September at the Monticello, Wisconsin, home he shared with Trumpy. In that case, Trumpy was charged as a party to the drug offenses and was reportedly cooperating with police as a witness against him.

A judge set Hammers bond at $73,000 cash Thursday; money Trumpys friends say his family could raise to get him out of jail.

Affrunti said he believes it would be a mistake for anyone to post Hammer's bond, adding that the allegations of violence in the September incident and Hammer's prison record give him cause for alarm.

"If he gets out, we will be looking over our shoulders nonstop," Affrunti said.

Daniel Kaiser, Trumpy's friend, agrees. He said Melissa told him days before she disappeared that she was afraid of Hammer.

"She was terrified to go back to her house," Kaiser said.

While it's not clear if Hammer will make bond and get out of jail, he appeared confident that the case against him won't stick, telling the judge during his bond hearing that he's been jailed since Halloween on Mickey Mouse charges that will just be dropped anyway.

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Prison records in Nevada show he was sentenced in 2018 to 35 to 108 months behind bars for battery by strangulation and possession of an explosive device. He was credited with 642 days time served and was granted parole after four months.

Hammer has not been named a person of interest in Trumpy's disappearance.

Search parties have combed wooded areas, swamps, ditches and private property in and around Shannon since she went missing but have come up empty.

Affrunti said those who are still out searching gave up hope weeks ago that Trumpy would be found alive.

Melissa is gone permanently, and my kids will never have their mother back, he said.

Trumpy was last seen with Hammer on Oct. 26, at his mother's home in Shannon.

Anyone with information regarding the whereabouts of Melissa Trumpy is urged to call the Carroll County Sheriff's Office at 815-244-2635. The Freeport Police Department is assisting in the investigation and can be reached at 815-235-8222.

Jim Hagerty: jhagerty@rrstar.com; @jimhagerty

This article originally appeared on Journal Standard: Melissa Trumpy missing: Illinois woman's boyfriend is key, friends say
With each passing day of war, more than 100,000 Ukrainian refugees are added to the tally, streaming into neighboring countries: Moldova, Romania, Slovakia, Hungary, Latvia, and most of all Poland. The United Nations reports that out of the one million who have fled, 500,000 are children.

Another one million are estimated to still be in Ukraine, some hiding in shelters. The question for the families remains: Should they stay or should they go?

One Ukrainian woman who stayed behind with her daughter and granddaughter told CBS News that Ukraine is a democracy, and she worries about her granddaughter's future.

"This is our country, not Russia's. We don't tell Russia how to live. Why should they tell us?" she said. "If our country is destroyed, what can you do? I do not know."

Andrey, a 4-year-old boy, was exhausted after 20 hours of sleepless escape. His father stayed behind in their besieged city of Kharkiv. His mother and his brother remained with Andrey. One Ukrainian woman said that she knows she may never return home.

"We heard explosions over our heads at the train station and all the way on the train," the woman said. "You're aware you may never return home." "Every day begins with a text to our relatives," says 16-year-old Dennis. "We ask, 'are you alive?'" More than 2,000 civilians have been killed, Ukraine officials said. The Biden administration on Thursday offered tens of thousands of Ukrainians living in the U.S. temporary humanitarian protection from deportation.

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Multiple schools in Burke County were removed from the states COVID-19 cluster list this week as the virus continues to wane.

The Burke County COVID-19 dashboard showed 43 new cases in two days for 296 active cases as of Thursday and a total of 25,144 cases, up from 25,101 cases on Tuesday. The county has reported a total of 322 deaths.

UNC Health Blue Ridge reported Wednesday it had 12 COVID-19 patients, all unvaccinated, in its hospital with four of them in the intensive care unit and two of them on ventilators. It also reported 15 patients in its COVID-19 virtual hospital.

The North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services reported 2,377 new cases with a daily percent positive rate of 4.9% and 1,401 people hospitalized on Thursday. It reported 117 new deaths since Tuesday for a total of 22,725 deaths.

The state has been conducting mass COVID-19 testing at the Burke County Health Department. The states last day of testing at the department is Friday.

Testing is taking place under a covered awning in the parking lot of the health department, according to the department.

The testing clinic is from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Appointments are not required, and testing is on a first-come, first-served basis. PCR tests will be the only tests administered and results will be given in two business days,

The health department said it will resume testing on Monday, with hours from 8-11 a.m. and 1-3:30 p.m. Monday through Thursday and 8-11 a.m. and as need in the afternoon on Fridays, the release said.

Appointments are needed and can be made by calling the department at 828-764-9150.

The health department also continues to offer COVID vaccines from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. on Fridays, offering Pfizer, Moderna and J&J. Appointments are needed and can be made by calling 828-764-9150.

Clusters and outbreaks

The Department of Health and Human Services updated its list of outbreaks and clusters on Tuesday. Nine schools in Burke County were removed from the cluster list since last week. Those schools are Drexel, Mull, Forest Hill and Ray Childers elementary schools and Table Rock, East Burke, Liberty and Walter Johnson middle schools, as well as Patton High School.

The clusters and outbreaks remaining in Burke County include:

Heritage Middle School is at a total of 19 positive virus cases, with all of them among students.

Mountain View Elementary School has a total of 16, with 14 students and two staff members infected.

George Hildebran Elementary School has a total of 15 cases, with 14 students and one staff member infected.

Glen Alpine Elementary School has a total of 13 cases, with eight students and five staff members infected.

Salem Elementary School has a total of 12 cases, with 10 students and two staff members infected.

Autumn Care of Drexel remains at a total of 37 virus cases, with 16 residents and 21 staff members infected.

Carolina Rehab Center of Burke remains at a total of 40 virus cases, with 38 residents and two staff members.

College Pines Health and Rehabilitation remains a total of six positive virus cases, all among staff.

Grace Heights Health and Rehabilitation remains at 62 total cases, with 36 residents and 26 staff members infected. The facility has reported two resident deaths from the virus.

Grace Ridge Retirement Community remains at a total of two positive virus cases, all among staff members.

J. Iverson Riddle Development Center remains at a total of 100 positive virus cases, with eight residents and 92 staff members infected.

The Berkeley remains at a total of seven positive virus cases, with four residents and three staff members infected.

For general questions about COVID-19, call the county health department public information line at 828-764-9150 or visit the COVID-19 webpage at burkenc.org/COVID-19.
Lawyers for a man who ran over a Baltimore County police officer and killed her when he was 16 argued to the Maryland Court of Appeals on Thursday he was improperly convicted and sentenced because he was a child at the time of his trial.

Dawnta Harris, now 20, was convicted of felony murder in 2019 and sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole. In 2018, Harris was driving a stolen car with a group of teens who were breaking into houses in Perry Hall when Officer Amy Caprio arrived.

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Standing in front of the car, Caprio told Harris, then a ninth grader, to get out of the car. Instead, Harris ducked his head and hit the gas, running Caprio over.

[ Baltimore teen sentenced to life for murdering Officer Amy Caprio. The punishment is fitting, prosecutor says. ]

Prosecutors charged Harris with felony murder, a legal doctrine used when someone is killed during the commission of a separate felony, and tried him as an adult.

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Harris attorney, Megan Coleman, argued to the Court of Appeals that felony murder should not apply to children who inadvertently kill someone when committing another crime because their brains havent developed enough to understand the ramifications of their actions.

Because he was 16, because he was a minor, he therefore was unable to appreciate the risks and consequences, Coleman said.

Coleman also argued Harris should have been given unique consideration at his sentencing hearing because of his age. The minimum sentence for felony murder is life in prison with the possibility of parole.

David Jaros, the director of the Center for Criminal Justice Reform at the University of Baltimore, said both of Colemans arguments have merit because children lack the same level of decision making adults have.

If children really do evaluate what theyre doing differently, if their brains are physiologically different, then the reasons we may be comfortable for holding someone accountable for committing a murder when they decide to commit a felony may be different for a child, Jaros said.

Andrew DiMiceli, arguing on behalf of the state of Maryland, said the judge was aware of Harris age and background, as they are of every defendant, when passing down the mandatory life sentence.

Because Harris was convicted of felony murder, prosecutors did not have to prove he had an intent to kill anyone  under the law it is implied  only that someone died while a felony was being committed.

In 2020 and 2021, bills were filed to prohibit minors from being charged with felony murder, but they both died in committee.

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Coleman also said during oral arguments it would be easier for Harris to have his conviction and sentence reexamined if the legislature took the issue up again.

Coleman also argued the court should consider the 2012 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Miller vs. Alabama when it rules on whether the sentencing judge should have exercised more discretion when sentencing Harris to life in prison.

In Miller vs. Alabama, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that life sentences without parole for children convicted of homicide were unconstitutional.

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Harris is eligible for parole after serving 15 years.

According to the Miller case, Coleman said, it should be more nuanced than a judge simply being aware of a defendants circumstances. Under Miller, judges should have latitude to issue sentences they see fit for children offenders, rather than being subject to mandatory sentencing guidelines.

The judge has to say I acknowledge your age and the impact your age may have had on your decision making and culpability, Jaros said.

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Even with greater discretion, a judge could still issue the same sentence Harris received.

DiMiceli argued Harris sentence is constitutional because he does have the chance to receive parole.

It may take months for the Court of Appeals to reach a ruling. While the court could reasonably rule in favor of Harris, Jaros said the ruling depends on a number of factors.

The courts willingness and interest in doing this is going to be balanced against what is an easier situation if we just have it resolved by the legislature, Jaros said. I think this is an argument that holds weight and is worth considering.
Note: This update makes an important correction to the previous story to say the man was jailed in Anaconda.

A Butte man who was jailed in Anaconda after a high-speed chase with Montana Highway Patrol troopers on Feb. 25 is now in the Butte jail on felony complaints of criminal endangerment, assault on police officers and other allegations.

Police say 37-year-old Charles Ross Ladin was transported to the Butte jail Wednesday and remained there Thursday with bond set at $360,000.

Ladin was allegedly involved in a vehicle pursuit with troopers that began on Interstate 90 in Anaconda-Deer Lodge County, said Butte-Silver Bow Sheriff Ed Lester.

He allegedly refused to stop and then entered Butte during the pursuit, ultimately striking a Butte patrol car two separate times on South Montana Street. He is also accused of throwing drugs out the window of his vehicle during the chase.

He was arrested on Dewey Boulevard at about 10 p.m. on Feb. 25 and taken to the Anaconda jail at first.

He was booked in Butte on felony complaints of criminal endangerment, three counts of assaulting an officer, felony possession of dangerous drugs with intent to sell, felony probation violation and a felony warrant out of Gallatin County.

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Additional air-quality testing in January by an EPA contractor suggests a chemical contaminant plume in the vicinity of Butte High School and an adjacent apartment building does not pose health hazards for occupants of either building.

The EPA said this week that the agency has no plans to perform additional testing.

The samples examined ambient air or involved drilling a hole in a concrete slab and testing for chemical vapors accumulated beneath the slab.

Joseph Chisholm, a site assessment manager for EPA, said samples taken in the high school and apartment building showed no contaminants of concern above detection levels.

The EPA has not determined the source of the plume but believes it likely originated from one or more defunct dry cleaning businesses that operated nearby.

Chisholm described the testing results from January as very good news.

He said the testing was conducted during a time when indoor air is most susceptible to pollution because of attempts to seal off cold air from outside.

The Montana Department of Environmental Quality first detected the solvent plume in 2009. The EPA contracted for a preliminary investigation of the site over a decade later  raising pointed questions about why the investigation was delayed for so long.

The report was completed this past summer, and shared with Butte-Silver Bow officials this fall.

The report found the site posed a potential risk to human health and recommended that a thorough site inspection be completed to find out for sure.

EPA toxicologist Charlie Partridge has said the chemical concentrations found in 2009 presented a fairly low risk to people, as does the potential exposure pathway.

In 2009, tetrachloroethylene (PCE) was detected in groundwater near Butte High at more than double the states standards. The highest concentration was 12 micrograms per liter and the standard is 5 micrograms per liter. The contamination was over 20 feet deep.

PCE is commonly used in dry cleaning solvents, adhesives and degreasing aerosols like brake cleaner. The chemical can cause neurological, kidney and liver damage, and is a probable carcinogen.

Also detected in the plume was trichloroethylene (TCE), another chemical used in a variety of industrial products and by commercial dry cleaners for spot removal. According to the National Cancer Institute, TCE can cause kidney cancer and may be associated with increased risk for other cancers as well.

The contaminated groundwater was first discovered during excavation for the bleachers at Butte Highs Naranche Stadium in 2009, according to the 2021 report to the EPA.

Butte School District No. 1 hired Butte-based engineering firm Water and Environmental Technologies to monitor the area with 10 shallow wells in 2009, according to the report, and the data was provided to the DEQ.

Today, the EPA believes the plume is not a threat.

The plume has most likely moved, dispersed, been diluted, Chisholm said.

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Local and state officials gathered Thursday morning at the University of Montana to talk about public safety and the criminal justice system, particularly a disturbing increase in violent crime.

The conversation included how Montanas housing and drug crises and need for mental health resources are driving violent crime rates.

Gov. Greg Gianforte joined Missoula County Attorney Kirsten Pabst, UM President Seth Bodnar and multiple state legislators, law enforcement personnel and others to share whats been working for keeping people safe and out of jail in western Montana and what theyd like to see going forward.

Twenty percent of Missoula Countys crime cases in 2017 were violent crimes, according to the county attorney's office. By 2020, that number climbed to 27 percent, and in 2021, 43 percent were violent crimes.

Pabst pointed to recent spikes in violent crime as a three-pronged issue  an uptick in drug use, need for mental health resources and a spike in the severity of domestic violence cases.

The county has been challenged by the influx of drugs in the region, specifically methamphetamine and more recently heroin and fentanyl, Pabst said. The need for mental health resources also plays a role in preventing crime.

Its an ongoing challenge and its how we respond to mental health thats going to make a difference as it relates to crime, Pabst said. We can try to get out on the front end to provide more access to mental health services, particularly local mental health services where weve seen some gaps.

Pabst described domestic violence as a social phenomenon and epidemic. The county has seen an increase in the severity of interpersonal violence cases, something she said is attributable to high drug-use rates and lack of mental health resources.

Many roundtable participants called the housing crisis in western Montana (and beyond) a catalyst for a rise in crime rates.

When people passing through the criminal justice system are on supervised release, the challenge becomes finding safe housing, according to Department of Corrections, Probation and Parole Bureau Chief Kim Lahiff. She pointed to probation officers partnerships with the Sober Living Program in Missoula as a help in finding safe homes for people in recovery.

People coming into our communities, whether they come from the court, or whether they come from (other) facilities, have got to have safe housing, Lahiff said. Without safe housing, their recovery won't last very long. That is the balance that we're trying to achieve.

Providing trauma-informed responses and understanding root causes of criminal behavior are also vital in reducing crime rates, Lahiff said.

Were not deluding ourselves that were going to get everybody into traditional housing, when we're into less than 1% vacancy rate, Missoula County Commissioner Josh Slotnick said. "We're creating livable spaces. We can't do enforcement unless we have some place for people to go."

Attendees also raised issues with the disproportionate number of Native Americans who are incarcerated. They comprise 6% of Montanas population, but a third of the local jail inmates, state Sen. Diane Sands said.

Sands would like to see the Department of Corrections continue to focus on getting Native American staff hired into social programs, she said.

Theyve got to be there, people with the skills who understand that lived experience to address those problems, Sands said.

In an interview after the roundtable, CSKT Tribal member and state Sen. Shane Morigeau said Sands was spot-on in her assessment of needing more Native people working in the criminal justice system.

"It all makes a difference," Morigeau said. "Back home, we've established priorities with CSKT because we've recognized they're so intertwined."

Mental health, homelessness, jobs, food sovereignty and culture and language are all areas that interact with one another to keep people out of the courts and give them a sense of purpose and belonging, Morigeau said.

"If we have someone who's an addict, who has kids and they wouldn't pass a drug test, let's have day-job opportunities for them," he said. "Let's not prohibit people from working."

When the governor asked roundtable participants whats working to combat violent crime, Missoula officials pointed to progress through partnerships between community agencies. The city's Mobile Support Team has been a success, Police Chief Jaeson White said. Two-person teams of licensed social workers and paramedics now respond to people in crisis.

If a Missoula police officer or sheriffs deputy responds to a public safety concern but they are able to hand off the situation to the Mobile Support Team, they do, White said. That can keep people out of the criminal justice system.

He explained that when a call comes in, dispatchers decide what resources to allocate based on information from the caller.

If someone is posing an imminent danger to themselves or public, that is a law enforcement response to make it safe," White said. "But if theres an ability to hand it off to the Mobile Support Team, or the Crisis Intervention Team or a Crisis Intervention Team-trained officer to be able to de-escalate that, then we do that. If that doesn't work, then we have to remain in the public safety mode in order to get that person safely into custody.

The Missoula County Attorney's Office also recently received a $600,000 grant for its Calibrate program, a pre-trial diversion program designed to keep non-violent offenders out of incarceration.

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WAPELLO  Around 30 people attended last Wednesdays Louisa County Conservation Board meeting; and many in the crowd expressed their opposition to the possible sale of the 18-acre Baird Timber northeast of Morning Sun, which had been on the meeting agenda as an action item.

According to information provided by LCCB Executive Director Katie Hammond and online records, the property was acquired by the county in 1983 from several Baird family descendants.

Several members of that family, including some who had signed the original land transfer documents in 1983, attended Wednesdays meeting and spoke.

Joe Baird said his father and two of his brothers had received the woodlot from their fathers estate; and recalled how it had been used to heat the family home just to the south.

He said the brothers had resisted repeated inquiries from others to purchase the property, but eventually agreed to a transfer to the conservation board. Baird said the brothers opted for that move because they wanted the parcel to be preserved.

They left it to the conservation board so it would be taken care of and preserved as a natural resource, he said, explaining if the brothers had sold the land earlier, it likely would have been cleared or used for housing.

Another family member, Bruce Baird, Mediapolis, who along with four other siblings eventually became the primary property grantors to the county, agreed.

It was a virgin tract of woods and (the family members) were not in favor of selling the property prior to 1983; and they are not in favor of selling the property as of this date and forward, he told the board.

An impassioned appeal not to sell the property came from Margaret Biggerstaff, a family member who traveled from Minnesota to attend the meeting. Biggerstaff pointed out she was a member of a different arm of the Baird family that had donated Baird Grove, a unit of the countys Virginia Grove Recreation Area, to the county.

She said both the Baird Grove donation and the transfer of Baird Timber, which Hammond said was still unclear whether it had been sold or donated, had been completed with the objective of preserving the resource.

If you start selling off this property, you are going against everything (the conservation board) stands for, she said, her voice cracking with emotion.

Responding to a question from Jeb Grimm, Wapello, LCCB member Brad Quigley, who also serves on the county board of supervisors, explained the sale had been discussed as a revenue source to develop campgrounds in the county.

He said over 125 respondents had listed campground development in the county as a top priority, but the potential $500,000 cost to do that had forced the LCCB to look at revenue options.

Quigley said the board had estimated the sale of Baird Timber could raise as much as $180,000, although he acknowledged later that money would actually go into the countys general fund before being accessible to the conservation board.

If you look at the surveys, its pretty much laid out the way what we are looking at it now, trying to raise money without raising taxes, he said.

Following more audience discussions, the board members discussed how to proceed and eventually agreed on a split decision to table action.

Board member Elizabeth Kling said she was upset with the decision because the issue had been raised several times in the past.

Im frustrated all these people came and were putting it off again, she said.

New board member Teresa Coleman however said she appreciated the extra time because she had only been at two meetings where the proposal had been discussed.

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WAPELLO  An extension of the voter-approved Wapello School Districts Physical Plant and Equipment Levy (PPEL) was approved with the overwhelming support of 3.52% of the districts total eligible voters during a special March 1 referendum.

With the approval, the district is allowed to assess up to 67 cents per $1,000 valuation or an income surtax not to exceed 20% for physical plant and equipment purposes as allowed under the law.

According to unofficial results on the Louisa County election website, 83 voters, or 95.4% of those who cast votes supported another 10-year extension of the levy. Only 4 people, 4.6% of the total number of actual voters, opposed the measure.

There are 2,475 registered voters in the school district.

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The already challenging path to bringing home Americans jailed in Russia and Ukraine is likely even more complicated now with a war overwhelming the region and increasingly hostile relations between the United States and the Kremlin.

Marine veteran Trevor Reed and corporate security executive Paul Whelan are each serving lengthy prison sentences in Russia, but their families have long held out hope for some sort of deal  including a possible prisoner exchange  that could get their loved ones home.

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Paul Whelan, a former U.S. Marine who was arrested for alleged spying, listens to the verdict in a courtroom at the Moscow City Court in Moscow, Russia, June 15, 2020. (Sofia Sandurskaya/AP)

Now, though, that seems a much harder ask.

I cant help but think that this is not going to help Trevor get released sooner, obviously, Reeds mother, Paula Reed, said in an interview with The Associated Press.

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The war with Ukraine has not only occupied global attention, but it has also led to punishing economic sanctions by the U.S. and escalating Russian aggression in the face of international condemnation over its invasion. Though the conflict has not closed off avenues for bringing home Reed and Whelan, the prospect of concessions by either side anytime soon is eclipsed by the likelihood of continued antagonism by Russia.

If this becomes long and drawn out, and they take over Ukraine, then the Western countries and the United States are going to be at odds with Russia for a long time, said Reeds father, Joey Reed. That could lead to additional charges against our son, if he lives, and keep him there indefinitely, which is not uncommon in Russia.

He said he was particularly concerned about a loss of communications between the two superpowers that could foreclose any possibility of the U.S. government getting him home.

Weve been told that even during the Cold War, they kept channels open. Even Kennedy was able to talk to Khrushchev during the Cuban missile crisis, Reed said. Anyone thats advocating for closing embassies and cutting them off, thats a gigantic mistake when two major nuclear powers are not speaking and are at odds with each other.

Joey and Paula Reed pose for a photo with a portrait of their son Marine veteran and Russian prisoner Trevor Reed at their home in Fort Worth, Texas, Feb. 15, 2022. Russia is holding Trevor Reed, who was sentenced to nine years on charges he assaulted a police officer. The already-challenging path to bringing home Americans jailed in Russia and Ukraine is likely even more complicated now with a war overwhelming the region and increasingly hostile relations between the United States and the Kremlin. Marine veteran Trevor Reed and corporate security executive Paul Whelan are each serving long prison sentences in Russia. (LM Otero/AP)

State Department principal deputy press spokeswoman Jalina Porter, asked by the AP Thursday about how the war affected the cases of all three men, said only that the administrations top priority is the safety and security of all Americans, including Reed and Whelan.

This is something that the secretary works on day in and day out, she said.

Reed, who is from Texas, was sentenced to nine years in prison in 2020 on charges that he assaulted police officers who were driving him to a police station after picking him up following a night of heavy drinking at a party. He has struggled with health issues behind bars, most recently coughing up blood this week, his father said.

He is regarded by the U.S. government as a wrongful detainee, as is Whelan, a Michigan corporate security executive sentenced in 2020 to 16 years in prison on espionage-related charges that his family says are entirely bogus.

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Whelans sister, Elizabeth, said shes been doom-scrolling news about the war on Twitter like everyone else, concerned about the impact of the war on her brother and the possibility of another Iron Curtain falling in the region.

She said the U.S. could use the conflict as a fresh opportunity to press for the release of Reed and Whelan by making it a condition of any lifting of the sanctions against Russia, though it is not clear that that would happen.

I cant imagine that all of these oligarchs whose families are now being affected, whose assets and goods are now being affected, wouldnt consider the release of Paul and Trevor a very small price to pay in order to get some relief themselves, Whelan said.

Ukraine, meanwhile, is holding North Dakota farmer Kurt Groszhans, accused in a plot to assassinate a current member of the countrys political cabinet. His family and supporters say the charges are trumped up, and were designed to silence Groszhans own allegations of government corruption in Ukraine.

Kristi Magnusson, Groszhans sister, said in a statement provided to AP that she was concerned that the State Department was not advocating for his release because it would be inferring that Ukraine is engaged in corrupt activities right at a time when State is focused on being as supportive as possible of Ukraine against the Russians.

We support the Ukrainian people against Russia as well, but our brother is a sitting duck in that prison and we need him to be released so at least he can try to survive on his own, she added.

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Unlike Reed and Whelan, the U.S. has not designated Groszhans as a wrongful detainee.
Rich in energy, but starved of foreign currency, Russia may use Bitcoin mining to dent the impact of ever tougher sanctions as the war in Ukraine drags on, according to one analyst.

It wouldnt be a stretch for the Russian government or certain sanctioned entities to look to mining as a way to get access to Bitcoin, said David Carlisle, director of Policy and Regulatory Affairs at blockchain analytics firm Elliptic.

They could be translated to goods and services or just hard cash.

Countries such as Iran might have already leveraged mining of crypto currencies, which is highly energy intensive, to convert its sanctioned energy into Bitcoin and hard currency for the government.

About 4.5% of Bitcoin mining took place in Iran in the last year, potentially generating $1 billion for the government, Carlisle said.

At the same time, Russia and Belarus have been two of the most welcoming countries after China issued a blanket ban on crypto mining last May.

China was the largest Bitcoin mining hub in the world and some Chinese miners have migrated to central Asia and eastern Europe, including Russia.

Russias President Vladmir Putin has backed crypto mining, despite the Bank of Russias proposal to ban mining and trading. Belarus said in January it would continue its liberal crypto rules.

Carlisle listed crypto mining along with cyber crime and non-compliant entities such as certain crypto exchanges as three potential ways for Russia to evade sanctions.

However, given the size of Russias economy and its financial market, crypto is unlikely to play a big role in helping Russia to circumvent sanctions.

Now read: Bitcoin falls on reports that Russia shelled Ukrainian nuclear plant
The man accused of shooting an American Canyon resident on Highway 29 could face life imprisonment after his arraignment on attempted murder and other charges.

Tuong Nguyen, 42, was arraigned last week in Napa County Superior Court on eight felony counts in connection with the Feb. 18 shooting of 57-year-old Robert Abreu in south Napa. Abreu, who was driving to his work as a hardwood flooring installer, was wounded in the attack and underwent surgery at an out-of-county hospital.

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The most serious charge against Nguyen, an attempted murder count, carries a maximum sentence of life in state prison with the possibility of parole. He also faces a charge of carjacking after authorities said he forced a driver out of her car in the city of Napa, minutes before Napa County sheriffs deputies stopped and detained him on Highway 221.

Other charges filed by the office of District Attorney Allison Haley include shooting into an occupied vehicle, shooting from a vehicle, gun and ammunition possession by a felon, carrying a loaded gun, and carrying an unregistered firearm. Nguyen also faces several special allegations, including causing great bodily injury and committing a crime after serving prison time.

A plea hearing was scheduled for 9 a.m. Tuesday. Nguyen, who has no listed address, has been held without bail in the Napa County jail since the shooting.

Deputies and California Highway Patrol officers were called to the junction of Highways 29 and 221 at about 6:40 a.m., after Nguyen, driving a sedan, pointed a gun at Abreus pickup and fired a shot to the right side of his head before fleeing, according to the complaint.

Several minutes later, dispatchers got a call from the woman who said a man pointed a handgun at her and demanded the keys to her vehicle in the 1400 block of First Street, according to the arrest document. Deputies soon found Nguyens car at Highway 221 and Magnolia Lane and arrested him, recovering a 9mm handgun and a magazine with ammunition that matched a shell casing found at the scene of the shooting, the complaint stated.

American Canyon man shot on Napa highway undergoes surgery Robert Abreu of American Canyon underwent surgery Sunday and may be released as early as the midweek, a niece said Monday.

Abreu, a father to three daughters and the grandfather of six, underwent surgery to repair his right eye after the attack and is expected to eventually return to work, his niece Nina OBrien told KTVU Channel 2, the San Francisco Fox affiliate. He and Nguyen had never met and had no interaction immediately before the shooting, OBrien previously told the Napa Valley Register.

A GoFundMe page started to raise money for Abreus medical care had raised more than $64,000 toward a $100,000 target as of Thursday night.

You can reach Howard Yune at 530-763-2266 or hyune@napanews.com

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Napa County prosecutors on Thursday announced the settlement of a consumer protection lawsuit against a woman authorities said practiced psychology without a license.

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The settlement with the office of District Attorney Allison Haley requires Dr. Patricia Gray to pay $20,797 in civil penalties and investigative costs, according to a news release from the department. Gray is barred from practicing psychology or referring to herself as a psychologist without holding an active license from the state Board of Psychology, and may not misstate her licensing status.

A complaint filed with the state board led it to launch the initial investigation, according to the District Attorneys Office.

The countys complaint, filed Feb. 17 in Napa County Superior Court, alleges Gray had been licensed as a registered psychological assistant, but never as a full-fledged psychologist, a license she has never held in California. A person may practice as a psychological associate if they are registered with the Board of Psychology and operate under the supervision of a licensed psychologist, but they may not advertise themselves as a psychologist.

Grays state registration as an assistant expired in June 2020, but she continued to practice psychology afterward, according to court documents.

Napa County's complaint did not connect its allegations to Gray Haven, the residential therapy program for which Patricia Gray is executive director.

In 2021, Gray outlined plans for Gray Haven to expand the historic Eliza G. Yount House on Seminary Street to eventually host up to 30 live-in recent jail inmates with mental health problems in order to train them to hold jobs and live independently. The project would require city permits, as only group homes with six or fewer beds are exempted from local permitting under California law.

Gray Haven suspended the expansion plan in May, after strong resistance from neighborhood residents who declared such a home would become a danger to the community.
The United States has imposed sanctions on the assets of Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov, as well as a number of Russian businessmen and their families. This is stated in a fact sheet issued by the White House press service on Thursday.

Today, the United States, in coordination with Allies and partners, is targeting additional Russian elites and family members who continue supporting President Putin despite his brutal invasion of Ukraine. These individuals have enriched themselves at the expense of the Russian people, and some have elevated their family members into high-ranking positions. Others sit atop Russias largest companies and are responsible for providing the resources necessary to support Putins invasion of Ukraine. These individuals and their family members will be cut off from the U.S. financial system, their assets in the United States will be frozen and their property will be blocked from use. The Department of Treasury will share financial intelligence and other evidence where appropriate with the Department of Justice to support criminal prosecutions and seizure of assets.

Today, the United States will sanction an expansive list of Putins cronies and their family members. One of the elites is Alisher Burhanovich Usmanov, one of Russias wealthiest individuals and a close ally of Putin. His property will be blocked from use in the United States and by U.S. persons  including his superyacht, one of the worlds largest, and just seized by our ally Germany, and his private jet, one of Russias largest privately-owned aircraft. The United States will also sanction Dmitry Peskov, who as Putins spokesman is a top purveyor of Putins propaganda. The United States will also impose visa restrictions on 19 oligarchs and 47 of their family members and close associates. As President Biden said, we, we will continue to work with our Allies and partners to hold accountable the Russian oligarchs and corrupt leaders who are profiting from this violent regime.

The United States and governments all over the world will work to identify and freeze the assets Russian elites and their family members hold in our respective jurisdictions  their yachts, luxury apartments, money, and other ill-gotten gains, the fact sheet reads.

Today the Department of State is announcing a new visa restriction policy to restrict the issuance of visas to certain Russian oligarchs, their family members, and close associates. These oligarchs are known to direct, authorize, fund, significantly support, or carry out malign activities in support of Russias destabilizing foreign policy. In an initial action under this policy, we have taken steps to place visa restrictions on 19 oligarchs and 47 family members and close associates, the fact sheet added.

Treasury will designate seven Russian entities, SDN Strategic Culture Foundation and associated outlets Odna Rodyna, Rhythm of Eurasia, and Journal Kamerton; SouthFront; SDN InfoRos; New Eastern Outlook; Oriental Review; United World International; and Geopolitical. In addition, Treasury will designate 26 Russia and Ukraine-based individuals who play central roles in these organizations, enabling the Government of the Russian Federations efforts to spread disinformation and influence perceptions as a part of their invasion of Ukraine. These entities have spread false narratives that advance Russian strategic objectives and falsely justify the Kremlins activities, the fact sheet concludes.
Civil disobedience actions resume in Yerevan

Denmark, Finland support European Commission proposal on Russian oil sanctions

Bulgaria to seek exemption from EU proposed Russian oil embargo

Biden says he is ready for additional sanctions against Russia

Switzerland braces for serious power shortage

Uruguay freezes ambassador appointment to Ankara after Cavusoglu's gesture

Czech Republic to seek exemption from proposed EU embargo on Russian oil imports

Charles Michel on the likelihood of Moldova's EU membership

Resistance Movement actions to resume tomorrow early morning

Elon Musk is invited to UK Parliament for buying Twitter

Disobedience march reaches France Square, rally starts

US crude oil shipments to Europe hit highest level in April

NEWS.am digest: Large-scale protests being held in Armenia to demand PMs resignation

Armenia Defense Minister meets with Georgian PM

UK bans imposes sanctions on 63 individuals and organizations in Russia

EU plan to completely ban Russian crude oil threatens Hungary's energy security

EU interested in expanding energy cooperation with Azerbaijan

Germany: Gradual EU ban on Russian oil imports could lead to 'supply disruptions'

Opposition demonstration reaches government residences

Aliyev insists so-called Zangezur corridor 'is already a reality'

Slovakia seeks exemption from EU oil embargo for three years

Defense Ministers of Armenia and Georgia sign cooperation program for 2022

Romanian President approves entry of Stryker Brigade and US fighter squadron into country

Dollar goes up, euro also rises in Armenia

EU studying possibility of providing military assistance to Moldova

Public demand for Nikol Pashinyan's resignation

Opposition supporters move toward Armenian parliament building

EU envoys can not agree on Russian oil

Armenia Security Council chief briefs Georgia PM on Karabakh conflict settlement process

Armenia deputy police chief says law enforcement has right detain MPs

Large-scale opposition rally starts in central Yerevan

Many teenagers in New Zealand are illiterate

AFP: EU proposes to impose sanctions on Patriarch Kirill

Arestovich says Israel could supply Ukraine with weapons Azerbaijan used in Karabakh war

Parliament speaker threatens Armenian opposition, clergy

Armenia opposition MP: Ex-President Serzh Sargsyan will not hold office in new government

Beijing closes over 60 subway stations due to COVID-19 outbreak

Bayramov, Roquefeuil discuss Azerbaijan-Armenia relations normalization process

Armenia FM meets with US National Democratic Institute president

Armenia ruling force MP: Opposition will not achieve its goal

Armenia 2nd president Robert Kocharyans son blocking road with citizens in Yerevan

Oklahoma bans almost all abortions

Number of children in Japan falls to record low

Karabakh President meets with of Free Homeland-UCA parliamentary faction members

Armenian judge waves Artsakh flag at Ironman Triathlon (PHOTOS)

There is still lot to do in 'October 27' case, says Armenia Prosecutor General

Ambassador Wiktorin to finance minister: EU ready to continue providing assistance to Armenia government

Armenia Prosecutor General admits there are difficulties in investigation of 'March 1' criminal case

Copper price is stable

3 COVID-19 new cases confirmed in Armenia

American Armenian youth hold protest rally outside Armenia embassy in Washington

Japan protests against North Korean missile

Gold is getting cheaper

U.S.-Armenia Strategic Dialogue issues joint statement

Newspaper: Armenia Patrol Guard Service head to be summoned to Investigative Committee to give explanation

Armenia parliament regular sittings continue

Newspaper: Armenia opposition members falling into National Security Service trap by opening links

Civil disobedience protests resume in Yerevan

Earthquake shakes Armenia-Georgia border zone

Microsoft urges to abandon Internet Explorer

Mark Milley: Potential for significant international conflict between great powers is increasing

EU: Poland fines in rule of law dispute now top $170 million

Putin and Lukashenko discuss ongoing situation

Greece and Bulgaria say new LNG terminal will help reduce dependence on Russia

German vice chancellor calls for rapid construction of LNG terminals

Rally of Resistance Movement takes place in France Square

Robert Kocharyan takes part in opposition march

Mario Draghi calls on EU to abandon requirement of unanimity in making foreign policy decisions

Finland and Sweden not yet decided whether to join NATO

Croatian president uses veto power to block Finland and Sweden from joining NATO

Slovakia will seek exemption from the EU embargo on Russian oil imports

NEWS.am digest: Blinken meets Mirzoyan in US, people detained during protests in Yerevan

Turkish Foreign Ministry on meeting of special envoys in Vienna

Opposition rally in central Yerevan starts with Sirusho's performance

Italy to face serious issues in winter if Russian gas supplies are cut off now

Johnson announces new military aid to Ukraine in amount of 300 million euros

Resistance Movement rally on France Square in Yerevan

EU hopes to adopt sixth round of sanctions against Russia at next EU Council meeting

Peaceful rallies of disobedience held in Spitak

Spain extends OVID-19 entry restrictions

Vayk joins demand for Nikol Pashinyan's resignation

Putin and Macron discuss Ukraine

Citizens demanding Pashinyan's resignation block road from Vayots Dzor to Yerevan

Peaceful rallies of disobedience held in Vanadzor demanding PM's resignation

Citizens demanding Pashinyan's resignation block Gyumri-Yerevan highway

Sirusho: Today I will join our compatriots in France Square

Third meeting of Armenia and Turkey special representatives held in Vienna

Dollar rises slightly after long decline, euro also goes up in Armenia

Civil disobedience actions in regions: Yerevan-Goris highway blocked

Azerbaijan settling occupied Armenian Hadrut, Shushi cities of Artsakh

New colors and new services: Team Telecom Armenia completes rebranding

Armenia legislature speaker receives France-Armenia Friendship Group delegation

France senator: We are leaving for Armenia with Senate group

Putin signs decree on economic measures against unfriendly countries

Armenia legislature speaker: Authorities have repeatedly proposed dialogue to opposition

Backpack action of protest being held outside Armenia parliament (PHOTOS)

Armenia defense ministry: Azerbaijan MOD statement does not correspond to reality

Armenia defense minister receives Kansas National Guard delegation

Armenia Police: Yerevan-Sevan motorway reopened

Ned Price: Mirzoyan-Blinken meeting will launch US-Armenia strategic dialogue
European Council President Charles Michel said on Thursday that enforcing a no-fly zone over Ukraine is a NATO decision, but that it would be one step too far with a real risk of escalation and a real risk of a possible third international war, CNN reported.

The EU is not at war with Russia. The reality is that Russia has launched a savage war against Ukraine. Ukraine is not a NATO member, and thats why we must be extremely careful and cautious. We need to do everything which is possible, but taking into account that Russia has nuclear weapons, and it is very important to avoid a third international war, he said in an interview with CNN.

Michel said that while this was a decision for NATO to make and not the EU, it is important for NATO members to understand that it would be one step too far."

Thats why we are trying to advocate in different fields at the diplomatic level. We are trying to provide more support to Ukraine in order to have a ceasefire as soon as possible, and in order to make sure that well be able to negotiate as soon as possible, he added.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has been calling for NATO and Western allies to enforce a no-fly zone over Ukraine amid Russias ongoing invasion and aerial bombardment of its cities. So far, that request has not been met.

Michel said that although NATO is a backbone for common security in Europe," European countries need to take on more responsibilities to be able to provide more capabilities on their own in the military field.

Zelenskyy has also put in an official request to join the European Union. The EU parliament has since adopted a resolution on Tuesday calling on the European Union institutions "to work towards granting" Ukraine the status of EU candidate country.

The European Council president told Anderson that Zelenskyys request was very legitimate and that the EU would work to asses the request as fast as possible, in order to remain extremely united in this field," alluding to some differing views among member states.

He said in the meantime and short term, he has decided to invite Zelenskyy to the European Council meetings on a regular basis to cooperate and coordinate politically with Ukraine.
The Baltimore Planning Commission considered digital billboards at its meeting Thursday night. This one would be at 300 S. Charles St.

Digital billboards may soon grace the facades of some of downtown Baltimores most visible buildings with approval this week from the citys Planning Commission.

The commissioners voted 6-2, with one member abstaining, in favor of approving six of 11 signs proposed for the citys downtown business district. City planners raised concerns about the remaining five signs, triggering further review.

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The signs, slated for some of downtowns most visible spots, such as the side of Power Plant Live! and a major gateway on Lombard Street, are not without controversy. Several residents who attended the Planning Commissions Thursday night meeting decried the proposal.

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Barbara Valeri, president of the Towers at Harbor Court Condominium Association, said the billboards will be visible to residential areas despite promises to the contrary from sign supporters.

I can tell you that I just looked out my window and at the Sheraton, Valeri said of one proposed sign location. I can see clearly where that billboard will be and so can all the other residents in my building.

For the last two decades, Baltimore has eschewed new billboards. In 2000, Mayor Martin OMalley signed a bill capping the citys billboard count at 900. Then, a coalition of city residents, including a then 12-year-old girl, led the push for the ban, which was the first bill OMalley signed after taking office.

But a sign ordinance passed by Baltimore City Council last fall cleared the way for the downtown signs. That ordinance, passed with almost no discussion by the council, created a district where signs are permitted. The zone is bounded largely by Howard Street to the west, Baltimore Street to the north, President Street to the east and Pratt Street to the south. The district continues south to Conway Street along the Inner Harbor.

Shelonda Stokes, president of the Downtown Partnership of Baltimore, said the billboards present the city with an opportunity to promote local events and help revitalize the downtown area. The partnership presented the plans to the Planning Commission on behalf of building owners who hope to host the signs.

Were talking about 144 acres, 11 signs over 2.5 miles, she said. Which is 11 opportunities to promote art, information and advertising to showcase our unique neighborhoods and were doing this on underutilized facades on these select buildings.

The plan presented Thursday called for 11 signs ranging from 680 to 1,800 square feet on nine buildings. All are proposed for locations that are major transportation corridors.

In their submission to the Planning Commission, the partnership argued the signs create light, vitality and activity. Digital signs will promote tourism, economic development and city branding, the submission argued.

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Digital signage positivity correlates with lower crime, higher pedestrian activity, enlivened streetscape experience  all of which is needed in our post-COVID recovery in downtown Baltimore, the proposal stated.

City planning staff recommended approval for much of the plan, which requires the signs to meet three criteria: They will not increase traffic congestion, add to the clutter of the area or be incongruous with the design of the area they are located.

The Baltimore Planning Commission considered digital billboards at its meeting Thursday night. This sign would be at 100 E. Pratt St.

Planners recommended reducing the size of several of the proposed billboards to align with those points. A proposed cluster of three billboards at the corner of Lombard and Charles streets received the most negative feedback. Planners suggested reducing the size of one sign and removing another altogether.

The largest sign proposed, an 1,800-square-foot billboard above the historic Farmers & Merchants National Bank building, now the Crafty Crab, was recommended for approval.

It will not negatively impact the architecture of the pedestrian experience of historic buildings, as it will not be visible at the pedestrian level, said city planner Caitlin Audette.

A billboard proposed for the facade of the Sheraton Hotel at Charles and Conway streets proved the most controversial with residents who attended Thursdays discussion in opposition to the plan. The sign is visible to the Towers at Harbor Court at 10 E. Lee St. The condominium building overlooks the Inner Harbor to the east and downtown Baltimore to the north.

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Valeri, who represents the buildings tenants, expressed concerns about the billboards causing car accidents and said too little research or analysis about the possible impacts on crime reduction and light pollution was presented.

Numerous others attended Thursdays meeting in favor of the proposed signs. Some suggested the billboards could inspire local artists and children to get their work onto a big screen.

Zed Smith, the CEO of The Cordish Companies, which owns the Power Plant at 601 E. Pratt St., said the billboards are a tremendous opportunity to bring new tenants in and bring some new energy to the city.

The CEO said it could help the building, which has struggled with vacancies the past several years, attract new tenants and showcase the property.

It can only be a big win, not only for us, but for the city, he said.

Councilman Eric Costello, who sits on the Planning Commission, championed the legislation creating the downtown sign district. Costello proposed the compromise agreed upon by the board Thursday.

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The District 11 representative said he felt it was necessary to allow more time for business owners, stakeholders and the community to share their input about proposed changes. Many said during the meeting they had not been alerted to size reductions or the possible elimination of billboards.

The Baltimore Planning Commission considered digital billboards at its meeting Thursday night. This sign would be at 124 Market Place.

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Amy Jordan, property manager at 36 S. Charles St., represented one such property. She said there was no indication the buildings billboard was going to be eliminated, but planning staff recommended it be removed because it would be incongruous with the existing design of the building and creates visual clutter in the area.

This is the first time I am hearing this, Jordan said. This is something weve been interested in from the start. We are willing to do whatever we need to do to make this happen for our building.

The Planning Commission advanced the following locations Thursday: 100 S. Charles St., 30 Light St., 300 S. Charles St., 55 Market Place, 204 E. Lombard St. and 601 E. Pratt St. It tabled discussion on 100 S. Charles St. (east elevation), 100 E. Pratt St. (northeast), 100 E. Pratt St. (northwest), 124 Market Place and 36 S. Charles St.

Victor Clark Jr., a citizen representative on the commission, abstained from the vote.

Even with the Planning Commissions approval, it could take up to a year for signs to appear downtown, according to a statement released Friday by the Downtown Partnership. The approved signs must still receive permits from the city.

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The property owners who will host the billboards have picked their own media companies and will contract with them privately, according to the statement. The partnership will also enter into agreements with those media companies and will manage the community space on the signs, which is time reserved for civic and artistic content, according to the partnership. The billboards will be used commercially, but will also offer branded content for special events such as the recent CIAA basketball tournament, the partnership said.

Partnership officials declined to answer a question about whether they will receive a share of the revenue created by the billboards. They also did not provide more detail about how much time will be devoted to civic content on the signs.
The U.S. military has set up a channel to communicate directly with the Russian military to prevent miscalculations or escalation over the Kremlins invasion of Ukraine, a defense spokesperson confirmed Thursday to The Hill, the latter reported.

The Department of the Defense recently established a de-confliction line with the Russian Ministry of Defense on March 1 for the purposes of preventing miscalculation, military incidents, and escalation, the spokesperson said.

They noted that the U.S. retains a number of channels to discuss critical security issues with the Russians during a contingency or emergency.

CNN later reported that the line is basically an exchange of phone numbers, one from the U.S. European Commands operations center in Stuttgart, Germany, and the other expected from the Ministry of Defense in Moscow.

The United States and Russia are not in direct conflict with one another, but as U.S. forces continue to flow into several of Ukraine's NATO neighbors, there are concerns of a possible close encounter or mishap that could lead to an escalation.

Russian aircraft, for example, have flown close to areas where thousands of American troops are in Poland, Romania and Baltic countries.

The new deconfliction line is of interest as Pentagon officials have previously said they have not had any direct communications with Russia since the invasion began eight days ago.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin last spoke with Russian Minister of Defense Sergey Shoygu on Feb. 18, while Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley last spoke to the Chief of Russian General Staff Gen. Valery Gerasimov on Feb. 11, nearly a month ago.
The Civil Aviation Committee of the Republic of Armenia (RA) has issued a statement in connection with the reports on detaining a Russian plane. The statement reads as follows, in particular:

"On March 3, 2022, hours before the arrival of the A320 aircraft operated by the Russian Siberia Airlines at the Zvartnots airport in Yerevan, while it was still in the RF [(Russian Federation)] airspace, document problems have arisen related to ensuring the flight suitability of the given aircraft.

According to the airline's decision, the plane landed at the airport of the RF city of Mineralnye Vody, only after which it arrived at the Zvartnots airport of Yerevan.

Due to the above-mentioned circumstance, the planned flight from Yerevan became impossible. The arisen problems were related to between the airline and the aviation authorities of the country of registration of the aircraft, as well as the lessor of the said aircraft.

We consider it necessary to note that no detention was applied regarding the plane, but the flight permit of the mentioned plane was temporarily suspended.

Let us also noted that the planned flight from Yerevan was carried out by another plane of the airline.

The RA Civil Aviation Committee is carrying out clarifying correspondence with the aviation authorities of the country of registration of the aircraft in connection with the problems that have arisen. The operating airline and the aviation authorities of the Russian Federation have also been informed about the issue. The operation of the plane will be resumed after the clarification of the document issues."
The head of the IAEA said his upcoming visit to Tehran could "pave the way" for a revival of the Iranian nuclear deal, an agreement that would return the country's oil exports to world markets, Bloomberg reported.

The optimism of the head of the IAEA, Rafael Grossi, was supported by diplomats in Vienna, where they discuss the last few outstanding issues.

Russian Ambassador Mikhail Ulyanov said that the parties are at the finish line and the deal is possible within 48 hours. Other negotiators have also said privately that they expect an agreement by early next week.

Iran has demanded that the International Atomic Energy Agency complete a stalled investigation into past nuclear activities as part of a deal to renew a 2015 deal that limited the Islamic Republic's nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief.

Western negotiators have so far said that this is not possible because the IAEA operates independently and does not have the power to obstruct an investigation. But Grossi made clear in an interview with Bloomberg TV that while a number of issues needed to be cleared up before he could close the investigation, a deal could be reached.

The revival of the landmark nuclear deal with Iran, referred to as the Iranian deal, would mean relief for global energy markets. Oil rose to $116 a barrel amid Russia's war with Ukraine and the reluctance of other oil-producing countries to significantly increase production.

Traders expect Iranian barrels to return to world markets this year. With the world's second-largest natural gas reserves and fourth-largest crude oil reserves, Iran is likely to be able to increase exports by about 1 million barrels a day within months of any deal, traders said.

Grossi said negotiators are consulting with IAEA officials as the talks draw to a close. Diplomats warn that there are only a few days to salvage the agreement.
The secret ballot for the election of a new member of the Board of the Central Bank of Armenia concluded Friday in the National Assembly (NA).

The ruling majority "Civil Contract" Faction of the NA had nominated economist Levon Sahakyan for that position.

But out of 107 MPs, only 70 voted; 69 of them approved Sahakyan's candidacy, whereas only 1 lawmaker voted against it.

As a result, Levon Sahakyan has become a member of the Board of the Central Bank of Armenia.
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M.  Members of a congressional panel focused on civil rights and liberties shared sobering statistics Thursday on the disproportionate number of Indigenous, Black and other minority women and girls who are being reported missing in the United States, saying more needs to be done to tackle the problem.

About 40% of the more than 250,000 women and girls reported as missing in 2020 were people of color, according to federal data gathered by the Subcommittee on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties. Despite making up a smaller share of the overall U.S. population, committee members said, Indigenous, Black and Hispanic women and girls are going missing at higher rates.

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The panels chairman, U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, called it a crisis hiding in plain sight. He said he was hopeful Thursdays hearing would shine more light on a problem that has shattered countless families, exposed jurisdictional challenges for law enforcement and highlighted the importance of media attention.

The cases span the country, from South Dakota, Wyoming and Montana to Louisiana, South Carolina and New York. Of the more than 700 Indigenous people that have gone missing in Wyoming over nearly a decade, for example, less than 1 in 5 received any media coverage, Raskin noted, citing a recent report from the state.

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The full scope of the problem is impossible to measure due to the lack of comprehensive and consistent data, committee members said during a hearing in Washington that included in-person and remote testimony.

Raskin also said that tribal communities often are hamstrung in their responses given jurisdictional issues, limited law enforcement resources and an inability to prosecute non-Native individuals who commit crimes on tribal land.

U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, pictured in July, calls the disproportionate number of Indigenous, Black and other minority women and girls who are reported missing in the United States a crisis hiding in plain sight. (Andrew Harnik/AP)

The core function of government is to protect the safety and the security of the people, Raskin said. Thats the essence of the social contract. We have to secure and fortify the social contract for women of color all across America.

The hearing comes as the grassroots movement among Native Americans to bring attention to the cases of their missing and slain relatives puts more pressure on state and federal officials. In New Mexico, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham recently signed legislation to dedicate more resources to the investigation of such cases and improve coordination among law enforcement.

Other states, including California, Oregon and Washington, have approved studies of the problem or allocated more funding for tribes.

The panel heard Thursday from Pamela Foster, the mother of 11-year-old Ashlynne Mike, who was abducted along with her brother on May 2, 2016, and left to die in a remote spot on the Navajo Nation in northwestern New Mexico. Fosters 9-year-old son was found alive by an older couple along a road after he fled the kidnapper.

Foster said she had to resort to social media to get word out about the abduction. Authorities didnt issue an Amber Alert for several hours.

I endured the longest hours of my life  waiting, hoping and praying for my children, for their safe return, she said.

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It wasnt enough to save her daughter, but Foster has been working ever since to ensure Ashlynnes death was not in vain by pushing for legislation to expand the Amber Alert system to tribal communities.

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Some of the panelists also talked about disparities related to how law enforcement and the media perceive victims when they are people of color.

Natalie Wilson, founder of the Black and Missing Foundation, told lawmakers that advocates understand not every missing persons case will get national attention but noted that cases involving people of color get a very small percentage of national media coverage.

We can all name Gabby Petito, Natalee Holloway, Chandra Levy and many other white women who have gone missing. But can any of you name a person of color that has garnered national media coverage? she asked. We want our missing to be household names too.

Akia Eggleston was eight months pregnant when she vanished before her baby shower in May 2017. (HANDOUT)

For Shawn Wilkinson, it took a month for law enforcement in Baltimore to begin looking seriously into the 2017 disappearance of his pregnant daughter, Akia Eggleston. Family members knew something was wrong when the 22-year-old Black woman failed to show up to her own baby shower.

Authorities announced an arrest in the case just weeks ago. While Egglestons body has not been recovered, prosecutors pointed to internet searches by the suspect that suggested her remains might be at a local landfill.

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A Marine veteran who served three tours in Iraq, Wilkinson said he gave all to his country but stood broken and frustrated at not being able to get immediate help for his daughter when he needed it.

The epidemic of missing persons of color is not a new topic but one that has been dismissed because society does not care about us, he said. This is a trickle effect that has come down through this countrys history. Only time has brought us to this point of actually acknowledging the disparities that exist.
WASHINGTON.  The World Bank Board of Executive Directors approved Thursday a EUR 26.5 million loan for the Forth Public Sector Modernization Project (PSMP IV) for Armenia. The project is the fourth in a series of public sector modernization projects in Armenia and will assist the Government in improving the efficiency of, and access to, selected government services for businesses and citizens, the World Bank office informed Armenian News-NEWS.am.

Accessing many public services in Armenia still requires the physical presence of citizens. This is most apparent in rural areas. Challenges also exist for citizens to access already existing digital services. A World Bank ICT survey found that only five percent of Armenian citizens and businesses currently use online government services.

The Government of Armenia has prioritized the digital economy as a key pillar of economic growth and GovTech. The project recognizes that a whole-of-government approach is needed for digital transformation to promote simple, efficient, and transparent government systems and public services. The Digitalization Strategy for 2021-2025 lays the foundation for the development and implementation of this approach. Modernization of public administration and efficient delivery of public services can foster inclusive growth and reduce inequalities, said Carolin Geginat, World Bank Country Manager for Armenia. Streamlined and digitized business processes promote resource efficiency and improve the productivity of public services. A more effective public sector, capable of delivering efficient and accessible services, also provides greater equality of opportunities for citizens and supports productivity of the private sector. The project will support the Governments approach to public sector modernization, through three components anchored in public administration, data management, and digital service delivery systems. The first component focuses on the overall efficiency of public administration and supports improvement of the productivity of the Civil Service Office, public service administration, the Ministry of Justice.

The second component supports digital public service delivery, with a focus on modernizing tax and customs administration systems to improve the efficiency of revenue mobilization and strengthening of government service delivery. Support of local governments, through the piloting of activities related to re-engineering databases, data infrastructure and computing systems, will align them with the business processes of central government agencies.

And the third component supports the underlying technological foundations needed for the successful implementation of the project, by improving and strengthening data governance/management, cloud computing, cybersecurity, and artificial intelligence.

The proposed project builds on the gains of the previous three Bank-supported operations focused on modernization of public sector functions and services in Armenia, with the application of technology for more efficient and accessible services. The World Bank will provide a EUR 26.5 million ($29.9 million equivalent) IBRD loan of variable-spread, with a 14.5-year grace period and a total repayment term of 25 years. The Government contribution is EUR 5.3 million ($6 million equivalent). Since joining the World Bank in 1992, and IDA in 1993, commitments to Armenia have totaled approximately $2,477,870 million.
NATO will not take part in the war in Ukraine, Chancellor Olaf Scholz told ZDF.

This would lead to a dramatic escalation of this difficult situation in Ukraine, which would present great dangers. That is why doing it now would be unwise. That is why there will be no solution now that will lead to the military involvement of NATO countries in this confrontation, Scholz said, highlighting the need to prevent a direct confrontation between NATO and Russia.

He added that in order to calm the situation in Ukraine, a ceasefire and further negotiations on the withdrawal of Russian troops from the territory of Ukraine are necessary. The agreed sanctions against Russia made themselves felt at the first stage, he noted.

According to him, he does not believe that regime change in Russia will solve the problems in the region, since democracy is something that should come from the people.

There is no single button that can be pressed to solve all problems. The only way is to try to create a basis for negotiations and find a consensus, he concluded.
Canada wants NATO to discuss all scenarios for isolating Russia, Foreign Minister Melanie Joly said when asked if the alliance should consider establishing a no-fly zone over Ukraine, The Guardian reported.

Upon arriving at an extraordinary meeting of NATO foreign ministers, Joly said NATO's red line was not to provoke an international conflict when asked about the no-fly zone.

But she added: We want to make sure that scenarios are being discussed.

NATO must adapt its military posture on its eastern flank to the new reality following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Romanian Foreign Minister Bogdan Aurescu said, without specifying whether he wants a permanent allied presence there.

We have to adapt the posture to the reality, which shows that the Russians troops are in Ukraine and in Belarus, so we need to rethink everything, he told reporters as he arrived for a meeting of NATO foreign ministers in Brussels.
NATO foreign ministers will agree on a response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, as well as consultations on the long-term consequences, NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg noted.

We provide support to Ukraine. At the same time, NATO is not part of the conflict. NATO is a defensive Alliance.

We don't seek war, conflict with Russia. At the same time, we need to make sure that there is no misunderstanding about our commitment to defend and protect all Allies.

And therefore, we have increased the presence of NATO forces in the eastern part of the Alliance. This is a defensive presence.

And I welcome the strong commitment from the United States with more troops. I met many of them. And it is always great to meet US troops in Europe and to see their commitment, and their professionalism, being part of the transatlantic bond.

I also welcome that European Allies and Canada are stepping up with more presence in the eastern part of the Alliance, on land, at sea and in the air. If anything, I think the crisis we are faced with now demonstrates the importance of North America standing together in strategic solidarity in NATO," he noted.
YEREVAN.  Minister of Finance Tigran Khachatryan received the German Ambassador to Armenia, Victor Richter, Armenian News-NEWS.am has learned from the Ministry of Finance of Armenia.

Lauding Germany's financial, methodological, and consulting assistance to Armenia, Minister Khachatryan attached great importance to the newly planned and already ongoing respective programs in Armenia, especially in infrastructure, agriculture, and water economy.

The German government is closely following the regional developments, and is always ready to assist Armeniaand within the framework of the European Union and the OSCE Minsk Groupin mitigating the negative effects of crises, Ambassador Richter noted, for his part.

The parties reaffirmed the continued expansion of the framework of their cooperation, and expressed their readiness to develop Armenian-German relations and establish stable partnership.
In response to a written inquiry by Armenian News-NEWS.am, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) of Armenian said that at the moment it is not possible to provide precise data on the number of Armenian citizens who are still in Ukraine, as the respective registration at the MFA consular section is voluntary, and a considerable number of compatriots have not done so.

"After the start of the military operation, about 1,500 [Armenian] citizens have applied to the embassy of Armenia in Kyiv," the foreign ministry said. To note, the same information was announced Thursday by Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyanin the National Assembly.

Applicants were provided with the necessary urgent information and advice. During this time, the aforesaid embassy provided assistance in providing shelter to several Armenian nationals in distress. Assistance was provided also to Armenian citizens who have lost their documents.

Thanks to the efforts of the Armenian MFA, Poland, Slovakia, Romania, Moldova, and Hungary have allowed Armenian citizens transit from Ukraine without visas.

At the same time, however, the question remained unanswered as to how many Armenian nationals in Ukraine have expressed a wish to return to Armenia, and how it is planned to organize their return to the homeland.
There was no radiation release at the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant, he IAEA director-general, Rafael Mariano, said, AP reported.

He said the agency contacted the Ukrainian nuclear regulator and Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant after a building at the site was hit. This caused a fire, which was extinguished.

"Ukraine regulator tells IAEA there has been no change reported in radiation levels at the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant site," IAEA said. Ukraine informed IAEA that the fire at the site of the NPP "has not affected essential equipment, plant personnel taking mitigatory actions," the agency added.

The Russian Defence Ministry earlier said that the fire was the result of arson by Ukrainian saboteurs who were trying to stage a provocation. The fire broke out at night on several floors of the nuclear power plant training complex.

The Russian Defence Ministry has said that Ukrainian nationalists last night tried to provoke a fire at the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant. According to it, a Ukrainian sabotage group set fire to the Zaporizhzhya NPP training building while leaving the building.

The Russian Defence Ministry said that since 28 February, the Russian Armed Forces had taken under their control the town of Enerhodar, the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant and the adjacent territory.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has consistently called for a no-fly zone, but NATO allies are resisting the move, which could drag them into war with Russia.

Speaking ahead of a meeting at NATO headquarters in Brussels, Lithuania said the alliance would be dragged into war if it imposed a no-fly zone.

Canadian Foreign Minister Melanie Joly said NATO's red line was not to provoke a wider international conflict but that all scenarios needed to be discussed, Reuters reported.

The French presidential administration has described the no-fly zone as "a very legitimate request and very difficult to satisfy."

Securing a no-fly zone over Ukrainian airspace would force NATO aircraft to directly confront Russian aircraft, risking dragging the alliance into an open conflict that spills over into Europe. The prospect of a war that would extend beyond Ukraine is very worrying for Eastern European states, Bloomberg wrote.

No-fly zone means NATO being in a conflict since it would be NATO's forces enforcing this no-fly zone, the Czech Republic's Foreign Minister Jan Lipavsky told reporters ahead of a meeting of alliance ministers.

Allies are also concerned that NATO does not have the means to close the skies over Ukraine, given Russia's strong military capabilities.

"NATO is not part of the conflict," Stoltenberg told reporters on Friday. "NATO is a defensive alliance, We don't seek war, conflict with Russia."

Pentagon spokesman John Kirby also rejected Ukrainian calls for a no-fly zone, saying it would only exacerbate the conflict and turn it into a war between the US and Russia.
South Korean President Moon Jae-in ordered that every effort be made to protect the Hanul nuclear power plant from a forest fire that broke out in the eastern coastal district of Uljin.

The government issued a disaster warning after a wildfire broke out in Uljin County on Friday, where Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power Co. operates six nuclear reactors. There are currently five reactors in operation and one under repair.

Authorities do not say how far the fires are from the site of the nuclear power plant.

Prime Minister Kim Bo Gum said local firefighters will work with the defense ministry and the forestry agency to extinguish wildfires that are reportedly moving up the country's east coast towards Gangwon Province.

As of late Friday, the fires have destroyed a total of 12 residences and three warehouses, according to Yonhap.
YEREVAN.  Prosecutor General Artur Davtyan received a delegation led by Deputy Prosecutor General and Chief Military Prosecutor of Russia Valery Petrov, who has arrived in Armenia within the framework of a regional visit, the Prosecutor General's Office of Armenia informed Armenian News-NEWS.am.

Davtyan valued the relations between the prosecutorial systems of Armenia and Russia. He stressed the personal contribution of his Russian counterpart, Igor Krasnov, to initiating the resolving of humanitarian issues in the post-war period, and stressed the consistency of the Russian Prosecutor's Office.

Petrov, for his part, noted that the prosecutor's offices of Armenia and Russia successfully cooperate in both bilateral and multilateral formats.

During the meeting, the sides exchanged views on the protection of fundamental human rights and the impact of conflicts on criminal trends.

Both sides highlighted the role of the Russian peacekeeping forces in Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) and the units of the Russian Armed Forces carrying out border service in Armenias Syunik Province in regional stability and easing of tension.

It was emphasized that the activities of the representatives of the Russian Prosecutor's Office in Artsakh contribute to the provision of law and order among the Russian military contingent there, to the increase of mutual trust in relations with the local population.

Artur Davtyan informed the guests that Azerbaijan continues to fail to fulfill its obligations to return Armenian prisoners of war and other detainees to Armenia, and, moreover, the unfounded and illegal criminal prosecutions and lawsuits against them continue in Azerbaijan.

In addition, there have been numerous cases of ceasefire violations by Azerbaijan. The information package on these incidents was passed to the Russian side, expressing hope that they will be discussed during future communication with the Azerbaijani side.

Artur Davtyan drew the attention of his Russian colleagues also to the fact that due to the evasive behavior of the Azerbaijani side, the implementation of the agreements reached by the prosecutors general of Armenia, Russia and Azerbaijan on the exchange of information on violations and incidents in the contact line is not too effective.

The parties agreed to continue the dialogue on the matters raised by both sides.
STEPANAKERT.  A delegation led by the newly elected Human Rights Defender (Ombudsperson) of Armenia, Kristine Grigoryan, on Friday was hosted in the Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) National Assembly (NA), the latter informed Armenian News-NEWS.am.

The ombudswoman of Armenia was first received by deputy speaker Gagik Baghunts of the Artsakh NA. The parties discussed cooperation between the two Armenian republics. Grigoryan informed that she is in constant contact with Artsakh ombudsman Gegham Stepanyan, and assured that they will further strengthen the ties in terms of monitoring, recording violations, and protecting the rights of Artsakh people at international instances.

Stepanyan, for his part, stressed the need to continue the current programs.

Both sides highlighted the experience of Artsakh during the 44-day war in the fall of 2020, and the need to intensify the activities of the ombudsperson's office in the post-war realities.

Then the meeting continued in an expanded format, with the participation of the heads of the factions of the Artsakh NA and the chairpersons of its leading committees.

The Artsakh MPs raised urgent matters related to human rights. Artsakh ombudsman Gegham Stepanyan, in turn, spoke about the need to have the ombudsman offices regional branch in Martakert region. And Kristine Grigoryan voiced her intention to convene a joint conference in Artsakh.
The UN Human Rights Council (HRC) has called for the establishment of a commission to investigate rights violations committed in the context of Russia's special military operation in Ukraine, TASS reported.

As noted in the resolution adopted at the Council's session in Geneva on Friday, the commission will consist of three experts and its initial term will be one year.

Thirty-two of the 47 countries in the Council, including the Western states that actively promoted it, voted for the document, while the delegations of Russia and Eritrea voted against it and 13 countries, including China, India, Cuba, Venezuela, Armenia, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, abstained.

The HRC decided to urgently establish an independent international commission of inquiry consisting of three human rights experts to be appointed by the council president for an initial period of one year. This commission would be mandated to investigate allegations of violations and abuses of human rights and international humanitarian law and related crimes in the context of Russia's special military operation.

It is also mandated to collect, consolidate and analyze evidence of human rights violations and identify individuals and organizations responsible for such violations with a view to bringing those responsible to justice. The HRC decided to hear an oral report on the work of the commission at its 51st session, to be held in autumn 2022, and to consider a comprehensive written report at its 52nd session in spring 2023.

The HRC is an intergovernmental body of the UN system. It was established in 2006, replacing the Commission on Human Rights, which was often criticized for being biased. The Council is made up of 47 states, each elected by a majority vote of the UN General Assembly by direct secret ballot.
An Armenian family suffered from the missile attack on the Ukrainian city of Kharkov, Hamlet Hovhannisyan, aide to the Armenian Honorary Consul in Kharkov, told NEWS.am.

He said the father, mother and two children of the family sustained shrapnel wounds. "The injuries are serious, but their state of health is assessed as stable after surgery. The spouses cannot walk yet, the condition of the children is relatively good. They were all in their flat at the time of the strike," Hovhannisyan said.

He also reported that the members of the family were injured on 1 March, but the information reached them only today.
Armenian News - NEWS.am presents the daily digest of top news as of 04.03.22

Russian forces seized Europe's biggest nuclear power plant on Friday during fighting in southeastern Ukraine, Zaporizhzhia. At night a fire broke out in the nuclear plants training building, which was extinguished hours later. No dead or injured have been reported. The fire has not affected any essential equipment of the plant. No change in the radiation levels have been reported either.

In the morning Volodymyr Zelenskyy claimed that the Russian troops were shelling the plant.

The Ukrainian president called his US counterpart Joe Biden after the fire broke out. Russia in its turn stated that the fire was a provocation by the Ukrainian nationalists.

Russia and Ukraine agreed on organizing humanitarian corridors to help civilians escape the military operations.A temporary halt to fighting in select locations is also possible. After the talks, the Russian side said "substantial progress" had been made while the Ukrainian side said the results were far from what Kyiv had hoped for. The parties will continue negotiations in a third round in the near future.

However, speaking ahead of a meeting at NATO headquarters in Brussels, Lithuania said the alliance would be dragged into war if it imposed a no-fly zone.

NATO will not take part in the war in Ukraine, Chancellor Olaf Scholz also noted.

Meanwhile, the alliance chief Jens Stoltenberg said, NATO is not part of the conflict. NATO is a defensive Alliance.

Zelenskyy today stated that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is providing significant support to Ukraine and is one of the few guarantors of Ukraines security.

French President Emmanuel Macron sent a congratulatory message to Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan on the 30th anniversary of establishment of Armenian-French diplomatic relations and invited him to Paris.

Thanks to centuries of close friendship between the French and Armenian peoples, over the past three decades the two countries have built a strong, diverse, forward-looking partnership, Macron said.

The American dollars (USD) exchange rate against the Armenian dram (AMD) comprised AMD 503.08/$1 in Armenia on Friday; this is up by AMD 6.60 from Thursday.

The exchange rate for one euro was AMD 553.49 (up by AMD 3.09).

The project is the fourth in a series of public sector modernization projects in Armenia and will assist the Government in improving the efficiency of, and access to, selected government services for businesses and citizens.

Accessing many public services in Armenia still requires the physical presence of citizens. This is most apparent in rural areas. Challenges also exist for citizens to access already existing digital services. A World Bank ICT survey found that only five percent of Armenian citizens and businesses currently use online government services.
A Turkish citizen wanted for involvement in the murder of journalist Hrant Dink has been detained in Bishkek, the Interior Ministry press service reported.

While detaining the 38-year-old foreigner, A.I. was found to be using a fake passport and driving license.

It turned out that this foreigner is wanted by the law enforcement agencies of Turkey. A search has been launched in Istanbul. A.I. is suspected of involvement in the murder of journalist Hrant Dink in January 2007, as well as a number of other serious crimes, including involvement in organised crime and illegal possession of firearms.

A criminal case has been initiated under articles 378 "Illegal crossing of state border" and 379 "Document forgery" of the Criminal Code of the Kyrgyz Republic.

On 28 February, by decision of the Bishkek Court, A.I. was detained for two months.

Hrant Dink, the editor-in-chief of Agos Armenian newspaper published in Istanbul, was killed by Ogun Samast at the editorial entrance on 19 January, 2007. The murder provoked a wide response in Turkey. Thousands of people in Istanbul and other cities in the country staged protests demanding that the organizers of the crime be found and punished.

The murder trial was not completed until five years later. Ogun Samast was sentenced to 21 years and 10 months in prison. There were 19 people involved in the case.
The small child and two adult civilians were among those taking shelter at a nursery and kindergarten in northeastern Ukraine when the explosives hit.

The three would perish in the Feb. 25 attack, believed to have been carried out by Russian forces using internationally banned cluster munitions.

Stomach turning is how Agnes Callamard, secretary general of Amnesty International, described the incident, adding that it should be investigated as a war crime.

As Russian forces continue their assault on Ukraine, hammering its cities with artillery and switching to a new strategy of targeting civilian areas, the International Criminal Court (ICC) has launched an investigation into possible war crimes in the eastern European country.

But what constitutes a war crime and just how difficult will it be for ICC investigators to locate corroborating evidence?

Pablo Rueda-Saiz, an associate professor of law at the University of Miami School of Law, whose interests include international and comparative constitutional law, law and society, social movements, armed conflict, and globalization, provides insight about alleged war crimes in the Russian-Ukraine conflict.

What crimes are prosecuted by the ICC?

The International Criminal Court prosecutes four offenses: war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide, and the crime of aggression. Now, what is specific about those crimes is that they were conducts that were prohibited by international law even before the end of the Second World War. They constituted violations of international law, but they were not crimes in the sense that states would be held responsible for incurring in those conducts, and no individuals were susceptible to punishment. But after the Second World War, all those conducts that already constituted breaches of international law were criminalized. People started being punished and going to prison for those crimes. Thats what we saw after World War II at the Nuremberg and Tokyo war crimes trials, when Hitlers associates and leaders of the Empire of Japan were accused of having committed either war crimes, which was the largest category, or crimes of aggression.

A view of the exterior view of the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands. Photo: The Associated Press

What counts as a war crime?

Intentionally targeting civilians, attacks that result in undue civilian casualties, attacks on places such as historic monuments, health care facilities, schools, and other civilian sites.

Are war crimes being committed in Ukraine?

Whats happening now in Ukraine can be classified as two kinds of international crimes. One is the aggression of Russia against Ukraine. The invasion itself constitutes the crime of aggression. And then besides that, other conducts constitute war crimes. For example, the fact that Russia attacks Ukraines Holocaust memorial or attacks civilians, those acts would constitute war crimes under international law.

How difficult will it be to prove Russia has committed war crimes in Ukraine?

It should not be that difficult. For one thing, there is the fact that the Russian military has attacked a sovereign state. That constitutes the crime of aggression and is absolutely incontestable. But also, there could be additional crimes. And even though there is armed conflict in Ukraine right now, making access to certain areas difficult, documenting and proving war crimes is easier now than it was 30 years agowhat with cellphone cameras and satellites. With such technology, someone could document crimes and take the evidence outside the country, provided they have access to the internet. The entire world is watching what is unfolding in Ukraine. There have been videos posted to social media, and journalists and human rights groups are documenting eyewitness accounts of attacks on civilians.

Does the fact that neither Ukraine nor Russia are members of the ICC complicate matters when it comes to prosecuting those responsible for war crimes?

It does. Since Ukraine is not a member of the ICC, it cannot bring allegations of war crimes. Other ICC-member countries, however, can refer alleged crimes to the court. But as Russia is not a member of the court either, it is not legally required to give up its people for potential prosecution. This applies to individual criminal responsibility, but theres also the responsibility under general international law, and thats the responsibility of the state. So, in that sense, Ukraine could actually sue Russia and obtain compensation for damages, including damages for the killing of people and the commission of war crimes.
Fire at Ukrainian nuclear plant after Russian attack

Fire at Ukrainian nuclear plant after Russian attack

Russian troops attacked Europe's largest nuclear plant on Friday, starting a fire at the Ukrainian facility, with the country's leader accusing Moscow of "nuclear terror".



Local authorities reported no immediate radiation rise was detected and "essential" equipment was unaffected by the fire, but it remained unclear what the invading forces planned next.



President Volodymr Zelenskyy accused Moscow of trying to "repeat" the Chernobyl nuclear disaster and said he had spoken with international leaders including US President Joe Biden about the crisis at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant.



Biden urged Russia to allow emergency responders to go to the site.



Images on a live feed from the site earlier showed blasts lighting up the night sky and sending up plumes of smoke, with the International Atomic Energy Agency urging an immediate halt to fighting there.



"No country other than Russia has ever fired on nuclear power units," Zelenskyy said in a video message.



"This is the first time in our history. In the history of mankind. The terrorist state now resorted to nuclear terror."



Zelenskyy appealed for global help.



"If there is an explosion, it is the end of everything. The end of Europe. This is the evacuation of Europe. Only immediate European action can stop Russian troops," he said.



But after several hours of uncertainty, Ukrainian authorities said the site had been secured.



"The director of the plant said that the nuclear safety is now guaranteed," Oleksandr Starukh, head of the military administration of the Zaporizhzhia region, said on Facebook.



"According to those responsible for the plant, a training building and a laboratory were affected by the fire," he added.



And the IAEA said it had been told by Ukraine's regulator that "there has been no change reported in radiation levels at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant site."



"Ukraine tells IAEA that fire at site of Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant has not affected 'essential' equipment, plant personnel taking mitigatory actions," the watchdog added in a tweet.



Russia has intensified strikes across the country eight days into the conflict, with fresh reports of civilian casualties and devastating damage, particularly in southern areas near the first city to fall to Moscow's troops.



In a second round of talks held on Thursday, Moscow agreed to a Ukrainian request for humanitarian corridors to allow terrified residents to flee, but there was no immediate clarity on how they would work, and no sign of any move towards a ceasefire.



Zelenskyy called for direct talks with Putin, but also urged the West to step up military assistance and "give me planes."



The offensive has continued despite punishing international sanctions, and Zelenskyy warned other former Soviet states were now at risk of Russian attack.



"If we are no more then, God forbid, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia will be next," he told a news conference, adding that direct talks with Putin were "the only way to stop this war".



Much of the international community has rallied behind Ukraine since Putin attacked on February 24, making Russia a global outcast in the worlds of finance, diplomacy, sport and culture.



Western analysts say the attacking forces have become bogged down  but warn that the early failures could lead to a frustrated Moscow deciding to unleash all its power on Ukraine.



Putin's comments on Thursday did nothing to dispel that fear.



He said Russia was rooting out "neo-Nazis", adding in televised comments that he "will never give up on (his) conviction that Russians and Ukrainians are one people".



French President Emmanuel Macron, who spoke to Putin on Thursday, believes "the worst is to come," an aide said.



While a long military column appears stalled north of Ukraine's capital Kyiv, Russian troops have already seized Kherson, a Black Sea city of 290,000 people, after a three-day siege that left it short of food and medicine.



Russian troops are also pressuring the port city of Mariupol east of Kherson, which is without water or electricity in the depths of winter.



"They are trying to create a blockade here, just like in Leningrad," Mariupol mayor Vadym Boichenko said, referring to the brutal Nazi siege of Russia's second city, now re-named Saint Petersburg.



In the northern city of Chernihiv, 33 people died on Thursday when Russian forces hit residential areas, including schools and a high-rise apartment block.



And Ukrainian authorities said residential areas in the eastern city of Kharkiv had been "pounded all night" by indiscriminate shelling, which UN prosecutors are investigating as a possible war crime.



Many Ukrainians were digging in.



Volunteers in industrial hub Dnipro were making sandbags and collecting bottles for Molotov cocktails as they prepared for an onslaught.



In Lviv, volunteers organised food and supplies to send to other cities and produced home-made anti-tank obstacles after watching YouTube tutorials.



But for others, the worst has already come.



Oleg Rubak's wife Katia, 29, was crushed in their family home in Zhytomyr, west of Kyiv, by a Russian missile strike.



"One minute I saw her going into the bedroom. A minute later there was nothing," Rubak, 32, said amid the ruins in the bitter winter chill.



"I hope she's in heaven and all is perfect for her," he said, in tears.



Gesturing at the pile of rubble, he said what remained was "not even a room, it's... maybe it's hell."



The conflict has already produced more than one million refugees who have streamed into neighbouring countries to be welcomed by volunteers handing them water, food and giving them medical treatment.



Both the EU and the United States said they would approve temporary protection for all refugees fleeing the war  numbered by the United Nations at more than one million and counting.



"We left everything there as they came and ruined our lives," refugee Svitlana Mostepanenko said in Prague.



The fear of igniting all-out war with nuclear-armed Russia has put some limits on Western support for Ukraine, though a steady supply of weaponry and intelligence continues.



The main lever used to pressure Russia globally has been sanctions, piled on by the West.



The rouble has gone into free-fall, while Russia's central bank  whose foreign reserves have been frozen in the West  imposed a 30-percent tax on all sales of hard currency, following a run on lenders by ordinary Russians.



And Putin's offensive has seen some eastern European countries lean even harder West, with both Georgia and Moldova applying for EU membership on Thursday.



In Russia, authorities have imposed a media blackout on the fighting and two liberal media groups  Ekho Moskvy radio and TV network Dozhd  said they were halting operations, in another death-knell for independent reporting in Putin's Russia.



On Friday, Facebook and multiple media websites were partially inaccessible in Russia, as authorities crack down voices criticising the war. (AFP)
The sanctions imposed by the US and other nations on Russia may not have any major abrasive effect on India's Carborundum Universal Ltd (CUMI) and its Russian subsidiary Volzhsky Abrasive Plant, officials said. Last week, Russia launched a military attack against Ukraine, resulting in sanctions imposed by the US and other European countries. The Volzhsky Abrasive Plant makes silicon carbide, abrasive tools and refractories. Speaking to IANS on condition of anonymity, an industry source said: "As per the current situation, there will be no major impact on the business. The Russian company deals with different banks and will not be affected by the financial sanctions imposed on that country by the US and others." At an investor call last month, N. Ananthaseshan, Managing Director of CUMI, had said that 40 per cent of Volzhsky Abrasive Plant's sales gets done in Russia CIS and Ukraine is part of that sales group. "We also buy raw materials from Ukraine for our abrasives in Russia. So, the equation with the Russian suppliers and customers are pretty normal as of now. And that's why I said we don't see a major disruption happening on the ground while there are definitely a lot of noise in terms of the geopolitical equations," Ananthaseshan had said. Further, about 60 per cent of Volzhsky Abrasive Plant's production is shipped out to Europe and other countries, and as there are no sanctions on the products, so the company will not be affected, the industry official said. According to the official, what may impact Volzhsky Abrasive Plant is logistics if Russia's military action in Ukraine extends for a longer period of time, with shipping lines saying they may not call on Russian ports. However, CUMI did not respond to the questions sent by IANS. (Venkatachari Jagannathan can be reached at v.jagannathan@ians.in) --IANS vj/arm ( 316 Words) 2022-03-03-22:00:03 (IANS)
Hyderabad (Telangana) [India], March 4 (ANI/NewsVoir): Hyderabad based Chennais Amirta International Institute of Hotel Management (CAIIHM) a premier hospitality education institution of South India that has been grooming future leaders in the hospitality industry conducted a mega campus recruitment drive at Hyderabad recently. Whilst, 410 CAIIHM Hyderabad students attended the interview and bagged recruitment offers from their preferred Star properties like Le Meridian, Westin, Green Park, Marigold, Radisson Blu, Lemon Tree, Hampshire Plaza, Hotel Avasa, Hotel Daspalla, The Golkonda Hotel, Hyatt Place, Dolphin Hotel, Celebrity club, The Platinum Boutique, Deccan Serai, Amirta Castle, Minerva Grand, Aditya Park Sarovar Portico, Inox, Yashodha Hospital and overseas recruiters where students were recruited directly. Placements were given in their preferred Department and preferred locations including Hyderabad, Bangalore, Kerala, Goa, Daman, Gujarat, Mumbai and Udaipurin addition to reputed star properties & Chain link restaurants and overseas recruiters participated in this one-day mega campus drive. Virtual interviews were also conducted for the outstation eminent star properties like Hablis, Residency Towers, Green Park Chennai, MGM Resorts, JP Hotels, Classic Sarovar Portico, Fern Group of Hotels, Udai Vilas, Marriott, Oberoi group of hotels, Sheraton Group of Hotels, Sterling Group of Hotels and Apollo Sindoori Groups, in addition to overseas recruiters. Three of the CAIIHM students from Hyderabad landed up with lucrative job offers from one of Turkey's Five Star Properties. Speaking at the campus drive in Hyderabad, Boomee Naathan, Chairman, Chennais Amirta IIHM said, "It was heartening and encouraging seeing the participating hoteliers extremely happy recruiting our 400 plus students from Hyderabad, out of which three have been selected for a five-star property in Turkey. About 3575 vacancies were created by the Placement Department of Chennais Amirta for the benefit of students who attended this campus drive at Hyderabad." The campus drive was organised by Rajesh Kumar - Principal of Chennais Amirta IIHM, Balkampet Hyderabad campus and Kavitha Nandakumar - Chief advisor for Placement Department - Pan India. Founded in 2010, Chennais Amirta IIHM aims to groom high calibre hospitality professionals and set a benchmark in the hospitality academics across the world. With a tagline 'Think Hotel Management; Think Chennais Amirta', the institute reflects its strong brand identity in South India's hospitality industry, with rich and experienced faculty members, state-of-the-art- lab facilities and academics that are a perfect blend of theoretical knowledge, Industrial Exposure trainings and on job trainings for students. Part Time Job facility is another boon for the students who gets handsome salary while pursuing his studies helping him to meet his financial needs and also gets wider exposure and experience during his academic tenure. Despite the hospitality sector being badly affected by COVID-19, Chennais Amirta IIHM has consistently performed well and provided its students with 100 per cent placements. With 16 different courses offered across Hyderabad, Chennai and Bangalore, about 15000 students are part of the institute's alumni, who occupy key positions in most of the hotels across India and abroad. This story is provided by NewsVoir. ANI will not be responsible in any way for the content of this article. (ANI/NewsVoir)
The foreign currency assets, which is the biggest component of the forex reserves, dipped by USD 2.228 billion to USD 564.832 billion during the week under review, according to the RBI's weekly statistical supplement.

Expressed in US dollar terms, the foreign currency assets include the effect of appreciation or depreciation of non-dollar currencies like Euro, UK's Pound Sterling and Japanese Yen held in the foreign exchange reserves.

The value of India's Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) declined by USD 122 million to USD 19.04 billion. India's reserve position in the IMF dropped by USD 34 million to $5.187 billion.

However, the value of gold reserves rose by USD 958 million to USD 42.467 billion during the week under review, the RBI data showed. (ANI)
According to People, the 95-year-old monarch has recently made a donation to the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) Ukraine appeal to help civilians affected by Russia's military operation.

The update about Queen's donation was shared on DEC's Twitter handle.

"Many thanks to Her Majesty The Queen for continuing to support the Disasters Emergency Committee and for making a generous donation to the DEC Ukraine Humanitarian Appeal," the organization said.

Prior to Elizabeth, Prince Charles and Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall had an emotional meeting with Ukrainians in London.

The conflict began escalating after Russian President Vladimir Putin on February 24 announced the military operation in Ukraine and warned other countries that any attempt to interfere with the Russian action would lead to "consequences they have never seen", and since then thousands of Ukrainians, both civilians and troops, have been killed. (ANI)
Embracing her roots in the time of need, actor Mila Kunis has shared how her Ukrainian lineage magnified her desire to bring awareness to the Russian military operation in Ukraine. Kunis joined her husband Ashton Kutcher in a video posted on his Instagram handle and asked fans to help Ukraine, where she was born. The 'Black Swan' actor started the video by explaining that she was born in Chernivtsi, Ukraine in 1983 and came to America in 1991. She said, "I've always considered myself American, a proud American. I love everything this country has done for myself and my family. But today I have never been more proud to be Ukrainian." "I've never been more proud to be married to a Ukrainian," said Ashton showing support for his wife of almost seven years. According to E! News, following Russia's military operation in the country, Ashton has used his social media platform to bring attention to the attacks on Ukraine. Now, the 'That '70s Show' alums are looking to bring in donations for refugee aid. "The events that have unfolded in Ukraine are devastating. There is no place in this world for this kind of unjust attack on humanity," continued Mila. The couple, who tied the knot in 2015, plans to send the money to Flexport and AirBnB for assistance in providing housing and supplies to refugees in Poland, Romania, Hungary, Slovakia and Moldova. They are also raising money for relief efforts and promising to match up to USD 3 million. Mila concluded the video by saying, "The people of Ukraine are strong and brave but being strong and brave does not mean you're not worthy of support." As per E! News, other celebs who have also shown their support for Ukrainians amid the military operation includes, Sean Penn, Bethenny Frankel and Maksim Chmerkovskiy among others. (ANI)
Taking to his Twitter handle, Allen shared with his followers that he is "full of anger and disgust" with the recent events in Ukraine.

Allen wrote, "My mind and body are full of anger and disgust at the coward Putin ghouls that have attacked a sovereign country. This is the definition of wrong. My head, heart and soul pray for the people of Ukraine." He concluded his tweet by adding, "F-putin".

With this message, Allen has joined a long list of celebrities including Sean Penn, Lady Gaga, Cardi B, Madonna, Andrew Garfield, Mila Kunis, Bethenny Frankel and Maksim Chmerkovskiy among others, who have shown support for the citizens of Ukraine.

Meanwhile, amid the worsening situation between Russia and Ukraine, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Friday had urged world leaders to stop Russia "before this becomes a nuclear disaster" in a Facebook video post. (ANI)
The research, published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, could help develop new approaches to treating people with leukaemia - blood cancer.

The team from the University of East Anglia (UEA) and Quadram Institute found that immune cells known as macrophages could be programmed to attack the cancer cells through a protein known as STING (Stimulator of interferon genes), a well-established activator of the immune system.

"Our results provide insight into how the immune system is able to be utilised to attack cancers if given the right signals," said Stuart Rushworth, from UEA's Norwich Medical School.

"Patients often relapse following treatment for cancer, because small amounts of disease remain despite chemotherapy. Our research reveals that targeting this biological phenomenon could help eradicate leukaemia from the bone marrow," he added.

The researchers identified these mechanisms in the bone marrow of leukaemia patients and mouse models of acute myeloid leukaemia.

"At present, sadly chemotherapy is often not enough to cure people of leukaemia. In the future, I hope our findings will help improve treatments for people with leukaemia by priming their immune response to help the chemotherapy drugs work better," Rushworth said.

--IANS rvt/vd

( 219 Words)

2022-03-04-19:40:04 (IANS)
Bamboo Airways set to repatriate VN citizens from Ukraine on Mar.9

Budget carrier Bamboo Airways announced that it will launch the first repatriation flight to bring back Vietnamese citizens stranded in Ukraines war zones on March 9.









The Vietnamese Embassy in Poland has sent officials and staff to the Ukaine-Poland border to receive Vietnamese citizens for repatriation flights.





Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner will be used to bring Vietnamese citizens back from Warsaw (Poland), the airline said on March 4.



Besides Warsaw, Bamboo Airways has also planned to operate repatriation flights from Prague (Czech Republic), Bucharest (Romania), Budapest (Hungary), Bratislava (Slovakia), Moscow (Russia) and Minsk (Belarus).



Bamboo Airways, together with other airlines such as Vietnam Airlines and VietJet Air, are joining a special programme to repatriate Vietnamese citizens left stranded in Ukraine due to the armed conflict between Russia and Ukraine.



The citizens are getting help to leave Ukraine for neighbouring countries to board repatriation flights.


Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla on Thursday met the family of a student stranded in Ukraine, in his home constituency Kota, and informed them that their son has reached safely on the border of Slovakia and the government of India is making serious efforts to bring back all the stranded Indians including him from the Eastern European country. Speaking to the media here, Birla said, "Arpit Sharma has reached the Slovakia border and has been made to stay at a hotel. He would be brought to Delhi soon. The government of India is committed and serious efforts are underway to evacuate the stranded Indian students from Ukraine. During the war situation, until the time that the students do not reach the border from their home, the family remains worried and also the government. As soon as this came to my attention, I spoke to the EAM." Ankit Sharma, brother of Arpit, said that his brother is in the safe zone. "Om Birla came to our house and assured us of his safe return. He is in the safe zone, along with him all the others who have crossed the border and are there in Slovakia and are in the safe zone. He has spoken to the Ministry, they will bring our brother back at the soonest," he said. Meanwhile, the Ministry of External Affairs on Thursday said that a total of 18,000 Indian nationals have left Ukraine since the first travel advisory was issued by the Indian Embassy in Kyiv. As many as 18 flights are scheduled for the next 24 hours including three IAF C-17 and other commercials flights like Air India, Indigo, Spice jet, Go first and Go Air, said MEA official spokesperson Arindam Bagchi, speaking at the special briefing on Operation Ganga, to bring back Indian citizens from Ukraine amid Russia's military operation. (ANI)
The Supreme Court on Thursday quoted the principle of governance by Chanakaya in his "Nitishastra", as it set aside the appointment of Vice Chancellor of Sardar Patel University in Gujarat. A bench comprising Justices M.R. Shah and B.V. Nagarathna said: "The appointment of respondent No 4 as a Vice Chancellor of the SP University - respondent No.2 herein, is contrary to the UGC provisions, namely, UGC Regulations, 2018. We hence allow the present writ petition and issue a writ of quo warranto quashing and setting aside the appointment of respondent No.4 as the Vice Chancellor of SP University." Justice Shah, who authored the judgment on behalf of the bench, said: "Against the backdrop of principle of governance as quoted by Chanakya in his 'Nitishastra', 'Yatha Raja Tatha Praja', the sense of morality must begin from the door of the leader who preaches it". The bench said the universities are autonomous and the VC is the leader of a higher education institution. "As per the norm, he/she should be an eminent academician, excellent administrator and also someone who has a high moral stature," it added. Justice Shah said a VC needs to be one who understands and handles the affairs of the university as ethical business and maintains pellucidity in his conduct towards the betterment of the university as well as the students therein. "A Vice Chancellor should be one who can inspire students and guarantee entry of high-quality teachers into the university system. A Vice Chancellor functions as a bridge between the executive and academic wings of a university as he is the head of both a teacher and an administrator," said the bench in its 58-page judgment. The top court judgment came on a writ petition filed under Article 32 of the Constitution challenging the appointment of the VC of Sardar Patel University and sought quashing of the notification issued on August 29, 2019. The bench said it is clear that Gujarat has failed to take note of the communication from the UGC and instead ,the university has left to the sweet will of the search committee to prescribe eligibility criteria for the appointment of the VC. The UGC counsel argued that in a search committee for appointment as Vice Chancellor, one of the members of the search committee shall be a nominee of the Chairman of the UGC. "It has been clearly stated that the UGC has prescribed minimum qualifications for the appointment of a Vice Chancellor and therefore, such an appointment must be in accordance with the provisions laid down in the aforementioned regulations of the UGC," said the bench. The bench said the university's VC does not fulfil the eligibility criteria as per the UGC Regulations, 2018, namely, having ten years of teaching work experience as a professor in the university system. Petitioner Gambhirdan K. Gadhvi argued that ignoring a regulation of the UGC, a search committee was constituted under Section 10(2)(b) of the Sardar Patel University Act, 1955 on July 29, 2016, with no nominee of the Chairman of the UGC. The Gujarat High Court dismissed the plea by the petitioner in July 2018, holding that the UGC regulations had not been adopted by Gujarat and thus were not binding upon respondent university. The petitioner moved the top court against the high court order. --IANS ss/vd ( 567 Words) 2022-03-03-20:26:04 (IANS)
The move comes as a way to ease the energy crisis that may come due to Russian invasion of Ukraine.

The IEA's plan for the EU recommends accelerated deployment of renewable energy such as wind and solar. The plan highlights that depending on existing coal infrastructure will be extremely costly and not in line with EU's climate objectives.

Fatih Birol, IEA Executive Director, released the plan via virtual press conference along with the French Minister for Ecological Transition Barbara Pompili and European Commissioner for Energy Kadri Simson.

Birol highlighted that energy efficiency, increasing gas storage requirement, accelerated wind and solar energy deployment, temporary use of existing low carbon infrastructure, and reducing wasteful consumption, could reduce Russian gas imports by one-third within this year.

He further stated that continued investments and cutting red tape in renewable energy deployment could help the EU reach its decarbonisation goal in accordance with EU's climate policy.

IEA's analysis acknowledged that relying on coal-fired power plants and oil as substitutes for Russian gas imports would not only go against the EU's green policy but also prove to be extremely costly.

Financing new coal projects has become increasingly difficult as financial institutes and banks are increasingly moving away from coal projects due to financial and reputational risk.

IEA's recent report on methane highlighted how coal mines are now the single largest source of methane emissions from the power sector.

At the press meet, Barbara Pompili, French Minister for Ecological Transition, stressed the importance of having long-term clean energy measures alongside short-term diversification.

"More than ever, getting rid of Russian fossil fuels and of fossil fuels in general, is essential... Each additional wind turbine or solar panel in Europe is a step forward for our energy independence."

As Russia-Ukraine conflict intensifies and extends, global commodity prices have skyrocketed. Highlighting the need for countries to move towards low-carbon sources such as wind and solar as a way for energy independence.

German Finance Minister Christian Lindner called "renewable energy is freedom energy" while supporting Germany's new pledge to reach 100 per cent renewable electricity by 2035.

--IANS vg/skp/

( 388 Words)

2022-03-03-20:30:02 (IANS)
Telangana Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao met BJP MP Subramanian Swamy and farmer leader Rakesh Tikait in the national capital on Thursday. The three leaders discussed the current political situation in the country, party sources said. KCR, as Rao is popularly known, has been camping in the national capital for the past few days. He is due to visit Ranchi on Friday, party sources said. The Telangana CM has lately intensified efforts to take on the ruling BJP at the Centre. He has been reaching out to regional leaders in different states as part of his plans to forge an anti-BJP alliance at the national level. Ahead of his arrival in Delhi on Monday night, there were talks that KCR would meet leaders of opposition parties, including Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and Samajwadi Party leader Akhilesh Yadav. It was also speculated that he is likely to join West Bengal Chief Minister and Trinamool Congress leader Mamata Banerjee at a Samajwadi Party election rally in Varanasi on Thursday. There have been no developments on this front so far. Bharatiya Kisan Union (BKU) leader Rakesh Tikait had led the farmers' protests against the three Central farm laws, which have been since repealed by the government. Tikait has been critical of the BJP. Of late, BJP's Rajya Sabha MP Subramanian Swamy has been critical of the Central government's handling of different issues. As part of his exercise to reach out to political leaders in other parts of the country, KCR had recently travelled to Mumbai where he met Maharashtra Chief Minister and Shiva Sena leader Uddhav Thackeray. He had also met NCP chief Sharad Pawar on that occasion. With the BJP trying to emerge as an alternative to the ruling TRS in Telangana, relations between the two have taken a turn for the worse over the last few months. --IANS pvn/arm ( 323 Words) 2022-03-03-20:36:03 (IANS)
In a tragic incident, 4 teens, including 3 from Nashik on a picnic, drowned at the Kelwe Beach while trying to rescue a 13-year-old boy who was being swept away in strong currents of a whirlpool during high tide, here on Thursday, police said. One 17-year-old boy, Abhilekh Devare, who was also sucked in by the swirling waters, but could swim, was pulled ashore with a rope thrown by a local tongawala (cart owner), said an official. The 3 victims were part of a 39-strong group of junior college students, including 11 girls, accompanied by 5 teachers, who arrived here in a tourist bus for a day's picnic at the picturesque Kelwe Beach, when the tragedy struck. The deceased have been identified as Deepak Vadkate, Om Vispute and Krishna Shelar, all aged 17, and residents of Brahma Valley in Nashik, besides the local boy Atharve Nakhre. According to Palghar Dy SP Nita Padvi, the picnickers were enjoying on the isolated Arabian Sea beach, presently lined with sandbags stacked on a km long stretch to prevent erosion. At that time, a local village boy Atharva Nakhre, who was playing with his young friends, was trapped in Arabian Sea waters as the levels suddenly rose in the high-tide. Hearing his screams for help, some of the Nashik boys jumped in the water to rescue him, but they could not battle the currents and were swept off in the Arabian Sea. Their college-mates and teachers raised cries for help but there were no people around on a weekday, though the tongawala, Rashid Khan managed to reach and save one boy from the waters. After several hours of search by police and local villagers, the bodies of all the victims were fished out of the waters and after autopsy, shall be handed over to their families, said Patil. A local resident, R. Mukne claimed that in the past over a decade there have been at least 15 incidents of drownings on the Kelwe Beach which is mostly deserted, and frequented by few from other cities like Mumbai, Pune, Thane, Nashik, etc. The local village panchayat has erected warning signs and appointed two lifeguards to man the beach, but many visitors prefer to go to the far end of the beach and risk their lives where deadly whirlpools are known to form regularly, he said. --IANS qn/skp/ ( 407 Words) 2022-03-03-20:36:04 (IANS)
Andhra Pradesh's minister for municipal administration Botsa Satyanarayana said on Thursday that the state government remains committed to its decision to develop three state capitals. He told reporters that three capital Bills will soon be tabled in the Assembly. His statement came hours after Andhra Pradesh High Court pronounced its orders on petitions filed by Amaravati farmers challenging trifurcation of the capital. He said the government would react to the verdict after going through the judgment. He said the government will examine the details in the judgment and then decide whether to challenge it in the Supreme Court or not. The minister said that the YSR Congress Party government's policy is to develop three capitals to ensure decentralization and development of all regions. The Andhra Pradesh High Court on Thursday directed the state government to complete implementation of Amaravati capital city master plan in six months. The court also asked the government to hand over developed plots with all basic amenities to farmers within three months. The government was also asked not to alienate lands in Amaravati for any purpose other than development of state capital. The court said that the Legislature has no legislative competence to pass any resolution/law for change of capital or bifurcating or trifurcating the capital city. A three-judge bench headed by Chief Justice Prashant Kumar Mishra pronounced the judgment on 75 petitions filed by Amaravati farmers and others challenging the government's move for trifurcation of state capital. The court directed the government to keep it informed about the development works taken up as per capital city master plan. "How can the plots be given in three months. We have to see whether this is practical or not," the minister remarked. Botsa Satyanarayana also argued that state legislature and Parliament have the right to make legislation. He also contended that the state legislature can also make laws with regard to the state capitals. --IANS ms/skp/ ( 330 Words) 2022-03-03-20:42:02 (IANS)
Still smarting from the humiliation of being pipped to the post after the 2017 Assembly elections in Goa, the Congress in the coastal state appears to have prepared a choreographed programme for claiming power on March 10, when votes polled in the February 14 Assembly polls are scheduled to be counted. According to former Ports Minister Michael Lobo, the Congress is confident of coming to power in Goa and has even set a timeline for making a claim to form the government this time around. "The Congress candidates who become MLAs will not split this time. We will give a good government. By 3 pm on March 10, the results will be out, and the Congress will stake claim to form the government by 5 pm," Lobo told reporters. "Those in power now will go to the opposition soon... They need not worry," Lobo said. "But they should not think that we will split this time. No one will split. We are all strong. People from other parties are in touch with us. They have told us that they do not want to go to the other side," he added. Interestingly, Lobo was a BJP MLA from 2012-2022 and joined the Congress just ahead of the February 14 Assembly elections. After the 2017 Assembly poll results were declared, Lobo was one of the key BJP leaders who was instrumental in shepherding some non-BJP legislators into the saffron camp, enabling late Manohar Parrikar to stake claim to form a BJP-led coalition government. After the Assembly polls in 2017, the Congress had emerged as the single largest party, but delay on its part to approach the Raj Bhavan with requisite numbers helped the BJP stake claim to power. Lobo, who was appointed as a Ports Minister during the BJP's second stint in power, quit the BJP accusing the state leadership of neglecting the party's cadre. --IANS maya/arm ( 329 Words) 2022-03-03-20:44:03 (IANS)
A module of cyber crooks, who used to defraud people pan-India by hacking their Gmail accounts, has been busted by Delhi Police with the arrest of two M.Com students, an official said here on Thursday. The accused have been identified as Anurag Kumar Singh and Vikas Kumar Maddheshiya, both pursuing their M.Com in Prayagraj. The duo reveled that they were trained to compromise Gmail accounts by a pan-India gang over Zoom meetings. The police termed it as a "major internet security issue and a matter of concern". Furnishing details about the matter, DCP Brijendra Kumar Yadav said that a case was registered based on a complaint received on the NCRP portal, which said that a man was defrauded of Rs 89,100 in a clandestine manner. A transaction was made from his SBI account even though he did not share the OTP with anyone, as he was sleeping at that time. Accordingly, the police registered a case under Section 420 of the Indian Penal Code and took up the investigation. "Information was sought from Flipkart which provided two email accounts that were used by the fraudsters to purchase Google gift cards. SBI Credit Card officials provided data of the transactions carried out by the fraudsters," the DCP said. From both the links, a common IP address was identified. Cyber-tracking conducted after information was received from Flipkart helped the police trace the accused persons to the ADA Colony in Prayagraj. A raid was conducted at the specified location from where both the accused were arrested. During interrogation, the duo revealed that they hacked the Gmail accounts of the victims, and once access was obtained, they committed financial fraud using the bank/credit/debit card details with the help of their associate, Prabhakar Vikram Singh, who is yet to be arrested. It was further revealed that so far, they compromised more than 25 Gmail accounts and defrauded people of lakhs of rupees. A search is on to nab the remaining accused person. --IANS uj/arm ( 339 Words) 2022-03-03-21:36:02 (IANS)
Tamil Nadu Water Resources Minister S. Durai Murugan on Thursday urged his Kerala counterpart Roshy Augustine to restore permission for felling 15 trees in Mullaperiyar dam site, saying this was part of the directive of the Supreme Court to strengthen the dam. In a letter to Augustine, he said that the Kerala Water Resources and Forest Departments were denying permission to convey the materials and machinery to the dam site for carrying out routine maintenance works, which were. as per the guidelines of the Central Water Commission as well as in compliance with the orders of the Supreme Court dated February 27, 2006, and May 7,2014. The Tamil Nadu minister said that the Kerala government must revoke its order dated November 11, 2021, at the earliest and restore the permission issued for the felling of 15 trees. He said that the Kerala government has been requesting the installation of a seismograph and accelograph in the dam site which was also recommended by the Central Water Commission. The senior DMK leader said that while the machines are ready for installation through the National Geo Physical Research Institute, Hyderabad, the Kerala Forest Department has not permitted the transport of materials for installing them. Durai Murugan wanted the Kerala minister to personally intervene in the matter and requested an urgent and positive response from him, noting that Mullaperiyar is vital for the farmers in his state's five drought-prone districts - Madurai, Dindigul, Theni, Sivagangai, and Ramanathapuram - for drinking water needs and for their livelihood. --IANS aal/vd ( 265 Words) 2022-03-03-21:50:03 (IANS)
The 'greenfield airport' in Hollongi is 15 km from the state's capital Itanagar and is being developed by the Airports Authority of India (AAI).

The airport is planned for operationalisation on August 15, the Ministry of Civil Aviation said in a statement, adding that the project, with an estimated cost of Rs 645 crore, includes construction of airport pavements, airside work, terminal building and city side works.

According to the ministry, the proposed airport is designed for operations of A-320 category of aircraft and future extension of runway by 500 metre length to cater A-321 type of aircraft. Besides, the airport will feature a terminal building that will be able to handle 200 passengers during peak hours.

"Equipped with eight check-in counters, the terminal building will have all modern passenger facilities," the statement said.

"Development work is in full swing and almost 80 per cent of airside works is completed," the ministry said.

Furthermore, the progress of construction of new interim terminal building is 30 per cent, it added.

As per the ministry, the terminal will be an energy efficient building provisioned with 'Rain Water Harvesting' system and sustainable landscape.

"The development work also includes construction of ATC tower cum technical block, fire station, medical centre and other ancillary works," it added.

--IANS rv/shs

( 246 Words)

2022-03-03-21:54:03 (IANS)
The over two-month-long hectic poll campaign for the second phase of the 60-member Manipur Assembly elections came to an end on Thursday afternoon ahead of voting on Saturday for the remaining 22 seats in six districts. Election Officials said that more than 300 companies of Central paramilitary forces have been deployed in the second phase in Thoubal, Jiribam, Chandel, Ukhrul, Senapati and Tamenglong districts for Saturday's polling. Thoubal falls in the valley area while the other five districts are in the mountainous areas bordering Assam and Nagaland, as well as Myanmar, making security forces maintain high vigil along both the international and the inter-state borders. According to the election officials, an electorate of 8,47,400, including 4,28,968 women, would cast their votes in 1,247 polling stations to decide the electoral fate of 92 candidates including two women. Eelection officials said that as part of a series of measures for a Covid-safe election, mandatory sanitisation of the polling stations was done in all six districts. Saturday's balloting would settle the electoral fortunes of three time (2002-2017) Chief Minister Okram Ibobi Singh, of the Congress, as well as several BJP ministers and sitting MLAs. The 74-year-old veteran leader, Singh is contesting from the Thoubal Assembly seat in Thoubal district and is locked in a four-corner contest against BJP's Leitanthem Basanta Singh, Janata Dal-United's Irom Chaoba Singh and Shiv Sena's Konsam Michael Singh. The main opposition Congress did not field candidates in four of the 22 Assembly seats -- Chandel, Mao, Tadubi, Tamenglong and the political circles observed that it is tacitly supporting the candidates of National People's Party (NPP), headed by Meghalaya Chief Minister Conrad K. Sangma, which is an ally of the BJP in both Meghalaya and Manipur since 2017, but contesting separately in Manipur this time. The campaign has seen Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, BJP President J.P. Nadda, Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, his Tripura counterpart Biplab Kumar Deb, NPP supremo Sangma, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, party General Secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, Rajya Sabha Member Jairam Ramesh canvassing for their respective party candidates. The BJP had bagged 21 seats in 2017 and came to power in the state for the first time, after stitching together a coalition government, with various parties including the NPP and the Naga People's Front (NPF). However, this time, all three are contesting separately and put up candidates against each other. The Congress, which governed the state for 15 consecutive years till 2017, had formed a Manipur Progressive Secular Alliance after forging a pre-poll alliance with four Left parties and Janata Dal-Secular. The first phase of polling was held in 38 seats on February 28, when 88.63 per cent of 12,09,439 voters exercised their franchise. Votes will be counted on March 10. --IANS sc/vd ( 478 Words) 2022-03-03-22:02:03 (IANS)
The Odisha government on Thursday nominated special representatives in four countries to coordinate the smooth evacuation of people from the state stuck in different border points of war-torn Ukraine. Issuing an order to this effect, Odisha Chief Secretary S.M. Mahapatra said that owing to the crisis prevailing in Ukraine, a number of people, especially students, from Odisha are still stranded in Ukraine who need to be evacuated. Also, a number of students/professionals from Odisha have crossed over to the neighbouring countries like Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia from where they are being evacuated by the Ministry of External Affairs by special flights, Mahapatra said. In this backdrop, the Odisha government has decided to nominate four special representatives to the four countries to coordinate with the Resident Commissioner, New Delhi, and the respective countries to ensure smooth evacuation of students and other Odia people from Ukraine, especially from the border locations. Vice President of KIIT University, Vikramaditya, has been nominated for Poland, while Arushi Ray, who works for UNHCR, has been appointed for Hungary. Similarly, Baishali Mohanty, UN policy officer, WFP, Rome, will make necessary coordination for evacuation of Odia people at the Romania border, whereas Anurag Pattnaik, a consultant based in Hungary, will look after the evacuation of Odia people from the border point in Slovakia. The Resident Commissioner's office in New Delhi will be the nodal office for the purpose. The entire expenses for the purpose will be met out of the Chief Minister's Relief Fund (CMRF), said the Chief Secretary. --IANS bbm/arm ( 267 Words) 2022-03-03-23:16:05 (IANS)
The businessman allegedly cheated the government by exporting carpets of inferior quality, showing them as silk carpets.

The accused businessman has been identified as Irfan Rashid. The DRI teams were given instructions to look into the matter by Nitin Saini, Afditional Director General of DRI.

The carpets were of inferior quality, while the businessman had claimed that they were made using silk and had demanded incentives.

On silk materials, the government pays high incentives whereas on other materials, less incentives are paid.

The DRI officials have produced Rashid before a concerned court, which remanded him to 14-day judicial custody.

Sources have suggested that many Srinagar-based firms export carpets and the DRI teams will look into their claims and the materials supplied by them. If found guilty, action will be taken against them.

The accused, who reportedly ran four firms, exported carpets to Dubai since 2018.

--IANS atk/arm

( 195 Words)

2022-03-03-23:22:03 (IANS)
A special flight from Hungary carrying 219 Indian nationals stranded in conflict-torn Ukraine reached Delhi on Friday. The special IndiGo flight under Operation Ganga departed from Hungary's capital Budapest on Thursday. Minister of State for Home Affairs Nisith Pramanik received the Indian students on their arrival at Indira Gandhi International Airport. He also interacted with the students. "We are getting successful in evacuating all the stranded Indian students in Ukraine. The four ministers deployed under the guidance of PM Modi are working very hard. All evacuated students have a zeal and respect for India. They thanked the Government of India and were happy," Pramanik told ANI. The Ministry of External Affairs, in close coordination with the Ministry of Civil Aviation, is making all efforts to bring the Indian students back to India at a fast pace. Four Union Ministers -- Hardeep Singh Puri, Jyotiraditya M Scindia, Kiren Rijiju and Gen (Retd) VK Singh -- have gone to countries adjoining Ukraine to support and supervise evacuation operations. Indian civilian planes as well as Indian Air Force planes are regularly bringing back stranded Indian students. The Ministry of External Affairs said more than 7,400 persons are expected to be brought through special flights in the next two days. Further, 3,500 persons are expected to be brought back on Friday and over 3900 on March 5. Russian forces launched military operations in Ukraine on February 24, three days after Moscow recognized Ukraine's breakaway regions - Donetsk and Luhansk - as independent entities.Several countries including the UK, the US, Canada, and the European Union have condemned Russia's military operations in Ukraine and imposed sanctions on Moscow. These countries have also promised Ukraine to help with military aid to fight Russia. The US, Canada and European allies agreed to remove key Russian banks from the interbank messaging system, SWIFT which means Russian banks won't be able to communicate securely with banks beyond Russia's borders. President Putin has also signed a decree on special economic measures against the US and its allies. (ANI)
Calling for the assassination of Russian President Vladimir Putin, US Republican Senator Lindsey Graham asked whether there is a Brutus or a "more successful" Colonel Stauffenberg in the Russian military. Julius Caesar, a Roman general, was assassinated by Brutus while Colonel Stauffenberg, a German army officer, had attempted to assassinate Adolf Hitler on July 20, 1944. In a series of tweets, Graham said, "Is there a Brutus in Russia? Is there a more successful Colonel Stauffenberg in the Russian military? The only way this ends is for somebody in Russia to take this guy out. You would be doing your country - and the world - a great service." He further said, "The only people who can fix this are the Russian people. Easy to say, hard to do. Unless you want to live in darkness for the rest of your life, be isolated from the rest of the world in abject poverty, and live in darkness you need to step up to the plate." (ANI)
BSF, in a statement, said, "Acting on specific inputs, troops of 1 Bn BSF, Mizoram and Cachar Frontier rescued 23 cattle from three vehicles meant for smuggling to Bangladesh on NH - 6 at Hilara area in Cachar district on Thursday (March 3)."

Recently, Director General of Border Security Force (BSF) Pankaj Kumar Singh had said that the border guarding force is using technologically advanced devices to stop cattle smuggling along the India-Bangladesh border. (ANI)
Ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's election campaign in his Lok Sabha constituency Varanasi, Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan has urged people to greet and welcome him in large numbers on Friday. The Prime Minister, who has been on the campaign trail for the seven-phased Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections, will be holding rallies and roadshows in the district today. "The Prime Minister is going to come tomorrow (Friday), will you be there? PM Modi will come to greet you. It is my invitation to you all that you come," the minister said while addressing 'Yuva Samvaad' at DAV Degree College in Daranagar, Uttar Pradesh on Thursday. Speaking to children at the school about the Ukraine crisis the minister said that several Indian students have been evacuated and more are to set to return under the leadership of the Prime Minister. "There is a war going on between Russia and Ukraine. Indian students are stranded there. Today, when I read the newspaper in the morning, I read that about 4,000 students have returned to the country. In the forthcoming days, the Government of India under the leadership of the Prime Minister will bring all the people back and not leave anyone behind." The minister also urged the people to vote in large numbers in the seventh phase of the Assembly elections in the state. "Celebrating the festival of democracy, people of Varanasi on March 7 should cast 70 per cent votes," he said. Heaping praise for the Prime Minister, the minister said, "PM Modi has brought New Education Policy. It's been 75 years since independence. I say this with great humility, even admit it, and I am not the one to run away from it. We can say today that the youth of our country are self-reliant in terms of employment." Urging the voters to chose wisely, the minister said, "A decisive government is needed for progress. There will be a corruption-free system, only then society will progress. We have resolved to serve you with this kind of decisive leadership. Today, the sixth phase of the state Assembly elections is over. After four days, you will have to decide whether a decisive government will be formed in the state, or a communal government will be formed." He also said, "I will keep my side in democracy. I cannot say that my system is right and this is the speciality of the republic. It is the feature of democracy that the people vote in four kinds of elections. The irony is, the educated don't vote in our country. It is everyone's responsibility that we vote. There is also an appeal to the students that they must come to vote." The Prime Minister's Lok Sabha constituency Varanasi will go to the polls on March 7. Varanasi district comprises Pindra, Ajagara, Shivpur, Rohaniya, Varanasi North, Varanasi South, Varanasi Cantt, and Sevapuri Assembly seats. A total of 54 Assembly seats across nine districts including Azamgarh, Mau, Jaunpur, Ghazipur, Chandauli, Varanasi, Mirzapur, Bhadohi and Sonbhadra, will go to polls in the seventh and final phase. (ANI)
Rishab Kaushik, a Dehradun resident who refused to leave war-torn Ukraine without his pet dog Maliboo, arrived in India early on Friday via Budapest (Hungary). Kaushik is an undergraduate student of software engineering at the Kharkiv National University of Radio Electronics Engineering. He had posted a video on Instagram regarding the difficulties he is facing in bringing his dog along with him to India, urging the Government to allow NOC. His video led People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) to appeal to the Indian government to press for allowing the Indians to take their pets along with in the flights. Earlier on Tuesday, the Government of India issued a memorandum facilitating "a one-time relaxation measure" for bringing back pet dogs and cats along with stranded Indians who are being evacuated from war-hit Ukraine. "There was a lot of documentation in India, the procedure was long. But in war-like situations, they should've allowed their own citizens. So, I had put up the appeal. A memorandum had come recently which stated that pets and even strays are now being allowed without NOC," Kaushik told ANI. A special flight from Hungary carrying 219 Indian nationals stranded in conflict-torn Ukraine reached Delhi on Friday. The special IndiGo flight under Operation Ganga departed from Hungary's capital Budapest on Thursday. Minister of State for Home Affairs Nisith Pramanik received the Indian students on their arrival at Indira Gandhi International Airport. He also interacted with the students. The Ministry of External Affairs, in close coordination with the Ministry of Civil Aviation, is making all efforts to bring the Indian students back to India at a fast pace. Four Union Ministers -- Hardeep Singh Puri, Jyotiraditya M Scindia, Kiren Rijiju and Gen (Retd) VK Singh -- have gone to countries adjoining Ukraine to support and supervise evacuation operations. Indian civilian planes as well as Indian Air Force planes are regularly bringing back stranded Indian students. The Ministry of External Affairs said more than 7,400 persons are expected to be brought through special flights in the next two days. Further, 3,500 persons are expected to be brought back on Friday and over 3,900 on March 5. Russian forces launched military operations in Ukraine on February 24, three days after Moscow recognized Ukraine's breakaway regions - Donetsk and Luhansk - as independent entities. Several countries including the UK, the US, Canada, and the European Union have condemned Russia's military operations in Ukraine and imposed sanctions on Moscow. These countries have also promised Ukraine to help with military aid to fight Russia.The US, Canada and European allies agreed to remove key Russian banks from the interbank messaging system, SWIFT which means Russian banks won't be able to communicate securely with banks beyond Russia's borders. President Putin has also signed a decree on special economic measures against the US and its allies. (ANI)
A 60-year-old woman poured kerosene oil on herself and tried to set herself ablaze at the gate of Mantralaya in Mumbai on Thursday evening on the first day of the new session of the Maharashtra Assembly, said the police. The police intervened and saved her in time, added the police. She demanded action against the Police officer concerned and the repeal of an FIR against her, stated the police. The budget session of the Maharashtra Assembly commenced on March 3 and will culminate on March 25. Meanwhile, the budget for 2022-23 will be presented in the Assembly on March 11. (ANI)
The Supreme Court on Friday set March 11 to hear plea challenging Allahabad High Court order, which granted bail to the prime accused in the Lakhimpur Kheri incident case, Ashish Mishra, who is the son of Union Minister of State for Home Affairs Ajay Mishra Teni. Advocate Prashant Bhushan had sought an urgent hearing on the appeal against the Allahabad High Court order, before a bench headed by Chief Justice of India NV Ramana. He apprised the Court that others accused in the case are now moving bail plea on the ground of parity to the relief granted to Ashish Mishra. The top court agreed to hear it. Family members of the victims of the Lakhimpur Kheri incident have moved Supreme Court challenging Allahabad High Court order, which granted bail to Ashish Mishra. The petition was filed through Advocate Prashant Bhushan. In the Special Leave Petition, family members of the deceased in the incident have challenged the Allahabad High Court order dated February 10, 2022, wherein Ashish Mishra has granted regular bail. The petitioner said that the Allahabad High Court order is "unsustainable in law". They also said that they have approached the Apex Court as the Uttar Pradesh state has failed to prefer anyappeal against the impugned order. "The lack of any discussion in the High Court's order as regards the settled principles for grant of bail is on account of lack of any substantive submissions to this effect by the state as the accused wields substantial influence over the State government as his father is a Union Minister from the same political party that rules the state," read the petition. "The impugned order is unsustainable in eyes of law as there has been no meaningful and effective assistance by the state to the court in the matter contrary to the object of the first Proviso to Section 439 of Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973, which provides that in grave offences notice of bail application should ordinarily be given to the Public Prosecutor," said the petitioner. Even the victims were prevented from bringing the relevant material as regards the settled principles for grant of bail to notice of High Court as their counsel 'got' disconnected from the hearing on January 18, 2022, before he could barely make any submissions and repeated calls to the court staff to get reconnected were to no avail and application filed by the victims/petitioners, the petition said. "Contrary to settled law, the High Court failed to form its opinion on the basis of the chargesheet on broad probabilities and has instead gone on the basis of far-fetched imaginary possibilities. The High Court observed that there might be a possibility that the driver tried to speed up the vehicle to save himself, on account of which, the incident had taken place is perverse especially when there was nothing on record to show the same. There is evidence in fact in the chargesheet to the contrary showing that the vehicles had been dashing at high speeds of 70-100 km/hr from the time they left the venue of the 'dangal'; when they passed the petrol pump; when they crossed the police crossing; all the way to the scene of the crime; and the same has been attested to by various eyewitnesses including police officials on duty, the petition stated. The petitioner said that Allahabad High Court has not considered the heinous nature of the crime; the character of the overwhelming evidence against the accused in the chargesheet; the position and status of the accused with reference to the victim and witnesses. The likelihood of the accused fleeing from justice and repeating the offence and the possibility of his tampering with the witnesses and obstructing the course of justice while granting relief to the accused. Ashish Mishra was released from jail last month followed by Allahabad High Court granting him bail. Eight people, including four farmers, had died in violence on October 3, 2020, in Lakhimpur Kheri. (ANI)
To equip the Central Armed Police Forces (CAPFs) with modern state-of-the-art weapons and equipment as per their operational requirement, the Ministry of Home Affairs on Friday has approved the scheme - Modernisation Plan-IV. It has been done in continuation of the scheme "Modernisation Plan- III" for CAPFs. A statement by MHA reads that Modernisation Plan-IV for CAPFs with a total financial outlay of Rs 1,523 crore is to be implemented by the Ministry of Home Affairs under the guidance of Union Home Minister Amit Shah from February 1, 2020, to March 31, 2026 and will equip the CAPFs with modern state-of-the-art weapons and equipment as per their operational requirement, keeping in view their deployment pattern in different theatres. Besides, upgraded IT solutions will also be provided to CAPFs. Implementation of the scheme will equip CAPFs to improve the overall operational efficiency/preparedness which will positively impact the internal security scenario in the country. This would bolster the Government's ability to address the challenges being faced on the International Border/LoC/LAC as well as in the different theatres, such as areas affected by Left Wing Extremism, Union Territories of Jammu and Kashmir, Ladakh and insurgency affected North Eastern States, the statement further reads. (ANI)
The Maharashtra politician tweeted "Extremely honoured and delighted to have inaugurated the @AkshyaChaitanya kitchen in Mumbai, this morning along with Prabhu Chanchalapathi Dasa and Mayor @KishoriPednekar Ji."

In another thread, he mentioned his keen interest in the project which aims at serving nutritious hot meals to school children in Mumbai and stated "I have been really keen on bringing Akshayapatra and Akshaya Chaitanya's spiritual work of serving nutritious hot meals to school children in our city and state."

This kitchen in Byculla is set to serve nutritious breakfast every day to more than 6,500 school kids in BMC schools and 1,800 meals to families of patients in various Govt hospitals in Mumbai.

The Shiv Sena leader also tweeted about scaling up the project, "We will scale this service up, to serve all schools with nutritious breakfast, working closely with @AkshyaChaitanya and its family of supporters while our women self-help groups cook and serve lunch. 2 health meals for school children!" (ANI)
Amid the ongoing conflict between Ukraine and Russia, the Art of Living organisation has been helping Indian students and other refugees to evacuate to safety. In line with the Indian government's Operation Ganga to evacuate Indian nations from the war-torn country, the organisation said that it has helped nearly 1,200 students to evacuate to safety. An Indian student who crossed over to Poland with Art of Living's help, thanked the founder, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar over video call and said, "The situation is not good. People are not treating us equally. We have just crossed the border; the journey was long but there were so many people helping us. I thank you guys (Art of Living) for helping us." Swami Jyothirmaya, Director of Art of Living Europe informed that to date, the organisation has helped 420 refugees in Poland and has also delivered medical supplies to Ukraine. "I am in Ukraine-Poland border. We are accommodating 500 refugees in our Ashram here. Our volunteers are also accomodating people in their houses. The same is happening in Hungary," he said. The organisation has arranged for mattresses, blankets for the refugees in their Taraska centre. Two buses have also been rented for the transport of the refugees. "About 50 seva volunteers are involved in Poland. There is a 24-hour hotline. About 40 homes are ready to host refugees," Jyothirmaya said. This comes against the backdrop of Russian forces launching military operations in Ukraine on February 24, three days after Moscow recognized Ukraine's breakaway regions - Donetsk and Luhansk - as independent entities. Several countries including the UK, the US, Canada, and the European Union have condemned Russia's military operations in Ukraine and imposed sanctions on Moscow. These countries have also promised Ukraine to help with military aid to fight Russia. The US, Canada and European allies agreed to remove key Russian banks from the interbank messaging system, SWIFT which means Russian banks won't be able to communicate securely with banks beyond Russia's borders. President Putin has also signed a decree on special economic measures against the US and its allies. (ANI)
As many as 184 students returned from Ukraine at 12.15 pm on Friday. The students reached Budapest and were evacuated from there in Air India IX 1602.

According to MoS External Affairs Meenakshi Lekhi, so far 9,000 Indian citizens have returned from the war-torn country.

Three more Indian Air Force's C-17 aircraft returned to Hindan airbase late last night and early morning today carrying 630 Indian nationals from Ukraine, using airfields in Romania and Hungary under Operation Ganga.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday chaired a meeting to discuss the ongoing evacuation drive of Indian nationals and the situation in conflict-hit Ukraine.

The meeting was attended by External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, Minister of Commerce & Industry Piyush Goyal, Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla, National Security Advisor (NSA) Ajit Doval and other senior officials.

The Prime minister had on Monday chaired two meetings to review the ongoing efforts under Operation Ganga for the return of Indians from Ukraine amid military operations by Russia.

Another meeting was held on Sunday. The Cabinet Committee on Security had met on February 24 in the wake of Russian military actions in Ukraine.The Centre has ramped up efforts to evacuate Indian citizens stranded in Ukraine amid heightened tensions.

The government has also deployed 'special envoys' to four neighbouring countries bordering Ukraine to coordinate and oversee the evacuation process of Indian nationals.

Union Minister for Petroleum and Natural Gas Hardeep Singh Puri is overseeing evacuation efforts in Hungary, Union Law Minister Kiren Rijiju in Slovakia, Civil Aviation Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia in Romania and Minister of State for Road Transport & Highways and Civil Aviation Gen VK Singh in Poland. (ANI)
Railways Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw on Friday witnessed the functioning of 'Kavach', an indigenously designed Automatic Train Protection (ATP) system in Hyderabad. The minister informed that Kavach is Safety Integrity Level (SIL-4) certified which is the highest level of safety certification. Speaking to media persons, Vaishnaw said, "Future plan is to roll it out very rapidly and export it to other countries also. This year we will roll it out on 2,000 Kms and in coming years 4,000-5,000 Kms every year." This technology has been built to help the Railways achieve the goal of "zero accidents". Kavach has been designed to bring the train to a halt automatically when it notices another train on the same track within a safe distance, the minister said. "If there are chances of a head-on collision between two trains, then Kavach automatically halt the train at a safer distance. If there is a red signal ahead, then the driver can see the signal in the train itself. Kavach will stop the car automatically if the train is approaching towards the red signal," he added. In February this year, Vaishnaw said that Union Budget has a provision of Rs 1.37 lakh crore of the capital investment support for the Railways and it will help complete the stalled Railways projects as a part of the Atmanirbhar Bharat initiative. (ANI)
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday said that India is working round the clock to ensure the safety and evacuation of the Indian citizens in conflict-ridden Ukraine. Addressing a rally in Uttar Pradesh's Mirzapur, PM Modi said that the Centre had earlier brought back Indian citizens struck across the world. Referring to the massive evacuation program called "Vande Bharat Mission" when a huge number of Indians were brought back to India during the COVID-19 pandemic, PM Modi said, "Millions of our Indians were stranded all over the world during COVID. India helped every one of its citizens to come back by running Operation Vande Bharat. Thousands of Indians were trapped in the crisis in Afghanistan, so we carried out Operation Devi Shakti and rescued many Indians from there." "India is working day and night to bring back every citizen, our students, trapped in the war. We have brought thousands of children safely from Ukraine by running 'Operation Ganga'," he added while elaborating about the efforts of the government in bringing back Indians safely from Ukraine amid Russia's military operations. PM Modi said, "Indian planes are constantly flying to bring those still stuck there. The campaign is associated with Maa Ganga's name, I am sure that that campaign will be successful." Centre under Operation Ganga is making all efforts to evacuate Indian nationals stuck in conflict-hit Ukraine. According to MoS External Affairs Meenakshi Lekhi, over 9,000 citizens have been brought back to India from Ukraine so far. Further, slamming the Samajwadi Party (SP) for dynastic politics, he said, "When these Pariwarwadis (SP) were in power, they used to put obstacles in whatever work we used to bring for the development of UP. These Pariwarwadis didn't let the poor, marginalised section progress." "They (SP) have built only 800 houses for the poor in Mirzapur, but in the last five years our government has built 28,000 houses for people of Mirzapur," he added. Yesterday, during the sixth phase of the assembly polls, political leaders from BJP and its alliance parties exuded confidence in winning over 300 seats. A voter turnout of nearly 54 per cent was recorded in the sixth phase of polling yesterday. According to Election Commission data till 8 pm, the 57 seats which went for the polls in the sixth phase saw 53.96 per cent polling. Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Lok Sabha constituency Varanasi will go to the polls on March 7. Varanasi district comprises Pindra, Ajagara, Shivpur, Rohaniya, Varanasi North, Varanasi South, Varanasi Cantt, and Sevapuri Assembly seats. A total of 54 Assembly seats across nine districts including Azamgarh, Mau, Jaunpur, Ghazipur, Chandauli, Varanasi, Mirzapur, Bhadohi and Sonbhadra, will go to polls in the seventh and final phase. (ANI)
Maharashtra BJP MLAs protest on the stairs of the state Assembly on Friday, demanding the resignation of minister and NCP leader Nawab Malik, who is in the Enforcement Directorate's custody in connection with Dawood Ibrahim in a money laundering case. Leader of Opposition in Maharashtra Legislative Assembly and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Devendra Fadnavis on Thursday along with the BJP leaders held a protest in the premises of the Vidhan Sabha amid the ongoing annual Budget session of the state seeking Malik's resignation. Fadnavis also accused the Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government of trying to shield the Maharashtra minorities welfare minister. Speaking to media persons here, Fadnavis said, "Why does the government not want to take his resignation? This is a 'Dawood samarpit', 'Dawood sharan' government. This government is coming together to save people who keep relations with Dawood. That's why we've started protests and we demand that his resignation be taken immediately." State Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar on Wednesday said that at present Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray is of the view that there's no need "to take Nawab Malik's resignation." Special PMLA court on Thursday extended the Enforcement Directorate (ED) custody of Maharashtra minister and NCP leader Nawab Malik till March 7 in connection with Dawood Ibrahim's money laundering case. Defence lawyer Amit Desai hitting out at the ED, argued in the court that the agency has said today that the "terror funding" by the Minister to Haseena Parkar was Rs 5 lakh as against Rs 55 lakh in the first application, which was due to a "typing error". (ANI)
Mirzapur assembly constituency will go to polls in the seventh phase. Here, voting will be held in 54 assembly constituencies in nine districts on March 7.

Addressing a public meeting in Mirzapur, the Chief Minister said, "Those who deprived you (public) of every drop of water, should be deprived of every vote. You should vote in a way that those who colluded politics with crime and mafias, brought 'parivarwaad' and anarchy don't dare to come in public life and exploit you."

A total of 54 Assembly seats across nine districts in Uttar Pradesh including Azamgarh, Mau, Jaunpur, Ghazipur, Chandauli, Varanasi, Mirzapur, Bhadohi and Sonbhadra, will go to polls in the seventh and final phase on March 7.

The counting of the votes will take place on March 10. (ANI)
A mob on Friday torched a police vehicle after one person was killed and seven were left injured in an accident on the National Highway 116B between Daisai and Telipukur area under Marishada Police Station limits in West Bengal's East Midnapur district. Following the incident, a fire tender reached the site and doused the fire. The police resorted to lathi-charge to disperse the protesters from the national highway. The police also arrested five people for setting a police vehicle on fire. Speaking to reporters, Amarnath K, Superintendent of Police, East Midnapur district said, "An accident occurred on NH 116 B. A sand truck coming from Contai towards Nandakumar and truck slowed down after seeing police vehicle, at the same time a Contai- Howrah passenger bus was coming in high speed and the bus driver was not able to control, dashed the truck and came to the opposite line resulting in a head-on collision with an auto which was coming from the opposite line." "One died and seven injured. A police vehicle torched and five people arrested in connection with this," the SP added. (ANI)
Maharashtra government is planning to introduce a bill in the State assembly to secure Other Backward Classes (OBC) reservation in upcoming local body elections. Amid continuous protest by the Opposition parties over OBC Reservation in local body elections, Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar on Friday announced in the council that the state cabinet will approve new legislation ensuring OBC quota in local bodies and this bill will be tabled on Monday in both the Houses of the state legislature. "Our government is of the view that OBC reservation must be given in local body elections and we all parties must come together for it," said Pawar. He further said that in today's cabinet meeting, they will hold the discussion on the same and then table this bill on Monday in both the Houses. "We had asked the details of the bill passed by Madhya Pradesh as a reference and even Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray has instructed the chief secretary to go through this bill and today there is a cabinet meeting and we are of the view that in this cabinet meeting we will discuss it and later we will table this bill on Monday in both the Houses," he added. The Deputy Chief Minister said that the government is also looking in yesterday's SC order and what else is required for this bill. Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray will chair the state cabinet meeting on Friday at 6 pm to discuss the OBC reservation issue. Earlier in the day, the issue was raked up by the BJP in Maharashtra Assembly, almost three months after the Supreme Court refused to accept the Maharashtra panel's interim report on quota for OBCs in local body polls. His remark came a day after the Supreme Court on Thursday directed the Maharashtra government and State Election Commission (SEC) not to act upon the interim report of Maharashtra State Backward Class Commission (SBCC) which recommended a grant of 27 per cent OBC quota in local bodies election and reiterated that election be held without OBC reservation. It directed the Maharashtra government and the State Election Commission to not act upon the interim report. (ANI)
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In his condolence message, Purohit said, "General Rodrigues was a great strategist who served as the Chief of Army Staff of the Indian Army as well as served on the National Advisory Board".

He also added, "During his tenure as Governor Punjab, General Rodrigues was very popular and rendered a great service to the people of the State. His demise is an irreparable loss to the people of the Nation."

Former Indian Army chief General SF Rodrigues passed away on Friday at the age of 88.

He served as the Chief of Army Staff between 1990-93. In addition to his more than 40 years of illustrious service in the Army, he served two terms on the National Security Advisory Board and was Governor of Punjab between 2004 to 2010. (ANI)
After holding a meeting with Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren in Ranchi on Friday, Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrashekhar Rao said that India needs a new direction for a better future and the first step has been taken for a "Better India". He said efforts have begun for the unification of like-minded leaders. He earlier held a series of meetings with Opposition parties to unite against Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Rao was accompanied by his Jharkhand's counterpart Hemant Soren during a press conference in which he said, "Even after 75 years of Independence, India has not achieved its full potential in terms of development. We are very clear. We need to lead this country in a new direction and take a new path. We have triggered a discussion in this direction." Responding to a question on whether this was an anti-BJP front, the Chief Minister said one need not be hasty in drawing conclusions as this was an effort to take India on the right path. "We held discussions on a number of issues. We're clear that efforts should be made to take India in a new direction. People are talking about a third front, a fourth front...let me tell you that no front has been formed yet," he stated. KCR was on a one-day visit to Jharkhand. During the visit, he held a short meeting with Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren and Jharkhand Mukti Morcha supremo Shibu Soren. The two Chief Ministers together distributed cheques of Rs 10 lakh to families of two Galwan Valley Martyrs. The Telangana government had earlier extended support to the family of Col Santosh Babu who laid down his life in the Galwan Valley clashes. Rao had also said that the state government would extend help to 19 Army personnel who laid down their lives in the clash in 2020. (ANI)
The Supreme Court on Friday issued notice to the Animal Welfare Board of India and others on a petition challenging the Delhi High Court order relating to the feeding of stray dogs and also stayed the same. A bench of Justices Vineet Saran and Aniruddha Bose issued notice to AWBI and others and also stay the operation of the Delhi High Court order dated June 24 2021. Delhi High Court order dated June 24 2021 dealt with directions on the feeding of stray dogs. The petition was filed by Humane Foundation for People and Animals, not for profit organisation whose main goal is the resolution of the human-animal conflict in society. Senior Advocate Sanjay Sarin has argued for the petitioner Humane Foundation for People and Animals and advocate Tarun Rana represented the petitioner organization. Meghna Uniyal, Co-founder of Humane Foundation for People and Animals, said that she was aggrieved by the order of the Delhi HC, and filed a special leave petition in the Supreme Court seeking to set aside the Delhi High order. According to the petition, the Delhi High Court had passed the directions/guidelines qua feeding of stray dogs with reference to "The Animal Birth Control (Dogs) Rules, 2001" and "The Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, 1960" despite there being an order passed by the Supreme Court vide order dated November 18, 2015, directing "High Courts not to pass any order relating to the 1960 Act and the 2001 Rules pertaining to dogs." The Delhi High Court had opined that there is a need to spread awareness that even animals have a right to live with respect and dignity and said that "street dogs have the right to food and citizens have the right to feed community dogs but in exercising this right, care and caution should be taken to ensure that it does not impinge upon the rights of others or cause any harm." Feeding of the community dogs have to be done at areas designated by the Animal Welfare Board of India (AWBI) in consultation with Resident Welfare Associations or Municipal Corporation and while determining the designated area, the AWBI and RWA/Municipal Corporations have to be conscious of the fact that every community dog is a territorial being and therefore, community dogs must be fed and tended to at places within their territory, the HC had further directed. It shall be the duty and obligation of every Resident Welfare Associations or Municipal Corporation to ensure that every community dog in every area has access to food and water in the absence of caregivers or community dog feeders in the said area. The Delhi High Court had asked AWBI to carry out an awareness campaign in association with various Newspapers, Television, Radio Channels and Social Media platforms. It had also said that AWBI shall also ensure these Guidelines are disseminated through the media and AWBI shall circulate these Guidelines to various Resident Welfare Associations, the Police Department, Municipal Authorities etc. The court had also issued various guidelines including all Law enforcement authorities shall ensure that no harassment or hindrance is caused to the person feeding the street dog at the designated feeding spot and to properly implement the AWBI Revised Guidelines on Pet dogs and street dogs dated February 26, 2015. (ANI)
Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath on Friday accused the previous governments of Uttar Pradesh of politicising the issue of electricity distribution in the state and said that his government did not discriminate in providing facilities to the people. Addressing a public meeting in Jaunpur, the Chief Minister said, "Earlier, electricity was also politicised. Before 2017, did you get electricity? Now, it is available and there are no cuts. Earlier, it would not come and now it remains for 24 hours because we believe in 'Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas'." Jaunpur constituency will go for polls in phase seven of Assembly polls. "If our double engine government comes to power again then all women older than 60 years of age will be given free access to travel in state corporation buses. We will give free scooty to girls and free electricity to farmers," promised Yogi Adityanath. Meanwhile, intensive campaigning is on for the last phase of UP polls as Prime Minister Narendra Modi who is in Varanasi today said that India is working round the clock to ensure the safety and evacuation of the Indian citizens in conflict-ridden Ukraine. Addressing a rally in Uttar Pradesh's Mirzapur, PM Modi said that the Centre had earlier brought back Indian citizens struck across the world. Referring to the massive evacuation program called "Vande Bharat Mission" when a huge number of Indians were brought back to India during the COVID-19 pandemic, PM Modi said, "Millions of our Indians were stranded all over the world during COVID. India helped every one of its citizens to come back by running Operation Vande Bharat. Thousands of Indians were trapped in the crisis in Afghanistan, so we carried out Operation Devi Shakti and rescued many Indians from there." "India is working day and night to bring back every citizen, our students, trapped in the war. We have brought thousands of children safely from Ukraine by running 'Operation Ganga'," he added while elaborating about the efforts of the government in bringing back Indians safely from Ukraine amid Russia's military operations. In the seventh phase, voting will be held in 54 assembly constituencies in nine districts on March 7. A total of 54 Assembly seats across nine districts in Uttar Pradesh including Azamgarh, Mau, Jaunpur, Ghazipur, Chandauli, Varanasi, Mirzapur, Bhadohi and Sonbhadra, will go to polls in the seventh and final phase on March 7. The counting of the votes will take place on March 10. (ANI)
A senior officer of the Indian Army headquarters in New Delhi on Friday drew an analogy between the ongoing Russian military operation in Ukraine leading to a global crisis, and said that the "situation has to be seen in the context of similar attempts" by the Chinese Army along the Indian Northern borders. "The Ukraine situation has to be seen in the context of similar attempts that could be made by the PLA along our contested Northern borders. At no stage should people lose focus on the Northern borders. In view of the threat from our Northern adversary, the Indian Army continues to maintain its operational priorities with an intent to develop capabilities with a long-term perspective," he said. Referring to the tensions with China along the Line of Actual Control on the Northern Indian borders, the officer said that the situation "warrants the Indian Army to re-align the operational tasking of its reserve formations to focus on Northern Borders and refine warfighting capabilities in high altitude mountainous terrain." Meanwhile, Chief of Army Staff General MM Naravane reviewed the role and operational plans of the Mathura based 1 Corps, which has been re-assigned to the Northern borders. Talking about the review by the Army Chief, the officer from the headquarters said "Various situations and responses of the formation were wargamed at Mathura and suitable lessons were also being drawn from various modern-day conflicts across the globe." The unilateral and provocative actions by PLA to change the status quo by force, in more than one area on the LAC, were adequately responded by the Indian Army. While both militaries are engaged in dialogue to resolve balance issues, the Indian Army maintains adequate force levels in areas where dis-engagement is yet to take place. Based on the reviewed threat perception, re-balancing of certain forces was carried out recently, in which re-orientation of forces to Northern Borders was carried out while retaining effective capability along the Western Front. This is the result of regular threat assessment and internal deliberations to re-organise and re-align forces in keeping with the Army's mandate of ensuring territorial integrity and to cater for the major augmentation of PLA forces and military infrastructure, said a statement by the Indian Army. (ANI)
Highlighting the imperative need to initiate efforts to transform India into a prosperous nation, Vice President M Venkaiah Naidu on Friday urged the people to actively participate in the Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav programme started by the Union Government. Inaugurating the newly constructed prestigious Durbar Hall at Raj Bhavan in Dona Paula village today, Naidu said the involvement of people in the programme such as Azadi Ka Amrut Mahotsav will help build momentum and bring in necessary reforms in varied sectors. He said, "Even after seven and half decades of India's Independence, our country is still facing some challenges in the areas of poverty, illiteracy, regional disparities, social discrimination in certain areas and also gender discrimination. We need to remove these social evils and initiate steps to eradicate illiteracy. The people should come forward and focus to accord importance to these aspects." The inaugural ceremony was graced by the Governor of Goa, PS Sreedharan Pillai and other dignitaries. The Vice-President who began his speech in the Konkani language further said that he was following the progress of this magnificent project during his visits to Goa. He said the construction of this building reflects the Goan architecture and that he was very happy to inaugurate the Durbar Hall which is the second-largest hall in Goa after Dr Shyama Prasad Mukherjee Indoor Stadium. Naidu said Goa is endowed with scenic beauty coupled with cultural and linguistic diversity, scenic splendour and hospitality. Apart from being Goa an international tourist destination, it can also boast of its Uniform Civil Code besides extensive forest cover, he added. Stating that India is a great example for the rest of the world in terms of Democracy, the Vice-President stressed the need to respect the institutions else it will weaken the Democracy. "We need to maintain dignity and moral ethics in public life and should also have the patience to respect the mandate of the people. We must follow the ethics, do justice and not indulge in any agitations, violations which may result to break the laws of the Constitution," he stated. The Vice-President said the post-independence period India has made remarkable progress in various fields, be it rail and air connectivity. "We should not remain complacent over our achievements but should endeavour to make our country prosperous. He also emphasized the need for universal peace and added saying that we should not resort to violence. If we have tension then we will not able to pay attention," he asserted. Governor PS Sreedharan Pillai, in his address, said that the idea to construct this Durbar Hall was conceived in March 2019. In fact, he said it was the bold initiative of the previous Governor of Goa, late Mridula Sinha. He also reminded the gathering about the contribution of the former Chief Minister of Goa late Manohar Parrikar and also of the present Chief Minister Dr Pramod Sawant for support towards the completion of the project. The Governor who referred to his ongoing visits to the villages of the State said that Goan villages are more beautiful than beaches of the State. This prestigious building of Durbar Hall will set a new milestone for the development of the State and the wellbeing of the people, he said. The Governor stressed political, social and economic freedom. Our freedom fighters fought to attain these aspects. However, we succeeded in achieving only political freedom and not social and economic freedom, Naidu added. Chief Secretary Puneet Kumar Goel, IAS who informed about the salient features of the project said that the construction of Durbar Hall has been completed two months prior to the stipulated date of completion. He said the project has a seating capacity of 600 persons with a total plinth area of 2200 sq meters and the project cost of the Durbar Hall is Rs 18 crores. (ANI)
Amid the ongoing Operation Ganga to bring back the stranded Indians in Ukraine, the Odisha government has stepped up its efforts to rescue its students who are stranded in Kharkiv and Pisochin. "Many students of Odisha are stuck in Kharkiv and Pisochin areas over the last few days and they are facing several difficulties, the state government has managed to bring 65 of them safely to the border of western Ukrainian by two special buses. The process is underway to rescue all students in the area and bring them to India by Air," said a press note from Chief Minister's Office. The note further informed that four special representatives have been assigned under the instruction of Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik to coordinate the smooth evacuation of the students of Odisha. "So far, 199 students of Odisha have returned to the State, the efforts to bring back to rest of the students are being taken, Resident commission of Odisha at New Delhi is coordinating the efforts on behalf of State," the note stated. Meanwhile, the Central government said on Friday that over 20,000 Indians have left the Ukraine border following advisories issued to them. (ANI)
Tamil Nadu Chief Minister and DMK supremo MK Stalin on Friday asked his party cadres who have occupied posts allotted to alliance partners in the indirect polls to step down immediately. Stalin said, "We had a smooth talk with the alliance party regarding seat-sharing and position in the indirect polls. I am really disturbed and feel bad about what happened during the secret ballot." He further said, "DMK candidates think that they have succeeded diligently and got the victory in secret ballot and went and sat on the position which was given to alliance party. But as party chief, I extend my condolences to the leaders of the coalition Party." Addressing the party cadres, Stalin said, "I humbly request, do immediately step down or face the expulsion from the party, if they don't resign." Stalin tweeted, "Duty, dignity and discipline are the ideals of former CM CN Annadurai. But some people have violated it and occupied the posts allocated to alliance partners. Though they might think that they have achieved something, as a leader of the party I stand feeling guilty." In another tweet, he wrote, " I am firm and strong that at any time, our alliance must not be broken. Those who win by contesting in the seats allotted to alliance positions should resign immediately. Those who fail to follow the direction would be removed from the party's primary membership." "Those who contested on DMK's 'rising Sun' symbol and later brought bad reputation to the party through their act, should immediately resign from their post, Then, come and meet me in person", added Stalin. Thol. Thirumavalavan, VCK party chief and MP requested Stalin to ask the DMK candidates who won for the posts allotted to the allies to resign. He also tweeted, "These candidates contested in the recent civic elections violating Stalin's directive. The Chief Minister should ask them to resign and safeguard the principles of the alliance." K Balakrishnan CPI(M) State general secretary said, "The DMK should uphold and safeguard the principles of the alliance. The DMK shouldn't have acted like this for a mere position." DMK functionary in Poonamallee, M Ravi Kumar has been suspended from the party for indulging in anti-party activities by DMK general secretary Duraimurugan while other DMK leaders are also likely to be suspended from the party. Indirect elections to the posts of mayor, deputy mayor, chairperson and vice-chairperson took place in local bodies across the state on Friday. DMK's Priya Rajan, a 28-year-old MCom graduate, was elected unopposed as the first Dalit and third woman Mayor of the Greater Chennai Corporation. (ANI)
Andhra Pradesh Governor Biswa Bhusan Harichandan asserted that the farmers should adopt digital technology for faster growth in agriculture. He was virtually addressing the 51st Convocation of the Acharya N. G. Ranga Agricultural University held in Mahati Auditorium in Tirupati on Friday. According to the release by the Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister's Office (CMO), the state Governor and Chancellor of ANGRA University, presided over the 51st annual convocation of the university. While delivering the convocation address, Biswa said, "To keep pace with the growing demands on food security, technology development and adoption should be at a faster rate and the Indian agriculture needs to adopt digital technologies that have the potential to offer out of the box solutions and ideas." He further added that the farmers can reap more economic benefits with smart technologies and smart decisions. The Chancellor advised the students and the faculty to visit the agricultural fields and interact with the farmers to know their difficulties. He also asked the students to conduct more and more research in an organic farming area and aware the farmers of the benefits of organic farming and also encourage farmers to adopt it. The Chancellor further said, "Acharya NG Ranga Agricultural University has shown good progress in the application of novel agricultural technologies such as Drone Technology, Geo-Spatial Technology, Nano-Technology in offering sustainable solutions." He appreciated the efforts of the University faculty in advocating precision farming and sustainable agriculture for establishing an exclusive Centre for 'A.P. Sensors & Smart Applications Research in Agriculture' (APSARA) in Lam, Guntur and their research on several agriculture-related applications. The Chancellor congratulated Ashok Dalwai, Chief Executive Officer, National Rain-fed Area Authority (NRAA), Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare, Government of India and Chairman of the empowered body, for doubling farmers' incomes. The Chancellor also congratulated the winners of several awards and distinctions for their zeal and perseverance in acquiring knowledge and for achieving excellence in their chosen field. (ANI)
The IAF flight departed from the Romanian capital Bucharest on Friday under Operation Ganga.

A total of 5,245 Indian nationals were airlifted from Romania to the country till March 3 amid Russia's military operations in Ukraine, informed the Government of India on Friday.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday chaired a meeting to discuss the ongoing evacuation drive of Indian nationals and the situation in conflict-hit Ukraine.

The government has also deployed 'special envoys' to four neighbouring countries bordering Ukraine to coordinate and oversee the evacuation process of Indian nationals.

Union Minister for Petroleum and Natural Gas Hardeep Singh Puri is overseeing evacuation efforts in Hungary, Union Law Minister Kiren Rijiju in Slovakia, Civil Aviation Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia in Romania and Minister of State for Road Transport & Highways and Civil Aviation Gen VK Singh in Poland.

The Ministry of External Affairs said on Friday that 16 flights were scheduled for the next 24 hours including Indian Air Force's C-17 aircraft under Operation Ganga.

Russian forces launched military operations in Ukraine on February 24, three days after Moscow recognized Ukraine's breakaway regions - Donetsk and Luhansk - as independent entities. (ANI)
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The election for the newly set-up Cuddalore corporation's Mayor witnessed some tense moments for the DMK with the party's official candidate R. Sundari challenged by a rebel candidate. However, the party's writ prevailed and Sundari was elected. The fight was so intense that on Thursday evening, 11 newly-elected councillors, including one each from the AIADMK and the BJP, were whisked away to a resort in Puducherry by a rebel group of DMK owing allegiance to party's district Treasurer, Gunashekaran. His wife G. Geetha was an aspirant for the Mayor post but the party leadership decided to field R. Sundari, the wife of city unit Secretary A. Raja. Of the 45 councillors, 19 cast their votes in favour of Sundari while 12 voted for the rebel candidate Geetha. One vote was declared invalid. Six AIADMK councillors abstained from voting. Of the 11 councillors who were kept in the resort, four managed to break free and vote but 7 were not able to participate. Raja is reportedly close to state Minister, M.R.K. Panneerselvam who extended his full support to Sundari. DMK, being a cadre-based party, announced a whip for its councillors to vote for the party's official candidate but the rebel candidate did not withdraw and fought the elections much to the dismay of the party leadership. "This is an unprecedented development in our party. The rebellion will be strictly put down and this has reduced the glow of our victory across the state. Strict action will be taken against those who acted against the party's dictum," a senior DMK leader told IANS. Of the 45 wards in the newly formed Cuddalore corporation, the DMK-led front won in 34 wards. While the DMK alone won in 27 seats, its allies, VCK and TVK, won in three seats each, and Congress in one. Sundari was sworn in as Mayor on Friday with the Cuddalore corporation Secretary, N. Viswanathan administering the oath of office to her, while Panneerselvam handed over the ceremonial dress and mace to her. --IANS aal/vd ( 348 Words) 2022-03-04-19:04:02 (IANS)
As thousands of evacuees, mostly students, from war-torn Ukraine land in Mumbai, Delhi and other cities, it does not spell the end of the long ordeal for many. Some have many more hurdles to cross and hundreds or thousands of kms to travel - before they reach the warmth of their homes to hug their near and dear ones - as was evident in their brief interactions with the media. One such student is Siya Das, 19, coming from the war-ravaged Chernivtsi in western Ukraine, who landed at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport (CSMIA) here by a flight from Bucharest, Romania. "I feel greatly relieved coming to Mumbai. But I still have another 2,700 km to travel before I reach my hometown Guwahati in Assam," Das said. During the flight, she was worried about her onward journey plans, how to book a hotel till her flight from Mumbai to Guwahati takes off etc. "But a pleasant surprise awaited me as the CSMIA had made all the arrangements and even put me on a flight to Guwahati, all complimentary. I saw the real heroes working silently behind-the-scenes, and despite the long journey, the pride of being an Indian was at its peak," Das said. Among the youngest evacuees till date from the Ukraine war-zone is a 25-day-old infant boy, who somehow managed to board a flight with his young parents from Ahmedabad. However, his return home was far from smooth as the infant did not have the most essential international travel document - a passport - which his parents could not manage, what with deadly bombs, bullets or missiles zipping all around, as his father Kuntart Makwana recalled. Here again, CSMIA took charge and took all care, ensuring that the little boy's first trip home was a smooth affair, and arranged the necessary formalities with the immigration department and finally, the child and his parents reached home safely. A medical student, Supriya Kumar (23) from Delhi, was all smiles as she arrived here accompanied by her best friend -- Coco -- her one-year-old pet dog. "I am indebted to the CSMIA authorities who ensured Coco could return with me, extended all support for immigration, Covid tests, baggage collection and even an overnight hotel stay as I flew to New Delhi the next morning," said Kumar. A medical student, Anushka Choudhary, who arrived from Bucharest, recounted her harrowing experience, the sheer uncertainty on crossing the Ukraine-Romania border, rushing to the airport and remaining in a state of panic till the flight actually took off. Landing on home turf, they were welcomed by Union ministers, and Maharashtra government and airport officials who ensured that after their nightmarish exodus from Ukraine via neighbouring countries, their arrival in India was as smooth and hassle-free as possible, said a CSMIA spokesperson. A total of five flights have landed in Mumbai in the past one week as part of 'Operation Ganga', and some more are expected to land over the next few days, bringing back Indians stranded in different parts of Ukraine. (Quaid Najmi can be contacted at: q.najmi@ians.in) --IANS qn/arm ( 528 Words) 2022-03-04-19:12:05 (IANS)
Indian national Harjot Singh received bullet injuries while he was attempting to escape from the Ukrainian capital, and is currently in a Kiev hospital, where he is said to be "out of danger". Harjot's brother Prabhjot Singh, who resides in Delhi's Chhattarpur, told IANS: "The last conversation I had with Harjot was on February 26 at 9 p.m. I haven't spoken to him since then. On March 2, at night, he contacted the family and informed them about his injuries. "He informed that he was hit by three to four bullets while he was trying to leave Kiev. Local people took him to the hospital via ambulance and after four days, when he regained consciousness, he contacted the family with a doctor's cellphone," Prabhjot narrated. "We also went to the embassy, gave them all the documents as Harjot has lost them when he was shot." Harjot's family urged the government to evacuate him to Delhi as fast as possible for further treatment. According to information, Harjot was trying to reach the border with his friends and was expected to catch a train from Kiev and reach Lviv somehow. However, he and his companions were not "allowed" to sit in the train. He was shot at when he and his friends were coming out of the station. Harjot could not identify who fired the shots. --IANS msk/shs ( 239 Words) 2022-03-04-19:20:03 (IANS)
The Odisha government on Friday said that it was able to evacuate 65 Odia students from the war-torn Kharkiv region in Ukraine to a safer place in the country's west. In a statement, the Odisha Chief Minister's Officer (CMO) said many students were stuck in the Kharkiv and Pisochyn area of Ukraine during the past three days and were suffering a lot of problems. The state government was able to evacuate 65 Odisha students by making a special arrangement of two buses to Ukraine's western border regions. It has also expedited the work to evacuate all other students stuck in the area and bring them back to India though flights, it said. The Resident Commissioner's office at New Delhi is working as a nodal office for the purpose. So far, 199 students from Odisha have landed safely in India, the CMO said. On Thursday, the state government had nominated four special representatives for Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia, who will coordinate with the Resident Commissioner, and the respective countries, for smooth evacuation of students and other Odia people stranded in Ukraine. --IANS bbm/vd ( 196 Words) 2022-03-04-19:38:04 (IANS)
The issue of Congress MLA Rajendra Singh Bidhuri' viral audio where he allegedly abused an SHO 103 times rocked the Rajasthan Assembly on Friday with uproar during Zero Hour. Bharatiya Janata Party MLAs created a ruckus in the House demanding action against Bidhuri. BJP MLA Arjun Jeenagar was the first to raise this issue and said that Congress MLAs are going unchecked. Leader of Opposition Gulabchand Kataria and Deputy Leader of Opposition Rajendra Rathod said that in such a situation no government employee will be able to work, if MLAs behave like this. Will an employee work, compromising his honour? The minister will have to answer on this and the Chief Minister should also answer, they said. Parliamentary Affairs Minister Shanti Dhariwal told the opposition that they are simply talking after listening to the viral audio-video. "How do you believe that it is true? How to assume that without examining it? If the audio has come, we will get it checked. It favours you, so you believe it to be true, we will get it investigated and after that we will take any action." The Begun MLA from Chittorgarh Rajendra Singh Bidhuri abused the Bhainsrogarh police station officer 103 times in 37 minutes. An audio of this episode has surfaced and gone viral. It seemed to be a case of encroachment and the MLA was furious as the SHO did not add the legal section as per his choice. He also threatened to sack the SHO. In the audio, SHO Sanjay Gurjar is repeatedly requesting the MLA not to abuse him. However, the MLA said "The audio has been modified, I did not even abuse." --IANS arc/bg ( 293 Words) 2022-03-04-19:54:05 (IANS)
The Supreme Court on Friday said the authorities cannot confiscate a vehicle, allegedly used in transportation of cows for slaughter, after the owner was acquitted in the criminal case. It held that this would amount to arbitrary deprivation of property and violate the right guaranteed to each person under Article 300A of the Constitution. A bench of Justices K.M. Joseph and Hrishikesh Roy said: "In the present case, the appellant's truck was confiscated on account of the criminal proceedings alone and therefore, under the applicable law, the vehicle cannot be withheld and then confiscated by the State, when the original proceedings have culminated into acquittal." Justice Roy, who authored the judgment on behalf of the bench, noted that it is also not the projected case that there is a likelihood that the appellant's truck will be used for committing a similar offence. The top court made these observations while setting aside Madhya Pradesh High Court order, which rejected a plea by Abdul Vahab challenging confiscation of his truck under the MP Prohibition of Cow Slaughter Act, 2004 and the Rule 5 of the MP Govansh Vadh Pratishedh Rules, 2012. Justice Roy said: "The confiscation of the appellant's truck when he is acquitted in the criminal prosecution, amounts to arbitrary deprivation of his property and violates the right guaranteed to each person under Article 300A." The bench said by reason of an order of confiscation, a person is deprived of the enjoyment of his property and added that Article 300A provides that no person shall be deprived of his property save by authority of law. "Therefore, to deprive any person of their property, it is necessary for the State, inter alia, to establish that the property was illegally obtained or is part of the proceeds of crime or the deprivation is warranted for public purpose or public interest," it said. Justice Roy said the circumstances in the present case are compelling to conclude that the District Magistrate's order of confiscation (ignoring the trial court's judgment of acquittal), is not only arbitrary but also inconsistent with the legal requirements. Vahab's truck, loaded with 17 cow progeny, was intercepted and the driver of the vehicle and one other person were arrested. The truck owner along with the accused faced trial for offences under the 2004 Act and under the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, 1960. The accused were acquitted by the trial court on the ground that the prosecution failed to prove that cows were being transported for slaughtering. However, the DM ordered confiscation of the truck, disregarding the acquittal. The vehicle owner moved the high court, which rejected the plea against the DM's order. Justice Roy said: "The District Magistrate has the power to independently adjudicate cases of violations under Sections 4, 5, 6, 6A and 6B of the 2004 Act and pass order of confiscation in case of violation. But in a case where the offender/accused are acquitted in the criminal prosecution, the judgment given in the criminal trial should be factored in by the District Magistrate while deciding the confiscation proceeding." "Consequently, the High Court's decision to the contrary is set aside. The appeal stands allowed with this order without any order on cost." --IANS ss/vd ( 555 Words) 2022-03-04-19:58:01 (IANS)
Two criminals, who have several times attacked the personnel of the Delhi Police, were arrested after a brief exchange of fire in the outer north area of the national capital on Friday. The accused were identified as Sonu alias Veeru (24) and Sunil (33). Furnishing details, DCP Brijendra Kumar Yadav said that on March 2, Wednesday, when a mobile patrol vehicle (MPV) was on patrolling duty in Sector 5, Bawana Industrial Area, a snatching incident was reported by a man. The police vehicle immediately started chasing the two accused, who were on a scooty, and asked them to stop with the help of a loudspeaker. "Even as police personnel asked them to stop, the accused persons fired one bullet towards the MPV. The police also retaliated and fired three shots aiming at the rear wheel of the scooty, however, the suspects managed to flee away," the DCP said. Accordingly, the police registered a case under sections 186 (Obstructing public servant in discharge of public functions), 353 (Assault or criminal force to deter public servant from discharge of his duty), 336 (Act endangering life or personal safety of others), 356 (Assault or criminal force in attempt to commit theft of property carried by a person), 379 (Punishment for theft), 34 (Acts done by several persons in furtherance of common intention) of the Indian Penal Code at the Narela Industrial Area Police Station. The police constituted several teams to nab the accused and two days later, on March 4, Friday, an information was received about the presence of the accused. A trap was laid at a specified location and as the accused duo were seen coming towards the police party on a motorcycle, the police team tried to stop them but they tried to escape due to which their motorcycle slipped and both of them fell, the senior police official said. "Even after falling, the accused duo yet again tried to escape and fired three shots at the police party. The cops also retaliated and fired five shots towards them, of which one person received a bullet injury on his leg," the official added. So far, the police have found that one of the accused had earlier also in 2020 attacked a police party. He is previously involved in 24 criminal cases. The DCP said that the injured accused was admitted to a hospital where his condition is said to be stable. Further interrogation is under progress, the official added. --IANS uj/shs ( 422 Words) 2022-03-04-20:10:04 (IANS)
A massive fire broke out in the Bone and Joints Hospital in Srinagar on Friday night. Several fire tenders are at the spot to control the fire at the hospital located in the Barzulla area of the city. Meanwhile, patients were evacuated to a safer place. Further details are awaited. (ANI)
Most members of the Russian elite are now busy evacuating their relatives and loved ones from Moscow to Georgia, Israel and the UAE, according to Ukrainian intelligence. "The top political leadership of the Russian Federation continues to panic and the level of mistrust of the President of the Russian Federation is increasing. Most members of the Russian elite are deciding to evacuate their relatives and loved ones from Moscow to Georgia, Israel and the Arab Emirates, and are specifying places of refuge in case of a nuclear war," as per intelligence data, Ukrayinska Pravda reported. From a conversation held with the advisor-envoy of the Russian Embassy in the United States, Artur Rushanovich Lyukmanov, with an unidentified person named Vladislav Lutsenko, the probability of a nuclear conflict (not war) is present, but small. At the same time, according to Lutsenko, Russian President Vladimir Putin has already lost the war with Ukraine. It is also believed that the Russian President has currently "lost his mind and his condition is not adequate", the report said. Ukraine's Minister of Foreign Affairs, Dmytro Kuleba, warned that Russia may resort to provocation as the country points its own rockets stationed in Ukraine towards Russian territory. In a Twitter post, Kuleba said, "Worrying reports: Russians might have pointed multiple rocket-launching systems in the Russian border village of Popovka towards their own territory. "Knowing the barbaric nature of Russian actions, we fear a false flag operation might be prepared in order to accuse Ukraine." (Sanjeev Sharma can be reached at Sanjeev.s@ians.in) --IANS san/arm ( 274 Words) 2022-03-03-21:56:02 (IANS)
A series of regional conventions and policies are playing an essential role in monitoring climate change and preparing for extreme weather events, preventing oil spills, reducing plastic and other waste, saving coral reefs, and providing overall ocean protection and restoration of marine ecosystems. These are the key findings of a UN Environment Programme (UNEP) report, whose authors call for expanding the scope of collaboration on regional seas in the coming decade. The report -- Contributions of Regional Seas Conventions and Action Plans to a Healthy Ocean -- draws on a series of case studies which examine the cumulative impact of these conventions and policies over the past 45 years. Through a robust body of evidence, the UN-led Regional Seas Programme -- which produced the report -- convenes and coordinates countries and institutions, and undertakes ecosystem-based planning and management to progress towards a healthy ocean and healthy people. The Regional Seas Programme aims to bring all relevant stakeholders together to address the accelerating degradation of the world's oceans and coastal areas through a "shared seas" approach.Since its establishment in 1974, 146 countries have joined 18 Regional Seas. Through cultivating joint scientific research, policy development and implementation, this network of regional policies has become one of the cornerstones of protection, conservation, and restoration of marine and coastal environments, it said. Susan Gardner, Director of UNEP's Ecosystems Division, said: "Marine pollution, invasive species and natural habitat loss, excessive extraction, and ocean acidification all share one common trait: they do not respect national borders. "Regional Seas demonstrate what can be achieved by working together for common goals at a regional scale. To secure the livelihoods of over three billion people, Regional Seas must not only be recognised, but their mandate ought to be expanded." Activities across regions are organised through Regional Action Plans for data collection and sharing best practices, addressing capacity needs (including of women, youth and indigenous peoples), mobilising financial and technical resources to support research and implementation, as well as monitoring and evaluation of ocean conditions and policy responses. Some of the impacts of Regional Seas are in marine pollution, biodiversity protection, and scientific knowledge-sharing. As many as 21 legally binding agreements relating to marine pollution have been adopted. These have, for example, increased preparedness to combat oil pollution incidents and spills in the Caspian Sea and the South Asia Cooperative Environment Programme (SACEP) has successfully mitigated the impacts of an oil tanker collision outside of Kamarajar Port in India in 2017. The 2013 Barcelona Convention for the Mediterranean has dramatically improved marine litter management across 10 Mediterranean countries, contributing to a 39 per cent reduction in beach marine litter and seafloor macro-litter from 2016 to 2019. In the Pacific, the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP) Elsewhere, Regional Seas have been integral to the development of early warning systems, nutrient reduction, and the adoption of the Polluter Pays principle. Regional Seas play a pivotal role in the creation of Marine Protected Areas across the world, and the Green Fins Initiative in the East Asian Seas, the Caribbean, Red Sea and Pacific regions brings together over 600 marine tourism companies in 11 countries. Studies show that consequently dive operators have significantly lower reef contact (and hence reef damage), the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) has introduced legal requirements for port inspection to prevent illegally landed fish from entering trade, mapping of capture and trade hotspots and a threats assessment have been jointly undertaken in west Africa, thanks to the Abidjan Convention, and in the Southern Ocean, Illegal Unregulated Unreported activities have decreased from around 33,000 to under 1,000 tons in less than a decade. The UNEP report called on decision makers, policymakers, researchers, and other stakeholders to enhance collaboration across all Regional Seas, including establishing formal coordination with other types of organisation such as Regional Fisheries Management Organisations, UNESCO and the International Maritime Organisation, increased awareness raising campaigns on the value of a healthy natural environment to sustainable economic development and human wellbeing. It concludes with a call to donors, the private sector, and NGOs to recognise and prioritise Regional Seas as a solution to some of the key risks facing the oceans. (Vishal Gulati can be contacted at vishal.g@ians.in) --IANS vg/vd ( 716 Words) 2022-03-03-22:20:03 (IANS)
The Annapolis Symphony Orchestra announced it will cancel performances by a renowned Russian violinist this weekend in response to Russias ongoing invasion of Ukraine. The orchestra will instead perform music in tribute to Ukraine.

The decision was made to replace Russian soloist Vadim Repin both as a result of the conflict and out of respect for Repins apolitical stance and concerns for his and his familys safety, ASO Executive Director Edgar Herrera said in a news release.

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We dont want to put him in an uncomfortable, even impossible, position, Herrera said in the release. Our hearts are with the victims of Russian President Vladimir Putins naked war of conquest. The ASO stands with the Ukrainian people.

Repin was set to perform Dmitri Shostakovichs First Violin Concerto No. 1 on Friday and Saturday at Maryland Hall in Annapolis. Instead, the orchestra will perform a musical tribute to Ukraine, including Der Rosenkavalier Suite by Richard Strauss, Concertino Cusqueno by Gabriela Len Frank, and Outburst by Michael Abels.

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Repin is a 50-year-old native of Siberia, born to Belgian and Russian parents. He specializes in Russian and French music, particularly Russian violin concertos, according to his online biography. He now lives in Vienna, Austria and is in a relationship with Svetlana Azkharova, a Russian prima ballerina with the Bolshoi Ballet in Moscow.

One member of the 56-piece Annapolis orchestra who has been deeply affected by the invasion is violinist Nataly Merezhuk who has family in both Ukraine and Moscow.

In an interview Friday afternoon, Merezhuk said the last week has been incredibly stressful and painful for her as she tries to help her grandmother evacuate Ukraine.

Fortunately, her town isnt getting bombed, but there have been strikes somewhat nearby, Merezhuk said of her grandmother. I also have close family in Russia. Its incredibly scary seeing a country that I love just go downhill, you know.

Merezhuk said she fully condemns the war.

Its really important for me as a Russian to speak out right now because I, and many other Russian people, are not for the war, said Merezhuk, who holds dual U.S. and Russian citizenship. We are against it. And were against Putin.

Merezhuk, who joined the orchestra in 2017, wont be performing this weekend as she recovers from a cold, she said. But if she were, she had hoped to play the concerto composed by Shostakovich, who was a quiet dissident in the Soviet Union during the rule of Josef Stalin.

I would have preferred to play the original program because  he was censored by the Soviet government. And he was one of the people that really tried to fight against it, she said.

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As Russias full-scale military invasion enters its second week, the attack has drawn swift and near-unanimous backlash from the international community and leaders in the United States.

Maryland has responded in support of Ukraine. Gov. Larry Hogan has severed diplomatic ties between Maryland and the St. Petersburg region of Russia. Baltimore bars have stocked up on Ukrainian liquor while Baltimore-area stores and restaurants have stopped selling Russian vodka. Ukrainians and those with deep ties to the country who live in Annapolis and Anne Arundel County have watched the war unfold and plan to help.

For this weekends Annapolis Symphony performances, audience members are invited to wear yellow and blue, the colors of the Ukrainian flag, to show their support, according to the release.

Tickets are available at AnnapolisSymphony.org and at Strathmore.org.
The Russian Foreign Intelligence Service has received data indicating the intention of the United States and the Ukrainian regime to drag out the Russian military operation in Ukraine as much as possible and turn it into a positional war. "Today it is already clearly visible, including from the intelligence information that comes to us, that the American administration and the Ukrainian regime obedient to it are betting on the maximum prolongation of the conflict, its development into a positional war of a high-degree of intensity," the head of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, Sergei Naryshkin, said in a statement, RT reported. He stated that groups of armed militants were sent to Ukraine from Western countries, who were tasked with organising and supporting the so-called "partisan underground". "Washington hopes very much that we will get bogged down in this operation and perish, and they will be able to calmly do a 'cleansing' of the Middle East, Eurasia and the Asia-Pacific region. This will not happen -- the ancient has passed, now everything is new," Naryshkin said. "As for the future of Ukraine, it will, of course, be determined by the Ukrainians themselves. But it will be a completely different Ukraine and a different story," Naryshkin added. Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin told his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron that the tasks of the Russian special operation in Ukraine would be fulfilled in any case, RT reported. Putin also detailed the fundamental approaches and conditions in the context of negotiations with the representatives from the Ukraine side. He confirmed that, first of all, "we are talking about the demilitarisation and neutral status of Ukraine so that a threat to Russia never comes from the Ukrainian territory". --IANS san/arm ( 305 Words) 2022-03-03-22:30:04 (IANS)
He has outlined the key issues on the agenda -- immediate ceasefire, armistice and humanitarian corridors for the evacuation of civilians from destroyed or constantly shelled villages and cities.

"The talks will take place," Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said earlier in a video conference, CNN reported.

Lavrov claimed -- without evidence -- that the Ukrainian side had deliberately delayed their arrival, and suggested that Ukraine is a puppet state of the United States.

Also on Thursday, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said a Russian delegation was in Belarus waiting for their Ukrainian counterparts.

"Our delegation was in place last night. It was expecting Ukrainian negotiators last night, all night, then in the morning. They are still waiting," he said.

"But as you know, the talks have not started. Ukrainian negotiators are clearly in no hurry. Let's hope they arrive today," added Peskov, CNN reported.

Delegations from both countries were due to meet on Wednesday for a second round of talks.

The first round of talks on Monday lasted for five hours and ended without a breakthrough.

--IANS san/arm

( 204 Words)

2022-03-03-23:26:03 (IANS)
Amid China's growing military aggression towards Taiwan, three US senators have proposed a bill that would allow for the imposition of financial sanctions against China in the event of an attack or invasion of the island. This bill comes at a time when the experts fear that China too might flex muscles over Taiwan and the South China Sea, after taking cues from Russia's military operation in Ukraine. The bill will give US lawmakers to sever all financial transactions between the US and China if China engages in armed aggression against Taiwan. Senators Rick Scott, and two other US lawmakers introduced the Deterring Communist Chinese Aggression Against Taiwan Through Financial Sanctions Act, which would seek to impose financial sanctions on Beijing should it invade, blockade, or enact regime change in Taiwan through the use of force. Senator Rick Scott said, "Taiwan is one of America's most important partners in the Asia-Pacific, and its peace and stability are in our political, security, and economic interests. We have watched Communist China's increasingly frequent actions to harass and intimidate the Taiwanese people, through regular military encroachments and cyberattacks. We must be clear that these intimidation tactics will not be ignored." "As Beijing quietly watches Putin's invasion of and assault on Ukraine, America must stand strongly behind our partners in democracy and leave no ambiguity as to our resolve to condemn and punish tyrants who attack our partners. Passing this bill will make clear to General Secretary Xi that if he mimics Putin's invasion then he will be met with economic isolation and severe financial sanctions," he added. Senator Kevin Cramer said their bill threatens crippling financial sanctions as a deterrence to China trying to follow in Putin's footsteps Another US Senator John Kennedy said, "Now more than ever, we must make it clear to the Chinese Communist Party that armed aggression towards Taiwan would deal a devastating blow to China's economy. As we know, waiting too long to sanction bad actors can create major national security risks at home. We can't let China seize the moment to attack one of America's key partners in the Pacific." China continues to regard Taiwan as a breakaway province despite seven decades of separate governance. Beijing has not ruled out military force to take Taiwan and has kept the pressure on the democratic island with frequent warplane flights into Taiwan's air defence identification zone. (ANI)
The Russian "invasion" prong aimed at the Ukrainian capital city of Kyiv appears to be stalled, while fighting rages in Kharkiv, the country's second-largest city, a senior US defence official said on Thursday. Russian President Vladimir Putin has amassed more than 150,000 troops in 120 battalion tactical groups on the border of Ukraine since last fall, and about 90 percent of the forces have invaded, the US official was quoted as saying by US Defence Department. In the southern part of the besieged country, news reports indicate the Russians have taken the city of Kherson, but US officials cannot independently confirm this development. Russian forces did get closer to Mariupol and are shelling the city. The Russians are also shelling Kyiv and Kharkiv, with more rounds hitting civilian targets, according to the US defence department. "Obviously, [the Russians] are hitting residential areas. There's no doubt about that," he said. "The degree to which that is intentional -- and intentionally precise, in that regard -- is difficult for us to assess. But clearly it's happening." Across northern Ukraine, Russian forces appear to be largely stalled, the official said. "In Kyiv, the Russian forces remain north and northwest of the city," he said. The capital city is under increasing bombardment. In Kharkiv, officials assess that the Russian forces now appear to be just outside the city, very near the ring road, a bypass road around the city. Ukrainian command and control nodes continue to function, and Ukraine's air defences remain effective, the US official said. "They continue to be able to fly their airplanes and to employ air-defence assets," the official said. "And, as of this morning, we have now counted more than 480 Russian missile launchers, again, of all of all sizes and stripes." The defense official said the United States cannot confirm that Russia is using cluster munitions or thermobaric fuel-air bombs against Ukraine. The Russian movements may appear to be stalled, but there is still a lot of combat power available to Putin, the US official said. Ukrainian fighting abilities have had an effect on the Russians, as have problems with logistics and sustainment, or they may be pausing to reassess their campaign and redirect their efforts, the official added. (ANI)
"The situation is serious, we need to mobilize the team, with the Ukrainians having more and more difficulties to get access to aid," Cori told the BFMTV broadcaster.

Last week, Russia launched a special operation after the breakaway republics of Donetsk and Luhansk requested assistance to defend themselves from ongoing attacks by the Ukrainian troops.

The Western countries have strongly condemned the Russian military operation and boosted the sanctions pressure on Moscow. (ANI/Sputnik)
Speaking exclusively to ANI, Minister of State (MoS) for Ministry of Civil Aviation (MoCA) General VK Singh revealed the information at Poland's Rzeszow airport on Thursday.

"A student from Kyiv was reported to have been shot and was immediately admitted to the hospital in Kyiv," General (retd) Singh told ANI.

"The Indian embassy had earlier cleared on the priority that everyone should leave Kyiv. In the event of war, the gun bullet does not look at anyone's religion and nationality," he added.

The students are currently fleeing the war-torn country Ukraine and trying to reach the border of Poland for their safe return to India.

Four Union Ministers, Hardeep Singh Puri, Jyotiraditya M Scindia, Kiren Rijiju and Gen (Retd) VK Singh -- are overseeing the evacuation efforts in the countries adjoining Ukraine. (ANI)
After Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (NPP), located in southern Ukraine, reported a fire on its territory, IAEA - International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is in contact with Ukrainian authorities about the situation. "Ukraine: IAEA is aware of reports of shelling at Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (NPP), in contact with Ukrainian authorities about situation," tweeted IAEA. Director-General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Rafael Mariano Grossi, has appealed for a halt of use of force and warned of severe danger if reactors are hit as it could be disastrous for radiation spread. "IAEA Director General @RafaelMGrossi speaks with Ukraine PM Denys Shmygal and with Ukrainian nuclear regulator and operator about the serious situation at Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, appeals for halt of use of force and warns of severe danger if reactors hit," tweeted IAEA. Meanwhile, Ukraine said that the fire at Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant has not affected "essential" equipment. "Ukraine tells IAEA that fire at site of #Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant has not affected "essential" equipment, plant personnel taking mitigatory actions," tweeted IAEA. Earlier on Friday -- before the fire broke out -- the IAEA released a statement warning that Russian troops were approaching the area and any fighting near the plant could be disastrous. Ukraine told the IAEA "a large number of Russian tanks and infantry 'broke through the block post to the town of Enerhodar, a few kilometres from the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (NPP)," the IAEA said in a statement. It added that Ukraine's regulatory authority had sent them an "urgent letter," warning that Russian troops were moving directly toward the nuclear plant and the situation was "critical." Meanwhile, Ukraine regulators told IAEA that there has been no change reported in radiation levels at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant. "#Ukraine regulator tells IAEA there has been no change reported in #radiation levels at the #Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant site," tweeted IAEA. As per Eastern European media, NEXTA, there was no threat of radiation spread. "According to Andrey Tuz, spokesman of the press service of the nuclear power plant, there is no threat of radiation spread," tweeted NEXTA. Earlier, the mayor of a nearby town said the nuclear plant was on fire amid intense fighting in the area, with firefighters unable to reach the site. Ukraine's foreign minister said Russian troops were "firing from all sides" at the plant. (ANI)
US President Joe Biden on Thursday (local time) spoke to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and received an update on the fire at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant. "President Joseph R. Biden, Jr. spoke with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine this evening to receive an update on the fire at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant," read White House release. Biden joined Zelenskyy in urging Russia to cease its military activities in the area and allow firefighters and emergency responders to access the site, added the release. Biden also spoke this evening with Under Secretary for Nuclear Security of the US Department of Energy and Administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) to receive an update on the situation at the plant. In recent developments, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has put its Incident and Emergency Centre in full 24X7 response mode. "IAEA puts its Incident and Emergency Centre (@IAEAIEC) in full 24/7 response mode due to serious situation at #Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in #Ukraine," tweeted IAEA. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau also spoke to Zelenskyy regarding Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant and condemned Russia. "DPM @cafreeland and I just spoke with President @ZelenskyyUa about the horrific attacks at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. These unacceptable attacks by Russia must cease immediately," tweeted Trudeau. Meanwhile, the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry said that the Russian army has opened fire on Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (NPP). "Russian army has opened fire on Zaporizhzhia NPP. No state except Russia has ever opened fire at nuclear power units. For the first time in human history, a terrorist state has resorted to nuclear terror. Only immediate European action can stop Russian troops," tweeted the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine. "Russian army is firing from all sides upon Zaporizhzhia NPP, the largest nuclear power plant in Europe. Fire has already broken out. If it blows up, it will be 10 times larger than Chornobyl! Russians must IMMEDIATELY cease the fire, allow firefighters, establish a security zone!," tweeted Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, Ukraine's nuclear regulator told the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) there is "no change reported in radiation levels at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant site," the IAEA tweeted on Friday. Ukrainian officials said early Friday a fire had broken out at the nuclear plant as Russian forces attacked "from all sides," with firefighters unable to reach the site. The Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Rafael Mariano Grossi, has spoken with Ukraine's Prime Minister and the country's nuclear regulator about the reported fire at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, the IAEA said on Twitter early Friday. Grossi "appeals for halt of use of force and warns of severe danger if reactors hit," the tweet added. Earlier on Friday -- before the fire broke out -- the IAEA released a statement warning that Russian troops were approaching the area and any fighting near the plant could be disastrous. (ANI)
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Friday spoke with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and discussed the grave concerns over the situation of Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, after Russian troops attacked it and sparked a fire. Johnson has said he will seek an emergency UN Security Council meeting. "I've just spoken to President @ZelenskyyUa about the gravely concerning situation at Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station. Russia must immediately cease its attack on the power station and allow unfettered access for emergency services to the plant, Johnson said on Twitter after his early morning call. According to a statement put out by Johnson's office both leaders agreed that Russia must immediately cease its attack on the power station and allow unfettered access for emergency services to the plant. "The Prime Minister said the reckless actions of President Putin could now directly threaten the safety of all of Europe. He said the UK would do everything it could to ensure the situation did not deteriorate further," the statement read. Johnson said he would be seeking an emergency UN Security Council meeting and that the UK would raise this issue immediately with Russia and close partners. Both leaders agreed a ceasefire was crucial. Meanwhile, fighting has stopped near the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant and background radiation levels are currently normal as a fire continued at the facility, a spokesperson at the plant said on Friday. Spokesperson Andrey Tuz said the plant has not sustained any critical damage, although only one power generation unit out of six is operational. Earlier Friday, Ukrainian officials said firefighters were unable to access the nuclear plant. Tuz said when firefighters initially arrived, they were met with guns and turned around. The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant is the biggest in Europe according to the plant's website. It supports one fifth of total electric power generated in Ukraine. The nuclear plant has six units in total, with the first one connected to the power grid in 1984, and the sixth one connected in 1995. (ANI)
Fighting has stopped near the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant on Friday and radiation levels are currently normal. Zaporizhzhia power plant spokesperson Andrey Tuz said the plant has not sustained any critical damage, although only one power generation unit out of six is operational as the fire continued at the facility As per Eastern European media, NEXTA, there was no threat of radiation spread. "According to Andrey Tuz, spokesman of the press service of the nuclear power plant, there is no threat of radiation spread," tweeted NEXTA. Earlier Friday, Ukrainian officials said firefighters were unable to access the nuclear plant. Tuz said when firefighters initially arrived, they were met with guns and turned around. Ukrainian authorities said about 2:30 a.m. local time Friday that a fire had broken out at the nuclear power complex, located in Enerhodar, southeastern Ukraine. The plant is the largest of its kind in Ukraine and contains six of the country's 15 nuclear energy reactors, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). US Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm tweeted Thursday night that she spoke with Ukraine's energy minister about the situation at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. The US has activated its Nuclear Incident Response Team, and is monitoring the situation along with the Department of Defense, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the White House, she said. "We have seen no elevated radiation readings near the facility. The plant's reactors are protected by robust containment structures and reactors are being safely shut down," she said. "Russian military operations near the plant are reckless and must cease," she added. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said in a tweet on Friday that "essential" equipment at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant site has not been affected by the fire, according to Ukrainian authorities. It added that the "plant personnel (are) taking mitigatory actions." US President Joe Biden received an update from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky late Thursday night about the reported fire at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, the White House said in a statement after the two leaders' phone call. Biden joined Zelensky "in urging Russia to cease its military activities in the area and allow firefighters and emergency responders to access the site," according to the statement. Biden also received an update on the situation from the undersecretary for Nuclear Security of the US Department of Energy and the Administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA). The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant is the biggest in Europe according to the plant's website. It supports one-fifth of the total electric power generated in Ukraine. The nuclear plant has six units in total, with the first one connected to the power grid in 1984, and the sixth one connected in 1995. (ANI)
I was 5 years old and in kindergarten when our class learned the words of The Star-Spangled Banner. We were told to stand up straight, hands over our hearts and turn to the American flag in front of Miss Webers desk. It was then, more than six decades ago, that the words and the rockets red glare, the bombs bursting in air put iridescent streaks in my young mind, vivid artistry painting the sky. The images were mesmerizing, not terrorizing.

I was 8 in the fall of 1962, when my country was in a scary standoff with the Soviet Union during the Cuban Missile Crisis. We were told by our second-grade teacher, Miss Pidoni, that the United States and the Soviet Union were in a big argument that could lead to a big war.

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Our lessons that year stretched beyond math and spelling to include instructions on how to cower under our desks if we were ordered to do so. There was a bomb shelter in the basement of my elementary school in Oak Park, Illinois that we practiced crowding into, during air raid drills prompted by a loud, heart-stopping siren screaming through the schools scratchy PA system.

People gather in the Kyiv subway, using it as a bomb shelter in Kyiv, Ukraine, Wednesday, March 2, 2022. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky) (Efrem Lukatsky/AP)

Those drills started before we hovered on the brink of nuclear war and lasted for years after. As a bigger girl and not a naive kindergartner, I could pick up a volume from our green and beige World Book Encyclopedia set and see pictures and the meaning of atomic bombs. I have a lasting, though faded, memory of President Kennedy, so handsome, talking to our family on a small black and white TV about the presence of nuclear-armed Soviet missiles in Cuba, which were based near American shores.

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Without smiling, which he usually did when I saw him give other speeches, Kennedy said that our country was prepared to go to war. Knowing that nukes, as I heard my dad call them, could blow up Oak Park, and even the world, World Book images of mushroom-shaped clouds from bombs streaked through my mind. This time, though, they were not the impressionistic brushstrokes like when I first heard The Star-Spangled Banner but stark portraits of mass destruction.

I was 15 in 1970, lying on my bed and listening to songs I can still sing word for word from my new two-album Woodstock set. Over and over, I play the soundtrack recorded from the August 1969 festival billed as An Aquarian Experience: 3 Days of Peace and Music, attended by upwards of 400,000 peace and music lovers. The motto of the times was Make love, not war.

The rockets red glare, the bombs bursting in air were no longer fantasy images in my childhood imagination, but thunderous explosions in Vietnam I witnessed nightly on the news. The Vietnam War would end up killing some two million civilians in both sides of Vietnam, including more than a million North Vietnamese and Viet Cong fighters and nearly a quarter-million South Vietnamese soldiers.

A woman runs as she flees with her family across a destroyed bridge in the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine, Wednesday, March 2. 2022. Russia renewed its assault Wednesday on Ukraines second-largest city in a pounding that lit up the skyline with balls of fire over populated areas, even as both sides said they were ready to resume talks aimed at stopping the new devastating war in Europe. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti) (Emilio Morenatti/AP)

When American troops became part of what the government called The Vietnam Era, U.S. casualties from February 1961 through early May 1975 amounted to 58,281. Their names are now eternally etched in the black granite wall of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. With more than four million visitors a year, this tribute to American soldiers that fought in a war we lost and still do not understand has become the second-most visited memorial in the U.S., behind only the Lincoln Memorial.

I am now 67, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine is entering its second week. In a 24/7 news cycle, the rockets red glare, the bombs bursting in air are on my phone, computer and television screens endlessly. I cannot stop watching this unthinkable, bloody and misguided assault on a proud and peaceful democracy. I am riveted to scenes of war with my coffee at 7 a.m. and at 3 a.m., sleepless from the courage displayed by common citizens becoming warriors and crying mothers clutching small children and large suitcases.

In the insomnia and blackness of pre-dawn, I see reporters atop BREAKING NEWS banners, their voices drowned by bombs bursting across Ukraine as they chronicle a Russian invasion that is killing God knows how many people. Again, Americans are locked in a breathless moment from the threat of nuclear devastation.

Today, while watching a CNN correspondent in bulletproof gear standing next to a couple of bodies, one a small child, this stanza from the Vietnam Song by Country Joe Fish played loudly in my memory: One, two three, what are we fighting for? Then, the rest of the lyrics come flooding forth: And its 5, 6,7 open up the pearly gates/Well there aint no time to wonder why/Whoopee, were all gonna die.

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These haunting words that became an anthem of anti-war activism a half-century ago are striking as powerfully as they were when I first heard them on my record player at age 15. I do not think we are all going to die. I do know that we will witness mass slaughter in a senseless war, and that fear and uncertainty over the rockets red glare will continue to keep us up at night.

I was an outraged teen who saw the carnage in Vietnam every day on the nightly news. Now, we see the carnage constantly streaming on all our devices. We cannot stand to watch this madness unfold. We cannot tear ourselves away.

During this time of unthinkable misery and threat of nukes, your kids will ask questions like my son just did: Mom, do you think we should go out today and buy lots of canned food?
Amid intense fighting between Russia and Ukraine, the Russian military on Friday seized a TV broadcasting tower in the southern city of Kherson. "The Russian military seized a TV broadcasting tower in the southern city of Kherson. As a result, there are concerns that it will be used to disseminate misinformation across this city," tweeted The Kyiv Independent. Meanwhile, an air raids alert was issued in Zhytomyr. "Air raid alerts in Zhytomyr. Residents should go to the nearest shelter," tweeted The Kyiv Independent. New videos posted to social media show the horrific aftermath of Russian military strikes that hit an apartment complex in the northern city of Chernihiv on Thursday. One video shows the strike as it happens, with residential buildings torn apart in a split second. Sirens echo as the camera shows parts of the building's walls torn open, exposing entire apartment rooms. The walls of one apartment complex were reduced to rubble, reported CNN. A fire is seen on the ground, with smoke elsewhere still rising from the explosion. The person filming the video moves out into the street, which is littered with debris and damaged cars. The video shows an injured woman on the ground, besides two people who appear burned and unmoving. "Kids ... little kids," she can be heard saying. A second before the military strikes, the roar of a projectile is heard on a surveillance video from a nearby house in Chernihiv, which shows at least five explosions, reported CNN. The Ukrainian Emergency Services said on Twitter that as of 6:20 p.m. local time, they had pulled 33 bodies from the rubble of the complex in addition to 18 injured people. Moreover, US President Joe Biden on Thursday imposed new sanctions on eight members of the Russian elite and their families, including Dmitry Peskov, Putin's press secretary. The US also imposed visa restrictions on 19 oligarchs and 47 of their family members and close associates. "U.S. President Biden imposed on March 3 new sanctions on eight members of the Russian elite and their families, including Dmitry Peskov, Putin's press secretary. The US will also impose visa restrictions on 19 oligarchs and 47 of their family members and close associates," tweeted The Kyiv Independent. The US and Europe have launched a series of sanctions against Russia in response to the large scale military conflict in Ukraine. These sanctions will prevent Moscow from accessing its hundreds of billions of dollars of reserves worldwide and cut short its state revenues from oil and natural gas. (ANI)
Amid heavy fighting with Ukrainian forces, Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday said that nationalist "neo-Nazis" units of Ukraine are preventing foreigners, including Indians from leaving the war zone and are using them as human shields. In a video address, Putin on Thursday said, "The fact that we are fighting neo-Nazis is proved by how the hostilities are going, nationalist neo-Nazi's units are using foreign mercenaries from the Middle East. Also, they use civilians as human shields, hiding behind their backs and we have facts, pictures of how they deploy heavy weapons in residential areas." He alleged that Ukrainian forces are taking them hostage. Putin said, "That's how gangsters act, from the kindergartens, from hospitals, they put their guns, tanks, cannons and they are taking foreign citizens as hostages from thousands of students studying in Ukraine colleges." He also alleged that around 3000 Indian students were taken as hostages by Ukrainian "neo-Nazis" units. "They kept more than 3,000 Indian citizens as hostages, including 576 people in Sumy. Neo-Nazis opened fire at Chinese students who wanted to leave Kharkiv, two of them were wounded," said Putin. Meanwhile, the Indian Government on Thursday said that the Indian embassy in Ukraine is in continuous touch with its stranded citizens, adding that it has not received any reports of students being held hostage in the war-hit country. The government's remarks came in response to media queries after the claims of the Russian embassy in India on Wednesday that the Indian students have been taken hostage by Ukrainian security forces to use them as a human shield. Refuting the reports of Indian students being held hostage, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) spokesperson Arindam Bagchi informed that many students left Kharkiv yesterday with the cooperation of Ukrainian authorities. "We have not received any reports of any hostage situation regarding any student. We have requested for the support of the Ukrainian authorities in arranging special trains for evacuating students from Kharkiv and neighbouring areas to the western part of the country," he added. Bagchi further said that the MEA has been coordinating effectively with the countries in the region, including Russia, Romania, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and Moldova, and expressed gratitude towards Ukrainian authorities for their help in the evacuation of Indians.(ANI)
"A total of 130 comfortable buses are ready to depart to Kharkiv and Sumy from the Nekhoteyevka and Sudzha checkpoints in the Belgorod Region since 6 AM today in order to rescue Indian students and citizens of other foreign states," he said.

It is also reported that places for temporary accommodation and rest have been set up at the checkpoints. The refugees will be provided with hot meals; mobile clinics have also been set up there with a stockpile of medicine, reported Russian News Agency TASS.

"The evacuees will be then transported to the city of Belgorod for subsequent departure to their homeland by air, including via Russian military airplanes," said General Mizintsev.

On February 24, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that in response to a request by the heads of the Donbas republics, he had made a decision to carry out a special military operation in Ukraine.

Meanwhile, the UN said that one million people have now fled Ukraine since Russia''s military operations.

The tally from the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees amounts to more than 2 per cent of Ukraine''s population -- which the World Bank counted at 44 million at the end of 2020.

The agency cautions that the outflows are far from finished. It has been predicted that as many as four million people could eventually leave Ukraine. (ANI)
"+40 725964976 is the 24x7 hotline number for any Indians evacuated from Ukraine and still in Romania. Please call for any assistance required," the embassy said in a Tweet.

Meanwhile, three more Indian Air Force's C-17 aircraft returned to the Hindan airbase late last night and early morning today carrying 630 Indian nationals from Ukraine, using airfields in Romania and Hungary under Operation Ganga.

"#OperationGanga Three more #IAF C-17 aircraft returned to Hindan airbase late last night and early morning today carrying Ukraine conflict-affected 630 Indian nationals, using airfields in Romania and Hungary," The Indian Air Force tweeted.

The Ministry of External Affairs has said that more than 7,400 persons are expected to be brought through special flights in the next two days. Further, 3,500 persons are expected to be brought back on Friday and over 3900 on March 5.

Russian forces launched military operations in Ukraine on February 24, three days after Moscow recognized Ukraine's breakaway regions - Donetsk and Luhansk - as independent entities.

Several countries including the UK, the US, Canada, and the European Union have condemned Russia's military operations in Ukraine and imposed sanctions on Moscow. These countries have also promised Ukraine to help with military aid to fight Russia. (ANI)
Pakistan is expected to remain on the grey list of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) for another four months, until June 2022, local media reported on Friday. Continuation on the FATF's "grey" list means that Pakistan will not get any respite from difficulties in trying to access financial help in the form of investments and aid from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank, Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the European Union. According to The News International, the concluding session of the plenary meeting of the FATF, a Paris-based global money laundering and terrorist financing watchdog, is due on Friday (today). Islamabad is now targeting the full completion of the 2021 action plan on anti-money laundering and combating terror financing (AML/CFT) by the end of January 2023. While Pakistan is eye washing FATF- global anti-money laundering watchdog by making claims of fulfilling compliance at a time when the country continues to remain an epicentre of terrorism and other criminal activities, reported a Canada-based thinktank, International Forum for Rights and Security (IFFRAS). Pakistan is desperately wanting to move out of the FATF Grey List as it would relax the international financial aid and investment channels for the country. Islamabad is putting up various 'actions' to showcase the pro-active attitude of the Imran Khan-led government in rescuing Pakistan, from falling into the Black List. Echoes of "Terrorist Terrorist! Pakistan Pakistan!" have also resounded outside the office of Financial Action Task Force (FATF) in France on Saturday as exiled Afghan, Uyghur and Hong Kong communities living in Paris organized a protest urging the watchdog to blacklist Pakistan. Pakistan was on FATF's Grey List between 2012 and 2015 as well. On February 27, 2015, during the FATF meeting in Paris, Pakistan's name was put into the category of "Jurisdictions no longer subject to the FATF's On-Going AML/CFT Compliance Process," reported the thinktank. In June 2015, India strongly raised the issue of non-compliance by Islamabad on freezing assets of LeT and its affiliates. Later, in June 2018, when Pakistan was put on the Grey List, it made a high-level political commitment to work with FATF and the Asia Pacific Group (APG).(ANI)
Seven men departed Belgium on Thursday for the Polish-Ukrainian border, and 18 others are expected to follow them in the coming days after filling all the necessary applications and holding interviews, the embassy told the newspaper.

A total of 70 people applied to the mission to volunteer, including Belgians, Brazilians, French, Georgians, Italians, Latvians, Moroccans, as well as nationals of Luxembourg and Sweden, the embassy specified. Some of the applicants have military experience.

According to the report, Ukraine has set up international hotlines to advise those willing to come to the country to participate in the hostilities.

The Belgian Foreign Ministry recommended the population to refrain from going to Ukraine due to security risks, and said that it was analyzing legal grounds and consequences for foreign fighters in Ukraine, the newspaper said.

Russia launched a military operation in Ukraine last week after the breakaway Donbas republics appealed for help in defending themselves against the Ukrainian military. The operation is solely targeting Ukrainian military infrastructure and the civilian population is not in danger, Moscow maintains. (ANI/Sputnik)
India on Friday abstained from voting at the UN Human Rights Council on the establishment of an independent international inquiry commission in the aftermath of the Russian military operation in Ukraine. The 47-member Council voted on a draft resolution on the situation of human rights in Ukraine. The resolution was adopted with 32 votes in favour, two against (Russia and Eritrea) and 13 abstentions, including India, China, Pakistan, Sudan and Venezuela. The resolution "condemned in the strongest possible terms human rights violations and abuses and violations of international humanitarian law resulting from Russia's aggression against Ukraine." The countries voting in favour included France, Germany, Japan, Nepal, UAE, UK and the US. "The Human Rights Council has decided to urgently establish an independent international commission of inquiry as a result of Russia's aggression against Ukraine, the Council tweeted. Earlier on Wednesday, India abstained from voting against Russia at United Nations General Assembly at the 11th emergency special session and fourth plenary meeting on the ongoing Russian military operation in Ukraine. 141 nations voted in favour of the move and five nations were against it while 35 countries abstained. The UNGA overwhelmingly voted to condemn Russia's invasion of Ukraine. As the results were placed on the screen in the chamber, a rare standing ovation occurred, UNGA statement said. However, Russia's Permanent Representative to the United Nations Vassily Nebenzia said that Moscow is not carrying out strikes on civilians and civilian facilities. On Sunday (local time), India abstained from voting on a resolution to call for a special emergency session of the UNGA on the Russia-Ukraine conflict. This came two days after India abstained from voting on the UNSC resolution condemning the Russian invasion of Ukraine, along with China and the UAE. Justifying India's stand at UN General Assembly, Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla has said that it was based "on certain careful considerations" and taken "in the best interests" of the country. "In United Nations, we take positions that are based on certain careful considerations and certainly, we do regard the merits of each and every case that comes before us...take decisions in our best interest," Shringla said while replying to India's decision to abstain from voting on a resolution to call for a special emergency session of the UN General Assembly on the Russia-Ukraine conflict. (ANI)
Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan has ordered an inquiry into the Peshawar blast incident and directed the concerned to provide immediate medical aid to injured people, Radio Pakistan reported on Friday. An explosion occurred at a Shia mosque on Friday in which 56 people were killed and 194 others were injured. Mohammad Asim, a spokesperson for Lady Reading Hospital (LRH), confirmed the casualties, adding that some of the injured were in critical condition. Officials, who termed the incident a suicide attack, initially said that two attackers were involved. However, CCTV footage released later in the day showed a lone attacker clad in a black shalwar kameez reaching the mosque in the city's Qissa Khwani Bazaar on foot and brandishing a pistol, the Dawn reported. Speaking to the media, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Inspector General of Police Moazzam Jah Ansari said two police officials were deputed at the mosque for security. He opened fired on police personnel deployed outside the main entrance for security before running inside. The attacker also opened fire on a man who tried to stop him and managed to enter the mosque, where worshippers had gathered for Friday prayers, after which an explosion took place. He said that one constable was martyred, while another police official was in critical condition. The senior police officer said that around five to six kilogrammes of explosive material was used, adding that there were no prior reports about the attack. Capital City Police Officer (CCPO) Peshawar Mohammad Ijaz Khan confirmed the chain of events, adding that one police official was martyred in the gunfight outside the mosque. (ANI)
Concerned over the non-availability of a humanitarian corridor for the evacuation process amid Russia's ongoing military operation in Ukraine, the Ministry of External Affairs on Friday urged Russian and Ukrainian authorities to announce a 'local ceasefire' at least so that Indian nationals can be safely evacuated. Speaking on a special briefing on Operation Ganga, MEA spokesperson Arindam Bagchi said, "It (Evacuation) looks difficult without a ceasefire. We urge the parties concerned- Ukraine and Russia, to have a local ceasefire at least so that we can evacuate our people." Bagchi said that on the Western borders the things are quite smooth. "We had requested Ukraine authorities for special trains but haven't heard anything yet. Meanwhile, we are arranging buses," he said. The MEA Spokesperson further said that the highest attention for evacuation is being given to Eastern Ukraine, particularly Kharkiv and Pisochin. "Highest attention is on the Eastern Ukraine particularly Kharkiv and Pisochin. We have managed to get some buses there. Five buses are already operational, more buses will be functional later in the evening. 900-1000 Indians stranded in Pisochin and 700 plus are in Sumy. We are concerned about Sumy," added Bagchi. He said that over 20,000 Indians have left the Ukraine border "since we issued our advisories." "During the 24 hours, 18 flights have landed in India with around 4,000 Indians on board. The total number of flights that have landed have been 48, carrying 10348 Indians," he said. He mentioned that sixteen flights were scheduled for the next 24 hours including Indian Air Force's C-17 aircraft. Meanwhile, a total of 5,245 Indian nationals were airlifted from Romania to the country till March 3 amid Russia's military operations in Ukraine, informed the Government of India on Friday. Meanwhile, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, today chaired a meeting to discuss the ongoing evacuation drive of Indian nationals and the situation in conflict-hit Ukraine. The government has also deployed 'special envoys' to four neighboring countries bordering Ukraine to coordinate and oversee the evacuation process of Indian nationals. Union Minister for Petroleum and Natural Gas Hardeep Singh Puri is overseeing evacuation efforts in Hungary, Union Law Minister Kiren Rijiju in Slovakia, Civil Aviation Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia in Romania and Minister of State for Road Transport & Highways and Civil Aviation Gen VK Singh in Poland. Russian forces launched military operations in Ukraine on February 24, three days after Moscow recognized Ukraine's breakaway regions - Donetsk and Luhansk - as independent entities. (ANI)
Thousands of people have fled conflict-ridden Ukraine and crossed over to Romania's Siret in the past few days amid Russia's ongoing military operation in Ukraine. Volunteers, charity organisations and Romanian firefighters are providing immediate relief to them at the border-- including food, mobile phone sim cards and free transportation to various cities in Romania. A total of 5,245 Indian nationals were airlifted from Romania to India till March 3 amid Russia's military operations in Ukraine, informed the Government of India on Friday. In north Romania's Siret border, mostly women with small children, elderly people, some with their pets and luggage were seen. In the Siret border, there are camps from various charity organisations that are working 24x7 to provide support to these refugees escaping war. There is everything from blankets to tents to hot food to anything one can need on a daily basis. There are feeding bottles for babies as well. The warmth that's showered on these refugees whether through the relief camps or through the willingness to help by volunteers is an incredible thing to experience. The weather conditions are extreme. There is snow everywhere and it's freezing. But the warmth of the volunteers is keeping it going even in these hard situations. One of the volunteers at the Red Cross said, "There are huge numbers of Indians coming in. Last night almost 800 Indians crossed over and today morning 450, camps are being arranged to accommodate them so they can rest and have something to eat." Some camps even have arranged special vegetarian food for Indians. "Indians were refusing to accept food containing meat and since then veg food is also being served", informed a volunteer from Siret. Raju, who has been in Romania for the last 20 years and is assisting the Indian embassy at Siret said, "Flight arrangement is a big relief. Now Indians don't have to wait for another two days. Romania govt providing everything round the clock- including food and sim cards for free." Russian forces launched military operations in Ukraine on February 24, three days after Moscow recognized Ukraine's breakaway regions - Donetsk and Luhansk - as independent entities. Several countries including the UK, the US, Canada, and the European Union have condemned Russia's military operations in Ukraine and imposed sanctions on Moscow. The Indian embassy in Romania on Friday issued a hotline number for Indians who have been evacuated from Ukraine and are still in Romania. "+40 725964976 is the 24x7 hotline number for any Indians evacuated from Ukraine and still in Romania. Please call for any assistance required," the embassy said in a Tweet. Meanwhile, three more Indian Air Force's C-17 aircraft returned to the Hindan airbase late last night and early morning today carrying 630 Indian nationals from Ukraine, using airfields in Romania and Hungary under Operation Ganga. (ANI)
The Baltimore Planning Commission considered digital billboards at its meeting Thursday night. This one would be at 300 S. Charles St.

Digital billboards may soon grace the facades of some of downtown Baltimores most visible buildings with approval this week from the citys Planning Commission.

The commissioners voted 6-2, with one member abstaining, in favor of approving six of 11 signs proposed for the citys downtown business district. City planners raised concerns about the remaining five signs, triggering further review.

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The signs, slated for some of downtowns most visible spots, such as the side of Power Plant Live! and a major gateway on Lombard Street, are not without controversy. Several residents who attended the Planning Commissions Thursday night meeting decried the proposal.

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Barbara Valeri, president of the Towers at Harbor Court Condominium Association, said the billboards will be visible to residential areas despite promises to the contrary from sign supporters.

I can tell you that I just looked out my window and at the Sheraton, Valeri said of one proposed sign location. I can see clearly where that billboard will be and so can all the other residents in my building.

For the last two decades, Baltimore has eschewed new billboards. In 2000, Mayor Martin OMalley signed a bill capping the citys billboard count at 900. Then, a coalition of city residents, including a then 12-year-old girl, led the push for the ban, which was the first bill OMalley signed after taking office.

But a sign ordinance passed by Baltimore City Council last fall cleared the way for the downtown signs. That ordinance, passed with almost no discussion by the council, created a district where signs are permitted. The zone is bounded largely by Howard Street to the west, Baltimore Street to the north, President Street to the east and Pratt Street to the south. The district continues south to Conway Street along the Inner Harbor.

Shelonda Stokes, president of the Downtown Partnership of Baltimore, said the billboards present the city with an opportunity to promote local events and help revitalize the downtown area. The partnership presented the plans to the Planning Commission on behalf of building owners who hope to host the signs.

Were talking about 144 acres, 11 signs over 2.5 miles, she said. Which is 11 opportunities to promote art, information and advertising to showcase our unique neighborhoods and were doing this on underutilized facades on these select buildings.

The plan presented Thursday called for 11 signs ranging from 680 to 1,800 square feet on nine buildings. All are proposed for locations that are major transportation corridors.

In their submission to the Planning Commission, the partnership argued the signs create light, vitality and activity. Digital signs will promote tourism, economic development and city branding, the submission argued.

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Digital signage positivity correlates with lower crime, higher pedestrian activity, enlivened streetscape experience  all of which is needed in our post-COVID recovery in downtown Baltimore, the proposal stated.

City planning staff recommended approval for much of the plan, which requires the signs to meet three criteria: They will not increase traffic congestion, add to the clutter of the area or be incongruous with the design of the area they are located.

The Baltimore Planning Commission considered digital billboards at its meeting Thursday night. This sign would be at 100 E. Pratt St.

Planners recommended reducing the size of several of the proposed billboards to align with those points. A proposed cluster of three billboards at the corner of Lombard and Charles streets received the most negative feedback. Planners suggested reducing the size of one sign and removing another altogether.

The largest sign proposed, an 1,800-square-foot billboard above the historic Farmers & Merchants National Bank building, now the Crafty Crab, was recommended for approval.

It will not negatively impact the architecture of the pedestrian experience of historic buildings, as it will not be visible at the pedestrian level, said city planner Caitlin Audette.

A billboard proposed for the facade of the Sheraton Hotel at Charles and Conway streets proved the most controversial with residents who attended Thursdays discussion in opposition to the plan. The sign is visible to the Towers at Harbor Court at 10 E. Lee St. The condominium building overlooks the Inner Harbor to the east and downtown Baltimore to the north.

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Valeri, who represents the buildings tenants, expressed concerns about the billboards causing car accidents and said too little research or analysis about the possible impacts on crime reduction and light pollution was presented.

Numerous others attended Thursdays meeting in favor of the proposed signs. Some suggested the billboards could inspire local artists and children to get their work onto a big screen.

Zed Smith, the CEO of The Cordish Companies, which owns the Power Plant at 601 E. Pratt St., said the billboards are a tremendous opportunity to bring new tenants in and bring some new energy to the city.

The CEO said it could help the building, which has struggled with vacancies the past several years, attract new tenants and showcase the property.

It can only be a big win, not only for us, but for the city, he said.

Councilman Eric Costello, who sits on the Planning Commission, championed the legislation creating the downtown sign district. Costello proposed the compromise agreed upon by the board Thursday.

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The District 11 representative said he felt it was necessary to allow more time for business owners, stakeholders and the community to share their input about proposed changes. Many said during the meeting they had not been alerted to size reductions or the possible elimination of billboards.

The Baltimore Planning Commission considered digital billboards at its meeting Thursday night. This sign would be at 124 Market Place.

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Amy Jordan, property manager at 36 S. Charles St., represented one such property. She said there was no indication the buildings billboard was going to be eliminated, but planning staff recommended it be removed because it would be incongruous with the existing design of the building and creates visual clutter in the area.

This is the first time I am hearing this, Jordan said. This is something weve been interested in from the start. We are willing to do whatever we need to do to make this happen for our building.

The Planning Commission advanced the following locations Thursday: 100 S. Charles St., 30 Light St., 300 S. Charles St., 55 Market Place, 204 E. Lombard St. and 601 E. Pratt St. It tabled discussion on 100 S. Charles St. (east elevation), 100 E. Pratt St. (northeast), 100 E. Pratt St. (northwest), 124 Market Place and 36 S. Charles St.

Victor Clark Jr., a citizen representative on the commission, abstained from the vote.

Even with the Planning Commissions approval, it could take up to a year for signs to appear downtown, according to a statement released Friday by the Downtown Partnership. The approved signs must still receive permits from the city.

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The property owners who will host the billboards have picked their own media companies and will contract with them privately, according to the statement. The partnership will also enter into agreements with those media companies and will manage the community space on the signs, which is time reserved for civic and artistic content, according to the partnership. The billboards will be used commercially, but will also offer branded content for special events such as the recent CIAA basketball tournament, the partnership said.

Partnership officials declined to answer a question about whether they will receive a share of the revenue created by the billboards. They also did not provide more detail about how much time will be devoted to civic content on the signs.
The misuse of the draconian blasphemy laws against minorities and even members of the Muslim community to settle personal grudges is rampant in Pakistan, local media said on Friday. Pakistan had inherited the British era blasphemy laws but no one was accused of insulting Islam until the Zia-ul-Haq regime added several clauses to them as part of the 'Islamisation' drive, sowing the seeds of violent religious extremism, said a Pakistan daily, Business Recorder. "There are very clear misuses, as is recognised, of the blasphemy law against minorities. However, most of the misuses, well over 50 per cent are Muslims misusing it against Muslims," the daily quoted citing the Archbishop of Canterbury, who was recently on a visit to Pakistan. Many people have been lynched to death in Pakistan on the mere accusation of blasphemy. Countless others languish in jails for years on end with no hope of getting justice as the lawyers, fearing for their own lives, refuse to defend them. Judges in the lower courts routinely hand the accused the ultimate penalty of death without examining the evidence. Recently, a counsel for an accused was murdered in Multan; and before that, a Lahore High Court justice was shot dead in his chambers for acquitting a wrongly accused Christian man. The radicalisation in society does not differentiate between foreigners, minorities or even Muslims themselves. Last December, a Sri Lankan manager of a Sialkot factory, a Christian, was brutally lynched by a mob, and soon afterwards in Vehari, a Muslim man was tied to a tree and stoned to death. Council of Islamic Ideology (CII) Chairman Qibla Ayaz called a special press conference after the incident said that the main factor behind such horrific incidents was a "delay in dispensation of justice" whereas, more often than not, the accused are killed unheard, the daily said. The CII is a constitutional body of Pakistan that advises the legislature whether or not a certain law is "repugnant to Islam". An important factor that leads to the blasphemy laws being so frequently and freely misused is that there are no consequences for a false accusation. "If one person accuses someone of blasphemy falsely and with malicious intent, they should have a criminal penalty in the same way as when there has been blasphemy, and the blasphemer should have a criminal penalty," the Archbishop was quoted as saying. It is about time the CII stopped sidetracking the real issue and played its role in making the necessary change so no one misuses the laws to commit inhuman acts in the name of Islam, the daily concluded. (ANI)
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Friday (local time) has left Ukraine and is currently in Poland, said Russian State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin, reported Sputnik. "Zelensky left Ukraine. Deputies of the Verkhovna Rada said that they could not get to him in Lvov", he wrote on his Telegram channel. "He is now in Poland". Several Western countries have expressed concern in regard to Zelensky's safety. Particularly, French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said Paris was ready "to help him if necessary", reported Sputnik. It was also reported that the United States offered him evacuation, but he refused. Reports that Zelensky left the Ukrainian capital earlier last week, with the president refuting them and posting several video messages in which he said he remained in Kyiv. As per fresh reports, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Friday that there is "no talk" of Russia and Ukraine signing any formal documents after Thursday's second round of talks between the two sides. "The second round of negotiations took place yesterday," Peskov said in a conference call with reporters. "Now it is up to these negotiations. It is an opportunity for the delegations to convey to each other all the elements of positions without unnecessary intermediaries. Elements of our position have been brought to the attention of the Ukrainian side," CNN reported. Asked about the possibility of the two sides signing any high-level agreements, Peskov said, "There is no talk of (signing) any documents yet. The talks that took place were a good opportunity to clearly convey our vision of this problem,"CNN reported. (ANI)
Union Minister Hardeep Singh Puri on Friday said that 3,000 Indian nationals have been evacuated from Budapest till Thursday and another 1,100 citizens are expected to leave on Friday amid the ongoing Russian military operation in Ukraine. Speaking to ANI Puri said, "From Budapest, 3000 people have been evacuated till yesterday, another 1,100 expected to leave today." He added, "We've asked for seven more flights, which will make it another 1,400 people being evacuated tomorrow." Hardeep Singh Puri reached Budapest on Tuesday to facilitate the evacuation of Indian citizens stranded in crisis-stricken Ukraine. According to Puri, with 'relative ease' in the crossing across the Hungarian border, a lot of people who were on the other borders where there were a lot of difficulties like queues, shifted to the Hungary-Zahony border. "Yesterday night we got another 1700 students coming into Budapest and we had arrangements for only 1200. That put a little strain," said Puri. He said he spoke to the Hungarian foreign minister who made a dormitory available for 800 students. The Union Minister said, "The volunteers, temples, civil society are all chipping in. So, the kids, although they have had a difficult time, are well fed and looked after well. One by one we will put them on flights." Puri lauded the volunteers' efforts who are providing essentials to the people at the border. He said, "It's heartwarming to see young professionals take leave of absence from their job and devote full time to helping our young students in need." Speaking on the Indian government's efforts in evacuation, Puri said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself is personally monitoring the evacuation process. "I don't think there is ever been a parallel to what the Government of India has done in this evacuation. In this case, taking out people from the war zone, flying them to the neighbouring countries and the GoI assuming responsibility to bring these children home. The Prime Minister himself is personally monitoring this evacuation," said the Union Minister. The government has deployed 'special envoys' to four neighbouring countries bordering Ukraine to coordinate and oversee the evacuation process of Indian nationals. Union Minister for Petroleum and Natural Gas Hardeep Singh Puri will oversee evacuation efforts in Hungary, Union Law Minister Kiren Rijiju in Slovakia, Civil Aviation Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia in Romania while Gen VK Singh in Poland. The Indian government has launched Operation Ganga for the return of Indians from Ukraine amid military operations by Russia. Russian forces launched military operations in Ukraine on February 24, three days after Moscow recognized Ukraine's breakaway regions - Donetsk and Luhansk -as independent entities. Several countries including the UK, the US, Canada, and the European Union have condemned Russia's military operations in Ukraine and imposed sanctions on Moscow. These countries have also promised Ukraine to help with military aid to fight Russia. The US, Canada and European allies agreed to remove key Russian banks from the interbank messaging system, SWIFT which means Russian banks won't be able to communicate securely with banks beyond Russia's borders. President Putin has also signed a decree on special economic measures against the US and its allies. (ANI)
Ukrainian Foreign Ministry strongly condemned the shelling and seizure of the Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) site by the Russian Federation and called on the international community to force Russia to withdraw its armed forces from the power plant. In a statement on a Facebook post, the ministry said, "The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine strongly condemns the shelling and seizure of the Zaporizhzhya NPP site in the town of Energodar by the occupying armed forces of the Russian Federation." "We call on our partners to take urgent steps to force Russia to withdraw its armed forces from the nuclear power plant and create a security zone," the statement reads. "As a result of the shelling on the territory of the nuclear power plant, a fire broke out, killing and injuring several people. The fire has now been extinguished," it said. It said that the Zaporizhzhya NPP site, as well as the Chernobyl NPP, are currently under the control of Russian armed forces. It warned that if the cooling of the nuclear fuel within the Zaporizhzhya plant is disturbed, it could cause radioactive damage and have "irreparable consequences for Europe's environment". "If, at any point, the cooling process is disturbed, this could cause radioactive damage across large territories and have irreparable consequences for Europe's environment. Thousands of people - including civilians who are currently unable to evacuate the area near the plant due to ongoing shelling and fighting - would be hurt by this," it added. In addition to the six power units at the Zaporizhzhya NPP, there is a storage facility for spent nuclear fuel on-site. Any damage to this facility can also lead to a nuclear radiation release. As a result, a nuclear disaster of this scale may exceed all previous accidents at nuclear power plants, including Chernobyl and the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant disasters. The ministry added that it was disappointed by the reaction of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and demanded "clear and decisive action" from the UN atomic agency. "We are disappointed by the reaction of the IAEA, whose statement did not go far enough to include any mention of the attacking side. We demand clear and decisive action from the IAEA." The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine calls on the international community to strongly condemn the actions of the Russian occupiers, which could lead to an unprecedented nuclear catastrophe. The Minister for Foreign Affairs of Ukraine Dmytro Kuleba has already instructed Ukrainian diplomatic missions to start urgent contacts with partners, in particular through the IAEA, in order to prepare an international response to Russia's aggression of the Russian Federation against nuclear infrastructure. Employees of the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant are monitoring the condition of power units and ensuring their operation in accordance with the requirements of technical regulations for safe operation. The radiation background is currently within the norm. Ukraine informed the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) today that the site of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) had been shelled overnight and Director-General Rafael Mariano Grossi immediately spoke with Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal as well as the country's national nuclear regulator and operator about the serious situation. (ANI)
"The third leg could take place tomorrow or the day after, we are in constant contact," The Times of Israel quoted Ukrainian presidential advisor Mykhailo Podolyak.

During the second round of talks in Belarus on Thursday, Russia and Ukraine agreed to organize humanitarian corridors to evacuate civilians.

"There is a solution only for the organization of humanitarian corridors," Advisor to the Head of the President's Office of Ukraine Mykhailo Podoliak said on Twitter.

Russian presidential aide Vladimir Medinsky, who is also the head of the Russian delegation, said the two sides discussed military issues, humanitarian issues, and a future political settlement of the conflict.

Meanwhile, Ukraine informed the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) today that the site of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) had been shelled overnight and Director-General Rafael Mariano Grossi immediately spoke with Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal as well as the country's national nuclear regulator and operator about the serious situation.

Meanwhile, the fighting has stopped near the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant on Friday and the radiation levels are currently normal. (ANI)
Meanwhile, Ukraine plans to hold the third round of talks with Russian officials to try to end the fighting triggered by Moscow's invasion this weekend, said one of Kyiv's negotiators.

"The third leg could take place tomorrow or the day after, we are in constant contact," The Times of Israel quoted Ukrainian presidential advisor Mykhailo Podolyak.

Ukraine informed the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) today that the site of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) had been shelled overnight and Director-General Rafael Mariano Grossi immediately spoke with Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal as well as the country's national nuclear regulator and operator about the serious situation.

Meanwhile, the fighting has stopped near the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant on Friday and the radiation levels are currently normal. (ANI)
The embassy said that Nasir Ahmad Fayeq made his decision without consulting diplomats and without following formal foreign policy guidelines, which would harm Afghanistan's interests, as per a media report.

While Taliban Defence Minister Mullah Yaqub said that its forces are getting stronger.

As per media reports acting Minister of Defense Mullah Yaqub said that the Afghan forces is getting stronger day by day and we are committed to building a well-organized, well-equipped and strong army and increasing their capacity.

On contrary, there are reports saying that the Taliban shot dead a young man in Sheigal district of the country's Kunar province.

"Yasin was shot dead by Taliban for playing music in his car in Sheigal district. He was accompanying the wedding convoy of his brother - as per traditions, people take the bride and groom on a drive & play music along the scenic valleys of Sheigal. 2 more people also wounded," a verified account named Bilal Sarwary said in a Tweet.

Meanwhile, the Human Rights Watch (HRW) has raised concern about the house searches being conducted by the Taliban in a number of provinces in Afghanistan.

On February 22, Taliban spokesperson Zabiullah Mujahid announced that the Taliban, which took over Afghanistan in August 2021, had started "clearance operations" in Kabul and nearby provinces ostensibly to search for criminals and weapons.

According to the rights group, the door-to-door searches have created an atmosphere of fear. (ANI)
Some Indian students who safely crossed the Ukraine border and are now living in a shelter home provided by the Indian embassy in collaboration with some other welfare Association in Poland, refused to return to India if their pets are not allowed on board in the flight and said they "won't be able to do it". Speaking to ANI, the student who hails from Haryana's Karnal district, said that they reached the shelter on March 3 and refused to board the Indigo flight as they "are not taking pets with them". He was told to "board the Indian Airforce plane". "We have a lot of attachment with them. They have been with us for nearly four years, how can we abandon them here. Nobody is doing that. We had spoken in the shelter to keep them, but even they to us to take them with us if possible," he said when asked about the reason for not leaving behind the pets in the time when people are running for life. "I have spoken to the embassy officials now and they have said that there is an Airforce plane and further told us to pack our bags. They will give us a call," he added. Asked if the Airforce plane does not allow the pets, the student said that he "will not be able to leave the pets behind". Another student Frenky told ANI that the pets were not being allowed in trains. "Due to space constraints, pets were not being allowed in trains but we somehow brought them with us from Kharkiv after spending a lot of money. We're waiting for special flights for those with pets to be flown to India," she said. Meanwhile, the government said on Friday that over 20,000 Indians have left the Ukraine border following advisories issued to them. (ANI)
The continuing spate of deadly attacks in Balochistan reflects the country's failure to pre-empt subversive forces, which seem to be operating with untempered vigour, a media report said on Friday. A remote-controlled bomb, reportedly targetting a police patrol managed to kill at least three including a deputy superintendent of police (DSP) and injure 25 on Wednesday in Quetta's Fatima Jinnah Road, The Dawn reported. The local police said the nature of the blast was being ascertained adding that 2-2.5 kgs of explosives were used. The bombing comes just a week after a gun attack on policemen claimed by the banned Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). Last month, Baloch Republican Guards (BRG) claimed responsibility for a hand grenade attack in Balochistan's Dera Murad Jamali town that killed one person and left many others injured. In the same month, at least 13 terrorists were killed and seven security personnel, including an officer, died during armed attacks on two security forces' camps in the province's Naushki and Panjgur districts. The modus operandi of incidents suggests that the attackers had knowledge of police movements and response strategies and targeted them when they were at their most vulnerable, the report said, adding that given the visible resurgence of violence in Balochistan since the start of this year, civil security forces are not exercising increased caution and vigilance. According to Islamabad-based Pak Institute of Peace Studies, the new regime in Afghanistan is "not helping in any way Pakistan's efforts to deal with the militant groups threatening its security". According to the Federal Interior Minister Sheikh Rasheed Ahmad, there has been a 35 per cent increase in terrorist attacks over the last few months. The security situation in Balochistan province has worsened since last year, claiming 50 lives. (ANI)
India on Friday said that it attaches the highest importance to ensuring the safety and security of nuclear facilities in Ukraine after reports emerged about the fire at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant. India's Permanent Representative to the United Nations T.S. Tirumurti expressed these concerns about the ongoing conflict in Ukraine during an emergency meeting on Ukraine over recent developments near the Zaporizhzhia NPP. Speaking at the UNSC meeting, ambassador Tirumurti called for an immediate cessation of violence and end to all hostilities are essential. Tirumurti said India is continuing to carefully follow the developments regarding the safety and security of Ukraine's nuclear power reactors and facilities. On Thursday, Ukraine informed the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that Russian forces had taken control of the site of the country's Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (NPP). But Director-General Rafael Mario Grossi said that the nuclear power plant continued to be operated by its regular staff and there had been no release of radioactive material. Ukrainian counterparts informed the IAEA that a projectile overnight had hit a training building in the vicinity of one of the plant's reactor units, causing a localized fire that was later extinguished. Media reports said the safety systems of the plant's six reactors had not been affected and there has been no release of radioactive material. "India attaches the highest importance to ensuring safety and security of nuclear facilities," said Tirumurti and added that any accident involving the nuclear facilities may have severe consequences for public health and the environment. "India accords the highest priority to the discharge by the IAEA of its safeguards and monitoring activities, in accordance with its Statute in an effective, non-discriminatory and efficient manner," he said. While noting the latest information on the nuclear power facilities in Ukraine, ambassador Tirumurti said that India is discussing the nuclear dimension of an unfolding conflict. He said UNSC must acknowledge that there is a pressing humanitarian crisis confronting us in Ukraine, where safety and security of innocent civilians including several thousand Indian nationals. Advocating the path of diplomacy, the Indian diplomat expressed hope that the second round of talks between Russia and Ukraine contributes to the immediate establishment of a safe humanitarian corridor. (ANI)
A 16-year-old and 14-year-old are charged in a fatal shooting of a 21-year-old in Belair-Edison last month, Baltimore Police said.

The department does not name juvenile defendants, and a spokeswoman did not have information about a possible motive in the case.

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The shooting occurred just before 5 p.m. on Feb. 5, in the 3300 block of Kentucky Ave.

Police later identified the victim as Ronald Boone, 21. He was taken to Johns Hopkins Hospital, where he died. The Baltimore Sun has been unable to locate Boones family for comment.

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Boone was one of three men shot that weekend. Police said another man, Gregory Nelson, 42, was killed in a separate shooting later the same day in the 3200 block Belair Road, also in the Belair-Edison neighborhood.

Another man was injured in a shooting on Feb. 6, and had sought treatment at a local hospital, but refused to tell police where he had been shot.
Russian State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin said that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is in Poland. "Zelensky left Ukraine. The deputies of the Verkhovna Rada said that they could not get to him in Lvov. Now he is in Poland," he wrote, RT reported. Mikhail Podolyak, adviser to the head of the office of the President of Ukraine, declined to comment on information about the whereabouts of Zelensky. "For the safety of the President, we will not distribute information about where he is now. I will also neither refute nor confirm information about his whereabouts," he was quoted as saying at a press conference in Lvov. Earlier, Colonel-General Mikhail Mizintsev, head of the Russian National Defence Control Centre, said that the Kiev regime had almost completely lost the ability to manage the administrations of the regions and regions of the country. "Firstly, the Kiev regime has almost completely lost the ability to manage the administrations of the regions and districts of the country. Secondly, civil law administrations in cities and towns of Ukraine are deprived of the right to deal with the civilian population, they are unable to solve elementary issues of a social and domestic nature," he said, RT reported. According to him, in most Ukrainian cities and towns, national battalions of the so-called territorial defence are rampaging, which, in fact, are "Nazis and mercenaries who joined them, terrorists and bandits, including those of foreign origin". --IANS san/vd ( 252 Words) 2022-03-04-21:20:03 (IANS)
Sokhonn became the ASEAN special envoy after Cambodia assumed this year's chair for the regional grouping.

This will be his first official trip as a special envoy for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), which is scheduled to take place from March 20-23.

Sokhonn is set to inch forward the implementation of ASEAN's Five-Point Consensus peace plan, which reached a special summit last April, The Diplomat magazine reported.

This visit comes as the Southeast Asian bloc is seeking to implement a five-point consensus on Myanmar it reached last year stressing dialogue, humanitarian assistance and an end to violence.

Analysts believe that this visit could lead to some progress on the humanitarian front but a genuine cessation of violence and political negotiations - seems unlikely.

Earlier, Sokhonn said that he was seeking permission to meet with representatives of the National Unity Government (NUG), which was set up last year by members of the National League for Democracy (NLD) administration that the military overthrew last February.

Media reports said Myanmar's military has recently given permission for ASEAN's envoy to meet with members of the NLD party. (ANI)
Ukrayinska Pravda

VALENTYNA ROMANENKO - WEDNESDAY, 4 MAY 2022, 17:33 Ukrainian defenders continue to destroy units of the Russian occupiers and their equipment with great professionalism. Source: the press centre of the DShV command [Command of the Assault Troops of the Armed Forces of Ukraine] and the press service of the National Guard Details: The assault troops showed a video with the aftermath of the Russian armoured vehicles, together with their crews, destroyed by the artillery of one of the units of the D
Nineteen murder trials are currently pending in Onslow County, keeping the District Attorney's office busier than ever.

With the completion of James Moore III's trial, which ended in a guilty verdict, District Attorney Ernie Lee and his office look toward their lengthy list of murder trials, many of which were pushed back due to COVID-19.

More: Greensboro man found guilty in 2017 Onslow County stabbing death

Lee is also responsible for Sampson and Duplin counties, in which there are an additional 22 first-degree murder defendants pending.

"This office puts considerable resources in prosecuting these cases," Lee said.

Although most of the murder trials do not yet have a set date, Onslow residents can expect to see some of them take place in 2022.

Here's a list of some of the cases currently pending in Onslow County.

Anthony Young

Anthony Wayne Young is charged with one count of first-degree murder in the 2015 death of his 13-month-old daughter.

Young was arrested on May 3, 2015, and the District Attorney's office has planned to seek the death penalty.

Previous coverage: DA seeks death penalty in infant death

Previous coverage: Update: Investigation continues in baby's death

Previous coverage: More details released in baby death

Young's trial is one of the few with a set date. Lee and Assistant District Attorney Michael Maultsby are set to begin prosecuting on May 23, 2022.

Jyree Dominic Noel

Jyree Dominic Noel, of Grants Creek Road, is charged with multiple offenses in a 2017 incident.

Noel was arrested and charged on Dec. 22, 2017, with an open count of murder; first-degree kidnapping; felony malicious conduct by a prisoner; resisting a public officer; assault on a government official or employee; altering, stealing or destroying criminal evidence; felony possession of marijuana; and two counts of felony trafficking cocaine.

Previous coverage: Jacksonville man accused of murder, kidnapping, officer assault

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Previous coverage: Christmas crime doesn't take a holiday

Previous coverage: Alleged Cave Gentlemen's Club shooter facing more charges

The murder charge is due to Noel allegedly shooting 39-year-old Tyrone Lamont Bailey at The Cave Gentleman's Club, who died at the scene from his injuries.

Noel's trial date is set to begin on May 9, and will be prosecuted by Senior Assistant District Attorney Kelly Neal.

Adolphus Earl Kimrey

A man charged in the death of Mariah Woods could stand trial this year.

Adolphus Earl Kimrey was charged Jan. 24, 2018 by the Onslow County Sheriffs Office with first-degree murder and felony intentional child abuse inflicting serious bodily injury, using chloroform, of 3-year-old Mariah.

Previous coverage: Investigation continues in toddler's death

Previous coverage: Murder charges brought forth in Mariah Woods case

Previous coverage: DA to seek death penalty in Mariah Woods death

Previous coverage: Superior court judge grants motion, moves Earl Kimrey murder trial for third time

Kimrey's trial has been moved multiple times.

Lee said there has been a motion to move the trial venue to another city due to community involvement in this case, though nothing had been decided as of Thursday, March 3.

Angela Olsen

Angela Olsen, of Dennis Road, was arrested Jan. 13, 2017, by the Jacksonville Police Department and charged with the murder of her one-year-old son, Tyler Ordway.

Previous coverage: Jacksonville police  Woman accused of killing toddler

Olsen's trial date has not yet been set.

Travares Waters

Travares Francis Waters is accused of allegedly shooting Tony Vince Lewis Jr. in Onslow County in 2015, after which Waters is accused of using a moped as a getaway vehicle.

Previous coverage: Sheriff's Office seeks person of interest in Tuesday homicide

Previous coverage: Man accused of 2015 moped shooting found in Texas

Previous coverage: DA: Fatal moped shooting not eligible for death penalty

Waters was not caught and served until August of 2017, after being found in Texas.

Waters' trial date has not yet been set.

Robert Ortiz

Robert Ortiz III is charged by the Onslow County Sheriff's Office with an open count of murder, for allegedly killing his neighbor Kerry Frank Howard on Sept. 16, 2019. Ortiz is accused of stabbing Howard 32 times, and causing abrasions and other superficial stab wounds.

Previous coverage: Swansboro man charged with murder

Previous coverage: Autopsy: Man stabbed 32 times in Swansboro homicide

Ortiz's trial date has not yet been set, but it is a capital murder trial.

Jordan Meade

Jordan Meade, of 1018 Birchwood Lane, in Jacksonville is charged by the Onslow County Sheriffs Office with three open counts of murder, larceny of a motor vehicle, and possession of a stolen motor vehicle, larceny of a firearm, and possession of a stolen firearm.

Previous coverage: Man accused of killing mom, grandparents in triple homicide

Also, deputies went to the home of the SUVs registered owner, 1020 Birchwood Lane, where they found Meades grandparents, Geraldine A. Hawks, 60, and Emmitt Jordan Hawks Sr., 71, who had died of gunshot wounds.

His mother was also shot next door. Meade was arrested on March 26, 2020.

No trial date has been set, but the case will be a capital murder trial.

What about the rest?

"As evidenced by the nine-day first-degree murder trial of James Moore that me and Chief ADA Michael Maultsby prosecuted from Feb. 7-17, 2022, there is a tremendous amount of work required to prosecute a murder case," Lee said. "In that case, the State called 47 witnesses including 8 out of state witnesses and introduced over 250 exhibits into evidence."

With so many murder cases pending in Onslow, it will take time to get to all of them.

Reporter Morgan Starling can be reached at mstarling@gannett.com

This article originally appeared on The Daily News: Here are the murder trials currently pending in Onslow County
Mar. 4Aiken and Edgefield County fire departments battled five structure fires within 24 hours this week, highlighting the demand for first responders in the community.

Structure fires account for 77.4% of fire-related deaths and 83.4% of fire-related injuries in the U.S., according to National Fire Incident Reporting System (NFISRS) data.

All three structure fires in North Augusta this week were extinguished without any injuries, fatalities or damage to other nearby structures. Similarly, there were no injuries or fatalities in the two Aiken County structure fires late Thursday afternoon.

In South Carolina, 53.1% of fire departments are volunteer, with only 9.6% being career fire departments, according to NFISRS data.

Five out of the six departments that responded to the three North Augusta fires were volunteer departments; the North Augusta Department of Public Safety is the only career department.

All five fire departments that responded to the structure fires in Aiken County were volunteer.

Shed fire on Macedonia Road

The first fire occurred around 1 p.m. Wednesday afternoon on Macedonia Road.

Crews from the Merriwether Fire Department, County Line Fire Department and North Augusta Public Safety responded to a shed fire that started after a residential trash burn got out of control.

The homeowner said she had been burning papers in the backyard and thought the fire was out, but it reignited.

An Edgefield County Sheriff's Office police vehicle responded to the scene was damaged by the heat of the fire, but there were no reported injuries.

Gustav Court house fire

About an hour after the first fire, North Augusta Public Safety firefighters responded to a home on the 100 block of Gustav Court off Exit 1 for another structure fire.

Suzanne Yates, who lives near the house that caught fire, said she was working from home when she heard two large blasts shortly before the fire.

Yates said the second blast was loud and shook her house.

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"I actually felt," she said. "I didn't know what it was, but you could feel it and you could hear it. My neighbor across the street was already outside when I went out and at that point there was just smoke billowing out of the back of the house."

Yates said within just a few minutes the fire department was on scene.

"Within 4 minutes tops, there was a fire truck and volunteers on scene, already dressed," she said. "I guess I've never watched them that close, but so many of them responded so quickly."

During fires, fire departments say cars parked on both sides of the road can slow their response time.

Earlier this week, the Graniteville-Vaucluse-Warrenville Fire Department released a statement on social media saying that parking on the street in a neighborhood can inhibit emergency vehicles from getting to a scene.

"With so many subdivisions and neighborhoods in our area, we routinely encounter streets that are difficult for fire trucks and ambulances to traverse safely due to vehicles parking on both sides of the roadway," the department said in the release.

Yates said she noticed this at the fire in her neighborhood on Wednesday afternoon.

"It was kind of disappointing outside of the neighborhood because at some point the fire trucks couldn't even get down the road to get to the house  cars were parked on both sides," Yates said.

Firefighters ask that the public be mindful and avoid parking in the roadway.

"Seconds matter in an emergency situation," the GVW Fire Department said in the release.

A spokesperson for NADPS, which responded to the North Augusta house fire, said most streets can accommodate three-wide vehicles, but they "continue to ask for help in keeping all roadways as clear and smooth flowing as possible."

Crews battled the house fire for hours before it was fully extinguished.

[The] cause of the fire is undetermined, but [it] looks like it started on the back porch," according to Lt. Tim Thornton with North Augusta Public Safety.

It is unclear if the family was inside the home when the fire started, but there were no injuries.

Yates said the neighborhood is grateful everyone is OK and is rallying together to help the family.

"They probably need everything," she said. "It was pretty traumatic watching them after the fire trying to get some personal belongings out. The neighborhood has a Facebook page that we're trying to rally together to help with clothes donations, even if it's gift cards to the Gap  somewhere where they can go get clothes."

Yates said the family has a place to stay, and she is just glad they are safe.

"You can replace personal belongings  you can't replace the people inside," Yates said.

Kershaw Drive house fire

After a short night's rest, firefighters were geared up again for a third fire in North Augusta on Thursday morning.

Around 9:45 a.m., a structure fire was called in on the 700 block of Kershaw Drive.

The North Augusta Department of Public Safety, the GVW Fire Department, Midland Valley Fire Department, Belvedere Fire Department and the Aiken County Sheriff's Office responded to the scene.

Dominion Energy was called and arrived at 10:30 a.m. to disconnect a power line running from the house. If ignited, it would have charged the metal fence in front of the home, according to firefighters on scene.

No one was in the home and no injuries were reported. A man on scene said there were four dogs in the home, some of which were unaccounted for.

The cause of the fire is still unknown.

Additional fires Thursday

Five volunteer fire departments responded to multiple fires in Aiken County on Thursday afternoon.

Monetta, Eureka, Center, Langley and Midland Valley fire departments responded to two brush fires and multiple shed fires in Aiken County just after 4 p.m. Thursday afternoon.

Around 4:10 p.m., departments responded to a three-acre brush fire, car fire and multiple shed fires on the 1300 block of Old Fort Knox Road in Ridge Spring.

Monetta Fire Department requested mutual aid from Eureka, Center and Ridge Spring fire departments.

Lt. Ken Finucan with the Center Fire Department said the fire was a controlled burn started by the homeowner, but it got out of control.

"It has turned brush fire season," Finucan said. "This is typical for us this time of year, but the weather conditions have been very dry. It got hot very quickly, and today we had a lot of wind. Once something gets going, it just runs. During a different time in the same year, if you had the same fire, it might burn a 300-by-300-foot area. This time of year, it will consume an acre because it just runs."

The a shed burned, but the homeowner was OK, Finucan said.

Around 4:20 p.m., Langley Fire Department responded to the 200 block of Sudlow Lane in Graniteville for a brush fire with multiple structures and a shed on fire.

Around 4:27 p.m., the Midland Valley Fire Department was called to assist the Langley Fire Department.

There were no reported injuries, according to dispatch.

Wagener and Windsor also responded to brush fires Thursday afternoon, but no details are available.
Mar. 4JUNEAU  A hearing in the Alaska Legislature earlier this week about whether to rename the Glenn Highway turned into a discussion of "cancel culture," the definition of torture, and historical atrocities in the Philippines.

Rep. Zack Fields, D-Anchorage, has proposed renaming the highway, which runs 179 miles from Anchorage to Glennallen. As a first step, he introduced House Bill 352, which would require the Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities to consult tribes and local residents before coming up with a new name. The bill doesn't formally rename the highway, but that's the end goal, Fields said. The House Transportation Committee heard the measure on Tuesday.

"I looked into it and thought that it is worth considering whether we should rename this road," Fields said. "(There are) a lot of admirable Alaskans, and maybe a war criminal isn't the best person to name one of our major roadways after."

The Glenn Highway is named after Edwin Glenn, a U.S. Army officer who from 1898 to 1900 led mapping and exploration missions in Southcentral Alaska.

While Glenn was in Alaska, the United States defeated Spain in the Spanish-American War. The Philippines were a Spanish colony, and Americans were helped by Philippine fighters seeking independence. After the war, rather than grant the Philippines that independence, the United States sought to make the islands a colony of its own.

The Philippine resistance turned against the United States, which fought a years-long counterinsurgency war to maintain control. Glenn, transferred to the Philippines, ordered the waterboarding of Filipinos who supported independence.

He was court-martialed, found guilty, and received a small punishment from fellow Army officers who also fought Filipinos. On another occasion, he was court-martialed for ordering the execution of Filipino prisoners of war. In that case, he was acquitted.

David Reamer, a historian in Anchorage who writes for the Daily News, said it's unlikely that the Alaska Road Commission knew about that history when it named the Glenn Highway in 1942.

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"They knew he had commanded a military expedition into Alaska. There's no evidence they knew anything more than a sentence worth about him," Reamer said.

He wrote a column in 2020 for the Daily News that described Glenn's history in the Philippines and labeled him a war criminal who tortured captives.

Fields said he was inspired by that article.

"So following up on the suggestion from a local historian, I introduced House Bill 352, to rename the road. I like the ring of the Katie John Highway," he said.

John, from the Copper River region, was a well-known advocate for subsistence fishing rights. She died in 2013.

To support renaming the highway, Fields provided a detailed account of the way Glenn used a "water cure," the early 20th-century name for waterboarding. Reamer supported it with testimony describing the practice.

At one point, Rep. Tom McKay, R-Anchorage, asked for a break.

"Do we need all that detail? We're the Transportation Committee. We're supposed to be worried about roads and airplanes and ferries, not waterboarding in the 1890s," he said after the hearing.

Rep. Kevin McCabe, R-Big Lake, had a stronger objection to the testimony.

"This is cancel culture. I want that on the record," he said during the hearing. "This is canceling out somebody who when he did waterboard, did not think it was torture."

"If you want to say he was a bad guy and he did some nasty things, that's fine. But what he did does not rise to the level of 'let's totally cancel him out,' " McCabe said.

In a brief interview Wednesday, McCabe compared Glenn's actions to the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War II, saying that while reprehensible, Glenn's actions may have ended hostilities more quickly.

Glenn himself made that argument in 1902, adding that he considered every man, woman and child in the Philippines to be a legitimate enemy of war.

"I was dismayed to see torture dismissed so lightly by some members of the legislature," Reamer said after the hearing.

McKay and McCabe said it would have been better to discuss the cost of renaming the highway. Fields' bill doesn't include a cost estimate because it doesn't formally rename the road.

An official with the Department of Transportation said the cost of replacing road signs would be "easily" over $2 million, and that does not include the cost to residents, who would be required to change their addresses on driver's licenses, passports and mail.

Rep. George Rauscher, R-Sutton, represents a district that includes about 139 miles of the highway and said the Matanuska-Susitna Borough would also incur costs.

"The people are certainly going to have to pay for it in a big way," he said.

During the hearing, McKay appeared skeptical of Fields' proposal, saying that "with the cancellation going on here," the committee should also look at renaming the town of Glennallen (named for Glenn and Lt. Henry Allen, who led a team that explored the territory for the U.S. in the 1880s) and Lake Louise (named after Glenn's wife).

Fields said he has no plans to rename either.

After the meeting, McKay and McCabe suggested the highway be renamed in honor of astronaut John Glenn, which would abrogate the need for new road signs.

Fields said he might be open to the idea, but the purpose of his bill is to solicit ideas from tribes and residents, not just have a name imposed by the Legislature. He said he's not trying to "cancel" anyone.

"I think the question is, we don't have that many roads in Alaska, and the roads that we do have, I think are major landmarks we should name after the most deserving people," he said.

Among those testifying in support of the bill were the executive director of the Chickaloon Tribal Village and Joshua Albeza Branstetter, co-founder of the Association of Asian, Pacific Islander and Desi Alaskans.

Alaskans with Filipino heritage represent one of the state's largest ethnic minority groups. The first recorded visit to Alaska by a Filipino occurred in 1788.

Branstetter said one of his grandfathers fought on the beaches of Normandy during WWII. One of his great-grandfathers served in the Army of the Philippines during WWII and died during the Bataan Death March.

"Those are people we should be celebrating and we should be naming roads after, not a man who tortured people," he said.
Lawyers for a man who ran over a Baltimore County police officer and killed her when he was 16 argued to the Maryland Court of Appeals on Thursday he was improperly convicted and sentenced because he was a child at the time of his trial.

Dawnta Harris, now 20, was convicted of felony murder in 2019 and sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole. In 2018, Harris was driving a stolen car with a group of teens who were breaking into houses in Perry Hall when Officer Amy Caprio arrived.

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Standing in front of the car, Caprio told Harris, then a ninth grader, to get out of the car. Instead, Harris ducked his head and hit the gas, running Caprio over.

[ Baltimore teen sentenced to life for murdering Officer Amy Caprio. The punishment is fitting, prosecutor says. ]

Prosecutors charged Harris with felony murder, a legal doctrine used when someone is killed during the commission of a separate felony, and tried him as an adult.

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Harris attorney, Megan Coleman, argued to the Court of Appeals that felony murder should not apply to children who inadvertently kill someone when committing another crime because their brains havent developed enough to understand the ramifications of their actions.

Because he was 16, because he was a minor, he therefore was unable to appreciate the risks and consequences, Coleman said.

Coleman also argued Harris should have been given unique consideration at his sentencing hearing because of his age. The minimum sentence for felony murder is life in prison with the possibility of parole.

David Jaros, the director of the Center for Criminal Justice Reform at the University of Baltimore, said both of Colemans arguments have merit because children lack the same level of decision making adults have.

If children really do evaluate what theyre doing differently, if their brains are physiologically different, then the reasons we may be comfortable for holding someone accountable for committing a murder when they decide to commit a felony may be different for a child, Jaros said.

Andrew DiMiceli, arguing on behalf of the state of Maryland, said the judge was aware of Harris age and background, as they are of every defendant, when passing down the mandatory life sentence.

Because Harris was convicted of felony murder, prosecutors did not have to prove he had an intent to kill anyone  under the law it is implied  only that someone died while a felony was being committed.

In 2020 and 2021, bills were filed to prohibit minors from being charged with felony murder, but they both died in committee.

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Coleman also said during oral arguments it would be easier for Harris to have his conviction and sentence reexamined if the legislature took the issue up again.

Coleman also argued the court should consider the 2012 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Miller vs. Alabama when it rules on whether the sentencing judge should have exercised more discretion when sentencing Harris to life in prison.

In Miller vs. Alabama, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that life sentences without parole for children convicted of homicide were unconstitutional.

Afternoon Update Weekdays Updating you on the day's biggest news before the evening commute. >

Harris is eligible for parole after serving 15 years.

According to the Miller case, Coleman said, it should be more nuanced than a judge simply being aware of a defendants circumstances. Under Miller, judges should have latitude to issue sentences they see fit for children offenders, rather than being subject to mandatory sentencing guidelines.

The judge has to say I acknowledge your age and the impact your age may have had on your decision making and culpability, Jaros said.

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Even with greater discretion, a judge could still issue the same sentence Harris received.

DiMiceli argued Harris sentence is constitutional because he does have the chance to receive parole.

It may take months for the Court of Appeals to reach a ruling. While the court could reasonably rule in favor of Harris, Jaros said the ruling depends on a number of factors.

The courts willingness and interest in doing this is going to be balanced against what is an easier situation if we just have it resolved by the legislature, Jaros said. I think this is an argument that holds weight and is worth considering.
An anonymous visitor to Tokyos Ghibli Museum awarded the ticket booth employee Totoro for his hard work with a secret gift of four little acorns wrapped in a bundle of leaves.



When entering the Ghibli Museum in Tokyo, visitors are greeted by a giant plush Totoro sitting behind the ticket booth.



On Wednesday, the Ghibli Museum tweeted that an unknown visitor had secretly left behind a surprise gift for Totoro at the ticket booth.









The special gift was revealed to be four acorns neatly wrapped in leaves, the same gift that the titular character from the film My Neighbor Totoro '' gives characters Mei and Satsuki.



Many Japanese Twitter users commented Suteki!, which translates to Lovely! in Japanese, and expressed their delight.



One user commented, I wish the whole world could be made up of kindness like this, while another wrote, So many positive feelings here, reported SoraNews24.







Feature Image via Always, Ros

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Russian and Ukrainian officials on Thursday met for a second round of negotiations after Russian forces invaded Ukraine last week.

More than 1 million refugees have fled Ukraine to neighboring countries since the attack began, according to the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi.

Officials from the two countries on Thursday agreed to create safe corridors backed by cease-fires to evacuate more civilians and deliver aid. Ukraine has also sought an armistice during negotiations with Russia.

But what is an armistice? And what is the difference between a cease-fire and an armistice? Would an armistice bring peace to Ukraine? Heres what you need to know.

What is an armistice?

An armistice is an agreement made by opposing sides in a war to suspend hostilities for a certain time, according to the National Museum of American Diplomacy. Armistices stop a war or other violence, but a state of peace still requires a peace treaty to be negotiated between two countries or other groups, according to The New York Times.

An armistice in a conflict is different from a cease-fire. A cease-fire is an agreement to stop hostilities and pause a conflict through pulling back weapons, creating a demilitarized zone or other measures.

The safe corridors created in Ukraine will include cease-fires along their path, Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, confirmed.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy: Ukraine president leads embattled nation in fight against Russia

World: Ukrainian couple married the day Russia invaded. Now, they've joined the fight.

What is an example of an armistice?

On Nov. 11, 1918, world leaders signed the Armistice to end World War I after four years of conflict.

The holiday Americans know today as Veterans Day began as Armistice Day, which was intended to mark the anniversary of the agreement.

"To us in America, the reflections of Armistice Day will be filled with solemn pride in the heroism of those who died in the countrys service and with gratitude for the victory, former President Woodrow Wilson said, proclaiming the first Armistice Day to be on Nov. 11, 1919.

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President Dwight Eisenhower signed a law changing the commemorations name to Veterans Day in 1954 amid an effort to honor all veterans.

What is the difference between an armistice and a surrender?

Under an armistice, the groups or countries involved in a conflict commit together to stop addressing disputes on the battlefield, The New York Times reported. An armistice still requires negotiations to create a peace treaty for peace between parties in a conflict.

Individuals and groups of troops can also surrender without ending a conflict or war. Though Russian forces have bombarded Ukraines major cities, some Russian troops in Ukraine have surrendered or sabotaged their vehicles to not fight, a Pentagon official confirmed, according to the Times.

What's everyone talking about?: Sign up for our trending newsletter to get the latest news of the day

Contributing: The Associated Press

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: What is an armistice? Would it end fighting between Russia, Ukraine?
A man faces several hate crimes charges after attacking seven Asian women in the span of two hours, police in New York City say.

Most of the women, ages 19 to 57, were struck in the face during the sudden and separate assaults on Sunday, Feb. 27, according to a New York Police Department statement provided to McClatchy News. Two went to the hospital.

Steven Zajonc, 28, would flee after approaching and attacking the women, police said, six of which he struck with a closed fist or elbow, before he was arrested three days later on Wednesday, March 2. His address was listed as a center for the homeless population in Midtown.

The following individual has been arrested in regards to the below assaults. https://t.co/XcN1IlBmkN  NYPD Crime Stoppers (@NYPDTips) March 3, 2022

There was no prior interaction and no statements were made, authorities noted about each of the incidents that happened on the street roughly between 6:30 p.m. and 8:30 p.m.

The youngest victim, a 19-year-old college student, told Pix11 News that she felt helpless after Zajonc assaulted her and that it was terrible. She got elbowed in the face, leaving a lip laceration, and was the fifth Asian woman police say Zajonic attacked, according to the statement.

It started when a 57-year-old victim was assaulted and Zajonc struck her in the face with a closed fist, leaving a cut lip along with redness and swelling, according to police. She was treated at a hospital.

Ten minutes later, hes accused of striking a 25-year-old woman in the face and her arm before attacking a third victim, 21, five minutes later who was taken to the hospital with a laceration and mouth swelling, the statement said.

After another five minutes passed, police said he assaulted his fourth victim by punching the 25-year-old woman in the face.

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Police say Zajonc attacked two others after the 19-year-old college students attack. The sixth woman was elbowed in the mouth, suffered swelling and bleeding to the lower lip and was treated by EMS. The final and seventh woman was shoved to the ground, leaving her minor hand injuries.

Zajonc was arrested at New York Public Library on March 2 after guards alerted police that he was there, the New York Times reported.

Police said Zajonc has been charged with seven counts of assault (hate crime), seven counts of attempted assault (hate crime), seven counts of aggravated harassment, and seven counts of harassment.

In 2020, anti-Asian hate crimes rose over 73%, according to FBI data, NBC News reported.

Since COVID-19 hit and the pandemic began in 2020, over 9,000 anti-Asian incident reports have emerged, according to Stop AAPI Hate.

Headstones desecrated at Ukrainian cemetery in Maryland, police say. Its just sad

Man accused of burning predominantly Black church was found with Hitler photo, feds say

Man pulled knife and yelled slurs at Black man walking in white Kansas town, feds say

White supremacist flyers distributed by men in ski masks shock Texas area, group says
Photo Illustration by Luis G. Rendon/The Daily Beast/Getty

In crop-lined fields across the United States, the long-promised age of autonomous technology appears to have finally arrived.

Already, a growing list of agriculture tech companies have developed self-piloting machines to, say, disperse seeds for crops, or harvest grapes, or pick apples, or distribute fertilizer. That innovation has brought with it some major investment: According to venture capital firm AgFunders most recent data, farm robotics ventures received a total of $491 million in investment during the first half of the 2021 business year, a 40 percent increase over the same period in 2020.

Of course, all the attention paid to those budding companies pales in comparison to the January announcement by heavy farming equipment mainstay John Deere that it would be releasing an autonomous version of its 8R tractor later this year. Given that a majority of all farm machinery sold in the U.S. is manufactured by John Deere, its entry into the world of driverless tractors all but guarantees that autonomous tech is here to stay.

A lot of the progress is made by startups, said University of Nebraska advanced machinery systems professor Santosh Pitla. If you look at John Deere, they actually have products on the market. In other words, decades of experience has helped the agriculture giant command a lions share of the publics attentioneven if not everyone is necessarily optimistic about the tech.

Each agriculture tech company offers its own spin on autonomy. In John Deeres case, the new 8R uses six pairs of cameras and an AI system to navigate without a driver. The system will also conduct real-time readings on soil qualitysomething made possible by the 8Rs remote control capabilities.

Autonomy is not just working on a camera that detects stuff, said Julian Sanchez, John Deeres director of emerging technology. Autonomy is having the right connectivity tech stack such that you can do over-the-air updates [and] remotely show the status of the vehicle to a grower. (That also means John Deere will own the data, an issue that hasnt gone unnoticed by surveillance watchdogs.)

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Yet, as enticing as the 8R might be for large farms, it could be too costly and impractical for smaller operations. Thats where the smaller companies come in. Take Advanced Farm, a California-based company behind the TX Robotic Strawberry Harvester, whichas the name suggestsuses a robotic gripper to pick ripe strawberries from in-soil beds. The TX harvester is 12 feet wide and clocks in at 3,000 lbs., making it more feasible for a smaller farm than John Deeres mega-tractor (weight: around 28,000 lbs).

We have re-designed the tractor from the ground up to be much more energy-efficient and, as a result, cost efficient, said Advanced Farm co-founder Kyle Cobb. While we cant do tasks that require a heavy load, we could do a number of tasks that dont require all the steel and horsepower from traditional tractors.

The companies creating these robots are, not surprisingly, quick to sing their virtues. For one, automated machines are more climate-friendly than their human-driven counterparts, due in part to the fact that theyre more efficient and thus burn less fuel.

Though on this front, not everyone is in agreement. I think it is evil incarnate, said Harper Keeler, the urban farm program director at the University of Oregon. Keeler worries that autonomous tech will only bolster the U.S.s so-called monoculture food systems, in which farmers are encouraged to grow only one crop species in a field at a time. Its a major form of farming in the U.S., and critics like Keeler argue that it isnt conducive to good soil health, decreases biodiversity, requires more water and pesticides than a polyculture system, and puts farmers at greater economic risk. Autonomous agriculture tech slashes costs and further bolsters the trend toward monoculture farming.

In this time of climate change, that type of agriculture necessitates cutting down forests and perpetuates this myth that big farms are the only way to feed the world, Keeler said. Which is bunk.

Then theres the issue of labor. Farms have for years been hit by a growing labor shortage, sparked by high physical demands of farmwork, low wages, and heightened competition for jobs from local restaurants and warehouses. On this point, Sanchez pointed to a U.S. Department of Agriculture report that projected single-digit growth in farmings labor force. No one else is entering [the labor force], or if theyre entering, theres enough exiting it, he said. And yet, you still have to feed more people.

Heres the Best Way to Stop the Future Food Crisis Looming Over American Cities

A lot more people. The United Nations projects the global population will hit 9.7 billion by 2050, a jump that would, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, require an increase to worldwide food production of 70 percent. That goal is going to be near-impossible to hit without robot workers, said Sanchez.

Yet there are sure to be growing pains, particularly in the workforce. A shift toward self-driving machines could well come at the expense of human workers (even with a labor shortage, there are still about 3 million farmworkers in the U.S., per the USDA, 73 percent of whom are migrants). We dont see it right now, [but] well see that in the future: [robots] displacing our workers, said Crescencio Diaz, president of Teamsters Local 890, a union that represents farmworkers in Californias farm-heavy Salinas Valley.

Cobb, the Advanced Farms co-founder, sees things differently. Were not replacing jobs, he said. Were actually supplementing that workforce for jobs that cant be filled right now. He raised an interesting analog: Before he created Advanced Farm, he started a company, Greenbotics, that performed robotic solar panel cleaning for utility-scale power plants. As Cobb tells it, Greenbotics helped create an entire new class of worker: the robotic solar panel cleaning technician.

There are hundreds of these people around the world now that didn't exist before, who have more earning potential than they had in previous roles, and who have unique skills that they were able to develop as a result of the technology, Cobb said. I think we're going to see similar things to ag tech, where people work alongside the equipment and become experts in utilizing the equipment.

Diaz, the Teamsters Local 890 president, echoed that prediction, but with a tone of solemnity. The only people who are going to retain jobs will be savvy enough to run and fix the machines, he said. The other people, theyre going to be displaced.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

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First repatriation flight for Vietnamese citizens in Ukraine scheduled

The first flight to repatriate 270 Vietnamese citizens in Ukraine is set to be scheduled this weekend.



The flight, which will be run by national flag carrier Vietnam Airlines, is slated to leave Hanoi on Saturday morning for Warsaw. The return flight from Poland is scheduled to arrive in Hanoi on Sunday.





A flight of Vietnam Airlines



Vietnam Airlines has asked the ministries of foreign affairs and transport to quicken the procedures for the flight.



Vietnam Airlines has asked the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to instruct the Vietnamese embassies in Ukraine and Poland to help with preparatiosn for the flight.

Meanwhile, the carrier has proposed the Ministry of Health removing regulations on Covid-19 testing, Covid-19 vaccination as well as quarantine regulations for Vietnamese citizens in Ukraine when they are brought home. Vietnam Airlines has also recommended arranging a doctor to support the flight.



As of midday of March 3, most of the Vietnamese people in Kyiv, Odessa and Kharkiv had been evacuated to neighbouring countries, including Moldova, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia.



Data from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs show that there are about 7,000 Vietnamese people in Ukraine, mostly in the three major cities of Kyiv (800), Kharkiv (3,000), and Odessa (3,000).



The CAAV said the repatriation plan now is that the citizens in Ukraine will go by road to neighbouring countries, with those in Kyiv moving to Poland, in Kharkiv to Russia, and in Odessa to Moldova or Romania, and then flights will be arranged to bring them from these countries back home.



As it is unable to operate flights to Ukraine, which is currently a war zone, airlines have planned flights to destinations in nearby countries such as Poland, Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, Russia, and Belarus.



Apart from these destinations, Vietnamese carriers are also ready to fly to any other places under the Governments plan in the principle of ensuring safety and the best possible conditions for Vietnamese people and their families in Ukraine to return to the homeland, according to the CAAV.


In addition to his law practice, James Marshall Jim Kramon wrote articles for The Baltimore Sun and several books.

James Marshall Jim Kramon, the co-founder of a Baltimore law firm recalled for his ethical standards, died of a degenerative neurological disease Feb. 25 in Quiogue on Long Island. The former Glyndon and Brooklandville resident was 78.

Born in Manhattan, he was the son of Jack Kramon, a founder of the MAJER slacks garment-making firm who emigrated from Russia as a child, and his wife, Hortense Sarot, a teacher from Maplewood, New Jersey.

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As a kid, Jim was mischievous, no doubt about it, his sister Patricia Pincus said. He loved to show us how, just as the laundry on the line of the building next to us was drying, a water balloon could soak it all over again.

After his father died, he became a family leader at age 12.

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I truly felt he saw it as his responsibility to step in after our father died, Ms. Pincus said. He made it his mission to safeguard us from that point forward. He was very loyal and enormously generous of spirit.

Mr. Kramon attended the Ethical Culture Fieldston School and earned a mathematics degree at what is now Carnegie Mellon University, then called Carnegie Tech.

While at the Pittsburgh school, he met his future wife, the former Susan Paula Samuelson. They married in 1966.

He earned a law degree at the George Washington University School of Law and a masters degree in law at Harvard University. He was a law clerk to U.S. Judge Thomas E. Fairchild in Chicago.

He moved to Baltimore in 1971 and became an assistant U.S. attorney during the administration of George Beall. He worked on criminal tax and mail fraud cases at the same time his office prosecuted former Maryland Gov. Spiro T. Agnew, then vice president of the United States, who left office in 1973.

Expand Autoplay Image 1 of 61 Ron Galella, the celebrity photographer whose pursuit of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis resulted in a restraining order against him after he stalked her for years, died at age 91 on April 30, 2022, at his home in Montville, N.J., of congestive heart failure. (Carlo Allegri/AP)

While at the U.S. Attorneys Office, Mr. Kramon met a fellow assistant prosecutor, Andrew Jay Graham.

Jim and I bonded together. We were two guys from New York, Mr. Graham said. We were close friends and we socialized together with our wives.

They founded the Kramon & Graham law firm.

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We had no clients and no money, but we rented a little office in the Sun Life Building, Mr. Graham said.

Jim had a brilliant mind and he could write extremely well. He had an amazing work ethic. He would focus on a case with laser-like attention. And he achieved just what his clients wanted, Mr. Graham said.

Mr. Kramon represented people involved in the 1985 Maryland savings and loan collapse, as well as a jockey who suffered a back injury at what was then Laurel Race Course.

The jockey case was a complicated civil litigation, and at the same time, Jim was involved with an international white-collar criminal matter and a health care [case] concerning a regional hospital. These were all large-scale, sophisticated matters in very different areas, and he was an expert in all of them, said Lee Ogburn, an attorney at Kramon & Graham from 1979 to 2021.

Mr. Ogburn also said: Jim set the bar high. He was a force. He was a great teacher and there are lawyers in Baltimore today who are better practitioners than they otherwise would have been.

Friends said he had a precise, tenacious legal mind and was known for his ethical commitments.

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Jim was a perfectionist. In a case, he was always extremely well prepared, said Mr. Graham, his former law partner.

Philip Andrews, a legal colleague, said: Jim led by example. His work ethic and his dedication to his clients were legendary. He was truly a giant in the Maryland legal community.

There was no way of knowing that this warm and wonderful man was to become our dearest friend for the next forty years, David Zinman, former musical director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, said in an email. Our conversations ranged from the necessary business calls to deep and unforgettable discussions of music, literature, and the state of the world.

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)

Mr. Kramon began to suffer from an undiagnosed neurological disease that eventually required him to use a wheelchair and lose the use of his hands.

Justin Kramon, his son, said his father kept up a thriving legal practice and engaged in philanthropic work. He also wrote articles for The Baltimore Sun and several books.

Afternoon Update Weekdays Updating you on the day's biggest news before the evening commute. >

Mr. Kramon served on the boards of the Park School and Pro Musica Rara. He regularly attended the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra.

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My father read widely, works by Tony Judt and Cormac McCarthy. He debated current events and philosophy with his close friends, his son, Justin, said.

Jim was a model of profound personal courage and resiliency in his productive life, said a friend, Philip Beauregard, a Massachusetts lawyer. Jim was unique in overcoming adversity. His indomitable will to go on resulted in years of quality work and productivity, as well as his availability to me to share personal and professional experiences.

[ Stephen E. Harris, a former public defender, dies ]

In 2011 after the death of his wife, Mr. Kramon moved to Westhampton Beach in New York, where he had spent childhood school vacations.

He looked forward to summer, when he could see his friends at the beach and spend afternoons watching the ocean as he did with my mom when she was alive, his daughter, Anna Annie Kramon, said.

Jacques Capelluto, a friend from New York, said: In word and deed, Jim personified courage, compassion, integrity, and uncompromising fidelity to moral and ethical principles, all of which he gave to us wrapped in friendship and caring.

Survivors include his two children, Justin Kramon of Philadelphia and Anna Annie Kramon of Scotch Plains, New Jersey; two sisters, Patricia Pincus of New York City and Elizabeth Harlan of Flanders, New York; a stepsister, Ellin Sarot of Cambridge, Massachusetts; and three grandchildren. His wife of 44 years, Susan Paula Kramon, a Jewish Family and Childrens Services social worker, died in 2010.
(Reuters) - The BBC said Friday it has temporarily suspended news operations within the Russian Federation while it assesses the implications of new legislation adopted by Russian authorities.

BBC News will continue its service in Russian from outside of Russia.

The safety of our staff is paramount and we are not prepared to expose them to the risk of criminal prosecution simply for doing their jobs," BBC Director-General Tim Davie said in a statement. "Id like to pay tribute to all of them, for their bravery, determination and professionalism."

(Reporting by Dawn Chmielewski, Editing by Louise Heavens)
By Trevor Hunnicutt and Anne Kauranen

WASHINGTON/HELSINKI (Reuters) -U.S. President Joe Biden agreed to deepen security ties with his Finnish counterpart Sauli Niinisto on Friday, but stopped short of making any formal guarantees to the country nervously watching Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Both men also stopped short of saying Finland would seek to join NATO or become a major non-NATO ally of the United States, a designation granting enhanced security cooperation.

Yet during an hour-and-a-half long White House meeting, Biden called Finland a "strong defense partner" helping a "united trans-Atlantic response to holding Russia accountable."

Russia does not want Finland or Sweden to join NATO and just a week ago Moscow made its latest warning to them of "serious military-political consequences" if they did. Niinisto has maintained that Finland, a European Union member, has a right to seek NATO membership but tamped down talk of doing so in the midst of a crisis.

Ukraine's government had said it wanted to seek membership in the U.S.-led military alliance and Moscow had wanted the West to guarantee Kyiv would never become a member.

"Finland has stirred clearly towards closer cooperation with the United States," Niinisto told reporters after thanking Biden for "leadership" in "very difficult times."

He said the United States and Nordic countries would "initiate a clear process to step up defense and security cooperation" after a meeting with Biden that included a call to Magdalena Andersson, the prime minister of Finland's western neighbor Sweden. Andersson and Niinisto plan to meet in Finland on Saturday.

The war in Ukraine has roused concerns among other European countries neighboring Russia. Finland shares a 833-mile (1,340-km) border with Russia and opinion polling shows support for full membership of NATO has grown since Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered his forces into Ukraine on Feb. 24.

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"This process of security cooperation is about concrete security and defense factors, not so much about memberships," Niinisto said after meeting Biden. But he added that Finland meets the criteria to join NATO.

"The Presidents committed to start a process that would strengthen U.S.-Finnish security cooperation, which would be conducted in close consultation with other Nordic countries," the White House said in a statement that alluded to NATO's policy of welcoming new members who meet its requirements. "The Presidents also discussed the importance of NATO's Open Door policy."

Deeper security ties will be on display when Finnish defense minister Antti Kaikkonen travels to the United States next week, where he will meet with his U.S. counterpart Lloyd Austin and visit Lockheed Martin facilities in Texas.

Last month, Finland sealed a $9.4 billion deal to buy dozens of F-35 stealth warplanes from the United States. Kaikkonen also plans to visit a U.S. air base in Florida to see the planes.

Finland, which was part of the Swedish kingdom until 1809 and then was under Russia's control until gaining independence in 1917, has historically sought to preserve cordial relations with Moscow.

During a small portion of the Oval Office meeting open to reporters, Biden said his predecessor Barack Obama believed the world would be fine if they left matters up to Nordic countries.

"Well, we usually don't start wars," Niinisto replied.

(Reporting by Trevor Hunnicutt in Washington and Anne Kauranen in Helsinki; Editing by Jonathan Oatis and Grant McCool)
A longtime bookkeeper at a property management company in Alabama is accused of embezzling more than half a million dollars from the business  as well as from the accounts of various homeowners associations  to feed her gambling habits.

Aimee Louise Statham pleaded guilty to wire fraud charges in the Northern District of Alabama, court documents filed on March 1 show.

Statham worked for her fathers company, Rouland Management Services, where they managed the funds of dozens of HOAs in the state, prosecutors said in court filings. For three years beginning in 2018, Statham is accused of funneling money out of at least 10 of those accounts using unauthorized checks.

Prosecutors said she used the money for personal expenses, namely for gambling online and at casinos.

Statham could not be reached for comment. Public defenders representing her and a representative from Rouland Management did not immediately respond to McClatchy News request for comment on March 4.

According to her plea agreement, Statham started working for her dad in 2006 and stayed on as a bookkeeper until August 2021. Her job duties included paying expenses for HOAs  such as utilities and landscaping.

Rouland Management, in Pelham, Alabama, was looking after about 22 HOAs as of mid-2021, the government said.

Each of those HOAs had a bank account, and Rouland Management could access the accounts in order to collect monthly dues and pay various expenses, court filings state. Statham was a signatory on those accounts, meaning she enjoyed unfettered access.

From 2018 until August 2021, Statham used that access to write checks to herself from bank accounts belonging to Rouland Management and at least 10 HOAs it managed, prosecutors said.

She is accused of depositing the money into bank accounts under her or her fathers control to use on personal expenses.

According to the government, Statham spent some of the money on gambling.

She then changed the bank statements for each account to hide the alleged fraud, court documents state, even moving funds between HOA accounts to cover her tracks.

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Prosecutors estimated Statham stole between $550,000 and $1.5 million throughout the course of the scheme. As part of her plea agreement, she agreed to forfeit at least $550,000. The government also said it would request a prison sentence at the low end of the recommended guidelines, citing her prompt recognition and affirmative acceptance of personal responsibility.

Statham and Rouland Management are also the subject of a proposed class action lawsuit filed by at least one of the HOAs she is accused of stealing from.

The civil lawsuit, filed by Black Creek Station Homeowners Association on Feb. 1, accuses them and certain banks of mismanaging its money. At one point the HOA said it believed there was at least $45,000 in the account only to find out there was just a little over $2,000.

Court filings show Statham and Rouland have not yet responded to the allegations.

A sentencing date for Statham in the criminal case has not been set as she is scheduled to be arraigned March 10.

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Firefigthers battle a fire that spread between two trailer homes in Woodbine on Tuesday afternoon, March 1, 2022. (Brian Krista/Carroll County Times)

A Woodbine man was charged with arson and attempted murder Thursday after being accused of intentionally setting a fire in his residence at the Woodbine Village Mobile Home Park, according to the Office of the State Fire Marshal. The fire rapidly engulfed a shed then spread to another mobile home next door, which was occupied. The occupant of the other home escaped without injury.

At at about 2:30 p.m. on Tuesday, the Winfield Community Volunteer Fire Department and other nearby fire departments responded to the Woodbine Village Mobile Home Park in the 5900 block of Woodbine Road for a dwelling fire, according to a news release from the Office of the State Fire Marshal.

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Witnesses reported observing a man, later identified as Milton Salguero-Vargus, 24, sitting outside the home while it was on fire. Salguero-Vargus told the witnesses that he set the fire, according to the news release.

According to Oliver Alkire, assistant public information officer for State Fire Marshals Office, the man told bystanders and investigators people were bothering him and people were going against him all the time but he didnt specify who these people were. He also said he didnt care if he went to jail.

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Officers from the Carroll County Sheriffs Office arrived and detained Salguero-Vargus before fire investigators arrived on the scene.

Deputy State fire marshals responded and conducted an origin and cause investigation and determined the fire was caused by arson. Salguero-Vargus told investigators that he shared the mobile home with two other men who were not home at the time, and that he set the mobile home on fire, according to the news release.

Salguero-Vargus was charged with first-degree attempted murder, first-degree arson, first-degree assault, three counts of malicious burning first degree, three counts of malicious destruction of property, and reckless endangerment.

He is being held at the Carroll County Detention Center without bond.

Alkire said the mobile home where the fire originated was considered a total loss with an estimated $153,025 in damages, including the home and its contents.

The second home impacted by the blaze was not completely destroyed, Alkire said, and estimated the total property damage at $100,000.
By Francois Murphy and Parisa Hafezi

VIENNA (Reuters) -Indirect talks between Iran and the United States on reviving the 2015 Iran nuclear deal are close to reaching an agreement, the chief British and French envoys said on Friday as they and their German colleague flew home to brief ministers.

"We are close. E3 negotiators leaving Vienna briefly to update Ministers on state of play. Ready to return soon," Stephanie Al-Qaq said on Twitter, referring to the chief British, French and German diplomats involved in the talks.

"Hoping to return quickly to reach a conclusion because we are very, very close to an agreement," the French envoy, Philippe Errera, said on Twitter.

Their departure raised the possibility that the United States and Iran, which have been talking indirectly because Tehran refuses to meet face to face, might be preparing to sit down together though diplomats said there were no such plans.

"As far as I know, the Iranians are not ready for direct talks," Russian envoy Mikhail Ulyanov told reporters. "We will have a deal maybe in the middle of next week. We are talking about the last efforts before crossing the finish line."

Negotiators have worked for 11 months to try to revive the 2015 deal under which Iran limited its nuclear program to make it harder to obtain fissile material for a bomb - an ambition Tehran denies - in return for relief from economic sanctions.

Western powers, China and Russia have for almost a year worked closely to revive the accord but the war in Ukraine is creating a sense of urgency to conclude talks before cooperation with Moscow may become more difficult.

Then-U.S. President Donald Trump reneged on the pact in 2018, restoring U.S. sanctions that have slashed Iran's oil exports, and prompting Iran to begin violating the deal's nuclear limitations about a year later.

On Thursday, Ulyanov had said he did not think the talks would now collapse and a ministerial meeting - typically where a deal would be blessed - was likely but he could not say if it would be on Saturday, Sunday or Monday.

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Myriad pieces must fall into place for a deal to happen.

One wildcard is an effort by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to resolve questions about nuclear material that the Vienna-based agency suspects Iran failed to declare.

The IAEA has found particles of processed uranium at three apparently old sites that Iran never declared and has repeatedly said Tehran has not provided satisfactory answers.

IAEA Director-General Rafael Grossi arrived in Tehran early on Saturday, Iranian news agencies reported, hoping to agree on a process that would lead to the end of the investigation and potentially clearing a way for the wider deal, diplomats said.

Another open question is the fate of Western prisoners in Iran.

While U.S. officials say talks on the two issues are separate, the top U.S. negotiator has said Washington unlikely to strike a nuclear deal unless Tehran frees four U.S. citizens that the United States says Iran holds hostage.

Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian hinted a nuclear agreement may be close but said the West's "haste" to reach one "cannot prevent the observance of Irans red lines."

"We are ready to finalise a good and immediate agreement," Iranian media quoted Amirabdollahian as telling the EUs top diplomat Joseph Borrell by telephone. "Most of Iran's requests have been considered in the upcoming agreement."

(Reporting By Francois Murphy and Parisa Hafezi in Vienna; Additional reporting by John Irish in Paris, by Arshad Mohammed in Saint Paul, Minn. and by Dubai newsroomEditing by Alistair Bell and Jane Wardell)
Mar. 3A 24-year-old Columbus woman who was shot after she allegedly hit a Montgomery County Sheriff's deputy with a car last month has been indicted by a grand jury.

Brooklynn Frazier is scheduled to be arraigned Tuesday in Montgomery County Common Pleas Court for two counts of felonious assault on a police officer and one count of failure to comply with the order or signal of a police officer.

"This defendant had no regard for the life or safety of the deputy and others and displayed a complete lack of respect for the law," Montgomery County Prosecutor Mat Heck Jr. stated in a release. "Cases like this remind us of the dangers that law enforcement officers face every day. Luckily, the victim/deputy didn't sustain more serious injuries or even death."

Sheriff Rob Streck said that deputy Michael Profitt was hit with enough force that his radio was lodged in the sedan's windshield. He did not break any bones, but reportedly had multiple lacerations, abrasions and road rash.

The deputy shot Frazier during the incident and hit her twice in the arm, Streck said. Her injuries were not life-threatening.

"For an individual to get shot, for one of my deputies to get run over because of a stolen vehicle is just ridiculous, and we have to figure out what to try to slow some of this stuff down," Streck said previously.

Deputies were conducting a traffic stop Feb. 22 on a suspected stolen car in the area of Stop 8 Road and North Dixie Drive in Harrison Twp. One sheriff's office cruiser was in the front of the car and a second one was behind it, according to the prosecutor's office.

Profitt was outside of his cruiser giving Frazier commands when she reversed the car and then began to drive forward, according to Dayton Municipal Court records.

"Frazier disregarded those commands. Frazier drove her vehicle at Profitt, striking him and tossing him into the (windshield) of her vehicle," the affidavit read.

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Profitt then fired at Frazier before she fled. Other deputies remained with Profitt while Dayton, Vandalia, Butler Twp. and MetroParks police responded to the scene. Officers located the car and chased it to Interstate 75 north's 66 mile marker in Miami County.

The chase lasted eight minutes, during which speed reached 100 mph, Streck said.

Frazier is being held on $1 million bail in the Montgomery County Jail.
Mar. 4ATHENS  Calls for peace and solidarity were raised Thursday as Concord University students and staff shared their support for the embattled nation of Ukraine.

Responding to the humanitarian crisis the people of Ukraine are enduring as Russia invades their country, the university held a vigil around the Peace Poles standing between the Alexander Fine Arts Center and the Marsh Administration Building.

Each of the poles bears the phrase "May Peace Prevail on Earth" in several languages. Yellow flowers were placed between them along with the blue and yellow Ukrainian flag. About 40 students and facility joined in the vigil.

"The lives of innocents have been altered, shattered and cut short," said graduate student Matthew Thomas, who also teaches social studies in Mercer County Schools. "This conflict and senseless violence has wrongfully encroached on the freedoms of a nation and its citizens. I wake up every day filled with worry, fear, anger and dread. I worry for the innocent people fighting for their freedom and running for their lives."

Like others at the vigil, Thomas expressed outrage about the actions of Russian President Putin and his supporters.

"I fear the escalation and spread of this conflict," he told the audience. "I am angry at those who have created and facilitated this meaningless violence. and I dread the news of future loss. I cannot fathom the fear and chaos the people of Ukraine are facing every hour, every minute of every day."

"It feels wrong to call it a conflict," Thomas added. "It's an invasion. It's trampling on the rights of other human beings."

Dr. Felica Wooten Williams, Ph.D, said that while Americans are grateful for their domestic peace and tranquility, the people of Ukraine are facing devastating times. People all over the world are standing together and calling for a peaceful resolution to "Putin's War."

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"So we know that people's homes are being destroyed," she said. "The land that they love is being demolished. We know that lives are being snuffed out, and so today, my brothers and sisters, my friends, we know that there is an unprovoked attack on the innocent citizens and civilians of Ukraine, and we know that we are here today acknowledging and expressing our concerns for the people and the situation in which they find themselves now. We want to draw attention to the humanitarian crisis which is evolving in Ukraine. Friends, we also want to express our concerns and this is a time for you to find your voice. This is a time for students to learn to express themselves on matters of social justice. This is a time to get together, and this may be the start."

Professor Michael Bean, director of education and director of diversity, equity and inclusion, said that students wanted to be more involved in addressing the crisis, and the vigil was the result. Students were given the opportunity to speak; in fact, one student wants to travel to Ukraine and help its citizens with humanitarian work. Her professors told her that now is not a good time.

Bridget Clark Wall, a freshman student, said she is taking a history class this semester. Lessons have been dealing with the Revolutionary War and injustice.

"I have always been a big history buff myself," she said, adding that she is a Christian. "I don't believe in taking up a sword for any cause except to protect. History has taught us many times, two worlds wars already, that when good people stand by quietly, bad men get power and they do bad things. It doesn't matter if you pick up arms. It doesn't matter if you sit there and do something kind. Say a prayer, have a moment of silence. Gather like this. Help with any program for aid. Find out what the global and national organizations are doing; and it doesn't matter what religion, it doesn't matter what creed, what gender. It doesn't matter about that."

Wall urged people to get involved and help Ukraine.

"Right now, we're human beings, and right now the fate of humanity lies with this generation, and I fully believe that," she said. "These are powerful, crazy men with the power to press one button and start a nuclear fallout. That affects all of us. It is every human being's God-given right to have life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. and if we stand by and we don't support peacefully, or with arms to protect, then what are we doing? We're allowing bad men to do bad things, and we're just watching the show."

The vigil for Ukraine was a collaborative effort between Concord's International Students' Club; the office of Multicultural Affairs; the office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion; Vine & Branches; and other off-campus organizations.

 Contact Greg Jordan at gjordan@bdtonline.com

Contact Greg Jordan at gjordan@bdtonline.com
Conor McGregor has called out Islam Makhachev ahead of the UFC stars return to the Octagon, labelling the Russian a s*** stain.

McGregor fought twice in 2021, losing to Dustin Poirier in both bouts. In the rivals January clash, the American knocked out McGregor, who suffered a broken leg in their July meeting.

McGregor, 33, is set to return to the ring this July and has advised lightweight champion Charles Oliveira to wait until then to fight, with the Brazilian currently expected to defend the belt against Justin Gaethje in May.

Also in the title picture is Makhachev, a childhood friend of McGregors fiercest rival Khabib Nurmagomedov, who is part of his fellow Dagestanis coaching team.

Khabib, who submitted McGregor in 2018, was in Makhachevs corner last weekend as the lightweight contender secured a TKO victory over late replacement Bobby Green in the first round. That win moved Makhachev closer to a shot at the gold, but an encounter with McGregor is not something the Irishman would be opposed to, it seems.

Ill fight that s*** stain [Makhachev], no sweat. Embarrassing [ground and pound] the other night [in my opinion]. Pitiful punching, McGregor tweeted on Friday.

And then bottles the [Rafael dos Anjos] fight after mouthing of him lol, McGregor continued, referencing Makhachevs offer to fight Dos Anjos on short notice this weekend in a potential bout that did not come to fruition.

Islam Makhachev secured a first-round win against Bobby Ground with heavy ground and pound (Zuffa LLC)

Embarrassing. Watch when I come back. Same as before. Anyone. Any weight. Anywhere. Game full of s*** stains.

McGregor won the UFC featherweight title in 2015 and added the lightweight belt in 2016 to become the promotions first ever dual-weight champion. He has also fought at welterweight.

Full mount [ground and pound] and [Green] bounces up not a scratch, McGregor continued.

Huggin and kissin. Talkin bout thanks for the match etc. If thats me theres holes left in their head like they been smacked with a sock full of golf balls. Dont even know where they are. Caramel butter skin strikes again!

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Am I the only one that sees this stuff for what it is or whats the craic? Not a scratch, man. Embarrassing!

Makhachev has just one professional defeat on his record and has won 10 fights in a row.

UFC president White suggested this week that Makhachev must earn another win before challenging for the lightweight title, however, with Beneil Dariush a potential next opponent for the 30-year-old.

Makhachev was due to fight Dariush last weekend before an injury to the American led to his compatriot Green stepping in.
Northampton, MA --News Direct-- CooperCompanies

As a global consumer medical device company, we recognize the powerful role we can play in contributing to the achievement of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a collection of 17 interconnected global goals that promote a better and more sustainable future for all. The SDGs provide a framework for Coopers ESG strategy, help guide our priorities, and provide an opportunity to demonstrate how our products and purpose link directly to broader societal aspirations.

Our current efforts focus on three SDGs, #3 Good Health and Well-being, #12 Responsible Consumption and Production, and #17 Partnership for the Goals, which we believe to be most relevant to our organization and where we can contribute in the most meaningful way. We plan to conduct further analysis of our ESG commitments to help determine where we can do more to support the SDGs.

#3 Good Health and Well-being

PEOPLE

Develop life-changing solutions to address health challenges, with continuous focus on product quality and patient safety

Foster an inclusive, healthy, safe, and engaged workforce

#12 Responsible Consumption and Production

PLANET

Sustainably manage and reduce the environmental impacts of our operations

Integrate sustainable design innovations into our products and packaging

#17 Partnership for the Goals

PARTNERSHIP

Collaborate with customers, suppliers, and communities to accelerate social and environmental improvements

Foster partnerships with charitable and other organizations to address unmet healthcare needs

Read the full report here.

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

View source version on newsdirect.com: https://newsdirect.com/news/coopercompanies-contributes-to-the-united-nations-sustainable-development-goals-439475664
Disney has issued a statement of support for the LGBTQ+ community despite it being revealed that the company donated sums of money to Florida Republicans supporting the Dont Say Gay legislation.

Last year, at least three Disney entities gave the chief sponsors of Floridas so-called Dont Say Gay legislation $4,000 (3,021) combined for their 2022 re-election campaigns.

Officially titled the House Bill 1557, Dont Say Gay, as its referred to by critics, has been condemned by democrats, parents and the White House, which has described the legislation as hateful.

If it becomes law, it will censor conversations about homosexuality and gender identity in Floridas classrooms.

In a statement issued via Good Morning America, the Walt Disney Company stated: We understand how important this issue is to our LGBTQ+ employees and many others.

For nearly a century, Disney has been a unifying force that brings people together. We are determined that it remains a place where everyone is treated with dignity and respect.

The statement continues: The biggest impact we can have in creating a more inclusive world is through the inspiring content we produce, the welcoming culture we create here, and the diverse community organisations we support, including those representing the LGBTQ+ community.

The current Disney CEO Bob Chapek is yet to make a personal statement beyond the official Disney company address.

With his on-screen alter-ego, Frozens Olaf (Shutterstock/Featureflash Photo Agency)

The Senate sponsor for the Dont Say Gay legislation, Ocala Republican Dennis Baxley, has previously supported other anti-gay legislation.

In 2013, he compared gay parents to drug abusers and abusive parents.

Baxley said: I mean I sat an hour and a half with a teacher telling me, Well this child has got serial men coming through the house, this one has two mummies, this one has an abusive father whos home, this has alcoholism, this one has drug abuse.

It was a casualty warfare event to hear  just her classroom  how many dysfunctional, atypical, to me, structures are in the way of a kid having a chance to learn.

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Baxleys 2022 campaign received $1,000 (756) from Disney Photo Imaging. In 2018, he received $1,000 (756) each from Disney Vacation Development Inc and Disney Destinations LLC.

Disney CEO Bob Chapek (AP)

The news of Disneys donations has attracted widespread backlash.

Producer and filmmaker Abigail Disney  who is the daughter of former Disney animation head Roy E. Disney and great-niece of Walt Disney  condemned the companys financial backing of the bill on Twitter.

I could not be more unhappy with their political activities, both in terms of whom they fund and how they lobby, Disney wrote. I would strongly support a law to require all corporations to reveal ALL of their funding and lobbying moves.

Writer of Disneys animated series Ducktales Benjamin Siemon wrote that he is deeply saddened by the companys silence when it comes to speaking out against the Dont Say Gay bill.

The Independent has contacted a representative of Disney for comment.
Lower Susquehanna Heritage Greenway (LSHG) has announced its mini-grant funding for six heritage tourism projects in Harford County.

The mini-grant funding comes from a $25,000 Maryland Heritage Areas Authority Block Grant for Fiscal Year 2022.

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Lower Susquehanna Heritage Greenway will create, implement and manage the grant program. Each grantee will match (or exceed) the amount of funding provided by the mini-grant, with cash or in-kind services.

This year we received a record-breaking 13 applications, Brigitte Carty, executive director of Lower Susquehanna Heritage Greenway, said. While we could not fund all the projects, as the requested amount was more than double the amount available, these growing numbers show that our partners are finding value in this mini-grant program.,

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In a news release, LSHG announced that there are six projects will receive a total of $25,568 in funding to plan and implement a variety of tourism-related activities including historical, cultural and agricultural.

Mini-grants were provided for the following projects:

100-year Celebration of the Life and Legacy of the Late Dr. George T. Stansbury, M.D., Havre de Grace Colored School Museum and Cultural Center, Inc., $5,000;

Afternoon Update Weekdays Updating you on the day's biggest news before the evening commute. >

What Was He Really Up To? Col. John Rodgers and the American Revolution, Town of Perryville, $5,000;

Havre de Grace Heritage Corridor Sculpture Trail Program, Havre de Grace Arts Collective, Inc., $5,000;

Concept Renderings of Harmers Town Art Center, which includes Grawl Alley, Harmers Town Art Center, Inc., $5,000;

Building a Nature-Tourism Destination, City of Havre de Grace, Department of Economic Development, $4,968;

Havre de Grace Ice Festival Museum Display, Havre de Grace Alliance, Inc., $600.

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We are excited about the projects being funded and look forward to seeing the outcomes that will promote the local economy, create jobs and build stronger communities, Carty said.

The Lower Susquehanna Heritage Greenway is a nonprofit whose mission is to encourage regional economic development through heritage tourism by supporting public recreation efforts, particularly trail development, public water access, historic preservation, cultural celebration and conservation efforts. For more information about Lower Susquehanna Heritage Greenway, visit www.UpperBayTrails.com.
Several inmates at the California Mens Colony are petitioning for their release saying the prison and the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation violated their Eighth Amendment protections by not providing proper COVID-19 safety measures.

Evidentiary hearings began Tuesday in the case regarding 21 CMC inmates who have filed habeas corpus petitions, alleging the state failed to follow established pandemic procedures and as a result subjected them to cruel and unusual punishment.

The first of the petitions was filed in October 2020, before an eventual 21 cases were consolidated into one petition in January 2021 by Judge Craig Van Rooyen. The outcome of this consolidated case will determine whether more petitions will be heard.

The inmates all are considered high-risk from the virus because of their old age and/or preexisting conditions, because they have contracted COVID-19 at least once while in custody and/or because they are experiencing long-COVID symptoms.

They claim, according to court documents, that the Mens Colony and CDCR engaged in deliberate indifference when it came to providing a safe environment throughout the pandemic.

The California Attorney Generals Office disputes that claim, saying the two entities responded reasonably to the risk presented by COVID-19. The AG also claims the issues that did exist toward the beginning of the pandemic have since been fixed.

CMC is currently facing a COVID-19 outbreak among inmates, with 60 active cases and 114 new cases reported in the past 14 days, according to the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. In total, the prison has seen 3,098 COVID-19 cases since the beginning of the pandemic  the fifth highest case count among California state prisons  and 13 deaths. There are currently 25 active cases among staff, and 27 new staff cases reported in the last 14 days.

An East Facility cell block at California Mens Colony prison.

Background of the CMC inmates case

The crux of this case is whether there remains a risk of severe harm to the inmates in custody at CMC, Brian McLennan, one of the attorneys for the inmates, told the Tribune.

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Not only are these breakthrough infections and the risk of long COVID present, but we just dont know where this is going, McLennan said. There easily could be a mutation that is more deadly, especially to at-risk groups, especially prisoners. They just have no control. They cant get away from each other because theyre packed in there, and thats just not the way you treat people.

According to court documents, the Attorney Generals Office feels the risk is no longer severe because of vaccine availability and efficacy and the general decline of COVID-19 case numbers. Data from the CDCR shows 86 percent of CMC inmates are fully vaccinated and 69 percent of CMC staff are fully vaccinated.

In an emailed statement to the Tribune, CDCR press secretary Dana Simas wrote that the department and California Health Care Services have implemented robust measures for the safety and wellness of all those who live and work in our institutions since the beginning of the pandemic, including personal protective equipment use among staff and inmates, mass testing of staff and inmates, proper sanitation, limited movement measures and robust isolation and quarantine measures at all institutions.

A 2020 report by UC Berkeley Public Health and Amend, a UC San Francisco prison research initiative, that evaluated the COVID-19 situation at CMC found population density and overcrowding to be a central issue at the prison. The report found risk for COVID-19 transmission particular high at the time in the West block of the prison, where there are community cells.

Decarceration is the single most effective strategy to prevent and reduce transmission, the report said. The Attorney Generals Office and CDCR claims the report is not relevant in the case because the issues raised in the report have since been addressed.

The CMC has released 33 inmates because of active COVID infections since the beginning of the pandemic, among 3,098 total positive cases since March 2. In comparison, the California Rehabilitation Center in Norco has had 2,870 cases and released 98 inmates with active COVID-19 infections.

CMC had 3,823 inmates in custody in March 2020 and 3,244 inmates in December 2021, according to the most recent data available on CDCRs website. It is unclear what contributed to this drop, and Simas did not answer this question in her emailed response to the Tribune.

Its not like these people are complaining about the conditions and just wanting to get out. Theyre all literally scared. And scared of dying in there, Steve Rice, another attorney for the inmates, told the Tribune.

East Facility courtyard at California Mens Colony prison.

What happened at Tuesdays hearing

Multiple inmates testified Tuesday about their experiences in custody during the COVID-19 pandemic. San Luis Obispo Superior Court Judge Barry LaBarbera wanted to keep the focus on the current conditions of the prison, so questions about the prisons early response to the pandemic were brief.

Common threads among the inmates testimonies included a lack of masking by guards, especially early in the pandemic, overcrowding in dorms to the point social distancing is impossible, poor ventilation and poor hygiene.

Brian Russell, an inmate at CMC, has kept a log of COVID-19 violations hes observed while in custody since the beginning of the pandemic. He said he began keeping the log to exercise a record of the conditions that weve been in since the beginning of this pandemic in order to show the court at the time of filing that this repetition of violations of protocols continues to this day.

He said he updates the log every quarter hour, so any violations that do occur are entered in the log promptly.

He said officers only wear masks when outside officials, like the attorney general or the inspector general, visit the prison. When there is a question about why theyre (the officers) not wearing masks, they turn around and tell us, Youre an inmate. You dont tell us what to do.

Russell described overcrowded dorms, with eight people housed in each sleeping pod. While each sleeping pod is six feet apart, Russell said it is impossible to social distance inside the pods. He also said there are too many people in the dorm, so it is impossible to social distant generally. And he said cleaning chemicals are being watered down.

Russell also has been infected with COVID twice while in custody at CMC  once in September 2020 and again in January 2021. He said he has to use his asthma inhaler more often to help subdue persistent coughing episodes. He said he is also struggling with running out of breath quickly.

Another inmate, Michael Grant, has cancer and was infected with COVID-19 while in custody at CMC in December 2020. Two weeks ago, his doctor recommended he see a pulmonary specialist after he tested for moderate-severe trouble breathing. In the meantime, hes been given an inhaler to help his condition. Grant believes his lung issues are connected to his COVID-19 infection because he never had issues with breathing prior to that, he said.

Grant said inmates are given one bar of soap per week and are not given a replacement if they use up the bar before the week ends. He said masking is no longer being enforced in the chow hall, and that everyone is currently entering at the same time rather than in smaller groups.

Shai Alkebu-Lan, a 64-year-old inmate whose petition is the lead on the case, currently has COVID-19 in custody  his second time being infected with the virus. He tested positive for COVID-19 on Feb. 23 despite being fully vaccinated and boosted, and he said he has not yet received treatment for his current COVID-19 symptoms.

Alkebu-Lan said he has overheard heard prison officers say they have COVID-19 and do not care if inmates die.

He has asthma and said he hardly had to use his inhaler until he contracted the virus while in CMCs care. Now, he said, he relies on his inhaler to breathe multiple times per day.

Two of his friends are among the inmates who have died, and he said the seeming lack of care from CMC employees has negatively affected his mental health and triggered his PTSD.

I dont want to die, Alkebu-Lan said.
The Dropout makeup team has explained why Amanda Seyfrieds makeup as Elizabeth Holmes is intentionally awful in the series.

Hulus new drama  which premiered on 3 March  stars Seyfried as Holmes, the biotechnology entrepreneur who was found guilty in January 2022 of wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud by misleading investors.

In the series, Seyfrieds Holmes is often shown wearing messy makeup.

In a recent interview with Vanity Fair, the shows head of makeup, Jorjee Douglas, explained why the scruffy look was deliberate.

Douglas said that Holmess 20-hour workdays would have left her no time or desire for aesthetic self-care.

There were points where she was really at a breaking point of trying to sell her [company to investors], she said.

Douglas added: [Holmes] was using her makeup as a weapon almost  using this very stereotypically sexy red lipstick, black-rimmed eyes kind of thing.

In order to successfully mimic Holmess look, Douglas described that her research included examining real-life photos of the disgraced entrepreneur and studying all of the different shades of red that she wore and all her unmatched colours of foundation.

Naveen Andrews as Sunny Balwani, left, and Amanda Seyfried as Elizabeth Holmes (AP)

[Holmes] often had clumpy lipstick and sometimes out-of-line lip liner... She wore makeup that sometimes clashed with her skin tone in college, she added.

Douglas said she wanted to honour the real-life entrepreneur, adding that she felt there was no way to look at the real Elizabeth Holmes without feeling some sort of pain.

The first three episodes of The Dropout can be watched on Hulu in the US and on Disney Plus in the UK.
Jamie Borthwick's driving ban has been reduced. (PA)

EastEnders star Jamie Borthwick has reportedly had his driving ban reduced because he gets recognised on public transport.

The actor  who plays Jay Brown in the BBC soap  had been handed a six month ban after being caught speeding in his Mercedes in Romford, East London, in May 2021 but appealed his sentence.

According to reports, his lawyer Alex Owen said Borthwick had problems with public transport due to his soap fame.

Read more: EastEnders star Max Bowden says his heart is hurting for Ukrainians

"He has issues with public transport and being recognised and not all of those encounters have been favourable," The Sun quoted Owen as saying.

The actor in 'EastEnders'. (BBC)

The actors legal team also argued that he needed his car to drive his great aunt and uncle to hospital appointments.

Owen said: "The circumstances of this offence are the road is a dual carriageway which isnt signposted at 30mph limit but of course the presence of street lights indicates that. He was unaware of that at the time, he was wrongly under the impression it was a 50mph limit.

"It took place in the mid-afternoon and it was relatively quiet at the time. No danger was caused."

Jamie Borthwick as Jay Mitchell in EastEnders (BBC/Jack Barnes/Kieron McCarron)

Borthwick, 27, was given six penalty points after the incident, and as he already had six he reached the maximum 12.

He was also given a six-month driving ban.

However, the ban was repealed at the hearing at Croydon Nightingale Court and the sentence of six points was amended to disqualification of 56 days.

Read more: EastEnders' Sid Owen cried for days after becoming a dad for first time at 50

Borthwick joined EastEnders in 2006. In 2008 Borthwick won the award for Best Dramatic Performance From a Young Actor or Actress at the British Soap Awards.

Watch: EastEnders Soap Scoop! Gray is finally caught out
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Sen. Bernie Sanders, and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Lou Rocco/ABC via Getty ImagesEC/Joe Raedle/Getty Images/Win McNamee/Getty Images

Six US lawmakers wrote to the Department of Labor and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

They asked for investigations into whether Amazon's absence policy breaks federal laws.

The lawmakers, all Democrats, said Amazon's policy penalized workers for emergency time off.

A group of Democratic lawmakers are calling on the Department of Labor and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to investigate Amazon's absence policy for workers, which the group argues could be illegally penalizing workers.

Sens. Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Cory Booker, and Richard Blumenthal as well as Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Cori Bush sent a letter to the two government bodies Thursday.

In the letter, the lawmakers say they believe Amazon's absence policies could violate the Family and Medical Leave Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act.

"Amazon's Attendance Points Policy punishes workers for missing work unexpectedly, regardless of the reason," the lawmakers wrote.

They cite a January report from the legal-advocacy nonprofit A Better Balance. In the report, A Better Balance included a screenshot of Amazon's policy on absences, which said the policy had taken effect October 24.

The policy gives two examples of how workers can be penalized. The first is "Absence Submission Infractions," which workers accrue if they don't notify their warehouse of an absence more than two hours before their shift starts.

"Amazon will review your employment for termination if you get 3 ASIs in a rolling 60-day period," the policy says.

Workers can also accrue "attendance points," which they get for absences "not covered by leave of absence of an approved time-off option." According to the policy published by A Better Balance, eight absence points will result in Amazon reviewing a worker's employment.

The Democratic lawmakers said these policies didn't take into account emergency time off, which is protected under federal law.

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"For example, if a worker's child had a severe asthma attack the night before a shift, and the worker took the child to the emergency room, then, under the FMLA, Amazon cannot require the worker to leave the child to report the absence while the child is receiving emergency treatment," the letter states.

"Amazon's policy, however, appears to punish this legally-protected right if it results in delayed notice of an absence," it adds.

The letter also accused Amazon of failing to inform workers of their rights, "keeping workers in the dark about the existing protections to which they are entitled, and intimidating them from exercising these rights by threats of termination."

Amazon didn't immediately reply when contacted for comment.

The Department of Labor and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission didn't immediately respond when contacted outside normal US working hours.

Read the original article on Business Insider
A federal jury found a Mississippi doctor guilty of evading taxes after prosecutors said he stopped filing income taxes for seven years.

Dr. Kevin L. Crandell was convicted after a three-day trial in the Northern District of Mississippi, the U.S. Attorneys Office said in a news release on Friday, March 4. Crandell faces up to five years in prison when hes sentenced on June 7.

Millions of Americans pay their income taxes every year, U.S. Attorney Clay Joyner said in the release. Those who intentionally attempt to mislead the IRS and fail to pay income taxes that they legitimately owe will face the consequences.

Crandell could not be reached for comment, and defense attorneys representing him did not immediately respond to McClatchy News request for comment on March 4.

Prosecutors said Crandell earned between $30,000 and $40,000 a month working as an emergency room doctor. He is from Golden, Mississippi, a town of fewer than 200 people next to the Alabama state line.

But in 2007, Crandell reportedly stopped paying taxes. For seven years between 2006 and 2012, court filings show, Crandell did not pay any income taxes to the Internal Revenue Service. His failure to pay resulted in a $972,493 tax bill, the government said.

In an attempt to negotiate a payment plan with the IRS in 2014, Crandell submitted whats known as a Form 433-A, which lists a persons income and expenses to help determine how much they can afford to pay on an outstanding tax liability.

But prosecutors said he lied on the form, saying he couldnt make any payments on his taxes because his income was less than his expenses. Crandell specifically indicated that his living expenses totaled $12,133 but he only earned $11,783 a month, according to court documents.

He actually made at least $5,000 more a month than what he reported, court filings state.

Crandell also intentionally left off certain assets and bank accounts when he submitted the Form 433-A, the government said.

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Though Crandell attempted to blame a tax resolution service he hired in 2010, the evidence at trial showed that Crandell intentionally manipulated his pay stubs to show a decrease in his 2014 annual income before submitting the pay stubs to the tax resolution service, the government said.

A grand jury indicted Crandell in October 2020, and he was released on a $50,000 bond, court documents show.

The case went to trial on Feb. 28.

Records filed with the Mississippi State Board of Medical Licensure show Crandell graduated from medical school in 2001 and still has an active license.

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By Johan Ahlander and Nate Raymond

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) -Swedish telecoms company Ericsson, its chief executive and chief financial officer have been named as defendants in a U.S. class action lawsuit for misleading investors about the company's dealings in Iraq, a filing to a New York court said on Friday.

Ericsson is at the centre of a scandal over potential payments to the Islamic State in Iraq. On Wednesday the U.S. Department of Justice said it was in breach of a 2019 deferred prosecution agreement (DPA) for failing to fully disclose details of its operations in Iraq.

The filing, by law firm Pomerantz to the District Court of Eastern District of New York, said that Ericsson among other things had misled investors by overstating the extent to which it had eliminated the use of bribes.

An Ericsson spokesperson could not immediately be reached for comment but Ericsson said in a brief statement that the company and "certain (company) officers" had been named as defendants in connection with "allegedly false and misleading statements" concerning Iraq.

Under the conditions of the 2019 DPA, Ericsson paid more than $1 billion to resolve a series of corruption probes, involving bribery in China, Vietnam and Djibouti, and agreed to cooperate with the department for ongoing investigations.

Ericsson has lost almost a third of its market value since media reports of the alleged bribes broke in February.

Ericsson said that an internal probe, which ended in 2019 but was only made public in February after media inquiries, had identified payments designed to circumvent Iraqi customs at a time when militant organisations, including Islamic State, controlled some routes.

(Reporting by Johan Ahlander in Stockholm and Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by Sandra Maler)
Russian forces attacked and subsequently seized control of a massive nuclear power plant in Ukraine early Friday. A fire at the site  caused by a projectile  was extinguished, amid warnings from officials that it could lead to drastic consequences.

Ukraine's State Nuclear Regulatory Inspectorate said that Russian forces had taken control of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant but that it was still being operated by its regular staff. The agency said that Russian shelling at the facility caused the fire which was later put out by Ukrainian State Emergency Service units.

In a statement, the International Atomic Energy Agency said that the safety systems of the plant's six reactors had not been affected and there was no release of radioactive material. Two people were reported injured, the agency said, but did not provide further details.

Located in the southern Ukrainian city of Enerhodar, the Zaporizhzhia facility is the largest power plant in all of Europe, according to Ukraine interior minister adviser Anton Gerashchenko, who described the area as the country's "capital" of energy workers. Videos on social media showed projectiles striking the facility as the fire raged.

IAEA Director General Rafael Mario Grossi said he remained "extremely concerned" about the situation at the plant and the overnight attack by Russia.

"Firing shells in the area of a nuclear power plant violates the fundamental principle that the physical integrity of nuclear facilities must be maintained and kept safe at all time, Grossi said.

Hours after the attack began, a spokesperson for the plant said the facility had not sustained critical damage, although its power-generating ability had been compromised. The IAEA also tweeted that the fire at the nuclear power plant "has not affected 'essential' equipment, plant personnel taking mitigatory actions."

US Department of Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm tweeted that the plant's reactors "are protected by robust containment structures and reactors are being safely shut down."

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Ed Lyman, director of nuclear power safety at the Union of Concerned Scientists in Washington, DC, said that despite reports of the Ukrainian plant being stable, the attack was "too close for comfort."

In an interview earlier this week, Lyman suggested that the big fear for all of Ukraine's active nuclear plants was that fighting knocked out their cooling and staffing, allowing situations similar to the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant disaster to occur. In that event, a loss of cooling caused partial nuclear meltdowns in reactors, venting of radiation, and a 19-mile radius evacuation.

Ukrainian officials had been urging Russian troops to stay away from the Zaporizhzhia plant, warning that shelling the power station could result in a nuclear disaster.

"If it blows up, it will be 10 times larger than Chornobyl!" Ukraine's foreign affairs minister, Dmytro Kuleba, tweeted, referencing the 1986 disaster at the Chornobyl (often transliterated from Russian as Chernobyl) atomic power station in Ukraine. When a reactor at that plant exploded, more than 30 people were killed and the spread of radioactive material contributed to many more deaths and illnesses. Over 350,000 people were eventually evacuated from contaminated areas in the years following the disaster.

Russian army has shelled power units of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Station. Right now Power Station is on fire. 12:29 AM - 04 Mar 2022

Officials said firefighters were initially unable to access the site, but, as of Friday morning local time, fire brigades had gained entry, according to Oleksandr Starukh, head of the Zaporizhia Regional State Administration.

"The entire Europe is at risk of a repeat of the nuclear catastrophe," tweeted Mykhailo Podoliyak, one of President Volodymyr Zelensky's advisers. "Russians must stop fire!"

For more than a week, Russian forces have been attacking Ukraine by air, land, and sea, launching missiles over major cities, including in residential areas, and threatening the lives of millions. More than a million Ukrainians have fled the country, while those who remained have sought safety in bomb shelters and subway systems or taken up arms to help defend their country.

Before Friday's attack in Enerhodar, Russia had already seized control of the now-decommissioned Chornobyl power plant.

According to the United Nations, at least 331 Ukrainian civilians, including 19 children, have been killed and hundreds more have been injured as a result of shelling and airstrikes since Russia launched its full-scale invasion last week. The actual death toll, however, is likely "much higher," the UN said Friday.

 Jason Wells and Dan Vergano contributed reporting.

More on this
This story was updated at 8 a.m. on March 6 to remove a photo that Aviano Air Base confirmed is not of the March 2 incident.

A U.S. Air Force pilot safely landed their F-16C Fighting Falcon jet in Italy after suffering an in-flight emergency on Wednesday afternoon, prompting buildings near the runway to lock down.

Aviano Air Bases emergency response teams responded and secured the area. All other base operations have returned to normal, spokesperson Natalie Stanley said in an email Friday. She did not provide details on the nature of the problem or if the plane was damaged.

A photo published by the Italian news outlet Veneto Messenger that shows a jet nose-down in the grass is not of the plane in question, Aviano spokesperson Maj. Kaylee Ausbun said Sunday.

Screenshots of a base alert posted to social media on Wednesday warned all employees and work centers facing the flightline, including sierra, zulu and tango loop, to shelter in place.

The airman who declared the emergency is part of Avianos 31st Fighter Wing, the only U.S. Air Force fighter wing in Europe south of the Alps. It oversees two F-16 squadrons, the 555th Triple Nickel Fighter Squadron and the 510th Fighter Squadron, that are key to protecting NATOs southern region. Its unclear which squadron the pilot was assigned to.

The 555th is currently supporting NATOs air policing mission to fend off Russian pilots who behave erratically in or near the airspace of allied countries. More than 100 combat aircraft from the United States and Europe are flying nonstop patrols over NATO nations to protect Russias war in Ukraine from spilling over into their territory.

Around 340 F-16s have been destroyed in mishaps since 1975, with 131 fatalities, according to the Air Force Safety Center. Three of the jets were in accidents in fiscal 2021, including one that was destroyed and its pilot killed.
Linda Dorsey-Walker, chair of the "VOTE4MORE!" coalition, speaks Thursday at the Randallstown Community Center in favor of adding four seats to the Baltimore County Council through a referendum this November. (Christine Condon)

A coalition of Baltimore County groups is calling for a referendum to be tacked onto Novembers ballot that, if passed, would add four seats to the seven-member county council beginning with the 2026 election.

Organizers say expanding the council makes sense given the countys growth. From 2010 to 2020 the county grew about 6%, so each council member represents about 122,000 constituents  far more than when the body was established by county charter in the 1950s.

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We need to modernize. We need to reflect the change that has taken place, said Linda Dorsey-Walker, a county resident who has championed the idea for several years.

Organizers of the effort, called VOTE4MORE!, say expanding the council could increase its productivity and offer fresh opportunities for young people, people of color and other groups to run for office. Their proposal comes as the county faces legal challenges to its current redistricting process in the wake of the 2020 census.

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After several civil rights groups filed suit, a federal judge last week tossed out the countys new map, arguing it would diminish Black voters opportunity to elect their chosen candidates. By Tuesday, the County Council must submit a map with two majority-Black districts instead of one, or another configuration by which Black voters would otherwise have an opportunity to elect a representative of their choice.

In recent years, voters in Marylands two most populous jurisdictions  Montgomery and Prince Georges counties  have voted to expand their councils to 11 members. Both feature at-large council members not tied to specific districts. Baltimore County is the states third largest.

Baltimore County Council Chairman Julian E. Jones, Jr. said he is studying the proposal, including how it might increase the budget for the county council by necessitating more support staff or a larger meeting space.

According to a National Association of Counties analysis from 2015, jurisdictions similar in size to Baltimore County typically had seven or fewer county representatives. But some similar-sized jurisdictions, including San Francisco city and county, had more.

Getting the referendum on the ballot in Baltimore County this year may be an uphill battle. The County Council could add it; otherwise organizers would have to gather 10,000 valid signatures from county residents. Organizers would have to get the first third of the signatures by May 31, and the remainder by June 30.

Supporters, including Linda Dorsey-Walker, right, sign a petition that would create a ballot referendum to add four members to the Baltimore County Council. Theyll need 10,000 signatures by this summer. (Christine Condon)

Thats why Dorsey-Walker is pushing for the passage of state legislation that would allow signatures to be collected electronically, which was permitted earlier in the pandemic. The bill, HB1089, is before the House Ways and Means Committee and sponsored by Del. Sheila Ruth of Baltimore County.

They want us to go back to the 1955 version of collecting signatures: I have to wait for you outside the supermarket and you may or may not want to stop. You may or may not want to stand 6 inches away from me. You may or may not want to give me your birth date and your full home address and your signature, Dorsey-Walker said. Were hoping that people will do that because they want so badly a change to take place. Why must they?

Afternoon Update Weekdays Updating you on the day's biggest news before the evening commute. >

Meanwhile the group is planning appearances at large county events like the Towsontown Spring Festival and the Reisterstown Bloomin ArtFest in late April and May, said Dorsey-Walker, who also serves on the Baltimore County Democratic Central Committee.

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Several community organizers joined Dorsey-Walker on Thursday to be the first to sign the petition during a news conference at the Randallstown Community Center. They included representatives from the Randallstown NAACP and the Baltimore County League of Women Voters.

The countys seven-district structure devised in the 1950s is outdated and unresponsive to the needs of our increasingly diverse communities, said Sonia Shah of Allies for Democracy, which is based in Baltimore County. We saw this vividly in the recent redistricting cycle.

For Alejandra Ivanovich of Amigos Baltimore County, who immigrated to the United States from Venezuela, the effort represents an opportunity to reach out to the countys Hispanic population and potentially add a Hispanic member to the council.

As a community activist, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, Ive seen firsthand the great need of minorities, she said. I believe that by supporting this cause, it will allow for people like me to be properly represented in Baltimore County. In fact, there has never been a Latino serving on the County Council.

With fewer constituents, County Council members would be better able to attend to the individual needs of the communities they represent, said Mark Weaver, who represented the Southwest Baltimore Democratic Club.

Although I am here with a political organization, this is not a partisan issue, he said. Its good government.
(Reuters) -Russian troops on Friday seized Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, the largest in Europe. Ukraine is heavily dependent on nuclear energy and has 15 operative nuclear reactors that generate roughly 54% of the country's electricity needs.

The World Nuclear Association, an international body that represents the industry, gave the following information about the country's nuclear power sector https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profiles/countries-t-z/ukraine.aspx.

WHAT SORT OF NUCLEAR PLANTS DOES UKRAINE OPERATE?

Ukraine's reactors are located in four separate plants. All 15 are water-water energy reactors (VVER), which means they are water cooled and water moderated. They were originally developed in the Soviet Union. Twelve of the reactors came on line in the 1980s, one in 1995 and two in 2004.

The plants generated some 13,107 gigawatt electrical (GWe) in 2020, the third largest amount of nuclear generated power in Europe after Russia (27,653 GWe) and France (61,370 GWe).

They are all operated by a state company -- Energoatom.

WHERE ARE THE PLANTS?

Four reactors are clustered in the Rivne plant, in northwest Ukraine near the Belarus border, and two are in the Khmelnitski plant, some 180 km (110 miles) southeast of the Rivne site. Three reactors are in the South Ukraine plant, some 170 km to the north of the port city of Odessa. The remaining six reactors operate in the giant Zaporizhzhia plant.

ARE THEY THREATENED BY THE FIGHTING?

Russian forces seized the Zaporizhzhia plant overnight. A volley of shells set off a huge blaze at a training centre in the plant. This was extinguished on Friday. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said the plant was undamaged and that only one reactor was working, at around 60% of capacity.

An Energoatom official said Russian troops were near the town of Voznesensk, about 30 km south of the South Ukraine plant. He said that a bridge entering the town had been blown up, slowing their advance.

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The Rivne and Khmelnitski plants do not appear to be under any immediate threat.

WHAT ABOUT CHERNOBYL?

The now defunct Chernobyl nuclear plant sits some 108 km (67 miles) north of the Ukrainian capital Kyiv. One of its four reactors exploded in 1986, spewing clouds of radiation across Europe. The site is still radioactive and a huge protective dome covers the destroyed reactor. The area was seized by Russian forces on Feb. 24.

ARE UKRAINE'S EXISTING PLANTS LIKE CHERNOBYL?

No. Ukraine's current reactors are much safer than the "first generation" Chernobyl reactors, which had a deeply flawed cooling system and did not have a containment building to protect the nuclear core.

By contrast, the essential reactor components at the Zaporizhzhia plant are housed inside a steel-reinforced concrete containment building designed to withstand aircraft crashes or explosions, said Mark Wenman, reader in nuclear materials at Imperial College London.

"The reactor core is itself further housed in a sealed steel pressure vessel with 20 cm thick walls," he told Reuters.

Energoatom has also spent millions of dollars in recent years to implement safety modernisations at all plants.

SO THE PLANTS ARE SAFE, DESPITE THE WAR?

While the plants themselves are robust, the IAEA has warned that staff stressed by the fighting could unwittingly make mistakes. That means the wellbeing of nuclear workers was "a humanitarian issue, but not only, it's also a technical issue," IAEA chief Rafael Grossi told reporters on Friday.

Staff operating nuclear power plants typically work in shifts but the IAEA has said staff at Chernobyl have not been able to rotate their shifts since Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and on Friday the IAEA expressed concern about the wellbeing of staff at Zaporizhzhia.

(Reporting by Crispian Balmer and Susanna Twidale; Editing by Elaine Hardcastle and Susan Fenton)
STUTTGART, Germany  One of Europes key weapon developments has stalled as the prime contractors have failed to reach agreement on the path forward, a top industry official said Friday.

The trinational Future Combat Air System (FCAS) program  intended to provide a swath of new military capabilities to France, Germany, and Spain by 2040  has yet to enter its research-and-development phase, and risks falling behind schedule if the industry partners cannot compromise on key workshare allowances.

Two of the three prime contractors, Airbus and Dassault, havent reached a deal to launch the R&D-related Phase 1B that would lead to a prototype fighter jet by 2027, said Dassault CEO Eric Trappier in a Friday earnings meeting.

We have done everything possible to sign with Airbus, and Im waiting for Airbus signature, he said. The problem is on the other side of the Rhine.

The Phase 1B contract has been prepared by the French military procurement agency Direction generale de larmement (DGA), and we are waiting for Airbus to sign which is not the case right now, Trappier said. Dassault is leading Frances industry participation in the FCAS program, while Airbus represents Germany and Indra represents Spain. Indra, who leads Spains industry participation in the FCAS program, declined to comment on Friday.

The negotiations, which have dragged on for months now, risk bringing the program to a complete standstill. There is a moment where we say yes, or we say no, Trappier continued. In my opinion, this has gone on a bit too long.

Per Trappier, the dispute rests on Dassaults role as the lead for the Next-Generation Fighter element. The program is separated into seven technology pillars, each of which is led by a specific company, with subcontractors contributing as well. Dassault is responsible for the new fighter jet, while Airbus leads the loyal wingman remote-carrier drone design, along with new cloud capabilities and stealth technologies. Indra leads the sensor systems pillar, while Safran is building a new jet engine for the fighter.

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Dassault should be the leader and the main contractor for the fighter jet, Trappier said. Additional requests were introduced to support this program; I said that there was a red line not to be crossed.

According to Airbus, the kerfuffle boils down to fairness.

We have managed months ago to find fair and balanced agreements on all 6 other pillars, where even under a defined leadership the competence and capacities of each partner are respected and can participate in an equitable manner, a spokesman told Defense News. Airbus has made several proposals to converge also on the Next Generation Fighter (NGF) and we are supporting any solution which will respect both the skills of each partner and the lead role of Dassault Aviation, leading to a fair agreement. We are confident that a resolution can be achieved if the rules of the cooperation agreed by the nations are respected in the NGF, as it is the case on other pillars.

The programs stakeholders have long awaited this industry contract. The German, French, and Spanish defense ministers reached their own trinational agreement last summer, which formalized the nations funding commitments through Phase 1B and 2, culminating in an initial prototype by 2027. In an Aug. 31 tweet lauding the deal, the German Defense Ministry pointedly said: Now its industrys turn  come to an agreement.

The ongoing delay risks pushing back the delivery schedule for the new fighter jet. Meanwhile, Dassault engineers who were due to work on the demonstrator phase have been redeployed elsewhere in the company, Trappier said. They will return to the FCAS program if and when the contract is signed.

I know they are eager to design an NGF demonstrator, he said.

The trinational program isnt the only source of tension between France and Germany at the moment. Reports have emerged that Berlin is once again considering buying U.S.-made F-35 Joint Strike Fighters as it phases out its aging Tornado fleet, and new Chancellor Olaf Scholz recently announced plans for Germany to invest 100 billion euro (U.S. $110 billion) into its defense.

Trappier, who is also the current president of the French Aerospace Industries Association (GIFAS), said Friday that he is convinced Germany will choose the F-35, as it had previously desired. He claimed the Germans are being pressured by the U.S. to use F-35s for their nuclear mission, even as Berlin pays lip service to the need to Buy European.

We will see with our number-one partner, which is Germany, whether the first decision they make [after investing 100 billion euros] is to sign the FCAS contract, or to buy the F-35, he said.
By Jan Lopatka and Fedja Grulovic

VELKE KAPUSANY, Slovakia/SIGHETU MARMATIEI, Romania (Reuters) -For 7-year-old Bogdan, his first time on a train should have been a journey of excitement and wonder, not fleeing with his mother and little more than the clothes on their backs.

Valerya Totskaya, 27, and Bogdan boarded the evacuation train on Tuesday from their hometown, with their papers, some food, underwear and what they were wearing - a story echoed by countless families seeking a route out Ukraine.

"There was a river of people. Men pushed away other women and children to get their own on. It was of course horrible," she told Reuters at a school-turned-shelter at Velke Kapusany, 10 km (6 miles) west of the Slovakian-Ukrainian border.

"It was very hot on the train. Some people tried to lock themselves in the compartments, but the conductor said people had to sit four on each bed, so there were 16 people in each compartment. Some slept on their bags in the corridor."

They have travelled some 1,200 km (745 miles) in total, first by rail to Lviv from Zaporizhzhia -- location of the nuclear power plant seized by Russian troops on Friday -- Totskaya said, explaining how her son had not been on a train before.

She said they then went by bus to Uzhhorod, where a contact took them by van to the border, where Bogdan got cold and the family did not sleep for two days.

"He cried 'Mom, I want to go home.' I said: 'my son, that is impossible, there is a war going on'."

The U.N. refugee agency said on Thursday 1 million people had fled Ukraine in the week after Russia invaded the country.

Thousands more Ukrainians were making the journey on Friday as the fighting intensifies.

Svitlana Babatenko and her three children arrived on foot in Slovakia. Her husband stayed behind to fight while she, their two teenagers and 10-year-old son journeyed west to safety.

"Our town, Malyn, is now being bombed, planes are destroying houses. Our relatives stayed behind," she told Reuters as they waited for a bus to take their group to Poland.

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"Last night, their house was bombed, we do not have any connection with them. We do not know if they ran away."

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After leaving Malyn, the family went to Vinnitsya, southwest of Kyiv. "Then (the fighting) started there too, so we decided to flee the country," she said.

Moscow says the aim of its "special military operation" is to disarm its neighbour and capture leaders it calls neo-Nazis and a threat to its own security.

It has dismissed allegations of strikes on civilian targets, and on Thursday Russia and Ukraine agreed on the need for humanitarian corridors to help civilians escape.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said on Friday it had received no official written communication from Russia or Ukraine for assistance in setting up safe passage for civilians and supplies.

In Romania, at the Sighetu Marmatiei crossing, women and children arrived by car, bicycle and on foot on Friday, clutching plastic bags and roll-on suitcases as the snow fell.

One woman brushed away tears as she hugged a loved one waiting for her.

In Poland, a Polish non-governmental organisation has been helping coordinate the evacuation of orphans, with more arriving from Odessa, Kharkiv and other parts of Ukraine on Friday in addition to the 1,000 already rescued. They try to not to separate children from the same orphanage.

"I do my best to keep them together," Aleksander Kartasinski, the head of the Happy Kids NGO, told Reuters.

Memories of Russian domination after World War Two run deep in the region, with many people looking to help how they can.

Some 73% of Poles were engaged in helping Ukrainians, mostly by donating food and hygiene products, according to a survey by pollster IQS for the Rzeczpospolita daily on Friday.

In Bulgaria, hotel owners on the Black Sea coast and small guesthouses throughout the country have offered free accommodation to Ukrainian refugees, while the state railway operator BDZ said they could travel for free.

(Additional reporting by Marek Strzelecki and Anna Wlodarczak-Semczuk in Warsaw, Anna Luiza Ilie in Bucharest, Tsvetelia Tsolova in Sofia, Jason Hovet in Prague; Writing by Gwladys Fouche; Editing by Hugh Lawson and Alison Williams)
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba. Timothy A. Clary/AFP via Getty Images

A fire has broken out at Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said early Friday morning, following shelling by Russian forces.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) tweeted that Ukraine's nuclear regulator said there is "no change reported in radiation levels" at the site. The Associated Press reports that a spokesman for Zaporizhzhia told Ukrainian media that shells falling on the facility started a fire at one of its six reactors. He said the reactor is being renovated and is not operating, but does contain nuclear fuel.

Zaporizhzhia is the largest nuclear plant in Europe, and Kuleba warned in a tweet that "if it blows up, it will be 10 times larger than Chernobyl!! Russians must IMMEDIATELY cease the fire, allow firefighters, establish a security zone!"

The plant is in southeastern Ukraine, near the city of Enerhodar. The mayor of Enerhodar, Dmytro Orlov, posted on Facebook that the fire started "as a result of relentless shelling" by Russians, adding, "there are victims, but the exact number and condition so far cannot be determined under the circumstances."

The White House said it is monitoring the situation and President Biden has called Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to discuss the matter.

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Mar. 3Athens Fire and Rescue responded to a house fire today at 5:37 a.m. on Cloverleaf Drive.

Two people were inside the home when the fire started but were able to get out safely and no one was injured, according to Fire Chief Al Hogan.

Hogan said the home is a total loss, and the cause of the fire is under investigation.

erica.smith@decaturdaily.com or 256-340-2460.
Florida lawmakers on Thursday voted to approve a 15-week abortion ban that shortens by more than two months the current window available to legally terminate a pregnancy.

The 24-15 party-line vote in the Senate came after more than six hours of discussion and debate over two days. The measure cleared the Florida House last month on a 78-39 vote and now goes to Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is expected to sign it.

"I think it's a great day," Senate President Wilton Simpson said about lawmakers approving Florida's most restrictive abortion regulations (HB 5) since the U.S. Supreme Court Roe v. Wade decision established abortion as a constitutional right in 1973.

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"For the first time in many years, youre going to have a bill that I believe will be tolerated (by) the U.S. Supreme Court," Simpson told reporters.

Senator Kelli Stargel defends SB 146, a proposed abortion bill in the Florida Senate, Wednesday, Feb. 2, 2022. being heard by the Senate Health and Policy Committee Wednesday, Feb. 2, 2022.

Rep. Erin Grall, R-Vero Beach, and Sen. Kelli Stargel, R-Lakeland, sponsored the measure and said it mirrors a Mississippi law that is now before the nation's high court.

"I never dreamed I'd be here today ... actually being able to save the lives of babies that are past 15 weeks of gestation," Stargel told her fellow lawmakers. "God is so good."

How did lawmakers vote? See who voted for and against abortion bill

Doctor who violates Florida's abortion ban faces 5 years in prison

If a physician violates the ban, they would be guilty of a third-degree felony, punishable by up to five years in prison and a $5,000 fine. The bill makes exceptions only in cases where the mother is at risk of death or "irreversible physical impairment," or if the fetus has a fatal abnormality.

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Republican lawmakers in both the House and Senate defeated amendments that would have made exceptions for rape, incest, human trafficking and mental health.

"After 15 weeks, that is a child. And so the argument is, should you kill a baby after 15 weeks because it was (conceived) under certain circumstances?" Simpson said.

Democrats pushed back at Republicans' assertions that a fetus has achieved personhood and that abortion is equivalent to the taking of human life.

"As much as a fetus may look like a baby in a sonogram, it is not a life until it is able to survive on its own and that is established under the law," said Sen. Gary Farmer, D-Plantation, a lawyer.

Sen. Gary Farmer speaks passionately and at-length in opposition to SB 404, requiring parental consent for abortion for minors, Thursday, Feb. 6, 2020. The bill passed the Senate 23-17 along party lines.

Farmer, a father of two daughters, said it was simply wrong for a male-dominated legislative body to make a "decree" about a woman's body. "We will never know what it feels like," he said.

And Senate Democratic Leader Lauren Book of Miami called abortion restrictions a "control mechanism and an affront to every woman's individual freedom and independence."

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis expected to sign abortion bill

When it was introduced in January, DeSantis said a ban on abortion after 15 weeks is a good idea.

If the bill becomes law, it's widely expected to be challenged in court.

Until now, a privacy provision in the Florida Constitution that guarantees a right to be let alone by the government has blocked abortion restrictions.

But that provision is grounded in the legal finding of a constitutional right to terminate a pregnancy before the fetus achieves viability, the ability to survive outside the womb, which the court set at 24 weeks.

Opponents of HB 5, a bill filed in the Florida Legislature that would ban abortions in the state after 15 weeks after pregnancy, rallied at the Florida Capitol, Wednesday, Feb. 16, 2022.

Advocates for a woman's right to an abortion fear the U.S. Supreme Court signaled it was willing to alter the legal landscape for abortion when it agreed to hear the so-called Dobbs case about the Mississippi law.

Abortion law scholar Mary Ziegler has told the USA TODAY Network-Florida Capital Bureau that the justices went looking for an opportunity to reopen Roe. There is no split in lower court decisions or conflict in state statutes for the justices to resolve in Dobbs, said Ziegler, a Florida State University law professor.

Three of them were picked by former President Donald Trump, she noted, who "promised to pick, in his words, pro-life justices,' " she added.

The Florida law, which would go into effect July 1, would significantly reduce access to late-term abortions. Currently, North Carolina is the only other southern state to permit an abortion after 15 weeks.

The bill galvanized opponents into a coalition that staged numerous rallies in Tallahassee and marched on the state Capitol three times in the past nine weeks.

Planned Parenthood of Florida, the ACLU of Florida, Florida Rising, the Florida Access Network and student groups from Florida State and Florida A&M universities vowed to make abortion access an issue in the 2022 mid-term election and target lawmakers who supported the bill.

But Simpson, also a candidate in November for state Agriculture Commissioner, dismissed any concerns about voters reacting at the ballot box: "When you do the right thing, the blowback is the blowback."

James Call is a member of the USA TODAY NETWORK-Florida Capital Bureau. He can be reached at jcall@tallahassee.com. Follow on him Twitter: @CallTallahassee

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This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: Florida abortion ban passes Legislature, sent to Governor Ron DeSantis
The Howard County Board of Education unanimously adopted a $1.1 billion operating and capital budget for the 2022-23 school year, a 14.5% increase over the school systems fiscal 2022 operating budget.

The budget has been sent to County Executive Calvin Ball and then will go on to the County Council for ultimate approval.

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The school boards request includes funding to implement the Blueprint for Marylands Future, the $3.8 billion legislation passed last year to make unprecedented statewide investment in early childhood and K-12 education.

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The request for county funding totals $757.4 million, an increase of $116.6 million or 18.2% over fiscal 2022. State revenues in the budget total $321.1 million, an increase of $38.6 million or 13.7%, driven by the required increases per student laid out by the Blueprint for Marylands Future.

Revenues to fund the budget request come from federal sources ($6.9 million) and the school systems fund balance ($11.6 million), according to a news release from the school system.

It is so critical that the Board of Education articulate the needs of the school system and request funding to address critical shortage areas, said Vicky Cutroneo, chair of the Board of Education. The COVID-19 pandemic has further exacerbated and shone a light on the many areas of our system where we are severely understaffed. We must prioritize these investments to ensure our students and families receive the wraparound services they need to be successful.

The request includes $2 million for increased salaries, other staff compensation and 14 additional positions to support the opening of a 13th high school, in Jessup.

The request maintains $6.4 million and 65 positions to support critical areas in behavioral health and well-being services and instructional support; $7 million and 144 positions to further address critical shortages in special education staffing; $26.8 million for technology, including 15 positions, classroom technology, networking and security, specialized instructional technology and student devices; and $4.6 million and 42 positions to sustain enhanced air filtration measures and increased maintenance and cleaning of schools.

Afternoon Update Weekdays Updating you on the day's biggest news before the evening commute. >

Blueprint-related requests include $34.3 million and 199 positions to be implemented during fiscal 2023 that include $16 million to increase teacher compensation for achieving the professional distinction of the National Board Certification; $7.1 million and 143.2 positions to begin the expansion to full-day prekindergarten for 3- and 4-year-olds, $4.7 million and 40 positions to support college and career readiness efforts and expand dual enrollment participation; and $2.1 million and 15 positions to build organizational capacity to meet Blueprint governance, accountability and reporting requirements.

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Built-in funding obligations include $24 million for staff compensation to fulfill fiscal 2022 bargaining agreements and increase salaries in fiscal 2023 to remain competitive as an employer while helping covering rising benefits costs.

We hope to use this budget to guide the public dialogue about our shared priorities and how we support our students, while implementing the reforms in the Blueprint for Marylands Future legislation, Cutroneo said. The Board of Education also wants to ensure the community understands that this is a legally prescribed process where the amount of funding requested by the board sets the maximum amount the budget can increase. If we dont advance the needs of our students now, there is no chance that they can be discussed and funded.

The boards budget has been submitted to Ball, who will hold public hearings followed by the submission of his proposed countywide budget to the County Council.

The council will then hold a series of public hearings and work sessions before the final adoption of the budget.

Following council action, the school board will make any necessary adjustments to account for revenue impacts and adopt the final fiscal 2023 operating and capital budgets.
LONDON (Reuters) - Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said on Friday that Russian soldiers had committed rape in Ukrainian cities.

Kuleba did not give any evidence for his claim. Reuters was unable to independently verify the claim.

"When bombs fall on your cities, when soldiers rape women in the occupied cities - and we have numerous cases of, unfortunately, when Russian soldiers rape women in Ukrainian cities - it's difficult, of course, to speak about the efficiency of international law," Kuleba told an event at Chatham House in London.

"But this is the only tool of civilization that is available to us to make sure that eventually all those who made this war possible will be brought to justice," said Kuleba, who was speaking in English.

(Reporting by Reuters in London; Editing by Jon Boyle)
By Benjamin Mallet

PARIS (Reuters) -France on Friday temporarily activated the crisis centre of its ASN nuclear watchdog after a fire at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in Ukraine broke out, using the country's expertise in nuclear radiation to monitor developments amid intense fighting around the plant.

Russian forces seized the largest nuclear power plant in Europe after a building at the complex was set ablaze during fighting with Ukrainian defenders, local authorities said.

Fears of a potential nuclear disaster at the Zaporizhzhia plant spread alarm across world capitals before the authorities said the fire in a building identified as a training centre had been extinguished.

France's ASN watchdog later on Friday said, the crisis centre has been deactivated again at around 1700 GMT, but added that a special team of its experts would continue to actively monitor the situation in Ukraine.

French energy minister Barbara Pompili said in the morning no changes regarding radiation levels had been signalled. "That's rather reassuring," she told Franceinfo radio. "But these very sensitive facilities need to be shielded."

The ASN said no information received so far from the Ukrainian safety agency or the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was cause for alarm.

"We have no information suggesting a system that contribute to the plant's safety has been hit in the attack," Anne-Cecile Rigail, ASN's deputy managing director, told Reuters.

France's IRSN nuclear institute, the technical arm of the ASN watchdog, said it had been in contact with the Ukrainian safety agency on Friday morning and that they had assured the French there had been no cut in power supply to the reactors.

"We had confirmation by the safety agency their had been no loss in electric supplies at the site, so all reactors are supplied properly," Karine Herviou, deputy managing director of IRSN, told Reuters.

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"Even if we lost all sources of external electricity supply, each reactor has four emergency electric generators and they have on site enough fuel to last for at least a week, even without refuelling," she said.

IRSN has about 440 nuclear sensors across France that can detect radiation levels in real-time and also has access to a network of sensors with countries bordering Ukraine, it said.

(Additional reporting by Sudip Kar-Gupta; Writing by Michel Rose; Editing by Mark Heinrich and Edmund Blair)
PARIS (Reuters) - France's European Affairs Minister Clement Beaune said the European Union must stand firm as Russian attacks in Ukraine intensify, adding it was too early to assess the consequences of a fire that broke out near the largest nuclear power plant in Europe.

"One can see the attacks intensify, which is extremely worrying and serious," Beaune told reporters as he arrived at a meeting of EU European Affairs Ministers in Arles, southern France.

A fire that broke out in a training building near the largest nuclear power plant in Europe during intense fighting between Russian and Ukrainian forces had been extinguished, Ukraine's state emergency service said on Friday.

U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said there was no indication of elevated radiation levels at the Zaporizhzhia plant, which provides more than a fifth of total electricity generated in Ukraine.

Earlier, a video feed from the plant verified by Reuters showed shelling and smoke rising near a five-storey building at the plant compound.

(Reporting by Dominique Vidalon; Editing by Sudip Kar-Gupta)
The man accused of killing his ex-girlfriend, a young single mother, in 2019 has been arrested, officials say.

The San Antonio Police Department had issued a warrant for Brian Ontiveros arrest after he was accused of breaking into the womans apartment on June 8, shooting her several times and fleeing, according to a news release from the U.S. Marshals Service.

The U.S. Marshals Service Lone Star Fugitive Task Force was called in to help track down Ontiveros, officials said.

After receiving information that the fugitive may be in the Republic of Mexico, authorities coordinated with Mexican law enforcement agencies and confirmed the man was hiding in Piedras Negras, about 145 miles southwest of San Antonio.

Ontiveros was arrested in the Mexico city on Thursday, March 3, according to the news release. He was brought back to the U.S. and will be held in an Eagle Pass detention facility until he can be extradited to San Antonio.

Marissa Jernigan, the woman who was killed, was his ex and the mother of his child, KSAT reported.

Officials say Ontiveros faces federal charges for unlawful flight to avoid prosecution in addition to charges connected to her murder.

The arrest of Brian Ontiveros is a testament to how effective and valuable our relationships are with our international and domestic law enforcement partners, U.S. Marshal Susan Pamerleau said. Deputy U.S. Marshals and Mexican law enforcement officers remained diligent throughout this investigation and never stopped searching until Ontiveros was finally arrested.

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Mar. 4As a bill to allow permitless carry of firearms moves through the Georgia General Assembly, U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene is hosting a Second Amendment rally featuring several national-level conservative politicians Saturday.

Beginning at noon, the "Shall not be Infringed" rally is being held at the Coosa Valley Fairgrounds in Rome.

The flyer promises Greene, former White House strategist and broadcaster Steven Bannon, military veteran and firearms instructor with the Warrior Poets Society John Lovell, U.S. Rep. and Georgia Secretary of State candidate Jody Hice, U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, "and other 2A Champions," the event's flyer says, referring to the Second Amendment.

Greene's campaign has also said appearances are expected by Dianna Muller, founder of the DC Project, a women's gun rights group; David Perdue, former Georgia senator and candidate for governor; and Lucretia Hughes, host of "Real News" and a conservative activist.

The venue can hold from 500 to 750 people, and there will be food trucks and refreshments for sale.

From 10 a.m. to noon, there will be a live broadcast of Bannon's WarRoom podcast. U.S. Senate candidate Herschel Walker was scheduled to speak but dropped out after Greene spoke at a rally organized by a political commentator who expressed support for Russia's invasion of Ukraine and is known for antisemitism.

A request for comment from the Walker campaign wasn't returned before deadline.

The rally's name is a reference to the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which reads: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

Supporters of Georgia's permitless carry bill call it a "constitutional carry" bill, also referring to the Second Amendment.

Sponsored by Dallas state Sen. Jason Anavitarte, the Constitutional Carry of Act 2021 passed the Senate with a party-line vote Monday and is heading now to the House.

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Anavitarte said on the Senate floor Monday that criminals don't follow the law, and law-abiding citizens shouldn't have the government "slow walk" their constitutional right to defend themselves. He said gun sales have gone up during the pandemic and the protests during the summer of 2020.

"The growing response by law-abiding constituents hearing these terrible stories is to go buy a gun and protect themselves," Anavitarte said.

Speaking against the bill on the floor of the Senate at the same hearing Monday, several Democrats pointed to a steep rise in gun violence and suicides in Georgia.

Sen. Michelle Au, a Democrat from Johns Creek, wanted to add an amendment that would require a background check for private gun sales. She said one-fourth of U.S. gun sales were made without a background check, referencing a 2017 study by the Annals of Internal Medicine, an academic medical journal.

Her amendment failed.

On July 1, Tennessee's permitless carry law went into effect.

The Tennessee law applies to concealed and open-carried handguns but does not apply to long guns, according to reporting from The Associated Press. The law applies to adults over 21 and military members 18 to 20 years old, with an exception for people with criminal convictions or certain mental illnesses.

Georgia's permitless carry law wouldn't override federal law barring some from gun possession, Anavitarte said during the hearing.

A bill that adds a separate criminal charge for every firearm illegally possessed by convicted felons, Senate Bill 479, was also passed by senators during that hearing. Senate Bill 259 was also moved to the House. That bill would prevent government officials from sharing county information on firearm possessors with outside organizations.

Speaking on the assembly floor during that same session, Sen. Jeff Mullis, R-Chickamauga, said, "It's not proper for people's private and personal information to be transmitted all across the state and nation. So they can only use it in that county to deal with issues regarding the Second Amendment."

Both Mullis and Gov. Brian Kemp listed permitless/constitutional carry as one of their priorities this legislative session.

Contact Andrew Wilkins at awilkins@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6659. Follow him on Twitter @tweetatwilkins.
BERLIN (Reuters) - German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has talked with Russian President Vladimir Putin on the phone and called on Moscow to halt all military actions immediately, a German government spokesperson said on Friday.

Scholz also called on Putin to allow access for humanitarian aid in areas where fighting was taking place, while the Russian president announced a third round of Russia-Ukraine talks this weekend, a government spokesperson said in a statement.

During the one-hour conversation, the leaders agreed to hold further talks soon, the spokesperson said.

(Reporting by Zuzanna Szymanska, editing by Kirsti Knolle)
An alliance of prominent civil rights lawyers from around the world on Wednesday announced it will file an appeal to the United Nations on behalf of Black refugees facing discrimination while trying to flee Ukraine.

The group includes Ben Crump, the civil rights attorney for the families of George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery; attorney Jasmine Rand, who represented the families of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown; Peter Herbert, one of Britains few nonwhite judges; Jamaican Member of Parliament G. Anthony Hylton; British solicitor Jacqueline McKenzie; and Carlos Moore, president of the National Bar Association in the U.S. They plan to file the appeal to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights as well as the U.N.s Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.

Earlier this week Filippo Grandi, the U.N. high commissioner for refugees, and Dmytro Kuleba, Ukraines minister of foreign affairs, acknowledged that some Africans looking to escape the Russian invasion of Ukraine had experienced discriminatory practices at the countrys borders.

Such blatant racism cannot be tolerated, Zita Holbourne, the chairwoman of the Black Activists Rising Against the Cuts U.K. told The Independent. Human rights of Black and brown people, predominantly students situated in Ukraine, must be honored and safe exit facilitated for all, free of discriminatory selection processes at borders. The targeting of Black and brown people in this way is a racist human rights abuse on top of a human rights crisis impacting all people forced to flee Ukraine.

Robert A. Sanders, a retired U.S. Navy Judge Advocate Generals Corps captain and a legal and national security educator at the University of New Haven, hailed the lawyers announcement.

Its totally appropriate, Sanders told NBC News. Filippo Grandi, the U.N. high commissioner for refugees, issued statements to Russia about its human rights activities during its attack on Ukraine. And so, it is completely appropriate for that same body to examine what Ukraine is doing, which, while sad, is not surprising because we live in a world that has structures and systemic pieces built up over centuries that make Black and brown people less than.

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Dammy Raji. (Courtesy Dammy Raji)

Dammy Raji, a Nigerian medical student in Ukraine, had planned to stay in Lviv, until the Russian invasion became too intense. So she packed up to leave.

She said she had heard about racism at the borders, where Black people had been routinely denied entry into safe countries. When Raji and friends attempted to flee to Poland this week, she said they endured what other Africans had shared around the world via social media.

They were not allowed to board two trains in Lviv, as Ukrainians want their people to go first, she said.

Raji said the reports of the trouble at the borders for Black people have been beneficial in her attempts to leave. Even though she had trouble getting across, she eventually made it to Poland.

We took the train because we heard that was easier at the border, she said. But it was really hard to get onto the train as Blacks. They prioritized their people, especially women and children.  The Ukrainians that want their people to go first.

Sanders said it was disingenuous for non-Black people to dismiss the early reports of racism at the borders.

One of those things that struck me was the immediate failure of white people all over the place, he said. To be in disbelief that racism was happening at the borders  Oh, well, there must be some other reason why theyre holding them back. Theyre letting women and children out.

I hear that and I say, Youre giving me an invalid excuse because you cant fess up and come to grips with the reality of the world that you live in and, in part, some of you helped create.

Safely in Poland, Raji said a nongovernmental organization helped her and her friends get settled. She said the Polish people were not the problem at the borders.

They are very accommodating, she said. They are really nice, and there are many places organized by NGOs for foreigners because of what they are hearing online. So I think the awareness is what has helped us.

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Visitors and personnel at the Naval Academy in Annapolis and in Fort George G. Meade garrison facilities no longer need to wear a face mask to prevent the spread of COVID-19. That includes students in Anne Arundel County Public Schools on the Fort Meade complex.

Earlier this week, the Department of Defense announced new COVID guidance stating that installations can make masking optional when the transmission rate falls from high to moderate in a given community, though screeningprograms must continue. When the rate hits low, as it is now in Anne Arundel County, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, installations can stop testing programs as well.

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That means Fort Meade and the Naval Academy are no longer required to implement COVID screening tests and that masks are now optional indoors.

The Naval Academy shared a cartoon on its Twitter page Thursday that showed its mascot, Bill the Goat, holding up a mask with a gold Navy N, which announced that masks were now optional.

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Indoor mask wear is now OPTIONAL at #USNA!



For more information, visit https://t.co/XElb7g2uSj pic.twitter.com/FBbhht8Qs6  U.S. Naval Academy (@NavalAcademy) March 3, 2022

Visitors are generally not being asked for proof of vaccination, though on its website the academy says it may change that policy based on factors such as community spread, size of venue and exposure to Midshipmen.

Daily Top Stories Daily Get the day's top news, sports, opinion, features and local events. >

Effective Thursday at Fort Meade, masking is optional in all garrison facilities. Masks are still mandatory at the Child Development Center, Child Youth Services and the Kimbrough Ambulatory Care Center, according to the forts family and morale, welfare and recreation page.

When masking became optional for Anne Arundel County Public Schools on Feb. 18, students and staff in schools at Fort Meade were required to continue wearing face masks due to federal requirements. Now, they are subject to the same policy as the county public schools.

Anne Arundel Community College announced Thursday that effective March 9, the school will no longer require proof of vaccination or weekly testing for faculty and students. Wearing a face mask indoors will continue to be required through May 19, the end of the spring term, the college said in a statement posted on social media.

We know there are different opinions on continuing the mask mandate through the spring term. This decision was not made lightly and reflects a continued commitment to our workforce and students by providing an added level of safety in a face-to-face setting, AACC wrote.

At St. Johns College in Annapolis, masking will become optional starting March 24, after spring break. In a letter to students, Annapolis campus President Nora Demleitner said that instructors can ask their classes to remain masked, and offices or departments may decide to require masks for classes and instructors within that department. Instructors need to tell students if they will be required to wear a mask before March 24.

She said masking will continue to be mandatory for large gatherings on campus and in the common area of the health center.

It is with great pleasure that after nearly two years of living with masks and multiple COVID-specific risk mitigation strategies, we have reached a point where the public health conditions allow for meaningful changes, she wrote.
By Davide Barbuscia

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Goldman Sachs Asset Management has reduced the Russian exposure in its GQG international equity fund to about $222 million, according to a statement and a spokesperson, down from over $1.7 billion six months ago.

The Goldman Sachs GQG Partners International Opportunities Fund was 0.99% exposed to Russia as of the end of February, Goldman Sachs said in a statement on its website, with holdings in Lukoil, Rosneft and Gazprom.

The fund is Goldman's only fund with Russian exposure, according to data from research firm Morningstar on the top 100 open-end and exchange-traded funds worldwide in terms of estimated U.S. dollar exposure to Russian securities.

"Coming into 2022 we saw attractive growth opportunities and valuations in many Russian companies", the firm said.

"The actions by the Russian government this year began to outweigh the positive fundamentals we were seeing in many companies. We have been reducing our exposure to Russian holdings since early January, and they are now concentrated in the energy sector," it said.

A spokesperson said the fund had $22.45 billion in assets as of the end of Feb., with Russian exposure equivalent to $222.3 million.

This is down from exposure of more than $1.7 billion as of September, according to Morningstar data.

Western sanctions on Moscow after Russia invaded Ukraine last week have prompted a wave of investors to announce they were cutting positions in Russia.

Goldman said it has also marked down the value of its Russian assets after the country's central bank closed the local market to all foreign investors, complicating plans to ditch or evaluate assets.

"Under these circumstances, the Russian securities in the portfolios for which we determine valuations are now being 'fair valued' in the absence of true market values," it said.

Fair value determinations "resulted in significant discounts to the market values that existed prior to the actions of the Central Bank of Russia," it added.

(Reporting by Davide Barbuscia; editing by Richard Pullin)
Two new committees will study the effects of drugs on Idaho communities and advise Gov. Brad Little on how to curb their spread.

Little on Thursday announced his plan, Operation Esto Perpetua, in a news conference at his Idaho Capitol office. Little decried the availability of illegal drugs, their low price and unpredictable potency, and attributed their rise in Idaho to the loose U.S.-Mexico border.

The governors plan seeks to combat the continuing threats to the health and safety of all Idahoans presented by illegal drugs, he said.

Methamphetamine and fentanyl, a deadly synthetic opioid, are the most serious growing drug threats in Idaho, Little said. The Republican governor said traffickers from Mexico are the primary source of the drugs.

Little asked the Idaho Legislature for $250,000 from the states general fund to carry out the plan.

Little convened a citizen group that will host meetings across Idaho with local law enforcement officers and the public over the next two months to collect information on fentanyl and meth.

The committee includes House Speaker Scott Bedke, an Oakley Republican whos running for lieutenant governor, and Sen. Abby Lee, a Fruitland Republican, as well as local government leaders and a representative of the Shoshone-Paiute Tribe. Luke Malek, a former state representative who last year withdrew as a candidate for lieutenant governor and endorsed Bedke, will be the committees chairman.

The citizen group will report its findings to a panel of law enforcement officials, which will advise the governor on policy solutions. The panel includes representatives from the Idaho State Police, Boise Police Department, Canyon County Sheriffs Office and governors office.

Last year, the Mountain West News Bureau, a public radio news collaboration that includes Boise State Public Radio, reported a rise in fentanyl deaths in the Intermountain West. Idaho State Police Col. Ked Wills, a member of the new law enforcement panel, said Thursday that fentanyl is dangerous, addictive and quickly spreading throughout the state.

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Esto perpetua, the states motto, is Latin for let it last forever. Little teased the plan in January during his State of the State address, when he also criticized Democratic President Joe Biden for his border policies. Last year, Little sent five Idaho State Police troopers to the U.S.-Mexico border, to help curb the flow of illegal drugs.

Little is expected to run for re-election this year, although he has yet to announce his candidacy. The GOP primary is in two months.

Idahos growing drug threat is a direct consequence of the loose border with Mexico, Little said Thursday. Law enforcement reporting shows the supply of illicit fentanyl from Mexico in the region has become much more prevalent.
Governor Tony Evers hands Green Bay Mayor Eric Genrich a check for 5 million dollars, Thursday, March 3, 2022, at Green Bay Water Utility in Green Bay, Wis. Samantha Madar/USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin

GREEN BAY - A major state grant will accelerate Green Bay's effort to move the C. Reiss coal piles to a site near the mouth of the Fox River.

Gov. Tony Evers on Thursday announced Brown County will receive $15 million via the Neighborhood Investment Fund Program to help move the C. Reiss Coal Co. operation to the former site of Wisconsin Public Service Corp.'s Pulliam Power Plant and expand Port of Green Bay operations.

"I'm very glad to be here today to finally move forward on this project once and for all," Evers said, noting the grant helps "connect the dots" on a complex project. "We need to make investments today to make long-term sustainable growth for tomorrow."

The $15 million is unlikely to cover all costs related to moving the coal piles off 35 acres of prime riverfront property south of the Mason Street overpass. But it could mean the county begins costly site improvements on the Pulliam Plant property in preparation for that move, said Dean Haen, director of the Port of Green Bay.

Governor Tony Evers hands Brown County Executive Troy Streckenbach and Wisconsin Department of Administration Secretary-designee Kathy Blumenfeld a check for 15 million dollars, Thursday, March 3, 2022, at Green Bay Water Utility in Green Bay, Wis. Samantha Madar/USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin

The amount of funding caught Brown County Harbor Commission Chair Tom Klimek off guard when Haen told him about it.

"Holy! ... I thought it'd be $8 or $10 million. This is unbelievable!," Klimek exclaimed when Haen told him the county received the maximum amount allowed under the

Haen's unofficial estimate has been that moving the coal piles could take a decade and cost $20 million-$25 million to complete. The county is currently interviewing engineering consultants who will determine the scope of work needed to prepare the Pulliam site for use as a port facility and to house the coal piles.

The Brown County Board of Supervisors last year agreed to pay $2.7 million for the power plant site. A Wisconsin Economic Development Corp. Idle Sites Grant provided $500,000 toward the purchase.

"Its really surprising and hard to fathom that its coming together as quickly as it is," Haen said. "Were very thankful to the community, state and the federal support for this project. For us to pull off this once in a lifetime opportunity, its happening quickly here." program.

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The funds are part of nearly $650 million in American Rescue Plan Act funding that Evers set aside for community building and recovery efforts. State officials received more than 200 applications seeking more than $900 million for community investment projects.

Construction crews have almost completed demolition of the former Pulliam Power Plant owned and operated by Wisconsin Public Service Corp. WPS started to take apart the coal-fired units on the site in October 2018 and expects to finish the job by spring 2021.

Green Bay Mayor Eric Genrich said the funds will enable the region to complete a "once-in-a-city's-lifetime" project. He added that port expansion and coal piles relocation would not have been possible if city and county taxpayers had to bear all the costs.

"Federal funding via Gov. Evers really makes this project possible," Genrich said.

'The dominoes that needed to fall'

While Brown County focuses on site infrastructure and development, the city of Green Bay has stayed in regular contact with representatives of C. Reiss Coal Co. and its parent company, Robindale Energy.

Genrich said there had been little to talk about, though, until the community could fund the improvements that would be needed for C. Reiss to consider moving its operations.

"These are the dominoes that needed to fall," Genrich said, referring to funding for port improvements. "This kicks those discussions into high gear."

C. Reiss representatives did not attend Evers' check presentation Thursday, but the company thanked Evers in a statement for funding "to help make the Pulliam site development project possible."

"We look forward to continuing our ongoing discussions with Brown County and the city of Green Bay for the relocation of our Mason St. dock operation."

Genrich said the city has preliminary plans for use of the 35-acre C. Reiss site. He said the northern 10 acres would be converted into a mixed-use development with river access while the southern 25 acres would be targeted for light industrial uses that fir the the industrial traffic on the Fox River and land use south of the site.

In addition to the $15 million state grant, the county also received a $1.1 million Harbor Assistance Fund grant and continues to pursue federal grants for costs related to the project.

It intends to apply for a U.S. Port Infrastructure Development Program grant by the program's May deadline. Haen said the program's minimum grant is $12.5 million.

The money from the state will be needed to convert the former power plant site into a state-of-the-art port facility with convenient access to rail and interstate highways. Haen said there is a rail spur just off the property the county purchased last year that easily could be extended onto the site.

The state grant would not only help the county fund the engineering work, but would help pay for the site improvements engineers will identify, including:

A new sheet piling wall to create docking facilites.

Dredging the area from the navigation channel to the site.

Filling in an existing ship slip on the Pulliam site.

Installing new mooring features for ships.

Lighting, fencing, road work and utility improvements.

An overhead image of the Pulliam Power Plant property highlights in red the property GLC Minerals LLC will purchase from Brown County and, in yellow, the land GLC wants to lease from the county.

The county in 2021 also approved a letter of intent to sell about 9.7 acres of the Pulliam property to GLC Minerals LLC, a processor of calcium carbonate, magnesium and gypsum products for use in industry and agriculture. GLC will pay $876,000 for the property and would invest $7.5 million to expand its processing capabilities.

$9.7 million for affordable housing

On Thursday Evers also announced Neighborhood Investment Fund grants of $4.7 million to the village of Ashwaubenon to support construction of 75 units of affordable housing there and $5 million to the city of Green Bay to support new housing initiatives and a community development site.

The Ashwaubenon grant closes a funding gap in General Capital's plan to build 75 units of affordable senior housing on Mike McCarthy Way. Milwaukee-based General Capital proposed the project in fall 2020 and secured WHEDA tax credits to finance the three-story building. General Capital and village officials said the grant means construction can start this year on the property, which will have 63 units set aside for seniors that earn less than 60% of the county's median income to go with 12 market-rate rental units.

Ashwaubenon Board President Mary Kardoskee said the village gets calls weekly, if not daily, asking for senior housing but the village falls short in its efforts to get the grants needed to build affordable senior housing.

Green Bay's $5 million grant will be used to develop a mixed-use, mixed-income housing development on 25 acres JBS Green Bay donated to the city last year. Green Bay tentatively plans to develop housing, a destination playground and an urban farm on the land located between Lime Kiln and Guns roads, on the city's east side.

The money would help pay for the public improvements and site preparation.

Contact Jeff Bollier at (920) 431-8387 or jbollier@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter at @JeffBollier.

This article originally appeared on Green Bay Press-Gazette: Green Bay coal piles relocation efforts boosted by major state grant
When students walked out of all four high schools Monday afternoon in Hampton, they were responding to a social media campaign for support of an elementary school-aged girl.

Nikia Millers oldest daughter began to plan the walkout last month. The 15-year-old told her mother she wanted to organize a peaceful protest after seeing what her family experienced since they began to speak publicly about her younger sisters sexual assault allegations.

The 15-year-old posted about the demonstration on social media, her mother said in an interview, not expecting the response she received.

She said it was a moment where she felt really accepted, and she felt like people understood what she was trying to do, and she felt supported, Miller said.

Miller has said her younger daughter was sexually assaulted by another student in 2020, and has maintained since then that Hampton school officials have not met her demands to support her daughters well-being.

School officials have denied that, saying their response was appropriate. And in a message sent to parents Monday night the Hampton school division said assertions made in sparking the walkout were not accurate. The school division did not name Miller or her daughter.

Those assertions were about sexual allegations involving two second-grade students, the division said in a statement. The social media post claimed school officials did not take those allegations seriously.

The two participated in separate after-school programs, the statement said.

School officials notified Hampton police. According to a police report, the two girls were ages 7 and 9 when school administrators and police found out. The citys prosecutor later opted not to file charges.

In addition, when school officials became aware of the incident, they took proactive actions including, at the parents request, enrolling the aggrieved student at another school and offering counseling.

The school system added that if required, it welcomes the opportunity for a court to examine this situation as the division is confident that at all times (Hampton schools) personnel acted appropriately.

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The statement said that there are better avenues than social media for parents to present concerns about how school officials handle incidents.

To protect the students privacy, the school system said it could provide no further details.

Miller said she fully supports her daughters actions and she appreciates the support other students showed during the walkout.

A Hampton schools spokesperson said the division supports peaceful assembly. Students who did not follow the districts Code of Conduct faced consequences. The division did not say what those consequences were, nor how many students were disciplined.

Dave Ress, 757-247-4535, dress@dailypress.com

Sierra Jenkins, 229-462-8896, sierra.jenkins@virginiamedia.com
It has become an unlikely soundtrack to the unfolding conflict in Ukraine.

A 10-second TikTok video a frightened but defiant teenager in Kyiv posted the day Russia invaded her homeland has captured the heart of the embattled nation.

And as the full weight of the Russian invasion bore down on Ukraine, for many refugees the sight of Elizabeth Lysova, 17, lip-syncing and gesticulating to the David Guetta dance track Whos That Chick has been a balm amid many tearful goodbyes.

The caption accompanying her video, which has been viewed almost 15 million times since Feb. 24, reads: When Russian attacked us so we r leaving at 8 a.m.

Now, Lysova is one of the more than 1.2 million Ukrainians who have fled their country.

When I did this TikTok, I was kind of in a state of shock, she told NBC News. It went viral. But then it got to me and I started realizing what was happening, and that my friends and I and my family were in bomb shelters and hiding. I felt terrified for everyone and myself as well. Its not a regular thing, to be scared for your life.

Lysova, who said her parents were in Switzerland when the war broke out, said she and her siblings packed their car and began driving toward the Polish border because the Russian forces were already bombing the airports.

Some of my friends actually went to war, she said. I am so scared for them. They are super young and they need to take a gun and go fight for our country.

Russian and Ukrainian negotiators have been able to hammer out an agreement to create corridors civilians can use to flee the country. And nearly a quarter of Ukraines 40 million-plus people could wind up as refugees, United Nations officials have warned.

Here are more scenes from an exodus of a size not seen in Europe since World War II:

Kyiv, Ukraine

Most of those fleeing the country are women and children and foreign residents and students, largely from Africa and Asia. Many of them have been fleeing the capital, Kyiv, and major cities like Kharkiv by train to the western city of Lviv, from which they have been traveling by bus to the Polish border.

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Image: People wait to board an evacuation train at Kyiv central train station (Gleb Garanich / Reuters)

Image: A girl and her brother sit on a train bound for Lviv at the Kyiv station on March 3, 2022. (Emilio Morenatti / AP)

Image: (Emilio Morenatti / AP)

In the peaceful time, we are the backbone of the economy, Alexander Kamishin, who is in charge of the Ukrainian railway system, said. In the wartime, we are the backbone of security.

At the main train station in Kyiv on Friday, crowds of women holding children bundled up against the cold kissed the men they were leaving behind to fight the Russian forces.

"Kids screaming, mothers screaming, it's so crazy this panic," Konstantyn Makarin, a 45-year-old circus acrobat, told NBC News correspondent Richard Engel. "People are so afraid."

Earlier this week, the Ukraine State Border Guard Service announced that men ages 18 to 60 were prohibited from leaving the country after President Volodymyr Zelenskyy declared martial law.

So it was just women, children and the elderly pushing their way onto the trains for Lviv. And every time a track was announced, the crowd made a mad dash for the train, sometimes clambering over the tracks.

"They're trying to cram as many people as possible on this train," Engel reported. "It feels like we've stepped back into World War II."

Lviv, Ukraine

When the air raid sirens went off in Lviv on Friday, there were thousands of people huddled inside the main train station and there was no place for them to hide.

So the crowd, mostly women carrying babies or holding their children's hands, with all the possessions they could grab in wheeled bags, ignored the sirens and continued chattering. But there was "desperation in their eyes," NBC News producer Paul Goldman reported from the scene.

Meanwhile, Nate Mook of the World Central Kitchen had set up shop near the train station and was trying to feed and comfort as many people as he could.

"Its really heartbreaking to watch whats happening as families are having to flee their homes, abandon their lives," he said.

The refugees arriving in Lviv on Friday were mostly from Kharkiv, where some of the fiercest fighting has taken place.

"As you can see, a lot of small children are here, a lot of infants, a lot of babies," he said. "Its freezing cold outside. So it just gives them a spot to kind of regroup and they get a hot meal, they can catch their breath, figure out whats next."

Korczewo, Poland

One of the Ukrainian refugees who arrived in this border town Friday was a 64-year-old named Anatoly who was carrying a bag of clothes and a guilty conscience.

Weeping, Anatoly told NBC News producer Konstantin Shukhnov that his village of Borodyanka, northwest of Kyiv, had been attacked several days ago by Russian tanks while he was visiting a friend.

He said his wife had taken shelter in the root cellar of their home, but it was inadvertently bombed by Ukrainian fighter planes that chased off the Russians.

Anatoly said when he got to the house, he realized his wife was buried somewhere beneath the ruins. But when he saw the Russians coming back, he took off running.

I left my wife and I have no idea if she is dead or alive, Anatoly said.

Krakow, Poland

Ukrainians who were able to get out say the idea of not knowing what to do next has been torture.

Olga Tsoi, a Ukrainian American from Chicago, was visiting her family in the city of Kherson and said it took her 72 hours to reach the Polish border.

Now ensconced in a Krakow hotel, she had nothing but praise for her Polish hosts but said she feared for her family in Kherson, which is now in Russian hands.

"Everybody is really worried what's going to happen next because they are running out of food, and right now it's not safe to get outside and go to a store," she told MSNBC's Chris Jansing.

Tsoi said she is trying get her mother out of Kherson but there "doesn't seem like there's a clear passage to get my mom to the United States since she doesn't have a residency or visa."

William Shaw, an American expat living in the ancient Polish city, told MSNBC he has taken in several Ukrainian refugees, and that across Poland, "there's a rush of goodwill."

Poland has taken in nearly 650,000 Ukrainian refugees, according to the most recent U.N. figures, half of the 1.2 million people who have fled the country.

And the country was already sheltering close to 2 million Ukrainians who arrived in 2014 after Russian President Vladimir Putin's forces seized the Crimean Peninsula.

Asked if Poland can take many more Ukrainians, Shaw said, "absolutely not."

"And that's probably what Putin wanted, but we're going to do our best," he said.
The last family of Afghan evacuees departs Fort McCoy Feb. 15, 2022. The base housed nearly 13,000 Afghans as they awaited resettlement in communities across the country.

After waiting at U.S. military bases for up to six months, Afghans who were evacuated as their country fell to the Taliban are starting new lives in homes across the country.

Refugee resettlement agencies in Wisconsin's major metro areas have taken in about 850 Afghans and the military installation in the state, Fort McCoy, saw its last evacuees leave in mid-February.

As the base returns to its normal operations, the work for resettlement agencies and aid groups in the state is just beginning.

Here's a look at key questions surrounding Afghan resettlement in Wisconsin.

Why was Fort McCoy a landing spot for Afghan evacuees?

The Biden administration announced Fort McCoy would be one of eight military installations that would house evacuees as they made their way through the immigration process and were connected with organizations to help them settle into new lives. Fort McCoy is Wisconsin's only active military installation, located on about 60,000 acres between Tomah and Sparta.

The base is also close to Volk Field Air National Guard Base in Camp Douglas, allowing the military to fly in the evacuees and complete their trip with a short bus ride to Fort McCoy.

The evacuees lived in barracks typically used to house military members training at the base. The buildings were built during World War II but were recently renovated.

More: 'We didn't have anything': Fort McCoy Afghans describe losing it all, starting over in America

When did they arrive?

Evacuees began arriving at Fort McCoy in August, steadily flowing into the base until the population reached nearly 13,000 people. People continued to arrive in September and into October, with the base once expanding its capacity so it could house more people.

More: 'Now we're waiting': Evacuees at Wisconsin's Fort McCoy face health care issues, confusion over restarting their lives

When did evacuees begin leaving the Fort?

As soon as people started arriving at Fort McCoy, some were able to leave to live with friends or family members already settled in the U.S.

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But for the majority of people, the stay was much longer, as the evacuees completed the mandatory immigration process, received health treatments and vaccinations, and were matched with resettlement agencies able to place them in new communities.

Task Force McCoy staff wave goodbye to the last family of Afghan evacuees as they depart Fort McCoy Feb. 15.

After leaving Fort McCoy and other military bases, where did the Afghans go?

Evacuees were resettled into communities across the country. If an evacuee had family members in the U.S., the government often tried to place the evacuee near them.

The vast majority of Afghans who stayed at Fort McCoy were not resettled in Wisconsin. In general, the location of an evacuee's military base had little bearing on their final destination.

Of the roughly 820 Afghans who have resettled in Wisconsin, about 180 came from Fort McCoy, according to the state Department of Children and Families, which oversees the state refugee program.

According to federal data first obtained by CBS News, more than a third of Afghan evacuees were resettled in Texas, California and Virginia. The three states are home to established Afghan immigrant communities.

The states bordering Wisconsin  Minnesota, Iowa, Illinois and Michigan  have all taken in more Afghans than Wisconsin.

Illinois has resettled the most of the Upper Midwest  about 1,900 people, according to the federal data, including more than 1,300 in the Chicago area.

What role have refugee resettlement agencies had in the process?

Resettlement agencies are the main organizations that help refugees in their first 90 days in their new homes. Agency staff provide furnished apartments, help enroll children in school, connect adults to jobs and drive families to appointments, among other tasks.

Six local resettlement agencies are operating in Wisconsin, each with an affiliated national agency.

Resettlement agencies tend to place refugees in homes in the same metro areas as their offices so that they can access services more easily.

The local agencies have agreed to resettle 850 Afghans this fiscal year. That's 400 Afghans in the Milwaukee area; 200 in Appleton; 125 in Green Bay; 75 in Wausau; and 50 in Madison.

In southeast Wisconsin, Afghan families are scattered throughout the city of Milwaukee and nearby suburbs  and even Racine and Kenosha, since affordable housing can be difficult to find.

More: Afghan evacuees in Wisconsin process relief, uncertainty, stress and trauma. A network of helping hands eases the journey.

Why are resettlement agencies strained with the surge of new clients?

As refugee arrivals sunk to historic lows during Donald Trump's presidency, many resettlement agencies had to cut staffing and even close.

Agencies say they have been scrambling to serve the recent surge of Afghan evacuees because of a lean last five years. Volunteers, nonprofits and faith groups have stepped in to help.

The Trump administration sharply curtailed the number of refugees allowed into the country, shifted resources away from refugee case processing and put new vetting measures in place that slowed processing times for refugees, according to a report by the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute.

In President Joe Biden's first year in office, refugee admissions dropped even more, even though he raised the cap for the year to 62,500.

For the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, about 11,500 refugees were admitted to the U.S., a record low. The number does not include Afghan evacuees.

The historical yearly average was 95,000 under previous Republican and Democratic administrations, according to the Associated Press.

Two new refugee resettlement offices did open in Wisconsin last year: Catholic Charities of Green Bay and the Ethiopian Community Development Council in Wausau. Both had been in the process of starting the programs before the Afghan evacuation occurred. They have proved integral to Afghan resettlement efforts in the state.

More: Wisconsin refugee arrivals are starting to pick up as Biden lifts refugee restrictions

Do Afghan evacuees have access to the same benefits as typical refugees?

Typically, people who enter the United States as refugees receive a slate of benefits including food stamps, Medicaid health coverage, cash assistance, job training and English language education.

But those who were evacuated from Afghanistan as the Taliban took over didn't have time to go through the yearslong process to be admitted to the U.S. as a traditional refugee.

After being vetted at bases abroad, most Afghan evacuees were brought to the U.S. under an authority called humanitarian parole.

At first, it was unclear whether the evacuees could receive typical refugee resettlement benefits. But a resolution Congress passed in September made Afghan evacuees eligible.

Afghan children play with art supplies in their new home in the Milwaukee area. As Afghan evacuees leave U.S. military bases where they were staying temporarily, Hanan Refugee Relief Group has been helping them get acclimated to their new lives. Lisa Summerfield, a volunteer with the organization, avoided capturing the faces of the children in this photo for their security.

Why don't some evacuees have a path to permanent legal residency in the U.S.?

The United States' evacuation effort initially focused on Afghans who had applied for special immigrant visas, a visa for those who worked for  or with  the U.S. government in Afghanistan.

But the U.S. evacuated many others who were also at risk of persecution by the Taliban and didn't meet the parameters for a special immigrant visa, including journalists and womens rights activists. Others who worked with the U.S. but hadn't applied for such visas were also evacuated.

More than 36,000 Afghan evacuees have no direct path to legal permanent residency in the U.S.

They must apply for asylum within a year of their arrival in the hope of gaining legal residency, but the process is notoriously backlogged and complex.

The U.S. has said Afghans asylum applications will be expedited, but legal experts are concerned that there arent enough government resources to handle the surge.

More: World-renowned Afghan women's rights activist Maryam Durani and her family begin a new life in Milwaukee

Will more Afghans be arriving in the U.S.?

About 2,800 Afghan evacuees are waiting on U.S. military bases in the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, which are being called "lily pad" sites.

It's likely the U.S. will admit more Afghans to the country, but the exact process is still being sorted out.

"Numbers and timelines have not yet been determined, but it is possible that Wisconsin may receive additional Afghans," said Gina Paige, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Children and Families.

Resettlement agencies in the state, which agreed to the cap of 850 Afghans, may be asked to resettle more people.

In February, a bipartisan group of more than 80 lawmakers sent a letter to Biden urging him to speed the processing of visa applicants at the overseas bases and to open more so-called "lily pads" to process more Afghans.

Tens of thousands of Afghans who directly aided the U.S. and its allies or those who would otherwise be targeted by the Taliban, such as journalists and human rights activists, remain at risk.

Sarah Volpenhein of the Journal Sentinel staff contributed to this report.

About this feature

This is a weekly feature for online and Sunday print readers delving into an issue in the news and explaining the actions of policymakers. Email suggestions for future topics to jsmetro@jrn.com.

Laura Schulte can be reached at leschulte@jrn.com and on Twitter at @SchulteLaura.

Our subscribers make this reporting possible. Please consider supporting local journalism by subscribing to the Journal Sentinel at jsonline.com/deal.

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This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Afghans leave Fort McCoy. What to know about resettlement in Wisconsin
The unprovoked Russian invasion of Ukraine threatens world order and has added to the angst of so many caring citizens already confronted by the COVID-19 pandemic and the frail state of our democracy. Further adding to the angst is the worsening environmental crisis leading to climate-related disasters and the planets sixth mass extinction. I am concerned for our future more than at any time in my life.

How can we fix these threats to our well-being, our democracy, to world order, and to our environment? Could it be that the collective global reactions and unity triggered by the invasion of a sovereign nation by the megalomaniac Russian President Vladimir Putin points the way to turning the tide?

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Led by President Biden, nations all across the globe are rallying behind Ukraine and condemning Russian aggression. They include thousands of Russians who are being arrested and jailed. They are supplying Ukraine with weaponry, food, and medical supplies. Poland is welcoming more than 400,000 fleeing Ukrainians, mostly women and children, with open arms. Nations are enacting measures that are crippling the Russian economy, waging war not with bullets but economic sanctions.

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Tens of thousands of people rallied for Ukraine in Berlin on Feb. 27. Germany reversed decades of policy in response to the crisis: tripling its defense budget this year and sending lethal anti-tank and other weapons to Ukraine. (Sean Gallup/Getty Images/Getty Images)

Many of these Putin protesters have an awareness of when Hitler, like Putin an idol of nationalistic authoritarian political leaders, started his European invasions: First Czechoslovakia, then Austria, and then in 1939 it was Poland, triggering WW II.

Foreign affairs specialists are noting a tectonic shift in international cooperation and security triggered by Russias invasion. Many are predicting the eventual end of Putins reign of terror. NATO will be expanded and made much stronger. European nations will take increasing responsibility for their defense.

The U.S. has to be the leader, the shining city on a hill, the beacon of democracy. We need to be united as a people to assure a world where human rights and dignity are universal, people live in freedom, and where we resolve major threats to our planet and human health. This means harnessing the unity brought on by the invasion of Ukraine and ending partisan and ideological schisms that divide our country. This includes our Congress, which cant even conduct a bipartisan investigation into the traitorous invasion of its own halls by rioters. Nor can it enact a budget, let alone a balanced one, or deal with the existential threat of climate change.

Even the prevention of COVID-19 became a political fireball and wedge issue used for political advancement despite the loss of nearly a million American lives.

This partisan gridlock and use of repeated lies by some politicians and news outlets inflames class warfare and the rise of white supremacists and neo-Nazis fostering racism and antisemitism. This presents the gravest threat to our democracy and core national values since the Civil War. We must overcome our divisions, isolate those who seek to exploit them, and act in unity to solve our pressing problems as we have in the past.

Former President Trump continues to exploit these divisions by insisting the election was rigged, calling the January 6 rioters charged in the Capitol riot political prisoners and the people storming the Capitol peaceful people and patriots. Recently, he praised Putin for the invasion calling him a genius and smart while calling American leaders dumb blaming the Biden Administration for Russias decision to invade Ukraine.

Did he forget about his efforts to pressure Ukrainian President Zelensky into investigating candidate Biden and his son as he blocked $391 million in military aid approved by Congress for Ukraine? This abuse of power earned him the first of his historic two impeachments. Certainly, he remembers that U.S. intelligence agencies clearly found that Russia had interfered in the 2016 election to aid him.

Contrast this with former President George Bushs scathing condemnation of Putin for his invasion, calling it the gravest threat to Europe since World War II. He urged unity with Ukraine insisting Putin was a bully who must be stopped.

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Subsequently, a white supremacist chairing a Florida PAC conference, elicited chants of Putin! Putin! Putin! after praising Russia. My wife and I watched on TV in horror and disbelief. How could this be happening in our country? A reporter commented she had never before cried covering stories until she witnessed this. Putin is broadcasting these traitorous events on Russian TV and other media. Note that Putins goal is to destroy our nation and take over the former countries of the USSR to make Russia great again.

My paternal grandparents were Russian Jews who immigrated from Odessa, Ukraine. My father served in the Navy in WWII. He was on a destroyer escorting supply ships to Murmansk, Russia after Hitler invaded. This was a very dangerous run with prowling U-boats. I never heard of the Holocaust until watching the sickening pictures of the internment camps and gas chambers on TV while alone one evening in 1951.

I still wrestle with how this could have happened while I was alive and thinking how my family could have been exterminated. Last week, on a visit to a non-political Jewish doctor, also of Russian descent, we discussed the Jan. 6 insurrection and rising antisemitism. I mentioned that one of the Jan. 6 rioters wore a T-shirt with CAMP AUSCHWITZ on it; she mentioned another had SMINESix Million Is Not Enough.

I was stunned.

More than anything, the Holocaust has driven me to seek justice and become an attorney. I happened to be enthralled with wildlife so chose a career as an environmental warrior and also served as a naval officer. The invasion of Ukraine and the rising antisemitism stab me through my soul.

The Biden administration is still trying to undo many Trump actions that reversed sensible industry-supported measures to deal with global warming as well as restore core environmental laws. It should be no surprise that in such a hostile political environment, we cannot collaborate to resolve environmental problems threatening life on Earth, from global warming to the sixth mass extinction to the restoration of the Chesapeake Bay.

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The clock is ticking as U.S. population is expected to grow by 79 million people by 2060, crossing the 400 million mark in 2058. Thats 1.8 million more people per year. We will reach eight billion people globally this year with another three billion projected by 2100. It took homo sapiens until 1804 to reach the first billion. So how do we even maintain the status quo environmentally especially in an industrializing world of rapacious consumption?

Abraham Lincoln warned: A house divided against itself cannot stand. We must melt the ideological silos we are in and harness our unity and solidarity against the Ukraine invasion to heal our divisions and resolve problems threatening our democracy. We again must act as the United States of America. We must be among the righteous and pull our great nation from the abyss of self-destruction.

Gerald Winegrad is a former Maryland state senator. He can be reached at gwwabc@comcast.net.
A Nampa man was sentenced to 51 months in federal prison Friday for assaulting police during the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol riot in Washington, D.C.

Duke Edward Wilson, 68, pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia in September to assaulting, resisting or impeding certain officers or employees and to obstruction of an official proceeding. He was originally charged with several more felonies.

The Nampa resident was one of six Idahoans charged in federal court over their involvement in the Jan. 6 insurrection. Wilson that day was outfitted with a baseball hat that read CNN FAKE NEWS, tried to pull open a door that Capitol Police were attempting to close during the riot, and struck at police with a piece of PVC pipe, hitting at least one officer, according to a statement of offense signed by Wilson.

He then threw the object at a line of police officers.

Wilson also assisted other rioters in attempting to pull a defensive shield away from a police officer and in pushing an officer to the ground.

That is what makes this a different case for the court. Obviously youre a decent guy, youve lived a good life, youve lived a productive life, youve been an upstanding citizen all your life, U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth said during Fridays sentencing. You made a terrible mistake, youve tried to fess up to it as best you could  but that was a horrible day for our country.

Capiol Police officers faith shaken

Wilson left Idaho on Jan. 5 and attended the rally of Donald Trump supporters in the nations capital the following day, according to court documents. After the rally, Wilson walked to the U.S. Capitol, where he and dozens of other rioters engaged in several acts of violence against police.

Court documents said the rioters, including Wilson, attempted to enter the building, where officers in riot gear were protecting the entrance. When the officers saw the crowd approaching, they attempted to close and lock the doors. But before they could, Wilson lunged toward the door and prevented it from closing, which can be seen in an image used as evidence.

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Assistant U.S. Attorney Christopher Tortorice said Friday that officers were primarily prevented from closing the door because of Wilson.

There is a decent argument to be made that had (Wilson) not done that, the doors to the Lower West Terrace may have closed  and it might have been a very different story, Tortorice said.

Next, Wilson, along with others, punched, shoved and kicked officers, according to documents. The officers were able to use a chemical irritant to try to force the rioters to leave, but Wilson was undeterred, picked up a thin PVC pipe and struck U.S. Capitol Police Sgt. Aquilino Gonell. Wilson then threw the stick into the crowd, hitting another officer.

Gonell, an immigrant from the Dominican Republic, gave emotional testimony during Fridays sentencing. He described the physical and emotional injuries he received during the riot.

My faith in the political and judicial system that support this great country has been shaken, Gonell said. I hope a strong sentence imposed on Mr. Wilson will help restore it  and our democracy.

Gonell said he suffered extensive physical injuries and had multiple surgeries on his right foot and a rotator cuff, which he said hes still recovering from.

More than one year later, Im still not able to put on my police uniform due to those injuries, because of what he did to me and my fellow officers, Gonell said.

Additionally, Wilson and other rioters pushed another officer to the ground and attempted to take his riot shield.

Wilson left the area after spending about 14 minutes in the Lower West Terrace tunnel when the crowd was dispersed, he told investigators. When Wilson returned to Idaho, he said a friend showed him an FBI wanted poster with his picture  which is when Wilson contacted an attorney and turned himself in, according to documents.

Charles Peterson, a Boise attorney representing Wilson, said Wilson wasnt attempting to instigate but instead was pushed by other rioters, which caused him to enter the Capitol.

Wilson maintained that defense during the sentencing, and said he was shoved into officers and hit on the head.

I was stupid to do something like that, Wilson said.
ELKHART  The Jimtown High School teacher who was caught on video hitting a student has been arrested, and authorities are recommending a felony charge of battery.

Mike Hosinski, 61, was taken into custody late Thursday afternoon, the Elkhart County Sheriff's Office said in a release.

The release said a recommendation for a felony charge of battery has been sent to the county prosecutor's office.

Michael Hosinski

Hosinski, a social studies teacher at Jimtown, struck a student in the head last Friday in a school hallway. The incident was caught on video.

Jimtown High School is located in Elkhart and is part of the Baugo Community Schools district.

A press release from the school district said Hosinski confronted the student about a hoodie worn to class. The video shows Hosinski following the student down a hallway and grabbing the boy's backpack before striking him. The student's head smacked against the wall, and he fell to the floor shortly after.

School officials said the student suffered visible injuries and required immediate medical attention.

Indiana teacher slaps student: What we know about Jimtown High School, Mike Hosinski incident

Hosinski had previously requested retirement at the end of the school year, but he submitted a new request following the incident to leave immediately. The Baugo school board on Monday night voted unanimously to award Hosinski early retirement and allow him to collect his pension.

One expert, Jennifer Drobac, a professor at Indiana Universitys law school, told the Tribune earlier this week that prosecutors would have to determine whether Hosinski's actions were "reasonably necessary."

Indiana code states teachers may take any action that is reasonably necessary to carry out or to prevent an interference with an educational function, including physical discipline.

We dont know the background, Drobac said. But I can guess that it should have been reasonably possible for that teacher simply to escort that child to the principals office for further discussion and potentially non-physical disciplinary action.

For prosecutors to file a felony charge against Hosinski, she added, they would have to conclude his actions inflicted moderate bodily injury to the student.

This article originally appeared on South Bend Tribune: Jimtown High teacher who hit student arrested, may face battery charge
STORY: Location: SUKABUMI, INDONESIA

This woman devotes her life to protecting endangered gibbons

Tini Kasmawati has spent nearly eight years caring for the primates

She is blind in one eye, and blurry in the other

So instead of using her sight she relies on her other senses

walking through the forest listening for the animals' distinct songs

(SOUNDBITE) (Bahasa Indonesia) CONSERVATIONIST AND SHOP OWNER, TINI KASMAWATI, SAYING:

Its an honor that Im able to do this. Not many people out there want to, nor can they do this. The people who are not blind might think this is not important, but I really hope that the gibbons will still be here, and the researchers are still able to study them and educate younger generations."

Source: Conservation International

Only about 4,000 silvery gibbons remain in the wild

About 24 live in this area, according to a local conservation group

(SOUNDBITE) (Bahasa Indonesia) CONSERVATIONIST AND SHOP OWNER, TINI KASMAWATI, SAYING:

God willing, as long as I can still walk, I will not stop until I have achieved what I have been dreaming of. Hopefully there will be others who can help me to continue my mission to take care of the gibbons. Or I can buy this land. Thats my dream, we can have dreams right? My dream is, at the very least, to be able to buy this land.
An Iowa man has been sentenced to more than 33 years in federal prison for kidnapping and sexually assaulting two Nebraska teenagers nearly 20 years ago.

Myron Lee Brandon, 43, of Pacific Junction was sentenced Wednesday to 405 months in prison, federal prosecutors in western Iowa said in a news release.

Brandon was convicted in October on two counts of kidnapping and two counts of transportation of a minor with intent to engage in criminal sexual activity.

Prosecutors said Brandon met the then-14- and 15-year-old girls in downtown Omaha in 2003. He then drove them to a rural road outside Pacific Junction, where he held them at knifepoint, bound them with rope, sexually assaulted them and burned them with a cigarette.

The teens escaped and walked to Interstate 29, where they were picked up by a motorist and taken to safety, officials said.

A 2015 initiative to reexamine old laboratory evidence linked Brandon to DNA collected in rape kits at the time of the crime.

This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Myron Lee Brandon convicted of kidnapping, sexually abusing two teens
MILAN (Reuters) - Italy's Prime Minister Mario Draghi on Friday condemned Russia's attack near the Zaporizhzhia Ukrainian nuclear power plant, calling it an "attack against everyone's security".

"Prime Minister Mario Draghi condemns Russia's atrocious attack on the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant - an attack against everyone's security," his office said in a statement.

"The European Union must continue to react united and with the utmost firmness, together with its allies, to support Ukraine and protect European citizens."

Russian forces seized the largest nuclear power plant in Europe after a building at the complex was set ablaze during intense fighting with Ukrainian defenders, Ukrainian authorities said on Friday.

(Reporting by Agnieszka Flak)
TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan's next central bank governor should be someone who understands the need to work with the government in beating deflation, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said on Friday.

Markets are looking ahead to a change of leadership due next year at the Bank of Japan (BOJ), eyeing possible changes to its massive asset-buying and yield curve control measures which have failed to fire up inflation to its 2% target and drawn criticism for hurting financial institutions' profits.

Kishida will have the power to choose a successor to current BOJ Governor Haruhiko Kuroda, whose term ends in April 2023, if his ruling party secures victory in upper house elections expected this summer.

Kishida's administration and the BOJ last November reaffirmed commitments made in a 2013 joint statement for the two sides to cooperate on economic policy, and for the central bank to strive toward meeting its 2% price goal.

"The government and the BOJ have agreed to work together towards beating deflation," Kishida told parliament on Friday, referring to the reaffirmed joint statement.

"We hope the BOJ continues to strive toward achieving its 2% inflation target with an eye on economic, price and financial developments," he said. "The next BOJ governor ought to be someone who understands this."

The choice of governor to succeed Kuroda, who is serving a rare second five-year term, will be key to how quickly the bank could dial back the radical monetary experiment undertaken by Kuroda.

Some analysts say Kishida will likely distance himself from his predecessor Shinzo Abe's "Abenomics" stimulus policies that relied heavily on monetary easing to reflate the economy.

Kishida's administration on Tuesday announced nominees to replace two BOJ policymakers retiring in July, appointments that will likely tilt the board away from radical easing.

Incumbent deputy governor Masayoshi Amamiya and former deputy governor Hiroshi Nakaso - both career central bankers - are seen by markets as among strong candidates as next BOJ head.

(This story refiles to correct day of week in first paragraph)

(Reporting by Leika Kihara and Kantaro Komiya; editing by Richard Pullin)
TOKYO (AP)  Two big names in Japanese electronics and autos are joining forces to produce an electric vehicle together.

Sony Group Corp. and Honda Motor Co. agreed to set up a joint venture this year to start selling an electric vehicle by 2025, both sides said Friday.

The plan is to bring together Hondas expertise in mobility development, technology and sales with Sonys imaging, telecommunication, network and entertainment expertise.

A union of traditionally different manufacturing businesses is uncommon for Japan. But it makes sense in the age of electric vehicles, which lack gasoline-powered engines and have complicated electronics.

All the world's automakers have been developing zero-emissions electric vehicles, as concerns grow about pollution and climate change. But they face tough competition from relative newcomers like Tesla.

The joint venture will develop and design the product, but will use Honda's plant for manufacturing. Sony, which makes the PlayStation video-game console and owns movie and music businesses, will develop the mobility services platform.

Honda makes the CR-V sport utility vehicle and Clarity plug-in hybrid and already has its own electric vehicle program, teaming up with General Motors to share platforms for EVs in North America.

The joint venture with Sony will be separate, meant to produce unexpected value in a chemical reaction, said Honda Chief Executive Toshihiro Mibe.

We're so used to thinking within the category of autos, it's hard to think outside that box, Mibe told reporters, while stressing that Honda will continue with its own EV program.

Sony showed an electric car concept at the CES gadget show in Las Vegas two years ago. It has been eager to find an auto partner, said Sony Group Chief Executive Kenichiro Yoshida.

The two executives, appearing together at a hastily called news conference in Tokyo, did not rule out a future stock listing of the joint venture.

Shares in both companies fell Friday, with Honda down 4.5% and Sony losing 3.2%.

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Both Sony and Honda have humble beginnings in the 1940s when Japan was rebuilding from the ashes of World War II. Both had charismatic founders.

Honda was founded by Soichiro Honda, an engineer, industrialist and reputed nonconformist. He started out helping at his fathers bicycle repair shop and eventually built Honda into a global powerhouse. He is often quoted as saying things like: A diploma is worthless, learn to work with your hands, or work for yourself and not a company.

Sony was founded by Akio Morita, who co-wrote The Japan That Can Say No, which advocated for a more assertive and prouder Japan, and Masaru Ibuka.

Morita had market savvy while Ibuka was known for product development. In the 1970s when Sony was developing the Walkman portable audio player, some engineers were skeptical. But Morita insisted people would want to listen to music on-the-go.

Although Sony and Honda are companies that share many historical and cultural similarities, our areas of technological expertise are very different, Mibe said.

I believe this alliance which brings together the strengths of our two companies offers great possibilities for the future of mobility.

Sony Group Chief Executive Kenichiro Yoshida said Ibuka respected and had learned a lot from Honda.

Commitment at the top is important," said Yoshida. "We are committed to taking up this challenge together.

___

Yuri Kageyama is on Twitter https://twitter.com/yurikageyama
ALBANY  A judge on Thursday rejected Republicans' requests to immediately pause this years New York election process.

But he did float the possibility of eventually rejecting the lines that were approved by the state Legislature in early February and ordering new maps to be drawn in time for special elections in every congressional and state Senate seat in 2023.

It is highly unlikely that the new viable map could be drawn and be in place within a few weeks or even a couple of months, said state Supreme Court Judge Patrick McAllister in Steuben County.

Therefore, striking these maps would more likely than not leave New York without any duly-elected congressional delegates. I believe the more prudent course would be to allow the current election process to proceed, then if necessary, provide for new elections next year.

Such an action would not be unprecedented in New York. After the district lines in place in 1964 were tossed, state legislators were elected to one-year terms before appearing on the ballot again in 1965.

Republicans win on other requests: Republicans challenged the new congressional lines minutes after they were signed into law.

They alleged, among other things, that the existence of maps that could allow the number of Democrats in the states congressional delegation to increase from 19 to 22  even as the size of the delegation is due to decrease from 27 to 26  was clear evidence that the lines run afoul of new language in the state constitution that prohibits drawing maps with the intent of helping a particular party.

The suit was brought in solidly-red Steuben County. And even the Democrats who predicted they would eventually win on appeal thought the initial venue could lead to a lower-court decision favorable to the GOP.

And for most of Thursday morning, McAllister sided with Republican requests.

He declined to remove Gov. Kathy Hochul as a defendant, allowed the suit to challenge lines in every corner of the state, let Republicans add a challenge to state Senate lines to their lawsuit and granted permission to subpoena legislators correspondence on the maps.

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Elections can go forward: McAllister declined, however, to support Republicans on their sweeping request to delay this years elections.

Doing so would have created a logistical nightmare. Candidates were allowed to start gathering petitions to appear on the primary ballot on Tuesday. If the lines were immediately blocked, then every hopeful for a congressional or state Senate seat would be left unsure if the signatures they were gathering were actually from residents of their districts.

It would even be unclear when the primary might be held until months of appeals concluded.

Simply the task of putting together copious privilege logs, not to mention the task of having to search for all the different documents that could potentially be responsive to a request, that would eat up the remaining time we have, said attorney Craig Bucki, who represented Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie (D-Bronx), while he was arguing against letting Republicans obtain correspondence from the state Legislature detailing mapmaking plans.

Also, there would then need to be a stay of any subpoenas and debates in appellate courts on the subject  and that would all have to happen before the low-level court arrived at its decision and any challenges are heard on two levels of appeal.

McAllister granted Republican requests to start subpoenaing. But acknowledging his time constraints, he reached his decision to allow this years elections to proceed as planned.

Litigants are expected to reconvene in McAllisters courthouse on March 14 to debate the technical claims made by the two sides. He is then expected to reach a decision by early April.
A Kansas City man has been convicted in the shooting death of 47-year-old Donna McKeown following a jury trial that concluded Thursday.

Damon Kerr, 46, was convicted of second-degree murder and armed criminal action in Jackson County Circuit Court. The trial came three years after Kerr was first charged with the crime.

Prosecutors said Kerr shot McKeown, the mother of their three children, as she was inside a vehicle parked outside of his residence in the 3400 block of East 54th Street.

According to court records, police were called out to the home around 6 a.m. on Nov. 25, 2018, on a reported shooting. McKeown was found slumped over in the front passenger seat, a gunshot wound to her neck, still buckled in.

Kerr initially told police he was inside the house when he heard a gunshot coming from outside. He said McKeown was angry with him for arriving home around 2:30 a.m. and had left for a while before returning, according to court records.

Kerr allowed police to search his cellphone. Among the records allegedly found on the phone and presented as evidence was a Google search for how to remove gunshot residue from ones hands.
Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas is again attempting to give the city control over a portion of the police departments spending.

Lucas on Thursday introduced an ordinance that would place $37.4 million of the departments budget into a newly-formed fund to be controlled by the city manager, with its use to be negotiated with the Board of Police Commissioners. The mayor is calling it the Community Policing and Prevention Fund.

This spending, if approved, would go toward hiring more officers, community outreach staff and 911 call-takers and funding other crime prevention initiatives. The proposal now goes to the councils Finance Governance and Public Safety Committee for consideration.

The $37.4 million is part of the police departments $269 million budget allocation for the fiscal year 2022-2023 that Lucas has submitted to the City Council. That figure represents nearly 40% of the citys general fund  well above the 20% minimum that state law requires to be spent on the police department.

The city funds the KCPD, but the department is under state control, overseen by a Board of Police Commissioners where four of the five members are appointed by the governor. The mayor is the fifth member. The unusual system was devised in response to 1930s Pendergast-era municipal corruption. City leaders have long chafed under the nearly century-old structure.

Kansas City saw its second-deadliest year on record in 2021 with 157 killings, according to data maintained by The Star. In 2020, 182 people were killed, making it the worst year on record.

Last May, the City Council voted to reallocate $42 million of KCPDs budget to fund crime prevention and other crime-fighting initiatives, with use of the money to be negotiated by the city manager and the police board. The board sued, and in October Jackson County Circuit Court Judge Patrick W. Campbell ruled that the council was interfering with the boards exclusive management and control of the police department.

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But Campbells ruling left a path for Lucas and the council to make such changes during the citys annual spring budget cycle.

The citys attempt to assert budget control infuriated some Republican state lawmakers, leading to a move to raise the state-required funding minimum from 20% to 25%. That debate is ongoing in the General Assembly.

Police spending breakdown

This years proposed $269 million police budget is nearly $8 million more than the department was allocated last year. But its also $12 million less than what police commissioners approved and submitted to the city in November.

The starting salary for a Kansas City police officer is about $43,404, which ranks among the lowest of the regions law enforcement agencies, according to the Kansas City Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 99.

Last fall, the finalized police budget guaranteed that $135 million would be dedicated to pay increases for sworn officers and civilian employees. Lucas previously pushed the police board to ensure those funds would not be used to cover settlement claims, which had been past practice.

The bulk of the additional spending proposed by Lucas goes toward hiring and employee raises.

A breakdown of the $37.4 million is as follows

$4 million for the hiring of officers

$5.15 toward salary increases

$4.68 million toward dedicated patrol and community outreach staff

$550,000 toward full-time dedicated Crisis Intervention officers (CIT officers)

$6,570 toward 911 call takers and communications unit operations

$175,000 towards bulletproof vests as life saving equipment

$30,000 toward inmate and detainee food and beverages

The remaining $20 million will be put toward funding victim and witness support services in the police departments violent crimes division. Money also would be spent on special operations, the traffic division and crime laboratory.

Budget disputes in Jefferson City

Lucas introduced the ordinance as debate on Kansas City police spending played out in Jefferson City this week.

The Senate, by a 20-9 vote, gave initial approval this week to one of two measures that together would raise the minimum percentage of Kansas Citys general revenue that must be spent on police from 20% to 25%. The other bill, a proposed amendment to the state constitution, remains under consideration.

The House on Thursday, by a 105-31 vote, approved an expansion of the kinds of revenue the city must include when allocating funds to the police. In effect, the bill would require Kansas City to increase spending on law enforcement.

Both measures are far from done deals.

The Stars Jonathan Shorman contributed.
The Democrat-controlled Maryland General Assembly isnt exactly packed with fans of Republican Gov. Larry Hogan. But lawmakers needed only a couple of brief minutes, and nary a word of debate, to unanimously reject a Trump-backed delegates attempt to impeach him.

Del. Dan Cox, a Frederick County Republican whos running for governor with former President Donald Trumps endorsement, accused Hogan in his impeachment resolution of a list of crimes and misconduct, primarily in the governors handling of the coronavirus pandemic. Cox had previously unsuccessfully sued to overturn Hogans restrictions and use of emergency powers.

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Cox spent four minutes rattling off his case against Hogan  accusing the governor of unconstitutionally ruling by executive order, abusing his powers and trying to cover up his actions  before the House Rules and Executive Nominations Committee on Thursday morning.

No one on the bipartisan panel asked Cox any questions before its members summarily rejected Coxs resolution on a voice vote.

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Republican Minority Leader Jason Buckel of Allegany County made the motion to dismiss it. The former minority leader, Republican Del. Nic Kipke of Anne Arundel County, quickly joined several other lawmakers in seconding Buckel.

I do not feel that it meets the standards for impeachment that would exist under Maryland law and it would be unprecedented under the circumstances to proceed at this time, Buckel said. It is a political issue, not a legal issue worthy of impeachment.

Cox, in addition to railing against Hogans coronavirus restrictions, also cited Hogans use of self-deleting text messages to communicate with top aides and the governors well-publicized $9 million purchase of defective South Korean COVID-19 tests. A number of Democratic lawmakers have sharply criticized Hogan over those same matters, which the governor maintains were all aboveboard, but werent interested in joining Coxs impeachment pitch.

Cox did not respond to emails from The Baltimore Sun. Cox told The Washington Post that he expected the impeachment effort to fail but filed the resolution to stand up for Marylanders who suffered the loss of their freedoms under Hogans public health orders aimed at curbing the spread of the virus.

Breaking News Alerts As it happens When big news breaks in our area, be the first to know. >

A Hogan spokesman took a jab at Cox afterward, comparing the 47-year-old Republican delegate to QAnon, a group of Trump-backing conspiracy theorists.

I guess this means its back to the QAnon Ouija board, said Michael Ricci, the spokesman.

Hogan, a prominent critic of Trump from inside the Republican Party, has repeatedly dismissed and mocked Cox in response to criticism from the first-term delegate. Cox is an ardent Trump supporter and enthusiastically took part in the former presidents attempts to reverse the results of the 2020 election.
LOS ANGELES, CA  For the first time since the Omicron surge, Los Angeles County officially exited the federal government's "high" coronavirus activity level, which will mean an end to most indoor mask requirements Friday.

U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention officially upgraded the county to the "low" COVID activity category Thursday. On Wednesday, county health officials outlined new health orders that would go into effect after the county exited the high activity category. Though masking in indoor public places remains highly recommended, it will no longer be mandatory in most settings. Similarly, local vaccine verification requirements at businesses such as bars, clubs, wineries and breweries will no longer be in effect, though county healthy officials "strongly recommend" it.

The changes mark some of the single biggest steps toward the return to normal since businesses and schools reopened following the 2020 shutdown. County health cautioned that they would be monitoring schools, nursing homes and other sectors for outbreaks that could trigger the return of widespread mask requirements in the days to come. But for now, Angelenos can breathe without face coverings.



"Under this modified order, indoor masking will be strongly recommended, but not required, for vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals, except in high-risk settings where federal and state regulations continue to require masking, including everyone using public transit and all those in emergency shelters, health care settings, correctional and detention facilities, homeless shelters, and long-term care facilities," according to the new health order. "At all sites where masking indoors is no longer mandatory, employers will be required to offer, for voluntary use, medical grade masks and respirators to employees working indoors in close contact with other workers and/or customers."

The CDC categories are based largely on the number of new virus-related hospital admissions and on the overall availability of hospital beds. COVID hospitalizations continue to fall dramatically in Los Angeles County. For weeks, the daily case rate had been dropping rapidly, too. However, that decline slowed and climbed slightly some days this week.

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The county reported 80 new COVID-19 deaths Wednesday, raising the overall death toll from the virus to 30,858. One of the deaths reported Wednesday was a person between ages 12 and 17.

The county also reported a total of 1,626 new COVID cases, raising the cumulative pandemic total to 2,799,169.

The new health orders will put the county in alignment with the state, which dropped its mask mandate on Tuesday.

Indoor masks also continue to be required on K-12 school campuses, although the county and state will lift that requirement on March 12. The policy, however, is expected to remain in place in the Los Angeles Unified School District until the end of the school year.

County health officials also noted that people attending indoor mega- events of 1,000 or more people  such as sporting events  will still be required to show proof of COVID vaccination or a recent negative test to be admitted. Vaccine verification or a negative test will also still be required at health care facilities and congregate-care facilities.

While the mask mandate will likely be lifted, Ferrer warned Tuesday that the virus remains a threat. She said the county will be monitoring seven "alert signals" that could portend increased virus activity. Three of them are community-wide metrics -- variants of concern, COVID-19 emergency department visits and cumulative COVID case rates in high-poverty communities.

The other four "alert signals" involve specific sectors, tracking outbreaks at skilled nursing facilities, at K-12 schools, at homeless shelters and at worksites. If two or more of those signals rise to alert levels, the county will work to determine what is causing the increase and whether restrictions need to be reinstated.

The rolling average daily rate of people testing for the virus was 1.2% as of Wednesday, according to the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health.

According to state figures, there were 907 COVID-positive patients in county hospitals as of Wednesday, down from 927 on Tuesday. Of those patients, 157 were being treated in intensive care, down from 174 the previous day.

City News Service and Patch Staffer Paige Austin contributed to this report.

This article originally appeared on the Los Angeles Patch
VILNIUS (Reuters) - The party coalition govenring Latvia's capital Riga agreed on Friday to change the name of the street where Russia's embassy is located to Independent Ukraine Street, a statement said.

The move followed an announcement on Thursday that Vilnius in neighboring Lithuania will change the name of a street where the Russian embassy is located to Heroes of Ukraine Street.

(Reporting by Andrius Sytas in Vilnius; Editing by Mark Heinrich)
Volunteers examine the site of explosion inside a Shiite mosque in Peshawar, Pakistan





At least 56 people are dead in Pakistan after a suicide bomber struck a mosque while individuals were praying.

The Shiite Muslim mosque in the city of Peshawar was attacked by a man wearing a large black shawl that covered a suicide vest that held 12 pounds of explosives, according to Moazzam Jah Ansari, the top police official for Khyber Pukhtunkhwa Province, and video reviewed by The Associated Press.

Before entering the mosque and detonating the device, the man shot at the two policemen standing guard outside the building, killing one and wounding the other.

It is unclear if the death toll will rise as Asim Khan, spokesperson for Lady Reading Hospital, said many had been brought in in critical condition, according to the AP.

The hospital struggled to accommodate all the injured while hundreds of relatives begged for information about loved ones.

The prime minister of Pakistan has condemned the attacks, and no militant group has yet claimed responsibility for the incident.

The AP noted that ISIS and the Pakistani Taliban have both carried out similar bombings in the region before.
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Rising home values can quickly transition a reasonable housing market into the type of real estate monster that has consumed places like the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles and New York. While the idea of affordable housing in an urban center isn't implausible for plenty of Americans living in some areas, that's rapidly changing in many places.

Find Out: 50 Cities Where It's Cheaper To Buy a Home Than Rent

Ready To Invest? Watch Out: 50 Housing Markets That Are Turning Ugly

GOBankingRates conducted a study to determine which major U.S. cities are on track to lose their label of affordability. GOBankingRates took the overall U.S. median home value and projected its growth over 10 years using Zillow's September 2022-23 one-year forecast. This projection was then compared to the projections of 537 U.S. cities that currently have home prices below the national median of $325,677, with those surpassing the national median in the next 10 years (plus its projected growth rate over the same period) being deemed "not affordable."

Granted, this approach comes with some caveats. Projecting into the future based on a single year's growth rate could ultimately paint an unfair picture in markets where the current rate is an anomaly. Additionally, Zillow's estimated home values don't necessarily reflect the list prices or sale prices in each market.

Still, identifying the areas that are outpacing the national average for growth can help shed light on the cities where you should buy a home sooner rather than later. If you end up living in one of these cities 10 years down the line, you might want to check out other, more affordable real estate markets instead.

will_snyder_ / Getty Images/iStockphoto

Roseburg, Oregon

January 2022 home value: $321,807

One-year projected growth rate: 20.4%

Roseburg is in the Hundred Valleys of the Umpqua in southwestern Oregon, known for having seasonal, but pleasant, temperatures - never too hot or too cold. It sits 123 miles north of the California border.

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kaceyb / Getty Images/iStockphoto

When It Will Become Too Expensive

Year: 2023

Projected home value: $387,456

U.S. median projected home value: $382,019

Difference in value: $5,437

*Oakland, Oregon pictured.

Steven Liveoak / Shutterstock.com

Auburn, Alabama

January 2022 home value: $321,643

One-year projected growth rate: 19.4%

Auburn, in the eastern part of central Alabama, is just 35 miles west of Columbus, Georgia, and a 3 -hour drive from vacation spots along the Gulf of Mexico. Auburn University is the city's largest employer, with about 7,100 people working there

disorderly / Getty Images/iStockphoto

When It Will Become Too Expensive

Year: 2023

Projected home value: $384,042

U.S. median projected home value: $382,019

Difference in value: $2,023

DenisTangneyJr / Getty Images/iStockphoto

Fayetteville, Arkansas

January 2022 home value: $307,909

One-year projected growth rate: 23.1%

Another college town, Fayetteville is home to the University of Arkansas. Bill and Hillary Clinton called Fayetteville home before he was elected the state's governor, and then president of the United States, and the home they lived in is now a museum preserving memories of their time in the city.

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When It Will Become Too Expensive

Year: 2024

Projected home value: $466,593

U.S. median projected home value: $448,108

Difference in value: $18,485

SeanPavonePhoto / iStock.com

Knoxville, Tennessee

January 2022 home value: $299,342

One-year projected growth rate: 23.1%

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When It Will Become Too Expensive

Year: 2024

Projected home value: $453,611

U.S. median projected home value: $448,108

Difference in value: $5,503

Patricia Elaine Thomas / Shutterstock.com

Dallas

January 2022 home value: $308,661

One-year projected growth rate: 22.4%

Dallas, with 1.3 million residents, is the third-largest city in Texas but also the ninth-largest in the United States. It boasts many firsts. The nation's first planned shopping center (Highland Park Village Shopping Center) and convenience store (7-Eleven) opened in Dallas, and the frozen margarita and precursor to the microchip were invented there.

Trong Nguyen / Shutterstock.com

When It Will Become Too Expensive

Year: 2024

Projected home value: $462,429

U.S. median projected home value: $448,108

Difference in value: $14,321

Chris Rubino / Shutterstock.com

Tucson, Arizona

Tim Roberts Photography / Shutterstock.com

When It Will Become Too Expensive

Year: 2024

Projected home value: $453,544

U.S. median projected home value: $448,108

Difference in value: $5,436

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Pueblo, Colorado

J. Michael Jones / Shutterstock.com

When It Will Become Too Expensive

Year: 2025

Projected home value: $538,080

U.S. median projected home value: $525,631

Difference in value: $12,449

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Fort Worth, Texas

Christopher Boswell / Shutterstock.com

When It Will Become Too Expensive

Year: 2025

Projected home value: $537,226

U.S. median projected home value: $525,631

Difference in value: $11,595

Susilyn / Shutterstock.com

Lakeland, Florida

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When It Will Become Too Expensive

Year: 2026

Projected home value: $656,543

U.S. median projected home value: $616,565

Difference in value: $39,978

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Daytona Beach, Florida

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When It Will Become Too Expensive

Year: 2026

Projected home value: $640,314

U.S. median projected home value: $616,565

Difference in value: $23,749

Arizona: 3.00% APY

Yuma, Arizona

Ken Lund / Flickr.com

When It Will Become Too Expensive

Year: 2026

Projected home value: $632,207

U.S. median projected home value: $616,565

Difference in value: $15,642

Brian Stansberry / Wikimedia Commons

Crossville, Tennessee

Swarmcatcher / Getty Images/iStockphoto

When It Will Become Too Expensive

Year: 2026

Projected home value: $623,526

U.S. median projected home value: $616,565

Difference in value: $6,961

Residential subdivision in Murfreesboro, Tennessee.

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Pocatello, Idaho

Ric Schafer / Shutterstock.com

When It Will Become Too Expensive

Year: 2026

Projected home value: $632,034

U.S. median projected home value: $616,565

Difference in value: $15,469

Idaho Falls, Idaho pictured.

virsuziglis / Getty Images/iStockphoto

Jacksonville, Florida

Ron_Thomas / Getty Images/iStockphoto

When It Will Become Too Expensive

Year: 2026

Projected home value: $620,451

U.S. median projected home value: $616,565

Difference in value: $3,886

Ocala, Fla

Ocala, Florida

Michael Warren / Getty Images/iStockphoto

When It Will Become Too Expensive

Year: 2028

Projected home value: $905,639

U.S. median projected home value: $848,350

Difference in value: $57,289

Lorraine Boogich / Getty Images

Cookeville, Tennessee

ESB / Shutterstock.com

When it Will Become Too Expensive

Year: 2028

Projected home value: $881,714

U.S. median projected home value: $848,350

Difference in value: $33,364

Nashville, Tennessee pictured.

Sean Pavone / Shutterstock.com

Athens, Georgia

Sean Pavone / Shutterstock.com

When It Will Become Too Expensive

Year: 2029

Projected home value: $1,018,829

U.S. median projected home value: $995,115

Difference in value: $23,714

Manuela Durson / Shutterstock.com

Klamath Falls, Oregon

Oregon: 66.67 Hours a Month to Afford

When It Will Become Too Expensive

Year: 2029

Projected home value: $998,169

U.S. median projected home value: $995,115

Difference in value: $3,054

Sean Pavone/iStockPhoto

Savannah, Georgia

SeanPavonePhoto / iStock.com

When It Will Become Too Expensive

Year: 2030

Projected home value: $1,210,520

U.S. median projected home value: $1,167,270

Difference in value: $43,250

Shutterstock.com

Huntsville, Alabama

Sean Pavone / Getty Images/iStockphoto

When It Will Become Too Expensive

Year: 2030

Projected home value: $1,190,458

U.S. median projected home value: $1,167,270

Difference in value: $23,188

DenisTangneyJr / Getty Images/iStockphoto

Clarksville, Tennessee

Google Maps

When It Will Become Too Expensive

Year: 2031

Projected home value: $1,397,052

U.S. median projected home value: $1,369,207

Difference in value: $27,845

ivanastar / Getty Images/iStockphoto

Albuquerque, New Mexico

photoBeard / Getty Images/iStockphoto

When It Will Become Too Expensive

Year: 2031

Projected home value: $1,384,248

U.S. median projected home value: $1,369,207

Difference in value: $15,041

More From GOBankingRates

Joel Anderson contributed to the reporting for this article.

Methodology: GOBankingRates took the overall U.S. median home value and projected its growth over 10 years using Zillow's September 2022-23 one-year forecast. This projection was then compared to the projections of 537 U.S. cities that currently have home prices below the national median, with those surpassing the national median in the next 10 years (plus its projected growth rate over the same period) being deemed "not affordable." For each "not affordable" city over the next decade, GOBankingRates found the following factors: (1) year the city will become "not affordable"; (2) projected home value for that year; (3) U.S. average projected home value for that year; and (4) the difference in value between factors (2) and (3). NOTE: GOBankingRates does not expect growth in home value to stay stagnant at one current rate for the next decade, but using these constant figures gives us an idea where certain markets are heading without unforeseen market disruptors in the future. All data used to conduct this study was compiled and verified on Feb. 23, 2022.

This article originally appeared on GOBankingRates.com: In Less Than a Decade, You Wont Be Able To Afford a Home in These Cities
Senator Lindsey Graham has called for the assassination of Russian president Vladimir Putin by someone close to him, as the countrys invasion of Ukraine entered its ninth day on Friday.

In a statement on Twitter on Thursday, the senator from South Carolina asked if the Russian president has a Brutus who can take out Mr Putin and end the war.

Is there a Brutus in Russia? Is there a more successful Colonel Stauffenberg in the Russian military?

Roman politician Marcus Junius Brutus assassinated his friend and Roman general Julius Caesar, while German army Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg is best-known for trying to kill Adolf Hitler in 1944.

The only way this ends is for somebody in Russia to take this guy out, the senator added. You would be doing your country - and the world - a great service.

In another tweet, Mr Graham said that the only way this war would end was if the Russian people decided to fix this.

Acknowledging that it was easy to say, hard to do, he told Russians: Unless you want to live in darkness for the rest of your life, be isolated from the rest of the world in abject poverty, and live in darkness you need to step up to the plate.

The only people who can fix this are the Russian people.



Easy to say, hard to do.



Unless you want to live in darkness for the rest of your life, be isolated from the rest of the world in abject poverty, and live in darkness you need to step up to the plate.  Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) March 4, 2022

Since Russia announced a special military operation in Ukraine on 24 February, over a million people have fled the country, while intense fighting has been underway across the country.

Russian troops are trying to capture capital Kyiv, while key cities such as Kharkiv, Odesa and Mariupol remained on the brink of collapse due to missile strikes and bombings. Kherson, a major urban Ukrainian centre, became the first city to fall on Thursday. Thousands have been killed or wounded in the past week.

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On Friday, a fire broke out at Europes largest nuclear power plant Zaporizhzhia in Ukraine following continuous shelling of buildings by Russian troops. Though the fire was put out in a few hours, it led to fears of a catastrophic nuclear disaster that would be ten times larger than Chernobyl disaster of 1986.

The US, along with other western countries, have imposed sanctions on Russia against its actions in Ukraine.

Earlier this week, US president Joe Biden, in his first state of union address, called Mr Putins attack on Ukraine premeditated and unprovoked.

However, the president has faced heat from Republicans who have blamed him and not Mr Putin for Russias war on Ukraine.

During the state of the union address, while the president was booed by his fellow Republican lawmakers Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene, Mr Graham had reportedly asked them to pipe down.

The Independent has a proud history of campaigning for the rights of the most vulnerable, and we first ran our Refugees Welcome campaign during the war in Syria in 2015. Now, as we renew our campaign and launch this petition in the wake of the unfolding Ukrainian crisis, we are calling on the government to go further and faster to ensure help is delivered.

To find out more about our Refugees Welcome campaign, click here. To sign the petition click here. If you would like to donate then please click here for our GoFundMe page.
Louis Vuitton has pledged 1 million euros to UNICEF earmarked for immediate release to aid the ongoing crisis in Ukraine.

The donation follows a 5 million euros donation from parent company LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton to the International Committee of the Red Cross, made on March 2.

More from WWD

The house said it is deeply affected by the tragic situation unfolding in Ukraine, and is committed to supporting UNICEFs emergency response on the ground.

Louis Vuitton has had a long-standing partnership with UNICEF since 2016, the U.N.s dedicated childrens relief fund, and the new money will go to those directly affected by the war in Ukraine.

Millions of children and their families are facing immediate danger, which is why the Maison is committed to supporting UNICEFs emergency response on the ground, through the Louis Vuitton partnership for UNICEF, to respond quickly to any emergency by providing children and families in Ukraine with humanitarian assistance, including access to drinking water, health care and school supplies, child protection services and to psychosocial care, the company said.

In addition to the new donation, funds that have already been contributed through the partnership will be released immediately in an effort to get aid to affected areas as quickly as possible.

Louis Vuitton has raised more than $17 million for UNICEF through the sale of its Silver Lockit bracelet and pendant collections since the start of the program.

Kering, Gucci, Valentino and Renzo Rossis OTB are among the other fashion houses that have donated to the U.N., through the UNHCR dedicated refugee section.
BERLIN (AP)  Maxim and Shaul had spent the last 52 hours on a bus full of dozens of Jewish refugee children that took them from war-torn Ukraine in the dark of night and across six European borders to safety in Berlin.

Pale, tired and overwhelmed, the two teenagers looked around when they finally arrived in the German capital Friday morning. There were lots of police officers in front of their hotel who had cordoned off the street so the 105 children could exit their buses as Jewish women from Berlin's Chabad community spontaneously started singing at the top of their voices to give them a joyous and relieved welcome.

I love Berlin, it's beautiful, 14-year-old Maxim said a little while later as he sat down to a kosher breakfast of tuna salad, cucumbers, cereal, eggs and pita bread. Last week we were still sitting in the bunker and the sirens were wailing nonstop.

His friend Shaul, 13, nodded, too tired to say much, straightened his red-checkered kippa and went over to one of the 15 foster home staffers to make sure he and Maxim would be sharing a room in Berlin. The children's last names were withheld because they are minors.

Only three days earlier, Rabbi Yehuda Teichtal, a Berlin rabbi and the head of the local Chabad community, had received a phone call from a rabbi in the Ukrainian port city of Odesa begging him to help get the children and teens from the foster care home Mishpacha  Hebrew for family  to a peaceful and secure place.

Its been a huge challenge but with the grace of God we worked it out together to bring these precious souls into safety, Teichtal, 49, told The Associated Press. The rabbi and a team of around 100 volunteers from the Chabad community had barely slept since they got the call for help from Odesa.

They soon figured out that traveling by plane would not be an option since about 40 of the children had no passports, only birth certificates. So they talked to diplomats and security officials from Israel, Germany and other European countries the children would have to travel through for help making the 1,000-mile (1,700-kilometer) overland trek come true.

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They raised money from Jewish aid groups and told the children to quickly pack warm winter clothes. The teenagers also took along their cell phones, while the little ones clutched their favorite stuffed animals tightly.

When we got on the road, we told the children that we are going on a winter trip, said Rabbi Mendy Wolff, 25, from Odesa, who accompanied the children on the journey. They should not feel like refugees for a single moment.

Thanks to the joint international diplomatic efforts the buses  one for the girls and another for the boys  crossed the borders of Moldova, Romania, Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic, before finally entering Germany without any problems.

They made a green corridor for us, Wolff said. When they crossed from Moldova to Romania, the buses were even allowed to use the diplomatic lane, passing a long line of around 100 buses full of other Ukrainian refugees waiting to get into the European Union.

More than 1 million people have fled since Russia invaded Ukraine last week. Several thousand have reached Germany. Many are coming to Berlin, with hundreds arriving daily on trains via Poland. The Berlin mayor, Frankziska Giffey, said earlier this week that around 20,000 refugees from Ukraine are expected to reach the city in the near future.

Most of the children from the Odesa home are foster kids, some are orphans and a few are members of the city's Chabad community who were sent out of the country by parents who couldn't flee their homes. Not all teenagers from the foster care home could come along. Boys aged 18 and older had to stay behind as men of military age are not allowed to leave the country.

After their first breakfast in Berlin, the children grabbed their backpacks and started arguing over who got to share rooms  almost like a regular group of kids on a school trip. Only the sound track was much more international  it was a Babylonian tangle of Ukrainian, Russian, Hebrew, English, German and even some Yiddish.

Baby Tuvia  only 5 weeks old  cried a little as the kids left the breakfast hall for their rooms. Sada, who had just turned 5, proudly held onto a big birthday balloon as she walked through the hallways with one of the caretakers, and Shoshana Khusid, 18, and one of the oldest, stared out of the window worrying about her parents back home.

I'm still afraid because my mother and father stayed in Ukraine, in Odesa, and all the time something happens there, and I read the news, and all the time I call them and ask, What happened? the teenager said with a worried face. "They tell me its all OK because theyre my parents. Thats something not good.

Asked about the future, she got monosyllabic.

I hope to be back home in two weeks, she said with an insecure smile.

Nobody really knows how long the children will stay in Berlin  it depends on when the war ends in Ukraine  but the community is determined to do everything to make them feel at home as long as needed.

We assume that they will stay here a little longer, said Roy Frydling, one of Chabads volunteers. The idea is that there will be an everyday life here for them soon, that they can go to school and kindergarten.

They will definitely stay together as one group, Frydling added. He said the plan was to put the children up at the hotel for the first two to four weeks, and that the Chabad community had already started looking for a building where the children can live afterward.

We've received an outpouring of support from the community and beyond, lots of clothes and other supplies, but what we really need now are financial donations  only the food for all the children costs about 5,000 euros every day, he added.

Alina Chubattaya, 59, the director of the children's home, looked concerned when asked about a possible return date to Odesa.

My husband, my daughter, my son and my dog, are all still in Odesa, she said with a sad smile. My heart is there, too," she added. "But I also wanted to take these kids here to safety.

I hope we will be back in time for Purim, Chubattaya said, referring to the Jewish holiday which begins on the eve of March 16 this year and commemorates the Jews' rescue from persecution in the ancient Persian empire.

You know, we Jews, we always dream of a better future.

___

AP writer Ilan Ben Zion contributed from Jerusalem.
ITV director Kevin Lygo has confirmed that the programmes producers are continuing their search for a new villa for its forthcoming season of Love Island.

The popular British reality dating show brings together a group of singles in a luxury villa, then sets them a series of challenges as they attempt to find love and make it through to the final.

The winning couple is voted for by the public.

Previous seasons of the show have been filmed at a property near Sant Llorenc des Cardassar, east of the Spanish island.

However, the location is reportedly unavailable for the upcoming season, forcing show chiefs to scout around for a new villa.

In a briefing, Lygo addressed the ongoing search, commenting: We didnt own it, we rented it, and we are choosing a new house for this summer so that is all secrecy. It is going to be marvellous.

When asked if the show would remain located in its long-term home in the Balearic Islands, he responded: Yes, it is going to be in Majorca. It is going to be a great one (series).

Liam Reardon won last years summer season (ITV)

Love Island is currently hosted by Laura Whitmore.

The show made its return to Majorca last year after a summer hiatus due to the pandemic, with Liam Reardon and Millie Court named as the winners of the series.
(Getty/The Independent)

There are exactly three customers sitting in Shooters Grill the day after its owner, Lauren Boebert, created a national brouhaha when she heckled President Joe Biden during the State of the Union address  as he spoke about his dead veteran son.

The Republican congresswomans restaurant is on Main Street in Rifle, Colorado, sandwiched between her constituency office and an interesting business thats a tattoo parlour/pawn shop. Shooters has been home to controversy for even longer than Boebert has been making headlines with her outspoken, far-right views; after an incident in the town, Boebert bragged that she and all her waitresses were openly carrying weapons. The restaurant also flouted Covid lockdown laws and subsequently got into trouble.

Boebert seems to revel in drama, whether its posing with guns at Christmastime  with her underage children also armed in the viral photo  or posting outrageously on social media.

The congresswoman really caused a stir on Tuesday night when she shouted at President Joe Biden during his State of the Union speech, accusing him of being personally responsible for the deaths of 13 service members in Afghanistan last year. Her heckling came as the president was speaking about his veteran son, Beau, who passed away in 2015; addressing burn pits in war zones and their residual affects on veterans, Mr Biden directly linked his sons death to his own toxic exposure while on deployment in Iraq.

In addition to the heckling on Tuesday night, Boebert joined fellow Republican provocateur Marjorie Taylor Greene in turning her back on the Cabinet.

Not everyone in Boeberts constituency loves her outlandish behaviour. Far from it, in fact.

Lauren Boeberts restaurant in Rifle, Colorado, which is gun-themed and called Shooters Grill, features weapon paraphernalia, history and a huge amount of MAGA decoration (Sheila Flynn)

Less than 48 hours after the congresswomans outburst during the State of the Union, Republican Kathy Hall was walking through the streets of Grand Junction, where Boebert also has a constituency office, with a petition in support of a new candidate to run against the 35-year-old mother of four.

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The thing that bothers me so much about the politicians we have ... [is that] instead of just doing good policy, instead of just working hard for their constituents, theyre being controversial, says Ms Hall, who has worked in public life for a quarter-century and currently chairs the Colorado Department of Transportation commission.

Their game is being controversial, and that really upsets me  because the kinds of things that Lauren Boebert has done creates a bad image of Western Colorado people, she says.

Boebert defeated incumbent Scott Tipton in the 2020 Republican primary with 55 per cent of the vote, then went on to win against Democratic challenger Diane Mitsch Bush, a retired sociology professor from Steamboat Springs. She took office in January 2021 and recently announced her re-election campaign.

So far, at least one opponent is coming across as brazen as Boebert is; last month Democrat Alex Walker released a campaign video featuring faeces falling from the sky onto the heads of Coloradans as he announced: Colorado needs a bull, not a bull******r.

Hes one of 10 Democrats running in the party primary, while Marina Zimmerman and Don Coram  a Republican state senator for whom Ms Hall is campaigning  are running in the June Republican primary against Boebert.

Ms Hall says that she and her social circle despise what [Boeberts} causing as a representative for western Colorado.

Shes creating a reputation that were a bunch of wackos over here, and were not  were a beautiful community, were very community-minded people ... this mean-girl attitude of just getting national attention is very detrimental to us on the Western Slope, and it harms our reputation.

And weve worked hard to have a strong reputation of a good place to do business, a good place to raise your family, and ... its making even a lot of my really good friends throughout the country, who are very strong conservatives and very strong Republicans, make us look like were crazy  and were not.

But those antics do nothing but create that image. And theyre nothing but antics. Theyre all about just getting publicity. Nobody has to wear a gun on their leg all the time in skintight clothing, dangly earrings, all the things that, as a woman whos been in public life all these years, we always wanted to be known for the fact that we were smart enough to hold the position. We didnt go on a sexy image.

She believes, however, that Boeberts rhetoric resonates with older and middle-aged voters who feel like they havent been heard all these years.

Lauren Boebert says all the things about Nancy Pelosi and AOC that resonates with them, she says.

To say Boebert is polarizing, even within her own constituency, is an understatement. Most people tell The Independent they think opinion is split about 50-50; another Grand Junction business owner, who is not a fan of the congresswoman, puts it at 60-40  not in Boeberts favour.

There are four of us who work here, and three of us cant stand her, he says.

Like Trump, who Boebert vocally supports, the congresswoman is popular with people who appreciate that she is not your typical politician, one constituent says (Sheila Flynn)

But Colorados third congressional district, which Boebert represents, is geographically huge. It includes much of the Western Slope and extends into the Eastern Plains, incorporating Grand Junction, Aspen, Glenwood Springs, Ignacio, Pueblo and Durango. The terrain is rugged and unforgiving in most of the catchment area; the drive from more liberal Denver alone is beautiful but intimidating as elevated highways weave through canyons and gorges, nothing but a small barrier separating vehicles from deadly drops.

Roadsides repeatedly warn motorists to look out for falling rocks and wildlife as you pass places with names like Antlers, No Name  really, that exists  and Silt, which is where Boebert lives, before getting to Rifle. Most people in the 10,000 population town  which seems a lot smaller  are either squarely in her camp or unwilling to say otherwise. Shes certainly put Rifle on the map; Shooters has become something of a de facto MAGA museum and tourist attraction, featuring cardboard cutouts of Trump and Boebert and selling merchandise with slogans like Lets Go Brandon and Guns dont kill people, Alec Baldwin kills people.

The day after the State of the Union, a curious passer-by wanders in off the street and asks a waitress to take his picture with Boeberts cutout.

The restaurant is, obviously, gun-themed; in the womens bathroom, theres a framed copy of the preamble to the Constitution above the changing table and, next to the sink, a picture of two rifles and the defiant Greek phrase Molon Labe, meaning come and take them  a favourite adage of gun-rights advocates.

This is hardcore gun territory, and everyone seems terrified the left is going to take their guns away. Guns are a part of life out here, whether theyre used to shoot prairie dogs on a ranch, go hunting or spend time at the rifle range.

Most of Boeberts supporters bring up her wildly pro-gun stance as the reason they stand behind her.

She could say anything, but as long as she fights for gun rights, Id vote for her, one Coloradan and major gun enthusiast  with a collection that includes assault weapons  tells The Independent.

When pressed on why theres such an importance placed on guns in this part of the world, he says: Just look at whats happening in Ukraine right now.

He doesnt elaborate on who, exactly, he thinks might start invading homes in western Colorado.

At the local VFW in Grand Junction, Post 1247, opinions are about as divided as they are across the general constituency. One Army engineer reiterates that, if Boeberts standing up for gun rights, hes with her; the woman with him interrupts.

I think shes a bully and a thug, she says.

Boeberts restaurant features cardboard cutouts of the congresswoman and Trump, attracting fans and the simply curious who want to pose for pictures with them (Sheila Flynn)

Another retired Marine agrees; he thinks Boebert is a loudmouth and an idiot.

The whole thing is, as a veteran and as a citizen, I think right now, more than ever, we need some really smart people to deal with the current problems in this country, says Steve Young, 61, who grew up in a military family and served all over the world, including a combat tour in Beirut.

Shes just not a very smart person, he says of Boebert. Shes a person that makes statements that are either lies or half-truths. [She] plays to the camera or microphone. Theres no substance there.

Mr Young, who takes care of the VFW grounds, was particularly disgusted by the congresswomans performance at the State of the Union address.

I saw the heckling and, especially to do so when a man is talking about the loss of his beloved son, I mean, thats lower than snakes***, as far as Im concerned, he tells The Independent.

Boebert defended her actions in a tweet this week, writing: When Biden said flag-draped coffins I couldnt stay silent. I told him directly he did it. He put 13 in there.

Our heroic servicemen and women deserve so much better, she said, adding that a mutual friend of a mother of one of the 13 service members told her the grieving parent really appreciated you speaking out.

Boeberts team did not immediately return a request for comment from The Independent.

Mr Young describes himself as a McCain Republican who was turned off by the partys treatment of the late war hero  and further disillusioned by Trumps antics and disparagement of the prisoner of war.

Muscle is definitely taking over from minds in this culture, he says.

Speaking to the same culture of the younger generation of politicians, Ms Hall believes that the problem extends across the aisle.

AOC is the same thing, she tells The Independent. Its all about me. Its not about, What can I do for my community and my constituents? Its, The more outlandish I am, the more comments I get. And thats not good government.

That presumed narcissism definitely does seem to be working against Boebert in some corners  as the constant stream of vitriol is viewed by many as nothing more than attention-seeking.

I used to support her, but I dont follow her anymore, one grandmother, whose daughter went to high school with Boebert and who watched the woman grow up, struggle as a pregnant teen and then gain a major profile, tells The Independent. The congresswoman has gotten a bit too much, she feels.

Boebert has curated a reputation as brash, outspoken and committed to attacking the left (AP)

Several constituents, who rarely speak up or get involved in politics, tell The Independent theyve emailed the congresswoman to complain after her heckling of the president on Tuesday night. Theres such a thing as manners, they say  and thats another big thing out here. People are polite; almost no one ever uses profanity, and its not unusual to have a cowboy hold the door for you.

On the other hand, of course, many people like Boeberts brash, stick-it-to-the left attitude. A long-haired musician working in a Grand Junction crystal store, of all places, tries to explain her popularity.

Shes not your typical politician, and I think thats whats appealing, Will Heckard, born and raised in the constituency, tells The Independent.

My thing on Trump is like, as a person, hes kind of a dirtbag ... but what I cant deny is the good that he did for the country while he was president. Hes a dirtbag as a person, but he was a pretty damn good president. I cant fault him for that.

With Boeberts antics, he says, I think that, though some people might get mad at it, everybodys entitled to what they believe.

I think she believes it, because I think theres some stuff there that, like, maybe she knows that we probably dont.

A lot of people, however  particularly those who own businesses  are afraid to say anything at all about Boebert or, well, anything else even remotely political.

People dont want to share their opinions because [customers] will blacklist you, one elderly shopkeeper tells The Independent.

A bar owner estimates that about 70 per cent of his clientele want to talk politics  but hes too savvy to get dragged in.

When it comes down to it, theres another factor to consider  and thats the fact that, in reality, a huge percentage of people in the constituency are armed.

When they talk about the Wild, Wild West  youre here, Mr Young says.
Less than a year after a Wilmington man was found dead near a cemetery in Delaware County, Pennsylvania, with his hands bound behind his back, a federal grand jury has indicted one of the people police say is responsible.

Kimon Burton-Roberson, 28, pleaded not guilty on Thursday to kidnapping and conspiracy to commit kidnapping in connection with the victim's July homicide.

Federal prosecutors have not identified the victim, citing a federal law regarding victims' rights and "the right to be treated with fairness and with respect for the victims dignity and privacy," wrote U.S. Department of Justice spokeswoman Kim Reeves.

According to the late February indictment, just before 1 a.m. on July 21, Burton-Roberson and his co-conspirators, whom prosecutors did not identify, broke into a home in Wilmington where they knew the victim was staying.

BACKGROUND: Body of man kidnapped from Wilmington found with hands bound in Delaware County, Pa.: Police

There, they beat the man with a "blunt object" until he was bleeding. Then, prosecutors said, they bound the victim's hands with zip ties and forced him into Burton-Robersons Jeep Cherokee.

From there, they drove him to a home in Philadelphia associated with Burton-Roberson, and one of the suspects shot the victim in the head, prosecutors said. They then took him to the 6200 block of Baltimore Ave., near Fernwood Cemetery in Yeadon, and left his body there, prosecutors said.

He was found just before 7:30 a.m. in the parking lot of a warehouse.

Evidence markers could be seen on the ground where detectives investigated, and police told Delaware Online/The News Journal at the time that warehouse surveillance footage captured a car in the area at the time of the slaying.

Wilmington police also confirmed to a reporter that they were working alongside Yeadon police on the case.

RELATED: Despite charges in July quadruple shooting in Knollwood community, neighbors frustrated

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On Friday, Wilmington Police Chief Robert Tracy called the homicide "chilling," adding that he was "proud of the work of our investigators, and our partner law enforcement agencies, in bringing justice for the victim."

The FBI worked with Yeadon and Wilmington police on the case, federal prosecutors said.

It's unclear whether the other people accused of working with Burton-Roberson have been charged.

Got a story tip or idea? Send to Isabel Hughes at ihughes@delawareonline.com. For all things breaking news, follow her on Twitter at @izzihughes_

This article originally appeared on Delaware News Journal: Man indicted after body of man kidnapped from Wilmington found in PA
A man involved in a Lansing Township Amber Alert incident in 2020 was found guilty on multiple charges March 2, 2022.

A man has been found guilty on charges stemming from a 2020 incident involving an Amber Alert and over 30 police officers searching for him.

Phoenix Washington, 27, was found guilty by an Ingham County Circuit Court jury on Tuesday of the following:

Assault with intent to do great bodily harm less than murder

Two counts of domestic violence

First degree home invasion

Two counts of unlawful driving away of a motor vehicle

Malicious destruction of personal property between $200 and $1,000

Interfering with electronic communications

Washington has yet to be sentenced.

Lansing Township Police said in an October 2020 press release that Washington broke the window to an apartment, which his son, Phoenix Washington Jr., 2 at the time, shared with his mother, stole the keys to the boys mothers vehicle and left with the child.

An Amber Alert was issued for the child that morning but later canceled when the boy was found safe.

Contact Bryce Airgood at 517-267-0448 or bairgood@gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter @bairgood123.

This article originally appeared on Lansing State Journal: Man involved with Lansing Twp. Amber Alert incident found guilty
A man pleaded guilty to murder Thursday in the death of Jacqueline Avant, the wife of a legendary Los Angeles music executive, officials said.

Aariel Maynor, 30, was accused of killing Avant, 81, and shooting at her security guard during a robbery at her Beverly Hills home on Dec. 1, the office of Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascon said in a statement.

Maynor pleaded guilty to one count of first-degree murder, attempted murder and two counts of burglary. He faces a maximum sentence of 170 years in prison and will be ineligible for parole, the statement said.

The security guard was not injured in the shooting.

Maynor was arrested Dec. 2 after security video captured him leaving the Maynors' home shortly after the shooting.

Jacqueline Avant, a philanthropist, mother and one-time model in the Ebony Fashion Fair, married Clarence Avant in 1967.

Clarence Avant is credited with helping launch the careers of notable Black musicians, including Bill Withers, and was known as the "Godfather of Black Music."

When Clarence Avant was inducted into the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame last year, Lionel Riche recalled him as "the one that brought us to some understanding of what the music business was all about."

In a statement Thursday, Gascon said the killing "continues to shock the conscience. Mrs. Avants death was a tragic loss felt by our entire community."

A lawyer for Maynor could not immediately be reached. His sentencing is scheduled for March 30.
Mar. 4Federal officials said a Chenango County man was sentenced to a term in prison for possessing child pornography.

According to a media release from the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of New York, Matthew Bormann, 35, previously of Sherburne, was sentenced Wednesday, March* 2, to serve 10 years in prison, to be followed by 15 years of supervised release, for possessing child pornography.

As part of his previously entered guilty plea, Bormann admitted that on March 12, 2021, during a visit at his home from his probation officer, Bormann possessed at least 3,500 images and video files of child pornography on a cellphone he was prohibited from possessing under the conditions of his supervised release, the release said.

Bormann was sentenced Wednesday to a 10-month consecutive term of imprisonment for violating the conditions of his supervised release by committing new criminal conduct, failing to truthfully answer questions from his probation officer, and failing to successfully complete mental health and sex offender treatment.

This case was investigated by the U.S. Probation Office and the FBI Mid-State Child Exploitation Task Force, composed of FBI special agents and investigators of the State Police, Bureau of Criminal Investigation. The case was prosecuted by Special Assistant U.S. Attorney Adrian S. LaRochelle as a part of Project Safe Childhood, the release said.

For more information about Project Safe Childhood, visit justice.gov/psc

*Changed at 8:22 a.m. March 4 to correct the date of the sentencing.
Arizona State Senator Wendy Rogers gives a speech ahead of former President Donald Trump's speech in Florence on Saturday, Jan. 15, 2022.

Matt Salmon just borrowed Kari Lakes sledgehammer to take aim at one of Lakes pals.

Salmon called on state Sen. Wendy Rogers to resign, saying her dismissive response of the Senates censure earlier this week indicates a level of misjudgment and a failure of character so outrageous that more stringent action is needed.

He was referring to her, well, lets just call it her less-than-chastened response to the Senates public slap on the wrist earlier this week after her speech to white nationalists on Friday and her threats to ruin the careers of any of her colleagues who challenged her.

Its refreshing that a Republican candidate for governor would call out one of the MAGAs biggest rock stars  and it certainly doesnt hurt that his opponent Kari Lake is one Rogers big admirers.

But, Matt, whereve you been?

Rogers' character has long been on display

Rogers failure of character has been on public display for years.

She spent a decade trying to convince voters to send her to Congress, going so far as to baselessly accuse a Republican rival of having ties to a sex-trafficking ring in 2018. When that didnt work, she moved from Tempe to a trailer in Flagstaff in 2020, hoping the Legislature would be a springboard to Congress.

She spent more than a million dollars to win her seat by running a slash-and-burn campaign against then-Sen. Sylvia Allen, charging that one of the most conservative members of the Legislature was not conservative enough.

Rogers campaign was so obnoxious that her now-seatmate, state Rep. Walter Blackman, a staunch conservative from Snowflake, told the Arizona Capitol Times after the primary election that he would not campaign with her.

Integrity, he said, is a big deal.

Since coming to the Legislature, Rogers has distinguished herself as easily the kookiest legislator ever elected in Arizona, one who will pretty much say anything to get noticed and gain traction on the steep and often slimy political slope.

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Anyone who disagrees with her is either in cahoots with George Soros or a communist or a traitor. Or possibly all three.

Rogers has used antisemitic tropes before

Its no surprise that Rogers would revere Joe McCarthy, the 1950s era witch hunter who ruined thousands of lives with unproven accusations that they were communists or that she would long for McCarthysim, which is defined as a campaign or practice that endorses the use of unfair allegations and investigations.

She has spent most of the last 16 months screaming, without evidence, that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. She was calling for Arizonas election to be decertified even before the audit was complete and for elections officials to be thrown in jail.

Doesnt matter that even the Senates Trump-friendly auditors have acknowledged they found no evidence of widespread fraud or that decertification isnt actually a thing or that here in America you need actual evidence in order to throw someone in jail.

There is money to be made and she is making it. There is a a political career to be built and she is building it.

Far right Republican candidates across the nation now seek the endorsement of this one-note politician whose only musical instrument is the dog whistle. She tosses out antisemitic tropes  including the they are coming to replace us warnings so popular with white supremacists  with abandon.

Last summer, she was called out by the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Phoenix, which said it was deeply concerned with Sen. Rogers use of extremist terms that have inspired some of the worst atrocities in recent history.

Given the uptick of antisemitism and extremism in our state, and across the country, Rogers use of thinly-veiled hate speech is dangerous and has no place in the rhetoric of Arizonas elected officials, the councils executive director, Paul Rockower, said at the time.

Why aren't they also condemning Gosar?

Where were you then, Matt?

And you, Sen. Kelly Townsend, who on Thursday called out Rogers after she refused to denounce antisemitic diatribes by white nationalist Nick Fuentes.

I emphatically reject @WendyRogersAZ endorsement of my campaign for Congress. I do not wish to accept financial donations that she solicited & will respectfully return them. I continue to call on her to end her support of an open antisemite. Genesis 12:3

I emphatically reject @WendyRogersAZ endorsement of my campaign for Congress. I do not wish to accept financial donations that she solicited & will respectfully return them. I continue to call on her to end her support of an open antisemite.

Genesis 12:3 https://t.co/6oYXNiP1XS  Senator Kelly Townsend (@AZKellyT) March 3, 2022

Fuentes is the flamboyantly racist, misogynistic and antisemitic head of the white nationalist America First movement  a guy who checks nearly every mark on the list of vile characteristics.

A creeper for whom Rogers has repeatedly expressed admiration.

A guy, by the way, who Rep. Paul Gosar calls a friend.

If Rogers is out of line for speaking at Fuentes America First Political Action Committee last week, what about Gosar, who recorded a message for Friday's gathering and delivered the keynote address at last years conference?

Where are the condemnations for this man who sits in Congress?

Still, credit them for speaking up. Will others?

Stilll, credit to Townsend and to Salmon for waking up and saying what so many of his fellow Republicans have refused to say. By their silence, they have allowed an ugliness to creep in from the fringes, further and further into the once-Grand Old Party.

"At times like this, I believe that it requires someone seeking high office to make use of their voice and platform to say what is necessary: Sen. Rogers must resign her seat in the legislature for the greater good of Arizona and so that LD6 can be effectively represented on issues of public policy, which her ongoing conduct and associations make her incapable of doing," Salmon said on Thursday.

She wont resign, of course. Shes more likely to send out yet another fundraising plea saying the RINOs like Salmon (a hard-core conservative) are out to get a sweet grandma who loves Jesus and America.

But its nice to know there are a few Republicans possessing of some starch in their spines, even if it is newly applied stiffener.

It also would be nice to hear from Karrin Taylor Robson, who last summer pronounced herself proud to support Rogers, whose election allowed Republicans to maintain control of the state Senate.

And from Lake, who has been endorsed by Rogers, but who unlike Rogers had the good sense to avoid the America First conference, despite being initially announced as a featured speaker.

And from Gov. Doug Ducey, who despite all his condemnation of antisemitism this week still apparently is happy to have spent nearly $500,000 from his PAC to get Rogers elected.

Shes still better than her opponent Felicia French, Ducey told reporters last week.

Heaven forbid, for Ducey to have found himself find with a deadlocked Senate and actually to have to deal with Democrats.

Reach Roberts at laurie.roberts@arizonarepublic.com. Follow her on Twitter at @LaurieRoberts.

Support local journalism: Subscribe to azcentral.com today.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Matt Salmon blasts Wendy Rogers as unfit to serve. Finally
Mayor Lori Lightfoot said a lawsuit alleging she berated Chicago Park District lawyers in offensive terms is wholly without merit and said she has no animus toward Italian Americans.

I am aware of the lawsuit that has been filed by a former Chicago Park District employee. While I will continue my practice of not commenting on the specific claims alleged in pending litigation, I feel compelled to state that the deeply offensive and ridiculous claims are wholly lacking in merit, and I welcome the opportunity to prove that fact in court, Lightfoot said in a statement. Furthermore, to be clear, I never have and never will harbor any animus toward Italians or Italian Americans.

Lightfoot released the statement a day after the Tribune reported on a lawsuit brought by former Chicago Park District deputy general counsel George Smyrniotis against the city. Lightfoot did not hold any public media availabilities on Thursday and ignored questions about the lawsuit outside a downtown restaurant.

Smyrniotis lawsuit alleges Lightfoot blocked a deal the Chicago Park District made with an Italian American group that would allow a Christopher Columbus statue to be displayed in a parade and made obscene remarks to government lawyers during a contentious meeting.

According to the lawsuit, Lightfoot told the attorneys: You make some kind of secret agreement with Italians. ... You are out there stroking your d---- over the Columbus statue, I am trying to keep Chicago police officers from being shot and you are trying to get them shot. My d--- is bigger than yours and the Italians, I have the biggest d--- in Chicago.

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Smyrniotis lawsuit against the city is closely related to another case brought by the Joint Civic Committee of Italian Americans against the Chicago Park District after Lightfoot removed Columbus statues from the city.

Smyrniotis claims in his suit that he was told by Timothy King, then the districts top lawyer, and then-Superintendent Michael Kelly that they wanted the lawsuit over the statues settled as soon as possible.

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According to Smyrniotis lawsuit, the Italian American group wanted to display the Columbus statue in its annual Columbus Day parade last fall, a request King approved because the Chicago Park District thought it would generate goodwill with the Italian Americans.

But when Lightfoot learned those negotiations also involved a proposal to remove the statue from Chicago permanently, Smyrniotis alleges in his lawsuit, she threatened to pull the parade permit and called the Zoom meeting with Chicago Park District officials.

There, Smyrniotis alleges, Lightfoot proceeded to berate and defame the lawyers and asked them, Where did you go to law school? Did you even go to law school? Do you even have a law license?

Lightfoot told them that they were not to do a f------ thing with that statue without my approval.

Get that f------ statue back before noon tomorrow or I am going to have you fired, Lightfoot said, according to the complaint.

Lightfoot also made obscene comments to Smyrniotis and King, according to the lawsuit, which alleges she called them d---- and asked, What the f--- were you thinking?

Smyrniotis asserts the alleged comments defamed him by imputing that he lacked the ability to perform his job duties. He resigned from the Chicago Park District last month, according to the lawsuit. King has also since left the district.

Prior to the mayors Friday statement, a city spokesperson said the city would have no further comment as the matter is now in litigation.

The lawsuit by Smyrniotis is just the latest fallout over Lightfoots July 2020 decision to remove Columbus statues from Chicagos public places.

The Joint Civic Committee of Italian Americans filed a lawsuit against the Chicago Park District last July asserting that the district violated a deal signed in 1973 to display the Columbus statue in Little Italy when it took down the statue in summer 2020.

Lightfoot has said she ordered the removal of Columbus statues in Grant Park, Little Italy and the South Chicago neighborhood after activists forcibly attempted to remove the Grant Park figure, leading to violent clashes between police and protesters.

Enrico Mirabelli, attorney for the Italian Americans, said he believes Smyrniotis allegations strengthen his case.

Presuming the mayor has been accurately quoted, her comments give proof to the claim that she has wrongfully interfered with my clients contract with the Chicago Park District in a degree that is unprecedented, Mirabelli said.

Ron Onesti, president of the Joint Civic Committee of Italian Americans, said hes literally outraged that someone in her position would ever use words like that to refer to any group of individuals.

When will it end with the disrespect? Onesti asked, referring to the mayors alleged comments as grotesque.

Columbus has been condemned by activists around the country who point to the Italian explorers mistreatment of Indigenous people after he landed in the Americas in 1492.

Many Italian Americans prize the statues of the explorer as an expression of their mainstream American identity.

Lightfoot initially resisted calls to take down Columbus statues. Comparing the debate over Columbus statues to the same argument over monuments to Confederate Army figures being removed in other cities, Lightfoot said she favors acting to not try to erase history, but to embrace it full-on.

But she ordered the removals after the unrest at Grant Park.

That lawsuit claims that a Columbus statue committee paid the Chicago Park District more than $10,000 in 1973 for the purpose of maintaining in perpetuity the Columbus statue.

After Lightfoot removed the Columbus statues, she created a review process for controversial city monuments that she said would be part of a racial healing and historical reckoning project. But the citys monuments commission has yet to issue its final report.
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A woman attacked a McDonalds employee in Georgia, jumping over the counter and pulling her hair, police said.

The altercation was over the customers food order, and she was sent to jail before she had a chance to eat, according to the Dunwoody Police Departments Facebook post.

It was a situation that police could only describe as McRidiculous.

The fight was at the McDonalds on Perimeter Center West, according to the March 3 statement.

She was then transported to DeKalb County Jail where her evening meal will be much different than the quarter pounder with cheese she ordered, the police department wrote.

The incident stirred alarm and amusement on the police Facebook page.

Thats horrible. Most of the employees at that location are sweet teenagers ... super young staff. They should be commended for working, not assaulted, someone said in the comments.

Sounds like she needed a happy meal instead of a quarter pounder, another person commented.

Police did not identify the woman in their post.

Courthouse locked down and streets closed in Alabama city - over a Taco Bell order

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Microsoft Corp. is suspending new sales of its products and services in Russia, the software giant announced Friday.

Microsoft joins a growing list of U.S. tech companies, including Apple and Dell Technologies, in cutting Russia off from key technologies following Russian President Vladimir Putin's violent invasion of Ukraine and subsequent Western sanctions against Russia.

"Like the rest of the world, we are horrified, angered and saddened by the images and news coming from the war in Ukraine and condemn this unjustified, unprovoked and unlawful invasion by Russia," Microsoft president Brad Smith wrote in a blog post.

"In addition, we are coordinating closely and working in lockstep with the governments of the United States, the European Union and the United Kingdom, and we are stopping many aspects of our business in Russia in compliance with governmental sanctions decisions," he continued.

Smith added in his blog post that Microsoft is attempting to protect Ukraine's cybersecurity, stating that the company has acted against "Russian positioning, destructive or disruptive measures against more than 20 Ukrainian government, IT and financial sector organizations" and other cyber attacks on civilian sites that Microsoft believes violate the Geneva Convention.

Microsoft's move comes after Apple said Tuesday that it would halt all sales to Russia and limit its services within the country. Google paused all ad sales in Russia Thursday, and Meta and Twitter have sought to crack down on Russian propaganda.

Corporate America has broadly joined much of the international community in condemning Russia, with Nike, ExxonMobil, Boeing, Ford Motor Co. and Airbnb among the firms cutting ties with Moscow. Even top Hollywood studios, including Warner Bros. and Disney, are pulling their releases from Russia.

The exodus of multinational companies comes after the U.S. and its allies imposed crippling sanctions and export controls that greatly complicate companies' ability to do business in Russia.
Mila Kunis and Ashton Kutcher are donating to Ukraine amid the Russian invasion. (Photo: Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images for Disney)

Mila Kunis and Ashton Kutcher aren't just talking about their support of Ukraine amid the Russian invasion. They started a fundraiser Thursday afternoon, in which they're seeking $30 million, and pledged to match up to $3 million of it themselves.

It looks like they will be contributing every penny of that, too. Just three hours after the GoFundMe project was created, the That '70s Show actors had already raised more than $2.5 million from 493 people to help organizations providing help to those affected.

In a video posted to Kutcher's social media accounts, Kunis noted that while she spent her first years in Ukraine, she has always considered herself an American. She was born in the city of Chernivtsi in 1983, and her family emigrated to the United States in 1991.

"I'm a proud American. I love everything this country has done for myself and my family," she said, "but today I have never been more proud to be a Ukrainian."

Kutcher added, "And I've never been more proud to be married to a Ukrainian."

"The events that have unfolded in Ukraine are devastating," she continued. "There is no place in this world for this kind of unjust attack on humanity."

Then Kutcher spoke again.

"And while we witness the bravery of the people in the country that she was born in, we're also witness to the needs of those who have chosen safety."

They explained that the money would go to Flexport.org and AirBnB.org, organizations who are inside the assault and providing immediate help.

On Thursday, one week after Russia arrived, more than one million people had already fled their country, according to a tweet from the United Nations' High Commissioner for Refugees.

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In just seven days we have witnessed the exodus of one million refugees from Ukraine to neighbouring countries.



For many millions more, inside Ukraine, its time for guns to fall silent, so that life-saving humanitarian assistance can be provided.  Filippo Grandi (@FilippoGrandi) March 2, 2022

Kunis also gave a statement on the fundraiser page.

"Ukrainians are proud and brave people who deserve our help in their time of need. This unjust attack on Ukraine and humanity at large is devastating and the Ukrainian people need our support," she wrote. "Our family is starting this fund to help provide immediate support and we will be matching up to $3 million dollars. While we are witnessing the bravery of Ukrainians, we are also bearing witness to the unimaginable burden of those who have chosen safety. Countless amounts of people have left everything they know and love behind to seek refuge. With nothing but what they could carry, these Ukrainian refugees are in need of housing and supplies right away."
Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis. aplusk/Instagram

Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis launched a fundraiser to aid Ukrainian refugees.

Kunis, now a US citizen, was born in Chernivtsi, Ukraine.

The couple pledged to match donations up to $3 million.

Mila Kunis and Ashton Kutcher have launched a fundraiser to aid Ukrainian refugees and pledged to match all donations up to $3 million.

Kunis, who was born in Chernivtsi, Ukraine, condemned Russia's invasion of Ukraine and said in a fundraising video posted to Kutcher's Instagram account that there was "no place in this world for this kind of unjust attack on humanity."

"I have always considered myself an American, a proud American. I love everything this country has done for myself and my family. But today, I have never been more proud to be a Ukrainian," Kunis added.

Kutcher, Kunis's husband since 2015, also appeared in the video and added: "While we witness the bravery of the people in the country she was born in, we're also witness to the needs of those who have chosen safety."

People wait at a train station as they attempt to evacuate the city on February 24, 2022 in Kyiv, Ukraine. Pierre Crom/Getty Images)

Kutcher later said that the main challenge for organizations on the ground in Ukraine was "logistics" such as securing housing and critical supplies for people who have been displaced by the violence.

"We're raising funds to support a relief effort that will have immediate impact and supply much-needed refugee and humanitarian aid to the area," Kutcher said.

The pair urged people to donate to their GoFundMe page, which has been set up in collaboration with Airbnb as well as the freight company Flexport. The two pledged to match all donations up to $3 million.

Kunis added: "The people of Ukraine are strong and brave but being strong and brave doesn't mean you're not worthy of support."

By Friday, the pair's GoFundMe page has already passed $3 million in donations. Venture Capitalist Ron Conway made a $2.5 million donation to the fundraiser and shared a link to the GoFundMe page on Twitter, voicing his support for their efforts.

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Russian forces attacked Ukraine last week and launched a large-scale, unprovoked invasion. The Russian military entered Ukraine from several directions, with troops headed toward the country's capital, Kyiv, and attacked with airstrikes and shelling.

On Friday morning, Ukrainian officials said Russia had seized Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant  the largest in the country and in Europe.

Read the original article on Insider
Just when fear of the latest COVID-19 variant was waning and long-term planning was starting to seem possible again, February brought unsettling episodes that shattered dreams of lasting peace and normality. Money played a crucial part in these episodes.

In Canada, we saw a Liberal government invoking for the first time the federal Emergencies Act, enacted in 1988, to end disruptions caused by protestors blocking borders and streets with trucks. Among other measures, the government ordered banks, financial institutions and even crypto exchanges to freeze personal and corporate accounts suspected of sending contributions to protestors, eliminating the need to obtain a court order and the risk of later being sued for abuse.

Marcelo M. Prates, a CoinDesk columnist, is a lawyer and researcher helping shape the future of money and payments.

It didnt matter whether you were transferring C$10 (US$7.89) or C$100,000 or paying for legitimate services provided a week ago: Send money to a targeted account and yours might end up frozen, too. A democratic government indiscriminately depriving its citizens of money as a sanction for supporting a protest shouldnt be taken lightly  even after the emergency declaration was revoked. But this action paled in comparison to what was about to happen.

In the last weekend of February, reacting to a dreadful invasion of Ukraine, the U.S. and the European Union, among others, decided to impose sanctions on Russia. By executive order, political leaders decided to prevent the Russian central bank from using hundreds of billions of dollars of its international reserves  an unprecedented move in its breadth and intensity.

These reserves are safe and liquid assets denominated in foreign currencies, usually U.S. Treasury bonds, that a central bank keeps deposited around the world to support its countrys international transactions. Without international reserves, neither the government nor the private sector can import goods or services, from software and clothing to much-needed medicine and consumer goods that arent produced locally.

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Read More: Bitcoiners Were Right: Weaponized Finance Just Created a Post-Dollar Planet

Cutting a countrys access to its international reserves amounts to unplugging it from the rest of the world: The longer the sanction lasts, the more isolated the country becomes and the scarcer essential goods and services get. Its an extreme measure that affects all citizens, no matter their political preferences.

Not your money

Its still early to understand all the implications of these episodes, but some lessons can start to be drawn. First, and perhaps most sobering, money is a weapon that can be used both against fellow citizens and despicable enemies.

As a weapon, money needs better governance. We have to think harder about the powers a money issuer, public or private, has. Should money issuers, from states to stablecoin creators, be able to restrict access to the money we legitimately hold? Under which circumstances?

Read More: Bitcoin Is 'Armageddon Insurance'? | The Node

This concern grows stronger when we realize digital money is the money that matters most. The long lines outside ATMs in Russia and Ukraine are a reminder that banknotes and coins arent always available. Unless you have your mattress permanently stuffed with cash, youll run out of it in no time when times are tough.

In the end, we dont really hold the bulk of our money. Its held for us, somewhere in a computer that can be blocked, hacked or stolen. The technological and institutional protections around this computer represent the thin line that separates monetary order from chaos  and this is true for all digital currencies, from bank deposits and central bank digital currencies (CBDC) to stablecoins and crypto.

Privacy

Second lesson: Monetary anonymity is a fallacy, not a solution. Against the Canadian background, its easy to argue that anonymous money would be the way to go. Wrong. Anonymous money in these circumstances would only give authorities more reasons to broaden their intervention and issue blanket bans.

That doesnt mean we need fully transparent money to satiate the desires of a surveillance state. It means money transactions should run on a system of partial identification and protected identity, following David Birchs ideas. If a decentralized pseudonymous bitcoin (BTC) type of coin seems too far-fetched for any sovereign currency, a decentralized pseudonymous identity should be allowed in money transactions.

Instead of providing your tax identification number and your personal details to open a bank account, for example, youd digitally send the bank a code generated by a decentralized database holding the details of your identity. Every time you needed to prove your identity or a personal detail (like your age, nationality or monthly income), the decentralized database would authenticate your access and release the required information.

But only under certain conditions (say, a court order) would the database disclose your full identity.

A better alternative

Third, cryptocurrencies can offer a way out for those being attacked and also for regular people who disagree with the actions taken by their tyrannical government. Think about a Russian family who doesnt feel safe in Russia anymore or simply doesnt want to pay the price for the governments lunacy. If they hold at least part of their savings in crypto, they have a chance of escape.

Sure, crypto can be volatile and isnt widely accepted or easily used for everyday payments. But try fleeing a country at war with gold in a suitcase or making payments with rubles in a couple of weeks if this tragedy lingers. In these cases, crypto has only to be better than the alternatives  and it is.

See also: Into the Money-verse: Central Banks Under Siege in 2028

Money for enemies

Finally, cryptocurrencies proved they can be valuable also for sovereign governments. The Ukrainian government asked for  and received  financial support via crypto donations. If crypto can provide some relief to a country being brutally attacked by a powerful neighbor, its social value becomes indisputable: it can be used against criminals.

More than that. As the freezing of the Russian international reserves raises doubts about how safe and liquid these reserves ultimately are, central banks might have started pondering if the time to add cryptocurrencies to their reserves portfolio has arrived.

Between securities controlled by foreign governments and cumbersome gold bars, crypto could end up offering a reasonable option.
PRAGUE (Reuters) - Slovakia has registered 90,329 people crossing its border from Ukraine since the Russian invasion began on Feb. 24, police said on Friday.

In the previous 24 hours to Friday morning, 11,279 had crossed, a similar amount to previous days, police said.

(Reporting by Jason Hovet; Editing by Mark Heinrich)
Singapore opens vaccinated travel lane for Vietnam

The Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore (CAAS) announced on March 4 it will launch vaccinated travel lane (VTL)  the quarantine-free travel scheme  for tourists from Vietnam and Greece, starting on March 16.









Passengers from Amsterdam arrive at Changi Airport under Singapores expanded Vaccinated Travel Lane (VTL) quarantine-free travel scheme. (Photo: Reuters)



The decision comes after Vietnam announced it will reopen all borders to international tourism on March 15.



With the launch of the VTL from Vietnam, we will restore two-way quarantine-free travel with Vietnam, which was a popular destination for many Singaporeans pre-COVID, the CAAS said in its statement.



It said those coming from Vietnam can apply for vaccinated travel pass (VTP) online starting at 10.00am on March 13, and this is only required for eligible short-term visitors and work permit holders.



According to VTL regulations, short-term visitors from Vietnam will have to receive full vaccine doses (at least 2 doses), have a vaccine passport, have negative PCR or ART test results 48 hours before entry, and purchase travel insurance with a minimum coverage of SGD30,000 (US$22,000) for COVID-19 treatment in case they get infected.



The VTL scheme has enabled Singapore to safely reopen its borders and at the same time manage public health risks. Since September 8, 2021, Singapore has established VTLs with 30 countries and territories. The CAAS said it will take further steps to expand VTLs to rebuild Singapore as a leading aviation hub.
(Reuters) - The war in Ukraine will cause more deaths and destruction over the coming days, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said on Friday, calling on Russia's President Vladimir Putin to withdraw all troops from Ukraine without conditions.

"The days to come are likely to be worse, with more deaths, more suffering and more destruction," Stoltenberg told reporters after a meeting of the alliance's foreign ministers in Brussels.

(Reporting by Ingrid Melander, Sabine Siebold, Gabriela Baczynska and Bart Meijer, editing by Marine Strauss)
By Dasha Afanasieva, Ted Hesson and Kristina Cooke

(Reuters) - A growing number of Russians and Ukrainians are traveling to Mexico, buying throwaway cars and driving across the border into the United States to seek asylum, a trend that could accelerate as Russia's invasion of Ukraine has forced more than a million people to flee their homes.

U.S. border officials encountered about 6,400 Russians in the four months between October 2021 and January of this year, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) data show. That's more than the roughly 4,100 apprehended during the entire 2021 fiscal year, which ended Sept. 30. The jump is similar for Ukrainians, with a little more than 1,000 apprehended since October 2021 through January, compared to about 680 for all of the last fiscal year.

These migrants account for a slim fraction of the 670,000 apprehensions made by U.S. border agents in the first months of the 2022 fiscal year, CBP figures show. The majority of those stopped were from Mexico and Central America and were swiftly removed from the United States.

Yet almost all the Russians and Ukrainians have been allowed to remain while they pursue asylum claims, and their presence has been notable at border-area shelters aimed at helping newcomers.

Since June, Russians have consistently been among the top three nationalities arriving at a San Diego shelter, according to data published by the San Diego Rapid Response Network, a coalition of nonprofits, attorneys and community leaders. Last week, Ukrainians were the third most-common nationality among arrivals.

The CBP figures include only migrants who arrived before Russia's Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine. But one current and one former border official who spoke with Reuters on condition of anonymity said there could be further increases as the fighting has intensified.

More than 1 million refugees have already fled Ukraine amid an onslaught of Russian tanks, troops and missiles that Russia has dubbed a "special operation." Most have headed to neighboring European countries. But the sheer speed and size of the exodus will exert tremendous pressure on these hosts and likely push some further afield.

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Russian President Vladimir Putin, meanwhile, has cracked down on dissent at home by jailing anti-war protesters and closing independent news outlets. Powerful financial sanctions by Western countries are already hammering Russian citizens, adding to migration pressures there.

Would-be migrants from Ukraine and Russia are swapping tips on social media on how to make the journey to the U.S. southern border via Mexico to claim asylum.

Russian dissident Dmitriy Zubarev made that trek last year. A civil rights lawyer, Zubarev had worked on the presidential campaign of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who is currently jailed. Spooked by the growing crackdown on dissent, Zubarev fled after Navalny's organizations were labeled "extremist" by the Russian government.

Zubarev told Reuters he boarded a plane in June 2021 from Moscow to Cancun, Mexico, then flew to Tijuana at the U.S border where he boarded a minivan with 11 other migrants. As soon as he crossed over, he said he asked for asylum and was released to pursue his case. Zubarev currently resides in Connecticut. He predicted more Russians would follow.

"Repression is intensifying and the people coming out to protest the war are treated very harshly," Zubarev told Reuters. "There will be more people trying to use refugee routes to escape the bad situation in the country."

The Russian government did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Zubarev.

The Russian Embassy in an emailed statement said it was "very concerned" about what it characterized as "detention" of alleged Russian citizens at the U.S.-Mexico border near San Diego, and that it had contacted the U.S. State Department to verify their identities.

The State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

U.S. President Joe Biden and his top officials have said they strongly support Ukrainians as well as Russians who have taken to the streets to protest the invasion.

But his administration so far is playing a secondary role to Europe when it comes to the refugee crisis, and has said it expects most fleeing Ukrainians to head to European nations.

The Biden administration on Thursday said it was granting temporary deportation relief and work permits to tens of thousands of Ukrainians already in the United States as of March 1.

At a congressional hearing on Wednesday, Representative Lou Correa, a Democrat from California, said he was taken aback by the number of Russian and Ukrainian migrants arriving by car when he visited the San Ysidro port of entry between San Diego and Tijuana about a month ago.

A border agent pointed out 20 cars that had been pulled over, saying they were full of Ukrainian and Russian migrants, Correa recalled.

"This problem is not going away," Correa said.

YOUTUBE, TELEGRAM TIPS

Under a pandemic-era U.S. policy known as Title 42, most migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border are rapidly expelled without a chance to claim asylum.

Those arriving on foot at official pedestrian crossings are usually turned back before they reach American soil. Vehicles are stopped less frequently.

Thus, some migrants are buying cheap cars in Mexico to enhance their chances of getting across the U.S. border to make their claims, according to former U.S. Border Patrol Chief Rodney Scott. "It's a way to jump the line," he said.

In December, CBP said 18 Russian migrants sped towards the San Ysidro port of entry in two cars. A CBP officer shot at the vehicles, striking one which collided with the other, according to a Dec. 14 CBP statement. Two of the migrants suffered minor head injuries, the agency said. At the same time, a third car carrying eight Russian nationals made it into the United States, the statement said.

Migrants who claim they've gained entry to the United States via Mexico are now sharing tips with hopefuls on Russian YouTube and through private group chats on secure apps like Telegram.

There they describe routes and share names and numbers of contacts who can help them procure cars. In a recent exchange in one Russian-language Telegram group, viewed by Reuters, a chat member said "helpers" charge at least $1,500 per person to provide a car. Another was trying to find a seat in a car for his Ukrainian mother.

Some Russians and Ukrainians have also tried crossing between ports of entry. In the early morning hours of Jan. 22 near Yuma, Arizona, a Reuters photographer saw a young Ukrainian couple with twin baby girls and a boy turn themselves over to U.S. border agents and ask for asylum.

Jessica Bolter, an immigration expert at the Washington-based Migration Policy Institute, said the relatively high approval rates for both Russian and Ukrainian asylum seekers in U.S. immigration courts could prove a lure for others.

Government data from the 2022 fiscal year show that about three-quarters of Russians and half of Ukrainians who had applied earlier for asylum were ultimately successful in court, though such cases can take years to process in the backlogged U.S. system.

The Mexico route is also attractive because it's relatively easy for Russians and Ukrainians to obtain visas to fly to Mexico as tourists, then head for the U.S. border, Bolter said. U.S. tourist visa requirements are much more stringent.

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said on Monday that his country is committed to supporting Ukrainian refugees.

"We are not going to close the country," he said.

RISKS OF STAYING 'TOO GREAT'

Zubarev, the Russian dissident, said he was the deputy coordinator for Navalny's campaign headquarters in the city of Vladivostok in 2017. That year, agents from Russia's federal security service searched Zubarev's apartment, according to a complaint he filed with the European Court of Human Rights which was viewed by Reuters.

Zubarev said in an interview that when Navalny's movement was designated as extremist last year by the Russian government, "my legs buckled from under me. I knew what would happen next," he said. "It was just a matter of time before the risks to my personal safety became too great."

Several of his fellow activists had traveled to the United States via Mexico before him, and shared the route they took, he said. After he arrived in Mexico, he took a couple of days to rest in a hotel in Cancun, before heading to the border. There, he connected with other Russians looking to cross into the United States.

Zubarev would not say how the group obtained the car, but Reuters spoke with an intermediary who has helped Russians find vehicles in Tijuana.

"It's different with them than other migrants, because they have more resources," the intermediary said.

After asking for U.S. asylum, Zubarev said he was detained for 53 hours in a frigid border station cell with about 15 other migrants.

After making his way to Connecticut, he dusted off his engineering background and started a business working with fiber optic cables as he waits for his case to be decided.

(Reporting by Dasha Afanasieva in London, Ted Hesson in Washington, and Kristina Cooke in San Francisco; additional reporting by Lizbeth Diaz and Laura Gottesdiener in Mexico City, and Go Nakamura in Yuma, Arizona; editing by Mica Rosenberg and Marla Dickerson)
RANDOLPH, NJ  As the coronavirus's presence continues to decline from the omicron wave's peak, Morris County will soon close its COVID-19 testing facility. The site at the County College of Morris will shutter March 11 "due to a continuing decline in public requests for tests," the county government said.

Morris County initially opened the testing center in 2020, offering hundreds of tests per day. But declining demand prompted the county to close the site in July.

The county, however, reopened the facility in early January as the omicron variant's presence peaked and demand for COVID-19 tests soared.

"We are meeting the increased demand of our residents for more testing facilities, and we want to take a tremendous burden off local hospitals where emergency room personnel have been overwhelmed by people walking in hoping to find tests," County Commissioner Director Stephen H. Shaw said when the site reopened.

The facility offered nearly 1,000 tests daily, but the virus's local and statewide presence has significantly diminished since. Morris County hit a pandemic high of 1,775 new cases Jan. 7 but has only averaged 45.7 infections per day in the past week, according to the New Jersey Department of Health.

Click here to make an appointment at the Morris County site or to find other local testing centers.

Thanks for reading. Have a news tip? Email josh.bakan@patch.com. Subscribe to your local Patch newsletter.



This article originally appeared on the Morristown Patch
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's husband Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has publicly disclosed a batch of stock trades made by her husband in January.

According to the disclosure, Paul Pelosi's new investments include $2.9 million in Apple, Walt Disney, PayPal, and Amex shares.

A House panel is due to debate a congressional stock trading ban that could include lawmakers' spouses.

Nancy Pelosi has publicly disclosed her husband's investments in January, which include $2.9 million worth of American Express, Apple, PayPal, and Walt Disney stocks.

According to a periodic transaction report dated Monday, Pelosi's husband invested between $250,000 and $500,000 in asset management firm AllianceBernstein. Under the STOCK Act, lawmakers must disclose stock transactions  be it their own or of family members  within 45 days.

The disclosure comes amid calls by lawmakers for members of Congress and their spouses to be barred from trading individual stocks. On Thursday, Insider's Kimberly Leonard reported that a US House panel plans to meet on March 16 to debate a congressional stock trading ban.

Punchbowl News reported in February that Pelosi was working on the ban. While she rejected the idea of a ban in December, she changed course the following month, signaling that she would be okay with letting lawmakers decide for themselves about it.

However, Pelosi has been largely noncommital on whether spouses should be included in any proposed ban.

The upcoming House panel meeting follows the release of Insider's "Conflicted Congress" report  a five-month investigation that found that dozens of lawmakers and at least 182 senior congressional staffers had failed to comply with the reporting requirements of the STOCK Act.

Pelosi's husband, financier Paul Pelosi, has been lauded as a star stock-picker for his winning trades, even prompting TikTokers to mimic his investments. His holdings in corporations  including Slack, Tesla, Alphabet, Facebook, and Netflix  have placed his wife in the 13th spot on Insider's list of 25 wealthiest members of Congress.

Read the original article on Business Insider
A man ringing the doorbell at the Ukrainian Embassy in London on March 2. Joshua Zitser/Insider

Insider spoke with men who visited Ukraine's embassy in London to volunteer to fight against Russia.

These men hope to join Ukraine's voluntary International Legion of Territorial Defense.

President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Thursday that 16,000 people worldwide had joined the legion.

Young men are turning up at the gates of Ukraine's embassy in Holland Park, west London, eager to become recruits in President Volodymyr Zelensky's newly formed International Legion of Territorial Defense of Ukraine.

UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said on Sunday that she supported British nationals joining the "struggle." Prime Minister Boris Johnson's office later distanced itself from the comment, stressing that the Foreign Office advised against travel to Ukraine.

Despite this warning, several men told Insider that they were fully aware of the dangers and, nonetheless, were ready to fly out to Ukraine and fight as soon as they were needed.

Andrew Luke, 33, standing outside the Ukrainian Embassy in London on March 2. Joshua Zitser/Insider

On Wednesday morning, Andrew Luke, 33, drove 130 miles from Cardiff, Wales, to volunteer his services to the International Legion of Territorial Defense of Ukraine.

The unemployed father of two, who said he had a year's worth of experience in the British Army Reserve, said he was prepared to leave for Ukraine as soon as this weekend.

"NATO isn't doing anything about it, so the only thing we can do is take up arms and do it ourselves," he said.

Luke, who had traveled to the embassy in London to find out more information about signing up, said he planned to fly to Poland and cross the border into Ukraine imminently.

Upon arriving, as with every other would-be recruit, he was silently presented with a sheet of paper at the gates that detailed how he could join the legion, and he was instructed to take a photo of it, he said.

A handout from Ukraine's embassy in London on how to join the foreign legion. Joshua Zitser/Insider

The paper outlined how one could apply to a volunteer legion by emailing the embassy, and it advised that impatient recruits could book flights to Poland themselves and cross the border into Ukraine with the help of volunteers.

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Luke said he was willing to do "whatever it takes" to support Ukraine because he was worried about the possibility of World War III and his young children one day living under a "Putin regime."

"I fear for their future," he said.

'I'm a young, fit man, and I can do my bit'

Callum Lawrence, a 22-year-old boxer and construction worker from London, said he was also motivated to join the foreign legion because he was scared of what the war between Russia and Ukraine could mean for the UK.

He said he had a "gut feeling" to join the International Legion of Territorial Defense after hearing about it on the news and seeing footage of women and children dying.

"I'm a young, fit man," he said. "I can go and do my bit."

Although Lawrence had no military experience, he said he thought he could be of use to Ukraine. "I'm a boxer, MMA, so I've got a bit of hand-to-hand-combat experience," he said.

Vinnie Baldwin outside Ukraine's embassy in London on March 2. Joshua Zitser/Insider

Vinnie Baldwin, 26, also thought his skills could come in handy.

Baldwin underwent extensive first-aid training as part of his job in the nightclub industry, he said. He could help "patch people up" and was willing to leave for Ukraine ASAP, he added.

He said he was also willing to take on a combat role should that be requested of him. "If they need to shove a rifle in my hands and put me on the front, then that's what they need to do," he said.

The nightclub worker said he'd do whatever he was asked to do to help Ukraine withstand the Russian invasion. "It's better than sitting with my thumb up my ass," he said.

'I hope there's some kind of training'

Another potential recruit said joining the legion would give him a purpose.

"I feel like I'm not doing anything meaningful with my life," said a 20-year-old pizzeria worker while standing outside the embassy's gates.

"Seeing the situation over there, it looks terrible. And personally, I have no combat experience, but I wanted to come here and see if I could get information to see if I could help out in any way," he continued.

The pizzeria worker said his preference would be to help Ukraine by ferrying provisions in a truck. "I hope they don't just give you a gun and say, 'Go fight,'" he added. "I hope there's some kind of training."

The 20-year-old asked not to be photographed or named because he hadn't yet told his family that he was thinking of joining the Ukrainians. Asked what his parents would think, he said, "They'd probably be horrified."

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Matt Dunham/AFP via Getty Images

Some 16,000 foreigners have volunteered to fight for Ukraine, Zelensky said on Thursday.

Most of the fighters came from post-Soviet states, such as Georgia and Belarus, The Washington Post reported.

But people from across the globe have signed up.

Hundreds of residents of the Netherlands have volunteered to fight for Ukraine, Dutch media reported. About 70 Japanese men, mostly former members of the Self-Defense Forces, have applied to join the fight, Japan Today reported.

And, The Times reported, "hundreds of Britons" have written to the Ukrainian Embassy to volunteer their services.

Zelensky's International Legion of Territorial Defense of Ukraine has historical echoes with the International Brigades that fought against the fascist-aligned nationalist forces and defended democracy in the Spanish Civil War between 1936 and 1939. An international organization of communists (Comintern) established the International Brigades, in which up to 60,000 foreigners served, including 15,000 who died in combat.

Read the original article on Business Insider
A fire broke out in a building outside of a nuclear power facility in eastern Ukraine on Friday morning local time amid fighting between Ukrainian and Russian military forces, the Ukraine state emergency services said in a statement.

The building that caught fire was a training facility outside the perimeter of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant complex, according to the statement, which was reported by Reuters. The station is the largest nuclear power plant in Europe and supplies about 25 percent of Ukraines electricity, according to the Associated Press.

A Ukrainian official said there was no damage to the nuclear reactors themselves, in comments to the AP.

The International Atomic Energy posted on Twitter that Ukraines regulator said there is no change in radiation levels at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. Additionally, Ukraine told the IAEA that there was no damage to essential equipment.

#Ukraine tells IAEA that fire at site of #Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant has not affected essential equipment, plant personnel taking mitigatory actions.  IAEA  International Atomic Energy Agency (@iaeaorg) March 4, 2022

Earlier in the day, Dmytro Orlov, the mayor of the town of Energodar near the Zaporizhzhia plant, accused Russian forces of shelling the facility.

As a result of relentless shelling by the enemy of the buildings and blocks of the largest nuclear power plant in Europe, the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant is on fire!!! Orlov wrote on Facebook in a post cited by CNN.

We demand that they stop the heavy-weapons fire, Orlov said in a video posted on Telegram and cited by the AP. There is a real threat of nuclear danger in the biggest atomic-energy station in Europe.

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Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm posted on Twitter that as result of the incident, the U.S. Department of Energy has activated its Nuclear Incident Response Team to monitor the situation.

We have seen no elevated radiation readings near the facility, Granholm said. The plants reactors are protected by robust containment structures and reactors are being safely shut down.

The plants reactors are protected by robust containment structures and reactors are being safely shut down. 3/3  Secretary Jennifer Granholm (@SecGranholm) March 4, 2022

President Biden and Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky spoke by phone on Thursday regarding the incident, the White House said in a statement.

President Biden joined President Zelenskyy in urging Russia to cease its military activities in the area and allow firefighters and emergency responders to access the site, the White House said.

Senator Marco Rubio (R., Fla.), the ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, earlier posted messages on Twitter about the alleged attack.

Russian soldiers have breached the main building of the Zaporizhzhia nuke plant in Ukraine, Rubio posted in one tweet. Active firefight is going on inside a facility that is already on fire and controls 6 reactors. Firefighters unable to fight the fire because they are in the middle of a combat zone.

Russian soldiers have breached the main building of the #Zaporizhzhia nuke plant in #Ukraine Active firefight is going on inside a facility that is already on fire and controls 6 reactors Firefighters unable to fight the fire because they are in the middle of a combat zone  Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) March 4, 2022

However, Rubio also cautioned that an accurate assessment of the danger of a leak, if any, will not be available for hours.

There is all sorts of contradictory information from officials in #Ukraine This is understandable given the fact their country is being invaded and at war An accurate damage assessment and determination about the danger of a leak, if any, will not be available for hours https://t.co/FvqiZCWKRV  Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) March 4, 2022

Earlier on Thursday, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency expressed concerns about the threat of fighting around the Zaporizhzhia power plant.

Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi appealed for an immediate halt to the use of force at Enerhodar and called on the military forces operating there to refrain from violence near the nuclear power plant, according to an IAEA statement.

Editors note 10:12 p.m.: This article was updated with additional information and comments regarding the incident at Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.

More from National Review
A school administrator and resource officer were injured when shots were fired at Olathe East High School, police said on Twitter.

CRITICAL INCIDENT: Olathe East High School. School Resource Officer Shot and injured, Administrator Shot and injured, police said in the post on Twitter. Occurred in Office Area. Suspect in custody. Stand by on reunification area. No active threat at this time.

The injured school resource officer reported that three people had been shot and injured: himself, an assistant school principal and the suspect, who is a student and was shot in the abdomen, according to radio traffic captured by Broadcastify.com.

Both the injured school administrator and the school resource officer are expected to survive, Olathe police spokesman Sgt. Joel Yeldell said in a briefing Friday.

Shortly before 2 p.m., Overland Park Regional Hospital said they were treating the three men who had been shot. One was in critical condition, one was in critical but stable condition and the third was stable.

Around 3:30 p.m., the hospital said two men had been discharged while the third remained in critical condition.

The high school, located at 14545 W 127th St., is one of five high schools in the Olathe School District. The school has roughly 2,000 students. The district, which is in the suburbs of Kansas City, has fewer than 30,000 students enrolled.

Shortly after the shooting, Olathe Superintendent Brent Yeager sent a message to families of Olathe East that said:

I want to make you aware of a situation that is currently happening. Olathe East is currently under lock down due to an active shooting situation on campus. Please know that law enforcement is on site and the building is secured. Olathe East and surrounding school buildings have been secured.

Parents and families were directed to reunite with their children at California Trail Middle School at 13775 W. 133rd Street, the school district announced.

Bus riders will come home on buses from the Pioneer Trail Middle School, just a few blocks from the high school campus, and student drivers will be released in groups and escorted to vehicles to drive themselves home.

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Police previously directed parents and guardians to Family Video or Frontier Park near the campus and, within minutes of the announcement, dozens of parents began flooding those locations.

Roads leading to the school were blocked by several police agencies from the metro.

Parent Ryan Forshee said he rushed to the school from his job at Catholic Charities after his daughter reached out to his wife.

Ryan Forshee, right, who went to check on his daughter who is a freshman at Olathe East High School, meets with a police officer near 127th and South Black Bob in Olathe after reports of a shooting at the school.

She texted, dont freak out but were in lockdown in Advisory. She said there had been a shooting and that an administrator had been shot as well as an SRO officer.

He said he thought, Ive got to get to my kid. I have to make sure my kid is safe.

He came to the back end of the school, as other parents did, and approached two police officers at Alden Street and 128th Terrace. The officer told him that parents would soon be able to pick up their children at Family Video nearby.

Neil Moore, head down, waits with other Olathe East High School parents for their kids at a reunification site at 127th and South Blackbob Friday after a shooting at the school. He was talking to his freshman son on the phone when it happened, he says his son didnt hear anything about a shooting but heard an announcement that the school was on lockdown.

The officer told Forshee the shooting was an isolated incident and heard officers say that a suspect was in custody.

Special agents with the Kansas City office of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives had responded to the shooting and were providing assistance with the investigation into the shooting.

This is a developing story and will be updated as soon as more information becomes available.
Welcome to the Joey Brunk show  sort of.

The Ohio State basketball team was without big men Zed Key and Kyle Young Thursday night because of injuries, and that means Brunk got a little extra playing time against Michigan State. And he made the most of it, helping lead the Buckeyes to an important 80-69 victory.

Brunk had a stat line to dream of. He scored 18 points, pulled down 6 rebounds, and forced 2 steals in a season-high 32 minutes of play. Were pretty sure Brunk was not circled on the Spartans game plan as a player to stop, but good on him for giving OSU a lift when the Buckeyes needed it the most.

For the rest of the Ohio State players, what a difference a couple of days make. The Buckeyes came out much more energized and engaged just a couple of days away from looking flat and uninterested in a shocking loss to last place Nebraska in the Schott while shooting just 38.6% from the floor.

OSU shot the ball much better on Thursday night, knocking down 29-of-53 shots for 54.7%. That mark included a much better 9-of-20 (45.0%) showing from beyond the arc.

Despite Brunks unbelievable night, it was actually freshman Malaki Branham that led all scorers with 22 points. He had a very effective 9-of-16 night from the floor that included a sensational left-handed jam over to Michigan State defenders. But that wasnt all. E.J. Liddell (19 points) and Jamari Wheeler (16 points) also filled it up tonight to make it four Buckeyes in double figures.

To sum up our night #Team123 pic.twitter.com/nJXR7TD7ex  Ohio State Hoops (@OhioStateHoops) March 4, 2022

Bottom line  it was a much more polished effort that should give Ohio State fans a little more hope of what might be lying in wait for the upcoming postseason. OSU now sits at 19-9 overall and remains in a tie with Iowa for fourth place in the Big Ten with a 12-7 conference record.

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If the Buckeyes can beat Michigan on Sunday at home and Iowa loses at Illinois this weekend, they will have clinched a double-bye in the Big Ten Tournament.

It is March after all.

Contact/Follow us @BuckeyesWire on Twitter, and like our page on Facebook to follow ongoing coverage of Ohio State news, notes, and opinion. Follow Phil Harrison on Twitter.

Let us know your thoughts, comment on this story below. Join the conversation today.
Oliver H. Radkey, my professor of Russian history at the University of Texas in the 1970s, enjoyed taking out of a cabinet a bust of Vladimir Lenin and placing it in the trash can.

Lenin was of course a leader in the 1917 Russian Revolution which overthrew Tsarist rule and imposed severe Communist rule. An example of severe  millions died under Josef Stalins dictatorship, by execution, famine, neglect. We know this because once the Soviet Union collapsed more than thirty years ago, many documents were declassified and scholars were given access. They have developed a classification of deaths.

LEFT: Edward Taborsky RIGHT: Oliver H. Radkey

Radkey, who was from Edna, Texas, had gone to Moscow as a young man to conduct research for his dissertation. When returning from dinner one evening he found his hotel room ransacked and all his research material gone. But his problems with the Soviet dictatorship ran deeper than resentment and for decades he would relay to his students its faults and the dangers it posed to the world.

More: Port CEO: Staff monitoring Russia-Ukraine conflict daily, preparing for market shifts

Edward Taborsky, my professor of government and politics of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, would have been a favorite of Ronald Reagan who coined the phrase "evil empire" in describing the Soviet Union. One of Reagan's famous speeches took place at the Berlin Wall where he demanded Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. Presidents Reagan and George H. W. Bush oversaw the dismantling of that evil empire.

In his lectures Taborsky took punches at that empire. He was from Prague, Czechoslovakia, had fled before the Nazis arrived, and fled again as part of the Czech government when Stalin was installing puppet regimes in Eastern Europe. Taborsky taught us a phrase popular in Russia that is still with me. It uses the words Pravda, Izvestia and nyet. Pravda means the truth and is the name of the Moscow newspaper. Izvestia is the word for news. Nyet means no. It varies in delivery, but generally goes  Pravda nyet Izvestia, Izvestia nyet Pravda, meaning  the truth isnt the news, and the news isnt the truth. Systematic of unchecked dictatorial rule.

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Taborsky observed firsthand what a timid response to Nazi Germanys invasion of Poland in 1939 led to.

I can imagine what these gentlemen would have to say about the Russian war in Ukraine. They would be disgusted, but perhaps not surprised. But they would also be shocked to learn that some Americans, including politicians, support Putin.

Today you can find I stand with Russia postings on Facebook. Free speech, of course, but nonetheless disturbing to those of us who see Putins aggression as perhaps part of a long-term effort to regain control of Eastern Europe and impose totalitarian rule. He has lamented the collapse of the Soviet Union.

We have come a long way from 1976 when during a presidential debate Gerald Ford denied Soviet domination of Eastern Europe. What was he thinking? Then such a statement was significantly damaging to a political campaign.

More: How a Texas war veteran carried the fight over burn pit exposure to the U.S. Supreme Court

Support for Putin would appear to condone or accept totalitarian rule. In the case of Russia and whatever satellite states it might manage to incorporate would be that on a grand scale  a threat to the United States and to world stability. Putin has already helped to destabilize Syria, throwing large numbers of refugees into an unprepared Western Europe.

Judging from Putins style of totalitarianism and aggression we should expect the same from him as his Soviet predecessors.

Herb Canales is a fifth-generation Corpus Christi resident. He served as the city of Corpus Christi's library director for 27 years.

This article originally appeared on Corpus Christi Caller Times: OPINION: A view of Russia from past University of Texas lectures
Photograph: Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP/Getty Images

Lindsey Graham has attracted widespread condemnation after the South Carolina senator suggested Vladimir Putin should be assassinated in order to end Russias invasion of Ukraine.

Graham first made the suggestion in an appearance on Fox News host Sean Hannitys show on Thursday evening, and he then repeated the idea in a tweet that quickly went viral.

Is there a Brutus in Russia? Is there a more successful Colonel Stauffenberg in the Russian military? The only way this ends is for somebody in Russia to take this guy out, Graham said on Twitter. You would be doing your country  and the world  a great service.

Brutus refers to one of the assassins of the Roman emperor Julius Caesar, and Stauffenberg was a German army officer who was executed for attempting to kill Adolf Hitler in 1944.

Graham added in a separate tweet: The only people who can fix this are the Russian people. Easy to say, hard to do. Unless you want to live in darkness for the rest of your life, be isolated from the rest of the world in abject poverty, and live in darkness you need to step up to the plate.

Despite immediate criticism of Grahams comments from left and right in the US, he doubled down on the idea in a Friday morning interview with Fox & Friends. Im hoping somebody in Russia will understand that he is destroying Russia, and you need to take this guy out by any means possible, Graham said.

Is there a Brutus in Russia? Is there a more successful Colonel Stauffenberg in the Russian military?



The only way this ends is for somebody in Russia to take this guy out.



You would be doing your country - and the world - a great service.  Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) March 4, 2022

Russian officials also attacked Grahams comments as criminal and demanded that the US government provide an explanation for his rhetoric.

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The degree of Russophobia and hatred in the United States towards Russia is off the scale, the Russian ambassador to the US, Anatoly Antonov, said in a Facebook post. It is impossible to believe that a senator of a country that promotes its moral values as a guiding star for all mankind could afford to call for terrorism as a way to achieve Washingtons goals in the international arena.

American lawmakers of both parties responded to Grahams comments with shock, dismay and outrage, pointing out the danger in demanding the assassination of a leader whose troops are currently engaged in shelling nuclear plants.

I really wish our members of Congress would cool it and regulate their remarks as the administration works to avoid [a third world war], the progressive congresswoman Ilhan Omar said in a tweet. As the world pays attention to how the US and [its] leaders are responding, Lindseys remarks and remarks made by some House members arent helpful.

The Democratic senator Brian Schatz added, I have seen at least a half a dozen insane tweets tonight. Please everyone keep your wits about you.

I really wish our members of Congress would cool it and regulate their remarks as the administration works to avoid WWlll. As the world pays attention to how the US and its leaders are responding, Lindseys remarks and remarks made by some House members arent helpful.  Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) March 4, 2022

Republican members of Congress were no less critical, as Senator Ted Cruz derided Grahams suggestion as an exceptionally bad idea. Use massive economic sanctions; BOYCOTT Russian oil [and] gas; and provide military aid so the Ukrainians can defend themselves, Cruz said. But we should not be calling for the assassination of heads of state.

Even Marjorie Taylor Greene  the extremist congresswoman who has sparked outrage for, among other things, comparing coronavirus-related restrictions to the treatment of Jewish people during the Holocaust  chimed in from the right with criticism of Graham.

While we are all praying for peace [and] for the people of Ukraine, this is irresponsible, dangerous [and] unhinged. We need leaders with calm minds [and] steady wisdom, Greene said on Twitter. Not blood thirsty warmongering politicians trying to tweet tough by demanding assassinations. Americans dont want war.

Experts in Russian politics argued that Grahams suggestion was not only irresponsible but also unrealistic. Bill Browder, the financier whose work against Russian corruption led to the Magnitsky Act of 2012, described Putin as probably the most paranoid man in the world.

Hes a very little man. Hes very scared of everybody, and hes very vindictive. And so hes constantly looking around for betrayal, Browder told CNN on Friday. I dont think that theres going to be a palace coup because hes looking to try to stop it.

At the daily White House media briefing, the White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, said: We are not advocating for killing the leader of a foreign country or regime change. That is not the policy of the United States.




It's Thursday, welcome to Overnight Defense & National Security, your nightly guide to the latest developments at the Pentagon, on Capitol Hill and beyond. Subscribe here: thehill.com/newsletter-signup.

The White House is asking for $10 billion for security, economic aid and additional humanitarian assistance for Ukraine in response to Russia's invasion of the country.

We'll break down the proposal, plus the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol making its most serious accusation to date against former President Trump.

For The Hill, I'm Jordan Williams. Write to me with tips at jwilliams@thehill.com.

Let's get started.

Biden administration seeks Ukraine aid

The White House on Wednesday formally asked Congress to authorize $10 billion in additional humanitarian, economic and security assistance for Ukraine and allies in central Europe to respond to Russia's invasion of the country.

The request is meant to address the immediate, short-term needs related to the crisis in Europe caused by Russia's large-scale invasion, which began last week, the administration said.

This was supposed to be smaller: Democrats and Republicans have signaled support for additional assistance for Ukraine in the wake of Russia's invasion.

As of Friday, the White House was eyeing $6.4 billion in additional funding for Ukraine, but that figure increased this week.

Into the numbers: White House Office of Management and Budget acting director Shalanda Young broke down the funding request in a letter to Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif) dated March 2. It asks for $4.8 billion for the Pentagon to support U.S. troop deployments to NATO countries and to provide additional military equipment to Ukraine.

The Biden administration is asking for $5 billion for the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) for security, economic aid and humanitarian assistance to Ukraine and allies on NATO's eastern flank. Of that funding, $2.75 billion would go toward humanitarian assistance to provide food and support for Ukrainians displaced by the conflict.

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Additionally, the White House is also asking for $21 million in additional funding for the Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security to increase enforcement of export control restrictions imposed on Russia and analyze Russian economic vulnerabilities and any U.S. supply chain vulnerabilities.

The request also includes $59 million for a new Justice Department task force to enforce sanctions on Russian oligarchs and $91 million for the Treasury Department to bolster the agency's work on Russia sanctions.

Finally, $30 million would go to the Energy Department to support the integration of Ukraine's electric grid with the European Union's own network.

STATE OF THE WAR

It's been one week since Russian President Vladimir Putin declared a "special military operation," essentially beginning his country's invasion of Ukraine.

Late Wednesday evening, Russia took control of Kherson, the first major Ukrainian city to fall since the war began. Igor Kolykhaev, the mayor of the city, told The New York Times that 300 civilians and defense troops may have been killed during the takeover.

A senior defense official said Thursday that Russia has launched over 480 missiles since the invasion started, with forces showing a "willingness to hit civilian infrastructure on purpose."

UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi said Thursday that over 1 million people have already fled Ukraine, "uprooted by this senseless war."

A second round of talks between both sides ended on Thursday with an agreement on humanitarian corridors for civilians.

Something to watch: The U.S. has imposed sanctions on Russia and Belarus for their roles in Moscow's war with Ukraine. But the Biden administration is also weighing sanctions on India for its Russian military stockpiles, a State Department official told Congress.

Donald Lu, the assistant secretary of State for South Asian affairs, told lawmakers in a hearing that the administration is weighing how threatening India's historically close military relationship with Russia is to U.S. security.

"It's a question we're looking at very closely, as the administration is looking at the broader question over whether to apply sanctions under CAATSA or to waive those sanctions," Lu said.

The Countering American Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA), passed in 2017 in the wake of the Kremlin's interference in U.S. elections, includes the authority to sanction transactions with Russian defense or intelligence sectors.

Read more coverage of the Russia-Ukraine conflict:

White House asks Congress to approve additional $10B in Ukraine-related aid

Lawmakers want House to stay in session to pass Ukraine aid

US, Russia set up military communication line to prevent accidental clash

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Jan. 6 panel asserts 'criminal conspiracy'

Former President Trump may have committed a crime in his effort to keep the 2020 presidential election results from being certified, the House committee investigating the attack on the Capitol said in a court filing Wednesday evening.

The accusations are the most serious that the committee has leveled against Trump so far. The allegations are not formal charges, nor do they indicate that the former president could face a criminal prosecution, but they signal that the committee has set its sights at the highest levels in probing what led up to the Capitol riot.

The allegation in detail: The panel said that Trump and Eastman had worked together to try to convince then-Vice President Mike Pence to obstruct Congress's certification of the Electoral College votes.

"Had this effort succeeded, the electoral count would have been obstructed, impeded, influenced, and (at the very least) delayed, all without any genuine legal justification and based on the false pretense that the election had been stolen. There is no genuine question that the President and Plaintiff attempted to accomplish this specific illegal result," the committee wrote in its filing.

The committee also claims it "has a good-faith basis for concluding that the President and members of his Campaign engaged in a criminal conspiracy to defraud the United States."

Where this came from: The development came in the committee's legal battle to compel documents from John Eastman, the lawyer charged with drafting the strategy for the Jan. 6 certification.

Eastman is seeking to block committee's subpoena for his private communications, which he has argued are privileged, in part because of his legal work on behalf of the former president.

But the committee argues that Eastman, an attorney for the Trump campaign, may not claim his conversations with the former president are covered by attorney-client privilege, partly because legal advice rendered with the intention of committing a crime is not protected.

Their filing on Wednesday asked the judge to review requested records personally in order to determine whether they fall under the crime-fraud exception to attorney-client privilege.

It's still unclear how the judge in the case will rule on Eastman's privilege claims. A hearing for the case is scheduled for Tuesday.

DISSECTING THE FILING

The filing includes depositions with a number of high-ranking former Trump officials, including those who worked for former Vice President Mike Pence, like his national security adviser Keith Kellogg and Pence's White House counsel Greg Jacob, who opposed plans to have Pence buck his ceremonial duties to certify the election results.

The documents also include heated emails between Eastman and Jacob, who criticized him for forwarding legal advice that "functioned as a serpent in the ear of the President of the United States."

It also includes a transcript of the deposition with Eastman, during which he invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination 146 times. He has also been ordered by the court to review 1,500 of his emails a day for content that might be covered by executive privilege.

Read the full story here.

House-passed bill addresses toxic burn pits

The House on Thursday passed legislation that would expand access to health care for veterans exposed to toxins, such as chemicals emanating from burn pits, during their military service.

Lawmakers passed the bill largely along party lines, 256-174. Thirty-four Republicans joined Democrats in support.

The bill would expand VA health care eligibility for veterans exposed to toxic burn pits by establishing a presumption of service connection for about two dozen types of respiratory illnesses - like chronic bronchitis and asthma - and cancers.

About burn pits: It's estimated that about 3.5 million U.S. service members have been exposed to burn pits, according to the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA), a nonprofit veterans organization. A survey from IAVA found that 86 percent of its members reported exposure to burn pits or other toxics, with 89 percent reporting symptoms that might have been caused by that exposure.

President Biden said during his State of the Union address that his late son, Beau, may have developed cancer from his exposure to a burn pit while serving in Iraq.

Such burn pits were often used at military sites in Iraq and Afghanistan to incinerate garbage like human waste, munitions, plastics, jet fuel and paint.

"They came home, many of the world's fittest and best trained warriors in the world, never the same," Biden said. "Headaches. Numbness. Dizziness. A cancer that would put them in a flag-draped coffin."

Other efforts to help exposed veterans: Passage of the bill came two days after Biden announced during his State of the Union address that the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) will add nine respiratory cancers to its list of service-connected disabilities to expand benefits eligibility for affected veterans.

Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee Chairman Jon Tester (D-Mont.) introduced more comprehensive legislation similar to what passed in the House on Thursday that would create new presumptions of service connection for veterans exposed to toxins and boost federal research into toxic exposures.

It's expected that the House and Senate will ultimately reconcile those measures and send a combined package for Biden's signature.

Read the full story here.

TOXIC WATER VICTIMS PUSH FOR JUSTICE

Tucked into Thursday's legislation was a bill that could allow military families to seek justice for decades of water contamination at Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune in North Carolina passed with bipartisan support as part of a broad piece of toxics legislation in the House on Thursday morning.

If the legislation goes on to receive Senate approval and become law, the Camp Lejeune Justice Act of 2022 would enable individuals who suffered from on-base water contamination to pursue lawsuits for their illnesses. The bill advanced within the Honoring our PACT Act of 2021 - an expansive act to improve benefits for veterans exposed to toxins - in a 256-174 vote, with 222 Democrats and 34 Republicans in favor.

The Camp Lejeune Justice Act would allow those exposed - even in-utero - to water contamination at the base for at least 30 days between Aug. 1, 1953 and Dec. 31, 1987 to file a claim in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Norther Carolina. To do so, the bill would essentially override a North Carolina legal hurdle that has otherwise made such suits impossible.

"Anybody who served in the United States Marine Corps, and went for combat training, probably went to Camp Lejeune in North Carolina," Rep. Matt Cartwright (D-Pa.), the Camp Lejeune bill's sponsor, told The Hill on Wednesday. "So this is not just a North Carolina issue; it's a national issue."

Read more here.

ON TAP FOR TOMORROW

WHAT WE'RE READING

That's it for today! Check out The Hill's defense and national security pages for the latest coverage. See you Friday.

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Welcome to Thursday's Overnight Health Care, where we're following the latest moves on policy and news affecting your health. Subscribe here: thehill.com/newsletter-signup.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) is fundraising off a viral video of him chiding a group of students at a press conference for wearing masks. Today we're looking at the Biden administration's formal request for more COVID-19 funding from Congress, and the possible battle to get it passed.

For The Hill, we're Peter Sullivan (psullivan@thehill.com), Nathaniel Weixel (nweixel@thehill.com) and Joseph Choi (jchoi@thehill.com). Write to us with tips and feedback, and follow us on Twitter: @PeterSullivan4, @NateWeixel and @JosefChoi.

Let's get started.

White House asks Congress for $22.5B

Deputy OMB director nominee S Young

The Biden administration is requesting $22.5 billion from Congress for the COVID-19 response, setting up a tussle with Republican lawmakers who have resisted new funding.

Where the funds would go: In a letter to Congress dated Wednesday, the White House said the additional funds are crucial for efforts around vaccines, treatments and testing. In addition, $5 billion of the funding will go towards the global COVID-19 response, including vaccinating other countries, which is key to helping stop new variants from arising.

"Without additional resources, we won't be able to secure the treatments, vaccines, and tests Americans need in coming months and fight future variants," wrote acting Office of Management and Budget Director Shalanda Young. "And critical COVID response efforts - such as free community testing sites and testing, treatment, and vaccination coverage for uninsured individuals - will end this spring."

The White House is urging that the funding be included in a broader government funding bill that faces a March 11 deadline.

GOP resistance: Passing the funding could be a challenge. Republicans have pushed back on new COVID-19 funds, pointing to the billions already provided for the virus response.

Story continues

Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) on Wednesday led 35 other Republican senators, including Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.), in a letter telling the administration they want a "full accounting" of money already spent "before we would consider" new COVID-19 funds.

Read more here.

Related: Senate Republicans oppose Biden's $22.5 billion COVID-19 relief request

Biden officials shift toward new virus phase

A discarded face mask lies in the street in San Francisco

The Biden administration has made a marked shift toward a new phase where COVID-19 is no longer treated as a crisis, rolling out a series of new programs aimed at increasing access to treatment and boosting vaccine capacity for the future.

Why the change: The change comes amid major strides in recent weeks including new case counts that have plummeted from 800,000 per day in January to 60,000, according to a New York Times tracker.

President Biden sought to highlight this shift in his State of the Union address Tuesday, saying the virus "no longer need control our lives." Mask mandates in the House chamber had been lifted just before his address to a joint session of Congress.

But the programs the administration aims to roll out require new funding from Congress, which could be held up by GOP lawmakers who don't want to allocate more money toward fighting the virus.

There is also the possibility of a new variant that may evade the protection of vaccines that, for the third time in less than a year, again hangs as a threat over recent progress.

Read more here.

SHARING TECH

The Biden administration is planning to share government-backed COVID-19 technology with the World Health Organization (WHO) to help low- and middle-income countries access crucial medicines.

During a press briefing on Thursday, Health and Human Service Secretary Xavier Becerra and chief White House medical adviser Anthony Fauci both confirmed that the U.S. was looking into licensing COVID-19 medical technologies owned by the National Institute of Health (NIH) to the WHO's COVID-19 Technology Access pool (C-TAP).

Becerra and Fauci were unable to provide specific details on this new policy.

According to Fauci, the details of this plan are still being "ironed out." The technologies will be sub-licensed through the Medicines Patent Pool, a Switzerland-based international organization aimed at enhancing access to medicines for low and middle-income countries.

"We're still in early stages," said Becerra. "This latest announcement is an effort to try to let low and middle-income countries know that we want them to have capacities as well."

Read more here.

A MESSAGE FROM ALEXION

NEW OPIOID SETTLEMENT

Purdue Pharma, the producer of the drug OxyContin, reached a new settlement with states and droves of local governments amid a court battle over the country's role in the opioid crisis.

The news comes after a previous settlement was appealed by eight states and Washington, D.C., last year.

"We're pleased with the settlement achieved in mediation, under which all of the additional settlement funds will be used for opioid abatement programs, overdose rescue medicines, and victims," Purdue Pharma said in a statement to The Hill.

"With this mediation result, we continue on track to proceed through the appeals process on an expedited schedule, and we hope to swiftly deliver these resources."

The settlement, filed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New York, was agreed upon by the right states and D.C. after the Sackler family, which owns Purdue, said they would contribute more cash, according to The Associated Press.

Read more here.

Senate GOP pushes to nix emergency status

Sen. R Marshall (R-Kas.)

Senate Republicans on Thursday passed a resolution to nix the coronavirus national public health emergency, their second win in as many days amid Democratic absences.

Senators voted 48-47 on the resolution, spearheaded by Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.), a day after they were also able to pass a measure to nix President Biden's vaccine requirement for health care workers.

"I would ask him to listen to the people and end this declaration of emergency," Marshall said in an appeal to Biden ahead of the vote.

Both votes were party line, but Republicans were able to exploit Democratic absences. Three Democratic senators were absent - Sens. Mark Kelly (Ariz.), Dianne Feinstein (Calif.) and Alex Padilla (Calif.) - compared to two absences for Republicans - Sens. James Inhofe (Okla.) and Richard Burr (N.C.) - effectively giving the GOP a majority in the chamber.

But the resolution, like the vaccine mandate vote, is going nowhere in the Democratic-controlled House. The administration also vowed ahead of the vote that if it reached Biden's desk, he would veto it.

Read more here.

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Sign up for NotedDC: The Hill's insider take on the heartbeat of politics and policy.

WHAT WE'RE READING

A group of hospitals has a plan to get around Congress's refusal to lower the cost of insulin (Washington Post)

As Cases Skyrocket, New Zealand Finally Faces Its Covid Reckoning (New York Times)

A MESSAGE FROM ALEXION

STATE BY STATE

Des Moines Public Schools drops mask mandate following federal changes (Des Moines Register)

Florida school superintendent who defied DeSantis on COVID masks is ousted (Tampa Bay Times)

Chicago Public Schools to Lift Mask Mandate in Schools 'in the Near Future,' Officials Say (NBC Chicago)

THE HILL OP-EDS

This Obesity Care Week, let's drop the stigmas and increase support

That's it for today, thanks for reading. Check out The Hill's health care page for the latest news and coverage. See you Friday.
PARIS (AP)  Giant leather pumpkins squashed on a brown soil carpet had fashion editors snapping their cameras at Fridays installment of Paris Fashion Week.

This strange scene, the brainchild of Jonathan Anderson, was a prelude to a surreal and thought-provoking collection for Loewe  one of the strongest seen this season.

Here are some highlights of ready-to-wear displays for fall-winter 2022, included how big fashion companies have begun voicing support for those caught in the Ukrainian conflict.

LOEWE LIVES FOR THE APPLAUSE

If kink and quirk were to have a love child, it may well have looked like Loewes Friday morning runway display.

Anderson, its 37-year old Northern Irish designer, was on fine form this season presenting a veritable fashion encyclopedia of surreal and creative fares to the VIP crowd -- all in front of a gargantuan marrow installation by artist Anthea Hamilton.

Fetishistic black dresses appeared alongside lip breastplates, molded felt bustiers and balloon bras. Boots frothed in silver. While one series of gowns sported possibly the most unusual hem ever presented in Paris: A car.

It was a moment of creative genius almost defying description.

Textures, colors, styles and shapes clashed and contrasted in a collection that was able to be fun and playful -- without ever falling into distasteful pastiche.

It garnered roaring applause -- boding well for the direction of the age-old house that has gained renewed focus in recent years.

VTMNTS IS COOL

It-brand VTMNTS or Vetements -- which means clothes in French  see fall and winter as a cold season. This is perhaps the reason why the entire collection of the Zurich-based fashion house was devoted to the coat  as an art piece, but also as a practical way to stave off low temperatures.

The designs by Guram Gvasalia  younger brother of Balenciagas creative director Demna Gvasalia  were typically cool. The house prides itself on putting out looks that could have been taken from the street. And here  in truncated black puffers, double breasted jackets and half-denim, half-leather jackets  these felt like the streets of East London.

Story continues

A regular dark vanilla double breasted jacket was paired with regular baggy jeans, and regular black shoes. Only black gloves and a polo neck betrayed the look as being high fashion. Elsewhere, similar subtleties were at work: Below a double breasted jacket, sheeny baggy pants in royal blue had a slit down the leg revealing just a flash of silver space boot.

UKRAINE

There was initially radio silence from big luxury brands regarding Ukraine, even amid vociferous calls from Ukrainian fashion designers, buyers and Tsum Kyiv department store to stop trading with Russia.

Now Balenciaga and Gucci, both owned by French luxury giant Kering, have responded by speaking out with statements of solidarity with the plight of the Ukrainians. Balenciaga said it had given an unnamed sum to the United Nations via the World Food Program ahead of its Sunday show. It said it would open our platforms in the next few days to report and relay the information around the situation in Ukraine.

Gucci meanwhile said it gave $500,000 to the UN Refugee Agency for Ukraine with the brands parent company going to Instagram to reveal that it had donated undisclosed sums of money to the UNHCR. Kering added: We hope for a peaceful resolution of this conflict.

Burberry has also donated to the British Red Cross Ukraine Crisis Appeal, and OTB Group, which owns Maison Margiela, has recently said its donated to the UNHCR.

BLACK IS BACK

There seems to be a return to the most slimming of colors for fall-winter  but it is actually a color?

One thing is certain: Black is back on the Paris runway.

Rihanna first set the tone Tuesday as she made her way to the Dior front row in a see through black babydoll gown  only to watch as designer Maria Grazia Chiuri responded with her collection that also relied heavily on black.

Then came Saint Laurents sleek black dresses, Isabel Marants black stripper boots, Balmains protective black warrior looks and Fridays Loewe shows kinky LBD.

Black is turning out to be one of the key trends to watch this season.

ISSEY MIYAKE'S SEED

The Japanese house famed for its use of techno-fabrics went to the vegetable patch for inspiration this fall with a series of gowns evoking germinating seeds.

It was hit and miss  let's call it patchy.

The best of the looks channeled the moment in which a seed twists and winds as it springs to life. Literally. Issey Miyake used spring technology with a fine rib knit.

A shoulderless loose ribbed bustier whirled down into a black full skirt that cut a fine silhouette, capped by soft black boot-pumps. The stylish ribbing repeated itself effectively on a torso and arm on another monochrome black look.

But there were times when the plant theme was delivered too heavy handedly. A thrice-spliced look evoking a pea pod  dyed using a traditional artisanal Kyoto-based tie-dying technique known as shiborizome  would have perhaps benefited from not being created in plant green.
Patrick Cannon, the former Charlotte mayor convicted in 2014 of accepting more than $50,000 in bribes, is returning to politics with a bid for Charlotte City Council.

It has been a little over five years since Cannon, a Democrat, was released from prison. On Friday, he filed to run for an at-large seat on City Council.

Cannon served half of his 44-month sentence at a minimum security prison in Morgantown, W.Va. He pleaded guilty to one count of honest services wire fraud after he accepted bribes from undercover FBI agents posing as investors. He took the bribes while in office, first as a City Council member then as mayor.

In a statement Friday after filing to run, Cannon wrote: To date I still take responsibility for my actions then, remaining sorry for those shortcomings, and continue to ask for forgiveness of you and our community in its totality. A chance for redemption is all I can ask for and pray that you might provide it in a fall that was taken, with the hope of getting up and starting a new beginning with your support.

In North Carolina, a person convicted of a felony temporarily loses their right to vote, which also means theyre not eligible to hold elected office until those rights are restored. State law permits automatic restoration of voting rights for people formerly incarcerated or convicted once their sentence is served, including probation and parole.

A spokeswoman for Mecklenburg County Board of Elections told the Observer Cannon filed to run and indicated his parole was finished. Voter registration information shows he registered to vote on March 1, 2019.

That year marked the end of his probation, five years after his conviction.

Greg Forest, chief U.S. Probation Officer for the Western District of North Carolina, said Cannons term of supervision ended in January 2019.

As The Charlotte Observer reported at the time, the bureaucratic-sounding charge  honest services wire fraud  belies the seriousness of Cannons crime. The (then) 47-year-old Democrat acknowledged taking bribes and other gifts in exchange for using his political influence to help those who paid him.

Story continues

Prosecutors described him, the Observer reported in 2014, as a mayor and City Council member on retainer  receiving a steady stream of cash and gifts, while being paid extra when something needed to be done.

In return for the bribes, Cannon promised to use his influence as mayor on an as needed basis, including to intervene with zoning, permitting and transportation issues, according to a press release from the U.S. Attorneys Office for the Western District of North Carolina.

2022 Charlotte election

At-large City Council candidates vie for the votes of all Charlotte voters, whereas district members only compete for votes within their districts. Current City Council members will also be running at-large, including Larken Egleston, who currently represents District 1, and Dimple Ajmera, who serves at-large.

Braxton Winston, another at-large member, also filed to run, as did former councilman James Mitchell. Mayor Pro Tem Julie Eiselt said she will not seek another term.

In the mayoral race, Mayor Vi Lyles will seek another term. Shell face three primary opponents, Lucille Puckett, Tigress Sydney Acute McDaniel and Tae McKenzie. Two Republicans have filed to run for mayor as well, Stephanie de Sarachaga-Bilbao and Mohamed Moustafa.

Stephanie Sneed, chair of the Black Political Caucus of Charlotte-Mecklenburg, declined to comment on Cannons candidacy announcement or fitness for office. She said Cannon will be invited, like all candidates who file, to participate in the caucus forums and rigorous endorsement process.

Those forums, she said, will inform the caucuss determination whether it was his time to come back or not, she said. She declined to say when endorsements will be announced, but said the forums would begin within the next two weeks.

People have the opportunity to hear directly from the candidates if they choose (to participate in the forums), including Patrick Cannon, she said.

Winston, the at-large Democrat city council member who is running again, declined to comment on the impact of Cannons history.

I think that voters determine whether someone is qualified to run for office, Winston said.

Ajmera, another at-large council member and candidate, said in a written statement that voters will decide who represents them.

I am staying focused on addressing the displacement, crime and congestion in our city, she said.

Republicans have put forward five candidates for at-large City Council seats. Some of those candidates met at the Board of Elections office Thursday to put forward a platform of bolstering public safety, improving the citys transportation networks and lowering housing costs.

One of them, Kyle Luebke, said it will be up to Democratic primary voters to decide whether Cannon is fit to hold office again.

We have a new vision for this city, and I think it will be very easy to contrast our vision for the city  with what the Democrats are offering, he said. Patrick Cannon is just one example of that.





Patrick Cannon convicted

Cannons conviction rattled Charlotte at the time. U.S. District Judge Frank Whitneys sentence was seven months longer than what prosecutors had recommended, saying at the time that while Cannons name hopefully will fade into our distant memories, let us never forget that a sitting mayor was susceptible to public corruption.

It will be that legacy that Cannon will have to break through in his at-large bid. His corruption charge covered five separate bribes between January 2013 and February 2014. He also admitted to receiving regular payments from a local business owner, who the Observer identified as strip-club mogul David Slim Baucom.

The details of the crime were striking. In the case of one bribe, an undercover FBI agent delivered the former mayor a briefcase containing $20,000 in cash in the mayors office.

During sentencing, his attorneys asked the court to not define Cannon by his crime. The former mayor and City Council member overcame poverty and the violent loss of his father to be a fine student, a loving father and a dedicated leader, the Observer reported at the time.

Youre a good man, a very good man, but you have made serious mistakes, Whitney replied.

Lauren Lindstrom and Ames Alexander contributed.

Patrick Cannons statement after pleading guilty

Former Charlotte Mayor Patrick Cannon gets house arrest after illegal vote

Former Charlotte Mayor Patrick Cannon sentenced to 44 months in federal prison

Strip club owner with ties to Patrick Cannon had access to officials
Davide Martello, a German citizen, traveled from Germany to Korczowa, Poland, to help bring some joy to Ukrainian refugees fleeing a Russian invasion. His inspired playing brought some measure of comfort to those fleeing war in the cold weather this week.

Some of the Ukrainian refugees themselves sat down at the piano to play their own songs, with some singing along to the music. At one point, a woman who had recently crossed the border sat down at the piano and played a rendition of "We Are the Champions," the iconic 1977 Queen anthem. She was bundled in a heavy winter coat, but neither the cold nor the stress of fleeing war stopped her from playing a touching version of the famous song.

Temperatures in Korczowa were cold this week, but seasonable, with the high reaching 37 Fahrenheit on Thursday and 36 F on Friday.

This is not the first time that Martello has lugged his piano to areas reeling from violence: He brought his piano to Istanbul, Turkey, in 2013 when anti-government protestors clashed with police and he also set up his piano outside the Bataclan theatre in Paris after terrorists attacked the city in 2015.

And it wasn't the first time that music has been used to ease stress during a disaster, in fact, the same type of instrument was used this week in Australia, amid a different kind of disaster.

With his garage rapidly filling with water, one man's focus was not on evacuating, but music. He pulled up a chair and sat down to play his piano one final time, spinning a jovial tune as stray sports equipment and boxes floated across the room.

The video, taken by David Xie at his home in a suburb of Brisbane, shows Gianluca, the owner of the apartment unit he lives in, playing the piano as the unit continues to flood, according to reporting from Storyful.

"At about 6 a.m., Gianluca and the others woke us up and there was about 2 feet of water," Xie said. "Furniture was floating and the fridge was soon floating as well. We moved the piano bench upstairs and Gianluca figured, may as well give the piano a final send-off, pictured in the video."

Story continues

While Gianluca was playing his piano, Brisbane was experiencing its worst flooding since at least 2011, with more than 2 feet of rain submerging much of the city and killing at least 10. Perhaps it is the power of nature that inspires people to play music in the face of disaster, just like these other five people did.

A man whose home was destroyed during the deadly tornado outbreak in Kentucky, plays a hymn on his piano that was spared during the storm. Beauty in the midst of sorrow and pain. pic.twitter.com/9goymGYK3L  Travis Akers (@travisakers) December 13, 2021

After historic and damaging tornadoes tore through Kentucky on Dec. 10, 2021, one homeowner whose house was torn apart was moved to play his piano, which was miraculously spared from the damage.

More than 50 people were killed by two long-track tornadoes that spun up in Arkansas, Kentucky and Tennessee that night, with the most impactful storm demolishing structures throughout the town of Mayfield and other areas in Kentucky.

Despite the roof over his head having been blown away, Jordan Baize, sat down to play a Christian hymn, "There's Something About That Name," according to reporting from The New York Times. Baize, who did not realize he was being recorded, was heartened by the positive response to his music.

"In these times, whether folks all around the world have suffered a tornado this past weekend or not, we all are facing storms of some kind," said Mr. Baize, an accountant and consultant. "That little bit of peace and perspective that I was dealing with, in what I thought was a personal, private moment, I think has spoken to people across the world."

Following the widespread devastation and flooding wrought by Hurricane Harvey, which flooded more than 130,000 properties in Houston alone when it made landfall in 2017, one man returned home to play his piano in a triumphant display of resistance.

Aric Harding, a father of seven, returned back to his property to grab some of his kids' belongings and found himself moved to play and filmed himself playing the piano to prove to his family that it still worked.

"For us, it's a piece of music being this universal language for everyone. It's always been a big part of my life. My family's always been very musical," he told ABC Houston station KTRK-TV. "From the moment we get up in the morning to the moment we go to sleep, we've got music going on in our house."

The piano, which was damaged by the floodwaters, was replaced with the help of Grammy-nominated singer Vanessa Carlton, according to reporting from ABC News.

"It's a little piece of normal coming back," he said of getting the new piano.

As Hurricane Ida was bearing down on New Orleans in August as a Category 4 storm, a lone trumpeter stood on the streets of New Orleans and blared his horn.

The jazzy tune stood in contrast to the dismal weather conditions, but shows that even in the worst conditions, the music never stops on Bourbon Street.

As Niel Jon Salcedo's home flooded during powerful Super Typhoon Rai, he took the time to play a tune even as the water was rising up to his knees. Rai struck the Philippines in Dec. 2021 and killed over 400 people according to reporting from The New York Post.

As he plays "River Flows In You," an ironic choice of song given the situation, the water on the floor ripples up and down and you can hear the sound of more water rushing into the home.

"My 20-plus-year-old piano," Salcedo wrote in a post on Facebook. "Probably my last time playing this piano before it gets junked." The post on Facebook went viral, garnering nearly one million views.

For the latest weather news check back on AccuWeather.com. Watch the AccuWeather Network on DIRECTV, Frontier, Spectrum, fuboTV, Philo, and Verizon Fios. AccuWeather Now is now available on your preferred streaming platform.
A Phoenix police vehicle on Dec. 7, 2021.

Police arrested a woman in connection to the fatal shooting of a man she lived with at a Phoenix duplex on February 25, officials said Thursday.

Officers had responded to a shooting call at about 10 p.m. at the residence near 19th Avenue and Bethany Home Road, according to Phoenix police.

According to police reports, 49-year-old Sally Macias is suspected of shooting and killing the victim, identified as 64-year-old Jimmie Montgomery, in the kitchen area of the duplex they lived in.

Neighbors reported hearing arguments and "a loud noise, which sounded like someone had hit a wall," according to police reports. Neighbors also reported seeing Macias and the Montgomery, "in a physical fight in the front yard when it was raining."

Macias was found and determined to have three outstanding felony warrants before being she was arrested by police on suspicion of one count of second-degree murder and one count of possession/use of a dangerous drug.

She was booked into a Maricopa County jail and is being held on a $250,000 bond. Court hearings are scheduled for March 9.

Reach breaking news reporter Adam Terro at adam.terro@arizonarepublic.com.

Support local journalism. Subscribe to azcentral.com today.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Police arrest woman in connection to fatal shooting at Phoenix duplex
In this article:

A Phoenix police vehicle.

Police are investigating a suspected murder-suicide that left a man and a woman dead on Wednesday afternoon in north Phoenix.

According to Phoenix police, Theodore Bower, 69, shot Terrance Cameron, 66, who authorities believe was his roommate, before committing suicide.

Phoenix Police spokesperson Vincent Cole said officers responded to a call about a shooting around 5:30 p.m. near Peoria and 35th avenues. On the scene, they found Cameron had been shot. She died from her injuries.

Based on witness reports police believe Bower shot her.

Bower's vehicle was found in a parking lot near the area. Officers found him dead in the vehicle with a gunshot wound.

Police said the investigation remains active.

Reach breaking news reporter Angela Cordoba Perez at Angela.CordobaPerez@Gannett.com or on Twitter @AngelaCordobaP.

Support local journalism. Subscribe to azcentral.com today.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Man dies from suspected suicide after shooting woman in Phoenix
The Providence police are looking for the public's help in finding a missing man.

Jose Luciano Espinal, 59, was last seen on on Feb. 27 near his residence on Plenty Street in Providence.

Jose Luciano Espinal

The police believe he could be in the Southeastern Massachusetts area.

More: Providence police say 11-year-old boy, missing since Christmas, has been found

Anyone with information is asked to contact Providence Police Youth Service Bureau at (401) 272-3121.

jperry@providencejournal.com

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This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: Providence police seek help finding missing man
LONDON (Reuters) - Jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny told Russians on Friday to protest against the war in Ukraine in Russian cities and across the world on March 6, and accused President Vladmir Putin of bringing shame on the Russian national flag and language.

Navalny, Putin's most prominent domestic opponent, told Russians in a post on his blog to shrug off fears of protesting against Russia's invasion of Ukraine and to take to the squares of their cities even if they had already left Russia.

"Show the world that Russians don't want war. Come out in the squares of Berlin, New York, Amsterdam or Melbourne, wherever you are. Now we are all responsible for Russia's future. For what Russia will be in the eyes of the world," he said in the post.

The anti-corruption campaigner called for protests every day of the week, but said that a demonstration on March 6 was most important and should take place in Moscow's Manezhnaya Square and St Petersburg's Gostiny Dvor.

"You may be scared, but to submit to this fear is to side with fascists and murderers. Putin has already snatched away from Russia its economy, relations with the world and hope for a future," Navalny said.

All forms of protest in Russia have essentially become illegal since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic for what authorities say are safety reasons. Thousands of people have been detained protesting against the invasion since last week.

Navalny was jailed last year after his return from Germany following treatment for what Western laboratory tests showed was an attempt to poison him with a nerve agent in Siberia. He said he was sentenced on trumped-up charges.

His blog post was published on his website after lawmakers backed legislation that would introduce jail terms of up to 15 years for people deemed to have spread "false" information about Russia's army.

Russian officials, who portray Navalny as an extremist, accuse the West of unleashing an information war on Moscow over Ukraine.

They describe the invasion of Ukraine as a "special military operation" aimed at the "denazification" and "demilitarisation" of the country, terms and assertions that the West dismisses as absurd propaganda.

(Reporting by Reuters; editing by Guy Faulconbridge and Alex Richardson)
Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a wreath laying ceremony

Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a wreath laying ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier by the Kremlin wall to mark the Defender of the Fatherland Day in Moscow on Feb. 23, 2022 Credit - Alexey NikolskySPUTNIK/AFP via Getty Images

History is a teacher. But it can be a very bad one. It is Ukraines tragedy that the president of Russia, Vladimir Putin, is a textbook example of how to draw the wrong lessons from the past.

Many things have gone into the making of Putin, the accused war criminal: His rough childhood produced a fighter and bully. His training in the KGB added a chillingly cold outlook where power is the key to everything. His long stay at the very top, then, made him arrogant and careless.

Read more: Russia Faces War Crime Accusations as Civilian Casualties Grow

But without his perverse view of history, this explosive mix would not have ignited by way of a massive invasion of Ukraine. Putins actions have shown that, for him, history consists of twoand only twothings: the collective lives of nations as he imagines them, and endless Hobbesian geopolitical struggle between them. And these things do, actually, matter, so he feels constantly confirmed in his prejudices. But the Russian president now leaves no room for anything else, in particular the role in history of restraint and patience, quiet yet real and persistent forces that helped humanity survive the risks of the Cold War.

In his law-of-the-jungle mindset, he has picked Ukraine as his hill to kill on, for two reasons, both about history as he sees it. First, Putins idea about the past of Russian-Ukrainian interaction is a bizarre Russian-nationalist caricature. Second, Putins ideas about recent world history, essentially between the Second World War and now, are one long gripe.

Putins key delusion is his willful failure to understandand accepthow Ukraine has come to be. For him, as far as he concedes that Ukraine exists, for now, he insists that most of its territory doesnt belong to it. Cherry-picking the past, he has cobbled together a deeply false narrative of Russia repeatedly gifting Ukraine lands it did not deserve, for which he blames the former Soviet Unions Communist rulers. And so, to him, not only is Ukraine not really there but almost all of it is really Russian in terms of true identityor, at least, so close to Russian that the difference becomes irrelevant. This is the gist of his long disquisitions on what he sees as the common history of Russians and Ukrainians. With a mind naturally intelligent yet grievously impoverished by nationalism and a soul without compassion except for those he selects to count as his own, this is a leader who makes time to producesurely with some helpmassive screeds on the past as he misunderstands it. Putin is not only a very bad pupil of history. Worse again: He thinks he is its master.

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Read more: How Putins Denial of Ukraines Statehood Rewrites History

In reality, Russia and Ukraine have a long past of close interaction, but they are not the same. While Ukraine could establish an independent state only recently, its history of becoming a nation is much longerand it is no more an invention or construction than Germany, the U.S., or, indeed, Russia.

Meanwhile, Putin misses the bitter irony that he is the one devastating the relationship between Ukrainians and Russians, quite possibly forever.

And Putins distortion of history is even broader than that. It also prominently includes the Second World War, the end of the Cold War and the Soviet Union, and the post-Cold War period. Unlike his dark musings about Ukraine, his ideas on these events are not entirely baselessbut the consequences of his errors there are no less serious.

Regarding the Second World War, for Putin it was a historic struggle between fascist evil and the rest of the world, in which the Soviet Union made a key contribution to defeating Nazism, which he feels is not recognized enough by the West. That much is true. Where he loses contact with reality again, is in nationalizing this achievement for Russia. As if millions of Ukrainiansand othershad not fought in the Soviet army as well. Or as if those sacrifices bestow no rights on their descendants, while Russian sacrifices somehow justify Moscows predominance. (With respect to another legacy of the Second World War, far-right forces in Ukraine are a red rag to Putin. His claim to denazify Ukraine is ridiculous and evil in its stunning hypocrisy, while the West has not done enough to signal that though it welcomes Ukraine, the same is not true for the Ukrainian far righta far right that does not, as Putin claims, run the country, but that is real.)

Read more: Historians on What Putin Gets Wrong About Denazification in Ukraine

Concerning the way the Soviet Union yielded in the Cold War and then ended, Putin sees a great defeat that could have been avoided if late-Soviet leadership had not been too soft. In reality, it was the Soviet Unions failure to reform its economic systemcompared to the way China has donethat forced it to retreat from superpower confrontation. Its then leadership under Mikhail Gorbachev was not flawless, but it did leave behind one great historic achievement of which Russians should, actually, be proud: it initiated and then accepted a peaceful end to the Cold War. Putin, however, sees a catastrophe and is determined to do better, as he understands it. Should he ever believe that Russia faces massive geopolitical decline again, he will fightincluding against the West. As he has told us, he prefers no world at all to a world without Russia. And to him, as a great-power nationalist, that really means a world without a powerful Russia. The eminent scholar of the Cold War Mary Elise Sarotte has warned us to take the danger of nuclear World War III seriously again. Indeed.

With respect to what happened after the end of the Soviet Union, debate continues among scholars and pundits over whether the West made and broke promises not to expand NATO. But it is clear enough that Putin sincerelyand not without at least some plausibilitybelieves Russia was cheated by the expansion of NATO, and the fact that the West did not confine itself to the more cautious, yet viable Partnership for Peace program initiated in 1994 that offered cooperation but not full NATO membership to countries in eastern Europe.

For a historian in particular, it is a dismal fact to face, but Putins war of aggression on Ukraine shows the dreadful power of historywith history understood not as what actually happened, but as what we believe happened. History is not a harmless provider of good plots for slick documentaries and gripping movies. Misunderstood, misrepresented, and misused, it can destroy the present and vitiate the future.

Clearly, something so dangerous should be handled with great care, by all of us. Heres one suggestion for now: Keep in mind that Russias past and identity, in reality, is not Putins to define. Leo Tolstoy, the great Russian patriot and unbending moralist who wrote War and Peace, would have despised Putin or prayed for his lost soul or both.

We face two tasks now: To protect Ukraine from as much further suffering as can still be prevented and to protect the world from a war to end human history. Even while we answer Putins attack with unprecedented resolve, we need to distinguish between what is absolutely unacceptable in his thinking and which of his ideas can, if he desists, feature in a responsible compromise, that could, for instance, make room for a neutral and independent Ukraine with full E.U. membership. To do that, if we dont want to make Putins mistake of acting on a false idea of reality, we must look beyond his violent caricature of history to understandnot accept but understandhow he sees not just the present, but the past as well.
Mar. 4Many Ukrainians are enduring brutal overnight cold in bomb shelters with no running water as Russia's siege rages overhead, a rabbi in the war zone told a rapt audience of Jewish listeners in Santa Fe and throughout North America.

It's the first time the shelters have been used since World War II, said Rabbi Yechiel Levitansky, who served in Sumy, Ukraine, from 2004 until Thursday. Levitansky and his family fled their longtime home sometime after his address, said Rabbi Berel Levertov of the Santa Fe Jewish Center-Chabad, who spread the word about the talk in Northern New Mexico.

Sumy, a city of roughly 250,000 residents, is about 35 miles from the Russian border; more than 200 miles from Ukraine's capital, Kyiv; and more than 700 miles from Ukraine's eastern border with Slovakia.

"It's incredible to see how the Ukrainian army is fighting with hands and feet, literally, against the second-largest army in the world," Levitansky, who is from Santa Monica, Calif., told a live online audience Wednesday night  early Thursday in Sumy.

Levitansky spoke at 6:30 p.m. Mountain Standard Time  which was 3:30 a.m. Thursday local time.

As for the territorial tumult that accompanies war, "As of a few hours ago, I think I was still in Ukraine," he said.

Levertov's interests in the region aren't just humanitarian; his father was from Moscow, and wife Devorah Leah Levertov's grandparents came to the United States from Ukraine in the 1940s following World War II, he said.

"This crisis is so difficult; there's no taking sides in anything," Levertov said before Levitansky's talk, stressing his concern lies solely with people's well-being. After the address, he expressed "awe" at Levitansky's calm demeanor.

Indeed, Levitansky shared a few smiles even as he delivered a somber take on the realities surrounding him.

"Sumy has been surrounded by Russian forces from Day One of this invasion," he said. "We're right on the border, and we're a small city."

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"The devastation that's coming from the air is becoming unbearable," he said. "One of the hardest things for us is to leave our communities. People here are hunkering down, are in their basements. ... I'm afraid to go on the roads. They're constantly shooting from all sides."

It's a marked change from Levitansky's early days in the region, he said. Some cities and even streets straddle the Ukraine-Russia border, and residents of the two nations once mingled freely.

That changed in 2014, Levitansky said, when Russia put up fences in the middle of streets to sequester residents.

"You had neighbors who [suddenly] had to go through a border crossing," he said. Nonetheless, Levitansky said of the war: "When this all started, nobody was expecting it. A lot of people are still in denial; I'm certainly in denial. I cannot imagine that something like this could happen in 2022."

Levitansky told audience members a siren sounded Thursday morning in Sumy, warning the Russian army had crossed the border.

"I never knew Sumy had a siren; I didn't know we were that advanced," he said. "People don't have running water. The electricity goes off here and there."

An audience member asked Levitansky about the scene on the streets, and he was cautious in his answer for fear of revealing his location.

"I can say that in the last two days, the surroundings have been completely demolished," he said, adding the devastation severely limits mobility.

A curfew from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. further restricts movement.

"Curfew here means, unfortunately, if someone is out in the street and is not identified, they don't ask questions," Levitansky said. "It's been very difficult to get around, very difficult to find products. ... The stores are practically empty by now. Yesterday they were rationing bread, only one loaf per person."

What happens once those meager supplies run out?

"I don't have the answer to that question; I only have the problem of that question, and I'm dealing with it on a daily basis," Levitansky said.
Brig. Gen. McGee started his military career breaking barriers with the 99th Fighter Squadron of the 332nd Fighter Group, the famed "Tuskegee Airmen".

MAXWELL AIR FORCE BASE - Brig. Gen. Charles McGee was one of the last surviving Tuskegee Airmen and died at 102 on Jan. 16, 2022. He joined the military at a time when becoming a pilot as an African American was inconceivable.

After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, a new pilot program was created to allow African Americans to train and become pilots. Two days after getting married, he received orders and headed to Tuskegee Airfield in Alabama. McGee's career took him from Alabama and on to three major wars; World War II, the Korean War, and Vietnam.

After flying with fighter missions in Korea, McGee moved to Montgomery, Alabama, with his family. He attended Air University's Air Command and Staff School at Maxwell Air Force Base and was in class 53B. McGee would give back to AU by volunteering at speaking engagements such as the Gathering of Eagles at Air Command and Staff College.

McGee retired from service as a Colonel in 1973, having had several leadership positions and flying 409 combat missions across the three wars. He was awarded a Legion of Merit on two occasions, three Distinguished Flying Crosses, a Bronze Star, and many others.

Brig. Gen. Charles E. McGee, retired, is interviewed by ACSC Student, Maj Daniel Thompson during the 2013 Gather of Eagles at the Air Command and Staff College Thursday 6 May 2013.

He used his retirement to return to college, serving as a leader for the Boy Scouts while also promoting the Tuskegee Airmen Inc. In 2020 McGee received a promotion to Brigadier General a few weeks after turning 100.

"Brig Gen Charles McGee was one of the most remarkable men I have ever met in my life," said Dr. Daniel Haulman, retired USAF historian. "The first thing I think about when talking about General McGee was his eagerness and devotion to serve his country, which he did with distinction in three wars, and to see it succeed.

This article originally appeared on Montgomery Advertiser: Remembering Brigadier General Charles McGee
Getty

Roger Stones unhinged quest to overturn the 2020 election for Donald Trump involved a sizable side hustle of lobbying for presidential pardonsincluding preemptive pardons for lawmakers like Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Josh Hawley (R-MO) and Reps. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) and Jim Jordan (R-OH).

The vast Stone Plan was detailed for the first time on Friday by The Washington Post, which reviewed more than 20 hours of footage from a documentary crew who trailed Stone for two years. The footage also covered Stones involvement in the Stop the Steal movement and his mad dash to leave Washington, D.C., after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

Once he arrived back in Florida after the Capitol riot, Stone began lobbying for a wide range of pardons, including preemptive pardons for lawmakers who tried to delay or block the certification of Joe Bidens electoral winand a blanket pardon for himself, of course. (Stones prison sentence for impeding a congressional investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election had been commuted by Trump in 2020.)

He detailed his plan in a five-page memo to the president, urging him to pardon a movement and give the Deep State the finger, according to a copy obtained by the Post. Other lawmakers named in the plan included Reps. Paul Gosar (R-AZ), Andy Biggs (R-AZ), and Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL), the Post reported.

Roger Stone Distances Himself From Stop the Steal and Insurrection After WaPo Documentary Bombshell

In conversations with the filmmakers, the pompous Republican strategist said the plan had been given to Trump and conservative mediaand, according to him, Trump was game.

I believe the president is for it, Stone said on Jan. 15, according to the footage.

Others who were wrapped up in Stones pardon crusade included the Florida-based tax collector and Gaetz wingman Joel Greenberg, who was under investigation for sex trafficking an underage girl; Colombo crime family members Michael Sessa and Victor Orena; Rudy Giuliani, the former New York City mayor and Trump acolyte; and a man named Henry, whose lawyer was heard in the footage offering Stone $100,000 to advocate for presidential leniency. Everything would have to be legal, the lawyer could be heard insisting.

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But Stones grand vision came into conflict with a brick wall: the law. Stone said the lily-livered, weak-kneed lawyers in the White House counsels office pushed back on the plan, which ended up not materializing.

Rep. Matt Gaetz Sought Preemptive Pardon From Donald Trump: NYT

A former official told the Post that Pat Cipollone, the former White House counsel, took particular issue with the preemptive pardons for lawmakers, as they hadnt been suspected of a crime and had not asked for pardons themselves. Trump had considered some of the pardons, another person told the Post. He ended up pardoning Stone and a bunch of other allies, friends, and crooked pols.

Clearly, Cipollone fucked everybody, Stone was filmed saying on a phone call to a friend who was in prison for fraud and was hoping to get a pardon through Stone.

The nail in the coffin came when David I. Schoen, a lawyer for the Colombo family members who Stone wanted to represent Trump in his second impeachment trial, sent Stone a CNN report detailing Trumps choice not to issue preemptive pardons.

This was a free home run that could have saved a lot of loyal lives, Schoen complained.

This Steaming Pile of Filthy Pardons Stinks Just Like Trump

Some of the lawmakers implicated in Stones plan denied ever knowing about it. Senator Cruz has no idea what Roger Stone says or does, a Cruz spokesperson told the Post, while a spokesperson for Jordan said he has never spoken to Roger Stone about pardons and he never sought a pardon because he did nothing wrong.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

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Frequent occurrences of red tides, also referred to as harmful algal blooms (HAB), have created a national concern because they affect not only the health of the ecosystems and the people near them but also local economies. In an effort to better inform the public, researchers are taking water samples that date back 60 years to develop an index that will rank red tide blooms along Florida's Gulf Coast, one of the most impacted parts of the country.

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), HABs occur when colonies of algae, which are just simple plants that live in the sea as well as bodies of freshwater like the Great Lakes, grow out of control while producing toxic or harmful effects on people, shellfish, fish, marine mammals and birds. The toxins make the surrounding air difficult to breathe, and as the name suggests, the bloom often turns the water red. Though rare, human illnesses caused by HABs can be debilitating or even fatal.

"The red tide is caused by a microorganism algal that's in the Gulf of Mexico, and it produced a toxin that can become an aerosol," Rick Stumpf, an oceanographer for NOAA told AccuWeather National Reporter Bill Wadell in an interview. "In my experience, [when] I'm out on the beach in a red tide and the wind's blowing onshore, I feel like I've come down with a cold."

A dedicated group of volunteers that had asthma worked with the Gulf of Mexico Coastal Ocean Observing System for 10 years, and the research from the group's data showed that even after a one-hour walk on the beach during a red tide event, they had shortness of breath, wheezing and chest tightness. This research proved that toxins released from the red tide weren't just upper airway irritants but instead were going into people's lungs and harming them.

CLICK HERE FOR THE FREE ACCUWEATHER APP

"The state of Florida has actually been collecting data on the concentration of red tide for 60 years, and in this effort, what we did was take this data and put it together in a way to assess how severe the blooms are each year," said Stumpf. "We've assessed it based on the amount of [coastline] in southwest Florida that was covered by a bloom each month and the months for the year."

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A sign stating that the beach and sand areas are closed to the public due to red tide is shown on Lake Worth Beach, Tuesday, Oct. 2, 2018, in Lake Worth, Fla. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee)

The index runs from zero, which means the red tide is non-existent, to 10, the highest level. Based on the severity of the red tide, a particular year is assigned a number on the index.

The years are defined differently than a calendar year. Since the blooms start during September and October, the year-long period that captures these blooms runs from August to August of the following year.

The worst year, which was rated a 10, was during 2018 when the largest bloom to affect Florida occurred. An unusually persistent HAB on the southwestern coast beginning in October 2017 spread to the panhandle and the east coast of Florida before dissipating in the winter of 2018-2019.

"Classically, [red tide blooms] are very patchy. There are patches of bloom, and then you can go half a mile away and the water's clear," Barbara Kirkpatrick, the senior adviser for the Gulf of Mexico Coastal Ocean Observing System, told Wadell in an interview. "The 2018 bloom was very different where it was much more consistent on our coastline."

Kirkpatrick hopes that this index will give a better description of one red tide to another so that people can have a scale to base the severity of the yearly red tide. She also hopes that this scale will help beachgoers make informed and educated decisions on whether it is a good day to go to the beach or a better day to stay away from the beach.

Beachgoers must consider the weather, and more recently their comfort level with the COVID-19 pandemic, when planning to go to the beach.

"This is just another factor," Kirkpatrick said.

Red Tide, Dead Fish In this Monday, Aug. 6, 2018, file photo, dead fish are shown near a boat ramp in Bradenton Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Chris O'Meara, File)

There has not been a good metric in order to determine what a major or small bloom is, so this research and index is the first essential step at looking at what causes major blooms one year compared to smaller blooms in other years.

Testing for red tide is done by collecting water samples and counting the organisms under a microscope. Since water samples don't include just red tide organisms but also other specimens too, it takes a lot of skill from the people who are conducting the research. The goal is to get an update out every month, but as of right now, the project releases an update each spring and summer, according to Stumpf.

"There is no red tide out on the Florida coast now, and that would tend to mean that we shouldn't see anything through the spring and into the summer," Stumpf said. "In past years, the summer blooms have typically been carry-overs from the previous year. Last year's bloom has ended. That's a good thing. So right now, we're looking very good for spring and summer."

With the 2022 Atlantic hurricane season approaching, Stumpf shared that hurricanes can sometimes move the red tide around to different locations, but they do not improve or worsen the red tide.

Another update will come out in the summer addressing the current state of the red tide at that time.

Reporting by Bill Wadell.

For the latest weather news, check back on AccuWeather.com. Watch the AccuWeather Network on DIRECTV, Frontier, Spectrum, fuboTV, Philo, and Verizon Fios. AccuWeather Now is now available on your preferred streaming platform.
A Rock Hill felon on bail from previous charges has been arrested in Charlotte for a South Carolina machete attack, according to and police and court records.

Stephen Daniel Tilley, 43, was taken into custody before 9 p.m. by Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department officers after a two-state manhunt following the 1 a.m. attack Thursday in northern York County, said Trent Faris, spokesman for the York County Sheriffs Office.

WANTED: Stephen Daniel Tilley is #wanted for Attempted Murder that occurred on March 3, 2022, just before 1:00 AM, on Lighthouse Ave., in Fort Mill, SC. If seen contact #CrimeStoppers or the YCSO 803-628-3059.#YCSONews pic.twitter.com/im1mh3dvoU  York County Sheriff (@YCSO_SC) March 3, 2022

York County deputies have a warrant charging Tilley with attempted murder, Faris said.

Tilley remains in the Mecklenburg County jail under a $100,000 bond. He was arrested on a fugitive warrant Thursday night, according to Mecklenburg County Sheriff records.

Because Tilley was arrested in North Carolina, he must be extradited back to South Carolina to face charges in the machete attack. No court date has yet been set for an extradition hearing.

A conviction for attempted murder in South Carolina carries a sentence of up to 30 years in prison, state law shows.

Suspect is felon who was free on Charlotte bail; Records

North Carolina sheriffs and court records from Mecklenburg County show Tilley has pending charges in Charlotte for drugs and weapons violations, including possession of a firearm by a felon, from two sets of arrests in March and November of 2021. He was released on bail after both sets of 2021 arrests, Mecklenburg jail records show.

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Tilley has previous convictions in York County for forgery and drugs, South Carolina court records show.

Victim hospitalized

The victim in Thursdays attack, who has not been identified, was found in front of a home on Lighthouse Avenue after being hit in the front and back of the head, sheriff office documents show. The victim was taken to a Charlotte hospital for treatment but his condition has not been released.

The area of the incident is just south of the Steele Creek area of North Carolina near the state line, close to S.C. 160 and Gold Hill Road. The area is in York County outside the city of Tega Cay and town of Fort Mill.
STORY: The ministry said in a statement that the military targets in Donetsk region were hit by guided aerial munition.

Reuters could not independently verify the information by the defence ministry.
WASHINGTON  Russian President Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine has triggered an earthquake of global condemnation, including in his own backyard, where protests have swelled across the country in a remarkable outpouring of dissent against the Kremlin's deadly military assault.

Antiwar protests erupted within hours of Russia's invasion Feb. 24 in more than 60 cities. The demonstrations, which range from massive rallies to single-person pickets, have continued even amid a fierce Kremlin crackdown.

Police have detained more than 8,000 Russians for antiwar activities since the invasion began, according to the independent monitoring group OVD-Info. Security forces have widened their patrols, looking for dissent in all corners  not just in Pushkin Square, the pedestrian space in central Moscow where most opposition rallies take place.

On Friday, the Russian parliament passed a law that would punish citizens for spreading what the Kremlin calls fake news about the military assault on Ukraine. The penalty: up to 15 years in jail.

Kremlin authorities mandated that Russian journalists refer to the assault as a military operation of demilitarization," essentially banning the term "war."

Some independent media outlets ignored the censors demands and continued to describe Russia's invasion as a war  and they've paid a price. This week, the Kremlin shut down a commercial radio station, Echo of Moscow, and the countrys last independent television, Rain TV.

Authorities shut our radio station down within minutes after the decision, Olga Bychkova, Echo of Moscows deputy editor in chief, told USA TODAY. They did it without any court process, without explaining any reasons to us."

Before authorities arrived, she said, the stations journalists gathered in the newsroom to talk about their options.

We decided to continue working, our team members will continue to get paid, reporting objective news and trying to stream their stories on YouTube, Bychkova said.

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On Friday, Russia's federal communication agency announced it would block the websites of the BBC, Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and other foreign media outlets for spreading "fake" information.

It becomes dangerous to cover news in Ukraine" under the Russian parliament's new law, which is blurry and allows authorities to go after anybody, Bychkova said.

Experts said the domestic unrest does not threaten Putin's iron grip on power. Kremlin officials have repeatedly said this week that the operation in Ukraine would go to the end.

But the turmoil could become more problematic for Putin, particularly as the international sanctions slapped on Moscow begin to hit ordinary Russians.

"Vladimir Putin is increasingly fighting two wars: one in Ukraine and one at home," Sam Greene, a professor of politics at Kings College in London and author of "Putin v. the People," wrote in a tweet Thursday. "A week in, neither is going terribly well."

Russians are 'facing real danger'

The past few years have been marked by increasingly draconian restrictions on freedoms of assembly and speech in Russia, experts said, and that's likely to escalate as the war drags on in Ukraine.

Part of the Kremlin's strategy involves plucking random protesters from crowds, detaining them and placing them on a targeted list that is used by police to intimidate people from taking part in protests, said Maria Popova, a political scientist at McGill University in Canada who studies Russian and Ukrainian politics.

"People are taking serious personal risk by showing up for these rallies," Popova said. "In Russia, you're not only taking a risk by showing up to a protest, you're taking a risk of being put on a list and being systematically harassed by authorities for having taking part in a protest."

Human rights activist Svetlana Gannushkina, founder of the Civic Assistance Committee, has documented violations for the past three decades. She said she never could have imagined it would get this bad.

My own employees are packing and leaving the country in fear of prison; I cannot protect them, Gannushkina, 79, said in an exclusive interview with USA TODAY.

There is panic in Russia, she said. Men are afraid of mobilization. Thousands of Ukrainian work immigrants are stuck, banned from leaving Russia  they are facing real danger here.

Some countries wanted to stay neutral: How Russia's invasion has reshaped Europe

Live updates: Russian troops seize site of nuclear plant fire; Western leaders condemn latest attacks

Putin's repression, Navalny's plea

In the 1980s and 1990s  during Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev's perestroika reform movement and under Russian President Boris Yeltsin  freedom of speech flourished even as the country struggled with an economic crisis, according to Popova.

With the rise of Putin came a gradual tightening of the screws on civil liberties and freedom of the press. In 2012, he returned to the presidency after serving as prime minister since 2008. The constitution barred him from serving a third consecutive term, a provision he amended to allow him to run again.

By the time Putin took office, the lower house of the Russian parliament, the State Duma, imposed restrictions on unsanctioned demonstrations and has moved to curb freedom of speech, increasing fines and prison sentences for participating in rallies and restricting the presence of nongovernmental organizations.

Thousands of Russian antiwar protesters arrested: What are the freedom of speech laws in Russia?

Putin focused on dismantling organizations linked to Boris Nemtsov, an opposition politician who was shot dead in 2015, and Alexei Navalny, an anti-corruption activist and one of Putin's fiercest critics who was poisoned in 2020 and detained upon his return to Russia last January.

Navalny said his poisoning was a failed assassination attempt orchestrated the Kremlin. Russian officials denied any involvement, but other world powers said they have no doubt the highest levels of Russian government were involved in the poisoning. The U.S. intelligence community determined with "high confidence" that the Federal Security Service used the nerve agent Novichok to poison Navalny.

Navalny's detention sparked widespread protests across Russia. The Biden administration and European allies sanctioned several Russian officials over Navalny's poisoning and his imprisonment.

In the months since, a Russian court outlawed Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) as "extremist," shutting down the organization and labeling those associated with it as foreign agents, barring them from running for office.

Navalny urged Russians to continue daily protests over Ukraine.

"Lets at least not become a nation of frightened silent people. Of cowards who pretend not to notice the aggressive war against Ukraine unleashed by our obviously insane tsar," he said in a statement published on Twitter by his spokesperson.

The Kremlin has taken advantage of COVID-19 restrictions to limit public assembly in the latest acceleration of Putin's repressive tactics, according to Kathryn Stoner, a Stanford University political science professor and author of "Russia Resurrected: Its Power and Purpose in a New Global Order."

"He's pretty systematically decapitated the mechanisms by which you might mobilize large numbers of people against the policy and has created deterrence against protesting because the cost is so high," Stoner said.

Popova said the past several years "are way worse than they have been at any point since Stalinist time," referring to Soviet dictator Josef Stalin.

Still, there is greater freedom for dissent than in the Soviet years. In 1917, one of the first decisions by the Bolsheviks was to ban criticism of authorities with the Decree of Press.

The dangers in covering Ukraine

In Ukraine, civilians said they hope Russians will seek out accurate information about the devastation Putin has wrought on Russia's neighbor.

We need journalists to report on the ground, we need the world to help us," said Galina Odnorog, who is worried about her daughter in Mariupol and volunteered to help her country's army.

Popova said there's a lot of uncertainty about where the majority of the Russian population stands because the Kremlin's propaganda machine is so pervasive and older generations in particular rely on state-sponsored television for their news. That makes it difficult for many Russians to get an accurate picture of what is happening in Ukraine and why.

Police detain a demonstrator during an action against Russia's attack on Ukraine in St. Petersburg, Russia, Wednesday, March 2, 2022.

Before the invasion, 60% of Russians said the United States and NATO were responsible for rising tensions in eastern Ukraine, according to a poll in February by the Levada Center, an independent pollster in Russia. Fewer than 5% laid blame on the Kremlin.

"This information battle is being waged right now," Popova said.

Though trust in state-sponsored media is low in Russia, trust in other outlets is even lower, said Hannah Chapman, a political science professor at Miami University and faculty associate at the Havighurst Center for Russian and Post-Soviet Studies.

Gaining access to alternative sources of information has become difficult as the government restricted access to social media, including Facebook and Twitter, further obscuring information about what's happening in Ukraine.

"But as the conflict drags on and the official message continues to depart from reality on the ground, it may become less persuasive," Chapman said.

Hope in the streets

Despite the crackdown, Russian opposition groups have organized more antiwar rallies, including one for March 6 and March 12.

I believe that now, when its obvious to all of us that Russia might mobilize all young men to this war, any antiwar protester is valuable, Gannushkina said.

She recalled the aftermath of World War II, which killed more than 10 million people in the Soviet Union, when German soldiers were pushed down Moscows streets outside her home.

I wonder now who  will feel sorry for Russian soldiers sent to Ukraine  many of them are not even aware what is coming, she said.

Putin is not immune to public pressure, Chapman noted. Though he's taken steps to shore up his support over the past 22 years, his popularity relies on Russia's economic prosperity and domestic stability  both of which have unraveled in the past week.

Police officers detain women during a protest against Russia's invasion of Ukraine in central Moscow on March 2, 2022.

Western allies imposed punishing economic sanctions that have rippled through the Russian economy, sending the ruble tumbling and interest rates soaring. Russians have stood in long lines to withdraw money from ATMs while vacations are cut short or canceled after more than 30 countries closed their airspace to Russian aircraft.

The sanctions, which will hit not only oligarchs but ordinary Russians, could exacerbate mass protests and lead to bigger crowds as they further erode Russia's economy, Stoner said.

"All of the gains since the collapse of the Soviet Union 30 years ago are being lost here," she said. "They may face not just recession but depression for a war they weren't consulted about and didn't know was coming  at what point do you go out into the street and risk arrest or worse?"

Although there is a brutal crackdown on free speech, demonstrations in lesser circumstances have forced the Kremlin to change tack, according to Stoner. Putin softened his plan to change the retirement age for women from 55 to 63, instead changing it 60 after public outcry and a slip in his approval ratings over the issue, she noted.

More: Where US, allies have targeted the dozens of sanctions against Russia

'It will be a lot harder on people': How sanctions will impact ordinary Russians

For Putin, who concentrates all his power within himself instead of government institutions, a change in public opinion could be his demise.

"These regimes look very solid until the very last moment before they collapse," Popova said. "Even if we're not seeing major cracks, we're not going to see them gradually develop, it will happen suddenly."

"We're not seeing it now," she cautioned, "but it is possible that if this becomes a major social mobilization that it could be the force that changes the course."

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Can Russian protests against war in Ukraine change anything?
Fears of a nuclear catastrophe worse than the 1986 Chernobyl disaster were raised overnight into Friday when Russian shelling hit Europe's largest power plant, causing a fire that was later extinguished.

Russian forces now occupy the Zaporizhzhia plant in southeastern Ukraine, the country's nuclear inspectorate said, adding that the nuclear facilities are intact and undamaged. Nuclear scientists called the attack "astonishing" and unprecedented.

The incident came as Russian forces made gains in Ukraine's south, seizing one key port city and encircling another.

Meanwhile, the humanitarian crisis continues to grow with more than 1 million people displaced so far. Ukraine and Russia tentatively agreed in talks Thursday to create humanitarian corridors to allow the safe passage of civilians. The Biden administration is offering temporary immigration protections to Ukrainians already in the United States.
The RBT, formerly the Russian Ballet Theatre, will present "Swan Lake" in El Paso in March.

The Russian Ballet Theatre has recently changed its name to RBT during its current tour in support of Ukraine.

RBT will present Tchaikovskys "Swan Lake" for one show only March 27 at the Plaza Theatre.

More: Gov. Greg Abbott wants Russian products taken off Texas shelves over invasion of Ukraine

Gulya Hartwick, a producer of the show, said in an email the group has been receiving questions and she wants to make sure people are informed.

"We are an independent, U.S.-owned ballet company, self-funded, with a multi-national cast from nine different countries including Ukraine, Belarus, Russia, Poland, Armenia, Japan, Italy and Slovenia," she said.

The RBT will bring its production of "Swan Lake" to El Paso this March.

"We honor the traditions of classical Russian ballet, Vaganova technique, the foundation of the world ballet. We are a living example of unity, having nine different nations together on one stage creating beauty, not destroying it," she added.

Hartwick said they are grateful for the kind words of support extended to their dancers, whose families are currently in danger.

"We dance for peace," she stated.

The group posted about the change of name on its Facebook page.

"The RBT team announces the change of companys name for the remaining shows on tour in solidarity of our friends, family members and all those in pain and fear caused by decisions of a small group of monsters," the Facebook post states.

"Lets not allow them to destroy a beautiful world and culture created by millions of brave and kind, smart and caring people of the world. We Dance for Peace. We stand with Ukraine."

In a post about its performance in February at The Carolina Theatre in Durham, North Carolina, the group posted that it was very emotional to perform. It was Feb. 24, the day Russia launched a large-scale invasion of Ukraine.

"It is hard to dance with tears on our eyes," the post stated. "We are grateful to Carolina Theatre, and the people of Durham for the support and spreading the message."

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Tickets, ranging from $39 to $135, plus fees, are available at Ticketmaster.com and elpasolive.com. There still are plenty of seats in all price ranges.

Lauren Falco, of Destination El Paso, said the policy for all events is "no refunds and no exchanges."

More: Former North American heads of state address Russian aggression in Ukraine at Border Summit

Maria Cortes Gonzalez may be reached at 915-546-6150; mcortes@elpasotimes.com; @EPTMaria on Twitter.

This article originally appeared on El Paso Times: Russian Ballet Theatre changes name to RBT for tour, supports Ukraine
Smoke and fires could be seen near the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine on March 4. Screenshot/YouTube

Ukraine said on Friday that Russia took control of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant after fighting.

A Ukrainian official said the plant's "nuclear safety is now guaranteed."

Ukraine's president said Russia targeted it and must be stopped before "nuclear disaster."

Ukrainian officials said on Friday that Russia had seized its Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant  the largest in the country and in Europe  but that radiation levels were safe.

Oleksandr Starukh, the head of the Zaporizhzhia regional military administration, said in a Friday-morning statement that Russian forces had taken control of the plant after attacking it. The State Inspectorate for Nuclear Regulation of Ukraine also confirmed the Russian capture in a Friday Facebook post.

Starukh confirmed earlier reports that a fire had broken out at the plant amid intense fighting in the area, but that the fire was "localized."

Early on Friday morning, a video livestream from the plant appeared to show at least one building in flames, as well as intermittent explosions  which set off car alarms in the parking lot  tracer rounds, and a column of armored vehicles outside.

Surveillance-camera footage showing the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant after Russian attacks on March 4. Zaporizhzhia NPP/YouTube via Reuters

"The fire that broke out was localized by our SES units. There was a fight. The nuclear power plant is currently under the control of the Russian military, which is responsible" for the fire, Starukh said, referring to the State Emergency Service.

But he added that the plant's "nuclear safety is now guaranteed," citing the facility's director, Agence France-Presse reported.

Officials from the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN watchdog, also told a press conference on Friday that there had been no release of radioactive material at the plant.

The State Inspectorate for Nuclear Regulation of Ukraine said employees were still working at the plant to keep it safe. It reported no changes in radiation levels but warned that could change.

Amid the attacks, US Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm tweeted that there were no signs of elevated radiation levels. She added, "The plant's reactors are protected by robust containment structures and reactors are being safely shut down."

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She also described Russia's military operations near the plant as reckless and said they "must cease."

Energoatom, Ukraine's nuclear-power operator, said there were deaths and injuries among Ukrainian troops, but it didn't specify a number, CNN reported.

Ukraine says Russia targeted the plant

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky accused Russia of intentionally firing at the plant in a Friday Facebook post.

"Europe must wake up now. Europe's largest nuclear power plant is on fire. Right now, Russian tanks are firing upon nuclear units. These are tanks equipped with thermal imagers. That is, they know where they are shooting. They have been preparing for this!"

"There are 15 nuclear reactors in Ukraine. If one of them blows, that's the end for everyone. That's the end of Europe," he said.

He told world leaders that they needed to stop Russia "before this becomes a nuclear disaster."

In a video posted on Telegram, Andriy Tuz, a spokesperson for the plant, accused Russia of shelling the facility, which he said provided a quarter of Ukraine's electricity.

"We demand that they stop the heavy weapons fire," Tuz said, the AP reported.

In a Friday statement, Rafael Mariano Grossi, the IAEA's chief, said the plant was hit by a Russian projectile.

Read the original article on Business Insider
A Russian general has been killed by sniper fire in the fighting in Ukraine.

He is the most senior Russian military official to be killed in the conflict in Ukraine so far.

Russia says nearly 500 soldiers have died in the fighting in Ukraine, but US officials say Russia's casualty figures should be viewed with skepticism.

A Russian general was killed by sniper fire in Ukraine earlier this week, according to reports.

Maj. Gen. Andrei Sukhovetsky, 47, was the commanding general of Russia's 7th Airborne Division and deputy commander of the 41st Combined Arms Army. His death was confirmed Thursday by a local officers' organization in southern Russia, with the cause of his death being later confirmed by a range of sources, including a BBC security correspondent.

Sukhovetsky is the most senior Russian military official to have died in the conflict in Ukraine thus far.

Two other senior officers, a divisional commander, and a regimental commander also killed. are also believed to have been killed in the fighting, reports say

Russian commanders are moving up towards the frontline in an apparent attempt to restore momentum to the invasion of Ukraine according to western officials, said Gordon Corera, a BBC security correspondent, in a tweet.

"Those commanders are trying to impose their own personality on the battlefield but this, in turn, is placing them at greater risk," said Corera.

The Russian newspaper Pravda said Sukhovetsky started as a platoon commander before rising through the ranks in a series of leadership positions. He was reportedly decorated for his roles in Russia's military campaign in Syria and the annexation of Crimea, according to The Independent.

The Executive Director of Bellingcat, an investigative journalism outlet, has said that the death of Sukhovestskiy will be a "major demotivator" for Russian troops.

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Russia says nearly 500 soldiers have died in fighting in Ukraine while Ukrainian officials claim the number is closer to 6,000.

A senior US defense official told reporters Wednesday that people should be "extremely skeptical" of Russia's casualty figures.

Read the original article on Business Insider
The U.S. Justice Department has created a task force to go after the assets of Russian oligarchs, with the Biden administration vowing to seize their yachts, luxury apartments and private jets. But what are oligarchs? And how is their wealth connected to Russia's invasion of Ukraine?

What is a Russian oligarch?

Oligarchs  or extremely wealthy business leaders who are politically connected  became more prominent in Russia in the 1990s, but they are not unique to Russia.

Many Russian oligarchs are heavily involved in and benefit from Russian President Vladimir Putin's regime, with some serving in political positions.

For example, when Putin opened a new bridge to Crimea in 2018  a region Russia had annexed from Ukraine in 2014  the bridge was built by his friend Arkady Rotenberg's company and the truck he drove across it was made by Sergei Chemezov's state corporation Rostec, according to The Carnegie Moscow Center, a think-tank that focuses on domestic and foreign policy.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, and billionaire businessman Arkady Rotenberg, left, during the awarding ceremony for the builders of the Crimean Bridge, on March 18, 2020 in Sevastopol, on the Crimean Peninsula, which Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014. / Credit: Mikhail Svetlov / Getty Images

There is often a line of succession for oligarchs in politics. For example, Dmitry Patrushev, the son of Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev, was appointed as Russia's minister of agriculture, according to The Carnegie Moscow Center.

Numerous Russian oligarchs and government officials were sanctioned by the U.S. in 2018, in part for the regime's occupation of Crimea and for continuing to instigate violence in Ukraine, according to the U.S. Treasury Department, which announced the sanctions. Rotengberg's son and Patruskev were included in that round of sanctions for their involvement with the regime.

"Russian oligarchs and elites who profit from this corrupt system will no longer be insulated from the consequences of their government's destabilizing activities," Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said in a press release about those sanctions.

Why are some oligarchs being sanctioned now?

The Justice Department says the new multi-agency initiative known as Task Force KleptoCapture aims to enforce the sweeping sanctions, export restrictions and economic countermeasures that the United States and its allies and partners have imposed on Russia following its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.

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The sanctions are designed "to isolate Russia from global markets and impose serious costs for this unjustified act of war, by targeting the crimes of Russian officials, government-aligned elites, and those who aid or conceal their unlawful conduct."

"To those bolstering the Russian regime through corruption and sanctions evasion: we will deprive you of safe haven and hold you accountable," Deputy Attorney General Lisa O. Monaco said in a press release. "Oligarchs be warned: we will use every tool to freeze and seize your criminal proceeds."

While the task force aims to hold the sanctioned Russian elite accountable following the country's invasion of Ukraine, tracking down and seizing their assets will not be easy.

These extraordinarily wealthy and powerful individuals  including Vladimir Putin himself  have taken elaborate steps to protect their wealth around the globe.

Some oligarchs are trying to dodge penalties by moving assets  like their mega-yachts  into territories where sanctions don't apply and where their property cannot be seized or their assets frozen.

What happens now?

Financier and anti-corruption advocate Bill Browder told CBS News senior investigative correspondent Catherine Herridge that the goal is to get oligarchs to pressure Putin to stop the war. "We're not ready to engage in military warfare, so there's an expression we should fight them in the banks if we can't fight them with tanks," Browder said.

Some wealthy Russians have spoken out against Putin's attack on Ukraine. Mikhail Fridman, who founded one of Russia'a largest largest private banks, said he does not believe war should be a solution.

Evgeny Lebedev, the son of an oligarch and owner of London's Evening Standard, ran a statement on the front page of his newspaper under the headline, "President Putin, please stop this war."

"As a Russian citizen I plead with you to stop Russians killing their Ukrainian brothers and sisters. As a British citizen I ask you to save Europe from war," wrote Lebedev, whose father, Alexander Lebedev, is a former KGB agent turned bank owner.

Another Russian business mogul, Oleg Deripaska, took to the messaging platform Telegram to share his statement. He is considered an ally of Putin, but wrote that "peace is very important" and talks to end the war should begin "as soon as possible," according to The Associated Press.

Biggest threats surrounding Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia nuclear facility

Here's what it means to be an oligarch

Millions face the possibility of famine as Russia-Ukraine conflict hurts supply chains
Shoppers lined up at the entrance of Ikea Rostokino in Moscow on March 3. Vlad Karkov/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

Ikea said this week that it would close all 17 of its stores in Russia because of the conflict.

Russian shoppers rushed to the stores to stock up on products.

Ikea is among a number of major US and European companies that have halted operations in Russia.

Shoppers flocked to Ikea's stores in Russia this week after the budget furniture chain announced that it would temporarily close all of its outlets in the country because of the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

In a statement shared with news organizations, the company said it was closing stores to support the safety of its workers and because the conflict had caused major issues to its supply chain.

Photographers shared on social media photos and videos they took that showed long lines outside some of the 17 stores that Ikea operates in Russia. The stores closed on Thursday.

Local journalists who photographed the scenes inside and outside Ikea stores in Moscow said staff at the stores advised customers to leave the lines because it would be impossible to serve them all before closing time.

An Ikea worker at one of its stores in Moscow informed shoppers that the store was closing. Konstantin Zavrazhin/Getty Images

But shoppers persevered and continued to wait in line, they said.

Ikea closed all of its stores in Russia on March 3. Oleg Nikishin/Getty Images

Ikea is among a number of major US and European companies who are either temporarily halting their operations in Russia because of the conflict or pulling out of the country entirely.

Apple, Nike, H&M, Disney, and Warner Bros. are among the companies limiting or ceasing services there. The oil companies BP and Shell both divested their 20% stakes in Rosneft, Russia's state-backed energy giant, in protest at the country's invasion of Ukraine.

Experts said foreign retailers who continued to operate in Russia would find it increasingly challenging to stock their stores or distribution centers, as leading freight and shipping companies  such as Maersk, FedEx, UPS, and DHL  had stopped delivering to the country.

A spokesperson for DSLV, Germany's federal logistics association, told Bloomberg that while deliveries were still being made by road, the number of companies doing so was rapidly diminishing.

Read the original article on Business Insider
LVIV, Ukraine (Reuters) - Russian troops have entered the Ukrainian Black Sea port city of Mykolayiv for the first time, regional authorities said on Friday.

In a video statement shared online, Governor Vitaliy Kim said fighting was under way in parts of the city.

"Let's not get nervous," he said.

(Reporting by Pavel Polityuk, Writing by Alessandra Prentice, Editing by Timothy Heritage)
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia's upper house of parliament approved a draft law on Friday that would impose a jail term of up to 15 years for people who intentionally spread "fake" information about Russia's armed forces, the TASS news agency reported.

The bill will become law once President Vladimir Putin signs it, as he is widely expected to do. Moscow says it is fighting back in what it casts as an information war with the West over the conflict in Ukraine.

(Reporting by Moscow bureau; Editing by Jon Boyle)
Mar. 4SAN BENITO  The San Benito school district is mulling a historic feat.

On its finance committee, Chairwoman Janie Lopez wants to know if the school board could cut into the district's property tax rate, which has stood at $1.30 per $100 valuation for about eight years  one of the highest among the area's school districts.

"I requested staff look into cost savings, including a tax cut," she stated Thursday.

In this city where residents make an average of $13,000 a year, a tax cut would lighten their burden, she said.

"Taxpayers, parents, and voters hold us accountable," she stated. "As the vice president of the San Benito CISD school board and chairwoman of finance, I have a duty to ensure the district exerts fiscal responsibility on the usage of local, state and federal funds. We must provide a good quality education while not causing taxpayers an added burden due to wasteful spending."

During a meeting, Lopez requested school attorney Steven Weller search for a financial advisor to conduct a feasibility study aimed at determining whether the school board could afford to trim the tax rate.

"I am requesting a feasibility study be conducted before we adopt a budget and tax rate this coming year," Lopez stated. "I would like to hire an external company to perform a feasibility study to break down expenditures and revenues to know if we are managing our funds effectively and efficiently  or if we need to cut down on wasteful spending."

Since 2012, the district's expenses have climbed by $20.5 million, she said.

"The study (will) help us determine what economic opportunities we may proceed with to continue to ensure a quality education while maintaining necessary costs, like wages," she stated.

Proposal facing opposition

However, school board members like Orlando Lopez stand against cutting the tax rate, noting the district's dropped student enrollment amid the coronavirus pandemic.

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Since the 2018-2019 school year, enrollment's fallen from about 10,500 to 9,600 while the state pays the district about $5,500 a year per student based on a formula.

Cutting the tax rate would slash revenues funding students' educations, Orlando Lopez said.

"We're losing revenue and they want to lower revenue even more when our goal is to give students every opportunity they need," he said.

Meanwhile, he described hiring a financial advisor as an unnecessary expense.

"It's an additional expense that we don't need when we have a CFO whose job is to assess the finances of the school district," he said, referring to Vicki Perez, the district's assistant superintendent of finance.

While board member Ariel Cruz also opposes cutting the tax rate, she expressed concern a feasibility study could delay the process of approving the district's new budget in June.

"It's really worrisome because it may affect our calendar for the budget for next year," she said.

Amid falling enrollment, the American Rescue Plan Act's Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief, or ESSER, grant money has been helping the district fund operations, she said, adding that money runs out in 2024.

Preliminary financial review called

Now, officials are waiting for Moak Casey & Associates, an Austin-based financial advisory firm, to present officials with preliminary information on the feasibility of cutting the tax rate, Perez told committee members during Tuesday's meeting, adding officials expect to pay the firm $3,000 to $4,000.

"Right now, the scope would be offering alternative tax rates and what it looks like as far as impacting the district's funding from the state," she said.

During its presentation, the firm plans to review the potential impact of two state propositions on the November election's ballot  one asking voters if they want to cut elderly and disabled homeowners' taxes while the other possibly boosting the homestead exemption from $25,000 to $40,000.

If voters approve the propositions, they'll cut into the district's revenue stream.

"There are two propositions that are going to offer some tax relief," Perez said. "That way you all are aware of what that looks like on that end and how that might impact the district."

Search for financial advisor

In response to Lopez's request, Weller said he would search for a financial advisory firm to conduct the feasibility study.

"The first step the district ought to take for examining a change in the tax rate might be whether the budget supports a change in the tax rate without creating affects that you don't want to the district's operations or funding levels from the state," he said.
Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham has called for Russians to do their country and the world "a great service" and assassinate Vladimir Putin. J. Scott Applewhite/AP

Sen. Lindsey Graham has called on Russians to assassinate Vladimir Putin, Julius Caesar-style.

"Is there a Brutus in Russia?" Graham tweeted, adding that only the Russian people "can fix this."

Graham echoed Fox News host Sean Hannity, who this week called for Putin to be assassinated.

Sen. Lindsey Graham has called for the Julius Caesar-style assassination of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

"Is there a Brutus in Russia? Is there a more successful Colonel Stauffenberg in the Russian military?" Graham tweeted on March 4.

Graham was referring to Brutus, a historical figure who assassinated Julius Caesar, and Claus von Stauffenberg, an army officer who tried and failed to kill Adolf Hitler.

"The only way this ends is for somebody in Russia to take this guy out. You would be doing your country  and the world  a great service," Graham tweeted.

In a separate tweet in the same Twitter chain on March 4, Graham said "the only people who can fix this are the Russian people," referencing his calls for Putin's assassination.

"Easy to say, hard to do. Unless you want to live in darkness for the rest of your life, be isolated from the rest of the world in abject poverty, and live in darkness you need to step up to the plate," Graham said.

Graham is not the first conservative American figure to call for Putin's assassination in the week since Russia launched an unprovoked invasion of Ukraine. Fox News host Sean Hannity floated the idea that Putin should be assassinated during a March 2 episode of his podcast, "The Sean Hannity Show."

Some Russians, too, have advocated for a regime change in their homeland. Businessman and US-based crypto investor Alex Konanykhin put a $1 million bounty on Putin's head this week, calling for military officers to arrest him as a war criminal.

Insider's live blog of the Russian invasion is covering developments as they happen.

Read the original article on Business Insider
Rhode Island plans a unique sendoff for the military medical team sent here in January to care for patients during a COVID surge.

A special Good Night Lights celebration will tonight "honor and thank" the 26 doctors, nurses and respiratory technicians who've been working at Rhode Island Hospital and Hasbro Children's Hospital for the past six weeks, according to Dr. Saul N. Weingart, hospital president.

Good Night Lights started small in 2010 when hospital cartoonist Steve Brosnihan flashed his bicycle lights from a bus stop to say goodnight to a patient he'd befriended. Over the years, it's become a nightly event with public safety workers, businesses, Brown University and others flashing lights at 8:30 p.m. to say goodnight to the patients at Hasbro.

From January: Rhode Island Hospital receives team of military doctors, nurses, amid latest virus surge

Providence police and fire departments parade past Hasbro Children's Hospital in April 2020 as part of a special Good Night Lights to thank frontline healthcare for their work fighting COVID.

Brosnihan spread the word about tonight's special event in a Facebook post, "Please consider becoming part of this opportunity to thank our service men and women who have stepped up when most needed in the hospital setting. All you need is a flashlight--or the headlights of your vehicle. Good Night Lights happens at exactly 8:30 every night."

Looking ahead: Entering the third year of living with COVID, RIers share their hopes for the future

With the highly-contagious omicron variant driving up hospitalizations, President Joe Biden in January deployed military medical teams to six states, including Rhode Island.

At the time, the number of COVID patients at Rhode Island Hospital had "skyrocketed" over six weeks from about 20 to 182, Weingart said then. Meanwhile, some 300 members of the hospital's staff of 7,000 were out of work with COVID, he said.

What they say: Do RI health care groups support easing COVID vaccine mandate for workers?

As of Friday, there were 34 COVID-19 patients at Rhode Island Hospital and Hasbro Childrens Hospital.

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Since arriving on Jan. 24, the U.S. Army's 14th Field Hospital medical team has worked "alongside hospital staff providing clinical care for severely ill patients in our respiratory ICU, the Emergency Department, the pediatric intensive care unit, and the pulmonary/critical care service," Weingart said.

"This team was an extraordinary addition to our ranks and provided much-needed help and relief at the peak of the COVID-19 omicron surge," he said. "Because of their assistance, Rhode Island Hospital and Hasbro were able to open additional critical care beds, accommodate additional transfers from outside facilities, and provide our exhausted staff with some temporary respite."

The team's last day is Sunday.

Recently: As COVID surged at state hospital, chief medical officer panned school COVID precautions

The response to the special event has been strong, according to Brosnihan. It should include fireworks and extended bucket trucks shining lights, he said. Anyone can join in, he said.

"It should be a good show," he said.

Brosnihan says "great signaling spots" include the entrance to Collier Point Park on Allens Ave., the Hot Club, and the Women & Infants One Blackstone Building parking lot in Providence and Bold Point Park, the East Bay Bike Path overlook and the University Orthopedics parking lot in East Providence.

The military personnel will be viewing the display from Hasbro Children's Hospital.

jperry@providencejournal.com

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On Twitter: @jgregoryperry

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This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: Good Night Lights to thank military team that fought COVID in RI
The contraction-like pain shot across Melissa Ursinis lower abdomen for an hour at a time. It would subside, then come back. She scheduled an appointment with her OB-GYN, but tests results looked normal. Still, her symptoms didnt improve. At one point, she was told she had a parasite. Then learned what was wrong: She had stage 2 colon cancer.

I wasnt losing weight. I was still exercising when I wasnt in pain, Ursini, 38, of Santa Clarita, California, told TODAY. The thought of colon cancer never hit my mind. I actually thought if it was any cancer it would have been ovarian cancer  or breast cancer.

Melissa Ursini hopes that her story encourages other people to pay attention to any symptoms they have and seek help early. (Courtesy Melissa Ursini)

Ursini is one the nearly 18,000 people under 50 diagnosed with colon cancer in a year, according to the American Cancer Society.

Im hoping that people realize its not an old persons disease, she said. Its becoming more common for younger people to get colon cancer. Dont balk reading those symptoms of abdominal pain or if you see blood in your stool. Got to the doctor, go get that checked out.

Stomach pain, loss of appetite, vomiting

In June 2021, Ursini started experiencing stomach cramps that felt like labor pains. After her OB-GYN conducted a few tests and ultrasounds that appeared healthy, Ursini visited a gastrointestinal doctor. Between appointments, her symptoms worsened.

Every couple minutes I had this big shot of pain go across the lower abdominal area and then it would go away and then it would come back and then it was stable, she said. It grew from there.

For a while, Melissa Ursini didn't think she could be seriously ill because she was able to exercise and do the things she loved. Though, she did notice she'd get tired easily. (Courtesy Melissa Ursini)

The pain became constant like period cramps and her appetite had waned. But she wasnt losing any weight even though she was eating less. While the GI doctor scheduled her for a CT scan with contrast, she started to have terrible stomach cramps and began vomiting. She thought it was a reaction to an antibiotic so she visited the emergency room.

The doctor dismissed it a little bit and hes like, I think youre constipated and I was like, Well I havent really eaten anything. Everything coming back up, she recalled.

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The doctor ordered a CT scan without contrast and it looked clear.

We didnt see the tumor, she said. We thought it would be like irritable bowel syndrome.

By this point, Ursini felt constant pain. Again, she started throwing up and returned to the emergency room.

The doctor came in and goes, I know what you have, you have a parasite. Have you been traveling? and Im like, 'Not really its COVID. I havent traveled. Ive literally been at home, she said. He gave me an antibiotic.

By this point, Ursini was throwing up so much she felt grateful for days when she didnt. Then one night, she started vomiting bile.

It smelled, she said.

She called her brother-in-law, Hector Leanos, an ER nurse. He suspected she had an obstruction.

He goes, Does it smell? I said, Yeah. He said, I dont care what youre doing I will come pick you up  you need to come to my hospital, Ursini said. (He said) Im going to let them know because I think its an obstruction.

Melissa Ursini felt sick for several months and visited several emergency rooms for treatment before discovering she had stage 2 colon cancer. (Courtesy Melissa Ursini)

After several tests, including a CT scan with contrast, the doctor delivered the news that it was colon cancer. At first, Ursini didnt grasp the news.

There was a mass inside my intestines causing me to back up, she said. Never in my mind would I ever think I had cancer.

She underwent an emergency colonoscopy, which only reached the mass. She underwent surgery where they removed the mass, 7 inches of intestine and tested 56 lymph nodes for cancer.

I was in shock, she said. Everything doesnt add up.

Melissa Ursini's grandfather died colon cancer nearly 40 years ago. When she was diagnosed, her mom felt worried Ursini would have as poor of a prognosis as he did. (Courtesy Melissa Ursini)

Her father had non Hodgkins lymphoma and lost weight and had abnormal bloodwork. That never happened to her. While her grandfather had died of colon cancer, her mother's cancer screenings never detected anything.

They found (my grandfathers cancer) so late that when they went in for surgery, they opened him up and then within 10 minutes came out and said, Theres nothing we can do, she said. You can imagine what my mom was going through when I went in for the same surgery almost 40 years later  she kept imagining they were going to come up and say the same thing.

Colon cancer in young people

Once considered an older persons cancer, doctors have noticed that more young people are being diagnosed with colorectal cancer.

The risk of colorectal cancer does increase with age and it used to be an older person disease, Dr. George Hajjar, a medical oncologist and hematologist at City of Hope and one of Ursinis doctors, told TODAY. Over the last 22 years of my career I (am) seeing that younger people are getting early disease and we are really not sure whats causing it.

While cases of colorectal cancer have been increasing in young people, Dr. George Hajjar said Melissa Ursini's case was unusual because she did not have the traditional risk factors, such as eating a high fat diet or a close family history of colorectal cancer. (Courtesy City of Hope)

People with a family history are at a higher risk and undergo screening about 10 years earlier  at 35 instead of 45 for people without a family history. Ursinis cancer did not have a genetic component but even still her daughter would qualify for earlier screening.

Its very important when we meet patients to get a good family history of malignancy because that might give us a tip to start screening early, Hajjar said.

Symptoms of colorectal cancer include:

Rectal bleeding

Anemia

Abdominal pain

Changing bowel habits, including diarrhea or constipation

Feeling full sooner

Symptoms can be nonspecific, meaning they are common enough that they could indicate other conditions.

Who would think that they will have colorectal cancer if they have some abdominal discomfort or change of bowel habits, Hajjar said. Thats where the screening idea came from.

Surviving colon cancer does mean that Melissa Ursini will have undergo colonoscopies more often to make sure it hasn't returned (Courtesy Melissa Ursini)

Treatment varies based on the stage but most people undergo surgery to remove the tumors and any cancerous lymph nodes. Sometimes follow up with chemotherapy is needed and patients will be followed closely after they complete treatment for the first few years. As for Ursini, her outlook seems promising.

She brought it to our attention at the right time and she had the appropriate treatment, he said. She did everything right.

Life after treatment

Treatment felt tough at times. Ursini lost some hair, struggled to sleep and experienced neuropathy that made her extremely sensitive to cold. She skipped drinking iced tea and sometimes she couldnt touch cold things because it caused pain.

While Melissa Ursini lost some of her hair, had trouble sleeping and experienced painful neuropathy, she feels grateful that her experience with chemotherapy wasn't too hard on her. (Courtesy Melissa Ursini)

I would go to the grocery store and I would have winter gloves on because if I touched something (cold) it would hurt so much, she said. I was pretty lucky and I dont think the side effects were as bad as they could have been.She finished treatment in October and follow-up scans and a colonoscopy show shes cancer free. She feels grateful for her health.

My body has taken me very far. First, it helped grow me so Ive grown in this body but Ive also grown a human. I grew cancer. I got that cancer removed, went through treatment, she said. There are times when I took this body for granted by not being happy with weight loss or pushing it a little too far with exercising or not eating the right things  This body has taken me far and (its) going to take me even further.
Attorneys Samantha Hernandez-Ortega, left, and Michael Alder, center left, speak at a news conference Friday. (Gregory Yee / Los Angeles Times)

An attorney representing a 16-year-old Rialto high school student who claims her allegations of sexual assault by another student were ignored by school officials filed a legal claim this week against the district's handling of the incident.

The girl told two assistant principals at the school in November that a 17-year-old boy had sexually and verbally assaulted her, according to her attorney Michael Adler. But her complaints went unheeded until last month when she broke down in class after a verbal confrontation with the boy, he said.

A teacher suggested she report what was happening to school officials, and the girl said she already had with no results, according to Adler. Her mother was contacted and she called police Feb. 16. An initial police report indicated the girl had been assaulted several times over the course of three months.

When detectives investigated the allegations they learned there were two additional female students, ages 15 and 16, who were sexually assaulted by the same suspect, the Police Department said in a statement. Although one of the victims first reported the assaults to school officials in September 2021, no notification was made to the Rialto Police Department until Feb. 16.

Assistant Principals David Shenhan Yang, 38, and Natasha Harris, 37, were each charged last month with one felony count of child abuse under circumstances or conditions likely to cause great bodily injury or death, and two misdemeanor counts of failure of a mandated reporter to report child abuse or neglect, according to the San Bernardino County district attorneys office.

Detectives issued a citation to the 17-year-old suspect and released him into his parents custody pending criminal charges, police said.

On Wednesday, Adler said he filed a legal claim, a precursor to a lawsuit, on the girl's behalf against the Rialto School District over the school's handling of the sexual assault claims. The girl's identity has not been revealed because of her age.

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Harris allegedly tried to brush away the claims, by saying to the girl "they are just boys" and repeatedly asked the girl if she "said 'no' loud enough for him to hear her," according to the claim.

The next day, the girl was called into Yang's office, where a security guard and the brother of the 17-year-old boy accused of assaulting her were waiting. She was told the boy was being harassed by other students and called a "pervert," according to the claim.

"Mr. Yang and the schools security guard told the claimant she needed 'to drop the beef' and if she didnt, she could and/or would be suspended or expelled," according to the claim.

Later, Harris told the girl this all might be happening because of the way she dressed, the girl told authorities and her attorney.

Stephanie Olvera, the girl's mother, said she was contacted by Vice Principal Johanna Cuellar on Feb. 16 and was told that something had happened, but "it was under investigation" and "nothing to worry about," according to the claim.

What makes me the angriest is that the vice principal herself reached out to me and stated to me that there was no immediate concern, Olvera said. I asked her plenty of times if I needed to leave my job so I can go and attend to my daughter, and she told me: No, Im a mother myself. You have no reason to worry.

The vice principal then told her to speak with her daughter at home, Olvera said, adding that she knew something was wrong because her daughter did not want to communicate or go out with family.

I did mention to her while I was on the phone with her [that] my daughters not the same as of a couple months, she said. Is there a reason I should worry?

Harris and Yang are considered mandated reporters under California law and should have immediately contacted law enforcement after they were notified of child abuse or neglect, prosecutors said.

Syeda Jafri, a Rialto Unified School District spokeswoman, said an internal investigation by the district is continuing and that officials are cooperating with authorities.

"Obviously, had there been legally proper reporting on the first incident, the second two would likely have not happened," Adler said.

His client is still trying to cope with what happened to her, Adler said.

"She's a strong young lady, but obviously this is very distressing," Adler said. "At school, we have a social network that's kind of been taken away from her. And she would like to return to those relationships, but not be scared and threatened."

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.




The Supreme Court on Friday sided with the U.S. government in a lawsuit brought against the FBI over a controversial post-9/11 surveillance operation that targeted a Muslim community in California.

In a unanimous ruling, the court found that the government could respond to the litigation by asserting the state secrets privilege, a legal doctrine allowing government information to be concealed if its disclosure would harm national security.

The decision concerned only the narrow and technical issue of whether the state secrets privilege is available to the government here. The 9-0 decision, penned by Justice Samuel Alito, held that the FBI can invoke this legal doctrine as the case proceeds through the lower courts.

The dispute traces back to 2006, when the FBI launched a 14-month counterterrorism operation aimed at surveilling members of Southern California's Muslim community.

The bureau relied on an informant, Craig Monteilh, to pose as a Muslim convert. He recorded his conversations at mosques and during other interactions. Midway through the operation, in a twist of irony, Monteilh began to make provocative statements about jihad that so alarmed his new Muslim acquaintances that they eventually reported him to the FBI.

Monteilh and the FBI later parted ways, and he went public with the details of the operation. The FBI has since confirmed that Monteilh made secret recordings as part of his undercover work.

In 2011, three Muslim men who had been spied on sued the FBI and its agents, alleging that, among other things, they had been illegally targeted because of their religion.

In response, the government invoked the state secrets privilege and asked the judge to dismiss the relevant claims because litigating them would require the disclosure of protected information. The court granted the FBI's request, prompting an appeal by the plaintiffs.

The San Francisco-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit reversed the district court's ruling, siding against the FBI and allowing some of the Muslim plaintiffs' claims to proceed.

The appeals court ruled the district court had erred by applying the state secrets privilege rather than using a procedure provided in a provision of the 1970s-era statute called the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).

But Friday's unanimous decision by the Supreme Court overruled the lower appeals court, with the justices holding that the FISA provision at issue does not eliminate or curtail the availability of the state secrets privilege.
A suspect is in custody after a high school shooting left three people, including the shooter, injured in Kansas.

The shooting took place in the school administration office area at Olathe East High School on Friday. The injured individuals include a resource officer and a school administrator, who police has confirmed as being the school principal, according to KMBC.

No further information about the suspect has been released to the public following the shooting southwest of Kansas City in the eastern part of the state.

The Olathe Police Department said that theres no danger to the public but they still urged people to stay away from the area as the investigation was ongoing.

School resource officer shot and injured, administrator shot and injured, the department tweeted just before noon on Friday. Stand by on reunification area. No active threat at this time. No reports of injured students at this time.

OLATHE EAST PARENTS: Frontier Park 15501 Indian Creek Parkway will be used for staging/overflow for reunification with students @CityofOlatheKS @olatheschools https://t.co/GYFz8Z85ID  Olathe Police (@OlathePolice) March 4, 2022

A police spokesman said authorities were notified of the shooting just before 10.30am when the schools resource officer radioed the police to say that he and an administrator had been shot. He added that the suspect had also been shot.

Olathe Police said the officer is expected to be okay and that the principal is also expected to survive, according to KMBC.

The suspect is reportedly a student at the school.

Police have said that students will be taken to Pioneer Trail Middle School to be reunited with their parents, according to The Kansas City Star.

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Ill freak out later, mother Nicole Maniscalco, who has two children at the school, told the paper. They need to see how moms got this.

At 12.03pm, Olathe public schools tweeted: Olathe East is currently under lockdown due to an active shooting situation on campus. Please know that law enforcement is on site and the building is secured. Olathe East and surrounding school buildings have been secured.

Forty minutes later, they added: To clarify, if your loved one was injured, you would have already been contacted by the police department. We will provide additional updates as soon as they are available. Thank you for your patience.

KMBC reported that agents from the Kansas City Field Office of the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms have been sent to the area to help police.

Parents wait as school busses line up to pick up kids at Olathe East.@kmbc pic.twitter.com/ZBiMq9w07F  Matt Flener KMBC (@MattFlenerKMBC) March 4, 2022

Kansas Democratic Governor Laura Kelly tweeted: Our thoughts are with the entire Olathe East High School community today. We are closely monitoring the situation on the ground & are in communication with law enforcement.

Overland Park Regional Medical Center spokesperson Christine Hamele said in a statement that the hospital was treating three patients from the shooting. One was in a critical condition, another was in a critical but stable condition, and a third was in a stable condition, The Kansas City Star reported. The patients were not identified.

Kansas Democratic state Senator Cindy Holscher went to California Trail Middle School to pick up her child.

Ill never be the same after this, she told the paper. You see the reports. You hear the things that go on in other places, but until youre there standing on that sidewalk looking at that school waiting to hear from your child.

I mean, its the worst feeling ever. You know, weve been trying to make changes. Im not talking about radical changes. Im just talking about simple things to help people be a little bit safer, she added.

Just this past week, we had a hearing for red flag bills, and you know those are the bills that if theres an identifiable threat, the guns are removed for a time to hopefully prevent a shooting during a domestic violence situation or a shooting of law enforcement, and one of the opponents actually said, we cant do this because gun owners will be upset if their guns got scratched when they were confiscated, Ms Holscher said. If thats where our focus is going to be, worried about a gun getting scratched, were going to keep seeing this.
JACKSON, Miss. (AP)  The same Mississippi Legislature that proclaimed racial reconciliation after removing the Confederate battle emblem from the state flag nearly two years ago passed a bill Thursday to limit how race can be discussed in classrooms.

Several Black legislators said during the six-hour debate that the bill could squelch honest discussion about the harmful effects of racism because parents could complain if history lessons make white children uncomfortable.

Democratic Rep. Chris Bell of Jackson opposed the bill. He said some people support it because they are fearful of Black people and are fearful of when white people will no longer be in the majority.

In Mississippi, we always tend to live in the land of purgatory of the most negative things around. This bill adds to that purgatory," Bell said.

The Republican-controlled House voted 75-43 to pass Senate Bill 2113. It will go to Republican Gov. Tate Reeves, who has pledged to sign it into law.

The bill's short title says it would prohibit critical race theory. But the main text of the bill does not mention or define the theory, and many supporters of the bill also have said they cannot define it.

The bill says no school, community college or university could teach that any sex, race, ethnicity, religion or national origin is inherently superior or inferior.

Democratic Rep. Zakiya Summers of Jackson said she has been told by some colleagues that the bill does nothing substantial but it gives them a talking point at election time.

Censoring teachers, dismantling education bit by bit, attempting to erase the past, refusing to acknowledge the hurt and the horror and the heinous acts that have been done to my people and then hiding behind this inferior versus superior argument  thats what this bill will do, Summers said.

No legislators gave speeches in support of the bill. Republican Rep. Joey Hood of Ackerman, who is white, did not define critical race theory as he explained the bill Thursday.

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History will continue to be taught  American history, Civil War history, Mississippi history, Hood said.

When the bill passed the Republican-controlled Senate in January, all of the Black senators withheld their votes and walked out in protest.

Republicans across the country have been raising money by saying critical race theory is a threat and multiple Republican-led states have banned or limited the teaching of critical race theory or similar concepts through laws or administrative actions.

Critical race theory is an academic framework that examines how racism has shaped public policy and institutions such as the legal system, and how those have perpetuated the dominance of white people in society.

State Superintendent of Education Carey Wright said critical race theory is not taught in Mississippi schools. The University of Mississippi law school offers an elective class on the theory.

Mississippi has the highest percentage of Black residents of any state  about 38%. Along with other states in the Deep South, including neighboring Alabama, it was a crucible of the civil rights movement.

All House votes for the bill on Thursday came from white Republicans. Of those voting against it, 39 are Black Democrats, two are white Democrats, one is a Black independent and one is a white independent. Four white lawmakers did not vote  two Republicans, one Democrat and one independent.

Republican House Speaker Philip Gunn led efforts to change the state flag in 2020, saying the Confederate symbol was hurtful to many. Voters approved a new flag that features a magnolia, and legislators put the new design into law in early 2021.

Gunn supported the bill Thursday, and immediately after it passed, he commended the House for having a respectful debate.

Gunn, who has been a leader in his Baptist church, also led the House in prayer and said representatives often face difficult issues, including the one Thursday. He asked God for healing and said: We pray that you would not allow this to create division."

___

Follow Emily Wagster Pettus on Twitter: http://twitter.com/EWagsterPettus.
DAR ES SALAAM (Reuters) -Tanzania's president, Samia Suluhu Hassan, on Friday met with the main opposition party's leader, Freeman Mbowe, the presidency said, hours after prosecutors dropped terrorism charges against Mbowe and set him free.

Mbowe, chairman of Chadema party, was detained last July in the lakeside town of Mwanza where he was due to attend a conference on proposals for a new constitution.

"President Samia emphasised the need to join hands to build the nation, through trust and respect built on the foundations of justice," her office said in a statement, announcing the meeting.

The statement quoted Mbowe saying they had agreed to be civil in their politics, and that he would cooperate with the government in its quest to develop the East African country.

He was charged in court on July 26, in spite of protests from his party that the charges were politically motivated.

"The director of prosecutions has dropped charges of economic crimes and terrorism," Chadema said on its Twitter feed. Three co-accused were also freed, the party said.

Mbowe's supporters, who had flocked into court to follow the trial, cheered after the decision to drop the charges was announced, while his lawyers hugged each other.

His detention and trial had raised questions about Hassan's commitment to greater tolerance for political dissent.

Hassan, who took over after the death of her predecessor John Magufuli in March last year, lifted a ban on four newspapers and met the exiled top opposition leader in Brussels last month, stirring hopes of greater tolerance for political dissent.

Government officials deny accusations of rights violations and stifling democracy. The government's partners welcomed Mbowe's freedom.

"Today's dismissal of the case against Freeman Mbowe is a welcome opportunity for Tanzania to turn the page and focus on the future," said Donald Wright, the U.S. ambassador to Tanzania.

(Writing by Duncan Miriri;Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky and Matthew Lewis)
Sen. Lindsey Graham, left, Sen. Ted Cruz, top right, and Rep. Marjorie-Taylor Greene, bottom-right AP Photo/Mariam Zuhaib, AP Photo/Evan Vucci, AP Photo/Evan Vucci

Ted Cruz and Marjorie Taylor Greene are unhappy with Lindsey Graham, a fellow Republican.

Graham suggested on Thursday that someone in Russia should assassinate President Vladimir Putin.

Cruz called it "an exceptionally bad idea" and Greene said it was "dangerous" and "unhinged."

Sen. Lindsey Graham suggested on Thursday night that someone in Russia should assassinate President Vladimir Putin  and some of his Republican colleagues aren't happy about it.

Putin is currently leading a brutal invasion of Ukraine, which he's dubbed "a special military operation," causing hundreds of civilian deaths, destruction and devastation of many areas with shelling, and spurring a refugee crisis that threatens to destabilize Europe.

Both parties in Congress are almost unanimously united in opposing Russia's war and supporting the Ukrainian people. President Joe Biden has imposed harsh sanctions on key Russian leaders and oligarchs, but has repeatedly stressed that he has no plans to deploy US troops to defend Ukraine.

In a Thursday night tweet, Graham asked whether there was a "Brutus" or a "Colonel Stauffenberg" in Russia, referring to Marcus Brutus, one of Julius Caesar's allies-turned-assassins, and Claus von Stauffenberg, a Nazi colonel who unsuccessfully attempted to assassinate Adolf Hitler in 1944.

"Is there a Brutus in Russia? Is there a more successful Colonel Stauffenberg in the Russian military?," Graham tweeted.

"The only way this ends is for somebody in Russia to take this guy out. You would be doing your country  and the world  a great service," he added.

In a follow-up tweet, Graham said "the only people who can fix this are the Russian people."

"Unless you want to live in darkness for the rest of your life, be isolated from the rest of the world in abject poverty, and live in darkness you need to step up to the plate," Graham said.

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Two of the most prominent conservatives in Congress quickly pushed back.

Sen. Ted Cruz, one of Graham's colleagues on the Senate Judiciary Committee, called Graham's tweet "an exceptionally bad idea," saying the US "should not be calling for the assassination of heads of state."

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a far-right conservative House member who is known for her inflammatory tweets and statements and was stripped of her committee assignments in 2021 over her own threatening social media posts, found Graham's tweet to be a step too far.

"This is irresponsible, dangerous & unhinged," Greene wrote. "We need leaders with calm minds & steady wisdom."

Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, a conservative Freedom Caucus member, sarcastically quipped, "When has Sen. Graham encouraging regime change ever gone badly?"

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (@RepMTG) March 4, 2022

Graham's suggestion managed to unite the two opposite ends of the political spectrum in bewilderment and concern.

Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, a progressive Democrat, tweeted: "Seriously, wtf?"

"I really wish our members of Congress would cool it and regulate their remarks as the administration works to avoid WWlll," she added.

Fox News host Laura Ingraham, one of the network's most prominent and popular opinion hosts, also expressed bafflement and dismay at Graham's suggestion.

"I don't know why a sitting US senator would be tweeting that out. It seems really dangerous and stupid to say that," Ingraham said on her show on Thursday night in a segment with Sen. Tom Cotton. "And we like Lindsey Graham, but that's just a stupid comment."

Read the original article on Business Insider
Chicago celebrates its birthday March 4, this year marking 185 years. Some say the city is older than we think, and that celebrating the date is like marking your baptism, or when you took your first steps, as your birthday.

We say even a fake birthday is worth celebrating, especially when there are so many classic Chicago food and drink experiences to be had, and in light of global events.

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So birthdays mean cake, and around Chicago that should mean an atomic cake.

Its a tall, weighty, radiant creation  with chocolate, yellow and banana layers  plus so much more.

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You start with a layer of banana cake topped with a banana filling, thats Bavarian cream custard with fresh sliced bananas, said Calumet Bakery owner Kerry Moore when discussing the history of the iconic Chicago-style cake in 2017.

Then you put on a layer of yellow cake, topped with a strawberry filling, thats fresh-sliced strawberries in a glaze with strawberry cream, Moore said.

The Atomic Cake is stacked high with three layers of cake, each a different flavor, and three different fillings. The whole is covered in a whipped topping. Food styling by Mark Graham. (Michael Tercha; styling by Mark Graham/Chicago Tribune)

Then you put on a layer of chocolate cake with fudge on top, he added. You ice it up, more times than not with whipped cream, but some people like buttercream, and thats it.

The cake has long been connected to Calumet Bakery. Moores maternal grandfather founded the business in 1935. His grandson had expanded the family-owned bakery beyond its original South Deering neighborhood.

When we spoke previously, Moore said he didnt know exactly who invented the atomic cake.

I was told that in the 50s, this guy named Frank or George, who worked part-time for my grandfather, came up with it, Moore said. He left to open Liberty Bakery in Roseland, but thats closed.

Other members of the Bakers Dozen, a collective of the oldest family bakeries in the area, said that it may have been a project by the group at the time.

After the previous story was published, however, readers wrote that it was George Kremm who invented the atomic cake at Liberty Bakery. One said they had worked for him in their teens, and others were related to the baker.

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Or bakers, because there was more than one.

George Kremm opened Liberty Bakery at 11932 S. Halsted St. in the 1950s. Ads in phone books, including the Greater Roseland Area Directory, stated they were the Originators of the Atomic Cake. He would also go on to open Louises Cake Box in Palos Heights, with his wife and namesake, Louise Kremm.

Another reader wrote that George and his brother, Rudy Kremm, created the atomic cake together. Rudy Kremm owned three Kremms Bakery locations, all on the South and Southwest Sides.

The original atomic cake was nearly identical to whats considered canon now.

The cake was assembled as follows, they wrote. A banana cake layer, topped with vanilla custard and fresh bananas plus whipped cream; next was a yellow cake layer, topped with fresh strawberries and whipped cream; next a chocolate cake layer, topped with chocolate custard; and then finally the whole cake was iced with whipped cream and garnished with chopped nuts and cherries on top.

The brothers made everything from scratch, custards and cake, plus used real whipping cream and all fresh fruit.

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George Kremm, once our mystery baker and the son of Hungarian immigrants who would apparently go on to invent the atomic cake, died at 60 in 1983. His wife, Louise Kremm, owner of Louises Cake Box for 34 years and daughter of Hungarian immigrants, died at 85 in 2008.

It remains somewhat of a mystery why the atomic cake remained a South Side specialty, but perhaps less so as we reveal the layers of racial, ethnic and geographic segregation across the city.

If you want an atomic cake, you still usually need to order a whole cake in advance. You can find the occasional slice or cup, but bakeries are reluctant to offer them, because the bananas will brown.

Now, Orland Park Bakery offers a whole section of Atomic Things. Its atomic paczki were maddeningly only available as a limited edition flavor of the day, prior to Paczki Day, though they may come back before Easter. You can order an atomic cup ($6), The Bomb cupcake ($3) and even a make at home atomic cake kit ($25), some assembly required.

You can bake your own atomic cake at home from our test kitchen recipe, or find them at many bakeries in Chicago and the suburbs, including the following bakers dozen, listed in alphabetical order, and do note you may need to order ahead, for Chicagos birthday or any day:

Bennisons Bakery; 1000 Davis St., Evanston; 847-328-9434; bennisonscakes.com

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Brown Sugar Bakery, 328 E. 75th St., 773-224-6262, brownsugarbakerychicago.com

Cal City Bakery. 816 Burnham Ave., Calumet City; 708-862-6640. 4019 E. 106th St., 773-437-3750. calcitybakery.com

Calumet Bakery; 18349 Torrence Ave., Lansing; 708-895-3700; calumetbakery.com

Dinkels Bakery, 3329 N. Lincoln Ave., 773-281-7300, dinkels.com

Fleckensteins. 19225 S. La Grange Road, Mokena; 708-479-5256. 352 Maple St., New Lenox; 815-462-3595. fleckensteins.com

Iversens Bakery; 12948 Western Ave., Blue Island; 708-385-3410; facebook.com/iversenbakery

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Orland Park Bakery; 14850 S. La Grange Road, Orland Park; 708-349-8516; orlandparkbakery.com

Pticek & Son Bakery; 5523 S. Narragansett Ave., facebook.com/Pticek-Son-Bakery-108169915891464

Roesers Bakery, 3216 W. North Ave., 773-489-6900, roeserscakes.com

TeaPotBrew Bakery, 1802 S. Wabash Ave., 312-966-6001, teapotbrewbakery.com

Webers Bakery, 7055 W. Archer Ave., 773-586-1234, webersbakery.com

Wolfs Bakery; 3241 W. 95th St., Evergreen Park; 708-422-7429; wolfsbakery.com

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Joe Cole as Harry Palmer in The Ipcress File. (Altitude TV/ITV)

Cold War thriller The Ipcress File gets a new adaptation at ITV this weekend, transporting viewers back to the 60s and a world of spying and intrigue.

Starring Peaky Blinders' Joe Cole as Harry Palmer and Tom Hollander (The Night Manager, Rev., Baptiste) as William Dalby, the new TV version of the Len Deighton novel spans three main filming locations.

Read more: Trigger Point confirms second series starring Vicky McClure

Here's all you need to know about where it was set and filmed.

Where is The Ipcress File set?

The story sees Harry Palmer recruited to work for spy master Dalby in 1960s London.

As well as plenty of shots of 60s London, the action takes us to international locations including Berlin, Helsinki, Beirut, Vienna and the Pacific.

But it might surprise viewers to know that although the drama convincingly appears to have visited those places, it was actually filmed somewhere completely different.

Where was The Ipcress File filmed?

Lucy Boynton as Jean in The Ipcress File. (Altitude TV/ITV)

The series was shot in just three locations - Liverpool, Cheshire and Croatia.

Liverpool is actually used as a substitute city for London, with Cole explaining: "We were filming in locations with some beautiful architecture and cool streets as well as in country houses. It was right in the middle of various lockdowns, but it was a nice experience filming there."

Director and executive producer James Watkins said that the series made use of the changing seasons as it worked its way through London and then Croatia, a favourite filming location for many crews as it can double for so many different places.

Read more: Joe Cole talks getting the glasses right for The Ipcress File

He said: "We started shooting in Liverpool, which doubles for London, in February where you want the drizzle and grey leaden skies of 1960s London.

Liverpool doubled as London. (ITV)

"Moving on to Croatia, very deliberately, in April and working our way through into June. Knowing we could work our way into the light, into the summer.

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So by the time we got to June it was like making a different show. You end up in the scorching burned out light of Beirut and then in a Pacific atoll with the light bouncing off the hardstanding of the air base, with the glistening Adriatic doubling for the Pacific. It was terrific."

Watkins, who also used Croatia to film his BBC series McMafia, said it helped to know the country so well.

Croatia provided many filming locations. (ITV)

He said: "To say, Okay, were in Zagreb and we can double Vienna here. Or we can go to the coast and create the souk in Beirut. Or go to an airbase up the coast and create the US Pacific atoll base.

"We also have scenes of Dalby in a car going through a snowy forest in Helsinki which was shot in Croatia in February. I knew they were going to have snow coming, so I said, Can we get a drone up and a car and just wait for the snow?"

He added: "It was also such fun creating those sets in Liverpool, including a 1960s London Odeon. We had big debates about what film posters to put up. Creating those worlds is maybe a nostalgic pleasure for people that were there and a retro pleasure for those that werent."

How did coronavirus restrictions affect filming?

Some of the drama is set, but not filmed, in Berlin. (ITV)

Many actors and filmmakers who've worked during the last couple of years will have stories to tell of how much more complicated the pandemic made their production.

However, The Ipcress File team only have positive things to say about how lockdown affected their shoot.

Hollander said: "Filming The Ipcress File was like being in a time machine. Which is true for any period drama, except this was in the middle of the pandemic and so the fictional world was so much more alive than the real world.

The series recreates the 1960s. (ITV)

"We were filming in a deserted Liverpool, which doubles for London. A Liverpool which I hardly know but I can see is the most vibrant, lively city. Liverpool is all about people and the energy on the streets. But there was no one on the streets because of the lockdown.

Read more: The Bay to return for series four

"Yet in our fictional world it was fully live action, obviously with all of our Covid protocols in place. It felt like we escaped one of the worst phases of the big lockdown. If people in the film and television industry have been working in this period, they have been incredibly lucky."

Lucy Boynton, who plays Jean Courtney, added: "Wed been in lockdown for the three months that we were shooting in Liverpool, so getting to travel (to Croatia) was in itself such a joy, then to do so to the 1960s versions of these places was pretty amazing."

Ashley Thomas said lockdown helped him stay in character. (ITV)

Ashley Thomas plays Paul Maddox and said that the lockdown had helped him to immerse himself in his character.

He said: "We were in the bubble because of COVID so it was difficult to get home. But I operate like that anyway.

Read more: Where is The Good Karma Hospital filmed?

"It works for me, Im in this character. Im going to stay in character the whole time and really dive into this world. Thats the best way for me to work. And then I dedicate myself fully to the character and Im not distracted by being at home. I do like working that way."

For Cole, he appreciated being able to travel to real locations while many actors were confined to green screen: "I remember when Harry had to cross the Berlin Wall from East to West. They had built this incredible set out in Croatia with these streets and the wall, the huts with the soldiers, and so on. And Im driving through that in an army vehicle.

"That was special, for sure."

The Ipcress File begins on Sunday at 9pm on ITV.

Watch: Peaky Blinders creator updates on movie spin-off
A 38-year-old man slammed into a New York home after fleeing police, authorities said.

Michael Robles was pulled over for a broken brake light on Thursday, March 3, in Staten Island, when police saw a clear glass pipe with residue in his SUV, the New York City Police Department said.

When officers told Robles to get out of the vehicle, he ignored their request and drove off in his 2007 Jeep Patriot, police said.

He then crashed into a home causing significant damage, police said.

Police said in a news release that there were no reported injuries, but officials told local outlets WABC and CBS New York that six people suffered minor injuries. McClatchy News has reached out to police for clarification on the injuries.

A neighbors Ring camera recorded the crash.

A woman living in the home next door in the duplex heard the crash, CBS New York reported.

I was (sleeping) and the bed shook. There was a loud bang. The door flew open. I thought it was an earthquake at first, but then I smelled smoke and I heard people screaming, she said.

Robles was arrested, and police said they found him with a controlled substance and a suspended license.

He faces multiple charges:

Reckless endangerment

Fleeing officer in a motor vehicle

Criminal possession of a controlled substance

Two counts of aggravated unlicensed operator

Equipment violation

Operating an unregistered vehicle

Motor vehicle license violation: no license

Dad, 3-year-old killed when pickup truck slams into their home, California cops say

19-year-old accused of driving drunk in a jail parking garage, South Dakota cops say

15-year-old in stolen Mercedes hits van carrying 5 people with disabilities, NC cops say
Jake Paul took to Twitter on Thursday to share a mock-up poster while pretending to promote a fight between himself and Vladimir Putin.

YouTuber Paul has gone 5-0 as a professional boxer, knocking out each man he has fought  including former UFC champion Tyron Woodley and ex-NBA star Nate Robinson.

Last week the American condemned Russias ongoing invasion of Ukraine, writing on Twitter: My thoughts are with the people of Ukraine and Russia who are both going to suffer greatly from all of this mayhem.

Paul, 25, took a more lighthearted approach in addressing the situation on Thursday, however, sharing a fake poster as he pretended to promote a bout between himself and Russian president Putin, 69.

Big news. Tickets on sale next week. #PaulPutin brought to you by @TimJDillon promotions, Paul wrote, referencing American comedian Tim Dillon.

Big news. Tickets on sale next week. #PaulPutin brought to you by @TimJDillon promotions. pic.twitter.com/O45FjVRxd8  Jake Paul (@jakepaul) March 3, 2022

Leave no doubt, was the tagline at the top of the poster, above side-by-side imagery of Paul and a topless Putin.

Coming soon, live on pay-per-view, read the text below the imagery, followed by #PaulPutin and the logo of Pauls Most Valuable Promotions company.

Ukrainian professional boxers Oleksandr Usyk and Vasiliy Lomachenko have both returned to their home country to aid the military in its defence against Russia, while compatriots and retired boxing icons Wladimir Klitschko and brother Vitali have also taken up arms.

Vitali Klitschko serves as mayor of Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital.
As extreme weather events become more common, lifesaving emergency alerts need to be available in all the languages commonly spoken in the communities that receive the alerts, New York Attorney General Letitia James wrote in a letter to the National Weather Service and the US Department of Commerce.

BuzzFeed News reported in December that during Hurricane Ida last year, emergency alerts sent out through wireless carriers to peoples cellphones were available only in English and Spanish. Eleven people drowned in basements in New York City during the storm, most of whom were of Asian descent, according to NBC News; many of them were immigrants.

Language should never be a barrier to critical information that could save lives, James said in a statement released this week. The National Weather Service must work with other agencies to ensure that all immigrant communities can be effectively warned of future weather-related crises and given the equal chance to survive. It is our responsibility to keep our people safe, and to do so, we must expand language accessibility in our safety protocols.

While New York City's local alert system can send messages in 14 languages, residents must sign up for the service. In contrast, the National Weather Service  part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which is an agency in the Commerce Department  is able to reach all cellphone users in an at-risk area.

James asks in the letter for the alerts to also be available in Chinese (both traditional and simplified text), Russian, French Creole, Bengali, and Korean, which are among the most common of roughly 700 languages spoken in New York City.

Hurricane Ida had a devastating impact on our community last year because many could not understand the warnings that were issued, Jo-Ann Yoo, executive director of the Asian American Federation, said in a statement. We cannot afford to make the same mistakes again.
Tom Hanks will finally explain his reasoning for firing actor Connor Ratliff from a role in Band of Brothers.

Ratfliff claims that Hanks fired him from a small role on the 2001 HBO miniseries after saying he had dead eyes.

The actor, who currently stars in The Marvelous Mrs Maisel, was replaced at the last moment, and has been attempting to get to the bottom of Hanks reasoning ever since.

The story became the source of a podcast, titled Dead Eyes, which has featured guests including Seth Rogen, Jon Hamm and Hanks own son, Colin Hanks.

In an unexpected move, Ratfliff has now managed to secure the man himself as a guest for the season three finale.

I was fully prepared for this to never happen, but I am thrilled that it has, said Ratliff, who started the podcast in 2019.

I think for listeners who have been following along, it will be a very satisfying experience. And for new listeners, its a Tom Hanks episode, so whats not to like?

He continued: I have been a fan ever since I heard him scream the line I am not a fish in Splash, and doing this podcast has only made me a bigger fan, even before he agreed to be a guest.

Tom Hanks will explain why he fired Connor Ratliff from Band of Brothers (Getty Images for Tribeca Film Fe)

The episode will see Hanks talk about the rules of working on a set, share unheard stories from his past and explain why exactly he had Ratfliff fired.

Hanks co-created the war drama Band of Brothers alongside Steven Spielberg after working on the 1999 film Saving Private Ryan. It first aired on 9 September 2001 and became one of the most acclaimed miniseries of all time.

The actor will next be seen playing Colonel Tom Parker in Baz Luhrmanns Elvis.
Twitter has banned more than 100 accounts that pushed the pro-Russian hashtag #IStandWithPutin for participating in coordinated inauthentic behavior, days after the hashtag trended on Twitter amid the invasion in Ukraine.

A Twitter spokesperson said on Friday that it is still investigating the origins and links between the accounts, and that it banned the accounts for violating its platform manipulation and spam policy.

The accounts with the most retweets about the hashtag on Wednesday only had a few dozen followers and used stock photos as profile pictures, which led disinformation researchers to question how the tweets went viral.

Its an indication that Russias once-feared firehose of falsehood has been both neutralized and drowned out in recent weeks, particularly as Western media and social platforms have sprung into action.

The swarm of inauthentic accounts was initially discovered by Marc Owen Jones, an assistant professor of Middle East studies and digital humanities at Hamad Bin Khalifa University in Qatar.

People throw the term bots around a lot, but what we saw here was lots of accounts demonstrating inauthentic activity and astroturfing, Jones said. Theyre not bots. Theyre a lot harder to check than that. Imagine a call center setup. Think of the amount of damage you can do.

The #IStandWithPutin hashtag then received a second wind as a trending topic when authentic accounts began tweeting the hashtag simply to criticize it.

This is the paradox of this kind of behavior, Jones said. Some of the most engaged tweets were people denouncing the hashtag.

Its failed attempt at building support on Twitter is the latest illustration of a Russian propaganda war thats fallen flat in the West. Since the invasion, the Kremlin has struggled to penetrate new barriers imposed on digital platforms and advance an anti-Ukraine narrative. On newer platforms, such as TikTok, pro-Ukraine content has dominated.

Thats a marked change from the first six weeks of the year, when Russian messaging was more potent and pervasive, according to a report from Omelas, a digital analysis firm.

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Russia flooded social media worldwide in early January at the same time that Western media wasnt as focused on Ukraine reporting, Omelas found. That gave Russia a window to spread Kremlin-backed propaganda, including referring to a Ukraine invasion as a military operation, reporting that Ukraine was provoking the war and other narratives most favorable to Russia, according to Omelas.

From Jan. 1-Feb. 20, Omelas tracked more than 192,000 posts from Russian government sources on the topic of Ukraine  40 percent of all the posts it tracked in that time.

Kremlin-backed dominance over the conversation changed in mid-February, as troops massed on the Ukrainian border and Russian President Vladimir Putin readied an attack. The Western medias round-the-clock coverage of the war and a consistency of reporting that showed Putin as the aggressor has dominated the news, which has helped build worldwide sympathy for Ukraine, said Andrew Gonzalez, a geopolitical analyst with Omelas.

Russia isnt getting the same impact of its audiences as it historically has gotten, Gonzalez said. The audience is certainly believing more so the Western portrayal that its a tragedy for Ukraine and Russia is the aggressor. That narrative is quite firm right now.

Gonzalez added that Western media reports have strongly pushed back on Putins portrayal of events in Ukraine, which has included his attempt to convince audiences that Russia was preparing to act in self-defense.

That was not the case a week ago, but its quickly becoming the case and you could definitely look at a much larger picture and see that thats the trend the whole world is really going in, Gonzalez said of the pushback on Putins narrative from Western media. Russia is losing a lot of ground  and their media  to the entire democratic media production effort that is focused on Ukraine right now.

The impact of Russian messaging waned as it became more and more clear an invasion neared, Omelas found.

The Kremlins reach is expected to contract even more thanks to ongoing efforts from social media platforms. YouTube, Facebook and other major social media sites limited the reach of Russias state media, RT and Sputnik.

Sinan Aral, director of the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy, wrote in a Washington Post op-ed that the platforms had taken a different strategy from when Russia invaded Crimea in 2014.

Today, the information war in Ukraine is more intense, more tightly contested and arguably more important than ever because motivating volunteer fighters at home and encouraging foreign support abroad are critical to success, he wrote. And this time, it seems, Russia is losing.

Tech companies are continuing to go after Russia-linked accounts. Earlier this week, Facebook and Twitter banned several fake identities created by a Russian troll farm who were posing as Ukrainian journalists.

Even after the ban, however, the fake Ukrainian journalists continued to post articles as if Russias invasion had resulted in Ukraines immediate surrender.

A post from Tuesday on one of the troll farms websites, Ukraine Today, is subtitled: What could be the political structure of post-war Ukraine? It begins with the line: The military operation in Ukraine continues, but its outcome is already a foregone conclusion.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States is weighing whether Russia has committed war crimes but has not yet made any conclusions, the White House said on Friday, adding Moscow's attack on a nuclear power plant in Ukraine was the "height of irresponsibility."

Washington was already reviewing possible Russian war crimes over evidence of Russian targeting of civilians even before it attacked one of Ukraine's nuclear plants on Thursday, White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki told reporters.

(Reporting by Trevor Hunnicitt and Chris Gallagher; writing by Susan Heavey; editing by Chris Reese)
Students walk around the UC Berkeley campus, which faces a court order to cut enrollment. (David Butow / For The Times)

UC Berkeley will boost the number of Californians and significantly reduce out-of-state and international students this fall as it scrambles to meet a court-ordered enrollment cap for the coming academic year just a few weeks before admission decisions are set for release.

Overall, the campus plans to enroll about 5,370 first-year California students both in-person and online this fall, an increase of about 500 over last year. They would make up about 90% of all freshmen, compared with 70% last year. Among them, 4,370 would be enrolled on campus, while 1,000 would spend fall semester in remote classes and move to in-person instruction for spring semester beginning in January 2023, the university announced Friday.

California transfer students would number 1,964 for on-campus enrollment for fall. Among 650 students who will be deferred until spring, the vast majority will be transfer students from California community colleges. Students who graduate this year or leave campus for study programs abroad or in other cities will free up seats for those using remote instruction or deferred enrollment in the fall.

About 400 students who would otherwise be able to enroll will not be given a seat because of the enrollment cap. Most will be graduate students, officials said.

The university initially calculated it would need to cut 3,050 seats to meet the court demand to cap enrollment at 2020 levels. But the campus now says it will need to lower on-campus enrollment by 2,629 students.

Berkeley's efforts to rejigger its enrollment plans were triggered by a court order to freeze its enrollment while the campus more thoroughly reviews the impact of its growth on housing, homelessness and noise. The University of California challenged the order, which came in a case filed by Save Berkeley's Neighborhoods, a community group, but both an appellate court and the California Supreme Court rejected its appeal to stay the enrollment freeze.

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Olufemi Ogundele, UC Berkeley's assistant vice chancellor and director of undergraduate admissions, said he was pained by what the court order will mean for so many deserving students. Their lives, he said, are at the heart of the issue  not environmental reviews or litigation by a local neighborhood group.

"I've really been heartbroken by the amount of opportunity that's going to be denied to students who should be here, who have worked really, really hard," he said in an interview Friday. "We had a chance to read some really compelling applications. Students are coming out of some incredibly trying experiences, both from the community college level and at the high school level, and they persevered through that. And I think that for something like this at the 11th hour to limit our ability to offer decisions, it's just something that is really, really heartbreaking."

Ogundele said he is working with university deans to figure out which students in which majors would be invited to enroll in person, online or delay their start until spring. Given research showing that low-income students tend to do better with in-person instruction, he said such considerations would be "front and center" in planning enrollment options.

He added, however, that the online academic programs will also be top-quality.

"We're actually feeling really confident about our ability to offer a world-class online experience for students, especially coming off the pandemic where we as an institution really strengthened our online muscle," he said.

UC Berkeley said it would also create an "expanded wait list" in case legislators are able to craft a solution by May 1, when most students select their college.



But the university continues to express its dismay at the long-term impact of the court decision.

"To be clear, the harm caused by this court decision extends beyond the students who should be offered an in-person seat in our fall 2022 class," a campus statement said. "It impacts prospective students generally, our campus operations and the universitys ability to serve students by meeting the enrollment targets set by the state."

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
The UK's deputy prime minister suggested seizing the mansions of Russian oligarchs.

Dominic Raab on Friday said the mansions could be used to house Ukrainian refugees.

The mayor of western Ukraine's Lviv made a similar statement during an interview on Tuesday.

UK Deputy Prime Minister Dominic Raab suggested on Friday that the mansions of Russian oligarchs could be seized and used to house Ukrainian refugees.

"If we've got the evidence and the legal basis, then we'll do it," Raab said on LBC radio after he was asked if the UK could seize property owned by Russian oligarchs, the Guardian reported.

Raab defended the UK's response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine last week, which has included sanctioning high-profile Russians and targeted the country's economy.

Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said earlier that the UK has a "hit list" of oligarchs who will be sanctioned, and the government said its financial sanctions against Russia could last 10 years.

"We are looking at everything in the round, it is a team effort across government, from the foreign and defense secretary through to [Housing Secretary] Michael Gove and, of course, the prime minister is driving this very hard," Raab told LBC, according to the Guardian.

A similar sentiment was made by the mayor of western Ukraine's Lviv, who said on Tuesday that the UK should put refugees in the London homes of Russian oligarchs.

"What we need now is for Boris Johnson to start freezing the bank accounts of Russian oligarchs in London and to seize their luxury villas," Andriy Sadovyi told the Guardian.

He added: ""It would be better to use them to house Ukrainian refugees."

Aside from the UK, the US, European Union, and other nations have slapped a wide range of sanctions on Russian elites, their families, and the country's financial sector.

France has gone after the $120 million super-yacht owned by a Russian oligarch, and Germany may go after a different one.

Read the original article on Business Insider
Prime Minister Boris Johnson has said Russias shelling of a nuclear power station in the south-eastern Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia could directly threaten the safety of all of Europe (Leon Neal/PA (PA Wire)

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Friday that Russian forces must immediately cease an attack on a Ukrainian nuclear power plant where a fire broke out.

Mr Johnson said he spoke to Ukraines president Volodymyr Zelensky about the situation at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in the countrys southeast.

I've just spoken to President @ZelenskyyUa about the gravely concerning situation at Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station.



Russia must immediately cease its attack on the power station and allow unfettered access for emergency services to the plant.  Boris Johnson (@BorisJohnson) March 4, 2022

Russia must immediately cease its attack on the power station and allow unfettered access for emergency services to the plant, he added.

In a press release Downing Street said: The prime minister said the reckless actions of President Putin could now directly threaten the safety of all of Europe.

He said the UK would do everything it could to ensure the situation did not deteriorate further. Both leaders agreed a ceasefire was crucial, it added.

Downing Street said that Mr Johnson will be seeking an emergency UN Security Council meeting in the coming hours, and that the UK would raise this issue immediately with Russia and close partners.

The Independent has a proud history of campaigning for the rights of the most vulnerable, and we first ran our Refugees Welcome campaign during the war in Syria in 2015. Now, as we renew our campaign and launch this petition in the wake of the unfolding Ukrainian crisis, we are calling on the government to go further and faster to ensure help is delivered.To find out more about our Refugees Welcome campaign, click here. To sign the petition click here. If you would like to donate then please click here for our GoFundMe page
You can give up anything from cursing to candy for Lent, but one of the most traditional sacrifices is to abstain from red meat.

Chicagos large Catholic population means there are plenty of restaurants helping to make the period from Ash Wednesday to Easter a little less painful by offering seafood-focused specials. These fish fries and dinners are so good, you might want to stop in even if youre not forgoing beef.

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Want to add your Lenten special to the list? Email food editor Ariel Cheung at archeung@chicagotribune.com.

Bonefish Grill

Dine on hand-battered crispy cod and panko-battered jumbo shrimp served on a bed of french fries with coleslaw and tartar and cocktail sauces for $19 Fridays through April 8. Multiple locations, bonefishgrill.com

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Cafe Ba-Ba-Reeba!

Rotating specials offered Fridays throughout Lent include mussels with noodles March 3 and seared haddock with melted greens March 10. 2024 N. Halsted St., 773-935-5000, cafebabareeba.com

Carrabbas Italian Grill

The restaurant has rolled out new dishes ahead of Lent including linguine tossed in champagne cream sauce with shrimp, red bell peppers and sauteed mushrooms. 1001 75th St., Woodridge, 630-427-0900, carrabbas.com

Epic Burger

Eat. Watch. Do. Weekly What to eat. What to watch. What you need to live your best life ... now. >

If hamburgers are off-limits, you can try the new $9 Epic fish sandwich made with IPA-battered cod, lettuce, pickles and tartar sauce. Locations vary, epicburger.com

Lil Ba-Ba-Reeba!

Special seafood tapas including roasted branzino with tomato salad and Spanish sardine conservas are available daily from March 2 through April 14. 441 N. Clark St., 312-985-6909, lilbabareeba.com

Macs Wood Grilled

Meat-free specials offered daily from March 2 through April 15 include beer-battered whitefish with fries and house-made tartar sauce ($13) and a fried fish sandwich served on a potato bun ($14). 1801 W. Division St., 773-782-4400, www.macswoodgrilled.com

Osteria Via Stato

The River North restaurant offers its signature seafood stew made with shrimp, scallops, fish and tomato broth and served with crusty ciabatta garlic bread for $24 Fridays during Lent. 620 N. State St., 312-642-8450, osteriaviastato.com

Shaws Crab House

At the Schaumburg location, dine in on Ash Wednesday or Fridays through April 15 and you can order a three-course meal including a cup of clam chowder, fish and chips and a slice of key lime pie for $27. You can also take home a family fish fry featuring a quart of clam chowder, eight pieces of beer-battered Atlantic cod, french fries, coleslaw and chocolate cake for $65 or a $95 crab cake dinner that includes rolls, Caesar salad and creamed spinach. At the Chicago location, various $35 fish fry entree options come with clam chowder, salad and a choice of dessert. 1900 E. Higgins Road, Schaumburg, 847-517-2722; 21 E. Hubbard St., 312-527-2722, shawscrabhouse.com

Tumans Tap & Grill

The Ukrainian Village bar offers $16 beer-battered cod with hand-cut fries and tartar sauce from 4-11 p.m. Fridays through April 15. On Wednesday you can also try Church Street Brewing Magisterium Maibock/Lentebock for $7. Tumans will be offering a rotating selection of seasonal beers throughout Lent including Aecht Schlenkerla Fastenbier, a German lager inspired by the tradition of monks making strong beers to get them through their Lenten fasts, when they could drink but not eat. 2159 W. Chicago Ave., 773-782-1400, tumanstapandgrill.com

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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.
BOSTON (AP)  Formed in a fury to counter Russias blitzkrieg attack, Ukraines hundreds-strong volunteer hacker corps is much more than a paramilitary cyberattack force in Europe's first major war of the internet age. It is crucial to information combat and to crowdsourcing intelligence .

We are really a swarm. A self-organizing swarm," said Roman Zakharov, a 37-year-old IT executive at the center of Ukraine's bootstrap digital army.

Inventions of the volunteer hackers range from software tools that let smartphone and computer owners anywhere participate in distributed denial-of-service attacks on official Russian websites to bots on the Telegram messaging platform that block disinformation, let people report Russian troop locations and offer instructions on assembling Molotov cocktails and basic first aid.

Zahkarov ran research at an automation startup before joining Ukraine's digital self-defense corps. His group is StandForUkraine. Its ranks include software engineers, marketing managers, graphic designers and online ad buyers, he said.

The movement is global, drawing on IT professionals in the Ukrainian diaspora whose handiwork includes web defacements with antiwar messaging and graphic images of death and destruction in the hopes of mobilizing Russians against the invasion.

Both our nations are scared of a single man  (Russian President Vladimir) Putin," said Zakharov. "He's just out of his mind. Volunteers reach out person-to-person to Russians with phone calls, emails and text messages, he said, and send videos and pictures of dead soldiers from the invading force from virtual call centers.

Some build websites, such as a "site where Russian mothers can look through (photos of) captured Russian guys to find their sons, Zakharov said by phone from Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital.

The cyber volunteers' effectiveness is difficult to gauge. Russian government websites have been repeatedly knocked offline, if briefly, by the DDoS attacks, but generally weather them with countermeasures.

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It's impossible to say how much of the disruption  including more damaging hacks  is caused by freelancers working independently of but in solidarity with Ukrainian hackers.

A tool called Liberator lets anyone in the world with a digital device become part of a DDoS attack network, or botnet. The tools programmers code in new targets as priorities change.

But is it legal? Some analysts say it violates international cyber norms. Its Estonian developers say they acted in coordination with the Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine.

A top Ukrainian cybersecurity official, Victor Zhora, insisted at his first online news conference of the war Friday that homegrown volunteers were attacking only what they deem military targets, in which he included the financial sector, Kremlin-controlled media and railways. He did not discuss specific targets.

Zakharov did. He said Russia's banking sector was well fortified against attack but that some telecommunications networks and rail services were not. He said Ukrainian-organized cyberattacks had briefly interrupted rail ticket sales in western Russia around Rostov and Voronezh and knocked out telephone service for a time in the region of eastern Ukraine controlled by Russian-backed separatists since 2014. The claims could not be independently confirmed.

A group of Belarusian hacktivists calling themselves the Cyber Partisans also apparently disrupted rail service in neighboring Belarus this week seeking to frustrate transiting Russian troops. A spokeswoman said Friday that electronic ticket sales were still down after their malware attack froze up railway IT servers.

Over the weekend, Ukraine's minister of digital transformation, Mykhailo Fedorov, announced the creation of an volunteer cyber army. The IT Army of Ukraine now counts 290,000 followers on Telegram.

Zhora, deputy chair of the state special communications service, said one job of Ukrainian volunteers is to obtain intelligence that can be used to attack Russian military systems.

Some cybersecurity experts have expressed concern that soliciting help from freelancers who violate cyber norms could have dangerous escalatory consequences. One shadowy group claimed to have hacked Russian satellites; Dmitry Rogozin, the director general of Russia's space agency Roscosmos, called the claim false but was also quoted by the Interfax news agency as saying such a cyberattack would be considered an act of war.

Asked if he endorsed the kind of hostile hacking being done under the umbrella of the Anonymous hacktivist brand  which anyone can claim  Zhora said, We do not welcome any illegal activity in cyberspace.

But the world order changed on the 24th of February, he added, when Russia invaded.

The overall effort was spurred by the creation of a group called the Ukrainian Cyber Volunteers by a civilian cybersecurity executive, Yegor Aushev, in coordination with Ukraines Defense Ministry. Aushev said it numbers more than 1,000 volunteers.

On Friday, most of Ukraines telecommunications and internet were fully operational despite outages in areas captured by invading Russian forces, said Zhora. He reported about 10 hostile hijackings of local government websites in Ukraine to spread false propaganda saying Ukraine's government had capitulated.

Zhora said presumed Russian hackers continued trying to spread destructive malware in targeted email attacks on Ukrainian officials and  in what he considers a new tactic  to infect the devices of individual citizens. Three instances of such malware were discovered in the runup to the invasion.

U.S. Cyber Command has been assisting Ukraine since well before the invasion. Ukraine does not have a dedicated military cyber unit. It was standing one up when Russia attacked.

Zhora anticipates an escalation in Russias cyber aggression  many experts believe far worse is yet to come.

Meantime, donations from the global IT community continue to pour in. A few examples: NameCheap has donated internet domains while Amazon has been generous with cloud services, said Zakharov.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy has survived three assassination attempts so far, it has been reported. (Getty)

Volodymyr Zelenskyy has survived three assassination attempts in a week, it has been reported.

The Ukrainian president previously said he is the "number one target" for Vladimir Putin, whose invasion of Ukraine has entered its second week.

According to The Times, plots to "eliminate" Zelenskyy, 44, have come from two sets of mercenaries - the Kremlin-backed Wagner group and Chechen special forces.

The newspaper reported the Wagner group have been alarmed by how accurately Ukrainian forces have been able to anticipate their moves.

Plans from both groups have been thwarted after anti-war Russians gave intelligence to Ukrainian authorities, it is claimed.

Read more: The Kremlin ordered 400 Russian mercenaries in Kyiv to hunt and kill Ukraine's president, report says

The invasion attempt has now entered its second week (Getty)

The Secretary of National Security and Defence told local journalists: I can say that we have received information from [Russias Federal Security Service], who do not want to take part in this bloody war."

On Saturday a group from the Chechen attempted to kill Zelenskyy, but were "eliminated", a Ukrainian security official said in a televised address.

Zelenskyy has become one of the most well-known faces in the world after the Russian invasion, and refuses to leave Kyiv for safety as enemy forces encircle the city.

The US offered to airlift Zelenskyy out of Kyiv as the fighting intensifies, but he declined telling them, "I need ammunition, not a ride."

Putin expected an easy victory, but his forces have been met with fierce resistance from the Ukrainian people, causing his underprepared soldiers to suffer heavy losses and slow progression.

Russia has so far captured only one Ukrainian city  the southern Dnipro River port of Kherson, which its tanks entered on Wednesday.

Read more: Putin has achieved in one week the exact opposite of what he wanted, says former Finnish PM

Putin expected an easy victory, but his forces have been met with fierce resistance from the Ukrainian people. (Getty)

On Thursday, Russia forces bombed the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant - the largest one in Europe.

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Zelenskyy accused Russian forces of "directly targeting" the station, adding it could have been "six times worse than Chornobyl."

He added: "This night could have been the end of history for Ukraine and Europe.

"Russian tank operators knew what they were shooting at, they directly targeted the station."

Boris Johnson accused Putin directly threatening the safety of all of Europe in the aftermath of the attack.

Ukrainian foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba said the Russian army was firing from all sides on the plant.

Fire has already broke out ... Russians must IMMEDIATELY cease the fire, allow firefighters, establish a security zone!, he wrote on Twitter.

Zelenskyy made a personal appeal to Putin on Wednesday, telling him: "Get off our land. You don't want to leave now? Then sit down with me at the negotiation table. I'm available. Sit. Just not 30 metres away like with Macron or Scholz etc. I am your neighbour. You don't need to keep me 30 metres away.

"I don't bite. I'm a normal bloke. Sit down with me and talk. What are you afraid of? We aren't threatening anyone, we're not terrorists, we aren't seizing banks and seizing foreign land."

Watch: Ukraine nuclear power plant catches fire during bombardment from Russia

Ukrainian authorities have claimed that more than 9,000 Russian soldiers have died since the attack began, in numbers which it is been so far impossible to independently verify.

On Wednesday, Russia admitted for the first time admitted it had suffered heavy losses, saying in a statement 498 of its troops had died. The UK has the death toll will be considerably higher than figures released by the Kremlin.

Instead of a swift invasion, Putin is now personally responsible for over a million refugees who have fled Ukraine into their neighbouring European countries.

In his own country, thousands have also been arrested after staging protests in Russia - most notably in Moscow and Putin's own hometown of St Petersburg.

In other developments:
President Volodymyr Zelensky in a video address released Monday. Ukrainian government

The Times of London reported that Volodymyr Zelensky survived assassination attempts this week.

Ukrainian officials said anti-war factions in Russia's spy agency were tipping them off, without giving further specifics.

Zelensky appears to have increasingly confined himself indoors in recent days.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has survived at least three assassination attempts from Russia-backed agents in the past week, The Times of London reported.

The Times reported that the reported attempts were carried out by mercenaries with the Wagner Group as well as Chechen special forces working under Ramzan Kadyrov, the head of Russia's Chechen Republic and close ally of President Vladimir Putin. The Wagner Group is a private army owned by Yevgeny Prigozhin, another ally of Putin.

Insider could not independently verify the report. Russia has run assassination teams in Europe for years, linked to its military spy agency, the GRU. But there was no evidence of these attempts provided or explanation of how close they had gotten to Zelensky.

Zelensky previously warned that "enemy sabotage groups" were active in the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv and that he was their "number one target."

The Times report said that several assassination attempts were foiled after Ukrainian security officials were tipped off by people working for Russia's Federal Security Service, or FSB, who opposed the invasion.

One assassination attempt by a group of Chechen assassins on the outskirts of Kyiv was foiled on Saturday, with the agents "eliminated" before they could reach Zelensky, the report said, without giving further specifics.

Oleksiy Danilov, the secretary of Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council, gave a similar report on Telegram earlier this week.

"I can say that we have received information from the FSB, who do not want to take part in this bloody war," he said. "And thanks to this, the Kadyrov elite group was destroyed, which came here to eliminate our president."

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Danilov did not provide evidence of any of the attempts to kill or capture Zelensky.

A source close to the Wagner Group told The Times that it was "eerie" how much Zelensky's security team knew about their foiled hit.

The Times reported on Monday that about 400 Wagner Group agents were dispatched to Kyiv and offered a financial bonus by the Kremlin for assassinating more than 20 top Ukrainian officials, including Zelensky.

At the beginning of the invasion, Zelensky was regularly seen out on the streets of Kyiv, but he has increasingly confined himself indoors and underground, delivering messages to the public via video messages filmed indoors.

With Russia's invasion showing no sign of relenting, US Sen. Lindsey Graham on Friday appeared to call on Russia's elite to stage an assassination of President Vladimir Putin, referencing the killing of Julius Caesar.

"Is there a Brutus in Russia? Is there a more successful Colonel Stauffenberg in the Russian military?" Graham tweeted on Thursday, referencing the most famous of the Roman emperor's assassins and the German army officer who tried, unsuccessfully, to assassinate the Nazi leader Adolf Hitler in 1944.

The Fox News host Sean Hannity appeared to agree with Graham on a recent episode of his podcast, saying: "You cut the head of the snake off, and you kill the snake. And right now, the snake is Vladimir Putin."

Read the original article on Business Insider
LVIV, Ukraine (Reuters) - Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy appealed to Russians on Friday to stage protests over Russian forces' seizure of the largest nuclear power plant in Europe.

A building at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant was set ablaze during intense fighting, Ukrainian authorities said on Friday, triggering fears of a potential nuclear disaster. The blaze was later extinguished.

"Russian people, I want to appeal to you: how is this possible? After all we fought together in 1986 against the Chernobyl catastrophe," he said in a televised address, evoking memories of the world's worst nuclear disaster.

"You have to ... take to the streets and say that you want to live, you want to live on earth without radioactive contamination. Radiation does not know where Russia is, radiation does not know where the borders of your country are."

Russia's defence ministry blamed the attack at the site of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant on Ukrainian saboteurs, calling it a monstrous provocation.

Russian forces that invaded Ukraine last week have already captured the defunct Chernobyl plant north of Kyiv, which spewed radioactive waste over much of Europe after an accident there in April 1986.

Analysts have said the Zaporizhzhia plant is a different and safer type, but Zelenskiy said that now was not the time to be silent.

"You have to remember the burning graphite scattered by the explosion, the victims. You have to remember the glow over the destroyed power unit, the evacuation," he said.

"How can you forget that? And if you have not forgotten, you should not be silent."

(Reporting by Natalia Zinets and Pavel Polityuk, Writing by Alessandra Prentice, Editing by Timothy Heritage)
Fears of a major nuclear reactor disaster in the middle of the war in Ukraine took on a frightening possibility on early Friday.

With the world riveted to security camera views of a fire, and fighting, at Ukraines Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, fears of damage to the reactors ricocheted around the globe. Ukrainian Foreign Affairs Minister Dmytro Kuleba tweeted that a disaster there will be 10 times larger than Chornobyl!" By morning, the fire was extinguished, Russian forces had taken control of the plant, and its safety equipment was stable, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency. No radiation releases were reported from the facility. But the fear remains.

We are in completely uncharted waters, said Rafael Mariano Grossi, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), in a Friday news briefing. The physical integrity of the plant has been compromised with what happened last night, Grossi said. We, of course, are fortunate that there was no release of radiation and that the integrity of the reactors in themselves was not compromised.

Grossi also offered to personally travel to Chornobyl (often transliterated from Russian as "Chernobyl"), the 1986 site of the worlds worst nuclear accident, to work out safeguards for the nuclear power facilities in the war-torn nation.

In the US, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm activated the agencys Nuclear Incident Response Team, and said the US Department of Defense and other agencies are closely monitoring radiation levels reported from the plant. She later expressed support for the IAEAs calls to allow Ukrainian operators to continue working at Russian-captured nuclear facilities. The Energy Department team monitored instruments near the plant with IAEA and Ukrainian officials, according to the National Nuclear Security Administration spokesman Gordon Trowbridge, allowing them to report no leaks.

UPDATE: Russian forces are in control of the Zaphorizhizia nuclear plant, and we call on Russia to allow the Ukrainian operators to continue to operate safely  including allowing shift changes at both Zaphorizhizia and Chornobyl. 1/ 06:14 PM - 04 Mar 2022

Although nuclear reactors are heavily shielded, nuclear safety experts expressed serious concerns to BuzzFeed News about threats to these facilities during the war. Rather than a disaster on the scale of the 1986 Chornobyl meltdown, they warned of the potential for disasters more similar to 2011s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident. There, reactor cooling lost in a tsunami led to partial reactor meltdowns, explosions near spent fuel pools, and venting of radioactive gas. A 19-mile radius evacuation zone was created around the facility.

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Everyone has this mental picture of a tank shell hitting a reactor. But the real concern is cooling being lost, said Cheryl Rofer, a retired Los Alamos National Laboratory nuclear chemist. Obviously, there is war going on, which is horrible already, but having a war next to a nuclear reactor is not a good idea.

Every nuclear reactor is a balancing act, where fuel rods are carefully kept just close enough together to generate the heat needed to generate electricity, while being continually monitored to prevent overheating, which would melt the fuel. This requires continuous cooling and a highly trained staff. The reactors themselves are covered with a steel shell and a heavy layer of concrete, expressly designed to withstand projectiles and plane crashes, and meant to contain the heat of the fuel melting down in a disaster. The Chornobyl reactors lacked this level of protection, which led to the open-air release of radioactive material.

Ukraine has four operational nuclear facilities, including Zaporizhzhia, according to the IAEAs Power Reactor Information System database. According to Joshua Pollack of the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, there are at least two worrying scenarios that concern experts about nuclear power plants becoming engulfed in war zones:

 While reactors are very tough, their pools, containing used-but-still-hot fuel rods, arent. If a cooling pond is damaged and stops working, the water eventually boils off, and these fuel rods will catch on fire, spewing radioactive particles skyward. This was a major concern in the Fukushima disaster.

 If a reactor shuts down, loses access to outside power, and then loses its backup power, the coolant inside the reactor itself stops flowing. Shortly later, the fuel catches on fire inside the reactor and releases hydrogen gas. As we learned in Fukushima, this is quite dangerous, Pollack said. In that disaster, hydrogen explosions blew the roofs off reactor buildings. That led to radioactive gas releases and massive evacuations.

There appear to be at least three explanations for Russian forces attacking Zaporizhzhia at this moment in its week-old invasion of Ukraine, said Melissa Hanham, an open-source intelligence specialist affiliated with the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University. The first is simply in the fog of war, the Russian invasion force is taking over every facility in its path, which led to the firefight at the plant. The second is a deliberate bid to control a high-risk site, similar to the takeover of Chornobyl at the outset of the invasion. The IAEA has complained about staff at Chornobyl not having relief in monitoring operations there. A third explanation suggested by Ukrainian officials is that Russia intends to control and cut off electricity to the country as part of its invasion plan.

If it is under Russian control, you would ask for some confidence-building by allowing the IAEA to have access and regular communication with whoever is running it, presumably Ukrainian staff, Hanham said.

What does it feel like in Europe rn? Pediatricians in Vienna are giving out free iodine tablets. My best friend in Germany tells me her phone is blowing up w/moms trying to figure out right dosage for their kids if worst happens. Docs also telling parents to "seal your windows." 02:00 PM - 04 Mar 2022

While shutting down the nuclear reactors in Ukraine now might seem like an obvious first safety step, the trouble is that nuclear power plants cant turn off reactors like light switches. Cooling systems need to keep operating during a shutdown, as is reportedly occurring in two of the reactors at Zaporizhzhia (three others are already shut down, and one, remarkably, remains in operation). Ukraine's Radio Svoboda warned that the plants staff doesnt want to work at gunpoint and may seek to flee the region to safety with their families.

You want to make sure that those individuals, who are technical experts but also just humans are getting enough rest, are not under so much psychological strain from being under armed guard or worrying about their families that theyre not able to perform their job, Hanham said.

As well, Ukraine still needs electricity, and the plants provide a significant fraction of its supply.

A related wartime concern is that backup cooling power generators at those facilities run on diesel, and the Russian military is reportedly running low on fuel. One hopes they dont steal that diesel to run tanks, Rofer said. Presumably, she added, Russian officials should understand that any atmospheric release of radioactive gasses from a stricken nuclear facility in Ukraine would travel into Russia itself, given prevailing winds.

It really is worth worrying about, Rofer said. Even if a disaster was more like Fukushima, that would be a terrible thing to add to an already terrible war.

Zahra Hirji contributed reporting to this story.

UPDATE

Mar. 05, 2022, at 01:45 AM

More on this
Mar. 3A 14-year-old Urbana High School student is facing criminal charges after he allegedly brought bleach to school Thursday with intention of making mustard gas.

At about 8:30 a.m., school staff alerted a Frederick County Sheriff's Office school resource officer (SRO) of a threat shared via social media and said a student brought potentially hazardous material into the building, FCSO said in a news release Thursday afternoon.

Staff at FCPS central office learned of the potential threat at about 8:40 a.m., according to Eric Louers-Phillips, Frederick County Public Schools' director of public affairs. Authorities conducted an initial investigation, then an alert went out to evacuate the school around 8:50 a.m. Students sheltered at Urbana Middle School and on buses.

HAZMAT units from the Frederick County Division of Fire and Rescue Services determined the potentially hazardous material was bleach, police said in the release. The bleach was found with the student in his backpack in the SRO office on the first floor of the school, according to FCSO spokesman Todd Wivell. No other ingredients needed to make mustard gas were found on the student, Wivell said.

Since the accused student is being treated as a juvenile in court, police said he will not be identified. Louers-Phillips could not speak to any disciplinary action the student may face at school.

Deputies interviewed the student at the sheriff's office. An initial investigation allegedly found the student brought bleach to school after watching a TikTok video on how to make mustard gas, according to the sheriff's office. Police say the student shared the video through Snapchat and indicated he planned to make mustard gas at school.

Students and staff began to reenter the high school around 10:50 a.m. after the building was deemed safe.

FCPS sent alerts to the Urbana community through its Find Out First notification system, and sent four messages between 9:16 and 10:49 a.m., police said. Louers-Phillips said FCPS also sent out another message to parents and guardians encouraging them to talk to their students about social media threats.

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Parents were asked not to respond to the school to pick up their children at the time of the evacuation due to the amount of fire and police apparatus on scene. School support personnel were notified to provide counseling as needed, Louers-Phillips said.

Anyone with information about the incident is asked to contact the FCSO at 301-600-1046 and reference case No. 22-023189.

Follow Patrick Kernan on Twitter: @PatKernan
WASHINGTON  The secretary of the U.S. Air Force said Thursday hes not concerned about Russias decision to cut off the United States access to more RD-180 rocket engines.

I have not been informed at this point of any major launch concerns associated with that, Frank Kendall told reporters during a media roundtable at the Air Force Associations Air Warfare Symposium.

The head of Roscosmos, Russias space agency, said Thursday the country would no longer sell the RD-180 to the U.S. or provide support for launches powered by the Russian-made engine.

In a situation like this we cant supply the United States with our worlds best rocket engines, Dmitry Rogozin said in an appearance on Russian state television, Reuters reported. Let them fly on something else, their broomsticks, I dont know what.

The United Launch Alliance  one of two launch providers certified to fly national security space launches  carries the RD-180 on its Atlas V rocket, which the company is set to retire in 2025. The company has said it has enough engines on hand to power the remaining scheduled Atlas V launches.

Asked to respond to Rogozins threats, which began on Twitter earlier this week, ULA CEO Tory Bruno said the company has developed considerable experience and expertise to troubleshoot any unexpected engine issues without help from Russia.

The United States has in recent years weaned itself from the RD-180, developing an assured access to space strategy to invest in domestic launch vehicle suppliers and ensure at least two companies are certified to launch national security space payloads. The new strategy was driven by a 2016 congressional directive to eliminate reliance on the Russian-made propulsion system by 2022.

Since then, the Air Force has introduced competition into its space launch program, certifying military space launch newcomer SpaceX to fly national security missions and awarding the company, along with long-time provider ULA, a five-year contract for launch services through fiscal 2027. The service has also invested in domestic launch vehicle development, providing early funding for ULAs Atlas V replacement, the Vulcan Centaur.

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Despite some recent schedule setbacks, ULA plans to fly Vulcan for the first time this year.

Kendall noted that the purpose of DoDs strategy  which he played a significant role in crafting in his former role as Pentagon acquisition chief  was to eliminate dependencies on Russia.

The whole point of the program we put in place several years ago was to work our way off of the RD-180, he said. Other suppliers like SpaceX, for example, have come on board. ULA is moving towards a different solution that doesnt involve the [RD-180]. I think our launch needs will be met.
Downtown Evanston is slated to see a return to the movies later this year, after AMC Theatres announced that it had reached a lease agreement with GW Properties to acquire and open AMC Evanston 12.

Previously known as Evanston 18, with 18 screens, and operated by Cinemark, the reopened theater will feature AMC amenities such as AMC Stubs and a MacGuffins bar. A news release noted that GW Properties plans to close and renovate six of the screens and restaurant space for non-theater use.

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This constitutes our third announcement of a major market acquisition in the last two months, including the second acquisition announcement for a theatre in the Chicago metropolitan area, which remains a strong moviegoing market for AMC, said AMC chair and CEO Adam Aron in the announcement.

In December 2021, AMC announced that it had acquired the 14-screen Lincoln Park multiplex formerly under the ArcLight brand, and is eyeing a late spring 2022 reopening.
Mar. 3A recent legal advisory opinion related to a Vigo County School Corp. consolidation committee represents a "shift" in the office's thinking, but it should be respected, an attorney for the school board told the board.

In that opinion, Public Access Counselor Luke Britt said the school district acted "contrary to the Open Door law" when it authorized a committee to operate behind closed doors and take official action on public business  the future of Meadows Elementary  outside of a public meeting.

Jonathan Mayes, school board legal counsel, discussed the opinion during Monday night's school board meeting.

The advisory opinion "represents a shift in the office's thinking. .... We welcome this new guidance from the office. The public access counselor plays an important role, even though it's not a legally binding decision. It's a decision that school boards and public entities around the state respect and follow and seek to adhere to," said Mayes, who is with Bose, McKinney and Evans.

The public access counselor also indicated there was an updated handbook forthcoming with the new interpretation, he said.

Britt indicated Wednesday the online handbook has been updated.

Board president Stacy Killion asked if the board had to reconsider the Meadows decision because of the advisory opinion. According to Mayes, Britt doesn't say that anywhere in the decision "and it's not legally required because of the (advisory opinion)."

Board member Rosemarie Scott said, "I think we should give this a lot of weight and a lot of respect. Public access is so important. He is counseling us that we did something wrong."

At issue was whether a committee appointed by school district administration is a governing body subject to the Open Door Law.

Britt said his office has been interpreting the access statutes more liberally when it involves committees appointed by school executives/administrators. The interpretation in the past has been that only committees directly appointed by the school board or its presiding officer were subject to the Open Door Law.

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In January, Britt stated, "Based on the way the law is written, both a school board or the administration can create a governing body that is subject to the Open Door Law. It's fact-specific and depends on a number of factors but the ODL contemplates either. That's often overlooked because only the school board committee statute has been litigated."

Britt says his goal this past year "has been to revise my office's take on that." In 2021, "This office has issued several published opinions clarifying the prior erroneous guidance," Britt said in his advisory opinion.

While the school district says it will follow the new guidance by issuing notices of any consolidation committee meetings, "The consolidation committee will be meeting in closed sessions as permitted by Indiana's Open Door Law," according to the district's initial response to the opinion.

The law does allow school consolidation to be discussed in closed session for discussion of strategy with respect to "school consolidation. However all such strategy discussions must be necessary for competitive or bargaining reasons," the law reads.

During the meeting, board members asked several questions related to the advisory opinion.

"We look forward to receiving that updated handbook incorporating hopefully this new guidance and incorporating that in to future practices for the school corporation," Mayes said.

The advisory opinion is not legally binding, Mayes said. Also, Britt indicated the new interpretation of the law is inconsistent with some of his earlier decisions in the role of public access counselor, Mayes said.

No court opinion has changed that provision of the law, Mayes said.

"It would be [Luke Britt's] interpretation of the law. It is something to be respected; it is not legally binding," Mayes said.

Courts, for example, if there is litigation, "don't defer to the public access counselor legal analysis in any way. But it should be respected by school boards and public entities around the state," Mayes said.

During public comment, Meadows parent Brian C. Payne pointed out that while the law does allow a closed session for school consolidation, the laws also says it must be for "discussion of strategy," and the strategy discussion "must be necessary for competitive or bargaining reasons."

He questioned what competitive or bargaining reasons required the school consolidation meetings to take place behind closed doors.

Britt has provided advisory opinions in 2021 with the new guidance, Payne said; Payne suggested that one of the reasons districts have legal counsel is to get the latest, up-to-date interpretations of the law.

"I can think of nothing more important to this board than an accurate and current understanding of the Open Door Law," Payne said.

After the meeting, Superintendent Rob Haworth responded, "We have, as long as I've been here , tried to do everything we can possibly do to be transparent," so the advisory opinion "does sting a little bit."

He also pointed out that the PAC handbook had not been updated since 2017.

Haworth also said the only thing the district should have done differently to comply with the law was to post notice of consolidation committee meetings.

In an earlier interview, Britt indicated that while governing bodies can discuss school consolidation in closed session for specified reasons, not everything can be done in closed session, particularly as the committee is "galvanizing its recommendation to the school board."

Sue Loughlin can be reached at 812-231-4235 or at sue.loughlin@tribstar.com Follow Sue on Twitter @TribStarSue.
matejmo / Getty Images/iStockphoto

Analysts, experts and politicians are warning Americans about the increasing threat of cybersecurity attacks from Russia. Analysts have been anticipating the surge since the start of Russia invading Ukraine on Feb, 24, which in turn, some see as sector investors should focus on.

See: Cybersecurity Stocks Set to Surge After Russias Invasion of Ukraine

Find: As Russia Invades Ukraine, is Bitcoin Still a Safe Haven Compared to Gold?

Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives said in a research note sent to GOBankingRates on Friday, March 4, that with a significantly elevated level of cyberattacks now on the horizon, he believes added growth tailwinds for the cyber security sector  which was already poised to grow 20% year-over-year industry-wide in 2022 pre-Ukraine conflict  and well-positioned vendors should be a focus sector for tech investors during this market turmoil.

Based on our conversations with enterprises/CISOs and contacts in the Beltway, there is a growing concern that massive cyberwarfare could be on the near-term horizon which would certainly catalyze an increase in spending around preventing sophisticated Russian-based cyber-attacks going after data centers, networks, vulnerability points, and other highly sensitive data, Ives wrote in the note.

We also believe Denial of Service, social engineering and password breaches will be front and center for consumers who should be on high alert. In a very nervous investing backdrop for tech, we believe the cybersecurity sector is a clear pocket of strength that we would be overweighting at current levels.

According to Ives, the core cybersecurity names most likely to benefit from this additional Ukraine-driven APT (advanced persistent threat) spending are Palo Alto Networks, Zscaler, Checkpoint, Crowdstrike, Tenable, Varonis, Fortinet, Telos, Mandiant, Palantir and CyberArk.

Furthering the conversation, on March 2, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), who is a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee and Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, along with Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) pushed for a significant increase in cybersecurity funding to help New York State combat the threat of Russian cyberattacks, sending a letter to the Senate Appropriations Committee, according to a press release.

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Due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the U.S. and our allies have leveled severe sanctions against Russia, which has increased the risk of retaliatory cyberattacks, particularly against New York State infrastructure and individuals, Gillibrand said in the release. It is critical that we boost funding to protect New York State and the country from cyber threats from Russia. The United States must act quickly to strengthen our cyber defenses to meet this unwarranted and unprovoked Russian aggression.

Gillibrand also posted on social media that Americans must be extra vigilant against Russian cyberattacks right now. The federal government is working closely with state and local governments to protect critical infrastructure  but your personal accounts could also be at risk. Hacked Facebook accounts are used to send spam, scam your friends and family, and spread disinformation for foreign governments. Follow these tips to secure your accounts and protect your data!

Learn: 9 Ways To Protect Your Social Security Number and Logins From Being Sold on the Dark Web

Scams: 5 Crypto Scams Investors Should Be Aware Of

The tips she included include protecting your data by using a strong password and turning on the two-factor identification; updating your devices as soon as possible, and being vigilant and suspicious.

More From GOBankingRates

This article originally appeared on GOBankingRates.com: In Wake of Russian Invasion, Experts Say Cybersecurity Stocks Remain Strong Investments
UNITED NATIONS (AP)  The United States and its allies accused Russia on Friday of attacking Ukraines largest nuclear power plant and putting the lives of millions of Europeans at risk of radiation fallout, but Russia claimed a Ukrainian sabotage group was responsible for setting fire to a nearby training facility.

At an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council after photos of a burning building sent shock waves around the world of a possible nuclear disaster, the head of the U.N. nuclear agency reaffirmed that no reactors were hit and the Zaporizhzhia plant in the southeastern city of Enerhodar was operating normally.

But International Atomic Energy Agency Director-General Rafael Mariano Grossi didnt say who was responsible for firing a projectile that hit a building adjacent to a block of six reactors at the plant sparking a fire.

He said the IAEA was informed a few days ago by Russia that its forces were moving to take control of the plant. Their advance toward its perimeter was met with opposition and some group of civilians attacking the access to the plant, he said, and early Friday the IAEA got information that a projectile had impact (cq) a building adjacent to the block of reactors  six of them.

For Ukraine and Western countries and allies on the Security Council there was no question that Russia was responsible for firing the projectile. The emergency meeting was called by the U.S., UK, France, Norway, Ireland and Albania.

Britains U.N. Ambassador Barbara Woodward said Russias reckless attack marked the first time that any country has attacked a fueled and functioning nuclear power plant.

In doing so, she said, it had breached international law and the Geneva Convention on the conduct of war which states that dams, dykes and nuclear electrical generating stations, shall not be made the object of attack.

U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield opened her remarks saying: By the grace of God, the world narrowly averted a nuclear catastrophe last night.

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She called Russias attack incredibly reckless and dangerous, saying it threatened the safety of civilians across Russia, Ukraine and Europe.

Dr. Alex Rosen, a pediatrician and vice-president of the German affiliate of the Nobel prize-winning group International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, said the attack clearly shows the danger of fighting war in a nuclear state.

Had the projectile hit a spent fuel pond at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant or one of its six reactors, the prevalent winds Friday morning could have spread radioactive fallout toward the southeast, across the Asov Sea straight into Russia, engulfing the city of Rostov and continuing toward Georgia, Rosen said in an interview.

Russias U.N. ambassador Vassily Nebenzia rejected claims that its military forces attacked the plant as simply untrue and part of an unprecedented campaign of lies and disinformation against Russia.

He claimed Russia took control of Enerhodar and the Zaporizhzhia on Feb. 28 and reached agreement with the plants management for the Russian military to guard the facility to ensure its security to prevent the Ukrainian nationalist or other terrorist forces from taking advantage of the current situation to organize a nuclear provocation.

According to the Russian Ministry of Defense, he said, a Russian mobile patrol in the area adjacent to the plant on Thursday night was attacked by a Ukrainian sabotage group with heavy small arms fire from the windows of several floors of a training complex just outside the nuclear plant in order to provoke return fire.

The Russians returned fire and suppressed their fire, he said, and as they were leaving, the Ukrainian sabotage group set fire to the training facility.

For Russia and Belarus which as neighbors lived through the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster, Nebenzia said, maintaining a normal radiation situation throughout Ukraine is important. And he again blamed Ukrainian nationalists for the incident at the plant and accused the West of attempting to blow it into a global scandal.

Ukraines U.N. Ambassador Sergiy Kyslytsya accused Russia of committing an act of nuclear terrorism by shelling the nuclear power plant and dismissed as lies Nebenzias claim that a Ukrainian sabotage group was responsible for setting fire to a training facility at the plant. He said the Russian ambassador may not be properly informed by his government.

Kyslytsya expressed disappointment that the IAEAs Grossi did not include any mention of the attacking side.

We demand clear and decisive action from the IAEA, he said. The international community must respond adequately to the actions of the Russian Federation, which could lead to an unprecedented nuclear catastrophe.

The Zaporizhzhia plant is currently under control of the Russian armed forces, Kyslytsya said. While there have been no changes in radiation levels, Kyslytsya said several buildings are damaged and the telephone connection to the plant is disrupted and not available at the moment.

___

Frank Jordans contributed to this report from Berlin
Mar. 4THOMASTON, Maine  In the 20 years since the old Maine State Prison was torn down, the 15-acre parcel along Route 1 in Thomaston where it stood has remained undeveloped open space.

Now, a group of residents have filed a petition to keep the site that way forever.

The citizen's petition, submitted last week, asks voters to decide whether or not the town should permanently dedicate the entire site, known as the Thomaston Green, as a public park for recreational uses and community events. For decades, the town has tried to attract development to the green to bring in tax revenue. But, attempts to develop the property beyond being just a green space have never panned out.

Over the last 20 years, the green has become a popular place for walking and general recreation. The town has built a gazebo there and the site is also sometimes used for community events.

While the fate of the Thomaston Green will ultimately be up to voters, some town officials feel dedicating the entirety of the site for use as a park would eliminate opportunities for needed housing development, tax growth and potentially a future home for a new emergency services building.

"It's a tough one, it's a really tough one. I commend the citizens who have gone out there and talked to their neighbors and have gotten all the support behind it. I take that very seriously," Thomaston Select Board member Zel Bowman-Laberge said. "If in the end the Thomaston Green never gets developed, I just hope we can all work together to find other ways to develop housing projects in Thomaston or find other ways to offset some of the expense and increase the tax base."

The Thomaston Select Board accepted the petition, submitted by the Friends of Thomaston Green, on Monday night. By law, once the collected signatures are verified, the petition's question must go before voters at the next town meeting, which is slated for June.

The town purchased the property from the state in 2005. Over the years, the town has made investments at the site, like building a road and extending some utilities, such as sewer lines, onto the site to make it ready for development, according to Thomaston Select Board member Bill Hahn, who has been involved with efforts to redevelop the site over the last 20 years.

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But the town has recently resisted efforts for development including in September 2020 when voters rejected two proposals that would have established housing  both for older adults and people with disabilities  on a portion of the site.

Hahn said the town has always intended to retain a portion of the site, including a walking path that runs along the south end of the property, as public space.

Thomaston is currently working on developing a parks and recreation master plan for public spaces and trails across town. Potential future uses for the Thomaston Green will be included in the plan, though those recommended uses are primarily centered around how the site can serve as a launching point for access to the town's network of trails, according to John Fancy, the town's pollution control superintendent, who has been involved in the plan development process.

The Thomaston Green has also recently been discussed as a potential site for a new fire and EMS building, though no formal plans have been developed.

Both Bowman-Laberge and Hahn said they would be in favor of having the green used as a recreation area, but also with space for some limited development.

"Speaking for myself, I think maybe it should be developed more than nothing but probably not as intensively as was suggested 15 or 18 years ago," Hahn said. "My personal opinion is some sort of development on the Main Street side of the property and leave the rest of it for recreational use of some sort."
WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert said she is not going to jeopardize the league's financial standing by allowing teams to use charter flights during the season.

Engelbert's response is to a report from Sports Illustrated this week where the New York Liberty were fined $500,000 for violating the WNBA's collective bargaining agreement for using chartered flights during the second half of the 2021 season. According to the report, the league discussed penalties for the team that included loss of draft picks, punishment for executives and eliminating the franchise.

"It would be more than $20 million a year to fund charter flights for an entire WNBA season," Engelbert said to ESPN. "So this is something that we're not going to jeopardize the financial health of the league and be irresponsible about. If we can get it funded by sponsors and supporters, great, but that's not where we are. We do not have that."

WNBA commissioner Cathy Englebert said the league cannot afford charter flights and asked airlines and other charter companies to help out.

Englebert said they have asked airlines and other charter companies to help out, but no major sponsors have stepped up. The league paid for chartered flights during the 2019 and 2020 postseason for teams.

"If we could get it sponsored or funded in some way," she said "I'm all ears. I've gotten lots of calls over the past year about this since we've been back in our 12 markets. Then when people price it out, and they see it's $20 million-plus, you never hear from them again."

Last month, the league announced that they raised $75 million of capital by equity selling in the league. Investors included Micky and Nick Arison of the Miami Heat and billionaire Michael Dell, CEO of Dell Technologies.

"We've been around 25 years, we're really healthy, we're growing," Engelbert said. "I'm trying to set this league up for the next 25 years."

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: WNBA commissioner says league can't afford chartering flights for teams
New York Mayor Eric Adams has ended school mask mandates and vaccine passport use in New York City.

The policies will expire on Monday.

We want to see the faces of our children, we want to see their smiles, Mr Adams said. We want to see how happy they are. We want to see when they are feeling sad so that we can be there to comfort them.

Masks will still be required for students younger than five as they are ineligible for the coronavirus vaccine. Parents of all students can still send their children to school with face coverings, and masks will be available at schools for students who request them.

We are not going to get in the way of your discretion and we want New Yorkers to be smart, flexibility and be able to feel comfortable without any bullying, without any teasing. If you feel comfortable wearing your mask feel free to do so, he said.

Mr Adams said that coronavirus rates are "low enough that the mandatory program is no longer needed."

"It's time to open our city," he said.

Individual businesses can still require masking or proof of vaccination if they wish.

Mr Adams suggested earlier in the week that the end to the mandates were coming, so long as there were no "unforeseen spikes" in coronavirus cases.

There were no spikes, and as of Friday Mr Adams said the city's seven-day positivity rate was 1.8 per cent. The city also shared a Yale University analysis showing how much death and illness was averted by the city's high vaccination rate.

A billboard in Times Square displayed the data, showing the city had dodged 48,000 deaths, 340,000 hospitalisations and 1.9 million infections.

While masking and vaccine passport requirements will be lifted for businesses, public employees will still have to be vaccinated.

Masking will also continue on public transportation and in nursing homes, corrections facilities, and homeless shelters, as well as in some health care venues.

Mr Adams said that his administration would continue to monitor coronavirus numbers and enact mitigation requirements - like masking - if the case numbers begin to rise again.

We will make proper public health decisions to keep our city safe. We will pivot if we see a reason to change any policies. Were going to be unafraid to make those adjustments and changes. COVID changes. It shifts, it modifies. We must be open to do the same, he said. And if we see a rise in cases or hospitalizations, were going to come back. Its imperative we know this battle is still on.
An invigorated Hubbard Street Dance Chicago is finally back at the Museum of Contemporary Art. After several years away from the museums cozy Edlis Neeson Theater, what used to be an annual tradition getting audiences up close to these performances has returned, with a vengeance.

If anyone deserves a win, its Hubbard Street. Between pandemic cancellations, a leadership change, closing the Lou Conte Dance Studio, and more than a handful of operational shifts and cutbacks, the 44-year-old dance companys resuscitation plan has been intentional and swift, steered artistically by Linda-Denise Fisher-Harrell. Fisher-Harrell became artistic director in 2021  right in the middle of an all-virtual season; as she lays out her curatorial cards this year, its clear Hubbard Street is in capable hands.

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In a conversation about her new job early in 2021, Fisher-Harrell told me the key to her vision was reconnecting with Hubbard Streets audiences. This spring series, comprising two separate programs over two weekends at the MCA does just that. Aptly named Re/Connect, Thursdays selections cast a wide aesthetic net with a mix of plucky caprice and poignant sensitivity.

Hubbard Street Dance Chicago performing "As the Wind Blows" by Amy Hall Garner. (Michelle Reid/HANDOUT)

Program A repeats through Sunday, featuring world premieres by Amy Hall Garner and Darrell Grand Moultrie, the company premiere of Lar Lubovitchs Little Rhapsodies, and a revival of Ohad Naharins B/olero. Next week also includes Moultries work, as well as Nacho Duatos Jardi Tancat and Jermaine Spiveys The Seen, the latter two part of their Harris Theater series last fall.

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The evening opened with several of the companys men sliding in and out of lunges and wide fourth positions, silhouetted by an orangy glow on the cyclorama (thanks to Harrison Pearse Burkes nimble lighting). It is the opening look to Garners As the Wind Blows, a gorgeous montage painting the transition from dawn to dusk and back to dawn again  at least, thats what I saw  and finishing as it began but this time with veteran performer Jacqueline Burnett dancing toward the horizon line.

Garner and Moultrie have frequently worked together, and I wondered if pairing the two in a single program could get a little same-same. Silly me; Garners voice is clearly her own, culled from an eclectic, cross-genre background. At first glance, As the Wind Blows appears to be a strictly neoclassical jaunt. Look closely and you can even spot flashes of her very first job in the Chicago cast of the hit musical Fosse: a jazz hand here, a staccato hip there, a few finger snaps and pinpoint precision. It is wrapped in feel-good, pure dance that harnesses the rhythmic complexities of a splendid score mixing solo flute, piano and groovy bass hits.

Moultrie, by contrast, drives a clearer narrative in his rousing closer, Dichotomy of a Journey, a set of seven interconnected vignettes that ends with a powerful unison phrase for the entire company. They are dressed in uncharacteristically bright separates (by Branimira Ivanova), swapping from candy apple red to white with red accents midway through, and equally bold geometric floor patterns by lighting designer Michael Mazzola.

A shift in both costume and mood is prompted by an arresting testimony (in this case performed by Alysia Johnson, who rotates with Andrew Murdock and Michael Garcia, depending on the cast), an appropriately schmaltzy treatment of V. Michael McKays gospel prayer, In My Dreams. Moultrie seems to propose a utopian world in which love triumphs over hate and communities uplift one another. That Hubbard Streets extraordinary dancers are the vehicle for such a message makes that seem just a bit more possible.

Last seen in 2019, Little Rhapsodies was presented as part of an evening celebrating the prolific career of Lar Lubovitch, a Chicago native. For Thursdays cast, Craig Black Jr., Michael Garcia and Adam McGaw are tasked with this exhausting behemoth set to Robert Schumanns Symphonic Etudes for solo piano. Variation after variation test every tool these dancers have, layered over with waggish character dancing pulling from Polish mazurka and Russian hopak, to name a few. I imagine Little Rhapsodies to be like a 21st century mens Pas de Quatre, replacing Fanny Cerrito with McGaw and white jazz oxfords in place of pointe shoes. A niche reference, to be sure, but the point here is that this is a showpiece, an exhibition of pure, unabashed, technical panache. Little Rhapsodies is also a far cry from the artistic dance films of last season, and provides reassurance that this is a company that has somehow managed to stay in impeccable form.

Having firmly planted the evening in a primarily balletic idiom, B/olero, is the relative outlier, excerpted from Hubbard Streets wildly popular collection of Israeli choreographer Ohad Naharins dances called Decadance/Chicago. With near perfection from Burnett and her capable junior, Alyssa Allen, B/olero isnt so much of a palate cleanser as it is a wink and a nod  a reminder that, yeah, we still do that too.

Hubbard Street Dance Chicago presents Re/Connect

When: Program A through March 6; Program B March 9-13

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Where: Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, 220 E. Chicago Ave.

Running time: 2 hours, 15 minutes

Tickets: $15-$110 at 312-334-7777 and hubbardstreetdance.com




Tech workers at The New York Times voted to unionize, becoming the largest active tech union in the country.

A National Labor Relations Board vote Thursday resulted in a majority of the more than 500 software engineers and product designers who cast ballots deciding to unionize.

The tech workers will be represented by the NewsGuild-CWA, the union that already includes The Times's newsroom.

"The National Labor Relations Board has confirmed what we have known to be true: support for a union is strong among tech workers at the New York Times," the Tech Guild said. "With this election result, the hundreds of us who work on New York Times websites and apps will finally have a real seat at the table and a meaningful say in our pay, benefits, and working conditions."

"Now that our colleagues have made their voices heard through a formal election, we look forward to working cooperatively with the Guild to negotiate in good faith, establishing a contract for the new unit and continuing to support our talented technology and digital staff," Danielle Rhoades Ha, a spokesperson for the Times, said in a statement.

The Times Tech Guild first went public with its intent to unionize last April.

The paper declined to voluntarily recognize the union, saying that management had heard concerns from tech workers about what a union would mean for them.

The company also tried to stop the election from happening over concerns about the proposed bargaining unit but was unsuccessful.

The union filed a claim of unfair labor practices against The Times for allegedly interfering in the organizing campaign. The Times denied having done so, but National Labor Relations Board officials found merit in the argument.

The tech worker union's victory follows a string of labor wins in media and comes as workers in technology are becoming more active in organizing.

Updated at 6:56 p.m.
Nelson Countys board of supervisors will hold a public hearing Tuesday on a proposed new mobile home park after the project recently received a recommendation of approval from the county planning commission.

The proposed location of the park is a 204-acre lot behind Ridgecrest Baptist Church along U.S. 29, adjacent to four single-family homes. The property is located in an area designated for agricultural use.

Applicant Justin Shimp of Afton presented his plan for a development to include 51 mobile homes accessed by a new entrance along U.S. 29. Shimp said the development would occupy only 10 of the total 204 acres, and he intends to preserve 35 acres of open space for tenants use.

One of the things I always look for is opportunities to create affordable housing, Shimp said at the planning commissions Feb. 23 meeting.

He presented census data demonstrating that median household incomes have decreased in the Lovingston area while housing values have increased across the whole county.

Folks who dont have the income for purchasing an expensive single-family house need an option, Shimp added.

He said tenants will have individual green space around their homes and access to Muddy Creek, which bisects the property.

Shimp said his development would also follow a residence investor community model. He said he intends to purchase some units to rent but also invite residents to move in their own units, new or used, and rent the land from him for approximately $400 per month.

Shimp explained with his model, residents can purchase a share of land and own the rights to their space, rather than paying rent. When the tenant moves on later, they can sell their land and profit from its appreciation.

So the person who has the mobile home actually has the opportunity to gain the appreciation of dirt thats usually reserved for the investor, Shimp said.

He said this model would both create a more permanent affordable housing option in the community and encourage tenants to maintain their properties because they have a stake in its value.

Shimp added the community would only be visible from the back of Ridgecrest Baptist and the small-scale nature of the development would leave most of the land untouched and therefore retain the propertys rural integrity.

During a public hearing on the proposal, Patty Fanelli of Stagebridge Road, which runs parallel to U.S. 29 on the Ridgecrest Baptist side, spoke on behalf of three of her neighbors.

She expressed concern over expending the areas aquifer, preservation of wetlands on the property, unleashed pets and the development bringing down neighboring property values.

Mainly were concerned about the effect on the area and keeping it decent and not letting it turn into some of these things we see on the side of the road that are a blight on the community.

Shimp told the board the units would draw from a series of wells that would not affect properties across Muddy Creek. He added he does not plan to develop further into the wetlands and the remainder of the acreage is not suitable for development. Shimp said there would be rules and standards for tenants to abide by that would be enforced.

West District representative Michael Harman said he shared Shimps concern about affordable rental housing but questioned the intended location.

I dont think it fits in our current comprehensive plan, Harman said.

New Central District representative Robin Hauschner, sitting at his first planning commission meeting, expressed support for the project given the countys dire need for low income housing.

North District representative Phillipa Proulx said the number of units was large by Nelson County standards and conflicted with the propertys current zoning, which discourages large scale development.

The comprehensive plan is an important guide and we cant ignore it, Proulx said.

All planning commission members, except for Proulx, voted to recommend approval of the project.

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Bedford County supervisors this week effectively ended the prospect of future large solar farms within the county when they declined to advertise a public hearing on a proposed utility-scale solar farm ordinance.

A public hearing on a solar ordinance drafted by the countys planning commission and staff planning department would have been the next step toward either passing or voting down the possibility of building larger solar farms, which can span multiple acres, producing greater amounts of power than smaller installations such as solar panels on a single homeowners roof.

Supervisors heard feedback Monday from residents for and against such solar farms, which have been a topic of discussion for several years.

Most supervisors are opposed to allowing utility-scale solar farms in Bedford County, with primary concerns being a loss of Bedford Countys agricultural land use and impacts to the rural aesthetic. But some Bedford County landowners say they want the option, citing landowners rights, the environmental benefits of green energy, and the economic benefit Bedford County could gain from having a solar farm through a revenue-sharing program recently passed by the Virginia General Assembly.

Bedford County currently allows residents to apply to construct solar panels on the roofs of their houses, and planner Mariel Fowler has said such permits are granted all the time. But there was never an ordinance in place to allow the larger utility-scale solar farms for Bedford County.

The Town of Bedford has a solar farm ordinance and operates one facility within its borders.

In October 2020, supervisors asked the county planning commission to draft an ordinance to be presented to the board for consideration. Jordan Mitchell, director of community development, said the team did due diligence by visiting solar farms in neighboring counties such as Campbell and Appomattox, discussing pros and cons with other county leaders, and working to address key issues to mitigate potential problems associated with solar farms, particularly erosion and sediment control. A Campbell County solar farm in Lynch Station, for example, has received multiple such complaints over the years, Mitchell said.

On Monday, Mitchell presented the solar ordinance draft and asked supervisors to decide whether or not to advertise a public hearing, which would have offered citizens the chance to give their input on solar farms in Bedford County.

We feel that this ordinance we brought to you tonight kind of addresses some of those issues, Mitchell said, regarding erosion and sediment control and the size of solar farms in particular.

Several Bedford County residents and landowners again spoke in favor of the solar ordinance during the public comment period at this weeks meeting.

Bedford County can help with climate change, as well as receive additional tax revenue at a considerable rate, at no cost infrastructure-wise to the county. If global warming is not controlled, there will be little, if any, farming anywhere. I cannot find a reason for not moving forward with a public hearing on a solar farm, other than a personal nature, said Russell Morgan, who owns land along Smith Mountain Lake Parkway and wants to consider putting in solar on part of his property.

Morgans neighbor, Terry Travis, supported solar as well.

I cannot find one negative about this, Travis said. The propertys surrounded by trees. It wont be obstructive of anybodys view. It makes no noise. It puts out no odor like a hog farm or something. Every angle I look at it, its a go.

A couple of residents spoke against solar farms.

Were losing farmland so fast in Bedford County, its time we need to put a stop to it. Im totally against it, and I dont think anymore land needs to be wasted on solar panels, said Goode resident Richard Ruff.

Emailed comments from citizens included one person opposed and six in favor, District 4 Supervisor and board chair John Sharp said.

There was a catch that arose earlier on Monday that could have affected the proposed ordinance.

Earlier that same day, Mitchell said, the General Assembly passed legislation impacting renewable energy regulations and standards. However, because this was adopted so recently, Mitchell said the planning department and planning commissioners had not had a chance to review the changes and make any necessary tweaks to the ordinance draft they crafted.

District 3 Supervisor Charla Bansley said she would prefer planning staff and commissioners review Virginias adjustments to renewable energy laws to make sure any solar ordinance Bedford County was in compliance before any public hearing or other action was taken.

District 6 Supervisor Bob Davis maintained his stance in opposition to solar farms, saying he thinks it would change the entire landscape of Bedford County and would result in destruction of farmland in Bedford County. He also said solar farms encroaching on agricultural use lands could damage the local economy. Agriculture is Bedford Countys number one economic driver, according to the county Economic Development Authority, a fact Davis mentioned.

Sharp shared his opposition to solar, echoing not only the concern for aesthetic and agricultural impacts as well as Bansleys point of needing to review the newest legislation from Richmond, but especially erosion and sediment control problems that could arise.

District 1 Supervisor Mickey Johnson and District 2 Supervisor Edgar Tuck said a public hearing should move forward on the matter because their constituents had the right to be heard.

I believe if we squash the publics ability to debate and discourse with us on this issue, they will not come and talk to us on other issues down the road, Tuck said. I think that piece is very important. Whether we ultimately vote the ordinance in or not, I think the public should have the opportunity to discourse with us about the decision.

Johnson agreed.

I know what my personal preference would be, [but] to be fair to the people that are speaking, I think they deserve a chance to be heard, he said.

After discussion, Johnson moved to table a decision on the public hearing and have the planning commission and planning staff review the ordinance draft, make sure it all complied with the latest state legislation, and make a recommendation to the board of supervisors as to whether the ordinance should be approved or not.

But Johnsons motion to postpone a vote but still leave open the possibility of a solar ordinance was defeated in a 4-3 vote, with only Johnson, Bansley, and Tuck voting in favor.

District 5 Supervisor Tommy Scott made a motion to kill the entire undertaking: no public hearing, no solar farm ordinance, no moving forward. After a second from Davis, the motion passed in a 5-2 vote, with Tuck and Johnson voting against.

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Virginia had an extraordinary opportunity in recent years to make bold choices about marijuana. But lawmakers are poised yet again to squander it, a bipartisan failure that leaves Virginians in a cloud of uncertainty about the cultivation, sales and regulation of the drug.

A House subcommittee on Feb. 28 rejected a bill that would have allowed recreational marijuana sales to begin in September. That measure, already passed by the Senate, establishes a legal framework intended to bring order to a chaotic marketplace where cannabis is legal in theory more than in practice.

Thanks to legislation approved by the General Assembly last year, it is no longer against state law for adults to grow four marijuana plants at home, to possess up to 1 ounce of cannabis for personal use or to gift up to 1 ounce to another adult.

But it remains against the law in Virginia to buy seeds, farm cannabis or legally purchase marijuana. Dispensaries are still not open to the general public, meaning individuals cannot buy products available to adults in several other states.

Yes, marijuana is still banned under federal law. But Washington has done nothing to punish states, such as Colorado, California and Oregon, which legalized sales that accounted for a combined $3 billion in sales tax revenue last year.

Whats stopping Virginia? Well, its always something.

More than five years ago, James City County Republican Thomas K. Tommy Norment Jr., then the Senate majority leader, sent shockwaves across the commonwealth by calling for a thorough review of Virginia laws concerning pot and what changing them might mean.

I think its absolutely crazy that we continue to lock people up for possession of a modest amount of marijuana, Norment told the Norfolk City Council in 2016.

In 2017 Virginia lawmakers unanimously approved a medical program  only for epilepsy patients, only for cannabis oil. A study by the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission followed, outlining options Virginia could pursue for legalization and the creation of a regulated marketplace.

When Democrats won control of the legislature in 2019  with Gov. Ralph Northam, a legalization proponent, in office  action on those proposals seemed inevitable. Lawmakers approved a bill in 2021 that allowed for home cultivation, individual possession and home use but delayed legal, regulated sales until 2024.

Negotiations broke down over how to stand up a regulatory authority, handle some of the criminal components, such as record expungement, and social equity measures to ensure communities hit hardest by drug enforcement could share the benefits of legalization.

Inaction on these items left the commonwealth in limbo, where it remains. Republicans took control of the House last year and some in the newly minted majority pledged to see creation of a legal market accelerated, to begin this year.

Instead, the House did nothing. It passed no bills of its own and said it would wait to see what the Democratic Senate did. A bill to begin legal sales in September passed the upper chamber, with bipartisan support, but died in the House on Feb. 28.

House Speaker Todd Gilbert blamed Democrats for his chambers failure, tweeting, Virginia Democrats made a great big mess when they legalized marijuana without putting any regulatory or retail structure in place. We are left having to clean up their mess and we will not make it worse by rushing to fix it.

Virginia does not have to invent the wheel here. Other states have shown how to establish successful legal markets and collect hundreds of millions in tax revenue. And the JLARC study illuminates a path forward for the commonwealth.

As it stands, everyone involved in the cannabis industry, including consumers, as well as law enforcement, prosecutors, other government officials and those convicted of marijuana offenses would all be better served by a faster path to legal sales and, above all, clarity in the law.

Its a missed opportunity that Richmond has been unable, and now unwilling, to provide.

 The Virginian-Pilot & Daily Press Editorial Board
Japan and its Western peers are racing to crack down on cryptocurrency transactions by Russians trying to dodge sanctions imposed after Moscow's invasion of Ukraine, but the effort faces enormous challenges because the targeted assets are decentralized and lack single administrators.

The U.S., Japan and the European Union blocked major Russian banks from the SWIFT global payment network as part of the sanctions, temporarily sending the value of the ruble down 30%. This has prompted Russian individuals and businesses to turn to cryptocurrencies for sending their money offshore -- a loophole that countries involved in the sanctions are aiming to close.

The Japan Virtual and Crypto Assets Exchange Association (JVCEA), the industry's self-policing organization in the country, began discussing new rules Thursday including a ban on transactions involving Russia that are mediated by exchanges.

About 17.3 million residents of Russia own cryptocurrency -- nearly 12% of the population, according to crypto payments company TripleA. Many blockchain developers hold crypto assets, and some wealthy Russians have used them as a channel to move money offshore.

Russian nationals have invested 5 trillion rubles ($46.6 billion at current rates) in cryptocurrency, said a lawmaker in Russia's lower house cited by Tass news agency. ...continue reading
Japan on Thursday raised its travel advisory for Belarus to the second-highest level to warn against visiting there, citing the possible danger after imposing sanctions on the former Soviet republic for its role in Russia's military invasion of their neighbor Ukraine.

The Japanese Foreign Ministry also issued the third-highest Level 2 advisory on its four-point scale for most of Russia including Moscow to ask Japanese citizens to refrain from nonessential travel to the area.

For the Ukrainian border areas along Russia and Belarus, the ministry raised the advisory to the highest Level 4, which urges all Japanese nationals to evacuate and not to travel there, citing "the possibility of military conflicts."

"There is concern that Japanese will possibly face danger" in Belarus, following Japan's decision to join the United States and European nations in imposing sanctions on the country "due to its involvement in Russia's aggression against Ukraine," according to the ministry.
Teri Bowers and Zeus the dog have become best buds at Midlands Humane Society.

Bowers grew up in Missouri Valley, and she graduated from Missouri Valley High School in 1998. After high school, Bowers said she did a lot of traveling and had some interesting experiences, including living on a sailboat off of San Diego, working at a dude ranch and later starting a cleaning business in Tuscon, Arizona and living in the mountains. She said she wanted to see what was out there after growing up in the Midwest.

I was born in a corn field, she said. There had to be more.

Bowers has since made her way back home, and shes currently living in Missouri Valley. She makes the commute to Council Bluffs many times a week as she is one of Midlands Humane Societys newer hires. Shes been there since October, and as an animal lover she said its always heartwarming to see animals find warm, loving homes.

She said shes always rooting for the underdogs, which includes her buddy Zeus. Zeus is a 2-year-old male pit bull terrier mix who is currently available for adoption at Midlands. Bowers said he came from a tough situation, so he is still shy around newcomers; however, she said putting in the time to show him love will make him your best friend.

He is a ball of energy when hes ready to play and is the best cuddle buddy when its time to relax. Bowers said hes been at the shelter for a while, so she hopes the right forever home comes his way soon.

Certain areas have pit bull breed bans, including Council Bluffs, so potential owners should take note. His adoption fee is $150, which includes a microchip, altering and age-appropriate vaccines.

In other shelter news, Midlands is happy to announce the date of its annual gala fundraiser. This years event will be on Friday, May 13, and will once again take place at the Mid-America Center. Tickets are now on sale and can be purchased at the Midlands website. More information about the event will come as the date draws nearer. Also, this week is PetSmart Charities National Adoption Week, and the Council Bluffs location, 815 McDermott St., is joining in on the fun.

Midlands has a select number of cats there and invite the public to go pay them a visit. More information about fostering, volunteering and donation opportunities can be found at midlandshumanesociety.org or by calling 712-396-2270. Like their Facebook page to keep up with daily shelter news. The shelter can also be found @midlandshumane on Twitter and @midlandshumanesociety on Instagram.

 Joe Shearer
The Iowa Cookie Crumbs group is celebrating its 15th year of baking cookies for U.S. military personnel deployed overseas.

The Crumbs, a chapter of the national Treat the Troops organization, started cooking up care packages in 2007 and soon will have sent 1.5 million cookies overseas, according to Abbie Crawford, founder of the group.

Iowa ranks second in the number of cookies sent, according to the Treat the Troops website. Georgia is credited for sending 1,850,728, Iowa has sent 1,487,077, South Carolina has sent 1,369,868 and Missouri has sent 1,148,007, according to Treat the Troops tabulations.

The Iowa Chapter can produce a lot of cookies because it has at least 100 volunteers, including many from Nebraska, Crawford said.

Theyre such a dedicated group of people, she said. During the winter, it drops down a bit  we have snowbirds.

The number of cookies needed has also decreased, Crawford said. She has her sources  she often learns of units in need through their chaplains  but the Cookie Crumbs could handle more requests.

They just want to help, she said. This is a very, very tight group, and they dont want to see the work they enjoy come to an end.

Last summer, the group made cookies for first responders in Council Bluffs and a few surrounding communities, she said.

Crawford, who serves on Treat the Troops national board of directors, said the organization is exploring other ways to help military men and women and will discuss whether to expand during the boards next meeting in two weeks.

Right now, we are still healthy, but youve got to look to the future, she said.

In the meantime, the Iowa Cookie Crumbs will top the 1.5 million mark Monday when they gather to pack a batch of 25,000 cookies to send overseas, Crawford said.

Its going all over the place, she said.

Some of the cookies will be going to forces near Ukraine, while others will be headed to Germany, Japan and Kuwait, Crawford said.

A lot of times, we dont know where theyre going, because we dont know all the APOs (military addresses), she said.

Treat the Troops invites family and friends of military personnel to request cookies for their deployed loved ones. Troops can also request cookies for themselves. To request cookies, visit treatthetroops.org and click Request Cookies Now. Treat the Troops cannot send cookies within the continental United States. Only orders for overseas units will be fulfilled. Requests received directly from troops will be given priority.

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Council Bluffs Community School District Superintendent Vickie Murillo will be staying in Council Bluffs  at least for now.

The Board of Education in a Kansas City-area school district where she was a finalist for superintendent has offered the position to an internal candidate, she said in an email to staff members Thursday.

That person would be Mike Kimbrel, current superintendent of academic services at Park Hill School District in Missouri. The other finalist was a superintendent from Texas.

Murillo became superintendent of Council Bluffs Community Schools on July 1, 2017, replacing Martha Bruckner, who retired.

Council Bluffs Board of Education President Chris LaFerla said he understands that Murillo has family in the Kansas City area but is glad she will be staying in Council Bluffs.

Im very grateful that she is planning to be here, he said. Shes accomplished an awful lot during the five years shes been here.

LaFerla highlighted her establishment of the Early College Academy, TradeWorks Academy and Diploma Plus One programs, among other accomplishments.

She supervised renovation of both of the middle schools and now is working on the Early Learning Center campaign  all while managing the entire school district through the (anxiety) of the pandemic, he said.

Im very proud of the work shes done, LaFerla said. Im grateful shes going to continue leading our district and to know that shes fully committed to  continue serving and leading our district.

Murillo sent a message out Monday notifying staff that she was a finalist for the Missouri position.

With my strong roots in the Kansas City area, considering this new opportunity to potentially move closer to home while I also continue to grow professionally became a real interest to me, she said.

Murillo also indicated she would be happy to continue serving Council Bluffs Community Schools, if the opportunity did not work out. She reiterated that in Thursdays message.

I want you to know that, even through the experience of being considered for the new role, I am as excited as ever about the future of our Council Bluffs schools, she said. As I shared with you earlier this week, I am very grateful to continue serving this caring and innovative community. I look forward to working with this outstanding school community in a focused and determined collective effort to accomplish our districts strategic goals.

Thank you for your dedication and for your confidence in me as we work together in the months and years to come.

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Commentary: Plundering of Afghan assets by Americans is blatant theft

17:58, March 03, 2022 By Chen Zi ( People's Daily Online

U.S. President Joe Biden recently signed an order to free up $7 billion in Afghan assets now frozen in the U.S., splitting the money between a fund for victims of the 9/11 attacks and a trust fund to help the people of Afghanistan.

The order, upon its adoption, brought about heated discussions in the international community, with the hashtag The United States is stealing Afghanistans money having become a heatedly debated issue on Twitter.

Ajmal Ahmady, former head of Afghanistans central bank, revealed on social media that Afghanistan has some $9 billion in foreign reserves and that the majority of that amount  some $7 billion  is being held in banks on U.S. soil.

Before the U.S. completely withdrew its forces from Afghanistan, the U.S. government announced plans to freeze the foreign reserves held by Afghanistans central bank. Among the frozen reserves, there are rescue funds Afghanistan had received from the international community as well as the savings of ordinary Afghan people. The bank has claimed that the money belongs to the Afghan people, not any government organizations, political parties or any other organizations.

The White House explained that families of the victims of the 9/11 attacks had filed lawsuits against the Taliban, which they held responsible for the death of their beloved ones, having also sought compensation from the assets of Afghanistans central bank in the U.S. The Biden administration has since indicated its support for such appeals.

However, what the White House said has not been consistent. According to a report by the New York Times, what makes the White Houses statement complicated and self-contradictory is that the U.S. has never recognized the Taliban as a legitimate government in Afghanistan, so if the frozen funds do not belong to the Taliban, how can they possibly be used as compensation for the victims of the 9/11 attacks?

In 2001, U.S.-led military forces invaded Afghanistan, having inflicted suffering on the Afghan people. More than 30,000 innocent civilians were killed during the Afghanistan War and about 11 million people became refugees.

In 2021, the U.S. decided to withdraw its forces from Afghanistan. The 20 years of war in Afghanistan destroyed the peaceful lives the Afghan people could have otherwise enjoyed, bringing devastation and desolation to the country. Statistics from the UN World Food Programme showed that 22.8 million Afghans now face life-threatening food shortages, and about 3.2 million Afghan children under five years old suffer from malnutrition.

At this critical moment, the U.S. did not shoulder its due responsibility to help the Afghan people alleviate their humanitarian crisis. Instead, it openly plundered the countrys assets, while further aggravating the suffering of the Afghan people. What the U.S. has done, by arbitrarily freezing Afghan assets and even taking the assets as its own, is tantamount to stealing money from Afghanistan.

These assets are considered life-saving money for the Afghan people, and yet they are now being used as nothing but a tool of the U.S. to create political benefits for its own country. According to the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, a U.S. think tank, Bidens decision to freeze and then redistribute Afghanistans reserves was a political move designed to show his Republican opponents how tough he can be on the Taliban.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin noted that the behavior of the U.S. has testified to the essence of the so-called rules-based international order as touted by the Americans. U.S. behavior has revealed just what order it actually is  an order of power politics devised for the purpose of maintaining U.S. hegemony.

As a matter of fact, not all the relatives of victims of the 9/11 attacks had sought compensation, with some of them having expressed the hope that the Biden administration could retract the relevant decisions it has since made.

We cant bring our loved ones back, Barry Admunson, who lost his brother in the 9/11 attack, told the media. But we can save the lives of people in Afghanistan by advocating that the Biden Administration release this money to its rightful owners: the Afghan people.

The blood debt the U.S. owes to Afghanistan is too enormous to count.

(Web editor: Hongyu, Du Mingming)
For those who lost loved ones in the opioid crisis, making sure the family behind OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma paid a price was never just about money. What many wanted was a chance to confront the Sackler family face to face, to make them feel their pain.

While some may get that chance  at least by video  under a tentative settlement reached Thursday that also would force the Sacklers to pay out billions, the families still are coming away feeling empty, conflicted and angry yet again. Theres a bit of hope mixed in, too.

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Lynn Wencus, of Wrentham, Mass., holds a poster, with a likeness of her son Jeff, at her home, in Wrentham, Wednesday, March 2, 2022. Wencus lost her son to a heroin overdose in 2017. OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma and virtually all U.S. states have agreed to a new settlement of opioid lawsuits. The deal reached Thursday, March 3, 2022, would require members of the Sackler family who own the drugmaker to pay $5.5 billion to $6 billion in cash. They also apologized. A bankruptcy judge must still approve the deal. (Steven Senne/AP)

Nothing, though, will bring back any of the lives lost or hold the Sacklers fully accountable, in their eyes.

Id like to see the Sacklers bleed all they can, but the bigger picture for me is what theyre doing to clean up the mess, said Vicki Meyer Bishop of Clarksburg, Maryland, who lost her 45-year-old son, Brian Meyer, in 2017. Were all so very worried about the next generation and the next child who will be lost.

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The Sacklers, whose wealth has been estimated in court filings at over $10 billion, will get to hang on to a chunk of their vast fortune and be protected from current and future civil lawsuits over opioids.

The deal, which must be approved by a federal bankruptcy judge, requires the Sacklers to pay as much as $6 billion, with $750 million for victims and their survivors. Most of the rest will go to state and local governments to fight the crisis. They also must give up ownership of their company, with the new entitys profits going toward fighting opioid addiction through treatment and education programs.

Some of the survivors of the opioid crisis and relatives of those who died will receive payments. But most will get just a few thousand dollars  not even enough to reimburse the cost of a funeral  and many more who have not filed claims already will be shut out altogether.

These families do need to get something, said Beth Schmidt, who started a support group in Sykesville, Maryland, after her son Sean died in 2013, one of 13 lost in their town in little over a year. We have families that cant afford to bury their children. Theyre choosing cremation because its less expensive. They shouldnt have to do that.

The agreement also recommends that the victims be allowed to directly share their heartache with Sackler family members by videoconference at a hearing scheduled for Wednesday.

Meyer Bishop would love to face the Sacklers and show them a picture of her son thats so big they couldnt look away.

Its what I see before I fall asleep every night, she said. I dont even know if that would touch them. I dont think it would.

The Sacklers have been cast as the leading villains in the countrys opioid crisis by activists who point to their lack of remorse and long-running efforts to shield their wealth while maintaining a lavish lifestyle. Their role in the epidemic was spotlighted in Hulus miniseries Dopesick.

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A half-million Americans have died from opioids over the past two decades, a toll that includes victims of prescription painkillers like OxyContin and Vicodin and illicit drugs such as heroin and fentanyl.

Everyday this goes on, we lose all of these people, said Lynn Wencus, of Wrentham, Massachusetts, whose son Jeff died of an overdose in 2017. If states use the money the way its supposed to be, then we will be saving lives.

It bothers her that more money wont end up in the hands of the families, but she also knows nothing would make up for what she and so many others have lost.

Even if I got a billion dollars, its not going to bring back my son, she said.

In one of the hardest-fought provisions in the settlement, the Sacklers will be protected from future opioid lawsuits. While they werent given immunity from criminal charges, there have been no indications they will face any.

Allowing the Sacklers to avoid any more lawsuits or jail time is a dangerous message to send to the pharmaceutical industry or any other business, said activists who have fought for Purdue owners and company officials to be charged with crimes.

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What makes me most angry is theyre getting away with it, said Tim Kramer, of Waterford Township, Michigan. Theyve got more money than God, so its not going to hurt them. Id like to see them go to prison, and a regular prison, not one of those resort prisons.

His common law wife, LeeRae Conn, was 46 when she overdosed in 2018. He found out she was addicted soon after they met a decade earlier.

No matter what she did, no matter what I did, she couldnt get off it, he said. She tried.

Sackler family members have never unequivocally offered an apology, but on Thursday issued a statement of regret about the toll of OxyContin.

The settlement comes more than two years after the Stamford, Connecticut-based company filed for bankruptcy while facing some 3,000 lawsuits that accused it of fueling the crisis by aggressively pushing sales of its signature painkiller.

An earlier settlement fell apart last year, but this time the Sacklers agreed to add another $1 billion and accepted other terms.

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Its money, but theres still no accountability, said Liz Fitzgerald, of Southington, Connecticut, who said she wanted to hear a public apology.

She lost two adult sons, who first used OxyContin in high school, to overdoses in 2013 and 2017.

My three children have lost two brothers, and I think that a lot more needs to be done to support families because of the traumatic PTSD. They just destroyed our lives, she said.

I have a granddaughter who lost her dad. No money in the world is going to bring back her dad, Fitzgerald said. How do you tell a 10-year child that your dads gone and not even understanding addiction? Its just horrific.

Associated Press writers Geoff Mulvihill and Susan Haigh contributed to this report.
The Irish airline Ryanair announced on Thursday the launch of a new route between the Spanish city of Valencia and Agadir.

This new service will be operational from April 1st with two weekly flights, the company said in a statement.

The launch of this route is part of the companys summer program the most important ever made from Valencia airport, including 7 new destinations, including the city of Agadir.

The low-cost airline Ryanair had inaugurated, last November, a new base at the airport of Agadir-Al Massira.

The inauguration of this base is part of the implementation of a partnership agreement concluded last July between the Moroccan National Tourist Office (ONMT) and Ryanair in order to strengthen the attractiveness of Agadir.
A new step forward in the legalization of cannabis cultivation in Morocco was made Thursday as the government adopted at its weekly meeting a decree regulating the activities related to the culture of the plant and selected three provinces, namely Al Hoceima, Chefchaouen and Taounate that will grow cannabis legally.

This decree, drafted by the Ministry of the Interior in coordination with the ministerial departments concerned, is part of the completion of the application of the law that was adopted in May 2021.

Ultimately, the text will subject all activities related to the cultivation, production, processing, transport, marketing, export and import of cannabis and its by-products to a licensing system.

It also provides for the creation of an advisory committee that will study and give its ruling on authorization applications. The Committee will be chaired by the Director General of the National Agency for the Regulation of Cannabis-related Activities or his representative, and composed of representatives of the sectors concerned.

Prior to tabling the bill on the legal uses of cannabis, medical, cosmetic and industrial to Parliament, the interior ministry had conducted exhaustive scientific studies, focusing mainly on the feasibility of the project, its socio-economic and environmental potential, as well as on the strengths and challenges that Morocco must meet to succeed in this large-scale project.

The studies showed that Morocco has great potentialities which are able to attract important investments for the industrialization of cannabis and the access to the global markets of these products.

The decree which identifies the three provinces (Al Hoceima, Chefchaouen and Taounate) allowed to cultivate and produce cannabis, leaves the door open to include other regions in the process based on domestic and international investors demand for cannabis supply chain activities.

According to the cannabis legalization law, the aim is to convert illicit crops that destroy the environment into sustainable legal activities that generate value, money and employment.

Under the law, the National Agency for the Regulation of Cannabis-related Activities shall buy the plant from farmers and sell it to pharmaceutical firms. The agency is also urged to adopt a gender approach to improve the conditions of rural women in these regions.

The text limits the plantation of cannabis to some regions only in northern Morocco and bans using the substance for recreational purposes.

The kingdom is counting on the sustained development of the global medical cannabis market, with forecasts of average annual growth of around 60% in Europe, its target market. Annual farm receipts are estimated to range from $420 million to up to $630 million by 2028.

Morocco is ranked the worlds largest producer of cannabis resin, according to the 2020 annual report of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.

According to official figures, some 400,000 people, or 60,000 households live on the cultivation of cannabis.

Until now, small farmers in the North received 4% of final turnover in the illegal circuit against potentially 12% in the legal market.

The legalization of therapeutic use aims to improve the living conditions of the plant growers and protect them from drug trafficking networks.

The law also recommends, in a bid to support the efforts of negotiation between farmers and manufacturers, that farmers set up cooperatives which will be in charge of signing contracts with manufacturers and ensuring the preservation of farmers rights, in addition to allowing the farmers to acquire the best methods for sustainable agriculture and to be open to global experiences in this field, in addition to the acquisition of quality seeds.

Interior Minister Abdelouafi Laftit had explained during the parliaments debate of the text that it is in line with the changes incurred by the global drug control system and in a special context marked by an unprecedented enthusiasm in countries around the world to develop cannabis cultivation and profit from the income generated by the commercialization of its legal products.

He had also highlighted Moroccos competitive assets, namely the great knowledge of this plant gained over the centuries, which qualifies Moroccan farmers to guarantee the success of this project. The geographical position of the Kingdom as a gateway to Europe will undoubtedly facilitate access to the largest market for cannabis products.

The Kingdoms logistics and its attractiveness of investment in general and foreign investment in particular are also part of these assets.
In 2021, $120 million private investments were injected in 28 new projects in all Tanger Meds activity zones, says the ports management in its latest newsletter.

The new projects created 4397 additional jobs. They were made by private entities and corporations from UK, USA, France, Italy, Ireland, China, Portugal, Japan, Germany, Belgium, Spain

The list of investors includes Nippon Express, a Japanese 3PL logistics company, Ravago, a Belgian company specializing in industrial grade polymers and recycled plastics, Mondi, an international packaging and paper manufacturing group, Boa, leader in the field of natural casing, Sonofet, a company specialized in the production of thermal insulation panels, etc.

Simultaneously, 8 companies operating within the industrial platform launched plans to extend their activities in 2021, including TE Connectivity, Indore and Siplas in Tanger Automotive City zone, and the automotive supplier Polydesign Systems in Tanger Free Zone.

On the logistics side, 8 new operators have started their activities in Tanger Med Logistical zone, including: GEFCO, Dachser, TE connectivity, APTIV, etc. These projects concerned in particular the commissioning of 40,000 m of advanced supplier warehouses (MAF) dedicated to automotive logistics.

Business volume generated in Tanger Med increased by 26 pc compared to 2020, going up to $9.2 billion in 2021 thanks to the good performance of the automotive sector ($6.2 billion, up 24 %), textiles & aeronautics sectors ($1 billion) and logistics sector ($2.1 billion)

The automotive sector boom is driven by new projects launched in the Tanger Automotive City zone.

As to the Tanger Med port proper, it is in the lead in Africa, and ranks 23rd among the largest ports worldwide, according to the latest report from the maritime data provider Alphaliner.

With over 7.1 million twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) containers handled in 2021, the Tangier port features among the top 100 largest ports in the world.

The port continues showing positive indicators despite the COVID-19 pandemic. The positive results are due to the launch of container terminals TC4 and TC3 in Tanger Med 2 in 2019 and 2021, respectively.

In 2021, Tangier Med port alone processed over 50% of the total port tonnage of Morocco, handling 101 million tons of goods, up by 25% compared to 2020.

The outstanding performances achieved by Tanger Med in recent years consolidate its strategic role in becoming a leading hub in the Mediterranean and Africa.
Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman will visit Morocco within the frame of an international tour that will take her to Turkey, Spain, Algeria and Egypt.

Sherman starts this Friday her week-long trip with a visit to Istanbul and Ankara, says a press release issued by the U.S. State Department.

The Deputy Secretary is expected in Rabat and Casablanca, from March 8 to 9, where she will lead the U.S. delegation to the U.S.-Morocco Strategic Dialogue on Regional Political Issues.

She will have a working lunch with Foreign Minister Nasser Bourita and meet with other senior government officials.

The U.S. Deputy Secretary will also deliver keynote remarks at an International Womens Day event featuring entrepreneurs and businesswomen and will meet with Moroccan youth.

Mrs. Sherman who will come to Morocco from Spain will later travel to Algiers and Cairo.
A parallel government installed by Libyas parliament and seeking to oust the ruling executive in Tripoli was sworn in Thursday, plunging the country into an institutional crisis reminiscent of the darkest hours of the civil war.

The parliamentary-appointed prime minister, Fathi Bachagha, and part of his team were sworn in before MPs in Tobruk, in the east of the country.

Already plagued by divisions between competing institutions in the east and west, Libya has been left with two rival governments after parliament approved a new executive on Tuesday headed by Mr. Bachagha, a former interior minister.

He is challenging the existing cabinet in Tripoli led by Abdelhamid Dbeibah, who refuses to relinquish power until parliamentary elections are held, which he has announced for June.

Mr. Bachagha accused his rival of trying to obstruct the swearing-in ceremony by suspending air traffic from Tripoli to prevent members of the new government from travelling to Tobruk and by having some of them detained by a loyal armed group.

He said three designated ministers were missing after being detained by a pro-Dbeibah armed group. This is a cowardly act, he said.

A fourth cabinet member, the Minister of Economy and Trade, Jamal Salem Chaaban, announced his resignation shortly before the ceremony, denouncing a lack of transparency and respect for procedure during the vote of confidence.

Being part of this government that is bringing war and destruction to the capital is not an honor, he said in a video broadcast by local media.
LINCOLN  Both critics and supporters of Nebraskas election system panned a proposal Wednesday that would require voters to send identification documents with mail-in ballots.

Even those who testified in support of Legislative Bill 1181 called it just a start in dealing with concerns about the security and integrity of those ballots.

Its a Band-Aid, said Jennifer Hicks. This isnt going to solve the problems we have with our elections.

The bill and other election-related measures have been introduced despite repeated assurances from the states top election official that his office has found no evidence supporting allegations of fraud in the 2020 election.

LB 1181 was originally introduced by State Sen. Mike Groene of North Platte. Sen. John Lowe of Kearney picked up the measure after Groene resigned. Lowe said he took on the bill to keep discussion about election issues alive.

We need to find a way to work together to ease the fears of the citizens, he said.

Lowe said LB 1181 proposes an idea that could make voters feel more comfortable with mail-in ballots without creating significant barriers to using that option.

Under the bill, the envelopes used for mail-in ballots would be required to have a separate, sealable pouch on the outside. Voters would have to use the pouch to provide a copy of some identification document.

Identification options could include a drivers license or state identification card or a bank statement, paycheck, utility bill or other government document dated within 60 days that includes the same name and address listed on the voter registration rolls.

The options would be similar to the documentation required when a person first registers to vote. Nebraska does not require identification for in-person voting.

Doug Kagan, representing Nebraska Taxpayers for Freedom, supported the measure, saying there is a growing concern about fraud with mail-in ballots, also called absentee or early ballots. A handful of other states have passed laws increasing voter ID requirements for such ballots.

Others said they supported the bill but argued that the identification documents allowed under it would not be adequate to secure the ballots.

Lorenzo Ortega III, speaking for the Nebraska Voter Accuracy Project, said voters should be required to provide proof of United States citizenship.

He said a drivers license would not be enough to do that, since noncitizens can obtain licenses, and suggested a passport as an alternative. Asked about the cost of a passport, he said: Its a high cost to live in this country, Im sorry.

Tracy Overstreet, the Hall County election commissioner, opposed the bill for several reasons, including the potential cost of the envelopes required.

She said she had been unable to find envelopes with sealable pouches and her usual envelope supplier had questioned whether they would meet postal regulations. She said that getting copies could pose a barrier to some people who do not own copiers.

Scout Richters with ACLU of Nebraska said the proposal would make it harder for Nebraskans to vote without any documented evidence of the kind of fraud it is targeting.

Theres nothing more fundamental to our democracy than the right to vote, she said.

Some opposed the bill because they said it did not do enough. Shawn Smith with Cause of America argued that the best way to ensure election integrity would be to require in-person voting except for those in the military or with verified disabilities.

The measure was among three heard by the Government, Military and Veterans Affairs Committee Wednesday that seek to address some peoples lack of trust in elections.

The other two are LB 1123, which would prohibit the counting of any ballot until the polls close on Election Day, and LB 1121, which would require the Secretary of State to inspect all vote counting machines to ensure they could not be hacked.

Secretary of State Bob Evnen told the committee Wednesday that his office has investigated every concern that has been brought to them and found no evidence to confirm the allegations.
Nebraskans have always considered the Sandhills one of the states jewels.

Now a study by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln has underscored how significant that jewel is.

Work by UNL researchers Dirac Twidwell and Rheinhardt Scholtz has concluded that the Sandhills are Earths largest remaining intact, temperate grassland.

Thats probably a surprise to some because the Sandhills arent well-known outside the state, Twidwell said.

While the Sandhills are recognized here, they havent gained the recognition internationally of other grasslands, he said.

The duos research found that the Sandhills are among seven large-scale grasslands of any type that remain mostly intact. Another is in the Wyoming Basin, two others in Asia and one each in Africa, South America and Australia.

Of these, the Sandhills are the only region that doesnt have an internationally focused conservation strategy, he said. That may be because the region lies wholly within one state and one country and doesnt straddle borders requiring international cooperation.

The Sandhills, located in northwest and north-central Nebraska, cover about a quarter of the state, and more than 90% of the land is privately owned.

One of the groups already working to protect the area is the rancher-led nonprofit Sandhills Task Force. The organizations goal is to promote profitable ranching hand-in-hand with conservation, said Shelly Kelly, executive director.

Kelly said the key to success in the Sandhills is collaboration between ranchers and conservation organizations.

Because we are ranchers, we have trust and credibility, she said. Weve built partnerships.

Her group and the UNL researchers identified the same major threat to the Sandhills: invasive eastern red cedar trees.

Its our number one threat, Kelly said.

The seedy evergreens, often planted as windbreaks, spread rapidly. Eradicating them takes a major, year-after-year effort, Kelly said.

The UNL research distinguishes between types of grassland-like regions based on climate and vegetation.

Africas Serengeti, for example, is larger than the Sandhills, but its a savannah, not a grassland, Twidwell said. The Serengeti naturally supports trees, but trees are not a natural part of the Sandhills landscape.

Likewise, there are shrubby desert grasslands that are more intact than the Sandhills, but they arent found in a temperate climate, Twidwell said.
A 12-year-old girl who was shot in the head in West Englewood while returning from a birthday dinner with her family has died, officials confirmed Friday.

Nyzireya Moore was shot about 7:45 p.m. Tuesday and pronounced dead at 11:32 a.m. Friday, according to the Cook County medical examiners office and Chicago police.

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Nyzireya was in critical condition at Comer Childrens Hospital with severe brain injuries from the shooting that happened as she sat in the passengers seat of a car driven by a family member in the 2300 block of West 72nd Street, when three men began firing from the street at a different car, according to a police report.

The targeted car sped northbound as the men apparently continued shooting, striking the passing family, the report stated.

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rsobol@chicagotribune.com
A group of about 20 people including several City Council members participated in the road plan hearing on Thursday evening.

The public session led by City Engineer Brent Burklund laid out the plans as described in the Telegraphs story and graphic in Thursdays publication.

Overall, the one-year plan consists of a balance between maintenance and finishing up projects, Burklund said.

The participants asked questions about various projects with the most comments about Eugene Avenue and Dixie Avenue.

Burklund said both of those streets are in the 6-year plan, but essentially are further out because of the complicated nature of right-of-way and street widths.

Right now (Eugene) is just on the long-term plan, Burklund said. Theres a lot of details that have to be addressed because there are similar issues with the right-of-way.

He said Eugene, as far as cost, is not on the design portion at this time.

We dont even have dollars assigned to it yet, Burklund said. Theres a lot more steps before well need to get to before that happens.

In the future, Eugene will need to be addressed and Burklund said there will be a lot more meetings to try to figure that out.

That will be a complicated corridor to deal with, Burklund said.

The question of when the Dixie Avenue project would be started came from the audience.

It is in the 2 to 6 year range, Burklund said. Its not going to be in the next 12 months, at this point anyway.

Another audience member said the Dixie project keeps getting pushed out further.

The thing with the (2- to) 6-(year plan) is it could be two to infinity, maybe would be the better way of describing it, Burklund said. For example is State Farm Road (projects), those are probably a long ways out but we just wanted to keep those on the radar.

Eric Seacrest attended the meeting representing the North Platte Chamber and emphasized one concern is Eugene because it is not safe for many trucks and something needs to be done in a fair way.

Seacrest also complimented those in attendance.

Its wonderful to see so many people here, Seacrest said. Theres been times when this particular meeting wasnt very well attended and that shows a lot of interest in roads.

He also pointed out the number of council members who were in attendance as well.

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LEXINGTON  The first law enforcement officer on the scene in the June 2020 shooting on Interstate 80 took the stand on the first day of the second-degree murder case against Kathleen Jourdan Thursday.

Nebraska State Patrol trooper Carlos Trevino, a 24-year veteran, was returning to North Platte from Cozad when he received the report of a hysterical female and a possible weapon involved. After arriving on scene and calling out instructions on his vehicles PA system, Trevino said he saw a female exit the passenger side of the vehicle with red, bloody hands, and two children. Trevino also observed an unresponsive male in the drivers seat.

Trevinos testimony came after opening arguments in Jourdans case. The 33-year-old Omaha woman is charged with second-degree murder and use of a deadly weapon to commit a felony in the shooting death of her husband, Joshua Jourdan. She has claimed self-defense. She pleaded not guilty to the charges in June 2020.

Cozad Police Department Sergeant Garrett McArdle, who also testified Thursday, said Jourdan told him on scene that Joshua Jourdan was dead, and that she had shot him.

He raised a hand to me and I couldnt do this anymore, is what McArdle said Jourdan told him at the time.

In her opening remarks, Dawson County Attorney Elizabeth Waterman said the couple had an abusive and strained relationship, but also said Kathleen Jourdan admitted to officers about thinking about killing Joshua Jourdan at various times since 2013.

She claimed she thought about it as an intellectual curiosity, Waterman said. Later in Jourdans interview with law enforcement, she told officers she was relieved Joshua Jourdan was dead.

Waterman also noted a Facebook conversation Kathleen Jourdan had with a friend about how to commit the perfect murder,

It gives you a window into the thinking of the defendant, Waterman said.

Waterman asked the jurors to keep two words in mind throughout the trial, fear and rage. Waterman said this killing was not about fear.

Defense attorney Brian Davis countered those assertions in his opening remarks, saying the timing of the Facebook conversation was unfortunate but the evidence would show the comedy being attempted, by Kathleen Jourdan and her friend.

Kathleen Jourdan had recently accepted a new job in Scottsbluff and had traveled there with her two children. While returning home, her vehicle broke down in Dawson County, forcing her to call her husband to come get them.

After Joshua Jourdan had arrived in Dawson County, Davis said the abuse started almost immediately.

During what would be their final argument, Davis said Joshua suddenly hit the brakes and pulled the car over to the side of the road. He raised his right arm for what exact purpose, I dont know, Davis said.

Davis also outlined a history of abuse, including an incident in 2015 in Grenada where Joshua strangled Kathleen to the point she thought she would die and had to seek medical attention and a 2017 incident in Georgia when Joshua had punched Kathleen in the face with a closed fist. Joshua Jourdan had been convicted of domestic assault in the second incident, Davis said.

Davis said Kathleen had filed for divorce in the past and gotten temporary custody of their children, a death wasnt necessary.

Davis concluded by saying, this was not rage, this was fear and this was a reaction. He said the jury will get to hear from Kathleen herself, as she testifies in her own defense, you will hear her story from her mouth.
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A man looks at TV sets broadcasting Russian president Vladimir Putins annual press conference in Moscow in 2006. Photo: AFP via Getty Images

Just two days after President Biden declared the federal government would be going after Russian oligarchs to seize your yachts, your luxury apartments, your private jets, the Manhattan U.S. Attorneys office filed its first-ever criminal indictment for violating the Ukraine sanctions  and its against an American former Fox News employee. Filed on Thursday in Manhattan federal court, the indictment accuses Jack Hanick of working with Konstantin Malofeyev, a blacklisted Russian banker who allegedly helped finance paramilitary groups in eastern Ukraine, to launch right-wing media networks in Russia, Greece, and Bulgaria.

Hanick, 71, appears to have been a close ally of former Fox News chief Roger Ailes, according to his LinkedIn page. Prior to Ailess launching of the right-wing-news channel in 1996, Hanick directed Straight Forward With Roger Ailes at CNBC during the future Fox bosss brief stint at the business-news network. He later was among the first employees at Fox. According to the indictment, Hanick met Malofeyev at a business conference in Russia and later moved there in 2013 to help Malofeyev create a network, called Tsargrad TV, on the premise that they could create a Russian version of Rupert Murdochs channel. In many ways Tsargrad is similar to what Fox News has done. We started from the idea that there are many people who adhere to traditional values and they absolutely need a voice, Malofeyev told the Financial Times in 2015.

Malofeyev is suspected of helping to fund private groups of Russian soldiers to try in 2014 to take the Donetsk region of Ukraine  one of the areas Russian president Vladimir Putin is now using as a pretext to invade the country. The oligarch has denied funding any paramilitary groups, but he has been sanctioned by the U.S. and Europe since 2014.

According to the indictment, prosecutors got information about the former Fox directors involvement in the Russian station from an unpublished memoir that was discovered by investigators through a judiciously authorized search of Hanicks email account. Other emails show he was at one point the chairman of the television station and principally in charge of operations. According to Right Wing Watch, Hanick was one of the executives who told Russian investors that God called on this country to stop the spread of gay rights and embrace traditional values.

Hanick was arrested on February 3 in London and is awaiting extradition. He faces as many as 25 years in federal prison for violating the sanctions and making false statements to federal agents. The case appears to have been in the works for some time  court filings show that the indictment was filed under seal in November  and predates Putins war in Ukraine.

Correction: An earlier version of this story erroneously cited a 2018 story that said he had worked on Sean Hannitys show. The post was corrected to remove that reference after the article was changed to reflect his position.
Photo: Andrei Gorshkov/AP/Shutterstock

The worst is yet to come.

That was French president Emmanuel Macrons takeaway from his 90-minute call with Vladimir Putin Thursday.

There was nothing in what President Putin told us that should reassure us. He showed great determination to continue the operation, a senior aide to Macron told the Agence France-Presse, noting that the Russian leader was adamant about his intention to seize control of the whole of Ukraine.

The Russian government quickly confirmed this assessment. In an official statement, the Kremlin said that its special operation in Ukraine will not end until the full demilitarization of the country is achieved, so that a threat to the Russian Federation will never emanate from its territory.

Putin then gave a public address to his national-security council. The Russian president mendaciously blamed his invasions rising civilian death toll on Ukrainian neo-Nazis (who had supposedly been using innocents as human shields), before declaring that Russias military campaign was nevertheless going according to plan and in full compliance with the timetable. All tasks set during the special operation in Ukraine are being accomplished successfully.

This was a lie. The first week of Russias invasion has badly disappointed the Kremlins expectations. And the fact that Putin is refusing to moderate his objectives, even after several fundamental premises of his war plan have proven false, invites questions about the Russian leaders rationality, if not about his sanity.

Research conducted by Russian intelligence officials in the run-up to the invasion, and subsequently leaked to British analysts, indicated that Ukrainians were dissatisfied with their leadership and gloomy about their nations future prospects. The picture of the Ukrainian government that emerges from these documents  of an unpopular, hollow state with more support from Western capitals than its own people  is of a piece with Putins apparent ideological convictions about Ukraine, which he routinely describes as a fictional nation wrested from its true motherland and dominated by foreign (if not Nazi) forces. It is not hard to imagine how the combination of Putins priors and the FSBs research might have led the autocrat to wildly underestimate the degree of resistance that his invading army would encounter.

That Putin misjudged the strength of Ukrainian nationalism is reflected in both his wars opening tactics and its ultimate strategic objectives. Instead of descending on Ukraines major cities with a combination of heavy arms, such as infantry supported by tanks and airpower, Russia initially sent small, isolated groups of paratroopers. This is a sound approach if one expects to be greeted as a liberator and wishes to avoid sparking a future insurgency through needless civilian casualties. But it was utterly inadequate to the challenge that the Ukrainian military actually presented. Meanwhile, Russia neglected to locate and destroy enemy radar and air-defense infrastructure at the onset of hostilities, enabling Ukraine to contest Russias air superiority and inflict large and unsustainable losses on Putins air fleet.

If Putin underestimated the Ukrainians, he likely overestimated his own forces. Wars have generally worked out well for the Russian president. Victory in the Second Chechen War helped him to establish a reputation for strength among the Russian public. His war in Georgia beat back that nations ambitions for NATO membership. He seized Crimea with little hardship in 2014 and successfully propped up Bashar al-Assads dictatorship amid the Syrian civil war.

Yet Putins present mission demands far more of the Russian military than the limited operations it has pulled off in recent years. Russia was able to take Crimea on the strength of special-operations forces and separatist militias. A large-scale ground invasion aimed at imposing regime change on a nation of 44 million people is a categorically different task. And a great many of Russias nonprofessional, conscripted soldiers do not appear up to it. Interviews with Russian prisoners of war indicate that these conscripts were completely unprepared for the operation they now find themselves in. In some instances, Russian soldiers have surrendered en masse or sabotaged their vehicles to avoid combat. The Russian operation has also been plagued by logistical failures. The armys allegedly poor tire management, combined with the onset of Ukraines spring thaw and its attendant mud, has bound Russias military convoys to roads and highways, funneling its forces into choke points where they lie vulnerable to Ukrainian drones and hunter-killer squads.

Such errors are unlikely to cost Russia military victory in a nominal sense. The Russian forces still boast overwhelming manpower and equipment advantages over their Ukrainian counterparts. But as great powers have learned so frequently in recent history, military victory is the easy part of a regime-change war. Ukraines resistance over the past week has not been sufficient to beat back the Russian invaders. But it has demonstrated what most analysts had assumed even before Putins invasion  that Russia cannot impose a puppet government on the Ukrainian people without embroiling itself in a ruinous occupation.

Beyond underestimating the Ukrainians will to fight, Putin has patently misjudged the Wests capacity to punish his aggression. The U.S. and E.U.s sanctions amount to financial war on the Russian state, one that has wiped out ordinary Russians savings overnight. Not only has the Wests response devastated Russia economically, it has set back the very strategic objectives that Putins invasion was meant to advance. The NATO alliance has been reinvigorated, with Finland and Sweden both now contemplating applications for admission. Germany has committed $100 billion to its own rearmament. And nations throughout Europe are recalibrating their energy strategies so as to reduce their dependence on Russian fossil-fuel resources.

To look at these results and conclude that it would be wise and achievable to conquer every inch of Ukrainian territory, dissolve the nations military, and impose a puppet government is madness. There is no way forward that will leave Putins regime better off than it was before it blundered into war. The best way to cut his losses would be to seek some sort of negotiated settlement, perhaps a deal in which Russia annexes Ukraines separatist territories and then withdraws from the rest of the country, in exchange for the Zelenskyy governments forswearing NATO and E.U. membership and the Wests lifting all sanctions.

Instead, Putin has opted to press his bad luck. And there is some reason to think that this intransigence is a by-product of literal mental illness.

American commentators and politicians have a lamentable habit of portraying all of their empires adversaries as lunatics who can be neither reasoned with nor understood. And Putin has no small number of rational (if not always legitimate) grievances against the West. But just because it is convenient for Western hawks to declare Putin a madman does not mean that he isnt one. It is possible for a socially isolated 69-year-old autocrat to lose his mind.

Putins mental health has been a topic of speculation for months now. Throughout the pandemic, Putin has held most meetings via teleconference, tightly delimited his in-person contacts, and addressed subordinates from the opposite end of a 20-foot table.

The best Putin massive table memes spotted on Twitter, a short thread: https://t.co/KrfcIFuXdt  Shaun Walker (@shaunwalker7) February 15, 2022

Western officials who interacted with Putin before and after COVIDs onset have almost invariably reported a change in his demeanor. After conducting five hours of talks with the Russian leader last month, Macron suggested that Putin was not the same man he had met at Elysee palace in December 2019.

Bernard Guetta, a member of the European Parliament who accompanied Macron in Moscow, said on French radio afterward, I think this man is losing his sense of reality, to say it politely.

All our Russia-watchers, watching his press conferences, think that hes descending even more into a despotic mindset, a European diplomat told the Guardian in late February.

Around the same time, Florida Senator Marco Rubio suggested that he has privileged access to information establishing that something is off with Putin.

I wish I could share more,but for now I can say its pretty obvious to many that something is off with #Putin



He has always been a killer,but his problem now is different & significant



It would be a mistake to assume this Putin would react the same way he would have 5 years ago  Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) February 26, 2022

Ive watched and listened to Putin for over thirty years, former U.S. ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul recently tweeted. He has changed. He sounds completely disconnected from reality.

Long-distance psychiatry is not the proudest field of medicine. From a geopolitical perspective, though, whether Putin is suffering from some clinical ailment is less important than whether his actions have come untethered from any rational calculation of his own best interest. Putins remarks Thursday suggest that the Russian leader is a madman in the way that counts.
January 6 Committee Chair Bennie Thompson listens as Representative Liz Cheney questions D.C. Metropolitan Police Department Officer Michael Fanone on July 27, 2021. Photo: Bill OLeary-Pool/Getty Images

In a development that will please anyone hoping to see Donald Trump finally brought to justice, the U.S. House Select Committee on January 6 submitted a court filing to a federal judge in California alleging that the 45th president and some of his allies may have engaged in a criminal conspiracy to defraud the federal government and obstruct Congress by seeking to prevent confirmation of Joe Bidens designation as president-elect on January 6, 2021.

But its far, far too early to envision Trump being led from a courtroom in leg-irons. The filing only stipulates potential criminal charges; the January 6 committee has no power to bring them, and at most could refer evidence to the Department of Justice, which would make its own decisions about prosecuting  or, more likely, not prosecuting  the scofflaw ex-president and his cronies.

The purpose of the court filing is to enforce a subpoena against Trumps lawyer John Eastman, author of the infamous Eastman memo, the document aimed at convincing Vice-President Mike Pence that he could throw out electoral votes won by Joe Biden. The committee wants emails Eastman sent to various people, including members of Congress, during the run-up to the violence-marred joint session of Congress on January 6. Eastman is trying to use attorney-client privilege to hide documents from the committee, but communications in the pursuit of fraud or criminal acts are a recognized exception to that privilege. So the fraught subject of where the investigation might ultimately lead has officially come up, with the committee asking the California judge to privately review some of the evidence it has already compiled.

A public statement by the committee spelled out its tentative conclusion, as the Washington Post reports:

The facts weve gathered strongly suggest that Dr. Eastmans emails may show that he helped Donald Trump advance a corrupt scheme to obstruct the counting of electoral college ballots and a conspiracy to impede the transfer of power, the committees chairman, Rep. Bennie G. Thompson (D-Miss.), and vice chair, Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), said in a statement.

The court filing goes further:

As the courts were overwhelmingly ruling against President Trumps claims of election misconduct, he and his associates began to plan extra-judicial efforts to overturn the results of the election and prevent the President-elect from assuming office, the brief said. At the heart of these efforts was an aggressive public misinformation campaign to persuade millions of Americans that the election had in fact been stolen. The President and his associates persisted in making stolen election claims even after the Presidents own appointees at the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security, along with his own campaign staff, had informed the President that his claims were wrong.

The direction of the committees investigation makes it very clear that its initial focus on the Capitol Riot has now given way to a broad-based inquiry into Team Trumps conduct long before January 6. It encompasses a plot that began with Trumps systematic efforts to sow doubts about the legitimacy of voting by mail and his constant claims that he could only lose the election and his presidency as the victim of fraud. But the plot definitely thickened as the process leading to Joe Bidens inauguration unfolded, and the violence of the Capitol Riot itself was mostly a horrific punctation mark on a failed election coup.

Now that the specter of potential criminal charges has been raised  even if they never materialize  we can expect the long-simmering Republican rage at the very existence of the January 6 committee to explode into virulent claims of a vengeful witch hunt by Democrats. But lets remember that the congressional Republicans who opposed Trumps second impeachment argued he was a private citizen who, if necessary, could be held accountable by prosecutors and the courts if criminal behavior was proved. So they arent on very solid ground in demonizing proceedings to determine fully what Team Trump did and how it very nearly obstructed an orderly postelection transfer of power. While it remains unlikely that the ex-president and his associates in the Trump-Pence campaign, the outgoing administration, and Congress will face criminal sanctions, it is becoming harder with each new revelation to pretend the events of January 6 were some sort of isolated moment of madness for whom no one is really accountable. If nothing else, voters may have to hold Trump accountable by denying what is likely to be his renewed bid for power in 2024.
2 p.m.: Drive through the mountains, head to your chalet

We drove to Gstaad from Bern after having flown into Zurich. (If we hadnt stopped in Bern, we would have flown into Geneva and driven from there.) The drive was magnificent. Youre on this big highway, and after about 30 minutes it becomes a one-way road winding through the mountains, so make sure you arrive during the daylight and rent a car with four-wheel drive. The snow turns this crazy white-blue, and the sun starts to disappear except for whats peeking out from the tops of the mountains. Theres no traffic, so I kept asking my boyfriend if he was sure we were doing the right thing. And you keep passing all these tiny towns, and I kept saying: Is this Gstaad? Is this Gstaad? But then you see a Hauser & Wirth gallery, and it gets very branded very fast. And then you know youre in Gstaad.

Theres a train from both the Zurich and Geneva airports, and you can book a rail ticket in advance or just get it at the station, but its definitely nice to have a car to get around. If youre staying at one of the central hotels in Gstaad like the Alpina (from $1,420) or the Park (from $700)  the two luxury hotels in the main part of Gstaad; theyre definitely major gathering places  you can probably make it work without. I have friends who have visited Gstaad in the past, and theyve rented chalets, which can create more of an immersive experience. Airbnb isnt big in the area, but you can find rentals that range from this websites modestly priced options, to FeWo-direkt for mid-priced places, to HomeToGo for luxury.

Chalet Wittebarg From $494 Note: This chalet requires a minimum stay of three nights, so the price shown here is for a three-night stay. From $494 at e-domizil Buy

6 p.m.: Settle in with a traditional raclette dinner

The night we got in we spent some time heating up the house by lighting a fire in the kitchen stove, and then we made a beautiful, simple raclette dinner for five. Raclette, potatoes, mushrooms, and this delicious bread  bread in Switzerland is like nothing Ive ever had before; its just fluffy, soft, and stays fresh for like a week! It was at this meal that I discovered potato baskets, a simple creation to keep boiled potatoes warm until youre ready to smother melted cheese over them. The basket is constructed of a flat wool fabric to keep heat in, and the design printed on the wool was charming and accented with snowflakes. Its the sweetest contraption.
This week gas prices have jumped up another 18 cents per gallon as a result of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Clay Ingram, marketing and public relations director for the American Automobile Association of Alabama, said the Russian situation created a lot of anxiety in the investment world as far as crude oil, resulting in gas prices continuing to increase every day.

The Alabama state average for regular unleaded gasoline is $3.47 a gallon, up 7 cents since Wednesday. According to AAA, the state average was $3.29 a week ago and $2.49 a year ago.

Ingram said that the price for a barrel of crude oil is the highest hes seen in a long time.

Thats going to mean high prices at the pump for us, he said. How high? We dont know yet. It just depends on how long this situation lasts and what countries impose sanctions against Russia and what those sanctions include. Im sorry to say its probably going to get worse before it gets better.

Ingram said about 10% of gas imported to the United States comes from Russia, but he said we can easily make that up from other sources.

The main impact the U.S. will see is an increase in gas prices, Ingram said, adding that were not in danger of having gas shortages or outages.

The state of Alabama is one of five states with the lowest prices in the country, currently 26 cents below the national average of $3.73.

With spring break here and graduation season on the horizon, Robyn Bridges, vice president of Auburn-Opelika Tourism, said shes staying optimistic and is not expecting a negative impact.

Its going to depend on how high the prices go, Bridges said. People will be willing to absorb a certain amount and thats just going to be based on the individual and the family.

Bridges said AO Tourism is preparing for the spring and summer travel season and believes people are eager to travel since things seem to be going back to normal after the pandemic.

We are lucky in that people will still travel, she said. Hopefully prices dont keep climbing.

Ingram said there was an increase in gas prices during late January and most of February primarily due to the anticipation of a busy travel season. Last month the state average was $3.12.

We seem to be getting over the hump with the COVID situation and people are just more comfortable getting out and about, he said.

There are a lot of things that affect gas prices, but Ingram said No. 1 is always supply and demand. The demand has been higher since the pandemic was in full swing.

There may be some supply issues around Europe because they get a lot of their gas and oil from Russia, he said. So their prices are going to go up and our prices are going up.
Chicago police investigate the scene where two police officers were shot at the Original Maxwell Street hot dog stand in the 3800 block of West Harrison Street on March 4, 2022. (Jose M. Osorio / Chicago Tribune)

One of two Chicago police officers who were shot early Friday while in line at a hot dog stand in Lawndale has been released from a hospital, the department said.

Meanwhile, a man was being held in the attack.

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The officers were taken to Mount Sinai Hospital in fair condition, but one of them was released Friday morning, and the other remained in the hospital, police Superintendent David Brown said at a news conference Friday.

Just before 3:30 a.m., an officer cried out 10-1! 10-1! into his radio, signaling an officer emergency.

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I got shot in the head! I got shot in the head! he said.

The officers were on a break at The Original Maxwell Street, a hot dog and hamburger stand in the 600 block of South Independence Boulevard, Brown said. A man standing in line in front of one of the officers reached into his pocket to pull out money, but a handgun fell out onto the ground, the superintendent said.

The man picked up the gun and without any warning shot at the officer standing near him, grazing the officers head, Brown said. He then shot three times into the drivers side of a police car in the parking lot, striking an officer in the leg, Brown said.

It was really a bang-bang moment, Brown said. There was no time for the officers to draw their own weapons or turn on body-worn cameras, he said.

A nearby undercover officer heard the shots and pursued the man, Brown said. He and other responding officers caught up with the man a few blocks away and placed him in custody, the superintendent said.

A weapon, which Brown said was tossed by the man, was recovered, police said.

Police are investigating, and there is video of the shooting, Brown said. No charges had been filed before the Friday morning news conference.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot called the shooting a brazen and callous attack.

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The officers were the third and fourth to be shot at or shot this year, Lightfoot said.

The shooting underscores that there are way too many people carrying illegal firearms and proves why diligent law enforcement action against illegal firearm possession is essential, Lightfoot said. Brown did not say whether the gun recovered by police was illegal.

Cook County States Attorney Kim Foxx said the shooting was a stark reminder of the dangers (police officers) run into on behalf of our community.

Any act of senseless violence cannot be the norm in our city, Brown said.
Russias war in Ukraine is intensifying. The United States and most of the other western powers have condemned Russia for invading Ukraine, joining together to implement massive sanctions that are only beginning to crush the Russian economy.

Many of us are watching this horrifying war from afar and wondering how we can help ordinary Ukrainian people whose homes, cities and lives are being destroyed before our eyes.

In times of humanitarian crises like this, acts of compassion and generosity can make a huge difference. There are dozens of organizations working directly in Ukraine, or active in nations that border on Ukraine, to provide aid to Ukrainian refugees.

If youre looking to support people affected by the war in Ukraine, consider donating money directly to the following organizations.

How to Donate to Organizations in Ukraine

The Ukrainian Red Cross

The Red Cross is often on the frontlines of war serving to help those affected by armed conflict. The Ukrainian Red Cross is currently assisting people inside the country by aiding evacuations and providing shelter, food and basic necessities.

World Central Kitchen

World Central Kitchen (WCK), established in 2010, is an organization that deploys chefs directly to disaster areas to provide hot meals to those in need. WCK is currently working in Ukraine and along its borders in neighboring countries.

GlobalGiving Ukraine Crisis Relief Fund

GlobalGiving is raising funds to support locally-led organizations throughout Ukraine. Any donations to the fund will provide essentials for refugees, health, psychological and support and access to education and economic assistance.

Vostok SOS

Vostok SOS is a Ukraine-based non-governmental organization (NGO) dedicated to assisting areas of conflict within Ukraine. The organization is currently accepting donations to help aid local people, evacuate the vulnerable and provide trauma support after shelling.

Voices of Children

Created in 2015, the Voices of Children Foundation has been providing psychological support to children affected by war in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Ukraine through art therapy, video storytelling, mobile psychologists and more. Now, the organization is working to support children across the country with emergency psychological assistance and assisting in the evacuation process.

Media Support

Donating directly toward the media in Ukraine can help fight against Russian misinformation and keep Ukrainians informed of the latest developments. A GoFundMe has been launched by various organizations to help keep Ukraines media outlets running during the war.

How to Support Ukrainian Refugees

The United Nations refugee agency reported on Tuesday that 660,000 Ukrainians have fled the country due to the war. Many have fled to neighboring countries including Poland, Hungary, Moldova and Romania.

Many refugees will be in dire need of basic supplies, food and resources as theyre now forced to rebuild their lives. You can donate to the following organizations to help them do this.

The International Rescue Committee

The International Rescue Committee is a longstanding organization that provides resources to those fleeing countries in crisis, including providing cash assistance, medical treatment and more. The organization is currently on the ground in both Poland and Ukraine to provide support to those who have had to flee their homes.

The Polish Red Cross

As of Feb. 28, most of the Ukrainian refugees have crossed into the countrys eastern neighbor, Poland. The Polish Red Cross has provided humanitarian reception points at Ukrainian-Polish borders to assist those entering with humanitarian aid and medical support.

Donate to the Polish Red Cross. (Note: the website is in Polish, but most browsers have an option to translate pages into English. Donations will be made in local Polish currency, zloty, and will be converted according to your cards current exchange rate. See here for bank transfer donations.)

Malteser International

Malteser International is the humanitarian relief agency of the Sovereign Order of Malta and is currently involved in relief efforts for Ukraine. The organization is providing food, shelter, emergency medical care and more both within Ukraine and neighboring countries. You can donate specifically to its efforts in Ukraine on the donation page.

***
Columnist

Beth Dolinar has been writing her column about life, both hers and the rest of ours, for over 20 years. When not on the page, she produces Emmy-winning documentaries, teaches writing to university students, and enjoys her two growing children.


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BREAKING: Ukraine says it has reached a tentative agreement with Russia to organize safe corridors for civilians to evacuate and for humanitarian supplies to be delivered. Under the agreement, cease-fires would be observed where safe corridors are created. https://t.co/8mZYHvXBRr  The Associated Press (@AP) March 3, 2022

As Russia's invasion of Ukraine continues, what you should know about how and why it started. https://t.co/eTXHfqwM55 pic.twitter.com/eywjdCaPcz  ABC News (@ABC) February 26, 2022

From Kyiv, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky says he must talk to Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin as "there are no other ways to stop this war." pic.twitter.com/76N7wqCndd  CBS News (@CBSNews) March 3, 2022

Heres a partial list of reporters on the ground and others who know what theyre talking about. https://t.co/jcixvK2O13  Daniel Dale (@ddale8) February 24, 2022

  Ukraine says it has reached a tentative agreement with Russia to organize safe corridors for civilians to evacuate and for humanitarian supplies to be delivered. Under the agreement, cease-fires would be observed where safe corridors are created. (Except that these same safe corridor agreements were not honored by Russia in Syria) The Biden administration is granting temporary legal status to Ukrainians living in the U.S. As many aswill be allowed to remain in the U.S. for. In addition, deportations are temporarily suspended for Ukraine, Russia, Belarus, Georgia, Hungary, Moldova, Poland, Romania and Slovakia.  Today in ThisIsVeryBig 1-China-based AIIB (Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank) freezes lending to Russia and Belarus over Ukraine war and 2-Russian oil giant Lukoil calls for halt to Ukraine warCatch up on previous posts Day 1 A quick explainer >  That super long Russian convoy approaching Kyiv is stalled by staunch Ukrainian resistance, mechanical breakdown, and congestion; it has made little discernible progress. In addition, 16,000 foreigners have volunteered to fight for Ukraine against invasion. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has asked former Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder to resign from his posts at Russian state-owned companies; Schroeder is a friend of Russian President Vladimir Putin Kherson mayor says Russian troops have "captured" city; Kharkiv continues to face heavy shelling 1M+ Ukrainians have left Ukraine to escape the invasion, per UN Refugee agency  YACHT COPS France seizes superyacht owned by Russian oligarch Igor Sechin, CEO of Russian oil giant Rosneft  Russian state-run media outlet RT shuts down American branch, lays off staff Paralympics banned Russian and Belarusian athletes, who had previously been allowed to compete under a neutral flag Reliable Twitter list < click tweet for details > Source World News Channels for international audience most of which will have a website. Beware non-allied nations. News stations for national audience most of which will have a website. Beware non-allied nations and Fox of course.**I know people in their own country will know their own news stations but if your own news may be biased based on your location, or you're in a different country than your own, then you can try the websites or stream for an alternate country for other reporting**Ukrainian Yuliia Sachuks organization, Fight for Right, promotes and protects the human rights of people living with disabilities in her community. In response to the crisis, Fight for Right is coordinating accessible shelter, evacuations, and emergency servicesensuring those living with disabilities arent left out of the humanitarian efforts.Andras Lederer and his team at the Hungarian Helsinki Committee have been helping provide free-of-charge legal assistance and representation to refugees in Hungary for decades. Right now, they are focused on helping asylum seekers from Ukraine find professional and free legal assistance.Following reports that a number of African and Indian students have faced discrimination and racism at the border of Poland while trying to escape to safety, Fundacja Ocalenie has stepped in to provide support.The Kyiv Independent, an English-language media outlet, was launched three months ago and was created on the principles of independent journalism and free-press. The goal of theircampaign is to keep the accurate news coming.This Polish organization is offering a free crisis hotline to assist people who are being affected by the Ukrainian crisis, including individuals who have fled the country, families worried about the well-being of their children, and those who have relatives in Ukraine and are feeling a sense of hopelessness.A Hungarian nonprofit that has experience helping severely traumatized asylum seekers, refugees, and their family members. They provide counseling and advanced psychiatric support.The Urgent Action Fund is helping support women, transgender, and nonbinary activists on the ground in and around Ukraine, by providing flexible funding, access to communication channels, and medical support.IOM is scaling up its humanitarian operations in Ukraine and neighboring countries, providing emergency services in health, shelter, winter supplies, and protection.This Polish NGO has been providing pro bono legal work for migrants and refugees since 2005. Due to the rapidly changing rules and individual cases of those fleeing Ukraine, the Association for Legal Intervention just launched a dedicated legal portal to provide prompt legal advice. Source plus Sources inside cuts
Kindergartners in teacher Vera Pema's class gather around a window filled with handmade sunflowers they constructed in support of Ukraine at Columbus Elementary School on March 3, 2022, in Chicago. The sunflower, Ukraine's national flower, is becoming a symbol of solidarity with the country. (Stacey Wescott / Chicago Tribune)

Seventh grader Sofiia Bilinska struggled with English when she moved from Ukraine to Chicago two years ago  then she joined the Ukrainian bilingual program at Columbus Elementary School.

I love that every student in the program, someone helps you. When I came to the school, I didnt know English at all. For two years, I learned how to speak and understand the language, she said.

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Sofiia is once again leaning on her classmates as Russia continues its devastating attack on Ukraine. At Columbus Elementary in the Ukrainian Village neighborhood, more than a quarter of the schools 234 students receive specialized instruction in both Ukrainian and English, a unique Chicago Public Schools program that began some two decades ago as more Ukrainian families settled in the area, Principal Wendy Garr-Oleksy said.

Kindergartners in teacher Vera Pema's class gather around a window filled with handmade sunflowers at Columbus Elementary School on March 3, 2022, in Chicago. The sunflower, Ukraine's national flower, is becoming a symbol of solidarity with the country. (Stacey Wescott / Chicago Tribune)

Students say the school has been a source of emotional support during the Ukraine conflict. Before her classmates gathered Thursday to rally for her war-torn country, eighth grader Iryna Lopushanskas eyes welled with tears as she tried to process the chaos.

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This week and last week was very hard for me because Im really worried about my family and friends that are in Ukraine because I understand that they are unsafe, Iryna said.

Im trying to contact them every single day. Its really hard for me to hear the news from them, like, they sit in the basement, and they hear sirens almost all day long.

Iryna said her English improved through Columbus bilingual program when she moved here five years ago from Buchach in western Ukraine. Chicago is said to have the second-largest Ukrainian population in the U.S., behind New York City.

Garr-Oleksy said when she began as principal at Columbus a decade ago, there were about 140 students in the program, which was once led by two teachers and a parent who worked part time for the school. Bilingual teacher Tetiana Fernandez and teachers assistant Romana Labazevych now present the curriculum, which the school devised on its own for kindergarten through eighth grade.

On Thursday in Room 203, a group of five students wrote on individual, erasable white boards as Fernandez asked them to name verbs that describe volcanic action. Erupt. Explode. Later, they crafted sentences about bacteria, taking care to note that bacteria is the plural of bacterium.

Students at Columbus Elementary School participate in a Ukrainian bilingual class on March 3, 2022, in Chicago. Many of the children attending the school have ties to Ukraine. (Stacey Wescott / Chicago Tribune)

Some Columbus students say they have had trouble concentrating on schoolwork since Russia launched a full-scale assault on Ukraine on Feb. 24.

The first day that the invasion occurred, I called the crisis management department of CPS saying, Hey, weve never really gone through a country being invaded before, so can you please help us? Garr-Oleksy said.

We followed their strategies, which was, we have a social worker here  and she was there that day  and my school counselor. And just to ask the teachers, if you see or hear any student in distress, please send them to the counselor or to the social worker. There have been a few students who consistently are needing that emotional support.

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Eighth grader Oleh Kurylo said he feels very sad and distressed about the conflict because he has family members fighting on the front lines. He said hes grateful for encouragement from his classmates. Its hard to miss the outpouring of love at Columbus, from the homemade paper sunflowers (Ukraines national flower) around the kindergarten classroom, to the blue and yellow ribbons tied to the fence surrounding the school, representing Ukraines flag.

Damian Kudim, 7, right, and other students at Columbus Elementary School participate in a school rally in support of Ukraine on March 3, 2022, in Chicago. (Stacey Wescott / Chicago Tribune)

Garr-Oleksy said leaders from other CPS schools have offered to send letters of encouragement from their students. She said she has also discussed support strategies with Everett McKinley Dirksen Elementary, a CPS school near OHare International Airport that also has a number of students of Ukrainian descent.

Refugees are top of mind for Garr-Oleksy. She said Columbus could accept some students, and emphasized that she wants people who might be coming to Chicago (to) know that we are here and available to them. She said if the conflict stretches into the summer, her school will create a plan of support, as many of her students spend summers in Ukraine with their extended family members.

Sixth grader Volodymyr Yatskanych, who traveled to Ukraine last summer to visit relatives, said hes been really worried and upset because its really unnecessary to start a war over some land that belongs to someone else.

He hopes Chicagoans will join pro-Ukraine rallies in case the president of Russia comes by and sees it live (on TV), he can change his mind.

Sixth grader Christina Gumenyak said shes been having difficulty sleeping, but she has drawn strength from Columbus staff and students.

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Christina Gumenyak, 12, is a sixth grader at Columbus Elementary School in Chicago. (Stacey Wescott / Chicago Tribune)

A lot of my friends and classmates, they have been asking me: How is my family? How am I doing? They hope for the best. So do I. I have faith that this will all come to a good end, she said.

tswartz@tribpub.com
omg wtffff

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same!! like wtf???!?

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????



Paying his victim to avoid serving time??? 4,000 pounds? Thats literally nothing to a dude like him!



Crime is legal for the rich. Spain explain yourself



Edited at 2022-03-04 04:31 am (UTC)

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I'm not Spanish but 12 months prison sounds like a lot for a relatively minor injury without lasting consequences, so I was guessing they slapped him with the max sentence realising he'd probably pay rather than contest.

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In Spain, sentences that are less than 2 years are automatically suspended (you don't go to jail for them unless you commit another offense), so I think whoever wrote the article doesn't understand how the law works here.



He didn't pay to avoid jail. He received a suspended jail sentence and a fine.

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Yes I keep seeing that but someone from Spain explained it was like a fine and suspended sentence with probation. It's not different in the US really, though the trials don't happen that quickly. :) Jared Padalecki did almost the exact same thing in 2019(drunken brawl with 2 employees of his own bar, including a bleeding wound near the eye, flashing a wad of cash at the cops arresting him), and got a slap on the wrist too because it was a "first offense". Don't even know if he was ever fined to be honest, the court date kept getting postponed.

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OP was the one who added the "paying his victim" part. It's not "paying the victim," it's paying a fine, like the poster above explained.

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These payouts should be proportional to income lol maybe theyd start thinking twice

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looks like he's a real homelander douche IRL

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lord that quote, the hubris and arrogance of a white man is truly something.



i wish he would just go to jail and suffer, rather than just paying the guy off. set a fucking example with this d-list replaceable nobody

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Ah yes, only white men threaten to kill other men when drunk.

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Right? Love a man shouting "you dont know who I am and what youve done"...Like, NOBODY knows who you are, dude. I'm on celebrity gossip sites all day, and I've never heard of you.

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Literally, I watch The Boys and the name sounded vaguely familiar but I was like who? And then the photo in the tweet is cropped so I couldnt see his face and I was like WHO??? 

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right, I ONLY know who he is because I watched a few episodes of The Boys. Dude isn't nearly as big of a name as he thinks he is, what ego.

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I was annoying that twitter cut his face out so I had to google him and I still have no idea who he is after googling.

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Only 4000 and a suspended sentence for hitting someone near the eye with a glass?! That is some bullshit

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i see playing homelander isn't much of a stretch for this guy. next he'll be caught breastfeeding

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wtf, so he didn't have to try that hard to play homelander then?

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Bet he gets fired from everything right away bc cancel culture truly exists!!!!

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Ohhh so hes not unlikeable as Homelander bc hes good at acting; its just his actual personality coming through. Cool cool cool

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I've seen a couple interviews with the cast where he seems kind of... off in a way that made me a bit uneasy but I assumed that was influenced by my hatred of his character on The Boys.

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Someone had pointed out this video where the cast are asked "Who is most like their character" and they all instantly point at him. 

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What an asshole. He always gave me bad vibes.

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What a fucking douche bag.

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"During his trial, he was handed a 12 months sentence but was told he could avoid serving time by paying his victim within the next 72 hours and avoiding committing another crime in two years."



Lol something about paying out in order to avoid 1 year sentence doesn't equally balanced in the trade-offs?

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In Spain any sentence under 2yr is automatically suspended. This was suspended and he was fined. The deadline was probably so small because he could afford it and they don't want him crowding the jails and making a big thing. It is p common for fines in lieu. If he fucks up again it will be different

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I feel like I've seen plenty of bar fights in my younger years having been a barfly for while and it's unfortunate but I feel like most go without any sort of legal repercussions period so I guess at least he's getting some kind of punishment.

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I've only seen one and those two drunk grown men looked so pathetic fighting. And you're right, they were just asked to leave. I feel for the people who work at bars and have to witness that often.

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As the ninth day of conflict in Ukraine begins, the situation on the ground continues to spiral out of control as Russian shells have reportedly landed at Europes largest nuclear reactor near the city of Zaporizhzhia.

According to a statement from Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) Spokesperson Andrii Tuz, the shelling from Russian heavy weapons has caused a fire. The plant, which has been disconnected from the grid in recent days for planned maintenance contains an unmentioned amount of nuclear fuel. According to the spokesman, the nuclear fuel was due to be unloaded in the central hall of the reactor, mentioning that if the hermetic membrane of the fuel is destroyed, the threat of release of radioactive material is real.

While the exact location of the fire at the plant isnt known at the moment, Ukrainian Foreign Affairs Minister Dmytro Kuleba has urged Russia to immediately stop shelling the power plant, allow firefighters to come in, and establish a security zone. Adding that if the plant blows up, the fallout could be ten times larger than Chernobyl.

 Dmytro Kuleba (@DmytroKuleba) March 4, 2022

At around 4 AM local time, Ukrinform reported that Oleksandr Starukh, head of the Zaporizhzhia Regional Military Administration said "Firefighters have been allowed to enter Zaporizhzhia NPP," by Russian invaders.

According to plant spokespeople, radiation levels surrounding the nuclear power plant have not changed during the last couple of hours.

By Tom Kool for Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
The green energy push in Europe has these days been overshadowed by events in Ukraine but it has not completely left the spotlight. On the contrary, EU officials have been adamant that the transition must continue despite the growing body of evidence that the continentor the union that takes up most of itcannot cope with renewables only. The International Energy Agency, never far from yet another bold energy transition declaration, first coordinated a planned release of 60 million barrels of crude to try and lower international oil prices, and then issued a 10-step plan to reduce the EU's energy dependence on Russia. The plan, the IEA noted, would not only make Europe less dependent on Russian oil and gas but would also help move along the EU's climate targets.

According to the agency's head, Fatih Birol, "The IEA's 10-Point Plan provides practical steps to cut Europe's reliance on Russian gas imports by over a third within a year while supporting the shift to clean energy in a secure and affordable way. Europe needs to rapidly reduce the dominant role of Russia in its energy markets and ramp up the alternatives as quickly as possible."

According to the French Minister for Ecological Transition, "More than ever, getting rid of Russian fossil fuels and of fossil fuels in general, is essential. What is at stake is both the need to accelerate the fight against climate change, and, as we can see now, the short-term energy security of the European continent. The 10-Point Plan proposed by the IEA today will enrich our thinking."

And according to the European Commissioner for Energy, Kadri Simson, "Reducing our dependence on Russian gas is a strategic imperative for the European Union. In recent years, we have already significantly diversified our supply, building LNG terminals and new interconnectors. But Russia's attack on Ukraine is a watershed moment. Next week, the Commission will propose a pathway for Europe to become independent from Russian gas as soon as possible."

Related: Saudi Arabia Significantly Raises Crude Prices To Key Market Asia

So, how does the plan look? For all the praise it received from European officials, the plan actually offers little in the way of practical anything. The first step of the plan states, "Do not sign any new gas supply contracts with Russia," and this is the most practical step in the text.

Not signing any new contracts for gas deliveries with Russia is simple and easy enough to do. It's the next steps that get tricky. One of them, for instance, suggests replacing Russian gas supplies with supplies from alternative sources. What these sources would be and whether they would be able to fill the gap left in Europe by the suspension of Russian gas remains an open question.

Of course, there are few candidates for the task, and these include Norway and Azerbaijan, if we're talking about pipeline gas, and the United States, Australia, and Qatar, if we're talking about LNG. None of these countries could fully replace Russian gas this winter even though they did try hard, especially the United States.

The plan of the IEA calls for a reduction of Russian dependence within a year, but the next winter season begins roughly seven months from now. That's far from enough for U.S. or Australian, or Qatari LNG producers to ramp up production enough to cover the EU's needs. The cost factor is also important but isn't mentioned in the plan: LNG costs more than pipeline gaswho's picking up this tab?

Related: Oil Ends Wildest Week Ever As Russian War In Ukraine Rattles Market



Another step proposed in the plan, hardly surprisingly, is the fast and significant buildup of wind and solar generation capacity. According to the IEA, this buildupfor which the agency doesn't mention specific numberswould reduce Europe's demand for Russian gas by 6 billion cubic meters within a year.

Europe has been building its wind and solar generation capacity for years now. Some countries have boasted that on certain days they had been getting all their energy from wind and solar. And that same Europe plunged into a massive energy crunch last autumn when there was not enough wind and solar power output began to decline as the earth moved around the sun as it does every year, bringing winter to the northern hemisphere.

Yet even if wind and solar did not have an intermittency problem, the bill for this new massive buildup of capacity would be a lot higher than it might have been just a couple of years ago. Thanks to ambitious government goals and no less ambitious metals and minerals demand projects resulting from these government goals, the prices of metals and mineralsand polysiliconare soaring. Sanctions against Russia are not helping at all, either, as the country is a major supplier of things like aluminum, steel, and nickel. All these are key for wind and solar installations.

So, what the IEA is proposing to the EU to make it less dependent on Russian gas is the simplest thing, that is, stopping the import of Russian gas. That's as far as the practical advice goes. The rest of the IEA's plan is more theoretical than practical and, more importantly, quite expensive. As one industry observer said recently on Twitter, the EU has painted itself in the corner and is contemplating using more paint.

By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
The number of traders with bullish positions on oil options is growing fast amid soaring international benchmarks.

Citing analysts and market data, Reuters reported that the influx of bullish options traders takes place as oil prices reach highs last seen a decade ago.

According to the data cited, between January 19 and February 9, the average volume of oil options traded in the United States on the CME exchange stood at 126,000 daily. Since then, the report noted, the average daily volume of oil options trades has increased to 178,000 contracts, with the first two days of March seeing daily volumes of over 240,000 contracts.

What this increased appetite for oil options signals is expectations that oil prices will continue higher, which is indeed the most likely development in the immediate term.

Russian oil export volumes have dropped dramatically in the aftermath of the Ukraine invasion and the series of sanctions that Western powers imposed on Moscow as a response. According to data from Energy Intelligence, Russian exports of crude have dropped by a thirdaround 2.5 million bpdsince the start of the sanctions.

This comes on top of an already tight oil market globally and an unwillingness on the part of OPEC to step up production ramp-ups to rein in prices. Russian oil exports, in the meantime, are likely to plunge even further as the West tightens the sanction noose, leaving traders and other buyers uncertain whether trading with Russia is worth the risk of violating some sanction or another.

Meanwhile, in the United States, there is growing pressure on President Biden to suspend Russian oil imports into the country. In fact, a bipartisan group of legislators has already introduced a bill proposing the suspension of these imports.

"I don't believe this country should be importing anything from Russia," Montana Senator Jon Tester said, as quoted by Reuters. "It will send even a bigger message that the United States is in this with Ukrainians for the long haul."

By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com

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Reports of a fire at Ukraine's largest nuclear power plant pushed commodity prices even higher despite statements from the Ukraine authorities that the fire had not affected essential equipment.

Quoting Ukrainian authorities, Reuters reported earlier today that a fire had broken out at a training building at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which is also the biggest in Europe. Video footage that Reuters said it had verified showed a building aflame.

Later in the day, the Russian section of the BBC reported, citing the authorities of nearby town Energodar, that the fire had been put out. The report also said fighting in the area had ceased.

The Ukrainian authorities have blamed Russian shelling on the fire, as well as intensive fighting in the area. Russian forces took control of the area, including the plant, earlier this week.

In response to fears about possible damage to the plant, the International Atomic Energy Agency issued a statement on Twitter saying "#Ukraine tells IAEA that fire at site of #Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant has not affected "essential" equipment, plant personnel taking mitigatory actions."

U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said, as quoted by Reuters, that there were no indications of elevated radiation around the Zaporizhzhia plant.

The White House, for its part, issued a statement saying, "President Biden joined President Zelenskiy in urging Russia to cease its military activities in the area and allow firefighters and emergency responders to access the site."

Following the news, commodity prices' rally intensified on renewed fears of supply disruptions, with wheat hitting the highest since 2008 and aluminum hitting a record of $3,850 per ton, Bloomberg reported.

Brent crude was trading at over $112 per barrel at the time of writing after it lost some of its gains this week on reports that the United States and Iran may be nearing a deal that could see U.S. sanctions on Iranian oil lifted. West Texas Intermediate was trading at over $109 per barrel, both benchmarks up by more than a percentage point from Thursday's close.

By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com

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Oil markets experienced one of the most volatile weeks in recent history, and there is no sign of things slowing down anytime soon. Russia's invasion of Ukraine is only intensifying, a nuclear deal with Iran is reportedly days away from being confirmed, and Libya has found itself once again on the brink of civil war.

Oilprice Alert. To read what Oilprice.com's geopolitical and trading experts have to say about Russia's invasion of Ukraine, make sure you sign up for Global Energy Alert and read this week's communique in the Members Section.

Friday, March 4th, 2022

Russias invasion of Ukraine has triggered arguably the wildest week in oil trading since Saddam Husseins attack on Kuwait back in 1990 - in fact, it was exactly 33 years ago that the oil markets were this backwardated. The risk of Russian barrels being barred from oil markets pushed prices to their highest level since 2008, with WTI touching $116 per barrel on Thursday and ICE Brent coming within touching distance of $120 per barrel. The war still rages on in Ukraine and, despite rumors reappearing about an imminent nuclear deal with Iran, there is still some work to do to finalize the nuclear covenant. As if this were not enough, renewed riots and force majeure events in Libya might trigger another civil war which would almost certainly push oil prices past the $120 per barrel next week.

OPEC+ Rubber-stamps April Production Increase. In what might be the briefest OPEC+ ministerial meeting in recent history, lasting a mere nine minutes, the oil group agreed to another 400,000 b/d monthly supply addition despite intensifying calls to produce more.

US Targets Russian Refining Sector. The Biden Administration announced another round of sanctions as it banned the export of specific refining technologies to Russia and Belarus, making it harder for both countries to modernize their downstream assets.

Germany Opposes Russia Energy Sanctions. In a refreshingly honest public utterance, Germanys economy minister Robert Habeck stated Berlin would not support a Russian oil and gas embargo, citing potential civil unrest should fossil fuel prices go higher, with electricity prices already up 130% on the year.

Russia Seizes Ukraines Largest Nuclear Plant. Russian military forces attacked and seized Europes largest nuclear power plant, the 5.7 GW capacity Zaporizhzhia, shelling a training facility outside of the plant area, in a move that triggered another UN Security Council meeting.

US Strategic Inventories Fall to Lowest in 20 Years. As Cushing stocks continue their downward decline, crude oil held in US strategic inventories fell once again by 2.4 million barrels, dropping to a total of 580 million barrels  the lowest level since August 2002.

Total Could Lose South African Discoveries. French oil major TotalEnergies (NYSE:TTE) could see its South African offshore licenses repealed, despite finding two major gas fields Brulpadda and Luiperd, if it fails to present a production plan to local authorities by September 2022.

Chinese Refiners Get Creative with Russian Purchases. Chinese refiners are increasingly paying for Russian crude by means of cash transfers paid upfront, mitigating the banking risks after most Western banks shied away from issuing L/Cs, with state-owned trader Unipec reportedly buying as much as eight ESPO cargoes in the Far East.

Russia Gauges Yuan Payment Opportunities. Russian logistics firm FESCO (MCX:FESH) is actively seeking to move its payments into Chinese yuan, implying that against such a sanctioning squeeze even non-sanctioned companies are trying to find workarounds with potential Asian market outlets.

Exxon Hikes Guyana Production Forecast. Having discovered some 10 billion barrels of recoverable oil in Guyanas offshore Stabroek block alone, US oil major ExxonMobil (NYSE:XOM) upped its production forecast for the South American country, saying it would produce 1.2 million b/d by 2027.

The Philippines to Revive Nuclear Power Capacity. Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte ordered that an inter-agency government panel look into the revival of the scrapped Bataan Nuclear Power Plant, completed in 1984 but subsequently shut two years later on the back of the Chernobyl disaster.

EU Carbon Prices Get Trashed as Speculators Flee. A wildly unpredictable macroeconomic outlook on the back of the Russia-Ukraine war, coupled with spiking gas, coal, and power prices have triggered a mass exodus of speculators from EU ETS trading, sending European carbon prices into a tailspin, with the Dec 22 currently assessed at 67 per metric tonne, down almost 30/mt week-on-week.

Spiking Crude Prices Reignite Options Buying. With WTI trading at a little below $115 per barrel, the average number of US options contracts traded on CME doubled average February volumes in the first week of March, hitting some 240,000 contracts per day.

Finland Seeks to Extend Nuclear Reactors Lifespan. Confronted with surging natural gas and power prices, the government of Finland might extend the license of the 1 GW Loviisa nuclear plant operated by Fortum (HEL:FORTUM) until the end of 2050, despite it being in operation for 40 years already.

Aluminium Set for Biggest Weekly Gain Ever. Amid concerns about blocked Russian supplies of industrial metals, aluminum prices on the LME rose to $3,815 per metric tonne, marking the biggest week-on-week increase in prices at 14%.

By Tom Kool for Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
Back in Russia, the Interior Ministry has warned people against protesting the war in Ukraine, noting that it has introduced extra measures to deal with such protests. An independent monitoring agency says that over 7,500 Russians have been arrested over the past week in anti-war protests.

There is one school of thought here that Putin has already lost the war. There is another school of thought that much worse is to come and that an unhinged leader has nothing more to lose as Moscow reels from sanctions and hundreds of Russian soldiers wont be coming home, ever (Moscow says theyve lost just under 500 forces; Kyiv says the Russians losses have hit 9,000). Its not the walk-in-the-park Putin seems to have thought it would be. Its not the crowning achievement of a would-be authoritarian. Russians are likely unimpressed, at best, and bitter, at worst, as the Russian economy tanks and the ruble loses 30% of its value.

Russian forces have now seized the strategic port city of Kherson, which would provide a land bridge to Crimea. With the invasion now entering its 9th day, Putins 60-mile-long convoy is still stalling outside of Kyiv in the north as of late Thursday, while another round of talks between Russia and Ukraine produced only Russian resolve to continue the onslaught despite the fact that Putin has now become an outcast and is being cut off from much of the world.

Russian forces have now seized the strategic port city of Kherson, which would provide a land bridge to Crimea. With the invasion now entering its 9th day, Putins 60-mile-long convoy is still stalling outside of Kyiv in the north as of late Thursday, while another round of talks between Russia and Ukraine produced only Russian resolve to continue the onslaught despite the fact that Putin has now become an outcast and is being cut off from much of the world.

There is one school of thought here that Putin has already lost the war. There is another school of thought that much worse is to come and that an unhinged leader has nothing more to lose as Moscow reels from sanctions and hundreds of Russian soldiers wont be coming home, ever (Moscow says theyve lost just under 500 forces; Kyiv says the Russians losses have hit 9,000). Its not the walk-in-the-park Putin seems to have thought it would be. Its not the crowning achievement of a would-be authoritarian. Russians are likely unimpressed, at best, and bitter, at worst, as the Russian economy tanks and the ruble loses 30% of its value.

Back in Russia, the Interior Ministry has warned people against protesting the war in Ukraine, noting that it has introduced extra measures to deal with such protests. An independent monitoring agency says that over 7,500 Russians have been arrested over the past week in anti-war protests.

Putins course here is a very difficult one from which to withdraw. If he fails in Ukraine, he will fail at home. He may fail at home, regardless. While we should not underestimate his resolve and his money, its his oligarchs who could end up taking him down, Kazakhstan-style, which is exactly what Putin fears. So far, at least three oligarchs have spoken out against the war, careful not to directly criticize Putin. Those oligarchs include aluminum magnate Oleg Deripaska (a Putin ally), who has demanded explanations as to what will happen to the economy in the near term. He also noted that we need real crisis managers and not fantasists with a bunch of silly presentations. A second oligarch is Ukrainian-born Russian billionaire Mikhail Fridman, the head of Alfa Group, who has called an end to the bloodshed, though he has been far more cautious than Deripaska. Fridmans Alfa Group holds the largest private bank in Russia and needs to raise money on the U.S. market. A third oligarch, Oleg Tinkov, appears to have lost $5 billion since Russia invaded Ukraine. Now, the digital banking tycoon is speaking out against the war, too.

What all these oligarchs are doing is reaching out to each other, testing the waters, via statements to the media. Anything else would risk too much. They are the only forces who can bring down Putin, but they dont trust each other, either. They fear Putin, but Putin also fears them. Putin will be thinking hard about what just happened in Kazakhstan. There, Nazarbayev, the former long-time dictator, had passed power to a puppet president who then became too powerful. Nazarbayevs answer to that was to hijack an organic peaceful protest against soaring fuel prices to launch a coup. Kazakhstan was a bit of an experiment for Putin. He wanted to see how it would work to keep Nazarbayev in power forever, through a puppet president. It failed, and, in the end, Putin came to the aid of Narabayevs new enemy, quashing the coup swiftly. Putin wishes to stay in power forever, and his routes to do so are being cut off. That makes him more dangerous than ever.
The spot prices of liquefied natural gas (LNG) in Asia jumped to a record-high of $59.672 per million British thermal units (MMBtu) on Thursday, as the market panics over natural gas supplies following Russias invasion of Ukraine.

The price of spot LNG, the Japan-Korea-Marker (JKM) benchmark for the region, as assessed by S&P Global Platts, soared this week to beat the previous record of $56.326/MMBtu set in October 2021. Back then, the market was tight ahead of the winter in the northern hemisphere, with Europe and Asia experiencing energy crises.

Now the winter is nearly over, but the Russian war in Ukraine has begun, spreading panic on all commodity markets that there would be disruption of energy supplies.

In addition, traders are avoiding Russian LNG, just like they are steering clear of Russian crude.

According to vessel-tracking data from Refinitiv Eikon cited by Reuters earlier this week, several LNG tankers from Yamal LNG in Russia have switched status to For Orders in the past days, from previously signaling France and the UK as destinations.

Currently, Europe is a strong pull for LNG cargoes, with prices there also rallying amid concerns that Russian pipeline gas supply could be disrupted or cut off any day now.

The European benchmark natural gas price surged on Thursday morning to hit a new record-high for a second consecutive day, trading at the equivalent of $360 per barrel oil, as concerns over the disruption of Russian gas supply mount.

The market is increasingly apprehensive about a potential disruption to natural gas supplybe it additional sanctions targeting Russias energy, a possible Russian retaliation to sanctions by halting pipeline supply, or a direct hit on a pipeline carrying gas from Russia via Ukraine.

Meanwhile, the EU is drafting plans to reduce its dependence on Russian gas, while the International Energy Agency (IEA) said on Thursday that the

European Union could reduce its reliance on Russian natural gas by more than one-third within a year by turning to other suppliers and using other energy sources.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
- Ukraine has reported Russian shelling of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plantEuropes largestand Russia now has seized the plant. The shelling has resulted in

- Russia is attempting to take another strategic port town, Mariupol, but the Ukrainians are still resisting and still holding the town, though it is under siege and the Russians are attempting to starve it out, with no food, water, or electricity.

- The strategic port city of Kherson has apparently fallen to the Russians, though it is arguable as to whether they have full control. They have set up checkpoints throughout the city and seized the TV tower late on Thursday, after sending their first armored columns from Crimea into Kherson.

- NATO says that Russian troops are shifting tactics to direct attacks on Ukrainian cities as attempts to encircle Kyiv, for instance, have largely failed.

- The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry, via the countrys official news agency, is demanding that Russian forces stop the shelling of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, reporting that fire has broken out and an explosion here would be 10X worse than Chernobyl. While a nuclear threat was declared earlier on Thursday, overnight, officials reported that the fire had been extinguished.

Military Maneuvers

- The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry, via the countrys official news agency, is demanding that Russian forces stop the shelling of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, reporting that fire has broken out and an explosion here would be 10X worse than Chernobyl. While a nuclear threat was declared earlier on Thursday, overnight, officials reported that the fire had been extinguished.

- NATO says that Russian troops are shifting tactics to direct attacks on Ukrainian cities as attempts to encircle Kyiv, for instance, have largely failed.

- The strategic port city of Kherson has apparently fallen to the Russians, though it is arguable as to whether they have full control. They have set up checkpoints throughout the city and seized the TV tower late on Thursday, after sending their first armored columns from Crimea into Kherson.

- Russia is attempting to take another strategic port town, Mariupol, but the Ukrainians are still resisting and still holding the town, though it is under siege and the Russians are attempting to starve it out, with no food, water, or electricity.

- Ukrainian forces claim to have liberated Bucha, a town in the Kyiv region.

- The White House is requesting $10 billion in aid (lethal and humanitarian) for Ukraine.

- Ukraine has reported Russian shelling of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plantEuropes largestand Russia now has seized the plant. The shelling has resulted in a massive fire at the training building at the Zaporizhzhia compound, which has since been put out. No radiation leaks have been reported.

Sanctions, Exits, Fallout

- On Thursday, Biden imposed new sanctions on 50 Russian oligarchs and their families. They are now banned from the US financial system and from traveling to the U.S. That list includes Kremlin press secretary Dmitry Peskov, whose daughter has been hitting up Instagram in support of Ukraine. (The socialite daughters of these oligarchs have become Instagram sensations for dangerously criticizing Putin - from afar).

- Oil prices surged to $120 on Thursday before falling slightly to around $111 for WTI and $113 for Brent.

- Fitch and Moodys have slashed Russias sovereign debt to junk status, while JP Morgan says the Russian economy will sink 35%. Big businesses are halting operations in Russia. So far that list includes IKEA, Volvo, GM, Ford, BMW, Dell, Apple, DirecTV, TJX, Harley Davidson, Adidas, Nike, H&M, Canada Goose, Boeing, GE, Expedia, UPS, Fedex, Maersk, Walt Disney, Warner Bros, Sony, Paramount, Universal, Spotify, Equinor, Exxon, BP, Shell.

- Nord Stream 2 AG, the company behind Nord Stream 2, has filed for bankruptcy and has terminated contracts with all of its employees, after being sanctioned by the United States last week.

- Oil traders are also shunning Russian oil as insurance, tanker, ethics, and public perception issues override the deep Urals discount.

- Oil majors are treating Russias oil industry as a pariah:

BP is exiting its 19.5% stake in Rosneft

Shell is exiting its massive Sakhalin LNG project as well as untangling itself from Nord Stream 2 and Gazprom.

ExxonMobil will exit its Sakhalin-1 project

ENI will sell its part of the Blue Stream gas pipeline that would carry gas from Russia to Turkey; ENI has a 50% stake in the project and is the operator.

Italy has also put its loan on hold that was financing a part of the $21-billion Arctic LNG 2 project owned and led by Novatek.

Centrica has announced the end of its partnership with Gazprom, which supplies gas for Centrica to sell to customers in the UK.

TotalEnergies has merely said it would not invest any additional funds.

- The flurry of foreign energy companies exiting Russia has drawn the wrath of Moscow, which will now seek to punish those heading for the door. Foreign countries in nations sanctioning Russia will only be allowed to continue business in the country if they provide full support and supplies to their Russian subsidiaries. Investors will be allowed to transfer their holdings to Russian business leaders, with the possibility of taking back their holdings after sanctions have been lifted. International investors that just up and leave will face fines, along with criminal prosecution for top managers or shareholders - the move would be seen as deliberate bankruptcy.

- Even though oil and gas shipments are exempt from the UKs ban on shipments from Russia, a tanker filled with Russian LNG canceled its scheduled arrival at a UK terminal. At least seven other tankers carrying Russian LNG that are in the northwest Europe area are waiting for destination orders by the vessel operators, highlighting the glaring uncertainty that the sanctions and Russian invasion have created in the market.

- As of Friday morning, Ukraine is stopping all exports of natural gas to ensure enough supply for local usage.

- Pakistans PM is bucking this trend and has signed a gas deal with Russiathe first to sign a new trade deal with Russia since the invasion of Ukraine.

- Canada has unveiled sanctions against 10 individuals from Russian energy giants Gazprom and Rosneft.

- Polands largest oil and gas company, PKN Orlen, has ordered five additional tankers of crude oil from Saudi Aramco to feed its refineries in Poland, the Czech Republic, and Lithuania - to protect against a possible supply disruption of crude oil from Russia. Orlen currently gets half of its crude oil from Russia. The remaining half comes from Saudi Arabia, the US, and West Africa.

- Germany is pursuing with renewed vigor its first LNG shipping terminals as a means of reducing its reliance on Russian gas. One of the future LNG terminals at the port of Brunsbuttel was first conceptualized in 2018. Now that environmental concerns have taken a backseat to Russias invasion of Ukraine and potential to choke off Europe from natural gas, the project has now moved to the forefront of Germanys concerns. Germany may also expedite the construction of an LNG terminal at Wilhelmshaven. Talks with the government about Brunsbuttel are now in the final stage, with construction set to begin before the end of this year. The terminal will also be capable of receiving green hydrogen as well.

Libya Updates

The standoff in Libya intensified this week, with the swearing-in of a new parliament while the incumbent prime minister refuses to step down, essentially creating two parallel governments for a potential return to the exact form of civil war that Libya just recently emerged from. This is putting the National Oil Company in a tricky position (which it is used to by now). With oil being the key factor for anyone looking to lead Libya, the NOC is the gatekeeper and it is impossible for it to remove itself from the political fray. This week, there seemed to be a battle going on among various forces using the NOC as the frontline and fake news as the weapon of choice, leaving readers to wonder if ports were actually closed due to bad weather and the inability of vessels to dock for loading, or whether this was a move intended to apply pressure. It also remains unclear what the situation is at Sharara, the largest oilfield, where Reuters reported a pause due to a valve shut-off, and Bloomberg reported a halt to production. No Libya media outlets have mentioned anything and Western media appears to be getting its information from a couple of engineers, without confirming it. Neither has the NOC offered any clue to that mystery. The Oil Ministry, the NOCs new enemy, has thrown its support behind the new prime minister from the east, Bashagha. Thus, shutting down some oil exports due to bad weather could upset the new PMs first days in a contested office. Incidentally, the Russians have also backed Bashagha.

Iran Update

While the nuclear talks with Iran appear to be nearing their end, with no deal as of Thursday night, a major hurdle is a UN report showing Iran is close to having enough enriched uranium for one nuclear bomb. Earlier on Thursday, oil prices slid a bit from their major highs on sentiment that the US could be close to a deal with Iran, and projections that Iran could hit full capacity production within two months after that, easing supply concerns caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Deals & Discoveries

After many years, South Sudan has finally paid Sudan the full amount of the $3.028 billion in debts it owed to Sudan over oil transit. Land-locked South Sudan relies on Sudan to move its crude oil to the Red Sea via pipeline. South Sudan said it would no longer be giving Sudan 28,000 bpd of crude oil to offset what it owed.

Regulation

- The IEA Ministerial Meeting has resulted in an agreement by its members to release 60 million barrels of crude oil from various strategic petroleum reserves in a coordinated release. The agreement, meant to relieve the price shock of crude oil and ostensibly fill a supply shortfall should there be one, comes as the world slapped sanctions on Russia that are expected to diminish its ability to export crude oil, although direct sanctions on Russias energy industry have not yet been employed. The 60 million bpd is less than a days worth of global crude oil demand and 9-10 days of Russias crude oil exports.

- 25 states, led by Lousiana AG Jeff Landry, are joining forces to oppose a ban on nat gas transport by raila move that the groups claim would raise energy costs and threaten national security. The rule was proposed back in November and would suspend the authorization to move LNG by railan authorization that has only been in effect since August 2020. The rule was implemented citing concerns with greenhouse gasses, worker safety, and environmental risks.

Renewables

- Arm Wind LLP, a subsidiary of ENI, has inaugurated the second wind farm in Kazakhstanthe Badamsha 2 Wind Farm. The wind farm was awarded to Eni in an auction last September. Combined, the two wind projectsBadamsha 1 and Badamsha 2have an installed capacity of 144 MW.

- In a bid to grow its renewable fuels segment, Chevron has agreed to acquire Renewable Energy Group valued at $3.15 billion. Renewable Energy Group produces about 2 billion liters of bio-based diesel annually. The purchase, and Chevrons plan to expand REGs Louisiana facility, should bring Chevron halfway to its goal of manufacturing 100,000 bpd of biofuel by 2030.
Oil prices continue to inch higher, with new reports that the White House is considering a ban on Russian crude oil.

At 3:01 pm ET, WTI crude had risen to $115.20 per barrel, up nearly 7% on the day and up more than $20 on the week. Brent crude was trading at $117.70, up 6.58% on the day and up more than $19 on the week.

On Thursday, the White House had tersely dismissed the idea of banning Russian crude oil imports, pointing out that doing so could cause oil and gasoline prices to rise even more than they already had.

But other U.S. lawmakers have pushed for a full ban, including Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).

On the other hand, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki downplayed the role Russian crude oil plays in the United States, adding that it only makes up 10% of the total crude oil that the United States imports.

But by Friday, the White Houses take on banning Russian crude oil softened.

The Biden Administration is now said to be looking at what can be done immediately to make up for Russian crude oil, should they take that route, White House Council of Economic Advisors chair Cecilia Rouse said on Friday.

We are considering a range of options, but whats really essential is that we maintain a steady supply of global energy, Rouse said at a press briefing.

The United States imported 12.5 million barrelsor 405,000 bpd--of Russian crude oil and crude oil products in December, according to the Energy Information Administrations latest monthly data. For straight Russian crude oil, the United States imported 90,000 bpd.

Crude oil production in the United States has stagnated at 11.6 million bpd according to the latest EIA data, down from 13.1 million bpd prior to the pandemic.

A ban on Russian crude oil and crude products could send oiland gasolineprices even higher.

By Julianne Geiger for Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
The first inkling that Rhashone Burnetts application for a pandemic-related relief loan was a fraud probably shouldve been the roster of employees at his purported construction company.

Mario Speedwagon? Anna Sthesia? How about Gail Forcewind and Petey Cruiser?

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But there were more red flags. According to federal prosecutors, Burnett wasnt a struggling business owner trying to stay afloat during difficult pandemic times.

In fact, he had just been released on home confinement after serving nearly 11 years in prison for narcotics and fraud convictions, including stealing more than $1 million in settlement money won by his young nieces and nephews after his sister and her son died in a tragic fire, prosecutors say.

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Now, Burnett, 43, is facing new federal charges alleging he fraudulently obtained a $20,000 Paycheck Protection Program loan just weeks after being released on home confinement five years early due to COVID-19, records show.

A criminal complaint recently unsealed in U.S. District Court also accused Burnett of lying on separate bank paperwork in November 2020 to obtain another loan, which he used to purchase a new BMW luxury SUV.

FBI agents arrested Burnett last week at the bungalow in west suburban Westchester where he was living on home confinement. Hes been ordered held without bond pending trial, court records show.

His attorney, Beau Brindley, could not immediately be reached for comment.

The charges were the latest in long history of eye-opening scams allegedly pulled by Burnett, most notably in 2013 when he was sentenced to 7  years in federal prison for stealing settlement money stemming from the deaths of his sister and nephew in a CHA high-rise fire.

Burnetts sister, Shlonzo, and her 1-year-old son died when their building at the Harold Ickes complex caught fire in 2001. Investigators later determined that the fifth-floor unit had no smoke detector. An inspector with a Chicago Housing Authority contractor managing the property admitted in a deposition to falsifying a report showing that there was a detector.

Burnett was supposed to be overseeing the $5.75 million settlement, ensuring that his sisters surviving children would be well cared for. Instead, prosecutors said Burnett stole more than $1 million and blew it on flashy cars, jewelry, even guns and a stash house for his burgeoning drug business.

When authorities finally caught up with the alleged scheme, Burnett was living lavishly in a home in the suburbs while his relatives languished in relative poverty on Chicagos West Side, prosecutors said.

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At his sentencing hearing before U.S. District Judge Matthew Kennelly nearly nine years ago, Burnetts attorneys argued for leniency, saying many of his purchases were for the benefit of his young relatives.

But the judge blasted that assertion as a fat pile of baloney.

I think its fair to say he saw his opportunities and he took them, Kennelly said at the time. He saw a big pile of money and he used it to sort of live the life, if you will.

Before he was sentenced in that case, Burnett read a lengthy statement apologizing for his actions, saying hed tried to do the right thing for his relatives at first but later felt entitled to the money.

I know stealing from them kids was wrong, and Im ashamed of it, he said.

At the time of his release on home confinement, Burnett still owed a $445,000 judgment imposed by the court, records show.

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About a month later, Burnett applied for the pandemic loan through a suburban money lender identified in the new charges only as Company A. On the application, he said he was the sole owner of a construction company named Rhashone Burnett, and that it had been in business at the time Burnett was actually imprisoned.

As part of the loan paperwork, Burnett submitted a bank statement purportedly showing payroll withdrawals for employees named Mario Speedwagon, Petey Cruiser, Anna Sthesia, and Gail Forcewind, according to the complaint.

The names, the complaint said, appear ... to be fictional individuals.

According to the complaint, the account Burnett said was his business banking account was actually a smart money checking account opened in February 2020 by a relative of Burnetts that had a balance of $20.

After the PPP loan was disbursed to a Chase account in Burnetts name, a debit card associated with the account was used to make a $1,264 purchase from Helzberg Diamonds and a $228 purchase from an Elmhurst motorcycle dealership, the complaint alleged.

The same card was used to buy over $250 of merchandise from Saks Off 5th department store and $501 from Versace USA, the charges stated.

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In November 2020, four months after applying for the PPP loan, Burnett allegedly took out another loan from U.S. Bank to finance the purchase of a $55,000 BMW X7 from a dealership in Des Plaines.

In the paperwork for that loan, Burnett falsely claimed to be the owner of a construction company, identified as Company B, earning a $125,000 salary for the past 10 years, according the complaint. In fact, Burnett had been working part time for the company only since his release from prison, and was earning $13 an hour.

Burnett faces up to 20 years in prison on the new charges.

jmeisner@chicagotribune.com
European buyers are scouring the world as far as South Africa to procure coal as Russias invasion of Ukraine and the threat of more sanctions on Moscow have made Russian coal unsellable with many European utilities.

Several carriers with coal have headed from South Africas Richards Bay Coal Terminal west around the Cape of Good Hope since last week, according to vessel-tracking data Bloomberg has compiled. Coal heading west from South Africa is not the typical export route for the large African coal producer and exporter, as it ships over 86 percent of its coal east to Asia.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine, however, has changed trade routes for many commodities, including for coal. Traders and utilities have started to steer clear of Russian seaborne commodities, including crude oil, LNG, and coal, as many firms and traders are in a self-sanctioning mode not taking any risks with any cargoes from Russia.

Coal flows from South Africa, the United States, and Colombia to Europe have increased over the past few weeks, Bevan Jones, chief executive officer of consultants African Source Markets, told Bloomberg.

Since the SWIFT sanctions against Russian banks this past weekend, trade in energy commodities has started to see disruptions, despite the fact that Russian energy is carved out of sanctions and banking payments.

As a result, coal and natural gas prices are surging in Europe and Asia, and international crude oil benchmarks are on a tear, too.

This week, European thermal coal prices surged to record highs.

European thermal coal prices have surged to record highs with futures prices above US$400/t until Q4 2022. Some buyers in Japan and Europe have already indicated they are looking to replace Russian supply, and non-Russian thermal coal in Europe is attracting a significant premium over Russian material, Wood Mackenzie principal analyst Rory Simington said on Thursday.

According to WoodMac, Russia would not be able to quickly make up for a loss of European demand by pivoting to Asia (China) due to limited eastbound rail capacity.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
Most Germans support sanctions against Russia over the invasion of Ukraine, even if the measures lead to energy supply bottlenecks and increase the cost of living, according to a survey by infratest dimap commissioned by public broadcaster ARD.

A total of 66 percent of Germans are concerned that the Russian invasion of Ukraine will lead to cuts in German power and gas supply. An ever higher percentage of Germans, 69 percent, are concerned there will be another major war in Europe.

Despite the concerns of reduced gas and power supply, 68 percent of Germans support sanctions against Russia, the survey found. Sixty-six percent support sanctions even if they lead to high energy prices and cost of living.

Just before the war in Ukraine, a survey by the Federation of German Industries, BDI, showed that nearly one-fourth of Germanys medium-sized enterprises fear they might not survive the soaring energy prices.

Following Putins invasion of Ukraine, GermanyEuropes largest economyannounced an overhaul of its energy strategy, aiming to reduce reliance on Russian gas, which accounts for 50 percent of German gas consumption.

Germany announced it was changing course in order to eliminate our dependence on imports from individual energy suppliers, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said on Sunday. Germany will build two LNG import facilities, at Brunsbuettel and Wilhelmshaven, and look to speed up the installation of renewable energy capacity to have 100-percent renewable power generation by 2035.

On Thursday, German Economy Minister Robert Habeck said he would not advocate for an embargo on Russian oil and gas imports.

We need these energy supplies to maintain the price stability and energy security in Germany, Habeck said, as quoted by Deutsche Welle.

By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
Foreign companies, including energy firms, which are ditching Russia will be considered pushing their Russian subsidiaries to deliberate bankruptcy, which under Russian law includes criminal prosecution for top managers, Upstream reported on Friday, quoting Russian Deputy Prime Minister Andrey Belousov.

Under Russian law, deliberate bankruptcy resulting in damages of over 1.5 million Russian rubles ($13,300 as of March 4) carries a criminal liability.

The companies leaving Russia will get fast-track bankruptcy protection, or they transfer their stakes to local managers until they return to Russia, according to a Reuters summary of Belousovs latest comments.

Many international companies, including oil majors, have announced they would end their involvement in Russian projects and Russian companies in recent days over the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

BP was the first to announce it would divest from Russia. In just a few days, many other Western oil majors followed suit.

BP said on Sunday that it would divest its 20-percent stake in Russian giant Rosneft. BP chief executive Bernard Looney resigned from the board of Rosneft with immediate effect. The other Rosneft director nominated by BP, former BP CEO Bob Dudley, also resigned from the board.

A day after BP, Shell also said it would exit its equity partnerships with Gazprom entities, including the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline project, its 27.5 percent stake in the Sakhalin-II LNG facility, its 50 percent stake in the Salym Petroleum Development, and the Gydan energy venture. Norways Equinor also decided to stop new investments into Russia and begin the process of exiting its Russian joint ventures. ExxonMobil discontinues operations at Sakhalin-1 and will make no new investments in Russia, the U.S. supermajor said this week, deploring Russias military action.

Glencore is reviewing all business activities in Russia, including stakes in En+ and Rosneft, and said it has no operational footprint in Russia, while its trading exposure is not material for Glencore.

Trafigura immediately froze investments in Russia and is reviewing the options in respect of its passive shareholding in Vostok Oil in which it has no operational or managerial input.

By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
Erik Eck, a former member of the Latin Kings gang stands in the doorway of his cell at the DuPage County, Ill., Jail displaying tattoos that symbolize his status with the gang, Thursday, Feb. 3, 2022, in Wheaton, Ill. Under penalty of a beating or death, Eck pledged when he joined the Latin Kings in Chicago at 13 to adhere to the gang's first rule: "Once a King, always a King." Tattoos that cover his entire body express fealty forever to the gang, one of the nation's largest. (Charles Rex Arbogast/AP)

Under penalty of a beating or death, Erik Eck pledged at age 13 to adhere to the Latin Kings first rule: Once a King, always a King. Tattoos that bedeck his entire body express his fealty forever to one of the largest gangs in the U.S.

Now 36, the longtime Latin King enforcer is trying to leave anyway. He is seeking to scrub his past by erasing his gang tattoos through a new gang-cessation and jobs program he and 11 other inmates signed up for at the DuPage County Jail in west suburban Wheaton.

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A dozen inmates are the first enrolled in the largely privately funded program at the jail. For their safety, theyre isolated from the jails 500 other inmates, half of whom are in gangs.

Eck, jailed on burglary charges, earned the nickname Hollywood on the street for his swagger. But nightmares jarred him awake for days before he recently walked into the jails new tattoo removal wing.

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This life is all Ive ever known, Eck said about agonizing over his decision to deface the tattoos that have been central to his identity for 20 years. But its for the better.

He added: I feel like the change has officially begun.

One goal is to land the inmates jobs in horticulture, welding and other fields theyre learning, said the programs civilian director and chief architect, Michael Beary. He said theres booming interest among businesses scrambling to address COVID-19-driven labor shortages.

Jobs training was available previously, but the gang and tattoo emphasis was added this year.

I used to beg businesses to hire these guys. Now they say, As long as they show up for work, we dont care what they did,  said Beary, a longtime business owner and executive director of the nonprofit JUST of DuPage, founded by a Roman Catholic nun to develop reentry programs for inmates.

The inmates arent promised jobs or reduced sentences. But if they graduate, they do get help searching for work and relocating away from their gangs. A letter from the sheriff touts their participation.

To graduate, participants must have their gang tattoos removed or covered with other tats. Its proof, said DuPage County Sheriff James Mendrick, theyre serious about forsaking their old lives.

Its a point of no return, he said. Its a commitment to themselves  and to us, that we arent wasting our time.

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The first tattoo Eck had covered was one on his arm of the Latin Kings initials. Jail-sanctioned tattooist Tom Begley inked the image of a deer over it in a four-hour session in February. Covering all of Ecks gang tattoos will take months.

A roaring lion  a favorite Latin Kings symbol  was recently converted to a roaring bear. Eck has to be careful to pick animals that arent other gangs symbols. A rabbit, he said, is out. Its a symbol of Latin Kings rival Two Six Nation.

Begley and his wife, Meagan Begley, of the suburban Electric Tattoo Parlor, jumped at the chance to lend their skills. Inmates painted a mural on a wall in the jails three-chaired tattoo studio. It says: Hope, Purpose and Redemption.

On a previous day, Tom Begley transformed a Satan Disciples tattoo on Jaime Marinezs forearm from a Christian cross fashioned from rifles into the image of a vulture.

Nearby, Meagen Begley removed hand tattoos of 27-year-old Latin Count leader Gilberto Rios, wielding a penlike tool to scrape off outer skin, then injecting a saline solution. That pushes ink into a scab, which flakes away over several weeks.

Theres lots of crying by them, she said, but not due to the pain. These tattoos have been their identity. (Giving them up) is very emotional.

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One she removed from Rios hand was a backward D, a symbol of disdain for Marinezs gang.

The two chatted amiably, comparing tattoo work done on them that day.

If they saw each other on the street, Beary said, theyd try and kill each other.

Affluent DuPage County isnt considered a hotbed of gangs. Mendrick, elected sheriff as a Republican, contends violent crime in his county is often committed by gangs from Chicago, in neighboring Cook County.

Mendrick is convinced the program, funded partly by church donations, will help reduce crime.

I am a religious man, he said. I feel I am answering my calling. Beary cites religion as a motivation, too.

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The program also offers classes on the Bible, anger management and decision-making. And it provides counseling to drug-addicted inmates.

Once freed, Eck wants to own a business. He believes he can apply leadership skills honed in his gang.

Hes blunt about the perks of gang life.

Being a gang member in my neighborhood was better than being the president of the United States, he said. I wanted the cars, the women ... the power, the respect.

The killing of his best friend two months before Eck was jailed a year ago began changing his perspective. It was an internal hit by a Latin King who coveted his friends higher perch in the gang hierarchy, Eck said.

He took 16 bullets, four in the face. It was like, enough is enough, said Eck, adding that guilt at having hurt others also began weighing on him.

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Other participants also cited trauma from years of gang violence as motivation for wanting out. Chicago police say most of the nearly 800 homicides in the city last year, the most in a quarter century, were gang-related.

In another tattoo session, Tom Begley traced a new image over a scar on Marinezs chest from when he was shot last year at a stoplight.

The tattoo is of a clock set to 6:20, memorializing the date his father died of a heroin overdose on June 20, 2016. Marinez turns quiet when he mentions his dad.

The 21-year-old knows hes putting himself in peril by spurning his gang.

I dont want to be doing this 50 years from now.  I know a lot of (adults) still in this life. And its just eating them up, he said.

Eck credits Beary, whom he describes as a father figure, for persuading him to join the program.

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I have never had anyone come up to me and say theres another way to live, he said.

Eck wants to create a meaningful life. One more criminal conviction, he said, could send him to prison for life.

There are already signs of his transformation.

Speaking on a recent afternoon, he appeared startled when he realized what pronoun he was using to talk about the Latin Kings.

Im saying they not we, he said, looking at Beary sitting nearby and laughing.

He has stopped answering to his street name, too. When several inmates recently addressed him by it, he bristled.

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My names Erik, he snapped. Hollywood? ... I dont know who youre talking about.

As he struggles to reinvent himself, he says he wants nothing to do with his gang persona.

I want to be able to wake up and not see that person anymore.
More than 3,000 dolphins were held captive as of 2019, according to a World Animal Protection report, but the Dolphin Project aims to change that.
There are many ways Russias invasion of Ukraine could come to an end  and none of them appear to be happy for Ukrainians.

That was the opinion offered by Jody Neathery-Castro, a political science associate professor at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, on Thursday afternoon during a Zoom panel discussion on the conflict.

Its tragic whats going on right now, she said. I fear the violence is going to continue.

The panel  which also included UNO assistant political science professor Michelle Black, UNO assistant religious studies professor Laura Alexander and Fort Hays State University (Kansas) assistant history professor and Ukraine scholar Amber Nickell  also discussed the detrimental humanitarian impacts and possible motivations behind Russian President Vladimir Putins attack on Ukraine.

Panelists agreed the invasion is tragic and heartbreaking, but they stopped short of saying it could escalate to World War III.

Part of the reason, Black said, is because there are many tactics Russias opponents can turn to short of combat. Those include continued economic sanctions, cyberspace and offering Russia some sort of off-ramp.

We can move within all these different domains that dont necessarily have mass casualties but do actually provide deterrent effects, Black said.

There is fear that escalating the conflict could lead to the use of nuclear weapons.

I dont say that to be fear-mongering or anything like that, Neathery-Castro said. There are other options ... to prevent that kind of escalation.

Neathery-Castro said Russian citizens are also suffering under sanctions that have significantly devalued the Russian ruble. The devaluation has triggered bank runs in Russia.

With the sanctions significantly and detrimentally impacting Russias economy, Neathery-Castro said the hope is that they will be enough to force Russia to de-escalate the situation.

The hope is that these large economic impacts will punish Russia enough to bring them to the table to back off or limit the impact of this attack, she said.

But the panelists acknowledge that is unlikely. Under Putins watch, the Russian military has been accused of indiscriminately targeting civilians, Alexander said.

Its quite clear that this Russian invasion is an unjustified act of military aggression, she said.

Alexander said Putin may also be driven by religious motivations in addition to territorial expansion. Alexander said Putin has spent years building a close relationship with the Russian Orthodox Church.

Alexander said the Russian government under Putin was not happy about the Orthodox Church in Ukraine having become independent from other Orthodox churches, including Russias, in 2018.

With Putin seeing himself as a uniter, Alexander added that Putin would view the unification of the Russian and Ukrainian Orthodox churches as a product of a successful invasion.

Throughout its history, parts of modern Ukraine have been subjected to rule under several empires, Nickell said. She said Putin has twisted Ukraines history to establish false pretenses for invasion.

Every time that Mr. Putin tells you that they were always Russian and always part of Russia, he is lying to you. He is manipulating the past, Nickell said.

The United Nations said Thursday that the war has forced 1 million people to leave Ukraine, and countless others have been displaced within the countrys borders.

This report includes material from the Associated Press.

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Workers remove the Christopher Columbus statue from Chicago's Grant Park during the early morning hours of July 24, 2020. (Armando L. Sanchez / Chicago Tribune)

Mayor Lori Lightfoot said a lawsuit alleging she berated Chicago Park District lawyers in offensive terms is wholly without merit and said she has no animus toward Italian Americans.

I am aware of the lawsuit that has been filed by a former Chicago Park District employee. While I will continue my practice of not commenting on the specific claims alleged in pending litigation, I feel compelled to state that the deeply offensive and ridiculous claims are wholly lacking in merit, and I welcome the opportunity to prove that fact in court, Lightfoot said in a statement. Furthermore, to be clear, I never have and never will harbor any animus toward Italians or Italian Americans.

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Lightfoot released the statement a day after the Tribune reported on a lawsuit brought by former Chicago Park District deputy general counsel George Smyrniotis against the city. Lightfoot did not hold any public media availabilities on Thursday and ignored questions about the lawsuit outside a downtown restaurant.

Raul Montes portrays Christopher Columbus as dozens of Italian Americans, elected officials and supporters converge at Arrigo Park on Columbus Day in 2020, months after the city removed Columbus statues amid summer unrest. (Antonio Perez / Chicago Tribune)

Smyrniotis lawsuit alleges Lightfoot blocked a deal the Chicago Park District made with an Italian American group that would allow a Christopher Columbus statue to be displayed in a parade and made obscene remarks to government lawyers during a contentious meeting.

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According to the lawsuit, Lightfoot told the attorneys: You make some kind of secret agreement with Italians. ... You are out there stroking your d---- over the Columbus statue, I am trying to keep Chicago police officers from being shot and you are trying to get them shot. My d--- is bigger than yours and the Italians, I have the biggest d--- in Chicago.

Sign up for The Spin to get the top stories in politics delivered to your inbox weekday afternoons.

Smyrniotis lawsuit against the city is closely related to another case brought by the Joint Civic Committee of Italian Americans against the Chicago Park District after Lightfoot removed Columbus statues from the city.

Smyrniotis claims in his suit that he was told by Timothy King, then the districts top lawyer, and then-Superintendent Michael Kelly that they wanted the lawsuit over the statues settled as soon as possible.

According to Smyrniotis lawsuit, the Italian American group wanted to display the Columbus statue in its annual Columbus Day parade last fall, a request King approved because the Chicago Park District thought it would generate goodwill with the Italian Americans.

But when Lightfoot learned those negotiations also involved a proposal to remove the statue from Chicago permanently, Smyrniotis alleges in his lawsuit, she threatened to pull the parade permit and called the Zoom meeting with Chicago Park District officials.

There, Smyrniotis alleges, Lightfoot proceeded to berate and defame the lawyers and asked them, Where did you go to law school? Did you even go to law school? Do you even have a law license?

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Lightfoot told them that they were not to do a f------ thing with that statue without my approval.

Get that f------ statue back before noon tomorrow or I am going to have you fired, Lightfoot said, according to the complaint.

Lightfoot also made obscene comments to Smyrniotis and King, according to the lawsuit, which alleges she called them d---- and asked, What the f--- were you thinking?

Smyrniotis asserts the alleged comments defamed him by imputing that he lacked the ability to perform his job duties. He resigned from the Chicago Park District last month, according to the lawsuit. King has also since left the district.

Prior to the mayors Friday statement, a city spokesperson said the city would have no further comment as the matter is now in litigation.

The lawsuit by Smyrniotis is just the latest fallout over Lightfoots July 2020 decision to remove Columbus statues from Chicagos public places.

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The Joint Civic Committee of Italian Americans filed a lawsuit against the Chicago Park District last July asserting that the district violated a deal signed in 1973 to display the Columbus statue in Little Italy when it took down the statue in summer 2020.

Lightfoot has said she ordered the removal of Columbus statues in Grant Park, Little Italy and the South Chicago neighborhood after activists forcibly attempted to remove the Grant Park figure, leading to violent clashes between police and protesters.

Enrico Mirabelli, attorney for the Italian Americans, said he believes Smyrniotis allegations strengthen his case.

Presuming the mayor has been accurately quoted, her comments give proof to the claim that she has wrongfully interfered with my clients contract with the Chicago Park District in a degree that is unprecedented, Mirabelli said.

Ron Onesti, president of the Joint Civic Committee of Italian Americans, said hes literally outraged that someone in her position would ever use words like that to refer to any group of individuals.

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When will it end with the disrespect? Onesti asked, referring to the mayors alleged comments as grotesque.

Columbus has been condemned by activists around the country who point to the Italian explorers mistreatment of Indigenous people after he landed in the Americas in 1492.

Many Italian Americans prize the statues of the explorer as an expression of their mainstream American identity.

Lightfoot initially resisted calls to take down Columbus statues. Comparing the debate over Columbus statues to the same argument over monuments to Confederate Army figures being removed in other cities, Lightfoot said she favors acting to not try to erase history, but to embrace it full-on.

But she ordered the removals after the unrest at Grant Park.

That lawsuit claims that a Columbus statue committee paid the Chicago Park District more than $10,000 in 1973 for the purpose of maintaining in perpetuity the Columbus statue.

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After Lightfoot removed the Columbus statues, she created a review process for controversial city monuments that she said would be part of a racial healing and historical reckoning project. But the citys monuments commission has yet to issue its final report.
Everyone agrees it was crazy.

A 23-year-old content creator from New Jersey decided to travel wherever a dart lands on a map of the United States. He ended up in Staplehurst, Nebraska, population 240.

When he arrived on Feb. 25, Adam Boro was adopted by some locals at the towns lone bar and enjoyed the adventures of a lifetime. At least for a kid who grew up on the East Coast.

Boro roped a fake steer head and drove a tractor. He had a whole school of kids pray for him, asking that he stay safe on his trips around the world.

It was the most random and unexpected thing to happen in the tiny Seward County town in a long time, said Harlan Anson, principal of Our Redeemer Lutheran School.

Of all the places in the world, why here? Anson  and everyone else in Staplehurst  wanted to know that day.

Boros full-time job is making travel videos that he shares on Instagram and TikTok, where he has 60,000 and 520,000 followers, respectively. Last year alone, he explored South America, Central America, the Middle East and lots of places across the U.S. Through clothing and travel endorsements, he makes enough money to live on while he roams the globe.

I really love spontaneously traveling, Boro said in a phone interview. I put it out (to his followers) that for the next 24 hours, I want you guys to decide where I spontaneously travel to.

One response in particular resonated with Boro. It was the one that suggested he throw a dart at a map of the U.S. and go where it lands. So thats what Boro did.

It was insane, he said. I was honestly really nervous. I dont know why.

Boro questioned his decision even more when, after flying into Lincoln, he drove through the empty main street of Staplehurst, which is about 8 miles northwest of Seward.

He described Staplehurst as desolate that day.

Anson said they dont call it a town. Its a village, with a school, a church, a bar, a post office that is open only four hours a day, a veterinary clinic and a co-op.

Boro didnt know where to start, so he picked the bar called the Good Ol Days because it had the most cars parked out front.

There, after awkwardly talking with the bartender for a while, his luck changed.

Jason Luebbe and his cousin Brandon Luebbe were finishing lunch when they struck up a conversation with Boro. They were as curious about life in New Jersey as he was about rural life in Nebraska.

He was just a real engaging person, and he was easy to talk to, Jason Luebbe said. It just kind of turned into what it was.

Neither Luebbe is on social media, so TikTok videos meant little to them. But Boro had brought along his map, with the area around Staplehurst circled, he was excited about being there and they decided to show him the sights.

They visited the vet clinic and the school, saw the waterfall on the Blue River, visited Jasons parents and then stopped at Brandons farm, where Boro got to lead a steer around and drove the tractor. After a stop at their uncles place, they ended up back at the bar, where they listened to a two-person guitar concert and ate fish. They all exchanged phone numbers, too.

It didnt seem like it was going to be that big of deal, Jason said, surprised when Boros posts about his visit started garnering attention. But its pretty cool.

Boro was amazed about how excited everyone was to see this foreigner from back East. He said it was insane and unforgettable to think of a whole school praying for his safe travels.

I spent like 12 hours with these strangers I just met, Boro said. By far, my most favorite thing was just how serendipitous it was. It was just so random.

He said hes never felt so welcomed in any other place hes traveled in the U.S.

The people and the landscape, too, are dramatically different from the highways and suburbs of East Brunswick, where he grew up.

The people in Nebraska were so much more community-oriented, friendly and proud of being from Nebraska, he said. It was really overwhelming how friendly people were. It was awesome.

Everyone, Boro said, liked his posts about the visit, and everyone in Staplehurst liked Boro. Thats the way things are there.

The people in this town are just genuinely good people, Anson said. Everybody was just welcoming. Thats what we want to be known for.

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An Iowa man has been sentenced to more than 33 years in prison for kidnapping two girls from Omaha and sexually assaulting them.

Myron Lee Brandon, 43, was sentenced Wednesday after being found guilty in October of two counts of kidnapping and two counts of transportation of minors with the intent to engage in criminal sexual activity, according to the U.S. Attorneys Office for the Southern District of Iowa.

According to a statement from the U.S. attorney and court documents:

The assaults took place in June 2003. Brandon picked the then-14- and 15-year-old girls up near 24th Street and Leavenworth Avenue in Omaha and took them to a field near Pacific Junction, Iowa.

He held them at knifepoint, tied them with rope and forced them to perform sex acts. He then burned their breasts with a lighter before getting gasoline from his truck and throwing it at them. At that point, the girls were able to run away. They walked for a few miles along Interstate 29 before a passing motorist picked them up and took them to police.

A sexual assault examination was performed and samples from that, along with the girls clothing, were held as evidence.

In 2015, the Iowa Attorney Generals Office launched an initiative to conduct DNA analysis on sexual assault kits from unsolved cases. In February 2020, the DNA profile from one of those kits matched a DNA profile of Brandon that had been taken when he was listed on the Iowa Sex Offender Registry. A second, new DNA sample was collected from Brandon and it matched, according to court documents. The probability of finding such a match among the general population would be 1 out of 1.9 nonillion.

According to the Iowa Sex Offender Registry, Brandon has two convictions dating to 2004: kidnapping and indecent contact with a child.

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LINCOLN  Nebraska lawmakers are headed for an election-year battle over expanding who can legally carry concealed weapons in the state.

State Sen. Tom Brewer of Gordon filed a motion Thursday to pull Legislative Bill 773 out of the Judiciary Committee, where it has stalled.

Under LB 773, Nebraska adults who are not otherwise banned from having guns would no longer have to get a permit to carry a concealed weapon. Proposals like this are sometimes called constitutional carry in reference to some gun rights advocates belief that the U.S. Constitution gives people the right to carry concealed guns.

The bill would allow people to still get concealed carry permits, however, which Brewer said they may want to do to carry a gun across state lines or potentially expedite a background check for purchasing a gun.

Permits require passing a criminal background check, paying a $100 fee and taking an eight- to 16-hour gun safety class.

Speaker of the Legislature Mike Hilgers of Lincoln said Brewers pull motion will be considered Tuesday, when lawmakers meet next. If the motion succeeds, the bill would be debated  and face a likely filibuster  next Thursday.

Brewer expressed confidence about having 25 votes to get LB 773 out of committee. So far, 22 of the 49 senators have signed on as co-sponsors of the bill. But he said he didnt know if he has the 33 votes needed to overcome a filibuster.

An amendment filed along with the pull motion may gain him some votes. He said that the Omaha Police Officers Association and Omaha Police Department have agreed to stop fighting the bill and adopt a neutral position if the amendment is adopted.

Anthony Conner, president of the OPOA, said the group worked with Brewer to improve the bill from a law enforcement perspective. He said the associations goal is to promote and protect the safety of officers and the citizens they serve.

Our law enforcement professionals have an unmatched perspective on the tragic impact of gun violence in our communities, and the OPOA advocates aggressively for gun laws that respect both the crime prevention needs of our officers and the Constitutional rights of law-abiding gun owners, he said.

But not all law enforcement opponents are on board. Others who testified against the bill during a January hearing included the Lincoln Police Department, the Police Chiefs Association of Nebraska and the Police Officers Association of Nebraska. A lobbyist for the City of Lincoln said the Lincoln Police Department is reviewing the amendment but will likely remain opposed.

At the hearing, law enforcement officials raised concerns that the bill would hamper local efforts to reduce gun violence and hinder their ability to seize illegal guns.

Brewers latest amendment would allow cities of the metropolitan class, meaning Omaha, to require registration of all handguns, other than those owned by people with a concealed carry permit. The city could not deny registrations to anyone allowed by state law to own a gun.

The amendment also would make it a crime to carry a concealed handgun while committing any of a lengthy list of offenses. The list ranges from murder to unauthorized graffiti and includes violations of city or village ordinances, as well as state laws.

A first violation of the proposed new crime would be a misdemeanor, punishable by up to one year in prison. Second or subsequent violations would be a felony, punishable by up to two years in prison and a year of post-release supervision.

Neither the bill nor the new amendment would change current laws governing where concealed weapons can be prohibited, such as schools. Nor would they allow people to carry a concealed weapon while drinking or using drugs.

Both would require a person carrying a concealed weapon to announce its presence during encounters with law enforcement or emergency services personnel. People without concealed carry permits would have to carry identification and show it upon request by those authorities.

Proponents of the bill, who included gun rights advocates and instructors, argued at the public hearing that the current requirements are unnecessary barriers to a fundamental right and that the costs of getting a permit and taking a class are unfair to low-income people.

At least 21 states have already passed such laws, including every state surrounding Nebraska except Colorado. As of Jan. 1, more than 85,500 Nebraskans were licensed to carry concealed weapons.

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Charles W. Herbster has used Jim Pillens record on critical race theory as ammunition in attacks against his chief rival in the Republican primary for Nebraska governor. But the critiques of Pillen, a University of Nebraska regent since 2013, arent backed by much substance.

The questionable claims are part of the latest back-and-forth as the two contenders seek to differentiate themselves based on what one longtime political observer described as a wedge issue  one being leveraged by conservative politicians across the U.S.

Critical race theory has existed for decades within academia, but it has become a key talking point in the last year or so for Republican politicians, including Gov. Pete Ricketts. Its an academic framework that views racism as systemic, embedded in systems and policies, rather than as an individual issue. Its generally taught at the graduate level, but opponents often call it un-American and use the term to cover a broad range of anti-racism and diversity curriculum and initiatives.

Herbster, a Falls City businessman, launched an ad last month asserting Pillen approved a whole new department focused on CRT  an apparent reference to the University of Nebraska-Lincolns Office of Diversity and Inclusion.

The Office of Diversity and Inclusion was created in 2018, Herbster campaign spokesperson Emily Novotny said in an email, with the chancellor position created that December.

Regents voted 7-0 on Dec. 4, with Hal Daub abstaining, to approve the chancellors recommendation to hire Marco Barker as vice chancellor of diversity and inclusion and as an associate professor, according to meeting minutes.

The office was created to coordinate and advance diversity efforts, and its aims mostly seem focused on campus culture.

The Herbster ad also asserts that Pillen chose a leader for that office who praised violent race riots on university letterhead. It uses the name and photo of Barker, who is Black. Barker declined The World-Heralds request for an interview.

Novotny sent The World-Herald a link to the letter cited in the ad, which Barker released in early June 2020 amid racial justice protests, according to The Daily Nebraskan. Barker wrote about the calls for change and offered resources on campus for those seeking out conversations, counseling or information. He did not reference violent race riots.

The series of events that we are seeing today and the civil rights moments in our history point to an echoing call for systemic change, Barker wrote. If we were listening and watching closely, we would see and hear a call for justice that has been shouted throughout our countrys history.

When asked multiple times via email where in the letter Barker praised violent race riots, Novotny did not respond.

The ad also claims that Pillen tripled the offices budget. But regents dont vote on department-level spending. According to spokesperson Melissa Lee, they approve an overall operating budget for the university system and every chancellor has authority over their campus budget.

In UNLs 2019-20 budget, the only spending item for the newly formed Diversity and Inclusion Office was Barkers salary of $250,000. The offices next budget did more than triple, as the department grew to include more employees (multiple were already working for the university) and operating expenses.

While it doesnt appear in the ad, Herbsters campaign routinely alleges that critical race theory first entered the University of Nebraska under Pillens watch, in 2014. It came up at a recent campaign event at an Omaha VFW post.

Jim Pillen is a regent at University of Nebraska, and in 2014, 2015, critical race theory seeped and creeped into the curriculum at the University of Nebraska, Kellyanne Conway, an adviser to former President Donald Trump, said to the crowd of about 45 people.

The campaign is not pointing to a particular class, professor or curriculum shift in 2014  its referencing a specific speaker.

Herbsters campaign did not mention the content of the speech. Rather, Novotny pointed out that scholar Shireen Roshanravan, then an assistant professor of womens studies at Kansas State University, gave a keynote address at a gender studies conference at the University of Nebraska at Kearney.

Novotny cited a news report that included the title of Roshanravans presentation (Intersectionality, Integrity and Coalitional Becomings) and noted Roshanravans research interests include critical race theory.

Pillen, who has touted his opposition to critical race theory, has tried to deflect the attacks by referencing his attempt last year to pass a resolution banning the imposition of critical race theory as a regent and his support for an anti-critical race theory bill in the Nebraska Legislature. Regents rejected his resolution on a 5-3 vote.

Alongside Governor Ricketts, (Pillens) been a leading critic of the University of Nebraskas so-called anti-racism and racial equity initiatives, Pillens campaign manager said in a press release. Nebraskans know where Jim stands, and theyve watched him take action to defend our values. Herbsters attacks are pure hogwash.

Spokespeople for the university system and UNL declined to offer any statements on particular claims.

Why has critical race theory played a prominent role in the Republican race for governor?

In the big picture, Randall Adkins, a political scientist at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, said social issues are often used as wedge issues that drive divisions between Republican candidates.

Primaries tend to be lower turnout, and in Nebraska its likely that the winner of the Republican primary will ultimately serve as governor.

The Herbster campaign is doing this because there are consultants telling them its going to work, Adkins said.

Unlike Herbster, Pillen has a voting record to point to since hes held elected office. Voting records are often used in campaigning, Adkins said, and historically theyre easy to misrepresent because the issues are complex.

This particular issue can be especially fraught.

From Trump to elected leaders in states from Virginia to Arizona, conservative politicians have condemned critical race theory, often in the broader context of education. Many Republicans view the concepts underlying critical race theory as an effort to rewrite American history and persuade White people that they are inherently racist.

Jeannette Jones, a UNL history and ethnic studies professor, told The World-Herald that critical race theory is being used as a straw man to basically oppose any discussion of the United States history and present as it deals with the history of race and racism, gender, gender identity, sexism, sexuality and other issues.

The idea that it came into the university in 2014 is untrue, she said. Theyre conflating critical race theory as an approach, she said, with any kind of approach that looks critically at race.

Richard Moberly, dean of the University of Nebraska College of Law, testified against the anti-CRT bill recently on behalf of the University of Nebraska system. Among objections, his written testimony states that it undermines constitutional and educational values by prohibiting speech related to certain ideas  ideas that deserve more discussion and debate rather than less. If the Legislature passed a bill to ban ideas and speech protected by the First Amendment, he wrote, it would likely be overturned in court.

Regardless of who wins the governors race, its unclear what, if anything, the next governor would plan to do to address the perceived issue.

As governor, there will be zero critical race theory in this state. Period, Herbster said at the recent VFW campaign event, to applause. People say, Well, how you gonna do that? I dont know, Ill figure it out. I will get it done, OK?

This report includes material from the Associated Press.

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A woman whose late husband was an influential state senator has filed to run for the Nebraska State Board of Education, ensuring contested races in all four board seats up for election this year.

Helen Raikes, a retired professor of education from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and registered independent, filed to run for the seat held by Kirk Penner, the governors outspoken appointee to the board.

Raikes husband, Ron, served in the Legislature from 1997 to 2009, including eight years as chair of the Education Committee. He died in a farming accident in 2009.

Helen Raikes, who described herself as a moderate, said voters need choices.

I think in our democracy its really important that we have opponents for major jobs, she said. And so I think we always need at least two candidates because we need to stimulate the dialog. That is the basis for our system.

Penner, a Republican and former Aurora school board member representing District 5 on the state board, is one of four candidates endorsed by the Protect Nebraska Children political action committee.

The committee formed in opposition to the controversial health education standards the board proposed last year.

Penner, who says hes for local control and parental engagement, said he and Raikes are polar opposites.

I really believe that District 5 is completely in line with my beliefs of public education, he said.

Penner and the others backed by the PAC  Sherry Jones, Elizabeth Tegtmeier and Marni Hodgen  have criticized the standards, which drew heavy public opposition before the board indefinitely postponed their development last September.

Jones and Danielle Helzer, both of Grand Island, are running in District 6, where incumbent Maureen Nickels declined to run again.

In District 7, Tegtmeier, of North Platte, and Pat Moore of Litchfield are challenging incumbent Robin Stevens of Gothenburg.

Three Omahans will compete in District 8, where incumbent Deborah Neary faces Hodgen and John Sieler.

Sue Greenwald, a leader of Protect Nebraska Children, said the candidates endorsed by her organization are pro-family, pro-local control and opposed to the woke agenda.

We have four candidates who have been in the battle against the overreach of the state board of education, the health standards being one of the ways theyve overreached, but only one, she said.

Jane Kleeb, chair of the Nebraska Democratic Party, said the Protect Nebraska Children coalition is a fundamentalist group that lobbies against LGBTQ families.

I dont care if you live in a rural community, suburban community or an urban community in our state, your kid will go to school with another child that has two moms or two dads, Kleeb said. And that is the reality of America. We should be embracing those kids, and loving them, no different than a child who has one mom, one dad, or a mom and a dad.

The initial draft of the standards contained language recognizing diverse family structures, gender identities and sexual orientations. Most of those references were stripped in a second draft, but the standards remained controversial.

Penner, appointed in December, attempted unsuccessfully to have the board permanently scrap the draft standards.

At a board meeting last month, he also read aloud sexually explicit passages from books found in some local school libraries, saying he wanted to alert parents and local education officials to inappropriate content

Asked if she would approve the standards as proposed, Raikes said she couldnt say for certain.

I think thats a little more specific than I could answer today because there are other things that are higher on my personal priority list, but I think I will always support local control and local decision-making about curriculum, Raikes said.

Raikes, who ran unsuccessfully for Nebraska Legislature in 2020, said her priorities would include working to ensure that rural schools provide quality, affordable early childhood education. She said she wants to ensure that kids have the opportunity to advance to college, community college and trades, and that rural schools have the ability to recruit and retain quality teachers and staff.

She said shes a longtime advocate for early childhood education.

Raikes lives in rural Ashland, on property adjoining the Raikes farm.

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Nebraska state veterinarian Roger Dudley said Thursday that hes very concerned at news that the high pathogenic avian flu has been discovered in a poultry flock in Pottawattamie County in Iowa.

The USDA on Wednesday announced that the virus had been found in a flock in Iowa and one in Connecticut.

Samples from the ill Iowa birds were examined by the Iowa State University Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory, which confirmed the virus. The Iowa location has been quarantined and birds there will be euthanized. (Similar actions were taken in Connecticut.) None of the meat from the birds will enter the food system, according to the USDA.

This form of bird flu is highly contagious and deadly among domestic birds, including chickens and turkeys. It is not as deadly to wild birds, according to the USDA.

The last time the extremely infectious and fatal pathogen reached Nebraska in 2015, 5 million chickens were killed or died in the state and 50 million nationwide.

It tells us our domestic poultry is being threatened, Dudley said of the outbreak just across the Missouri River.

The discovery prompted the Henry Doorly Zoo & Aquarium to indefinitely close its aviary and lock the rest of its birds indoors.

Dr. Sarah Woodhouse, director of animal health at Henry Doorly Zoo, instituted several changes there on Wednesday. The goal, she said, was to lessen the chances of the zoos birds becoming infected.

In a memo to zoo staff, Woodhouse said 45 birds from a backyard flock in Iowa had died from the virus. The flock, she said, was located about 20 miles east of Offutt Air Force Base.

This means that there are very likely HPAI-infected (avian flu) wild birds in our air space, and we need to take immediate action to prevent our birds from becoming infected, she wrote the staff in a memo.

The zoo has locked inside any birds with indoor pens, she said. Strict sanitation protocols also have been put in place. Staff is to wear special boots and sanitize them before stepping into a bird enclosure. Food and other treats are to be sanitized. And there is to be no interchange of tools, food or treats between bird enclosures. If one group of birds becomes ill, the zoo hopes to prevent the rest from becoming ill.

Woodhouse also advised that staff who have birds at home, especially chickens, consider keeping them inside.

Dudley, who works for the Nebraska Department of Agriculture, said chicken owners should take steps to protect their flocks. Keep poultry isolated from wild waterfowl and human visitors as much as possible.

Kathy Garvey, who lives south of Plattsmouth, is doing exactly that. She has 16 chickens and four ducks.

I dont want people walking in there with any kind of footwear that could be around any contaminated areas, she said. At this point, Im not planning on bringing in any new chicks, just because they would be that mild threat.

Sarah Jenkins, who has four chickens in South Omaha, said shell be creating an area to wash off her footwear so she doesnt track infected feces into her property.

Its deadly for chickens, she said. I think its scary.

Dudley said this is different from the low pathogenic avian flu that arrives annually and is based in North America.

This more deadly version began circulating in Europe and Asia about 18 months ago. It was first identified in the United States in some harvested wild birds on the east coast in January and has been moving west.

The virus is spreading with waterfowl during the migration, he said. The waterfowl get infected, but they dont get sick and die. So they continue to spread the virus.

He said the flu will continue to be a threat until the spring migration is over and then decline as long as it hasnt spread through the millions of chickens in Nebraska.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the risk to people getting HPAI infections from birds is low. No human cases of avian influenza viruses have been detected in the United States.

Omaha veterinarian Michael Bosilevac, a chicken expert, said the flu basically causes pneumonia. A chickens eyes will get swollen, and their combs and feet turn purple. Sometimes there are no symptoms and the first sign of the disease is that a hen may stop laying eggs.

They dont get enough oxygen and die, he said. We just get flocks completely wiped out.

Millions of chickens are also raised commercially in Nebraska, and Dudley said continuing to practice established biosecurity guidelines is crucial.

Just like a backyard producer, a car can drive over droppings and take it to their farm, Dudley said. Or they can go for a walk in the park and take it home on their shoes. The virus will stay on those surfaces for hours at a time.

Jenkins said people might think shes being too concerned about the flu, but she wants to keep her flock protected.

I dont want them to get sick because they are my kids, she said.

High pathogenic avian flu What is it? A high pathogenic flu carried by wild birds, especially migratory wildfowl. Why is it so dangerous? Its very contagious for chickens and other poultry and has a high mortality rate. What are symptoms? A decrease in water consumption; lack of energy and appetite; decreased egg production or soft-shelled, misshapen eggs; nasal discharge, coughing, sneezing; incoordination; and diarrhea. HPAI can also cause sudden death in birds even if they aren't showing any other symptoms. Some bids have purple combs and feet. Does it only affect chickens? No, it can also infect turkeys, ducks and geese How do you protect your flock? Restrict access to your property and poultry; wear clean clothes, scrub boots/shoes with disinfectant and wash hands thoroughly before and after contact with your flock; don't share equipment, tools, or other supplies with other livestock or poultry owners. Bird owners should prevent contact between their birds and wild birds, making sure wild birds cannot access domestic poultry's feed and water sources. What should you do if you find a dead or sick bird? Contact your veterinarian, the Nebraska Department of Agriculture at 1-800-831-0550 or 1-402-471-2351 or the USDA sick birdline, 1-800-536-7593.

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Marjie Ducey Marjie is a writer for The World-Heralds special sections and specialty publications, including Inspired Living Omaha, Wedding Essentials and Momaha Magazine. Follow her on Twitter @mduceyOWH. Phone: 402-444-1034. Follow Marjie Ducey 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
With Russian rockets pounding Ukrainian cities and President Vladimir Putin brandishing his plutonium saber, you just know the late-night coffee is brewing deep inside U.S. Strategic Commands glass tower at Offutt Air Force Base.

Adm. Charles Richard, StratComs commander and the keeper of the nations nuclear keys, implied as much in video-chat testimony to a House Armed Services subcommittee on Tuesday.

Due to the unfolding events over the weekend, Richard said, I felt it prudent to remain at my headquarters here in Omaha.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine is more than just the largest land war in Europe since 1945. It also presents the United States with the starkest threat of nuclear conflict since the end of the Cold War, and has thrust Nebraska-based StratCom into an unaccustomed spotlight.

The men and women of U.S. Strategic Command ... work night and day to deter threats like these, Nebraska Sen. Deb Fischer said this week in a speech on the Senate floor. Theres a reason their motto is Peace is Our Profession. 

Putin has compounded the risk with bare-fanged threats sure to make neck hair stand on end in both Omaha and D.C.

Todays Russia remains one of the most powerful nuclear states, Putin said last week. There should be no doubt for anyone that any potential aggressor will face defeat and ominous consequences should it directly attack our country.

He ratcheted up tensions another notch Sunday when he ordered Russias forces put on a special regime of high-alert combat during a strange meeting where he was photographed sitting at one end of a long conference table while his top military commanders gathered at the other.

So far, the U.S. hasnt responded in kind.

We know that the president has not placed U.S. nuclear forces on high alert, said Lana Obradovic, director of the University of Nebraska at Omahas Intelligence Community Center of Academic Excellence program. But I am certain StratCom is observing the situation and working around the clock.

In StratComs cubicles, teams of military and civilian planners earn their pay by envisioning catastrophic threats to the U.S. and its allies, and then drawing up plans to defuse them.

This is the kind of stuff that they work on  numerous reports written, thousands and thousands of hours of research, gaming out different scenarios that the president and his advisers could face, said Tyler White, director of the National Security Program at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. You dont want two nuclear powers going to war with each other.

The fear of just such a war animated StratComs predecessor at Offutt, the Strategic Air Command, for four decades during the Cold War as the U.S. and the USSR eyed each other with a hostile gaze.

In those days, nuclear-armed missiles and bombers stood poised to fire in both countries. Around the world, two generations grew up under the constant threat of nuclear annihilation.

The threat all but evaporated with the fall of the Iron Curtain and the breakup of the Soviet Union. In 1992 SAC, the nations Cold War guardian, stood down and was replaced by StratCom.

The new command took on new tasks including space, missile defense, intelligence collection and communications. But StratComs public profile faded with the prominence of its signature nuclear mission.

Suddenly, with Putins Ukraine incursion, Americans are experiencing a riveting, nuclear-tipped calamity that for many is a brand-new experience.

StratCom is one of the lesser-thought-about (military) commands, White said. Now it kind of takes center stage again because of this crisis.

The public may be paying attention to nuclear issues for the first time in a long while, but StratComs planners have never looked away.

The strategic deterrence mission is ongoing all the time, said Rick Evans, executive director of the University of Nebraskas National Strategic Research Institute, an academic alliance that conducts research for StratCom. These types of plans are very well-practiced. Were very proficient at that.

Evans has been in the room to see plenty of them. The retired Air Force major general served in top positions at StratCom near the end of his 35-year military career, including a stint as acting deputy commander. He retired in 2019.

Evans said he would be more worried about Putins nuclear noise-making if StratComs intelligence sources indicated he was taking concrete steps toward a nuclear strike, like loading bombs on aircraft or pulling weapons out of storage.

This is still a regional conflict, he said. We have the appropriate forces on status at the right time.

People may think StratComs strategic plans rest on massive retaliation  nuking adversaries to kingdom come. And they do have plans for Armageddon.

But Armageddon represents the failure of nuclear deterrence, Evans said. StratComs modern plans employ non-nuclear, and even non-military strategies to keep confrontations from escalating  like diplomacy, information warfare and economic sanctions.

All these instruments of national power are in play, he said.

And all of them are in use in Ukraine, including by Ukrainians themselves. Militarily they should be no match for the huge Russian army. But President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has united his own people behind him, and inspired NATO and the world to support his cause.

He has won the information war, White said. This is a space that Putin is used to winning. And he is being absolutely schooled.

The sympathy for Zelenskyy and his fellow Ukrainians has aided President Joe Bidens efforts to rally NATO support.

NATO has certainly demonstrated that it is more united, resilient and resolute than ever before, said Obradovic. The unintended consequence of the Russian aggression was that American leadership and NATO's renewed purpose have now led to an increase in defense spending and added credibility.

Obradovic, an associate professor of political science who has worked closely with StratCom, brings a unique personal perspective to a research portfolio that includes U.S. national security policymaking and post-communist transitions.

At age 16, she fled her home in the former Yugoslavia with her mother as the country collapsed in sectarian violence following the collapse of communist rule. She has witnessed the kind of indiscriminate targeting of civilians now taking place in Ukraine and experienced life as a refugee.

Coincidentally, Obradovic is on a sabbatical in Sarajevo, in her former homeland, recruiting young Bosnian students for a summer program at UNO. In the 1990s, Sarajevo became the battered symbol of the Bosnian war during a four-year siege that killed nearly 14,000 people.

Sarajevens have marched in support of the Ukrainian people, Obradovic said, and feel a special bond to them in their suffering.

They know a lot about war, perseverance and defiance, which is why so many are horrified by the events in Ukraine, she said in an email. The hope is that the world has learned its lessons since Bosnia, that democratic nations will protect international norms and rules, and prevent atrocities and attacks  particularly those aimed at the civilian population from happening again.

Putin has certainly endured setbacks, with his military bogged down in Ukraine, the world nearly united in its disapproval, international sanctions already crippling Russias economy and protesters marching in the streets of his own country.

Ukraines efforts to frustrate the invasion have surpassed expectations, White said. He has to feel isolated internationally, and he probably feels isolated internally. His biggest fear is a popular uprising.

The growing fear is that, feeling cornered, Putin might unsheathe his nuclear sword. Would he really do it?

Thats an important question that energizes everybodys minds, said Christopher Yeaw, NSRIs associate executive director for strategic deterrence and nuclear programs. In Putins current state of mind, he is certainly leaning forward.

In the nuclear realm, Yeaw said, Putin has a large number of low-yield tactical or battlefield atomic weapons. These are small enough to level a few city blocks, perhaps killing dozens or hundreds of people, instead of destroying an entire city, and killing tens of thousands.

Of course, they would still burn and maim and poison, just on a smaller scale.

These are nuclear warheads that blur the line between conventional and nuclear, Yeaw said. They could take out an entire air base with one strike.

The U.S. and the USSR both stored up large caches of these baby nukes during the Cold War, expecting they might use them should the two sides clash in a European ground war.

Battlefield nuclear weapons werent covered by any of the post-Cold War arms agreements. The U.S. got rid of its weapons, seeing no further need for them.

For a time Russia did, too, Yeaw said. But by the 1990s it stopped, after seeing the U.S. become involved in conflicts with Russian allies in the Balkans.

The Russians made promises that went away, Yeaw said. The U.S. is outmatched in the European theater probably 20-to-1. In the Pacific theater, we dont have any.

Yeaw helped to write the Pentagons 2018 Nuclear Posture Review, which provided for the addition of two new types of tactical nuclear weapons in the U.S. arsenal: the W-76-2 Trident submarine warhead, which was deployed in 2020, and the Sea-Launched Cruise Missile, which is still on the drawing board.

The W-76-2 is about 5 to 7 kilotons  less than 10% as powerful as the W-76 Trident missile it is derived from, and less than half the strength of the bomb that leveled Hiroshima, Japan, at the end of World War II.

Battlefield nuclear weapons are opposed by arms-control advocates, who believe their lesser firepower compared with larger city-killing weapons might tempt a cornered, desperate leader to use them. Doing so would clearly cross a red line.

Any use of nuclear weapons is going to have strategic implications, Evans said. If you actually use one of these things, if you break the seal, it opens you up to a whole different variety of outcomes.

So  would Putin really use one?

Thats the $60 million question, Yeaw said.

The United States is trying to stay out of a direct confrontation with Russia. Its not clear how Biden would respond if Putin detonates a battlefield nuke in Ukraine.

How do you deal with a country that is willing to use nuclear weapons, in a war that youre not in? White said. Its hard to believe theres going to be no response.

Part of Yeaws job since joining NSRI is to prepare war games for StratCom planners to play, simulating real-life situations.

In 2019, his team created one and blandly named it the Limited Nuclear Employment War Game. It plays out a conflict between NATO and Russia over Russian expansionism in Ukraine.

He has played it a number of times. So have planners at StratCom.

Yeaw doesnt want to say exactly how it ends.

What could happen is the whole realm of scary possibilities, he said. Once you start down the path of war, things take on a life of their own.

Hes been thinking about that game in recent weeks.

I hope I dont watch it on TV, Yeaw said.

One of the key points in any StratCom plan to avert war is to give the adversary a face-saving way to back out, said Michelle Black, deterrence researcher and assistant professor of political science at NSRI.

She, too, has been in the room. Her tour in the Army from 2001-05 included deployments to Iraq, Kuwait and Qatar as a psychological operations specialist. She worked seven years at StratCom in a civilian post as an adversary deterrence analyst. She worked there when Putin seized Crimea in 2014.

Since Crimea, (Ukraine) has been a target of attention. Understanding how things could escalate has been a priority, Black said. I would have confidence in saying that a portion of this has been planned out.

She sees Putin as a rational actor.

Putins a strategist. He has smart people around him, she said. Maybe Putin's not ready for an off-ramp yet."

Yeaws concern is what happens if NATO corners Putin so effectively that the off-ramps are gone.

Theres a cornered bear thats still trying to lash out, Yeaw said. I wouldnt want to be in front of the bears paw.

In his testimony this week, StratComs Adm. Richard worked to reassure jittery members of Congress.

Please make no mistake, he said, StratComs forces are ready.

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BLOOMINGTON  More than 50 woman-owned businesses have made Bloomington's central business district their home.

In celebration of Women's History Month, which is recognized in March, downtown Bloomington is honoring female entrepreneurs during its First Friday event this weekend.

But, to some business owners, being a woman in business is about more than breaking the glass ceiling. It's about coming together to make downtown Bloomington a destination for arts, culture, food and shopping.

For Melissa Sorensen, a local real estate agent, opening her own business was akin to achieving the American Dream. It was a goal she had set for herself at a young age, and when the opportunity to take over Merlot and a Masterpiece arose, she jumped at the chance.

"I loved what Merlot offered to the community and I thought it was such a fun place that I didn't want to see it go," said Sorensen, who took ownership of the paint-and-sip workshop in January 2020.

Merlot and a Masterpiece, 412 N. Main St., had been open in downtown Bloomington since 2010. But shortly after Sorensen took the reins, the COVID-19 pandemic hit, and the business closed for seven months.

"I had to get crafty and figure out a way to, No. 1, survive as a business, and No. 2, find a way to still connect with the community," said Sorensen.

As part of the downtown business community, Sorensen had tons of support from other business owners during that time.

"Our community in general, I'm very proud of what we have done here," Sorensen said. "There are a lot of female-owned businesses and we're very supportive of each other."

She added, "In general, I feel like women have to work a little bit harder and try a little bit harder, and we have less room to make mistakes."

'It's just very vibrant'

The upcoming First Friday event in downtown Bloomington is all about celebrating and empowering the women who make up the city's central business district. During the event, visitors are encouraged to support the more than 50 female-owned businesses downtown, which will be offering a variety of deals.

There are very few downtowns or districts like ours that could say they have over 50 (female-owned businesses), and that's just an estimate, said Samantha Mlot, downtown Bloomington development specialist. Its just astonishing to sit back and see how supportive the community is of small businesses, and not just that, but small businesses that are female- or minority-owned.

She added that the number of female-owned businesses downtown has "created this unique atmosphere where its just very vibrant, very electric."

The event kicks off at 5 p.m. Friday and lasts until 8 p.m.

During the celebration, people can also stop by the McLean County Museum of History to hear from representatives with Women Build of Habitat for Humanity, Dreams are Possible, Labyrinth Made Goods and the ExtraOrdinary Women Project.

The museum has installed a Women's History Month banner designed by Rachel Lapp Whitt, a local graphic design artist. It will be on display in the museum through the end of March.

Several women who helped shape McLean County history are featured on the banner: trapeze artist Antoinette Concello; McLean County "foremothers" Fannie Walker Duff and Hester Vernon Fell; civil rights activist Sister Mary Antona Ebo; politician Florence Fifer Bohrer; physician Dr. Louise Crothers; teacher and school superintendent Sarah Raymond Fitzwilliam; and playwright Rachel Crothers.

There is also a range of "contemporary" women featured on the banner, celebrating a number of professions and backgrounds.

"Women who are business owners and entrepreneurs, those who serve as elected officials and essential workers within governmental organizations who literally hold up our democratic institutions, those who contribute to the cultural and creative life of our area as well as to the economy, those who lead nonprofit organizations that are so enmeshed in the life of Bloomington that we can't imagine our community without them," Lapp Whitt told The Pantagraph.

She added, "Some of those roles are visible, easily recognizable, and some are not; some are compensated and some are not. It's also important to me to show how today's empowered women, today's leaders, can also empower other women and girls who are seeing what's possible for their own lives."

'They can achieve anything'

Similar to Sorensen, Elizabeth Aspbury purchased Bobzbay bookstore, 419 N. Main St. in Bloomington, in 2015 after working at the shop for six years. Since taking over, Aspbury has changed the store significantly to focus primarily on selling books.

For her, being part of the downtown Bloomington business community is a source of pride. Since joining the community 12 years ago, she has witnessed a multitude of changes.

And, being able to join the city in highlighting female entrepreneurs on Friday night is a great way to show young women that they can achieve anything they put their minds to.

"I think its important because it shows folks that they can achieve anything they dream of," said Aspbury. "Seeing proof of women who have been successful is definitely a push in the right direction when Im feeling burnt out."

IF YOU GO What: March First Friday: Celebrating Female Entrepreneurs When: 5-8 p.m. Friday, March 4 Where: More than 50 businesses in downtown Bloomington will have special deals, and the McLean County Museum of History will display a Women's History Month banner and host community groups by and for women.

Contact Sierra Henry at 309-820-3234. Follow her on Twitter: @pg_sierrahenry.

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An escalation seems very likely, given Russias apparently stalled invasion as it faces what seems to be more Ukrainian resistance than it expected, said Sherri Replogle, instructional assistant professor in politics and government at Illinois State University. Early signs of restraint from the Russians surprised her, but she doubts it will last.

I expect (an escalation) to happen in the next week () I expect it to be a lot bloodier, she said.

Illinois Wesleyan University political science chair William Munro shared similar forebodings, saying Russian President Vladimir Putin would be looking for a way to argue that he had achieved his goals with the invasion.

That would mean a massive escalation of the war and the costs, and its going to be awful, Munro said.

Normal West High School social studies teacher Glen Petersen served as an American adviser and trainer for the Ukrainian military from June 2020 to May 2021. He retired from the Illinois Army National Guard as a colonel in September of last year.

"It's just really inspiring how hard they have fought," he said. "(...) their spirit has not surprised me at all."

A team from his unit trained Ukrainian soldiers in using the Javelin system, which is a handheld anti-tank and armored vehicle missile.

The Russian invasion has included thousands of armored vehicles, so Petersen doubts the Ukrainian army has enough Javelin systems to make a big enough dent. Javelin systems also do not work against artillery placements, something Russia has been using to shell major cities in Ukraine.

"An artillery system is 20 miles away; you can't do anything to it," Petersen said.

He predicted it would be be a while before Ukraine is beaten, but given Russian numbers and Ukrainian casualties and deteriorating equipment, it seems inevitable unless something outside the country changes, he said.

"The sheer magnitude and numbers are in Russia's favor," Petersen said.

One of Replogles research interests is civilians in war. She had already been watching Russian aggression toward civilians in Syria, where Russia has been supporting the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad in a civil war since 2015.

The siege sort of warfare can be really brutal for civilians, she said.

Petersen is still in contact with one of the linguists he met in Ukraine, whose company moved linguists from western Ukraine to Poland to help translate for refugees. It took them four attempts to find a way to the border, and once they did, it took them 17 hours to make it the 30 miles to the border.

Even people far from the conflict zones have had their lives upended, Petersen said.

"People's lives are just completely wrecked. Even if you're not facing an artillery barrage, your life is wrecked," he said.

The invasion will also dramatically change perceptions of the international order and international law, Replogle and Munro said.

When you have a powerful state that is no longer going to play by those rules, thats a game changer, Replogle said.

Russias actions raises challenges to the existing international order, Munro said, but in many ways the world has responded more strongly than Putin seemed to expect. The International Criminal Court has opened up an investigation into Russias invasion, which could make life difficult for some Russian elites, though likely not Putin himself.

Putins past successes in Georgia, Chechnya and Crimea seem to have emboldened him, Munro said.

Petersen, too, condemned Russian's behavior during the invasion of Ukraine.

"To see how the Russians are conducting themselves, it's just appalling," he said.

The blatant disregard of international norms, or even laws, could further embolden China in regards to Taiwan, which mainland China considers a breakaway province, Replogle said.

However, the Chinese government also values and benefits from stability due to its global economic ties, she said.

The invasion has come up in both Munros and Replogles classes this semester. Munro is teaching a course on human rights, in which he showed the class a speech from the Ukrainian ambassador to the United Nations given last week condemning the invasion.

The invasion will come up again later this term when the class talks about refugees, Munro said. The flow of refugees out of Ukraine, which has now topped 1 million people, will be a challenge for the rest of Europe, as the European Union already faces internal disagreement about how to handle migrants from Africa and the Middle East.

This is going to be a huge, huge impact on the European Union, Munro said.

He also has a class on international courts, which will be following the case against Russia at the International Criminal Court.

Replogle is teaching a course on international conflict and security. The invasion will have a lasting impact on that course, and the world, she said.

Its never going to be the same, she said.

Contact Connor Wood at (309)820-3240. Follow Connor on Twitter: @connorkwood

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Former Illinois Speaker Michael Madigan departs from his lawyers' office, March 9, 2022, after making his first virtual court appearance for his indictment. (Brian Cassella / Chicago Tribune)

The swagger that Illinois Democrats have displayed since taking full control of Springfield three years ago had already been tamped down by the political realities of confronting crime and COVID when corruption reared up as one more daunting campaign issue heading into this years elections.

The federal charges filed Wednesday against former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, long the states most powerful politician and the man who set agendas for the Democrats and the state for decades, represent a staggering indictment of Springfields political and power culture, even though Madigan was dethroned more than a year ago.

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Don Tracy, the state Republican chairman, left little doubt about the role Madigan will play up and down this election years ballot.

The Illinois Republican Party is committed to exposing and defeating every last Democrat still around that accepted Madigans money, voted Madigans way or defended him as the leader of their party. The list of those needing to be held accountable for what happened is long and it starts with Gov. J.B. Pritzker, Tracy said.

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Illinois GOP Chairman Don Tracy speaks at Republican Day at the Illinois State Fair in Springfield on Aug. 19, 2021. (E. Jason Wambsgans / Chicago Tribune)

The 106-page indictment, alleging Madigan and his allies used his powerful political position to enrich himself, his close confidants and loyal staffers, was even more stunning in scope than the 2008 arrest and indictment of disgraced former Democratic Gov. Rod Blagojevich  in part because Madigan had always fostered a belief that he was smart enough to know how to stop before lines of illegality were crossed.

Madigan denied any wrongdoing following the federal charges, just as he has since a federal investigation in 2020 resulted in Commonwealth Edison agreeing to pay a $200 million fine for allegedly providing favors to Madigan allies in exchange for favorable consideration of the utilitys desired legislation.

It was the ComEd investigation that led Democrats to oust Madigan from his post as the nations longest-serving House speaker last year as they sought to usher in talk of a new day for party leadership in the statehouse.

Republicans have tried to use Madigan to target Democrats for years with little success. Now, his indictment provides the GOP an opportunity to resurrect the former speaker as the states political boogeyman and the face of Democratic corruption.

[ The Michael Madigan corruption case has a familiar lesson for Illinois politics ]

Within hours of the 22-count corruption indictment being announced, not only did Republican candidates for governor, other statewide offices and the General Assembly use it as an attack point on Democrats, even GOP contenders seeking federal office, far outside the sphere of Springfield, jumped on the bandwagon, among them U.S. Reps. Rodney Davis of Taylorville and Darin LaHood of Peoria.

Starting with Gov. J.B. Pritzker, Madigans allies in the Illinois Democrat Party will have to answer for why they enabled this corruption for so long that contributed greatly to our states challenges, LaHood said in a statement.

Pat Brady, a former state GOP chair who launched a Fire Madigan program more than a decade ago, said Madigans indictment will create a perception shift among voters.

Politically, you can talk about someone getting indicted. But after it comes down, theres a big difference. This is an exclamation point. Now, its not just something that the Republicans are saying. Now the headlines are, Madigan Inc., Madigan Enterprise. Thats how Springfield ran, said Brady, who is working for Gary Rabine, one of five potential Republican challengers to Pritzker.

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After Madigan resigned from the legislature in February of last year, Pritzker issued a statement saying the people of Illinois have much to be grateful for thanks to his dedicated public service and the many sacrifices he and his family made to make a difference in our lives.

But on Wednesday, Pritzker issued a statement calling Madigans alleged conduct deplorable and a stark violation of the publics trust and said Madigan must be held accountable to the fullest extent of the law.

Former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan speaks to reporters after a meeting where his replacement, Angie Guerrero-Cuellar, was chosen as the new state representative, on Feb. 25, 2021. (Brian Cassella / Chicago Tribune)

At the same time, a top Pritzker aide acknowledged that the governor spoke to federal agents about Madigan for an hour, but was only a witness.

The indictment notes Madigan said he would seek a high-paying state board job from Pritzker for former Ald. Danny Solis, now a government informant. U.S. Attorney John Lausch said there is no allegation in this indictment against the governor or his staff or that the job was ever awarded.

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Democratic lawmakers quickly sought to tout how they deposed Madigan and replaced him with the states first Black speaker, Emanuel Chris Welch. Nineteen House Democrats who opposed Madigans renomination to lead the chamber put out a statement saying they knew that our chamber, our state, and our party deserved better leadership and the unfolding corruption scandal would only continue to erode public confidence.

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The group called the indictment is a watershed moment for our state.

But Madigans indictment follows a slew of recent federal corruption charges against Democratic state lawmakers. Just last month state Sen. Tom Cullerton of Villa Park resigned after entering a plea deal in a federal ghost payroll case.

In addition to state legislators, longtime Ald. Edward Burke faces trial on corruption charges, while last month former Ald. Patrick Daley Thompson, grandson of the late Mayor Richard J. Daley, was convicted on federal tax charges, becoming the 37th alderman to be found guilty of federal crimes since the early 1970s.

Some Democrats, privately and perhaps optimistically, said they believed Madigans legal troubles would have little influence on an electorate that has already made up their minds one way or another after years of Republican efforts to tarnish the former speaker.

It would be my guess the electorate at large doesnt care, emotionally, by the time the election rolls around in November, said one veteran Democratic lawmaker who asked not to be named because he was not authorized to speak publicly about internal caucus discussions. Hes been demonized so much already, with Republicans saying hes corrupt. Theyve been saying that for years, and I dont think (the indictment) is going to change peoples minds.

Still, the lawmaker acknowledged, Theres no doubt it adds another weight as were treading water. It adds another weight. But I dont think its as big as the crime issue.

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Addressing crime has indeed dominated many early GOP campaigns. Republicans have seized upon sweeping criminal justice changes passed by Democrats and approved by Pritzker to blame the party for recent outbreaks of violent crime  even though crime has risen in many places nationally and major elements of the new measure, such as cashless bail, have yet to go into effect.

The other side is using crime as a bludgeon for the next election, said a longtime Democrat who was not authorized to speak for the House majority, and theres a political reality that people want to address crime.

The issue provides inroads to swing suburban districts that had once been reliable Republican territory but have changed demographically and ideologically in favor of Democrats in recent years.

But an internal poll conducted for Senate Democrats indicated that crime falls below taxes and other concerns among suburban voters, according to a senator who was not authorized to speak about internal caucus discussions. Only in Chicago was crime a top issue, the legislator said, in part because random gun violence being seen in parts of the city that have long been relatively unscathed by violence.

To counter Republican attacks, Democratic legislators are looking to take up issues in Springfield this spring that include carjacking, smash-and-grab retail theft and ghost guns, which can be manufactured from home kits without serial numbers or other ways to trace them.

Theres also an effort to provide increased funding for state and local police to both attract and retain officers after retirements of police hired with an influx of federal dollars in the mid-1990s.

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As for the response to COVID, the other main line of Republican attack, Pritzker got an assist when the Centers for Disease Control and Preventions guidance belatedly backed his decision to drop the statewide mask mandate at the end of February.

Republicans had sought to use court rulings over the school mask mandate to bolster their attacks on Pritzkers power during the pandemic, while Democratic legislators had been content to let Pritzker use his authority for pandemic mitigation efforts, allowing them to escape any public criticism.

But with heated debates over school masking policies pushed by Republicans and their allies elevating the political stakes, particularly in the suburbs, Democrats have also grown weary of the mitigation policies. Even an effort to remove some protesting anti-mask Republicans from the House floor for violating its mask rules found some Democrats defecting.

If a new and dangerous variant emerges and theres another coronavirus surge, Pritzker could turn to the legislature for new mandates to forestall any future court challenges But Democrats would be eager to avoid doing anything to reimpose any of the mandates Pritzker ordered during the first two years of the pandemic.

Any further action we take on COVID at this point will be in conjunction to if theres another surge running that will be significant like omicron or delta, the lawmaker said. But I think right now, the will of the General Assembly is like, this things going away, let it go away.

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BLOOMINGTON  Another convoy of truckers heralding messages of freedom is set to pass through the Twin Cities on Saturday.

Statements and images posted this week to the "Freedom Illinois" page on Facebook show The American Freedom Convoy's Saturday route extending from Rockford to Indianapolis, by way of Bloomington via Interstate 39. The fleet  originating from Minot, North Dakota  is expected to arrive by 11 a.m. Saturday in South Beloit at the interchange for I-90 and I-39, later convening with two other conveys at 2 p.m. in Oglesby.

The groups of truckers and other vehicles will then cruise under the overpass for Exit 8 on I-39, just south of Kappa on East County Road 2500 North. Supporters plan to meet at that bridge at 2 p.m. and cheer on the convoy that will make its pass between 2:30 and 3:30 p.m. Saturday.

The trucks will then navigate east on Interstate 74, reaching Oakwood by 4 p.m. and stopping for the night in Spiceland, Indiana. The convoy's final destination is Maryland.

The event follows five days after a similar convoy rolled through LeRoy. The Pantagraph reported around 100 people appeared at the Shell gas station on Tuesday in support of the caravan, which was expected to link with The People's Convey that left Southern California last week for Washington, D.C.

The People's Convey published demands on its website for the immediate lifting of national COVID-19 emergency rules. Several people told The Pantagraph on Tuesday in LeRoy that workers shouldn't be forced to get vaccinated by threat of employment termination.

The convoy also comes at a time when the national average price for gas has surged 29 cents since Russia's invasion of Ukraine, according to a Friday report published by CNN, and the rate of diesel is now up to $4.26 per gallon.

Contact Brendan Denison at (309) 820-3238. Follow Brendan Denison on Twitter: @BrendanDenison

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BLOOMINGTON  One week after a Bloomington man was found guilty of murder, area law enforcement agency leaders reflected on the years of investigative work that followed a violent 2018 in the Twin Cities.

The Normal Police Department, the Bloomington Police Department, the McLean County sheriff's and state's attorney's offices, and the Illinois State University Police Department released a joint statement Thursday recognizing that guilty verdicts have been made in all 2018 homicide cases.

The officials applauded investigators for their thousands of hours of work on the cases, and described those efforts as historic. They also thanked the witnesses who stepped forward to provide information to detectives on these crimes.

The Pantagraph has followed eight court cases prosecuting a total of 11 homicides occurring that year. Two were counted as mass-shooting incidents, and another two were stabbing deaths.

Most recently, on Thursday, Feb. 24, Jordyn H. Thorton, 22, was convicted of the first-degree murder of Trevonte Kirkwood, 27. He faces 20 to 60 years in prison for fatally shooting Kirkwood on Oct. 30, 2018, in Bloomington.

On Oct. 16, 2021, Sydney Mays Jr., 25, was punished with three life sentences for the murders of Nate Pena and Corey Jackson, both 22, and Juan Carlos Perez, 33, on June 18, 2018, at a Bloomington apartment. Mays was found guilty in February 2021.

Other accused persons found guilty in 2018 homicide cases include:

Monroe Elbert, sentenced in summer 2019 to 34 years in prison for stabbing his 30-year-old wife to death and breaking his stepson's leg on Feb. 5, 2018, in Bloomington.

Christopher Harrison, sentenced in fall 2020 to 31 years in prison for the slayings of 20-year-old Joseph Gardner and 19-year-old Reginald Hart Jr. on April 25, 2018, in Normal.

Hammet D. Brown, sentenced in August 2021 to life in prison for shooting Taneshiea Brown, 20, and Steven Alexander Jr., 18, to death on June 10, 2018, in Bloomington.

Leila Jackson, sentenced in fall 2020 to 23 years in prison for the deadly stabbing of 24-year-old Quantez Brown on July 17, 2018, in Bloomington.

Tyjuan Bruce, sentenced in December 2020 to 45 years in prison for his involvement in the murder and robbery of 20-year-old Egerton Dover on Dec. 5, 2018, in Bloomington. In a separate trial in fall 2020, Anthony Grampsas was sentenced to 45 years in prison for his role in Dover's death. A third suspect in the case, 18-year-old Curtis Hairston, died in a 2019 shooting in Decatur.

McLean County States Attorney Don Knapp told The Pantagraph on Thursday that his office was involved in all of those cases, adding it was an incredibly busy time for his prosecution team. He also said 2018 was a career high for homicide cases as far back as any local law enforcement partners can remember.

Knapp said his office handled three homicide cases in 2019, with only one added in 2020. He said 2021 was a "bad year," with seven cases added.

Knapp also pointed to extraordinary efforts by investigators, and witnesses who came forward with information.

Its just unbelievably impressive how hard our community works that these people are held accountable for these types of actions, he said.

Theres still more work to be done in the states attorneys office, Knapp continued.

I think any community should be proud thats how hard their law enforcement is going to work  and its an incredible amount of work they do."

Were around every time a trigger gets pulled and theres a homicide.

Contact Brendan Denison at (309) 820-3238. Follow Brendan Denison on Twitter: @BrendanDenison

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ATLANTA  A planned $5 billion electric vehicle plant that's billed as the largest economic development project in Georgia's history is drawing opposition from an unusual source: former Republican U.S. Sen. David Perdue.

Perdue  also a former corporate executive  is looking to unseat Georgia governor and fellow Republican Brian Kemp in this year's gubernatorial race. The campaigns have traded attacks on a range of issues in a contest spurred by former President Donald Trump following his election defeat in the state.

On Monday, Perdue ripped into Rivian Automotive's planned battery and assembly plant east of Atlanta, which Kemp was expected to tout on the campaign trail as a major achievement.

The Irvine, California-based electric vehicle manufacturer announced last year that it would build the facility at the Georgia site, where it expects to eventually employ more than 7,500 workers and produce up to 400,000 vehicles a year. State and local officials have yet to disclose the value of financial incentives they offered to lure the project, but the figure is expected to run into the hundreds of millions of dollars.

This bad deal is nothing more than a scheme by Kemp to promote himself in an election year at Georgians expense," Perdue said in a statement. Kemp thought he could get away with this under the guise of economic development, but all he is doing here is selling us out and lining George Soross pockets.

Soros  a billionaire investor and Democratic mega- donor  is a frequent target of right-wing conspiracy theories. He bought a large stake in Rivian recently.

Perdue planned to meet later Tuesday with local residents opposed to the project over concerns about traffic, loss of farmland, and other development issues. The plant is set to go up on a 2,000-acre (809-hectare) site in Morgan and Walton counties about 45 miles (72 kilometers) east of Atlanta along Interstate 20.

An email to Rivian was not immediately returned.

Kemp campaign spokesman Cody Hall called Perdue's criticism sad."

It is unfortunate that he's choosing to play politics with 7,500 jobs, $5 billion worth of investment in a local community  and in a rural community  that needs more jobs and more economic development, he said at a news conference on Tuesday.

Economic incentives to lure corporations are common, though they do face criticism, often from politicians on the left. The Rivian deal is facing opposition from the right, including Republican Congressional candidates from the area.

Perdue's criticism, additionally, comes despite a lengthy career in business that included stints as CEO of Reebok and two other companies. The Georgia Chamber of Commerce cited Perdue's outstanding record of defending free enterprise, creating jobs, and supporting small businesses during the COVID-19 crisis in its 2020 endorsement of his Senate reelection bid. Perdue went on to lose to Democrat Jon Ossoff in a runoff.

The chamber endorsed Kemp for governor before Perdue announced his candidacy. CEO Chris Clark said in a statement Monday about the Rivian project that recent efforts by candidates from both parties to criticize economic growth projects, local efforts or major sporting events for political gain are counterproductive and harmful to the long-term economic prosperity for our communities.

Perdue also accused Kemp of ignoring locals concerns" about the Rivian plant and "trying to cut them out of the process. The state recently agreed to take over the approval process for construction of the plant from local officials.

Hall said the site has long been marketed for industrial development, and the state had to keep some parts of its negotiations secret because of competition for the plant from other states. But Georgia economic development officials have made it clear that they are committed to hearing directly from local residents about their concerns, he said.

He said similar projects in the state in the past have had a positive impact, citing a Kia auto plant in West Point, Georgia as an example.

That's a generational project that changes lives for the better, he said.

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SPRINGFIELD  With thousands of teacher positions reportedly going unfilled in Illinois, lawmakers are targeting the issue with a variety of proposals.

Multiple bills aimed at addressing the states teacher shortage have passed the House and Senate in the past week, with some sparking partisan debate. The measures come amid a persistent problem with unfilled teacher positions, both in Illinois and nationwide.

A 2021 survey led by the Illinois Association of Regional Superintendents of Schools found that 88% of the responding 663 districts believed they had a teacher shortage problem, and 96% said they had a substitute teacher shortage problem. Districts reported that there were 2,040 open positions.

Solving the problem starts with framing it accurately, said state Sen. Cristina Pacione-Zayas, D-Chicago, who prefers the term teacher vacancy.

The term teacher shortage can simplify the root issues, Pacione-Zayas said. There are still many qualified educators in the state, but a lot of them have been pushed away by what she described as a lack of respect for their profession.

Just because you can't buy a Ferrari for 99 cents doesn't mean there's a Ferrari shortage, she said, referencing an article that helped shape her understanding of educator vacancies.

Pacione-Zayas introduced Senate Bill 3988, which would lower the age requirement for otherwise qualified applicants for paraprofessional school positions from 19 to 18.

While the one-year difference might not seem like a major change to some, Pacione-Zayas said lowering the age requirement could help address two problems  getting more employees in schools and getting more young people on the path to teaching careers sooner rather than later.

Pacione-Zayas said the education systems problems are chronic and need a mix of short- and long-term solutions.

The problems didn't happen overnight, so the solutions and the wins are not going to happen overnight, either, she said.

State Sen. Doris Turner, D-Springfield, has also backed bills aimed at increasing support in classrooms.

Turner introduced Senate Bill 3907, which would extend the number of consecutive days short-term substitute teachers could cover for one teacher from five to 15.

There is a great deal of uncertainty and fear in our schools, Turner said. I believe that this bill will help to calm those fears and show teachers, parents and students across the state that we are trying to send help their way.

Education has been top of mind for both chambers this session. Other bills passed in the Senate and heading to the House include Senate Bills 3915 and 3893, which would waive short-term substitute teaching license fees and increase the amount of days substitute teachers can teach, respectively.

Pacione-Zayas appears likely to pass in the House. It passed in the Senate with no opposition and was drafted with support from the State Board of Education.

Turners bill also made it through the Senate with bipartisan support and has backing from the Illinois Association of School Boards. Turner is confident it will pass the House before the legislative session ends in April.

But not all education bills are ripe for smooth passage. With Democrats in control of both legislative chambers, their measures are more likely to make it to a vote. A number of Republican-sponsored bills remain stuck in committee and are unlikely to make it out now that the Senates third reading deadline has passed.

State Sen. Terri Bryant, R-Murphysboro, filed Senate Bill 4180, which would require five new elected  not governor-appointed  members of the Illinois State Board of Education.

The bill was read once last week then referred to the Senate Assignments Committee, where it has remained since.

Republicans have good ideas on education, Bryant said, but are often sidelined in favor of Democratic bills.

Weve got the conversation going, Bryant said. Its difficult to get conversations going when your bills are not being called.

House members on Wednesday debated over a bill filed by State Rep. Sue Scherer, D-Decatur, that would issue tuition reimbursements for eligible Illinois public school teachers.

Despite Republican concern that the bill would benefit some wealthy individuals, the bill passed 70-42.

I don't understand why people are opposed to these things, said Scherer, a former teacher.

Pacione-Zayas said lawmakers must put partisanship aside and focus on input from teachers themselves.

The folks closest to the problem always have the best solutions, she said.

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At its core, the alleged bribery scheme involving ex-Speaker Michael Madigan and utility giant Commonwealth Edison is an alarmingly familiar lesson on how often-cozy relationships between business leaders and politicians can catch the attention of federal prosecutors.

Like so many federal corruption probes before it, the case is replete with powerful political characters, bit players, well-connected lobbyists and big-business clout.

Unlike the investigations that felled two consecutive Illinois governors  Operation Safe Road and Operation Board Games  the ComEd bribery investigation has no official nickname, but still it has reverberated across the states political landscape.

Then came something of a political earthquake on Wednesday, when federal prosecutors returned a grand jury indictment charging Madigan and longtime confidant Michael McClain with racketeering conspiracy alleging an array of corrupt endeavors, including the ComEd bribery scheme.

The 22-count indictment, which alleged Madigans elected office and political operation were a criminal enterprise that provided personal financial rewards for him and his associates, had been anticipated for more than a year and half amid reports of FBI raids and wiretaps involving some of Madigans most trusted associates.

The first big shoe dropped in July 2020, when ComEd admitted in court that it gave contracts, law business and jobs requiring little or no work to friends and political allies of Madigan in hopes that he would look favorably upon the companys Springfield agenda, which started scoring a string of big wins in the Illinois General Assembly in 2011.

Major indictments followed, including charges against, McClain, a former legislator and lobbyist, well as former Madigans former chief of staff, Democratic legislators, and ComEd executives, lobbyists, and consultants.

The far-reaching bribes-for-favors investigation, along with lingering fallout from multiple #MeToo outrages among his allies, eventually weakened the speakers once-unassailable political status and eventually cost him the top job in the House.

The 106-page indictment returned Wednesday, meanwhile, outlines new examples of how Madigan was allegedly aware of  and at times personally participated in  the ComEd scheme.

Among them, according to the charges, was a May 2018 phone call in which Madigan allegedly instructed McClain to talk to then-ComEd CEO Anne Pramaggiore about giving a lucrative consulting contract to retiring 23rd Ward Ald. Michael Zalewski, a longtime Madigan ally, as well as to go forward with the appointment of former McPier CEO Juan Ochoa to ComEds board.

Around the same time, Madigan also talked to McClain by phone about working to kill a 2018 bill in the House that would have imposed more restrictive requirements on retail electric suppliers, legislation that ComEd opposed, according to the indictment.

Defense lawyers have previously argued that there was no quid pro quo arrangement between Madigan and the utility and that actions described in the indictment were routine practice that falls well within the bounds of legal political horse-trading.

Madigans attorneys on Wednesday blasted the indictment as baseless.

Mr. Madigan vehemently rejects the notion that he was involved in criminal activity  before, during or after his long career as a public servant, attorneys Sheldon Zenner and Gil Soffer said in a statement. The governments overreach in charging him with these alleged crimes is groundless, and we intend to prevail in court.

But prosecutors had alleged that not only did the co-conspirators know what they were doing was illegal, it was enormously successful, with ComEd receiving at least $150 million in legislative benefits over the length of the scheme.

Over and over, the utility appeased Madigans requests  often mediated by McClain  ranging from Ochoas appointment to the ComEd board of directors to giving students in the speakers 13th Ward power base a hefty batch of internships each summer, according to prosecutors.

Meanwhile, ComEds legislative victories stacked up, including a massive smart-grid system designed to improve service and a formula rate making plan in 2011 that critics charged was too lucrative for the company.

In 2013, the legislature endorsed a trio of accounting techniques that helped ComEds bottom line despite opposition from the Illinois Commerce Commission. And in 2016, the company won support for a consumer subsidy for some of its nuclear power plants and the thousands of jobs that went with them.

But the companys alleged scheme began to unravel in 2019 with a series of FBI raids. ComEd agreed in July 2020 to pay a $200 million fine in a deferred prosecution agreement with the U.S. attorneys office that required them to cooperate for three years in exchange for bribery charges being dropped.

Two months later, ex-ComEd Vice President Fidel Marquez pleaded guilty to bribery and revealed hed been cooperating with the government, recording conversations with McClain and others along the way, court records show.

In November 2020, a federal grand jury brought an indictment against McClain, Pramaggiore, former lobbyist John Hooker, and Jay Doherty, the longtime head of the City Club of Chicago whod worked for years as a ComEd consultant.

Another longtime member of Madigans inner circle, Tim Mapes, ousted by the speaker in a 2018 sexual harassment controversy, was indicted in May 2020 on perjury and obstruction of justice charges over allegedly lying to a federal grand jury investigating the ongoing ComEd fallout. He has pleaded not guilty.

Two former Democratic Chicago lawmakers who later worked on ComEd matters, Rep. Eddie Acevedo and Sen. Annazette Collins, were indicted on tax counts that arose from the ComEd scandal.

Acevedo has pleaded guilty. Collins has pleaded not guilty.

A plethora of Madigan allies  and even some former political foes  have played cameos in the ComEd investigation but have not been charged.

They include clout-heavy attorney Victor Reyes of Reyes Kurson, who was allegedly hired by ComEd early in the scheme in an effort to please Madigan.

Also included were Madigans former 13th Ward Ald. Frank Olivo, and former Cook County Recorder of Deeds Ed Moody, a legendary door knocker in Madigans political operation. Documents have tied both of them to ComEd jobs.

Zalewski, who first turned up in the investigation when his house was raided in May 2019, wound up landing a consulting contract with ComEd that paid $5,000 a month, according to the charges.

And Ochoa, a onetime political nemesis of Madigan, was indeed appointed to ComEds board at the speakers request, a part-time position that paid $78,000 a year, according to the indictment.

At the center of the sprawling probe is McClain, a former House lawmaker from Quincy who served with Madigan in the 1970s and 1980s and then became a contract lobbyist for ComEd and many other top-shelf clients. The Tribune first reported the feds raided his house in Quincy in May 2019.

McClain often sat on a bench outside the speakers wooden doors of the speakers 3rd floor Capitol suite. He would hold court for former legislators and Madigan staffers who left state government to become lobbyists for companies that relished their connections with the man who ran the House for a nationwide record 36 years.

One of the speakers frequent dinner companions, McClain had Madigans ear and helped him with campaign strategy and political fund-raising. McClain even sent out fund-raising pitches to political friends that he called the most trusted of the trusted.

Before the November 2018 election, McClain pulled their names from a Magic Excel sheet filled with political pals and urge them to give to a secret project for House Democrats and HIMSELF, an affectionate Irish term he used to identify the speaker. That election gave the speaker his all-time biggest Democratic majority, a 74-44 political edge over Republicans.

McClain also created a firestorm when he rounded up current and former ComEd lobbyists to send more than $30,000 in checks to Kevin Quinn, a onetime Madigan worker ousted over his own sexual harassment allegations in 2018.

Bank records obtained by the Tribune showed they started cutting the checks to Quinn in September 2018, the same month Madigan wrote an op-ed in the Tribune vowing that he had made it a personal mission to take this issue head-on and correct past mistakes.

A Madigan spokeswoman said the speaker was not involved in the effort to help Quinn, who is the brother of 13th Ward Ald. Marty Quinn, Madigans field general.

Though not charged, Marty Quinn was identified in Wednesdays indictment as individual 13W-1, who, allegedly on Madigans direction, was paid more than a quarter of a million dollars by ComEd through Dohertys firm over a six-year period.

The Tribune would later learn that the feds had recorded McClains telephone conversations, though it was unclear how much interaction caught on the wire included the famously cautious Madigan.

Pramaggiore abruptly resigned in October 2020, less than a week after ComEd and parent company Exelon acknowledged they had received a second federal subpoena in the burgeoning probe.

Long viewed as a star in the corporate world, Pramaggiore left after having been elevated to CEO of Exelon Utilities. The indictment shocked business leaders.

When Pramaggiore first ascended to CEO of ComEd in 2009, the company elevated Hooker, the chief lobbyist, to executive vice president for legislative and external affairs.

Hooker lobbied the legislature for years, building relationships with lawmakers and spreading around ComEd goodies so frequently that, as one insider said, his arrival at the Capitol on session days was like a visit from Santa Claus.

After retiring from ComEd, Hooker remained in action for a while as a lobbyist subcontracted to work on ComEd issues for a lobbying group whose star is Michael Kasper, the onetime top House lawyer under the speaker and longtime attorney for the Illinois Democratic Party that Madigan.

In 2016, Hooker chaired a group that successfully sued to keep off the ballot a proposal to overhaul the once-a-decade process in which Illinois lawmakers redraw the district boundaries for legislators, a process that Madigan had used deftly to build up record Democratic majorities in the House and Senate.

It was the same year that Exelon first convinced the legislature to approve a financial package that helped save some of the companys nuclear plants and the jobs that went with them.

In addition to his indictment, Doherty made headlines as a result of the Tribune obtaining a series of emails to Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, telling her as the ComEd investigation was ramping up that ComEd duped him. I was an innocent bystander, he texted the mayor, saying he knew nothing about the utilitys alleged efforts to bribe then-Speaker Madigan.

The Mapes indictment is unusual because he was charged with perjury after he received immunity, an arrangement where he simply had to tell the truth to the prosecutions satisfaction.

Mapes spent decades as Madigans chief of staff, served as executive director of the Madigan-run Democratic Party of Illinois and later became clerk of the Illinois House, giving him a trio of positions all aimed at pushing the Madigan agenda.

Mapes allegedly lied to grand jurors when he said he had no knowledge that McClain had communicated with two unnamed state representatives in 2018 on behalf of Madigan. Sources identified the Democratic lawmakers as Rep. Bob Rita of Blue Island and former Rep. Lou Lang of Skokie. Neither of them have been charged in the case.

Since his ouster in 2018, Mapes has received more than $400,000 in pension payments.

READ THE INDICTMENT

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Corruption charges released Wednesday against former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan could haunt Democratic candidates running for office in southern Illinois this year and going forward, according to a downstate political analyst.

"It reinforces southern Illinois views and prejudices against Chicago and against Madigan, which are now five decades old," said John Jackson, a visiting professor at the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute in Carbondale. "Republicans are going to try to hang Madigan around the neck of every Democrat who runs for office."

A federal grand jury indicted Madigan, the longest serving state House speaker in American history, on 22 counts of racketeering and bribery charges in connection with an alleged scheme involving utility giant ComEd. The U.S. Attorney's Office of the Northern District of Illinois said Madigan took advantage of his political power to benefit himself and others.

Downstate Republicans pounced on the accusations, attempting to connect Democrats statewide to the former speaker.

"The people of Illinois have known for years that Madigan was corrupt to his core and that he used state government to benefit himself and his political machine," U.S. Rep. Rodney Davis said in a statement. "Governor J.B. Pritzker and Illinois Democrats refused to admit this truth publicly because they enabled Madigan's corruption, and some were complicit in it."

Illinois Democratic Party Chair state Rep. Robin Kelly of Matteson said Democrats statewide are focused on fighting "for the things all Democrats believe in, including raising wages, lowering costs, defending reproductive choice, protecting the environment, investing in our infrastructure, providing high quality education for all, and more."

"We will not let actions of the past distract us from our mission in 2022 and beyond," Kelly said.

Jesse Reising, a Republican candidate for the 13th Congressional District, said Illinois needs "to wipe our state clean of the stained legacy of the corrupt Madigan Machine."

"That starts with preventing the Madigan Machine's hand-picked candidate from being elected in Illinois' gerrymandered thirteenth congressional district," Reising said, referring to Democratic candidate Nikki Budzinski.

Budzinski said she hopes Madigan "is prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law."

"Corruption should be exposed and bad actors held accountable at every level of government," Budzinski said.

Pritzker sought to rebuke Madigan in a statement.

"Michael Madigan must be held accountable to the fullest extent of the law," Pritzker said. "Ultimately, every person in elected office is responsible for doing the right thing  and not lining their own pockets. I am fully committed to eradicate the scourge of corruption from our political system, and today's indictment is an important step in cleaning up Illinois."

Former Republican state Sen. Paul Schimpf of Waterloo, now a gubernatorial candidate, pushed back at the governor's response.

"No amount of revisionist history gives the Governor the right to clutch his pearls now," Schimpf said in a statement.

State Rep. Amy Elik, R-Fosterburg, said "it's time to write a new chapter that begins with stronger ethics reforms to root out corruption in state government." A Democratic candidate, former East Alton Mayor Joe Silkwood, has announced his plans to run for Elik's seat.

While there are unidentified individuals listed in the charging documents that outline Madigan's Chicago-centric alleged conspiracy, they're unlikely to have a southern Illinois connection, Jackson said.

"He didn't need southern Illinois to get done what he was doing," Jackson said.

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The city council on Monday approved spending $59,000 to install 10 of the high-tech devices, which automatically scan streets to pick up plate numbers. The data is then cross-referenced with law enforcement information about vehicles involved in crimes.

Plenty of cities have the technology, which the vendor says deters crime. Privacy advocates say the cameras are too intrusive and raise obvious concerns about overreach.

In the case of Bloomington, the city council in January was going to vote on installing the technology without discussion. That prompted the local American Civil Liberties Union to urge the council to reconsider, which they did. That was the appropriate call.

To its credit, the city then did have meetings to get public input. Bloomington police had a three-hour virtual question and answer session. And the Bloomington Public Safety and Review Board talked about the contract in a two-hour meeting.

There are still fundamental concerns about privacy and these cameras, but the police department promises to use the technology only for major crimes.

Not everyone will like the outcome of Monday nights council meeting, but the process is a lesson in the importance of getting public input. On decisions like this, the more feedback, the better.

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The Ashanti Regional Police Anti-Robbery Squad has arrested one and shot two others following a robbery incident that occurred on February 21, 2022.



The Anti-Robbery Squad during an intelligence-led operation on March 2, 2022, engaged a group of five robbers who had blocked the road from Abodom - Koniyaw, near Bekwai with wooden logs to rob some market women.



In a statement signed and released on March 2, 2022, by Director-General of public affairs of the police, DCOP Kwesi Ofori, the process of Police engagement with the robbers, led to the shooting of two and the arrest of one. The two others who managed to escape sustained gunshot wounds and are currently being pursued.



The service further urges residents of the surrounding communities and medical facilities to be on the lookout for suspicious persons and inform the police for further action.



According to the statement, "preliminary investigations establish that this gang of robbers on Monday, February 21, 2022, had blocked the road at Anwiankwanta and robbed passengers on board a Takoradi- Kumasi bound VIP bus. After subjecting the passengers to the harrowing experience, the robbers were reported to have then called on their victims to remember them in their prayers".



"Exhibits retrieved from the scene of Monday's events include a Mazda mini bus with registration number AK 179-19, face masks, cutlasses, three pump action guns all loaded with AAA live ammunitions and 30 spare AAA ammunitions", the statement 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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The government is ready to publish the report on the Appiatse disaster if the need be, the Minister of Lands and Natural Resources, Samuel Abu Jinapor, has stated.



Speaking in Parliament on Thursday, Mr Jinapor said it will be more useful to rather publish report on the Health and Safety Committee of Inquiry, which has a broader mandate and whose recommendations are geared towards reformation of the mining sector.



The government, he said, has nothing to hide and indicated that the two earlier reports will be of no use to the public, because they are technical reports generally covering the mining sector in Ghana.



Mr. Jinapor said this in response to an urgent question in Parliament on what the findings and recommendations of the Appiatse disaster reports are and whether the reports can be made public.



He indicated that following the disaster of January 20, 2022 when the truck transporting explosive materials exploded at Appiatse, the Minerals Commission as the regulator, conducted its investigations in accordance with the Minerals and Mining (Explosives) Regulations, 2012 (L.I. 2177), and submitted its report to the Ministry.



Given the complexity of the matter, I constituted a three-member Committee, chaired by a highly respected former Chief Executive Officer of the Minerals Commission, Mr. Benjamin Aryee, to carry out independent investigations to corroborate, or otherwise, the findings of the Minerals Commission.



On Tuesday, February 1, 2022, I received the report of the three-member Committee. Mr. Speaker, the two reports established certain regulatory breaches, on the part of Maxam in the manufacture, storage, and/or transportation of explosives, he said.



According to Mr. Jinapor, key among the breaches unearthed by the investigations include failure to ensure the transportation of explosives was managed by a certified explosives manager, contrary to regulation 6(2)(a) of Minerals and Mining (Explosives) Regulations, 2012 (L.I. 2177).



Maxam, he said, also failed to ensure that activities that involve explosives are carried out only by competent and certified persons, contrary to regulation 6(2)(b) of L.I. 2177; and also failed to ensure that the code of safe working practice developed for the transportation of explosives is followed, contrary to regulation 11(1) of the L.I. 2177 among others.



The Committee, he said, recommended among others that Maxam be sanctioned and also recommended the transportation of explosives be made safer by the installation of fire suppression systems in explosive vehicles, the use of two escort vehicles, one in front and one behind, the use of two police officers, one-armed and other unarmed, the use of sirens to alert road users, and a review of the entire health and safety regime of the mining industry.



A Health and Safety Committee of Inquiry, he said, has been established to review the entire health and safety regime of the mining industry, and make recommendations to the government, for legislative, policy and other reforms.



The Committee, he said, will be submitting its report to the Ministry soon and the necessary recommendations will be implemented to make the industry safer and better.







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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Dr. Freda Prempeh, the Member of Parliament (MP) for Tano North Constituency in the Ahafo Region has refuted media reports, alleging that she intends to manipulate the Constituency's album, ahead of the Polling Station elections.



"This is ungodly and I can't do that" the MP stated and described the said report as false, unfounded and unsubstantiated.



The "story is concocted to run me down, but there is no way my political foes within the NPP in the constituency can succeed", Dr. Prempeh added.



"What baffles me is that I have not been granted any interviews on Jewel FM as reported. This diabolism clearly indicates that my enemies are seriously at work, but God has been by my side all these years and I believe He would continue to stand by me if everybody rejects me", she said.



Dr. Prempeh, also a Minister of State in-charge of Works and Housing told Journalists at Duayaw-Nkwanta, that "internal enemies and traitors always tried to make you unpopular in the eyes of the people, if you stand for the truth. There is no way I can sacrifice the development of my people and go around sharing money, and this is what some people around don't like"



Politics, the MP explained, was purposely meant for development and to improve the socio-economic conditions of the people, saying "this is exactly what I have stood for years now and there is no way or nothing can sway my attention and focus from that".



Dr. Prempeh said the NPP remained a strong Party which prioritised and cherished internal democracy and advised some supporters of the Party to refrain from the "pull him down attitude" in the supreme interest of the Party.



"I think what we have to concentrate on doing much, is to sell the numerous achievements of President Akufo-Addo as well as the rich ideologies and philosophies of the NPP to make the Party more attractive and woo the voting masses for a landslide victory in Election 2024", she said.



Dr. Prempeh said she was not happy about the alleged irregularities that had characterised the Party's Polling Station Elections, and appealed to all disgruntled members and supporters to remain calm, and rather pass through the Partys laid down procedures to seek redress.



The MP said she was hopeful her constituents would give her another opportunity to represent them in Parliament in Election 2024.



"I have not failed my constituents. I am always in touch with them. Just make time and come around and you will see the level of development in Tano North. Every community has in one way or the other benefited from two or three development projects. In fact I have worked and I believe the people would testify to that", Dr. Prempeh stated.

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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Tiffany Henyard smiles May 8, 2022, after being sworn in as mayor of Dolton. (Jeff Vorva/Daily Southtown)

Up against a midnight deadline with less than 15 minutes to spare, the Thornton Township Board Thursday appointed Dolton Mayor Tiffany Henyard to fill the late Frank Zuccarellis position as Thornton Township supervisor.

The action, at a meeting convened at 10:55 p.m., came after at least five other nominations failed and following two closed-door sessions by the board, that needed to appoint somebody before Friday or the decision would have been left to voters who attended a town hall-style meeting.

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This followed a Tuesday meeting when the board also had remained deadlocked, even after meeting, mostly in closed session for more than 3 hours, and that gathering was a continuation of a Feb. 22 meeting.

Township Trustee Gerald Jerry Jones, Township Assessor Cassandra Elston and Joyce Washington, who has been deputy supervisor, were among the people nominated Thursday who were unable to get the three votes needed to fill the job, or in some cases get a second to their nomination.

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At one point, Township Clerk Loretta Wells was needed to break a 2-2-tie. Washington and Jones had voted to appoint Jones; trustees Darlene Gray Everett and Christopher D. Gonzalez had voted no. Wells, too, voted no.

After no trustee received enough votes, nominations were made of other officials in the township before Henyard was nominated. After receiving enough votes, a surprised Henyard was immediately sworn in to meet the midnight deadline and complete Zuccarellis term, which runs through April 2025.

Zuccarelli, who died Jan. 3, had been township supervisor since 1993 and was paid an annual salary of about $250,000, which is more than Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkles salary or Gov. J.B. Pritzker.

The supervisor oversees 170 full- and part-time township employees and an annual budget of $35 million in 2019, according to the Illinois comptroller.

According to state statute, the township board had to fill the supervisor position within 60 days, or citizens could call a special township meeting. If at least 15 registered voters attend the meeting, any qualified person who receives the most votes is appointed.

Before the meeting, township attorney Stanley Kusper said there are different interpretations of the statute, such as whether the 60-day period includes the date of Zuccarellis death or starts the day after. Rather than risk a legal challenge or letting a group of voters decide at what likely would become a chaotic town hall meeting, Kusper advised the board complete the vote Thursday.

Less than a year ago, Henyard was elected the youngest mayor of Dolton and the first woman in that position, after serving eight years as a village trustee. She was sworn in as mayor in May 2021 and the subsequent months have not been smooth. In November, Henyard said her dream team had become a nightmare.

Daily Southtown Twice-weekly News updates from the south suburbs delivered every Monday and Wednesday >

A trustee has accused her of steamrolling her ideas through the village board.

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A special meeting in August was canceled at the last minute. Trustees held a meeting outside of Village Hall without the mayor.

Henyard also has been criticized for hiring a registered sex offender as a code enforcement officer. She admitted not having a background check performed was a mistake and said she created a background check policy to try to correct it. But she resisted the boards effort to make the policy retroactive to May.

In the fall, Henyard said she was trying to improve communication with the board members.

In December, the Dolton Village Board voted 5-1 to put a referendum on the June ballot to have her recalled. Henyard questions the legality of that proposition.

Thornton Township borders Indiana and includes all or parts of Burnham, Calumet City, Dixmoor, Dolton, East Hazel Crest, Harvey, Homewood, Lansing, Phoenix, Riverdale, South Holland and Thornton.

Kimberly Fornek is a freelance reporter for the Daily Southtown.
Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain

Amazon announced partnerships Thursday with 140 colleges and universitiesincluding nine in Floridato fully fund tuition and fees for employees.

Hourly employees who have worked for Amazon for at least 90 days are eligible for free tuition and fees every year they work at Amazon. Participating schools in Florida are the University of Florida Online, Florida International University, the University of Central Florida, Miami Dade College, Hillsborough Community College, Polk State College, Valencia College and Florida State College at Jacksonville.

"Tuition assistance programs like these are crucial in positioning students to succeed academically and professionally," said Theodorea Regina Berry, UCF vice provost of Student Learning and Academic Success and dean of the College of Undergraduate Studies, in a press release.

Joe Glover, provost and senior vice president for academic affairs at the University of Florida, said in a news release that the program will give people flexibility and added opportunities.

"By removing the barrier of cost, this partnership will give Floridians another avenue to advance their careers and prosper in a fast-growing workforce," he said.

Explore further Why community college students quit despite being almost finished

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The forked main spillway of the Oroville Dam following the 2017 Oroville Dam crisis. Credit: California Department of Water Resources/Picryl, Wikimedia Commons Public Domain

A one-two punch of precipitation resulted in damage to Oroville Dam's main and emergency spillways pushing the second largest dam in California into a crisis in February 2017. Researchers from Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego and colleagues say in a new study that they have identified the fingerprint of climate change in the events that triggered the incident. Issues with the dam's spillways led to the evacuation of 188,000 people who lived in the floodplain of the Feather River some 70 miles north of Sacramento, Calif.

Though officials narrowly averted a sudden release of water from behind the emergency spillway holding back the top-most portion of California's second largest reservoir, the incident demonstrates how difficult it is to balance water supply needs served by full dams with public safety that requires retaining sufficient empty space to capture floodwater. The consensus in climate science is that precipitation will become less frequent but more intense, increasing California's hydroclimate instability.

"We expect atmospheric rivers (ARs) to become more potent in a warming climate. We had previously assessed ARs and their evolving contribution to hydroclimate change over western North America. It was done in global climate model projections," said study co-author Alexander Gershunov, a climate scientist at Scripps Oceanography, "but this is the first study that quantified the influence of global warming on a specific, real, recent, and impactful atmospheric river event."

Researchers noted that in summer 2021, Oroville Lake's record low level prevented hydropower generation for the first time since the dam opened in 1968.

"Climate projections for California and the U.S. West Coast suggest fewer, yet more intense, precipitation events in the future," said study lead author Allison Michaelis, an assistant professor of meteorology at Northern Illinois University. "Such changes to the hydroclimate naturally come with heightened risks of both drought and flooding and potential for infrastructure damage."

The research taps into increasing knowledge of the weather phenomenon known as atmospheric rivers, which are potent flows of water vapor that provide California with up to half its annual water supply and account for more than 90 percent of the state's flood damages. Scripps Oceanography scientists at the Center for Western Weather and Water Extremes (CW3E) have led much of the work on atmospheric rivers, including the creation of the AR Scale. The scale categorizes atmospheric river storms in a spectrum between beneficial replenishing precipitation events and deluges that can cause widespread flooding.

Previous research led by Scripps Oceanography has suggested that as the climate continues to warm, the state and much of the rest of the West Coast will grow increasingly dependent on atmospheric rivers for their water supply making accurate prediction of these storms increasingly important. CW3E scientists are working to improve their ability to predict where and when atmospheric rivers will make landfall and how much rain, snow and runoff they will produce.

The California Department of Water Resources (DWR) AR Program, and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation funded the new study, which appears in the American Geophysical Union journal Earth's Future.

"The potential impacts of atmospheric rivers on water storage facilities were made clear by the 2017 Oroville Dam spillways incident," said DWR Director Karla Nemeth. "DWR has been working with partners like CW3E and others to enhance tools to better forecast, prepare for, and manage climate change-induced extreme conditions that impact California's water supply operations."

On Feb. 6, 2017, an atmospheric river storm made landfall in Northern California. An initial pulse of relatively cold precipitation dumped snow on an already unusually large snowpack. This was followed a couple of days later by a warm pulse that poured rain on top of the snow. While the second pulse produced a comparable amount of precipitation, it had the effect of melting the snow on the ground, contributing to the boost of inflow that the Oroville Dam had trouble containing.

Researchers led by Michaelis, previously a postdoctoral research scholar at CW3E, modeled the February 2017 event. The simulation indicated that human-induced warming caused an 11-percent increase in precipitation during the first pulse and a 15-percent increase in the second pulse. When the warming projected to take place was assessed, the researchers found that by the late 21st century, precipitation in the second pulse would have been enhanced by nearly 60 percent.

The first pulse, however, did not see as much of an increase in a much warmer climate. That two components of one atmospheric river event behave so differently in simulations suggests that although warmer air can hold more moisture making ARs more potent, not all ARs are similarly enhanced by warming, complicating weather prediction.

"We were surprised to see such different responses from the two pulses of this storm," Michaelis said. "The different relationships between warming temperatures and precipitation increases opens up interesting research questions that we're excited to explore with a larger sample of cases."

Besides Michaelis and Gershunov, study authors include Tamara Shulgina and F. Martin Ralph of Scripps Oceanography, Scripps alumna Meredith Fish, and Alexander Weyant, who contributed most of the data analysis to the study while an undergraduate math major at UC San Diego. Weyant has since joined Scripps Oceanography as a first-year Ph.D. student.

"I believe most students studying statistics in the math department would find it very exciting to join the research effort on weather events in the background of a nonstationary climate," said Weyant. "They need only be made aware of this puzzling problem, which straddles the divide between structure and randomness, as well as that of short and long timescales."

Explore further 'Rivers' in the sky likely to drench East Asia under climate change

More information: Allison C. Michaelis et al, Atmospheric river precipitation enhanced by climate change: A case study of the storm that contributed to California's Oroville Dam crisis, Earth's Future (2022). Allison C. Michaelis et al, Atmospheric river precipitation enhanced by climate change: A case study of the storm that contributed to California's Oroville Dam crisis,(2022). DOI: 10.1029/2021EF002537
The lake bed of the Wickiup Reservoir is exposed by drought conditions that left the reservoir at 1% capacity on Wednesday, Sept. 1, 2021, near La Pine, Ore. Climate scientists in the U.S. Pacific Northwest are warning that the region can expect even tougher drought conditions this summer than in the previous two years. Credit: AP Photo/Nathan Howard, File

Climate scientists in the U.S. Pacific Northwest warned Thursday that much of Oregon and parts of Idaho can expect even tougher drought conditions this summer than in the previous two years, which already featured dwindling reservoirs, explosive wildfires and deep cuts to agricultural irrigation.

At a news conference hosted by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, water and climate experts from Oregon, Washington and Idaho said parts of the region should prepare now for severe drought, wildfires and record-low stream flows that will hurt salmon and other fragile species.

Drought covers 74% of the Pacific Northwest and nearly 20% is in extreme or exceptional drought, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. An unusual ridge of high pressure off the U.S. West Coast scuttled storms in January and February that the region normally counts on to replenish water levels and build up a snowpack that feeds streams and rivers in later months, the experts said.

"This year we're doing quite a bit worse than we were last year at this time, so one of the points is to make everyone aware that we're going into some tough times in Oregon this summer," said Larry O'Neill, Oregon's state climatologist. "Right now, we're very worried about this region, about the adversity of impacts we're going to experience this year."

The predictions are in line with dire warnings about climate change-induced drought and extreme heat across the American West.

Justin Grant examines an artificial pond created by his agricultural well and used to water his cattle herd, Saturday, July 24, 2021, in Klamath Falls, Ore. After a water crisis last summer that left dozens of homes with no water, more domestic wells in southern Oregon's Klamath Basin are running dry. Credit: AP Photo/Nathan Howard,File

A 22-year megadrought deepened so much last year that the broader region is now in the driest spell in at least 1,200 yearsa worst-case climate change scenario playing out in real time, a study found last month. The study calculated that 42% of this megadrought can be attributed to human-caused climate change.

In the Pacific Northwest, the worst impacts from the drought this summer will be felt in Oregon, which missed out on critical winter storms would normally moisten central and southern Oregon and southern Idaho. Scientists are debating the cause of the shift in the weather pattern and some believe a warming northern Pacific Ocean could be part of the cause, said O'Neill.

"Climate change may be changing this storm track, but there is yet no consensus on how it is affecting the Pacific Northwest," he said.

The National Interagency Fire Center recently designated all of central Oregon as "above normal" for fire danger starting in Mayone of the earliest starts of fire season in the state ever. Most of central and eastern Oregon is in exceptional or extreme drought, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor, and parts of eastern Washington and western and southern Idaho are in severe drought.

Seven counties in central Oregon are experiencing the driest two-year period since the start of record-keeping 127 years ago. Overall, Oregon is experiencing its third-driest two-year period since 1895, the experts said.

Matt Lisignoli walks through an irrigation canal that ran dry in early August after the North Unit Irrigation District exhausted its allocated water on Wednesday, Sept. 1, 2021, near Madras, Ore. Climate scientists in the U.S. Pacific Northwest are warning that the region can expect even tougher drought conditions this summer than in the previous two years. Credit: AP Photo/Nathan Howard, File

Most reservoirs in Oregon are 10% to 30% lower than where they were at this time last year and some are at historic lows, signaling serious problems for irrigators who rely on them to water their crops.

Southern Idaho is also experiencing severe drought and a major reservoir in the Boise Basin has below average water supply, said David Hoekema of the Idaho Department of Water Resources.

"It takes more than just an average year to recover and it doesn't appear that we're going to have an average year," he said. "At this point, we expect southern Idaho to continue in drought  and we could also see drought intensify."

Some of Oregon's driest areas are already running into trouble.

After a water crisis last summer that left dozens of homes with no water, more domestic wells in southern Oregon's Klamath Basin are running dry. State water monitors have measured a troubling drop in the underground aquifer that wasn't replenished by winter precipitation, said Ivan Gall, field services division administrator for the Oregon Water Resources Department.

Jim Shanks, left, and other ranchers from the Klamath River Basin collect hay donated by Timber Unity at the farm of Fred Simon, Saturday, July 24, 2021, in Malin, Ore. After a water crisis last summer that left dozens of homes with no water, more domestic wells in southern Oregon's Klamath Basin are running dry. Credit: AP Photo/Nathan Howard, File

His agency has received complaints of 16 domestic wells that have run dry since Jan. 1 and is scrambling to figure out how many more wells might go dry this summer in a cascading crisis, he said. Farming season in the agricultural powerhouse began Tuesday.

Last summer, farmers and ranchers in the basin didn't receive any water from a massive federally owned irrigation project because of drought conditions and irrigators instead pumped much more water than usual from the underground aquifer to stay afloat, Gall said.

The tension over water gained national attention when, for a brief period, anti-government activists camped out at the irrigation canal and threatened to open the water valves in violation of federal law.

"We're going to start this year's pumping season 10 feet lower than we did last season, which is a problem," said Gall, who is already fielding calls from worried water users. "I think it's going to be another rough water year in the Klamath Basin."

 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
Research submersibles permit long-duration dives at any depth with panoramic views of underexplored ecosystems. They are also equipped with devices to collect fishes during those dives. Credit: D. Ross Robertson, Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute

The mysteries of underwater life have long been a source of inspiration for writers, filmmakers, and marine biologists. But scientists interested in understanding the biological diversity of the oceans are often limited by the relatively shallow depths accessible via scuba diving. Small research submersibles, while expensive, allow for the exploration of much deeper waters. A new paper co-authored by researchers at the Smithsonian's Tropical Research Institute (STRI) and National Museum of Natural History (NMNH), the University of Washington and the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Honduras describes the important contribution of submersibles to increasing our knowledge about the diversity of deep-reef fishes in the Greater Caribbean.

In 2010, Smithsonian scientists initiated the Deep Reef Observation Project or DROP to explore the ocean surrounding the Caribbean islands of Curacao, Bonaire, Dominica, Sint Eustatius (Statia) and Roatan using two privately-owned small submersibles, Curasub and Idabel. These submersibles can dive to 300 and 900 meters, respectively, about two to six times deeper than a technical scuba dive, and they can stay at maximum depth for much longer than can technical divers relying on tanks of gas mixtures they carry with them.

The new article in Frontiers in Marine Science reveals that, due to DROP research at three sites in the Greater Caribbean (Curacao, Statia, Roatan), the numbers of deep-reef fishes recorded increased about 9-fold and the total numbers of such fishes are two to four times greater than at three sites with little or no similar research effort: Alligator Reef in the Florida Keys, Bermuda and St. Croix.

"DROP research produced two important results: it showed that reef-fish faunas dominated by families of typical shallow water reef fishes extend down far below the mesophotic zoneto about 300 metersand that the diversity of the deep-reef fish fauna of the Greater Caribbean biogeographic region is at least one third greater than had previously been realized," said D. Ross Robertson, STRI staff scientist. "These results derive from our collections of such fish using the submersibles, mostly at Curacao and Roatan."

Although the rate of discovery of new deep-reef fish species began increasing after the advent of scuba, it grew dramatically with the use of research submersibles, as they permit longer-duration dives at any depth with panoramic views of underexplored ecosystems, and are equipped with devices to collect fishes during those dives.

"When DROP first started exploring Caribbean deep reefs using submersibles, we saw a lot of fish species we didn't recognize," said Carole Baldwin, chair of vertebrate zoology at the NMNH. "Now, after nearly a decade of submersible collecting at places like Curacao, we can identify almost everything we see from the windows of the sub, much of which we collected, named, and described as new species."

The use of research submersibles has revealed that the deep-reef fish fauna of the Greater Caribbean region is at least one third greater than had previously been realized. Credit: D. Ross Robertson (Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute) Carole Baldwin (National Museum of Natural History) Luke Tornabene (University of Washington) and Barry Brown (Substation Curacao)

However, such submersible research is at the expensive end of the range of options. Depending on whether or not it is supported by a research vessel, a week-long expedition using submersibles could cost between $30,000 and $200,000. In comparison, similar research using a small industrial ROV (remotely operated vehicle) working to 300 meters and operated from a small fishing vessel would cost around $40,000 for one week's research.

Baited remote underwater videos (BRUVs) are the cheapest technology and can be used at sites wherever there is boat support. However, since they rely on baits, they tend to attract certain fishes over others and may not gather the same kind of data as other methods.

Closed-Circuit Rebreathers (CCR) are a less expensive option. They allow dives with minimal boat support and, because divers are highly maneuverable, likely are more effective than submersibles at collecting rapidly moving demersal fishes. However, they are limited by human physiology to dives shallower than about 150 meters and require extended periods of decompression after short deep dives.

Differences in deep-reef fishes discovered at different islands ultimately suggest that many parts of the Greater Caribbean likely harbor a myriad of deep-reef fishes waiting to be discovered, a process that could be accelerated by increasing the use of research submersibles, perhaps in combination with other less costly underwater exploration methods.

Funding for the DROP project comes from internal sources at the Smithsonian, from the National Geographic Society's committee for research and exploration and the Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation. Fieldwork at Roatan was conducted using additional funds from the University of Washington and the Burke Museum.

Since 2011, the DROP project has published 45 peer-reviewed papers, with more planned. Those include descriptions of 7 new genera and 35 new species of deep-reef fishes, mollusks, crustaceans and echinoderms, with another approximately 10 fish species still to be named and described. DROP discovered and described a new reef ocean zone, the rariphotic, which connects the mesophotic and deep sea. It also acquired almost ten years of temperature data along a reef slope from 15 to 245 meters, documented the first record of invasive Caribbean lionfish preying on previously unknown biodiversity, acquired foundational data on cryptic reef biodiversity at various depths down a tropical-reef slope and developed protocols and methods for deployment and retrieval of collecting devices placed on deep reefs, using robotic arms of ROV/submersibles.

Explore further Researchers name new ocean zone: The rariphotic

More information: D. Ross Robertson et al, Submersibles Greatly Enhance Research on the Diversity of Deep-Reef Fishes in the Greater Caribbean, Frontiers in Marine Science (2022). Journal information: Frontiers in Marine Science D. Ross Robertson et al, Submersibles Greatly Enhance Research on the Diversity of Deep-Reef Fishes in the Greater Caribbean,(2022). DOI: 10.3389/fmars.2021.800250
Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

Pet owners may unknowingly be feeding their pets with meat from endangered shark species, shows a new study published in Frontiers in Marine Science. The researchers used DNA barcoding to investigate the occurrence of shark in different pet food products purchased in Singapore, which revealed a considerable prevalence of ingredient mislabeling. They suggested implementing global standards for pet food labels to avoid overexploitation of endangered sharks.

If you ever read the ingredient list on your pet's favorite food, you may come across ambiguous terms such as 'fish', 'ocean fish', or 'white bait'. Have you ever wondered what exactly these ingredients are? A team of researchers at Yale-NUS College in Singapore analyzed pet food products purchased within Singapore and discovered that these terms may refer to endangered shark meat.

Shark population declines

Sharks are crucial for the functioning of healthy marine ecosystems. As apex predators, they are at the top of the oceanic food chain. Shifting their prey's distribution, which changes the feeding strategy of other species, they maintain a balance of the food chain. The loss of sharks has led to the decline in seagrass beds and coral reefs.

The growing shark fin and meat trade is putting shark populations at risk. Research suggests that around 100m sharks may be killed annually. Overfishing is the biggest threat to sharks worldwide, and a lack of effective monitoring and management of fishing practices adds burden to vulnerable shark species.

"Shark populations are overfished throughout the world, with declines of more than 70% in the last 50 years documented. This is indicative of the current lack of regard in which we hold our oceans," said authors Dr. Ben Wainwright and Ian French, of Yale-NUS College.

Shark meat in everyday products

A silent contributor to the decline in shark populations is the use of shark products in everyday products such as pet food and cosmetics. For example, many people may not know that certain body care and beauty products may use shark-derived squalene (as opposed to plant-derived squalane).

Research has also discovered shark meat in pet food products. A previous 2019 study found the occurrence of shark in 78 pet food samples collected within the US.

"Given the results of a previous study performed in the US, we wanted to see if endangered sharks are also sold in Asian pet food," explained the authors.

The researchers used DNA barcoding to investigate whether there was shark DNA in 45 different pet food products from 16 different brands on sale in Singapore.

"None of the products purchased listed shark as an ingredient, using only generic catch-all terms such as 'fish', 'ocean fish', 'white bait' or 'white fish' to describe their contents," said Wainwright and French.

Of the 144 samples taken, 31% contained shark DNA. The most identified sharks were the blue shark (Prionace glauca), followed by the silky shark (Carcharhinus falciformis), and the whitetip reef shark (Triaenodon obesus).

The silky shark and the whitetip reef shark are listed as 'vulnerable' in the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List. The silky shark is also listed in the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) Appendix II, which means that its trade must be controlled to avoid overconsumption that would threaten survival of the species.

Transparent labels

The results demonstrate the high overfishing pressure to which sharks are increasingly subjected.

"The majority of pet owners are likely lovers of nature, and we think most would be alarmed to discover that they could be unknowingly contributing to the overfishing of shark populations," commented the authors.

The authors urge for more transparency in the ingredient labels of pet food products. Avoiding vague catch-all terms in ingredient lists to allow consumers to make informed purchasing choices and implementing global standards for pet food labels are two steps to avoid shark overfishing.

A higher accountability throughout human and pet food seafood supply chains is needed, which would mitigate unsustainable fishing and resource use incompatible with shark populations survival.

Explore further More than 3,000 shark fins confiscated in Colombia
Fig 1: The sum of the mass of the particles that make up a proton  quarks (large colored spheres), gluons (yellow squiggles), and quark-antiquark pairs (smaller spheres)  comes to 1.8 x 10-26 g, while the proton containing those particles and their interactions weighs almost 100 times more. EIC may reveal exactly how the quark-gluon interactions generate the bulk of a proton's mass. Credit: Brookhaven National Laboratory

The Electron-Ion Collider (EIC), planned to be built at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL), in partnership with Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (Jefferson Lab), will be the most advanced tool for studying some of the deepest unexplored recesses of the atom. It will peer into protons and neutrons, the building blocks that make up atomic nuclei, providing unprecedented insight into how those particles' internal building blocksand the gluelike force that holds them togetherbuild up the structure of nearly all visible matter in the Universe.

Electron-Ion Collider science: Origin of mass

We know that a proton is made up of quarks and a sea of gluons (see box). Those gluons also keep producing quarks and anti-quark pairs (called sea-quarks). So, the internal microcosm of a proton is abundantly full. One could assume that this abundance of particles would explain where protons get their mass, but quarks are nearly massless, and gluons have no mass. If we add up the masses of the quarks that make up the proton, they account for only about 1% of the proton's total mass.

Where is the remaining 99%? Astonishingly, it appears to come from the interaction energy among the proton's inner building blocks. In fact, it looks like the nucleons, nuclei and, by extension, all the planets and galaxies of the visible Universe get their mass through interactions of massless gluons and almost massless quarks. How does this happen? The Electron-Ion Collider will resolve this profound and longstanding mystery.

Since the 1960s, physicists have known that protons and neutrons, referred to collectively as nucleons, are made up of fundamental particles called quarks, bound together by a force resulting from the exchange of gluons. We call this the "strong force." The strong force depends on the existence of a different type of charge, called the "color charge." Unlike "electric charge," which comes in two varieties (positive and negative), the strong force seems to have three types called "colors" (red, blue, and green).

Another important difference is that, unlike the photons that mediate the electromagnetic force, the gluons that mediate the strong force can and do interact with one another. That is one of the characteristics that makes the strong force so strong. In fact, it makes it impossible to find a free quark in nature. Instead, quarks are always confined within composite particles such as protons. Within the protons, however, the quarks are essentially free to move around.

Despite more than six decades of exploration, our knowledge and understanding of this apparent discrepancy between quark confinement and asymptotic freedom within protons, as well as the gluons' role in strong force interactions, are surprisingly insufficient compared with our understanding of electromagnetismthe force at the heart of today's electronic technologies. Can we do better? Yes, but for that we need to pin down the gluon and understand its gluelike behavior much more precisely. For that, we need the EIC. What we learn may unlock the secrets of the strongest force in nature and potentially new ways to apply that knowledge.

Fig 2: Protons and neutrons are made up of three valence quarks (shown as large colored spheres with arrows), a sea of gluons (yellow wiggles), and sea quarks (pairs of smaller colored quarks and antiquarks in the right figure). EIC will explore how these quark and gluon spins and their possible orbital motion generate the total spin of the proton. Credit: Brookhaven National Laboratory

Electron-Ion Collider science: Origin of spin

Quarks and gluons also have a property called spina form of intrinsic angular momentum. You can think of spin as similar to the rotation of Earth around its own axis, resulting in days and nights. Being part of the proton, which also has a definite "spin," the quarks and gluons are naturally expected to contribute to the proton's spin. However, experiments performed so far indicate that quark and gluon spins can explain only about 4050% of the total spin of the proton.

Scientists think that the remaining spin of the proton must come from the motion of the quarks and gluons inside the proton being aligned with the proton's orbital angular momentumwhich, in the case of Earth, would be the planet's motion around the Sun. There is ample evidence of such transverse motion of quarks and gluons inside the proton, but only the EIC will be able to measure if that motion is consistent with the angular momentum. If true, a beautifully consistent picture may emerge, showing that the orbital motion explaining the spin of the nucleons also results in the energy of quarks and gluons, simultaneously explaining the mass of the proton.

EIC science: Gluon saturation

Measurements from past experiments have shown that gluon number density inside nuclei increases at high energy. The theory that explains quark-gluon interactions can explain this increase. However, at extremely high energy, beyond what has been experimentally explored, certain fundamental rules and arguments of that theory and fundamental physics suggest that there is a cap on how high gluon density can rise.

In such a regime, a novel state of saturated gluonic matter, called the Color Glass Condensate (CGC), is expected to be formed. Theoretical studies of CGC suggest that it should have some remarkably intriguing properties, including energy density as high or higher than that in the core of neutron stars, the densest objects in our Universe. Does such an exotic form of gluonic matter really exist? If so, what are its properties and how can we study them systematically? If CGC does not exist, then what unknown mechanism in physics puts a cap on the number of gluons at high energy? The Electron-Ion Collider will explore this mystery.

Fig 3: The number of gluons in the proton increases with energy. Theory predicts it must saturate to form a novel gluonic form of matter called the Color Glass Condensate. Discovery and detailed study of CGC is one of the primary goals of the EIC. Credit: Brookhaven National Laboratory

The EIC moves forward

Recognizing the importance of understanding the origin of mass and spin and the potential for discovering and studying a saturated gluonic state in nucleons and nuclei, an international community of physicists outlined the parameters of a machine that could embark on an exploration of this new frontier in nuclear physics.

The consensus called for construction of a high-intensity, high-energy electron-ion collider with controlled spin orientation of particles in the colliding beams. A 2018 report from the US National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (NAS) concluded that the "EIC science is compelling, fundamental and timely." In January 2020, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced that the facility would be built at Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York. A recent review set the cost range for the EIC to be $1.72.8bn from the DOE Office of Science, with anticipated contribution of $100m from New York State.

A team of physicists, technicians, engineers, and other professionals from Brookhaven Lab and Jefferson Lab, as well as other collaborating partners from around the world, is now working to make the EIC a reality. The team hopes to start construction in 2024, aiming for a collider operation date within the 2030s.

The EIC will have these main features:

High luminosity: The EIC will produce particle collisions at a rate of 1  10 34 per square centimeter per second. Lots of collisions (also referred to as high luminosity) means lots of data.

per square centimeter per second. Lots of collisions (also referred to as high luminosity) means lots of data. High polarization: Both the electrons and some ion beams will be polarized, making the EIC the only facility in the world with this capability. This means the particles' spins can be aligned in a particular way. EIC physicists will collide polarized particles to study how the spins and orbital motion of their internal building blocks contribute to their overall spin.

High energy: The EIC will produce collisions at variable center-of-mass energies, from 20 billion to 140 billion electron volts (GeV). At the scale of ordinary things, that is less energy than two mosquitoes colliding. But, at the scale of an electron colliding with a proton, it is enough to produce high-resolution snapshots of the proton's internal components.

Varied ion species: The ion sources for the EIC, already in use at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) and the adjacent NASA Space Radiation Laboratory, can provide ions of almost any element on the periodic table. Light ion beams (protons, deuterons, and helium-3) will emerge polarized from their source. EIC scientists will use a wide range of beams, from protons to heavy ions, to explore how ion size and other features of nuclei affect properties and interactions of quarks and gluons.

Fig 4: The EIC will use the existing tunnel of the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), currently operating as a DOE Office of Science user facility for nuclear physics research at Brookhaven Lab, along with one of its existing ion accelerator rings (shown in yellow). A new electron beam facility (red and cyan) will be built to inject, accelerate, store, and collide electrons with ions  atomic nuclei stripped of their electrons  at two possible detector locations. The ion beams will be prepared at the ion source and accelerated through an existing chain of accelerators (green), including the booster and the Alternating Gradient Synchrotron (AGS). Credit: Brookhaven National Laboratory

Designing EIC detectors

Scientists around the world are also working to design detector systems that will make the most of the EIC's technical capabilities. The EIC Users Group (EICUG) was formally established in 2016 and has been actively working with the Brookhaven Lab and Jefferson Lab management teams and with the DOE on plans. Starting with about 700 scientists, the group has now grown to more than 1,300 participants from over 250 institutions and 33 countries. By the time the EIC is ready for operations, some 2,000 scientists are expected to conduct experiments.

The EIC Project Management team issued a call for detector collaboration proposals in February 2021. This call formally launched the process of refining detector designs and the formation of experimental collaborations. Three teams submitted detailed plans, now under review by an external committee appointed by the Brookhaven Lab and Jefferson Lab management teams.

Ideally, EIC scientists would like to build two complementary detectors so they can collect different kinds of data and/or cross-check one another's findings. The Brookhaven collider complex has two interaction regions for such large-scale EIC detectors. The EIC project within the DOE Office of Science includes funding for the accelerators, one interaction region, and one detector.

As part of the Electron-Ion Collider team's collaboration-building strategy, the project team and user group are working to attract additional funding sources, including international and non-DOE funds. Some of this additional non-DOE-sourced funding could potentially be used to build a complementary detector system in the second interaction region to maximize the scientific output of the EIC complex. The EIC project stands ready to explore all such possibilities and would welcome any such initiative for collaboration from around the world.

Fig. 5: An ideal EIC detector, as envisioned in an EIC User Group report, includes subdetector systems for tracking and identifying various types of particles and measuring characteristics such as their energy and momentum. Credit: Brookhaven National Laboratory

Societal benefits

The EIC will be one of the world's most complex accelerator projects ever designed and operated. The versatility and flexibility in its operation make the EIC a challenging but exciting machine to work on. Physicists and engineers involved in the project will be developing many state-of-the-art (or beyond) accelerator technologies to make this machine a reality over the next several years. Such a challenging endeavor will attract the world's most talented and ambitious accelerator scientists. Collaborations are being initiated with leading national and international accelerator laboratories to contribute and participate in the EIC design. Similar international cooperation is expected to emerge once detector construction begins and when the EIC becomes operational.

Such a concentrated effort to design and develop new technologies will likely spark innovations that have impacts well beyond the field of nuclear physics. Cancer therapy is one example. The particle-beam-related improvements for the EIC could lead to improved delivery and quality of particle beams used to treat cancer with reduced cost and improved efficiency and efficacy.

Another potential impact could be improvements to accelerators used in industryfor example, to test computer chips, study new materials for batteries and solar cells, and develop alternative and clean energy technologies. These improvements would also benefit the biomedical industry, where accelerators are used to study different kinds of proteins, including for drug and vaccine development, and for inspecting and keeping our food supply safe.

The research and development (R&D) anticipated for Electron-Ion Collider detector components will also push the evolution of technologies and bring in new ideas that could be directly exported for use in security operations, for example to identify illicit drugs in closed cargo containers or to identify other national security (sensitive) materials.

In addition, the EIC's need for highly efficient data collection, storage, and analysis will spark advances in computing that extend to other fields, including finance, climate modeling, and other data-intensive challenges.

Fig. 6: Map of institutions that form the EIC Users Group. Current membership stands at over 1,300 scientists from more than 250 institutions and 33 countries. Credit: Brookhaven National Laboratory

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, by attracting the best science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) workforce from around the world to build and run the EIC, we will be building up a tech-savvy workforce for tomorrow while also building bridges that connect nations of the world.

Students and researchers from different nationalities and cultures will come together to work on some of the most challenging conceptual and technical problems in nuclear and particle science and on accelerator and detector technologieswhile also learning about one another. In the long run, through those collaborations, they could become ambassadors of peace and friendship among countries and cultures across the world. The tools, technologies, and connections they develop will benefit mankind for many decades to come.

Explore further Examining the origins of proton spin
Artist rendering of optical systems containing the analog of a pair white-black hole. Credit: 2021 PhD alumnus Anthony Brady, postdoctoral researcher at the University of Arizona

Louisiana State University physicists have leveraged quantum information theory techniques to reveal a mechanism for amplifying, or "stimulating," the production of entanglement in the Hawking effect in a controlled manner. Furthermore, these scientists propose a protocol for testing this idea in the laboratory using artificially produced event horizons. These results have been recently published in Physical Review Letters, "Quantum aspects of stimulated Hawking radiation in an analog white-black hole pair," where Ivan Agullo, Anthony J. Brady and Dimitrios Kranas present these ideas and apply them to optical systems containing the analog of a pair white-black hole.

Black holes are some of the most mystifying objects in our universe, largely due to the fact that their inner-workings are hidden behind a completely obscuring veilthe black hole's event horizon.

In 1974, Stephen Hawking added more mystique to the character of black holes by showing that, once quantum effects are considered, a black hole isn't really black at all but, instead, emits radiation, as if it was a hot body, gradually losing mass in the so-called "Hawking evaporation process." Further, Hawking's calculations showed that the emitted radiation is quantum mechanically entangled with the bowels of the black hole itself. This entanglement is the quantum signature of the Hawking effect. This astounding result is difficult, if not impossible, to be tested on astrophysical black holes, since the faint Hawking radiation gets overshined by other sources of radiation in the cosmos.

On the other hand, in the 1980's, a seminal article by William Unruh established that the spontaneous production of entangled Hawking particles occurs in any system that can support an effective event horizon. Such systems generally fall under the umbrella of "analog gravity systems" and opened a window for testing Hawking's ideas in the laboratory.

Serious experimental investigations into analog gravity systemsmade of Bose-Einstein condensates, non-linear optical fibers, or even flowing waterhave been underway for more than a decade. Stimulated and spontaneously-generated Hawking radiation has recently been observed in several platforms, but measuring entanglement has proved elusive due to its faint and fragile character.

"We show that, by illuminating the horizon, or horizons, with appropriately chosen quantum states, one can amplify the production of entanglement in Hawking's process in a tunable manner," said Associate Professor Ivan Agullo. "As an example, we apply these ideas to the concrete case of a pair of analog white-black holes sharing an interior and produced within a non-linear optical material."

"Many of the quantum information tools used in this research were from my graduate research with Professor Jonathan P. Dowling," said 2021 Ph.D. alumnus Anthony Brady, postdoctoral researcher at the University of Arizona. "Jon was a charismatic character, and he brought his charisma and unconventionality into his science, as well as his advising. He encouraged me to work on eccentric ideas, like analog black holes, and see if I could meld techniques from various fields of physicslike quantum information and analog gravityin order to produce something novel, or 'cute,' as he liked to say."

"The Hawking process is one of the richest physical phenomena connecting seemingly unrelated fields of physics from the quantum theory to thermodynamics and relativity," said Dimitrios Kranas, LSU graduate student. "Analog black holes came to add an extra flavor to the effect providing us, at the same time, with the exciting possibility of testing it in the laboratory. Our detailed numerical analysis allows us to probe new features of the Hawking process, helping us understand better the similarities and differences between astrophysical and analog black holes."

Explore further Quantum circuit black hole lasers to explore Hawking radiation

More information: Ivan Agullo et al, Quantum Aspects of Stimulated Hawking Radiation in an Optical Analog White-Black Hole Pair, Physical Review Letters (2022). Journal information: Physical Review Letters Ivan Agullo et al, Quantum Aspects of Stimulated Hawking Radiation in an Optical Analog White-Black Hole Pair,(2022). DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.128.091301
Bluefin tuna are the largest of all tuna species  adults can reach ten feet in length and weigh more than a thousand pounds. But they start out small, as 2- to 3-millimeter-long larvae. This one was caught by Chrissy Hernandez in the Slope Sea, a region of the Atlantic Ocean between the between the U.S. continental shelf and the Gulf Stream farther offshore. The area is a newly-recognized spawning ground for western Atlantic bluefin tuna  more good news for a species whose population in the Gulf of Mexico is sustainably managed with a limited harvest. Credit: Chrissy Hernandez, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

The Slope Sea off the Northeast United States is a major spawning ground for Atlantic bluefin tuna (Thunnus thynnus), a new paper affirms. This finding likely has important implications for population dynamics and the survival of this fish, according to the paper, "Support for the Slope Sea as a major spawning ground for Atlantic bluefin tuna: evidence from larval abundance, growth rates, and particle-tracking simulations," published in the Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences.

"Overall, our results provide important supporting evidence that the Slope Sea is a major spawning ground that is likely to be important for population dynamics," the paper states. Spawning in the Slope Sea "may offer the species additional resilience in the face of both harvesting and climate change," the paper adds.

The paper presents larval evidence supporting the recognition of the Slope Sea as a major spawning ground, including that larvae collected in the Slope Sea grew at the same rate as larvae collected in the Gulf of Mexico, indicating that this region is good larval habitat.

"In comparison to everything else we know about this species, the Slope Sea is a perfectly good place to be born as a larva," said lead author Christina Hernandez, who was a doctoral student in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) - Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) Joint Program in Oceanography/Applied Ocean Science and Engineering at the time of the study.

"The larvae are growing at a similar rate in the Slope Sea as they are in the Gulf of Mexico, at least in the year [of sampling], which suggests that the Slope Sea is providing completely suitable and adequate habitat for larval growth and development," she said.

The researchers used plankton nets to collect larvae in the Slope Sea and the Gulf of Mexico, and they analyzed and compared larval growth in the two regions by studying larval otoliths, which are small bones found in the heads of tuna. Researchers also conducted larval transport simulations to estimate the movement of larvae floating in ocean currents forward and backward in time to evaluate the origin of the larvae and their fate.

Bluefin tuna larvae are 2 to 3 millimeters long when they hatch, but they can grow quickly, adding roughly 0.5 millimeter per day. Credit: Chrissy Hernandez, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

The prevailing understanding has been that Atlantic bluefin tuna comprise two populations with strong natal homing to spawning grounds in the Gulf of Mexico and the Mediterranean Sea. However, there has long been speculation that spawning may occur in other regions, and a 2016 paper demonstrated a bluefin tuna spawning ground in the Slope Sea. The Slope Sea is a wedge of ocean that is bounded by the U.S. shelf break and the Gulf Stream as it moves away from the U.S. east coast.

"In the 2016 paper, we proposed that the Slope Sea is a third major spawning ground for bluefin tuna. The additional sampling, reported in this new paper, confirmed that bluefin larval abundances in the Slope Sea are comparable to levels typically found in the Gulf of Mexico. Moreover, bluefin tuna larvae in the Slope Sea were found to grow at similar rates to those in the Gulf of Mexico," said David Richardson, research fisheries biologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Richardson is the lead author of the 2016 paper and co-author of the new paper.

"This work emphasizes the importance of the Slope Sea as a spawning ground and highlights the need for further bluefin tuna research in this region," Richardson said.

The paper notes that the response to the discovery of the Slope Sea spawning area has been mixed, with some scientists expressing skepticism about the origin of larvae or stating that the classification of the Slope Sea as a spawning ground has been premature.

Further study of larvae and spawning adults in the region should be prioritized to support management decisions," the paper states.

"We need as much information as we can get about bluefin tuna so that we can improve management models and improve the sustainable management of our fisheries," Hernandez said. "I hope that this study helps to gain more acknowledgement of the Slope Sea as a spawning area and more funding for further research in this region."

Explore further Potential Western Atlantic spawning area found for Atlantic bluefin tuna

More information: Christina M. Hernandez et al, Support for the Slope Sea as a major spawning ground for Atlantic bluefin tuna: evidence from larval abundance, growth rates, and particle-tracking simulations, Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences (2021). Journal information: Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences Christina M. Hernandez et al, Support for the Slope Sea as a major spawning ground for Atlantic bluefin tuna: evidence from larval abundance, growth rates, and particle-tracking simulations,(2021). DOI: 10.1139/cjfas-2020-0444
Graphene charge carriers lying on different energetic levels represented by the Dirac cones, which, depending on the number of charge carriers, are occupied up to the neutrality point (blue level on the left cone) or well into the conduction band (blue level on the right cone). In the two cases, the photoexcited charge carriers relax with faster (left side) or slower (right side) dynamics. Credit: Politecnico di Milano - CNR

Graphene is the thinnest material ever produced, with the thickness of a single atomic layer. Thinner than a billionth of a meter, it is able to efficiently absorb light from the visible to the infrared through the photoexcitation of its charge carriers. After light absorption, its photoexcited charge carriers cool down to the initial equilibrium state in a few picoseconds, corresponding to a millionth of a millionth of a second. The remarkable speed of this relaxation process makes graphene particularly promising for a number of technological applications, including light detectors, sources and modulators.

A recent study published in ACS Nano has shown that the relaxation time of graphene charge carriers can be significantly modified by applying an external electrical field. The research was conceived within an international collaboration between the CNR-IFN, Politecnico di Milano, the University of Pisa, the Graphene Center of Cambridge (UK) and ICN2 of Barcelona (Spain).

"The change in the relaxation time of charge carriers in graphene that we have observed, demonstrates an unprecedented level of control on the optical response of a crystal and allows to obtain a large variety of behaviors using a single material" says Eva Pogna, researched from CNR-IFN, first author of the work.

This work paves the way to the development of devices that exploit the control of the relaxation time of charge carriers to support novel functionalities. For example, if graphene is used as saturable absorber in a laser cavity to generate ultrashort light pulses, by changing the relaxation time of the charge carriers, we can control the duration of the output pulses.

"The specific device that we have used to study graphene, proved to be crucial to observe the strong tunability of its optical properties with the external electric field, allowing to change the number of charge carriers over a broad range by exploiting ionic liquid gating, which is a state-of-the-art technology introduced to study superconductors" explains Andrea Ferrari, director of the Graphene Center in Cambridge.

The graphene-based device has been studied by ultrafast spectroscopy, which allowed to monitor the variation of the relaxation time of the charge carriers.

"This work represents the latest step of a long-standing research collaboration devoted to the study of the ultrafast carrier dynamics in graphene, aimed at exploring the great potential of this fascinating material" as added by Klaas-Jan Tielrooij, leader of the Ultrafast Dynamics in Nanoscale Systems group at ICN2.

"This discovery is of large interest for a number of technological applications, ranging from photonics, for pulsed laser sources or optical limiters that prevent optical components damaging, to telecommunication, for ultrafast detectors and modulators" concludes Giulio Cerullo, professor of the Physics Department of Politecnico di Milano.

Explore further Researchers uncover the mechanism of electric field detection in microscale graphene sensors

More information: Eva A. A. Pogna et al, Electrically Tunable Nonequilibrium Optical Response of Graphene, ACS Nano (2022). Journal information: ACS Nano Eva A. A. Pogna et al, Electrically Tunable Nonequilibrium Optical Response of Graphene,(2022). DOI: 10.1021/acsnano.1c04937

Provided by Politecnico di Milano
Drosophila suzukii on cherry. Credit: Tim Haye, CABI

CABI scientists have led new research which highlights the safety of a classical biological control agent against the devastating invasive fruit fly Drosophila suzukii which attacks over 150 wild and cultivated fruits, including cherries, blueberries and strawberries, as well as the fruits of ornamental plants.

Drosophila suzukii, or commonly called Spotted Wing Drosophila, is a frugivorous insect native to Eastern Asia that was accidentally introduced to the Americas and Europe in the 2000s, where it rapidly spread. Unlike sympatric Drosophila species in invaded areas, D. suzukii females are able to lay eggs inside unwounded ripening fruits due to their specialized egg-laying organ that is equipped with saw teeth, providing it with a unique niche virtually free from competition.

The resulting high abundance of D. suzukii is leading to extensive damage, making it a major problem for fruit growers, especially in the soft fruit industry.

Field cage releases of the parasitoid G1 Ganaspis cf. brasiliensis carried out in two regions of Switzerland in August 2021 supports findings from previously conducted laboratory-based experiments and the low risk for non-target effects on native Drosophila spp.

The study, carried out with colleagues from the Repubblica e Cantone Ticino, Agroscope, and the Institute of Agricultural Sciences (IAS) of ETH Zurich, andall in Switzerland, revealed that larvae of the target species D. suzukii feeding in fresh fruits was readily parasitized and of 957 emerging parasitoids, only one was from larvae of the non-target species D. melanogaster feeding on decomposing fruits.

Lead researcher Dr. Lukas Seehausen, based at CABI in Switzerland, said, "Released parasitoids had the choice to parasitize either D. suzukii larvae in fresh fruits, blueberries or elderberries, or the non-target native species D. melanogaster in decomposing fruits, which is their natural habitat.

"The results were unequivocal in that parasitism of D. suzukii larvae feeding in fresh fruits was on average 15%, whereas only one parasitoid emerged from D. melanogaster feeding on decomposing fruits, which is a mere 0.02% parasitism.

"The results achieved under semi-field conditions supports findings from previous laboratory experiments that the parasitoid G1 G. cf. brasiliensis is highly specific to D. suzukii larvae feeding in fresh fruits and parasitism of the closely related D. melanogaster naturally feeding on decomposing fruits is very rare.

"Because in its invaded range, D. suzukii is the only Drosophila species that can attack and develop in undamaged fresh fruits, we conclude that possible non-target impacts are a low and acceptable risk for the control of the destructive invasive spotted wing drosophila."

In their conclusion, the scientists note that with the first releases of G. cf. brasiliensis in Italy in 2021, a recent acceptance of the application for releases of the same parasitoid in the US, and the submission of an application in Switzerland in February 2022, the research starts to be implemented into practice.

The research was published in Journal of Pest Science.

More information: M. Lukas Seehausen et al, Large-arena field cage releases of a candidate classical biological control agent for spotted wing drosophila suggest low risk to non-target species, Journal of Pest Science (2022). M. Lukas Seehausen et al, Large-arena field cage releases of a candidate classical biological control agent for spotted wing drosophila suggest low risk to non-target species,(2022). DOI: 10.1007/s10340-022-01487-3

Provided by CABI
An ancient bustling street market brimming with pavement stalls and hawkers peddling goods as depicted in Riverside Scene at Qingming Festival, a masterpiece by Zhang Zeduan from the Song Dynasty (960-1279), has been found in Dengzhou City, central China's Henan Province.

During excavation, archaeologists discovered special construction structures in some building ruins at the Dengzhou street market site. The structures were designed to support the house foundation above the drainage pipes. They also unearthed a lot of copper coins and ironware near the pipes. All the findings suggest that the house owners used to run shops along the street.

In ancient China, drainage pipes belonged to urban public facilities and many dynasties strictly separated residential areas from specialized markets, and citizens were not allowed to open shops in residential areas.

However, the shops found alongside the street at the site made full use of public facilities and took part of the street as their own extension areas, which is a typical embodiment of the development of commodity economy in the Song Dynasty, explained Bao Weike, a researcher with the provincial cultural relics and archaeology institute, who is also in charge of the excavation project.

The new discoveries in Dengzhou can serve as the physical evidence of the ancient economic transition from emphasizing agriculture and suppressing commerce to promoting the development of commodity economy at that time, said Sun Yingmin, president of Henan's cultural relics and archaeology society.

Previously, as the ancient capital of the Northern Song Dynasty (960-1127) was buried underground by sediments from the Yellow River, it was difficult to excavate its ruins and unearth relics. The new findings have helped to fill in the blanks of evidence for the relevant history.

During the Song Dynasty, Dengzhou was also a border city and had set up a border market. "The large amount of fine porcelain unearthed at the site indicates that it was probably also a market where the porcelain produced in the famous Deng kiln during the Song Dynasty was sold," said Sun Xinmin, head of China ancient ceramics society.

Currently, more than 1,200 square meters of the site have been excavated. To figure out the remaining mysteries, further excavation of the Dengzhou site is still underway.
In the Pulverize It scenario, an asteroid heading for Earth would be struck with an impactor that had an array of rods, some with explosives. The asteroid, or comet, would be broken into smaller pieces that pose a minor threat. Credit: Lubin/Experimental Cosmology Group, UCSB

Gazing at the night sky can evoke a sense of wonder regarding humanity's place in the universe. But that's not all it can evoke. If you're knowledgeable about asteroid strikes like the one that wiped out the dinosaurs, then even a fleeting meteorite can nudge aside your enjoyable sense of wonder. What if?

Luckily, planetary defense is at the top of mind for some scientists and engineers. One of those scientists is Professor Philip Lubin from the University of California Santa Barbara. Lubin is developing his idea called PI-Terminal Defense for Humanity. The PI stands for Pulverize It, and Lubin thinks pulverizing an incoming impactor into tiny pieces is our best bet to protect ourselves from an asteroid on short notice.

Lubin presented his PI Planetary Defense idea at the 2021 Planetary Defense Conference. His idea is now a Phase One awardee in the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program. NIAC aims to promote and support visionary ideas that can transform future NASA missions. NASA operates the Planetary Defense Coordination Office (PDCO), and Lubin's PI Planetary Defense idea fits that office's mandate.

The threat of an asteroid strike is genuine. A massive asteroid like the one that wiped out the dinosaurs would kill our civilization. We've faced more minor threats, like the Tunguska Event and the Chelyabinsk meteor, but can we count on luck to avoid devastating impacts? That wouldn't be wise.

"So far, humanity has been spared large-scale catastrophe as was visited upon our previous tenants, but counting upon being 'lucky' is a poor strategy in the longer term," Philip Lubin said in 2021.

NASA is busy finding and cataloging asteroids that pose a threat to Earth. But that's only an initial step. We must develop ways to protect Earth from a catastrophic impact.

Much of the thinking around asteroid impact mitigation is focused on long lead times. If we know months or years ahead of time when an asteroid will impact Earth, we can send out a kinetic impactor to redirect the asteroid. With enough lead time, even a small kinetic impactor can redirect a large asteroid away from us.

But what if time is short? What if we find out too late? What if we've launched a kinetic impactor, but it missed or failed somehow? That's where Lubin's PI idea could come into play.

The main idea of PI is to pulverize an asteroid into smaller debris which would then burn up in Earth's atmosphere. In an article for NIAC from February 18th, 2022, Lubin wrote, "In short intercept scenarios, the asteroid fragments of maximum ~10-meter diameter allow the Earth's atmosphere to act as a 'beam dump' where the fragments either burn up in the atmosphere or air burst, with the primary channel of energy going into spatially and temporally de-correlated shock waves."

PI's idea is to design an impactor that's not only kinetic but explosive. The impacting device would be fitted with penetrating rods to pierce the asteroid. Explosives would fill some rods, and the resulting explosion would pulverize the bolide into smaller chunks, hopefully 15 m or less in diameter. The pieces would form a cloud of debris. Depending on the size of the bolide, the size of the device, and the distance from Earth when detonated, some of the debris might strike Earth. But much of it would be destroyed through friction with the Earth's atmosphere.

This figure shows two fragment clouds resulting from successful interceptions. The top is a smaller asteroid, and the bottom is larger. Note how some of the fragments would miss Earth entirely with a larger asteroid. Credit: Lubin 2021

"The effectiveness of the approach depends on the time to intercept and size of the asteroid, but allows for effective defense against asteroids in the multi-hundred-meter diameter class and could virtually eliminate the threat of mass destruction caused by these threats," Lubin explains.

According to Lubin, the PI System could be in orbit around Earth or even housed on a lunar base. "Compared to other threat reduction scenarios, this approach represents an extremely cost-effective, testable, and deployable approach with a logical roadmap of development and testing. Pre-deployment of the system into orbit or a lunar base allows for rapid response on the order of less than a day if needed," Lubin said.

"The great advantage of this approach is that it allows for terminal defense in the event of short warning times and target distance mitigation where orbital deflection is not feasible," said Lubin. "Even intercepts as close as the moon with intercept times of a few hours prior to impact are viable."

The moon has a couple of inherent advantages. For one thing, it has no atmosphere, so as a base for observing the asteroid environment near Earth, it would allow "long-range optical/NIR LIDAR detection" of incoming asteroids. The moon also has a lower escape velocity than Earth, making launches easier and less expensive.

Launching a large explosive impactor from Earth is becoming more feasible over time, too. Heavy launch vehicles like SpaceX's Falcon Heavy, NASA's Space Launch System, and others are heralding a new age of powerful rocket technology.

Lubin says that the PI system only needs a five-hour prior to impact window to destroy an asteroid the size of the object in the Tunguska Event. That object was likely about 50 meters in diameter and exploded with a force of about 10 Megatons. It knocked over millions of trees in a remote part of Siberia. If an object that size were to explode over one of our cities, it would be devastating.

The system could also work when it comes to massive asteroids like Apophis. Apophis will pass near Earth in 2029, but it won't impact Earth. However, if it passes through what's called a "gravitational keyhole" during its 2029 flyby, it could be nudged enough that it could strike Earth on the subsequent flyby. Apophis is about 370 meters in diameter, and its yield is about four gigatons. Lubin said that his PI system could successfully destroy Apophis-sized asteroids with a 10-day prior to impact intercept.

It'll be interesting to see how much further Lubin develops his Pulverize It asteroid defense idea. NASA launched its Double Asteroid Redirection Test mission in November 2021. DART is headed for the double asteroid system of Didymos and its smaller companion, Dimorphos, which orbits Didymos.

Dimorphos isn't on a trajectory toward Earth. DART is purely a test mission, and impacting Dimorphos will lead to a slight change in the trajectory of the double asteroid system. NASA will monitor the system after the impact to see if the mission was successful.

But there's no reason we can't develop multiple asteroid mitigation systems in parallel. That might be the most prudent way forward. As we get better and better at finding all of the asteroids that threaten Earth, we'll be more prepared for intercepting asteroids with advanced lead times. But no system is foolproof.

It'd be wise for humanity to develop another system that could launch rapidly and be employed on short notice. Then we can look up at the sky and relax.

Explore further Physicists propose a new method for defending the Earth against cosmic impacts

More information: An overview of the method can be found here: An overview of the method can be found here: Pi  Terminal Defense for Humanity
Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

The visual and tactile examination of plant leaves is a standard method for identifying disease in crops and horticultural products. However, such an approach can be highly subjective and is dependent on the skills of the examiners. Writing in the International Journal of Computational Vision and Robotics, a team from Egypt describes a new approach to plant leaf disease detection using deep learning on a mobile device. The team's tests against a standard database of diseased leaf images showed their system to be capable of up to 98% diagnostic accuracy. The process is rapid and showcases the sophisticated computational power available in modern mobile phones for this kind of intensive task.

Shaheera A. Rashwan and Marwa K. Elteir of the Informatics Research Institute at the City of Scientific Research and Technological Applications in Alexandria, suggest that for busy farmers in remote regions with no immediate access to plant disease experts, a mobile application that can help them spot disease and so treat the crops in a timely manner could be vital to their ongoing agricultural viability.

The team's approach exploits the recent evolution of computational systems and especially graphical processing units (GPUs) that allow machine learning operations to be carried out efficiently in ways that previous generations of devices simply could not match for speed. Such operations facilitate the running of tools such as convolutional neural networks, which mimic certain characteristics of brain function, and allow image recognition and related tasks to be carried out quickly. The team thus embedded image recognition of the characteristics of disease in leaves for the present research.

Despite the great speed and accuracy of disease diagnostics that the team has shown, there is still room for improvement. They highlight an issue with shadows on images and confusing backgrounds when a user takes a photo of a suspect leaf. They hope to be able to develop a pre-processing step that will reduce any problems and the inaccuracies that might arise if the acquired leaf image is not as perfect as it might be for image recognition. Fundamentally, automated light level adjustment in the image would preclude issues arising because of shadows, while a step that isolates the leaf from its background in the image and effectively removes said background would ease the whole process still further and hopefully nudge the accuracy upwards.

Explore further Identifying crop diseasesthere's an app for that

More information: Shaheera A. Rashwan et al, Plant leaf disease detection using deep learning on mobile devices, International Journal of Computational Vision and Robotics (2022). Shaheera A. Rashwan et al, Plant leaf disease detection using deep learning on mobile devices,(2022). DOI: 10.1504/IJCVR.2022.121151
View of the power plant site from a distance, with the containment shield structure in place over the destroyed reactor. Credit: T.A. Mousseau, CC BY-ND

The site of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in northern Ukraine has been surrounded for more than three decades by a 1,000-square-mile (2,600-square-kilometer) exclusion zone that keeps people out. On April 26, 1986, Chernobyl's reactor number four melted down as a result of human error, releasing vast quantities of radioactive particles and gases into the surrounding landscape400 times more radioactivity to the environment than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Put in place to contain the radioactive contaminants, the exclusion zone also protects the region from human disturbance.

Apart from a handful of industrial areas, most of the exclusion zone is completely isolated from human activity and appears almost normal. In some areas, where radiation levels have dropped over time, plants and animals have returned in significant numbers.

Some scientists have suggested the zone has become an Eden for wildlife, while others are skeptical of that possibility. Looks can be deceiving, at least in areas of high radioactivity, where bird, mammal and insect population sizes and diversity are significantly lower than in the "clean" parts of the exclusion zone.

I've spent more than 20 years working in Ukraine, as well as in Belarus and Fukushima, Japan, largely focused on the effects of radiation. I have been asked many times over the past days why Russian forces entered northern Ukraine via this atomic wasteland, and what the environmental consequences of military activity in the zone might be.

Why invade via Chernobyl?

In hindsight, the strategic benefits of basing military operations in the Chernobyl exclusion zone seem obvious. It is a large, unpopulated area connected by a paved highway straight to the Ukrainian capital, with few obstacles or human developments along the way. The Chernobyl zone abuts Belarus and is thus immune from attack from Ukrainian forces from the north. The reactor site's industrial area is, in effect, a large parking lot suitable for staging an invading army's thousands of vehicles.

A fox near the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. Credit: T. A. Mousseau, 2019, CC BY-ND

The power plant site also houses the main electrical grid switching network for the entire region. It's possible to turn the lights off in Kyiv from here, even though the power plant itself has not generated any electricity since 2000, when the last of Chernobyl's four reactors was shut down. Such control over the power supply likely has strategic importance, although Kyiv's electrical needs could probably also be supplied via other nodes on the Ukrainian national power grid.

The reactor site likely offers considerable protection from aerial attack, given the improbability that Ukrainian or other forces would risk combat on a site containing more than 5.3 million pounds (2.4 million kilograms) of radioactive spent nuclear fuel. This is the highly radioactive material produced by a nuclear reactor during normal operations. A direct hit on the power plant's spent fuel pools or dry cask storage facilities could release substantially more radioactive material into the environment than the original meltdown and explosions in 1986 and thus cause an environmental disaster of global proportions.

Environmental risks on the ground in Chernobyl

The Chernobyl exclusion zone is among the most radioactively contaminated regions on the planet. Thousands of acres surrounding the reactor site have ambient radiation dose rates exceeding typical background levels by thousands of times. In parts of the so-called Red Forest near the power plant it's possible to receive a dangerous radiation dose in just a few days of exposure.

Radiation monitoring stations across the Chernobyl zone recorded the first obvious environmental impact of the invasion. Sensors put in place by the Ukrainian Chernobyl EcoCenter in case of accidents or forest fires showed dramatic jumps in radiation levels along major roads and next to the reactor facilities starting after 9 p.m on Feb. 24, 2022. That's when Russian invaders reached the area from neighboring Belarus.

As of the beginning of March 2022, Russian forces controlled the Chernobyl facility.

Because the rise in radiation levels was most obvious in the immediate vicinity of the reactor buildings, there was concern that the containment structures had been damaged, although Russian authorities have denied this possibility. The sensor network abruptly stopped reporting early on Feb. 25 and did not restart until March 1, 2022, so the full magnitude of disturbance to the region from the troop movements is unclear.

If, in fact, it was dust stirred up by vehicles and not damage to any containment facilities that caused the rise in radiation readings, and assuming the increase lasted for just a few hours, it's not likely to be of long-term concern, as the dust will settle again once troops move through.

But the Russian soldiers, as well as the Ukrainian power plant workers who have been held hostage, undoubtedly inhaled some of the blowing dust. Researchers know the dirt in the Chernobyl exclusion zone can contain radionuclides including cesium-137, strontium-90, several isotopes of plutonium and uranium, and americium-241. Even at very low levels, they're all toxic, carcinogenic or both if inhaled.

Possible impacts further afield

Perhaps the greater environmental threat to the region stems from the potential release to the atmosphere of radionuclides stored in soil and plants should a forest fire ignite.

A bird from Chernobyl with a tumor on its head. Credit: T. A. Mousseau, 2009, CC BY-ND

Such fires have recently increased in frequency, size and intensity, likely because of climate change, and these fires have released radioactive materials back into the air and and dispersed them far and wide. Radioactive fallout from forest fires may well represent the greatest threat from the Chernobyl site to human populations downwind of the region as well as the wildlife within the exclusion zone.

Currently the zone is home to massive amounts of dead trees and debris that could act as fuel for a fire. Even in the absence of combat, military activitylike thousands of troops transiting, eating, smoking and building campfires to stay warmincreases the risk of forest fires.

It's hard to predict the effects of radioactive fallout on people, but the consequences to flora and fauna have been well documented. Chronic exposure to even relatively low levels of radionuclides has been linked to a wide variety of health consequences in wildlife, including genetic mutations, tumors, eye cataracts, sterility and neurological impairment, along with reductions in population sizes and biodiversity in areas of high contamination.

There is no "safe" level when it comes to ionizing radiation. The hazards to life are in direct proportion to the level of exposure. Should the ongoing conflict escalate and damage the radiation confinement facilities at Chernobyl, or at any of the 15 nuclear reactors at four other sites across Ukraine, the magnitude of harm to the environment would be catastrophic.

Explore further Ukraine puts out forest fire around Chernobyl

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
This fall, Sabliovs fungicide-loaded nanoparticles were tested for the first time on soybeans in a field. In this photo, the healthy rows (on the right) had been treated with fungicide, while the unhealthy rows (on the left) had not been treated and subsequently became diseased. Credit: Trey Price/LSU

Louisiana farmers rely on herbicides, pesticides and fungicides to protect their crops against weeds, insects and diseases. Even though most farmers try to be good stewards of the environment, some of those chemicals inevitably end up in waterways, or elsewhere, instead of benefiting the plants. To address this problem, LSU Professor Cristina Sabliov is working on technologies for more targeted delivery of agrochemicals to crops, to prevent wastea cost issue for farmerswhile protecting plants, yields and the environment.

Sabliov develops nanoparticles that are smaller than the eye can seeabout a thousand times smaller than the thickness of a human hair. These tiny delivery systems can attach to specific parts of a plant, such as the root or the leaves, and deposit a small but significant payload to be released either immediately or over time.

Most of Sabliov's work to-date has focused on soybeans, a major crop in Louisiana and around the world. She's received continuous support for her research from the Louisiana Soybean and Grain Research and Promotion Board and from the U.S. Department of Agriculture throughout her career.

"Louisiana soybean farmers see great value in supporting research that can generate solutions to challenges that are unique to our state," said Charles Cannatella, chairman of the Louisiana Soybean and Grain Research and Promotion Board and a farmer in Melville in St. Landry Parish where he grows soybeans, corn and sugarcane together with his family. "We are excited that Dr. Cristina Sabliov is doing just that. Louisiana soybeans thrive in large part due to our climate conditions, which also present unique challenges, like diseases and fungi that thrive in these same conditions."

Many Louisianans are surprised to learn that their home state produces more soybeans than rice. Soybeans rank fourth among Louisiana's top agricultural commodities, after forestry, poultry and sugarcane. At harvest, 80% of all soybeans become soybean meal, often used as livestock feed since it's high in protein. Most of that meal is fed to chickens, so the argument could be made that Sabliov's research supports not just one, but two, of the state's top agricultural industries.

Her most recent work turns a waste product from the paper industry called lignin into something useful as biodegradable "nanovehicles." Lignin is present in most plants to give cells rigidity. Without lignin, trees would be floppy and sag. This natural polymer is both cheap and safe. Through advanced engineering and chemistry, Sabliov and her team are able to wrap lignin molecules around other materials, such as agrochemicals. By using surfactants, they can keep the compounds homogeneously dispersed, similar to a vinaigrette that never separates, and then dry the resulting nanoparticles into a powder, extending their shelf life.

"I have a food science background and a biological engineering background and a chemical engineering background, so I absolutely love interfaces and learning about how things connect," said Sabliov, who is the Roy Paul Daniels Professor and the Richard R. & Betty S. Fenton Alumni Professor in the LSU Department of Biological and Agricultural Engineering in the LSU College of Engineering with a joint appointment in the LSU AgCenter.

"It's nice to pay attention to what molecules like to do," Sabliov continued. "I think a lot about how molecules like to be with each other, or like to repel each other, or like to self-assemble in a certain waytheir characteristics and relationships. If you create the right environment for a certain molecule, it will behave in a way that leads to nanoparticle formation, which in our case means that it will self-assemble into a ball around an agrochemical."

When it's time to test the nanoparticlesto see where they go and how they move when applied to plantsSabliov uses hydroponics, which involves growing plants without soil. The reason is that soil introduces a host of unknown variables.

"Hydroponics is our steppingstone to greenhouse and field applications because it's a much simpler system without all of the chemicals and microorganisms that are naturally present in organic matter," Sabliov said. "If you start by testing the nanoparticles in soil, you will be in that for a long, long time before you can answer your research question with any certainty."

Once Sabliov is sure the loaded nanoparticles are both safe and effective, she collaborates with LSU AgCenter specialists to test them on plants in soil. Trey Price, a plant pathologist at the Macon Ridge Research Station in Winnsboro, Louisiana, recently harvested soybeans from an initial field trial where the seeds had been treated with Sabliov's fungicide-wrapped-in-lignin nanoparticles before being exposed to a fungus and common soybean pathogen called Rhizoctonia solani.

"We planted the treated seeds in two greenhouse experiments and a small field trial," Price said. "The soybeans that were treated with the fungicide-loaded nanoparticles did just as well as those that were treated with a broader formulation of commercial fungicide, while the plants that received no fungicide became diseased and yielded much less."

"Fungicides offer insurance against seedling diseases during the critical two-to-three weeks after planting and amount to a significant annual cost for many farmers," Price continued. "Field trials here at the research station are geared toward justifying or reducing those costs and keeping farmers in business."

Fungi cause most diseases in soybeans, and most of them thrive in warm and wet environments. Because of the sub-tropical climate, Louisiana farmers battle more problems than farmers elsewhere in the U.S. in protecting their crops from disease, according to Price. Soybeans are often grown in rotation with other crops for weed and disease control and to maximize profit. Crop prices fluctuate from season to season. In Louisiana, those crops tend to be wheat, corn, sorghum, rice and sugarcane grasses or, alternatively, cotton, a broadleaf. The production of soybeans in the state jumped radically during the agricultural revolution in the 1960s and '70s from about 100,000 acres to over 2 million. Today, soybeans are grown on roughly 1.1 million acres in Louisiana by more than 2,200 farmers.

"Without unbiased, third-party research from land-grant institutions like LSU, farmers would have to incur losses in their production to figure out solutions to troublesome fungi like Dr. Sabliov is investigating," Cannatella said. "Not only is it more efficient for us to let someone with her expertise discover these things and let us transition them back to our farms, but this also allows us to be more environmentally conscious and overall sustainable by generating solutions in a lab or on a research farm rather than on our much larger scale. Research is a good investment of Louisiana farmers' dollars."

Louisiana soybean growers spend a total of about $164 million on herbicides, pesticides and fungicides for their crops each year. That's almost half of all direct costs of soybean production. Any reduction in the amount of these inputs, as farmers call them, would help protect the farming industry as well as the environment.

"Farm inputs like seed treatments continue to increase in expense, reduce in availability, and face constant questions from those who do not understand the investment in time and resources that go into producing a safe and abundant crop," Cannatella continued. "We believe Dr. Sabliov's work and the partnership between the Louisiana Soybean and Grain Research and Promotion Board and LSU can provide valid answers to all of these challenges. And farmers, consumers, and all Louisianans benefit."

"I'm so grateful and proud that Louisiana's soybean growers and the Louisiana Soybean and Grain Research and Promotion Board believe in our technology and continue to support our work even if the development of our formulations into a commercial product could take many years still," Sabliov said.

Sabliov currently holds four U.S. patents on nanotechnologies for agricultural as well as biomedical applications.

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a) Flowchart of spheroid formation and extraction. Representative MCF-7 b) and 4T1 d) spheroids after 1, 3, and 7 days; the right panel shows the cross-sectional area distribution of spheroids. Live-dead staining of 7-day-cultured MCF-7 c) and 4T1 e) spheroids released from SupraGel; the right panel shows the corresponding area or integrated density of green and red fluorescence. Credit: Science China Press

Prof. Zhimou Yang, who has wored in the research field of peptide self-assembly biomaterials for more than 15 years, has designed a peptide hydrogel for cell spheroids production. "Supramolecular hydrogels of self-assembling short peptides are promising for cell 3D culturing because they are biocompatible and are composed of nanofibers similar to the extracellular matrix. However, peptide hydrogels for cell spheroid production are rarely reported." Prof. Zhimou Yang says.

The peptide that formed the hydrogel contained two parts: one is the self-assembling part that contains biotin groups and the other is the bioactive part for regulating cell adhesion and growth. Peptide fragments derived from laminin and an integrin-binding peptide are encoded into the peptide sequence of the bioactive part.

The hydrogel formed by the supramolecular self-assembling of this peptide is termed "SupraGel" by the team. The team in Prof. Yang's lab performed rheological measurements of SupraGel and found that it could transform into a solution by simply vigorously shaking by hand, and the resulting solution could form a hydrogel again after approximately 10 min. "These features are critical for incorporating cells and isolating cell spheroids." Prof. Yang says.

Yang's team cultured several kinds of cancer cells in SupraGel. After 7 days of growth, each single cell divided into many cells and formed spheroids spontaneously. Then they collaborated with Prof. Quan Chen, who is an expert in cell biology, to test whether SupraGel was suitable for stem cell culturing and spheroid production.

The researchers found that intestinal stem cells (ISCs) could grow into spheroids after 15 days of cell culture in SupraGel. They also compared ISCs spheroids in both SupraGel and commercially available Matrigel and found that SupraGel helped to maintain the stemness of ISCs during the formation of the spheroids better than Matrigel did.

"We envision significant potential for SupraGel in cell spheroid preparation and a range of related applications, such as studying cellular complexities and screening drugs." Prof. Yang says.

The research was published in Science China Materials .

More information: Sifan Ai et al, A SupraGel for efficient production of cell spheroids, Science China Materials (2022). Sifan Ai et al, A SupraGel for efficient production of cell spheroids,(2022). DOI: 10.1007/s40843-021-1951-x
Credit: CC0 Public Domain

Scientists from Washington University in St. Louis are helping to recover gases from a container of lunar soil that astronauts collected and sealed under vacuum on the surface of the moon in 1972. The effort is part of NASA's Apollo Next Generation Sample Analysis (ANGSA) initiative.

Apollo 17 astronauts Harrison Schmitt and Eugene Cernan collected the sample from the site of an ancient landslide in the moon's Taurus-Littrow Valley. The astronauts used a coring device to dig out a column of lunar regolitha rough mixture of dust, soil and broken rock from the surface of the moonand sealed it in a container. Back on Earth, NASA carefully placed the container in the lunar vault at NASA's Johnson Space Center, where it has remained in pristine condition, virtually untouched until now.

"For the last 50 years, the lunar core was enclosed in a core sample vacuum container, which was then enclosed in an outer vacuum container," said Alex Meshik, a research professor of physics in Arts & Sciences and faculty fellow of the university's McDonnell Center for the Space Sciences. "They were nested together, almost like Russian dolls."

The containers were placed in two sealed Teflon bags and stored in a nitrogen glove box in a vault.

Cracking the containers open, as Meshik and collaborators did last month, was tricky. The scientists needed to be able to identify the original chemical signature of every bit of gas that could be in the containers. That includes lunar gas that might have been captured at the time the lunar regolith was collected on the surface of the moon, as well as any other gases that could have seeped from the rocks during the subsequent decades in storage.

"There is no perfect vacuum seal," Meshik said. "There was no way to know how the vacuum seals on the containers fared after 50 years. Did they hold the vacuum? To what extent did they leak? The main challenge in building the extraction system was to anticipate every possible scenario so we would be ready for every outcome.

"Because of that, our apparatus was designed to be able to perform not just one single gas extraction but several extractions of different volumes at different conditions," he said.

"To help us make the informed decisions during these extractions, we incorporated into the apparatus a mass spectrometer for real-time compositional analyses of the gas, and three high-precision capacitance manometers for nondestructive and gas-independent pressure measurements," Meshik said.

Meshik led the design and construction of the extraction manifold apparatus, with support from Olga Pravdivtseva, a research associate professor of physics, and Rita Parai, an assistant professor of earth and planetary sciences, all in Arts & Sciences at Washington University. The three scientists are internationally recognized for their high-precision noble gas analyses of terrestrial and extraterrestrial materials from various bodies in the solar system, including the sun itself (Genesis mission) and cosmic dust (Stardust mission).

Olga Pravdivtseva, front right, a research associate professor of physics in Arts & Sciences, helps adjust the extraction manifold apparatus at Johnson Space Center in Houston. Scientists at Washington University in St. Louis designed and built the device that is being used to collect gases from a container of lunar soil collected by astronauts on the Apollo 17 mission. Also pictured is NASA's Juliane Gross, Astromaterials Research and Exploration Science Division (ARES) deputy Apollo curator. Credit: Alex Meshik

Ryan Zeigler, NASA's Apollo sample curator and a Washington University alumnus, received and also helped test the apparatus at Johnson Space Center.

"Fifty years ago, when these samples were collected, NASA scientists had the foresight to put in place curation procedures that would ensure future generations access to pristine samples when new analytical methods and procedures would be available, and new scientific questions would be asked," said Brad Jolliff, the Scott Rudolph Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences and director of the McDonnell Center for the Space Sciences.

"At Washington University, we have several cutting-edge labs looking at various aspects of these precious samples and testing hypotheses about their origins and how they fit into a modern context of planetary science," said Jolliff, who is the institutional lead investigator for Washington University on its ANGSA team, which is led by the University of New Mexico.

"The noble gas studies are a great example because they contain not only much information about present-day implantation of material from the sun into the surface of the moon, but also about the very origin of the moon four and a half billion years ago. Stay tuned for interesting results to come!"

Preliminary science results from the initial gas collection will be discussed during the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, which will be held in Houston March 7-11.

The lunar gases from the storage containers are now being collected using the extraction manifold apparatus. After the gases trapped in the containers are collected, the team plans to let other gases slowly diffuse out of the moon rocks themselves. NASA will then send the gases to selected laboratories in the U.S. and Europe specializing in high-precision analyses of oxygen, nitrogen, noble gases and organicsincluding to Washington University.

"One of the important characteristics of 73001 (NASA's identifier for the particular Apollo 17 lunar regolith sample) is that it was taken at a depth that was always below freezing for water," Jolliff noted. "So the thought was that it might preserve more volatiles than the upper part, which was subjected to more of the effects of diurnal heating and cooling."

As an experimental physicist, Meshik has a background in high-vacuum equipment and isotope mass spectrometry that dates back to his university years in Russia, then at Max-Planck-Institut fur Kernphysik in Heidelberg, Germany, and finally at Washington University.

He shared a personal reflection on the many hours of meticulous labor spent assembling the extraction device with his wife and frequent collaborator Pravdivtseva:

"The construction of the apparatus occurred at the peak of COVID restrictions, when we had to keep six feet distance between team members and work most of the time from home," Meshik said. "We were limited to only momentary outdoor contacts with our EPS colleagues. Meanwhile, the construction required more than two hands. Luckily the restrictions did not apply to married couples. This is how the apparatus became our family business."

Explore further Opening a 50-year-old Christmas present from the moon

More information: The effort is part of NASA's The effort is part of NASA's Apollo Next Generation Sample Analysis (ANGSA) initiative.
Network of Twitter accounts which used the #oxfordcircus or #oxfordstreet hashtag on 24 November 2017 (16:00 GMTmidnight), with specific emphasis on leading accounts. Credit: The Communication Review (2022). DOI: 10.1080/10714421.2022.2035165

In acute crisis situations, social media can play a crucial role in rapidly disseminating vital information. But there is also a risk that false or outdated facts are spread, causing unwarranted fear or panic. In a new study, Moa Eriksson Krutrok, Associate Professor of Media and Communication Studies, and Simon Lindgren, Professor of Sociology, both at Umea University, investigated how information about a suspected terrorist attack on the London Underground in 2017 was spread via Twitter. The terror alert, which created uncertainty among the public, soon turned out to be false. But by then it was already too late, alarming reports were spreading like a digital wildfire.

"Social media information flows do not directly follow a logical structure. Social media mixes witness accounts with hearsay, assumptions, and perceptions about these crises, and it can be difficult to reach out as well as take into account new information," says Moa Eriksson Krutrok.

Risk of digital wildfires

The false terrorist alarm the researchers looked at saw a surge in tweets with the hashtags #oxfordstreet and #oxfordcircus, both of which were heavily used during the event. In the first hour after the alert, as many as 2,750 tweets per minute were published.

"The recommendation system of the platforms themselves, supported by algorithms, can contribute to biases in the flow of information. These algorithms help to tailor information to the individual user, but in a crisis, you may need the most up-to-date information rather than the most personalized. As old and new information is shuffled around and spewed into our different feeds, it's difficult for social media users to clearly understand the developments of the event and get an understanding of the whole picture," says Moa Eriksson Krutrok.

The researchers were able to see that the way the platforms worked, combined with the way users acted, indirectly contributed to the creation of so-called "digital wildfires" of information. This means that the spread of information works so fast that it becomes unmanageable and can reach a large number of people very quickly.

"Such wildfires can be difficult to extinguish. Platforms can moderate the content as much as possible, but when thousands of tweets a minute are involved, it is more difficult to verify the information. Even information from credible official sources can create uncertainty about the course of events, for example if it is vague or written at a certain stage when you are not yet sure of all the elements of the development of events," says Moa Eriksson Krutrok.

Use social media, but with caution

Despite the risks of spreading false information, Moa Eriksson Krutrok believes that social media plays an important role in crisis situations. However, she believes that all users need to be even more critical of their sources during a crisis, especially when accessing information via social media.

Social media allows more people to participate in information flows in a way that has not been possible before. But because social media platforms are made up of a huge number of actors, the dissemination of information can be potentially unmanageable, and it can be difficult to know whether updates are true or false.

Even though misinformation can spread via social media, it is far from always malicious. Instead, the researchers say, it is difficult even for witnesses to interpret a situation while it is happening. The false terrorist alarm they studied included witness statements that later turned out not to be true.

People hiding in shops along Oxford Street thought they heard shots being fired, but it was later confirmed that there were no perpetrators, and no weapons, at the scene.

There are technological solutions that Twitter can apply to reduce the spread of information during crises, including limiting the use of retweet functions.

"This was tried, for example, during the 2020 US elections and could also be used in connection with terrorist alerts," says Moa Eriksson Krutrok.

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More information: Moa Eriksson Krutrok et al, Social media amplification loops and false alarms: Towards a Sociotechnical understanding of misinformation during emergencies, The Communication Review (2022). Moa Eriksson Krutrok et al, Social media amplification loops and false alarms: Towards a Sociotechnical understanding of misinformation during emergencies,(2022). DOI: 10.1080/10714421.2022.2035165
A fin whale and common dolphins seen during a New England Aquarium aerial survey of Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument in 2020. Credit: New England Aquarium

Sightings of more than 1 million marine mammals in the federally protected Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument and sites along the Atlantic Coast have been used to identify areas of high marine mammal diversity. These findings underscore the importance of ocean conservation as these waters face increasing impacts from human activities.

In a new study published in Conservation Science and Practice, New England Aquarium scientists reviewed marine mammal sightings to gain a better understanding of habitat use along the U.S. East Coast. The research team used North Atlantic Right Whale Consortium data from aerial and boat surveys conducted by 49 organizations between 1979 and 2020 to calculate marine mammal species diversity in the North Atlantic Ocean between Florida and Nova Scotia, Canada. The data set contained 189,175 sightings of more than 1 million animals from 30 unique species or species groupings.

High species diversity occurred more frequently in the northern part of the Atlantic Coast, particularly around the Monument, on the edge of the continental shelf, and across the Gulf of Maine and Georges Bank, they found. "It was very exciting to see these results," said Brooke C. Hodge, the study's lead author and Associate Scientist in the Spatial Ecology, Mapping, and Assessment (EcoMap) Program for the Anderson Cabot Center for Ocean Life at the New England Aquarium.. "Our research shows us that the Monument is diverse compared to the East Coast. It is clearly well-sited and protects a unique and diverse marine mammal community."

Last October, the Biden-Harris Administration reinstated the Monument's federal protection status, which had been removed by the previous administration. The nearly 5,000-square mile underwater sanctuary is located 130 miles southeast of Cape Cod and is home to vibrant deep-sea ecosystems that include coral reefs, fish, and endangered whales. In 2016, Aquarium scientists provided strong scientific evidence that helped the Monument's initial designation under President Obama. In 2021, Aquarium scientists explored the consequences of removing protections from the Monument and demonstrated that opening the Monument to fishing increased the risk of entanglement, bycatch, and habitat destruction for species from the sea surface to sea floor.

In this study, scientists found that species diversity was highest in the northern and mid-Atlantic regions with steep continental shelf edges. Canyons and areas with high salinity and low temperatures also had a high diversity of marine mammals. "Well designed and effectively managed marine protected areas can lead to conservation success," Hodge said. In the study, the authors wrote: "Our analyses contribute to efforts to designate MPAs (marine protected areas) to conserve habitat that is important for protecting species by identifying drivers of biodiversity and potential sites for protecting 30 percent of the plant by 2030." The Biden-Harris Administration aims to protect 30 percent of federal U.S. lands and waters by 2030.

"Identifying MPAs in our study area is critical because U.S. East Coast waters face intensive human use from fishing, shipping, planned wind energy development, and features that support marine mammal foraging are subject to specific threats," researchers wrote in the study. "The Gulf of Maine is one of the most rapidly warming marine ecosystems in the world, and evidence of changes in productivity have already been observed. Designating MPAs and establishing effective management measures to meet the goal of protecting areas of particular importance to biodiversity are needed to protect marine mammals and the ecosystems on which they depend." However, the authors acknowledge that further research is needed to more fully characterize marine mammal species diversity in these areas and to assess the biodiversity of the full wildlife community and the habitat, such as seabirds, deep-self invertebrates, deep-sea corals, sponges, and fish.

The study's coauthors include several New England Aquarium scientists: Daniel E. Pendleton, Research Scientist; Laura C. Ganley, Postdoctoral Associate Research Scientist; Orfhlaith "Orla" O'Brien, Associate Scientist; Scott D. Kraus, Emeritus Scientist; and Jessica V. Redfern, Senior Scientist and Chair of the Spatial Ecology, Mapping, and Assessment Program. Ester Quintana-Rizzo of Simmons University also contributed to the research.

Explore further Opening protected area off New England coast to commercial fishing compromises protections

More information: Brooke C. Hodge et al, Identifying predictors of species diversity to guide designation of marine protected areas, Conservation Science and Practice (2022). Brooke C. Hodge et al, Identifying predictors of species diversity to guide designation of marine protected areas,(2022). DOI: 10.1111/csp2.12665

Provided by New England Aquarium
A young Myanmar snub-nosed monkey, precious representative of the next generation of this critically endangered primate. Credit: Shaohua Dong, FFI

These are uncertain times for Myanmar, and for the future of its astonishing biodiversity. Last year, not long before the world awoke to the news that the military had seized control of the country and declared a year-long state of emergency, Fauna & Flora International (FFI) staff in Yangon had been discussing how best to commemorate a remarkable conservation milestone. At the time, it felt inappropriate to celebrate. Now, as we settle into what we hope will be a game-changing year for biodiversity, it's time to share some good news, so here goes: within the space of a single decade, FFI and our in-country and international partners have discovered no fewer than 100 new species in Myanmar.

Myanmar harbors biological riches that most countries can only dream of. Its remaining tracts of forest are home to some of the most spectacular wildlife in mainland Southeast Asia. With two-thirds of the country's population living below the poverty line, local communities are heavily dependent on natural resources for survival, and it is vital that they are involved in decisions about how best to safeguard that natural heritage.

When Myanmar began to open up in 2010, FFI wasted no time in trying to establish links with the emerging grass-roots organizations that were aiming to give local communities a voice. We subsequently joined forces with in-country partner Biodiversity and Nature Conservation Association (BANCA) to establish an ambitious long-term program focusing on protected area management and community forestry.

New primates

If evidence was needed that Myanmar's biodiversity was one of Asia's best-kept secrets, the first joint surveys undertaken with BANCA in early 2010 certainly provided it. The biggest revelation was a primate species new to science. Previously known only to local hunters, the Myanmar snub-nosed monkey would prove to be the first in an incredible sequence of discoveries culminating in last year's revelation that another local primate, the Popa langur, was actually a new species hiding in plain sight.

Recently discovered in eastern Myanmar, this new species of slender toad, Ansonia kyaiktiyoensis, is the westernmost example of its genus. Credit: Evan Quah, FFI

Endless forms

Appropriately enough, the species that took the cumulative count into three figures was not a charismatic close relative but an unprepossessing, cave-adapted two-pronged bristletail. This arthropod's main claim to fame stems less from any intrinsic beautywhich in this case might escape most beholdersthan from its extremely limited range (possibly just a single cave). Mussels and other molluscs, slender geckos, a spiny eel, a gilded toad and the delightfully named Ywangan crocodile newt are among the other new finds.

Any country that serves up a list of one hundred new species within a ten-year timeframebookended, to boot, by a brace of mystery monkeysclearly merits close conservation attention. In the case of Myanmar, that need is all the more urgent given the extent to which the country's resources are already being exploited by outside interests.

Growing threats

All these speciesfrom freshwater mussels in Myanmar's largest river to karst-dependent geckos on their isolated limestone outcrops face a barrage of threats including illegal logging, hunting, agricultural encroachment, ill-conceived infrastructure development and indiscriminate quarrying.

The good news is that a new protected area has already been created to help safeguard the Myanmar snub-nosed monkey and its habitat, but much remains to be done to ensure that other, less newsworthy, species benefit from similar protection measures.

At this time of uncertainty, our thoughts are with our staff and local partners in Myanmar, and with the communities they continue to engage with. FFI is accustomed to operating in countries during periods of political crisis, and we are committed to finding a way forward in these turbulent times, in order to ensure that biodiversity conservation remains high on the government's agenda.

Explore further New hope for critically endangered Myanmar snub-nosed monkey
Ulturgashevas research is steeped in her lived experience, as well as academic study. She regularly returns to Siberia to conduct ethnographic research among Indigenous reindeer herders and their reindeer. Credit: Olga Ulturgasheva

Arctic Indigenous worlds, experiences, and challenges past and presentalong with their implications for our climate crisisare the focus of a course at Princeton this spring titled "Pluriversal Arctic." That is also the life's work of the course's instructor, Olga Ulturgasheva, an Eveny member, renowned anthropologist and the current Canadian Studies Pathy Distinguished Visitor at Princeton.

"I'm trying to show this alternative vision, perhaps change a little bit of something within these students, to see the environment not as something to control, tame or modify, but as something that without which, humans cannot survive," said Ulturgasheva, an internationally recognized social scientist with decades of field research in the Arctic who is also a visiting research scholar and visiting professor in the Council of the Humanities for the current academic year.

"This entire course is about producing a particular subjectivity, which is about protection of the environment," she said, "but also understanding the kind of worldviews that do not separate nature and culture in a way where nature is inferior to human culture."

The Eveny, an ethnic minority and community of about 20,000, live in Northeast Siberia, in the Sakha Republic of Russia. While it remains the coldest inhabited place on Earth, their homeland is experiencing some of the most dramatic impacts of climate change.

Siberian permafrostground that is frozen year-roundis melting rapidly, making parts of the region uninhabitable as potential flooding looms and the land turns to mud and loses stability.

In June 2021, a temperature of 88.8 degrees was recorded in Oymyakon (which is accustomed to lows approaching or exceeding 80 below zero). Also in 2021, Siberia's Yakutia region was among the hardest hit worldwide by forest fires. These fires were the largest ever recorded anywhere on Earth.

The changes threaten not only the Arctic, but the entire globe.

Research and lived experience

Ulturgasheva's course incorporates both her lived experience and her research, introducing Princeton students to anthropological and cross-disciplinary studies of the ways in which circumpolar populations experience, perceive and respond to environmental, political and socioeconomic changes.

"The course is a primary source introduction to Indigenous knowledge, ways of looking at the world from a non-human centric perspective," Ulturgasheva explained.

Ulturgasheva, who holds a Ph.D. in anthropology and polar studies from the University of Cambridge, is senior lecturer in social anthropology at the University of Manchester. She has carried out ethnographic research on childhood and adolescence, narrative and memory, animist and nomadic cosmologies, reindeer herding and hunting, climate change and the latest environmental transformations in Siberia and Alaska.

Since 2006, she has been engaged in international projects exploring climate change and adaptation patterns in Siberia, the American Arctic and Amazonia, along with human and non-human personhood, and youth resilience.

She also serves as a principal investigator for two large, international collaborative research projects funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the European Research Council (ERC).

The NSF-funded project is a study of adaptation strategies and resilience patterns among Alaskan Yup'ik and Siberian Eveny, which aims to provide new insights on human capacity to navigate through recent environmental threats induced by climate change and environmental degradation in the Arctic.

The ERC-funded project examines how climate change is managed at the ethnic borderlands of China and Russia, while mobilizing the expertise of anthropologists, historians and philosophers of science and ethics, religious studies experts, Indigenous leaders and environmental scientists.

Simon Morrison, professor of music and Slavic Languages and literatures at Princeton, and director of the Fund for Canadian Studies, encouraged Ulturgasheva to apply for the Pathy professorship after meeting her during a PIIRS Global Seminar, which he taught for 15 Princeton students in Moscow in 2019.

Morrison said Ulturgasheva's research is grounded in her lived experience and her direct observations as an anthropologist.

"She's looking at how people in her community are processing these calamitous events, and what she brings to the classroom is what it's like to be there," Morrison said. "She's not just talking about stuff she read on JSTOR or in books. It's actually the gritty, sweaty, uncomfortable, brittle, fragile, alienating nature of that kind of work."

He added: "On one hand, she is committed to the preservation of that rich and distinguished and very fragile culture, and, on the other hand, she's dealing with ways for us to comprehend something that's existential and comprehensibleclimate changeand whether or not there are systems of knowledge that Indigenous communities can provide, that can actually help us to comprehend and perhaps address the crisis."

Twenty-seven Princeton students are enrolled in Ulturgasheva's course this spring. About two-thirds are anthropology concentrators, and there are also students from departments as varied as music, computer science, mathematics and physics.

Ulturgasheva acknowledges that some of the source material can seem overwhelming and unfamiliar to students with different worldviews. Pluriversal in the course's title, for example, refers to the theory of the existence of more than one reality, which is central to Arctic Indigenous cosmologies.

In one class lecture, Ulturgasheva described the central role of the shaman to Siberian communities in connecting with the spirit world and ensuring the health and well-being of the clan.

The term shaman, meaning "one who knows," derives from the Tungus language, which the Eveny share with their closest kin, the Evenki. She played a video clip of a shamanic ceremony, and later spoke of the threats to shamanic practice, including the long persecution of shamans under Soviet Russian rule.

Keely Toledo, a concentrator in anthropology, was among the many students who engaged Ulturgasheva with questions afterward. Toledo, a member of the Navajo Nation, asked about how shamans protect themselves in the spirit world. "She doesn't create an air of mystery about it," Toledo said. "It's a way of life."

Toledo said Ulturgasheva encourages students to ask questions and to think critically. On a personal level, Toledo said she finds Ulturgasheva's presence to be a comfort.

"She really does stand in her power, and I think that's very inspiring," Toledo said. "She believes in the work that she's doing, and her passion shows through."

Gabriel Duguay, a senior who is finishing an independent study in Indigenous studies, said he was thrilled when he learned the class was being offered.

Duguay, a Canadian national whose father is Mi'kmaw, said he and Ulturgasheva share many interests. Duguay said he hopes to work in the Arctic in the future for the Canadian government.

"I think her firsthand stories of the Arctic are pretty exceptional and really add to the issues that we're talking about," Duguay said. "Whenever we're talking about a concept, she's able to elaborate on it from personal experience which was really quite helpful."

Ulturgasheva will share more lessons from the region later this year in a collection titled, "Risky Futures: Climate, Geopolitics and Local Realities in the Uncertain Circumpolar North" (Berghahn, August 2022). The volume, which she co-edited with Barbara Bodenhorn, brings together authors who are local practitioners, Indigenous scholars and international researchers, providing nuanced views of the social consequences of climate change and environmental risks.

The book takes up the same message she impresses upon her students: What happens in the Arctic region, such as permafrost thaw or methane release, not only sweeps rapidly through local ecosystems, but also has profound global implications.

Explore further Satellites pinpoint communities at risk of permafrost thaw
China expected to play growing role in global development, stability

Xinhua) 08:01, March 04, 2022

* Solidarity and cooperation are key to defeating the COVID-19 pandemic. China and its partners worldwide have supported and helped each other in the arduous fight against the deadly virus since it broke out.

* China's achievements have boosted global confidence in its economic outlook, and experts believe that the Chinese economy will maintain a sound momentum.

* China will remain committed to building a community with a shared future for mankind, where countries with different social systems, ideologies, histories, cultures, and levels of development will strive for common prosperity.

BEIJING, March 3 (Xinhua) -- Struggling to handle the COVID-19 pandemic, uneven economic recovery and other challenges, the world is craving development initiatives and actions in a global approach.

With China's annual "two sessions" drawing near, the world is keeping a close eye on how the country will play its role in advancing global development and stability.

STABILIZER

Solidarity and cooperation are key to defeating the pandemic. Since the COVID-19 pandemic broke out, China and its partners worldwide have supported and helped each other in the arduous fight against the deadly virus.

Photo taken on March 6, 2021 shows a container of COVID-19 vaccines from Chinese company Sinovac at the El Dorado International Airport in Bogota, Colombia. (Colombian Presidential Office/Handout via Xinhua)

In the year 2021 alone, China provided 2 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines to more than 120 countries and international organizations, honoring its commitment to making the vaccine a global public good. This is part of China's largest emergency humanitarian action since the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949.

Khaled Abdel Ghaffar, Egypt's higher education and scientific research minister and acting health minister, said China has always fulfilled its commitment to building a community of common health for mankind.

The vaccine assistance provided by China is the largest foreign aid Egypt has received so far in fighting the pandemic, Ghaffar noted, adding that China has made remarkable achievements in its own anti-pandemic response.

Pandemic is just one of the stiff global challenges facing the global community. In recent years, notably since the outbreak of COVID-19, the world has seen rising unilateralism and protectionism that have disrupted global industrial chains and posed a grave threat to global economic recovery. Upholding multilateralism, China is committed to promoting development through opening-up and global cooperation, bringing a sense of certainty so dear to the increasingly chaotic world.

In the eyes of Greek scholar Pelagia Karpathiotaki, China's economic stability and its initiatives to promote international economic cooperation would make significant contribution at this difficult moment.

The forthcoming "two sessions" will for sure "attract global interest more than ever as China's role and influence is now extremely important in addressing global challenges," she said.

DRIVING FORCE

In 2021, China's foreign trade exceeded 6 trillion U.S. dollars for the first time and its economy expanded 8.1 percent year on year. Contributing over 30 percent to global economic growth in recent years, China has become a key driving force for the world economy.

Aerial photo taken on Dec. 7, 2021 shows vehicles before being loaded onto a freight ship at Yantai Port, east China's Shandong Province. (Photo by Tang Ke/Xinhua)

China's achievements have boosted global confidence in its economic outlook. Experts believe that despite a stiff headwind, the Chinese economy, with strong resilience and great potential, will maintain a sound momentum.

For decades, China has been the world's manufacturing hub and a crucial link in global supply chains. China's steady recovery from the pandemic, high-quality development and action to further opening up will add stronger impetus to global recovery in the post-COVID-19 era, said Selcuk Colakoglu, director of the Ankara-based Turkish Center for Asia-Pacific Studies.

Aerial photo taken on Dec. 16, 2021 shows the automated production line of a technology company in the Economic Development Zone of Anji County, Huzhou, east China's Zhejiang Province. (Photo by Xia Pengfei/Xinhua)

In face of challenges, China has fulfilled its commitment to continuing opening up its market, demonstrating its determination to build a more prosperous future with the rest of the world.

China's opening-up is closely related to the development of the global economy, said Evandro Menezes de Carvalho, a Brazilian professor at the Getulio Vargas Foundation, a think tank based in Rio de Janeiro. He noted that given the size of China's economy, its policies drawn up during the "two sessions" will have an important impact on the world.

Cavince Adhere, a Kenya-based international relations scholar, said China has become a staunch supporter of multilateralism and globalization, and many countries are expecting to see it take further moves in opening up and reform via the annual gathering.

PIONEER

When meeting with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Feb. 5 in Beijing, Chinese President Xi Jinping stressed strengthening unity and cooperation to tackle various pressing global challenges, saying that humanity lives in a global village where the destinies of all are intertwined.

The message of Xi's remarks is clear: China will remain committed to building a community with a shared future for mankind, where countries with different social systems, ideologies, histories, cultures, and levels of development will strive for common prosperity. No one should be left behind in this drive.

To achieve a balanced, coordinated and inclusive growth worldwide, the Chinese president proposed the Global Development Initiative in steering global development in face of the pandemic.

Professor Paul Zilungisele Tembe, a senior fellow at South Africa's Thabo Mbeki African Leadership Institute, said China "has no history of seeking political or economic hegemony over its neighbours or forcing other countries to follow the Chinese model of development."

China always values the important role of international institutions such as the United Nations, the World Trade Organization and the Africa Union in global affairs, the sinologist added.

Alexey Avdonin, an analyst at the Belarusian Institute for Strategic Studies, said China's steadfast stance and practice give hope and boost confidence in building a community with a shared future for mankind.

China has explored and developed a development path suited to its own conditions, and it raises confidence of developing countries in pursuing their development, said Bambang Suryono, chairman of Indonesian think tank Asia Innovation Study Center.

(Web editor: Xia Peiyao, Liang Jun)
The development of China's AG600 large amphibious aircraft has gained support from the financial-leasing sector, the Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC) announced Thursday.



China Aviation Industry General Aircraft Co., Ltd., a subsidiary of AVIC, signed a strategic cooperation agreement with Everbright Financial Leasing Co., Ltd. on Thursday to jointly boost research and development of the AG600 and its future operation, said AVIC.

According to the agreement, the two sides will explore innovative financial plans to support further research on the AG600, as well as purchasing the first batch of aircraft products.

Both sides will also explore building an innovative industry-finance community to boost the country's aviation emergency-rescue system, said the agreement.

The move represents a major step forward for the AG600 in entering the market and playing a role in the country's emergency-rescue system.

The two sides will hold further discussions on the leasing plan for the first batch of AG600 aircraft and the signing of the purchase agreement, said AVIC.

They will join efforts in exploring the integration of industry and finance, actively carry out business-model innovation, and fully promote "independent innovation" activity, with the aim of boosting the development of the AG600 and its related industrial chain, AVIC added.

Codenamed Kunlong, the AG600 is a key piece of aeronautical equipment in China's emergency-rescue system.

As a model of special-purpose aircraft, the AG600 has been developed by AVIC to meet the needs of firefighting and marine-rescue missions, as well as other critical emergency-rescue operations.

The AG600 successfully completed its maiden flight in 2017, its first take-off from a water reservoir in 2018, and its maiden flight over the sea in 2020.

For 2022, the AG600 project has set a target of seeing three new aircraft enter the final assembly phase and three aircraft to take maiden flights, according to AVIC.
FORT EDWARD  Washington County District Attorney Tony Jordan asked the county supervisors Public Safety Committee on Tuesday for a new attorney position.

Changes in the states criminal justice laws since 2019 have considerably increased our work, Jordan said.

He cited a new requirement to share evidence with the defense, called discovery, in every criminal case, not just some of them, at an early stage of the process; the need to review more body-camera footage as more law enforcement agencies adopt them; more litigation around cases; new demands on DA offices as a result of the recently signed Less is More Act; and a backlog of cases due to COVID-related court closures.

On top of that, his office has to review around 200 cases from the village of Fort Edward, where two police officers are accused of not turning over evidence to defense attorneys.

Its a massive undertaking, Jordan said.

Jordan apologized for not requesting the new position last fall when supervisors were working on the 2022 budget.

I could not have anticipated all of these things cumulatively, he said. The courts werent fully functioning last fall.

There is significantly more litigation with every case, Jordan said. He tried to streamline his offices procedures to cope but it didnt help, he said.

Some of the litigation is frivolous, he said. Even if its thrown out of court, the DA has to respond or is considered to acquiesce, Jordan said.

His office is fielding more 440, or post-conviction, appeals, Jordan said. The appeals may be filed by public defenders, attorneys under another state program for indigent defendants, private attorneys, legal defense funds, or defendants acting on their own. Eighty-five to 90% of people prosecuted by his office are represented by county or state public defenders, Jordan said.

Hartford Supervisor Dana Haff asked if the county will have to pay the public defenders office to file more 440 appeals.

Were paying ourselves to hurt ourselves, Haff said.

County Attorney Roger Wickes confirmed that the county may be paying both sides, sometimes three if his office is involved.

The tipping points for Jordans office have been the reopening of the courts with a huge backlog and the Less is More Act, which took effect Tuesday, he said. The act, which Gov. Kathy Hochul signed in September, prevents recently paroled people from being sent back to prison for technical parole violations such as missing a curfew, failing a drug test or failing to obey travel restrictions. Hearings for parole violations have to be held within 24 hours of the report of a violation, so his staff has to coordinate quickly with other agencies, Jordan said.

The state gave the county $193,000 last year to help pay for extra costs around discovery due to the 2019 criminal justice reforms, Jordan said.

Well get some money this year but not nearly enough, he said.

Granville Supervisor Matthew Hicks said he wouldnt support a change to the staffing pattern now, except in an emergency, extreme nature. A new attorney would cost $100,000 to $125,000, he said.

Im totally opposed, said Hebron Supervisor Brian Campbell. If the supervisors approve this request, well have to bulk up the public defender and Rogers (Wickes) office. We dont have an extra million to spend on employees, nor does the county have space for more employees. The board needs to see how this plays out, Campbell said.

I dont have the luxury of saying, Lets see what happens when this explodes, Jordan said. If you think that letting public safety go in Washington County will move the Legislature, were mistaken. Their goal is to let the system collapse.

The committee referred the request to the personnel and finance committees.

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The COVID-19 Short Term Emergency Rental and Mortgage Assistance programs are funded by a Community Development Block Grant originally introduced in 2019. The programs were created with a $500,000 budget to prevent, prepare for and respond to coronavirus.

Following the end of moratoriums in the state of New Jersey that were originally put in place due to the negative impacts from COVID-19, we know that Atlantic City residents need help, said Rebekah Mena, the citys public information officer.

In partnership with the Salvation Army and Catholic Charities, the grant program was revitalized to provide rent and mortgage assistance specifically to low-to-moderate income households still feeling the economic sting of the pandemic.

The Salvation Army and Catholic Charities will help administer the program by allowing eligible residents to go directly to those organizations to start the application process. The two organizations also will help with the collection of necessary documents and disbursing money for rent payments. Residents can visit the Salvation Army or Catholic Charities for rental or mortgage assistance effective immediately, while funds last.

The rent and mortgage assistance programs will be available in three-month increments while allowing renters to apply for an additional three-month extension if they can show assistance is still needed, for a total of six months of aid.

Hamilton Township administrators, parents meet to discuss school safety After an apparent surge in fighting, bullying and other behavioral problems in local schools

Small said the Community Development Block Grant program has made an initial commitment of $300,000. If and when that funding is accounted for, the CDBG is in the position to make an additional commitment of $200,000, totaling $500,000 in potential funds toward rental and mortgage assistance for residents.

Residents also can submit outstanding utility bills on a case-by-case basis for consideration through this funding, Mena said.

It primarily will go to support rent and mortgage assistance, but residents that do have outstanding utility bills can also submit those for consideration, Mena said.

To be eligible for assistance, low-to-moderate income households must come in at or below 80% of the area median income for Atlantic County. The median household income in Atlantic County from 2015-19 was $62,110, according to U.S. Census data.

Applicants must show financial hardship due to the pandemic, such as reduced work hours, layoffs, furloughs or day care closures.

Contact Selena Vazquez: 609-272-7225 svazquez@pressofac.com

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BRIDGETON  When the mother of a 3-year-old Cape May County boy who was killed 12 years ago accepted an automated call two weeks ago, she wasnt expecting to learn the man responsible for her sons death would be released from prison early.

Christina Ulbrich and her husband, Richard, didnt understand why 47-year-old Charles Kane would be released by the end of this month, so Richard called the state Department of Corrections seeking answers.

They learned he was eligible for early release under legislation intended to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 in prisons.

Christina Ulbrich said she went to work, but the calls emotional toll didnt hit her until 40 minutes into her shift. She said she then asked her supervisor whether she could go home for the day.

Violent offenders should not be allowed out of jail, period, Ulbrich said. Im just disgusted.

The couple, who lived in the Wildwoods when Elijah died but have since relocated to Las Vegas, had already felt their son never received justice when Kane was sentenced 10 years ago.

They headed west three years ago to start a new life, where they wouldnt be known locally as the parents of the murdered child. She ended friendships with people who knew Kane after Elijahs death and hadnt had to tell anyone about the incident since moving to Nevada, until now.

Kane was babysitting the toddler at the boys North Wildwood home Feb. 25, 2010, when, as he told the judge during his plea hearing, he became angry at the boy when he wet his pants. He then threw the boy against the homes refrigerator, inflicting injuries to his skull that required a hospital stay at Cooper University Medical Center in Camden.

The boy died March 17, 2010.

The couple trusted Kane with their son because they shared mutual friends, and Kane had cared for other children in the area. Kane was also godfather to several children the couple knew from other friends, Ulbrich said.

Even my husband said, I would have left my child with him (Kane), too, she said.

Kane pleaded guilty to causing the 2010 death of Elijah and has been serving his sentence at South Woods State Prison in Bridgeton since 2012. Kane was sentenced to 15 years in prison, of which he would need to serve 85%, and five years of parole supervision.

The Lower Township man has a maximum release date of March 26, meaning he has to be released on or before that date, according to the Department of Corrections.

Kane had been indicted on a charge of murder but ended up pleading to aggravated manslaughter.

The boys parents have condemned Kanes sentencing, saying he received too light a punishment for a crime that resulted in their son losing his life.

We dont feel like justice was served in the first place, Ulbrich said.

Records show Kane was scheduled to be released in November, but his release date was moved via the states COVID-19 protocols for prisons, which call for discharging offenders ahead of their previously scheduled release dates.

The inmates must meet specific criteria to be eligible for early release, such as being due for release within one year and not serving a sentence for crimes including murder and aggravated sexual assault.

Kane meets those eligibility requirements, DOC spokesperson Liz Velez said.

North Wildwood boy, 3, died of head trauma three weeks after alleged assault, according to autopsy CAPE MAY COURT HOUSE _A preliminary autopsy lists "blunt head trauma" as the cause of death 

Ulbrich has sharply criticized the states decision to release some inmates to reduce the spread of the coronavirus, a move she says puts people in harms way because inmates like Kane can be released earlier.

Arent murders not supposed to be included? So because he pleaded to manslaughter that is the loophole? she said in a comment on Facebook.

Gov. Phil Murphys press team did not respond to a request for comment.

Ulbrich and her husband are concerned that a similar incident, even if its not caused by Kane once hes freed, may happen to another family and inflict everlasting pain, especially if the perpetrator is released early.

Allowing it, she said, shows New Jerseys criminal justice system isnt protecting children.

Theres going to be some excuse from the state of New Jersey as to why its OK for a criminal to walk the streets, she said.

Contact Eric Conklin: 609-272-7261 econklin@pressofac.com Twitter @ACPressConklin

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After an apparent surge in fighting, bullying and other behavioral problems in local schools, administrators are working to allay parental concerns about student safety.

About 100 parents, administrators and board members filled the cafeteria Wednesday night at William Davies Middle School for a school safety meeting hosted by the Hamilton Township School District.

Administrators delivered a presentation identifying what they believed to be parents primary concerns, speculated about what is driving misbehavior and described what steps the district was taking to ensure student safety.

This is not something that were going to fix tonight, but we will continue to work with the community to make Hamilton Township a better place, Superintendent Jeffery Zito said.

The district administered a poll to parents in advance of the meeting asking them to identify serious problems in the district. The chief concern was safety generally, which was mentioned in 20 parental responses. Other concerns were fighting, discipline policies and phone policies.

How will the school protect my son as he moves to sixth grade? How is the administration going to regain order at (William) Davies? read one of the complaints, which were distributed to attendees at the meeting Wednesday.

Local couple organize Mays Landing library project HAMILTON TOWNSHIP  Retired teachers Vic and Helen Hudson were riding their bicycles on the 

How to keep schools safe, stop the violence at Davies, way to help our kids feel safe again at school, read another complaint, listing what issues the respondent wanted the district to address.

The district discussed different strategies for preventing fighting and other misbehavior.

This includes a Positive Behavioral Interventions & Supports program, in which students receive rewards and other positive reinforcement for good behavior.

Currently, administrators from both the board office and the school monitor hallways during class changes.

Monitors also are stationed outside some of the bathrooms, which has been the site of recent, alleged incidents of misconduct.

Schools also are considering staggering student schedules so as to reduce the volume of hallway traffic between class periods.

State school bus mask mandate to end March 7 On March 7, New Jersey school districts will be free to adopt their own mask policies, with 

The district has hired a safety specialist and is meeting with police on a monthly basis to discuss safety issues.

Administrators said they were considering installing the HALO Smart Sensor device in the bathroom to detect smoke, particularly from vaping, as well as loud noises and vulgarities.

They were also looking to streamline the amount of time it takes to investigate incidents that occur on school buses.

Zito said he believes the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as school shutdowns and other recent restrictions, inhibited students maturation. While he stressed he did not attribute all problems in the district to the pandemic, he did point to its impact.

It makes you think, yep my eighth grader, the last time they had a normal school year they were a fifth grader, Zito said. Not an excuse, just a fact.

Davies Principal Darren Palmer said that while the intensity of the fighting at the school had increased, there were actually fewer students involved in fights relative to the last full school year, which was 2018-19. The 2019-20 and 2020-21 school years saw only limited student interactions due to pandemic restrictions on in-person learning and classroom movement.

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Palmer also attributed an increase in anti-social behavior to coronavirus social-distancing guidelines, which he said caused students to develop unhealthy social media habits.

The middle school was the scene of alleged incidents involving students filming one another using the bathroom. A science teacher was recently fired from Davies after being arrested for allegedly causing false public alarm, although he has said he was trying to address issues surrounding cyberbullying and fighting at the school.

Administrators did criticize student use of phones during the meeting, calling them distracting, detrimental to learning and a tool that can facilitate bullying. Some parents at the meeting pushed back against policies restricting phone use during school hours  especially in light of concerns over safety, fighting and student violence.

Some parents in attendance who spoke with The Press of Atlantic City after the meeting remained skeptical about the districts response.

Kristine Parker, a mother of two middle school students, said she was opposed to the current fighting policies. She said the policies unduly punish students who are victims in fights and not the perpetrators, creating for the victims undue anxiety about getting in trouble.

Its beyond not fair, Parker said.

Atlantic County's first female police chief retires from Galloway department GALLOWAY TOWNSHIP  Retiring police Chief Donna Higbee says she has prioritized supporting t

Kalel Torres, a father of two students in middle school and one in elementary school, said he wanted to see the district communicate detailed plans to address bullying and connect students with mental health resources. Torres said the district should also work to recognize the symptoms of a student in distress.

When you find out how to get to the core of those things right there, and eliminate those symptoms or factors that would cause those, then you can effectively eliminate the situation to begin with, Torres said.

Contact Chris Doyle cdoyle@pressofac.com

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It was 9 a.m. Tuesday, and many who filed inside Pay Less Liquor as soon as the doors were unlocked already seemed impaired, many looking dazed and some struggling to walk.

They came out with their purchases, and many stood on the sidewalk outside the liquor store near the entrance to Save A Lot, currently the downtowns largest supermarket. Some sat on walls, in cars and elsewhere in the area, holding their paper bags.

Residents complain the people who hang out in the area all day aggressively beg for money from anyone who walks by and engage in unacceptable behavior around and behind the stores.

Ive lived here all my life. Its terrible I cant go to shop (at the Save A Lot) without people begging for money, said neighborhood resident Lisa Bishop, 57, after dropping off her 4-year-old granddaughter at the Gateway Head Start Center across New York Avenue from Renaissance Plaza.

One day she was waiting for her granddaughter to get out of preschool and she saw a man exposing himself and engaging in a sex act behind the stores, she said.

Atlantic Citys supermarket dream coming true The absence of a supermarket in Atlantic City has been the norm for much of the past four decades.

I reported it to the school, Bishop said. We see heroin bags, needles in front of the school. Kids are young and innocent, they should not be subject to this foolishness.

Mayor Marty Small Sr. recently announced the No Tolerance policy as one of his administrations highest priorities for 2022.

Small said Wednesday he is working with police Officer-in-Charge James Sarkos to hire civilian police aides to help patrol the area.

That area will be covered 24 hours a day, Small said. Its not OK to stand in front of a business and do illegal activity. People will be held accountable.

Councilman Kaleem Shabazz, who represents the 3rd Ward, including the area around Renaissance Plaza, said hes heard reports of the Gateway school playground being used by people to party, use drugs and have sex.

There are 200 kids here, Shabazz said, from 6 weeks to 5 years old, and they need to be protected.

The plaza area has long attracted vagrants and people with mental illness and substance abuse problems. Three years ago, Shabazz chaired a group called the Cleaner and Safer & Healthier committee that sent people to the area two hours a day to try to get people into treatment programs and offer other help.

The Casino Reinvestment Development Authority, which controls the Tourism District where the plaza is located, approved security upgrades about three years ago. They included additional lighting and cameras at Renaissance Plaza after City Council unanimously adopted a resolution urging the state agencys assistance.

But progress has been slight.

Part of the problem is people with substance abuse issues being attracted to the city because of social services offered there, and another issue is the effect of COVID-19, which has slowed interventions and kept municipal court from operating at full capacity.

Before COVID, substance abuse treatment was more easily offered to people when they appeared in municipal court after being ticketed or charged, Shabazz said.

Shabazz said he had introduced an ordinance that would have stopped the selling of small bottles of liquor, which panhandlers buy after collecting enough from panhandling.

He couldnt get support for it.

Im going to put it up again, Shabazz said.

He is also exploring making it part of the mercantile license for business owners to work in conjunction with police to protect the public.

We have to make it uncomfortable for people to hang out, Shabazz said. People should be able to come and shop.

But the law doesnt make it simple to eliminate such behaviors.

There is no such thing as a loitering law in New Jersey, said police Capt. Rudy Lushina as he stood at the corner of New York and Atlantic avenues later in the day, overseeing the situation. They were struck down a long time ago. We can only do what the law allows us to do.

That includes ticketing people for aggressive panhandling, public urination or having open containers of alcohol. None of those are crimes, Lushina said, but are violations of municipal ordinances.

It is legal to drink alcohol from open containers on the Boardwalk and in Gardners Basin and the restaurant and bar area of Tennessee Avenue, he said. And then it only pertains to drinks purchased from bars and restaurants that are in cups with the establishments name on them.

It is not legal to drink anywhere on Atlantic Avenue, Lushina said.

People read the headlines and think they can bring a 12-pack, he said, but they are wrong.

If they buy or use drugs they can be arrested, but wont be kept in jail under bail reform, Shabazz said.

Area resident Omar Pressley said police should increase programs to help people eliminate outstanding warrants, so they will feel more comfortable seeking help for substance abuse and mental health issues.

Everybody has a story to tell. They are out here because of circumstances, Pressley said. There is a real fear of going to jail because of warrants.

Shabazz said the city conducts a warrant forgiveness program for certain nonviolent offenses, usually in the spring, and will do so again this year.

REPORTER: Michelle Brunetti Post 609-841-2895 mpost@pressofac.com

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The 27th Annual Quad-City Regional Auto Show kicked off Thursday with premier night and the awarding of 14 scholarships to area high school students.

The nine academic and five trade-school scholarships totaled $51,000.

The Quad-City Times gave $5,000 from the sales of the Auto Show Special Supplement to be deposited with the Quad City Community Foundation to the scholarship fund.

With this years recipients, the Auto Show has given more than $632,000 in scholarships to 192 area students over the past 27 years.

In addition to the Quad-City Times, this years sponsors of the premier event include All Y, Autotrader, CDK Global, Carfax, IH Mississippi Valley Credit Union, GTG Peterbilt, S&S Automotive and The Greater Quad City Auto Auction.

This year's show is being held that the Bend XPO in East Moline.

The auto show runs from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Friday, March 4, and Saturday, March 5, and from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday, March 6.

Ticket cost $8 for ages 13 and older, $5 for people 62 and over. Children 12 and under are free.

This years scholarship recipients are:

College and university scholarships:

Anne Turpin, Geneseo High School, $5,000.

Raymond Wiese, Moline High School, $3,000

Deven Stief, North Scott High School, $4,000

Nicholas Koustas, Geneseo High School, $3,000

Ella Zillmer, Bettendorf High School, $4,000

Abbey Smith, Davenport West High School, $3,000

Ashley Smith, Davenport West High School, $3,000

Megan Lindsly, Central DeWitt High School, $4,000

Mercedes Hantz, Rock Island High School, $3,000

Automotive-technical-trade school scholarships:

Jason Blick, Geneseo High School, $3,000

Carson Miller, Galena High School, $4,000

Noah Van Damme, United Township High School, $3,000

Jade Bovee, United Township High School, $4,000

Dalton Koenig-Plath, Mercer County High School, $5,000

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The Easter Bunny was representing the prosecution in several hundred Polk County criminal cases.At least thats what Iowa Courts Online, the court systems official, statewide web-based repository of court records, indicated for most of April.On April 4, the online docket sheets for hundreds of Polk County cases  primarily misdemeanors and drunken-driving cases  were revised to indicate the prosecution of those cases had been transferred from one particular assistant county attorney, Kailey Gray, to another prosecutor in the county attorneys office by the name of Easter Santa Bunny.And thats where the cases remained as of Thursday morning.Bret Lucas, an assistant county attorney, said Thursday the situation stemmed from a recent realignment of cases within the county attorneys office. Gray took over a colleagues cases, and Iowa Courts Online accurately reflects the transfer of those cases. But Grays old cases, he said, were transferred to the Easter Bunny until all of the work on the digital case transfer could be completed.We had contacted the Judicial Branch and they worked with their information technology department to facilitate the mass transfer of cases, Lucas said. Apparently, the Judicial Branch and the IT department decided to put that placeholder in there because, obviously, no one else would have that name.  So they were all aware of that, and it sounds like they must still be in the middle of that transfer process.Stacy Curtis, a supervisor for the criminal division of the Polk County Clerk of Courts Office, said the references to the Easter Bunny should not be visible to the public either through a name search or in the docket sheets for the individual cases. She said the office took extra steps to make sure members of the public didnt see any reference to the Easter Bunny and only clerks, lawyers, judges and others with higher security clearance could see it. It appears that the opposite may have occurred, as the Easter Bunny references could be seen by members of the public who werent even logged into the site.This has been a nightmare for me, Curtis said. We moved everything from Kaylie to the Easter Bunny, and those should have all been cleaned up so you wouldnt be able to see that.Many of the cases that were publicly assigned to the Easter Bunny are open, active cases, but hundreds of others are dormant, though not technically closed because of probationary sentences that have yet to be completed or fines that have yet to be paid.The only practical effect of the Easter Bunny designation is that some defendants may see that information online and not know who to contact at the county attorneys office about their case.After being contacted by the Iowa Capital Dispatch on Thursday, court officials were working to erase from the website any mention of the Easter Bunny, and by late afternoon it appeared they had succeeded.Santa bailed out by RudolphThe Easter Bunny cases are not the only criminal matters listed on the court systems official website to have featured nonexistent lawyers or defendants. In what appear to be training exercises for clerical staff, fictitious test cases are sometimes created and then posted to the public website but never removed.For example, a December 1997 case shows Santa Claus being convicted of felony burglary and kidnapping, with a charge of assault on a peace officer dismissed by the court. The court records indicate a sentence of 999 years in prison was imposed.As part of that same test case, the court imposed a no-contact order prohibiting Santa from having any contact with Mickey Mouse. Santas bail  listed as one million bucks in a possible punning reference to Santas reindeer  is stated to have been posted by Rudolph.In 2014, Santa Claus was charged with second-degree robbery in Scott County, according to the Iowa Courts Online site. Although theres no record of a conviction in that case, Claus right to carry a gun was revoked.The court systems website also shows that in 2014, Mickey Mouse filed a small claims case against Donald Duck in Marion County.For more information, visit iowacapitaldispatch.com.
Members from various sectors of the 13th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) have registered for the top political advisory body's annual session scheduled to open on Friday in Beijing.

Preparations for the fifth session of the 13th National Committee of the CPPCC have been completed, according to the press center of the session.
A Davenport aerospace defense contractor supplier plans to hire replacements for striking workers as contract negotiations break down.

Representatives from striking International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers Local 388 said Thursday that talks with Davenport's Eaton-Cobham Mission Systems had stalled.

"The union and representatives from Eaton met on Tuesday and Wednesday in efforts to resolve the strike at Mission Systems Division of Davenport," John Herrig, directing business representative for District 6 of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, said. "Although several passes were made each day and parties discussed all the sticking points which have resulted in this strike action, the parties have not been able to reach a tentative agreement."

Herrig said the company's latest proposals changed somewhat in structure  from a three-year to a five-year agreement  while the rest of the proposed terms remained largely unchanged.

The union argues wage increases proposed by Eaton-Cobham "are dwarfed by the cost of living and takeaways in health care and retirement are unacceptable to or membership," Herrig said.

In a statement issued Thursday, Eaton Aerospace senior manager of global communications and marketing Katie Kennedy said the company "has proposed dates to continue bargaining."

Kennedy also confirmed Eaton-Cobham planned to hire replacements for striking workers.

"Given the complexity of our products and the time it takes to train new hires, we will begin taking the necessary steps to hire permanent replacement workers to ensure we can continue to fulfill our customer commitments," Kennedy wrote in an email. "It's not a decision we make lightly, and our goal remains to reach a mutually satisfactory agreement with the Union."

Herrig said he planned to spend part of Thursday evening talking to Local 388 members on the picket line.

More than 400 Eaton-Cobham union employees represented by IAMAW Local 388 and Machinist Union Local 1191 hit the picket line just after midnight on Friday, Feb. 18, after more than 98% of the membership voted down a proposed three-year contract from the company.

Eaton, a multinational power management company headquartered in Dublin, Ireland, announced June 1 that it had completed its purchase of Cobham Mission Systems, described as a leading manufacturer of air-to-air refueling, life-support, fuel inerting, space propulsion and missile actuation systems, primarily for defense markets. Cobham has a workforce of approximately 2,000 people and manufacturing facilities in the United States and United Kingdom.

Eaton purchased Cobham for $2.83 billion, including $130 million in tax benefits.

According to the Quad Cities Chamber of Commerce, the Eaton-Cobham plant employs 950 people, not all of whom are union members.

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The Jewish Federation of the Quad Cities is bringing back the Lloyd M. Burstein Memorial Holocaust Film Series this month, giving people the opportunity to experience stories of the Holocaust from all around the globe from a screen in the Figge Art Museum.

Tickets to attend the screenings cost $7 for adults, $6 for seniors and members of the military, and are free for students.

The three-film series will begin 4 p.m. March 13 with "Love It Was Not," a documentary film about the unlikely romance between Helena Citron, a young Slovak woman imprisoned in Auschwitz, and Franz Wunsch, her captor and an SS Officer. Their forbidden relationship ended at Citron's liberation, but 30 years later their lives were once again brought together by Wunsch's wife, who reached out to Citron asking her to testify on Wunsch's behalf.

"Sobibor" will play 4 p.m. March 27, diving into the story of the Sobibor extermination camp uprising, orchestrated by Soviet officer and prisoner of war Alexander Pechersky. The uprising led to a mass escape of the prisoners, of which some were captured again and others made it to the partisans.

The series will round out 4 p.m. April 3 with "Three Minutes - A Lengthening." The documentary takes three minutes of film  a home movie shot by David Kurtz in 1938 that shows the only video left of the Jewish residents of Nasielsk before the Holocaust  and analyzes it frame-by-frame, telling the stories of those caught on camera. Kurtz's grandson and a man who was in the film as a young boy add their perspectives to this moment in time.

Jewish Federation of the Quad Cities Executive Director Allan Ross will set the stage for the movies before they begin, giving some history on the story and where it was made. He will also take questions after the screening.

Ross said a committee decides on which films to show in the series, looking at around the dozen or so Holocaust-centered movies released each year.

These are movies that are not shown in theaters around here," Ross said. "The committee tries to pick the best ones out, and usually they're excellent films, and they're from all over the world."

"Love It Was Not" was filmed in Hebrew and German and "Sobibor" includes Dutch, Russian, German and Polish, so both will be played with English subtitles.

The federation has held Holocaust film series for the past 15 years. The federation also hosts two other film series, which center around Jewish and Israeli films, respectively.

Ross said they're hoping for good attendance for the films. This is the federation's first in-person film series since the COVID-19 pandemic baegan.

"I guess you could say after two years of being locked down in many respects, it's great to get out," Ross said.

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The seven-day new-case count in Rock Island and Scott counties offered more hope that the COVID-19 pandemic may be receding.

The best news came from Scott County, where health department officials confirmed the county saw an increase of just 55 cases during the seven-day period ending Friday.

That total varied wildly with Friday's county-wide update from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. According to the agency, Scott County had an increase of 603 cases in the seven-day span.

Scott County Health Department Public Information Officer Brooke Barnes explained the vast discrepancy in new-case totals.

"This has happened periodically in the past," Barnes said. "There was a data dump from out-of-state labs that really skewed the case count for the week. So a bunch of cases from before the last week were counted in the seven-day total.

"As I said, this has happened in the past  the state updates case counts to include data from tests done out of state. Unfortunately, the state didn't notify some other agencies."

According to the CDC's latest update, the county saw an increase of 126 cases in that span and a positivity rate of 3.77%.

Falling cases and positivity rate had an immediate impact on the CDC's rating of community-wide transmission in Rock Island County.

"Last week, we were at a medium, but we fell to low by Friday. This metric means that people can choose to wear a mask. The Illinois mask requirement in many locations was lifted Monday," Rock Island County Health Department COO and Public Information Officer Janet Hill said.

Hill explained that "masks still are required in health care and congregate care settings and on public transportation and transportation facilities."

School districts, day cares and private businesses can continue to require masks at their discretion. Hill stressed individuals can continue to wear masks in public settings or in large crowds.

"We urge understanding and compassion for that persons decision," Hill said. "The virus that causes COVID-19 still is circulating in our community, and masks offer protection to you, your family, and your community."

Scott County Health Department Medical Director Dr. Louis Katz cautioned cases could rise again in the fall, as happened in 2020 and 2021.

"The next variant may be better, worse or the same in terms of transmission and severity compared to omicron and delta, and we are not in position to predict that," Katz said. "Accordingly, the broad use of boosted vaccination is critical, as is continued consideration of non-pharmaceutical interventions depending on community levels and individual risks of bad outcomes. The pandemic is not over."

COVID-19 vaccinations in the Q-C

Barnes said demand for the COVID-19 vaccine slowed throughout the last half of January.

"If we look at the month of February, our department administered 49 doses of vaccine  Pfizer adult, Pfizer pediatric, and Johnson & Johnson. As a whole, 1,617 doses were administered by Iowa providers to Scott County residents during the month of February," Barnes explained.

As in Scott County, the Rock Island County Health Department reported more than 1,000 people in the county took the jab in February  1,315 doses, to be exact.

"Our Pfizer Friday clinic is busier than the Tuesday one for Moderna and Johnson & Johnson because Pfizer can be given to those age 5 and older and the other two are 18 and older," Hill said. "The Rock Island County Health Department gave 295 COVID-19 vaccinations in February, so you can see how hard pharmacists and healthcare providers also are working to get our community vaccinated."

Officials from both area health departments said the COVID-19 clinics are not carrying large surpluses of vaccine because of cautious ordering practices.

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A Scott County jury on Thursday found a Woodridge, Ill., man guilty of a charge of third-degree sexual abuse after a four-day trial in district court.

Fred Valenzuela, 49, faces a 10-year prison sentence for the Class C felony.

Scott County District Judge John Telleen set a sentencing hearing for May 5 in district court.

According to the arrest affidavit filed by Davenport Police Detective Evan Obert, on Aug. 16, 2020, officers were sent to the Holiday Inn Express & Suites, 401 Veterans Memorial Parkway to investigate a report of a sexual assault.

The victim was sleeping and awoke to Valenzuela sexually assaulting her. She did not consent to the sex act.

Valenzuela was taken into custody Thursday after the verdict and will be held in the Scott County Jail without bond pending sentencing.

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A final charge was the result of Goins lying to a Diplomatic Security agent when he claimed he did not have the minor's cell phone number, then lying again when he told the agent the minor voluntarily entered a bathroom with him.

Mike Vondran, spokesperson for the Davenport School District, said Thursday that he was not able to immediately confirm whether Goins had been permanently dismissed.
A wrongful death lawsuit has been filed by the widow of a man killed by a vehicle as he crossed a street to join fellow United Auto Workers striking on a picket line outside a Deere & Co. plant in October.

Jill Rich, widow of Richard Rich, filed suit Thursday in Rock Island County seeking damages in excess of $150,000. She is suing for a minimum of $100,000 in damages from Alex Kabura, the driver of the vehicle that struck Rich and a minimum of $50,000 from Med Trans Logistic, LLC, owner of the van operated by Kabura.

The county, United Autoworkers Local 79 and Davenport Electric Contract Company are named in the suit as co-defendants related to their ability to provide information.

Richard Rich, a UAW Local 79 member, was struck and killed around 6 a.m. Oct. 27 while crossing the Rock Island-Milan Parkway at Deere Drive to join a picket line at John Deere Parts Distribution Center in Milan.

Rich, 56, was struck by a gray Ford Transit XLT Van driven by Kabura. He was pronounced dead at the scene. According to the UAW leadership, he was a 15-year employee of Deere PDC.

The filing states Kabura was negligent as he owed a duty to Rich to "exercise ordinary and reasonable care in the operation of his motor vehicle" and "operated his vehicle at a rate of speed which was greater than reasonable and proper with regard to traffic conditions and the use of the highway."

Jill Rich states that as a result of her husband's death, she suffered losses including "the loss of his love, society, companionship and financial support, and who endured grief, sorrow and mental suffering, all of which are permanent in nature."

Following an investigation, the Rock Island County state's attorney's office announced criminal charges would not be filed against Kabura, who pulled over after the crash and cooperated with officers when they arrived on the scene.

Kabura told officers he had a green light and had not seen Rich crossing the road. The driver did not show signs of impairment because of alcohol or drugs. He told officers he might have been driving up to 60 mph, in the 55 mph zone.

Jill Rich is being represented by the law offices of Thomas Popovich, P.C. She also is seeking in her lawsuit to be named special administrator of her late husband's estate since he did not have a will at the time of his death, making it possible for her to collect damages if awarded.

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Tyla Sherwin-Cole has been named executive director of the Doris & Victor Day Foundation, four months after former director Dave Geenen was terminated and placed under investigation for the alleged embezzlement of at least $40,000.

Sherwin-Cole served as executive director of Dress For Success Quad Cities for three years and serves as a trustee for Eastern Iowa Community College. She begins in her new role with the Day Foundation March 14.

During her tenure with Dress For Success, Sherwin-Cole successfully completed a $350,000 capital campaign ahead of schedule to pay off the groups mortgage on its new building, expanded the HireHer program to include American Job Center colleagues, piloted the Fill-A-Bag Friday sales program and more.

"I am extremely proud of all that Dress For Success Quad Cities staff, the board and volunteers (have accomplished) the past couple of years and hold dear to my heart the relationships Ive built during my time as executive director," Sherwin-Cole said in a news release.

"It was immediately clear that Sherwin-Cole was the right fit," Day Foundation Board President William Stengel said. "Her experiences played a major role in our decision, and we know she will lead us into a new era."

Geenen, 41, was terminated Nov. 4 after it was discovered money was missing from the foundation, 1800 3rd Ave., Rock Island. He resigned as Rock Island 7th Ward Alderman on Nov. 19.

Following an investigation by the Rock Island County Sheriff's Department, State's Attorney Dora Villarreal charged Geenen Feb. 4 with felony theft and set bond at $50,000. The felony charge indicates theft of more than $10,000 but less than $100,000.

The Day Foundation lists assets in excess of $17 million. Since its founding in 1987, the foundation has given more than $22.5 million in grant money to local nonprofits focusing on emergency assistance, affordable housing, child care, job training, support programs, scholarships and education.

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Illinois Democrats U.S. Rep. Cheri Bustos and U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin met this week with Illinois Department of Transportation Secretary Omer Osman to press for progress on the long-delayed passenger rail project that would connect Moline with Chicago.

Durbin and Bustos wrote a letter last month to the state transportation department and the Iowa Interstate Railroad urging them to finalize an agreement on the scope and costs of infrastructure upgrades before the latest funding extension expires in 2024.

"With the passage of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, Illinois will soon see a new era in infrastructure," Durbin said in a news release. "In meeting with Secretary Osman, I expressed my hope that we can finally make progress on the Quad Cities Rail Project and reaffirmed my commitment to supporting our regions infrastructure projects on a federal level."

The passenger rail project has been in the works for more than a decade. About $177 million in federal funding was awarded to the rail project in 2010. The project was delayed during Illinois' budget crisis and the then-governor froze new projects. In 2019, the project was revived when the state allocated $225 million for it in addition to the federal funds.

Now, negotiations have stalled between IDOT and the railroad company.

According to Durbin and Bustos, the latest federal funding extension will expire in 2024 unless the department and the railroad company reach an agreement on track upgrades.

Former Illinois Deputy Secretary of Transportation Doug House said in October that the current rail lines are categorized as Class II and Class III for transporting freight, livestock or cars. The rail lines need a higher class and safety category to transport people, he said, and an agreement must be in place in order for construction to begin.

"We are in a pivotal moment for infrastructure improvements across the country  and Im focused on ensuring that communities in Northwest and Central Illinois benefit from these investments," Bustos said in a news release. "Today, I joined Senator Dick Durbin to urge Illinois Department of Transportation Secretary Omer Osman to meet this moment by making real progress on a long-overdue Amtrak line between the Quad-Cities and Chicago. Now is the time to get this done."

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Illinois State Rep. candidate Thurgood Brooks will not face disciplinary action by the city of Rock Island after he initiated two confrontations following a city council meeting Feb. 14 with Alderman Mark Poulos, Ward 6, and business owner Natalie Linville-Mass.

Because Brooks is an employee of the city through his job with the Martin Luther King Jr. Community Center, Interim City Manager John Gripp said city staff reviewed video footage captured by cameras in the lobby where the incidences took place.

"We completed the review  human resources and myself," Gripp said. "The review was completed and it was determined there were no violations of personnel policies. There were no formal complaints provided to me or anyone else regarding the matter."

Brooks declined to comment Thursday.

"If there was no violation to the policy, then, hopefully, we can move forward and bridges can be mended," Poulos said.

The issue between Poulos and Brooks began at the beginning of the Feb. 14 meeting, when Brooks said during the public comment portion that if any council members voted to approve a controversial Black history trail grant and appoint Linville-Mass as sub-recipient, he would ensure none of them were re-elected.

Poulos said during the meeting that he did not appreciate being threatened by members of the public.

After the meeting, Brooks approached Poulos in the lobby outside city council chambers, standing within inches and nearly nose-to-nose with Poulos, who did not move, as witnessed by a Dispatch-Argus and Quad-City Times reporter who was there.

Linville-Mass, who faced pushback from residents opposing the grant, said Brooks also entered an elevator as she was leaving the meeting, held the door open and confronted her.

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Rock Island is close to announcing a new city manager.

Council members met in closed session during a special meeting Wednesday night to interview the final three candidates, with secondary interviews to follow this week.

According to three city officials, the finalists are Todd Thompson, current city manager for Galesburg; Richard Keehner, former village manager of Villa Park, Ill.; and Gerald Smith, city manager of Creedmore, N.C.

"We have some follow-up interviews scheduled," Interim City Manager John Gripp said Thursday.

Gripp has been parks and recreation director since 2016 and employed by the city since 2000. He stepped in as interim manager when City Manager Randy Tweet retired in December after 22 years with the city.

Gripp originally interviewed for the city manager position but withdrew his name for personal reasons.

"I really enjoy being the parks director," he said. "We have a strategic plan in place, and it's been very successful. I want to make sure I work with staff to complete those projects."

Mayor Mike Thoms said the city received 36 applications for the city manager position.

"We were very pleased to get a number of strong candidates," Thoms said. "We are very positive that Rock Island will have a strong manager to move the city forward."

Human Resources Director Rob Baugous said the final candidate would be announced in an upcoming City Council meeting this month.

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China has launched its manhunt operation in 2022 to capture corrupt officials who fled overseas and to recover their illicit assets, according to the central anti-corruption coordination group.

The campaign, codenamed "Sky Net 2022," was studied, planned, and made public at a recent meeting held by the office in charge of fugitive repatriation and asset recovery under the central anti-corruption coordination group.

According to the office, the campaign will be carried out under coordinated efforts by several authorities, with the National Supervisory Commission in charge of duty-related crimes, and the Ministry of Public Security (MPS) initiating targeted operations for hunting fugitive officials that fled overseas.

In addition, the People's Bank of China and the MPS will work together to prevent and crack down on illicit money transfers through off-shore entities and underground banks. The Supreme People's Court and the Supreme People's Procuratorate will jointly launch campaigns for criminal proceed returns involving cases where the criminal suspect or defendant escapes or is dead.

The Organization Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, the MPS, and other related departments will strengthen coordination in the management of illegal obtaining and possession of licenses, it added.

In 2021, a total of 1,273 fugitives were returned to China and over 16.74 billion yuan (about 2.66 billion U.S. dollars) of illicit funds were recovered.
The sexual abuse of a child by a former Davenport and Rock Island-Milan teacher occurred in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, U.S. Army officials confirmed Friday.

Gary Goins, 40, was sentenced this week to 42 months in prison after entering a guilty plea in his court martial at Fort Bragg, N.C. Officials previously declined to say whether the assault occurred while Goins was serving in the U.S. or was deployed out of the country.

The former staff sergeant, former teacher and one-time candidate for the Bettendorf School Board was ordered to immediately begin serving his sentence at the Midwest Joint Regional Confinement Facility in Fort Leavenworth, Kan., officials confirmed Friday.

He was convicted by a military judge, pursuant to his plea, on one count of sexual assault of a child between the ages of 12 and 15, three counts of sexual abuse of a child involving sexual contact and one count of sexual abuse of a child involving indecent communication, Army records show.

Goins was suspended from the Davenport Community School District after he was charged in March 2021. Mike Vondran, spokesperson for the Davenport School District, said Thursday that he was not able to immediately confirm whether Goins had been permanently dismissed.

In addition to a dishonorable discharge, Goins' rank was reduced from an E-6 to an E-1, which is effectively, "taking your whole career away," a military official said Thursday.

It is possible Goins will not serve the entire 3.5 years.

"Soldiers earn five days of confinement credit for every 30 days of confinement so long as they behave themselves while in confinement," Capt. Perianne Duffy, said of the public affairs office at Fort Bragg. "If, during the term of imprisonment, a prisoner violates the rules of the institution or commits any offense, all or any part of the good-conduct time, which has been earned on any unexpired sentence, regardless of where earned, may be forfeited."

Court records show the case involved the following:

On or about Dec. 24, 2020, Goines sexually assaulted a child between the ages of 12 and 15, initiating intercourse, according to military records.

Charges stated that he sent a text message to the minor "communicating indecent language." The Army says Goins texted the minor, saying, "I'm sorry you are so sexy," "You are sexy," and "When was the last time you had sex?'"

Another charge accused Goins of giving alcohol to a minor, while the third charge accused him of directing the minor to delete text messages between them.

A final charge was the result of Goins lying to a Diplomatic Security agent when he claimed he did not have the minor's cell phone number, then lying again when he told the agent the minor voluntarily entered a bathroom with him.

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CHICAGO - The citys latest marketing campaign, Chicago Not in Chicago, is an effort to show potential visitors how other cities have benefited from Chicago-born innovations such as the skyscraper and house music, an electronic-driven dance genre pioneered by Chicago disc jockeys. In one TV ad, the point is driven home through a clip of a tour guide acknowledging New Yorks various debts to Chicago as a double-decker bus passes along Manhattans streets.

The goal is to compel viewers living elsewhere to quickly develop a desire to buy airline tickets to OHare International Airport and book rooms at a Loop hotel.

Critics might note that a less expensive response would be for those intrigued by the commercials to simply experience those wonders that originated in Chicago in places closer to their hometown. On top of that, some of Chicagos celebrated achievements are no longer viewable in the city. When passing New Yorks packinghouse district, for example, the tour bus guide pays homage to Chicagos Union Stockyards. They vanished in 1971.

The story of Chicagos efforts to put its best foot forward begins on the morrow of the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. With 17,000 buildings destroyed and 100,000 residents homeless, Chicago had to rebuild quickly  a feat rival cites gloatingly doubted could be pulled off.

A New Orleans newspaper predicted: Chicago will be like the Carthage of old, referring to a long-vanished ancient city. Its glory will be of the past, not the present.

Yet in the midst of the disaster, some Chicagoans displayed a remarkable resilience. Merchants set up shop on the rubble of their stores. A real estate dealer pounded a sign into the ashes: All gone but wife, children and energy.

Hoping to communicate Chicagos resiliency to Eastern bankers and workers, William Bross hopped aboard the first available train. The co-owner of the Tribune was a font of rhetoric and he deployed it freely in a speech to the New York Chamber of Commerce.

Go to Chicago now! he declaimed. Young men hurry there! Old men send your sons! Women send your husbands! You will never again have such a chance to make money.

As a mark of his salesmanship, carpenters and stonemasons headed to Chicago. But to some ears, Bross pitch sounded like the stump speech of a windbag politician: long on purple prose, short on facts.

Because of such overblown hype, Bross hometown became known as the Windy City. Only later was the nickname attributed to the winds off Lake Michigan. Outsiders considered verbosity a telltale Chicago foible. Chicagoans assumed it was a politicians inherent style.

In the 1870s, Tribune headlines characterized City Council sessions as a Windy Debate or a Windy Discussion.

The Windy City became the put-down of choice when Chicago mounted a full-throated campaign to host a Worlds Fair on the 400th anniversary of Columbus discovery of America.

The U.S. had scarcely announced the celebration when Chicago began lobbying Congress and Washingtons diplomatic corps. Chicago executed a flank movement on other candidates for the worlds fair by opening headquarters here today, a Tribune dispatch reported on Oct. 15, 1889.

Why, every express package that comes East from Chicago is labeled in large letters Worlds Fair at Chicago in 1892, a New York congressman told the New York Herald.Every congressman has been deluged with papers filled with the Worlds Fair in Chicago to the extent of a column or more daily.

New York was caught flat-footed, and the stakes were high. The worlds fair would attract myriad visitors and pump big bucks into the host citys economy. So New Yorks partisans belittled Chicago in a blistering counterattack that only alienated other cities.

The Baltimore American reported: Every feature of Chicagos political, economic, moral and domestic life is distorted for the purpose of creating the impression that the city is not a fit place to hold the Fair.

The Toledo Blade fired the coup de grace: New York has made fuss enough for a dozen Worlds Fairs. Chicago is no longer entitled to the name Windy City. 

When Chicago got the fair, one New York newspaper acknowledged Gothams self-destruction:

Perhaps we failed to realize that Chicago itself is one of the miracles of civilization  an eighth wonder of the world, wrote the New York Tribune. Probably many were not aware of mechanical facilities which made feasible what only a few years ago would have been impossible.

Indeed, in the decades since the Great Chicago Fire, a frontier outpost had become an industrial giant. Its meteoric growth  from 298,977 residents in 1870 to 1,099,850 in 1890  was in itself a tourist attraction. Some visitors published their impressions, pre-selling Chicagos Worlds Fair pitch. Even those put off by factories that belched smoke recognized such nuisances as a sign of a booming economy.

No place in the United States has attracted more attention or been more closely watched than Pullman, the Times of London wrote in 1887. It is the extension of the broadest philanthropy to the working man, based upon the strictest business principles.

British tourists who put George Pullmans factory town on their must-see list could scarcely guess it would be wracked by a bitter strike in 1894, a year after Chicagos Worlds Fair closed.

Postponed a year because of construction delays, the Fair was a public relations bonanza. Many of its 27 million visitors raved about Chicago.

Those who come here will wonder how, in less than 50 years, that is, in less than a mans lifetime, it has been possible to transform a swamp, producing only a sort of wild onion, into a powerful and flourishing city, marveled F. E. Bruwaert, a French travel writer.

Chicagos second Worlds Fair was a more risky business. Years of planning for a Century of Progress celebration of the citys centennial were interrupted by the stock market crash of Oct. 24, 1929.

While New York financiers were trying to stabilize Wall Street, Rufus Dawes, president of the exposition, could assure Chicagos architects that money was on hand to carry out their plans for the exposition.

But Chicagos image had been tarnished by the newspaper fodder of Prohibition-era gang wars.

Would tourists be drawn to the city of Al Capone?

Fortunately President Herbert Hoover endorsed the Century of Progress and appointed a U.S. attorney in Chicago who declared war on crime in a speech at the Union League Club.

He predicted that by the time of the 1933 Chicago Worlds Fair this city will be the most law abiding in the country, the Tribune reported.

Capone was indicted and Chicago freed to argue that its fair wouldnt be mobbed up or a casualty of the Depression, but a herald of better times. Its exposition focused on science and technology, underscoring their economic potential.

The Tribune spread the message by distributing windshield stickers advertising, Come to the Words Fair, to interstate truckers. Loop parking lots placed them on cars, and the combination of words and shtick turned the trick.

A Century of Progress, biggest single enterprise undertaken by private industry during the depression, will open its doors for business next Saturday, the Tribune proclaimed on May 21, 1933.

It was a resounding success. President Franklin Roosevelt wanted the fair held over for another year, a sentiment echoed in letters from Tribune readers. Many, many people who have been hit by the Depression could not get here this year, and they are now getting on their feet and can come next year, and they want to see it, wrote W.H. Allen, upon returning from the West Coast.

Reopened in 1934, the fair drew 48,469, 227 visitors in all.

After that, Chicago lost its moxie. Bids for a third Worlds Fair and the 2016 Olympics were duds. Its current tourism campaign begs for deciphering. It lacks the fiery rhetoric of Bross 1871 pitch. Or the fierce competitiveness of the Columbian Expositions partisans.

Perhaps Chicago Not in Chicago is like a Zen masters enigmatic teaching: aimed at provoking audiences to explore hidden layers of meaning.

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EAST ST. LOUIS  When Josh Cummins went to college, he jumped into the deep end with computer coding classes. It didn't go well at the time.

But now, the East St. Louis High School math teacher is being recognized for increasing access to computer science classes for girls.

East St. Louis High School is one of 27 schools in the state that earned the College Board Advanced Placement Computer Science Female Diversity Award, which acknowledges schools that have been able to grow the number of girls taking high-level computer classes.

Advanced Placement courses prepare students for a test at the end of the school year that, if passed, can help them earn college credit.

Cummins, who has been in District 189 for nine years and currently heads the math department, first started teaching AP Computer Science about five years ago. His first class had five students, with only one being a girl. This year has has 15 this year, 11 of which are girls.

"It's traditionally a male and, honestly, mostly white-male dominated class," Cummins said. "We're one of the few that's the opposite, which is really cool. ... It's really cool to see these girls stepping up and showing out for our honors classes."

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, women made up just 24% of people in computing occupations, while 15% of those employees are Black or Hispanic.

As a white man, Cummins said computer programming provided the opportunity for him to create a curriculum that caters to the Black girls he's teaching.

"It's easier with this class than a normal math class, but I really try to build stuff around their interests," he said. "Social media, music, fashion: That's all stuff we can do with writing programs."

Originally, student Savannah Williams was signed up for a statistics class, but was moved to Cummins' computer science class. She says that's for the better.

"It suits my personality more and what I want to learn about," she said. "This is more creative. I can do what I like instead of following a strict line of rules."

Williams' classmate, SirNickolas Gilmore-Hardy, said he waited for two years to take the class, which is offered to juniors and seniors.

As the class has grown  mostly through word of mouth  Cummins said they're looking at ways to expand their course offerings in the next few years. The current class is an introductory class, covering how the internet works and cybersecurity before introducing the students to coding.

For now, Cummins said the high school is in the early stages of looking at an even more introductory class for freshmen to get them exposed earlier, as well as a more advanced class that's focused entirely on coding and programming.

"They're getting exposed, a lot of them, to things they didn't even know existed," Cummins said. "They're learning how to code, they're learning how to build apps on their phone, they're learning how the internet works. I think that drives them to want to learn more about it, because they're using that stuff everyday."

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Illinois State rallied in the second half to beat Indiana State before turning sights to Friday MVC quarterfinal game against No. 1-seed Northern Iowa.
An exhibit at Matthews Opera House and an awareness campaign during National Developmental Disabilities Awareness month are putting inclusion in the spotlight.

March is National Developmental Disabilities Awareness month. Black Hills Works in Rapid City, which supports more than 600 individuals who have developmental and intellectual disabilities, is observing the month that promotes awareness and acceptance for people of every ability.

Black Hills Works' vision is to have a community where all people are good neighbors, valued friends, productive workers, respected leaders and caring volunteers who can fulfill their potential. Inclusion and connection are vital to accomplish that.

Getting to know and be a part of the lives of people with developmental disabilities is one of the most rewarding experiences a person can have, said Brad Saathoff, CEO of Black Hills Works and Black Hills Services.

Author James JJ Janis is one of the people supported by Black Hills Works. On Wednesday, an exhibit inspired by Janis book The Chair is Not Me, opened at Matthews Opera House and Arts Center gallery in Spearfish.

The Chair is Not Me is an exhibit of poems and art from Janiss book. The book is a collection of poems about Janiss life experiences and challenges as a diversely-abled individual. The exhibit showcases 11 poems that have been illustrated by artists of diverse abilities and cultures. The exhibit can be seen during Matthews Opera House business hours, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday.

The public can meet Janis at an artists reception from 5 to 6 p.m. March 11 at Matthews Opera House gallery. The reception will include a poetry reading and question-and-answer time with Janis. Light refreshments and a cash bar will be available.

Janis spent two years writing "The Chair Is Not Me, which was published in 2018. Janis, who has cerebral palsy, composed the book's 18 poems that reflect his ideas about being a person with diverse abilities.

"I may be in (the chair), but it's not all that I am. I've got to think I'm more than the thing I sit in," Janis said.

No matter what limitations his body might present, poetry gives Janis an outlet to be creative, to advocate and sometimes to honor others by writing poems for special occasions in their lives. Janis is a self-taught poet who previously had his work published in 1980 in a book called "Ashes and Chuckles," which also focused on people with disabilities. Janis taught a local poetry class for people with disabilities in 1980 and 1981.

The book's cover art and illustrations were provided by 10 artists from the Suzie Cappa Art Center in Rapid City, which provides arts programs and opportunities for diversely-abled artists. "The Chair Is Not Me" was published with grant funds from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Janis hopes the book will make connections between people with diverse abilities and people without disabilities.

Janis has sent copies of his book nationwide to people such as former President George H.W. Bush, who signed the Americans With Disabilities Act into law in 1990. Janis also sent his book to organizations and museums nationwide, including the Smithsonian Institute for its exhibit about disabilities.

"I hope this book opens the door for others and lets them know they dont have to sit home and watch TV. If they have the mind, they can do what I did," Janis said. "If you're smart, you won't retire from life because there's always something that will change, and you've got to meet the challenge of the change."

Janis exhibit opened on the same day as the Spread the Word campaign, which is observed annually. Spread the Word to End the Word launched in 2009. The campaign was founded by two youth leaders to address how words and labels can exclude people who have developmental and intellectual disabilities. Spread the Word is supported by Special Olympics nationwide, and it primarily targets school-aged youths to educate them about how words can be hurtful.

Janis book addresses the importance of language, too, by including etiquette and terminology to use with people who have disabilities.

In 2019, Spread the Word expanded its focus not only on language but also inclusion for all people who have intellectual and developmental disabilities.

National Developmental Disabilities Awareness month began in 1987 with a proclamation from President Ronald Reagan to promote awareness and acceptance. The proclamation called for citizens to provide understanding, encouragement, and opportunities to help people with disabilities lead productive and fulfilling lives.

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Two state government entities made very different decisions Thursday about a proposed 175-bay shooting range north of Rapid City in rural Meade County.

The House of Representatives Appropriations Committee voted 7-2 Thursday morning to kill a $2.5 million funding request from Game, Fish & Parks for the proposed shooting range. However, later in the day at least one-third of House members "smoked out" the bill for one last chance before the full House.

At another hearing Thursday afternoon before the GF&P Commission in Pierre, commissioners voted 6-1 to proceed with the purchase of the 400 acres of Meade County ranch land where the proposed shooting range would be located.

House actions

Testimony on the proposed shooting range in the House Appropriations Committee lasted late into the evening hours Wednesday. However, committee chair Rep. Chris Karr, R-Sioux Falls, deferred any decision on the funding bill until Thursday morning.

Wednesday's testimony and question-and-answer period for SB 175 lasted one and a half hours. The bill seeks $2.5 million from the state's general fund and a $2.5 million authorization for GF&P to tap into their "other fund" to build the proposed shooting range. A similar funding measure died earlier in the House, but the request was revived in the Senate by Sen. David Johnson, R-Rapid City, before heading back to the House.

Proponents of the bill included GF&P, gun right groups, outdoor sport enthusiasts, Elevate Rapid City and two additional Rapid City-area lawmakers  Reps. Becky Drury and Mike Derby. Opponents included several ranchers who live near the proposed range, the South Dakota Stockgrowers Association and environmental groups.

A turning point in committee consideration occurred during the question-and-answer portion Wednesday, when Rep. Taffy Howard, R-Rapid City, asked GF&P Secretary Kevin Robling if the shooting range would still be built even without funding from the Legislature.

"The one thing that I did not hear addressed, and I think it's probably the question that needs to be asked first, is that regardless of what this committee does tonight, this range is going to be built and the ground will be broken in a couple of months," Howard said.

Robling said the range would still be built, but development of the shooting range would be scaled down and potentially delayed if funding is not approved by the Legislature.

"So, we would have to take a step back and say, 'Hey, what is the first phase and build it in phases.' Potentially, that would be the case," Robling said.

Howard again attempted to clarify.

"Basically, you are here asking for money because it'll make it easier, but it's still going to go ahead regardless. So, what really is the point of being here? Because you'll have to do a little additional fundraising?" Howard asked.

Robling responded, saying, "It really does come down to the range would not look the same. I mean, there would be components of the range, likely that whole north end of the law enforcement bay... those things likely could not occur, and we would still have a lot of money to raise."

When the House Appropriations Committee met again Thursday morning, the committee voted 7-2 to kill the bill, mostly because of Howard's argument that the range would still be built with or without spending tax dollars from the state's general fund.

Even with the committee's recommendation to kill the funding bill, House members used a legislative maneuver Thursday called a smoke out to force the full House to hear the bill. According to legislative rules, a smoke out occurs when one-third of House members require a committee to deliver the bill.

On Thursday, Rep. Roger Chase, R-Huron, made a motion to force SB 175 out of the House Appropriations Committee using "Rule 7-7," which is the smoke-out clause. The motion passed with the one-third vote necessary.

A Legislative source told the Journal on Thursday that the funding bill is expected to be heard by the House on Monday, where it will require a two-thirds majority vote to pass.

GF&P purchases land

The GF&P Commission also met in Pierre on Thursday afternoon to consider several items, including purchasing the 400 acres of Meade County ranch land off of Elk Vale Road  approximately 10 miles north of Rapid City  for the shooting range site.

The commission heard public comment from seven people. Five were in favor of the purchase, while two people were against.

During testimony, GF&P Section Chief John Kanta said the agency has been searching for land near Rapid City to build a shooting range since at least 2016. He confirmed a news article report in the Journal, which stated a previous land acquisition for a much-larger gun range east of Rapid City that would have supported military training fell through.

Kanta also confirmed the Journal's report that GF&P worked with Rapid City businessman Jim Scull to initiate the purchase agreement for the Meade County land that was later assigned to the South Dakota Parks and Wildlife Foundation  with the intent that GF&P would purchase the land by April 2022.

"We met with the South Dakota Parks and Wildlife Foundation in January (2021) and talked to them about the possibility of purchasing this property so that we could move ahead and make things happen," he said.

Kanta said the reason was because it would take GF&P anywhere between eight and 12 months to purchase the property themselves due to government regulations. He said the landowner was ready to sell immediately.

"So, we did ask the foundation to step in. They agreed to purchase the property with that purchase agreement that needed to be done before April 2021," he said.

After weighing the public comments and the area ranchers' concerns, the GF&P Commission voted 6-1 to pass a resolution to purchase the land from the foundation for $900,000 "plus all associated costs." The purchase transaction must be completed by April 30, the resolution states.

Contact Nathan Thompson at nathan.thompson@rapidcityjournal.com.

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Court appeals continue in the original lawsuit against the state on behalf of residents in the neighborhood where a sinkhole opened in April 2020, while a new case has been filed against the state.

John Fitzgerald of the Fitzgerald Law Firm, the attorney in the case working for the residents of Hideaway Hills in Black Hawk, said he filed appeals against Meade Countys dismissal and a $25,000 judgment against his clients in the original court case filed in June 2020.

The sinkhole that opened in the Hideaway Hills neighborhood caused 40 people to be evacuated from 15 homes and exposed an abandoned gypsum mine. Since then, two law firms have performed multiple studies to indicate and find what is in the subsurface there. A large national law firm seeking class certification for its case claims the abandoned mine poses a threat to all Hideaway Hills homes.

Fitzgerald said if the appeals are granted, the case will move back to the Meade County circuit court. He said his law firm would be able to approach the court and ask to amend the complaint and have Meade County share in those charges.

Theyre facts that we couldnt get in last time because we were denied the ability to amend our complaint, he said.

He said the charges allege that one of the members of the county commission was profiting from Hideaway Hills.

Judge Michael Day dismissed Meade County and former commissioners from the lawsuit in October 2020.

The $25,000 damage judgment comes from Fitzgerald filing a temporary injunction for drilling by experts for Fox Rothschild, the large national law firm seeking class certification, to stop in the neighborhood in August 2020.

Fitzgerald said his law firm has also filed a new case Feb. 2 against the state, the South Dakota Cement Plant Trust, and the state Commission of School and Public Lands. Fitzgerald said its about the same facts for Hideaway Hills but is for inverse condemnation. He said it alleges the state knew about the underground mine, and instead of building around it, the state built on top of it and scraped the leftover gypsum outcroppings.

By doing that, they severely altered the surface making the surface of it much thinner, he said. Also by taking the natural strata off the top of the mine, they exposed those natural formations to water and snow and the like, which causes a weakening especially at the roof of the mine.

Fitzgerald said it also alleges the surface mining that went on around the gypsum mine weakened the strata, and while the state was surface mining, there were certain collapses and cave ins that were exposed and later back-filled.

He said they determined they should appeal the Meade County lawsuit and start an entirely new lawsuit to get the case moving along more quickly.

 Contact Siandhara Bonnet at siandhara.bonnet@rapidcityjournal.com 

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PIERRE | A South Dakota lawmaker who is running for governor faced backlash Thursday from Gov. Kristi Noem and female legislators after he used a derogatory term for a woman during a speech on the House floor.

Republican Rep. Steve Haugaard described a woman whom he did not name but said was addicted to methamphetamine as a wrung-out whore." At the time, Haugaard was speaking against a bill that would allow physician assistants and advanced nurse practitioners to recommend medical marijuana, which he described as a gateway drug.

Haugaard's use of the term drew an audible reaction from lawmakers on the floor, who called for a point of order, and he was told to keep his comments to the bill at hand. Haugaard later apologized on the House floor.

He told reporters the comment was intended to make the point of how devastating drugs are for so many people.

Haugaard said he knew the woman, though offered no further details, and said: The reason I use those words is thats where she found herself. Thats what she described to me.

But female lawmakers in both parties spoke out against Haugaard, a former House speaker who is mounting a Republican primary challenge against Noem as a more conservative option

I doubted my ability to compose myself, Republican Rep. Tamara St. John posted on Twitter after Haugaard's comments. I stand by the young women who struggle and have addiction problems.

Democratic Rep. Erin Healy said that a line was crossed on the House floor," adding that misogyny and aggression towards women shouldn't be allowed in the Legislature.

She said he should have been gaveled down after making the comment.

Noem said in a statement she was appalled by Haugaard's language and called on legislators to reprimand and censure him.

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PIERRE | A state Senate committee on Thursday dismissed Gov. Kristi Noem's proposal to ban public K-12 school curricula that compels people to feel discomfort based on their race.

The Senate Education Committee voted 4-3 to reject the proposal. The move, made by three Republicans and a Democrat, was a major blow to Noem's proposal, which she had touted as a repudiation of critical race theory. It could still be resurrected with widespread support in the full Senate.

The bills text makes no mention of critical race theory  an issue that has in the last year morphed from an obscure academic discussion point on the left into a political rallying cry on the right. Instead, it lays out a list of divisive concepts," including that individuals are inherently responsible for past actions or should feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress on account of their race.

The Republican governor has this year pushed a pair of bills, applying separately to universities and K-12 schools, as a way to ensure students are not taught that they are responsible for (the) different actions of our ancestors.

The Senate committee this week listened to hours of debate, both from those who championed the bills and critics who say they would squelch classroom discussions on racism and history.

Racism is alive and well in this state, and I think it would be more beneficial to talk about that, said Democratic Sen. Troy Heinert.

Republican senators opposed to the K-12 school bill argued that it was unnecessary because Noem can already influence classroom lessons by setting the state's educational standards. Other lawmakers warned against the Legislature and governor intruding into classroom discussions.

I see government looking over the shoulders of teachers, Republican Sen. V.J. Smith said of the bill.

On Tuesday, the committee narrowly advanced the bill applying to public universities, and it was set for a vote in the Senate next week.

It would ban universities from making students or faculty members adhere to the divisive concepts or promoting them in required trainings. But it carves out an exception for academic courses.

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China will step up efforts to protect endangered wildlife species and their habitats during the 14th Five-Year Plan period (2021-2025), the National Forestry and Grassland Administration said on Thursday.

Emergency measures will be taken to protect 48 critically endangered wild animal species, including Siberian tigers, and 50 wild plant species with extremely small populations, such as Abies beshanzuensis, the administration said.

The country will strive to ensure a 10 percent increase in its total area of important habitats during the period, build a breeding base and gene bank for rare and endangered wild animals, and launch the ex-situ conservation of plants with low populations.

In recent years, China has made consistent efforts to protect wild animals and their habitats, and boost the in-situ and ex-situ conservation of wild plants.

The number of wild giant pandas has grown from 1,114 to 1,864 over the past four decades, and the Asian elephant population has grown from 180 in 1985 to approximately 300 at present.

The wild population of Hainan gibbons has increased from no more than 10 in two groups in 1980 to 35 in five groups.

Thursday is the World Wildlife Day, which was created to celebrate and raise awareness of the world's wild flora and fauna.
Ravalli Countys farmers rank second in the state in raising fruits and berries. It is third in nursery, greenhouse, floriculture and sod and eighth for production of vegetables.

From Ravalli County Economic Development Authority executive director Julie Fosters perspective, farmers are just scratching the surface of whats possible with specialty crops in the Bitterroot Valley.

Foster is looking for someone to lead an effort to help specialty crop growers take the next steps that will lead to new opportunities to increase competitiveness, profitability and farm resiliency.

The new specialty crop business development specialist will also put together the financial package that hopefully leads to completion of a long-held dream of construction of a processing center in Hamilton.

The RCEDA has received a grant to fund the full-time position for three years. The application deadline is March 22 for the job that pays up to $24 an hour.

Before applying for the grant, Foster spoke to several specialty crop producers to learn what they felt was missing to help that industry grow.

They are trying to make a living but its just hard, Foster said. No matter how long theyve been around, any rancher, farmer or producer will tell you they receive low dollar amounts for their investment and hard work. Someone else gets the money.

(By) establishing a market for growers in the Bitterroot as a collective group, we can change that, she said. The marketing that you need to do to establish a brand and to bring people together is a lot of work. If you try to do it on an individual basis, we could never get it done. We have to get people starting to work together.

I think this is something that can really grow, Foster said. It touches on so many things that are important to all of us here  agriculture, ag jobs, food security and the fact we want to retain farmland in the valley.

The new position will focus on four challenges facing specialty crop producers. Those include:

* Providing marketing assistance to specialty crop growers to increase their competitiveness and profit margins. That will include gathering baseline data and analyzing costs, financial health and profit margins for different crops.

* Developing a proposal to gain necessary funds to develop and construct a processing center in Hamilton.

* Connecting local specialty crop growers to businesses and one other.

* Developing plans for collaborative marketing, worker cooperatives, bulk buying of supplies and other ways to increase the bottom line for local producers.

This position cant do everything obviously, but Ive seen the difference of people coming together to talk about things and how some good ideas come out of those discussions, Foster said. These are smart people. They just dont have the capacity, the funding or the time to put all of that together.

The pandemic heightened what was already a growing demand for locally grown food and agricultural products. Every producer that Foster spoke with in putting together the grant said the lack of a processing facility in Ravalli County was cutting into sales and increasing expenses.

The RCEDA owns four acres on Hamiltons Old Corvallis Road where its 10,000-square-foot business incubator is located. There is space for up to a 12,000-square-foot food processing facility on the site, which would allow producers to add value to their products.

Foster said there is a lot of federal money set to be spent on infrastructure. For the most part, when people talk about infrastructure, they think sewer, water and roads.

Agriculture needs infrastructure too, she said. This processing center will provide a place for local producers to create products that help their bottom line.

A lot of federal programs focused on helping small farms and ranches are overly expensive. Foster said farmers often have to invest up to $75,000 to get into them.

Those costs are too high for most small farmers.

If we are going to preserve agriculture in Montana, we have to have more programs that fit small farms, Foster said. When you look at programs for small business, youll find lots of them. Farms are a small business too, but things are quite different in how they get their money and how long it takes for them to get that money.

Whoever takes on the new job will have flexibility in figuring out how they can best serve those growing specialty crops in the valley.

There are certain goals but within those parameters, there is a tremendous amount of flexibility, Foster said. There is a budget for them to do marketing, hold events and be outside with farmers  Whoever it is will love agriculture, have a lot of energy and enthusiasm and also be happy to sit down in a quiet place and put pen to paper.

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The Salvation Army reports the Hamilton community has been hit hard with many residents facing challenges of food insecurity and a lack of affordable housing but reminds the community that they are available to provide assistance.

Hamilton Service Center Director Fidelis Temukum said food insecurity is on the rise with area families

Luckily, The Salvation Army is here to support families in need through this challenging season, Temukum said. We are here to help with groceries, prevent eviction and stop utility disconnects. Hamilton is full of families and individuals who are hard-working, loving and ready to help one another through hard times.

He noted that The Salvation Army in Hamilton has been a proud partner in Hamilton for over 125 years and continues to serve.

For example, during this recent Christmas season, The Salvation Army of Hamilton was able to help meet the needs of families. Temukum and volunteers gave 1,128 toys to 188 kids, provided over 100 food cards and 100 food boxes (valued at $80 each) and prevented dozens of power shutoffs.

Dozens of families benefited from our emergency rental and mortgage assistant program, Temukum said. We continue to daily provide gas cards to needy families, hygiene supplies, auto repairs, case management, counseling, bus tickets and many other needs.

He said The Salvation Army in Hamilton is proud to serve the community and encourages families in need to reach out.

The Salvation Army is a Christian service organization based on the bible verses, Above all, love each other deeply. Peter 4:8 and The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. Psalm 23:1. It helps people overcome poverty, recover from disasters and economic hardships through a range of emergency disaster services and social services. The Salvation Army provides food for the hungry, clothing and shelter for the homeless, disaster relief, senior activity and outreach, adult rehabilitation and opportunities for underprivileged children.

The Salvation Army in Hamilton is open from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays and is open on Tuesdays and Thursdays by appointment only. Stop by The Salvation Army office at 217 N. 3rd St., Suite B-2, in Hamilton, call for an appointment at 406-210-1453, or email fidelis.temukum@usw.salvationarmy.org.

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An eastern Montana law firm is asking the state Supreme Court to step in to block a law prohibiting employers from mandating vaccines in the workplace, after a District Court judge declined to do so last month.

Netzer Law Office and Donald Netzer submitted a notice of appeal to the high court on Thursday. In February, state District Judge Olivia Regier had ruled against their request for a preliminary injunction against Montanas new law prohibiting discrimination on the basis of vaccine status, which was signed into law last year.

The lawsuit was filed last October against Attorney General Austin Knudsen and state Commissioner of Labor and Industry Laurie Esau. Regier, a Dawson County District Court judge who is overseeing the case in Richland County District Court, found that the plaintiffs had failed to sufficiently demonstrate that they would suffer irreparable harm if the law remained in effect. Other measures to curb the spread of the virus are available to plaintiffs, she wrote, including mask and hygiene requirements and remote work.

The Sidney law firm had cited the costs of supplying masks to those who entered the law office, along with the costs of billing hours related to providing a safe workplace in the absence of a COVID-19 vaccine mandate for employees and customers. The complaint also alleges that the new law violates the law firms rights to a clean and healthful environment and equal protection under the state constitution.

While Republican lawmakers who supported the new law during last year's legislative session focused on its implications for COVID-19 vaccine requirements, the vaccine discrimination law applies to requirements for any type of vaccination, with some carve-outs for schools and long-term care facilities.

Regiers ruling and the subsequent appeal to the states high court only apply to the plaintiffs request for an injunction to temporarily block the law. The lawsuit also seeks to have the law struck down as unconstitutional, an argument that is still playing out at the district court level.

Knudsen's office, which is defending the law, didn't immediately respond to a request for comment Friday.

No Montanan should be forced by their employer to receive a vaccine they do not want," spokesperson Emilee Cantrell previously said in an emailed statement.

Netzer Laws complaint was filed two weeks after the Montana Medical Association, a Missoula hospital, medical clinics and people with compromised immune systems filed the first challenge to HB 702, in federal court in Missoula. That complaint makes the case that the vaccine law violates federal protections for people with disabilities and work safety standards in hospitals. It also argues that the new law prevents hospitals from appropriately addressing unvaccinated staff.

A federal judge last month decided that case could move forward on some of those grounds, but rejected the argument that the law violated the state constitution's "clean and healthful environment" guarantee. Past rulings have found that only applies to the natural environment, he wrote. The court heard oral arguments in that case on Thursday, but no new ruling had been issued as of Friday morning.

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Pressure is mounting on the Biden White House to resolve its stalled policy on oil and gas leases in the West, with both the energy industry and environmentalists frustrated.

Tensions hit a new level last week as Congress turned its attention to oil and gas supply challenges exacerbated by Russias war in Ukraine. Demands for domestic oil production sparked a flurry of congressional bills.

At issue is a now 15-month pause on federal land oil and gas leases, initially triggered by an executive order on Jan. 27, 2021, as the new administration reviewed climate impacts of fossil fuels from public lands. That pause segued into a legal dispute in 14 states with Republican governments, Montana included, suing over the pause.

There were leases the Trump administration had all prepared and ready to go for first quarter 2021, and the Biden administration came in and put a halt to it, said Kathleen Sgamma, Western Energy Alliance president. There has not been a lease sale in Montana for all of 2021 and now there wont be one for the first quarter of 2022.

Last month, the Biden administration announced it would continue its leasing pause as it retooled the way it calculates climate change costs associated with fossil fuels extracted from public lands. A Louisiana federal judge earlier rejected the administration's method for calculating the social costs of carbon emissions.

Montana was scheduled for a March lease sale, which seemed likely given the White House suggested last August that leasing would resume this year.

Also displeased with the lack of resolution are environmentalists who expected by now to see an end to oil and gas leases to address concerns about climate change. Then-candidate Joe Biden promised such a move, said Nicole Ghio, Friends of the Earth U.S. fossil fuels program manager. Environmental voters expect results.

He made really big promises. And, he wasnt the only Democrat running for president who made big promises to end oil and gas leasing. Hes done the exact opposite, Ghio said. Even if BLM makes small restrictions on what lands they do offer up for sale, that's still very, very minimal. It doesn't get at the climate concerns, and it's really just dressing up a broken promise.

The thousands of acres locked into leases that dont get developed are a long-time sticking point for environmentalists and conservationists.

Frustrating environmentalists further are the number of drilling permits the Biden administration is approving. The liberal advocacy group Public Citizen reported that in 2021, the Bureau of Land Management approved about 333 drilling permits per month from February through November with a December high of 839 permits.

Sgamma said from the energy industry perspective, permitting hasnt gone well. Companies often file for permits a couple years out. Any leasing delays in 2021 will likely show up later in permitting, with some companies possibly getting short on permit inventory.

One congressional hawk on oil and gas leasing is Sen. Steve Daines. The Montana Republican was cautioning months ago that the March lease sale for Montana and North Dakota wasnt going to happen.

I want to see action here, but lets not forget why were at this moment. Its because the president put a stop to it. So, its sending a chilling message to the capital markets, you know Be careful if you invest in oil and gas exploration because were coming after you,' Daines said. Thats a huge problem. That is dangerous and I hope we get leases done, but weve got an administration that is very anti made-in-America energy.

Thursday, Daines was on the Senate floor trying to introduce his bill requiring the Biden administration to hold oil and gas lease sales. It was a Quixotic stand, with Democrats voting not to take up the Supporting Made in America Renewable and Traditional Energy Act, SMART Act for short. The bill called for the Department of Interior to not only resume lease sales immediately but hold at least four sales a year in five Midwest and Western states, including Montana. The bill also prevented the president from pausing the lease process.

With the Russian invasion of Ukraine stirring energy concerns, a flurry of congressional actions on oil surfaced this week. Thursday, Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairman Joe Manchin, a West Virginia Democrat, and Sen. Lisa Murkowski, ranking member of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, introduced a bill to ban Russian petroleum and liquid natural gas imports. Daines and Montana Democratic Sen. Jon Tester signed onto the bill, though Daines called the legislation a fig leaf for lawmakers not pursuing a restart of oil and gas leases.

The Montana Petroleum Association issued a thank you letter to Sens. Daines and Tester for supporting domestic oil and gas production, though MPA Executive Alan Olson noted that the effectiveness of the senators zeal, which extended to reviving the Keystone XL pipeline, had its limits.

While both senators have called for reconsideration of the Keystone XL pipeline it is very unlikely TC Energy will attempt to start over what was a 12-year, cost intensive, rollercoaster process, Olson wrote.

Keystone developer TC Energy indicated in its recently filed annual report that the project, ended in June 2021, was in full wind-down.

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The Capital Wing of the Commemorative Air Force based in Culpeper and the Delaware Aviation Museum Foundation on Monday announced its tour schedule for the 2022 Warbird Showcase.

World War II aircraft will be flying at 12 cities in six states this year as a tribute to the thousands of men and women who built, serviced and flew them.

A Capital Wing meet-and-greet will launch the aviation events Saturday, April 23, at Culpeper Regional Airport. As always, rides in the warbirds will be available to the public.

Mothers Day weekend May 7 and 8 at Warrenton Airport will see the debut of Women and Girls Can Fly! featuring three women pilots.

One flies the B-25 and is a retired Southwest Airlines captain who flew Boeing 737s. Another female member flies the Fairchild F24 and a Falcon 7X jet at her day job. The third woman is a student pilot flying a Piper TriPacer.

A WWII Weekend will be held June 3-5 in Reading, Pa., at which riders in the TBM Avenger will be flying exactly 80 years to the day of the Battle of Midway where the planes were heavily involved.

An Independence Day celebration July 3 at the airport in Martinsburg, W.Va., will enjoy fly-bys of the TBM Avenger and Stearman bi-plane as well as fireworks at night.

Other cities on the 2022 Warbirds Tour are Ashland and Leesburg in Virginia; Cumberland, Frederick and Hagerstown, Md.; Manteo and Raleigh, N.C.; and Georgetown, Del.

At each event, the public can be a passenger in these historic flyers including a meticulously restored 1945 TBM Avenger torpedo bomber, a 1945 North American B-25 twin-engine twin-tailed bomber Panchito, a 1943 Stinson L-5 Sentinel and a 1942 Boeing PT-17 Stearman open cockpit bi-plane.

Warbird rides allow the public to sit in the exact same seats as did those of another generation 80 years ago. Many riders are overcome with emotion if their grandfathers or fathers flew in these same type warbirds.

Warbird rides are priced to fit every budget and can be purchased on site, if available.
The battle to prevent Second Baptist Church from being demolished continues, as activists plan to rally at 13 W. Franklin St. beside The Jefferson Hotel on Friday.

A coalition of activists is rallying from 6 to 7 p.m., boycotting the hotel and its plans to tear down the historic site in favor of new development. Activists argue the building should be restored for its historic value and blame city government for its failure to follow its own procedures.

Although the citys planning department said the building could not be torn down until an application is filed and reviewed by the citys Commission of Architectural Review, the city changed its position and upheld an October 1992 Richmond City Council decision that said Second Baptist could be demolished.

After learning about the citys decision, activists from Historic Richmond, Preservation Virginia and others expressed their disapproval through rallies and news conferences.

Their efforts paid off. At a City Council meeting in February, the architectural review commission penned a letter to the council, formally reinforcing their opposition to the demolition.

After the rise of public pressure, city leadership reached an informal agreement with the hotels owner, Richmond businessman William H. Goodwin Jr., to delay demolition for three months while the hotel owner explores other options for the site.

Although an accord was struck, activists arent sitting on their heels in this battle. Jennie Dotts, a real estate expert with Long and Foster and a longtime preservationist, says residents are appalled by the mishandling of new development and historic structures.

Theres a group of people of all different ages and demographics who are, for the most part, appalled that this exquisite architectural landmark is being demolished by a billionaire who allowed it to fall into disrepair and use that as justification for tearing it down, Dotts said.

Dotts is a member of the Old House Authority, an organization that helps extend the life of traditional old houses in Richmond. She says Second Baptist is one of those places that make Richmond feel like Richmond.

From Dotts perspective, the city has been inconsistent in how its managed the demolition of Second Baptist and historic sites. She said whats happening with Second Baptist is indicative of how some business or homeowners are treated differently than others.

From a social justice angle, Im really outraged, Dotts said. Why is this person getting preferential treatment, and why is the city more concerned about supporting them while every other Richmond property owner has to play by certain rules?

Alyssa Holliday, a homeowner living in Jackson Ward for about 15 years and a board member of the Historic Jackson Ward Association, echoed Dotts sentiments.

During her time in Jackson Ward, Holliday became invested in the community and in the background of Richmonds most historic neighborhood. When she first moved in, she said her intention was to build on its historic value.

I didnt know the history of Jackson Ward when I first moved in, but I was very aware that as a white woman, Im moving into a Black neighborhood and the dangers of gentrification, Holliday said. So I wanted to try to do my best to not fall into that category.

Since that time, Holliday has learned a great deal about Jackson Ward and its importance in Richmonds historical landscape through stories from her neighbors and investing time into the community.

Holliday said shes witnessed how the city has mishandled longtime homeowners of historic homes, and whats happening at Second Baptist fits that pattern of mismanagement.

Its basically the same pattern that Ive seen where I live happening just across the street, Holliday said. Maybe its not directly in my neighborhood, but thats not the point. The point is that money shouldnt allow you to skirt the different procedures and policies that the average resident or anybody else has to go through.

Dotts and Holliday are two of the many grassroots activists who will be at Fridays rally and who are hoping to spread awareness that although The Jefferson Hotel and Historic Hotels LLC claim to want to invest in the community in the same way, activists say their actions and the actions of the City Council indicate otherwise.

They will have the support of a broader coalition of activists that gathered more than 500 signatures pledging to boycott the hotel and protect Second Baptist.
The future of the Antares space station resupply missions from Wallops Island remains in doubt, despite good news from Ukraine about the factory complex that designs and manufactures rocket bodies for the launches from a state-owned pad on the Eastern Shore barrier island.

The U.S. government confirmed Thursday that the complex in Dnipro, Ukraine, was structurally intact, despite previous unconfirmed reports that the Yuzhnoye State Design Office and Yuzhmash Machine Building had been destroyed by missile strikes when the Russian military invasion began on Feb. 24.

The complex produces the first-stage assemblies for Antares rockets to resupply the International Space Station under contracts between Northrop Grumman Corp. and NASA.

But the good news was tempered by an announcement in Russian media on Thursday that Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, would no longer allow the sale and delivery to the U.S. of the engines used in the Antares program.

Today, we have made the decision to halt the deliveries of rocket engines produced by NPO Energomash to the United States, said Roscosmos Director Dmitry Rogozin in a television interview reported by TASS, the Russian government press agency. Let me remind you that these deliveries had been quite intensive somewhere since the mid-1990s.

The Russian decision came in response to sanctions the U.S. and its allies imposed in opposition to the invasion of Ukraine. President Joe Biden said the sanctions include reductions in export of U.S. technology to Russia that he said would degrade their aerospace industry, including their space program.

According to a report by Reuters, Rogozin said in the television interview, In a situation like this we cant supply the United States with our worlds best rocket engines. Let them fly on something else, their broomsticks, I dont know what.

The ban applies to the RD-181 rocket engines used in the Antares program since 2016, two years after a rocket powered by a rebuilt Russian engine exploded moments after launch and caused $20 million in damage to the state pad next to the Atlantic Ocean.

It also applies to the RD-180 engines the United Launch Alliance uses to power the Atlas V rocket, which was used to launch the Cygnus spacecraft for Northrop Grumman resupply missions to the space station after the Antares launch failure in October 2014.

Northrop Grumman and the ULA say they had stockpiled equipment for future launches. In a news conference before the last Antares launch from Wallops on Feb. 19, Northrop Grumman space launch program director Kurt Eberly said the company had all of the components it needs for the resupply missions scheduled for this year.

Best mitigation we can have is to be buying ahead, Eberly said, according to a report by The Space Review. Hopefully, that will tide us over until these tensions can subside and we can be back to normal operating procedure.

Northrop Grumman, based in Fairfax County, has said little since Russia began its invasion of Ukraine.

The company deferred all questions about U.S. sanctions to NASA, but said we have all the hardware needed to fulfill our NASA-contracted missions on Antares.

John Logsdon, founder and former director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University, said Friday, I would characterize it as highly uncertain.

Logsdon was pleased that the Yuzhnoye/Yuzhmash complex had not been destroyed, but he said, Producing a complex piece of equipment, even if the factory is intact, in the middle of a combat zone is pretty dicey.

The future of the International Space Station itself is uncertain after Rogozin blasted the U.S. sanctions on Twitter and suggested that they could destroy our cooperation in the program. Subsequently, Russia halted launches to the space station for Europe from French Guiana.

So far, the perspective from NASA is that we continue to cooperate with Russians where we can, especially with the International Space Station, Rep. Don Beyer, D-8th, chairman of the House Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics, said this week.

At the same time, its hard to imagine going forward on any additional projects together.

Its certainly a casualty, Beyer said, and there are many casualties from this invasion.
Delegate after delegate came up to the rostrum Monday at a special session of the United Nations General Assembly and condemned Russias invasion of Ukraine as an unjustified, barbarous act against a sovereign state. When it was Chinas turn, Beijings U.N. ambassador, Zhang Jun, predictably took no side in the crisis, saying only that talks between Ukraine and Russia should continue. The ...
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Delegations of the deputies to the 13th National People's Congress (NPC), China's national legislature, have all registered for the NPC annual session scheduled to open in Beijing on Saturday.

Preparations for the fifth session of the 13th NPC have been completed, according to the press center of the session.
CHRISTIANSBURG  A Montgomery County judge on Wednesday revisited a child sex abuse case over which hed presided eight years ago  because the victim now says he was not molested.

At an unusual evidentiary hearing in the countys circuit court, Judge Robert Turk again heard testimony from Shawn Douglas Smith as part of an appeals process by David Wayne Kingrea, 43, of Pilot.

In 2014, Smith was the 15-year-old chief witness at a jury trial that ended with Kingrea being found guilty of taking indecent liberties with a minor. Turk had affirmed the jurys recommendation and sentenced Kingrea to 12 months in jail.

At the trial, Smith said that Kingrea abused him when he was 10, at a time when Kingrea was the boyfriend of Smiths mother. Now 23, Smith testified Wednesday that he had made that story up.

It was false and a lie, Smith said.

Attorney Fred Kellerman of Christiansburg, representing Kingrea, said it was clear that Smith had abandoned his earlier accusations.

But Brandon Wrobleski, a special assistant for investigations in the Virginia attorney generals office, urged Turk not to trust the new version of events, calling Smiths recantation selective, opportunistic, and incredible and unworthy of belief.

Kingrea, who was present Wednesday but did not speak, has said in recent interviews that he wants to have his conviction thrown out and be removed from the Virginia Sex Offender Registry so that he can better care for his disabled son.

The Virginia Court of Appeals is weighing Kingreas request to overturn his conviction, a request made after Smith filed an affidavit saying Kingrea did not sexually abuse him.

In the affidavit and in a letter Smith wrote to Kingrea in 2020, portions of which he read aloud Wednesday, Smith said he falsely accused Kingrea partly because in 2011, a counselor kept asking if he was sexually abused  and also because he hated Kingrea, who he said beat him during the time in 2007 and 2008 when he, his mother and his brother lived under Kingreas roof.

Smith said that Kingrea also hit his mother and burned his familys clothes and other belongings after Kingrea and Smiths mother broke up.

Wrobleski asked Smith if he knew that Kingrea abused crack cocaine and prescription drugs and smoked marijuana during the time they lived together. Smith answered that drugs and alcohol had been a problem for both Kingrea and his mother.

Smith said that while he was verbally and physically abused by Kingrea, there was no sexual abuse. He said that lied to get revenge for the harsh treatment, but knew it was wrong to do so. What I did has been eating me alive, Smith said Wednesday, reading from the letter he wrote to Kingrea.

Smith changed his story after ending up in prison himself. In a Radford case, Smith was convicted of malicious wounding, cruelty and child abuse or neglect for breaking his 8-week-old daughters legs and feet. He was sentenced to serve four years behind bars.

Smith said Wednesday that he spent much of the time in solitary confinement due to the nature of my charge. I kept getting jumped by other inmates.

After hearing a preacher who came to the jail, and with lots of time to reflect, Smith said he began to consider his life from a more Christian perspective. Smith said that he realized what his accusation had subjected Kingrea to, both in jail and afterward.

Smith said that in jail, he decided he needed to forgive Kingrea for the physical violence, and to set the record straight about the sex abuse claim.

On Wednesday, Smith testified that it was not Kingrea, but someone else who sexually abused him when he was a child.

Smith did not specify at the hearing who the abuser was. But according to the attorney generals offices report from a November 2021 interview with Smith, he said that he was abused by another boy years before he met Kingrea.

A long section of Wednesdays hearing revolved around Smiths January 2020 sentencing in Radford. His attorney in that case put on evidence to try to mitigate Smiths punishment, including testimony from the lawyer who was Smiths legal guardian during his childhood. The former guardian told the Radford judge that Smith was sexually molested by his mothers boyfriends.

Turk asked Smith if he had ever told his Radford attorney that the accusation against Kingrea was incorrect. Smith said that he had not.

The state appeals court, which eventually must decide whether to maintain Kingreas conviction, asked Turk to consider if Smith was in fact saying that his 2014 testimony was false and that Kingrea never touched him in a sexual manner; whether Smiths recantation was available to Kingreas attorney within 21 days of his final order of conviction in 2014; and whether anyone influenced Smiths decision to recant.

On the first point, Smith said over and over that in 2014  and in earlier hearings and statements to investigators and counselors  that he lied.

On the second point, Wrobleski argued that sometime ahead of the 2014 trial, Kellerman or someone from a defense team should have interviewed Smith because it might have revealed if the accusation was false. Kellerman countered that it was enough that the defense conducted a normal discovery process to review evidence that would be presented in the case.

And on the third point, Turk said that he did not hear either side directly ask Smith if anyone influenced him. There were multiple questions about whether Kingrea or any of his family had contacted Smith, and Smith answered that they had not.

Smith told the judge that he knew he was risking a perjury charge by saying now that his earlier accusation was false.

I dont care, Smith said. I want to do whats right.

Judge Turk said he would issue his findings within 30 days.

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Saint Francis Service Dogs has opened registration for Barks n Rec, its second annual spring fundraiser.

Last year, nearly 500 people across 27 states participated in the first Barks n Rec fundraiser.

Saint Francis Service Dogs has a goal of raising $60,000 through the event and is almost halfway there, according to a promotion. Proceeds from the event will help Saint Francis raise, train, and place service dogs with individuals with physical and developmental disabilities throughout the state of Virginia and surrounding areas.

During the week of April 18-24, Barks n Rec is an opportunity for people to do their favorite activities with their pets by their side.

Participants can register to participate online at www.saintfrancisdogs.org/barks-n-rec and pledge to do any activity they like  kayaking, cartwheeling, swimming, juggling, reading, etc.  during Barks n Rec Week.

They also will have the option of creating an individual fundraising page to share their activity and participation and receive support from friends and family.

A $25 registration includes an event T-shirt and the chance to win special event prizes.

Cabell Youell, executive director of Saint Francis Service Dogs, said he is grateful to those who participated in the first event as we navigated such a challenging year in 2021 and is excited about the upcoming event, adding We deeply appreciate your support. Everything you do helps us continue our mission.

World Day of Prayer is FridayChurch Women Uniteds annual World Day of Prayer, where women of many traditions from across the world will be together virtually and in spirit to observe a common day of prayer and action, is March 4.

Each year a different country serves as the writer of the WDP worship service, interpreting the Bible in its own context, and lifting up issues of mission, justice and peace. The women of England, Wales, and Northern Ireland are sponsoring WDP 2022.

The worship will be based on I know the plans I have for you, inspired by Jeremiah 29:1-14.

To join the 7 p.m. meeting by Zoom, enter the meeting ID, 839 8496 8742, and passcode, 281463; or join by phone by dialing 1 301 715 8592, and entering the meeting ID 839 8496 8742# and passcode 281463#.

Offerings taken at this meeting will go to World Day of Prayer and special programs supported by Church Women United of Roanoke Valley  Family Food Assistance Team, Bethany Hall, Roanoke Rescue Mission, Salvation Army, LOA Meals on Wheels, and Feeding America. Checks should be sent to CWU Treasurer at Post Office Box 12103, Roanoke, VA 24022.

2 Addison classes celebrate 55th anniversariesTwo graduating classes of the former Lucy Addison High School are sponsoring a grand reunion in July to celebrate the legacy of the schools namesake.

The Class of 1967 is celebrating its 55th reunion along with the Class of 1966, which had to postpone its 55th reunion in 2021 because of COVID-19.

During the July 16 event at the Holiday Inn Valley View, the graduates and guests will pay tribute to educator Lucy Addison, who was largely responsible for bringing high school level education to Roanokes Black residents.

Born enslaved in Fauquier County, Virginia, she earned a teaching diploma in Philadelphia and taught briefly in Loudoun County before moving to Roanoke in 1887.

Addison campaigned for a secondary school curriculum at the old Harrison School, which offered classes only up to the eighth grade. The State Board of Education later accredited Harrison School as a high school in 1924.

After the 1926-1927 school year, Addison retired, and the city named the school after her in 1928. She died 10 years later in Washington, D.C.

Envision Band from Winston Salem, North Carolina, will provide music for the reunion and dinner which cost $50 per person.

For more information and tickets, contact Johnny Taylor at 540-330-5501 or send a check to 3527 Laurel Ridge Road, N.W.

New effort to focus on Salems early historyThe Salem Historical Society has been awarded two grants to fund a major new exhibition slated for later this year at the Salem Museum.

The Community Foundation Serving Western Virginia has provided a $18,000 grant from its Community Catalyst Funds for the exhibition exploring local history.

Virginia Humanities provided additional funding of $7,040 for digital humanities content from the National Endowment for the Humanities, as part of the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 and the NEH Sustaining the Humanities through the American Rescue Plan initiative.

These two grants are making possible the development a new permanent exhibition to provide an overview of local history, dating back long before Salems actual founding in 1802. The exhibition will demonstrate how citizens in the Roanoke County town played a role in, and were affected by, the sweep of national and world events.

The Salem Museum & Historical Society is an independent, nonprofit organization preserving and celebrating the history of Salem and Roanoke County. It is located next to Longwood Park in the historic 1845 Williams-Brown House at 801 East Main Street, Salem. For additional information, call 540-389-6760 or visit salemmuseum.org.

Contact JoAnne Poindexter at joanne.poindexter @roanoke.com

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The owner of a Roanoke auto dealership was placed on home detention Friday for taking $30,000 in drug-tainted cash for a car.

Abdul Ahad Nahibkhil actually accepted the money from agents with the Internal Revenue Service, who led him to believe it was drug proceeds in an undercover investigation of Blue Ridge Auto Sales.

The law Nahibkhil broke is intended to prevent drug dealers from hiding their ill-gotten gains, U.S. District Judge Michael Urbanski said during a sentencing hearing on the charge, which is rarely brought in Roanoke.

Lets be clear about this: drug dealing destroys peoples lives, Urbanski said. And unfortunately, Mr. Nahibkhils actions furthered that destruction.

Nahibkhil, a 36-year-old Afghanistan immigrant, said he was very, very deeply sorry for what Ive done.

The United States of America has given me a second life and chance to live here, he said. If I wasnt here, I would have been dead a long time ago.

Last year, Nahibkhil pleaded guilty to failing to report a 2018 transaction to the IRS after being told that two payments of $15,000 each came from drug trafficking. The undercover exchange was captured on video.

Federal law requires the reporting of cash payments of $10,000 or more within 15 days.

This was about greed, pure and simple, Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew Bassford said.

But Bassford did not oppose a sentence of six months of home detention and two years of probation, saying the defendant is not a bad guy. Nahibkhils only prior convictions were for simple possession of marijuana and failing to appear for a court hearing more than a decade ago.

There was no evidence that Nahibkhil was involved in drug dealing, or that he actually helped a criminal organization conceal its profits, his attorney, Correy Diviney, wrote in a sentencing memorandum.

But he intended to, and that is not something to be scoffed at, as Mr. Nahibkhil has learned the hard way, Diviney wrote.

With a felony conviction, Nahibkhil faces an uncertain immigration status and may lose his dealers license to sell cars.

In letters to Urbanski, family members and friends described Nahibkhil as a hard-working, family man who made a one-time mistake. Although the charge carried a maximum sentence of five years in prison, the judge saw no need for that.

This is an aberration, he said of Nahibkhils actions.

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Virginia State Police authorities say they will continue investigating sexual assault claims against a retired Spotsylvania County doctor who was found dead in Loudoun County on Thursday.

The death of Michael B. OBrien, 66, is being investigated by the Loudoun Sheriffs Office. OBriens body has been taken to the medical examiners office in Manassas for autopsy and examination.

State police Sgt. Brent Coffey said that as of Friday, there was no indication of foul play and that OBriens death appears to be self-inflicted.

OBrien was arrested last week following a raid at his home in Spotsylvania. He was charged with forcible sodomy of a child under 13, an offense that carries a potential life sentence. Court records show that the charge stems from 1987 during OBriens career as an orthopedic surgery specialist in the Fredericksburg area. At the time of his arrest, police said more charges were pending.

OBrien was placed in the Rappahannock Regional Jail and released on bond a few days later.

Coffey said authorities are still encouraging anyone with information regarding the investigation to call State Police at 888/300-0156 or email questions@vsp.virginia.gov.
RICHMOND  A bill that would have restricted colleges from withholding the transcripts of students who havent paid their bills was defeated Wednesday in a House subcommittee.

The subcommittees seven delegates unanimously rejected the measure, which had passed on the Senate floor 25-15.

At a time when student debt has become a national focus and the cost of college has ballooned, schools can hold on to one mechanism designed to motivate students to pay.

In a world of crushing student debt, this is the most short-sighted  if not mean-spirited  insult they could add to injury, said Sen. Ghazala Hashmi, D-Chesterfield, the bills sponsor.

When a student doesnt fully pay tuition and fees, a college can withhold the students transcript and diploma, attempt to garnish wages or file a lawsuit. Law requires colleges to aggressively pursue their debts, which can range from a few hundred to several thousand dollars. Debt owed on student loans is not a part of this bill.

If a students cant access their transcripts, they cant transfer to another school, and they are less likely to gain the employment necessary to pay off the debt. Trapped in a Catch-22, students often abandon their education, Hashmi said.

Students who lose access to their credits are more likely to be low income, students of color, students on payment plans, community college transfers, adult education students, those on financial aid or those with military or employer tuition payment plans, according to a study by think tank Ithaka S+R.

Hashmi called withholding transcripts an ineffective form of debt collection.

All this is doing is harming the prospects for those who are least able to pay back those debts, said Jared Calfee, executive director of Virginia21, which advocates for college students.

The Richmond areas two historically Black universities, Virginia Union and Virginia State University, used some of their federal relief funds to pay off students debt during the pandemic. The number of students in debt and the amount owed rose in 2021, VSU president Makola Abudullah said.

But opponents say colleges need leverage to encourage students to pay their bills.

I dont know what else will drive a student who has debt to a university to pay off that debt if they have their transcript, said Sen. John Cosgrove, R-Chesapeake. Facing opposition, Hashmi agreed to let colleges hold on to diplomas but not transcripts. Then she amended the bill so that transcript would include only the credits the student paid for.

If youve already paid for something, you ought to be able to own it, Hashmi said.

The House Education Committee advanced the revised bill on Monday, but an Appropriations subcommittee rejected it 7-0 two days later. The subcommittee also rejected a similar bill in the House last month sponsored by Del. Betsy Carr, D-Richmond.

Hashmi said shed like to see colleges develop programs to guide students financially so they dont accrue debt and pay off their bills while theyre still students.
MARTINSVILLE  Nadia Kriger of Martinsville thought she had become 100% American, leaving her Ukrainian heritage behind  until Russias invasion flooded her with concern from the homeland she left over 25 years ago.

When she was just 14, in 1990, Krigers family moved from Ukraine to Virginia Beach after facing large amounts of religious persecution for most of her life, she said. That was because Kriger and her mother were devout Christians  publicly  in a Communist country.

At that time, Ukraine was part of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and religion was very much forbidden, she said.

Kriger said that society was more accepting of Catholicism among the older people, but being Pentecostal, which her mother was  though in Ukraine Pentecostal was considered a form of the Baptist religion  was considered worse than being a devil worshipper.

Kriger said that, while living in Lviv, Ukraine, she remembered refusing to say an oath in her third-grade classroom that was a pledge to live like Lenin lived, referring to Vladimir Lenin, the head of the former Communist Soviet Union. That refusal led to a visit to the principals office, where she continued to stand her ground and not say the pledge.

The principal then grabbed her by the ear and dragged her a mile and a half home, only next to yell at her mother for allowing such behavior. The family was even threatened with starvation because the government was a main source of food for people.

Her reasoning behind her childhood refusal, she said, was that after two years of watching her mother be a Christian, she also had accepted Christ at an early age.

The worst religious persecution, though, came from home, Kriger said: While her mother had developed a religious belief, her father had not, and greatly disapproved of it.

A large memory of her time in Ukraine, Kriger said, was of her mother crying over her religious beliefs not being accepted. Her extended family largely ostracized her immediate family, and even Krigers godmother refused to speak to her.

Her mothers older sister  though she eventually converted  even told Krigers father that all things were permissible to rehabilitate her mother, said Kriger.

Kriger also said that the atmosphere in Ukraine, because of communism, wasnt exactly neighborly. People often reported others to the government and were very aware of when other people had more because they learned to live within that system created by communism.

Making a homeBecause of the way she experienced Ukraine when she lived there, Kriger said, she was surprised at how emotional the Russian invasion of Ukraine has made her feel and has been in shock at how it is affecting her.

In 1988, when Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev was in power, he met with American president Ronald Reagan and entered into talks about giving persecuted Ukrainian residents the chance to leave, she said. That allowed Kriger and her family to start the process of leaving for America, which required trips to the embassy in Moscow.

Because of difficulties in dealing with officials, it took Krigers family two years of the process to finally be able to leave Ukraine.

World Vision International, a Christian humanitarian aid organization, got them a home and family to stay with in the United States. However, the Kriger familys assigned host family fell through, leaving the Krigers stranded at LaGuardia Airport in New York for several days, she said.

However, little did they know it then, but God had a better plan, she said.

When they finally arrived in their new apartment in Virginia Beach on Dec. 31, 1990, and saw the space that was originally prepared for the other family, it was as if it was us that they were waiting for, she said.

Their new American home even was stocked with just the right toys and clothes.

Humble beginningsKriger and her husband, Mark Sells, have three children: Nikolas, 16, Katelyn, 9, and Viktoria, 7.

She has a bachelors degree in international studies from Old Dominion University and a masters degree in national security from the American Military University. She worked in an American embassy in Moscow for 18 months and was a linguist in military intelligence for the U.S. Army for eight years.

She loved the work, she said, but left the military because its scheduling was not compatible with military life.

She had to rebrand herself after leaving the Army, so she got a masters degree in education because her son liked the idea of her being a teacher, she said.

The Kriger-Sells family came to Martinsville in 2013 when he took a job with Sovah Health as a nurse practitioner. He now works at GoDocs in Danville. Having always been a city girl, she was weary of small-town life at first, but the area later grew on her, she said.

She taught English as a Second Language at Bassett High School before the pandemic, and is now an English teacher at Westover Christian Academy in Danville, which her children attend.

Kriger said that though she misses working in the Army, she has no regrets about where she has ended up in life. She and her husband both came from equally humble beginnings she said, and this led to them working hard to give their own children things that they never had.

Kriger had not even a ping of some sort of regret about leaving Ukraine, she said: After so long in America and her proud service in the Army, she identifies very strongly as an American and very little with the part of her life that took place in Ukraine.

Thus, she was surprised how hard the impact of hearing about the Russian invasion of Ukraine hit her, she said.

Im barely Ukrainian. That part of my life has been so suppressed and pushed back that I barely identify as one. When I read the news and saw the pictures, it felt like death, it felt like 9/11 felt, and 9/11 felt like when my brother died, she said.

She clearly remembers one day after the attack happened, she said, because she heard from her daughter, Katelyn, that they were praying for Ukraine over a map in her classroom. Kriger later saw a post on Facebook from her daughters teacher, Jenni Sunderland, with a picture of the children praying in class at Westover Christian Academy.

Kriger said that what hurts the most about this entire situation is the comparison between her past in Ukraine and the situation there now.

A different UkraineWhen her family was leaving, Kriger said that it felt like funeral with all her relatives watching them leave knowing that they would likely never see them again. Her family left in Ukraine saw them leaving right on the brink of freedom from communism.

For her to now see that freedom threatened once again makes Kriger feel helpless all over again, she said.

Kriger still has friends and family back in Ukraine; one friend she met in America through working for the Army, Lyuba Ovsienko; and many cousins as well. She said she has been fortunate enough to go back and visit since her move to America because of work and missions trips, while her immediate family have not.

Kriger said she knows that America has provided significant aid and humanitarian efforts as well, but that more needed to be done.

Its not just Ukraine. We will be next if we dont do something there and the power shifts in Europe. We will be next, she said.

Kriger also spoke about how many Americans take their freedom for granted.

We havent seen anything yet and we already complain, she said. She also added that the people who complain about losing freedom in America have no idea what losing freedom even means, and they wont until they are under the control of a tyrant.

Overall, Kriger said, she is proud of how the people of Ukraine are making a stand for their nation and being passionate about it, showing what a hardcore group of people she comes from.
RICHMOND  A Democrat-controlled Senate panel on Thursday advanced legislation banning discrimination in the admissions process at Virginias governors schools, weakening a more expansive proposal by the GOP that sought race-blind admissions but signaling dissatisfaction with new policies to bring more racial diversity to the schools.

Four Democrats joined the Republicans to back legislation that says simply that the schools admissions process cant discriminate on the basis of race and other criteria. Sen. Chap Petersen, D-Fairfax City, who authored the language, said it would be up to the courts to define exactly what constitutes discrimination, but added that it was an important statement for the Virginia legislature to make.

Del. Glenn Davis, R-Virginia Beach, introduced House Bill 127, which Gov. Glenn Youngkin backed. Davis bill took aim at efforts to boost the number of Black and Hispanic students at the states governors schools, where they are underrepresented. Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Fairfax County recently overhauled its admissions process to that end, prompting criticism that the policy discriminated against Asian American applicants, who at the time made up more than two-thirds of students at the school.

A federal judge ruled against the school district last week, calling the new admissions policy an unlawful attempt at racial balancing. The Fairfax school district said it will appeal the decision.

We're not going to discriminate based on race in governors school admissions. Period, full stop. And I'm going to let the courts kind of work out what that means. And they're doing that right now," Petersen said.

Virginia has 19 regional governor's schools that serve approximately 11,000 students, including science and math based schools in Roanoke and Dublin. A study released under the administration of former Gov. Ralph Northam found that Asian students were dramatically overrepresented in the state's governor's schools as a percentage of the population, while econonomically disadvantaged students were underrepresented.

Richmonds Maggie L. Walker Governors School has struggled with a lack of racial diversity. The admissions rate for Black students at the school over the last two decades is about 5%, nearly four times lower than the rate for white students, a Times-Dispatch investigation found.

The bill the Senate panel approved Thursday also requires that middle schools eligible to send students to a governor's school offer coursework that is rigorous enough to prepare students to be admitted. Petersen said the bill would make the pipeline stronger, broader and more acceptable.

The bill Davis originally introduced would have banned seeking information about an applicant's race, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin, and called for acceptance decisions to be made blind as to an applicant's identity.

The bill as proposed drew opposition from the Virginia Education Association, the Virginia Schools Boards Association, and alumni from Thomas Jefferson and Maggie L. Walker governors schools.

On Thursday, Sen. Ghazala Hashmi, D-Henrico, who voted against the bill, said the new process at Thomas Jefferson in Fairfax was designed to ensure that all students who have an aptitude or a passion for STEM in particular  have the opportunity to come to the school and to succeed.

Sen. Mamie Locke, D-Hampton, who also opposed the measure, said simply off the microphone: If we want to go ahead and go back to 1950-something Im good. Im good.

Senate Majority Leader Dick Saslaw, D-Fairfax, Sen. George Barker, D-Fairfax and Sen. Lynwood Lewis, D-Accomack joined Petersen in backing the amended bill.

Lab schools, school police

Some of Youngkins other education priorities advanced through the Senate panel Thursday, albeit not as the administration had intended.

The panel advanced Davis' House Bill 346 to expand the number of public schools operated by higher education institutions, but the panel advanced a Senate version that would leave the schools to rely on private funding to operate.

The panel also advanced House Bill 873, sponsored by Del. Karen Greenhalgh, R-Virginia Beach, which originally called for school boards to hire at least one law enforcement officer per school. The panel amended the bill to simply require the local police chief to designate and train an officer to serve as the law-enforcement liaison for any schools without a stationed officer.

The panel rejected House Bill 787 from Del. Dave LaRock, R-Loudoun, that would have made it illegal for schools to teach, among other things, that an individual, by virtue of the individual's race or sex, is inherently racist. The bill is similar, but more expansive, to the divisive concepts bills the administration backed that failed earlier in the session.

The panel also rejected House Bill 1093 that would have weakened a requirement that public school teachers be evaluated on cultural competency.

On another topic of note, the education and health panel voted 10-5 to defeat Greenhalgh's House Bill 212 that would have required a woman to sign a form confirming informed consent before an abortion is performed. Sen. Siobhan Dunnavant, R-Henrico, voted with the panel's nine Democrats.

The Roanoke Times contributed to this report.
Worldwide, the ultra-wealthy are notorious for trying to hide their wealth for tax reasons, while simultaneously showing it off, usually via their offspring or spouses. The proof of their wealth has already been the subject of a number of documents leaks made public in the last few years, but hiding money is one thing 

Hiding an ostentatious yacht is quite another.

To that end, as Russias invasion of Ukraine marches on, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has now announced the formation of a special task force to go after the assets of Russian billionaire oligarchs who support Russian President Vladimir Putin.

With the Hollywood-style catching name of KleptoCapture, the task force will target their lucrative assets, including yachts, artwork and mansions.

The announcement of the task force formation came after President Joe Biden's State of the Union speech, during which he singled out the Russian political and financial elite.

"We are joining with our European allies to find and seize your yachts, your luxury apartments, your private jets. We are coming for your ill-begotten gains," President Biden said.

The KleptoCapture task force will use federal law enforcement resources from various agencies, including the FBI, the Treasury Department and the IRS.

Attorney General Merrick B. Garland said the primary goal of the task force would be to enforce the sweeping sanctions, export restrictions, and economic countermeasures that the United States and its allies have imposed on Russia.

We will leave no stone unturned in our efforts to investigate, arrest, and prosecute those whose criminal acts enable the Russian government to continue this unjust war, Garland said.

The U.S., the EU and the UK have responded to the invasion of Ukraine with economic sanctions on Russia, including measures targeting oligarchs in Russian president Vladimir Putins inner circle. That pretty much includes all of them as all those who tried to rebel against Putin are not oligarchs anymore.

On Thursday, French authorities said that they seized a yacht owned by Russian Igor Sechin, CEO of Rosneft, Russia's massive state oil and gas company.

Earlier this week, Germany seized a $600-million yacht belonging to billionaire Alisher Usmanov.

There are different estimates as to how much Russias wealthiests have lost since the start of the invasion of Ukraine.

Just on the first day of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, 22 of Russian richest individuals lost $39 billion. Among those, Vagit Alekperov, chairman of oil company Lukoil, lost $6.2 billion.

According to a Bloomberg report, Russia's wealthiest individuals have lost $83 billion since the beginning of this year, with the majority of the losses since the invasion.

At the start of the invasion, Putin reportedly summoned some dozen oligarchs and told them that what is happening is a necessary measurewe were simply left with no chance to do otherwise.

None of the billionaires apparently commented during the meeting, but now, some are testing the water and sending vague messages that war should stop, but they are still failing to criticize the government.

Nonetheless, they are taking their vast losses to heart.

Following President Bidens speech and the seizure of the yachts belonging to Usmanov and Sechin, oligarchs are now on the move to countries that dont have an extradition treaty with the U.S.

According to an Agence France-Presse report, at least five new superyachts owned by Russian billionaires are now anchored in Maldives.

Media reported that the yachts of Oleg Deripaska, the founder of aluminum giant Rusal, steel magnate Victor Rashnikov, and Alexander Abramov, a cofounder of steel producer Evraz, are among the owners of those anchored yachts. Russian banker Andrey Kostins yacht is heading to the Maldives from Turkey, as we speak, according to reports.

According to Marine Traffic data, Lukoils Alekperov is reportedly sailing his yacht from Barcelona to Montenegro, while Roman Abramovichs yacht is reportedly moored in St. Maarten.
Get to know the history of firefighting in the Santa Maria Valley with this column from Shirley Contreras. This is the second story in a two-part series. The first part 'From bucket brigades to fire fleets, a history of firefighting in the Santa Maria Valley,' was published earlier this month.
China's national legislature will open its annual session on Saturday morning in Beijing, a spokesperson said Friday.



The fifth session of the 13th National People's Congress (NPC) is scheduled to conclude on March 11, with 10 items on the agenda, Zhang Yesui, spokesperson for the session, told a press conference.

Lawmakers will review documents including the government work report and deliberate the draft amendment to the Organic Law of the Local People's Congresses and Local People's Governments, Zhang said.

They will also deliberate the draft decision on the number of deputies to the 14th NPC and their election, and two draft methods for the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR) and the Macao SAR to elect their deputies to the 14th NPC, Zhang said.
LSU will provide Amazon hourly employees that live in Louisiana access to online and on-campus bachelor's degrees and college credit certificates; Amazon's Career Choice program provides full tuition to learn new skills for career success at Amazon or elsewhere

BATON ROUGEToday, LSU announced it has been selected as an education partner for Amazon's Career Choice program, providing Amazon's hourly employees that live in Louisiana access to online and on-campus bachelor's degrees and short-form college credit certificates, or MicroCreds.

"With a focus on 'Scholarship First,' our mission is to provide excellent educational opportunities for the workforce of tomorrow," said Matt Lee, interim executive vice president & provost of LSU. "We are proud to be a part of a working adult's journey toward advancing their career 'at Amazon or elsewhere' with a degree from LSU."

The university expects to offer degrees and college credit certificates to Amazon employees through LSU, LSU Shreveport, LSU Eunice and LSU Alexandria. As a whole, LSU includes institutions, facilities and programs in each of Louisiana's 64 parishes. Each institution plays a vital role in preparing students to incorporate new knowledge and new technologies into their daily lives.

Amazon's Career Choice program is an education benefit that empowers employees to learn new skills for career success at Amazon or elsewhere. The program meets individual learners where they are on their education journey through a variety of education and upskilling opportunities including full college tuition, industry certifications designed to lead to in-demand jobs, and foundational skills such as English language proficiency, high school diplomas, and GEDs. In the U.S., the company is investing $1.2 billion to upskill more than 300,000 employees by 2025 to help move them into higher-paying, in-demand jobs.

Amazon's Career Choice program has a rigorous selection process for third-party partner educators, choosing partners that are focused on helping employees through their education programs, assisting them with job placements, and overall offering education that leads to career success.

"We're looking forward to LSU coming on board as an education partner for Career Choice, adding to the hundreds of best-in-class offerings available to our employees," said Tammy Thieman, Global Program Lead of Amazon's Career Choice program. "We're committed to empowering our employees by providing them access to the education and training they need to grow their careers, whether that's with us or elsewhere. We have intentionally cultivated a partner network of third-party educators and employers committed to providing excellent education, job placement resources, and continuous improvements to the experience. Today, over 50,000 Amazon employees around the world have already participated in Career Choice and we've seen first-hand how it can transform their lives."

LSU is seeking new organizations to partner with. If you are an employer interested in partnering with LSU, visit online.lsu.edu/partnerships.

For more information on Amazon's Career Choice, visit: https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/workplace/career-choice.

For more information on LSU, visit online.lsu.edu.

About LSU

The LSU system is dedicated to providing a positive learning environment that enables students to achieve their full potential. It includes the LSU Agricultural and Mechanical College at Baton Rouge (the premier flagship university for the state); campus units at Alexandria, Eunice, and Shreveport; Health Science Centers in New Orleans and Shreveport; LSU Agricultural Center; and Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge. The LSU system has more than 35,000 undergraduate students and more than 12,000 graduate students; it also has 2,000 professional students in the Health Centers. There are 3,000 full-time-equivalent faculty members, including 1,340 tenured or tenure-track. The LSU system has an endowment with a market value larger than $900M, about $350M in annual research expenditures, and more than 200 active licenses.

About LSU Online & Continuing Education

LSU Online & Continuing Education supports more than 100 online degrees and certificate programs from the LSU family of institutions. These flexible programs stack together to help advance careers and reach educational goals with no credit left behind. Our mission is to meet learners' evolving needs by creating education opportunities in high-demand, workforce-relevant fields. Programs are designed for online and taught by award-winning LSU faculty and expert instructors. Online degree students will earn the same diploma as their on-campus peers and can expect world-class customer service through personal, concierge-style learner support. Explore our programs today at online.lsu.edu.

Contact Ernie Ballard

LSU Media Relations

225-978-8277

eballa1@lsu.edu

Provided by Louisiana State University
HARTSVILLE, S.C.  A burn ban has been posted for Darlington County after a series of brush fires that burned at least 130 acres of Darlington County land.

Darlington County Fire Chief Ricky Flowers issued the burn ban Friday morning.

The weather forecast for the next several days indicates dry conditions will continue with almost no chances for precipitation, Flowers said in a media advisory. We would like to remind the community that burning at this time can be very dangerous, leading to property damage, increased injuries, and even fatalities. We strongly discourage the public in burning until conditions improve.

The South Carolina Forestry Commissions regional dispatch center recorded 32 fires Thursday.

Eight of those fires were in the Florence/Darlington county area  evenly split between the two counties, according to the forestry commissions website.

A fire on April Drive, off S.C. 34 north of Darlington, burned 100 acres. Darlington County firefighters also battled a blaze on Mont Clare Road and, with assistance from Florence County firefighters, a fire on South Center Road.

Another Thursday fire burned 30 acres in Florence County on River Bend Road at Sally Hill Road  along the Darlington County line.

Low relative humidity  below 20% for most of South Carolina  is likely contributing to the increase in wildfire activity, according to the media advisory.

The weekend weather forecast calls for warm, dry and windy conditions with no chance of rain until at least Tuesday, when there is a 40-50% chance of rain through Thursday.
FLORENCE, S.C.  Florence County Council Vice Chairman Buddy Brand will be seeking a full term.

Brand told the Morning News Friday morning he plans to seek reelection to the County Council District 8 seat hes held since he won a 2020 special election.

County Council District 8 includes three connected roughly square-shaped areas southwest of downtown Florence.

What I want to do is continue to build on working together, the city, the county, Brand said. He said the city and the county need to work together to compete against the other counties in South Carolina, other states and even other countries for economic development projects. If we dont work together with the city and the county, nothings going to happen.

Brand was elected vice chairman of the County Council in January.

Prior to the County Council, he served for 15 years on the Florence City Council representing Council District 3. Brand served for several years as the citys mayor pro tempore.

Brand has also been a member of several community boards and organizations including the Kiwanis Club, the downtown Florence development board, Florence County Progress, Florence County Economic Development Partnership, the Francis Marion University Foundation board, three McLeod boards, the United Way executive board, the Boys and Girls Club board, Choices, the Junior League Advisory Board, Pee Dee Land Trust and the Northeastern Strategic Alliance.

With the Kiwanis Club, Brand has served as president, lieutenant governor and on the board of directors.

He has served as chairman of the Florence County Progress and Economic Development boards, the Francis Marion Foundation board, the McLeod Health board, the United Way Executive Board, the Boys and Girls Club, Choices and Pee Dee Land Trust.

Brand is senior vice president of investments at Stifel Nicolaus. He is graduate of The Citadel, where he serves as class foundation director and on his classs board of directors.

He has been married to his wife, Janet, for 32 years. They have four children.

Brand attends First Presbyterian Church, where he serves as an elder and a member of the finance committee.

He will face Florence City Councilman William Schofield in the Republican primary. Schofields father, James, represented the district for several years but died in 2020, which necessitated the special election that Brand won.

No Democrats have announced plans to run for the seat.

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FLORENCE, S.C.  U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham and Congressman Tom Rice are looking to make additional consequences for Russia following its invasion of Ukraine.

Graham, South Carolinas senior U.S. senator, introduced a resolution Wednesday strongly condemning any war crimes being committed by Russia in Ukraine and encouraging and supporting the investigation of war crimes by committed by Russia.

Dictators like Putin care only about themselves and their cronies, Graham said in a media advisory. This resolution supports Ukraines war crimes complaint to the International Criminal Court and is a chance to change behavior to stop Putins madness. The resolution supports the investigation of Putin as a war criminal and urges the ICC and ICJ to expand their investigation to include Russian military commanders carrying out the war crimes.

Around 40 nations referred allegations of war crimes to the International Criminal Court. The court has since announced an immediate investigation into the allegations. However, Russia is not a signatory to the treaty that created the court so its not known what effect the court could have on the country or its invasion.

Graham encouraged the Senate to support the complaint because he believes if it receives U.S. support other nations will join in.

Putin has destroyed the Rule of Law in Russia, jailing his opponents and killing those who dissent, Graham continued. The ICC is a venue to bring bad actors to justice in those areas where the Rule of Law is absent as they did in the Balkan War during the 1990s. Finally, one reason history repeats itself is that we fail to learn from the mistakes of the past.

I can only imagine what would have changed if in the 1930s the world had spoken forcefully to condemn Hitler for his atrocities within Germany and surrounding areas. We have a chance to chart a new path with this resolution.

Rice, the Republican representing most of the Pee Dee and Grand Strand regions, introduced a resolution removing Russia from most favored nation status, which he says will complete the isolation of Russia from the worlds economy.

Most favored nation status is an international law term referring to one country allowing another to have lower tariffs or higher import quotas than other nations. The World Trade Organization requires its members to offer this benefit to all other members. The United States has been a member since Jan. 1, 1995. Russia has been a member of the organization since Aug. 22, 2012.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine is shocking and inexcusable, Rice said in a media advisory. The response of the United States has been weak. On one hand, Biden is too weak to call it an invasion and to use all the tools at his disposal. On the other, Trump calls the ruthless maniac, Putin, brilliant and cheers him on. We can do better.

In a Feb. 24 interview with Clay Travis and Buck Sexton, Trump used sarcasm when he discussed the Russian invasion. Several media outlets have reported from the transcript without listening to the audio of the interview.

Rice added he has requested and the Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal is scheduling a meeting to discuss options to inflict further pain of Russia.

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DARLINGTON, S.C.  An expansion of the Darlington County Museum will let people dig deep into their history.

Ground was broken on March 2 for the 8,800-square-foot expansion of the museum, which is under direction of the Darlington County Historical Commission & Museum.

The addition is made possible by the late Carolyn Bet Norment Phillips, who bequeathed $4 million to the Historical Commission at the time of her death on March 11, 2018, for the specified purpose of a county museum.

Participating in the groundbreaking were Bill Segars, chairman of the Historical Commission Board; Bobby Hudson, chairman of Darlington County Council; Brian Gandy, county historian; David Victoria, Tungsten Corporation; County Administrator Marion Charles Stewart III; and Robert Goodson Jr., architect.

In his welcome to the event, Brian E. Gandy, director of the Darlington County Historical Commission & Museum, said people caught the vision more than 100 years ago that local history in Darlington County was important and began to preserve it. Darlington County Historical Society has worked diligently for 85 years to preserve that history, which is now under the umbrella of the county government.

Gandy spoke of Bet Norment Phillips passion for Darlington County, its rich history and how she left something for everyone in the county with her gift to build the museum. Phillips understood the importance of preserving Darlington Countys history for future generations, he said.

Gandy said the museum is creating a destination for residents to dig as deep as they want into their historical narrative.

He said there are only two museums in South Carolina where you are able to view exhibits and do further research in the same place. The Darlington County Historical Commission & Museum will be the third.

With the design of the new addition patrons will be able to view the exhibits in first-floor galleries and go upstairs and do further research in the research center and library. The old part of the building will house the archives, and the first floor of the new construction will be the lobby, museum and galleries.

Currently, the historical commission operates in a building on Hewitt Street in Darlington that was built in 1937 and once served as the county jail. The 8,800-square-foot add-on will make the new building more than 17,000 square feet in total.

Speakers were Angie Stone Godbold, councilwoman, District 1; Curtis Boyd, mayor of Darlington; and Marion Charles Stewart III, county administrator.

Godbold said a lot of hard work was put into getting to this moment. Even if it is about history, it is about moving forward, too, she said. Phillips and Gandy shared a friendship and a passion.

We will have a tangible result of Phillips kindness and generosity, Godbold said.

Stewart said the museum expansion will be a valuable asset to the town and the county and people should appreciate Phillips gift that has made this possible. And he is certain that Gandy and his staff will make the most of this opportunity.

Boyd spoke of the growth in Darlington County, of which the museum will be a part, and how this new addition will bring people to Darlington.

We are proud of all the building that is going on, he said. We are making history.

He said a lot is going on in Darlington, but this museum belongs to all of Darlington County.

Its impact is already being felt. One guest at the groundbreaking came from Utah to be a part of the celebration. Pam Watson Lichty, a Hartsville native, said the event coincided with her plans to travel this month to Hartsville for her class reunion. She is a 1962 graduate of Hartsville High School. And she wanted to witness this historic event.

Lichty, her husband, Gary, and her brother, Chuck. and his wife, Diane, spent 18 months in Darlington County digitizing family records. She said the oldest they came across was 1794. They recorded wills, judgment rolls and other items. She said they stayed on the family farm in Hartsville while working on the project. She has a vested interest in the museum. The museum has a copy of their work.

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Four relics remind me of how things used to be: fire towers, windmills, chimneys, and silos. Ive written about fire towers, windmills, and chimneys but never silos. I described where a rock chimney stands, its quartz glistening in sunlight like a polished headstone. And I wrote about an old windmill covered in kudzu. Green it was and green were the people who used windmills. And I remember a day when blinding bursts of sunlight filtered through a forest only to open up on an iconic fire tower where life was lonely at the top.

But Ive never written about silos, which seem lonely to me. Thus I devoted two days to searching for silos, and I found several. My quest took me into western South Carolina and eastern Georgia, the land I call Georgialina. Its a land where old farms, collapsing barns, dead churches, and lonely chimneys mourn the passing of the past. And so do I.

I set out, a seeker of the past, camera in hand. I knew where several silos stood, those stalwart sentinels of yesteryear. Theres the farm come late summer with twin silos, Black Angus, and gold-burnished bales of hay. Its as pretty as a picture, as pretty as an old vintage postcard. I felt a twinge of remorse, however, when I saw a forlorn silo long empty of ensilage, that five-dollar word for silage. Silos allowed silage to ferment to a point where acidification, a ten-dollar word, preserved it.

Why silos in the first place? Lets go back to a headline in the November 12, 1916, Atlanta Journal and Constitution: Modern Silo Solves Problems of Dairies and Stock Farms. Innovation had arrived to solve a problem. The problem down South was and is winter. As grass goes dormant, it renders grazing most difficult. Farmers could store corn stalks, alfalfa, and grasses in silos for later use. Silos helped keep the oxygen level low, assuring the silage was edible. Thanks to silage, cattle rocked on for a long time, but nothing remains the same. Long white bags were coming.

Eighty-six years later, the Atlanta Journal and Constitution described how Alpharetta purchased three silos to save a part of its past. Other silos nearby had been torn down to make way for a shopping mall. The silos had once been a vital part of a 1,000-acre farm of the 1940s and 50s. Where cattle once grazed, where silage fermented, kids aimlessly walk tile floors seeking amusement. They grab a Coke and chicken sandwich and play video games and buy practical jokes, like a fake roach on a string. Progress. Here, we see why some silos became relics.

Fodder. Thats what silos held, and silo would enter the business lexicon. A good while back I wrote about such fodder. Business types toss silo around as a way of describing organizations unlikely to share important information. Weve got to break down silos. Such pointy-head assignments brought Dylans lyrics to mind. Yes, I wish that for just one time you could stand inside my shoes. Youd know what a drag it is to see you. But lets move on.

The sun was setting along Highway 81. There stood a silo with dying light shooting through its broken sides. The silo seemed to hold embers. The sun was literally setting on the silo. Earlier I had driven by a cluster of silos with buzzards atop them as if the silos time to pass had arrived. And there was a silo that appeared to have a tree growing out of it. I wasnt able to get close enough to verify things, but I knew one thing for sure. It no longer held silage.

Pay attention to the silos you see. Theyre tangible reminders of the past. Monuments to a way of life thats dying. Once they were hailed as saviors. Now, theyre doing their best to be survivors.

Visit Tom Polands website at tompoland.net. Email Tom about most anything at tompol@earthlink.net.
Seguin, TX (78155)

Today

Scattered thunderstorms in the morning becoming more widespread in the afternoon. High around 85F. Winds S at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 70%..

Tonight

Partly cloudy. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low 67F. Winds E at 5 to 10 mph.
By Steve Scherer and Ludwig Burger

OTTAWA/FRANKFURT (Reuters) -BASF SE secured land for a planned battery materials facility in Canada, and the country's industry minister said on Friday it would be the "first pillar" of the country's drive to ensure the future of the electric vehicle manufacturing sector.

The German company said the facility in Becancour, Quebec, will produce and recycle cathode active materials (CAM), starting in 2025, to serve electromobility markets in Canada, the United States and Mexico, according to a statement. It did not disclose financial terms. Cathodes are the most complex and costly chemical component of an electric vehicle battery.

Reuters first reported in May of last year that Canada's government was in early talks with BASF about it tapping a federal clean tech fund to set up production here.

Canada's Industry Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne, in a telephone interview, confirmed the government planned on supporting BASF's "substantial" investment, without providing details.

"I see BASF as being the first pillar of the battery ecosystem in Canada," Champagne said. "It's certainly a substantial investment, both for the company and for us... as the federal government."

BASF last September predicted its battery materials revenue would reach more than 1.5 billion euros ($1.64 billion) by 2023 and more than 7 billion euros by 2030 as electric vehicle production surges.

BASF, in partnership with Japan's Toda Kogyo Corp, already produces CAM at two locations in North America - Ohio and Michigan - including nickel cobalt aluminum oxide and nickel cobalt manganese oxide.

Rich in key materials for EV battery production - including lithium, graphite, cobalt and nickel - Canada has been wooing battery makers to safeguard the future of its car manufacturing industry as the world seeks to cut emissions.

Champagne said BASF's investment in Canada's electric vehicle battery ecosystem is the first "in a series," adding that the aim was to make Becancour a hub, linking Quebec to the heartland of Canada's automotive industry in Ontario.

Story continues

Ontario is geographically close to U.S. automakers in Michigan and Ohio, and General Motors Co, Ford Motor Co and Stellantis NV have all announced plans to make electric vehicles at factories in Ontario.

"Both Quebec and Ontario... will be joined when it comes to the automotive sector of the future," he said. "We're building around Becancour kind of the full ecosystem of the critical minerals you need to produce a battery... that's why you'll see more to come," Champagne said.

($1 = 0.9164 euro)

(Reporting by Steve Scherer in Ottawa and Ludwig Burger in FrankfurtEditing by Matthew Lewis, Paul Simao and David Gregorio)
Surveillance camera footage shows a flare landing at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant during shelling in Enerhodar, Zaporizhia blast (Zaporizhzhya NPP via REUTERS)

China urged all sides to exercise restraint to ensure the safety of the Zaporizhzhia power plant in Ukraine, after Russian military forces launched an overnight attack to seize Europes biggest nuclear facility.

A Chinese foreign ministry spokesman said on Friday that Beijing is very concerned about the ongoing situation.

We will monitor the situation and call on all sides to exercise restraint, avoid escalation and ensure the safety of relevant nuclear facilities, foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin told a daily briefing.

China, a close ally of Russia, which has so far stopped short of condemning Moscow for the unprovoked attack on Ukraine, released a statement after a fire broke out at the nuclear power plant after shelling by Russian forces.

The fire at an adjacent five-story training facility sparked worldwide fears of a potential nuclear disaster in entire Europe.

Ukraines Emergency Services said they managed to extinguish the fire with broke out at a building outside the plants premises. The Ukrainian authorities claimed the plant has been seized by Russian troops.

The Ukrainian president on Friday sounded an ominous warning by referring to it as a repeat of 1986 Chernobyl disaster and accused Moscow of resorting to nuclear terror.

If there is an explosion, it is the end of everything. The end of Europe, he said.

The attack on the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant was condemned by world leaders who called out Russian president Vladimir Putin as horrific and reckless attack endangering the safety of the whole of Europe.

Surveillance footage that captured the incident showed a blast lighting up the night sky before sending plumes of smoke out the plant.

In a statement on Facebook, Ukraines emergency services confirmed that at 06:20 [04:20 GMT] the fire in the training building of Zaporizhzhia NPP in Energodar was extinguished. There are no victims.

The UNs nuclear watchdog, International Atomic Energy Agency said that it was putting its incident and emergency centre in full 24/7 response mode due to serious situation at the nuclear power plant.

Story continues

Chinas Xi Jinping-led government has tried to distance itself from Russias aggression in Ukraine while avoiding criticising Moscow. It also denounced trade and financial sanctions on Russia and did not announce any humanitarian aid to war-torn Ukraine.

A China-led development bank, Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), on Thursday suspended business ties with Russia and Belarus, in a sign of Beijings limits of its support to the country.

Under these circumstances, and in the best interests of the Bank, Management has decided that all activities relating to Russia and Belarus are on hold and under review, the Beijing-based bank said in a statement on Thursday.

The multilateral development bank did not give the reason for the suspension in business with two countries, but said its thoughts and sympathy to everyone affected.
KYIV, Ukraine  Russian forces shelled Europe's largest nuclear plant early Friday, sparking a fire as they pressed their attack on a crucial energy-producing Ukrainian city and gained ground in their bid to cut off the country from the sea.

The world's leading nuclear authorities saw no immediate cause for alarm about damage to the facility, but the assault triggered a phone call between U.S. President Joe Biden and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and the U.S. Department of Energy activated its nuclear incident response team as a precaution.

The attack on the eastern city of Enerhodar and its Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant unfolded as the invasion entered its second week and another round of talks between the two sides yielded a tentative agreement to set up safe corridors to evacuate citizens and deliver humanitarian aid.

Nuclear plant spokesman Andriy Tuz told Ukrainian television that shells were falling directly on the facility and set fire to one of its six reactors. That reactor is under renovation and not operating, but there is nuclear fuel inside, he said.

Firefighters couldn't get near the flames because they were being shot at, he said, and Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba tweeted a plea to the Russians to stop the assault and allow fire teams inside.

"We demand that they stop the heavy weapons fire," Tuz said in a video statement. "There is a real threat of nuclear danger in the biggest atomic energy station in Europe."

The assault renewed fears that the invasion could result in damage to one of Ukraine's 15 nuclear reactors and trigger another emergency like the 1986 Chernobyl accident, the world's worst nuclear disaster, which happened about 65 miles north of the capital.

U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm tweeted that the Zaporizhzhia plant's reactors were protected by robust containment structures and were being safely shut down.

In an emotional speech in the middle of the night, Zelenskyy said he feared an explosion that would be "the end for everyone. The end for Europe. The evacuation of Europe."

But most experts saw nothing to indicate an impending disaster.

The International Atomic Energy Agency said the fire had not affected essential equipment and that Ukraine's nuclear regulator reported no change radiation levels. The American Nuclear Society concurred, saying that the latest radiation levels remained within natural background levels.

"The real threat to Ukrainian lives continues to be the violent invasion and bombing of their country," the group said in a statement.

The plant's reactor is a different type than the one used at Chernobyl, and there should be little risk if the containment vessel is not damaged and outside power can be restored, said Jon B. Wolfsthal, a former senior director for arms control and nonproliferation at the National Security Council and former special adviser to then-Vice President Joe Biden.

"Everyone needs to take a step back and not jump to conclusions," Wolfsthal, now a senior adviser at Global Zero, said on Twitter.

The mayor of Enerhodar said earlier that Ukrainian forces battled Russian troops on the city's outskirts. Video showed flames and black smoke rising above the city of more than 50,000, with people streaming past wrecked cars, just a day after the U.N. atomic watchdog agency expressed grave concern that the fighting could cause accidental damage to Ukraine's 15 nuclear reactors.

The Ukrainian state atomic energy company reported that a Russian military column was heading toward the nuclear plant.

Later, a live streamed security camera linked from the homepage of the Zaporizhzhia plant showed what appeared to be armored vehicles rolling into the facility's parking lot and shining spotlights on the building where the camera was mounted.

There were then what appeared to be bright muzzle flashes from vehicles, followed by nearly simultaneous explosions in the surrounding buildings. Smoke then rose into the frame and drifted away.

While a huge Russian armored column threatening Kyiv appeared bogged down outside the capital, Vladimir Putin's forces brought their superior firepower to bear over the past few days, launching hundreds of missiles and artillery attacks on cities and other sites around the country and making significant gains in the south.

Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal called on the West to close the skies over the country's nuclear plants as fighting intensified. The U.S. and NATO allies have ruled out creating a no-fly zone since the move would pit Russian and Western military forces against each other.

The Russians announced the capture of the southern city of Kherson, a vital Black Sea port of 280,000, and local Ukrainian officials confirmed the takeover of the government headquarters there, making it the first major city to fall since the invasion began a week ago.

Heavy fighting continued on the outskirts of another strategic port, Mariupol, on the Azov Sea. The battles have knocked out the city's electricity, heat and water systems, as well as most phone service, officials said. Food deliveries to the city were also cut.

Severing Ukraine's access to the Black and Azov seas would deal a crippling blow to its economy and allow Russia to build a land corridor to Crimea, seized by Moscow in 2014.

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You are here: China

The one-China principle is the political foundation for China to develop bilateral relations with all countries, a Chinese spokesperson told a press conference Friday.

Zhang Yesui, spokesperson for the fifth session of the 13th National People's Congress, made the remarks in response to a question about relations between China and Lithuania.
An image comes to me, uncalled, unwanted. Flooding back across space and a great deal of time. A man talking to my boss at the newspaper. A dad, hes standing in the newsroom holding his baby. Not an infant. Shes large enough to sit up in a stroller, but not old enough to walk. A pretty baby. Fresh and clean with her whole life ahead of her. Babies smell different than the rest of us. They wear the smell of hope on them.

Theyre honest and completely open. If theyre hungry or need anything, they let you know. If theyre happy, every inch of them is happy. From the inside out. From the tops of their heads to the tips of their toes. They make happy an enviable state. They make happy, well, happy.

Thats what I remember about this beautiful, smelling-like-hope, happy baby.

Two days later I get a work call on Sunday morning. Unusual. My boss picks me up. Drives us out of town to a building where theres been a fire. He wants pictures of the building. While hes off somewhere, I see a stroller out in the front yard. A little stuffed animal sits inside, patiently waiting for its occupant. But shes never coming back. She died in the fire.

On the way home my boss says, Remember that baby in the newsroom a couple of days ago? I nod my head, Yes. He says, She lived here. She didnt make it out alive.

My mind couldnt grasp the reality that this beautiful baby who smelled like hope was gone. The one whose dad was busy talking two days earlier, all the while holding his little girl close to him. Im sure that he planned to hold her close to him all the days of his life on this earth.

I saw the image of the stroller with the stuffed animal for a long time. Its come to represent the things that are left behind and dont even realize theyve been left. Theyre part of a life that no longer lives on this earth.

I believe that when this beautiful, innocent little girl left this earthly life, she joined Jesus in heaven. Shes with Him right now. Still. Always.

Why does this memory emerge at this particular time? Watching news reports on the invasion of Ukraine, I see the human toll of these actions. Families with bombed-out homes. Parents scrambling to protect their children and get them to safety. Seeing the desperation, the tears, the fears, and so many other emotions I cant comprehend. Only those who are in the mist of this invasion truly know what its like.

Something comes back to me about the baby in the fire. They suspected arson. Not from anyone in the family, but someone else. Maybe a stranger. The exact details are long gone from my memory. I have that luxury. Im sure the family does not.

I saw other images this past week. Ukrainian Christians kneeling in the snow, asking for the Lords help and protection. Ukrainian President Zelensky out in the streets fighting for freedom with his fellow Ukrainians. Theyre not retreating. Theyre fighting for the right to raise their beloved children in the country they love in the way they see right.

Strolling through my life, I see other images. Wars. Rumors of wars. Many people over the years sharing their war stories with me. Those fought on battlefields in foreign lands and those fought in the battlefields of daily living. I hold in my mind and in my heart so many stories that Im surprised theres room for any new ones.

At times, I smell the faint scent of hope, reminding me of that beautiful baby girl so long ago. That scent does not come from money. Its source isnt from a government leader. It doesnt emanate from someone whos highly educated with a prestigious job. Or someone who does everything thats good and right day after day.

No, the smell of hope lingers on those who have completely surrendered their lives to Jesus Christ, the author of hope.

Its not enough to know Jesus exists. Satan and his demons know without any doubt that God is real. But they choose not to follow Him or surrender their will to His. Its not enough to be a good person. Many good people havent chosen to make Jesus the Lord of their lives. Many good people wont go to heaven unless they repent and follow Jesus before they die.

Evil exists in this world. We can look at history, at the present headlines, and, of course, read the Bible to know that. Some people encounter evil every day of their lives. They are helpless, hopeless. They have no ammunition to fight evil. Like President Zelensky said, We need ammunition, not a ride.

Jesus is our ammunition. Hes already overcome evil. He not only smells like hope, Hes our one and only hope. For true, eternal freedom, we need to trust in Him.

As we share Jesus with others, we, too, smell like hope.

 Now he uses us to spread the knowledge of Christ everywhere, like the sweet perfume. Our lives are a Christ-like fragrance rising up to God (2 Corinthians 2:14b-15a).

As we humbly and earnestly pray for the people of Ukraine, may we have the smell of Jesus on us and the Holy Spirit within us.

Kathy Yoder is a devotional writer. She may be reached at Kathyyoder4@gmail.com.

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LOS ANGELES  The gruesome killing of Christina Yuna Lee in New York City in February rattled many women who could imagine themselves in the same situation. Lee was followed home after a night out with friends and stabbed to death in her Chinatown apartment. Asian American women have been on especially high alert with reports of anti-Asian harassment rising in the last two years.

It was a wake-up call, said Riffat Rahman, the program coordinator of the South Asian Networks gender-based violence prevention unit based in Artesia.

Rahman does safety planning with survivors of domestic violence and helps them come out of an unsafe environment. But in the last week, she found herself thinking about how she should advise her clients, family and friends to prepare for situations that are random and unexpected.

Those who work with sexual assault and domestic violence survivors  like Rahman and Jong-Ling Wu, the community services program manager for the Los Angeles-based Center for the Pacific Asian Family  are quick to remind people that the majority of these violent incidents come from someone you know. In most cases, the attacker is not a stranger jumping out of the bushes.

But some of the conversations around stranger danger that took hold in the 80s and 90s are coming back, Wu said, with the rise of hate incidents across the nation. A recent study from the Center for Hate and Extremism at Cal State San Bernardino reported that Los Angeles recorded the most hate crimes among large U.S. cities in 2021  a 71% jump in the incidents and the third-highest annual total in any U.S. city since the 1970s.

How do you prepare for the worst, without being constantly terrified?

Its like learning how to drive, said Wu. If you fixate on the pot holes, youll hit the pot holes. Its more helpful to steer toward the smooth road. Look for where you want to go, so youre not stuck scared, because thats an awful place to be.

The Times asked Wu; Rahman; Katherine Yeom, the executive director of Korean American Family Services, based in LA's Koreatown; Jenae Williams, director of victim and survivor services at the National Center for Victims of Crime; Manjusha Kulkarni, executive director of the Asian Pacific Policy & Planning Council and co-founder of Stop AAPI Hate; and LAPD Officer Drake Madison to share ways people can be more prepared to handle an emergency.

What to do if you think you're being followed

The simple answer is to get out of that situation as fast as you can, whether that means taking a different route or putting a barrier between you and a potential attacker  or running.

The key is not to be alone, said Yeom. Call someone who can keep track of where you are. Enter a nearby store or business. Go knock on a neighbors door instead of going home.

Madison, a Los Angeles Police Department spokesman, recommends going to a populated, well-lit area or a police station.

If confronted by armed suspects, give them what they want and dont resist, he said.

Williams said VictimConnect Resource Centers anonymous hotline specialists will sometimes suggest reaching out to police, but they recognize that is not a safe option for everyone.

People in small communities who may have a distrust in law enforcement might not feel comfortable reaching out, she said. So other things we talk about (include) leaning on an existing social network.

Be mentally prepared

Wu said often people find themselves in a vicious cycle, where something scares them and theyre not sure if they should be scared, then they feel guilty or paranoid for being scared. None of that is helpful, she said.

She thinks this is especially common among children of immigrants whose parents come to the U.S. for a better life. If someones parents came here fleeing war, she said, it can feel as though youre overreacting to be scared of something you see on the news.

It can skew our view of what is serious, she said.

Kulkarni, who has been collecting data on anti-Asian American discrimination through Stop AAPI Hate, said its a constant balance not to instill fear but also to acknowledge that even if not all of these incidents are officially characterized as hate crimes, this continues to be a worrisome issue for the community.

She said that the vast majority of hate incidents and harassment do not rise to the level of a crime, but can still leave people feeling fearful that itll escalate to a more violent situation.

Even if people are able to escape worst-case scenarios, its still traumatizing, Wu said.

Honor that emotion, she said. Take time to process it, feel the feelings, then think about what you can do.

Build your support network

A basic hello can go a long way, said Yeom, whether youre creating a relationship with your neighbor or talking to the person who runs the business under your apartment. Because it takes time after calling 911 for law enforcement to arrive, if someone is following you home, you might need more immediate help.

Familiarize yourself with your phones emergency options

Some may not realize their phones can quickly call for help in an emergency. This is especially helpful when you need assistance but its unsafe to dial a number or speak out loud.

For Apple users with an iPhone 8 or newer, you can press and hold the side button and one of the volume buttons until the emergency SOS slider appears. Drag the slider to call the local emergency number. If you continue to hold the side and volume buttons, a countdown begins and an alert sounds. Check Apples website for older phones features.

After the call ends, your iPhone sends your emergency contacts a text message with your current location, unless you choose to cancel. Itll also make sure your location services are on and alert your contacts if your location changes.

You can add emergency contacts by opening the Health app, tapping medical ID, then edit. Scroll to emergency contacts.

For Android users, press the power button five or more times quickly to call emergency services.

The emergency SOS can be set up by opening the phones Settings app and going to Safety & Emergency. Options may vary depending on the model, but you can add emergency contacts and medical information that emergency responders can access even if your phone is locked. You can also opt to set up your phone to send SOS messages, auto call people, attach photos taken with both the front and rear cameras, and attach a five-second audio recording.

Know how to share your location in an emergency

Anyone with Google Maps on their phone can share their location with friends by setting up location sharing from the apps menu.

iPhone users can share their location with other iPhone users for a certain amount of time  an hour, a day, indefinitely  by going to their contact card and selecting Send My Current Location or Share My Location.

Or you can always screenshot a map of your location and text it to someone.

Look into safety apps

Many apps can help with safety planning. Noonlight, which has partnered with Tinder, is an example of a free app that allows you to discreetly press an on-screen button and trigger emergency services if you feel unsafe.

Other apps will allow you to hold a button while youre walking to your destination and call 911 or a trusted contact if you let go, said Williams. Other apps might text someone on your behalf if you dont input your arrival to a safe place.

Wired has a guide to various personal safety devices, apps and alarms.

But beyond technology, its good practice to have someone who generally knows where you are going and when you are expected to be back  someone checking up on you if something goes awry.

Understand how your brain reacts to trauma

Some fear and anxiety come from the assumption that theres a right way to act when something traumatic happens to you  and a worry that youll do something wrong if youre in an unsafe situation. This leads to victim blaming, Wu said.

But we all respond differently to trauma, and those responses are hard to predict. Most people have heard of the fight or flight response, for example. But Wu pointed to three other Fs that are less discussed. Some people freeze: They cannot move or speak. Others fawn (sometimes referred to as friend): This is when people try to appease an assailant. It can look confusing because they are being nice, but the idea is to minimize the danger, Wu said. And the last F is flop, which refers to when people become entirely physically or mentally unresponsive; for example, if someone is so paralyzed by fear that they faint.

If you know that you freeze, then perhaps its a good idea to get a personal alarm, because its easier to pull it than to scream, she said. And if you feel yourself freezing, you can think, I know what this is. Acknowledging it can help you break out of the fear.

These are all normal and natural responses to safety, she said. And to know that we did the best that we could at the given moment, and if were here to talk about it, it worked. It got us to this point.

What can you do to prepare yourself physically?

Everyone has their own protective bubble, and if someone crosses it, you naturally feel tense. The closer someone is to you, the less time you have to respond or get out of the way.

Wu said you can think about a general attack range as an arms reach, plus one step. Thats the distance that would make it hard to quickly defend yourself from a quick punch, grab or other violent act.

But you have to consider relative distance, she said. For example, if someone is holding a weapon or if they have something they can throw at you, the attack range is larger. Again, in an emergency, its helpful to not only create distance between you and your attacker, but also to use your environment to create barriers  for example, by running behind a counter.

Take a self-defense class

Sign up for a class. Even if you intellectually understand how to break free from an arm grab versus a neck grab, its not the same as practicing the physical maneuvers, Wu said.

If youre going to use pepper spray or an alarm, practice

Wu emphasized that if youre going to carry an accessory, such as pepper spray or a safety alarm, its imperative that youre comfortable using it.

Dont panic, have it taken away and used against you, she said.

If you carry it in your purse, make sure you can pull it out quickly, so youre not fumbling around for it.

Its also helpful to know that there are different types of pepper sprays. Foggers go everywhere and therefore would not be helpful in windy or indoor situations. Directional sprays can be aimed at an attackers eyes  youre less likely pepper-spray everyone, but it requires skill and practice, she said.

Check your local laws too. In California, it is legal to buy, carry and use pepper spray, but the container cannot exceed 2.5 ounces.

Assess your own situation

Typically on the hotline, we spend time talking with survivors about safety planning that matches their needs, Williams said. The things we suggest are never concrete, and survivors can choose their level of comfort with each.

It really comes down to being aware of what and who is around you, the LAPDs Madison said.

This includes not having your head buried in your cellphone and being aware of people or vehicles that might be following you, he said.

Rahman also recommends being generally aware of where the emergency exits are wherever you are, how to get your neighborhood alerts, where youd go if you couldnt go home, and what red flags to look out for if something doesnt seem right.

Even if 99% of time, you dont utilize it, if you use it 1% of the time, it makes a difference, she said.

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OMAHA -- Men from Sioux City and South Sioux City involved in drug trafficking were sentenced Friday to lengthy federal prison sentences.

Pablo Leyva, 28, of South Sioux City, was sentenced in U.S. District Court in Omaha to 20 years in prison on charges of conspiring to distribute methamphetamine and fentanyl and carrying a firearm during a drug trafficking crime.

Chrystian Townsley, 34, of Sioux City, was sentenced to 15 years in prison on the same charges.

According to the U.S. Attorney's Office, Leyva, Townsley and an unnamed woman had passed through Nebraska in a truck and were stopped on March 8, 2020, in Arizona while on their way to Mexico in possession of a rifle to facilitate drug trafficking. Officers in Arizona took possession of the rifle, but allowed them to continue to Mexico.

Once in Mexico, the three left the truck there and re-entered the United States on foot and were picked up in Arizona by a woman from Nebraska. On their way back to Nebraska, they were stopped on March 14, 2020, in Liberal, Kansas. Officers found five packages containing 4 pounds of meth and 65 fentanyl pills in the vehicle.

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SIOUX CITY -- A Sioux City man who had sex with a 14-year-old girl has been sentenced to probation.

Jesse Castro-Navarrette, 23, pleaded guilty Thursday in Woodbury County District Court to one count of third-degree sexual abuse.

Following terms of a plea agreement, District Judge Roger Sailer suspended a 10-year prison sentence and placed Castro-Navarrette on probation for three years.

In addition to registering with the Iowa Sex Offender Registry, Castro-Navarrette will serve a lifetime special sex offender sentence. If he were to violate terms of the special sentence, he could be sent to prison.

Castro-Navarrette picked up the girl, whom he had met a few days earlier on social media, on Dec. 14, 2020, and took her to his home, where they had sex.

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WASHINGTON, D.C. -- A Sioux City man on Friday pleaded not guilty of entering the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection.

Kenneth Rader, 53, entered his plea in U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia to charges of entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds, disorderly and disruptive conduct in a restricted building or grounds, disorderly conduct in a capitol building and parading, demonstrating or picketing in a capitol building.

No trial date was set. Rader's next court date is a May 10 status conference.

Rader is charged with entering the Capitol during the insurrection, in which hundreds of supporters of former president Donald Trump were protesting the results of the November 2020 election in which Joe Biden had defeated Trump. The mob gathered outside the Capitol before hundreds of protesters broke into the building in an effort to prevent Congress from certifying the electoral college results declaring Biden the winner.

According to court documents, security footage shows Rader entering the Capitol through a door that had already been broken by protesters. Once inside, Rader stood near a broken window, spoke with several unidentified men and then exited, spending about three minutes inside the Capitol.

Two days later, a family member tipped the FBI to Rader's alleged participation in the event, telling agents that Rader had shared videos of himself on the Capitol grounds and inside the building.

A complaint filed Jan. 11 said the FBI confirmed Rader's presence in Washington through cellphone records and video footage of him inside the Capitol.

According to court documents, Rader told FBI agents during a September interview that he had attended the Jan. 6 rally but never entered the Capitol.

The FBI arrested Rader Jan. 20 in Sioux City. He was released from custody later that day.

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SIOUX CITY -- The Emerald ash borer has been discovered in Ida and Sioux counties for the first time, according to a statement from the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship.

The statement, which was released Thursday, said that EAB larvae were removed from ash trees in Galva and Sioux Center by an Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship employee. Officials with the USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service confirmed the identification of the larvae.

The invasive insect from Asia is a significant threat to all ash species. The cumulative damage from larva feeding on the inner bark eventually kills ash trees within two to four years. Indicators of an infestation include canopy thinning, leafy sprouts shooting from the trunk or main branches, serpentine galleries under the bark, bark splitting, woodpecker damage, and 1/8-inch D-shaped exit holes.

The EAB has now been confirmed in all but 13 of Iowa's 99 counties since its original detection in 2010. Although the EAB has not yet been detected in Woodbury County, it's only a matter of time before it arrives in Sioux City, where ash trees make up an estimated 28 percent of the trees planted in parks and along streets.

The City of Sioux City has an EAB management plan that consists of allowing ash trees in unmaintained areas to be left as host trees to slow the spread of the EAB, injecting a larvae-killing chemical into ash trees the city wishes to save, and cutting down other ash trees and replacing them with another tree species.

According to the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship, now is the time to adopt a course of action for ash trees within 15 miles of a known infestation. Landowners and managers can choose to wait and see what happens, remove declining ash trees and replace them with other species, or use preventive insecticide treatments to preserve and protect valuable and healthy ash trees.

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SIOUX CITY -- Continued dry conditions to the north and west of Sioux City have caused officials to lower the forecast for runoff into the Missouri River.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers on Thursday said runoff into the river's basin above Sioux City, already predicted to be below normal for 2022, is now expected to be lower than initially forecast. After February saw lower-than-average runoff, the corps lowered the runoff forecast for this year from 21.7 million acre-feet to 20.4 MAF. , 79% of the normal 25.8 MAF.

"The runoff in February was less than predicted, and we expect the lower-than-average runoff to continue in the coming months," John Remus, chief of the corps Missouri River Basin Water Management Division, said in a news release. "The snow accumulation in both the plains and the mountains continues to be below average, and the soil moisture remains very low compared to normal."

February runoff was 0.9 million acre-feet, 78% of average, mainly due to the lack of snow accumulation and dry soil conditions, the corps said.

The 2022 forecast would be an improvement from the 15.2 MAF of runoff in 2021, the 10th lowest total in 123 years of record keeping.

Mountain snowpack that melts and feeds the Missouri River and its tributaries in the late spring and early summer is currently 80% to 82% of average. About 80% of the snowpack typically accumulates by this time.

Storage in the river's six reservoirs currently totals 48.1 MAF, 8 MAF below the system's flood control storage zone, which begins at 56.1 MAF and extends to 67.7 MAF, leaving extra room to store runoff from snowmelt and spring rains.

Releases from Gavins Point Dam near Yankton, South Dakota, continue at the winter release rate of 12,000 cubic feet per second and will be adjusted beginning in mid March to provide water flow support for navigation downstream.

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Here are some trending topics for March 3:

'The Dropout'

Elizabeth Holmes has been a source of fascination for many since glimpsing the husky-voiced, wide-eyed persona she affected in Alex Gibney's documentary "The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley." Amanda Seyfried nails all of that in "The Dropout," a slick Hulu docuseries devoted to Holmes' rise and Shakespearean fall, as well as the gender dynamics at play throughout.

Read more here:

Michael Madigan

Michael J. Madigan, the former speaker of the Illinois House of Representatives, was indicted by a grand jury Wednesday on 22 federal charges related to racketeering, bribery and attempted extortion, prosecutors said.

The indictment accuses Madigan, 79, of using his political power to obtain bribes and steer business toward his private Chicago law firm, Madigan & Getzendanner, according to the Department of Justice.

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Supreme Court and Kentucky abortion law

The Supreme Court on Thursday cleared the way for Kentucky's Republican attorney general to step in to defend a controversial abortion law, after the Democratic governor declined to continue doing so.

The law restricts a standard second-trimester abortion method known as "dilation and evacuation" that is used after 15 weeks of pregnancy. It was signed into law in 2018 but has so far been blocked by the courts.

The Supreme Court's ruling doesn't address the constitutionality of the law.

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Live updates from Ukraine

Russian troops are shelling Europe's largest nuclear power station in Ukraine.

We demand that they stop the heavy weapons fire, Andriy Tuz, spokesperson for the plant in Enerhodar, said in a video posted on Telegram. There is a real threat of nuclear danger in the biggest atomic energy station in Europe.

The plant accounts for about one quarter of Ukraines power generation.

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The Ukrainian American poet Ilya Kaminskys book Deaf Republic tells the story of a city under siege from an occupying force, and the steps the citizens to fight back. It also portrays the experience of watching conflict from a safe distancesomething many Americans have experienced this week as images of the Russian invasion of Ukraine flood our social feeds and televisions. I emailed with Kaminsky this week about what he hopes readers take from his work, how the Ukrainian sense of humor has influences images of resistance, and the newly heroic Volodymyr Zelensky.

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Slate: Earlier this week your poem We Lived Happily During the War went semi-viral online. What was it like to suddenly have a whole new audience encounter this work, divorced from its context as the opening poem in your book Deaf Republic?

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Ilya Kaminsky: Deaf Republic opens when a deaf boy is shot by a soldier from an invading army in a public square. The whole community decides to protest this murder by refusing to hear the authorities. The townspeople coordinate with each other by sign language. In the midst of this violence, people still fall in love, laugh, make children.

I grew up watching the collapse of USSR and the war in TransnistriaRussias first so-called humanitarian aid campaign, which was very similar to the current war in Ukraine, though less well publicized. Then I came to USA, where for 12 years I have lived only 8 miles from US/Mexico border. It was not unusual to have your car stopped and searched for people trying to cross the border, or to see people being taken away in ICE vans. And of course the police brutality against Black and brown people has been such a hugely visible and important issue, finally, in the past few years.

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So, as the author, a living human, I couldnt help but notice certain similarities between images of violence caused by this empireviolence taking place here in this countryand images of violence in Eastern Europe. And at the same time, there is happiness. People fall in love, laugh, make children.

Beginning with the poem We Lived Happily During the War, which is heavy with irony about the greatness of our capitalist nation, shows a different kind of so-called happiness, the happiness of living with our backs turnedignorant bliss. The poem is meant to serve as a wake-up call; to prevent people from reading Deaf Republic as a tragedy of elsewhere. Deaf Republics, with their hopes, protests, and complicities, are everywhere. We live in the Deaf Republic.

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I think of this poem by Ilya Kaminsky a lot. I think of all of the people who are hiding in bomb shelters right now and do not have the luxury of living happily. pic.twitter.com/e3GV5SihZu  Eva (@evacide) February 26, 2022

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As for the poemWe Lived Happily During the War is not a piece of journalism or philosophy, where one might go into facts or questions of ethics. In a poem, one hopes to create an experience in the reader: in this case, the hope of the poem is to help the reader see their own complicity.

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The poem doesnt want to be a pronouncement. The poem is a warning. This is what happens when half-measures take place. We lived happily during the war, the poem begins, and it ends with the same words. But by the time it gets to its final line, one hopes the reader might find the horrific irony in that fact of repetition. How many wars can we live through, happily?

One hopes the reader sees the critique of this we and what it has done. By the time you get to the repetition of our country of money and then to our great country of moneyone questions the word great. That is what art hopes to do: It doesnt shout at the reader You must change! Instead, the reader is changed via the act of reading.

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Deaf Republic imagines a towns sharp resistance to an occupying force. Were now seeing citizens of Ukraine engaging in active resistance to the Russian invasion. What do you see in the response from non-Ukrainian observers to this resistance? What can we learn from the sunflower seeds lady, for instance, and how do you feel about peoples lionization of her?

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I was 16 when I left Odessa, a deaf kid who heard the USSR fall apart with my eyes. Odessa architecture is scaled down, human sized, and there was an opera house before there was potable water. Odessa loves art, and it loves to party. In the summer, huge cages of watermelons sit on every corner. You break them on the sidewalk and eat them with friends. The city has an especial affinity for literature. There are more monuments to writers than in any other city I have ever visited. When they ran out of writers, they began putting up monuments for fictional characters.

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The most important holiday in Odessa isnt Christmas, it is April 1, April Fools Day, which we call Humorina. Thousands of people come to the street and celebrate what they call the day of kind humor. All of Ukraine has a sense of humorthink of the man who offered to tow the Russian tank which had run out of gas back to Russia. Humor is part of our resilience.

But alas Ukraine is not a perfect country. There is corruption and a lot of crime, especially among political figures. There are oligarchs. Although the Ukrainian president is Jewish, there is still antisemitism in daily life (which is why my family left). But what gives me hope is the new generation of Ukrainians, people who grew up after the fall of USSR. They are freeprobably more free than Americans or Europeans. They have respect for freedom because the mindset of corporations hasnt yet entered Ukraine the way it has the West. They believe in culture. There are festivals all over the place. In Odessa, for example, they had an event when people created a human chain across the city, and each person read a favorite passage from a book to a person standing next to them. I have hope in that generation.

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Youve written about the role language has played in the UkrainianRussian conflict. Its interesting to me that in every video of interaction between Russian soldiers and Ukrainian military or civilians, there is obviously no language gap; they are communicating easily. Ukrainians are even, allegedly, helping captured Russian soldiers call their parents on the phone. What do you make of the cultural and linguistic connection between the invading force and the people theyre invading?

Ukraine is a bilingual country. Ukrainians know both languages. It is the Russians who only know one language. And, yes, there is a moral in this accounting.

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The problem here is that Putin decided not to speak any language except that of violence, showing us what authoritarian regime circa 21 century is like. He has decided to have a war on the pretext of saving Russian languagewhether or not it needs to be saved. My cousin Petya in Odessa speaks Russian. Does he want Putin to come and save him? Hell, no. You go on Russian news, and what do you read? You read that Ukrainians are bombing their own houses as they retreat. Seriously. Fake news.

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But, wait a second, how is it different from our own wannabe authoritarian, Mr. Trump and all his barrage of fake news? It is not that different at all. And everyone who pays attention has noticed that. It is a tragedy that Putins propaganda was able to do what it did with the Russian population who is now attacking its neighbors and friends. But isnt it somewhat similar to what Mr. Trumps propaganda is doing to people who are calling to ban books from schools, etc.? Lets take a very long and very close look in the mirror here. Havent we got a somewhat identical problem?

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Youve been sharply critical of Ukraines leaders in the past. What is it like to see the president of the country turn into a kind of folk hero, even as his and his countrys immediate future remains troubled?

Whether Zelensky is a good president on the daily basis, whether he is a kind of bureaucrat who was able to create transparency and due processthat is not up to me to say. But I can say he is certainly someone who can inspire his people in the time of trouble. And that is quite a lot at this moment. Quite a lot.
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Russia and Ukraine agreed to organize humanitarian corridors to evacuate civilians in the second round of talks in Belarus on Thursday, Advisor to the Head of the President's Office of Ukraine Mykhailo Podoliak confirmed on Twitter.

"There is a solution only for the organization of humanitarian corridors," Podoliak tweeted.

During the talks on Thursday, the two sides discussed military issues, humanitarian issues, and a future political settlement of the conflict, said Russian presidential aide Vladimir Medinsky, also the head of the Russian delegation.

"The positions were made absolutely clear ... On some of them, we managed to reach an understanding," he said, noting that creating humanitarian corridors is "substantial progress."

Russia's TASS news agency reported earlier Thursday that the second round of talks has ended.

Podoliak told a media briefing that the third round of peace negotiations may take place soon, according to Ukrainian media.

Earlier in the day, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, when commenting on the peace negotiations, said that "any talks" make sense.
At this moment, the United States Navy is preparing to deploy a 10,000-ton warship carrying 320 officers and sailors, along with missiles, torpedoes, and a mounted artillery gun. This ship, known as a guided-missile destroyer, defends the United States and its allies on the seas. Although its next mission remains secret, it may bolster American military presence in Europe as Russian aggression pushes the continent into war. But the Navy cannot currently deploy this warship, because it has lost trust in its commanding officer, an anti-vaxxer who has repeatedly disobeyed lawful orders, misled superiors, and allegedly exposed dozens of his crew to COVID-19 due to a refusal to get tested.

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The Navy wants to remove this officer, whom Ill call John Doe, from command of the destroyer. But it cant, because a single federal judge in Tampa has forbidden it. This judge has overruled multiple admirals and captains who assert, under oath, that deploying the ship with Doe in charge would imperil national security. He instead ordered the Navy, under threat of sanction, to keep this disobedient officer in charge of a $1.8 billion warship. The federal judiciary is quite literally preventing the nation from defending itself at sea.

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That judge, Steven Douglas Merryday, is a George H.W. Bush nominee who sits on a federal trial court in Florida. He gained notoriety in 2021 after blocking a CDC order that limited cruise ship operations due to the pandemic. So, when the far-right Liberty Counsel sought to halt President Joe Bidens COVID-19 vaccine mandate for the armed forces, they took their case to Merrydays court. Predictably, they prevailed: In February, Merryday ruled that the mandate violated the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, siding with the plaintiffs, Navy Commander John Doe and Lieutenant Colonel Jane Smith. (Ive applied these pseudonyms to the officers because the court granted them anonymity.)

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But Merryday did not merely exempt Doe and Smith from the mandate. Rather, he handed down a sweeping restraining order that prohibited the Navy from taking any adverse action against the plaintiffs because of their unvaccinated status. Specifically, he barred the Navy from reassigning them for any reason whatsoever.

This order created immediate problems. An active-duty member of the Marine Corps, Smith is slated to take command of a Combat Logistics Battalion later this year. As Lieutenant General W.M. Jurney attested, this commander must disembark at ally nations all over the world. Many of these countries require all U.S. service members to be vaccinated against COVID before stepping on their shores. Because she is unvaccinated, Smith is not worldwide deployable, in Jurneys words. And yet Merryday has forced the Navy to deploy her.

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But Doe poses the bigger threat. He is currently the commanding officer of a warship that may soon set sail. If he falls seriously ill at seawhich is more likely because he refuses the vaccinehe may thwart the entire mission. The issue, however, goes deeper than that. In declarations, Vice Admiral D.W. Dwyer and Captain Frank Brandon explained that Does anti-vax beliefs are part of a broader pattern of insubordination. Brandon testified that last November, he spoke with Doe on Does ship one day before its scheduled departure. Doe was experiencing multiple symptoms of COVID, and appeared to have a relatively severe case; he could, Brandon recalled, barely speak. Yet Doe refused to get testeda clear violation of protocoland attended a briefing in a cramped room with about 60 other people. Brandon ordered Doe to get a test, which revealed that he did, indeed, have COVID, and exposed dozens of others to the virus.

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Doe engaged in other deceptive behavior. For instance, when requesting leave, he concealed the fact that he was flying to another state, which would have triggered a mandatory risk assessment. After Brandon discovered this subterfuge, he learned that Doe had traveled to a high-risk area, requiring five days quarantine upon return. Doe did not inform his Executive Officer of this extended absence, creating a significant and very rare disruption across the waterfront during a crucial phase of ship preparation. Brandon concluded that Doe intentionally deceived me, put his crew at risk, failed to comply with the Navys COVID-19 policies, and engaged in negligent behavior in performance of his duties.

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I do not trust [Doe] with the lives of our Sailors, Brandon testified. He continued:

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I am responsible for the well-being of my Squadron, including welfare of my ships and the health of my sailors. My loss of confidence in [Doe] is  based on the fact that I cannot trust his judgment, I cannot trust him to look after the welfare of his sailors, and I cannot trust him to be honest with me. In my judgment, allowing him to remain in command of a Navy warship would be reckless.

Brandons view is shared across the Navy. In Dwyers alarming declaration, the vice admiral explained that Doe would constitute a manifest national security concern if he remains a commanding officer. It is untenable that a subordinate commander may choose to disregard, modify, or half-heartedly execute a senior officers orders due to his or her personal beliefs, Dwyer testified. This insubordination degrades mission effectiveness and the ability of the strike group to perform its mission in the interest of U.S. national security.

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Merrydays order, Dwyer noted, requires the Navy to leave a subordinate commander in command of a warship, despite his senior officers questions relating to his fitness to discharge his duties as ordered. Under no circumstances would the Navy typically deploy a commander in an operational capacity with whom his or her superior officers have such reservations.

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In light of these fears, the Department of Justice pleaded with Merryday to pause his decision. On Wednesday, he declined. Merryday scorned the notion that Doe might get sick, writing that he is triumphantly fit and slim and strong. He also implied that Navy leadership may be lying about Does insubordination in retaliation against his religious beliefs. Merryday declined to fully credit their testimony until he could subject them to cross-examination. He concluded that the plaintiffs right to religious liberty trumps the Navys profound national security concerns.

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The Navy and the federal judiciary are therefore in a standoff. The Navy will not deploy Does warship until he is stripped of command. Merryday will not allow it to do so. As a result, Merryday has effectively taken a 10,000 ton, $1.8 billion guided-missile destroyer out of commission. As the Navy builds up its naval presence in Europe to guard against further Russian aggression, it is down a shipsolely because an unelected judge in Tampa has inserted himself into the chain of command.

This situation is untenable. Already, a Texas judge, abetted by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, has freed nearly three dozen SEALs from the vaccine mandate, a decision that high-ranking officers say will put the world at risk. Now Merryday is holding back a warship from deploymentand the judicial resistance to military mandate is just beginning. These cases are on a fast-track to the Supreme Court. If the justices do not confirm that judges must respect the commander-in-chiefs lawful orders, thousands of other service members like Doe will unleash chaos on the armed forces.
My cousin found out after her routine 20-week ultrasound: The fetus had a severe chromosomal abnormality with critical organs outside the envelope of their body. If born, the child would likely die within hours. If among the very few to survive the first day, they would have severe deformities, require constant care at bankrupting costs, and potentially endure lifelong discomfort or pain. As my cousin and her husband walked through a shadow of private anguish, prayer circle emails were forwarded through my family. Updates cascaded by telephone from aunts and uncles. Our family, dominated by vocally anti-abortion Reagan enthusiasts, frowned sympathies while speculating in hushed tones about how my cousin and her husband, an evangelical pastor, might resolve their moral crisis. For some time, she did not know.

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Texas Senate Bill 8, which the Supreme Court has now blessed in contravention of long-established precedent, prescribes a single path for women presented with an unwanted or ill-fated pregnancy: to carry the fetus to term and bear its risks and consequences. Because many women do not know they are pregnant before the governments six-week deadline, and getting an abortion is fraught with government-imposed obstacles, the law leaves a de jure skeleton of the constitutional right while making that right de facto impossible to access. It makes no exception for the health of the unborn.

Will he suffer more if I allow him to be born? my cousin asked. If he breathes and then gasps and gasps for breath? I was fixated on: I dont want him to suffer, I dont want him to suffer. It was up to me. After gut-wrenching introspection, my cousin chose to carry her pregnancy until her own degrading health compelled doctors to induce. She delivered the child, named him, and held him for 87 minutes until his death. It has become lore in my family that this was as beautiful and healing as it was painful. When I wrote to ask my cousin to tell her story, she wrote back immediately, I love to talk about him. <3 He would be thirteen this summer.

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If you ask anyone in my family, including my cousin herself, what made her story healing rather than soul-breaking, or how she pulled beauty from the depths of catastrophe, you will hear us say that she chose the path of her values. You will hear us say that her choice was in alignment with her deeply held convictions, sacred texts, and her understanding of her Gods will. Yet, we cannot tell her story without using the word choice. When even the most dedicated pro-life advocate tells her story, choose and decide are the action verbs that unlock the words courageous, brave, convicted, and her values.

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Without that choice, my cousins story is a forced-birth, authoritarian nightmare. Another woman may see the risk that her baby could experience pain as intolerable, or weigh differently the risk of death by childbirth or bequeathing the lifelong weight of caretaking to siblings. Another woman may view the childs quality of life as vastly more important than his time alive, or read Genesis 2:7 to say that life starts not until first breath. Any of these womenwith no less conviction than my cousinmight see the fetuss earliest-possible termination as more conscionable than the childs latest-possible death. By taking away the right to choose, Senate Bill 8 disregards a critical truth: how we value suffering, life, love, death, and when life is worth living is inextricable from our spiritual, religious, and metaphysical convictions, which cannot be legislated. The case against legislating these decisions becomes more damning when we understand that pregnancies have infinitely complex individual circumstances that legislators cannot anticipate and that pregnant women are singularly positioned to navigate.

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It matters deeply whether our laws allow a woman to arrive at the right decision for herself and her family, but the process of how that decision gets made also determines who we are in relation to our government. My cousin told me, I reached depths that were important to me by wrestling with this and I am thankful for that. Without the chance to wrestle with the question of when and whether to bring forth a child, a woman lacks the agency to answer fundamental metaphysical and moral questions about her childs life, and about herself. Without that agency, she becomes a fertility vessel, a regulated host for a ward of the state.

Complicated pregnancies bring these moral questions into high relief for nonpregnant people to understand, but the same unanswerable questions of life and death, love and suffering, risk and reward, quality and quantity of life, are in balance in every pregnancy. Every pregnancy presents fundamentally spiritual questions about the trade-off between the arc of a womans life and her offspring.

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Six weeks after fertilization, the embryo is smaller than a blueberry. It is not yet a fetus. Obstetricians can identify electrical activity in the cluster of cells that will develop to function as its hearts pacemaker, but the mitral and tricuspid valves that would flap to make a heartbeat have not yet differentiated from the surrounding tissues. Nevertheless, Texas legislators euphemized Senate Bill 8 as the Texas Heartbeat Act to underscore the myth that the embryo has a thumping organ. The mythology of a silenced heart is a form of virtue signaling. The raw political potency of its imagery should make us suspicious of what the politicians advancing these bills seek to gain.

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Can we be intellectually honest in calling a position pro-life when the solitary life-or-death question it proposes to regulate is the question that biology endows only to women? We give judges the power to order executions. We allow a single head of state virtually unrestricted power to launch missile strikes. We give ordinary people the stand your ground right to kill. In each of these scenarios, the pro-life lobby is either silent or vocally in favor of an unencumbered right to kill. Why is life inviolable only when its fate is trusted to the moral calculus of a woman?

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I think the answer is found by observing just how dogmatically politicians will push abortion laws that lead to horrific outcomes. Senate Bill 8 makes no exceptions for rape, incest, or dangerous birth defects that could result in pain, death, or debilitation of the child or mother. Its sole concession to the infinite complexity of abortions moral question is the medical emergency, meaning that even a mother carrying a pregnancy with mortal risks must delay the procedure until her life faces immediate danger. Why? Laws limiting womens reproductive rights are predicated on the assumption that women, given freedom, cannot be trusted to make important decisions. Carving out turf where moral authority is sovereign to a woman would enshrine a place where men assume an optional, advisory role.

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This past winter, after a routine 18-week ultrasound, one of my oldest friends learned that the fetus in her womb carried a rare and terminal heart condition. Like my cousin, my friend desperately wanted another child. She found herself midway through pregnancy devastated by loss of what could have been.

Those who oppose a womans right to an abortion often suggest that women who terminate pregnancies do so for convenience and are indifferent to the moral questions their pregnancies pose. But those who support a womans full and unencumbered reproductive rights fully recognize the moral questions. We believe those questions are simply best answered by an empowered woman, reflecting her own views of life and bearing her own risks and consequences, rather than the views of powerful politicians, who would force her hand through the machinations of police, bureaucracy, religion, and money, while bearing none of the consequences.

My dear friend lost her baby last month. I dont know whether she considered, let alone used, her constitutional right to choose what happened to her unborn child in the weeks after that ultrasound. For what is perhaps a transient moment in this democratic experiment, the power to choose rested only with her.
As the death toll of Russias invasion of Ukraine ticks up, so do the number of refugees. The United Nations estimates that about 1 million refugees have already exited the country, a number that could swell up to 4 million. Filippo Grandi, the U.N.s high commissioner for refugees, tweeted a thank-you to governments for keeping their borders open and welcoming refugees, an enormous undertaking as the crisis in Ukraine deepens.

But this welcome development has also troubled some who have watched Europes treatment of other refugees in recent years. Poland, for example, took a break from erecting a border wall intended to keep refugees from the Middle East out to accept Ukrainians, promising to welcome anyone fleeing the Russian invasion. Much of Europe has committed to giving the welcome to Ukrainian refugees that others before them were routinely denied. The contradiction was further highlighted by comments from newscasters in Europe and America, who drew offensive comparisons between civilized Ukrainians and presumed nonwhite, non-Christian others.

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These disparities have been roundly condemned. But for aid workers and advocates I spoke to, the open embrace of fleeing Ukrainians has trigged complicated reactionsand the real-life fallout is beginning to unfold.

All people who are fleeing a situation of conflict deserve protection, said Daniel Balson, Amnesty Internationals advocacy director for Europe and Central Asia. States are obligated to respect the rights of refugees and asylum-seekers, regardless, of course, of the identity of the individual fleeing. Still, he said, I dont think your readers or anybody else will be surprised to see that the welcome has been more robust for Ukrainians heading across the border.

Balson added that despite the clear change in rhetoric toward the Ukrainian refugees versus people fleeing from the Middle East, the policies were always going to be different. Part of this is a function of the fact that legal mechanisms are in place already, through various agreements between Ukraine and the European Union that facilitate the transit of Ukrainians across the border, that arent in place, for instance, between Afghanistan and the European Union, he said. Since 2017, Ukrainians have been able to access the Schengen Zone for 90 days without a visa, which helped facilitate their entry into neighboring countries whether or not they have made an explicit commitment to shelter Ukrainians.

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Balson also stressed how many vulnerable populations are among those fleeing, and said Europes response has been appropriate. I think its an important point that over the past several years, Ukraine has become a safe harbor of sorts for individuals whove criticized their governments. Whether thats Russian dissidents or Belarusian activists or Crimean Tatar activists who fled Crimea for safety. Thats all at risk now, he said. A lot of these people were quite public in their criticisms. They have extensive public profiles, are easily findable and identifiable. And as well as specifically vulnerable groups the Russian government has a history of targeting and abusing, such as the LGBTI community, Jehovahs Witnesses, and other such individuals.

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Niamh Keady-Tabbal, a researcher at the Irish Centre for Human Rights who focuses on border violence and has documented refugees from the Middle East being pushed out to sea from Greece, said the extraordinary response to refugees from Ukraine is also already playing out in policy.

The press release that came out of the European Commission about proposals to activate the temporary protection directive I think highlights the uniqueness of the current response, she said. The temporary protection directive in Europe offers refugees a kind of legal status to live freely and work, cutting much of the red tape that can clog the pipeline leaving refugees in limbo for months at a time. Thats something that hasnt been activated previously, despite very large numbers of individuals seeking international protection in the EU, Keady-Tabbal said.

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The political will that we see to expand and extend protection and rights to certain displaced people is taking place while pushbacks, illegal expulsions, and border violence is going on elsewhere in the EU, she said.

The key point here is not to pit different populations against each other.  Daniel Balson

Jibran Alsaeed, a Syrian humanitarian worker now in Ireland, knows well the world of difference these kinds of protections make. He told me how onerous the process was for him when he fled Syria as a refugee in 2016 after five years of war. His journey to the EU coincided with the beginning of the controversial EU-Turkey deal to allow for European countrieslike Greece, where Alsaeed arrivedto deport refugees to Turkey. Today he is watching the developments with Ukrainian refugees closely.

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Nowhere in the refugee convention does it say you have to have blue eyes or white skin or a Netflix account or drive a car to be a refugee. The refugee convention did not discriminate on any basis, whether its religion or nationality, he said. However, this isnt the European approach in practice. In practice, such segregations are taking place. And the disparity between white and nonwhite refugees is particularly visible now because of the Ukrainian current circumstances. Europes response to Ukrainian refugees shows the disparity of the inherent racism within European border policies.

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Alsaeed said hes seen videos circulating of refugees at the Polish border this past week being separated between white and nonwhite. Its somethingalthough extremely devastating and depressingits not something new to relatively any country in Europe, he said. Pushbacks of nonwhite refugees has been taking place in the very countries who are now welcoming people, such as Poland.

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He noted that Poland is even welcoming Ukrainians to bring their cats and dogs. Not too long ago, Iraqi and Syrian refugees in Poland have died from freezing in the cold, being stuck between the borders of Belarus and Poland. There is probably to this day many on the ground there, he said.

For Alsaeed, the lesson of the moment is clear. You dont get to pick and choose which war is more urgent, or which flagrant violations of international law are more important. A violation is a violation, he said. Both need equal attention at this point. Bombs dont pick and choose which people die or are affected. Neither should our policies select which people we let in and which people we let out.

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Balson, of Amnesty International, said he also sees a more complicated phenomenon playing out in the embrace of fleeing Ukrainians. Part of it is a function of the fact that people are necessarily going to be more attuned to conflict and political dynamics in proximate spaces. I imagine Pakistanis are broadly more aware of whats happening in Afghanistan. People in Thailand are more closely tracking whats happening in Myanmar. And this is all understandable, he said, stressing that all refugees deserve equal access to protection and safety.

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Its absolutely, frankly, unacceptable that large numbers of refugees from the Middle East, from Central Asia, were denied the opportunity to seek refuge. But I think the key point here is not to pit different populations against each other. Were obviously having a conversation about Ukrainian refugees, given what is happening in Ukraine. Those individuals absolutely require protection, and its critical that they be given it, he said. Weve of course been disappointed at some of the treatment refugees in the past have received in Europe. We continue to be. But none of this takes away from the people of Ukraines genuine plight and genuine need for protection at this time.

For more on the difference of treatment of refugees in Europe, listen to this recent episode of What Next.
This article originally appeared in the Record.

Elon Musk has a tendency to be outrageous on Twitter, and the Ukrainian government may have found a way to leverage him to help the country stay online if the internet goes out during the Russian invasion.

Although internet access has been relatively stable so far, fears of widespread outages have increased in recent days as Russia has directed its attacks on the countrys communication infrastructure, including TV towers.

Late on Monday, an equipment truck arrived from Starlinkthe satellite internet subsidiary of Musks rocket company, SpaceX. Inside were elegant black boxes, packed with white flat dishes that would allow users to always stay in touch. The equipment was perfectly posed for photos, which were shared online for inspiration, marketing, or maybe both.

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The system works by connecting to a constellation of satellites orbiting the Earth, rather than the physical cables most types of online access require. But its hard to gauge how resilient a backup system Starlink can provide to the country at large without more information about Musks commitment, which remains unclear. (SpaceX did not immediately respond to a request for more information about the program.)

According to Ukraines Ministry of Digital Transformation, only one truck of Starlink kits has arrived in Ukraine. Now the ministry is raising funds to purchase additional equipment, according to Forbes Ukraine (where I work). Ukraine is also considering the purchase of used Starlink devices.

A key figure behind the initiative, a 31-year-old Minister of Digital Transformation Mykhailo Fedorov, who asked Musk for assistance on Twitter on Feb. 26.

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The next day Musk, the worlds richest person with a net worth of $239 billion, activated Starlinks service in Ukraine and promised to send more terminals.

The standard Starlink kit costs $499, according to Business Insider. A subscription to the network is $99.

So far, the system does appear to help some Ukrainians stay connected. And the general stability of Ukrainian internet access allows Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and regular citizens to update the outside world about the Russian invasion.

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However, internet connectivity has been affected in the southern and eastern parts of the country where fighting is the heaviest. Ukrainian officials say that Russia would not be able to switch off internet access for the entire country, and Doug Madory, director of internet analysis at

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Kentik, previously told the Record the countrys multiple land fiber connections to the west made it hard to take Ukraine as a whole offline.

Many Ukrainians fear they could be cut off from the world if Russian troops destroy the critical infrastructure responsible for television and the internet.

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At the same time, Ukraine also took steps to limit Russian troops access to networks, including ordering its phone carriersKyivstar, Vodafone, and Lifecellto shut down network access to phones from Russia and Belarus. This means that troops from those countries cannot send misleading messages or spread false information via phone calls, according to Ukraines state service responsible for information protection.

Russia, in turn, has already taken some steps to target communications infrastructure: On Tuesday, Russian missiles hit a TV tower in Kyiv, knocking out some access to news and broadcasts.

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Some people in Ukraine are already testing the Starlink service.

Ukrainian engineer Oleg Kutkov, for instance, said in an interview with the Verge that his Starlink dish got a signal from one of SpaceXs satellites in just 10 seconds. I honestly didnt believe that it would work, Kutkov told the Verge.

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Ukrainian state-owned railway operator Ukrzaliznytsia also received its terminal. Ukrzaliznytsia is notorious for its poor internet connection, but first plans to use Starlink for military purposes only.

We have several operational headquarters that are moving around the country, and they need the internet, said Ukrzaliznytsia CEO Alexander Kamishin in an interview with Forbes.

Another possibility is to use Starlink in the military or territorial defense, according to the Ministry of Digital Transformation.

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Other Ukrainians can order their terminals on Starlinks website, but it is not clear how fast they can receive them given that Ukraine is struggling with the full-scale war. Additionally, it is difficult to leave a house because of shelling and curfews introduced in many cities, including Kyiv and Odesa.

Satellite internet is the most useful for those living in villages where fiber optic cables and cell towers do not reach. The internet connection in rural areas in Ukraine has historically been poor, but Fedorov pushed policies to change that.

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He had been negotiating with Musk about Starlink even before the war, but the satellite launch was regularly postponed. One of the possible problems: The company couldnt obtain a license needed to start the operation in Ukraine, one source in the Ukrainian government (who requested anonymity due to the sensitivity of the negotiations) told the Record.

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Musk faced similar license issues in India, where he tried to roll out internet services in the country in early 2021. However, as of Jan. 15. SpaceX had 1,469 Starlink satellites active and 272 moving to operational orbits soon.

Musk, a founder of PayPal who has made much of his fortune as the CEO of Tesla, is no stranger to controversy. His companies have been accused of pushing regulatory boundaries and fostering a culture of toxicity, and Musk himself often weighs in loudly on Twitter durings times of crisis.

With just one truck of Starlink kits arriving in Ukraine so far, its unclear what the true value of his donation to Ukraine will bebut if internet connections do go down, Starlink could serve as a useful tool.

Future Tense is a partnership of Slate, New America, and Arizona State University that examines emerging technologies, public policy, and society.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, weve seen how conspiracy theories can overlap and collide. Ive documented how anti-vaccine groups embraced QAnon disinformation about liberal elites conspiring to unseat Trump, and how white nationalists find willing audiences for their racist ideology in anti-mask groups. Over the past week, a new disinformation hybrid has appeared, as online anti-vaccine groups have become a hotbed of pro-Russia conspiracy theories about the conflict in Ukraineand some of the most prominent anti-vaccine activists are actively promoting geopolitical falsehoods.

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Imran Ahmed, CEO of the online extremism tracking group Center for Countering Digital Hate, has been following the convergence of conspiracy theories and noticed that they share familiar themes: alleged secret government alliances, antisemitic accusations, and allusions to nefarious scientists. There are particular individuals within the anti-vaccine world who are amenable to pro-Russian propaganda, he says, and that would include some of the people whove cohered around QAnon and Trump.

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One example of this is how an old Trump-era storylinethe theory that SARS-CoV-2 was deliberately engineered in a lab and releasedseems to have been reconstituted in a new form: Anti-vaccine influencers claim that the United States owns a network of secret biolabs in Ukraine where dangerous infectious disease research takes place. For them, its just obvious that Biden is sending aid to Ukraine in order to protect those assets. This rumor has been proven to be manifestly falsebut that hasnt stopped it from circulating and gaining momentum.

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Last week, Christiane Northrup, an influential holistic medicine practitioner who regularly spreads pandemic misinformation and promotes QAnon, shared with her 78,000 Telegram followers a map that supposedly showed the secret labs in Ukraine that she insists create viruses. She also shared a post from a Bulgarian news site claiming the U.S. government conducted biological experiments with a potentially lethal outcome on 4,400 soldiers in Ukraine and 1,000 soldiers in Georgia. This is not true. On Instagram, a popular meme traveling with the hashtag #biolabs shows a photo of Tom Hanks as Forrest Gump, with the caption I might not be a smart man, but I do know if they lied to me about COVID for 2 years, they are probably lying to me about why Russia invaded Ukraine this week.

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Meanwhile, Candace Owens, a conservative political pundit-turned-anti-vaccine activist, used an extended metaphor involving the lab-leak COVID origin theory to describe the conflict in Ukraine. We are now experiencing Foreign policy Covid: Experts pretending that what is happening between Russia and Ukraine is a naturally occurring event, when in fact, it was manufactured in a lab by the people who stood to benefit trillions, she tweeted to her 3 million followers last week.

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Ahmeds team has also noted that a strong current of antisemitism runs through many of the Ukraine conspiracy theories in anti-vaccine chats. Sherri Tenpenny, the anti-vaccine activist who has claimed COVID shots make people magnetic, suggested in a Monday post to more than 150,000 followers that Jews were using the Ukraine conflict to distract the world from a meeting in Europe about pandemic preparedness. She shared a post from an account called End Times Newz that used echo parentheses, a widely recognized symbol that antisemitic hate groups use to identify Jewish people. Whilst everyone is distracted by the events in (((Ukraine))), the (((WHO))) is ramming through an international treaty on pandemic procedures, the post said. Same tribe every time  On the same day, in a separate Telegram post, Tenpenny claimed that the hacker group Anonymous, which has carried out recent cyberattacks against Russia, is part of the Soros/Klaus/WEF puppet army. This refers to billionaire philanthropist George Soros and Klaus Schwab, the founder of the World Economic Forum, which holds a yearly economic symposium in Davos, Switzerland.

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Ben Dubow, a fellow of the Democratic Resilience Program at the Center for European Policy Analysis, has documented the spread of Russian disinformation during COVID. He notes that antisemitic tropes involving the Hungarian-born Soros are a hallmark of Russian disinformation campaigns, largely because Soros has promoted democracy in what Russia considers its sphere of influence, says Dubow. He is very much an obsession of Russian leadership. Anti-vaccine groups have their own diabolical Soros myth: Many believe he worked with Bill Gates to hide microchip tracking devices in the COVID vaccines.

In a bizarre Telegram video on Tuesday, David Wolfe, a wellness influencer, also connected the invasion of Ukraine to Soros and Schwab. He then went on to speculate wildly about American politicians children and pedophilia in Ukraine: If youre convicted of paedophilia in Russia, youll get chemically castrated, hes gonna throw you out, he told his more than 100,000 followers. How can John Kerrys kid, and Nancy Pelosis kid, and Bidens kid all be involved in the Ukraine? Ill tell you how, because that is the bed of corruption in Europe and in mid-Asia.

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One aspect of Putins rhetoric on the Ukraine invasionthat the Western hegemony is trying to force progressive values on Ukrainewill appeal to Americans steeped in far-right conspiracy theories about the deep state and the villainous intentions of public health agencies. Putins message, Dubow notes, really does throw pretty naturally off of a lot of messaging they had, to try to raise skepticism about vaccines, about the origins of COVID, about how generally you cant trust any member of the Western establishment.

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Indeed, wild theories about Ukraine do seem to be gaining traction beyond just the influencers pushing them. I noticed them popping up in casual conversations among members of online anti-vaccine groups as well. In a Telegram group with 52,000 followers called COVID Vaccine Injuries, a member posted about an upcoming video, saying, I plan to expose, for the first time, using information I never shared before, how the conflict in Ukraine, the vaccines, and The Great Reset are all tied together. (The Great Reset is another recurring theme in many of these postsits a conspiracy theory that alleges that the government and elites are using the pandemic to brainwash citizens.) In an anti-mandate Facebook group with 3,000 members called Stop the Tyranny, one member posted last week, Look at all the corruption installed in Ukraine. Putin is against the New World Order and child trafficking. She shared a meme of Leonardo DiCaprio that read, The moment you realize Putin isnt fighting Ukraine. Hes fighting the DeepState in Ukraine!

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Anti-vaccine online spaces have proliferated in the past few weeks as activists have come together to plan a U.S. version of the anti-mandate trucker convoys that happened in Canada. Observers have noticed a pro-Putin sentiment in many of those anti-mandate convoy planning chats on Telegram as well. In one, a member wrote, Go Putin! He is standing up against the New World Order with the Truckers of the world! Going against George Soros. In a Facebook group called Freedom Convoy 2022, with 22,000 members, someone posted last week about reports that Putin Strikes are targeting US-RUN BIO-LABS in the Ukraine. He went on:

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One thing is for sure, there is much more to this story than any of the world governments or mainstream media is reporting. If we learned anything from the medias depiction of the Canadian Convoy, one important thing was that the media will twist the facts to support a political narrative.

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Anti-vaccine and wellness influencer Naomi Wolf predicted ominously on Telegram that the Truckers Convoy [and] Ukraine, will be weaponized in a cyberattack to give more emergency powers to Pres Biden and suspend midterms.

When I ask Dubow if he thinks that agents of Russian disinformation campaigns are specifically targeting American online anti-vaccine groups, he says he wouldnt be surprisedbut it would hardly be necessary. The information environment is already set for that sort of messaging to make its way there, he says. You think about the profile of these groupstheyre people who deeply distrust the U.S. government, deeply distrust any mainstream narrative.

Center for Countering Digital Hates Ahmed agrees. Sherri Tenpenny and Christiane Northrup are members of his groups Disinformation Dozen, a list of the 12 most influential spreaders of vaccine disinformation, which also includes Robert Kennedy Jr. and Joseph Mercola. Ahmeds group has extensively documented the cross-pollination of conspiracy theories in online anti-vaccine spaces, noting how anti-vaxxers seamlessly integrated the QAnon idea of a coming storm of retribution into their conversations and insisted COVID shots were part of a comprehensive and evil government agenda called the Great Reset. After a sufficient amount of time of cross-fertilizing each others follower base, he says, they actually started to merge their central conspiracies.

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Nonetheless, Dubow expects that Ukraine conspiracy theories will remain mostly a fringe phenomenon. Weve seen for the first time in a while, both in terms of total posts and in terms of total engagements, Russias really losing control over the narrative, he says. Yet Ahmed cautions that above all, anti-vaccine influencers are opportunistsand they will adapt whatever happens to command the headlines into their own narratives. Indeed, as Candace Owens tweets furiously about Ukraine, she is gaining more followersto whom she is also promoting her forthcoming documentary series about the supposed dangers of each of the recommended childhood vaccines. Anti-vaccine activists are always looking to see how they can mold their narrative to fit any breaking news item and fit it into a conspiracy theory, says Ahmed. Because the key element of conspiracy theorists is that they dont have to rely on facts.

Future Tense is a partnership of Slate, New America, and Arizona State University that examines emerging technologies, public policy, and society.
SIovak building sites could fall silent as Ukrainian workers return home to fight.

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The Slovak construction sector is anticipating a significant hit as many of the Ukrainian workers it employs return to their home country. In addition, further increases in the prices of some building materials, especially steel and petroleum products, can be expected as a result of the war in Ukraine, industry watchers say.

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The performance of the local construction industry may decline due to the relatively high proportion of Ukrainian workers it employs in Slovakia. Pavol Kovacik, president of the Slovak Association of Construction Entrepreneurs (ZSPS) assumes that this may concern as many as 5,000  or half  of the Ukrainian citizens currently working in the construction sector in Slovakia.

Some of them have quit to help their families evacuate from Ukraine, some are returning to Ukraine mainly to participate in defending their country, said Kovacik, as quoted by the SITA newswire.

Before the start of Russias invasion of Ukraine, i.e. as of February 24, about 10,000 Ukrainians, both employees and sole traders, worked in the Slovak construction industry. They accounted for some 6 percent of the total workforce in this sector.

Due to the uncertain economic situation in eastern Europe and disruption of supply chains, some foreign investors are already suspending preparation of projects in Slovakia.

This will cause a decline in orders in the private construction sector, said Kovacik, adding that the situation is continuing to develop rapidly.
https://sputniknews.com/20220303/california-governor-unveils-care-court-compelling-mental-health-treatment-for-homeless-1093567893.html

California Governor Unveils Care Court Compelling Mental Health Treatment for Homeless

California Governor Unveils Care Court Compelling Mental Health Treatment for Homeless

California Governor Gavin Newsom has unveiled a plan to allow homeless people to be ordered into to mental health treatment by trial court judges in a bid to... 03.03.2022, Sputnik International

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Theres no compassion with people with their clothes off defecating and urinating in the middle of the streets, screaming and talking to themselves, Newsom told the San Francisco Chronicle on Wednesday. Theres nothing appropriate about a kid and a mom going down the street trying to get to the park being accosted by people who clearly need help.Im increasingly outraged by whats going on in the streets, he said. Im disgusted with it.According to the Chronicle, this could happen in one of three scenarios: they are suspected of a crime, an involuntary hold in a psychiatric emergency room is about to end, or a family member or outreach worker believes they cannot take care of themselves. They would be represented by a public defender; a lawyer in the US legal system employed by the court to represent clients unable to afford a lawyer. A clinical team would create a care plan in conjunction with the person and a county case manager, who would help them navigate the process.The plan could include clinical visits, prescriptions for medication, or housing at a board-and-care facility or halfway house.According to the San Francisco paper, the rule would not apply exclusively to homeless people, either.The Golden State has an estimated 161,548 homeless, as of January 2020, according to the US Interagency Council on Homelessness - roughly 40% of the entire homeless population the United States.The San Francisco - Bay Area, in particular, is one of the nations most unaffordable places to live. A September 2021 report by the Bay Area Equity Atlas found that nearly half of Bay Area residents are either low income or very-low income, according to California Department of Housing and Urban Development data. United Ways of California also noted in July that one-quarter of Bay Area residents arent making enough money to cover the cost of housing, food, medical care, childcare, and other essentials.Newsom, a former mayor of San Francisco, has long postured as tough on crime, pledging in November of 2021 a police crackdown on smash and grab theft from boutique shops and pharmacies.

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https://sputniknews.com/20220304/convicted-rapist-harvey-weinstein-reprimanded-after-prison-guards-discover-milk-duds-in-cell---1093568733.html

Convicted Rapist Harvey Weinstein Reprimanded After Prison Guards Discover Milk Duds in Cell

Convicted Rapist Harvey Weinstein Reprimanded After Prison Guards Discover Milk Duds in Cell

Convicted rapist Harvey Weinstein is being held at a medical facility within the Los Angeles, California, Twin Towers jail, as he awaits trial on 10 counts of... 04.03.2022, Sputnik International

2022-03-04T01:03+0000

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Harvey Weinstein, 69, was reprimanded by the LA County jail after guards for the facility discovered "contraband," in the form of Milk Duds, stashed with the convicted sex offender's belongings. The chocolate-coated caramel candies were promptly confiscated upon discovery on November 10, according to records reviewed by Variety. Jail officials assume the Milk Duds were passed off during a same-day, face-to-face meeting between lawyer Shawn Burkley and Weinstein, who reportedly has a laundry list of health problems, including diabetes and cardiac issues. Guards have warned the former top Hollywood boss that his attorney's legal binders and laptop bags will now be subject to searches. Weinstein reportedly claimed that the incident was a misunderstanding and that the chocolate-covered contraband was brought to the jail during his extradition from New York in July 2021. Alan Jackson, his attorney, also issued a public apology, adding that the incident had "not happened since" the reprimand late last year. Jail officials documented that such items were not with Weinstein during his initial search at the Correctional Treatment Center, the medical facility of the Twin Towers jail in LA. Following his New York-to-California extradition, the disgraced 69-year-old ex-mogul pleaded not guilty to four counts of both forcible rape and forcible oral copulation, as well as two counts of sexual battery via restraint and one count of sexual penetration by use of force.Weinstein secured a minor legal victory in August 2021 when one charge was dropped due to surpassing the 10-year statute of limitations. An amended filing was issued after the fact, but was denied by Judge Lisa B. Lench, the same judge who dismissed the charge. Weinstein, if convicted in California, faces 10 counts of rape and sexual assault, and well over 100 years in prison. This would be in addition to the New York court's 23-year sentence handed down in 2020. Weinstein's legal team is currently crafting an appeal on the East Coast, with a ruling expected within the next few months.

https://sputniknews.com/20210813/weinstein-avoids-sexual-battery-charge-in-ca-rape-case-as-statue-of-limitations-runs-out--1083593241.html

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https://sputniknews.com/20220304/def-con-pelosi--1093569781.html

Def-Con Pelosi

Def-Con Pelosi

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), set social media ablaze earlier this week by appearing preemptively excited about US President Joe Biden's remarks on burn... 04.03.2022, Sputnik International

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While announcing the administration's plans to support US veterans, Biden's 'Unity Agenda for the Nation' was upstaged by what appeared to some to be the premature giddiness of the House speaker. While it might appear to some that Pelosi was trying to repurpose her viral clap toward then-US President Donald Trump at the 2020 SOTU, it is more likely that the House speaker was happy about the additional support for US veterans. Legislation associated with treatment of burn pit victims notably passed with a 256-174 vote in the House on Thursday. The bill calls for expedited health care and disability payments for US veterans. Only 34 House Republicans supported the bill to support US war veterans.

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https://sputniknews.com/20220304/denmark-running-low-on-helmets-bulletproof-vests-amid-special-op-in-ukraine-1093574455.html

Denmark Running Low on Helmets, Bulletproof Vests Amid Special Op in Ukraine

Denmark Running Low on Helmets, Bulletproof Vests Amid Special Op in Ukraine

According to a retailer, combat equipment is mostly being procured by Danes who want to donate it to Ukrainians, Ukrainians who want to travel home, and Danes... 04.03.2022, Sputnik International

2022-03-04T06:58+0000

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The demand for combat equipment has soared in Denmark amid Russia's special operation in Ukraine, to the point of several retailers having sold out their merchandise.At the store VagtShop, inquiries about vests, helmets, radio and medical equipment have peaked, resulting in warehouses being emptied, owner John Brinck told TV2.Elite Armor, a Danish manufacturer of protective equipment that cooperates, among others, with the Danish police, reported unseen demand for their goods.He said that employees at their factories have started working in shifts around the clock to produce as much as possible.According to Elite Armor, the demand is highest for bulletproof vests and helmets with protection level four, which can withstand shots from heavier rifles, such as the AK-47.Elite Armor said it had received inquiries from relief organisations, companies, and individuals from several European countries, who want to go to Ukraine and fight.The website Grejfreak.dk also reported having sold all the helmets and bulletproof vests they had in stock, alongside ceramic plates used for the vests.Per the website, the customers include Danes who want to donate equipment to Ukrainians, Ukrainians who want to travel home and take part in the hostilities, and Danes  typically with a past in the Armed Forces  who want to fight for the Ukrainian side.The Russian operation in Ukraine meant to demilitarise and "de-Nazify" the country in en effort to protect the Donbass Republics sparked several young Danes to go to Ukraine to support its cause, despite little to no military experience, TV2 reported. The young Danes have been encouraged by, among others, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, who welcomed volunteers from across the globe. This sparked a warning by Niels Hartvig Andersen, chairman of Denmark's Veterans.The Danish government has donated protective equipment and sanitary bags to Ukrainian soldiers at the country's request. The Danish assistance includes 2,000 TYR vests, which protect against fragments and bullets, and 700 sanitary bags.

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Russia's special military operation in Ukraine is proceeding in strict accordance with the schedule and plan, President Vladimir Putin said Thursday.

"All the assigned tasks are being successfully fulfilled," Putin said at a meeting with the permanent members of Russia's Security Council.

Russian soldiers and officers "act courageously" and "fight steadfastly, with a full understanding of the rightness of their cause," he told the country's top officials.

The operation is aimed at clearing the threats caused by the West over past years right at Russian borders, including threats from nuclear weapons, said Putin.

The Russian Defense Ministry announced Wednesday that 498 Russian servicemen had been killed during the special military operation in Ukraine that started on Feb. 24.
https://sputniknews.com/20220304/he-was-evil-personified-melinda-gates-addresses-jeffrey-epsteins-friendship-with-ex-husband-bill-1093568197.html

'He Was Evil Personified': Melinda Gates Addresses Jeffrey Epstein's Friendship With Ex-Husband Bill

'He Was Evil Personified': Melinda Gates Addresses Jeffrey Epstein's Friendship With Ex-Husband Bill

Melinda French Gates, the billionaire philanthropist who married Bill Gates in 1994, opened up about what led to her shocking divorce last year in a candid... 04.03.2022, Sputnik International

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It wasn't one thing but "many things" that led to their divorce, Melinda said in the interview when King asked her about Bill Gates' friendship with Epstein."He was awful", she added. "I had nightmares about it afterward".When King asked Melinda if Bill, the co-founder of Microsoft, continued to share correspondence with Epstein, she seemed resolved to not make an excuse for her ex-husband. "Any of the questions remaining about their relationship, those are for Bill to answer".Bill Gates, 66, released a statement to CBS saying, "Meeting with Epstein was a mistake that I regret deeply. It was a substantial error in judgment".Jeffrey Epstein was a convicted paedophile who died in jail via suicide at the age of 66, while waiting on additional child sex trafficking charges that would've placed him in jail without bail for 45 years.The disgraced multimillionaire financier was connected to a string of high-profile individuals, some of which the victims said they were forced to perform sex acts with, including former Maine Senator George Mitchell, former New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, money manager Glenn Dubin, and MIT Professor Marvin Minksy.Other celebrities whose names are connected to Epstein include: former US President Bill Clinton, former US President Donald Trump, Prince Andrew, and actor Kevin Spacey, all of whom Epstein's former pilot testified flew on Epstein's private plane.Beginning in 2011, Bill Gates met with Epstein on a number of different occasions, including at Epstein's townhouse where it was reported that Gates stayed "late into the night". Epstein and Gates had also discussed a possible charitable fund involving the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, a key asset in Melinda Gates' life and career."His lifestyle is very different and kind of intriguing although it would not work for me", Bill Gates emailed colleagues in 2011, after he first met Epstein.In the interview, Melinda Gates addressed her ex-husband's affair with a Microsoft colleague in 2000. The affair became public knowledge in 2019 and led to an internal corporate investigation. Melinda Gates believed they had gotten past the affair prior to their divorce.In May 2021 the pair announced that they would split and finalised their divorce the following August. The news interviewer asked if Gates felt as if the divorce was her fault. She said she had been committed to her marriage from the day she and Bill became engaged, to the day of their divorce."I don't question myself now. Not at all. I gave every single piece of myself to this marriage. I was committed to this marriage from the day we got engaged and until the day I got out of it", she explained.According to Melinda Gates, she and her ex are not "friends" but are "friendly". She says she does not wish her ex-husband any ill will, and that the two will continue to work together on their Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation charity.Melinda's current net worth is reported to be at least $11 billion. Her ex, the Microsoft co-founder, reportedly has a net worth of $131.4 billion, currently making him the fourth-richest man in the world. Of their divorce he stated in 2021 that it was the "most unusual and difficult year of my life".Melinda says despite experiencing "lots of tears for many days", she's excited about 2022, and is open to dating and falling in love again. When asked if she had started dating, she told King she is "dipping her toe in that water".

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https://sputniknews.com/20220304/indian-cinemas-on-road-to-recovery-after-157bln-revenue-hit-from-covid-says-pvr-cinemas-boss-1093583784.html

'Indian Cinemas on Road to Recovery After $1.57Bn Revenue Hit From COVID': Says PVR Cinemas Boss

'Indian Cinemas on Road to Recovery After $1.57Bn Revenue Hit From COVID': Says PVR Cinemas Boss

The Cinema Exhibition Industry worldwide has been one of the worst-hit sectors by the COVID pandemic, having suffered the double whammy of zero income for... 04.03.2022, Sputnik International

2022-03-04T14:36+0000

2022-03-04T14:36+0000

2022-03-04T14:37+0000

india

cinema

cinema

movie

exhibition

revenue

filmmaker

bollywood

hollywood

covid-19

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As India comes to the end of two years of COVID-19 outbreak that led to a nationwide lockdown from March 2020, Gautam Dutta, chief executive of one of Indias biggest multiplexes, PVR Cinemas, has told Sputnik about how the Cinema Exhibition industry, which has been one of the worst-hit sectors, is now reviving after a third wave of the pandemic.Sputnik: The cinemas are reopening after COVID. How is your business, PVR Cinemas, luring audiences back?Gautam Dutta: PVR launched a blockbuster movie month for February with an exhilarating Movie Trailer mash-up to alert customers to forthcoming films.The month of February saw some movie releases such as Gangubai Kathiawadi, Badhaai Do, Death on the Nile, Moonfall, Marry Me, Uncharted, Valimai, and Bheemla Nayak.Sputnik: How do you ensure everyone keeps safe from the virus in the enclosed space of your cinemas?Gautam Dutta: Apart from following standard safety protocols laid down by the government, weve deployed a revolutionary technology through negative ion generator devices that provide real-time indoor air sterilisation, offering protection against all kinds of harmful bacteria, viruses, and microbes in the air and on surfaces.For those, who dont feel safe watching movies in an enclosed space, weve launched Indias first Rooftop Drive-in Theatre at Jio World Drive in Mumbai city, bringing back the nostalgia of watching films under the stars from the comfort of your car.Sputnik: When can we hope to have a full house and audiences watching movies without social distancing?Gautam Dutta: Cinemas will peak again only when we are allowed to operate at our maximum capacity without any restrictions.After the second COVID wave in July 2021, cinemas received a good flow of Hollywood and Bollywood films screening in cinemas. Restrictions such as variable seating capacity restrictions, limited operating hours, weekend closures, vaccination status of employees and guests became a new norm.The third-quarter of the year (October to December) saw the release of Bollywood films spearheaded by big blockbusters Sooryanvanshi', 83 and others which revived cinema-going habits.This was aided by big-ticket Hollywood films such as No Time to Die, Spiderman: No Way Home and Eternals, and regional Indian films such as Pushpa: The Rise, Annaatthe, Border and Maanaadu.The big screen was back in the doldrums when the third wave of omicron struck in January 2022, slowing the momentum of growth, with all the big-ticket films postponed and footfall affected yet again.Sputnik: How did the omicron third wave affect the cinema business in India?Gautam Dutta: It was a brief intermission for the cinemas. Because it was less severe, cinemas were ordered to shut down temporarily in Indias capital city Delhi and Haryana state, and reopened after a month as the pandemic started to disperse.Sputnik: How much loss did Indias film exhibition industry face in these two years because of the COVID-19 pandemic?Gautam Dutta: The Cinema Exhibition Industry has been one of the worst-hit sectors affected by COVID-19. The first and second waves of pandemics had brought uncertainties and unprecedented challenges for both employees and the entire multiplex industry.Thousands of screens countrywide were forced to close down, and many employees, not just of cinemas, but even their supply chains and other stakeholders, faced personal hardship.The film exhibition industry directly employs more than 200,000 people while providing indirect employment to thousands of others who bore the brunt of these massive losses because of several rounds of lockdown in the country.Sputnik: Some people avoid going to the multiplexes as they think its not safe since a lot of people congregate in them. Whats your take on this?Gautam Dutta: Its a big misconception. Many international scientific studies have confirmed that there is a very low risk of COVID-19 transmission in the cinemas, where customers are - for the vast majority of the time - sitting, facing the same direction, wearing masks and not talking.The Multiplex Association of India has been lobbying various state governments with a study that not a single outbreak of COVID-19 in the world has been traced to a cinema and that cinemas should be treated in the same way as comparable industries and institutions.After being allowed to reopen, cinemas have already demonstrated an ability to operate safely for the public and employees via the use of enhanced ventilation systems, enhanced hygiene, and other safety protocols.Sputnik: What releases are expected?Gautam Dutta: Continuing the momentum generated in February and March, there are some great movies due for release. This includes Bollywood movies such as Jhund starring megastar Amitabh Bachchan, Bachchan Pandey starring Akshay Kumar, Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2 starring Kartik Aryaan.There is Hollywoods Batman starring Robert Pattinson, Oscar-nominated King Richard starring Will Smith, and The Lost City with Sandra Bullock and Brad Pitt.From India's regional industry, there is Radhe Shyam starring Prabhas Vikramaditya, and RRR from filmmaker Koduri Srisalla Sri Rajamouli who has already wowed audiences with his 'Baahubali'.

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india, cinema, cinema, movie, exhibition, revenue, filmmaker, bollywood, hollywood, covid-19, life under covid-19 quarantine, delta variant of covid-19, global covid-19 cases spike to highest level post-lockdown, countries ease lockdown measures while covid-19 cases surpass 4 mln worldwide
Ukraine's Ex-Prime Minister Says Kiev Will Not Agree to Neutrality, Recognition of DPR, LPR

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - Ukrainian authorities will not agree to the neutral status of Ukraine and the recognition of the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Lugansk people's republics as the United States will not allow it, ex-Ukrainian Prime Minister Nikolay Azarov has told Sputnik.

"I think it is impossible, the Americans will not allow it. Of course, the Americans have achieved their main goal - a bloodshed between Russia and Ukraine has begun, and the longer this bloodshed continues, the longer the human, material, financial resources are spent on this conflict, the better for the Americans. They got opportunities, let's say, economic opportunities, causing enormous difficulties to Russia, and that is not a concern at all. So they are unlikely to allow [Volodymyr] Zelensky to make this sort of a decision," Azarov said.

According to Azarov, Zelensky is under pressure from "a number of gangs of Nazis and nationalists, the so-called radicals," who will not allow him to make any decisions.

The former prime minister said that Zelenskyy is "a puppet incapable of making his own decisions."
https://sputniknews.com/20220304/lukashenko-says-belarusian-army-does-not-and-will-not-take-part-in-special-op-in-ukraine-1093589552.html

Lukashenko Says Belarusian Army Does Not and Will Not Take Part in Special Op in Ukraine

Lukashenko Says Belarusian Army Does Not and Will Not Take Part in Special Op in Ukraine

Kiev has repeatedly accused Minsk of taking part in what it calls a "Russian invasion". Russia launched a special operation to demilitarise and "de-Nazify"... 04.03.2022, Sputnik International

2022-03-04T13:59+0000

2022-03-04T13:59+0000

2022-03-04T14:00+0000

situation in ukraine

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ukraine

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Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko has said that the country's army has not and will not take part in Russia's special military operation in Ukraine. The latter has been underway since 24 February.Lukashenko stressed that Belarusian forces are currently employed in guarding the nation's border against external threats. He added that special attention is being paid to the western and northwestern portion of the border with the EU.The president underscored that the country's military will fight and die protecting their homeland, but expressed hope it won't come to that.Lukashenko thus once again rejected allegations by Ukraine that Belarus is aiding Russia in its special military operation, which Kiev calls an "invasion". The operation was ordered by President Vladimir Putin on 24 February. He said that Russia was left with no other choice after Kiev essentially gave up on fulfilling the Minsk agreements opting for a military option to resolve the conflict with the Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics (DPR and LPR).The Russian president outlined the goals of the operation as demilitarisation  the removal of weapons endangering Russia, including possibly nuclear devices that Kiev threatened to obtain, and to de-Nazify the country  removing nationalists from its leadership and defeating nationalist battalions.Western nations slapped Russia with harsh economic sanctions in response to the start of the operation. They also imposed sanctions on Minsk, whom they accuse of aiding Moscow in the operation, despite Minsk denying it.

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belarus, ukraine, russia, alexander lukashenko
https://sputniknews.com/20220304/mod-indian-citizens-come-under-fire-from-ukrainian-nationalists-at-station-in-kharkov--1093585008.html

Russian MoD: Indian Citizens Come Under Fire From Ukrainian Nationalists at Station in Kharkov

Russian MoD: Indian Citizens Come Under Fire From Ukrainian Nationalists at Station in Kharkov

According to the Russian Defence Ministry, over 7,500 foreign citizens across Ukraine are being prevented by local nationalists from evacuating. 04.03.2022, Sputnik International

2022-03-04T11:38+0000

2022-03-04T11:38+0000

2022-03-04T12:49+0000

situation in ukraine

ukraine

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nationalists

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A group of Indian citizens came under fire from Ukrainian nationalists at a railway station in Kharkov on Thursday, the Russian Defence Ministry said.According to Colonel General Mikhail Mizintsev, several Indian citizens were injured as a result of the attack. Aside from that, five Indian students were injured and the fate of 11 others is unknown after Ukrainian neo-Nazis attacked a campus in the town of Sumy, according to the ministry.More than a thousand Indian students were blocked in the village of Pesochin outside Kharkov when they attempted to cross the border to Russia on their own, Mizintsev said. He added that there is an acute shortage of food products and medicines in the area. Indian citizens are panic-stricken, the official said.Earlier, the Russian Defence Ministry said that the number of foreign citizens wanting to be evacuated from Ukraine but being prevented by local neo-Nazi groups from doing so exceeds 7,500.

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Sofia Chegodaeva

ukraine, india, kharkov, nationalists
https://sputniknews.com/20220304/nato-countries-sending-terrorist-fighters-to-ukraine-russian-intelligence-service-warns-1093592308.html

Terrorists Set for Deployment in Donbass Were Trained at US Al-Tanf Base, Russian Intelligence Warns

Terrorists Set for Deployment in Donbass Were Trained at US Al-Tanf Base, Russian Intelligence Warns

Russia launched a special operation in Ukraine on 24 February with a stated goal to demilitarise and de-Nazify the country. President Vladimir Putin authorised... 04.03.2022, Sputnik International

2022-03-04T15:22+0000

2022-03-04T15:22+0000

2022-03-04T17:35+0000

situation in ukraine

world

ukraine

russia

terrorist

mercenaries

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NATO countries are sending terrorist fighters to Ukraine, Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service warned on Friday.According to the intelligence service, the terrorists, who are to be deployed to Donbass, were trained at the US-controlled Al-Tanf military base in Syria."At the end of 2021, the Americans released from prisons several dozen Daesh terrorists, including citizens of Russia and CIS countries. These individuals were sent to the US-controlled Al-Tanf base, where they have undergone special training in subversive and terrorist warfare methods with a focus on the Donbass region," the statement added.The intelligence service said that most of the Daesh* terrorists trained in Syria for deployment in Donbass were destroyed during Russia's special military operation in Ukraine.However, the United States continues to form new terrorist units in the Middle East and Africa in order to send them to Ukraine via Poland, the agency pointed out.The Russian Defence Ministry said on Thursday that US military intelligence was stepping up a campaign to recruit mercenaries for Ukraine. Around 200 Croatian mercenaries arrived in Ukraine via Poland last week, the Russian Defence Ministrys spokesman Igor Konashenkov said. He emphasised that foreign mercenaries in Ukraine cannot be considered prisoners of war (POW) if detained in line with international humanitarian law. When detained, they can expect criminal prosecution at best, Konashenkov said.Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned that nationalist and neo-Nazi formations, which include foreign mercenaries from the Middle East, are using civilians in Ukraine as human shields. The Kremlin stressed that neo-Nazis in Ukraine are using terrorist methods by deploying heavy weapons in residential areas.On 27 February, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced the creation of a foreign legion, the International Legion of Territorial Defence of Ukraine. Days later, the country's foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, claimed that more than a thousand mercenaries from 16 countries were headed to Ukraine. Zelensky has asserted that about 16,000 foreign mercenaries were going to fight for Ukraine.On 24 February, Russian President Vladimir Putin authorised a special military operation in Ukraine following a request from the Donbass republics, which he had recognised a few days earlier. *Daesh, also known as ISIS/IS/Islamic State, is a terrorist group banned in Russia and many other countries.

https://sputniknews.com/20220304/putin-saved-thousands-of-lives-in-donbass-republics-pre-maidan-ukrainian-prime-minister-says-1093577806.html

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world, ukraine, russia, terrorist, mercenaries
https://sputniknews.com/20220304/paris-will-put-forward-measures-to-safeguard-5-ukrainian-nuclear-facilities-1093600324.html

Paris Will Put Forward Measures to Safeguard 5 Ukrainian Nuclear Facilities

Paris Will Put Forward Measures to Safeguard 5 Ukrainian Nuclear Facilities

PARIS (Sputnik) - France will propose to its partners specific steps to safeguard five main Ukrainian nuclear facilities based on the criteria by the... 04.03.2022, Sputnik International

2022-03-04T22:57+0000

2022-03-04T22:57+0000

2022-03-04T22:57+0000

situation in ukraine

russia

ukraine

nuclear facilities

france

safeguard

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Ukraine has four active nuclear power plants  Zaporizhzhia, Khmelnitsky, Rivne and South Ukraine. The fifth one in Chernobyl is currently sealed.Earlier in the day, the Russian Defense Ministry said that Ukrainian authorities attempted a provocation overnight by accusing Russia of creating a source of radioactive contamination at Zaporizhzhia NPP. While patrolling the area adjacent to the station, a group of the Russian National Guard was attacked by a Ukrainian sabotage unit who opened fire on them from the windows of several floors of an educational and training complex located outside the NPP. The firing points of the Ukrainian sabotage group were suppressed by return fire. Leaving the building, the sabotage group set it on fire.The fire was put out and the NPP is working as usual, with radiation background at normal level, the Russian military said. The US embassy in Kiev in a tweet accused Russia of shelling the nuclear plant.

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russia, ukraine, nuclear facilities, france, safeguard
https://sputniknews.com/20220304/pocket-rocket-german-feminists-demand-vulva-shaped-spaceship-to-challenge-phallic-shaped-designs-1093600501.html

Pocket Rocket? German Feminists Demand Vulva-Shaped Spaceship to Challenge Phallic-Shaped Designs

Pocket Rocket? German Feminists Demand Vulva-Shaped Spaceship to Challenge Phallic-Shaped Designs

In many scientific fields, a higher percentage of women participated in the Soviet Union in the 1960s than did in the United States, even today. One of those... 04.03.2022, Sputnik International

2022-03-04T23:05+0000

2022-03-04T23:05+0000

2022-03-04T23:06+0000

rocket

feminism

space flight

genitals

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The fictional film character Austin Powers made an extensive gag about it, and the fact hasnt eluded the legions of social media users watching recent rocket launches: theres no denying that rocket designs in recent years have a definite phallic shape.One feminist group has taken up a bold new mission: to get the European Space Agency (ESA) to design a space rocket with a shape evoking that other type of human genitalia: the vulva."We want to restore gender equality to the cosmos," they said.As of December 2021, just 72 of the 596 humans who have been into space have been women. The purpose of the design isnt just to promote diversity, however, its also very efficient.Due to this optimized V-shape, it guarantees maximum fuel efficiency with an exterior made of reinforced carbon which enables it to withstand the most extreme temperatures, she added.According to Daniel Ramspacher, a propulsion engineer at NASAs Goddard Space Center outside Washington, DC, the reason most rockets are the shape they are is mostly that its a proven design.Wer Braucht Feminismuss Twitter account, WHAT IS FEMINISM today, has mostly featured photos of women describing why feminism is important. As part of their recent campaign, they included an image with a quote by Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova, who, in addition to being the first woman in space, has been a staunch advocate of women in science.Tereshkova flew into space on the Vostok 6 mission on June 16, 1963, spending three days in orbit. She later joined the leadership of the ruling Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and after the USSR was dissolved in 1991, she became a lawmaker. She was most recently elected to the Russian State Duma in 2016.

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rocket, feminism, space flight, genitals
https://sputniknews.com/20220304/political-observers-natos-non-stop-eastward-expansion-forced-russia-to-start-spec-op-in-ukraine-1093594278.html

Political Observers: NATO's Non-Stop Eastward Expansion Forced Russia to Start Spec Op in Ukraine

Political Observers: NATO's Non-Stop Eastward Expansion Forced Russia to Start Spec Op in Ukraine

A Russian special military operation kicked off just a day before the Ukrainian Armed Forces and nationalist battalions' offensive against Donbass scheduled... 04.03.2022, Sputnik International

2022-03-04T16:59+0000

2022-03-04T16:59+0000

2022-03-04T16:59+0000

situation in ukraine

world

opinion

ukraine

russia

us

nato

nato expansion

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azov battalion

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"On the eve of the start of the operation, the Western media pushed the narrative of the Russian Army's allegedly unreasonable concentration on the border [with Ukraine]. Meanwhile, in previous years, NATO, under the pretext of exercises, sent a large number of troops to the Russian borders from the Baltic to the Black Sea. These exercises posed a threat to Russia. Shortly before the start of the Russian special operation, the Ukrainian Army began massive artillery shelling of Donbass", says Hasan Erel, political observer and former editor at the Turkish Radio and Television Corporation (TRT).The Western media campaign accusing Russia of planning to invade and occupy Ukraine started in spring 2021. In April 2021, White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki claimed Russian troop numbers near Ukrainian borders were the "highest" since 2014.In November 2021, the narrative got its second breath with Bloomberg claiming that the US had intelligence of Russia's alleged offensive against Ukraine, admitting at the same time that it wasn't clear whether Moscow would really invade. Under the pretext of an apparent "invasion", the US and its NATO allies stepped up deliveries of lethal weapons to Ukraine while thousands of NATO troops were sent to Eastern European NATO member states to "deter" Russia.Meanwhile, the Ukrainian Army had amassed a large contingent along the line of contact with Donbass as well as heavy weaponry prohibited under the Minsk agreements. On 26 October 2021, the Ukrainian Army used a Turkish Bayraktar drone for the first time against the Donbass self-defence forces. By December 2021, Kiev had concentrated around 125,000 troops near the breakaway Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics, and gradually intensified shelling of the region.While Ukraine's military buildup was going on, Russia in mid-December 2021 sent draft security agreements to Washington and NATO which envisaged the alliance's non-expansion, Ukraine's non-admission into the military bloc, non-deployment of offensive weapons systems near Russia's borders, and the return of the bloc's European capabilities and infrastructure to 1997 levels. Moscow warned Western states that if its proposals were dismissed, a military-technical option was also on the table. However, Russia's key security proposals were dismissed by the US, NATO, and the EU in late January 2022. In early February, the Ukrainian government made it clear that it would not engage in direct negotiations with the leadership of the Donetsk and Lugansk republics, thus upending the process which Kiev had already snubbed for almost eight years.Hotbed of Instability in UkraineDe facto, the US and its NATO allies have intentionally created a hotbed of instability in Ukraine and provoked a military conflict by encouraging Kiev not to implement the Minsk Agreements and providing training to the Ukrainian neo-Nazi battalion Azov and radical nationalist groups, according to Erel. Furthermore, under Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Dmitry Yarosh, Ukrainian ultra-nationalist and ex-Right Sector leader, was appointed chief adviser to the Armed Forces of Ukraine in November 2021. The Right Sector was established in 2013 as an umbrella organization for a whole set of nationalist and neo-Nazi groups, including the Patriots of Ukraine, Trizub, SNA, UNA-UNSO, and White Hammer."President [Volodymyr] Zelensky demonstrates dependence on the United States in every step he takes. It was he who, in fact, threw his country under the bus", says the Turkish political observer. "[Still] the responsibility for this process lies entirely with the United States. They are trying to use this process to change the government in Russia. However, this time they face not Libya, Syria or Yugoslavia, but a powerful state with a nuclear potential".Russia's ongoing special operation in Ukraine shouldn't be ripped out of the context of NATO's post-Cold War expansion, according to Turkish journalist Alptekin Dursunoglu.If one takes a look at the countries of Latin America, one would see that the US has openly tried to asphyxiate Cuba and Venezuela, according to the Turkish journalist. The US is not only financially supporting opponents of the sitting governments, it is carrying out regime change operations, resorting to outright invasions and assassination attempts, he notes."In this situation, they are trying to create a front in Ukraine, bordering Russia, and at the same time they accuse Russia, which seeks to protect itself, of actions contrary to international law", Dursunoglu concludes, denouncing Washington's double-standard approach. "This is completely unacceptable".

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Ekaterina Blinova

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https://sputniknews.com/20220304/putin-says-russia-has-no-ill-intentions-towards-its-neighbours-1093584107.html

Putin Says Russia Has No Ill Intentions Towards Its Neighbours

Putin Says Russia Has No Ill Intentions Towards Its Neighbours

On 24 February, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the beginning of a special military operation in Ukraine meant to demilitarise and "de-Nazify" the... 04.03.2022, Sputnik International

2022-03-04T11:05+0000

2022-03-04T11:05+0000

2022-03-04T12:14+0000

russia

vladimir putin

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sanctions

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President Vladimir Putin has made it clear that Russia has no ill intentions towards its neighbours.Referring to the ongoing Russian special operation in Ukraine, Putin stressed that Russia only responds to "negative actions by other countries".In an apparent nod to the impact of sanctions imposed by the US and its Western allies over the Russian operation, he pledged that Moscow would fulfill its economic obligations to other states."If someone is unwilling to cooperate with Russia, it will not stop us from resolving our tasks. We will win because we will obtain new expertise", the Russian president said. Puitn made the remarks as he took part in an online flag-raising ceremony for the Marshal Rokossovsky ferry in northern Russia.Russia's Special Operation in UkraineOn 24 February, Russia began a special operation to demilitarise and "de-Nazify" Ukraine, responding to calls for help from the Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics (DPR and LPR) in countering increasing shelling by Ukrainian troops. The Russian Defence Ministry said the special operation is only targeting Ukrainian military infrastructure and that the civilian population is not in danger. Moscow has repeatedly stressed that it has no plans to occupy Ukraine. In response, the United States, the United Kingdom, members of the European Union, and several other countries imposed comprehensive sanctions against Russia. Some of them closed their airspace to all Russian flights, sanctioned a number of Russian banks and officials. They are also seeking to disconnect Russia from SWIFT, and the international payment system confirmed that it would obey the law on sanctions once it gets the legal order.

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russia, vladimir putin, special operation, sanctions
Russia, Ukraine end second round of talks, agree to organize humanitarian corridors

Xinhua) 08:23, March 04, 2022

Photo taken on March 3, 2022 shows a view of the second round of talks between Russian and Ukrainian delegations at the Belovezhskaya Pushcha on the Belarus-Poland border. (Belta news agency via Xinhua)

The two sides discussed military issues, humanitarian issues, and a future political settlement of the conflict.

KIEV/MOSCOW, March 3 (Xinhua) -- Russia and Ukraine agreed to organize humanitarian corridors to evacuate civilians in the second round of talks in Belarus on Thursday, Advisor to the Head of the President's Office of Ukraine Mykhailo Podoliak confirmed on Twitter.

"There is a solution only for the organization of humanitarian corridors," Podoliak tweeted.

During the talks on Thursday, the two sides discussed military issues, humanitarian issues, and a future political settlement of the conflict, said Russian presidential aide Vladimir Medinsky, also the head of the Russian delegation.

"The positions were made absolutely clear ... On some of them, we managed to reach an understanding," he said, noting that creating humanitarian corridors is "substantial progress."

Russia's TASS news agency reported earlier Thursday that the second round of talks has ended.

Podoliak told a media briefing that the third round of peace negotiations may take place soon, according to Ukrainian media.

Earlier in the day, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, when commenting on the peace negotiations, said that "any talks" make sense.

(Web editor: Xia Peiyao, Liang Jun)
 Flash

Delegations of India and Pakistan discussed issues under the Indus Water Treaty (IWT) during a meeting of the Permanent Indus Commission (PIC), said the Indian Foreign Ministry.

The three-day meeting, which concluded on Thursday, was held in Pakistan's Islamabad, during which "technical discussions were held regarding on-going projects including Pakal Dul, Kiru and Lower Kalnai," according to a statement issued by the ministry.

The PIC, comprising of Indus commissioners of India and Pakistan, discussed "the exchange of hydrological and flood data," the statement said.

"Both the commissioners reaffirmed their commitment to interact more frequently in an attempt to resolve issues through bilateral discussions under the treaty," it added.

The PIC also agreed to hold the next meeting "in New Delhi on mutually convenient dates," it said.

Post-partition of the subcontinent water-sharing was a major problem between India and Pakistan. The issue was resolved with the arbitration of the World Bank and a settlement in the name of IWT was reached in 1960.

The agreement governs how the two countries use and share water resources.

Under the provisions of the IWT, the two commissioners are required to meet at least once every year, alternately in India and Pakistan.
https://sputniknews.com/20220304/rally-in-support-of-russia-takes-place-in-serbias-belgrade-1093596853.html

Rally in Support of Russia Takes Place in Serbia's Belgrade

Rally in Support of Russia Takes Place in Serbia's Belgrade

BELGRADE (Sputnik) - The activists of several patriotic associations in the Serbian capital of Belgrade are holding a rally in support of Russia, a Sputnik... 04.03.2022, Sputnik International

2022-03-04T18:53+0000

2022-03-04T18:53+0000

2022-03-04T18:53+0000

europe

serbia

belgrade

russia

crimea

kosovo

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The demonstrators gathered in the evening at the monument to Russia's Nicholas II, across the street from the residence of Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic in Belgrade's city center. Members of Obraz, a Serbian far-right political party, bikers from the motorcycle club Night Wolves Serbia, members of patriotic movements and numerous citizens joined the rally.According to reports, the participants blocked the street of King Milan and unfurled a nearly 20-meter-long Russian tricolor flag. The demonstrators, with a total number exceeding 1,000 people, chanted "Russia, Serbia."The anthems of the two countries were played from loudspeakers installed at the monument. The rally is reported to be peaceful, without police interference.Earlier on Monday, a group of Serbian nationalists held a rally in Montenegro to support Russia and its operation in Ukraine. Nearly 100 people participated in the demonstration in front of an Orthodox church in the central city of Niksic.The Serbian authorities refused to object to Russia's operation in Ukraine, with President Vucic saying that Belgrade would not back Western sanctions against Russia. He stressed that imposing sanctions against any state does not suit Serbia's political and economic interests.Vucic also claimed that there are no plans to alienate the property of Russian companies in the country amid rising sanctions pressure on Moscow and its economy.

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europe, serbia, belgrade, russia, crimea, kosovo
https://sputniknews.com/20220304/retired-turkish-admiral-turkey-has-to-close-straits-to-nato-since-the-military-bloc-aiding-ukraine-1093563926.html

Retired Turkish Admiral: Turkey Has to Close Straits to NATO Since the Military Bloc Aiding Ukraine

Retired Turkish Admiral: Turkey Has to Close Straits to NATO Since the Military Bloc Aiding Ukraine

Turkey on 27 February closed the Bosphorus and Dardanelles for all warships under the Montreux Convention amid the Russian special operation to demilitarise... 04.03.2022, Sputnik International

2022-03-04T04:00+0000

2022-03-04T04:00+0000

2022-03-04T07:39+0000

situation in ukraine

world

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us

europe

ukraine

turkey

bosphorus

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"Our country has closed the straits for the warships of warring sides", says Cem Gurdeniz, retired rear admiral of the Turkish Navy. "However, the warships of littoral states should be allowed to return to their ports on the Black Sea even after this decision. As part of this, I understand that the Turkish Foreign Ministry will not accept NATO's declarations of passage to the north. Since NATO is providing military assistance to Ukraine it thus openly declared itself as an ally of the belligerent side. Under these conditions, I consider the statement of the Turkish Foreign Ministry, which announced the closure of the Straits for all warships, to be correct and appropriate".The 1936 Montreux Convention is an international agreement governing the Bosporus and Dardanelles. It regulates the movement of ships in peacetime through the straits. The convention allows warships of any class belonging to the Black Sea states to freely pass through the straits. Yet, military vessels of non-Black Sea states face restrictions in terms of class, tonnage, and time spent in the Black Sea. In addition, Turkey has the right to close the straits to warships during a military conflict.According to the Turkish newspaper Daily Sabah, Ukraine officially asked Turkey to close access to the Black Sea to Russian ships. However, Ankara "did not immediately respond to this request", according to the newspaper, adding that Turkey maintains working relations with both Moscow and Kiev.Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu explained to CNN Turk on 27 February that Ankara cannot prevent Russian and Ukrainian ships from accessing the Black Sea as Article 19 of the Montreux Convention allows vessels from littoral states to return to their home base.Turkey, which has the largest coastline along the Black Sea and the largest exclusive economic zone, must maintain stability and the status quo in the waters of the Black Sea in the context of the Russian special operation, according to Gurdeniz. He notes that it would only be possible if everyone follows the provisions of the convention while Turkey is maintaining an "active neutral status". According to the retired rear admiral, it is because of the Montreux Convention that blood has not been spilled in the Black Sea since the end of the Second World War. The naval veteran praised Ankara's well-balanced position on the ongoing situation over Ukraine.Russia launched its special operation aimed at defending Donbass and demilitarising and de-Nazifying Ukraine on 24 February. In response to Moscow's operations European and North American countries introduced new sanctions against Russia, including disconnecting seven Russian banks from SWIFT and other measures against various economic sectors of the country. Meanwhile, Turkish presidential spokesperson Ibrahim Kalin told journalists on 1 March that Turkey does not plan to introduce restrictions against Russia because Ankara does not want to harm its interests, as quoted by Hurriyet Daily News.

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Ekaterina Blinova

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https://sputniknews.com/20220304/russian-forces-take-control-over-city-of-energodar-hosting-europes-biggest-nuclear-power-plant--mod-1093578321.html

MoD: Kiev Sought to Frame Russia for Radioactive Contamination at Ukrainian Nuclear Power Plant

MoD: Kiev Sought to Frame Russia for Radioactive Contamination at Ukrainian Nuclear Power Plant

The Ukrainian Emergency Service said a fire had erupted outside the Zaporozhskaya nuclear power plant overnight, with one of its units having been switched... 04.03.2022, Sputnik International

2022-03-04T08:52+0000

2022-03-04T08:52+0000

2022-03-04T10:43+0000

situation in ukraine

ukraine

nuclear power plant

russia

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radioactive

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Russian forces have taken control over the city of Energodar where Europe's biggest nuclear power plant is located, the Russian Defence Ministry said. The fire was the result of a provocation by Kiev aimed at accusing Russia of creating a hotbed of radioactive contamination, the ministry added. According to Russian MoD spokesman Igor Konashenkov, at around 2 a.m. local time, a group of Russian National Guard officers patrolling the territory around the NPP were attacked by Ukrainian saboteurs who opened fire from the building of the station's training centre. Russian forces fired back and destroyed the saboteurs' combat bases. As they were leaving the building, the Ukrainian sabotage group set the building on fire. Konashenkov added that the radiation level is normal following the incident. The NPP's staff continues to work as normal and is monitoring radiation levels.Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Rafael Grossi confirmed there was no radiation release as a result of the incident, the safety systems of the six reactors at the Zaporozhskaya NPP were not affected by the fire."It is important to say that all the safety systems of the six reactors at the plant were not affected at all and that there has been no release of radioactive material ... importantly, in this regard, is the radiation monitoring systems ... are fully functional as well", Grossi said.He added that he is in contact with both Russia and Ukraine at the diplomatic and technical levels about the incident at the nuclear power plant.On Friday night, Ukraine's State Emergency Service reported a fire at a training centre outside the Zaporozhskaya nuclear power plant in the city of Energodar. The blaze was localised to 2,000 square metres, the emergency service later reported, adding that no casualties were reported during the incident.

https://sputniknews.com/20220225/russian-paratroopers-take-control-of-chernobyl-nuclear-power-plant-mod-says-1093358774.html

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https://sputniknews.com/20220304/russian-mod-ukrainian-nationalists-planning-provocations-in-kharkov-involving-foreign-journalists-1093590627.html

Russian MoD: Ukrainian Nationalists Planning Provocations in Kharkov Involving Foreign Journalists

Russian MoD: Ukrainian Nationalists Planning Provocations in Kharkov Involving Foreign Journalists

Russia repeatedly condemned the actions of the Ukrainian nationalist battalions, accusing them of using civilians as human shields and placing armaments... 04.03.2022, Sputnik International

2022-03-04T14:34+0000

2022-03-04T14:34+0000

2022-03-04T15:31+0000

situation in ukraine

world

ukraine

russia

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Russia's Defence Ministry has issued a warning about Ukrainian nationalists' planned provocations in Kharkov. According to its intelligence, the nationalists have deployed several rocket launchers in the residential quarters of the city and forbidden the civilians to leave their homes in the hopes of drawing Russian fire towards them. The ministry revealed that the MRLs are installed in the Kiev district of Kharkov.The Defence Ministry said that the provocation is designed to make Russian forces shoot residential buildings in an attempt to destroy the MRLs, film it and release the footage to foreign journalists for distribution.Igor Konashenkov, spokesman for Russia's Ministry of Defence, further stated that retreating nationalist battalions are damaging critical civilian infrastructure objects in Donbass.Konashenkov also told how the Russian special operation in Ukraine was progressing, saying that Russian forces, in cooperation with the Donetsk Lugansk People's Republic (DPR), have managed to seize control of a number of towns and villages, including Pyatikhatki, Shevchenkovo, Polohy, Gusarka, Novodanilovka and Shcherbaki.Russian President Vladimir Putin launched the special operation on 24 February with the goal of demilitarising and de-Nazifying Ukraine. He stressed that Moscow was left with no other option after Kiev threatened to revive its nuclear status, abandoned in 1994, and after Ukrainian authorities failed to implement the Minsk agreements.

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world, ukraine, russia
https://sputniknews.com/20220304/russias-un-envoy-blasts-claims-that-russian-military-attacked-zaporozhskaya-npp-in-ukraine-as-lie-1093595425.html

Russia's UN Envoy Blasts Claims That Russian Military Attacked Zaporozhskaya NPP in Ukraine as Lie

Russia's UN Envoy Blasts Claims That Russian Military Attacked Zaporozhskaya NPP in Ukraine as Lie

A fire erupted outside the Zaporozhskaya Nuclear Power Plant on Friday, with Russian MoD spokesman Igor Konashenkov saying that it was the result of actions by... 04.03.2022, Sputnik International

2022-03-04T17:31+0000

2022-03-04T17:31+0000

2022-03-04T18:07+0000

situation in ukraine

world

russia

ukraine

nuclear power plant

vasily nebenzya

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Claims that Russian troops attacked the Zaporozhskaya Nuclear Power Plant are false, Russias Permanent Representative to the United Nations Vasily Nebenzia said on Friday.According to the envoy, Russian forces are not interfering with the work of the nuclear power plant, and their goal is to provide its security.Nebenzia stressed that there is no threat to the NPP, citing the estimation of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA): earlier in the day, it confirmed that the security and safety systems at the Zaporozhskaya plant were not compromised.The Russian envoy also said that the UN Security Council's emergency meeting on the power plant fire is another attempt by Kiev and its supporters in the West "to kindle artificial hysteria" around the events in Ukraine.The US Embassy in Ukraine decried the incident, tweeting that "it is a war crime to attack a nuclear power plant". However, reports emerged later that the US State Department urged all European embassies to not retweet the message or delete it in case it was already done.On Friday night, according to the Russian Ministry of Defence, "the Kiev regime" attempted to carry out a provocation at the Zaporozhskaya NPP in order to accuse Russia of creating a source of radioactive contamination. The ministry's spokesman Igor Konashenkov said that the fire at the NPP occurred after a group of Russian National Guard officers was attacked by "Ukrainian saboteurs" who "opened fire from the building of the station's training centre". When the Russian troops fired back and forced the "saboteurs" to leave, the latter set the building on fire, according to Konashenkov.

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https://sputniknews.com/20220304/scotus-blocks-gitmo-detainee-from-state-secrets-on-his-post-911-torture-at-cia-site-in-poland-1093570757.html

SCOTUS Blocks Gitmo Detainee From 'State Secrets' on His Post-9/11 Torture at CIA Site in Poland

SCOTUS Blocks Gitmo Detainee From 'State Secrets' on His Post-9/11 Torture at CIA Site in Poland

Abu Zubaydah, a Guantanamo Bay detainee, filed a discovery request with the US government in an effort to obtain testimony from Central Intelligence Agency... 04.03.2022, Sputnik International

2022-03-04T04:01+0000

2022-03-04T04:01+0000

2022-03-04T04:01+0000

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The US Supreme Court on Thursday ruled in favor of the US government regarding Abu Zubaydah's request to learn more about the torture he endured at a CIA black site in Poland after being taken from Pakistan in 2002 under suspicion of terrorism. "In our view, the Government has provided sufficient support for its claim of harm to warrant application of the privilege," Justice Breyer added. SCOTUS Justice Neil Gorsuch, joined by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, argued that their colleagues may be "ignorant as judges of what we know to be true as citizens." Testimony and other information sought by Zubaydah and his lawyer would have been passed to Polish authorities that have been investigating his time at the secret CIA facility. At the time of his 2002 capture in Pakistan, the US believed Zubaydah to be a high-ranking official of the al-Qaeda* terrorist group behind the September 11, 2001, terror attacks in the US. He was held at CIA 'black sites' until he was transferred to the Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp in 2006. It has been reported that Zubaydah may have also been transported to the CIA's first 'black site' in Thailand between 2002 and 2006. A 2014 US Senate report confirmed that Zubaydah was waterboarded more than 80 times and spent more than 11 days in a coffin-sized box. Zubaydah was subjected to starvation, a mock burial and other torture tactics approved by the Pentagon and developed by so-called 'psychologists' James Mitchell and John Jessen, who were compensated some $81 million for their efforts to invent and implement their 'enhanced interrogation techniques.' Although seven SCOTUS Justices argued that the release of such information could endanger national security or tarnish the reputation of the US, both Jessen and Mitchell have provided several testimonies and stories on their CIA torture program. Mitchell has also written a book on the subject. During a 2020 testimony, Mitchell notably confessed to personally torturing Zubaydah over 60 times through the use of his waterboarding technique.Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, one of the alleged co-conspirators of the 9/11 terror attacks, was tortured by Mitchell and Jessen through waterboarding. While accepted by the Pentagon at the time, such tactics are now deemed torture. Although the US government has granted the disclosure of information on how Zubaydah was treated, further details, including locations of the post-9/11 CIA 'black sites,' have been kept from public knowledge, with officials citing national security concerns and commitments to foreign partners. Zubaydah, who has never been convicted or charged with a crime by the US, remains an indefinite inmate at the Guantanamo detention center. *Al-Qaeda is a terrorist organisation outlawed in Russia and many other states

https://sputniknews.com/20211007/biden-administration-fight-to-not-disclose-details-of-cia-torture-of-detainee-1089750911.html

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https://sputniknews.com/20220304/second-finnish-sitizens-initiative-on-nato-reaches-goal-as-80-of-finns-see-russia-as-threat-1093573953.html

Second Finnish itizens' Initiative on NATO Reaches Goal, as 80% of Finns See Russia as Threat

Second Finnish itizens' Initiative on NATO Reaches Goal, as 80% of Finns See Russia as Threat

A second citizens' initiative on NATO has reached the required number of signatures in less than a week in Finland, under the pretext of the formally... 04.03.2022, Sputnik International

2022-03-04T06:46+0000

2022-03-04T06:46+0000

2022-03-04T06:46+0000

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A second citizens' initiative demanding that Finland apply for NATO membership has reached the 50,000 signatures needed and will move to parliament for debate.The initiative demanding NATO accession was launched on 25 February and reached the 50,000 threshold in less than a week, national broadcaster Yle reported.The initiative justifies the need for NATO membership on the grounds of the current situation in Europe, arguing that Finland lacks the necessary security guarantees. "Ultimately, it is a matter of securing our way of life through common defence and security guarantees", it says.The initiative demands that the nation's parliament and Finland's president fulfill their constitutional obligations and safeguard fundamental human rights through international cooperation by applying for NATO membership.A previous citizens' initiative, demanding a referendum on the issue, was launched on 21 February and also reached the necessary support in less than a week. Unlike the previous initiative, the current endeavour is not a legislative initiative, but a straightforward requirement.The initiatives proposed amid the Russian special operation in Ukraine coincide with a marked change in Finns' attitudes toward Russia. A recent Yle poll revealed a strong majority of Finns were worried about the direction that Russian policy is taking, with some 79 percent of respondents considering Russia's current course a threat to Finland. In comparison, just 11 percent of respondents said that they were not worried, while 10 percent were unsure.This is a significant change from a similar survey by pollster Taloustutkimus published at the beginning of the year, in which merely 15 percent identified Russia as a source of concern.Despite their formal non-alignment for historic reasons, Finland and its western neighbour Sweden have been getting closer to NATO in recent years through joint drills and training activities, overseas missions, and military acquisitions from Washington. Inside both Nordic countries, there is a strong political push for joining NATO from top brass and numerous parties.On 24 February, Russia's President Vladimir Putin launched a special military operation in Ukraine, responding to an appeal from the Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics, which Russia had formally recognised earlier that week.Moscow made it clear that it has no plans to conquer or occupy Ukraine and that the operation's goal is to protect civilians from genocide and defend the DPR and LPR from Kiev's aggression, as well as demilitarise and "de-Nazify" Ukraine.

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https://sputniknews.com/20220304/stormtroopers-in-ukraine-israeli-channel-shows-star-wars-jet-during-broadcast-on-russian-special-op-1093591025.html

Stormtroopers in Ukraine? Israeli Channel Shows Star Wars Jet During Broadcast on Russian Special Op

Stormtroopers in Ukraine? Israeli Channel Shows Star Wars Jet During Broadcast on Russian Special Op

On 24 February, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a special operation in Ukraine, which he said is aimed at denazifying and demilitarizing Kiev. Moscow stressed that there is no threat to the civilian population as forces are only targeting military infrastructure in Ukraine.

2022-03-04T16:02+0000

2022-03-04T16:02+0000

2022-03-04T16:02+0000

viral

israel

fake news

ukraine

russia

vladimir putin

volodymyr zelensky

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Darth Vader and his henchmen are now in Ukraine wait... what? Yes, you read it correctly. Israeli Channel 13 showed a TIE spaceship during its live broadcast about Russias special operation in Ukraine, local media reported. According to 'Israel Today', the footage shows the spacecraft, which has apparently crashed, lying on the ground and two stormtroopers standing beside it.Snippets of the broadcast and screenshots of it were posted on social media and quickly sparked condemnation from journalists, who accused the channel of unprofessionalism and spreading fake news.According to the London-based online news outlet, Middle East Eye, the channel has launched an investigation into the incident and the person edited the image has been suspended. The outlet said that the footage shown during the broadcast was a video from 2014 that Disney, the company that owns the Star Wars franchise, used to promote the saga in Germany on Sky Deutschland.Israel Today writes that the footage has recently been shared on Telegram channels, which wrote about Russias special operation in Ukraine.The special operation was ordered by Russian President Vladimir Putin on 24 February and, according to the Russian head of state, is aimed at protecting the residents of the Donetsk and Lugansk People's republics, which announced their independence from Kiev in 2014. LPR and DPR asked for help from Moscow after Kiev escalated attacks on the republics. During the standoff, the LPR and DPR ordered their civilian populations to be evacuated to Russia.President Putin also said that the special operation is aimed at "de-Nazifying and demilitarising" Ukraine.For his part, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has rejected Putin's statement about the presence of Nazis in Ukraine, and described the special operation as a "full-scale invasion". Western nations have sided with Kiev, condemning Russia's actions and imposing the harshest sanctions on Moscow to date. The Kremlin has stressed that the West has been turning a blind eye to war crimes committed by Kiev in Donbass.

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https://sputniknews.com/20220304/telegram-channels-of-sputnik-rt-being-blocked-in-eu-countries-1093584818.html

Telegram Channels of Sputnik, RT Being Blocked in EU Countries

Telegram Channels of Sputnik, RT Being Blocked in EU Countries

Earlier in the week, the Rossiya Segodnya media group lambasted the move by Google to restrict access to its resources online, calling it an act of censorship. 04.03.2022, Sputnik International

2022-03-04T11:35+0000

2022-03-04T11:35+0000

2022-03-04T12:13+0000

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censorship

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The Telegram channels of the Sputnik news agency and RT are being blocked in the European Union, press services revealed Friday.The move comes shortly after the EU banned Sputnik news websites and the broadcasting of the RT in the bloc earlier in the week. Additionally, the Rossiya Segodnya media group (which both Sputnik and RT are a part of) said on Wednesday that Meta had suspended the work of those apps related to its resources. A similar decision was made by Google News and Google Discover - the services have limited access to the Rossiya Segodnya media outlets online. The move targeting the Russian state-run media outlets was condemned by the media group as "censorship" and "manipulation of the information agenda". Harsh criticism was also voiced by the Russian Foreign Ministry as it blamed the West for trying to "deliberately restrict access to Russian information [sources] so that users can see a one-sided picture of the Russian special operation".The YouTube channels, Instagram, and TikTok accounts linked to Sputnik and RT were also blocked across Europe following a slew of anti-Russian sanctions imposed by the bloc over the military operation by Russia in Ukraine. The Kremlin said that the goals of the operation are to "demilitarise and de-Nazify" the nation's neighbour.

https://sputniknews.com/20220303/wests-censorship-of-rt-sputnik--psy-ops-against-russians-is-sign-of-weakness-say-us-analysts-1093528682.html

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https://sputniknews.com/20220304/tory-mp-urges-boris-johnson-to-scrap-foreign-aid-to-india-over-stance-on-ukraine-1093578733.html

Tory MP Urges Boris Johnson to Scrap Foreign Aid to India Over Stance on Ukraine

Tory MP Urges Boris Johnson to Scrap Foreign Aid to India Over Stance on Ukraine

Although the UK said in 2012 that it would end foreign aid to India by 2015, figures released by the British government in September last year showed that the... 04.03.2022, Sputnik International

2022-03-04T11:40+0000

2022-03-04T11:40+0000

2022-03-04T11:40+0000

russia-nato row on european security

uk

india

tories

boris johnson

nato

ukraine

russia

vladimir putin

quadrilateral security dialogue (quad)

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Former UK Defence Minister and Tory Member of Parliament, Johnny Mercer, has called on Prime Minister Boris Johnson to scrap millions of pounds' foreign aid to India because of New Delhis stance on Russia's military operation in Ukraine.Mercers boss, Prime Minister Boris Johnson, has been one of the western leaders to blame Russia for the present security crisis between Moscow and the 30-nation North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO). In lockstep with US, EU and other western allies, the UK government slapped economic sanctions against the Russian Central Bank and several other financial institutions, as well as the countrys political leadership because of the crisis in Ukraine.On 24 February, Russia's President Vladimir Putin announced a special military operation aimed at the de-Nazification and demilitarisation of Ukraine, and at stopping the genocide by the Ukrainian regime of the Russian-speaking people in Donetsk and Lugansk Peoples republics, two Ukrainian regions which declared independence from Kiev back in 2014.Moscow also has demanded that the 30-nation NATO bloc, which includes EU nations, the UK and the US, abandons its "open-door policy" and jettisons any plans to grant Ukraine member status in the future.Johnson has said that NATO has no plans to grant membership to Ukraine, the western nations have supplied more than $1.5 billion in military supplies to the administration of Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky since hostilities erupted.India, for its part, has maintained that it doesnt comply with unilateral western sanctions. India, along with China, has also regularly abstained from voting on several western-backed United Nations (UN) resolutions calling Russia, one of New Delhis foremost defence partners, the aggressor in Ukraine. New Delhi has said that it respects legitimate security concerns of all sides and backs dialogue to end the hostilities.New Delhis neutral stance is appreciated by Moscow, but has put India at odds with the position adopted by the US and its other western partners.Quad MeetingThe four-nation Quad grouping comprising Australia, India, Japan and the US, seeks to defend an open and inclusive Indo-Pacific region amid Beijings rising economic and military influence. Beijing perceives the US-led group as being directed against it and has described it as an Asian NATO.Australia, Japan and the US have sought to make the Ukraine situation part of Quads agenda. Australia and Japan have also committed millions of dollars to Kiev, besides slapping sanctions on Russian entities.A joint statement released after the Quad meeting said that the ongoing conflict and humanitarian crisis in Ukraine were discussed by the partners and its broader implications were assessed.

https://sputniknews.com/20220227/putin-thanks-russian-special-op-forces-for-heroically-performing-their-military-duty-in-ukraine-1093413085.html

https://sputniknews.com/20210925/china-warns-us-will-dump-india-australia-and-japan-as-four-nations-convene-for-quad-summit-1089391336.html

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Egyptian and French naval forces held joint military drills in the Red Sea, said the Egyptian army on Thursday.

"The joint exercises aim at consolidating the Egyptian-French bilateral relations and enhancing the prospects for military cooperation between the two countries," Egyptian Military Spokesman Tamer al-Refai said in a statement.

The drills effectively contribute to preserving maritime security and stability in the region and exchange of expertise, he said.

The military activities covered various training programs, including protection of a vital target in the sea against potential threats, air defense activities, and exchange of helicopter landings on helidecks of marine units and destroying marine mines, he added.

Egypt regularly holds joint military exercises with other countries to boost military collaboration and exchange military expertise.

The joint drills between Egypt and France conducted in the past few years reflected the deep bilateral ties, the spokesman added.
https://sputniknews.com/20220304/us-general-watching-china-like-a-hawk-for-taiwan-invasion-says-havent-seen-anything-so-far-1093597292.html

US General Watching China Like a Hawk for Taiwan Invasion, Says Havent Seen Anything So Far

US General Watching China Like a Hawk for Taiwan Invasion, Says Havent Seen Anything So Far

The head of the US Pacific Air Forces on Thursday said that his surveillance assets were watching Chinese President Xi Jinping like a hawk for signs that the... 04.03.2022, Sputnik International

2022-03-04T19:29+0000

2022-03-04T19:29+0000

2022-03-04T19:28+0000

taiwan

us pacific air forces (pacaf)

china

invasion

mike pompeo

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I havent seen anything so far, but that doesnt mean they havent talked about it internally and doesnt mean that they wont try something, Gen. Kenneth Wilsbach said at the Air Force Associations annual conference, according to Air Force Times.Since Russia launched its special military operation in Ukraine last week, speculation has increased that China could make a similar move against Taiwan. Beijing regards the autonomous island as a Chinese province in rebellion, and sees US aid to the government in Taipei as meddling in Chinas internal affairs.Beijing continues to assert that Taiwan is destined to reunite with mainland China, but prefers that it be done peacefully. Jinpings government proposed a one country, two systems approach akin to Hong Kong, a former British colony that London returned to Beijing in 1997. Under the system, local autonomy is preserved in a special administrative region to accommodate the conversion of Hong Kongs capitalist system toward Chinese socialism, but certain overarching national laws also apply, such as those for national security.The US and Taiwan have accused China of planning to invade Taiwan for more than a year, after Taipei began scrambling fighter jets in response to Chinese aircraft flying through a broad area of international airspace that Taipei claims as its air defense identification zone (ADIZ). Such zones have no basis in international law, but Chinese aircraft flights are commonly reported in Western media as violations of Taiwanese airspace, making it seem as if the PLA is banging at the metaphorical gates. One such flight on February 24, the day Russias special military operation began in Ukraine, aroused particular anxiety, but turned out to be as uneventful as the previous flights.While China has given no indication that it will soon move against Taiwan, the US seems intent on provoking a reaction. Earlier this week, a delegation of more than half a dozen former top US security officials traveled to Taiwan to meet with Tsai and other senior Taiwanese figures, and the following day, former CIA director and former US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, arrived for his own visit.On Friday, Pompeo posted a series of tweets calling for US President Joe Biden to recognize Taiwan as an independent state, calling it a political, diplomatic and sovereignty reality.This isn't about Taiwans future independence, it's about recognizing an unmistakable already existent reality. That reality is, as many of your past & present leaders have made clear, there's no need for Taiwan to declare independence because its already an independent country.Asked about Pompeos comments at a Friday presser, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin described him as a former politician with bankrupt credibility. His lunatic remarks will lead nowhere.

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taiwan, us pacific air forces (pacaf), china, invasion, mike pompeo
https://sputniknews.com/20220304/us-sanctions-bill-named-after-nazi-collaborator-slogan-iran-deal-reportedly-close-1093570135.html

US Sanctions Bill Named After Nazi Collaborator Slogan; Iran Deal Reportedly Close

US Sanctions Bill Named After Nazi Collaborator Slogan; Iran Deal Reportedly Close

Republican Senators Marco Rubio and Chuck Grassley introduced a new sanctions bill that spells out "Glory to the Heroes," a slogan infamously chanted by World... 04.03.2022, Sputnik International

2022-03-04T09:37+0000

2022-03-04T09:37+0000

2022-03-10T10:21+0000

radio sputnik

the critical hour

jcpoa

ukraine

haiti

rubio

chuck grassley

china

radio

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US Sanctions Bill Named After Nazi Collaborator Slogan; Iran Deal Reportedly Close Republican Senators Marco Rubio and Chuck Grassley introduced a new sanctions bill that spells out "Glory to the Heroes," a slogan infamously chanted by World War 2 Nazi collaborators in Ukraine.

Scott Ritter, former UN weapon inspector in Iraq, joins us to discuss Ukraine. Republican Senators Marco Rubio and Chuck Grassley introduced a new sanctions bill been that spells out "Glory to the Heroes," a slogan infamously chanted by World War 2 Nazi collaborators in Ukraine. Also, we discuss the history of Ukraine and the Donbass.Dr. Ken Hammond, professor of East Asian and global history at New Mexico State University, joins us to discuss China. There are competing narratives as China stands accused of collaborating in Russia's Ukraine operations by some Western sources. Also, we discuss the US trade war on China.James Carey, writer, activist, and podcaster, joins us to discuss the Iran nuclear deal. Though it has been stated ad nauseam, there are fresh proclamations that the Iran nuclear deal will be rejoined by the US empire soon. Senate Leader Chuck Schumer, a former opponent of the agreement, has changed direction and is now pushing for closure.Dr. Gerald Horne, professor of history at the University of Houston, author, historian, and researcher, joins us to discuss Eastern Europe. Dr. Horne joins us to review his latest article in Black Agenda Report on the crisis in Ukraine. He argues that this crisis is one of the rare turning points in world history.Laith Marouf, broadcaster and journalist based in Beirut, joins us to discuss the Middle East. We discuss the Muslim world's reaction to the Ukraine crisis. There seems to be little support for joining the US in isolating Russia in a region that has been under military attack and domination by the West for decades.Dr. Jemima Pierre, associate professor of Black studies and anthropology at the University of California, Los Angeles, a member of the Black Alliance for Peace, and an editor of the "Black Agenda Review" segment of the Black Agenda Report, joins us to discuss Haiti. We compare the Ukraine crisis to the multi-century war on Haiti by the United States. This is particularly interesting because the US and Haiti were the first two free and sovereign nations in the Americas (slavery in America notwithstanding).Professor Nicolai Petro, professor of political science at the University of Rhode Island specializing in Ukraine and Russia, joins us to discuss the US response to the Ukraine crisis. The US has announced a new regime of sanctions against Russia and Belarus. We discuss the blowback of these sanctions on the US and EU and the world power dynamic implications of the political and economic reaction.Jim Kavanagh, writer at thepolemicist.net and CounterPunch and the author of "The American Farce Unravels: Shreds of January 6th," joins us to discuss media implications from the Ukraine crisis. The US and EU have taken dramatic actions against Russian media and its employees. We discuss the fallout of these actions and the underlying meaning of societies that use such draconian measures of censorship.We'd love to get your feedback at radio@sputniknews.comThe views and opinions expressed in this program are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the position of Sputnik.

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https://sputniknews.com/20220304/why-is-the-west-silent-about-ukrainian-neo-nazi-movements-azov-battalion--bandera-legacy-1093561142.html

Why is the West Silent About Ukrainian Neo-Nazi Movements, Azov Battalion, & Bandera Legacy?

Why is the West Silent About Ukrainian Neo-Nazi Movements, Azov Battalion, & Bandera Legacy?

French President Emmanuel Macron claimed in his Wednesday address to the nation that Russia's special operation to demilitarise and "de-Nazify" Ukraine is "not... 04.03.2022, Sputnik International

2022-03-04T09:53+0000

2022-03-04T09:53+0000

2022-03-04T09:53+0000

situation in ukraine

us

world

opinion

europe

russia

ukraine

neo-nazism

donbass

fascism

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Ukraine's ultra-nationalist and neo-Nazi battalions made headlines after the 2014 February coup d'etat in the country only to be largely overlooked and downplayed in the ensuing years by the mainstream media.CNN admitted that Ukraine's ultra-nationalist parties and groups, including Svoboda and the Right Sector ultra-nationalists, played a significant role in the 2014 regime change in Kiev and later assumed positions in the National Security and Defence Council, the office of the Prosecutor General, and the ministries of ecology and agriculture of the interim government.Shortly after the coup, Ukraine saw the formation of volunteer nationalist battalions that carried out attacks against the breakaway Donbass republics and terrorised Eastern Ukrainian civilians. One of them, Azov, was led by Andriy Biletsky, former leader of the Kharkov branch of "the Stepan Bandera All-Ukrainian Organisation 'Tryzub'" and co-founder of the ultra-nationalist movement, the Social-National Assembly.Biletsky was quoted as saying in 2010 that Ukraine's mission was to "lead the white races of the world in a final crusadeagainst Semite-led Untermenschen [subhumans]". He was a member of the post-coup Ukrainian Parliament between 2014 and 2019. Azov formally joined the Ukrainian National Guard in 2014.The Azov regiment, that still proudly wears the neo-Nazi Wolfsangel insignia, is notorious for attacking and displacing residents in eastern Ukraine, looting civilian property, as well as raping and torturing detainees in Donbass, according to a 2016 UN report by the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OCHA).Ukrainian nationalist organisations and political movements have been disseminating their ideology among young people with Kiev's backing and funding. In 2020, the Ukrainian government allocated money for nationalist projects, including the "Cyborg Igor Branovitsky Charity Run", "Young Banderite Course", "Banderstadt Festival of Ukrainian Spirit", etc. As the Ukrainian outlet STRANA.ua noted in 2020, the nationalist projects were due to receive 8 million hryvnia ($266,416) which is almost half of all the funds allocated by the Ukrainian government for children's and youth organisations.The ministry's 2020 list also included the project "Unconquered" - named in honour of Yaroslav Robert Melnik, a regional leader of the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) of the Carpathian region and a "major political educator" of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA)*. Both OUN and UPA are infamous for collaborating with Nazi Germany and conducting the ethnic cleansing of Jews, Russians, Roma, and Poles in the Nazi-occupied territories of Ukraine during WWII. After the western-backed Orange Revolution, President Viktor Yushchenko altered the Ukrainian school curriculum to glorify both OUN and UPA and granted the titles of Hero of Ukraine to OUN-UPA leaders Roman Shukhevych and Stepan Bandera in 2007 and 2010, respectively. While in May 2011, the Supreme Administrative Court of Ukraine reversed Yushchenko's orders, President Petro Poroshenko gave OUN and UPA the status of "fighters for the independence" of Ukraine in 2015. As of today, several hundred monuments and statues have been erected and streets named after former Nazi collaborators in Ukraine.On 16 December 2021, the UN General Assembly discussed a resolution that called to combat the glorification of Nazism, neo-Nazism, and other practices that fuel racism and xenophobia. The only two countries that voted against it were the US and Ukraine.OUN-UPA and Their HeirsAccording to Rudling, there is no doubt that OUN was a "fascist" organisation from its inception. The idea of racial purity was a leitmotif of OUN's ideology. The Ukrainian nationalist press regularly carried anti-Semitic articles since the 1930s. After the Nazi occupation of Ukraine in 1941, OUN teamed up with them and went on an ethnic cleansing spree in the occupied territories."The Nachtigall Battalion, consisting almost exclusively of OUN(b) activists serving in German uniforms under Shukhevych's command, carried out mass shootings of Jews near Vinnytsia in July 1941", wrote Rudling. "At least 58 pogroms are documented in western Ukrainian cities, the estimated number of victims of which range between 13,000 and 35,000".On 29-30 September 1941, Nazi forces and their Ukrainian collaborators executed nearly 34,000 Jews in Babi Yar, a ravine in the Ukrainian capital Kiev.From 1943 and until the arrival of the Soviet Army, OUN - and its military wing, UPA - had carried out massive ethnic cleansings of Poles in Volhynia and Galicia which claimed the lives of at least 88,700 people, including children, women, and the elderly.According to Rudling, the most vocal advocate of this bloodbath was Mykola Lebed, then-acting leader of the OUN. Remarkably, it was Lebed who established contacts with the American intelligence services in 1945 from his exile in Rome, the historian wrote. Despite describing him as "a well-known sadist and collaborator of the Germans", the CIA and the US State Department sponsored Lebed's 1949 immigration into the US and shielded him from prosecution, according to Rudling.After the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945, members of OUN and their paramilitary UPA units joined foreign subversive groups, propaganda outlets, and intelligence agencies to fight against the USSR during the Cold War.In 1956, the CIA incorporated a set of networks under Lebed's leadership and created the non-profit Prolog (Prologue) Research and Publishing Association, whose goal was to publish anti-communist propaganda, including radio broadcasts, newspapers, and books. During the Cold War, Ukrainian diasporas and OUN-UPA veterans were busy whitewashing the organisation's crimes, the author pointed out. They created historic forgeries and myths about the OUN and UPA being pluralistic and inclusive organisations which rescued Jews during the Holocaust and fought shoulder to shoulder against Hitler and Stalin. After the collapse of the USSR, these narratives started filling the gap left by Soviet ideology in a new Ukrainian state.The problem, however, is that despite the manipulations of history, the fascist roots of Ukrainian radical nationalism never went away, according to the historian. The ideological heirs of the OUN-UPA got their first chance to receive government recognition under Viktor Yushchenko and then, after the four-year presidency of Viktor Yanukovich they returned to the stage to hijack even more power and penetrate the fabric of Ukrainian society.*The Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA*) is an extremist organisation banned in Russia since 2014.

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Zelensky Fled to Poland and is 'Hiding in US Embassy', Ukrainian Lawmaker Says

Zelensky Fled to Poland and is 'Hiding in US Embassy', Ukrainian Lawmaker Says

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky earlier said that he has not left the country's capital Kiev due to the ongoing Russian military operation in Ukraine to... 04.03.2022, Sputnik International

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Ukrainian opposition lawmaker Ilya Kiva claimed that the president "urgently" left for Poland and is hiding in the US Embassy there.Neither the Ukrainian president nor the US Embassy in Poland have commented on his claims.Earlier, Russian State Duma speaker Vyacheslav Volodin also asserted that Zelensky fled Ukraine and headed to Poland.Shortly after Volodin's statement, Verkhovna Rada asserted that Zelensky did not leave Ukraine and remains in Kiev.Several Western countries have expressed concern in regard to Zelensky's safety. Particularly, French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said Paris was ready "to help him if necessary". It was also reported that the United States offered him evacuation, but he refused.Reports that Zelensky left the Ukrainian capital emerged earlier last week, with the president refuting them and posting several video messages in which he said he remained in Kiev. In late February, Russia launched a military operation in Ukraine with the goal to "demilitarise and de-Nazify" the country. The operation began after a request for help from the Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics. After the start of the operation, a massive wave of anti-Russian sanctions followed from the West.

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UNIONVILLEA veteran-owned garment company that supports veterans mental health and honors the fallen recently, in a quiet affair with loved ones, recognized a Barboursville Army veteran tragically shot to death at his home last year.

Florida-based Til Vilhalla Project crafted a customized plaque, Always With Us, in memory of 36-year-old James Manning, who died June 16, 2021. He left behind a wife, Jessica, and three children.

A specially selected Legacy Guardian from the area made the plaque presentation Jan. 30 at veteran-owned Unionville Brewing Co.

Jessica Manning nominated her husband for the plaque because she wanted their son and two daughters to have it to remember him by. Specialist Manning, an Arizona native, served with the 1st Squadron, 91st Cavalry Regiment, 173rd Airborne Brigade in Germany and Afghanistan.

James was such a selfless, giving person who deserved to be honored for the sacrifices he gave to his country, his friends and his family, said his wife.

Jessica Manning said her husband was young when he joined the Army, and it was something about which he was proud. And so are his kids, she said. Manning thanked the company for honoring her husband.

Created by a veteran in 2016, Til Valhalla Project comes from Norse mythology for "hall of the fallen." It is said among service members, Until we meet again in Valhalla, a sign of respect that they will meet again.

Til Valhalla Project employs veterans in its St. Augustine facility, where printing, bagging, packaging, shipping, and customer service for its clothing products is done.

The company was set up to raise money to support veteran suicide prevention and to make the plaques that are hand-crafted and hand-delivered to veterans families at no cost to them, more than 1,500 so far. The plaques also honor law enforcement officers and firefighters.

Theres a long waiting list for people wanting a plaque for their loved one, according to Til Valhalla Project community coordinator Angela, a retired military and law enforcement veteran who preferred not to publish her last name. She is part of the four-person Fallen Hero Team responsible for creating the memorial plaques and Legacy Stories.

Currently we are only able to honor 64 heroes a month and we have over 1,200 applications, so there is an extensive waiting period, but we do we our best to honor all of the heroes, Angela said.

She approved Mannings plaque application and said it was truly their privilege to be able to honor his service to the country and his legacy.

We were humbled by his story and everyone at T.V.P. was deeply saddened by the circumstances of his tragic passing, especially knowing he left a wife and three young children behind. SPC Manning's story is absolutely heartbreaking, Angela said.

Mannings former Army mate, SFC Joel Harmon, of Newport News, helped write the Legacy Story, having served with James in Afghanistan. The story was printed on poster board with photos and displayed at the plaque presentation.

Manning served his country with pride. Assigned to mail duty in Germany while a PFC, he sometimes worked 18 hours straight, wanting to ensure that each piece of mail was sorted and delivered to the soldiers waiting for word from family and friends.

Manning also completed a 14-month tour of duty in Afghanistan. While deployed, he assisted with air operations that ensured soldiers received necessary life-sustaining supplies and their much-anticipated care packages and communications from home, the plaque read.

The fallen soldiers volunteer duties included base protection, late-night tower guard and primary entry gate guard, among many others, according to his Legacy Story.

He never complained, lived the Army values and was the ultimate quiet professional, his story says.

Manning, as a civilian, drove a UPS truck to support his family and was a favorite delivery person among the dogs on his route, for the former soldier always had a ready treat.

Manning was a devoted family man whose wife and three children honor his legacy and keep his kind and loving spirit alive. Rest easy, selfless hero. Til Valhalla, soldier! the Legacy Story stated.

Herman attended the recent plaque presentation along with fellow servicemen Larry Gonzalez, of Alexandria and David Ortiz, who traveled from Florida for the poignant program in Orange County.

What we remember most about James is how quiet and professional he was, Herman said in a message Wednesday. Always helping out, volunteering to help us do the things he didnt have to do. He was easy to make laugh, too, I remember lol.

Unionville Brewing Co. was an apt place to hold the plaque presentation, endorsed by Legacy Guardian Grace Mullinax, a U.S. Marine veteran who graduated in 2016 from Culpeper County High School.

It was her first time delivering a plaque to the family of a fallen veteran so she did it at a familiar venue, pro-military, police and first responder, with snow on the ground.

Mullinax signed up for the volunteer role with Til Valhalla Project to stay connected to her own service.

I wanted to give back to the families who lost their loved ones, and help honor my fellow military members, police, and firefighters, Mullinax said.

She didnt know the Mannings before the presentation, but soon got familiar with their circumstances.

It was more rewarding personally than I imagined, but extremely difficult to hold it together for the sake of the family, Mullinax said. It absolutely broke my heart, but Im glad they have a good way to remember their father and husband for who he was and not how he was taken from them.

Til Vilhalla Project selects Legacy Guardians who live in plaque recipients' local areas. The majority, like Mullinax, are are veterans, family members of veterans and Gold Star family members, according to Angela.

"The Legacy Guardian for SPC Manning was selected based on her name Grace, often defined as God's intervention and support in everyday moments of life,' said Angela.

"Knowing everything that Jessica and her children have been through by having SPC Manning taken from them... I thought Grace would be a good fit, Angela said.

The impactful plaque presentation, quiet all around, lasted just a few moments as the Legacy Guardian saluted, handed the plaque to Jessica Manning and stated, From a fellow veteran and sister-in-arms, please accept this plaque in honor of your fallen hero.

Family from out of town, including James Manning's siblings and his mother, joined the presentation event via Facebook Live while dozens filled the brewing company to honor the local veteran.

There were stacks of tasty pizza, sub sandwiches, local beer from the tap, juice and soda for the kids, and something called Tractor Juicespiked, flavored seltzer for adults.

The mayor of Gordonsville attended the program along with Gordon-Barbour Elementary School family, Orange County sheriff's office investigators, friends from all around and cousins who traveled from a distance with children to attend.

A plaque presentation can be an emotional experience for everyone involved. Regardless of how long ago a hero may have passed, the circumstances of their passing, or the recipient's relationship to the hero, a plaque presentation can generate a myriad of feelings and emotions, happy, sad, pain, and everything in between, Angela said.

A feeling of support was also felt for the Manning family. Purchase James Manning wrist bands in support of the Project at: tilvalhallaproject.com/products/spc-james-darren-manning-memorial-band-hosted-by-the-manning-family

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LINCOLN  Nebraska Cattlemen requests those who have received a beef draft during the 2021 Nebraska State Fair to use the draft as soon as possible. Beef drafts will no longer be honored after May 1, 2022. All beef drafts can be used at grocery stores for beef purchases or at restaurants while enjoying a beef meal.
Northfield fourth graders celebrated one giant birthday party for the state of Nebraska, which turned 155 years old this year, on Tuesday, March 1.

With fourth grade being the year Nebraskan students learn about their state history, Northfield fourth grade teacher Allison Wagner thought it would only make sense to celebrate the states birthday with four mini sessions representing each century of its history.

I figured it was a good time to celebrate and kind of incorporate all the different things that we have learned, she said. Weve all dressed in red to represent our state.

The first station was a presentation from a former history teacher Jurene Chief Eagle, who taught on a reservation and married a Native American, along with her grandson, Northfield alum Preston Lenoir, who regularly attends and performs at the Sun Dance ceremony in the summer.

Chief Eagle and Lenoir taught the students a few words in Lakota, showed various Native American items and artifacts and even let them play a drum that Lenoir personally made. Lenoir said he got into the drumming and singing part of his culture back in sixth grade right there in the Northfield Elementary building.

It all started here at the school in sixth grade. In sixth grade, we were working on assignments on the Chromebooks, and so I went on YouTube to search up Sun Dance songs, he said. You could listen to music and stuff (during homework) because they gave us headphones or earbuds. So, I listened to it there, and one time I went home and I suddenly realized Im kind of humming along, so I was like, Oh, I know the song. So then I was like, Well, Im just going to start you know listening to more and more, and then here we are now.

Students then traveled to the 1800s, in which they learned how to square dance and dosey doe with some help from Northfield music teacher Kathleen Rose.

From there, they hit the Great Depression in the 1900s and did a stock market crash simulator activity. Each student was given a job, a house, so much money in savings and so much money invested in the stocks. Then, the students would go through the chain reaction of losing the stock market money, losing the savings, losing the job, etc.

One student asked after losing her savings, How am I supposed to pay off my house? which was exactly the lesson Wagner was hoping the fourth grade students would take away from the activity.

Finally, the 2000s session consisted of a little art project of making coasters with the state symbols, so they can take that home to remember it, Wagner said.

As those dried, they played a game of trivia in which Students raced to answer questions like What do we have in Nebraska that looks like Stonehenge? and What is it called when a person waves at another with two fingers from behind the steering wheel?

The birthday celebration was complete with snacks originating from Nebraska, like Kool-Aid and Dorothy Lynch  with carrots and celery, of course.

Wagner said the day was great, and she couldnt have pictured a better way for students to celebrate and learn about state history.

Fourth grades just awesome getting to learn about their state, their home, she said.

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A trail of supporters  from medical professionals and mental health service providers to groups representing defense attorneys and prosecutors  spoke Thursday in favor of LB1223, a bill that would make the state pay when people wait in a jail cell more than 30 days to get treatment after being found not competent for trial.

"I think this is one of the most important human dignity questions the committee is going to address this year," said Sen. Steve Lathrop of Omaha, who is chair of the Legislature's Judiciary Committee.

Only one person opposed the bill: the chief operating officer at the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services, the agency that would have to reimburse counties.

And it could add up for the department, given that the average wait time statewide is 128 days  more than four months  according to the bill's fiscal note.

In some places, such as Lincoln, people wait an average of 145 days before getting a bed in a treatment facility.

Lathrop said the problem was about more than money.

"I know the counties see that as unfair," he said. "But to me, it is a violation of human dignity to make these people who are incompetent sit in county jails because we won't provide the capacity down at the Regional Center or at some other suitable place to have their competency restored."

Deb Schorr, chair of the Lancaster County Board, said the current wait time has "skyrocketed." One inmate at the county jail in Lincoln has been waiting 365 days.

She said Lancaster County Corrections' staff provide the most compassionate care possible, but "our jail is simply not designed or equipped to provide the mental health treatment needed to restore individuals to competency."

Schorr said $100 a day might be helpful, but additional beds are what's most important to Lancaster County. She said officials owe it to the detainees and their families to do something about the problem.

In addition to forcing DHHS to reimburse jails for housing people waiting for treatment, Sen. Matt Hansen of Lincoln said the bill he introduced also would require the state hospitals for the mentally ill to have a minimum number of beds for different reasons of commitment, totaling 200 beds.

"In recent months it's become clear that the number of beds available at the Lincoln Regional Center is dramatically low for those seeking to place individuals at the center," he said.

Hansen said he's heard varying reasons about why. But he's concerned the low numbers are placing undue burdens on county jails and local hospitals.

His bill also would require DHHS to prepare a report and testify at the Legislature annually.

"I think this issue is too important to not set up some kind of reporting structure where members of the Judiciary Committee can receive updates on what's going on at the Lincoln Regional Center and within the division of Behavioral Health," the senator said. "Our county jails have become mental health facilities, which they are not designed for."

Shannon Engler, senior director of behavioral health at Bryan Health, spoke in support of the bill on behalf of the Nebraska Association of Behavioral Health Organizations, Nebraska Hospital Association and Bryan Health.

"At the end of the day, we don't have enough public capacity or private capacity," he said.

Engler said Treatment Advocacy Center, a national advocacy group, has identified the need for approximately 950 public-access beds in Nebraska. In 2021, HHS said the state had 607.

Sen. Tom Brandt of Plymouth asked how to fix it.

"Do we open another regional center?" he asked.

Larry Kahl, the chief operating officer for HHS, said in January 2021, the Lincoln Regional Center began construction work on three of its housing buildings to reduce the possibility of patients harming themselves. That means it currently has 164 patients, despite having 180 beds.

He said COVID-19 supply chain issues have caused significant delays on the project. As a result, the center has buildings or wings out of commission for months at a time. Work is set to be done in the fall.

Kahl said the even bigger issue is staffing shortages, especially nurses. Last year, HHS spent $4.5 million at the Lincoln Regional Center alone on temporary staffing.

He said statewide there are 76 people on a court-ordered list waiting to get a bed and one committed by a mental health board waiting.

"DHHS is working to reduce length of stay and length of time on the admission list," Kahl said. "In addition to this, we are actively working with our regional partners to address critical care gaps in service."

But DHHS believes the proposed bed allocation plan would cause delays in treatment.

Lathrop said he doesn't think having DHHS pay counties $100 a day was enough incentive and wouldn't solve the problem.

"If it's not this bill, what is the solution for us to have the capacity to meet the needs of the people who are incompetent, the people to be committed and the sex offenders who are part of your charge?" he asked.

Kahl said the solution is being able to have robust continuum care, including an adequate number of acute-care beds at the Lincoln Regional Center, but also services throughout the continuum.

He said officials are currently working to find gaps that mean people can't be discharged sooner. But he thinks DHHS should be the ones to help identify capacity, at least for the state-based care.

Brandt said it isn't just Lancaster and Douglas counties that face this problem.

"It's the whole state that faces this problem and we need to work together to solve it," he said.

Reach the writer at 402-473-7237 or lpilger@journalstar.com. On Twitter @LJSpilger

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Cambodian and Malaysian armies vowed on Thursday to increase bilateral cooperation for mutual benefits, the Cambodian army said in a statement.

The agreement was reached during a meeting between Lt. General Hun Manet, deputy commander-in-chief of the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces and commander of the Royal Cambodian Army, and Malaysian Army Chief General Zamrose bin Mohd Zain, who arrived in Cambodia on Wednesday for a two-day visit.

The statement said that during the meeting, the two commanders expressed satisfaction with the fruitful results achieved in bilateral cooperation in the field of national defense, including on the training of Cambodian military personnel through the Malaysian Defense Cooperation Program (MDCP) since 2002.

"Regarding the bilateral cooperation at the army level, both sides greatly appreciated the results of this visit, which paves the way for more comprehensive and robust cooperative ties between the two armies," the statement said.

"Both sides discussed the mutually beneficial concepts and cooperative directions, including increasing bilateral cooperation, especially on human resource development and cybersecurity," it added.

They agreed to lift cooperation to a higher level, mulling over setting up a mechanism for army-to-army talks and expanding cooperation in other potential areas, according to the statement.
Russian state media is spreading misinformation about the location of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in what analysts said is an attempt to discourage resistance fighters and erode support for Ukraine around the globe.

A story published by the Russian News Agency Tass this week quoted a Russian lawmaker saying Zelenskyy "hastily fled" Kyiv for Lviv in far western Ukraine, despite photos and video clips showing him leading Ukraine's defense from its capital.

It's one of many distorted claims to emerge from a Russian propaganda and disinformation campaign that aims to strengthen domestic support for the invasion and undermine the resolve of Ukrainians. But the same tactics that have sustained such propaganda for years are running into a far more complex reality where the claims can be instantly and credibly rebutted on social media.

Videos and photos of Zelenskyy in Kyiv have quickly become some of the defining images of the invasion, rallying support for Ukraine at home and abroad and challenging Russia's attempt to control public perception.

By claiming he's fled Kyiv, Russia hopes to undermine Zelenskyy's status as a Ukrainian hero while also suggesting legitimate sources of news and information can't be trusted, according to Sarah Oates, a professor at the University of Maryland who studies Russian propaganda.

To Oates, it's a move that smacks of desperation by a Russian propaganda machine that can't compete with viral images of Ukrainian defiance.

"They're flailing. They've been doing this for decades and they have a very well oiled delivery system but right now their content just isn't working," Oates said. "The Ukrainians may be completely outgunned by traditional military, but they are winning the propaganda war."

Some of the most popular posts falsely claiming Zelenskyy has fled are clearly aimed at an international audience. The news outlet Sputnik ran translated versions of the story not only in English and Spanish but also Portuguese and Vietnamese. A Spanish-language TikTok video created by Sputnik  set to the grooves of the American band Twenty One Pilots  has racked up more than 2.3 million views.

Zelenskyy has declined American offers to help him evacuate the city.

"The fight is here; I need ammunition, not a ride," Zelenskyy said last week, according to a senior American intelligence official with direct knowledge of the conversation.

Despite the evidence that Zelenskyy remains in Kyiv, Sputnik and Tass have not removed their claims or added corrections. The story has also been republished in Italy, India and China.

The false story began spreading on Twitter on Friday when George Papadopoulous, a former aide to ex-President Donald Trump, posted a link to the claim in an Italian publication. Papadopoulos served prison time for lying to the FBI during its investigation into Russia's meddling on behalf of Trump in the 2016 election.

"Breaking: Zelensky, after saying he would not abandon Ukraine, has fled the country," Papadopoulous tweeted. He did not immediately return a message seeking comment on Friday.

Claims that Zelenskyy has abandoned the capital aren't the only narratives Russia is trying to use to lower Ukrainian morale, according to Roman Osadchuk, a Ukraine-based analyst with the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab. He said Russian forces have also tried to spread claims that Ukraine has surrendered.

Early in the invasion, a fake account said to be controlled by Zelenskyy appeared on the platform Telegram telling Ukrainians to surrender to the invaders.

"Attacking morale seems to be really important for the Russian forces," Osadchuk said Friday during an online discussion about the conflict.

After the European Union's president called for a ban on Russian state media, a wave of tech companies blocked the channels from their platforms within the EU. They include Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, as well as TikTok and Google, the owner of YouTube.

TikTok, which boasts more than one billion users worldwide, has emerged as perhaps the leading front in the information war that's running parallel to the military invasion, according to Ciaran O'Connor, an analyst who researches online disinformation at the London-based Institute for Strategic Dialogue. TikTok's loose content moderation policies when compared to Facebook or YouTube make it a more effective means of spreading misinformation and propaganda.

One favored tactic used by Russian state media is to highlight pro-Russian comments from Western leaders to divide its opponents, O'Connor said. For example, the Russian news agency RIA Novosti uploaded a TikTok video clip this week featuring Trump's recent praise of Russian President Vladimir Putin. It has been viewed more than 4 million times.

"This is one of the first major wars in which TikTok has been at the forefront of events on the ground," O'Connor said, "both for people watching from afar but also those trying to document events, disseminate narratives and shape perceptions."
A dog once left for dead in a Greensboro park  and whose plight created tougher animal cruelty laws in North Carolina  is being honored by Guilford County officials.

Commissioners on Thursday unanimously voted to name the Guilford County Animal Resources surgery facility Susies Medical Surgery Ward.

Susie, a pit bull-shepherd mix, was found beaten, severely burned and abandoned at a Greensboro park in 2009.

The community rallied around the 2-month-old puppy, who eventually recovered and went on to become a therapy dog, visiting schools, churches and hospitals.

The man who abused Susie received six to eight months in prison on a charge of burning personal property  his girlfriends puppy at the time. He could have received the same sentence for burning a mattress. But on the animal cruelty charge, he received only probation.

Outrage over the case spurred Susies supporters to push for "Susies Law," a measure that ultimately toughened the states animal cruelty laws in 2010. It allows for a jail sentence of up to eight months for the crime.

Donna Smith Lawrence, who adopted Susie, recently announced the now 12-year-old dog has bone cancer in her spine. Susie is set to undergo the first of five rounds of radiation on Monday, Lawrence said.

Susie has brought healing to so many people in so many ways, Lawrence told Guilford commissioners. She speaks a powerful message of love, hope and forgiveness.

Lawrence noted that Susie has inspired a movie, books and stuffed animals and was the recipient of an American Humane Hero Dog Award in 2014.

After adopting the dog, Lawrence started Susies Hope, a nonprofit to raise awareness about animal cruelty and to help rescue and foster unwanted, neglected and abused animals. She thanked the board for honoring Susie and for those who have contributed to help cover her medical expenses.

Were very optimistic and very hopeful that Susie will have much more time with us, Lawrence said. However, she added, her voice breaking, when the time comes, Susie will let me know and I will say my temporary goodbyes to her.  Please continue to pray for our Susie.

Assistant District Attorney Chris Parrish also attended Thursdays meeting to applaud the commissioners move to honor Susie. He recalled the difficulty 10 years ago of explaining to Lawrence and others that the laws at the time would not allow jail time for animal cruelty.

(Animal cruelty) is something thats a scourge on our society, he said. Susie has done a wonderful job as an ambassador, as a teacher, of going out and letting  people know what can happen at the hands of a human being when they have evil in their heart and they do what they do to an animal.

Contact Kenwyn Caranna at 336-373-7082 and follow @kcaranna on Twitter.
A building at Marion Manor Apartments has been given the all-clear after police found a suspicious package while executing a search warrant Thursday morning.

According to a statement posted to the Smyth County Sheriff's Office's Facebook page, agents with the Virginia State Police Bomb Squad and the ATF determined the package was a homemade electronic device.

The device was dismantled and contained no hazardous materials, the statement said.

As a precaution, one of the buildings in the complex was evacuated, according to a statement from the Town of Marion. Others who were not asked to evacuate did so on their own. Those evacuated were permitted to return home shortly after 3 p.m.

One resident said she made the decision to leave after police told residents not required to evacuate to go inside their homes and stay there.

I figured if it was bad enough for them to tell us that then I'm leaving, she said.

When you've got state police, the big buses with the canopies rolled out and equipment flying everywhere and stuff going, it's kind of a scary situation, she added.

The woman said she found out through a social media post from the town's spokesperson, Ken Heath, that police were investigating a suspicious package.

Thank God Ken shared it because I didn't know, she said.

The sheriff's office did not mention in its statement what investigators sought in the search warrant or if any arrests had been made.
In the decade prior to the 2020 census, Smyth County lost about 8.5% of its population, or more than 2,400 people.

In the three-year period of 2017-2020, according to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, the county saw its Gross Domestic Product -- the value of goods and services produced locally -- drop by 5.7%.

As county officials explore how best to use the federal pandemic relief funds, stemming that population loss and building the economy are two of their highest priorities.

To decide how to best use the about $5.9 million the county received from the federal American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), each member of the board of supervisors selected a representative from their district to serve on a committee tasked with reviewing proposals and recommending projects to fund. Joining them on that committee are the supervisors chair and vice chair, Charlie Atkins and Lori Deel, and Supervisor Mike Sturgill.

Their work isnt easy.

Earlier this month, Deel, noting the challenge before the committee, said the county has received more than $15 million in requests, more than double whats available.

One area that is expected to carry extra weight for funding is infrastructure, particularly the countys water systems. Dependable water supplies are integral to economic growth.

Over the coming months, the county plans to conduct a countywide water study to help assess the greatest needs.

The ARPA Committee has delayed action on a number of requests until after that studys results are reported.

However, it did recommend several requests for funding, which the supervisors then gave final nods to.

Among those was $110,000 to join the Mount Rogers Regional Partnerships I81-I77 Crossroads Talent Recruitment Program.

The program is focused on creating jobs, building the tax base and bettering the standard of living in Bland, Carroll, Grayson, Smyth, and Wythe counties and the city of Galax by attracting and encouraging national and international businesses to locate and invest in the region; and by assisting existing companies to create or retain jobs.

During a recent board of supervisors meeting, Sturgill noted the need to stem what has been called the brain drain as young people leave the county. He noted one Chilhowie High class that sent 40 of its graduates to college. None returned to work in the county, he said.

In another development move, the supervisors OKd giving $50,000 to Smyth County Tourism for marketing to people who live outside of the county.

The marketing needs to be done now, Atkins said.

Once fully open, the non-profit Blue Ridge Discovery Center, which is redeveloping the historic Konnarock Training School into whats described as a world-class education and interpretive center and biological field station, is expected to attract visitors from a multi-state area. The center already helps host naturalist rallies, summer camps and other programs that attract widespread participation.

The center asked for $250,000 of the ARPA money for a wastewater treatment center. Without the treatment facility, the center cant open.

The supervisors also approved that award.

Additionally, they also agreed to give $364,500 to add a classroom facility to the Smyth County Fire-Rescue Academy in Chilhowie.

According to Atkins, the Virginia Department of Fire Programs had approached local officials about continuing to develop the academy into a training center that could serve 13 Southwest Virginia counties. The classroom space is expected to make the academy, developed by Chilhowie Fire-EMS, into a premier fire training facility for the region.

Outside agencies would pay a fee for training as well as buy meals and fuel locally and spend money for lodging.

Under the leadership of David Haynes, Chilhowie Fire-EMS chief, the academy started in the spring of 2019 and includes a burn building to simulate structure fires, a flashover simulator to teach fire behavior, a vehicle on which to practice fire suppression, and other props used in firefighter training. However, theyve had to do classroom work at Chilhowie Middle School and the Adwolfe Fire Department.

The proposed building would provide classroom space for both firefighter and EMS training, restrooms and a shower, office, kitchen and storage. Haynes said storage of equipment is especially needed and having everything in one place will save time and money when it comes to trainees having to travel between classroom instruction and on-site instruction.

Having the academy here is beneficial to us because when you ask people to volunteer, they dont have to drive long distances for training, Haynes said in a 2020 interview.

These allocations will take $774,500 of the countys ARPA dollars. Atkins said the committee believed these requests needed to be addressed immediately while others could be considered later.

For two requests that initially went before the ARPA Committee, the supervisors decided to pay for them out of the countys General Fund.

They awarded $15,000 to the Smyth County Public Library to help match grant dollars to study the needs of the Saltville branch and help design its future home. This money will limit the library to fundraising for $5,000 to help meet the required match.

Finally, the supervisors approved $30,000 for the Chamber of Commerce of Smyth County for a child care development project.

Deel noted that the need for childcare is dire, while Atkins said that improved daycare options may help people return to the workforce.
Local retailers are pulling liquor made in Russia in opposition of the countrys invasion of Ukraine last week.

Oregon state officials announced Monday liquor stores can no longer sell Russian-produced spirits. The same day, the parent company of Fred Meyer announced the removal of Russian-made vodka from its thousands of stores, including one on Ocean Beach Highway in Longview.

Oregon

The Oregon Liquor and Cannabis Commission reports state liquor stores were directed to immediately halt sales Monday of two dozen Russian-manufactured liquor products, including Russian Standard Vodka and Beluga Vodka.

Oregon officials said 281 state liquor stores had about 5,000 bottles of the banned products as of Monday. The retailers were directed to pull them from shelves and the commission will not fulfill further orders, reports the state.

The Rainier Liquor Store on Rock Crest Street did not have any of the 24 banned products to pull, owner Traci Brumbles said. Staff members special order Beluga for customers once every few months, but the store does not regularly carry Russian-produced spirits, she added.

Stolichnaya and Smirnoff are not included in the ban. The vodkas have Russian sounding-names but are distilled outside the country.

Rainier Liquor Store employee Christina Goforth said U.S.-produced vodkas Burnetts and Platinum 7X now have American-made labels on their bottles, including a flag on Platinum products.

The ban on Russian-made spirits adds to the economic sanctions placed on Russian businesses by other states to end the conflict, says the Oregon Liquor and Cannabis Commission. The Associated Press reports Russias ruble fell another 15% against the U.S. dollar Thursday and is worth less than 1 cent, after Western nations placed financial sanctions on Russia Monday

Fred Meyer

Fred Meyers parent company Kroger announced Monday all Russian-produced vodka was pulled from store shelves last weekend in solidarity with Ukraine. The company also is sending emergency food assistance to the conflicts refugees through a grant.

The Kroger Company says it owns 2,750 grocery stories under 19 banner names, including Kroger, Fred Meyer and QFC.

Contact Daily News reporter Hayley Day at 360-577-2541 or hday@tdn.com for possible inclusion in the series.

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CLARK COUNTY  The public fire department that covers Ridgefield, La Center and Woodland says it is considering a levy to hire more paramedics because the private ambulance company they contract with is taking longer to reach those in need.

Ambulances

Clark-Cowlitz Fire Rescue says the department is seeing an exceedingly long response time from the ambulance company American Medical Response, or AMR. In a statement released Thursday, the department reports responses for the ambulance company to reach the service area has increased by about 9% since 2019. Responses over 20 minutes long have increased 109%.

That is too long for our citizens to wait for life-saving paramedic services, said Clark-Cowlitz Fire Rescue Chief John Nohr.

An AMR spokesperson said the company has met or exceeded the response time requirements for the service area since their contract with the city of Vancouver began in 2015. Clark-Cowlitz Fire Rescue says the departments contract piggybacks off the agreement with the city and AMR.

Clark-Cowlitz Fire Rescue says the contract was written when the departments service area north of 179th Street near Battle Ground was considered lower populated and AMR was allowed 20 minutes to respond to 90% of the incidents.

Population increases

The areas population has skyrocketed over the last decade. Ridgefields population increased 116% from 2010 to 2020, according to the U.S. Census. La Centers population increased 21% and Woodlands population increased 18% during the same time period.

The population increase mirrors the areas increase in emergency calls.

Clark-Cowlitz Fire Rescue responded to roughly 18% more emergency calls in 2021 compared to the year before, and 57% more since 2016, according to Thursdays report. The department says, overall, the time to respond to high-priority emergencies has increased 11% since 2019.

Levy

In addition to longer waits for ambulances, Nohr said the departments limited staff stretched across five response units forces staff to sometimes travel further to reach emergency calls when closer staff are already out.

If you go What: EMS levy workshop. When: 4 p.m. Thursday. Where: Clark-Cowlitz Fire Station 21, 911 North 65th Avenue, Ridgefield, or online at clarkfr.org.

Clark-Cowlitz Fire Rescue said its board is considering asking voters to approve a levy to hire 21 more personnel, including paramedics to offer quicker life-saving services the ambulance company is not providing. The levy would also pay for two new department ambulances, as well as hire an EMS trainer and three more firefighters to increase response times.

Clark-Cowlitz Fire Rescue says the levy would cost up to $250 a year for the owner of a $500,000 home, and be between $0.45 to 0.50 per $1,000 of assessed property value. People can comment on the proposed levy Thursday at the fire commissions board meeting in person at Station 21 in Ridgefield or over Zoom by accessing a link on clarkfr.org.

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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.

Impersonation, stolen property  Cowlitz deputies Wednesday arrested Kelly Jean Parker, 38, of Astoria, on suspicion of first-degree criminal impersonation and second-degree possession of stolen property.

Abandoning dependent  Cowlitz deputies Wednesday arrested Alondra Stephanie Trujillo, 30, of Kelso, on suspicion of abandoning a dependent in the second degree.

Assaults

500 block of Carlon Loop Road, Longview. Wednesday. Report of a man throwing a rock at someones head.

100 block of Cowlitz Way, Kelso. Wednesday.

Burglaries

100 block of Rice Park Road, Silver Lake. Wednesday. Report of residential burglary.

800 block of Grade Street, Kelso. Wednesday. Report of items worth an estimated $2,000 taken from business yard.

200 block of Pacific Avenue, Kelso. Wednesday. Report of someone entering a home through a window and taking a laptop, TV, bike and clothing.

500 block of 27th Avenue, Longview. Wednesday. Report of home break in, with laptop and jewelry missing.

Stolen vehicles

100 block of Cowlitz Drive, Kelso. Wednesday. Blue 1994 GMC Sonoma truck spray painted black.

400 block of Pacific Avenue, Kelso. Wednesday. Black Hyundai Accent.

200 block of Baltimore Street, Longview. Wednesday. Red 1993 Honda Accord. Washington BXL9781.

Thefts

2400 block of Lewis River Road, Woodland. Wednesday. Someone reported leaving payment for a storage unit and the company said they didnt receive it.

1200 block of Atlantic Avenue, Woodland. Wednesday. Report of catalytic converter theft.

Vandalism/malicious mischief

1900 block of 33rd Avenue, Longview. Wednesday.

Vehicle prowls

3600 block of Columbia Heights Road, Longview. Wednesday.

2100 block of Third Avenue, Kelso. Wednesday. Report of money and medication taken from vehicle.

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Woodlands Love Street Playhouse reopens its doors March 11 with the James Sherman comedy farce Beau Jest.

It is with an overabundance of enthusiasm, excitement and a Big Fat COVID hangover that Love Street Playhouse announces the reopening of its doors, Owner and Artistic Director Melinda Pallotta wrote in a press release submitted to The Daily News.

What a long, strange trip its been! she wrote.

The theater doors were closed March 13, 2020. She tried to open the playhouse a number of times, but the pandemic prevented it.

There was a glimmer of hope in the summer of 2021 as we attempted to get the show Shadowlands off the ground and once again got some pushback from this pesky virus, she wrote. Shadowlands wound up being performed at the Columbia Theatre Association for the Performing Arts in Longview to a rousing success, Managing Director Lou Pallotta said in the press release.

And now were back and ready for a fun-filled year of great comedy and drama! We cant wait to see everyone again, he said.

In Beau Jest, Sarah is a nice Jewish girl whose parents want her to marry a nice Jewish boy. Her parents have not met her boyfriend, an advertising executive named Chris Kringle. Sarah tells her parents she is dating a Jewish doctor, who they insist upon meeting.

Sarah plans a dinner party. Over Chris protests, she hires an escort service to send her a Jewish date to portray Dr. Steinberg. They instead send an aspiring actor, Bob Schroeder, who agrees to impersonate the doctor. He is convincing in his role, Sarahs parents are enraptured and soon Sarah falls for Bob.

Cast and creative team

The cast includes Portland resident Kilee Rheinsburg plays Sarah, Longview resident Adam Pithan plays Bob (aka Dr. Steinberg), Longview resident Larry E. Fox plays Sarahs dad Abe, Vancouver resident Sharon Mann plays Sarahs mom Miriam, Vancouver resident Wayne Yancey plays Sarahs doubting brother Joel and Portland resident Evan Adent plays Chris.

Vancouver resident Brenda McGinnis is the director. Melinda Pallotta is the producer and set designer. Lou Pallotta, Love Street Playhouse co-owner, is the managing director. Mikail Nordquist of Longview is in charge of lighting and design. Corrie Graham is the directors assistant. Longview resident Lorraine Little is in charge of costume design and Katya Leuthold is the production stage manager.

The 2022 lineup

Up next at the playhouse is The Explorators Clubfollowed by a Sherlock Holmes twist, Miss Holmes. Ending the year will be the Christmas show A Nice Family Gathering.

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The resolution on Ukraine's nuclear security, adopted by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), undermines the agency's independence as a professional international organization, China's Permanent Representative to the United Nations in Vienna Wang Qun said Thursday.

Wang made the remarks after voting against the resolution at a meeting convened by the IAEA Board of Governors to discuss the situation in Ukraine.

The resolution on nuclear safety, security and safeguards implications of the situation in Ukraine, proposed by Canada and Poland, was adopted by the IAEA board at the meeting.

The Chinese envoy said the resolution has "obviously gone beyond the IAEA's mandate by introducing many politicized elements."

"It's unacceptable that relevant countries, in disregard of the constructive suggestions of amendment, obstinately pushed the resolution into vote," he said.

Wang said that China is concerned about the safety, security and safeguards of nuclear facilities in Ukraine and supports the IAEA in performing its duties in accordance with its mandate.

He called for restraint on all relevant sides to avoid unintended nuclear safety and security accidents.

China will continue to support diplomatic efforts conducive to de-escalation of the situation in Ukraine, he added.
China's TikTok is being targeted by a group of states seeking to determine whether the social media platform is being improperly marketed to children.

China's TikTok is being targeted by a group of states seeking to determine whether the social media platform is being improperly marketed to children. The states are investigating how the ByteDance Ltd-owned TikTok promotes itself to younger users, including techniques to increase time spent on the platform and frequency of use, Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey said Wednesday. She is co-leading the probe with California, Florida, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Nebraska, New Jersey, Tennessee and Vermont.

As children and teens already grapple with issues of anxiety, social pressure, and depression, we cannot allow social media to further harm their physical health and mental wellbeing, Healey said in a statement. State attorneys general have an imperative to protect young people and seek more information about how companies like TikTok are influencing their daily lives.

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TikTok issued a statement saying, We care deeply about building an experience that helps to protect and support the well-being of our community, and appreciate that the state attorneys general are focusing on the safety of younger users. We look forward to providing information on the many safety and privacy protections we have for teens.

The probe was announced less than four months after a group of U.S. state attorneys general said they are investigating Meta Platforms Inc.s Instagram photo-sharing app over its efforts to engage children and young adults. In May, 44 attorneys general urged Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg to drop the project. The company paused work on its Instagram Kids site in September after the Wall Street Journal reported that Facebook consistently played down its own research that the app can harm the mental well-being of its youngest users.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said last month that he is probing TikTok for potential facilitation of human trafficking and child privacy violations as well as other possibly unlawful conduct.
Do the ends justify the memes? When Russia began its invasion of Ukraine, cryptocurrency fans appeared to be trapped in a decadent fantasy.

When Russia began its invasion of Ukraine, cryptocurrency fans appeared to be trapped in a decadent fantasy. A batch of CryptoPunk NFTs (blockchain collectibles) had just been yanked from auction at Sothebys amid fading enthusiasm and a broader market sell-off. The seller tweeted Drake memes to laugh off the canceled event, but considering the glitzy marketing campaign, it was a humbling moment.

A week later, another CryptoPunk is sitting in a Ukraine government account as part of a $51 million fundraising drive. Kyiv is using its tech-savviness to appeal for all sorts of assets that it can sell to finance the war effort. Like the New Zealand lamb donated in the First World War, or chunks of the Berlin Wall sold as memorabilia for a good cause, NFTs are finding a new use in conflict beyond social status and virtual wealth.

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Crypto evangelists have been quick to leap on the implications of their favorite asset as a lifeline in war after years of bad press over speculation, illicit money flows and criminal activity. With financial markets cratering and sanctions piling up on Russia, digital tokens and artworks are being sought as an alternative to otherwise vulnerable forms of payment. Bitcoin trading in rubles and hryvnia is surging.

It may very well be that this is what wartime back-channels will look like in the future. Crypto has traditionally been user-agnostic, used by Ukraine-linked organizations that have been blocked because of military ties, or stolen to reportedly fund North Korea missile programs.

But theres a bigger dose of reality here for cryptos utopian narrative of borderless and stateless money as bombs rain down at Europes doorstep. In a world where even Switzerland is ditching historic neutrality, crypto is finding it hard to escape geopolitical facts on the ground.

Crypto is becoming less meta. Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of the Ethereum blockchain, tweeted support for Ukraine fundraising: Ethereum is neutral, but I am not. While one CryptoPunk owner a few months ago told Wired she felt like she was living in the metaverse and the physical world was slowing her down, today the Uniswap exchange has a Ukraine donation facility and Kyiv is telling Facebook parent Meta Platforms Inc. that it must ensure that there is no place for war criminals in Metaverse.

Just as crypto fans are feeling forced to choose sides, crypto exchanges are also being asked to confront their freewheeling, patchily regulated past. While the likes of Kraken Chief Executive Officer Jesse Powell insist that crypto is about making arbitrary lines on maps meaningless, governments are prodding exchanges to make sure its not being used to evade sanctions. Finance ministers from the Group of Seven and European Union are working on a maximum sanctions toolkit that includes crypto assets, while U.S. financial regulators are probing whether NFT offerings run afoul of their rules.

Perhaps in the same way that Covid-19 saw the crypto market balloon but also spurred governments to drag it into the light, this conflict will likely intensify regulatory efforts. The narrative that the benefits of secrecy or anonymity (technically pseudo-nymity) outweigh the costs will cut little ice  coincidentally, its also one that was used by tax havens, which have found life a lot harder as the world counts the cost of leaking money to them. Even as big exchanges push back against the idea of barring all Russian users, they are at pains to point out theyve complied with sanctions. Blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis says dodging sanctions without detection would be difficult.

To be sure, the likes of Mike Novogratz predict that sanctions and geopolitical crisis will eventually boost the case for crypto. As capital gets squeezed out of other assets, more of it could find a home there  and even as bombs drop, the sector is having little trouble raising funds.

But history is still being written. Its unclear if a post-war crypto market will be able to spread HODL memes with quite the same level of science-fiction frenzy. One Russian expat in the U.S. told Bloomberg News that even if crypto platforms offered alternatives, cash was still king in times of trouble: You cant pay everything by crypto, and anyway need to withdraw money on a debit card or exchange on cash.

Maybe when swords are melted back into plowshares, crypto evangelists will have a new story to tell. But for the time being, this feels like a dose of reality after years of decadence. Like those Berlin Wall chunks before it, a CryptoPunk today might have value only because it was donated during a war and can be sold for cash. The ends sometimes justify the memes.

Lionel Laurent is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering the European Union and France. He worked previously at Reuters and Forbes.
The malleable arm is mostly bendy, with a rigid part at the end (P6-P5). Credit: Imperial College London

Imperial researchers have designed a malleable robotic arm that can be guided into shape by a person using augmented reality (AR) goggles.

The flexible arm, which was designed and created at Imperial College London, can twist and turn in all directions, making it readily customisable for potential applications in manufacturing, spacecraft maintenance, and even injury rehabilitation.

Instead of being constrained by rigid limbs and firm joints, the versatile arm is readily bendable into a wide variety of shapes. In practice, people working alongside the robot would manually bend the arm into the precise shape needed for each task, a level of flexibility made possible by the slippery layers of mylar sheets inside, which slide over one another and can lock into place. However, configuring the robot into specific shapes without guidance has proven to be difficult for users.

To enhance the robot's user-friendliness, researchers at Imperial's REDS (Robotic manipulation: Engineering, Design, and Science) Lab have designed a system for users to see in AR how to configure their robot. Wearing mixed reality smartglasses and through motion tracking cameras, users see templates and designs in front of them superimposed onto their real-world environment. They then adjust the robotic arm until it matches the template, which turns green on successful configuration so that the robot can be locked into place.

Credit: Imperial College London

Senior author of the paper Dr. Nicolas Rojas, of Imperial's Dyson School of Design Engineering, said: "One of the key issues in adjusting these robots is accuracy in their new position. We humans aren't great at making sure the new position matches the template, which is why we looked to AR for help.

"We've shown that AR can simplify working alongside our malleable robot. The approach gives users a range of easy-to-create robot positions, for all sorts of applications, without needing so much technical expertise."

The researchers tested the system on five men aged 2026 with experience in robotics but no experience with manipulating malleable robots specifically. The subjects were able to adjust the robot accurately, and the results are published in IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine.

Although the pool of participants was narrow, the researchers say their initial findings show that AR could be a successful approach to adapting malleable robots following further testing and user training.

The AR template turns green to indicate successful configuration. Credit: Imperial College London

Bent into shape

Potential applications include manufacturing, and building and vehicle maintenance. Because the arm is lightweight, it could also be used on spacecraft where low-weight instruments are preferred. It is also gentle enough that it could be used in injury rehabilitation, helping a patient perform an exercise while their physiotherapist performs another.

Co-first authors Ph.D. researchers Alex Ranne and Angus Clark, also of the Dyson School of Design Engineering, said: "In many ways it can be seen as a detached, bendier, third arm. It could help in many situations where an extra limb might come in handy and help to spread the workload."

The researchers are still in the process of perfecting the robot as well as its AR component. Next, they will look into introducing touch and audio elements to the AR to boost its accuracy in configuring the robot.

They are also looking into strengthening the robots. Although their flexibility and softness makes them easier to configure and maybe even safer to work alongside humans, they are less rigid while in the locked position, which could affect precision and accuracy.

Explore further Physical texture of robots influences judgments of their personality

More information: Alex Ranne et al, Augmented Reality-Assisted Reconfiguration and Workspace Visualization of Malleable Robots: Workspace Modification Through Holographic Guidance, IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine (2022). Alex Ranne et al, Augmented Reality-Assisted Reconfiguration and Workspace Visualization of Malleable Robots: Workspace Modification Through Holographic Guidance,(2022). DOI: 10.1109/MRA.2022.3141973
A new wireless charging technology opens the door to developing charging stations for consumer use. Credit: Aalto University

A new wireless charging system can charge devices placed anywhere within a ring around it. Existing systems transfer power in a specific direction or to a specific position. By providing a donut-shaped charging field, the new system offers a more convenient and reliable design for consumer use.

The main challenge in creating an omnidirectional charger has been that the strength of the charging field changes with location. This means that devices will charge inefficiently if they are in the wrong spot or aren't oriented correctly. One approach to solve this is to create a charging field using several transmitter coils connected to several power sources, but this increases the complexity of the transmitter, making the system impractical. Other systems use feedback to properly orient the charging field, but the control systems are also complicated and expensive.

Researchers at Aalto University developed the new system to address these challenges. "We set out to create a simple, low-cost system using only a single power source," says Nam Ha-Van, the postdoctoral researcher who led the study.

The key to the new design is a cylindrical power coil. The wire at the top of the coil is wound in the opposite direction to the wire at the bottom of the coil, with a z-shaped bridge connecting them. Since the current flows through these windings in opposite directions, they produce complementary magnetic fields. One field flows out from the middle of the cylindrical coil, around the top winding, and back in through the top; the other flows out from the middle, around the bottom coil, and back in through the bottom.

This results in an even magnetic field around the middle of the charging coil. Receivers placed anywhere within that area charge efficiently, regardless of their position or orientation. "This was just a proof of concept," says Yining Liu, a doctoral candidate. "Now we can work to improve the efficiencymaybe to around 90%  and also the power."

Based on simulations of the electromagnetic field around a consumer device, the researchers found that the level of exposure conformed to the requirements in safety regulations. However, further safety studies will be required before the technology can be used.

The new design complements recent work from the same research group which made it possible to transfer power to multiple, moving receivers in a charging area. The two technologies address different dimensions of the challenge of wireless charging: freedom of movement for industrial applications and free placement for consumer, tabletop devices.

The results have been published in IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics.

Explore further New type of wireless charger can charge multiple devices simultaneously

More information: Nam Van Ha et al, Cylindrical Transmitting Coil for Two-Dimensional Omnidirectional Wireless Power Transfer, IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics (2022). Nam Van Ha et al, Cylindrical Transmitting Coil for Two-Dimensional Omnidirectional Wireless Power Transfer,(2022). DOI: 10.1109/TIE.2022.3151961
Credit: Shutterstock

Solar electricity is produced almost entirely by panels, or modules, constructed with light-absorbing cells made from silicon. Silicon is the industry standard because it is reliable and inexpensive, with structure and performance that are well understood.

But silicon cell modules are little more than 20% efficient in converting sunlight into electricity, and their production is relatively expensive and complicated. Efforts to lower technology costs relative to yield therefore include different materials or combinations of materials. One such mix is cadmium, selenium and telluride, abbreviated as CdSeTe and spoken colloquially as "CadTel."

"CadTel makes up only about 5% of the photovoltaics market, but it has significant potential," says Arthur Onno, an assistant research professor with the Holman Research Group in the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering at Arizona State University. "For example, the absorbers are approximately 40 times thinner than those in silicon cells. Also, CadTel cells can be applied directly onto the front glass of a module through a more efficient production process called vapor transport deposition, which is the not the case for silicon. These differentiations can significantly change the manufacturing and cost structures for solar panels."

However, current CdSeTe devices display poorly understood voltage deficits that compromise their performance. Onno says the research community working with CdSeTe lacks the tools and techniques necessary to examine voltage losses and guide optimization in ways that are commonplace for improving silicon-based solar cells.

"It means issues are often associated with 'this part' or 'that part' of a device without any clear quantification of the losses or the mechanisms at play," Onno says. "It's sort of 'flying blind," so there is a real opportunity to bring important contributions to this field."

To seize that opportunity, Onno has been running a three-year project to develop a means of understanding why CdSeTe solar cell voltages are not higherand thereby illuminate the way forward to improved performance.

The effort has been led by the Holman Research Group, which is part of the School of Electrical, Computer and Energy Engineering, one of the seven Fulton Schools at ASU, in partnership with the Center for Next Generation Photovoltaics at Colorado State University, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colorado, and First Solar Inc. of Tempe, Arizona. Their research has been supported by a $1.5 million grant from the Solar Energy Technologies Office within the U.S. Department of Energy.

"We have succeeded in identifying a technique that works. The measurement is called external radiative efficiency, or ERE," Onno says. "We started using it on solar cells produced by our project partners, and we found a lot of hidden potential.

"We also learned that the main mechanism limiting voltage is not necessarily linked to defects within the bulk of the cell nor at the interfaces between different materials comprising the cell," he says. "That's usually what is assumed in the CadTel community. But instead, it's an issue with selectivity, which is when electrons within the cell go the wrong way and cancel each other."

Selectivity losses correspond to a drop between the internal and external voltages of the cell. Internal voltage is a measure of how defects within the bulk of the absorber and at its interfaces reduce voltage below an ideal thermodynamic limit. External voltage corresponds to internal voltage minus losses due to non-ideal behavior in the semipermeable membranes that sandwich or wrap the cell absorber and direct the electron flow in and out of the cell to generate an electric current.

The very presence of selectivity losses means these semipermeable membranes are imperfect, and Onno says the CdSeTe community has long assumed that semipermeable membranes were not an issue and therefore overlooked these losses.

The team's new research shows that things are more complicated than assumed, and more precise accounting is required because different devices exhibit different types of voltage losses. Consequently, the ability to measure internal voltage through ERE is an important innovation.

Onno says that the "doping" of absorbers through the addition of elements like arsenic helps to reduce selectivity losses. It does so because absorbers engineered in this way can support the role of the semipermeable membrane by letting electrons flow only one way through them.

This means altering the fabrication of the absorber with doping can change overall selectivity even when semipermeable membranes are left unchanged. Onno says this is important because it shows that there are multiple ways to achieve low selectivity losses and improve the efficiency of CdSeTe devices.

These new findings are revealed in "Understanding what limits the voltage of polycrystalline CdSeTe solar cells," a new paper written by Onno with his colleagues and published in the research journal Nature Energy.

Moving forward, the team will apply the measurement technique to help improve solar cells produced from other advanced materials such as perovskites, a class of compounds that absorb light from a different portion of the electromagnetic spectrum than the range for silicon.

The research results will also be applied to work with traditional silicon solar cells. The Holman Research Group is supporting a project led by Mariana Bertoni, an associate professor of electrical engineering in the Fulton Schools, to monitor device degradation in the field. The ERE technique works through glass, so solar cells already packaged inside commercial modules can be evaluated in ways that are not currently possible using a standard method known as quasi-steady-state photoconductance, or QSSPC.

"We're also focused on getting this technology into the hands of industry," says Zachary Holman, director of the Holman Research Group and an associate professor of electrical engineering in the Fulton Schools. "We have already built replicates of this measurement technique for a couple of domestic solar cell and module manufacturers."

Each company purchased components from a list supplied by the Holman Research Group. The ASU team then assembled the ERE unit and conducted lab training with an engineer from the manufacturer before shipping everything to their site.

Holman says his group plans to continue distribution of the new capability, with added drive from the launch of Arizona's New Economy Initiative, or NEI, to position Phoenix and the state for success in cultivating high-tech industry.

"The NEI's Science and Technology Center for Advanced Materials, Processes and Energy Devices, or AMPED, has photovoltaics as a thrust area," he says. "And it has recently extended support for further commercialization of this innovation, which is really going to help us get it out in the world and create impact."

Explore further Researchers demonstrate low-temperature and effective ex situ group V doping of polycrystalline solar cells

More information: Arthur Onno et al, Understanding what limits the voltage of polycrystalline CdSeTe solar cells, Nature Energy (2022). Journal information: Nature Energy Arthur Onno et al, Understanding what limits the voltage of polycrystalline CdSeTe solar cells,(2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41560-022-00985-z
Smart devices in a flat lay on a white table. Credit: Carnegie Mellon University

Smartphones, smartwatches, smart health devices, and pervasive smart sensors are becoming enmeshed in our daily lives, generating a flood of data that help keep us safe, healthy, and informed. As we see more sources of data, like these low-resource client devices, there is an increasing demand for sophisticated computing on those data, especially to extract value from the data using machine learning. Low-resource devices have limited computing capabilities because of the energy limitation of their small batteries and typically simple computing hardware. To get around these shortcomings, these devices could instead use computational offloading, sending sensor data for processing to a nearby edge device or to the cloud. Offloading makes even very sophisticated data processing possible, but only with the concession that the server performing the processing has unencrypted access to the data.

A new way of computing, which is called homomorphically encrypted computing, mitigates these privacy concerns: using this technique, the client encrypts its data, sends the encrypted data for offloading, and the offloaded processing happens without ever decrypting the data. Encrypted computing has an extremely high computational cost, which has been mostly regarded as infeasible. Recently, advances in computer architecture and algorithms have made it feasible to offload encrypted computation with reasonable cost, making the technique feasible. However, these advances ignore costs imposed on the low-resource client by encrypted computing, which are associated with arranging the data for encrypted processing, and actually encrypting the data. These costs make encrypted offload computing infeasible for low-resource devices.

McKenzie van der Hagen, a Ph.D. student of electrical and computer engineering at Carnegie Mellon University, and her advisor, Associate Professor Brandon Lucia, have developed new algorithms and hardware designs that directly address these costs to client devices, making encrypted offloading feasible, even for low-resource clients. The two published a paper at this year's annual symposium on Architectural Support for Programming Languages and Operating Systems (ASPLOS). ASPLOS is a venue in the field and is being held in Lausanne, Switzerland from February 28 to March 4.

For encrypted computing, the device encrypts the data such that computations can be performed on it without decrypting it. The drawback, however, is that only linear operations, like addition and multiplication, can be performed on the encrypted data. Research has traditionally focused on the server because creating work-arounds that fit these constraints drastically increases the number and complexity of computations and thus the time and energy needed.

"The implementations that are available are so highly-optimized for this server that they're not considering the work that has to be done on the client," van der Hagen said. "We show that it's not practical for these resource-constrained clients to participate in these schemes."

Devices that use computational offloading usually send all of the data in one big package and the servers perform lots of computations at once. This requires a lot of energy from the client. Instead, van der Hagen proposes sending the encrypted data in smaller chunks, which would spread the energy demands over a period of time.

Suddenly, multiple rounds of communication with the server becomes feasible. With this new capability, van der Hagen designed processes that are most energy efficient for the client. First, the device collects data, encrypts it, and then sends it to the server. The server performs a handful of linear operations on the encrypted data before sending it back to the device. The device then decrypts the data and completes nonlinear calculations that cannot be done on encrypted data. That data is encrypted again and sent back to the server for another round of linear operations. This process is repeated until the computations are complete.

"We also show that, counterintuitively, it is actually better for the client to be doing this continuous interaction with smaller ciphertexts than to use all of their energy to send a ton of data at the beginning and decrypt a ton of data at the end," van der Hagen said. "We reduce communication costs by up to three orders of magnitude."

This work also introduced new algorithms that make the computations less complex by minimizing the size of the encrypted data, and they created hardware that supports the use of these algorithms. Both are specially designed for these low power clients. By designing within these constraints, researchers ensure that their work will benefit many devices with a variety of goals.

"The work that we're doing can help clients participate in encrypted computing for many different applications and even applications that are still coming," van der Hagen said. "These are very flexible concepts and flexible implementations that can really help for the future."

Explore further Quantum computing: When ignorance is wanted

More information: The researchers published a paper at this year's annual symposium on The researchers published a paper at this year's annual symposium on Architectural Support for Programming Languages and Operating Systems (ASPLOS).
The Microsoft company logo is displayed at their offices in Sydney, Australia, on Wednesday, Feb. 3, 2021. Microsoft has closed on its approximately $16 billion acquisition of speech recognition company Nuance. The deal, which was announced last year, helps Microsoft Corp. get more entrenched into hospitals and the health care industry through Nuance's widely used medical dictation and transcription tools. Credit: AP Photo/Rick Rycroft, File

Microsoft has closed on its approximately $16 billion acquisition of speech recognition company Nuance.

The deal, which was announced last year, helps Microsoft Corp. get more entrenched into hospitals and the health care industry through Nuance's widely used medical dictation and transcription tools. The acquisition is Microsoft's second-largest after its $26 billion purchase of career networking service LinkedIn in 2016.

Nuance's artificial intelligence technology helped power Apple's Siri digital voice assistant upon its release on iPhones more than a decade agol. The Burlington, Massachusetts-based company has since shifted to focus on physicians and other tailored uses of its Dragon line of voice recognition tools.

Microsoft announced it was buying the company in April 2021 but faced a setback in December when British antitrust regulators said they were opening an investigation into whether it could result in a "substantial lessening of competition" in the U.K. market. The British agency announced it cleared that deal Wednesday.

The merger was separately cleared later in December by regulators in the European Union, which Britain left in 2020. The EU's top antitrust authority said Microsoft and Nuance "offer very different products" and would continue to face strong competition in their respective markets.

Microsoft continued to shop this year, in January announcing that it would spend nearly $70 billion to acquire video game maker Activision Blizzard.

Mark Benjamin will continue to serve as CEO of Nuance and report to Scott Guthrie, the head of Microsoft's cloud computing and AI division.

Shares of Microsoft, based in Redmond, Washington, declined slightly amid a broader market sell-off Friday.

Explore further UK antitrust watchdog investigates Microsoft's Nuance deal

 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
A do-it-yourself air purifier in use in a classroom. Credit: Douglas Hannah, CC BY-ND

One afternoon, a dozen Arizona State University students gathered to spend the morning cutting cardboard, taping fans and assembling filters in an effort to build 125 portable air purifiers for local schools. That same morning, staff members at a homeless shelter in Los Angeles were setting up 20 homemade purifiers of their own, while in Brookline, Massachusetts, another DIY air purifier was whirring quietly in the back of a day care classroom as children played.

The technology in all three casesan unassuming duct tape-and-cardboard construction known as a Corsi-Rosenthal boxis playing an important part in the fight against COVID-19. The story of how it came to be also reveals a lot about communities as sources of innovation and resilience in the face of disasters.

A simple technology with a big effect

As it became clear that COVID-19 was spread through airborne transmission, people started wearing masks and building managers rushed to upgrade their ventilation systems. This typically meant installing high-efficiency HEPA filters. These filters work by capturing virus-laden particles: Air is forced into a porous mat, contaminants are filtered out, and clean air passes through.

The efficacy of a building's ventilation system is governed by two factors, though, not just the quality of the filters. The amount of air moved through the ventilation systems matters as well. Experts typically recommend five to six air changes per hour in shared spaces, meaning the entire volume of air in a room is replaced every 45 minutes. Systems in many older buildings can't manage this volume, however.

Portable air filters are an option for augmenting ventilation systems, but they typically cost hundreds of dollars, which puts them out of range for schools and other public spaces that face budget constraints.

This is where the Corsi-Rosenthal box comes in. It's a cube consisting of four to five off-the-shelf furnace filters topped by a standard box fan blowing outward. Once sealed together with tape, it can sit on a floor, shelf or table. The fan draws air through the sides of the cube and out the top. The units are simple, durable and easy to make, and are more effective than simply placing a single filter in front of a box fan. It usually takes 40 minutes, minimal technical expertise and US$60 to $90 in materials that are available from any home supply store.

Despite this simplicity, though, these homemade units are extremely effective. When used in a shared space like a classroom or hospital ward, they can supplement existing ventilation and remove airborne contaminants, including smoke and virus-laden particles. A raft of recent peer-reviewed research has found portable air purifiers can dramatically reduce aerosol transmission. Other preprint and under-review studies have found Corsi-Rosenthal boxes perform as well as professional units at a fraction of the cost.

Origins of the Corsi-Rosenthal box

The formal story of the Corsi-Rosenthal box began in August 2020, when Richard Corsi, an air quality expert and now dean at the University of California, Davis, pitched the idea of building cheap box-fan air filters on Twitter. Jim Rosenthal, the CEO of a Texas-based filter company, had been playing around with a similar idea and quickly built the first prototype.

Within days, tinkerers and air quality engineers alike were constructing their own Corsi-Rosenthal boxes and sharing the results on social media. A vibrant conversation emerged on Twitter, blending sophisticated technical analysis from engineers with the insight and efforts of nonspecialists.

By December, hundreds of people were making Corsi-Rosenthal boxes, and thousands more had read press coverage in outlets like Wired. In different corners of the world, people tweaked designs based on the availability of supplies and different needs. Their collective improvements and adaptations were documented by dedicated websites and blogs, as well as news reports.

In some cases, design tweaks proved to be influential. In November 2020, for example, a homeowner in North Carolina discovered an issue with air being drawn back in through the corners of the most commonly used square fans. Subsequent testing by air quality experts showed that adding a shroud to the fan increased efficiency by as much as 50%.

Analyzing social media and news coverage gives a sense of the scale of the Corsi-Rosenthal box phenomenon. As of January 2022, more than 1,000 units were in use in schools, with thousands more in homes and offices. More than 3,500 people had used the hashtag #corsirosenthalbox on Twitter, and tens of thousands more contributed to the online conversation. News articles and explainer videos on YouTube had collectively accumulated more than 1.9 million views.

Corsi-Rosenthal boxes assembled and awaiting delivery to a homeless shelter in California. Credit: Douglas Hannah, CC BY-ND

Communities as sources of innovation

The story of the Corsi-Rosenthal box is part of a broader story of the grassroots response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The early days of the pandemic did more than just take a terrible toll on people. They also galvanized a massive entrepreneurial effort, with tens of thousands of everyday citizens lending their hands to design and produce the critical medical supplies and personal protective equipment that was suddenly needed.

My research team has been tracking these efforts. Through dozens of interviews and months of archival research, we've built a database of more than 200 startupsformal and informal, nonprofit and for-profitwhose activities ranged from designing oxygen concentrators to 3D printing face shields to building UV disinfection rooms. The picture of innovation that emerges is a far cry from the traditional lab coats and middle managers image that is commonly associated with new technologies.

First, few of the innovations we've tracked were actually invented by a single person, or even a single team. Rather, they were the joint project of broad networks of individual contributors from different backgrounds and organizations. This breadth is important because it brings more knowledge and more diverse perspectives. It can also be helpful for tapping existing knowledge. For example, as Corsi-Rosenthal boxes gained traction, the community was able to draw on earlier iterations that had been developed to help with wildfire smoke.

Second, the innovation process lacked hierarchical control. There was no single person directing where or how the technology was used. This lack of control made it easier to experiment and adapt to local conditions. One example is the development of oxygen concentrators for use in hospitals in India. Realizing that existing Western technologies failed frequently in the more humid operating environment typical of India, teams of innovators rallied to develop and share improved open-source designs.

Third, these communities shared knowledge online. This allowed individual contributors to communicate directly and share ideas, which helped knowledge spread rapidly through the network. It also meant that knowledge was more readily accessible. The detailed designs and test results from air quality engineers working on Corsi-Rosenthal boxes were readily available to anyone in the community.

Also, most of the organizations we tracked used Facebook, Twitter and Slack as tools to manage collaboration within and between organizations. As I and others have argued, this gives grassroots innovation tremendous promiseespecially in a world where large-scale disruptions like a pandemic are increasingly common.

Pitfalls of grassroots innovation

Despite this promise, there are areas in which grassroots innovation communities falter. One challenge is a lack of technological sophistication and resources. While some of the communities in our study produced remarkably complex devices, the greatest contribution was in far simpler products like face shields and surgical gowns.

Then there are rules and regulations. Even when grassroots communities can produce safe and effective innovations, existing rules may not be ready to receive them. Some hospitals were unable to accept personal protective equipment provided by the community during the pandemic because of inflexible procurement policies, and today some schools continue to prohibit Corsi-Rosenthal boxes.

A final issue is sustaining effort. While grassroots communities were vital to allowing hospitals and medical facilities to remain functioning during the early days of the pandemic, many of the efforts that depended on volunteer labor eventually ran out of steam.

What this means for the future

As the second anniversary of the U.S. declaration of emergency approaches, a key lesson the world has learned is the importance of investing in indoor air quality, for example through monitoring and improved ventilation and filtration. And the value of ventilation as a noninvasive public health tool is even greater as mask mandates wane.

Another, broader lesson is the power of grassroots innovation and citizen engineering to develop these technologies. The story of the Corsi-Rosenthal box, like the thousands of other grassroots innovations developed during the pandemic, is fundamentally about people taking the welfare of their communities into their own hands. The most popular tweet shared about Corsi-Rosenthal boxes was from a 14-year-old aspiring engineer in Ontario offering to build and donate boxes to anyone in need.

Explore further From pandemic to endemic: The future of masking

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, the biggest nuclear power station in Europe, about 50 km from Zaporozhye in Ukraine, 2009. Two cooling towers (one largely obscured by the other) at the left and 6 VVER reactor buildings. Photo from the "Nikopol" bank of the river Dnieper. The two tall smokestacks are at a coal-fired generating station about 3km beyond the nuclear plant. Credit: Ralf1969/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0

It sounds like a nightmare come true. During a military offensive as part of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, fire broke out at Europe's largest nuclear power station, the Zaporizhzhia power plant in the southern city of Enerhodar.

From what we understand of the situation, Russian troops were shelling the area during a battle for control of the facility, which supplies 25% of Ukraine's electricity.

The plant has six large 950-megawatt reactors, built between 1980 and 1986crucially to a different design to the notorious and now decommissioned Chernobyl power station.

The fire evidently broke out in a multi-storey training building but has since been reportedly extinguished.

Was there a real risk of nuclear contamination?

The incident understandably raised the specter of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. But it's important to remember these are two different types of reactor. Chernobyl used RBMK-type reactors, a Soviet design from the 1970s that was never built in the West because of inherent safety flaws.

The Zaporizhzhia power station features Russian-designed VVER reactors, which use broadly the same design as the Pressurized Water Reactor (PWR), the most popular reactor design used worldwide and also the type used in nuclear-powered submarines.

A PWR has a self-contained primary cooling water system to transfer heat from the reactor core to a steam generator. This system is kept pressurized so the water doesn't boilhence its name. A second, separate water loop transfers the steam produced in the steam generator to the turbine that produces the electricity.

Another crucial contrast with Chernobyl is the fact that VVER and PWR reactors have a massive concrete containment around the reactor to stop any radioactive release. This completely surrounds the reactor and steam generators, ensuring any water that could potentially be radioactive is within the containment.

The containment is typically constructed from pre-stressed concrete with a steel liner. In contrast, the Chernobyl-type reactor was physically very large, meaning a similar containment to enclose that system would have been very expensive.

Besides the normal cooling systems, VVER reactors have emergency core cooling systems consisting of four "hydroaccumulators"vessels pressurized with gas and filled with water that can be automatically released into the reactor to cool it. These are called "passive" systems because they rely only on gas pressure to inject the water, rather than pumps that would require electrical power.

They also have multiple systems that use pumps to inject water into the reactor to prevent a core meltdown if the normal cooling systems are not available, for instance as a result of a loss of electrical power.

If the connection to the grid is lost, standby diesel generators can provide electrical supplies to essential plant. This backup plant has several "trains"identical and independent sets of plant that are physically separated and perform the same safety function. For example, this VVER has three trains of high-pressure water injection and three trains of low-pressure injection.

The four trains of passive hydroaccumulators do not need diesel supplies and will still provide the necessary cooling.

Previous disasters

In 1979, one of the PWRs at Three Mile Island in the US state of Pennsylvania suffered a core meltdown, but there was practically no radioactive release to the environment because of the concrete containment system.

After the 2011 Fukushima disaster in Japan, Ukraine's nuclear regulator examined the capability of its nuclear power plants to withstand extreme events so all nuclear plants are better prepared to cope with these situations. This led to the installation of mobile diesel-driven pumps that can be connected to the reactor's cooling system to provide water in an emergency.

The Zaporizhzhia plant supplies 25% of Ukraine's electricity, and Russia presumably wanted to gain control of it so as to control the electricity supply. Despite the self-evident recklessness of fighting near a nuclear power plant, it would not be in Russia's interest to cause a radioactive release because this would immediately affect its army personnel in the vicinity, and also potentially cause a radioactive cloud to spread over western Russia and particularly the annexed region of Crimea, just to the south of the plant.

Explore further Military action in radioactive Chernobyl could be dangerous for people and the environment

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain

A new study by Kingston University exploring the impact social media is having on young people found school children as young as 11 are fame-seeking through the TikTok video-sharing platform, potentially putting their mental health at risk.

The research by marketing experts examined the psychology of secondary school age TikTokers and the uses and gratifications they get from the social networking site.

The paper sought to uncover how much young people are motivated by self-expression, social recognition and fame-seeking when using TikTok. The findings revealed that children often believe that they will become famous by sharing video clips of their talents, and at the same time, increasing the risk of being exposed to predatory and privacy issues at a very young age.

The paper was published by Dr. Rita Kottasz, Associate Professor of Marketing at Kingston Business School, and Kingston Master's graduate Christina Bucknell-Bossen. Dr. Kottasz said school children were consciously seeking celebrity statusrather than subconsciously, as previously believedwhich could set them up for failure. "Young people think that they can easily become famous, perhaps due to the rising number of reality TV stars across the globe," Dr. Rita Kottasz said.

"Becoming famous may be an unrealistic expectation nonetheless. Even those who become famous, such as contestants on The X Factor or The Apprentice, are often in the public eye for a very short time, then disappear. These sorts of expectations can be as much of a problem for the mental health of young people as predatory and privacy issues on social media," she added.

Bucknell-Bossen conducted the research for her Master's degree in music and creative industries at Kingston Business School. Her professional experience in artist management in the music industry and as a project manager on the Danish version of The X Factor gave Bucknell-Bossen insight into the industry and inspired her to explore this phenomenon.

"One of the reasons that identity and fame-seeking are important topics to me is because I saw a lot of people having great success, but then having that taken away from them," Bucknell-Bossen said. "I saw how it affected them psychologically because their identity was so intertwined with their careers. This is especially for creative people, because when you offer something you've created up to the world and people judge you, it can really impact on them," she said.

Previous studies have largely focused on teenagers aged 16 and upwards, but this latest researchcarried out in Bucknell-Bossen's home country, Denmarkreached a much younger demographic, aged 1116.

Although TikTok requires young people to be at least 13 years old to sign up, pre-adolescent children were found to be more active in posting video content and were heavier users than adolescents.

Dr. Kottasz said that regular users could be as young as nine. "Although the minimum age to sign up to TikTok is 13, quite often you'll find much younger children are using the platform," Dr. Kottasz said. "There's a lot of digital activity you cannot oversee or track as a parent, because children are tech-savvy and can often find loopholes to access sites." she said.

In addition to fame-seeking and self-expression, the research by Kingston Business School found children widely using the app to expand and seek out new social networks. This is potentially of great concern as children are less likely to understand the hidden dangers of online predatorial and privacy issues, the experts warned.

"The way young people use social media is changingwhat this research shows is that by surveying a typical teenager at the age of 13 upwards is almost too late, because young people are very impressionable and are going online younger than they used to. Education needs to start younger and younger about the dangers of social networking sites," Dr. Kottasz said.

While a lot of research has been undertaken around social media use by teenagers and adults, Bucknell-Bossen hopes this study opens up the conversation and leads to more interest in understanding pre-adolescent use of social media.

Since graduating in 2020, Bucknell-Bossen has launched a marketing business, advising small businesses and start-ups. She said the program helped prepare her for the world of work. "One of the main aspects of the masters was to learn how to become an entrepreneurhow to think like an entrepreneur, how to trust your own creativity and intuition, and how to create protypes and test them," she said.

"It opened up the possibility for me to try different things without being afraid of them failing, because that's all part of the process. That's what I learned the most from Kingston University, as well as the core skills in marketing, sales, branding and communications."

The paper, Uses and gratifications sought by pre-adolescent and adolescent TikTok consumers, was named Winner of the Outstanding Paper in the 2021 Emerald Literati Awards by Emerald Publishing.

More information: Christina Bucknell Bossen et al, Uses and gratifications sought by pre-adolescent and adolescent TikTok consumers, Young Consumers (2020). Christina Bucknell Bossen et al, Uses and gratifications sought by pre-adolescent and adolescent TikTok consumers,(2020). DOI: 10.1108/YC-07-2020-1186
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It is hoped that the initiators of the Ukraine crisis will reflect on their role in the crisis, and earnestly shoulder their due responsibilities instead of blaming others, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson said Thursday.

Wang Wenbin made the comments at a daily press briefing in response to a New York Times article on Wednesday claiming that China asked Russia not to "invade" Ukraine until the end of the Beijing Winter Olympics. This shows that China had some degree of advance knowledge about Russia's planned military action, the article said.

In response, Wang said that the report is pure false information. "This kind of diversion and blame shifting is despicable. It is very clear how the Ukrainian issue has evolved to this point. We all know what the crux of the problem is," he said.

George Kennan, the former U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union, has recently been quoted in the international press as advising the administration in the 1990s that continued NATO expansion toward Russia would be the most fatal mistake of U.S. policy, Wang noted.

"Regrettably, the U.S. government wasn't listening," Wang added.

Thomas Friedman, a renowned U.S. expert on international issues, recently published an article, pointing out that the U.S. government should bear considerable responsibility for the deterioration of relations with Russia caused by its major mistake of greenlighting the NATO expansion, Wang noted.

"It is hoped that the initiators of the crisis will reflect on their role in the Ukraine crisis, earnestly shoulder their due responsibilities, and take action in real terms to ease the situation and solve problems, instead of blaming others," he said.


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WASHINGTON  The physics of international politics sometimes tidily illustrate Newtons third law of motion: When two bodies interact, their forces on each other are equal in magnitude and opposite in direction. Vladimir Putins war has provoked opposite forces of more than equal magnitude.

NATO was created in 1949 to (said its first secretary general) keep the Soviet Union out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.

Putin has provoked Germany to do what various U.S. presidents have fruitlessly exhorted it to do: stand up. That is, to embrace diplomatic and military roles commensurate with its European centrality and economic vigor.

For decades, Germanys foreign policy had often been liberal, as Robert Frost defined a liberal: someone too broadminded to take his own side in a quarrel. But in last Sundays emergency Bundestag session, Chancellor Olaf Scholz of the left-of-center Social Democrats said goodbye to all that.

To set boundaries for warmongers like Putin, Scholz announced 100 billion euros ($113 billion) to modernize Germanys military. Germany will at last meet NATOs goal-cum-duty for members to spend 2% of gross domestic product on defense, a commitment tepidly avowed by, and not constraining for, most NATO members.

Germany, Scholz said, will build the next generation of battle tanks, and might purchase U.S. F-35 fighter jets and  Germany has been queasy about drones  Israeli drones.

Two liquefied natural gas terminals will be built to receive LNG from the United States and Qatar, reducing Germanys current 55% dependence on Russian gas.

Germany, which is sending Ukraine missiles and armored vehicles, has ended its opposition to other countries transferring German-made weapons (howitzers from Estonia, rocket-propelled grenades from the Netherlands) to an active conflict zone.

In Scholzs coalition government, the foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, is from the generally pacifist Green party. She said Germanys 180-degree turn means leaving behind a form of special restraint in foreign and security policy, but if our world is different, then our politics must also be different.

The coalitions third party, the Free Democrats, stands for fiscal rectitude but called the increased defense spending an investment in our future. Credit Putin for this epochal transformation.

Some people eager to propitiate Putin have suggested the Finlandization of Ukraine. A 1948 treaty with Moscow lodged Finland firmly in the Soviet sphere of influence. But Pekka Haavisto, the current foreign minister of Finland (which is a member of the European Union but not of NATO), says of Finlandization: We dont recommend that path to anyone. And: It is very important that NATO keeps its open-door policy, that Finland keeps the right to apply ... and that is our position for Ukraine and Georgia as well.

In Sweden, too, NATO membership is being considered.

In 1910, almost 40 remarkably peaceful European years after the Franco-Prussian war, Norman Angell published The Great Illusion, which became one of the first international bestsellers. His argument was that major wars  those between developed nations  would be prohibitively expensive, hence futile, hence unlikely. Wars had become too disruptive to be feasible in an economically interconnected world.

Stanford Universitys president agreed: The Great War of Europe, ever threatening ... will never come. ... The bankers will not find the money for such a fight, the industries of Europe will not maintain it. David Starr Jordan said this in 1913, the year before the beginning of, essentially, a 30-year European war.

Eleven decades after Angell wrote, the ever-thickening fabric of globalization still is insufficient to prevent all wars. It might, however, enable noncombatant nations to coordinate the inflicting of economic pain severe enough to force even a barely developed nation, such as Putins ramshackle Russia, to buckle.

Putins Russia might be, in President Barack Obamas dismissive estimation, a regional power. But its region is Europe. And as Dominic Sandbrook, the British historian, says, Fixated on their own modernity, obsessed with the here and now, many Western politicians seem unable to grasp that at the eastern edge of Europe, history really matters. That they grasp it now is another of Putins self-wounding ricochets.

Daniel Yergin, in The New Map: Energy, Climate, and the Clash of Nations, writes: In 1976, the Leningrad Evening News reported that a previously unknown local judoist had won a judo competition and predicted that more would be heard about him. He was the 23-year-old Vladimir Putin.

One principle of judo is to turn an attackers force against him. This is what  Newtons third law of motion applied to international affairs  the 69-year-old Putin is now experiencing.

George Wills email address is georgewill@washpost.com .
For some, the war in Ukraine feels distant and out of reach.

But for Mariya Dzhyoyeva and Roman Bohdan, the situation is personal.

Dzhyoyeva, an assistant professor of modern language at Ferrum College, hails from Ukraine. And Bhodan, an assistant professor of business at Ferrum, is from Crimea.

The two on Monday participated in a panel discussion on campus about the Russian invasion in Ukraine. They were joined by Michael Hancock-Parmer, an assistant professor of history.

I think I speak for all of us in that what we want you to see is that it is a very nuanced, complicated situation, Hancock-Parmer said. On the simple side, the human cost requires our compassion  the loss of life, the invasion of a sovereign state. But at the same time, as I kind of warn my students, it can be too easy to go looking for heroes and villains, to sort of put up flags or statues.

The panel discussed many topics, including the subject of timing and why this conflict is happening now, as opposed to occurring earlier.

For me personally, this invasion hasnt started five days ago. It started eight years ago... Since or even before 2014, Dzhyoyeva said. They realized that Ukraine would not back away from it [being independent], so it was just a question not of if [Russia would invade], but a question of when.

Bohdan agreed the invasion had been ongoing and added that the attitude of some Ukrainians toward Russia has changed.

Its not an easy process, he said. Its all Ukrainian spirit. And the majority of the political leadersthey have become nationalists, and its very difficult to conquer them. Thats why we still have independent Ukraine up to this point. Otherwise, it would be very quick, a very quick reunion. But its all lasted since probably 2004.

Bohdan believes the resistance stems from the fact that Russia is dealing with deep internal issues, and Ukrainianseven former supporters of a Russian unionnow want no part of a reunification.

I guess now people more realize that they dont want Russia because Russia has its own problems Because in Russia there is totalitarianism So if they go to protest, they will be arrested. They will get criminal records, he said.

Bohdan also said some people were more nostalgic about Russia, especially those from the eastern part of the country. Many of those people no longer feel that way, he said.

[They] might have wanted to be closer or to be reunited, but now theyve changed their minds because Russia has its own political issues. And some even realize that the current president is losing reality, Bohdan said.

Members of the audience also wanted to know the panels thoughts on NATO support for Ukraine.

This is very difficult to provide an exact answer, but I can say that there is never enough, Bohdan said. The war is ongoing, and the fight is the Ukraines fight, so they need as much as possiblea lot of supplies and ammunition.

Dzhyoyeva expressed concern over whether NATO support would heighten tensions.

As a Ukrainian Canadian, I am very proud of what Canada has done for Ukraine so far in terms of military and military aid, she said. Now should they go further? I dont know. Because they do realize how fragile the situation is. And we dont know if going further would cause something that gets completely out of control

Another topic raised was the Ukrainian response to the invasion and people defending their homes and homeland.

Im proud, but at the same time, Im embarrassed and angry, Dzhyoyeva related. When I go to social media and read what the people of Crimea post there, it is a stark contrast with Poland, with Bulgaria, with Hungary that are now receiving Ukrainians as fugitives. And that level of humanity is an exact opposite of what you see in CrimeaThe sentiment there is not like the rest of Ukraine There is a very significant sector of population that genuinely supports Russia.

Bohdan explained his amazement at the nationalistic spirit of the Ukrainian people.

There is a group where local people post videos, how they fight. And Im watching, and Im just very proud, because some people, just by their bare hands, fight the armed Russians, he said.

Remarks were also made about the cost of the war, both financially and otherwise. Bohdan argued that this is no mere invasionno matter how it is portrayed.

Thats a war, and its [been] a war since 2014, because Russia annexed Crimea. Crimea is part of an independent country So thats not a crisis. Thats a war. Its [a] real war, he stated.

Hancock-Parmer went on to discuss the various sanctions and the effects they may or may not have on Russia. He believes Russian President Vladimir Putin is confident in his countrys ability to weather these effects.

The narrative is that he is prepared for the sanctions. He is saying, Oh of course they are going to do this and this and this, but we can withstand all of this. One of the things hes saying is, We will be able to sustain our way of life without the West, he explained.

Regardless of the motive for war, both Russia and Ukraine are feeling the costs.

The average Russian citizens are also paying the price, Dzhyoyeva remarked. If you look at social media, people are talking about how ordinary people arent able to make payments or transactions and complaining about itand then its been over 3,000 arrests over internal protests just in two days, Dzhyoyeva remarked. Its amazing that people dare to protest like this.

Hancock-Parmer agreed.

Its amazing that its that highbecause I dont think theyre being handled politely, he said. I dont think the situation is going to come into the brightest of focus, but at the same time, [we should do] anything we can do to build our understanding and build our concern and compassion for other people in the world who are going through hell at the moment, he said.
Heartland Lutheran High School will have its 24th annual banquet and benefit auction on April 9 at the Doniphan Events Center. Proceeds from the event support the operational costs of the school.

The reservation-only event Saturday, April 9, begins at 5 p.m. with super-silent auction bidding. Dinner will be served at 6:15 p.m. with the live auction at 7:30 p.m. and followed by a dance until 11:30 p.m.

Tickets to the banquet, auction and dance are $75 each and may be purchased through March 29 from the Heartland Lutheran High School office, 3900 W. Husker Highway, Grand Island, or from the school website at www.heartlandlutheran.org/red-and-blue.

A table of eight may be purchased for $1,000. A corporate table for eight, complete with special corporate recognition, may be purchased at three different levels. The levels are gold ($1,000 and up), silver ($500 and up) and bronze ($250 and up).
YORK  This past week, Troy L. Swindell, 27, of Stromsburg (whose address has also been listed as York in court documents) was sentenced to one year in county jail, for cases involving assault and possession of methamphetamine, after he violated the terms of the probation he was given last year.

The first case initially involved a charge of first degree domestic assault with prior offense, which is a Class 2 felony. That was later amended down to domestic assault/intentionally causing bodily injury, which is a Class 1 misdemeanor. In response to the plea agreement, Swindell pleaded no contest to the new charge.

According to the affidavit of probable cause filed with the court, Swindell was driving from Osceola to York when he began arguing with his female passenger. The passenger said that somewhere between Benedict and York, Swindell became verbally aggressive and then back-handed the woman across her face. The physical assault gave her a cracked and swollen bottom lip and upon speaking with (the woman) I observed this physical evidence, the investigating deputy from the York County Sheriffs Department said.

The deputy says, in the affidavit, that the woman stated Swindell drove in excess of 100 miles per hour, swerving all over the roadway and almost running over a motorcyclist on Highway 81. She stated at one point there were only two tires on the ground because of his sudden jerks of the wheel. She also said he swerved to try to hit a couple road signs and concrete, barrier-like objects, but either braked right before hitting the objects or swerved to avoid hitting the objects right at the last second. While he was driving in this reckless manner, he continued to verbally threaten her life.

During my interview with her, she stated that she feared for her life during this incident which is why she locked herself in the bathroom (at a convenience store in York) and called 911 where she then made contact with law enforcement. It should be noted that she captured seven minutes and 32 seconds of video footage of this incident on her cell phone which corroborated the above referenced statements, the deputys affidavit says.

The deputy also notes that Swindell was arrested in York County on June 14, 2017, for strangulation and was later convicted of third degree domestic assault.

In this particular case, he was initially sentenced to two years of probation. Following his non-compliance, Judge James Stecker sentenced him (this week) to four months in jail with credit for 72 days already served.

In the second case, Swindell was charged with possession of a controlled substance, a Class 4 felony. That case was not modified and Swindell pleaded no contest to that charge. In this case, during a traffic stop, Swindells vehicle was searched (following a canine alert to the vehicle) and methamphetamine was found. In this case, he was sentenced to three years of probation. Following his non-compliance, Judge James Stecker sentenced him (this week) to six months in jail to be served consecutively with the other sentence. He was given credit for 123 days already served in this matter.
Speaking of hope in times like these may seem excessively optimistic and naive, but Eleanor Roosevelt said, "It is more intelligent to hope rather than to fear, to try rather than not to try."
You are here: World

 Flash

Russia has decided to cease deliveries of rocket engines to the United States in response to a new wave of Western sanctions related to the Ukraine conflict, state space corporation Roscosmos said Thursday.



"Such deliveries have been quite active since the mid-1990s, including the RD-180 engine that powered the Atlas-V rocket," Roscosmos Director General Dmitry Rogozin told a Russian TV program.

He asked the United States to "fly on their brooms."

In addition, Rogozin said that Roscosmos will not cooperate with Germany on joint experiments on the Russian segment of the International Space Station and will conduct them independently.
Southern Illinois University Carbondales Day of Giving garnered more than 2,400 donations totaling over $3.5 million in gifts  a new record for the 24-hour fundraiser. In all, the campaign has raised more than $10 million. Last year, the university raised $2.8 million.

The event included an eight-hour livestream broadcast featuring interviews with university leaders, faculty and staff members as well as video segments about many of SIUs majors, facilities and programs. It was the second year of the livestream broadcast from the WSIU-TV studios. The COVID-19 pandemic made the initial livestream in 2021 a necessity, but one that worked out well.

We were the only university to go live last year, and it was so terrific that we knew we had to do it again, said Matt Kupec, CEO of the SIU Foundation. He served as host for the livestream.

Broadcast on the SIU Alumni Associations Facebook page, followers were able to comment and interact with the livestream as Kupec made real-time announcements about gifts and other important news.

Among academic programs, the School of Medicine raised more than $756,000, followed by the College of Liberal Arts with more than $723,000, according to a media release from the SIU Foundation.

Donors to the Balancing Education, Experience, and Reality (B.E.E.R.) Scholarship continued their tradition of Day of Giving support by combining to make nearly 700 gifts and raising more than $52,000. The scholarship program was established in 2019 by members of a Facebook group dedicated to Carbondale in the 1980s and 90s.

Other scholarship and campus programs including the Touch of Nature Environmental Center, the SIU Alumni Association, the Marching Salukis and the Student Multi-Cultural Resource Center all received support during the one-day campaign.

Once again, Salukis everywhere came together and showed their spirit, Kupec said. We were awed by the outpouring of support throughout the day.

Kupec called the Day of Giving one of the best days of the year at SIU.

Our alumni and donors make it so much fun. They have made it into an unbelievable success, he said.

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Jan Thompson, a professor and director of Southern Illinois University Carbondales School of Journalism, wants to safeguard the legacy of what American POWs in the Pacific endured in the World War II Bataan Death March in April 1942.

Thompson will present comments before a joint U.S. Senate and House Committee on Veterans Affairs as part of a virtual hearing at 9 a.m. Tuesday, March 8. She has spent more than three decades on research and film and radio projects on the POW experience  her late father, Robert, was surrendered to the Japanese on Corregidor about a month after the death march and spent more than three years as a POW before being liberated from a Manchurian prison camp in September 1945.

Thompson will provide her statement as president of the American Defenders of Bataan & Corregidor Memorial Society, a nonprofit organization that provides continuing education and scholarships. Its predecessor, the American Defenders of Bataan & Corregidor (ABDC), was formed in 1946 by surviving prisoners of war of Japan.

It is an honor, and I hope that whatever Im able to say will represent what these individuals had to go through, Thompson said. I hope that Im able to present it so that those who have no idea about this slice of history will have a better understanding and appreciation of the sacrifices that these men and women gave.

Why remember?

The reasons to not forget this history are simple: The horror of war. She points to Russias recent invasion of the Ukraine and the memories of Germany and Japan also invading other countries to start World War II.

Its important for history to not be distorted, she said.

It is estimated more than 10,000 of the more than 75,000 American and Filipino prisoners did not survive the 65-mile, nine-day forced march that began April 9, 1942. It marked the largest surrender in U.S. military history.

Her father was reticent to talk of the horrors he went through, which included surviving three hell-ships used to take prisoner to Japan for forced labor. Thompson started accompanying her dad to ABDC conventions in 1991 where some men, many of whom were in their 70s, began to share their experiences.

It was at that point where Im starting to hear stories, and it just really opened up my eyes. It was one of those definitive moments, she said.

These men were patriots. They believed in democracy, Thompson said. They were basically sacrificed; thats why they became prisoners of war. You would think there would be resentment, and a lot of these men, when I interviewed them, there wasnt resentment. If they had to do it over again, they would have done it over again, which I find amazing. But they also understand what the prices of freedom means, more so than anybody else.

Award-winning documentaries

Thompson has, as part of her acclaimed radio, television and film work, three documentaries on Bataan and American POWs:

She is working with Baldwin on a podcast Ben Steele, American. Steele was a death march survivor who worked as a POW in a Japanese coal mine and turned to art recounting his experiences. The podcast will also feature material not used before.

In July 2015, Thompson participated in a ceremony in Los Angeles where Mitsubishi Materials Corp. executives apologized for using American POWs as forced labor in company mines during the war  the first public apology by a Japanese corporation for wartime atrocities. She also accompanied several former POWs in October 2015 to Japan under a reconciliation program Japans Foreign Ministry had started a few years earlier.

Previous written statements

Thompsons appearance before the joint committee will be her first. She previously submitted written statements to the joint hearing to receive legislative presentations of Veterans Service Organizations. Among several recommendations included at the time has been to award, collectively, American POWs of Japan the Congressional Gold Medal, and the encourage Japan to continue the Japan/POW Friendship Program and to expand it into a permanent educational initiative.

U.S. Rep. Mike Bost, R-Murphysboro, is the ranking member on the House Committee on Veterans Affairs and with Thompsons help, said he introduced the World War II Pacific War Heroes Congressional Gold Medal Act to award these brave Americans with Congress highest civilian honor.

The Greatest Generation was ordinary Americans who stepped up and did the extraordinary when our nation and the world needed them, Bost said. It is critical that their service and sacrifice does not go without recognition. As we approach the 80th anniversary of the Bataan Death March, I look forward to hearing Jans testimony during the House and Senate Veterans Affairs Committees joint hearings in early March. Its vitally important that we hear from our VSO partners to ensure our veterans are accessing the good care and services they have earned.

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On the heels of raising more than $3 million as part of Southern Illinois University Carbondales annual Day of Giving, officials have announced the expansion of a long-term capital campaign.

Chancellor Austin a. Lane told a group of alumni and supporters gathered at a SIU reception Wednesday evening in St. Louis that the Forever SIU campaign has a new goal of raising $500 million for the university.

Were going to move that needle to a half billion dollars, Lane told those gathered at the reception.

The Forever SIU campaign began in 2017 with a stated goal of $75 million by 2020. That goal was reached six months early, leading to a revised goal of $90 million. The effort also has eclipsed the most recent $200 million goal.

At the end of 2019, we had already surpassed that new goal, Matt Kupec, CEO of the SIU Foundation, said. Thats when we set our sights on $200 million, and were well ahead of schedule. Its clear that we need to keep this momentum.

Lane said the campaign and the donations in generates will greatly impact the university. Donations given as part of Forever SIU have funded scholarships, improvements to the campus, supported faculty and supported other activities.

This is about supporting our students and strengthening the university, he said. Our alumni and donors understand the importance of this mission, and their generosity is what has set us on this path to half a billion dollars, Lane said. This will reshape the way we imagine the future of SIU.

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At a time when everything from flowers to lumber is in short supply, an ineffective law is now making it so that puppies are in short supply, too.

On Feb. 23, a law passed last year by the state legislature took effect banning pet stores from selling dogs and making it more difficult for Illinois families to find the newest member of their families.

The law was well-intentioned but poorly designed. But this year, the legislature has a unique chance to fix it.

Last years law prohibits pet stores from selling dogs obtained from breeders. Pet stores can only sell dogs obtained from rescues and shelters.

This might sound good on paper, but it doesn't solve the problem. In fact, it incentivizes more bad behavior.

Advocates claimed the ban was needed to stop puppy mills. Actually, pet stores were already prohibited from selling dogs from bad breeders under a state law passed in 2017. That 2017 law prohibits pet stores from buying animals from unlicensed breeders or from breeders with USDA violations in the previous two years.

The new ban, however, throws the puppy out with the bathwater. It prohibits both good and bad breeders from selling in pet stores, instead of only the bad.

Does this sound like an improvement to anyone? Why would we punish good breeders?

The pet store ban is as sensible as banning liquor stores from selling booze on the premise that it will stop moonshiners. We saw how that one played out in the 1920s and 30s during Prohibition.

In fact, a black market (of dogs) is already a fast-growing problem.

According to the CDC, Many dogs are bred irresponsibly in large numbers in puppy mills overseas, where the risk of congenital abnormalities and disease is high. Importers then fly them as cargo in large batches, claiming them as rescue dogs, valued at $0 on their paperwork, and allowing the importers to evade entry and broker fees.

Meanwhile, a Washington Post investigation found that rescues in the U.S. had been secretly buying dogs at commercial auctions in Missouri from the breeders they condemn.

Illinois new law only exacerbates these problems. Consider: The 2015 outbreak of dog flu in Chicago was traced to rescues bringing in dogs from Asia. Chicago was ground zero for the respiratory disease, which had never previously been spotted in the United States. But after the South Korean "rescue dogs" arrived, suddenly hundreds of pets in Chicago were sick with a serious disease.

Last year, the CDC took the extraordinary step of banning the import of dogs from dozens of countries due to rabies. In the age of COVID, do we want more animals coming in from abroad?

Illinois new pet store ban will make black market incentives worse  while doing nothing to curtail puppy mills here.

Illinois isnt alone. Many localities across the country have been pressured by fervent animal rights activists into passing pet store bans. But Illinois can be the first state to repeal the bad policy and replace it with something better.

Presently, lawmakers from both parties support a bill that would repeal last years law and replace it with increased state regulations of dog breeding.

This makes logical sense. If there is a problem with breeders, then the sensible thing is to focus on breeding standards.

Even fervent anti-pet-store groups will admit there are good breeders  they just dont think those breeders should sell through a pet store.

Its none of their business. A good breeder should be able to choose where they want to sell their puppies, just as a farmer can choose to sell goods at their property or at a local store. And a family should have a choice about driving hours to visit a breeder in person, or going through a local store.

Most people are practical. Ultimately, what matters most is not where a dog comes from, but that it is well cared for.

And thats exactly why Illinois lawmakers should protect both animals and consumer choice by fixing last years mess and repealing the newly enacted pet store Prohibition.

Will Coggin is managing director for the Center for Consumer Freedom.

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Orangeburg

Department

of Public Safety

Two pounds of marijuana were seized by law enforcement Thursday at the Orangeburg post office on Middleton Street, according to an ODPS incident report.

The post office received the package Wednesday afternoon and delivered it to a local address, according to a heavily redacted report. The package was shipped from California in an Amazon box.

A person opened the package and discovered it contained a clear plastic bag with the marijuana and a box of McCann's steel cut Irish oatmeal.

The person returned the package to the post office, saying it was not wanted and not ordered. The post office turned it over to police.

The marijuana will be destroyed by law enforcement, according to the report.

Orangeburg County

Sheriff's Office

An Orangeburg woman claims a man pointed a gun at her head on Thursday because she owes him money for food, according to a sheriffs office incident report.

The Coburg Lane woman said the man arrived at her residence shortly before 4 p.m.

He was irate and allegedly pointed a gun at her and her mother, according to the report.

The woman said she asked him to leave, but he said You owe me money, too.

He allegedly pushed the woman to the ground and threatened to shoot her, according to the report.

The woman said she and another person owe the man $40 for food.

The woman claims the man fired several shots into the air as he left her yard. Officers did not find spent casings at the scene.

In a separate incident report, a Norway woman returned to her Saint John's Avenue residence on Thursday to find a man in her home.

The man was on all fours behind her couch, she said.

When the woman asked who was in her house, she noticed the man had a hand under a cover, simulating he had a gun.

The man asked the woman to leave, according to the report.

The woman left and called law enforcement. She then saw the man leave her home, the report said.

The woman said she recognized the man as a homeless person in the community, according to the report.

The incident will be investigated by the Norway Police Department since it happened within the city's limits.

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Orangeburg County

Sheriffs Office

A 74-year-old Virginia motorcyclist was injured after running off Interstate 95 near Santee and striking a parked State Transport Police vehicle Wednesday afternoon, according to a sheriffs office incident report.

The motorcyclist was riding south on Interstate 95 when he drove off the shoulder and collided with vehicle at about 2:30 p.m., witnesses said. The sheriffs office reports that the State Transport Police vehicle was legally parked on the shoulder of the road.

Witnesses provided care until the Santee Fire Department and Orangeburg County EMS arrived on the scene, according to the report.

The Virginia man was airlifted to Trident Hospital in Summerville.

The S.C. Highway Patrol requested the sheriffs office handle the collision because a state vehicle was involved.

The state vehicles damage was estimated at $5,000.

In other reports:

 Someone stole items from six trucks parked at a Five Chop Road location on Tuesday night.

A total of five catalytic converters and four resonators were stolen from six trucks, according to an incident report.

An augur bit and augur tip were stolen from a truck bed.

The total value of the damage and theft is $8,350.

 An Orangeburg woman reported a roll of carpet was stolen from her McMichael Street residence Wednesday.

The carpet was valued at $1,400.

Orangeburg Department of Public Safety

A U-Haul tow dolly was stolen last week from a John C. Calhoun Drive business.

The 2020 silver and orange dolly was stolen sometime between Feb. 26 and Feb. 28, according to the incident report.

The equipment was valued at $5,200.

In a separate incident, an Orangeburg woman said someone stole her burgundy 2000 Chevy Impala from her Broughton Street residence over the last two weeks.

The car is valued at $2,500.

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An Olar man has been sentenced to prison for trying to kill a man on a dirt bike, according to a press release from the 2nd Circuit Solicitors Office.

Kelcie Gilbert, 39, was convicted on Wednesday of attempted murder and possession of a weapon during the commission of a violent crime by a Bamberg County jury.

On Thursday, he was sentenced to 17 years in prison for the attempted murder and five years for the possession of a weapon during the commission of a violent crime by Circuit Judge Courtney Clyburn Pope, who presided over the trial. Gilbert will serve the sentences consecutively.

The case was prosecuted by Deputy Solicitor David Miller and Assistant Solicitor Leigh Staggs of the 2nd Circuit Solicitors Office.

Gilbert shot the victim seven times from his car while the victim was riding a dirt bike on Low Country Highway in Olar on Jul 18, 2020.

After the shooting, Gilbert fled the scene. Law enforcement contacted him several hours later after he was identified as the shooter by multiple eye witnesses.

He claimed the shooting was in self-defense, the release said.

During closing arguments, Miller told the jury there was no evidence that suggested the victim possessed a gun other than Gilberts statements to police and to the jury. He said Gilberts statements were self-serving and changed over time.

The victim and two eye witnesses denied that the victim had a gun when the shooting occurred.

The victims mother addressed the court during sentencing and described the ordeal she and her son faced as a result of his injuries, the release said.

Gilbert has a prior conviction for assault and battery of a high and aggravated nature.

He is also facing unrelated charges of murder, assault and battery in the first degree and additional weapons charges. Hes accused of shooting into Shakeira Waymyers vehicle and killing her on July 5, 2021 in Denmark, according to warrants.

As a result of his convictions this week, he is now facing a mandatory sentence of life in prison without parole if convicted of the pending murder charge.

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South Carolina State University will celebrate its 126th birthday this weekend with events honoring students and university supporters.

Friday, March 4: The university will honor the newest members of the Thomas E. Miller Society in an invitation-only dinner on campus. Named in honor of Thomas Ezekiel Miller, the first president of the institution that would evolve into S.C. State, the Miller Society recognizes cumulative philanthropy from individuals, couples, organizations, associations, corporations and foundations who demonstrate commitment to the university and higher education by sharing their resources.

Saturday, March 5: The S.C. State Foundation will host its 31st annual Scholarship Gala & Tribute, a ticketed event at Smith Hammond Middleton Memorial Center. Tickets for the in-person event are sold out with a waiting list, but the festivities will be streamed online exclusively to virtual ticketholders at $99 each. The foundation also continues to accept sponsorships. This annual event is the S.C. State Foundations major fundraiser and supports scholarships at the university. To purchase tickets and sponsorship packages, visit https://www.scstategives.com. The event will begin at 6 p.m., and the foundation will honor six Shining Stars in the student body.

Sunday, March 6: The Founders Day Program, 126 Years: Affirming Our Past, While Embracing Our Future, will begin at 4 p.m. in Smith Hammond Middleton Memorial Center. Dr. Andrew Hugine Jr., former S.C. State president (2003-2007) and a 1971 alumnus, will deliver the keynote address. This event is open to the public.

The Founders Day Program will include the universitys annual awards, including faculty and staff service awards, 2022 Quarter Century Club Awards, the Distinguished Alumnus and Alumna Awards, the Outstanding Accomplishments and Achievements Award, the Distinguished Alumni Awards, and the Staff Employee of the Year Awards.

Dr. Andrew Hugine Jr.

Hugine is a Green Pond native and the son of the late Rev. and Mrs. Andrew (Irene Short) Hugine Sr. He resides in Madison, Alabama.

In 1971, Hugine received a bachelor of science degree and a master of education degree in 1974, both in mathematics, from South Carolina State College (now university). In 1977, he received a doctor of philosophy degree in higher education and institutional research from Michigan State University in East Lansing, Michigan.

During his 30-year career at S.C. State, Hugine served as the director of special services, program director for University Year for Action Program, teaching assistant, institutional research analyst, assistant professor, research fellow, the assistant director and director of the self-study, assistant vice president for academic affairs, professor of mathematics, and interim executive vice president. Hugine was appointed president of SCSU in 2003. In 2009, he was appointed president of Alabama A&M University in Huntsville, Alabama.

2022 Thomas E. Society Inductees

 Chief Justice Donald W. Beatty, '74.

 Helen Corbett-Brandyburg, '74.

 Hubert Daniely Jr., '63.

 Dr. and Mrs. Charles (Barbara) Gadsden, '72, '90.

 Willa H. Hightower Jr., '64.

 Dr. and Mrs. Andrew (Abigale H.) Hugine Jr. both '71.

 Judge Maurice B. Mosley, '68.

 Dr. James H. Salley, '73.

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Dogs and puppies

 King, a 1-year-old black male Boxer-mix, needs the warm embrace of safety with you (case 0328).

 Cyndi Lou, a 3-year-old black-and-white female Lab-mix, is no Grinch to be around (case 0361).

 Ollie, a 1-year-old spotted white-and-black male Lab-mix, will only have eyes for you (case 0542).

 Nosey, 2-year-old tan female Shepherd-mix, needs someone to love just as much as she does (case 0001).

 Bandi, a 4-5 year-old white female Lab-mix, needs love she has never been shown (case 0051).

 Petunia, a 2-3 year-old brindle female Boxer-mix, will cuddle with you all day long (case 0137).

 Diesel, a 14-month-old black male Boston Terrier-mix, is that fire you need in life (case 0242).

 Rust, a 9-month-old black-and-brown male Huskey/Rottweiler-mix, will make you feel brand new (case 0274).

 Ranger, a 10-month-old tan female Jack Russell-mix, is ready for any adventure (case 0271).

 Rex, a 1-year-old brindle male Boxer-mix, is more than the average mans best friend (case 0261).

 Timmy, a 1-year-old tan male Mountain Curr-mix, needs someone to show him a loving touch (case 0159).

 Starlight, a 3-year-old gray female Lab/Boxer mix, will give you all of her love (case 0422).

 Sampson, a 2-year-old black male Boston Terrier-mix, is searching for his Delilah (case 0034).

 Jenny, a 3-month-old black female Lab-mix, will be your partner in crime (case 0279).

 Dick, a 5-month-old gray brindle male Pointer-mix, wants a Batman for his Robin (case 0281).

 Luna, a 1-year-old brown female Pin/Shepherd-mix, will brighten your life (case 0282).

 Otto, a 5-month-old brown male Lab/Shar Pei-mix, will trade love for licks (case 0021).

 Archer, a 4-year-old tan male Lab-mix, will catapult straight to your heart (case 0022).

 Smoke, a 11-month-old brindle male Boston Terrier-mix, will light a fire in your heart (case 0023).

Cats and kittens

 Penelope, 2-year-old tabby female, will turn your sour in to sweet (case 0331).

 Juliet, a 5-month old black-and-white female tuxedo/magpie-mix, needs a new Romeo (case 0326).

 Carolina, a 1-year-old tabby with white female DSH, makes every day feel like sunshine (case 0416).

 June, an 18-month-old black female Bombay-mix, who makes it feel like summer all year long (case 0178).

 Dotty, a 2-year-old tabby female DSH, will make your heart skip a beat (case 0548).

 Emma, a 10-month-old black-and-white female DSH, will cast a spell over your heart (case 0059).

 Freda, an 11-year-old tri-color female calico, knows cuddles are the best medicine (case 0075).

 Missy, a 5-month-old female tortoise shell, who needs someone classy in her life (case 0229).

 Haley, an 11-month-old female tortoise shell, is out of this world fun (case 0218).

 Cynthia, a 1-year-old female diluted calico, is the best couch surfer (case 0132).

 Simon, a 3-month-old black male DSH, knows what he wants and how to tell you (case 0141).

 Raven, a 4-month-old female tabby DSH, will make you feel like your soaring (case 0144).

 Kira, a 3-month-old female tabby DSH, has a way with purrs (case 0184).

 Sunshine, an 18-month-old orange-and-white female tabby DSH, will show brighten your day (case 0185).

 Jasmine, a 1-year-old gray-and-white female Persian-mix, is ready to explore the world with you (case 0134).

 Meow, an 11-month-old female tortoise shell, knows purrs are the way to your heart (case 0260).

 Boxie, an 11-week-old orange female tabby DSH, is tailless and can care less with so much fun (case 0271).

 Jack, a 2-month-old black male DSH, is looking for his Rose (case 0257).

The Orangeburg SPCA will be limiting the number of people inside its facility at this time. Hours of operation are from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday through Friday and 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on the first and third Saturdays. The SPCA is located at 225 Ruf Road and the phone number is 803-536-3918. Check out available adoptions on the internet at orangeburgspca.petfinder.com, the interactive website at www.OrangeburgSPCA.org and Facebook page at Orangeburg SPCA. Email any questions to adopt@orangeburgspca.org.

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 Flash

Three years ago, Isabelle Brivian watched other children rush to school as she stayed at home taking care of her brothers. Now, because of the regular meals provided at the school by a Chinese school feeding program, parents are motivated to enroll and keep their children in school. The young girl can finally join the cohort of pupils in Mathare, a slum neighborhood in Nairobi, Kenya's capital.

The program, named Lunch for Children, was jointly started by Deng Fei, a Chinese philanthropist, the Chinese Red Cross, and the Social Welfare Foundation of China in March 2017. The program covered 1,103 pupils from five primary schools in Mathare on a daily basis in its initial days. Since then, it has evolved to include over 6,000 students from 23 schools in Kenya, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Nigeria, Malawi and Uganda.

Teachers agree that food delivery reduces absenteeism. The participating students' academic performance is improving, and their dropout rates are decreasing. The program's benefits also extend to low-income homes, since parents have less stress to cope with when it comes to their children's nutrition. In fact, Brivian no longer asks for food when she returns home from school.

Poor nutrition is a serious issue on the African continent. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) said in its annual report, The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2021, that more than a third of the world's 768 million undernourished people, or 282 million, reside in Africa. This accounts for 21 percent of the African population, more than twice the undernourished group of any other region.

On the eve of the UN Food Systems Summit in September 2021, the African Union Development Agency facilitated an African Common Position. The five recommended paths to promote fair and affordable access to food prioritize nutrition and school feeding. The task is daunting for the Chinese program in this aspect, as its coverage has been expanding.

An effective device

Since its inception in 2011, the Free Lunch for Children program initiated by Deng has been implemented in 1,555 schools across China, raising 833 million yuan ($131.3 million) to assist over 380,000 children by September 2021. It also partially contributed to the establishment of a national nutrition improvement program for rural students in October 2011. The government has since invested around 16 billion yuan ($2.5 billion) in it every year.

"Public welfare knows no borders," Deng said. His program has been expanded to Africa based on this principle. Yin Binbin was entrusted with the project's implementation. The young Chinese volunteer co-founded the Dream Building Service Association, an NGO created in Kenya in 2014, focusing on youth education, undernourishment reduction among children, and poverty relief. Through his organization's efforts, three schools in Mathare were restored between 2014 and 2018.

Funds for the school feeding program come from individual donors as well as Chinese organizations and foundations. The initiators have also registered a foundation in the United States for overseas fundraising operations. All of the participating schools, have set up profiles on social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter to publish information on a regular basis. Furthermore, teachers and students share meals together, a measure taken to ensure cohesiveness and quality.

Local farmers are contracted to provide rice, beans, wheat, dairy products and other ingredients for the school meals. This helps combat hunger while also allowing the farmers involved to have a stable source of income. Parents are also encouraged to participate in monitoring and assessment, as well as the purchase of some required products, in order to ensure the project's long-term viability.

New challenges

According to FAO research, food insecurity and malnutrition have worsened due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the ensuing containment measures. In 2020, about 46 million more individuals in Africa were impacted by hunger than in the previous year.

With many schools closed as a result of lockdown, program teams chose to keep serving meals to pupils. Typically, participating children are required to gather and eat their meals on-site. Nevertheless, adjustments were made after school closures caused by COVID-19. Between July and November 2020, a total of 5,361 food packages, each weighing 7 kg, were provided to eight Mathare schools. The program resumed to provide meals on-site in the area in October 2020, with the reopening of schools. Despite the uncertainty of the pandemic, plans have been formulated to ensure the normal operation of the program.

If conditions permit, the program is likely to provide meals in 50 schools by 2022, with an estimated annual expenditure of 5 million yuan ($786,500), which could reach 10 million yuan by 2023, covering 100 schools. Yet the funding shortage is a severe challenge.

According to the program's observer Shi Zhihong, a scholar at the Center for Sudanese Studies of Yangzhou University, the project relies too much on donations from foundations and NGOs, which account for 75 percent of the 5.64 million yuan ($888,900) raised in China, as of November 2020, while the public, especially corporate donations are limited. However, due to the pandemic, donations from foundations have decreased significantly, and the rest of the funding can only provide meals to 3,640 students and teachers from 10 school in Mathare, about 1 million yuan ($157,600).

Therefore, Shi called for more active participation of Chinese chambers of business and enterprises, as well as philanthropic groups. Chinese students and employees from Confucius Institutes in Africa are also invited to join the volunteer team.

Li Anshan, professor emeritus at Peking University and President of the Chinese Society of African Historical Studies, agrees that the program is a good opportunity for Chinese living in Africa to support the local community.

The Chinese program began somewhat late and is currently on a tiny scale in comparison to school feeding programs undertaken by international organizations such as the UN. However, it has the benefit of having built a stable, efficient and sustainable operational model, according to Shi, who believes that the project will reach its full potential in the near future.
Today

Partly cloudy skies. High 86F. Winds S at 5 to 10 mph.

Tonight

Scattered thunderstorms developing overnight. Low 66F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 40%.

Tomorrow

Thunderstorms likely in the morning. Then a chance of scattered thunderstorms in the afternoon. Potential for severe thunderstorms. High 78F. Winds SW at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 90%.
As Russia lays siege to its neighbor, the West has rallied behind Ukraine, wielding dollars, euros and pounds against the 11th-biggest economy in the world. The European Union, reliant on Russian fossil fuels but loath to let Vladimir Putins government weaponize its exports, took economic aim at Russias oil tankers and gas pipelines, and cut itself off before its opponents could.

The sanctions are working: Russia, now isolated from the global financial system, has already struggled to sell oil and coal. But putting that kind of pressure on a top-three oil exporter  the biggest supplier of fossil fuels to Europe  comes at a global cost. Especially in the energy sector.

In Europe, natural gas prices are breaking records, even as Russian imports continue to arrive. Crude oil prices surged to a 10-year high worldwide. U.S. gasoline prices are climbing.

Economists warn that Americans will face steep energy costs until the war ends. Maybe  some say probably  even steeper than today. For Wyoming, perhaps more than any other state, a war being fought on the other side of the world could have far-reaching implications.

Oil

Fossil fuels have been the lifeblood of Wyoming for decades. The state gets away with having low property taxes and no individual or corporate income tax by levying taxes on industries, particularly extractive ones.

The Wyoming economy expands and contracts along with the oil and gas markets. Its one of the most volatile state economies in the country.

Even before Russia caused prices to skyrocket, oil  which has replaced more economically stable coal as Wyomings biggest source of severance tax revenue  was forecast to experience a strong year. Record low prices early in the pandemic caused production to plummet. Since then, demand has recovered, but production hasnt, increasing prices.

The state agencies that predicted higher-than-expected oil prices in October, then revised that estimate up again in January, offered a rosy prognosis for state revenues in 2022. Since then, oil prices have surged ever higher.

Clearly, there was not a regional conflict between Russia and Ukraine priced into that, nor should there be, said Rob Godby, an economics professor at the University of Wyoming and one of the authors of the quarterly revenue report. But its having real effects on our state revenues. And the longer this goes on, the greater that effect will be.

Oil is traded globally. If its price changes in one market, other markets typically follow. Thats why, as supply risks pushed prices up in Europe, U.S. benchmark West Texas Intermediate also went up.

Higher oil prices generate more revenue for producers  and, as a result, for the state, which puts some severance tax money into savings and spends the rest on government operations and public services.

Before the pandemic, oil companies responded predictably to shifts in the market. When oil prices were low, production decreased, and prices rose. When prices were high, production increased, and prices fell. Now, despite high oil prices that persisted for months before the invasion, companies have been slow to ramp up. Why that is depends on who you ask.

The oil industry says its because of uncertainty. To companies shaken by the last two years, new investments seem too risky. Theyre afraid more lockdowns will again suppress demand, and worried the Biden administration, which has yet to hold an onshore lease sale, will make it harder to secure leases or permit wells.

Some, particularly environmental groups, disagree. They say oil companies are intentionally suppressing fuel production, then blaming the high prices on the Biden administration.

No one, even industry, can be sure how high prices could get before oil companies ramp up. The U.S. government cant force them. International oil cartel OPEC Plus has declined to significantly increase production to ease costs. Experts warn that as the conflict drags on, Russia will likely find ways around the sanctions; as long as prices are up, any oil that it manages to sell will be that much more profitable.

A coordinated release of 60 million barrels of crude oil, about two-thirds of the volume consumed globally each day, from countries strategic petroleum reserves was announced Tuesday by the U.S. and 30 allies. Though the move has been cheered as a show of international unity, it isnt expected to have a lasting effect on prices.

Risk tolerance varies considerably across U.S. companies and regions. In Wyoming, where production is particularly costly and the high proportion of federal leases often prolongs the permitting process, companies tend to move more slowly.

How that plays out is going to be a company-by-company decision, said Gabriel Collins, a fellow at Rice Universitys Baker Institute for Public Policy. I think its going to come down to an operator-level decision of, basically, how quickly do you grab at the potential cash generation opportunity presented by higher commodity prices?

For Wyoming, that means gasoline prices will probably keep ticking upward. It could also stave off the ramifications of the states several-hundred-million-dollar budget deficit, patched in the near term with federal COVID-19 relief money, for a few more years.

Natural gas

In Europe, the natural gas price trendline looks a lot like oils swing: Since Russia invaded on Feb. 24, its gone up. And up. And up. But U.S. prices havent really changed over the last couple of weeks.

Thats because natural gas markets are more localized, insulating most regions from external supply shocks. At least for a while.

The U.S. in December became the worlds No. 1 exporter of liquefied natural gas (LNG). Those shipments, however, are near capacity. Plans for some new LNG export infrastructure are already underway. Building even more will take money  and time. Companies hesitant to drill new wells may prove even more reluctant to sink money into a volatile international gas market.

According to Ana Maria Jaller-Markarewicz, a European energy analyst at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis research group, if U.S. natural gas producers can access the European market, theyll probably choose to.

U.S. LNG exporters will prefer to sell to Europe at a higher price than sell gas in the U.S. This could create a reduction of gas supply in the U.S. which would then increase the price domestically, Jaller-Markarewicz said in an emailed statement.

Notably, by the time the necessary infrastructure is in place, producers will have had plenty of time to permit and drill new wells. The impact of additional exports on supply could be lessened by an increase in domestic natural gas production.

Suppliers could come into the market to take advantage of that  that would be their natural tendency, Godby said. That would then moderate the increase, because the demand would be met with more supply. The only question is whether suppliers will do that.

U.S. natural gas prices are already elevated. Since June, the Henry Hub spot price has remained higher, and more volatile, than the prices seen over the last several years, pushing up heating costs for most Wyoming households.

Until a few weeks ago, the cost of natural gas was expected to settle over the next couple of years. Now economists suspect it will instead hold steady, or even go up, during that time.

Persistently high prices would mean more expensive winters for Wyoming homeowners. The state, meanwhile, could stand to profit. Natural gas ranks second, after oil but ahead of coal, as a source of severance tax revenue in Wyoming. Like oil, it was forecast to have a lucrative year, and may also outperform predictions.

Coal

Natural gas is usually cheaper than coal. At a certain price, coal becomes competitive, and utilities that have both coal- and gas-fired power plants may start burning more coal. Many utilities, facing abnormally high natural gas prices, have done just that, driving up the price of Wyoming coal and temporarily reversing the industrys decade-long decline.

Higher natural gas prices are always good for coal, said Travis Deti, executive director of the Wyoming Mining Association.

The spot price of coal mined in the Powder River Basin hovered between $8.25 and $13.25 per ton for a decade. In November, as utilities scrambled to secure coal for the winter, the spot price passed $30. It stayed that high for weeks.

Wyoming, the countrys biggest coal state, saw an uptick in hiring and a bump in production as demand went up, but its coal industry is unlikely to expand much more than that. Utilities arent building new coal plants. Coal companies arent opening new mines.

After a while, the spot price started to subside. As of Feb. 25, Powder River Basin coal cost $21.65 per ton.

It was  and is  a temporary reprieve. Coal demand will almost certainly subside when natural gas prices stabilize. The longer that takes, the better coal will fare. And if gas prices do go up, its definitely going to prolong the use of Wyoming coal, said Anne Alexander, an economics lecturer at the University of Wyoming.

Most Powder River Basin coal contracts are now sold out through 2023. Future demand will hinge on how utilities expect gas prices to change in the years that follow.

Renewables produce cheaper electricity than burning coal. Before last summer, natural gas usually did, too. Both of those sources also emit far less carbon than coal.

With price competition and climate concerns edging coal out of the market, the fuel now has a bigger infrastructure problem than its competitors. Utilities arent just burning less of it. Theyre closing their coal plants. Some utilities no longer have the option to fuel-switch. And after a lull last year, 6% of the countrys coal capacity is set to retire by the end of 2022.

Still, for the coal industry and the state, the relief could last longer than expected. A little over a decade ago, about 70% of Wyomings revenue came from the mineral sector. Today, minerals contribute about half. The drop is partly attributable to natural gas, but its mostly lost coal revenue, which has left Wyoming more vulnerable than ever to the booms and busts of the oil and gas industry.

At current production levels, the industry cant bridge that gap, but it, too, might pay more in severance taxes than it has in years.

Parting with Russia

Europe has known for a long time that getting roughly one-quarter of its oil and close to half of its natural gas from Russia was a risk. It hoped the alliance wouldnt fray. The move worked for a while, but left Russia with a lot of influence over Europe.

To cut that off, Godby said, Europe will have to stop depending on Russia.

Executives from the American Petroleum Institute (API), the biggest U.S. oil and gas trade group, outlined their vision for the future of European energy during a call with reporters on Thursday.

The only long-term solution is growing Americas energy leadership, said Frank Macchiarola, API vice president of policy, economics and regulatory affairs.

The trade group called on the federal government to speed up permitting for LNG export infrastructure and promptly start holding quarterly oil and gas lease sales. The conflict in Ukraine shows that the world needs more energy, especially natural gas, the executives said. They believe the U.S. should supply it. A statement issued Friday by 25 Republican governors, including Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon, urged similar actions in addition to completion of the Keystone XL oil pipeline, which President Joe Biden canceled last year.

The answer to the question of Russian oil is more American oil, Sen. John Barrasso, R-WY, said to the state House of Representatives on Friday. We are much better, safer and freer as a nation if were selling American energy to our friends than having to buy it from our enemies.

API and other oil and gas advocates have appealed repeatedly to the federal government since the invasion, angering environmental groups, which say more U.S. drilling wont solve European energy problems and have accused the oil and gas industry of trying to exploit the conflict for profit.

The Biden administration has not indicated that it plans to change course.

Just about everyone agrees that in the coming months, Europe will need oil and gas. If it doesnt come from Russia, itll have to be imported, at a higher cost, from elsewhere. But Seth Feaster, a data analyst at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, doesnt think Wyomings economic boost will last.

Longer-term, high energy prices for coal, oil, and gas will increase the drive to build wind and solar, because they do not face any of the volatility in fuel costs, unlike fossil fuels, Feaster said in an emailed statement.

Such a shift could already be happening. A week after announcing that it would halt construction of a major Russian natural gas pipeline, Germany now appears poised to swear off of fossil fuels. Europes biggest economy  and biggest consumer of Russian gas  intends to shift to 100% renewable electricity by 2035, Reuters reported Monday.

The consequences for Wyoming depend, most immediately, on what Russia does. It will be up to U.S. producers to respond. And then Europe will decide where to go from here.

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GILLETTE  They arrived in pickups and hatch-backs, carrying American flags and protest signs. Many brought along their children. They parked along the outskirts of Gillettes Cam-plex facility Thursday, awaiting the American Freedom Convoy.

The convoy is one of many currently traveling across the nation with the intent to converge on Washington.

A Freedom Convoy and protest in Canada last month paralyzed traffic between Detroit and Ontario, Canada, on Ambassador Bridge, North Americas busiest land border crossing. The protest arose from a mandate implemented earlier that month requiring truckers to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 or undergo a two-week quarantine when crossing the border from the U.S. into Canada.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau declared a national emergency in response to the blockage, and within days, the crossing was reopened.

But simmering indignation over vaccine mandates, masking requirements and other COVID restrictions in the U.S. were fodder for the movement to catch fire across the states.

The American Freedom Convoy started its journey in Spokane, Washington, and passed through Bozeman and Billings, Montana. After its stop in Gillette Thursday afternoon, the convoy headed for South Dakota.

Gillette native Katrina Bears was waiting for the arrival of the convoy in the CAM-plex parking lot with coworkers, her family and two tow trucks that she operates as part of her business, Draggin Towing and Recovery.

Bears has been following the convoy through Facebook, but said she doesnt know anyone who was directly participating.

Were just supporting what theyre doing, she said. You know, getting rid of the vaccine mandates and trying to open up the workforce.

Were Wyoming natives, and were more about freedom and letting the virus run its course.

Former President Donald Trump loomed large over the event. In the drivers side window of one of the tow trucks, colored yellow and black, was a profile cutout of Trump, his mouth open as if mid-yell. There were flags standing upright on the perimeter of the trucks bed: #FJB, Lets Go Brandon, Trump 2024: The Revenge Tour.

Robert and Robby Noriega, father and son, sat in the flatbed of their truck.

Robert said he worked for Transpro Burgener Trucking until his retirement in 2015. He picked up materials in Heber and Orem, Utah, and drove on Interstate 80 to deliver them to a quarry in Longmont, Colorado.

Roberts concerns seemed less focused on vaccine mandates, which the federal government has as of now only put in place for health care workers and government employees, and more focused on the general impact of the pandemic on truckers. The Supreme Court ruled in January that the federal government could not impose a vaccine mandate for businesses with 100 employees or more.

There are shortages at grocery stores, shortages of products, shortages of fuel, Robert said. As a trucker, that has a big impact on you.

Sirena Cooley and Emilee Hutchinson, sitting in the trunk of a hatchback, work as a nurse and a certified nursing assistant, respectively. Cooley said she is exempt from getting the vaccine for religious reasons. Hutchinson was not able to get an exemption, but both of them said they were frustrated with the vaccine requirement.

Besides the vaccine, Cooley also said she was burnt out from working in health care. She put it simply: No staff, underpaid, overwhelmed.

A cacophony of honking interrupted Cooley as a line of trucks started barreling down the road in front of the Cam-plex facility, snaking around its perimeter and parking in front of the Wyoming Center under a giant American flag that was suspended in the air.

Onlookers began congregating in the parking lot, towing around signs: FREEDOM ISNT FREE. GOD BLESS YOU. WYO TRUCKERS. DONT TREAD ON ME. BIDENS A B****. A little girl wearing pink cowboy boots walked around nearby with a sign nearly as tall as her: JAIL CORRUPT POLITICIANS.

J.R. Cole, a trucker, said he and his wife started organizing the convoy about a month ago along with other truckers across the U.S. and that their following has been spread by word-of-mouth.

We tried to make a registry at first, but people were afraid of sharing their names because of what happened in Canada, he said.

Mike Nagel, a trucker who transports structural steel mostly in Washington, said he was sick and tired of the government constantly taking away our freedoms.

It seemed that being sick and tired is much of what drove people out of their homes and across the country.

Everybodys been waiting for someone to take a stand, Cole said.

Joshua Wolfson is the editor of the Casper Star-Tribune. Find him on Twitter @joshwolfson.

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By every measure, Carlos Gonzales is the perfect example of academic success at the University of Wyoming.

Gonzales is the universitys top graduating male in 2021. Hailing from Buffalo, he is now in the process of obtaining his Ph.D. in the Department of Sociology and Criminology at Penn State. He was prepared to succeed in his doctoral program thanks to the rigor and expectations of his major: gender and womens studies at Wyomings lone four-year university.

But the gender studies department is now in jeopardy of being cut.

The Wyoming Senate passed a budget amendment last week that would defund the department. If the amendment becomes law, it would risk three degree programs, dozens of courses, research ventures and multiple faculty jobs at one of the oldest gender studies departments in the nation.

The Senates vote reverberated beyond the department itself, sparking a broader conversation about the future of education in Wyoming and the Legislatures role in deciding what should and shouldnt be taught in the states classrooms.

Legislative action

The budget amendment to strip UWs gender studies program of its funding appeared on the Senate floor at the end of a grueling week of legislation, with lawmakers working to develop the states fiscal plan while contending with dozens of other bills. It was 4 p.m. on Friday, Feb. 25, when Sen. Cheri Steinmetz, R-Lingle, rose to explain her amendment.

Framed as an effort to stop teaching UW students to be activists, Steinmetzs amendment succeeded in a close vote (16 to 14). But its future is unclear. A mirror amendment died in the House after the rules committee there concluded it was not germane to the budget. The differences between the two budgets is being hammered out by a committee of lawmakers.

The amendment bars any general funds, federal funds or other funds under the control of the university for the purpose of gender studies courses, academic 8 programs, co-curricular programs or extracurricular programs.

Steinmetz portrayed the department as out of step with the values of the state that supports and funds the university. Learning what was being taught in the department caused her to lose sleep, she said.

The lawmaker highlighted a couple of the phrases on the departments website and in its learning outcomes that she took particular issue with. You will learn how to articulate the history, strategies, and goals of interconnected movements for social justice, one states. Steinmetz noted another one that lists, Translate feminist and social justice theories into service or activism in its learning objectives.

I dont believe its an appropriate use of taxpayer dollars, she said.

The departments top official says lawmakers focused on certain words but missed the larger picture of what the program actually entails.

We obviously teach social movements because many social movements have organized around gender and sexuality, said Dr. Michelle Jarman, director of gender and womens studies at UW. The bringers of this amendment are focusing on one word in the syllabus.

Critics of the move, meanwhile, say the Senate is unnecessarily meddling in the universitys curriculum without taking the time to understand the department.

This is a Senate that has decided that it wants to run full bore down the culture war road without acknowledging the consequences, said Sabrina King, lobbyist for the ACLU. They dont have any clue what theyve even done because all they care about is the culture war.

The department

The gender and womens studies department resides within the University of Wyomings Culture, Gender and Social Justice School. Gender and womens studies consist of one major and two minors across the undergraduate and graduate schools.

In the last five years, the gender and womens studies department graduated 81 students. In the 2021 fall semester, there were roughly 450 students enrolled in gender and womens studies classes, including those that are cross-listed with other departments.

The advent of the womens studies program started in the late 1970s with a few classes, and it was formalized into a major in the 1990s. The gender studies department also includes a queer studies minor, which began in 2007.

The department has raised eyebrows before, Jarman said, but nothing as direct as the budget amendment.

Leaders of the program say the budget revision would completely wipe out all funding for the department if enacted. Jarman said it would be devastating.

Jacquelyn Bridgeman, a law professor and the director of the Culture, Gender and Social Justice College, said that no one from the Legislature reached out to the department ahead of time.

It would appear that they have no idea what the content of the courses is, Bridgeman said. They made assumptions, they didnt talk with us to understand how courses are actually taught.

University reaction

Santi Murrilo, a former UW student who minored in gender and womens studies, said she didnt understand why Steinmetz took issue with the department.

I think theyre so afraid that people will stand against what they believe in and shut them down, she said. Ive taken classes where I didnt 100% agree with what was being taught, but thats the point of university, you have to be open to other ideas. Were in the Equality State, where women were first given the right to vote, are we not allowed to talk about that anymore?

Gonzales, the 2021 winner of the Tobin Memorial Award as the University of Wyomings outstanding graduating male, pushed back on the idea that students were being forced to think a certain way.

The professors were not actively pursuing any political ends, Gonzales said. We were never indoctrinated into some way or thinking or way of doing. What I did with those tools is beyond the control of those professors.

UW student Riley Skorcz, who is majoring in speech, language and hearing sciences and has taken courses in the gender studies program, thinks legislators who supported the amendment are disconnected from their constituency and disconnected from the university.

I just wish that legislators would interact with the population that theyre affecting, she said.

Actions like those in the Senate exacerbate the problem of young people leaving the state for opportunities elsewhere, advocates for the program say. Skorcz said she plans to leave as soon as she graduates, while Gonzales already has.

I consider myself almost proudly part of this exodus where I took the courses I wanted in order to meet my own needs, and as soon as I was presented the opportunity, I left to an environment where I dont really feel threatened or that the topics are going to be controlled by some political motivations, Gonzales said.

University of Wyoming President Ed Seidel and Executive Vice President Kevin Carman sent out a statement to the UW community on Monday addressing concerns about the amendment.

We disagree with the Senate position, which thankfully was adopted on the thinnest possible margin, they said. We agree with the House that this amendment should not be considered germane to the bill, in addition to other serious concerns of both practice and principle that we have with it.

History

Steinmetz has spoken out before concerning the department. She expressed her opposition to the coursework at a Joint Appropriations Committee meeting in the fall, but had not formally taken action before this amendment.

During the Feb. 25 discussion, she shared a handout with lawmakers that highlighted a number of department learning objectives that she took issue with such as understanding historical and contemporary context in which women, queer, and gender non-conforming individuals have exercised their agency and connecting crip, queer, critical race and ethnic studies approaches to place, environments, and the land.

Steinmetz is known as one of the Legislatures more prominent social conservatives, often weighing in on issues pertaining to the LGBTQ community.

In 2014, a municipal court judge in Sublette County made a statement to a local news outlet about her unwillingness to perform a same-sex marriage due to her religious beliefs. The Wyoming Supreme Court ultimately censured the judge for violating the states judicial code. Steinmetz was a vocal supporter of the judge and wrote a blog post for the Wyoming Pastors Network voicing her support.

In the 2017 general session, she was the prime sponsor on a bill that would have allowed people to sue employers if their workplaces policies about LGBTQ workers conflicted with their religious or moral convictions. At the time, the American Civil Liberties Union said the bill would legalize discrimination against same-sex couples and transgender people.

The bill was eventually withdrawn by its sponsors.

In 2018, she also wrote that some proposed transgender protection policies conflict with the overwhelming main stream majority of Goshen County and Wyoming Citizens around the time that the Eastern Wyoming College Board of Trustees was voting on the measures.

Critics of the amendment see it as representative of animosity toward the LGBTQ community.

The [amendment] stands for something larger, Gonzales said. The bill signifies ... Wyomings continual hatred against LGBTQ people.

Steinmetz, however, denied that the amendment is anything beyond addressing how taxpayer dollars are spent.

This is an issue of the proper use of public funds, she said in a brief comment to the Star-Tribune via text. Nothing more.

A relative rarity

Lawmakers have criticized university programs before. In 2017, Sen. Anthony Bouchard, R-Cheyenne, got into an argument with students over an academic project related to guns. They said the senator threatened to end funding for their program, which he denied.

But university representatives say the Legislature hasnt gone so far as to actually attempt to remove funding from programs they disagreed with until now.

I dont remember seeing anything quite like this, said Bridgeman, whos in her 20th year at the school. To do that kind of targeted legislation...that is pretty unprecedented.

UW spokesperson Chad Baldwin also said that he couldnt think of a specific example that matches the current situation, although he said that, over the years, there have been some concerns in the Legislature about certain activities at UW.

That said, the amendment uses some similar language to another gender-related budget amendment to the universitys budget dating back to the 2020 session.

Like Steinmetzs amendment says, the 2020 amendment barred the school from using general funds, federal funds or other funds, but in that case the money was blocked from going towards elective abortions or group health insurance that provides coverage for students elective abortions.

Academic freedom

This session, lawmakers have pursued multiple measures that attempt to influence whats being taught in Wyoming. The others have sought to bar the teaching of critical race theory in the states K-12 schools or require the disclosure of teaching materials on a website.

But some legislators see a difference between getting involved in the teaching of younger children and university students.

When we send them to the university, youre turning them loose. Theyre adults, said Sen. Drew Perkins during the debate on the Senate floor. You turn them out to be ready for an adult world, and you dont have to agree with the point of view to learn about it.

The amendment prompted a larger discussion about the Legislatures role in the states academics system. Some legislators say their purview extends into the universitys instruction.

Academic freedoms been hijacked folks, said Sen. Larry Hicks, R-Baggs. It was never the intention that nobody else gets to weigh in on what we teach at the university, but it seems to be present that academic freedom means that if youre not smart enough or intellectual enough and work for a university then you dont get a say so in the process. Is that what intellectual freedom actually means?

Steinmetz referred to the handout she shared with lawmakers and pointed to Sen. Charlie Scotts testimony on the floor. The Natrona County Republican characterized the department as extremely biased and ideologically driven.

I think well hear complaints about how were interfering in the internals of the university, but I think what were really doing is sending them a message that they need to clean up their act in terms of the quality of the instruction thats being given, Scott said.

Perkins, who chairs the committee that drafts the budget bill, pushed back.

That was the hue and cry just a couple years ago about what was happening on college campuses around the nation about providing safe spaces so people didnt have to be exposed to certain points of view, he said. We were incensed at that. I was incensed at that. Well, this is just the other side of that coin.

Perkins noted that lawmakers could wade into these waters. But he questioned whether they should.

I still believe in limited government, he said. This is too much government for me. This is too much overreach.

Legislative action

The Senate doesnt make budget decisions by itself. It must pass a state budget with the involvement of two other parties: the House of Representatives and the governor.

Because the House did not pass the same budget amendment, the matter  along with other differences  will be hashed out in a committee of both senators and representatives.

Creating one cohesive budget out of the two budget bills is a long and arduous process, and sometimes amendments are thrown out with little discussion. At least some believe that might happen with the gender studies measure.

I dont think it will be the subject of any conference committee, said Sen. Mike Gierau, D-Jackson.

The ACLUs King also believes it has zero prospects. That said, Steinmetz is on the conference committee, so she will have some sway.

If the amendment survives that process, it must also be approved by Gov. Mark Gordon, who has the power of the line-item veto and is known for cutting things in the budget that could be standalone bills.

Given that the amendment only passed by a narrow margin in the Senate and was defeated in the House, Baldwin, the UW spokesman, said he is optimistic it will not make it into law, although he added that the university administration is watching closely.

The students in the program, meanwhile, are on the sidelines, watching to see if their department will survive.

Skorcz said she has recently been working on her class registration for next semester and is interested in signing up for several upper division classes that involve studying gender and social justice. She wonders if shes signing up for classes that ultimately wont exist.

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Both the Wyoming House and Senate have passed redistricting plans, but as usual, the process has been anything but smooth.

The Senate adopted a redistricting plan Thursday that risks a court challenge and is drastically different from what the House of Representatives agreed on earlier in the budget session.

Lawmakers have been working for months on redrawing the states legislative districts in light of population changes that occurred over the past decade. The process has been a challenge, especially as lawmakers try to reconcile population growth in Wyomings larger cities with the states shrinking small towns.

In the Senates map, the Bighorn Basin is slightly out of deviation, meaning that the ratio of constituents to representatives is not proportional enough. If districts are out of deviation, they risk being in violation of the 14th Amendment and the one man, one vote concept. Courts have held that if districts are within 10% deviation, they comply with the 14th Amendment.

Currently, the Senate map is roughly 11.25% out of deviation and has 90 lawmakers. The Houses map that was delivered to the Senate was dramatically different. So what happened?

Sen. Bo Biteman, R-Ranchester, brought an amendment Tuesday that more or less brought back a layout that the Joint Corporations Committee tabled in February. But there is one major difference between then and now: The committee had the basin in deviation, while Bitemans plan does not.

Biteman's amendment also reduced the number of lawmakers from 93 back down to 90.

Another amendment brought in the Senate Thursday by Sen. Bill Landen, R-Casper, pushed the basin farther out of deviation by a mere 142 people. With the passage of that amendment, however, a community of interest was made whole again by putting some northwest Natrona County people back into a Natrona County district. It also solved whats called a split ballot, which occurs when people go to the polls and have to vote on two different ballots because municipal and legislative district lines cross over. County clerks have repeatedly voiced their opposition to splits because it confuses voters.

The new maps that the House and Senate passed come after the Joint Corporations, Elections and Political Subdivisions Committee worked on a reapportionment plan over the past few months, all the while hearing from county clerks, residents and other lawmakers. The map that the committee ultimately sponsored was changed dramatically in both chambers. For one, the committee proposed a map that would increase the Legislature from 90 to 93 lawmakers. That provision was later removed in the Senate

Wyomings county clerks said they were not looped in on the major Senate amendments and are not keen on them.

Theyre really disappointed, said Mary Lankford, a lobbyist for the Wyoming County Clerks Association and the Sublete County clerk for 32 years. They worked really hard during the interim with the public, and in two days all their work has been ignored and gone.

The association was on board with the 93-lawmaker plan because it met all the redistricting principles and was within deviation. Lankford does not expect a map with the basin out of deviation to pass the courts if the state is sued.

The final Senate map passed easily with 20 in favor and 10 against.

I do acknowledge that [the possibility of being sued] may exist, but I feel pretty strongly about what the Senate did, Landen said. Were more concerned with communities of interest, which I think more reflects the values of Wyoming. What the Senate has landed on is: We believe that communities of interest are more important. Those opposed to the 93-legislator plans are wary of growing government and concerned about the cost of doing so.

Sen. Ogden Driskill, R-Devils Tower, chairman of the corporations committee, calls that cost a red herring, making the point that a special session to sort out redistricting disagreements would cost far more than adding three lawmakers over multiple years.

The Senates map is going back to the House for a vote, where it is more than likely get voted down, said Rep. Dan Zwontizer, R-Cheyenne, co-chairman of the legislative committee responsible for redistricting.

That vote will trigger a conference committee  three representatives and three senators  to address the major differences in the two chambers maps. The map that the committee ends up with will again be put to a vote in both bodies. A conference committee did not occur in the last two redistricting efforts.

Before the bodies have a chance to vote, lawmakers will likely convene a caucus to get a pulse on how many votes the map options have, Zwonitzer said.

They likely wont bring something that wont pass, he added.

If the conference committee cant come to an agreement, Wyoming runs the risk of having the courts draw the map, the prospect of which also concerns people.

Theyll do a cookie cutter thing and say, Here it is , Lankford said. There wont be any community of interest. No consideration for any of that.

A special session would be called if the joint committee cant offer a bill that can pass both the House and the Senate and the Legislature runs out of time in this budget session to work.

As lawmakers go into a conference committee, they have to wrestle with a two plans, one of which is over 11% out of deviation. If the Legislature ultimately moves forward with a map out of deviation, the state is opening the door to a lawsuit, which has happened before. Wyoming lost a lawsuit over the plan the state put forward in 1990 because the House and the Senate were astronomically out of deviation: 83% in the House and 58% in the Senate.

That said, the U.S. Supreme Court also upheld a Virginia plan as constitutional that was 16.4% out of deviation because of the specific facts of the case, the Wyoming Legislative Service Office wrote in a memo.

The Bighorn Basin is a unique circumstance. It causes issues because of its geography (its mountainous and hard to access in the winter as roads get snowed in) and because it has a community of interest. The basin has long had a farming community that some lawmakers say would not make sense to split up or add a large group of people to from outside the community just to satisfy the deviation requirements.

The Bighorn Basin is tough every year, said Pete Illoway, the chairman of the corporations committee last time the Legislature performed redistricting.

Many lawmakers are willing to run the risk of a lawsuit, while other lawmakers disagree that Wyoming will prevail. The 14th Amendment requires a state to make an honest and good faith effort to draw districts as equally as is practical.

I like our chances of defending what Wyoming represents, Landen said.

On Tuesday, after Biteman brought his major amendment, there was chatter on and off the floor that his map was drawn to prioritize maintaining lawmakers seats over respecting population changes. This plan ensures the greater likelihood of us to come back. Its self serving, Sen. Tara Nethercott, R-Cheyenne, said to the body. It works. We know it works.

Sens. Cale Case, R-Lander, Mike Gierau, D-Jackson, and Driskill all told the Star-Tribune that they believed the driving force behind this map was electability. Biteman denied that had anything to do with his draft.

Thats absolute B.S. Biteman said. Theres no motivations like that period.

The senators concerns arent without cause. There have been public conversations about wanting to maintain seats, and there was a previous map drawn that split Cheyennes Latino community unfavorably in order to prevent two sitting lawmakers from running against one another, the Star-Tribune reported earlier.

The need for a conference committee is reflective of how redistricting has gone so far. The corporations committee aimed to be done with the process by Dec. 1, but the panel ultimately worked up until the Friday before the budget session convened in mid-February because the committee and the public could not come to an agreement.

Correction: This story previously misstated an aspect of the House map. The map that left the House was also out of deviation.

Follow state politics reporter Victoria Eavis on Twitter @Victoria_Eavis

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SMALL business owners in three Caribbean countries will get the opportunity to showcase how their enterprises are transforming their communities, and themselves, due to support from the social enterprise, Nudge Caribbean.

The opportunity comes tomorrow, at an event called Nudge Now, which is being organised by Nudge Caribbean, which was founded by Anya Ayoung-Chee, design strategist and social entrepreneur, and Julie Avey, Massy Groups senior vice president of People and Culture.
A Barrackpore woman returned to her house in the early hours of last Saturday and found an i
US gas prices are surging at pace drivers haven't seen since Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

The national average price for a gallon of regular gas stood at $3.84 a gallon Friday, according to AAA. That is the highest price since September 2012 and 11 cents higher than Thursday.

Gas prices have soared 18 cents since Wednesday and 29 cents since Russia's invasion of Ukraine eight days ago. Each of those increases marks the largest price hikes since Hurricane Katrina slammed into the US Gulf Coast in 2005, devastating the nation's oil and gas industry, according to the Oil Price Information Service, which collects data from 140,000 gas stations nationwide for AAA's price averages.

With prices rising so rapidly, a national average of $4 a gallon, as well as the record $4.11 set in 2008, will probably be reached soon.

"This is not the end of it. We're already up another 14 cents on wholesale gas prices this morning," said Tom Kloza, global head of energy analysis for OPIS. He said the wholesale gas price increases are likely to be passed onto consumers in short order.

"It's absolutely out of control," he said.

The average price a year ago was $2.75 a gallon, as prices were still recovering from the plunge that occurred early in the pandemic. Stay-at-home orders and business shutdowns slashed demand for gasoline.

The average household uses about 90 gallons a month, said Kloza, so a $1.09 increase in gas prices costs that household about $98 a month, or just less than $1,200 over the course of a year.

Kloza said he could see the average price rising to a new record of between $4.25 to $4.50 a gallon. He said the rapid rise in the price of gas is making a particularly strong impression on the public, compared to a slow but steady increase in prices.

"When you get increases this quick, and this dramatic, you really scald the public," he said.

California's statewide average jumped 13 cents overnight to $5.07 a gallon, making it the first state ever to have a average price above $5 a gallon.

There are now nine states -- California, Hawaii, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, Alaska, Illinois, New York and Pennsylvania, where the average price is already over $4 a gallon, with New York and Pennsylvania crossing the $4 mark with the latest reading.

Two more states -- Arizona and Connecticut, as well as Washington, DC, are only pennies away from that $4 average.

The average price of a gallon of diesel is now $4.26 a gallon. It hit $4 this past weekend. While relatively few US passenger cars use diesel, virtually all large trucks depend on it. And most trucking companies have a schedule of fuel surcharges that are based on average prices, meaning that the cost of transporting almost all goods is increasing for businesses, a cost increase that is also likely to be passed onto consumers in the form of higher prices.

The sanctions placed on Russia's economy following its invasion of Ukraine have so far exempted Russian oil exports. But traders have been reluctant to purchase Russian oil due to uncertainty about being able to close the transaction with the limits on the Russian banking sector, as well as concerns about finding oil tankers willing to to call on Russian ports to load any oil purchased.

The cost of gasoline the year you started driving The cost of gasoline the year you started driving 1937 1938 1939 1940 1941 1942 1943 1944 1945 1946 1947 1948 1949 1950 1951 1952 1953 1954 1955 1956 1957 1958 1959 1960 1961 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969 1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020

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Dorothy Williams was a U.S. Forest Service fire lookout at Atascosa Peak northwest of Nogales for the summer months of 1967.

The Atascosa Lookout, built between 1930 and 1933, was a 14-by-14-foot structure that served as an active fire-sighting post until the late 1970s. In that time period, improved aerial detection of fires led the U.S. Forest Service to stop staffing many lookouts.

It served as a summer roost for a string of solitary fire spotters, including the late author Edward Abbey, whose books included "Desert Solitaire" and "The Monkey Wrench Gang."

The lookout - sited on a 6,249-foot summit northwest of Nogales - was destroyed during the Murphy Complex Fire in 2011, which burned nearly 70,000 acres.

Photos  Arizona Daily Star or Tucson Citizen, where applicable
A Yuma County judge is considering whether to dismiss a defamation lawsuit by a current Southern Arizona legislator against a former colleague.

Superior Court Judge Levi Gunderson heard arguments Wednesday from the attorney for former state Rep. Charlene Fernandez that the 2021 lawsuit must be dismissed under Arizona law and the U.S. Constitution. An attorney for state Rep. Mark Finchem, of Oro Valley, former state Rep. Anthony Kern and U.S. Rep. Paul Gosar disagreed.

The three Republicans say Fernandez, a Democrat, defamed them by co-signing a criminal referral to the FBI, along with every other Democrat in the state Legislature. The letter asked the FBI to look into their activities at the Jan. 6 2021 actions at the U.S. Capitol. The letter also named U.S. Rep. Andy Biggs, but he did not join the lawsuit.

For opaque reasons, the three only sued Fernandez, who resigned last year to take a job as the U.S. Department of Agricultures Arizona director for rural development. At the Wednesday hearing, attorney George Wentz said they picked Fernandez because she had previously shown animus to Kern.

The law does not permit three public officials to target for defamation one member of the entire Democratic caucus who co-signed a criminal referral letter to the FBI, said David Bodney, the attorney for Fernandez, on Thursday.

When a person submits a criminal referral letter to law enforcement, that letter is absolutely privileged as a matter of Arizona law, Bodney said. When all 42 Democratic members of the Arizona Legislature submit that letter, the submittal is all the more privileged.

Gunderson said he would rule on the motion within 60 days.

Finchem, the Arizona Republic reported this week, is running three separate fundraisers, apart from his campaign for secretary of state. One is to pay for this lawsuit, another is for legal representation regarding the congressional investigation into the Jan. 6 attack and the third is to defray his costs for a Nov. 30, 2020, event in Phoenix building a case that the presidential election was stolen.

Tim Steller </&h6>

Ducey: Still no eyes on Senate

Gov. Doug Ducey, who is termed out, says he still isnt entering the race to try to unseat Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly.

The AP reiterated Duceys position in a news story this week saying Ducey has notified Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell about the decision.

Ducey had already said in January 2021 that he would not seek to challenge Kelly.

The governor has said specifically he is not running for the United States Senate, Ducey spokesman C.J. Karamargin told Capitol Media Service in a news story Jan. 25, 2021.

That didnt stop Ducey from sharing his new no-surprise announcement with donors, according to the Arizona Republic.

Right now I have the job I want, Ducey wrote, adding that he is fully committed to helping elect a Republican U.S. senator from Arizona, the Republic reported.

Kelly was elected in 2020 to finish the last two years of the term of the late Republican Sen. John McCain.

Howard Fischer</&h6>

No denunciation of Sen. Rogers

Less than 24 hours after condemning racism, Gov. Doug Doug refused to say Wednesday whether he would once again endorse Sen. Wendy Rogers.

And he would not directly condemn the Flagstaff senator herself for her statements and actions.

Ducey says his Tuesday statement condemning racism was not because of anything the senator had done but was in response to the Senates censure of Wendy Rogers.

I have condemned racism and antisemitism in all of their forms every time I have been asked about it, he said. Anyway, the governor said, he was never directly asked about whether he considers Rogers to be a racist.

What Ducey was asked last week, however, was whether he regretted having his political action committee spend $500,000 in 2020 to get her elected. And the governor said at the time that he needed a Republican elected in the district to provide him with a critical 16th Republican vote in the 30-member Senate.

Press aide C.J. Karamargin said much of the information that resulted in the Senate censure vote only became public over the weekend.

That included her speech to the America First Political Action Committee, a group of white nationalists, where she advocated building gallows to make an example of these traitors who have betrayed our country. And she opened with seeking applause from the crowd for Russias invasion of Ukraine.

There was was no statement from Ducey until after the Senate voted, with 10 of the 16 Republicans in the chamber joining with all 14 Democrats, to censure Rogers. And even then, Ducey did not call out Rogers by name but instead issued a statement praising the Senate vote, saying it sends a clear message that antisemitic and hateful language has no place in Arizona.

Howard Fischer</&h6>

Miller: Rogers is misunderstood

Former Pima County Supervisor Ally Miller weighed in this week on the controversy over comments by state Sen. Wendy Rogers.

In a letter posted on Wendy Rogers campaign website, Miller, who represented the northwest side of the Tucson area from 2013 to 2021, said people are misstating Rogers call for people to be hung on gallows.

First, Rogers said that traitors need to be tried and convicted prior to being hung, Miller wrote. Isnt that the way our criminal justice system works?

Yeah, maybe. Although hanging is only a legal method of execution in two states  Washington and New Hampshire.

More to the point, though, is the question of who Rogers was calling a traitor needing to be hanged. Miller did not touch on that.

Tim Steller</&h6>

Landmarks lit up to back Ukraine

The historic Pima County Courthouse was decorated in blue and yellow lighting this week to show support for Ukraine.

Photos of the special lighting was shared on Pima Countys official Twitter page.

Not surprisingly, many of the comments centered on the countys mask rules rather than Ukraines war with Russia.

Several other landmarks in the state also have been used to show support for Ukraine, according to the Associated Press.

The fountain at Fountain Hills is to be lit blue and yellow every Wednesday night through March. It shoots a stream of water 560 feet into the air for about 15 minutes at the top of each hour from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily.

And the town of Gilbert lit its water tower in the colors of Ukraines flag last week.

Ducey this week said the state Capitol would show colored lights, as is City Hall in Phoenix, the AP reported.

Contact columnist Tim Steller at tsteller@tucson.com or 520-807-7789. On Twitter: @senyorreporter

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Tesla Motors will open its first electric vehicle dealership and service center in Tucson this summer, as supply-chain and production issues have slowed deliveries of EVs to a trickle nationwide.

The site, at 5001 N. Oracle Road, near River Road, is about 30,000 square feet of showroom and service center with a price tag of about $5 million, city of Tucson building records show.

A sign hanging on the chain link fence around the construction site announced Teslas pending arrival.

In 2020, Tesla dissolved its public relations department and there is no mechanism for communication with the media. Getting the companys comment on why it chose to open a Tucson dealership was not possible.

Stephen Grimm, owner of the shopping center, Keystone Fiesta Plaza, and general contractor, Blue Lion Construction, said completion is expected this summer.

The architect is G Squared Architecture.

The showroom will have Tesla Models S, 3, X and Y and the Cybertruck.

Teslas are sold mainly by pre-order, with delivery waits now ranging from six to nine months, depending on the model.

EV shortage

The opening of the dealership comes as most shoppers now will have trouble finding any new EVs to buy and drive off Tucson dealer lots.

Popular, lower-priced EVs like the Nissan Leaf and the Chevy Bolt were out of stock last week and at most dealers nationwide, with delivery delays stretching into months for the Leaf, and later this year for the Bolt due to a safety recall.

Automakers blame supply-chain issues related to the pandemic and a shortage of semiconductor computer chips, which has also delayed production and deliveries of some gas-powered cars and trucks.

David Gebert, president of the Tucson Electric Vehicle Association, said EVs have been in short supply at local dealerships for the past year.

Its all (because of) supply-chain stuff, said Gebert, whose group offers tips to EV newbies. Theres really nothing for them to sell.

Volkswagen acknowledged struggling to meet demand for the ID.4 all-electric SUV, and it didnt help that a U.S.-bound cargo ship carrying more than 1,500 Volkswagen Group vehicles including ID.4s, Audis and Porsches caught fire and sunk off last week off the coast of Portugal.

Larry H. Miller Volkswagen in Tucson does not currently have any ID.4s on the lot, and the dealership is taking orders for the vehicle with a delivery wait of about nine to 11 months, company spokeswoman Sara Waldman said.

Meanwhile, sports-car enthusiasts looking to buy a Ford Mustang Mach-E, the all-electric version of the iconic muscle car, are facing a delivery delay of 20 to 28 weeks, Ford says.

Demand high

Hot demand for EVs also is a factor, driven nationally by mandates to move to zero emission vehicles adopted by a dozen states including California.

Sales of new light-duty plug-in electric vehicles, including all-electric vehicles and plug-in hybrid electrics, nearly doubled to 608,000 in 2021, according to the U.S. Energy Department, and some analysts predict EV sales could nearly double again in 2022.

After getting nearly 200,000 purchase reservations for its new F-150 Lightning electric truck, Ford began taking orders for the Lightning in January.

The automaker says it plans to begin deliveries this spring, though it may not be able to fill all pre-orders this year. The Lightning starts at about $40,000 and can top $90,000 with all the options.

The Leaf is the lowest-priced production EV in the U.S., starting at $27,500 for a shorter-range model.

But last summer, Nissan halted production of the 2022 Leaf at its Tennessee manufacturing plant for at least six weeks due to chip shortages, and it has also delayed the rollout of its new EV, the Ariya.

And special circumstances have prompted shortages of two other popular EVs.

General Motors halted production of its Chevy Bolt EV and EUV  a sport-utility version  last fall to devote production to replacing battery packs on about 140,000 2019-2021 Bolts involved in a safety recall after a series of battery fires.

GM recently said it would restart 2022 Bolt EV and EUV production in April, when sales of new Bolts also are expected to resume.

Looking ahead, GM plans to launch several new EVs by the end of 2023, including the Cadillac Lyriq luxury SUV a Chevrolet Silverado EV pickup and a Chevrolet Equinox compact SUV.

Theres a lot on the horizon, said Chris Holcomb, general sales manager at ORielly Chevrolet in Tucson.

Contact reporter Gabriela Rico at grico@tucson.com. 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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Gabriela Rico Reporter Gabriela's been with the Star since 2007.
Economic fundamentals stay strong

08:39, March 04, 2022 By OUYANG SHIJIA and MA SI ( China Daily

A reporter puts questions to Guo Weimin, spokesman for the fifth session of the 13th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, on Thursday during a news briefing held via video. [Photo by Jia Ning/For China Daily]

China is confident of achieving steady development despite global challenges

China has the confidence, conditions and capabilities to achieve steady, healthy and sustainable economic development this year, Guo Weimin, spokesman for the fifth session of the 13th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, said during a news briefing on Thursday.

Facing the complex and volatile international environment and multiple challenges from the COVID-19 pandemic, China's economy has maintained steady recovery in 2021, suggesting that its economic fundamentals remain strong in the long term, Guo said.

He also warned that the external environment has become more complex and uncertain, saying that China's economy faces severe challenges this year.

Citing comments from members of the 13th National Committee of the CPPCC, Guo said more efforts should be made to maintain steady and healthy economic growth this year, including promoting technological innovation and industrial transformation, expanding domestic demand, strengthening the supply chain, speeding up self-reliance and self-improvement in science and technology, and stabilizing market expectations.

Guo also noted that although foreign trade faces uncertainties and pressure this year, China's trade has solid industrial foundations, and the foreign trade industry has achieved high development in recent years.

More efforts are needed to make use of cross-border e-commerce and other innovative formats to boost foreign trade, actively promote the integration of domestic and foreign trade and boost the digitization level of trade, Guo added.

He said the country will take practical steps this year to continuously expand high-level opening-up and build an open world economy.

Data from the National Bureau of Statistics showed that the official purchasing managers index for China's manufacturing sector came in at 50.2 in February versus 50.1 in January, staying in expansion territory for four months despite downward pressure and uncertainties. A PMI reading above 50 indicates the economy is expanding.

Yang Jinghao, chief economist at Concat Data Technology (Hangzhou) Co, said the accelerated manufacturing activity in February points to the resilience of China's economy and shows that the nation has taken proper measures to deal with the downward pressure.

Despite facing multiple pressures from shrinking demand, supply shock and weakening expectations, China's economy enjoys strong resilience with positive fundamentals remaining, Wang Yiming, a senior economist and a member of the 13th National Committee of the CPPCC, said at a recent news conference.

Wang said China's economy may face greater downward pressure in the second quarter, adding that he expected the government to take more steps to shore up growth.

He said the government needs to be prudent in mapping out policies with contractionary effects, and more efforts should be made to expand domestic demand, strengthen industrial and supply chains and guard against and defuse major risks.

Tommy Wu, lead economist at the think tank Oxford Economics, said he expected front-loaded policy support and more policy easing to support growth.

"We forecast GDP growth will slow to 5 percent this year, before a pickup to 5.5 percent in 2023," he said.

According to Wu, the government has continued to emphasize tax cuts and unemployment benefits to support the economy and has sped up the approval of infrastructure projects. In addition, local governments' bond issuance for infrastructure financing has also gained pace.

"We look for further reduction in the reserve requirement ratio and loan prime rate to support growth," he added.

(Web editor: Zhong Wenxing, Liang Jun)
Migrant Protection Protocols, also known as the remain in Mexico policy for immigrants, is helping to keep Arizonans safe, the director of Arizonas Department of Homeland Security told a panel of lawmakers this week.

The policy, which was ordered reinstated by courts after the Biden administration tried to end it, lets border officials spend less time chasing the same trafficker, smuggler and coyotes, Tim Roemer told a House Homeland Security subcommittee.

When applied properly MPP helps protect the lives of every Arizona community and those throughout the nation, Roemer said on Wednesday. MPP gives federal law enforcement authorities the ability to stop the individuals who are taking advantage of the asylum system and allows the system to work better for those in need.

But there is no way to apply the law properly, federal officials told the hearing. They repeated administration concerns that the remain in Mexico policy is counterproductive and inhumane to migrants, who can fall victim to crime and illness when forced back across the border.

MPP is not aligned with this administrations values and imposes an unjustifiable human cost on migrants and pulls resources away from more important efforts that seek to address the root causes of irregular migration, said Blas Nunez-Neto, the acting assistant homeland security secretary for border and immigration policy.

The hearing came the same day that protesters, including several from Arizona, rallied outside the White House to charge that Biden has not done enough to protect immigrants.

He was the one that decided to implement that policy with the remain in Mexico, said Arisaid Gonzalez, an Arizona native who is D.C.-area campaigns manager for United We Dream, which organized Wednesdays rally. He had the opportunity to take it away and he hasnt, so hes definitely part of the problem.

MPP was unveiled in January 2019 by the Trump administration. Under the policy, border officials accepted the claim of any migrant who showed up at the border seeking asylum  but then turned that immigrant around to wait in Mexico while their case was considered.

A year later, as the COVID-19 pandemic hit, MPP was combined with Title 42, a law that allows the U.S. to turn back immigrants who pose a potential health risk.

Critics said the two policies posed serious health and safety risks to migrants by forcing them to live in makeshift camps with poor sanitation and little protection from criminals who were free to rob, rape, threaten and, in some cases, kill. Many of the migrants were from countries other than Mexico, leaving them few options when turned back.

We have very serious concerns about both the remain in Mexico policy and the misuse of Title 42, said Eleanor Acer, senior director for refugee protection at Human Rights First. Under both of these policies, which originated under the Trump administration, the United States and now the Biden administration is turning away people seeking asylum to places where their lives and safety are at risk.

Biden has kept Title 42, to the dismay of immigration advocates. But he tried to do away with MPP shortly after taking office, issuing an executive order on Feb. 2, 2021, to suspend the program, which was followed five months later by a Homeland Security memorandum officially terminating it.

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas justified termination by saying MPP did not enhance border safety or management, diverted resources from other border missions and exposed migrants to a lack of stable access to housing, income, and safety. That could result in some migrants abandoning potentially meritorious protection claims.

Texas and Missouri sued, claiming that an end to MPP would mean an influx of immigrants to their states, while overwhelming DHSs detention capacity, among other concerns. A U.S. district judge in north Texas agreed and in August ordered DHS to make a good faith effort to reinstate the program.

DHS restarted the program, even as it has renewed its efforts to do away with it. The Supreme Court said last month that it will hear the governments claim that it should be allowed to end the program, fast-tracking arguments for April.

In the meantime, the Biden administration has made two major changes to the program.

Where migrants previously had to tell officers they feared returning to Mexico, officers are now required to ask the question of migrants. And the standard of proof needed to demonstrate a reasonable possibility of persecution or torture in Mexico, has been lowered, said Jessica Bolter, associate policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute.

Roemer acknowledged the humanitarian concerns about MPP. But he said those have to be weighed against the dangers of a wide-open asylum system, to both migrants and Arizona residents.

MPP allows authorities to take significant action as opposed to the catch-and-release tactics from the past that are sadly becoming all too real again today, he said. It allows border officials to focus their activities on the worst actors, effectively protecting Arizona and America from dangerous drugs and transnational criminal organizations who continue to profit off of vulnerable populations.

But for Ana, an undocumented immigrant from Arizona who was part of the rally outside the White House on Wednesday, the only real solution will be comprehensive immigration reform. Despite Bidens pledge to get reform passed, protesters noted that there have been 2 million deportations under his administration so far.

Im here because we just hear the same rhetoric, they always say promises and they never fulfill their promises, Ana, speaking in Spanish, said through a translator. So its a lot of failure on their end.

For more stories from Cronkite News, visit cronkitenews.azpbs.org.

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PHOENIX  State Sen. Kelly Townsend is folding her congressional bid, a move that could pave the way for her to take on the recently censured Sen. Wendy Rogers in a legislative race.

Townsend, an Apache Junction Republican, said she made the decision after failing to get an anticipated endorsement from former President Donald Trump.

She said her fate with Trump was sealed when she publicly lashed out this week at Rogers, who is closely linked to Trump and insists, as does he, that the 2020 election was stolen from him.

The lack of the endorsement means that instead of being able to unite the field behind a single banner, my presence in the Republican primary will serve only to split the conservative vote even further, Townsend said, explaining why she is dropping out of the race for the congressional seat currently occupied by Democrat Ann Kirkpatrick, who is not seeking reelection.

But Townsend said Friday she has yet to decide whether to run for another two-year term in the state Senate. To do so would pave the way for a head-to-head GOP primary with Rogers.

Rogers may face further actions

Rogers, a Flagstaff Republican, not only was censured this week for conduct unbecoming a senator, but could face further actions, especially after using the censure to raise campaign money, Senate President Karen Fann said Friday.

We are giving her a little time to think about how her actions are affecting the entire Senate body, Fann said.

The Senate has received emails and calls from constituents inquiring about expulsion or filing ethics complaints, said Fann, a Prescott Republican.

If those complaints are filed, they will be taken up by the Senate Ethics Committee, which could recommend additional sanctions, she said. Fann also has the power to remove Rogers from committees.

There was no immediate comment from Rogers, who was rebuked by the Republican-led Senate on a 24-3 vote for publicly issuing and promoting social media and video messaging encouraging violence against and punishment of American citizens. In a speech to a white supremacist group late last month, she said we need to build more gallows to make an example of these traitors who have betrayed our country.

The censure also mentioned Rogers tweet, ahead of the vote, threatening political destruction of those who disagree with her views.

Townsend was not present for the vote, saying her daughter had a medical emergency. But she did comment on the Senate floor the following day after Rogers sent out an email calling the censure a shock political hit job to try to silence her, and using it to solicit campaign donations.

Without naming Rogers, Townsend apologized to those who have had to see daily, ongoing grifting with emails that have little basis in fact, giving false hope, tearing our state apart.

Legislative race

The state Senate seat both may covet is the newly redrawn Legislative District 7, which stretches from Flagstaff through Payson, into Apache Junction and south to Oracle. It has a 60-40 Republican-Democrat voter registration.

The Independent Redistricting Commission, at the behest of Tucson Republican David Mehl, recently moved the area where Rogers lives out of what would have been a competitive district into the safely Republican District 7. Thats the district Townsend already represents.

Townsend has to make a decision about running relatively soon: The deadline for gathering signatures and filing nominating petitions is April 4.

One thing working in her favor is that the Legislature just lowered the number of signatures required of legislative candidates for this years election, to 492 for Republicans and 469 for Democrats.

I could get 500 signatures with a team of 20 people in a weekend, Townsend said.

She said if she decides to run, she anticipates getting backing from many in the district who dislike Rogers and her links with white supremacist organizations.

People that would never have supported me in the past are begging me to run against her, Townsend said.

Congressional race

Meanwhile, the newly drawn Congressional District 6, where Townsend is no longer running, runs loosely from Casa Grande through midtown Tucson, down to Sierra Vista and up through Safford and Morenci. The new district largely overlaps the old Congressional District 2, which Kirkpatrick, who is retiring, represents.

Remaining GOP contenders include Juan Ciscomani, Brandon Martin and Kathleen Winn. On the Democratic side, candidates include former state Sen. Kirsten Engel, state Rep. Daniel Hernandez, and Marcos Urrea.

+1 +1

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Socialism is

on the march

The socialist Democrats want to force socialism on Americans. The socialist Russians want to force socialism on the Ukrainians. The socialist Democrats want to take guns away from Americans. The socialist Russians want to take guns away from Ukrainians. The socialist Democrats control the majority of the media in America. The socialist Russians control the majority of the media in Russia. The socialist Democrats have been shutting down oil production in America and we have a manufactured shortage. The socialist Russians are pumping oil and getting rich selling oil to America to finance the Russian army who have invaded Ukraine. The socialist Democrats rioted, burned and destroyed American cities. The socialist Russians use the military to burn and destroy cities. Socialism is bad  but socialist Democrats have embraced it.

Gary Erickson

Benson

On ID, let's

make a deal

So, if the controlling party of our state Legislature wants to require enhanced voter ID. I propose a deal. We the voters will take steps to further confirm our right to vote once you, the Legislature and all future legislative candidates, share with we the voters the details of who is providing your campaign financing. One ID for another only seems fair.

Guy Brunt

West side

Declawing ban

could backfire

Re: the Feb. 10 article "House committee votes to ban declawing of cats."

Before vaccines were available there were lots of COVID-19 cases in my mother's assisted living facility, so I brought my mom and her cat home with me for about 2 months. Her cat is docile and sweet, but she literally destroyed two couches and damaged a chair. It cost me $5,000 to replace or repair them. Sadly, if anything happens to my mother, I won't take her cat into my home again. I fear many cats will go unadopted from shelters because they cannot be declawed and outdoors is too dangerous an environment for a cat.

Cindy Hansen

Foothills

NATO countries

need to wake up

Kids know the bullies. Parents know a broken nose will stop them. Why don't NATO's leaders know it? Why wait for Russia (and Belarus) to kill and take; Putin is a historical bully? Why allow a few words in NATO's charter to excuse NATO's insufficient response to date? Are Putin's energy-supply and other threats as egregious as tanks and bombs? Why wait for Putin to invade Baltic countries, after a certain denial while his army prepares? Why allow untold Ukraine citizens to die first, and leave Putin and NATO nations closer? No need for American troops yet; what happens for U.S. troops when NATO is directly attacked? NATO jets could destroy Russia's armor/vehicle movements today; Ukraine soldiers would certainly prevail then. I am ashamed NATO and my country is run by fools, like Neville Chamberlain pre-WWII! NATO's excuses and Russian lies are producing no distinction for Ukraine.

John Lepley

Green Valley

Teach our kids

to communicate

Currently, there are no interpersonal and communication or relationship skills in our school curricula.

We teach our children how to learn and know, but we leave out the education they need to "be."

We might characterize current school curricula as "me" education, as contrasted with "we" education.

Students are taught information, tested on retention, receive grades based on how much information they have learned.

Census Bureau data indicates that many first marriages fail and even more second marriages fail (only now there are children). Students graduate with reading, 'riting, and 'rithmetic skills without knowing how to get along with one another.

A fourth "R," adding relationship and communication skills, will alter their, and our, future.

I propose that all students receive the skills, insights and best practices they will need every day for the rest of their lives, before they go on to form family, and community relationships.

Paul Zohav

East side

Ducey is loco

to back Rogers

Gov. Doug Ducey says that he would rather have a white nationalist like Wendy Rogers in power than a Democrat. So he continues to support her and give her PAC money. State Sen. Rogers calls for execution of political enemies. Ducey has now shown how morally unhinged and corrupt he has become. He needs to resign right now.

John Higgins

Southeast side

Sweet reason

breathes its last

Common Sense died recently, surrounded by his loving family, his three adopted sons, No Sense, Nonsense and Innocence.

No Sense headed up the crime commission that defunded the police, Nonsense stopped all domestic oil production in the U.S., and Innocence championed abortion on demand.

His health declined when he was no longer able to determine his children's education and the ravages of overbearing government regulation.

He suffered in pain as he watched our departure from Afghanistan and the Ukrainian war.

Finally, Common Sense lost his will to live when the Supreme Court was packed, Christianity was banned, and Big Tech did away with free speech.

At the end, Common Sense drifted in and out, when he learned that voter ID was not required and that all undocumented could vote in all elections.

Finally, when told that we were a nation of inflation and that a barrel of oil cost $200, he breathed his last.

His funeral was poorly attended because the New York Times refused to publish his obituary.

Tom McGorray

Northwest side

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Sandra McNeil received several scholarships to attend Oklahoma State University, but she knows many arent extended the same opportunities.

Thats why the Amazon general manager was delighted to learn Thursday that Amazon is partnering with educators to provide workers full tuition at five Oklahoma colleges and universities.

They are the University of Oklahoma, Oklahoma State University, Oklahoma City Community College, Tulsa Community College and Rogers State University.

Im really excited that Amazon is offering this, said McNeil, who since 2020 has served as GM of the Amazon Robotics Fulfillment Center in north Texas. Without this education, Im not sure I would have had the means to do this.

Amazon employees in Oklahoma will have access to education from these five schools, as well as national online education providers, including Southern New Hampshire University, Colorado State University-Global, Western Governors University and National University.

All told, Amazon is partnering with more than 140 U.S. colleges and universities through Career Choice, program designed to help front-line employees expand their skills for success at Amazon or elsewhere.

The company employs more than 12,000 people in Oklahoma and has three venues in Tulsa: a fulfillment center, operations facility and delivery station.

McNeil, who earned a degree in electrical engineering at OSU, worked about 25 years for General Motors before joining Amazon.

Its really great to see Amazon helping to open the doors to careers that can maybe offer better economic stability and greater economic equality for other individuals who otherwise wouldnt be exposed to them, she said.

Workers can participate in Career Choice every year they work at Amazon, and they are eligible after 90 days of employment. Through the program, they can pursue a bachelors degree, earn industry certifications and build skills through English language proficiency and high school completion programs.

Oklahoma State University is focused on accessible education for all and workforce development, Dr. Kayse Shrum, president of the OSU system, said in a statement. The partnership between Amazon and OSU-OKC will accomplish both of those, opening new doors for students and creating potential within their career paths. We are delighted to take part  to join together to provide career opportunities and possibilities for our students relevant to the states workforce needs.

Career Choice participants may take classes online, in-person at a local university or on-site in one of the more than 110 Career Choice classrooms located in fulfillment centers in 37 states. Since launching in 2012, Career Choice has helped provide education for more than 50,000 employees.

We are thrilled to provide educational opportunities to Amazon employees in Oklahoma and beyond, Martha Banz, dean of OUs College of Professional and Continuing Studies. This collaboration aligns with the universitys goals to up-skill and re-skill the workforce in critical occupations across the state. The efforts of Amazon employees touch millions of lives every day, and we look forward to helping them reach the next level in their careers.

Amazon pays an average starting wage of $18 per hour and offers comprehensive health benefits, paid time off and up to 20 weeks fully paid parental leave.

Education assistance programs, such as Amazon Career Choice, help individuals with their chosen career paths and, at the same time, elevate our community and raise our economic standard, Leigh Goodson, TCC president and CEO, said in a statement. Tulsa Community College believes in building success through education and through this employer-backed program, we stand ready to help individuals by providing the expertise, guidance and support needed to create the future they want.

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Chicago-based Boeing on Thursday announced a $2 million emergency assistance package to support humanitarian response efforts in Ukraine.

The assistance package will be directed to organizations working to bring food, water, clothing, medicine and shelter to displaced Ukrainians, including those seeking refuge in neighboring countries. In addition, Boeing, which has operations in Oklahoma City, will match all qualifying employee contributions made in support of Ukrainian humanitarian relief through the companys charitable matching program.

The conflict unfolding in Ukraine is leading to a significant humanitarian emergency, and Boeing will take action to support the Ukrainian people, Dave Calhoun, Boeing president and CEO, said in a statement.

Our thoughts are with all those who have been thrust into the midst of this crisis. While we work to ensure the safety of Boeing employees in the region, our hope is that this assistance package will help deliver some much-needed support to those who are displaced and suffering.

Funding from the Boeing Charitable Trust will support the following organizations:

$1 million to CARE to assist with food, water and hygiene kit distribution as well as monetary assistance and psycho-social support for Ukrainians, with a focus on women, children and the elderly.

$500,000 to American Red Cross to support the global Red Cross movement providing critical humanitarian relief.

$250,000 to Americares to help with the distribution of medicine and medical supplies as well as support critical medical and mental health care for families displaced by the crisis.

$250,000 to organizations working to support vulnerable, displaced populations in Ukraine and neighboring countries.

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One of the projects pianist Orion Weiss has been working on during these pandemic times is a series of recordings of music written in the early 1910s, just before the world descended into World War I.

The first disc, titled Arc I: Granados, Janacek, Scriabin, which will be released March 18, features solo piano works that reflect the composers awareness of what was to come, and the horror and despair they felt.

The fact that rumors of similar wars are currently circulating around the world is something of which Weiss is acutely aware.

The world has been going through so much the past few years  first with the COVID pandemic, and now the prospect of a European war, Weiss said. If anything, its made me appreciate music even more.

Music has been such a safe haven for me during all this, he said. Music gives us a way to express all kinds of feelings, and allows us to communicate across languages and borders. It brings us together in such marvelous ways.

Weiss will be part of the Tulsa Symphony Orchestras latest effort to bring diverse people together through music, when he will perform the Piano Concerto No. 3 by Bela Bartok as part of the orchestras concert titled Unfinished.

The program, led by principal guest conductor Daniel Hege, will also feature the Overture to Prince Igor by Borodin, as well as the Symphony No. 8, the Unfinished, by Schubert.

This will be Weiss first time to perform with the orchestra, although he has performed a few years ago at Oral Roberts University, and was part of a chamber music ensemble that appeared at the 2012 OK Mozart Festival in Bartlesville.

He had been scheduled to play Gershwins Concerto in F as part of the TSOs 2020-2021 season, but that concert was canceled because of the pandemic.

However, Weiss said, he is pleased to be able to perform the Bartok concerto, which is a piece that does not get programmed often enough.

Bartok always created such a rich and exciting musical world in his work, that its always an adventure to play a piece like this, Weiss said.

The concerto was the final work Bartok composed; he died before he could finish orchestrating the final few bars of the piece. And while it was written during an intensely difficult time, as Bartok battled leukemia while struggling to find someplace to live after fleeing Hungary during World War II, the work has an almost surprisingly cheery air.

It almost sounds like the work of a young man, in its brightness and sense of optimism, Weiss said. Bartoks first two piano concertos are hyperactive, over-the-top pieces, full of virtuosic fireworks. But this concerto is more intimate. It has moments of drama and passion, but its not a dark piece by any means.

The works second movement contains examples of what has been called Bartoks night music, which can evoke the sounds of the natural world.

There are times when this night music can be scary, Weiss said. The passages in the second piano concerto remind me of something Alfred Hitchcock might have used during the attack scenes in The Birds.

But in this work, the night music is more tuneful, and quite beautiful, he said. To me, it helps give the movement a sense of heartfelt depth, a sense of hope. And for me, that is one of the great things that art can do. It can truly lift us up, and help us transcend the scariness of humanity.

Tulsa World Scene: Batman opening coincides with Admiral Twin reopening

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Julie Alpert and Andy Arkley have been married for 10 years and are both artists working in separate studios.

We go home and talk about art all the time, what different artists are doing, what different institutions are doing, what the overall art world scene is, and that is all we talk about and then we have to remind ourselves that we just need to stop talking about art and talk about something else, Arkley jokingly said.

Alpert is an installation artist with a background in painting and drawing. Arkley is a visual artist concentrating on painting, sculpture and installation.

Considering the two artists are married, one would think they would collaborate often on projects. But they try to keep their work separate, for the most part, and offer help in support roles.

What we have learned from the collaborations is that we like assisting each other and bounce ideas off of each other and have different strengths and weaknesses, Alpert said.

Looking at their art, you see the influences of color and fun.

Alpert has a show, Altars, Keepsakes, Squiggles, and Bows, at Crystal Bridges Museum in Bentonville, Arkansas, until May 16. Alpert also has an installation at ahha Tulsa called Diorama that will be up until the end of 2022. She also has an upcoming solo exhibition at ahha Tulsa from September through November.

Arkley has a show, Together, at the Experience at ahha Tulsa until the end of 2022.
Japanese electronics company Panasonic wants to buy land in Kansas or Oklahoma to build a multibillion-dollar factory to supply Tesla with lithium-ion batteries, according to reporting from Japan public broadcaster NHK.

The states are being considered, according to the report, because they are close to Texas, where Tesla is preparing a new electric vehicle plant.

Panasonic and Tesla have partnered for some time. Both companies operate a gigafactory outside Reno, Nevada.

Panasonic also reached an agreement in October with electric vehicle start-up Canoo to supply batteries for its lifestyle vehicle. Canoo announced last year that it plans to build a factory at the MidAmerica Industrial Park in Pryor, creating at least 1,500 jobs.

Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt, through a spokesman, declined to comment Friday on the Japanese report on plant sites.

On Feb. 22, however, he did say officials are trying to lure a huge company to eastern Oklahoma, a confirmation that followed a Kansas City Star report that said Oklahoma is battling Kansas for an electric vehicle battery factory.

The Kansas Legislature recently approved $1.2 billion in economic development incentives in an effort to bring the plant to that state.

The Oklahoma site under consideration is MidAmerica Industrial Park, according to the Star.

The Mayes County Board of Commissioners is examining whether to establish a tax increment financing district on 700 acres of undeveloped MidAmerica Industrial Park land, the Tulsa World reported last month. David Stewart, chief administrative officer of the park, projects that private investment in the TIF, if approved, would be $5 billion to $6 billion over the first five years.

Tesla and Oklahoma have a history.

Tulsa reportedly was a finalist in 2020 for the CyberTruck Gigafactory that went to Austin, Texas. Oklahomas governor said that year following Teslas decision to pick Texas that Oklahoma ultimately will be able to capitalize on its showing.

Even though we didnt come out on top for Tesla, the effort so many people put into that project will pay great dividends for our state down the road, Stitt said in August 2020. Tesla took notice with how well we worked together, and I have a feeling well be hearing from them again real soon.
OKLAHOMA CITY  Two bills that seek to crack down on employee vaccine mandates cleared a Senate panel on Thursday.

Senate Bill 765, by Sen. David Bullard, R-Durant, is dubbed the Privacy and Conscience Protection Act.

It would make it a misdemeanor for employers who mandate vaccinations not to provide a privacy exemption and allow employees to refuse disclosure of vaccination status, with a fine of up to $100 for each violation.

It would apply to both public and private employers, and it would bar discrimination or discipline against employees who refuse to disclose their vaccination status.

I have had people come to me who have gotten attacked because they are vaccinated, Bullard said. The goal of this is to protect the privacy of an individual.

Sen. Lonnie Paxton, R-Tuttle, said he was concerned that the measure would result in federal funds being withheld from Oklahoma health care facilities by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services based on federal requirements.

The consequences are dire, Paxton said, adding that the measure would add the burden to small businesses and would be everything but business friendly.

Sen. Micheal Bergstrom, R-Adair, said the measure would apply only to businesses that require vaccinations.

Bergstrom said it seems that some are suggesting the best policy would be to surrender the beliefs of Oklahoma residents and their privacy rights due to fear of possible bureaucratic overreach and acts of vengeance by an agency with tremendous power.

The president of the State Chamber of Oklahoma criticized the bill.

It is baffling that some in the Legislature want to charge business owners with a misdemeanor for simply having safety standards in their organizations, said Chad Warmington, president and CEO of the State Chamber.

SB 765 is far worse than the Biden-type mandates the U.S. courts halted weeks ago, he said. State government should not penalize job creators through ridiculous and unnecessary mandates, and that is exactly what this bill would do.

The bill passed by a vote of 7-4 and now heads to the Senate for possible consideration.

The panel also passed Senate Bill 1128, by Sen. Blake Stephens, R-Tahlequah, which would bar vaccinations as a condition of continued employment. The measure is dubbed the Employee Liberty and Freedom Act.

It passed by a vote of 6-4 and also heads to the Senate for consideration.

Stephens said mandated work-safety equipment such as a hard hat, safety clothing and boots all can be taken off at the end of the work day but that a vaccine cannot be removed.

This is about liberties for our individuals, he said.

The State Chamber opposes both bills.

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The Oklahoma Legislature is poised to move the state from an independent judiciary into one mirroring the highly politicized federal judge appointment process.

It would be a bad move and a step backward for the state.

A mid-1960s bribery scandal in Oklahomas judiciary led to the creation of one of the nations best processes for filling seats on the state Supreme Court and Court of Criminal Appeals.

Since then, the state has been scandal-free with a judiciary focused on law, not politics or cultural whim.

But at times it frustrates lawmakers who have their bills declared unconstitutional. Reactions have advocated for legislative confirmations, partisan elections or other ways to tinker with nominations.

Basically, they want to insert politics into a nonpartisan judiciary.

Currently, when there are judicial vacancies, a 15-member, geographically diverse, bipartisan citizen panel  the Judicial Nominating Commission  interviews potential candidates and sends three nominees to the governor, who makes an appointment from that list.

The commission is not dominated by attorneys or politicians. Historically, it has shown to be an earnest group of volunteers dedicated to finding the best qualified jurists based on merit.

The system was created by a statewide vote in 1967 after three state Supreme Court justices revealed that their rulings were influenced by political pressure and that they took bribes.

That nomination process is at risk with Senate Joint Resolution 43 by Senate President Pro Tem Greg Treat, R-Oklahoma City. It passed the Senate Judiciary Committee earlier this week by a vote of 8-3.

The measure would create a referendum for voters to decide on abolishing the Judicial Nominating Commission. In its place would be the governor selecting appointees with Senate approval.

Look at how thats working in Congress: a circus over every Supreme Court nomination, federal seats left empty during partisan impasses and qualified candidates denied appointments based on the party of the president or majority Senate.

Both sides of the political spectrum have been victims of this federal rhetorical posturing. We dont need it in Oklahoma.

The argument that it would give the governor more authority doesnt wash when the goal is an independent judiciary. The legislatures under Gov. Kevin Stitt have moved more power to the executive branch than at any other time in state history.

Oklahoma has been well-served by the judicial nomination process for more than half a century. There is no reason to abolish the system for something more politically influenced.

For lawmakers disappointed in rulings, the answer is not to add politics in courtrooms. Its to pass constitutional legislation.

Tulsa World Opinion: Theres real stuff happening. Lets pay attention and come together

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The tech industry has long tried to align with the green movement, though its leaders are often accused of spouting nebulous slogans and making hard-to-test pledges.

The Mobile World Congress, an industry get-together in Barcelona, certainly saw some sloganeering. But Huawei, Orange and industry body GSMA attempted to flesh out some of the green claims made about 5G.

The next-generation mobile network is being rolled out across the globe, with promises of super-fast internet going hand-in-hand with claims of massive benefits for the environment.

Laurence Williams of Sussex university in the UK recently led research assessing the available evidence on the supposed green gains of 5G.

He told AFP how the industry's claims stack up.

Will 5G be more energy efficient?

Jean-Marie Chaufray of Orange hailed power-saving features such as "sleep modes", whereby components are switched off when they are not being used, and more energy efficient antennae and other hardware.

He told the MWC that 5G would be "10 times more efficient" than 4G by 2025.

Laurence Williams: "Energy efficiency is only half of the equation. The total amount of data traffic being transmitted across mobile networks clearly matters too.

"Mobile data traffic is set to continue growing dramatically in the coming years. It is increasingly acknowledged that 5G will at least in part be the cause of this data traffic growth.

"Various estimates have been put out by the industry -- some suggest network energy consumption will fall, others that it can remain flat, at least one estimate suggests that network energy consumption will rise due to 5G.

"A recent study from Finland estimated that electricity consumption of the main mobile networks in 2017 was roughly 10 percent higher than in 2010. The authors argue that this was due to rapidly increasing data usage and new functionalities, especially video streaming.

"Whilst this study relates to the period just before 5G started to be rolled out across the world, it nonetheless demonstrates that improvements in the energy efficiency of networks do not guarantee reductions in the energy consumption of networks."

Will 5G help achieve zero-carbon goals?

GSMA's Emanuel Kolta boasted that telecoms companies were "among the leading private sector companies" for committing to net-zero goals.

And he marked out the path to achieving those aims through uptake of renewable energy, more efficient batteries and "low-hanging fruit" like using artificial intelligence to enable component shutdowns in less busy periods.

Laurence Williams: " Encouragingly telcos are increasingly signing up to climate targets and committing to use renewable energy to power their networks.

"While some operators already power their networks with 100 percent renewable energy, a 2021 benchmarking study from GSMA suggested that looking across 31 networks in 28 diverse countries an average of 46 percent of energy consumption was supplied by renewable sources with significant variation between countries.

"The operational energy required to power mobile networks is important, but so is the 'embodied energy' required to produce network infrastructure.

"A lot of research looking at the energy use implications of 5G only looks at operational energy.

"At the very least, we should be sceptical about the claimed energy saving potential of strategies that require the large-scale introduction of new infrastructure based on assessments that fail to consider the embodied energy costs of that infrastructure."

Does 5G bring wider energy savings?

Duan Hao from Huawei flagged up the importance of the so-called enablement effect, which he said would "accelerate digitisation and decarbonisation across industries".

The idea is that better connectivity will allow more services and activities to move online, reducing energy consumption from transport and other industries.

Some industry estimates suggest energy saving at a ratio of 10-to-one -- every unit of energy invested in 5G will save 10 more.

Laurence Williams : "A University of Zurich study puts this ratio closer to three-to-one, primarily from flexible work, smart grids and precision farming.

"However, others have cautioned that 5G-enabled efficiency improvements may simply lead to the greater consumption of particular goods or services or may only partially substitute for older goods or services -- people may still attend in person meetings and buy physical music alongside teleconferencing and music streaming.

"Even if 5G does produce enablement effects that exceed its own emissions, it doesnt necessarily follow that network operators could be allowed to achieve lower levels of emissions reductions.

"Enablement effects are difficult to estimate or measure and clear accounting mechanisms and principles would have to be established to ensure consistency with carbon budgets and climate policy."
Hospitals across Hanoi are facing a shortage of COVID-19 doctors, with many having recently tested positive for the virus amid a massive rise in daily patients, presenting serious challenges for the Ministry of Health as it scrambles for solutions.

We have more than 1,000 doctors, but right now 300 are infected with the coronavirus, Bach Quoc Khanh, director of the National Institute of Hematology and Blood Transfusion, told Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper.

Staff with COVID-19 symptoms have been isolated at hospitals or at home depending on conditions whereas those with low viral loads and at no risk of transmission have been asked to continue working, Khanh said.

The current doctor shortage comes as the daily numbers of infections in Hanoi continue to rise, hitting around 13,300 cases  a nearly 10,000-case rise from 3,972 on March 1, the Hanoi Health Department said, warning that the figure is forecast to keep increasing in the coming days.

The head of the oncology department of a hospital in the capital said nearly half of all doctors and health workers at the hospital have contracted COVID-19, resulting in a serious dearth of medical staff and forcing the institution to only admit emergency cases.

At the COVID-19 Treatment Hospital in Hoang Mai District, where some 300 severe- and moderate-level patients are receiving treatment, coronavirus infections among medical staff are identified nearly every day, the hospitals media representative said.

The Hanoi Medicine University Hospital has sent us some of the doctors who are infected with COVID-19 but have either slight or no symptoms, the representative said.

About 200 employees at the two hospitals have caught the coronavirus, the representative added.

Dr. Nguyen Ich Thuong, from the functional rehabilitation department at the Hanoi Medicine University Hospital, as well as several other doctors from the hospital, have volunteered to continue working despite testing positive for the virus.

With the number of COVID-19 patients on the rise, the current line-up of doctors and other health workers is simply not enough to keep up, according to Dr. Thuong.

Duong Thi Mai Thanh, from the social work department of Bach Mai Hospital, said a large number of doctors have contracted COVID-19 though the exact figure has yet to be announced.

At Ha Dong General Hospital, where 50 doctors and other medical workers are treating about 300 coronavirus patients, infected doctors who show no symptoms have been asked to continue treating the patients.

Most medical staff engaging in COVID-19 treatment are working in the resuscitation and emergency section, where certain equipment must be operated by specially trained staff. Its not easy to replace these professionals, Dr. Dao Thien Tien, the hospitals director, explained.

Luong Ngoc Khue, director of the health ministrys Department of Medical Examination and Treatment Management, told Tuoi Tre that he was aware of the shortage of medical staff.

The department will review the current human resources at all relevant hospitals and work out appropriate solutions, Khue said.

Hanoi has documented 319,250 COVID-19 cases and 1,041 fatalities since the pandemic erupted in Vietnam in early 2020, the health ministry reported.

The daily numbers of coronavirus infections and deaths in the capital city have recently increased, to 18,661 and 20 on Thursday from 2,716 and five a month ago, according to the ministrys data.

Nationwide, 3,885,631 infections, with 2,550,525 recoveries and 40,547 fatalities, had been recorded by Thursday.

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Market monitors in Hanoi seized more than 2,000 boxes of drugs allegedly for use in COVID-19 treatment and 1,000 coronavirus test kits, which were transported without documentation on the origin on Thursday.

The total value of the confiscated items was estimated at some VND456 million (US$20,000), the citys Market Surveillance Department reported the same day.

A market surveillance team on Thursday detected 2,000 boxes of drugs with many Chinese characters, including the Lianhua Qingwen Jiaonang brand, on their packaging when they examined a suspicious car in Nam Tu Liem District, the department said.

The owner failed to show any documents to prove the origin as well as the legality of the drugs but said the products were used in treatment of COVID-19 patients.

The value of the drugs was estimated at VND160 million ($7,014), according to the department.

The team imposed an administrative fine of VND90 million ($3,945) on the owner and seized all the illegal drugs for destruction.

The same day saw another team find 400 blister packs of drugs of the same brand transported by a 34-year-old man, Le Manh Hoang, in Hai Ba Trung District.

Hoang could not produce invoices and papers validating the origin of the goods, but also said they were used in COVID-19 treatment.

This photo shows boxes of 'Lianhua Qingwen Jiaonang' drugs, without documentation on the origin, being examined by market surveillance officers in Hanoi on March 3, 2022. Photo: Vietnam Directorate of Market Surveillance

The team impounded all the packs that were valued at around VND16 million ($701).

The same team also caught another man, Nguyen Viet Ha, 31, transporting 1,000 COVID-19 test kits on a street in the same district on Thursday.

All test kits had no invoices or documents and were valued at about VND280 million ($12,270), according to the team, which confiscated all the tests and fined Ha VND16 million.

On February 28, the citys market surveillance force seized more than 3,000 boxes of drugs featuring the said Chinese words on their labels from an establishment in Dong Da District, VnExpress reported.

The seller had no papers for the goods and admitted that they had bought the drugs from a supplier on social media to resell them to consumers.

Such cases were detected amid rising COVID-19 infections in Hanoi, prompting locals to flock to buy such kits and drugs and leading to a high demand for such items.

Daily infections in Hanoi soared to 18,661 on Thursday, much higher than the 8,864 a week before, according to the ministrys data.

The city has documented 319,515 cases and 1,026 fatalities since the pandemic hit the country in early 2020.

Nationwide, 3,885,631 infections, with 2,550,525 recoveries and 40,547 fatalities, have been recorded.

Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam!
An 83-year-old woman was hospitalized after being attacked by a neighbor over her complaint about his loud karaoke in Hai Phong City, Vietnam.

Police in An Tien Commune, An Lao District confirmed on Thursday that they were investigating an assault on Nguyen Thi H., 83, by her neighbor.

The elderly woman was being treated for COVID-19 at her home prior to the incident, officers added.

Ngo Thi Hao, H.s daughter, told Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper that she and her mother were attacked over their complaints about loud karaoke noise on Thursday night.

A group of people at a paint shop near Haos house were loudly singing karaoke at around 9:00 pm that night, Hao recalled.

Her parents, who were being quarantined and treated for COVID-19 at her home, were upset by the noise.

Ngo Thi Hao suffered from a bloody nose following the attack in Hai Phong City, Vietnam, March 2, 2022 in this photo supplied by the family.

Hao and her mother complained to the neighbors about their karaoke noise, but they refused to turn down the volume and yelled at them.

One of the men kicked open our gate, went into our house, and attacked me and my mother, Hao said.

The two women ended up with several injuries.

H. needed to be hospitalized due a combination of suffering a serious injury, her old age, and being COVID-19 positive.

After being notified of the incident, police in An Tien Commune have summoned relevant individuals to clarify the case.

The attacker has been identified as a 41-year-old man named Dat, according to VietNamNet newspaper.

Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam!
A man from Nghe An Province, north-central Vietnam has been sentenced to seven years in prison for illegally raising 14 tigers he claimed to have bought from Laos last year.

The provincial Peoples Committee on Thursday imposed a seven-year jail term on Nguyen Van Hien, 40, for violating regulations on the protection of endangered, precious, and rare animals, a source from the Education for Nature Vietnam (ENV) confirmed.

On August 4, 2021, police in Nghe An Province inspected Hiens home in Do Thanh Town, Yen Thanh District and discovered 14 tigers, each weighing nearly 200 kilograms, which were kept inside cages at the basement of the house.

Officers also found three tigers that were raised illegally at another house in Do Thanh Town that day.

The illegal activities were hard to detect as the tigers were kept in a closed and separate section of these houses.

At the police station, Hien said he had sourced the tigers from Laos when they were still cubs.

Following the detection, the 17 tigers were transported to an ecological area for temporary care and assessment and to facilitate the investigation.

However, nine of them later died of unknown reasons, while the remaining eight are still in good health.

Authorities in Nghe An are completing necessary procedures to hand over the eight tigers to a zoo in Hanoi.

Tigers and many other wild animals are strictly banned from being traded in, imported to or exported from Vietnam as they are on the list of endangered wildlife protected by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), to which the country has been party since 1994.

As some people believe that tiger-derived products can cure bone and joint illnesses, tigers are in demand in Vietnam for their meat, bones, and skin.

Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam!
Vietnam will take steps to 'normalize' the COVID-19 pandemic and treat it as an endemic disease, Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh said on Thursday.

The PM made the directive at a cabinet meeting, where he asked the Ministry of Health to continue applying effective measures to put the pandemic under control, the Vietnam Government Portal (VGP) reported.

The ministry must accurately assess the epidemic situation and evaluate the degree of protection that antibodies provide against the coronavirus among fully vaccinated people a national scale.

The agency should refer to international experience for appropriate and effective measures to move toward 'normalizing COVID-19' and considering it an endemic disease, the PM directed.

In a report delivered to the meeting, the ministry noted that the numbers of severe cases and fatalities have been dropping, with the rate of deaths over infections down from 2.45 percent to 1.54 percent presently.

A recent survey found 96 percent of Vietnamese satisfied with the governments measures for coronavirus prevention and control, the ministry said.

The agency, however, cited cautions from the World Health Organization (WHO) as well as other countries, saying COVID-19 would not be kept at bay completely before 2023, as the Omicron variant and other similar strains may potentially cause unpredictable developments.

Vietnam has so far received 218 million doses of vaccine and administrated nearly 202 million shots to people, according to VGP.

The first, second, and third vaccine dose coverage for the countrys adult population has reached 100 percent, 97.9 percent, and 34.5 percent, respectively.

Children aged 12 to 17 years old have received their first and second shots at the corresponding rates of 98.7 percent and 93.3 percent.

The central government has recently issued a resolution on the purchase of 21.9 million doses of Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine intended for children from five to under 12 years old.

The health ministry said it is preparing to vaccinate children in this age range.

Vietnam has documented 3,885,631 infections, with 2,550,525 recoveries and 40,547 fatalities, since the pandemic erupted in the country in early 2020, according to the ministry.

Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam!
Authorities in Lao Cai Province, Vietnam held a groundbreaking ceremony on Thursday for the Sa Pa Airport project, worth nearly VND7 trillion (US$306 million).

The project, developed under the public-private partnership (PPP) format, is located on a 371-hectare plot in Cam Con Commune, Bao Yen District, about 35km south of touristic Sa Pa.

The first phase includes building an airport with a capacity of 1.5 million passengers per year.

The second phase, scheduled for 2028, involves doubling the airports capacity to three million passengers per year.

The government will be charged with site clearance while private companies will handle construction.

The government will contribute VND2.73 trillion ($119.5 million), or 39 percent of the total investment, while private investors will cover the rest.

Construction is expected to last four years and the investors are forecast to break even after 46 years.

Sa Pa Airport is one of six new airports approved for construction by 2030 in Vietnam, which has 22 airports at present.

Lao Cai is home to Sa Pa Town, which is around 330 kilometers from Hanoi and is one of Vietnams most famous tourist destinations.

In 2021, Lao Cai welcomed more than 1.3 million tourists, raking in over VND4.2 trillion ($183.8 million) from tourism activities, according to the Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism.

Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam!
Screen Territory together with Arts NT have partnered with the National Institute of Dramatic Art to boost skills and professional development for Territorians across the creative industries.

The program will present a series of face-to-face NIDA training courses for Territorians in the screen sector, along with one-day courses for student.

This marks the first time that two state or territory agencies in the Australian screen and arts sectors have collaborated to provide training opportunities across both sectors.

Screen Territory Director Jennie Hughes said Production has increased significantly in the Territory, particularly with premium scripted content, and this has highlighted the need to build capacity and broaden the skills base to create more employment opportunities for Territorians to work in the screen sector.

We are delighted to be working with NIDA and our colleagues at Arts NT to build pathways and provide opportunities for cross collaboration across the Screen and Arts sectors. This initiative forms part of our commitment to Ausfilms National Workforce Capacity Working Group of which Screen Territory and NIDA are both members.

Arts NT A/Director Georgia Thomas said, This initiative strongly supports the goals of the Northern Territorys Creative Industries Strategy, in particular the creation of new pathways for business, employment and career development. The programs targeted training and skills development opportunities will undoubtedly deliver great outcomes and benefits for participants and the sector.

CEO of the National Institute of Dramatic Art Liz Hughes said: I applaud the strategic initiative and ambition of Screen Territory and Arts NT to support the development of the creative industries as a central pillar of economic development in the NT.

NIDAs training is perfectly positioned to realise this exciting ambition. We are looking forward to commencing practical skills training for NT storytellers across a range of disciplines. Many super talented creative individuals are from the NT, including a number of successful NIDA alumni, and we are excited by the potential of this program to provide a pathway for emerging creatives.

Proud Territorian, and NIDA Graduate Rob Collins said: NIDA provided me with an outstanding base for building my craft and launching a career in both Screen and Arts, and I am excited for my fellow Territorians to have access to the world-class facilities and training of NIDA through this program.

The Northern Territory is rich with storytellers and talented creatives who, with access to this kind of in-person training, will have greater networks and opportunities to realise their potential. I look forward to working with them in the future!

Ausfilm CEO Kate Marks said: Todays announcement from Screen Territory, NIDA and Arts NT on their partnership to boost skills development opportunities for Northern Territory screen practitioners is a welcome initiative and is aligned with the national focus to grow Australias below the line workforce capacity as underpinned by the National Workforce Capacity Working Group.

Development of skillsets that are transferable across Screen and Arts in the Northern Territory will support industry growth, employment and long term sustainability for a sector which has seen a significant increase in local and inbound screen productions as a result of increased investment by the Northern Territory Government.

The program will present a series of face-to-face NIDA training courses in specific areas designed to fill skills shortages and build the talent pool of Territory creatives and production professionals including screen practitioners, theatre and live events staff, performing arts, publicity and promotion.

A number of one-day courses for Territory high school students will also be run in conjunction with the workshop program, focused on providing NT youth with a taste-test for future study or career progression in the screen and arts industries.

The training program will commence early April and will deliver 11 focused training workshops subsidised by both Screen Territory and Arts NT, comprising Producing for Stage and Screen, Writing for the Screen, Acting Technique, Acting Technique for Screen, Directing Actors for Screen, Make-up for Screen, Costume Design Essentials, Props Making, The Confident Voice, Screen Acting on Location, Audition Preparation and Screen Tests.

For more information on the NIDA courses on offer and scheduled delivery please visit www.screenterritory.nt.gov.au. To enrol in a course please visit open.nida.edu.au/skillsnt
A blazing fire has engulfed an historic mill in West Yorkshire, England,used as a filming location for Peaky Blinders and Downton Abbey.

Flames and black smoke could be seen in the air above the 19th century building with more than 100 firefighters attending. There are no reports of any injuries.

Nick Smith, from West Yorkshire fire and rescue service, described dealing with the blaze as challenging. He said: Internally the building has collapsed, the floor and the roof.

Smith added the incident was being scaled back but firefighters would spend the night damping down the fire.

Richard Knight, from Screen Yorkshire, described the fire as a sad loss to the Yorkshire film-making landscape. He told the BBC: Its one of those amazing locations that is like a destination in its own right.

Its got the kind of provenance and scale that could attract film-makers from far and wide.

Other productions to have shot there in recent years include BBC dramas The Great Train Robbery, Gunpowder and To Walk Invisible.

Breaking: Firefighters are battling a massive blaze at Dalton Mills, a mill complex used as a filming location for shows 'Peaky Blinders' and Downton Abbey, in Keighley, West Yorkshire. pic.twitter.com/gfJglryf8D  PM Breaking News (@PMBreakingNews) March 3, 2022

Source: The Guardian
Tyler, TX (75702)

Today

Variable clouds with strong thunderstorms. Damaging winds, large hail and possibly a tornado with some storms. High 77F. Winds SSW at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 100%. 1 to 2 inches of rain expected..

Tonight

Partly to mostly cloudy skies with scattered thunderstorms before midnight. Low 57F. Winds W at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 40%.
Talks on humanitarian corridors for Mariupol failed, Vadym Denysenko, the adviser to the Interior Minister, said.

"The most critical situation now is certainly the city of Mariupol. There, unfortunately, it is not possible to agree on any humanitarian corridors and the situation there is quite critical, given that the city has been continuously shelled from Grad rocket launchers for the past five days," Denysenko said on the air of the Ukraine-24 TV channel on Friday.

He also said that the attempt of Russian occupiers in Kherson to distribute humanitarian aid to residents failed.

"Not just failed, but failed miserably. People simply do not come to KAMAZ vehicles with their "humanitarian aid," people ignore them, while they are not allowed to do pictures for Russian television they wanted to make," Denysenko said.
The University of Dayton will award an honorary doctoral degree in humanities to Brother Raymond L. Fitz, S.M., the longest-serving president in University history and a committed community and faith leader who has dedicated his life to educating young people and addressing critical social justice issues.

Fitz, who served as UD president from 1979 to 2002, will receive the honor April 1 during "The Common Good in a Divided City," a University-sponsored conference focused on regional solidarity  an issue championed by Fitz during and after his presidency.

Fondly known as "Brother Ray," his presidency was marked by the active engagement of the University and his personal involvement in some of the most pressing needs of the Dayton community  poverty, racism and other social concerns that affect children and families. His work, which has spanned more than 50 years, is grounded in the Catholic Intellectual Tradition and the Marianists' signature emphasis on community.

"This honor is not about recognizing Brother Ray, the president emeritus, this is about Brother Ray the scholar, the faculty member, the citizen of the community, and the committed adherent to Catholic social teaching," said University President Eric F. Spina. "Through Brother Rays deep belief and understanding of Catholic social teaching and social justice, he takes the core tenet of Catholicism and applies it to all that he does."

Fitz became a trusted figure in the Dayton region on pressing community issues. During his presidency, county commissioners asked him to co-chair the Montgomery County Family and Children First Council task force after five children in Daytons child welfare system died, and he helped launch neighborhood school centers in Daytons poorest elementary schools. While building a national reputation for UD as one of the nations top Catholic institutions, Fitz and a skilled administrative team were the driving force behind the Genesis Project, which helped transform the Fairgrounds neighborhood between UD and Miami Valley Hospital into a vibrant place to live and work. The areas revitalization triggered an economic boom for Brown Street, the Universitys main thoroughfare.

After stepping down as UD president in 2002, he moved into a position as Father Ferree Professor of Social Justice  a professorship named for his mentor  in the Fitz Center for Leadership in Community, a center the University named in his honor that year. The Fitz Center represents a lasting legacy and a continuation of his work to create partnerships among neighborhood, community nonprofit and government organizations and associations. As Ferree professor and chair from 2002-19, he fostered collaborations with community and church leaders on generational poverty-reduction strategies, as well as listening sessions in West Dayton on the Catholic Church's role in alleviating racial injustice.

Click here for a full-length feature story on the legacy of Bro. Ray.

For interviews and head shot, contact Shawn Robinson, associate director of news and communications, at 937-229-3391.
ReportLinker

Major companies in the gastrointestinal drugs market include Takeda Pharmaceuticals, Bayer AG, Abbott Laboratories, Otsuka Holdings Co. ltd. , Johnson & Johnson, Reckitt Benckiser Group plc. , Bausch Health Companies Inc.

New York, March 04, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Reportlinker.com announces the release of the report "Gastrointestinal Drugs Global Market Report 2022" - https://www.reportlinker.com/p06241982/?utm_source=GNW

, Sanofi S.A, Procter & Gamble and Daiichi Sankyo Company.



The global gastrointestinal drugs market is expected to grow from $71.85 billion in 2021 to $75.63 billion in 2022 at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 5.3%. The change in growth trend is mainly due to the companies stabilizing their output after catering to the demand that grew exponentially during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. The market is expected to reach $86.96 billion in 2026 at a CAGR of 3.6%.



The gastrointestinal drugs market consists of sales of gastrointestinal drugs by entities (organizations, sole traders and partnerships) that produce gastrointestinal drugs to treat gastrointestinal diseases such as ulcerative colitis, diverticular disease, perianal infections, anal fissures, hemorrhoids, constipation, and irritable bowel syndrome. The key gastrointestinal diseases drug categories include Anti-peptic agents (antacids, antagonists, Proton Pump Inhibitors, Sucralfate, and Misoprostol), antiemetics, adsorbents, anticholinergics, opiates, intestinal flora modifiers, emollient/surfactants, hyperosmotic, saline, and simulant/irritant.



The main types of gastrointestinal drugs are antacids, antiulcerants, antiobesity, antiemetics and antinauseants and antidiarrhoeals.Antacids are medications that counteract (neutralise) stomach acid to relieve indigestion and heartburn.



The different types include pharmaceutical drugs, and biologics.The drugs are administered through oral, parenteral, and others that are classified into branded and generic drugs.



The various mode of purchase includes prescription-based drugs and over-the-counter drugs which are distributed by hospital pharmacies, retail pharmacies/ drug stores and others.



North America was the largest region in the gastrointestinal drugs market in 2021.Middle East is expected to be the fastest growing region in the forecast period.



The regions covered in this report are Asia-Pacific, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, North America, South America, Middle East and Africa.



The aging population profile of most countries will contribute to the growth of the gastrointestinal drugs market.The increase in patient pool due to rising geriatric population globally, will contribute significantly to the growth of the market during the forecast period.



According to the WHO, by 2030, one in every six people on the planet will be 60 or older. The proportion of the population aged 60 and up will rise from 1 billion in 2020 to 2.2 billion by 2050. This rise in the geriatric population increased the demand for medical care and drove the healthcare expenditure. This will led to increased demand for pharmaceuticals products, significantly impacting market growth during this period.



During the forecast period, the growth of the gastrointestinal drugs market will be restrained by patent expiration of branded gastrointestinal drugs.In general, pharmaceutical companies invest a large sum of money in the drug development process and patents.



During the patency period, the company holding the patent holds exclusivity for the manufacturing and distribution of drugs.Post expiration of patency, generic versions of the drugs are manufactured by other companies with prices much lower than the original branded drugs.



Overall, this will negatively impact the growth of the market in terms of value.



Major companies in the gastrointestinal drug industry are investing in making oral capsules of macromolecular drugs for gastrointestinal diseases for making the drug more effective.Macromolecular drugs, such as peptides, proteins, and antibodies, form a new class of drugs which can treat diseases of the gastrointestinal tract, such as inflammatory bowel disease.



These macromolecular drugs are usually injected and only a fraction of the administered dose reaches the disease sites in the gastrointestinal tract.Thus, major companies such as Eli Lilly have been increasingly investing in making oral capsules for macromolecular drugs.



The company invested $5 million to enter into a collaboration with Entrega to study the oral delivery of complex molecules, such as peptides to combat gastrointestinal diseases.



The countries covered in the gastrointestinal drugs market report are Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Egypt, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Norway, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, Turkey, UAE, UK, USA, Venezuela and Vietnam.





Read the full report: https://www.reportlinker.com/p06241982/?utm_source=GNW



About Reportlinker

ReportLinker is an award-winning market research solution. Reportlinker finds and organizes the latest industry data so you get all the market research you need - instantly, in one place.



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CONTACT: Clare: clare@reportlinker.com US: (339)-368-6001 Intl: +1 339-368-6001




Negreanu Wins Again! Impressive High Roller Form Continues

March 04 2022 Matthew Pitt Editor

GGPoker ambassador Daniel Negreanu is no stranger to playing high-stakes poker. "Kid Poker" has battled with the best players in the world for more than two decades, and has accumulated almost $46 million in live tournament cashes. He boosted his winnings tally by $216,000 on March 2 by taking down a $15,300 high roller event at the Wynn Millions festival in Las Vegas.

Wynn $15,300 High Roller Final Table Results

Place Player Country Prize 1 Daniel Negreanu Canada $216,000 2 Sergi Reixach Spain $144,000 3 Ren Lin United States $96,000 4 Brock Wilson United States $66,000 5 Sean Winter United States $48,000 6 Ali Imsirovic Bosnia & Herzegovina $30,000

Negreanus return to form in high roller and super high roller events is impressive to say the least. Taking down the $50,000 No-Limit Holdem Event at the 2021 PokerGO Cup in November for $700,000 seems to have reignited Negreanus passion for high-stakes tournaments.

Check out Negreanu's $1M 2022 WSOP schedule Bookmark this page! All you need to know about the 2022 WSOP is here. Click here

Negreanus $10K+ Tournament Results Since His PokerGO Cup Victory

4th place in the $100,000 PokerGO Cup #8 for $230,000

3rd place in the $10,000 Poker Masters #2 for $103,200

1st place in the $10,000 Poker Masters #5 for $178,200

3rd place in the $25,000 Poker Masters #10 for $152,000

9th place in the $10,000 Dealers Choice for $25,741

3rd place in the $50,000 Pot-Limit High Roller for $519,764

3rd place in the $50,000 No-Limit Holdem High Roller for $661,041

1st place in the $25,000 PokerGO Cup #6 for $350,000

5th place in the $50,000 PokerGO Cup #8 for $112,000

5th place in the $10,000 Aria High Roller #2 for $28,800

4th place in the $15,000 Aria High Roller #3 for $54,450

Negreanus latest high roller victory came in the second high roller event of the Wynn Millions festival, a $15,000 buy-in affair that drew in a crowd of 40 entries. Only the final six players received a slice of the $600,000 prize pool, with Sergio Aido being the unfortunate soul to pop the money bubble.

Ali Imsirovic was struggling to keep his head above water and was the sixth place finisher despite doubling through both Sean Winter and Ren Lin. Imsirovic finally came unstuck when he three-bet all-in over the top of a Negreanu raise with a pair of red kings in the hole. Negreanu looked him up with ace-king, flopped an ace, and won the pot.

Winter crashed out shortly after Imsirovic. He committed his last 5,000 chips with queen-five on a ten-high flop only for Sergi Reixach to snap-call with pocket aces. The turn and river were void of drama, and Winter headed to the cashiers desk.

Fourth-place and $66,000 went to Brock Wilson who called off his short stack from the big blind with ten-five of clubs after Lin opened from the small blind. Lin put in calling chips with his pair of sevens, which held to reduce the player count by one.

Heads-up was set when Negreanu sent Lin to the showers in third place, a finish worth $96,000. Negreanu min-raised to 100,000 with pocket nines before calling Lins 820,000 all-in bet. Lin turned over ace-six of diamonds, but could not find an ace on the jack-high board.

That hand gave Negreanu a 2,570,000 to 1,430,000 advantage over Reixach but victory was far from assured, such is the talent of Negreanus final opponent. Negreanu had Reixach on the ropes but the Spaniard fought back and refused to be beaten. Something had to give and it did when Negreanu moved all-in with what turned out to be nine-eight and Reixach called off his short stack with pocket fours. A nine appeared as the door card, and it proved enough to bust Reixach and hand another high roller title to Negreanu.

Back to my winning ways and it feels good! 3am finish with all the chips in the $15k for $216,000 and 216 points to https://t.co/edP61hpAVF  Daniel Negreanu (@RealKidPoker)

Negreanu will be back in action on for the $10,000 buy-in $10 million guaranteed Wynn Millions Main Event on March 3, although his celebratory tweet states he will be buying in during late registration.

You can follow all the action from the $10 million guaranteed Main Event right here at PokerNews. Our live reporting team is on the ground from the first hand being dealt to the champion being crowned. Will that champion be Negreanu? We do not have long to wait to find out.
Police officers detain women during a protest against Russias invasion of Ukraine (AFP via Getty Images)

Vladimir Putin is poised to impose martial law in Russia  plunging the country further into authoritarianism.

The introduction of martial law will enable a further crackdown on dissent, a free press and human rights as the Russian President seeks to control the narrative of the invasion of Ukraine.

Some 7,000 Russian protesters have already been arrested after demonstrating against military aggression in Ukraine, which has reportedly caused the death of more than 2,000 civilians since last Friday.

EU officials fear Mr Putin could announce martial law at a session of the Russian parliament on Friday afternoon  allowing him to suspend civil liberties entirely. The Kremlin denied these reports on Thursday.

What is martial law?

Under the Russian constitution, martial law can be imposed when the country is under threat of attack.

It means that the normal administration of government functions is taken over by the armed forces, and the ordinary rule of law temporarily postponed.

Mr Putins decision could be preceded by a false flag missile attack from within Ukraine, which would enable him to impose the law on the pretext that his country faces imminent danger.

European officials said on Thursday that the imposition of martial law was something were conscious of, and something were worried about.

What would martial law allow Putin to do?

The passing of the law would gift Mr Putin extraordinary powers, including the ability to shut the countrys borders, intern all foreigners and control food supplies.

The Kremlin would also be able to further tighten censorship of the media, with military commanders given control of what can and cannot be printed and broadcasted.

It would give Moscow the power to shut down the internet entirely as well as social media apps, which are being used by anti-Kremlin protesters to spread information and publicise demonstrations.

Mikhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, said on Wednesday martial law would mean a total ban on all rallies, disconnection from the outside world and large-scale food and financial restrictions.

Story continues

(AP)

How have Russians reacted?

Some have considered leaving the country before martial law is introduced and the borders are shut.

One Russian man, who moved back to Moscow from western Europe around a year ago, told Reuters he had bought a flight to Istanbul for the weekend, adding that living in Moscow may no longer be possible.

Im afraid that mobilisation will be introduced tomorrow and I wont be able to fly out, said the 29-year-old, who asked to remain anonymous.

In my worst nightmares I couldnt have dreamt of such hell when I was coming back a year ago.

Evidence of a possible rush to emigrate can be seen in the price of plane tickets, which have leapt since Russia closed its airspace to airlines from the EU and many other countries in response to western sanctions.

Two popular options for Russians fleeing Mr Putins regime are Georgia and Armenia as they do not require a visa to live and work.

What has the Kremlin said?

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Thursday that rumours of martial law were a hoax.

These are nothing but hoaxes published on social networks, which citizens send to one another, he said.

One should be very careful about information and not to fall victim to rumours and fakes.
UNCW a Partner in $662,905 NSF Grant Studying Sea Squirts

Patrick Erwin and Susanna Lopez-Legentil, associate professors in UNCWs Department of Biology and Marine Biology, are co-principal investigators on an award totaling $662,905 from the National Science Foundation Division of Environmental Biology. Together with colleagues from Coastal Carolina University and Soka University of America, they will study the development and application of genomic resources for ascidian taxonomy and holobiont evolution.

Both Erwin and Lopez-Legentil completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the Business of Marine Biotechnology at UNCW in 2009. Erwin has been with the university for 11 years, and Lopez-Legentil for 12 years. Their research laboratory, imesalab.com, seeks to advance knowledge on the biology and ecology of marine animals, particularly ascidians or sea squirts.

Sea squirts are frequently found on floating docks and often mistaken for other immobile animals like sponges. They get their name from their ability to expel a stream of water through their siphons (squirt) when removed from the water.

Sea squirts are our closest invertebrate relatives and thus are often used as models to research and study vertebrate development and evolution. Some ascidians are actively consumed in Peru and South Korea, and others produce natural products that have resulted in anti-tumoral drugs. Many sea squirts effectively invade new coastal habitats where they can thrive and alter natural communities as well as cause economic loss to the areas aquaculture industry. However, despite their ecological and evolutionary importance, identifying ascidian species remains a challenge.

The Development and Application of Genomic Resources for Ascidian Taxonomy and Holobiont Evolution is a three-year NSF award that will further advanced research on ascidians of Belize in Central America. This project will develop new genomic tools to accurately identify sea squirt species and address important questions in invasive species spread and chordate evolution. A species inventory will also be created, representing the first catalogue of ascidians from both harbor and reef habitats from Belize, which is a biodiversity hot spot for the group. The project will also document the prevalence of invasive ascidian species in the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef and provide insight into the role of gut microbial symbionts in ascidian evolution and invasive potential.

The project provides valuable hands-on research for more than nine undergraduates per year at the three universities and supports four scholarships for underrepresented students in STEM disciplines. In addition, 24 students will be trained in ascidian taxonomy and a workshop on ascidian diversity will be presented to interested stakeholders in Belize.

-- Mary Ellen Frizzell

#CMS

Susanna Lopez-Legentil, associate professor in UNCWs Department of Biology and Marine Biology
Isabella Martinez has evolved as a leader since becoming a student at the University of North Georgia (UNG).

The Bethlehem, Georgia, native served on the Student Government Association (SGA) Summer Council in 2020 between her freshman and sophomore years on UNG's Oconee Campus. For the 2020-21 school year, she is the director of marketing and communications for SGA.

In these roles, she has gained valuable skills toward her career goal of helping people as a lawyer.

"I've learned so many things about how to be a stronger leader," Martinez said. "Leadership is not about being in charge. It's being a part of the community and working together toward a goal."

Martinez, who is pursuing a degree in communication with a public relations concentration and a minor in political science, said the social unrest of 2020 has further affirmed her desire to attend law school.

"I'm seeing how unjust the world can be at times," Martinez said. "I want to help a little bit, even if it's just in my community or my town."

She sees her leadership as part of a collective process.

"My leadership style is based on teamwork and communication," Martinez said. "A leader should be someone who is there to guide and support you, instead of someone who just gives orders without assistance."

She also has seen the value of not putting too much pressure on herself.

"Just be yourself. Sometimes people try a little too hard," Martinez said. "And just be a nice and genuine person."

Lindsay Bailey, director of Student Involvement on UNG's Oconee Campus, saw the potential in Martinez and encouraged her to take part in SGA.

"Isabella immediately stood out as a leader when I first met her as a student in my class. She is outspoken, kind and not afraid to take charge," Bailey said. "Her maturity and intelligence shine through her dedication to class projects and activities outside of class. I especially appreciate her follow-through. When she says she is going to do something, I know it will get done. She is an absolute delight to work with."
I was an educator my whole professional life, so I have been watching with great interest the wave of new legislation that has been proposed by Republicans around the country, allegedly designed to combat critical race theory. After reading a few newspaper accounts, I took a look at some of the actual bills that are under consideration in approximately 36 states now. I am not an alarmist by nature, but I was very disturbed by what I discovered. It is time to be alarmed.

Critical race theory is, I believe, a deeply flawed theory, with assumptions I cannot accept and implications I do not endorse. But the new legislation that is sweeping the country is not really about this academic theory; it goes much deeper than that.

Consider the bill in Florida, proposed by state Sen. Manny Diaz Jr. It would make it illegal for schools to teach anything that would make people feel discomfort, guilt, or anguish, or any other form of psychological distress on account of race, sex, or national origin. But learning anything can cause psychological distress. Learning is largely about challenging our deeply held views, and it often begins with cognitive dissonance, which can be unpleasant, even if the result is a better and deeper understanding of something. Students need to be confronted with difficult facts if they are going to learn.

A bill proposed in New Hampshire would make it illegal to advocate socialism or communism. What does it mean to advocate these things? Would a teacher be violating the law to say that universal health care is a good idea? Probably, since many ill-informed people would equate that with socialism. The bill would also make it illegal to promote a negative account or representation of the American founding or history. This is a wildly oppressive requirement. What is a negative account or representation? Would it be negative to quote Abraham Lincoln saying that slavery was a moral, social and political evil?

The South Carolina version of the bill also creates sanctions for creating psychological distress. Schools can lose their funding for up to a decade if they allow it. Rashawn Ray and Alexandra Gibbons of the Brookings Institution point out that laws forbidding any teacher or lesson from mentioning race/racism, and even gender/sexism, would put a chilling effect on what educators are willing to discuss in the classroom. The sad thing is that this is exactly why the laws are being proposed  to have a chilling effect on education.

Its not just that these bills are poorly written (even though they are). And its not just that they misunderstand critical race theory (which they do). These laws are not about making education better or protecting the freedom of students and teachers. They are about shutting down critical thinking, which requires exposure to divergent ideas.

John Milton, the famous Christian poet who wrote Paradise Lost, also wrote an essay entitled Areopagitica condemning censorship. In it, he said, I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary. We do not help our young people by trying to protect them from the difficult issues of the day. In fact, we harm them by trying to censor what they encounter.

Its time we spoke about this plainly because I dont think the purpose of these laws is widely understood. Democracies stand or fall on the ability of their citizens to think critically. Citizens need to be able to analyze their history in order to review public policy choices and evaluate their representatives so that they can make informed decisions. Citizens need to know the good, the bad and the ugly about their regime if they are to be empowered to fulfill the highest aspirations of their country. In Politics, Aristotle says a citizen is defined by participation in governing. Autocratic governments dont want citizens; they want followers. If we lose the ability to think critically, we will become nothing more than followers.

And as frightening as these new laws are, things can get worse. What will come next? Laws making it illegal to criticize or be negative about our leaders? We have seen this before in history, and there is no reason to think it could not happen here, especially if this first round of laws is received well. These laws are only trial balloons for what will follow. If they are not rejected, even more disturbing and outlandish laws will be proposed.

We cannot allow this to happen. Citizens need to pay attention to these proposed laws and oppose them. If citizenship is about participating in governing, we must actually participate. What does this mean? Write to your legislators. Write to your newspapers. Talk to your friends and alert them to what is going on. Democracy is more fragile than we appreciate and can be swept away more easily than one could imagine. If we take it for granted, we can lose it before we realize that it is gone.

Solomon D. Stevens has a Ph.D. in political science from Boston College. His publications include Religion, Politics, and the Law, co-authored with Peter Schotten, and Challenges to Peace in the Middle East. He wrote this for InsideSources.com.
As some readers may already have heard, Mike Spauldings combat veteran F4U-1D Corsair (BuNo.82640) made its first post-restoration flight on February 28th, taking to the air from Mareeba Airport near Cairns in northern Queensland, Australia. Stephen Death was at the controls for this momentous occasion. The well-known warbird pilot had flown in earlier from his home in Albury, New South Wales, some 1,500 miles due south of Mareeba. Interestingly, this seemingly minor detail regarding Deaths residence had delayed the Corsairs first flight by several months since COVID-19 restrictions severely limited interstate travel in Australia until fairly recently.

We reached out to Mike Spaulding to glean further details about the Corsairs first flight. Australia is currently nearing the end of its summer season, so it was quite warm during the late afternoon flight, with temperatures hovering in the mid-80s (F) accompanied by a moderate, southeasterly breeze. The initial flight lasted about an hour, with Spaulding noting that it involved the following: Check[ing] all the aircraft systems such as gear, flaps, hydraulics, brakes, engine, propeller, flight and stall characteristics. [The pilot] did stalls, loops and rolls whilst carrying out these tests. Upon landing, Stephen Death remarked that he could not fault the aircraft which only added to the jubilation which everyone sensed after completing this complex restoration. Myself and our Chief Engineer [Paul Knox] have put ten years of our lives into restoring this iconic aircraft, and to see it fly successfully for the first time since WWII was emotional, satisfying and we both have a sense of pride in our achievement.

We did a second flight the following day of approximately the same duration, where Stephen flew in formation with me, in our T-6, so our cameraman in the back could take our aerial pictures, Spaulding added. The aircraft is now fully certified to fly and there is nothing left to do on the aircraft.

When asked about whether the Corsair is scheduled to take part in any air shows in the coming year, Spaulding remarked: We have made no commitments for the aircraft [at present, because for] anyone else to fly the aircraft [they] will need to be endorsed before that happens and, at this stage, no arrangements have been made towards that end.

This Corsair is now the worlds only Vought-built -1D variant flying anywhere in the world, with only one other complete survivor in preservation (the Smithsonians BuNo.50375). The aircraft is also one of only a handful of WWII combat veteran Corsairs extant, having served with VF-10 Grim Reapers aboard the carrier USS Intrepid between January and April, 1945. Mike Spaulding and his team at North Queensland Warbirds Pty deserve hearty congratulations for getting this aircraft flying again. Their achievement in successfully completing this restoration cannot be overstated given the immense demands of their endeavor. Amongst other difficulties, the project required the complete rebuild of the Corsairs main spar, by far the most complex of any WWII fighter aircraft indeed the demands of such an enterprise rendered it economically unviable until this past decade. So bravo to Mike Spaulding for taking on the daunting and demanding investment of time, skill and treasure which this restoration represents!

Just as we went to press, we learned that Mike Spaulding had listed the Corsair for sale with our sponsor, Platinum Fighter Sales. Wherever this historic fighter finds her new home, we hope that she has many years of safe and successful operations in her future!

Many thanks indeed to Mike Spaulding for taking the time to talk with us, and for providing the wonderful images of his Corsair in flight.
WATERLOO  Keyon Christian Roby stood quietly as he heard the decision that will send him to prison for life for killing a Cedar Falls man in a downtown apartment in 2019.

Jurors on Friday reached a verdict finding Roby, 20, guilty of first-degree murder in the death of Grant Saul, 24. The verdict came following a week of testimony and a day and a half of deliberations that began Thursday.

The jury also found Roby guilty of first-degree robbery, a charge that the defense conceded during closing arguments.

The murder charge is punishable by a mandatory life sentence under Iowa law. First-degree robbery is punishable by up to 25 years in prison. Sentencing will be at a later date.

Prosecutors used the felony murder rule, which allows for a murder conviction in cases where a life is taken during to commission of another felony  in this case robbery  regardless of premeditation.

Prosecutors said Roby, James Wright-Buls and Marquas Gafeney entered a Main Street apartment Dec. 4, 2019, brandished a pistol and demanded those inside hand over their stuff.

Roby allegedly struck a friend of Sauls in the head with the pistol, and Saul began to reach for his own gun. Roby then fired three shots at Saul, killing him, according to testimony.

During trial, one of Sauls friends identified Roby as the first person through the door during the robbery and the gunman. Wright-Buls and Gafeney also testified about robbery.

The defense argued Roby didnt have time to think, time to form malice aforethought  an element of murder  when he fired and was merely reacting to Saul.

Wright-Buls and Gafeney entered into agreements to plead guilty to related charges.

A fourth person arrested in the case, McKayla Faith Ryan, is awaiting trial. Ryan, 22, is charged with robbery, and authorities allege she drove the others to Sauls apartment but didnt enter during the robbery.

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CEDAR FALLS  A consensus by a majority of the City Council on Feb. 21 to maintain the status quo of the public safety department has been broken by one member.

On Monday, Mayor Rob Green is prepared to lead a discussion on his Public Safety 2022 (PS-22) plan, which he introduced during his campaign for re-election, with significant changes to address some concerns with the public safety officer program.

It acts as a hybrid of sorts between the two sides of the debate on whether or not to cross-train police officers and firefighters.

Some aspects of the current PSO Model are great  I fully support cross-training and believe our smart and motivated officers have the skill and will to serve ably in that capacity, Green said in introducing the plan in councils meeting packet. Cedar Falls Public Safety has hired top-notch officers; this certainly isnt about them, and Im very proud of them and the excellence they bring to their critical safety roles every day.

That said, PS-22 is a response to the concerns that the current PSO model lacks inherent accountability to certify that personnel maintain the perishable law enforcement, firefighting, rescue, and emergency medical skills needed to protect Cedar Falls residents, workers, and visitors, and their property.

After speaking with retired firefighters and in some cases, friends and families of firefighters, Councilor Gil Schultz said he is now willing to consider larger changes than when he was one of four to informally vote for the status quo during the first lengthy meeting on public safety.

Schultz sided with Councilors Daryl Kruse, Kelly Dunn and Susan deBuhr who have supported moving forward with the PSO program while striving toward goals in a special report that provides both the fluidity to adapt and the structure necessary to provide an efficient future for Cedar Falls Public Safety from 2021 to 2025.

The first-term city councilors stance on the issue has changed since he began campaigning early last year, having previously been in the camp of wanting traditional police and fire departments.

But his change in stance has come, in part, after learning that Cedar Falls public safety officer program has an organizational structure and response in which police and fire act in their own separate divisions.

Schultz insists he wants to continue learning more about the pros and cons of the traditional and PSO models, as well as its other options as a city, but not wanting to immediately flip the switch back to the ways of the past.

Mask requirement lifted for Cedar Falls city employees City employees had been required to wear a face covering inside public buildings whenever away from their desks.

With the March 11 retirement of Public Safety Director Jeff Olson looming, the city will appoint an interim public safety director at some point. Whether the city hires a full-time replacement is still up in the air and could be determined during Mondays discussion.

No time is allotted during the Monday work session for the public to weigh in on the topic. But it is expected that if stronger consideration were to be given to certain changes that future meetings would allow for the community participation.

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WATERLOO -- Lost Island is preparing for its grand opening this summer for its brand-new immersive theme park. Hiring for both Lost Island Waterpark and Lost Island Themepark is happening now.

Hiring fairs will be held from 2-6 p.m. Wednesday, March 16, at Isle Casino Hotel, Salon D - Ballroom, and from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, March 19, at College Square Mall, Cedar Falls.

They will be hiring over 600 team members between the two parks.

You can also apply online by visiting: www.thelostisland.com/jobs.

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DES MOINES  Reversing course, if only temporarily, an Iowa House committee has voted to withdraw subpoenas it issued in investigating whether a district court judge committed an impeachable offense.

Judiciary Committee Chairman Steve Holt, R-Denison, asked the committee to withdraw the subpoenas and essentially put the investigation on hold until a Judicial Branch investigation of Judge Kurt Stoebe has been completed.

After launching the investigation last month and issuing subpoenas Tuesday to members of a judicial nominating commission that Stoebe was part of, Holt learned minutes before a Thursday morning committee meeting that the Judicial Qualifying Commission is conducting its own investigation.

Typically, such investigations are kept confidential. However, Chairwoman Martha Shaff of Davenport wrote to Holt and the committees ranking, Democrat, Rep. Mary Wolfe of Clinton, to explain she was informing them because the subject matter of the complaint is of broad public interest and I believe providing this information will promote public confidence in the administration of justice. Many of the facts in the matter already are public, she added.

Stoebe was the chairman of judicial nominating commission for several counties in northern Iowa. A commissioner accused Stoebe of making inappropriate and unprofessional comments about certain nominees, of falsely claiming that a nominee had withdrawn from consideration, and of unfairly favoring one nominee over others during discussions and interviews.

His actions tainted the process, Gov. Kim Reynolds said. She rejected the nominees and ordered the commission to start over for only the second time in history. The commission recommended the same two finalists, and Reynolds appointed district Associate Judge Derek Johnson to the bench in December.

Holts motion to withdraw subpoenas was approved on a voice vote.

We are not ending the investigation, he said. We will take a step back and we will allow the (commission) to do what it is tasked to do.

Judiciary Committee Democrats opposed issuing the subpoenas, questioning whether the panel had the authority.

Three members of the judicial nominating who received subpoenas also had questions. They filed motions to quash the subpoenas, Holt said.

He also said Thursday that Des Moines attorney Alan Ostergren had been retained by the House to represent the committee. Wolfe had objections that she did not want to discuss in the public meeting.

Im stating that we are declining representation, Wolfe said, adding she would put further comments in a letter to the chairman. She has not responded to a request for further explanation.

Ostergren has represented Republicans, including the campaign of former President Donald Trump, on legal matters. That, Holt said, shouldnt disqualify him from representing lawmakers.

Regardless of our political affiliation, he is eminently qualified to represent this committee, Holt said. Initially, he asked Attorney General Tom Miller to represent lawmakers, but the Democrat declined because he was representing the Judicial Branch. So again, I would state that its not about political affiliations.

Although the Judiciary Committee investigation has been paused, Holt said Stoebes actions must be pursued.

Information about what took place will either tend to exonerate him or confirm the allegations, Holt said. Either way, the air is cleared and sunlight will once again proved to be the best disinfectant.

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Weather Alert

...MORE WINDY DAYS ON THE WAY, WITH COLDER TEMPERATURES AND RAIN/SNOW SHOWERS FOR MOTHER'S DAY WEEKEND... --Thursday and Friday-- * A pair of systems brushing through the region will bring gusty winds both days, with even stronger winds possible on Friday. Winds will bring travel difficulties both in the air and on the ground. Travel restrictions for high profile vehicles are possible. Check with CalTrans/NDOT for the current road information. Please see the latest hazard text products for the latest information on anticipated wind speeds. * Area of blowing dust are possible both afternoons downwind of the Carson Sink, possibly affecting portions of I-80, US 50, and Highway 95. In addition, backcountry and ski recreation could be impacted along with choppy conditions on area lakes. * A few light showers with minimal liquid totals are possible in far northern Nevada and northeast California. --Mother's Day Weekend into Early Next Week-- * It will remain breezy throughout the weekend, with a secondary max in wind speeds on Sunday due to a strong cold front. This front will usher in a much colder air mass and high temperatures on Mother's Day will be 15-20 degrees below normal. * There will be rain and snow showers with the front, but again, liquid amounts will be minimal. There are solid chances for snow levels to fall to all valley floors by Sunday evening, which may catch many off guard, though it is hard to get snow to stick to roadways in lower elevation valleys this late in the spring. * Well below normal temperatures and chances for light showers will continue into Monday and Tuesday next week. While still some uncertainty due to winds and cloud cover, it's possible we could have frost and freeze concerns Sunday and Monday nights.

...WIND ADVISORY IN EFFECT FROM 11 AM TO 9 PM PDT THURSDAY... * WHAT...Southwest winds 20 to 35 mph with gusts up to 55 mph expected. Wind prone areas may experience gusts in excess of 60 mph. Southwest winds 15 to 25 mph with gusts to 45 mph and waves of 2 to 4 feet expected on Pyramid Lake. * WHERE...Greater Reno-Carson City-Minden Area and Western Nevada Basin and Range including Pyramid Lake. * WHEN...From 11 AM to 9 PM PDT Thursday. * IMPACTS...Gusty winds could blow around unsecured objects and high profile vehicles will be prone to tip over. Tree limbs could be blown down and a few power outages may result. Blowing dust may locally reduce visibility downwind of dry lake beds and sinks. Small boats, kayaks and paddle boards will be prone to capsizing. * ADDITIONAL DETAILS...Travel restrictions for high profile vehicles are possible. Check with NDOT for the latest on road conditions. PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS... Now is the time to secure loose outdoor items such as patio furniture, holiday decorations, and trash cans before winds increase which could blow these items away. The best thing to do is prepare ahead of time by making sure you have extra food and water on hand, flashlights with spare batteries and/or candles in the event of a power outage. Check lake conditions before heading out on the water and be prepared for a sudden increase in winds and wave heights. Consider postponing boating activities on the lake until a day with less wind. &&
U.S. President Joe Biden speaks to reporters before the start of a cabinet meeting in the Cabinet Room of the White House on March 3, 2022 in Washington, DC.


Wiluna Suspends Concentrate Shipments to Russia

Perth, Mar 4, 2022 AEST (ABN Newswire) - Wiluna Mining Corporation Limited ( ASX:WMC ) ( FRA:NZ3 ) ( OTCMKTS:WMXCF ) announces that, in light of the current military action in Ukraine, it will immediately suspend shipments of gold concentrate from its Wiluna Mining Centre to Russia.During this period, Wiluna has arrangements in place to sell and ship all its concentrate to alternative destinations. We will continue to monitor the situation in Ukraine and any sanctions imposed on the Russian Federation before making further decisions on the destination of its product.About Wiluna Mining Corporation Ltd

Wiluna Mining Corporation (ASX:WMC) (OTCMKTS:WMXCF) is a Perth based, ASX listed gold mining company that controls over 1,600 square kilometres of the Yilgarn Craton in the Northern Goldfields of WA. The Yilgarn Craton has a historic and current gold endowment of over 380 million ounces, making it one of most prolific gold regions in the world. The Company owns 100% of the Wiluna Gold Operation which has a defined resource of 8.04M oz at 1.67 g/t au. In May 2019, a new highly skilled management team took control of the Company with a clear plan to leverage the Wiluna Gold Operation's multi-million-ounce potential.
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Vancouver, Mar 3, 2022 AEST (ABN Newswire) - In this segment of The Ellis Martin Report we speak with Claudia Tornquist, the President and CEO of Kodiak Copper Corp ( CVE:KDK ) ( OTCMKTS:KDKCF ) ( FRA:5DD1 ). The company is resuming a 25,000 meter drill program at its Copper Gold Porphyry Project in British Columbia.Kodiak Copper Corp. announces that drilling is to commence within the next week at the Company's 100% owned MPD copper-gold porphyry project in southern British Columbia.Highlights. Plans for 2022 include a large drill program with up to 25,000 metres of drilling in several target areas, as well as further geophysical and geochemical surveying, prospecting and geotechnical studies Drilling will commence at the Gate Zone high-grade discovery, where systematic exploration has intersected porphyry mineralization over 950 metres in length, down to a depth of 850 metres and across a width of 350 metres to date The Gate Zone remains open in multiple directions and a recently conducted 3D Induced Polarization (3D IP) geophysical survey has identified high-priority drill targets for potential extensions of mineralization.A one kilometre long "look-alike" anomaly 600 metres to the southeast of the Gate Zone represents a new target of significant size that was identified in the 3D IP survey and will also be drilled Other high-priority targets slated for drilling include Prime, Man, Dillard and Axe which exhibit similar regional geophysical and geochemical anomalies as the Gate Zone as well as shallow mineralization from historic drilling, and have rarely been drill tested at depth.Kodiak also expects further results from its 2021 drill program in the near future and throughout Q1 2022, for 12 holes remaining from 36 drilled (21,675 metres).Claudia Tornquist, President and CEO of Kodiak said, "2022 promises to be another exciting year as we are embarking on a large drill program. It is important to keep in mind that we are still in the early stages of unlocking the potential of what appears a large, multi-center porphyry system at MPD. Not only is there significant potential to further extend the Gate Zone but it will be very exciting to apply the successful approach from Gate to multiple other high-priority drill targets on the property as we are aiming to make further high-grade discoveries at MPD."To view the Interview, please visit:About Kodiak Copper Corp.Kodiak Copper Corp. (CVE:KDK) (OTCMKTS:KDKCF) is focused on its portfolio of 100% owned copper porphyry projects in Canada and the USA.The Company's most advanced asset is the MPD copper-gold porphyry project in the prolific Quesnel Trough in southern British Columbia, Canada, where in 2020 the Company made a high-grade discovery at the Gate Zone, which is part of a zoned, copper-gold enriched envelope of significant size.Kodiak also holds the Mohave copper-molybdenum-silver porphyry project in Arizona, USA, near the world-class Bagdad mine. Both of Kodiak's porphyry projects have been historically drilled and present known mineral discoveries with the potential to hold large-scale deposits.The Company's Kahuna diamond project in Nunavut, Canada, hosts a high-grade, near surface inferred diamond resource and numerous kimberlite pipe targets. Kodiak is considering strategic options for the Kahuna project.
Were calling The Batman a superhero movie because its another telling of the tale of one of the most iconic comic-book characters in American history  but in terms of tone and scope and storyline, Matt Reeves reboot of the ever-fruitful franchise is more of a film noir than a fable about fantastic flying creatures, more Zodiac and Seven than Guardians of the Galaxy or Eternals.

When the character of Batman made his debut in 1939, he was the cover subject of Detective Comics, and thats what were getting here: a detective story that is a gritty and grounded and relatively dark exploration into the troubled psyche of the young Bruce Wayne/Batman, who is early into his crime-fighting career when a mysterious, violent, devious and quite insane sociopath starts knocking off some of Gotham Citys most elite power brokers, all the while making a sick game out of it.

Weve seen Batman when he was starting out (Batman Begins), Batman in the midst of his crime-fighting prime (Batman Returns) and Batman as a world-weary, battle-scarred, 45-ish Caped Crusader (Justice League). In this iteration, the Dark Knight (Robert Pattinson) is only two years into his career and is just beginning to calibrate his moral compass while battling the scum of Gotham City in the shadows and the rain. (In true film-noir fashion, its almost always raining in The Batman, and theres almost always something troubling lurking in the steam and the mist and the dark of night.)

We pick up the story at a time when virtually everyone on the police force considers Batman to be an outlaw with a gimmick, the only exception being the earnest and capable Lt. Gordon (Jeffrey Wright), who infuriates his colleagues when he summons the Batman to crime scenes. (When a fully outfitted Batman arrives at a murder scene and starts picking up clues a la Colombo, its pretty great and also kinda funny.)

A sadistic serial killer is executing some of the most influential players in Gotham City, leaving behind cryptic and creepy messages addressed To The Batman  cards with strange symbols and markings, warnings such as NO MORE LIES and riddles such as, What does a liar do when hes dead? (Reminiscent of elements in the aforementioned David Fincher films Seven and Zodiac.) Of course, Batman is the only one who can solve the riddles and parse the clues; Ill bet hed be good at Wordle.

Sporting a military-green getup that includes a disturbing mask that looks like it was made in a serial killers basement  which is probably the case  Paul Danos Riddler is a shadowy, elusive figure who doesnt carry the all-out menace of, say, Heath Ledgers Joker, but Dano specializes in playing unsettling outcasts, and hes effective enough, especially in a scene when the Batman confronts him at Arkham State Hospital. Were also introduced to one Oswald Cobblepot (a virtually unrecognizable Colin Farrell, having great fun hamming it up), who is pure corruption but still paddling his way up the crime ladder and hasnt yet become Penguin, and the crime boss Carmine Falcone (the great John Turturro), who oozes menace. And lets just say the obvious criminals arent the only criminals in Gotham City.

Zoe Kravitz is outstanding as Selina Kyle, who remains smart and confident and sexy and dangerous, but is less of a caricature than some previous versions of this character. Theres genuine chemistry between Pattinson and Kravitz as Selina becomes the Batmans ad hoc partner in crime-fighting even as the romantic sparks fly. Give Zoe/Selina/Catwoman their own movie!

As for Pattinson  hes become one of the most interesting actors of his generation, and he perfectly captures the existential angst of Bruce Wayne, even as his youthful looks and his modified Johnny Depp-in-Benny-and-Joon hairstyle serve as reminders this man is still relatively callow and hasnt fully established his identity, either as Bruce or Batman. (One character says to Bruce, You really could be doing more for this city. Your family has a history of philanthropy  but youre not doing anything.) This Batman almost has a touch of Dexter in him, at one point proclaiming: Im vengeance.

With Chicago providing multiple exterior shots for stunt sequences, and principal photography in London, and location sequences also in Liverpool, England, and Glasgow, Scotland, the Gotham City of The Batman still has a decidedly New York City vibe; theres even a Gotham Square a la Times Square. The rain-soaked, golden-hued cinematography by Greig Fraser (Rogue One, Dune) is beautiful, but director Reeves favors a stripped-down, bare-bones approach to the narrative. Bruce Waynes lair actually looks like a cave, as its located underneath the city, in an old section of the Wayne Terminus Subway. Even the Bat Signal is a jagged, scrap metal device that shoots a rather murky image into the sky whenever Lt. Gordon attempts to summon the Batman. This is an urban-based Batman saga, and though the citizens of Gotham City have yet to fully appreciate it, they are lucky to have him patrolling their streets, their sewers and their skyline.
Aerial photo shows an electric multiple unit (EMU) train of the China-Laos Railway crossing a major bridge over the Yuanjiang River in southwest China's Yunnan Province, Dec. 3, 2021. (Xinhua/Wang Guansen)

KUNMING, March 3 (Xinhua) -- The China-Laos Railway, a landmark project of high-quality Belt and Road cooperation, has boosted regional connectivity and economic cooperation since it started operation three months ago.

As of Thursday, the railway has handled more than 350 international freight trains which transported over 250,000 tonnes of cargo, according to the China Railway Kunming Group Co., Ltd.

Driven by the increasing demand for transportation, the types of goods have expanded from fertilizers, fodder and vegetables at the beginning to electronic products, monocrystalline silicon, daily necessities and communication equipment, said Xu Chao, deputy general manager of the Kunming branch of China United International Rail Containers Co., Ltd.

In order to better serve train operation and improve efficiency, local authorities have coordinated efforts between epidemic control and transportation service, and facilitated the customs clearance at ports.

"Our train service has become more diversified, from traditional international cargo trains to Lancang-Mekong Express and cold chain trains," Xu said, adding that the Lancang-Mekong Express only takes 26 hours from Kunming, capital of southwest China's Yunnan Province, to the Laotian capital Vientiane.

Opening to traffic on Dec. 3, 2021, the China-Laos Railway runs over 1,000 km and links Kunming with Vientiane. It is the first overseas railway jointly constructed and operated by the two countries.

International trade companies are among those who benefit from the railway. Laos is embracing modern logistics services including road-rail combined transport and one-stop customs clearance, which improves the timeliness of cargo transportation and largely reduces costs, said Wang Lijun, chairman of Haofeng International Transport Co., Ltd, a Chinese joint venture rooted in Laos for over a decade.

Wang said the development of his company has entered into the fast lane, with business growing rapidly.

"The China-Laos Railway saves us about 30 percent of logistics cost from Kunming to Vientiane. The rail transport is more punctual and can reduce damages to the goods," said Yang Jie from Shanghai Rencheng Supply Chain Management Co., Ltd. "We are more confident to expand Southeast Asian market."

"The launch of the railway has not only promoted economic development along the route but also accelerated the construction of the China-Laos Economic Corridor and the community of a shared future between the two sides," said Ma Yong, head of the institute of Southeast Asian studies under the Yunnan Academy of Social Sciences.

As the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) agreement entered into force in January, the destinations of international freight via China-Laos Railway have been expanded to more countries and regions including Thailand, Malaysia and Cambodia. 
Dave Grohl has always seemed like a man possessed  and I mean that in a good way  from his early days behind the drum kit for Nirvana through a second Rock & Roll Hall of Fame career as the frontman for the Foo Fighters to his status as a truly cool dad of rock n roll who absolutely loves playing and writing and recording music. Anytime the Foo Fighters perform live, or you see Grohl giving an interview, you can tell how much he loves his craft and appreciates his life.

Now Grohl truly is a man possessed in the bat-bleep crazy, WTF-is-happening, weird and cheerfully bloody drive-in horror/comedy Studio 666, which just might be the most bizarre movie starring a band since Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park in 1978. Directed with genuine splatter-film style by BJ McDonnell and featuring game performances from Grohl and his bandmates, along with a terrific roster of supporting players such as Jeff Garlin, Whitney Cummings and Jenna Ortega (the latest Scream queen), Studio 666 is This Is Spinal Tap meets The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

Is it a great movie? Not even close. But is it a real, actual movie and not just some wacky vanity project? Yes! Pretty much.

The Foo Fighters play, well, the Foo Fighters, who are told by their manager (Garlin) its time to deliver their 10th studio album, NOW. Seeking the same kind of inspiration Led Zeppelin found at Headley Grange back in the day, the Fighters of Foo set up in an Encino mansion, a property with a decidedly creepy, haunted vibe. As the nosy next-door neighbor (Cummings) explains, theres a lot of dark history surrounding this place  but theres something about the acoustics that convinces Dave something special could transpire here.

If only he could get over his writers block. When he plays a new riff for his bandmates, drummer Taylor Hawkins says, Dude, wait, (thats) called Everlong, and you wrote it about 20 years ago.

Eventually, though, Dave has a breakthrough when he discovers a long-lost underground recording studio, and he becomes possessed with making music  and also possessed by some sort of demon. At this point Studio 666 becomes a full-out horror film, with various characters getting sliced, diced, grilled, chopped, pureed  you name it. We get some great guest cameos from Will Forte and Lionel Richie, yes, Lionel Richie. Late in the movie, Ortega appears and amps up the supernatural proceedings, and while Im still not sure exactly who she was playing and what it had to do with the inner workings of the plot, theres some badass pyrotechnics involved.

Studio 666 also has some great laughs, e.g., when the Foo Fighters celebrate by doing a Pearl Jam high-five (aping the cover of the Ten album), or when they know the charred corpse they find on the property must be that of the food delivery guy, because little cups of ranch dressing are scattered all around him. This is a stupid, silly, freewheeling mix of music, comedy and blood that kills.
Ask a dozen locals to name their favorite Chinese restaurant, you might get a dozen different answers. Ask a hundred, then youll probably hear Fan Tang in Nob Hill mentioned a few times.

Since opening in 2011, Jason Zengs restaurant has become one of the more popular places in town to get orange peel chicken, lo mein noodles and other American Chinese favorites.

Zeng comes from a family of restaurateurs. His grandfather had a restaurant in China and his parents are the founders of Chows Bistro in Santa Fe and Albuquerque. While attending UNM, Zeng noticed the relative lack of Asian dining options in the Nob Hill area and saw an opportunity when an historic building on the northwest corner of Central Avenue and Carlisle Boulevard became vacant.

That building is a former gas station built in the 1940s in the streamline moderne style, with rounded corners and a stepped tower rising from the roof.

Theres a small parking lot on the west side of the restaurant, accessed from Central. The entrance, set back from the street, opens on a curving bar with a large menu stretched across three walls behind it. Booths along the windows offer sweeping views of one of Centrals more picturesque intersections.

Like most Chinese places in town, Fan Tang is something of a fusion operation. Dishes like pho and Pad Thai are offered alongside all the American Chinese standards.

The menu stands out for its numerous vegan and gluten-free offerings. Gluten-free Singapore Noodles ($9.99 plus $1 for shrimp or beef), are served for takeout as a thick slab of rice noodles in savory lobster sauce with onions and baby bok choy. As most Chinese food lovers know, lobster sauce doesnt contain lobster. It gets its name because Cantonese restaurants in North America would use it to cook the pricey shellfish. Fan Tangs presentation is redolent of garlic and ginger and an infused chili oil that sneaks up and stings you long after the bite. Hidden inside the chewy noodles were a half-dozen sprightly shrimp. I appreciated the addition of an egg cooked over easy, the yolk still runny enough to make a sauce.

Among the signature dishes on the menu, Mapo Tofu ($10.95) is the one most associated Chinas Sichuan province, a landlocked region in the southwestern part of the country known for its spicy food. Fan Tangs version certainly lives up to that reputation. It activates the mucus membranes so decisively, it should come with a small box of tissues. The tofu presents as cubes that yield to a fluffy center that sponges up the molten broth. Served with tendrils of pork, it offers a wealth of heat and umami  all thats missing is a little crunch. The side of white rice helped subdue the intense flavor and heat. The portion was easily enough for two people.

Coffee Chicken ($11.95), another Fan Tang signature dish, was my go-to at Chows Northeast Heights location before it closed back in 1999, so I was eager to revisit it. The bits of stir-fried chicken breast come out the dark brown color of the French roast coffee rub. The sweet sauce balances the coffees bitterness in the same way that sugar takes the edge off a shot of espresso. It was missing the promised heat, but the green beans served with it were nicely al dente.

The Chinese have been smoking ducks and eggs and other foodstuffs for centuries as a way to preserve them while adding flavor and fragrance. Fan Tang honors that tradition with its Tea-smoked Beef ($12.95) served with rice and chopped green bell peppers. The meat, smoked with applewood and tea leaves, had an appetizing char and the compelling aroma of backyard barbecues and Chinese spices. The broad, flat strips of meat, however, were mostly tough.

I ordered by phone and the food was ready when I got there 15 minutes later. Servers were friendly and efficient. There was a 3% charge on the bill for using a credit card; I would have preferred a few fortune cookies instead.

Fan Tang serves up big portions with lots of flavor and heat. Its unique menu items and vegan and gluten-free options place it in the upper echelon of Albuquerques Chinese restaurants.
WASHINGTON  Its time for America to stop letting the coronavirus dictate how we live, President Joe Bidens White House declared Wednesday, outlining a strategy to allow people to return to many normal activities safely after two years of pandemic disruptions.

One highlight is a new test to treat plan to provide free antiviral pills at pharmacies to people who test positive for the virus.

The 90-page National COVID-19 Preparedness Plan spells out initiatives and investments to continue to drive down serious illness and deaths from the virus, while preparing for potential new variants and providing employers and schools the resources to remain open.

We know how to keep our businesses and our schools open with the tools that we have at our disposal, said White House COVID-19 coordinator Jeff Zients.

Meanwhile, 140 million Americans, or 43% have now had COVID, according to a new assessment from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That estimate comes from a surveillance program that tested nearly 72,000 blood samples that were sent to commercial labs from late December to late January. The samples were checked for antibodies from infection, and were distinguishable from antibodies that came from vaccination.

More than 947,000 people in the U.S. have died from the virus according to the CDC.

Wednesdays White House announcement follows Bidens Tuesday night State of the Union speech, in which he pointed to progress against the pandemic since last year, with a dramatic reduction in cases, along with readily available vaccines and the likelihood of new tests and therapeutics soon becoming more accessible.

This plan lays out the roadmap to help us fight COVID-19 in the future as we move America from crisis to a time when COVID-19 does not disrupt our daily lives and is something we prevent, protect against, and treat, the White House said. We are not going to just live with COVID. Because of our work, we are no longer going to let COVID-19 dictate how we live.

That tracked Bidens speech statement, Tonight, I can say we are moving forward safely, back to more normal routines. Its time for Americans to get back to work and fill our great downtowns again.

COVID-19 cases have fallen to their lowest level since last summer in recent weeks, after a winter spike from the highly transmissible omicron variant. Deaths, though, which lag cases by weeks, are still elevated, with an average of nearly 1,700 people dying in the U.S. each day. Officials emphasize that most instances of serious illnesses and death in the U.S. occur among those who are unvaccinated or who have not received a booster dose of vaccine.

The White Houses strategy comes days after the CDC loosened its guidance for when face masks should be worn in public indoor settings, placing more emphasis on local capacity to treat serious disease than overall case counts. Now more than 70% of the country can safely remove masks indoors, the CDC says, and the percentage is expected to grow as cases continue to decline.

While most states and localities moved to relax their mask requirements even before the CDC change, many have kept mandates in place for schools, and the federal government continues to require face masks on public transportation, including airplanes. The federal mandate is to expire on March 18, and health officials did not provide any indication whether it would be extended.

Meanwhile, businesses across the country are struggling to navigate employees lingering concerns about COVID-19 and desire for the flexibility of working from home. Many companies would like to get workers back into offices.

A key component of the administrations plan to convince American that it is safe to resume normal activities is the increasing availability of an antiviral pill from Pfizer that has been shown to reduce the risk of hospitalization from COVID-19 by 90%. By the end of the month, the administration says, 1 million pills will be available, with double that ready for use in April.

A White House official said the test-to-treat plan would initially roll out in hundreds of pharmacies across the country, including CVS, Walgreens, and Kroger locations, and would soon expand beyond that. Those who test positive at the sites would be able to obtain the antiviral pills for quick use, dramatically reducing the risk of bad outcomes.

One possible problem: The test-to-treat plan drew early concern from some pharmacists. Anne Burns, a vice president with the American Pharmacists Association, said pharmacies across the country have struggled with staffing issues in recent months. Pharmacists already doling out vaccines, prescriptions and health advice are worried about the extra time needed if they add more COVID-19 testing and treating.

Theres just a lot of considerations that go into this, she said. It takes far longer than it takes to dispense most normal prescriptions.

The administration said it also stands ready to rapidly administer millions of vaccine doses for children under 5 once the vaccines are approved by federal regulators. While there had been hope for the first shots to be authorized last month, Pfizer is now waiting on the results of a study including a third dose of the vaccine for that age group, and that will likely delay approval until April.

As part of the new strategy, the administration is calling on Congress to reinstitute tax credits for businesses that provide paid sick leave for employees who are sick with COVID-19. The White House is also asking Congress for additional funding to invest in new COVID-19 drugs, including research into the development of pan-coronavirus vaccines that would prevent against multiple strains and even several different types of viruses.

Meanwhile, federal officials emphasized they have greatly improved the public health systems capacity to identify and track any potential new variants, with new investments in surveillance testing and genomic sequencing. Zients said the administration believes that if needed, it can authorize, produce and deliver new vaccines and treatments in just 100 days rather than in many months or years.

Biden, in his remarks Tuesday night, said that in addition to starting the new antiviral initiative, his administration would allow people in the U.S. to order another round of free tests from the government. He said that starting next week, the administration would make available four more free tests to U.S. households through COVIDTests.gov, which has sent more than 270 million to nearly 70 million households since it launched in mid-January.

Juan Gallego, a 58-year-old resident of Chelsea, Massachusetts, a majority Latino city north of Boston that was one of the states hardest hit during the pandemic, says Bidens comments were appropriate, given how far the nation has come over the plast two years.

Before, we didnt know how to treat it. We were all paranoid, we didnt know what to do, he said of the virus. Now we know, with all the experience, all weve done with the vaccines and new treatments.

Gallego, a real estate agent who during the worst of the pandemic helped make face masks and deliver groceries and other essentials to quarantined families throughout Chelsea, said safety habits wont quickly fade, especially in cities like his that took the brunt of the pain.

Many along Chelseas bustling main street and even children in local schools have continued to mask up, although a statewide mask mandate in classrooms was lifted this week, he said.

He sent a message of hope, not desperation, Gallego said of Biden. We are in a much better place. And hes right.

___

Associated Press writers Mike Stobbe, Phil Marcelo and Tom Murphy contributed to this report.
ZAHONY, Hungary  Some of the 1 million people who have fled Russias devastating war in Ukraine count among societys most vulnerable, unable to decide on their own to flee and needing careful assistance to make the journey to safety.

In the Hungarian town of Zahony on Wednesday, more than 200 Ukrainians with disabilities  residents of two care homes in Ukraines capital of Kyiv  disembarked into the cold wind on a train station platform after an arduous escape from the violence gripping Ukraine.

The refugees, many of them children, have serious mental and physical disabilities, and were evacuated from their care facilities once the Russian assault on the capital intensified.

It wasnt safe to stay there, there were rockets, they were shooting at Kyiv, said Larissa Leonidovna, the director of the Svyatoshinksy orphanage in Kyiv. We spent more than an hour underground during a bombing.

Russias intensifying attack on Ukraine has forced 1 million people to leave in what one U.N. official predicted could become Europes biggest refugee crisis this century.

The exodus tallied early Thursday by the U.N. refugee agency after one week of Russian fighting is without precedent in this century for its speed and amounted to more than 2% of Ukraines population.

More than half of the refugees  nearly 505,000  have gone to Poland, while more than 116,300 have entered Hungary and over 79,300 have crossed into Moldova, according to earlier figures. Another 71,000 have fled to Slovakia, and some 69,600 have gone to other European countries.

While many of those fleeing are able-bodied adults, choosing to brave long and sometimes dangerous journeys to bring themselves and their families to safety, others are at the mercy of their caregivers to deliver them out of danger.

These children need a lot of attention, they have illnesses and require special care, said Leonidovna, the director of the Kyiv orphanage.

Moving from the train in groups of 30, the children  also from the Darnytskyy orphanage in Kyiv  were escorted to buses waiting to take them to Opole, Poland, where they would be settled and receive further care.

There are 216 people altogether, the children along with their chaperones, said Viktoria Mikolayivna, deputy director of the Darnytskyy home.

Cold weather gripping Eastern Europe on Wednesday made conditions even harder for those fleeing into countries neighboring Ukraine.

At the border area of Palanca in southern Moldova, a country that shares a long border with Ukraine, temperatures hovered around freezing and a fresh blanket of snow covered the ground.

Mothers with young children came wrapped in blankets and clothing, but the cold weather has made an already desperate situation even worse.

Julia, a 32-year-old mother with a 3-year-old child, tried to calm her son who was burning with fever. She felt helpless, she said, but is proud that she made the decision to help her family.

Thank God that I can protect my family, but I didnt want to leave my country. But I had to find another way to protect my family, she told The Associated Press.

Braving snow and sub-freezing temperatures, thousands of refugees continued to flee Ukraine into neighboring Romania through the Siret border crossing.

Alina Onica, a 41-year-old Red Cross volunteer in Siret, said that the freezing weather and snow are only adding to the challenges and needs of the refugees being displaced by war.

It made it more difficult because many left their homes a couple of days ago, and all they had was the clothes on their backs, she said. They have been asking for gloves, hats, and blankets. Its a humanitarian crisis and were hoping it will end soon.

Nastya Kononchuk, who hopes to reach the Bulgarian capital of Sofia to wait out the war with her dog, said she is originally from the Black Sea city of Odesa but was living in Kyiv. Her husband drove her to the Romanian border, but then returned to joined Ukraines armed forces.

It was a very long road and very scary, she said of the journey, when she heard the thud of missiles all around. You dont understand, Is it ours or is it enemy?'

Maybe its okay that now we dont have children, she added. But we have our dog, it is our child.

Victoria Baibara, who left Kyiv two days ago with her 6-year-old son after witnessing escalating bombing in the capital, arrived in Romania on Wednesday and will travel to Istanbul to stay with friends, she said.

Its so hard, its hard for a child, we cant explain to him why we should leave our home, why we hear these bombs, the 29-year-old said. He is also very scared. I am also very scared.  Its so cold and it was hard to stay with a child in the snow.

Marya Unhuryan, from Chernivsti in western Ukraine, came by car to Siret with her 9-year-old daughter and other relatives, all women.

I feel a lot of pain.  Just pain. A lot of pain for my country and my people, she said. Shes 9 years old and she does not understand the situation. She just wants to eat pizza in Italy and go to Disney in France.



AP journalists Stephen McGrath and Renata Brito in Siret, Romania, and Helena Alves in Palanca, Moldova, contributed to this report.



Follow the APs coverage of the war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
CAMP VERDE, Ariz.  The body of a man found in the Verde River has been positively identified as Valentin Rodriguez, who was suspected of shooting an Arizona police officer, authorities said Thursday.

Yavapai-Apache Nation police Sgt. Preston Brogdon is recovering after being shot in the abdomen on Feb. 9. A bullet went through his vest and belt, punctured his small intestine and shattered his pelvis and hip.

Brogdon and another officer had responded to reported gunfire near the Verde River on the Yavapai-Apache Nation. Rodriguez got out of a vehicle and fled while shooting at officers, the tribe said.

The FBI and Yavapai County had offered a reward for information in the search for Rodriguez. A father and son were fishing Friday when they spotted a body later identified as Rodriguez.

Its not clear how Rodriguez died. The Yavapai County Medical Examiners Office, which performed the autopsy, didnt immediately return a message Thursday seeking a cause and manner of death.

FBI spokesman Kevin Smith said the case remains open. The agency is investigating the circumstances of the shooting and will present the information to prosecutors before closing the case, he said.

Rodriguez had been charged in federal court with assaulting two tribal officers and discharging a firearm in a violent crime.
PHOENIX  A teenager and three adults have been arrested in connection with the fatal shooting of a 19-year-old man in south Phoenix, according to authorities.

Police said Adrian Rufgio Beaulieu was found dead inside an apartment around 11:30 p.m. Tuesday.

It appears the victim was accidentally shot by a 16-year-old boy whose name is being withheld because hes a juvenile, police said.

Several people at the apartment allegedly impeded the investigation by hiding evidence prior to polices arrival and changed their stories with investigators.

Police said the teenager was booked into the Maricopa County Jail along with 36-year-old Deanna Silva, 20-year-old Daniel Ruelas and 38-year-old Eric Buchanan.

The four are facing various charges and police said their investigation of the fatal shooting was continuing.
I usually focus on a bird species in this column, but this month I want to talk about creating a wildlife habitat in your backyard whether you live in an urban or rural area, have a large backyard or a small patio space. In any of these settings, with just a bit of effort, it is possible to create a welcoming oasis for birds and wildlife.

North American birds have declined by nearly 3 billion since the 1970s. This is mainly due to habitat loss, invasive species, climate change and pesticides. This is a staggering number, but there are some simple steps we can take that can make a difference.

These include providing food, water, shelter and suitable habitat for birds and wildlife in your area.

Recent studies have determined that although birds do not become dependent on our bird feeders, feeding birds does increase their rate of survival. Putting out a bird feeder with seed is the most common way to feed the birds.

Not all bird food is formulated with the birds nutritional needs in mind. Be sure to check with a knowledgeable source when choosing a bird food and feeder for your yard. Planting native, bird friendly foods such as nectar producing flowers and winter berry and seed producing plants provide natural foods year round.

Water is a magnet for birds and wildlife, especially in our arid climate. Bird baths no deeper than 1 to 2 inches safely provide water for small and large birds.

Other water features such as ponds also attract a wide variety of visitors. If providing a bird bath, it is important for the birds health to change the water daily.

Shelter can provide a safe place for birds to raise their young, and protection from predators. Types of shelter include man-made nesting boxes or providing a brush pile. Not all nest boxes are safe for the birds. If using nest boxes it is important that the box meet the required specifications for the species it is designed to house.

The Cornell Lab of Ornithology is a reputable resource for information on nesting birds.

Providing a habitat that includes low water use, native food producing plants is key to attracting the greatest variety of birds and wildlife to your backyard. Check with your local nursery to find the best selection for your area.

Wherever you live in New Mexico, the following resources will assist you in creating a backyard habitat for birds and wildlife.

Mary Schmauss is the owner of Wild Birds Unlimited in Albuquerque. A lifelong birder and author of For the Birds: A Month-by-Month Guide to Attracting Birds to your Backyard.
When it comes down to who should stay in jail pending trial and who is safe to release, it is essential our judges are exercising judicial discretion.

Because in three recent cases, the Public Safety Assessment court tool used by Bernalillo County judges recommended the release  without GPS monitoring  of a Belen man authorities say fled to Mexico after striking and killing a 7-year-old boy in December, a 21-year-old man charged with fatally shooting a man he found in his ex-girlfriends bedroom in January and a 42-year-old man police say went on a stabbing spree as he bicycled through Downtown Albuquerque on a Sunday afternoon in February.

The Arnold tool, used in 40 jurisdictions and developed by billionaire hedge fund manager John Arnold, was implemented in Bernalillo County in June 2017.

In two of the three cases, the system worked and the defendants are being held pending trial. In the third case, a pretrial detention hearing has yet to be held.

But the cases demonstrate how the Arnold tool should be just that  one tool judges use as they weigh whether to keep someone behind bars pending trial or what conditions to put in place for their release.

In one case, Tobias Gutierrez, 42, is accused of randomly stabbing 13 people over five hours. He has drug and burglary convictions that sent him to prison in 2008. The Arnold tool noted his prior felony and violent felony convictions, as well as no pending charges at the time of the latest offense. It recommended he be released on his own recognizance.

During the Feb. 18 pretrial detention hearing, Second Judicial District Court Judge Britt Baca-Miller said she found the stabbing allegations credible and no conditions of release could guarantee public safety. Thank you, judge.

The Arnold tool also recommended 27-year-old Sergio Almanza of Belen be released on his own recognizance, also without GPS monitoring. Authorities say Almanza fled to Mexico for seven weeks after he ran a red light on an off-road vehicle, striking and killing 7-year-old Pronoy Bhattacharya and injuring the boys father as they left the River of Lights on Dec. 12.

Almanza surrendered at the southern border after re-entering the United States on Jan. 31. With no prior felony or misdemeanor convictions, no failures to appear in court, no pending charges at the time of the deadly crash and no prior jail or prison sentences, the Arnold tool recommended Almanza be released on his own recognizance. The tool didnt take into account he had absconded to Mexico.

However, Almanza and his attorney, Richard Pugh, didnt challenge the DAs pretrial detention motion he remain behind bars, a motion Judge Stan Whitaker granted.

Francisco Espinoza Almeida Jr., 21, is charged with shooting and killing a man he found in the bed of his ex-girlfriend Jan. 22. Police say Almeida fled the scene and was arrested two days later in northern New Mexico. Because he had no convictions and no failures to appear in court, the Arnold tool recommended he be released on his own recognizance, again without GPS monitoring. Almeidas pretrial detention hearing is set for March 11 before Judge Baca-Miller.

Arnold Foundation studies maintain keeping lower-risk criminals in jail for long periods greatly increases the persons chance of committing additional crimes. We agree and add many nonviolent offenders should be out contributing to society while their cases are resolved rather than incarcerated and putting their jobs, homes and families at risk.

Court officials say data shows the criteria the tool uses are the best metrics for determining whether a defendant is a safety or flight risk. One Administrative Office of the Courts official has said changes would hurt its integrity and acknowledged it is one factor judges should consider.

But as these cases show, the Arnold tool and the metric the court uses to apply it fall far short of providing a complete look at whether a defendant poses a safety or flight risk. Its essential to emphasize the Arnold tool is but one piece of the pretrial release equation and we need judges to continue to use their discretion to keep the public safe and justice done.

This editorial first appeared in the Albuquerque Journal. It was written by members of the editorial board and is unsigned as it represents the opinion of the newspaper rather than the writers.
Copyright  2022 Albuquerque Journal

SANTA FE  A 26-year-old first-term Espanola city council member and Realtor ousted the citys mayor in Tuesdays election.

In unofficial but complete results, John Ramon Vigil defeated Javier Sanchez by 800 votes to 736, or 52% to 48% in the two-person race, according to the Secretary of States website.

Im humbled and honored to assume this position, its about trust and faith, Vigil said of his victory over the one-term mayor.

I was born and raised here and I believe in this community, Vigil told the Journal in a phone interview.

Vigil said his priorities as mayor include creating a public safety atmosphere where residents can enjoy shopping and living here and improving water and sewer infrastructure in rural areas of the city.

Farther north, the Town of Taos will have a new mayor as Pascualito Maestas defeated two-term incumbent Mayor Daniel Barrone, 851 votes to 358, or 55% to 23%, according to the Secretary of States website.

The other candidates, Genevieve Oswald and Dustin Sweet, received 20% and 1% of the vote, respectively.
WASHINGTON  The already challenging path to bringing home Americans jailed in Russia and Ukraine is even more complicated now with a war overwhelming the region and increasingly hostile relations between the United States and the Kremlin.

Marine veteran Trevor Reed and corporate security executive Paul Whelan are each serving lengthy prison sentences in Russia. The families of Reed and Whelan have long held out hope for a deal  including a possible prisoner exchange  that could get their loved ones home.

Now, though, that seems a much harder ask.

I cant help but think that this is not going to help Trevor get released sooner, obviously, Reeds mother, Paula Reed, said in an interview with The Associated Press.

The war with Ukraine has led to punishing economic sanctions on Russia by the U.S., and escalating Russian aggression in the face of international condemnation over its invasion. Though the conflict has not closed off avenues for bringing home Reed and Whelan, the prospect of concessions by either side anytime soon is eclipsed by the likelihood of continued antagonism from Russia.

If this becomes long and drawn out, and they take over Ukraine, then the Western countries and the United States are going to be at odds with Russia for a long time, said Reeds father, Joey Reed. That could lead to additional charges against our son, if he lives, and keep him there indefinitely, which is not uncommon in Russia.

The father said he was particularly concerned about a loss of communications between the two superpowers that could foreclose any possibility of the U.S. government getting him home.

Weve been told that even during the Cold War, they kept channels open, Reed said. Anyone thats advocating for closing embassies and cutting them off, thats a gigantic mistake when two major nuclear powers are not speaking and are at odds with each other.

State Department principal deputy press spokeswoman Jalina Porter, asked by the AP Thursday about how the war affected the cases, said only that the administrations top priority is the safety and security of all Americans, including Reed and Whelan.

This is something that the secretary works on day in and day out, she added.

Reed, who is from Texas, was sentenced to nine years in prison in 2020 on charges that he assaulted police officers who were driving him to a police station after picking him up following a night of heavy drinking at a party. He has struggled with health issues behind bars, most recently coughing up blood, his father said.

Reed is regarded by the U.S. government as a wrongful detainee, as is Whelan, a Michigan corporate security executive sentenced in 2020 to 16 years in prison on espionage-related charges that his family says are entirely bogus.

Whelans sister, Elizabeth, said shes been doom-scrolling news about the war on Twitter like everyone else, concerned about the impact of the war on her brother and the possibility of another Iron Curtain falling in the region.

She said she hopes the U.S. can use the conflict as a fresh opportunity to press for the release of Reed and Whelan by making it a condition of any lifting of the sanctions against Russia, though it is not clear that would happen.

I cant imagine that all of these oligarchs whose families are now being affected, whose assets and goods are now being affected, wouldnt consider the release of Paul and Trevor a very small price to pay in order to get some relief themselves, Whelan said.

Ukraine, meanwhile, is holding North Dakota farmer Kurt Groszhans, accused in a plot to assassinate a current member of the countrys political cabinet. His family and supporters say the charges are trumped up, and were designed to silence Groszhans own allegations of government corruption in Ukraine.

After the State Department said last month that it was evacuating almost all of its staff from the embassy in Kyiv and would maintain a small consular presence elsewhere, Kristi Magnusson, Groszhans sister, said there is no longer any way for U.S. officials there to check on him.

Magnusson said in a statement provided to AP she was concerned that the State Department was not advocating for his release because it would be inferring that Ukraine is engaged in corrupt activities right at a time when State is focused on being as supportive as possible of Ukraine against the Russians.

We support the Ukrainian people against Russia as well, but our brother is a sitting duck in that prison and we need him to be released so at least he can try to survive on his own, she added.

Unlike Reed and Whelan, the U.S. has not currently designated Groszhans as a wrongful detainee. It is unclear if that will change.

___

Follow Eric Tucker on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/etuckerAP.
TEHRAN, March 4 (Xinhua) -- After more than three years of hardships, Iran is preparing to regain its fair share in the oil and gas market with the prospect of reaching a new nuclear deal with world powers in Vienna.

Iran has plans for the post-sanctions era to invest in its energy industries by opening new refineries, building new pipelines, and strengthening international relations to broaden economic opportunities.

PREPARATION

On Thursday, Iranian Minister of Petroleum Javad Owji said his country is "fully prepared" to restore its oil production and exports to the levels prior to the imposition of U.S. sanctions in November 2018, in case the negotiations in the Austrian capital should conclude with an agreement for a possible nuclear deal.

"Iran is technically and operationally able to stabilize its export share in the world market after the lifting of sanctions," Owji noted.

Iran's crude oil and condensate exports fell from about 2.5 million barrels per day (bpd) to below 1 million bpd after the former U.S. government withdrew from the 2015 nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), and imposed sanctions on Iran in 2018.

Earlier this week, Iranian Minister of Economy and Finance Ehsan Khandouzi also emphasized Iran's "special role in the oil and gas market."

The oil and gas sector is one of the advantages of the Iranian economy and will remain the same in the future, he said, adding Iranian officials focused on increasing the capacity of the oil and gas sectors for the growth of the Iranian economy.

Iran is reportedly shifting more oil onto ships in a move to speed exports should the ongoing talks in Vienna succeed in ending its exclusion from global energy markets.

"The amount of oil on tankers has jumped by 30 million barrels since early December to 103 million barrels," analysis firm Kpler was quoted by Bloomberg as saying.

DIPLOMACY

To re-embrace the global energy market, Iran has also taken the initiative to expand its relations with other countries and international organizations.

Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi recently attended the sixth summit of the 11-member Gas Exporting Countries Forum in Doha, and urged the international community to resist U.S. "cruel" unilateral sanctions against other countries' oil and gas industry, according to the Iranian presidency's website.

Iran, a top holder of natural gas reserves, has considerable capacities for the production, transfer and export of hydrocarbon products and seeks to play a greater role in ensuring global energy security by expanding bilateral and multilateral cooperation with neighbors and other countries, Raisi said.

Iran's regional strategy is based on increasing gas production and exports and providing regional nations with maximum access to clean fuel, he added.

Meanwhile, Mohammad Akhbari, a foreign policy expert, recommended the Raisi government to map out energy strategy based on geopolitics.

"Because of the lack of a geopolitical energy strategy, the Americans were able to impose sanctions on us in the field of energy and harm the country's economy," he said in an interview on Raisi's visit to Qatar with the official IRNA news agency.

Akhbari called on Iran to play a more active role in the Council of Gas Exporting Countries. "If we supply energy to other countries, including Europe, our security will be tied to their security and this will be very effective in eliminating threats against Iran."

NEGOTIATIONS

Iran said on Thursday that the Vienna talks on reviving the 2015 nuclear deal are in the final steps. "Extra efforts needed. Everybody is now focused on the final critical steps," Iranian Foreign Ministry's spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh tweeted.

Likewise, "we are close to a possible deal, but a number of difficult issues still remain unsolved," U.S. State Department deputy spokeswoman Jalina Porter told reporters.

Enrique Mora, the European Union's coordinator for the talks, also said the international negotiations have entered the "final stages," but "some relevant issues are still open and success is never guaranteed in such a complex negotiation."

The Iranian Foreign Ministry in February confirmed talks with the Republic of Korea on resuming Iran's crude oil exports and unfreezing Iranian assets held in the East Asian country. Such a move was widely believed as a positive signal for the success of the Vienna talks as both topics in question are among Iran's key demands in negotiations aimed at salvaging the JCPOA.

Global oil prices, driven by the prospect of a new Iran deal, steadied on Thursday after surging to their highest levels in almost a decade. Europe has also struggled with higher gas prices for months.

"They should have thought about it before imposing illegal sanctions on Iran's oil and gas," Mohammad Marandi, an advisor to Iran's negotiating team in the Vienna talks, tweeted recently.

"Western regimes brutalized Iranian citizens, but if they want oil and gas they must accept Iran's red lines at the nuclear talks," he said. 
SINGAPORE  As the West condemns Russia, President Vladimir Putin has vocal supporters in China, where the ruling Communist Party tells its people they are fellow targets of U.S.-led harassment.

If Russia is destroyed, we will be next. This is for sure, said Wang Yongchun, a retiree in Beijing. The United States wants to dominate the world.

Such comments reflect the stance of a ruling party that is the closest thing Putin has to a major ally: The war should stop but the United States is to blame.

President Xi Jinpings government has tried to distance itself from Russias offensive but avoided criticizing Moscow. The government has offered to act as mediator and denounced trade and financial sanctions against Russia.

Ruling party control of all Chinese media and intensive internet censorship make it hard to gauge public opinion. But what the party allows online and requires media to publish make clear what it wants the public to think.

Media outlets were told last week to post only pro-Russian content and to censor anti-Russian or pro-Western views, according to a copy of instructions posted on the social media account of the newspaper Beijing News. The post was later deleted.

In a live broadcast of the Winter Paralympics opening ceremony in Beijing on Friday, state broadcaster CCTV did not translate portions of remarks by the head of the International Paralympic Committee in which he expressed his horror about the war.

Online and in social media, expressions of sympathy for Ukraine and support for Russia appear but not criticism of Moscow.

When a war begins, is it not the children of ordinary people who serve as cannon fodder? said a post signed Da Ke Ming Yi on the Weibo social media platform. Those who died were the children of ordinary people.

A letter signed by five professors from prominent universities that criticized Russia for attacking a weaker neighbor appeared briefly on social media before being deleted.

We stand against unjust wars, said the academics from schools including Tsinghua University in Beijing, alma mater of many ruling party leaders.

Comments posted by nationalists criticized the professors for failing to stick to the ruling partys official position of neutrality.

The ruling party has spent decades using school textbooks and the entirely state-controlled media to nurture a sense of nationalist grievance. It accuses the United States of trying to block Chinas rise to its rightful position of global leadership.

State media repeat Beijings position that the United States and its European allies are to blame for the Ukraine war because they failed to respond to Russian concerns that its democratic neighbor should be barred from joining NATO, the Western military alliance.

That echoes Chinese complaints that Washington and its allies are interfering in its domestic affairs and issues of national sovereignty, including its claim over Taiwan, territorial disputes in the South China Sea, and in Xinjiang, the far-western region where China has been accused of detaining over a million Uyghurs.

Russias attack, as a historical event, is not a good one, but people think the conflict between Russia and Ukraine is because the United States stirred up trouble, said Zheng Bowen, a 38-year-old engineer.

The state-run newspaper Capital News exhorted the public to line up with the ruling party: The nations attitude is our attitude.

China has always upheld a fair and responsible attitude, calling on all parties to exercise restraint and ease the situation, and return to dialogue and negotiation, it said.

However, the newspaper appeared to support Putins demand that Ukraine become a neutral buffer between Russia and Europe and give up the possibility of NATO membership.

Ultimately, Ukraine should be a bridge between East and West, rather than a frontier of confrontation between major powers, the Capital News said.

Comments online have called for China to support Russia by purchasing its exports of oil, gas and other goods.

Let the Russian Embassy sell their goods on livestream. Lets show them Chinas buying power, said a comment signed Bao Zou Guang Xiao Pang on Weibo. It received 42,000 likes.

A separate comment advocating that China maintain normal trade with Russia, an implicit rejection of sanctions, received nearly 80,000 likes.

Social media platforms have urged users to act responsibly and say they have removed thousands of postings about the attack on Ukraine.

Douyin, a short-video service operated by the Chinese owner of TikTok, said it deleted more than 3,500 videos and 12,100 comments due to vulgar, war belittling, sensationalist and unfriendly comments.

The popular WeChat message service also complained about vulgar posts that it said have a negative impact on cyberspace.

It said some users took the opportunity to publish bad information about international current affairs, including comments belittling the war such as crass jokes about gaining course credits by going to Ukraine and fighting in the war and asking Ukrainian beauties to come to China, the platform said.

WeChats post was later shared by a unit of Chinas internet watchdog, the Cyberspace Administration of China.

Weibo said it removed more than 4,000 posts that were vulgar and ridiculed war. It said more than 10,000 accounts were closed.

Peaceful environments do not come easily, the company said in a social media post. It called on users to maintain an objective and rational attitude and take part in discussion in a reasonable manner.

___

AP video producer Olivia Zhang in Beijing contributed to this report.
KYIV, Ukraine  Russian troops Friday seized the biggest nuclear power plant in Europe after a middle-of-the-night attack that set it on fire and briefly raised worldwide fears of a catastrophe in the most chilling turn yet in Moscows invasion of Ukraine.

Firefighters put out the blaze, and no radiation was released, U.N. and Ukrainian officials said. Russian forces pressed on with their week-old offensive on multiple fronts, though they did not appear to gain significant ground in fighting Friday. The number of refugees fleeing the country eclipsed 1.2 million.

With world condemnation mounting, the Kremlin cracked down on the flow of information at home, blocking Facebook, Twitter, the BBC and the U.S. government-funded Voice of America. And President Vladimir Putin signed a law making it a crime punishable by up to 15 years in prison to spread so-called fake news, including anything that goes against the official government line on the war.

Multiple outlets said they would pause their work inside Russia while they evaluate the situation. CNN and CBS News announced they would stop broadcasting in Russia and Bloomberg temporarily suspended the work of its journalists there.

While the vast Russian armored column threatening Kyiv remained stalled outside the capital, Putins military has launched hundreds of missiles and artillery attacks on cities and other sites across the country, and made significant gains on the ground in the south in an apparent bid to cut off Ukraines access to the sea.

In the attack on the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in the southeastern city of Enerhodar, the chief of the U.N.s International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Mariano Grossi, said a Russian projectile hit a training center, not any of the six reactors.

The attack triggered global alarm and fear of a catastrophe that could dwarf the worlds worst nuclear disaster, at Ukraines Chernobyl in 1986. In an emotional nighttime speech, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he feared an explosion that would be the end for everyone. The end for Europe. The evacuation of Europe.

But nuclear officials from Sweden to China said no radiation spikes had been reported, as did Grossi.

Authorities said Russian troops had taken control of the overall site but plant staff continued to run it. Only one reactor was operating, at 60% of capacity, Grossi said in the aftermath of the attack.

Two people were injured in the fire, Grossi said. Ukraines state nuclear plant operator Enerhoatom said three Ukrainian soldiers were killed and two wounded.

In the U.S., Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said the episode underscores the recklessness with which the Russians have been perpetrating this unprovoked invasion. At an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council, Ukraines U.N. ambassador, Sergiy Kyslytsya, said the fire broke out as a result of Russian shelling of the plant and accused Moscow of committing an act of nuclear terrorism.

Without producing evidence, Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov claimed that a Ukrainian sabotage group had set the fire at Zaporizhzhia.

The crisis unfolded after Grossi earlier in the week expressed grave concern that the fighting could cause accidental damage to Ukraines 15 nuclear reactors at four plants around the country.

Atomic safety experts said a war fought amid nuclear reactors represents an unprecedented and highly dangerous situation.

These plants are now in a situation that few people ever seriously contemplated when they were originally built, said Edwin Lyman of the Union of Concerned Scientists in Washington. No nuclear plant has been designed to withstand a potential threat of a full-scale military attack.

Dr. Alex Rosen of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War said the incident was probably the result of military units overestimating the precision of their weapons, given that the prevailing winds would have carried any radioactive fallout straight toward Russia.

Russia cannot have any interest in contaminating its own territory, he said. He said the danger comes not just from the reactors but from the risk of enemy fire hitting storage facilities that hold spent fuel rods.

In the wake of the attack, Zelenskyy appealed again to the West to enforce a no-fly zone over his country. But NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg ruled out that possibility, citing the risk of a much wider war in Europe. He said that to enforce a no-fly zone, NATO planes would have to shoot down Russian aircraft.

In a bitter and emotional speech, Zelenskyy criticized NATOs reluctance, saying it will fully untie Russias hands as it escalates its air attack.

All the people who die from this day forward will also die because of you, because of your weakness, because of your lack of unity, he said in a nighttime address. The alliance has given the green light to the bombing of Ukrainian cities and villages by refusing to create a no-fly zone.

Russian forces, meanwhile, did not make significant progress Friday in their offensive to sever Ukraines access to the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov, which would deal a severe blow to its economy and could worsen an already dire humanitarian situation. There were also no changes in the north and the east, where the Russian offensive has stalled, meeting fierce Ukrainian resistance.

A round of talks between Russia and Ukraine yielded a tentative agreement Thursday to set up safe corridors to evacuate citizens and deliver food and medicine. But the necessary details still had to be worked out.

More than 840 children have been wounded in the war, and 28 have been killed, according to Ukraines government. A total of 331 civilians had been confirmed killed in the invasion, but the true number is probably much higher, the U.N. human rights office said.

In Romania, one newly arrived refugee, Anton Kostyuchyk, struggled to hold back tears as he recounted leaving everything behind in Kyiv and sleeping in churches with his wife and three children during their journey out.

Im leaving my home, my country. I was born there, and I lived there, he said. And what now?

Appearing on video in a message to antiwar protesters in several European cities, Zelenskyy continued to appeal for help.

If we fall, you will fall, he said. And if we win, and Im sure well win, this will be the victory of the whole democratic world. This will be the victory of our freedom. This will be the victory of light over darkness, of freedom over slavery.

Inside Ukraine, frequent shelling could be heard in the center of Kyiv, though more distant than in recent days, with loud thudding every 10 minutes resonating over the rooftops.

Ukrainian presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovich said battles involving airstrikes and artillery continued northwest of Kyiv, and the northeastern cities of Kharkiv and Okhtyrka came under heavy fire.

He said Ukrainian forces were still holding the northern city of Chernihiv and the southern city of Mykolaiv. Ukrainian artillery also defended Ukraines biggest port city, Odesa, from repeated attempts by Russian ships, Arestovich said.

Another strategic port, Mariupol, on the Sea of Azov, was partially under siege, and Ukrainian forces were pushing back efforts to surround the city, Arestovich said.

Amid the warfare, there were occasional signs of hope.

As explosions sounded on the fringes of Kyiv, Dmytro Shybalov and Anna Panasyk smiled and blushed at the civil registry office where they married Friday. They fell in love in 2015 in Donetsk amid the fighting between pro-Russian separatists and Ukrainian forces that was a precursor to the countrywide war.

Its 2022 and the situation hasnt changed, Shybalov said. Its scary to think what will happen when our children will be born.

___

Karmanau reported from Lviv, Ukraine. Chernov reported from Mariupol, Ukraine. Sergei Grits in Odesa, Ukraine; Jamey Keaten in Geneva; Vanessa Gera in Warsaw, Poland; Frank Jordans in Berlin; Matt Sedensky in New York; Robert Burns in Washington; and other AP journalists from around the world contributed to this report.

___

Follow the APs coverage of the Ukraine crisis at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
PESHAWAR, Pakistan  A suicide bomber struck inside a Shiite Muslim mosque in Pakistans northwestern city of Peshawar during Friday prayers, killing at least 56 worshippers and wounding 194 people, hospital officials said.

No militant group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack. Both the Islamic State group and the Pakistani Taliban  a militant group separate from the Taliban in Afghanistan  have carried out similar attacks in the past in the area, located near the border with Afghanistan.

According to the spokesman at Peshawars Lady Reading Hospital, Asim Khan, many of the wounded were in critical condition. Scores of victims were peppered with shrapnel, several had limbs amputated and others were injured by flying debris.

Peshawar Police Chief Muhammed Ejaz Khan said the violence started when an armed attacker opened fire on police outside the mosque in Peshawars old city. One policeman was killed in the gunfight, and another police officer was wounded. The attacker then ran inside the mosque and detonated his suicide vest.

The suicide bomber had strapped a powerful explosive device to his body, packed with 5 kilograms (12 pounds) of explosives, said Moazzam Jah Ansari, the top police official for Khyber Pukhtunkhwa province where Peshawar is the capital.

The device was hidden beneath a large black shawl that covered much of the attackers body, according to CCTV footage seen by The Associated Press. The footage showed the bomber moving quickly up a narrow street toward the mosque entrance. He fired at the police protecting the mosque before entering inside.

Within seconds, a powerful explosion occurred and the camera lens was obscured with dust and debris. Ansari said the crudely made device was packed with ball bearings, a deadly method of constructing a bomb to inflict the most carnage spraying a larger area with deadly projectiles. The ball bearings caused the high death toll, Ansari said.

Local police official Waheed Khan said the explosion occurred as worshippers had gathered in the Kucha Risaldar Mosque for Friday prayers. There are fears the death toll could still rise further, he added.

Ambulances rushed through congested narrow streets carrying the wounded to Lady Reading Hospital, where doctors worked feverishly.

Shayan Haider, a witness, had been preparing to enter the mosque when a powerful explosion threw him to the ground. I opened my eyes and there was dust and bodies everywhere, he said.

At the Lady Reading Hospital Emergency department, there was chaos as doctors struggled to move the many wounded into operating theaters. Hundreds of relatives gathered outside the emergency department, many of them wailing and beating their chests, pleading for information about their loved ones.

Outside the mosque, Shiites pressed through the cordoned-off streets. Kucha Risaldar Mosque is one of the oldest in the area, predating the creation of Pakistan in 1947 as a separate homeland for the Muslims of the Indian subcontinent.

The prayer leader, Allama Irshad Hussein Khalil, a prominent up and coming young Shiite leader, was among the dead. Throughout the city, ambulance sirens could be heard.

Prime Minister Imran Khan condemned the bombing. His national security adviser, Moeed Yusuf, said the bombing was a heinous terrorist attack and promised that those behind the carnage would be brought to justice.

We will not allow our gains against terrorism & our internal security to be compromised at any cost, Yusuf tweeted.

Retired army officer Sher Ali who had been inside the mosque at the time of the explosion was injured by flying shrapnel. He made a impassioned plea to the Pakistani government for better protection of the countrys minority Shiites.

What is our sin? What have we done? Arent we citizens of this country? he said from inside the emergency department, his white clothes splattered with blood.

Irans Foreign Ministry condemned the attack, saying the perpetrators were intent on sowing discord among Muslims. In a statement on the ministrys website, spokesman Saeed Khatizadeh expressed his hope that Pakistans government puts an end to such attacks with firm actions, without elaborating.

In majority Sunni Pakistan, minority Shiites have come under repeated attacks. Also, in recent months, the country has experienced a significant increase of violence and dozens of military personnel have been killed in scores of attacks on army outposts along the border with Afghanistan.

Many attacks have been claimed by the Pakistani Taliban, who analysts say have been emboldened by the Afghan Taliban seizing power last August in Afghanistan.

Pakistan has urged Afghanistans new rulers to handover Pakistani Taliban militants who have been staging their attacks from Afghanistan. The Afghan Taliban have said their territory will not be used to stage attacks against anyone, but until now have not handed over any wanted Pakistani militants.

___

Gannon reported from Islamabad. Associated Press writers Munir Ahmed in Islamabad and Amir Vahdat in Tehran, Iran, contributed to this report.
Copyright  2022 Albuquerque Journal

A Santa Fe police officer told investigators an alleged kidnapping victim was actually the driver fleeing police on Wednesday and caused the crash that killed an officer and a retired firefighter.

At no time did Officer (Julian) Norris see anyone else exit the vehicle, recently filed search warrant affidavits say, referring to what the officer leading the pursuit witnessed immediately after the crash.

The 46-year-old woman was driving a stolen car at speeds of 90 mph into oncoming traffic on Interstate 25 north of Santa Fe when the crash occurred, court documents state. Authorities said she told them she had been kidnapped at knifepoint.

The affidavits, filed in Magistrate Court in Santa Fe, identify the woman as Jeannine Jaramillo. She has not been charged with a crime in Wednesdays crash and New Mexico State Police said on Friday that they are still working on identifying and locating a suspect.

Jaramillo has a history of methamphetamine use and arrests for fleeing from police, according to court records.

In a recent arrest, which is eerily similar to this weeks incident, she led authorities on a reckless chase before telling them a man in a red shirt and black pants forced her to do so at knifepoint.

Wednesdays crash involved five vehicles  including two police cruisers  and resulted in the deaths of Santa Fe police officer Robert Duran, 43, and retired Las Vegas, New Mexico, firefighter Frank Lovato, 62. Duran was the first Santa Fe officer killed in the line of duty since 1933.

State Police, who are conducting the homicide investigation, said the woman was released after being treated at a local hospital.

Police said they were told that a man wearing a red shirt and black pants fled the crash on foot. A BOLO for the wrong man was subsequently sent out by police.

State Police said they do not believe there is an ongoing threat to the public but, on Friday, reiterated that they are still looking for a male suspect.

There have been no arrests made at this time. When more information becomes available we will send out an update, spokesman Dusty Francisco said.

The incident started around 11 a.m. with reports of a woman being kidnapped at knifepoint from the Rancho Vizcaya Apartments in Santa Fe. According to the affidavit, Santa Fe police tried to stop a car matching the suspect vehicles description and it fled.

Investigators said police pursued the car as it drove north in the southbound lanes of I-25 and crossed the dirt median, before traveling the wrong way on I-25 at approximately 90 miles per hour.

Santa Fe officer Julian Norris, who was leading the pursuit, told State Police the driver sideswiped a white truck and came to a stop on the embankment, according to court records. Norris saw the car occupied by only the female driver who exited from the drivers side, the affidavit states.

Jaramillo  who identified herself as a kidnapping victim  told authorities her phone would either be in the car or with a man. State Police said in a release that a BOLO for that man as a potential suspect was issued to law enforcement agencies.

Initially, this is the information that was given to investigators by witnesses, State Police said. The BOLO was leaked on social media and State Police contacted the man before clearing him as a suspect.

According to the affidavit, the car Jaramillo was driving had been reported stolen on Feb. 28. Court records show she has a history of arrests for stolen vehicles, fleeing from police, shoplifting and drug possession.

Two recent incidents show a striking similarity to Wednesdays crash.

On Sept. 8, Jaramillo allegedly led Cibola County deputies on a high-speed chase through Grants, running vehicles off the road and almost causing multiple crashes.

According to court records, she dodged multiple spike strips and drove in opposing lanes of traffic before the pursuit was temporarily canceled. Eventually, authorities successfully used spike strips on the car and found the car crashed into a fence and Jaramillo nearby.

The car had been reported stolen out of Albuquerque and Jaramillo, out of breath and distraught, told authorities a man in a red shirt and black pants held a knife to her neck and forced her to flee, according to court records.

Authorities found a bag of methamphetamine near Jaramillo and nearby security video showed she was the only one in the fleeing car when it crashed.

Then, on Oct. 12, Jaramillo was arrested after she allegedly stole a CenturyLink bucket truck in Grants. Court records show Cibola County deputies found the bucket truck abandoned on the side of Interstate 40 and Jaramillo, clad in a bra and pants, nearby.

She told deputies her boyfriend was with her but they found nobody else in the area and recognized Jaramillo from the wild police chase a month earlier.

Both cases were dismissed by prosecutors pending further investigation.
In his statement, the disgraced producer says that it's 'an innocent misunderstanding' and insists that he's been 'a model inmate, following the rules and regulations.'

Mar 4, 2022

AceShowbiz - Harvey Weinstein has issued an apology after being caught with contraband Milk Duds in Los Angeles jail. Showing his remorse, the disgraced movie mogul promised that "it will not happen again."

In a statement to Variety on Thursday, March 3, the 69-year-old former film producer said via his representative Juda Engelmayer, "This was an innocent misunderstanding." He went on to promise, "It will not happen again," before noting, "I have been a model inmate, following the rules and regulations and I am sincerely sorry."

Harvey's lead attorneys, Mark Werksman and Alan Jackson, also issued an apology. "We have been informed about this and are very sorry it happened," they stated. "It had not happened before, and never happened since. Harvey has been a model inmate and intends to continue as such." It's also said that the judge and the jail took no action against Harvey.

Harvey is being held at the Correctional Treatment Center, the medical unit within the Twin Towers jail in downtown Los Angeles, while he awaits trial on 11 charges of rape and sexual assault. In 2020, he was sentenced to 23 years in prison in New York. That conviction is being appealed and a ruling on the appeal is expected within the next couple of months.

Last November, Harvey was caught with contraband Milk Duds, prompting a reprimand from L.A. County jail guards, according to the jail records. The Milk Duds were found during a search on November 10, after the "Django Unchained" producer had a face-to-face meeting with Shawn Burkley, one of his attorneys. The Milk Duds were confiscated and the guards warned that they would have to search his attorneys' legal binders and laptop bags on future visits.

Harvey then claimed to the guards that he had brought the Milk Duds with him when he was extradited from New York in July. But the jail officials said the "Untouchable" producer had been searched upon his arrival at the L.A. County jail's medical facility and nothing was found, leading them to conclude that the Milk Duds were passed to him during the attorney's visit.
Instagram Celebrity

While Doja, Olivia and Tinashe opt for chic style, the likes of Ciara, Normani and Saweetie go daring with their revealing dresses at the event held at YouTube Theater in Inglewood, California.

Mar 4, 2022

AceShowbiz - The 2022 Billboard Women in Music Awards brought out some of the biggest female music stars nowadays. The event, which was held at YouTube Theater in Inglewood, California on Wednesday night, March 2, was attended by the likes of Doja Cat, Olivia Rodrigo and Tinashe who looked chic on the red carpet.

Doja, who won the Powerhouse award, showed up in a strapless black dress from Carolina Herrera that had a plunging deep-v neckline bodice and featured a peplum of fabric layered over a black tulle skirt placed in the middle of the garment. She teamed up the dress with black pumps and accessorized with a chunky diamond necklace and diamond chandelier earrings, while her hair was pulled into a sleek straight-back appearance.

Being one of the honorees that night, Olivia stood out in a white crystal-embellished dress from Area. She completed the look with a large black crystal-embellished belt and chunky platform shoes that showed her signature playful style.

Tinashe, meanwhile, brought the colors in a strapless bubble dress from Christopher John Rogers. Also opting for fresh looks in similar colorful style was Heidi Klum, who stunned in a striped bustier-style top and fitted skirt from Moschino's pre-fall 2022 collection.

Phoebe Bridgers looked stylish in a cream Gucci suit with a ruffled shirt underneath with a small beige bowtie. She teamed the outfit with black patent leather boots that featured a round toe and a chunky sole. That night, she received the Trailblazer Award.

Ciara, who hosted the event, was in charge of the daring style in a flowing animal print dress from Roberto Cavalli that featured a flowing cape and thigh-high slits. She was joined by her husband Russell Wilson when posing for photographers.

Saweetie also showed some skin in a Valentino Couture number with a midi fringe skirt and a very plunging neckline, giving a look at her ample cleavage. Normani Kordei, on the other hand, showed off her toned leg in a brown dress with metallic top and cut-outs around the waist.

H.E.R. mixed comfort and glamor in a black tight top and pants with a loose printed robe. She added white-rimmed glasses to her chic look. She posed with Christina Aguilera, who looked stylish in an all-black black pantsuit.

Also bringing sexy styles to the red carpet were Sevyn Streeter, who left little to the imagination in her black dress with a slit up to the waist, and Tate McRae, who looked stunning in a sheer Prada number with red strapless top and mini skirt.
ABC TV

In a new episode of the talk show, the co-host falls while approaching the tabel as she misses the step to her tall, moving chair that she likens to 'The Exorcist'.

Mar 4, 2022

AceShowbiz - Joy Behar had a dramatic fall in a new episode of "The View". In the March 3 episode of the talk show, the longtime co-host shocked everyone when she took a tumble while approaching the iconic table.

Thankfully, her fellow co-hosts, Whoopi Goldberg, Sunny Hostin and Sara Haines, were quick to help her as they circled her. "OK, full stop," Whoopi told Joy. "Just stand."

According to Joy, she missed the step to her tall, moving chair that she likened to "The Exorcist". While Joy laughed off the on-air mishap, Sunny claimed that "these chairs are dangerous." Whoopi added, "For the record, we hate these chairs."

Despite the shocking incident, Joy didn't seem to be too fazed as she joked, "25 years, that has never happened! Who do I sue?" She went on to assure viewers that she wasn't seriously hurt, adding, "I'm a klutz!"

That, however, didn't stop her co-hosts from feeling concerned. The co-hosts checked in to see if she's okay once again. Guest co-host [ Navarro] also sent a text to Joy, asking, "Mamacita, are you okay?" Meanwhile, viewers took to social media to express concern following the fall. "My heart stopped," one fan wrote on Twitter alongside a video of the fall.

Later in the episode, Joy revealed that her fall reminded her of Bob Saget, who passed away in January from head trauma. "When Bob Saget fell, he died," she reflected. "If you hit your head and you feel dizzy or you have blurry vision or you feel like you want to go to sleep, go to the doctor because that will kill you."

The actor's cause of death was revealed in February. "Now that we have the final conclusions from the authorities' investigation, we felt it only proper that the fans hear those conclusions directly from us," the family said in a statement. "The authorities have determined that Bob passed from head trauma. They have concluded that he accidentally hit the back of his head on something, thought nothing of it and went to sleep. No drugs or alcohol were involved."
WENN/Will Alexander Celebrity

The SKIMS founder was granted her request to become legally single and allowed to remove 'West' off her name during a court hearing on Wednesday, March 2.

Mar 4, 2022

AceShowbiz - Kim Kardashian made her legally single status Instagram official. The "Keeping Up with the Kardashians" star didn't need to wait for long before she removed Kanye West's last name from her Instagram account.

Her Instagram profile previously listed her as Kim Kardashian West. However, she officially took "West" off of her profile on Thursday, March 3.

Kim was granted her request to become legally single during a court hearing on Wednesday, March 2. Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Steve Cochran allowed her to officially remove her ex-husband Kanye West's name.

Appearing at the hearing via video conference, she reportedly looked "happy." When asked if she wanted to change her name back, the SKIMS founder replied, "Yes." A source revealed to PageSix, "After the judge read the questions and told her she now has her single status back, Kim smiled."

As for Kanye's new attorney Samantha Spector, she claimed that the rapper didn't have "no issues" with Kim getting her name back. Instead, she said that he was more concerned with his "assets and interest" and wanted to "make sure his trust was protected." Meanwhile, Kim's attorney Laura Wasser objected to her client's trust being frozen because she needs to use it for her business. The judge sided with Kim on this matter.

Kanye's team released a statement clarifying several "mistruths" on the divorce following the judge's order. "Kanye's paperwork has always indicated that his problems with the divorce were only procedural," the message read.

"Moreover, he was always in support of the divorce only if Kim satisfied the procedural requirements to protect rights under the CA law - the same rights afforded to any litigant going through a divorce," it continued. "Today it was determined and addressed in court that Kim initially did not have the proper paperwork to get the bifurcation of the marital status."
WENN Celebrity

The 'Maleficent' actress and the 'Once Upon a Time in Hollywood' actor's children reportedly want their parents to stop fighting as they're 'wiping out all those happy memories.'

Mar 4, 2022

AceShowbiz - Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt's kids apparently have had enough of their parents' nasty divorce drama. If a new report is to be believed, the children of the Hollywood stars are urging their parents to "put aside their hatred" for the sake of the family.

"They're well aware that instead of things calming down, Brad and Angie despise each other more than ever," a source told OK! Magazine on Thursday, March 3. The so-called insider added, "They've pleaded with both of them to put aside their hatred, but it's falling on deaf ears."

The informant went on to talk about how Angelina and Brad's kids reacted to their parents' court battle over their winery. "Ironically, [Chateau Miraval] is where Brad and Angie tied the knot in 2014, and they had so many wonderful times there as a family," noted the insider. "The bigger irony, of course, is that by letting this fight consume them, they are wiping out all those happy memories for the kids."

"It's hard on the kids because they love their dad and want him to be happy, but they want Angelina to be happy too," the source added. "But they're old enough now to understand what's going on."

"Their parents are so caught up in this ugly divorce that they can't see how much they're hurting their kids and that's breaking their hearts," the insider continued. Though the informant then pointed out that the actors' kids, 20-year-old Maddox, 18-year-old Pax, 17-year-old Zahara, 15-year-old Shiloh and 13-year-old twins Knox and Vivienne, have had enough, they "just wish their mom and dad would put weapons down and give each other a break."

Last month, Brad filed court documents against the "Maleficent" actress as she allegedly sold her interest in Chateau Miraval, which they purchased together in 2008, without his consent. The "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" actor also found out that she sold her interests to a Russian oligarch, Yuri Shefler.

In the paperwork, Brad stated that he's seeking an unspecified amount of damages. Not stopping there, the 58-year-old actor is also asking for the courts to declare that her sale of Nouvel, the company that owned her shares of Miraval, is null and void.
Instagram Music

The 23-year-old 'Big Energy' femcee, whose real name is Alyssa Michelle Stephens, also name-drops the likes of 21 Savage and Ludacris on her verse on the song.

Mar 4, 2022

AceShowbiz - Latto (Mulatto) was forced to defend herself against criticism of her new music. Having been accused of dissing Migos, Ciara, and other artists with Omeretta the Great's "Sorry Not Sorry (Remix)", the female rapper took to social media to offer her clarification.

The track hit streaming services on Thursday, March 3. On her verse, the 23-year-old femcee raps, "So Migos is not Atlanta?/ [21 Savage] is not Atlanta?/ Ciara is not Atlanta?/ Ludacris is not Atlanta?/ Man, Clayco made Atlanta/ Decatur made Atlanta/ Rap game tried to play Atlanta/ OutKast came and saved Atlanta."

The lyrics have since sparked debate on Twitter, prompting Latto to set the record straight. "Y'all I'm not dissing the people I named on the verse!!! I'm saying so Migos is not Atlanta?? 21, Ciara, Ludacris etc because they technically not from the city but helped make it is what it is!" she explained.

"That 'ishnot Alanna' TikTok that Shaderoom posted I had just sent the verse back to Retta & we was watching y'all eat it up in the comments," Latto, whose real name is Alyssa Michelle Stephens, added. "check the background I was literally at the studio lol."

The clip in question was uploaded by The Shade Room on Instagram nearly a week ago. In the footage, she quoted a line from Omeretta's controversial song outro and wrote "Clay Co ishnot Alanna". When one follower asked whether the song was "really that big of a deal," Latto replied, "It's not a big deal lol clay co is the south we not the city she said the truth tbh."

Despite the confusing lyrics, Latto got praised for it. Among those who loves the new track was fellow raptress JT. Taking to her Twitter page, the one-half of City Girls gushed, "I like that!!! @Latto," adding a number of fire emojis.
Mwalimu Julius Nyerere Leadership School holds inauguration ceremony

08:41, March 04, 2022 By Bai Ziwei, Shi Yuanhao ( People's Daily

Chinese Ambassador to Tanzania Chen Mingjian, President of Chama Cha Mapinduzi Party and Tanzanian President Samia Suluhu Hassan, as well as general secretaries and high-level representatives of the other five parties unveil the plaque for the Mwalimu Julius Nyerere Leadership School. (Photo from https://panafricanvisions.com/)

The inauguration ceremony of the Mwalimu Julius Nyerere Leadership School in Tanzania, co-funded by six parties in southern Africa, was recently held both online and offline. Over 2,000 people from the six parties and representatives from all walks of life in Tanzania attended the event.

The six parties include Tanzania's Chama Cha Mapinduzi party, the African National Congress of South Africa, the Mozambique Liberation Front Party, the People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola, the SWAPO party of Namibia and the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front.

As an important outcome of China-Africa exchanges on national governance, the Mwalimu Julius Nyerere Leadership School aims at enhancing party construction and improving governance capabilities of the six parties through exchanges and communication.

At the ceremony, leaders of the six parties expressed their heartfelt thanks to the Communist Party of China (CPC) for the latter's support for the construction of the School, hoping they can learn more successful experiences from the CPC at the School and constantly explore the path to Africa's development and vitalization.

They said the six parties will enhance their cooperation with China on poverty alleviation, COVID-19 response and the Belt and Road Initiative, so as to build a closer China-Africa community with a shared future.

President of Chama Cha Mapinduzi Party and Tanzanian President Samia Suluhu Hassan called the Mwalimu Julius Nyerere Leadership School a bridge between the six parties and the CPC.

He introduced the long-term cooperation between the six parties and the CPC, and the support provided by the Chinese side during the construction of the School. He believes that upon the operation of the School, the two sides will continue deepening their cooperation, which will keep benefiting his country.

Chinese Ambassador to Tanzania Chen Mingjian, President of Chama Cha Mapinduzi Party and Tanzanian President Samia Suluhu Hassan, as well as general secretaries and high-level representatives of the other five parties cut the ribbon at the inauguration ceremony of the Mwalimu Julius Nyerere Leadership School. (Photo from https://panafricanvisions.com/)

The practice of the CPC indicates that poverty and other challenges can be defeated by fostering capable officials, said Cyril Ramaphosa, President of the African National Congress of South Africa and South African President.

He noted that the inauguration of the Mwalimu Julius Nyerere Leadership School came right on time, which will help Africa train its officials and make important contributions to the bright future of the continent.

Filipe Nyusi, Leader of the Mozambique Liberation Front Party and Mozambican President said the inauguration of the Mwalimu Julius Nyerere Leadership School marked a new milestone of the friendship and solidarity among the six parties. He said the six parties are willing to enhance friendly cooperation in each field with the CPC.

Joao Lourenco, President of the People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola and Angolan President introduced that the CPC showed valuable support for the six parties when the leaders of the latter proposed to nurture young talents a few years ago. He said the six parties are willing to continue participating in the construction of the School, so as to make it fully operational.

Hage Geingob, President of SWAPO Party of Namibia and Namibian President expressed his gratitude to the CPC for the latter's support for the construction of the School, hoping the School can advance the cooperation between the six parties and the CPC, so that they can work together to respond to challenges, achieve economic development, equity and justice.

The Mwalimu Julius Nyerere Leadership School will play a key role and gather intelligent resources to promote think tank exchanges between the region and other regions, and help coordinate the work of leadership and political institutions in relevant countries, said Emmerson Mnangagwa, Chairman of the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front and Zimbabwean President.

Extending sympathy and working together as they unite and lead their respective people to strive for independence, promote national construction and pursue development, the six parties and the CPC have developed an unbreakable friendship.

The inauguration of the Mwalimu Julius Nyerere Leadership School is another piece of evidence showing the firm mutual support between China and Africa. It has set a new example for and injected new vitality into China-Africa cooperation in a new era.

According to a Chinese representative attending the inauguration ceremony, the CPC is willing to implement the important consensus reached between CPC general secretary Xi Jinping and the top leadership of the six parties, and keep enhancing exchanges of experience in national governance, especially issues of common concerns such as party construction and poverty alleviation, so as to jointly safeguard the interests of developing countries.

(Web editor: Xia Peiyao, Liang Jun)
TEHRAN, March 4 (Xinhua) -- The Iranian foreign minister said on Friday that Iran will not concede its red lines despite the West's rush to reach a deal in the Vienna nuclear talks.

Hossein Amir Abdollahian made the remarks in a phone conversation with European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, according to the Foreign Ministry website.

Observing Iran's red lines, including providing a guarantee that would secure Tehran's economic benefits within the nuclear deal's framework, is the prerequisite for continued nuclear talks and a final agreement, Abdollahian noted.

Appreciating the EU's efforts to coordinate the negotiations, he pointed to Iran's constant and active consultations with all delegations in the Austrian capital.

"Our country's delegation will continue its efforts with seriousness to reach a final and good agreement," Abdollahian said, adding he is ready to travel to Vienna whenever the Western sides accept Iran's remaining red lines.

Iran and the remaining parties to the 2015 nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), are currently negotiating in Vienna to settle disputes on the revival of the deal. Iran said on Thursday that the talks are in the "final critical steps."

Iran signed the JCPOA with world powers in July 2015. However, former U.S. President Donald Trump pulled Washington out of the accord in May 2018 and reimposed unilateral sanctions on Iran, which prompted the latter to drop some of its nuclear commitments one year later and advance its halted nuclear program. 
Colors Tamil, the fastest-growing GEC of Tamil Nadu, brings to your screens a thought-provoking tale about a single mothers fight for justice through its brand-new fiction show, Idhu Solla Marandha Kadhai. Premiering on 7th March 2022, Monday, it will be telecast every Monday to Saturday at 9:00 PM.

The show gives you glimpses into the life of Sadhana (essayed by Rachita Mahalakshmi), a young widow with two children, battling to defend her late husband's innocence in a case that had tarnished his reputation. Arjun (essayed by Vishnu), an honest journalist who is investigating the case, unwittingly becomes her ally in her fight. Despite their personalities being poles apart, Arjun and Sadhanas fates get intertwined. Will Sadhana manage to provide for her children while trying to prove her late husbands innocence? Will she end up getting another chance to start her life afresh?

Commenting on the launch, Mr Rajaraman S, Business Head, Colors Tamil, said, Following the successful launch of Valli Thirumanam and Namma Madurai Sisters, we are elated to introduce yet another differentiated fiction show - Idhu Solla Marandha Kadhai during our prime time. The notion behind the show is to bring to light the trials and tribulations of certain sections of women that are less talked about. Personifying women empowerment in a true sense, Idhu Solla Marandha Kadhai strives to portray the life of a single mother who is all set to regain all that she has lost and gives herself a new chance. Displaying courage, vigor and independence, we are positive that this show will leave lingering thoughts with the audiences.

Director Anand Babu said, I am delighted to helm Idhu Solla Marandha Kadhai, which highlights a strong facet of women by showcasing a character who will go to any lengths to protect her family. We often forget the ordeals and challenges faced by many women. With this show, we are attempting to highlight the fact that a vulnerable woman can be courageous too. I am grateful towards Colors Tamil for this opportunity.

Adding to this, Actor Rachitha Mahalakshmi said, I am ecstatic to play Sadhana, who is smart, brave, just and warm-hearted. Unafraid to speak her mind, she never loses hope despite the challenges she faces in terms of her family or the society in general. With Idhu Solla Marandha Kadhai, we strive to showcase that every woman has the right to make a choice for herself, even if it ends up defying social norms.

Actor Vishnu said, It is for the first time that I will be portraying a journalist who has staunch morals and principles. It is the honesty and desire for truth that sets Arjun apart from all the characters I have played in my previous projects. Hence, I am thrilled to be a part of Idhu Solla Marandha Kadhai and I am certain that the audiences will appreciate the efforts of each and every character in the show.

Following up on the initial hard-hitting promo which mirrored the societys perspective towards single mother, Colors Tamil launched an intriguing follow up promo, introducing two young characters Adithya (essayed by Satvik) and Akshara (essayed by Arshita) who introduce the characters in the show and present their unique innocuous perspective on the happenings in their family.

Tune in to Colors Tamil this Monday, March 7th, 2022, at 9:00 PM, to watch Sadhanas unconventional story. Colors Tamil is available on all leading cable networks and DTH platforms - Sun Direct (CH NO 128), Tata Sky (CHN NO 1515), Airtel (CHN NO 763), Dish TV (CHN NO 1808), and Videocon D2H (CHN NO 553). Viewers can also tune in to VOOT any time to see Colors Tamil shows at their convenience.
British broadcasting regulator Ofcom has opened a further 12 investigations into the due impartiality of programmes on the RT news channel. This takes the total number of RT programmes under investigation to 27.

Ofcom said that it is very concerned by the volume of programmes on RT that are raising potential issues under the Broadcasting Code, and as we progress our investigations we are considering whether RT should retain a UK licence.

Last week, Ofcom opened 15 new investigations into the due impartiality of news programmes on the RT news channel.

The regulator observed a significant increase in the number of programmes on the RT service that warrant investigation under our Broadcasting Code.

When dealing with major matters such as the crisis in Ukraine, all Ofcom licensees must comply with the special impartiality requirements in our Code. These rules require broadcasters to take additional steps to preserve due impartiality  namely by including and giving due weight to a wide range of significant views, said Ofcom.

These investigations  which relate to 15 editions of the hourly news programme broadcast on RT on 27 February 2022 between 05:00 and 19:00 inclusive  will be expedited, given the severity and urgency of the current crisis. We expect full cooperation from RT, maintained the regulator.

The licences for the RT service are held by ANO TV Novosti.

Ofcoms Chief Executive Dame Melanie Dawes said: Given the scale and gravity of the crisis in Ukraine, audiences expect to be able to trust and rely on duly impartial broadcast news. When reporting on an armed conflict, we recognise it can be difficult for broadcasters to verify information and events, but it is imperative that they make every effort to do so. They must also explain clearly to audiences where there is uncertainty or where events are disputed. Supporting a fair and free media is central to Ofcoms work. We take this responsibility  and our duty to protect audiences and uphold trust in news  extremely seriously. Freedom of expression is a cornerstone of our approach and fundamental to our democracy.

Given the serious ongoing situation in Ukraine, we will be concluding our investigations into RT as a matter of urgency, Dame Melanie Dawes added.
redBus, Indias largest online bus ticketing platform, has launched, Here for her- a campaign aimed at offering a more comfortable road travel experience for women. The campaign is being rolled out ahead of Womens Day, as a tribute to women who are increasingly embracing road travel, with the objective of offering them a more hygienic and safe option when using toilets at rest stops during journeys. Being the largest player in the bus transport sector with several features and initiatives to its credit, that have made bus travel seamless for millions of people, this well thought out and detailed initiative is intended at relieving women of the anxieties associated with using unclean toilets at roadside pit stops, relieving them of immense physiological stress.

As part of this campaign, women representatives of redBus will distribute free hygiene kits for women travellers at major bus boarding points and even explain their usage to those who are unfamiliar with such products. redBus has associated with Pee Buddy, a home-grown FemTech startup, seeking to break the stigma around intimate female hygiene, for this initiative. As a pilot, redBus is setting up kiosks at major bus stations in Bengaluru and Pune, between 6th March and 8th March, to facilitate distribution of about 10,000 kits to its women passengers and intends to scale it to other regions subsequently.

Speaking on the initiative, Pallavi Chopra, Sr. Vice President & Head, Marketing, at redBus, stated, Here for her is a novel initiative from redBus that will make a huge difference to how women perceive their long-distance road travel, which they are anxious about at times of having to use toilets that may not be clean and hygienic. Our association with Pee Buddy to launch this initiative, will go a long way in making travel more comfortable for women, and we are extremely happy to dedicate this to all the women out there, ahead of Womens Day, wishing them on the occasion, as well as for a safe and comfortable journey.
Dentsu Webchutney, a dentsuMB Company & digital creative agency from dentsu Creative India, has once again raised the creative bar with its exceptional performance at Spikes Asia 2022. Being the most awarded Indian agency, Dentsu Webchutney has brought home 19 metals - 5 Gold, 5 Silver, 5 Bronze and not to miss out - THE 4 GRAND PRIX!

While The Unfiltered History Tour for VICE Media has won a total of 4 Grand Prix, 5 Gold, 4 Silver & 5 Bronze, The Better Half Recipes for Swiggy has won a Silver. These wins are a testament to Dentsu Webchutneys year-after-year brilliant performance on the back of creativity and innovation.

Commenting on the achievement, Amit Wadhwa, CEO, dentsu Creative India said, This is a huge accomplishment. Dentsu Webchutney is known for the unimaginable creativity it offers with every campaign. The 4 Grand Prix and the many metals are proof of what a network that nurtures some of Indias best creative minds can attain. Huge kudos to everyone who worked on these projects and made magic happen! And what makes it even more exciting is that a similar excitement around the end product can be felt across all our creative units/agencies. Watch out for more exciting stuff from dentsu!

Sidharth Rao, CEO, dentsuMB Group added, Time after time I get the opportunity to celebrate the success of my extremely talented colleagues and their fabulous pieces of work. This particular moment however seems like the start of something more special. All our ideas are special to us, but theres something about our big winner this time  The Unfiltered History Tour that gives us a sense of being more than just any other normal achievement. As an agency, converting 32 shortlists into 19 metals which include 4 Grand Prix, across multiple campaigns shows were not a one-trick pony either. Ive got some very special colleagues, past and present to thank for this.

Ajay Gahlaut, Group Chief Creative Officer India, dentsu Creative India commented, Heartiest congratulations to everyone for this massive win. This is a near-miraculous achievement. The fact that these campaigns were created at the peak of the Pandemic amidst a lockdown make them even more special. That the teams were able to create such world-class work despite all the constraints speaks volumes for their ability, creativity and commitment to great ideas. In the end, it has all been worth it. These are the people who are the real winners today and our success totally belongs to them.
Wunderman Thompson India has had a winning spree at the recently concluded Spikes Asia awards 2022. The agency bagged a Grand Prix for Good for The Lost Daughters in addition to winning a Glass Spike for the same campaign. Wunderman Thompson India also won a gold for the film 'Hidden Truth' for Vidya India in the category 'Film Craft' for 'Script writing'.

The Lost Daughters activation was in collaboration with Sanlaap, a Kolkata-based NGO that rescues and rehabilitates sex trafficking survivors. An estimated 16 million women are victims of sex trafficking in India. Unfortunately, only 7% of them are ever rescued. When a woman is rescued from sex trafficking, often families refuse to accept them back because of social stigma and the fear of being shunned by society. The Lost Daughters activation is an attempt to raise awareness about this issue to help more daughters come back home with dignity.

The agencys other gold win was for the film The Hidden Truth in the category 'Film Craft' for 'Script writing' which was in collaboration with Vidya India, an NGO that strives for empowering and transforming lives of women and children. The film unmasks the silent struggle waged inside the homes against domestic violence with The Vidya Helpline becoming a safe way to reach out for help. The Hidden Truth made the truth of the rising instances of Domestic Abuse hard to ignore by setting it against the narrative of the Covid 19 Pandemic.

On the agency wins, Shams Jasani, Wunderman Thompson South Asias CEO, said, I am immensely proud of our stellar performance at Spikes Asia 2022 and I feel honoured and privileged to be leading a team of extremely talented and passionate people at Wunderman Thompson India. I congratulate our CCO, Senthil Kumar, Regional Creative Director, Tista and Senior NCD, Priya and their teams for producing path-breaking work with powerful social messages. Great way to kick start the year and we look forward to raising the bar and setting new benchmarks with our creative bravery.

Senthil Kumar, Chief Creative Officer, Wunderman Thompson India, commented, In the business of ideas it doesnt get bigger than the Grand Prix at Spikes Asia. Every idea that is ever born to solve a marketing problem dreams of growing up into a Gold Lion and if its truly blessed into a Gigantic Grand Prix at Spikes Asia. We are very proud of our Creative Firepower at Wunderman Thompson that is connecting the dots between Creativity and Technology with every new idea every day. Our Senior Creative Leaders Tista and Priya are leading by example and this recognition on the biggest international stage will surely inspire everyone in the team towards greatness.

Talking about The Lost Daughters campaign, Tista Sen, Regional Creative Director, Wunderman Thompson South Asia, said, What a more befitting tribute to Womens day than an idea which is fierce, challenges patriarchy and makes you acknowledge the hypocrisy in society. Lost Daughters is for every woman who knows the home she grew up in may not be welcoming anymore. It forces us to look at relationships and question how rescued girls are abandoned by their families because of social stigma and regressive pervasiveness.

Commenting on her film, The Hidden Truth, Priya Shivakumar, Senior National Creative Director, Wunderman Thompson India, said, This is a special win for a writer and to have won it for a piece that was dedicated to the sisterhood is the best kind of feeling. We set out to turn the spotlight on the pandemic hiding in the shadows and this was a case of putting two different and equal truths together to uncover the Hidden Truth. While all media and messaging directed people towards their homes, urging them to stay safe, the realisation that home was not a safe place for a few, while also giving them a safe way to reach out for help, became a small but meaningful way to draw attention to the Shadow Pandemic, as it was called by UN Women.

The Spikes Asia Awards, APAC's most prestigious creative communications awards serve as the definitive benchmark for not only creative excellence, but also marketing strategy and effectiveness in Asia-Pacific.

View the winning work here 
The Federal Council

Bern, 04.03.2022 - At its meeting on 4 March 2022, the Federal Council decided to extend the mandate of the Geneva Science and Diplomacy Anticipator (GESDA) Foundation by ten years and to maintain its financial support for the Foundation. After a three-year pilot phase, the Foundation has carved out its profile in International Geneva as an important global governance player. GESDA identifies trends in science and technology, evaluates their impact on and potential for people, society and the planet, and reinforces Geneva as a vector enabling exchange among all actors of the international community.

The world is facing rapid scientific and technological progress. Many advances have the potential to transform humanity and how it interacts with the planet. The international community must act with foresight in order to preserve its scope for action and strengthen its capacity to shape the future. In 2019, these considerations led the Federal Council to establish, together with the State Council of the Canton of Geneva and supported by the City of Geneva, the GESDA Foundation. The mission of the Foundation is to identify and harness the opportunities and challenges of progress. The Foundation serves as an instrument used to develop approaches to tackling the current and emerging challenges facing humanity.



Successful pilot phase

After its three-year pilot phase, the Foundation is now picking up speed. The Federal Council, as one of the founders, has agreed to extend its mandate until 2032. The federal authorities will provide GESDA with CHF 3 million each year for ten years, starting in 2023. This amount covers just under one third of the Foundation's budgeted basic costs. The decision by the State Council of the Canton of Geneva is pending. Since its inception, GESDA has succeeded in becoming an important player in International Geneva. The Foundation's work pursues three priorities:



- Science Anticipation: here, GESDA publishes an annual Scientific Breakthrough Radar report that describes trends in science and technology that could have a major impact on people, societies and life on Earth. Over 500 Swiss and international scientists worked together to draw up the first Radar, which was published in autumn 2021.

- Diplomacy Acceleration: Guided by the Radar's findings, GESDA promotes dialogue among key stakeholders working in diplomacy, science, international organisations, business and philanthropy, and civil society. The first GESDA Summit was held in early October 2021 and was attended by over 900 people from around the globe.

- Implementation: through science anticipation and the impartial and fact-driven facilitation of discussions between science and diplomacy, GESDA supports the development of specific and effective solutions promoting the implementation of the 2030 Agenda's Sustainable Development Goals. GESDA also pursues this goal through its own projects, such as the GESDA-XPRIZE Quantum competition.



Added value for Switzerland

In its role as host state, Switzerland strives to bolster International Geneva as a neutral platform for dialogue and the development of joint solutions to global challenges. GESDA is helping to establish Geneva as a hub for science diplomacy. Through its Radar and annual Summit, the Foundation has been boosting the visibility of International Geneva beyond the traditional spheres of international governance such as NGOs and the UN  and specifically in the scientific community. Moreover, by involving stakeholders working in science, diplomacy, the private sector, philanthropy and civil society, GESDA is breathing new life into the way multilateralism works. With its anticipatory science diplomacy, Switzerland is connecting science and diplomacy with each other early on, thereby providing the international community with an innovative and effective approach to dealing with global issues.

Address for enquiries

For further information:

Alexandre Fasel, Ambassador

Special Representative for Science Diplomacy

Tel. +41 58 482 24 00

alexandre.fasel@eda.admin.ch



***

FDFA Communication

Tel. +41 58 462 31 53

Tel. Press service +41 460 55 55

kommunikation@eda.admin.ch

Publisher

The Federal Council

https://www.admin.ch/gov/en/start.html



Federal Department of Foreign Affairs

https://www.eda.admin.ch/eda/en/home.html




The Federal Council

Bern, 04.03.2022 - The Federal Council is staggering the entry into force of the revised Federal Act on the Promotion of Research and Innovation (RIPA). A new legislative provision will come into force on 15 April 2022 to support SMEs and start-ups that currently do not have access to the European Innovation Council's Accelerator funding instrument. The Federal Council also approved and submitted to Parliament the related financial measures on 4 March 2022. The remaining provisions of the revised Act are to enter into force on 1 January 2023.

Switzerland is currently a non-associated third country in Horizon Europe, the EU framework programme for research and innovation. This status does not allow participation in the Accelerator funding instrument of the European Innovation Council (EIC), which supports innovative small and medium-sized enterprises. This concerns Swiss SMEs and, in particular, start-ups. In its autumn 2021 session, Parliament therefore included a provision in the Federal Act on the Promotion of Research and Innovation (RIPA) to allow the Swiss Innovation Agency (Innosuisse) to implement its own programme as long as Swiss companies cannot participate in EIC Accelerator calls for proposals.

On 4 March, the Federal Council decided that this legislative provision would come into force on 15 April 2022 and approved the related amendment to the Innosuisse Funding Ordinance. It also approved and submitted to Parliament the financial resources for Innosuisse's transitional measures for the 2022 EIC Accelerator calls for proposals. Innosuisse will publish the calls implementing these measures on its website.

The remaining provisions of the revised law, which mainly concern the promotion of innovation, are planned to enter into force on 1 January 2023. The revised law increases Innosuisse's room for manoeuvre and flexibility by allowing companies to contribute between 40 and 60% of the total costs of innovation projects as Innosuisse implementation partners. Up to now, a 50% contribution has been the rule. In future, Innosuisse may determine a higher (above 60%) or lower (below 40%) partner contribution in individual cases. Special emphasis will now be placed on funding innovation projects by start-ups. Innosuisse will be able to directly support start-up innovation projects preparing for their market entry.

Address for enquiries

EAER Communications

info@gs-wbf.admin.ch, +41 58 462 20 07

Publisher

The Federal Council

https://www.admin.ch/gov/en/start.html



Federal Department of Economic Affairs, Education and Research

http://www.wbf.admin.ch



Innosuisse  Swiss Innovation Promotion Agency

https://www.innosuisse.ch




Federal Department of Foreign Affairs

Bern, 04.03.2022 - As a sign of solidarity with the people affected by the war in Ukraine, all church bells in Switzerland will ring for three minutes at 10am on 9 March. Switzerland's Bishops' Conference, Protestant Reformed Church and Christian Catholic Church are asking the country's population to pause for peace during the three minutes. President of the Swiss Confederation Ignazio Cassis, together with National Council President Irene Kalin and Council of States President Thomas Hefti, is supporting this campaign.

The war in Ukraine has brought immeasurable suffering to the population there. Many people have lost their lives or been injured. Hundreds of thousands have had to leave their homes and flee their homeland.



People in Switzerland care deeply about the fate of people in Ukraine. Presidents Cassis, Kalin and Hefti are impressed by how much the people of Switzerland are doing to help Ukrainian refugees. As mandated by President Cassis, Swiss Humanitarian Aid has already sent a first consignment of aid to Warsaw. From there, the relief supplies will be dispatched to those in need.



The three presidents will pause for three minutes next Wednesday at 10am to express their solidarity with the people in Ukraine. During these three minutes, all church bells in Switzerland will ring.



Switzerland's three national churches have launched this campaign of solidarity to express support for the people in Ukraine and to protest the war. Cassis, Kalin and Hefti have thanked the churches for this display of solidarity. The three presidents call on all of Switzerland to join the churches in their three-minute pause for peace, during which church bells will ring out across the country.

Address for enquiries

FDFA Communication

Federal Palace West Wing

CH-3003 Bern, Switzerland

Tel. Communication service: +41 58 462 31 53

Tel. Press service: +41 58 460 55 55

E-mail: kommunikation@eda.admin.ch

Twitter: @SwissMFA

Publisher

Federal Department of Foreign Affairs

https://www.eda.admin.ch/eda/en/home.html




Alton, IL (62002)

Today

A steady rain in the morning. Showers continuing in the afternoon. High 66F. Winds ESE at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 100%. Rainfall may reach one inch..

Tonight

Thunderstorms likely. Low 58F. Winds SE at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 70%.
In this article Im going to give you instructions on how to safely pull a calf.
BEIRUT, March 4 (Xinhua) -- The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) on Friday launched a project aimed at promoting low-emission and environmentally sound transport systems in Lebanon, the National News Agency (NNA) reported.

Dubbed "Lebanon Sustainable Low-emission transport systems," the project is funded by the Global Environment Facility (GEF), in cooperation with Lebanon's ministries, NNA said.

The UNDP inaugurated its project from the city of Byblos, which was chosen because of the efforts made by its municipality to preserve the environment, by launching the "Solar Powered-Electric Public Bus" project, through which a solar energy system will be installed in the municipality building, which will be used to charge the bus designated for shared transportation in the city.

Lebanon suffers from severe air pollution mainly caused by the transport sector in the country. 
LOUISVILLE, Ky.  Farm equipment manufacturers are experiencing an abundance of demand but a paucity of supply.

Sales are up in nearly every segment of the industry, thanks to factors such as high grain prices and  oddly  COVID-19. But visitors to the National Farm Machinery Show here had fewer pieces of shiny metal to examine because inventory is short.

Times now are really good. Theres a lot going on, said Nate Williams of John Deere. Factories are working to get equipment out as fast as they can, but there are certainly some hang-ups with supplier constraints. That has pushed some factory delivery dates out for some customers and dealers. Were seeing high demand in parts and whole goods across the country.

Other manufacturers are seeing the same thing.

Our 2022 outlook is as robust as weve seen in modern history, said Kurt Coffey, North American vice president of Case IH.

The past few years have been profitable for farmers following a down period. That means many are looking to add some iron.

Crop prices are superb, along with other trends, Coffey said. We werent having the greatest time back in 2015 to 2017, so replacement demand is very strong. Even though that was a few years ago, farmers are looking to upgrade an aging fleet.

Supply chains have been disrupted, which is keeping dealers busy both selling and obtaining goods.

Its going to be a function of production capabilities. Demand in some areas is outpacing capabilities, Coffey said. You see that in automotive and household goods even. Its the economy were in right now.

Tires and semiconductors are among the products in tight supply. Moving goods is another concern.

Theres the supply crunch capacity and skilled labor, Coffey said. Were fighting harder than we ever have getting it out the door.

John Dickey of New Holland has had the same experience. While big equipment is in high demand, consumers are eating up small-horsepower machines. Much of that is due to a trend toward more weekend farming operations.

Demand has been great, Dickey said. Its been unprecedented growth starting in 2020. Its because with COVID everyone has some extra money in their pockets. A lot of people started moving away from urban areas. They wanted acreage.

Adrian Crisp of AGCO expects the good times to continue.

We had a fantastic year in 2021, he said. For 2022 were predicting the small-equipment market to grow by 5% and large equipment to grow at 12 to 15% over last year.

Demand was high for AGCOs large machines in their Massey-Ferguson and Fendt brands. Haying equipment also saw healthy gains, Crisp said.

Small-tractor manufacturer Kubota has seen rocketing sales over the past couple of years. While some of the companys vehicles are as large as 200 horsepower, most are under 100. Like their colleagues, keeping iron on the lot has been challenging.

Sales have been great during COVID. In 2021 we were up almost 25%, said Kubotas Scott Eckart. Inventory is another situation. Its been a battle over the past year and a half.

Statistics back up claims made by Eckart and others in the industry. According to the Association of Equipment Manufacturers, new farm tractor sales in the United States rose 1.5% in January over the same month in 2021  16,150 compared to 15,915. Combine sales have slowed considerably, however. January-to-January numbers have fallen by 41%, from 350 units to 205.

Jerry Campbell, a sales representative with the small-horsepower brand Branson Tractors, said buyers are on a waiting list.

Tractor companies right now are six to nine months out, Campbell said. A new dealer is going to wait six months on tractors, even the Korean manufacturers such as us.

Farmer morale has been strong overall, according to Bruce Mustard of the British equipment manufacturer JCB.

Its positive, generally, Mustard said. This week and last week, at the Tulare (California) show, prices are good. Guys seem to be in a good frame of mind. We had a record year last year in the ag space. Its nice to be back at shows.

The ag boom has been broad, though not every sector has enjoyed prosperity. And getting goods to the farm has been difficult for many.

Its across the board, but the cow guys not as much as other guys, Mustard said. The row-crop guys had a really strong year, so we had a good run with them at the end of the year. Supply is a question. We have a lot of inventory coming in but spoken for. Customers seem to be OK with that. Theyre planning ahead for their purchases.

Williams said that although smaller pieces may be leading the way, equipment used on large farms is also in high demand today.

The large ag segment is certainly strong, he said. And there is a big demand for small ag and turf equipment. Theres a big demand for all of that. It feels like everything.

New Holland is also seeing demand across the board, but especially in small-farm machines.

Every product is a growth sector for us but especially compact tractors, those machines used in 5- and 10-acre lots, Dickey said. Were selling to a lot of residential home owners. Im in the home construction side, where weve been experiencing growth. Were seeing a lot more demand for construction pieces.

Dealers have become acclimated to the delays in product delivery. But farmers dont have as much patience.

Its their customers were concerned about  the end user, said Bransons Campbell. They cant wait that long. Theyll look for something else. Its going to take a long time to get them. Its like cars right now.

The supply-and-demand dynamic has resulted in high prices.

Prices are elevated, so were going over list price, Campbell said. Tractor sales seem to be right at MSRP, which is very unusual.

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CHARLES CITY, Iowa  An argument could be made that the push to get votes for women in the United States got its start on a little farm near Charles City. While Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton were early leaders in the womens suffrage movement, it was Iowan Carrie Chapman Catt who got the job done in 1920.

And Catts story begins with an aha moment on this little farm.

The then 13-year-old Carrie Lane was on her parents farm in 1872 when her father and a hired hand were getting ready to go into town to vote. The girl asked why her mother wasnt going along, and her father informed her that voting was too important to be left up to women.

She did not appreciate that, says Karen Kedrowsky, who now works as the director of the Carrie Chapman Catt Center for Women and Politics at Iowa State University. She thought it was a terrible injustice.

It took a long time, but nearly 50 years later Catt led the effort to pass the 19th Amendment, which finally gave women the right to vote.

The Carrie Chapman Catt Girlhood Home and Museum in Charles City is open to the public during the summer months, from Memorial Day to Labor Day. Catt has also been honored at Iowa State University, where she was the only woman in her graduating class in 1880 and where the Carrie Chapman Catt Center for Women and Politics is located.

Catt was born as Carrie Lane in Wisconsin in 1859. Her family moved to Iowa when she was a child and built the home where she grew up and which is now the museum.

There are childhood stories of Carrie standing up to bullies or asking questions that girls just didnt ask in those days, says Cheryl Erb, co-president of the National 19th Amendment Society in Charles City, which runs the museum. And as Carrie Lane grew up she made it known she wanted to attend college. She taught in a local country school and traveled to Ames to attend Iowa State, working two campus jobs to pay her way.

At the time the men on campus drilled for exercise, marching around the campus. Lane thought the women should be active as well so she organized a G troop of girls to march, carrying brooms instead of guns. She also pushed to get women allowed to be part of a forensic debating club.

She left her mark (at ISU), Kedrowsky says.

After graduation she became a teacher in Mason City, and soon became superintendent of schools there. It was there that she met her first husband, Leo Chapman, who edited the local newspaper. They married and soon he decided to move to San Francisco. She followed later, but by the time she arrived he had died, probably of typhoid. Stuck in San Francisco, she became a newspaper reporter and eventually married George Catt, an engineer whom she had met at Iowa State. It was soon after that she became involved in the womens suffrage movement.

During the 1890s she worked for the vote and met Susan B. Anthony, who pushed her to take over the leadership of the movement. From then until 1920, her lifes work was trying to get the vote for women both in the United States and in other nations.

Once the 19th Amendment was passed, Catt started the League of Women Voters and continued to advocate for womens rights.

In recent years Catts reputation has come under fire as some of her writings and quotes have been called racist. Kedrowsky and Erb dispute that idea.

Most of those statements are taken out of context, Kedrowsky says, noting that Catt was repeatedly pushed to water down the suffrage amendment or to add the word white to it to and she always refused to do so.

What is clear is that Catt was a remarkable woman.

And it is also clear that the seeds of her activism were planted on this little farm on a gravel road in northern Iowa.

The effort to make the farm into a museum is a story in and of itself. It began 30 years ago when Rhoda McCartney, who grew up about seven miles from the historic farm, began working with a local contractor and a preservationist. They formed the National 19th Amendment Society, raised money, and eventually bought the home and a few acres of land. Today they have established a natural prairie and planted apple trees at the farm, in recognition that the Lane family had grown apples on the site.

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Two of the founding members of a proposed beef processing facility at North Platte, Nebraska, note they have a daunting task ahead of them. But the project is one they say will give them a voice in an industry that allows producers little say in their destiny.

Trey Wasserburger and Cassie Lapaseotes, two of the initial investors in Sustainable Beef LLC, spoke to an audience of about 100 students and beef producers during a recent forum at the Nebraska College of Technical Agriculture.

The Sustainable Beef LLC project began about a year ago as an effort to work on vertical integration for producers and make beef production a better experience for producers and consumers alike, said Wasserburger.

The NCTA program was organized by James Lee and other students in the human relations class at NCTA taught by Dr. Eric Reed, professor in the gen ed division. Lee, a second-year ag business major from Sutherland, Nebraska, noted it gave them great experience in planning an event, setting up all the details, and coordinating related publicity.

Austin Youngquist of Auburn, another human relations classmate, noted, We did surveys before settling on a forum topic and the topic hit home with our students, many of whom raise beef, and the public.

Wasserburger who along with his wife, Dayna, owns TD Angus at the Rishel Ranch south of North Platte said Sustainable Beef wants to build a new, modern beef processing facility on a 400-acre site east of North Platte. The plant will expand marketing opportunities for cattle producers, he said, with the goal to harvest and process 1,500 head of beef per day during a single shift.

Impetus for the project grew during the COVID-19 pandemic and supply chain disruptions that caused financial hardship within the beef industry.

We cant keep taking these losses, Wasserburger said.

They assembled what he called a group of fighters and entrepreneurial individuals.

Our story is not being told and this project is telling that story. We are regenerative, we are environmentalists, and our producers have hundreds of years of integrity built into this story, he said.

Lapaseotes manages the family feed yard headquartered at Bridgeport.

COVID clearly impacted everybody in this room. It impacted cattle feeders and growers. Sustainability to me means being able to have a place to kill our cattle and be sure we can stay in this industry and provide for the next generation, she said.

What started as a $285 million project is now up to $325 million, said Wasserburger. While they arent certain about the exact timeline for construction, the company goal is to break ground sometime in 2022.

Because the site is on an old city wastewater lagoon, it is going to take an estimated 47,000 loads of dirt to raise the ground above the flood plain, which Wasserburger noted is overwhelming for a little cattle feeder.

Given supply chain issues, permitting steps and getting contractors lined up, this will likely be a two-year build, noted the two investors. That will give them time to find enough labor for the plant and housing for new workers. This is a stimulating project for this community. North Platte has been a town of about 30,000 people for 30 years. We want to grow the community, said Wasserburger.

Lapaseotes said the Sustainable Beef project is estimated to have a $1.16 billion economic impact on Lincoln County.

The median wage in North Platte is $28,000. Our starting wage on the floor will be $50,000, said Wasserburger. If you take care of people they will come. Developers wont touch construction until we break ground. We have two years to build houses while we build the plant.

North Platte appears ready to embrace the project, he said.

We have been through 14 voting processes in the city and not one time have we gotten a no vote, he said. We have already had inquiries about, When are you hiring? People are watching and waiting. What better place to come than to a new facility with new technology and new equipment?

Sustainable Beef plans to use Lumachain  a new technology that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to provide traceability at every step of the food production journey, said Lapaseotes. A camera in the plant will trace each head of beef that enters.

Having a new plant, well be able to install the technology up front and well design it to allow for incorporation of robotics if desired, Wasserburger said. Retailers are looking for source-verified beef and traceability for a plant of this size will be easier.

They currently have cattle committed from 26 contracts (feed yards), she said, adding there are eight members of her family invested in Sustainable Beef.

By having a local-regional plant we hope to raise the margin for profit across the industry, she said. The next step will be to figure out a model for price discovery. The beauty is we have an open box. We have the opportunity to be a stand-alone company.

For the first time in our lifetime cattle feeders have a chance to have a seat at the table, Wasserburger said. Instead of being price takers, we can be the price creator. The supply is here, and we wont have to import.

This project is a way to bring the next generation along as all the cattle feeders have a second generation involved, he said. .

As for what the optimum carcass size will be for the new plant, Wasserburger said consistency is the most important, then carcass size.

Retailers are telling us they want consistent, quality meat, he said.

Lapeseotess family is already making plans to change their breeding.

We will need more black cattle to provide the type of marbling in meat consumers are looking for, she said. I currently have all Charlois bulls. That will have to change.

Fewer days on feed for the best marbling is a key goal to address the carbon footprint cuts that consumers are also demanding, she said. .

Both investors noted that while there is demand for strictly grassfed beef, that niche has been filled and they are going after the traceability niche consumers want.

We have a great story to tell, but we do a poor job of doing that because were too busy doing our job every day. We need to focus on keeping agriculture alive and keep our number one economic driver going, she said.

At the end of the day we want to control our destiny, Wasserburger said.

Barb Bierman Batie can be reached at editorial@midwestmessenger.com.

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Pigs dont get sick when exposed to the coronavirus, and scientists at Iowa State University have learned more about the cell process that protects them.

The researchers say the information could lead to new therapies to trigger the same process in humans, lessoning COVID-19 symptoms. It could also help in dealing with other swine respiratory illnesses.

Rahul Nelli and Luis Gimenez-Lirola work in veterinary diagnostic and production animal medicine at ISU and were part of the research team. Both have studied how coronaviruses affect pigs for years, although this study provided new information about the actual cell process that protects pigs.

Pigs are resistant or not susceptible to this virus, Nelli says.

Gimenez-Lirola says the topic has obviously been of particular interest of late.

We have a lot of research going on with coronavirus in pigs and humans, he says.

Pigs can be infected by the virus if exposed to high doses, but the infection is limited, and the pigs dont show clinical signs of disease and do not transmit the virus to other animals.

Findings

In these latest experiments, the researchers introduced the virus to cultured pig and human respiratory epithelial cells, which line most of the respiratory tract. They found pig cells went through a process called apoptosis, meaning controlled cell death, in response to infection, at a higher rate than the human cells. The pigs cells going through the controlled cell death of apoptosis instead of the less controlled cell death of necrosis, which is more likely in human cells, is likely a key to why pigs dont spread the coronavirus or experience symptoms.

Nelli says during the study they saw the controlled apoptosis process through a microscope.

When we looked under the microscope there was an interesting phenomenon going on inside the cells, he says. The nuclei of the infected pig cells were starting to shred into fragments, but no uninfected pig cells.

Researchers say the shredding of the nucleus is a telltale sign of apoptosis. Triggering apoptosis early in the infection causes minimal tissue damage and confines viral replication, which limits severe illness.

Human cells can go through apoptosis in response to coronavirus infection as well, but the study showed human cells do so much less frequently than pig cells. Pig cells are roughly 100 times more likely to undergo apoptosis than human cells, the study showed.

During necrosis cell death, the contents of the cell leak into the surrounding space, which causes a strong hyperimmune response that isnt caused during apoptosis controlled cell death.

In necrosis, the cells die, and they leak all the contents into the body, Nelli says.  In apoptosis, it wont let any of the cell contents leak out.

The researchers say apoptosis disposes of infected cells quickly without the immune system overreacting, while necrosis and the hyperimmune response are not as good for host cells, and the leaked contents of dying cells can spread infection to neighboring cells.

We dont want to over-conclude, but this response is probably something intrinsic to the pig immune system that is innate and not acquired, Giminez-Lirola said. The idea is to kill the virus subtly but fast enough so theres not an excessive immune response triggered.

Helping humans

Nelli and Gimenez-Lirola say the research could lead to new therapies that trigger apoptosis in humans, which could lessen COVID symptoms in humans and make them less likely to spread the disease.

Gimenez-Lirola says there could absolutely be health benefits for humans from the findings, if researchers can identify the specific molecules and components that initiate the apoptosis response. This could lead to treatments for humans to activate apoptosis in cells as a disease response.

Nelli says now that researchers know the process that protects pigs from coronavirus, identifying what causes that process will be the next step in using the information to help humans and also further understand how pigs can fight a variety of respiratory diseases.

Now that weve identified the mechanism, the next step is what is causing that mechanism to happen, he says. It could be a molecule, it could be a chemical that triggers that apoptosis in the early stages.

Gimenez-Lirola says the work is important as livestock producers combat a variety of animal diseases, and notes that while pigs are not affected by COVID, some animals are, noting mink producers were hit hard by the coronavirus outbreak.

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It was a snowy, cold Thursday in Missouri, but for recently retired University of Missouri Extension agronomist Peter Scharf, it was a mild summer Friday morning in Australia. He and his wife, Jane, moved there last year, following through on a long-term plan.

My wifes Australian, Scharf says. We met in the States and got married.  She always wanted to come back, which I agreed to years ago.

With their younger of two sons about to start high school and wanting to be closer to his wifes parents, Scharf says the timing was right. Of course, moving during the time of COVID had some challenges, and Scharf says he had to spend a two-week quarantine in a hotel upon arriving in Australia.

Scharf has kept busy in Australia, slowly renovating the farmhouse where they live, near the town of Foster in the southeastern Australian state of Victoria, about two hours from the city of Melbourne. The house has views off toward the ocean and is in a rural area.

Fifty years ago it was dominated by dairy, now theres a lot of beef cattle as well, he says. Its pretty to look at.

In addition to putting in new floors and working on fences at the farmhouse, Scharf has been keeping in touch with Extension personnel and farmers back in Missouri, and he is working on a fertilizer manual project for MU. Scharf studied nitrogen fertilizer for MU, and his project is looking at the right rate, timing, placement and source for fertilizing, using research collected by MU. He enjoys staying involved with his main area of study, even if he has shifted to emeritus status with MU.

Im keeping my finger in the pie a little bit, he says.

Beyond that, Scharf says he is appreciating living in the country again. He grew up in rural Wisconsin.

Im just enjoying a rural lifestyle, he says. Its hilly and green.

Scharf says the temperate climate allows for essentially year-round green grass, which provides a slight difference for local agriculture that is largely similar to Missouri.

Theres a lot less hay here than in Missouri because they dont have as many days they need it, he says.

Rural life in Australia has some similar issues to rural Missouri, Scharf says, including the need for broadband Internet access. He says they just got new satellite internet at their house, and he says satellite internet has a lot of potential for rural communities.

Im grateful for it, he says.

Scharf still keeps track of nitrogen trends back in Missouri, seeing his decades of research in action.

Row crops, probably theres more nitrogen used than there used to be, but its used more efficiently because a lot of that goes on after planting, he says. I played a part in that, showing them what it looked like when they put it on before and it was a wet year.

He adds that every farm is different, and a farms labor situation can help determine when nitrogen fertilizer needs to go on. Many farms are diversified and have to juggle putting up hay and livestock work along with row crop tasks.

Scharf says the trend has been wetter springs, which can cause nitrogen loss. But he says there are benefits as well.

Starting in about 1980, there was a trend toward wetter springs and bigger areas of wet springs, he says. I think people picked up on that, and I think wetter springs are great if youre growing grass. Ive seen lots of Julys where fescue is still growing because its not out of water. I think its not a bad thing that Missouri is getting wetter springs, you just have to adjust.

Scharf says farmers seem to be getting better and better with nitrogen fertilizing, both on pastures and in row crop fields, improving their timing. He says on pastures, putting nitrogen on later, such as March or April, can support summertime growth.

He says the next improvements in nitrogen use could involve doing more with rate diagnoses and adjusting application rates to meet needs in different parts of fields.

Now, Scharf is happy to monitor that progress from afar, on the other side of the world, out in the country.

I like living the rural life again, he says.

That rural life contains some simple joys, like taking his younger son to the local boat ramp, where theres a big parking lot, to practice driving ahead of getting his license.

Hes getting better, Scharf says, not as fast as his confidence is growing.

Scharf says he has enjoyed living the Australian life.

The people are fun, he says. I like being near the ocean. Thats one thing you cant do in Missouri.

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Official numbers are in for South Dakotas newest crop.

In February, the U.S. Department of Agriculture released the results of the 2021 Hemp Acreage and Production Survey in its National Hemp Report, a joint effort by National Agricultural Statistics Service and Agricultural Marketing Service USDA agencies.

The report focused on the 2021 growing season and is the first industrial hemp report since the crop was legalized in the 2018 farm bill.

The release of this landmark report provides a needed benchmark about hemp production to assist producers, regulatory agencies, state governments, processors, and other key industry entities, NASS Administrator Hubert Hamer said.

Not only will these data guide USDA agencies in their support of domestic hemp production, the results can also help inform producers decisions about growing, harvesting, and selling hemp as well as the type of hemp they decide to produce. The survey results may also impact policy decisions about the hemp industry, he added.

According to the report, a total of 54,152 acres nationwide were planted with industrial hemp that was grown in the open. This included hemp grown for all utilizations including CBD oil, grain, fiber, and seed.

Floral hemp, which is hemp grown for CBD oil, production was estimated at 19.7 million pounds. Utilized production totaled 15.7 million pounds. The area harvested for floral hemp was estimated at 15,980 acres. The average yield for floral hemp was estimated at 1,235 pounds per acre. The value of floral hemp totaled $623 million.

Hemp grown for grain totaled 4.37 million pounds. Utilized production totaled 3.96 million pounds. The area harvested for hemp grown for grain was estimated at 8,255 acres. The average yield for hemp grown for grain was estimated at 530 pounds per acre. The value of hemp for grain totaled $5.99 million.

Hemp grown for fiber was estimated at 33.2 million pounds. Utilized production totaled 27.6 million pounds. The area harvested for hemp grown for fiber was estimated at 12,690 acres. The average yield for hemp grown for fiber was estimated at 2,620 pounds per acre. The value of hemp grown for fiber totaled $41.4 million.

Production of hemp grown for seed was estimated at 1.86 million pounds. Utilized production totaled 1.68 million pounds. The area harvested for hemp grown for seed was estimated at 3,515 acres. The average yield for hemp grown for seed was estimated at 530 pounds per acre. The value of hemp grown for seed totaled $41.5 million.

The total value of U.S. hemp production in the open was $712 million.

South Dakota hemp growers happy with first harvest One producer who planted seven acres of hemp this year is looking to grow 40 to 50 acres in the 2022 growing season.

South Dakota valuation was not directly included in the report. However, Katie Sieverding, executive director for the South Dakota Industrial Hemp Association said the total value of grain hemp in the state is $1,789,000 and fiber crop is $480,000.

Investment in processing started and underway is valued at approximately $6 million, she added.

The report showed that U.S. growers harvested about 8,200 acres of hemp for grain, valued at nearly $6 million. Growers harvested about 12,600 acres of hemp for fiber, at a value of $41.4 million. They also harvested about 3,500 acres for seed, at a value of $41.5 million.

Ken Meyer, president of the South Dakota Industrial Hemp Association and hemp processor, said those values are not solely about the raw hemp, but included products made from hemp.

The survey results come just a few short months after South Dakota producers wrapped up their first year of production.

Hemp lessons: Grower shares what went right and wrong after hard year When asked about growing industrial hemp the first year it was legal in South Dakota, Wessin

Ten South Dakota hemp producers harvested a total of 1,700 acres out of the 1,850 acres planted during the 2021 season.

Of the 1,700 acres, over 1,500 were planted with a dual variety of hemp which allowed the harvest of both the grain and the fiber of the plant at separate times.

That's one of the things that's making hemp as a crop in South Dakota compete really well with corn and soybeans - because it has two income streams, Meyer said.

He expects producers should be able to sell their hemp for about the same price this year as last year, with a slight increase to factor in fertilizer costs.

The 2021 hemp fiber crop sold at $200 per ton and will sell for $210 per ton in 2022, Meyer said.

2021 Non-organic grain hemp sold for $24.20 per bushel and organic grain hemp at $48.40 per bushel, and producers should see similar prices this year.

While it was only the states first year growing the crop, the 1,700 harvested acres put South Dakota as the 12th largest hemp producing state in the nation.

That ranking was promising for the future of the industry in South Dakota, Meyer said. Despite the dry start to the 2021 growing season, the numbers from what was planted to what was harvested was better than many other regions in the country.

Meyer attributes this to the quality of soil found in southeastern South Dakota along with average precipitation amounts and its geographical location.

If you get too far south, too much humidity can make it difficult to grow, he said. It really does look like South Dakota is one of the best places to grow hemp for grain and fiber.

Melisa Goss, Associate Editor for the Tri-State Neighbor, is a South Dakota farm girl whose love of travel has allowed her to see ags vital impact around the world, from Americas heartland to the rice paddies of Southeast Asia and many places in between. She makes her home in Sioux Falls with her husband, daughter and miniature schnauzer. You can reach her at mgoss@lee.net.

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April 12, 2017

Irans former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad surprised everyone April 12 by registering to run in the May 19 presidential election, a move that could be interpreted as directly defying Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who had publicly advised him last autumn not to run in the race.

When it comes to politics, Ahmadinejad is a clever operator. The hard-line politician has confused and misled everyone in recent months by indicating that he didnt intend to run in the election, particularly as he encouraged his former vice president, Hamid Baghaei, to announce his candidacy for the presidency.

Since the first days of Khameneis advice, which initially was not made public, Ahmadinejad had signaled that he was not eager to take the hint. Rather, he continued his electoral trips to various provinces. Upon seeing Ahmadinejad's defiance of the supreme leader, conservatives started disclosing the former presidents meeting with Khamenei. The supreme leader, without naming Ahmadinejad, said he had advised the former president not to run in the election due to the possible polarization of society, as Ahmadinejads candidacy could lead to a repeat of the unrest in the aftermath of his disputed re-election in 2009. Following this disclosure, Ahmadinejad released a statement announcing his loyalty and commitment to the supreme leader. However, a few months later, in a surprising move, Ahmadinejads former vice president declared his candidacy, and Ahmadinejad officially threw his weight behind him, a move seen as as disobeying and opposing the supreme leader.

On the heels of Baghaeis announcement, various video clips were released by Baghaei, Ahmadinejad and the former president's controversial friend and aide Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, some of whose pronouncements have been interpreted as deviant by some religious conservatives. In one of the clips, Baghaei tells Ahmadinejad and Mashaei that one of us must be sacrificed. Based on this, it seems that Ahmadinejad is planning to pressure the conservative-dominated Guardian Council, which is tasked with vetting presidential candidates, to let Baghaei run. On April 12, after registering to run, Ahmadinejad and Baghaei both held a press conference in which Ahmadinejad said that his decision had been made in support of Baghaei, I registered merely to support Baghaei and I will act according to the [supreme] leader's advice.  I'll be serving Mr. Baghaei with all my power." The former president added, Some people say that the [supreme leader's] advice was meant to completely forbid [me from running], but what the leader said was just advice.  I am still committed to my moral promise."

Conservatives and many analysts have been saying in recent months that Baghaei wouldnt get approval from the Guardian Council. Baghaei, who has crossed many of the red lines in Iranian politics, was jailed for unannounced reasons for more than 200 days and he still has cases that are being reviewed by the judiciary. Therefore, Ahmadinejads candidacy might have been registered just to prevent Baghaeis disqualification. However, the former president may try to stay in the race, putting more pressure on the Guardian Council, which would probably disqualify him for defying the supreme leader; such a decision could then provoke Ahmadinejad's vocal political base. The likelihood of such a scenario caused conservative cleric Mohammad-Taghi Rahbar to voice his concern April 12 that Ahmadinejads candidacy could cause chaos in the country.

Ahmadinejads entering the race has angered conservatives who no longer consider him an insider. Elias Naderan, a conservative figure, tweeted April 12, This is the end of Ahmadinejad. This tweet may mean that Ahmadinejad, after disobeying the supreme leader and standing up to him, may have seen his political life in Iran come to an end. Conservative politician Hossein Kanani Moghaddam said April 12, This is a suicidal move, and [Ahmadinejad] has entered the field wearing an explosives belt.

Saeed Laylaz, a prominent Reformist analyst, said April 12, The [target] audience of Ahmadinejads [candidacy] is not the Reformists but rather the high-ranking officials of the country. Ahmadinejad will probably turn into the Boris Yeltsin of Iran.

Meanwhile, conservative Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, who chairs the Guardian Council, has voiced criticism that too many people are registering to run for president. On the first day [of registration, on April 11], 126 people registered to run in the presidential election, while many of them dont have the necessary criteria [to be allowed to run], Jannati said April 12.
ADDIS ABABA, March 4 (Xinhua) -- The United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) on Friday appealed for 205 million U.S. dollars to deliver life-saving assistance and protection to over 1.6 million people displaced due to the conflict in northern parts of Ethiopia.

Noting that sixteen months of conflict in northern parts of Ethiopia has created a humanitarian crisis, the UNHCR in a statement said civilians, including refugees and internally displaced people, have been displaced, amid widespread reports of gender-based violence, human rights abuses, loss of shelter and access to basic services, and critical levels of food insecurity.

Of the 205 million U.S. dollars, 117 million U.S. dollars will support the needs of Ethiopian IDPs and Eritrean refugees in the Afar, Amhara, and Tigray regions of Ethiopia, while 72 million U.S. dollars will help the UNHCR support Ethiopian refugees in Sudan, it was noted.

Some 16 million U.S. dollars will be used for preparedness as part of contingency measures for any potential influx into neighboring countries Djibouti, Kenya, Somalia and South Sudan, it was noted.

More than 2 million Ethiopians have fled in search of safety within the country, and almost 60,000 across the border into Sudan, according to the UNHCR.

Several camps and settlements hosting Eritrean refugees have been attacked or destroyed, further displacing tens of thousands within Ethiopia, it said.

"Funds raised will help us to provide essential protection and humanitarian assistance to those impacted by the violence," the UNHCR said.

At least 60,000 IDP households will be assisted with shelter and emergency relief items, it was noted.

The UNHCR commended the "quick response" of the Ethiopian government to identify new sites to settle the displaced refugees, which requires resources.

UNHCR will work with the government's Refugees and Returnees Service (RRS) and partners to complete the Alemwach site, in the Amhara region, so that Eritrean refugees can be relocated as soon as it is possible to do so, and to ensure essential services.

A new temporary site for Eritrean refugees that was caught up in the fighting in the Afar region last month is also said to be similarly in need of urgent investment.

In eastern Sudan, UNHCR will provide critical protection and assistance to Ethiopian refugees, including by building shelters that are more durable and strengthening health care and education.

It said that activities to prevent and respond to gender-based violence and to provide psychosocial and mental health support will be scaled up. 
Court Rips DOD in Military Case

NEWS PROVIDED BY

Liberty Counsel

March 4, 2022



TAMPA, Fla., March 4, 2022 /Christian Newswire/ -- Judge Steven Merryday has denied the U.S. Department of Defense's (DOD) request for the federal district court to stay the preliminary injunction granted for two of Liberty Counsel's plaintiffs from the shot mandates in Navy SEAL 1 v. Austin. Judge Merryday also scheduled a new hearing on the motion to stay for Thursday, March 10 at 10 a.m.

The DOD waited ten days after the February 18 ruling to file an appeal and then filed an emergency motion February 28 seeking to stay the lower court's preliminary injunction. The DOD threatened to file the motion with the U.S. 11th Court of Appeals.

Liberty Counsel represents plaintiffs from all branches of the military who were denied religious exemptions from the COVID shot mandate in Navy SEAL 1 v. Austin.

In his response Judge Merryday wrote, "The second portion of the defendants' motion advances the 'judicial overstepping' claim. In particular, the second portion claims that two footnotes in the preliminary injunction somehow 'discount the effect of refusers on good order and discipline in the military' and 'by second-guessing the scientific and military evidence that vaccination is the most effective means to protect the health and safety of the force.' (The term 'refusers' is a tellingly offensive term that the defendants must employ no further in this court. A RFRA [Religious Freedom Restoration Act] claimant is not a 'refuser,' not an outcast subject to shunning)."

Judge Merryday continued: "A review of the defendants' motion reveals that the defendants persistently and resolutely cling to the belief that their accustomed and unfettered command discretion need not yield  on the narrow and specific question of the free exercise of religion  to the statutory command of RFRA or to an order under RFRA from a district court (actually, at this moment, orders from several district courts and a circuit court of appeals), the forum selected by Congress and enacted in RFRA to resolve a dispute under RFRA (in other words, Congress and the President, not the district court, chose the district court as the proper forum for service members to assert the RFRA claim asserted in this action)."

The court concluded the 20-page response by writing, "In finalizing a plan, the district judge must consider the full array of options available for conditional and final class certification, along with an array of other formidable issues. Mindful of these and other considerations and mindful both of the public interest and the interest of the litigants (not necessarily divergent in many or most respects), this action has proceeded expeditiously but carefully (with simultaneous mediation underway before the magistrate judge). Unless ordered otherwise, the district judge will continue to proceed apace to resolve the organizational, legal, and remedial complexities (assuming some successful claims) in accord with governing law."

On Wednesday, March 2, 2022, Liberty Counsel asked federal Judge Merryday for a temporary restraining order on behalf of another plaintiff, a United States Marine Corps Captain who needed relief from the shot mandate before 2 p.m. ET March 3, 2022, or faces life-altering discipline. The USMC Captain whose religious convictions prevent him from receiving the COVID shot had been ordered to receive the injection by March 3, 2022 at 3:00 p.m. or be in violation of "a lawful order" subjecting him "to punitive and/or administrative action."

Instead, the DOD extended the captain's orders to receive the shot through March 24, 2022. In the order the DOD stated, "There is no emergency, and the Court need not issue any ruling on the TRO pending full briefing of the motion for a preliminary injunction."

Therefore, apparently if the military can claim "no emergency" for one of Liberty Counsel's plaintiffs, then there is really not an urgent need for any service members to get the shots.

Liberty Counsel Founder and Chairman Mat Staver said, "The Department of Defense continues its arrogant stance toward a court of law, acting as if it is above the law. Every military branch has violated the Constitution and the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act with this unlawful COVID shot mandate. We look forward to next week's hearing to prove that our service members do not have to choose between their Christian convictions and their service to our nation."



Liberty Counsel provides broadcast quality TV interviews via Hi-Def Skype and LTN at no cost.



SOURCE Liberty Counsel



CONTACT: Mat Staver, 407-875-1776, Liberty@LC.org



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Russian propaganda efforts have redoubled since Putin launched its aggression against Ukraine a week ago. Suddenly, a host of stories has appeared in conservative media that try to rally support for Vladimir Putin because he is allegedly fighting Nazis and the New World Order in Ukraine. One of the worst examples is, perhaps, the Gateway Pundit, which has been duped into publishing stories by one Larry Johnson, whose only focus is the glorification of Russia and the smearing of Ukraine as a nation of Nazis.

We could respond by advising Russia and its advocates to worry about their own neo-Nazi infestation, but since this smear has now become widespread, it is prudent to address it.

The Nazi smear is a twisted but effective technique used by Russian propaganda and our left-wing media in equal abundance. Russia has been doing it since Stalin made it "a thing." This smear is effective because its victims try to distance themselves from one another and sometimes join in accusations, hoping others won't think of them as Nazis. It's also effective because it's extremely dirty. Trying to debunk it makes one dive deep into repulsive dirt.

Remember how Trump was smeared over Charlottesville  where did those Neo-Nazis even come from? Remember Nick Sandmann? Remember how Kyle Rittenhouse "became" a neo-Nazi for shooting at violent thugs in self-defense? Of course you do. But somehow no one remembers it when exactly the same technique is used on Ukraine.

When the Nazis occupied Ukraine in 1941, my Armenian grandfather became trapped there with four of his children, while his fifth and oldest joined the Soviet Army and was killed in action. The Nazis arrested my grandfather and sent him to a concentration camp because they decided that he looked Jewish. By some miracle, he survived and returned home to raise my father and my three aunts. Growing up, I have been a few times insulted by random antisemites who thought I was Jewish, and I know from personal experience how unfair and downright evil it is to single out people because of their ethnicity. I've written articles in support of Israel and one time was arrested for hanging pro-Israel posters on the GMU campus. Don't even bother accusing me of whitewashing a bunch of Nazis.

A lot of the anti-Ukrainian propaganda points have been growing from a widely planted story claiming that their Azov battalion is a Nazi organization. Debunking that libel today is especially difficult because the Russian influence operators have already distributed the myth around the world, all the way to the U.S. Congress. It would take an entire think-tank to shovel through that pile of "evidence."

Why have the Russian propagandists chosen that particular group? Azov is extremely effective against the Kremlin-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine. The fact is, Russian aggression was the only reason Azov was formed in the first place, so the Kremlin has only itself to blame for it.

The Azov battalion was organized in 2014 when the poorly armed and unprepared Ukrainian army was forced to fight an unexpected war against Kremlin-orchestrated "separatism" in eastern Ukraine. Seeing how the military was failing, one of the richest Ukrainian industrialists and the governor of the Dnipro Oblast, Igor Kolomoisky, spent a hefty chunk of his own money to recruit and arm a volunteer battalion to defend Ukraine. The unit was named Azov after the small Azov Sea in southern Ukraine. This was quickly followed by a series of Ukrainian victories, in which Azov played a part.

Its initial sponsor, Kolomoisky, is Jewish and has since become an Israeli citizen, living in Israel. Not exactly neo-Nazi material, but the media influencers conveniently omit that fact. The smear is as absurd as if Hitler were to spread rumors about General Patton being a Nazi so as to hinder the American war effort.

Have there been volunteers with extremist views? Surely, there have been. Extremists exist in every nation, and they tend to join militias, as such people are drawn to violence. In a life-or-death situation for the country, when every fighter and every minute counts, no one does background checks on people who volunteer to fight for a good cause. Or would you rather they stay home and send bespectacled academics to the war instead?

It's not difficult to single out a dimwit or two and provoke them to make stupid statements on record, then magnify them out of proportion in the media. The media have done it many times to American conservatives; conservatives should know better.

Were there extremist or racist soldiers fighting in George Patton's army? I bet there were a few, but it doesn't follow that Patton was one of them, or that the U.S. Army had no moral right to fight Hitler and its victory was not legitimate.

To reference American popular culture, Azov is the Ukrainian version of the Suicide Squad. Accordingly, they chose a bellicose, ominous-looking emblem of the crossed letter Z that also calls to mind a modified Ukrainian Trident but, to the critics, it appears too close to the SS emblem or the swastika. It arguably follows traditional embroidery ornaments, and, after all, we don't demonize the entire Buddhist community in Asia for the continued use of their traditional swastika symbol.

There is some scary quality about the designs one can make with the letter Z. Germans used it, Ukrainians used it, and so have the Russians in the war against Ukraine (see the illustration). Yet, if I were the Azov P.R. agent, I'd probably advise them to hire a different art director.

In the seven years since Azov was formed, it has been cleaned up to become a special unit in the Ukrainian National Guard, but the smear of being a neo-Nazi militia is still being artificially inflated out of proportion. It came to a point in January of 2021 when the battalion had to write an official refutation to a Time Magazine article that called them a "white-supremacist militia." If you remember what happened in Washington in January of 2021, you may wonder if the timing of that story was not coincidental and if a Russian influence operation may play a role in the sudden surge of "white supremacist" and "Nazi" name-calling in the American media, aimed to split and demoralize the country.

Appealing to the history of antisemitism in Ukraine isn't much proof. Ukraine is not unique here because the history of Europe, especially Russia, is littered with examples of antisemitism. What makes Ukraine unique is its current Jewish president, Zelensky  the only such head of state in the entire world outside Israel. By the logic of the Nazi smear, Azov should be fighting on the Russian side against Zelensky. But Russian propaganda has never bothered to be consistent. The more insane, the better.

By the same propaganda logic, Germany should be open for invasion by anyone willing to do so because it has a history of state-sponsored antisemitism under Hitler. Except that today's Germany is not what it was generations ago, and that is what should matter now.

It would seem that the Russian influence operation has been successful not just in planting smear stories, but also in removing the stories that counter their narrative. The existing links that support this article are in Ukrainian or Russian, so they won't be of much use in the U.S., but for those who read either of those languages, here is a detailed breakdown published by Hromadske, a Ukrainian nonprofit organization for public journalism.

Of the English-language sources, observe the debunking of one of the vile examples of the anti-Azov Russian hoaxes. On the eve of the Netherlands' referendum about relations with Ukraine, Russian propaganda released a video in which alleged "Azov members" in masks threaten Dutch citizens with violent terrorist acts and burn the Dutch flag. This example speaks volumes about the goals, methods, and targets of such operations.

Speaking of neo-Nazi videos, here's a recent one on Instagram, in which neo-Nazis swear allegiance to their Fuehrer. Only they are not Azov fighters, nor are they even Ukrainians. They are goose-stepping, black-clad young Russians declaring their undying love for the Putin regime. In other words, Putlerjugend.

The best source is saved for last. It was published by The Hill and written by Kristofer Harrison, who worked for defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld and secretary of state Condoleezza Rice and was a foreign policy adviser to Sen. Ted Cruz's presidential campaign. He is a co-founder and principal of AMS, a company that specializes in Russian information warfare.

In the article "Did California's Ro Khanna get duped by Russia's propaganda?," Harrison writes:

Congratulations, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), it appears you were just duped by Russia (and bragged about it). As a result, you promoted Russian propaganda about Ukraine's Azov Battalion being Nazis with text in the behemoth $1.3 trillion spending bill. The question is, who put you up to it? ... It is ridiculous nonsense that Ukraine is beset with a bunch of Nazis. The Russians have been pushing this foolishness for a while. In Russia, if you want to discredit someone, call them a Nazi. Putin is using it to justify his war to his subjects. Russians are not particularly keen on attacking Ukraine. But if it is to free them from the yoke of Nazis, well, that's different. The reason why the Kremlin is using information war against the Azov Battalion, specifically, is partially because they sometimes make themselves easy PR targets. These are guys with guns fighting a Russian invasion, not a PR agency with media training. But the bigger reason is that the Azov Battalion is one of the most effective defensive units. Russia can't beat them on the battlefield, so they use K Street lobbyist sellouts to help cripple them. Who wants to provide guns to fascists? Nobody. That is the ruse you fell for. ... In this instance, the Russian active measure began with an article in a publication that should know better: Foreign Policy. John Conyers read the piece on the Congressional Record. It then spread like wildfire among lazy journalists and Russia's network of fools, knaves and propagandists. ... Russia is attacking the U.S., and quisling K Street lobbyists are helping them. Help us identify them.

Propaganda surely exists on both sides, it's part of any war. But it's curious to see how, in American social media, especially among some conservatives, it has become popular to ridicule and debunk any embellishments coming out of Ukraine, with no attention whatsoever to a less noticeable, creeping insertion of anti-Ukrainian tropes in the American media, which comes not as a meme, but as an "eye-opener" of a "serious political expert."

Think about that before you make another disparaging comment about an underdog nation fighting for freedom and independence against a stronger, dictatorial neighbor. Just like some Americans on January 6, Ukrainians rebelled over a brazenly stolen election by a Kremlin-backed candidate in 2004, and then they rebelled again against a Kremlin-backed president in 2014, and they have been fighting off Russian aggression ever since. Today, Russia is bombing Ukrainian cities, and the Azov battalion is the only force that bravely stands in the way of a superior invading army, defending a strategic port city, Mariupol, on the Sea of Azov.

Image: Goo3 via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped).
Before March had arrived, we witnessed the early probing of forward Russian troops into Ukraine. Initially, this force consisted of young inexperienced troops and old equipment.

The media and inexperienced pundits celebrated Ukrainian victories and pondered over the ineffectiveness of Putins army against Ukrainian resistance.

But this stage, with raw forces and older equipment, was only the beginning. They were cannon fodder to test Ukrainian defenses in advance of the proper assault by toughened soldiers with deadly modern armaments.

Ukraine begged for experienced Western fighting forces and their sophisticated weaponry to intervene to take on the might of the massive Russian heavily armed force in static formation before the heavy tanks began to roll. But that help was not forthcoming.

We have watched grim scenes of early destruction. This is only the opening barrage. The real attack, with heavy armor and fully trained Russian soldiers, is about to begin.

Destruction? You havent seen anything yet. Or, as they say crudely in Russian, Blat!

I hope I am wrong, but I am convinced that, despite its peoples bravery, Ukraine will be outgunned and swallowed up, maybe before you get to read this article. And NATO and the United States will regret that they did not stand fully with the Ukrainians as they should have done.

Ukraine is trying to be Israel. Since 1948, we in Israel did it on our own. That is why we spent so many decades, and so much of our economy, developing our military force out of sheer necessity. That necessity drove us to become the most advanced and innovative country on earth. If we hadnt, we wouldnt exist today.

Unlike Ukraine, we didnt have the oil reserves to fuel our economy. We only had sand that we turned into a giant agricultural economy. We turned barren places into technological R&D centers in our search for superiority to outwit and outgun our adversaries and partner with moderate nations.

They now call Israel the Start-Up Nation, but that drive began out of the urge to survive.

Never Again was not, is not, an empty slogan.

Unlike Israel, then, the West has what Ukraine needs in abundance, but is too timid and hesitant to give it to them in large enough quantities.

Ukraine is, like Israel 1948, 1967, 1974, alone militarily. And if/when we finally act, whatever they receive may be too little too late.

It pains me to see the obstinacy of the democratic West, particularly in Europe, not standing shoulder to shoulder militarily with Ukraine right now. It is in Europes best interest to draw a line in the sand in Ukraine. This should be their European Stalingrad against the advance of Communism, to use a mixed historic metaphor.

I know about treaties and protocol, but that is for committees, not for a Europe that needs to stand strong against an enemy whose appetite will not be satisfied by Ukraine. They must not only tell Putin, Beyond this border, you shall not pass, but they should also stand in his path with the same stoic courage as the Ukrainians.

Image: 1967--Israelis recovering the Western Wall from its long Islamic captivity.   Pikiwiki Israel. CC BY 2.5.

I know that Ukraine is not a NATO member. That is the fault of NATO for being too appeasing to Putin. But Ukraine is a European-style democracy standing, in their military nakedness, against the advance of Russian Communism. Where better place, what better battle to wage by Europe, to stand in Ukraine rather than wait for Moldova, or Estonia, or Poland to fall.

This is not the time for committee protocols. This is the time for Europe and the United States to grow a moral spine!

Am I hopeful? Sadly not. Europe is scrambling to make up for lost time, but the embattled Ukrainians do not have that time. Communism is already battering down their door.

As for America, history shows us, in two world wars, that they are isolationists, always too late coming to the fight. It seems they prefer to wait until the enemy is destroying them on their own turf before they wake out of their stupor and get into the battle. (Pearl Harbor, anyone?)

Before Americans get involved, they muddy the waters and let others take the brunt of the battle. And that brings me to Iran.

Americas history and Ukraines present are why Israel cannot allow the United States to dictate or agree to the terms of another Munich-like agreement with the Iranian Ayatollahs over their inexorable march to a nuclear missile.

Israel cannot, must not, wait for an American Churchill to replace the current Chamberlain. We had two such Chamberlains, Carter and Clinton, acclaim Peace in our time! as they clutched false promises signed by a deceptive Palestinian leader. That danger still hangs around our necks.

Western leaders demand that we surrender historically legitimate and security essential territory to an enemy that still vows for a world without Israel. And they are shocked and accusatory because we see reality rather than surrender to a fake fantasy.

Obama, another American Chamberlain, let the Tehran deceivers progress almost to the point of them becoming a nuclear threshold state.

As we see the mess left by Biden in Afghanistan, Putins unchallenged invasion of the second-largest country in Europe, and a new Iran nuclear deal which leading Israelis describe as far worse than the last bad one, we Israelis know we stand alone.

Those dreadful words Never Again seem to be happening again.

Who will the United States or Europe sanction when the nuclear hammer comes down on Israel? Who cares? Israel certainly doesnt.

Thats why Israel has no faith in Western sanctions. We already know that no one will come and fight with us for our existence as the only truly democratic state in the Middle East because the West has shown us it hasnt got the spine to stand with a democracy against a massive Communist aggression within Europe.

If the West is not willing to stand there, it certainly wont stand here.

For Israel, Ukraine was a test case, and the West failed that test.

Barry Shaw is the Senior Associate of the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies.
Could it be any clearer that the mainstream media actively wants to divide the country and make us hate one another? How else to explain that they are constantly running stories like this at the top of their website front pages: Video showing how police treat Black and White teens in mall fight sparks outrage.

If you want to believe that headline, dont watch the video.

What do you see in the video, objectively? Two male teens fighting, and the fight being broken up by two police officers, who handle the chaos in a decisive way that has nothing demonstrable to do with any racial animus and that results in no physical harm, arrests, or charges to either teen.

But CNN is here, of course, to make sure you wont see the video absent the correct underlying narrative to help you penetrate below what your eyes see to whats really going on.

According to the narrator, its obvious that the white teen is the aggressor: whites are always looking to violently attack blacks, who are always innocent and defensive victims of that aggression. But the video evidence is more complicated. The white teen points his finger at the black teen, but he does not touch him. The black teen is the one who first initiates physical contact by shoving the white teens hand aside. The white teen responds to this by pushing the black teen. The black teen is the first one to throw punches and, in this footage at least, he throws many more punches than the white teen does.

Who is the aggressor, then? Its not clear how youd easily determine that from this, though if by aggressor you mean the one who initiated physical contact, then your answer is not the one CNN gives. To get a better perspective, we would need to know more about what happened prior to the finger-pointing. CNN tells us the black teen claims he was protecting another kid from the white teen. Notably, CNN does not give us the white teens perspective. That is not an accidental omission. It is in keeping with the narrative.

The CNN narrator then says the white teen tackled the black teen and then threw him to the ground. What actually happened, by the evidence in the video, is that the black teen began to throw punches after the white teens shove and the latter closed the distance between them to take away the black teens punching ability, driving him backward into the couch. Then both wound up falling to the floor. As they were getting up to continue the fight, the black teen lost his balance and fell.

As for the police halting the fight, the narrative of endless racist violence against blacks shapes the CNN account entirely, when more obvious explanations fit the video evidence and common sense better. How much of the difference in how the two teens were taken under control is accounted for by the fact that one officer here is male and one female? The female is the one who treated the participant in the brawl she had to deal with less aggressively -- though notably only after her male partner had physically separated the fighters by shoving them apart. Males are more aggressive than females, and that includes male police officers.

It is not clear from the video if the black teen struggled at all with the officer, and perhaps the officer used more force than needed to subdue him. It would be invaluable to hear the accounts of the officers involved to get more insight into how things happened. There is no obvious reason, though, to imagine that the officers made the decision only to handcuff one because of his race. Are we to believe that the male officer made the split-second decision that he was going to leave the white teen to his female partner because he wanted a chance to tackle the black teen? If their physical positions had been reversed and the black teen had been closer to the female officer and thus easier for the male officer to push in her direction, I would not feel at all confident betting the white teen, left to the male officer, wouldnt have gotten the handcuff treatment, especially if he resisted.

The question of unnecessary escalation by police is a legitimate one in some settings. But the matter is contextual. What else do officers know about the scene in which this is taking place? Have other mall fights in that area in the recent past involved weapons? Did those reporting to police suggest the fight was more serious than it was? We dont know any of that, and we would need to hear from the police to learn it. But the narrative says police are always racist and blacks are always innocent victims of police racism.

CNN does not give us the perspective of police or the white teen, but they sprint right over to the local NAACP for their insights. In their analysis, the white teen was comfortably shown a seat by police. It is clear in the video that, after the fighters were thrown apart by the male officer, the white teen fell back onto the couch purely because of his position relative to it, and the female officer ascertained quickly that he was pacified and turned to help her colleague with the other teen. The NAACP perspective is useless if your effort is to understand. But the narrative is never about understanding. Its about making reality fit the preconceived conception.

Here's something I do feel safe betting on: If, when more facts come in, and the narrative presented by CNN turns out looking more questionable than it already does after an objective look at the video, there will be no correction of the record. They will just rely on the public to forget the case and then eagerly move on to the next thing they can bend and twist to fit the narrative.

Image: CNN
Across the entire political spectrum, America and the West generally have swallowed the Putin is Hitler bait even more completely than the covid bait. Western governments, politicians, and grossly ignorant celebrities are now deliberately engendering and inflaming intense hatred of anything and anyone Russian.

This attitude toward a nuclear-armed nation, whose political and military leaders, within the memory of living man, experienced Nazi Germanys war of annihilation against them, is foolhardy in the extreme. It is not only productive of immense danger to the entire planet, it is unjustified when the unfolding Ukraine tragedy is viewed in light of pertinent recent history.

Without a doubt, Putin is a ruthless dictator whose invasion of Ukraine is to be condemned. The destruction and carnage of World War II should have settled once and for all that the horror of modern weaponry has rendered war obsolete as an arbiter of either national interest or national borders.

Agitprop tweeted by Ukraine

That said, what world leaders should be striving for now is a prompt end to the Ukraine war, the most perilous for humanity since World War II. World War I, in effect the prelude to World War II, arose out of events that at the time, and still in retrospect, seem far less momentous and threatening than those now unfolding in Ukraine today.

The real danger is that Russia, highly aggrieved by the conduct of the West since the Soviet Unions demise (whether its aggrievement is justified or not), and increasingly isolated, may be tempted to resort to weapons far more destructive than any yet employed in the unfolding war; or that the Wests military leaders believing that it might do so, might urge preemptive action.

The danger of the present circumstances cant be emphasized too strongly. One rogue colonel, one mistakenly targeted missile, a single false flag Chinese Communist operation, or simple Russian fatigue at casualties caused by Western weapons  any of these events, and two generations of history-ignorant Western adults could quickly learn how easily wars can enlarge and spin out of control.

But instead of working to promptly end the conflict, Western, especially American, leaders are demonizing Putin and Russia -- as if the Russian attack were an utterly unforeseen and inexplicable act of wanton thuggery. Though utterly to be condemned, Russias invasion of Ukraine was in fact motivated by an accumulating sense of grievance and threat, all caused by the Wests persistent refusal to acknowledge Russias security concerns, born of both its historic and more recent bitter experiences.

The Russian attack was entirely foreseeable, and the events that produced it are known to every Western diplomat with an IQ that exceeds double digits; justifiably or not, Putin and Russia have felt misled and lied to, and that Russias legitimate security interests have been ignored by a pattern of Western behavior going back to the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.

An end to the Ukraine conflict, and the avoidance of something much worse, is possible only by honestly recognizing how we got to this point.

And that recognition starts with acknowledging that since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 the West, led by the United States, has rubbed the losers nose in its defeat, and has consistently ignored the psychology of a country that eighty years ago was the object of a massive aggressive war of conquest and annihilation initiated by a western nation.

Instead of respecting Russias historically driven fears, and doing all we could to bring this immense, slightly paranoid, and heavily armed country, with an exclusively authoritarian past, into the community of nations, significant Western interests -- the Pentagon, Western arms producers, and intelligence communities -- have pursued their own goals of maintaining Russia as an enemy. They have tormented the bear for at least 15 years and the Ukraine war is the result.

Consider the history:

The Eastward Expansion of NATO

Consider the 1990 talks leading up to the Soviet Unions acceptance of German reunification and ultimately to the 1991 collapse and disintegration of the Soviet Unions eastern European empire and of the Soviet Union itself, talks led by Secretary of State James Baker for the first President Bush. Soviet leaders claim they were given to understand that there would be no eastward expansion of NATO, an alliance formed explicitly to counter the perceived Soviet threat, hence, an alliance perceived by newly shrunken Russia as at least potentially hostile.

There is debate whether these assurances were formal, or were given at all. But that debate is beside the point: Any western diplomat would have known that in 1991, and for the then near future, any eastward expansion of NATO would be somewhere between highly unwelcome and overtly threatening to Russia. Given Russias history, this psychology was and remains understandable.

In view of this reality, in the decades after 1991, if the West had been genuinely desirous of peacefully integrating Russia into Europe, it would have avoided expanding the NATO alliance toward Russias borders. A period of undisputable independence for the former eastern European satellites and westernmost ex-Soviet republics, accompanied by their balanced relations with east and west, would have been the prudent course for all concerned.

The opposite occurred. In 1999, Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic were all admitted to NATO. Russia grumbled but did nothing. In March of 2004, still worse from Russias standpoint, seven more European nations were folded into NATO: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Bulgaria, Slovakia, and Slovenia. Russia objected more vigorously (its parliament condemned the action), but still simmered without action. A month after the second NATO accession, April of 2004, western-supplied F-16s were patrolling the skies over the Baltics from bases that had been Soviet a few short years earlier. This is rubbing a former enemys nose in its defeat.

Then, in April of 2008 NATO met in Romania and, further affronting Russia, gave assurance to both Georgia and Ukraine of eventual membership. Eventual membership was a compromise with then-US President George W. Bushs urging that the two countries be fast-tracked into NATO. European leaders resisted the United States more aggressive position explicitly to avoid excessively antagonizing Russia. Revealing that the assurance of eventual NATO membership for Ukraine was not only resented by Russia but controversial in Ukraine itself, there were demonstrations in several Ukrainian cities against NATO membership.

Shortly after NATOs provocative 2008 promise of membership to Georgia and Ukraine, war broke out between Georgian pro-Russian separatists and Georgia. The offer of NATO membership to Georgia almost certainly played a role in August of 2008, when Russia intervened on behalf of the Georgian separatists in South Ossetia and Abkhazia, resulting in a humiliating defeat for the leader of Georgia.

From then on, August of 2008 at the latest, no one at Foggy Bottom could credibly claim not to know of Russias resentment and hypersensitivity to the previous, and threatened further, eastward expansion of NATO. From then on, to non-brain dead diplomats it should have been clear that Russia simply would not tolerate NATO membership for either Georgia or Ukraine -- both former Soviet Republics, both directly bordering Russia, and, in the case of Ukraine, a nation bound up historically with Russias sense of its own founding -- in the 9th through 12th centuries Kievan Rus was the cradle of Russian Christianity and civilization -- until the catastrophic arrival of the Mongols destroyed everything, and Russia, now farther to the east and north, had to begin all over again.

The 2010 Election and The Maidan

But the two eastward expansions of NATO, in 1999 and 2004, followed by the offer of eventual membership to Georgia and Ukraine were not to be the Wests last affront to Russia. Roughly six years later came a momentous development that, in retrospect, probably sealed Russias absolute unwillingness to countenance further (i.e., Georgian or Ukrainian) expansion of NATO.

In 2010, in an election generally acknowledged as fair, Ukraine elected a moderately pro-Russian President by a clear margin. Victor Yanukovych received just about 49% of the vote, to 45.5% for pro-Western Yulia Tymoshenko. Unsurprisingly, Yanukovych received strong support in the eastern and southern parts of largely Russian-speaking Ukraine, while Tymoshenkos support becomes ever more overwhelming as one moves west on the Ukraine map. The blue-red 2010 Ukraine electoral map is reminiscent of the 2016 and 2020 US presidential election maps of, say, Illinois, all blue in the northeast around Chicago, all red elsewhere. In sharp political and cultural divisions, Ukraine makes a pair with America.

In the late fall of 2013, Yanukovychs wariness of the west and pro-Russian sympathies became more apparent, as he refused to sign a trade accord with the EU and seemed headed for an agreement with Russia. It was at this point that the Maidan broke out, a series of ever more violent demonstrations, in Kyiv and elsewhere, with violence on both sides and no indisputably clear villain (except to partisans). There was a real atrocity in Odessa, a largely pro-Russian city, when over 40 pro-Yanukovych demonstrators were trapped in a large public building and died, either from the fire that was started by someone or in trying to jump from the flames to safety. Russia was further enraged.

What is clear in the 2013/14 Maidan is that the US, both elected and bureaucratic officials, as well as shadowy US organizations and personalities, sympathized with and encouraged the anti-Yanukovych demonstrators. John McCain, ever an enthusiastic supporter of US power projection and well-known detractor of Putin, gave an inflammatory speech in Kyiv supporting the anti-Yanukovych forces in which he said, We are here to support your just cause, the sovereign right of Ukraine to determine its own destiny freely and independently. McCain neglected to mention that Ukraine, without his help, had already voted to determine its own destiny by electing Yanukovych in the 2010 election, a free and independent decision that McCain was helping to overturn. And US Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland worked largely behind the scenes for the same, anti-Yanukovych side.

The upshot was that Yanukovych, democratically elected in 2010, was driven from office and fled to Russia.

Russia itself has always claimed to believe, with more than slight justification, that the US and its allies sponsored and assisted the movement that drove Yanukovych from office. There is absolutely no doubt that Yanukovych was unpopular in western Ukraine and popular in eastern and southern Russian-speaking Ukraine. There is equally no doubt that the US, at minimum in the persons of Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and Senator John McCain, but also probably with assistance from other individuals and organizations, mixed into this ugly and violent conflict on behalf of those seeking to oust the elected president.

Russia watched all this interference by the West on its doorstep and seethed.

This event unquestionably made a deep impression on Putin, and shortly after these events, fearful of losing the long-standing Russian naval base at Sevastopol on the Black Sea to the newly installed pro-Western government, Russia marched into Crimea. Shortly thereafter Crimea voted overwhelmingly to become part of Russia (which, prior to Nikita Khrushchevs quixotic 1954 gifting of Crimea to Ukraine, Crimea always had been). That plebiscite has been overwhelmingly seen as accurately reflecting the will of those living in Crimea.

Also, shortly after the Maidan events, the easternmost provinces of Ukraine, Luhansk, and Donetsk, where Russians and Russian-speaking Ukrainians overwhelmingly predominate and had overwhelmingly supported Yanukovych, sought more independence from Kyiv. Kyivs response was to send the Ukrainian army into those regions, leading to a civil war that has never really stopped. That war has been costly in physical destruction and lost lives. At various times Russia has provided military and humanitarian aid to the separatist regions and has sent military volunteers to aid the populations of both provinces.

Just prior to invading Ukraine, Russia recognized the independence from Ukraine of both Luhansk and Donetsk, both of which the day before had declared their independence.

What can be made of all this history? How does it relate to Russias ongoing invasion of Ukraine and to the tragedy that is now enveloping that country? And to the risks to civilizational survival inherent in this war?

Let me suggest a few conclusions:

First, nothing in the foregoing historical narrative justifies Russias invasion of Ukraine, an invasion that is rightly receiving worldwide condemnation, and that inevitably will make acknowledgment of Russias security concerns -- if any such acknowledgment is appropriate or possible -- more difficult because such acknowledgment would now be denounced as rewarding aggression.

Second, Russias invasion of Ukraine was not the willful, mad, brutish act of a Hitlerite thug bent on conquest. It was the act of a national leader who -- rightly or wrongly -- actually perceived a threat to his own nation from a series of acts by the West that placed a government, troops, and weapons systems on his nations border that he perceived hostile to his nation.

Third, the West for thirty years has understood, but been indifferent to, the understandable psychological makeup of a nation with Russias recent history and, as a result, has acted in a way guaranteed to bring about Russian perceptions of encirclement and threat that led to the ongoing invasion.

Fourth, the danger to the security of the world inherent in what is occurring now in Ukraine cannot be overestimated  the near-universal, over-the-top Western condemnatory rhetoric directed at all things Russian, combined with the unprecedented coordinated isolating measures, is likely to heighten Russias sense of injustice and threat and to magnify the risk of a general, catastrophic war.

Fifth, ending the fighting quickly, and getting the parties to the negotiating table, are the urgent needs of the moment; this goal cannot be achieved in an environment of total denunciation of Russia and absolute refusal to recognize the legitimacy of any of its concerns.

Sixth, I have no idea what the terms of a comprehensive resolution of Ukrainian and Russian concerns would be, but Im convinced Vladimir Putin will not allow his country to be defeated on the battlefield; and that the longer the conflict goes on the greater the risk of a general war through desperation or accident. To say that this is in no ones interest is to state the obvious.

Western diplomats should be burning the midnight oil now, searching for ways to bring this conflict to a speedy halt and to fashion a final agreement acceptable, if not pleasing, to the parties. They should be restraining, not encouraging, the uninformed and overheated rhetoric that impedes any opportunity for negotiation. In July and August of 1914, their great-great-grandfathers had a chance to avert a general war that no Western leader wanted. They failed, and World War I (and World War II) resulted. The descendants of those failed diplomats have a chance today to redeem their offices if not their ancestors.

The alternative looks increasingly grim.
In Texas, the stage is set for the anticipated Abbott vs. O'Rourke gubernatorial election in eight months. Incumbent Texas governor Greg Abbott gave a victory speech following his primary victory highlighting job creation and the strong state economy. On the Democrat side, Beto O'Rourke is still talking about the power grid and a few other things.

The People of Texas Campaign will focus partly on Abbott's "radical agenda," as O'Rourke's campaign puts it.

"While Abbott tries to divide and distract us, we are focused on uniting Texans around a shared vision for great jobs, world-class schools, affordable health care, and a future where everyone in this state can live to their full potential," O'Rourke said in a news release Wednesday.

Gov. Abbott spoke about the Texas economy:

"Tonight, Republicans sent a message: they want to keep Texas the land of opportunity and prosperity for absolutely everybody, the prosperity we've delivered over the past eight years," Abbott said in his victory speech late Tuesday night. "Texans face a very profound question this election: do we take a left turn that leads to more government and less freedom?"

So the stage is set.

At this point, it looks as though Gov. Abbott has a stronger hand  i.e., job growth and the number of relocations to Texas.

On the other hand, Mr. O'Rourke avoids specifics and speaks about the lights that went out a year ago. And does not mention President Biden.

At the moment, Gov. Abbott leads Mr. O'Rourke by 8.8 points. Over the next few weeks, the governor will likely be endorsed by his fellow Republicans, Mr. Alan West and Mr. Don Huffines. It should give him an uptick in the approval polls. Who endorses Mr. O'Rourke now? I don't know, but don't expect V.P. Harris or Sen. Bernie Sanders to visit Texas anytime soon.

By the way, the GOP did well in south Texas, the most Hispanic area of the state: "Republicans celebrate in Texas, as Democrats gird for November."

Gov. Abbott is saying the GOP will carry the Hispanic vote in November, and that looks like a better bet after Tuesday's primary. And, once again, Beto is still talking about the lights that went out 13 months ago.

PS: Click for my videos and podcasts at Canto Talk.

Image: Gage Skidmore via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0.
If you have been monitoring the coverage of the conflict in Ukraine, it is amply clear that a narrative is being pushed.

President Volodymyr Zelensky is being compared to Winston Churchill during World War II; he is leading his people during perilous times to become an inspiring figure. He refused a safe passage offer from the U.S. with the quip: "I need ammunition, not a ride." He streams videos from the deserted streets of Ukraine and posts photos with his Cabinet. Photos of Zelensky surface in military gear on the battlefront. To sum it up, Zelensky is being portrayed as Churchill, Rambo, and a social media influencer all rolled into one.

Not to be left behind, a former Miss Ukraine and the first lady of Ukraine, Olena Zelensky, reportedly joined the army. There are teary moments of Ukrainian soldiers bidding farewell to their families and children in the streets waving at them as they depart for war. There were photos of Russian soldiers holding Ukrainian girls as hostages. We see harrowing footage of injured Ukrainian children, slain Ukrainian soldiers, and explosions. We see courage as a brave Ukrainian child stands up to a Russian soldier, almost ordering him to leave her country.

It is all so poignant and inspiring until you fact-check the images.

The photos of Zelensky in military gear were from February 11, 2021, and April 9, 2021. The photo of the Russian soldier holding Ukrainian girls at gunpoint was a 2005 photo from the West Bank. Neither the first lady of Ukraine nor the former Miss Ukraine is joining the armed forces. The teary farewell of Ukrainian soldiers amid the invasion was actually a photo of the happy homecoming moment of U.S. Marines. Ukrainian children sent off to the army for war with Russia was an old image from 2016. Then there is a video that shows a young Ukrainian girl standing up to a Russian soldier  which is, in fact, a video shot in 2012 in the West Bank. A video from Syria was falsely shared as a Russian attack on Ukraine. A heartbreaking photo of an injured child from the Syrian war was shared as the victim of the Russia-Ukraine conflict. A poignant moment from the movie was shared as scenes from battle-torn Ukraine

Such instances are numerous, and all show the Ukrainian side in a good light, which makes it clear who the creators are.

They prove the adage that truth is the first casualty of war.

It is also interesting to note that Zelensky has been seen on deserted dark streets of Ukraine or in indoor locations but never in public places in Ukraine where the date can be verified. Now, there is a possibility that he remains behind closed doors for security reasons.

An amazing 91 percent of Ukrainians approve of Zelensky's performance. This is good news for Zelensky, who was struggling with just 28 percent of public approval after the pandemic.

The videos keep flooding the zone, and the media dutifully report them. Yesterday, a moving video appeared to show a captured Russian soldier breaking down in tears as he sips tea and Ukrainians call his mother to tell her he's OK.

Remarkable video circulating on Telegram. Ukrainians gave a captured Russian soldier food and tea and called his mother to tell her hes ok. He breaks down in tears. Compare the compassion shown here to Putins brutality. pic.twitter.com/KtbHad8XLm  Christopher Miller (@ChristopherJM) March 2, 2022

Even news organizations such as the BBC use mobile phone footage whose authenticity they cannot verify. They introduce it with a disclaimer, but the question remains: why show it if it cannot be verified?

Let's have a look at Zelensky and his tenure in office, so far, before the war broke.

Zelensky won the presidential election in 2019 after much of his campaign was allegedly bankrolled by one of Ukraine's richest  and most corrupt  oligarchs, Igor Kolomoisky.

Corruption remains rampant and deep-rooted in Ukraine. There are allegations that new anti-oligarch laws were used to restrict the activities of oligarchs who do not support Zelensky. Corruption charges aimed at Zelensky's main rival, Petro Poroshenko, his predecessor as president, are regarded as politically motivated by observers. There has been an allegation of considerable corruption and cronyism.

During recent months, there has been a surge in attempts by Zelensky to control the media. This included pressure on publication owners, demands for political talk shows, attempts to cancel the screening of a documentary film, and threats of criminal prosecution against media outlets and journalists.

Over the years, neo-Nazism has earned the Ukrainian government's implicit endorsement. The Ukrainian National Guard is already home to the Azov Battalion, which has neo-Nazi leanings. The logo of the Azov Battalion comprises two neo-Nazi emblems  the Wolfsangel and the Sonnenrad. The National Guard of Ukraine has shared a video on its Twitter account that shows Azov fighters greasing bullets with pig fat, ostensibly to be used against Muslim Chechens deployed to their country as Russia steps up its military assault on Ukraine.

Following Russia's invasion, there have been reports of the Ukrainian government using citizens as human shields.

Indian students described the increasingly violent, antagonistic, and racist behavior meted out to them by Ukrainian authorities at the borders. There have also been charges of racism. African, Asian and Caribbean people, many of whom are students, have shared reports and footage of themselves being prevented from leaving the country owing to their race.

We must remember that those cheering the Ukrainian regime are still claiming that President Trump colluded with Russia's President Vladimir Putin to rig the 2016 elections and that the protests on Jan. 6, 2020, that went overboard were an insurrection. They now baselessly blame Trump for this conflict because he is "weakening NATO." The long-term goal is, was, and will always remain to prevent Trump from winning the White House in 2024.

Beyond the petty Democrat politics, we must obviously sympathize with regular Ukrainians. Their suffering is unfathomable. They have lost their loved ones, their homes, their places of work, sources of income, and hope. They are living in fear. Families have been torn apart. Some will have to live as refugees in neighboring nations. They may suffer from PTSD apart from physical impairments.

So what do we make of the Ukrainian regime and President Zelensky? Could the conflict have transformed him into a different man, or is this all a charade?

Let the conflict end or recede, and let those affected by the conflict be interviewed. Let historians and documentarians gather information from all sides. Let everything be judged dispassionately and objectively. Only then can we pass a verdict. The media and the public must restrain the urge to confer members of the Ukrainian regime with superlative epithets merely based on social media posts or poignant utterances from a former actor.

Global powers must be cautious while arming the Ukrainians without supervision. These arms could be misused or sold after the conflict is over, and the millions may end up in personal accounts. Aid has to be sent, and aid workers must make sure the aid reaches the people directly and is not siphoned off by middlemen.

For every bit of information we receive from any of the media, including social media, we have to have a healthy amount of skepticism but an open mind while we hope for peace.

Image: Twitter screen shot.
Has there ever been a pairing of a POTUS and a veep where neither one could be counted on to answer a straightforward question without becoming incoherent? The fact that we now live on a knife's edge with the potential for nuclear war greater than at any time since the Cuban Missile Crisis makes the subnormal leadership capacity of the Executive Branch all the more alarming.

Watch and wince as Kamala is asked a question that any briefing book would have covered: will the administration sanction Russia's oil and gas sector?

Her answer:

As it relates to what we need to do domestically as well as what we need to do in terms of this issue generally, we have, as the president said, reevaluated what we're doing.

NBC asks Kamala Harris if Biden will sanction Russia's oil and gas industry.



Harris responds: "As it relates to what we need to do domestically as well as what we need to do in terms of this issue generally, we have, as the president said, reevaluated what we're doing" pic.twitter.com/7ZRn9cIFiu  RNC Research (@RNCResearch) March 2, 2022

Stay to the end (if you can stand it) to hear her pronounce "pundits" as "pundints."

Perhaps most alarming of all, whoever is pulling the strings on the Biden presidency doesn't seem to realize that Kamala is an imbecile. Unless, that is, this story in The Hill was planted as a fake, a diversion:

The White House is actively discussing sending Vice President Harris to Warsaw, Poland, and Bucharest, Romania, in the coming days to show solidarity with Ukraine as it faces an escalating Russian invasion, sources familiar with the conversations tell The Hill. The discussions involve sending Harris to visit troops stationed in Romania and potentially to the border with Ukraine, where a refugee crisis has seen more than 1 million people flee that country since the Russian attack. The trip could happen in the coming weeks, one source said, adding that there is no active dialogue about sending President Biden to the region.

Imagine the effect of a Harris visit on the heads of Poland and Romania. Will they be reassured about America's leadership role?

The backroom bosses of the Democrat party who foisted this duo on the American people have a lot to answer for. Let us hope the potential for nuclear catastrophe inherent in the current crisis does not come to pass.

Photo credit: Twitter video screen grab.
Russia's attack on Ukraine has prompted a lot of noble and industrious responses from foreigners around the world  from the warm welcome that ordinary Polish and Romanian citizens have extended to fleeing Ukrainian refugees to the Pittsburgh professor who raised $800,000 in a day to help Ukraine with humanitarian needs to gourmet chef Jose Andres's World Central Kitchen operation to cook for and feed Ukrainian refugees to the Animal Food Bank's effort, which is delivering relief to pet owners, to Project Hope, which is shipping medical supplies to Ukraine, to the millions of people around the world who have peacefully demonstrated their support for Ukraine and its uphill war against an aggressor. Whether it's lighting a candle, fasting for Ukraine, sending money, or doing something more, much of the world is mobilizing to help.

But then there's Sen. Lindsey Graham, who, instead of rolling up his sleeves in some little way, has gotten out the old jawbone, and it's not helping.

Is there a Brutus in Russia? Is there a more successful Colonel Stauffenberg in the Russian military?



The only way this ends is for somebody in Russia to take this guy out.



You would be doing your country - and the world - a great service.  Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) March 4, 2022

See, he's got it all figured out. No Putin, no problem. He's calling on someone else to go do the dirty work (not himself, of course) of getting Putin out of the picture by killing him off, and the whole thing will be fixed and off the front pages.

Yes, sometimes a targeted killing works, as it did in the case of Iran's Qassem Soleimani, but more often, it doesn't. Did Charlotte Corday's 1793 assassination of the vicious Jacobin leader Jean-Paul Marat end the terror in France? Nope, it got worse. How did Stauffenberg's bid to kill Hitler work out for him? Hitler survived, and the war got worse. How'd the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, which put the U.S. in the hands of revanchists, help the ruined South recover from the war? How'd Julius Caesar's assassination work out for Brutus or Rome in general? Again, it all got worse.

In other words, what makes Graham think something worse wouldn't follow in Russia with Putin picked off? The killing of crazed Marxist Eric Gairy in Grenada in 1997 led to the even crazier and more brutal Marxist dictatorship of Bernard Coard in 1983. There are some unconfirmed reports that reported CIA attempts to off the vile Fidel Castro in the early 1960s led to Castro having a hand in the assassination of John F. Kennedy as revenge.

And to take probably the most relevant example, the failed assassination attempt on Vladimir Lenin in 1918 led to his declaration of the Red Terror in the new Soviet Union.

Bottom line: These things don't work out quite the way the would-be assassins think they will work out  and they almost always lead to something worse.

The open call to kill is particularly unwise, given who Graham's target is: Vladimir Putin, who's more than a little familiar with state-sponsored assassinations of people who get in his way. Putin knows all about assassinations. Putin may put assassinations back on his memo board now that Graham has declared the field open.

Worse still, Putin's now isolated and paranoid, refusing to even allow his closest advisors to get within knife's reach or open window's reach of him physically. Those long tables where meetings are held in the news photos raise just that issue.

What does calling for the assassination of a guy who's already paranoid do to his mind? Does it make him more reasonable, more willing to end his war? Does it make him easier to negotiate to end this war on Ukraine? Well, an educated guess on Putin suggests that it more likely validates his already galloping paranoia.

We certainly can see it in the Russian press, controlled by Putin, which has made lots of hay on Graham's call to kill Putin.

Here's RT News's take, which is featured prominently on its website:

Republican Senator Lindsey Graham pleaded on Thursday for "somebody in Russia" to "step up to the plate" and assassinate President Vladimir Putin, and who would thus do the country and the world "a great service." The Russian ambassador to Washington has rebuked the remarks, calling them "unacceptable and outrageous." The South Carolina senator advocated assassinating Putin during an appearance on Fox News, and cited historic examples of plots to kill famous political leaders, including Julius Caesar and Adolf Hitler.

The Russian propaganda site brings up the various U.S. attempts to assassinate Castro, as well as the targeted bombing of Libya's Moammar Gaddafi (again, how'd that assassination work out for Libya?), as "proof" that the U.S. is a very assassination-minded place and therefore Graham's threat must be taken seriously.

Putin is already so paranoid that ordinary Russians expect him to declare martial law soon. Thousands of Russians are now heading for the Belarusian, Finnish, and Baltic states' borders to escape that anticipated declaration, and it's sparking an atmosphere of panic. Now we have this, from Graham.

Putin could retaliate against the U.S. for this kind of talk  with an assassination of his own, claiming it to be "defensive," just as he claims his attack on Ukraine is "defensive," because he has his internal logic about this, and now he has something from Graham to work with.

It's just a very bad idea that Graham didn't have to bring up and pin onto the official dialogue from the U.S.

Assassination as a state policy is a very bad idea that could easily draw the U.S. into conflict.

And what is this based on? Well, probably a lot of hubris left over from the George W. Bush post-9/11 era, where civil liberties and rule of law were subsumed to the war on terror and everything was OK for the government to empower itself based on that logic for one. But even that didn't work, and Graham's unwise "solution" to ending the Ukraine war now gives Putin some self-justification for whatever it is he does next  and incredibly, Graham's tweet is likely nothing more than the popping off of someone who doesn't think things through.

Graham is not helping things with this disastrous brain fart that Putin will take seriously and will get meaner from as a result. Ukraine is serious business, and the embattled state is under mortal and sustained attack, taking crushing blows. Graham needs to sit down now and try to think of something helpful to do for Ukraine instead of brainlessly stoking Putin's paranoia.

Image: Wikidata, CC BY-SA 4.0.
Asra Nomani, journalist and parent, testified on March 1 to the House Judiciary Committee on Critical Race Theory in education. She brought children's books such as Not My Idea to show how radical ideologies appear in kindergarten materials: "Whiteness is a bad deal... it always was," communicates this book to young minds. This is one of many books that dumb down decades-old fringe critical theories from academia to present to children as "real" history.

The debate over books in public-school libraries has become a political battleground. In progressive counties, school boards use this debate to intimidate parents. Mark Robinson, the lieutenant governor of North Carolina, just released a statement clarifying his arguments against books like Gender Queer and The 1619 Project. Unfortunately, the emphasis on diversity and inclusion in early literature pushes aside the children's books that we should be introducing to our most innocent.

Recently, I read a favorite book from my childhood  Petunia by Roger Duvosin  to a lower elementary class. The kids loved it. They talked excitedly afterward about the importance of reading. The message is powerful. Petunia is a silly goose (literally). She overhears a man talking about the importance of books. She finds a book and carries it with her, thinking she is now wise. She boldly shares her "wisdom" with fellow animals, of course causing more confusion than clarity. Despite her errant advice, she grows prouder and prouder, and her neck stretches longer and longer. Ultimately, she finds a box and tells the farm animals it is safe to open because it reads "Candies" when it actually reads "Danger Firecrackers." She is an expert  for, after all, she carries a book.

A large explosion ensues! Burned and injured animals lie scattered around the farm. "Petunia's pride and wisdom had exploded with the firecrackers," reads the book. The silly goose recognizes, "It was not enough to carry wisdom under my wing; I must put it in my mind and in my heart."

Social justice in K12 education is the current box of firecrackers to the silly geese of the left. Social-justice ideologues think the box label reads "diversity," when the container holds Critical Race Theory, which will ultimately explode and burn us all. Look at social-justice celebrities, for example. Last fall, the media asked LeBron James about a book he was reading at a post-game press conference: The Autobiography of Malcolm X. Mr. James gave a generic answer that, to many, suggested he hadn't really read the book. He was merely carrying it under his wing while becoming prouder and prouder. Jason Whitlock commented, "Inauthenticity is my problem with LeBron. His headfirst dive into politics and social justice warrioring has made him as phony an athlete as we've ever seen. He's a full-blown politician willing to say and do anything to advance an agenda."

It isn't enough to carry books around, to posture pretentiously about social justice causes in front of cameras. Dangerous unanticipated events have resulted and will result that scar society. Petunia, the silly goose, learned this the hard way.

Unfortunately, not only are leftists indoctrinating children with racial incitement as Ms. Nomani testified, but they are erasing the books that teach us to put wisdom in our minds and hearts. Federal IDEA grant funds, specified for preschool children in North Carolina, funded a teacher training program based in Critical Race Theory. The training materials included how to teach children to question "norms based in whiteness." It also told teachers to "avoid commercial cartoon-based materials including animals." Teachers should use only authentic representations. No more learning about silly geese. Instead, our children will follow the path of an uninformed and inauthentic LeBron James. Will our social justiceoriented celebrities and ideologues ever learn the lessons that Petunia and her injured friends realized at great cost?

Only if we return books centered in morality, humility, and creativity to our most innocent will we overcome the critical theory movement.

Image: Dragonfly Books.
King Madigan of Illinois is finally in trouble. What took so long?

Here is the headline: "Former IL House speaker Michael Madigan indicted on racketeering, bribery, more."

Here in Illinois, it is hard to imagine how many people were beneficiaries of Madigan's political favors (kickbacks) and how many people participated in paying bribes to Madigan to get political favors in his over 30 years as speaker and fifty years in office.

There is no way Democrats throughout Illinois didn't know of the no-show jobs and other political favors he handed out, so they were complicit in the corruption.

If journalists had any desire to root out corruption, they would have been able to find it.

Madigan had control of everything in the House yet handed out chairmanships like candy to people who supported him. As chairman, they got raises and bigger pensions, so the taxpayers were screwed.

Whenever citizens of Illinois got enough signatures to get referenda on the ballot for independent legislative maps, or term limits, Madigan had judges who would say the referenda were invalid.

We couldn't allow the people to have the power.

Politicians in Illinois and throughout the country frequently pass limits on what the public can give to candidates. What they never limit is what politicians like Madigan can give to other politicians because they are special. They crave power.

It is probably incalculable how much taxpayers, utility payers, and others had to pay due to Madigan's and others' criminal schemes to enrich themselves. Illinois has a constitutional provision to balance the budget, yet in Madigan's fifty years in office, Illinois ran up more than $100 billion in actual debt and well over $100 billion in unfunded liabilities. Abuse of power is extremely expensive...to others.

This brings up the role of the lapdog press not acting as a watchdog.

The media have known for years about how many kickbacks the Clintons and their foundation doled out and don't care.

They know how many laws Hillary broke with her private server and don't care.

They know how many women the Clintons physically and mentally abused and don't care.

Why is careerist, corrupt Hillary treated as a viable candidate for president and treated as a reliable news source? Remember this?

Cash Flowed to Clinton Foundation amid Russian Uranium Deal

The media have also known for years how Joe Biden lined his family's pockets with kickbacks for years from foreign sources. They not only don't care but also intentionally bury stories to hide the truth from the public when they campaign for him and his leftist agenda.

The corrupt Obama administration, the Obama-Biden Justice Department, the EPA, and the CFPB shook down corporations and handed kickbacks to liberal groups who supported them and their leftist agenda.

Most of the media not only don't care but also pretended that the Obama-Biden administration was scandal-free as they intentionally misled the public.

My educated guess is that the media would have had a collective cow if Trump had slush funds and gave kickbacks to conservative groups. There would have been wall-to-wall coverage.

The media might spot the rampant lawlessness and corruption if they didn't spend so much time targeting Trump and regurgitating talking points to promote the leftist agenda to destroy America.

Trump must have been pretty clean in 2016 if the DNC and Hillary campaigns had to resort to paying over $10 million to a foreign national to create a fictional document to destroy him.

Image: Screen shot from WGN video, posted on shareable YouTube.
President Biden is more worried about Russians crossing their border with Ukraine than he is about the Russians crossing our border with Mexico.

The problem with America's porous southern border and an unfinished wall to serve as a deterrent is the inability to know who has entered into the United States. Other than wanting to get into America without following the legal process, we know nothing about the countless illegals who are already here, including rough estimates that are close to accurate.



Border Patrol drone video of unknown illegals crossing the border.

Most people who cross illegally may be decent and simply want to take care of their families as best they can. Then there are those unknowns from all over the world who are not decent and have no honorable intentions. Without a means to identify people coming across the border illegally, there may very well be war criminals and other bad actors hiding from their own people.

Several outlets have reported Russians being found at the southern border  not a small number, but thousands with no way to know how many Russians are in America illegally. The cartels deliver without question anyone who will pay.

On January 30 of this year, Business Insider had an article by Sarah Al-Arshani, "The US southern border saw a growing number of migrants from Russia, Ukraine, and other distant countries last month." She stated: "In December, over 2,000 Russians and 300 Ukrainians made their way to the border. Axios reported most of them had either arrived or were found at a legal port of entry in San Diego, California."

This is over 2,000 Russians at a single port of entry who were caught, compared to how many at other points in last December alone who made it into the United States? There are several unverified stories about Russian saboteurs who were already in Ukraine before Russia invaded, which is certainly in line with Putin's history.

The Russians who are currently in the United States illegally are an unknown threat  not just the potential added ranks to the Russian mob, one of the most brutal organized criminal organizations in the world, if not the worst, but Russian saboteurs as well.

Ukraine has been invaded, again, under another Democratic president who will do nothing, just like Obama with Crimea. If sanctions worked, there would have been no invasion a second time, and Crimea would have returned to Ukraine. What are new sanctions going to do to Putin? Same thing as the old: absolutely nothing.

If there are enough saboteurs in place and the Russian mob supplying weapons, we could be busy fighting an enemy from within and without. An attack on American power grids would be devastating to the country and an easy target with the right military hardware in place.

That is just one of the numerous potential targets that could easily be attacked by Russian saboteurs, who are most likely already in the United States. Motivated individuals have carried out devastating attacks against America in the past through military or terroristic actions and will do so in the future.

Considering the weakness of Biden, God help all Americans if it happens during his presidency.
As soon as Associate Justice Stephen Breyer announced his intent to retire, the Biden-Harris regime reported their plan to fill his seat with a black female replacement.

Why announce the sex and skin color of the nominee, weeks in advance of naming the name? Biden's strategy here is not just an effort to protect a party that's bleeding from a loss of conservative blacks, but also an attempt to insulate the nomination from the normal process. Touted first and foremost as a black female, the nominee's "groundbreaking" sex and color are the costume that disguises the actual content of this nomination.

Ketanji Brown Jackson was raised in the orbit of government: her father was chief attorney for a school district; her mother was a school principal. She attended Harvard for undergrad and law school, clerked at the Supreme Court, did pro bono work at major law firms helping criminals beat the rap, and received plum appointments to federal judgeships from Barack Obama and Joe Biden.

And she served on the United States Sentencing Commission, first as a counsel, then as a commissioner.

Throughout her career, there is one common thread: a personal crusade to reduce the ability of the criminal justice system to impose real sentences on people convicted of crimes.

Our system requires both defense attorneys and prosecuting attorneys; it is fundamental to our system that the defendant is assumed innocent until proven guilty.

But once that guilt is proven, the American people need to be able to count on our system to remove the criminal from society, to keep him off the streets until he is no longer a threat. In a nation in which the vast majority of crimes are committed by recidivists, there is no other issue more central to criminal justice than the ability to impose long sentences on those who are finally proven to be a threat to their communities.

Ketanji Brown Jackson is intended to be the pro-criminal, anti-LEO lobby's camel under the tent, to infect the Supreme Court itself with this malevolent attitude.

She has all the public relations positives  Ivy League degrees, an impressive curriculum vitae, several years on the federal bench. She would be the Supreme Court's first black female, as if the color and sex of the judge should have anything to do with the votes she casts or the opinions she writes.

But in a world crafted by P.R., the Biden-Harris regime is hoping this is the way to sell its destructive, dangerous policies to the American people. Her welcome skin color and sex, her cheerful smile, and impressive resume are just deceptive coverings over the pro-criminal policies that have scared shoppers out of the malls, turned our inner cities into war zones, and forced those who could afford it into gated communities.

America cannot afford the left's euphemisms anymore. We need to cast off the disguises and start seeing Democrat bills, policies, and appointees for what they really are.

The American voter needs to remember one of the oldest of proverbs whenever political appointees bury their policy positions under colorful emphasis on their demographics: "You can't judge a book by its cover."

John F. Di Leo is a Chicagoland-based international transportation professional. A onetime Milwaukee County Republican Party chairman, he has been writing a regular column in Illinois Review since 2009. His book on vote fraud (The Tales of Little Pavel) and his brand new political satires on the current administration (Evening Soup with Basement Joe, Volumes I and II) are available on Amazon.

Image: H2rty via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0 (cropped).
Readers may recall the Uranium One deal with Russia. Thensecretary of state Hillary Clinton's State Department approved a deal giving Russian interests control of 20 percent of the United States' uranium supply after the Clinton Foundation received $145 million from the shareholders of Uranium One.

In light of Russia's naked aggression against Ukraine, now would be an excellent time to unwind this unholy transaction and retrieve our interests. The minerals are on U.S. soil, in Gillette, Wyoming.

The issue parallels the issue of importing oil from Russia. Bloomberg is reporting that "export restrictions on [Russia] the world's top supplier of nuclear fuel has the potential to disrupt the U.S. power industry." The Biden administration likely wants to keep these imports to avoid price increases for energy, in this case electricity.

Reporters for Reuters have reported:

The United States relies on Russia and its allies Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan for roughly half of the uranium powering its nuclear plants[.] ... Washington and its allies have imposed a series of sanctions on Moscow in the past week as Russian forces pushed deeper into neighboring Ukraine, though the sanctions exempt uranium sales and related financial transactions. The National Energy Institute (NEI), a trade group of U.S. nuclear power generation companies including Duke Energy Corp DUK.N and Exelon Corp EXC.O, is lobbying the White House to keep the exemption on uranium imports from Russia, the sources said.

The same Reuters reporters also report:

There is no uranium production or processing in the United States currently, though several companies have said they would like to resume domestic production if they can sign long-term supply contracts with nuclear power producers. Texas and Wyoming have large uranium reserves.

Considering the various sanctions that have been imposed, considering that BP has been forced to "offload" its 20% stake in Rosneft, previously valued at $14B (10B), and abandon its two seats on the board following pressure from the British government, it would be eminently reasonable for the U.S. to retrieve its interests. If this causes the Russians to stop exports of uranium, there may be some economic pain for the U.S. However, this would be offset by the fact that the U.S. would be sending less money to Russia to fund the war, and by the development of domestic capacity in this industry of strategic importance. And if Russia pre-emptively stops the export of uranium, then there would seem to be no reason at all for the U.S. not to unwind the Uranium One deal.

William Marbury is the pen name of a lawyer who works in the arts.

Image via Public Domain Pictures.
KCR to visit Jharkhand Today:- Telangana Chief Minister KCR has been quite busy for the past few days. He paid a surprise visit to New Delhi and he has been meeting several crucial leaders on the discussion of the Federal Front. His meeting with Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal got canceled due to various reasons and KCR is in New Delhi for now. He will be flying to Jharkhand today to pay the tributes to the jawans who got killed in the Galwan valley attack after the Chinese troops staged an attack. KCR announced a financial assistance of Rs 10 lakhs for the family members of the martyred soldiers.

Before this, KCR will meet Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren and will hand over the cheques to the family members of two jawans who hail from Jharkhand. Colonel Satish Babu from Telangana passed away in the Galwan valley attack and Telangana government announced an ex gratia of Rs 5 crores for his family. As there is an election code in some of the states, there is a delay in handing over the cheques for the families of the martyred soldiers. KCR will also discuss about the Federal Front with Hemant Soren and will invite for a meeting that is scheduled to take place in Hyderabad soon. Some crucial leaders from various states are expected to attend the meeting.
It seems like the US OnePlus 10 Pro variant will come with a slight design change. That is what Evan Blass, a well-known tipster, suggested in his new tweet. He shared a couple of renders of the US model.

The US OnePlus 10 Pro has a slight design change, in form of a microphone

If you take a look at the images in the gallery below, youll see the renders he shared. These probably look very familiar, but there is one design detail that is different. There is a microphone in the middle of its camera array.

That microphone is not present on the Chinese variant of the device (shown below). Were not sure if the European model will have it, or is it exclusive to the US variants of the device. That is something well have to wait to find out.

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Needless to say, this is a tiny difference that most users wont even notice. Still, if you know what youre looking for, it makes the US model really easy to differentiate, without even powering it on.

That microphone should help with audio recording, especially while youre shooting videos

This microphone should, however, help the device capture better audio. It is meant to be used during video recording, first and foremost, but were people will find other use cases for it.

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The rest of the design should be the exact same, and its specs will also be the same or extremely similar. The OnePlus 10 Pro is expected to launch globally really soon. OnePlus still didnt confirm the launch date, though.

The OnePlus 10 Pro features a 6.7-inch QHD+ LTPO2 AMOLED display with a 120Hz refresh rate. It is fueled by the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 SoC, and it includes 8GB or 12GB of LPDDR5 RAM.

OnePlus partnered up with Hasselblad, and there are four cameras on this phone. 48, 50, and 2-megapixel units are included on the back, while a single 32-megapixel unit is placed on the front.

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80W wired, and 50W wireless charging is also included here, and much more. Click here if youd like to know more about its specs.
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(ANSA) - ROME, MAR 4 - Wintry Russian weather will hit Italy over the next 10 days starting this weekend, forecaster Antonio Sano said at 'iLMeteo.it' Friday.

"Two months late, winter appears to want to get serious," he said on the wave of cold Siberian air that will bring snow and ground frost to the Bel Paese.

Snow will fall Friday and Saturday in many parts, especially the Adriatic coast, as "Russian corridor" steers icy winds southward from the North Pole, he said.

After a brief respite on Sunday and Monday, Sano said, two other major cold fronts will strike Italy, on Tuesday with snowfall in the centre and south, and on Thursday with a big dumping of snow in the Po valley.

This weekend, Sano said, "we expect a wintry weekend on the central and southern Adriatic coast and tepid sunshine elsewhere, a sun that will shine on the areas where it has been bright lately". (ANSA).


'Wrong country, if they blackmail us on energy', Italian FM More gas to Italy over coming months, Algerian ambassador

(ANSAmed) - ROME, MARCH 4 - Italian Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio on Friday said Italy expected a European strategy on energy, speaking on the sidelines of a meeting of NATO ministers of foreign affairs.



"We expect a European energy strategy, I think it is fundamental to guarantee the stability of the entire EU", Di Maio said.



"I also want to say that Italy is engaged not only at the EU level but also at a bilateral one", he explained.



Di Maio announced that, "over the coming hours we will organize new trips, after that in Algeria, together with ENI and CEO Claudio Descalzi to continue in the strategy of energy diversification".



"If someone thought they could blackmail Italy on energy, they got the wrong country".



Meanwhile Algeria's ambassador to Italy, Abdelkrim Touahria, in an interview with financial daily Sole 24 Ore, confirmed that Algeria will send more gas to Italy already in the coming months, as part of agreements taken during Di Maio's recent visit to Algiers.



"Italy will be able to count on additional provisions of Algerian gas at the same price to touch, perhaps exceeding, 30 billion of cubic meters already in the coming months with an increase of about 2 billion cubic meters compared to current volumes", said Touahria.



According to the ambassador, the flow of gas that will pass through the Transmed pipeline across Tunisia to reach Mazara del Vallo, in Sicily, "will be able to, if not entirely cancel, at least considerably reduce the effects of the Ukrainian crisis and of sanctions against Russia on Italian energy provision systems".



Moreover, following recent contacts between the management of ENI and Sonatrach, Algiers has said it is available not only to increase the volume of gas based on existing contracts, but also through spot sales.



"Regardless of the crisis in Ukraine - the ambassador told the financial daily - energy partnerships and economic relations between Italy and Algeria are going through an excellent phase".



Over the coming days ENI and Sonatrach will sign an agreement worth 1.4 billion dollars for the exploration and extraction of gas in the field of Berkine, 770 km south of Algiers, where it is estimated that at least 7 billion cubic meters of gas will be extracted, necessary for national needs and intended for exports.(ANSAmed).




You know that feeling when youre riding a fancy brand-new rollercoaster and youre literally being smashed and banged around from side to side and never know what to expect next? Well, as cheesy as it sounds, I can think of no better analogy to describe my college experience  a rollercoast
CAIRO - Hafed Gaddur, the foreign minister of the new national Libyan government of stability, has been released by the militia that abducted him Thursday together with two other members of the executive of premier Fathi Bashagha. The former ambassador to Italy made the announcement in a statement published on Facebook Friday.



Gaddur spoke about the "horrible" moments of his abduction with a shooting yesterday, reportedly carried out by a militia supporting the prime minister who is refusing to step down, Abdel Hamid Dbeibah. The new Libyan diplomacy chief, however, did not express resentment against the militia members. "I am in good health", he wrote on Facebook. Gaddur added however that "the modes of the attack against our convoy and our transfer to a detention center were horrible". "Weapons were used. Bullets were fired. But I wasn't hit", added the former ambassador to Italy. "I thank all those that tried to free us. And we state that we will patriotically work, abstaining from retaliation or revenge", he concluded.



A text which the minister made available for ANSA refers to a militia from Misrata as responsible for the abduction: "Forces of the 'joint force' that held us come from the sons of the Revolution. It is a disciplined force with a good reputation.



But they were victims of misleading media campaigns against the new government. They executed the orders of the cabinet" led by Dbeibah. Another Libyan source said the release occurred at 23:30 Thursday.




CASABLANCA - An appeals court in Casablanca has upheld a six-year prison term inflicted on journalist and human rights activist Omar Radi on espionage and rape charges. He is the second independent Moroccan journalist in a week to be sentenced to a lengthy prison term over a sex crime.



A week ago, on February 24, another journalist, Soulaimane Raissouni, was sentenced to five years in prison for "sexual assault", also by the appeals court of Casablanca. The judge confirmed the conviction by a court of first instance against Raissouni, a 49-year-old editorialist known for his critical tone against authorities. He was accused of "sexual assault" by a young LGBTQ activist, a charge that he denied during the trial, saying he was being tried "due to his opinions".




A Ukrainian MP has said singing in the nations parliament on Thursday sent a message to the world that were not leaving.

Inna Sovsun, deputy leader of the Holos Party, joined hundreds of fellow MPs in the Verkhovna Rada as they sang the anthem, which translates in English as Glory and Freedom of Ukraine has not yet Perished.

I cant explain what it feels like to sing a national anthem when we are at war, Ms Sovsun, 37, told the PA news agency.

I think everyone was just extremely emotional, but at the same time, everyone was feeling that this is our country, we are here and this is our responsibility.

People were not panicking, people were determined I think that is the general feeling in Ukraine right now.

Ukrainian MP Inna Sovsun has been staying at a friends house in Kyiv after having to abandon her home in the north of the city (Inna Sovsun/PA)

Ukrainian MPs had been called for an emergency parliamentary session to pass legislation regarding Russias invasion, including the confiscation of Russian property.

But I think the even more important thing about this emergency session was just to send the message that we as a parliament, we as an authority, are staying here, she said.

We are in Kyiv, we are keeping the situation under control and were not leaving.

That was an important message both to the Ukrainian citizens, but also to the world.

Fellow MP Vadym Ivchenko told PA: When the plenary session begins we always sing the national anthem of Ukraine, but with music.

Now we are singing without the music, because we are in the war it means that all the members of parliament show that they are in Kyiv, they are trying to do their best.

Vadym Ivchenko in Ukraines parliament (Vadym Ivchenko/PA)

Ms Sovsun has been staying with a friend in Kyiv since Russia invaded on February 24, abandoning her home in the north of the city.

Her boyfriend is with the Ukrainian army and she has not seen her son for eight days.

(My son) asked me when I will be able to see him again, I started crying because I cannot answer that question, she said.

Ms Sovsuns 61-year-old father has joined the territorial defence in the country, and she had not heard from him for three days until Friday morning.

My mum is in western Ukraine she was going slightly crazy with that, as you can imagine, she added.

We just got a message two hours ago that he is alive and well I am lucky, so many people are not.
Russia has blocked access to Facebook for its 146 million citizens amid the Ukraine invasion, a state regulator has said.

The countrys communications watchdog, Roskomnadzor, said the social media platform was blocked on day nine of the war due to cases of discrimination against Russian media.

It comes a week after Russia limited access to Facebook after it refused to stop fact-checking and labelling content from state-owned organisations.

Sir Nick Clegg, vice president of global affairs at Facebooks parent company Meta, said Russians have been silenced from speaking out.

Roskomnadzor said in a statement: On March 4, 2022, a decision was made to block access to the Facebook network (owned by Meta Platforms, Inc) in the Russian Federation.

Since October 2020, 26 cases of discrimination against Russian media and information resources by Facebook have been recorded.

In recent days, the social network has restricted access to accounts: the Zvezda TV channel, the RIA Novosti news agency, Sputnik, Russia Today, the Lenta.ru and Gazeta.ru information resources.

On the Russian government's decision to block access to Facebook in the Russian Federation: pic.twitter.com/JlJwIu1t9K  Nick Clegg (@nickclegg) March 4, 2022

Responding to the decision, former deputy Prime Minster Sir Nick said: Soon millions of ordinary Russians will find themselves cut off from reliable information, deprived of their everyday ways of connecting with family and friends and silenced from speaking out.

We will continue to do everything we can to restore our services so they remain available to people to safely and securely express themselves and organise for action.

Twitter also said last week that Russians were being restricted from accessing its platform.

In a tweet, the company said it was aware that access to the platform has been restricted for some people in Russia, adding it was working to keep our service safe and accessible.

The move against Facebook also follows blocks imposed on broadcasters including the BBC, the US government-funded Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, according to AP.
The shelling of a nuclear power station in south-eastern Ukraine is a new red flag that the war does not just affect Ukraine and Russia, Irelands foreign affairs minister has said.

Russian forces shelled the station  the biggest nuclear plant in Europe  in the city of Zaporizhzhia overnight, with the attack continuing even as emergency services tried to put out the resulting fire.

Simon Coveney said the assault concerns everyone on the continent who could have been impacted by a disaster there.

A breach of the facility could release higher radiation levels than those seen after the worlds worst nuclear accident at Ukraines Chernobyl in 1986, he warned.

The #SecurityCouncil will hold an urgent meeting at 11:30am EST on #Russia's attack on #Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant in #Ukraine. Ireland joined  in calling for the meeting. It's essential that the #UNSC meets immediately on this extremely concerning attack. pic.twitter.com/0kb81sB6qA  Ireland at UN (@irishmissionun) March 4, 2022

Mr Coveney joined foreign ministers from the European Union, the UK, US and Canada in Brussels to show his support for Ukraine.

He said the ministers would not be signing off on a new raft of sanctions, though further measures will be agreed later.

I think its really about sending a very clear message to the world that we in the European Union and our other partners are really disgusted and outraged by what we continue to see day after day in Ukraine, and Russias actions, which clearly are a breach of international law, Mr Coveney said.

He said he does not think theres any credible arguments now that war crimes arent being committed on a daily basis, saying civilians and civilian areas had been targeted.

He said: I think what well see is some very strong statements today and a determination to work together to ensure that we continue to isolate Russia internationally, not just in Europe.

We will send a very clear message to Moscow that this simply isnt acceptable, and to increase the calls for a ceasefire and an end of hostilities, and a return to political dialogue and diplomacy.

The targeting of the violence and the fire at this nuclear facility, I think, raised a new red flag, if you like, in relation to this conflict, that this is not just about Ukraine and Russia.

Its about all of us who live on the continent of Europe who could potentially be impacted by an accident or a breach of that facility that obviously could release radiation that would be multiples of the volume and size of what happened at Chernobyl.

I think that has added a sense of urgency on that particular issue.

Meanwhile, Irelands premier Micheal Martin said senior ministers met on Thursday to discuss the arrangements for refugees travelling to Ireland after fleeing Ukraine.

Russias attack on the #Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station is utterly reckless. Russias military activity in the area must cease immediately. This is a grave threat to the European continent. Our full support to the @iaea and DG @rafaelmgrossi in their essential work. @dfatirl https://t.co/BPaYnJwBOu  Simon Coveney (@simoncoveney) March 4, 2022

The Fianna Fail said Cabinet ministers discussed how the country will provide education for Ukrainian children and access to healthcare facilities, the social protection system, and the right to work.

Some ministers have been tasked to work on those issues, Mr Martin added.

In terms of the energy issue, we know that is very pressing and we will work with our European Union colleagues but also the key ministers in that area.

Its something we have to work through for the medium term as to how we deal with this exponential growth and the price of fuel and gas, which has risen to extraordinary heights.

As we emerge from Covid and because of the war in Ukraine and the decision of Russia to hold back supplies in advance of that, and other factors, now the war will make it worse.

Mr Martin warned that the war will have a real impact on Ireland due to the amount of grain that is exported by Russia and Ukraine.

PABest A woman walks past anti-war graffiti in support of Ukraine, painted on shutters in Dublin city centre, following Russias invasion of Ukraine. Picture date: Wednesday March 2, 2022.

Mr Martin added: We are very concerned overall. The multilateral order has been turned upside down. This is a very serious moment in the history.

We need cool heads to deal with this. The Russian aggression is morally unacceptable and its in everyones interest that the spread of nuclear radioactive material doesnt happen.

Referring to Irelands militarily neutral standing, Mr Martin said it has not hindered Irelands stance against Russia.

In the first instance, our military non-alignment has in no way hindered our approach to the war in Ukraine. We have been very pro-active, he added.

We are not neutral in what has happened in Ukraine.
FILE - In this Saturday, March 14, 2020, file photo, an Apple logo adorns the facade of the downtown Brooklyn Apple store in New York. Apple's shareholders have approved a proposal Friday, March 4, 2022, urging the iPhone maker to undergo an independent audit assessing its treatment of female and minority employees, delivering a rare rebuke to a management team that runs the world's most valuable company. (AP Photo/Kathy Willens, File)

SAN RAMON, Calif. (AP)  Apple's shareholders have approved a proposal urging the iPhone maker to undergo an independent audit assessing its treatment of female and minority employees, delivering a rare rebuke to a management team that runs the world's most valuable company.

The measure passed Friday during Apple's annual meeting is nonbinding, so the Cupertino, California, company isn't required to adopt the recommendation.

But rebuffing the wishes of its shareholders would thrust Apple into an uncomfortable position, especially since the company has long cast itself as a champion of civil rights. CEO Tim Cook reiterated that belief Friday in response to a question from a shareholder during the meeting held remotely.

I have long believed that inclusion and diversity are essential in their own right," Cook said. And that a diversity of people, experiences and ideas is the foundation for any new innovation."

Like other major technology companies, Apple's workforce  particularly in high-paid technical positions  consists primarily of white and Asian men, an imbalance that the industry has been trying to address for many years.

Apple's board had pushed against the shareholder proposal seeking a civil rights audit that eventually be made public. The company pointed to its recent strides in civil rights inside and outside Apple that have made a third-party audit of its practices unnecessary.

The initiatives included Apple making a $130 million commitment to a racial equity and justice fund after the 2020 murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis. The company also says it is raising the pay of women and minority employees while also hiring more female, Black and Hispanic workers.

During Friday's meeting, Cook said Apple has achieved gender pay equity every year since 2017 and now has racial pay equity within the U.S. He also said 59% of Apple's leadership positions during the past year have been filled by people from underrepresented communities."

But proponents of the civil rights proposal insisted Apple hasn't been doing enough, making it imperative for outsiders to investigate recurring reports of sexual harassment, discriminatory practices and other abuses within the company, which employs 154,000 worldwide.

The proposal gained momentum after Apple last year hired a former Facebook product manager, Antonio Garcia Martinez, to join its ad team __ a move that sparked an outcry among employees who accused him of making misogynistic and racist remarks in a 2016 book called Chaos Monkeys." Apple quickly cut its ties with Garcia Martinez after the backlash.

Apple also raised widespread privacy concerns last year by announcing plans to scan iPhones for images of child sex abuse. Complaints about that scanning program prompted Apple to backtrack from that plan, but it provided another rallying point for the backers of a civil rights audit.

Most shareholder proposals are overwhelmingly rejected when they're opposed by the boards of publicly held companies. That was the case for five other shareholder proposals during Apple's meeting Friday.

Apple shareholders generally have been enthusiastic supporters of the company because of the tremendous wealth that it has created. Apple currently is worth nearly $2.7 trillion, with most of the gains coming during the past two years of a pandemic that has made its products and services even more popular.

Yet the proposal for a civil rights audit of Apple won the backing of two advisory firms that often sway the votes of institutional shareholders. The audit proposal was supported by 5.13 million shares and opposed by 4.45 million shares, with 131.2 million shares abstaining, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing by Apple.

The outcome shows that investors want to know if Apple is making a difference in tackling potential harms to key stakeholders stemming from its products and policies," said Dieter Waizenegger, executive director of SOC Investment Group, which was one of the shareholders that filed the civil rights proposal. Investors heard from Apples corporate and retail workers who bravely spoke out against inequitable and harmful conditions even under the threat of retaliation.

Similar shareholder proposals seeking civil rights audits have been adopted during the past year at several other publicly held companies, including CitiGroup.

Although he didn't say whether Apple intends to submit to a civil rights audit, Cook described gender and racial equity essential to the future of our company."
As the Russian invasion of Ukraine upends global politics and whipsaws markets, eyes have turned to Taiwan as the next possible site for a similar conflict.

The island of nearly 24 million residents, which sits about 100 miles east of China and hosts the world's leading semiconductor manufacturer, has for years faced threats of an incursion from its powerful neighbor. The crisis in Ukraine has elevated concern, giving rise to an ominous catchphrase: Today Ukraine, Tomorrow Taiwan.

However, instead of increasing the likelihood of a Chinese attack on Taiwan, the invasion of Ukraine and the global sanctions regime that followed have put such an operation on the "back burner," says Bill Browder, an asset manager who for years specialized as an investor in major Russian firms.

"The Chinese are equally malicious actors in the world," says Browder, the CEO of Hermitage Capital Management and a longstanding critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

"The coordinated financial attack that the West has executed against Russia  I think it's so scary that the Chinese probably won't, if they were eyeing up Taiwan to do something similar, I think they put that on the back burner," he adds.

A U.S. delegation to Taiwan, led by former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mike Mullen, on Wednesday reaffirmed its support for Taiwan and its opposition toward "any unilateral changes to the status quo," Reuters reported.

Taiwanese government officials have downplayed parallels between Ukraine and Taiwan. Soon after Russia initiated its invasion, Taiwans President Tsai Ing-wen characterized the circumstances faced by Taiwan as "very different," the Washington Post reported. A Cabinet spokesperson said it's "inappropriate" to describe Taiwan as the next site of conflict, the Post found.

China, a Russian ally, said last month that Taiwan "is not Ukraine," noting Beijing's longstanding claim of sovereignty over the island.

In 1949, Chinese Nationalists fled the country and took refuge in Taiwan, leaving China under Communist rule and establishing a separate government on the island. Nearly 50 years later, in 1996, Taiwan held its first direct presidential election, capping a years-long shift toward democracy. Mainland China is Taiwan's top trade partner.

Since 1979, the U.S. has recognized Taiwan as part of the People's Republic of China but remains a key ally and arms supplier for the island.

A conflict in Taiwan would cascade across the global economy, as supply chain disruptions continue to snarl global trade and a global sanctions regime on Russia casts uncertainty over the world's long-term economic outlook.

Chinese President Xi Jinping, right, and Russian President Vladimir Putin talk to each other during their meeting in Beijing, Feb. 4, 2022. (Alexei Druzhinin, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP, File)

In the late '90s and early 2000s, Browders firm delivered strong returns by exposing corruption at major Russian companies, bringing about company shake-ups, and boosting share prices. In 2005, Browder was denied re-entry to Russia and later became the victim of a Russian government scheme to undermine his firm, he says.

Sergei Magnitsky, a lawyer hired by Browder to investigate Russian corruption, was arrested and died in Russian custody.

Speaking to Yahoo Finance, Browder predicted that Russia will seek financial support from China as it tries to mitigate sanctions.

"Now that the West has completely cut off Russia from the financial markets, Putin is going to have to go begging for money," he says.

"I think the Chinese will provide money on highly usurious terms," he adds. "It'll be like borrowing money on a credit card."

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Shelves display bottles of bourbons for sale at a Pennsylvania fine wine and spirits store, Saturday, Jan. 22, 2022, in Harmony, Pa. American whiskey exports, battered by tariffs and the COVID-19 pandemic, started rebounding in 2021, but distillers have more ground to make up to fully recover, an industry group said. (AP Photo/Keith Srakocic) (ASSOCIATED PRESS)

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP)  American whiskey exports, battered by tariffs and the COVID-19 pandemic, started rebounding in 2021, but distillers have more ground to make up to fully recover, an industry group said.

Exports of bourbon, Tennessee whiskey and rye whiskey reached $975 million in 2021, up 15% from the prior year, according to a report issued by the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States. Last year's total was still down 18% from the record high exports  about $1.2 billion in 2018.

American whiskey distillers got caught up in a trans-Atlantic trade fight, causing deep drops in exports to the European Union  the industrys biggest overseas market. The EU imposed a retaliatory tariff on those spirits in mid-2018 in response to then-President Donald Trumps decision to slap tariffs on European steel and aluminum. A deal was reached in late 2021 to suspend those tariffs on American spirits.

U.S. spirits exports are beginning to bounce back and thats definitely a positive sign, but the value of 2021 exports remains far below levels achieved before the 2018 retaliatory tariffs kicked in, Rob Maron, the council's vice president of international trade, said Thursday.

But as American whiskey producers work to regrow EU market share, the sector still faces a retaliatory tariff in another key market  the United Kingdom  which continues to curtail growth, Maron said.

Several factors led to last years rebound, including the reopening of the hospitality sector as COVID-19 restrictions eased, consumers choosing more premium and super-premium American spirits and the lifting of tariffs by key trading partners, the report said.

But distillers face headwinds in redeveloping European sales, including supply-chain problems, said Amir Peay, owner of the Lexington, Kentucky-based James E. Pepper Distillery. For an industry that requires patience in crafting its products, it will take time to build back market share.

The wind is in a much better direction," Peay said in a phone interview Friday. "But its just unrealistic to think that we can flick a light switch and just immediately go back to a realistic pace of rebuilding what we lost. Its just impossible from the situation were in right now.

His distillerys signature bourbon and rye brand is James E. Pepper 1776.

Distillers also have to balance the potential for overseas sales with strong domestic demand in deciding how to allocate finite supplies of whiskey. It takes years for whiskey to mature, especially the premium brands in high demand. Combined U.S. sales for bourbon, Tennessee whiskey and rye whiskey rose 6.7%, or $288 million, to $4.6 billion in 2021.

Last year, American whiskey accounted for 61% of all U.S. spirits exports in value terms and 38% in volume. The gap reflects the popularity of premium spirits that fetch higher prices.

Tennessee is the nations leading spirits exporter, followed by Kentucky, the council said.

Meanwhile, total U.S. spirits exports in 2021 increased 14% over the prior year, reaching $1.6 billion  still below the 2018 pre-tariff levels of about $1.8 billion, the report said.

Other U.S. spirits producers also posted strong gains in international sales. Exports of gin surged by 59%, vodka increased by 10% while liqueurs and cordials shot up by 41%, the report showed.

Between 2001 and 2021, global U.S. spirits exports expanded 220%, from $493 million to $1.6 billion  mostly driven by the growing popularity of American whiskeys, the report said.
Students are back in class amid the coronavirus pandemic, and to keep you posted on whats unfolding throughout U.S. schools  K-12 as well as colleges  Yahoo Life is running a weekly wrap-up featuring news bites, interviews and updates about the ongoing situation.

More states announce the end of school mask mandates

The number of states that plan to end school mask mandates continues to grow. Connecticut and New York saw their statewide school mask mandates end this week. New York City Mayor Eric Adams announced Friday that the city's school mask mandate is also coming to an end. Masks will be optional in the city's K-12 schools run by the New York City Department of Education starting Monday, March 7.

California, Washington and Oregon also announced the end of school mask mandates.

The Western states "moved together" to end their mandates, according to a press release from California Gov. Gavin Newsom's office. "California continues to adjust our policies based on the latest data and science, applying what we've learned over the past two years to guide our response to the pandemic," Newsom said in a statement. "Masks are an effective tool to minimize spread of the virus and future variants, especially when transmission rates are high. We cannot predict the future of the virus, but we are better prepared for it and will continue to take measures rooted in science to keep California moving forward."

The mandates will lift in schools in all three states on or just after 11:59 p.m. PT on Friday, March 11.

Infectious disease experts say it's time. "I do think that most schools will eventually end mask mandates, and the CDC guidance gives them the ability to do so with confidence," Dr. Amesh A. Adalja, an infectious disease expert and senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, told Yahoo Life. "Vaccines are widely available, hospitals are not currently worried about capacity, and there are new tools to deal with COVID-19, so I think that schools can adapt their mitigation measures."

But as Dr. Thomas Russo, professor and chief of infectious disease at the University at Buffalo in New York, told Yahoo Life, "There is still COVID out there." He urges people to consider wearing a mask indoors if they are at high risk of COVID-19 complications, including those who are unvaccinated, immunocompromised, eligible for a booster but have not yet received one and are either older than 50, have a significant health condition or are pregnant  or if they live with anyone from these groups. "Avoiding getting infected is not all about your chances of developing severe disease, but is also about protecting against the development of long COVID and potential long-term consequences, which is particularly important for our school-aged children," he said.

Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease specialist and professor at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, told Yahoo Life that he expects some areas will "hang on longer" to school mask mandates, especially if there is a lot of COVID-19 transmission in their area. "But I see the end of mask mandates as a pretty rapid movement across the country right now, for better or worse," he said.

Study finds Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine doesn't prevent many kids from contracting COVID-19

A new study from health officials in New York state found that the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine isn't as effective at preventing children ages five to 11 from getting COVID-19 as it is in older teens and adults. The vaccine still prevents severe illness in children, but the data suggest it offers almost no protection against infection in younger children, even just a month after their vaccination.

The researchers studied data from 365,502 children between the ages of 5 and 11 and found that vaccine effectiveness against COVID-19 cases "declined rapidly" from 65 percent to 12 percent 28 to 34 days after they were vaccinated.

"These results highlight the potential need to study alternative vaccine dosing for children and the continued importance of layered protections, including mask-wearing, to prevent infection and transmission," the researchers concluded.

With school mask mandates lifting, it's understandable for parents to have some concerns.

Russo pointed out that a study released by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention soon after the New York state research found that the vaccine was more protective in the 5-11 age group. "Regardless, both studies demonstrated that vaccination protected against severe disease and hospitalizations," he said. "As we are entering into a maskless phase, vaccination is more important than ever to protect our children from the consequences of COVID." Russo urges parents whose children are unvaccinated to consider having them continue to wear masks in school until their local case counts drop to lower levels and to "get them vaccinated ASAP."

Adalja also stressed that the vaccines are working, even in this age group. "Pediatric vaccines provide significant protection against what matters: serious illness," he said. "Omicron was expected to diminish vaccine efficacy."

Schaffner suggested that parents pay close attention to what is happening with COVID-19 cases in their area. "If your child is fully vaccinated, then your level of concern can diminish," he said. "But, if local COVID-19 cases are high, your level of concern should be higher as well." Schaffner also notes that new CDC guidance recommends masking indoors in areas where transmission is high, regardless of vaccination status  and that includes masking in schools.

The NCAA releases new, looser guidelines for basketball teams ahead of March Madness

This week, the NCAA unveiled new guidelines for the Division I men's and women's basketball championships.

The guidance "encourages indoor masking" when athletes aren't practicing or competing, in their hotel rooms or eating or drinking, but notes that each team can create its own safety protocols, provided that they don't clash with local public health guidance.

The guidance said that athletes may be exempt from COVID-19 testing if they are fully vaccinated or have proof of a COVID-19 infection in the last 90 days. Those who aren't exempt have to show proof of a negative COVID-19 test before they travel to a tournament site.

However, the NCAA stated that local areas and venues may have more strict COVID-19 testing protocols.

Adalja said he believes it is acceptable for organizations to drop certain mitigation efforts as we move into a different stage of the pandemic. "COVID-19 is not going to be eradicated, and people have to realize that there are always going to be COVID-19 cases," he said. "Individual risk preferences are going to be whats important for people, and theyre not going to be the same for everyone."

Russo, however, warned that "outbreaks could still occur." That's the reason why, he says, that "from both a public health perspective and to maintain your competitive edge, the best practice would be to minimize the risk of your players getting infected," including having players be fully vaccinated and boosted, if eligible, and to use high-quality, well-fitting masks in high-risk indoor settings like locker rooms.

Kansas school district uses therapy dogs to help students cope with COVID-19 stress

Kansas's Topeka Public Schools district has found a unique way to help students cope with the stress of living through a global pandemic: therapy dogs.

Superintendent Tiffany Anderson told Yahoo Life that the district has actually used therapy dogs for years, but ramped up the number of its four-legged staff members in the pandemic. "We have grown to ensure almost every school for our 13,100 students has access to a therapy dog at their school site," she said.

"It has really been amazing," Anderson said. "Therapy dogs have helped to reduce anxiety and [allow] for young people to connect with another living being that's different from adults or another classmate. It allows for stability."

Topeka public school student sits with a therapy dog. (Credit: Topeka Public Schools)

Anderson said the dogs "can be deployed to a particular student who is having a meltdown" or can be used during a "check and connect" with a student's counselor or social worker. "Throughout the day, the therapy dog can walk through the classrooms," she said, noting that staff members all have walkie-talkies that can be used to call for a dog as needed.

The district has even used therapy dogs at school-sponsored vaccination clinics to help ease anxiety, Anderson says.

When they're not at school, therapy dogs will typically live with a staff member who agrees to be responsible for them, Anderson says. The district doesn't just use animal therapy  it also offers art and music therapy to students who are not comfortable with dogs. "We have a variety of approaches that, no matter where you are, we will meet you," Anderson said.

Anderson said that the dogs have proven their worth and that the district "absolutely" plans to continue to use them. "Animals just love on you," she explained. "They can sense your mood, and there's just an automatic willingness to help."

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At least a million refugees have fled Ukraine over the past week, seeking safety in neighboring European countries from Russias advancing military forces. Amid the chaos and deadly attacks on major cities that the U.N. estimates have so far killed approximately 3,300 civilians, some African students have reported encountering ugly instances of racism from some civilians and members of the Ukrainian military as they try to escape the country.

Korrine Sky, a 26-year-old second-year medical student from Leicester, England, documented on Twitter what she endured, using the trending hashtag #africansinukraine.

On Feb. 25, after hearing the air-raid sirens sound in Dnipro, a city in eastern Ukraine, Sky, a Zimbabwean-born British citizen, and her husband, a neurosurgery student she met in Ukraine, hastily gathered documents and some of their belongings and set off for the Romanian border. The couple faced long lines for gas and to get money out of an ATM before they joined an automotive queue at the border. Still in Ukraine, they slept in the car for two days.

On our way to the border, a man held a gun up at me and told us that if we dont leave in five minutes, he would shoot us, Sky told a pool of reporters that included Yahoo News. Other Black women have been reported being shoved, being pushed, women with children. Its horrific. The treatment has been awful.

The last 24 hours of her journey in the queue, Sky said, were the worst because thats when she started facing racism and segregation. She said that while she and her husband were making their way to the front of the line, Ukrainian civilians began aggressively circling their car, with one man allegedly lunging at her.

We have reached the actual border experiencing some threats of violence from some local Ukrainians who dont believe we should enter. This man keeps circling our car pic.twitter.com/kWw5DjkcL0  Koko  (@korrinesky) February 28, 2022

Fearful of the mob, Skys husband pulled the car off the road to seek assistance from the Ukrainian military, but was met by another civilian who attempted to divert them onto a pedestrian border crossing.

In that pedestrian queue, there were only people of color, Sky said. There were Asians, Arab people, Black people. There were no Ukrainian people.

At another crossing point, she said, Ukrainian people were just walking through the border.

If you look on the other side, there was a fence, there were Ukrainian people just walking through, but we were told to queue. We had to queue, and there was not a single Ukrainian person in that queue, Sky said. Students who come from different countries to get an education for a better life for our families and friends, were the least of their worries.

Another African student, Alexander Somto Orah of Nigeria, tweeted that when he finally reached the border with some companions, Ukrainian police and members of the army initially refused to let them cross while allowing white Ukrainians through the entry point without incident.

According to the New York Times, 24-year-old Nigerian doctor Chineye Mbagwu, who resided in the western Ukrainian town of Ivano-Frankivsk, said she was stranded in the town of Medyka for two days at the Poland-Ukraine border crossing as foreigners were denied passage by border guards.

The Ukrainian border guards were not letting us through. They were beating people up with sticks and tearing off their jackets, she added. They would slap them, beat them and push them to the end of the queue. It was awful.

Other accounts using the #africansinukraine hashtag (but unverified by Yahoo News) involve African men, women and children being shoved off trains and buses by Ukrainian troops.

Refugees from Africa, the Middle East and India, many of them students at Ukrainian universities, gather at the Medyka pedestrian border crossing in Ukraine. (Wojtek Radwanski/AFP via Getty Images)

Sky, who said she fled Zimbabwe with her family at a young age to seek asylum in the U.K., was one of tens of thousands of African students studying in Ukraine when Russia launched its invasion last week. She said she had come to the popular destination for international students to study medicine, engineering and military affairs.

I was heartbroken because Ukraine was becoming our home. We never expected this. We never planned for this. Nobody really believed it was going to happen, and to happen on this scale, she said.

On Tuesday, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba tweeted that Russias invasion had affected Ukrainians and non-citizens in many devastating ways and emphasized the countrys support for African students fleeing the country.

Russias invasion of Ukraine has affected Ukrainians and non-citizens in many devastating ways. Africans seeking evacuation are our friends and need to have equal opportunities to return to their home countries safely. Ukraines government spares no effort to solve the problem.  Dmytro Kuleba (@DmytroKuleba) March 1, 2022

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Commissioner Filippo Grandi also condemned the alleged instances of discrimination on the Ukrainian border. There has been a different treatment. ... There should be absolutely no discrimination between Ukrainians and non-Ukrainians, Europeans and non-Europeans. Everyone is fleeing from the same risks. He added that UNHCR plans to intervene to try to ensure that everybody receives equal treatment.

On Monday, the African Union, which represents the 55 countries on the African continent, also warned that reports that Africans are singled out for unacceptable dissimilar treatment would be shockingly racist and in breach [of] international law. The union urged all countries to show the same empathy and support to all people fleeing war notwithstanding their racial identity.

Sky and her husband, who drove for over 40 hours before finally arriving in Romania on Monday night, are now heading back to the U.K. after what has proven to be an emotionally charged week.

The Romanian people have been so good to us. Its been a massive effort of volunteers from people in Romania, seeing where they can assist. Sky added that Romanians provided them with hotel rooms, food and water at the border.

Sky has also used her newfound platform to raise funds and awareness to get help for other students. Shes created a database via Telegram for students, including hundreds still stuck in Sumy, Ukraine, to stay in contact and provide resources while they navigate to safety.

What we need right now is support from the U.N. or people who have the power to ensure the safety of those students, she said.

On Thursday, during a second round of talks, officials from Russia and Ukraine agreed on a pact to create safe corridors to evacuate civilians and deliver aid.

Noting that many of those students still stuck in Ukraine are as young as 16, Sky said she worries about what they and their families may face in the days ahead.

Theres children there, basically, and their parents are worried sick about them, she said.
Donations for people suffering from Russia's invasion of Ukraine in the Brighton Beach neighborhood in the Brooklyn borough of New York City

(Reuters) - CNN will stop broadcasting in Russia, the news channel said on Friday after the introduction of a new law there that could jail anyone intentionally spreading "fake" news.

Russian officials have said that false information has been spread by Russia's enemies such as the United States and its Western European allies in an attempt to sow discord among the Russian people.

Lawmakers passed amendments to the criminal code making the spread of "fake" information an offence punishable with fines or jail terms. They also imposed fines for anyone calling for sanctions against Russia following the invasion of Ukraine.

"CNN will stop broadcasting in Russia while we continue to evaluate the situation and our next steps moving forward," a spokesperson said.

News organizations including the BBC and Canadian Broadcasting Corp have also suspended reporting from Russia following the passing of the law.

Russia has called its actions in Ukraine a "special operation".

(Reporting by Chavi Mehta in Bengaluru; Editing by Maju Samuel)
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Thursday signed into law a bill that bans nearly all abortions after 15 weeks, the same gestational limit currently being reviewed by the U.S. Supreme Court.

The new law, which passed the state Senate in March, will go into effect July 1.

Under the law, there are no exceptions for abortion in the case of rape or incest, but it does allow for exceptions if the fetus has a fatal abnormality or in cases when the mother is at risk of death or "substantial or irreversible physical impairment."

Those exceptions would require written certification from two physicians.

Physicians who perform abortions must submit monthly reports to the state health department with details about each procedure, including the reasons for performing them and the number of infants born alive after attempted abortions.

"Were here today to protect life. Were here today to defend those who cant defend themselves," DeSantis said Thursday in Kissimmee before signing the bill.

Florida Enacts Protections for Unborn Babies at 15 Weeks https://t.co/IeOANY8LxM  Ron DeSantis (@GovRonDeSantis) April 14, 2022

Abortion rights advocates argue that banning abortion after 15 weeks will further harm patients who need care the most, including people of color, people of limited economic means and people who lack health insurance.

"Nobody should be forced to travel hundreds or even thousands of miles for essential health care  but in signing this bill, Gov. DeSantis will be forcing Floridians seeking abortion to do just that," Alexis McGill Johnson, president of Planned Parenthood Action Fund, said in a statement. "Floridians want to be able to make decisions about their health and their families, without interference from politicians. They want the protections guaranteed by their states constitution. This ban runs counter to all of these goals. Planned Parenthood pledges to stand with patients and fight this until people can get the care they deserve.

Dr. Sujatha Prabhakaran, chief medical officer at Planned Parenthood of Southwest and Central Florida, told ABC News in March that doctors like herself are "scared and sad" about the legislation's potential impact.

"The biggest impact of the bill is going to be hurting our patients' access to the care that they need," said Prabhakaran, also a practicing OB-GYN in Sarasota, Florida. "We know that when there are these restrictions, it doesn't mean that the need for the care goes away, it just means that it makes it even harder for patients to access the care."

The new law in Florida comes at the same time that legislators in Oklahoma and Kentucky have also taken action to limit abortion access.

PHOTO: Advocates for bodily autonomy march to the Florida Capitol to protest a bill before the Florida legislature to limit abortions, Feb. 16, 2022, in Tallahassee, Florida. (Mark Wallheiser/Getty Images, FILE)

Under a bill signed into law Tuesday by Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt, any medical provider who performs an abortion will face a fine of $100,000 and up to 10 years in prison. The only exceptions for performing an abortion would be if the mother's life is in danger.

On Wednesday, the Kentucky state legislature overrode Gov. Andy Beshears veto of a bill banning abortion after 15 weeks, along with several other abortion restrictions. Under the bill, any physician that performs an abortion after 15 weeks would lose their license for at least six months.

The state-level actions come as the Supreme Court is reviewing a Mississippi law that bans abortion after 15 weeks.

MORE: Majority of abortions in US now done with pills, data shows

In the case, Mississippi, Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health, the state of Mississippi is arguing to uphold a law that would ban most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, while Jackson Women's Health, Mississippi's lone abortion clinic, argues the Supreme Court's protection of a woman's right to choose the procedure is clear, well-established and should be respected.

Since the Roe v. Wade ruling and the 1992 Planned Parenthood v. Casey ruling that affirmed the decision, the court has never allowed states to prohibit the termination of pregnancies prior to fetal viability outside the womb, roughly 24 weeks, according to medical experts.

If the Supreme Court rules in Mississippi's favor and upholds the law -- as is expected because of the court's current conservative makeup -- the focus will turn to states, more than half of which are prepared to ban abortion if Roe is overturned, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive rights organization.

MORE: 5 things to watch as abortion rights fight reaches peak in 2022

Prabhakaran said in March that she and other doctors in Florida were already seeing patients from states as far away as Texas, which last year enacted a law that bans abortions after six weeks of pregnancy.

PHOTO: The Florida Capitol in Tallahassee, Florida. (Stephen M. Dowell/Orlando Sentinel/TNS via Getty Images, FILE)

As of 2017, abortions in Florida represent just over 8% of all abortions in the U.S., according to the Guttmacher Institute.

According to Prabhakaran, a 15-week ban in Florida has the potential to force pregnant people to travel as far as North Carolina and Washington, D.C., for care.

"While abortion is very safe, the the higher the gestational age, the more risk there is potentially to patients who have a complication," she said, adding that the lack of access also means some patients will continue with high-risk pregnancies while others will seek other care. "What I worry is going to start to happen again is that patients will be taking care from unqualified providers, and that that will put them at risk."

ABC News' Will McDuffie contributed to this report.

Florida governor signs law banning nearly all abortions after 15 weeks originally appeared on goodmorningamerica.com
Former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo gives a speech in Taipei

By Ben Blanchard

TAIPEI (Reuters) -The United States should formally recognise Taiwan as a country, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Friday during a speech in Taipei, drawing a stern rebuke from China for his "babbling nonsense".

"The United States government should immediately take necessary and long overdue steps to do the right and obvious thing: that is to offer the Republic of China, Taiwan, America's diplomatic recognition as a free and sovereign country," Pompeo said in a speech organised by a Taiwan think-tank.

Washington ended formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan in 1979 when it recognised the People's Republic of China.

While Taiwan's official name is the Republic of China, politicians often add "Taiwan" in their public comments.

"While the United States should continue to engage with the People's Republic of China as a sovereign government, America's diplomatic recognition of the 23 million freedom-loving Taiwanese people and its legal, democratically-elected government can no longer be ignored, avoided, or treated as secondary," Pompeo said.

Pompeo's comments cross a sensitive red line for China, which claims Taiwan as its own territory and has never renounced the use of force to bring it under Chinese control.

"Pompeo is a former politician whose credibility has long gone bankrupt. Such a person's babbling nonsense will have no success," said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin.

China says Taiwan is the most important and sensitive issue in its relations with Washington.

China placed sanctions on Pompeo when he left office at the end of the Trump presidency last year, angered by his repeated criticism of the country, especially its ruling Communist Party, and support for Chinese-claimed Taiwan.

He met Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen on Thursday, who bestowed a presidential honour on him.

China put sanctions on "lying and cheating" Pompeo and 27 other top Trump-era officials as President Joe Biden took office in January 2021.

The Donald Trump administration gave strong backing to Taiwan, despite the lack of formal diplomatic ties, including high-profile arms sales and visits by top U.S. officials to Taipei.

China has stepped up its military and diplomatic pressure against Taiwan over the past two years, seeking to force the island to accept its sovereignty.

Taiwan's democratically-elected government says it wants peace but will defend itself if attacked, and that only the island's people have the right to decide their future.

Pompeo said after Beijing's "brutally successful takeover of Hong Kong," Chinese President Xi Jinping feels more powerful and "won't be satisfied stopping at Hong Kong".

"Taking over Taiwan, a necessary mission, is not only to boost Xi's egomaniacal claim of greatness, but indeed to solidify it," Pompeo said.

(Reporting by Ben Blanchard, Additional reporting by Emily Chow in Beijing; Writing by Sarah Wu; Editing by Michael Perry)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States on Thursday imposed sanctions against Russian oligarchs as it targeted Russia's super-rich and others close to President Vladimir Putin, further ratcheting up financial pressure over Moscows invasion of Ukraine.

The United States imposed full blocking sanctions on eight oligarchs and officials, including Russian tycoon Alisher Usmanov, taking aim at those who have amassed fortunes and political influence through their connections to Putin.

"We want (Putin) to feel the squeeze, we want the people around him to feel the squeeze," White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki told reporters on Thursday.

The sanctions are the latest in a series announced by Washington, including against Putin and Russia's central bank, after Russian forces invaded Ukraine in the biggest assault on a European state since World War Two. Moscow calls the assault a "special operation."

Washington imposed sanctions on Usmanov, founder of Russian mining company Metalloinvest, whom the White House described as a one of Russias wealthiest individuals and a close ally of Putin.

The sanctions block his property from use in the United States and by U.S. persons, including his luxury yacht, which the White House said was seized by Germany, and his private jet.

The U.S. Treasury Department took the rare step of including in what are normally textual news releases a pair of photos of Usmanov's super-yacht and private jet.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, whom the White House accused of being "a top purveyor of Putin's propaganda," was also targeted.

SANCTIONED: Russian businessman and founder of USM Holdings Alisher Usmanov (right) is seen with President Vladimir Putin. (Kremlin via Reuters)

Nikolay Tokarev, chief executive of energy giant Transneft, was designated along with his wife, daughter and his two luxury real estate companies.

Billionaire brothers Boris and Arkady Rotenberg and several family members were also hit with sanctions, as was Igor Shuvalov, a Russian politician and Putin's former deputy prime minister who heads the State Development Corp.

Yevgeniy Prigozhin, previously targeted for alleged attempts to interfere in U.S. elections, was designated again. The Treasury described him as the Russian financier of the Internet Research Agency (IRA) and said his "influence apparatus is reportedly supporting Russian Government designed influence operations within Ukraine."

"Treasury is committed to holding Russian elites to account for their support of President Putins war of choice," Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in a statement.

In addition to sanctions against Russian elites, the Treasury designated 26 Russia- and Ukraine-based individuals and seven Russian entities, some linked to Russian intelligence services, accused of spreading disinformation aimed at destabilizing the Ukrainian government.

The United States will also impose visa restrictions on 19 Russian oligarchs, their family members and associates, the White House said in a statement.

Thursday's action helps bring the United States in line with measures the European Union took earlier this week.

SANCTIONED: Yevgeniy Prigozhin is seen in an FBI poster. (FBI/Handout via Reuters)

The EU on Monday imposed sanctions on 26 prominent people over Russia's invasion of Ukraine, including oligarchs and business people active in the oil, banking and finance sectors. The EU measures included Peskov and Usmanov.

Britain on Thursday also imposed sanctions on Usmanov and Shuvalov.

Thursday's measures come after the U.S. Justice Department on Wednesday launched a task force known as "KleptoCapture" aimed at straining the finances of Russia's oligarchs.

The United States and its allies last week announced they would launch a task force to identify and freeze the assets of sanctioned Russian companies and oligarchs.

The State Department named the 22 Russian defense-related entities that the White House had announced on Wednesday would be hit with sanctions. The targeted firms include Kurganmashzavod, which makes infantry fighting vehicles, and Makeyev State Missile Center, which produces missiles.

Washington has repeatedly warned that it is prepared to take further measures to hold Moscow to account over its invasion of Ukraine.

In his State of the Union address on Tuesday night, President Biden said the United States would work to seize the yachts, luxury apartments and private jets of wealthy Russians with ties to Putin.

"We are coming for your ill-begotten gains," Biden said.

U.S. prosecutors in Manhattan on Thursday charged a television producer for Konstantin Malofeyev, described as a Russian oligarch, with violating Crimea-related sanctions.

The producer, U.S. citizen John Hanick, was arrested in February in London, and the United States is seeking his extradition. Prosecutors said Hanick was charged with violating U.S. sanctions arising from Russia's 2014 invasion of the Crimean peninsula.
Refugees fleeing Ukraine are escaping the most atrocious set of circumstances, the Home Secretary said during her trip to the Polish border.

Priti Patel travelled to Medyka, Poland, to mark the Ukraine family scheme opening on Friday to allow Britons and those settled in the UK to bring their relatives over to join them.

Ms Patel said work is being done night and day to ensure those fleeing the advancing Russian troops can seek refuge.

The Cabinet minister said people crossing the border  the majority of them women and children  are coming from the most atrocious set of circumstances where they are being persecuted by (Russias) President Putin.

She was in the country very much in terms of standing in solidarity with the people of Ukraine, but also with our friends here in Poland, Ms Patel said.

The UKs initial visa offer was restricted to immediate family but widened on Tuesday to include parents, grandparents and siblings, with applications opening on Friday.

A sponsorship scheme will also allow individuals and organisations to bring Ukrainians to the UK.

Today I am in Poland to launch the United Kingdoms Ukraine Family Scheme. From today anyone settled in the United Kingdom can bring their Ukrainian family to safety. The British Government is doing everything it can to support the Ukrainian people as they fight for freedom. pic.twitter.com/Q6rbpEeHw1  Priti Patel (@pritipatel) March 4, 2022

Ms Patel said: We stand shoulder to shoulder with the people of Ukraine but also with our dear friends here in Poland, who are working really night and day, we can all see this, under incredible circumstances.

The new-expanded family route will allow thousands more Ukrainians to come to the UK free of charge, with three years leave to remain and access to benefits and the right to work.

The Home Office on Friday afternoon said it is too early to say how many applications have been made.

Ms Patel said it was heartbreaking to have met those forced from their homeland because of the monstrous Russian invasion.

But she said seeing the first people who will apply to the expanded scheme was wonderful.

While we want people to be able to return to their homes at the end of this diabolical invasion, giving thousands of people a route to the UK is the right thing to do, she said.

The whole of the UK is united in our condemnation of Russias barbaric and cold-blooded actions and the Government is doing everything possible to make certain our humanitarian support is in Ukraines best interests.

Labour has urged the Home Office to go further by creating a simple emergency visa allowing anyone fleeing the conflict to come to the UK.

The party said the move would lift normal visa conditions other than biometrics and security checks, which could be done en route to the UK.

It comes as MPs criticised the support provided by ministers to refugees looking to escape the Taliban in Afghanistan following the withdrawal of Western troops in the summer, and drew parallels with the unfolding crisis in Ukraine.

Read comments from our Chair @SarahChampionMP on UK support for aid workers in #Afghanistan and the Afghan people and lessons to be learnt for the UK response to #Ukraine. Read more here: https://t.co/joDezIyTAg pic.twitter.com/7OEXlw49nn  International Development Committee (@CommonsIDC) March 4, 2022

The Commons International Development Committee published a report on Friday, called Afghanistan: UK Support for Aid Workers and the Afghan People, and said the Government had been inflexible in its response to the plight of people looking to escape the central Asian country.

Sarah Champion, the Labour chairwoman of the committee, said: By only making limited concessions to pre-existing UK immigration routes, the response from the Home Office to the situation in Ukraine shows an inflexible and begrudging approach to an acute humanitarian situation.

As in Afghanistan, there has been a lack of clarity  and agonising slowness of pace  in explaining what UK immigration routes are available.

Ms Champion called for the Government to be significantly more agile in adapting existing immigration routes, saying the safety of countless people and their families depends on it.

According to the UN refugee agency, more than 1.2 million people have left Ukraine since the fighting began.

More than 165,000 people left the country on Thursday  down slightly from Wednesdays count and well under the nearly 200,000 on Tuesday, which amounted to the peak one-day exit of people from Ukraine since Moscows attack began, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
A military veteran who was suicidal has praised the Poppy Factory, which is celebrating its centenary year, for helping to give him a purpose in life.

The charity, established in the aftermath of the First World War, has since grown into a national organisation providing support for ex-service personnel with health conditions to get into employment.

Stephen Pleasants began volunteering with the charity after suffering a breakdown, and is now a production worker at the west London factory, manning reception, making wreaths and helping in the warehouse.

The former RAF member described the factory, in Richmond, as a safe space for people.

He told the PA news agency: I had a major breakdown about seven years ago, so it took me a long time to rebuild my life, and the Poppy Factory has really helped with that.

I was suicidal.

I was going to commit suicide and ended up in a psychiatric hospital for a couple of weeks and then did a lot of therapy.

He said it had been suggested to him to get involved with the Poppy Factory, and he had found a purpose there.

He said: I think having a purpose in your day, a purpose in life is so helpful.

And having a routine is really good, just getting out of bed and having something to do, a purpose in everything you do, is really important.

Stephen Pleasants said his role at the factory had helped him after a breakdown (Steve Parsons/PA)

Mr Pleasants, who served in the RAF for six years and did two tours of Belize and Ascension Island in the 1980s, added: Its actually my life. It really is. I mean without this place, as I said, I dont know where Id be now.

And its really good, Ive learned a lot, learned a lot about myself since Ive been here.

A big advantage of the supportive environment is that those at the factory are understanding of the challenges people might face on different days, Mr Pleasants said.

He told PA: The thing is, with my diagnosis, youre going to have to good days and bad days.

But whats really nice about working here (is that) people, they understand that.

Theyre not going to sack you for having a day off, because youre having a really bad day and they get that, you know.

The Duchess of Cornwall opened the new facilities at the Poppy Factory in Richmond in November, 2021 (Geoff Pugh/Daily Telegraph/PA)

Deirdre Mills, the Poppy Factorys chief executive, said there will be different events happening over the coming months to celebrate the charitys 100 years in existence.

She said: We are celebrating in all sorts of ways.

The first way would be to remember our past and our history.

And of course, we were set up in 1922 to remember wounded, injured and sick veterans from the First World War but were also celebrating our more modern mission, which is to help wounded, injured and sick veterans into employment all across the country, and in all sorts of ways whether that be in partnership with the NHS, whether that be in a community environment, or working with Government organisations such as DWP (Department for Work and Pensions), or whether its in small community environments, such as cafes, and the like.

She said she hopes to work again with the royal family throughout this, our centenary year, praising the charitys patron, the Duchess of Cornwall, for the interest and the engagement that she shows.

Ms Mills said she is delighted the factory has re-opened following shutdowns during the pandemic, and encouraged the public to book on the website, come on through the doors, and see for yourself what is going on here and the wonderful work of the charity.

People can book a visit and see how veterans make royal and regimental wreaths by hand, as well as having the chance to make their own poppy.
The Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) has praised the UKs astonishing show of support for those affected by the conflict in Ukraine after raising 55 million in the first day of its appeal.

The charity, made up of 15 leading aid agencies, urged the public to keep momentum for the cause going as it revealed that hundreds of thousands of people had contributed within hours of the appeals launch.

Among them was the Queen, who made a generous donation on Thursday, along with the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Cambridge, the DEC said.

More than one million people across Ukraine have been forced to flee their homes. Families have been separated, homes destroyed and lives are in danger. Donate to our appeal to help people in Ukraine. Thank you for your support https://t.co/JRCP8NYvdB pic.twitter.com/H27FAT2OtV  DEC (@decappeal) March 4, 2022

The total figure includes 20 million donated by the Government as part of its UK Aid Match initiative  the largest commitment ever made to a DEC appeal through the scheme.

DEC chief executive Saleh Saeed said: We are extremely grateful for the huge generosity of everyone in the UK who has donated to the DEC appeal. We are also very grateful for the generous support of the royal family.

We also thank the UK Government, who have matched pound for pound the first 20 million donated by the public, as well as our broadcast partners and celebrities for having aired and joined the appeal, reaching millions of viewers and listeners.

People who have fled their homes and are headed to the Ukrainian border face huge challenges: long waits to cross into neighbouring countries and scant facilities. At night, temperatures dip below freezing. Please help provide vital aid to those in need: https://t.co/JRCP8NYvdB pic.twitter.com/eQJAyYdDmC  DEC (@decappeal) March 4, 2022

The appeal was backed by Game Of Thrones star Kit Harington and Trigger Point actor Adrian Lester, who appeared in broadcasts publicising the launch on Thursday.

Commercial radio appeals were voiced by Doctor Who and Broadchurch star David Tennant.

Tesco also announced on Friday that it will donate 1 million to the Red Cross, one of the DEC member charities, to help it respond to the crisis on the ground.

Chief executive Jason Tarry also pledged to establish a scheme whereby every pound donated by a customer will be matched by the supermarket up to a further 1 million.

Were deeply saddened and distressed by the unfolding humanitarian situation and our thoughts are with the people of Ukraine and all those affected, Mr Tarry said.

Our thoughts are with the people affected by the Ukraine crisis. Were committed to support the relief efforts of those who need it. https://t.co/8Fg8J4NN6X pic.twitter.com/0JUxB82LmA  Tesco (@Tesco) March 3, 2022

Meanwhile, the World Health Organisation Foundation launched an international health appeal with a target of 57.5 million US dollars (around 43.2 million) needed to deliver urgent healthcare to those in Ukraine as well as refugees.

Jarno Habicht, WHO representative in Ukraine, said: We see that some cities now are becoming isolated and we are getting reports that people dont feel safe seeking healthcare with healthcare workers under attack.

This is moving very fast with the military offensive broadening and we are moving closer to a humanitarian crisis.

Mr Habicht said a full picture has not yet emerged but electricity, oxygen and medicines are all under threat, with some hospitals already running out of supplies.

The health situation in #Ukraine is worsening & the population needs access to healthcare. How can we support those affected with continued coordination, life-saving medical supplies provision, & vital healthcare?  Donate to https://t.co/eh7bJmQCr8 pic.twitter.com/3ZyRpQHhwU  WHO Foundation (@WHOFoundation) March 3, 2022

Anil Soni, chief executive of the WHO Foundation, said: The people of Ukraine need urgent action and support from the rest of the world to ensure its healthcare is functioning and protected so further loss of life is prevented.

Waless First Minister also announced on Friday that the Welsh Government will provide 4 million to Ukraine through the DEC.

Mark Drakeford told Sky News that his country hopes to be a nation of sanctuary and that its aid helps those on the front line.

(PA Graphics)

The DEC appeal aims to raise funds to be distributed to charities responding on the ground in Ukraine, Moldova, Romania, Hungary, Slovakia and Poland, giving people food, water and shelter.

The charity has not set a target for the appeal, with Mr Saeed saying it is absolutely grateful for every single pound donated.

The more money we raise, the more people that we can reach, he said.
The head of the UNs nuclear energy watchdog has offered to travel to Ukraine in a bid to broker a deal with Russia and avoid further damage to radioactive power plants during the conflict.

Rafael Mariano Grossi, director-general of the United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said he has volunteered to travel to Chernobyl  the site of a nuclear disaster in the 1980s and now under Russian control since the invasion started  to reach a framework to uphold nuclear safety.

In a move condemned by Western leaders, Russian forces shelled the power station in the city of Zaporizhzhia overnight, with the attack continuing even as emergency services tried to put out the resulting fire.

Mr Grossi said there has been no release of radiation at the nuclear plant  the largest of its kind in Europe  and that the radiation monitoring system is fully functional.

However, he said IAEA members are in an unprecedented situation following the damage, and that the industry is in completely uncharted waters.

A Russian projectile struck a training centre on the site but the building that was hit was not part of the reactor, he told reporters at a press conference.

In the aftermath of the attack, Mr Grossi said he had proposed to both Kyiv and Moscow that he meet political delegates to ensure key principles of nuclear safety are upheld during the fighting.

IAEA director-general Rafael Mariano Grossi has offered to broker a deal between Ukraine and Russia (Lisa Leutner/AP)

He said one of the seven principles for the safe use of nuclear energy  to ensure the physical integrity of a power plant  has been compromised with what happened last night in Zaporizhzhia.

He said it was fortunate there was no radiation release on this occasion and it could have been dramatic.

Bearing in mind what is happening and the risks that we may all incur if this continues without an enhancement and without recommitment to these principles, I have indicated to both the Russian Federation and the Ukraine my availability and disposition to travel to Chernobyl as soon as possible so that these seven crucial pillars are never again compromised, he said.

The idea behind this initiative of mine as director-general of IAEA is to agree on a framework and compromise that would commit to not compromising these principles which we all subscribe and agree to.

We all know that, given the very complicated circumstances on the ground, the logistics for such a trip, my presence in this place is not going to be easy, but at the same time I believe it wouldnt be impossible.

Speaking from the organisations headquarters in Vienna, Austria, Mr Grossi said both sides are considering his offer to travel to Chernobyl.

Reactor number four at the Chernobyl plant exploded and caught fire in 1986, shattering the building and spewing radioactive material high into the sky.

Even 36 years later, radioactivity is still leaking from historys worst nuclear disaster.

#Ukraine informed IAEA that Russian forces took control of site of #Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant; says safety systems of the plants six reactors had not been affected and there has been no release of radioactive material. Two people reported injured. https://t.co/XGl7nFUa9j  IAEA  International Atomic Energy Agency (@iaeaorg) March 4, 2022

Offering a further update on what happened at Zaporizhzhia, Mr Grossi said two people on the site were injured in the blaze.

He said that only one reactor is operating at about 60% and it continues to be controlled by Ukrainian technicians.

In an update posted on social media after the briefing, the IAEA said Ukrainian officials had informed the watchdog that Russian forces had taken control of the Zaporizhzhia plant but that the safety systems of the sites six reactors have not been affected.
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YEREVAN, MARCH 4, ARMENPRESS. The Armenian Parliament adopted at second reading the amendments to the Law on Advertising, banning all kinds of gambling advertisements, including advertisements of online casinos, casinos or bookmakers, with few exceptions.

The bill received 63 votes in favor and 24 abstentions.

Deputy Minister of Finance Armen Hayrapetyan said the restrictions return to those of 2020, when gambling ads were allowed only in 4 locations: on border checkpoints, at hotels of 4-star or higher, at the entrance or inside of their officers or on official websites of such companies.

Civil Contract Party MP Tsovinar Vardanyan reminded that this bill is one of the steps of their partys promise to fight gambling addiction.
RTHK: Presidential voting beings in Covid-hit South Korea

South Korea began early voting on Friday for a presidential election in the shadow of the pandemic, as up to a million people with Covid-19 are expected to cast ballots during a spike driving one of the world's highest caseloads.

Election workers have been deployed in protective equipment including full-body suits and safety glasses, and voters will spray hand sanitisers and wear gloves before casting ballots, according to the national election commission.

With more than 800,000 under home treatment for the coronavirus and nearly 800 in hospital intensive care, the government and health officials have sought to accommodate infected voters, including revising the election law last month.

People infected or in quarantine can walk in or take taxis or ambulances provided by local offices to the polling stations to vote in isolated booths. They are allocated an hour at the end of the second day of early voting and an hour and a half on the final day on Wednesday.

South Korea had early success in containing outbreaks and surges with aggressive testing and contact tracing. Although the government's pandemic management was not a major campaign focus, the omicron spike of the past week is affecting the voting as it drives cases to record highs.

Voters are choosing a replacement for liberal President Moon Jae-in, who cannot run for reelection due to term limits.

Yoon Suk-yeol got a boost on Thursday when a fellow conservative dropped out and threw his support behind Yoon, in a move that could tip the balance of the closely fought election away from the ruling liberals. Moon's ruling party is represented by Lee Jae-myung.

The race has focused on seeking a leader to clean up polarised politics and corruption, and tackle the runaway housing prices and deepening inequality that have dogged Asia's fourth-largest economy. (Reuters)

This story has been published on: 2022-03-03. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
U.S. immigration agency accused of failing to protect detainees from COVID-19

Xinhua) 08:49, March 04, 2022

People protest in front of a detention center of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in downtown Los Angeles, the United States, on July 2, 2018. (Xinhua/Zhao Hanrong)

"ICE officials have known for months that they must provide booster shots to people in detention, but have failed to do so," said an attorney.

WASHINGTON, March 3 (Xinhua) -- COVID-19 "continues to spread rapidly throughout" detention centers run by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), threatening the lives of people detained across the nation, according to an attorney with the nonprofit American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

"ICE officials have known for months that they must provide booster shots to people in detention, but have failed to do so," Eunice Cho, senior staff attorney at the ACLU's National Prison Project, has recently said in a statement.

"ICE's callous failure to provide this necessary protection is cruel and unconstitutional," Cho alleged.

The ACLU and its legislative office in Washington, D.C. filed a lawsuit Tuesday on behalf of "medically vulnerable people detained" by the ICE "who have requested and been denied COVID-19 vaccine booster shots."

The lawsuit demands that the plaintiffs, who are medically vulnerable to severe illness and death in the event of infection, as well as all medically vulnerable people in ICE detention, be offered booster shots.

It was the second lawsuit the ACLU has filed to obtain booster shots for people held in immigration detention.

More than one out of every 20 people in ICE detention are currently infected with COVID-19, according to ACLU data.

Hundreds of people take part in the "March to Abolish ICE" protest in New York, the United States, June 29, 2018. (Xinhua/Wang Ying)

It also claimed ICE has provided only a total of 1,436 boosters to people detained in ICE detention facilities over four months between November 2021 and Feb. 21, 2022, despite holding between 18,800 to 22,000 people on average daily.

Anna Sorokin, also known as Anna Delvey and now the subject of the popular Netflix series "Inventing Anna," is among the four named plaintiffs in the civil action against U.S. authorities and officials.

Sorokin, according to the ACLU lawsuit, said that she caught COVID-19 as a result of the ICE refusing her multiple requests for a booster shot.

A 31-year-old German woman convicted in 2019 of posing as a wealthy heiress to scam banks, hotels, and New York socialites, Sorokin was sentenced to four to 12 years in prison for her crimes and is presently detained by the ICE at a correctional facility in Goshen, New York, awaiting deportation to Germany, which she is legally contesting.

(Web editor: Xia Peiyao, Liang Jun)
YEREVAN, MARCH 4, ARMENPRESS. Former President Armen Sarkissian congratulated Vahagn Khachaturyan on his election as 5th President of Armenia.

In a message to Khachaturyan released through his office, Sarkissian said: Congratulations on your election to the high and responsible position of the President of the Republic. You are assuming office at an extremely difficult and responsible time for our country and nation, when numerous domestic and foreign problems require urgent solutions. Along with congratulations, I wish robust health to you, which is one of the most important preconditions for you to be able to successfully and decisively defend and advance the interests of our country and serve the Armenian state and people with dignity. Attaching importance to the safe and prosperous future of our homeland and people, I am ready to support you by serving my opportunities, experience, connections and potential for the benefit of a strong and stable statehood. Good luck and all the best to you.

President-elect Khachaturyan will be inaugurated on March 13.
YEREVAN, MARCH 4, ARMENPRESS. By the decision of the President of the National Assembly of Armenia, pursuant to Article 100 of the Constitution of the Republic of Armenia and Article 41 of the constitutional law the Rules of Procedure of the National Assembly, at the initiative of the Government an extraordinary sitting of the National Assembly will be convened on March 9, at 11:00.

The agenda includes two legislative initiatives: amending the Law on Reducing and Preventing Health Harm from the Use of Tobacco Products and Their Substitutes, and ratification of the Leter of Agreement between the Republic of Armenia and the International Monetary Fund, signed on January 11 and January 18, 2022 "On the use of the funds of the Reserve Program".
The govt's remarks came after Russian embassy in India said Indian students have been taken hostage by Ukrainian security forces

Union Minister Kiren Rijiju with Indian students, during his visit to Slovakia to facilitate the evacuation of Indians stranded in war-torn Ukraine, in Kosice, Slovakia. (Photo: PTI)

New Delhi: The government on Thursday said that the Indian embassy in Ukraine is in continuous touch with its stranded citizens, adding that it has not received any reports of students being held hostage in the war-hit country.

The government's remarks came in response to media queries after the claims of the Russian embassy in India on Wednesday that the Indian students have been taken hostage by Ukrainian security forces to use them as a human shield.

Refuting the reports of Indian students being held hostage, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) spokesperson Arindam Bagchi informed that many students left Kharkiv yesterday with the cooperation of Ukrainian authorities.

"We have not received any reports of any hostage situation regarding any student. We have requested for the support of the Ukrainian authorities in arranging special trains for evacuating students from Kharkiv and neighbouring areas to the western part of the country," he added.

Bagchi further said that the MEA has been coordinating effectively with the countries in the region, including Russia, Romania, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and Moldova, and expressed gratitude towards Ukrainian authorities for their help in the evacuation of Indians.

"A large number of Indian nationals have been evacuated from Ukraine in the last few days. We appreciate the help extended by the Ukrainian authorities to make this possible. We thank Ukraine's western neighbours for receiving Indian nationals and accomodating them while they waited for flights to take them back home," he stated.

Notably, the Russian embassy in India on Wednesday wrote in a tweet, "According to the latest information, these students are actually taken hostage by the Ukrainian security forces, who use them as a human shield and in every possible way prevent them from leaving for Russia. Responsibility, in this case, lies entirely with the Kyiv authorities."

However, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, in a tweet, said that the country has established an emergency hotline for African, Asian and other students wishing to leave Ukraine as the tensions between Moscow and Kyiv rages on.

Meanwhile, a total of 17,000 Indian nationals have left Ukraine since the advisories were issued and flights under 'Operation Ganga' have been increased to facilitate the evacuation of remaining students stranded in Ukraine.

The students who left Ukraine also included some Indians who had not registered with the Embassy of India in Kyiv previously.

Further, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday chaired a high-level meeting on the issue. The meeting was attended by Union Ministers S Jaishankar, Piyush Goyal, National Security Advisor Ajit Doval, Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla and other officials.
Defence ministry has offered these four projects to the Indian Industry for design and development under Make-I category of DAP 2020

Three projects for Indian Air were accorded Approval In-Principle (AIP) by Collegiate Committee of MoD including communication equipment with Indian security protocols (routers, switches, encryptors, VoIP phones and their software) and Airborne Electro Optical pod with Ground Based System. (Representational Image/ AFP)

New Delhi: In a major push towards Aatmanirbharta in defence sector, the defence ministry accorded in-principle approval to fund four projects by Indian industry. It inclu-des design and development of light tank for the Indian Army and airborne stand-off jammer for the Indian Air Force. The industry will be provided financial support for prototype development of these projects.

Defence ministry has offered these four projects (one for army and three for IAF) to the Indian Industry for design and development under Make-I category of Defence Acquisition Procedure (DAP) 2020.

This is for the first time since the launch of industry-friendly DAP-2020 that Indian industry has been involved in development of big ticket platforms such as Light tank and Communication Equipment with Indian security protocols.

Three projects for Indian Air were accorded Approval In-Principle (AIP) by Collegiate Committee of MoD including communication equipment with Indian security protocols (routers, switches, encryptors, VoIP phones and their software) and Airborne Electro Optical pod with Ground Based System.

The indigenous development of these projects in the country will help harness the design capabilities of Indian defence industry and position India as a design leader in these technologies, said defence ministry.

In the defence budget, 70 per cent funds have been kept for domestic procurement in 2022-23. Underlying the importance of Make-in-India in defence sector, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had told Indian industry that surprise element during war can only be attained if customized and unique weapons are developed in one's own country.
The meeting was attended by EAM S Jaishankar, Piyush Goyal, Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla, NSA Ajit Doval, with other officials

PM Modi at the meeting with senior officials. (Photo: ANI)

New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday chaired a meeting to discuss the ongoing evacuation drive of Indian nationals and the situation in conflict-hit Ukraine.

The meeting was attended by External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, Minister of Commerce & Industry Piyush Goyal, Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla, National Security Advisor (NSA) Ajit Doval and other senior officials.

The Prime minister had on Monday chaired two meetings to review the ongoing efforts under Operation Ganga for the return of Indians from Ukraine amid military operations by Russia.

Another meeting was held on Sunday. The Cabinet Committee on Security had met on February 24 in the wake of Russian military actions in Ukraine.

The Centre has ramped up efforts to evacuate Indian citizens stranded in Ukraine amid heightened tensions.

The government has also deployed 'special envoys' to four neighbouring countries bordering Ukraine to coordinate and oversee the evacuation process of Indian nationals.

Union Minister for Petroleum and Natural Gas Hardeep Singh Puri is overseeing evacuation efforts in Hungary, Union Law Minister Kiren Rijiju in Slovakia, Civil Aviation Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia in Romania and Minister of State for Road Transport & Highways and Civil Aviation Gen VK Singh in Poland.
US President Joe Biden, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida participated in the summit

Prime Minister Narendra Modi addresses the post-budget DPIIT webinar on Make in India for the World. (Photo: PTI)

New Delhi: India on Thursday discussed the implications of the Ukraine crisis with Quad group of countries  the United States, Japan and Australia.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi emphasised the need to return to a path of dialogue and diplomacy.

US President Joe Biden, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida participated in the virtual summit.

The meeting reviewed the progress of Quad initiatives since the summit in September 2021 with the leaders agreeing of accelerating cooperation with an objective to achieve concrete outcomes by the summit in Japan later this year.

Prime Minister Modi reiterated importance of adhering to UN Charter, international law, respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity. The leaders also discussed developments in Asean, the Indian Ocean region and the Pacific Islands. The leaders agreed to stay in touch to work towards an ambitious agenda for the forthcoming leaders summit in Japan.

In a joint statement that was released later, the leaders reaffirmed their commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific, in which the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all states is respected. They agreed to stand up a new humanitarian assistance and disaster relief mechanism.

Meanwhile, Russia offered to send 130 buses to evacuate stranded Indian students and other foreigners from war-torn Ukraines Kharkiv and Sumy cities to its Belgorod Region, a top Russian military general said on Thursday. The remarks by Russian National Defence Control Center head Colonel-General Mikhail Mizintsev comes a day after Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke to Russian President Vladimir Putin and discussed evacuation of Indians from conflict areas.
Mr Modi began the roadshow after garlanding a statue of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel at the Maldahiya crossing

New Delhi/Guwahati/Varanasi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi began his roadshow in Varanasi Friday afternoon, drumming up support for BJP candidates ahead of the last phase of the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections on March 7. Campaigning for this phase ends on Saturday afternoon. Mr Modi began the roadshow after garlanding a statue of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel at the Maldahiya crossing. It is due to close near the Kashi Vishwanath complex, where the PM will offer prayers.

In the Northeast, Manipur votes in the second and final phase Saturday for the 22 remaining seats, with both the ruling BJP and the Congress expressing confidence of having an edge on each other. While BJP state chief A. Sharda Devi claimed it will get at least 15 of the 22 seats, the Congress leaders claimed they are in a better position in the second phase. We will get a minimum of 17 seats, said Congress Manipur in-charge Bhakta Charan Das.

The political atmosphere in the northeastern state has got surcharged as former Union minister and Congress state observer Jairam Ramesh accusing Rs 16.63 crores were paid to militant groups in Manipur in the run-up to the polls.

Alleging this was done to influence voters a day before the polling, Mr Ramesh told reporters in Imphal: In a shocking violation of the model code of conduct, the Union home ministry and the BJP government in Manipur released Rs 15.7 crores on February 1 and a further Rs 92.7 lakhs on March 1 the banned militant groups. This has made a mockery of the elections in four districts.

In the second phase, 92 candidates, including two women, are in the fray across six districts. The BJP has fielded candidates for all 22 seats while the Congress is contesting 18 seats, the National Peoples Party 11, and the Naga Peoples Front and Janata Dal (U) 10 candidates each.

In Varanasi, the PM will wind up his visit on Saturday with a rally in Khajuria village, under Rohaniya Assembly seat, and will address people from five other Assembly segments under the Varanasi Lok Sabha seats.

Besides Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav, Congress leaders Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra landed in Varanasi on Friday and headed to the Phulpur middle school grounds for a rally after praying at the Kashi Vishwanath temple.
Instead of a tiny virus, we have a Russian strongman who wants to show pretenders whos the 'asli duniya ka boss'!

Indias chattering classes are behaving like theyve just discovered a country called Ukraine! Maybe they really have. After all, Ukraine isnt as glam as France or Italy. Its amusing to follow the emotionally charged exchanges between self-styled intellectuals swapping forwards plucked from WhatsApp groups, as they take positions on a crisis threatening the world as much as Covid-19 did three years ago. Instead of a tiny virus that crept into unsuspecting lungs and killed a lot of people, we have a Russian strongman who wants to show pretenders whos the asli duniya ka boss! Clearly, it aint Joe Biden! This is Vladimir Putins moment in history, and he isnt about to blow it. Neither will he blow up Ukraine, as people fear. He doesnt have to. The message has gone out loud and clear: Putin has secured his place in history books merely by flexing his martial arts-toned biceps. And firing a few missiles, of course.

Back in India, the sabjantawalas are busy creating their own narratives. We talk like overnight experts on geopolitics. Bored, idle urbanites are obsessing on the crisis, almost as if their own future hangs on how many missiles and tanks are deployed in Ukraine before a sensible setting is achieved, and we go back to worrying about rising petrol prices and what happens in Uttar Pradesh if the BJP loses. Memes and jokes galore are doing the rounds, even as our dynamic ministerlog fly in and out of Europe to ensure that Indian students in Ukraine get home safely. This is a timely move by the government and shows how proactive we are, even if we chose to remain non-committal by abstaining during the critical anti-Russia UN vote. Sending our airliners to bring back our kids is easier, and shows Ukraine in a very poor light. If they cant ensure the safety of 18.000 Indian students studying in their universities, they must be really bad people, who deserve to be pounded by aggressive Russians out to grab their country, right? Desi students added to the discourse by recounting how rude the Ukrainians were to them. Stories of starvation and scary escapes to the border are making more news today than the equally poignant plight of thousands of migrant workers trudging back to their villages during the pandemic ever did.

But our sense of humour stays intact. A recent meme offered an instant solution: Change the spelling from Ukraine to UKKKRENNE and the problem will be solved, it read, in a dig at a popular numerologist who minted millions by advocating spelling changes, involving the letter K.

Most of us living in our Mumbai-bubble have a sizzling story or two featuring attractive Ukrainian ladies. Quite a few high society marriages took a hit, a decade ago, with the other woman being a beauty from Kyiv. Special charters from Ukrainian cities with gorgeous young girls on board would regularly land in Mumbai and be met by canny talent scouts whod herd the lot for auditions with Bollywood producers looking for backup dancers in elaborate item songs. Some of the taller girls would turn to ramp modelling, while others slightly lower in the pecking order would get jobs as scantily-clad ushers in grand-scale weddings. At one point, no Ludhiana/Jalandhar shaadi was complete without Ukrainian bar girls serving drinks to lusty shouts of Balle Balle. Lets not go all the way to Goa, with entire villages taken over by Ukrainians plying various nefarious trades as cops looked the other way.

This has nothing to do with our sympathy for the country under siege. The very thought of Ukraines President winning major dance contests and carving out a successful career as a stand-up comic is most inspiring. Pappu can dance, saala! Russias foreign minister Sergei Lavrov has generously and disingenuously said his country recognises Volodymyr Zelenskyy as Ukraines legitimate President. Spasibo! But its angry with the popular President for lying to his people. Russian leaders never lie to their people, okay? Its the same Zelenskyy who hasnt abandoned his citizens and fled after being offered asylum. He is there on the streets, wearing a helmet and promising to defend his country till the last bullet. But hey he also messed up evacuation plans. Why didnt he take Putins threats seriously and put out an advisory to citizens to vacate homes well in advance?

Talking to a top dog in the Indian Army, who retired recently and is considered a good military strategist/tactician, I was interested to read his comments on the media coverage, providing detailed statistics about the conflict. He says such accuracy is totally off, if not impossible. As he put it: Casualty reports on either side are never accurate, seldom truthful and (often) deliberately falsified. I wish our reporters understand they are giving figures of something very different than a profit and loss statement of an MNC after the AGM. He went on to scoff: EU and Nato are like any RWA (residents welfare association) watching two neighbours fighting bitterly. But they darent discontinue water and electricity supply of those homes. I have still to come across a better perspective!

Kaun jeetega or kaun harega in this dark, dismal scenario is impossible to predict, as the real war is being fought slyly behind the scenes between players whose identity isnt known to the world. Stealth and secrecy have always determined the outcome of battles through time immemorial. Russia doesnt like to lose wars, as history has established. Putin is way too alpha to back down regardless of sanctions and threats from other European nations, with leaders calling him a dictator, criminal and worse. The hypocrisy and double standards are there for all to judge. Who will ever forget the blatantly racist coverage on TV channels, with anchors talking in outraged terms about white people with blue eyes and blond hair being killed by other whites! In this White vs White war it's only Vladimir Putin who will make history and change history. What he launched against Ukraine isnt new. Americans can be accused of this and worse. Besides, for all his belligerence and chest-thumping, Joe Biden comes across as a wimp. And why is Barack Obamas role being overlooked? Saat khoon maaf? Like another apt meme stated: When Russia sends tanks and soldiers into another country, its called INVASION. When America does it, its called LIBERATION.

Till peace is restored, lets seek comfort and inspiration from poetry, as Ukrainian soldier Zhenya Peripelitsa did, standing in a field covered in snow, as he recited a poignant poem by Hamid Mosadegh: What are you thinking? Who would believe your love turned to ashes, the jungle of my soul

As long as poetry can soothe us and act as a salve, theres hope for peace!
Six would-be volunteers visit the Ukrainian embassy. For Chanaphong, 28, Ukrainians are also fighting for democracy. Thailand voted to condemn Russia at the UN but the prime minister has tried to stay away from the controversial issue.

Bangkok (AsiaNews/Agencies)  Some members of Thailands pro-democracy movement, which has been protesting against the government of General Prayut Chan-o-cha (Ret) since 2020, have expressed the intention to enlist in the international legion" fighting against Russian forces in Ukraine.

Chanaphong Ball Phongpai, a former Thai Air Force conscript turned political activist, and five friends registered on a site for potential recruits to help Ukraine and visited the Ukrainian embassy in Bangkok.

In a single day, the online Thai language group gathered the names of more than 2,000 people interested in volunteering for Ukraine.

However, for the Ukrainian embassy, volunteers must provide documents online, including proof of military training and a clean criminal record. Thus, it is unclear whether they will be accepted into the international legion.

Chanaphong, 28, said he was shocked at what was happening to the Ukrainian people, particularly following news of Russian attacks on civilians. I have been involved in demanding democracy in my country ... and opposing tyranny, he told Reuters in an interview.

Speaking about the Ukrainians, he added that, They are also fighting for democracy and [the country] is now invaded by a superpower and a tyrant, so I asked myself what I can do for them

Other men and I have some basics weapons training, so I think I might be useful to help save the Ukrainians from this crisis, he explained.

Thailand was among 141 countries that condemned Russia for its invasion of Ukraine at the UN General Assembly; however, Thai Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha has kept a neutral stance since the start of Russias military operations on 24 February.

Thai government spokeswoman Ratchada Thanadirek said that no law prevents Thai citizens from joining foreign volunteer forces but she urged people to consider the potential grave danger that going to war entails.
by Guido Alberto Casanova

During a TV debate, the former Japanese prime minister suggested that, in light of current international situation, Japan should reach an agreement with the United States to share nuclear weapons. Incumbent Prime Minister Fumio Kishida rejects the idea, but the ruling party, to which both Abe and Kishida belong, is divided over the issue. Meanwhile, hibakusha, the survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs, are outright against it.

Tokyo (AsiaNews)  Nuclear weapons have become a hot topic in Japan after former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe mentioned them last week during a TV programme devoted to international situation and threats to Japans security following Russias invasion of Ukraine.

Mr Abe suggested that had Ukraine not given up its nuclear weapons after the fall of the Soviet Union, it might not have had to face Moscows aggression. By the same token, Abe suggested that Japan should discuss with the United States a possible nuclear sharing agreement.

It is necessary to understand how the world's security is maintained. We should not put a taboo on discussions about the reality we face, he said, implicitly referring to the challenge of increased Chinese assertiveness and North Koreas nuclear programme.

Incumbent Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida immediately dismissed the idea because it would violate the three principles that have guided Japanese foreign policy since the 1960s, namely of not producing, not possessing and not allowing nuclear weapons on its territory.

Despite Kishidas stance, the political debate in the country over the issue has not stopped. Although Abe stepped down as prime minister in 2020, he remains a major player within the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), in which he heads the right-wing and largest faction, which tends to be more nationalist and hawkish in defence matters.

Abes influence on public opinion is well reflected in the intense political turmoil following his statements.

Matsui Ichiro, head of the opposition Nippon Ishin no Kai party, echoed Abes views by arguing that Japan cannot conduct its policy based on the principles of a bygone era and announced that his party would come up with its own proposals.

Tamaki Yuichiro, who heads the Democratic Party for the People (DPP), questioned the effectiveness of nuclear deterrence and whether it could work with too strict an interpretation of the three non-nuclear principles.

By contrast, Japans Communist Party has the opposite opinion, criticising the position of the former prime minister. Party leader Akira Koike said, The three non-nuclear principles are not a mere policy measure but a national cause.

More cautious, the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan (CDP), the main opposition party, questioned the appropriateness of suddenly raising the issue. Komeito, the LDP's only government ally, said it was essential to stick to the three principles.

In the face of the anger of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear bomb survivors, the hibakusha, some have taken a step back.

Victims' associations held a press on Wednesday to publicly condemn the idea of letting nuclear weapons into Japan. We need people who have not experienced war to understand, at any cost, the realities of war and nuclear weapons, said a hibakusha representative. The next day, Nippon Ishin removed from its proposals the one to revise the three anti-nuclear principles.

Abe, however, has not given up. Yesterday, during a meeting of his faction, he reiterated his position, which is shared by his partys right wing. Although the LDP-led government is against any revision, the decisive battle remains internal to the party to which both Kishida and Abe belong.
The United Arab Emirates (UAE), a non-permanent member of the Security Council (2022-23), abstained from the resolution condemning Russia but voted in favour in the General Assembly, a symbolic gesture. The Gulf state has to protect its trade with Russia (US$ 4 billion) without antagonising the West. Catholics in the country pray for peace.

Abu Dhabi (AsiaNews)  The United Arab Emirates (UAE[*]) abstained from voting in favour of a resolution condemning Russias aggression against Ukraine. The resolution was defeated because of Russias veto. But just a few days later, at the United Nations General Assembly when the resolution had more of a symbolic value, the UAE voted in favour, deploring Russias invasion.

This inconsistency embodies the UAEs difficult attempt to find a balance over Russias invasion of the Ukraine, one that would protect its economic interests while trying to avoid irritating Moscow, Washington and the West, which reacted with harsh sanctions.

Along with Qatar, Kuwait and Bahrain, the UAE are NATO partners within the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative and have strong relations with the United States; however, it is also Russias top trading partner among the six monarchies that make up the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), with total trade reaching US$ 4 billion in 2021.

Russian oligarchs have been increasingly attracted by the emirates as a tourist destination, now reopening after two years of closures caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, and as a place for investment in infrastructure and real estate, especially Dubai.

Analysts explain that the two different votes in the UN  in the Council and the Assembly  reflect the UAEs desperate attempt to maintain an even foreign policy, trying to appear neutral while nurturing ties with Moscow, even more so since the Ukraine crisis broke out.

Such an ambivalence can be seen in the UAEs decision to provide US$ 5 million to the United Nations for humanitarian aid and assistance to refugees.

In a statement, the UAE Foreign Ministry noted the deteriorating humanitarian situation for civilians and the need for safe passage for those seeking to leave the country without discrimination or obstacles.

For Anwar Gargash, diplomatic adviser to the UAE president and chairman of the National Human Rights Committee, taking sies would only lead to more violence.

At the same time, in exchange for the UAEs neutral position, Russia for the first time voted in favour of an arms embargo against the Houthi, who are opposed to the Saudi-led Arab coalition in the Yemeni conflict.

In recent history, from the Middle East to North Africa, the UAE has sided more often with Russia than with the United States, including the rapprochement with Syrias Bashar al-Assad and Libyas Khalifa Haftar, both backed by Russia.

The day before the invasion, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and his UAE counterpart, Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan discussed important issues, expressing similar views.

On Monday, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, discussed ways to ensure stability to the energy market, which, together with wheat, seems to be the most likely to suffer from the conflict.

In fact, gas and oil prices have soared recently, with gas reaching an all-time high of US$ 221 per megawatt-hour before falling back while in Europe, Brent crude futures hit US$ 118, the highest level since 2013.

For their part, the OPEC + countries (which includes Russia) have decided to maintain a gradual approach to increasing production in order to avoid any shocks.

Amid the tensions and uncertainty over the future, the Catholic community in the UAE has heeded the Pope Franciss appeal for peace during Lent.

Bishop Paul Hinder, vicar of southern Arabia[] and apostolic administrator for northern Arabia[], told AsiaNews that he "asked priests and pastors to add a prayer for peace on the liturgical agenda.

The whole world is in shock, he added; anxious about the war between Ukraine and Russia. It is time for us to show our solidarity with the people in Ukraine and support them with our prayer.

[*] The UAE IS a non-permanent member of the United Nations Security Council elected for the period 2022-23.

[] UAE, Oman and Yemen.

[] Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Bahrain.
Among those infected were Lee Cheuk-yan, Albert Ho and Koo Sze-yiu, who has stage four cancer. Almost 60,000 cases a day in the city: one in seven prisoners is infected. Prison authorities: most are asymptomatic. Hong Kong Watch: 721 democratic figures are locked up in city prisons.

Hong Kong (AsiaNews) - The historic democracy leaders Lee Cheuk-yan and Albert Ho are among about 1,000 inmates held in city prisons infected with Covid-19. Among the positives is 75-year-old democracy activist Koo Sze-yiu, who has stage four cancer.

The health emergency in Hong Kong, hit by the fifth wave of the pandemic, seems to be out of control, even alarming Beijing. Yesterday, local authorities recorded almost 57,000 cases and 198 deaths. To curb the run on goods over the past week, two of the city's biggest supermarket chains have decided to ration food and medicine sales from today.

The infection rate in prisons is higher than in the population as a whole. There are currently about 7,350 people behind bars in Hong Kong, which means that one in seven prisoners is infected. In recent days, there have been 200 infections a day in prisons. In response to the problem, the executive has decided to turn some prisons into isolation centres.

Prison authorities say most of the infected inmates are asymptomatic and all are now in quarantine. Those without symptoms include Lee and Ho. The two democracy figures are serving sentences for taking part in unauthorised demonstrations. They are also awaiting trial on charges of violating the draconian national security law, which Beijing imposed in June 2020 to stifle the pro-democracy movement.

In the past, Lee and Ho led the disbanded Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China, which on 4 June each year organised the traditional vigil in memory of the 1989 Tiananmen massacre. The Alliance, like Lee and Ho, is accused of inciting subversion under the security measure.

Due to his health condition, Koo was unable to appear at the court hearing yesterday for his possible release on bail. As reported by the Hong Kong Free Press, the National Security Police arrested him last month before an announced demonstration against the Beijing Winter Olympics. He had previously spent several periods in jail.

According to the UK-based humanitarian organisation Hong Kong Watch, 721 pro-democracy figures are imprisoned in Hong Kong.
The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists got hold of some of the Swedish company's internal review documents. In addition to blatant cases of corruption and money laundering in several countries, findings show that after 2014 the company may have paid terrorists to do business.

Baghdad (AsiaNews/Agencies)  In 2014, Ericsson, the Swedish-based telecommunications giant, asked the Islamic State (IS) to be allowed to continue operating in Mosul and smuggled equipment into IS-controlled areas, this according to the Ericsson List, a project by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalism (ICIJ), which obtained documents from an internal company review.

The ICIJ report, which was shared with a number of international newspapers, found Ericssons business practices included sham contracts, inflated invoices, falsified financial statements and payments to consultants with shady job descriptions.

After the findings were published, Ericsson released a public statement on 15 February in which it acknowledged corruption-related misconduct in Iraq and possible payments to the Islamic State.

The company, officially known as Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson, generated US$ 25 billion last year and employs approximately 100,000 people in more than 140 countries.

It is a leading supplier of towers, radio base stations and mobile switching centres, essential for modern communications. From 2011 to 2018, its sales in Iraq totalled about .9 billion.

In 2019, the Swedish giant admitted that it had engaged in illegal business practices in five countries (China, Vietnam, Indonesia, Kuwait and Djibouti) and reached a billion-dollar settlement with US authorities to avoid a criminal trial.

Internal documents indicate that the company examined corruption allegations concerning certain employees in 15 other countries, including Iraq.

According to leaked documents, in 2014, when the Islamic State was at its peak following conquests in Syria and Iraq, two employees proposed halting operations in Iraq. Senior executives rejected the recommendation, claiming that leaving would destroy our business.

Shortly thereafter, Ericsson asked a local partner, Asiacell Communications, to seek permission from local authority ISIS to continue work in Mosul.

The internal review concluded that they could not rule out the possibility that the company financed terrorism through its subcontractors, although they were unable to identify any employees directly involved.

The internal investigation is incomplete, the ICJI noted, because it does not include interviews with the people directly involved.

Still the companys investigators found that Elie Moubarak, Ericssons account manager for Korek Telecom, a mobile phone carrier and the companys largest customer in Iraq, engaged in corruption and financial irregularities.

In one instance, Moubarak asked for a US$ 50,000 donation to Kurdistans Peshmerga forces for fighting ISIS, the report reads.

The militia was led by Sirwan Barzani, one of the main shareholders of Korek, a member of one of the main Kurdish family oligarchies with whom Ericsson had close ties.

Ericssons internal report shows that Korek evaded taxes and fees amounting to US$ 375 million and threatened to demolish rival company towers in Kurdish territory.

However, the biggest problems came with the rise of the Islamic State. Ericsson and its partner Asiacell needed to move cell towers and equipment from Erbil, in northern Iraq, to Ramadi, in the middle of the country.

A transportation contractor, Cargo Iraq, offered two options, according to the report: the legal way and the Speedway. The latter passed through ISIS territories and avoided Iraqi customs controls, which risked blocking goods for weeks.

At least 30 lorries each paid US$ 3,000 to US$ 4,000 to haul various equipment across IS-controlled territory. In March 2017, the company paid US$ 22,000 per lorry for three loads in one day.

The investigations into the matter have not yet been completed, and the ICIJ cannot exclude Ericssons money funded terrorism.
Today's headlines: protests against the war in Ukraine continue in St Petersburg and other Russian cities, with hundreds of arrests; Israel expropriates Jerusalem's Alexander Nevsky Church from the Russians; the majority party in Georgia wants to speed up its entry into the EU; the Pope will visit East Timor by the end of the year.

INDIA

The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) reports that in 2022 about 92% of people who died of Covid-19 were not vaccinated. In terms of case fatality rate (cfr), the Omicron-dominated third wave had the lowest figure (0.35%;) the Delta-driven second wave had a case fatality rate of 1.29%. Omicron took only 18 days to reach its peak number of cases, compared to 49 for Delta.

RUSSIA

In St Petersburg, Ekaterinburg and other cities, protests continued under the slogan "Peace in Ukraine, Putin in The Hague!", which led to the arrest of hundreds more people in recent days. The Security Committee has called for the formation of a special section of the police to control "extremist pacifists".

UKRAINE - RUSSIA

The Russian Defence Ministry listed for the first time the losses suffered by the army, speaking of 498 dead and 1957 wounded. In contrast, Kiev sources speak of 6,000 dead among Moscow's soldiers. The UN has declared that one million refugees have left Ukraine since the beginning of the conflict.

ISRAEL

An Israeli court stripped the Russian government of ownership of the Alexander Nevsky Church in Jerusalem. Judge Mordechai Kaduri annulled the registration that gave Moscow control of the "Alexander courtyard" not far from the Holy Sepulchre, an area famous for its excavations and architecture. Prime Minister Naftali Bennett will decide the fate of the complex.

GEORGIA

The political committee of the majority party in Georgia, the Georgian Dream, has decided, after consultation with Prime Minister Irakli Garibasvili, to propose that the country join the European Union as soon as possible. The "political context" and the "new conditions of international relations" are said to be behind the acceleration.

NORTH KOREA

A project dedicated to greenhouse crops, the only one of its kind in North Korea and created two years ago to feed the rural population, has only served to enrich the tables of the party leaders in Pyongyang. The farm is located in the village of Jungphyong, in the northeastern province of North Hamgyong, is 490 acres in size and includes about 300 greenhouses.

ARMENIA

The Armenian parliament elected the new President of the Republic in the second round of voting. The choice fell on the Minister of Industrial Development, Vaagn Khachaturyan, with 71 votes out of a total of 107. An economist, the new president was also mayor of Yerevan and is considered to be very loyal to Prime Minister Nikol Pasinyan.

TIMOR EAST

Pope Francis has confirmed the apostolic journey to East Timor, which will take place this year, although there is no precise date yet. This was confirmed by the charge d'affaires of the nunciature, Msgr Marco Sprizzi, during a meeting with the press in Dili. The visit was planned for September 2020 with Indonesia and New Guinea but was postponed due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
by Vladimir Rozanskij

President Tokaev talks with Putin and Zelensky. Kazakh authorities and companies worried about the fallout from the conflict and Western sanctions against Russia. In terms of the Kremlin's geopolitical aims, with a large population of Russian origin, Kazakhstan's situation is similar to that of Ukraine.

Moscow (AsiaNews) - After heavy criticism for failing to condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Kazakhstan's President Kasym-Zomart Tokaev has decided to offer himself as a neutral mediator between the two "brotherly" countries in conflict. He did so after having his representatives at the UN abstain and contacting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyj by phone.

As the spokesman for the Kazakh president, Berik Kurmangali, said, the talks took place "at the request of Ukraine", and Tokaev stressed "the importance of reaching an agreement in the negotiations in order to stop and prevent further escalation of war operations in Ukraine". Zelenskyj made it known via Twitter that he had discussed the difficult security situation throughout the region, and made agreements on humanitarian issues, promising "to stay in touch".

Earlier, Tokaev had called Russian President Vladimir Putin, asking him to "reach a compromise" on Ukraine. Kazakhstan had actually avoided officially condemning the start of the Russian action on 24 February. So far, Nur-Sultan has maintained total secrecy about this assessment, so much so that it has attracted accusations from the West that it is in fact a supporter of Russia and should be subject to sanctions.

At the extraordinary session of the UN General Assembly on 2 March, where the resolution condemning Russia was overwhelmingly approved with 141 votes in favour, Kazakhstan was one of 35 countries that abstained, while only five voted against: Russia, Belarus, North Korea, Syria and Eritrea. Zelenskyj thanked those in favour, declaring that he had "chosen the right side", and his thanks were implicitly extended to the neutrals, starting with China and Kazakhstan, who had in some way demonstrated the groundlessness of Putin's claims over the entire former Soviet area.

Kazakhstan is in fact the "other side" of Ukraine, having been defined even recently by Putin as a country that was "originally Russian", both because of the vast common territories artificially subdivided during the Soviet period (such as Crimea and Donbass), and because of the historical link that in this case does not depend on the common Christian baptism as in Kiev, but on the Eurasian ethnic exchange evident since the earliest centuries. It is no coincidence that the "Kazakhs" are a term that in Russian sounds identical to the "Cossacks", precisely because of the contiguity of the ethnic-social composition of nomads and refugees in the territories straddling Europe and Asia.

The Ukrainian events of recent days are also seriously affecting Kazakhstan's economy, so much so that local businessmen have recently asked Tokaev to form an "anti-crisis commission" to study ways of easing the burden of sanctions against Russia on the country's economy. The chairman of the board of directors of the influential "Kusto Group", Erkin Tatisev, said that "constant joint work is needed to unite experts in economics, finance and business under the leadership of the president, so that Kazakhstan does not collapse into widespread poverty".

Nearly 100 Kazakh commercial convoys have been stranded in Ukraine, and many Kazakh citizens are trying to reach Poland. According to the Nur-Sultan Foreign Ministry, more than 1,500 Kazakhs are still in Ukraine.
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Later on in its life, the 1985 Lamborghini Countach 5000 was parked in a barn and left there for 20 years. It is unclear why the vehicle was parked for so much time, and the seller did not bother explaining that on camera for all of us to see. But we digress, so let's just move on.The Countach is set to get a new home, and it will leave Connecticut for Miami, Florida, where it will be restored by the folks over at Curated, who have hired Larry Kosilla of Ammo NYC to get the vehicle cleaned and detailed when restoring it. As Larry noted, this was the most disgusting supercar he has encountered, and mice are to blame.If there is something to learn from this video, on top of detailing techniques, the takeaway for you should be the fact that, in the case of any barn find , you must approach it with care, and be careful what you touch, as mice may have contaminated it. Larry explains things in detail, and even shows the extent of the damage done by the creatures.We should point out that mice may spread disease, and you must do whatever you can to avoid touching their droppings. That is why you see Larry wearing a full mask on his face, and he even uses a protective suit to shield himself from having the gross remains touch his skin or his clothes.With that, Larry offers another free professional tip in detailing, which is to clean your tools every once in a while, during the cleaning process of a vehicle . Otherwise, you risk contaminating other surfaces with what you are attempting to remove in the first place.Despite the massive amount of work, not to mention the smell (thankfully, we cannot sense it through YouTube), Larry still said that it was one of his favorite barn finds. As I noted in a different article, maybe consider letting go of a car if you do not use it for years in a row. It might have a better life with someone else.
Over the past week, the Russians have done everything in their power to ruin decades of close collaboration. The head of the Russian space agency kind of threatened to let the International Space Station drop out of the sky , Roscosmos is no longer flying the Soyuz from the European Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, and, most recently, joint missions from Baikonur, Kazakhstan, have been suspended as a result of the OneWeb incident.This most recent development involves Russia refusing to launch over 30 OneWeb internet satellites using the Soyuz rocket, out of claimed fear they will be used for military purposes. The launch was supposed to take place on March 5.As a result of Russia pulling out of Kourou, the European Space Agency already said it would focus on the upcoming Ariane 5 and Vega C rockets. Today (March 4), Arianespace did the same.Arianespace is strictly abiding by the sanctions decided by the international community (European Union, United States of America and United Kingdom) following the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, the space company said.Arianespace is in close contact with its customers and French and European authorities to best assess all the consequences of this situation and develop alternative solutions.The Ariane 5 is a heavy launcher capable of lifting to orbit up to 20 metric tons, being capable of taking up the heaviest spacecraft either in production or on the drawing board. The Vega C can take to the sky just over 2 metric tons, but will be capable of accommodating cargo of different shapes and sizes.
But unlike previous Callaway Corvettes, this time around the option is focused on carbon fiber upgrades produced by the specialist. In addition to boosting the performance of previous Corvette models with twin turbocharger setups, Callaway has also invested heavily in producing carbon fiber aerodynamic aids that enhance the handling of both road-going and race-ready GT3 Callaway Corvettes.Callaway says all the carbon components used in the package are designed by Dr. Paul Deutschman, who is the designer of record for all Callaway Corvettes going back to Project Sledgehammer in 1988. These pieces for the C8 package include a front splitter, rocker panel extensions, a rear spoiler with a unique slot gap and a rear diffuser assembly.In addition to the carbon fiber enhancements, the Callaway package includes a revamped cat-back exhaust system featuring a lightweight center chamber that creates a unique exhaust note. The stainless-steel exhaust also features Callaways signature Double-D center mount exhaust tips integrated into the carbon fiber rear diffuser.The lighter weight setup also removes about 40 pounds of mass behind the rear axle. The 2022 B2K 35th Anniversary Edition Callaway Corvette rides on nine-spoke forged alloy wheels that are 26 pounds lighter in total than the four original equipment wheels.Inside, the Callaway anniversary edition models sport anodized door sill panels with the Callaway logo, embroidered floor mats, billet aluminum accelerator and brake pedals, and a serialized build plaque on the center console. The price for the limited run package is, you guessed it, $34,960 or nearly $1,000 for each year of the relationship. That comes on top of the standard price for a 2022 Chevrolet C8 Corvette Z51 package which starts at $68,490.
However, it will be a few months until it graces dealers nationwide, as it will launch this summer, so in the meantime, lets put the spotlight on its predecessor, which is still a force to be reckoned with.Rocking a 6.2-liter V8 engine, the Corvette Z06 C7 has 650 hp and 650 pound-feet (881 Nm) of torque to play with. Flat-out, it is capable of pushing up to 196 mph (315 kph), with the 0 to 62 mph (0-100 kph) sprint taking less than 4 seconds. In perfect conditions, with good tires, and a skilled driver, it is roughly a 10-second car down the quarter-mile.As for its ad-hoc rival, which it met a few days ago presumably, at the Bandimere Speedway in Colorado, it was none other than the Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 . The menacing muscle car packs a supercharged 6.2-liter V8 as well, and in case you forgot, it has identical output and torque numbers to the Vette Z06 C7. It too can deal with the quarter-mile in around 10 seconds on a good day, and it can hit 62 mph in under 4 seconds from a standstill.Now, this isnt the first time weve seen a drag race between the Corvette Z06 and Camaro ZL1 , and it wont be the last time either. This would be a good time to place a little bet and while you try to guess which one was faster on that day, we have to mention that the video embedded below shows two more drag races, in which the Z06 and ZL1 took on some old timers as well, beating them into submission.
Chassis number AR1482026 is a 1969 model thats been refurbished over the course of 13 years under previous ownership. Acquired by the selling dealer in January 2022, this bonafide roadster had its original 1.8-liter Twin Cam replaced with a 2.0-liter Twin Cam equipped with a pair of Dellorto carburetors. Its not known how much power it develops, but to whom it may concern, the Bialbero in the 2000 GTV produces 130 ponies.Considering how little the Alfa Romeo Spider 1750 Veloce weighs, its more than adequate. Spruced up with a center-exit ANSA exhaust system, the powerplant has been serviced with fresh oil in preparation for the sale. A five-speed manual is tasked with sending the goodies to the rear wheels.The undercarriage and engine bay are both flawless, which can also be said about the silver repaint, black soft top, black leather upholstery for the aftermarket bucket seats, and wood-rimmed steering wheel. Offered with a tool roll, tons of records, and a clean title at no reserve, this four-wheeled piece of art shows under 13,500 miles (21,726 kilometers) on the clock.Fitted with Carello headlight covers, Euro-style front and rear indicators, split bumpers, and GTA-inspired wheels from Alfaholics, the car had its windshield replaced in 2007. Now rolling on 2021-dated Yokohama tires, the open-top blast from the past is rocking GTA trailing arms and Koni shocks. Power disc brakes on every corner, diamond-stitched floor mats, a Hanhart chronograph affixed to the glovebox, black leather upholstery on the interior door panels, and very classy Jaeger instruments pretty much seal the deal.Offered at no reserve, this amazing car is going for $28,000 on Bring a Trailer after six offers and with seven days of bidding left on the ticker.
AMG

Back in October 2021, the Stuttgart-based automaker launched investigations into two extremely serious conditions. More specifically, Mercedes-Benz discovered a ground connection on the front-left longitudinal member and the potential equalization for the electric auxiliary heater in the motor compartment that may not have been properly secured at the Sindelfingen assembly site where the EQS is manufactured.A ground connection thats not properly grounded translates to increased electrical resistance. In other words, high electric currents flowing through the connection in combination with increased electrical resistance increase the risk of a fire. Whats more, Mercedes notes that the left headlamp may stop functioning in the case of an interruption with the ground connection.Fast forward to November 2021, and thats when two more reports on internal vehicles within the distribution process were detected. Mercedes had enough by this point, initiating a plant rework campaign to check and rectify vehicles. In parallel, the German automaker went through the production records to identify any potentially affected vehicle in the field.Merc ultimately discovered a deviation in the production process and 24 potentially affected vehicles delivered stateside. The population ranges from the base 450 to the top-of-the-line 53 that bears Mercedes-branding even though its not a true AMG. These EQS vehicles were reportedly manufactured last year from May 26th through December 23rd.A change in the production process was implemented on December 24th.Known owners of the all-electric liftback will be notified by first-class mail on April 29th. Dealers have been instructed to check the nut and bolt of the ground connection (part number A0009911403) and the nut and bolt of the potential equalization (part number A0009916703). If necessary, the Mercedes service technician will tighten them according to spec.
SUV

Europa Clipper, a mission to explore Jupiter's icy moon, is coming together! The assembly effort, which includes 9 science instruments & other hardware, is underway for the SUV-size spacecraft. The mission is entering its final phase before its 2024 launch https://t.co/4JPZT3lDbG pic.twitter.com/imaqZVovMV  NASA JPL (@NASAJPL) March 3, 2022

Scientists believe that beneath Europa 's icy crust is a salty ocean with twice the amount of water that our oceans have combined. And as many of you perhaps know, if there's water, there might be signs of alien life too.To investigate whether the moon has the ability to support life, NASA will launch the Europa Clipper to search for evidence of geological activity, look for subsurface lakes, and measure the depth of the ocean that lies beneath its frozen crust.Currently, the mission is entering its final phase before its 2024 launch. NASA's team of researchers and engineers have started assembling the probe at the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California.The spacecraft's main body is a 10-foot-tall (3-meter-tall) module that will house the electronics, communications, cabling, and propulsion system. The module is scheduled to arrive at NASA's JPL this spring, along with the spacecraft's 10-foot-wide (3-meter-wide) antenna.Most of the flight components, including a suite of nine scientific instruments that will enable the probe to investigate the icy moon, are expected to be completed by the end of this year, according to the agency.Once fully assembled, the Europa Clipper will be as big as anand will have massive solar arrays, which will help it get power from the Sun to get to the moon.The SUV-size spacecraft will then undergo a series of tests that will determine if every system functions accordingly and can endure the harsh environment of space. Then, in October 2024, the Europa Clipper mission is set to be launched from Kennedy Space Center in Florida on top of a SpaceX Falcon Heavy Rocket After it separates from the rocket, the probe will head to Jupiter. It will orbit the gas giant and perform multiple flybys over Europa, modifying its flight path for every flyby in order to scan different regions of the moon.
The latest is comedian and actor Pete Davidson, who, according to PageSix , is in the final stages of negotiations with Jeff Bezos for a flight on Blue Origin. No timeline for the flight is offered, but the tabloid notes that a contract is yet to be signed.Still, Davidson is locked in for a future flight. Pete is excited, says a source. He got on really well with Jeff when they met.The meeting happened in January this year when billionaire reality star Kim Kardashian drove her boyfriend Davidson to Bezos Los Angeles mansion for a dinner date. The two stayed for hours, presumably talking business, and, as per the report, this flight to space was among the topics discussed.Of course, getting along with Bezos is not a prerequisite for a flight to the edge of space on his Blue Origin rocket. Money is  as is always the case. Bezos initially said that he would be offering the flights for prices ranging between $200,000 and $300,000 but later declined to put an actual figure to it. The most expensive ticket was $28 million and was sold at auction on the Blue Shepherd's first manned flight.Naturally, Davidson wont be paying this kind of money for his ticket. Given the number of celebrities who have already been flown to the edge of space by Blue Origin, including Star Trek star William Shatner and GMA host Michael Strahan , it could very well be that Bezos is offering discounts for the extra publicity.As noted above, ahead of the inaugural flight, on which Bezos himself was a passenger, he made a point of stressing that space tourism was a means of studying our planet from a distance and finding new ways of solving the problems its currently facing.Until that happens, heres Davidsons Chad character heading to Mars and, with some assistance from Elon Musk
The location of the new center was carefully chosen to serve as a permanent deployment site for Saildrone missions. The company plans to use its modern technology and fleet of USVs (uncrewed surface vehicles) for ocean and habitat mapping, as well as for helping scientists understand the causes of hurricane intensification.At the same time, Saildrone also wants to deploy maritime security missions that can support authorities fight illegal fishing and waterborne drug trafficking, which have devastating effects on the economy.According to Saildrone CEO Richard Jenkins, new high-resolution maps of the seabed are essential to help Florida protect communities, while also growing its blue economy and facilitating sustainable aquaculture and alternative energy. He also added that USVs are a more cost-effective solution than traditional approaches, being able to accomplish more with far less investment. Saildrone is a San-Francisco-based USV manufacturer whose ocean drones have now totaled 15,000 days spent at sea (which is over 40 years), covering a total of 500,000 nautical miles (575,000 miles/925,000 km).There are three models of floating drones in the companys fleet: Explorer, Surveyor, and Voyager. All of them are powered by a combination of solar and wind energy, allowing them to operate non-stop seven days a week for up to a year, without the need for refueling or maintenance work.Saildrones drones can withstand waves that are over 10 ft (3 m) tall and winds of over 70 mph (112 kph).Back in October , one of the companys USVs ventured right into the eye of hurricane Sam, facing 50 ft (15.2 m) waves and winds stronger than 120 mph (193 kph). The drone collected live data from inside the hurricane. This kind of data plays an important role in helping scientists improve forecast models so that coastal communities can better prepare to face future hurricanes.
EV

kW

The document states that Sony and Honda will create a new company that will be in charge of the joint development and sales of high value-added battery electric vehicles (EVs). Another concern is selling these vehicles and providing mobility services.Honda gets a bit more specific about that further ahead. The yet-unnamed new company is expected to plan, design, develop, and sell the EVs, but not own and operate manufacturing facilities. That is probably what made Sony repeat so insistently that it would not sell the Vision-S while it kept developing the car and presenting photos and videos of the process. It was tell me another at its best.The fact that Sony was doing that with Magna suggested that the manufacturing bit of the equation was more than solved. As the worlds biggest manufacturing contract company, Magna could take care of that for Sony. As the joint venture announcement makes it clear, that was not the only concern the electronics giant had: selling the vehicle was also something Sony was sweating to solve. Honda stated that it is expected to be responsible for manufacturing the first EV model at its vehicle manufacturing plant. For the Japanese carmaker, there are several benefits to that arrangement: reducing idle capacity and investing more in electric cars with a partner that has a great reputation for quality are the most important ones.Sony will be in charge of developing a mobility service platform for the new company. Apart from selling the Vision-S, this joint venture may also offer subscription options. That would make it very similar to Lynk & Co . We also expect to see the companies offering useful software to the vehicles owners, such as autonomous systems when they are finally available.The Japanese titans also made it clear that the MoU is just the first step in getting the new company going. They still have to proceed with negotiations toward executing various definitive binding agreements, including a joint development agreement and a joint venture agreement. If everything goes as planned, well learn the name of the new company in 2022. It will be called Sony something: it would not make sense to offer anwithout that branding, just like an Apple car will have to bear the bitten apple logo and the name.The Vision-S was presented at the 2020 CES. The electric sedan is 192.9 inches (4,90 meters) long, 74,8 in (1,90 m) wide, and weighs 5,181 lbs (2,350 kg). Its two electric motors give it 536 hp (400) and allow it to go from 0 to 62 mph (100 kph) in 4.8 seconds, with a top speed of 149 mph (240 kph).The Vision-S 02 emerged at the 2022 CES. With the same motors, it is 192.7 in (4,90 m) long, 76.0 in (1,93 m) wide, and 65 in (1,65 m) tall. Top speed will be reduced to more than 112 mph (180 kph), but not much more than that due to the higher center of mass and bigger frontal area, which makes it less energy efficient.
ICE

EV

The study's main conclusion is that electric pickup trucks offer the most gains in GHG (greenhouse gas) emissions compared to theircompetitors. In other words, selling them instead of pickup trucks with combustion engines would bring the most benefit in the shift to electric mobility.The convenient part relates to Ford being so close to delivering the first units of the F-150 Lightning: the electric pickup truck will be in customers' hands by spring. Knowing that these trucks will be more beneficial to the environment than other light-duty vehicles such as sedans and SUVs could definitely push sales numbers if Ford needed that. And it doesnt.If all 150,000 reservations made until now turn into real purchases, Ford will only manage to sell new F-150 Lightning units by 2024. It is not unlikely that those willing to buy one will have to wait for its second generation. The new electric pickup truck will be presented in 2024 and will already use Fords new TE1 platform Back to the study, it compared the emissions of combustion-engined sedans, SUVs, and pickup trucks to those of its electric competitors from manufacturing until they become junkyard material. The University of Michigan discovered that electric sedans save 45 metric tons of carbon dioxide in their entire lifecycles. When the comparison is between SUVs, the electric one will save 56 metric tons of CO2.Electric pickup trucks save 74 metric tons of carbon dioxide in their cradle-to-grave cycle despite emitting more CO2 during their manufacturing process. According to the study, they can offset that plus in only 1.3 years of use. Electric sedans take 1.2 to 1.3 years and SUVs powered by a battery are the ones with more trouble to solve that: 1.4 to 1.6 years. These periods were calculated considering the average U.S. grid and vehicle miles traveled.The authors of the study clarify that electric pickup trucks save more carbon dioxide because they are usually heavier vehicles with bigger engines. When these engines are replaced, you burn a lot less fossil fuel. They also state that charging during the day, far from peak hours, makesowners reduce the carbon footprint in these vehicles even faster.The study lost a good opportunity to mention all the pollutant gases that electric pickup trucks help to eliminate, such as NOx (nitrogen oxides) , ozone, hydrocarbons, sulfur dioxide, and many others. As important as GHGs are, climate change should not be the only concern involving electric mobility.On the other hand, it also did not ask if electric pickup trucks are as capable as pickup trucks with combustion engines in getting the job done when towing or carrying cargo. Those are good topics for future research, even if not a scientific one.
Join Edith Salas of Salas Properties & host Jenn Barlow as they visit the Coronado Shores community. The towers have amazing views including the world famous Hotel del Coronado, downtown San Diego, San Diego Bay, the City of Coronado, Point Loma, and the Pacific Ocean.
EV

ICE

Tesla has been looking forward to getting the Berlin plant up and running. However, final approval was lacking due to what officials revealed was a scarcity of water resources in the region. Elon Musk did not take the sentiments lightly and was ready to take his business elsewhere.According to a statement calling for a conference on Friday by the State of Brandenburg, Tesla's approval for a battery and electric vehicle plant in Gruenheide is in the final stages, Reuters reported.Tesla is already doubling its efforts in China, building its second Gigafactory in Shanghai . The expansion program will set off in March. The second plant will be close to the Gigafactory in Lingang, Pudong.The automaker is also setting up a design studio in Beijing after approval by local Government agencies in February.Elon let known his irritation in a letter to German authorities over the delays in approval. He said that the country's complex planning processes were at odds with the urgency to avert the effects of climate change.Tesla is looking to expand its market in the European region. Currently, VW Group leads in electric vehicle sales, taking up 25% of the market share compared to Tesla's 13%. Elon Musk was planning to have the plant operational by December.The European region offers a lucrative market formanufacturers. Countries like the U.K. will stop the production ofby 2030 and are already setting up infrastructure to ease the transition.With the plant set up in Germany, Tesla will have a fair shot competing for the top cake with the largest automaker in the world, Volkswagen AG.
But, beware, this is not something that was brought up by a local. Tesla learned about the community, visited it, and made a video that was meant only for China. It first appeared on the Weibo social network, and it made its way onto YouTube. Unlike the decision to not be active on Facebook, Elon Musks company is constantly sharing curious and interesting brand-related stuff in China.If youre not knowledgeable about the Standard Mandarin language thats official in China, then well tell you whats what. The story is about a man who left Panziga, the small, mountainous place in Yunnan Province that has now changed. He was searching for ways to improve his life but never forgot his first home.Years passed, and he amassed enough money to feel comfortable returning to his village, especially after he learned there was a new road connecting the place to other important routes. He got himself a Tesla Model Y in the meantime and drove it up the mountains. When he arrived with the idea in mind to build a chic hotel, the neighbors went ballistic over his car. They all wanted to see it and the man quickly became a local source for information. As he presented the vehicle to everybody who asked him about it, more and more people got convinced they needed a Tesla. As of now, there are at least 30 of them in Panzhiga. Tesla found out, and they paid him a visit. You can see the result of that down below. Its inspiring!People started using their cars not just as a means of transportation, but they even do their business with the vehicles.Elon Musk was impressed about the story too and signed one of the Destination Chargers (Superchargers installed by Tesla partners) that are now found in that small Chinese community that has become already an international legend  the Tesla Village. It might not have its name engraved on a plaque yet, but it surely got famous quickly for its citizens' ability to immediately adapt and make the best out of a new situation.We're hoping he got some sort of real recognition from Tesla for his contribution in helping with sales and branding. Free Supercharging for life would sound like a sweet gift for the man.If you're a Tesla fan or just a happy customer, then you'll remember something that might seem similar to this story. Youre not wrong. Six years ago, we were told about YarraBend, an Australian housing project that ended up nicknamed as the  Tesla Town .Finally, we all know Tesla is an American product born from the pure desire to succeed in what was once a very conservative environment. But you shouldnt forget that Musks company has a strong presence in the Asian country and is constantly investing in the local communities either directly or with help from partners.
The ban of Russian aircraft from the U.S. airspace went into effect on Wednesday after President Joe Biden announced it in his State of the Union address. The U.S. Department of Transportation and its Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has suspended operations of all aircraft that are owned, operated, or controlled by Russian entities and citizens. This includes all passenger, cargo, and charter flights.Russias flagship airline, Aeroflot, will be most impacted since it will have to reroute flights to exotic destinations, which implies flying over the U.S. and Canadian airspace. But this might be a small issue for the countrys commercial aviation, compared to the fact that it already lost access to maintenance and technical support services for its fleet after Boeing, Airbus, and G.E. have suspended these services for all airlines in the country. Added to the economic sanctions, this will effectively block the nations aviation industry.U.S. airlines that had been flying over the Russian airspace to destinations in Asia had already chosen to reroute before the conflict in Ukraine started, so a potential ban issued by Kremlin, as a response to the U.S. decision, wont change too much.Ian Petchenik of FlightRadar24 (a flight tracking service) told the National Public Radio (NPR) that some American airlines will have to deal with increased costs due to burning more fuel and flying over longer periods of time as a result of rerouting. But the impact wont be severe, especially since the frequency of international flights had already dropped because of the pandemic.As of Wednesday, any aircraft operators who violate the ban announced by the U.S. face the risk of being intercepted and their pilots detained. Canadas aviation authority is currently investigating a violation of its ban, which Aeroflot had declared as a humanitarian mission.
To date, the U.S. has avoided being drawn into an escalatory rhetoric with Russia over nuclear weapons, but it does seem to be taking some steps to ensure nothing goes terribly wrong in the near future.This week, defense contractor Northrop Grumman announced it has been awarded a $111 million contract by the U.S. Navy to upgrade the Boeing 707-based E-6B Mercury, the machine that connects the national command authority with the United States Nuclear Triad.More to the point, the company will update the command, control and communications functions of the airplane, in a process that is supposed to take over five years. Modernization work will be conducted at the Northrop Grumman facility in Lake Charles, Louisiana.The E-6B Mercury is described by the Navy as a communications relay and strategic airborne command post, handling the launch of both ballistic missiles from submarines and, if need be, land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles as well.The aircraft was introduced in 1998 as a replacement for the EC-135. It can hold a crew of 22 people, in charge with ensuring secure connections between the National Command Authority (NCA) and U.S. strategic and non-strategic forces.Powered by four turbofan engines, the E-6B Mercury can reach speeds of 600 mph (960 kph) and, more importantly, it can fly at altitudes of about 40,000 feet (over 12,000 meters). The maximum range of the airborne command and control post is rated at 7,590 miles (12,144 km), and comes with a six-hour loitering time.
DEARBORN, MI - SEPTEMBER 17: Ford CEO Jim Farley takes off his mask at the Ford Built for America event at Fords Dearborn Truck Plant on September 17, 2020 in Dearborn, Michigan. (Photo : Nic Antaya/Getty Images)

Wall Street rejoiced with Ford Motor's decision to internally separate its electric vehicle and legacy businesses on Wednesday, March 2, with the carmaker's stock recording its fifth-highest daily gain in the past year.

The joy of Wall Street analysts is not 100 percent, though, as they are not completely sold on the changes chief executive Jim Farley is implementing for the Dearborn automaker with his "Ford+" turnaround plan. Wall Street views Ford's plan to split the two businesses as positives but far from a sure thing, with analysts voicing doubts about the company's new EV and profit margin targets.

Some analysts are still calling for the company to have a full spin-off for either one of the businesses that Ford just separated. Other analysts are also questioning Ford's statement that it can achieve a 10 percent operating profit margin across its EV and legacy businesses by the year 2026, while also increasing the company's global production of electric vehicles to 2 million units by that time.

Morgan Stanley analyst calls Ford's EV goal a stretch

Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas was among those who is not fully sold on Ford's boast, calling the company's EV target a "stretch" in his note to investors on Wednesday. Jonas argued that he has little confidence in Ford securing enough supply chain resources, raw materials, and tooling in the next four years to ensure delivery of an EV number that the company just promised.

Based on Morgan Stanley's own estimates, it expects Ford to produce just 560,000 electric vehicles by 2026, less than a third of the company's EV target of 2 million EVs by that timeframe. Morgan Stanley also estimates Ford's adjusted operating profit margin on its electric business to be only 4 percent by 2026, and not 10 percent.

It is important to mention, however, that the research firm first issued those target numbers before Ford's ground-breaking announcement. Jonas said that there could be some upside from the split that Morgan Stanley is not taking into account just yet but at the present time, it is sticking with its previous EV forecast for Ford.

Also Read: Ford Splits EV and Legacy Auto Business: Carmaker Creates 'Ford Blue' and 'Ford Model e' Divisions

Deutsche Bank analyst shares concerns about Ford's profit margin

Deutsche Bank analyst Emmanuel Rosner also voiced his concerns about Ford's production goals, saying that the company's profit margin target of 10 percent is "ambitious". Rosner explained that for Ford to achieve that goal, the company would not only require "unprecedented" profitability in its legacy vehicle business but also substantial increases in profitability and production in its EV business.

Rosner told investors in Wednesday's note that Ford separating its businesses presents opportunities for the company to expand its ICE margins. That being said, Deutsche Bank has concerns those numbers will not be enough for the carmaker to reach its profit margin target of 10 percent by 2026, with Ford's margin-dilutive EVs taking a greater share of total production volumes over the next few years.

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The logo of German car maker Volkswagen (VW) can be seen on a VW ID.5 electric car during a press preview at the International Motor Show (IAA), on September 6, 2021 in Munich, southern Germany. (Photo : CHRISTOF STACHE/AFP via Getty Images)

Russia's deadly invasion of Ukraine is in its second week now and it continues to affect businesses operating within the region in a major way. Russian President Vladimir Putin's decision to inflict violence in Ukraine has impacted the auto industry in particular, with Volkswagen the latest carmaker to suspend its operations in Russia.

Volkswagen made the announcement via a press release on Thursday, March 3. The German automaker opened its message by stating its dismay and shock with the war in Ukraine and for Russia to stop its hostilities in the region.

With the Russian onslaught still ongoing, the Group Board of Management of Volkswagen AG made the decision to stop the production of its vehicles in Russia until further notice. The temporary closure affects Volkswagen's production facilities in Nizhny Novgorod and Kaluga.

Volkswagen stops vehicle exports to Russia

Apart from the production stoppage, Volkswagen has also decided to stop vehicle exports to Russia immediately. Volkswagen concluded its statement by saying "With the extensive interruption of business activities in Russia, the Executive Board is reviewing the consequences from the overall situation, during this period of great uncertainty and upheaval."

Closing the Russian plants is a big blow for Volkswagen as those facilities play a key role in the company's global vehicle production. Volkswagen's Nizhny Novgorod plant currently builds the Taos model as well as three other Skoda models: the Karoq, Octavia, and Kodiaq. The company's Kaluga plant currently assembles the Audi Q7 and Q8. It also builds the Skoda Rapid as well as the 2022 Volkswagen Tiguan and Polo.

Also Read: VW, Porsche, BMW Face Supply Chain Issues as Wire Harness Production Stops in Western Ukraine

Russian auto industry crippled as automakers suspend operations

Volkswagen joins Toyota Motor Corporation, Daimler Truck, AB Volvo, Ford Motor Company, Renault, Hyundai Group and Mitsubishi Motors in the list of automakers that have halted vehicle production in Russia because of the war.

Toyota announced on Wednesday that it would halt production at its St. Petersburg facility starting on Friday. That plant manufactures Camry and RAV4 models, mainly for the Russian market.

Daimler Truck was among the first automakers to suspend its operations in Russia, announcing on Monday its decision to halt all of its business activities in the country, including their joint venture with Russian truck manufacturer Kamaz.

Daimler's former parent company Mercedes-Benz also decided to cut its ties with Russia, announcing that it would divest its 15 percent stake in Kamaz. Ford announced on Tuesday that it has suspended its operations in Russia until further notice, that being the company's joint venture with Russian firm Sollers.

Renault and Hyundai also announced that they were suspending operations in Russia but the reason that they gave for the work stoppages are supply chain shortages. With Western sanctions against Russia already taking effect, parts have been hard to come by in the country, causing disruptions to the companies' vehicle production. Russia is a big market for both Renault and Hyundai, so they may try not to stop their operations there if it can be helped.

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There is growing momentum in Congress to cut off U.S. imports of oil and petroleum products from Russia in response to the invasion of Ukraine.

Why it matters: This issue is pitting lawmakers from both parties against the White House, which is wary of a ban's potential to jack up gas prices.

Driving the news: On Thursday, a bipartisan, bicameral coalition of lawmakers introduced a bill that would ban U.S. oil and petroleum product imports from Russia.

The lawmakers include Senate Energy Committee Chairman Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) along with Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska).

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi backed the idea. "I'm all for that. Ban it. Ban the oil coming from Russia," Pelosi said at a news conference.

The big picture: Total U.S. oil and refined product imports have declined greatly since the mid-2000s, but the country remains a significant importer.

The U.S. imports from Russia have bounced around, from more than 800,000 barrels per day in mid-2021 to about 400,000 per day in December.

Yes, but: Banning Russian imports into the U.S. could further increase gas prices, which are already running at their highest levels since 2014.

For this reason, the White House has opposed an oil imports ban.

"Our objective and the president's objective has been to maximize impact on President Putin and Russia while minimizing impact to us and our allies and partners," White House press secretary Jen Psaki said yesterday.

"We don't have a strategic interest in reducing the global supply of energy," she said. "Its as simple as: Less supply raises prices."

Later on Thursday, Manchin contested the administration's arguments, saying an imports ban would not necessarily reduce oil supplies and cause prices to rise because the U.S. can boost its domestic production in the meantime.

"We can basically produce whatever needs to be produced," he said.

Zoom in: The bill, which has 18 bipartisan co-sponsors, would prohibit more than the importation of Russian crude oil. It would also ban imports of petroleum products, liquefied natural gas and coal.

The intrigue: The White House needs Manchin's support to pass any pared-down version of the Build Back Better legislation, including climate provisions.

If the administration blocks Manchin's push for an imports ban, it could complicate already tough efforts to revive pieces of that legislative package.

Axios' Ben Geman contributed reporting.
Florida's Republican-controlled Senate passed a bill to ban abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy 23-15 on Thursday night.

Why it matters: Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) is expected to sign the bill, which makes no exception for rape, incest or human trafficking, as the Supreme Court prepares to consider the fate of Roe v. Wade following a series of new abortion restrictions in Republican-led states.

Florida's legislation follows Mississippi's law that bans abortions after the 15th week of pregnancy  which the Supreme Court's conservative-majority justices have indicated they would uphold when they rule on the case later this year.

Worth noting: The state's Senate Democrats failed to pass amendments to allow for exceptions to the law for rape, incest or human trafficking.

What they're saying: "I believe we have a unique opportunity in the fact that the Supreme Court is considering 15 weeks right now," said state Rep. Erin Grall (R), who sponsored the Florida bill that passed earlier in the House, per the Washington Post.

Planned Parenthood of Southwest and Central Florida tweeted after the bill passed, "Banning abortion is not what Floridans want. Why do some politicians think they are better equipped to make medical decisions about someones pregnancy than the pregnant person, their family, and their doctor?"

Editor's note: This article has been updated with new details throughout.
Russia's invasion could destroy Ukraine's sovereignty or Vladimir Putins regime. The outlines of a solution that leaves both intact are murkier.

The big picture: Putin has failed to force a quick capitulation from Kyiv. Now, even if he ultimately succeeds in removing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, he'll almost certainly face a prolonged, well-armed and motivated insurgency  a bad outcome for Russia and a worse one for Ukraine.

Still, Putins demands and demeanor  denouncing Zelenskys administration as "Nazis" and insisting on the full "demilitarization" of a country he is invading  are not those of man who's ready to cut a deal.

Putin's calculus will only change if he comes under sufficient pressure at home  due to battlefield casualties and economic hardship  that he feels continuing the war is more perilous for him than ending it, says Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Even in such a scenario, its unclear what exit Putin might be willing to take.

Putin's other core demand, that Ukraine declare itself neutral and rule out future membership in NATO, has long been a nonstarter in Kyiv. Its unclear whether battlefield realities could change that.

But having described his mission in Ukraine as one of deNazification (however absurd that may be), and spoken at length about Ukraines rightful place in Russias orbit, Putin would seem to have set the bar for success, at minimum, at the installation of a loyal government.

There, Putin does have an advantage, however. His control over Russian media is such that he might believe he can sell a modest outcome  a new status for the eastern "republics" and a promise on NATO, perhaps  as a victory, despite the high costs.

On the one hand: Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.) is among those arguing that the U.S. should set out the circumstances under which sanctions will be lifted in order to provide Putin with an off-ramp.

On the other: Radek Sikorski, the Polish chair of the European Parliament's EU-U.S. delegation, told Axios that the goal of Western sanctions should now be regime change, calling Putin "a criminal whos threatening us with nuclear war."

Either way, the West's focus right now should not be on diplomacy, Haass said. It should be increasing the costs on Putin.

Driving the news: In a second round of peace talks near the Ukraine-Belarus border Thursday, the Ukrainian and Russian delegations reached a tentative deal to organize humanitarian corridors for fleeing civilians, but made no progress toward ending the war.

Afterward, Zelensky challenged Putin to meet him one-on-one.

"It is not that I want to talk with Putin. I think I have to talk with Putin. The world has to talk with Putin because there are no other ways to stop this war," he said.

Meanwhile, Putin held a 90-minute call with French President Emmanuel Macron in which he not only refused to budge on his demands but also promised to add more if Ukraine continued to fight.

A French official offered reporters this ominous analysis: "Russia's ambition is indeed to take control of all of Ukraine."

Go deeper: The latest on the Russia-Ukraine crisis
A federal appeals court panel ruled unanimously Friday that the Biden administration can continue expelling migrant families "for now" under the Trump-era Title 42 public health policy but only to countries where they don't risk persecution or torture.

Why it matters: The ruling will offer more protection to families fleeing danger, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said Friday. The surge in illegal crossings at the southern border is largely driven by violence, poverty and disasters, according to the Washington Post.

Details: The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals partially affirmed a lower court order that ruled against the federal government's expulsion of migrant families at the U.S.-Mexico border.

The Title 42 policy, which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) implemented at the start of the pandemic, allows the U.S. to immediately expel migrants who enter the country illegally without legal permission. It effectively turned away any asylum seekers, CNN notes.

The ACLU had sued the administration on behalf of six migrant families who were turned away at the southern border.

What they're saying: "To be sure, as with most things in life, no approach to COVID-19 can eliminate every risk," the three-judge panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit wrote in the opinion.

"But from a public-health perspective, based on the limited record before us, its far from clear that the CDCs order serves any purpose. For now, the Executive may expel the Plaintiffs, but only to places where they will not be persecuted or tortured."

Citing "stomach-churning evidence" of the U.S. sending migrants to regions where they face assault and death, the judges wrote that expelling migrants to dangerous areas goes against federal law.

The federal government itself is "aware of  the quite horrific circumstances that non-citizens are in in some of the countries that are at issue here."

Immigrant rights groups hailed the ruling, but still called on the administration to end Title 42 entirely.
An agreement to restore the 2015 Iran nuclear deal could be just days away, with negotiators from Europe and Iran making clear that they've reached the final hurdles.

Driving the news: Rafael Grossi, the head of the UN's nuclear watchdog, will travel to Tehran on Saturday to try to resolve one of the remaining disputes: Iran's insistence that an investigation into its undeclared nuclear activity be dropped. The success of failure of Grossi's visit could determine the fate of the deal.

The latest: Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian told EU foreign policy chief Joseph Borrell in a call on Friday that he is ready to travel to Vienna and sign the deal so long as the U.S. and European powers accept Irans red lines, including effective economic guarantees for Iran, the Iranian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

According to that statement, Borrell said he thinks Irans major demands have been taken into account and stressed that a deal was close.

"We are ready to finalize a good and immediate agreement but the haste of the Western side can not prevent the observance of Iran's red lines," the statement quotes Amir-Abdollahian as saying.

What they're saying: All participants in the Vienna talks have been stressing that a deal is very close but not yet at hand.

There has been significant progress and we are close to a possible deal, but a number of difficult issue remain unsolved," deputy State Department spokeswoman Jalina Porter said in a conference call with reporters on Thursday.

The British chief negotiator Stephanie Al-Qaq said in a Farsi-language tweet that a deal was "very close" but "final steps" still remained. She followed that up on Friday by saying a deal was "not guaranteed" and the parties "must now walk the last few meters."

French negotiator Philippe Errera posted a photo of the European negotiating team and thanked them for their work over the past 11 months, in a possible signal that talks are concluding.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Saeed Khatibzadeh tweeted that regardless of the positive rumblings, "Nobody can say the deal is done until all the outstanding remaining issues are resolved.

What to watch: The biggest hurdle appears to be the IAEA investigation, which Western powers have said can't be shut down until the agency's concerns are addressed. Grossi's visit is intended to find a formula that all sides can live with.

Another sticking point has been Iran's insistence that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps be removed from the U.S. terror blacklist.

The big picture: Iran has dramatically accelerated its nuclear program since Donald Trump withdrew from the deal in 2018, and has also limited the access of inspectors. The deal would require Iran to dial back its nuclear program and restore the inspections, in exchange for sanctions relief from the U.S.
RT America is ceasing production and laying off most of its staff, according to a memo from a production company behind the network, CNN reports.

Why it matters: Under pressure to respond to Russian state media's role in spreading disinformation about Russia's war with Ukraine, American TV distributors have begun to drop the network.

DirecTV said Monday it plans to drop RT America from its lineup in light of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Roku removed RT from its Roku Channel store globally shortly thereafter.

DirecTV rival Dish said in a statement earlier this week it's "closely monitoring the situation."

Details: Unfortunately, we anticipate this layoff will be permanent, meaning that this will result in the permanent separation from employment of most T&R employees at all locations, said Misha Solodovnikov, the general manager of the production company, T&R Productions, wrote in a note to employees, published on Twitter by the New York Times.

Flashback: On Wednesday, the International Emmy Academy booted Solodovnikov off its board of directors.

The big picture: Big Tech platforms began to crack down on Russian state media companies, seriously limiting their power and reach.

Apple and Google both banned apps for RT and Sputnik News in their app stores. Microsoft, Twitter, Facebook and others have limited the distribution of Russian state media and their ability to sell ads.

Go deeper: Walls closing in on Russia's propaganda machine
Russia's communications regulator Roskomnadzor on Friday said it would block Facebook entirely, after partially restricting the social network a week ago.

Why it matters: Russia claims the decision of Facebook parent company Meta to restrict access to Russian state media accounts violated "fundamental human rights and freedoms, as well as the rights and freedoms of Russian citizens."

Driving the news: In a blog post Friday, Roskomnadzor said Facebook restricted the Zvezda TV channel, the RIA Novosti news agency, Sputnik, Russia Today, the Lenta.ru and Gazeta.ru information resources.

Russia says its laws prohibit efforts to prevent users access to Russian media on foreign Internet platforms.

What they're saying: Meta's president of global affairs said in a statement Friday that "soon millions of ordinary Russians will find themselves cut off from reliable information, deprived of their everyday ways of connecting with family and friends and silence from speaking out."

We will continue to do everything we can to restore our services so they remain available to people to safely and securely express themselves and organize for action," Clegg added.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Friday that the Biden administration is "deeply concerned ... about the threat to freedom of speech" in Russia and the "crack down on any form of information being shared with their public."

Catch up quick: Tech companies have been increasingly limiting the reach of Russian state media.

Meta restricted access to Russian state media on its platforms across the EU earlier this week after the European Commission said it will ban "the Kremlin's media machine.

It also began demoting content linking to Russian state media outlets on Facebook and Instagram globally.

Several companies, including Google, Meta, Twitter, Microsoft, and others have complied with the Russian state media ban in the region and have restricted Russian state media from buying ads globally.

The big picture: Friday's move is part of a greater effort by Russia to silence dissent amid protests against the country's unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.

Russian lawmakers on Friday approved legislation that threatens to imprison journalists and individuals for up to 15 years if they publish what Moscow deems to be "fake" information about Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Go deeper:
In a second round of peace talks near the Ukraine-Belarus border on Thursday, the Ukrainian and Russian delegations agreed to organize humanitarian corridors to allow civilians to flee, but made no progress toward ending the war, according to a Ukrainian official.

State of play: The talks took place under ominous circumstances. Russian President Vladimir Putin has said he'll continue his invasion until Ukraine is "demilitarized." Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky challenged Putin to meet with him directly.

The latest: Mykhailo Podolyak, a member of the Ukrainian delegation and an adviser to President Volodymyr Zelensky, tweeted after the talks that "the results Ukraine needs are not yet achieved," but there was an agreement "for the organization of humanitarian corridors."

The Ukrainian side went into the talks calling for humanitarian corridors as well as a ceasefire.

Reuters reports that the sides agreed to meet again soon, and the agreement reached Thursday included a "possible temporary ceasefire during evacuations."

It's unclear where and when the humanitarian corridors would be established.

In a press conference on Thursday, Zelensky called on Putin to "sit down with me" and negotiate at the head-of-state level, asking: "What are you afraid of?"

"It is not that I want to talk with Putin. I think I have to talk with Putin. The world has to talk with Putin because there are no other ways to stop this war," Zelensky said.

A call earlier on Thursday between Putin and French President Emmanuel Macron underscored the remote prospects of a swift diplomatic resolution.

Putin stuck by his demands for the "demilitarization and neutrality of Ukraine," which he said would be accomplished "whatever happens," the Kremlin noted. If Kyiv won't cut a deal, Putin added, Russia will only add to its demands.

A French official told reporters after the call that it appears "Russia's ambition is indeed to take control of all of Ukraine."

Flashback: A previous round of talks on Monday ended without a breakthrough. Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said the Russian side was ready to meet again sooner but believed the Ukrainians were stalling.

Zelensky told CNN on Tuesday that the talks would be a waste of time unless the fighting stopped and Russian forces retreated to their positions from before the invasion.

But an adviser to Zelensky told Axios the Ukrainian side would push for a partial ceasefire to address the humanitarian disaster.

The two delegations greeted each other cordially and shook hands before sitting down for the talks.

Between the lines: Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, told Axios that Putin's demands indicate that he is not currently serious about diplomacy.

That will only change if Putin comes under sufficient pressure at home  due to battlefield casualties and economic losses  that he feels continuing the war is more perilous for him than ending it, Haass said.

Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA) is among those arguing that the U.S. should set out the circumstances under which sanctions would be lifted in order to provide Putin with an off-ramp.

Others take a harder line. Radek Sikorski, a Polish politician and chairman of the European Parliament's EU-USA delegation, told Axios the goal of Western sanctions should now be regime change in Moscow.

The big picture: Outside of the negotiating room, every indication is that this war will continue to escalate. Russia is bombarding Ukrainian cities while Ukrainian officials vow to fight on until victory.

If diplomacy fails, this war could continue until the end of Ukrainian independence or the end of Vladimir Putin's regime.

The path to either outcome would likely be long and incredibly destructive. But at present, no other outcome looks particularly likely.

Editor's note: This story has been updated with new details throughout.
Ukrainian officials said Friday they've extinguished a fire near the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station in southeastern Ukraine that ignited during shelling by Russian forces, but confirmed that Russia's military had "seized" the plant.

The latest: Energoatom, Ukraines nuclear power operator, said in a Telegram statement that the "administrative building and the checkpoint" at Europe's largest nuclear power station "are under occupiers' control."

Rafael Grossi, director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, points on a map of the Ukrainian Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant during a news conference at the IAEA headquarters in Vienna, Austria on Friday. Photo: Joe Klamar/AFP via Getty Images

"The plant's staff continues to work on power units, ensuring the stable operation of nuclear facilities, Energoatom added. "Unfortunately, there are dead and wounded among the Ukrainian defenders of the station."

The big picture: The United Nations' nuclear watchdog and U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm both said the plant was secure. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky accused Russian forces of "nuclear terror," according to a translation by the Ukrainian Embassy in D.C.

President Biden said after speaking with Zelensky over the phone that Russia should "cease its military activities in the area," per a White House statement.

Rafael Grossi, director-general of the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said at a news conference Friday "there has not been a release of radioactive material and the integrity of the reactors has not been compromised," but added that the situation remains "extremely tense and challenging."

What they're saying: "Russian tanks are shooting at the nuclear blocks. These are tanks equipped with thermal imagers, so they know what they are shooting at. They have prepared for it," Zelensky said in an emotional middle-of-the-night video post.

"Our boys have always kept the nuclear plant safe. We made sure no provocations could happen," he continued. "No country has ever shot at nuclear blocks except for Russia. First time ever."

He called on European leaders to "wake up" and stop Russia's military "before there is "a nuclear catastrophe," according to the translation.

The U.S. Embassy in Ukraine tweeted: "It is a war crime to attack a nuclear power plant. Putin's shelling of Europe's largest nuclear plant takes his reign of terror one step further."

State of play: Ukrainian official Oleksandr Starukh said earlier that the "director of the plant said that the nuclear safety is now guaranteed," AFP reports.

The IAEA said in a Twitter post that the fire in a training building near the plant had "not affected 'essential' equipment, plant personnel taking mitigatory actions."

U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm concurred with this assessment, tweeting after speaking with her Ukrainian counterpart: "The plant's reactors are protected by robust containment structures and reactors are being safely shut down."

Meanwhile, Biden spoke with the undersecretary for nuclear security of the U.S. Department of Energy and administrator of the national nuclear security administration to receive an update on the situation at the plant, the White House said. He will continue to be briefed regularly.

Granholm said that her department had "activated its Nuclear Incident Response Team and is monitoring events in consultation with" the Defense Department, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission Privacy Policy and the White House.

What to watch: British Prime Minister Boris Johnson will seek "an emergency U.N. Security Council meeting in the coming hours" over the shelling of the plant, according to a statement from his office following a phone call with Zelensky.

By the numbers: The plant provides roughly 25% of Ukraine's power generation, according to AP.

Flashback: Russian forces last month seized control of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.

Go deeper: The latest on the Russia-Ukraine crisis

Editor's note: This article has been updated with new details throughout.
A new poll out Friday found for the first time that a majority of Swedes favor joining NATO as Russia's invasion of Ukraine escalates.

Driving the news: 51% of Swedes are in favor of joining NATO, up from 42% in January, according to a poll by Demoskop and commissioned by Aftonbladet newspaper.

Swedes in opposition to joining NATO fell from 37% to 27%, the poll found.

Sweden and close ally Finland attended Friday's meeting of NATO foreign ministers and will be at all future meetings on Ukraine, Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said.

"In response to Russia's aggression, we have decided to strengthen our coordination and information-sharing with Finland and Sweden," he added.

"Both countries are now taking part in all NATO consultations about the crisis."

State of play: Sweden's Defense Minister Peter Hultqvist said that the poll alone would not prompt entry into NATO.

"To change the defense doctrine, that is a very huge decision, so you don't do it overnight and you cannot do it because of opinion polls," Hultqvist said, per Reuters.

The Sweden Democrats, however, the third biggest party in parliament, said Friday that it was reviewing its stance on NATO.

"We are analyzing the situation now, hour by hour more or less, looking at the NATO issue, looking at other security policy collaborations and what we can do," Aron Emilsson, foreign policy spokesperson for the Sweden Democrats said.

The big picture: Public opinion in Finland, a close ally to Sweden, is also shifting towards greater support of joining NATO.

A poll commissioned by Finnish broadcaster YLE found 53% were in favor of Finland joining NATO  the first time a majority expressed support  and 28% were against.

The Russian Foreign Ministry last week expressed concern over what it described as efforts by the U.S. and allies to "drag" Finland and Sweden into NATO, warning that Moscow would take action if they joined, AP reports.

"I want to be extremely clear: It is Sweden that itself and independently decides on our security policy line," Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson said in response.

Go deeper: Historically neutral countries turn on Putin after Ukraine invasion
Health professionals, transgender teens and their families are fearful and angry over Texas Gov. Greg Abbott's new directive to have a state agency investigate parents for child abuse if they seek gender-affirming care for their children.

Driving the news: Texas officials have already begun investigating parents of transgender children in accordance with Abbott's order, according to a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and Lambda Legal on Tuesday.

"My first reaction is anger and fear," Landon Richie, a 19-year-old trans man who is a sophomore at the University of Houston, told Axios' Asher Price.

"For myself and so many other trans people, gender affirming care has been life-saving. To equate gender affirming care with child abuse is just outrageous and extremely harmful," Richie said.

"This order is the most powerful political figure in the state ... saying that ... not only does he not believe that trans young people should be able to access appropriate medical care, but he believes that if your parents love you and are providing you the care that doctors say is required, that that would be considered child abuse," said Amit Paley, CEO of the Trevor Project.

"That is terrifying," Paley added.

Over two-thirds of LGBTQ youth said recent debates over state laws that target transgender people have negatively impacted their mental health, according to a poll by the Trevor Project, which provides crisis intervention and suicide prevention services to LGBTQ youth.

The impact is even greater among trans and non-binary youth: 85% of those polled  four in five of this group  said their mental health had been negatively affected, the poll released last month found.

The big picture: Medical organizations, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Psychological Association and the American Medical Association, have condemned legislation to restrict gender-affirming medical care, saying it could have a detrimental effect on the mental health of transgender youth.

"Research consistently shows that access to gender-affirming medical care and family acceptance of a young persons gender identity result in better mental health outcomes, including lower rates of suicidality," Jack Turban, MD, chief fellow in child and adolescent psychiatry at Stanford School of Medicine, wrote in an email to Axios.

No other state in the U.S. considers gender-affirming care to be child abuse but legislation to block gender-affirming care for minors was introduced in at least 21 states in the last year alone.

State of play: Abbott asked Texas' Department of Family and Protective Services to follow an opinion issued by the state's Attorney General Ken Paxton in which he argues that gender-affirming care "can legally constitute child abuse."

While neither Abbott's letter or Paxton's opinion contain enforcement guidance, the latter suggests that the order may be imposed via court order if a judge considers gender-affirming care to be child abuse.

The ACLU and Lambda Legal in their lawsuit argue that Abbott's order to investigate parents for child abuse if they seek gender-affirming care for their children has no "[c]onstitutional or statutory authority."

The ACLU also fears that the order will lead to an increase in false accusations of child abuse "directed at parents who are simply supporting and loving their child," Adri Perez, policy and advocacy strategist at the ACLU of Texas, told Axios.

What we're watching: On Wednesday, a Texas court on Wednesday temporarily blocked the state from conducting a child abuse investigation on the parents of a trans teenager receiving gender-affirming care.

In this decision, the judge did not block all such investigations. A following hearing has been scheduled for March 11 to decide whether to block the Abbott's directive more broadly.

President Biden has called Abbott's order "government overreach at its worst," adding that it threatens "to harm children and their families just to score political points."

"Children, their parents, and their doctors should have the freedom to make the medical decisions that are best for each young person  without politicians getting the way."

The Health and Human Services Department announced a series of steps "to protect trans and gender diverse youth in Texas," including issuing a memo letting states know they "should use their child welfare systems to advance safety and support for LGBTQI+ youth, which importantly can include access to gender affirming care."

HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra released a statement Wednesday calling the Texas government's actions "unconscionable," saying "at HHS, we listen to medical experts and doctors, and they agree with us, that access to affirming care for transgender youth is essential and can be life-saving," he said.

The bottom line: "Separating a child from a loving supportive home has been linked to a range of bad outcomes including depression, physical health problems and even shorter life expectancy," Turban told Axios.

"These actions by Abbott and Paxton are tantamount to telling the parents of children with diabetes that they will put their children in foster care if they give them insulin. They are ill-informed and dangerous."

Go deeper:
Russia's invasion of Ukraine is highlighting the dark side of crypto, right as the industry's lobby ramps up efforts in D.C. to protect it from regulation.

Why it matters: The crisis provoked a sharp and nearly united response globally from the very institutions  governments and banks  that cryptocurrencies seek to sideline. It's also amplifying the perception that crypto helps bad actors escape penalties or detection.

At the same time, the war's pressures are pushing even more people to begin using crypto.

Whats happening: Sanctions speedily imposed by governments and traditional banking systems after Russias Ukraine invasion helped tank Russias economy.

Immediately, concerns arose that both the Russian government and targeted individuals might sidestep sanctions by funneling money into decentralized, unregulated cryptocurrencies.

A group of four senators, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), wrote to the Treasury Department Wednesday asking whether criminals, rogue states, and other actors may use digital assets and alternative payment platforms as a new means to hide cross-border transactions for nefarious purposes.

Additionally, the Biden administration asked leading crypto exchanges to monitor accounts that might be tied to sanctions targets.

Crypto platforms have balked at calls to ban Russian addresses from using their services.

The intrigue: The crisis unfolded just as crypto lobbyists in D.C. were cranking up a campaign to dissuade lawmakers from enacting new restrictions.

Congress blindsided the industry last summer with tax provisions in the infrastructure bill, and advocacy ramped up exponentially and immediately, Niki Christoff, a Beltway consultant who advises companies in the crypto payments space, told Axios.

By the numbers: A cryptohead.io study, released last month, showed that the industry's lobbying expenditures increased by 116% in 2021, rising to $4,925,000.

A Tech Transparency Project report released at the end of last year revealed at least "235 officials from Congress, the White House, federal agencies, the Federal Reserve, and national political campaigns" have "moved to or from dozens of crypto companies, exchanges or trade associations..."

Membership in the Blockchain Association lobby group has ballooned in recent months to 80 members, including Crypto.com and Foundry Digital.

The big picture: Cryptocurrencies and blockchain-based tech aim to build alternatives to existing financial systems that can transcend national boundaries and operate beyond government reach.

That vision has increasingly conflicted with real-world institutions and laws.

The dramatic rise in ransomware attacks, often coupled with demands for payment in crypto, has added to regulators fears.

"In reality, the crypto industry has the worst of both worlds: dependence on institutions without any of their protections," crypto critics Rebecca Ackermann and Poppy Alexander wrote in an LA Times op-ed on Monday. "No wonder terrorists increasingly rely on crypto for financing, criminals seek to hide their funds with it, and fraudsters take advantage of the gullible, with crypto 'love scams' particularly on the rise."

Yes, but: The Russian invasion has also added weight to some arguments in support of crypto.

Crypto has proven a fast and effective way to send funds to the war zone. The Washington Post reported on Thursday that the Ukrainian government has already raised over $42 million in crypto.

Inside the industry, many, like Christoff, say that concerns crypto might help Russia evade sanctions are a red herring.

"People cant spend crypto without off-ramps into fiat banking, Christoff said.

And some have pointed out that the magnitude of the sanctions, paired with the transparency of public blockchain receipts, would make it difficult for Russia to use crypto as a financial back door.

Between the lines: Dave Grimaldi, executive vice president and head of government relations at the Blockchain Association, understands how quickly the tide can turn against a new, technologically complex industry.
The State Department is asking the Ukrainian government to release Americans held in pre-trial detention in Kyiv, fearing for their safety as Russian forces continue their assault on the capital, Axios has learned.

Why it matters: With conditions growing more desperate by the day, any way out for these Americans is highly uncertain. Two former Marines the U.S. has said are wrongfully detained in Russia may also face additional danger as tensions with Moscow spiral.

The U.S. no longer has a diplomatic presence in Kyiv to check on detainees and ensure their safety, and it's unclear how long prison guards will continue to report to work.

The State Department made the request in a diplomatic note to the Ukrainian government on Wednesday.

Zoom in: About five Americans are believed to be in pre-trial detention in Ukraine, meaning they have been charged but not convicted of a crime, according to a former U.S. official who advises the families of wrongful detainees.

One is Kurt Groszhans, a farmer from North Dakota accused of plotting to assassinate Ukraine's minister of agriculture, Roman Leshchenko, who was his former business partner.

Groszhans' family claims he was arrested on trumped-up charges after publicly accusing Leshchenko of corruption. They say he now risks being left behind without food or heat as Russia threatens to seize Kyiv.

The family has urged the State Department to secure Groszhans' release since early January, when alarms were sounding over Russia's continued military buildup on Ukraine's borders.

What they're saying: "Our concern is that the State Department is not advocating for his release because it would be inferring that Ukraine is engaged in corrupt activities right at a time when State is focused on being as supportive as possible of Ukraine against the Russians," Groszhans' sister, Kristi Magnusson, told Axios in a statement.

"We support the Ukrainian people against Russia as well, but our brother is a sitting duck in that prison and we need him to be released so at least he can try to survive on his own," she added.

Sens. John Hoeven (R-N.D.) and Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) told Axios they have been in contact with both the State Department and Ukraine's ambassador to the U.S. this week to push for Groszhans' release on humanitarian grounds.

The big picture: The situation is also growing dire for Trevor Reed and Paul Whelan, former U.S. Marines imprisoned in Russia who  unlike Groszhans  are considered by the U.S. to be "unlawfully detained.
Washington lobbying and public relation firms are offering their skills to Ukraine as Americans rally to its side amid Russia's brutal and relentless invasion, Axios has learned.

Driving the news: The latest entrant is the powerhouse firm SKDKnickerbocker, which is doing pro-bono work for the Ukrainian government, records show.

The firm told the Justice Department this week that managing director Stephen Krupin, a former speechwriter for President Obama and John Kerry, would help Ukraine craft remarks to the United Nations Security Council and General Assembly.

SKDK has close ties to the Biden administration.

The firm did extensive work on the president's 2020 campaign. And managing director Anita Dunn was a senior White House aide during his first year in office.

The big picture: Russia's brutal invasion of its democratic neighbor has galvanized Washington, and sources tell Axios that K Street is eager to lend its services.

The more cynical view, expressed by some close to Ukraine's representatives in Washington: messaging experts see an excellent P.R. opportunity.

Axios was unable to obtain comment from Krupin.

What they're saying: A source familiar with Ukraine's U.S. lobby told Axios there's been a heavy influx of D.C. consultants offering pro-bono services.

President Volodymyr Zelensky's U.S. allies are appreciative but wary, according to Daniel Vajdich. He's a lobbyist who represents a Ukrainian energy trade group, as well as a Kyiv NGO aligned with the Zelensky government.

"Anyone being brought on needs to demonstrate how they would actually contribute. Were all making sure that this is the case," Vajdich told Axios.

"Ukraine doesnt need hacks right now."

Between the lines: The rush to work with Ukraine underscores how quickly and dramatically K Street's posture toward the country has changed.

The central roles Ukraine and Russia played in the Trump 2016 election allegations caused many firms to steer clear of clients in the two countries.

"After the Mueller investigation, doing work for entities affiliated with Russia or Ukraine presented a level of risk many firms were not willing to take," one seasoned D.C. lobbyist told Axios. "In addition to the reputational challenges, no retainer is worth a Justice investigation."

But that lobbyist said Russia's invasion has shifted the calculation, and his firm has for the first time blessed efforts to seek Ukrainian clients that would previously have been considered too high-risk.

The bottom line: "The new view is Russia is so aggressive and such a bad actor, we see it as a positive to take on Ukraine work," the lobbyist said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called for solidarity in a message broadcast to thousands of people gathered in cities across Europe on Friday.

Driving the news: Zelensky in the speech, which came a little over a week after Russia began its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, said that if Ukraine fell, "Europe will not stand."

"If we will fall, you will fall so please don't be silent, do not turn the blind on eye on this," he added.

What they're saying: "If we win, and I'm sure we'll win, this will be the victory for the whole democratic world," Zelensky said.

"This will be the victory of our freedom. This will be the victory of light over darkness, of freedom over slavery."

Zelensky also paid tribute to those who have died with a moment of silence.

"Those who are making heroic deeds in different areas protecting their country and have given their lives away for this," he said.

"They're protecting your Europe and they're greeting each other, wishing each other good health....this is our heart, this is the heart of Ukraine, standing together against the evil," Zelensky added.

Details: The speech was broadcast over Zoom to cities across Europe, including Bratislava, Frankfurt, Prague, Lyon, Tbilisi, Vienna and Vilnius, according to CNN.

In Prague, thousands cheered in Wenceslas Square as Zelensky gave his speech. Large Ukrainian flags were seen and buildings were lit up in blue and yellow.

A pro-Ukraine rally was also held in Tbilisi, Georgia. The crowd, sporting their Ukrainian flags, cheered when Zelensky held his fist up in the air in a salute at the end.

Demonstrators watch an address of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on the big screen during a rally in support of Ukraine in Tbilisi. Photo: Vano Shlamov/AFP via Getty Images.

Go deeper:
The Armenian Foreign Ministry said that the embassy staff was relocated to the western Ukrainian cities of Lviv and Uzhgorod for safety reasons. It said the diplomats will continue to work and serve Armenian citizens from there.

Let us emphasize that the Embassy of the Republic of Armenia in Ukraine is one of the few embassies that have worked with all their staff and served compatriots during all this time, and it will continue to do so from the new locations, the ministry spokesman, Vahan Hunanian, wrote on Facebook.

Hunanian said nothing about the Armenian consulate in the Black Sea city of Odessa which military observers believe could be captured by Russian troops in the coming days. He again posted emergency phone numbers for Armenian nationals who want to leave or have already left Ukraine and need assistance.

The United States, most European Union member states and other Western nations fully or partly pulled their diplomatic staff out of Kyiv ahead of the Russian assault that began on February 24.

Estimates of the number of ethnic Armenians who lived in Ukraine before the war vary from 100,000 to 400,000. Many of them are said to hold Armenian passports. The European Union has allowed them to enter Ukraines EU members without Schengen visas.

Several Armenians told RFE/RLs Armenian Service on Wednesday that they fled Kyiv on their own after receiving no help from the Armenian Embassy.

Apart from giving us advice, they should have organized evacuations on time, complained one of them.

Right now no roads are safe enough for moving out [of Armenian citizens,] said an embassy official.
For a bibliophile, there is no more exciting sight than a room chock to the brim with books. Its one thing to be in a bookstore, but imagine tables strewn with random titles, allowing chance to let the right book  or books  find us. And for just a few pennies at that.

The Beaumont Friends of the Library will host a Sack of Books Sale at the R.C. Miller Memorial Library on Dowlen Road, March 12, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., with a member preview March 11, from 5 to 8 p.m. Memberships start at $10 and are available at the door.

Just a few days after Beaumont Friends of the Librarys last book sale in 2019, Tropical Storm Imelda flooded the library downtown, causing damage to the basement. Then COVID-19 put events on hold. But the Friends of the Library never stopped taking donations, said President Elaine Wikstrom. So, the inventory has continued to build to a point where a book sale is necessary.

The space is significantly smaller than the downtown librarys basement, so Wikstrom said they decided to change up the format. In the past, the books were all 10 cents and patrons could grab a box, fill it up, take it to a storage area, grab another box and count up at the end. This time, patrons will buy a paper bag for $2 and whatever they can fit in is what they get.

I had done some research on (other libraries) websites to see how they handled their service and that's how we got the bags, Wikstrom said. People are used to the free counting table (but) theres no room for them. That's when we started trying to figure out what else we could do, because if we can't count them, how can we charge them?

The bags are typical grocery story paper bags and were donated by HEB.

Friends of the Library secretary Laura Darchuk moved to Beaumont in 2016 from Annapolis, Maryland and attended her first book sale in 2018. Shes been a member ever since.

It's funny, I actually was never a reader growing up  I resented having to read books in school, she said. I just happen to after I finished college. It was during a blizzard. I was at home, picked up a book started reading and just fell in love. And ever since I am constantly at the library, the bookstores or downloading Kindle.

Darchuk said she doesnt know how many books will be in the sale, but more than two weeks out they are unpacking a lot of boxes.

There's 30 books per box and they're bringing us 10 boxes a day, she said. Weve just been sitting on them, and we want to be able to get them out to the public.

We do a whole variety. We've got fiction, we've got nonfiction, we've got children's, we've got art books, travel books, how-to books, cookbooks  we've got something for everybody.

Part of the fun of the book sale is rummaging through the tables and discovering hidden gems. Darchuk said she left her first sale with 85 books.

(We say) don't judge a book by its cover, but that really was what was getting me at that point, she said. And because you're getting them for less than a dollar, (you) find a bunch diamonds in the rough. My books that I've gotten from these sales, I will read them, I will pass them on to family and friends. I have several books that my sister has taken to her to her job, and they've just been passed around the entire plant, because people are like, Oh my gosh, it's so good. I wouldn't have thought to buy it.

The books are separated into fiction and non-fiction, but apart from that there is no order to the tables.

Nothing's in alphabetical order, the books are not together, Darchuk said. You could go in and find a book on grilling next to trips to Rome. You're going to get lost in this world. Just take your time and just see what you can discover.

Darchuk said the limited space for this sale means becoming part of Friends of the Library and being able to attend the members preview is important.

You're going to find that that treasure that might not be here if you wait until Saturday, she said.

The Friends of the Library help fund outreach programs throughout the year and pay for activities that are not in the budget, Wikstrom said. Despite having thousands of books for sale, most of the money comes from memberships.

If you think about it, they're a dime a book or $2 a bag  it's not going to get you too far, she said.

Membership forms are available at any Beaumont library and will also be available at the door.

Andy Coughlan is a freelance writer.
It will be at least another month before an announcement is made on an already-delayed murder trial in Jefferson County.

Gregory Joseph Ager, 28, last summer was been accused of killing Darian Kaimen Banks, 25. He was scheduled for an announcement regarding his expected trial in the Jefferson County Criminal District Court presided by Judge John Stevens last month.

But an attorney speaking on behalf of Agers defense attorney said the team was not ready to head to trial. More time was needed to obtain evidence, including to review video footage allegedly related to the case.

Related: Jefferson County grand jury indicts man for murder

The murder case is going to be prioritized and there is not much movement on (three other cases Agers is accused in) until the murder case can be moved one way or another. The state is not going to dismiss them, Stevens said.

Stevens ultimately reset the case for six weeks.

Ager was arrested June 5, 2021 on murder charges just hours after police say he was involved in the killing of another man. Beaumont police said around 4:30 a.m. that same day, they received a report of a shooting at an apartment in the 2500 block of Smart Street, The Enterprise previously reported.

Related: Jefferson County cancels jury duty as COVID cases continue to spread

When officers arrived, they found Banks dead after he had been shot multiple times, according to the Beaumont Police Department.

Soon after, a grand jury indicted Ager, the article said.

meagan.ellsworth@beaumontenterprise.com

twitter.com/megzmagpie
Anjaknie Roundtree and her two children, Tykeese and Chloe (Vernon Police Department)

Vernon police are asking for the publics help in finding a missing mother and her two young children.

Anjaknie Roundtree, 36, and her kids, Tykeese, 4, and Chloe Palmer, 2, were reported missing on Thursday. Roundtree was last seen on Tuesday in the area of Grove Street in Vernon, looking for a ride to a Manchester hotel, police said.

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Mother and children left the area on foot. Roundtree does not have a vehicle and uses public transportation to get around, police said. She uses a double stroller to transport her children. Previously, police said, Roundtree had gone to Virginia to apply for jobs.

Anyone with information on the familys whereabouts is asked to call police at 860-872-9126.

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Jesse Leavenworth can be reached at jleavenworth@courant.com
Representatives of victims of terrorist attacks and relatives of victims pose for a group photograph after receiving monetary compensation from the Witness and Victim Protection Agency at the governors office in Palu, the capital of Indonesias Central Sulawesi province, March 4, 2022.

Indonesia on Friday paid out 24 billion rupiah (U.S. $1.7 million) in compensation to 142 victims of terrorism and their families in Central Sulawesi, a province where Islamic militants have carried out attacks since the 2000s.

Those receiving checks from the payout included relatives of 45 people who were killed in terrorist attacks and those who were injured but survived, said Hasto Atmojo Suroyo, who heads the central governments Witness and Victim Protection Agency. It serves people victimized by terrorism, human rights abuses, human trafficking and other crimes.

They are victims of 20 terrorism attacks before the enactment [of the 2018 anti-terrorism law], Hasto told reporters after a ceremony to hand over the compensation money to victims and victims relatives at the governors office in Palu, the provincial capital.

At least 357 terrorism victims and their heirs across the country have now been financially compensated, Hasto said.

The government so far has spent slightly more than 59 billion rupiah ($4.1 million) to compensate victims of terrorism and their families, including those in Central Sulawesi, he said.

One of those in Central Sulawesi who received compensation on Friday was the widow of Marten Solong, one of four farmers killed by militants with the Islamic State-linked Eastern Indonesian Mujahideen (MIT) group, in Poso regency last May.

We are very grateful for this assistance, Maria Solong told reporters after the ceremony at the provincial governors office.

Some of the money will be used to buy daily necessities and the rest will be used to start a farming business, she said.

Compensation for terrorism victims is mandated by the 2018 anti-terrorism law, which was rushed through parliament following suicide bombings that targeted churches in the countrys second largest city, Surabaya, in May 2018. The Surabaya attacks killed 22 people, including the bombers.

The 2018 law is a piece of progressive regulation that protects victims of terrorism, Hasto said.

Villagers carry the body of a farmer killed by suspected MIT militants in Parigi Moutong regency, Indonesia, Sept. 14, 2015. [BenarNews]

In 2020, Indonesian President Joko Jokowi Widodo signed a government decree that grants compensation, restitution and assistance to citizens victimized in terrorist attacks that occurred before 2018.

The presidential decree replaced one from 2018 that did not apply retroactively. It stipulates that victims of past acts of terrorism are entitled to compensation, medical assistance, or psychological rehabilitation.

Before 2018, compensation was given on a case-by-case basis, usually by court orders.

The new decree also covers a string of deadly terrorist attacks that killed hundreds of people in Indonesia during the first decade of this century. Authorities blamed those attacks on the Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) militant group, a Southeast Asian affiliate of the al-Qaeda terror group.

These included the Bali bombings that killed 202 people in 2002  Indonesias deadliest-ever terror attack  and a string of deadly hotel bombings and other attacks in the 2000s.

Children play on a dirt road in Lembantongoa village in Indonesias Central Sulawesi province, days after suspected members of the MIT militant group killed four residents, Nov. 30, 2020. [Faldi Muhammad/BenarNews]

In Central Sulawesi, attacks blamed on JI include the bombings of two markets in the town of Poso in 2004 and 2005, which killed six and 22 people, respectively.

More recently, the MIT group has been active in Poso and neighboring areas. Its strength has been reduced to three people after years of an anti-insurgency operation involving police and soldiers.

Most attacks in Central Sulawesi in recent years, including the killing of four Christians in 2020 in Sigi, a regency that borders Poso, have been blamed on MIT.

The group, which pledged allegiance to the Islamic State terror organization in 2014, is responsible for kidnappings, bombings of police stations and killings of security personnel and farmers, police say.

Mamun Amir, the deputy governor of Central Sulawesi, said his administration would help provide training to allow recipients to gain new skills.

We hope that the compensation money can be put to good use, he said.

For this reason, the local government will assist the recipients."
People walk past signs with the message We Support Ukraine outside the Canadian embassy in Beijing, March 3, 2022.

Russias invasion of Ukraine is being portrayed in varying ways by news outlets serving nearly 2 billion readers in East and Southeast Asia.

Chinese media are offering Moscow-friendly coverage and censoring the rest, while some of its more democratic neighbors are delivering balanced and occasionally pro-Ukraine reporting.

Over the past week, Radio Free Asia and BenarNews staff surveyed news media coverage of the crisis in the countries we cover that run the gamut from Marxist-Leninist governments in China, Vietnam, North Korea and Laos, to more liberal countries in Southeast Asia, where audiences often sample news media that would be familiar to people in the West.

Those countries are carrying international wire reports and hosting lively debate. They also focus on the plight of their expatriates living and working in Ukraine.

Predictably, the regions more authoritarian nations have much more controlled messaging, reflecting historic ties between Moscow and its Communist friends in Asia  apparent at this weeks United Nations General Assembly 141-5 vote in favor of condemning the invasion of Ukraine, where China, Laos and Vietnam all abstained. North Korea, which has the most closed media of any nation in the world, voted against the U.N. measure and has been mostly silent on Ukraine.

Here is a quick look at the regions media coverage of the war. Countries are listed along with their ranking in the annual World Press Freedom Index by the France-based watchdog Reporters Without Borders. (For reference, the index ranks Ukraine at 97 out of 180 countries, while Russia is at 150).

Members of the Ukraine delegation hold banners to call for peace prior to the opening ceremony of the Beijing 2022 Winter Paralympic Games at the National Stadium in Beijing, March 4, 2022. [Handout via AFP]

China (177/180)

Chinese state media have struggled like the government that controls and directs them to reconcile widening gaps between the official line that stops short of calling the Russian campaign an invasion and the fast unfolding horrors being inflicted on the people in Ukraine by Russian forces.

State media have been using content from Russian media reports, to the point that official media have pretty much become the mouthpiece of the Russian media, said Renmin University journalism graduate Lu Nan.



He said the CCPs shadowy public opinion management operations were encouraging pro-Russian comments on social media, while comments critical of Moscow get censored swiftly.

They only allow one voice to exist, so all of the comments are supportive of Putin, Lu said. No dissenting voices are allowed to appear.

State media propaganda sits uneasily with a tide of social media reports from Chinese on the ground in Ukraine including students begging to be evacuated amid shelling by Russian forces.

Vietnam (175/180)

Vietnamese media are covering the conflict in great detail. While much of the coverage is pro-Moscow, there is less pro-Russia bias than when Russia annexed Crimea in 2014.

Nhan Dan daily, the mouthpiece of Vietnams ruling Communist Party, reported both sides arguments at Tuesdays United Nations Security Councils emergency meeting on Ukraine. It carried quotes by not only the Russian and Chinese representatives but also by the U.S. ambassador to the U.N. and a statement from the Ukrainian president.

The official Vietnam News Agencys online newspaper, Bao Tin Tuc, while dedicating most space to the Russian accounts of the crisis, also reported on the Wests condemnation of Russian President Vladimir Putins recognition of the two breakaway regions in eastern Ukraine, as well as the European sanctions against Moscow.

Laos (172/180)

Mainstream media in Laos is state-run, and the sparse coverage it has of the Ukraine conflict leans heavily on the Chinese state news agency, Xinhua, which in turns leans heavily on Russias view of events.

A March 3 headline in the Vientiane Times reads: Fighting continues as Russias special military operation in Ukraine has entered the seventh day, while a new round of peace talks is reportedly to take place. The same report gives most prominence to a quote from the Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu who vows to continue the military operation in Ukraine until achieving the main goal of defending Russia from Western threats.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu (left) and Commander-in-Chief of Myanmars armed forces, Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing walk past an honor guard prior to their talks in Moscow, June 22, 2021. [Russian Defense Ministry handout via AFP]

Myanmar (140/180 before the Feb. 1, 2021, military coup)

Military junta-controlled state media favor Russia. It is one of the few countries to support the military regime that ousted an elected government a year ago. Moscow has continued to sell arms to the junta despite widespread atrocities.

The Myanmar state newspapers cover the Ukraine crisis by printing translated stories directly from Russias TASS news agencies and Chinas CGTN news, while pro-military nationalists accounts on Telegram clearly side with Russia.

The Burmese language Kye Mon newspaper reminded readers that Ukraine was part of Soviet Union and appeared to draw a link with the situation at home, warning against allowing disintegration of multi-ethnic Myanmar and to prevent outside interference. An editorial last week in the Burmese-language Myanmar Alin also called for building a strong military in order to be respected by neighbors.

But private media have carried international wire services and presented the conflict as the result of a Russian invasion. Anti-junta outlets operating in exile took a largely pro-Ukraine stance.

Cambodia (144/180)

The state news agency Agence Kampuchea Presse, or AKP, has carried brief news about Russian leaders and the sanctions they now face, based on translations from Xinhua and TASS. AKP reports do not portray Russia as the aggressor and do not provide details of death and destruction in Ukraine.

Pro-government Fresh News has focused on sanctions against Russia from the West and Russian reactions.

The pro-government outlet DAP has published articles and news supporting the Russian invasion as an act of self-defense, and blaming the West for provoking the war to enlarge its influence.

Some private outlets are carrying international media reports of the conflict.

Indonesia (113/180)

Most media in Indonesia have relied on international wire services including Agence France-Presse, the Associated Press and Reuters for reporting on the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

One news website RMOL.id posted an interview with the Ukrainian ambassador to Indonesia, Vasyl Hamianin, which began with: Its extremely worrying. Russian President Vladimir Putins ambition and obsession with invading Ukraine has brought Muslim societies in both countries into conflict.

During the interview, Hamianin accused Russia of pitting Muslims against each other by sending Chechen fighters to Ukraine.

While Muslims total only about 1 percent of Ukraines population, Crimea, which is internationally recognized as part of Ukraine, account for 15 percent of the population.

Indonesia is the worlds most populous Muslim-majority nation.

Malaysia (119/180)

The Malaysian government has refrained from using the word invasion, referring to the current situation as intensifying conflict in Ukraine while urging the two nations to find peace without specifically naming Russia.

But upcoming local elections in one of Malaysias largest states is drawing more attention from local media than what is being called the Russia-Ukraine crisis  where reporting leans pro-Ukraine.

Much of the reporting is focusing on how the crisis has impacted on the Malaysian economy in the form of price hikes for gasoline and other goods.

Bangladesh (152/180)

Ukraine reporting tops the front pages of Bangladesh newspapers while private TV channels host analysts to discuss the Russian invasion and air reports released by global media including BBC, CNN, and Al Jazeera. Overall, the media coverage is balanced while the analysts offer varied opinions, mostly critical of the invasion.

Bangladesh media is mainly presenting the war facts and casualties, which is not sufficient in wartime reporting, I think. The media should be more reflective of anti-war sentiments and presenting human angle stories, media analyst Faruq Faisel, regional director for South Asia and Bangladesh of the rights group Article 19, told BenarNews.

Bangladesh media has reported on efforts to return Bangladeshi expatriates who were stuck inside Ukraine or fled into its neighboring countries. Other reporting focused on analysts expressing fear that potential sanctions against Russia could negatively affect construction of the Russian-built Rooppur nuclear power plant, one of the nations largest development projects.

The Philippines (138/180)

Philippine media coverage of the conflict in Ukraine has been muted and has dealt with efforts to bring home about 350 Filipino migrant workers.

Stories are playing on foreign news pages as Page One reporting has focused on the May 9 presidential election even as candidates have spoken about Russia and Ukraine.

Of particular concern is how the ongoing invasion would affect the economy because pump prices have gone up.

Thailand (137/180)

Thai medias foreign news sections have been flooded with coverage of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, largely based on reports or analysis from foreign news agencies. Global English news channels, like BBC, CNN, Al Jazeera, Russias RT, and Chinas CCTV can be watched only on pay TV. Many people get access via YouTube.

Official information is coming out of the Thai Embassy in Warsaw, Poland, which also is responsible for the evacuation of some 255 Thais working in the service sector in Ukraine. Thirty-eight arrived back home on Wednesday.

The Thai government, known for bending with the wind on foreign policy, failed to condemn Russia for the invasion. It has been noted and criticized by some in the local media for taking a neutral stance, as government officials have avoided the word invasion, and largely confined their remarks to the economic fallout, including on gas prices and tourism.

Ahmad Pathoni in Jakarta, Pimuk Rakkanam and Subel Rai Bhandari in Bangkok, Richel V. Umel in Iligan, Philippines, Froilan Gallardo in Cagayan de Oro, Philippines, a BenarNews correspondent in Zamboanga, Philippines, and Muzliza Mustafa in Kuala Lumpur contributed to this report.
U.S. President Joe Biden listens as Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi speaks during a Quad summit at the White House, Sept. 24, 2021.

Following a virtual meeting, leaders of the four member states of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, or Quad, said a major conflict like in Ukraine should not be allowed in the Indo-Pacific.

The leaders of the United States, Australia, India and Japan met virtually late Thursday to discuss the Russia-Ukraine war and its possible impact.

After the meeting, Fumio Kishida the Japanese prime minister , Fumio Kishida, said unilateral changes to the status quo by force or coercion like the recent Russian aggression against Ukraine are also unacceptable in the Indo-Pacific region.

In his statement, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said: We cannot allow what is happening in Ukraine now to ever happen in the Indo-Pacific.

We are resolute in our commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific region where smaller states do not need to live in fear of more powerful ones.

A joint readout of the Quad leaders call said the meeting was to reaffirm their commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific, in which the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all states is respected and countries are free from military, economic, and political coercion.

It also said the leaders agreed to stand up a new humanitarian assistance and disaster relief mechanism which will enable the Quad to meet future humanitarian challenges in the Indo-Pacific, as well as to respond to the crisis in Ukraine.

The four leaders will meet in person in Tokyo in the coming months, the readout said. Japanese sources the meeting could occur in May.

Persuading India

The summit was convened at U.S. President Joe Bidens request, reportedly after India abstained on a U.N. resolution condemning Russias aggression in Ukraine.

The resolution was adopted on Wednesday at a rare emergency session of the U.N. General Assembly with 141 of the U.N.s 193 members voting in its favor. India was among 35 countries that abstained, together with China and South Africa. India has a strong, long-standing relationship with Russia, especially in the defense sector.

Washington had been making efforts to persuade Delhi to take a clear stance in opposing Russias aggression in Ukraine, Donald Lu, U.S. assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asia, told a Senate subcommittee hearing on Wednesday.

In response, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said after the Quad summit that the leaders reaffirmed our shared commitment to ensuring security, safety and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific.

Modi underlined that the Quad must remain focused on its core objective of promoting peace, stability and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific region, according to his office.

The Indian prime minister emphasized the need to return to a path of dialogue and diplomacy in relation to developments in Ukraine.

Former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo (left) and Taiwans President Tsai Ing-wen walk together during a meeting at the Presidential Office in Taipei, Taiwan, March 3, 2022. [Taiwan Presidential Office via AP]

Taiwan issue

As the war is ravaging Eastern Europe, there are concerns that China would feel emboldened to make a move on Taiwan which it considers a breakaway province and has repeatedly vowed to reunite with the mainland.

Experts said Beijing is watching the Ukrainian developments closely before making any decision in regards to Taiwan.

On Friday, when asked about a possibility that China would use force against the self-governing island amid the Ukrainian war, Mike Pompeo, former U.S. secretary of state, said: I dont think we know how [Chinese leader] Xi jinping will interpret whats taking place in Ukraine today.

Pompeo, on his first visit to Taiwan, warned that losing Taiwan would directly imperil our vital national interest in the United States.

The former top U.S. diplomat said his nation should change its 50-year strategic ambiguity on Taiwan and immediately take necessary and long overdue steps to do the right and obvious thing which is to offer the Republic of China (Taiwan) Americas diplomatic recognition as a free and sovereign country.

The call was met with angry response from Beijing. China Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin on Friday said: Mike Pompeo is a former politician with bankrupt credibility and his nonsense is doomed to failure.

On Thursday, Wang called Pompeos meeting with the Taiwanese leader Tsai Ing-wen a simply shameless and futile act.

Pompeo served as secretary of state during the Trump administration.
Gas prices in Connecticut soared Friday, as the armed conflict in Ukraine pushed the price of crude oil to a decade high. (stefanamer/Getty Images/iStockphoto)

Gas prices in Connecticut are soaring  gaining an average of 13 cents a gallon between Thursday and Friday alone  and are expected to surge well above $4, as the armed conflict in Ukraine pushes prices for crude oil to highs not seen for more than a decade.

In Connecticut, the average price for a gallon of regular unleaded gas jumped to $3.97 Friday, according to the daily survey by AAA, compared with $3.84 on Thursday and $3.71 just a week ago. A month ago, the average price was $3.53.

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Fridays prices in Connecticut were well above the national average of $3.84, AAA reported.

Gas prices poised to rise well above $4 in Connecticut. (Carline Jean / South Florida Sun Sentinel)

Figure $4.25-$4.50 a gallon for gasoline before this crests or changes and figure $4.50-$4.75 a gallon for diesel, said Tom Kloza, global head of energy analysis at the Oil Price Information Service, a gas and oil price-reporting agency in Rockville, Maryland. I wish I was making those prices up or engaging in hyperbole, but I am not.

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AAA began tracking fuel price data in 2000, and this week is only third time that the country has seen single-day increases as high as this, Tracy E. Noble, an AAA spokeswoman said Friday.

This week, weve seen historic single-day increases and today is no exception, Noble said.

Gas prices in Connecticut soaring Prices gained an average of 13 cents a gallon between Thursday and Friday alone -- and are expected to rise well above $4, as the armed conflict in Ukraine pushes prices for crude oil to highs not seen for more than a decade. National Avg. $3.837 Connecticut Avg. $3.972



State Name Price: Fairfield Hartford Litchfield Middlesex New Haven New London Tolland Windham $3.920 <

$3.920 to $3.945

$3.945 to $3.970

$3.970 to $3.995

> $3.995







SOURCE: AAA, Gas prices as of March, 4 2022

The last two times were both in 2005, Noble said.

A key measure of crude oil prices this week increased 7.4% a barrel to close at $115.68, the highest price since May, 2011.

The International Energy Agency, which helps shape global energy policy, has coordinated the release of 60 million barrels of crude oil from the strategic reserves 31 member countries, half of that expected from the United States.

News @3 Daily Catch up on the days top headlines sent directly to your inbox weekdays at 3 p.m >

But the effects on pricing, AAA noted, has been limited given the amount of oil that is exported out of Russia daily, about 5 million barrels, or 12% of what is traded globally.

A man talks on a phone in front of his burning house damaged after shelling in the city of Chernihiv Friday. (DIMITAR DILKOFF/AFP via Getty Images)

Some reprieve in the tight supply of crude oil could come from Iran if the U.S. and the oil-rich nation complete a new nuclear agreement and related sanctions are lifted, some energy analysts have said.

Even before Russias invasion into Ukraine, supplies of crude oil were tight, demand was picking up amid strong economic signs emerging from the pandemic.

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With increasing sanctions on Russia, the price of oil will likely continue to rise and a potential ban would only further disrupt the supply of oil, AAA said, and translate to more pain at the pump.

OPIS Kloza said the existing sanctions against Russia are already disrupting a supply chain  involving banks, insurers, tanker companies and others  preventing and estimated 2 or 3 million barrels a day from leaving Russia.

In other words, this is the catalyst for prices screaming higher, Kloza said. They are doing so on every corner of the planet.

Kenneth R. Gosselin can be reached at kgosselin@courant.com.
Shereen Ahmed (center) as Eliza Doolittle, with Leslie Alexander as Mrs. Higgins and Kevin Pariseau as Colonel Pickering in the national tour of the Lincoln Center Theater Production of "My Fair Lady," at The Bushnell March 8 to 13. (Joan Marcus)

To understand how Shereen Ahmed can morph herself from an uncouth flower girl into a cultured woman of society in the role of Eliza Doolittle, all you need to do is browse her resume.

Although she is now starring in the national tour of My Fair Lady, which finally arrives at The Bushnell March 8-13 after a COVID-induced postponement, her training ground for the part was in her home state of Maryland, where she played such outspoken, intelligent characters as Maria in The Sound of Music, Anita in West Side Story, Anna in The King and I, Christine in Phantom of the Opera and Princess Fiona in Shrek: The Musical.

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But her Eliza was for Broadway in the major revival of Frederick Loewe and Alan Jay Lerners masterwork in 2018-2019. Ahmed understudied Eliza and also played numerous smaller roles in the long-running production.

Playing the indomitable Eliza, the Cockney street vendor who dreams of escaping poverty, is all based on the language, Ahmed says during a recent phone interview with The Courant. Ive always gravitated toward accents. My father is from Egypt and has a heavy accent. Ive always had an ear for it.

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Eliza Doolittle (Shereen Ahmed) roots for a horse, as Freddy (Sam Simahk), Colonel Pickering (Kevin Pariseau), Mrs. Higgins (Leslie Alexander) as others look on, in the national tour of "My Fair Lady." (Joan Marcus)

Ahmed is the first woman of color to play Eliza Doolittle on Broadway and on Londons West End, but she says my background doesnt inform Eliza. Elizas background informs Eliza. Eliza is an English girl who grew up on the streets. Im an Egyptian American, and I thought a lot about what does that mean for me? My father grew up poor. I also took a lot of inspiration from people around me.

Defining moments for Eliza, as Shereen sees it, come in the songs The Rain in Spain and I Could Have Danced All Night, when the audience sees her superpower, which is her voice.

My Fair Lady is a bonafide American musical-theater classic, based on the play Pygmalion by British playwright George Bernard Shaw. It also has strong Connecticut connections. It had its world premiere at the Shubert in New Haven on Feb. 4, 1956, for a triumphant series of out-of-town try-out performances five weeks before it was on Broadway. The director of this revival, Bartlett Sher, was the associate artistic director of Hartford Stage in the mid-1990s, and is now a Broadway powerhouse who helmed major revivals of Fiddler on the Roof and The King (both of which toured to The Bushnell), and also directed Aaron Sorkins acclaimed new adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird.

I worked closely with Bart, Ahmed says. We had very deep conversations about the challenges of the show. People romanticize and fantasize My Fair Lady in a way its not meant to be at all.

In the wrong hands, she suggests, the relationship between Eliza and Prof. Henry Higgins (played on the tour by Laird Mackintosh) can play into, rather than openly question, issues of male dominance.

Weekender Weekly Our picks for things to do and places to go this weekend >

Its about the challenging circumstances of gender politics in the early 1900s and now she emphasizes. It shows how important reviving old musicals is.

On a bet, phonetics specialist Higgins sets about turning Eliza into a well-spoken woman that can fit into society circles, a project she accepts as a way of improving her job prospects. Their relationship is not intended to be romantic; Eliza has that with a young man admirer named Freddy (played by Sam Simahk).

From left: Kevin Pariseau as Colonel Pickering, Laird Mackintosh as Professor Henry Higgins and Shereen Ahmed as Eliza Doolittle in the national tour of the recent Broadway revival of "My Fair Lady." (Joan Marcus)

Henry Higgins and Eliza Doolittle never sing a song together, or talk about a romantic future together, Ahmed says. Theirs is an intellectual relationship. We are really hearkening back to what was originally intended. We are getting back to Shaw.

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The tour was originally scheduled to be in Hartford in late April of 2021. The downtime from the pandemic was a wild experience, Ahmed says. The transition was very different from when youre ending a role and then doing it in a different place. I had 18 months off. I didnt work much. I didnt create much. And when I came back to [My Fair Lady] I wanted to approach it in a different way, because I have changed so much.

When we started again, Bart and I, and the company, changed a few things. We had a table read in August and some lines were landing differently. The misogyny in Higgins landed differently. We were playing in Houston, and there were womens rights protests there at the time, and there were visceral reactions to the show. We began digging deeper than we had before.

As Eliza herself puts it, The difference between a lady and a flower girl is not how she behaves, but how she is treated.

Christopher Arnott can be reached at carnott@courant.com.
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Greg Sukiennik has worked at all three Vermont News & Media newspapers and was their managing editor from 2017-19. He previously worked for ESPN.com, for the AP in Boston, and at The Berkshire Eagle in Pittsfield, Mass.
Eugene Sidoronok, right, and friend Eugene Shcherbak, both of Ukraine, are taking shelter together with their immediate families at Scherbaks home. Sidoronok said he and his countrymen are ready to defend their homeland, their only goal. They are key employees of Paul Belogour of Guilford.
Commentary: DPP's latest farce to court Washington

Xinhua) 08:50, March 04, 2022

BEIJING, March 3 (Xinhua) -- Taiwan's Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) authority staged a well-calculated performance to court foreign support for its "Taiwan independence" goal during the recent visits of a handful of former U.S. officials.

This latest farce is another example of how Washington's intention to use Taiwan to contain China aligns with the DPP's attempts to seek U.S. support for its "independence" agenda, and it is proof of how the DPP authority would betray the well-being of Taiwan people for its own interests.

Fully aware of the sensitivity of the Taiwan question in China-U.S. relations, anti-China forces in the United States, both in the ruling and opposition parties, have treated Taiwan as a pawn to lure votes in domestic elections and achieve monetary gains from arms deals.

On public occasions, the U.S. side has always pledged its support for the one-China principle. The White House and the U.S. Department of State have repeatedly pledged such support. Even former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo did not openly support "Taiwan independence" while in office.

U.S. politicians understand that undermining the one-China principle will shake the foundation of China-U.S. relations, which is not in the best interests of the U.S. No matter how supportive their gestures seem to the DPP, Washington has been testing the boundaries rather than making concrete moves.

However, Taiwan politicians advocating for "Taiwan independence" will not miss the opportunity to promote propaganda. The leader of Taiwan's authority has declared that "Taiwan-U.S. ties are as solid as a rock," and even presented a special medal to Mike Pompeo.

Still, the truth has always been there. Whoever the United States sends to Taiwan to show its so-called firm support, and however the DPP authority brags about "Taiwan-U.S. friendship," the fact that the United States regards Taiwan as a pawn in its political agenda will not change.

Fortunately, the people of Taiwan are not easily deceived. On social media platforms, locals have hit back at the United States for "selling weapons, war and death," and asked, "Haven't you messed up the world enough?"

The United Daily News said in an editorial that two U.S. politicians with different political agendas had made respective visits to Taiwan, for their own interests and calculations, and that they are "locking horns with each other" rather than supporting Taiwan.

However different are the hidden intentions of U.S. or Taiwan politicians, they share something in common -- they do not care about the security, interests and well-being of the approximately 23 million residents of Taiwan.

It is the DPP authority that is making itself the willing tool of anti-China forces in the United States and other countries in the West, instigating anti-China activities and undermining ties across the Taiwan Strait.

To that end, the DPP authority will not hesitate to plunge the people of Taiwan into a disaster.

(Web editor: Xia Peiyao, Liang Jun)
Irelands Great Hunger Museum is moving to Fairfield, it was announced on Friday by Quinnipiac University, which closed the museum last summer.

The Gaelic American Club (GAC) in Fairfield will become the new steward of the entire collection, which is the worlds largest collection of art and artifacts about the 1845-1852 Great Hunger, QU spokesman John Morgan said in a press release.

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The universitys goal is to preserve the collection, to have it displayed intact, and for it to remain in Connecticut in a more central location accessible to a broader public, Morgan wrote. The decision follows extensive exploratory conversations with many organizations and community leaders as the university investigated multiple avenues to preserve the collection and its important message.

The removal of the collection to Fairfield was approved by a unanimous vote of QUs board of trustees.

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The university remains committed to keeping the collection together and honoring the terms of the original donor agreements for any items donated to IGHM, Morgan wrote.

An 8,000-square-feet historical building near the GAC clubhouse at 74 Beach Road will be converted into an exhibit space, according to John Foley, vice president of the GAC. Among the designers who will be consulted regarding the renovation are architects Peter McGinley and Conor Kenney, Foley said.

Foley said it is too early to give details about the next steps or a timeline for opening. The partnership itself has to be defined. The next step is to sit with [Quinnipiac], Foley said.

In their negotiations with QU, which began in December, the GAC asked if the museum could stay in its current space in Hamden. It would have been a much easier thing for this to open in Hamden, much easier to everyone, Foley said. Quinnipiac didnt want to open it. They didnt discuss as to why.

The club at first considered working with a nearby university  Fairfield or Sacred Heart  to house the museum, then rejected that idea. Why put it behind another university wall? What happens  if three or four years along, the institution changed and wanted a new scenario. Wed be back to square one again, Foley said.

Foley said the GAC would work with universities that have Irish studies programs to ensure the collection will be used for educational purposes, and that the collection also will be accessible to the public.

It is cause for great celebration that the Great Hunger Collection will not remain shuttered; that this remarkable and terrible part of the story of Ireland will once again be shared and understood alongside the equally remarkable and brilliant paths that Irish people  many of whom became Irish Americans  have forged, an online statement on the GAC website read.

The 75-year-old GAC is one of New Englands largest Irish-American organizations, with 6,000 members.

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One group that was organized to save the museums collection, however, is not satisfied with the decision to hand the collection over to the GAC. Turlough McConnell, executive director of the nonprofit Save Irelands Great Hunger Museum, said that committee was shocked that Quinnipiac would make a rash decision to turn such a valuable collection over to a social club, moreover, one that does not have appropriate charitable status.

Even more surprising is that it would do so while the attorney generals investigation is still ongoing, McConnell wrote in a news release. Our concern always has been, and always will be, the story of Irelands Great Hunger as told through art and artifacts by leading artists, for which the university has shown a callous disregard.

Others commenting Friday on the Save Irelands Great Hunger Museum Facebook page, however, disagreed with the organizations official position, praising the universitys partnership with GAC.

In a statement, U.S. Sens. Chris Murphy, Richard Blumenthal and U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, who had been lobbying for the museums reopening, agreed.

We are pleased that Quinnipiac University has recognized the significant importance of keeping the Great Hunger Museum intact and in Connecticut. The Gaelic-American Club is a great Irish organization and potentially a terrific steward of the museums assets, they said in the release. First and foremost, our goal has been to ensure every effort is made to keep the Museum operable in its current location.

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If that isnt feasible, then the collection should remain intact and in Connecticut. Further, it is equally important that the museum maintain full time operation with broad accessibility to the public. Lastly, any transition will need to be in accordance with requirements resulting from the pending inquiry by the State Attorney Generals office, they said.

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The uproar about the museum began when QU board of trustees unanimously voted in August to close it for good.

In a virtual town hall that month, QU President Judy Olian blamed the closure on three years in a row of low attendance and insufficient fundraising. She said the school planned to distribute the museums collection to other museums.

The news of the permanent closure, and the potential breakup of the collection, caused an uproar in the Irish and Irish American communities. Many compared the Great Hunger, known commonly as the potato famine, to the Holocaust and blasted the university for its decision.

Attorney General William Tong launched an investigation into the matter, and state officials rallied around the collections preservation. Tongs spokeswoman Elizabeth Benton said on Friday that the investigation is active and ongoing.

QU is still home to Irelands Great Hunger Institute and the Irish collection in the Lender Reading Room.

Susan Dunne can be reached at sdunne@courant.com.
PITTSFIELD  A jury Thursday acquitted a city man accused of touching the genitals of a patient in a Lee nursing home, because of insufficient evidence.

Louis Hansen, 63, was found not guilty on all charges by a jury of six in Central Berkshire District Court, with Judge Jennifer Tyne presiding. In 2019, Lee Police had charged Hansen with indecent assault and battery on a person over 14 and permitting injury to an elderly person. The trial was delayed because of the pandemic.

The charges stemmed from an accusation by Jessie Cibelli, now 93. She alleged that she awoke one evening in late February 2019 at Lee Healthcare  she was staying there for a month to recover from a back injury  to find Hansen with a hand down the front of her incontinence briefs, and touching her genitals and the inside of her leg.

The nursing homes internal investigation found no wrongdoing by Hansen. The homes owner, Next Step Healthcare, reported it to the state Department of Public Health. After reviewing the incident report, the agency did not pursue its own investigation, deeming the companys probe sound.

In 2020, Cibelli sued Next Step, in Berkshire Superior Court over the allegations, and settled with the company in April 2021.

Hansen always has maintained his innocence, said Joanna Arkema, his public defender. She said prosecutors did not have enough evidence to identify Hansen as the perpetrator, among other issues.

The problem is that with respect to her allegation, there werent a lot of details or facts, so, when the police began their investigation, they didnt have much to go on so they settled on Mr. Hansen, Arkema said. While his case was open for such a long time, the jury was out for 15 minutes.

Arkema also said the charges deeply had affected Hansen, who continues to work at the facility.

He was torn up about it and just mortified about it from the beginning, she said.

Cibelli also has struggled since making her claim. Her family says a host of issues plagued the case, including Cibellis eyesight. All would make it difficult for a jury to convict Hansen, said the family, and Cibellis daughter said the family had girded for an acquittal.

Its due process, said Susan Cibelli, Jessie Cibellis daughter. Somebody has to identify you.

Susan Cibelli noted the settlement with Next Step over the allegations. The lawsuit had pointed to a history of abuse and neglect at Lee Healthcare.

If they believed it didnt happen, why would they settle? she asked.

The Berkshire District Attorneys Office would not answer questions about concerns it might have with Hansen continuing to work around vulnerable people, saying a respones would be inappropriate.

That being said, we believe survivors, and we are not afraid to take difficult cases to trial, said Andrew McKeever, the D.A.s public information officer.

We commend the survivor in this case for coming forward and for having the courage to seek justice. Unfortunately, the jury did not feel there was enough evidence to meet the Commonwealths burden of proof. This office will continue to believe survivors and fight for their stories to be heard.
Jim Shulman, a Pittsfield native living in Ohio, is the author of Berkshire Memories: A Baby Boomer Looks Back at Growing Up in Pittsfield. If you have a memory of a Berkshire baby-boom landmark, business or event youd like to share or read about, please write Jim at jesjmskali@aol.com
Individual newspapers travel along a track to be sorted into bundles at The Berkshire Eagle in August. The Eagle is once again looking for community support to help fund a Report for America reporter at The Eagle.
Massachusetts is facing an unprecedented moment. Im not talking about the COVID-19 pandemic  although the shoe still fits. Im talking about the billions of dollars in federal funding pouring into our commonwealth, challenging lawmakers to make intentional, generational investments that will build a sound foundation for housing, health care, infrastructure and transportation for centuries to come.

In push for 'west-east' rail, Berkshire County lawmakers press for track upgrades west of Springfield West-east rail, for state Rep. William Smitty Pignatelli, is more than a catchphrase. Unless work for Pittsfield-to-Boston passenger rail begins in Western Massachusetts, the Lenox Democrat says, he does not expect to board that train in his lifetime.

With an opportunity such as this comes the need for bold vision and action as we seek to tackle projects that can change the lives of residents from the Berkshires to Boston. Its no secret that west-east rail is long overdue, but now that we have the funds to make it happen, we must do it the right way.

Gov. Charlie Baker recently indicated his support for east-west passenger rail, which is a step in the right direction. However, its far too soon to celebrate. If the rail begins in Boston and moves west, I  and many of my colleagues  have no doubt that the money will dry up and the link will end in Springfield, leaving the Berkshires in the dust. If we start in Springfield and connect west to the Berkshires and east to Worcester, everyone wins.

Discussions with U.S. Reps. Richard Neal and Jim McGovern have been ongoing to ensure that we have a consistent transit system throughout the commonwealth, but our work is not finished until Gov. Baker and our federal delegation truly understand that a rail system serving the entire state needs to run from west to east.

People in the Berkshires pay taxes that directly fund the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority but do not benefit from the services that MBTA provides. While talk of free fares swirl through Boston, the penny that Berkshire residents are currently paying on the sales tax  totaling to more than $30 million annually  does not give them access to reliable transit systems locally. Instead, we continue to face issues with our own regional transit system, including a general lack of funding and the inability to extend hours for buses or add weekend services. This only worsens the divide in regional equity that already exists.

My colleagues and I in the 413 Western Massachusetts delegation recognize that strengthening the collective economic corridor requires connecting our constituents to economic opportunities in the east affordably and conveniently. Providing people with the ability to live here and work there is a fundamentally west-east conversation. Building rail in the west paves the way to connect the capital regions of Massachusetts and New York and will strengthen the opportunity for north-south connectivity in the Berkshires. The Berkshire Flyer is a good step to link the Berkshires to New York, but west-east is the only guarantee to get folks from the Berkshires to Boston accessibly and effectively. The Massachusetts Turnpike started in Western Massachusetts, and rail expansion should, too.

The very definition of a commonwealth emphasizes the shared responsibility that we share as neighbors to one another. What lies before us is an unprecedented moment of possibility, challenging us to be intentional in our decisions and bold in our vision. If were going to invest in rail, lets start in the west and work eastward. Lets build a transit authority that works for everyone in the Commonwealth and seeks to connect us all. Lets capitalize on this once-in-a-generation opportunity and do it the right way, west to east.
Hartford, Ct. - 03/03/2022 - Participants in an immigration rally demonstrate outside the Ribicoff Federal Building and U.S. Courthouse in Hartford. The rally was part of nearly 20 other actions taking place across the country as part of the #CommunitiesNotCages National Day of Action on March 3rd following Biden's State of the Union address. Photograph by Mark Mirko | mmirko@courant.com (Mark Mirko/The Hartford Courant)

Crowding the plaza of the Abraham A. Ribicoff Federal Building in Hartford on Thursday, members of Connecticuts immigrant rights community demanded the closure of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention centers and a renewed effort by the White House to deliver comprehensive immigration reform.

During his State of the Union Address Tuesday, President Joe Biden called for an overhaul of the immigration system, including by providing a pathway to citizenship for Dreamers  undocumented immigrants who entered the country as minors  as well as by securing the U.S.-Mexico border against drug smuggling and human trafficking. To many at the Hartford rally, it had been a disappointing and infuriating message.

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We hear his promises to reduce detention and deportation, we hear him promise to create a fair and humane immigration system. We hear him promise to value our immigrant communities, to value our people. And yet, we have seen him do exactly the opposite, Teresa Quintana, 47, of Manchester, a member of the organization Uniting for a Safe Inclusive Community, told the crowd of more than 50 people.

Participants in an immigration rally demonstrate March 3, 2022 outside the Ribicoff Federal Building and U.S. Courthouse in Hartford. The rally was part of nearly 20 other actions taking place across the country as part of the #CommunitiesNotCages National Day of Action on March 3rd following Biden's State of the Union address. Photograph by Mark Mirko | mmirko@courant.com (Mark Mirko/The Hartford Courant)

Quintana urged the White House to close detention centers  particularly Plymouth County Correctional Facility in Massachusetts, a prison that holds ICE detainees, including those from Connecticut  end deportations, liberate ICE detainees and defund ICE.

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We are demanding action instead of empty promises, she said, earning a roar from the crowd.

Participants in the rally  who represented a number of advocacy groups affiliated with the Connecticut Immigrant Rights Alliance  waved signs that read No fear no hate no ICE in our state, Protect kids not borders, and Asylum is a human right.

Javier Villatoro, 26, of New Haven, who came to the United States from Mexico, said that one of his relatives had been deported following a traffic accident and that many immigrants in America live in fear of deportation.

We do not need militarized police, he shouted through a bullhorn. We do not need more violence in our communities. We do not need more kidnappings in our communities. We do not need more mothers and fathers being taken from their children.

Leida Ramos, 36, of Hartford, who is affiliated with Make the Road CT, urged the U.S. Congress to provide equal services for undocumented residents and protect the nations immigrant communities.

Weve been waiting too long for undocumented families living in the United States to live without fear, she said in Spanish.

Hartford, Ct. - 03/03/2022 - Javier Villatoro, 26, of New Haven speaks at an immigration rally outside the Ribicoff Federal Building and U.S. Courthouse in Hartford. The rally was part of nearly 20 other actions taking place across the country as part of the #CommunitiesNotCages National Day of Action on March 3rd following Biden's State of the Union address. Photograph by Mark Mirko | mmirko@courant.com (Mark Mirko/The Hartford Courant)

Many who joined the rally said that they had been optimistic that Bidens election would usher in a new era of security and freedom for immigrant communities, particularly following the Trump administrations restrictive and repressive approach to immigration. But there has been little progress, they said.

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I dont see that theres much improvement, said Maureen Carpenter, 64, of Middletown, who attended the rally. I was hopeful, but our government is in a bit of a standoff, one side against other, and were not moving forward as much as we should be.

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Ben Haldeman, a lawyer with New Haven Legal Assistance, described poor conditions experienced by his clients at Plymouth County Correctional Facility and other detention centers, where detainees have reported physical and verbal abuse, inadequate medical care and insufficient access to legal resources.

A year into the Biden presidency, immigration detention is the same as it always was: racist, inhumane, unnecessary and fundamentally unfair to anyone fighting for the right to stay with their family and community, he said.

Hartford, Ct. - 03/03/2022 - Participants in an immigration rally demonstrate outside the Ribicoff Federal Building and U.S. Courthouse in Hartford. The rally was part of nearly 20 other actions taking place across the country as part of the #CommunitiesNotCages National Day of Action on March 3rd following Biden's State of the Union address. Photograph by Mark Mirko | mmirko@courant.com (Mark Mirko/The Hartford Courant)

At the close of the rally, participants spread artificial flowers across two cardboard coffins and held a moment of remembrance for those who have died in detention centers.

Then they broke the silence.

Up, up with liberation! they chanted. Down, down with deportation!

Eliza Fawcett can be reached at elfawcett@courant.com.
AHSAHKA  Dworshak Dam will be slowly increasing releases this month from 1,700 cubic feet per second to the approximate range of 6,000-10,000 cfs. Operations at Dworshak will change the height of the Clearwater River downstream of the dam by approximately 1.5 feet, gradually, across a two-week period.

Officials say the reservoir will steadily fill through the month of March. Water is currently being conserved for the release of juvenile salmon and steelhead in April, and will refill at the beginning of summer, all while still providing appropriate flood risk management, say officials.

The current operation will result in total dissolved gas remaining below 110%. Water being released water creates the dissolved nitrogen that can harm fish. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers says it will continue to work with regional water managers, other agencies, tribes, and fish managers and hatcheries in joint efforts to meet reservoir objectives and keep total dissolved gas below the Idaho State maximum threshold of 110%, when possible.

The rate of change in downstream river stage limit of one foot per hour, as measured at the United States Geological Survey Clearwater River Near Peck.
Property taxes are the lifeblood of local governments and municipalities across the United States, accounting for over 70% of all local tax revenue. Property taxes - such as taxes levied on homeowners and landowners - go to fund schools, parks, roads, and other public works and services.

While states typically impose a minimum property tax, property taxes are mostly determined at the local level - and are often a percentage of a property or home's overall value. Depending on where you choose to buy a home, property taxes can range from negligible amounts to nearly matching a mortgage payment.

Across Idaho, the effective annual property tax rate stands at 0.65%, the 16th lowest among states. For context, homeowners in the U.S. pay an average of 1.03% of their housing value in property taxes a year.

The effective property tax rate is calculated by taking the total amount of taxes paid on owner-occupied homes in a given area as a share of the total value of those homes. While an effective property tax rate is useful for comparing taxes at the state level, it is important to note that property tax rates can still vary considerably within a given state.

Because property taxes are typically levied as a share of a given home's value, Americans living in places with higher home values often pay more in property taxes in dollar terms, even if the effective property tax rate is relatively low. In Idaho, the typical home is worth $255,200, slightly higher than the national median home value of $240,500.

All data in this story is from the Tax Foundation, a tax policy research organization, and the U.S. Census Bureau's 2019 American Community Survey.
The ability to access loans will help enterprises increase production and provide advanced health solutions to address COVID-19

Axis Bank has committed to strengthening Indias healthcare infrastructure by signing an MoU with IPE Global for the SAMRIDH Healthcare Blended Finance Facility.



Under this partnership, Axis Bank will provide affordable finance of up to $150 million through SAMRIDH, to support health enterprises and innovators who would otherwise not have access to affordable debt financing. The ability to access loans will help them increase production and provide advanced health solutions to address COVID-19 along with other health emergencies, especially across the vulnerable communities of India from Tier II and III cities.



SAMRIDH, an initiative supported by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), leverages philanthropic capital and public sector resources, to offset barriers for commercial investments in small and medium health enterprises.



The partnership will enhance SAMRIDHs efforts to scale market solutions and innovations in the healthcare value chain, supplementing the manufacturing and distribution of pharmaceuticals, facility expansion of public and private hospitals, nursing homes, small clinics, laboratories and warehouses.



The healthcare segment has been a key focus area for Axis Bank and we have been supporting various entities impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Our partnership with SAMRIDH will enable the Bank to extend the much-needed debt support to more entities that are working to strengthen Indias healthcare infrastructure, to deal with the third wave of the pandemic and any other emerging healthcare challenges, said Subrat Mohanty, Group Executive  Axis Bank Business Group, Axis Bank.



Speaking on the collaboration, USAID/India Mission Director Veena Reddy said, "Private enterprise is a powerful force for lifting lives, strengthening communities, and accelerating sustainable development. Increasing access to affordable capital for small enterprises with solutions for greater reach will enable long-term impact. This new partnership between Axis Bank and SAMRIDH will further our joint efforts to provide innovative healthcare solutions to some of the most vulnerable people in India.
The Conversation Africa is an independent source of news and views from the academic and research community. Its aim is to promote better understanding of current affairs and complex issues, and allow for a better quality of public discourse and conversation.Go to: https://theconversation.com/africa
The National Assembly (NA) has passed the National Forests Amendment and the National Environmental Management Laws Amendment Bills. The bills were passed during a parliamentary plenary sitting on Tuesday, 1 March.

Source: Sergii Gnatiuk via 123RF

The National Forests Amendment Bill

The National Environmental Management Laws Amendment Bill

Source:The two pieces of legislation are among the bills, initially introduced during the fifth Parliament and revived in the sixth Parliament.The bills were approved by the National Council of Provinces (NCOP) on 14 December 2021 and referred to the NA's Portfolio Committee on Environment, Forestry and Fisheries for further processing, in terms of Section 76 (1(c)) of the Constitution.The National Forests Amendment Bill aims, among others, to amend the National Forests Act of 1998 to provide for precise definitions of forests and woodlands and the public ownership of these spaces to increase the promotion and enforcement of sustainable forest management, to control and remedy deforestation.The approved essential amendments include the new definitions of "destruction of the natural forest" and "woodlands". The "destruction of the natural forest" is now defined as any action where one or more trees in a natural forest are felled or caused to die, or the undergrowth removed, for land use or resource use.The new definition of woodlands now means a group of indigenous trees which are not a natural forest, but whose crowns cover at least 5% of the area they occupy, and which may, in a degraded state have a crown cover of less than 5%. Further, any vegetation type declared by the Minister to be a woodland by notice in the Gazette," Parliaments spokesperson Moloto Mothapo said.The National Environmental Management Laws Amendment Bill seeks to amend several provisions to clarify matters and textual amendments under various related Acts.These include the National Environmental Management Act of 1998, the National Environmental Management: Protected Areas Act of 2003, the National Environmental Management: Biodiversity Act of 2004 and the National Environmental Management: Air Quality Act of 2004.Mothapo said public consultation processes on the two bills were conducted extensively, and these included calls for written submissions and the facilitation of public hearings held by provincial legislatures.The two bills will now be sent to President Cyril Ramaphosa for assent.
Microsoft has announced new initiatives to accelerate the growth of 10,000 African startups and fast-track investment in Africa's startup ecosystem over the next five years. The company's recently launched global Founders Hub will now be available to African startups through the Africa Transformation Office (ATO). The Founders Hub is a self-service hub that provides startups with a wide range of resources, including access to mentors, skilling content, tools like Microsoft Azure and GitHub, and go-to-market and business support.

Africas startup market is booming

The Founders Hub

Partnerships with key startups

Microsoft is also creating new partnerships with accelerators and incubators across Africa, including Grindstone, Greenhouse, FlapMax and Seedstars to provide industry-based startups with access to markets, technical skills and funding opportunities.These partnerships will provide Africa startups with access to skilling programmes, access to markets, including opportunities to co-sell with Microsoft, and access to technology, with support from Microsofts engineering and product teams for co-innovation opportunities.To enable startups to rapidly scale using investment funding, Microsoft is establishing industry alliances and partnerships with venture capital investors that will facilitate access to $500m in potential funding for African startups.This funding will come from a network of venture capital investors, who will dedicate a portion of their financial support to startups in the Microsoft network.Microsoft has already established partnerships with several key venture capital investors, including Banque Misr, Global Venture Capital and Get Funded Africa, and the intention is to grow this network of venture capital investors in the next five years to increase funding and enable them to scale up and drive economic growth.Microsoft believes the vibrant African startup market is well placed to become a cornerstone of the continents digital economy, supporting local innovation through relevant solutions to societal challenges.Investments into Africas startup ecosystem are growing at an exciting pace. According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), there are more than 640 active tech hubs across Africa, accelerating innovation and creating employment, particularly among the youth, says Wael Elkabbany, managing director, Microsoft Africa Transformation Office.However, Elkabbany points out, currently the African startup market represents less than 1% of total investments worldwide. This needs to change.He reveals that Microsofts endeavour to dramatically scale its impact will be driven by an overarching strategy with three key focus areas.The Founders Hub includes opportunities for startups to sell to Microsofts corporate and enterprise customers. Microsoft will also support startups in geo-expansion activities, where startups can scale up by selling in new countries or regions.The Founders Hub allows Microsoft to engage with accelerators, incubators and tech hubs across the continent. Our partnerships with key African accelerators provide crucial support to accelerate growth-stage startups with their business development and market expansion plans, says Gerald Maithya, Startups Lead, Microsoft Africa Transformation Office.Microsoft will partner with B2B-focused startups, scaleups, soonicorns (businesses with the potential to become unicorns) and unicorns across a range of leading African industries, and those concentrated on working with SMEs.We understand that each startup is unique and exists beyond the limitations of a one-size-fits-all partnership model. This is why Microsoft will tailor each partnership to the needs of individual startups, providing support and access  whether to technology, markets and co-sell opportunities, funding or digital skills  to enable them to grow and contribute to the wider economic growth of Africa, says Maithya.
In September 2021, Nando's Pinecrest in KwaZulu-Natal unveiled a poignant art piece - a charcoal drawing by artist Nkoali Nawa that commemorates the African spirit in the face of adversity. The unrest in July 2021, which saw shops looted, buildings burnt, and people and communities affected by outbreaks of violence, was followed by recovery, rebuilding and restoration.

Image supplied

Nawa, who is part of the Nandos Art Initiative in partnership with Spier Arts Trust, was commissioned to create artwork using a charcoal medium for six Nandos restaurants that were affected by the unrest. The idea behind choosing charcoal artwork is to show that beauty can rise from ashes.The first artwork was placed at the Pinecrest restaurant after it reopened, and the remaining five pieces were unveiled last week and have found a home at the Berea Centre, Umlazi, Empangeni, Umgeni and Church Street restaurants. Each artwork carries a message of empathy and hope. It is a gentle reminder of what the has the country experienced and highlights the resilience of South Africans.Nandos relationship with Nawa is long-standing and in 2018, he was part of the Nandos Creative Exchange programme which saw him exhibit his work at AVA Gallery in Cape Town and at the Basha Uhuru Festival in Johannesburg. The Nandos Art Initiative was established to shine a spotlight on emerging artists and the brand remains one of the greatest contemporary art collectors with well over 21 000 pieces hanging in their stores around the world.In addition to the artworks reminding us of the difficulties faced, they also show the versatility and resilience we have as a country. In times like this we need to collectively look at the high rate of unemployment and poverty, and ask ourselves, what can we do to help, says Peet Opperman, KZN General Manager.Nandos GM Marketing: Brand Strategy and Communications, Justine Cullinan says Nkoali was commissioned to create the pieces specifically because of his unique ability to bring through the human spirit in his work. His comprehensive body of work is enlightening. The symbolism tells a story through its beautiful simplicity with charcoal and evokes a range of emotions. We hope these art pieces will be a reminder of what we can achieve through sheer determination.
Chris Botha, Park Advertising's group MD, and recently voted as the most admired media agency professional in the Scopen's latest Agency Scope South Africa 2021/22, shares his experience of the industry and looks forward to its future.

Chris Botha, Park Advertisings Group MD, and recently voted as the Most Admired Media Agency Professional in the Scopens latest Agency Scope South Africa 2021/22

What are the three things that you believe have had the biggest impact on the media industry since you joined in 1999?

Has this impacted on the skills needed by a media agency and if so, in what ways?

The changes that have taken place in the industry, have they left the industry better or worse off?

So where is the industry headed?

How have you been able to keep the agency fresh and ahead of the curve?

What has been your secret to success in the industry?

Whats the next step for you?

How do you view the transformation of the industry and the pace of transformation?

Well, its been an exciting 23 years, with not a dull moment in sight. The advent of digital media drastically changed the media industry, as it has changed the world. I would also say the influence of governance and procurement, in the relationship between marketing and media. Lastly our trading model has changed. The modern media trading model is more focused on packaged audiences  regardless of platform. This is very different from the way we bought 20 years ago.It has and it hasnt. The skills that the industry has long relied on are still required, and that is people who are strong left and right brain thinkers, who are creative but also understand maths and data.Broadly speaking this remains true, however we have moved towards employing more specialist people for specialist functions and generalists for generalist functions.Twenty years ago, I would say the industry was more generalist - basically you did everything - but now it is more hyper-specialist especially in the areas such as Out of Home (OOH), search, and programmatic.I believe that change is a good thing and that the market should always stay dynamic, so I see the change as good. We have moved from a few monolith agencies 20 years ago to seeing numerous smaller, nimble players in the market. I believe this is something that will continue into the future.It will become even more specialised with a hyper focus, for example on strategy and business analytics. There are already agencies specialising in areas such as example, social and programmatic, but I believe this will become even bigger. Eventually you will find a mix between specialist functions that work together.Anyone can look at a trend but its the implication of that trend and what you do with it that counts. Trends do not change quickly; they change slowly and remain static for longer than we think. But how theyre applied is always changing. When I look at trends, I dont see what the next big thing is, I examine how we could apply it to our business and our clients business.Take the metaverse as an example, and the trend to hold virtual meta meetings. What does this mean for our business and for my work today? The trend must add value to your business and be made as locally relevant as possible.I am not sure, but I have been persistent. I believe you must look after your agency profile and work with great people, and I have been able to do that. We have great staff and great clients as well as great media partners that all make us look good.The South African media industry still has so much to offer. There is so much talent in this industry and I want to see that grow onto the global stage. I am looking at how we can do this.I also see us returning to some sense of normality as we come back to the office. This is good for our industry. We are a people industry and I do not see a future where everyone works from home. Being fully virtual is dangerous for our industry; we need to be face-to-face. If not our agency brand and culture will disappear very quickly.As an agency we have been working with a hybrid model with some days in the office and some working remotely for a number of months already.I think it is happening very late but very fast. As an industry we were slack for many years, but now the change is rapid. Almost all agencies are run by black leaders. On the ground  we have 70% of our staff that are black. So, I think we are playing a very quick game of catch up.
Global best-practice, third party verification of Digital Out of Home (DOOH) has arrived in South Africa for the first time through a partnership between Outdoor Auditors, an independent auditor of Out-of-Home (OOH) media, and Seedooh.

Source: Danette Breitenbach

Established best-practice

Piloting the technology

Low impact and scalable

Launched by in 2017, as the worlds first independent verification technology platform for DOOH, this technology has been in operation at market scale in Australia and New Zealand, where third party verification is now considered a requirement for DOOH campaign delivery.The work we have done in Australia over the last five years to establish best-practice standards for verified campaign delivery, is a proof case for the global sector, says Tom Richter, Seedooh CEO and founder.Transparency and confidence ultimately benefits all participants as OOH matures to compete with other digitised media - whilst remaining the only truly broadcast channel.We believe that 100% accurate and verified campaign data should be available on demand to both buyers and sellers, via a low-impact, highly secure platform, he explains.Erik Warburg, marketing director at Outdoor Auditors agrees: Digital OOH is now receiving 20% of OOH investment spend in South Africa and is growing fast (25% YOY), as more sites are digitised and advertisers take advantage of the premium locations and flexibility that sophisticated networks offer.He adds that its important that advertisers know what they are getting in return for their DOOH investment - just as it is in every other media channel.Seedoohs technology creates complete transparency of what is being displayed in the real world, in granular detail, so Outdoor Auditors can provide advertisers with; real time, granular analysis and rapid remediation support if there are any variances from what has been booked, plus comprehensive post-campaign reporting, he explains.Outdoor Auditors has been piloting the Seedooh platform on Tractor Outdoors DOOH campaigns for a few months and the network visibility has been enlightening and well received.We were pleased to be involved in the pilot with Outdoor Auditors and to be South Africas first Seedooh verified network, says Simon Wall, CEO at Tractor Outdoor.Our customers naturally expect that they will get what they pay for and we are committed to demonstrating that they do - via third party verification that works seamlessly for all parties.On occasions where campaigns might be affected by a technical issue, human error or power outage, instant and verified confirmation of the facts is invaluable to make sure we can address this in a timely and efficient manner, he says.Wall also sees the long term value for the OOH industry. We agree that the future potential of OOH will be enhanced by greater accountability and confidence.Richter says the tech has been designed and proven to be low impact and scalable.While third party oversight of campaign delivery is a baseline requirement, it is of equal importance to the ongoing sectors growth, that any independent verification process adds value, rather than disruption, cost and confusion to the process of campaign delivery.
For nearly two years, Connecticut citizens have widely accepted the prevailing public health messaging on the importance of COVID-19 mitigation measures, specifically when these policies are targeted at protecting our most vulnerable: the elderly and our children. Moreover, we have largely acquiesced to prevention policies targeting these two groups because of public perception that they are, in fact, our societys two most treasured segments of the population. Many of these measures have been necessary.

Nonetheless, leaders and policymakers who have long promoted policies that are laser-focused on reducing transmission of COVID-19, should start considering an adjustment to these measures in anticipation of the virus entering its endemic stage. Specifically, future policy should transition to both transmission reduction that is also in tandem with efforts to tackle the mounting mental health imbalances affecting children and seniors.

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Children and the elderly have been forced to live with two years of shutdowns, mask mandates, school closures and institutional visitation restrictions. Much of the discourse on the adverse effects of these restrictions has focused on the social and emotional well-being of our children, and rightfully so.

In November, UConn Healths child and adolescent psychiatry practice noted that, in the context of pandemic realignment and children, there is a tremendous need for services at all levels. It is encouraging that some lawmakers have proposed prioritizing this trend at the next legislative session, with a focus on making Connecticuts mental health infrastructure more robust.

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Anticipating the specter of a mental health crisis is a good start, but to be proactive also means we must be honest with ourselves. While schools have reopened, many children find themselves in a constant state of stress and anxiety  not solely from the virus itself, but also from the rules designed to stop it. Nightly emails from school administrators informing parents of positive COVID-19 cases in the classroom have become the norm. Debates rage throughout local school districts about virtual versus in-person learning. Teachers unions posture. Guidance that trickles down from federal and state health agencies confuses stakeholders and changes frequently.

In formulating isolation and quarantine guidance following exposure, school districts impose different guidelines on vaccinated and unvaccinated children. Regardless of ones position on childhood vaccination, it is inevitable that this will cause peer pressure and self-consciousness, further exacerbating anxiety amongst students. What is referred to as Othering in academic circles is on full display.

As school environments realign to accommodate new guidance, we must ask ourselves if the very measures designed to prevent transmission are worth further degenerating the child mental health landscape. Instead of asking ourselves whether these rules are effectively mitigating the virus, we should be asking ourselves how these rules are affecting our children.

And finally, what about our seniors? Two years on, there has been no marked improvement to their social-emotional experience, despite doing everything theyve been asked to do. Theyve isolated from loved ones, been vaccinated, scheduled booster shots. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, nearly 30% of adults aged 50-65 reported symptoms of anxiety or depression, and over 1 in 10 seniors over 65 reports battling the same conditions. Even more alarming is that data suggests almost a third of those people have an unmet need for treatment or counseling of those conditions.

In elderly institutional and congregate housing settings, administrators and property managers have closed common areas, canceled enrichment activities and have discouraged group interaction. In large part, these are professionals who have their residents best interests at heart. But they have been following the guidance.

For many of our seniors, isolation and loneliness was a public health crisis even before COVID-19. For our seniors specifically, the past two years is time they will never get back. For us to rectify the damage COVID-19 has caused, its time to stop focusing on what seniors cant do and focus on what they can do to live normal, enriched and satisfying lives. If we dont reconsider our approach, Im afraid we will commit ourselves to trading one public health crisis for another, with the latter lasting much longer than the pandemic itself.

Jamie Kennedy is the president/CEO of Kings Daughters and Sons Housing and a director at Kingsway Group. Both are nonprofit providers of affordable subsidized housing for the elderly with locations in Norwalk and Bridgeport.
Like thousands of Connecticut residents, I was laid off at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and was never called back.

As far as I know, however, Im one of the only workers in the state  and maybe the country  to return to my job by proving to a judge that the pandemic wasnt the real reason I was left out of work.

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The others I know in the same boat are my three former co-workers: Milagros Vasquez, Pilar Mestanza and Rosa Franco. Together, we participated in a charge of unfair labor practices brought to the National Labor Relations Board by 32BJ SEIU  the union were trying to bring to our job  against Michell Enterprises, the company headed by our boss, George Michell.

Michell Enterprises owns and operates several McDonalds locations in Connecticut, including the one where we worked, at the service plaza on I-95 northbound, just outside of Darien. For a good part of my 26 years at the restaurant, I led the nightshift crew, proudly running an efficient shift at one of the busiest plazas on one of the nations busiest highways. Still, I could only do so much to protect my co-workers from mistreatment, or for that matter, to protect myself.

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Many of my co-workers worked for years without raises or respect. Despite being a single mom, Rosa Franco (no relation to me) had to work almost every Christmas for 13 years, and even missed time with her special-needs daughter on the day she had an operation.

Opinion Weekly Perspective on the week's biggest stories from the Courant's Opinion page >

My own worst experience came a little over five years ago. At the time, my wife also worked at the McDonalds. One hot summer day, she passed out in a back room at the store, striking her head. A few days later, she died in a hospital bed. Michells McDonalds paid for her headstone, nothing more.

In 2019, my crew and I finally found a way to speak out when we met organizers with 32BJ who had learned that many of us were not only being mistreated, we were also suffering wage violations.

For years, the wages many of us earned were below the rate in the states standard wage law, which sets a minimum rate, with benefits, for service workers employed by state subcontractors. (Every McDonalds, Dunkin, Subway and other outlet at a Connecticut interstate service plaza is a state subcontractor). We began to raise our voices together with the union, which led to Department of Labor investigations. After many months, George Michell settled with the DOL for almost $900,000 in back pay, plus raises. Investigations are still happening at other companies, which means many more settlements or fines could be coming.

Michells McDonalds, it seems, wanted to make us pay a price for our victory. My three co-workers and I lost our jobs when the plaza shut down in March 2020, but we were never recalled, even as the McDonalds hired new workers. Losing our jobs pushed our families to the brink. For months, we struggled as the pandemic raged, hitting immigrant communities especially hard. 32BJ filed an unfair labor practice charge with the National Labor Relations Board, which eventually led to a trial spanning three weeks last January. On Dec. 30, we were overjoyed to learn that the NLRB judge ruled in our favor, concluding that Michells McDonalds had schemed to use the pandemic layoffs as an excuse to terminate the discriminatees.

On Feb. 28, almost two years after losing our livelihoods, Milagros, Pilar, Rosa and I returned to our jobs  where we plan to fight harder than ever for a union for over 800 fast-food workers at the 23 service plazas across Connecticut.

A union at the plazas would raise the bar for all low-wage service workers in the state, a field dominated by immigrants and people of color struggling to survive in a pandemic that has weaponized inequality and discrimination. We ask the Lamont administration and its agencies to do everything they can to end worker abuses by state contractors operating on state property. We also ask for your support. Sign our petition, share our story, and remember our years of hard work the next time you stop on a highway for a few minutes rest.

Mario Franco lives in Stamford, CT
The legislatures Black and Puerto Rican Caucus is pressing for passage of a series of bills that seek to address the social, economic and political impact of racial inequality in Connecticut.

During the George Floyd summer of unrest, so many people said some beautiful words, said Sen. Douglas McCrory, a Democrat from Hartford and a member of the caucus. They said they understood institutional racism. They said they understood structural concerns ... well, now is the time. Its time to execute.

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At a press conference at the state Capitol Tuesday, the 35-member caucus unveiled its legislative agenda. The proposals range from bills to address educational inequity and environmental justice to measures that promote economic development, expand childrens access to mental health services and address a lack of diversity among judicial nominees.

The caucus supports revisiting the police accountability bill, which was passed by the Connecticut legislature in 2020, shortly after the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer sparked a national discussion about policing.

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We have to tighten that up, said caucus vice chairman Rep. Bobby Gibson, D-Bloomfield. I have many friends who are police officers who are doing a great job, who are protecting and serving, but its for those bad actors out there who are making their jobs even worse.

Rep. Geraldo Reyes of Waterbury, the chairman of the caucus, declined to detail exactly what changes to the accountability bill the group supports, saying the measure is still being worked on.

The caucus is also backing legislation banning the use of solitary confinement in Connecticuts prisons. A similar bill passed the General Assembly last year but was vetoed by Gov. Ned Lamont.

Below are some of the other proposals endorsed by the caucus Tuesday:

Housing

Rep. Quentin Williams highlighted several bills that aim to address the housing crisis. House Bill 5234 would limit the fees a landlord could charge in connection with tenant screenings, permit tenants to conduct a walk-through inspection before renting a home or apartment and require landlords to provide tenants with voter registration forms before they sign the lease.

The bill would also allow tenants to provide damage insurance in lieu of a security deposit.

We have landlords that ask for two to three months rent, said Williams, D-Middletown. Where does that money come from when our minimum wage is not a living wage? We want folks to save $2000, $3,000, $4,000 just to get into a home. We need common sense alternatives.

Voting

The caucus also backs several measures it says would improve access to the ballot. Senate Bill 184 would keep in place several Covid-19-related changes, such as making it easier for voters to obtain an absentee ballot, through the Nov. 8 election. The proposal will be the subject of a public hearing before the legislatures government administration and elections committee on Friday.

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Hilda Santiago, a Democrat from Meriden, said the caucus is also advocating for a constitutional amendment to allow for early voting in Connecticut. The question will come before voters on the November ballot.

People need to know that Connecticut is one of just five states in the country with no form of early voting, said Sen. Matt Lesser, D-Middletown. We talk about voting rights like this is a thing that is only an issue in Alabama or Texas or Georgia but the fact of the matter is we have more work to do in Connecticut.

Labor

The caucus is pressing for passage of several bills pending In the legislatures labor committee, including a proposal requiring employers to post a weekly schedule no less than 14 days in advance of the first day of the scheduled work week.

A committee is also considering legislation would remove a blanket prohibition that bars formerly incarcerated people from obtaining professional licenses in fields ranging from funeral embalmer to barber.

We know that this pandemic has had a devastating impact on everyone but  in particular [and] most harshly communities of color, said Rep. Robyn Porter, co-chair of the labor committee and a Democrat from New Haven. Black and brown communities, white poor rural communities, are suffering and people are looking to get back to work. They need to get back to work.
Top legislative leaders have pledged to make permanent a temporary income tax cut for Connecticuts working poor, a move that would provide roughly an extra $300 annually to more than 185,000 households.

Senate President Pro Tem Martin M. Looney of New Haven, House Speaker Matt Ritter of Hartford and other leaders of the Democratic majority also pledged this will be the beginning of a larger tax fairness reform effort that could take years to implement.

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In this file photo, backed by Senate President Pro Tempore Martin M. Looney, Lt. Governor Susan Bysiewicz and Speaker of the House Joe Aresimowicz, Ned Lamont receives a standing ovation in 2019 after advocating for paid family medical leave during his address to a joint session of the legislature. Photograph by Mark Mirko | mmirko@courant.com (Mark Mirko/Hartford Courant)

But the fate of this tax relief remains uncertain. Thats because Gov. Ned Lamont, a fiscally moderate-to-conservative Democrat, has said hes uncertain Connecticut will be able to afford that tax relief in 2024, when emergency federal pandemic relief has expired.

Poverty is very concentrated in this state, Ritter said, pointing to a map showing that most working poor families are located in the states cities and in northeastern Connecticut. This [proposal] will help a lot of poor, hard-working people. Its a path that we can get an agreement on.

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Democratic legislative leaders specifically want to increase the value of the Earned Income Tax Credit, a program within the state income tax system that assists very low-income working households.

In Connecticut, this tax break has fluctuated over the years. And with a new tax fairness study this week showing Connecticuts state and municipal tax systems hammer the poor and lower-middle-class hardest, Ritter said boosting the EITC to unprecedented levels is an essential first response.

Launched in 2011, the state credit was initially set at 30% of the federal EITC. It very quickly was dropped to 27.5% and legislatures continued to whittle it down in tough fiscal times.

At the start of last year the credit stood at 23% of the federal EITC. The state paid an estimated $101 million to more than 191,000 filers, which amounts to an average benefit of $525.

The legislature bumped the state EITC last June to 30% of the federal credit, pushing the average benefit to $700.

To help poor residents harmed by the pandemic, Lamont used emergency federal pandemic relief this winter to retroactively boost the EITC level to 41.5% of the federal credit for 2020 and for 2021. That gave eligible households an extra $300 for each year.

But Democratic legislators say one or two years of extra funds isnt sufficient, given the minimal earnings necessary to qualify for the credit.

To qualify for the EITC in 2021, a taxpayer had to earn $57,414 or less. And while the credit often is touted as a program to help poor working people save money, Looney noted that in most cases recipients have to spend their entire benefit to cover outstanding utility, grocery or medical bills.

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It is the kind of targeted relief that immediately comes back into the economy, he said. People that are receiving the EITC are people that are living on very, very tight margins.

But while Ritter and Looney expressed confidence that the credit expansion would be made permanent, Lamont wasnt so sure.

I cant have more permanent tax cuts that discombobulate the budget, the governor said Wednesday. Well see where we are in terms of the budget next year.

State government received roughly $3 billion in federal pandemic relief via the American Rescue Plan Act, or ARPA, last year. Those funds, which are buoying state finances, expire in 2024.

Lamont is cautious about cutting state taxes too deeply now, given challenges Connecticut faces once this money expires.

Administration officials also note that federal treasury guidelines limit how much states that accept ARPA dollars can cut taxes, since that federal aid is supposed to bolster education, health care, economic development and other programs impacted by the pandemic.

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Lamonts budget office estimates state tax cuts next year cant total more than $200 million in value because of the treasury restrictions.

The EITC expansion legislators proposed would cost an estimated $42 million, Looney and Ritter said. But thats not the only tax cut on the table at the state Capitol.

Lamont wants to cut income taxes chiefly for the middle class by expanding another credit, which offsets up to $200 of a households municipal property tax expenses. The governors proposal would cost $123 million per year.

House Republicans have an even more aggressive property tax credit expansion on the table. And the Senate GOP wants to lower the sales tax rate for 2022 from 6.35% to 5.99% and eliminate the 1% surcharge on restaurant meals.

Further complicating matters, House and Senate Democrats want to provide tax relief to more than just the working poor.

Many lawmakers in both caucuses also endorse the idea of boosting the property tax credit.

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Many others also support a proposal from Rep. Sean Scanlon, D-Guilford, co-chairman of the Finance Committee, to create a $600-per-child credit for low- and middle-income households within the state income tax. This credit, once fully implemented, could cost up to $300 million per year.

Scanlon said that proposal might have to be phased in over the course of several years to avoid clashing with federal ARPA restrictions, but the issue of tax fairness at the Capitol isnt going away.

The Guilford lawmaker called the proposed EITC expansion a down payment toward a fairer tax system for low- and middle-income households.

Representative Toni Walker of New Haven speaks during a Special Session at the State Capitol. (Lauren Schneiderman / Hartford Courant)

Rep. Toni E. Walker, D-New Haven, co-chairwoman of the Appropriations Committee and another supporter of a child tax credit, called the proposed EITC boost a beginning.

We in Connecticut need to do better, Walker said, noting that the tax fairness study released by the Department of Revenue Services this week showed nearly half the states population lives in households earning less than $45,000. It also found those families effectively lose 26% of their annual income to state and local taxes.

The legislatures 35-member Black and Puerto Rican Caucus also endorsed the EITC expansion on Wednesday.

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Ritter and Looney said they hope to craft a bipartisan plan to cut taxes.

If they want to do that, said Senate Minority Leader Kevin Kelly, R-Stratford, they should focus more on his caucus proposal to cut the sales tax.

The middle and low income families of this state are suffering, he said, adding that Senate Republicans have the only plan that provides broad-based relief that can be delivered immediately. Rather than wait for a larger state income tax refund in the spring of 2023, families could benefit right now if lawmakers reduced the sales tax.

They need money in their pockets  today, he added.

Keith M. Phaneuf is a reporter for The Connecticut Mirror (https://ctmirror.org/ ). Copyright 2022  The Connecticut Mirror.
Russian invasion forces seized Europe's biggest nuclear power plant on Friday in what Washington called a reckless assault that risked catastrophe, although a blaze in a training building was extinguished and officials said the facility was now safe.

Combat raged elsewhere in Ukraine as Russian forces surrounded and bombarded several cities in the second week of the assault launched by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

A presidential adviser said an advance had been halted on the southern city of Mykolayiv after local authorities said Russian troops had entered it. If captured, the city of 500,000 people would be the biggest yet to fall.

The capital Kyiv, in the path of a Russian armoured column that has been stalled on a road for days, came under renewed attack, with air raid sirens blaring in the morning and explosions audible from the city centre.

The U.S. Embassy in Ukraine called the Russian assault on the Zaporizhzhia plant a "war crime". Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby said it showed how reckless the Russian invasion has been.

"It just raises the level of potential catastrophe to a level that nobody wants to see," he told CNN.

Video verified by Reuters showed one building aflame and a volley of incoming shells before a large incandescent ball lit up the sky, exploding beside a car park and sending smoke billowing across the compound.

Thousands of people are believed to have been killed or wounded and more than 1 million refugees have fled Ukraine since Feb. 24, when Putin ordered the biggest attack on a European state since World War Two.
The mysterious Forward Observation Group (FOG) has come under scrutiny after Russian media sources identified the group as foreign U.S. mercenaries arming and training Ukrainian front line fighters.

Retired servicemen of the US Army (Forward Observations Group) stopped by the units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the Donbass. Apparently as instructors.#Ukraine #USArmy #Multicam #FOG pic.twitter.com/XqjmyDAgKK  julio / Caronte (@jmscaronte) January 22, 2022

The group, which previously came under fire after close association with the ultra-nationalist Ukrainian Neo-Nazi group, The Azov Battalion, has once again found themselves in the spotlight.

In a VICE news piece, the man running the operation, who identified himself as Derrick Bales, explains that he was simply in Ukraine filming for his Military Lifestyle Brand, and that he is not training Ukrainian solders.

While speaking with VICE, Bales continued to downplay the Neo-Nazi aspects of the Azov Battalion, saying the soldiers arent overtly Nazi by any means.

Although FOG does sell merchandise on their website, many accounts across social media have reported the group to be engaging within Ukraine, claiming them to be volunteer.

FOG is said to have participated in numerous conflicts overseas, although, information is difficult to corroborate due to the nature of their group, as it is considered by many to be a private militia.

Je re publie cette video qui nest pas des forces speciales americaines mais dune SMP americaine, Forward Observation Group.



Desole pour lerreur pic.twitter.com/GyOYxFEDoC  Casus Belli (@CasusBellii) April 7, 2021

The Azov Battalion has a long history of associating with neo-nazi organizations, something which American and NATO allies have been accused of ignoring, as international groups continue to aid in their training/funding of the group.

Read below more about the Ukrainian Azov Battalion and the brutal tactics of the neo-nazi group.
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky claimed in an "emotional" speech on Thursday night that Russia intentionally launched an attack on the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in the city of Energodar with tanks and warned that the entirety of Europe could be destroyed as a result.



"Right now, Russian tanks are firing upon nuclear units," Zelensky said. "These are tanks equipped with thermal imagers. That is, they know where they are shooting, they have been preparing for this!"



He continued: "I appeal to all Ukrainians, to all Europeans. To all people who know the word 'Chernobyl.' Who know how many grief and casualties the explosion at the nuclear power plant caused. It was a global catastrophe. Hundreds of thousands of people struggled with its consequences. Tens of thousands of people were evacuated. Russia wants to do it again. And already repeats. But six times more!"



"Europeans! Wake up, please! Speak to your politicians! Russian troops are firing upon the nuclear power plant in Ukraine. Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, the city of Energodar. There are six power units. Six! One power unit exploded in Chernobyl," Zelensky said.



"The Russian military must be stopped immediately! Shout to your politicians. Ukraine has 15 nuclear units. If there is an explosion, it is the end of everything. The end of Europe. This is the evacuation of Europe. Only immediate European action can stop Russian troops. Do not allow the death of Europe from the catastrophe at the nuclear power plant!"







Zelensky regime officials claimed they detected "elevated levels of radiation" and urged NATO to immediately institute a no-fly zone over Ukraine (which would immediately mean World War III).





A government official tells The Associated Press elevated levels of radiation are being detected near the site of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, which provides about 25% of the countrys power generation.  Meg Kinnard (@MegKinnardAP) March 4, 2022

Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal called on the West to close the skies over the countrys nuclear plants as fighting intensified. It is a question of the security of the whole world! he said.  Meg Kinnard (@MegKinnardAP) March 4, 2022



Everything they said was a lie. The International Atomic Energy Agency and the White House both fact-checked Zelensky's claims on Thursday night and reported there was no radiation leak.



"Ukraine regulator tells IAEA there has been no change reported in radiation levels at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant site," the IAEA said.





#Ukraine regulator tells IAEA there has been no change reported in #radiation levels at the #Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant site.  IAEA - International Atomic Energy Agency (@iaeaorg) March 4, 2022



"Two White House officials say their latest information shows no indications of elevated levels of radiation at the Zaporizhzhia complex," CNN's Kaitlan Collins reported.





Two White House officials say their latest information shows no indications of elevated levels of radiation at the Zaporizhzhia complex. The White House is continuing to monitor it closely following President Bidens call with Zelensky.  Kaitlan Collins (@kaitlancollins) March 4, 2022



"Background radiation levels remain unchanged at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine where a fire has broken out following an attack by Russian military, the RIA news agency cited a plant spokesman as saying," Reuters reported Thursday night. "Separately, RIA quoted Ukraine's emergency service as saying that the fire was outside the station perimeter and one of the blocks at the station had been switched off. "



Clint Ehrlich highlighted video suggesting a Ukrainian soldier actually shot "what appears to be an RPG" from inside the plant.



"Russian forces claim these RPG attacks are what forced them to return fire," Ehrlich said.





This is video of what appears to be an RPG being fired from inside the #Zaporizhzhya plant.



Russian forces claim these RPG attacks are what forced them to return fire.



Their explanation seems plausible from the video. https://t.co/UqyxXu9Lj3  Clint Ehrlich (@ClintEhrlich) March 4, 2022



Ehrlich noted that if Russia wanted to blow the plant up they could have easy done so.





Russian and Ukrainian forces reached a local ceasefire to guard #Chernobyl together.



The Russians were ready to do the same thing at #Zaporizhzhya.



But they were fired on with RPGs -- which set off this whole incident.  Clint Ehrlich (@ClintEhrlich) March 4, 2022

Russian forces in Ukraine are actively working to maintain services like water & electricity in the areas they occupy.



That doesn't make their invasion ethical.



But it puts the lie to claims they tried to sabotage a nuclear reactor.  Clint Ehrlich (@ClintEhrlich) March 4, 2022

If Russia wanted to destroy #Zaporizhzhia, they would have bombed it from the air.



They sent infantry there to protect it -- just like they did at #Chernobyl.



Anyone claiming there was a Russian op to sabotage the reactor is gaslighting you.  Clint Ehrlich (@ClintEhrlich) March 4, 2022



Zelensky put out the exact same lie to con NATO into the war a week ago.





Reminder: #Zaporizhzhya is the *second* nuclear PsyOp of this war.



Zelensky also pretended the Russians were trying to meltdown #Chernobyl. https://t.co/mIrHJ7o44S  Clint Ehrlich (@ClintEhrlich) March 4, 2022



Zelensky is a serial liar and a con man who is doing everything in his power to drag this war on and get as many Ukrainian civilians killed for propaganda purposes to try to justify Western intervention.



Zelensky lied about the first nuclear plant incident, he lied about the second nuclear plant incident, he lied about Snake Island and he lied about Russia attacking a Holocaust memorial.



He's trying to con NATO into a war induced by his own aggressive threat to acquire nuclear weapons and his own aggressive moves to join NATO.



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Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on Thursday sanctioned a host of Russian-backed news outlets for allegedly "advancing false narratives" and spreading "false information" to "undermine COVID-19 vaccines" and paint "Ukrainian government officials as the aggressor in the Russia-Ukraine relationship."



Yellen's sanctions hit the Strategic Culture Foundation, Odna Rodyna, Rhythm of Eurasia, Journal Kamerton, InfoRos, SouthFront, United World International, New Eastern Outlook, Oriental Review and Geopolitica.



Yellen provided no evidence or specific examples of any "false information" the various websites allegedly spread to "undermine COVID-19 vaccines" in her press release announcing the sanctions.



The sanctions freeze the websites' assets and ban Americans from donating to them.



Anonymous "US intelligence officials" last month accused ZeroHedge of "amplifying Kremlin propaganda" for sharing content from the Strategic Culture Foundation and there was language in Yellen's press release which appeared to allude to ZeroHedge being in her sights as well.



From the US Department of the Treasury:

FURTHER ACTION AGAINST RUSSIAN INTELLIGENCE-DIRECTED DISINFORMATION OUTLETS



On April 15, 2021, OFAC designated Strategic Culture Foundation, InfoRos, NewsFront, and SouthFront for propagating Russian intelligence services-directed content. Since designation, these online media sites have attempted to evade sanctions and continue advancing false narratives against a variety of topics, including the COVID-19 pandemic. Russias disinformation and propaganda machine is a network of official and unofficial communication channels and platforms that Russia uses to create and amplify false narratives. Russia invests massively in these propaganda outlets to support their disinformation efforts, and it leverages outlets that pose as news sites to spread these false and misleading narratives. These media outlets repeatedly republish content from each other in an attempt to legitimize and popularize the disinformation narratives they propagate. The propaganda they collectively generate then is available to be cited by slightly larger, slightly more credible outlets, which filters their Russian intelligence-directed propaganda to a larger readership. This approach also allows Russia to be opportunistic, such as with COVID-19, where it has used the global pandemic as a hook to push longstanding disinformation and propaganda narratives.

That sounds like a dig at ZeroHedge, does it not?







Note, the Treasury has a link at the top of their page urging everyone to go "visit Vaccines.gov" and get vaxxed.



Russia sought to downplay Western concerns about a (then) potential further Russian invasion of Ukraine. Russian intelligence entities target Ukrainian and Russian citizens with disinformation attempting to label Ukraine and Ukrainian government officials as the aggressor in the Russia-Ukraine relationship. Russias disinformation playbook employs specifically placed propaganda at the behest of Russian intelligence services to manipulate and weaken perceived adversaries.



SVR-DIRECTED STRATEGIC CULTURE FOUNDATION (SCF)



SCF is an online journal registered in Russia that is controlled by the SVRs Directorate of Active Measures and is closely affiliated with the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. SCF was designated pursuant to E.O. 13848 on April 15, 2021, for having engaged in foreign interference in the 2020 U.S. presidential election.



Since then, SCF has continued to make attempts to reach an audience, despite being banned on many social media and payment platforms following U.S. sanctions. SCF has created additional media outlets to promote its narratives, including Odna Rodyna and Rhythm of Eurasia. In 2021, SCF used Odna Rodyna to reach Ukrainian audiences. In 2021, SCF posted content alleging that the United States was supporting Ukraine in order to debilitate Russia. The SVR and SCF work to promote another affiliated media outlet, Journal Kamerton, which hosts a litany of articles denigrating Ukraine. Svetlana Georgiyevna Zamlelova (Zamlelova) is the Chief Editor of Journal Kamerton. One of the SCFs main tactics is to publish Western fringe thinkers and conspiracy theorists, giving them wider reach, while trying to obscure the Russian origins of the journal. This tactic helps the site appear to be an organic voice within its target audience of Westerners. SCF affiliates Odna Rodyna, Rhythm of Eurasia, and Journal Kamerton are being designated pursuant to E.O. 13848 for being owned or controlled by, or for having acted or purported to act for or on behalf of, directly or indirectly, SCF. Zamlelova is being designated pursuant to E.O. 13848 for having materially assisted, sponsored, or provided financial, material, or technological support for, or goods or services to or in support of, Journal Kamerton.



ADDITIONAL SVR-DIRECTED DISINFORMATION NETWORKS



Russias SVR directs two additional disinformation outlets, New Eastern Outlook and Oriental Review. Both media outlets spread many types of disinformation about international organizations, military conflicts, protests, and any divisive issues that they can exploit. Recently, both outlets spread false information to undermine COVID-19 vaccines. New Eastern Outlook is a pseudo-academic publication of the Russian Academy of Sciences Institute of Oriental Studies that promotes disinformation and propaganda focused primarily on the Middle East, Asia, and Africa. It combines pro-Kremlin views of Russian academics with anti-U.S. views of Western fringe voices and conspiracy theorists. In 2022, Oriental Review shared content that denigrated the United States' handling of the ongoing crisis in Ukraine. New Eastern Outlook and Oriental Review are being designated pursuant to E.O. 14024 for being owned or controlled by, or for having acted or purported to act for or on behalf, directly or indirectly, the GoR.



Today, OFAC is targeting seven SCF employees that have helped perpetuate their false narratives. Vladimir Ilich Maksimenko (Maksimenko) and Andrey Grigoryevich Areshev (Areshev), served as Directors for SCF. Irina Sergeyevna Bubnova (Bubnova) and Anton Sergeyevich Bespalov (Bespalov), worked in editing and social media operations. Sergei Ivanovich Saenko (Saenko) monitored SCFs social media operations. Natalya Petrovna Skorokhodova (Skorokhodova) worked to recruit and pay U.S. contributors to SCF. Yuriy Anatolyevich Prokofyev (Prokofyev) served as SCFs president. Maksimenko, Areshev, Skorokhodova, Bubnova, Bespalov, Prokofyev, and Saenko are being designated pursuant to E.O. 13848 for having materially assisted, sponsored or provided financial, material or technological support for, or goods or services to or in support of, SCF, a person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to E.O. 13848.



GRU-DIRECTED INFOROS



InfoRos is a news agency that is primarily run by the GRUs 72nd Main Intelligence Information Center (GRITs). GRITs is a unit within Russias Information Operations Troops, which is identified as Russias military force for conducting cyber espionage, influence, and offensive cyber operations. InfoRos operates under two organizations, InfoRos, OOO and IA InfoRos. InfoRos has used a network of websites, including nominally independent websites, to spread false conspiracy narratives and disinformation promoted by GRU officials, to include spreading disinformation about the COVID-19 pandemic. On April 15, 2021, InfoRos, OOO and IA InfoRos were designated pursuant to section 224(a)(1)(B) of the Countering Americas Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA) , E.O. 13694 as amended, and E.O. 13382, for acting or purporting to act for or on behalf of the GRU, a person designated under section 224(a)(1)(A) of CAATSA, and pursuant to E.O. 13694, as amended, and E.O. 13382.



Around 2012, InfoRos reportedly began branching out throughout Russia registering over 1,000 online sites, effectively creating a network of networks that secretly distributes the Russian governments preferred account of events. In early December 2021, a Ukraine-based InfoRos contributor submitted an editorial for publication on the InfoRos website, intended for Russian readership, blaming Ukraine for provoking Russia.



Today, OFAC is targeting nine InfoRos employees. OFAC is designating InfoRos General Directors Andrey Vitalyevich Ilyashenko and Anastasiya Sergeyevna Kirillova, InfoRos Executive Editor Maksim Borisovich Krasovskiy, InfoRos Director Nina Viktoronova Dorokhova, InfoRos web master Yevgeniya Vitalyevna Nezhdanova, InfoRos editors Aleksandra Aleksandrovna Kamyshanova, and Denis Sergeyevich Tatarchenko, InfoRos Project Director Maksim Iosifovich Krans, and InfoRos employee Valeriy Ivanovich Pogrebenkov, for acting or purporting to act for or on behalf of, directly or indirectly, InfoRos, OOO, pursuant to section 224(a)(l)(B) of CAATSA, E.O. 13694, as amended, and E.O. 13382.



FSB-DIRECTED NEWSFRONT



NewsFront is a Crimea-based disinformation and propaganda outlet that worked with FSB officers to coordinate a narrative that undermined the credibility of a news website advocating for human rights. NewsFront was also used to distribute false information about the COVID-19 vaccine. With the self-proclaimed goal of providing an alternative source of information for Western audiences, Newsfront is particularly focused on supporting Russia-backed forces in Ukraine. Newsfront was designated pursuant to section 224(a)(l)(B) of CAATSA, E.O. 13694, as amended, and E.O. 13382 on April 15, 2021, for being owned or controlled by, or for having acted or purported to act for or on behalf of, directly or indirectly, the FSB.



Today, OFAC is targeting four NewsFront Employees. Konstantin Sergeyevich Knyrik (Knyrik), the director and founder of NewsFront, has written and published articles at the behest of FSB officers and obtained funding for NewsFront from its financial sponsor, Yuriy Sergeyevich Fedin (Fedin). NewsFront cofounder Mikhail Anatolyevich Sinelin (Sinelin) and NewsFront deputy director Yevgeniy Eduardovich Glotov (Glotov) have supported NewsFronts attempts to establish alternate mediums in order to evade sanctions. Glotov has also written an article falsely alleging U.S. interference in Ukrainian mass media.



Knyrik is being designated pursuant to section 224(a)(l)(B) of CAATSA, E.O. 13694, as amended, and E.O. 13382, for acting on or purporting to act for or behalf of, directly or indirectly, the FSB and NewsFront. Sinelin, Glotov, and Fedin are being designated pursuant to E.O. 13694, as amended, and E.O. 13382, for having materially assisted, sponsored or provided financial, material or technological support for, or goods or services to or in support of, NewsFront.



FSB-DIRECTED SOUTHFRONT



SouthFront is a disinformation site that receives taskings from the FSB. Following the 2020 U.S. presidential election, SouthFront sought to promote perceptions of voter fraud during the 2020 U.S. presidential election cycle, and was designated pursuant to E.O. 13848, E.O. 13694, as amended, and E.O. 13382 on April 15, 2021, for having engaged in foreign interference in the 2020 U.S. presidential election and being owned or controlled by, or for having acted or purported to act for or on behalf of, directly or indirectly, the FSB.



Since its designation, SouthFront has struggled to generate revenue and attract contributors. Attempting to evade sanctions to keep its platform alive, SouthFront solicited donations and attempted to conceal its identity from payment processors. SouthFront and its employees remain focused on attempting to influence U.S. elections through the spread of false information. Although it previously focused on the 2020 U.S. presidential election. SouthFront has also spread information suggesting that Ukraine or NATO could use chemical weapons within the country with hopes to blame it on Russia.



Today, OFAC is targeting four SouthFront employees. Denis Yakovlevich Gafner (Gafner) is involved in running the website and soliciting funds from readers. Aelita Leonidovna Mamakova (Mamakova) is responsible for soliciting financial donations from readers to SouthFront and publishing material. Aleyona Anatolyevna Chuguleva (Chuguleva) is a SouthFront employee. Valeriya Kalabayeva (Kalabayeva) produced content for SouthFront. Gafner, Mamakova, Chuguleva, and Kalabayeva are being designated pursuant to E.O. 13382, E.O. 13694, as amended, E.O. 13848 for having materially assisted, sponsored or provided financial, material or technological support for, or goods or services to or in support of, SouthFront.



ADDITIONAL DISINFORMATION SITES



In 2020, media influence organization Project Lakhta, owned by Prigozhin, developed a new website, United World International (UWI). Since at least 2014, Project Lakhta has used among other things, fictitious online personas that posed as U.S. persons to interfere in U.S. elections, as the IRA did during the 2016 U.S. election. In 2022, UWI suggested that Ukraine would perish if it is admitted to NATO. UWIs chief editor, Darya Aleksandrovna Dugina (Dugina), sought contributors to write articles on UWI. Duginas father, Alexander Dugin (Dugin), was first designated in 2015 pursuant to E.O. 13660 for being responsible for or complicit in actions or policies that threaten the peace, security, stability, or sovereignty or territorial integrity of Ukraine. Dugin was a leader of the Eurasian Youth Union, which actively recruited individuals with military and combat experience to fight on behalf of the self-proclaimed Donetsk Peoples Republic and has stated that it has a covert presence in Ukraine.



Dugin controls Geopolitica, a website that serves as a platform for Russian ultra-nationalists to spread disinformation and propaganda targeting Western and other audiences. For example, on February 8, 2022, Geopolitica published an article falsely accusing the U.S. and NATO of provoking war with Russia, in order to further terrorize the American people in all sorts of malicious ways.



UWI is being designated pursuant to E.O. 13661, E.O. 13694, as amended, and E.O. 13848 for being owned or controlled by, or for having acted or purported to act for or on behalf of, directly or indirectly, Prigozhin. Dugina is being designated pursuant to E.O. 13661, E.O. 13694, as amended, and E.O. 13848, for acting or purporting to act for or on behalf of, directly or indirectly, UWI. Geopolitica is being designated pursuant to E.O. 13660 for being owned or controlled by, or for having acted or purported to act for or on behalf of, directly or indirectly, Dugin.



SANCTIONS IMPLICATIONS



As a result of todays action, all property and interests in property of the individuals and entities above that are in the United States or in the possession or control of U.S. persons are blocked and must be reported to OFAC. In addition, any entities that are owned, directly or indirectly, 50 percent or more by one or more blocked persons are also blocked. All transactions by U.S. persons or within (or transiting) the United States that involve any property or interests in property of designated or otherwise blocked persons are prohibited unless authorized by a general or specific license issued by OFAC, or exempt. These prohibitions include the making of any contribution or provision of funds, goods, or services by, to, or for the benefit of any blocked person and the receipt of any contribution or provision of funds, goods, or services from any such person.

This is all just a lawless, blatant attack on the First Amendment. It comes just months after Attorney General Merrick Garland seized the domain names of Press TV and other Iranian news outlets he didn't like.



No one has spread more disinformation on the Russia-Ukraine conflict than Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky and the controlled media outlets which report all his blatant lies as though they're proven facts.



The White House even had to come out on Thursday night and publicly counter his latest lie that Russian tanks intentionally attacked Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Energodar and caused radiation to start leaking from the plant.



Nonetheless, the White House has sent and is continuing to send Zelensky and his "neo-nazi" Azov Battalion underlings billions of dollars in high-tech weaponry, all while the Ukrainian military openly announces on Facebook that they're going to start committing war crimes.







Follow InformationLiberation on Twitter, Facebook, Gab, Minds, Parler and Telegram.


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Westman organizations are stepping up their humanitarian efforts to aid the ongoing crisis in Ukraine.

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Westman organizations are stepping up their humanitarian efforts to aid the ongoing crisis in Ukraine.

The conflict resonates with Maple Leaf Foods and the Mennonite Central Committee due to the roots of many of their Ukrainian employees.

"Maple Leaf Foods employs many team members from outside Canada, and we do everything possible to support them through difficult situations in their homelands, from natural disasters to political upheaval and violence," said Janet Riley, vice-president of communications and public affairs for Maple Leaf Foods.

"Attacks on the Ukraine are tragic, terrifying and dangerous, and as a company, we hope for a peaceful solution. We are deeply concerned about our team members from the Ukraine and those with family and loved ones living there now."

Approximately 100 team members at the Maple Leaf plant in Brandon are Ukrainian and the plant community has set up a donation table, Riley said. The company is permitting people to go home if they want, and supervisors at the plant are reaching out personally to provide additional support.

Rick Cober Bauman, executive director of Mennonite Central Committee (MCC), shares a similar concern. Bauman said it has been painful to see Russia violate international law and leave Ukraine at the mercy of an invasion in a display of violence not seen this way in decades.

"It does seem a bit surreal," Bauman said.

"It feels like kind of a 19th century-style bullying invasion where its tanks and explosives. It feels like its out of another era."

Bauman explained the MCC does not have a specific program in place for people in Canada to contribute toward, but the company has received an overwhelming amount of support through financial donations from people across the country.

Bauman said people are designating Ukraine as their intended recipient when they pledge support, and the money is providing an opportunity for MCC to bolster its 16 partnership organizations in Ukraine, the majority of which are in the Zaporizhian region of eastern Ukraine.

The majority of the 16 partnerships are with church groups in the region. As the conflict progresses, he said, many of the local Ukrainian staff MCC has been in touch with have had to find a safer location. As a result, the organization is waiting to address the specific humanitarian needs using the financial donations they have received until it is safe for their partners in Ukraine to access their support.

"We want our partners to have a lot of agency in how we do respond," Bauman said.

"Its a war zone. The very people that give leadership to the partners we work with are dealing with the day to day of keeping their own families safe in their own communities. We might want to ship blankets into eastern Ukraine, and our partners in eastern Ukraine might say, Were OK for blankets, but what we really need is canned meat because we could sure use protein for families meals."

Bauman emphasized the historic connection between MCC and Ukraine as the organization was founded in that country in 1920. He said there were a lot of Ukrainian Mennonite people who were threatened by famine, violence from the Russian Civil War and typhus which, in turn, created a response from Canadians to aid those in need.

"We started by responding with some very basic food kitchens, and then some seeds and tractors and then eventually helping a lot of people leave Ukraine and come to Canada," Bauman said.

"It was out of the initial response that MCC was birthed."

The MCC is celebrating 50 years since the organization opened its first thrift store in Altona, Man., in 1972. Bauman said in a given year, the thrift stores can represent up to 25 per cent of MCCs total income in Canada.

At the beginning of the crisis, MCC stepped in to assist its Ukrainian staff and staff working abroad in the country to determine a safe plan to leave the country when possible. Bauman said donations received in Brandon and across the province in such an extraordinary time have marked another chapter in the organizations ongoing humanitarian support overseas.

"A huge expression of gratitude from MCC for the generous response to MCC to be able to respond to Ukraine," Bauman said.

"We want people to know we are committed to the very best stewardly use of their gift, and grateful for their gift in the first place."

At Maple Leaf, Riley is encouraging all of the companys team members to make use of the support resources available for Canadians and Americans through the companys Employee and Family Assistance Program.

The program has opened a crisis line for access to immediate emotional support to deal with the events in Ukraine as well as offer additional resources to help cope with trauma.

To contribute toward the MCCs efforts in Ukraine, Brandon residents can visit the thrift store located 414 Pacific Ave. or the website donate.mcccanada.ca/cause/ukraine-emergency-response.

 jbernacki@brandonsun.com

 Twitter: @JosephBernacki
A Lenore-area cattle producer has added an unusual addition to his herd  a young deer who has made herself at home with the bulls.

SUBMITTED Charlotte the deer hangs out with the bulls at TRI-N Charolais.

A Lenore-area cattle producer has added an unusual addition to his herd  a young deer who has made herself at home with the bulls.

Mervin Nykoliation, of TRI-N Charolais, has been in the cattle industry for 40 years, raising one-of-a-kind bulls. He dubbed his newest resident deer Charlotte because she lives with the Charolais bulls.

"Were happy to let Charlotte have a bit of time with us if she wants to," Nykoliation said. "I think when it warms up, shell probably wander out, hopefully."

Deer are not a common site at TRI-N Charolais, he said, which makes the situation all the more unique. The farm is located in an open area. They will see the odd coyote pass through, but other animal sightings are a rare thing to behold.

"How she ended up here just amazes me," Nykoliation said. "This isnt deer country."

He imagines Charlotte jumped in with his bulls because of the limited shelter options available around the farm.

"Where we live, there arent any natural tree belts."

Nykoliation and his stepdaughter Tanis planted trees around the homestead about 30 years ago, offering some of the only shelter in the area.

"[Charlotte] got locked away from her friends and was living in that deep snow in the trees around our house and just got hungry and met these guys [the bulls], and theyre fairly docile animals, to begin with, and I think they just put up with her and now shes one of the team," Nykoliation said.

He suspects Charlotte may be a spring fawn or yearling who became separated from her herd and wandered onto the farm looking for new companions.

SUBMITTED The bull Jehu sold for $245,000 during a TRI-N Charolais dispersement sale in December.

"Theyve [the bulls] got it good and so does she," Nykoliation said with a laugh.

He estimates the deer started living with the bulls when the winter weather got especially harsh.

"Now, we just let her come and go as she wants," Nykoliation. "She will have a little drink of water and just lay down with the pack."

At this point, she does not even flinch when someone opens a gate to check on the cattle.

"Now, shes just like one of their buddies," Nykoliation said. "We do photos of our bulls for our bull sale, and this deer  she wouldnt leave the bulls. She went through the photo-op just like one of the bulls."

She has also lined up in the chutes when the veterinarian visits.

TRI-N had a day where bulls were set to get ultrasound data from the veterinarian, Nykoliation said, and Charlotte ran right through the chute with them. They moved her through gently, helping her feel like she was just part of the herd.

"I think she took to chute probably better than some of the bulls," Nykoliation said. "It was like she said, this is what I gotta do to hang around with these guys. She went through and came out no worse for wear and [continued] hanging out with the bulls."

The veterinarian had a good laugh and told Nykoliation there were no issues having the little lady live with her new cattle friends.

"She seems happy, so well give her some shelter," Nykoliation said.

The addition of Charlotte to the herd caps an unusual year for the producer.

He is currently transitioning out of farming and looking to retire. Part of this process has included dispersal sales.

It is challenging seeing your life played out in a public auction, he said, explaining he was feeling nervous prior to the first bid. Thoughts of no one placing a bid ran through his head before he hit the auction ring.

Instead, he found himself in the midst of a bidding war he did not expect.

Nykoliation held a mini-dispersal sale on Dec. 3, selling the farms bred heifers, first-year calving females and a couple of bulls.

One of the bulls, Jehu, had incredible clout in the auction ring, pulling in a record-setting $245,000  a figure never seen in Manitoba. Nykoliation said he had expected to get around $50,000 for the bull.

"I think that bull is syndicated worldwide [now]," Nykoliation said. "I think his semen is in Australia, New Zealand, America, Canada, and at that point, I think theyre still adding up places its going to."

Jehu now has an iconic place at the farm and will be something people see in the breed for years going forward.

"When we had him, he was just a bull. But now hes The Bull, which really changes everything about him."

TRI-N Charolais has another bull sale coming up on March 21 featuring the offspring of Jehu.

Nykoliation is now busy with calving season and counting down the days until spring. It is an exciting time and a lot of work, he said, but he enjoys getting to see the years of work paying off with the birth of the sons and daughters of Jehu.

"Its actually worked out very well for us," Nykoliation said. "The cattle were well accepted, and it looks like the deer is well accepted, too. Things are working out for us."

 ckemp@brandonsun.com

 Twitter: @The_ChelseaKemp
An F/A-18E Super Hornet of Oceana-based Strike Fighter Squadron VFA 211 conducting air policing patrols over Romania is refueled from a German Air Force A400M tanker. (US Navy photo)

Aviators from the USS Harry S. Trumans air wing have been walking the beat in Romanian skies as theyve joined NATOs air policing mission at a tense time in eastern Europe.

That mission usually falls to the U.S. Air Force and other NATO air forces, but the tasks involved are familiar territory, said Capt. Patrick BC Hourigan, commander of carrier air wing 1.

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The NATO air policing effort means checking on aircraft in NATO member airspace that arent communicating with civilian air traffic control or operating transponders.

The Truman air wing aviators job is to intercept and if necessary, escort such planes to the ground or out of NATO airspace.

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We do this anyway; interceptions and escorting are just something we do, Hourigan said. Its all following the rules of the road.

In fact, said Rear Adm. Curt Renshaw, while the elements of the air wing are patrolling over Romania, others are working with the groups air defense command center, on the cruiser USS San Jacinto, patrolling over the Mediterranean Sea.

Sailors on the groups destroyers and the Royal Norwegian Navy frigate HNoMS Fridtjof Nansen keep eyes out for possible threats from surface warships and submarines.

Weve been operating together so long, I forget they speak Norwegian, Renshaw said. The sailors in this group that keep the ships running ... complex machines in dangerous place, with planes in the area, day after day, week after week  Im just so impressed by their professionalism.

Although the air policing effort over Romania is new, working with NATO is like plug and play, Hourigan said.

While his pilots get specific briefings on communications procedures, routes to from and over NATO allies airspace, and where and when and from which nations tanker planes to refuel, thats the kind of detail they get before any flight, Hourigan said.

Every mission is unique, he said.

And while managing an in-flight refueling, especially from another nations tanker, looks daunting, I cant count how many allied tankers were refueled with, Hourigan said. Our ability to augment the air policing detachments ... sends a strong reassuring signal to the collective defense of our Allies.

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NATOs enhanced air policing started after the Russian invasion of Crimea in 2014, and aims to temporarily augment Estonian, Romanian and Bulgarian air defense with detachments from other NATO members air forces.

The basic job is to monitor the 30,000 daily flights within Europes airspace to look for planes that arent in radio contact with civilian air traffic control or that have shut transponders off or that havent filed a flight plan. Air force pilots  and now, pilots from Truman  listen closely to the control centers directions, carefully approach such planes, make eye contact with the pilot, make sure that plane isnt in trouble, and if necessary help it land or direct it to where it ought to be flying.

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I think its great to be a part of the air patrol missions, said Lt. Cmdr. Richard Watkins, a pilot with Strike Fighter Squadron VFA-11.

Its a good mission. We have a unique ability to operate from an aircraft carrier and by working with our NATO Allies we really get to showcase our cohesive unified force, he said.

Before starting the air policing mission, the Truman air wing flew a series of training missions with the Romanian Air Force, with planes and maintenance crews operating off the Borcea Fetesti Airfield for a week in February 8-15.

In a similar effort, Trumans aviators also flew training missions with the U.S. and Italian Air Forces, under Italian tactical command and control. The Trumans aviators were supported by U.S. Air Force 48th, 55nd and 32nd fighter wings as well as the 435th Air Ground Operations Wing and the 606th Air Control Squadron.

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Weve probably worked with more than 20, maybe 30 different NATO navies and air forces, Renshaw said.

Flying air policing patrol over Romania may be new, he said, but because we train to do this kind of thing, and we work with partners and allies all the time, its easy for us to go anywhere.

Dave Ress, 757-247-4535, dress@dailypress.com
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NSW Transport Minister David Elliott received a text message warning of looming massive disruption to the Sydney rail network the night before it was shut down, but says he decided to wait until he woke the next morning to find out what it would look like.

Under heavy questioning from Labor on Friday about the dramatic events of last week, Mr Elliott insisted that he learnt about the shutdown only via social media from his constituents when he woke about 4am on Monday, February 21, to commuter chaos.

Transport Minister David Elliott is grilled on Friday at a budget estimates hearing about the rail network shutdown. Credit:James Brickwood

During a heated budget estimates hearing on Friday, Mr Elliott was grilled about a trove of internal documents, including a text message that suggested he was told of the massive disruption the night before it occurred.

At 10.51pm on the night before the shutdown, Mr Elliott and his ministerial staff were forwarded a text message from a senior transport agency official warning that massive disruption was expected on the Monday morning.
A week of relentless shelling and gunfire has forced a Sydney woman and her family to flee Ukraines second largest city, leaving behind a synagogue and Jewish community fostered over 32 years.

Miriam Moskovitz was left with no choice but to abandon her Kharkiv home this week with her husband, five of her 12 children, her daughter-in-law and four grandchildren.

The family had been bunkering in their sandbag-lined basement 40 kilometres from the Russian border since last Thursday, when the brutal Russian invasion began.

As prominent leaders of the local Jewish community, they spent the week housing and feeding desperate Ukrainians in their synagogue, while the sounds of war rained around them.
Ill look through that, but clearly that is completely unacceptable. That shouldnt happen, he said. What I do know is that we couldnt get aircraft into the skies. We couldnt do it. We were sitting there watching these terrible scenes. And, based on the advice of our emergency services personnel, we just couldnt, based on safety. He acknowledged that people in the community were angry and traumatised but disagreed when asked if there had been a catastrophic failure to prepare the region in time for the deluge. Flooding in Cumberland Reach along the Hawkesbury River Photo Nick Moir 4 March 2022 Credit:Nick Moir I wouldnt say that yet ... our focus right now is not to play a blame game, he said.

Well do a review in relation to what resourcing was in place and what needs to be in place going forward. The Premier said the scale of rainfall and subsequent flooding required a dedicated recovery effort, announcing a clean-up taskforce with 400 personnel, helicopters and equipment. Loading Lismore recorded its worst flood in history this week, after the Wilsons River catchment peaked at 14.37 metres, more than 2 metres higher than the previous benchmark set in 1954. Emergency Services and Flood Recovery Minister Steph Cooke described the extreme weather event as a natural disaster of unprecedented proportions. As the clean-up begins, Northern NSW locals said they felt abandoned by authorities, with just 150 defence personnel deployed to Lismore.

Lismore resident Sigourney Andrusko, who has been helping friends cut off by floods, said the bulk of the clean-up and rescue has been organised by the community. For the amount of people here  the SES, the ADF, the police  the one common thread is, where the f--- are they? Because people cant see them, theyre not visible, she said. Joe Buffone, director-general of Emergency Management Australia, said about 70 defence personnel had been in Lismore the whole time and about 150 were now on the ground. On Friday Senator McKenzie said it was up to the state governments to decide when and where ADF personnel should be deployed. A spokesperson for the minister said, as of 5am on Friday, Defence increased the number of available personnel to 1500 and a further 500 were being made ready.

As the Commonwealth government, we cant deploy the ADF into states, so our ADF assets are exactly where the state governments have requested them, Senator McKenzie said. Loading However, on Friday evening the head of the states disaster response Shane Fitzsimmons said he was not aware of such offers. Of course I would say yes to an extra 2000 personnel, but it would be nice to know about it. I think its disappointing if they are running this publicly and not contacting us operationally, he said. It goes against everything happening on the ground.  Mr Fitzsimmons later said he had confirmed the additional available personnel with defence and would begin assigning as many as possible to the recovery effort.

The Premier said the flood risk was not over, as difficult conditions are forecast to continue over the weekend. Authorities on Friday were still concerned about the Hawkesbury and Nepean areas and flash flooding in other places, including the Central Coast and Hunter. An east coast low off the NSW coast has weakened, however severe thunderstorms are still forecast for parts of the countrys east coast. Depending on where storms develop, further river rises are possible over coming days due to already saturated catchments. Flooding on River Road, Wisemans Ferry on Friday. Credit:Louise Kennerley While most floodwaters are receding, numerous flood warnings remain current, including major flood warnings for the Clarence, Hawkesbury and Nepean, Richmond, Gloucester and Weir rivers.

Flooding in the Hawkesbury-Nepean valley less than 12 months after it was last inundated has reignited debate about floodplain development. Head of the National Recovery and Resilience Agency Shane Stone on Friday said residents in flood-prone areas needed to face realities and inundated homes should not be rebuilt. Loading There have been renewed calls for at least 5000 residents living below the 1-in-100-year flood line to be relocated, however NSW Planning Minister Anthony Roberts said such a proposal was unrealistic. We cant stop these people rebuilding because  there might be a flood, he said.
Queensland is urging residents to be on the lookout for symptoms of the mosquito-borne illness Japanese encephalitis (JEV) after the first human case was confirmed in the state.

Hours after experts expressed concerns the virus had spread from Cape York to Victoria seemingly undetected, it was confirmed a person had come down with the disease in Queensland.

Queensland Health Minister Yvette DAth said health authorities were now working with the agriculture sector as well as interstate and federal authorities to try to get ahead of the virus.

Queensland Health is working collaboratively with the department of Agriculture and Fisheries as well as state, territory and national counterparts to discuss a national response, and support is being provided to intensive livestock industry workers, Ms DAth said.
War veteran Ben Roberts-Smith checked whether a defence force drone had captured specific events on camera on the same day that he was allegedly involved in two unlawful killings in Afghanistan, a Special Air Service soldier has told the Federal Court.

Person 18, a serving SAS soldier whose identity cannot be revealed for national security reasons, gave evidence in Mr Roberts-Smiths defamation case on Friday that he overheard a soldier dubbed Person 5 telling Mr Roberts-Smith during a mission on Easter Sunday, 2009, that youve just done this while a drone was still flying above.

Ben Roberts-Smith arrives at the Federal Court in Sydney last month. Credit:James Alcock

The court has heard evidence that camera-equipped drones, known as Intelligence Surveillance Reconnaissance devices, were used to film some missions from the air. Person 5 told Mr Roberts-Smith on the day of the so-called Whiskey 108 mission that the drone may have recorded him, Person 18 said.

Mr Roberts-Smith replied to Person 5 that we need to find out if the ISR was still above us, Person 18 said, and Person 5 sent a message on a troop internal chat asking where the drone was and if it was recording.
Swinburne University is moving to remove grades from some core sections of its design degree, saying students focus on high marks was stifling the creative process.

Eight out of 23 units in the graduate design degree will switch to a pass-fail model, and students who fail will have the opportunity to resubmit their work.

Swinburne is moving away from grading design students. Credit:The Age

We were noticing more and more that students were fixating on grades, and that was not necessarily having a positive effect on the outcome, said Nikki Wragg, Swinburnes associate dean of education in design and architecture.

Students were not consulting enough with each other and lecturers, Ms Wragg said, with the industry more concerned about a portfolio and process.
The state governments will cop criticism, but the feds will be vulnerable too. Morrison (with the lessons of the bushfire disaster in memory) has been anxious to get ahead of critics. On Thursday, he convened a virtual roundtable to discuss supply chain and other issues (he tuned in from Kirribilli House); federal funds were announced for NSW and money for Queensland will follow. At the start of the week Newspoll, in which the opposition retained its 55-45 per cent two-party lead, was a relief for Labor and a source of further worry for an embattled government. Most immediately, it suggested the Coalition had failed, at least for the moment, in its over-the-top attempt to wedge the opposition on China. Both sides know the polls will narrow at some point. But the longer Labor can hold that off, the better for its momentum and the more the Coalitions morale will be sapped.

One danger Labor will need to keep in mind is being caught on the hop as circumstances change. COVID-related government mistakes were fertile ground for the opposition as recently as January. Yet Labors strategists know that harking back to these, while tempting, is reaching into a bucket with a hole in it. Loading Its always difficult to let go of issues as they pass their use-by date  for example, Labor in 2001 was out of time when campaigning on rolling back the GST on some items. For its part, the government needs to get attention onto the economy, but it mightnt have much opportunity until close to the March 29 budget. Wednesdays national accounts indicated a strong economic recovery in the December quarter, in a bounce back from last years lockdowns in Melbourne and Sydney. (The March quarter will reflect the Omicron hit, but we wont see that until after the election.) The numbers received limited coverage, squeezed by the dominant stories.

The budget, the launch pad for the election, will be affected by both the floods and the Ukraine war, although the estimates of the extent of the impact will, of necessity, be rough. Apart from bringing direct costs, the floods will hit production. Reserve Bank governor Philip Lowe this week drew attention to the uncertainty the war poses for the world economy. Asked this week about the budgets priorities, Treasurer Josh Frydenberg laid down some markers. Treasurer Josh Frydenberg talks about the national accounts figures at Parliament House on Wednesday. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen Despite the very strong economic recovery that weve seen and the resilience, the recovery is not yet locked in, he told his national accounts news conference. COVID was still with us and the international events showed the downside risks. The government had been driving unemployment down  we are on the verge of full employment  and the budget would continue to invest in areas that helped create jobs. So, there will be very significant infrastructure investment [] There will be very significant investment in our regions because they are going to be key to our economic growth.

Frydenberg named the digital economy as a major focus for the government, as well as manufacturing. Thered be attention on skills and on incentivising investment, including in energy. National security will obviously be to the forefront, and he also mentioned health and education. Loading Budgets are full of pea-and-thimble tricks, so in some areas the question will be whether extra spending is real or illusory. But clearly budget repair will not be a priority at this point and therell be election pork to try to attract voters. Frydenberg continues to dodge the question of whether the low and middle income tax offset, which costs nearly $8 billion, will be renewed. Despite the price tag, it would be a big call in an election budget not to continue it or have some equivalent. This budget is not just important to the governments chance of reviving from a low base, but many in the Liberal Party will also have an eye on the personal performance of Frydenberg, as a prospect for leader if the Coalition is defeated.

As he watched things from isolation at Kirribilli House, Morrison would have registered Anthony Albanese arriving in Perth as soon as the border opened on Wednesday night. Morrison is desperate to get to WA, where the Liberals fear for two or three of their seats. The PMs illness has been a sharp reminder of something thats been preoccupying the parties. We might be living with COVID, but it still has the ability to disrupt life mightily, including election campaigning. Frustrated as he might be this week, Morrison may reckon hes better off to have COVID now than in the campaign itself (assuming no return bout). Albanese has dodged the virus but knows there are no guarantees it wont strike him between now and election day. Imagine coming down with COVID in the second-last week of the campaign, say when there was supposed to be a face-to-face debate.
The Liberal Partys federal executive has approved a formal intervention in the partys NSW division to confirm candidates in crucial electorates to prepare for the election without letting branch members vote on who will stand.

The move, decided on Friday morning, clears the way for Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Immigration Minister Alex Hawke to play a key role in appointing candidates quickly when some Liberals fear it is already too late to win ground against Labor and independents.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

The federal executive, which includes Mr Morrison as well as party president John Olsen and former federal cabinet minister Nick Minchin, chose a temporary move that was modified after an intense debate about the extraordinary decision to intervene.

The group voted to appoint a committee of three members to oversee the NSW division with the goal of confirming Immigration Minister Alex Hawke in his seat of Mitchell, Environment Minister Sussan Ley in her seat of Farrer and backbencher Trent Zimmerman in the seat of North Sydney.
Sixty-four-year-old Jin Feng is a cleaner at the Wuhan Central Hospital. She had heard of the virus early on, in the hospital lifts and the doctors changing room  an infectious disease in Wuhan that is much more severe than SARS.

It is late on the evening of January 29, 2020, the seventh day of Wuhans lockdown. Jin Feng does not get a moments sleep, and neither does Xia Bangxi, who paces back and forth at the doorway, keeping his eyes on his wife. Just before first light, he says to Jin Feng, Dont worry, Ill take care of everything.

In that moment, Xia Bangxi reads her mind. Well, in that case, he says, Im not going to work.

Xia Bangxi opens the door. The TV says this disease can be treated. Why not get it treated?

After persistent questioning, Jin Feng finally reveals the truth: she is infected with the novel coronavirus. Jin Feng shoves her husband and their son Xia Lei out of the room, closes the door and silently sobs. She is still weighing up the best way to kill herself.

Jin Feng trudges home, brooding on how to die. Xia Bangxi is preparing to head off to his night shift, but as he is about to leave, his wife arrives. He senses something is wrong.

Suicide is not an easy choice, but on that evening of January 29, Jin Feng is unable to come up with a better way out. This disease is so infectious, Jin Feng says to herself. Im over 60. Many people have not been cured, so why would I want treatment? She cannot afford the cost of treatment anyway, and she cant possibly isolate in her own home. I didnt want to hurt my family, she says. I did not want to infect them.

By this time, it is after 10pm and the lobby of the hospital is overflowing with fever patients. Jin Feng slowly walks outside into empty streets. The whole city is deserted, like a village submerged by a flood. Forget it, she thinks. I wont go for treatment.

On January 29, Jin Feng had worked from early in the morning until the evening, cleaning many rooms on many floors, sprinkling disinfectant in every corner. Close to the end of her shift she began to feel uncomfortable: feverish and weak all over. She went downstairs to register at the outpatient department, had blood drawn for a test, and was given a CT scan, which she handed over to a nurse. The nurse examined the scan and confidently told her: Its very likely youre infected. You should see a doctor straight away. Jin Feng works at the Nanjing Road unit of the Wuhan Central Hospital. During the pandemic, its responsible for diagnosis only, so for treatment she would have to go almost seven kilometres to the Houhu branch.

Although she has worked at the hospital for more than two years, she is not officially a member of staff. She is employed by a property management company called Pearl River Management. She mops floors, disposes of rubbish, and even cleans the doctors surgical clothes and shoes, which are often blood-stained and soiled. In two years, she has encountered many doctors and nurses, though few of them know her name.

At the time, the Chinese government wasnt worried about the disease  it was more concerned about preventing panic  so doctors were forbidden to wear protective equipment. A cleaner like Jin Feng is even less eligible for protective equipment.

The two people who arrive with Jin Feng have good connections at the hospital, so they are promptly allocated beds. But Jin Feng is just a lowly cleaner, unworthy of such privileged treatment. No doctor called us, says a person in charge, so how can you prove you work at the hospital? When Xia Bangxi begs for his wife, the response is cold: You say youre with the hospital, he [another queue member] also says hes with the hospital. How do I know if you really are with the hospital?

The lobby is cacophonous with people running around, shouting. A constant stream of vehicles for transporting corpses is coming and going, and family members are wailing piteously. Not far from Jin Feng, a tall, strong young man is on his knees begging a doctor to treat a relative. So many people were dying, says Jin Feng. Even the doctors were helpless.

At 10am, the neighbourhood committee dispatches a vehicle to take Jin Feng, Xia Bangxi and two other infected people to the branch hospital in the Houhu district. They are greeted by the huge infected persons marketplace  a long line of infectious people queuing up for treatment, some seated, more just lying on the ground.

Xia Lei remembers none of this and has no ability to help his parents. A 2007 car accident left him with a severe head injury. Now 40, his intellect is more or less that of a primary-school student. His memory is worse, and he has great difficulty clearly uttering a complete sentence. When Jin Feng is interviewed, Xia Lei quietly sits to one side, listening to his mother recount past miseries, occasionally contributing by muttering, This fing disease, so ferocious.

When dawn breaks on January 30, Jin Feng telephones her superior  a woman surnamed Yuan  to ask for help. I work in the hospital too, says Jin Feng. I just hope the hospital could help me. Ms Yuan tells her, Just go. When you get there, someone will treat you.

This is where Jin Feng and her family live. They share the apartment with another family  a shared kitchen, a shared toilet, and jet-black concrete floor. How could I possibly isolate in a place like this? she says. Thats why I thought it would be better to die. If I were dead, they would be safe. Only when Xia Bangxi deploys all his persuasive powers does his wife relinquish thoughts of suicide.

No. 22 Poyang Street is in the centre of Wuhan, just metres from the banks of the Yangtze River. It is the dormitory compound of the Wuhan Central Hospital, with scores of old, dilapidated, dusty apartments. The peeling walls are mottled with small advertisements for fake IDs and toilet-unblocking services. The air reeks of sewage, stews and rotting food. Piles of hexagonal briquettes sit like clusters of poisonous mushrooms.

Dont worry, he says to Jin Feng. Even if I get infected, I will use my life to save yours.

It is less than seven kilometres, but it often takes them more than three hours to get there. After arriving at the hospital, they join the queue, shuffling forward for five or six hours just for the chance of an IV infusion. For Xia Bangxi this is a perilous routine, but he doesnt mind because he has vowed to get his wife cured.

That is the first day. Then follows the second day and the third day  Each morning, to arrive at the hospital as early as possible, Xia Bangxi rises at 4am, cooks rice porridge for Jin Feng and attends to her until she finishes it. They pack a simple lunch for two, a bottle of milk and a piece of fruit. Then they ride the bike, stopping and starting, gasping for breath all the way to the hospital.

Its a freezing winters night. There are no taxis, and neither the police nor the hospital can possibly arrange for a car to shuttle them home. Jin Feng and Xia Bangxi instead have to share a rented bicycle. Every 10 minutes or so, a frail Jin Feng has to stop and rest for a while. Then Xia Bangxi lifts her back onto the bike and the two of them, clinging together and faint from lack of food, pedal through the bitter wind, slowly making their way home.

Notification never comes. Jin Feng has no alternative other than to huddle into her husband and follow the flow of people inching forward. They eventually register, have all sorts of check-ups, then sit in the corridor and wait for an IV infusion. They are famished but cannot leave the hospital until 2am.

Jin Feng has a high fever and can barely sit upright. Xia Bangxi holds her in an embrace, while Jin Feng telephones Ms Yuan again. She responds, Ive already called the leadership of the hospital. If they dont make arrangements, what else can I do? Jin Feng asks, What should I do now? Ms Yuan replies, Nothing, just wait for notification.

After the epidemic explodes, the Chinese government seizes the opportunity to strengthen its rule. No sick person is permitted to obtain treatment on their own; treatment decisions are to be made by a grassroots level of the government, that is, the neighbourhood committee. The committees are now responsible for collating infection statistics, distributing food, arranging transportation  everything. On the evening of February 9, when Jin Feng carries Xia Bangxi, vomiting blood, into the neighbourhood committee office, no one takes any interest. A leader tells them: Its too late to do anything today. Come back tomorrow.

No. 22 Poyang Street is an area particularly hard-hit by the epidemic. Red stickers declaring fever household are everywhere; every building has at least one infected person inside. Jin Feng hears there are 226 doctors and nurses infected at the Nanjing Road unit of her workplace. The number of deaths is unknown, but at least five people of professorial rank are among them.

Xia Bangxis sickness comes on fast and feverishly. By February 9 he is vomiting blood, yet he still forces himself to rise at 4am and cook rice porridge for Jin Feng, before together, they head off to the hospital. They are given nucleic acid tests. Jin Feng is negative. Xia Bangxi tests positive, but there are still no beds available at the hospital. After IV infusions, they struggle to get back home. At that time, I really couldnt walk, and neither could he, says Jin Feng. I had no other options, I had to go to the neighbourhood committee.

On that evening of February 7, many people die silently. Nameless and only numbered, they are covered in white cloth and reduced to piles of grey powder. As Jin Feng waits for treatment again in the sprawling infected- persons marketplace, Xia Bangxi is by her side, ready to lend an arm to support her. With bloodshot eyes, he occasionally coughs behind his face masks. I dont know how he became infected with this disease, says Jin Feng. He had been very careful. He wore a plastic raincoat and three masks. How could he get infected?

While they edge forward in the treatment queue, Dr Li Wenliang dies in the very same hospital. Jin Feng and Xia Bangxi see the flood of journalists arriving and the floral wreaths piling up at the main entrance, but they dont pay much attention and have no idea about the repercussions of Wuhan whistleblower Li Wenliangs death for China and the world. They are preoccupied with their own survival.

The next day is cold, overcast and raining. Xia Lei lugs his father down the staircase, then Jin Feng supports him back to the neighbourhood committee. What she sees pushes her into despair. As soon as they saw us, they ran away, says Jin Feng. They all went into hiding  Only one person remained.

There is a yellow demarcation line outside the neighbourhood committee office, which Jin Feng and Xia Bangxi have no right to cross. As they stand shivering in the rain, Xia Bangxi coughs violently, occasionally spraying blood. Jin Feng moves a chair and helps him sit under the eaves, but he doesnt have the strength to sit. I set him down, but he just slid off the chair.

Jin Feng begs the remaining neighbourhood committee member: Just look at my old man, she says. Hes vomiting blood. I beg you. Please save him.

Like other Communist Party organisations, the neighbourhood committee excels at avoiding responsibility during the pandemic. Doesnt matter what you say, says Jin Feng, they have all sorts of excuses. They just didnt want to take us to hospital. The neighbourhood committee will not report Xia Bangxis name to the higher authority as he cannot produce a nucleic acid test report. He cannot produce the report because the hospital had notified him by telephone. There is no report.

The back-and-forth of begging and refusing continues unabated for hours. At noon, the committee finally agrees to arrange a car to take Jin Feng to a hotel and Xia Bangxi to an isolation station.

That was not a place for treating the disease, says Jin Feng. They sent us into isolation. He was so sick, but they didnt arrange for treatment. They just sent him into isolation.

Xia Bangxis condition worsens at the isolation station. Jin Feng telephones many times from the hotel. She hears his weak voice say there is no one looking after people, let alone treating them. There is no water and no food. They keep us here, he gasps, just to let us die.

That was not a place for treating the disease. They sent us into isolation. He was so sick, but they didnt arrange for treatment. They just sent him into isolation.

Jin Feng is frantic. She calls the neighbourhood committee again. They tell her: Its none of our business. Your husband is at the isolation station, so talk to the doctor there. It takes several hours to get through to the doctor. He responds: We dont have any medicine here and were forbidden to treat patients, so youd best speak to the neighbourhood committee.

The desperate and the helpless are trapped in a system from which there is no escape. Jin Feng begins to contact every relative, every friend, begging them to phone the mayor, the neighbourhood committee, the media, every organisation with any power. She feels the weight of these calls like a mountain, yet they are not enough to have her husband admitted to hospital.

At the time, the government had vowed to treat every single novel coronavirus patient, but due to inadequate medical resources, many people like Xia Bangxi are abandoned to await death. They die at home or in the corridors of hospitals or simply on the streets of the city of despair. Jin Feng thinks of her husbands vow to care for her and the unforgettable words he uttered: I will use my life to save yours. She cant hold her tears back. Throughout that wintry night, with the desolate sound of rain falling, Jin Feng weeps as she desperately makes telephone calls. In the isolation station on the other side of the city, her husband is dying.

At noon the next day, Jin Feng leaves her isolation hotel, gasping for breath as she rushes to the neighbourhood committee office. She sinks to her knees and howls at the officers: Why didnt you report our names to the higher authority? It wouldnt have cost you a penny. You just had to say the word. Why couldnt you do that? She then asks, Do you have parents? Do you have children? Did you not report our names because we are peasants?

Someone responds: Didnt you say you want to sue? Well, go ahead.

Scenes like this never appear on Chinese TV. In that bitter spring, apart from Jin Feng and Xia Lei, no one remembers a 64-year-old woman kneeling on the muddy ground, crying and begging for this world to save her husband. She really did think about dying. If you dont send my husband to hospital, she wails, I will die here, Ill die here in front of your eyes.

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At 4pm on February 11, the neighbourhood committee finally reports their names to the higher authority and dispatches a van to take Jin Feng to the isolation station so she can take her husband to hospital.

By then, Xia Bangxis strength is almost completely depleted. He strains to get to the vans door; he flops over the seat but doesnt have the energy to pull himself into it. Jin Feng crouches behind him, holds his legs in her arms and uses her shoulder to push from behind. Slowly, she heaves him into his seat, then goes to the other side of the van to get in herself. Hugging her husband tightly, she uses all her strength to hold him upright.

You want me to live, she speaks close to her husbands ear. I want you to live, too.

Medical staff members take a break. Jin Feng was so grateful for the doctors who eventually operated on her husband: I wholeheartedly hope they can live to 100. Credit:Getty Images

Xia Bangxi was born in 1953; he is the same age as President Xi Jinping. When Xia Bangxi was 26, a matchmaker introduced him to Jin Feng. Soon the couple married. Like many marriages of the time, love blossomed little by little under the arduous circumstances of life. Together they planted rice, cotton and sweet potatoes, and raised chickens, ducks and pigs. Jin Feng still remembers them transplanting seedlings and threshing grain. Our crops were pretty good, she recalls. Sometimes wed work through the night to be sure the daytime work was not delayed.

It was an era of extreme poverty. They rented a leaky hovel, where the landlords coffin was stored in the doorway to be sure of a dignified burial. After Xia Lei was born, they built their own home, brick by brick.

While poor, the family was warm and harmonious. Xia Lei never saw his parents fight or get angry. The old man and the old lady were pretty good-tempered, he says. Jin Feng never mentions the word love as she explains, slightly embarrassed, We were husband and wife for 41 years and he always looked after me well.

Their hometown was about 60 kilometres from Wuhan in a small village called Dragon Kings Watchtower. The village consists of a few dozen old houses, some unoccupied, battered by the elements and slowly falling apart. Xia Bangxi spent most of his life in this village. For more than 20 years, he was its Party branch secretary. He always smiled warmly, doing his best to help everyone.

Jin Feng is a high-school graduate, which in the era of Mao Zedong was an extraordinary achievement. Naturally, she became a schoolteacher, in a shabby village school where she taught for more than 20 years. Some of her students made it to university and one even went to America, something that makes her very proud. She breaks into a radiant smile. Those kids were really smart.

In official documents, Jin Feng is merely a locally funded non-government school teacher. The term non-government-employed teacher is one of those abstruse terms that means Jin Feng is not a teacher or is a temporary teacher, so she has no possibility of promotion and cannot enjoy the benefits a teacher in the city enjoys, like a retirement pension and medical insurance. Around 2002, this temporary teacher of 22 years was dismissed. The compensation was paltry but Jin Feng doesnt complain; she even feels its what she deserved: The new teachers are young and educated, so Im not really qualified. After she was fired, Jin Feng worked in the fields for about a year. The exhaustion was unbearable.

Im short. The rice stalks I carried were as tall as me. That was when Xia Lei was in the serious car crash. The medical fees left this already humble family completely broke.

Jin Feng had to give up farming and head to the city to get menial work  dish-washing, cleaning  because the pay was slightly better than farm work. As she aged, her income declined. In 2014, her monthly salary was

RMB 3100 (about $670); in 2017, RMB 2600; and in 2018 when, at the age of 62, she was hired as a sanitation worker responsible for cleaning the contaminated operating theatre, her salary was RMB 2250.

When he reached 50, Xia Bangxi had been dismissed from his position as Party secretary. He received an allowance but it was small, almost nothing, so to make ends meet he had to follow his wife to the city. His diabetes meant he could not do any heavy work, so right up until Jin Feng was infected he worked as a night guard, making RMB 2600 a month.

Like most Chinese people, Jin Feng and her family bear the injustice of their lives with equanimity. They dont complain and are rarely angry. They simply work diligently and draw strength from every small kindness that comes their way.

In 2016, Jin Feng was a dish-washer at a restaurant. When her mother died, she asked the boss for two weeks off. He didnt dock her pay when she returned. She was deeply moved. That boss was such a good person, she says. Im truly grateful to him.

While the family resides in Wuhan, their household registry records them as peasants. They are in the city as migrant workers, which in the language of communist China means they are second-class citizens. Yet they accept the situation. They still worship the Party and believe in the Chinese government, using the honorifics Chairman Mao and Chairman Xi when referring to Mao Zedong and Xi Jinping. They are full of praise for the governments handling of the pandemic.

The governments policy to my mother is all right, says Xia Lei. But for my father  The dissatisfaction is directed at the neighbourhood committee because they did not properly implement the Partys policies.

Xia Lei doesnt get to see his father as death closes in. At dusk on February 11, the van takes Xia Bangxi to the Hankou Hospital. Several doctors and nurses push him in a wheelchair into an operating theatre. Jin Feng watches, brimming with hope and with thanks. I was so grateful to those doctors. In such a dangerous situation, they worked at saving my old man, she says softly. I wholeheartedly hope they can live to 100.

The next morning, Jin Feng sneaks into the operating theatre. She sees her husband, eyes shut, lying motionless on a hospital bed. She walks over to the bed and touches his forehead, then gently grasps his hand. He can barely open his eyes. Jin Feng tells him, Dont lose heart, in the hospital theres a chance to be saved. Xia Bangxis lips tremble as he speaks, almost inaudibly.

You must take care of yourself. You are sick, too. You have to eat properly.

Her tears stream but Jin Feng dares not cry out loud. Choking with emotion, she tries to encourage her husband, just like she had encouraged her students in the classroom years ago. Have confidence, the doctors will surely cure you.

I was so grateful to those doctors. In such a dangerous situation, they worked at saving my old man. I wholeheartedly hope they can live to 100.

Xia Bangxi takes her hand, speaking a last sentence with difficulty. Go and get a nutritional injection 

Jin Feng barely sleeps the following night. In another part of the hospital, she ruminates on the 41 years of joy and hardship that she and Xia Bangxi have been through together. Soon after 5am on February 13, before it is light, a doctor hands her a critically ill notification. Her spirits sink. After two more hours, several doctors and nurses come out of the operating theatre. One doctor tells her: Xia Bangxi couldnt be saved. He has died.

Jin Feng does not know how to describe her feelings at that time. It was like the city walls collapsed, she sobs, anguish in her eyes.

In China, after each disaster the state media asserts in a nonchalant tone, The family members of the deceased are emotionally stable, as if death is a trifle and the family members are without feelings. In truth, a tumult of blood and tears bubbles like molten rock beneath a mountain. In the aftermath of the Wuhan disaster, the government uses bribery, threats, surveillance and arrests to ensure the grieving and angry do not protest.

The neighbourhood committee delivers food and gently beseeches Jin Feng to collect her husbands ashes and bury them. The government provides RMB 3000 ($630) consolation money for every coronavirus victim, but when Jin Feng demands the money, every day for a week the committee responds: You have to bury the ashes first, then you can get the money. By taking the consolation money she would be acknowledging Xia Bangxis death, indemnifying the government and relinquishing her right to seek redress. The family members of the deceased are emotionally stable.

By April 3, she can no longer resist the entreaties and threats of the neighbourhood committee and goes to collect Xia Bangxis ashes. I didnt want to wrangle with them, I just didnt have the energy, says Jin Feng. Besides, being lenient to others is actually being lenient to yourself, so I let it go.

The Hankou funeral parlour has many different kinds of cremation boxes. Jin Feng chooses a white one because she thinks white is pretty. There is no photo on the box, just Xia Bangxis date of birth and date of death. Red fabric is wrapped around the box and yellow tassels are sewn onto four sides. Jin Feng likes the red fabric. She embraces the box as she slowly walks out of the funeral parlour. In all those years together, that was the first time I could hold him up, she later says.

Jin Feng cant afford a grave plot in the city. She instead takes her husband back to their home village to bury him in the fields they had tilled together. In any case, she knows the city is not their real home and she will eventually

return to the village so that Xia Bangxi can see her at any time. Xia Bangxis mother still lives in the village. Shes over 90 and Jin Feng is afraid to tell her of her sons death, out of concern her aged body would not withstand the sorrow.

The fields they tilled have been left fallow for years and are covered with waist-high weeds. Jin Feng selects a hillock for the burial. During the pandemic, funerals are simple affairs  no burning of ghost money and no religious ceremonies. The villagers are fearful that Jin Feng could be carrying the virus and deny her entry to the village itself, and will not even allow her to participate in the funeral. So while Jin Feng sits in a car nearby, Xia Lei places the cremation box in the grave and the villagers help him fill the grave with dirt.

Village leaders speak a few words to memorialise Xia Bangxis impoverished but hard-working life as their Party secretary. Xia Lei mutely observes, not really understanding the proceedings. Xia Bangxis grave does not have a tombstone. In accordance with local custom, tombstones for people who die an inauspicious death are erected only after three years. Jin Feng wonders whether shell still be alive then.

This is an edited extract from Murong Xuecuns Deadly Quiet City: Stories from Wuhan, COVID Ground Zero (Hardie Grant, $30), out March 11. Murong visited Wuhan at the urging of his friend, Australian author Clive Hamilton, with whom he will appear today at Adelaide Writers Week. Murong left China ahead of this books publication.

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Officials from Hampton City Schools say they responded appropriately to allegations that a young girl was sexually assaulted. (PiChi Chuang / Daily Press)

Hampton  When students walked out of all four high schools Monday afternoon in Hampton, they were responding to a social media campaign for support of an elementary school-aged girl.

Nikia Millers oldest daughter began to plan the walkout last month. The 15-year-old told her mother she wanted to organize a peaceful protest after seeing what her family experienced since they began to speak publicly about her younger sisters sexual assault allegations.

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The 15-year-old posted about the demonstration on social media, her mother said in an interview, not expecting the response she received.

She said it was a moment where she felt really accepted, and she felt like people understood what she was trying to do, and she felt supported, Miller said.

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Miller has said her younger daughter was sexually assaulted by another student in 2020, and has maintained since then that Hampton school officials have not met her demands to support her daughters well-being.

School officials have denied that, saying their response was appropriate. And in a message sent to parents Monday night the Hampton school division said assertions made in sparking the walkout were not accurate. The school division did not name Miller or her daughter.

Those assertions were about sexual allegations involving two second-grade students, the division said in a statement. The social media post claimed school officials did not take those allegations seriously.

The two participated in separate after-school programs, the statement said.

School officials notified Hampton police. According to a police report, the two girls were ages 7 and 9 when school administrators and police found out. The citys prosecutor later opted not to file charges.

In addition, when school officials became aware of the incident, they took proactive actions including, at the parents request, enrolling the aggrieved student at another school and offering counseling.

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The school system added that if required, it welcomes the opportunity for a court to examine this situation as the division is confident that at all times (Hampton schools) personnel acted appropriately.

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The statement said that there are better avenues than social media for parents to present concerns about how school officials handle incidents.

To protect the students privacy, the school system said it could provide no further details.

Miller said she fully supports her daughters actions and she appreciates the support other students showed during the walkout.

A Hampton schools spokesperson said the division supports peaceful assembly. Students who did not follow the districts Code of Conduct faced consequences. The division did not say what those consequences were, nor how many students were disciplined.

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: German luxury car maker has rolled out the 1,00,000th Made-in-India car manufactured at its facility at neighbouring Singaperumalkoil on Friday.

A Individual 740Li M Sport Edition received the special badge marking the milestone, a company statement said here.

"It is a day of great joy and pride for us as the 1,00,000th Made in India car drives out of our assembly lines. This accomplishment is a result of the team's hard work, efficiency and consistency which ensures that every or MINI Car locally produced here in Chennai is of the same international quality standards as any other BMW plant across the world," BMW Group Plant, Managing Director Thomas Dose said.

Highly skilled employees, advanced manufacturing processes along with state-of-the-art technology and a strong focus on sustainability provided the necessary ingredients for this success, he said.

The Chennai plant which commenced operated in March 2007 celebrates 15th anniversary this year and it has increased number of locally produced car models to 13 at the facility. The plant runs on 100 per cent green electricity.

"...increased localisation of up to 50 per cent and a robust collaboration with local supplier partners has created more value for everyone in the ecosystem. BMW Group Plant Chennai looks forward to raising the bar in sustainable manufacturing excellence further as the India story grows," he added.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The ministry of road transport and highways in consultation with the insurance regulator on Friday released a draft notification for revising the motor third party premium rates for the financial year 2023.

The proposed revision in motor third party premiums will take place after two years as the premium rates were not revised for FY21 and FY22 because of the pandemic.

According to the revised rates, private cars with 1,000 cubic capacity (cc) will attract rates of Rs 2,094. Similarly, private cars with 1,000 cc to 1,500 cc will attract rates of Rs 3,416 while above 1,500 cc private cars will see a premium of Rs 7,897. Two-wheelers over 150 cc but not exceeding 350 cc will attract a premium of Rs 1,366 and for two-wheelers over 350 cc the revised premium is Rs 2,804.

For public goods carrying commercial vehicles, the premium will range from Rs 16,049 to Rs 44,242 depending on the gross vehicle weight while for the private ones the premium will range from Rs 8,510 to Rs 25,038.

Further, the draft notification has proposed a 15 per cent discount for electric private cars, electric two wheelers, electric goods carrying commercial vehicles and electric passenger carrying vehicles. The proposed discount is expected to incentivise usage of environmentally friendly vehicles. Electric private cars will attract a premium of Rs 1,780 to Rs 6,712 depending on their capacity expressed in kilowatts. Similarly, two-wheeler electric vehicles will attract premiums in the range of Rs 457 to Rs 2,383. Further, hybrid electric vehicles will attract a discount of 7.5 per cent on the motor third party premiums.

The three-year single premium for new private cars and five-year single premium for new two-wheelers has also been revised and will attract premiums in the range of Rs 6,521 to Rs 24,596 and Rs 2,901 to Rs 15,117, respectively, depending on their cubic capacity.

The insurance executives are not very enthused with the proposed revision and termed it as a pro-policyholder move. The claims burden in the motor segment had gone down because of the pandemic but the increased claims on the health segment more than offset the dip in claims in the motor segment, an insurance executive said.

The insurance industry was expecting a decent increase from the regulators side after two years of no revision in premiums because there have been some court judgments, which have increased the claims severity on insurance companies.
Domestic passenger vehicle retail sales declined eight per cent in February as the companies continued to suffer production loss due to chip shortage, dealers' body FADA said on Friday.

The passenger vehicle (PV) sales dropped to 2,38,096 units last month, down 7.84 per cent from 2,58,337 units in February 2021.

"Even though the passenger vehicle (PV) segment saw some launches and slight respite in supply due to better production, it was not enough to meet customer demand. Vehicle waiting period thus remains similar to what it was in the past few months," FADA President Vinkesh Gulati stated.

The industry body warned that the Russia-Ukraine conflict could further impact the production of semiconductors.

"Russia is one of the largest producers of rare-earth metals, especially Palladium, which is an essential metal for semiconductors. Ukraine, on the other hand, is one of the biggest producer and exporter of neon gas, which is used in the manufacturing of semiconductors.

"Due to the ongoing war, we once again fear the shortage in semiconductors which will create additional supply side issues for PVs," the Federation of Dealers Associations (FADA) noted.

Two-wheeler sales last month declined 10.67 per cent to 9,83,358 units, compared with 11,00,754 units in February 2021. Gulati said rural distress coupled with a price rise has led to a drop in the sales in the segment.

"The two-wheeler segment is showing no signs of recovery as Bharat continues to play spoil-sport. With the cost of acquisition continuously going north, the inquiry level remained weak. As corporates and educational institutions continued operating from home, urban demand also took a hit," he stated.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Aviation veteran Sanjiv Kapoor will be the new chief executive officer of Jet Airways, said the airline on Friday.

Kapoor, who has previously worked as chief operating officer at and chief strategy and commercial officer at Vistara, resigned as president of Oberoi Hotels on Thursday, said the Economic Times.

stopped operations in April 2019. The Jalan-Kalrock consortium, comprising UAE-based entrepreneur Murari Lal Jalan and UK-based Kalrock Capital, was selected two years later to revive the airline.

Kapoor will join Jet on April 4. Earlier, the company appointed Sri Lankan Airlines chief Vipula Gunatileka as its chief financial officer.

"I am looking forward to getting back to aviation. Even though has been out of operation for three years, it still has a large fan base of loyal customers who miss it every day and can't wait for it to take to the skies again," PTI quoted Kapoor as saying.

"I always believe in investing in human capital and by having Sanjiv as the CEO and Vipula as the CFO, I am certain will reclaim its lost glory and surpass everyone's expectation," said Murari Lal Jalan, lead partner of the Jalan-Kalrock Consortium and proposed non-executive chairman of Jet Airways.
The Kalrock Jalan consortium is putting together a senior management team as it looks to revive .

On Friday the consortium announced the appointment of veteran Sanjiv Kapoor as its chief executive officer. Kapoor will take charge on April 4.

Kapoor is currently the president of Oberoi Hotels and Resorts. Prior to joining the Oberoi group, he was the chief strategy and commercial officer at Vistara, and oversaw strategy, marketing, network planning and other functions.

He led SpiceJet as its COO in 2014-15 implementing innovative pricing and marketing strategies. The period also saw the airline face a cash crunch amid high oil fares and led to a change in ownership. Kapoor left SpiceJet in 2016.

Last month the consortium appointed former Sri Lankan Airlines Chief Executive Officer Vipul Gunatilleka as the Jets chief financial officer.

I always believe in investing in human capital and by having Sanjiv as the and Vipula as the CFO, I am certain will reclaim its lost glory and surpass everyones expectation, Murari Lal Jalan, lead partner of the consortium and non executive chairman of Jet Airways, said.

Working together with a very strong team of experienced aviation professionals that is being put together by the Jalan-Kalrock Consortium, I look forward to leading the charge in rebuilding into the most preferred customer-oriented airline once again, a people-focused airline for the digital age, Kapoor said in a statement.
Now you can chat with a psychologist real-time from your workplace if you're distressed. National Program has launched a workplace initiative to provide evidence-based solutions to corporate organisations.

"The Workplace Mental Health Program provides for mental health counselling of employees of different organisations, webinars to create a culture of openness and acceptance about mental health in the organisations. A key feature of this initiative is the provision of additional real-time text chat support for individuals in distress, by a team of expert psychologists," said in a statement.

Globally, mental health conditions are amongst the leading causes of disability and distress. As per the WHO, approximately 280 million people in the world suffer from depression alone, and the mental health challenges experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic have only exacerbated the situation. The lack of awareness and access to care remain the most significant obstacles to mental health care.

Anil Vinayak, Group Chief Operating Officer, Healthcare at the event said, The unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic has brought a major shift in the work life balance over the last few years. It has been difficult for most individuals to create a balance between personal and professional lives and it has also aggravated the mental health of many. It is important that as organisations, we prioritise the mental health of the people. To identify, manage and treat mental health issues, mass awareness initiatives like this one is very crucial.

Samir Parikh, Director, Fortis National Mental Health Program said that through this initiative our team of psychologists offers tele-consultations and text support during psychological distress and the program offers counselling sessions and a 24x7 helpline in 14 Indian languages.
Junio, kid-focused digital payments and pocket money app, has raised $6 million in Pre-Series A funding round, led by UAE-based firm NB Ventures with significant participation from the Rajiv Dadlani Group .

The startup intends to utilise the freshly raised capital to bolster its team, roll out new product features, and scale up customer acquisition initiatives.

The brainchild of Shankar Nath and Ankit Gera, Junio aims to digitise pocket money for children and be the preferred digital payment option. The platform offers a smart card that enables kids to make offline and online purchases. The New Delhi-based startups goal is to nurture discipline and awareness in children about how to manage money, in a fun and practical way. Parents have visibility to the spending patterns of their children, and can guide towards early lessons in money management.

Speaking on the development, Ankit Gera and Shankar Nath, co-Founders of Junio said, We have seen huge adoption of our app ever since we launched it last year. There is a strong acceptance among the parent-children community. We are now in the process of introducing new and exciting features while focusing on developing a user-friendly product. We are delighted to have our new investors on board, and thank them for their support.

Neelesh Bhatnagar of NB Ventures said, Shankar and Ankit have handled digital payments at scale earlier, and we are very impressed by the traction that Junio has been able to garner in a short time. Junio will cultivate a habit of digital payments among young children and create less dependence on cash. The scope for digital payments by children is immense, and we have barely scraped the surface. New, innovative use cases will emerge and Junio, with their superior product and market understanding, is well poised to leverage this.

Pocket money is an age-old concept, and it has evolved over the years. Now, the Junio app is trying to revolutionize the sector by using technology and digitization. The pandemic has pushed us towards a cashless economy, and while pocketmoney and digital payment by kids are in their nascent stage in India right now, there is a huge potential. We are totally aligned with the vision of the team and happy to be a part of their journey, said Rajiv Dadlani

In 2021, Junio raised $2 million in funding from marquee angel investors such as Kunal Shah and Yashish Dahiya, Venture Catalysts, and family offices led by the Rajiv Dadlani Group.

Headquartered in Delhi, Junio has users spread across the length and breadth of the country. The core users are 10-16 year old children who have embraced all things digital.
'We believe that the lodgment of the complaint against the petitioners and continuity of the proceedings, is an abuse of process of law', the ...
Mutual trust boosts China-Serbia economic cooperation: PM Brnabic

Xinhua) 08:55, March 04, 2022

BELGRADE, March 3 (Xinhua) -- The trade between Serbia and China is getting stronger every day, showing the trust of Chinese companies in Serbia, Prime Minister Ana Brnabic said here on Thursday during the opening ceremony of the Chamber of Chinese Companies in Serbia.

The ceremony, which was also attended by representatives of the Chinese Embassy in Serbia and Chinese companies, was accompanied by an exhibition on environment protection and sustainable development.

In her address, Brnabic stressed the important role the new chamber will play in advancing the two countries' partnership.

"In a moment like this, the establishment of the chamber is a clear message that Chinese companies have trust in Serbia, in the political and economic stability of Serbia, and that they have the intention to invest more and further in our country," she said.

Praising the strengthening of economic cooperation between Serbia and China in recent years, she said that in 2021 bilateral trade exchanges were worth 5.3 billion euros (5.86 billion U.S. dollars), and that in the past five years the volume of Serbia's exports to China increased 15 times.

Song Sihai, director of HBIS Serbia, who became the president of the Chamber of Chinese Companies in the country, said that the new chamber could provide advice to Chinese companies interested in developing their business in Serbia.

He said that Chinese companies will benefit from this chamber through learning, support and the exchange of experiences, as well as by bringing the chamber's members and the local business circles closer to each other.

Tian Yishu, charge d'affaires of the Chinese Embassy, recalled that the excellent relations between the two countries promoted economic growth and the realization of numerous projects in fields of infrastructure, energy and production capacities, and that the volume of bilateral trade increased by 52.5 percent from 2020 to 2021 despite the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.

"All people present here are participants and promoters of China-Serbia economic cooperation, and I believe that through cooperation of institutions for promotion of investments, and through mutual cooperation between Chinese and Serbian companies, economic and trade cooperation can be raised to an even higher level," he said.

(Web editor: Xia Peiyao, Liang Jun)
Williamsburg  When the owners of The Cheese Shop in Williamsburg announced in December they would be putting sandwich-making on hiatus, fans of the boutique eatery went to extraordinary lengths to show their love.

That outpouring was a heartening reminder of the support the shop has enjoyed in the community after 50 years in business, say members of the Power family, who own and operate The Cheese Shop along with the Fat Canary, Downstairs at Fat Canary and the Wine Cellar.

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But the adoration did little to solve the wider problems that led to the decision to put sandwich-making on hold. The staff of The Cheese Shop is continuing to adjust to the long-term realities of conducting business in the wake of the pandemic, dealing with a short staff while trying to come up with ways to keep customers coming in.

The day after news broke that sandwich-making would pause, patrons stood in line upwards of 45 minutes to snag last-minute, made-to-order sandwiches at the sandwich counter. Fans came from as far away as New Jersey. Even national news publications came calling.

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[ Family behind Cheese Shop marks 50 years in business. The bad news: Sandwich-making is going away until further notice. ]

It made us feel very loved, said Mary Ellen Power Rogers, who runs the family businesses with her sister, Cathy Power Pattisall, and brother Tom Power, Jr.

While business at The Cheese Shop had been doing very well in the waning months of 2021, according to the Power family, the decision to pause sandwich-making was based on the low number of staff, with no prospects for new hires. Trying to keep all the parts of the business running with so few hands on deck was neither safe nor healthy, according to the Powers.

After the sandwich counter stopped taking orders, however, the staff was able to pivot to keep patrons fed. Within a couple days, employees were bundling and selling all the ingredients for make-your-own sandwiches. They also emphasized the wide range of the shops other offerings  cheese plates, soups and stews to go, for example.

We never want people to go hungry, Cathy Power Pattisall said.

People were disappointed, but understood the decision. Addison Snyder, a school counselor at Lafayette High School, has been a fan of The Cheese Shop for more than 15 years, beginning when she was a student at the College of William & Mary.

The Cheese Shop sandwich was part of Snyders weekly college routine and her affection for the sandwich  and especially the house dressing  followed her into professional life. That included a move to Texas and a return to the Historic Triangle. She even put The Cheese Shops name on her license plate.

Snyder said that she enjoys the laid-back atmosphere of The Cheese Shop, where townies, tourists and college students mingle side-by-side, all to appreciate good food. But if theres not enough people to pull that off, Snyder agreed, something has to give.

Every business, every school is feeling that lack of personnel because of the pandemic, Snyder said. They were doing their due diligence to not burn out employees.

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Although the sandwich decision generated a lot of buzz, customers continued to drop in. Business remains brisk.

Year 51 is starting off great, Pattisall said.

Staff has since begun offering some types of their classic sandwiches, such as turkey and Swiss and baked ham and provolone, made daily and available for sale in a refrigerated display. At least between the hours of 11 a.m. and 5 p.m., Pattisall said, you can always get a sandwich at The Cheese Shop.

But while business is good, the underlying problem hasnt been resolved. A few applications only resulted in a few new positions  far short of the dozens the shop needed to resume business-as-usual.

There were critics who said that higher pay would help the Powers businesses retain employees, and Pattisall said that she read many of those comments. But she said that the issue is too complicated for a one-size-fits-all solution, and that treating employees well has been a family priority since The Cheese Shops earliest days. Many of the businesses employees stay for years, even decades, according to Pattisall, and not because theyre treated poorly.

If that was something keeping us from hiring people, we would react to that, she said.

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Instead, Pattisall said, there seems to be a wider reluctance among potential job seekers to be public-facing.

Williamsburg Area Restaurant Association executive director Debi Schaefer said that most businesses in the hospitality industry are still shorthanded, and that its still too early to know if spring will usher in a rebound in applications.

But, Schaefer said, there are reasons for optimism, and local bright spots to acknowledge. Not a single WARA member restaurant closed during the pandemic. That accounts for over 100 restaurants, which is pretty amazing, she said.

Schaefer credits restaurateurs resilience and creativity in helping them navigate the pandemic no matter what obstacles they face.

The Cheese Shop employees continue to try to come up with novel ways to grab attention, such as a flyer listing numerous personal and professional benefits of employment under the headline, Are you feeling CHEESY? No KNEAD to WINE about it!

We dont know what the solution is, but were not giving up, Pattisall said.

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Meanwhile, the silver lining of the slower pace that the sandwich-making break afforded was more time to focus on areas of the business that needed a little more attention. For instance, the shop now has a daily social media presence, announcing pre-made sandwich specials and emphasizing other specialty foods and items of interest.

The current challenges remind Rogers of something her late father Thomas Power used to say when diners would come into their restaurant to celebrate an anniversary.

If it was a couples 50th anniversary, hed smile and say, The first 50 years were the easiest,  Rogers said. Thats how I feel with us. Maybe our first 50 years were the easiest.
(RIL) announced the opening of the countrys largest business, commerce and cultural destination  the Jio World Centre  spread across 18.5 acres at Bandra Kurla Complex in Mumbai.

The initial launches are the Dhirubhai Ambani Square, the musical Fountain of Joy and The Jio World Convention Centre. The Jio World Centre will have a phase-wise opening over the course of the current and the next year, RIL said in a release.

The Jio World Centre will include a cultural centre, a musical fountain, an upscale retail experience, a curated selection of cafes and fine dining restaurants, serviced apartments and offices, and the convention facility.

Nita Ambani was quoted as saying in the release, Jio World Centre is a tribute to our glorious nation and a reflection of the aspirations of New India. From the largest conventions to cultural experiences to path breaking retail and dining facilities, Jio World Centre is envisioned as Mumbais new landmark, a point where we come together to script the next chapter of Indias growth story.

Over 250 teachers from BMC schools and other schools across Mumbai were invited to attend the opening show.
Sachin Bansal-backed Navi (MF) on Friday announced the appointment of Hari Shyamsunder as the chief executive officer (CEO) of the fund house. He will take over from Saurabh Jain who resigned from his current role on February 28.

Shyamsunder is currently the fund manager of Navi asset management company (AMC). While Jain will be moving to another role within the Navi Group where he will lead a new business vertical. Jain is also part of Securities and Exchange Board of Indias (Sebi) advisory committee on MFs.

According to the press release issued by the company, Shyamsunder brings more than 16 years of work experience, with 12 of those years being in the asset management industry. He joined Navi AMC Limited in 2021 after over a decade at Franklin Templeton where he was a co-portfolio manager and research analyst. He is a CFA Charterholder and has a PGDM from IIM Bangalore.

Sachin Bansal, co-founder of the Navi Group said, I am looking forward to Hari taking charge and continuing the exciting journey of Navi AMC. He is a industry veteran with a proven track record in portfolio handling and research. I am confident that Hari will further strengthen our business.

Navi MF has largely focused on offering low-cost passive funds in the last few months. Navi MF had acquired assets of Essel MF in 2021. The data from Association of Mutual Funds in India (Amfi) shows that Navi MF has assets of ~929.59 crore as of December quarter.
Global steel giant has stopped production at its Kryvyi Rih facility in amid the ongoing conflict between the eastern European country and Russia.



In a statement, ArcelorMittal, which is owned by Indian-origin industrialist Lakshmi N Mittal, said "the decision to idle its steelmaking operations in Kryvyi Rih, (has been taken) in order to ensure the safety and security of our people and assets."



The company has been evaluating the situation on a daily basis and production had previously been reduced with the plant operating at a technical minimum (approximately one-third of its normal production levels), the company said in the statement issued on Thursday.The steelmaker further said it is deeply concerned about the situation in and the threat to its employees and the entire Ukrainian population.Luxembourg-headquartered is the world's leading steel and mining company, with a presence in 60 countries.In India, the company runs a steel plant in Hazira, Gujarat in a joint venture with Japan-based Nippon Steel.

(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.)
Haryana Chief Minister on Friday said the anti-conversion Bill introduced by his government in the Vidhan Sabha aimed at maintaining communal harmony and not to divide society.

The state government on Friday introduced the Haryana Prevention of Unlawful Conversion of Religion Bill, 2022, against religious conversion through force, undue influence or allurement, triggering vociferous opposition from the Congress.

"In the past a few days, many incidents have been reported in Yamunanagar, Panipat, Faridabad, Gurugram and Nuh, wherein forced conversions were done by allurement, fake promises of taking abroad, expanding business and running away from home. Such incidents have become a matter of great concern," said the CM in a statement here.

"FIRs have also been registered in many cases. Such incidents are happening all over the country and different states have made their own laws to stop such incidents," said Khattar.

He said the Bill does not bar a person from willful conversion, provided that such person has to submit an application before the District Magistrate one month in advance.

Although the provisions in the Indian Penal Code too call for action against those involved in forced conversion, this does not provide complete solution to this problem, hence enactment of this law is the need of the hour, asserted Khattar.

If any complaint is received in older cases, then action will be taken in that as well, he said. The Bill prohibits religious conversions which are effected through misrepresentation, force, undue influence, coercion, allurement or by any fraudulent means, marriage or for marriage.

The Bill provides for declaring marriages, which were done solely for the purpose of conversion from one religion to another religion, null and void.

On students in Ukraine, Khattar said till now 1,815 students of Haryana have been identified.

So far 1,014 students have returned and 123 students are stuck in different cities of Ukraine. Besides, 599 students have reached Poland, Hungary and Slovakia borders and 20 students from Haryana are about to reach, he added.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Fourteen people were killed and another 10 seriously injured in a major blast that rocked a crowded locality in Bihar's district, pulling down a number of structures, the state police chief said on Friday.

The magnitude of the destruction in the incident caused Prime Minister Narendra Modi to sit up and take note.

The director general of police S K Singhal has blamed unregulated illegal firecracker business as being responsible for the explosion that took place in Kajwalichak locality falling under Tatarpur police station area.

The prime minister posted on his Twitter handle that he spoke to Chief Minister Nitish Kumar over phone, expressed anguish over the loss of lives, prayed for speedy recovery of those who were injured and took stock of the relief work being carried out at the site by the administration.

A statement from the chief minister's office said Kumar summoned chief secretary Amir Subhani and director general of police S K Singhal to get a detailed feedback and gave instructions for proper treatment of the injured and suitable action after a thorough investigation.

Later, Singhal addressed a press conference in Patna and said that the explosion had taken place half an hour before midnight on Thursday and after the debris was cleared after a nearly 10-hour-long effort.

The DGP also said that ten others who survived the blast and were pulled out from under the rubble. They are undergoing treatment at a hospital in .

He said searches conducted by the dog squad and forensic team has led to the recovery of a large quantity of material used in the manufacture of firecrackers, though it was found that none of the households in the area had a license.

It is the responsibility of the police station concerned to keep a check on such illegal and dangerous activities," Singhal said.

Accordingly, Tatarpur station house officer Sudhanshu Kumar has been held prima facie guilty of laxity and placed under suspension, said the DGP.

He said the blast had taken place inside the house of Leelavati Devi, a widow who lived there with other family members and was said to be involved in the manufacture of . All five occupants of the house, three of whom were women, have died.

The remaining deaths are of people living in adjoining buildings. These include Dhirendra Mandal, a neighbour of Leelavati Devi, who is said to have been involved in unlicensed firecracker business," he said.

Mandal had lost a brother in a similar blast that took place in 2002, a few days before Deepawali, which claimed altogether four lives, Singhal added.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
on Friday recorded 153 new cases of that raised the tally of infections to 10,39,745, while the toll stood at 10,732, as no fresh fatalities were reported, an official from the state health department said.

At least 515 patients were discharged from hospitals during the day, taking the count of recoveries to 10,27,142, he said



The central state is now left with 1,871 active cases, he said, adding that the positivity rate remained at 0.4 per on the second consecutive day on Friday.

Bhopal and Indore, the two worst coronavirus-hit cities of Madhya Pradesh, registered 26 and 17 cases respectively, in the last 24 hours, the official said.

With the addition of 32,524 swab samples examined during the day, the number of tests conducted in the state has gone up to 2,80,63,684, he added.

As per a government release, 11,38,79,308 COVID-19 vaccine doses have been administered so far in the state, including 40,366 jabs given on Friday.

figures in MP are as follows: Total cases 10,39,745, new cases 153, death toll 10,732, recoveries 10,27,142, active cases 1,871, number of tests so far 2,80,63,684.

(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 2022, which was proposed to be held in Gujarat's Gandhinagar from March 10-March 14, has been postponed, the spokesperson said on Friday. The announcement comes at a time when the Russia-Ukraine conflict is escalating.



The 12th edition of the prestigious biennial defence exhibition was postponed due to logistics problems being experienced by participants, the Ministry said, adding that the new dates will be announced 'in due course.'

The MoD had said on February 22 that as many as 973 exhibitors, including 121 foreign exhibitors from 63 countries, had registered for Asia's largest exhibition on land, naval and homeland security systems.

"Over 900 companies, including over 100 foreign firms, have confirmed their participation. We expect the number to go beyond 1,000," an official said last month while adding, 'we expect around 250 MoUs to be firmed up at the four-day event'.

According to officials, the main idea behind the four-day event was to showcase how India's policy intervention actually led to a success story in defence manufacturing.

Over 50 delegations to be led by either defence ministers or service chiefs were expected to attend the Defexpo 2022.



Prime Minister Narendra Modi was scheduled to inaugurate the .
on Friday reported 302 fresh COVID-19 cases and four deaths, while the positivity rate stood at 0.63 per cent, according to data shared by the city health department.

With this, the national capital's case count increased to 18,61,189, while the death toll mounted to 26,134, the latest health bulletin stated.

The number of COVID-19 tests conducted a day ago stood at 47,738, it said.

had on Thursday recorded 326 cases with a positivity rate of 0.77 per cent, and three deaths.

The number of daily cases in has been on the decline after touching the record high of 28,867 on January 13. The city had recorded a positivity rate of 30.6 per cent on January 14, the highest during the ongoing wave of the pandemic.

Amid the decline in daily cases of COVID-19 in Delhi, the number of patients under home isolation has significantly fallen in the last few weeks.

The total number of home isolation cases as on February 1 had stood at 12,312, and it dipped to 1,080 on March 4.

The number of containment zones, which were also slowly falling in this period, registered a dip in its count to 4,236 on March 4, according to official figures shared by the health department.

The surge in Covid cases in Delhi during the third wave of the pandemic was largely due to the variant of the virus which is highly transmissible.

There are 10,771 beds for Covid patients in Delhi hospitals and 130 (1.21 per cent) of them are occupied.

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will soon start operating from Uttarlai Air Force Station in Barmer near the border, a senior official said on Friday.

Ministry of Defence has granted sanction to the Airport Authority of India (AAI) to operate air services from the runway of the Uttarlai Air Force Station, Defence Estate Officer Abhinav Singh said.

After Jodhpur Air Force Station, this will be the second airbase in Western Sector to allow the operation of civil from its runway.

The airbase played an important role in the Indo- war. The squadron of upgraded MiG-21 Bison is deployed here.

Defence Estate Officer Singh said that land measuring 4,568 sqm would be given to the AAI on the annual lease of Rs 10,670 in the air force station as per the Memorandum of Understanding to be signed between the IAF and AAI.

"Besides this land, a parcel of 7.1 bighas between the adjacent railway line and air force station has already been allotted to the AAI for construction of a terminal for the airport," said Singh.

The permission is in pursuance of the regional connectivity scheme 'UDAN' introduced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in April 2017 with the objective of expanding air services in the country and making them economic.

The AAI had expressed its intention to operate civil flights from Uttarlai Air Force Station in 2018 keeping in view the growing importance of Barmer as a centre for crude production and its refining and generation of non-conventional energy.

While construction of the refinery and crude exploration by the oil exploration giant Cairn Energy is already in full swing in Barmer, many other companies are engaged in minerals, oil and gas exploration and solar and wind energy generation.

The Estate officer said that the sanction has been granted to the AAI for construction of temporary/minimum infrastructure on and near the defence land at/inside perimeter wall and between the railway line and air force station boundary wall without alienation/transfer of ownership of land.

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An Air India Express flight from Bucharest carrying 185 Indians stranded in landed in on Friday, an official said.

Union minister Raosaheb Danve welcomed the passengers as soon as the Air India Express Flight IX 1204 landed at 2 am.

This was the fourth evacuation flight to have landed in . Another flight, this one from Budapest, is likely to land in around 8 am on Friday, the official said.

Interacting with passengers, Danve said the evacuation operation will continue till all those stranded in war-torn are brought back to India.

Ukraine's airspace is shut since February 24 and India has been evacuating its citizens by special flights from that country's western neighbours like Romania, Hungary and Poland.

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Autorickshaw driver and owner unions on Thursday staged a protest in front of the Telangana Road Transport Authority commissionerate demanding that more three-wheelers be allowed to operate in the GHMC jurisdiction. (Representational Image/ DC File)

Hyderabad: Amid speculation that fuel prices would be increased because of rising cost of crude oil, the state-owned public transporter TS Road Transport Corporation is lobbying for permission to increase ticket fares.

RTC has cumulative losses of about `2,000 crore, and is sliding further into the red every day. The corporation had sought permission from the government for a fare hike six months ago but has not got a reply.

The TSRTC had increased its ticket prices in 2020, and before that in 2016.

The RTC runs about 10,000 buses, and every small increase in the diesel price costs it heavily.

Venketeshwarlu Veerla, executive director. RTC-Greater Hyderabad, said, Within the city limits, there are 3,100 buses. The RTC covers 8.5 lakh route kilometres and consumes 1.4 lakh litres of diesel a day. Every Rs 1 increase in the diesel price will cost the RTC Rs 5 crore in the city alone, V.C. Sajjanar, Managing Director, TSRTC, said, We have sent a recommendation to the government to increase the ticket prices, considering the abnormal increase in the cost of fuel and spare parts. That proposal is pending for the past few months

He said if the fuel prices are increased further it would lay a greater burden on the corporation and therefore there was a need to hike the fare.

Auto unions for Rs 40 min. fare

Autorickshaw driver and owner unions on Thursday staged a protest in front of the Telangana Road Transport Authority commissionerate demanding that more three-wheelers be allowed to operate in the GHMC jurisdiction.

The unions joint action committee (JAC) also demanded that the minimum fare be doubled to Rs 40.

They wanted that around 1.4 lakh vehicles be allowed from the present one lakh that operate in the corporation limits.

Later, JAC members submitted a representation to RTA officials seeking implementation of their demands.
India on Friday abstained in a vote in the UN Human Rights Council that has decided to urgently establish an independent international commission of inquiry as a result of Russia's aggression against Ukraine.

The 47-member Council voted on a draft resolution on the situation of human rights in Ukraine. The resolution was adopted with 32 votes in favour, two against (Russia and Eritrea) and 13 abstentions, including India, China, Pakistan, Sudan and Venezuela.

The countries voting in favour included France, Germany, Japan, Nepal, UAE, UK and the US.

"The Human Rights Council has decided to urgently establish an independent international commission of inquiry as a result of Russia's aggression against Ukraine, the Council tweeted.

India has abstained on two resolutions on Ukraine in the 15-nation Security Council and one in the 193-member General Assembly in the last one week.

The UN General Assembly this week overwhelmingly voted to condemn Russian aggression against Ukraine and demanded that Moscow completely and unconditionally withdraw all of its military forces from the territory of Ukraine.

India abstained on the resolution, which received 141 votes in favour, five against and a total of 35 abstentions.

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India on Friday sought ceasefire by Russian and Ukrainian troops in eastern for evacuation of Indian citizens stuck in conflict zones and said it is yet to see the implementation of the decision by the two sides to create safe corridors for the exit of the civilians.

Arindam Bagchi, the spokesperson of the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA), said that around 300 Indians are stranded in Kharkiv and 700 are in Sumy while some citizens out of over 900 are being taken out of Pisochyn in five buses.

At a media briefing, he said India is primarily focusing on evacuating its nationals out of the conflict zones in eastern including from Kharkiv and Sum, adding that the total number of Indians stuck in could be roughly in the range of 2,000 to 3,000.

Asked about Russian President Vladimir Putin's comments Thursday that some Indians are being held hostage by Ukrainian forces, the MEA spokesperson once again rejected the claim saying India does not have any such information or reports.

On Thursday too, Bagchi rejected claims by both Russia and Ukraine that Indian students are being held hostage in Kharkiv.

In the briefing, he also said that India has evacuated one Bangladeshi as part of its mission to bring back the stranded Indians.

Bagchi said India was in touch with all parties concerned on the evacuation of the Indians and sought a "local ceasefire" in the conflict zones to get them out of the areas witnessing fighting and violence.

The spokesperson also said that India has not seen any movement after it emerged that Russia and Ukraine on Thursday agreed to the need for the creation of humanitarian corridors to help civilians leave the conflict zones.

"We have not seen anything further to that in terms of implementation of the same on the ground. We are closely and eagerly monitoring that," he said.

"If that happens, it will certainly help our process. We have been asking for a cessation of hostilities by both sides. Local ceasefire or whatever works to get our people out of the conflict zones," Bagchi said.

Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said after talks between Russia and Ukraine that the two sides reached an understanding to establish safe corridors for civilians.

Asked about reports that Russian reports that Moscow has arranged 130 buses for evacuation of Indians from eastern Ukrainian cities, Bagchi said the buses are around 50-60 km away from where the students are.

"They are frankly too far away. We do not see a safe and secure way to reach them. I would appeal and urge the parties concerned to have a local ceasefire at least so that the students can go to the buses," he said.

On whether an IL-76 transport aircraft is being put on standby for evacuation of Indians from the Russian side, Bagchi, without giving a specific reply said, "all are in readiness".

"The core problem is how we get the students from where they are to the buses which are far away," he said.

Bagchi said around 20,000 Indians have left Ukraine's borders since India issued its first travel advisories in mid-February.

He said 15 flights landed in India as part of the evacuation mission during the last 24 hours, bringing back more than 3,000 nationals.

The spokesperson said 16 flights are scheduled for the next 24 hours to bring back the Indians from Romania, Hungary, Slovakia and Poland.

Over 10,300 Indians brought back in 48 flights under evacuation mission 'Operation Ganga' so far, he added.

The MEA spokesperson said India will continue with the operation till the last citizen is not taken out of Ukraine.

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The on Friday said there is no harm in the KCR-Soren meeting scheduled to be held later in the day, but it is cautious as it was unaware of the said move despite being an ally in the government.

Avinash Pande, General Secretary Incharge of said: "There is no harm in the meeting as Telangana Chief Minister K. Chandashekhar Rao has been with the UPA in the past and anybody who is trying to defeat the BJP is a good move, but there is writing on the wall that without no government in the centre could be formed."

Ironically, despite the Congress being a junior partner in the Hemant Soren-led government, it was not aware of the meeting. is meeting non-BJP and non-Congress chief ministers to prepare for the 2024 elections.

On Thursday, the Telangana CM met BJP MP Subramanian Swamy (who has been taking on Modi on a lot issues of late) and farmer leader Rakesh Tikait in the national capital. The three leaders discussed the current political situation in the country, party sources said.

Chandrashekhar Rao has lately intensified his efforts to take on the ruling BJP at the Centre. He has been reaching out to regional leaders in different states as part of his plans to forge an anti-BJP alliance at the national level.

As part of his exercise to reach out to political leaders in other parts of the country, had recently travelled to Mumbai where he met Maharashtra Chief Minister and Shiva Sena leader Uddhav Thackeray. He had also met NCP chief Sharad Pawar on that occasion.

With the BJP trying to emerge as an alternative to the ruling TRS in Telangana, relations between the two have taken a turn for the worse over the last few months.

--IANS

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Chief Minister K Chandrashekhar Rao who is currently camping in the national capital will proceed to Ranchi on Friday to fulfil his promise given to extend support to the families of jawans martyred in Galwan Valley clashes at the Chinese border, an official release said.

The release on Thursday night said will give the cheques for Rs 10 lakh each, to two martyrs' family members along with his counterpart Hemant Soren at his official residence at Ranchi.

The government had earlier extended support to Colonel Santosh Babu, belonged to Telangana, who was martyred in the Galwan clashes.

Rao then announced that the state government would extend help to 19 Army personnel who were martyred in the same clash.

In this backdrop, to keep the promise, the CM would go to and give the financial assistance to the kin of two jawans who were martyred, the release said.

will extend help to other jawans who were martyred at Galwan, as promised later after polls as there is model code of conduct in place in some of the states.

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Prime Minister on Friday spoke to Chief Minister on the blast and said that the administration has been engaged in relief and rescue operation.

Taking to Twitter, he expressed grief at the deaths in the incident saying: "The news of loss of life due to an explosion in Bihar's is painful. I wish the injured a speedy recovery."

All possible assistance is being provided to the victims by the state administration, PM Modi said.

At least four people were killed and seven others injured in a powerful explosion at a building in Kajvalichak area under Tatarpur police station of district late on March 3 night.

The injured were rushed to the local Mayaganj hospital.

According to district officials, the blast took place during the making of illegal firecrackers which turned the three stories into rubble and damaged the adjoining buildings. The debris are being removed with the help of JCB machine.

The government has ordered an inquiry into the incident.

--IANS

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A court here on Friday granted interim protection from arrest till March 10 to Union minister and his MLA son Nitesh Rane, in a case wherein they are accused of making defamatory and misleading statements about Disha Salian, late actor Sushant Singh Rajput's former manager.

Fearing arrest in the case, the father-son duo filed an anticipatory bail before a Dindoshi sessions court in suburban Malad through their lawyer Satish Maneshinde.

As the matter came up for hearing, special public prosecutor Pradeep Gharat sought time to file their reply.

The court asked the police not to arrest them till the next date of hearing. It then adjourned the hearing in the matter till March 10.

Meanwhile, Mumbai police are likely to record the statements of the Ranes in the case on Saturday.

The police have issued notices against the BJP minister and his son under section 41A of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC), asking them to appear for recording their statements.

According to the FIR registered by suburban Malvani police, the remarks were made by the Union minister on February 19 in a press conference, where his son was also present. During the press conference, the minister had made certain claims regarding Salian's death.

The FIR was registered based on a complaint lodged by Disha's mother Vasanti Salian after she approached the Maharashtra State Women's Commission (MSWC) demanding action against Narayan Rane, Nitesh Rane and others for defaming the Salian family on various media platforms.

Salian had allegedly committed suicide by jumping from a high-rise in suburban Malad on June 8, 2020, six days before Rajput (34) was found hanging at his apartment in suburban Bandra.

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India's new ambassador to Pradeep Kumar Rawat has arrived in the country and is undergoing mandatory quarantine for the COVID-19, the Indian embassy here said on Friday.

"Ambassador-designate Shri Pradeep Kumar Rawat has reached and is currently undergoing mandatory quarantine, the embassy said in a tweet on Friday.

Rawat succeeds Vikram Misri.

An Indian Foreign Service (IFS) officer of the 1990 batch, Rawat was previously India's ambassador to the Netherlands.

Rawat's appointment comes in the midst of the lingering eastern Ladakh border standoff.

He has earlier served in Hong Kong and .

Rawat served as the ambassador of India to Indonesia and Timor-Leste from September 2017-December 2020. He speaks fluent Mandarin.

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There has been no dip in air-traffic at Goa's Dabolim International Airport in wake of the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine, airport director Gagan Malik said.

Malik told reporters late Thursday night that Air India had sought one more additional slot for a London-Goa flight.

"I do not see a difference in the air traffic, nor have my number of incoming passengers come down. If my incoming passengers have not dropped, then the outgoing passenger numbers will also not drop."

The Airport Authority of India official also said that flights operated by Russian charter group Rossiya Airlines, continued to fly to and from the .

"Rossiya is operating on approved slots. Today (Thursday) there was a charter from Russia in which more than 506 passengers had arrived and 489 passengers had departed. No slot has been cancelled by Rossiya. Domestic flights have peaked very well and it shows that we are heading for normalcy.

"Air India's frequency of its London flight is twice a week. They have requested an increaseAofAanother flight (slot) in one week. There will be three flights a week from Goa," Malik added.

Goa is one of the more popular inbound tourism destinations for Europe.

Russians top the number of foreign tourists contingents to the coastal state.

--IANS

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has so far administered over 2 crore precaution doses or the third vaccine shots among the eligible beneficiaries, Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya said on Friday.

Additionally, over 97 per cent of the country's adult population have also received their first dose of vaccine against Covid-19.

"Over two crore healthcare & frontline workers and citizens aged 60 years or above have received precaution doses", the minister tweeted.

He also requested the eligible beneficiaries to get their third shot at the earliest.

So far, the country has administered 2,03,69,898 precaution doses as on this morning. With the administration of over 24.84 lakh doses in the last 24 hours, the Covid-19 inoculation coverage has reached 178.29 crore. This has been achieved through 2,06,05,684 sessions, as per the Union Health Ministry data.

As many as 6,396 fresh Covid-19 cases were reported in the last 24 hours. In the same period, 201 Covid-related fatalities took the death toll to 5,14,589. The active Covid cases have further reduced to 69,897 which constitute 0.16 per cent of the country's total positive cases, as per the ministry report.

Meanwhile, the Health Minister welcomed the Indian students on their arrival from the war-torn Ukraine at Delhi airport in the morning.

He said that the students have shown amazing courage even in difficult situations. Every effort is being made by the PM Modi government for the safe evacuation of everyone.

--IANS

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Prime Minister on Friday chaired the fifth high-level meeting to review progress of the ongoing evacuation of Indians from Ukraine under Operation Ganga.

The meeting was attended by External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar, Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal, Security Advisor Ajit Doval, Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister P.K. Mishra, Cabinet Secretary Rajiv Gauba, Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla and senior officials of the external affairs ministry.

During the meeting, Jaishankar and Shrigla briefed Modi about the progress of the evacuation mission and informed him that over 18,000 Indians have been brought back since the initial advisories issued by the Indian Embassy in Kyiv were put out.

The Prime Minister was also briefed on the status of Indians, mostly stuck in Odessa and Sumi areas close to the Russian border and discussed the possible ways for their safe evacuation. Sumi is located close to the Russian border and a gunfight is going on there.

Modi is chairing meetings almost every day since Sunday evening to discuss the evacuation despite his election campaigns in Uttar Pradesh.

The evacuation process was ramped up soon after the four Union Ministers went to the neighbouring countries of Ukraine to oversee Operation Ganga.

Meanwhile, the officials in the Indian mission in Slovakia have also identified a new checkpoint at Vysne Nemecke, which is close to the Uzhhorod in Ukraine. The Union Minister Kiren Rijiju personally visited the site to see the arrangement made there for the Indian students who have been advised to get into Slovakia instead of going to Budapest in Hungary.

Rijiju also received a group of the Indian nationals, mostly students on Thursday evening and they will depart for during the day.

--IANS

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Hyderabad: State Congress president A. Revanth Reddy on Thursday demanded an inquiry into the permissions granted by the Hyderabad Metropolitan Development Authority and TS Real Estate Regulatory Authority (RERA) and land allotments made by the TS Industrial and Infrastructure Corporation headed by IAS officers hailing from Bihar, Somesh Kumar, Arvind Kumar and Jayesh Ranjan.

Continuing his attack of the last couple of days, Revanth Reddy wrote an open letter to Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao to express his objections to the postings of all-India services (AIS) officers.

Of the 157 IAS and 139 IPS officers in Telangana state, only Bihar native officials were getting plum postings, he alleged. This when one of the main aspirations behind the formation of Telangana state was self-rule.

Despite this, Revanth Reddy wrote, the state was still in the clutches of the rule of outsiders. Reminding the CM of his statement in a TV interview in 2008 that his ancestors came to the state from Bihar, Revanth Reddy told Chandrashekar Rao that he had handed over the administration to officers from Bihar.

He said the people would not take kindly to the presence of Bihar AIS officers around the CM. He asked the CM for the reasons for his behind his dependence on officials from Bihar, despite the presence of several officers from the state.

He asked why the CM had appointed officers from Bihar as Chief Secretary and Director General of Police continued them there for long periods of time.

Revanth Reddy reeled out the names of the IAS officers hailing from Bihar  Somesh Kumar, Rajat Kumar, Arvind Kumar, Sandeep Kumar Sultania, Jayesh Ranjan, Neetu Kumar Prasad and IPS officer Anjani Kumar.

The state Congress chief said that DGP M. Mahendar Reddy had issued a press release to rebut his claims only under pressure from the TRS leadership. Mahendar Reddy did not disclose medical reports of his fracture when went on medical leave giving charge to Anjani Kumar, he said.

Revanth Reddy said the AIS Officers Association is also led by Bihari babus and they condemned our statements. He said Telangana state was carved out to involve local intellectuals in the administration, but this was ignored, he said. Employees associations are also favouring the government, Revanth Reddy alleged.
Prime Minister on Friday urged households to set up solar trees to meet the increasing energy demand of India, and contribute to saving up to 15 per cent for every house.

Addressing a post-budget webinar on 'Energy for Sustainable Growth' he also said that four pilot projects for coal gasification and conversion of coal into chemicals required for the industry will be set up to evolve the technical and financial viability of transitioning to renewable energy.

PM Modi said, "With the coming years, India's energy demands will increase, therefore, we must transition to renewable energy."

"Every household should develop its own solar tree that can contribute to saving up to 15 per cent of that house. It will not only be unique but will be environment-friendly," he added.

Further, he said that the seminar intends to focus on the implementation of the new budget schemes and to chalk out ways through which the execution that is effective and concrete can begin.

"We have to focus on the seamless implementation of the Budget to benefit the masses. These seminars are designed for industries to come up with innovative solutions that can give optimum outcomes of this year's budget," PM Modi said.

Referring to India's COP26 goals of achieving the NetZero target by 2030, the Prime Minister said that he considers it as an opportunity and not a challenge.

"By 2030, India has set the target of extracting 50 per cent of its energy from non-fossil fuels. It is our opportunity to shift to more sustainable practices. We need to focus on building a hydrogen ecosystem in which the private sector can play a pivotal role," he said.

PM Modi further said the Union Budget 2022-23 has drawn a special focus on Battery Swapping Policy that can scale India's energy efficiency capabilities.

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India is primarily focusing on evacuating its nationals from the conflict zones of Kharkiv and Sumy in eastern Ukraine, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said on Friday.

spokesperson Arindam Bagchi said that around 300 Indians are stuck in Kharkiv and 700 are in Sumy.

At a media briefing, he said a local ceasefire would help in the evacuation of the Indians and that New Delhi is urging both the Russian and Ukrainian sides to find ways for their safe passage from the conflict zones.

"Our primary focus is to get Indian students out of conflict zones in eastern Ukraine," he said.

Bagchi said around 20,000 Indians have left Ukraine's borders since India issued its first travel advisories in mid-February.

He said 15 flights landed in India as part of the evacuation mission during last 24 hours, bringing back more than 3,000 nationals.

The spokesperson said 16 flights are scheduled for the next 24 hours.

Over 10,300 Indians brought back in 48 flights under 'Operation Ganga' so far, he added.

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Law Minister who is overseeing the evacuation of Indians from war-hit through on Friday called on the prime minister of the Slovak Republic.

The Indian embassy in tweeted about the meeting.

Rijiju is among the four Union ministers sent by Prime Minister Narendra Modi as his special envoys to Ukraine's neighbouring countries as part of the Operation Ganga to evacuate Indian nationals.

"Hon'ble Minister called on Prime Minister Eduard Heger of the Slovak Republic and conveyed Prime Minister Narendra Modi's message, and expressed gratitude for the help extended in evacuating back to India the Indian nationals who have come from Ukraine," the embassy tweeted.

The other ministers who are in the region are Gen V K Singh (retd), Hardeep Singh Puri and Jyotiraditya Scindia.

Over 10,300 Indians have been brought back from in 48 flights under 'Operation Ganga' since Russia launched a military offensive.

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In the wake of Russia's attack on the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Plant in Ukraine, India on Friday cautioned that any accident involving nuclear facilities may have severe consequences for public health and the environment, while asserting that the "must acknowledge" the pressing humanitarian crisis confronting Ukraine.

"India attaches the highest importance to ensuring safety and security of nuclear facilities as any accident involving the nuclear facilities may have severe consequences for public health and the environment," India's Permanent Representative to the UN Ambassador T S Tirumurti told the .

The 15-nation Council held an emergency session, called by Albania, France, Ireland, Norway, the United Kingdom and the United States on Friday, following Russia's attack on the Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Plant in southeastern Ukraine.

Tirumurti said India continues to carefully follow the developments regarding the safety and security of Ukraine's nuclear power reactors and facilities and added that India accords the highest priority to the discharge by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) of its safeguards and monitoring activities, in accordance with its Statute in an effective, non-discriminatory and efficient manner.

"We have also noted the latest information available with regard to the nuclear power plants and facilities in Ukraine," including updates provided by the IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi on the current situation.

Tirumurti said while the Council discusses the nuclear dimension of an unfolding conflict, the UN body must acknowledge that there is a "pressing humanitarian crisis confronting us in Ukraine, where safety and security of innocent civilians including several thousand Indian nationals, in particular students are at stake."



He expressed hope that the second round of talks between Russia and Ukraine contributes to the immediate establishment of a safe humanitarian corridor.

Under-Secretary-General for Political and Peacebuilding Affairs Rosemary DiCarlo told the meeting that every effort should be taken to avoid a catastrophic nuclear incident.

"Military operations around nuclear sites and other critical civilian infrastructure are not only unacceptable but highly irresponsible. Ukraine knows only too well the devastation a major nuclear accident can cause. The Chernobyl disaster in 1986 stands as a lasting example of why it is vital to ensure all nuclear power plants have the highest standards of safety and security," DiCarlo said.

Tirumurti said it is regrettable that the situation in Ukraine has worsened further since the Security Council last convened on this matter last week.

Tirumurti reiterated that an immediate cessation of violence and end to all hostilities are essential.

He added that as reiterated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his conversations with global leaders, including of the Russian Federation and Ukraine, differences must be resolved through sustained dialogue and diplomacy.

"Commitment to the principles of the UN Charter, to international law and respect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all states are key principles in this regard.

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As the on Friday expressed concern for the lives of students caught in the middle of the conflict zone in Ukraine, the Centre said that government efforts have resulted in a swift evacuation of 17,000 Indians from Ukraine.

A bench of Chief Justice of India NV Ramana and Justices AS Bopanna and Hima Kohli suggests to the government to open helplines so the students or their families can communicate.

Attorney General of India KK Venugopal, appearing for Centre, apprised the bench that government efforts have resulted in the swift evacuation of 17,000 Indians from Ukraine and government is keen to swiftly evacuate the remaining around 7,000 Indian citizens.

The Prime Minister had a meeting with ministers to ensure the evacuation happens swiftly, added Venugopal.

The government of India is equally concerned as the is and is leaving no stone unturned to bring the citizens back, AG told the bench.

Please leave it to the government, AG said and cited the example of the government evacuating lakhs of Indians during the Kuwait war.

The bench said it was not saying a single word about Centre and appreciate the efforts but it's concerned about the stranded students.

During the hearing of plea seeking evacuation of stranded Indian medical students on Ukrain border, Attorney General said that he had conveyed the concerns expressed by the bench yesterday to PK Mishra, the Secretary to the Prime Minister's Office, who in turn conveyed the same to Union Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia, who is stationed in Romania to oversee the rescue operations.

Scindia contacted the petitioner student Fathima Ahana who was stranded at the Ukraine border and now have crossed over to Romania. She along with others will be brought back by a special flight to India tonight, AG added.

Yesterday, the apex court had asked AG to "use your good officers" to bring back the students from the conflict zone.

Today, the apex court also asked Attorney General to get instructions from the Centre about all the steps being taken to evacuate Indians stranded in Ukraine and the possibility of a helpline for parents etc.

CJI Ramana also said that it was unfortunate that humans have not learnt from the past horrors of war.

"It's unfortunate that we have not learnt from past mistakes and still resort to war. We dont have much say but there is anxiety about students," said the CJI.

The bench now listed the matter for hearing next Friday.

The petition filed by Ahana claimed that over 250 students stranded in Ukrain were stuck and trapped, looking for hope towards the government, not India.

Senior advocate AM Dar appearing for her yesterday said, "Students studying in Odessa Medical University, Ukraine are at the Romanian border and no flights are being operated. Only Poland and Hungary have flights. They are stranded in -7 degrees without food and water."

The plea has sought direction to the government to secure permission to cross the checkpoint in Moldova from Ukraine en route to Romania for boarding the Air India evacuation flight, and to immediately take effective diplomatic steps and measures for the evacuation of the Petitioner including other stranded students from Ukraine.

The bench also slammed advocate Vishal Tiwari for filing a PIL in the matter and asked if he was looking for publicity by taking advantage of the situation.

The CJI told Tiwari that he has seen from the website that he has filed several PILs in the past which were dismissed with costs.

"If you want to do something, this isn't the way to file petitions with paper cuttings etc. You know this is a sensitive situation, we can't say anything, don't try to take advantage," the bench said.

He had filed the plea seeking directions for the protection of thousands of students and families who are stranded in Ukraine in wake of the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine.

(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.)
He wanted the doctor to authenticate his identity for his bank. An involuntary shaking of his hand muscles, a post-Covid symptom, had altered his signature to the extent that the bank was not accepting it. Some of the people who have recovered from Covid cannot hold the pen the way they could earlier, says O M Srivastava, co-director, infectious diseases, Sir H N Reliance Foundation Hospital, Mumbai. I have had requests from many to certify that I have ...

Dear Reader,

Business Standard has always strived hard to provide up-to-date information and commentary on developments that are of interest to you and have wider political and economic implications for the country and the world. Your encouragement and constant feedback on how to improve our offering have only made our resolve and commitment to these ideals stronger. Even during these difficult times arising out of Covid-19, we continue to remain committed to keeping you informed and updated with credible news, authoritative views and incisive commentary on topical issues of relevance.

We, however, have a request.



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Budget carrier India on Friday said it is operating an evacuation flight from Suceava city in to fly back stranded Indians from the war-hit .

India's maiden rescue flight under Operation Ganga, has departed from Suceava to Delhi carrying over 170 guests safely, the airline said on Friday.

"The flight departed to Delhi from Suceava at 6.30 pm (local time) and it is being operated via Dubai. it is expected to arrive in Delhi at 4.30 am (on Saturday), subject to OCC approval, an India spokesperson said.

The Bengaluru-headquartered carrier, in which Tata Group owns 83.6 per cent stake, and Malaysian airliner group AirAsia the rest 16.33 per cent, also said it is looking to operate few more evacuation flights.

"While there are other flights that are being planned, they are all subject to requirement of the External Affairs Ministry and can only be chartered a day in advance," he said.

India has been evacuating its citizens through special flights from Ukraine's western neighbours such as Romania, Hungary, Slovakia and Poland as the Ukrainian airspace has been shut since February 24 due to a Russian military offensive.

Apart from civilian flights, which have so far been operated by Air India, Air India Express, IndiGo, Go First and SpiceJet, Indian Air Force helping the government in bringing back the stranded Indians from .

According to the MEA, 15 flights landed in India during the past 24 hours, flying back 3,000 Indian nationals while 16 flights are scheduled for the next 24 hours.

(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.)
Indian Harjot Singh received bullet injuries while he was attempting to escape from the Ukrainian capital, and is currently in a Kyiv hospital, where he is said to be "out of danger".

Harjot's brother Prabhjot Singh, who resides in Delhi's Chhattarpur, told IANS: "The last conversation I had with Harjot was on February 26 at 9 p.m. I haven't spoken to him since then. On March 2, at night, he contacted the family and informed them about his injuries.

"He informed that he was hit by three to four bullets while he was trying to leave Kyiv. Local people took him to the hospital via ambulance and after four days, when he regained consciousness, he contacted the family with a doctor's cellphone," Prabhjot narrated.

"We also went to the embassy, gave them all the documents as Harjot has lost them when he was shot."

Harjot's family urged the government to evacuate him to Delhi as fast as possible for further treatment.

#WATCH "No support from the Indian embassy yet. I have been trying to get in touch with them, every day they say we will do something but no help yet," says Harjot Singh, an Indian who sustained multiple bullet injuries in war-torn Ukraine, receiving treatment at a Kyiv hospital pic.twitter.com/8oc9urO74s  ANI (@ANI) March 4, 2022

According to information, Harjot was trying to reach the border with his friends and was expected to catch a train from Kyiv and reach Lviv somehow. However, he and his companions were not "allowed" to sit in the train.

He was shot at when he and his friends were coming out of the station. Harjot could not identify who fired the shots.

--IANS

msk/shs

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
said it will operate 12 evacuation flights with over 2,600 Indians from war-torn Ukraine's neighbouring countries between Friday and Sunday.

India has been evacuating its citizens through special flights from Ukraine's western neighbours such as Romania, Hungary, Slovakia and Poland as the Ukrainian airspace has been shut since February 24 due to a Russian military offensive.

In a statement, said 42 evacuation flights with 9,200 Indians had been scheduled to operate between February 28 and March 6.

"We have already operated 30 flights bringing back more than 6,600 of our citizens till today," the airline's Chief Operating Officer Wolfgang Prock-Schauer said on Friday.

Twelve flights with over 2,600 Indians will be operated by India's largest airline between March 4 and March 6.

"We are humbled to fulfil our responsibility by operating more than 50 per cent of the flights under Operation Ganga and contribute towards the repatriation efforts by the Indian government," Prock-Schauer said.

IndiGo's flights are operating to India from Bucharest and Suceava in Romania, Budapest in Hungry, Rzeszow and Warsaw in Poland, and Kosice in Slovakia.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
India on Friday said remained the core focus of the even if the situation in was discussed at a meeting of the leaders of the coalition.

Leaders of the Prime Minister Narendra Modi, US President Joe Biden, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison and their Japanese counterpart Fumio Kishida held a virtual meeting on Thursday that saw a discussion on the crisis.

A joint readout released by the White House said the leaders discussed the ongoing conflict and humanitarian crisis in besides assessing its broader implications.

External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Arindam Bagchi said at a media briefing that it is natural for leaders, having such good rapport among themselves, to discuss topical issues when they meet.

As you saw from the readouts, Ukraine was discussed naturally. But let me just emphasise the remains the core focus of the Quad's agenda and you will see that coming in terms of positive activities, initiatives and efforts all four countries are making, he said.

Bagchi said the message at the meeting was very clear that although there is a crisis in Ukraine, all four countries were trying to take forward the agenda of the Quad that was firmed up at an in-person summit of the leaders of the coalition in Washington last September.

From our perspective, while of course there's a very serious situation...in Ukraine, it's not as though challenges in other parts of the world have vanished, he said.

In the Indo-Pacific, the challenge is there and the agenda that the leaders of these four countries have signed up to, that is... being at the core of the Quad's agenda is something that they want to push ahead with, he said.

In his remarks at the virtual meeting, Prime Minister called for a return to a path of dialogue and diplomacy in defusing the crisis in Ukraine.

They (Quad leaders) agreed to stand up a new humanitarian assistance and disaster relief mechanism which will enable the Quad to meet future humanitarian challenges in the Indo-Pacific and provide a channel for communication as they each address and respond to the crisis in Ukraine, the joint readout stated.

It said the Quad leaders agreed to meet in person in Tokyo in the coming months.

An Indian statement said, Developments in Ukraine were discussed in the meeting, including its humanitarian implications. The prime minister emphasised the need to return to a path of dialogue and diplomacy.

Modi underlined that the Quad must remain focused on its core objective of promoting peace, stability and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific region and he also reiterated the importance of adhering to the United Nations Charter, international law, and respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity, it 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.)
Ocugen Inc said on Friday US regulators have declined to issue an emergency use authorization (EUA) for Covaxin, the COVID-19 vaccine developed by its Indian partner Bharat Biotech, for use in individuals aged 2 to 18 years.



Shares of Ocugen slumped 30% premarket on the news.

Ocugen said it intends to continue working with the US Food and Drug Administration to evaluate the process for getting an EUA for pediatric use of Covaxin.

Ocugen had entered into a deal with vaccine maker Bharat Biotech in late 2020, under which it would develop, supply, and commercialize Covaxin for the U.S. market. Covaxin, which is not cleared for any age group in the United States, is one of the two most widely used COVID vaccines in India and also has an emergency use listing from the World Health Organization.

(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 around 20,000 Indian students already evacuated from Ukraine, the government reckons there are between 2,000 and 3,000 Indians left in the conflict-hit country and around 300 in Kharkiv where the heaviest fighting is on.

We will not rest until we have got the last one out. Evacuation flights will continue till every Indian is out from the country, said Arindam Bagchi, the spokesman for the .

He added that the government had appealed to both Russia and to cease fire for a short while and create humanitarian corridors so that all Indian citizens can leave.

An Indian student with gunshot injuries, Harjyot Singh, is in a hospital in Kharkiv. As soon as it is safe and he is in a position to be moved, he will be evacuated. The government will bear all his medical expenses. The embassy is yet to meet him as fighting is ongoing in the street, but he is safe in a hospital, Bagchi said.

When the conflict first broke out, around 20,000 Indians had registered with the Indian Embassy. However, Bagchi said not all in had registered and the number of students could be more.

In the past 24 hours, 18 flights have landed carrying 4,000 Indians. This brings the total number of flights operational as part of Operation Ganga to 48. Sixteen flights are waiting to leave with Indians aboard all around . These include four IAF craft.

The vast majority of Indians who have crossed the border from Ukraine will have returned by tomorrow (Saturday) this time. Flights will continue, Bagchi said.

He conceded that students still stranded in Sumy and Kharkiv in eastern Ukraine were facing a difficult situation. Social media is full of messages from these students who are facing a shortage of food and water. And while fighting was on so it was dangerous to move outdoors, efforts were on to negotiate a humanitarian corridor and a ceasefire for a few hours, he said.

However, the situation is unpredictable and smallest moves can involve extensive deliberation and delay. Bagchi said nearly 1,000 Indians were in a city called Pisochyn and five buses were contracted to take them out. But getting buses is easier said than done with petrol and vehicle shortages and also lack of drivers, with many unwilling to take Indian students when the buses were needed by armed forces on both sides. Bagchi said the government had noted the Russian offer of buses on the Russian side. But the road from East Ukraine to the Russian border was full of pitfalls and travel nearly 60 km to the buses was not feasible or advisable unless a ceasefire corridor was created.

We want a local ceasefire. Weve already told both sides: please lets have a ceasefire, Bagchi said.

More humanitarian aid  medicines and medical equipment  was flown to neighbouring countries in the expectation that these countries will carry it onwards into Ukraine if required. Bagchi said the intensity of calls for help from Ukraine was coming down. There have been 11,000 calls so far and 9,000 emails.

Bagchi said India had received calls for help from students from Bangladesh and Nepal and was committed to helping them as well. A Bangladeshi student has landed in Delhi and other calls will also be attended.
Dear Reader,

Business Standard has always strived hard to provide up-to-date information and commentary on developments that are of interest to you and have wider political and economic implications for the country and the world. Your encouragement and constant feedback on how to improve our offering have only made our resolve and commitment to these ideals stronger. Even during these difficult times arising out of Covid-19, we continue to remain committed to keeping you informed and updated with credible news, authoritative views and incisive commentary on topical issues of relevance.

We, however, have a request.



As we battle the economic impact of the pandemic, we need your support even more, so that we can continue to offer you more quality content. Our subscription model has seen an encouraging response from many of you, who have subscribed to our online content. More subscription to our online content can only help us achieve the goals of offering you even better and more relevant content. We believe in free, fair and credible journalism. Your support through more subscriptions can help us practise the journalism to which we are committed.



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Digital Editor
As war rages in Ukraine and Russian forces push deeper into that country, the effect is being felt in faraway Gujarat, where the Government of India has indefinitely put off DefExpo 2022  billed as Asia's largest exhibition on land, naval and homeland security systems that was scheduled to be held next week.

Taking attendees by surprise, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) announced on Friday: Due to logistics problems being experienced by participants, the DefExpo 2022 proposed to be held in Gandhinagar, from March 10thtill March 14th is postponed. The new dates will be communicated in due course.

MoD sources, speaking off the record, say the postponement has nothing to do with logistics problems. As recently as February 18, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh visited Gandhinagar to review the preparations for DefExpo 22. His satisfaction was evident from the fact that he extended the exhibition by a day, to allow the public to visit in larger numbers.

After Rajnaths visit, the MoD announced: The event is being organised as one of the largest defence international exhibitions of the world. There has been greater domestic and international interest in this 12th edition of DefExpo, since India relaxed its health protocols owing to the reduction in Covid-19 cases.

An upbeat defence minister said he expected the number of companies registering for DefExpo 22 to exceed 1,000 by the start of the show.

MoD sources are speculating that the postponement of DefExpo 22 could be an outcome of Americas unwillingness to participate in a military systems exposition that was also being attended by Russia at a time when the latter stands accused of unilateral military aggression against Ukraine.

MoD sources also cite the imprudence of tying up Indias military transport aircraft fleet  including the C-17 Globemaster III, Ilyushin -76 and C-130J Super Hercules  in administrative duties related to DefExpo 22 at a time when they may be needed for evacuating Indian citizens from a war zone.

While the MoD has so far announced only that DefExpo 22 has been postponed, and not cancelled, officials in Gandhinagar say it is most unlikely that all the meetings, seminars, press conferences and other events in a defence exposition could be rescheduled.

The participating defence companies and government entities have paid large sums of money for travel, accommodation, display areas and administrative expenses. These costs are unlikely to be reimbursed to us. Nor would we have the appetite for another round of expenses, said the chief executive of a foreign defence firm.
In the election year, the government on Friday presented a Rs 51,365-crore for the financial year 2022-23 against the 49,131-crore in 2021-22.

Chief Minister Jai Ram Thakur, who also holds the state's finance portfolio, presented the 2022-23 that saw more focus on the poor and social security.

The debt on is higher than the amount earmarked in the Budget for the next fiscal presented in the state's Assembly on Friday.

Soon after presenting the Budget, Thakur, responding to a media query, said debt burden on the state rose to Rs 63,200 crore from Rs 55,737 crore in the previous year.

Earlier, while presenting the Budget, the chief minister said Rs 11 would be spent on loan repayment and Rs 10 on interest payment out of every hundred rupees to be spent by the state government in 2022-23.

In this way, over one-fifth of the total Budget amount will be paid on loan repayment and interest payment.

In other words, the state government will use over Rs 10,786 crore on loan repayment and interest payment out of the total Rs 51,365-crore Budget in 2022-23.

No new tax has been proposed in the Budget, which saw an increase of Rs 2,234 crore from Rs 49,131 crore in 2021-22.

The increase was Rs 4,743 crore in 2020-21, from Rs 44,388 crore in 2019-20. The Budget was 41,440 crore in 2018-19.

According to the Budget 2022-23, out of every 100 rupees expenditure, Rs 26 will be spent on salaries, Rs 15 on pension, Rs 10 on interest payment, Rs 11 on loan repayment, Rs 9 for grants for autonomous bodies; while the remaining Rs 29 will be spent on other activities, including capital works.

The revenue receipts of 2022-23 are estimated at Rs 3,67,375 crore, whereas expenditure is likely to be Rs 40,278 crore -- leading to a revenue deficit of Rs 3,903 crore.

The fiscal deficit is estimated at Rs 9,602 crore for 2022-23, which is 4.98 per cent of the state's gross domestic product (GSDP).

Presenting the Budget 2022-23 in the state Assembly, Thakur on Friday announced to increase monthly old-age pension amount from Rs 1,001 to Rs 1,500.

In his fifth and last budget of the current government, the chief minister also announced to decrease the age limit from 70 years to 60 years for availing such pension, without any income limit.

Thakur also announced to increase the Member of Legislative Assembly Local Area Development Scheme (MLALAD) fund from the existing Rs 1.80 crore to Rs 2 crore.

The MLALAD fund has been increased by Rs 20 lakh in the Budget, which is the last one before the next Assembly elections scheduled to be held in December.

During his nearly three-hour address in the Assembly while tabling the 152-page Budget, Thakur stated that a total increase of Rs 90 lakh has been made in the MLALAD fund during his government.

The chief minister also announced to increase the discretionary grant for MLAs from Rs 10 lakh to Rs 12 lakh per annum for the next fiscal.

Thakur also announced a hike in pension for destitute women from Rs 1,000 to Rs 1,150; for those between 60 years and 79 years, increased from Rs 850 to Rs 1,100; and for those above 70 years and disabled, a jump from Rs 1,000 to Rs 1,700.

He said Rs 1,300 crore will be spent in the Budget on providing social security pension to 7.50 lakh eligible persons.

The chief minister hiked the grant given for widow remarriage from Rs 50,000 to Rs 75,000. He announced Rs 5 crore for creating livelihood for urban youth, while a Bill will be tabled in the Assembly for fixing eligibility criterion.

Cow cess on liquor will be increased by Rs 1 per bottle, he added.

On the health sector, the chief minister declared to create 500 new posts for doctors in the state.

Thakur announced that a provision would be made whereby the Himcare Card for availing free health services for various ailments will be required to be renewed after three years instead of every year.

Honorarium for Mayor, Deputy Mayor and councillors in municipal corporations has been increased from Rs 12,000 to Rs 15,000, from Rs 8,500 to Rs 10,000 and from Rs 5,050 to Rs 6,050 per month, respectively, he added.

Allocating Rs 8,412 crore for education, he announced that that Sardar Patel University in the Mandi district would start functioning from April 2022.

Four flying schools will be set up for imparting training to fly drones in Himachal Pradesh, he added.

Thakur also announced to construct 1000 new Anganwadi Bhawans in the state.

A total of 789 plans from NABARD worth Rs 3,200 crore was approved during the five-year tenure of the previous Congress government, whereas that during the current government stood at Rs 3,452 crore for 826 plans, he added.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
India's are estimated to increase 15.38 per cent year-on-year to 7.5 million tonnes (MT) in the current marketing year 2021-22, on likely rise in demand for the Indian sweetener amid the possibility of a global deficit, industry body said on Friday.

The country has physically exported 4.2 MT of sugar till February of the current marketing year, against the export contracts already undertaken for shipment of six million tonne, it said.

Sugar marketing year runs from October to September. India is the world's second-largest sugar producer after Brazil.

According to the Indian Sugar Mills Association (ISMA), "India will export 7.5 million tonne sugar in the current season, as against six million tonne estimated earlier."



Higher exports from India are possible as the International Sugar Organisation (ISO) in its report has indicated a global deficit of around 1.93 MT for the marketing year 2021-22 (October-September) and interest of exporters to buy more Indian sugar, it said.

Indian exporters are likely to ship another 1.2-1.3 MT in March, taking the total physical exports to 5.4-5.5 MT by then, it added.

Sharing the latest figures, said total production has reached 25.28 million tonne during the October-February period of the ongoing 2021-22 marketing year, up by 7.68 per cent from 23.48 million tonne of sugar in the year-ago period.

in Uttar Pradesh, the country's top sugar-producing state, remained lower at 6.86 million tonnes during the October-February period of this marketing year, as against 7.42 million tonnes in the year-ago period.

However, in Maharashtra, the country's second-largest producing state, rose to 9.71 million tonnes from 8.48 million tonnes; while that in Karnataka, the country's third-largest producing state, rose to 5.08 million tonnes from 4.08 million tonnes in the said period.

Sugar production reached 7,93,000 tonnes in Gujarat and 4,53,000 tonnes in Tamil Nadu till February of the ongoing marketing year. The remaining states collectively produced 2.37 million tonnes in the said period, said in a statement.

ISMA said sugarcane availability in Maharashtra and Karnataka is higher than what was expected earlier. As a result, the production estimate for Maharashtra and Karnataka has been revised upward for this year, while not much change is expected in other states including Uttar Pradesh.

Consequently, the country's total sugar production estimate has been revised higher at 33.3 million tonnes for 2021-22 marketing year, considering diversion of 3.4 million tonnes of sugar equivalent to ethanol, it added.

The country is estimated to have a closing stock of 6.8 million tonnes at the end of September 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.)
Chief Minister of Basavaraj Bommai on Friday said the estimated revenue deficit of Rs 14,699 crore in 2022-23 can be minimised if the Centre agrees to the request of the State to extend the GST (goods and services tax) compensation for the next three years in view of losses incurred due to the impact of COVID-19.

After presenting the Rs 2,65,720-crore budget of the State for 2022-23, he told reporters that it was revenue surplus but due to COVID-19 it has become revenue-deficit. In view of the increased expenditure commitments with the available resources, a revenue deficit of Rs 14,699 crore is estimated in 2022-23 compared to Rs 15,134 crore in 2021-22, said the Chief Minister.

He said the government did not take the GST component into account this year.

Bommai said the State used to get a of Rs 11,000 crore to 14,000 crore, which would stop from this year. The State would get a compensation of Rs 4,000 crore to Rs 5,000 crore till June but due to the constitutional amendment, payment of compensation, which was only for five years since 2017, would be stopped, he said. "We have appealed to the Centre to continue it further for at least three years keeping into account the COVID-19 year. The Centre has time till June. If Centre agrees, we can minimise our revenue deficit," said the Chief Minister.

According to Bommai, the union government had permitted borrowing up to four per cent of GSDP for 2021-22. The State had budgeted a borrowing of Rs.67,100 crore in 2021-22. However, the revenue increased and was expected to reach the budgetary targets."So, we have reduced the borrowing to Rs.63,100 crore for 2021-22 in the revised estimates," he said.

"We have budgeted total borrowings of Rs.72,000 crore for 2022-23," he said.

Bommai was confident of the State achieving the targeted excise revenue, GST revenue, non-tax revenue and stamp duty revenue for the current fiscal. However, meeting the estimated revenue from motor vehicles would not be possible as the vehicle production has come down, he added. Speaking about infrastructure, he said the State would build infrastructure for waterways. "Besides ports, railways, airports and roads, we are for the first time focusing on waterways," he said.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Maharashtra's revenue from residential registrations in FY22 is set to surpass its all-time high as the pace of buying properties is going up in the last two months, a realty consultant said on Friday.

The additional surcharge of 1 per cent on registrations from April 1, 2022 is making buyers advance their purchases, resulting in higher revenues for the exchequer, Group said in a report.

Within the first 11 months of FY22, the state has earned Rs 5,671 crore from registrations, which is 63 per cent higher than Rs 3,474 crore in FY21.

The heightened activity in property registrations will help surpass an all-time high revenue of Rs 5,878 crore observed in FY18, as per the report.

With a 27 per cent increase over January 2021, property registrations in were the best in February since the beginning of the pandemic, with 10,379 units being sold.

According to Prashant Thakur, head of research of the company, the last peak of property registration was attained in December 2020 when the state government reduced stamp duty to 2 per cent between September 2020 and December 2020.

"The state government's announcement that it will levy an additional surcharge of 1 per cent to the stamp duty on registration of properties from 1st April 2022 appears to have triggered a fresh wave of new registrations in the city. Buyers and fence-sitters are now trying to finalize deals before the overall transaction costs increase kicks in," it said.

The report also noted, "Registrations in March 2022 would likely exceed the current year's levels and establish a new record for 2022 - a year entirely bereft of stamp duty cuts."



The property consultant attributed the healthy rise to post-pandemic economic revival and an improvement in the employment scenario.

New hiring, restoration of jobs, and higher compensation by many companies have strengthened financial confidence, leading to an increase in housing demand, it added.

The area under office space in also increased by 28 per cent in 2021 compared to the year-ago period, it said, pointing out that the IT-ITeS and BFSI sectors dominated office space demand, accounting for over 40 per cent of absorption in 2021.

(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.)
Chief Minister announced no new tax proposal and increased the old-age pension to Rs 1,500 per month while bringing down the age limit to 60 years in the Rs 51,365-crore budget for 2022-23 presented in the Assembly on Friday.

The budget focuses on social security and the poor, the chief minister, who also holds the finance portfolio, told reporters after the presentation of the budget.

To a query, Thakur replied that the debt burden on the state rose to Rs 63,200 crore from Rs 55,737 crore in the previous year.

While presenting the budget, the chief minister said that out of every 100 rupees to be spent by the state in 2022-23, Rs 11 would be on loan repayment and Rs 10 on interest payment.

In this way, over one-fifth of the total budget amount will be paid on loan repayment and interest payment. The state government will use over Rs 10,786 crore on loan repayment and interest payment out of the total Rs 51,365 crore budget in 2022-23.

No new tax has been proposed in the budget which saw an increase of Rs 2,234 crore from Rs 49,131 crore in 2021-22. The increase was Rs 4,743 crore in 2020-21 from Rs 44,388 crore in 2019-20.

According to the budget of 2022-23, out of every 100 rupees, Rs 26 on salary, Rs 15 on pension, Rs 10 on interest payment, Rs 11 on loan repayment, Rs 9 for grants for autonomous bodies while the remaining Rs 29 will be spent on other activities including capital works.

The revenue receipts of 2022-23 are estimated at Rs 36,737 crore, whereas expenditure is likely to be Rs 40,278 crore -- leading to a revenue deficit of Rs 3,903 crore.

The fiscal deficit is estimated at Rs 9,602 crore for 2022-23, which is 4.98 per cent of state's gross domestic product (GSDP).

Presenting the Budget 2022-23 in the state Assembly, Himachal Thakur announced increasing old age social security pension from Rs 1,001 to Rs 1,500.

Presenting his fifth and the last budget of the current government, Thakur announced to decrease the age limit for availing such pension without any income limit from 70 years to 60 years.

The chief minister, however, rejected the notion that the decision has been taken in view of the forthcoming elections later this year.

The state government focussed on the social security since its first cabinet meeting four years ago when it had reduced the age limit for old-age pension from 80 years to 70 years, he replied to a query.

The chief minister accompanied by chief secretary Ram Subhag Singh and additional chief secretary Prabodh Saxena further told reporters that the state had got over Rs 600 crore more as its share in the central taxes in the current fiscal. Over Rs 13,000 crore increase which amounts to 15 per cent is expected as share in the central taxes in the next fiscal, he added.

Thakur further announced to increase the Member of Legislative Assembly Local Area Development Scheme (MLALAD) fund from the existing Rs 1.80 crore to Rs 2 crores.

The MLALAD fund has been increased by Rs. 20 lakh in the last budget before the next Assembly elections scheduled to be held in December.

In his nearly three-hour address in the Assembly while tabling the 152-page budget document, Thakur stated that a total of Rs. 90 lakh increase had been made in the MLALAD fund during his government.

The chief minister also announced to increase the discretionary grant for MLAs from 10 lakh to 12 lakh per annum for the next fiscal.

Thakur announced hike in pension of destitute women from Rs 1,000 to Rs 1,150, for those between 60 to 79 years up from Rs 850 to Rs 1,100 and for those above 70 years and disabled from Rs 1,000 to Rs 1,700. He said Rs 1,300 crore would be spent in the budget on providing social security pension to 7.50 lakh for eligible persons.

The chief minister hiked the grant given for widow remarriage from Rs 50,000 to Rs 75,000. He announced Rs 5 crore for creating livelihood for urban youth while a Bill will be tabled in the assembly for fixing eligibility criterion.

Cow cess on liquor will be increased by Re 1 per bottle, he added.

Talking about health, the chief minister declared to create 500 new posts of doctors in the state.

Thakur announced that a provision would be made whereby the Himcare Card for availing free health services for various ailments would be required to be renewed after three years instead of every year.

Honorarium for Mayor, Deputy Mayor and councillors in Municipal Corporations has been increased from Rs 12,000 to Rs 15,000, from Rs. 8,500 to Rs. 10,000 and from Rs. 5050 to Rs. 6,050 per month respectively, he added.

Announcing budgetary allocation of Rs 8,412 crore for education, he said that Sardar Patel University in Mandi district would start functioning in April this year.

Four flying schools will be set up for imparting training to fly drones in Himachal Pradesh, he added.

Thakur also announced to construct 1,000 new anganwadi bhawans in the state.

A total of 789 plans from NABARD worth Rs 3,200 crore had been approved during the five-year tenure of the previous Congress government, whereas the current government got approval of 826 plans from NABARD worth Rs 3,452 crore, he added.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Domestic passenger vehicle retail sales declined eight per cent in February as the companies continued to suffer production loss due to chip shortage, automobile dealers' body FADA said on Friday.

The passenger vehicle (PV) sales dropped to 2,38,096 units last month, down 7.84 per cent from 2,58,337 units in February 2021.

"Even though the passenger vehicle (PV) segment saw some launches and slight respite in supply due to better production, it was not enough to meet customer demand. Vehicle waiting period thus remains similar to what it was in the past few months," FADA President Vinkesh Gulati stated.

The industry body warned that the Russia-Ukraine conflict could further impact the production of semiconductors.

"Russia is one of the largest producers of rare-earth metals, especially Palladium, which is an essential metal for semiconductors. Ukraine, on the other hand, is one of the biggest producer and exporter of neon gas, which is used in the manufacturing of semiconductors.

"Due to the ongoing war, we once again fear the shortage in semiconductors which will create additional supply side issues for PVs," the Federation of Automobile Dealers Associations (FADA) noted.

Two-wheeler sales last month declined 10.67 per cent to 9,83,358 units, compared with 11,00,754 units in February 2021.

Gulati said rural distress coupled with a price rise has led to a drop in the sales in the segment.

"The two-wheeler segment is showing no signs of recovery as Bharat continues to play spoil-sport. With the cost of acquisition continuously going north, the inquiry level remained weak. As corporates and educational institutions continued operating from home, urban demand also took a hit," he stated.

Tractor sales stood at 50,304 units last month, down 18.87 per cent from 62,004 units in February 2021.

Commercial vehicle sales, however, witnessed a growth of 7.41 per cent last month at 63,797 units, as against 59,395 units in the year-ago month.

The total sales across categories last month declined by 9.21 per cent to 13,74,516 units from 15,13,894 units in February 2021.

FADA said that with crude breaching the USD 110 mark, the government will not be able to hold prices of petroleum products for long and that would have a negative impact on two-wheeler sales.

"Until the Russia-Ukraine conflict doesn't come to an end, FADA changes its outlook from 'neutral' to 'negative'," it added.

FADA said it has collected data from 1,391 out of 1,600 RTOs (road transport offices) across the country.

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Prime Minister will hold a roadshow in his parliamentary constituency in on Friday.

The Prime Minister will start the roadshow by garlanding the statue of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel in the Maldahiya area at around 2 p.m.

He will then offer prayers at the Kashi Vishwanath Temple before proceeding to Banaras Hindu University (BHU) to garland the statue of Pandit Madan Mohan Malviya.

The Prime Minister will stay in till Saturday.

Meanwhile, Congress General Secretary Vadra is already in and Rahul Gandhi is expected to visit the holy city and offer prayers at the Kashi Vishwanath temple.

will also be campaigning in the city on Friday.

Varanasi goes to polls in the final phase on March 7.

--IANS

amita/dpb

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Alleging that militant outfits are intimidating voters and influencing the ongoing assembly polls in Manipur, the Congress on Friday urged the to maintain a level-playing field and ensure a free and fair poll.

A Congress delegation met the commission ahead of the second phase polling on Saturday and also raised the issue of the BJP-led state government releasing funds to militant groups under the suspension of operation agreement despite the model code of conduct for the assembly polls being in force.

The party said that these issues have "far-reaching consequences" for the conduct of free and fair elections.

The delegation of AICC senior observer for Jairam Ramesh and party leader Salman Khurshid met the Chief Election Commissioner and two Election Commissioners.

The Congress apprised them of "the BJP's 'goondagardi' tactics that have made a mockery of the Phase-1 polls in . We urged them to intervene to ensure free and fair polls in Phase-2 tomorrow," Ramesh said after the meeting.

The Congress raised the issue of release of funds -- Rs 15.70 crore on February 1 and Rs 92.65 lakh on March 1 -- to banned militant groups by the state government, according to a memorandum submitted by it.

It also flagged a statement issued by the president of the banned Kuki National Organisation asking electors to vote for the BJP and threatening them with dire consequences.

The Congress also alleged intimidation and threats from underground outfits to people attending its meetings and poll-related violence and criminal intimidation witnessed by its leaders and workers during the campaign.

Ramesh said that despite their concern, six people accused of poll violence which led to a murder were released on bail in the first week of March in Heirok.

Assembly polls in are being held in two phases and the results will be announced on March 10.

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Ahead of results of the assembly polls in five states, has issued an advisory to sensitise users to harness social media in a responsible manner and also curb spread of misinformation and fake .

In a statement, the micro-blogging site on Friday said it has released community guidelines for its users in the 10 languages that are operational on the platform.

Results of in Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Goa, Punjab and Manipur will be declared on March 10.

said it has also restricted over 800 handles so far after finding them posting "spammy or unwarranted content".

"Ahead of election results in Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Uttrakhand, Goa and Manipur, the app has launched an advisory to sensitise users to harness social media in a responsible manner and to curb misinformation and fake news," the statement said.

"As part of the advisory, Koo has also released its community guidelines in all the 10 languages that are operational on the platform," it said.

The statement said fake is "often" proliferated by bots or spam accounts and Koo "proactively" monitors and restricts the actions of such accounts to limit misinformation.

"From December 1, 2021 till February 28, 2022, we spotted more than 4,720 handles that identified themselves as channels or journalists or being related to news in any manner, out of which 834 handles have been restricted due to spammy or unwarranted content," it said, adding "we continue to monitor their behaviour".

Noting that a spike in misinformation is "usually witnessed" on social media before election results, the micro-blogging platform said it has enabled users access to "prominent third-party fact-checkers" for the purpose of authenticating information.

"Being a social media intermediary, Koo itself does not assess accuracy or interfere with content, unless required by the law," the statement said.

Enabling access to fact-checkers is reiteration of Koo's commitment to building safety and transparency online, it said.

Koo said that its community guidelines are aligned to "the Indian context" and they empower the creators, as well as first-time users to build more "wholesome content", while detailing out what constitutes responsible online conduct.

The guidelines carry "specific references" to fake news and misinformation, and inform users on the importance of verifying information before posting, while refraining from calling out information as fake without adequate proof, it said.

"As a social platform for self-expression in native languages, we celebrate creators and empower users to adopt a more holistic approach online to foster creativity and innovation. Misinformation is a key concern ahead of crucial events. Through this advisory, Koo - as a responsible platform - can help restrict the proliferation of fake news and malice, and promote greater online safety and transparency," Koo's CEO and co-founder Aprameya Radhakrishna was quoted as saying in the statement.

The advisory will encourage users, especially first-time users to leverage technology "in a positive and respectful manner" to build more meaningful conversations online, he said.

"Koo endeavors to identify best practices on a continuous basis to provide users with a secure and immersive experience," Radhakrishna added.

The micro-blogging platform said it had earlier released 'Koo Voters Guide', ahead of the in multiple languages, to empower first-time voters on their rights and responsibilities as enshrined in the Constitution of India.

"Koo has also been augmenting voter literacy to build greater trust in the electoral process," it said, adding that it has "successfully" executed voter awareness campaigns like 'PledgeToVote', 'UP ka Manifesto'.

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The task is cut out for allies of both the BJP-led coalition and the one headed by the Samajwadi Party to mobilise core voters in Varanasi, where the poll battle is being seen as a test of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's popularity in his constituency.

The might of Apna Dal (Sonelal) led by union minister Anupriya Patel and Nishad parties would be on test in in particular to see that the BJP retains power in all the assembly segments here like the last time.

Similarly, the utility of the Apna Dal (Kamerwadi) led by Anupriya's mother Krishna Patel and the Akhilesh Yadav led alliance will be proved especially in .

Sources in various parties suggest that two lakh votes of the Patel community, locally known as OBC kurmi, for which mother-daughter led Apna Dal (S) and Apna Dal (K) are competing and over one lakh of OBC Rajbhars would be crucial in deciding the outcome of the assembly seats in .

While Modi is all set to lead the poll blitzkrieg in his Lok Sabha constituency Varanasi for two days on March 4 and 5, opposition allies are working overtime to tilt the result in their favour.

BJP sources here said the prime minister will hold a roadshow in different localities of Varanasi starting 2 pm on Friday and will address a rally in Khajuri village of the district the next day.

The roadshow will be held for three assembly constituencies of Cantt, Varanasi North and Varanasi South. Modi is also scheduled to visit the Kashi Vishwanath temple.

In Rohania assembly seat of Varanasi, the two Apna Dals are taking on each other directly.

The Anupriya Patel headed party has fielded Sunil in the seat to take on Abhay Patel of her mother led outfit. Apna Dal (K) is also in poll fray from Pindara constituency to take on BJP's Awdhesh Singh and Congress' Ajay Rai.

Similarly former minister and Suheldev Bhartiya Samaj Party (SBSP) leader Om Prakash Rajbhar has been allotted Ajgora and Shivpur seats to take on saffron party nominees.

In Shivpur, Om Prakash Rajbhar's son Arvind Rajbhar is the joint opposition candidate against minister Anil Rajbhar.

Union Minister of State for Industry and Commerce Anupriya Patel told PTI, "We have shown our mettle in 2014 and also in the last general elections in 2019".

On the claims made by the party headed by her mother that they have made inroads in Patel caste votes, she said, "Not once but three times it has been proved that who has the support of people...is there anything left to prove?"



However, her elder sister Pallavi Patel, who has challenged deputy chief minister Keshav Prasad Maurya from Sirathu in Kaushambi, said, the situation is different this time as people have made up their mind to dislodge Yogi Adityanath.

She also claimed that the Apna Dal (K,) will perform stupendously.

After the split, Pallavi Patel is in the outfit led by her mother.

Om Prakash Rajbhar, whose party had won one seat in Varanasi as the BJP partner in 2017 but is part of the Akhilesh Yadav headed grouping, told PTI that "the result will be 6-2 in favour of opposition coalition in Varanasi".

Prominent leaders of opposition parties have made a trip to the city considering its importance for winning a perception war before the next Lok Sabha election.

Trinamool Congress leader Mamata Banerjee held a joint rally with SP president Akhilesh Yadav and his RLD ally Jayant Chaudhary on Thursday.

After humbling the BJP in her home state West Bengal, Banerjee is trying to lead a formidable grouping of the anti-BJP forces in the next national election.

Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi and BSP supremo Mayawati have already marked their attendance in Varanasi and neighbouring areas.

Locked in a fierce poll battle with the Samajwadi Party in particular, winning a majority of seats out of the 54 constituencies in the end round, is a must for the BJP to continue its sway in the 2024 general election.

In 2017, out of the eight assembly seats in Varanasi, the BJP had won six while its partner Apna Dal (S) had bagged one and another one had gone to Rajbhar's SBSP which was with the BJP then one.

Varanasi has over 3.25 lakh Vaisyas, three lakh Muslims, Brahmins (2.5 lakh), Patels (two lakh), Yadavs (1.5 lakh), Thakurs (one lakh), Dalits 80,000 and other OBC castes 70,000.

The 54 seats going to polls on March 7 are in Azamgarh, Mau, Jaunpur, Ghazipur, Chandauli, Varanasi, Mirzapur, Bhadohi and Sonbhadra.

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Prime Minister started his roadshow here on Friday afternoon, drumming up support for BJP candidates ahead of the last phase of the Assembly elections on March 7.

Modi arrived in his Lok Sabha constituency after addressing a rally in neighbouring Mirzapur. He began the roadshow after garlanding a statue of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel at Maldahiya crossing.

The crowd chanted "Jai Shri Ram" and "Har Har Mahadev", and showered rose petals as the prime minister's convoy moved through the city to cover a distance of a little over three kilometres. Modi wore a saffron cap and a "gamcha" (towel) around the neck.

According to the planned route, the roadshow would end close to the recently renovated Kashi Vishwanath complex, where the PM would offer prayers.

Modi had begun his first roadshow in from the same spot after filing his nomination papers for the 2014 Lok Sabha election.

BJP city president Vidyasagar Rai said Modi will stay the night at the Diesel Locomotive Works (DLW) guesthouse.

Modi's roadshow will cover the three assembly segments of Cantonment, North and Varanasi South.

The prime minister will wind up his trip on Saturday with a rally in Khajuria village under the Rohaniya assembly seat, also addressing there people from the other five assembly segments under the Varanasi Lok Sabha constituency, Rai said.

During an earlier stay at the DLW guesthouse, Modi had written in the visitors' book that it reminded him of his childhood days when he used to vend tea at Vadnagar railway station in Gujarat.

After the mega Modi event, Varanasi will see another roadshow by Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav from 8 pm to 10 pm.

SP's Varanasi district president Vishnu Sharma told PTI that earlier they had sought permission from the district administration to hold the event from 5 pm to 10 pm.

As the near their end, Varanasi is abuzz with the arrival of top leaders from all major parties.

Congress leaders Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra landed in Varanasi Friday and headed to Phulpur middle school grounds for a rally after praying at the Kashi Vishwanath temple.

The two reached the rally venue after holding a roadshow of their own in favour of Congress candidate Ajay Rai from Pindara assembly segment.

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Crowds cheered and showered flower petals on Narendra Modi's cavalcade as he held a mega roadshow here, drumming up support for candidates ahead of the last phase of the assembly polls in Uttar Pradesh.

Modi stood in an open-roof vehicle as the convoy travelled over three kilometres through the holy city, part of the prime minister's Lok Sabha constituency.Two security men stood behind him.

The crowd chanted "Jai Shri Ram" and "Har Har Mahadev", and showered rose petals at several places as Modi waved to them or folded his palms in a namaste'. The PM wore a saffron cap and a "gamcha" (towel) around the neck.

Crowds followed Modi all through the roadshow and many people stood on balconies and rooftops, waving at him.

Modi arrived in the Lok Sabha constituency after addressing a rally in neighbouring Mirzapur, on a two-day visit before the polling on March 7.

Other political heavyweights also headed towards on Friday. leader Akhilesh Yadav was scheduled to conduct a roadshow late evening, and leaders Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi held a rally in the district.

Modi began the show after garlanding a statue of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel at Maldahiya crossing.

The convoy covered three kilometres before the PM visited the Kashi Vishwanath temple where he offered prayers.

He then left for Lanka chowk where he garlanded the statue of Madan Mohan Malviya, ending the event.

At Lahurabir, some devotees welcomed the PM by chanting hymns. And at Kabirchaura, people danced as devotional music played.

Modi had begun his first roadshow in from the same spot after filing his nomination papers for the 2014 Lok Sabha election.

city president Vidyasagar Rai said Modi will stay the night at the Diesel Locomotive Works (DLW) guesthouse.

Modi's roadshow covered the three assembly segments of Cantonment, Varanasi North and Varanasi South.

At the Kashi Vishwanath temple, damrus (small drums) were beaten to receive him. He performed the Shodashopachara puja to lord Shiva, priests said.

The prime minister will wind up his Varanasi trip on Saturday --- the last day for campaigning according to Election Commission guidelines -- with a rally in Khajuria village in Rohaniya assembly constituency.

People from the other five assembly segments under the Varanasi parliamentary constituency will also participate, Rai said.

During an earlier stay at the DLW guesthouse, Modi had written in the visitors' book that it reminded him of his childhood days when he used to sell tea at Vadnagar railway station in Gujarat.

After the mega Modi event, Varanasi was set to see chief Akhilesh Yadav's roadshow from 8 pm to 10 pm.

SP's Varanasi district president Vishnu Sharma told PTI that earlier they had sought permission from the district administration to hold the event from 5 pm to 10 pm.

leaders Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra also landed in Varanasi Friday and headed to Phulpur middle school grounds for a rally after praying at the Kashi Vishwanath temple.

The two reached the venue after holding a roadshow of their own in support of candidate Ajay Rai from Pindara assembly segment.

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Ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's election campaign in his Lok Sabha constituency Varanasi, Union Education Minister has urged people to greet and welcome him in large numbers on Friday.

The Prime Minister, who has been on the campaign trail for the seven-phased Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections, will be holding rallies and roadshows in the district today.

"The Prime Minister is going to come tomorrow (Friday), will you be there? PM Modi will come to greet you. It is my invitation to you all that you come," the minister said while addressing 'Yuva Samvaad' at DAV Degree College in Daranagar, Uttar Pradesh on Thursday.

Speaking to children at the school about the Ukraine crisis the minister said that several Indian students have been evacuated and more are to set to return under the leadership of the Prime Minister.

"There is a war going on between Russia and Ukraine. Indian students are stranded there. Today, when I read the newspaper in the morning, I read that about 4,000 students have returned to the country. In the forthcoming days, the Government of India under the leadership of the Prime Minister will bring all the people back and not leave anyone behind."

The minister also urged the people to vote in large numbers in the seventh phase of the Assembly elections in the state.

"Celebrating the festival of democracy, people of on March 7 should cast 70 per cent votes," he said.

Heaping praise for the Prime Minister, the minister said, "PM Modi has brought New Education Policy. It's been 75 years since independence. I say this with great humility, even admit it, and I am not the one to run away from it. We can say today that the youth of our country are self-reliant in terms of employment."

Urging the voters to chose wisely, the minister said, "A decisive government is needed for progress. There will be a corruption-free system, only then society will progress. We have resolved to serve you with this kind of decisive leadership. Today, the sixth phase of the state Assembly elections is over. After four days, you will have to decide whether a decisive government will be formed in the state, or a communal government will be formed."

He also said, "I will keep my side in democracy. I cannot say that my system is right and this is the speciality of the republic. It is the feature of democracy that the people vote in four kinds of elections. The irony is, the educated don't vote in our country. It is everyone's responsibility that we vote. There is also an appeal to the students that they must come to vote."

The Prime Minister's Lok Sabha constituency will go to the polls on March 7. district comprises Pindra, Ajagara, Shivpur, Rohaniya, Varanasi North, Varanasi South, Varanasi Cantt, and Sevapuri Assembly seats. A total of 54 Assembly seats across nine districts including Azamgarh, Mau, Jaunpur, Ghazipur, Chandauli, Varanasi, Mirzapur, Bhadohi and Sonbhadra, will go to polls in the seventh and final phase.

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Senior Congress leader Friday accused Prime Minister of seeking votes on the basis of "lies", and said he now does not talk about his poll promises of doubling farmers' income and generating jobs.

"Hindu religious books nowhere say to speak lies," Gandhi told an election rally here after offering prayers at the Kashi Vishwanath temple here, during which he was also joined by his sister Priyanka Gandhi Vadra.

alleged that Modi now doesn't speak on his earlier poll promises of doubling farmers' income and generating jobs for youths, whereas there is "no mismatch" in the Congress' words and deeds.

He cited the example of fulfilling poll promises of writing off farmers' loans by the Congress government in Chhattisgarh and also procurement of paddy at the Minimum Support Price of Rs 2,500 a quintal.

"Not in the name of dharma, rather he is winning votes on the basis of lies," the former Congress chief said, attacking Modi.

On his arrival in Varanasi, both and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra offered prayers at the Kashi Vishwanath temple, days before the eight assembly seats in the district go to the polls.

The brother-sister duo reached the historic temple straight from the airport, temple and Congress sources said.

Hours later, Prime Minister also visited the shrine dedicated to Lord Shiva. is also Modi's Lok Sabha constituency. Earlier in the day, Union minister Smriti Irani had visited the temple.

After their temple visit, Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra left for the Pindara assembly constituency on the outskirts of where they addressed a rally in favour of Congress leader Ajay Rai who is up against sitting BJP MLA Awdhesh Singh.

Polling will be held in in the last phase of the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections on March 7.

Continuing with his tirade against the PM, Rahul Gandhi said, "Actually his 'double engine' are 'Adani and Ambani' (Industrialists). This kind of double engine can never provide employment to people."



He said while Indian students stranded in war-torn Ukraine are sending videos of their painful condition "in the absence of help" from the Indian government, BJP leaders are "dismissing the videos as those of failed students".

"We have the only leader in the world who asked people to beat utensils (thali bajao) to chase away coronavirus," he said, targeting Modi.

The Congress leader said PM Modi and Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath have added a third problem for the people of Uttar Pradesh in the form of stray cattle, along with unemployment and price rise.

In her brief speech, Priyanka Gandhi reaffirmed her party's resolve to promote women-centric agendas if the Congress comes to power.

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Union Home Minister on Friday said it has been clear after the first six phases that the BJP is winning the Assembly polls while the (SP) and (BSP) have been completely wiped out from the state.

Addressing an election rally in Jangipur, Ghazipur, Shah said, "In Uttar Pradesh, six phases of elections are over. After these phases, it is clear that SP and BSP have been wiped out. In UP again, BJP will form the government by getting over 300 seats."

Listing the works done by the incumbent BJP government, Shah said that they freed the state from the clutches of criminals and mafia.

Under the leadership of Chief Minister Yogi Adiytanath, Shah said BJP provided houses to the poor "by freeing the land worth Rs 2,000 crores from the possession of the mafia."

"The work of reducing crime in has been done under the BJP government," he asserted.

"Earlier in Uttar Pradesh, there was no electricity in the houses of the poor. Yogi ji's government has done the work of providing electricity in for 18 to 24 hours. Today electricity is reaching the houses of the poor. This change has come under the BJP government," he said.

Shah also said that for the "first time after independence, the welfare of the poor has been done in the PM Modi government."

With BJP retaining its power, Shah assured of making Uttar Pradesh the number one state of the country.

A total of 54 Assembly seats across nine districts including Azamgarh, Mau, Jaunpur, Ghazipur, Chandauli, Varanasi, Mirzapur, Bhadohi and Sonbhadra, will go to polls in the seventh and final phase on March 7.

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A powerful suicide blast ripped through a crowded Shia mosque during the Friday congregation here in northwest Pakistan, killing at least 57 people and wounding nearly 200 others, in one of the deadliest attacks in the restive province, bordering Afghanistan.

A rescue official said the blast occurred at a Jamia mosque in Qissa Khwani bazaar area in when the worshippers were offering Friday prayers.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for the blast in Peshawar, the provincial capital of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa which borders Afghanistan. However, the Islamic State and sectarian militant groups have claimed responsibility for the deadly attacks targeting Shias in the past.

Mohammad Asim, a spokesperson for Lady Reading Hospital (LRH), confirmed that at least 57 people were killed while 194 were injured in the blast.

Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa government spokesman Barrister Mohammad Ali Saif said the explosion was a suicide bombing. He added that two terrorists were involved in the attack.

Talking to the media, SSP Operations Haroon Rasheed Khan said the explosion was a suicide blast.

There were two attackers but only one of them was a suicide bomber, he said.

An eyewitness identified a person as dressed in black as the suicide bomber, saying he entered the mosque, shot and killed the security guard first and then fired five to six bullets.

"After that, he quickly entered the [mosque's] main hall and blew himself up in front of the pulpit. Following this, there were bodies and injured people lying everywhere," the eyewitness told Geo News.

An emergency has been declared in the hospital and doctors on leave were summoned.

Officials said the condition of some of the injured is stated to be critical.

Capital City Police Officer Ijaz Ahsan said two attackers tried to enter the mosque and fired at the policemen standing guard. One policeman was killed while the other was critically injured, he said.

The blast occurred following the firing incident, he added.

President Arif Alvi condemned the blast and expressed grief over the precious lives lost.

Prime Minister Imran Khan strongly condemned the while Interior Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed sought a report of the incident from the Chief Secretary and IG of the province.

Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Chief Minister Mahmood Khan condemned the blast and vowed to bring the perpetrators of this heinous act to justice.

He said targeting people in a place of worship is an inhuman and cruel act and directed authorities to ensure the best medical care to the injured.

He has convened an emergency meeting at Chief Minister's House to review the overall security situation in the province, bordering Afghanistan.

"Heart-wrenching terrorist incident in Peshawar in which so many precious lives have been lost. Words can't adequately condemn the sheer brutality. Terrorism continues to remain our foremost national challenge. Prayers & condolences are with the bereaved families!" PML-N President and Leader of the Opposition in the National Assembly Shehbaz Sharif tweeted.

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Russian invasion forces seized Europes biggest nuclear power plant on Friday in what Washington called a reckless assault that risked catastrophe, although a blaze in a training building was extinguished and officials said the facility was now safe.

Russias defence ministry, on its part, blamed the attack at the site of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant on Ukrainian saboteurs, calling it a monstrous provocation. The United Nations Security Council was set to hold an emergency meeting late Friday night over the attack on the nuclear power plant in .

Combat raged elsewhere in as Russian forces surrounded and bombarded several cities in the second week of the assault launched by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

A presidential adviser said an advance had been halted on the southern city of Mykolayiv after local authorities said Russian troops had entered it. If captured, the city of 500,000 people would be the biggest yet to fall.

The capital Kyiv, in the path of a Russian armoured column that has been stalled on a road for days, came under renewed attack, with air raid sirens blaring in the morning and explosions audible from the city centre.





IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi points on a map of the power plant during a news conference in Vienna Photo: Reuters

The US Embassy in called the Russian assault on the Zaporizhzhia plant a war crime. Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby said it showed how reckless the Russian invasion has been.

Video verified by Reuters showed one building aflame and a volley of incoming shells before a large incandescent ball lit up the sky, exploding beside a car park and sending smoke billowing across the compound.

Thousands of people are believed to have been killed or wounded and more than 1 million refugees have fled Ukraine since February 24, when Putin ordered the biggest attack on a European state since World War Two.

Although the nuclear plant was later said to be safe and the fire out, officials worried about the precarious circumstances. The Ukrainian state nuclear company said that three Ukrainian troops were killed and two wounded in the attack at the Zaporizhzhia plant.

Atomic Energy Agency chief Raphael Grossi paid homage to the plants Ukrainian staff: to their bravery, to their courage, to their resilience because they are doing this in very difficult circumstances.

The plant was undamaged from what he believed was a Russian projectile, Grossi said. Only one of its six reactors was working, at around 60 per cent of capacity.

Russias defence ministry also said the plant was working normally.

Nato wont police no-fly zone over Ukraine

Nato countries refused to police a no-fly zone over Ukraine, warning that such a move could provoke widespread war in with nuclear power Russia, the organisation's top civilian official said.

Speaking after chairing a meeting with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and his counterparts, Nato Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg acknowledged the suffering of the Ukrainian people, as Russia ramps up its use of heavy firepower, shelling cities and other sites, forcing more than a million people out of the country.

What is taking place now in Ukraine is horrific. It's painful and we see human suffering, we see destruction at a scale we haven't seen in since the Second World War, he said.

'Europeans wake up'

"Europeans, please wake up. Tell your politicians 'Russian troops are shooting at a nuclear power plant in Ukraine'," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in a video address. In another address, he called on Russians to protest.

Russian forces advancing from three directions have besieged cities, pounding them with artillery and air strikes.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz became the latest Western leader to phone Putin and demand he call off the war.

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said Russia was only increasing its strikes on civilians: "It is clear to see that this war of aggression by Putin is targeting the civilian population with the most brutal rigor."

Moscow says its aim is to disarm its neighbour and capture leaders it calls neo-Nazis. Ukraine and its Western allies call that a baseless pretext for a war to conquer a country of 44 million people.

In Kyiv's Borshchahivka neighbourhood, the twisted engine of a cruise missile lay in the street where it had apparently been downed overnight by Ukrainian air defences. Residents were furious but also proud of the successful defence of the city of 3 million, which Russia had hoped to capture within days.
French President is "pessimistic" after his exchange with Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, and Macron thinks that "the worst is yet to come" in .

The French and Russian presidents spoke on Thursday morning for nearly an hour-and-a-half over telephone. Putin stuck to his guns and refused any "compromise", BFMTV reported, quoting a spokesman for Macron.

The Russian President expressed "his great determination" to continue his offensive, the aim of which is "to take the control" of the whole country, the Elysee reported, according to BFMTV.

During the discussion, the Russian President told his French counterpart that the operation of the Russian army is developing "according to the plan" and that it is going to be "worse "if the Ukrainians do not accept his conditions", the French presidency said.

Putin also confirmed that he intended to carry out a "denazification" of Ukraine, as he had announced ahead of the beginning of the war.

"The President's (Macron) intuition is that the worst is yet to come given what President Putin told him," according to the Elysee.

"The Russian ambition is to take all of . Vladimir Putin's war aims have not changed," said the same source, BFMTV reported.

--IANS

san/arm

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and the Monetary Fund (IMF) have reached a preliminary $44.5 billion agreement to help the South American country manage its debt burden, the Ministry here said.

The "Debt Refinancing Agreement between the Argentine Republic and the Monetary Fund" will be promptly submitted to Congress for approval, Xinhua news agency quoted the Ministry as saying in a statement.

"After intense negotiations, the national government managed to reach an agreement with the that will allow the country to refinance the commitments assumed" in 2018, the Ministry said, referring to a loan deal between the and Argentina's previous government.

The lending agency issued a statement on Thursday, saying the two sides reached "a staff-level agreement on the economic and financial policies to be supported by a 30-month Extended Fund Facility (EFF) Arrangement".

The deal "aims to provide with balance of payments and budget support to address the country's most pressing economic challenges and to enhance the prospects of all Argentines by implementing measures designed to promote growth and protect essential social programs", the added in the statement.

The staff-level agreement is still subject to approval by the IMF's Executive Board, it said.

--IANS

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Inc, the world's largest asset manager, said it had halted purchase of all Russian in its active and index funds as of Monday after Russia's invasion of Ukraine.



It has "proactively advocated" with "index providers to remove Russian from broad-based indices," Rich Kushel, head of the portfolio management group and Salim Ramji, global head of iShares and index investments, said in a joint statement on Thursday. Russian account for less than 0.01% of their clients' assets, they said.

Western sanctions on Moscow after it invaded Ukraine last week have prompted a wave of investors to announce they were cutting positions in . Canadian asset manager Purpose Investments said on Thursday it had divested all direct holdings of Russian companies as of Feb. 28 and pledged to stop new investments as long as Russia's invasion continued.



Efforts by investors to cut positions have been complicated, however, by a Russian ban on local brokers from selling securities held by foreigners. said earlier this week it was consulting with regulators, index providers, and other market participants to ensure its clients could exit their positions in Russian securities, where allowed.



Major index providers FTSE Russell and MSCI said on Wednesday they were removing Russian equities from all their indexes. FTSE Russell said the decision will be effective from March 7, while MSCI said its decision will be implemented in one step across all MSCI indexes as of the close of trading on March 9.



"We will continue actively consulting with regulators, index providers and other market participants to help ensure our clients can exit their positions in Russian securities, whenever and wherever regulatory and market conditions allow," the Thursday statement said.



CEO Larry Fink said in a LinkedIn posting that while the company did not have offices or operations in Ukraine or Russia, it was what doing what it can to provide support to colleagues and their families who have been directly impacted. "BlackRock and its people have also rallied to provide financial assistance to Ukrainian refugees on the ground," Fink wrote.

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British Prime Minister on Friday spoke with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and discussed the grave concerns over the situation of Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, after Russian troops attacked it and sparked a fire.

Johnson has said he will seek an emergency UN Security Council meeting.

"I've just spoken to President @ZelenskyyUa about the gravely concerning situation at Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station. Russia must immediately cease its attack on the power station and allow unfettered access for emergency services to the plant, Johnson said on Twitter after his early morning call.

According to a statement put out by Johnson's office both leaders agreed that Russia must immediately cease its attack on the power station and allow unfettered access for emergency services to the plant.

"The Prime Minister said the reckless actions of President Putin could now directly threaten the safety of all of Europe. He said the UK would do everything it could to ensure the situation did not deteriorate further," the statement read.

Johnson said he would be seeking an emergency UN Security Council meeting and that the UK would raise this issue immediately with Russia and close partners.

Both leaders agreed a ceasefire was crucial.

Meanwhile, fighting has stopped near the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant and background radiation levels are currently normal as a fire continued at the facility, a spokesperson at the plant said on Friday.

Spokesperson Andrey Tuz said the plant has not sustained any critical damage, although only one power generation unit out of six is operational.

Earlier Friday, Ukrainian officials said firefighters were unable to access the nuclear plant. Tuz said when firefighters initially arrived, they were met with guns and turned around.

The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant is the biggest in Europe according to the plant's website. It supports one fifth of total electric power generated in .

The nuclear plant has six units in total, with the first one connected to the power grid in 1984, and the sixth one connected in 1995.

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kicked off its annual Parliament season on Friday amid the global turmoil over the Ukraine crisis and the impending leadership overhaul later this year as President is set to begin an unprecedented third term at the end of his 10-year tenure this year.

China's annual Parliament season comprising the national legislature, the National People's Congress (NPC) and the advisory body Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) began on Friday.

The CPPCC, which has 2,200 members mostly nominated by the ruling Communist Party of (CPC) commenced its session which was attended by President Xi and other leaders.

For over two weeks, the NPC with over 2,800 members often referred to as the rubber-stamp parliament for its routine approval of policies of the CPC, will transact annual legislative work including approving the work report to be submitted by Premier Li Keqiang in which would outline its annual economic performance and announce new defence outlay besides other economic initiatives to boost the economy which is on a slowdown mode.

The significance of the two sessions this year is that this is the final year of the 2nd five-year tenure of Chinese President Xi.

While all his predecessors retired after two five-year tenures, Xi, 68, is widely expected to continue in power perhaps for life.

His unprecedented third term was expected to be formally conferred by the once-in-a-five-year CPC Congress to be held in the next few months as a key party Plenum meet last year had formally endorsed his continuation.

He is now equated with the Party's founder Mao Zedong who held reins of power until his death in 1976.

While Xi, who heads the party, the military and Presidency is set to remain in power, the composition of the government was expected to change as most of his associates, including Premier Li, may be replaced under the two-tenure norm.

The two sessions were also being held in the backdrop of Russia's military action on Ukraine which has created a global political crisis not seen in recent times, testing China's close ties with Russia.

Beijing is also faced with a major political and trade onslaught from the US, European Union and their allies over a host of issues including human rights violations in Xinjiang, Tibet and Hong Kong.

The global attention was also fixated on Taiwan, which fears an impending military action from China as the Chinese military ratcheted up tensions by conducting hundreds of air raids into Taiwan's air defence zone.

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Amid the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan, hosted a round-table discussion on the current and future of the war-ravaged country.

The talks were organised in co-operation between the Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), Qatar Red Crescent Society and its Afghan counterpart, with the participation of special advisors and ambassadors of several countries, Gulf Times reported.

The sessions are intended to support the humanitarian situation in that threatens the lives of millions of families.

Rina Amiri, the US special envoy for Afghan women, girls, and human rights said that she discussed issues concerning women's rights and human rights in .

"Spent several days in discussing women's & human rights in & the importance of the Muslim world leading on these issues. Qatari women leaders are a great example of Muslim women in public & political roles to advance their country," Amiri tweeted.

"Will continue to engage the Muslim world to show rich diversity in Islam & women & girls' place in political, economic & social spaces. Afghanistan needs to utilize the talent of its women & girls to move towards stability & a future Afghans deserve," she said in another tweet.

Six months after the fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban, it is time for concerned countries to deepen their engagement with the country's new authorities and take action to prevent an irreversible economic collapse, the top UN official in Kabul told the Security Council on Wednesday.

"Six months of indecision ... are eroding vital social and economic coping systems and pushing the population into greater uncertainty," said Deborah Lyons, who is the Secretary-General's Special Representative and Head of the UN mission in Afghanistan, known as UNAMA.

Thanking donors for generous humanitarian contributions since August 2021, when forces left Afghanistan after a two-decades-long engagement, she said the worst possible outcome was averted thanks to their support.

"As the winter season comes to an end, we have perhaps averted our worst fears of famine and widespread starvation," she said.

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No was released from a Russian attack at Europe's biggest nuclear power plant in Ukraine and firefighters have extinguished a blaze at the facility, U.N. and Ukrainian officials said Friday, as Russian forces pressed their campaign to cripple the country despite global condemnation.

The Atomic Energy Agency's director-general, Rafael Mariano Grossi, said Friday the building hit by a Russian projectile at the Zaporizhzhia plant was not part of the reactor but instead a training center at the plant.

Nuclear officials from Sweden to China said no spikes had been reported, as did Grossi. Ukrainian officials have said Russian troops took control of the overall site, but the plant's staff were continuing to ensure its operations. Grossi said the Ukrainians were in control of the reactor.

In the frenzied initial aftermath when the risk of a release was not clear, the attack caused worldwide concern and evoked memories of the world's worst nuclear disaster, at Ukraine's Chernobyl.

Facing worldwide indignation over the attack, Russia sought to deflect blame. Without producing evidence, Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov blamed arson rather than artillery fire. He claimed a Ukrainian sabotage group had occupied the training building at the plant, fired on a Russian patrol and set fire to the building as they left.

There had been conflicting reports earlier over which part of the Zaporizhzhia facility had been affected in the attack, with an official saying at one point that shells fell directly on the facility and set fire to a reactor not in operation as well as a training building. Grossi later said that the fire was in the training center.

The confusion itself underscored the dangers of active fighting near a nuclear power plant. It was the second time since the invasion began just over a week ago that concerns about a nuclear accident or a release of radiation materialized, following a battle at Chernobyl.

Grossi said only one reactor of six at Zaporizhzhia is currently operating, at about 60% capacity, and that two people at the site were injured in the fire. Ukraine's state nuclear plant operator Enerhoatom said three Ukrainian soldiers were killed and two wounded.

The plant fire came as the Russian military advanced on a strategic city on the Dnieper River near where the facility is located, and gained ground in their bid to cut the country off from the sea. That move would deal a severe blow to Ukraine's economy and could worsen an already dire humanitarian situation.

With the invasion in its second week, another round of talks between Russia and Ukraine yielded a tentative agreement to set up safe corridors to evacuate citizens and deliver humanitarian aid to the country, overturned by a war that has sent more than 1 million fleeing over the border and countless sheltering underground. A handful cities are without heat and at least one is struggling to get food and water.

In the center of the capital, Kyiv, frequent shelling could still be heard Friday, although more distant than in recent days, with loud thudding every 10 minutes resonating over the rooftops.

The West has heaped sanctions on Russia, and most of the world lined up to demand Russia withdraw its troops in a vote in the U.N. General Assembly this week. In the latest show of opposition to the invasion, the U.N.'s top human rights body voted 32-2 on a resolution that would among other things set up a panel of experts to monitor human rights in Ukraine. Only Russia and Eritrea opposed; there were 13 abstentions.

The attack on the nuclear facility led to phone calls between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and U.S. President Joe Biden and other world leaders. The U.S. Department of Energy activated its nuclear incident response team as a precaution.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson called for an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council to raise the issue of Russia's attack on the plant.

In an emotional speech in the middle of the night, Zelenskyy said he feared an explosion that would be the end for everyone. The end for Europe. The evacuation of Europe.

But most experts saw nothing to indicate an impending disaster.

The real threat to Ukrainian lives continues to be the violent invasion and bombing of their country, the American Nuclear Society said in a statement.

Russian President Vladimir Putin's forces have brought their superior firepower to bear over the past few days, launching hundreds of missiles and artillery attacks on cities and other sites around the country and making significant gains in the south.

The Russians announced the capture of the southern city of Kherson, a vital Black Sea port of 280,000, and local Ukrainian officials confirmed the takeover of the government headquarters there, making it the first major city to fall since the invasion began just over a week ago.

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Alphabet Inc's Google said on Thursday that it had stopped selling online advertising in Russia, a ban that covers search, and outside publishing partners.

The move by the world's top seller of online ads by revenue follows similar pauses in Russia by Twitter Inc and Snap Inc after Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

"In light of the extraordinary circumstances, we're pausing in Russia," the company said in a statement. "The situation is evolving quickly, and we will continue to share updates when appropriate."

Google earlier had banned Russian state-funded media from buying or selling ads through its technology. It also had invoked its sensitive events policy, which bars marketing that seeks to take advantage of the war, with an exception for protest or anti-war ads.

Russia's communications regulator Roskomnadzor on Monday ordered Google to stop showing ads that contained inaccurate information about casualties sustained by Russian forces and Ukrainian civilians.

On Thursday, the regulator told Google to stop showing ads with afalse political informationa about Ukraine that aimed "to misinform the Russian audiencea about current events, the Wall Street Journal reported. Moscow in the past has fined or restricted access to services that ignore its demands.

Google last year paid more than 32 million roubles in fines over content violations. The SPARK business database showed last year that Google's turnover in Russia in 2020 was 85.5 billion roubles ($790 million).

(Reporting by Paresh Dave; Editing by Sandra Maler and Edwina Gibbs)

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Indian house prices will rise this year and next at a faster pace than predicted just three months ago, supported by the economic recovery from the pandemic, according to a Reuters poll of property analysts.

Once a bright spot in India's economy, the sector was struggling even before COVID-19. But unlike most other major world property markets it has remained in the doldrums throughout the pandemic.

Average house prices rose only 2.5% last year, according to Reuters calculations based on the Reserve Bank of India's House Price Index. That compares with double-digit gains in nearly every other property market.

But as Asia's third-largest gets back on track, the market was expected to pick up pace.

The Feb. 9-28 poll of 13 property analysts predicted national house prices to go up a median 5.0% this year, an upgrade from the 3.75% expected in a December survey.

Average Indian house prices were expected to rise 7.0% next year and in 2024, partly driven by increasing input costs for new homes as oil prices were expected to rise further as the Russia-Ukraine crisis worsens.

"The third wave of the pandemic has apparently not dented business confidence and investors appear mostly unperturbed this time. We expect a rise in prices over next two years provided no major socio-economic disruptions occur," said Arvind Nandan, managing director of research at Savills India.

Nearly three-quarters of respondents, or 8 of 11, to an additional question said the Indian market would become a buyer's market in 2022.

"(The) Indian housing market is already a buyer's market, and the pandemic further increased this trend in 2020 and 2021 with consumer preferences largely tilted towards ready homes or those nearing completion," said Anuj Puri, chairman at ANAROCK Property Consultants.

The Indian sector is expected to account for 13% of India's GDP by 2025, according to NITI Aayog, the official public policy advisory to New Delhi.

Construction, which has traditionally been a major employment generator for the largely unskilled labour force in India, received a special allocation in the February budget.

However, there was no clear consensus among analysts if the allocated 480 billion Indian rupees ($6.3 billion) would be enough to boost affordable housing in India. Five of 10 respondents said it would help, the rest said it would not.

For the time being, monetary policy is also helping. The Reserve Bank of India held on to its accommodative stance at its February meeting for the 11th consecutive meeting and kept its repo rate at a record low of 4.00%.

A separate Reuters poll showed the RBI would start raising rates next month, with the repo rate reaching 4.75% by the end of the next fiscal year, end-March 2023.

The median response to a separate question showed the repo rate would have to rise to that rate by the end of December this year to significantly slow the housing market. Forecasts ranged between 4.50% and 5.00%.

(Reporting by Shrutee Sarkar and Milounee Purohit; Polling by Prerana Bhat, Arsh Mogre and Md Manzer Hussain; Editing by Hari Kishan and Chizu Nomiyama)

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Europe's largest nuclear power plant was hit by Russian shelling early Friday, sparking a fire at one of its six reactors and raising fears of a disaster that could affect all of central Europe for decades, like the 1986 Chernobyl meltdown.

Concerns faded after Ukrainian authorities announced that the fire had been extinguished, and while there was damage to the reactor compartment, the safety of the unit was not affected.

But even though the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant is of a different design than Chernobyl and is protected from fire, nuclear safety experts and the Atomic Energy Agency warn that waging war in and around such facilities presents extreme risks.

One major concern, raised by Ukraine's state nuclear regulator, is that if fighting interrupts power supply to the nuclear plant, it would be forced to use less-reliable diesel generators to provide emergency power to operating cooling systems. A failure of those systems could lead to a disaster similar to that of Japan's Fukushima plant, when a massive earthquake and tsunami in 2011 destroyed cooling systems, triggering meltdowns in three reactors.

The consequence of that, said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, would be widespread and dire.

If there is an explosion, that's the end for everyone. The end for Europe. The evacuation of Europe, he said in an emotional speech in the middle of the night, calling on nations to pressure Russia's leadership to end the fighting near the plant.

Only urgent action by Europe can stop the Russian troops. Do not allow the death of Europe from a catastrophe at a nuclear power station.

WHAT HAPPENED?



After taking the strategic port city of Kherson, Russian forces moved into the territory near Zaporizhzhia and attacked the nearby city of Enerhodar to open a route to the plant late Thursday.

It was not immediately clear how the power plant was hit, but Enerhodar Mayor Dmytro Orlov said a Russian military column had been seen heading toward the nuclear facility and that loud shots were heard in the city.

Later Friday, Ukrainian authorities said had taken over the nuclear plant.

Plant spokesman Andriy Tuz told Ukrainian television that early Friday morning, shells fell directly on the facility and set fire to one of its six reactors.

Initially, firefighters were not able to get near the flames because they were being shot at, Tuz said.

Even ahead of the attack, the director of the U.N. nuclear watchdog, Rafael Grossi, had warned that the IAEA was gravely concerned with Russian forces conducting military operations so close nearby.

It is of critical importance that the armed conflict and activities on the ground around Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant and any other of Ukraine's nuclear facilities in no way interrupts or endangers the facilities or the people working at and around them, he said earlier this week.

WHAT COULD HAVE HAPPENED?



The reactor that was hit was offline, but still contains highly radioactive nuclear fuel. Four of the other six reactors have now been taken offline, leaving only one in operation.

The reactors at the plant have thick concrete containment domes, which would have protected them from external fire from tanks and artillery, said Jon Wolfsthal, who served during the Obama administration as the senior director for arms control and nonproliferation at the National Security Council.

At the same time, a fire at a nuclear power plant is never a good thing, he said.

We don't want our nuclear power plants to come under assault, to be on fire, and to not have first responders be able to access them, he said.

Another danger at nuclear facilities are the pools where spent fuel rods are kept to be cooled, which are more vulnerable to shelling and which could cause the release of radioactive material.

Perhaps the biggest issue, however, is the plant's power supply, said Najmedin Meshkati, an engineering professor at the University of Southern California who has studied both the Chernobyl and Fukushima disasters, raising a concern also voiced by Wolfsthal and .

The loss of off-site power could force the plant to rely on emergency diesel generators, which are highly unreliable and could fail or run out of fuel, causing a station blackout that would stop the water circulation needed to cool the spent fuel pool, he said.

That is my big biggest concern, he said.

David Fletcher, a University of Sydney professor in its School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, who previously worked at UK Atomic Energy, noted that even shutting down the reactors would not help if the cooling system failed in such a way.

The real concern is not a catastrophic explosion as happened at Chernobyl but damage to the cooling system which is required even when the reactor is shut down, he said in a statement. "It was this type of damage that led to the Fukushima accident.

WHAT CONCERNS REMAIN?



Ukraine is heavily reliant on nuclear energy, with 15 reactors at four stations that provide about half the country's electricity.

In the wake of the attack on Zaporizhzhia, U.S. President Joe Biden, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and called for an immediate end to the fighting there.

Following a conversation with Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal, IAEA Director Grossi appealed to all parties to refrain from actions that could put Ukraine's nuclear power plants in danger.

Shmyhal called on western nations to close the skies over the country's .

It is a question of the security of the whole world! he said in a statement.

Ukraine is also home to the former Chernobyl nuclear plant, where radioactivity is still leaking, which was taken by Russian forces in the opening of the invasion after a fierce battle with the Ukrainian national guards protecting the decommissioned facility.

In an appeal to the IAEA for help earlier this week, Ukrainian officials said that Chernobyl staff have been held by the Russian military without rotation and are exhausted.

Grossi earlier this week appealed to to let the Chernobyl staff do their job safely and effectively.

During fighting on the weekend, Russian fire also hit a radioactive waste disposal facility in Kyiv and a similar facility in Kharkiv.

Both contained low-level waste such as those produced through medical use, and no radioactive release has been reported, but Grossi said the incidents should serve as a warning.

The two incidents highlight the risk that facilities with radioactive material may suffer damage during the armed conflict, with potentially severe consequences, he said.

James Acton, the co-director of the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for Peace, said the simple key to keeping the facilities safe was to immediately end any military operations around them.

Under normal circumstances, the likelihood of a reactor losing power and of the emergency diesel generators being damaged and of not being repaired adequately quickly is very, very small, Acton said.

But in a war, all of these different failures that would have to happen for a reactor to become damaged and meltdown the likelihood of all of those happening becomes much more likely than it does in peacetime.

Mitsuru Fukuda, a professor at Nihon University in Tokyo and expert on crisis management and security, said the Zaporizhzhia attack raises broader questions for all countries.

Many of us did not expect a respected country's military would take such an outrageous step, he said. Now that (Russian President Vladimir) Putin has done it, not only Ukraine but the community, including Japan, should reevaluate the risk of having as potential wartime targets.

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Hungary will remove the majority of its restrictions introduced against the COVID-19 pandemic, Gergely Gulyas, the head of the Prime Minister's Office said on Thursday.

"The obligation to wear a mask will end next Monday," said Gulyas, adding that the wearing of masks will stay obligatory in social and health care institutions, Xinhua news agency reported.

He said that the government decided to remove the measures because the fifth wave of the pandemic was coming to an end.

The government also revoked the rule that allowed employers to make vaccination against the compulsory, the minister added. The regulations concerning the vaccination certificate will also be canceled.

The government will maintain the "health emergency situation" in Hungary for fear of the risk of a possible sixth wave.

On Thursday, the country registered 3,862 new COVID-19 cases in a 24-hour span, raising the national total to 1,796,982, according to official data.

In the past 24 hours, 77 people died from the disease, taking the cumulative death toll to 44,211 in the country. Currently, 3,120 patients are being treated in hospitals, including 126 on ventilators, the government's website said.

As of Thursday, 6,395,509 people had received at least the first shot of a COVID-19 vaccine.

--IANS

int/pgh

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The Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on Friday said that it has decided to launch a 24-hour Centre for Incidents and Emergencies in the wake of the now-extinguished fire at the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant in caused by Russian shelling.

In a tweet, the IAEA said: "IAEA puts its Incident and Emergency Centre in full 24/7 response mode due to serious situation at Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plant in ."

Nuclear safety at the plant, which is the largest in Europe, was threatened, reactors were in danger due to shelling by the Russian military and subsequent fire.

Firefighters were initially denied the access to put out the fire caused by the fighting, but were later given access.

President Volodymyr Zelensky addressed the world community and stated that no one had ever shelled nuclear power plants, the Russians were threatening to blow up the station, which puts an entire world in danger of a global catastrophe.

Energodar, where the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant is located, has six energy blocks. In 1986, only one block exploded in Chernobyl.

In total, has 15 nuclear energy blocks.

--IANS

san/ksk/

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The United Arab Emirates is set for inclusion on a global watchdogs gray list after some of its members indicated that the Gulf nation hadnt made enough progress in tackling illicit financial flows, according to people familiar with the matter.

At least three members of the Paris-based Financial Action Task Force (FATF) have expressed the view that the hasnt done enough to exit the review process and therefore will likely get put on the groups list of countries subject to more oversight, said the people in the know.

The organisation is currently holding its plenary, where members are discussing the governments efforts to combat dirty money, and a decision is expected to be announced as early as Friday.

To avoid the designation, a significant majority of the FATFs 39 members must vote that a country has made sufficient progress since the evaluation period began. Just a few votes to the contrary can result in a jurisdiction getting added to the list of nations under increased monitoring, the people said.

A gray-list classification isnt as punitive as the groups highest-risk black list, and it suggests that officials are taking steps to address the countrys current deficiencies, the people said. Still, the decision is potentially the most significant step to be taken by the in its three-decade history, given the UAEs position as a regional financial centre.

Pakistan to stay on gray list

Pakistan is likely to remain on the grey list of until June for failing to meet some of the targets under the additional criteria, according to a media report on Friday.
has called for making answer for patronising and unleashing and has put a spotlight on Islamabad "mainstreaming persecution of minorities".

" should be held accountable for extending patronage to terrorist outfits, engaging in cross-border and providing sustenance and support in the territories under its control," Seema Pujani, a First Secretary in India's UN Mission in Geneva, told the Human Rights Council on Thursday.

Calling " is a crime against humanity", she said: "The supported and trained by are behind vicious terror attacks in as well as linked to those taking place in other parts of the world. They are responsible for violating the right to life of people in our region and are a threat to peace and security everywhere."

"Pakistan holds the ignoble record of hosting the largest number of terrorists proscribed by the UN Security Council."

Pujani was exercising the right of reply in Geneva to Pakistan Human Rights Minister Shireen Mazari's statement at the High-Level Segment of the Council's 49th session.

She said: "Mazari's statement is nothing but smoke and mirrors. Pakistan's tendency to propagate false and malicious propaganda against my country is nothing but a bid to deflect attention from the sorry state of affairs within Pakistan, particularly when it comes to the mainstreaming of radicalism and the persecution of minorities including Hindus, Sikhs, Christians and Ahmadiyyas."

Responding to Mazari's assertion that Kashmir was "under illegal occupation of India" and that "has accelerated the scale and pace of demographic changes", Pujani said: "The entire territory of the Union Territories of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh is an integral and inalienable part of India. All the measures taken by my Government to ensure socio-economic development and good governance therein are matters internal to India."

Pujani recalled the assassination of Pastor William Siraj in Peshawar in January, the death sentence impose on Pastor Zafar Bhatti on allegations of blasphemy, "and the countless cases of abduction, forced conversion and marriage of minor girls from minority communities in Pakistan" as examples of the religious persecution of minorities in Pakistan.

"Some of the most draconian blasphemy laws in the world, that carry a potential death sentence for anyone who insults Islam, threaten the lives of minority communities in Pakistan."

There are about 80 persons on death row or serving life imprisonment in Pakistan convicted on blasphemy charges in highly flawed judicial procedures and the accused are often presumed guilty, she said.

"Increasingly, these cases are being settled with violence outside the courtroom," she said, citing the lynching of Sri Lankan Christian Priyantha Kumara in Sialkot in December 2021 and the stoning to death of Muhammad Mushtaq in Khanewal district last month.

"The case of Roshni Meghwar of Sindh, only 13 years old, who was abducted, forcibly converted and married off to her abductor is an example of the impunity with which rights of religious minorities are trampled over in Pakistan," Pujani added.

She also said that the places of worship of minorities were being desecrated with no action to protect them, she added.

Regarding statements made by the Organisation for Islamic Cooperation, Pujani said: "We regret that the OIC countries continue to allow Pakistan to misuse OIC platforms to indulge in anti-India propaganda."

She also took exception to Turkey's mention of Kashmir during the session and said: "We regret the comments made by Turkey on a matter that is an internal affair of India and advise it to refrain from making unsolicited comments on our internal matters."

(Arul Louis can be reached at arul.l@ians.in and followed @arulouis)

--IANS

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said on Thursday that the Vienna talks on reviving the 2015 nuclear deal are in the "final critical steps."

"Nobody can say the deal is done, until all the outstanding remaining issues are resolved," Iranian Foreign Ministry's spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh tweeted.

"Extra efforts needed. Everybody is now focused on the final critical steps," he said.His remarks came after Western media reported that and the parties to the 2015 Iranian nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), are "very close" to an agreement.

"Premature good news does not substitute good agreement," the Iranian spokesman said.

and the remaining parties to the JCPOA, namely Britain, China, France, Russia and Germany, have held eight rounds of talks in Vienna in a bid to revive the deal, from which the United States unilaterally pulled out in 2018.

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Japan's unemployment rate rose marginally to 2.8 per cent in January due to increasing cases of Covid-19 negatively impacting the labour market, s government report said on Friday.

From the previous month, on a seasonally-adjusted basis, the unemployment rate edged up 0.1 percentage point as a number of prefectures in the reporting period were placed under a Covid-19 quasi-state of emergency to combat the spread of the highly-contagious Omicron variant of the virus, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications said.

The Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, meanwhile, reported Friday the job availability ratio in the reporting period rose from a revised 1.17 in December to 1.20. This equates to there being 120 job openings for every 100 people seeking employment, reports Xinhua news agency.

According to the statistics bureau, in January the total number of people out of work in rose by 40,000, which was a 2.1 per cent increase from a month earlier to 1.9 people million unemployed people.

Of the total, those leaving their jobs of their own volition totalled 710,000 people, rising by 10,000 people, while those laid off totalled 590,00 people, jumping by 60,000 from a month earlier.

The number of new job seekers, the Ministry said, stood at 490,000 people, the same figure for December.

"The impact of the was especially seen in the lodging and eatery services sector, where 220,000 workers were absent in January, accounting for nearly 40 per cent of the 590,000 people who were newly furloughed in the month," a Ministry official was quoted as saying.

"Downward risks to the have increased and we must consider a scenario in which employment will be affected."

--IANS

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US President had a constructive conversation with leaders amid the rapidly evolving situation in Ukraine, the said on Thursday.

The leaders -- US President Joe Biden, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi --- convened a virtual meeting on Wednesday where they prominently discussed Russia's military operation in Ukraine and the humanitarian crisis unfolding in the eastern European nation.

The President felt it was a constructive conversation, Press Secretary Jen Psaki told reporters at her daily news conference.

The leaders reaffirmed their commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific region, and agreed to meet in person in Tokyo later this year, the said in a press release.

I met with my fellow Quad leaders Prime Minister Scott Morrison, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and Prime Minister Kishida Fumio about Russia's ongoing attack on Ukraine and our commitment to sovereignty and territorial integrity around the world, including in the Indo-Pacific, Biden said in a tweet after the meeting.

Biden suggested that members of the respective national security teams should also follow up after the meeting of the four heads of state, Psaki said.

He (Biden) asked members of their national security team to follow up from there, Psaki told reporters.

In November 2017, the US, Australia, India and Japan gave shape to the long-pending proposal of setting up the four-nation Quad grouping to develop a new strategy to keep the critical sea routes in the Indo-Pacific free of any influence, amid China's growing military presence in the strategic region.

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Meta has pledged $15 million to support humanitarian efforts in and neighbouring countries amid the Russian invasion.

This includes $5 million in direct donations to United Nations agencies and more than a dozen nonprofits, including Medical Corps that will be using these funds to deploy mobile medical units to and Internews to support at-risk journalists and human rights defenders in the region.

"We're also donating to UNICEF to scale up lifesaving support for children and families in and the region. The remaining $10 million will be provided as ad credits, helping nonprofit organisations raise the funds they need to respond and deliver essential information to people impacted by the violence," Meta said in a statement late on Thursday.

The social network has established a special operations centre staffed by experts from across the company, including native Russian and Ukrainian speakers, who are monitoring the platform around the clock.

"We've added several safety features in Ukraine and Russia, including the ability for people to lock their profile, removing the ability to view and search friends lists, and additional tools on Messenger," said Meta.

Meta has also expanded a ban on Russian state media outlets RT and Sputnik on and Instagram globally to stop the flow of misinformation as Russian forces make deeper inroads into Ukraine.

In addition to restricting access to RT and Sputnik across the European Union, the company announced to "globally demote content from Pages and Instagram accounts from Russian state-controlled media outlets and make them harder to find across our platforms".

--IANS

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Former US Secretary of State in a speech Friday on a non-official visit to called for the US to give diplomatic recognition to the self-ruled island claims as its own territory.

During Pompeo's tenure in the Trump administration, the US stepped up official exchanges with in moves that were strongly opposed by China, but he did not publicly advocate for formal diplomatic recognition of while in office.

The US is Taiwan's largest unofficial ally but ended formal recognition when it established diplomatic relations with mainland China's Communist government in 1979.

It's my view the US government should immediately and take necessary and long overdue steps to do the right and obvious thing, that is to offer the Republic of Taiwan America' diplomatic recognition as a free and sovereign country, Pompeo said while speaking at the invitation of the Prospect Foundation in Taipei, a private think tank based in Taiwan.

It's the reality. It's the fact... there's no need for Taiwan to declare independence because it's already an independent nation, he added.

Pompeo also framed the Russian war in Ukraine as a battle of democracies and autocracies, praising Taiwan for being on the front lines of this fight between freedom and tyranny.

Pompeo is speculated to be among several Republicans who may seek the party's presidential nomination in 2024.

Taiwan, formally known as the Republic of (Taiwan), is where the former ruling government of mainland China, led by the Nationalist Party, fled to after losing a civil war with the Communist Party in 1949.

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In the wake of the Russia- military conflict, two former Soviet republics-- Georgia and Moldova-- have applied for (EU) membership.

This come two days after said it was seeking fast-track membership to the bloc.

Georgia Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili said that the former Soviet republic of Georgia has formally signed an application for membership into the EU.

"It is a historic day for Georgia -- we are signing an Application for EU Membership on behalf of the country. Application for EU Membership is yet another milestone on the path of European integration of Georgia -- it is a stage, which turns a new page in our history and continues the effort of our ancestors, which is aimed at the accession of Georgia into a common European family," he said.

Aside from Georgia, Moldova has also officially applied for membership in the EU.

On Thursday, Moldova's President Maia Sandu said that the country had signed "a request to join the European Union".

"We want to live in peace, prosperity, be part of the free world," she was quoted as saying by Al Jazeera. "While some decisions take time, others must be made quickly and decisively, and taking advantage of the opportunities that come with a changing world."

Both Moldova's and Georgia's bid to forge closer ties with the West have long perturbed .

Moldova shares a roughly 1,200-kilometer border with . Meanwhile, Georgia has a nearly 900-km-long border with southern .

Both these countries have signed Association Agreements with the EU "on economic integration and political approximation" and free trade, Radio Free Europe reported.

As continue to advance near Kyiv, Ukrainian officials have asked for swift entry into the EU.

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countries refused on Friday to police a no-fly zone over Ukraine, warning that such a move could provoke widespread war in Europe with nuclear power Russia, the organisation's top civilian official said.

Speaking after chairing a meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and his counterparts, Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg acknowledged the suffering of the Ukrainian people, as ramps up its use of heavy firepower, shelling cities and other sites, forcing more than a million people out of the country.

What is taking place now in Ukraine is horrific. It's painful and we see human suffering, we see destruction at a scale we haven't seen in Europe since the Second World War, he said.

But, he added: We are not going to move into Ukraine, neither on the ground, nor in the Ukrainian airspace.

Under a collective security guarantee binding NATO's 30 member countries Article 5 of its founding treaty all allies must come to the defense of an ally if it finds itself under attack. Any shooting down of a warplane by could trigger that clause.

The only way to implement a no-fly zone is to send NATO fighter planes into Ukrainian airspace, and then impose that no-fly zone by shooting down Russian planes, Stoltenberg said. He said allies believe that if we did that, we would end up with something that could end in a full-fledged war in Europe.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has appealed for the West to enforce a no-fly zone over his country, most recently after a fire overnight at one of Ukraine's nuclear plants, the largest in Europe.

But, Stoltenberg said, we are not part of this conflict, and we have a responsibility to ensure that it does not escalate and spread beyond Ukraine, because that would be even more devastating and more dangerous.

NATO members and officials are alarmed at Russian President Vladimir Putin's threat to use nuclear weapons should one of their number get involved in his war on Ukraine. NATO has no weapons itself, but the United States, Britain and France are nuclear powers, like .

NATO has mobilised thousands of troops backed by aircraft, tanks and heavy equipment and deployed them to countries on its eastern flank near Ukraine and Russia, such as Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Romania, which are nervous about Putin's intentions for their future.

At a second round of talks between Ukrainian and Russian delegations Thursday, Putin warned Ukraine that it must quickly accept the Kremlin's demand for its demilitarization and declare itself a neutral country, thereby renouncing any bid to join NATO.

NATO insists that its door remains open to any European country that wants to join and can fulfill the obligations of membership. Stoltenberg said that the world's biggest security organisation will also step up cooperation with already close allies Finland and Sweden.

Blinken also held talks in Brussels Friday with members of the Group of Seven major powers and European Union countries.

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Oil rose above $113 a barrel on Friday in a volatile session as fears over disruption to Russian oil exports in the face of Western sanctions offset the prospect of more Iranian supplies in the event of a nuclear deal with Tehran.

Signs of an escalation in the Russia-Ukraine conflict, with reports of a fire at a Ukrainian nuclear power plant, spooked before authorities said the fire in a building identified as a training centre had been extinguished.

Brent crude rose as high as $114.23 a barrel and by 1300 GMT was up $3.28, or 3%, at $113.74. U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) added $3.19, or 3%, to $110.86 after touching a high of $112.84.

"Russia's invasion of Ukraine means that fears over supply will remain front and centre," said Stephen Brennock of oil broker PVM, though he added that there is "a new sense of urgency" to revive the Iranian nuclear deal.

Crude oil hit its highest in a decade this week and prices are set to post their strongest weekly gains since the middle of 2020, with the U.S. benchmark up more than 20% and Brent 17%.

On Thursday prices swung in a $10 range but settled lower for the first time in four sessions as investors focused on the revival of the nuclear deal, which is expected to boost Iranian oil exports and ease tight supplies.

Still, Iran's Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian said on Friday that the West's "haste" to reach a nuclear agreement "cannot prevent the observance of Iran's red lines", including economic guarantees.

are rising on fears that Western sanctions over the Ukraine conflict will disrupt shipments from Russia, the world's biggest exporter of crude and oil products combined.

Trading activity for Russian crude has slowed as buyers hesitate to make purchases because of sanctions against Russia while U.S. President Joe Biden comes under growing pressure to ban U.S. imports of Russian oil.

More oil supplies are set to be added from a coordinated release of 60 million barrels of oil reserves by developed nations, agreed this week. Japan said on Friday that it plans to release 7.5 million barrels of oil.

(Additional reporting by Florence Tan in Singapore and Sonali Paul in MelbourneEditing by David Goodman)

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is likely to remain on the grey list of global and terrorist financing watchdog until June for failing to meet some of the targets under the additional criteria, according to a media report on Friday.

has been on the grey list of the Paris-based Financial Action Task Force (FATF) since June 2018 for failing to check money laundering, leading to terror financing, and was given a plan of action to complete it by October 2019.

Since then, the country continues to be on that list due to its failure to comply with the mandates.

The concluding session of the plenary meeting of the is due on Friday and includes Pakistan's review on the agenda, the Dawn newspaper reported.

is now targeting the full completion of the 2021 action plan on anti- and combating terror financing by the end of January 2023.

In October 2021, the FATF acknowledged Pakistan's progress on a 27-point action plan on completion of 26 items but kept the country on its increased monitoring list to exhibit terror financing investigations against and prosecutions of top cadres of UN-designated terror groups.

At the time, FATF President Marcus Pleyer said Pakistan had to complete two concurrent action plans with a total of 34 items.

It has now addressed or largely addressed 30 of the items, the report quoted him as saying.

The most recent action plan of 2021 on from FATF's regional affiliate the Asia Pacific Group (APG) largely focused on money laundering and had found serious deficiencies.

In this new action plan, four out of the seven items now stood addressed or largely addressed, the report said.

In October, FATF encouraged Pakistan to continue to make progress in addressing the one remaining CFT-related item as soon as possible by continuing to demonstrate that terror financing investigations and prosecutions target senior leaders and commanders of UN-designated terrorist groups, it said.

Recently, the Monetary Fund (IMF) asked Pakistan to complete the last remaining item in the 2018 anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing (AML/CFT) action plan on the effectiveness of terror financing investigations and prosecutions of senior leaders of UN-designated terrorist groups.

It asked Pakistan to promptly address the deficiencies identified in Pakistan's Asia Pacific Group on Money Laundering Mutual Evaluation Report under the 2021 AML/CFT action plan, the report said.

The government has given a commitment to the IMF to review the implementation of AML/CFT controls by financial institutions by the end of June with respect to the tax amnesty programme for the construction sector, the report said.

It promised to meet the timelines for the implementation of APG's 2021 action plan, including on the mutual legal assistance framework, AML/CFT supervision, transparency of beneficial ownership information, and compliance with targeted financial sanctions for proliferation financing, it said.

With Pakistan's continuation on the grey list, it is increasingly becoming difficult for Islamabad to get financial aid from the IMF, the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the European Union, thus further enhancing problems for the country.

Pakistan has so far avoided being on the black list with the help of close allies like China, Turkey and Malaysia.

The FATF is an inter-governmental body established in 1989 to combat money laundering, terrorist financing and other related threats to the integrity of the financial system.

The FATF currently has 39 members including two regional organisations -- the European Commission and Gulf Cooperation Council. India is a member of the FATF consultations and its Asia Pacific Group.

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Russia on Friday accused "Ukrainian nationalists" of "forcibly" holding over 3,700 Indian citizens in various cities, while saying the Russian military is doing everything to ensure the peaceful evacuation of foreign nationals.

Russia's Permanent Representative Vassily Nebenzia told an emergency UN Security Council meeting following the attack on the Zaporizhzhya nuclear plant in Ukraine, that radicals and extremists in were and are under the close guardianship and protection of Western nations.

"We urge you to calm down your mentees who in the worst traditions of ISIL terrorists and their Idlib associates are hiding behind civilians, placing heavy weaponry and multiple rocket launchers in residential areas.

He said these terrorists are preventing civilians wishing to leave the cities from doing so and this practice is affecting not only Ukrainians, but also foreign citizens.

The number of foreign nationals who are being forcibly held by Ukrainian nationalists is shocking. In Kharkiv, this includes 3,189 citizens of India, up to 2,700 citizens of Vietnam, 202 citizens of China. In Sumy, this includes 576 Indian citizens, 101 Ghanaian citizens and 121 Chinese citizens.

The Russian military is doing everything to ensure the peaceful evacuation of foreign nationals, he said adding that at various checkpoints 130 comfortable buses are standing ready in order to leave for Kharkiv and Sumy to rescue Indian students and other foreign citizens.

He said checkpoints have been equipped with temporary accommodations, rest facilities and hot meals and mobile medical stations have been deployed with stocks of medications. The evacuees will be later transported to Belgrade and subsequently brought home by air.

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Russian forces seized the largest nuclear power plant in Europe after a building at the complex was set ablaze during intense fighting with Ukrainian defenders, Ukrainian authorities said on Friday.

Fears of a potential nuclear disaster at the Zaporizhzhia plant had spread alarm across world capitals, before authorities said the fire in a building identified as a training centre, had been extinguished.

U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said there was no indication of elevated radiation levels at the plant, which provides more than a fifth of total electricity generated in Ukraine.

The Ukrainian regional authority confirmed in a Facebook post that Russian forces had captured the plant and said personnel were monitoring the condition of power units to ensure they could operate safely. Earlier, a video feed from the plant verified by Reuters showed shelling and smoke rising near a five-storey building at the plant compound.





ALSO READ: US Senator Lindsay Graham calls for Putin's assassination amid Ukraine war

The footage shot at night showed one building aflame, and a volley of incoming shells, before a large candescent ball lit up the sky, exploding beside a car park and sending smoke billowing across the compound.

"Europeans, please wake up. Tell your politicians--Russian troops are shooting at a nuclear power plant in Ukraine," Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in a video address.

Zelenskiy said Russian tanks had shot at the nuclear reactor plants, though there was no evidence cited that they had been hit.

The mayor of the nearby town of Energodar about 550 km (342 miles) southeast of Kyiv said fierce fighting and "continuous enemy shelling" had caused casualties in the area, without providing details.

Thousands of people are believed to have been killed or wounded and more than 1 million refugees have fled Ukraine since Russian President last Thursday launched the biggest attack on a European state since World War Two.

Early reports of the incident at the power plant sent financial markets in Asia spiralling, with stocks tumbling and oil prices surging further. "Markets are worried about nuclear fallout. The risk is that there is a miscalculation or over-reaction and the war prolongs," said Vasu Menon, executive director of investment strategy at OCBC Bank.

Russia had already captured the defunct Chernobyl plant north of Kyiv, which spewed radioactive waste over much of Europe when it melted down in 1986. The Zaporizhzhia plant is a different and safer type, analysts said.

Earlier, U.S. President Joe Biden and UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson both spoke with Zelenskiy to get an update on the situation at the plant.



"President Biden joined President Zelenskiy in urging Russia to cease its military activities in the area and allow firefighters and emergency responders to access the site," the White House said.

Johnson said Russian forces must immediately quit their attack and agreed with Zelenskiy that a ceasefire was crucial. "The prime minister said the reckless actions of President Putin could now directly threaten the safety of all of Europe," Downing Street said.

The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency said he was "deeply concerned" by the situation at the nuclear plant, and that Ukrainian authorities had assured the IAEA that "essential" equipment were unaffected.

FIGHTING RAGES, SANCTIONS MOUNT

On Thursday, Russia and Ukraine negotiators agreed to the need for humanitarian corridors to help civilians escape and to deliver medicines and food to the areas where fighting was the fiercest.

Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak said a temporary halt to fighting in select locations was also possible. The negotiators will meet again next week, the Belarusian state news agency Belta quoted Podolyak as saying.

Only one Ukrainian city, the southern port of Kherson, has fallen to Russian forces since the invasion was launched on Feb. 24, but Russian forces continue to surround and attack other cities.





ALSO READ: US provoked Russia by not ruling out NATO membership for Ukraine: China

Mariupol, the main port on the Sea of Azov, was surrounded and under heavy bombardment. Water and power was cut off, and officials say they cannot evacuate the wounded.

Video posted on Twitter from Mariupol, and verified by Reuters, showed parked vehicles burning while non-stop firing reverberated around surrounding apartment blocks. The northeastern city of Kharkiv has been under attack since the start of the invasion, but defenders are holding out in the heavily shelled city.

While no major assault has been launched on Kyiv, the capital has been shelled, and Russian forces unleashed devastating firepower to break resistance in the outlying town of Borodyanka.

In Washington, a U.S. defence official said Russian troops were still 25 km (16 miles) from Kyiv city centre. The United States and Britain announced sanctions on more Russian oligarchs on Thursday, following on from EU measures, as they ratcheted up the pressure on the Kremlin.

More companies including Alphabet Inc's Google, footwear giant Nike and Swedish home furnishing firm IKEA shut down or reduced operations in Russia as trade restrictions and supply constraints added to political pressure.

Russia calls its actions in Ukraine a "special operation" that is not designed to occupy territory but to topple the democratically elected government, destroy its neighbour's military capabilities and capture what it regards as dangerous nationalists. It denies targeting civilians.

Moscow further tightened the flow of information, restricting access the BBC Russian service and Radio Liberty. Russian human rights activist and former world chess champion Garry Kasparov called on Western countries to eject Russia from the global police agency Interpol, and impose a no-fly zone over Ukraine.

"Russia should be thrown back into the Stone Age to make sure that the oil and gas industry and any other sensitive industries that are vital for survival of the regime cannot function without Western technological support," Kasparov said.

(Reporting by Pavel Polityuk, Natalia Zinets, Aleksandar Vasovic in Ukraine, David Ljunggren in Ottawa and other Reuters bureaux; Writing by Costas Pitas and Lincoln Feast; Editing by Stephen Coates & Simon Cameron-Moore)

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Mayor London Breed has announced plans to commit to returning to in-person work in the city next week.

The Mayor has worked with the Chamber of Commerce and business leaders on implementing return to in-person work policies through the "Welcome Back to SF" pledge as the surge subsides, the announcement on Thursday said, adding that as one of the highest vaccinated cities in the country, is poised to welcome workers back to the office.

The city and county of San Francisco workers, many of whom have been telecommuting since the start of the surge, are scheduled to return to the office in varied capacities from March 7, reports Xinhua news agency.

After two years of primarily remote work policies by office-based industries, San Francisco's office core has not shown the same degree of economic recovery like that of other city neighbourhoods.

The decrease in the number of workers has had significant repercussions for the small businesses that cater to offices and their employees, according to the announcement.

"By committing to San Francisco, these businesses and many more are investing in this city and what makes it special - the people who live and work here," said Breed.

"This March is the start of a new beginning for this city, and I want to thank all the businesses and workers who are committed to supporting our city and our small businesses."

The city has also partnered with several downtown stakeholders to curate a series of events spanning the last week of March as part of efforts to welcome workers back downtown.

Additionally, through a $12.2 million investment by the city, Welcome Ambassadors are stationed throughout San Francisco's office core, including transit hubs and popular congregation points, to provide a familiar atmosphere for returning office workers, residents, and tourists.

--IANS

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Japans and said on Friday they would pair up to develop and sell battery-powered electric vehicles, and said they were open to bringing in other partners. The said in a statement they would form a joint venture this year and aim to begin selling the first model in 2025.

Honda will be responsible for manufacturing the first model, while will develop the mobility service platform, they said.

In the joint venture, we would like to lead the mobility evolution by combining our technology and experience with Honda's long experience in mobility development and vehicle body manufacturing technologies, CEO Kenichiro Yoshida said. The did not reveal financial details of the tie-up.

During a news conference in Tokyo on Friday, Honda CEO Toshihiro Mibe said although he is not thinking about taking the joint venture public immediately, he would not dismiss that as among the options to grow the firm.

Asked whether the partnership between the two is exclusive, Mibe said they are open to bringing in other companies. In the future, we would like to expand our business with an open mindset, Mibe said, adding Honda will continue to develop its own EV strategy separate from the JV.

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As the conflict between and Ukraine entered the ninth day, suspended all its operations in and amid the bombing at Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant.

The US-based has decided to suspend all operations in and Russia, The Kyiv Independent reported quoting the company's CEO, Brian Chesky.

Chesky tweeted on March 3, " is suspending all operations in and ."

Moreover, US President Joe Biden on Thursday imposed new sanctions on eight members of the Russian elite and their families, including Dmitry Peskov, Putin's press secretary.

The US also imposed visa restrictions on 19 oligarchs and 47 of their family members and close associates.

"U.S. President Biden imposed on March 3 new sanctions on eight members of the Russian elite and their families, including Dmitry Peskov, Putin's press secretary. The US will also impose visa restrictions on 19 oligarchs and 47 of their family members and close associates," tweeted The Kyiv Independent.

The US and Europe have launched a series of sanctions against Russia in response to the large scale military conflict in Ukraine.

These sanctions will prevent Moscow from accessing its hundreds of billions of dollars of reserves worldwide and cut short its state revenues from oil and natural gas.

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The Biden administration offered humanitarian relief to Ukrainians in the on Thursday, which could protect as many as 30,000 people from being deported.

Ukrainians can remain for up to 18 months under the federal programme known as Temporary Protected Status.

Russia's premeditated and unprovoked attack on has resulted in an ongoing war, senseless violence that has forced Ukrainians to seek refuge in other countries, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro N. Mayorkas said.

The programme is for people fleeing ongoing armed conflict, environmental disasters, or extraordinary and temporary conditions.

As many as 30,000 Ukrainians may benefit, according to The Migration Policy Institute.

Refugee advocates applauded the move.

Krish O'Mara Vignarajah, president and CEO of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, called it a concrete show of solidarity with the Ukrainian people.

Protecting Ukrainian families from deportation is the least we can do amid a Russian onslaught that has targeted civilians and civilian infrastructure.

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The UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) has announced the start of a fundraising campaign to provide aid to the Ukrainian people, assessing the urgent needs at the level of 400 million euros (over $441 million), Deputy Regional Director Regional Office for Europe and Central Asia Philippe Cori said.

"The situation is serious, we need to mobilize the team, with the Ukrainians having more and more difficulties to get access to aid," Cori told the BFMTV broadcaster.

Last week, launched a special operation after the breakaway republics of Donetsk and Luhansk requested assistance to defend themselves from ongoing attacks by the Ukrainian troops.

The Western countries have strongly condemned the Russian military operation and boosted the sanctions pressure on Moscow.

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Covid-19 "continues to spread rapidly throughout" detention centres run by the and Customs Enforcement (ICE), threatening the lives of people detained across the nation, according to an attorney with the non-profit American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

"ICE officials have known for months that they must provide booster shots to people in detention, but have failed to do so," Xinhua news agency quoted Eunice Cho, senior staff attorney at the ACLU's National Prison Project, as saying in a statement.

"ICE's callous failure to provide this necessary protection is cruel and unconstitutional," Cho alleged.

The ACLU and its legislative office in Washington, D.C. filed a lawsuit earlier this week on behalf of "medically vulnerable people detained" by the ICE "who have requested and been denied Covid-19 vaccine booster shots".

The lawsuit demands that the plaintiffs, who are medically vulnerable to severe illness and death in the event of infection, as well as all medically vulnerable people in ICE detention, be offered booster shots.

It was the second lawsuit the ACLU has filed to obtain booster shots for people held in immigration detention.

More than one out of every 20 people in ICE detention are currently infected with Covid-19, according to ACLU data.

It also claimed ICE has provided only a total of 1,436 boosters to people detained in ICE detention facilities over four months between November 2021 and February 21, 2022, despite holding between 18,800 to 22,000 people on average daily.

Anna Sorokin, also known as Anna Delvey and now the subject of the popular Netflix series 'Inventing Anna', is among the four named plaintiffs in the civil action against US authorities and officials.

Sorokin, according to the ACLU lawsuit, said that she caught Covid-19 as a result of the ICE refusing her multiple requests for a booster shot.

The 31-year-old German woman convicted in 2019 of posing as a wealthy heiress to scam banks, hotels, and New York socialites, Sorokin was sentenced to four to 12 years in prison for her crimes and is presently detained by the ICE at a correctional facility in Goshen, New York.

--IANS

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(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Chinas Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin has condemned the "fake" and "very despicable" suggestion that Beijing asked to delay its invasion of until after the 2022 Winter Olympics had finished.

Speaking at a daily briefing on Thursday, Wang told reporters that the allegation in a US newspaper "is purely fake news, and such behaviours of diverting attention and shifting blame are very despicable".

He reiterated the country's claim that the US provoked by not ruling out NATO membership for .

The report in The New York Times quoted a Western intelligence report as saying senior Chinese officials told senior Russian officials to not invade until the sporting event in Beijing had concluded, RT reported.

The article claims the "report indicates that senior Chinese officials had some level of direct knowledge about Russia's war plans or intentions before the invasion started".

was one of 35 nations that abstained from a vote of the UN General Assembly on Wednesday, which saw 141 nations condemn Russia's invasion of Ukraine, while only five members, including Moscow, rejected the resolution.

"Regrettably, the draft resolution submitted to the General Assembly emergency special session for vote had not undergone full consultations with the whole membership, nor does it take into consideration the history and the complexity of the current crisis," Wang told reporters, explaining China's decision to abstain.

--IANS

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The has imposed new sanctions on 50 Russian oligarchs, including Kremlin press secretary Dmitry Peskovt, and their families in the latest attempt to target President Vladimir Putin for ordering the invasion of .

President Joe Biden said the sanctions will target those who line their pockets with the Russian people's money as the Ukrainian people seek shelter from airstrikes.

The new penalties will cut members of the Russian elite, their families and close associates, from the US financial system.

Today, I'm announcing that we're adding dozens of names to the list, including one of Russia's wealthiest billionaires. I'm banning travel to America by more than 50 Russian oligarchs, their families, and their close associates, Biden told reporters at the top of his Cabinet meeting at the on Thursday.

The US, he said, continues to impose very severe economic sanctions on Russian President Vladimir Putin and all those folks around him, choking off access to technology as well as cutting off access to the global financial system.

It's had a profound impact already. And the goal was to maximise the impact on Putin and and to minimise the harm on us and our allies and friends around the world. Our interest is in maintaining the strongest unified economic impact campaign on Putin in all of history, and I think we're well on the way to doing that, Biden said.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken, in a statement announced the names of some of the wealthiest Russian elites close to Putin who has been subject to the latest sanctions. They are Alisher Usmanov, Boris Arkady, and Igor Rotenberg, and their family members and entities connected to them.

Among them is Dmitry Peskov, a prominent spokesperson for the Kremlin, as well as Yevgeniy Prigozhin, a wealthy Russian businessman known as Putin's chef, NBC News reported.

These actions also target influential Russian executives: Nikolai Tokarev, President of Transneft; Sergei Chemezov, CEO of Rostec; and Igor Shuvalov, Chairman of VEB.RF. These individuals, part of President Putin's inner circle, have enriched themselves at the expense of the Russian people, and their support has facilitated Putin's war of choice against Ukraine, Blinken said.

In addition to them, 33 other Russian individuals were added to the sanctions list. The Department of State imposed substantial sanctions on 22 defence-related firms.

These far-reaching sanctions target entities that develop and produce fighter aircraft, infantry fighting vehicles, electronic warfare systems, missiles, and unmanned aerial vehicles for Russia's military. These sanctions strike at the core of Putin's war machine, Blinken said.

Further, the Department of Commerce also imposed export controls on oil and gas extraction equipment that support Russia's refining capacity.

Because a significant portion of the Russian government's revenue comes from the sale of oil and gas, these actions will degrade Russia's ability to raise revenue to support and sustain its military aggression. These measures also align U.S. export controls in this area with those of the European Union, Blinken said.

Later in the day, Secretary of State Blinken spoke with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba.

They discussed the remarkable resolve and actions taken by nations around the world to support the Government of and the Ukrainian people in the face of Putin's war against . They also discussed additional security, economic, and humanitarian support needs, State Department Spokesperson Ned Price said in a readout of the call.

Press Secretary Jen Psaki told reporters that We don't have a strategic interest in reducing the global supply of energy, she said.

That would raise prices at the gas pump for the American people, around the world, because it would reduce the supply available. It's as simple as less supply raises prices. That is certainly a big factor for the president at this moment. It also has the potential to pad the pockets of President Putin, which is exactly what we are not trying to do. So, as the president has said, we carved out payments for energy, trade, and transport from our financial sanctions with that in mind, Psaki explained.

The US, she said, has been taking steps to degrade Russia's status as a leading energy supplier over time. That includes, of course, shutting down Nord Stream 2 or preventing Nord Stream 2 from operating. That's why we're surging LNG to Europe to help accelerate its diversification from Russian gas, she said.

Meanwhile, the US said that with Ukraine's agreement, 45 countries have invoked the OSCE Moscow Mechanism.

This action will establish an expert mission to address our grave concerns regarding the humanitarian and human rights impacts on the people of Ukraine caused by Russia's further invasion with the support of Belarus, State Department Spokesperson, Ned Price said.

The OSCE expert mission, he said, will work impartially to establish the facts and circumstances surrounding possible contraventions of OSCE commitments and violations and abuses of human rights law and humanitarian law by Russia's forces.

The expert mission will prepare a report that will be shared with all OSCE participating States and relevant accountability mechanisms, including national, regional, and courts and tribunals. The United States and our partners will hold and its forces accountable for all human rights abuses, violations of international humanitarian law, war crimes, and crimes against humanity they committed in Ukraine, Price said.

The UK also announced further sanctions against two Russian oligarchs on Thursday. The European Union announced this week that it would sanction more than two dozen prominent Russians.

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Calling for the assassination of Russian President Vladimir Putin, US Republican Senator Lindsey Graham asked whether there is a Brutus or a "more successful" Colonel Stauffenberg in the Russian military.

Julius Caesar, a Roman general, was assassinated by Brutus while Colonel Stauffenberg, a German army officer, had attempted to assassinate Adolf Hitler on July 20, 1944.

In a series of tweets, Graham said, "Is there a Brutus in Is there a more successful Colonel Stauffenberg in the Russian military? The only way this ends is for somebody in to take this guy out. You would be doing your country - and the world - a great service."

He further said, "The only people who can fix this are the Russian people. Easy to say, hard to do. Unless you want to live in darkness for the rest of your life, be isolated from the rest of the world in abject poverty, and live in darkness you need to step up to the plate.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A top American Senator has urged the Ukrainian government to end racial discrimination at its border, a prickly issue that has been pointed out by numerous students who have been frantically trying to flee the war-ravaged country.

As the Russian invasion of intensified, foreign students, especially Africans and Asians, who are attempting to flee the country have been complaining that they have been experiencing racist treatment by Ukrainian security forces at border check-posts.

I want to call attention to a growing body of disturbing reports along Ukraine's western borders, which allege discriminatory treatment and processing of certain non-Ukrainian individuals in particular, individuals from African nations, Senator Mark Warner said in a letter to Oksana Markarova, Ambassador of to the US on Thursday.

Warner is Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and is also Co-Chair of Senate India Caucus.

According to online videos circulating on social media, individuals from Morocco, Nigeria, Egypt and India, as well as other nations seeking to escape the war in Ukraine, have been physically abused, barred from boarding trains and buses, and denied entry into border nations, among other things, the Senator's office said.

Many of these individuals are students studying in . As you well know, at least 20 per cent of the more than 80,000 students studying in Ukraine come from an African nation, with sizable populations of Moroccan, Nigerian, and Egyptian students, Warner wrote.

These students and other individuals must be able to seek safety, and any discriminatory treatment or actions that deny them that ability are unacceptable. I echo the sentiments of the African Union, the US Department of State, and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, and highlight this right of all people who are fleeing conflict, he said.

Acknowledging the challenging circumstances being navigated by Ukrainian security personnel who are rapidly working to facilitate historic refugee flows, Warner in his letter has stressed the importance of affording all individuals the ability to seek safe evacuation, regardless of race, religion, or nationality.

Warner also stated this point in his letters to the ambassadors of neighbouring nations Poland, Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, and Moldova who are working with Ukraine to process and provide refuge in response to the mass migration spurred by Russia's aggression.

The Senator also stated he will continue to monitor the conditions relating to the African diaspora and who are being forcibly displaced at the Ukrainian borders.

An coalition of activists and human rights lawyers on Wednesday filed an appeal to the United Nations on behalf of African and Asian refugees who were facing discrimination and abuse while trying to evacuate from the eastern European nation.

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The United Nations' atomic watchdog says has informed the Atomic Energy Agency that staff who have been kept at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant since Russian troops took control of the site a week ago are facing psychological pressure and moral exhaustion.

IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi said Thursday that the staff must be allowed to rest and rotate so their crucial work can be carried out safely and securely.

Grossi received a joint appeal from the Government, regulatory authority and the national operator which added that personnel at the Chornobyl site have limited opportunities to communicate, move and carry out full-fledged maintenance and repair work,' the IAEA said in a statement.

Reactor No. 4 at the power plant exploded and caught fire in 1986, shattering the building and spewing radioactive material high into the sky.

Even 36 years later, radioactivity is still leaking from history's worst nuclear disaster.

has lost regulatory control over all the facilities in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone to the Russians and asked the IAEA to undertake measures in order to reestablish legal regulation of safety of nuclear facilities and installations within the site, the statement added.

Grossi has repeatedly stressed that any military or other action that could threaten the safety or security of Ukraine's nuclear power plants must be avoided.

I remain gravely concerned about the deteriorating situation in Ukraine, especially about the country's nuclear power plants, which must be able to continue operating without any safety or security threats, he said.

Any accident caused as a result of the military conflict could have extremely serious consequences for people and the environment, in Ukraine and beyond.

___



Chernihiv: Video taken in the aftermath of shelling in the city of Chernihiv shows firefighters standing in rubble dousing flames with hoses as rescue crews carried at least one person on a stretcher and another helper assisted a person down a ladder.

Smoke spewed from a high-rise building just behind what appeared to be a children's swing set, according to video released Thursday by the Ukrainian government.

Ukraine's state emergencies agency says at least 33 civilians were killed and another 18 wounded in a Russian strike Thursday on a residential area in Chernihiv, a city of 280,000 in Ukraine's north.

___



Washington: US President Joe Biden's administration on Thursday announced new sanctions against Russian oligarchs and in President Vladimir Putin's inner circle as Russian forces continue to pummel Ukraine.

Those targeted by the new sanctions include Putin's press secretary, Dmitry Peskov, and Alisher Burhanovich Usmanov, one of Russia's wealthiest individuals and a close ally of Putin.

The US State Department also announced it was imposing visa bans on 19 Russian oligarchs and dozens of their family members and close associates.

These individuals and their family members will be cut off from the US financial system; their assets in the United States will be frozen and their property will be blocked from use, the White House said in a statement announcing the new penalties.

The White House described Peskov, the Kremlin spokesperson, as a "top purveyor of Putin's propaganda.

The property of Usmanov and the will be blocked from use in the US and by Americans. His assets include his superyacht, one of the world's largest. Usmanov's private jet, one of Russia's largest privately owned aircraft, is also covered by the sanctions.

___



Prague: The Czech Republic won't punish those Czech nationals who decide to join brigades to help Ukraine fight the invading Russian army.

Prime Minister Petr Fiala said on Thursday he and President Milos Zeman have agreed on the plan.

To serve in a foreign army is punishable by a prison term in the Czech Republic, but Fiala said that such a person would be pardoned by the president, with him co-signing it.

Several hundred Czechs have asked the presidential office and the Defense Ministry for approval to serve in foreign armed forces following Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's call for brigades of volunteers.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A World Bank emergency cash disbursement to will grow to 460 million euros ($509 million) with contributions from and the Netherlands, and will be submitted for board approval on Friday, two people familiar with the transaction said.



Ukraine's government could receive the loan funds almost immediately after board approval, which may be delayed until early next week, one of the sources told Reuters. The disbursement, arranged with unusual speed for the development lender, would provide with desperately needed cash to fund government operations as it battles a Russian invasion that has killed thousands and unleashed devastating bombardments of urban centers.



The will guarantee a 95 million euro increase in the loan, while will back a 50 million euro increase, the sources said. The guarantees from the two countries will allow the World Bank to expand the disbursement to 460 million euros from a the bank's previously-announced $350 million (317 million euros) loan.



Reuters reported on Tuesday that the $350 million for general budget support would be added to an existing development policy loan to speed the approval process. The plan has the backing of the United States and other Western democracies that hold an overwhelming majority of the bank's voting power, the sources said.



Spokespersons for the World Bank and the U.S. Treasury declined to comment on the additional contributions.

One of the sources familiar with the plan said the loan would be deemed approved if no objections were lodged by Monday, but Russia's executive director may object, requiring a board meeting to consider the plan, which may delay disbursement by a day or two.

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Chinese President has urged armed police forces of the country to always serve as the "faithful guardian" of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the people.

Xi made the remarks on Wednesday in the reply to a letter from a People's Armed Police Force unit in Shanghai, Xinhua news agency reported.

Xi, also general secretary of the CPC Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, praised the unit for its honourable tradition and achievements in learning the party's history and called for carrying forward the great founding spirit of the CCP.

Since 1998, members of the unit have devoted their weekends and holidays to explain the party's history to over 4.5 million visitors to the site of the first CCP National Congress in Shanghai, Xinhua reported.

According to the local media reports, the site is part of a memorial that chronicles the founding of the CCP as well as the Party's efforts and achievements over the past 100 years.

Armed police officers of the unit recently wrote to Xi to report their progress in studying the Party's history, the report added.

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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday urged European leaders to "wake up" as the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, the largest in the continent, is on fire, while also appealing for "immediate action" against .

In a video posted on Twitter, the President said that "the biggest nuclear power plant in Europe is on fire right now" and accused Russian troops of deliberately shooting at the plant's six reactors using tanks equipped with thermal imaging, reports the BBC.

Invoking the "global catastrophe" at Chernobyl in 1986, he warned the consequences of a meltdown at Zaporizhzhia would be far worse.

"Europeans, wake up please. Tell your politicians that Russian forces are shooting at the nuclear plant in Ukraine," he said.

Zelensky further said he had been in touch with leaders from the US, UK, European Union, Germany and Poland, as well as the Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), but called on ordinary citizens to raise alarms with their own politicians too.

"Russian propaganda has warned in the past that it would cover the world in nuclear ash. Now this isn't just a warning, this is real."

Earlier on Friday, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba warned that if the nuclear plant blew up as a result of the fire then the catastrophe would be "10 times larger" than the Chernobyl disaster.

Citing Ukrainian officials, the Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said that there has not been any change in the radiation levels at plant site in the wake of the fire.

The IAEA also said that the fire has not affected "essential" equipment and personnel at the nuclear power plane were "taking mitigatory actions".

The global nuclear organisation further said that it is consulting with "and others with a view to provide maximum possible assistance to the country as it seeks to maintain nuclear safety and security in the current difficult circumstances".

But in the wake of the "serious situation" at the plant, IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi has warned Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmygal and the country's nuclear regulator and operator of the severe danger if the reactors were hit by the ongoing Russian firing.

currently has four active nuclear plants, including Zaporizhzhia which reportedly accounts for some 25 per cent of the country's power, the BC reported.

It also deals with nuclear waste at sites like Chernobyl, which is now under Russian control.

The latest developments come on the ninth day of Russia's continuous military assault on .

--IANS

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Emporia, KS (66801)

Today

Thunderstorms likely. Rainfall will be locally heavy at times. Low 53F. Winds NE at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 80%..

Tonight

Thunderstorms likely. Rainfall will be locally heavy at times. Low 53F. Winds NE at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 80%.
Ten gram of 24-carat is selling at Rs 51,600 on Friday, down Rs 440 since the last trade as demand fell for the safe-haven bullion.

Ten gram of 22 carat is selling at Rs 47,300, down Rs 400 from Thursday according to the Goodreturns website. One kg of is selling at Rs 67,300, up Rs 100 from the last trade.

In Delhi, Kolkata and Mumbai, 24-carat is selling at Rs 51,600. The price of 22-carat gold in these cities is Rs 47,300.

In Chennai, 24-carat gold is selling at Rs 52,850. The price of 22-carat gold is Rs 48,470 in Chennai.

The prices of gold and vary across the country due to excise duty, state taxes, and making charges.

In Chennai, the price of 1 kg of is at Rs 72,500. In Delhi, Kolkata and Mumbai, the price is at Rs 67,300.

Gold slipped due to an uptick in risk appetite, a report in Reuters said.
Domestic steel makers have hiked the prices of hot-rolled coil (HRC) and TMT bars by up to Rs 5,000 per tonne as is being impacted amid ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict.

According to industry sources, the prices have been increased in the past few days and are expected to go up further in the coming weeks with the crisis deepening between the two countries.

After the price revision, a tonne of HRC will cost around Rs 66,000, while the buyers will get TMT bars for about Rs 65,000 per tonne, the sources said on Friday.

"The war is impacting the at the international level leading to an increase in input cost. Coking coal is trading at USD 500 per tonne," an industry executive said adding that it is a rise of about 20 per cent compared to the rates a few weeks ago.

India meets 85 per cent of its coking coal, a key steel making raw material, requirement from imports. While Australia remains the main buying destination, part of requirement is met from countries like South Africa, Canada and the US.

When asked about the impact of the conflict on domestic sectors including steel, Tata Steel CEO and MD T V Narendran said, "Both Russia and Ukraine are manufacturers and exporters of steel in addition to being suppliers of raw materials including coking coal and natural gas. The unfolding Russia-Ukraine crisis will impact supply-demand dynamics, input costs and the overall global economy."



Narendran, who is also a member of the global industry body the World Steel Association, further said, "We are continuously monitoring the evolving situation and have contingency plans in place to ensure our customers and stakeholders remain unaffected."



HRC and TMT bars used in consumer-friendly industries such as auto, appliances and construction, and real estate, among others.

The prices of the houses, vehicles and consumer goods are bound to be impacted by the rise in as steel is a raw material for these sectors, an expert said.

While JSW Steel declined to comment, an e-mail query sent to JSPL, AMNS India, SAIL and RINL remained unanswered.

(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.)
Hindustan Unilever slumped 5.17% to Rs 1,983.55, extending its losing run to ninth consecutive trading session.

Shares of Hindustan Unilever have declined 14.2% in nine trading sessions from its previous closing high of Rs 2,312 posted on 18 February 2022. The counter has fallen nearly 30.6% from its 52-week high of Rs 2859.10 hit on 21 September 2021. The stock hit a 52-week low of Rs 1,982 in intraday today.

In one month, the stock has fallen 14% as compared to a 7.7% fall in Nifty 50 index.

On the technical front, the stock's RSI (relative strength index) stood at 20.169. The RSI oscillates between zero and 100. Traditionally the RSI is considered overbought when above 70 and oversold when below 30.

The stock is trading above its 50 and 100 days simple moving average placed at 2297.96 and 2350.13 respectively. These levels will act as crucial resistance zones in near term.

HUL manufactures branded and packaged consumer products including soap, detergent, personal care products and processed food

The FMCG major posted 16.76% rise in standalone net profit to Rs 2,243 crore on 10.43% increase in revenue from operations to Rs 12,900 crore in Q3 FY22 over Q3 FY21.

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ICICI Bank fell 1.04% to Rs 691.05, extending decline for third day in a row.

The stock has lost 6.95% in three sessions, from its recent closing high of Rs 742.70 recorded on 28 February 2022.

On the technical front, the stock's RSI (relative strength index) stood at 32.611. The RSI oscillates between zero and 100. Traditionally, the RSI is considered overbought when above 70 and oversold when below 30.

The stock was trading below its 50-day, 100-day and 200-day simple moving average (SMA) placed at 774.27, 765.08 and 720.57, respectively.

ICICI Bank is the second largest private sector bank in India. The bank had a network of 5,298 branches and 13,846 ATMs at 31 December 2021.

The bank's standalone net profit grew 25% to Rs 6,194 crore in Q3 FY22 from Rs 4,940 crore in Q3 FY21. Total income during the quarter rose by 11% Y-o-Y (year-on-year) to Rs 27,070 crore.

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IndiaMART InterMESH entered into an agreement to invest 10% of the share capital (on fully diluted basis) of Zimyo Consulting (referred as Zimyo) for a cash consideration of Rs 17.01 crore.

The investment will be executed within a period of 45 days. As part of the funding round, IndiaMART InterMESH intends to invest upto Rs 17.01 crore approximately in Zimyo in the following manner - a) subscribing of 1,870 Series A Compulsorily Convertible Preference Shares (CCPS) of face value of Rs 10 per CCPS at a premium of Rs 86,306 per CCPS aggregating to approximately Rs 16.14 crore; and, b) purchase of 100 equity shares of face value of Rs 10 per equity share at a premium of Rs 86,306 from existing shareholders, aggregating to approximately Rs 0.86 crore.

Zimyo is engaged in a business of offering SaaS-based human resource management software for the companies. It allows users to carry out critical HR processes including recruitment and onboarding, payroll management, performance management and time & attendance management. It also includes employee benefits modules which offers salary advance, personal loan and health & term insurance to employees. The total turnover of Zimyo for the financial year ended 31 March 2021 stood at Rs 0.8 crore.

Since, one of the Independent Director of the company holds 0.16% of the paid up capital of Zimyo on fully diluted basis, the transaction has been treated as related party as on the date of this investment. IndiaMART InterMESH has invested in companies such as Vyapar, Bizom, Shipway, Legistify, Superprocure, Aerchain, M1xchange, Easyecom, Fleetx, Industry Buying, Realbooks and BUSY. "All these investments are part of IndiaMART's long term objective of offering various software solutions which improve ease of doing business for Indian businesses and Enterprises," the press release highlighted.

The company's consolidated net profit declined 12.47% to Rs 70.20 crore on 8.35% rise in net sales to Rs 188.10 crore in Q3 December 2021 over Q3 December 2020.

IndiaMART is India's largest online B2B marketplace for business products and services. IndiaMART makes it easier to do business by connecting buyers and sellers across product categories and geographies in India through business enablement solutions. IndiaMART provides ease and convenience to the buyers by offering a wide assortment of products and a responsive seller base while offering lead generation, lead management and payment solutions to its sellers.

Shares of IndiaMART InterMESH shed 1.91% to Rs 4,471.05 on BSE.

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Intellect Design Arena said that the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has chosen Intellect to implement the upgraded version of the Cloud Native Intellect Quantum Core Banking solution to power the next stage of their digital transformation agenda.

The next generation Intellect Quantum solution is built on cutting edge API first, cloud-native and cloud-agnostic microservices architecture supported by a rich set of packaged business components.

Intellect Design Arena's consolidated net profit jumped 25.9% to Rs 101.31 crore on a 33% surge in net sales to Rs 508.29 crore in Q3 FY22 over Q3 FY21.

Shares of Intellect Design Arena gained 0.42% to Rs 659.20 on BSE. Intellect Design Arena, a specialist in applying true digital technologies, is the a full spectrum banking and insurance technology products company, across global consumer banking, central banking, global transaction banking (iGTB), risk, treasury and markets, and insurance.

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Key equity benchmarks once again witnessed selling pressure in mid-afternoon trade. The Nifty fell below 16,350 level after crossing 16,450 mark in afternoon trade. Consumer durables stocks were under pressure.

At 14:25 IST, the barometer index, the S&P BSE Sensex, was down 400.62 points or 0.73% at 54,702.06. The Nifty 50 index shed 149.10 points or 0.9% at 16,348.95.

The continued escalation of the Russia-Ukraine war, soaring oil prices and continued FIIs selling, dampened sentiment. FIIs were net sellers Rs 6,645 crore while DIIs were net buyers Rs 4,799 crore yesterday.

In the broader market, the S&P BSE Mid-Cap index lost 1.81% while the S&P BSE Small-Cap index slipped 1.10%.

The market breadth was weak. On the BSE, 1,319 shares rose and 1,980 shares fell. A total of 110 shares were unchanged.

Buzzing Segment:

The Nifty Consumer Durables index fell 2.2% to 26,576.05. The index has fallen 4.24% in three sessions.

Titan Company (down 3.55%), Crompton Greaves Consumer Electricals (down 3.34%), Relaxo Footwears (down 3.28%), Blue Star (down 2.31%), Orient Electric (down 2.02%), Voltas (down 1.88%), Amber Enterprises (down 1.71%), Bata India (down 1.69%), TTK Prestige (down 1.59%), Havells India (down 1.48%), Dixon Technologies (India) (down 0.97%) and Kajaria Ceramics (down 0.62%) declined.

Stocks in Spotlight:

Indian Metals & Ferro Alloys fell 1.63%. The company said that it has prepaid the long term debt of Rs 127.65 crore, thereby making the total prepayment of Rs 308.65 crore till date. After payment of normal installments for the quarter ending 31 March 2022, the company will have miscellaneous loans of Rs 14.28 crore, which will be paid as per norms due to adverse prepayment conditions.

Time Technoplast added 0.20%. The company bagged an order for supply of 7,58,814 units of cylinders of 10 kg capacity for a value of approximately Rs 180 crore from Indian Oil Corporation (IOCL). The cylinders are to be supplied over the next 12 months.

Vikas Ecotech rose 2.54%. The company announced an investment in green renewable energy systems to support the electricity requirement of its manufacturing facilities in Rajasthan, India.

Global Stocks:

European shares declined while most Asian stocks ended lower on Friday, as Russia's invasion of Ukraine escalates, with Russian forces attacking Europe's largest nuclear power plant.

Ukraine's nuclear agency says Russian military forces have taken control of the facility in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine. Situated in the southeast of the country, the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant houses six of Ukraine's 15 operational nuclear power reactors.

The bombardment triggered international condemnation and U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson has said he will call for an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council to discuss the attack.

Traders also monitored comments from US Federal Reserve officials, including Fed Chairman Jerome Powell's testimony to the Senate Banking Committee for his second day of Congressional testimony this week. Cleveland Fed President Loretta Mester said Thursday that the war in Ukraine intensified the need for the Fed to raise rates.

India Services PMI:

India's services sector output increased to 51.8 in February from 51.5 in January, pointing to a moderate rate of expansion, as per a report by IHS Markit. Greater bookings, better demand conditions and the retreat of the pandemic drove this moderate expansion.

The composite PMI output rose to 53.5 in February from 53.0 in January, signaling a solid rate of expansion that was nonetheless below its long-run average, the IHS Markit stated.

Economy:

Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal has called for increasing India's share in global trade to 10% and taking India's share of exports in GDP to about 25%. Addressing the closing session of the Post-Budget Webinar on 'Make in India for the World', Goyal said these are ambitious targets, but doable.

He said other countries are also talking of programmes very similar to AatmaNirbhar Bharat. Goyal called for taking India among the top three nations in Global Services Trade.

Stating that the government is looking at a more liberal regulatory regime for the Drones sector barring the Defence systems, he said that the Industry should aim to make India become the manufacturing hub of Drones.

He called for integrating quality in full value chain and said it should not just come into picture once the final product is made. Underlining the need to develop technical skills of tomorrow for the industry, the Minister called for the need to reorient academic courses to make it relevant to the "needs of today".

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Vikas Ecotech rose 1.56% to Rs 5.20 after the company announced an investment in green renewable energy systems to support the electricity requirement of its manufacturing facilities in Rajasthan, India.

The company will add solar power generating system of 172 kwp capacity, which will cost about Rs 1.05 crore which in turn will decrease the electricity bills by about Rs 0.21 crore per annum, thus, aiding better cost efficiency for the manufacturing plant. This system will be fully established and operational starting a direct contribution to the business economics by April 2022.

Vikas Ecotech's Rajasthan plants already have a time-tested solar power generating system of 290 kwp capacity of electric power supporting the Rajasthan facilities. The new addition will take the total annual savings to Rs 0.50 crore, wiz. about 33% of the average electricity costs. The company aims to enhance its reliance on renewable energy systems targeting a electrically self- sufficient manufacturing unit by the year 2025.

The recent reductions in the bank debt and the reduced load of the interest thereon, clubbed with the savings offered by the renewable energy systems will offer a definite and considerable economies and provide an edge to the company businesses as soon as the forthcoming F.Y. 2022-23.

On a standalone basis, Vikas EcoTech reported a net profit of Rs 3.43 crore in Q3 FY22 as compared to a net profit of Rs 0.02 crore in Q3 FY21. Net sales surged 165% to Rs 75.26 crore in Q3 FY22 over Q3 FY21.

Vikas EcoTech is a specialty chemicals and plastic & rubber additives player. It provides IPR-driven compounds and specialty chemicals that are non-toxic. It derives a majority of its revenues from PVC industry additives like Organotin stabilizers and from specialty compounds.

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Vodafone Idea: The board of directors of the telecom services provider has approved fund raising of upto Rs 4,500 crore on a preferential basis, through its promoters. It has decided to issue more than 338.34 crore equity shares at an issue price of Rs 13.30 per share to Euro Pacific Securities, Prime Metals, and Oriana Investments Pte Ltd. The company has also received board's approval for additional fund raising of Rs 10,000 crore via private placement or qualified institutions placement.

Mahindra & Mahindra Financial Services (MMFSL): Disbursement in February 2022 was approximately Rs 2,733 crore, delivering a 44% Y-o-Y growth. The YTD disbursement was approximately Rs. 23,632 crore, registered a Y-o-Y growth of 42%.

Wockhardt: The company's rights issue will open for subscription by shareholders on March 15 and the close on March 22. The company will issue three rights equity shares for every 10 equity shares held by shareholders as on record date of March 9.

IndiaMART InterMESH: The company has entered into an agreement to invest 10% of the share capital (on fully diluted basis) of Zimyo Consulting Private Limited.

Themis Medicare: Themis Medicare on Friday announced that it received approval from Drug Controller General of India (DCGI) for its antiviral drug VIRALEX.

LT Foods: The company said its subsidiary LT Foods Americas Inc has acquired 51% stake in Golden Star Trading Inc along with its brand Golden Star from its promoters with a call option to acquire 49% stake after three years.

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CPIM general secretary on Thursday said that the "weakened" Congress is unable to challenge the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) at the Centre which does not see the grand old party as a major threat.

Briefing mediapersons, Yechury said, "Any amount of flirting with soft Hinduwta, which will feed into the agent of the Hindutva forces and that is what Congress is doing. Congress is today only weakened. Many in the and RSS do not see Congress as a major threat because, at any point of time, any of its leaders can leave the Congress and join the . So weakened Congress is unable to take on this challenge."

On the Opposition's alliance, the CPIM leader said, "A stronger Left will be able to bring together all the secular forces. On many occasions in Kerala, Congress played in tandem with the against the LDF government. This kind of compromising attitude cannot help in advancing and achieving the objective of removing the ruling BJP."

He said state-by-state analysis and alliance to formed accordingly will be the effective solution to defeat the ruling BJP at the Centre.

"The other response to combat that to majoritarian communalism or Hindutva communalism by mobilising minority fundamentalism, that also eventually feeds into the agenda of Hindutwa. We see that happening in various issues come up recently. What we required is that the minority, as well as all secular-minded people, come together within the secular democratic mainstream," he said.

The CPIM general secretary said BJP is on the backfoot in the assembly polls in five states.

"In this election, the BJP continued to be more on the backfoot. We never heard of an Indian Prime Minister is spending three times continuously in his constituency to make sure that in the assembly election the BJP wins," said Yechury.

The CPIM leader's remark comes ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's scheduled visit to Varanasi on Friday.

On the evacuation of Indians from conflict-torn Ukraine, Yechury said, "This is actually a war between Russia and the USA NATO. Ukraine is the theatre where this war is being played out. No patriot in our country will oppose the government's effort to bring back Indians. All of us will support it. This does not mean appreciation of the government's move. Why were the instructions not given to evacuate all Indians in Ukraine on the day when the government decided to evacuate the staff and the family of Indian diplomats in the Kyiv Embassy. Why did they wait for the outbreak of the war? Even at the outbreak of the war, they exaggerated the issues saying Indians should leave Kharkiv.

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Five in critical condition after explosion crumbles apartments in U.S. state Maryland

Xinhua) 08:56, March 04, 2022

Firefighters work at the scene of an explosion in Silver Spring, Montgomery County, Maryland, the United States, on March 3, 2022. (Xinhua/Liu Jie)

One section of the four-story apartment complex was leveled into a pile of blackened, smoldering wreckage. Seven or eight people have less serious injuries, and some of them were transported to the hospital.

WASHINGTON, March 3 (Xinhua) -- Five people are in critical condition after an explosion took down parts of an apartment building in Montgomery County, the U.S. state of Maryland, on Thursday morning.

One section of the four-story apartment complex, just several kilometers outside of Washington, D.C., was leveled into a pile of blackened, smoldering wreckage.

Firefighters rushed to the scene at about 10:30 a.m. (1530 GMT), and they were able to help some residents escape before the building was consumed by fire and collapsed, according to Montgomery County Fire Chief Scott Goldstein.

Goldstein also told reporters about 125 to 150 firefighters had responded to the scene, saying that "it's too early to speculate" on a cause.

Seven or eight people have less serious injuries, and some of them were transported to the hospital, Montgomery County Fire and Rescue spokesman Pete Piringer said earlier.

Firefighters work at the scene of an explosion in Silver Spring, Montgomery County, Maryland, the United States, on March 3, 2022. (Xinhua/Liu Jie)

"This is obviously a really tragic event," Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich said later, adding that county officials would step in to offer shelter and other aid to residents of the apartments.

Maryland Governor Larry Hogan tweeted state officials were in contact with Montgomery County authorities to offer assistance.

(Web editor: Xia Peiyao, Liang Jun)
Online discussion forum 'Reddit' has categorically banned its users globally from posting links to Russian state-sponsored media outlets, including RT and Sputnik, as well as Russian advertisements on its platform.

Apple, Google, Meta, Microsoft, Twitter, YouTube and several other tech platforms have already banned RT and Sputnik in the wake of Russia's invasion of .

"While many communities on Reddit already prohibited links to Russian state media outlets like RT, Sputnik and their foreign language affiliates, we have made such restrictions universal across the site in all geographies," the company said in a statement late on Thursday.

Furthermore, "We will continue not to accept advertisements that target or originate from any Russia-based entity, government or private."

Reddit said it is in active contact with its moderators and communities "particularly those most affected by the conflict" to provide support, resources and specialised tooling so they can continue to function without interference.

"We are also assisting affected Reddit colleagues in Ukraine, including providing advanced income payments and housing allowances, and supporting their relocation," said the company.

Meta has already expanded a ban on Russian state media outlets -- RT and Sputnik -- on Facebook and Instagram globally to stop the flow of misinformation as Russian forces make deeper inroads into .

Swedish music streaming giant Spotify has shut down its office in and removed content from state-backed media outlets RT and Sputnik.

--IANS

na/khz/dpb

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New Delhi [India], March 4 (ANI/PRNewswire): Breakthrough India's three day Pan-Asia summit "Reframe" started a dialogue on raising awareness on concerns around accountability in the sphere of transforming masculinities and engaging men and boys to achieve gender equality.

Initiated by Breakthrough India, the conversation revolved around practices, and challenges in implementing accountability standards.

As India struggles to keep pace with its gender equality targets, national reports of progress against Sustainable Development Goal 5 on Gender Equality evidence the need for an increased understanding and awareness of the unequal power relations between men and women in society. Globally, current trends show that men and boys have largely been excluded from the gender equality discourse. The engagement of men and boys is a crucial element for progress in India and beyond.

Samitha Sugathimala, Director Programs / Advisor on Gender and Development, FISD, Sri Lanka started the discussion by noting, "When it comes to prevention of gender based violence, there have been a lot of male dominated interventions coming in but there has not been any research about the outcomes of these programmes, in terms of accountability, programme designing, policies, etc. There is a lack of consultation with women's rights organisations, lack of acknowledgement of women's rights and leadership, and men in the movement have been taking too much space, especially in leadership roles. We have to question all of these to accelerate the outcomes of the programmes."

As envisioned in the Beijing Platform for Action, one critical piece for advancing the gender equality agenda is engaging men and boys. The Beijing framework envisioned male engagement as a necessary means to challenge the structures, beliefs, practices, and institutions that sustain men's aggregate privileges, as well as to address inequalities between women and men.

Anthony Keedi, Program Manager, Masculinities and engaging men in Gender Equality, Lebanon, said "Accountability is about acknowledging and understanding the part one plays in the harm done against women and other groups in patriarchy through our hidden powers and privileges. On the other hand, the work on engaging men and masculinities should be in conversation with women. Women, and other marginalised groups need to be at the forefront of this process to ensure that we recognise who we are doing this for."

While women become more empowered to assert their rights, many organisations are also realising the importance of engaging men and boys in the conversation in order to break the cycle of violence. Currently, involving men and boys to achieve social equality varies by country and context. But we need to consider the various factors that influence men and boys, and thus, the work on men and masculinities.

Madhumita Das, Feminist Researcher, Faculty, The George Washington University, India, noted, "If you look at growing evidence about involving men and boys in transforming injustices, most initiatives have a very narrow focus and have been adapted as an instrumental approach rather than strategy. It has been observed that these initiatives tend to over justify the reason for integrating the component rather than deeply understanding how this move will help achieve the overall goal of gender equality. Accountability to women's rights activists, SRHR, and LGBTQIA+ movement will ensure that our efforts are more effective and impactful and it must be central to all our work with men and boys. Accountability starts with us, from the point of recognising our power and privilege, pushing for collaborative actions, and helping in addressing both personal and institutional practices that go against gender equality and equal rights. Additionally, we have to build a relationship with all the movements that are seeking to challenge the current norms of gender equality."

Adding to this thought, Sanjog Thakuri, Founder, President of Yuwalaya, Kathmandu, said, "While working with men and masculinities, we have seen that it is very easy for men to talk about gender equality. Two things are missing in our initiatives involving men and boys: conceptual planning and movement building. Men and boys are taking the lead in gender based violence but due to the lack of conceptual clarity, they are exaggerating the engagement of men and doing the bare minimum and occupying the space. We need meaningful and ethical participation of men and boys in the feminist discourse."

The majority of the work with men and boys focuses on individual behaviour change. While this is important, it is equally vital to ensure that work on men and masculinities centres the systems change agenda in order for this field to meaningfully add value to advance the broader feminist agenda of equality and justice.

This story is provided by PRNewswire. ANI will not be responsible in any way for the content of this article. (ANI/PRNewswire)

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New Delhi [India], March 4 (ANI/PNN): BUILDIFY is a Digital First, company that focuses on using technology to build and optimize value in the structural building material value chain. It is a Gurgaon-based building materials company that uses the latest technology and technique to manufacture Bricks, Blocks, and Interlocking Pavers of the finest quality.

With a vision to build a sustainable model using the best technologies and also generate employment, BUILDIFY strives for excellence. BUILDIFY believes in giving back time, skills, and resources to the community and adding value to every process that they are involved in.

BUILDIFY aims at supporting construction companies by creating a financially viable model. The company emphasizes the online procurement process and bringing parity and transparency in pricing to change the way real estate & construction companies in India operate today.

BUILDIFY is the premium manufacturer and preferred sourcing partner of PMC Companies, Engineers, Architects, and Contractors Empowered by a team of Engineers, Business Development Managers, Architects, and Designers, BUILDIFY offers the best solutions to clients. As a value-driven company, the team values every customer and supplier partner to build long-last relations. BUILDIFY prefers quality over quantity and always aims for customer satisfaction. With the help of a dedicated retail distribution center and Transportation Management technologies, BUILDIFY provides a Magical Model of 'SAME DAY DELIVERY' for construction materials (up to 95 per cent of orders). The company takes pride in having a making capacity of thirty thousand pieces per day and is the largest preferred sourcing partner.

Rajeev Rana, Founder & CEO of BUILDIFY is a visionary entrepreneur with strong business acuity. As a hospitality professional with a background in strategy, Sales and Business Management, Rajeev Rana believes in amalgamating technology and innovation to address industry issues. He is the Founder and CEO at Rana Infra Projects Pvt. Ltd. (RIPPL), is a Construction material company besides being an active seed and angel investor.

All the products at BUILDIFY pass through stringent quality checks and are tested in NABL accredited labs before dispatch. With a mission to make a difference and change the way the construction industry in India works, BUILDIFY has embarked on its journey.

Click (http://www.buildify.co.in) to find out more about durable building materials.

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New Delhi [India], March 4 (ANI/Oswaal Books): On Friday, 04 March 2022, CISCE has released the Date sheet for ICSE ISC class 10 & 12 Semester 2 Exams 2022 on its official website (https://www.cisce.org/).

Students can check and download the official exam schedule through CISCE website.

The pre-boards for CISCE students will be conducted in the last week of March. It is also expected that in a few days admit cards for CISCE semester 2 exams 2022 will also be released.

As the Semester 1 result is already out therefore students can give their undivided attention for the semester 2 exams.

When it comes to the students of PCM, then they have that subject knowledge with them that is required for the exams. In this sort of situation, students with PCM can go for the specimen papers to boost up their preparation efforts in no time.

Exam Ready Tricks to Use Specimen Papers to Prepare in PCM

Specimen papers act as a great boon for CISCE students. They are specifically designed as per the latest guidelines issued by CISCE and hold various benefits for the students.

1. Offer better analysis of paper pattern

Students won't get a proper and crystal clear idea about the paper pattern until they experience it in real-time. Specimen papers will act as an eye-opener for the students preparing for PCM.

They will find out the weightage of each chapter with the specimen papers. In addition to that, they will also realize the important areas from an examination standpoint.

2. Better assessment

Specimen papers will help the students realize their weak and strong areas. They will give them an idea of whether they are more proficient in attempting Maths, Physics, or Chemistry papers.

This will allow them to work upon their weak areas and shine in the semester 2 exams.

As soon as the students proceed with the solving of specimen papers they will gain more confidence in their preparation.

3. Thorough revision

This is the time when students can't start anything from scratch. Therefore, these specimen papers will help them with the thorough revision of the concepts that they have gone through during their preparation.

In addition to that, students will get an idea about the topics that they need to revisit to boost up their preparation.

4. Manage speed with accuracy

Semester 2 exams will have both subjective as well as objective questions. Students don't have much practice for the answer writing as semester 1 exams were conducted in MCQ format.

With the specimen papers, students will come to know how they can manage speed and accuracy for the exams. Both of these things are essential to help them score high in the board exams.

Maximize Your Efforts with:

1. Specific towards the study material: Students should be very specific towards their study material to prepare their CISCE Semester 2 Exams. If you will be flooded with unnecessary study material, it can deviate you from your goal. Choose quality study material and make your preparation chapter-wise.

2. Measure your performance: Students should measure their performances by practice on daily basis. Subjects like Math, Physics and Chemistry demand more practice for greater results. Set your targets and measure them to check your performance. Students can easily identify that which subject need more practice.

3. Achieve your weekly targets: Make a concrete study plan according to the suitability of your own. Like one can set their monthly, weekly or day-wise targets. By this you can easily track your success rate and performance credibility.

4. Go with Relevant Practice Papers: Practice papers are best to prepare for board exams. It helps to improve the performance as well as helps in solving the difficult chapters. Choose right sample papers to rank up your score in CISCE Semester 2 Exams 2022. Students can also practice with Oswaal ICSE ISC Semester 2 Specimen Sample Papers Class 10 & 12 for Board Exams 2022. It contains all the latest typologies of MCQs And Subjective Questions, along with cognitive exam tools For Semester 2 Exam Readiness.

Here's the recommended link for ICSE Semester 2 Specimen Sample Papers Class 10 for Board Exams 2022: (https://oswaalbooks.com/collections/icse-isc/class-10+sample-question-papers-semester-2-new?utm_source=ANI+Online+PR & utm_medium=Advertorial+4+March+ & utm_campaign=ICSE+Semester+2+Class+10+2022) (https://bit.ly/3KfxAg6)

Here's the recommended link for ISC Semester 2 Specimen Sample Papers Class 12 for Board Exams 2022: (https://oswaalbooks.com/collections/icse-isc/class-12+sample-question-papers-semester-2-new?utm_source=ANI+Online+PR & utm_medium=Advertorial+4+March & utm_campaign=ISC+Semester+2+Class+12+2022) (https://bit.ly/3vEfvnH)

You need this European technique to get ahead of the competition and ace the scorecard! Learn about Pomodoro Technique now!

Conclusion

Specimen papers will give a new direction to the preparation for the students in PCM. They will help to boost the confidence level of the students.

They can also download the syllabus present on the official website without any trouble for enhanced preparation.

All the Best!!

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Bengaluru (Karnataka) [India], March 4 (ANI/PR Newswire): With an aim to develop a strong foundation on various aspects of international marketing practices among the aspirants, JAIN Online, the e-learning arm of JAIN (Deemed-to-be University) is offering CIM Accredited International Marketing programs. This program is specifically designed for MBA and BBA students and job seekers and is accredited by the Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM), a professional marketing organization based in the United Kingdom.

The Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) is the leading professional body for marketers worldwide and exists to develop the marketing profession, maintain professional standards, and improve the skills of marketing practitioners. JAIN (Deemed-to-be University) has joined forces with CIM to give students the opportunity to gain professional qualifications through the CIM Accredited Degree partnership. CIM qualifications are highly sought after by employers, and their content is reflected in JAIN Online degrees, which ensures equipping students with the best opportunities for a successful marketing career.

Commenting on the Program, Dr Raj Singh, Vice-Chancellor, JAIN (Deemed-to-be-University), said, "At JAIN, we always believe in empowering students and aspirants by envisioning the future. This has enabled us to offer electives that keep the professionals on a growth path amidst a rapidly evolving landscape. Our accreditation with the Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) is a step towards this objective. With this initiative, we aim to overcome the geographical challenges by providing opportunities to dual-qualify capable students, and enhancing employability scores as well".

A degree with a concentration in International Marketing provides the knowledge for understanding market trends, product portfolios, competitors, and consumer behaviour from a global perspective. It provides students with the necessary advanced-level skills to efficiently plan, develop and implement strategic marketing processes. The program brings in-use examples of various international industries to teach advanced marketing theories and techniques. It teaches about the link between marketing, logistics and other co-related domains that exist in a contemporary global environment. An industry-vetted program that delivers technical excellence and supplements professional skills by making students analyze problems and propose actions in real-world situations as part of the project work.

CIM is a UK-based professional marketing body founded in 1911. CIM is a strong family of over 30,000 members, including more than 3,000 registered chartered marketers. It has supported, represented, and developed marketers, teams, leaders, and professionals. It promotes responsible marketing practices across the profession to safeguard public confidence and inspire the wider society.

JAIN Online, the e-learning arm of JAIN (Deemed-to-be University), is one of the leading (https://onlinejain.com/?utm_source=pr+newswire & utm_medium=press+release & utm_campaign=bba+and+mba+international+marketing) online education providers in India. With skilled academic experts and digital innovators, JAIN Online offers learners the flexibility of studying from anywhere and at any time.

The list of global and extensive education offered through the platform is aimed at empowering individuals to learn new skills through new-age and industry-relevant programs. JAIN Online is steadfast in its pursuit to offer diverse ways of learning that will help learners to advance their careers and life.

Promoted by JAIN Group, the university is recognized among the top universities in India and is considered a preferred learner-centric destination for students from different countries across the globe. Known for its emphasis on education, entrepreneurship, research, and sports, JAIN (Deemed-to-be University) has some of the best minds in the educational and research fields and centres that inspire entrepreneurship and innovative thinking.

Logo: (https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1759578/JAIN_Online_Logo_2.jpg)

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Gurugram (Haryana)/ New Delhi [India], March 4 (ANI/NewsVoir): Max Life Insurance Company Ltd. ("Max Life" / "Company") in line with its commitment to support the collective fight against the COVID-19 pandemic, has donated 8500 Covid Care Kits to the Gurugram Police Department.

Comprising N95 masks and sanitizers, the donation will ensure frontline protection for the entire police workforce of the city. The same is in continuation of the company's PEHAL initiative to assist frontline workers during the pandemic.

As part of the 'Culture of Giving' initiative, Max Life donated 20,000 PPE, health and safety Kits to frontline warriors, 36,300 safety kits to police officials, and 5000 kits to recovering patients from government hospitals in 2020. The Company had further distributed 5500+ antigen testing kits to hospitals and 6000+ safety kits to RWA's in Delhi-NCR.

Continuing into 2021, Max Life had contributed over 50,000 safety kits across 350 locations Pan-India. The social drive included the distribution of masks, shields, and sanitizers to the police & defense officials, healthcare workers, frontline workers in the state administration & the education sector.

Shailesh Singh, Senior Director & Chief People Officer, Max Life said, "Max Life is a responsible corporate citizen. In the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic, we remain committed to supporting society with our humble contributions. We express our gratitude to the Gurugram Police Department and DCP HQ Gurugram, Astha Modi (IPS), for accepting our gesture and enabling us to contribute our support in securing the lives of our frontline heroes."

This initiative is a part of the larger pledge for COVID-19 combat assistance announced last year. Max Life has created a separate fund pool for pandemic-related support that is nearly 16% of its total Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) budget. Under this, the Company has contributed ration to the needy, along with material supplies to various organizations.

Max Life Insurance Company Limited is a Joint Venture between Max Financial Services Limited and Axis Bank Limited. Max Financial Services Ltd. is a part of the Max Group, an Indian multi-business corporation.

Max Life offers comprehensive protection and long-term savings life insurance solutions, through its multi-channel distribution including agency and third-party distribution partners. Max Life has built its operations over almost two decades through a need-based sales process, a customer-centric approach to engagement and service delivery and trained human capital.

As per public disclosures and annual audited financials for FY20-21, Max Life has achieved a gross written premium of Rs. 19,018 crore. As of 31st March 2021, the Company had Rs. 90,407 crore of assets under management (AUM) and a Sum Assured in Force of Rs. 1,087,987 crore.

For more information, please visit the Company's website at (https://www.maxlifeinsurance.com).

This story is provided by NewsVoir. ANI will not be responsible in any way for the content of this article. (ANI/NewsVoir)

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Bhavnagar (Gujarat) [India], March 4 (ANI/NewsVoir): In line with the vision for Aatmanirbhar Bharat, India's premier indigenous security and surveillance product manufacturing company, PRAMA India launched its first brand store and experience center in India at Bhavnagar, Gujarat amidst much big fanfare.

The PRAMA Brand Store was inaugurated in the presence of leading dignitaries from the security industry.

Bhavnagar has earned the honour of being the first Indian city to have PRAMA's brand store. The company has planned a pan-India phased rollout of PRAMA brand stores and aims to open multiple stores spread across Tier-I, Tier-II and Tier-III cities over the next 12-month period.

PRAMA is India's premier indigenous security brand has inaugurated its first brand store in Bhavnagar, Gujarat on 1st March, 2022. This new brand store is aimed at showcasing and bringing high quality, state-of-the-art security & surveillance products as well as the latest technology innovations closer to potential consumers and end-users.

Commenting on this milestone, Ashish P. Dhakan, MD & CEO, PRAMA India Pvt. Ltd. said, "This grand store opening event is a glorious moment for all the security professionals associated with PRAMA India. We are happy to dedicate our first branded PRAMA store to the people of Bhavnagar in Gujarat. This is just the auspicious beginning of a journey, which will witness exponential growth and the presence of the brand at a pan-India level. Our store is strategically designed to showcase best-in-class products and solutions. We are hopeful that the store in Bhavnagar will be able to help the security professionals in the Saurashtra region to source the latest PRAMA Security and Video Surveillance Products."

"We extend best wishes to our partner Rajesh Vyas of Max Digital Services and hope this initiative will help them to deliver success to PRAMA ecosystem partners," Dhakan added.

The newly inaugurated PRAMA Store showcases a wide range of security and surveillance products to create a new customer experience. PRAMA's key USP is to provide customers and end-users with a hands-on experience by sharing insights into myriad vertical solutions, designed as per the considerations of Indian environment and standards framework.

PRAMA India has been working tirelessly to make India self-reliant in the electronic security product manufacturing sector, the company believes its indigenous manufacturing will be one of the key enablers for achieving India's dream of becoming truly Aatmanirbhar for the security and surveillance industry.

"The security industry needs to work diligently to realise our Prime Minister's dream of and a self-reliant India into reality. As the industry moves to new technology frontiers, there is a need to focus on indigenous security product manufacturing. These security systems are helping to resolve the physical security challenges in the private, government and commercial segments," concluded Dhakan.

PRAMA India has made significant investments to create a product portfolio that combines cutting-edge technology with the best of innovation and quality from India that put the country on the global map of security and surveillance products.

This story is provided by NewsVoir. ANI will not be responsible in any way for the content of this article. (ANI/NewsVoir)

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Noida (Uttar Pradesh) [India], March 4 (ANI/NewsVoir): Recenturesoft Infotech Pvt. Ltd. is a renowned IT solutions provider in India. They offer various types of services, including web development, mobile app development, software development, online brand building, digital marketing, and much more.

The company makes a perfect balance of its development trajectory as there have been constant advancements in every way: expert team, economic results, effective marketing strategies and values, to have a remarkable presence in the market with potential clients. They also provide a variety of web development services, from building mobile web development and user-friendly designs to custom eCommerce and online marketing services using the latest and proven frameworks and technologies.

"Realism is the key to envision a greater future. With the advent of a modern IT world, Recenturesoft remains the pinnacle of growth and reality, " Shiva Nand.

Their website developers have worked closely with Nand and their customers to deliver unique yet scalable solutions when it comes to employee monitoring.

Founder and Director Shiva Nand's vision has led the company to offer a new product in the market- WorkTrackZilla, A modern employee monitoring software for work from home employees. The idea of WorkTrackZilla hit Shiva amidst the pandemic when a lot of companies were new towards adjusting to remote working.

With the changing market, Shiva Nand envisions delivering WorkTrackZilla on a national and global level with effective pricing and putting customers at the top.

Let's understand their core product in detail

WorkTrackZilla: WorkTrackZilla is the new-gen remote employee monitoring software for analysing your employee's productivity during their working hours. This monitoring tool is secure, versatile and easy to use. It offers a time tracking tool that enables tracking the working hours of individual employees or the entire team.

The software clearly shows the amount of time an employee is dedicated to working related tasks versus the amount of time they're idle or wasting their time doing unproductive things. WorkTrackZilla software is helpful for business managers to monitor the work of their employees and take further actions.

It also comes with a feature of computer screenshot capture, which takes the screenshot of the employee's desktop at a set interval. Some of the other key features of WorkTrackZilla includes:

-Idle time recording

-Desktop recording

-Website & URL tracking, etc.

At present, WorkTrackZilla has been sourced by more than 30 companies with positive feedback all over the clouds. It works on a basic principle to facilitate friendly employee tracking without much pressure.

For more information about WorkTrackZilla visit: (https://www.worktrackzilla.com)

Why Partner with Recenturesoft Infotech Pvt. Ltd.?

Recenturesoft Infotech Pvt. Ltd. tailors its processes depending on the client's scale and needs. They begin by mapping a strategy, developing a prototype, creating the beta version and finally launching the product. With a team of expert web developers and designers, you can expect mind-blowing custom web developments from this agency that covers all sorts of web development solutions, ranging from planning, designing to development and deployment. Their professionals are specialized in creating websites and applications using open source technologies like WordPress, JavaScript and PHP.

Listed below are some of the points that prove why they are a leading web development company:

-Expert Web Developers

-Timely Project Delivery

-Agile Approach

-Scalability

"We are very proud of the growth of the company, the offerings we provide and for the upcoming years of success and evolutions. We will continue to work hard and provide top quality to our clients at all times," says Nand.

For more information about Recenturesoft Infotech Pvt. Ltd., visit: (https://www.recenturesoft.com). or call +91 777-000-3288

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Kolhapur (Maharashtra) [India], March 4 (ANI/PR Newswire): Shrenik Ghodawat, Managing Director - Ghodawat Consumer Ltd (GCL), the FMCG arm of Sanjay Ghodawat Group (SGG), was recently conferred with the Entrepreneur 35 Under-35 award for achieving a historic revenue milestone of INR 1,000 crores at the end of FY21, and for being the driving force behind the inception of rural start-up, Star Localmart - a locally sourced, locally processed, and locally sold retail ecosystem.

In today's volatile economic environment, any entrepreneurial initiative faces a greater difficulty producing revenues from a company while simultaneously striving to gain client trust and keep the brand loyalty intact. 2021 being a challenging year for everyone, GCL dealt with a lot of disruption in its demand and supply chain, yet, the company overcame these obstacles and was able to achieve a 40 per cent CAGR. GCL's ongoing credo for success has been to be adaptable and agile to changing environments, since challenges and obstacles will keep appearing in the future. The company is profitable and has grown its revenue by 40 per cent and profitability by 60 per cent on a YOY basis and they look forward to doing the same in the next two years. GCL aims to produce quality products that compel consumers to at least use one GCL product throughout the day. With over 2,000 distributors, GCL's goods have served millions of consumers across India.

Thanking the entire team of GCL and Star Localmart, Shrenik said, "It is an absolute honour to be part of this illustrious list of entrepreneurs. I would like to dedicate this award to our entire team for their hard work as it is because of their efforts I have been able to be part of this list."

Further elaborating on the secret to GCL's success, "Our world-class manufacturing facilities, extensive rural and urban penetration, distribution network and business ethics are the key driving factors for accomplishing this illustrious feat in such a short period of time. In due course of time, we shall also consider expanding to newer geographies and adding more products to our portfolio in GCL. At Star Localmart we plan to add 3,000 stores by FY25 which will generate employment opportunities for over 25,000 people," added Shrenik.

35 under 35 is all about millennial pride. It is a celebration of self-belief and individuality. Founded in 2017, the aim has always been to cover achievers who have been game-changers in various industry sectors. Entrepreneur recognizes such extraordinary examples and celebrates such professionals who have built great companies before the age of 35.

Sanjay Ghodawat Group (SGG) is a prominent Indian business conglomerate that has a presence in various high-value business verticals. Aviation, Consumer Products, Education, Energy, Mining, Realty, Retail, and Textiles are some of its key business domains. SGG was founded in 1993 and since then it has witnessed impressive growth under the splendid stewardship of its Founder and Chairman - Sanjay Ghodawat. It has a strong base of millions of customers globally, an employee strength of over 10,000, and a student base of over 16,000. SGG is moving ahead with great vigour and bringing significant changes in people's lives with its wide range of high-quality products and services. For more information, please visit (https://www.ghodawat.com).

Photo: (https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1759522/Shrenik_Ghodawat_35_Under_35.jpg)

Logo: (https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1759521/Ghodawat_Consumer_Logo.jpg)

This story is provided by PRNewswire. ANI will not be responsible in any way for the content of this article. (ANI/PR Newswire)

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Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and Tencent Holdings Ltd. were among the worst-performing stocks invested in by Norways sovereign wealth fund last year, the fund manager said in its 2021 annual report released on Thursday.

The market value of Alibaba shares held by the worlds largest sovereign wealth fund fell 46.6% year-on-year to $3.5 billion at the end of 2021, while the funds ownership of the company rose 0.02 percentage points, according to Norges Bank Investment Management. The market value of its Tencent holdings fell 13.4% to $5 billion at the end of last year, while its stake in the company rose 0.06 percentage points.

By contrast, the funds total equity investment booked an annual return of 20.8% in 2021.

The disappointing performance of investment into Alibaba and Tencent came as China intensified an antimonopoly campaign in the internet sector that saw industry giants, including Alibaba, Tencent, Meituan and Baidu Inc., fined big for antitrust violations. Many saw their stocks slump last year.

Still, Alibaba and Tencent were the Norwegian funds largest equity investments in the Chinese market last year, followed by Meituan and state-owned China Construction Bank Corp.

Overall, China accounted for 3.8% of the funds global equity investments at the end of last year, down from 5.3% a year earlier, the annual report showed. The U.S. accounted for 44.7%, up from 42% a year earlier. Europe accounted for 31.1%, up from 30.9%.

At the end of last year, 72% of the funds investment portfolio was equities, 25.4% was fixed income, and the remainder consisted of unlisted real estate and renewable energy infrastructure. Together, the fund reported an annual return of 14.51% last year, up from 10.86% in 2020, when the world was hit particularly hard by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Contact reporter Tang Ziyi (ziyitang@caixin.com) and editor Lin Jinbing (jinbinglin@caixin.com)

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Covid-19 /

Hong Kong cases top 55,000, but Lam rules out full lockdown

Hong Kong wont resort to a wholesale city lockdown, although a certain level of movement restriction may be adopted as the city struggles to contain a surge of Covid-19 cases, Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam said Wednesday.

The special administrative region reported a record 55,353 daily new infections Wednesday, up 70% from 32,597 a day earlier. Health authorities said there were 117 deaths, mostly people in care facilities, and 64 patients were in critical condition in hospitals.

The Asian financial hub has been struggling to tame a fifth wave of Covid-19 outbreak, the worst in the city since the pandemic started. The flare-up has been largely caused by the omicron variant.

South China city tightens Covid curbs as cases rise

Russia-Ukraine /

Wounded Chinese citizen in Ukraine out of danger, ministry says

Chinas Foreign Ministry confirmed Thursday that a Chinese citizen was shot while evacuating Ukraine March 1 but said the injured person is out of danger for the time being.

The Chinese embassy in Ukraine immediately contacted the person to provide assistance, said Wang Wenbin, a spokesperson for Foreign Ministry during a press conference. No further details of the incident were provided, though Wang said the embassy will continue to monitor the situation.

China can play key role in Ukraine, French ambassador says

FINANCE & ECONOMY

Photo: VCG

'Two Sessions' /

GDP target, budget deficit, housing controls: What to watch for at Chinas Two Sessions

Thousands of lawmakers and political advisers from across the country are converging on Beijing this week for key meetings, known as the Two Sessions, that will map out the direction of Chinas political, legislative and economic work over the coming year.

The National Peoples Congress (NPC), Chinas top legislature, will kick off its annual session Saturday with Premier Li Keqiang delivering the government work report for 2022. The document will lay out Chinas development priorities for the year including targets for GDP growth, employment, the fiscal deficit, local government special bond quotas and more. The annual session of the Chinese Peoples Political Consultative Conferences national committee, a political advisory body that puts forward proposals to the government, will start Friday.

RCEP /

Chinese local governments unveil plans to implement RCEP mega free trade pact

Several local governments in China unveiled plans to implement the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), a sign that the country is taking steps to further open up its market to other Asia-Pacific member countries of the free trade pact.

Inked in November 2020, RCEP aims to reduce tariffs to zero on more than 90% of the goods traded among its members  10 Southeast Asian countries and five other Asia-Pacific nations including China, Japan and South Korea. The 15 member countries account for about 30% of global GDP, making the free trade pact the worlds largest. The agreement has taken effect for most of the 15 countries, including China, since the beginning of the year.

Survey /

More surveyed companies in China failed to turn a profit in 2021 amid Covid, AmCham says

Fewer surveyed companies operating in China turned a profit in 2021 than the pre-epidemic level in 2019, a business groups survey found, pointing to the adverse impact of Covid-19 flare-ups on business operations.

Of the 230 surveyed companies, 82% said they made a profit in China last year, a drop of 13 percentage points from 2019, when 240 companies were studied, according to the survey report released by the American Chamber of Commerce in South China Tuesday.

PMI /

Chinas services growth slows to six-month low, Caixin PMI shows

Chinas services sector expanded at the slowest pace in six months in February as new orders shrank due to Covid-19 flare-ups, a Caixin-sponsored survey showed.

The Caixin China General Services Business Activity Index, which gives an independent snapshot of operating conditions in the sector, fell to 50.2 in February from 51.4 the previous month, according to the survey report released Thursday. Readings greater than 50 signal expansion.

The Caixin China Composite PMI, which covers both manufacturing and service companies, came in at 50.1 last month, unchanged from the reading in January, the Thursday survey showed.

Quick hits /

Top banking regulator warns against a too dramatic real estate correction

Singapores Temasek invests in forest fund as carbon tax looms

BUSINESS & TECH

No mainland TMT company went public in the U.S. in the second half of 2021.

IPOs /

Chinas tech, media and telecom companies flock to domestic markets

Chinese technology, media and telecommunications companies increasingly turned to raising capital on domestic stock markets in the second half of 2021 amid headwinds on selling shares abroad, global consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers said Wednesday in a report.

Initial public offerings (IPOs) in Hong Kong and overseas by the sector, known as TMT companies, declined to 25% of total financing in the second half from 82% in the first, PwC said. Meanwhile, 89% of the 74 second-half share flotations by mainland TMT companies took place on Chinas markets, the consulting group found.

Batteries /

Carmaking tycoon calls for more government support for NEV battery swapping

On the eve of Chinas Two Sessions, the head of the nations biggest private carmaker called for more to be done to support electric-vehicle battery swapping.

Li Shufu, chairman of automaker Zhejiang Geely Holding Group Co. Ltd., suggested that the government should deepen its collaboration with related parties to accelerate the construction of battery-swapping stations.

Haidilao /

Tip sheet: Hot pot heavyweight Haidilao gets a new CEO after warning of huge losses

High-end hot pot chain Haidilao, one of Chinas best-known restaurant brands, reshuffled its top leadership with founder Zhang Yong departing as CEO. He will remain chairman of the board.

Chief Operating Officer Yang Lijuan, who has been leading the firms downsizing strategy, has been tapped for the top job.

Quick hits /

Huawei pivots to renewable energy as smartphones slump

Crispr ruling invalidates some biotech company licenses

GALLERY

Hong Kongers flock to stores on lockdown fears

Recommended newsletter for you /

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In recent weeks, a case of a Chinese national who was kidnapped and forced to work as a blood slave by a gang of online scammers in Cambodia has shocked China.

In many media reports, Li Yayuanlun, identified as the victim in the case, had 350 milliliters (about three-quarter of a pint) of blood forcibly drawn from him seven times for over the six months he was held at the gangs hideout in the Cambodian city of Sihanoukville.
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The horrific Tsar Bomba tested by the USSR was detonated with force equal to 3000 times more than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in the closing days of the Second World War. It was one of the biggest bombs tested on the coast of Severny Island, close to the Arctic Sea. The resulting explosion was a mushroom cloud taller than Mount Everest, making it one of the most potent weapons engineered by any nation.

Russia's Most Potent 'Tsar Bomba'

As the Russian forces send waves of bombs and missiles assaults, hit Ukraine, the memory of the powerful bomb resurfaced as a reminder of the army's power that the Kremlin wields, reported the Daily Star.

In 2020, Moscow celebrated the first 75 years since it became a nuclear powerhouse. The Super bomb was considered confidential but declassified by Russia's nuclear division ROSATOM.

For the first time, images of the actual explosion and its devastating power could be witnessed by the world when the USSR detonated it on October 30, 1961, cited Business Insider.

The explosive power was estimated at 3,333 times of terrifying devastation on any target, resulting in a cloud that sailed into the air 42 miles high or seven times loftier than Everest. It would be numbing to realize the atomic cloud dwarfed every mountain on earth.

Fear of Nuclear Hell as Putin Threatens

On February 27, Vladimir Putin commanded that nuclear deterrence forces on the highest alert over the news of the Zelensky regime was looking for nukes.

Read Also: Vladimir Putin Net Worth 2022: Does Anyone Know Russian President's Hidden Wealth?

President Putin called his relevant officials, including Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and military Chief of Staff Valery Gerasimov, to inform them of his decision to place nuclear weapons ready with the deterrence force on to the special mode of combat duty and special orders that would star nukes flying.

Seen in the old footing releases photonic light bright or more than the sun. Next, the titanic mushroom clown shoots up the sky. The video was recorded by an aircraft that captured the mushroom of cloud getting bigger into the sky. As many as 50 million tons of explosives were the equal of the terrifying blast in modern history.

World's Biggest Bomb

Tsar Bomba, weighing up to 27 tons and 24-feet long, has one of the largest casings ever made for all bombs, preset to explode about 4000 meters in the air, the affected area would be monstrously palled the imagination.

Much to the shock of the crew flying, the Tu-95V Soviet bomber was 75 miles away, from where it dropped the bomb. A shockwave hit the plane in mid-air, trying to get far away.

Those who were 620 miles far could still see the explosion, case in point that London and Edinburgh are only 402.3 miles far. The documentary about the bomb showed 'Top Secret' as an opening caption.

Many details were mentioned in the old video with information that would not be normal in some cases. A nuclear historian would dodge more about intimate details.

Lucky for everyone because tests would be done below ground, the Tsar is the last nuclear explosion tested above the ground.

In 1963, a pact between the US, UK, and then USSR inked the Partial Test Ban Treaty, formalizing all future tests to be held beneath the ground, per BBC.

For all intents, the Tsar Bomba would be a devastating weapon if used today, but control of such arms is needed more than ever, and the Russians know it more than anyone.

Related Article: Vladimir Putin's Vast Arsenal of Weapons To Use if New Tactics Are Needed To Change the Outcome

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Stonehenge and its enigma are solved as a study of the monument revealed the construction was no accident but intentional.

Analysis of the ancient monument shows each stone was a marker for a specific time of the year. Amazingly, it allowed the ancient people to know when the solstices were to come and calculated 365.25 days a year.

Ancient Calendar

Archeologist Timothy Darvill of Bournemouth University; conducted a study to analyze and understand the nature of the monument, reported the Express UK.

What was found out the Henge predicted the solstices per year from when it was built, as it had included calculations where the Earth would be tilting at the most in its axis from the sun. Thus, looking at where the shadows were, those alive at that time depended on it to indicate the longest and shortest days.

From antiquarian William Stukeley, people have suggested that Stonehenge featured some type of calendar owing to its apparent solstitial synchronization. Discoveries have shown that the year embedded in the alignments of the stones is tropical.

The Sarsens

According to Live Science, Prof. Darvill and his data had pointed to the heavy stone slabs or Sarsens that were transported and built to where they are now in 2500 BC. But in one phase, not several as discovered.

Analysis of the large slabs shows they are from the Marlborough Downs about 15 miles at the north side of the Salisbury Plain. All the stones were placed simultaneously as a single unit when Stonehenge was built.

Read Also: Swarms of Summer Solstice Festivalgoers Converged on Stonehenge Despite the Cancellation of the Yearly Event

Using the new data, the archeologist further examined if there is more to the layout of the henge in comparison to other calendar systems of the later Neolithic era.

Incorporated in the circular formation is the solar calendar that marked all phases in a year that ancient people of Wiltshire would plan their yearly activities from, and it was a straightforward calendar, too, Darvill noted.

A Measure of Time

The structure works as a calendar that each sarsen slab, 30 of them, represents a day in a month, in a sub number of three weeks every ten days. The beginning of each week is marked by a distinct stone found inside the sarsen circle.

More sophisticated functions of the ancient monument are tracking the solar year with a supplementary or intercalary of five days, representing a leap day, factored into the formation.

Per Ancient-Wisdom, the five Trilithons, which are two stones with one straddling the tops in the center formation, represent an intercalary month dedicated to the site's gods. The four 'Station Stones' not in the circle of sarsens marked the progression to a leap day.

The professor would say the progress to summer and the stone per year easily marked the winter solstices. The addition of the trilithons would help notice a winter solstice that would be close to a new year of the ancient calendar.

Depending on the solar calendar more complex than a more straightforward Gregorian calendar, ancients are vastly different. More than one culture in the stone age used the henge to determine days of the year. He added the solar calendar would find its way to the eastern Mediterranean after 3000 BC. It was used by the Egyptians as its civil calendar in 2700 and later in the Old Kingdom by 2600 BC.

The Stonehenge and its calendar system would find their way to others societies and add to the culture of societies with an element of time. It was more than a ring of sarsens as the professor.

Related Article: Stonehenge Reveals Human Presence in the Ancient Period of the Prehistoric Monument Discovered by Archaeologists

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On Thursday, Russian President Vladimir Putin contacted French President Emmanuel Macron, in what looked to be a far more hostile conversation than prior exchanges between the two leaders.

As per a senior French source, the 90-minute chat did not result in a diplomatic breakthrough, leaving Macron concerned that "the worst is yet to come" and that Putin aims to grab control of all of Ukraine.

France Warns That Putin is Making a "Major Mistake"

According to Russian and Ukrainian authorities, the conversation, which the French president stated was initiated by President Putin, took place as Ukrainian officials were prepared to meet with a Russian group. However, based on the interaction between the two leaders on Thursday, there was no hint that a diplomatic solution was in the works.

Putin assured Macron, according to the Kremlin's press service, that the goals of the special military operation - the Kremlin's phrase for Russia's invasion of Ukraine - will be met in any scenario.

President Putin disagreed "with many points" stated in Macron's speech, according to the Kremlin news service, and he disputed that Russia was responsible for the bombardment of major Ukrainian towns, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

President Macron is the only Western leader who has maintained regular public communication with Putin since Ukraine's invasion, in what the French presidency has described as an effort to keep the door to real dialogue open. Putin and Macron also spoke on Monday and Thursday of last week, according to the Washington Post.

The call, which occurred at the request of the Kremlin, was the third between the two presidents since the start of the war, according to the French presidency. President Macron has positioned himself at the heart of European diplomacy, burnishing his prestige in France and abroad by becoming an intermediary with Putin, who is set to launch his bid for re-election in April later on Thursday.

Despite the French presidency's assurances that diplomatic relations with Russia would be maintained for as long as required - even to facilitate the passage of humanitarian aid - Mr. Macron's outreach to Putin has been limited by his phone talks with Putin.

The French source gave a pessimistic assessment of Putin's will to pursue the fight, adding that the Russian leader recited a long list of grievances and perceived slights from Western countries that had compelled him to act. According to the person, Putin also reiterated demands that the Ukrainian government and other European nations have previously found unacceptable, as per New York Times.

Read Also: Russian Foreign Minister Warns the Western Alliance on Threat of World War 3 as Russia Goes Nuclear

Vladimir Putin Firm at Stance to Go With The Plan

President Putin reiterated that Russia is pursuing "neo-Nazis," adding that he "would never give up on (his) belief that Russians and Ukrainians are one people" during the televised beginning of a national security council meeting.

According to a Kremlin account of their talk, Putin warned French President Emmanuel Macron that Moscow plans to maintain its tough struggle against militants of nationalist armed organizations.

After NATO allies ruled out establishing a no-fly zone for fear of triggering a direct conflict with nuclear-armed Russia, President Zelenskyy has called on the West to provide military support.

The EU has already given fighter jets, and a source in Berlin claimed Germany was going to send another 2,700 anti-aircraft missiles to Ukraine. The 27-nation group also decided to grant temporary protection to all refugees fleeing Ukraine's war, which the UN estimates to number more than one million.

Both sides clasped hands across a table at the start of the discussions, the Ukrainian representatives in military uniforms and the Russians in more formal clothes, at an unknown site on the Belarus-Poland border, SBS News reported.

Related Article: Joe Biden Gaffes in His State of the Union Address, Gets Lost in Facts Once Again

@YouTube

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On Thursday, a Kentucky jury found a former police officer not guilty of endangering neighbors when he fired rounds into an apartment during a narcotics raid in 2020 that resulted in Breonna Taylor's death.

Following final remarks from the prosecution and defense counsel, the panel of eight men and four women reached a decision roughly three hours after taking the case. After the ruling, Hankison was shaken but also relieved. Juniyah Palmer, Taylor's sister, shook her head.

Jury Finds Ex-Officer Brett Hankison Not Guilty on All Counts

During the raid that left Taylor, a 26-year-old Black woman, dead, Hankison was charged with three counts of wanton endangerment for shooting through sliding-glass side doors and a window of Taylor's apartment. Hankison's lawyers never disputed the ballistics data, but claimed he fired ten shots because he believed his fellow policemen were "being executed."

Hankison did not leave the courtroom after the verdict was given, but his lawyer, Stewart Mathews, said he and his client were "thrilled." Barbara Maines Whaley, an assistant Kentucky attorney general, said she appreciated the jury's decision but had no additional comment. After the verdict, Taylor's mother, Tamika Palmer, and a group of friends and family members exited without saying anything, CBS News reported.

Prosecutors said they respected the judgment, which came after three hours of deliberation but refused to speak to the media further. Hankison risked one to five years in jail if convicted of each offense.

The accusations arose from a bungled raid in which Taylor, a 26-year-old emergency medical technician, was tragically shot in her own house by police. Her death sparked broad demonstrations over how the justice system handles Black people, as well as specific critiques about the hazards of no-knock warrants, following the murders of George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery.

Prosecutors summoned 26 witnesses in court over five days to argue that Hankison fired a blind shot into a window from outside the apartment in a direction perpendicular to the point of origin. According to authorities, his bullets traveled into Taylor's apartment, endangering a man, a pregnant lady, and her 5-year-old boy who resided next door.

During her closing remarks, Assistant Attorney General Barbara Whaley stated that the other policemen in the group, aside from Mattingly and Cosgrove, who were in the line of fire, made the proper decision not to shoot. Hankison, she claimed, was shooting "without a target" and hence shouldn't be firing, according to CNN.

Read Also: WATCH: Heartbreaking Moments of Parents Leaving Their Children Amid Ongoing Russia-Ukraine War

Why is Brett Hankison Found Not Guilty in Breonna Taylor Raid?

Hankison, who was dismissed by the Louisville Metro Police Department for firing blindly during the raid, said it was the first time he had used his weapon in the line of duty since joining the force in 2003.

As Taylor's door swung open, Hankison, a 20-year veteran K-9 officer assigned to manage a drug-sniffing dog, claimed he was positioned behind an officer with a battering ram and could see the dark silhouette of a person 'in a shooting posture' with what seemed to be an AR-15 weapon.

The pistol of Walker, who told Louisville Police detectives he assumed intruders were breaking in, was the only weapon discovered. Investigators decided that Walker fired the shot that struck Sgt. John Mattingly in the leg, and that he, along with officer Myles Cosgrove, returned fire. The cops fired a total of 32 shots. Walker was unharmed.

Other cops in the vicinity of Cosgrove and Mattingly opted not to fire, according to Whaley, and there was no evidence of bullets fired from a long rifle at the site. Though prosecutors stressed in opening comments that the case was not about Taylor's death or the police judgments that led to the March 13, 2020, raid, the issue loomed large over the trial. Jurors were shown a single photograph of her body at the end of the hallway, hardly recognizable.

Taylor, a 26-year-old emergency medical worker, was shot numerous times and killed at the scene after authorities smashed through her door.

Prosecutors for Kentucky Attorney General David Cameron wanted a grand jury to indict Hankison on allegations of endangering Taylor's neighbors, but they declined to arrest any cops involved in Taylor's death. Protesters who had been marching for months were incensed.

Taylor's name, along with that of George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery, two black males killed in interactions with police and white pursuers, were rallying cries during global racial justice rallies in 2020, as per Daily Mail.

Related Article: Pennsylvania Police Shoot Dead a 12-year-old Boy; Officers Change Initial Statement, Admit They Are Unsure if He Had a Weapon

@YouTube

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In what seems to be a regular occurrence at this point, Mazda has announced a product stoppage anew at their Japanese factories this May.
School officials thank community, agencies for support after loss of 4 ECHS students in plane crash
The agency that runs the landfill system in Carteret, Craven and Jones counties plans to eventually start producing renewable natural gas here, at the Tuscarora landfill in Craven County, with the help of industry giant Ingenco. (Contributed photo)
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky argued that support from the United States and the West, in general, arrived a little too late to safeguard his country and his people from the terror of the Russian army.

During a Thursday news conference, Zelensky appealed for more assistance internationally in a defiant appearance in his capital Kyiv as Moscow's invasion entered its second week. One Pentagon official said that Russia has now sent nearly all of the troops it had gathered across the border into Ukraine.

Zelensky's Plea

There have been reports that Russian troops were gaining ground while their main point of entry was to the night, through Belarus. The Ukrainian president repeated his request for a NATO no-fly zone in order to protect his cities and his troops.

Zelensky said that he now had good communication lines with U.S. President Joe Biden and other international leaders. However, he lamented that the world had only increased its support of Ukraine after Russia ordered its troops to invade his country, as per the Daily Mail.

The leaders of Ukraine and the United States spoke by phone on Tuesday for more than half an hour, one White House official said. In a Twitter post, Zelensky confirmed that the phone call took place while his country was fighting against Russian forces.

Read Also: Russia-Ukraine War: New Satellite Images Show Heartbreaking Damages to Ukraine

In his post, Zelensky said that he and Biden discussed anti-Russian sanctions and defense assistance to Ukraine. The Ukrainian president added that the world must work together to stop the aggressor as soon as possible and expressed his gratitude for all the support worldwide.

According to Fox News, the two international leaders also talked about "ongoing deliveries of security assistance, economic support, and humanitarian aid. One topic in the discussion included Russia's attacks on civilians, including the bombing near the Babyn Yar Holocaust memorial, said White House authorities.

Russia-Ukraine War

In an interview on Tuesday, Zelensky noted that as long as Russia's aggression in Ukraine continues, there was little progress that could be made in talks between the two regions. He said that the first thing to do was communicate, arguing that everyone had to stop fighting and go back to before the invasion occurred.

The Ukrainian leader was asked whether or not he felt that his country was wasting time by trying to talk to Russia. In response, Zelensky said, "We'll see," as officials met for the first time on Monday since the beginning of the war last week.

Before Biden's speech in Congress on Tuesday, Zelensky had asked the American leader to impress upon his people the urgency and implications of Russia's invasion. The Ukrainian president said the Democrat is one of the leaders of the world and should help his citizens understand the situation better.

The Ukrainian leader reiterated calls for the U.S. and NATO to either put up the no-fly zone over Ukraine or deploy troops on the ground. Zelensky said that he had already made his plea with Western leaders, arguing that leaders should support democratic countries and work on helping them, CNN reported.



Related Article: China Reportedly Asks Russia To Delay Ukraine Invasion Until After Winter Olympics, Urges Not To Sanction Moscow Despite Bombardment in Kyiv

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While prominent U.S. politicians are calling for the assassination of Russian president Vladimir Putin, animators are taking a more peaceful (and creative) approach to the problem: an anijam where they can vent their frustration at Putin through visual graphics.

The anti-Putin anijam is organized by award-winning Ukrainian filmmaker Mykyta Lyskov, whose film Kohannia was recently our Short Pick of the Day.

Any animator can participate  all thats needed is a 10-second piece of animation showing how youd vanquish Putin. Specs: 19201080, 24pfs, with or without sound. Submit the work to putlersdeathanimation (at) gmail (dot) com.
Photo: Contributed Members of Parliament form a live Tryzub, the Ukrainian coat of arms, at the Centennial Flame in Ottawa.

A little over a week ago, the worst fears of thousands of Ukrainian-Canadian families in Kelowna-Lake Country were realized.

The long-threatened invasion of Ukraine by (Russian President) Vladimir Putin's despotic government became a reality as Russian military forces crossed Ukrainian borders. This aggression is by the Russian regime, not the Russian people, many of whom have risen in opposition.

The Russian government's unprovoked decision to invade Ukraine is now the most severe threat to global peace and security we've seen since the Second World War.

Being of Ukrainian descent myself, I was shocked by this sudden turn of events, as I'm sure most residents here in Kelowna-Lake Country are.

The actions of the Canadian government to financially penalize with severe sanctions available are greatly supported and consistent with our allies. Isolating the Russian government's access to financial markets and Russian politicians and oligarchs from their wealth provides much-needed pressure for peace.

Conservatives have also recommended that Canada seek to remove Russia from international partnerships like the G20 and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe. We also believe it is crucial to send a strong message to Russia by recalling Canadas ambassador in Moscow and expelling the Russian ambassador from Ottawa.

Conservatives have always taken a strong stand against Putins militarism and we must ensure we continue to press him where it hurts the most - his pride, ego and wallet.

I want to thank our local Ukrainian community leaders for its strength over the past days and its help in keeping me up to date on what they are hearing from the ground in Ukraine.

I have been able to pass on critical information on whats needed on the ground to those responsible in government, based on what our own community leaders are hearing.

On Feb. 28 in the House of Commons, I was able to participate in a late-evening Take Note debate. I asked the government about ensuring Ukrainians fleeing violence can travel to Canada without requiring an onerous visa or at least streamlining the process.

I again want to thank the Ukrainian community here in Kelowna-Lake Country for sharing concerns about visa requirements, so I could ask the government about the potential to take action on it.

The following day, a motion on Ukrainian visas was brought before the Immigration committee. While it was (supported) by the Conservative and other opposition MPs, Liberal MPs chose to vote against it.

As we've seen at marches and rallies here locally and nationwide, Canadians understand that by standing up for the protection of Ukrainian peace and democracy, we stand for its protection here in Canada as well. I was proud to join a gathering in front of the Centennial Flame in Ottawa this week, to join other Parliamentarians in expressing our support for the people of Ukraine.

This invasion has brought national and international security conversations to the forefront. In recent years, Canada has become familiar with Putins interest in the Arctic and Russias excursions into Arctic waters. Thats why its critically important that in the weeks and months ahead, Canada begin to take real action to protect our Arctic and secure our waters.

We must also support our European allies seeking to end their energy dependency on Russian natural gas with increased exports of Canadian energy through new tidewater pipelines.

Russia also provides North America with crude oil and petroleum products, and we should instead fully use Canadas energy capacity with our neighbours in North America.

If you are aware of any Canadians in need of consular assistance in Ukraine, they should contact Global Affairs Canadas 24/7 Emergency Watch and Response Centre in Ottawa at: +1 613 996 8885, by e-mail at [email protected] or SMS to +1 613 686 3658

Some of the organizations involved in humanitarian aid to Ukraine include the Canadian Red Cross, the Ukrainian Canadian Congress and the Canada-Ukraine Foundation.

If you need any assistance with programs or have any thoughts to share, feel free to reach out. 250-470-5075 or [email protected].

This article is written by or on behalf of an outsourced columnist and does not necessarily reflect the views of Castanet.
Photo: Contributed

Getting help from first responders in an emergency will become even more seamless with the help of Telus.

Telus has announced the roll-out of the first phase of migration to the Next-Generation 9-1-1 (NG9-1-1) services in British Columbia and Alberta, with Canada being the first country in the world to begin the rollout on a national level.

The improved service will allow more precise location data to video and photo sharing and will enable connected vehicles to contact public safety services independently.

Telus is working with the CRTC to develop and deliver the new IP-based 9-1-1 network.

In an emergency, every second counts and information is critical. Bringing this next-generation technology to the people of Alberta and B.C. will save lives, and that is something that we at Telus are very proud to support, said Jerome Birot, VP-Voice & Services Development Opportunities at Telus.

Our world-leading 5G network provides the perfect environment to bring the future of emergency communications, Next-Generation 9-1-1, to life, enabling the seamless flow of information, including text, photos and video, to first responders, while facilitating vastly enhanced functionality in the future - this is just the beginning.

Historically, 911 systems have been limited to voice calls with only a limited capacity for text messaging in very specific circumstances.

Deaf and hard of hearing callers, once they registered with their wireless provider, could utilize text messaging in an emergency through their cell phones.

NG9-1-1 will see the eventual arrival of video calling, widespread text availability and document sharing such as image uploads, which will improve communication and provide accessibility benefits to support users and first responders.
Photo: BC SPCA The Vancouver Island marmot is found in only a few small mountainous pockets on the big island.

Today is World Wildlife Day and the BC SPCA is highlighting the plight of many endangered species.

According to the BC SPCA, more than 8,400 species of wild animals and plants are critically endangered, while close to 30,000 more are endangered or vulnerable - including several in BC.

The Vancouver Island marmot is found in only a few small mountainous pockets on the big island. The marmots are one of only a few mammals exclusive to Canada.

The rare marmots have dark, chocolate-brown fur, with white noses, bellies and foreheads.

They are known to touch noses in greeting, play fight and emit five distinct whistles or trills.

Although resilient, these marmots are critically endangered  with fewer than 30 in the wild in 2004. Their decline is still a mystery, but is suggested to be due to a change in predator-prey dynamics because of ongoing landscape changes.

Thanks to conservation recovery efforts, their population has increased to more than 200 individuals in 2019.

The northern spotted owl is one of Canadas most endangered species  fewer than a dozen still live in B.C. The medium-sized owls rely on old-growth forests to roost, nest and hunt. Their decline is due to habitat loss from ongoing logging and human disturbances.

Spotted owls are frequently confused with barred owls  a more abundant close relative. Barred owls have grey plumage, with vertical brown streaks on their chest, and no spots. Spotted owls are more brown, with white oval spots on their body feathers and horizontal white bars on their chest.

Purple martins are the largest swallow in North America. They are commonly known for their unique colouring, agility and speed  topping 40 miles per hour.

Due to habitat loss, development and competition, the western purple martin population in B.C. was down to only 10 breeding pairs by the 1980s. Thanks to an amazing volunteer nest box program, the purple martin population has gradually increased to roughly 1,200 pairs.

Theyre not out of the woods yet, but the recovery is thanks to the efforts of many collaborators, funders and volunteers.

Woodland caribou are an iconic species in the forests of B.C. They graze mainly on lichen  a slow-growing plant  found in old-growth forests. Their survival is intimately linked to the survival of old-growth habitat, which is being impacted by logging and other human activities like mining, oil and gas, renewable energy and road building.

Human disturbances cause them to leave their preferred habitat, and move in to less-desirable areas.
Photo: Twitter

Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland was photographed holding a scarf bearing colours associated with a far-right Ukrainian paramilitary group from the Second World War this past weekend.

Both her office and the Ukrainian Canadian Congress suggest the questions and criticism she has received about it online is linked to a pattern of Russian-backed disinformation targeting members of the Ukrainian community.

The Twitter account for Freeland shared photos of the federal finance minister at a Ukrainian solidarity march in Toronto on Sunday holding a black-and-red scarf with the Ukrainian phrase Slava Ukraini, which translates to Glory to Ukraine, written in Cyrillic.

Toronto Mayor John Tory was in the group and his account also shared photos of the moment, including one that showed the other side of the scarf, which had the phrase Heroyam Slava, or Glory to heroes. Neither Tory nor Freeland are touching the scarf in that photo.

Both accounts deleted the photos the next day. Freeland then issued an identical tweet about her presence at the march organized to show solidarity with Ukraine after Russia launched a multi-pronged attack on the sovereign country. It featured a photo without the scarf.

Ivan Katchanovski, a political scientist at the University of Ottawa, said the red-and-black flag, along with the Glory to Ukraine, glory to the heroes slogan, was adopted by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) during its congress in Nazi-occupied Poland in April 1941. The UPA was the armed wing of Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), an ultranationalist, antisemitic and fascist organization.

Adrienne Vaupshas, press secretary to Freeland, said in a written statement Wednesday that there were thousands of people at the event in Toronto, that many were trying to get a photo or give the Liberal cabinet minister tokens, such as ribbons, and that she tried to be friendly with everyone.

She added that someone pushed a scarf (that read Slava Ukraini) in front of some politicians, including Freeland. Vaupshas described it as the slogan of Ukraine in todays fight against Russia, and that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson have used the phrase too.

The original tweet, and its subsequent deletion, garnered a lot of reaction, which intensified after online conservative news site True North Centre wrote about it on Monday. The article noted that Trudeau had called out Nazi symbolism at the recent protests in Ottawa after a swastika flag was seen in the crowd.

Can you see the hypocrisy and double standard now? Peoples Party of Canada Leader Maxime Bernier tweeted the next day, adding that he does not believe Freeland is an actual Nazi.

A classic KGB disinformation smear is accusing Ukrainians and Ukrainian-Canadians of being far right extremists or fascists or Nazis, Vaupshas wrote in the beginning of her statement sent Wednesday.

The KGB, which existed from 1954 to 1991, was the security service in the Soviet Union.

A photo was taken, tweeted, and later replaced when it was clear some accounts were distorting the intent of the rally and photo, she added.

We condemn all far-right and extremist views and organizations, whether they are in Russia, Ukraine, or Canada. The deputy prime minister has no association with any far-right organizations, she added.

Vaupshas did not comment when asked about what was written on the other side of the scarf the minister was holding.

A statement from Torys office said the mayor attended the rally to show both his and Torontos support for Ukraine and its people. We are not aware of this particular scarf or its meaning. The mayor is always focused on bringing our city together during difficult times and in no way wants to do anything that divides our residents as we work to support the Ukrainian community.

Conservative MP James Bezan, who was also at the rally and seen in the photo holding a sign someone gave him that said "pray for Ukraine and stop war," said Thursday that he was not aware of what was happening with the scarf at the time. But he also suggested the attention the original photo is getting is feeding into Russian disinformation efforts.

"I just don't think in the moment  people are thinking about how all this plays out with a Putin disinformation campaign," he said.

According to Katchanovski, contemporary Ukrainian ultranationalist groups, such as Right Sector, have adopted the red-and-black flag along with the "Glory to Ukraine" greeting before and during the pro-western Euromaidan protests that led to the removal of former Ukraine president Viktor Yanukovych from power in 2014. He said its widespread subsequent use has led some to believe that it is a traditional Ukrainian greeting.

There have also been attempts in modern Ukraine to recast the OUN and the UPA as popular national liberation movement, which fought against both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, and to present OUN and UPA leaders as national heroes, said Katchanovski.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has argued Ukraine is committing genocide against ethnic Russians and that the state needs to be de-nazified as justification for his invasion.

The glorification of these organizations has been the subject of an emerging criticism by historians both in the West and within Ukraine, said historian John-Paul Himka, a professor emeritus at the University of Alberta and an uncle to Freeland.

Putin has exploited the heroization of these nationalists in his propaganda. With his invasion, he has only brightened their image.

Katchanovski said scholarly studies and archival documents show the OUN collaborated with Nazi Germany in the beginning, and at the end, of the Second World War. The Bandera faction of the OUN, which controlled the UPA, led a campaign of ethnic cleansing of Poles in Volhynia in 1943. (Polands Parliament voted in 2016 to recognize the massacre as a genocide.)

Many OUN and UPA leaders and members, who headed or served in the police and local administration during the Nazi occupation of Ukraine, helped Nazi Germany to perpetrate in the Holocaust and Nazi genocides of Jews, Roma, Ukrainians, Byelorussians and Russians, Katchanovski said.

Katchanovski nonetheless said neither the OUN nor the UPA were Nazis, who killed millions of Ukrainians.

He also said Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who is Jewish and a descendant of Holocaust survivors, and his government are not Nazis or neo-Nazis, and there is no genocide in Ukraine.

Marvin Rotrand, national director of the League for Human Rights at Bnai Brith Canada, condemned the use of the black-and-red flags spotted at pro-Ukraine events.

The UPAs black-and-red flag is consistently recognized as a fascist emblem and a hate symbol throughout the international community, he said.

After The Canadian Press contacted Freelands office for comment, the Ukrainian Canadian Congress sent a statement from its president, Alexandra Chyczij, reacting to allegations on social media that Freeland was showing support for extremists with the scarf.

"The Ukrainian Canadian Congress strongly and categorically rejects these unfounded allegations and attacks against Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland. Ms. Freeland obviously does not support far-right extremist organizations, she wrote.

Ms. Freeland has been a victim of Russian disinformation before and this is a typical Russian smear to discredit Ukrainians and Ukrainian-Canadians."

Freeland, a Toronto MP of Ukrainian heritage, was banned by Russia in 2014 after Putin retaliated against sanctions imposed on his country over its annexation of Crimea.

Her grandfather, as described in an article written by Himka that the Globe and Mail reported on in 2017, was editor of a Nazi propaganda newspaper, the Krakow News, in occupied Poland during the Second World War. The Globe reported Freeland had edited the article.

When the news of her grandfathers role was first reported that year, including by pro-Putin sites, Freeland initially linked it to a Russian disinformation campaign.
Photo: The Canadian Press

The U.N. Security Council has scheduled an emergency open meeting on the attack on Ukraines largest nuclear power plant.

The meeting, to be held today, was requested by the United States, United Kingdom, France, Ireland, Norway and Albania.

Council diplomats said the International Atomic Energy Agency will brief council members. Russias shelling of Europes biggest nuclear plant in Ukraine received widespread international condemnation on Friday. The shelling at the Zaporizhzhia plant in Enerhodar had touched off a fire that was extinguished. Russian forces have taken control of the site.

MOSCOW  Russians could face prison sentences of up to 15 years for spreading information that goes against the Russian governments position on the war in Ukraine, a move that comes as authorities block access to foreign media outlets.

The Russian parliament voted unanimously Friday to approve a draft law criminalizing the intentional spreading of what Russia deems to be fake reports.

Russian authorities have repeatedly decried reports of Russian military setbacks or civilian deaths in Ukraine as fake reports. State media outlets refer to Russias invasion of Ukraine as a special military operation rather than a war or invasion.

State news agencies said the draft law was approved by the lower and upper houses of parliament in quick succession. It could be signed into law by President Vladimir Putin and take effect as soon as Saturday, the speaker of the lower house, Vyacheslav Volodin, said

The blocks affect the BBC, the U.S. government-funded Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, German broadcaster Deutsche Welle and Latvia-based website Meduza. Together, they are among the most influential and often critical foreign media publishing in Russian.

BRUSSELS - NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg says the military organization will not police a no-fly zone over Ukraine and is warning that such a move could end in a wide-spread war in Europe.

Speaking Friday after chairing a meeting of NATO foreign ministers, Stoltenberg said we are not going to move into Ukraine, neither on the ground, nor in the Ukrainian airspace.

Russian President Vladimir Putins forces have ramped up their attacks in Ukraine, launching hundreds of missiles and artillery strikes on cities and making significant gains in the south.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has appealed to the West to enforce a no-fly zone over his country, most recently after a fire overnight at one of Ukraines nuclear plants, the largest in Europe.

The only way to implement a no-fly zone is to send NATO fighter planes into Ukrainian airspace, and then impose that no-fly zone by shooting down Russian planes, Stoltenberg said. We understand the desperation, but we also believe that if we did that, we would end up with something that could end in a full-fledged war in Europe.

We have a responsibility as NATO allies to prevent this war from escalating beyond Ukraine, he said.

ANKARA, Turkey  Turkeys foreign minister says Ankara wants to bring Russia and Ukraines top diplomats together for talks during an international diplomacy forum in the country next week.

Speaking Friday to reporters in Brussels where he attended a NATO meeting, Mevlut Cavusoglu said Russian Foreign Minister Seygey Lavrov has confirmed his attendance at the Antalya Diplomacy Forum to be held in the Mediterranean coastal city between March 11-13.

Cavusoglu said a meeting between Lavrov and Ukraines Dmytro Kuleba could be possible, but added that he was not certain Ukrainian officials would be able to attend.

Turkey, which has close ties to both Ukraine and Russia, has been trying to balance its relations with both. It has repeatedly offered to mediate between the two.

LONDON  The Ukrainian government and a former British prime minister are pushing for a special criminal tribunal to prosecute Russian President Vladimir Putin and his allies over the invasion of Ukraine.

Former Prime Minister Gordon Brown said the call for a body to investigate the crime of aggression was based on the tribunals that prosecuted senior Nazis after World War II.

The Netherlands-based International Criminal Court is already investigating allegations that Russia has committed war crimes in Ukraine. But while it can investigate genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes, Russia has not signed up to a separate ICC statute under which nations pledge not to commit crimes of aggression.

Brown said that this act of aggression by Russia  cannot go uninvestigated, unprosecuted and unpunished.

He said the Russian president must not be able to escape justice.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba welcomed the call for a tribunal, which is backed by legal experts and academics from around the world.

We are fighting against an enemy who is much stronger than us. But international law is on our side, Kuleba told a meeting in London by video link from Ukraine.

WARSAW, Poland  Polish security services say they have arrested a Spanish citizen on suspicion of spying for Russia.

Security services spokesman Stanislaw Zaryn said the man, who was born in Russia but holds a Spanish passport, was arrested on the night of Feb. 27 at a hotel in Przemysl, in southeastern Poland, and had journalist status.

Przemysl, near Polands border with Ukraine, is one of the main points where hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian refugees arrive as they flee Russias invasion.

Also, thousands of additional U.S. troops recently deployed to Poland to strengthen NATOs eastern flank are stationed in the area.

The man allegedly was collecting information that was sensitive to Polands security and defense, Zaryn told The Associated Press.

The man is accused of spying for Russia. If convicted, he could get up to 10 years in prison.

GENEVA  The U.N.s top human rights body has voted overwhelmingly to appoint a three-person panel of experts to monitor human rights in Ukraine, where Russian forces are invading.

The Human Rights Council voted 32-2, with 13 abstentions, to pass a resolution that was presented by many Western countries and others who have spoken out against Moscows attack on its neighbor.

Only Russia and Eritrea opposed the resolution, with China abstaining.

The vote Friday was the culmination of an urgent debate called by Ukraine, during which most council members lambasted Russia.

Many Western envoys sported blue or yellow ties, scarves, jackets or ribbons on their lapels, in a reference to the colors of the Ukrainian flag. Far-flung countries such as Gambia and Malaysia spoke out against the invasion.

The result testified to growing international isolation of Russia: On Monday, five countries  including China  had voted against Ukraines effort to convene the urgent debate.

Ukraines ambassador Yevheniia Filipenko, her eyes red with emotion, told delegates after the vote: I thank all those who voted for the right course.
Photo: The Canadian Press

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is heading to Europe this weekend to meet with allies over their responses to Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Trudeau will travel to London, Berlin and Latvia, where Canada is leading a multinational NATO battle group, and to Warsaw, Poland.

Meanwhile, Canadas foreign affairs minister met counterparts at NATO headquarters in Brussels on Friday to co-ordinate continuing efforts to sanction Russia for its invasion of Ukraine.

Before the meeting, Melanie Joly said ministers planned to discuss a Russian attack on a major nuclear power plant in the eastern Ukraine city of Enerhodar.

Russian troops seized the plant, the largest in Europe, after a middle-of-the-night attack that set it on fire and briefly raised worldwide fears of a catastrophe.

Firefighters put out the blaze, and no radiation was released, United Nations and Ukrainian officials said, as Russian forces pressed on with their week-old offensive on multiple fronts and the number of refugees fleeing the country topped 1.2 million.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said late Thursday he had spoken with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy about the assault on the power plant.

Following the attack, Zelenskyy appealed again to the West to enforce a no-fly zone over his country. But NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg ruled out that possibility, citing the risk of a much wider war in Europe.

He said the only way to implement a no-fly zone would be to send NATO planes to enforce it by shooting down Russian planes.

We understand the desperation, but we also believe that if we did that, we would end up with something that could end in a full-fledged war in Europe, Stoltenberg said.
Re. Donna Berubes letter Justice for Harmandeep (Castanet, March 3)

I wanted to provide some clarification regarding Donna Berubes recently published letter titled Justice for Harmandeep.

During a section of the letter, Donna admonishes Paladin Security for not providing its employees with the proper tools to be able to safely perform their duties.

However, the issue is not that Paladin Security is unable or unwilling to provide their employees with the proper tools. Paladin Security provides (anti-)stab vests and all other legally available PPE to their employees upon request, or automatically issues these items if a site is known to be dangerous, with absolutely no charge or cost to the employee.

The real issue here is that the provincial government does not allow security officers in B.C. to carry any items that could be used for self-defence.

The area (of the licensing requirements) that applies reads as follows: You may not carry or use a baton, taser, pepper spray or any other item designed to injure or control another person or animal while you are working.

This regulation rules out all non-lethal options for security professionals.

All they have to defend themselves while on duty are your own two hands. If they do not know how to defend themselves using their hands, then they are out of luck in British Columbia under the current regulations.

Disengaging and/or retreating are not always viable options.

If young Harmandeep (Kaur) had been allowed to carry a non-lethal option for self-defence, such as pepper spray or a Taser, she might very well still be alive today.

Lance Powers, West Kelowna
Re: Proactive' gun reform? (Castanet, March 1)

Once again the federal Liberal government is spewing a bunch of fluff that has absolutely no substance.

The Liberals have promised a mandatory buyback of banned assault-style firearms. Guess what? As of this date there has not actually been any proposed plan by the federal government outlining any details for this so-called buyback that is supposed take place, and be enforced, (as of) Apr 30.

This ban, and the so-called buyback, was implemented via an Order in Council May 1, 2020 by (Prime Minister Justin) Trudeaus (government) with absolutely no parliamentary discussion or debate and without any statistical proof or evidence that this banning of legally owned property from law-abiding Canadians would have any positive effect on gun crime or violence what so ever.

Guess what? The ban has been in place for almost two years now and firearm-related homicides and gun crimes in general have steadily increased since the ban. Thats an actual statistic from (federal Public Safety Minister Marco) Mendicino right off the Public Safety Canada website.

So how has this ban done anything to reduce gun crime in the last two years?

Oh yes, Im sure banning the so-called assault-style firearms that shoot exactly the same way and at the same rate with less powerful ammunition than many of your average hunting-style firearms from law-abiding Canadians is really going to reduce gun violence.

And Im sure cracking down on high-capacity firearm magazines from law-abiding Canadians is really going to reduce gun violence.

Guess what Mr. Mendicino? Semi-automatic and centre-fire rifles are already legally limited to only five rounds of ammunition and handguns to 10 rounds but gang bangers and criminals dont abide by the law What a concept, eh?

So the Liberal government creating all these additional firearms laws that only affect already law-abiding Canadians is going to do basically nothing to combat gun crime and violence, as has been proven over the last two years.

From the gang banger in the city streets to the scum responsible for the Nova Scotia shootings to the person sitting a basement, licensed or not, making 3D guns, they all have one thing in common. They already have broken, or are breaking, the law and no amount of additional laws or legislation are going to prevent them from committing their crimes.

We already have numerous laws in place to take care of these people. They just need to be enforced and the people responsible for enforcing these laws need way more support and backing then they currently get.

So why should the Canadian public concern itself over a bunch of guns being banned from law-abiding citizens? Well, most probably arent and wont care. But what you might want to concern yourself with is what the cost of this so-called buy back plan will be.

It has been estimated, by the parliamentary budget officer, the plan could cost up to $756 million, and we know how accurate government estimates are.

Add to that the $1 billion the federal government has earmarked for assisting provinces and territories in banning handguns, not taking into account provincial or territorial costs that would be on top of that, as well as who knows how much they are spending on the current advertisement/propaganda campaign currently on pretty much every radio and TV station.

You might want to ask yourself what could approximately $2 billion or more actually do to reduce gun crime, if used for additional law enforcement and prosecution of actual criminals, to combat gun smuggling at our borders, in helping support inner city youth programs and schools, to get kids off the streets and stay out of gangs and towards supporting the mental health community, as gun crime and violence often stems from mental health issues.

It doesnt take a rocket scientist to see if the billions of dollars the current government is wasting taking legally owned property away from law-abiding Canadians and coming up with more useless laws was used to add financial support towards these causes, it would actually have a positive effect on gun crime and violence across the country.

But then again, Trudeau (was) a drama teacher not a science teacher.

Jeff Kraus, Lake Country
Photo: Google Street View

A veteran Victoria police officer had to catch her breath when the victim of domestic violence walked into the police station and removed her sunglasses, revealing the severity of her injuries.

That information was recounted Thursday by Victoria provincial court Judge Lisa Mrozinski as she convicted Caleb True Hurry of choking his intimate partner, assaulting her with a weapon, assault causing her bodily harm and unlawful confinement on Oct. 17, 2020.

Whatever else may be in dispute in this trial, what is without doubt is that [the victim] presented at the Victoria police department with signs of serious physical assault, said the judge.

The identity of the woman, who died recently, is protected by a publication ban.

Hurry, 44, from Prince Edward Island, is in custody at the Vancouver Island Regional Correctional Centre. Last month, he was sentenced to nine months in jail after being convicted of assault causing bodily harm to the same woman on Jan. 1, 2020.

The judge recalled that during the trial, Const. Hayley Swann testified that the womans face looked swollen and beaten, and she seemed barely able to walk.

Const. Swann testified that she immediately regretted having her come into the police station.

The victim gave a statement to police describing a series of brutal assaults on her by Hurry the previous day, said the judge, in a review of what the court was told. It happened at the apartment she shared with Hurry on Stanley Avenue and they continued on and off for several hours between 12:30 a.m. until she was able to get away about 9:30 a.m. She spent that day and night at a friends home and went to the police station on Oct. 18, 2020.

Hurry denied assaulting her as alleged. He testified that they argued for a lengthy period that night and he struck her twice in the face with an open palm. He told the court the woman had exaggerated her injuries, particularly around her neck and ribs. The injuries were caused by him defending himself or fighting her off, he said.

Police photographs show her left eye swollen and bruised. There was bruising on her right eye, left ear, under her neck, on both cheeks, serious bruising on her left thigh and swelling and bruising on her ribs.

The judge rejected Hurrys evidence, saying most of his testimony was false and riddled with inconsistencies. She found him to be an unco-operative witness who would not answer a question directly.

Although Hurry tried to paint himself as a victim, the judge noted that, during cross-examination, he admitted he was found guilty of a previous assault where he urinated on the victim, spat on her and bit her lip so hard that she required 15 stitches. These facts make your claim of victimhood less credible, she said, pointing out that he was much bigger than his partner and could simply have walked out of the apartment.

Mrozinski accepted the Crowns theory that Hurry was angry when his partner spent time drinking with a male friend.

The victim, whose evidence was rich in detail, testified that when she came home, he threw a drink in her face.

Then, she was struggling for her life as he wrapped his surf leash around her neck and tried to strangle her.

She recalled trying to hold onto the cord to release the pressure on her neck.

The judge was convinced that Hurry caused serious injury by striking his partner about her face and head with his hands, fists and used a binder.

She was also convinced that Hurry used a phone cord and a surf leash to try to strangle her, and that he assaulted her with a belt and tried to prevent her from leaving the apartment twice.

Hurrys sentencing date will be scheduled on March 8.
Military analyst Bill Roggio said that the Russian offensive's allegedly failing images are inaccurate and are the west's delusional thinking.

He warned that if the western powers are not more critical, they will eventually lose Ukraine. The fact that the Ukrainians are winning is a jaded view that disguises the US and NATO officials aren't treating it more seriously.

West Fails To Understand the Conflict

Bill Roggio, a senior fellow from the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and editor of its Long War Journal, served from 1991 to 1997 in the US Army and New Jersey National Guard as his credentials for this analysis.

Roggio added that the west is looking through colored glasses of victory in Kyiv, which is not final yet, reported the Daily Mail.

An underdog complex is at play with an overpowered Ukrainian defender that has to claim the Russian bit off more than they can chew, simplistic claims that Vladimir Putin has lost it, which aren't realistic at all but propaganda. One idea is that the Russian blitzkrieg ended the conflict faster, though a follow-on strategy is devised to make up if the hammer blow does not work.

The military analyst warned that the Russian leader should not be discounted when the west did not take him seriously, and this is the sorry result of that, cited Michael Savage, Now is the time to be more aware of how things can go sideways in war.

Pentagon officials are not using the proper process to deal with the Ukraine conflict, letting personal judgment be swayed by sympathy and emotions, which led to the loss of Afghanistan.

They incorrectly judged with two days of the rollout of the Russian offensive; briefs by the US State Department of Defense make hasty claims as a win for the Ukrainians, noted the military analyst.

Read Also: Vladimir Putin Net Worth 2022: Does Anyone Know Russian President's Hidden Wealth?

US Department of Defense says the Moscow offensive was unsuccessful because Kyiv, the capital, has not fallen under Russian control. After the debacle of Afghanistan, the Biden administration and their military professionals are too naive of the outcome.

This might be a repeat of the past when the US and Western alliance have not learned from previous errors, offering too simplistic an analysis of the one-sided assault.

Russia Expected a Quick Ukraine Defeat

Western sources reported that Vladimir Putin would overthrow Kyiv, fearing Russian armor and forces over the front. Next, the Kremlin failed by not giving a knockout blow, and Volodymyr Zelensky is fighting a propaganda war on social media.

The Russian leader wanted a quick defeat of the Ukrainians, but he did not depend on his bombastic salvo. Believing in that concept is not the case. A long strategy will suffice if the blitz attack does not work. It is the same plan used by America during the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Just like the US opening strike on Saddam and his leaders, it did not go as planned, but they continued a campaign to go after him with boots on the ground. It was the same with Moscow ordering full-on invasion and assault as the US before, Putin reminded Washington of it. Waging a mechanized campaign will be resource and time-intensive, and everything needs to be coordinated.

The Russian assault in several places and the proper forces followed up systematically running down Ukraine. Putin and company are serious in this Russian offensive, noted Roggio, a military analyst, who thinks NATO and the US are too premature. The problem is that lack of boots on the ground that the allies fear risking.

Related Article: Russia Sends in Its BMPT-72 Terminator Tanks To Ukraine for Urban Warfare as NATO Scrambles Its Defenses

@ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Photo: The Canadian Press

Former Vice President Mike Pence will urge Republicans to move on from the 2020 election, declaring there is no room in this party for apologists for Putin as he further cements his break from former President Donald Trump.

Pence, in a speech Friday evening to the party's top donors in New Orleans, will take on those in his party who have failed to forcefully condemn Russian President Vladimir Putin for his unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.

Where would Russian tanks be today if NATO had not expanded the borders of freedom? There is no room in this party for apologists for Putin, Pence will say, according to excerpts from the speech. There is only room for champions of freedom.

Pence does not directly reference the former president in excerpts shared ahead of his remarks. But Trump has repeatedly used language that has been criticized as deferential to Putin, including calling the Russian leader smart while insisting the attack never would have happened on his watch.

Pence will also continue to push back on Trump's lies about the 2020 election as he lays the groundwork for a possible 2024 presidential run. Trump, who has been teasing his own comeback bid that could potentially put the two in direct competition, has continued to falsely insist that Pence had the power to overturn the 2020 election, which he did not.

Elections are about the future," Pence will say. "My fellow Republicans, we can only win if we are united around an optimistic vision for the future based on our highest values. We cannot win by fighting yesterdays battles, or by relitigating the past.

Pence has been increasingly willing to challenge Trump  a dramatic departure from his deferential posture as vice president.

Pence has said the two men will likely never see eye to eye on the Capitol insurrection of Jan. 6, 2021, when Trump supporters stormed the building in an effort to stop certification of Joe Biden's election victory And last month, he directly rebutted Trumps false claims that he, as vice president, could have overturned the results, telling a gathering of lawyers in Florida that Trump was wrong.

Still, he will join the oft-stated view of Trump and others in the Republican Party Friday evening in blaming President Biden for Putin's actions, accusing the current president of having squandered the deterrence that our administration put in place to keep Putin and Russia from even trying to redraw international boundaries by force.

Its no coincidence that Russia waited until 2022 to invade Ukraine, Pence will say, according to excerpts. Weakness arouses evil, and the magnitude of evil sweeping across Ukraine speaks volumes about this president.

While Pence allies believe that he can forge a coalition that brings together movement conservatives, white Evangelical Christians and more establishment-minded Republicans, Trumps attacks on Pence have made him deeply unpopular with large swaths of Trumps loyal base, potentially complicating his bid for the Republican presidential nomination.

Pence on Jan. 6 had to be whisked to safety with his family as a mob of Trump supporters breached the Capitol building, some chanting Hang Mike Pence!
The number of new hospital admissions of patients with COVID-19 per 100,000 population reflects the amount of severe COVID-19 disease within the community. Percent of staffed inpatient beds occupied by patients with COVID-19 is an indicator of local healthcare system usage and remaining capacity. Regardless of the reason for inpatient care, the level of usage of clinical care resources to manage patients with COVID-19 reflects impact on the community and signals when urgent implementation of layered prevention strategies might be necessary to prevent overloading the healthcare system. These indicators are proxies for underlying COVID-19 morbidity and severity of COVID-19 cases, and for the ability of the local healthcare system to support additional people requiring hospital care, including those with COVID-19. In addition, new COVID-19 cases per 100,000 population in the past 7 days serves as a leading indicator  most importantly early in a surge  of anticipated healthcare strain.

The indicators combine to result in three COVID-19 Community Levels: low, medium, and high. The COVID-19 Community Level is determined by the higher of the new COVID-19 hospital admissions and percent inpatient beds occupied by patients with COVID-19 indicators and is adjusted upwards one level if the new COVID-19 cases indicator is  200 cases per 100,000 population in the last 7 days.

A rapid rise in new cases may forecast increases in new hospitalizations or inpatient beds occupied by COVID-19 patients. Monitoring this leading indicator can allow communities to plan appropriately. When COVID-19 Community Levels are low, it does not indicate that virus is not circulating, or that individuals do not need to take any preventive measures to protect themselves, especially if they are at high-risk for serious disease. As communities see declines in case rates and the burden on the healthcare system eases, this can signal to individuals and communities when to discontinue the use of some layered prevention strategies. Community members can likewise consider these factors in making decisions about individual prevention behaviors based on their level of risk for severe disease or that of the members of their household or contacts.16

How the indicators of COVID-19 community levels were selected

To identify indicators, criteria were established that reflected priorities for indicator representation.

All indicators should have available county-level metrics from either data reported at the county level or allocated to county level from Health Service Areas (HSAs). All indicators should have coverage from all counties in the United States (or with the possibility of allocation to all counties using HSAs). Indicators should directly reflect the intended goals of minimizing medically significant disease or healthcare strain or represent a leading indicator of potential increases in severe disease or healthcare strain. Indicators must represent data reported at least weekly or more often, with sufficient timeliness to permit assessment of COVID-19 Community Levels and use those data to inform decisions about recommended prevention measures in a timely manner.

Based on these criteria, a comprehensive review of historical data and available indicators, including reviews of existing data sources, data systems, and metrics, was conducted. This included an inventory of available indicators and data sources with frequent reporting and displays on CDC COVID Data Tracker. Candidate indicators were compiled that included all available data systems and sources. Historical data and thresholds used in the COVID-19 Community Profile Reportexternal icon and the State Profile Reportexternal icon were reviewed. These two reports provide daily metrics based on established thresholds reflecting trend data at the state and county level. Finally, a review of historical trends in increases and declines in cases, hospital metrics, and other data was conducted. Each candidate indicator on the comprehensive list of indicators was assessed against the pre-established criteria, and those that did not fully meet all criteria were eliminated. For example, death rates provide important information for monitoring the impact of COVID-19 at local, state, and national levels. Nonetheless, they are a lagging indicator and occur in very small numbers when reported frequently, particularly in sparsely populated areas. For this reason, death rates were eliminated from the list of potential indicators but retained as a potential outcome to assess the performance of selected community metrics.

Syndromic surveillance, based on the percent of emergency department visits due to COVID-19 (from the National Syndromic Surveillance Program) serves as an early warning system and holds promise in providing community metrics. However, this data source only reflects 71% coverage of emergency departments in the United States, and thus was not included. Counties and states with access to these data may consider these metrics as an additional, optional indicator when determining COVID-19 community level. When this metric is available, jurisdictions could use thresholds of <4.0%, 4.0-5.9%, and 6.0% of emergency department visits with diagnosed COVID-19 (7-day average) for communities with <200 new cases per 100,000 population in the past 7 days, and <4.0% and 4.0% for communities with 200 new cases per 100,000 population in the past 7 days. If including emergency department visits as an additional metric, communities would use the highest of the three indicators (percent inpatient beds occupied by patients with COVID-19, new COVID-19 hospital admissions, or percent emergency department visits due to COVID-19).

Wastewater surveillance complements traditional surveillance and enables health departments to intervene earlier to focused support communities experiencing increasing concentrations of SARS-CoV-2 in wastewater. Robust, sustainable implementation of wastewater surveillance requires public health capacity for wastewater testing, analysis, and interpretation. Wastewater surveillance is a valuable tool that health departments have used to allocate testing resources and forecast resource needs at the community level. Wastewater surveillance represents innovative data for local jurisdictions to use to inform and interpret COVID-19 Community Levels. Because wastewater surveillance does not provide national coverage, it was not considered a critical indicator for COVID-19 Community Levels.

Candidate indicators were further refined based on additional considerations. Percent of ICU beds occupied with COVID-19 patients was eliminated due to limitations of data from rural hospitals, the fact that it is a lagging indicator of severe disease, and the potential for bias due to small numbers. New COVID-19 hospital admissions with confirmed COVID-19 per 100 staffed beds did not provide added value as the concepts were already represented in other metrics (new COVID-19 hospital admissions per 100,000 population and percent of inpatient beds occupied by COVID-19 patients). Test positivity has limited current utility due to the widespread use of point-of-care and at-home tests, and thus was eliminated. Metrics that reflect percent change (e.g., in new hospital admissions or new cases) were eliminated due to challenges with interpretability of this metric for lay audiences.

Following this thorough review, new hospital admissions with confirmed COVID-19 per 100,000 population in the past 7 days and percent of staffed inpatient beds occupied by patients with confirmed COVID-19 were retained as best candidate indicators. New cases per 100,000 population in the past 7 days was also retained to assess performance as a leading indicator.

Data sources

The recommended COVID-19 Community Levels leverage the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Unified Hospital Data Surveillance System (UHDSS), which monitors national and local trends in healthcare system stress, capacity, and community disease levels for approximately 6,000 hospitals in the United States. Data reported by hospitals to UHDSS represent aggregated counts, and include metrics capturing information specific to hospital capacity, occupancy, hospitalizations, and admissions. Most hospitals are required to report daily to UHDSS (with data backdated if reporting is delayed on weekends or holidays). For full guidance on hospital reporting and a list of data elements and definitions, including those used for the COVID-19 Community Level indicators, please visit: https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/covid-19-faqs-hospitals-hospital-laboratory-acute-care-facility-data-reporting.pdfpdf iconexternal icon.

Hospital-based metric calculations for COVID-19 Community Level indicators

New admissions of patients with confirmed COVID-19 per 100,000 population (7-day total) Numerator : the total number of patients admitted with laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 to an adult or pediatric inpatient bed each day during the previous 7 days for the specified geographic locality.

: the total number of patients admitted with laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 to an adult or pediatric inpatient bed each day during the previous 7 days for the specified geographic locality. Denominator : total U.S. Census population for the specified geographic locality (based on 2019 Census population estimates).

: total U.S. Census population for the specified geographic locality (based on 2019 Census population estimates). Missing data: if there are no data reported for a locality for the given 7-day window, the indicator reported is N/A. Percent of staffed inpatient beds occupied by patients with confirmed COVID-19 (7-day average) Numerator : the average number of adult and pediatric patients hospitalized with laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 each day during the previous 7 days for the specified geographic locality, calculated as the average of valid values within the 7-day period (e.g., if only three valid values, the average of those three is taken).

: the average number of adult and pediatric patients hospitalized with laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 each day during the previous 7 days for the specified geographic locality, calculated as the average of valid values within the 7-day period (e.g., if only three valid values, the average of those three is taken). Denominator : the average number of staffed inpatient beds during the previous 7 days for the specified geographic locality, calculated as the average of valid values within the 7-day period (e.g., if only three valid values, the average of those three is taken). Per UHDSS reporting guidance, staffed inpatient beds in a facility are defined as those that are currently set up, staffed, and able to be used for a patient within the reporting period. This includes all overflow, observation, and active surge/expansion beds used for inpatients, ICU beds, surge/hallway/overflow beds that are open for use for a patient, regardless of whether they are occupied or available.

: the average number of staffed inpatient beds during the previous 7 days for the specified geographic locality, calculated as the average of valid values within the 7-day period (e.g., if only three valid values, the average of those three is taken). Per UHDSS reporting guidance, staffed inpatient beds in a facility are defined as those that are currently set up, staffed, and able to be used for a patient within the reporting period. This includes all overflow, observation, and active surge/expansion beds used for inpatients, ICU beds, surge/hallway/overflow beds that are open for use for a patient, regardless of whether they are occupied or available. Missing data: if there are no data in the locality for the given 7-day window, the indicator reported is N/A.

These metrics are calculated for all hospital subtypes reporting to UHDSS (including Veterans Administration, Defense Health Agency, and Indian Health Service hospitals), excluding psychiatric, rehabilitation, and religious non-medical hospitals.

The data include new COVID-19 hospital admissions and inpatient beds occupied by patients with confirmed COVID-19. Universal screening for SARS-CoV-2 infection continues to be common practice in clinical care, and incidental infections are common in many healthcare settings. The UHDSS data do not distinguish incidental infections from COVID-19-related hospitalizations. Confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection could be a contributing factor to a health condition in varying ways that are not immediately clear. Further, infection can create burden on the healthcare system, regardless of whether it is the determining factor in hospitalization. All patients with SARS-CoV-2 infection in the hospital pose a risk to healthcare workers and other patients, even if the patient has mild illness or is asymptomatic and the infection is incidental. In addition, having SARS-CoV-2 infection requires isolation and other precautions that place added burden on the healthcare system. Furthermore, SARS-CoV-2 infection may complicate treatment and clinical course of other health conditions, further contributing to health system burden and severe illness.

The data on inpatient bed utilization include the total number of all staffed inpatient beds in the facility, that are currently set up, staffed and able to be used for a patient within the reporting period. This includes all overflow, observation, and active surge/expansion beds used for inpatients, as well as ICU beds. Because this metric is reported as a percent of staffed beds (including overflow), the denominator may vary over time based on staffing and how many overflow beds are set up. Inclusion of all surge/hallway/overflow beds that are open for use for a patient in the staffed inpatient beds in use by COVID-19 patients may result in an overestimate of remaining capacity.

Geographic unit of analysis for COVID-19 Community Level indicators

Analysis of these data at the local level is complicated by unequal distribution of hospitals within regions, as they are often clustered in large population centers and have service areas that overlap and extend across multiple communities. The unequal distribution of hospitals leads to a mismatch between places where people live and places where they receive care. This issue is particularly relevant in rural communities or those with relatively small populations, many of which have no hospitals or have hospitals with few inpatient beds. More complex hospital care (including critical care) may only be available at the very largest hospitals, often located in metropolitan areas with a very large catchment. Spatial aggregation of small geographic units (e.g., counties) to match the catchment area of local hospitals involving HSAs reflect hospital utilization patterns. HSAs reflect service areas of hospitals and helps reallocate patients to surrounding areas and align with county boundaries.17-19

An HSA is defined by CDCs National Center for Health Statistics as a geographic area containing at least one county which is self-contained with respect to the populations provision of routine hospital care. Every county in the United States is assigned to an HSA, and each HSA must contain at least one hospital. While county has previously been used as a geographic area to display these metrics since it is typically the smallest geographic unit for which national data are available, not all counties in the United States have hospitals. As a result, county-level analyses of hospital data can result in inaccurate local population estimates. (https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/series/sr_02/sr02_112.pdfpdf icon). Use of HSAs in the calculation of COVID-19 Community Level indicators allows for more accurate characterization of the relationship between health care utilization and health status at the local level.

Data sources for case incidence rates

Total cases are based on aggregate counts of COVID-19 cases reported by state and territorial jurisdictions to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). In accordance with the CSTE definition of COVID-19 cases and deaths, counts for many jurisdictions include both confirmed and probable COVID-19 cases. For aggregate state-level data, CDC calculates the number of new cases each day either by using the information provided by states and territorial jurisdictions or by calculating the difference in cumulative counts reported by the state from the day before.
On April 28, 2022, CDC confirmed the first detection of avian influenza A(H5) virus (H5 bird flu) in a person in the U.S. More information is available about this case in a press statement online. Updates to this webpage are forthcoming.

Human infections with avian influenza A viruses are uncommon but have occurred sporadically in many countries, usually after unprotected exposures (e.g. not using respiratory or eye protection) to infected poultry or virus-contaminated environments and have resulted in mild-to-severe illness with a wide range of symptoms and complications. A small number of human infections with avian influenza A viruses have been attributed to exposure to infected wild birds. For some human infections, the source of the virus infection was not determined. Human infections have occurred with different subtypes of low pathogenic and highly pathogenic avian influenza A viruses. The designation of low versus highly pathogenic avian influenza A virus refers to specific criteria, including mortality in experimentally infected poultry, and not to the severity of illness with human infections. Clinical illness associated with human infections with avian influenza A viruses does not necessarily correlate with virus pathogenicity in infected birds.

Low Pathogenic Avian Influenza A Virus Infections*

Subtypes of low pathogenic avian influenza (LPAI) A viruses that have been virologically confirmed to have infected people include A(H6), A(H7), A(H9), and A(H10) viruses.

A(H6) Virus Infections LPAI A(H6N1) virus infection was reported in one person with moderate lower respiratory tract disease in Taiwan in 2013. A(H7) Virus Infections LPAI A(H7N2) virus infection was reported in a small number of people with conjunctivitis (pink eye), mild upper respiratory tract symptoms, or lower respiratory tract disease in the U.K. and U.S. since 2002. Four infections have been identified in the U.S. since 2002, including 2 that resulted from cat-to-human transmission of an LPAI A(H7N2) virus circulating among cats in 2016.

LPAI A(H7N3) virus infection was reported in a small number of people with conjunctivitis or mild upper respiratory tract symptoms in the U.K. and Canada since 2004.

LPAI A(H7N4) virus infection was reported in one person with pneumonia in China in 2017.

LPAI A(H7N7) virus infection was reported in one person with conjunctivitis in the U.K. in 1996.

LPAI A(H7N9) virus infection was reported in more than 1500 people in China, particularly during epidemics from 2013-2017, including cases exported to Hong Kong, Macau, Malaysia, Taiwan, and Canada. Clinical syndromes have included mild upper respiratory tract symptoms, lower respiratory tract disease, encephalitis, severe pneumonia with respiratory failure, and multi-organ failure. The case fatality proportion in hospitalized patients is approximately 40%. A very small number of people were reported with asymptomatic infection after investigations in China during 2013. A(H9) Virus Infections LPAI A(H9N2) virus infections have been reported sporadically in more than 80 people since 1998 in China, and in Hong Kong, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Egypt, India, Oman, Pakistan, and Senegal. Most cases have been in children and have resulted in mild upper respiratory tract illness symptoms, but lower respiratory tract disease including severe pneumonia, and respiratory failure, including a small number of deaths, have been reported. A(H10) Virus Infections LPAI A(H10N3) virus infection was reported in one person with severe pneumonia and respiratory failure in China in 2021.

LPAI A(H10N7) virus infection was reported in a small number of people with conjunctivitis or mild upper respiratory tract symptoms in Egypt in 2004 and Australia in 2010.

LPAI A(H10N8) virus infection was reported in a small number of people with severe pneumonia with respiratory failure, including a few deaths, in China since 2013.

Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza A Virus Infections*

Subtypes of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) A viruses that have been virologically confirmed to have infected people include A(H5) and A(H7) viruses.

A(H5) Virus Infections HPAI A(H5N1) virus infections have been reported in more than 880 people with approximately 50% case fatality proportion since 1997, including 20 cases and 7 deaths in Hong Kong during 1997-2003, and more than 860 cases reported in 19 countries since November 2003. Mild upper respiratory tract symptoms, lower respiratory tract disease, severe pneumonia with respiratory failure, encephalitis, and multi-organ failure have been reported. One case of asymptomatic infection was reported in Vietnam in 2011 and one of case of asymptomatic infection was reported in the U.K. in 2021.

HPAI A(H5N6) virus infections have been reported in more than 60 people in China since 2014 and one case was reported in Laos in 2021. Mild upper respiratory tract symptoms, lower respiratory tract disease, severe pneumonia with respiratory failure, and multi-organ failure have been reported. Case fatality proportion in hospitalized patients is >40%.

HPAI A(H5N8) virus infections were reported in a small number of asymptomatic people in Russia in 2020. A(H7) Virus Infections HPAI A(H7N3) virus infections have been reported in a small number of people with conjunctivitis since 2004 in Canada and in other countries.

HPAI A(H7N7) virus infections have been reported in more than 90 people, since the first human infection was identified in the U.S. in 1959; although that infection was associated with hepatitis, most infections have been associated with conjunctivitis. However, mild upper respiratory tract symptoms, lower respiratory tract disease, severe pneumonia with respiratory failure, and multi-organ failure have been reported, including one death. Most reported cases were associated with exposures during widespread poultry outbreaks in the Netherlands in 2003.

HPAI A(H7N9) virus infections have been reported in China since 2016, including lower respiratory tract disease, severe pneumonia with respiratory failure, and multi-organ failure. The case fatality proportion in hospitalized patients is >40%.

Human-to-Human Transmission of Avian Influenza A Viruses

Human-to-human transmission of avian influenza A viruses is rare. Probable limited, non-sustained, human-to-human transmission has been reported in a small number of people without poultry exposures who had close unprotected exposure to a symptomatic index case of HPAI A(H5N1) virus infection, HPAI A(H7N7) virus infection, or LPAI A(H7N9) virus infection. Most reported cases of probable limited, non-sustained, human-to-human transmission have occurred among blood-related family members after unprotected, prolonged close household exposure to a symptomatic family member. However, a small number of reported cases occurred after unprotected, prolonged close exposure to a very sick family member in a hospital. A few cases of probable limited, non-sustained, human-to-human transmission in a hospital have been reported among unrelated patients after unprotected exposures.

*Sources: Adapted from Uyeki T and Peiris M. Infectious Disease Clinics of North America 2019; and World Health Organization reports. For the latest summary, case counts of human infections, and risk assessment, see the World Health Organization Influenza at the human-animal interface summary and assessment: https://www.who.int/teams/global-influenza-programme/avian-influenza/monthly-risk-assessment-summaryexternal icon
Turkcimento rings alarm over coal price rise due to Ukraine war

ICR Newsroom By 04 March 2022

Coal prices in Turkey have seen a more than 50 per cent hike in the past week due to the Russian invasion into Ukraine, according to Volkan Bozay, chair of Turkeys cement association, Turkcimento. He warned that the domestic cement industry faced an imminent crisis.



Cement companies imported 5Mt of coal last year and Russia was the main supplier. Each US$10 increase in coal prices pushes the cost for cement production up by around US$1.50, he said, adding that in the past week, the rise in coal prices amounted to more than US$100.

Unless alternative fuels were made available, the depleting coal inventories of the sector would lead to the halting of cement production activity, he said.

Published under
Microsoft founder and CEO Bill Gates issued a public apology to his ex-wife, Melinda French Gates, after the latter opened up about her life and her "painful" divorce with her husband.

In a statement, the 66-year-old billionaire entrepreneur said that he "will always be sorry" for the pain that he caused to Melinda and their family. The couple share three children: Jennifer, 25, Phoebe, 19, and son Rory, 22 years old.

Melinda Gates on Divorce

The tech CEO said that he admired Melinda and everything his ex-wife had done to improve the lives of women and girls worldwide. Gates added that he was also thankful for the work that the couple continued to do together through their foundation, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Gates' statement and apology come after his ex-wife said that no one moment, in particular, caused them to fall out. In an interview, Melinda said that there had just reached a point in time that there was enough that she realized the relationship she had with Gates was not healthy and that she "couldn't trust" what they had, as per People.

When the two of them got married in 1994, Melinda said she believed that they would be together "till death do us part." However, their marriage only lasted 27 years after announcing their split last May. Melinda said that she never expected to be divorced and that her split with Gates would be the talk of the world.

Read Also: Prince Harry Unlikely To Return to the UK as "He Can't Face His Family"; Duke, Wife Meghan Markle Can Work as Part-Time Royals

She said that she needed to take a different path and revealed that she understood the announcement of the divorce would surprise a lot of people. Melinda said she felt bad about disappointing others and noted how she did not expect how big of a controversy her marriage would end.

According to CBS News, after the announcement of the divorce, Gates admitted to having an affair during his marriage with his ex-wife. Melinda said she thought that she and her ex-husband would work through their issues, but it was something that they were unable to accomplish.

Reason for the Split

Furthermore, Melinda opened up about being upset with Gates during his past meetings with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. While there were many factors to the end of their marriage, Melinda said that Gates' meetings with Epstein were a big factor.

Melinda revealed that she once met with Epstein before the disgraced financier died in jail in August 2019 while waiting for a trial on federal sex-trafficking charges. She said she was curious to see who the man was and noted she regretted meeting Epstein when she stepped in the door.

"Meeting with Epstein was a mistake that I regret deeply. It was a substantial error in judgment," said Gates in a statement issued by his spokeswoman. The billionaire philanthropist said he continued to remain dedicated to his work at his and his ex-wife's foundation.

A Microsoft employee, who is believed to be the woman Gates had an affair with, sent a letter in 2019 revealing her relationship with the entrepreneur. The letter prompted some board members to investigate the issue, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Related Article: Melinda Gates Breaks Her Silence About Divorce with Bill Gates; Reveals Microsoft Co-Founder's Affair After Separation

@ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Danville City leaders get ready to breathe new life into the old mill village; Danville leaders ready to weigh proposal to provide real estate tax help to elderly and disabled; Danville native taking his place in Virginia Sports Hall of Fame.
Police noticed a white male had been standing next to a closed business, Mobile, 2720 Rossville Blvd., for several hours. Officers got out with the man and identified him and asked him what he was doing. He said he had recently become homeless and was resting his feet and trying to stay out of the wind. Officers checked his information and found no outstanding warrants. Officers offered to take him to the Waffle House, 2024 East 23rd St., so he could rest and get some coffee. He agreed, and officers dropped him off at the Waffle House.

* * *

An employee of Signal Centers, LLC, 109 N. Germantown Road, told police that sometime overnight, someone came onto the back lot and cut the catalytic converters off of work vans and stole them. He said he is searching the security videos to see if by chance this was caught on tape. Communications created a Watch List for this location.

* * *

An employee at CubeSmart Self Storage, 5952 Brainerd Road, told police her company box truck was stolen the night before. She said the vehicle was an old U-Haul box truck around 20 feet, with USDOT2474644 and G&P Distributors on the driver door. She said the truck was parked in the

CubeSmart fenced-in parking lot and was locked, with no keys in the vehicle. Police spoke with the staff, who said they had video of the truck being taken around 11-11:30 p.m. CubeSmart said a subpoena would be needed to get the video footage from the property, but that they would collect all video related to the theft. The box truck has been entered into NCIC.

* * *

Police responded to a call of a suspicious vehicle parked in the yard of a residence on Wisdom Street. A woman at the residence told police she woke up and found the vehicle in her side yard. Police ran it through dispatch (white Ford Expedition) and it came up not stolen. The vehicle has an illegitimate temporary tag that was "issued" 10-22-2022. Police have seen multiple vehicles with the same issue date. Because the vehicle was parked on private property, police assisted the woman in finding a tow company to take the car. Police and the woman were able to contact Doug Yates Towing and they agreed to take the vehicle off her property.

* * *

A woman on Bridgeview Drive told police that sometime overnight someone entered their unlocked 2021 Kia Sportage and stole a pair of prescription sunglasses. She said that they leave the vehicle unlocked because of the number of vehicle break-ins in the area. She also requested a watch for her street. Communications created a Watch List for the address.
Chattanooga State Community College announced they have been selected as an education partner for Amazons Career Choice program providing Amazons hourly employees access to more than 100 degree and certificate programs preparing students for associate and associate of applied science degrees, technical and institutional certificates, transfer to four-year institutions, and immediate entrance into the job market.



"Chattanooga State is honored to expand our partnership with Amazon to provide even more students with access to a college degree, said Dr. Rebecca Ashford, president of Chattanooga State Community College. Eligible Amazon employees may choose from a robust offering of online degree programs, in-person or hybrid options and many classes offered in a seven-week format, as students build a schedule around their work. We commend Amazon for investing in their employees to build a better future."



"Amazons Career Choice program is an education benefit that empowers employees to learn new skills for career success at Amazon or elsewhere," officials said. "The program meets individual learners where they are on their education journey through a variety of education and upskilling opportunities, including full college tuition, industry certifications designed to lead to in-demand jobs and foundational skills such as English language proficiency, high school diplomas and GEDs. In the U.S., the company is investing $1.2 billion to upskill more than 300,000 employees by 2025 to help move them into higher-paying, in-demand jobs.



"Amazons Career Choice program has a rigorous selection process for third-party partner educators, choosing partners that are focused on helping employees through their education programs, assisting them with job placements and overall offering education that leads to career success".



Were looking forward to Chattanooga State Community College coming on board as an education partner for Career Choice, adding to the hundreds of best-in-class offerings available to our employees, said Tammy Thieman, global program lead of Amazons Career Choice program. Were committed to empowering our employees by providing them access to the education and training they need to grow their careers, whether thats with us or elsewhere. We have intentionally cultivated a partner network of third-party educators and employers committed to providing excellent education, job placement resources and continuous improvements to the experience. Today, over 50,000 Amazon employees around the world have already participated in Career Choice and weve seen first-hand how it can transform their lives.
To millions of watchers who used to tune into the Today show on NBC in the 1990s and early 2000s, co-host Katie Couric had such a naturally relatable manner while also doing the serious news interviews that viewers almost felt like they knew her.

As it turns out, a few Chattanoogans her age did and still do.

Little publicized over the years, several graduates of Baylor, McCallie and Girls Preparatory School went to the University of Virginia with her in the mid-to-late 1970s and were good friends with her through the Greek life program and other activities.

And their views of her are not that much different from those of America, who found her outgoing and usually smiling manner appealing overall.

She was a girl who was attractive, bubbly, fun and gregarious and was a good egg, recalled Matt Lewis, chief advancement officer for Baylor School and a student at Virginia at the time.

She was lots of fun to be around and had tons of friends.

The memories of Ms. Couric, who went on to be the first woman solo anchor of CBS Evening News and later had her own talk show, have come to light due to her recent memoir, Going There.

In the book, she recounts in brutal honesty her life in TV journalism and broadcasting, as well as her early life. Although she only scantly mentions her time attending U.Va., there is one line in the book that hints of her possible friendship with some Chattanoogans.

On page 244 of the hardback edition, she writes in a reflective manner of her new experience in college, saying, U.Va. introduced me to a different world with its own language, customs and dress codeMany of the students radiated privilege and hailed from places like Richmond, Chattanooga, Atlanta, and well-heeled Connecticut suburbs.

For years the University of Virginia has attracted students from the three local independent schools as well as possibly other area institutions due to its good academic reputation and the fact that founders of both Baylor and McCallie attended it.

Ms. Couric had enrolled at Virginia in 1975 after attending public school in Northern Virginia. According to 1974 GPS graduate and recent board of trustees member Mary Moncure Watson, Ms. Couric joined the Delta Delta Delta sorority in which Ms. Watson was also a member, but not until later in her college career.

I am a year older than she, so we didnt have a huge overlap, she recalled, adding that she was aware of the book and the fact Ms. Couric was in Ms. Watsons current hometown of Atlanta doing a recent book signing, although she was unable to attend.

One GPS graduate who was even closer to her in college and has kept up with her some over the years is Mitsy Clark Costello from the class of 1975. Contacted, she kindly offered some praising memories.

She was an unassuming, fun person -- smart and involved in U.Va, she said, also recalling that they went to Florida together on a senior spring break trip and also attended many sorority functions. She had an outgoing personality and knew lots of people.

Ms. Costello has also kept up with Ms. Couric some over the years, including when she and her daughter visited New York City not long after Ms. Courics husband, Jay, died in 1998 from colon cancer.

We went to the Today show and Katie took us on a tour of the studio and of her office, which was very sweet, she said.

Ms. Costello, who lives in Chattanooga, also attended her recent book tour stop in Nashville and was able to say hello. She seems really happy and the same Katie I knew in college, Ms. Costello said of the noted woman who happily remarried in recent years and focuses on documentary filmmaking at present.

Local physician Dr. Jack McCallie also became acquainted with her after enrolling at Virginia following his graduation from McCallie School in 1975.

We were friends then, and I have seen her off and on over the years at our five-year reunions, he said.

Although he said he has not kept up with Ms. Couric or her broadcasting work in more recent years and has not read her book, he did say that her manner on the air over the years is reflective of the college student he once knew well.

I would say that her personality on air is genuine...a very funny, nice and intelligent woman, he said.

Mr. Lewis said that many of the Chattanooga young men who went to Virginia at that time were in Zeta Psi fraternity, which is commonly known as Zete, and they became acquainted with Ms. Couric through the various Greek social activities.

One of Mr. Lewis fraternity brothers at the time, Scott Brittain, dated Katie, Mr. Lewis recalled. He was from Nashville and had attended Montgomery Bell Academy. He unfortunately died in 2018, Mr. Lewis said.

Another Virginia student at the time and whom Ms. Couric references in the book is Paul Hicks, whose daughter, Hope Hicks, worked in communications and as a close adviser to former President Donald Trump while he was in office.

As a special feature while she was still at the Today show before leaving in 2006 to begin working for CBS, Ms. Couric went back and visited her old sorority and even sang sorority songs with the students at the time.

Mr. Lewis said he ran into Ms. Couric years after graduation. He said he went up to visit New York and was among the crowd that gathered out on the Rockefeller Center plaza to try and get on TV when the hosts like Ms. Couric came out for brief segments. He said he had parked himself near the door where she and the others went in and out, and he was able to get her attention.

I had a chance to say hello, he recalled. She acted like she remembered me.

Readers of her book will likely remember it, too. Told in an openly honest and candid style both about herself and those she worked with, she recounts her career when she became interested in journalism and her slow rise to being a nationally known newsperson through stops at Miami and at then-fledgling CNN.

Whether she is talking about her dating relationships, her perspectives of other people with shortcomings, or her own stumbles and successes, she is brutally open. She said she was inspired by the advice of her current husband, John Molner, with whom she admittedly found that sometimes elusive compatibility. She said he told her, If youre not going to be honest, dont write a book.

Her honesty includes everything from discussing her battles overcoming eating disorder as a young reporter, her intimacy with her first husband before their marriage, and her and one of her daughters later questioning of her first husbands interest in Confederate Civil War re-enactments.

She also discusses some crazy dating relationships after her first husband died and names about every person whom she either did not like or she felt harassed her in some way in her work. She also goes into detail about her once-good relationship with former fellow host Matt Lauer and her attempts to connect with him after his firing for sexual harassment before their friendship fizzled.

Ms. Couric also mentions a little-known story regarding her and her first husbands struggles with their first nanny, who, she said, became too attached to the family and was let go. The woman also later took some stories to the tabloids. It is about the only place in the book where Ms. Couric does not give the real name of the person.

And she gives a little insight into the crazy world of competing against rivals like Diane Sawyer and trying to come up with good interviews. She also mentions the mistakes she made, such as not covering a newsworthy topic or two when interviewing the now-late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg due in part to a personal relationship with her.

To me the book did not seem like a gossipy tell-all, but more an honest account at least slightly in the spirit of the candid and Pulitzer Prize-winning autobiography of Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham.

I am far from the type of person who reads a book a week, or even every month or two, but perhaps due to my connection to the world of journalism and communications and as a longtime watcher of the Today show, I could not put it down. My only critique is that I did perhaps find one or two dates that did not seem right, such as when former colleague Ann Curry unceremoniously left her Today show host position in 2012.

But overall, the book is excellent. This writing style that to me took a little courage is simply the perspective of a woman who naturally communicated her thoughts and views in an open way, a manner that apparently existed even back at the University of Virginia.

Mr. Lewis said he did not realize or predict Ms. Couric was going to be a well-known broadcaster, but he was aware of her naturally endearing manner that would appeal to nationwide TV viewers decades later.

All I can do is look at her and say shes a cute gal and she was a lot of fun, he said.

* * *

Jcshearer2@comcast.net
Kenny Morgan, a Soddy Daisy High School graduate who had planned to run for the Third Congressional District seat as a Republican, said he is being forced out of the race by tighter Republican rules on who is "a bona fide Republican."

To be considered on the up and up, candidates must be active in the local or state GOP, be vouched for by an elected Republican or must have voted in three of the last four statewide Republican primaries (instead of the previous two of the last four).

Mr. Morgan said, "In June 2021 the Kenny Morgan for Congress Committee filed with the Federal Election Committee for Tennessee Thgird District with the intent to challenge incumbent Chuck Fleischman for the seat. In December, supportive members of the Hamilton County Republican Party suggested that the Tennessee GOP would challenge my eligibility as a 'bona fide Republican' based on bylaws that were passed to prevent crossover candidates from appearing on the Republican ballot.

"My 30-year Republican voting history was not enough to overcome the political push to negate me from the Republican primary ballot as suggested by supportive members. Tennessee GOPs bylaws are modifiable for the politically connected but become fixed for political newcomers or first-time candidates. This current situation allows a pocket-size group from within the Republican establishment to determine who is or who is not considered a 'bona fide' Republican. Thus, a handful of individuals, or even one person (Scott Golden, Tennessee Republican Party chairman) can select candidates for the primary ticket and/or prevent the incumbent from having challengers."

Mr. Morgan said, I understand language within the bylaws was implemented to prevent non-conservatives from running as Republicans. But it is now being used to insulate career politicians from authentic competition  with a select few determining our primary candidates. Under the present governance, Senator Bill Frist would never have become one of our honored senators.

He said the Kenny Morgan for Congress campaign "reached out to Scott Golden on numerous occasions for clarity and consideration but received no response. National and local Republican leaders who oppose the current language used within the bylaws spoke to me off the record. The incumbents political friendships and influences over the process is too much for my grassroots campaign to overcome."

He said, "I am grateful for support our Republican grassroots campaign received. We considered a campaign as an independent candidate but ultimately felt we could not bridge the informational and financial gap needed for a chance to win in the November election.

Mr. Morgan said, "Career minded, and divisive politicians are putting our nation at risk and are undermining the value of community so the Kenny Morgan for Congress Committee will suspend the 2022 campaign, but will not rule out a future campaign for the congressional seat.

This decision "falls on the eve of a political fundraiser for incumbent Chuck Fleishman where a $2,900 donation buys a 30-minute private reception with Chuck and adds to his already $2.5-million campaign fund. It is troubling when requests for townhall meetings by constituents have been ignored but a generous donation will get you a face-to-face conversation.

When he announced for the race, Mr. Morgan said, For seven generations my family has called Tennessee home. The people of this region shaped my life  community leaders, teachers and my family instilled in me the importance of hard work and compassion. When these qualities unite great things happen.

He said he has more than 35 years of combined experience in the armed services, healthcare, education, chaplainship and as a non-profit leader. He attended Hamilton County Public Schools and graduated from Soddy Daisy High. He served in the U.S. Army Health Services Command at Madigan Army Medical Center. He worked at Tennessee Donors Services, Erlanger Medical Center, Hamilton Health Care System and the Family Resource Agency.

Mr. Morgan and his wife, Dr. Jennifer Davis, a local pediatrician, "have dedicated their lives to servant leadership. "They believe strongly in investing in our future  our children and their health. Kenny has volunteered or served in various non-profit organizations throughout the region. He has served on Judd Cancer Center Patient Advisory Board, led T.C. Thompson Childrens Hospital (now Erlanger Childrens Hospital) Family Advisory Council, and mentored youth from Bethel Bible Village. Kennys son, Kenny Morgan Jr. is an entrepreneur and local small business owner.

"The concerns that are important to Tennesseans are important to Kenny Morgan. These include affordable healthcare, accelerating student achievement, small business opportunity, safe communities, national security and protecting our constitution.

"Kenny is concerned that career minded, and divisive politicians have put our nation at risk and undermined the value of community. He is also troubled by the increasing influence of big donors from outside our district. We deserve better. It is time for someone to represent all of us, not just the economic elite.

"Kenny believes in people focused leadership. He will represent local concerns at the national level."

Mr. Morgan said, The people of this region inspire me; have taught me to listen well and to follow through. It would be an honor to give back to my district and represent our concerns within the peoples house.
Two true-crime worlds collided on Netflix when Billy McFarland (portrayed by Ben Rappaport) from Fyre Festival appeared with Anna Delvey (Julia Garner) in Inventing Anna. That was no coincidence; the pair did cross paths in 2013. However, even more shocking is that the same summer that Fyre Festival took place, lawsuits began to pile up against Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes.

The media went wild in 2017 when the news broke that McFarland, Delvey, and Holmes were all scammers in disguise. Now, five years later, viewers get to watch how the summer of scams all played out in The Dropout on Hulu and Inventing Anna on Netflix. Fyre Fraud and Fyre: The Greatest Party that Never Happened dropped to Hulu and Netflix respectively in 2019, but are worth a rewatch after finding out all three scams came to a head at the same time.

Inventing Anna: Ben Rappaport as Billy MacFarland and Julia Garner as Anna Delvey | Nicole Rivelli/Netflix

Inventing Anna: Anna Delvey scammed Billy McFarland before his Fyre Festival

The Netflix drama Inventing Anna opens with a disclaimer, This whole story is completely true, except for all the parts that are totally made up. However, the part about the two convicted scammers hanging out together for months is not made up.

In 2013, Anna Sorokin arrived in New York City and became Anna Delvey. She posed as a fake German heiress worth $60 million. However, she let friends foot the bill for her lavish lifestyle and crashed upscale hotels without paying. Many Inventing Anna characters portray real-life people from Delveys life.

RELATED: Inventing Anna Is Only the Beginning; Where Anna Sorokin Is Today Soon Becomes a New Docuseries

Before Billy McFarland defrauded investors and let his $1,000-ticket holders stay in FEMA tents at his luxury music festival, he headed the credit-card company Magnises. According to Page Six, Delvey stayed in McFarlands SoHo headquarters of Magnises for four months in 2013, rent-free. She scammed the Fyre Festival con artist before his music extravaganza failed miserably.

The Dropout depicts Elizabeth Holmes and the rise and fall of Theranos

In Hulus The Dropout, Elizabeth Holmes surpasses Anna Delveys fraud in Inventing Anna by billions. Amanda Seyfried portrays Holmes as the biotechnology entrepreneur and CEO of Theranos. The health technology companys claim to fame was that it could use tiny volumes of blood (like that from a finger prick) for blood testing. However, their Edison device gave inaccurate results, and Holmes moved forward anyway. Her connections led to the support of influential people, much like Anna Delvey in Inventing Anna. Those relationships helped convince others of Holmes credibility, leading to more investors for Theranos.

RELATED: Who Is Elizabeth Holmes?

Holmes continued building her company despite the lack of a working blood testing device. It sounds a little bit like the Anna Delvey Foundation (ADF), but Holmes secured the investments she needed, while Sorokin never did.

The events of Inventing Anna, Fyre, and The Dropout collided in 2017

The summer of 2017 began with the arrest of Billy McFarland for defrauding investors of approximately $27 million. Later that year, the New York Police Department conducted a sting operation to arrest Anna Sorokin at a luxury rehab center in Los Angeles, California. By May of 2017, Elizabeth Holmes completed a transaction, according to Business Wire, that gave up her equity in the company to settle lawsuits. She also gave a lengthy deposition in August of 2017, featured prominently in The Dropout, revealing the depths of her deception. Although authorities did not arrest Holmes until 2018, the media interest and investigation intensified in 2017.

All three fraudsters had visions of grandeur that fell short. Fyre Fest, the Anna Delvey Foundation (ADF), and dreams of testing blood with only one tiny drop never came to fruition. The similarities between the three individuals are shocking when watched consecutively. They were all very young when they began their quests for a startup company, and all three could deliver on what they promised. Did they believe in their vision but get in over their heads? Or were McFarland, Delvey, and Holmes all frauds from the beginning? Decide for yourself.

The first three episodes of The Dropout are available for streaming on Hulu on March 3, 2022. The remaining episodes drop weekly on Thursdays. Inventing Anna and Fyre are currently available for streaming on Netflix. Fyre Fraud is available on Hulu.

RELATED: The Dropout: Amanda Seyfried is A Little Worried About Her Elizabeth Holmes Voice
The Jersey Shore: Family Vacation roommates Florida vacation continues in Happy Birthday, Vinny! Deena Corteses prank from Deenas Revenge comes to a head as the roomies realize whats going on. Plus, Nicole Snooki Polizzi arrives just in time for a floating tiki bar and Vinny Guadagninos birthday Mike The Situation Sorrentinos freedom party.

Deena Cortese | MTV

Deena Corteses murder mystery dinner sparks more tension with Lauren Sorrentino

Deenas Revenge ended with the roommates in a panic. Deena, her husband Chris Buckner, and production were in on the prank. But the rest of the Jersey Shore: Family Vacation cast thought theyd witnessed a murder.

Deena reveals her prank is actually a murder mystery game for the roommates to play in Happy Birthday, Vinny! but some of the cast arent happy, including Lauren Sorrentino. Previously, Lauren and Deena exchanged words about going back to their rooms to be with their respective babies. That tension carried over to the murder mystery dinner.

"We've all been drunk before." Ma'am this is AN INTERROGATION.



The prank war champion is crowned tomorrow on a new #jsfamilyvacation at 8/7c on MTV. pic.twitter.com/w7Hoeq61Qq  Jersey Shore (@JerseyShore) March 2, 2022

Im a terrible person, Deena says in the episode. Someone should put me over a fire.

You would be really upset [if we did this to you], Lauren tells Deena. She disagrees but eventually the whole group moves on from the tension when The Situation solves the murder. It takes a con to know a con, he quips.

Mike The Situation Sorrentino is planning another celebration in Happy Birthday, Vinny!

Mikes jail time and probation are a running joke in the MTV series. But during their trip to the Florida Keys in November 2021, Mike is officially off paper. Naturally, he wants to mark the occasion with a party.

I just think he wants cake, Vinny tells cameras. Instead of celebrating Vinnys birthday, which he says is next week in the episode, Mike moves forward with plans for his freedom celebration.

This inspires Vinny to make a list of Jersey Shore castmembers who are more likely to get a party before he does, including Sammi Sweetheart Giancola and Danny Merk from the Shore Store. He also feels Mikes friend The Unit and Kirk Medas from Floribama Shore are more likely to get a party thrown for them before he does.

Vinny Guadagnino practices his stand-up comedy

In an interview with the Imagine It Done podcast, Vinny talks about his experience living in New York City and working on his stand-up comedy. Stand-up  is like the most welcoming, supportive [community], he said. Its the hardest thing you could ever do  go on stage and make a room full of people laugh.

I do stand up comedy https://t.co/H0NnyNHVzh  Vinny Guadagnino (@VINNYGUADAGNINO) March 27, 2020

After talking about Saturday Night Lives annual auditions in Happy Birthday, Vinny!, the Jersey Shore cast coaxes Vinny into doing a few impressions. He messes up on Robert DeNiro, but has more success impersonating his roommates.

Happy Birthday, Vinny! brings Nicole Snooki Polizzi to the Florida Keys

Snooki and her daughter Giovanna Sissy LaValle finally arrive at the Isla Bella Resort in Happy Birthday, Vinny. Nicoles first order of business is figuring out where here shipment of wine is.

While waiting for Enrique to deliver her wine, Nicole takes a Tiki booze cruise with her roommates and learns more about Angelina and Chris Larangeira breaking their dry spell.

I wanna know the full sex story, Nicole says. Finally, after two years, he f***ing initiated, Angelina replies. I think we should give him a medal.

Tune in next week to see The BDS Independence Day party come to fruition. Watch new episodes of Jersey Shore: Family Vacation every Thursday at 8 p.m. ET on MTV.

RELATED: Jersey Shore: Mike The Situation Sorrentino Doesnt Have Any Regrets From the Show, Just One Huge Miscalculation
Love Is Blind Season 2 star Shaina Hurley answers some burning questions about her relationship with Kyle Abrams. She insists that she didnt ghost him during the week in Mexico.

Kyle Abrams and Shaina Hurley Love Is Blind | Netflix

Shaina leaves Kyle in Mexico

During Love Is Blind Season 2, episode 3, Shaina and Kyle are engaged and whisked away to Mexico. On their first night, they ate together, but Shaina made it clear that they would spend the night in separate rooms.

Shaina Hurley and Kyle Abrams, Love Is Blind Season 2 | Netflix

She said, I just feel like we are both passionate about what we believe in and not gonna change. She felt like the best thing to do was to leave Mexico a single woman. Shaina packed her bags and left for Chicago, leaving Kyle at the resort.

Shaina denies ghosting Kyle

During the March 2 episode of The Bachelor alum Nick Vialls podcast, The Viall Files, Shaina addresses what happened during the Mexico trip. She said, Theres so much that was not caught on film, behind the scenes. And so because there are so many hours of filming, they werent able to get all of it.

Nick asked Shaina about her ghosting Kyle during the week in Mexico. She denied ever ghosting him. She said, No, no, I would not just leave him in Mexico. Unfortunately, why I left wasnt on film. So they werent able to show that.

Shaina revealed that she had a conversation with Kyle before leaving the resort. She said, Unfortunately, it wasnt on film. So it looked like I ghosted Kyle. I didnt ghost him.

She says, I was just honest. I just said, Im so sorry, this isnt going to work for me. I cant do this. So thats why I left.

Shaina explained, Again, it shows I broke up with him for a reason, and I explained that to him in Mexico, and I wanted to go home. I was kind of over it at that point. I just needed to see my family again. We werent able to see them for about three weeks, so I had no outside influence.

The real reason why her relationship didnt work out with Kyle

As Love Is Blind fans know, the main reason that Shaina left Kyle was because of their differing religious views. She revealed that it was difficult to be with someone who mocked her faith. She felt like his jabs at her faith boiled down to a lack of respect.

Shaina revealed that the problems with Kyle ran deeper than just religious differences. She said, It wasnt just the faith thing. It was definitely the foundation of it not being able to work. But there was a lot. Unfortunately, that was not shown of Kyle that had happened.

Though she didnt want to reveal what those red flags were for her. She said, Im going to keep it private. Shaina said, It doesnt matter. Its moot at this point.

She revealed, Theres just other character flaws that I saw that I did not want in my husband.

While the Love Is Blind experiment didnt land Shaina with a husband, she is in a serious relationship with someone else. Love Is Blind reunion episode drops March 4 on Netflix.

RELATED: Love Is Blind: Deepti Defends Co-Star Danielle After Being Mocked for Mental Health Issues
After watching The Dropout on Hulu, viewers want to know where Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes (portrayed by Amanda Seyfried) is today and if shes still rich. A jury convicted the 37-year-old biotech engineer of four counts of criminal fraud in January 2022. However, a few days later, the media spotted her laughing and smiling with her husband, William Billy Evans, their young baby, and both of their mothers. At the time, she was still residing in the wealthy Green Gables Estate in Silicon Valley.

The Dropout: Amanda Seyfried as Elizabeth Holmes | Michael Desmond/Hulu

The Dropout: Where is Elizabeth Holmes today in real life?

Although the first three episodes of The Dropout depict a young, ambitious biotech entrepreneur, things do not go well for Elizabeth Holmes. Her Edison device never accurately produced blood test results with a finger prick in real life. However, in her deep baritone voice, Holmes continued to lie to investors and Walgreens that the technology worked. The following episodes of The Dropout will explore the fall of Holmes and the dissolution of Theranos in 2018.

When viewers fast-forward to Elizabeth Holmes life, today, in 2022, it doesnt look like much has changed. Photos captured by Daily Mail on Jan. 7 show that Holmes still lives a lavish lifestyle like Richard Sackler from Purdue Pharma. She took a leisurely walk near the 74-acre $135 million Green Gables Estate where she and husband, Billy Evans, reside with their nine-month-old baby, William. In addition to her husband and son, Holmes walked with her mother, Noel Holmes, Anne Evans, and another friend.

Is Elizabeth Holmes still wealthy?

Although The Dropout depicted Elizabeth Holmes as once having a $4.5 billion net worth, that money is long gone. According to Celebrity Net Worth, Holmes current net worth is $0 in 2022. However, shes residing at one of Americas most expensive estates in Silicon Valley with her husband and son.

Luckily, Holmes new husband, Evans, is an heir to the Evans Hotel Group, which owns luxury hotels in San Diego, California. According to the hotel website, Evans grandparents founded the company in 1953. It looks like Holmes married into wealth this time instead of defrauding investors.

For everyone asking about Holmes's social media. It's private. But here are a few screenshots of her and her fiance we found online. (I personally find it crazy that she's being charged with 11 felony counts, thousands of people's lives were harmed, and she's as happy as can be.) pic.twitter.com/6nYfjltLt4  Nick Bilton (@nickbilton) February 21, 2019

RELATED: The Inventor: Where Is Elizabeth Holmes of Theranos Now?

The Dropout: Will Elizabeth Holmes go to jail in real life?

According to the Wall Street Journal, Holmes is awaiting sentencing for her Jan. 3 conviction. She is currently out on bail for approximately another six months. A September 2022 sentencing hearing is expected to determine how many years of prison she faces. Each of the four counts carries a maximum sentence of 20 years; however, the Theranos founder likely wont get anywhere near that. An analysis of similar cases guesses Holmes might get 16 years of prison time.

The sentencing is not expected until after the other Theranos trial of Ramesh, Sunny Balwani. Holmes former longtime boyfriend, Balwani, is also extensively portrayed in The Dropout by Naveen Andrews.

Hulus The Dropout premiered on March 2, 2022, with three episodes and then every Thursday until April 7.

RELATED: Inventing Anna: 5 Shows Like It to Watch for More True Crime and Con Artists
Chemists at the University of Jena, Germany have set a new record, having discovered a fluorescent aluminium complex with the highest quantum yield known to date. For virtually every photon absorbed by the substance, a photon is emitted. This could be of benefit in applications such as LED technology.

This discovery was literally a case of serendipity, explains Robert Kretschmer, Junior Professor for Inorganic Chemistry of Catalysis at Friedrich Schiller University Jena.

We actually wanted to use the substance for catalysis. But my team quickly noticed that the substance features an extremely strong fluorescence. So, we looked into it and demonstrated this unique property.

If light is absorbed, light is emitted

In fluorescence, a substance emits light when another light hits it and is absorbed. This phenomenon is used, for example, in fluorescent tubes, where the white coating is made to glow by means of invisible UV radiation. But in light-emitting diodes (LEDs), too, the light emitted is the result of fluorescence. However, when energy is transferred, a portion of it is lost and also in fluorescence.

The record so far for aluminium complexes is around 70 per cent, says Kretschmer. This means that with this quantum yield, for every 10 light particles absorbed, seven new ones are emitted by the substance. In our complex, however, almost every light particle is converted into a new one.

Low-cost aluminium as chemical base

A further advantage is that this record-breaking complex is based on aluminium  a relatively low-cost raw material. In our substance, two aluminium ions are bound to an organic molecule called ligand, explains Kretschmer. Its production is quite simple and can be done in larger quantities in the laboratory, that is to say in grams. We were also able to have the substance spun into a fabric, which then still fluoresces with an impressive 90 per cent quantum yield.

Kretschmer and his team now want to study the complex in more detail and gain a better understanding of the record-breaking fluorescence.

Well replace the aluminium ions with other metals and also vary the organic ligands, says Kretschmer. Another goal is to make the complex more stable. For example, it cannot be used in water so far, but that would be important for biological applications. We already have ideas on how we can achieve that.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has successfully dismantled the last of the country's free press in an attempt to control what his people see in relation to the Russia-Ukraine war that has been raging for more than a week.

The pillars of the country's independent broadcast media collapsed on Thursday under pressure from the state. The freewheeling radio station founded by Soviet dissidents in 1990, Echo of Moscow, symbolized Russia's new freedom and was "liquidated" by its board.

Putin's Battle Against the Free Press

Furthermore, the youthful independent television station, TV Rain, which called itself "the optimistic channel," said that it was suspending operations indefinitely. Journalist Dmitri Muratov, who shared the Nobel Peace Prize last year, said that his newspaper, Novaya Gazeta, which had previously survived after six of its journalists were murdered, is on the verge of closing down as well.

Muratov argued that Russian authorities were taking down anything that was not propaganda. The situation is part of plans by the Russian Parliament to take up legislation on Friday that would make news that they consider "fakes" about Moscow's war in Ukraine punishable by yearslong prison sentences, as per the New York Times.

The move comes as Russian residents struggle to understand what is really happening in Ukraine and what their leaders are trying to accomplish. Tasya, a 19-year-old who asked not to be named by her last name, stood with her friends on a cold morning in the Russian city of St. Petersburg.

Read Also: Russia-Ukraine War: New Satellite Images Show Heartbreaking Damages to Ukraine

The teenagers stood with other protesters and chanted against Moscow's use of violent force against Ukraine. She said that it was safer to stand together with others who would help you look over your shoulder in case you needed to run. However, she said that after a while, her friends left the protest to go home or warm up someplace else, leaving her all alone in the street.

According to CNN, citing the Feb. 24 protest in St. Petersburg, Tasya said that a group of police officers later walked past her with one suddenly looking at her, approached, and detained her. Demonstrations continue across several regions in Russia as young citizens, middle-aged residents, and retired citizens decry Putin's actions.

Surrender of Soldiers

On top of resistance from Ukrainians and his own civilians, Putin is facing off against some members of his military. Some soldiers have begun sabotaging their own vehicles and surrendering in droves, the Pentagon said on Tuesday.

Officials said that not all of the military troops were fully trained and prepared for the war and some were not even aware that they were being sent into a combat operation, said one senior Defense Department official.

British intelligence firm, Shadowbreak, intercepted radio clips that captured the sounds of Russian troops crying in combat, refusing to obey orders, and complaining of supply shortages. Some soldiers even claimed that they had no idea what to expect in their invasion of Ukraine.

A separate recording seems to show a soldier refusing to fire artillery on an area until all Ukrainian civilians had left the site. The situation helped to slow the advances of Russian forces, including the infamous 40-mile long convoy of tanks and armored vehicles near the Ukrainian capital, the New York Post reported.



Related Article: At Least 22 Belarusian Officials Face International Sanctions For Involvement in Russia-Ukraine War

@ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
A dose of a Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine is prepared at Lurie Children's hospital, Nov. 5, 2021, in Chicago. Some people getting Pfizer or Moderna COVID-19 vaccines should consider waiting up to eight weeks between the first and second doses, instead of the three or four weeks previously recommended, U.S. health officials said, Tuesday, Feb. 22, 2022.
Benjamin Frey, American Studies professor at the University of North Carolina, is seen on campus in Chapel Hill, N.C., Thursday, Feb. 24, 2022. Frey, a member of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, led the language research behind a new smartphone interface by Lenovo-owned Motorola. The Cherokee language interface on its newest line of phones, uses the syllable-based written characters first created by the Cherokee Nation's Sequoyah in the early 1800s
Chickasha, OK (73018)

Today

Partly to mostly cloudy skies with scattered thunderstorms in the morning. High 67F. Winds NNW at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 40%..

Tonight

Clear skies. Low near 45F. Winds NW at 10 to 15 mph.
Brian Jose, part of the Radstock Network of churches on mission, answers questions on Ukraine and discusses some of the specific ways the Church can respond and help right now.

Brian, you have a long history with Ukrainian churches. Can you share how youve been involved there  and how youre connected now?

I cut my teeth in global missions during the days of the USSR as a Bible smuggler. In 1983, my wife, Audrey, and I delivered a compact printing press to the unregistered Baptists in Ukraine, who used it to produce underground Bibles. After communism, Radstock Ministries helped churches launch drug rehabilitation centers, and partnered with a Baptist ministry to street children. In the 2000s a Presbyterian church in Kyiv became a primary partner in our network and we helped develop church partnerships to augment their English evangelistic camps and give training in missions, theology and church leadership. The most fun was hosting groups of 6 to 8 in Albania for a few weeks at a time for our trainman Academy. Audrey has also taught Ukrainian women who came to Christ out of abuse and addiction.

Tell us what youre hearing from your church contacts in Ukraine.

A friend and former elder a church in Kyiv sent this message:

Early morning on the 24th at 5 am we were very hesitant but decided to leave Kyiv. All the girls as well as a turtle and a cat are with us. A church is currently hosting us and we found a place to rent at $20 per day. With this amount of evacuees its a hard task and the market here is very small.

It was a miracle for us to be able to leave Kyiv. The traffic was extremely heavy and the driving took us twice more but now, just two days later the bridges that we were using to depart Kyiv are exploded not to allow Russian tanks into Kyiv. It breaks out hearts to leave our relatives but I am so blessed to see that my children are safe and do not experience the horror of the war. Although they see it happening with their friends.

Its so ugly - the occupants cover with fire residential areas, hospitals, kindergartens and orphanages. They destroy everything. Praise God the banking system is still working. We were able to pay for groceries with credit card at a supermarket. Please keep us in your prayers. So that we could stay safe as long as it possible and no occupants reach this part of Ukraine.

You talk sometimes about how churches are nimble responders in times of crisis. What does that mean generally and how do you see this in practice in Kyiv?

The attacks seem intended to isolate and frighten. The church community seems to be a powerful antidote to that.

Gods people are there. Now. In the midst of the bombing and shooting, Ive seen how their their basement office  the same one some of us had used for weekend teaching sessions a few years ago  became a bomb shelter for the neighbors. I saw a short video clip and it was jammed full. There was even a dog trotting around. But spirits were high. What food they had, they were sharing. I definitely dont know much about war, but the attacks seem intended to isolate and frighten. The church community seems to be a powerful antidote to that.

Everyone in Kyiv is of course incredibly vulnerable right now. In crises, some people are always even more vulnerable. How are churches responding to this need?

One church leader volunteered for military service but was declined, for now. He decided that the best way to serve (his) country would be to evacuate women and children to safer regions in the west of the country. So hes been driving back and forth at great risk in order to lead people to safety. Another friend said they slipped out of their shelter to deliver food to older adults who are isolated in their apartments. Churches are doing what they can with what they have  so simple and so profound. If they have a stove, they cook food for the displaced. If they have a car, they shuttle women and children from train stations to border crossings. A missionary friend with Mission to the World tells me their three centers in Lviv are overwhelmed and their 90 bed hostel is overflowing.

With your history in Ukraine and texting youve done with people there during the past week, can you share how youve seen faith in Christ (both early in your experience with the underground church in the Soviet Union and texting and talking this past week) be part of peoples resilience?

I asked a friend how manages to sleep amidst the horror and uncertainty, and he simply texted back Psalm 4:8: In peace I will lie down and sleep, for you alone, Lord, make me dwell in safety. It took my breath away. I met people in my Bible smuggling days who went to prison for their faith. Todays church stands on the shoulders of those of whom this world is not worthy. I dont want to portray an idealized church. They have their disputes and divisions, too, but it strikes me that many walk the same path as earlier generations by understanding that the way of Christ involves suffering and simple  not to say shallow  faith. I need to keep being reminded of that.

Applications for the 2022-23 academic year are due by March 15. The Better Samaritan blog is produced by the Humanitarian Disaster Institute at Wheaton College, which offers a M.A. in Humanitarian & Disaster Leadership and a Trauma Certificate. To learn more and apply, visit our website

Brian Jose went to Europe for 2 years in 1980 to serve as a Bible courier to communist countries, and stayed for 37, the final seven in Albania, fostering missional church partnerships. He is the Executive Director of Radstock Ministries and leads the planting team for Village Church in Newcastle, Ontario.
Churches near Ukraine's border shelter refugees as 1 million flee Russian invasion

Churches in countries neighboring Ukraine have opened their doors to shelter and aid refugees as the United Nations refugee agency estimated Thursday that 1 million people have fled the Eastern European nation since the beginning of Russia's invasion last week.

"In just seven days, 1 million people have fled Ukraine, uprooted by this senseless war," U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi said in a statement. "I have worked in refugee emergencies for almost 40 years, and rarely have I seen an exodus as rapid as this one."

Russia began its invasion last Thursday, targeting military installations in Kyiv and other major cities nationwide. Reports have indicated that the Russian military has also targeted areas with civilian populations, and hundreds of civilians have reportedly been killed.

Many of the displaced have fled to neighboring countries such as Poland, Moldova, Slovakia and Hungary, while many more remain in Ukraine.

Grandi said people are fleeing the violence "hour by hour" and "minute by minute" as "countless" people have also been displaced internally inside Ukraine. The U.N. official warned that "millions more are likely to be forced to flee" unless the conflict reaches an "immediate end."

Churches in neighboring countries are among community centers and camps sheltering refugees who've fled from the violence, with some seeing hundreds of Ukrainians coming and going in recent days.

As Poland has taken the brunt of the Ukrainian refugees, one church that has served as many as 400 refugees is a Baptist church in Chelm. According to the Baptist Federation of Europe, the church is "filled with life" as it has pushed its pews out of the way to make room for beds.

"It is not tension that you feel as you enter the building but life, peace and joy," a statement from the federation reads. "Children laugh and play while mothers prepare for onward journeys. The church piano plays a variety of tunes, none of the hymns, as the children practice their piano lessons."

"Pews are in the pulpit and beds fill the sanctuary, the balcony and every available space," the statement adds. "Ukrainian and Polish families work side by side, making food, receiving donations and cleaning the toilets. The laundry vibrates as the three new washing machines continue their endless 24-hour cycle. The supply rooms are full of children excitedly selecting new clothes and discovering new toys that have been donated."

The church's kitchen has supplied soup, snacks and hot meals for the refugees arriving while packing lunches for the refugees that depart. The church receives help from local hotels that provide clean linen for the beds.

The Polish Baptist Union hopes to house as many as 1,000 refugees.

According to the Southern Baptist Convention's International Mission Board, Polish Baptists have established 40 shelter camps. The PBU provides the camps with bedding items, food and hygiene items, while Send Relief, IMB's relief arm, provides funds to assist in the relief efforts.

First Baptist Church of Gdasnk, Poland, will host one of the refugee centers, according to IMB missionary Ken Brownd.

"It's just cool to see Polish Baptists stepping up and taking care of their neighbors. They've done that for a long time now, but this is a different level," Brownd was quoted as saying in an IMB report. "Our team is trying to organize the Send Relief help  but really, this is mostly driven by Polish Baptists, so we're not the main players in this at all. We're helpers, and so it's amazing."

A church in Poland about an hour from the border affiliated with the Shoreline Church in Austin, Texas, has put beds "in every possible place they can put one." Shoreline Church has raised over $110,000 to support the refugees through its Caleb Foundation.

"Your generosity is astounding, thank you for being the church in the world. It is imperative that we continue to pray and fight in the spirit," the church told its members in a Facebook post.

Shoreline Pastor Rob Koke has preached in Kyiv numerous times. Koke told KXAN the church he and his wife, Laura, started 15 years ago in Czestochowa, Poland, has taken in over 100 refugees. Koke said that the church's members have brought food to the border and brought refugees back to their church.

"They were freezing cold and standing for five days," Laura Koke told the news outlet about the refugees. "They were hungry. One little boy said, 'I don't have a home.' One of the church members said, 'this is your home' it's so touching."

In Cluj-Napoca, Romania, Methodists are providing shelter to refugees in a former hotel that has been rented out and turned into a community center, according to United Methodist Church in Romania Superintendent the Rev. Rares Calugar.

"The UMC has built a network in Cluj-Napoca and has access to numerous apartments and houses where those leaving the community center can stay to make room for new arrivals," Calugar told UMC's official news agency UM News.

Church members have also traveled to the border to help refugees as they cross the border.

UMC churches in Hungary, Slovakia and Poland have also provided shelter to refugees. In Slovakia, Pastor Svetlana Komives Francisti from a UMC church in Michalovce transported six African students who fled while studying in Kyiv to her church for shelter until they can reunite with families or other students, according to UM News.

Experts say the invasion is the most significant attack by a European country on another since World War II. World leaders have called on Russian President Vladimir Putin to put an end to the war, and the global community has issued targeted sanctions to cut off Russia from western financing and technology.

Earlier this week, the United Nations reported that at least 227 civilians had been killed in Ukraine and over 525 injured.

A European Union executive warned Sunday that as many as 4 million Ukrainians could flee the country and as many as 7 million could be displaced internally by the conflict.

"Inside Ukraine, our staff  and other humanitarians  are working where and when they can in frightening conditions. Our staff stay, even at great risk, because we know the needs in the country are huge," Grandi said.

"Despite the extraordinary pace and challenges, the response from governments and local communities in receiving these 1 million refugees has been remarkable. UNHCR staff have already moved in throughout the region and are scaling up our protection and assistance programs for refugees, in support of host governments."

U.S.-based Christian disaster relief organizations such as World Help and Samaritan's Purse, as well as American churches, have also sprung into action to help those displaced by the war.

Samaritan's Purse, which evangelist Franklin Graham heads, has deployed members of its Disaster Assistance Response Team to surrounding countries to help meet the needs of Ukrainian refugees.

Ridgecrest Baptist Church in Springfield, Missouri, has sent a team of volunteers and its senior pastor to Poland to provide care and shelter to orphaned refugees from Ukraine, arriving on Thursday morning. Another team is expected to leave in two weeks, according to the church.

Speaking with reporters Wednesday, U.S. President Joe Biden accused Russia of targeting civilians but said it's too early to tell if Russia had committed war crimes. However, United Kingdom Prime Minister Boris Johnson told members of Parliament Wednesday that Putin should be investigated by the International Criminal Court for war crimes, citing attacks against civilians in Ukraine.

The second round of negotiations between the two countries began on Thursday in Belarus. Ukraine said both sides had agreed to create humanitarian corridors through ceasefires that would allow civilians to evacuate and aid to be delivered.

Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, told Reuters that ceasefires will exist only in areas where the "humanitarian corridors themselves will be located."

"[I]t will be possible to cease fire for the duration of the evacuation," he was quoted as saying.
The uniqueness of American culture

At the risk of inflicting cruel and unusual punishment on CP readers, I am going to give you a brief peek into the way my mind sometimes works. Remember, I am Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). If they had had Ritalin when I was a child (back when the crust of the Earth was young), they would have marinated me in it.

Anyway, I was working on the first draft of a column on How words are the weapons in any battle requiring persuasion in the public square.

I took a break to go through a stack of newspaper clippings I had filed away to be saved or discarded later. While doing so I came across an article that had me immediately saying to myself, Teachable Moment! Teachable Moment!

So, I immediately decided to postpone the planned column to go with this serendipitous one! Here it is.

As I was leafing through an old copy of The New York Times, the following quote from a French Muslim arrested my attention: Its only abroad that Im French. Im French, Im married to a French woman. I speak French, I live French, I love French food and culture. But in my country, Im not French.

Evidently, there has been a rising tide of emigration from France by French men and women who are the children of non-French immigrant (mostly Muslim) heritage in recent years.

This phenomenon illustrates a point I have sought to make on numerous occasions. The United States of America is a unique society in that it is not established and founded on soil or ethnicity, but on an all-encompassing idea that All men are created equal and that they are endowed by their Creator with the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. This ideal, and allegiance to it, are the social glue that holds us together. In France and in most countries in the world, a society is formed and is held together by its common ethnic background and experience. Many of these French emigres, mostly white-collar professionals, have relocated permanently, a large number in the U.S., where they feel much more accepted.

I have said many times that I could go through all the steps to become a French citizen and learn the French language and customs, but I would still never be fully accepted as French.

Yet, someone perhaps of Korean ethnicity and ancestry can immigrate to the U.S., learn English, and become a citizen, learn our history, embrace our ideals, and fully become an American in a much deeper sense than either he or I could ever become French.

I first was personally made aware of this profound difference when I was a doctoral student at Oxford University in Great Britain (1972-75). This was a time of deep political tension and turmoil in the U.K. as late Socialist Britain was on its last shaky legs, soon to be replaced by Thatcherism. And yet, while they would go after each other relentlessly and stridently, they still had their common heritage and experience as Englishmen to hold them together.

A humorous experience during my first year there helped to reinforce this message. In my ignorance, I erroneously thought at that time that British and English were synonymous terms that could be used interchangeably. In conversing with my Oxford advisor/professor, who was very English, I made the mistake of describing the great American writer and emigre to Great Britain, T.S. Eliot, as English. My tutor immediately responded, Oh no, my dear boy, one can become British, one must be born English!

To an American such as myself, these were odd sentiments indeed. Anyone can become an American in every real sense that I, whose family on both sides arrived on these shores before 1700, am an American, as long as you embrace and swear allegiance to our founding ideals.

And at the same time, while embracing America, people of other cultures and ethnicities can cherish their original ethnic identity with pride and gratitude, as testified to by the millions of African Americans, Chinese Americans, German Americans, Hispanic Americans, Irish Americans, Italian Americans, Japanese Americans, and Vietnamese Americans, etc. have done and will continue to do so.

In making common cause in cherishing our American ideals, without abandoning their own ethnic traditions, they have and will continue, to enrich the multi-hued tapestry of our shared culture in myriad and important ways.

This welcoming attitude toward newcomers who embrace Americas ideals extends even to the strongest of regional American traditions. I am a sixth-generation Texan, and no one is more proud of their traditions than Texans. Yet, with a steady influx of newcomers to the state over the last several decades, the most popular bumper sticker year after year in the state is, I wasnt born here, but I got here as fast as I could! In other words, Texans applaud the good taste of those who move to Texas and welcome them as Texans.

All of us have benefitted from the various cultural, musical, linguistic, and culinary contributions that each ethnic group has made to the great mosaic that is America.

As I read of the sad plight of the French emigres, I was once again so grateful that in the providence of God I was born and raised in this great and unique country. I also could not help but think of Dr. King and his enormous contribution to all of us in articulating the vision of a country where we are judged not by the color of our skin, but rather by the content of our character.

As President Theodore Roosevelt declared just over a century ago, America has lots of room and acceptance for those immigrants who come here for a better life for themselves and their families as long as their primary emphasis was on being American. T.R. wanted to make certain the emphasis was in the right place  i.e. African AMERICAN, Anglo AMERICAN, Irish AMERICAN, Italian AMERICAN, etc.

Let us all consider our patriotic duty to help our beloved country to ever more fully live up to the ideals contained in our founding documents. That American vision and dream for all men and women is a noble one deserving of our devotion and duty.

P.S. My heart breaks when I see the apparent martyrdom of Ukraine in its pursuit of what began as the American dream which has universal application. I recognize the Spirit of 1776 when I see it and it is on courageous display in Ukraine right now as free men and women oppose Russias savage tyranny. Please join me in praying for our Ukrainian brothers and sisters and their families.
UMC delays conference for third time; theologically conservative churches launch new denomination

In a move critics are calling unwise and potentially destructive, the United Methodist Church has delayed its General Conference meeting for a third time amid the COVID-19 pandemic, prompting theologically conservative United Methodists to announce the official launch of a new denomination.

On Thursday, General Conference organizers announced they are postponing the meeting to 2024 due to COVID-related and governmental policies/constraints. The 2020 General Conference originally had been set for May 2020 in Minneapolis but was rescheduled for Aug. 29  Sept. 7, 2021. It was rescheduled again for 2022 at the same venue.

Commission Chairperson Kim Simpson said the decision to postpone the meeting was an exceedingly difficult one, the UMC statement said.

"We engaged in a fair, thorough, integrity-filled discussion of the alternatives," said Simpson. "The visa issue is a reality that is simply outside our control as we seek to achieve a reasonable threshold of delegate presence and participation. Ultimately our decision reflects the hope that 2024 will afford greater opportunity for global travel and a higher degree of protection for the health and safety of delegates and attendees."

The move comes at a particularly sensitive time for the UMC, as delegates to the General Conference were expected to negotiate a denominational split over theological differences, including the full inclusion of LGBT members into the denomination.

The decision to postpone drew criticism from some theologically conservative UMC groups that said they are not willing to wait until 2024 to move forward.

On Thursday, the Global Methodist Church, a more conservative Methodist denomination, announced it will officially launch in May. The creators of the GMC and other United Methodists had previously said they would hold off from launching until after the General Conference.

The denominations website says thousands of Methodist clergy and laity from around the world have worked together for over three years to lay the groundwork for a new, theologically conservative Methodist denomination steeped in the great ecumenical and evangelical confessions of the Christian faith.

It is anticipated that some theologically conservative local churches will find annual conferences willing to negotiate fair and just exit provisions, while others will, unfortunately, face obstacles placed in their paths, the denomination said in a statement.

The Transitional Leadership Council decided it was time to launch the Global Methodist Church, so those who can leave early will have a place to land, to begin building and growing, and making room for others to join later.

The Rev. Keith Boyette, the chairman of the Transitional Leadership Council that has been overseeing the creation of the GMC, said theologically conservative churches and annual conferences want to be free of divisive and destructive debates, and to have the freedom to move forward together."

"We are confident many existing congregations will join the new Global Methodist Church in waves over the next few years, he said. As we embark on this great venture, we know we will stumble and fall at times. But with the great prophet Isaiah, we also firmly believe we will, in Gods good time, run and not be weary, and walk [in the way of the Lord] and not faint!

In a statement, UM Action, an organization that works to defend biblical faithfulness and a disciple-making focus in the United Methodist Church, accused General Conference organizers of succumbing to an intense institutionalist pressure campaign in canceling the conference.

"This decision was extremely unwise and potentially destructive, it said. The Commissions majority and those who pressured them into this destructive path will provoke confusion, more church division, and litigation in which there are no winners.

The United Methodist Church remains our church, and we will continue to defend its doctrine and moral standards, it added. We will have more to say and do in the coming days.

The UMC has been engaged in a long battle over the churchs teachings on sexuality, prompting more conservative churches to leave the denomination. The UMCs official stance, as outlined in the Book of Discipline, labels homosexuality a sin, bars the ordination of noncelibate homosexuals and prohibits the blessing of same-sex marriages.

However, progressive United Methodists have on several occasions defied the rules by ordaining openly gay clergy or officiating same-sex marriages. In December, a UMC pastor was relieved of his duties after participating as a drag queen in the HBO reality series Were Here.

On Jan. 30, Frazer United Methodist Church, a congregation of about 4,000 members in Montgomery, Alabama, became the latest church to disaffiliate from the mainline Protestant denomination.

The church said in a statement to The Christian Post that the congregation intends to join the Free Methodist Church: "[W]e believe that the Free Methodist Church is a better fit for our present identity and future fruitfulness.

The UMC has more than 6.2 million members in the U.S., according to 2020 data, making it the third-largest Christian sect in the United States.
Voddie Baucham says he's been asked to accept nomination for SBC president

Renowned Southern Baptist preacher Voddie Baucham, who denounced critical race theory and the social justice movement in his latest book, Fault Lines: The Social Justice Movement and Evangelicalisms Looming Catastrophe, confirmed Friday that he has been asked to accept a nomination for SBC President.

Responding to questions from The Christian Post about the prospect of his nomination, which was first rumored online, Baucham, who considers himself an outsider in the halls of power of the nations largest Protestant denomination, said he isnt sure he is eligible to accept the nomination.

I have indeed been asked to accept a nomination for SBC President. While I am honored to have been asked, I am not sure I am eligible, Baucham said in a statement. There are questions about the way church membership is considered for missionaries (SBC Article II and Article VIII).

Baucham, 52, currently serves as dean of theology at African Christian University in Zambia and a board member of Founders Ministries, a conservative group within the SBC dedicated to the biblical reformation of local churches.

Article VIII of SBCs constitution requires that all officers of the SBC must be members of Baptist churches cooperating with this Convention. But Article II says: It is the purpose of the Convention to provide a general organization for Baptists in the United States and its territories for the promotion of Christian missions at home and abroad and any other objects such as Christian education, benevolent enterprises, and social services which it may deem proper and advisable for the furtherance of the Kingdom of God.

My sending church (the church I planted) has always practiced regenerate, resident church membership. Unfortunately, this is not common practice in many SBC churches. As such, we have always believed that missionaries sent to the field needed to join local churches in order to be shepherded properly, Baucham told CP.

Unfortunately, since the SBC is an American entity, that means missionaries who leave the USA must either practice non-resident membership (which I am convinced is unbiblical), or join a local church and be technically outside the SBC while being counted as SBC missionaries.

Baucham calls the situation a huge problem in foreign missions.

Many spend years on the field being members of churches thousands of miles away, refusing to submit to local church leadership on the ground, and suffering spiritually as a result. Either that, or they practice some kind of dual membership. Either way, it sends a terrible message to those whom we serve.

I am a missionary sent by an SBC church, supported by an SBC church, reporting to an SBC church, but am technically not a member of that SBC church because my family and I entrusted our souls to a healthy, indigenous, local Baptist church at the behest of our SBC church. Hence, it appears my commitment to missions and biblical church membership has rendered me ineligible for any office in the SBC, he added. At least thats the way I read it.

Bauchams response comes after SBC President Ed Litton announced on Tuesday that he would not seek reelection following his first year in office.

Willy Rice, the pastor of Calvary Church in Clearwater, Florida, who delivered the convention sermon at the 2021 annual meeting last June, is also expected to be nominated for the SBC presidency at the 2022 SBC Annual Meeting this June in Anaheim, California.

Though he is a popular figure, particularly in the more conservative wing of the SBC, Baucham is viewed by some as polarizing for his views on race and the role of women in the church, which have been two of the most contentious points in the denomination in recent years.

Baucham, who had successful coronary bypass surgery last year, told CP in an interview about his latest book last summer that he feels his positions have made him an outsider in some Evangelical circles.

Popular evangelicalism is woke, so most of the things that Im pointing out put me on the outside of the echo chamber, not the inside. I mean, Im not going to be invited to CRU or Intervarsity or The Gospel Coalition or I could run down the list. Im not going to be invited by any of those things that are the premier places in evangelicalism, he said.

Forget the SBC, forget the PCA, a Southern Baptist seminary couldnt hire me today because of all of these ideas. They would be completely pilloried if they hired me. So far from writing for an echo chamber, Im actually speaking out and putting myself outside the echo chamber.

When asked about his health on Friday, Baucham said his heart is better and stronger.

My health is great! he said. I was checked out at Mayo [Clinic] a few months ago and came through with flying colors. I am back to doing everything I was doing before my illness. By Gods grace, my heart is better and stronger than it has been in years.
China's AG600 large amphibious aircraft gets financial-leasing support

Xinhua) 09:02, March 04, 2022

BEIJING, March 3 (Xinhua) -- The development of China's AG600 large amphibious aircraft has gained support from the financial-leasing sector, the Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC) announced Thursday.

China Aviation Industry General Aircraft Co., Ltd., a subsidiary of AVIC, signed a strategic cooperation agreement with Everbright Financial Leasing Co., Ltd. on Thursday to jointly boost research and development of the AG600 and its future operation, said AVIC.

According to the agreement, the two sides will explore innovative financial plans to support further research on the AG600, as well as purchasing the first batch of aircraft products.

Both sides will also explore building an innovative industry-finance community to boost the country's aviation emergency-rescue system, said the agreement.

The move represents a major step forward for the AG600 in entering the market and playing a role in the country's emergency-rescue system.

The two sides will hold further discussions on the leasing plan for the first batch of AG600 aircraft and the signing of the purchase agreement, said AVIC.

They will join efforts in exploring the integration of industry and finance, actively carry out business-model innovation, and fully promote "independent innovation" activity, with the aim of boosting the development of the AG600 and its related industrial chain, AVIC added.

Codenamed Kunlong, the AG600 is a key piece of aeronautical equipment in China's emergency-rescue system.

As a model of special-purpose aircraft, the AG600 has been developed by AVIC to meet the needs of firefighting and marine-rescue missions, as well as other critical emergency-rescue operations.

The AG600 successfully completed its maiden flight in 2017, its first take-off from a water reservoir in 2018, and its maiden flight over the sea in 2020.

For 2022, the AG600 project has set a target of seeing three new aircraft enter the final assembly phase and three aircraft to take maiden flights, according to AVIC.

(Web editor: Xia Peiyao, Liang Jun)
A political commentator said that Vice-president Kamala Harris is causing problems for the Democrats and the president, who are sinking the party faster than the Titanic.

Simon Dolan, a commentator, pointed out that the vice-president with worse drooping approval ratings next to Joe Biden is not cutting through, which is ironic. Combined, Biden and Harris are getting more unpopular with time, with a less than spectacular public personal is getting toxic even for their party.

Infighting Among Democrats

Dolan said that Biden and Harris are having problems, and the Democrats are going through a divide that is getting nasty, reported the Express UK.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is invading Ukraine because the Kyiv government was allegedly getting nukes. It gets worse as the president and his deputy looks helpless and divided while the Kremlin ignores them. The entire Western alliance could see they could not rally allies effectively.

President Biden, 79, is faced with whether he has the mental facility to lead the White House. He incurred blunder after another in the past year because he allegedly stutters. But no one is buying it, especially when Donald Trump runs rings around him.

Dolan, a political commentator who wrote a book about 'Trump: The Hidden Halo,' has speculated that Alzheimer's disease caused Biden blunders and errors, which explained the lackluster leadership of the ex-vice president Obama and the current VP Kamala Harris is not encouraging.

Read Also: Joe Biden Net Worth 2022: How Wealthy Is the 46th President of the United States?

He argued that Biden messed up the Ukraine crisis with Harris, who is not acceptable to the public as America is making the Democrats sink more, noted CNN.

She was supposed to be a steady hand to the commander in chief but failed to solve the border crisis has predetermined that the Kremlin is just much for her. Allies in NATO and the EU are not exactly feeling secure as well.

He added that the Democratic Party is very obvious to be fighting amongst themselves to rule the White House.Both Biden and Harris are at the center of the firestorm after Americans left Afghanistan due to a desire for a photo op on 9/11.

Doubts surface if the president can lead, is terrible, but now with the Vice president in the crosshairs of the GOP, she's another liability to a ravaged Democrat party.

No Unity in the White House

Dolan remarked the office of the president and vice-president are opposed to each other, and they easily rag on against each other.

Russia and China see this and smell weakness on a grand scale when unity is better, but that is how both offices regard each other and willingly cause dysfunction affecting their party.

How can the president use his VP, who has not allegedly been up to speed on anything, to be allowed to deal with sensitive matters far from expertise. The VP getting a venue to meet the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is supposed to boost her by leaving the sidelines.

Most of the time, it ends the wrong way and only brings more attention to the already troubled White House. If it turns sideways, then-President Biden is not to blame but Harris, and he gets a free get-out card.

The political commentator Simon Dolan mentioned that Kamala Harris and her lack of knowledge about Ukraine would sink the White House further in its quicksand, cited India Today.

Related Article: Sen. Joe Manchin Calls Out Joe Biden To Cut Russian Oil Imports Instead Push for US Energy Independence

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Seven million women died last year because they didnt have access to abortion. This was the absurd claim by a pro-abortion activist testifying in opposition to Nebraskas Legislative Bill (LB) 933, the Human Life Protection Act. The claim made all of us watching those protesting the bill scratch our heads.

Did she really just say that?

Considering there were only 861 maternal deaths in 2020 according to the CDC, lets chalk it up to another epic pro-abortion distortion. Abortion doesnt reduce maternal mortality. No Maternal Mortality Review Committee even offers abortion as a solution to preventable maternal deaths. In actuality there is no state or federal data in America that document a single woman who died because an abortion was not committed upon her and her child. There are, however, hundreds of instances of women dying from so-called safe and legal abortions like Jamie Lee Morales, Tonya Reeves, Jennifer Morbelli, Cree Erwin Sheppard, Karnamaya Mongar and hundreds more since Roe.

LB 933 will outlaw abortion for any reason, except to save the physical life of the mother, if Roe is overturned or if a pro-life amendment is added to the Constitution. I was invited by the Nebraska Family Alliance to share my rather unique perspective. I led a press conference and testified before the judiciary committee in support of the bill. Ive combined the messages I delivered at both events here to share my passion to end the social injustice of abortion:

Good afternoon, Chairperson Lathrop and members of the Judiciary Committee. My name is Ryan Bomberger. Im the cofounder and Chief Creative Officer of The Radiance Foundation. Or, rather, the Chief Creative Agitator. Frederick Douglass encouraged society to address injustice this way: agitate, agitate, agitate. So, Im the Chief Creative Agitator. And the violence of abortion is the violent injustice Im fighting to abolish. Im here to fully support LB 993, the Human Life Protection Act.

Many say that I should have been aborted.

I was conceived in rape but adopted in love. I grew up in a diverse family of fifteen, where ten of us were adopted. Many of us were rescued from the violence of abortion. Were white, black, mixed, Native American, Vietnamese, abled and disabled. Despite the horrific circumstances most of us came from, none of us wouldve been better off dead. We were all better off loved.

Im the one percent used to justify 100% of abortions. But the circumstances of our conception dont change the condition of our worth. No one controls the circumstances of his or her conception. No one, for that reason, should pretend to be the arbiter of human value.

My birthmoms courageous decision will continue to unleash beautiful reverberations for generations. Today, Im married to my best friend, Bethany Bomberger. She was a single mom who found herself in an unplanned pregnancy. Despite enormous pressure from fellow teachers and the biological father (who wanted the child aborted to rid himself of any responsibility), she rejected the violence of abortion. I adopted that precious baby girl. Her name is Radiance, the reason for the name of our organization. Our youngest son, Justice, was also adopted. Im the father of four awesome kiddos, and theyre all loved like crazy. Our family wouldnt exist if I had been aborted.

Abortion brings countless casualties. Life brings powerful possibilities.

Its why I fight for the most marginalized, the most vulnerable and the most discarded. Of course, the injustice of abortion is equally tragic no matter the hue of skin, but no group of humans is harder hit, statistically, by the violent social injustice of abortion than the black community. According to the CDC, abortion rates among black women is 3.6x higher than white women and twice as high as Hispanic women.

In fact, in Manhattan (where Planned Parenthood is based)  there were more black babies aborted than born alive in 2018. For every 1,000 born alive, there were 1,226 aborted. This is a ratio 3.5 times higher than whites and over two times higher than Hispanics. Yet pro-abortion activist groups, like NYC-based Guttmacher Institute, absurdly argue there is a lack of access.

How many more black lives should be taken by abortion?

There is no lack of access. And thats been by eugenic design. Planned Parenthood is the leading killer of black lives, taking an estimated 360 innocent lives every single day. Yet they now claim to be an anti-racist organization (here, here and here), which shows you what a fraud the anti-racist movement is. Abortion is systemic racism. Its the leading killer of black lives outnumbering the top 20 causes of death combined.

Black History Month teaches us this truth: anytime anyone denies the humanity of another human being, discrimination and death always follow.

Womens History Month should teach us this: You cant make history unless youre born.

Roe has killed 64 million under the guise of fake feminism. This is the tragic but deliberate result of a multi-billion-dollar abortion industry  led by Planned Parenthood  that profits from fear, solves no social issue, gives no one equality, and ushers more deaths into communities already ravaged by violence.

And we need to act with the fierce urgency of now to end this violence against women and children.

There will be those who will testify and oppose this bill today and speak of the alleged empowerment of abortion. Of course, each of those individuals are only able to be here today because their mothers, thankfully, did not abort them.

Thank you, members of the Judiciary Committee, for your time and efforts to ensure Equality before the law. I urge you to vote LB 933  The Human Life Protection Act  to the floor of the Legislature. Your vote could help make lives like mine and my children possible.
True to its doctrine: Conservatives plan for a new church after United Methodism splits over homosexuality debate

The United Methodist Church, the third-largest Christian sect in the United States, took another step toward schism over their longstanding debate on LGBT issues when theological conservatives recently unveiled their plan for a new denomination.

Known as the Global Methodist Church, it was the product of the 17-member Transitional Leadership Council, a group of theologically conservative United Methodists.

The Wesleyan Covenant Association, a conservative United Methodist advocacy group, announced the launching of the GMC on March 1, explaining that it will not officially begin operations until a formal separation policy is approved by the UMC.

Theologically conservative United Methodists have made no secret of their efforts to form a new church, stated the WCA in the announcement.

In late 2018, the Wesleyan Covenant Association created a Next Steps Working Group to begin drafting its own Book of Doctrines and Discipline outlining essential theological confessions and governing structures for a new churchs consideration.

The creators of the GMC and other United Methodists are holding off further action until the results of the next churchwide legislative meeting, known as the General Conference.

Due largely to the coronavirus pandemic, the global denomination has had to postpone the legislative meeting multiple times, with it presently being scheduled to take place Aug. 29  Sept. 6, 2022, in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

On the agenda for General Conference 2022 will be a proposal to fund and create at least one new separate denomination for those who no longer want to remain in the UMC.

The Christian Post reached out to United Methodists supportive of or tied to the Global Methodist Church to find out how the proposed new denomination will operate, what opposition exists, and if the new denomination will abort its launch if General Conference fails to approve a separation measure.

The endless debate

For decades, the UMC has debated whether to change their official stance, as outlined in the Book of Discipline, that labels homosexuality a sin, bars the ordination of noncelibate homosexuals, and prohibits the blessing of same-sex marriages.

These efforts to amend the Book of Discipline have regularly been brought up at General Conference, the churchwide legislative meeting that normally occurs every four years.

Every attempt to change the UMC's stance at General Conference has failed, largely because of delegates from Africa and elsewhere abroad who tend to be more conservative.

In February 2019, at a special session of General Conference held specifically to address the issue, delegates voted to reaffirm the traditional stance, rejecting a proposal known as the One Church Plan that would have allowed regional bodies and local congregations to determine their own position on LGBT issues.

Despite the many losses, progressive United Methodists have continued to campaign against the official stance, sometimes engaging in outright defiance of the rules by ordaining openly gay clergy or officiating same-sex marriages.

For example, in 2016, the UMC Western Jurisdiction unanimously elected Karen Oliveto to be bishop of the UMC Mountain Sky Area, making her the first openly gay bishop in the Church.

Although the United Methodist Judicial Council, which is the denominations highest court, ruled in 2017 that her election violated church law, she remains in office as of April of this year.

Keith Boyette, president of the Wesleyan Covenant Association and spokesman for the Global Methodist Church, told The Christian Post that UMC leadership has shown an unwillingness to uphold its teachings.

In the United States, particularly, some bishops, clergy, and churches are operating in open defiance to the teachings of the United Methodist Church, Boyette said.

The Church has become ungovernable as a consequence, such unchecked defiance has destroyed the integrity of the Church.

Boyette said that this defiance has only increased in recent years, noting that those who advocate for change in the official teachings and who are in defiance have made it very clear that they will not leave the Church voluntarily.

With the defiance and disobedience in the leadership of the Church, they cant be forced to leave, he continued. In light of this, theologically conservative leaders have decided to launch a new denomination that will be true to its doctrine and teachings and end this endless conflict within the United Methodist Church.

John Lomperis of the Institute on Religion & Democracy, who has served as a delegate to the UMC General Conference, told CP that he believed the cat is out of the bag when it came to the schism.

Leaders of all major factions have admitted that we need to split, and a split is coming. The main question is if we are going to split in a relatively amicable way acceptable to all sides, or if we will split in a much more combative and bitter way, Lomperis said.

Traditionalist United Methodist leaders have been willing to make great, painful sacrifices for the sake of getting the former. But it remains to be seen if bishops and other liberal leaders will be willing to restrain their own greed and selfishness enough to make the transition smoother.

Little dissent among conservatives

In January 2020, a group of theologically diverse United Methodist leaders expressed their support for what they called Protocol of Reconciliation and Grace through Separation.

If passed, the Protocol would, among other things, allocate $25 million for conservative Methodists to create a new denomination, tentatively called "traditionalist Methodist."

By March 2020, three regional conferences had voted to send the Protocol to General Conference for consideration, with two expressing overt support for the measure.

Boyette told CP that the Global Methodist Church is the traditionalist Methodist denomination referenced in the Protocol and that he was not aware of any other theologically conservative groups or denominations being planned to emerge from the United Methodist Church.

The Rev. Thomas Lambrecht, vice president and general manager of Good News magazine, who supports the creation of the GMC, told CP that there was little opposition among conservative United Methodists.

Echoing Boyette, Lambrecht reported that he knew of no other group that is organizing as a traditionalist alternative to the Global Methodist Church.

There are always a few disgruntled people for whom the GMC is not the perfect answer, but I know of no organizational work going on to form an alternative, Lambrecht said.

The people who are disgruntled are not prominent, but rather ordinary pastors and laity who leave comments on Facebook or Twitter bashing this or that provision of the new proposed church.

Given that the General Conference and the likely approval of separation has been postponed until 2022, debates over the GMCs exact structure will likely come later, Lambrecht said.

The polity has only been public for a few weeks, so some of that may come in the future, he told CP in an earlier interview in March. Now that General Conference has been put off, there may be plenty of time for critique.

A preliminary structure

Although not officially launched, the Global Methodist Church already has a website that includes a mission statement and information on their plans pending General Conference.

The new denomination, should it formally begin operations, will allow for female ordination and be committed to racial equality, as well as have measures to prevent theological liberals from taking over their leadership.

According to Boyette, as an example, this includes measures laid out in their transitional book of doctrines and discipline regarding leadership structure and the ordination process.

The ordination process is structured so as to ensure allegiance to that doctrinal position, those disciplines, the accountability structures within the Church are robust at every level, he told CP.

In the Global Methodist Church, bishops are accountable not to each other but to a global commission on episcopacies, which is composed of laity and clergy who would have been elected to that position because of their allegiance to the doctrines and teachings of the Church.

The GMC also has a process comparable to that of the Southern Baptist Convention, in which a congregation found in violation of their positions can be removed from the denomination.

There is a provision in the for the involuntary disaffiliation of a congregation if it fails to adhere to the doctrines and teachings and ethical practices of the Global Methodist Church, Boyette explained.

Theres a whole process that is outlined to try to bring the congregation in alignment. But if it persists in their disobedience to the doctrines, discipline, ethics of the Church that would be the ultimate remedy.

Lambrecht of Good News magazine has heard his share of critique about the plans for the GMC structure and said to CP that he believed the most common criticism has been that churches should be able to pick their own pastor, more of a call system, rather than having the bishop appoint the pastor.

More congregational veto power was considered in earlier drafts of the polity, but we reconsidered in light of the need to ensure that women and ethnic clergy would have an equal opportunity to serve in pastoral ministry in any church, he continued.

That issue of pastoral appointment will undoubtedly become a matter of discussion in the first inaugural General Conference of the new church.

How many will leave?

Adam Hamilton, a United Methodist megachurch pastor known for his support of changing the Book of Discipline's stance on LGBT issues, said in 2019 that he expected as many as 7,500 congregations would leave the denomination due to the debate.

Hamilton made this prediction at the Leadership Institute gathering held September 2019 at his Kansas-based Church of the Resurrection, when the General Conference was still scheduled to take place in May 2020.

A year from now, we will not be the same church that we are today, said Hamilton, who went on to predict that there would be between 3,400 and 7,500 less churches in the UMC as a result.

Hamilton reasoned that between 3,400 and 6,800 congregations will exit the UMC to join a new theologically conservative denomination while 300 to 1,000 churches will decide that the UMC is still not inclusive enough.

So well lose 3,400 to 6,800 on one side and maybe 300 to 1,000 churches on the other side, said Hamilton in 2019, adding that this estimate was just a guess.

Conservatives within the UMC who are sympathetic to the creation of the Global Methodist Church were hesitant to provide specific numbers or names of congregations open to joining the new denomination.

Because the Protocol has not been adopted by the General Conference of The United Methodist Church, local churches cannot make a decision on alignment yet, Boyette explained.

We have not asked churches to provide any indication of their plans to affiliate. Until that becomes possible, theyre not in a place to be making decisions.

While Boyette said that they were not able to say how many of the local churches are planning to join the Global Methodist Church when it comes into existence, he did note that a lot of churches had expressed an interest.

Lomperis of the Institute on Religion & Democracy, whose organization has many connections to conservative United Methodism, also declined to name specific congregations that would likely join the GMC once a separation proposal was approved.

He told CP that it would be unwise to get into listing all the particular congregations likely to join the GMC due to possible vindictive acts from some left-leaning UMC officials.

This could paint a giant target on such congregations and pastors, making them vulnerable to all kinds of repercussions, he said.

Even if we get the Protocol passed, it will remain to be seen if bishops and others will have integrity in fairly implementing the Protocols terms, to let congregations and conferences make their own fair, free, and informed choices.

Should the Protocol separation plan be enacted, Lomperis believed that we could expect a large critical mass of Americans joining the GMC, joined by others in Europe, especially Eastern Europe, the Philippines and Africa.

Liberation Methodism

Conservative churches are not the only ones considering a departure from the UMC, as some progressives have formed their own splinter church organization.

Known as the Liberation Methodist Connexion, its creation was announced last December, with the group describing themselves as a grassroots denomination of former, current, and non-Methodist faith leaders working on the unfolding of the kin-dom of God.

We intentionally invite the full participation of all who are living out their God-given identities and expressions, stated the website. We are journeying toward a new way of being followers of Christ that refute the imbalance of powers, principalities, and privileges that has plagued Methodism: colonialism, white supremacy, economic injustices, patriarchy, sexism, clericalism, ableism, ageism, transphobia, and heteronormativity.

In response to the development, Mark Tooley, president of the Institute on Religion & Democracy, wrote a blog post predicting that the progressive denomination would not become a major entity.

LMX will live out theological pluralism to its more logical conclusions, minimizing if not altogether dismissing theological doctrine in favor of political activisms and identity politics, wrote Tooley last year.

No doubt LMX will start very small and will remain a small niche movement. Most radicals will stay within United Methodism, or whatever it is ultimately called, shifting whats left of the old denominational structures ever leftward.

CP reached out to the Liberation Methodist Connexion for this story. While a representative said they would respond, a response was not provided by press time.

Leaving Regardless?

Although the Global Methodist Church lacks any conservative splinter competition and many leaders have signed on to the Protocol, its passage is not inevitable.

In September 2019, before the Protocol separation plan was announced, the Africa College of Bishops released a statement denouncing any plans to dissolve the United Methodist Church.

That we do not accept any plan that calls for the dissolution of the church and by default, the closure of General Agencies, they stated, as reported by United Methodist Insight.

 we call on the entire denomination to exercise restraint and work towards an approach to the human sexuality debate in ways that are humane and respectful.

Nevertheless, it was an African bishop, John Yambasu of Sierra Leone, who helped develop the Protocol plan that was announced months after the African bishops statement was released.

Boyette told CP that he believed, when it came to possible opposition from African delegates and bishops, ultimately, it is the rank and file clergy and laity who will make the decision on what they will do.

Those bishops from Africa who urged continued alignment with The United Methodist Church have not addressed how remaining aligned will solve the irreconcilable differences present in the Church, said Boyette.

When asked by CP what the GMC will do if the Protocol fails to pass at General Conference 2022, Boyette responded that there was still a chance that many congregations would leave regardless.

Those who are supportive of it and are theologically aligned with the Global Methodist Church have made it very clear from the inception that we cannot be part of the United Methodist Church if it changes its teachings or continues to be ungovernable, he explained.

Should the Protocol not be adopted and the United Methodist Church either changes its teachings or fails to resolve its lack of coherence, we anticipate that the Global Methodist Church will be launched.
We have been disappointed: Liberal congregations leaving United Methodist Church over homosexuality debate

Multiple theologically progressive congregations in the United Methodist Church are in the process of leaving the mainline Protestant denomination due to its stance on LGBT issues.

For decades, the UMC has debated whether to change its biblically-based position on homosexuality, labeling it as sinful, its ban on the ordination of noncelibate homosexuals, and defining marriage as only being between one man and one woman.

Although many expect a large number of conservative congregations to eventually leave the UMC because of the debate and form their own denomination, in recent months, some liberal congregations have already decided to exit.

HopeGateWay, a congregation in Portland, Maine, voted to leave the denomination on March 28, with the New England Annual Conference to vote on their disaffiliation in June.

Sara Ewing-Merrill, lead pastor at HopeGateWay, told The Christian Post that the March vote was 68 in favor and one against, with no plans at present to join another denomination.

We are exploring partnerships. We believe in connectionalism and ecumenical and interfaith work. We are in covenant with our fellow disaffiliating churches here in Maine, explained Ewing-Merrill.

Because of legislation passed at the special session of General Conference in 2019, HopeGateWay reported being able to keep its property and assets upon leaving the UMC.

For many, many years as we approached the next General Conferences, we have told our congregation that things would get better and the UMC would become more open and affirming. Every time we have been disappointed, Ewing-Merrill added.

Now that an option was created for us to make our own decision and not be dependent on others, we felt compelled to create a church where all are truly welcomed and affirmed.

Chebeague Island United Methodist Church, located on Chebeague Island, Maine, voted in February to leave the denomination following a discernment process that began in 2019.

As with HopeGateWay, Chebeague Island UMCs vote to disaffiliate still needs to be confirmed when the New England Annual Conference meets in June.

Chebeague Island Pastor Melissa Yosua-Davis told CP that her congregation will be released from their trust clause with the UMC when they fulfill certain payments to various entities.

Through agreement with the Board of Trustees of the New England Annual Conference, we will be paying our pro-rata share of the unfunded pension liability, as well as an additional year of mission shares, to honor the commitment of the conference to care for clergy in retirement and to leave in a way that respects the ongoing work of the Conference and its budgetary financial commitments, Yosua-Davis explained.

Yosua-Davis also told CP that while it's expected that many conservative churches will soon leave the UMC, it is no guarantee that the denomination that will remain will become entirely inclusive and affirming of LGBT individuals and their families.

That scenario could be years down the road. Even if the UMC changes its policies, which I hope happens, it will still be a long road for full and true inclusion, she added.

By leaving now, it enables the church to be more responsive to God's hopes and dreams for us and our community.

Bering Church of Houston, Texas, voted to leave the UMC on April 18, deciding to join the more theologically liberal mainline denomination, the United Church of Christ.

The Rev. Diane McGehee of Bering forwarded to CP the responses she gave to questions posed by the UMC Texas Annual Conference regarding her congregations plan to leave.

Berings sole reason for departing the UMC is the soul-level harm being done to persons who are LGBTQ+ and their families because of the official stance of the United Methodist Church that living out ones sexual orientation and gender identity as LGBTQ+ is incompatible with Christian teaching, said McGehee in the responses.

The weight of all of those years and the refusal of the denomination to act to end the discrimination deeply informs this decision.

According to Bering, the church will receive a general warranty deed to their property from the UMC after they pay for two years of apportionments and a future pension obligation.

Berings future is bright, continued McGehee. It is a vibrant, missionally active community, committed to bringing the Good News of the Gospel to all people, but especially those who have been pushed to the margins.

News of the departing progressive congregations comes as many conservatives within the UMC are planning to form their own denomination, known as the Global Methodist Church.

Keith Boyette, spokesman for the Global Methodist Church, told CP in an earlier interview that UMC leadership has shown an unwillingness to uphold its teachings on LGBT issues.

In the United States, particularly, some bishops, clergy, and churches are operating in open defiance to the teachings of the United Methodist Church, said Boyette. The Church has become ungovernable as a consequence, such unchecked defiance has destroyed the integrity of the Church.

In light of this, theologically conservative leaders have decided to launch a new denomination that will be true to its doctrine and teachings and end this endless conflict within the United Methodist Church.
Black-clad mob at UNT attacks dad fighting to save son from trans puberty blockers

Editors note: this article contains some profanity.

Liberal protesters at the University of North Texas denounced a concerned father who wants to stop the gender transition of his son as a fascist and forced the student organizer of a lecture in which the father spoke to hide in a closet amid threats to her safety.

The Young Conservatives of Texas, which has chapters at several college campuses in Texas, hosted an event featuring Jeff Younger at the Denton, Texas-based university on Wednesday.

Younger is a father who lost custody of his trans-identified biological son after objecting to his ex-wifes efforts to transition him from male to female.

Younger, who is running as a Republican for the Texas House of Representatives, was asked to give a presentation titled For the Future of Texas: Federalism as State Nationalism, Conservatism as Traditionalism, [and] Republican Politics as Restoration.

A promo for the event announced that Younger, a local business owner and veteran, would share his vision for Texas and stated that he had received national attention defending his young son against being forcibly transitioned by his ex-wife, and now looks to continue the fight representing Texas House District 63.

As a political candidate, Younger wants the state legislature to outlaw sex-change surgeries on children and criticizes the legislature for failing to do so in the last two sessions.

Initially scheduled for Feb. 23, a winter storm led the organizers to postpone his speech until this week.

Younger spoke before a crowd of students at UNT the day after advancing to a runoff in the Republican Primary for House District 63 and a week after the Texas Attorney General characterized gender reassignment surgeries and puberty blockers for the purpose of gender transition as child abuse in a formal opinion.

Video footage shared by independent journalist Andy Ngo reveals that Younger received an overwhelmingly negative reaction from liberal protesters in the audience.

The protesters, who expressed outrage at Youngers opposition to the efforts to promote the gender transitioning of children, pounded on the table and clapped their hands as they chanted F*** you, fascist. One protester is seen putting up their middle finger.

At the University of North Texas in Denton, far-left activists shut down the Young Conservatives of Texas (@YctUnt) event featuring the father who lost custody of his trans child. The radicals pounded on the table & shouted, F you, fascist over & over.pic.twitter.com/QRIAXcWBZK  Andy Ngo ?????????? (@MrAndyNgo) March 3, 2022

Additional video footage shared by Ngo shows that the heckling of Younger continued throughout the speech, with some joining Younger at the front of the room. The whiteboard had the phrase doesnt pay child support written on it in an attempt to take a dig at the concerned father, based on a premise he contended was inaccurate.

This is what leftist politics looks like, Younger remarked after a protester screamed in his face. Another protester set off a noisemaker.

At the University of North Texas, a trans-critical event by a conservative student group feat. @JeffYoungerTex was shut down. One person went to the front to scream. Another stood on the table & spit at the speaker after being called "she." More footage:https://t.co/IbwXOEziF9pic.twitter.com/IemEmT3DPD  Andy Ngo ?????????? (@MrAndyNgo) March 4, 2022

As UNT President Neal Smatresk noted in a letter to the campus community Thursday, the protest against Younger was not limited to the classroom at Curry Hall where his lecture took place.

A few hundred protestors gathered outside the building, holding signs and chanting, he said.

Smatresks letter also mentioned that the nature of the lecture led to additional police presence.

Because conversations surrounding the student organizations event, which focused on criminalizing healthcare for transgender children, have been contentious, UNT Police created a plan to ensure their ability to maintain a safe environment for our campus community, the student organizers, their guest, and event protestors, requesting advance assistance from both Denton Police and the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS).

Based on the event space capacity and for safety purposes, the room was limited to 80 attendees. A few hundred protestors gathered outside the building, holding signs and chanting, he added. The police agencies tasked with maintaining public safety were inside and outside the building. DPS officers were staged at a nearby location as an extra safety precaution.

Police believe a small group of protestors not affiliated with the university contributed to escalating the overall protest from peaceful to an aggressive encounter, Smatresk stated.

These actions culminated with a group of protesters swarming police, who were working to safely escort both the guest speaker and student organizers off campus, he explained. DPS was called in to assist with maintaining safety.

Ngo indicated that some in the group of protestors not affiliated with the university are believed to be linked to the Dallas-Fort Worth #antifa cell, adding that Law enforcement had to evacuate the speaker & conservative student organizer.

The student organizer, Kelly Neidert, detailed in a Twitter thread Thursday how concerns for her safety led to her requiring a police escort to depart from the event.

Last night I was evacuated from an event hosted by [the Young Conservatives of Texas at the University of North Texas] on my college campus, she recalled. I received violent threats and constant harassment leading up to the event and was targeted by Antifa protesters. They separated me from my police escort and I ended up hiding in a janitor closet.

In video footage posted by Neidert, multiple protesters yelled F*** you, Kelly, and one called her another highly inappropriate name. After hiding in the closet for a period of time, Neidert was rushed into a police car.

Last night I was evacuated from an event hosted by @YctUnt on my college campus. I received violent threats and constant harassment leading up to the event and was targeted by Antifa protesters. They separated me from my police escort and I ended up hiding in a janitor closet. pic.twitter.com/WO0ChTlXlh  Kelly (@kelly_neidert) March 4, 2022

Neiderts boyfriend, Alex Stein, posted a screenshot of what he purports are threatening Instagram messages she received expressing a desire to beat you and your ugly boyfriend  up at the same time and tie you together and hang you off the side of a f***ing building.

Additionally, the Instagram user discussed how he cant wait to see the videos come out of UNT of Kelly getting her a** beat, predicting that people would throw your ugly a** down the tallest flight of stairs they can find.

Smatresk elaborated on the adverse treatment experienced by Neidert in his letter.

A group of protestors surrounded the police vehicles containing both the student organizers and their guest and attempted to block their exit from the scene by banging on the vehicles and impeding their movement, he stated. The officers engaged emergency lights and sounded warning signs repeatedly while inching forward as other officers assisted in clearing a path for the vehicles to exit safely.

The UNT President reported that we have heard accounts of a protester who was reportedly injured during that time, stressing that we do not have confirmed details of that report.

A liberal Twitter user, Denton Possum, implied that Dentons police apparently have no qualms about running over students because as soon as Kelly was settled in the car, the driver accelerated towards the crowd rapidly and a protestor was unable to back away fast enough, and was struck by the front of the vehicle.

Denton's police apparently have no qualms about running over students. As soon as Kelly was settled in the car, the driver accelerated towards the crowd rapidly. A protestor was unable to back away fast enough, and was struck by the front of the vehicle. pic.twitter.com/DOvf7ob4c0  Denton Possum (@DentonPossum) March 3, 2022

Smatresk praised UNT Police for working to create and maintain an environment safe for all students to express themselves, regardless of topic, but said that the behavior by some individuals is not reflective of the UNT I know and love.

Smatresk stated that the school has always touted the importance of freedom of expression and been proud of our students ability to speak up for themselves and participate in nonviolent protest.

The presidents letter did not sit well with liberal student activists, who will hold a protest Friday afternoon expressing opposition to the tone of his letter.

The Walk Out Protest is directed at Smatresk for condoning hate speech and ignoring the voices of students.

Younger details his family situation more on his campaign website, saying his ex-wife began to teach his son that he is a girl at the age of 2. He said a pediatrician plans to put his son on hormone drugs around the age of 9.

Ive spent over a million dollars in total economic costs trying to stop her, the courts, and the schools from transitioning my son to a girl, the website explains.

My ex-wife now has authority from the State of Texas to cross-dress my nine-year-old son.

Younger has issues with Coppell Independent School District calling his son by a girls name and allowing him to use the girls bathroom. He argued that they actively teach his son that he is a girl.
Principal bans teacher from attending church event; superintendent steps in after legal pressure

A school superintendent in the midwest has overturned a principals decision to forbid a teacher from attending a church event during nonschool hours because the event was also to be attended by two students.

Liberty Counsel, a conservative Christian legal group that advocates for First Amendment right, says that it has come to the defense of a teacher at an undisclosed high school in the United States after she was told by the school principal that she could not attend an event organized by her own church.

According to the legal group, the principal in question told the teacher in December that attending a church event in which two students at the school would also be present would violate some sort of fraternization policy.

The two students were attending the church event because they also attend the same church as the teacher.

At the beginning of the month, a representative of the Orlando-based nonprofit called the school district asking for the principals policy to be tossed out. The legal group explained that the policy is unconstitutional on grounds that it prevented the teacher from exercising her religious freedom rights guaranteed by the First Amendment.

The names of the school, teacher and principal involved in the matter have been left undisclosed by Liberty Counsel to protect the privacy of the teacher.

It makes no sense to have a policy like that, Liberty Counsel Chairman Mat Staver told The Christian Post in an interview Tuesday. Lets say a teacher is attending a church and students decided to also attend the same church; does that mean that the teacher has to leave that church and go someplace else?

Staver noted that in some communities, it could be hard for a teacher to find a church where there are no students included in the congregation. He also asked how teachers are supposed to know whether or not students will be at an event they plan to attend.

What if you go to a Christmas event in December, for example, or some other event or even church service on a Sunday or a choir? he posed. It makes no sense and it is unconstitutional to impose that kind of rule.

Staver asserted that teachers have a First Amendment right both on campus and off campus.

During nonschool hours outside of school, they have the same rights as any other citizen, he stated. They can engage in First Amendment-expressive activity, especially in church, without the schools intervention. This is actually government interfering in the free exercise of religion and speech and the free association guaranteed by the First Amendment.

Staver said that Liberty Counsels correspondence with the school district led to a prompt reversal of the principals policy.

The superintendent correctly reversed the principals decision to ban teachers from attending the same church events as students, Staver said in a statement. Teachers acting in their individual capacity after school have the same rights as any others who are not teachers.

This is not the first time that Liberty Counsel has come to the defense of that teacher.

About a year ago, the same principal tried to prevent the teacher from leading an after-school Bible club that had the approval and permission of parents of the students who wanted to take part. Even without the teacher, one student offered to lead the group as a student-led club. But that idea was also rejected by the principal.

The teacher eventually contacted Liberty Counsel, which sent a demand letter to the school superintendent on her behalf. The principals decision, in that case, was also overruled by the superintendent.

I think the first time we could give the [principal] the benefit of the doubt and that the principal acted out of ignorance and misinformation when she said the teacher couldnt be a part of a Bible study even though parents provided permission, Staver said.

As wrong as it is and unconstitutional as it is, maybe the [principal] had good intentions. But when it happens again within a year and it involves something that is common-sense wrong yet alone constitutionally impermissible to impose, I now believe that this principal has some animus toward religion and Christianity in particular.  I think the principal has some other kind of motive that is hostile to Christianity.

Staver, who has in the past represented high-profile clients such as controversial Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis, warned that actions like the ones taken by the principal could have led to a lawsuit if they were not addressed by the superintendent.

Some people might not be willing to do a demand letter before they file suit, Staver said. The school might find themselves a defendant in a lawsuit over this principals actions. Now it is a recurring pattern and they need to do something to hold her accountable.

Recently, Liberty Counsel intervened in a Nebraska school district after an elementary school principal sent out instructions telling teachers to stay away from using Christmas-related messaging and activities in the classroom. The teacher even warned that teachers could not give out candy canes, asserting that they symbolize Jesus.

After Liberty Counsels intervention, the principals guidance was overturned, she was placed on administrative leave and eventually resigned.
'Ditch the timeline: Sadie Robertson Huff urges Gen Z not to grow impatient, trust in Gods timing

Sadie Robertson Huff, who rose to fame as a teenager on the hit series "Duck Dynasty," shared what it means for Christians to be anointed, stressing that while believers are set apart and sacred, that doesn't mean they'll be quickly elevated to positions of authority, using the story of David in the book of Samuel as an example.

Speaking at the LO Sister App Retreat in Monroe, Louisiana, Robertson Huff said many in her generation, Gen Z, allow pride and fear to lead them to question why God doesn't work on their timetable.

God, she said, doesn't instantly elevate Christians to their desired platform or position because there are experiences they need to go through first so that He can prepare them to use their anointing, she emphasized, while preaching on the topic, "Anointed Right Now" on Feb. 22.

Reading from the book of Samuel, the 24-year-old pointed the audience to the story of David, who, long before he became king, worked for many years in the fields as a shepherd tending to his sheep while he was anointed by God. But during this time of fulfilling his duties as a shepherd, God was preparing him for the battle he would face against the giant Goliath and for his eventual succession as king of Israel.

Sometimes youre like, I am anointed. But why am I watching the sheep? ... Im supposed to be king, right? But its not time to be king yet. Its time to watch the sheep, Robertson Huff said.

David is anointed. He is gifted. He is good-looking. He is killing it. And hes keeping the sheep. So my point is: you can be gifted, you can be anointed, you can be called by God, you can even have it in your future that you might be king, but that does not mean that your timing with the sheep is not extremely important in your life, she emphasized.

As a young shepherd, David used his musical giftings by playing the harp while tending to his sheep. This led to David being noticed by one of King Saul's servants, who recommended his musical talents to help soothe the king who was "tormented" by an evil spirit (1 Samuel 16:14).

[Davids] not trying to promote himself. Hes not going around the palace and playing the harp. Notice that? Hes not outside saying, Notice me. Im so awesome, she added. Hes not trying to get a meeting with the king. ... Hes literally sitting with the sheep, playing the harp. He didnt have to promote himself. Because when youre anointed, you dont have to promote yourself.

When youre anointed, you dont have to strive for someone to notice you because God sees you and Gods timing on when you will be seen will be intentional. And it wont be until youre ready, she continued.

After David's performance for King Saul, instead of demanding the right to be elevated to a higher position, David went right back to his duties tending the sheep, she said.

"The thing that really qualified [David] was that God was with him. Thats what made people want to be around him.  And I love how, when David goes in and hes playing for the king,  Hes not trying to be king, Robertson Huff explained.

Hes not trying to rush the process. Because so many of us do that. Its like we finally get our opportunity, and we just want it to just blow up, she added.

Robertson Huff said that many times when Christians receive opportunities to use their gifts and anointing to bring God glory, they oftentimes try to get ahead of Gods timing.

We try to rush the process," she said. "We try to promote ourselves to all these people. And we dont even realize that we actually are even promoting ourselves to God. We say, God, Im so anointed. Why am I with the sheep? As if He didnt anoint you.

And God is [saying], You dont know that while youre with the sheep, Im preparing you. You dont know that while youre playing the guitar, Im preparing you. You dont know that while youre making those Instagram posts, Im preparing you. You dont know that while youre praying, Im preparing you, Robertson Huff continued.

So before you promote yourself, you just need to prepare yourself. ... Before I can ever put you in front of giants, I got to make sure you know how to steward a sheep, she added.

Because King Saul did not have a pure heart, God removed him as king of Israel and David rose to power.

You could be qualified with all the things that could make you king. But if you dont have a pure heart, youre not going to be king," she maintained. "If you dont figure out how to sit with the sheep and tend those. If you dont figure out how to play your gifting well, then whos going to notice? How are you going to get seen?

Its important for Christians to wait on Gods timing, she reiterated, even when Gods timing is not aligned with our expectations.

It was like five years, they believe, from the time [David] was anointed to the time he was fighting Goliath. And when he was fighting Goliath, he wasnt even king yet. Im just saying that God is a God of very specific time and that time sometimes is not going to fit in your timeline. ... My best advice for you is: ditch the timeline, Robertson Huff declared.

When it was time for David to battle against Goliath, she continued, he was prepared because during his time as a shepherd, he had to occasionally fight off a lion or bear to protect the flock.

You know how he was confident because he was faithful in the private moments because he was obedient. He stepped out when a lion or bear came and he trusted God, she added.

When Christians feel tempted to rush ahead of God and ask why their dreams arent being fulfilled, or when Christians feel fearful of taking a leap of faith and conquering their dreams, they should look to Jesus, she advised.

I hear our generation say 'why' so much to God. And God can handle your why questions. He really can. ... Im not even saying that He doesnt appreciate when you ask why, Robertson Huff said.

We can look at Jesus life and know that, in that moment, it was probably so hard ... to just carry that weight, and it was just like, why. But Jesus knew and God knew that because three days later, He was going to rise and thats going to give hope for the entire world, she declared.
'Unholy Bible': University promotes art project of desecrated Bible, satanic Christ

A universitys promotion of an atheist students art display of a desecrated Bible and demonic images covering Jesus' face has sparked outrage from Christians who meet on campus for worship.

The University of Southern Maine has found itself embroiled in a controversy over the art piece called the Unholy Bible: Very Revised Standard Edition.

The piece was created by sophomore Riley Harris for an art class assignment requiring students to re-purpose a book and create something new.

Harris display consists of a Bible with torn pages that are painted orange to look like flames. According to The Kennebec Journal, satanic images cover the face of Christ in the display.

Harris told the Journal that the piece is supposed to symbolize challenges to religious authority.

People question different types of authority, but for some reason, religious authority seems too taboo to question, so I thought I would give it a shot, Harris told the newspaper.

The project was completed for a class and later put on display by the university in a building in which community organizations and religious groups rent space regularly.

One of those groups that meet in the building is the Casco Bay Church of Christ.

This is someones sacred text being desecrated, destroyed and displayed in a public place, church member Charlie Flynn told the news outlet. I couldnt help but feel no ones sacred text should be treated that way. I think its very inappropriate and repugnant.

Despite some Christians finding the display offensive, the school has stood by Harris on grounds that he has protected freedom of speech.

Jared Cash, the universitys vice president for enrollment management and marketing, told CentralMaine.com that university policy dictates that the institution must support free speech as long as it does not violate the law, defame specific individuals, genuinely threaten or harass others or violate privacy or confidentiality requirements or interests.

Academic freedom is the freedom to present and discuss all relevant matters in and beyond the classroom, to explore all avenues of scholarship, research and creative expression, and to speak or write without any censorship, threat, restraint, or discipline by the university with regard to the pursuit of truth in the performance of ones teaching, research, publishing or service obligation, the policy reads.

The policy further states that demands for civility and mutual respect will not be used to justify restricting the discussion or expression of ideas or speech that may be disagreeable or even offensive to some members of the university community.

The display of Harris work of art also drew the ire of Christian conservative pundit Todd Starnes.

"He actually ripped pages out of the Bible and painted them to look like flames from the lake of fire, Starnes told CBN News. Then he took portraits and paintings of Christ and in place of the face of Jesus, he placed a satanic image. You can actually see the Nativity scene with Mary cradling the Christ child and there is an evil satanic face on the Christ child.

Despite understanding the rights of free speech, Flynn still considers Harris piece hateful.

If I saw a Quran with pig blood on it I would certainly call someone  or a Torah with unclean foods on it, Flynn was quoted as saying. This is a Bible with Satans image put over Jesus image and around Christmastime. I dont understand why that would be viewable in an institution of higher learning. This is USM, a school that services the community.

Starnes said that it would be improbable to see a school like the University of Southern Maine display a desecrated Quran or satanic images of the Islamic prophet Muhammad.

Here in the United States of America, only Christians and Jews are allowed to be attacked for their religious beliefs, Starnes argued.

The display also drew an objection from the evangelical grassroots organization My Faith Votes.

This is sad, a Facebook post from the organization reads. It seems here in the U.S., Jews and Christians can be attacked for their religious beliefs  but Muslims seem to be off-limits.

In 2018, USM also received pushback when it removed three oil paintings created by a former sex offender at its Lewiston-Auburn campus because administrators feared it could trigger victims of abuse.

Critics felt that the school unfairly censored the artist who had paid the societal debt for a 20-year-old conviction.
Church sued by employee who resigned for cohabitating with boyfriend wins in court

An appeals court has ruled that a Wisconsin church daycare employee who left her job over a policy barring unmarried employees from cohabitating was not wrongfully terminated.

Sandra Sandoval sued Capitoland Christian Center Church, Inc., claiming the institution ended her employment because she violated an employment agreement that prohibited workers from cohabitating outside of marriage. Sandoval contends that the Madison-based church discriminated against her due to her marital status.

In a per curiam decision released last Thursday, the Wisconsin Court of Appeals panel which included judges JoAnne Kloppenburg, Rachel Graham, and Jennifer Nashold  ruled against Sandoval, upholding a prior ruling from the Madison Equal Opportunities Commission.

According to the decision, Sandoval signed a Statement of Affirmation and Agreement, where she agreed to refrain from co-habitation with members outside of marriage as a condition of employment.

Sandoval was hired to cook for the church daycare center in 2014. The fact that she lived with her boyfriend was not brought up until January of the following year.

The panel concluded in part that she was not wrongfully dismissed from the position because the church did not explicitly fire her, noting that the director of the church daycare center had wanted to work something out regarding the employee agreement violation.

The director of the church daycare center, Brenda Van Rossum, testified that when she informed Sandoval that Capitoland could not allow its employees to live with each other outside of marriage, she replied, its okay, Ill be done then.

Van Rossum reported indicating to Sandoval that she did not want her to resign right away and announced her intention to touch base with the Capitoland pastor (Samuel Jake Stauffacher) and go from there.

Additionally, she said she encouraged Sandoval to come back the next day and to not just resign on the spot like that.

The director of the church daycare center hoped Sandoval could elaborate on her arrangement to determine whether it conflicted with the agreement, but she repeatedly responded to such requests by insisting, no, thats okay, Ill be done.

It didnt seem like she wanted to discuss it, Van Rossum concluded.

Sandoval deduced based on the conversation that she had already been fired even though she was never explicitly told that. She called in to say she would not be coming into work the day after the discussion and did not show up or call in for the following three days, which was a cause for termination of employment.

When Sandoval returned to work four days after her conversation with her supervisor to hand in her keycard, she claims she was told, I could not return to work unless I got married, and if I didnt, I could not return to work.

Based on testimony from Sandoval and her former employer, the panel determined that Sandovals noncompliance with the Agreement was ongoing, [and] Capitoland had not yet imposed any ultimatum on Sandoval.

Additionally, the judges affirm the Commissions finding that Sandoval voluntarily resigned her employment with Capitoland.

Sandoval does not develop any argument explaining why she would be entitled to any of the damages she seeks if, as we have concluded, Capitoland did not terminate or constructively discharge her employment, the panel reasoned.

The Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative legal nonprofit representing Capitoland, celebrated the ruling that reaffirmed the earlier decision against Sandoval.

Every church has a statement of faith, and it is not only reasonable, but expected for a church to require its employees to agree with and follow its religious beliefs, asserted ADF Senior Counsel Jeremiah Galus in a statement released Thursday. Were pleased the Wisconsin Court of Appeals agreed and that Capitoland Christian Center Church will be free to continue its great work in the Madison community.

The Madison Equal Opportunities Commission ruled against Sandoval in May 2019, concluding that she was unable to draw a causal connection between the adverse action and her protected classes (sex, race, and/or national origin).

Sandoval argued that the commission's determination that she voluntarily resigned her employment was "erroneous" and claimed that the commission was wrong to determine that the church's "no cohabitation provision" doesn't violate the state's Equal Opportunities Ordinance.

"[R]egardless of the merits of Sandovals argument that the Agreements cohabitation clause violates the Equal Opportunities Ordinance, Sandoval does not argue that she is entitled to relief if she voluntarily resigned her employment," the panel ruled. "During the proceedings before the Commission, Sandoval sought back pay, front pay, and an unspecified amount of damages for emotional distress, but it appears that some if not all of the damages sought by Sandoval may be dependent on proof that she was subjected to an adverse employment action."
Pastor Greg Locke says hes being threatened with death, hexes and sex toys for exposing witches

Pastor Greg Locke, who exposed the presence of suspected witches at his church in recent weeks, says hes being threatened with death, hexes, sex toys and glitter bombs for preaching about deliverance from evil.

Locke, the leader of the Global Vision Bible Church in Tennessee, has been preaching about deliverance at his church for the last two months. On Sunday, he referred to his latest series as the most dangerous message hes ever preached.

The most dangerous message Ive ever preached is the message of deliverance in the name of Jesus Christ. Its caused more anger; its caused more pushback, its caused more threats, more evil, it stirred up more problems, he said. Its done more to hurt people in our church  meaning that friends and family have forsaken them.

In a video message to his more than 2 million followers on Facebook Friday, Locke called the opposition to his deliverance message unbelievable.

Its really been unbelievable. I havent even checked the mail yet today, but you can ask anybody on our staff or people that volunteer here with us in deliverance ministry at the office. It is non-stop, he explained.

We get hundreds and hundreds, many times thousands, of phone calls every week. The voicemail will only hold 40 voicemails at a time. We can be on the phone and the voicemails will fill up about every two hours, and so many of them are like non-callback numbers, private numbers, people calling us and fussing, he continued.

Locke revealed one man recently "promised to come to the tent and slice my throat and to kill me," while others have sent sex toys and glitter bombs in the mail.

"Everybody is mad about the thing I said about calling out witches," he said. "They are real. They know theyre real. Theyre not hiding the fact that theyre real. Its just that the Church is too unbiblical and ignorant to recognize witchcraft, sorcery and spells and curses when they see them. We literally got a box the other day that said it was from my mom that was full of all kind of crystals and hexes and vexes and curses.

Locke added that the Church of Satan sends him postcards every day, and some detractors have been trying to get him banned from his favorite Dunkin' Donuts coffee shop.

The Tennessee pastors ongoing crusade to promote deliverance in American churches began generating national headlines after he said a demon told him the names of six witches in his congregation during a deliverance session at his church.

He insisted that while many of his critics have been trying to make him look crazy for pushing his deliverance message, he is confident that the Bible supports it.

During his sermon on Sunday, Locke said he's been reading the book of Psalms in the Bible to encourage himself.

How many times in the 150 chapters of the book of Psalms, David or one of the Old Testament writers . wrote about the subject of deliverance? You ought to do a Blue Letter Bible study sometime of how many times the word 'deliver' and 'deliverance' [are] even used in the book of Psalms. Its uncanny, he said.

Locke said he began to notice many of the headings to the Psalms include the word "deliverance."

"As I read through the Psalms, Im amazed ... at how much deliverance is mentioned in the Bible and more shocked at how little preachers have said anything about it for decades, he added.

Its almost like its been hidden under a rock for so many years. Then all of a sudden, we start peeling things back and making the invisible Kingdom visible, and the devil gets so stirred up when we bring national, global attention he would assume stay a secret.
Islamic terrorists kill 3 Christians, destroy church in Nigeria

Suspected terrorists from the Islamic State West Africa Province have killed three Christians and destroyed a church in an attack in a village in northeast Nigerias Chibok area, according to reports.

The attack took place in the predominantly Christian village of Kautikari in Borno state on Friday evening in which three Christians were killed and the building of the Church of the Brethren in Nigeria was destroyed, Morning Star News reported Sunday, citing area residents.

Nigerian newspaper the Daily Post identified the deceased as Bulama Wadir, a traditional rulers son, and two internally displaced persons.

The Kautikari community, which lives on the fringes of Sambisa forest, a base of ISWAP terrorists, was also attacked in mid-January, when 24 Christian women and children were captured and taken into captivity, with 20 of them still held captive. The four others managed to escape in late January.

A worship auditorium of the local Church of the Brethren in Nigeria was also damaged in the January attack.

Kautikari village is near Chibok, where over 200 girls were kidnapped from a school in 2014.

Chibok leaders were quoted as saying that their communities have been attacked more than 72 times since the 2014 kidnappings. After eight years in which 57 girls escaped on their own and others were released, 110 of the girls remain in captivity, according to the Chibok Area Development Association.

In an earlier interview with The Christian Post, Emeka Umeagbalai of the Anambra-based International Society for Civil Liberties and the Rule of Law said kidnappings of Christians happen for various reasons.

Boko Haram, ISWAP and radicalized members of the Fulani herding communities are motivated by money, while others are inspired by Islamic radicalism.

Security analysts say kidnapping for ransom has become a lucrative industry in Nigeria as weapons are becoming available to militants in Nigeria thanks to war-torn Libya.

In Nigerias northeast, Boko Haram and ISWAP have killed thousands and displaced millions.

The U.S.-based persecution watchdog group International Christian Concern warns that the Nigerian government continues to deny any religious motivation behind the attacks and has recently convinced the U.S. Department of State to do the same.

Many have raised concerns about what they perceive as the governments inaction in holding terrorists accountable for the rising number of murders and kidnappings.

However, last November, the Biden administration removed Nigeria from the U.S. State Departments list of countries of particular concern, a designation reserved for the countries that tolerate or engage in some of the world's worst violations of religious freedom. Nigeria was added to the CPC list in December 2020 during the final months of the Trump administration. ICC identified the African country as one of its 2021 Persecutors of the Year.

Nigeria is one of the deadliest places on Earth for Christians, as 50,000 to 70,000 have been killed since 2000, the ICC Persecutor of the Year report states.

According to Open Doors USAs 2022 World Watch List report, at least 4,650 Christians were killed between Oct. 1, 2020, and Sept. 30, 2021, up from 3,530 the previous reporting year, and more than 2,500 Christians were kidnapped, up from 990 the previous reporting year.
Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson has begun her fight against criticism from the Republican party on her way to her Senate confirmation hearing scheduled to start on Mar. 21.

Critics have started to assault the nominee, saying that she is a "radical" who was being promoted by "dark money," and another that demanded her to reveal her LSAT scores. Senators from the GOP who will vote on whether to confirm Jackson to the SC have, at least publicly, are keeping their thoughts to themselves.

Ketanji Brown Jackson's Nomination

Republican lawmakers say that they are keeping an open mind while they prepare for personal meetings with U.S. President Joe Biden's nominee in a four-day confirmation hearing later this month. However, several senior party officials have started quietly sketching out the criticism and challenges that Jackson could receive from members of the GOP.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell on Thursday telegraphed the range of attack that Jackson should anticipate, including questions about her background as a public defender leading her to be soft on crime, her commitment not to oppose Supreme Court expansion, and accusations that she is promoted by "dark money" groups, as per the Washington Post.

The situation comes as Jackson is endorsed by a group of two dozen former law clerks from the 1999 Supreme Court term who want her to don a black robe. The group sent a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee praising the intellect and character of Biden's nominee with whom they served before.

Read Also: Ketanji Brown Jackson Meets With Senators on Her Way To Face Senate Confirmation Hearing on Mar. 21

The group wrote in the letter that while they all held diverse points of view on politics, judicial philosophy, and many other things, they all supported Jackson's nomination to the Supreme Court. They argued that the reason was that the nominee was eminently qualified for this specific role.

According to ABC News, the support of the former clerks comes as Jackson is facing questions about her experience and qualification after Biden's announcement of her nomination last month. She made history as the first Black woman to be nominated to the Supreme Court.

Securing Key Votes

Republican Sen. Susan Collins, who is considered a key swing vote, is scheduled to meet with Jackson on Tuesday. The event will mark a crucial sit-down for Biden's nominee as Democrats hope to gain GOP support for her nomination to the Supreme Court.

Last year, Collins and Sens. Lindsey Graham and Lisa Murkowski voted to confirm Jackson to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, which is considered to be the second-most important federal court in the U.S. This week, the Maine Republican said that she had not yet made a decision on whether or not she will support Jackson's nomination but said that a sit-down was crucial to her decision.

In a statement, Collins said that Jackson's nomination to the court of appeals and her recent path to the Supreme Court were on completely different levels. Democrats view the Maine senator, who supported former President Barack Obama's Supreme Court nominees, as a crucial supporter for Jackson's confirmation, The Hill reported.



Related Article: Biden Interviews 3 Black Women in Search of Supreme Court Nominee

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From the mountains to the sea: treasures from the Golden Age of British watercolours

As some 200 works from Martyn Gregorys collection of British art are offered online, specialist Annabel Kishor and writer Alexandra Harris examine a group of pictures that both reflect the passions of the Romantic poets and prefigure 20th-century painting

In 1781, from a small art materials shop on the Strand in London, an Englishman named William Reeves started selling his latest invention: hard cakes of paint. Roughly equal in size to a box of matches, and offered in an assortment of colours such as Prussian blue, indigo and vermilion, the dried blocks were presented in a wooden box light enough to carry under one arm. Beneath them was a drawer just big enough for a palette, a few sheets of paper and brushes. The only thing an artist needed to provide in order to work was water. Watercolour paint itself wasnt a new invention. During the Middle Ages it had been used for manuscript illuminations, and in the Renaissance Albrecht Durer adopted the medium to create wildlife studies such as Young Hare. Reevess creation, however, was accompanied by a blossoming interest in the natural world, described by the Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1798 as loving fields and woods and mountains with almost a visionary fondness. By making paint more portable, Reeves freed artists to work spontaneously as they explored the great outdoors. This afforded them the opportunity to do with the brush what the Romantic poets achieved with a pen. As a result, the following 100 years became known as Britains Golden Age of watercolour painting.

Open a larger version of this image John Varley (1778-1842), Cader Idris, Snowdonia, Wales. Pencil and watercolour on paper. 8 x 15 in (22.2 x 39.3 cm). Sold for 9,450 on 24 March 2022, Online

The spontaneity and swiftness of watercolour painting, with its rich colours and exact tonal control, made it perfect for capturing fleeting light, while free brushwork and rough-textured paper could be used to enhance the drama of natural phenomena. Harnessing these techniques, artists such as Thomas Girtin, John Sell Cotman, David Cox and Peter de Wint discovered lucid and expressive ways to represent nature  and, in some cases, to produce works that prefigured Modernism and abstraction. Many of them travelled to remote corners of the British Isles in search of the most stirring landscapes, which prior to the advent of the railways was often an arduous undertaking. A handful even employed watercolours to depict the exotic subjects they encountered on Grand Tours and journeys to the far flung Oriental lands of Egypt, Turkey and the Middle East. In 1804 the Society of Painters in Water Colours was formed with a view to sharing new technical skills, which ultimately stimulated further stylistic advancements. It also promoted the medium in an increasingly competitive art market.

Open a larger version of this image William Turner of Oxford (1889-1862), Dawn, Loch Torridon, Western Highlands, Scotland. Pencil, watercolour and touches of bodycolour, heightened with gum arabic on paper. 17 x 34 in (44.4 x 88.3 cm). Sold for 25,200 on 24 March 2022, Online

From 10 to 24 March, Christies will offer a selection of Golden Age watercolours in Dramas of Light and Land: The Martyn Gregory Collection of British Art. In the film above, Christies British Drawings and Watercolours specialist Annabel Kishor and writer and cultural historian Professor Alexandra Harris discuss how artists changed the character of landscape painting, as shown in lots from the sale including rugged views of Welsh and Scottish mountains by the pioneering painter John Varley and his pupil William Turner of Oxford.

Open a larger version of this image Nicholas Pocock (1740-1821), Fingal's Cave, Staffa, Inner Hebrides, Scotland, 1792. Pencil, pen and ink and watercolour on paper. 12 x 16 (30.5 x 41 cm). Sold for 4,032 on 24 March 2022, Online

Another of the paintings they examine, by Nicholas Pocock, depicts Fingals Cave in Scotlands Inner Hebrides, a rock formation that also made a strong impression on the Romantic poets Keats and Wordsworth, as well as the composer Felix Mendelssohn. Harris reminds us of Keatss poem On Visiting Staffa, in which he describes the cave as this cathedral of the sea.

Open a larger version of this image William Green (1760-1823), Ruined Ash Tree in Rydale Park, Ambleside, Lake District. Pencil, pen and brown and watercolour heightened with gum arabic and with scratching out. 14 x 19 in (36.2 x 50.5 cm). Sold for 10,080 on 24 March 2022, Online

The success of these artists, explains Harris, stemmed from their passion for the drama of the British landscape. Moving on to a painting by William Green of Rydale Park in Cumbria, Kishor speaks of what was an extraordinary demand for this type of view from new tourists coming to the Lake District. Some of the painters pioneering watercolour techniques  such as leaving blank, white space to illustrate clouds and layering washes of paints with varying opacity  would play a role in shaping the styles of modern British painters in the 20th century, including the brothers John and Paul Nash, both of whom are also represented in the sale.

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When Sydney Cannarozzi was young, she told us that she didnt know that I was going to work in beer. But as a teenager, I always thought that working in beer would be a dream job.

Cannarozzi has now been a professional brewer for over 10 years, but it hasnt been exactly easy.

Women have to prove themselves ten times more than any man, she said. It seems like we have to explain ourselves all the time.

Being a woman in the beer industry is still a bit of a rarity. According to a study by the national organization the Brewers Association in 2021, only 7.5% of brewers are female, and only 2% of breweries are wholly owned by women. About 51% of breweries are owned by a male/female team. We dont know the percentages of women brewers and owners in Michigan, as the Michigan Liquor Control Commission doesnt ask for demographics when people apply for a license.

Originally from Riverside, California, Cannarozzi moved to Michigan after meeting her now-husband during a summer spent working in Colorado. Chris Fischer was a Michigan native, so the couple moved back here, where Cannarozzi promptly fell in love, not just with Fischer but with Michigan as well.

Lake Michigan just blew me away, she said. Everything was so green. The cost of living was great, I couldnt believe how affordable it was.

Cannarozzi delivered pizzas for two years, while she continued her homebrewing escapades. She got started early with fermenting.

At 16 I was making prison wine in my closet, she said with a laugh.  I was making hooch in my closet. In a 5-gallon water jug. I used that so I could watch the fermentation since it was a clear jug. And it just blew my mind. I never read a book on brewing. I just started mixing juice, bread yeast, sugar and fruit. It was such a mess!

Two good things came out of this closet hooch, Cannarozzi said.

We always had backup booze, and it sparked an interest in me a long, long time ago," she said.

As Cannarozzi approached the legal age of 21, she had a revelation.

A light bulb went off, she said. I was close to 21. I could actually work in the beer industry.

She started dropping off resumes to breweries along the Lake Michigan lakeshore, and ended up scoring a job at Our Brewing in Holland as a bartender. It was one foot in the brewery door, so to speak.

No shy wallflower, Cannarozzi knew of an opportunity when she saw one.

I would force my way into the production facility at Our all the time, Id say teach me all the things," she said.

A few months later, she attended an event that would really change her life. And in the spirit of full foreclosure, Ill let you know that I was there for that fateful day. In fact, there were several women in attendance that would become mentors for Cannarozzi as she entered the brewing industry.

Amanda Pants Geiger was brewing at Hudsonville Pike 51 Brewery at the time.

A regular at Pike had met her when she moved here from California, Geiger said And she told her about the Fermenta brew day.

Fermenta-A Womens Craft Collective is a charitable non-profit organization, founded in 2014 by brewer Stacey Roth, Shorts Brewery sales manager Pauline Knighton-Preuter and brewer Angie Williams.

Created as a way to encourage more women to become involved in the beer industry, the group focuses on education, collaborative brewing, sharing of knowledge and mentorship. Currently, the group is open to any female involved in any and all fermented beverages and food industries. They offer educational events and seminars, and special scholarships to help promote education amongst its members.

That special day, a group of some of the top, and only, women brewers in West Michigan for a special collaborative brew in honor of Fermenta.

Amanda Geiger, who was a brewer at Pike 51 at that time, hosted a women's collaboration brew day, said Laura Houser, brewer at Founders Brewing in Grand Rapids.

She was in attendance that day, along with her partner Tara Durkin. Also in attendance were Sheryl Rose and Bonnie Steinman, who currently works at Bells.

It truly was a fantastic day," she said. "It brought in so many different women. All of them chomping at the bit to hang out with other women and brew and talk about beer with only other women. Maybe that doesn't sound like a big deal, but it was the first time most of us had been a part of anything like that.

I popped into the party a little late, after the ladies had been brewing for a while, to catch the story of this exciting gathering. I remember walking through the door and being inundated with peals of delighted laughter.

We laughed so much that day, my sides were sore, Houser remembered.

I was terrified, said Cannarozzi. I had never met any of you. Someone had said that these women wanted to make beer with me. That day was so much fun, that day I didnt even know where I could go with my career, and that day gave me a lot of opportunities.

She was the first one to show up that morning, Geiger said. And she was straight-up super sunshine energy, just ready to brew and learn everything she could.

I think Syd was like the third person to arrive that morning after Tara and I, said Houser. She was just a baby, maybe 22 or 23. I remember how nervous and excited she was to brew and to meet all the other women. And we all got along with her immediately. She was so friendly and helpful, and had a great sense of humor.

Cannarozzi also brought some presents to share that day.

I remember she even brought in bottles of her own homebrew to share with everyone, and it was phenomenal, said Houser. I knew then that if she could figure out a way to break into the industry, she would do great things.

She started bouncing around to different breweries, stopping by on brew days to help and gain knowledge.

I built up a resume of these experiences, she said.

She ended up applying for and getting, a full-time job at Trail Point Brewing in Allendale.

I was the only person doing all the production," Cannarozzi said. "Id work here during the week, and then go back and bartend at Our Brewing on the weekends.

At Trail Point, Cannarozzi came under the tutelage of Gary Evans and Jeff Knoblock.

Jeff has always been super supportive of me, she said. Gary was fantastic, he taught me a lot. I give him a lot of credit. Beer-making can be kind of easy, but there are alot of mistakes you can make, and he taught me discipline. I give him a lot of respect.

From there, Cannarozzi moved on to managing the cellar at Our Brewing, and then took the leap to the big dog in town, Founders.

I wanted a challenge, she said. I applied for a cellar position, as there were a lot more of those than brewing positions.

Here, she blossomed.

The cellar position at Founders back then, we were responsible for everything on the cold side until packaging," she said. "So that meant, sanitzing, cleaning tanks, working the centrifuge, and clarifying beer without a filter. I learned about dry hopping, fruit additions, and was there for all of their seltzer trials. I got to work in the 300 barrel brewhouse, 3 days a week.

Cannarozzi brewed some of Founders' experimental and small-batch beers.

The process on such a large scale was fascinating, said Cannarozzi.

Dry-hopping here might mean 1400 pounds of hops being dumped from a bulldozer dangling over the tanks. Some days it might mean just filling and emptying barrels all day long.

Founders was super strict about how things were done," she said. "They really taught me everything I could possibly learn. It was just such a different scale of things."

She was the only woman on her 28 person team at the time. Over on the brewing side, there were three women out of 15, one of who was, and is, Houser.

After taking a break in 2020, Cannarozzi had the opportunity to create an all-female brew team at Elk Brewing in Comstock Park.

It was the chance of a lifetime, she said. I like to be challenged, to force myself to learn new things. I went in blind.

Elk was in a state of disrepair at the time, had recipes that had to be pieced together, needed to be reorganized, and cleaned up. If Cannarozzi could do that, she could hire her female production staff, and have some creative freedom in the beers.

I knew she was capable of cleaning it up and making good beer there, but I warned her that it was going to be an enormous and insane undertaking, said Houser. It was, but Cannarozzi was up to the task.

Elk Brewing recently had to close their Comstock Park facility, which resulted in Cannarozzi losing her job. Their Wealthy Street taproom remains open, while the Comstock Park location will become strictly a production facility.

It was a good experience overall, she said. I will never lose all that knowledge. I can bring all that with me.

Since losing her job, Cannarozzi has been feeling the love.

West Michgian is seriously the best community I have ever been a part of, she said.Ill never find this kind of support anywhere else. I have a long list of friends I can call at any point to get answers, or help. I could say so many nice things about people in this industry.

Cannarozzi reflected on the changes shes seen in the industry since she started.

Its a lot different now, she said. Ive met more women working in production in the last few years than I had in the first six. The brewing school at GRCC and Kalamazoo, there are a lot of women doing these programs. There is a lot of support now. Maybe we, as women, are not questioned as much as before. Its much more positive.

That one day changed everything for Cannarozzi.

Bless Manda's heart for hosting because although it was an epic day, I'm sure it was a lot like herding drunk cats, said Houser about that fateful Fermenta brew day.

Ever since that day weve been forever friends, said Geiger. She has learned so much since that day. Shes always willing to learn and I love that shes come so far in this industry.

Her sparkling personality just makes people want to be around her, Geiger continued. She isnt afraid to be herself and I think that openness has enabled her to absorb all and any info about brewing and cellaring.

I know she'll continue on to do more amazing things, because that's just what Sydney does, no matter where she is or what she's doing, said Houser. She's intelligent, kind, humble, and I'm really proud to have her as a friend.

Cannarozzi is currently looking for her next great opportunity in the brewing industry and hopes to continue to make her mark on Michigan beer in the future, so if you are looking for a brewer, here she is.

Im feeling good now, she said. I have so much support in the community. I have been overwhelmed by the amount of love given to me.

Houser guessed right on that first day she met Cannarozzi when she guessed that she would do great things in the beer industry.

Although I love to be right, I especially love being right about women doing great things, she said.
Billy Calzada /San Antonio Express-News

While Tesla isn't working on eerie humanoid robots, it is still making sure its electric vehicle owners in San Antonio are covered. The multi-million dollar company is revealing plans for a second service center that could also be a dealership.

Tesla is laying the groundwork for a second service center near the San Antonio International Airport at 8434 Airport Boulevard, according to a recent filing with the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation. With the first service center out near the Dominion, this second location will be closer for inner city Tesla owners.
(Bloomberg) -- Oil posted its biggest weekly gain on record with prices swinging in a $20 range since Russia invaded Ukraine and sparked fears of a major supply crunch.

Futures in New York rose by more than $24 this week, the highest weekly dollar increase on record. Oil extended gains Friday on news the Biden administration is weighing a ban on U.S. imports of Russian crude oil. Brent traded in its biggest range since the launch of the futures contract in 1988 -- eclipsing the wild swings in the global financial crisis of 2008 and when demand plunged in the coronavirus pandemic.

There has been nothing to take the edge out of this market and weve had single direction volatility, meaning prices higher, said Rob Haworth, senior investment strategist at U.S. Bank Wealth Management. To lower prices, the market would need to see OPEC output or U.S. drilling activity to change meaningfully, he said.

Prices climbed early in Fridays session after Ukrainian officials said Russian forces attacked a nuclear plant -- Europes biggest. While the likelihood of a major disruption to Russian supply has boosted prices this week, signs that an Iranian nuclear deal may be near added to price volatility.

Conversations are taking place within the Biden administration and with the U.S. oil and gas industry on the impact banning Russian oil imports would have on American consumers and the global supply, according to people familiar with the matter. A White House spokesperson said no decision has been made.

In a bid to cool prices, the International Energy Agency announced a release of emergency reserves of 60 million barrels, that has so far failed to quell supply concerns. The agency said this is an initial release and that it is ready to recommend additional steps if necessary, according to a statement Friday.

Bloomberg

JPMorgan Chase & Co. said global benchmark Brent crude could end the year at $185 a barrel if Russian supply continues to be disrupted, and some hedge funds are eyeing $200. Goldman Sachs says that without Russian barrels on the market, oil could reach $150 in the next three months.

We have no buffer in terms of inventories left, and what shale producers have told us, once again, is that the elasticity is quite small, Damien Courvalin said during a Bloomberg Television interview on Friday.

The invasion has reverberated throughout the energy sector. Global oil majors such as BP Plc, Shell Plc and Exxon Mobil Corp. are exiting Russia, buyers of its crude are seeking alternatives and shipping costs are spiking. Russias Lukoil PJSC called for a fast resolution of the military conflict.

While sanctions havent been imposed on Russian energy exports, buyers are shunning the nations crude as they navigate financial penalties. Germany and the White House oppose a ban on Russian oil imports, though U.S. lawmaker support to prohibit shipments into America is growing.

The physical market-- where real barrels are bought and sold-- has also rallied sharply in recent days, as traders rush to supplies at healthy premiums. Saudi Arabia raised oil prices for buyers in Asia for April crude at a record price. Europes diesel prompt timespread rose over $30 while BP Plc has taken a key production unit offline at Europes second-biggest oil-processing plant.

The head of the worlds atomic watchdog said his trip to Tehran on Saturday could pave the way for reviving the Iran nuclear deal, a pact that would see the return of official oil exports. The OPEC producer has millions of barrels of oil stored offshore that could flow quickly into a tight market.

Brent remains in deep backwardation, a bullish structure where prompt barrels are more expensive than later-dated cargoes, signaling a tight supply-demand balance. The benchmarks prompt spread was $3.97 a barrel after touching record levels in recent days.

Against this backdrop, OPEC+ stuck with its gradual scheduled increase of supply in April during its monthly meeting Wednesday, wrapping up the gathering in record time without discussing the invasion of Ukraine. Russia is one of the key leaders of the cartel, along with Saudi Arabia.

2022 Bloomberg L.P.
This article was first published on NerdWallet.com.

Businesses buoyed by coronavirus relief funding may face a new wave of uncertainty this tax filing season as rules about how that money should be reported on federal and state income taxes continue to shift.

Congress made coronavirus relief programs like the Paycheck Protection Program and the Shuttered Venue Operators Grant tax-exempt, while still allowing companies to deduct business expenses paid with the funds they received, effectively creating two layers of tax relief for struggling businesses.

But, not all states followed suit  and many have been inconsistent with the tax treatment of COVID-19 funding at the state level  causing confusion for businesses owners.

Here's how various types of COVID relief funding may impact your 2021 business taxes. When in doubt, consult with a tax professional to decode any changes or nuances in your states tax code.

Paycheck Protection Program

Forgiven PPP loans aren't taxable income as far as the IRS is concerned. And expenses that normally would be deductible are still deductible, even when paid with a PPP loan. But some states deviate from the federal code on one or both of these points.

In Utah, for example, forgiven PPP loans are considered taxable income on state returns. And in California, only private companies that experienced a 25% drop in gross receipts can deduct expenses paid with a PPP loan.

Other states altered their tax treatment of PPP loans and expenses in 2021, meaning businesses may need to file amended returns.

COVID-19 Economic Injury Disaster Loans

Funds lent through the Small Business Administrations EIDL program aren't taxed as income, says Armine Alajian, a certified public accountant and founder of the Alajian Group, an accounting firm with offices in Los Angeles and New York.

EIDL loans are pure loans paid in 30 years at 3.75% interest. This is not taxable because it's not income, it's a loan to pay back, Alajian says. The payments are not tax-deductible either.

Businesses that received a targeted or supplemental EIDL advance don't need to report those funds as income for federal tax purposes either. While those funds are technically grants, they are excluded from taxable income.

State and federal COVID Grants

Grants are typically treated as income on business tax returns. Thats not the case with two large-scale federal COVID grants: the Shuttered Venue Operators Grant and the Restaurant Revitalization Fund.

Money received through either program isn't taxed as income on federal returns, and you can deduct expenses paid with your grant money. You may need to report these funds on your state taxes, though, as some states dont align with the federal government on this.

State grants are a different story. These funds are often considered income on both state and federal returns, but some states have made exceptions for COVID-relief grants.

If youre unclear on your states rules, check your tax documents and consult a tax professional, says Talibah Bayles, founder and CEO of Birmingham, Alabama-based TMB Tax & Financial Services.

Be very intentional about looking at any 1099s you receive due to a grant, Bayles says. That form will indicate if the grant is taxable. If you have a 1099 and it is taxable, talk to a tax professional. What were the program requirements? Are there any nuances at the state level that would allow you to treat it as not taxable on the federal level?

Employee Retention Credit

The Employee Retention Credit has gone through several iterations over the past two years, causing headaches and heartburn for many small-business owners.

Originally, business owners couldnt double-dip on PPP and ERC. This was later amended, retroactively, so businesses that took out a PPP loan could claim the tax credit, just not on wages already covered by their PPP loan.

The amount of the credit also changed. Businesses could qualify for up to $5,000 per employee for wages paid between March 12, 2020, through the end of 2021. That figure changed to $7,000 per employee, per quarter, for wages paid from Jan. 1 through Sept. 30, 2021, making it a much more enticing option for small-business owners.

I do think it is a gem for business owners," Bayles says. "Its a great opportunity for trying to positively impact your cash flow.

The problem: Most small businesses dont have payroll.

Especially your solopreneurs or even single-member LLCs, she says. Most business owners dont have a formal payroll or have themselves on a formal payroll, so it still leaves out a chunk of people that it was intending to help.

Businesses that qualify and want to cash in on ERC changes retroactively will need to amend prior years' tax returns to lower accompanying payroll expenses.

You need to reduce the expense in the year in which youre claiming [the credit], not the year youre receiving it, says Ryan Losi, a certified public accountant and the executive vice president of Piascik, an accounting firm headquartered near Richmond, Virginia. The IRS says some [ERC] claims will take a year to process.

That means business owners need to amend personal and business returns from the prior year without actually having cash in hand  and in their books  from the credit.

A previous version of this article misspelled Armine Alajian's name. It has been corrected.

Kelsey Sheehy writes for NerdWallet. Email: ksheehy@nerdwallet.com. Twitter: @KelseyLSheehy.

The article How COVID Grants, Relief Programs Impact 2021 Business Taxes originally appeared on NerdWallet.
Like many college students who juggle both school and a job, Ethan Swope has been doing his best to make it all work.

Im taking classes online, he says, so its been a challenge.

By contrast, though, Swopes job isnt a barista gig or a few hours at the college bookstore. For the past two months, hes been on the ground in Ukraine photographing for a variety of international news agencies, covering the humanitarian crisis there as it has unfolded. He has seen and photographed tearful Ukrainians trying to flee, ordinary citizens making Molotov cocktails and grandmothers sewing camouflage netting. After he files all his images for the day, he then turns his attention to his schoolwork, some of which he has recently submitted from within bomb shelter scenarios with air raid sirens howling.

Ethan Swope/Bloomberg Ethan Swope/Bloomberg Clockwise from top left: A couple kiss while waiting at Lviv-Holovnyi railway station as displaced Ukrainians flee to Poland, in Lviv, Ukraine, on Feb. 27, 2022.; A member of hotel staff reacts while on the phone in Kyiv, Ukraine, on Feb. 24, 2022; Ukrainian soldiers patrol a street in Lviv, Ukraine, on Feb. 28, 2022. ; Passengers watch from the window of a train at Lviv-Holovnyi railway station as displaced Ukrainians flee to Poland, in Lviv, Ukraine, on Feb. 27, 2022. (Ethan Swope/Bloomberg) Clockwise from top left: A couple kiss while waiting at Lviv-Holovnyi railway station as displaced Ukrainians flee to Poland, in Lviv, Ukraine, on Feb. 27, 2022.; A member of hotel staff reacts while on the phone in Kyiv, Ukraine, on Feb. 24, 2022; Ukrainian soldiers patrol a street in Lviv, Ukraine, on Feb. 28, 2022. ; Passengers watch from the window of a train at Lviv-Holovnyi railway station as displaced Ukrainians flee to Poland, in Lviv, Ukraine, on Feb. 27, 2022. (Ethan Swope/Bloomberg)

Yet, Swope shrugs it off with little complaint: I get to do what I love.

At 19, the Sausalito native is a rapidly rising star in the field of photojournalism. This past year, he won the White House News Photographers Association award for Student Photographer of the Year, largely based on his in-depth work covering Californias wildfires. In addition to contributing to publications such as the New York Times and Washington Post, he has spent all of 2022 in Ukraine, covering a wide range of assignments along the lines of military training, the community war effort and the ever-increasing refugee situation within the country.

After following Swopes work for the past two months, we caught up to talk with him via Zoom just as he exited Ukraine to Poland, to discuss the war on the ground level, photojournalism and his career trajectory, which stems back to an interview with Pixar  when he was 12.

----

Ethan Swope/Bloomberg

SFGATE: First off, Im glad to hear youre safe. Can you walk me through where you are and what the last 24 hours have been like for you?

Swope: I am now currently in Warsaw. Ive been covering Ukraine for the last nine weeks. I got here on New Years Eve, and since then Ive seen the whole story unfold in front of me, from when we had an inkling that there might be an invasion to seeing troops actually on the ground.

In terms of the last 24 hours, last week we made a decision with our security chief that we should leave Kyiv, and along with other journalists, we made the decision that it was probably the right time to leave since we had been basically in a shelter  the basement of our hotel  for three days with limited access to being able to work because of the air raid sirens. It just made operating very challenging. So some colleagues and I made it to Lviv with the help of our amazing local producer, who was able to find a way to navigate through Kyiv and out to safety, since a lot of bridges have been blown up and there were troops on the outskirts. We made it out and have been working in Lviv for the past few days, and now Im taking a break.

Ethan Swope/Bloomberg

SFGATE: At what point did you initially decide to travel to Ukraine?

Swope: Im a freelance photojournalist, and Ive been covering stories related to climate change, immigration and humanitarian issues for the last couple of years. My focus is on the human condition. I was interested in the culture of Ukraine, and I began getting reports back in November and December of the Russian buildup with the potential for renewed aggression, so I made preparations to go.

Ive been here for a little while now, and Ive been working with the Associated Press, Telegraph and pretty extensively with Bloomberg News for the past few weeks. I worked on different stories, such as the territorial defense training, which are these civilian groups who basically come together on the weekend to train should they be called to action  and they have been now. With the AP, we covered a military field hospital, covering soldiers who had been wounded. This was right before the invasion when there had been indiscriminate shelling.

Ethan Swope/Bloomberg Ethan Swope/Bloomberg Ethan Swope/Associated Press Clockwise from top left: A customer looks at a sign showing conversion rates at a currency exchange kiosk in Kyiv, Ukraine, on Thursday, Feb. 24, 2022; Members of the Ukrainian forces participate in an urban combat training exercise, organised by the Ukraine Ministry of Internal Affairs, within the exclusion zone in the abandoned city of Pripyat, Ukraine, on Friday, Feb. 4, 2022; Passengers crowd the stairs at the Lviv-Holovnyi railway station after disembarking from a train in Lviv, Ukraine, on Monday, Feb. 28, 2022; A patient undergoes surgery at the Military Mobile Hospital 66 in Pokrovsk, eastern Ukraine, on Wednesday, Feb. 9, 2022. Clockwise from top left: A customer looks at a sign showing conversion rates at a currency exchange kiosk in Kyiv, Ukraine, on Thursday, Feb. 24, 2022; Members of the Ukrainian forces participate in an urban combat training exercise, organised by the Ukraine Ministry of Internal Affairs, within the exclusion zone in the abandoned city of Pripyat, Ukraine, on Friday, Feb. 4, 2022; Passengers crowd the stairs at the Lviv-Holovnyi railway station after disembarking from a train in Lviv, Ukraine, on Monday, Feb. 28, 2022; A patient undergoes surgery at the Military Mobile Hospital 66 in Pokrovsk, eastern Ukraine, on Wednesday, Feb. 9, 2022.

SFGATE: Can you tell me a bit about your interactions with the Ukrainian people?

Swope: The word that comes to mind is resilience. Theyve been facing conflict for the last eight years. And pretty much everyone that I talked to didnt believe an invasion was going to happen. They said it was impossible. Even when talking with them about 2014 when Russia originally invaded, they didnt think it was going to happen then either.

Everyone here has rallied together to support each other. And in a sense, it does give me faith in humanity. Everyone has been cordial. People have been queuing for gasoline and food. Everyone has been polite to each other even when there is fear.

But Ive also been covering stories outside of the conflict. In January, I covered Malanka. Its a pagan New Years celebration. It has a long history and people coming together from all these villages. Theres just a big sense of community here.

SFGATE: Whats one of the more hopeful things that youve observed in your time there?

Swope: It doesnt pertain to the current aggressions, but I was covering an orphanage in Donbas like two weeks before the conflict started. And we got to hear a story from one of the children there about how he had cancer while living on the separatist side of Ukraine  and in order to get treatment, he had to cross to the Ukrainian side. And people were able to organize a cease-fire in order to have him cross over. And it was really impactful to hear about that.

SFGATE: Not to put you on the spot with a difficult subject, but you took a photograph of an emotional Nigerian student at the train station. In your caption, you say that he had been turned away for six days. This is something we have been hearing about, and Im wondering if you could tell us about that photo and what youve seen firsthand with regard to that issue?

Swope: That was tough. It was tough personally  I mean  Im a photographer, and I take photos, but as a human, I felt for him as he was going through a lot of emotions and the situation he had been facing.

So the train stations have been packed with tens of thousands of people trying to flee to Poland and the rest of Europe. There were many Nigerians and people from Ghana who were trying to get on the trains. Allegedly, women and children got first priority,  which I do think is the case, but [that student] was crying over being unable to get access. He said, I have been turned away for six days; I havent eaten or had water. And I think this was a fairly common situation that is happening here. I cant say with 100% certainty that race has something to do with it, but it seems very likely that there is definitely an element of that.

SFGATE: What was the initial spark that caused you to pick up a camera and then eventually pursue photojournalism?

Swope: Ive always had a camera in my hands since I was very little. Part of it was [he laughs] I wanted to be a character designer at Pixar. And everything I do, I try to do it 110%, so I made a portfolio and went to interview with them when I was like 12. But then I had an existential crisis about art, and I decided to capture my reality and my surroundings with a camera. So thats where it started.

I really enjoyed documenting my community, but also, the camera was like my passport. It gave me access to different people, different circumstances, and gave me opportunities to be places I normally couldnt be.

SFGATE: You have clocked a fair amount of time covering the California wildfires up close. Did it help prepare you for your experience now?

Swope: There are a lot of parallels between covering wildfires and something like the situation in Ukraine. Safety is paramount with both. And so, working with the team, communicating with other journalists, putting together risk assessments, having the right protective equipment, medical training  it all plays a part.

I think at least for me, the connections I made from covering fires with other photographers and editors has helped me be able to work in Ukraine.

SFGATE: How do you think this experience in Ukraine is impacting you as a photographer?

Swope: Ive learned a lot here. Ive been able to shadow photojournalists who have decades of experience of covering conflicts. So Ive been able to pick up how they operate in the field, and thats been invaluable.

Additionally, having empathy and being able to sympathize with the people here, seeing their plight. Its reaffirmed that this is the work that I find meaningful.

SFGATE: Just to wrap up, what is your level of optimism for Ukraine and its people based on what youve seen on the ground level over the past two months?

Swope: Sadly, I dont think this is going to end soon. Even if Kyiv gets taken over, there are hundreds of thousands of people willing to fight for their country. But Ive seen their people in the best and worst of times  and they give me hope.
Anya Arseienko chose to do an exchange program in Texas to challenge herself, be independent, and see the world. Now, shes watching from afar as her family in Ukraine flee to Poland as Russian troops invade her home country.

Arseienko, 16, is from Kyiv, the capital city of Ukraine. She is attending Lake Creek High School in the Montgomery Independent School District as an exchange student this year. It has been her dream since she was young to come to travel and practice her English. This is her first time doing an exchange program and despite being surprised by the Texas humidity she said she loves where she is.

She arrived six months ago and has been staying with the Boniface family since December. When Russian troops invaded Arseienkos home country last week her host family immediately tried to find a way to support her family.

They started an online fundraiser  Help Anyas Family in Ukraine on GiveSendGo.com  and surpassed their original goal of $10,000 in less than a day. They have since adjusted the goal to $30,000 and as of Thursday afternoon had raised over $22,000.

I feel terrible realizing that all my family, all of my relatives, all my friends are there and Im here and I cant physically help them, and terrible because I have a sister and when I think of her emotions, what she is going through right now, it makes me cry because she is so young, Arseienko said.

Arseienkos family made their way to Poland but had to abandon their car and walking is difficult because they are traveling with her 98-year-old great-grandmother, along with her grandmother, her mother, her younger sister, and her father. They made it into Poland on Wednesday.

Related: Fundraiser helps family of Ukrainian exchange student at Montgomery ISD

The money being raised will be used to help Arseienkos family get to safety and possibly settle elsewhere. Arseienkos father cannot leave the country because Ukrainian men have been ordered to stay and fight, but the rest of her family will try to make their way to the American embassy in Poland. What happens after that is still up in the air.

I love my host family so much and I appreciate and I am so grateful for this help, and all of the peoples support, Arseienko said of the communitys reaction.

On Tuesday, Lake Creek had a blue and yellow day, the colors of the Ukrainian flag, to show support. Arseienkos friend made her a bracelet of blue and yellow ribbon that matched her blue and yellow nails, the blue and yellow bows in her hair, and the Stand with Ukraine T-shirt she wore. The students of student council, which Arseienko is a member of, handed out small Ukrainian flags.

This support is so important to me, Arseienko said. It felt so warm inside my heart.

Since starting at Lake Creek High School Arseienko has been a studious and enthusiastic student, said her student council adviser, Alison Rice.

Enthusiastic, loves to try everything, Rice said of Arseienko as a student. I love how outgoing she is. Even with what shes going through, shes incredibly studious. Shes missed one day of school.

For many, if not most, students at Lake Creek High School, the war in Ukraine would remain a distant and impersonal issue if they did not know Arseienko.

Its a sentiment the Boniface family shared as well, if they did not have a Ukrainian student living in their home they would not have been as invested. But Arseienko and her familys struggle to find safety has brought this international issue home to many.

Arseienko has spoken to both the student council and a government class about what is happening in her home country.

I feel like its something that they would have probably ignored, its so distant to them, being at the age that they are, but having Anya there really made it more relevant, Rice said. It feels a lot closer to home.

Her classmates, host family, and community have rallied around Arseienko. The school district has shared the fundraiser on all of its social media platforms and took the initiative to reach out to the media to spread the word. The proceeds of a teacher chili cook-off will be donated to the fundraiser.

Since the fundraiser went up Saturday, community members have been offering support in other ways. Brian Boniface, the host father, said that people have offered to use their airline miles to help get Arseienkos family out. Now, the family is looking for help navigating the refugee or asylum system if Arseienkos family comes to Texas, and have reached out to the offices of U.S. Rep. Kevin Brady and U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz for help.

Im glad its us helping, Boniface said. We kind of felt helpless when it first started so we came up with the idea to start some sort of crowd sourcing funding forum because we know once they fled Kyiv they would no longer have any kind of income, they were leaving all their belongings behind, so theyre going to have to start all over.

Arseienko is like another daughter to their family, Boniface said. While they have reached out to elected officials, the family will take help from anyone with experience with the refugee or asylum process, or who has contacts in embassies in or near Poland.

It is stressful checking the news every day, not being able to be with her family, and watching as her home is attacked. But she believes her country can make it through.

All Ukranians are very strong people and Im so proud of my nation, Arseienko said.

jamie.swinnerton@chron.com
The true nature of an alleged 300-year old mummified mermaid would be exposed, according to a report. Its grotesque appearance with a human face and fishtail defies any rational explanation. Mermaids are legendary creatures of myth and fables that are supposed to exist, but no real one has been captured yet.

Mermaid Caught in Shikoku Island, Japan

For the first time, scientists will go to the nether regions of logic to answer if the mummified thing is what it is, the Sun UK reported.

Based on unverified facts, the so-called oddity would give immortality to those who eat the flesh. Measuring a foot long, it was allegedly caught in the Pacific, in the Japanese Isle of Shikoku from 1736 to 1741. The alleged mermaid is in a temple in Asakuchi City.

The mummified mermaid is described with a grimaced face, sharp teeth, two hands, hair on its head, and a brow looking human but with a fishtail, not legs.

Scientists To Prove if Mermaid is Real

It has gotten the interest of scientists from the Kurashiki University of Science and the Arts, who want to prove if it is real or not, using CT Scan technology to determine the truth.

According to Hiroshi Kinoshita of the Okayama Folklore Society, who thought up the will the idea of proving something far from science logic and dabbling into the religious impact of such artifacts.

He cited a belief that people become long-lived, and legend says a woman ate part of this creature and lived eight centuries long. It was never verified through the 300-year-old mummified Mermaid mystery.

Read Also: Shark Attack Suspected Cause of Missing Surfer in Western Australia

This fantastic legend of the Yao Bikuni is kept and preserved near a temple where the thing was discovered. Kinoshita said it could be used for COVID-19 as the fold story would suggest; another aspect of the mermaid claim is that terrible disease was prophesied.

A former owner of the half-fish mummy wrote a letter in 1903, and keeping it close to the mummy is proof there is something quasi-mystical to everything connected to the mermaid legend. Mentioned in the letter is the mer-creature was captured in a fishing net in the sea near Kochi Prefecture.

Not knowing what he caught, the fisherman sold it in Osaka as a weird fish, which his ancestor bought and kept as a treasure. But everything gets muddled, and how the Enjuin Temple in Asakuchi got it later.

The Temple priest, Kozen Kuida, encased it with a glass display about forty years back, not in a steel safe.

The Asahi Shimbun paper states that its legendary properties might help find any cure for COVID-19. But Kinoshita is more realistic about the odd creature.

Mermaid Mystery To Be Revealed

Scientist thinks it is not real but made during the Edo period from 1603 to 1867, later exported to Europe and Japan as freak shows or spectacles then, per Kanlish News.

For a long time, these legends of mermaids fueled the belief worldwide that someone gullible would believe in it.

The showman P.T. Barnum would have shown it publicly, with a monkey, torso connected to a fish body. The Japanese folkloric tales call it the ningyo.

Scientists will post the finding late in the year, which might solve the 300-year-old mummified mermaid mystery and lay it to rest after scientific inquiry.

Related Article: Dad Saved Daughter from Shark by Punching Its Face, But Girl Still Lost Her Leg and Two Fingers

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A man has been arrested in relation to a robbery that occurred at a boutique in downtown Laredo, authorities said.

At about 6:17 p.m. Jan. 7, police officers responded to a robbery report at Daisys Boutique on 206 Juarez Ave. A woman stated that a man went inside the boutique, demanded money from her and threatened to shoot her. The woman did not see the weapon but noticed the male with his hands inside the pockets of his sweater.
After two years, Orange-based utility company Avangrid is getting another new CEO.

Pedro Azagra Blazquez, a current board member for Avangrid and the chief development officer of Spanish energy giant Iberdrola, S.A., will succeed the current chief executive officer, Dennis Arriola in May.

Pedro knows Avangrid and the U.S. market well, said Avangrid Chairman Ignacio Galan in a press release Thursday. Over the years, Pedro has built strong relationships in the U.S. with key stakeholders in our sector.

Galan added that he is confident in Azagra Blazquezs leadership and the company will continue to focus on being the leading sustainable energy company in the U.S.

Arriola, who came to Avangrid in July 2020 from a San Diego-based utility company, is stepping down effective May 28 after he decided to leave the business, the company said in a news release.

Arriola replaced James Torgerson, who retired after being the top executive for Avangrid, and its precursor UIL Holdings, for nearly 14 years. Iberdrola acquired UIL Holdings in 2015, and created Avangrid to oversee its holdings in the United States.

Avangrid currently owns and operates eight electric and natural gas utilities that serve more than 3.3 million customers in New York and New England. Their companies include United Illuminating, Southern Connecticut Gas and Connecticut Natural Gas.

Azagra Blazquez has served as a member of Avangrids board of directors since 2019, and previously served as a member from 2014 to 2018. The company said he has a deep familiarity with Avangrids businesses and helped advise the $17.9 billion merger and integration of Avangrid and UIL Holdings in 2015, among other mergers and acquisitions.

Azagra Blazquez has also led regulatory strategy and regularly provided testimony on our governance commitments and customer benefits, the company said in a news release.

Formerly, Azagra Blazquez led Iberdrolas U.S. businesses and served as the director of strategy. He also previously was on the board of directors of Energy East, Rochester Gas and Electric and New York State Electric & Gas, Avangrid said.
United States President Joe Biden on Thursday signed a bill into law that would ban the forced arbitration of cases for sexual assault and harassment, giving victims of workplace abuse the right to seek recourse in a court of law.

The Democrat signed the Ending Forced Arbitration of Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment Act to ban employment contracts from forcing individuals to settle sexual assault or harassment claims through private arbitration proceedings.

Ban on Forced Arbitration

Most of the time, employers benefit from avoiding a court of law during sexual assault and harassment cases because it keeps misconduct allegations from reaching the public. The law is retroactive and allows individuals who have been bound by arbitration language to pursue legal action against their harassers.

The Democratic president called the signing of the bill a "momentous day for justice and fairness in the workplace." The U.S. president said that victims of sexual assault or harassment were able to gain the right that they did not have yesterday, as per the San Francisco Gate.

The former Fox anchor, Gretchen Carlson, who worked to ban arbitration clauses since after she sued Roger Ailes, then-CEO of the network, for sexual harassment, attended Biden's signing of the bill on Thursday. She was with four survivors who testified on Capitol Hill in support of the bill and four lawmakers who supported the bill's passage in the House and Senate.

Read Also: Former House Speaker Michael Madigan Indicted on Nearly $3 Million Racketeering, Bribery Charges

Before signing the bill, President Biden said that forced arbitration protected perpetrators and silence victims in sexual assault and harassment cases. The Democrat acknowledged that while there are victims who would choose to settle their issue privately, others will want to bring the case to court.

According to CNN, a White House official said that more than 60 million workers are subject to mandatory arbitration clauses in the workplace. They said that the situation comes unbeknownst to the victims when they try to bring a claim against their employer.

Cases of Sexual Assault or Harassment

The president of the United States also said that anywhere between half and three-quarters of all women in the workplace report they have been victims of sexual assault or harassment. Biden noted that the arbitration clauses denied them their voice and a fair chance to get justice.

Carlson said that she attended the ceremony on behalf of the millions of American workers who have, until now, been voiceless against sexual assault or harassment in the workplace. She noted that Biden's new law will prevent bad behavior in the workplace because women's voices can now be heard.

In a statement, Vice President Kamala Harris noted that the passage of the bill into law has gone through a lot to get where it is now. She said that she had been an original co-sponsor of the bill five years ago.

Biden's signing ceremony was also attended by a bipartisan crew, including Kirsten Gillibrand, who co-sponsored the bill in the Senate, and Reps. Cheri Bustos and Pramila Jayapal, who are co-sponsors of the House legislation, The Hill reported.

Related Article: Ketanji Brown Jackson Meets With Senators on Her Way To Face Senate Confirmation Hearing on Mar. 21



Related Article: Ketanji Brown Jackson Meets With Senators on Her Way To Face Senate Confirmation Hearing on Mar. 21

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The Texas Homeowners Assistance Fund, an $842.2 million COVID-19 relief program offering Texas homeowners up to $65,000, is now open for all homeowners in Texas. The fund was previously in a pilot program.

The fund is paid for by the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021.
On February 25, Lee Jae-Myung, a candidate for the ruling Democratic Party, stuck his foot in his mouth during a presidential debate in South Korea. Volodymyr Zelenskyy, he alleged, "provoked Russia because he lacked knowledge of politics and diplomacy." The president of Ukraine is to blame for the commencement of conflict."

On Reddit, messages decrying Lee's crude remarks swiftly spread. The majority of users chastised him. Unfortunately, Lee was hardly the first South Korean politician to make controversial comments about the Ukraine conflict. Former Minister of Justice Choo Mi-ae claimed that the former comedian's irresponsible attitude toward Russia was the cause of the conflict. "He triggered the invasion of Ukraine by the Kremlin."

South Korean Presidential Candidates Often Discuss Ukraine Crisis

The conflict in Ukraine, according to Lee and Choo, indicates that their national security policies, which include renouncing an armaments buildup and seeking peace negotiations with North Korea, are the only solution. After receiving harsh criticism for their statements on the war, Lee apologized for his foolish remarks. Many people, on the other hand, questioned if his apology was genuine or only a thinly veiled ploy to avoid a vote loss ahead of the presidential race.

While citizens chastised Lee for his words, Yoon Suk-yeol, the presidential candidate from the People Power Party, condemned Lee for defaming Ukraine's president and apologized for Lee's remarks against Ukraine as a presidential candidate in Korea.

However, Yoon's social media statements showed that his apology was only a ruse to avoid losing votes. Yoon said the conflict in Ukraine is evidence that Lee's ideas on national security, particularly his policies toward Pyongyang, were incorrect on February 24, when Russia attacked Ukraine, according to The Diplomat.

Read Also: Donald Trump Expects China To Invade Taiwan, Blames Joe Biden, US for Poor Leadership

South Korea's Election Result Watched by US, North Korea, and China

A conservative win in South Korea's next presidential election might result in the country adopting a hardline attitude toward North Korea and China, thus reigniting Asia-Pacific tensions.

The conservative People Power Party's Yoon Seok-youl and the ruling Democratic Party's Lee Jae-Myung are the front-runners for the March 9 election. According to a series of opinion polls performed by Gallup Korea, Yoon and Lee are neck and neck, predicting a close fight. Lee had a 38 percent favorable rating in a poll of 1,000 respondents conducted on February 25, compared to 37 percent for Yoon. In a survey taken in early February, the two were deadlocked at 35%.

Economic issues, notably housing, dominate this election. However, given North Korea's continued missile tests and domestic anti-China sentiment, foreign policy issues are likely to affect public opinion. A lot is riding on South Korea's geopolitical fate, with each contender holding opposing views on North Korea, China, and the United States.

While each contender has fundamentally different views on inter-Korean ties and the US-China competition, numerous observers believe the Asia-Pacific security and political dynamics do not allow for significant changes in foreign policy, CNBC reported.

On March 9, South Koreans will pick a new president, with the two leading candidates holding opposing views on leading Asia's third-largest economy and managing nuclear-armed neighbors China and North Korea.

The conservatives have chosen the former top prosecutor and political newbie Yoon Suk-yeol to try to reclaim the presidency from the progressives, who have nominated Lee Jae-Myung, a former governor of the country's most populated province. The president is elected for a single five-year term and will succeed Moon Jae-in, who plans to hand over the reins to Lee, a fellow Democratic Party member, as per Bloomberg.

Related Article: China Reportedly Asks Russia To Delay Ukraine Invasion Until After Winter Olympics, Urges Not To Sanction Moscow Despite Bombardment in Kyiv

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Federal officers deported a non-citizen wanted in Mexico.

On Wednesday, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's Enforcement and Removal Operations San Antonio Field Office with assistance from the Harlingen Field Office deported Rafael Olvera-Amezcua, 64, who was wanted for fraud by the government of Mexico.

ICE officers turned Olvera-Amezcua to Mexican authorities at the Juarez-Lincoln International Bridge. Authorities said that Olvera-Amezcua entered the country on Nov. 8, 2014, via Laredo with an authorized work visa. On Nov. 22, 2016, Mexican officials issued a warrant for his arrest for fraud. On May 24, 2019, ICE officers arrested Olvera-Amezcua and served him with a notice to appear before an immigration judge.

An immigration judge with the Executive Office for Immigration Review issued a final order of removal for Olvera on Dec. 4, 2019. He was housed at the South Texas ICE Processing Center in Pearsall until his removal.

People with information about foreign fugitives are urged to contact ICE by calling the ICE Tip Line at 1 (866) DHS-2-ICE or internationally at 001-1802-872-6199. They can also file a tip online by completing ICEs online tip form.
According to the latest data from Standard and Poor's Dow Jones Indices for the S&P 500 LinkUp Jobs Index, available positions increased year-to-date by 3.8% through Feb. 21, 2022. This news comes as the Labor Department found Friday that U.S. employers added 678,000 jobs in February.

The S&P index tracks the change in open job listings at S&P 500 companies, 500 large companies listed on stock exchanges in the United States.

The utilities, energy and financial industries were found to have added jobs the fastest, according to S&P. It found consumer staples companies, or those dealing with a set of essential products used by consumers like food and beverages, household goods and hygiene products, have increased job listings the slowest with a 1.65% decrease in February.

The unemployment rate dropped from 4% nationally to 3.8% in February, continuing a decline in joblessness as the economy continues to recover from effects of the pandemic. The Associated Press reported that consumer spending has risen recently, spurred by increasing wages and savings, and restaurant traffic has regained pre-pandemic levels while far more Americans are flying than at the peak of omicron.

In Illinois, the career with the most open positions in February was registered nurses, as employers across the state were looking to hire 2,516 more workers. There were also 2,192 listings for retail salespersons and 1,911 listings for sales representatives in the state in February, according to data from the Illinois Department of Employment Security. IDES also found that the employers looking for the most workers in Illinois in February were Walgreens, Northwestern Memorial Healthcare and the University of Illinois.

The Labor Department's report found that hourly pay has increased 5.1% in the past year, but rose an average of just 1 cent in February. Restaurants, bars and hotels added 79,000 jobs in February, the Labor Department found, with construction adding 60,000 and transportation and warehousing 48,000. The economy still has 2.1 million fewer jobs than before the pandemic, a gap that is quickly closing, the AP reported.
The Madison County Historical Society (MCHS) announced the addition of three new members to their Board of Directors, Norma Asadorian, of Granite City, and Jeffrey Skoblow and William Krause, both of Edwardsville.

Asadorian is returning to the board after a short hiatus. Asadorian is descended from Armenian immigrant ancestors who settled in the historic Lincoln Place neighborhood in Granite City. She is the founder and president of the Lincoln Place Heritage Association that preserves and promotes the heritage of Granite Citys historic Lincoln Place neighborhood.

Before her retirement in 2012, Asadorian was an award-winning secondary school educator who, over the course of her 37-year career, taught a variety of social studies courses. Through Lincoln Place and MCHS, she continues to incorporate her lifelong interests in history, languages and archaeology. She currently works part-time for SIUEs Historical Studies Department where she observes and evaluates student teachers.

Skoblow is an SIUE emeritus professor who taught in the English Department for 31 years. A native of New York, he moved to Edwardsville in 1987. He has published books and articles, most on British Literature, and is looking forward to working with the society to build public interest in the history and culture of Madison County.

Krause moved to Madison County in 2005 to attend Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. He is president of KNR investments LLC with a portfolio of 25 single and multi-family properties in the St. Louis Metropolitan area. He has a strong interest in history as well as historic preservation. He was chair of the Edwardsville Historic Preservation Commission for four years before being elected as Edwardsvilles Ward 5 alderman. He brings to the board expertise in historic preservation, grant writing and experience in architectural restoration.

The MCHS Board is an active organization with nearly every member devoting hundreds of hours annually towards the mission of preserving the stories and artifacts that tell the story of Madison County. MCHS is a 501(c)3 charitable organization that has no government funding. The organization relies on donations and membership dues to fund operations for the Madison County Archival Library and Museum. The society website (madcohistory.org) provides many ways for visitors to explore Madison County's history.
Russia seized control of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine, the largest in Europe, after a fire broke out at the station due to an attack by Moscow's troops.

According to Ukrainian authorities, the fire sparked after Russian soldiers bombarded it with shells.

Ukrainian foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba said in a tweet that the Russian forces were "firing from all sides upon Zaporizhzhia NPP," which holds 15 nuclear reactors.

The official noted that if the power plant explodes, it will be much worse than the Chernobyl disaster in 1986.

Andriy Tuz, a spokesperson of the nuclear facility, said that there was a high risk of "nuclear danger," so he demanded Russia to stop shooting at the plant, per NBC News.

State Emergency Service of Ukraine said that there were no victims in the incident, and the fire had already been extinguished.

World leaders blasted Russia for putting the safety of an entire continent in grave danger, while Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called Russia's action "nuclear terror."

United States President Joe Biden and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau urged Russia to stop its military aggression, while UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson said that Russia's action was "reckless" and could "directly threaten the safety" of the whole continent.

Per BBC, Johnson would propose to set an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council over the attack on the power plant by the Russians on Friday.

Without presenting proof, Russia's defense ministry attributed the incident to Ukrainian saboteurs, calling it a "monstrous provocation."

Read Also: WATCH: Heartbreaking Moments of Parents Leaving Their Children Amid Ongoing Russia-Ukraine War

Is Europe Safe from High Levels of Radiation?

According to US Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm and other authorities from Western countries, there was no spike in the levels of radiation in the nuclear facility.

The International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN's nuclear watchdog, also said the blaze had not damaged the plant's critical equipment. But the agency is closely monitoring the "serious situation" at the nuclear power plant.

VIDEO: Ukraine nuclear plant on fire after Russian shelling.



Europe's largest nuclear power plant was on fire Friday after the station came under fire from invading Russian forces, with Ukraine's foreign minister demanding an immediate ceasefire at the site to avoid disaster pic.twitter.com/AkVuT9dizu  AFP News Agency (@AFP) March 4, 2022

However, Ukrainian President Zelensky encouraged Europeans to "wake up" and tell their leaders to take action on Russia's shelling at the nuclear facility that endangered the whole continent. He also urged Russians to conduct demonstrations in response to the attack.

President Zelensky claimed Russia wants to repeat the world's worst nuclear disaster that happened in Chernobyl in 1986. He said that there would be an explosion at the facility, "it is the end of everything."

Earlier, Russian forces had captured the Chernobyl plant north of Kyiv, which is no longer operational and had been converted into a tourism site.

The mayor of Energodar, a town approximately 550 kilometers (342 miles) southeast of Kyiv, claimed there had been injuries in the area due to heavy combat and "continuous" shooting by Russian troops. Though, he did not provide further specifics.

Russia Continues Aggression

Al Jazeera reported that Ukraine's capital city Kyiv and other cities, Kharkiv and Mariupol, are still being attacked by the Russian troops, while the Ukrainian government lost control over Kherson.

Since Feb. 24, when Russian President Vladimir Putin launched the worst attack on a European state since World War Two, tens of thousands of people are estimated to have been dead or injured, and over one million refugees have fled Ukraine.

Related Article: French President Warns Vladimir Putin Amid Russia-Ukraine War: "Your Country Will Pay Dearly"

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An innovative ballet performance exploring the strength and resilience of women during the time of revolutionary Mexico will bow at Texas A&M International Universitys Center for the Fine and Performing Arts Theatre Friday, March 4 at 7:30 p.m.

The performance, hosted by TAMIUs College of Arts and Sciences, will be brought to life by Ballet Nepantla, a New York City-based affiliate of the Edinburg Dance Theatre. Admission is free, but donations in support of TAMIU Dance Scholarships will be gratefully accepted.

TAMIU dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, Dr. Claudia San Miguel, said the College was thrilled to be able to bring the unique fusion performances of Ballet Nepantla to TAMIU and Laredo audiences.

Ballet Nepantla has carved out an impressive place in the dance world with a daring fusion of traditional folklorico, contemporary dance, classical ballet, and West African dance. We are thrilled to host their artistry here at TAMIU and to share it with our students, campus, and community at large, Dr. San Miguel explained, noting the company will also be leading masterclasses for TAMIUs Ballet Folklorico students and guests during their campus visit.

Ballet Nepantla is a celebration of our border and the things that define and bind us, so Im especially grateful that TAMIU, an international university located on the U.S.-Mexico border, can present this opportunity, she concluded.

The evenings performance is Valentina, an original collection of stories that address the resilience and strength of women during the revolution in Mexico, 1910-1920. The performance fuses contemporary dance and traditional folklorico, telling stories of struggles and triumph while exploring the spaces between love and hate and hope and despair.

Ballet Nepantla was founded in 2017 by Andrea Guajardo and Martin Rodriguez. Both say Ballet Nepantla tells stories to provoke imagination and help others see the beauty of the Mexican and Mexican American people. The ballet companys name is drawn from the indigenous Nahuatl word for in-between, a concept buoyed by the late writer Gloria Anzalduas borderlands theory embracing both sides of the borderland Guajardo and Rodriguez call home.

Like the fusion they seek to present, artistic director Guajardo comes from the world of classical ballet and contemporary dance, while associate director Rodriguez draws from traditional Mexican folklorico dance.

In program notes, they observe that they, envisioned a new form of expression that fused the two modalitiesan aesthetic that would speak to the cultural, historical and social realities of a broader narrative of being Mexican, Mexican American, immigrant, and trans-cultural.

Reviewers have enthusiastically hailed Ballet Nepantla.

The Texas Observer declared Ballet Nepantla erases boundaries between dance forms and explores what it means to be from the Borderlands - both as a geographical space and a state of mind.

Broadway World wrote that Ballet Nepantlas fusion of Mexican folkloric forms and ballettransforminto a brochure of the Rio Grande come to life.

The Monitors Matthew Wilson declared the company an ambassador for folkorico and Mexican culture.

TAMIU offers students the option to minor in dance (18 credit hours) or to take dance courses as general electives. The CFPA houses two dance studios and a full-size performance theater. Dance courses are led by accomplished faculty members in genres including ballet, folkorico, dance conditioning, flamenco, jazz and modern. In addition to performances by guest artists, each semester culminates with a major two-night performance with all dance classes represented.

For more on the Friday, March 4 performance of Valentina by Ballet Nepantla at TAMIUs CFPA Theatre, contact the CFPA director of operations, Elizabeth Rubio, at elizabeth.rubio@tamiu.edu or call 956.326.2646.

To learn more about Ballet Nepantla, visit balletnepantla.com
Samantha Markle, Meghan Markle's half-sister, is suing her half-sister for "spreading lies" in her bombshell interview with Oprah Winfrey last year. The case is "baseless and ludicrous," according to a lawyer for the Duchess.

Samantha, a Big Brother participant who shares Meghan Markle's father, Thomas Markle, claims Meghan's "rags to royalty" story is bogus. She allegedly contradicted the Duchess' claim that she was an "only child" in the documents.

Samantha Markle Sues Duchess of Sussex of Defamation

Before stepping down from their roles and relocating to California in 2020, the 40-year-old royal and her husband, Prince Harry, sat down for a candid interview with Oprah last year and detailed their experience as members of the Royal Family in the UK, highlighting Meghan Markle's mental health struggles as well as allegations of racism.

Samantha accused Meghan Markle of spreading lies to promote the illusion she's overcome a terrible family situation in court docs acquired by TMZ, citing the fact the former actress told Oprah she was an 'only child,' despite sharing the same father, Thomas, as Samantha and her brother, Thomas Markle Jr. (also of Big Brother fame).

Meghan Markle said in the interview that she hadn't seen her half-sister in 'at least 18, 19 years ago and before that, ten years ago,' and that Samantha only changed her surname back to Markle after the former actress's romance with Prince Harry became a media sensation. Samantha said Meghan Markle made up stories about growing up in "virtual poverty" since her father paid for her to attend prestigious and expensive private schools and dance and acting training.

Samantha maintains that their father paid Meghan's tuition and living expenses at Northwestern University. Despite Meghan's statements to Oprah and talk show host Ellen DeGeneres, she worked hard to get herself through university. Samantha said Meghan Markle lied about herself and her childhood for them to "not interfere with or contradict the fake narrative and fantasy life story produced by" the Duchess.

She's also alleged that her estranged relative's statements harmed sales of her memoirs, The Diary of Princess Pushy's Sister, prohibited her from finding a job, and caused her emotional and mental anguish, according to Metro.

Read Also: Bill Gates Issues Public Apology to Melinda French Gates Over Painful Divorce After She Says She "Couldn't Trust" What They Had

Meghan Markle Predicted Her Fortune of Being a Wife of a Prince

Meanwhile, royal admirers believe Meghan Markle foresaw her destiny as a princess more than a decade ago. Meghan was an actress long before she married Prince Harry, best known for her role as paralegal Rachel Zane in Suits' courtroom drama series.

Meghan also appeared in an episode of the American television series Castle in 2012, in which she played Charlotte Boyd, a lady tied to the murders of two of her friends. Detectives Richard Castle (Nathan Fillion) and Kate Beckett (Stana Katic) are on the hunt for the killer when they come upon Meghan's character dressed as Sleeping Beauty, which some feel prophesied her destiny as Prince Harry's bride.

The Duchess of Sussex was determined to keep her relationship with Prince Harry under wraps as she figured out if he was The One. And the couple kept it up for five months before the secret was revealed and their beautiful, private bubble broke. According to royal journalists Omid Scobie and Carolyn Durand, when the press learned about them, the idea that this was "her new life" "terrified" Meghan, Mirror reported.

Related Article: Prince Harry Seems Unhappy at LA Super Bowl Appearance With Princess Eugenie, Body Language Experts Says

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Courtesy /U.S. Border Patrol

U.S. Border Patrol agents apprehended 17 migrants who attempted to use rail cars to further their journey into the United States, authorities said.

The incident unfolded on Feb. 28, when agents responded to a report of several people aboard a box car east of Laredo. Responding agents encountered 17 migrants from the countries of El Salvador, Guatemala and Mexico. No injuries were reported.
Texas families with transgender children are facing new fears as state leaders continue targeting them and anti-trans policies crystalize as a top priority in the state Republicans' agenda.

The families have begun lawyering up after Gov. Greg Abbott directed the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services in February to investigate those who seek gender-affirming care for their children. The order came days after Attorney General Ken Paxton issued a nonbinding legal opinion classifying certain types of gender-affirming care as child abuse.

Civil rights groups sued to block Abbott's order as the first of these investigations came to light. A district judge granted a temporary restraining order, which was soon challenged by Paxton.

The legal fight comes months after Texas lawmakers failed to pass legislation that sought broader bans on transition-related medical care for transgender kids, including gender-affirming care that is widely accepted by leading health care groups.

Medical experts say Republican lawmakers rhetoric falsely claims that doctors and parents are allowing children to go through irreversible medical treatments.

Leading health care organizations in Texas  including the Texas Medical Association, Texas Counseling Association and Texas Pediatric Society  say gender-affirming care is the best way to provide care to transgender children. Theyre not alone: the American Psychiatric Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry and others agree  and have for years.

Heres what you need to know about gender-affirming care, which lies at the heart of the brewing legal and political battles in Texas.

What is gender-affirming care? Areana Quinones, executive director for the Texas nonprofit organization Doctors For Change, defined gender-affirming care as judgment-free, individualized care oriented toward understanding and appreciating a persons gender. Providers often work with counselors and family members to ensure they have everything they need to navigate the health care system. Under the gender-affirming model of care, more time is spent allowing kids to socially transition instead of focusing on medical treatment. A social transition consists of the steps a child takes to affirm their identity. An example could include allowing a child assigned male at birth to grow their hair or use a different name and wear clothing that better fits their identity. This transition is done with their family and communitys support. The most important message is that trans kids are kids, said Seth Kaplan, president of the Texas Pediatric Society. And they deserve to have the same health care that all kids have, which is evidence-based health care that serves to promote their growth and development to help them become healthy, fully functioning adults. Sometimes, more medical support is needed for the child. Puberty or hormone blockers are used to give a transgender kid time before deciding what permanent transition-related treatment they want.

What are puberty blockers? Puberty blockers are a type of medical treatment that delays puberty. They are completely reversible. It is not uncommon for puberty blockers to also be a treatment for children who arent transgender. Since early onset puberty can cause health issues into adulthood, they have been an approved medical treatment for children for decades. Hormone blockers are used for a lot of different medical purposes, not just for transgender youth, Quinones said. So I think that it's a slippery slope, when you're saying you're going to prohibit physicians from using this as a potential treatment for something.

Do transgender children have procedures more advanced than puberty blockers? Some transgender children have more advanced medical procedures, like starting testosterone therapy. Those instances are rare, especially if they are allowed to go on puberty blockers, which give them more time to decide what medical procedures they want in the future when they are an adult. Language in legislation targeting medical care for transgender children didn't reflect this reality, however. One bill filed during last years legislative sessions by state Rep. Matt Krause, R-Fort Worth, sought to ban gender transitioning and listed procedures that do not fall under gender-affirming care. The bill did not pass. The standards are to support pre-pubertal youth where they are, said Celia Neavel, director of the Center for Adolescent Health at the Peoples Community Clinic in Austin. Theres nothing going on with hormones or surgery, theres only living your life and being supportive of who you are.

Are gender-affirming surgeries used on children? Medical experts say transgender children rarely if ever have surgeries like orchiectomies, hysterectomies and mastectomies before they're adults. Still, Abbott cited such procedures in an Aug. 6, 2021, letter directing the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services top official to determine whether such gender confirmation surgeries are child abuse under existing state law. Paxton also listed those procedures in his legal opinion, which is nonbinding, issued in Febrary. Experts took issue with Abbotts language in the letter, which repeatedly referred to gender confirmation surgery as genital mutilation. It's literally the harshest language possible, because he wants a reaction from his side, said Andrea Segovia, Transgender Education Network of Texas field/policy coordinator. And they can gain supporters in that of like, Oh, that sounds awful. Yeah, we shouldn't be doing that to our minors.

How do these legislative attempts affect transgender youth? LGBTQ advocates say the political rhetoric surrounding anti-transgender legislation  and the possibility that the bills could become law  have dire consequences for trans kids mental health. The Trevor Project's 2021 National Survey on LGBTQ Youth Mental Health found 52% of transgender and nonbinary youth seriously considered attempting suicide in the previous year. It also found that over 70% of transgender kids have experienced symptoms of generalized anxiety and major depressive disorder. Over that year, the organization, which offers crisis counseling for LGBTQ youth, has received over 9,400 crisis contacts from Texas. A majority of trans individuals have struggled with depression or anxiety, at a minimum, during their life and their process, said Adrian Warren, president of the Texas Counseling Association. And any time the government, or really any entity, has an anti-trans position, that does further harm. And so when it is something like the government, theres a very large potential for harm. Medical providers are worried that any future legislation could impact their ability to provide treatment to Texas transgender kids. If you cant even talk about it, and these kids cant get the mental health services that they need and the counseling services that they need, then that has a huge detrimental impact on those kids, said Kaplan, of the Texas Pediatric Society.

What do transgender Texans think? Some families with transgender children have proactively hired lawyers as a result of Abbott's directive. Transgender Texans are paying attention to further moves officials could make to stifle gender-affirming care. During the 2021 legislative sessions, many transgender kids and their families spent hours testifying at the Capitol in support of gender-affirming care, along with doctor and counselors. At the time, some said they would consider leaving the state if any further action is taken. Landon Richie and his family have considered such a move. Now 18, Richie began socially and medically transitioning as a teenager. He also got involved in transgender activism, and is now an intern with Transgender Education Network of Texas. A third-generation Texan, he has a younger nonbinary sibling, and his family has discussed moving if they have to. Trans people absolutely do belong in the state of Texas, Richie said. We make up an integral part of the fabric of this state. But every other year thats the message that is sent, that trans people dont belong. Theyre second-class citizens. Texas doesnt want us to exist in public life. Disclosure: Equality Texas and Texas Medical Association have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.
Planning to go stargazing this month? NASA finally released their monthly skywatching guide.

NASA Reveals Skywatching Guide This March

Every month, NASA has been releasing a skywatching guide for people who plan to observe the skies. The space agency recently released a video explaining the notable happenings to expect this month.

According to NASA, people can expect to see morning planets, the nearest star cluster, and some do-it-yourself exoplanets.

Saturn Joins Venus And Mars

One exciting event is that Saturn will be joining both Venus and Mars in the morning sky this month. Starting on March 18 or 19, early risers will be able to witness Saturn steadily approaching Mars and Venus each day, forming a trio low in the East before sunrise.

Meanwhile, on March 27 and 28, the crescent moon will join the party.

Read Also: NOAA's GOES-T Weather Satellite Successfully Launches: What is It Meant to Do in Orbit?

Hyades Star Cluster

Apart from Saturn joining the other planets, people must also look above the Southwest on March evenings to locate the tall, bull, Y-shaped constellation Taurus. In the center of this constellation, skywatchers will find the Hyades star cluster forming the bull's face.

The Hyades star cluster contains hundreds of stars and it is the closest open star cluster to our solar system.

The space agency also explained that: "An open cluster is a group of stars that are close together in space and loosely bound together by their mutual gravity. These are stars that formed together around the same time, from the same cloud of dust and gas. Over time they blow away that leftover nebula material and drift apart."

"Open" clusters are so-named due to their open, or dispersed features.

Through this, NASA pointed out that skywatchers can observe Hyades without using a telescope. The simplest way to locate Hyades is by looking for a V-shaped cluster of stars in the constellation Taurus. Use the stars in Orion's belt as a compass to guide to identify the bright orange star Aldebaran.

Keep in mind that Aldebaran is not part of the star cluster, but it is located halfway to the Hyades. Think of it as the unwanted guest that you can't unsee.

Other Interesting Formations In The Skies

Apart from Hyades, the Epsilon Tauri, which is the Taurus bull's right eye, is the orange dwarf star that hosts an Eight-times-the-mass-of-Jupiter gas planet. Safe to say that "dwarf" might be a little misleading.

The 7 Canis Majoris will also appear in the skies this month. This star is located at the center of the dog constellation, which houses the brightest star, Sirius.

On the other hand, the star Tau Geminorum, which is located at the center of Castor, will also appear. Finally, Beta Ursae Minoris, the brightest star in the Little Dipper's bowl, may be seen spinning around to the north.

This star is orbited by a planet with a mass of six Jupiters.

It will be hard to remember these events and locations, so keep a copy of this page for future reference.

How To Use Your Mobile Phone To Capture Sky Events

As mentioned, some of the skywatching events this month do not require the use of telescopes. For this matter, CBC shared some ways for you to easily capture these sky events.

In the dark wide-field area, set up your tripod and mobile phone. Once all set, open the camera app on your phone. Upon opening, point the camera to the skies and touch the screen to adjust the focus. After touching, tap and hold the screen to open the brightness settings. Once it appeared, adjust it accordingly. Lastly, take a photo of it.

Related Article: Hubble Space Telescope Snaps New Photo of Seemingly Overlapping Galaxies in Constellation Virgo
It was a big Tuesday for Texas politics, which ended in run-offs for Attorney General and Railroad Commissioner candidates, while cementing Greg Abbott and Beto O'Rourke as gubernatorial candidates heading into the November midterms. But one coastal district had a surprising win. Former San Antonio TV meteorologist turned politician claims his first major victory in the race for U.S. Congress.

Maclovio Perez won the Democratic nomination for U.S. House in Texas 27th Congressional District. The results were announced Wednesday following the March 1 primary election.

Perez worked as a meteorologist for KENS 5 in the 1970s and then came back to the San Antonio airwaves in 2002 at News 4 San Antonio following a long stint in Los Angeles. He left WOAI in 2008 for Corpus Christi's KRISTV, where he stayed through 2020.

Corpus Christi TV station KIIITV spoke to Perez Tuesday night at his watch party in Nueces County. During the interview, Perez showed gratitude to the Texans who threw their support behind him.

I always new that Nueces County would be good for me, and I appreciate all the voters who turned out, Perez told KIIITV.

The congressional candidate also spoke about visiting the different areas in the 27th district during his campaign, which includes Victoria, Lavaca, Gonzales, Bastrop, Caldwell, Wharton, San Patricio, Calhoun, Matagorda, Jackson, Aransas and Nueces.

'San Antonio is a very, very special place': KSAT reporter signs off the air.

Perez quickly shifted his tone to Washington and how he will not stray away from his roots if elected to Congress.

We need somebody whos more concerned about whats happening in our neighborhood than what politics are going on in Washington, D.C. Too often, they leave, they go to Congress, and you never seem them again. Im not that kind of guy. Im of the soil. Im of the people.

One of main issues he is campaigning with is clean environment and clean energy. During his interview with KIIITV, Perez says were now seeing the effects of what scientists have been talking about for 30 years.

Having worked on the West Coast, I know what pollution looks like, and if youre from Houston, well, you know what pollution looks like. All that can be fixed in a matter of months if we tried. Its getting to a point where our kids are not having clean air. Theres too much plastic on beaches. This is our home. We have to take care of it.

Perez will now face off in the November General Election against incumbent Michael Cloud.
News of what Ukrainian officials said was an unprecedented attack on a nuclear power plant, the largest in Europe, sent shudders around the world. But a fire that broke out at the Zaporizhzhia site was eventually contained and the damage was unlikely to result in the kind of devastation seen in the last atomic disaster on Ukrainian soil, the 1986 meltdown at Chernobyl.

1. What happened?

Ukraine's Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba wrote on Twitter early Friday that a fire had broken out at the Zaporizhzhia plant in southeastern Ukraine after Russian shelling overnight. Kuleba called on Russia's military to halt firing immediately. The facility -- near the city of Enerhodar, about 500 kilometers (310 miles) from Chernobyl -- has a total capacity of 5.7 gigawatts, enough to power more than 4 million homes. Kuleba had initially warned that an explosion would be 10 times larger than Chernobyl. Emergency services said later they had extinguished the blaze and there were no casualties or any immediate risk to the reactors. Russian forces have since occupied the site, according to Ukrainian officials.

2. Is a disaster likely?

There's little reason so far to think so. Ukraine told the International Atomic Energy Agency the fire "has not affected 'essential' equipment," and that there had been no change reported in radiation levels. The reactors are "being protected by robust containment structures" and are being safely shut down, U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said in a statement. She said the department had activated its Nuclear Incident Response Team.

3. How does the plant compare to Chernobyl?

Unlike Chernobyl, the six reactors at Zaporizhzhia are pressurized water reactors (950 MW VVER-320), built in the early 1980s. They have containment structures around the reactor to stop any release of radiation. "Chernobyl did not have a containment," said Dale Klein, a former chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and a professor at the University of Texas at Austin. Unlike the damaged Fukushima plant in Japan, these VVER reactors have separate water circuits to cool the reactor and to produce steam, according to Tony Irwin, a nuclear power expert and honorary associate professor at Australian National University. They also have emergency core cooling systems and multiple injection systems to prevent a core melt, he said.

4. How strong are the containment structures?

The reactors are protected with thick metal and cement shells -- the head of Ukraine's nuclear operator has said they are designed to withstand an aircraft crash. "Depending on what type of artillery shells they are firing, it is not likely they will break out the containment buildings," Klein said. Nuclear plants are equipped with emergency response systems that should shut the reactors once they sense the vibrations from the attack, according to Mark Nelson, managing director of Radiant Energy Fund, which advises non-profits and industry about nuclear energy. Even if those systems were damaged, the meltdown would likely be contained within the facility.

5. What about a meltdown?

If a nuclear fuel rod isn't properly cooled and is exposed to air, then it can quickly heat up, begin to melt and release radioactive gases, which is the phenomenon known as a meltdown. But as long as there is power -- and backup diesel generators -- to keep the fuel rods cool, then it won't spiral into a meltdown like the one that occurred at Fukushima in 2011, which didn't have electricity for a prolonged period of time following an earthquake and tsunami. "Multiple backup cooling systems are available and operators have been trained to be able to withstand plausible situations that could occur under any abnormal situation," said Lake Barrett, a former official at the U.S. NRC who was involved with the cleanup after a partial meltdown at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in the U.S. in 1979. "If there is no significant military damage to their multiple redundant safety systems, the reactors should remain in a safe stable state."

6. What are the risks?

If Russian forces knocked out power at one of Ukraine's 15 nuclear reactors, and destroyed backup diesel generators, the plant operator may struggle to keep the fuel rods cooled. "My concern is that they hit the diesel storage for the diesel generators, and that will take out one of their backup power systems," said Klein. If spent nuclear fuel is stored in pools on site, an attack might drain the cooling fluid and cause the fuel to melt, releasing large amounts of radioactivity, James Acton, co-director of the nuclear policy program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, wrote in a note in February. And should fires that have broken out after shelling breach the containment structure surrounding pressurized water reactors, there could be a risk of radiation releasing out into the air, said Chris Gadomski, an analyst for BloombergNEF in New York. "If you damage the reactor's core, you'll have something that would be very unpleasant and similar in scope to Fukushima."

7. Why such fear?

There's never been a military attack on an operating nuclear plant, according to analysts. In the days before the incident, the IAEA had considered a 30-kilometer exclusion zone surrounding all of Ukraine's reactors. Nuclear plants house incredibly dangerous radioactive material - even after 10 years of cooling, spent fuel can release 20 times the fatal dose of radiation in one hour. In the 1986 accident at Chernobyl in Ukraine, then part of the former Soviet Union, 350,000 people had to be evacuated and dozens of workers died of radiation poisoning within weeks. It's the only accident in the history of commercial nuclear power to cause fatalities from direct radiation exposure, and was the product of a severely flawed Soviet-era reactor design, combined with human error, Gadomski said. More than 30 years later, there are still reports of dangerously high levels of radiation in locally produced milk, mushrooms and wild game.
Texas House candidate Jeff Younger, who seeks to outlaw transgender youth care, was driven out of an event hosted at the University of North Texas by protesters on Wednesday, March 2. The event played out on a thread from Twitter user Ismael Belkoura last night, who was posting photos and video from the event. Belkoura's thread has since been taken down by Twitter.

Younger, who is running for Texas House District 63, was scheduled to speak at an event organized by UNT chapter of Young Conservatives of Texas. The room where Younger was to speak was filled by protesters who drowned out Younger and organizers with a "F**k these fascists" and "trans rights" chants.

Younger, according to the tweets, only egged on the protesters by asking them to make more noise and proceeded to call the protesters "Communists." Another tweet alleges that Younger said "Trans people don't exist."

Younger's campaign website says he is running to outlaw "Transgender Child Abuse." It's a Texas issue that is already being fought in the courts after Gov. Greg Abbott issued a directive last week to state health and family protective services officials to investigate transgender youth care as child abuse.

A Dallas jury granted Younger's ex-wife Anne Georgulas custody of his now nine-year-old transgender daughter in 2019.

The event was then cut short by "40 minutes" another tweet says, and police then asked the protesters to leave the building. The protesters remained outside the UNT building where they chanted "protect trans kids."

UNT YCT president Kelly Neidert said on Twitter that she was rushed out of the building by campus police and into a vehicle after hiding in a janitor's closet. Another video posted to Twitter says that the police vehicle escorting Neidert off campus drove toward a group of protesters, and one woman who couldn't back away from the vehicle fast enough was hit.

The Denton Police Department confirmed to MySA that a woman on the scene reported being hit by a UNT police vehicle, but the incident was being investigated by UNT.

UNT-YCT distributed flyers around campus in late February saying "criminalize child transitions." The group also held an event in October last year called "What is wrong with Christian fascism?"

UNT's president said denounced the flyers campuswide email in February, calling them "intolerant." No statement in regards to last night's event has been released.

MySA reached out to UNT for comment.
The Harris County Republican Party is calling for Elections Administrator Isabel Longoria to resign after filing a lawsuit over a delay in ballot counts during Tuesday's primary election. At a press conference Thursday, Party Chair Cindy Siegel said Longoria is not qualified and has no experience or credentials to run elections in the county.

"Today we've seen what happens when you put the wrong person in the job," Siegel said. "This election was an unmitigated disaster."

Siegel's comments come on the heels of a new a suit filed by the party at 5:18 p.m. Wednesday, seeking to impound election records. State law requires counties to report election results within 24 hours of polls closing. However, the statute permits provisional and mail-in ballots to be counted up to six days after an election.

In the suit, the GOP claims that there were issues at the polls that affected votes. The document claimed some voters were able to submit the first page of their ballots but were unable to successfully transmit the second page. Other allegations in the lawsuit claim election officials did not properly test voting machines ahead of time, resulting in "inoperable scanning equipment in some voting locations."

In a Wednesday statement, Siegel blamed County Judge Lina Hidalgo for the alleged failures. "This fiasco has been a complete failure on behalf of Democrat County Judge Lina Hidalgos unelected, unaccountable Elections Administrator who is tasked with managing our elections and was sold to voters as a way to make our elections more efficient in Harris County," Siegel said. "The fault lies with Lina Hidalgo and the management of this primary that both parties contracted the Harris County Elections Administrator to run."

Harris County GOP attorney Steven Mitby announced Thursday that he is exploring additional legal actions in response to the incident. "The election didn't just go awry Tuesday night," Mitby said. "It went awry in the months before that when the planning process took place when Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo appointed an elections administrator who could not get the job done. As a result of that failure... we had the worst election disaster in Texas history."

A county judge dismissed Siegel's impound request on Wednesday night and allowed the vote count to resume almost two hours after it was halted. The elections office posted final unofficial elections results shortly after midnight Thursday.

"The court understands that we abided by the deadline that she provided and the political parties have agreed to file a motion to dismiss the lawsuit," said Harris County Director of Voting Beth Stevens during a separate Thursday press conference.

Stevens said that having paper ballots as a backup for electronic votes is a best practice for election officials across the country and requires time to count accurately. "The 24-hour deadline that has been in the Texas election code has been there since the 80's or 90's," Stevens said. "The state itself needs to contemplate that we're requiring every county in the state to move to this system and that's a good thing and the law needs to catch up to that."

Stevens said the office is "extremely confident" that every vote was counted accurately and fairly, adding that issues like damaged ballots are not a new phenomenon.

"I think it's unfortunate that it has been politicized over the last couple of days by state leadership in a way that's unnecessary and tends to call into question a process that we and they know are best practices," Stevens said. "Having leadership from the state spin up a thing that undermines the certainty of the election is a disservice to voters and a disservice to what we're trying to do here because it distracts from the actual work of finishing the count."

In a statement shared with KHOU Thursday, Hidalgo stated: "State leadership lost their moral authority on elections the day they bought into the Big Lie and used it as the basis to pass SB1. Still, that does not absolve our own elections administrator from being expected to run a smooth and efficient election for our voters. I am eager to get a full accounting from the elections department, including any state, local, and party-level issues."




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Ukraine was attacked with malware named "HermeticWiper". The malware attacked the country the same day Russia did.

The cyberattack that affected Ukraine was directed at government agencies and financial institutions. As Microsoft has reported, the said cyberattack has the possibility of attacking other institutions.

'HermeticWiper' Cyberattack on Ukraine

The cyberattack happened right after Russia officially declared its political aggression towards its neighboring country.

The New York Times reported that Microsoft's Threat Intelligence Center was one that alerted and monitored the situation. The private company received a warning of a never-before-seen piece of "wiper" malware. The said wiper malware alarmed Microsoft as it specifically targets government agencies and financial institutions of countries.

Three hours after detecting the malware, Microsoft's threat center was caught in the middle of the cyber conflict. The "HermeticWiper" was flagged as a high priority. Thereafter, Ukrainian cyber defense authorities were quickly informed of the threat.

Hermetic Wiper is also named as FoxBlade in the earlier days of its attacks.

According to ESET, the cyberattack started on February 23. The following day on February 24, the Ukrainian government receive a massive attack by another wiper.

On February 25, a cyberattack employed a new version of malware with debug logs.

Following the outbreak of wiper attacks such as HermeticWiper, Legal authorities such as the FBI and the federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) issued a warning to neighboring countries.

The wiper malware that attacked Ukraine has the potential to damage government organizations of other countries in Europe as the political aggression continues.

With that being said, further cyberattacks might still come their way as the aggression continues. Disruptive cyber attacks are also used by Russia to manipulate and invade their neighbor.

Read Also: Russia Issues Additional Demands for OneWeb, Will Not Launch Satellites Unless They're Met

What is 'HermeticWiper' is Still Continues

As reported by VentureBeat, multiple Hermetic malware attacked Ukrainian organizations during the start of the invasion: HermeticWiper, HermeticWizard, and HermeticRansom.

"HermeticWiper", as the name implies, is a malware that deletes all of the data on a disk that has been infected by it. The malware has the capability of wiping itself out from a disk by overwriting its own file with random bytes.

It is reported that this malware behavior is likely meant to stop people from looking at the wiper after an accident.

Microsoft says that as of right now, there is still an ongoing risk from the threat actors who made the "HermeticWiper" attacks.

These grave cyberattacks have coincided with Russia's advances in Ukraine.

In response to this threat, the Microsoft Security Response Center (MSRC) published an update reading the recent attack.

In the report made by Microsoft, the company confirmed the news. Microsoft stated that on February 23, a destructive malware attack was found that affected hundreds of systems in government, information technology, financial sector, and energy organizations that were mostly in or had ties to Ukraine.

Furthermore, The Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center (MSTIC) is keeping track of the threat actors who did this attack as DEV-0665, but it hasn't linked it to a group of people who has done this before.

Microsoft believes that there is still a chance that this group will launch another cyberattack. This assumption stems from more evidence of intrusions that collected since February 23.

Related Article: Apple Pay and Google Pay Discontinue Services to Russians as Part of US Sanctions
Russia made a decision to discontinue the supply of rocket engines to the U.S.

It will cut off the supply of RD-180 space rocket engines to United Launch Alliance (ULA). This comes as a retaliation against the sanctions the U.S. gave to Russia.

Russia Discontinues Supply of Rocket Engine

ULA is an American-based company formed by Lockheed Martin and Boeing that manufactures rockets and launches spacecraft. The partnership of Roscosmos and ULA is supposed to launch a rocket mission to space for the Pentagon's national security missions.

The discontinued supply includes RD181 rocket engines known to be used in the Antares rocket of Northrop Grumman and NASA.

The Antares spacecraft is a collaborative effort of both NASA and Northrop Grumman. The spacecraft is used to launch resupply missions to the International Space Station.

According to Reuters, Roscosmos Director General Dmitry Rogozin stated that their agency has supplied a total of 122 RD-180 engines to the U.S. since the 1990s. Atlas spacecrafts in turn have so far used 98 engines to power their launch.

In addition to that, Roscosmos stated that they will also halt the supply of all the engines since there are still 24 engines that need technical assistance.

However, ULA's CEO Tory Bruno stated that this will not negatively impact the upcoming launches they plan. The company has been using the same engine for Atlas V for several years now.

Furthermore, any problems that may arise with the engine will be addressed by the company's in-house experts.

ULA spokesperson Jessica Rye also stated that even if the agreements for technical support and spares will be discontinued, they will do everything to successfully fly their Atlas program.

Read Also: Microsoft Warns 'HermeticWiper' Cyberattacks Remains as an Ongoing Threat in Ukraine

Russia's Space Partnership With the West

Roscosmos Director General Dmitry Rogozin has vocally warned the U.S. to cooperate if it wants to keep a good space relationship with Russia.

"It has been known for a long time that our reliance on Russian rocket engines was both a vulnerability and an inhibitor of innovation," said Joe Laurienti, the CEO of Ursa Major, a manufacturer of propulsion systems in the United States.

However, this situation demonstrates that, despite assurances from major defense contractors, the United States still has a long way to go in developing the robust and flexible industrial base that will allow it to maintain its position as the world's leading space power.

Rogozin also threatened the partnership that has allowed the space station to operate for more than two decades.

As reported by The Washington Post, he, speaking through an interpreter on Russia Today, a state-run English-language television station, stated that Russia "will closely monitor the actions of our American partners and, if they continue to be hostile, we will return to the question of the existence of the International Space Station."

In addition to this, the Roscosmos space agency just recently provided conditions on internet satellite service provider OneWeb before it will launch the latter's satellites. These demands were imposed abruptly before the supposed launch of 36 satellites aboard the Soyuz rocket on Friday.

The first demand of Roscosmos is for OneWeb to assure that the satellites will not be used for military purposes. The other demand is for the British government to withdraw as a major stakeholder of the company.

So far, the second demand was rejected. OneWeb is also unlikely to submit to the imposition against it, putting in peril the scheduled satellite launch.

OneWeb has regularly used the help of Roscosmos in launching their satellites to space using the Soyuz rocket.

Furthermore, even if the relationship of Roscosmos to other companies has been strained, NASA and Roscosmos are stated to still be in communication with one another.

Related Article: Russia Issues Additional Demands for OneWeb, Will Not Launch Satellites Unless They're Met
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Chinese envoy says IAEA's resolution on Ukraine undermines agency's independence

Xinhua) 09:07, March 04, 2022

VIENNA, March 3 (Xinhua) -- The resolution on Ukraine's nuclear security, adopted by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), undermines the agency's independence as a professional international organization, China's Permanent Representative to the United Nations in Vienna Wang Qun said Thursday.

Wang made the remarks after voting against the resolution at a meeting convened by the IAEA Board of Governors to discuss the situation in Ukraine.

The resolution on nuclear safety, security and safeguards implications of the situation in Ukraine, proposed by Canada and Poland, was adopted by the IAEA board at the meeting.

The Chinese envoy said the resolution has "obviously gone beyond the IAEA's mandate by introducing many politicized elements."

"It's unacceptable that relevant countries, in disregard of the constructive suggestions of amendment, obstinately pushed the resolution into vote," he said.

Wang said that China is concerned about the safety, security and safeguards of nuclear facilities in Ukraine and supports the IAEA in performing its duties in accordance with its mandate.

He called for restraint on all relevant sides to avoid unintended nuclear safety and security accidents.

China will continue to support diplomatic efforts conducive to de-escalation of the situation in Ukraine, he added.

(Web editor: Xia Peiyao, Liang Jun)
Twitch is finally taking a stand against "harmful misinformation actors." Starting Thursday, March 3, users who violate the website's new policy will be banned.

Twitch just announced a new set of Community Guidelines that specifically addresses misinformation issues in the platform. Aside from the guidelines, the platform also discussed three categories that indicate a streamer as a "harmful misinformation superspreader."

Twitch Community Policy: Who Will be Banned?

According to The Verge, Twitch said, "We do not believe that individuals who use online services to spread false, harmful information, have a place in our community." The company explained that the following criteria will be used to flag possible offenders:

The streamer must persistently share misinformation.

The misinformation must be widely disproven and broadly shared.

The misinformation must encompass harmful topics, which include bogus theories about COVID-19 vaccines and elections.

Be warned that these criteria include Twitch streamers who share false information about COVID-19 vaccines, harmful health tips, and election frauds. Twitch emphasized that any streamer who "undermines the integrity of a civic or political process" and any information "promoted by conspiracy networks tied to violence and/or promoting violence" will also be banned.

The company further explained that these critera were made by taking together "the highest risk of harm including inciting real world harm." Keep in mind that these are new rules being added to the already long list of Hateful Conduct & Harassment Policy.

Read Also: Apple Event Will Take Place on March 8: Expect the Launch of New iPhone SE, Upgraded iPad Air, M2 Chip, and More

Twitch Misinformation Issues: System Changes

CNET noted that these changes came out just after the U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy called out to big tech companies about misinformation issues. The official had emphasized that COVID-19 misinformation was growing prevalent in the platforms, so companies had until May 2 to resolve the case. Tech giants were tasked to:

Report the sources of misinformation,

Report the number of people exposed.

Report about the demographic information of the victims to check how they were impacted.

Linking the two developments together, Twitch might be fulfilling its duties by actively hunting these offenders and removing them from the system to stop the spread.

Other Details About Twitch Ban Rules

Near the end of the announcement, Twitch said this update "will likely not impact you or the streamers you love" so long as users do not provoke the new rules. This implies that users who follow the guidelines can still continue on the platform.

Twitch emphasized that the new rules will not affect users "based on individual statements or discussions." This means streamers who simply disagree about a topic, or are explicitly sharing a personal opinion can be exempted from the rule.

In contrast, users who actively promote wrong information and encourage viewers to "try it out" will be severely punished.

Twitch users can report any harmful misinformation actors by contacting Twitch via email at OSIT@twitch.tv.



Related Article: Facebook Shuts Down Campus - Will the Data Be Permanently Deleted?
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Scattered thunderstorms in the morning, then partly cloudy late. High near 65F. Winds NW at 15 to 25 mph. Chance of rain 50%..

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A.O. Centrul de Drept al Femeilor anunta concurs pentru pozitia unei/ unui Experte/ Expert protectie
SYDNEY (AP)  Around 500,000 people in Sydney and its surrounding areas had by Thursday been told to evacuate or prepare to flee floodwaters as torrential rain lashed an extraordinarily long stretch of the Australian east coast.

Rivers were rising in Australias most populous city, home to 5 million, with New South Wales State Emergency Services Minister Steph Cooke warning of treacherous weather conditions over the next 24 hours.

Australias Bureau of Meteorology warned of life-threatening flash flooding and damaging winds with peak gusts in excess of 90 kilometers (56 miles) an hour.

Major flooding was expected along several rivers in and around Sydney. Dozens of suburbs were on high alert.

The State Emergency Service issued evacuation orders to 200,000 residents and evacuation warnings had been sent to another 300,000.

New South Wales Premier Dominic Perrottet urged residents to take the orders seriously.

We do believe that things will get worse before they get better, Perrottet said.

Minor flood warnings were also issued for coastal communities as far as 200 kilometers (120 miles) south of Sydney.

Floodwaters were also rising in Brisbane, Australias third-most populous city 730 kilometers (450 miles) north of Sydney, as severe thunder storms struck.

Hailstones 5 to 6 centimeters (2 inches) wide pounded the town of Inglewood, 270 kilometers (170 miles) southwest of Brisbane, early Thursday, the Bureau of Meteorology said.

Extraordinarily heavy rain brought flash floods to the Queensland state coast 500 kilometers (310 miles) north of the capital Brisbane last week and a south-moving low-pressure system had since brought the rain south of Sydney.

The flooding has claimed 14 lives in Queensland and neighboring New South Wales since Feb. 22, when the body of a 63-year-old woman was recovered from a submerged car at Belli Park, north of Brisbane.

In New South Wales, a 54-year-old man was found Friday in a submerged SUV in Matcham, 90 kilometers (50 miles) north of Sydney.

Most recently, a man in his 70s was found in his flooded apartment Wednesday in Lismore, New South Wales. Four people died in the town of 28,000.

Several Brisbane suburbs remain flooded after the river that snakes through the city center peaked on Monday.

Queensland Fire and Emergency Services Assistant Commissioner John Cawcutt said hundreds of people were calling for help in Brisbane _ home to 2.6 million people _ and its surrounds with heavy rain causing flash flooding.

Weve got high winds and of course weve got the potential for flash flooding because of the already sodden ground out there, Cawcutt told Nine Network television.

Because of the saturation, creeks are rising very, very quickly _ drains, stormwater areas, water is bubbling up from below ground so its right across Brisbane, Cawcutt added.

He described the dangerous weather extending north of Brisbane and south of Sydney as an enormous event.

Bureau of Meteorology forecaster Laura Boekel said thunderstorms brought the chance of more flooding, extending 450 kilometers (280 miles) north from Brisbane to Bundaberg during the next day or two.

This is a very dangerous and potentially life-threatening situation for southeast Queensland, Boekel said.

McGuirk contributed from Canberra, Australia.

About the photo: State emergency staff stand near the entrance to the flooded Windsor bridge on the outskirts of Sydney, Australia, Thursday, March 3, 2022. Around 500,000 people in Sydney and its surrounds have been told to evacuate or prepare to flee floodwaters as torrential rain lashes an extraordinarily long stretch of the Australian east coast. (AP Photo/Rick Rycroft)

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
The number of carjackings has exploded in major US cities in the past two years, along with a less astonishing increase in car thefts overall, according to the National Insurance Crime Bureau.

NICB President and Chief Executive Officer David J. Glawe told the Senate Judiciary Committee during a hearing Tuesday that from 2019 to 2021 the number of carjackings increased 286% in New York City, 238% in Philadelphia, 207% in Chicago, 200% in Washington D.C., 159% in New Orleans and 89% in Denver. Glawe said his organization pieced together those figures from a variety of sources because there is no comprehensive national data that parses out carjacking from car theft in general.

Nonetheless, the limited data that is available shows a staggering increase in the frequency of the violent crime, Grawe said.

One disturbing sub-plot laying underneath these bleak numbers is the fact that many of the carjackings are being committed by juveniles  sometimes by kids as young as 11 years old, he told the committee. In Chicago, juveniles were involved in nearly half of all carjackings in 2020.

The NICB said nationally car thefts increased 16.5% from 2019 to 2021, and 30% since 2017. But Colorado saw a 79% increase from 2019 to 2021, Wisconsin 74%, Vermont 64%, New York State 59% and Washington D.C. 52%.

Law enforcement officials testified that the rise in carjacking numbers comes along with a general nationwide increase in violent crime over the past two years. For example, the number of homicides in the nations largest cities increased 49% from 2019 to 2021, said Dallas Police Chief Eddie Garcia, speaking on behalf of the Major Cities Chiefs Association.

Garcia said financial gain is one motive. The rise in value of the precious metals inside of catalytic converters has spawned a national crime spree. Some carjackers take stolen vehicles directly to chop shops to be sold for parts. Criminals also steal cars at gunpoint and then use the vehicles to use during robberies and drive-by shootings, he said.

But some carjackings appear to be motivated by a a thirst for clout and to gain notoriety on social media.

The most prominent example is the Kia Boys in Milwaukee, Garcia said. As part of this disturbing trend, groups of juveniles will steal vehicles, primarily Kias and Hyundais, and take them for joyrides. Theyll then post videos on social media in a bid to outdo each other.

Technology can be used to combat the problem. Cook County Sheriff Thomas J. Dart told the committee that the geolocation equipment installed in most vehicles since 2015 is one of the most effective tools available to law enforcement.

But Dart said while some vehicle manufacturers are helpful and willing to assist police investigations, others are reluctant to help track stolen vehicles. He said one victim whose car was carjacked while stopping for gasoline in a Chicago suburb contacted the manufacturer and asked for help in tracking the vehicle, with not success. After the sheriffs office got involved, it took two days to recover the vehicle. Dart said by the time the car had been used in at least two other crimes, including another carjacking.

We believe auto manufacturers can be a great ally in this battle, Dart said. They already innovated the technologies needed to track the stolen vehicles. Now they must lead the way in developing a system to communicate in a consistent way with responding law enforcement.

John Bozzella, president and CEO of the Alliance for Automotive Innovation said the industry is working on it. Bozzella told the committee that connectivity capability of vehicles varies widely among manufacturers. He said even if vehicles are tracked, the accuracy of the location service can be compromised by signal strength or even by being disabled by savvy criminals.

Exposure to liability is also an issue, Bozzella said. He said state privacy laws may interfere with a manufacturers ability to cooperate with a request to track a vehicle. Also, there needs to be a way to verify that a tracking request actually is being made by a law enforcement officer, he said.

Further, automakers may have contractual limitations within their customer agreements on when location may be provided to third parties, including law enforcement, Bozella said. Therefore, this is a consideration that must be taken to account when evaluating different policy or technical solutions to this challenge.

About the photo: The funeral procession leaves Grace Church of Middleburg Heights, Ohio, following the service for Cleveland police officer Shane Bartek, who was fatally shot during a carjacking New Years Eve, Tuesday, Jan. 11, 2022. (Joshua Gunter/Cleveland.com via AP)
The International Maritime Organization (IMO) will convene a special meeting next week to discuss the risks to seafarers and ships in the Black Sea and Sea of Azov after Russias invasion of Ukraine, the UNs shipping agency said on Friday.

Over 15 countries earlier this week called for an IMO meeting as concerns grow for the safety of ships and their crews amid ships being damaged by projectiles.

Many shipping firms have suspended sailings to affected Black Sea ports and other terminals in Ukraine. Insurance premiums for voyages have soared since Russias invasion on Feb. 24, an action Moscow calls a special operation.

An Estonian-owned cargo ship sank on Thursday off Ukraines major Black Sea port of Odessa, hours after a Bangladeshi vessel was hit by a missile or bomb at another port, killing one of its crew. This followed at least three other ships being hit by projectiles in recent days.

The IMO said the virtual meeting will be held on March 10 and 11 with its Council, which consists of 40 member countries who are elected for two years. Non-Council member states such as Ukraine will be able to make statements.

The IMO has 175 member states and three associate members and is tasked with safety and security of international shipping.

While it can adopt international laws to bolster safety at sea it cannot stop merchant ships from sailing to destinations.

The Marshall Islands, one of the worlds top flag states for shipping, raised its warning system to the highest level on Thursday for some stretches of water.

Commercial vessels should not attempt to enter the Sea of Azov or the Northwest Black Sea, it said in an advisory note, adding that multiple commercial vessels have been hit by missile attacks and shelling at or near Ukrainian ports and territorial waters.

On Wednesday, the International Transport Workers Federation union and other bodies designated sections of the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov as warlike operations areas, which entitles seafarers to refuse to sail to the region among other rights.
In an effort to prepare for future public health crises, the U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murphy officially calls on tech companies to supply research, data, and any information on COVID-19 misinformation.

Murphy submitted the Request for Information (RFI) to the Federal Register on Thursday, March 3.

"The Office of the Surgeon General requests input from interested parties on the impact and prevalence of health misinformation in the digital information environment during the COVID-19 pandemic," the request read.

Facebook, Google, Big Tech Urged To Hand Out Data

The request is centered around gathering essential data on COVID misinformation from technology platforms, especially social media sites and apps like Facebook and Twitter, as well as general search engines like Google.

Some usual examples of the misinformation being spread are quite alarming.

One myth circulating around is that receiving a COVID-19 vaccine can make the recipient magnetic. This is obviously not true and it would not take that much fact-checking to confirm its falsity. However, many still fall for myths such as this.

The data Murphy wants to access includes any aggregate data and analysis on the common misinformation in circulation, how many users were exposed to such misinformation, and the demographics of those exposed.

The Surgeon General also wants data about the technology platforms' policies related to COVID-19. This would most likely include work-from-home setups and mask mandates. Just recently, Google employees were asked to return to an office setup starting April.

Read Also: Truth Social App Losing Interest From People - Including Trump

First Step in Combating COVID Misinformation

The move to utilize the help of Big Tech is an essential first step in Murphy's desire to eradicate harmful health misinformation.

Last year, the surgeon general released a report on the seriousness of the spread of false COVID information. The report reflects his desire to proactively tackle the looming threat of misinformation, urging all other sectors of society to help out.

He had a separate message to media members, educators, health practitioners, and technology platforms on what to do to help out.

And help out they did.

Big Tech Initiatives Against Misinformation

The major technology platforms already have actions in place to help eradicate COVID misinformation.

Facebook already launched a campaign together with the World Health Organization (WHO). It is considered as the "biggest worldwide campaign to promote authoritative information about COVID-19 vaccines."

Google put aside $3 million to support fact-checking initiatives to counter COVID misinformation, especially surrounding vaccines. The Covid-19 Vaccine Counter-Misinformation Open Fund is designed to support journalistic efforts to spread COVID facts and fact-checking methods.

As for Twitter, it has been proactive in searching out and removing harmful COVID-19 misleading tweets.

But as of this moment, Surgeon General Murphy is asking for a little more help. The data these technology platforms can provide will certainly be crucial in crafting strategies and policies to fight COVID misinformation. Such information will enable policy-makers to understand the psychology and motivations behind the spread of false information.

Relate Article: Biden Calls on Congress To Pass CHIPS Act in SOTU Address
A visitation will be held on Tuesday, May 3, 2022 at the MMS- Payne Funeral Home Chapel from 1:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. Family will greet friends from 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. Grace Ann Harrison passed away on April 26, 2022 at the age of 76 years old. Grace Ann was born to Dryden and Joan Carman 
If a visitor to Israel had the time to take a month to really get to know the country, I would recommend the period that has just concluded  from Passover through Israeli Independence Day. Its Israel in a nutshell. And it also happens to be a time of year when most of the days are picture-
Korean Trade Minister Yeo Han-koo poses for a photo with U.S. Deputy Secretary of Commerce Don Graves during their meeting in Washington, Friday, in this photo provided by the South Korean ministry. Yonhap





Korea won an exemption from the United States' expanded export restrictions on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine, Seoul's industry ministry said Friday.







Last week, the U.S. government announced the Foreign Direct Product Rule (FDPR) for "all of Russia" as part of its export controls to block Russia's access to global high-tech products and other major items, such as semiconductors.







The measure calls on companies to receive a license from the U.S. for tech-related items using U.S. technology before they can be shipped to Russia, which is feared to affect major South Korean exporters, as they use U.S. technology and software.







Trade Minister Yeo Han-koo met with senior U.S. officials in Washington, Thursday, and the two sides agreed to include South Korea in the U.S.' list of exempt countries, according to the ministry.







"The U.S. assessed that South Korea's sanctions against Russia are well-aligned with the international standard and announced its decision to put South Korea on the list of FDPR exempt nations," the ministry said in a release.







Korea is now included on the list of 33 nations, which includes the European Union, Britain and Japan. (Yonhap)


GE Current, under the name Current Lighting Solutions, will bring its corporate headquarters to 25825 Science Park in Beachwood from Nela Park in East Cleveland. The site is the former Aleris International building, which closed in 2020 after the company was purchased by Novelis Inc. of Atlanta.

On Aug. 30, 2021, Beachwood City Council approved a job creation incentive grant and other incentives for GE Current, a Daintree Company. At that point, GE Current planned to move to 23550 Commerce Park. In exchange for the move to Beachwood, council members unanimously passed a package of three incentives, which included a job creation incentive grant for 10 years, a $500,000 job creation occupancy grant and a rebate of certain permitting fees in connection with job creation.

However, after GE Current announced plans to acquire Hubbell Incorporateds C&I Lighting in October 2021, Jim Benson, GE Currents director of strategic marketing and external communications, told the Cleveland Jewish News that GE Current was reconsidering its Northeast Ohio office needs for office space. On Feb. 1, the $250 million cash transaction was complete.

Benson told the CJN at the time that GE Current was moving forward with our search for our new office location in Beachwood and surrounding cities.

The new agreement, which names as parties the city of Beachwood, Current Lighting Solutions, LLC and Current Lighting EmployeeCo, LLC, stipulates there will be 90 employees relocated to Science Park no later than April 1, 2023, with an annual payroll of approximately $6 million.

The job creation is not limited to the companys original site so long as it is in Beachwood, but not located in the Chagrin Highlands, the draft six-year agreement reads.

In addition, the terms read, The city shall pay to Lighting EmployeeCo an amount equal to 30% of the municipal income tax withheld from company employees at the site and paid to the city, for a period of six years (6) beginning with the employee payroll for calendar year 2022 with the first year of the grant to be paid annually starting in 2023 (the incentive grant).

In the first and final year of the agreement a prorated calendar year payment will be calculated and due, the agreement reads. Years two through six will be paid in one lump sum at the end of the six-year term on or around July 1, 2028 so long as Lighting EmployeeCos annual payroll averages six million dollars ($6,000,000.00) over the previous five-year period taking into account any prorated year.
Jewish leaders in Central Ohio said they believe that Intels decision to build a microchip plant in New Albany will draw Jewish professionals to the area, spurring growth that could transform the community.

That project could really be an inflection point for the community, Howie Beigelman, executive director of Ohio Jewish Communities in Columbus, told the Columbus Jewish News.

He said that local Jewish day schools Columbus Torah Academy and Columbus Jewish Day School in New Albany will play a central role in that growth. The quality of Jewish education will be one of the first things young Jewish professionals will consider when deciding whether to move their families to the area, he said.

JewishColumbus CEO Joel Marcovitch said he sees great long-term growth potential for the Jewish community stemming from the Intel project.

This is an unbelievable game-changer for the Central Ohio region, he said, adding that the area could see a large increase from its current Jewish population of 27,000.

Its very, very exciting, he said. Whos to say that in the next 10 years our population cant go close to Pittsburghs or close to Cincinnatis.

This excitement is shared by Rabbi Benjy Bar-Lev, senior rabbi at Temple Beth Shalom, and Rabbi Areyah Kaltmann, executive director of the Lori Schottenstein Chabad Center, both in New Albany.

We at Temple Beth Shalom were thrilled to see the news that such a transformative project is coming to New Albany, bringing so many new people to our beloved city, Bar-Lev said. We are very excited at the prospect of welcoming new members to Temple Beth Shalom and the larger Columbus Jewish community.

This development will lead to growth, which is an important part of Judaism, Kaltmann said. His Chabad will help Jewish people relocate to New Albany as other Chabads had done elsewhere, he said. For example, Chabad helped Jewish professionals relocate to Chandler, Ariz. when Intel built a semiconductor manufacturing plant there in 2021.

Whether its a seed starting to bud or Intel creating one of the worlds largest chip plants in New Albany, according to Jewish tradition growth is the greatest indication that something is alive and thriving, he said.
Clinton, IA (52732)

Today

Rain showers in the morning will evolve into a more steady rain in the afternoon. High 57F. Winds E at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 80%. Rainfall near a quarter of an inch..

Tonight

Showers early, becoming a steady rain late. Low 48F. Winds ENE at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 80%. Rainfall near a quarter of an inch.
Moda Moda's "pro-change black" shampoo / Korea Times file



By Lee Hyo-jin



A shampoo introduced by a Korean cosmetics company which "miraculously" turns gray hair to black, is facing a major setback as the country's drug safety regulator seeks to ban the sale of the product citing the presence of toxic chemicals in its ingredients.



The "pro-change black" shampoo manufactured by Moda Moda was first launched in the U.S. market in June 2021 through a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter and hit the local market in August of that year.



According to the company, when used over a period of several months, the shampoo gradually turns gray hair to black. The product was developed jointly with Lee Hae-shin, a chemistry professor at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST).



The developers took the idea from "browning reactions" of fruits such as apples and bananas when exposed to oxygen, caused by polyphenol (PPO). The company stressed that the shampoo is completely free of any materials that are toxic to the human body or allergy-inducing substances.



The "miracle shampoo" sold out fast among consumers who found this a great alternative to frequently dyeing their hair. Over 2 million bottles of "pro-change black" have been sold in Korea and overseas as of March, according to the company.



But Moda Moda ran into a major setback in December 2021, when the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety announced its plan to prohibit the use of 1,2,4-trihydroxybenzene (THB), the main substance of the shampoo, in cosmetics.





Lee Hae-sin, a professor of chemistry at Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology shows Moda Moda's shampoo during an interview with Hankook Ilbo, sister paper of The Korea Times at the newspaper's office, Oct.13, 2021. Korea Times photo by Han Ji-eun



The ministry took reference from a European Council (EC) decision made in December 2020 to add THB to its list of prohibited ingredients for cosmetics, based on an assessment by the Scientific Committee for Consumer Safety (SCCS).



In its report, the SCCS said it "does not consider 1,2,4-THB safe due to potential genotoxicity when used as an auto-oxidative hair dye component in permanent hair dye formulations."



"The systemic availability of 1,2,4-THB raises the risk of intracellular generation of hydrogen peroxide, as well as potential genotoxicity via DNA adduct formation by 1,2,4-THB and/or semi-quinones," it added.



On Jan. 26, the ministry concluded that it will revise relevant policies within the first half of the year. Once the process is completed, the revision will take effect after six months, following which the production of the shampoo will be banned.



Moda Moda is fiercely protesting, claiming that it is unfair to apply EC's standard to its product.



In a press conference held on Jan. 27, Professor Lee criticized the authorities for imposing excessive regulations on the innovative product.



"The SCCS report assessed the use of THB in dyeing products, not shampoos. These are two different hair products," said Lee.



"The mechanism used in our product is different from other coloring products," he said, urging the authorities to draw up new guidelines for newly-introduced products that do not fit the existing regulations.



The company also argued that the ministry is failing to provide clear reasons on its decision, and that the use of THB in cosmetics is not prohibited in many other countries such as the U.S. and Japan.



"We are conducting additional clinical trials to prove the safety of the shampoo, with the results expected to be announced in the first half of this year. We will submit the results to the government for further review," said a Moda Moda official, Thursday.



But the drug safety ministry stands firm on its stance.



"Our decision, which was made based on thorough discussion with experts, remains unchanged. We will proceed with necessary steps to revise the regulations, with public safety as our top priority," ministry spokesman Kang Baek-won told The Korea Times over the phone, the same day.





Ministry of Food and Drug Safety headquarters in Cheongju, North Chungcheong Province / Courtesy of Ministry of Food and Drug Safety
Eisenhower Auditorium was filled to the brim Thursday evening as Waitress brought Broadway back to Penn State. With close to a full house, the energy was egg-static throughout the entire production.

Waitress is based on the 2007 film with the same name, written by Adrienne Shelly. The musical follows Jenna Hunterson, a waitress and pie-making prodigy, whose life takes an unexpected turn when she discovers she has a bun in the oven. Stuck in a small town and an abusive relationship, Hunterson bakes away her blues with her pie-making, incorporating her struggles into their names, such as Betrayed by My Eggs pie or Gingersnap Out of it pie.

Although Hunterson's life isnt as easy as pie, she maintains support from her fellow waitresses and faithful friends. The show explores themes of being true to oneself and not crumbling in the face of adversity.

Ed Legutko, a retired State College resident, said he was most compelled by the heartwarming relationships in the musical.

It was a touching story, Legutko said. It was full of hope and love and created a new kind of family. It was all just wonderful.

Diane Schultz, another attendee, drove over 40 miles from Altoona, Pennsylvania, just to see the show. She agreed that Waitress took the cake  or pie, rather.

It had everything, Schultz said, music, drama, comedy, excitement. It just had it all.

This production is the first in Broadway musical history to have four women in the top four creative positions, with Jessie Nelsons book, Sara Bareilles score, Lorin Latarros choreography and Diane Paulus directing.

Len Codispot-Anderson, the group sales and development relations manager for the Center for the Performing Arts at Penn State, said a lot went on behind the scenes to make the show possible.

We all pulled together, Codispot-Anderson said. It was the first show back, so we were really excited.

Laura Sullivan, the director of marketing and communications for the Center for the Performing Arts, said that managing coronavirus restrictions was not easy, but the production staff [made] it work and [adjusted] in order to bring [live productions] back to [the] campus and community.

Just to be able to bring touring Broadway back as we begin to emerge from a pandemic is so exciting, Sullivan said via email. And to bring it back with a full house is encouraging and hopeful for those of us who make the arts our lifes work.

Waitress will continue its national tour through June, according to the official website. Individuals who missed the performance at Eisenhower Auditorium can keep a "pie" out for additional dates in Pennsylvania later this month.

We came out to see a good show, Legutko said, and Waitress did not disappoint.

MORE LIFESTYLE CONTENT
At a Wednesday meeting, the Centre County Commissioners agreed to sell the county's Russian assets from its retirement portfolio after Russia's invasion of Ukraine, according to Centre County Commissioner Michael Pipe.

Pipe said the "roughly" $130 million retirement portfolio had two different funds, which "had exposure to Russian-controlled assets" or assets in areas under Russian command.

The two funds contained about $30 million total in each, approximately $200,000 of which was invested in Russia, Pipe said. Centre County will replace the investments with ones that are not involved with Russia, according to Pipe.

Pipe called Wednesday's vote a "moral decision" for Centre County and said many states across America, including Pennsylvania, have taken similar action.

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Penn States Ukrainian Society held the "We Are Ukraine" rally at Old Main Thursday to stand in solidarity with Ukraine  a sovereign, peaceful country undergoing an unjust war and invasion, Sophia Datsko, the society's vice president, said.

The war began when Russian troops invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, and according to the Associated Press, it's now Europe's largest ground war since World War II.

The rally kicked off with Ukrainian Society members singing the American and Ukrainian National Anthems, and the crowd joined in.

Ukrainian Society President Maria Smereka then gave thanks to the societys supporters and discussed fundraising efforts.

Thank you to everyone who has made a donation to the We Are for Ukraine Venmo fund thus far, Smereka (junior-biology) said. Your generosity is greatly appreciated and desperately needed by the soldiers and innocent civilians suffering in Ukraine.

Datsko (senior-global and international studies and political science) said the Ukrainian Society established a business Venmo page to raise donations for three funds: the National Bank of Ukraines humanitarian fund, the Armed Forces of Ukraine and Revived Soldiers Ukraine.

We currently have $2,500 collected, Datsko said. Our goal is to donate $10,000.

For the remainder of the event, Ukrainian Society members and participants shared the richness of Ukrainian culture through speech, poetry and song, while also discussing current information about the war.

The first speaker, Yuliya Ladygina said Ukrainians are fighting for what lays at the very foundation of America life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Hence, the Ukrainian cause is also the American cause, Ladygina, assistant professor of Russian and global studies, said. Hence, Ukraine's success in defeating Putin is crucial for Americas success.

Another speaker, State College Mayor Ezra Nanes said this is not a war of the Russian people but a war of a government.

I have friends who are Russian who have had their children harassed and teased and bullied because of this, Nanes said, and I want to say as I put my arm around my Ukrainian kin, I also put my arm around my Russian kin.

Jesse Barlow, State College Borough Council president, then spoke about the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that was ratified by the United Nations in 1948.

To live free from unprovoked violence is one of our most important human rights, Barlow said. To live free from unprovoked invasion is the right of every nation.

Barlow said Russias leaders and military are depriving people living in Ukraine of those rights and more.

This war has deservingly sparked protests all over the world, Barlow said. I see today that State College and Penn State have strong ties to Ukraine.

Wyatt Gould, like other Penn State students, came to the rally to support his Russian and Ukrainian friends.

I think with issues like this, it can be really difficult to see how to take action, Gould (senior-security and risk analysis) said, and I think coming out to these sorts of things and being publicly visible and outspoken on these issues is a direct way to feel like youre doing something to help.

Tasha Luk also said she wanted to support Ukrainian and Russian people since China and Taiwan have similar tensions.

My mom is from Taiwan, Luk (senior-political science) said, so I can feel [this], and I can relate.

Tetiana Kovalyus said it was really nice to see people coming out in support of Ukraine.

When I moved here, a lot of people didn't know where Ukraine was, Kovalyus (junior-management) said, and whenever I spoke Ukranian, I was given Russian dictionaries to translate, so its amazing that for once were getting recognition.

The rally ended with a candlelit remembrance for all of the fallen Ukrainian soldiers and civilians who have fought and continue to fight for Ukrainian freedom.

We are Penn State, the crowd chanted. We are for Ukraine.

MORE CAMPUS COVERAGE
People wait in line for COVID-19 tests at a pop-up screening clinic in front of Seoul Station, Friday. Yonhap





Korea's daily COVID-19 infections exceeded 260,000 for the first time Thursday as the highly transmissible Omicron variant continues to rage across the country.







The Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA) reported 266,853 cases, including 266,771 local ones, raising the total caseload to 3,691,488. Daily infections jumped from 198,803 cases Wednesday.







The daily caseload surpassed 200,000 for the first time Tuesday, the day the government suspended the enforcement of the vaccine pass system over the lack of staff to handle the pandemic.







Daily cases exceeded 100,000 for the first time in mid-February.







Virus-related deaths rose to 186 from 128 a day earlier, bringing the toll to 8,580 for a fatality rate of 0.22 percent, the KDCA said.







The number of critically ill COVID-19 patients rose to 797 from 766 during the same period.






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In this file photo, Bill Sperry collects signatures for Dave Gross, a Democrat running for the University of Colorado Board of Regents from the 2nd Congressional District, on Feb. 11, 2020, in Boulder. Gross qualified for the primary ballot but lost to Callie Rennison, who won the open seat in November.
The Colorado legislature approved legislation Friday that seeks to prevent the doxxing of health care workers and other employees.

The state Senate passed House Bill 1041 in a final 23-9 vote on Friday, following the state House of Representatives 52-10 approval last month. The bill will now be sent to Gov. Jared Polis for final consideration.

If enacted, the bill would add health care workers  as well as code enforcement officers, child representatives and animal control officers  to the list of people who can request to have their personal information removed from government websites after they receive threats to their safety. Personal information includes home addresses, phone numbers and email addresses.

People deserve to do their job without fear for their lives and safety, and the safety of their family, said Sen. Joann Ginal, D-Fort Collins, the bills Senate sponsor. Its unbelievable what can happen to one who only wants to do their job. It is really easy to be able to intimidate and threaten someone just by looking at the internet.

This legislation comes as 31% of hospital nurses in September 2021 reported experiencing an increase in workplace violence during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a survey by National Nurses United.

Though the bill received bipartisan support, all lawmakers who voted against the bill are Republicans.

Some opponents have previously denounced the bill because they argue privacy protection should be afforded to everyone equally; however, these privacy protections are already in place for other workers including law enforcement.

The bill would not prohibit access to records by county officials or certain other individuals if the access is related to a real estate matter. Under the bill, threats would include any threats made to the individuals family as well as to their own life.
This week on Colorado Politicking, legislative reporters Marianne Goodland and Hannah Metzger join host Pat Poblete to discuss the response from public officials in Colorado to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Read previous coverage on our stories here:

To see previous episodes, click here.
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Messages of support for Ukraine are placed in front of the Embassy of Ukraine in Yongsan District, Seoul, Thursday. Yonhap



By Kwon Mee-yoo



In the wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, attention to the Eastern European country has grown sharply in Korea followed by increased coverage of the nation. Discovering that some Korean media outlets are using a Russian style of romanizing the name of the capital, the Embassy of Ukraine in Seoul has officially asked the Korean media and Koreans to refer to their cities in the Ukrainian style.



For instance, the Ukrainian capital is written "Kyiv" in the Ukrainian style of romanization, but "Kiev" in the Russian one. In Korea, the names of Ukrainian cities were commonly written to reflect Russian-language pronunciation, despite the country having gained independence from the Soviet Union over two decades ago.



The Ukrainian Embassy here shared the Ukrainian style of transliterating city names on its Facebook page, encouraging Koreans to use the Ukrainian versions for pronunciation and spelling.



"In view of the ongoing Russian war in Ukraine, we asked Korean society to refrain from usage of the names of Ukrainian cities transliterated from Russian language," the embassy told The Korea Times, Wednesday.



"It has an occupational meaning to us. Russia is willing to destroy us as a nation which is why it is also targeting our culture as well as the language. Thus changing the Russian style pronunciation of Ukrainian names in Korean is very important, and will help to preserve the correct Ukrainian naming. This campaign has been run for many years worldwide, and we are grateful that Korea is willing to correct this historical mistake now."



According to the Ukrainian embassy, the correct version would be "Lviv," not "Lvov," for the city in western Ukraine, and "Krym" for "Crimea."





The Embassy of Ukraine in Korea lists the correct transliteration of Ukrainian cities in English. Courtesy of the Embassy of Ukraine to Korea
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Boomtown 2022: How to live your best life in Columbia over 50

Columbia makes repeated appearances on lists ranking cities as good places to live. It is perhaps an even better place to mature and retire. A strong health care network, reasonable housing prices, a vibrant, engaged community and an appealing downtown help create an attractive location for all generations, but especially for those over 50. Read more stories.

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Danville, IL (61832)

Today

Cloudy with periods of rain. High 58F. Winds ESE at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 90%. Rainfall near a quarter of an inch..

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Rain likely. Low 56F. Winds E at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 70%. Rainfall near a quarter of an inch.


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Social media giant Twitter has announced it will reinstate business travel immediately and reopen its offices from March 15, though employees will still be able to work remotely should they choose.

In a statement posted on Twitter, CEO Parag Agrawal said the company was ready to fully open up business travel and all its offices around the world. Business travel is back effective immediately, and office openings will start on March 15, he wrote.

However, Agrawal stressed that Twitter would be supporting a hybrid work model, stating the company was committed to offering truly flexible work.

The decisions about where you work, whether you feel safe travelling for business, and what events you attend, should be yours, the statement read.

This aligns with former CEO Jack Dorseys October 2020 promise that employees can work from home permanently, as first reported by Buzzfeed News.

Agrawal did caution that distributed working will be much, much harder, and that employees must learn how to adapt to challenges in the coming months, such as hybrid meetings where some employees are in the office and others are remote.

Tech returns to the office

Twitter is not the first major tech company to announce it would be reopening its offices. On February 28, Microsoft reopened its headquarters in Redmond, Washington and other locations around the world.

Google also told employees on Wednesday that it would begin requiring its employees in various US locations to return to the office in person for at least three days a week starting April 4, according to an internal email seen by Reuters.

In December 2021, Meta said it was delaying its plan to reopen US offices until the new year. This was pushed back again to March 2022, but workers will only be allowed to return if they show proof of a booster vaccination.

We understand that the continued uncertainty makes this a difficult time to make decisions about where to work, so were giving more time to choose what works best for them, Janelle Gale, Metas vice president of human resources, told CNBC. Meta employees that wish to continue working remotely after March 28 will need to request a deferral, which will last between three and five months.
An increase in workplace surveillance during the COVID-19 pandemic could lead to widespread discrimination, work intensification, and unfair treatment of workers unless regulatory safeguards are put in place, according to a prominent UK union group.

The Trades Union Congress (TUC), which represents most unions in the UK, published survey results this week highlighting the use of surveillance technologies to monitor workers in a variety of job roles.

The survey, which polled 2,209 workers in England and Wales in December 2021, showed that 60% of respondents believe they are subject to workplace monitoring, up from 53% in 2020. Techniques include monitoring emails and files, employee webcams, keystroke logging, phone records, and movement tracking via CCTV.

The research also indicated that worker surveillance is more prevalent in certain job sectors: financial services workers were the most likely to report monitoring (74%), followed by wholesale and retail staff (73%), and utilities workers (73%).

Worker surveillance tech has taken off during this pandemic  and now risks spiralling out of control, Frances OGrady, TUC general secretary, said in a statement.

Reports of intrusive monitoring of remote workers aren't just limited to the UK. A number of companies worldwide embraced the tactic during the pandemic as office workers were forced to work from home, outside of the direct view of managers. Those businesses deployed monitoring tools to track worker activity and ensure productivity levels were unchanged outside of the office, raising concerns about staff well-being.

In guidance related to remote work, the World Health Organization (WHO) recently warned employers of the potential harm to staff from unnecessary monitoring, urging employers to refrain from excessive monitoring or surveillance of workers, including the inappropriate use of software that monitors computer usage or activates constant online video capabilities. Such measures reduce trust and may increase stress for teleworkers, according to WHO guidance published last month.

While some level of monitoring is needed in the employer/employee relationship, the availability of new technologies and the recent work-from-home boom has sparked debate about what is acceptable.

Many industries are required to carry out a certain level of tracking of employee activity through industry-specific regulations, said Angela Ashenden, principal analyst at technology analyst firm CCS Insight. Financial services organizations, for example, where need to ensure customer data is protected adequately, she said. But employees also have a right to privacy, particularly in their own home, so it's a question of what data is collected and how it's stored and used by the employer."

CCS Insight How employees view remote worker monitoring depends on the rationale a company uses to explain the practice.

CCS Insight research in 2020 indicated that employees are more likely to be comfortable with increased monitoring in certain circumstances. This includes monitoring that improves employees technology experience and online security when working from home, for example. But employees are more likely to push back strongly where they perceive it to be focused on their productivity or their personal health and wellbeing, said Ashenden.

Businesses that overstep the mark in terms of perceptions of employee privacy risk, at best, damaging employee trust, or at worst litigation, she said.

Algorithmic management?

Employee surveillance is a problem across the workforce: the TUC also warned Monday of the negative impacts of algorithmic management and monitoring, which tends to affect those in lower paid gig economy jobs, such as ride-hailing platform drivers.

New management and monitoring technologies must be regulated to protect all workers, the TUC said. Rules should include a requirement that employers consult with trade unions before implementing monitoring or algorithmic management systems, the TUC said, as well as human oversight of algorithmic decisions.

Employers are delegating serious decisions to algorithms  such as recruitment, promotions and sometimes even sackings, said OGrady.

The TUC survey indicated that most workers, 82%, support a legal requirement for employers to consult before introducing monitoring, compared to 75% in 2020. A majority, 72%, also agreed that using technology to make decisions about workers could increase unfair treatment without careful regulation; that percentage is up from 61% from two years ago.

There are growing calls to regulate the use of worker monitoring and AI management technologies internationally. The European Commission recently proposed new rules that would require companies who employ gig workers would have to provide greater transparency about the use of algorithmic management and monitoring.

In the US, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy has called for an AI Bill of Rights to regulate the use of technology in workplace and society more broadly.
Microsofts Office apps have long been the dominant enterprise productivity tools, with Google Workspace its key rival. But newcomers have emerged in recent years that promise new approaches to document creation.

Two of the well-funded startups leading the charge  Coda and Notion  offer their own takes on modern all-in-one workspace apps, combining elements of docs, spreadsheets, databases, wikis and more into a single interactive page that can integrate data from different sources.

The two companies recently announced new features to their respective platforms as they seek to challenge the productivity app incumbents.

Coda and Notion have developed innovative approaches to collaborative document creation that aim to address the limitations of traditional spreadsheets and word processors  namely, the need to enhance the user experience with intelligent automation and enabling a tighter integration to existing workflows, said Raul Castanon, senior analyst at 451 Research, a division of S&P Global Market Intelligence.

These emerging 'living documents' will likely impact the competitive landscape and, for some companies, represent a viable alternative to Googles or Microsofts productivity and collaboration apps.

Notion adds synced databases, team spaces

Notion, which launched its app in 2016 and has 25 million users, unveiled a host of new features at its Block by Block event this week.

Among them is a new app sidebar that lets users create dedicated spaces for Notion content. These sections can be allocated to specific teams, such as marketing or sales, or cross-functional projects such as a product launch, to organize work more effectively, said Notion in a blog post. Teams can be designated as public or private to ensure the appropriate individuals are able to access sensitive information, and restrictions can be applied to individual pages within a team for more granular control.

The feature will be rolled out gradually from this spring, Notion said.

Notion Notion gets a new teams sidebar that can be used to create dedicated spaces.

New ways to visualize shared data are coming in a few weeks, with the addition of quick filters in the Notion database view that can be saved and recalled at a later point. Users will be able to switch between custom view tabs at the top of a database, and access customization options in a settings panel.

An update to Notion databases, due later this year, will let users sync structured data in the app with external sources, such as Google Calendar, Jira, and GitHub.

Other updates at Notions user event on Thursday, include the general availability of the Notion API alongside added API functionality such as enhanced admin controls and documentation. A Notion Certified Program has been launched to help Notion power users expand their expertise with official accreditation as external consultants or internal admins, while a Notion Champions Community provides a place for enthusiasts to connect and share advice as well as interact directly with Notion.

Coda 3.0 overhauls editor tool

Coda, which launched its app in 2019, announced its 3.0 release last week. The updated software includes an overhauled editor tool, the result of a two-year-long development process, CEO and co-founder, Shishir Mehrotra, said in a blog post.

One facet of the new editor is the ability customize page layouts more easily, using a drag-and-drop interface to rearrange blocks of text as needed. This combines the benefits of two types of editor tools, said Coda  those used for writing and those used by publishers, for example in wikis or website design. Being able to use the same surface for authoring and publishing opens up a wide set of scenarios, said Coda, pointing to a portfolio website, team wiki, or dashboard for displaying OKRs and metrics as options.

Another feature of the new editor is the canvas column. This lets users insert a Coda page  with images, tables, and comments  into a spreadsheet row; it can be used for purposes such as writing draft blog posts directly from a content calendar, Coda said.

Coda Coda 3.0's updated editor tool offers Canvas columns.

The other updates include changes to Coda Packs, which launched in Coda 1.0 to let users create custom automations that interact with third-party apps, such as a button to send emails from a doc with the Gmail Pack.

With the launch of Pack Studio in Coda 3.0, users can build their own Packs in minutes using a browser interface, said Coda, requiring minimal coding knowledge. These can be for use internally across an organization, or shared more widely in the Coda Gallery marketplace, where they can be listed as free to use or paid.

A viable alternative?

The updates by Coda and Notion align with key requirements for business users identified in 451 Research's survey data, said Castanon, namely by providing greater connectivity across productivity apps.

The analyst firms research highlighted some of the top obstacles affecting team productivity for business. They include: information siloed in different applications (28%), a lack of integration between applications (26%), and difficulties in collaborating effectively across applications (21%).

Other opportunities for productivity improvement cited by respondents include the integration of data from different applications into a workflow (31%), reporting the progress of work against goals (24%), and the creation of documents, spreadsheets, and slides (24%).

These priorities are not lost on Microsoft or Google. Both vendors have been updating their own productivity apps to provide greater flexibility for users. For Google, this led to the smart canvas concept and greater connectivity between apps such as Docs, Sheets, and Slides, as well as its collaboration tools such as Meet and Chat.

Microsoft has been building out its Fluid Framework for some time, culminating in the creation of the Loop app, announced last year and currently in preview, which appears to be a more direct to challenger to newcomers such as Coda and Notion.

While Coda and Notion have proved popular, Castanon doesn't expect they will displace Microsoft and Googles apps anytime soon.

Rather, they are complementary tools intended to address use cases that traditional word processors and spreadsheets were not designed for, he said, with capabilities for real-time and asynchronous collaboration, integration to systems of record, team project management, and workflow automation.

More likely, we will see an intermediate stage where they coexist side by side with Microsoft and Google apps, providing some level of integration, said Castanon.

Related: 3 next-level note-taking apps that'll change the way you work




Early voting for the presidential election kicked off Friday at 3,552 polling stations nationwide, with ruling party candidate Lee Jae-myung and main opposition candidate Yoon Suk-yeol expected to be among the first to cast their ballots.







Lee of the liberal Democratic Party of Korea is scheduled to visit a polling station in central Seoul at 8:40 a.m., while Yoon of the conservative People Power Party is scheduled to vote in the southeastern city of Busan shortly thereafter.







Voting is open to anyone who wishes to cast their ballot before Election Day next Wednesday.







Polling stations will open from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. Friday and Saturday. COVID-19 patients and those in quarantine will be able to vote if they arrive at a polling station between 5 p.m. and 6 p.m. Saturday.







This year's presidential election is being held concurrently with by-elections for five National Assembly seats.







Early voting for the Assembly elections will take place at the same places at the same time.







On the campaign trail, Lee is scheduled to make stops in Hongcheon and Chuncheon in Gangwon Province before returning to Seoul via Namyangju, Gyeonggi Province.







In Seoul, he will hold campaign rallies in the eastern districts of Jungnang and Gangdong.







Yoon's campaigning will focus on the southeastern region comprising Busan, Daegu and North Gyeongsang Province.







In Busan, he plans to visit the United Nations Memorial Cemetery to pay tribute to the fallen soldiers of the 1950-53 Korean War.







Yoon's campaign has been expected to receive a boost after Ahn Cheol-soo of the People's Party dropped out of the race Thursday to merge candidacies with Yoon.







Minor candidate Sim Sang-jeung of the Justice Party cast her ballot early Friday in Seoul and will head southeast to Changwon, Daegu and Daejeon to meet with voters there. (Yonhap)


The tech exodus from Russia ramped up today, as Microsoft halted all new product and services sales inside the country because of the invasion of Ukraine. Apple did much the same thing earlier in the week.

Like the rest of the world, we are horrified, angered and saddened by the images and news coming from the war in Ukraine and condemn this unjustified, unprovoked and unlawful invasion by Russia, Microsoft President Brad Smith said in a blog post.

Microsoft is just the latest in a line of Western companies to suspend sales in protest of Russias invasion of Ukraine. Nike and Dell Technologies have suspended sales inside Russia, as have SAP and Oracle. On Tuesday, Apple confirmed it had stopped selling its products in Russia. On Apples Russia store, all products are listed as unavailable for purchase or delivery in the country.

We are deeply concerned about the Russian invasion of Ukraine and stand with all of the people who are suffering as a result of the violence, Apple said in a statement Tuesday. We are supporting humanitarian efforts, providing aid for the unfolding refugee crisis, and doing all we can to support our teams in the region.

Alphabets Google, however, said it will continue to provide its search engine and other services in Russia, though Google Pay may become unavailable in certain countries, regions and institutions as sanctions are imposed. Most of our services (like Search, Maps and YouTube) currently remain available in Russia, continuing to provide access to global information and perspectives, Google said in a blog post.

Google, did however, block mobile apps connected to Russian broadcasters RT and Sputnik, and has ceased ad sales in Russia. Microsoft also said it would remove Russian state-owned media outlet RTs mobile apps from the Windows App store and ban advertisements on Russian state-sponsored media.

Also on Friday, Russias Federal communications oversite agency (roskomnadzor) announced it would block Facebook inside the country. The social media blackout is as an attempt to squelch dissenting views on social media, according to one US regulator.

Russia framed the social media restriction as a retaliatory action based on 26 cases of discrimination against Russian media by Facebook.

Other companies that have stopped sales or services in Russia include Dell Technologies, Ford and Ericsson. And shipping companies A.P. Moller-Maersk A/S and Mediterranean Shipping Co. said they would suspend all shipments to Russian ports with the exception of food.
Kab-karimun.go.id scored 51 Social Media Impact. Social Media Impact score is a measure of how much a site is popular on social networks. 2.5/5.0 Stars by Social Team

This CoolSocial report was updated on 9 Sep 2013, you can refresh this analysis whenever you want.

kab-karimun.go.id is very popular in Facebook. Furthermore its facebook page has 27 likes.

The total number of people who shared the kab-karimun homepage on Google Plus by a google +1 button. The total number of people who shared the kab-karimun homepage on StumbleUpon. This is the sum of two values: the total number of people who shared, liked or recommended the kab-karimun homepage on Facebook + the total number of page likes (if kab-karimun has a Facebook fan page). The total number of people who shared the kab-karimun homepage on Delicious. This is the sum of two values: the total number of people who shared the kab-karimun homepage on Twitter + the total number of kab-karimun followers (if kab-karimun has a Twitter account).

Basic Information

PAGE TITLE Halaman Depan Situs Pemkab Karimun DESCRIPTION Website Resmi Pemerintah Daerah Kabupaten Karimun KEYWORDS Pemda Karimun, Karimun, kabupaten karimun, kepulauan riau, website karimun, pemerintah daerah kabupaten karimun OTHER KEYWORDS karimun, bupati karimun, bupati, kabupaten, kabupaten karimun, wisata, humas



CoolSocial advanced keyword analysis tool is able to detect and analyze every keyword on each page of a site. The title found in the head section of the homepage. The URL (Uniform Resource Locator) is the address of the site. The description meta-tag found in the head section of the homepage. The keywords meta-tag found in the head section of the homepage.

Domain and Server

DOCTYPE XHTML 1.0 Transitional CHARSET AND LANGUAGE English (United Kingdom) UTF-8English (United Kingdom) DETECTED LANGUAGE English English SERVER Apache (PHP/5.3.26) OPERATIVE SYSTEM Linux Linux

The language of kab-karimun.go.id as detected by CoolSocial algorithms. Character set and language of the site. Represents HTML declared type (e.g.: XHTML 1.1, HTML 4.0, the new HTML 5.0) Type of server and offered services. Operative System running on the server.

Site Traffic trend during the last year. Only available for sites ranked <= 100000 in the world.

Referring domains for kab-karimun.go.id by MajesticSeo. High values are a sign of site importance over the web and on web engines.

Facebook link

FACEBOOK PAGE LINK FOUND FACEBOOK PAGE www.facebook.com/pages/Pemkab-Karimun/507001029342732 DESCRIPTION Akun Resmi Pemerintah Daerah Kabupaten Karimun Kepulauan Riau LIKES 27 PEOPLE TALKING ABOUT 7 PAGE TYPE Government website TIMELINE PAGE TIMELINE

Facebook Timeline is the new layout of Facebook pages. The description of the Facebook page describes website and its services to the social media users. The URL of the found Facebook page. A Facebook page link can be found in the homepage or in the robots.txt file. The total number of people who tagged or talked about website Facebook page in the last 7-10 days. The type of Facebook page. The total number of people who like website Facebook page.

Twitter account link

TWITTER PAGE LINK NOT FOUND
Ponsgenics.biz scored 40 Social Media Impact. Social Media Impact score is a measure of how much a site is popular on social networks. 2/5.0 Stars by Social Team

This CoolSocial report was updated on 5 Mar 2015, you can refresh this analysis whenever you want.

This is the sum of two values: the total number of people who shared, liked or recommended the ponsgenics homepage on Facebook + the total number of page likes (if ponsgenics has a Facebook fan page). The total number of people who shared the ponsgenics homepage on Google Plus by a google +1 button. The total number of people who shared the ponsgenics homepage on StumbleUpon. This is the sum of two values: the total number of people who shared the ponsgenics homepage on Twitter + the total number of ponsgenics followers (if ponsgenics has a Twitter account). The total number of people who shared the ponsgenics homepage on Delicious.

Basic Information

PAGE TITLE Ponsgenics DESCRIPTION KEYWORDS OTHER KEYWORDS password,



The URL (Uniform Resource Locator) is the address of the site. CoolSocial advanced keyword analysis tool is able to detect and analyze every keyword on each page of a site. The title found in the head section of the homepage. The keywords meta-tag found in the head section of the homepage. The description meta-tag found in the head section of the homepage.

Domain and Server

DOCTYPE HTML 5.0 CHARSET AND LANGUAGE English English DETECTED LANGUAGE English English SERVER Microsoft-IIS/7.5 (ASP.NET) OPERATIVE SYSTEM Windows Server 2008 R2 Windows Server 2008 R2

Represents HTML declared type (e.g.: XHTML 1.1, HTML 4.0, the new HTML 5.0) The language of ponsgenics.biz as detected by CoolSocial algorithms. Character set and language of the site. Operative System running on the server. Type of server and offered services.

Site Traffic trend during the last year. Only available for sites ranked <= 100000 in the world.

Referring domains for ponsgenics.biz by MajesticSeo. High values are a sign of site importance over the web and on web engines.

Facebook link

FACEBOOK PAGE LINK NOT FOUND

A Facebook page link can be found in the homepage or in the robots.txt file. Facebook Timeline is the new layout of Facebook pages. The description of the Facebook page describes website and its services to the social media users. The type of Facebook page. The total number of people who like website Facebook page. The URL of the found Facebook page. The total number of people who tagged or talked about website Facebook page in the last 7-10 days.

Twitter account link

TWITTER PAGE LINK NOT FOUND
Its pizza week at Cracked. We were very hungry when thinking up this weeks theme.

We asked readers to tell us about the worst pizza they've ever eaten, and we received some truly disturbing answers. Keith D. went to Italy, and rather than an authentic Italian dish, they gave him "four pieces of smashed white bread with Campbell's tomato soup poured on top, with the bits of one slice of Velveeta." Kyle M. went to Japan and ate mayonnaise and squid pizza, having been told it was alfredo and mushroom. "I took one bite and almost George Bush'd the entire restaurant."

Danielle P. gagged every time she went to a place called Sam & Ella's ("say it out loud"), but that was just because of the name, since the pizza itself was phenomenal. Elliot R. recalled his high school days, when a girl he dated baked a frozen pizza without removing the cling film firstwhich was just his way of leading up to saying, "Last week I made a pizza with a gluten-free crust mix. That gluten-free pizza made me wish for a slice of that plastic and sausage pizza."

The highest-voted answer came from Matt K: The Chef Boyardee Pizza Kit. You can still buy the product today, now marketed as the Chef Boyardee Pizza Maker and consisting of pizza dough and sauce, but when it debuted in the '50s, it included cheese (a teaspoon of parmesan, instead of mozzarella), and the dough came in the form of powdered flour and yeast.
President Moon Jae-in and first lady Kim Jung-sook cast their ballots, March 4, as Korea began two days of early voting for next week's presidential election. Yonhap





President Moon Jae-in encouraged people Friday to cast their ballots as early voting for next week's presidential election began.







"As the leader of a democratic republic, I hope all people will participate in exercising their sacred voting rights," Moon said in a message posted on social media.







The presidential election comes as the nation is grappling with the worst wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, driven by the highly transmissible Omicron variant of the coronavirus







Early voting is open to anyone who wishes to cast their ballot before Election Day next Wednesday.







Moon said those infected with the virus can also cast their ballots.







Polling stations open from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Friday and Saturday. COVID-19 patients and those in quarantine will be able to vote if they arrive at a polling station between 5 p.m. and 6 p.m. Saturday. (Yonhap)


I've already been to some live sporting events.

Yes, I plan on attending several events.

I may go to one or two.

I like sports but I doubt it.

I'm not into sports.

Vote

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The need for organisations to guard against the dangers of ransomware is not new, yet never has the threat to data been so pervasive as in 2022.

In addition to the perpetually ongoing growth in the scale and sophistication of the capabilities which threat actors possess, theres been the requirement for businesses to rapidly shift to work-from-home models since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic  that in turn has increased the challenge of managing and protecting data.

This increase in data footprint, and as a result organisations attack surfaces, has given rise to new security vulnerabilities and vectors of attack, posing a profound challenge for security professionals whove been tasked to formulate a strong yet malleable response to these new needs, albeit amidst a rapidly evolving dynamic.

Cyber execs discuss the threat

Australian cyber security chiefs gathered in Melbourne recently to discuss how their businesses will deal with the ransomware threat this year. The luncheon was sponsored by Cohesity, who offer next-gen data management and protection solutions.

Derek Cowan, director of systems engineering - Asia-Pacific & Japan at Cohesity, says the increase in size of data footprints across enterprises is proving to be a fundamental factor in the altered dynamic that the pandemic has delivered.

The pandemic has supercharged digital adoption and transformation amongst governments, organisations and consumers, which has created opportunities for cyber criminals. As organisations adopt new technologies and integrate new cloud applications into their technology environment, they increase their data footprint, Cowan says.

This increased data footprint, combined with the increase in the number of people working from home, who may be using shadow IT or are simply outside the security perimeter of the office, is creating a ripe environment for ransomware, as well as a data protection and recovery challenge for organisations.

The challenge for organisations, according to Cowan, is that many are using what Cohesity describes as legacy technology built around 20th century capabilities that increase complexity, create siloed data, force IT teams to manage multiple products from multiple vendors, do not integrate with existing 3rd party security solutions, and which do not share common security policies across data management infrastructure.

Organisations understand that ransomware is become increasingly more sophisticated and frequent. However, with malicious actors now specifically going after not just the data, but backup data too, the game has changed, says Cowan.

This means it is crucial to look beyond backups as the sole solution, and instead consider how next-gen data management technology  which delivers simplicity at scale, is built around zero trust principles, can deliver AI-power insights, and should have 3rd party extensibility  might help improve the ability to effectively govern and protect data, to mitigate risk, and compliance with regulations and legislation, he says.

For James Ng, general manager of security operations for AARNet, the challenges posed by ransomware have been seen up close, and so too strategies to respond to it.

Whilst AARNet has not experienced a ransomware attack, across the sector we support through our managed SOC services, we are aware of organisations impacted by ransomware, Ng says.

In one example, the timely identification and isolation of compromised accounts and assets meant there was no ransom communicated and therefore none paid. The attack impacted corporate services including email  this resulted in the use of non-corporate email and phone as the primary communication method while services were taken offline and restored from a known good recovery point, he says.

AARNets approach to reviewing cybersecurity protocols proved to be a case of fortuitous timing when it came to responding to the new dynamic that the pandemic created.

Just prior to COVID, AARNet was coincidentally going through a significant cyber security uplift. This included reviewing and updating our cybersecurity policy, standards and procedures, says Ng.

With the onset of COVID, we were on the front foot for ensuring we had both the appropriate processes (supported by policy and standards) in place, and technologies deployed in a secure manner to facilitate remote working, he says.

The secure manner encompassed additional security controls, including preventative measures such as MFA (Multi-Factor Authentication), detective measures where we rolled out SOC monitoring via SIEM technologies and responsive measures to ensure we could effectively quarantine/isolate or recover infected assets, and also simulate and run ransomware tabletop exercises.

A new era in 2022: The end of the beginning

Many people and organisations have commenced 2022 with an ambition to return to (the new) normal. In Australia, states and territories have sought to put an end to lockdowns, loosened restrictions surrounding pandemic isolation requirements, and started down the path to fully reopen their borders to domestic and international travellers once more. To many itd be tempting with all these visible changes to suggest the worst of the pandemic is over.

Yet for the Australian cybersecurity community, the rueful reality is that this new year can realistically only be seen as the end of the beginning of this new era, when it comes to ransomware.

For threat actors, the many high-profile ransomware attacks of 2021 illustrate it was a very productive year for them, and doubtless such actors are aspirational to pursue more of the same in 2022, with production data a prime target, and backup data a high value target.

The task ahead for cybersecurity professionals and their organisations is to recognise this new era indeed poses confronting challenges, but also new opportunities to define and deploy a revised strategy that more deeply factors in the role of modern data management and greater integration with IT teams, in this altered security landscape.

Such an approach requires a readiness to engage in a fundamental rethink not only about the contemporary challenges of ransomware in 2022, but also beyond, and to how security postures are strategically built around not just endpoint or network security, but data protection too.

Yet just as is a very sizeable task, especially with the added challenge of bringing data management into the fold, so too does it bring with it the prospect of defining a new direction, one where an organisation can ultimately become better-positioned in its defences in 2022 as this pandemic continues, and also in the post-pandemic era to follow.
The group of young men from Greenwich prepared for the journey in secret. Their parents would have thought it was too dangerous. And today, what they planned would be impossible.

It was February 1857 and 23 boys planned to walk from Connecticut to Long Island across the waters of Long Island Sound.

Yes, walk.

The winter had been unusually cold, even by the standards of the day. The first snow fell around Christmas Day and the ground remained covered until the 20th of March, said Seamen Mead, a Greenwich resident and member of the expedition, recalling the journey 55 years later in the Greenwich Press (via the Port Chester Daily Item) in 1912. I can remember quite well how Field Point road was blocked with five feet of snow and the folks down in that section were unable to get thru the roads for many weeks. You could not tell where the fences were and it was with the greatest difficulty that the people got around.

At sea, conditions were just as surreal. The heavy snow filled up the Sound with slush, so that when a severe cold snap followed the storm, the entire Sound froze over.

The newspaper described the oddity: This was the only time, in the memory of even the oldest resident of the vicinity, when the eight mile expanse from Greenwich to the Long Island side was one glade of ice. Men who are gray-haired and feeble to-day do not remember having heard their sires tell of the Sound being frozen from shore to shore and it is unlikely that the occurrence will ever transpire again.

Long Island Sound never freezes across today due to warmer winters and increased ship traffic. Some modern-day observers say a shore-to-shore freeze is impossible, even in the chillier winters of yesteryear. But news reports, such as this one, from the 19th and 20th centuries speak of sporadic deep freezes, even though the Sounds tides made such a thing rare.

Another freeze took place in 1885, with the Greenwich Time newspaper noting, Once in about 10 years is the Sound frozen over during the latter part of March, so as to prevent the passage of vessels. However, such occurrences became less common in the early 20th century. In 1904, the Sound mostly froze, with the passage between mainland Connecticut and Fishers Island almost blocked. Three decades later, in the very cold winter of 1934, the Sound partially froze again enough that residents were able to walk from Greenwich to a local island.

But that journey was nothing compared with the one in 1857. When Mead and his friends got the notion of crossing the Sound on foot, they determined the ice would be solid enough after several days of 10-below-zero temperatures, and met on a Saturday morning.

All of us who could skate carried a pair with us, Mead said. Those who could not skate took their sleds and we were to draw them along while we skated. Ten or a dozen of us had ropes about thirty-feet long, coiled up and thrown over our shoulders or wrapped around our waists. It was about ten oclock when we set out. For a little way we kept up along the shore and then we struck across and kept to the east of the little island.

Initially, the group found the ice very rough and not suitable for skating, but as they got farther out onto the frozen water the ice became smoother.

About midway across we came to a crack about two or three feet in width, that extended for some distance, Mead said. Some of us jumped across but the rest walked around the fissure and this took those some distance out of their way.

The group arrived at the Long Island shore at Huntington Bay and then walked down the Sound for about 3 or 4 miles, skating most of the way. On the way back they came near the north side of the sound near Rye, New York, then stayed close to shore, moving back across the ice to Greenwich.

As local resident Peter Acker followed the boys progress with a spyglass, Meads parents worried for his safety. But the boys all made it home safely, and the trip drew enough local notoriety to be remembered more than a half-century later.

In 1912, while recalling his childhood adventure, and seeing many automobiles pass by, Seaman Mead couldnt help but complain about the new invention. Ive got an automobile, Mead said, but I would not sell our old horse for anything. You cant depend on these new inventions. Why, only last Wednesday, in that severe storm, an auto party was held up on this hill for over an hour while the driver of the car was wrestling with the tire. I believe in sticking to the horse even if it is a little old-fashioned.

This article appears in the February 2022 issue of Connecticut Magazine. You can subscribe to Connecticut Magazine here, or find the current issue on sale here. Sign up for our newsletter to get our latest and greatest content delivered right to your inbox. Have a question or comment? Email editor@connecticutmag.com. And follow us on Facebook and Instagram @connecticutmagazine and Twitter @connecticutmag.
SHERMAN  Citing reasons pertaining to decreased enrollment and a possible transition to a part-time role, Sherman Schools superintendent Jeff Melendez will step down in his position, effective June 30.

Over the past 18 months, the Board of Education has become concerned about the cost of operating and managing our school given our small size and declining enrollment, Melendez wrote in a letter to The Sherman School community Thursday evening.

Sherman Schools enrollment has been steadily decreasing since 2009. In 2009, there were 444 students; in 2013, there were 372; in 2017, there were 301; in 2020 there were 259; in 2022, there are 236. By 2025, there are projected to be about 221 students enrolled, according to the Peter Prowda enrollment study from 2021.

In the letter, Melendez, a Danbury resident who has been The Sherman School district's superintendent-principal for the past six years, said the board previously talked about the need to use an outside consulting firm to conduct an audit of the districts operations.

This includes the structure and size of our administrative team and instructional programming, Melendez wrote.

Recognizing the Boards desire to evaluate our model, and the likely transition to a part-time superintendent, I initiated formal conversations with the Board of Education in October 2021 regarding a possible leadership transition plan and shared my intent with newly elected board members in December, he wrote.

He said even though the board voted to extend his contract through June of 2024, his resignation is voluntary and amicable.

Tasks Melendez plans to focus on for the remainder of the school year include helping the board find and transition a part-time, interim superintendent who will begin July 1. He said hell serve as a liaison between the board and the interim superintendent to ensure that the leadership team is fully functional and ready to take over on July 1.

Additionally, hell be recommending the promotion of Brian Kalkreuth, Sherman Schools assistant principal, to interim principal, effective July 1.

He said hes proud of what the Board of Education, staff, families and students have accomplished together.

He referenced his goals over his time at the school, one of which is maintaining a flat budget for five consecutive years.

Board of Education Chairman Brian Berlandi said Melendez will be missed and wishes him success in his future endeavors.

Melendez resignation request was made in a very gracious and professional manner...which only further exemplifies the type of person he is, Berlandi told Hearst Connecticut Media Thursday.

Berlandi said the board accepted Melendez resignation at Wednesdays Board of Education meeting with enormous thanks and gratitude for the six years of dedicated and hard work he has provided to The Sherman School and our community.

He added the board is extremely grateful for Melendez willingness to assist the board with a smooth and orderly transition, and for his support of the boards efforts in assessing our operating structure.
A health official disinfects a polling station set up at Seoul Station, March 3, a day before the two-day early voting period for the March 9 presidential election begins. Yonhap





Separate voting booths were set up for people infected with COVID-19, including 10 special polling stations at big hospitals, as early voting got under way for next week's presidential election amid soaring coronavirus cases.







This year's election takes place as the wave of the Omicron variant has been spreading rapidly throughout South Korea, pushing the country's daily cases to record highs. Thursday's tally reached an all-time high of 266,853.







Amid concerns that the coronavirus situation could deprive hundreds of thousands of infected people of their voting rights, the National Assembly passed legislation last month to allow COVID-19 patients and people in quarantine to vote separately for the March 9 presidential election.







For early voting, COVID-19 patients will be allowed to vote Saturday, the last day of early balloting. They will be allowed to leave their homes from 5 p.m. and must arrive at early polling stations before 6 p.m. in order to vote.







Virus patient early voting will be held in separate areas away from non-infected voters from 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.







Voters stand in line to cast their ballots at a polling station in Seoul Station, March 4, the first day of two-day early voting for the March 9 presidential election. Yonhap





Patients and quarantined people must present temporary leave permits issued by local health offices through mobile text messages. They will be restricted from using public transportation to travel to their voting stations.







They must also immediately return home after voting and cannot stop by other places. Violators can face punishments of up to one year in prison or a maximum 10 million won fine.







Election authorities also plan to operate 10 special polling stations inside large medical centers across the country on Saturday to allow hospitalized COVID-19 patients to participate in early voting.







For Wednesday's main voting, virus patients will be allowed to vote from 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. at their nearby polling stations under the same rule as early voting patients.







According to the health authorities, those who have tested positive in a self-test kit but with negative polymerase chain reaction test results are allowed to vote along with non-patient voters.







Election authorities have also issued general guidelines centered on virus safety for voting.







Voters are asked to wash their hands before leaving their homes and refrain from being accompanied by children at polling stations. Temperature checks will be conducted and mask wearing will be required at all times except during identification checks.







The National Election Commission's budget for operating the election stands at 283.6 billion won ($234 million), 76.8 billion won higher than the previous election due to increased spending on COVID-19 response measures. (Yonhap)


Attorney General William Tong announced Wednesday Connecticut is joining other states in a nationwide investigation into TikTok to see if the popular social media application violated consumer protection laws that put the public at risk.

Tong and other officials allege the application promotes its platform to children and young adults while use is associated with physical and mental health harms, he said in a statement.

I have had multiple conversations with TikTok leaders where I have made it clear that the reckless viral challenges that proliferate on their platform are dangerous and need to stop, Tong said.

Tong said he appreciates that the platform has made efforts to remove some of the harmful content from their site, but whatever they have been doing just is not enough to protect our kids.

Our investigation will look at what TikTok knew about the risks to our children, and precisely what they have been doing to keep our kids online, Tong continued. In coordination with attorneys general across the country, we are prepared to use the full weight of our consumer protection authority to hold TikTok and other social media giants accountable.

The investigation will also focus, among other things, on what techniques TikTok used to boost engagement from young users, including increasing how much time they spend on the platform and their frequency of engagement, Tong said.

Attorneys general from California, Florida, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Nebraska, New Jersey, Tennessee and Vermont are leading the investigation, according to Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey.

As children and teens already grapple with issues of anxiety, social pressure and depression, we cannot allow social media to further harm their physical health and mental well-being, Healey said in a statement. State attorneys general have an imperative to protect young people and seek more information about how companies like TikTok are influencing their daily lives.

This isnt Tongs first time criticizing social media platforms and their negative effects on young residents.

Tong first wrote to TikTok executives in October 2021. In the letter, he demanded a meeting in Connecticut to give educators and parents the opportunity to discuss the harmful impact the viral app has had on the mental and physical safety of young people and educators.

Tong said plans for that meeting are ongoing, and he expects it will take place this spring.

TikTok has been a means of sharing delinquent to nefarious content in the past.

At the start of the school year, a viral trend encouraged students to vandalize or steal equipment from their schools. Another trend, which authorities said originated on TikTok, went viral at the end of 2021 alleging threats of school violence.

In December, an Ohio man was sentenced to 10 years in prison for posting a naked video of a 12-year-old New Canaan girl on TikTok. The judge who sentenced the man called the incident a parents worst social media nightmare.

In an effort to minimize harm, the platform has also taken steps to protect the LGBTQ community and women from harassment in hate speech. TikTok also announced recently it will crack down on content that promotes disordered eating.

TikTok isnt the only social media platform under scrutiny.

In May 2021, a bipartisan coalition of 44 attorneys general urged Facebook to abandon its plans to launch a version of Instagram for children under 13.

Attorneys general across the country, including Tong, also announced an investigation in November 2021 into Instagrams parent company Meta Platforms Inc., formerly known as Facebook, for providing and promoting Instagram to kids.

Snapchat and Metas Facebook and Instagram were recently the subject of a wrongful death lawsuit. A Connecticut mother claimed the social media giants did not do enough to protect her daughter from harmful and exploitative content before her suicide. Before her death, the lawsuit claims the 11-year-old had an extreme addiction to Instagram and Snapchat.
In their first 12 months of life, children are most at risk for critical or fatal outcomes from abuse and neglect, according to Connecticut child advocate officials.

When those outcomes turn fatal, the state Office of the Child Advocate  along with other agencies in some cases, depending on the circumstances  step in to investigate.

Sarah Eagan, who has served as the states child advocate since September 2013, said her office investigates all infant deaths in Connecticut.

The most recent incident involving OCA  which remains under review by the states chief medical examiner and under investigation by local police  is the case of an apparent pre-term baby found by first responders dispatched to a reported medical call at the Motel 6 on Hazard Avenue in Enfield.

The circumstances of the babys death are still unknown.

Data compiled by the OCA, which was formed in 1996 in the wake of a brutal child abuse and neglect case, examining child deaths from 2011 through 2020, showed that nearly all of them were among children 12 months and younger.

Were always focused on infants because they are the most at-risk for preventable child death, Eagan said.

Our data tells us that if we can get infants through the first four months of life, their chances of having a devastating outcome diminish considerably, said Faith Vos Winkel, assistant child advocate and child fatality coordinator for the OCA.

Dating back to the 1980s, more than 10 children ages 12 months or younger have died from abuse or neglect in Connecticut, based on an extensive review of news reports and OCA data.

While the homicides highlight some of the most brutal child deaths in Connecticut, there are many others investigated by the OCA and authorities that do not garner as much attention.

Most of the infant deaths are not homicide-related, Eagan said. Those deaths tend to get a lot of attention.

In 2019, OCA data indicated that 26 infants  12 months or younger  died from accidents, homicides and undetermined incidents, according to Vos Winkel. Twenty-five of those infants had one or more risk factors associated with their sleeping environment, the data showed. Twenty-two of the children were 3-months-old or younger. The remaining case was a homicide of an infant, according to the data.

In 2020, the total number of infant deaths was 21, Vos Winkel said. Fifteen of those children were 3-months-old or younger. Thirteen cases had one or more risk factors associated with their sleeping environment. There were three infant homicides.

The data for 2021 has not yet been finalized, Vos Winkel said. She said there are 10 cases that remain under further review. Data was completed for 22 cases for last year, which showed 17 cases where infants had one or more risk factors in their sleeping environment. Twenty-two cases were among children ages 3-months or younger. Two cases were infant homicides.

Eagan said most preventable infant deaths are typically classified by the medical examiner as undetermined, often in cases of sudden unexplained infant death. Eagan said the investigation typically finds one or more environmental safe-sleeping risk factors in these incidents  like the baby sleeping in an adults bed, sleeping on its stomach, in a crib or bassinet with blankets and pillows or sleeping with an impaired caregiver.

There have also been instances over the years of deaths at day care and child care facilities, from over-the-counter medicine and sudden unexplained infant death.

Adam Seagull, a 4-month-old Shelton boy, died March 22, 2016, after police said a woman who ran an unlicensed day care out of her Fairfield home for 11 years gave him Benadryl. Carol Cardillo, the owner of the day care, pleaded no contest to a manslaughter charge and was sentenced to 30 months in prison.

There are also cases of illegal substance exposure. Eagan said the state has seen an uptick in young children  not necessarily just those under the age of 1  dying after fentanyl exposure.

In 2021, based on data that has not yet been finalized, three children died from fentanyl exposure in Connecticut. Each death  two 1-year-olds and one 2-year-old  was ruled a homicide, Eagan said.

It would take such a small amount of exposure, to fentanyl to cause the death of a child, Eagan said.

In 2020, there was one case of fatal fentanyl exposure among children  involving an 11-month-old, Eagan said. The case was ruled a homicide. Eagan said there were no child deaths reported from fentanyl exposure in 2019.

Its part of the landscape now, she continued. As we think about substances people use  both legally and illegally  we also have to think about the possible implications for a child in the home.

Safe Haven Act

For those who are unable to care for their baby, there are options in Connecticut for them to legally give up their child.

In Connecticut, the Safe Havens Act for Newborns allows a parent to voluntarily give up custody of an infant that is 30-days-old or younger to nursing staff of an emergency room.

Eagan said safe haven babies were definitely up during the pandemic. She said the overall number remains low, but there has been a marked increase over previous years.

When a parent surrenders a child, they are not subject to arrest for abandonment. The act, however, does not protect the parent from being arrested and criminally prosecuted if neglect or abuse is found to have occurred prior to surrendering the baby.

When a parent brings a child to surrender, a nurse meets with the parent in a private area to get information about the childs medical history to help with future care. The nurse will ask the parent questions like their name and address. Parents are not required to answer any questions.

The parent will be given a packet of information on their rights and how to contact the state Department of Children and Families. Within 24 hours of the parent leaving the hospital, the nurse will contact DCF, who will take custody of the baby. DCF will then develop a permanent care plan for the child, including a court hearing to apply for legal termination of the parents parental rights to free the child for future potential adoption.

DCF is required by law to notify both parents of its intent to seek termination of parental rights if the parents names have been given. A court officer would then notify the parents of the court action and the first hearing date. If the names and addresses of the parents is known, DCF may publish notice in a local publication.

Anyone who has questions about the safe haven protections or process can call the DCF care line at 800-842-2288.

Anyone in need of referrals to resources throughout the safe haven process can call 211.

Correction: This story has been updated to correct the spelling of Sarah Eagans last name.
From a Cub Scouts first hike in a local park to the thrill of our High Adventure bases, from our backyard to the backcountry, our outdoor ethics guide us to be responsible outdoor citizens  protecting our natural world for generations to come and being considerate of other visitors. Scouting has a long, proud tradition of conservation service to the nation.

 Boy Scouts of America

On its website and in many other places, the Boy Scouts have placed conservation of the natural world front and center among their commitments. Yet in the face of strong efforts to preserve Deer Lake in Killingworth, for open space and outdoor education, the directors of the Connecticut Yankee Council of the Scouts are proceeding toward selling the Deer Lake Scout Reservation to a private developer.

This doesnt have to happen. The town of Killingworth, the state of Connecticut, the Trust for Public Land and several other nonprofits, and over 1,500 private citizens have come together to try to protect what U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal has called a treasure for the whole state and part of the ecological lifeblood of the region. Federal, state, and local resources are available; they can be marshaled to buy the land from the Council.

We understand that the Council needs funds to continue its mission. We are working to put together an offer that would give the Council a fair price for the Deer Lake property. The Council has said that the sale of Deer Lake is urgent because the Councils reserves are being depleted by a required contribution to the bankruptcy settlement of the Boy Scouts of America. But putting together a plan to protect a public resource takes time, vision, and trust.

The directors of the Connecticut Yankee Council have a duty to protect the fiscal health of the organization, but they also have a duty to protect the organizations basic mission. Again from the Boy Scouts of America website: Since its first appearance in the 1955 printing of the Boy Scout Handbook, the Outdoor Code has reminded Scouts to be conservation-minded.

The Council says it will consider superior offers to the one from the developer. We hope that preservation of the unique and vital environmental resource that is Deer Lake will be a factor in the Councils consideration of what makes an offer superior.

Nancy Gorski is the Killingworth first selectman; Cathy Iino is the former Killingworth first selectman.
BRIDGEPORT  Local lawmakers are proposing changes to state law in response to two high-profile incidents of families who said police never notified them of loved ones deaths.

The legislation, House Bill 5349, requires police who respond to or otherwise encounter a deceased person or the remains of a person to ensure the persons next of kin are notified within 24 hours of the persons identification.

If they cant, the law would require cops to document the reason for the failure or delay of notification and any attempts made to make such notification.

State Rep. Antonio Felipe, D-Bridgeport, said the proposed bill  prompted by the cases of Lauren Smith-Fields and Brenda Lee Rawls, who both died Dec. 12 in unrelated incidents  shouldnt be needed.

Its deeply upsetting that this legislation is even necessary, he said in a prepared statement announcing the bill. This is a wrong being righted.

Police officers who run afoul of the law could be reported to the states Office of the Inspector General for investigation and possible censure, suspension, or revocation of the peace officers certification.

The bill will be the subject of a public hearing before the General Assemblys Judiciary Committee scheduled for 10 a.m. on March 9 to be conducted via Zoom.

The committees chairman, Rep. Steve Stafstrom, D-Bridgeport, said he wrote the bill after meeting with Smith-Fields family, who reached out through Maria Pereira, a member of Bridgeports City Council who represents the district where Smith-Fields and Rawls lived.

A spokesperson for Gov. Ned Lamont said the governors office will review the proposal.

In a brief statement, Larry Dorman, a spokesperson for the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Council 4, which includes the Bridgeport police union, said Bridgeport cops share in the outpouring of sympathy for the families of Lauren Smith Fields and Brenda Lee Rawls.

However, this bill should place the burden of notification on police chiefs, not responding officers, Dorman said.

Families of both Smith-Fields and Rawls said they were never notified by police of their family members deaths. The states Office of the Chief Medical examiner ruled Smith-Fields died of an accidental overdose, and Rawls died of natural causes.

The two Bridgeport detectives initially investigating the cases were suspended and are the subject of an investigation into alleged violations of the departments internal policy on next of kin notifications, which requires notifications to be carried out promptly and in a considerate matter.

Darnell Crosland, a lawyer who represents the families, said they are in favor of the bill and actually fought hard to have the proposal put before the legislature.

A law requiring cops to notify families of untimely deaths in a timely manner was one of several demands Smith-Fields family made during a rally in front of the Margaret Morton Government Center that drew hundreds of people in January.

One of Rawls sisters, Dorothy Washington, said Thursday shes also in favor of the bill, but it will be a waste of time if oversight continues to be little to none, and employees are not held accountable for what they get paid to do.

State Sen. Marilyn Moore, D-Bridgeport, echoed the sentiment, saying she researched possible legislation after the outcry prompted by the Smith-Fields and Rawls cases.

I dont think you can put a law in place to make people do their job, she said. Theres many laws on the books to protect people, its a matter of enforcing them, its that simple. You cant legislate common sense.

Stafstrom agreed the legislation shouldnt be needed, but pointed to its enforcement provisions, which call for referral to the inspector general and possible punishments including decertification.

There is oversight built into this bill, he said. The penalty for not complying is pretty significant.

I wish a bill like this wasnt necessary, Stafstrom said. Frankly the Bridgeport Police Department could have and should have done a little better outreach from the get-go and this should be standard procedure by a police department. Clearly there was a gap and thats why we thought the legislation was necessary to make the expectation abundantly clear.

Its a human right for somebody to be notified in a timely manner when theyve lost a loved one, Felipe said during an interview. Were just making sure that right is protected and insured in an explicit way.

Scott Appleby, Bridgeports emergency management director, said in an email Thursday that he spoke to Acting Police Chief Rebeca Garcia and the Bridgeport Police understands the importance of a loved one being notified in a timely fashion. However, there are times when the information regarding next of kin is not readily available.

With that said, Appleby wrote, police are open to and have been researching potential tools that may be utilized.

Appleby said Bridgeport Mayor Joe Ganims office is preparing testimony in favor of the bill.

Felipe said lawmakers look forward to hearing from law enforcement in crafting the legislation further.

We welcome their testimony on the practical reasons there may have been an issue in Bridgeport, he said. Were going through this in a collaborative way. If law enforcement wants to strengthen this bill we welcome it 100 percent.

Staff writer Brian Lockhart contributed to this story.
A wildfire that broke out in the eastern coastal county of Uljin, March 4, is seen in this photo. Yonhap





A fast-spreading wildfire in eastern coastal areas on Friday destroyed dozens of homes, forced thousands to evacuate and threatened to burn the vastest forest area in a decade.







The blaze started on a road near a mountain in Uljin County, North Gyeongsang Province, about 330 kilometers southeast of Seoul, at 11:17 a.m. and spread to the vicinity of the mountain peak, according to the Korea Forest Service (KFS).







The fire spread north to the city of Samcheok, Gangwon Province, in the afternoon, driven by strong winds and dry weather.







The KFS and the National Fire Agency issued an emergency alert and dispatched 30 helicopters, 230 fire trucks and 1,100 firefighters to extinguish the wildfire.







The firefighters were having difficulties containing the fire due to strong winds of over 25 mps, officials said.







The fire burned at least 50 homes and led to the evacuations of about 4,000 people in Uljin, and about 1,000 people in Samcheok. No casualties were reported.







Authorities said about 3,300 hectares of woodland, equivalent to about 4,600 soccer stadiums, is under the influence of the fire. It is the largest forest area to be affected by a single wildfire in the past decade.







Firefighters battle a wildfire in the eastern coastal county of Uljin on March 4. Yonhap





Damages are estimated at approximately 20.9 billion won ($17.2 million) but are likely to increase, as the fire is spreading to the Gangwon area.







As the fire spread to Samcheok, the authorities were struggling to protect the nation's largest liquefied natural gas (LNG) production complex located in the city.







The fire once threatened Hanul Nuclear Power Plant in Uljin. The fire reached the outer fences of the plant's complex, only 11 kilometers away from the fire's origin, but was put under control in late afternoon, firefighters said.







The Korea Hydro Nuclear Power, the plant's operator, had lowered the generation capacity of five reactors in operation by 50 percent.







President Moon Jae-in instructed officials to make efforts to swiftly put out the wildfire, prevent casualties and protect the nuclear plant.







Early voting for next week's presidential election was suspended at one of the polling stations in Uljin due to a power outage caused by the fire. (Yonhap)


Christian Abraham / Hearst Connecticut Media

BRIDGEPORT  Detectives are investigating a shooting that landed one person in the hospital Thursday night, police said.

Shortly after 6 p.m., the police department was notified by medical personnel at St. Vincents Medical Center that a gunshot wound victim had showed up to be treated.
When the Illinois legislature legalized adult-use cannabis in 2019, state leaders embarked on a campaign to encourage local banks and credit unions to provide banking services to this emerging industry. Following a meeting with the State Treasurer and months of careful due diligence about the industry, the risks involved, and how to serve it compliantly, Credit Union 1 (CU1) CEO Todd Gunderson and his board made the decision to launch a cannabis banking program in January 2020.

CU1 now provides a full range of banking services to cannabis-related businesses (CRBs) as well as banking services to all CRB employees, including mortgages, auto loans, credit cards, home equity loans, and other banking products. Shield spoke with Todd about his experience serving this industry and why cannabis banking makes good business sense.

Why did you launch your cannabis banking program?

Todd Gunderson: CU1 has physical locations in three states, two of which (Illinois and Nevada) have legal adult-use and medical cannabis programs. We saw a lack of availability for an entire banking solution in these states and across the country for the cannabis industry. In Illinois specifically we knew that when the legal adult-use program started in January 2020, demand would only grow. We have always sought to serve underserved people and organizations, so banking this industry was a natural extension of our mission. Our members operate like any other legal business. The only thing standing in their way of accessing banking on a broad scale is a discrepancy with federal law on cannabis.

What made you confident you could serve this industry compliantly?

TG: Once we took the time to understand the industry, we realized that banking the cannabis industry is no different from any other aspect of banking, especially in terms of the need for data transparency to detect fraud or potentially fraudulent scenarios. Investing in a Once we took the time to understand the industry, we realized that banking the cannabis industry is no different from any other aspect of banking, especially in terms of the need for data transparency to detect fraud or potentially fraudulent scenarios. Investing in a compliance management platform enables us to track the movement of money across our cannabis member accounts in real-time. It complements our other internal processes to ensure were operating efficiently while meeting our compliance requirements. It also allows us to offer a better onboarding experience to our CRBs while providing transparency to our regulators. Partnering with experts in the cannabis banking field has helped us adopt best practices for serving the industry, stay ahead of industry and regulatory changes, and realize a better overall return on investment from our program.

How does CU1 support social equity goals?

TG: CU1 is the only full services banking institution currently providing lending to social equity applicants in the State of Illinois. CU1 is partnering with the Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity (DCEO) to meet the needs of social equity applicants with loans available up to $1 million to help with startup costs related to entering the cannabis space. CU1 can provide banking, ATM, payroll, cash delivery services, and lending options to these applicants depending on their business needs.

What final thoughts do you want to share about banking in this industry?

TG: As we began to meet with potential members, we quickly realized that many of the business leaders in this industry are extraordinarily well educated with solid business models and great work ethics. Many of them have experience running successful businesses in other sectors and have extensive connections in the community. It made no sense that these entrepreneurs would suddenly try to do the illegal, nefarious things that some people associate with cannabis. We approached these business partners just as we would someone who owns a gas station, a shoe store, or a restaurant. We talked about their business plans and what they needed from a banking partner. We were also open about our services and our pricing, being clear that our costs are associated with the compliance burden required by the government and that we were not trying to take advantage of them.
Funeral Service for Brenda Joyce Wright, 71, of Cullman, will be 3 p.m. Friday, May 6, 2022 at Northbrook Baptist Church. A viewing will be on Friday from 2-3 p.m. prior to the service. The visitation will be 5:30 - 8 p.m. Thursday night, May 5, 2022 at Cullman Funeral Home. Rev. Keith Warde
Schedules for China's "two sessions" on March 4

Xinhua) 09:35, March 04, 2022

BEIJING, March 3 (Xinhua) -- The following are the schedules for the fifth session of the 13th National People's Congress (NPC) and the fifth session of the 13th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) on Friday.

-- At 3 p.m., the fifth session of the 13th CPPCC National Committee will hold its opening meeting at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.

-- Wang Yang, chairman of the CPPCC National Committee, will deliver a report on the work of the Standing Committee of the CPPCC National Committee.

-- A preparatory meeting for the NPC session will be held to elect the session's presidium and secretary-general, and vote on a draft agenda of the session.

-- Presidium of the fifth session of the 13th NPC will hold its first meeting.

-- The spokesperson for the NPC session will give a press conference at noon.

(Web editor: Xia Peiyao, Liang Jun)
Main opposition People Power Party's candidate Yoon Suk-yeol, second from right, gestures during a campaign speech in Gongju, South Chungcheong Province on Thursday. Yonhap



By Kang Hyun-kyung



Prosecutor-turned-presidential hopeful Yoon Suk-yeol struggled to redefine his image as a respectable candidate who has no bias against feminism throughout the third and final pre-election debate that aired Wednesday night on three TV broadcast networks.



The main opposition People Power Party (PPP) candidate was put to the test when his main rival, ruling Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) candidate Lee Jae-myung, switched gears from defending his cash-based basic income policy from Yoon's criticism of its potential burden on the national economy, to feminism as a topic to discuss among the four candidates, including Ahn Cheol-soo of the People's Party and Sim Sang-jung of the Justice Party.



Mentioning Yoon's comment from last year in which he had suggested that feminism had caused Korea's abysmally low birthrate, Lee asked Yoon to answer if he knows what feminism is and, if so, how he would define it.



Shrugging off the question, Yoon answered broadly, saying he understood that feminism is respecting women and affording them equal treatment to men so that they can receive the same respect that men enjoy.



His remarks invited criticism from his rival as Lee reproached him for knowing little about feminism. The DPK candidate corrected Yoon, saying that feminism recognizes discrimination and inequality against women as a reality and tries to correct them. Justice Party candidate Sim said that Yoon's remarks only confirmed his limited understanding of the issue, and that his answer led her to believe that the PPP candidate had confused feminism with humanism.



Yoon has been portrayed by a number of women's rights activists as being anti-feminist.



His campaign pledge that he would abolish the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family, together with his past hardline comments on feminism, have both played their part in making some women's rights activists view him as an misogynist.



Yoon failed to erase that image during the TV debate, as he stumbled in defending himself when facing criticism from the other candidates.



Later in the debate, Yoon fired back at Lee for the latter's past work as an attorney who defended his nephew in a homicide case.



"When you served as a lawyer, you took the case in which your nephew killed his girlfriend's mother. In front of his girlfriend, he stabbed her mother 37 times with a sushi knife. Serving as his attorney, you claimed that the death of his girlfriend's mother was the result of his mental illness and dating violence," Yoon said, questioning Lee's ethics as a lawyer.



"In the past, you destroyed women's human rights. Now you are saying you are a defender of feminism. It's dreadful to imagine what will happen if you are elected as the next president. Will young people still want to get married and have babies?"



Lee responded that as an attorney he had an obligation to defend his clients, even if they are determined to be a criminal in a murder case.



The DPK candidate said that he felt sorry for the victims of the case. But he countered Yoon's criticism, noting that representing his client in the homicide case had nothing to do with feminism.



Yoon was caught in the crossfire, as Sim then took aim at him for his past remarks advocating for the diversion of government budget funds earmarked for gender reform to national defense.



"You said that if South Korea can use part of the 30-trillion-won budget for gender equality for defense, the nation will be able to successfully thwart North Korea's nuclear threat. I am wondering if you really know what you said," Sim said.



Sim went on criticizing the PPP candidate for his campaign pledge to abolish the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family. She said that Yoon was trying to gain votes from younger men by playing the misogyny card.



Yoon tried to defend his position, but Sim didn't give him an inch, deploring his ignorance on the issue of gender inequality.




Lee Jae-myung of the Democratic Party of Korea clenches his fists in front of a crowd at the May 18 Public Square in Gwangju, Feb. 18. Newsis



Liberal DPK candidate enjoys massive support in nation's west, and conservative PPP candidate in east



By Ko Dong-hwan



Thoughnot a big nation, Korea has long been divided whenever voters head to the polls. Voters in the nation's western regions sweepingly support liberal candidates, whereas their counterparts in the eastern regions predominantly vote for conservative party candidates.



The voter divide between Korea's east and west is similar to how the United States has, in recent years, become geographically divided between Democratic blue states and Republican red states.



Such regional divisions are still looking to be present in Korea ahead of the March 9 presidential election, with people having expressed their willingness to vote for either Lee Jae-myung of the Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) or Yoon Suk-yeol of the conservative People Power Party (PPP), or remaining as yet undecided in various public opinion surveys.



The National Election Commission on Feb. 25 said that the official total number of Koreans eligible to vote in this election is 44,168,510, including those currently outside of the country. Gyeonggi Province has the largest number of voters with over 11.4 million, followed by Seoul with over 8.3 million, and Busan with over 2.9 million.



The two leading candidates, now neck-and-neck in their public support ratings, have been scrambling with their election camps since the official election campaign began on Feb. 15, to consolidate as much support as possible from their traditionally friendly regions, as well as to entice as many voters as possible in traditionally unfriendly regions and largely neutral regions.



North Gyeongsang Province has been the country's most starkly conservative-friendly ground, with Daegu in the province a long-time stalwart for conservative politicians  thus known as "the heart of the conservatives." Former President Park Geun-hye, who won the 2012 presidential election as the main conservative party candidate, raked in over 80 percent of the city's voters. Other conservative presidential candidates in the past, like Hong Joon-pyo and Yoo Seung-min in 2017, if considered together, took the majority of the city's votes, with 45 percent and 12 percent, respectively.



The trend has been evident this year as well, with Yoon having recorded nearly 60 percent of the public support rating among residents in the province and the city recently, while Lee had 19 percent, according to the country's three broadcasters, MBC, KBS and SBS, on Feb. 17. Another survey conducted by Kantar Korea from Feb. 27 to March 1 showed Yoon nabbing over 65 percent of public support from the region. (Further details are available on the websites of the survey agencies or the National Election Survey Deliberation Commission.) The PPP aims to maximize friendly votes from this region by drawing 80 percent of the votes.





Yoon Suk-yeol of the People's Power Party makes his signature uppercut punch gesture to a crowd of supporters on Dongsung-ro road in Daegu, Feb. 18. Newsis



South Gyeongsang Province, as well as Busan and Ulsan in it, are also tilted towards Yoon, as his popularity there beats Lee's. A public survey by the Korea Society Opinion Institute from Feb. 19-20 showed 52 percent of Busan residents, 51 percent of Ulsan residents and 53 percent in the residents of the rest of the province supported Yoon, while Lee recorded 32 percent, 31 percent and 30 percent, respectively.









Whereas the country's eastern regions are firmly in support of Yoon, the opposite scenario has been occurring in the west. The North and South Jeolla Provinces, along with Gwangju (the largest independent metropolis city in the South), have been the country's staunch democratic regions. From a Kantar Korea survey conducted from Feb. 27 to March 1, Lee gained over 68 percent in the three regions that together have over 4.31 million voters.



In 1997, over 95 percent of the votes from the same Jeolla region went to liberal presidential candidate Kim Dae-jung (who won the election), the highest figure from a friendly region, which remains unbroken so far. Incumbent President Moon Jae-in also received over 89 percent of the votes from these regions as the Democratic Party of Korea presidential candidate in 2017.



Voters in the rest of the country  Seoul and the provinces of Gyeonggi, Gangwon and Chungcheong  have largely remained swing-voters so far. Gangwon and Gyeonggi, which border North Korea, have been particularly sensitive to the candidates' pledges regarding national security. Yoon, to attract voters in Gangwon, told people during his campaigning in the province that his relatives on his mother's side live in Gangneung there. On the opposing side, Lee referred to himself as "Chungcheong's son-in-law" while canvassing in the region because his father-in-law was born in Chungju city in North Chungcheong. It's a popular tactic among election contenders in Korea to link their family lineage to local regions they visit to woo residents for votes.



Against the odds



While getting votes in their friendly regions isn't so hard for Lee and Yoon, one of the election-winning clinchers depends on how many votes they can get from regions that are unfriendly.



"The PPP is now keen on whether Yoon will break the 15-percent barrier in the Jeolla provinces  the figure considered a landmark from the conservative party's view," political analyst and Myongji University professor of politics Kim Hyung-joon told The Korea Times. "The most votes a conservative presidential candidate ever earned in the Jeolla region was just over 10 percent, and that went to Park Geun-hye." (Park received 13 percent of the votes in North Jeolla in the 2012 presidential election, together with over 7 percent in Gwangju and 10 percent in South Jeolla.)




Barbara Faye Boyles, 75, of Raceland, Kentucky passed away Tuesday, May 3, 2022, at her residence. Barbara was born August 1, 1946, in Load, Kentucky a daughter of the late Homer and Gladys Johnson Boyles. In addition to her parents, she was preceded in death by one nephew Robert Boyles. Bar
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A National Election Commission staff member shows a stamp prepared for the 20th presidential election, at a polling station set up for the two-day early voting period on Friday and Saturday, at Seoul Station, Wednesday. Joint Press Corps





By Jung Da-min







With the country's 20th presidential election set to take place on March 9, there are several things that voters should be aware of when casting their ballots.







First of all, some minor candidates, including Kim Dong-yeon of the New Wave and Ahn Cheol-soo of the People's Party, have withdrawn their candidacies with less than a week left before Election Day.







On Wednesday, Kim announced his withdrawal and unification of candidacy with Lee Jae-myung of the ruling Democratic Party of Korea. A day later, Ahn also held a press conference to announce his withdrawal and unification with Yoon Suk-yeol of the main opposition People Power Party.







Following the two candidates' withdrawals, the NEC has put "withdrawal" marks on the ballots to be used for the two-day early voting period, Friday and Saturday, when they print them out at the polling stations. But the election watchdog has said they cannot do the same on Election Day, as the ballots for March 9 have already been printed out. The NEC will instead put up notices about the withdrawal of the two minor candidates at the polling stations on Election Day.







This situation means voters will have to be more careful when casting their ballots so that they do not vote for those who have already withdrawn from the race, as their votes will be invalid in such cases.







An official at a printing office in Seoul's Seocho District checks printed ballots to be used in the March 9 presidential election, March 1. Yonhap





But another problem has arisen. For those living abroad who took part in the six-day early voting period for Korean nationals overseas from Feb. 23 to 28, their votes have become invalid if they voted for candidates who have since stepped down.







According to the NEC, about 161,000 voters  or 71.6 percent of the total 226,000 who had registered for early voting overseas  cast their ballots, from 219 polling booths in 115 countries around the globe.







Some have raised the issue to the presidential office by writing a petition on the Cheong Wa Dae website, saying the country needs to establish a law banning candidates from withdrawing after the overseas early voting period, to guarantee that the votes of people living abroad are not invalidated.







There are also several new conditions under which this year's presidential election is taking place.







It is the first presidential election since the country lowered the legal voting age to 18 from 19 through the passage of a revision bill to the Public Official Election Law in the National Assembly in late December 2019.






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Vladimir Putin will hold up Kharkiv as an example of what he is willing to do to Kyiv - but Ukrainians must keep battering demoralised Russian troops with guerrilla attacks to buy time, a military tactics expert has claimed.

Ukraine and Russia are now in a 'race against time' - with the Ukranians' best hope of slowing the advance being to batter Russian convoys with raids, stockpiling food and ammunition and drawing on their will to survive.

Jack Watling, research fellow for land warfare at the Royal United Services Institute, said Russia will use Kharkiv as a demonstration of what it will do to Kyiv if Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyi does not capitulate.

He warned that Ukrainian civilians are 'likely to see an escalation of indiscriminate violence by Russian troops' because Russia must seize key cities before economic sanctions begin to undermine their war effort.

Dr Watling said that so long as Russian force densities remain low there is a 'great deal of scope for insurgent resistance', adding that Western supplied arms will be critical to the longevity of this.

The London-based expert pointed out that Russian forces around Kyiv have a long and exposed line of supply - and that Ukrainian forces can conduct raids and guerrilla attacks to disrupt this line of supply.

And he said anti-tank guided weapons and portable air defence systems will help Ukraine's capacity to resist - and these can be smuggled into Kyiv before it is encircled, posing a threat to Russian aircraft and armour.

Here is Dr Watling's exclusive analysis on what the Ukrainians need to do next to defend their country:

President Vladimir Putin launched his long-planned invasion of Ukraine on the night of 23 February, Defender of the Fatherland Day in Russia.

The symbolic start date, and scripted drumbeat of Ukrainian 'provocations' over the preceding week, demonstrate that the Kremlin was working to a timetable, rather than responding to any aggression by Kyiv.

Once Russian forces crossed their start lines however the Kremlin's script fell apart.

The initial Russian plan was premised on the belief that Ukrainian society was apathetic towards their government, and that if Russia could seize the centres of government quickly, Ukrainian resistance would fail to materialise. Initial cruise missile strikes were aimed at shocking the Ukrainian population into passivity.

Russian forces rushed forward, their lightest vehicles in front, with an air assault to capture a key airfield outside Kyiv.

This satellite image provided by Maxar Technologies this week shows the military convoy heading towards Kyiv in Ukraine

The remains of the destroyed Kharkiv National University building after it was badly damaged by shelling in Ukraine this week

Moscow's assumptions about Ukrainian's will to fight were catastrophically mistaken, however. Ukraine mobilised, and Russia's first echelon took severe casualties.

JACK WATLING is a research fellow for land warfare at the Royal United Services Institute in London

The damage caused to Russian forces was exacerbated by the fact that Moscow had surprised its own soldiers. Starting in December Western intelligence agencies had been publicly outlining Russia's war plans.

In an attempt to improve operational security Russia's tactical echelons were told they were on a training exercise until up to 24 hours before the war.

They consequently had little time to study their maps, agree courses of action between units, or psychologically prepare. The result was a chaotic advance during which Russia sustained heavy casualties.

In spite of the initial success of Ukrainian forces the sheer size and breadth of the attack fixed Ukraine's military into fierce defensive battles.

Fighting on all fronts the Ukrainian military has had few reserves to reposition or counterattack.

Russia has consequently enveloped several of Ukraine's cities, putting them under siege. Ukrainian troops have begun to run short of ammunition.

The concept of operations for the Russians how now shifted. Recognising Ukraine's determination to resist, and its own force's low morale, Russia has begun to employ massed artillery and airstrikes against Mariupol and Kharkiv.

This is intended to undermine the will of the defenders  civilian and military  to continue the struggle. It means the indiscriminate shelling of civilians.

Units of the Russian Armed Forces enter the Kyiv region of Ukraine yesterday in this image from the Russian Defence Ministry

Firefighters extinguish a blaze in a building at Chernihiv in Ukraine after a shelling attack by the Russian army yesterday

Russia will also use Kharkiv in particular as a demonstration of what it will do to Kyiv if Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyi does not capitulate.

Although the Ukrainian military has few options in suppressing Russia's artillery advantage the Russians face a difficult decision as to when to commit their forces to the assault.

Urban operations are some of the most costly and complex a military can undertake. Given the low morale of Russian troops, if Kyiv does not surrender, then their ability to carry it by assault must be questioned.

This suggests that Russia will seek to encircle and wear down the defenders through starvation and shelling.

If the Russians do take the next phase of the operation slowly then Ukraine has some opportunities for extending the longevity of resistance.

Fire is seen in Mariupol yesterday after Russia launched a massive military operation against Ukraine

Firstly, the longer that encircled towns in the East hold out, the fewer Russian troops can move towards Kyiv. Moreover, unlike Kharkiv, close to the Russian border, Russian forces around Kyiv have a long and exposed line of supply.

Ukrainian forces can conduct raids and guerrilla attacks to disrupt this line of supply. Reducing the number of shells that can be moved to the front must ease the intensity of the bombardment of urban areas.

Given the need to impose attrition on Russian lines of supply the provision of anti-tank guided weapons and man portable air defence systems by a number of NATO and non-NATO states makes a material contribution to Ukraine's capacity to resist.

These can be smuggled into Kyiv before it is encircled, posing a threat to Russian aircraft and armour. It can also be used by light forces to ambush and harass Russian convoys moving from the border.

A member of the Territorial Defence Forces guards a checkpoint at the Independence Square in central Kyiv yesterday

The air defence equipment in particular limits the freedom of the Russian air force to conduct extensive bombing.

Both combatants are now in a race against time. For the Ukrainians they must protract the fighting by ensuring stockpiles of food, water, and ammunition are built up in those urban centres not yet cut off.

For Russia they must seize the cities before economic sanctions begin to undermine their war effort and the news of heavy casualties leads to growing opposition inside Russia.

Tragically for Ukrainian civilians this is likely to see an escalation of indiscriminate violence by Russian troops.

Even if Kyiv falls, however, it is not clear that Russia has the means to occupy and fully control the country without sustained violent repression of the population.

They lack the mass to pacify Western Ukraine, and so long as Russian force densities remain low there is a great deal of scope for insurgent resistance. Western supplied arms will be critical to the longevity of that resistance.

People stand next to a shell crater in front of a house damaged by a recent attack in the village of Hatne in Ukraine yesterday

This being the case Russia has set itself up for a long and dirty war. Precisely because Putin has described Ukraine as a historical mistake, and dismissed Ukrainian culture as artificial, Ukrainians will see the fight as existential.

For now, neither party has any reason to compromise in negotiations. The Russians believe they can obliterate the defenders of Kyiv just as they destroyed Grozny or Aleppo.

The Kremlin recognises the war may now take weeks, but it believes it can bear the cost. For Ukraine, Russia's terms for a ceasefire constitute unconditional surrender and cannot be accepted.

But if the fighting continues beyond what the Russians are willing to sustain and the Ukrainians can bear, both sides may eventually engage in more pragmatic diplomacy.

It is vital that the international community plans to shape those negotiations if the possibility emerges. Until then, the priority must be to enable the Ukrainians to keep fighting.

So long as the will to resist can be maintained, the Russian military is in for a world of pain.
A British paedophile 'preacher' on the run overseas is still at large despite evidence he has abused potentially 'hundreds' of children in a 'wholesale, industrial scale', a former prosecutor has told the BBC.

Daniel Erickson-Hull, now 46, from Plaistow, London, was jailed in 2017 after being convicted of making and possessing hundreds of indecent images of children.

After being released later that year, he was supposed to sign the sex offenders' register, was subject to an order banning him from unsupervised contact with children, and was barred from travelling abroad without informing authorities.

He ignored these restrictions and relocated to Bulgaria, where he has been living in a deprived Roma neighbourhood called Nadezdha.

Erickson-Hull was first exposed by File On 4 in 2019. Now, three years later, journalist Paul Kenyon has revisited the case and revealed how, despite evidence from the BBC, a former devotee and Erickson-Hull's own sister, the paedophile remains at large and the Metropolitan Police has done 'little to stop him'.

Daniel Erickson-Hull (left) was first exposed by File On 4 in 2019. Now, three years later, journalist Paul Kenyon (right) has revisited the case and revealed how, despite evidence from the BBC, a former devotee and Erickson-Hull's own sister, the paedophile remains at large an the Metropolitan Police has done 'little to stop him'. Above, the original 2019 confrontation

Daniel Erickson-Hull, left, now 46, London, was jailed in 2017 after being convicted of making and possessing hundreds of indecent images of children. He is still at large

When Kenyon first met Erickson-Hull, he was posing as a youth pastor.

The 2019 footage of the journalist confronting the paedophile went viral and showed the BBC crew were chased away by a mob of his teenage followers, revealing just how deep his ties in the community went.

Following the story, an American follower named Dawn Gibbs, who had travelled from Houston, Texas, to work with Erickson-Hull, decided to confront the so-called pastor. When she walked into his room, she found him in bed with two boys.

'I looked at the bed and there's Daniel and one boy is facing him, face-to-face, spooning him, and another boy was spooning him from the rear,' she recalled, as she told her story for the first time.

'The boys immediately jumped out of the bed... There was lots of shouting from the boys. Daniel just sat in the bed like nothing was going on.'

Soon afterwards, Dawn decided to leave. When she went to say her goodbyes to the children she discovered just how many boys had been abused.

'This young man interrupts the conversation to say, ''We f****d Daniel. He continued to tell me "yes, don't you know Daniel is gay? We f****d him".

'I told them this was very serious and that I was going to need to speak to Daniel.'

Erickson-Hull uses his social media channels to raise money which he gives to the Roma community in Bulgaria. Above, in a video posted online

In that room, approximately 15 claimed to have been abused by Erickson-Hull. Some of them told her their little brothers had been preyed upon.

The youngest boy Dawn heard from was 10 years old.

She said: 'He was just a small, young boy who had one of the worst allegations - that Daniel was performing oral sex on him. Often.'

Dawn decided to confront Erickson-Hull again and question him about the allegations.

'I questioned him and he denied it all and told me the children were possessed by demons,' she explained. 'He was amused. He was laughing it off.'

Ms Gibbs says she told the Metropolitan Police about his actions but did not receive a reply.

Soon after the original File On 4 investigation was broadcast, Bulgarian police raided his apartment and found him with six children.

He was charged with abusing eight boys under 16 and was taken to prison to await trial. While he was in custody, the Roma community came together to protest against his arrest.

Erickson-Hull, pictured in a pool with a child, was charged with abusing eight boys under 16 and was taken to prison to await trial. However the case against him eventually collapsed

One anonymous witness, who originally alerted the BBC to the case, explained Erickson-Hull's manipulation extended to the victims' parents and communities.

He used the money he received from well-intentioned people from around the world to keep the struggling community afloat, either by giving them cash, or by buying essentials and household goods.

'With the amount of money that he had, he was able to buy the families, literally buy the whole communities,' the witness said.

While he was in prison awaiting trial, Erickson-Hull gave his sister, Anna, access to his YouTube account so she could continue to raise funds. Through this, Anna gained access to her brother's Google account and Google search history.

'I have never been so sick and shocked,' she told File On 4. 'Nothing could have prepared me for this. Nothing. The things that he had been looking at for years.

'It was teenage boys, it was tweens, so it got younger. It was Gypsy boys. It was boys having sex with their parents. It was awful. It was so much. It was children having sex. There were chat rooms... and it was all young boys.'

Anna notified the Metropolitan Police and gave them access to his search history and waited for them to act.

The case against Erickson-Hull eventually collapsed when all eight alleged victims withdrew their statements.

BBC reporter Paul Kenyon (right) confronting Erickson-Hull in Bulgaria in 2019

The anonymous witness, called 'John' in the radio programme, had previously contacted the Metropolitan Police to make them aware of the case and ensure British authorities were ready to act in case the Bulgarian case collapsed.

The Met responded to say: 'The contact that I have at the British Embassy for the National Crime Agency is very keen to not leave any gaps so that, should the worst happen and we be in a position to extradite him if the Bulgarian investigation went badly wrong.'

Yet when Erickson-Hull was released without charge, the Metropolitan Police did not act, even after the witness contacted the force to inform them of the case collapsing.

The Met has powers to investigate UK child sex offenders they suspect of abuse abroad under Section 72 of the Sexual Offences Act. However an investigation has not taken place.

Nazir Afzal, a former national lead prosecutor for child abuse cases at the Crown Prosecution Service, told File On 4: 'This is grooming on an industrial scale.

'He's manipulated these young children into thinking what they're doing is right in some way. When in actual fact, he is simply abusing them. And doing so to multiple children, multiple times.

'It would not surprise me if we're talking about hundreds of people having been abused by this particular suspect. And I don't know how anyone can simply "this is a matter for Bulgarian authorities".

'This is a British citizen, a British citizen for whom we still remain responsible. We cannot allow him to continue to put children in danger in the way that he has done, as certainly, the way the evidence suggests.'

Daniel Erickson-Hull remains a free man and is still active on social media.

The Metropolitan Police said in a statement: 'We would encourage anyone who has information about suspected offences in London to contact the Metropolitan Police.

'If offences reported to us are alleged to have taken place in a different country then we will share this with the relevant police force.

'We are not aware of any new Metropolitan Police investigations in this case.'

Mr Afzal believes this is simply not good enough.

He said: 'The police statement is a dereliction of duty when it comes to a British citizen whom we've already convicted, whom we've allowed to use the country, whom appears to be abusing children on a wholesale, industrial scale in a very vulnerable community in Bulgaria. And we're simply saying "well it's not our problem".

'Well, the Bulgarians tried to prosecute. How well they tried is a moot point now because he was not convicted but the evidence points to the fact that this behaviour is continuing and we have a duty.'

Ms Gibbs added: 'I completely feel it is the responsibility of the English police to reach out to me. I am just so bothered and upset that he's allowed to be out...

'I have information that could put Daniel Erickson-Hull back behind bars. They should come and see me, or speak to me, I would be happy and glad to give them an account of what happened. I have nothing to hide.'
The bash at Edward Enninful's Longleat House wedding was full of men who were perfectly coiffed with flawless skin and outfits that fit just so. And they were just the waiters.

For the event was catered by high-end London-based firm Cellar Society, which specialises in producing food and drink that's served by a 'cast' of men and women who are so attractive, they could easily be mistaken for models (many of them are, others are students).

Cellar Society attracts the highest of high end clients, with big name brands like Balenciaga, Harrods and Versace spending an average of 20,000 to 100,000 on food and drink for their soirees.

The London-based company does private catering, too, and worked Kate Moss' 2011 wedding, as well as a recent bash in Monaco where the client only wanted Fiji Water that needed to be flown in in suitcases.

To work such glittering events, the waiters, who earn 14 an hour, must meet a strict list of requirements, managing director Bertie de Rougemont told The Times, and are 'key to the success' of a Cellar Society event.

Edward Enninful's big day was estimated to have cost 600,000 - and part of that was splurged on bottles of Champagne and splendid food arranged by high-end London caterers (pictured) Cellar Society, whose clients typically have a budget in the region of 20,000 to 100,000

But while the service team's food and drink is known to be of excellent quality - it's their 'cast' of waiters and waitresses (above) that are the 'key to their success', according to managing director Bertie de Rougemont

They must have no visible piercings or tattoos, be 'extremely fit and charming' and, if they're 'boys', have short hair. They can't be hungover or lazy. They must be able to know how to hold a conversation, but never flirt; be engaging, but never fawn.

'It's all about detail. My boys or girls are never fawning,' de Rougemont said. 'They are not incentivised by tips. They can hold a conversation but are trained to withdraw without giving offence. But we're all human beings and people do flirt.

'Its not always just some old geezer drinking champagne getting overfamiliar either. Its not unknown for girls to slip a number into someones pocket. Especially after lockdown when people seem to have forgotten how things work. If we see it, we take them aside and say, "This really shouldnt be happening".'

While it was once mainly men who worked for Cellar Society, now more women are wanted.

'We are now taking briefs from luxury brands who insist on diversity. Not just racial diversity  20 beautiful blond boys who look like they come from Bergen, Norway, is not an option. They want girls too. Girls who are well turned out, charming and have the right attitude are now in demand like never before.'

Intimate venue: It is understood Edward and Alec married in The Orangery in the grounds of Longleat House, underneath a stunning floral arch

Meet my new husband! British Vogue's Edward Enninful looks the picture of newly-wedded bliss in the first photo of him and new husband Alec Maxwell since their lavish English countryside wedding, taken earlier this month

The waiters and waitresses are interviewed and dressed before sitting through hair and make-up. A detailed briefing follows, with the service itself choreographed.

One Stella McCartney fashion show dinner saw the staff - who are paid 18 an hour - rehearsing for two hours ahead of the event.

de Rougemont said he was honoured to be asked to work on last week's Enninful wedding, which marks high-society's appetite for glitzy events returning again.

At the start of the pandemic, de Rougemont feared his company, which he started in his mid-thirties, after working at the CBS record label in the 1980s, would be finished.

During the first lockdown, the company used the leftover supplies to create 25,000 meals for the ambulance service found next door to its north London HQ.

For the most part, the firm's staff (above) - which serve A-list celebrities, fashion houses and luxury brands - are made up of 'fit and beautiful boys turned out nicely with a bit of hair and make-up,' claimed de Rougemont, 56, who was born in Paris

However his cast of serving staff (pictured), made up of young models and university students in the main, who go around with trays of food and drinks at the glitzy events, is now more diverse

But the quarantine didn't stop some 'naughty requests' from private customers asking de Rougemont to arrange a party - despite it being illegal. de Rougemont said he always said no to the requests.

Outrageous requests from the caterer's clients have also included Katie Moss' wedding to Jamie Hince in 2011, in which she wanted a champagne tower made of 500 glasses.

Poured into the glasses were 360 bottles of Pol Roger champagne, which were then handed out to guests one by one.

Then recently, a person behind a party in Monaco would only drink Fiji water - which had to be flown out by four staff members, carrying suitcases of the bottles from London.

House party! Longleat House was lit up by Emma Thynn, Marchioness of Bath, for her friend Edward Enninful's party

Glamorous guests: Anders Christian Madsen, a fashion critic at British Vogue, shared a picture with editor Christine Centenera and Victoria Beckham ahead of the wedding

But post-lockdown have changed the clients' tastes, with wealthy individuals seemingly not wanting to show off as much as before Covid.

As such, a buffet, relaxed atmosphere and vegan food is now preferred.

de Rougement remained tight-lipped on the exact offering at Enninful's wedding, but no doubt it was delicious.

The Enninful wedding saw a handful of the couple's nearest and dearest invited to see them exchange vows in the Orangery.

Ordinary couples must pay a minimum of 13,800 for venue hire of the Orangery for their ceremony and a marquee for the reception. The party then continued into the night, although the specifics have remained under wraps.

Chris Ayre, managing director at AYRE Events told FEMAIL, he thought the cost would be in the region of 600,000, saying: 'I would say a wedding like this would certainly cost around 600,000, if not more.'
A model has claimed that women have offered to pay her eye-watering sums to put their boyfriend's loyalty to the test.

Carolina Lekker, who lives in Barcelona, explained that she has been charging women up to 1,400 to help weed out infidelity.

She said the scheme is profitable although she returns money to any women whose partner doesn't agree to meet with her.

Carolina told The Daily Star how she tests unsuspecting men, saying: 'I contact them first on Instagram and wait for them to respond. I keep making conversation until the conversation gets hotter.

Carolina Lekker (pictured), who lives in Barcelona, has revealed women are paying her to test their boyfriend's loyalty

'If after a lot of talking he wants to meet with me, I get the money and he doesn't pass the loyalty test.'

Carolina, who recently appeared on the cover of Playboy Africa, explained that she returns her high fee if the man doesn't give in to her request for a casual meeting.

She claims to have made more than 7,400 so far from the honeytrap scheme, which she plans to spend on having further cosmetic surgery.

In the hopes of achieving the 'most expensive body on Instagram, Carolina has already spent 110,000 on plastic surgery including four nose rhinoplasties.

The model, who has also had liposuction and facial harmonisation, claims the pain of surgery is 'worth' it.

Carolina (pictured) claims she has made over 7,400 from her honeytrap scheme, which she plans to spend on cosmetic surgery

Carolina (pictured) achieves her enviable look with cosmetic surgery, make-up and professionally installed hair extensions

Carolina has been candid with her 500,000 Instagram followers about how she achieves her look.

She recently posted about having regular facial treatments with cosmetic specialist Junior Alkmim at Skin Miracle Clinic and has shared photos having hair extensions professionally installed.

According to Portuguese website Virgula, Carolina recently had to defend herself from social media trolls who accused her of 'cultural appropriation' after she shared a snap with blonde hair.

Carolina said: 'I was shocked by so many negative comments about my hair.

'I was even accused of cultural appropriation, but I will never forget the racist comments.

'I've already received comments from people who didn't like my blonde, but this time the messages were much heavier. I found it unnecessary.'
An Australian shark expert has warned keen surfers to avoid the beach after heavy flooding as bull sharks will have been disturbed from their river systems and be closer to the shoreline.

Self confessed 'shark girl' Madison Stewart put a call out to watermen on Thursday, urging anyone thinking about taking advantage of the uncharacteristic wild weather waves to choose a different means of exercising.

'Big enough rainfall will change the normal distribution patterns of bull sharks within a river system and will move bulls out of a river system into a near shore beach area,' she wrote on Instagram.

Self confessed 'shark girl' Madison Stewart put a call out to watermen on Thursday, urging anyone thinking about taking advantage of the uncharacteristic wild weather waves to choose a different means of exercising

'Big enough rainfall will change the normal distribution patterns of bull sharks within a river system and will move bulls out of a river system into a near shore beach area,' she wrote on Instagram

'They can't cope with the drop in salinity in the water. River mouths also represent a food source for sharks with all run off flowing into the ocean from upriver, things like fertilizers and even sewage can cause fish to feed and congregate in the river mouth area.

'In murky water bull sharks thrive. IT'S A DANGEROUS TIME TO SURF. Please be safe.'

Plenty of her 200,000 fans on social media were quick to praise the messaging, as many had sighted large sharks in recent days.

'Well said. 100%!!! I wouldn't go diving right now for so many reasons. Bacteria in the water, risk of drowning, zero vis, and sharks. They don't need more bad press, so for their sake STAY OUT OF THE WATER,' one man wrote.

'Had aggressive sharks at both Burleigh and Snapper Rocks today. Stay safe people. Deceased livestock floating around too,' said another.

Plenty of her 200,000 fans on social media were quick to praise the messaging, as many had sighted large sharks in recent days

A third added: 'I might leave it for a bit then'.

According to National Geographic bull sharks are one of the likeliest breeds to attack humans because they enjoy the shallow coastal waters humans frequent the most.

They are aggressive by nature and can grow up to four metres in length.

More towns have been evacuated as rain and floods continue to batter NSW and Queensland with warnings the bad weather will continue into next week.

Residents living in Wiseman's Ferry, 75km north-west of Sydney, were the latest to receive evacuation orders from the State Emergency Services on Friday.

Residents living in Wiseman's Ferry, 75km north-west of Sydney, were the latest to receive evacuation orders from the State Emergency Services on Friday

The SES warned residents should be prepared to leave their home over the next few hours if they live along River and Singleton roads and the western edge of Laughtondale.

An evacuation order has been reinstated for lower Portland along the lower Hawkesbury River, in the Central Tablelands.

Minor flooding is also expected along the Dawson River at Baralaba, in central Queensland, with more severe thunderstorms headed to the south-east of the state.

The Bureau of Meteorology has forecast the bad weather to continue in both states into next week with heavy rain and strong winds coming this weekend.
People around the world will embrace 'steady and charming' Camilla when she becomes Queen Consort because most don't want 'another glamorous Diana on the throne', according to one royal expert.

Speaking on True Royalty TVs The Royal Beat, Ingrid Seward, Editor in Chief of Majesty Magazine, said the Duchess of Cornwall, 74, being 'slightly in the background' will be a 'very good thing' when the time comes for her to become Prince Charles' Queen.

However, the royal commentator suggested that Camilla still has some work to do to increase her popularity - especially in the US, where the 'ghost of Princess Diana' overshadows the Prince of Wales and the Duchess.

People around the world will embrace 'steady and charming' Camilla (pictured meeting royal fans on March 1) when she becomes Queen Consort because most don't want 'another glamorous Diana on the throne', according to one royal expert

Speaking on True Royalty TVs The Royal Beat, Ingrid Seward, Editor in Chief of Majesty Magazine, said that Camilla still has some work to do to increase her popularity - especially in the US, where the 'ghost of Princess Diana' overshadows the Prince of Wales and the Duchess. Pictured, Diana in Chicago in June 1996

'I think people that have met Camilla really love her, and can see the warmth that she has,' said Ingrid.

'But globally shes not so popular, especially in the United States, because of this huge swell for Diana that will never go away.

'So I feel that Camilla and Charles have always got the ghost of Diana hovering over them.'

But she added: 'I dont think the world wants another glamorous Diana on the throne, I think after the Queen goes, to have someone steady and charming but slightly in the background like Camilla is probably a very good thing.'

Elsewhere on the programme, Duncan Larcombe told how the Duchess has supported the families of soldiers killed in conflicts.

Elsewhere on the programme, Duncan Larcombe told how the Duchess, pictured in her Colonel-in-Chief role, has supported the families of soldiers killed in conflicts

He recalled: 'I was writing about the 3 Rifles Battalion that had just got back from Afghanistan.

'Thirty of their men had been killed in that conflict, and Camilla was the Colonel of Chief, as she still is.

'And it hadnt been publicised, but I found out from the commanding officer of this unit, that she had handwritten a note to all of the 30 soldiers that were killed, all of their significant relatives, under the radar.

'She didnt have to do that, but that showed to me that Camilla is not just the colonel in chief of the three rifles, shes not just patron of a charity, she really means it and she is incredibly passionate about those causes.'

Last month, the Duchess said it will be a 'great honour' to become Queen Consort - adding that she will use the position to help her to highlight the causes she supports.

Last month, the Duchess said it will be a 'great honour' to become Queen Consort - adding that she will use the position to help her to highlight the causes she supports. Pictured: broadcaster Emma Barnett and the Duchess of Cornwall at Clarence House

Speaking to BBC presenter Emma Barnett about her work with victims of domestic violence, Camilla said she would not 'give up mid-channel', saying she hopes to continue 'doing it for a lifetime'.

It comes after The Queen issued her royal seal of approval for the Duchess to use the title of Queen when her husband, Prince Charles, becomes King.

Speaking to Emma at Clarence House for Woman's Hour and BBC Breakfast, Camilla said: 'Of course it's a great honour (becoming Queen Consort), it couldn't be anything else. But it does help it.

The Queen ended years of speculation and controversy over the Duchess's future title by publicly announcing during her Platinum Jubilee speech that it was her 'sincere wish' that Camilla should be known as Queen Consort when the time came.

The Royal Beat - available on True Royalty TV
The Duchess of Cambridge is looking 'more confident' on solo royal trips because she finds it easier to relax without Prince William by her side, a royal biographer has claimed.

Referring to Kate's recent solo trip to Denmark, Robert Jonbson pointed out how the Duchess playfully whizzed down a slide on a visit to the LEGO Foundation PlayLab, and said she seemed completely at ease.

Speaking to True Royalty TV's The Royal Beat, he said: 'The fact that she went down that slide, Im not sure she necessarily would have done that if he [William] was there. She was on good form.'

He described Prince William as being 'a bit fussy' on royal jobs, and said that even after a decade of official duties, Kate still looks to William to make sure she's doing the right thing when they carry out joint engagements.

Speaking to True Royalty TV's The Royal Beat, Robert Jobson pointed out that Kate, 40, was on 'good form' on her recent trip to Copenhagen where she went down a slide at the LEGO Foundation PlayLab

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge pictured on a visit to Abergavenny and Blaenavon in Wales this week. Robert Jobson said that Prince William can be 'a bit fussy' on royal engagements

Describing Kate's recent outings, Jobson said: 'She was all smiles, very confident. Kate seemed more relaxed without William, who can be a bit fussy when hes on royal jobs.

'Probably more confident than when shes alongside William. She spoke very well. I thought she really came out of herself when she was there...She didnt have to refer to William.

'When you see them together, shes always double-checking whether its the right thing to do, even now.'

Kate shares Prince George, eight, Princess Charlotte, six, and Prince Louis, three, with Prince William, 39, and has been carrying out official royal duties with her husband since they married in 2011.

The Duchess of Cambridge looked confident and relaxed as she visited Stenurten Forest Kindergarten in Copenhagen, Denmark, last month

Meanwhile, in recent weeks, the Duchess has appeared to be 'sharing more' about her family because she 'needed to raise the bar' following the Queen's recent health struggles and Megxit.

As well as taking Prince George along to last Saturday's rugby at Twickenham, she shared her children's half term activities and even opened up about feeling broody.

Royal biographer Sarah Gristwood said the mother-of-three's candid confessions showed she has opened up in the last year, telling People: 'The changing times have required Kate to start to share a bit more.

'She's done it carefully enough to be relatable  nothing that would cause controversy and nothing that could be considered oversharing.'

Last week, Kate spoke about feeling broody, joking that meeting babies always makes her want another one while chatting to parents at Copenhagen's Children's Museum.

At the Children's Museum, Kate heard about the Understanding Your Baby research project which trains health visitors to help new parents as they begin to notice and interpret their babies' behavioural cues.

In recent weeks, the Duchess has appeared particularly candid about the family's life at home (pictured with Prince William, Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis)

After meeting with two eight-month-old baby boys and their parents, she joked: 'It makes me very broody.

'William always worries about me meeting under one-year-olds. I come home saying, '"Let's have another one".'

Meanwhile she and Prince William were joined by Prince George at the weekend as they watched the England vs Wales game at Twickenham Stadium on Saturday.

And days ago, the future Prince and Princess of Wales were visiting a goat farm in Llanvetherine, near Abergavenny, and shared how Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis had helped with their animals during half term.

It is thought the family were in Norfolk, where the Prince of Wales has been working to turn the Queen's Sandringham estate into a fully organic operation.

Last week, Kate spoke about feeling broody, joking that meeting babies always makes her want another one while chatting to parents at Copenhagen's Children's Museum

As they toured Pant Farm, where Gary and Jess Yeomans, both 50, produce goats' milk that has supplied a local cheesemaker for the past two decades, William spotted a robot silage sweeper in one of the barns.

Gary explained it could also be used to move feed, and the duchess replied: 'That was George's job at half term - moving feed.'

William told his hosts the children had been getting involved on the farm and added: 'We are trying some Agroforestry as well.'

Meanwhile Kate told her hosts: 'I was looking into my ancestry and there was someone who was a rare breed goat farmer. I will have to find out which one it was. It was just after the First World War.'

With Prince Andrew's legal difficulties, the Queen's Covid battle, as well as the Firm's concerns over the imminent publication of Prince Harry's upcoming memoir, the Duchess has been touted as playing a key role in shaping the future of the Monarchy.

Having already been writing for a year, the prince is set to turn in a manuscript, which he promised will be a 'first-hand account of my life that's accurate and wholly truthful', by the end of this year. It is set to hit the shelves in 2022.

In addition, members of the Royal Family will also have to prepare themselves for series five of Netflix drama The Crown, which has started filming and will dramatise a notoriously difficult period of time in their recent history.

It will cover the Queen's 'annus horribilis', a Latin phrase meaning horrible year which she used in 1992 to describe the collapse of three of her children's marriages - including Prince Charles' to Princess Diana - and the fire that severely damaged her Windsor Castle home.
A brave Ukrainian TV presenter revealed he's moved to a bunker in order to keep presenting his show during the Russian invasion.

Yegor Gordeev, who normally presents a breakfast show for the Ukrainian media group 1+1 Media told Kate Garraway and Ben Shephard about his situation in Kyiv on Good Morning Britain.

The presenter said he has moved to a bunker but does not know how safe he is, and added he's had to interrupt his show several times due to sirens.

He was seen sitting behind a makeshift desk in the studio, which has been created with a combination of plywood and digital backgrounds to hide the bunker.

This comes as Europe's largest nuclear power plant, at Zaporizhzhia in Ukraine, was attacked by Russian troops overnight as the conflict enters its ninth day and shows no sign of stopping.

Speaking from his bunker, Yegor gave a glimpse into the current situation in Ukraine for the locals who have remained there.

The presenter has been working on his show from a bunker with a reduced team of producers during the conflict

He told Kate and Ben: 'Kate, I don't know if I am safe, but I hope so.'

He said that apart from the fact Russia has seized Zaporizhzhia last night, very little is known about what will happen now.

'There are a lot of Russian troops around it. We don't know anything. I keep in touch with the people who live there, but they don't know nothing.'

The TV presenter, who's moved his show to a bunker, said he sometimes has to interrupt his broadcasting because of sirens sounding in the background.

Yegor said he has moved to a bunker but does know how safe he is, and added he's had to interrupt his show several times due to sirens

The presenter told Ben Shephard and Kate Garraway that there is only one TV channel left in Ukraine

And talking of his work-station, he said, tongue-in-cheek: 'it's not an ordinary studio. There's a table and a kitchen,' he said, gesturing to croissant and bread laid out behind him.

'But it's nothing like we remember from before the war.'

He explained that there is one one TV channel left in Ukraine, which broadcasts information 24/7.

'All single channels in Ukraine have united into one that's non-stop,' he said.

Yegor Gordeev, who normally presents a breakfast show for the Ukrainian media group 1+1 Media told Kate Garraway and Ben Shephard about his situation in Kyiv on Good Morning Britain.

The show shared a glimpse of the bunker where Yegor and his coworkers have retreated to, bringing in some accessories from their former studio - right, to keep an air of normalcy

Ukraine war: The latest Fire at Europe's biggest nuclear power station at Zaporizhzhia is put out after Ukraine accuses Russia of 'nuclear terror' in shelling the plant. Russian troops later take the reactors

Diplomats from NATO, the EU and G7 will all meet in Europe today to discuss next moves to contain crisis

Russia admits 'limiting' access to news websites including the BBC, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, independent Russian site Meduza and Germany's Deutsche Welle, with Facebook blocked

Russian lawmakers approve legislation providing up to 15 years in jail for any publication of fake news about the Russian armed forces

Thirty-three people are killed as Russian forces hit residential areas, including schools, in the northern city of Chernihiv

Russia and Ukraine agree to create humanitarian corridors to evacuate civilians from cities

Russian President Vladimir Putin says Moscow's advance is going 'according to plan'

Senior US Republican senator Lindsey Graham calls for 'somebody in Russia' to assassinate Putin

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky calls for direct talks with Putin as the 'only way to stop the war'

Russian forces take the Black Sea port of Kherson as it appears Moscow is trying to cut Ukraine's access to the sea

US and EU offer temporary protection for Ukrainian refugees so far numbering more than 1million

Russians pack trains out of the country to Finland, fearful that it is their last chance to escape the impact of swingeing Western sanctions

Sanctioned Russian oil giant Lukoil calls for a halt to fighting in Ukraine, one of the first major domestic firms to speak out

Russian tech giant Yandex warns it may default on its debt after it was suspended from trading on New York's digital stock exchange

The China-backed Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank suspends business with Russia and Belarus in a sign of their deepening pariah status

Ex-Soviet states Georgia and Moldova - which borders Ukraine's threatened south - apply to join the EU

The Beijing Winter Paralympics opens with Russian athletes banned Advertisement

'Right now there are a lot of people in bomb shelters and they need normal communications,' he said.

'They need advice from experts and psychologist,' he added, adding that some parents will need advice on how to talk to their children.

'We mix our broadcast with breaking news, and normal shows, sometimes with jokes,' he added.

'It's a hard job, really, but everyone now in Ukraine are doing our jobs, I think we believe in our victory because here, now in my country, there is a line between past and future.'

Asked by Ben how he felt personally about his safety, Yegor said it is a difficult question to answer, because he has been working non-stop and so have the people surrounding him.

'I fear for my life, I fear for the lives of my relatives,' he added, saying his mother, who lives outside of Kyiv, is in a city that is surrounded by Russian troops and keeping in touch with him via phone.

The presenter said he feels it is his mission to create 'some atmosphere of normal life as much as possible.'

Meanwhile, Boris Johnson has accused Russia of 'threatening the security of the whole of Europe' after Putin's troops attacked the continent's largest nuclear power plant overnight, sparking a fire that raged for hours before emergency crews were eventually allowed to extinguish it as Russian soldiers seized the complex.

Mr Johnson condemned the attack as 'reckless' after a phone call with President Volodymyr Zelensky who branded it 'nuclear terrorism'. Jen Stoltenburg, who is in Brussels today to meet with NATO allies, denounced attacks on all civilian infrastructure and said the fire at the plant underlined the need to end Putin's war as soon as possible.

Russian troops had attacked the Zaporizhzhia plant in the early hours of Friday, with CCTV capturing a fierce gun battle between Putin's men and Ukrainian defenders that sparked a fire in a six-storey training building just outside the main complex.

Moscow's men then stopped firefighters getting to the building for several hours.

Eventually, emergency crews were allowed to go in and douse the flames before Russian troops moved in an occupied the site, which provides a fifth of Ukraine's electricity.

The UN's nuclear monitoring agency said that, fortunately, none of the site's six reactors had been directly damaged and radiation levels remained normal. Three Ukrainian troops were killed defending the complex, Kyiv said.

Moscow has, predictably, attempted to deny responsibility for the attack, saying its forces had come under attack by Ukrainian 'saboteurs' while patrolling the plant, who then set fire to the building themselves.

Ukraine is home to three other active nuclear power plants, one of which is located 70 miles from the city of Mykolaiv which Russian forces have begun attacking after seizing nearby Kherson.

The other two active sites are located in the west and are not currently under threat, though that situation could change as the Russian attack branches out. Ukraine also has five sites which are out of action, including Chernobyl, but could still pose a risk if hit by shells.

President Zelensky said the attack on Zaporizhzhia could have caused a crisis equivalent to 'six Chernobyls' - referencing the fact that the modern-day plant has six reactors while the Soviet-era disaster affected only one - and called on Russians to end the fighting.

Nuclear experts told the BBC that attacks on Zaporizhzhia were 'frightening' but that any disaster caused by fighting would be similar to Fukushima in 2011 rather than Chernobyl in 1986.

Fukushima, in Japan, melted down after a tsunami cut electricity to the plant, disabling its cooling system. Chernobyl exploded after a training exercise gone-wrong caused an uncontrolled nuclear reaction.

Yegor said he fears for his life and his family but wants tp carry on doing his job and believes in Ukraine's victory

Claire Corkhill, professor of nuclear materials at Sheffield University, told the corporation that the reactors at Zaporizhzhia now appear to be shutting down to remove the danger - which may have been Russia's intention in attacking the plant.

Russia's war against Ukraine is now entering its ninth day and shows no sign of stopping any time soon after talks between the two sides yesterday broke up without agreement, before Vladimir Putin went on TV to declare that he would keep battling for 'total victory' whilst spouting propaganda that Russia's forces are not deliberately targeting civilians and that the 'special operation' is proceeding on time with all of its major objectives completed to schedule.

Mykolaiv, a city to the west of Kherson which is now under Russian control, came under attack on Friday morning with the mayor saying troops had moved into the outskirts. Mykolaiv is located along the road to Odessa, Ukraine's third-largest city and main port, which is increasingly at risk of coming under siege.

The city of Mariupol, on the other side of the Crimean peninsula, also continues under heavy bombardment as Moscow's men try to bomb it into submission - with the aim seeming to be cutting off Ukrainian access to the Black Sea to deny the government access to lucrative trading routes.

Fighting is also continuing across the north and east, with Ukrainian special forces ambushing and destroying Russian tanks and armoured vehicles at Hostomel - to the west of the city - and Brovary - to the east - late yesterday and this morning.

Ukraine also claimed its jets have targeted part of a 40-mile convoy currently stalled outside the city, amid fears it would encircle the capital and bombard it.

Meanwhile Chernihiv, to the north east of Kyiv, and Kharkiv, in Ukraine's east, were braced for more heavy shelling today after days of increasingly indiscriminate attacks including with banned cluster munitions have left dozens of civilians dead. Officials in Chernihiv said this morning that 47 people died in attacks yesterday.

President Putin is also stepping up actions on the home front, intended to head off internal dissent about the war as combat proves fiercer and harder than his generals anticipated, and western sanctions destroy large chunks of the economy.
Sarah Ferguson has returned to her online show Story time With Fergie and Friends to show support to the children of Ukraine.

The grandmother of August, one and Sienna, born in September, who took a break from her show on January 10, read Beautiful World, Beautiful You in a video she shared on her Youtube channel for World Book Day.

Fergie started the series during lockdown in 2020, reading children's books and interviewing authors, but stopped for two months earlier this year.

Surrounded by sunflowers, the flower of Ukraine, and donning a blue and yellow cardigan reminiscent of the Ukrainian flag, the mother-of-two, 62, dedicated the episode to the children of Ukraine and the children of Afghanistan.

This comes as as Europe's largest nuclear power plant, at Zaporizhzhia in Ukraine, was attacked by Russian troops overnight as the conflict enters its ninth day and shows no sign of stopping.

Meanwhile, Fergie's ex-husband Prince Andrew, 62, has been keeping a low-profile since he reached an out-of-court settlement with accuser Virginia Roberts, who was suing the Queen's son in New York for alleged sexual abuse after she claims she was trafficked by his friend and convicted sex offender Jeffery Epstein. Prince Andrew vehemently denied these claims.

Sarah Ferguson has returned to her YouTube show Storytime with Fergie and Friends and sent a message of support to the children of Ukraine

'I'm so excited, I'm so excited, I'm back,' Fergie said during the video, shared on her Youtube channel last night.

The Duchess of York said that from now on, she'll be hosting the show, with Little Red, the heroine of her own series of children's books.

'I decided that I would go make Story time with Fergie and Friends actually be 'Little Red Story Time and Fergie and Little Red's stories,' she said.

Little Red, who wears a red and white dress, will be a real 'bringer of joy and bringer of hope' on the show, Fergie said.

Fergie hosted the show with a doll of the heroin of her children's books series Little Red, and said she wanted to visit Ukraine to bring support

'I know lots of people, mums and dads, aunts and grannies, grandpas, and all these children out there in the big world, they are all frightened,' she said.

'And there are so many different words on the playground. Words like "invasion" and it seems to be so much news,' she added.

'These poor children that are coming over borders, across boundaries and running away from some people that are not letting them be in their own homes and it's very frightening,' she added.

Fergie went on to address a message to the children in Ukraine and globally.

'To the children of Ukraine, to the children of Afghanistan, to children globally, Little Red is here.

'Little Red is here to say: "Come on, I know there are fears, I know that it's really, really, really frightening, but together, if we just can be kind, if we can just talk to each other, if we can just smile"...' Fergie said.

The grandmother-of-two donned a yellow and blue cardigan resembling the Ukraine flag, and decorated her set with sunflowers, which is the national flower of Ukraine

'We want you to know that we're here and we hear what you need.'

She went on to say that that she wants to visit Poland and Hungary, which border Ukraine, to help families and displaced children.

'I was thinking, maybe you might need a torch, cause it gets so dark, so here is a little sun, and a solar torch,' she said, showing a sunflower-shaped torch to the camera.

She said she hopes to deliver portable solar panel chargers so people can charge their electronic devices and stay in touch with their family via phone or computer.

'If you would like you send a message, please do, if we can be of any help and whatever you wish, children, you tell us. Tell Little Red and we'll come and see you,' she said.

She added Little Blue, who is Little Red's friends, would also be coming on the journey.

Fergie said she will host all upcoming episodes of Story time from Little Red's Buttercup Cottage

She also explained she had created a story called Little Red visits Ukraine, where her heroine travels across the country looking for Sunflowers, the Bumble Bee and the Nightingale, which are all symbols of the Eastern European Country.

Ukraine war: The latest Fire at Europe's biggest nuclear power station at Zaporizhzhia is put out after Ukraine accuses Russia of 'nuclear terror' in shelling the plant. Russian troops later take the reactors

Diplomats from NATO, the EU and G7 will all meet in Europe today to discuss next moves to contain crisis

Russia admits 'limiting' access to news websites including the BBC, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, independent Russian site Meduza and Germany's Deutsche Welle, with Facebook blocked

Russian lawmakers approve legislation providing up to 15 years in jail for any publication of fake news about the Russian armed forces

Thirty-three people are killed as Russian forces hit residential areas, including schools, in the northern city of Chernihiv

Russia and Ukraine agree to create humanitarian corridors to evacuate civilians from cities

Russian President Vladimir Putin says Moscow's advance is going 'according to plan'

Senior US Republican senator Lindsey Graham calls for 'somebody in Russia' to assassinate Putin

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky calls for direct talks with Putin as the 'only way to stop the war'

Russian forces take the Black Sea port of Kherson as it appears Moscow is trying to cut Ukraine's access to the sea

US and EU offer temporary protection for Ukrainian refugees so far numbering more than 1million

Russians pack trains out of the country to Finland, fearful that it is their last chance to escape the impact of swingeing Western sanctions

Sanctioned Russian oil giant Lukoil calls for a halt to fighting in Ukraine, one of the first major domestic firms to speak out

Russian tech giant Yandex warns it may default on its debt after it was suspended from trading on New York's digital stock exchange

The China-backed Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank suspends business with Russia and Belarus in a sign of their deepening pariah status

Ex-Soviet states Georgia and Moldova - which borders Ukraine's threatened south - apply to join the EU

The Beijing Winter Paralympics opens with Russian athletes banned Advertisement

Fergie also said she has made a hat out of flowers in a nod to another Ukranian custom.

Meanwhile, Boris Johnson has accused Russia of 'threatening the security of the whole of Europe' after Putin's troops attacked the continent's largest nuclear power plant overnight, sparking a fire that raged for hours before emergency crews were eventually allowed to extinguish it as Russian soldiers seized the complex.

Mr Johnson condemned the attack as 'reckless' after a phone call with President Volodymyr Zelensky who branded it 'nuclear terrorism'. Jen Stoltenburg, who is in Brussels today to meet with NATO allies, denounced attacks on all civilian infrastructure and said the fire at the plant underlined the need to end Putin's war as soon as possible.

Russian troops had attacked the Zaporizhzhia plant in the early hours of Friday, with CCTV capturing a fierce gun battle between Putin's men and Ukrainian defenders that sparked a fire in a six-storey training building just outside the main complex.

Moscow's men then stopped firefighters getting to the building for several hours.

Eventually, emergency crews were allowed to go in and douse the flames before Russian troops moved in an occupied the site, which provides a fifth of Ukraine's electricity.

The UN's nuclear monitoring agency said that, fortunately, none of the site's six reactors had been directly damaged and radiation levels remained normal. Three Ukrainian troops were killed defending the complex, Kyiv said.

Moscow has, predictably, attempted to deny responsibility for the attack, saying its forces had come under attack by Ukrainian 'saboteurs' while patrolling the plant, who then set fire to the building themselves.

Ukraine is home to three other active nuclear power plants, one of which is located 70 miles from the city of Mykolaiv which Russian forces have begun attacking after seizing nearby Kherson.

The other two active sites are located in the west and are not currently under threat, though that situation could change as the Russian attack branches out. Ukraine also has five sites which are out of action, including Chernobyl, but could still pose a risk if hit by shells.

President Zelensky said the attack on Zaporizhzhia could have caused a crisis equivalent to 'six Chernobyls' - referencing the fact that the modern-day plant has six reactors while the Soviet-era disaster affected only one - and called on Russians to end the fighting.

Nuclear experts told the BBC that attacks on Zaporizhzhia were 'frightening' but that any disaster caused by fighting would be similar to Fukushima in 2011 rather than Chernobyl in 1986.

Fukushima, in Japan, melted down after a tsunami cut electricity to the plant, disabling its cooling system. Chernobyl exploded after a training exercise gone-wrong caused an uncontrolled nuclear reaction.

Claire Corkhill, professor of nuclear materials at Sheffield University, told the corporation that the reactors at Zaporizhzhia now appear to be shutting down to remove the danger - which may have been Russia's intention in attacking the plant.

Russia's war against Ukraine is now entering its ninth day and shows no sign of stopping any time soon after talks between the two sides yesterday broke up without agreement, before Vladimir Putin went on TV to declare that he would keep battling for 'total victory' whilst spouting propaganda that Russia's forces are not deliberately targeting civilians and that the 'special operation' is proceeding on time with all of its major objectives completed to schedule.

Mykolaiv, a city to the west of Kherson which is now under Russian control, came under attack on Friday morning with the mayor saying troops had moved into the outskirts. Mykolaiv is located along the road to Odessa, Ukraine's third-largest city and main port, which is increasingly at risk of coming under siege.

The city of Mariupol, on the other side of the Crimean peninsula, also continues under heavy bombardment as Moscow's men try to bomb it into submission - with the aim seeming to be cutting off Ukrainian access to the Black Sea to deny the government access to lucrative trading routes.

Fighting is also continuing across the north and east, with Ukrainian special forces ambushing and destroying Russian tanks and armoured vehicles at Hostomel - to the west of the city - and Brovary - to the east - late yesterday and this morning.

Ukraine also claimed its jets have targeted part of a 40-mile convoy currently stalled outside the city, amid fears it would encircle the capital and bombard it.

Meanwhile Chernihiv, to the north east of Kyiv, and Kharkiv, in Ukraine's east, were braced for more heavy shelling today after days of increasingly indiscriminate attacks including with banned cluster munitions have left dozens of civilians dead. Officials in Chernihiv said this morning that 47 people died in attacks yesterday.

President Putin is also stepping up actions on the home front, intended to head off internal dissent about the war as combat proves fiercer and harder than his generals anticipated, and western sanctions destroy large chunks of the economy.
British actress Veronica Carlson, best known for her performances in classic Hammer Horror films including Dracula Has Risen From The Grave, has died.

Her death was announced on her Facebook page on February 27. According to her daughter Carly Love, the actress died from natural causes, at her home in Bluffton, South Carolina. She was 77.

Originally a model, she landed her big break when Hammer Horror producer Jimmy Carrera spotted a photo of her posing in a white bikini, and her first big screen speaking role was alongside Christopher Lee in 1968.

But despite going on to star in several more horror hits, the scream queen was too much of a 'nice middle class girl' to meet increasing demand by studios to strip off for racy scenes, something which would eventually derail her career.

Speaking of her curtailed career, she told The Actor's Notebook, she said: 'It was never my intention, because I thought I was really going places.

'The film industry changed for one thing. There was a lot of nudity introduced and I wasn't into that, because I'd had a very strict upbringing. I wouldn't think of taking my clothes off. But it seemed at the time that was going to be the only option.'

Veronica Carlson, who has died aged 77, was best known for her roles in Hammer Horror films. Here she is pictured with Christopher Lee in a publicity portrait for 1968 film Dracula Has Risen from the Grave

This image, taken circa 1970, shows Veronica during her career ascent, after she had made her Hammer Horror debut two years' earlier

As well as the big screen, Veronica appeared in small screen productions, including a 1969 episode of TV series The Saint, pictured here alongside Hedger Wallace

The actress was born Veronica Mary Glazier on September 18, 1944, in West Yorkshire to parents Edith and William Glazier.

The family moved around England after the war, ending in up High Wycombe, where William worked for the Ministry of Defence after working as an RAF officer.

She said she was 'rescued' aged 16, by a teacher who told her mother to send her to art college.

Veronica did indeed go on to study drawing at High Wycombe College of Technology and Design, an experience she would later describe as 'wonderful'.

The actress (pictured circa 1970) says going to art college when she was 16 'rescued' her. She got the acting bug while there, which led to her big screen career

Veronica, pictured here at the 2012 Monsterpalooza in Burbank, California, is survived by her daughter, two sons, and seven grandchildren

It was during her time at art school that Veronica started acting, appearing in amateur productions and college revues. This led to her auditioning for the 1967 Morecambe and Wise film The Magnificent Two.

She won the part - which required some knowledge of judo, which she had - after throwing one of the other auditionees 'over [her] head'.

Further non-speaking parts followed that year, in Casino Royale and Smashing Time, and she worked as a model, which led to her major breakthrough a year later.

Film producer Jimmy Carrera, who co-founded Hammer Film Productions, saw a picture of Veronica, dressed in a white bikini in a tabloid newspaper, and got in touch.

Peter Cushing and Veronica Carlson starred together in the 1969 film Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed, her second Hammer Horror movie

This studio portrait, taken around 1965, shows Veronica posing for a modelling shot just three years before her big acting break

He auditioned her, before offering a her a role in 1968 film Dracula has Risen from the Dead, opposite Christopher Lee, marking her first speaking part in a film, and her first foray into the world of Hammer Horror.

She followed this by starring opposite Peter Cushing in Frankenstein Must be Destroyed in 1969 - and experience which started strangely.

Describing her first day on set of the picture in a 2001 interview, she talked about how she overheard fellow actor Peter and director Terry Fisher discussing how her character should be killed.

She said: 'The very first day of shooting involved killing me on the cellar stairs.

'I was all dressed for the role, and Terry Fisher was discussing how I should be killed  which was slightly unsettling as I had not met either of them properly.'

Veronica (far right) also appeared in the movie 1968 Crossplot, which was filmed at Elstree Studios, and starred Roger Moore (pictured)

Claudie Lange (left) starred in Crossplot, with Gabrielle Drake (centre) and Veronica Carlson (right) also made an appearance in the 1968 picture

Despite the unusual meeting, the thespian pair ended up bonding during the shoot, after filming a traumatic rape scene, which was added to the script at the last moment by movie distributors who felt it might encourage more people to watch it.

According to Veronica, both she and Peter were left 'trembling' after shooting the scene.

After the film, she appeared in a 1969 episode of television series The Saint, titled The Man Who Gambled with Life, as well as an episode of Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased).

They were followed by her third Hammer picture, The Horror of Frankenstein, acting alongside David Prowse, in 1970.

A promotional shot for 1970 film The Horror of Frankenstein, which Veronica (right) starred in opposite Peter Cushing. Here she is pictured with actress Kate O'Mara

Pictured here in 1974, the year she married businessman Sydney Love. She cited her marriage and subsequently motherhood as two of the reasons she started moving away from acting

That year she also teamed up again with Peter Cushing, with the pair acting together in The Horror of Frankenstein. Their final turn together was in 1975's The Ghoul.

She did not appear in another horror picture for almost 20 years.

Speaking about it years later, the Telegraph reports her as saying: 'I always think how pathetic I was.

'I was thrilled to be cast in the films, but being a nice middle-class girl, I refused to do anything too revealing.

'They wanted to undo my dress and get a shot of my back. The cut of the dress meant I couldn't wear a bra and I pleaded with them to do it 'tastefully'. It makes me blush to think about it.'

In 1969, Veronica appeared in an episode of television series The Saint, titled The Man Who Gambled with Life,

Among her small screen appearances, the actress appeared on The Des O'Connor Show, and with pictured with its namesake host here in 1971

Throughout the early seventies, Veronica made some acting appearances, notably starring in ITV crime series Spyder's Web in 1972. A horror spoof followed in 1974, Old Dracula, in which she worked with David Niven.

She appeared in a handful of productions after the mid-seventies, notably 2019 feature House of the Gordon, a tribute to the low-budget Hammer genre.

Speaking in 2011, Veronica said she hadn't planned to leave the movie business while her career was going so well.

But, she said: 'The film industry changed for one thing. There was a lot of nudity introduced and I wasn't into that...so my options were limited'.

She also cited her marriage to businessman Sydney Love, moving away from London (and finally settling in the US), and motherhood as further reasons behind her early retirement from the industry.

The actress in one of her most iconic roles, playing Maria in Dracula Has Risen from the Grave, opposite veteran thespian Christopher Lee

According to Veronica (pictured here in a 1969 promotional shot for Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased)), there were several reasons she took early retirement from her promising acting career - notably marriage, motherhood, and the industry becoming racier

Veronica, pictured at the Chiller Theatre Expo in New Jersey in 2017, had been slated to appear in upcoming film The Rectory, according to IMBD

However, Veronica still had a creative outlet, in the form of drawing and painting, and was considered accomplished in her art.

Before her death, Veronica was slated to star in a future film The Rectory, which is currently in pre-production, according to IMDB.

She had also planned to appear at Carolina Fearfest, a horror convention in North Carolina, at the end of May.

Veronica is survived by her daughter Carly, sons Adam and Marcus, and seven grandchildren.
A voter casts their ballot at a polling station in Gwangju, Friday, the first day of the two-day early voting period for the 20th presidential election. Yonhap



Rival parties encourage supporters to cast early ballots



By Jung Da-min



With the two main rival parties, the ruling liberal Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) and the main opposition conservative People Power Party (PPP), actively encouraging their supporters to participate in early voting for the 20th presidential election, the turnout is expected to reach a record high.



The turnout on the first day was 17.6 percent, compared with 11.7 percent from the first day of early voting in the 2017 election.



Political watchers said more voters were expected to participate in the two-day early voting period on Friday and Saturday, especially under the current pandemic conditions where the daily number of COVID-19 cases has continued to skyrocket over the past weeks.



Major presidential candidates, including the two leading rivals, Lee Jae-myung of the DPK and Yoon Suk-yeol of the PPP, as well as Sim Sang-jung of minor opposition progressive Justice Party, cast their ballots Friday. President Moon Jae-in also participated in early voting on the same day.





Major presidential candidates participate in early voting for the 20th presidential election, Friday, the first day of the two-day early voting period. From left are Lee Jae-myung of the ruling liberal Democratic Party of Korea at a polling station in Seoul's Jung District, Yoon Suk-yeol of the main opposition conservative People Power Party in Busan's Nam District and Sim Sang-jung of the minor opposition progressive Justice Party in Seoul's Jongno District. Joint Press Corps



The political parties have also encouraged their supporters to participate in early voting.



The conservative PPP's encouragement to vote early, however, is rather a new phenomenon to political watchers and the public as, in the past, the system had more commonly been promoted by the liberal and progressive political parties, since it was introduced in 2014.









Political watchers said that the liberal bloc had often promoted early voting to their young supporters to increase their turnout, as many of them had not been able to vote on Election Day. Often, they had to go to work when it fell on a normal working day or viewed it as personal time, once Election Day was designated a public holiday.



But they said that this strategy of the liberal bloc is not an outdated one. First of all, the once widely accepted idea of many young people being supportive of the liberal bloc is no longer necessarily the case, as evidenced by recent elections, in which many of them instead supported conservative candidates.



More importantly, as the early voting system is now well established, more people, regardless of their age group, prefer to vote early. Many people find the early voting system more convenient, as they can vote from any region regardless of their registered address, political watchers said.



Park Sung-min, the president and founder of local political consulting firm MIN Consulting, said that the early voting turnout would not affect the overall turnout, especially for major elections like the presidential election, as they usually have a high turnout.



"The overall turnout matters, but the early voting turnout means nothing. For the main opposition PPP and Yoon Suk-yeol, they see that a high turnout would bring a favorable result, as it means that not only enthusiastic supporters of the liberal and conservative blocs, but other members of the general public, will participate in the election," Park said, weighing on the fact that recent opinion polls show that a majority of the public desires a leadership change.





Voters queue up to participate in early voting for the 20th presidential election, at a polling station in Gangneung, Gangwon Province, Friday, the first day of the two-day early voting period. Yonhap
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The upsetting scenes in Ukraine brought an unusually public response from the royals this week.

The Cambridges and the Sussexes made statements, while Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall put the issue at the heart of their work.

'The Prince of Wales spent the weekend locked in talks with his advisers about how to express the anguish that he like everyone else feels at what he is seeing unfold in Ukraine, but also what he could do to help practically, The Daily Mails Royal Editor Rebecca English tells this weeks Palace Confidential.

This included a speech and using his remarkable convening power to bring together leaders of five charities of which he is patron, to help Ukrainians in Britain better support family and friends at home.

Royal watchers have discussed the royal family's united response to the war in Ukraine. The Prince of Wales,issued a statement of support to Ukraine and lit a candle at the altar during a visit at the Ukrainian Catholic Cathedral with the Duchess of Cornwall, centre right, Bishop Kenneth Nowakowski, left, and Ukraine's Ambassador to the UK Vadym Pristaiko, right, on Wednesday

Despite their actions, royal biographer Hugo Vickers thinks the Queen will keep her customary counsel and leave the comments to her son and grandson.

The Queen has always remained above politics and she has always remained silent, so I would imagine on this occasion that she will continue that policy, he says.

The Queen is not a stirrer-up of trouble; she is a tremendous conciliator and so I think if Prince Charles and Prince William have had their say, I dont think theres any need for her to say anything.

Meanwhile, The Daily Mails Diary Editor Richard Eden pointed out an extraordinary spat on social media, in which fans of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex attacked the embattled Ukrainian leader.

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, pictured during their visit to Wales on Tuesday, also sent a message of support to the Ukrainian people

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex have condemned Russia's offensive on Ukraine during a speech at 53rd NAACP Image Awards Show on Saturday in Burbank, California

This was something extraordinary, here we have President [Volodymyr] Zelenskyy fighting to survive, his life is under threat and he was able to send a message to the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, thanking them for their support for the people of Ukraine, he says.

He starts then being abused by some of the more strident social media followers of Harry and Meghan, saying Why havent you thanked them?

His fellow panellist, author and historian Dr Tessa Dunlop, wondered whether these accounts could have a more nefarious origin.

We have to question, to what extent are those trolls and naysayers actually bots  controlled, incidentally, possibly by Russia, she says.

Ive often wondered [about] the sort of militancy behind some of the Sussex following makes me wonder if theyre actually real.
A woman has captured hearts on social media after sharing the adventures of her pet 'house cow,' who she says is like her 'son.'

Faith O'Shields Allen, 22, who works an office job in Arkansas, has shot to viral fame on TikTok with her unique pet, Ferdinand, a 16-month-old cow who spent the first month of his life living inside her home.

Faith dresses Ferdinand in clothes, bottle feeds him, and even potty trained to go on a schedule.

'Ferdinand truly sees me as his mother and always will be my son,' she told Jam Press. 'He follows me everywhere and always wants to be right with me  usually licking my face.'

A woman has captured hearts on social media after sharing the adventures of her pet 'house cow,' who she says is like her 'son'

Faith O'Shields Allen, 22, an office worker from Arkansas, has shot to viral fame on TikTok with her unique pet, Ferdinand, a 16-month-old cow who lives inside her home

Faith dresses Ferdinand in clothes, bottle feeds him, and even potty trained to go on a schedule

Faith and her father own a hobby farm and five-acre ranch, where the pair bred and raise miniature cattle as pets

Faith and her father own a hobby farm and five-acre ranch, where the pair bred and raise miniature cattle as pets.

'Anyone who owns a pet of any kind knows that theres a special bond formed between you and your pet,' she said.

'This feeling is amplified greatly when youre raising an animal on a bottle.'

'When he sees me, he moos to get my attention and keeps doing this until I come to see him,' she went on.

Ferdinand is the offspring of one of Faiths other cows, Dutch  and though Faith loves having Ferdinand as a pet, there have been a few challenges along the way.

'I lost some sleep waking up during the night to give him his bottles, but I wouldnt call that a challenge. His sweet face and seeing how happy he was, made it more than worth it,' Faith said.

'Although, we were not prepared [for this] as we assumed his mother would care for him.

'When he sees me, he moos to get my attention and keeps doing this until I come to see him,' she said

' Anyone who owns a pet of any kind knows that theres a special bond formed between you and your pet,' she said

'Ferdinand stayed on a pretty consistent potty schedule and always went shortly after he finished his bottle,' she said

'I lost some sleep waking up during the night to give him his bottles, but I wouldnt call that a challenge. His sweet face and seeing how happy he was, made it more than worth it,' Faith said

'After a difficult delivery, this wasnt the case as she wanted nothing to do with him and we had to bottle feed him so he would survive.

'He was like a perfect baby  after the first week or so, he slept through the night.'

They also got him potty trained to go on schedule.

'Ferdinand stayed on a pretty consistent potty schedule and always went shortly after he finished his bottle,' she said. 'This allowed us time to get him outside, like potty training a dog.'

Faith also owns six miniature zebu cattle, four miniature horses, two pigs, and three Nigerian dwarf goats. Also living on the farm are eight rabbits, 12 chickens, three dogs, and lots of barn cats.

Despite the wide range of animals, they all get along very well.

Some people even called it the funny farm because of the strange connections and friendships their animals have.

'Ferdinand's best friends are his sister, Magnolia, who was born just three months after him, and Sunny and Stormy the goats,' Faith said.

Ferdinand has recently become a big star on social media with over 10,500 followers on TikTok

Many of Faith's TikTok fans believe that Faith lives in the city and spontaneously adopted a calf without knowing what she was doing.

However, she did extensive research before taking in Ferdinand and encourages others to do the same

'Ferdinand's best friends are his sister, Magnolia, who was born just three months after him, and Sunny and Stormy the goats,' Faith said

A recent TikTok clip of Ferdinand has been viewed 10.3 million times and has 2.3 million likes

'While Magnolia was living in the house, Ferdinand was four months old and he snuck back in fairly often for play dates and to read our favorite book, Ferdinand the Bull.

'Its not unusual to see a goat acting like a dog or a cow cuddling with a pig.'

Ferdinand has recently become a big star on social media with over 10,500 followers on TikTok.

In a recent clip, which has been viewed 10.3 million times and has 2.3 million likes, Faith gives insight into the cow's story.

The adorable Ferdinand can be seen preparing to take on the day while posing in a blue and white jumper.

Over the video, a text reads: 'When you were born on a farm and your mom didnt want you so a girl in her 20s took you home and now youre a house cow who wears sweaters, takes baths and sleeps with a heated blanket.'

Ferdinand is the offspring of one of Faiths other cows, Dutch

Ferdinand is pictured when he was just a calf, getting a bath

'Before getting one, you need to make plans and prepare to care for them for their entire life,' Faith has advised other people who want a cow

Ferdinand has lots of different outfits, and Faith shares photos on social media

'Hes living that cowdashian dream,' one viewer commented

The cow appears to stand just below the door handle and its clear that Ferdinand is no larger than the average dog.

'Hes living that cowdashian dream,' one viewer commented.

Another person added: 'Cows are honestly the most kind hearted, loving animals out there.'

'My ex is a house cow,' someone else wrote.

One person said: 'As he should material boy.'

'Just wait it will get too pig to fit through your door,' another viewer commented.

Many of Faith's TikTok fans believe that Faith lives in the city and spontaneously adopted a calf without knowing what she was doing.

However, she did extensive research before taking in Ferdinand and encourages others to do the same.

Though Ferdinand used to live in the house, he is now outside with the other animals

'Ferdinand only lived in the house for the first month of his life and after that, he went out to the barn/pasture in my backyard,' Faith said

Social media users have fallen in love with Ferdinand, the unexpected pet

The cow also appears to enjoy cuddling in blankets and towels

'The love, support and interest shown has truly meant the world to me,' Faith said of their TikTok fame

'Before getting one, you need to make plans and prepare to care for them for their entire life,' she said.

'Keep in mind that they dont stay small forever and soon, they will be a full grown adult. Even the miniature cattle we raise can reach up to 600 lbs. and they are fairly expensive to care for.

'Ferdinand only lived in the house for the first month of his life and after that, he went out to the barn/pasture in my backyard,' she went on.

'I encourage people to practice good ethics and not take calves away from their mothers  he was only raised by me because of the circumstances.

'The love, support and interest shown has truly meant the world to me,' she said of their TikTok fame. 'I cant explain how happy it makes me that so many people from all around the world love Ferdinand and see how special he is.'
Drinking just a glass of wine or pint of beer each night in middle-age may age your brain by two years, a study claims.

Researchers analysed MRI scans of 36,000 adults to calculate their brain size, and then compared the alcohol intake of the volunteers.

Their results suggested a 50-year-old who drank one unit a day  the equivalent of half a lower-strength lager beer  would have a brain six months older than if they kept off the booze.

University of Pennsylvania researchers found the link grew even stronger the more people drank.

Middle-aged adults who consumed two units a day  one medium-sized glass of red or white wine  had a brain two-and-a-half years older, the data implied.

Increasing the number of units to four per day resulted in an extra ten years of aging compared to abstinence.

Professor Remi Daviet, one of the researchers, said: 'Cutting back on that final drink of the night might have a big effect in terms of brain aging.'

The findings mark another twist in the evolving field about the risks of alcohol, and question claims that low-level drinking can have benefits.

University of Pennsylvania researchers have found drinking just three pints a week can cause your brain to age by an extra half a year

A glass of wine with dinner - rather than on its own - cuts risk of type 2 diabetes, study finds You shouldn't feel guilty for having a glass of wine every night  so long as you drink it with dinner, like the French. A study has found enjoying a glass with your meal, rather than on its own, could cut your risk of type 2 diabetes. The researchers discovered that people who drank wine with their meals were 14 per cent less likely to develop the condition, compared to those who drank wine without food. However, those who drank beer or spirits with their meals appeared to be at higher risk of the metabolic disease. Lead author Dr Hao Ma of Tulane University, New Orleans, said: 'Drinking moderate amounts of wine with meals may prevent type 2 diabetes if you do not have another health condition that may be negatively affected by moderate alcohol consumption and in consultation with your doctor.' Previous studies have identified a compound present in the skin of grapes, known as polyphenols, as being able to lower blood sugar levels. Wine, especially red, is also rich in healthy plant chemicals such as resveratrol that acts as an antioxidant. Advertisement

The study, published in Nature Communications, tracked people's drinking habits using data from the UK biobank.

Lead author Professor Gideon Nave, a neuroscientist, said: 'Having this dataset is like having a microscope or a telescope with a more powerful lens.

'You get a better resolution and start seeing patterns and associations you couldn't before.

'The fact we have such a large sample size allows us to find subtle patterns  even between drinking the equivalent of half a beer and one beer a day.'

They checked MRI scan records of patients aged between 40 and 69 to see how much white and grey matter they had in the brain. One scan was used for each individual.

Grey matter is the main part of the brain that processes information, whereas white matter acts as the lines of communication.

Participants answered a survey that asked them about how much they drank, from nothing to four units a day.

The team controlled for other factors that may have skewed the results, including age, height, sex, smoking status, income, genetic ancestry and where people lived.

They used statistical models to calculate how increasing drinking would affect the brain age of a 50-year-old.

Going from one unit a day to two saw their brains age a further two years.

And increasing from two units to three units a day saw brains age another three-and-a-half years on top of that.

Professor Daviet said: 'There is some evidence that the effect of drinking on the brain is exponential.

'One additional drink in a day could have more of an impact than any of the previous drinks that day.'

The research could have ramifications for national drinking guidelines, the researchers said.

Professor Henry Krazler, a psychiatrist and one of the authors, added: 'These findings contrast with scientific and [US] governmental guidelines on safe drinking limits.

The NHS recommends that adults drink no more than 14 units each week  that's 14 single shots of spirit or six pints of beer or a bottle and a half of wine

'For example, although the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism recommends that women consume an average of no more than one drink per day, recommended limits for men are twice that.

'[This is] an amount that exceeds the consumption level associated in the study with decreased brain volume.'

The NHS recommends that adults drink no more than 14 units each week  that's 14 single shots of spirit or six pints of beer or a bottle and a half of wine.

Despite showing an increased risk to brain ageing from drinking more, the team did not look into how binge drinking affected cognitive decline compared to daily consumption.

Professor Nave said: 'This study looked at average consumption, but we're curious whether drinking one beer a day is better than drinking none during the week and then seven on the weekend.

'There's some evidence that binge drinking is worse for the brain, but we haven't looked closely at that yet.'

Previous research had shown an association between drinking more and lower brain volume, but experts have yet to discover why exactly this takes place.
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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) only recommends ten percent of Americans to wear masks in indoor, public, settings because they live in an area of 'high' Covid risk, a drastic fall from last week when nearly all Americans were recommended to wear masks before the agency updated guidelines.

The updated recommendations, which now value hospitalization rate and capacity instead of only daily cases, come as Covid cases continue to plummet in the U.S. and Americans start looking towards life after Covid.

America is averaging 57,020 Covid cases every day, a 25 percent drop over the past week and a drop of more than 90 percent since the Omicron surge peaked at 800,000 cases per day in mid-January.

Many states and localities were already dropping masks even before the CDC revised guideline last week. Hawaii is the only state in America that has not either lifted its mask mandate, or set a date in the coming weeks to do so. City level officials in New York, San Francisco and Chicago have lifted or relaxed mask orders as well amid falling cases.

Under initial guidelines revealed last week, 30 percent of Americans were living in an area where residents were recommended to wear masks indoors. In only one week, that figure has slashed by a third, per the CDC.

 Slide me  Last week, the CDC revised its COVID-19 risk assessment metrics, and dropped the number of Americans living in areas of 'high' risk from 95% to 30% (left). People in these areas are recommended to wear a mask in indoor public places. Updated figures revealed Thursday drop the number of Americans living in 'high' risk areas down to only ten percent, mainly concentrated in West Virginia and Kentucky (right)

Counties still under mask recommendations from the CDC are largely clustered in West Virginia and Kentucky, two states that among the nationwide leaders in Covid hospitalization rate. West Virginia leads the nation in hospitalization rate, with 35 of every 100,000 residents hospitalized with the virus every day. Kentucky has the third highest hospitalization rate, at 23 per every 100,000 residents daily.

Neither state has a mask mandate, though, and CDC guidance is not binding. This means that it will be up to individuals living in these counties to decide for themselves if they want to abide by the agency's recommendations.

Americans are largely looking forward to putting the pandemic behind them, though. The CDC guidelines were revised after weeks of pressure from state level officials and every day Americans who are ready to return to normal life.

An AP-NORC survey conducted last month found that only 24 percent of Americans are still very concerned about themselves or someone in their family catching the virus.

This week was finally when the federal government budged, after dragging its feet for weeks on rolling back pandemic related mandates.

At the State of the Union address on Tuesday, President Joe Biden announced new plans for the U.S. to move forward and control the pandemic without the need for lockdowns or other potentially-destructive mandates.

Biden announced that the country had increased its purchase order of Pfizer's Paxlovid from 10 million to 20 million courses.

The drug, which received authorization from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) late last year, has been deemed as the most effective treatment post-infection but the company has reportedly had issues with production.

'If you get COVID-19, the Pfizer pill reduces your chances of ending up in the hospital by 90 percent,' Biden said.

'I've ordered more pills than anyone in the world has. Pfizer is working overtime to get us a million pills this month and more than double that next month.'

With production issues somewhat quelled, and the U.S. soon to have more access to the drug, Biden announced a 'Test to Treat' program.

Under the new system, any Americans can receive a Covid test at a pharmacy, and if they test positive they will be offered courses of Paxlovid for free.

Only pharmacy clinics will be allowed to distribute the drug, though, as the White House clarified Wednesday afternoon that a prescription would still be required. Pharmacists are not authorized to prescribe the drug.

The White House also announced Wednesday morning that it would create a 'one stop' website where Americans could find information about the pandemic, along with putting more resources into the vaccine rollout, and increasing the nation's Covid test manufacturing capacity.

Plans going forward also include ramping up domestic production of tests, antivirals and masks, expanding access to public health resources and information, helping Americans manage 'long Covid' symptoms and launching the 'Test to Treat' program, which should expand access to Covid therapeutics.

It also gives funding to schools and daycare centers to improve their ability to prevent transmission, supplying them with Covid tests and resources needed to improve ventilation.

These changes to federal Covid policy, combined with declining cases and growing vaccine protection - nearly 90 percent of U.S. adults have received at least one shot of a vaccine - have experts hopeful this spring and summer will be 'normal' for a majority of Americans.

Dr Scott Gottlieb, former director of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) told CNBC's Squawk Box on Thursday that he does not expect the U.S. to experience another Covid surge in the coming months, and if another does occur it will happen as early as fall or winter of this year.

'We're gonna have a pretty normal spring and summer,' he said, while also praising efforts by the White House to keep schools open by investing in tests and better ventilation.

The number of Americans hospitalized and dying from Covid is dropping as well, another sign the country may soon be able to make a full return to normal.

The U.S. is recording 1,639 Covid deaths every day, a six percent drop over the past week. Hospitalizations with Covid have fallen 44 percent over the last 14 days.
A three-month-old girl was left hours from death after bungling doctors missed her brain tumour and dismissed her seizures and swollen head as 'normal'.

Molly Mai Wardle-Hampton was born on November 7 in Rhyl, North Wales, healthy and weighing 7lbs. But she began suffering seizures from three-weeks-old.

Her worried mother, Corinne Wardle, 37, took her daughter to a series of medical appointments over the following weeks but claims she was told Molly Mai's issues were 'normal baby stuff'.

Ms Wardle rushed Molly Mai to A&E last month due to her worsening symptoms and was immediately referred to Alder Hey Children's Hospital, where doctors discovered a tumour in her brain.

Doctors said that a build-up of fluid was putting pressure on Molly Mai's brain and eyes and she would die within 24 hours if they did not operate on her immediately, Ms Wardle claimed.

Molly Mai underwent a gruelling three-hour operation to remove the tumour, which had spread to three-quarters of her brain.

Doctors have since confirmed her tumour is ependymoma  a rare cancer affecting the brain and spine. Less than 50 children in the UK and around 200 in the US develop the condition every year.

Molly Mai has since returned home but is receiving chemotherapy twice a week for the next year in a bid to kill off the remaining tumour and stop it spreading.

Molly Mai Wardle-Hampton (pictured) was born on November 7, healthy and weighing 7lbs, but began suffering from seizures from three-weeks-old

Her worried mother, Corinne Wardle, 37, (pictured) took daughter to two GP appointments over the following weeks but Molly Mai's symptoms were dismissed by doctors as 'normal baby stuff'

Ms Wardle said Molly Mai had three seizures around the time she was three-weeks-old, each of which lasted around a minute long.

She took Molly Mai to a GP appointment and was referred to a paediatrician in Wrexham.

Before that appointment took place, Molly Mai was seen by a GP for a regular six-week check up. Despite Molly Mai's head measurements being larger than normal, Ms Wardle said the GP was not concerned.

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But over the following weeks, Ms Wardle noticed Molly Mai could only look to her right, had a large head, was vomiting and unsettled.

At the subsequent paediatrician appointment, Ms Wardle said the doctor dismissed Molly Mai's seizures and swollen head as 'normal baby stuff'.

Just before Christmas, Molly Mai was rushed to the Countess of Chester Hospital A&E, where Ms Wardle works, with a viral infection.

Ms Wardle said: 'I explained everything about Molly Mai's seizures and swollen head but doctors tend to deal with what is in front of them and treated the viral infection and nothing more.'

Over the following weeks, Molly Mai's symptoms continued to worsen.

Her eyes were going in opposite directions and her head size 'had now gone off the chart', her mother said.

On February 1, Ms Wardle rushed Molly Mai to the A&E department at the Countess of Chester Hospital for a second time.

Medics there conducted a CT scan and spotted a large tumour, which was pushing on her eye nerves.

Molly Mai was then rushed in an ambulance to Alder Hey Children's Hospital for further scans.

The following day, doctors conducted a three-hour operation to remove the tumour.

Ms Wardle said: 'The surgeon at Alder Hey was very clear that she wouldn't have survived 24 hours without surgery, it was that close.

'I think in that moment I just went numb, I don't think I've processed it properly yet, we're still in shock.

'You just never expect that it's going to happen to you.'

Symptoms of ependymoma, which has a five-year survival rate of around 60 per cent, include vomiting, seizures and an increased head circumference.

Molly Mai has since returned home but is undergoing twice-weekly rounds of chemotherapy in a bid to kill off the remaining tumour and stop it spreading.

Ms Wardle said: 'We were quite lucky she is a baby because the skull is not fused, so the skull could expand with the fluid.

'If she had been an adult, she would have ended up with severe brain damage or it probably would have killed her.

'The tumour covered three different parts of the brain. It covered a hefty part of the right hemisphere.

'My partner keeps saying to me now, "if you hadn't kept pushing, she'd be dead by now", which is so scary.'

Ms Wardle rushed Molly Mai to A&E last month due to her swollen head and was immediately referred to Alder Hey Children's Hospital, where doctors discovered a tumour in the three-month-old's brain

Doctors told Ms Wardle that fluid was putting pressure on Molly Mai's brain and eyes and she would die within 24 hours if they did not operate on her immediately

The mother-of-three said: 'It was very frustrating because I knew something wasn't right but I kept being told by the doctors that it was normal baby stuff. It was missed by many of them.'

'She's only 14 weeks now and we've got a whole year of chemotherapy to come.

'She's obviously going to get really poorly and because she's a baby and I can't explain why this is happening.

'The likelihood is she is going to end up with ulcers, she's going to end up in a lot of pain and lethargic.

'She can't tell me that her tummy hurts, or that her skins itchy and feeling horrible. She's going to be in absolute agony.'

A fundraising page set up to support the family has raised more than 1,600.
Pfizer and Moderna, manufacturers of the two most popular used vaccines in the United States and much of the rest of the world, are expecting to bring in $51 billion in vaccine sales this year, according to earnings statements published by the companies.

Pfizer expects to lead the way, with $32 billion in expected sales, with Moderna projecting $19 billion in revenue from its Covid shots.

Almost all of these sales are coming from the developed world, with major nations like the U.S., the UK, Germany and others having surplus of vaccines while many developing countries struggling to get their hands on the shots.

The wide disparity between the developing and developed world has been noted by organizations like the World Health Organization (WHO) and the People's Vaccine Alliance (PVA) who are continuing calls for the companies to make their shots more widely available in the developing world.

Pfizer and Moderna project a combine $51 billion in revenue from their Covid vaccines this year

Large vaccine manufacturers have been criticized by the global health community for prioritizing profits over health. The companies have delivered less than 2% of vaccines to developing countries while also refusing to lift IP waivers to allow these countries to make their own versions of the shot

The Pfizer and Moderna shots have been administered a total of over 500 million times in the U.S. since the first became available in late 2020

Pfizer's shot has been administered 326 million times to fully vaccinate 123 million Americans and boost 52 million others, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The CDC also reports that Moderna's shot has been administered 208 million times to fully vaccinate 41 million people.

Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel (pictured) predicts that Covid booster shots will be necessary once again this fall, likely another financial windfall for the pharma giant

Both companies have big plans for 2022, with more vaccine products on the way and foresee a financial windfall ahead with some experts saying annual booster shots may be needed for upwards of a decade to control Covid long-term.

Moderna and Pfizer, which partners with the German company BioNTech for the development and manufacturing of Covid vaccines and splits profits with, both have a Omicron-specific vaccine expected to become available in the coming weeks.

Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel said in February that his company believes another Covid booster shot will also be needed come fall, which should only add to the company's revenue projections going forward.

'We believe there's a high probability that we're moving into an endemic setting,' Bancel told CNBC's Squawk Box in February.

'We should still be cautious because as we've seen with Delta, which came after alpha and was more virulent, [it] is always possible to get the more virulent variant of course.'

An endemic would mean humans can live alongside the virus with not disruptions to regular life. Like the flu, it will also require annual booster shots, which would likely be produced by Pfizer and Moderna.

Albert Bourla, CEO of Pfizer, has said he believes regular, annual, boosters will be necessary for at least the next ten years.

While the pharmaceutical company's vaccine rollouts have certainly been profitable, and the effectiveness of the vaccines has likely saved millions of lives worldwide, the way they have conducted business during the pandemic has not gone without critics.

The WHO has called for greater vaccine equity across the world, as many developing nations, and specifically those in Africa, have had trouble getting the vaccine to their population.

While in countries like America, the vaccine is widely available to everyone who wants it - and millions of doses are even trashed due to lack of demand - in Africa only 19 percent of residents have received at least one shot of a COVID-19 vaccine and 12 percent are fully vaccinated.

Some African nations still have vaccination rates below five percent.

Bourla has said that this is not because of lack of access to vaccines, but instead because of vaccine hesitancy existing in these nations.

Alex Maitland, a senior advisor for Oxfam, a UK-based anti-poverty non-profit and member of the PVA - a global alliance of organizations dedicated to fighting what they describe as a 'vaccine apartheid', told DailyMail.com that these claims are bunk.

Despite claims from Bourla, and even President Biden, Africans generally have higher levels of vaccine acceptance than the United States, with anywhere from 67 percent to 89 percent of people in each country wanting the jab.

Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla (right) and President Joe Biden (left) have both previous stated that vaccine uptake remains limited in Africa because of vaccine hesitancy in the countries. Studies have found that vaccine demand is just as high in African countries as it is in the U.S.

The main issue cited by Maitland is the lack of access to the shots. He notes that only one percent of Pfizer's overall vaccine deliveries, and 1.4 percent of Moderna's have gone to the developing world.

Instead, the companies have prioritized selling jabs for booster shots over-and-over to the developed world, where profit margins are much larger.

Meanwhile, companies like AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson are licensing their shots to be produced in the developed world.

Other companies who are producing this vaccine aren't showing this [profit] desire,' Maitland said.

He also notes that Moderna took $2.5 billion in funding from the U.S. government for research and development costs, so it should have more of a duty to pay humanity back.

The PVA is calling for patent waivers to be lifted, allowing developing nations to manufacture generic versions of the shot.

These types of measures are supported by a majority of countries in the world, though key leaders like the U.S. and UK are keeping the waivers in place.

Theres been very strong lobbying efforts,' Maitland said, citing pressure from the companies themselves on governments for their refusal to budge on vaccine patents.

He said that these larger, richer, countries also financially benefit from these vaccine sales as well.

BioNTech, for example, was responsible for 0.5 percent of Germany's economic growth in 2021, a marker Maitland calls 'unprecedented'.

This is great for the German economy, and the continued protection will boost the U.S. - where Pfizer and Moderna are based - and Germany at the expense of others.

The main downside of a lack of vaccine equity has been solved by the developed world as well.

Not providing vaccines to the developing world allows for the virus to continue spreading unrestricted.

Every time Covid finds a new host, it rapidly replicates. Every time it replicates, it has a chance of mutating.

While a majority of mutations have little to no impact, sometimes the mutations combine to create a new variant, with new traits.

Rampant spread of the virus poses a threat to people everywhere, as a variant that forms in one country can quickly spread across the world.

The last two strains to overtake America where Delta and Omicron. The former originated in India when the nation was struck by a massive surge in spring 2021. The latter was first discovered in South Africa, but its true origins are unknown.

Both caused massive Covid surges in America despite a relatively high vaccination rate, though, and Omicron even proved to be able to evade vaccine protection.

Maitland said that developed nations just 'skip the line', though, rolling out booster shots to prevent the variants once they arrive rather than providing vaccines to the developing world to prevent these new variants all together.

As long as these richer nations can pay more money, they will have the ability to get booster shots even before poorer nations can get enough doses to get their population the original vaccine sequence.

This leaves many poorer nations in a situation where they are stuck, with little access to the shots as long as the developing world does not help them.

The U.S. has pledged to donate upwards of 1.1 billion COVID-19 vaccine doses to developing nations, but advocacy groups like Doctors Without Borders have said that these types of donations are not enough, and that developing nations need to be allowed to develop their own versions of the shots.

'The U.S. must help dramatically scale up mRNA vaccine production globallylike through the World Health Organizations COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine Technology Transfer Hub in South Africaby demanding that pharmaceutical corporations share the technology and know-how for mRNA vaccines so that many more manufacturers globally can produce these lifesaving vaccines,' Dr Carrie Teicher, director of programs for Doctors Without Borders, said in a statement.
Oil soared towards $120 a barrel yesterday and the rouble crashed to an all-time low as war in Ukraine continued to send shockwaves through financial markets.

As Russia stepped up the assault on its neighbour, Brent crude rose to $119.84, a level last seen in 2012, before falling back.

At the same time, the rouble crashed to an all-time low as the Russian economy plunged deeper into crisis.

Oil rose to $119.84 a barrel, a level last seen in 2012, before falling back. Russia normally ships more than seven million barrels per day (Pictured: A Russian oil platform in the Caspian Sea)

Stock markets around the world tumbled with the FTSE 100 down 2.6 per cent, or 190.71 points, to 7238.85.

Russia competes with Saudi Arabia for the title of biggest crude and refined oil products exporter and ships more than seven million barrels per day (bpd), with about half going to Europe.

Although sanc-tions have steered clear of energy, companies are starting to self-sanction and avoid Russian oil. At least ten tankers failed to find buyers on Wednesday.

We expect that Russian oil exports will plunge by one million bpd from the indirect impact of sanctions and voluntary actions by companies, said Rystad Energy chief executive Jarand Rystad. He said oil prices could go beyond $130 per barrel.

The rally to close to $120 took gains for the year so far to more than 50 per cent and raised fears of further price rises on British forecourts.

Petrol hit a record high of 151.25p a litre last Sunday, while diesel hit 154.75p at the end of February.

RAC fuel spokesman Simon Williams said: The RAC is now calling on the Treasury to look at an emergency, temporary cut in the VAT rate levied on fuel.

Oil fell back in later trading amid hopes of a breakthrough in talks to revive an Iran nuclear deal which could see Iranian barrels back on the market.

But RBC Capital analyst Helima Croft warned: The sums entailed would simply be too small to backfill a major Russian disruption.

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, Russia and its allies, known as OPEC+, stuck to a plan for a gradual output rise of 400,000 bpd a month, snubbing consumer calls for more.
The London Stock Exchange has frozen trading in another 27 Russian companies as British directors face mounting pressure to quit the boards of firms linked to Moscow.

LSE bosses banned investors from buying or selling shares in a host of Russian entities including energy giants Gazprom, Rosneft and En+, retailers Fix Price Group and Lenta International, and the countrys biggest lender Sberbank. It took the total suspensions to 28.

And the LSEs FTSE Russell arm  which runs indexes such as the FTSE 100 and FTSE 250  said it will exclude Russian businesses whose shares are still trading in London from Monday.

Crackdown: LSE bosses banned investors from buying or selling shares in a host of Russian entities including Gazprom, Rosneft, En+, Fix Price Group, Lenta International and Sberbank

This will deny stocks such as Roman Abramovich-backed steelmaker Evraz the air of respectability that membership of a leading index affords  and mean funds that track an index will not have to hold their shares.

But the measures fell short of calls from MPs and business leaders to kick Russian companies off the stock exchange entirely.

It came as the Institute of Directors urged British business leaders to stand down from the boards of Russian companies.

IoD director general Jonathan Geldart said: We believe that it is no longer tenable for British directors to be involved in governance roles in the Russian economy.

The 27 companies targeted by the LSE have primary listings on the stock market in Moscow, which has been closed all week as the Russian economy and financial system teeters on the brink of collapse.

But they have secondary listings in London and these shares have tumbled in recent days  some by as much as 99 per cent.

The invasion of Ukraine has shone a light on the lucrative connections the British establishment has cultivated with Russia. Lord Barker is executive chairman at En+, whose owners include the oligarch Oleg Deripaska.

Barker, 55, was a businessman before he became a Conservative MP in 2001  developing close relationships with a number of Russian oil companies.

Lord Barker: EN+ Former energy minister Lord Barker has worked for Russian aluminium giant En+ since 2017 and became executive chairman in 2019. He made 3million last year. Now a peer, he was a Tory MP from 2001 to 2015.

Xavier Rolet: Phosagro Frenchman Xavier Rolet was boss of the LSE from 2009 to 2017, when he was ousted in a boardroom row. He holds a slew of directorships and earned 325,344 in 2020 as chairman of Russias PhosAgro.

He served as energy minister in David Camerons government and is now a Conservative peer.

But in recent days he has come under fire from Defence Secretary Ben Wallace for his role at En+, which he has held since 2017 and earned him 3million last year alone.

Prince Charless former principle private secretary Sir Michael Peat has also been urged to ditch his job on the board of Evraz.

The 72-year-old has earned 1.9million since he took the role in 2011.

Sir Michael Peat: Evraz Prince Charless former adviser Sir Michael Peat has made 1.9million since becoming a director at steel giant Evraz in 2011. He was formerly the Queens Treasurer and is credited with slashing Palace spending.

And the freezing of shares in PhosAgro, a Russian fertiliser company, will come as a humiliation to its chairman Xavier Rolet  who was the boss of the LSE before being ousted in 2017.

The LSE Groups boss David Schwimmer said he suspended the Russian firms either due to sanctions or because a flood of investors had created a disorderly market by rushing to sell out. Around eight more Russian companies are under scrutiny, he added.

Schwimmer said: This is a very complex and very fast-moving situation. We have had an unprecedented level of sanctions launched by governments around the world.

We are working with regulators and various authorities in terms of making sure we are implementing the sanctions across the different parts of our business.

The LSE had already suspended trading in VTB Bank, Russias second-largest lender, earlier this week. It also barred VTB  which is 61 per cent owned by Vladimir Putins government  from its clearing house yesterday, meaning the lender will effectively be unable to do business in the West.

But the LSE has been urged to go further and ban Russian stocks from the exchange altogether.

Chris Bryant, an MP on the Commons foreign affairs committee, said anything directly, indirectly, tangentially or slightly connected with the Russian state regime should be rooted out of British life.

Schwimmer declined to comment on whether companies would be booted off the stock exchange entirely.
UK stocks have suffered heavy losses today as the Ukraine war intensifies, with the FTSE 100 recording its biggest weekly decline in over a year.

The UK blue chip index has closed down 3.5 per cent, or 251.7 points, to 6,987.1, while the FTSE 250 has also tumbled 3.5 per cent, or 692 points, to 19,387.68.

A City veteran has stepped down from the board of Roman Abramovich-backed Russian steelmaker Evraz, which has been at the centre of the fallout on the London market since the Ukraine invasion.

James Rutherford, who was previously senior vice president with Capital Group, told the board on Thursday he would be stepping down with immediate effect but no reason for his departure was given.

British mutual Royal London saw operating profits surge to 133million in 2021, up from 41million the year before, as new inflows into its funds business jumped from 3.9billion to 5.3billion.

The firm attributed 9.4billion of new business sales to strong growth in its workplace pensions business, which recovered to near pre-pandemic levels.

European natural gas prices have soared above 200, while UK prices have also hit a new record high of 508p a therm. Oil has fallen back slightly from $120 a barrel yesterday to around $115.

>If you are using our app or a third-party site click here to read Business Live
Royal London's annual profits rebounded strongly in 2021 as the economic recovery and a flourishing employment market heightened sales of its pension products.

Following a significant drop in trade in 2020, the mutual's pre-tax operating earnings more than trebled to 133million last year thanks to the value of new business jumping by 1billion to 9.4billion.

Most of this growth was driven by sales of its workplace pensions rising by 30 per cent to 3.2billion, which the group said was not just a feature of newly employed people joining its schemes, but firms reviewing their choice of pension provider.

Recovery: The mutual insurer's pre-tax operating earnings more than trebled to 133million last year thanks to the value of new business jumping by 1billion to 9.4billion

Revenues were further boosted by a modest increase in purchases of protection products across the UK and Republic of Ireland, with the latter market receiving an additional uplift from demand for term assurance.

But the volume of new business sales remained below pre-pandemic levels as a result of the trade in individual pensions being held back by a weak recovery in the smaller and mid-sized adviser market.

However, the total volume of its assets under management jumped by 16billion to a record 164billion due to the popularity of its sustainable funds and weaker levels of institutional outflows.

Royal London policyholders will earn a 168million share of the insurer's profits, which marks a 23million rise on the previous year and takes the amount the firm has handed out to its customers to 1.2billion since 2007.

Chief executive Barry O'Dwyer said: '2021 was a good year for Royal London. Sales and profits are both up on last year. We have maintained very strong flows into our asset management business, helping assets to hit record levels.

'Our Governed Range remains a hugely popular choice amongst independent financial advisers, and this range alone accounts for over 50billion of our customers' investments.

Sale: Royal London boss Barry O'Dwyer (pictured) told Reuters that the firm would try and sell its assets in Russia as quickly as possible following the invasion of Ukraine last week

'The action we have taken to reduce the carbon intensity of the equity investments in this range shows that a well-run portfolio can generate excellent returns in a responsible way.'

O'Dwyer additionally told Reuters that Royal London, which is Britain's largest mutual insurer, would try and sell its assets in Russia as quickly as possible following the large-scale invasion of Ukraine last week by Russian military forces.

Less than 0.1 per cent of the company's investment portfolio is held in Russian or Ukrainian businesses, and it does not have any active investments in Russia, according to O'Dwyer.

The publication of Royal London's results comes about a month after merger talks with fellow mutual insurer LV, formerly known as Liverpool Victoria, collapsed.

Royal London had began discussions over a possible tie-up following an unsolicited offer in December and the failure of a 530million takeover bid for LV by the American investment group Bain Capital.

Many Members of Parliament from across the political spectrum voiced hefty criticism of the proposed Bain deal, because it would lead to LV policyholders receiving a small payout and losing ownership of the business.
Russian troops should withdraw from Ukraine immediately



The United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution Wednesday, strongly condemning Russia for its invasion of Ukraine and demanding Russian troops withdraw immediately. The resolution also criticized Russian President Vladimir Putin for having put his nuclear forces on alert.



It received approval from 141 U.N. member nations, while five states including North Korea and Syria voted against it. China, India and 33 other nations abstained. Russia deserves the U.N. condemnation for its brutal attacks on Ukraine in violation of the U.N. Charter prohibiting acts of aggression. All U.N. member nations should abide by the U.N. Charter and join moves against any violation as responsible members of the international community.



"The world is rejecting Russia's lies. Russia is responsible for the devastating abuses of human rights and the international humanitarian crisis that we are watching in Ukraine in real time," U.S. President Joe Biden said in a statement. We hope the recent U.N. move will help expedite efforts toward more international alliances and assistance to Ukraine.



The International Criminal Court, for its part, should embark on a full-fledged investigation into the possible atrocities committed by Russian troops against Ukrainian people to prevent more harm to civilians. In this vein, it is encouraging that the ICC chief prosecutor unveiled plans to proceed immediately with active probes into possible war crimes. "Our work in the collection of evidence has now commenced," Karim Khan wrote in a statement.



In the face of growing international pressure, Russia has expressed its intention to discuss a ceasefire during an envisioned second round of negotiations with Ukraine. Yet what Russia needs to do right now is stop its bombing, to prove its sincerity toward stopping war. Russia already took global flak for its missile attacks in Ukrainian civilian residential areas.



Russia has continued its offensives, infiltrating the airspaces of Sweden and Japan with fighter jets and helicopters. Worse still, Russia has been threatening the world with nuclear blackmail. "If a third world war were to occur, it would involve nuclear weapons and be destructive," Russia's RIA news media quoted Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov as saying. Russia needs to pay particular heed to the growing international pressures that are isolating it further from global society.



An increasing number of private enterprises, international institutes from various sectors such as sports, culture and arts as well as governments are combining efforts to expel or sever ties with Russia. All these and others well prove that Putin made the wrong decision in attacking Ukraine, and Ukraine is stronger than Putin thought. First and foremost, international society is overwhelmingly backing Ukraine and its people.



Russia should realize that it cannot win its current war against Ukraine, and will see more harm to its troops and people as well if the war protracts. The Russian people are generally opposed to the war, which means Putin has already lost. As the U.N. put it, Russian troops should withdraw from Ukraine immediately.


A western Sydney hairdresser whose 'fairytale' relationship came crashing down when her new boyfriend was shot dead while sleeping beside her

fled the country because she was so scared for her safety.

Fatima Hage was cautiously optimistic that she'd met 'the one' when she struck up a romance with Kemel Barakat, months after meeting him at a music festival in January 2016.

Her hopes were crushed when Barakat, an underworld figure with ties to known criminals and bikies, was shot dead as he slept beside her in March 2017.

His friend Ahmed Jaghbir was found guilty of procuring, aiding and counselling unknown persons to murder him ,and sentenced to 11 years in jail.

Now, Ms Hage has broken her silence to deny she was ever Barakat's mistress, revealing she suffers post traumatic stress disorder and still fears for her safety.

Fatima Hage was cautiously optimistic that she'd met 'the one' when she struck up a romance with Kemel Barakat, months after meeting him at a music festival in January 2016

Her hopes were crushed when Barakat, an underworld figure with ties to known criminals and bikies, was shot dead as he slept beside her in March 2017

'I always wonder why they let me go,' she told Daily Mail Australia. 'I want to know why they let me live.'

Ms Hage recalls Barakat waking up and instantly 'palming' her away to the other side of his custom made double-king bed as he was shot at. With her face buried in the blankets, she was certain the assailants would take aim at her next.

It was only by chance that Ms Hage had even spent the night at her new lover's Mortlake apartment in Sydney's inner west.

They'd been secretly dating for just a few months and a then-24-year-old Ms Hage was living with her traditional, 'strict' parents who did not like her staying out all night.

'Normally I'd just stay until late but still go home. But that night I was really sick, so I went to his bed and fell asleep,' Ms Hage said.

'I knew I'd have to wake up and go home at some point because my mum would stress out... Next thing he was gone, dead in my arms.'

A hairdresser from Sydney's west, Ms Hage insists she was so far removed from the life of crime she now knows Barakat and his acquaintances led

Kemel 'Blackie' Barakat is pictured with his estranged wife - who was overseas holidaying in Thailand at the time of his shooting in March 2017

Ms Hage claims she had no idea why her boyfriend was targeted. He'd never expressed any concerns to her about his safety and appeared well liked.

A hairdresser from Sydney's west, Ms Hage insists she was so far removed from the life of crime she now knows Barakat and his acquaintances led.

'It was a completely different world,' she said. 'I was exposed to a lot more once we'd got together.'

Looking back, Ms Hage concedes she never really gave much thought to what Barakat did for work.

'I never asked,' she said.

'We were still in our honeymoon period... He was my Prince Charming. I didn't see any bad in him, just the fun, the laugher, the generosity, the good.'

Jaghbir, right, with his lawyer Mahmoud Abbas at court during his trial. He was sentenced to 11 years in prison

On left: Sydney crime figure Kemel Barakat prior to his death at home in the city's inner west in March 2017. On right: Ahmed Jaghbir, above, is now serving 11 years in jail in relation to his death

Initial reports accused Ms Hage of being Barakat's mistress, but she insists he'd separated from his wife before they started dating.

'They weren't living together, they were very much separated,' Ms Hage claimed, noting she visited Barakat at his home most nights.

His wife, Amanda, was holidaying in Thailand at the time of his death.

Ms Hage couldn't shake the feeling that his assailants would be after her too after she was thrust into the spotlight.

The then-24-year-old fled to Dubai but felt frightened for her life even there, so returned to Sydney.

Five years on and Ms Hage said it's not getting any easier to process the violence she witnessed that night.

Jaghbir is a one-time business associate of colourful Sydney personality Salim Mehajer. There is no suggestion Mehajer is in any way involved in this case

'It actually gets harder,' she said. 'The first two to three years, you're still not really coming to terms with what happened to you. That comes after.'

In a statement tendered to the court, she detailed how the room smelled 'like fire' in the moments immediately after four gunmen began shooting.

Ms Hage said she closed her eyes and put her head down, believing she was about to be killed.

'I didn't hear anyone say anything, I thought I was dead. About a minute went by and I checked myself and I wasn't shot. I then moved over to Kemel. He was coughing and he looked at me and said ''I'm sorry''.'

Ms Hage recalls telling him not to be sorry, before they repeated an Arabic prayer twice.

She told the court Barakat had been 'anal' about security. About 10.30pm - just hours before the shooting - the unit's intercom went off and Barakat went downstairs. Ms Hage heard yelling.

When he returned she asked him 'is everything alright?' but he flatly replied: 'Yeah, don't ask questions'.

Five years on and Ms Hage said it's not getting any easier to process the violence she witnessed that night

The pair went to bed about midnight and the trouble began about 2.30am.

Aided by Ms Hage's evidence and testimony from an expert locksmith, Justice David Davies found Barakat's former friend Ahmed Jaghbir guilty of procuring, aiding and counselling unknown persons to murder him.

He was sentenced to 11 years imprisonment. The four gunmen have never been arrested or charged.

Jaghbir had been a friend of Barakat's and had fitted his new security door in place. At trial, the court heard he'd had the opportunity to duplicate a door key.

The judge found there were three possible motives for Jaghbir to participate in the plot, including retaliation for the killing of a friend of Jaghbir's that Barakat was suspected of carrying out.

Ms Hage has been in one serious relationship since Barakat's death, but claims she was the victim of domestic violence.

Now, she's struggling to see a future where she can ever move on and feel content in a relationship.

'I always think they might die at any moment... It's been five years and now I'm just trying to pick up the pieces of my life for me and my son.'
Last week, those of us in England, Scotland and Northern Ireland breathed a sigh of relief when most of the Covid-19 restrictions we've been living with for nearly two years finally came to an end.

For example, in England we can now visit loved ones in hospital and we don't have to wear masks in enclosed public spaces or self-isolate at home if we catch the virus.

But just because we don't have to do something, doesn't mean we shouldn't. Coronavirus is still with us, so it's wise to continue protecting ourselves and others against it. After all, the virus can still be deadly, and no one wants long Covid, which has had such a debilitating effect on many people's lives.

Here, as we move into the 'living with Covid' phase of the pandemic, we speak to people who are still planning to protect themselves against the virus  and think that you should, too.

'IF A CUSTOMER WANTS US TO WEAR A MASK, WE WILL'

Mark Maciver, 37, owns SliderCuts in Hackney, east London, and has cut the hair of celebrities including Anthony Joshua, Janet Jackson, Reggie Yates and rapper Stormzy.

Mark says: 'The whole hairdressing industry has taken a huge blow over the past two years with lockdowns, rule changes and uncertainties. But customers seem a lot more at ease recently  we're seeing booking rates and walk-ins busier than before the pandemic.

'Customers seem more at ease recently': Salon owner Mark Maciver still wears a mask if asked

'We are ensuring that every person who walks through our door is comfortable with their experience.

'Although masks are no longer mandatory in England, we'll happily wear one if a customer wants us to, we'll still have sanitisers available in the shop, and we'll always advise people to let us know if they can't make a booked appointment because of Covid.

'It's so important that everyone has a real understanding of other people's needs and worries. We shouldn't be making customers feel bothered because they're still anxious about the pandemic. We should be supporting people as we head back to normal.

'All of my staff have such a great relationship with the customers that I'm confident that nobody would ever feel they couldn't ask for a mask to be put on or their appointment be moved to a time when the studio's quieter.

'We will always take into account people's needs and wants, and encourage them to think about the wider community.'

'WAITING 30 MINUTES FOR A LESS CROWDED TRAIN IS BETTER THAN COVID'

Farren Morgan, 35, is a lance sergeant in the Coldstream Guards and founder of The Tactical Athlete, which trains civilians to military fitness standards. He lives in London with wife Sarah, a paediatric nurse.

Farren says: 'Being in the Army and with my wife in the NHS, it's really important for us to keep following guidelines. We've both been given the message that there's still a massive threat out there.

'If Covid affected a fit guy like me, what about older people?' Lance Sergeant Farren Morgan

'I had Covid in 2020  I couldn't even do a burpee. If it affected me, a fit guy, like that, what's it like for people in their sixties or seventies or with health problems?

'I have to get the tube and train to work, but if it's too busy, I won't get on. I'd rather not get Covid for the sake of waiting half an hour. It's the same with shops  if they are too busy, I'll wait or find another one.

'When I take clients, I have to make sure the gym has plenty of space, that I'm wearing a mask at all times and that my client takes a lateral flow test.

'Neither my wife nor I want to bring Covid home. She works with little babies, so it's really important not to transmit it, so we both test almost every day. And if we tested positive, we'd self-isolate.'

'WEARING A MASK HARMS NO ONE'

Amanda Walker, 55, and her daughter Alicia Bartle, 24, live in Durham. Alicia is mother to Quintin, three, and five-week-old Tobias.

Amanda says: 'I've been very careful all the way through Covid as I'm immunosuppressed  I've got lupus  and even with the relaxing of the rules, both my daughter and I will be doing what we've always done.

'Before we see each other, we'll take a lateral flow test. We'll wear a mask in enclosed spaces, and limit where we go.

'Putting a mask on in a supermarket harms no one, and I'll continue trying to socially distance although it's hard in shops because people don't seem to bother.'

'I'm still careful': Amanda Walker, right, and her daughter Alicia Bartle, left, live in Durham

Alicia says: 'I've got a new-born baby, and I'm very frightened he's going to get it or that I'm going to catch Covid and not be able to look after him and his brother.

'And I don't want to end up killing my 81-year-old grandparents by giving it to them, so I'm doing the same as my mum: wearing a mask, socially distancing and testing.

'While I wouldn't go to a soft-play centre, I do take my eldest son to a sensory cafe  one of my best friends owns it and I know how stringent the cleaning regime is between sessions.'

'I'LL WEAR A MASK AT SCHOOL TO KEEP THE CHILDREN SAFE'

Teaching assistant Suzanne Scott is careful

Suzanne Scott, 50, is a teaching assistant who lives with husband Peter in Malvern, Worcestershire.

Suzanne says: 'We were living in Dubai until January 2020, when we returned to the UK. I've had to go back several times and not caught Covid.

'I'll carry on doing the three things I did when I was going back and forth as I believe they kept me safe: I sanitise my hands as I enter and leave shops, socially distance and test when seeing my children and grandchildren.

'If I meet a friend for coffee, we'll sit outside if the shop is busy even if it's cold and when I start my new job in a secondary school as a teaching assistant, I'll be wearing a mask the whole time.

'Children could be taking Covid back to households with vulnerable people, and I need to keep them safe.'

'I'LL KEEP ON ZOOMING MY CLIENTS'

Website designer Marie Brown, 50, runs Beyond The Kitchen Table and lives in Sevenoaks, Kent, with her husband and two teenage children.

Marie says: 'Before Covid, I used to do a mixture of Zoom and face-to-face meetings for my business  now I want to do more on Zoom, and when I meet people in the flesh, I'll be testing myself before I go.

'We have to get on with our lives, but people do get seriously ill and die from Covid. We have quite a number of people who can't be vaccinated against Covid, and we have a duty to be sensible for them.'

'We have to get on with our lives, but people do get ill from Covid: Web designer Marie Brown

 For more information about the guidance in Northern Ireland, visit nidirect.gov.uk/coronavirus

 For more information about the guidance in Scotland, visit gov.scot/coronavirus-covid-19

What precautions should you still be taking? You don't always know if someone's got Covid-19  around one in three people have no symptoms  so it's sensible to protect yourself and others from catching the virus with these easy steps: Get vaccinated Quite simply, vaccines are our best defence against Covid as they significantly reduce the risk of serious illness from the virus  most people in hospital because of Covid haven't been jabbed. So get both and the booster for maximum protection. Let fresh air in Unlike cigarette smoke, you can't see Covid particles hanging around in the air, ready to infect the personwho inhales them. That's why it is so important to ventilate indoor spaces,' says Catherine Noakes, Professor of Environmental Engineering from Leeds University. 'Opening windows, even if just regularly for a short time, can make a big difference. 'This way fresh air can disperse and blow Covid-19 particles away to decrease the risk of others being infected.' Cover up In enclosed spaces, wear a mask over your nose and mouth. They can catch some of the contagious droplets exhaled by people with the virus and help stop others catching it. Isolate if unwell The main Covid symptoms are a high temperature (meaning your chest or back will feel hot to touch), a new continuous cough, and a loss of taste and smell. If you have any of these symptoms it's a good idea to stay at home, take a test and avoid contact with others unless a test comes back negative. In Scotland, continue to follow self-isolation rules for the time being if you have Covid-19 symptoms.

 This article is part of a paid-for partnership with the UK Government
An Australian high school principal has been forced to apologise after one of its teachers made a teenage schoolgirl of Russian descent burst into tears.

The distraught girl's mother told Daily Mail Australia how the teacher at her school in Sydney said 'nasty things about Russia' to the entire class, and when the girl begged her to stop, she told the student she was wrong to support Russia.

In an apology emailed to the girl's mother, the principal said the school was 'sincerely sorry' and has now banned all of its teachers and staff from any 'further discussion' of the Russia and Ukraine crisis.

The mother said her 'very shy' and kind daughter as shocked by the teacher 'explaining to all children how bad is Russia'.

The comment 'came out of the blue' and her daughter 'really needed to be coaxed back' to school after the incident.

The mother, who did not wish to be identified, was shocked when her teenage daughter was brought to tears by a teacher who said to the whole class 'how bad is Russia' in the Ukraine crisis and has been given an apology by the principal

After the teacher said 'nasty things' about Russia's role in the Ukraine crisis making the student cry, her mother was sent an apology by the school saying it wouldn't happen again

The mother 'Kat', who did not want to be known by her real name, said her two daughters were saying to her 'people hate us now'.

Kat has issued a plea to Australians to cease any aggression towards children of Russian descent.

'Australia is very inclusive. We used to be very multicultural. I never had any problems being Russian, but this time it seems to have change,' she said.

'My daughter says "I am so tired. People say they hate Putin, they hate Russians". This makes them anxious.'

In her impassioned plea on Facebook, Kat posted: 'Dear Australian community! STOP AGGRESSION TOWARDS RUSSIAN CHILDREN AT SCHOOLS!!!

'My daughter came back home in tears and told me that the teacher began to say nasty things about Russia during the class, explaining to all children how bad is Russia.

'All children were involved in this and showed aggression towards Russians. My child began to cry and begged teacher to stop!

'What are you trying to bring by doing this? I'm half Russian half Ukrainian. I can't choose between mum and dad.

'We were made into the war, not we wanted the war. We never wanted it!'

Kat's impassioned Facebook plea on behalf of Russian Australian children questioned why Australia was not the 'big and friendly community' it once was

Kat wants Australians to see images of Russian people like this mother and child (above) she says are among victims who have died since the 2014 conflict in Donbas began

Kat, who came to Australia from Russia two decades ago aged 20 said although her mother is Ukrainian, both she and her two daughters identify as Russian.

'They identify as Russian Australian and speak Russian at home ... and in general the school is very friendly.

'But the teacher came to class to tell everyone about the situation and conflict between Russia and Ukraine.

'(My daughter) burst into tears in class. The teacher trying to calm her down was trying to convince her she was wrong.'

On Facebook post, Kat gave an account of the last eight years in the Donbass and Lugansk regions of southeastern Ukraine where she claims Russians speakers 'are victims of genocide'.

This version of events, used by Vladimir Putin to launch an invasion on Ukraine, is widely disputed by experts.

The Donbas war, which broke out in March 2014, and is part of the ongoing armed conflict between Russia and Ukraine.

The United Nations has acknowledged the death in the region since 2014 of more than 13,000 people, on all sides, including Russian armed forces and separatist groups, and Ukrainian forces and more than 3300 civilians.

Kat has family members in Donbas, and forwarded images she wanted published of civilians she said were victims of Ukrainian aggression against Russians.

Anti-Putin sentiments, like this held up by a protestor in Sydney's Martin Place, have risen around the world as well as in Australia, which Kat says was 'always a big and friendly community' before the current conflict

'Since 2014, Russia was begging Ukraine to stop genocide. Why you, Australians, would do the same genocide here? How are you much better than that? Just STOP!'

In response to her Facebook post, Kat's friends offered their support and criticised the teacher, although her comments did attract some online anti-Russian abuse.

'It is unprofessional for the teacher to say things like this,' one male Facebook user wrote.

'The kid will remember such an abuse and the matter should be taken to the principal without any fears.

Members of the Australian-Ukrainian community and others participate in a protest against Russia's invasion of Ukraine at the Sydney Opera House this week

Ukrainians and their supporters dressed in the country's yellow and blue flag colours holding what has now become a daily protest in Martin Place (above) against the Russian invasion

'If a teacher made a mistake - she will say sorry, otherwise - she is not in the right place.'

'What has changed? Do you really want to make our children fight each other?'

Another Facebook poster wrote, 'What a disgrace!!! Absolutely speechless!! this person should not be a teacher at all.'

Kat's Facebook post about what her daughter endured at school when a teacher took side in the Ukriane conflict drew responses like this (above) saying how could multicultural Australia 'get as low as this'

One man wrote that if their kid's teacher did something similar to his child he would 'make them run for their miserable life'.

'I don't understand how in Australia, a multicultural society and freedom, teachers get as low as this,' he wrote.

'I already heard complaints from Russian kids' parents a few times. If it was a gay, ethnicity or some other topic, no one would say a word.

'If it comes to politics and whatever Russia does, everyone must say something. You should lodge a complaint against bullying.'

After her daughter burst into tears at the anti-Russian stance taken by a high school teacher, Kat has questioned why Australians are so anti-Putin (above protestors at the Sydney Opera House this week) when it used to be a 'friendly community'

Another posted Prime Minister Scott Morrison's message to Australians of Russian descent, saying 'I know they will also be feeling terrible about these events', suggesting Kat send it to the school principal.

Kat's daughter's school has promised none of its pupils would be confronted in class again with opinions by teachers about the Russia Ukraine situation, and said it would be supportive and offered personal counselling by senior staff.

One of Kat's Facebook friends described her daughter as 'a beautiful girl, inside and out' and said 'especially in this country, she of all people should not have to put up with racial abuse.

'Especially not from her teacher.'
A young woman has vowed to help an immigrant taxi driver rebuild his home after it was burned down in an apparent racist firebomb attack.

Cab driver Robbie and his wife Shilebeth's western Sydney home was burned to the ground in January, allegedly by an anti-Muslim neighbour.

The devastating blow led businesswoman and family friend Lily Avery, 20, to launch a fundraiser to raise thousands of dollars to assist them in demolishing their Lalor Park house and sell the land.

Lily Avery, 20, from The Boujee Boards, has vowed to help her courier driver Robbie (pictured) rebuild his home after firebombed in a racist attack

Robbie and his wife lost almost all of their belongings in the fire and did not have home insurance

Robbie's Lalor Park home was firebombed by a racist neighbour (pictured)

Ms Avery had enlisted Robbie, a family friend, in delivering her business's luxury grazing boards during Sydney's Covid-19 lockdown last year.

The cabbie also helped keep Boujee Board's staff off the road as a Covid safe precaution to prevent unnecessary travel.

However, tragedy struck Robbie last month when his home went up in smoke - along with critical equipment for his wife's photography business.

The blaze was allegedly the result of a shocking attack by a neighbour who targeted Robbie for his Muslim faith.

Despite their house being unlivable, Shilebeth and Robbie are still continuing to pay off their mortgage.

To make matters worse, the couple could no longer afford home insurance and are not eligible for Centrelink payments.

Meanwhile, NSW Police issued an arrest warrant for a 44-year-old man over the blaze in February and appealed for public assistance - however, he is yet to be located.

The attack prompted Ms Avery to launch the #grazeforgood campaign, pledging $10 from every Boujee Board order towards Robbie's GoFundMe

The attack prompted Ms Avery to launch the #grazeforgood campaign, pledging $10 from every Boujee Board order toward the couple's GoFundMe.

'When I found out about Robbie and what happened with his house, I knew I had to do more than donate,' she said. 'I had to help him like he helped me.'

Ms Avery turned her 'side hustle' during university into a successful business, Boujee Boards, which sells charcuterie boards for between $60 and $160.

The Graze for Good campaign is an ongoing charity project that works with the Endometriosis and Breast Cancer foundations

Ms Avery says she aims to raise at least least $50,000 for Robbie and Shilebeth which will help cover rental costs and the charred property's demolition.

'Robbie was almost in tears... he's so grateful and overwhelmed, he's almost like family to me,' she said.

Despite the tragedy, Robbie is still delivering orders for Boujee Boards across NSW and Ms Avery maintains she couldn't do it without him.

'He's like family I've known him so long and he's helped us out so much,' she said.

Ms Avery said the Graze for Good campaign is an ongoing charity project that also works with the Endometriosis and Breast Cancer foundations.

She hopes other charities will hop on board and that the initiative can help other people get back on their feet.

'Working with charities and people in need is what I really care about,' she said.
California Governor Gavin Newsome has unveiled a $14 billion plan which would allow judges to force mentally-ill homeless people into psychiatric care in a bid to tackle squalor and crime across the Golden State.

Under the plan, called Community Assistance, Recovery and Empowerment Court, each county in the state would set up a civil proceedings court requiring in-patient care for drug addiction and mental health problems.

Judges would be allowed to decide if a person's illness was sufficiently serious for them to be committed to mandatory health care, which would involve them receiving medical treatment, and being made to move into assigned housing.

Some Californians could be locked away in the program, unveiled by Newsom at a press conference on Thursday, for up to two years.

Newsome said that he would not be rounding up the homeless and shipping them off to institutions, but provide treatment, medication and housing to those most vulnerable in society.

California Gov. Gavin Newsome proposed $14 billion toward a program that would force the homeless and the drug addicted into psychiatric treatment

'We could hold hands, have a candlelight vigil, talk about the way the world should be, or we could take some damn responsibility to implement our ideals and thats what we're doing differently here,' Newsome told the press outside a mental treatment facility in San Jose.

The measure still has to pass the California state legislature, which Newsome vowed to push through in the next few months.

The Golden State has been grappling with unprecedented levels of homelessness, crime and open-air drug use in its major cities.

In San Francisco, DailyMail.com captured photos of men and women shooting up in plaza in the Tenderloin District. Hypodermic needles, empty food containers, blankets littered the area outside a Market Street drug treatment center.

An open air drugs market is effectively operating legally in the city's once-buzzing Union Square after a woke bid at 'harm reduction' went off-the-rails.

Drug use, mental illness and homelessness has been tied to the rise in crime in San Francisco, with soaring shoplifting, muggings, thefts, and more serious offenses all leading to a marked decline in quality-of-life for the pricey city's residents.

In December, Mayor London Breed declared a state of emergency in the Tenderloin as the neighbor devolved in to chaos and violence due to the lack of enforcement of illegal activity.

An 11-year-old Muslim girl in a hijab was punched in the head by a woman who spewed racist comments at her.

Ironically, District Attorney Chesa Boudin has sought to reduce prosecutions of crimes related to these social ills in order to reduce putting people behind bars.

Like the Bay Area, Venice Beach in Los Angeles has struggled with homelessness and social ills.

Crime in San Francisco has been a serious issue in the past year. Since the start of the month, the city recorded three homicides - up from two in the same period in 2021. Meanwhile, overall crime so far this month has decreased by 21.8% compared to the same time period last year

Last January it took 116 firefighters two hours to put out a fire that spread from a homeless encampment to a two-story building on the boardwalk.

Public defense lawyers and civil liberties advocates expressed doubt over Newsome's plan.

'At this point there are a million questions and a million things that could go horribly wrong,' said Kevin Baker, director of government relations for ACLU California, in an email. He said homelessness is caused by skyrocketing housing costs 'and we wont solve homelessness, mental health, or substance abuse problems by locking people up and drugging them against their will.'

Under the plan, which requires approval by the Legislature, all counties would have to set up a mental health branch in civil court and provide comprehensive and community-based treatment to those suffering from debilitating psychosis. People need not be homeless to be evaluated by a court.

The city cleared out more than 200 people from the area last summer, but about 70 people are still camping out overnight, according to the head of the Venice Stakeholders Association

Venice Beach, a popular tourist site, was home to about 2,000 homeless people in 2020

Residents in the area have long complained about garbage, drug use and fires from the encampments

A Venice Beach community organization warned LA city officials that they may face million-dollar lawsuits if the area near Venice Beach isn't kept clear of encampments. Above, the beach on June 29, 2021

'Rather than reforming in the margins, a system that is foundationally and fundamentally broken, we're taking a new approach, and were offering a new strategy and new partnerships,' Newsome said at the press conference.

But the idea of forcing treatment bothered some, and the California State Association of Counties objected to the requirements put on counties. Other groups called on the need for more resources, which Newsom has proposed for additional psychologists and treatment beds.

The Western Center on Law and Poverty pointed to a 2020 state audit that found many people put under conservatorship wound up with limited treatment and follow-up while the San Francisco Public Defender's Office called the proposal a 'band-aid' approach falling short of the fully funded mental health system California needs.

SPADE WORK: California Gov. Gavin Newsome, pictured here with a shovel, proposed a $14 billion program to force homeless people with severe mental health and addiction disorders into treatment

'As it stands, because of the drastic under-funding of our mental healthcare system, our clients are waiting (anywhere from) nine weeks to six months in jail for treatment,' the office said in a statement.

Californians approved for treatment would be obligated to accept the care or risk criminal charges, if those are pending, and if not, they would be subject to being held in psychiatric programs involuntarily or lengthier conservatorships in which the court appoints a person to make health decisions for someone who cannot.

Residents argued that homelessness is the top problem facing the county, with 94 percent of voters viewing it as a serious or very serious problem

Newsom, a Democrat and former mayor of San Francisco, has made homelessness and housing a focus of his administration.

Last year, the Legislature approved $12 billion for new housing and treatment beds for the homeless and this year Newsom has proposed an additional $2 billion, primarily to shelter people suffering from psychosis, schizophrenia and other behavioral health disorders.

The Golden State is flush with cash as it is home to most of the world's biggest and most prestigious tech companies, including Apple, Facebook and Google.

Newsom has called distressing behavior on the streets heartbreaking and maddening and says residents are right to complain that government is not doing enough.

Half-dozen people were witnesses smoking fentanyl near a drug treatment center in San Francisco, and two people passed out at a table

A man sits on the ground next to a fence in San Francisco where witnesses have seen hundreds of people dealing and using drugs

San Francisco Mayor London Breed's established the Tenderloin Emergency Intervention plan for a sweeping crackdown on open air drug use and drug dealing in the downtown Tenderloin neighborhood

The plan came in the midst of a local, state, and national debate over whether the city should open a 'supervised drug consumption' site as a tactic for reducing drug overdose deaths

People with addiction issues or mental health disorders often pinball among various public agencies, namely hospitals, court and jail. There is no one place that manages the persons health, offering steady and safe housing combined with resource intensive care and California, like the rest of the country, suffers from a shortage of treatment beds.

If those living on the streets do fall into crime, they are often freed straight back onto the streets thanks to progressive 'no bail' policies aimed at keeping the poorest out of jails.

But public safety advocates say those same policies embolden some criminals to reoffend, knowing that they'll face little or no consequences, and thus drive up crime figures in big cities.

Cities and states across the country are grappling with growing homelessness, as well as mental health crises. Nearly a quarter of California's estimated 161,000 unhoused residents have a severe mental illness, according to a 2020 count of homeless people required by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Nationally, the figure was just over 20% of an estimated 580,000 unhoused residents.

Newsom's plan could apply to an estimated 7,000 to 12,000 people, said Dr. Mark Ghaly, secretary of the California Health and Human Services Agency.

Compare that to just over 200 people forced into court-ordered treatment last year under Laura's Law, a program for people with severe and persistent mental illness who may pose a risk to themselves or others, he said. The program is optional and just over half of California's 58 counties participate.

Drone images show dozens of people sprawled out in an open-air shooting gallery in San Francisco, many in wheelchairs and on crutches

Some people rant in the streets, nude and in need of medical help. Last year, 712 people died of drug overdoses, compared with 257 people who died of COVID-19

The governor said under his proposal, people would have a say in their treatment plan and have a public defender to represent them. Most importantly, the proposal allows a broader array of people, including family member or first responder, to refer the person for help, he said.

Still, others say that mandated treatment is necessary for some who are too sick to realize they need care.

In San Francisco, a state law designed to get more people into conservatorships has resulted in just two people being forced into care, said Rafael Mandelman, a city supervisor who has watched helplessly as homeless residents languish outdoors.

He would welcome more money for emergency psychiatric treatment beds and staffing. But he also says there needs to be a major change in both the deployment of resources and in the way judges think.

'We also clearly need better systems that are able to respond to the needs of this population much better,' he said, 'and we need laws that are clear to judges, and that reflect the expectations of the community.'
A California doctor known as a leading purveyor of coronavirus misinformation pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge on Thursday for joining the mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol last year.

Dr. Simone Gold, 56, founder of the anti-vaccine group America's Frontline Doctors, entered the plea to a charge of entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds. The conviction carries a maximum sentence of six months in jail.

As part of her guilty plea, Gold acknowledged she and her co-defendant John Strand, while outside the building, were directly in front of a police officer who was assaulted and dragged to the ground. The doctor also acknowledged then entering the building and giving a speech in Statuary Hall about her opposition to coronavirus vaccine mandates and lockdowns imposed by the government, as Strand filmed her comments.

Gold, of Beverly Hills, later told The Washington Post that she followed a crowd into the Capitol, didn't witness any violence and didn't think she was breaking any laws.

'I can certainly speak to the place that I was, and it most emphatically was not a riot,' she said. 'Where I was, was incredibly peaceful.'

Gold, who has over 400,000 followers on Twitter, is an outspoken figure in the anti-vaccine movement in the U.S. and is known for spreading misinformation about COVID-19.

She has promoted the use of unproven and potentially dangerous drugs, including the anti-worm treatment ivermectin and the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine, as coronavirus treatments.

SCROLL DOWN TO WATCH VIDEO

Dr. Simone Gold, 56, (pictured during the Capitol siege) founder of the anti-vaccine group America's Frontline Doctors, entered the plea to a charge of entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds. The conviction carries a maximum sentence of six months in jail

Gold, of Beverly Hills, (with megaphone) later told The Washington Post that she followed a crowd into the Capitol, didn't witness any violence and didn't think she was breaking any laws

Gold, who has over 400,000 followers on Twitter, is an outspoken figure in the anti-vaccine movement in the U.S. and is known for spreading misinformation about COVID-19

Dr. Irwin Redlener, founding director of Columbia Universitys National Center for Disaster Preparedness, said Gold has had 'a starring role' in the anti-vaccine propaganda movement, using her medical credentials and platform to 'undermine science' and politically pollute efforts to tamp down the pandemic.

'In some ways, her extremist voice seems to weigh with greater impact than the vast, vast majority of doctors who are saying, `Of course you need to take the vaccine. It will save your life,' Redlener said.

Rep. James Clyburn, a South Carolina Democrat who chairs a special House subcommittee on the coronavirus crisis, announced in October that the panel would investigate online groups spreading COVID-19 misinformation and promoting potentially hazardous treatments.

In a letter addressed to Gold, Clyburn cited news reports that her group and its partners have generated millions of dollars in revenue by selling hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin and offering online COVID-19 consultations.

'While (Americas Frontline Doctors) is not alone in providing these services, it is reportedly among the top purveyors of questionable treatments nationwide and a prominent source of misinformation related to the coronavirus,' Clyburn wrote.

Gold told the Post that she had traveled to Washington to speak at a 'Rally for Health Freedom' on the East side of the Capitol on the afternoon of January 6, 2021. She said she was worried that photos of her inside the Capitol would distract from her advocacy work.

'I do regret being there,' she said less than a week after the siege.

'I do regret being there,' Gold said less than a week after the siege at the Capitol. She originally traveled to D.C. to speak at a 'Rally for Health Freedom' on the East side of the building before joining the mob

Gold (third from right), who is founder of the anti-vaccine group America's Frontline Doctors, is a licensed doctor in Beverly Hills, California

The Medical Board of Californias database shows Gold remains licensed to practice medicine in the state and has a Beverly Hills office address

The Medical Board of Californias database shows Gold remains licensed to practice medicine in the state and has a Beverly Hills office address.

Strand, the communications director for Americas Frontline Doctors, told the Post that he was at the Capitol to help Gold and 'ensure her safety.' He has pleaded not guilty to the charges again him. A trial for Strand is scheduled to start on July 18.

Gold's sentencing is scheduled for June 16.

More than 750 people have been charged with federal crimes related to the Capitol riot from last year.

Over 220 of them have pleaded guilty, mostly to misdemeanors, and more than 100 riot defendants have been sentenced.
Torrential rain and widespread flooding has sparked an urgent warning from health experts about a deadly mosquito-borne virus as a human case is reported in a second Australian state.

Queensland health authorities overnight reported one human case of Japanese Encephalitis Virus (JEV) after the disease was recently detected in piggeries in four different states.

Three Victorians are recovering in hospital shortly after the virus was detected in pigs in Echuca in the state's north. A fourth has since been discharged.

The latest human case had recently travelled in regional southern Queensland - where the virus has also been detected in pigs - and is currently being treated in a Brisbane hospital.

Health authorities in several states have issued alerts about Japanese Encephalitis Virus

The latest human case prompted a public alert urging Queenslanders to take steps to prevent being bitten by mosquitoes in the wake of the recent weather.

Renowned virus expert Professor Peter Doherty said the disease 'will likely now be endemic in Australia.'

Authorities have warned of a boom of mosquito numbers following widespread flooding and heavy rain as 'rain bombs' batter the east coast.

The virus is spread by mosquitoes and is already endemic to parts of Asia and Australia's Torres Strait region.

'There is precedent  in the past a similar virus, Murray Valley encephalitis, saw widespread outbreaks in 1974 and 2011,' QIMR Berghofer's Mosquito Control Laboratory head Associate Professor Greg Devine told the Brisbane Times.

'Obviously there were big floods in those years, but it's not the floods themselves, the floods and the virus are both symptoms of the fact that those years saw months of very wet conditions, which is conducive to mosquitoes spreading the virus.'

There are fears the mosquito borne infection could become an endemic in Australia

The virus was previously restricted to Cape York in far north Queensland and the Torres Strait.

JEV is spread through the bite of an infected mosquito to people and animals, mostly pigs and horses.

The disease is not transmitted from person to person and cannot be caught by eating pork or pig products.

Children aged under five years of age and older people who are infected with JEV are at a higher risk of developing more severe illness.

Most JEV infections have no only mild symptoms but can result in severe disease and even death.

Severe symptoms include inflammation of the brain, high fever and chills, severe headache, sensitivity to light, neck stiffness and nausea/vomiting.

Cases of Japanese encephalitis virus has been found in Australian pigs in four states

People can reduce the risk of bitten include applying insect repellent, wearing loose, light coloured clothing which cover up arms, legs and feet and use other insecticide-based devices where outdoors.

Australia's health department said the disease had been found in one piggery in Victoria's north, six piggeries in NSW and one in Queensland.

'This is the first time the virus has been detected in Victoria, and biosecurity authorities are working with their human health departments to understand the implications and risks of human exposure,' Australian Chief Veterinary Officer Dr Mark Schipp said.

Queensland Health is working collaboratively with the Department of Agriculture and Fisheries and industry, as well as state, territory and national counterparts to discuss a national response.

Support will also be provided to livestock industry workers.

Vaccinations are available to protect both humans and animals.

'Vaccinate the people most at risk  those people who work in and around piggeries, that would certainly help,' Dr Devine said.
An ABC reporter has confronted Mark McGowan over Western Australia's hard border closure after a young rugby player took his life.

Jordan Grace took his own life just days shy of his 21st birthday last November, after moving to Perth to kickstart his burgeoning rugby career.

His family, who live in Victoria, say their son struggled with being isolated from relatives after WA's hard border closure turned the state into a fortress for 700 days.

Speaking with Premier Mark McGowan on Thursday, journalist Rhiannon Shine asked: 'Are you sorry to that family that they went through that?'

Jordan Grace, (pictured) took his own life just days shy of his 21st birthday in November last year after moving to Perth to play rugby

McGowan replied: 'Sorry to anyone who suffered over the last two years. It hasn't been pleasant.

'It's been a difficult time for everyone and making these decisions was not something that I ever expected I'd be put in that position but here I am, and I did the best I could.'

Until this week, the western state had the strictest border restrictions in the world in place for nearly 700 days.

The Delta strain resulted in most of the east coast being locked out for more than nine months and Omicron then to all other states being banned from November and December.

Jordan's mother Katie and her husband, who are based in Melbourne and double vaxxed, had to acquire passes to enter the state after their son's death.

Despite being granted entry, they were still required to undergo 14 days of hotel quarantine before they could collect their son's belongings.

The family said because of their children in Melbourne and funeral arrangements, that two weeks quarantine was simply not an option.

Premier Mark McGowan apologised for the state's hard border closure on ABC's 7.30 report

'All we wanted was to go and be with our son. Go and grab all his things and bring him home with us,' his father Steve Grace told 7.30.

'That's all we wanted to do. Simple as that and start that grieving process.'

Mr Grace now wonders if his son would have still taken his life if the family were able to visit him for his birthday.

'If we were able to fly over there for his 21st and spend some time with him, things may have been different,' he said.

His family, who live in Victoria, say their son struggled with being isolated from relatives after WA's hard border closure turned the state into a fortress for 700 days (pictured, Jordan with his sister Isabella Grace)

Steve Grace (pictured, left) wondered if his son Jordan (pictured, right) would have taken his life if the family were able to enter into Western Australia for his 21st birthday

While the rest of the world had learned to live with the virus, Mark McGowan kept the state's hard border in place until Thursday.

The state was closed to overseas arrivals since the start of the pandemic on March 20, 2020, with a ban on interstate travellers for months over a handful of cases.

However, hours after families reunited on Thursday, the premier warned he wouldn't rule out slamming the borders shut again.

'You can never guarantee these things,' Mr McGowan said.

'Obviously, if another strain comes along that is deadly or a different illness comes along, or something of that nature, no government can guarantee that.

'And I'll just remind you all: the Commonwealth Government put in place a border around Australia as well, and every state in Australia actually at one point in time or another had borders in place.'

Both interstate and international travellers are required to complete a G2G pass before entering the state, and must take a rapid antigen test within 12 hours of arrival.

Interstate travellers who have had three Covid doses, if eligible, will be able to enter the state without quarantining upon arrival.

Only unvaccinated returning Australians from overseas will need to stay in hotel quarantine for one week.

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Russian President Vladimir Putin is dangling hefty boosts in cash payments to the families of deceased soldiers as those who might get career-ending injuries in his 'special operation' in Ukraine  in the latest sign of the bloody toll it is taking on his forces.

Putin spoke at length about the specific cash amounts and what they could be used for in his latest rambling speech  his first remarks attempting to justify the Ukraine invasion since he announced it more than a week ago.

He said there would be payments of up to 5 million rubles ($45,000 at current rates after the currency tumbled) to the families of fallen Russian soldiers  after the Russian government finally confirmed casualties and said more than 500 of their forces had died. Ukrainian estimates of Russian troops killed are far higher.

'Unfortunately, we have losses, and our duty is to support the families of our military who are fighting for our people, people of Russia,' Putin said in televised remarks Thursday on the eighth day of the invasion, where he characterized Ukrainians defending their homeland as 'extreme gangsters.'

He made the comments about his country's military survivor benefit program even as he called the operation in Ukraine a 'success' and said 'all the tasks that have been set are being successfully resolved.'

Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a boost in the cash payments to the families of deceased Russian soldiers taking part in the invasion of Ukraine. He also announced payments to those who could no longer serve due to injuries. It comes after Russia said more than 500 of its forces have been killed in the operation, which Putin called a 'success'

The invasion has drawn a barrage of international sanctions and a resounding vote to condemn it at the United Nations.

'To all family members of all the Fallen Soldiers they will receive they will receive insurance payouts and each member of their families will receive financial compensation,' Putin said in a virtual meeting with his security council.

'But moreover, I believe that it's necessary to set additional payments to the military and military and other forces that are participating in this operation in the amount of 5 million Rubles,' he said in the latest of his rambling speeches, with commnets translated from Russian and aired by Sky News.

Then he outlined specific payments to the injured  amid a wealth of video footage of burning and destroyed Russian vehicles, even amid Russia's sustained bombing of Ukrainian cities and towns.

'All military who are participating in this operation will also receive additional payouts, insurance payouts, plus compensation for any injuries if a soldier is not able to continue his military service as a result of this operation, they will receive a payout of 2.9 million rubles and this has been put in law already,' Putin said.

Putin stood up for a moment of silence during his televised remarks. Members of his security council were taking part by zoom, so he appeared to be alone. Sky News aired the speech alongside images of burned out Russian vehicles

Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Lieutenant General Valery Zaluzhny: "Soldiers of the 93rd OMBR Kholodny Yar captured two Russian occupiers from unit 91701 of the Yampol Motorized Rifle Regiment"

An image posted on the Internet appears to show Russians captured by Ukrainian soldiers.

'I also believe we need to ensure additional payments to the staff of the minister of Defense and any injured personnel in the amount of 3 million rubles ($27,000). I would like to emphasize again that our officers and soldiers are fighting for Russia for a peaceful life of citizens of Donbass to demilitarize and de-Nazify Ukraine so that we do not have anybody who is threatening us at our borders, including threatening us with nuclear weapons.

It comes after Russia finally confirmed 500 wounded and 1,500 injured  with Ukraine saying Russian casualties were far higher, with Ukrainian defense officials putting the figure at 9,000.

Putin stood at the end of his zoom session with other officials and held a moment of silence for fallen forces.

'We are proud with our military. We will remember our fallen comrades, we will do everything to support their families, their children to support their education. And I asked you to honor them with a minute of silence,' he said.

It all comes amid a series of anecdotal signs that members of Putin's invasion force were young, undertrained, or in some cases uninformed they would be participating in an invasion of their neighboring country, where many Russians have family.

A Pentagon official said Tuesday that some groups of Russians had surrendered or even sabotaged their vehicles  one possible contributor to the stalled convoy of Russian equipment north of Kiev.

Ukraine has been seeking to encourage them to give up the fight, offering young soldiers with calls home to their mothers and even offering one surrendering soldier tea.

Said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in a video: 'Our military, our border guards, our territorial defense, even ordinary farmers capture the Russian military every day.

'All the captives say only one thing: they do not know why they are here. Despite the fact that there are dozens of times more than them, the morale of the enemy is constantly deteriorating.'

Pentagon spokesman Adm. John Kirby spoke to Russia's challenges on CNN Thursday, even as Russia made territorial gains with its vicious assault.

'We don't have perfect visibility into Mr. Putin's planning, but our assessment is that the Russians have been flummoxed, they have been frustrated, they have been set back, they have been slowed by a stiff and determined Ukrainian resistance,' he said.

'We also believe that they have stumbled themselves, that they have conducted missteps. They're having logistical and sustainment problems. They're running out of fuel, running out of food for some of their soldiers, that they have been surprised by the manner in which and the effectiveness with which the Ukrainians have been defending their cities and their people,' he added.
A 13-year-old boy has generously donated $50,000 to help victims of floods which devastated New South Wales and Queensland.

Jack Berne, who founded 'Fiver for a Farmer' and previously helped drought-affected Aussies, gave the cash to Foodbank Australia so hampers could be sent to families.

The teenager announced his generous contribution on Ben Fordham's 2GB breakfast show, surprising Foodbank CEO John Robertson.

'I just wanted to say hi to Mr Robertson first, it's a pleasure to meet you,' Jack began after the radio host gave a brief rundown of his charitable history.

Jack Berne (pictured) raised $1 million in his 'A Fiver For A Farmer' campaign, which encouraged people to donate at least $5 to the cause

Jack, who is the founder of charity initiative Fiver for a Farmer, decided to contribute funds to Foodbank Australia so hampers could be sent to families impacted by the floods

The Sydney high school student continued: 'I've seen all the coverage this week with our mates in the devastating floods.'

'A lot of people have been reaching out, and I've been reaching out to people trying to help. And I've been so proud of all the money that has been raised with the help of so many Fivers from people around the country.'

Fordham then enquired about Jack's decision to donate specifically to Foodbank.

'The people have trusted me with all this money, so I'm thinking you're the right guy to help our mates,' the school boy told Robertson in response.

The young teenager announced his generous contribution on Friday when radio host Ben Fordham introduced him on his 2GB breakfast show, surprising Foodbank CEO John Robertson, who was chatting on-air with Fordham at the time

'A lot of people have been reaching out, and I've been reaching out to people trying to help. And I've been so proud of all the money that has been raised with the help of so many Fivers from people around the country,' the Sydney school student said

'So Mr Robertson, on behalf of Jack's Mates Foundation and all the Fivers donated, we'd love to donate $50,000,' he said.

Robertson was stunned by announcement, saying 'wow, that's amazing' before thanking Jack and telling the teenager that he is 'an impressive young man'.

'That is such a difference to so many people, Jack. I cannot thank you enough,' the charity CEO replied.

Fordham estimated that Jack's contribution would pay for 1,500 hampers for flood-affected families.

Foodbank CEO John Robertson appeared to be taken aback by the big announcement before thanking Jack and telling the teenager that he is 'an impressive young man'

Fordham estimated that Jack's generous contribution amounts to almost 1,500 hampers for flood-affected families

Jack previously raised $1million to help drought-stricken farmers across Australia back in 2018.

The then-10-year-old and his classmates raised the money through Jack's 'A Fiver for A Farmer' campaign on GoFundMe.

The initiative urged people to spare at least $5 to support drought-stricken farming communities.

Jack's classmates also dressed up as farmers at school and donated money.

Jack's original goal was to raise $200,000 but he instead generated $1million in a little over a month.

The Sydney school student said he was inspired to take action after learning about the drought in class.
Visitors are seen at Samsung Electronics' Galaxy Studio in Moscow, in this Aug. 10, 2017 photo. Courtesy of Samsung Electronics



By Baek Byung-yeul



Samsung Electronics is facing mounting pressure to take part in global companies' efforts to stop selling products in Russia as part of the international business community's movement to protest Moscow's invasion of Ukraine, according to industry analysts Friday.



At a time when global firms such as Apple, Intel, Nike and BMW have decided to take a stand against Russia by withdrawing the shipment or manufacturing of their products there, Ben Wood, a chief analyst at market tracking firm CCS Insight said Apple's boycott could consequently put pressure on rivals, especially Samsung.



"The move 'absolutely' puts pressure on rival firms like Samsung to follow," the analyst told CNBC, March 3, upon hearing Apple's announcement on March 1 that is will stop sale of its products in Russia. Anshel Sag, a principal analyst from Moor Insights and Strategy, also told the U.S. media that Apple's move "could force others to follow suit."



The industry view is that it is unreasonable to compare Samsung  which ranks first in the smartphone market, with a 33.2-percent share in Russia in 2021, according to data by Counterpoint Research  with Apple, which accounts for about 15 percent.



Samsung, having recently released its latest Galaxy S22 premium smartphone, operates TV manufacturing lines in Russia. The company has held the largest share in the country's smartphone market since 2007.



"Their (Apple) business is so big that it's very resilient," Wood said, adding, "to lose that revenue is not going to have a catastrophic impact on the business."



Regarding the issue, a Samsung Electronics spokesman said that there is no official company position on the matter.



However, a local IT industry official said that it will be difficult for Samsung to take action in advance of government policy decisions against Russia, although the pressure on Samsung to stop selling its products in Russia is expected to grow, due to strong anti-Russia sentiment.



He added that U.S. companies like Apple were able to participate actively in the movement to stop selling in Russia because their government aggressively sanctioned Moscow's invasion of Ukraine.



"The current economic sanctions against Russia are led by the U.S. The Korean government is participating in these sanctions as part of the international community. In this regard, there is a difference between Korean and American companies. From the perspective of Korean companies, it is not right for them to push ahead if their government does not take a lead role in the sanctions," the industry official said.



"Apple's suspension of sales was possible as its business in Russia is not that large and the U.S. government is active in the sanctions movement. The position of Korean companies is that it is right to act in cooperation with their government. So these companies are closely monitoring this situation," he added.



The Korean government announced late last month that it would join the international community's sanctions on finance and exports to Russia, denouncing the armed invasion.



Whether Samsung decides to boycott Russia or not, market tracker TredForce said the Russia-Ukraine war could have negative impact on the smartphone market in the region. "The smartphone industry will be noticeably affected by the ongoing war. Take the ranking of smartphone brands by market share in Russia and Ukraine last year, for instance; the top three brands sold included Samsung, Xiaomi and Apple, which had combined annual sales of about 45 million units for 2021."


A teenager who was later jailed for two decades for plotting terrorist attacks on Australian soil appeared on a TV panel show wearing an Islamic State logo - but wasn't kicked out of the audience.

ABC host Stan Grant's booting of a Vladimir Putin sympathiser from the Q&A studio audience on Thursday evening has sparked comparisons with previous controversial moments.

Grant told Sasha Gillies-Lekakis to leave some 20 minutes after he told the program that he was 'outraged' the media is depicting Russia as 'the bad guy' for invading Ukraine.

'There are a lot of Russians here and around the world who support what Putin is doing in Ukraine, myself included,' the University of Melbourne student said.

Back in 2014, as jihadist groups rampaged across Syria and Iraq beheading Westerners, 19-year-old Sulayman Khalid appeared on an SBS Insight program named Joining The Fight wearing an Islamic State logo on his jacket.

He said: 'ISIS - they do not want to bring anything but justice. Justice, peace and humanitarian aid to the people.'

Khalid said ISIS' do not want to bring anything but justice' during the 2014 program, and showed off the logos of terror organisations he had emblazoned on his shirt

Pictured: Islamic State-inspired terrorist teenager Sulayman Khalid. He appeared on SBS Insight three years before being jailed for 22 years for plotting terror attacks

Three years later, Khalid was jailed for 22 years, a term later reduced by two and a half years, after he pleaded guilty to conspiring to do acts in preparation for a terrorist act to advance 'violent jihad'.

His attack plot involved killing police officers and targeting government buildings in Sydney.

During the SBS program, Khalid showed other guests the emblems of different terrorist organisations on his clothing, before declaring 'they're all the same flags'.

'People might say "you're a supporter of Jabhat al-Nusra [a former jihadist group]", and with this flag here people might say "you're a supporter of Dolatful Islam and ISIS".

'But these flags are all one... one Muslim nation and that's it.'

The ABC has also courted controversy with its guest lists for Q&A in the past.

In 2015, guest Zaky Mallah was allowed question panellists about plans to strip jihadis of Australian citizenship - despite Mallah himself having been charged with two terrorism offences twelve years earlier.

Mallah was acquitted in a jury trial and instead pleaded guilty to a charge of threatening a government official, for which he served two years in prison.

Nearly seven years before Q+A host Stan Grant kicked a guest out who claimed Ukrainians were 'Nazi' killers , the ABC allowed ex-terror suspect Zaky Mallah (pictured) to question the panel about plans to strip jihadis of Australian citizenship

During a heated exchange, the Sydneysider accused the Liberal government of giving Australian Muslims a 'justification' to go overseas and join the terror organisation.

Panel member and then-Liberal MP Steven Ciobo hit back, saying he knew Mallah's case and would be glad to see him expelled from the country.

'Rubbish,' Mallah replied. 'As an Australian I would be happy to see you out of the country.'

However he was not removed from the audience - with host Tony Jones only going as far as saying the comments were 'out of order'.

The ABC later said it had made an 'error in judgement' in allowing Mallah to ask a question as it could not properly vet what he would say in a debate-style environment.

At the time, the Muslim activist told Daily Mail Australia he supported al-Qaeda linked Jabhat al Nusra, 'but only in Syria because it is there they are trying to deradicalise Islamic State'.

Sasha Gillies-Lekakis (pictured) was asked to leave the Q&A studio after he said he supported what Putin was doing in Ukraine and claimed there were other like-minded Australians

Mallah was not removed from the audience - with host Tony Jones only going as far as saying the comments were 'out of order'

Poll WAS GRANT RIGHT TO THROW PUTIN SUPPORTER OUT? Yes No WAS GRANT RIGHT TO THROW PUTIN SUPPORTER OUT? Yes 1179 votes

No 1595 votes Now share your opinion





The comparison between the two on-air controversies comes as Mr Gillies-Lekakis on Friday morning hit back at Q+A and his critics - while also denying he supports the war.

The 23-year-old, who spent a semester living and studying in communist Cuba, said he 'made no direct statement sanctioning violence or conflict'.

'I was hoping to make the point that I support Putins grievances regarding the breaking of the Minsk Peace Agreement by the Ukraine, and the ensuing loss of life.'

'I find Mr Grants statements following my departure, and the fact that I was asked to leave the program, disappointing and unprofessional.'

Despite his on-air comments, Mr Gillies-Lekakis now claims he is 'unequivocally against war and the loss of any lives' and argues his 'words were misrepresented and incomplete' because he was cut off from finishing his question.

The Spanish and Latin American Studies student from the University of Melbourne also denied allegations his question was 'unvetted' and 'rogue'.

Sasha Gillies-Lekakis spent a semester abroad living and studying in communist Cuba

On Friday the 23-year-old, who spent a semester living and studying in communist Cuba, hit back at his critics and ABC's Q&A host Stan Grant, arguing he 'made no direct statement sanctioning violence or conflict'

He claims to have followed all the appropriate channels, including submitting the question via the Q&A portal and finessing it at the request of production.

'I am genuinely sorry that things took the turn they did. However, at the same time, an acknowledgement of the ABCs questionable conduct would also be appreciated.'

Daily Mail Australia can reveal Mr Gillies-Lekakis spent a semester during his degree living and studying in Cuba, a communist nation.

The then-20-year-old travelled to Cuba in 2020, making him the first student from the University of Melbourne to undertake an exchange program in Cuba.
Dr Nick Coatsworth has called on doctors to allow visitors into hospitals in spite of restrictions after a family-of-five was stopped from seeing their terminally ill mother.

The former deputy chief medical officer took to Twitter on Friday after hearing a mother has been left to die on her own in a Bunbury hospital, 180km south of Perth.

Jo Gittos, 47, has been given just three months to live but she is not allowed to accept visitors after all public hospitals in Western Australia were placed on 'red alert' on Wednesday.

Visitation has been reduced to only approved essential visitors and those with exemptions.

Dr Coatsworth urged doctors to 'manage' the restriction and make their own decisions on who is allowed to step foot in the hospital.

Dr Nick Coatsworth has called on doctors to allow visitors into hospitals in spite of restrictions after a family-of-five was stopped from seeing their terminally ill mother

Jo Gittos, 47, has been given just three months to live but she is not allowed to accept visitors after all public hospitals were placed on 'red alert' on Wednesday

'This happened to me one of the weekends I was Exec on call at my Hospital,' he wrote. 'You know what you do?

'You let the kids in. It's not a hard decision. Rules can be "managed" safely at a local level.'

An exemption has only been given to Ms Gittos's husband Darren while her five children have been stopped from visiting.

Mr Gittos slammed the restriction as 'callous' and 'ill-thought out' and revealed doctors had given his wife just months to life.

'We were told a month ago that three month's was optimistic,' he told 10 News First Perth.

'That was a month ago. Her condition has deteriorated since then and fairly quickly unfortunately. They won't allow the kids to see their mum and they won't allow my wife's mum to see her.'

Mr Gittos revealed the entire family has been barred even though they are fully vaccinated.

Premier Mark McGowan said the 'red alert' was put in place to protect the vulnerable and that the restrictions will only last a month.

Public hospitals will cut back on category two and three elective surgeries from March 14 while private hospitals will make the changes from March 21.

PPE use will be increased across the facilities while rapid antigen tests will be distributed to every patient.

The restrictions were brought in as Western Australia reopened its borders for the first time in 696 days on Thursday.

There were emotional scenes at Perth Airport when the first travellers landed after the state finally opened to the world for the first time in 697 days.

Dr Coatsworth urged doctors to 'manage' the restriction and make their own decisions on who is allowed to step foot in the hospital

An exemption has only been given to Ms Gittos's husband Darren (pictured) while her five children have been stopped from visiting

WA was closed to international arrivals since the start of the coronavirus pandemic on March 20, 2020, and the hardline premier banned travellers from other states for months at a time over just a handful of cases.

Delta outbreaks locked out most of the east coast for more than nine months and Omicron led to all other states being banned from November and December.

Mr McGowan stubbornly kept his hard border up even as the rest of the world learned to live with the virus, even cancelling a planned reopening date on February 5 until WA's own outbreak rendered the issue moot.

But just hours after families ripped apart by his draconian policies finally embraced each other, the premier threatened to put them through months or years more hell.

'You can never guarantee these things,' he said on Thursday as he refused to rule out pulling up the drawbridge yet again, even while claiming he didn't 'any intention whatsoever' of actually doing it... for the moment.

'Obviously, if another strain comes along that is deadly or a different illness comes along, or something of that nature, no government can guarantee that.

'And I'll just remind you all: the Commonwealth Government put in place a border around Australia as well, and every state in Australia actually at one point in time or another had borders in place.'

Family members wait for the arrival of loved ones with flowers in hand at Perth International Airport on Thursday morning
Anthony Albanese has been accused of trying to sneak into government by not announcing the full cost of his big-spending policies.

The Labor leader has a plan to increase child care subsidy rates for every family earning less than $530,000.

The policy would save families between $600 and $2,900 a year and cost taxpayers $6.2 billion over four years.

Anthony Albanese (pictured arriving in Perth on Thursday) has been accused of trying to sneak into government by not announcing the full cost of his big-spending policies

But Mr Albanese has also announced an aspiration to one day give every family - including millionaires - a 90 per cent subsidy for childcare regardless of income.

Labor has not revealed how much this would cost but the Government claims it would be an extra $63billion over the next 10 years.

Mr Albanese has also said he wants to provide six months paid parental leave on full pay with superannuation - but again no costings have been released.

Finance Minister Simon Birmingham said announcing 'aspirational' policies which are not costed is a deliberate strategy by Labor to avoid being accused of spending too much like former leader Bill Shorten.

'By describing this as aspirational, Labor doesn't have to account for it in their official costs,' Mr Birmingham told Daily Mail Australia.

'This is sneaky by them and they're not being upfront with Australians on what the full cost of their policies will be.'

Mr Shorten lost to Scott Morrison in 2019 after he was branded 'the Bill you can't afford' over his proposed tax increases to pay for extra spending.

Mr Albanese has announced an aspiration to one day give every family - including millionaires - a 90 per cent subsidy for childcare regardless of income. This would cost an extra $63billion over the next ten years, the Government claims

Mr Birmingham described a 90 per cent childcare subsidy as 'ill-considered and reckless'.

'This $63 billon child care splurge is further proof that Labor are addicted to spending without any consideration on how they will pay for it,' he said.

Labor denied its plan is sneaky, insisting that costings have not been announced because a review by the Productivity Commission would be required before implementing a 90 per cent subsidy.

Labor sources also say it's much harder and more expensive to cost policies from Opposition because the Government can draw on an army of public servants which Labor doesn't have.

'Labor is not going to redesign Scott Morrison's broken childcare system from Opposition,' said Labor childcare spokesman Amanda Rishworth.

'We want to fix his mess properly, and this will begin with a comprehensive Productivity Commission review.'

But the Coalition says Labor should make use of the independent Parliamentary Budget Office which can cost policies for free.

Labor believes its childcare policy will boost the nation's wealth by getting more parents into work.

Party sources denied the aim is to 'sneak' into government with a 'small target strategy', insisting Labor has a 'bold, smart vision' to bring down the cost of living while tackling the national debt and maintaining essential services.

They say Labor's policies are detailed, especially its climate change package which Mr Albanese claims is based on 'the most comprehensive modelling ever done for any policy by any Opposition in Australia's history since Federation.'

The election is expected in May.
The jet's crashing site in international waters had fueled belief that China would recover the plane before the U.S., due to it's advanced technology

At the time, the USS Vinson had been conducting training in the strategic South China Sea, much of which is claimed by China

Seven U.S. military personnel were hurt in the January 24 accident on the deck of the aircraft carrier

The United States has recovered an F-35C warplane that fell into the South China Sea in a landing mishap in January, the U.S. Navy said on Thursday, fearing China would get involved in its retrieval.

The wreckage was recovered from a depth of about 12,400 feet using a remotely operated vehicle to attach rigging to the aircraft, which was then hoisted up by a diving support ship, the U.S. Navy's 7th Fleet said in an email.

It will be delivered to a nearby military installation to aid in the ongoing investigation of the incident, the statement said.

'The recovery effort shows the U.S. Navy commitment to its assets, and a free and open Indo-Pacific,' it said.

Members of the US 7th Fleet Task Force 75 and the Naval Sea Systems Command's Supervisor of Salvage and Diving were in charge of the operation. They used 'the diving support construction vessel Picasso' to retrieve the wreckage.

Seven U.S. military personnel were hurt in the January 24 accident on the deck of the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson, which had been conducting training in the strategic South China Sea, much of which is claimed by China.

The warplane ripped through four of the arresting cables on the ship's deck, which are normally used to catching tail hooks on aircrafts in order to keep them grounded.

A notable amount of debris was scattered on the deck's catapult tracks. Still, the carrier was ready to land and launch aircraft within 45 minutes of the crash.

The U.S. Navy said on Thursday it has recovered the stealth F-35C fighter jet that fell into the South China Sea after a crash landing aboard the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson in January

The F-35C fighter jet's crashing site in international waters had fueled speculation that China might want to retrieve the plane before the U.S., due to it's advanced technology

The jet's pilot was ejected and recovered from the water. He was taken to Manila in the Philippines along with two other injured sailors from the crash. Four additional sailors who were wounded were treated aboard the Vesson by medical personnel.

'When the mishap happened, we had additional aircraft airborne that needed to land,' a defense official who was not authorized to comment publicly on ongoing investigations, told Defense News in February. 'The training kicked in immediately.'

Photos and video footage of the January crash circulated online, showing the jet crashing onto the deck before gliding through the ship's strip on fire and falling into the South China Sea.

A Navy ensign, a senior chief and three chiefs were later charged with failure to obey an order under Article 92 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice for the release of the footage.

The Vinson, which travelled to the Far East in August of last year, returned to San Diego in February. It was the first deployment to have the F-35C Lightning II fighter jet and the CMV-22 Osprey onboard.

Members of the US 7th Fleet Task Force 75 and the Naval Sea Systems Command's Supervisor of Salvage and Diving were in charge of operations regarding the F-35C fighter jet's retrieval (pictured)

A F-35C Joint Strike Fighter jet deployed aboard the aircraft carrier Carl Vinson launches off the ship's flight deck January 22, 2022, in the South China Sea, just two days before the crash

The Navy had previously brushed off media reports suggesting there were fears the $100 million fighter jet could fall into the hands of China, which said at the time that it had no interest in recovering the warplane.

The F-35C includes some of the Navy's most advanced technology.

'We advise [the US] to contribute more to regional peace and stability, rather than flexing force at every turn in [the South China Sea],' Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said.

Shortly after the crash, Navy officials described the damage to the Carl Vinson as 'superficial' and said it quickly resumed normal operations.
A customer suspected of potential shoplifting was shot in the head by a police officer, while being held down by two other cops and a civilian, inside a Californian Walmart.

Shocking police bodycam footage, and store surveillance video, captured the moment Ernesto Paul Aguilar, 30, of Santa Ana, was shot at point blank range.

Aguilar was being pinned down by two deputies and a civilian, as the officers struggled to handcuff him, when one of the officers yelled out 'He's got a gun! Shoot him!'

Another officer raised their gun and shot Aguilar in the head.

Incredibly, Aguilar survived the shooting and is now recovering in jail. His bail is set at nearly $2.3 million.

The incident began at around 10pm on January 19 at a Lake Forest Walmart when a store security guard called 911 to report that Aguilar and a woman he identified as his wife were planning to steal using a 'fake' Walmart+ receipt.

It is unclear why the store detective believed this as they had not viewed the receipt and Aguilar was in line at the checkout holding cash when the police arrived.

They say they were in store to buy their children toys and diapers.

Shocking police bodycam footage, and store surveillance video, captured the moment Ernesto Paul Aguilar, 30, of Santa Ana, was shot at point blank range

Deputy 3 can be seen throwing Aguilar's gun away from the men and as Deputy 1 pulls out his gun and shot Aguilar in the head once

Officers struggled to control Aguilar as he wrestled with them on the ground. It took three deputies and a civilian to get him on the ground

Deputy 1 found a gun on Aguilar, which Deputy 3 can be seen removing from the man's body

Ernesto Paul Aguilar, 30, of Santa Ana, (pictured) was shot at point blank range at a Wake Forest Walmart on January 19 around 10pm after he was accused of stealing and officers found a knife and gun on him

The officers approached the pair in the checkout line and asked them to leave 'peacefully' before one of the deputies told Aguilar: 'Why are you doing this? You're like 40 years old and you're still stealing, dude? Get a job, let's go.'

Aguilar and his wife insisted that they were there to make a legal purchase, and had cash in hand. They added they had never been to that Walmart location.

The deputy told them that they were not going to be arrested for shoplifting but they were going to be charged with trespassing so they would not be allowed to return.

As they made their way through the door of the store, another deputy informed his colleague that Aguilar had 'got a knife.'

Aguilar reached calmly for the weapon to which the first deputy told him to 'get your f**king hand off the knife' and to 'get the f**k out of the store.'

He then changed his mind and told Aguilar to 'put his hand behind back' and began to handcuff him. Aguilar began to struggle and yelled out to the woman he was with.

Deputy 1 and 3 are seen standing in the Walmart after the shooting as Deputy 2 reported the shooting to superiors

'You're going to put you in handcuffs, because I don't know if you have other weapons,' Deputy 2 told him. 'If you fight, we're going to get on the ground. I'm promising you right now that you're not going to win this fight.'

Two officers struggled to handcuff Aguilar before slamming him into a display of water bottles.

At this point, Aguilar began to beg customers for 'help.'

'Can somebody help me? I'm not trying to do nothing,' he pleaded. He told officers he was 'freaking out' and managed to break away from the wall, causing the officers to struggle to control him.

Deputy 2 called for backup on his radio and as Deputy 1 abandoned Aguiar's wife to help the other two, while a civilian also joined in to help.

The deputies managed to get them to him to the ground and Aguilar pleaded with the officers: 'My money, my money, please  I need my money.'

His wife told NBC Los Angeles that he had $1,000 in cash on him and 'was going to pay for the items in his cart.'

Shortly after they got Aguilar on the floor, Deputy 1 discover he has a gun.

They corner Aguilar into packaged water bottles during the struggle and Aguilar pleaded with customers to 'help him'

A customer suspected of potential shoplifting was shot in the head by a police officer, while being held down by two other cops and a civilian, inside a Californian Walmart

Aguiar's wife (circled in the upper right corner), ran out of the door after Deputy 1 ran back to help the other officers

Deputy 1 frantically started screaming: 'He's got a gun! He's got a gun! Shoot him, shoot him!'

A civilian also started yelling: 'Shoot him, shoot him, shoot him, shoot him.' He can was later heard saying: 'Nice, nice, nice,' after Aguilar was shot.

Deputy 1 shot one bullet into Aguilar's head who immediately went limp. Deputy 2 called it in over his radio.

A gun can be seen in Aguilar's waistband, near his knife, in the video before one of the deputies grabbed it and threw it across the register away from the struggle.

Aguilar, who survived the shooting, can be heard saying: 'I'm dying' after being shot. He was taken to the hospital and underwent surgery.

He was charged with several felonies, including assault on a peace officer and possession of a gun missing a serial number.

The shooting is still under investigation, the Orange County Sheriff's Office said.

Aguilar's wife said she didn't know he had weapons on him and said that 'carrying a gun into Walmart is like a death sentence.'

'Any time someone calls Ernie to help them out he's willing to help them out,' she told NBC Los Angeles. 'He was buying me toys and diapers for my children.' It is unclear what their relationship is.

After she saw Aguilar being wrestled to he floor, she took off and got into her car, she said.

'I wasn't under arrest, didn't commit a crime, so even if they got my license plate I didn't think they'd come and get me for anything because I didn't commit a crime,' she told NBC Los Angeles. She was later found inside her home and said she didn't know Aguilar had been shot.

'I just thought he got beat up real bad. I thought that's why they put him in the hospital. I didn't know he got shot in the head,' she said.

'I'm traumatized. Just thinking about Walmart makes me want to throw up. I will never step foot inside a Walmart ever again in my life.'
A United Australia Party Senate candidate has quit his bid for election over social media posts praising Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

Sean Ambrose was an endorsed UAP Senate candidate for New South Wales but his support of Russia's invasion of Ukraine put him at odds with the party founded by billionaire Clive Palmer.

UAP leader Craig Kelly had called for 'united condemnation' of Mr Putin's actions in invading the sovereign nation, which has caused death and destruction in the country.

Other tweets leading up to his withdrawal commended Mr Putin, referenced conspiracy theories, and criticised Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky and the media.

Former United Australia Party Senate candidate Sean Ambrose pictured with the party's leader, Craig Kelly

My childhood hero was Batman.



My view on Putin is that hes like Batman.



Hes the good guy that doesnt necessarily play by the rules and is most often misunderstood but he is always there when hes needed. https://t.co/vCDM4E3cSO  Sean Ambrose (@Anmchadh44) March 2, 2022

'My childhood hero was batman, My view on Putin is that he's like Batman,' Mr Ambrose praised Mr Putin in one post.

'He's the good guy that doesn't necessarily play by the rules and is often misunderstood but he is always there when he's needed.'

'Apparently 65.5 per cent of Ukrainians are unvaccinated. The woke fake lefties are now stating that they are standing in solidarity with the people of the Ukraine but wouldn't stand with their own people yet are claiming freedom and liberties and are willing to see WWZ. I'm confused,' read another.

On Thursday, Mr Ambrose's Putin-positive posts culminated in the announcement he had withdrawn his nomination as a Senate candidate with the UAP.

'I do not support the acts of aggression by NATO against the people of Ukraine and it's creation of a pariah state and I commend Putin for his fight against the New World Order,' he said.

Mr Ambrose believes that Mr Putin is in Ukraine to fight the 'new world order'

Sean Ambrose (pictured left) was the ALP candidate for the Queensland seat of Wide Bay in 2004

The UAP last week also disendorsed Victorian candidate for the electorate of Macnamara, Jefferson Earl, over his views on the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

Like Mr Ambrose, Mr Earl has posted pro-Russian material that conflicted with the UAP's own policies.

Earl addressed a tweet directly to Mr Putin in January, inquiring about the state of Ukraine.

'President Putin. I have supported u [sic] for many years,' he posted.

'I am the endorsed candidate for the seat of Macnamara in Melbourne Australia for the United Australia Party. Is there any truth to what the media is saying?'

He tweeted in February: 'My words about Putin are inline with my thinking and are not a UAP policy or thought. I stand by my reasoning that MAD [mutually assured destruction] and not breaking its balance is essential to preventing war.'

Mr Earl was disendorsed shortly after.

UAP leader and current Federal MP Craig Kelly said: 'It is very important that the entire world is united in condemning Putin's conduct to the Ukraine.'

My words about Putin are inline with my thinking and are not a UAP policy or thought. I stand by my reasoning that MAD and not breaking its balance is essential to preventing war.  Jefferson Earl (@JeffersonEarl1) February 23, 2022

'Ukraine has become a bit of a swamp for the new world order. If anything we should be commending Vladimir Putin for cleaning their mess up,' Mr Ambrose said in a podcast

Both Mr Earl and Mr Ambrose have appeared on the podcast of Russian nationalist Simeon Boikov talking about the UAP's stance on the Ukraine conflict.

Daily Mail Australia has previously exclusively reported on Boikov, a Putin supporter who campaigned but did not run in the recent Strathfield by-election in NSW.

Mr Boikov has called the Australian Prime Minister a 'complete fool' who is putting Australia's national security at risk by supporting Ukraine.

'We've [Mr Ambrose and Mr Earl] got no take on the conflict, but [we dislike] not being able to have a differing opinion to what the party has chosen.' Mr Ambrose said during the podcast.

'It's quite clear to me that Ukraine has become a bit of a swamp for the new world order,' he continued.

'If anything we should be commending Vladimir Putin for cleaning their mess up.'

Mr Ambrose cited debunked theories surrounding US-owned Ukrainian biological weapons facilities and child sex trafficking in support of his argument.

Ultra pro-Russian nationalist Simeon Boikov has hosted both of the now-former UAP candidates on his latest podcast episode

Mr Ambrose has previously been critical of the public reaction to news that UAP chairman Clive Palmer had allegedly purchased a motorcar belonging to Adolf Hitler.

When MP Patrick Gorman earlier in the week wrote to block Mr Palmer's importation of Hitler's Mercedes, Mr Ambrose tweeted: 'The likes of @AustralianLabor are no better than ISIS terrorists with their destruction of buildings from antiquity in Syria. Such items of history whether good or bad need to be preserved and respected'.

Mr Palmer has since denied he had purchased the car.
Police are searching for the knife-wielding straphanger who slashed another man who accidentally bumped into him at a Greenwich Village subway station Sunday - the latest in a string of violent transit attacks.

Startling video released by the police captured the moment the suspect whipped out a large knife and lunged at a group of men on the stairs, slashing a 28-year-old man.

It happened around 8 p.m. on Sunday at the West 4th Street-Washington Square subway station in Manhattan.

The NYPD says the suspect was walking up the stairs to the A/C train platform when he was accidentally bumped from behind by a fellow commuter at the station.

The video shows the attacker, holding a large knife, wheeling round and leaning over the railing of the stairs to slash angrily at the group of men.

Police are searching for the knife-wielding straphanger (pictured) who slashed another man during a dispute after he was accidentally bumped at a Greenwich Village subway station

Startling video released by the police captured the moment the suspect whipped out a large knife and lunged at a group of men, slashing one of them

One of the men is seen on the video hurling a drink can at the suspect, and liquid sprays everywhere, as the suspect continues slashing at them with his knife

One of the men responds by hurling a drink can at the suspect as he approaches them, in an attempt to keep him at bay.

The suspects appears to back off to avoid being sprayed before returning to jab at the group before jumping on a train.

Police say the victim was treated at the scene for a minor cut to his hand.

NYPD is asking the publics help identifying and tracking down the slasher.

Anyone with information is asked to call Crime Stoppers at (800) 577-TIPS.

Police are asking the publics help identifying and tracking down the slasher

Transit crime is up significantly from last year, with 375 incidents as of February 27

It's the latest in a series of disturbing crimes to have been caught on camera across NYC as crime continues to soar.

Overall crime in New York City is up 47.7 percent from last year.

Last month, a man was accused of smearing feces in a woman's face on the subway.

Suspect Frank Abrokwa was also arrested on January 7, for allegedly punching a 30-year-old man on a subway platform at 125th Street and Lenox Avenue and on February 5, for hitting a 53-year-old man at the Port Authority Bus Terminal.

Just one week before the feces subway attack, Abrokwa was arrested for allegedly threatening a hardware store employee with a screwdriver but had been released without bail.

It is a regular pattern for the criminal menace who has been arrested 44 times only to be released to terrorize another New Yorker.

Frank Abrokwa, 37, (pictured in his mugshot) accused of smearing feces on a woman in a subway attack last week, was released without bail, arrested again for a Brooklyn hate crime and given supervised release

But each time, thanks to New York's lax new bail reform laws, the career criminal did not have to post bail and was released.

NYPD police union head Pat Lynch criticized New York's bail reform laws for allowing people like Abrokwa to roam the streets.

Overall crime in New York City is up 47.7 percent from last year.

During his State of the Union address on Tuesday, President Joe Biden directly took aim at progressives' calls to 'defund the police,' earning a standing ovation from Republicans and sour looks from the progressive Squad.

He followed it by urging Congress to pass more gun control measures to 'save lives.'

The number of shooting incidents this year is up by 14.7 percent compared to this time last year, with shooting victims up by 17.8 percent, according to the latest data from the NYPD

We should all agree: The answer is not to Defund the police. The answer is to FUND the police with the resources and training they need to protect our communities, the president said.

The House chamber erupted in bipartisan applause, including standing ovations from top Republicans like House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Minority Whip Steve Scalise.

Biden then touted his administrations efforts to provide resources to both hire new police officers and equip them with body cameras and other measures that provide more accountability.

The president also acknowledged the toll of the violent crime wave gripping US cities by taking a moment to remember the two young NYPD officers who were slain when responding to a domestic violence call earlier this year.
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The White House is considering sending Vice President Kamala Harris to Eastern Europe to show solidarity with Ukraine, according to sources familiar with discussions.

As well as the Polish capital Warsaw and the Romanian capital Bucharest, possible options include a visit to American troops stationed in Romania and a trip to the border with Ukraine, an area that has become the center of a humanitarian emergency as people flee for safety.

Details emerged on Thursday, the eighth day of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

With a huge armored column apparently bogged down outside the capital Kyiv, Russian forces turned to huge missile and artillery bombardments to intensify pressure on Ukrainian cities.

A source told The Hill that there is no current discussion of sending President Joe Biden himself to the region.

'A presidential visit is a heavier logistical lift,' the source said.

'The vice president has a smaller footprint and is historically more nimble.'

Harris last month traveled to the Munich Security Conference, where she met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and other world leaders to promise firm US action if Vladimir Putin pressed ahead with invasion.

She also spoke to European leaders this week including the Polish and Romanian prime ministers.

During the conversations she 'reaffirmed our ironclad commitment to NATO's Article 5,' said an official, reassuring allies that the US would come to their defense if attacked.

'You can expect the vice president will continue to engage with allies and partners on these issues,' another official told The Hill.

The White House is considering sending Vice President Kamala Harris to Warsaw, Poland, and Bucharest, Romania, in a show of solidarity with Ukraine and with NATO allies and European partners

The trip could include stops in the Romanian capital Bucharest and the Polish capital Warsaw as well as a visit to the border

Kamala Harris met Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Munich last month as fears of a Russian invasion grew

Ukraine claimed that Russia has lost 5,840 troops since the beginning of the invasion, though these figures cannot be verified (pictured: a Ukrainian territorial defence fighter examines a destroyed Russian armoured vehicle)

A destroyed tank is seen blocking a street with damaged houses in the background in the town of Bucha, near Kyiv, as Russia's invasion of Ukraine continues, March 1, 2022

The US has already deployed an extra 3000 troops in Poland and Romania in recent days.

Meanwhile, Secretary of State Antony Blinken left Thursday for a six-day trip to Belgium, Poland, Moldova and the Baltic states to help coordinate the international response.

Earlier the Ukrainian president complained that the US and the West had acted too late to protect his country from the might of the Russian army and described how 'the end of the world has arrived' during a news conference.

Zelensky appealed for more help during a defiant appearance in his capital Kyiv.

He repeated his plea for a NATO no-fly zone to protect his cities and troops.

And eight days into the war he said he now had good lines of communication with the President Joe Biden and other leaders, but lamented that they only stepped up their support once Russia launched its invasion.

'It's a pity it began after the beginning of this war, but we have it. And my appreciation to [Biden] and to his team. We can speak now often,' he said

'The whole world is late with Ukraine, making decisions.'

Zelensky and his allies had urged the West to step up financial sanctions on Moscow as Vladimir Putin massed his troops on the border with Ukraine to deter an invasion.

But the White House and allies stepped up its pressure only after Putin ordered troops into Ukraine.

More support arrived on Thursday in the form of sanctions on oligarchs and other's in the Russian president's inner circle.

Now his country was fighting for survival, said Zelensky.

'The end of the world has arrived,' he said.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the US and the West had acted too late to protect his country from Russian might and described how 'the end of the world has arrived' during a news conference on Thursday

Pictured: A map showing the Kyiv region and the area occupied by Russian troops as they close in on Ukraine's capital

Ukrainian forces have inflicted heavy losses on advancing Russian forces as bitter fighting in Ukraine enters its seventh day, according to a spokesperson for the nation's general staff (picture: Russian armoured vehicles stand destroyed or abandoned in the streets of Kharkiv)

After saying the world had been too slow to act, he called on Western leaders to step up their support now with a no-fly zone that would deny access to Russian warplanes.

He said the world was too slow to offer support for Ukraine and prodded Western leaders to enforce a no-fly zone over Ukraine to deny access to Russian warplanes that were bombing civilian areas.

'We want a no-fly zone because our people are being killed. From Belarus, from Russia  these missiles, these Iskander missiles and bomber planes, are coming,' Zelensky said.

'I asked President Biden, and Scholz and Macronand I said, if you cant provide a no-fly zone right now, then tell us when?'

The White House and and NATO allies have ruled out a move that would directly pit its warplanes against Russian forces.

Foreign leaders have hailed the spirit of the Ukrainian resistance, which is credited with slowing or stopping the Russian advance.

But that has only prompted Putin and his generals to double down.

Russia has accelerated the arrival of troops into Ukraine, a senior U.S. defense official told reporters, with 90 percent of the assembled troops now having crossed into Ukraine.

More than 150,000 troops, along with tanks, aircraft, armored vehicles carriers and missile systems had gathered around the borders ahead of the invasion.

The result was a day of fierce fighting.

The deputy mayor of Mariupol said hours of shelling and besieging Russian troops had cut off power, food and water to his city.

Civilians help construct makeshift barricades around the nuclear power plant at Zaporizhzhia to stop Russia capturing it

A damaged armored vehicle is abandoned on the street after shelling in the city of Kharkiv, Ukraine

Part of the Karazin National University campus in the city of Kharkiv is destroyed after being struck by a Russian missile which was seemingly intended for a nearby police or interior ministry building

'We are near to a humanitarian catastrophe,' said Sergiy Orlov. 'Russian forces are several kilometers away on all sides.

'The Ukrainian army is brave and they will continue to defend the city, but Russia does not fight with their army, they just destroy districts... We are in a terrible situation.'

And officials in Kyiv, Ukraines second-largest city Kharkiv, and the northern city of Chernihiv, said they had come under fierce attack but remained under Ukrainian control.

A Pentagon official told reporters that that the invasion prong aimed at Kyiv appeared to be stalled.

In the southern part of the besieged country, news report indicated the Russians had taken the city of Kherson, but U.S. officials said they could not independently confirm its fall.

Russian forces did get closer to Mariupol, another city in Ukraines south, they said, and are shelling the city.

The Russians are also shelling Kyiv and Kharkiv, with more rounds hitting civilian targets.

'Obviously, are hitting residential areas. There's no doubt about that,' said the official.

The degree to which that is intentional - and intentionally precise, in that regard - is difficult for us to assess. But clearly it's happening.'
NHS waiting lists are now so long that more than eight in ten patients are considering going private, a damning poll shows.

Millions are in such pain they are even prepared to plunge themselves into debt or raid their savings or pension pots to get treatment.

Doctors warn patients are getting significantly worse while they wait, leading to widespread dissatisfaction and misery.

Eight in ten Britons on waiting lists now say they feel failed by the NHS, the survey of 1,000 adults by ITVs Good Morning Britain reveals.

Millions are in such pain they are even prepared to plunge themselves into debt or raid their savings or pension pots to get treatment

It comes after the service prioritised Covid patients during the pandemic, causing huge disruption to routine care.

The NHS constitution says people should get the treatment they need within 18 weeks of being referred by their GP.

But waiting lists in England stand at a record high of 6.1million, with 310,813 patients waiting more than a year and some for more than two.

Alarmingly, Health Secretary Sajid Javid has warned the list is likely to get even longer before it starts to fall.

More than half of those questioned have been waiting for more than the 18-week target.

The NHS constitution says people should get the treatment they need within 18 weeks of being referred by their GP

Some 85 per cent have paid for or are considering private medical treatment, with 68 per cent ending up in debt as a result. Of these, 84 per cent are worried about how they will pay it off.

Meanwhile, doctors warn more people are having their referrals to hospital rejected. A shocking 93 per cent say patients outcomes have worsened while their treatment is delayed  58 per cent significantly, a separate poll of 761 family doctors by GP magazine Pulse revealed.

In addition, 85 per cent say there has been an increase in referrals to secondary care being rejected or bounced back.

Professor Neil Mortensen, president of the Royal College of Surgeons, said: These findings further highlight the high number of patients facing long waits. The impact can be devastating, as people are left in limbo and in pain. Thats something we have to tackle. We must get back to providing timely surgery.

Rachel Power, chief of the Patients Association, said: Opting for private healthcare is not a genuine choice if youre going private because you can no longer bear to wait for NHS treatment, and especially if paying for it puts you in debt.

Patients waiting for care need more support than theyre getting. How many will be beyond help by the time they do receive hospital treatment?

The NHS said the pandemic has inevitably disrupted how we deliver care and our routine service. A spokesman urged anyone with health concerns to contact their local GP or get in touch with 111 online.
Families face paying hundreds of pounds more a year for energy if the cost of responding to climate change is put on them, ministers have been warned.

The Government wants to reach net zero emissions by 2050  but achieving the target will require investment of 50billion a year by 2030, according to official estimates.

Energy economist Professor Nick Butler criticised ministers for failing to set out how this will be paid, and warned it could cost households 400 a year each.

He predicted the green levies, which add about 160 a year to bills, could more than double to fund the 50billion investments.

Somebody has to meet that, he said.

Either government pays for it, which is more borrowing or taxation, or some comes on consumer bills.

Families face paying hundreds of pounds more a year for energy if the cost of responding to climate change is put on them, ministers have been warned

The Government wants to reach net zero emissions by 2050  but achieving the target will require investment of 50billion a year by 2030, according to official estimates

'I could easily see the green levy doubling from its current point  and could well be more.

'Theyve just not talked about the whole thing yet.

Professor Butler advised the Lords industry and regulators committee, which today publishes a report warning that funding the transition through charges to billpayers is regressive.

The peers urged ministers to set out how the net zero ambition will be paid for.

Funding the transition primarily through charges to billpayers... involves invidious trade-offs, making some consumers pay for investments that will not directly benefit them, the report states.

Experts have estimated that the average household faces a hit of at least 1,200 this year as taxes and energy bills rise.

A Government spokesman yesterday said it was on track to meet the 2050 target, adding: Detailed measures are set out in our comprehensive net zero strategy, which has been widely welcomed by a range of experts.




By Kim Jae-heun







LS Group is providing manpower, technology and information to seek mutual growth with its partner companies while helping them become hidden champions.







It is also engaging in technology-sharing projects with various small- and medium-sized companies, as well as agricultural and fishing foundations, to build smart factories around the country.







LS Group's cable manufacturing unit LS Cable & System has been reducing the burden on its subcontractors by reflecting increased copper costs in supply prices in conjunction with the international price of the material on a monthly basis. Copper is the main material in LS Cable's original equipment manufacturer (OEM) products.







LS Cable posts changes in prices of raw materials on its website for its partner companies to check and adjust their purchase unit prices.







LS Group is encouraging safety management within the company while actively engaging in ESG programs as well.







It plans to provide consulting regarding ESG management standards for its partner companies by encouraging them to use renewable energy, while establishing safety systems to prevent accidents. At the same time, LS Group will hold meetings with the companies it partners with to listen to their difficulties in running business and offer solutions.







LS Electric is promoting a "win-win smart factory construction project," targeting local small- and medium-sized firms.







Last August, it invited the representatives of 15 subcontractors in Cheongju, North Chungcheong Province to sign a memorandum of understanding to build smart factories there.







LS Electric is running a smart factory open platform called "Tech Square." Here, anybody can participate to gain information on finding suppliers or providers in the industry, while sharing information on managing related projects, as well as providing maintenance services.




Nineteen children and an employee were hospitalized after a car crashed into a California preschool.

Ambulances transported fourteen children to local hospitals on Thursday after a Suzuki sport utility vehicle crashed into Great Adventures Christian Preschool in Anderson, California.

The SUV ended up completely inside the main area of the building, according to a Police Department photo and Facebook statement.

Police said the majority of those transported were for 'precautionary reasons,' with two of the children taken to a pediatric intensive care unit at UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento, AP reported.

Five other children were taken to the hospital by parents, police said.

According to the Anderson Police Department, two kids were pinned under the vehicle when they arrived.

At the time of the crash (pictured) there were nineteen children and at least two staff members in the preschool

Nineteen children were hospitalized after a car crashed into into Great Adventures Christian Preschool in Anderson, California (pictured)

No fatalities have been reported and police said the severity of the injuries are currently unknown.

The driver, a woman from Anderson, cooperated with authorities, didn't show any sign of being under the influence of drugs or alcohol, and was released after providing a statement, police said.

No arrest have been made and the cause of the crash is under investigation, police said.

At the time of the crash there were nineteen children and at least two staff members in the preschool.
President Joe Biden on Thursday signed a law to protect the rights of victims of sexual harassment in the workplace, allowing them to seek justice in court, accompanied by one of the nation's most prominent campaigners for the measure.

Gretchen Carlson, the former Fox News presenter, has worked to end the use of forced arbitration proceedings ever since she sued network boss Roger Ailes for sexual harassment.

'A dear friend of mine said to me, "You know, Gretchen something good is going to come out of this," and at the time I didn't quite believe her,' she said

'But you know what? She was right.

'Something great has come from my decision to come forward and stand alongside millions of others to say that it's not okay for companies to hide harassment, assault.'

Biden signed into law the Ending Forced Arbitration of Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment Act, which bars employment contracts from forcing people to settle claims of sexual assault or harassment through private arbitration proceedings instead of in a court of law.

Gretchen Carlson (seen behind Biden's shoulder) joined President Joe Biden and other campaigners in the East Room of the White House for the bill signing ceremony on Thursday

Carlson's suit against Fox News chief Roger Ailes in 2016 was one of the first high-profile cases of the #metoo movement. He was forced to resign after dozens more women came forward

Employers often benefit from the process, which keeps misconduct allegations from becoming public.

The law is retroactive, freeing individuals who have been bound by arbitration language to pursue legal action against their harassers.

Biden called it a 'momentous day' for justice and fairness in the workplace.

'To those who experienced sexual harassment or assault, you're going to have the right today that you did not have yesterday,' the president said.

An estimated 60 million workers are bound by forced arbitration clauses slipped into their employment contracts, with many unaware the language exists, Biden said.

Private arbitration keeps them from knowing who else may have suffered similar indignities.

As a result of the #MeToo movement, the widespread practice has come under fire for forcing employees to seek recourse without a jury, a chance to appeal an arbitrator's decision or the sunlight of a public court process.

Biden said giving employers absolute power to decide how sexual assault or harassment claims are resolved isn't how justice is supposed to work.

'Some survivors will want their day in court, and that should be their choice and nobody else's choice,' Biden said at a White House ceremony in the East Room where he signed the bill.

Carlson, 55, said it was a great way to kick off Women's History Month.

'Today I'm here on behalf of the millions of American workers, who up until today had been voiceless - silenced for simply having the courage to come forward to say something bad happened at work, and in return they got shunted into the secret chamber of arbitration,' she said.

'I could have never imagined that five years ago after filing my harassment lawsuit against chairman and CEO of Fox News, Roger Ailes, that this day of real change could actually come.'

Ailes was the chairman and chief executive of Fox News when Carlson accused him of sexual assessment. Fox News reportedly settled the suit for $20 million and a public apology

She filed her suit in 2016, prompting dozens of other women to come forward with their own complaints against him.

Ailes resigned soon after.

Carlson settled her lawsuit for a reported $20 million in one of the first high-publicity cases of what would become the #metoo movement.

She choked up as she described the struggle and thanked her family.

'I often say that I did all of this for my children, and nothing would have been complete without them here today,' she said, becoming teaful.

'Kaia and Christian, thank you for bravery and for allowing your mom to transfer my contagious courage to you

Defenders of the arbitration process, including business groups, argue that it is a faster and cheaper way to resolve disputes than through lengthy courtroom proceedings.

The legislation enjoyed broad, bipartisan support in a divided Congress, allowing the Senate to pass it by unanimous consent  a procedure almost never used for significant legislation, especially one affecting tens of millions of people. The House passed the bill 335-97 in February.

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., who has focused on combating sexual harassment and sexual misconduct in the military, originally introduced the bill in 2017 with Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.
Tesco is considering rebranding its Chicken Kiev range to Chicken Kyiv to show support for the Ukrainian people, it was reported last night.

Rival supermarkets Morrisons and Sainsburys are also said to be looking at a name change.

Under Soviet rule, Ukraines capital was known as Kiev but now Ukrainians call it Kyiv.

Waitrose and Marks & Spencer say they have no plans to make the change, according to the Daily Telegraph.

Rival supermarkets Morrisons and Sainsburys are also said to be looking at a name change. A file photo is used above

Some smaller brands and restaurants have been boycotting Russian goods.

The Co-op has already committed to stop selling Russian-made vodka.

The UK artisan food producer Finnebrogue Artisan tweeted that they were renaming their plant-based Chicken Kiev in solidarity with the Ukrainian people.

Campaigners for the renaming of the chicken product claim that changing the spelling is a small and peaceful way to take a stand against Russian aggression.

One tweeted: Lets start a campaign to rename Chicken Kiev, the Russian name for Kyiv, to the Ukrainian name and call it Chicken Kyiv from now on.

Another posted: I still think @marksandspencer is missing a real trick in not renaming its iconic Chicken Kiev - a dish that launched the entire ready meal industry - as Chicken Kyiv and donating profits to Ukraine Red Cross or similar. Come on, guys...
A woman's torso was found inside a garbage bag inside a shopping cart in Brooklyn by a horrified passerby amid a huge spike in New York City crime.

The female corpse was found inside a garbage bag without a head or limbs by a passerby on Pennsylvania and Atlantic Avenues in Brooklyn around 1.45am on Thursday.

The man reportedly saw the garbage bag in the shopping cart and decided to take it but when he peeked inside where he made the grisly discovery.

Police reported that the woman, who has not yet been identified, did not appear to have any gunshot or visible stab wounds, nor any identifying marks like tattoos. The body also did not appear to be decomposed, police said.

The 75th Precinct determined the body was that of an adult woman and said the medical examiner will determine her cause of death and possibly identify her through DNA.

Authorities are now scouring surveillance footage in hopes of identifying the woman's attacker and the incident is under investigation, but locals are worried about safety.

A local student Cynthia Jimenez said they don't feel safe in the city, telling ABC 7: 'They say New York is a dream, an American dream, but I don't feel safe.'

A woman's torso was found inside a garbage bag in a shopping cart in Brooklyn on Thursday. A man who was passing by found the woman after he opened the bag. She did not have a head or limbs (pictured: garbage bags, that do not contain her body, on the street in Brooklyn on Thursday)

The woman was found in a garbage bag, similar to these, around 1.45am on Thursday

Police were still on the scene as late as 7am when a local construction shop employee was denied access to the store to open it as police tape blocked the entrance, The New York Times reported. A pawn shop was also blocked off.

Construction shop owner Sung Hong, 64, was notified of the incident when his employee couldn't get inside the shop. Arriving an hour later from Long Island, Song pleaded with police to let him inside his business.

The South-Korean-turned-New-Yorker said the news of the decapitation have heightened his anxieties about the rising crime in New York City, especially those concerning Asian Americans.

'Its getting worse and worse,' he told The New York Times. 'I dont know whats going on. Its like people have become crazy.'

A local construction shop and pawn shop (pictured) were tapped off by police as they investigated the incident for many hours

Local resident Violent Rodriguez told ABC 7: 'Oh my God, Jesus Christ, cause nowadays anyone is not safe here anymore, I don't know what to do because I work around the corner.'

The busy intersection remained tapped off during the morning commute and it is unknown when it opened back up.

Asian Americans have experienced a 343 percent increase in hate crimes last year with 133 attacks.

A few days ago, a bleach-blond homeless Army veteran was arrested on suspicion of racist attacks on seven Asian women. He allegedly hurled n-word slurs at NYPD cops after his apprehension.

Steven Zajonc, 28, was apprehended for the February 27 attacks on Wednesday, after barricading himself inside a bathroom at the New York Public Library and causing a standoff with the police.

His alleged attacks come after a spate of high-profile attacks on Asian-Americans in recent weeks - two of them deadly. Last week, Asian grandmother GuiYing Ma, 61, died after fighting for three months to recover from brain damage after being smashed in the face with a rock during a New York City street attack.

Overall crime is up almost 50 per cent in New York City.
Around 200 people gathered at a vigil to mark one year since Sarah Everard was abducted and murdered by marching to the Clapham Common bandstand in south London to show 'solidarity'.

A crowd of mourners laid flowers and lit candles on Thursday evening to pay tribute to the 33-year-old marketing executive at the bandstand close to where she was kidnapped by a serving Metropolitan Police officer last year.

The event was organised by the Urban Angels group, which aims to make society safer for women and non-binary people, to 'give the community an opportunity to come together to commemorate all victims of gendered violence'.

Wayne Couzens was handed a whole-life jail term last year after using Covid powers to conduct a fake arrest of the 33-year-old marketing executive as she walked home from a friend's house, before committing crimes so horrific they shocked the nation and undermined confidence in the police.

The 49-year-old, who used his warrant card and handcuffs to carry out the crime, had been planning for at least a month before abducting Ms Everard in Clapham, south London, on the evening of March 3, 2021.

Passing sentence at the Old Bailey in September, Lord Justice Fulford said the case in which a serving officer abused his position was so exceptional that it warranted a whole life order, meaning Couzens will never be freed.

It was the first time the sentence had been imposed for a single murder of an adult not committed in the course of a terror attack.

Yesterday, exactly 12 months on from when Ms Everard first went missing, hundreds marched through Clapham North to the Clapham Common bandstand in south London, as organisers made speeches 'demanding change'. Two police officers also laid flowers at the scene.

Around 200 people gathered at a vigil to mark one year since Sarah Everard was abducted and murdered by marching to the Clapham Common bandstand in south London to show 'solidarity'

A crowd of men and women laid flowers and lit candles on Thursday evening to pay tribute to the 33-year-old marketing executive (pictured) at the bandstand close to where she was kidnapped by a serving Metropolitan Police officer last year

Wayne Couzens (pictured) was handed a whole-life jail term last year after using Covid powers to conduct a fake arrest of the 33-year-old marketing executive as she walked home from a friend's house, before committing crimes so horrific they shocked the nation and undermined confidence in the police

Passing sentence at the Old Bailey in September, Lord Justice Fulford said the case in which a serving officer abused his position was so exceptional that it warranted a whole life order, meaning Couzens will never be freed. It was the first time the sentence had been imposed for a single murder of an adult not committed in the course of a terror attack. Pictured: Crowds gather at Ms Everard's vigil in Clapham, south London

Yesterday, exactly 12 months on from when Ms Everard first went missing, hundreds marched through Clapham North to the Clapham Common bandstand in south London, as organisers made speeches 'demanding change'. Two police officers also laid flowers at the scene

Statement from Ms Everard's family on the first anniversary of her horrific murder 'It is a year since Sarah died and we remember her today, as every day, with all our love. Our lives have changed forever and we live with the sadness of our loss. Sarah was wonderful and we miss her all the time. 'Over the past year we have been overwhelmed with the kindness shown to us, not just by family and friends, but by the wider public. We are immensely grateful to everyone for their support, it has meant such a lot to us and has comforted us through this terrible time. 'Sadly, Sarah is not the only woman to have lost her life recently in violent circumstances and we would like to extend our deepest sympathy to other families who are also grieving.' Advertisement

Event organiser Madison Hall, 25, said: 'The purpose of the event is to give the community an opportunity to come together to commemorate all victims of gendered violence and also pay respect to and remember those women that have lost their lives.'

A similar rally also took place outside Kelvingrove Art Gallery in central Glasgow.

In the days after Sarah's murder the bandstand became a focal point for an outpouring of grief and anger calling for more awareness for women's safety.

Police were then slammed for breaking up a vigil after hundreds defied orders to not attend a cancelled organised event during the covid lockdown.

Now a year on, well wishers have laid flowers at the site in Sarah's memory.

The Women's Institute also put up bunting around the bandstand highlighting Sarah and every other woman killed in the UK since Sarah's horrific death which shocked the nation.

Yesterday afternoon the family of Ms Everard paid tribute to her, saying she was 'wonderful' and that they 'miss her all the time'.

In a statement released through the Metropolitan Police, they said they have been 'overwhelmed' by the public's support.

Her family said: 'It is a year since Sarah died and we remember her today, as every day, with all our love.

'Our lives have changed forever and we live with the sadness of our loss. Sarah was wonderful and we miss her all the time.

'Over the past year we have been overwhelmed with the kindness shown to us, not just by family and friends, but by the wider public.

'We are immensely grateful to everyone for their support, it has meant such a lot to us and has comforted us through this terrible time.

'Sadly, Sarah is not the only woman to have lost her life recently in violent circumstances and we would like to extend our deepest sympathy to other families who are also grieving.'

The Metropolitan Police force has also issued a statement, which read: 'Our thoughts are with Sarah Everard's family and loved ones. One year on we remain deeply disgusted and shamed that a Met police officer was responsible for Sarah's appalling murder.'

Event organiser Madison Hall, 25, said: 'The purpose of the event is to give the community an opportunity to come together to commemorate all victims of gendered violence and also pay respect to and remember those women that have lost their lives'. Pictured: Crowds gather at Ms Everard's vigil in Clapham, south London

In the days after Sarah's murder the bandstand became a focal point for an outpouring of grief and anger calling for more awareness for women's safety. Police were then slammed for breaking up a vigil after hundreds defied orders to not attend a cancelled organised event during the covid lockdown

Yesterday afternoon the family of Ms Everard paid tribute to her, saying she was 'wonderful' and that they 'miss her all the time'. Pictured: Crowds gather at Ms Everard's vigil in Clapham, south London

The Women's Institute also put up bunting around the bandstand highlighting Sarah and every other woman killed in the UK since Sarah's horrific death which shocked the nation

Women 'demand change' on anniversary of Ms Everard's death Women will be demanding change at a memorial protest to mark the anniversary of the murder of Sarah Everard, organisers have said. The killing of the 33-year-old - who was kidnapped, raped and murdered by serving Met police officer Wayne Couzens as she walked home in south London - sparked outrage across the country one year ago. A rally is planned to remember Ms Everard, and other women killed by men, outside Holyrood on Thursday. Politicians including SNP MP Hannah Bardell and Labour MSPs Monica Lennon and Pauline McNeill are due to speak at the event, as well as Rape Crisis Scotland chief Sandy Brindley. Strut Safe founder Alice Jackson said the event has been planned as a 'coming together to mark a year since the passing of Sarah Everard'. Speaking on BBC Radio Scotland's Good Morning Scotland programme, she added: 'It's not only demanding change and mourning the countless others lost to violence, but to demonstrate that progress is inevitable, it is the only path we will accept. 'It is to let those in Holyrood and wider society know that there is no place in our society for those who perpetrate violence, for those who protect the people who perpetrate it and encourage it. 'So we are just asking people to join us, to come together with us.' Strut Safe was set up in the wake of Ms Everard's murder, with volunteers providing a free service to help women walk home safely in Edinburgh, along with phone support in the rest of the UK. Ms Everard's murder in March 2021 'exposed the gravity of the situation in terms of how much misogyny there is in our culture, the brutality of misogynistic violence that many of us are constantly threatened by and suffer', Ms Jackson added. She said: 'It has served as a reminder for many and a wake-up call for so many of us that we are not protected or valued by some of the institutions that claim to do so. 'In the year since her passing we have lost so many more to violence, despite promises after her murder that her death would incite meaningful change.' On Thursday evening, a walk will take place in south-west London, which organisers The Urban Angels said is in memory of 'victims of gendered violence.' The group, which aims to make society safer for women and non-binary people, wrote it is a 'chance for us all to stand in solidarity and show that we both demand and support change.' The event will begin at Clapham North underground station at 7pm and will finish at the Clapham Common bandstand, near where Ms Everard went missing and the location of a socially distanced vigil held in her memory last year. Advertisement

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Boris Johnson has said it is 'unacceptable' that many women and girls still face violence and perpetrators must be held to account.

'It is unacceptable that so many women and girls still fear and face violence and abuse, and perpetrators must be held to account for their actions. Everyone deserves to feel safe on our streets.'

A non-statutory inquiry has since been launched - led by Dame Elish Angiolini - who is looking at how Couzens was able to work as a police officer for three different forces despite concerns about his behaviour.

Following this, there are plans for a second part that would look at wider issues in policing.

The Met has also commissioned its own review of the culture and standards at the force, including Couzens' former unit - the Parliamentary and Diplomatic Protection Command.

The past year has seen a number of high-profile alleged stranger murders of women, including the deaths of PCSO Julia James and teachers Sabina Nessa and Ashling Murphy.

Another case saw labourer Valentin Lazar, 21, jailed for life for beating 45-year-old Maria Rawlings to death after a chance meeting on a bus.

London mayor Sadiq Khan also paid tribute to Ms Everard, and said he wanted every woman and girl to feel safe on the streets.

Mr Khan said: 'I am clear, we cannot simply respond to male violence against women and girls - we must prevent it. I want every women and girl to be safe, and to feel safe - whatever the time of day and wherever they are in the capital,' he said.

'I will continue to do everything within my power to ensure that ending violence against women and girls is treated with the utmost urgency, both by our police and society as a whole.'

Lydia Davies, a 53-year-old nanny from Wales who has lived and worked in Clapham for over six years said that she and other local nannies and mothers had helped in the search for Sarah, and that every woman she knew had been deeply affected by the shocking events of last March.

She said: 'I don't know how to feel right now, it is really tough.

'What has even happened since then? Have any laws been brought in? Have any of these officers who they've realised have done awful things been suspended? Are we any safer to walk in the dark now?

'Police stations everywhere are shutting, we don't know where to go. When you call 999 they don't come. What are you supposed to do when something happens?

'I am a nanny so I often work late and have to walk home in the dark. I have been getting minicabs a lot more now but they are expensive so I still often walk.

'As soon as we saw the posters with the image of Sarah it just hit us, every woman I knew. A few of us helped to look for her.'

Lydia explained how women felt when it happened last year and why so many decided to break lockdown rules to gather for the vigil to Sarah: 'There was an outpouring of grief, it was amazing.

'If you are a woman who has had any violence in her background or you have had an abusive partner, her death just brought everything back to you. You just felt like the vigil was a way to express that.

'The police dealt with it in a very heavy-handed way, they could have policed it but they did it in the wrong way. The local MP begged with them to stop.

'There were activists who were over the top, but the majority were mums and daughters who had just had enough.'

Annie Lane, 28, who works in PR and lives in Clapham, laid tulips at the bandstand while out for her daily jog, and said: 'It's awful what happened it's terrifying.

'I live in the local area and I am a similar demographic to Sarah. It could have been me, it could have been anyone.

'It has just reminded everybody about how dangerous it is for girls out there.

'There needs to be more done to protect girls, well I say protect girls but it's actually more to change the behaviour of men and boys - men just seem to think its their right to attack girls and obviously it is not right.

'In lockdown the only thing there was to do was go for a walk, she was just walking home because it was the safest way for her healthwise, but obviously the most unsafe way in terms of violence.'

'Women are still looking over our shoulders, I don't think anything has changed since.

'There is more conversation around girls but I don't know if that has translated into boys understanding that they too need to talk about it and make the change.

'She did everything she could she wore brightly coloured clothes, she rung her boyfriend, there's nothing she could have done to stop it - but men and society could have done more.

'I hope that one day girls can walk home in the dark safely, not having to clutch their keys. There is apps and stuff now but it is silly that that is what girls have to do to feel safe.'

A survey commissioned by Good Morning Britain has found that three-quarters of men in the UK recognise that they should actively change their behaviour to make women feel safe when they are on their own.

It was conducted by Savanta ComRes a year after Ms Everard's death and used a sample size of more than two thousand men in the UK

The 125 women killed by men since Sarah Everard was murdered

The 125 women killed by men since Sarah Everard was murdered by serving police officer Wayne Couzens (pictured)

A survey commissioned by Good Morning Britain has found that three-quarters of men in the UK recognise that they should actively change their behaviour to make women feel safe when they are on their own

The past year has seen a number of high-profile alleged stranger murders of women, including the deaths of PCSO Julia James and teachers Sabina Nessa and Ashling Murphy
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Oleh Bulavenko's death was captured in the footage filmed by his son on the outskirts of Kyiv, as they tried to take their pet dogs to safety

The sham of President Putin's claims to not be targeting civilians was laid bare last night as video emerged of a family car being strafed by tank fire on a quiet country road outside Kyiv.

The Russian leader yesterday delivered an address claiming 'gangster' Ukrainian leaders using 'human shields' was the real reason so many civilians had been killed by his troops' onslaught in the country.

But within hours footage emerged showing a father and his adult son having tank rounds unleashed on them as they attempted to rescue their three dogs, having already once fled their home town near Kyiv.

The son who shot the harrowing footage  who hasn't been named by local media  was filming from the passenger seat as their car was forced to pull over by the side of the road after encountering a Russian convoy.

After they stop and as he is asking his father to reverse, and with the army a considerable distance away, bullets tear into the vehicle.

'Get out and lie down,' he shouts at his father, named by media as Oleh Bulavenko. 'Can you hear me? Get back and duck to the right.'

Seconds later more rounds smash into the car. The dogs in the back can be heard wimpering in fear and pain.

The son, whose passenger door is closest to shelter, jumps out into undergrowth but his father must exit into the road. Dozens more shots ring out before the son crawls round the back of the car to find his father lying prone in the road.

'Dad! Dad!' he cries out in anguish. 'Are you still there? Hang in there!'

He tells his father to stay down as the older man tries to sit up to look at his wounds. The footage shows the bullets have torn right through the family saloon leaving large exit holes on the boot despite entering from the front.

'Dad, f***! Why?' the son plaintively asks.

As the shooting subsides, the son crawls from the back of the car again.

'My foot is torn off,' the father growls in agony as he lies in a pool of blood.

The son bravely breaks cover and drags his father into the undergrowth.

The father could be seen lying motionless in the middle of the country lane after the pair were struck with gunshots from a distance

'Please don't die, I'm begging you,' he implores.

But moments later his father died from his injuries, lying in the ditch he was dragged into.

Footage then shows the family pets ripped apart on the backseat of the car. One dog survived the attack, and went to sit with the dead man's body in the gully, refusing to leave.

The heartbreaking footage, which was uncovered and verified by Radio Free Europe, was believed to have been filmed last Friday. The family fled their home in Ivankiv in the Kyiv region after Russian's initial attacks, but returned to get their pets.

Local reporters said they had confirmed no Ukrainian troops were in the area of the attack, which witnesses said came from Russian military vehicles.

The footage graphically exposes the lies of the Kremlin regime who have repeatedly insisted civilians are not being targeted, despite mounting evidence to the contrary.

Putin yesterday hailed his soldiers as heroes who are fighting to save innocent lives and blamed Ukrainian 'neo-Nazis' for holding citizens hostage.

The son, who said his foot had been 'torn off' in the fire, watched on helplessly as he begged for his father to stay alive as he lay in the middle of the road

The son screamed out to 'get out and lie down' as their car became the target of ammunition from what is understood to be a Russian tank

The pair had been driving along a quiet country lane when they are suddenly met with the sound of rapid gunfire and pull to the side of the road

The father and son discuss the state of a 'nine-story building' that is on fire as they try to flee the area

Bullet holes were visible all over the vehicle after the father and son exited the car to find cover from the tank

Ukraine war: The latest Peace talks between the two sides resumed today, with negotiators meeting on the Belarus border

An agreement was made for safe corridors to be created to allow for people to evacuate cities and for aid to be delivered, both sides confirmed

Vladimir Putin called Emmanuel Macron to tell him that he has no intention of calling off the invasion, will keep going until 'the end', and may increase his demands despite suffering losses

In an appeal to his Russian counterpart, Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky appealed to Putin to sit down with him in-person for negotiations

Russian forces take the Black Sea port of Kherson in southern Ukraine, the first major city to fall

Invasion so far has been badly managed, a 'disaster, through and through', US defence experts say

Ukraine's second city Kharkiv continues to come under heavy Russian shelling

Column of Russian vehicles north of Kyiv 'stalled' due to fuel and food shortages, and Ukrainian resistance

More than one million people have fled Ukraine since the Russian invasion

Moscow admits 498 troops have died in Ukraine, widely thought to be an under-estimate but still a record total for post-Soviet Russia

The International Criminal Court's chief prosecutor says an active probe into possible war crimes in Ukraine 'will immediately proceed'

Russia's top independent radio station closed and a leading independent TV station has suspended its operations as Kremlin moves to stifle criticism

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US follows the EU in targeting Russian ally Belarus with sanctions for supporting invasion Advertisement

Putin made the claim in his address yesterday, his first since announcing the start of his 'special operation' eight days ago, which did little to reassure anyone that the war is close to being over, or that Russia can be brought to the negotiating table without more blood being shed.

But it also hinted that Putin is rattled as the fighting proves harder than Russian commanders anticipated, and western sanctions go harder and deeper than even European or American observers predicted. All hope of a swift victory has now been dashed, leaving Putin facing a long, bloody and expensive war to achieve his aims.

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky called on his Russian counterpart to sit down with him at the negotiating table in person during another impassioned television appearance shortly after the address.

Zelensky's comments came as Putin's forces continued their brutal assault on several of Ukraine's cities, and on the same day negotiations between the two sides made little progress in deescalating the deadly war.

And the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, the largest of its kind in Europe, was on fire in the early hours of Friday morning after an attack by Russian troops.

In an appeal to his Russian counterpart, Zelensky said: 'Get off our land. You don't want to leave now? Then sit down with me at the negotiation table. I'm available. Sit. Just not 30 metres away like with Macron or Scholz etc. I am your neighbour. You don't need to keep me 30 metres away.

'I don't bite. I'm a normal bloke. Sit down with me and talk. What are you afraid of? We aren't threatening anyone, we're not terrorists, we aren't seizing banks and seizing foreign land.'

Zelensky's comments came during a press conference in Kyiv and in response to a reporter's question on what 'guarantees' Ukraine can offer.

'Guarantees for what?' Zelensky fired back at the interviewer in Russian. 'We aren't attacking Russia and we have no intention of doing so. Guarantee what? We aren't in NATO. We don't have nuclear weapons. What am I supposed to say, what am I supposed to give, and to whom?

'You must understand - this is also a huge thing that everybody is talking about - what am I supposed to give? Jesus, what do you want from us?!'

Ukraine's president, who has become an inspirational figure both at home and abroad for his defiance in the face of Russian aggression, also called on the West to supply planes to help his military control the skies. It came after NATO members ruled out enforcing a no-fly zone over Ukraine for fear of igniting World War Three.

Ukraine war: City by city Kyiv: Four large rocket strikes hit the Ukrainian capital overnight, including one which struck a train station being used to evacuate civilians , while others struck TV and radio stations. Ukraine claimed to have shot down a Russian fighter jet over Irpin, a satellite city of Kyiv which has come under heavy attack, in the early hours of Thursday Kharkiv: The second-largest city in Ukraine continue to come under bombardment with pictures showing destroyed residential buildings and rubble littering the city centre. Izyum, a city 70 miles to the south of Kharkiv towards Donetsk, also came under heavy bombardment with explosions lighting up the night sky Chernihiv: Located to the north-west of Kyiv, the city has been the site of fierce fighting with Russian troops since the early days of the invasion Despite being surrounded and under heavy shelling, the city remains under Ukrainian control Mariupol: Heavy Russian shelling which began targeting the city on Wednesday continued into Thursday, with the mayor saying the bombardment is so heavy that medics can't get into the streets to rescue the dead and injured Despite the attacks, the city remains in Ukrainian hands Kherson: City feared captured by Russian forces after mayor says 'armed visitors' joined a local council meeting and had imposed a curfew However, the British MoD said Thursday morning that the military situation is still 'unclear' - suggesting that Russia may not be in full control Zaporizhzhia: Russian forces have surrounded the city and its nuclear power plant, which is the largest in Europe Civilians set up road blocks around the plant to defend it, with the city's mayor saying one came under fire by Russian troops on Wednesday leaving two people hurt Odessa: The Black Sea port city, and Ukraine's main naval base, is preparing for a Russian assault after a dozen warships were seen forming up near Crimea Mayor said fighter jets appear to be testing air defences by flying sorties overhead, as residents prepare makeshift defences made of old railway sleepers and lay landmines on the beach Advertisement

'If you do not have the power to close the skies, then give me planes!' Zelensky told a news conference. 'If we are no more then, God forbid, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia will be next,' he said, adding that direct talks with Putin were 'the only way to stop this war'.

Zelensky - who just weeks ago sought to calm Ukrainians over US allegations that Russia was planning to invade his country - said: 'Nobody thought that in the modern world a man can behave like a beast.'

Soon after Putin's address, Ukraine announced that it has agreed with Russia to create safe corridors - backed by ceasefires - to evacuate civilians and deliver aid to areas under attack by Russian forces. Russian negotiator Vladimir Medinsky also said the agreement had been made during talks, describing it as 'substantial progress'.

The agreement was the only tangible progress from a second round of talks between Moscow and Kyiv, according to an adviser to Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky, and it was not immediately clear how they would work.

Negotiators from Ukraine and Russia said afterwards that a third round of talks on the war will be held shortly.

So far, more than one million people have fled Ukraine as Putin's armies have laid waste to key cities.

Meanwhile the Russian economy is tanking with the ruble at record lows, the stock market unable to open because it faces near-total collapse, and European countries seizing assets from billionaire oligarchs. Protests have also sprung up in Russia, coupled with high-profile political figures and celebrities calling for the war to end.

Just hours before the TV address, Putin had phoned Emmanuel Macron to tell the French President that he has no intention of pulling back from Ukraine or watering down his security demands, will achieve his aims 'whatever happens' and will continue fighting until 'the end'.

Macron's aides said after the call that they believe Putin intends to take the whole country, and that the 'worst is yet to come' as the Russian attacks step up, and that 'there was nothing in what President Putin told us that should reassure us.'

Mr Macron is said to have told Putin he is making a 'major mistake' and 'lying to himself'. Macron said Russia would end up poor, weakened and under sanctions for a very long time.

'There was nothing in what President Putin told us that should reassure us. He showed great determination to continue the operation,' Macron's aide said, before adding that Putin 'wanted to seize control of the whole of Ukraine'.

Putin's two statements today - the first he has made in public since announcing the start of his 'special operation' eight days ago - will do little to reassure anyone that the war is close to being over, or that Russia could be brought to the negotiating table without more blood being shed.

News that the convoy has been at least partially damaged or destroyed will come as a huge boon to the people of Kyiv, as it was feared the vehicles would be used to surround and bomb the city into submission. The Ukrainian capital is still under attack by Russian rockets and missiles, but has largely escaped the intense fire being rained down on other locations.

Perhaps the hardest-hit has been the city of Mariupol, on Ukraine's eastern Black Sea coast, which came under bombardment by Russian forces surrounding it yesterday - with the fire kept up near-continuously into today. Local officials say the city is without water, heat, or electricity, and cannot clear the dead from the streets.

Harrowing pictures revealed at least part of the civilian death toll, with a father seen weeping over the body of his son who was killed when a Russian shell destroyed his legs. Two elderly women were also pictured being evacuated from their homes and covered in blood after Russian attacks.

Despite the vicious shelling, the city still remains in the hands of Ukrainian forces - as a defiant Zelensky vowed today that Ukraine will be rebuilt with Russian money as he praised his troops' 'heroic' defence.

Kharkiv, in the east, and Chernihiv, in the north west, also remained under Ukrainian control despite coming under heavy rocket fire. Nine people died in Chernihiv after Russian rockets hit a school and nearby apartments. There were also fears the Russians were about to launch a major amphibious assault against the port city of Odessa after a large fleet of ships was spotted near Crimea in the early hours.

The Ukrainian president said that 'all lines of defence are holding' with the cities of Kyiv, Chernihiv, Sumy and Mykolaiv all resisting Russian attacks. He even claimed the city of Kherson remains in Ukrainian hands, despite the mayor seeming to confirm overnight that it had been taken by Russian forces.

'They wanted to destroy us. They failed. We've been through so much. And if anyone thinks that, having overcome all this, Ukrainians will be frightened, broken or surrender, they know nothing about Ukraine,' Zelensky said, adding: 'We will restore every house, every street, every city and we say to Russia: learn the word 'reparations'.

'You will reimburse us for everything you did against our state, against every Ukrainian, in full.'

Separately, one of his presidential advisers said the Ukrainian army is now getting ready to launch counter-attacks on Russian forces after their initial assault on the country stalled - amid reported of fuel and food shortages, heavy casualties, and mismanagement of the operation.

'Help to us is increasing every minute and the strength of the enemy is decreasing every minute. We're not only defending but also counter-attacking,' the adviser said in a televised briefing.

President Zelensky's office said a second round of negotiations had concluded. A first round of talks on Monday ended without an agreement.

Ahead of the invasion, Washington had warned that Russia's superior forces would be able to quickly overwhelm Ukraine's 200,000-strong army - taking out air defences, achieving superiority in the skies, and then raining death down on those below.

But none of that has come to pass. Ukraine's skies remain contested, US intelligence says, while attacks have been piecemeal with troops under-supplied and not fighting in a coordinated fashion, leading to large numbers of dead along with some abandoning their vehicles which have then been captured.

'This is a colossal intelligence failure that vastly underestimated Ukrainian resistance, and military execution has been terrible,' Michael Vickers, former US Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, said at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

'[Putin's] main attack has been underweighted. It's been piecemeal. His reconnaissance elements have been captured, columns have been destroyed,' he said. 'It's just a disaster, through and through.'

But many caution that Russia's initial failures could simply pre-sage a secondary phase of the fighting in which it uses superior numbers and force of arms to surround and bomb Ukrainian troops into submission, causing large civilian casualties.

Yves Le Drian, the French foreign minister, agreed with that assessment today as he issued a warning that the 'worst' is still to come as Russia switches to a 'logic of siege' with major cities in danger of being surrounded.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky gestures as he speaks during a press conference in Kyiv on March 3, 2022. He made a plea to Russian President Valdimir Putin to sit down with him in person for negotiations

Russian President Vladimir Putin issues assessments during his meeting with the officials of Security Council of Russia, on March 03, 2022 in Moscow, Russia. Putin branded Ukrainians 'extreme gangsters', claimed their army is using civilians as 'human shields', hailed his soldiers as heroes who are fighting to save innocent lives and said his invasion is going exactly to plan and schedule in a stunning act of hypocrisy and outright denial

Units of Russian Armed Forces enter Kyiv region, Ukraine, in this screengrab obtained from a video by Reuters on Thursday

MARIUPOL: Serhii, a father from the Ukrainian city of Mariupol, weeps over the body of teenage son Iliya at a maternity unit converted into a hospital to treat civilian victims of Russian shelling

MARIUPOL: Ilya is brought into hospital in the back of a car, with both of his legs destroyed by a Russian shell explosion. The mayor of Mariupol believes 'hundreds' of civilians have been killed in similar strikes

MARIUPOL: A civilian wounded in Russian strikes on the city of Mariupol is treated at a maternity unit of the local hospital that has been converted into a centre to treat the victims

KYIV: A firefighter works to extinguish fire at a warehouse that caught flames, according to local authorities, after shelling, as Russia's invasion of Ukraine continues, in the village of Chaiky in the Kyiv region, Ukraine March 3, 2022

Kherson, a city of 300,000 on the Black Sea, appears to have fallen under Russian control after the mayor said 'armed visitors' had taken over a council meeting and imposed curfews. If Putin's men are in full control then it opens up the city of Odessa, home to Ukraine's main naval port, to attack - with amphibious assault ships seen forming up near Crimea today

Pictured: A map showing the Kyiv region and the area occupied by Russian troops as they close in on Ukraine's capital

MARIUPOL: A Ukrainian woman living in the Black Sea city of Mariupol is evacuated from her home during a brief break in Russian shelling, which has now been continuous for more than 24 hours

MARIUPOL: An elderly woman laying in a pool of blood inside her apartment in Mariupol is rescued by paramedics after being injured during shelling of the city

MARIUPOL: Ambulance paramedics move a wounded in shelling civilian onto a stretcher to a maternity hospital converted into a medical ward in Mariupol

MARIUPOL: The Black Sea city continues to be under heavy bombardment today, with the mayor saying there is no water, heat or electricity and that Russian fire is so intense they cannot collect bodies from the streets

KYIV: Smoke rises over Chaika, a residential area on the outskirts of Kyiv, as the city again came under bombardment

BELARUS: Ukrainian and Russian negotiators meet on the border with Belarus for talks on ending the war. Ukraine says it will demand a ceasefire and the withdrawal of all Russian forces from the country

KYIV: An apartment building in Borodyanka is seen on Thursday morning almost totally destroyed after a Russian missile struck it the day before, causing a large part of it to collapse

KYIV: Another view of the apartment block in Borodyanka shows it suffered heavy damage in a Russian strike on Tuesday, as Putin's men continue to try and take the country

A view of heavy damage in the residential area of Borodyanka, on the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine

CHERNIHIV: A diesel fuel storage facility burns in Chernihiv after being struck with a Russian shell

CHERNIHIV: Ukrainian firefighters attempt to put out a burning diesel fuel depot in the northern city after attacks by Russia

A force of around a dozen Russian vessels including landing ships is massing off the coast of Crimea today, with experts saying an assault on Odessa could come later in the day

KYIV: Destroyed Russian vehicles are seen on a street in the settlement of Borodyanka, around 30 miles from the capital

KYIV: Destroyed Russian vehicles are seen on a street in the town of Borodyank, around 30 miles from Kyiv, after meeting 'staunch' Ukrainian resistance

KYIV: Damaged buildings and destroyed Russian vehicles are seen in the streets of Borodyanka, close to the capital of Kyiv, after a failed assault by Putin's men

Macron: 'Delusional' Putin is intent on seizing 'the whole' of Ukraine to achieve 'de-nazification' French President Emmanuel Macron believes 'the worst is yet to come' in Ukraine after 90-minute phone call with Vladimir Putin ended with his Russian counterpart declaring his goals will be achieved 'in any case'. In the phone call initiated by Putin today, the Russian leader reiterated his determination to 'neutralise' Ukraine, whether diplomatically or by force, a senior aide to Macron said. 'The expectation of the president is that the worst is to come, given what President Putin told him,' the official told reporters on condition of anonymity. 'There was nothing in what President Putin told us that should reassure us. He showed great determination to continue the operation,' the aide continued, before adding that Putin 'wanted to seize control of the whole of Ukraine'. 'He will, in his own words, carry out his operation to ''de-Nazify'' Ukraine to the end.' Macron in return told Putin he was making a 'major mistake' by invading a sovereign nation, that he was deluding himself about the government in Kyiv, and that the war would cost Russia dearly over the long term. The French President also urged Putin to avoid civilian casualties and allow for humanitarian access. It comes as the civilian death toll in Ukraine continues to climb as Russian forces carry out a sustained bombing campaign of several major cities including Kharkiv, Mariupol, Chernihiv, Zhytomyr and capital Kyiv. After having shared several direct calls with Putin in an attempt to avert war in recent weeks, Macron today told the Russian President directly that he was 'delusional' in light of his invasion of Ukraine. 'You are lying to yourself,' the French President said according to the aide. '[This invasion] will cost your country dearly, your country will end up isolated, weakened and under sanctions for a very long time.' Despite their drastically opposed viewpoints however, there were no signs of aggression between the pair on the call. 'President Putin has a way of talking that is very neutral and very clinical. He sometimes shows signs of impatience, but fundamentally there were no open signs of tensions during the exchanges,' Macron's aide suggested. Advertisement

He spoke as Europe continued to step up its assistance to Ukraine, with Germany pledging another 2,700 anti-aircraft missiles to bolster the Ukrainian defences. That comes on top of 1,000 anti-tank weapons and 500 Stinger anti-aircraft weapons it has already sent, in a stunning reversal of its long-standing pledge not to supply weapons.

Kyiv has so-far escaped what observers feared would be Russian attempts to surround and bomb it into submission, after skirmishes in the outskirts led to Moscow's men being pushed back. Sight of the convoy earlier this week seemed to confirm that Putin would resort to 'siege' tactics to force a bloody victory.

But, as of Thursday morning, the convoy was near-motionless - having stalled late Monday. The exact reason is unclear, but American and British intelligence believe it is due to a combination of Ukrainian resistance and logistical problems within the convoy itself.

Reports from the ground indicate that Russian vehicles have been running out of fuel, while pictures also appear to show some vehicles have been poorly maintained and their tyres are falling apart.

A Pantsir missile system bogged down and abandoned in a muddy field lost several of its tyres when Ukrainian forces tried to tow it away, with Trent Teletenko - a former Department of Defence civil servant - wrote on Twitter that it appears Russia has failed to maintain the tyres on its vehicles properly, leaving them brittle.

According to his analysis, it means lowering the pressure in the tyres - which is typically done so they can drive off-road - will cause them to shred, meaning the trucks and artillery systems will be confined to highways or else risk getting bogged down in mud.

Other images showed armoured vehicles bogged down and abandoned after Russian forces tried laying sawed-down trees under their wheels to keep them out of the muck.

Whatever the case, the longer the Russian convoy remains stuck the more vulnerable it becomes to Ukrainian counter attack and the longer the people of Kyiv get to go about their lives without the risk of being shelled.

In just seven days of fighting, more than 2% of Ukraine's population has been forced out of the country, according to the tally the U.N. refugee agency released to The Associated Press.

The mass evacuation could be seen in Kharkiv, a city of about 1.4 million people and Ukraine's second-largest. Residents desperate to escape falling shells and bombs crowded the city's train station and pressed onto trains, not always knowing where they were headed.

At least 227 civilians have been killed and another 525 wounded in that time, according to the latest figures from the office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights. It acknowledges that is a vast undercount, and Ukraine earlier said more than 2,000 civilians have died. That figure could not be independently verified.

As the toll of war mounted, a second round of talks between Ukrainian and Russian delegations was expected later Thursday in neighboring Belarus - though the two sides appeared to have little common ground.

'We are ready to conduct talks, but we will continue the operation because we won't allow Ukraine to preserve a military infrastructure that threatens Russia,' Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said, repeating an accusation Moscow has repeatedly used to justify its invasion.

Lavrov said that the West has continuously armed Ukraine, trained its troops and built up bases there to turn Ukraine into a bulwark against Russia.

The U.S. and its allies have insisted that NATO is a defensive alliance that doesn't pose a threat to Russia. And the West fears Russia's invasion is meant to overthrow Ukraine's government and install a friendly government - though Lavrov said Moscow would let the Ukrainians choose what government they should have.

Russian President Vladimir Putin earlier raised the specter of nuclear war, putting his country's nuclear forces on high alert, but his foreign minister shrugged off questions of whether Russia could escalate the conflict with nuclear weapons, saying such talk comes from the West.

In Kherson, the Russians took over the regional administration headquarters, Hennady Lahuta, the governor of the region, said Thursday - while adding that he and other officials were continuing to perform their duties and provide assistance to the population.

Kherson's mayor, Igor Kolykhaev, previously said that the national flag was still flying, but that there were no Ukrainian troops in the city. Britain's defense secretary said it was possible the Russians had taken over, though not yet verified.

The mayor said the city would maintain a strict curfew and require pedestrians to walk in groups no larger than two, obey commands to stop and not to 'provoke the troops.'

'The flag flying over us is Ukrainian,' he wrote on Facebook. 'And for it to stay that way, these demands must be observed.'

Earlier Thursday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that Russian land forces have stalled and Moscow is now unleashing air attacks, but that they are being parried by Ukrainian defense systems, including in Kherson.

'Kyiv withstood the night and another missile and bomb attack. Our air defenses worked,' he said. 'Kherson, Izyum - all the other cities that the occupiers hit from the air did not give up anything.'

Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said explosions heard overnight in the Ukrainian capital were Russian missiles being shot down by air defense systems.

From Kherson, Russian troops appeared to roll toward Mykolaiv, another major Black Sea port and shipbuilding center to the west along the coast. The regional governor, Vitaliy Kim, said that big convoys of Russian troops are advancing on the city but said that they will likely need to regroup before trying to take it over.

A group of Russian amphibious landing vessels is also heading toward the port of Odesa, farther west, the Ukrainian military said.

A building is engulfed in flames after shelling in Kyiv, with the Ukrainian capital under heavy attack on Thursday afternoon

Heavy smoke blankets an area of Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine, after it was hit by Russian shelling

A Ukrainian serviceman walks past as fire and smoke rises over a damaged logistic center after shelling in Kyiv

A badly damaged car and destroyed buildings are seen in central Kharkiv, eastern Ukraine, after being hit by artillery

The interior courtyard of a building in Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city, are pictured after being hit by a missile

Heavily damaged buildings in downtown Kharkiv are pictured after a strike by Russian rockets on Thursday

KHARKIV: A view of damaged civil settlements after Russian attacks in Kharkiv, Ukraine

KHARKIV: Flattened buildings and a destroyed apartment block are seen in Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city, after it came under attack by Russian forces

KHARKIV: A view of damaged civil settlements after Russian attacks in Kharkiv, Ukraine

A view of heavy damage in the residential area of Borodyanka, on the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine

A woman walks next to a damaged house following recent shelling in the separatist-controlled city of Donetsk

Images have been steadily emerging of Russian vehicles getting stuck, including one where the tyres shredded (left) after apparently being poorly maintained

A satellite image shows southern end of convoy armour towed artillery trucks, east of Antonov airport, Ukraine

Ukrainian soldiers patrol in front of the Independence Monument during Russian attacks in Kyiv

A Ukrainian soldier tasked with defending Kyiv is pictured patrolling the streets shortly after airstrikes on the city

Ukrainian soldiers patrol in front of the Independence Monument during Russian attacks in Kyiv

A woman cooks for Ukrainian soldiers at a frontline, northeast of Kyiv

Ukrainian soldiers share a light moment at a frontline, northeast of Kyiv

A Ukrainian soldier walks next to a camp fire at a frontline, northeast of Kyiv

Moscow's isolation deepened when most of the world lined up against it at the United Nations to demand it withdraw from Ukraine. The prosecutor for the International Criminal Court opened an investigation into possible war crimes. And in a stunning reversal, the International Paralympic Committee banned Russian and Belarusian athletes from the Winter Paralympic Games.

Russia reported its military casualties Wednesday for the first time in the war, saying nearly 500 of its troops have been killed and almost 1,600 wounded. Ukraine did not disclose its own military losses.

Ukraine's military general staff said in a Facebook post that Russia's forces had suffered some 9,000 casualties in the fighting. It did not clarify if that figure included both killed and wounded soldiers.

In a video address to the nation early Thursday, Zelenskyy praised his country's resistance.

'We are a people who in a week have destroyed the plans of the enemy,' he said. 'They will have no peace here. They will have no food. They will have here not one quiet moment.'

He said the fighting is taking a toll on the morale of Russian soldiers, who 'go into grocery stores and try to find something to eat.'

'These are not warriors of a superpower,' he said. 'These are confused children who have been used.'

Meanwhile, the senior U.S. defense official said an immense Russian column of hundreds of tanks and other vehicles appeared to be stalled roughly 25 kilometers (16 miles) from Kyiv and had made no real progress in the last couple of days.

The convoy, which earlier in the week had seemed poised to launch an assault on the capital, has been plagued with fuel and food shortages, the official said.

On the far edges of Kyiv, volunteers well into their 60s manned a checkpoint to try to block the Russian advance.

'In my old age, I had to take up arms,' said Andrey Goncharuk, 68. He said the fighters needed more weapons, but 'we'll kill the enemy and take their weapons.'

Around Ukraine, others crowded into train stations, carrying children wrapped in blankets and dragging wheeled suitcases into new lives as refugees.

Among the million-plus refugees who have fled Ukraine in recent days were some 200 orphans with severe physical and mental disabilities who arrived from Kyiv by train in Hungary on Wednesday.

Some of them spent more than an hour in underground shelters during a bombing, said Larissa Leonidovna, the director of the Svyatoshinksy orphanage for boys.

Overnight, Associated Press reporters in Kyiv heard at least one explosion before videos started circulating of apparent strikes on the capital.

Russia's Defense Ministry said it had knocked out a reserve broadcasting center in the Lysa Hora district, about 7 kilometers (4 miles) south of the government headquarters. It said unspecified precision weapons were used, and that there were no casualties or damage to residential buildings.

A statement from the general staff of Ukraine's armed forces didn't address the strikes, saying only that Russian forces were 'regrouping' and 'trying to reach the northern outskirts' of the city.

'The advance on Kyiv has been rather not very organized and now they're more or less stuck,' military analyst Pavel Felgenhauer told the AP in Moscow.

Ukrainian soldiers unload weapons from the trunk of an old car, northeast of Kyiv

A Ukrainian soldier holds an anti-tank launcher at a frontline, northeast of Kyiv

A Ukrainian soldier flashes the victory sign at a frontline, northeast of Kyiv

A worker from a local construction company prepares an anti-tank obstacle to be place on road around Kyiv

Workers from a local construction company weld anti-tanks obstacles to be place on road around Kyiv

Workers from a local construction company weld anti-tanks obstacles to be place on road around Kyiv

Civilians build iron barricades and traps to block armored vehicles in Lviv, as Russia attacks other cities in the country

Metal workers in Lviv, western Ukraine, help to make barricades that can be used to defend the city in case Russia attacks

Civilians build iron barricades and traps to block armored vehicles in the city of Lviv, western Ukraine

Clusters of metal spike traps designed to puncture the wheels of Russian armoured vehicles are manufactured by metal workers in Lviv, western Ukraine

At least 227 civilians have been killed and another 525 wounded since the invasion began, according to the latest figures from the office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights. Earlier, Ukraine said more than 2,000 civilians have died, a figure that could not be independently verified.

The U.N. office uses strict methodology and counts only confirmed casualties, and admits its figures are a vast undercount.

Still, the tally eclipses the entire civilian casualty count from the fighting in 2014 in eastern Ukraine between pro-Russian separatists and Ukrainian forces - which left 136 dead and 577 injured.

In a videotaped address, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called on Ukrainians to keep up the resistance. He vowed that the invaders would have 'not one quiet moment' and described Russian soldiers as 'confused children who have been used.'

Moscow's isolation deepened when most of the world lined up against it at the United Nations to demand it withdraw from Ukraine. The prosecutor for the International Criminal Court opened an investigation into possible war crimes. And in a stunning reversal, the International Paralympic Committee banned Russian and Belarusian athletes from the Winter Paralympic Games.

Felgenhauer said with the Russian economy already suffering, there could be a 'serious internal political crisis' if Russian President Vladimir Putin does not find a way to end the war quickly.

'There's no real money to run to fight this war,' he said, adding that if Putin and the military 'are unable to wrap up this campaign very swiftly and victoriously, they're in a pickle.'

Several parts of the country were under pressure.

Ukraine's military said Russian forces 'did not achieve the main goal of capturing Mariupol' in its statement, which did not mention the another important port, Kherson, whose status was unclear.

Putin's forces claimed to have taken complete control of Kherson, and U.K. Defense Secretary Ben Wallace said Thursday that it was 'possible - it's not verified yet - that Russia is in control' there.

A senior U.S. defense official earlier disputed the Russians controlled the city.

'Our view is that Kherson is very much a contested city,' the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Zelenskyy's office told the AP that it could not comment on the situation in Kherson while the fighting was still going on.

The mayor of Kherson, Igor Kolykhaev, said Russian soldiers were in the city and came to the city administration building. He said he asked them not to shoot civilians and to allow crews to gather up the bodies from the streets.

'We don't have any Ukrainian forces in the city, only civilians and people here who want to LIVE,' he said in a statement later posted on Facebook.

The mayor said Kherson would maintain a strict 8 p.m.-to-6 a.m. curfew and restrict traffic into the city to food and medicine deliveries. The city will also require pedestrians to walk in groups no larger than two, obey commands to stop and not to 'provoke the troops.'

People board an evacuation train from Kyiv to Lviv at Kyiv central train station amid Russia's invasion of Ukraine

People board an evacuation train from Kyiv to Lviv at Kyiv central train station amid Russia's invasion of Ukraine

Children look out from an evacuation train from Kyiv to Lviv as they say goodbye to their father at Kyiv central train

Pictured: Footage from Kiyv overnight showed a huge explosion light up the night sky. Reports said at least two huge blasts were heard in the city air raid sirens warned residents to urgently seek shelter

Burned buildings which were hit by shelling is seen in small city of Borodyanka near Kyiv

A view shows damaged buildings following recent shelling, as Russia's invasion of Ukraine continues, in the settlement of Borodyanka in the Kyiv region, Ukraine March 2, 2022

'The flag flying over us is Ukrainian,' he wrote. 'And for it to stay that way, these demands must be observed.'

Mariupol Mayor Vadym Boychenko said the attacks there had been relentless.

'We cannot even take the wounded from the streets, from houses and apartments today, since the shelling does not stop,' he was quoted by the Interfax news agency as saying.

Russia reported its military casualties for the first time in the war, saying nearly 500 of its troops have been killed and almost 1,600 wounded. Ukraine did not disclose its own military losses.

Ukraine's military general staff said in a Facebook post that Russia's forces had suffered some 9,000 casualties in the fighting. It did not clarify if that figure included both killed and wounded soldiers.

In a video address to the nation early Thursday, Zelenskyy praised his country's resistance.

'We are a people who in a week have destroyed the plans of the enemy,' he said. 'They will have no peace here. They will have no food. They will have here not one quiet moment.'

He said the fighting is taking a toll on the morale of Russian soldiers, who 'go into grocery stores and try to find something to eat.'

'These are not warriors of a superpower,' he said. 'These are confused children who have been used.'

Meanwhile, the senior U.S. defense official said an immense Russian column of hundreds of tanks and other vehicles appeared to be stalled roughly 25 kilometers (16 miles) from Kyiv and had made no real progress in the last couple of days.

The convoy, which earlier in the week had seemed poised to launch an assault on the capital, has been plagued with fuel and food shortages, the official said.

On the far edges of Kyiv, volunteers well into their 60s manned a checkpoint to try to block the Russian advance.

'In my old age, I had to take up arms,' said Andrey Goncharuk, 68. He said the fighters needed more weapons, but 'we'll kill the enemy and take their weapons.'

Around Ukraine, others crowded into train stations, carrying children wrapped in blankets and dragging wheeled suitcases into new lives as refugees.

In an email, U.N. refugee agency spokesperson Joung-ah Ghedini-Williams told the AP that the refugee count surpassed 1 million as of midnight in central Europe, based on figures collected by national authorities.

Shabia Mantoo, another spokesperson for the agency, said that 'at this rate' the exodus from Ukraine could make it the source of 'the biggest refugee crisis this century.'
The US arm of Russian state-backed media outlet RT is laying off staff and effectively shutting down amid backlash over the war in Ukraine.

Misha Solodvnikov, the general manager of T&R Production, made the announcement in a memo Thursday.

He told the network's 100-strong staff that RT America will be 'ceasing production... as a result of unforeseen business interruption events.'

'Unfortunately, we anticipate this layoff will be permanent, meaning that this will result in the permanent separation from employment of most T&R employees at all locations,' Solodovnikov wrote. 'We deeply regret and understand the uncertainty this action will cause our valued employees.'

RT America has been sidelined in the U.S and most of Europe since Russia's invasion of Ukraine on February 24.

The network, seen as one of Putin's main mouthpieces in the US, had referred to the unprovoked invasion as a 'minor incursion intended for defensive purposes.'

Their stance quickly drew backlash and some of RT's own staff publicly resigned, and multiple television providers, streaming tech service Roku and social media outlets severed ties with the network.

Satellite TV company DirecTV recently announced it would be pulling the plug on the channel on March 1, ahead of a contract that was going to expire later this year.

'In line with our previous agreement with RT America, we are accelerating this year's contract expiration timeline and will no longer offer their programming effective immediately,' a spokesperson said.

Dish, which also carries the network, did not comment on its relationship with the Kremlin-backed channel. Formerly known as Russia Today, RT has sister stations across the globe, including United Kingdom and France, which have also been recently booted off-air.

YouTube, TikTok, Twitter and Facebook parent company Meta have also banned RT content on their platforms in Europe, with Meta executive Nick Clegg hinting that a decision was made in relation to 'the exceptional nature of the current situation' in Ukraine.

RT, formerly known as Russia Today, has announced the closure of its U.S. branch on Thursday. The state-funded TV network produces news content in English and several other languages across the world. Pictured: Employees of RT work in its international studio in Moscow, Russia.

RT America's app will also be removed from Microsoft and Apple's app stores in all countries except Russia. YouTube, TikTok and Facebook parent company Meta have also banned RT content on their platforms in Europe

RT's app will no longer be available on Microsoft and Apple app stores in all countries except for Russia.

Spotify and Roku have also removed RT-linked podcasts from its platform.

Over the last month, the network has lost some of its key talent too. Talk show host and comedian Dennis Miller, 68, announced that he will abandon his show, Dennis Miller + One. It began airing on the channel in March 2020.

Actor William Shatner will also stop doing business with RT beyond his contractual agreement with the network after producing 70 episodes of a show for production company Ora TV, which then sold it to RT America.

In an interview with the Daily Beast, the 90-year-old said that all Ora TV productions for RT America have come to a halt. 'I await with apprehension what will transpire but my total sympathy is with Ukraine,' he said.

Nick Clegg, an executive at Meta, shared on Twitter that RT content will be limited on social media in Europe, including on Facebook - one of the social networks owned by the company

Dennis Miller, 68, also announced the immediate cancellation of his popular show, Dennis Miller + One, on RT amid rising tensions between the U.S. and Russia over Ukraine

William Shatner, 90, will stop working for RT too after producing 70 episodes of a show for production company Ora TV, which then sold it to RT America

While RT America's audience in the United States is hard to scale, the news outlet received a lot of traffic online through the amplification of social media posts by conservative media companies.

'The purpose of RT is for Russia to fight against the West and democratic values on the cheap,' Robert Orttung, a professor of international relations at George Washington University, told the Washington Post.

'It is easier to pay for this kind of divisive media coverage than to build a military equal to that of the United States and its allies.'

Yet its sudden shutdown should not come as a surprise given the current political climate, he added. 'With sanctions taking a big bite out of the Russian economy and state income, the Kremlin is going to cut its most unproductive assets,' Orttung said.

RT America's YouTube channel, where it has 1.2 million subscribers, remains live.

In his column, a host for the network, Holland Cooke defended RT America's reputation as well as its integrity.

'I was never once censored, and never handed a script,' he wrote, praising his '100+ enthused, whip-smart colleagues I genuinely enjoyed working alongside in a bustling broadcast center, handsome and lavishly equipped, two blocks from the White House, with an amazing hi-tech coffee machine.'

The Justice Department in 2017 required RT's U.S. operations to register as a foreign agent, which angered Russian leaders. U.S. intelligence agencies have said that RT acted as propaganda for the Kremlin. Doing so did not restrict the channel's content but meant it had to disclose its funding and label its content.

Staff at the network, which is headquartered in Washington D.C but has bureaus in New York, Los Angeles and Miami, will be given severance packages for the following two months.

RT has will now broadcast on Rumble, a YouTube-like video site, as soon as this week. Rumble is a video site popular among U.S. political conservatives. In December former U.S. President Donald Trump's media venture, Trump Media and Technology Group, said Rumble will deliver video and streaming for Truth Social, the venture's social media app that launched in the Apple

Dailymail.com has contacted Solodovnikov and RT for comment.
Scott Morrison has said Russia should be treated as an international outcast like North Korea after invading Ukraine.

The Prime Minister said Russia 'self-nominated as a pariah state' when Vladimir Putin illegally launched an unprovoked invasion of his neighbour with missiles and tanks last Thursday.

'We can line them up with North Korea and others and they should be treated accordingly,' Mr Morrison told Perth's Radio 6PR from Sydney where he's isolating with Covid-19.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un takes part in an event to plant trees on Wednesday

North Korea is an isolated and nuclear-armed totalitarian dictatorship ruled by Kim Jong-Un. It has very few allies and its economy is crippled by sanctions imposed by the United Nations.

The Prime Minister said international financial sanctions on Russia in response to the invasion were hurting the nation's economy.

'They are paying a high price this is having a very damaging impact on their economy, the targeted sanctions on individuals, it's having an impact on their oligarchs, and the whole support system to President Putin,' he said.

Mr Morrison said Russia's economic pain warned China not to invade Taiwan, a self-governing island which Beijing claims.

'This all sends a very clear message to any other autocratic regime, and we know about a few of those in our own region,' Mr Morrison said without naming China.

'It should be a clear message to not take the wrong lesson out of this there will be a heavy transactional cost in reputation and in economic terms and potentially militarily.'

Scott Morrison has said Russia should be treated as an international outcast like North Korea after invading Ukraine. Pictured: Putin on Thursday

While the West has condemned Russia's invasion, India and China are sitting on the fence.

But the Prime Minister said he didn't blame quad ally India for not condemning Moscow.

India and Russia signed a defence co-operation pact last year and Russia is supplying long-range S-400 surface-to-air missile defense systems to New Delhi.

'I think we've got to work patiently with our partners who have the same objectives as we do in the Indo Pacific,' Mr Morrison said.

'I don't draw an equivalence between India and China whatsoever, and I do know from discussions we had last need that India is seeking to ensure that this violence ends.

'They have some very real concerns right now there are 16,000 Indian students in the Ukraine we're trying to get out safely. So they have a lot of issues we will work closely with them.'

On Thursday night Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky called on his Putin to sit down with him at the negotiating table in person during another impassioned television appearance.

Zelensky's comments came as Putin's forces continued their brutal assault on several of Ukraine's cities, and on the same day negotiations between the two sides made little progress in deescalating the deadly war.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky gestures as he speaks during a press conference in Kyiv on March 3, 2022. He made a plea to Russian President Valdimir Putin to sit down with him in person for negotiations

In an appeal to his Russian counterpart, Zelensky said: 'Get off our land. You don't want to leave now? Then sit down with me at the negotiation table. I'm available. Sit. Just not 30 metres away like with Macron or Scholz etc. I am your neighbour. You don't need to keep me 30 metres away.

'I don't bite. I'm a normal bloke. Sit down with me and talk. What are you afraid of? We aren't threatening anyone, we're not terrorists, we aren't seizing banks and seizing foreign land.'

Earlier, Putin branded Ukrainians 'extreme gangsters', claimed their army is using civilians as 'human shields', hailed his soldiers as heroes who are fighting to save innocent lives and said his invasion is going exactly to plan and schedule in a stunning act of hypocrisy and outright denial.

The Russian leader, who eight days ago declared all-out war against Ukraine in a bid to topple its elected government and reunify it with Russia by force, denied that his troops are deliberately targeting civilians - despite reams of evidence to the contrary - and instead blamed 'neo-Nazis' holding citizens hostage.

Kherson, a city of 300,000 on the Black Sea, appears to have fallen under Russian control after the mayor said 'armed visitors' had taken over a council meeting and imposed curfews. If Putin's men are in full control then it opens up the city of Odessa, home to Ukraine's main naval port, to attack - with amphibious assault ships seen forming up near Crimea on Thursday

Referring to the invasion as a 'special operation' aimed only at protecting the eastern Donbass region, he acknowledged that some Russian forces including a senior commander had died in the fighting - but claimed the officer had blown himself up in a heroic act of sacrifice while taking out several Ukrainian soldiers.

The address, one of the first Putin has made in public since announcing the start of his 'special operation' eight days ago - will do little to reassure anyone that the war is close to being over, or that Russia can be brought to the negotiating table without more blood being shed.

But it also hints that Putin is rattled as the fighting proves harder than Russian commanders anticipated, and western sanctions go harder and deeper than even European or American observers predicted. All hope of a swift victory has now been dashed, leaving Putin facing a long, bloody and expensive war to achieve his aims.

Zelensky's subsequent comments came in during a press conference in Kyiv and in response to a reporter's question on what 'guarantees' Ukraine can offer.

'Guarantees for what?' Zelensky fired back at the interviewer in Russian. 'We aren't attacking Russia and we have no intention of doing so. Guarantee what? We aren't in NATO. We don't have nuclear weapons. What am I supposed to say, what am I supposed to give, and to whom?

'You must understand - this is also a huge thing that everybody is talking about - what am I supposed to give? Jesus, what do you want from us?!'

Ukraine's president, who has become an inspirational figure both at home and abroad for his defiance in the face of Russian aggression, also called on the West to supply planes to help his military control the skies. It came after NATO members ruled out enforcing a no-fly zone over Ukraine for fear of igniting World War Three.

Putin (pictured on Thursday) branded Ukrainians 'extreme gangsters', claimed their army is using civilians as 'human shields'

'If you do not have the power to close the skies, then give me planes!' Zelensky told a news conference. 'If we are no more then, God forbid, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia will be next,' he said, adding that direct talks with Putin were 'the only way to stop this war'.

Zelensky - who just weeks ago sought to calm Ukrainians over US allegations that Russia was planning to invade his country - said: 'Nobody thought that in the modern world a man can behave like a beast.'

Soon after Putin's address, Ukraine announced that it has agreed with Russia to create safe corridors - backed by ceasefires - to evacuate civilians and deliver aid to areas under attack by Russian forces. Russian negotiator Vladimir Medinsky also said the agreement had been made during talks, describing it as 'substantial progress'.

The agreement was the only tangible progress from a second round of talks between Moscow and Kyiv, according to an adviser to Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky, and it was not immediately clear how they would work.

Negotiators from Ukraine and Russia said afterwards that a third round of talks on the war will be held shortly.

So far, more than one million people have fled Ukraine as Putin's armies have laid waste to key cities.

Meanwhile the Russian economy is tanking with the ruble at record lows, the stock market unable to open because it faces near-total collapse, and European countries seizing assets from billionaire oligarchs. Protests have also sprung up in Russia, coupled with high-profile political figures and celebrities calling for the war to end.

Just hours before the TV address, Putin had phoned Emmanuel Macron to tell the French President that he has no intention of pulling back from Ukraine or watering down his security demands, will achieve his aims 'whatever happens' and will continue fighting until 'the end'.

Macron's aides said after the call that they believe Putin intends to take the whole country, and that the 'worst is yet to come' as the Russian attacks step up, and that 'there was nothing in what President Putin told us that should reassure us.'

Mr Macron is said to have told Putin he is making a 'major mistake' and 'lying to himself'. Macron said Russia would end up poor, weakened and under sanctions for a very long time.

'There was nothing in what President Putin told us that should reassure us. He showed great determination to continue the operation,' Macron's aide said, before adding that Putin 'wanted to seize control of the whole of Ukraine'.

Putin's two statements on Thursady - the first he has made in public since announcing the start of his 'special operation' eight days ago - will do little to reassure anyone that the war is close to being over, or that Russia could be brought to the negotiating table without more blood being shed.

News that the convoy has been at least partially damaged or destroyed will come as a huge boon to the people of Kyiv, as it was feared the vehicles would be used to surround and bomb the city into submission. The Ukrainian capital is still under attack by Russian rockets and missiles, but has largely escaped the intense fire being rained down on other locations.

Perhaps the hardest-hit has been the city of Mariupol, on Ukraine's eastern Black Sea coast, which came under bombardment by Russian forces surrounding it yesterday - with the fire kept up near-continuously. Local officials say the city is without water, heat, or electricity, and cannot clear the dead from the streets.

Units of Russian Armed Forces enter Kyiv region, Ukraine, in this screengrab obtained from a video by Reuters on Thursday

Harrowing pictures revealed at least part of the civilian death toll, with a father seen weeping over the body of his son who was killed when a Russian shell destroyed his legs. Two elderly women were also pictured being evacuated from their homes and covered in blood after Russian attacks.

Despite the vicious shelling, the city still remains in the hands of Ukrainian forces - as a defiant Zelensky vowed that Ukraine will be rebuilt with Russian money as he praised his troops' 'heroic' defence.

Kharkiv, in the east, and Chernihiv, in the north west, also remained under Ukrainian control despite coming under heavy rocket fire. Nine people died in Chernihiv after Russian rockets hit a school and nearby apartments. There were also fears the Russians were about to launch a major amphibious assault against the port city of Odessa after a large fleet of ships was spotted near Crimea in the early hours.

The Ukrainian president said that 'all lines of defence are holding' with the cities of Kyiv, Chernihiv, Sumy and Mykolaiv all resisting Russian attacks. He even claimed the city of Kherson remains in Ukrainian hands, despite the mayor seeming to confirm overnight that it had been taken by Russian forces.

'They wanted to destroy us. They failed. We've been through so much. And if anyone thinks that, having overcome all this, Ukrainians will be frightened, broken or surrender, they know nothing about Ukraine,' Zelensky said, adding: 'We will restore every house, every street, every city and we say to Russia: learn the word 'reparations'.

'You will reimburse us for everything you did against our state, against every Ukrainian, in full.'

Separately, one of his presidential advisers said the Ukrainian army is now getting ready to launch counter-attacks on Russian forces after their initial assault on the country stalled - amid reported of fuel and food shortages, heavy casualties, and mismanagement of the operation.

'Help to us is increasing every minute and the strength of the enemy is decreasing every minute. We're not only defending but also counter-attacking,' the adviser said in a televised briefing.

President Zelensky's office said a second round of negotiations had concluded. A first round of talks on Monday ended without an agreement.

KYIV: A firefighter works to extinguish fire at a warehouse that caught flames, according to local authorities, after shelling, as Russia's invasion of Ukraine continues, in the village of Chaiky in the Kyiv region, Ukraine March 3, 2022

Pictured: A map showing the Kyiv region and the area occupied by Russian troops as they close in on Ukraine's capital

Ahead of the invasion, Washington had warned that Russia's superior forces would be able to quickly overwhelm Ukraine's 200,000-strong army - taking out air defences, achieving superiority in the skies, and then raining death down on those below.

But none of that has come to pass. Ukraine's skies remain contested, US intelligence says, while attacks have been piecemeal with troops under-supplied and not fighting in a coordinated fashion, leading to large numbers of dead along with some abandoning their vehicles which have then been captured.

'This is a colossal intelligence failure that vastly underestimated Ukrainian resistance, and military execution has been terrible,' Michael Vickers, former US Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, said at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

'[Putin's] main attack has been underweighted. It's been piecemeal. His reconnaissance elements have been captured, columns have been destroyed,' he said. 'It's just a disaster, through and through.'

But many caution that Russia's initial failures could simply pre-sage a secondary phase of the fighting in which it uses superior numbers and force of arms to surround and bomb Ukrainian troops into submission, causing large civilian casualties.
California mom Sherri Papini who claimed she was kidnapped for 22 days by two Hispanic women in 2016 in a story that shocked and puzzled America, has now been arrested for making it all up six years later.

On Thursday prosecutors charged 'supermom' Papini, 39, for lying to federal agents about being kidnapped and defrauding the state's victim compensation board of $30,000.

The mother-of-two was found on Thanksgiving Day in 2016 after weeks of searching in California and several nearby states 22 days after she disappeared while jogging on November 2.

She was found tied up, with a broken nose, a 'brand' on her right shoulder and a shaved head. Papini told authorities at the time that she had been kidnapped at gunpoint by two Hispanic women, even providing descriptions to an FBI sketch artist.

No one was ever arrested, and authorities could never determine what the 'Hispanic women's' motive was.

When Papini was found on Thanksgiving Day, 2016, police collected DNA samples from her clothes. They ran them against the national criminal database but found no matches.

In 2020, however, they were alerted to a potential match. It was matched to the boyfriend's father, whose DNA was on record with the DOJ.

They then traced that sample to the ex-boyfriend, and he admitted the entire hoax.

California mom Sherri Papini who claimed she was kidnapped for 22 days by two Hispanic women in 2016, has been arrested for faking her abduction

Papini said she was taken at the intersection of Sunrise Drive and Old Oregon Highway while on a jog. She's described her captors as two Hispanic women who drove a dark SUV

Papini claims that two Hispanic women driving an SUV abducted her but covered their faces. These sketches were released of them almost a year after she went missing

In reality, she was with an unidentified ex-boyfriend who police say she asked to pick her up. An affidavit released by the US Attorney's Office for Eastern California details how Papini had multiple affairs and boyfriends, and was described by exes as an 'attention hungry' woman who made things up for sympathy.

The ex-boyfriend is not named in the affidavit but the pair plotted their escape on pre-paid cell phones which they used to text each other before he collected her in November 2016.

PAPINI'S PARENTS STATEMENT 'We love Sherri and are appalled by the way in which law enforcement ambushed her this afternoon in a dramatic and unnecessary manner in front of her children. If requested, Sherri would have fully complied and come to the police station, as she has done multiple times before, where this could have been handled in a more appropriate way. 'Sherri and Keith have cooperated with law enforcements requests despite repeated attempts to unnecessarily pit them against each other, empty threats to publicly embarrass them and other conduct that was less than professional. 'We are confused by several aspects of the charges and hope to get clarification in the coming days.' Advertisement

She then spent the next few weeks at his apartment. The boyfriend confessed to FBI agents, as did one of his cousin's who saw her inside the apartment.

He told how he also hired a rental car to drive her back to her family's neighborhood on November 24, 2016.

Since then, Papini has claimed $30,000 from the Victim Compensation Board.

'In truth, Papini had been voluntarily staying with a former boyfriend in Costa Mesa and had harmed herself to support her false statements,' an announcement by the US Attorney's Office in the Eastern District of California said in a release on Thursday night.

They alleged that Papini continued to lie about what happened, even after FBI agents confronted her with evidence that proved it was a hoax.

Between 2017 and 2022, Papini claimed a total of $30,000 in 35 payments the from Victim Compensation Board.

She is now being held in federal custody, awaiting her first court appearance.

A 55-page affidavit released on Wednesday night reveals how investigators were suspicious of what had happened from the beginning.

On November 2, Papini's husband Keith reported her missing at 5.50pm after returning home from work. She was nowhere to be found and their two children were still at daycare.

Keith then used the 'Find My iPhone' app to locate Sherri's phone, that was sitting on the side of the road near their home next to her earbuds, which were tangled in blonde hair.

He told authorities he thought it looked as though the phone had been 'placed' there and that it was positioned strangely.

Keith said the pair argued like any other married couple but had no serious marital issues. He said their last argument was the previous month and was over a messy room, and that Papini could be 'loud'.

Police started searching her phone and quickly discovered two men's phone numbers that were saved under women's names, the affidavit claims.

Neither was the ex-boyfriend she spent her 'missing' weeks with, but authorities interviewed them and one of her old bosses.

The day before she went missing, Papini texted one of the men and discussed meeting up in Redding, California, near her home.

That man lived in Michigan and had been in California for a work trip. He told police he'd met Papini in 2011 on a work trip and that the pair 'spent the weekend together'.

They continued to exchange flirtatious messages for years, he said, but he did not end up meeting the weekend he was in California, before she disappeared.

The second man told police that he met Papini in 2000-2001 through a a Friday Night Live youth program. He said she was a liar who liked attention and would 'tell stories' to get it.

He said she once told him she was the victim of abuse in her family.

'Man 2 described Papini as an attention-hungry person who told stories to try to get peoples attention. Man 2 stated that Papini fabricated stories of being the victim of abuse from her family, father, and then Man 2 after the couple broke up,' the affidavit reads.

Papini and her husband Keith are pictured for Halloween with their two children

Picture of Keith and Sherri Papini on their wedding day in August 2012

On the day Papini went missing, her husband Keith said he had first become concerned about her whereabouts when she stopped answering her phone

Prosecutors charged Sherri Papini, 39, (pictured) for lying to federal agents about being kidnapped and defrauding the state's victim compensation board of $30,000

'THEY PLAYED ANNOYING MEXICAN MUSIC AND FED ME TORTILLAS': PAPINI'S 'LIES' ABOUT CAPTORS SHE CLAIMED WERE HISPANIC WOMEN The 55-page arrest affidavit reveals some of what Papini told police about the 'Hispanic women' who kidnapped her. Below are excerpts from that affidavit: 'They would play music loudly. That really annoying Mexican music. And theywould watch TV . . . There was a fireplace, I could smell it. I could hear that sound, you know when you move the handle to open the fireplace. It made like a creaky sound . . . and it was cold. It was always cold. And it seemed like it rained almost every night.' 'I heard birds. I never heard anything else ....... they put the stereo right outsidemy door and . . . played it super loud.' 'Papini said her abductors fed her once a day, maybe rice or tortillas, and Sometimes apples' 'Papini said the women put her in a closet with a bucket with kitty litter in it for her to use as a toilet. She described the closet as containing shelves and a metal pole to which the women hooked a cable and a chain to, with the other end of the chain hooked around her waist. There was enough length on it for Papini to reach the bed, but she could not reach the door. The chain was unmovable because it was bolted into the ceiling. Papini escribed how, when she did not listen to the women, they would lock her in the closet. 'Papini stated that there were boards on the windows of the room she was kept in'' 'I tried to get out the first time and thats when she branded me.' Papini described how her abductors brought a table in, hit her back, and tied her to the table. When they branded Papini, her skin made a sizzling popping sound and it was very painful. Later in this same interview, Papini said her abductors told her that her buyer wanted Papini branded because' Advertisement

Investigators also spoke with Papini's boss at the Friday Night Live youth program, and he said he worried about having her in the program because she 'was good at creating different realities for people so that they would see what she wanted them to see, which got her really good attention.'

Papini was married once before she met Keith.

Her first husband was in the military. Keith told police that their entire marriage was a sham designed to get her onto his medical insurance so that she could receive treatment for a persistent heart murmur.

When police spoke to the first husband, he said she told him she needed the insurance due to 'complications from regular egg donations'.

Papini's mother said she'd told her she 'traveled the world' with her first husband when in reality, they had only traveled together once.

The ex-husband told police that after they divorced, he was told by mutual friends that she had a history of lying.

The hoax was unraveled by the DNA match to the ex-boyfriend's father.

Local investigators in California asked the DOJ to run a familial search of the DNA they had collected from Papini's clothing in 2016. It was found on her underwear, sweatshirt and pants, and belonged to a man - even though she had told investigators she had been kidnapped by two women.

The search pinged a partial match for the ex-boyfriend's father.

It remains unclear if his DNA was on file because it was in the criminal database, or if he had submitted to an at-home DNA test.

Authorities then staked out the ex-boyfriend's home. They collected a bottle of Honest Honey Green Tea in June 2020,

She faces a mail fraud charge related to the reimbursement requests that carries a penalty of up to 20 years in prison, while lying to a federal officer has a maximum five-year sentence.

'Everyone involved in this investigation had one common goal: to find the truth about what happened on Nov. 2, 2016, with Sherri Papini and who was responsible,' said Shasta County Sheriff Michael Johnson.

That 22-day search and five-year investigation not only cost money and time, he said, 'but caused the general public to be fearful of their own safety, a fear that they should not have had to endure.'

The mother-of-two, dubbed a 'supermom' by her sister Sheila Koester, 36, disappeared while out jogging on November 2, 2016.

On the day she went missing, her husband Keith said he had first become concerned about her whereabouts when she stopped answering her phone.

Neighbors told DailyMail.com that Papini had been living as 'a recluse' but has begun to make more frequent appearances in 2017

After spending the past year living as a recluse, the mother-of-two seemed to be getting back to normal when she went for pizza with her husband Keith in Redding, California in 2017

Neighbors told DailyMail.com that shortly after returning home Papini had been living as 'a recluse' but had begun to make more frequent appearances in 2017

A video shows Papini (in red circle) running around on the morning she was found after vanishing for two weeks in November 2016

The area where Sherri Papini was found near the I-5 freeway outside of Yolo, California

When he discovered she hadn't picked the kids up from daycare, he flew into full blown panic.

'I couldn't find her, so I called the day care to see what time she picked up the kids. The kids were never picked up so I got freaked out, I hit the Find My iPhone app thing,' he said. 'I found her phone; it's got like hair ripped out of it, like, in the headphones.'

Her phone was discovered a mile away at the intersection of Sunrise Drive and Old Oregon Highway  neatly placed on the ground and with the headphones tidily wrapped around it.

Keith, who said at the time that his wife would never leave him or their children voluntarily, also launched an appeal  a GoFundMe account raising cash to pay for the search which eventually raised close to $50,000.

After being found three weeks later, with her hair hacked off and branded with a threatening message, Papini claimed she had been kidnapped by two Hispanic women who could not be identified because they constantly covered their faces.

Papini said the women had been driving a dark-colored SUV with 'a large rear side window' at the time of the kidnapping but has so far been unable to give details of the make and model.

However, police also revealed that male DNA that did not belong to husband Keith was found on her clothing and said she had been texting another man before her disappearance.

Cops investigating the kidnapping had discovered Papini's texts and tracked down the man in Detroit, Michigan on November 9 - a week after she disappeared.

Following her return, Papini was said to be living a quiet existence at her family home which occupies a shady plot of land on the outskirts of Shasta Lake; a small town of 10,000 people in Northern California.

Neighbors told DailyMail.com that she had been living as 'a recluse' but had begun to make more frequent appearances in 2017.

That year she was spotted doing the school run and relaxing in her yard with a book.

Further skepticism about why she disappeared emerged after it was revealed she had previously run away as a teenager.

And according to the Sacramento Bee, uncovered documents from 13 years ago outlined how Papini's mother, Loretta Graeff, called police asking for help after her daughter was allegedly self-harming and trying to blame the wounds on her.

The incident report, filed in December 2003, is just two lines long and reads: 'RP states her 21y/o daughter that was living with her was harming herself and blaming it on the RP.

'RP states female is coming back to live with them and she wants advice.'

The newspaper also found two other incidents involving Papini, where her father and sister both claimed she damaged their property.

In 2000, Richard Graeff said his daughter 'burglarized his residence,' before Sheila Koester, 'alleged her back door had been kicked in and she believed Papini was the suspect', the Bee reported.

In retrospect, 'we are relieved that the community is not endangered by unknown, violent kidnappers,' said Sean Ragan, special agent in charge of the FBI's Sacramento Field Office.
Jetstar has announced a flight sale to Bali from seven Australian cities, as the Indonesian resort island looks to eliminate Covid quarantine rules.

The sale began at 9pm on Thursday for flights from April 8, with fares ranging from $99 to $125, and will end at 11:59pm on Friday.

Ross Taylor from the Indonesia Institute said quarantine rules still apply but could be gone this month as Omicron cases fall.

Australians can now fly to popular holiday destination Bali starting from next month as the country returns to a sense of normality following the pandemic

'The good news is that our "insiders" tell us that the Indonesian government is wanting to eliminate any quarantine requirement,' he told The West Australian.

Under current restrictions in Indonesia, arrivals with three shots have to quarantine for three days, while those with two shots need to quarantine for five days.

Taylor noted that Australians entering the country also need to apply for a visa prior to departure, but adds that Indonesia is now looking to bring back 'Visa-on-Arrival'.

Travellers looking to Bali for their next vacation spot will be able to fly for an affordable price after Jetstar announced a $99 one way airfare sale this week

Ross Taylor from the Indonesia Institute told The West Australian that holidaygoers will still need to follow quarantine rules upon arrival, but says the government is considering scrapping rules in March

Aussies have been locked out of Indonesia for the past two years due to travel restrictions brought about by the Covid pandemic.

Jetstar Bali sale Sydney to Bali : From $125 Melbourne to Bali: From $125 Brisbane to Bali: From $125 Darwin to Bali: From $106 Cairns to Bali: From $99 Adelaide to Bali: From $99 Perth to Bali: From $99 Advertisement

Indonesia, and especially Bali, has been severely impacted by the pandemic as the island nation's economy relies heavily on tourism dollars.

More than 70 per cent of Balinese residents work in tourism. The industry accounts for 52 per cent of the island's GDP.

At least 90% of tourism-related businesses and restaurants at the island have shut their doors due to the miniscule number of international arrivals over the past two years - with just 45 overseas visitors reportedly holidaying at the island in 2021.

Many resorts have closed during the pandemic to renovate and refurbish.

Indonesia, and especially Bali, has been severely impacted by the pandemic as the island nation's economy relies heavily on tourism dollars

At least 90% of tourism-related businesses and restaurants at the island have shut their doors due to the miniscule number of international arrivals over the past two years - with just 45 overseas visitors reportedly holidaying at the island in 2021.

Jetstar's low airfare fees to Bali will apply to flights from all major cities in Australia, while reassuring travellers about possible changes to Covid rules.

'If customers are affected by changes to border restrictions, they will always be able to get a credit voucher to the full value of their booking,' Jetstar said.

'Depending on the circumstances, cash refunds or free changes to flight dates or times may also be available.'

Australians aged 12 or older who are travelling on Jetstar flights will need to be fully vaccinated unless they have an exemption.
Hyundai Heavy Industries Ulsan shipyard / Courtesy of Korea Shipbuilding & Offshore Engineering



By Kim Hyun-bin



Korea Shipbuilding & Offshore Engineering (KSOE) is restructuring its global production strategy by forging partnerships with companies in the Middle East and Russia, company officials said Wednesday.



The world's leading shipbuilder has been partnering with global shipyards and transferring technology so as to receive royalties rather than competing to fully procure big ship building projects in major ordering countries.



"All the technologies we export are commonly used among shipbuilders so it is better to transfer and receive royalties from countries instead of trying to compete with China's low prices such as bulk carriers," a KSOE official said. "Then we can concentrate more on developing high value added carriers such as LNGs."



The IMI shipyard project, which is scheduled for completion next year, is a joint venture between KSOE and the Saudi government, and Saudi Engines Manufacturing Company (SEMC).



The IMI project is a mega-sized shipyard which KSOE is building in the King Salman shipbuilding industrial complex in Saudi Arabia, as a result of a partnership agreement in 2017, with Saudi state-run energy company Aramco, state-owned shipping company Bahri and the UAE energy company Lamprell.



President Moon Jae-in also mentioned the shipyard as a representative case of economic cooperation between the two countries during his state visit to Saudi Arabia in January.



IMI Shipyard is the first overseas shipyard built by a Korean shipbuilder that is operated purely on 'royalties'. KSOE participates as a licensor that provides technology to the project, which is estimated to be worth at least 5 trillion won, and secures 20 percent and 30 percent stakes in IMI and SEMC, respectively.



In 2019, the company signed a contract with IMI to sell design drawings and construction technologies for very large crude-oil carriers (VLCC). This is a structure in which the shipyard receives royalties every time it builds a VLCC. IMI has already secured the supply of more than 50 crude oil carriers from Aramco and Bahri.



Royalties also come from the engine, which is a key piece of equipment. SEMC pays royalties to produce the 'Himsen Engine,' a mid-size marine engine developed by KSOE with its own technology. It plans to produce about 200 marine engines annually.



Prior to Saudi Arabia, KSOE opened the door for technology export by being involved in the modernization project of the Zvezda shipyard that the Russian government is aiming to strengthen. Hyundai Samho Heavy Industries established Zvezda-Hyundai, an engineering joint venture in 2017, and built a mid-sized Aframax class tanker together with Zvezda, and succeeded in delivery last year.


The NHS has scrapped free flu jabs for millions of people aged over 50 as the organisation chose to reverse its policy to pre-pandemic conditions.

Secondary school children aged 11 to 15 who were also eligible for the free shot wont be offered one either.

It comes after a record 35 million people  including everyone over the age of 50  were offered the vaccines this winter, amid fears that Britain could face one of the worst flu seasons in history.

A letter published on the NHS website has confirmed that the flu vaccination programme for 2022/23 will be only offered to patient groups eligible in line with 'pre-pandemic recommendations'.

The NHS has scrapped free flu jabs for millions of people aged over 50 as the organisation chose to reverse its policy to pre-pandemic conditions (stock photo)

This includes the over-65s, people in clinically 'at risk' groups, very young children and pregnant women.

The changes are expected to affect around 10 million people aged over 50 - some who had already arranged jab appointments - and four million secondary school children.

The letter added that: 'Seasonal flu vaccination remains an important public health intervention and a key priority for 2022/23 to reduce morbidity, mortality and hospitalisation associated with flu at a time when the NHS and social care will be managing winter pressures, potentially including further outbreaks of COVID-19.'

Pharmacists warned that the guidance had caused chaos for them, many of whom had already ordered millions of vaccines, which would now need to be cancelled.

Dr Leyla Hannbeck, the chief executive of the Association of Independent Multiple Pharmacies, told The Telegraph: 'No one has communicated to the public that the offer of flu jabs this year is going to be any different to last year.

Pharmacists warned that the guidance had caused chaos for them, many of whom had already ordered millions of vaccines, which would now need to be cancelled

'Last year over-50s were being told they should get their jab, now the advice has changed, but no one is explaining why. It's going to cause so much confusion.'

The guidance was given in line with advice from the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) and Department of Health and Social Care.

However, JCVI minutes from December suggest the committee was keen to see children aged 11 to 16 still offered jabs.

The minutes say it would be 'acceptable to vaccinate 50 to 64-year olds for the 2022-23 season if funding available', but said this group was a lower priority.

But health officials have opted to axe both groups from the rollout.

It follows formal JCVI advice in September, which backed jabs for those over the age of 65, and for younger people in at-risk groups, saying it was for health officials to consider 'supply and affordability' before making plans.

One source working with the rollout told The Telegraph there were concerns the decisions appeared to be financially driven.

He said: 'Given that the next pandemic might be caused by the influenza virus it seems extremely reckless to to cut the flu vaccine programme.'

A Whitehall source said: 'We are getting back to business as usual. It made sense to expand the flu jab offer during the pandemic when we were concerned about the twin dangers of Covid and flu, but we need to get working in the way we used to, as part of living with Covid.'

Comes following warnings from scientists including Professor Graham Medley that the UK would take longer to spot variants if free Covid tests were scrapped

The measure, which will save the taxpayer and the NHS money, comes following warnings against axing free Covid tests - which is said to cost up to 2billion a month.

Professor Graham Medley, chair of No10's coronavirus modelling group, warned that new Covid variants will take weeks longer to detect when mass testing is scrapped on April 1.

From that point the country will rely solely on the Office for National Statistics' weekly Covid survey to monitor community spread of the virus, with only severely vulnerable people eligible for free tests.

Professor Medley said that while the UK was alerted to Omicron by South Africa, and Delta by India, it was Britain's mass testing programme that helped to pick up the Alpha variant in South East England and warned the world.

He is the latest Government adviser to warn against the potential dangers of scrapping mass testing, after two SAGE members - Professor John Edmunds and Professor Matt Keeling - also expressed concern.
Labour's Paulette Hamilton has become the country's newest MP after winning the Birmingham Erdington by-election.

Former nurse Paulette Hamilton, 59, has made her victory as the first black MP elected from a Birmingham constituency after the by-election was triggered by the death of veteran politician Jack Dromey - who had held the seat since 2010.

Mr Dromey held the seat for Labour in 2019 with a majority of 3,601 and was one of the leading trade unionists of his generation, however he died at age 73 from 'sudden heart failure'.

The mother-of-five won with a majority of 3,266 but the by-election failed to inspire voters, with a turnout of just 27 per cent and a total of 17,016 ballots cast.

She picked up 9,413 votes, ahead of Tory candidate Robert Alden with 6,147, and when asked about her victory, she said she was 'exhausted but delighted'.

Labour, who have held the constituency since it was created in 1974, increased its vote share from 50.3 per cent in 2019 to 55.5 per cent.

Labour's Paulette Hamilton (pictured) has become the country's newest MP after winning the Birmingham Erdington by-election

Ms Hamilton, whose father died just as her campaign got under way, thanked her Labour colleagues for their support 'through four storms' and her bereavement.

She said: 'I'd also like to say a special thank you to Kier Starmer for his endless support - even when my dad died, they were there, they wrapped me in cotton wool, and they supported me, and my dad isn't even buried yet but they were there when I was crying'.

Ms Hamilton is the cabinet member for health and social care on Labour-controlled Birmingham city council.

A Labour spokesman said: 'In Paulette, the people of Birmingham Erdington have elected a great local champion. We're delighted that this campaign has seen the first black MP elected from a Birmingham constituency.

'Increasing our vote share is a huge achievement and shows that with Keir Starmer's leadership, Labour is regaining the trust of voters in our traditional 'red wall' seats in the Midlands after the disastrous results of the 2019 general election.

Ms Hamilton, whose father died just as her campaign got under way, thanked her Labour colleagues and Sir Keir Starmer for their support 'through four storms' and her bereavement

'Even in a traditionally low turnout seat with a well-known Tory candidate, we've seen a swing to Labour with voters backing Keir Starmer's contract for the British people based on security, prosperity and respect for all.'

There had been concerns in the Labour camp that low turnout could increase the chances of an upset, while candidates from smaller parties could erode their share of the vote.

There have been close results in the past, with the Tories losing by just 231 votes in 1983, when leader Margaret Thatcher was at the peak of her powers after the Falklands War.

But Mr Johnson's party has been struggling in the national polls as the Prime Minister was battered by allegations of parties in Downing Street breaching coronavirus rules.
A young woman tragically killed in a motorbike crash was just two days away from moving away to start a new life.

The far north Queensland community of Port Douglas has been rocked by the death of Shanti Wren, 27, as a man was charged with a string of serious offences over the crash.

Ms Wren was thrown from the back of a motorbike after the rider allegedly failed to navigate a corner in the well-known tourist resort on Wednesday night, according to police.

She was rushed to hospital in a critical condition but couldn't be revived, sparking an outpouring of grief on social media.

Ms Wren was remembered as a ray of sunshine, the life of the party and one of a kind by shattered friends, former colleagues and fitness buddies.

The tragic death of Shanti Wren (pictured) has sparked an outpouring of grief in far north Queensland

Her social media shows a love of spending time with friends and the great outdoors.

Ms Wren was due to make the 1,800 km move south to Noosa on Friday to make a fresh start and had spent her final days alive saying her goodbyes.

'She spent the past week making the most of time with her friends around the Cairns and Port, with a new life chapter that was supposed to commence tomorrow with a move to Noosa... however, the universe had other ideas,' local gym Team Carling posted.

'It's a cruel reminder that life can end at any moment, doesn't matter who you are or what your plans.. so live, laugh, love.. and don't fret the small things.

'Amazing, fun, loving, caring human. The world has lost another great soul.'

Shanti Wren was due to to make the big move from Port Douglas to Noosa on Friday

Ms Wren's shattered housemate recalled how the pair were meant to catch up for farewell drinks the day after she died.

'I was going to tell you again how grateful I was for everything you've done for me over the last 10 months,' the woman wrote.

'For being a second mum to my fur babies & helping when i was away for work. I don't trust many people with them but you were one of a kind.

'You shared a bond that no one else will. Thank you for making my house feel like a home again.'

Other friends struggled to comprehend the shock loss.

'There will only ever be one Shanti Wren, the life of the party who filled her life with making memories. I miss your contagious laugh, witty sense of humour, killer dance moves & just you,' one woman wrote.

'I can't comprehend what has happened and I don't know how any of us will recover from this.'

Shanti Wren (pictured) has been remembered as a ray of sunshine and life of the party

A man has been charged over the Port Douglas crash that claimed the life of Shanti Wren (a floral tribute at the crash scene)

A former workmate added: 'You were such a pure spirit, an absolute ray of sunshine and always just a bit wild. You made my work days at larder so much brighter, more fun and definitely always more interesting.'

Former bosses had nothing but kind words to say about Ms Wren.

'She had a lovely manner about her and was well liked by everybody, and well known around the town too,' Century 21 Port Douglas co-owner Phil Holloway told the Cairns Post.

'It has come as a great shock to everyone that has known her.

Local restaurant owner Shane Loughnan added: 'It's hard to come to terms with (because) we are talking about a beautiful normal everyday girl who was so well liked.'

Shanti Wren was a passenger on the back of a motorbike when her life was tragically cut short

A growing shrine has been set up at the crash site.

A Port Douglas man, 31, was charged with a dangerous operation of a vehicle causing death while affected by an intoxicating substance, drink driving and unlicensed driving.

He was bailed to appear in Mossman Magistrates Court on March 23.

Police investigations into the fatal crash continue.
President Joe Biden spoke to his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky on Thursday night to discuss Russia's shelling of Europe's largest nuclear power plant.

The White House was monitoring the situation, officials said, without providing details of the call.

'POTUS spoke with President Zelenskyy this evening to receive an update on the fire at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant,' the White House tweeted.

'He joined President Zelenskyy in urging Russia to cease its military activities in the area and allow firefighters and emergency responders to access the site.

'POTUS also spoke this evening with Under Secretary for Nuclear Security of the U.S. Department of Energy and Administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration to receive an update on the situation at the plant.

'The President will continue to be briefed regularly.'

Zelensky, in a video posted to social media, said he had spoken to the leaders of the United Kingdom, Germany, Poland, and the European Council, in addition to Biden.

The Zaporizhzhya plant, 350 miles south of the capital Kyiv, was partially on fire on Thursday night and into the early hours of Friday morning - although it was believed that the fire was in an administrative building used for training, rather than a reactor.

Andrii Tuz, a spokesman for the plant, told CNN that the facility was attacked 'from air, from tanks, from rockets, from many, many armor'.

He said Ukraine remained in control of the site.

'But any moment it may result in a nuclear accident.'

A building at the Zaporizhzhya nuclear plant was on fire in the early hours of Friday morning. It is believed that the structure is an office building, rather than a reactor

Images from a livestream at the site on the Dnieper River showed powerful explosions lighting up the night sky in the early hours of Friday

Joe Biden spoke to Volodymyr Zelensky on Thursday evening in Washington DC, and the pair discussed the attack on the nuclear plant

Tuz said the reactors were not on fire.

'Russians are shooting at a unit of the nuclear plant - unit one and unit two have damage.'

He added: 'Help us, please.'

Igor Murashov, Ukraine's nuclear chief, said that efforts to put out the fire were ongoing.

'#Nuclear safety at the #Zaporizhzhya NPP has been broken,' Nexta reported him as tweeting.

'We are doing everything possible, but the fire is going on, firefighters are not allowed. There are great risks.

'Fightings are going on at the plant. The #reactors are in danger.'

The plant has six reactors. It was unclear whether the nuclear fuel rods remained in the reactors, or whether they had been shut down.

Nuclear experts were urgently calling for the fighting to stop, though - pointing out that if the electricity to the plant was cut off, it could trigger a devastating incident.

Even if the reactors were shut down and the nuclear rods placed into cooling pools, the pools required large quantities of water and electricity, said Joseph Cirincione, who has worked on nuclear weapons policy in Washington for over 35 years.

The International Atomic Energy Agency on Thursday night said they were deeply concerned - but emphasized that no increase in radiation levels had been reported.

'#Ukraine regulator tells IAEA there has been no change reported in #radiation levels at the #Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant site,' they tweeted.

Ukraine's foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, tweeted a dire warning about the attack.

'Russian army is firing from all sides upon Zaporizhzhia NPP, the largest nuclear power plant in Europe,' he said.

'Fire has already broke out.

'If it blows up, it will be 10 times larger than Chornobyl!

'Russians must IMMEDIATELY cease the fire, allow firefighters, establish a security zone!'
A TV host has been left red-faced after comical video emerged of him berating the wrong guest about the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Video of the exchange showed Indian news anchor Rahul Shivshankar angrily accusing the editor of Ukrainian newspaper Kyiv Post Bohdan Nahaylo of being 'on the fence' about the war.

'Daniel McAdams, just take a bit of a chill pill... relax, calm down,' the Times Now host said as the pair shouted over each other continuously.

It took more than a minute for the presenter to realise he wasn't actually speaking to Mr McAdams, the executive director of the Ron Paul Institute for Peace.

The actual Mr McAdams eventually interrupted the war of words, telling Shivshankar 'I'm not talking. It's the other guy who's talking - I haven't been able to say a word!'

Craziest 2 minutes of TV news ever, with opposing guests on the Ukraine war hosted by Indian TV. the ending is a MUST watch. pic.twitter.com/1USI8bjHif  Sk Boz, PhD  (@skbozphd) March 3, 2022

Indian TV host Rahul Shivshankar spent more than a minute berating Kyiv Post editor Bohdan Nahaylo, but had confused him with Daniel McAdams - he executive director of the Ron Paul Institute for Peace

'I have not said a word yet, I do not why you are yelling at me,' the institute director said.

'Im not yelling at you, Im yelling at Mr. McAdams,' Shivshankar replied.

'I am Mr McAdams - I am Mr McAdams,' the US commentator responded, at which point Shivshankar's moment of realisation finally arrived.

'Oh sorry, I got that confused,' the host said.

The news presenter had repeatedly berated Nahaylo about US President Joe Biden during the fiery exchange, not realising the journalist was Ukrainian.

'Dont lecture us here in India, okay?' Shivshankar said. 'I am not gonna hear your lecture. And if you have really have problems, then go tell the US president Mr Biden, who flashes his fancy credentials.'

Shivshankar (pictured) took more than a minute to realise he wasn't actually speaking to Mr McAdams, the executive director of the Ron Paul Institute for Peace

Daniel McAdams, the executive director of the Ron Paul Institute for Peace, was forced to interrupt the war of words and said 'I have not said a word yet, I do not why you are yelling at me'

The mistake appeared to have been caused by a production error by Times Now producers, which meant the on-air subtitles for the two experts were mixed up.

Daily Mail has contacted Times Now for comment.

Former Daily Mail editor-at-large Piers Morgan was among the high-profile media figures to comment on the video after it went viral on social media.

'A hilarious reminder to always check who your guests are,' he said.
A father has admitted to trying to kill his young daughter after maintaining his innocence for over a year.

Shaun Mate appeared at the South Australian Supreme Court on Monday and formally pleaded guilty to attempting to gas her in their south Adelaide home.

Mate and his then three-year-old daughter were found unconscious in a bedroom close to an open gas tank in July 2020.

Shaun Mate, 45, has pleaded guilty to the attempted murder of a three-year-old girl and will be sentenced at a later date

Both were put into induced comas as doctors worked to revive them. As soon as Mate recovered he was charged with attempted murder and has remained in police custody.

In December 2020 the Supreme Court refused to release him on home-detention bail after it heard that he had been bashed in prison.

Opposing bail, prosecutors said Mate's actions with his daughter were premeditated and it was 'sheer good luck' she was still alive, The Advertiser reported.

The Adelaide Magistrates Court had previously heard evidence that Mr Mate had become desperate and his marriage was on the rocks leading up to the incident.

Mr Mate pleaded not guilty to attempting to murder his daughter last year.

Then just last month his defence team told a court he had admitted to opening the gas cylinder that caused him and his child to lose consciousness.

But Marie Shaw QC, for Mate, told the court she was investigating whether her client had been mentally competent at the time of the event.

The matter has been adjourned until May.

For confidential support call the Lifeline 24-hour crisis support on 13 11 14
A Western Australian mother who spent three years waiting for elective surgery only for her cancer to return has accused Premier Mark McGowan of 'playing God with people's lives'.

Michelle Hansford, from Busselton south of Perth, chose to go on a waiting list to have her remaining right breast removed in 2019 after battling back from stage three breast cancer.

She never reached the front of the queue as Mr McGowan repeatedly paused non-urgent category three operations even when his state had zero Covid transmission.

Three years later, Ms Hansford found a cyst in her right breast and was then given the devastating news her cancer had returned, The West Australian reported.

A Western Australian grandmother spent three years waiting for elective surgery to remove her remaining breast due to Covid delays - only for her cancer to return

The normal waiting time to be admitted for category three operations in WA is only a year, according to the state government's official website.

The grandmother said her doctor told her the cancer would not have returned if the surgery had been performed in an acceptable time period.

'I was a bit numb to start with but then very, very angry,' the grandmother said.

She wrote a letter to the state's health minister, in which she said the mastectomy she now needed to undergo would double her chance of dying.

'To top it all off, now I am not able to have the support from my family at the hospital, as if having surgery [a three hour] drive from my hometown wasnt hard enough,' she said.

WA Health Minister Amber-Jade Sanderson said in a statement her office would contact Ms Hansford urgently.

WA Premier Mark McGowan (pictured) has vowed to keep Omicron at bay. Last month, he postponed bookings for non-urgent elective surgeries for between six to eight weeks

'There is no change to category one bookings and the surgery schedule for these will continue as normal,' she said.

The grandmother is now a category one patient, which means her procedure will take place in the next 30 days.

Mr McGowan, who she accused of 'playing God with people's lives', put a pause on category two and three elective surgeries on February 28 amid an influx of new Covid cases in WA.

The McGowan government hopes the pause will alleviate pressure on the state's hospital system (pictured, people in Perth)

The pause is expected to last between six and eight weeks and reduce pressure on the state's healthcare system.

On Friday, there were 2,137 new Covid cases in Western Australia.

There are 21 people with Covid in hospital state-wide, none of whom are in intensive care.
Florida's Republican-led Senate on Thursday voted to ban abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, rejecting Democratic attempts to soften its restrictions and add exceptions for rape, incest or trafficking.

The vote also puts the state one step closer to adopting a gestational limit currently under review by the U.S. Supreme Court.

The state's House of Representatives, which also has a Republican majority, approved the measure last month on a party-line vote.

Final legislative passage on a 23-15 vote in the Senate sent the bill to Governor Ron DeSantis, a Republican, who is expected to sign the measure into law.

'Governor DeSantis is pro-life and has voiced support for the concepts in this bill,' his spokesperson, Christina Pushaw, said earlier in the day.

Enactment of the bill would significantly reduce access to late-term abortions for women across the U.S. Southeast, many of whom travel hundreds of miles to end pregnancies in Florida because of stricter abortion laws in surrounding states.

The state currently permits abortions within up to 24 weeks of pregnancy without a mandatory waiting period, meaning a woman can terminate her pregnancy the day she arrives at a clinic.

Florida's measure, which would take effect on July 1, makes exceptions to the 15-week restriction only in cases when the mother is at risk of death or 'irreversible physical impairment,' or if the fetus has a fatal abnormality.

In a session on Wednesday, Republicans defeated an amendment that would have made exceptions for rape, incest and human trafficking.

Florida's Republican-led Senate on Thursday voted to ban abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, rejecting Democratic attempts to soften its restrictions and add exceptions for rape, incest or trafficking

Final legislative passage on a 23-15 vote in the Senate sent the bill to Governor Ron DeSantis, a Republican, who is expected to sign the measure into law

The state currently permits abortions within up to 24 weeks of pregnancy without a mandatory waiting period, meaning a woman can terminate her pregnancy the day she arrives at a clinic. Kate Dandy-Samitz, center, leads protest chants at the Florida Capitol

'As a woman it is my right to make decisions about my body and what is in the best interest of my family,' said Rep. Robin Bartleman, a Democrat.

'God forbid your 11 year old is raped and pregnant and you find out after 15 weeks, you don't get to get your daughter that abortion, that's what this law says.'

Democratic lawmakers who supported the amendment asked their colleagues to focus on the emotional needs of pregnant victims of sexual assault. 'We're better than this,' state Senator Victor Torres said.

The bill's sponsor, state Senator Kelli Stargel, defended the bill's exclusion of an exception for rape, saying she rejected the premise that a 'child should be killed because of the circumstances in which it was conceived.'

Florida Democratic Rep. Robin Bartleman has fought against the bill pointing to the fact that it does not allow considerations in special circumstances such as rape or incest

The bill's sponsor, state Senator Kelli Stargel, defended the bill's exclusion of an exception for rape, saying she rejected the premise that a 'child should be killed because of the circumstances in which it was conceived'

Republican lawmakers around the country have introduced bills mirroring a 15-week abortion ban enacted by Mississippi and now being weighed by the U.S. Supreme Court after lower courts blocked the measure as unconstitutional.

Arizona's Senate and West Virginia's House passed similar 15-week abortion bans last month.

Some states have also sought to craft their own versions of a Texas law that bans abortion at six weeks and empowers citizens to sue people who assist women getting abortions past that point. Idaho's state Senate passed a Texas-style six-week abortion ban on Thursday, sending it next to the state House for approval.

During oral arguments in December, the Supreme Court indicated its willingness to allow Mississippi's 15-week abortion ban to stand.

A ruling in Mississippi's favor would conflict with the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision establishing the right to end a pregnancy before the fetus is viable, typically around 24 weeks.

Florida's GOP-controlled Senate passed a controversial 15-week abortion ban on Thursday (Pictured: Advocates for bodily autonomy protest at the Florida Capitol in February)

The 15-week abortion bill would become one of the most restrictive in the country (Pictured: Advocates for bodily autonomy march to the Florida Capitol in February)

Besides seeking reinstatement of its abortion law, the state of Mississippi in Jackson Women's Health Organization v. Dobbs has asked the high court to overturn Roe altogether.

The Supreme Court's ruling is expected this spring.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Florida said a privacy clause in Florida's constitution that explicitly protects against government 'intrusion' in residents' private lives would be grounds for a lawsuit challenging a 15-week abortion ban.


Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has apologised to parents for 'confusing' messages over school closures and pick-ups after a severe weather warning.

Many parents and school staff across the state's south-east expressed confusion after Ms Palaszczuk yesterday handed down an edict for students to be collected from schools between the northern suburbs of Brisbane up to Bundaberg to avoid coming storms.

All south-east Queensland schools were then closed on Friday as a precaution ahead of a forecast of more severe weather, despite Queenslanders waking up to partly cloudy skies.

The mea culpa came as a tenth victim of the flooding in Queensland was confirmed.

In a press conference on Friday a contrite Ms Palaszczuk said she was acting on the weather advice she was given when she closed schools, but acknowledges the decision was an 'inconvenience' for parents.

'Can I say from the outset to all the parents on the south-east, that I apologise for the inconvenience,' she said.

'But I think everybody would realise that if you were in my shoes... everyone would have made exactly the same decision.'

15,000 homes in Queensland are still without power, and up to 17,000 homes and businesses have been damaged.

'Safety has to come first. At the end of the day you can only act on the advice you were given.'

The advice given to Ms Palaszczuk suggested the state would face severe hail and thunderstorms on Thursday and Friday, which failed to eventuate.

All schools are set to reopen from Monday, except for 64 state and 76 non-state schools damaged by floodwaters.

All schools are set to reopen from Monday, except for 64 state and 76 non-state schools damaged by floodwaters. Pictured: A woman walks through a flooded street at the Queensland-NSW border

Ms Palaszczuk also reminded Queenslanders that from 6pm Friday night, the mask mandate in the state will be lifted.

'The masks can come off. If you're in crowded situations please think about whether or not you want to use it [the mask], but it is completely up to you.'

Ms Palaszczuk says harsh weather conditions around the state are easing and the Brisbane River level had reduced to 2.25 metres.

Queensland's mask mandate will be lifted at 6pm on Friday night, but Queenslanders are encouraged to keep wearing them in busy places

Around $559 million in disaster grants and loans are being offered to individuals and businesses from the state and federal government.

Missing man's body found under wharf

On Thursday night, the Queensland Fire and Emergency Services conducted two water rescue operations and the body of a 53-year-old man who was last seen on a boat in the flooded Brisbane River was also recovered.

'Any loss of life during these events is gut wrenching not only for the families but for their friends as well,' Ms Palaszczuk said about the incident.

Queensland's death toll is now at 10, with another man still missing.

Queensland Police Commissioner Katarina Carroll said the 53-year-old's body was found under a wharf at the Port of Brisbane on Thursday night, four days after he was last seen in a small aluminium boat on the Brisbane River at Murrarie.

'All of these deaths are flood-related, some completely unexpected, where water has risen very, very quickly in areas that we're not used to,' Commissioner Carroll told reporters on Friday.

Queensland authorities performed two water rescues overnight before Friday morning as many floodwaters continue to present a danger to many

'So over the next few days as the showers, and storms, and rain continues, please be aware of that flash flooding, be aware of your circumstances.'

An elderly man was also still missing after he was seen falling from a boat on the Brisbane River near Breakfast Creek on Saturday.

Queensland Fire and Emergency Services made two more swift water rescues overnight and responded to almost 200 calls for help.

QFES Commissioner Greg Leach said there had been 650 swift water rescues and emergency services had received almost 12,000 calls for help in the last 11 days.

'We still have around 900 tasks outstanding, so it will take us another two to three days to get to you,' he said, addressing those who had sought help.

'So if you are waiting for SES assistance, please be patient, we will get to you.'

Whole communities remain cut off by floodwaters, 15,000 properties are without power and up to 17,000 homes and businesses have been damaged.

Queensland's emergency services have more than 900 tasks still to complete, the SES has asked people to 'be patient'

Police and Defence Force troops are air-dropping food, water and medical supplies to those stranded, while 260 people are staying in evacuation centres.

Conditions have eased on Friday, but Bureau of Meteorology forecaster Laura Boekel said a flood watch remains in force over the saturated catchments of Brisbane, Ipswich, Logan, and the Sunshine and Gold coasts.

'They have no ability to take on and absorb any water, so any water that does fall from showers or storms today could lead still to flash flooding,' she said.

There are 260 people still in evacuation centres in Queensland as Brisbane River drops to 2.25 metres in height

Maryborough (pictured) sits in the region between Brisbane and Bundaberg where Premier Palaszczuk ordered schools to close.

About $559 million in disaster grants and loans are also being offered to individuals and businesses from the state and federal government.

The premier said the total cost of the 'unprecedented' disaster was unclear as severe weather forecasts were hampering damage assessments on homes, businesses, roads and railways.

'Let's face it, it's climate change. I mean, I've never seen so many natural disasters,' Ms Palaszczuk said.

'We seem to be dealing with more and more, more cyclones, more floods, you know, a couple of years ago ... we had the catastrophic fire events in central Queensland, Queensland had never seen anything so catastrophic before.'

However, she said the disaster hadn't diminished her own support for fossil fuel and Queensland was 'lucky' to have coal and gas, with renewable energy investment also ramping up.
A drug supplier whose jail conditions included mice crawling on his face and nibbling on his feet during a severe rodent plague has won a small cut in his sentence.

Ahmed Taha's appeal was told he reported 'mice chewing on his shoes, eating his food, crawling on his face, nibbling on his feet and depositing faeces on his bed'.

The then 27-year-old was jailed for five years with a non-parole period of two years and six months in November 2020 after pleading guilty to four counts of supplying cocaine.

A drug supplier whose jail conditions included mice crawling on his face and nibbling on his feet during a severe rodent plague has won a small cut in his sentence (stock image)

Taha, who had a history of drug-related offending, admitted that between July and September 2019 he facilitated drug supply to over 30 customers.

He challenged his sentence on grounds relating to his borderline intellectual functioning and a claim the sentencing judge erred in how she considered his pre-sentence custody.

The NSW Court of Criminal Appeal upheld the latter ground, resentencing Taha to four years with a non-parole period of two years and three months.

The judges ruled that the rat plague and hardships imposed on prisoners as part of the necessary response to the COVID-19 pandemic were factors warranting reducing the sentence that would otherwise be imposed.

'It was common ground that, in May 2021, the applicant was housed in the Wellington Correctional Centre during which time there was a severe rat plague which impacted upon the correctional centre,' Justice Michael Walton said.

Taha said he lived in these conditions, which included the mice nibbling and crawling, for about three months.

'I do not consider that it may be inferred, as submitted by the Crown, that the extent of the problems experienced by the applicant in Wellington due to the rat plague were common to everyone residing in that area,' the judge said.

'They were ultimately resolved by the applicant being removed to another facility.

'The hardship suffered by the applicant was for a finite period and is, therefore transitory in nature akin to, for example, offenders being confined in protective custody for periods of their sentence.

'I shall take this factor into account in resentencing, but, in these circumstances, the weight afforded to it cannot be substantial.'

The judges also took into account the increased hardships on custodial conditions associated with COVID-19.

Justice Walton said Taha's criminal history denied him leniency, finding his prospects of rehabilitation were at best guarded and he is at medium to high risk of reoffending.
Flames and smoke billow from a residential building damaged by recent shelling in Chernihiv, Ukraine, March 3, as Russia's invasion of the country continues. Reuters-Yonhap





Russia and Ukraine agreed Thursday to the need for humanitarian corridors to help civilians escape Moscow's eight-day-old invasion, the first apparent progress in talks, as the United States added to Western sanctions on more oligarchs.







Thousands are thought to have died or been wounded as the biggest attack on a European state since World War Two unfolds, creating 1 million refugees, hits to Russia's economy and fears of a wider conflict in the West unthought-of for decades.







Russian forces have continued to surround and attack Ukrainian cities, including Mariupol, the main port in the east which has been under heavy bombardment, with no water or power. Officials say they cannot evacuate the wounded.







After talks at an undisclosed location, Russia said "substantial progress" had been made while the Ukrainian side pointed to an understanding on helping ordinary people, but not the results Kyiv had hoped for.







Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak said a temporary halt to fighting in select locations was also possible.







"That is, not everywhere, but only in those places where the humanitarian corridors themselves will be located, it will be possible to cease fire for the duration of the evacuation," he said.







They had also seen eye-to-eye on the delivery of medicines and food to the places where the fiercest fighting was taking place. The negotiators will meet again next week, the Belarusian state news agency Belta quoted Podolyak as saying.







The West has responded to Russian President Vladimir Putin's invasion with military support and by tightening the economic screws on the Kremlin and Russians. The fallout so far has included queues outside banks, a plunge in the value of the ruble and an exodus of foreign companies.







In a sign of business unease, Russia's second-largest oil producer Lukoil called for the conflict to end as soon as possible, saying it was concerned by the "tragic events in Ukraine."







On Thursday, the United States and Britain announced sanctions on more oligarchs, following on from EU measures.







Included was Russian tycoon Alisher Usmanov, the founder of mining company Metalloinvest.







In Germany, his luxury yacht worth nearly $600 million was moored at a Hamburg shipyard. Hamburg's economic authority said there were no plans for the vessel to be delivered to its owner.







Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov has also been hit with U.S. sanctions. Visa restrictions will be imposed on 19 Russian oligarchs, their family members and associates, the White House said.







Sanctions have "had a profound impact already," said President Joe Biden.







Rescuers work at a residential building damaged by recent shelling in Chernihiv, Ukraine, March 3, as Russia's invasion of the country continues,. Reuters-Yonhap









Kyiv and other major cities are still controlled by Ukraine but the United Nations said one million people have now fled, mainly seeking refuge in Poland and other neighbors to the west.






The mostly Gen Z activists have blocked the entrance and climbed among pipes and atop tankers at the Nustar Clydebank terminal, near Glasgow, resulting in dozens of police officers being called to the scene. In videos posted on Twitter, groups of activists can be seen holding up orange banners carrying their organisation's name, while demonstrators - some as young as 17 - warn they will push on with their 'disruptive action' across the country until the UK government releases a 'meaningful' statement agreeing to their demands. It comes just days after a total of 35 people were cuffed after members of the eco-mob damaged pumps and glued themselves to the tarmac and vehicles at two petrol stations on the M25. Meanwhile, drivers were warned last night that Petrol and diesel prices could hit new records within weeks - just in time for the Platinum Jubilee bank holiday getaway in early June. One protestor told Capital Scotland News on Tuesday that the group's demand to stop investment for new oil fields that 'won't be operational for decades to come' was 'more than reasonable'. He added: 'We don't want to be here, we don't want to be inconveniencing people, we don't want to be shutting people out of their work, we don't want to have police here wasting their time with this frankly, when they have got better things to be doing... Our plan is to stay here until we are forcibly removed, and over the longer term we are going to keep doing these disruptive actions until we get a meaningful statement from the government that they're going to halt the expansion of oil and gas.' A spokesperson for the group told MailOnline there have yet to be any arrests and that many plan to protest at the Scottish site 'for several days'.
Senator Lindsey Graham has called for 'somebody in Russia' to assassinate their president Vladimir Putin.

The Republican Senator invoked a Julius Caesar-style assassination of the Kremlin strongman - currently leading an invasion of Ukraine - during an appearance on Fox News' Hannity show and in a series of incendiary tweets on Thursday.

'Is there a Brutus in Russia? he asked. 'Is there a more successful Colonel Stauffenberg in the Russian military?' he tweeted, referencing the army officer who attempted to kill Adolf Hitler.

'The only way this ends is for somebody in Russia to take this guy out. You would be doing your country  and the world  a great service,' his tweet continued.

Graham's call for Putin to be assassinated comes as the Russian leader continues to indiscriminately bomb cities after launching his savage invasion of Ukraine.

Russian troops today seized Europe's largest nuclear power plant in Ukraine after a firefight that set part of the complex ablaze, with President Volodymyr Zelensky accused Putin of resorting to 'nuclear terror' and risking a catastrophe 'six times worse than Chernobyl' that would affect the whole continent.

In a separate tweet Graham added that the responsibility of eliminating Putin laid solely in the hands of Russian citizens.

The tweets prompted a furious response from the Russian ambassador to the US. Anatoly Antonov called Graham's remarks 'unacceptable and outrageous' and demanded an explanation.

Senator Lindsey Graham called on Russians to carry assassinate their president Vladimir Putin

The Republican Senator invoked a Julius Caesar-style assignation of Putin who is currently leading an invasion of Ukraine during an appearance on Fox News ' Hannity show

School hit during the Russian air raids in Zhytomyr, a city around 80 miles to the west of Kyiv, which was struck this week

'The only people who can fix this are the Russian people,' Graham tweeted. 'Easy to say, hard to do. Unless you want to live in darkness for the rest of your life, be isolated from the rest of the world in abject poverty, and live in darkness you need to step up to the plate.'

Graham's call for Putin to be assassinated drew a stern rebuke from Russia, with Ambassador Antonov accusing him of inciting terrorism.

Antonov said today: 'I find the statement of the American politician unacceptable and outrageous.

'The degree of Russophobia and hatred in the US towards Russia is off the charts. It's unbelievable that a senator of a country that promotes its moral values as a 'guiding star' for all mankind could afford to call for terrorism as a way to achieve Washington's goals in the international arena.

'It's getting scary for the fate of the United States, which has such irresponsible and unprofessional politicians at the helm.

'We demand official explanations and decisive condemnation of this American's criminal statements.'

It comes as Russia sparked dire warnings and international condemnation after it emerged that Russian soldiers attacked the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine in the early hours of Friday, setting part of the plant ablaze.

Senator Lindsey Graham (pictured) called on Russians to carry out the assassination of President Putin in his latest series of tweets. Graham's comments drew a stern rebuke from Russia, with the Ambassador to Russia to the US, Anatoly Antonov, accusing him of inciting terrorism

Graham's call for Putin to be assassinated drew a stern rebuke from Russia, with the Ambassador to Russia to the US accusing him of inciting terrorism

Fire-damaged buildings at the Zaporizhzhya nuclear complex are pictured on Friday morning after coming under attack by Russian forces overnight, leading to international condemnation

On Thursday the Republican Senator invoked Julius Caesar-style assignation of the Russian President Vladimir Putin (pictured) who is currently leading an invasion of Ukraine

Graham is not the first conservative to call for Putin's death this week.

Earlier this week Fox News host Sean Hannity said: 'Cut the head of the snake off and you kill the snake.'

'What we really need in this crisis, more than anything else, is a worldwide condemnation,' Hannity said on his daytime radio show. 'And it's a simple new rule that if you invade an innocent sovereign country, and you kill innocent men, women and children, you don't deserve to live. That's the bottom line.'

'Now currently the U.S. operates under a decades-old executive order signed by [former President] Gerald Ford that prohibits the U.S. government employees from engaging in political assassinations.

'And I'm like, 'You cut the head of the snake off and you kill the snake. Right now the snake is Vladimir Putin,' Hannity added.

It comes as Russian troops have seized Europe's largest nuclear power plant in Ukraine after a firefight that set part of the complex ablaze.

Russian troops attacked the Zaporizhzhia plant in the early hours of Friday, with CCTV capturing a fierce gun battle between Putin's men and Ukrainian defenders that sparked a fire in a six-storey training building just outside the main complex. Moscow's men then stopped firefighters getting to the building for several hours as fighting raged.

Eventually, emergency crews were allowed to go in and douse the flames before Russian troops moved in an occupied the site, which provides a fifth of Ukraine's electricity. The UN's nuclear monitoring agency said that, fortunately, none of the site's six reactors had been directly damaged and radiation levels remained normal.

However, news that Russian soldiers had put the plant at risk by opening fire close by and shelling it sparked dire warnings and international condemnation - with the head of the International Nuclear Energy Agency saying he was 'deeply concerned'. Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who spoke with Zelensky after the plant was attacked, called the attack 'reckless' and said Putin is now 'threatening the security of the whole of Europe'.

Sparks erupt from an administration building (bottom right) as a live steam video shot from a larger office block behind it films Russian tanks opening fire on the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in the early hours of Friday morning

A destroyed Russian tank is seen on the road near Brovary, to the east of Kyiv, after being destroyed on Friday morning

Moscow has, predictably, attempted to deny responsibility for the attack, saying its forces had come under attack by Ukrainian 'saboteurs' while patrolling the plant, who then set fire to the building themselves.

Ukraine is home to three other active nuclear power plants, one of which is located 70 miles from the city of Mykolaiv which Russian forces have begun attacking after seizing nearby Kherson. The other two active sites are located in the west and are not currently under threat, though that situation could change as the Russian attack branches out. Ukraine also has five sites which are out of action, but could still pose a risk if hit by shells.

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky accused Russia of 'nuclear terror' and wanting to repeat the Chernobyl disaster - considered the worst nuclear disaster in history.

'You know the word 'Chernobyl,' he said in a video posted on Friday morning, calling on Russia to stop its attack.

'No country other than Russia has ever fired on nuclear power units. This is the first time in our history. In the history of mankind. The terrorist state now resorted to nuclear terror,' he said in the video message.

President Joe Biden had spoken with his Ukrainian counterpart about the attack, while a Downing Street spokeswoman said Johnson had also spoken to Zelensky.

The spokeswoman called the situation 'gravely concerning', adding: 'Both leaders agreed that Russia must immediately cease its attack on the power station and allow unfettered access for emergency services to the plant.

Fire is seen in Mariupol at a residential area after shelling amid Russia's invasion of Ukraine

A view of damaged building after the shelling is said by Russian forces in Ukraine's second-biggest city of Kharkiv

Russia's war against Ukraine is now entering its ninth day and shows no sign of stopping any time soon after talks between the two sides yesterday broke up without agreement, before Vladimir Putin went on TV to declare that he would keep battling for 'total victory' whilst spouting propaganda that Russia's forces are not deliberately targeting civilians and that the 'special operation' is proceeding on time with all of its major objectives completed to schedule.

Fighting is expected to ramp up around the cities of Mykolaiv and Odessa, in Ukraine's south, in the coming days - with a mass amphibious assault on Odessa feared after dozens of Russian landing ships were pictured massing near Crimea.

The port city of Kherson fell to Russian soldiers yesterday with the city of Mariupol, on the other side of the Crimean peninsula, now under heavy bombardment as Moscow's men try to bomb it into submission - with the aim being to cut off Ukrainian access to the Black Sea and deny the government access to lucrative trading routes.

Fighting is also continuing across the north and east, with Ukrainian special forces ambushing and destroying Russian tanks and armoured vehicles at Hostomel - to the west of the city - and Brovary - to the east - late yesterday and this morning. Ukraine also claimed its jets have targeted part of a 40-mile convoy currently stalled outside the city, amid fears it would encircle the capital and bombard it.

Meanwhile Chernihiv, to the north east of Kyiv, and Kharkiv, in Ukraine's east, were braced for more heavy shelling today after days of increasingly indiscriminate attacks including with banned cluster munitions have left dozens of civilians dead.

President Putin is also stepping up actions on the home front, intended to head off internal dissent about the war as combat proves fiercer and harder than his generals anticipated, and western sanctions destroy large chunks of the economy.

Russia's rubber-stamp parliament on Friday approved new laws that would see anyone spreading 'fake news' about the invasion jailed for up to 15 years. Putin had previously threatened and shut down radio and TV stations referring to the 'war' or 'invasion' of Ukraine - which Moscow prefers to call a 'special military operation'.

People walk past the remains of a missile at a bus terminal, as Russia's invasion of Ukraine continues, in Kyiv

An office block in central Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city, has been destroyed in Russian attacks in the last few days

Moscow also admitted to limiting news from outside sources getting into the country, with the BBC, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, independent Russian site Meduza and Germany's Deutsche Welle all restricted, while access to Facebook has been blocked.

Putin has also gone after peaceful protesters, with thousands arrested while marching in rallies around the country asking for the conflict to end.

Meanwhile diplomats from NATO, the EU and G7 will hold a series of back-to-back meetings today in order to discuss next steps in the crisis, with discussions expected to focus on reinforcing NATO's eastern flank in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, supporting non-NATO states such as Moldova and Georgia, and calls for more military support to be sent to Ukraine.

As Russia's invasion of Ukraine continues to escalate, Graham is not the only person suggesting Putin be taken care of.

Russian businessman Alex Konanykhin offered a $1 million bounty for Vladimir Putins arrest - by posting a Wanted: Dead or Alive poster online.

Konanykhin said in posts on Facebook and LinkedIn that he would pay the money for the arrest of Putin as a war criminal under international laws

Konanykhin claimed that Putin was not the President of Russia because he murdered his opponenets.

Konanykhin, 55, is a wealthy entrepreneur who served on a Russian delegation to the US in 1992 under its then President Boris Yeltsin.

But he fell out with the Kremlin after it accused him of embezzling $8m from the Russian Exchange Bank in Moscow and he was granted asylum to stay in the US in 2007.

In the post on LinkedIn, Konanykhin wrote: I promise to pay $1,000,000 to the officer(s) who, complying with their constitutional duty, arrest(s) Putin as a war criminal under Russian and international laws.

Putin is not the Russian president as he came to power as the result of a special operation of blowing up apartment buildings in Russia, then violated the Constitution by eliminating free elections and murdering his opponents. As an ethnic Russian and a Russian citizen, I see it as my moral duty to facilitate the denazification of Russia.

I will continue my assistance to Ukraine in its heroic efforts to withstand the onslaught of Putin's Orda.
The father of former New South Wales police minister Troy Grant, who claimed he was sleepwalking when involved in a drunken fatal hit-and-run, has been jailed for three years and 10 months.

District Court Judge John Hatzistergos told Ken Grant, 72, there was no escaping the simple fact he had deliberately driven a car when he was in 'no fit state to do so' before the crash.

Judge Hatzistergos accepted Grant, a retired police inspector, was genuinely remorseful but had to be jailed because of his high degree of moral culpability.

When Ken Grant was pulled over by police after the crash and had to be dragged out of his car and handcuffed, he repeatedly told officers he was ex-police minister Troy Grant's (pictured) father

The judge noted Grant had written a letter to the court saying: 'Taking a man's life has left me with the deepest regret and guilt that will live with me forever.'

Judge Hatzistergos found in November there was no reasonable possibility Grant had been suffering from somnambulism when he crashed into Tony Greenfield.

Grant claimed he was either sleep walking or had transient global amnesia, a sudden temporary episode of memory loss, or had sleep apnoea and was not driving voluntarily before the crash.

But neurologist Dr David Rosen said it was more likely Grant had an alcoholic blackout.

Grant was found guilty after a judge-alone trial of dangerous driving causing death, failing to stop after a fatal crash, being involved in a police pursuit and drink driving after running into Mr Greenfield at about 11.24pm on November 30, 2019, in Maitland.

The 62-year-old scientist died of his injuries at Newcastle's John Hunter Hospital.

Guests at the party both men had attended described Grant as being 'hammered' before getting behind the wheel.

Blood tests following the crash suggested that Ken Grant (pictured) had a BAC of nearly 4 times the legal limit at 0.194

Grant, who returned a blood alcohol level of 0.108 after his arrest and had a later reading of 0.194 from blood tests, claimed to have no memory of the crash which threw Mr Greenfield 20m forward past his wife Nerida when they were walking back to their accommodation.

Judge Hatzistergos on Friday said he had taken into account the powerful victim impact statements from Mrs Greenfield and the couple's daughter Bronwen when determining Grant's sentence.

The judge pointed to how Mrs Greenfield claimed to have a video clip of the last seconds of her husband's life which would be etched in her brain for the rest of her life.

Mrs Greenfield repeatedly relived the accident where she would see her husband flying through the air before Grant drives off.

She still experienced flashbacks remembering how her husband's body felt in her arms when lying on the grass.

Ken Grant (pictured) claimed he was either sleep walking or had transient global amnesia,, or had sleep apnoea before the crash

The judge highlighted how Bronwen had been baffled at why Grant, once he had sobered up, could not admit what had happened and was only thinking about himself when he denied responsibility.

But Judge Hatzistergos said since the crash Grant was genuinely sorry for what he had done.

When Grant was pulled over by police after the crash and had to be dragged out of his car and handcuffed, he repeatedly told officers he was the police minister's father.

At one stage he told police, 'My son is Troy Grant, the police minister, and I'm pissed.'

The judge was sitting in Wollongong to deliver sentence, with Grant watching proceedings remotely from a Newcastle court. He will eligible for parole after one year and 11 months.
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8.00am: Trains started running later into rush hour but seven were hit with severe delays and two had minor disruption

Tube chaos has continued into a fourth day as all London Underground lines were shut until 'mid-morning' - despite no strike called for today.

Commuters faced misery as they had to find alternative ways into work as the service recovered from yesterday's union action.

Trains started running later into rush hour but seven were hit with severe delays and two had minor disruption.

In another blow Uber hiked its prices again this week as passengers were slapped with eye-watering 'surge fares'.

It comes as Labour was accused of being in chaos over the strikes after failing to condemn the second crippling walkout.

Meanwhile ministers were last night facing growing calls to ban strikes by transport workers amid this week's misery.

All Tube lines were down again early on Friday morning until 8am due to what is thought to be the service recovering from strike action.

Bakerloo, Central, Circle, District, Hammersmith and City, Jubilee, Metropolitan, Northern, Piccadilly, Victoria and Waterloo and City were all suspended.

Transport for London told commuters struggling to get to work they should expect problems travelling on the days after strikes.

It said: 'In addition to today's Tube strikes, services will be affected on 4 March. No service expected before 8am. Travel after mid-morning. For essential journeys, check your travel.'

It added in a tweet last night: 'If you can, travel later in the day on the days after strikes (Fri 4 March). Avoid early morning travel.'

Tube chaos has continued into a fourth day as all London Underground lines were shut until 'mid-morning' - despite no strike called for today

Commuters faced misery as they had to find alternative ways into work as the service recovered from yesterday's union action. Pictured: Canada Water this morning

Meanwhile ministers were last night facing growing calls to ban strikes by transport workers amid this week's misery

All Tube lines were down again early on Friday morning until 8am due to what is thought to be the service recovering from strike action. Pictured: Canada Water this morning

Bakerloo, Central, Circle, District, Hammersmith and City, Jubilee, Metropolitan, Northern, Piccadilly, Victoria and Waterloo and City were all suspended

Commuters wait for London Underground services to resume this morning following the Rail, Maritime and Transport (RMT) union's day of strikes across the network yesterday

Pictured: Canada Water London Underground station was closed until 7.50am forcing livid commuters to be late for work today

Yesterday marked another day of commuter despair as the militant RMT union staged a second 24-hour walkout of around 10,000 Underground staff.

Picket lines were mounted outside Tube stations and the union said its members were solidly supporting the industrial action.

Key workers and hospital patients were caught up in the mayhem as passengers tried to board packed buses.

The strikes were held on Tuesday and yesterday, with the effects of the walkouts bleeding into Wednesday and today, stretching the chaos out over four days in all.

Underground staff are protesting over fears of staff cuts and changes to work conditions and pension schemes as TfL looks to recover from the pandemic.

In another blow for travellers, Uber users were hit by hiked fares as they were forced to turn to the app amid transport chaos.

Prices were around double, with a normal taxi from Kennington to Kensington costing 25 and one from Kensington to Tooting hitting 20.

And roads were clogged up with vehicles as those who would usually get the Tube to work took to taxis, buses and cars.

In another blow for travellers, Uber users were hit by hiked fares as they were forced to turn to the app amid transport chaos

LONDON:

LONDON:

Passengers queue in their droves at a bus stop at London Liverpool Street yesterday morning amid the tube strike

The underground escalators at Kings Cross station were deserted yesterday morning as a result of the tube strike

Commuters faced almost a week of chaos on the Tube TUESDAY A 24 hour strike was in force throughout the day, from 00:00 to 23:59, with the vast majority of routes completely shut following a walkout of 10,000 workers. Services were suspended on all lines except the Overground, DLR and TfL Rail - though a significantly reduced service did open on the Central, District and Northern lines by mid-morning. WEDNESDAY No strike action is scheduled but commuters arrived to find stations closed during the morning rush hour. The TfL website just after 7am showed all lines were either suspended, part-suspended or running with a reduced service or minor delays, with the exception of the Victoria and Central lines, as well as TfL rail. Guidance says to expect severe disruption on all lines and advises to travel later in the day if possible. The last Piccadilly line service from Acton Town to Uxbridge will run 15 minutes early, departing at 00:44 THURSDAY Another 24 hour strike is scheduled, as TfL says to expect 'severe disruption' to all lines and stations, adding that it's 'highly likely' no services will run. Bosses also say workers should consider working from home where possible. FRIDAY No strike action is scheduled during the day but commuters are likely to experience further delays. Guidance says to expect severe disruption on all lines and advises to travel later in the day if possible. Then in the evening, there is planned strike action between 2030 and 0429. Central and Victoria lines could be affected. A good service is expected on the Victoria line (including Night Tube). A regular service is expected on the Central line (at least two trains per hour through central London). SATURDAY In the evening, there is planned strike action between 2030 and 0429. Central and Victoria lines could be affected. A good service is expected on the Victoria line (including Night Tube). A regular service is expected on the Central line (at least two trains per hour through central London). Advertisement

It comes as Labour was blasted over its silence over London Underground strikes yesterday after failing to condemn the second crippling walkout.

London Mayor Sadiq Khan was booed while attending a glitzy music awards ceremony, with one punk group publicly savaging him for not dealing with the crisis.

Critics questioned why the mayor was attending the event instead of holding talks to try to halt the industrial action.

Yet party leader Sir Keir Starmer has chosen to remain silent on the crippling issue.

Analysis of Labour MP Twitter accounts found at least 15 used their profiles to back the strikes, with several proudly posting pictures of themselves on picket lines.

Ministers and MPs led an angry backlash, pointing out that those on lower incomes would be hit the hardest by the strikes.

Mr Khan was booed on stage as he presented a gong at the NME Awards at the O2 Academy Brixton in south London on Wednesday night.

He was seen rubbing shoulders with celebrities such as YouTuber Amelia Dimoldenberg at the do. But he was also rounded on by those frustrated with strikes.

Punk-grime duo Bob Vylan, who were there to present the award for Best Festival in the UK, said: 'Sadiq you need to sort these trains out. Do you understand?

'You have to keep this city moving bro because people need to get to work, you understand? Come on, we've got to do better.'

Boris Johnson demanded an end to the chaos after stepping in and ordering TfL and union bosses to stop 'bringing misery to Londoners'.

The Prime Minister's official spokesman said: 'I think these ongoing strikes clearly are bringing misery to many Londoners, and we want both sides to get around the table and put an end to this disruptive action.

'It's a blow to businesses as they recover from Covid restrictions and it's stopping people from getting to work.'

Transport Secretary Grant Shapps was also critical, as he tweeted: 'For the 2nd time this week, @TfL tube strikes have brought London to a standstill.

'Given the government has provided almost 5bn to protect services & TfL jobs throughout the pandemic, this is no way to repay hard-pressed taxpayers who are simply trying to get to work & home.'

Tory MP Greg Smith, who sits on the Commons transport committee, said: 'It's wholly unacceptable for people's daily lives, their income, their livelihoods to be disrupted in this horrendous way.

'It's literally taking food off people's tables. People who were stuck in the rain on Tuesday and who couldn't get about today will be raising many an eyebrow as they see the Labour mayor was swanning around at a glitzy event with celebrities rather than hammering it out with the RMT to end this nonsense.'

Speaking in the Commons, fellow Conservative Bob Blackman said: 'The trade unions, for the second day this week, have brought London literally to a halt.

'At this time of course, there is one person that's completely silent about that  the do-nothing Mayor of London.'

Commuters cram onto a bus at Liverpool Street station yesterday morning as London continues to be crippled by the tube strike

A sign at Paddington Station in London during a strike by members of the Rail, Maritime and Transport union (RMT)

Commuters cram onto a bus at Liverpool Street station this morning as London continues to be crippled by the tube strike

Driverless Tube trains could be answer to union strike chaos in the capital Driverless trains could be introduced on the Underground as part of plans by ministers to break the power of the militant RMT union. Transport Secretary Grant Shapps has made driverless technology a condition of talks on a bailout for Transport for London (TfL), which wants a long-term settlement to shore up finances ravaged by the pandemic. Millions of commuters face another day of misery today as the RMT strikes over job cuts and pensions for the second time this week. Tuesday's strike brought the network to a standstill, leaving commuters queuing for buses and walking miles in the pouring rain. Yesterday, the RMT threatened more strikes and said there could be 'a massive shutdown over the summer' if TfL tries to change the terms of staff pensions. Sadiq Khan, London's Labour Mayor, has responsibility for TfL, but a Government source said Mr Shapps was determined to begin the shift to driverless technology. 'Industrial action or no industrial action, there is a strategic case for moving forward on driverless trains,' the source said. Advertisement

Commons Leader Mark Spencer branded Mr Khan's record 'absolutely appalling'. Conservatives also condemned figures showing the RMT has given Labour and its MPs hundreds of thousands of pounds in recent years, sparking accusations that union barons had 'bought the party's silence.'

Tory MP Andrew Bridgen said: 'Through multiple donations the RMT has bought the Labour Party's silence on an issue that's crippling the capital and damaging our economy at a crucial time.'

A spokesman for Mr Khan defended his attendance at the awards, saying the mayor 'will always support the capital's creative industries as it continues to recover from the pandemic.'

A Labour spokesman said: 'Transport for London's finances have been decimated during the pandemic.

'Sadiq Khan has been working hard to get it back on track, while Conservative ministers continue to play politics with TfL's finances.'

RMT chief Mick Lynch said: 'Our members across London Underground are making it crystal clear again this morning that they are not going to be used as pawns in a political fight between the mayor and the Government which threatens their futures and their livelihoods.'

Meanwhile ministers were last night facing growing calls to ban strikes by transport workers.

MPs said tough new laws were needed to smash the power of militant unions and prevent them from 'holding the country to ransom'.

They said ministers should even consider an outright ban on walkouts by workers who deliver 'critical services', including public transport.

That would mirror the ban on police officers striking due to them providing an emergency service.

It could also mimic stricter rules in countries such as France and Germany, where to be considered lawful, industrial action must be 'proportional' to its aims.

Boris Johnson, pictured with ambassador Vadym Prystaiko, today demanded an end to the Tube strike chaos, after stepping in and ordering TfL and union bosses to stop 'bringing misery to Londoners'

Why are the tube drivers striking and what do they want? The union fears that spending cuts will lead to hundreds of job losses and reductions in pensions and working conditions. However, TfL insists it hasn't proposed any changes to pensions or terms and conditions, and described the action as 'completely unnecessary'. RMT general secretary Mick Lynch said: 'Sadiq Khan should be standing up to Tory ministers who want to needlessly attack jobs, pensions and conditions of key transport workers. 'It is this political failure that has left Tube workers with no choice but to strike this week. 'Our members have been left paying the price for a turf war between City Hall and the government and they are not having it, as can be seen right across London today.' Drivers can earn 24,000 while on a 12-16 week training course, which can then rise to 30,000 after completing assessments. The salary for a newly qualified driver is around 49,000 but those with five years experience can pocket an extra 11,000 on top. In the financial year from April 1, 2019 to March 31, 2020, the annual wage of a full time driver was 56,496. This is on top of other perks the drivers enjoy such as free travel around the capital for them and a partner. They can retire on a reduced pension at the age of 50 or a full pension at 60. Advertisement

Tory MP Greg Smith, who sits on the Commons transport committee, said: 'There is definitely a case to be explored to prevent those in key critical national infrastructure, which includes getting people to work on public transport, from being able to disrupt that.'

A Department for Transport spokesman said last night: 'Rail strikes have a real impact on people's lives... which is why we are looking at how we can limit the impact of this action.'

It also emerged earlier this week driverless trains could be introduced as part of plans by ministers to break the power of the militant RMT union.

Mr Shapps made driverless technology a condition of talks on a bailout for TfL, which wants a long-term settlement to shore up finances ravaged by the pandemic.

Yesterday, the RMT threatened more strikes and said there could be 'a massive shutdown over the summer' if TfL tries to change the terms of staff pensions.

Mayor Mr Khan has responsibility for TfL, but a Government source said Mr Shapps was determined to begin the shift to driverless technology.

'Industrial action or no industrial action, there is a strategic case for moving forward on driverless trains,' the source said.

'They are already a reality  the London Docklands Light Railway has been automated since its birth 35 years ago  but there is a deep-seated cultural resistance to the concept at TfL.

'It cannot be right that commuters are held to ransom and the economy of London harmed, merely at the whim of union bosses.'

The Transport Secretary has warned Mr Khan he must begin 'scoping work' on driverless trains if he wants more bailouts.

Mr Shapps is also demanding a reduction in the number of TfL bosses on six-figure salaries, as well as curbs to the gold-plated pensions of train drivers. For every 1 staff pay into the fund, TfL pays 6.

The PM has pushed for driverless trains on the Underground for more than a decade, but has been thwarted by unions, who say the idea is 'dangerous nonsense'.

The Government has given TfL almost 5billion to help compensate for revenues lost during lockdowns when millions of staff were ordered to work from home.

The agreement runs until June, and Mr Khan has been warned there will be no long-term financial settlement unless he agrees to embrace driverless technology.

But a spokesman for the Mayor said that he had been clear to ministers that driverless trains would cost 10billion and were 'not a priority for TfL'.

The dispute is also over planned reductions in station staff. But TfL said there will be no redundancies and its plan is to not fill about 600 vacancies after staff leave.

Vladimir Putin's useful numbskulls: ANDREW PIERCE examines the shameful record of militant union chiefs behind London's crippling Tube strike

This week, London has once again been crippled by Tube strikes: industrial action slammed as irresponsible by business leaders and naturally hated by the capital's residents.

The walkouts  more are threatened  have seen 200 Underground stations close, caused chaos during rush hours, cost the city up to 100million and savaged businesses that were only just struggling back on to their feet after two years of on- off lockdowns.

But the timing is terrible for another reason, of course: Vladimir Putin's deranged invasion of Ukraine and its destabilisation of our world.

And on that score, the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT) might have chosen its moment to wage class war rather more carefully, given the rather troubling fondness that several of its senior members have expressed for Russia in the past.

The RMT has contained pro-Russian elements for years: at its annual meeting in 2014, soon after Putin first began his attempts to annexe eastern regions of Ukraine, the union passed a motion denouncing Western support for the 'far-Right regime in Kiev'. Putin must have been delighted.

It also supported what it called the 'antifascist resistance in Ukraine'  but was silent when it came to criticising Russia directly. Individual RMT members, however, go much further.

London has once again been crippled by Tube strikes: industrial action slammed as irresponsible by business leaders and naturally hated by the capital's residents. Pictured: RMT president Alex Gordon

Take RMT assistant general secretary Eddie Dempsey, who enjoys a somewhat unproletarian salary package of 108,000. He has said he wants to 'implement in this country policies which are socialist'  but another country seems to interest him even more than his own.

If Putin has a number of 'useful idiots' in the West, Dempsey has surely been among the most useful. In 2015, not long after the Russian dictator's first invasion of Ukraine, the RMT's man thought it would be a good idea to visit that country's Donbas region.

Here, he posed for photographs with the Putinite warlord Aleksey Mozgovoy, a commander in the hideous 'Ghost Brigade' of pro-Russian separatists: branded a 'terrorist organisation' by Ukraine's Supreme Court.

In Dempsey's deluded eyes, Mozgovoy was a 'charismatic anti-fascist'.

Instead of calling out the Ghost Brigade for the blood-stained aggressors they are, the union leader praised them as 'volunteers' while calling the West's efforts to broker peace in the region a 'US-orchestrated coup'.

And when, just two weeks after Dempsey's happy snap, Mozgovoy was killed in a bomb and machine-gun attack, the union baron wrote a fawning obituary for the terrorist in the Communist newspaper Morning Star.

In 2020, a court found that Mozgovoy had planned and ordered the ambushing and murder of a family for money. How's that for 'charismatic anti-fascism'? Dempsey also saw fit to sign a recent letter from the notorious Stop the War coalition, which criticised Nato for showing 'disdain for Russian concerns' in Ukraine.

RMT Assistant General Secretary Steve Hedley (pictured) poses in a Soviet-style soldier's hat with an assault rifle

It pointedly failed to criticise Russia for massing up to 190,000 troops on the Ukraine border  the prelude to Putin's monstrous war.

Will Dempsey now express regret for his bizarre stance?

The Labour MP Chris Bryant, who sits on the foreign affairs select committee, certainly thinks so, saying: 'He should apologise  and be ashamed of himself.'

But Dempsey, sadly, is only one of the RMT's hard-Left numbskulls.

The union's own president, Alex Gordon  a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain's executive committee  has never made any attempt to hide his beliefs. In 2015, after Mozgovoy was killed, Gordon shared a post online that read: 'A person can be murdered but not his ideas.'

In 2020, he cheerily tweeted: 'Happy 150th Birthday, Lenin!'  celebrating the architect of Russia's 1918 Red Terror that saw about 100,000 people executed as the Bolsheviks cemented their revolution.

Then there's Steve Hedley, assistant general secretary of the RMT. He has appeared in pictures brandishing an automatic rifle while wearing a Russian fur hat emblazoned with a hammer-and-sickle badge and has declared: 'We want to overthrow capitalism and create a socialist form of society.'

Hedley, whose online campaign page declares he wants to 'fight the bosses', has the rare distinction of being to the Left even of John McDonnell, Jeremy Corbyn's Marxist ex-shadow chancellor.

Mr Hedley has the rare distinction of being to the Left even of John McDonnell, Jeremy Corbyn's Marxist ex-shadow chancellor

After Putin's goons committed their sickening atrocity in Salisbury in 2018, McDonnell  in a rare moment of good judgment  called for a moratorium on Labour members appearing on Russia Today, Putin's English-language propaganda channel (now under investigation by the broadcast regulator Ofcom because of its brazen pro-Kremlin propaganda).

Hedley declared the moratorium was 'absolute liberal nonsense' and accused 'Mac Donell' (sic) of joining 'the jingoistic anti-Russian bandwagon'.

The RMT was kicked out of the Labour party in 2004, but in 2018, during Corbyn's leadership, they said they would once again 'align' themselves with the party.

And they've certainly been generous to trusted Labour MPs. Ian Mearns, for example, has received an astonishing 86,000 from the RMT since 2016, while his Gateshead constituency party has received 12,500 since 2015.

Mearns is chairman of the RMT's 24-strong parliamentary group, which also includes Diane Abbott and the Corbynista former leadership candidate Rebecca Long Bailey.

Former Labour transport secretary Lord Adonis, who often had to deal with the RMT's 1970s-style intransigence, is appalled by the union leaders' failure not to criticise Putin in the most ferocious terms.

Former Labour transport secretary Lord Adonis (pictured), who often had to deal with the RMT's 1970s-style intransigence, is appalled by the union leaders' failure not to criticise Putin in the most ferocious terms.

Adonis tells me: 'The British people have no time for fascist dictators. Churchill saw off Hitler and Mussolini in the 1940s in our 'finest hour', and our freedom and prosperity flow from his stand against fascism and dictatorship. Working people in Britain are not going to fall for apologists for Vladimir Putin.'

Quite so. So why have so many on the far-Left appeared in the past to swallow the Kremlin's lies instead of supporting their own democratic country and its allies?

Tory MP Bob Seely, a former Army captain who lived in Kyiv in the 1990s, offers one explanation.

'Because Putin opposes the UK and the US, they think he is on their side, somehow  and because some have a legacy romantic attachment to the Soviet Union, they see Putin as someone who shares their anti-capitalist urge,' he says. 'They may also see Putin, in some weird and pathetic way, as a successor to the Soviet Union.'

Dempsey did not express regret for his association with Mozgovoy when the Mail contacted the RMT last night. Asked if the union backed the Ukrainian government, the RMT said in a statement: 'The union does not support either Vladimir Putin or his actions in Ukraine.'

Pointedly, though, these self-proclaimed 'anti-fascists' don't show any support for the brave struggle of a democratic country against a real fascist in the Kremlin.
Australia's health experts fear mosquitoes flourishing in the rainbomb floods of Queensland and New South Wales could spread a deadly new threat.

Japanese encephalitis virus has now been declared a national health emergency after a ninth Australian case of the disease was found in Queensland.

A woman in her 60s is in critical condition on life support after contracting the disease - normally never seen south of Cape York - while on a campervan trip.

Eight other human cases of the disease have already been reported in New South Wales and Victoria, including two children and six adults aged 35-75.

Australia's acting Chief Medical Officer Dr Sonya Bennett declared the virus a 'communicable disease incident of national significance' on Friday.

Japanese encephalitis virus, spread by mosquito (pictured) has now been declared a national health emergency after a ninth Australian case of the disease was found in Queensland

Australia's health experts fear mosquitoes flourishing in the rainbomb floods of Queensland and New South Wales (pictured) could spread a deadly new threat

The disease is spread to humans by mosquitoes from pigs but can also affect horses. It can't be spread human to human and humans can't catch it from eating pork.

Most people affected will show mild or no symptoms, but around one per cent will develop encephalitis - swelling of the brain - leading to brain damage or death in one in three severe symptomatic cases.

Other symptoms include sudden vomiting, fever, chills, neck stiffness, sensitivity to light and severe headache, and can see victims slipping into a coma.

The government is now rolling out a vaccine in danger areas and has launched an urgent education and awareness campaign to try to stem the spread of the disease.

The latest case was discovered in Goondiwindi, Queensland, with another case in the NSW-Queensland border town of Tenterfield.

The disease is spread to humans by mosquitoes from pigs (pictured) but can also affect horses. It can't be spread human to human and humans can't catch it from eating pork

Experts are concerned the flood conditions in south-east Queensland and rural northern New South Wales (pictured) could prove ideal for mosquitoes and the virus

The new case of the virus had recently travelled in regional southern Queensland and is being treated in Brisbane's Prince Charles Hospital.

Experts are concerned the flood conditions in south-east Queensland and rural northern New South Wales could prove ideal for mosquitoes and the virus.

The disease is normally confined to the tropical north of Queensland, but the wet warm weather and climate change is feared to have brought it south.

'Clinicians at Queensland hospitals have been asked to be alert to the possibility of the Japanese encephalitis virus in people,' said QLD health minister Yvette D'Ath,

Australia's Chief Veterinary Officer, Dr Mark Schipp, said JEV had been confirmed in animals at 14 piggeries across NSW, SA, Victoria and including nine in Queensland.

'The key signs to look out for in pigs are stillborn or weak piglets, some with an impaired nervous system,' Dr Schipp said.

Australia's acting Chief Medical Officer Dr Sonya Bennett (pictured) declared the virus a 'communicable disease incident of national significance' on Friday

Queensland health minister Yvette D'Ath (pictured) said hospitals had been put on high alert to look out for people possibly infected with the disease

'Piglets can develop encephalitis or wasting, depression or hindlimb paralysis. Adult sows do not typically show signs of disease

'In horses, many cases show no signs of the disease. Some animals may show signs of elevated temperature, jaundice, lethargy or anorexia.

'Other signs may include lack of coordination, difficulty swallowing, impaired vision or over-excitement.'
'They are out of their f***ing minds!' Russian cabinet 'were kept in the dark by Putin over invasion plans, shocked to discover the truth and unprepared for the level of international sanctions'

Boris Johnson says 'the security of the whole of Europe has been put at risk' by Russia's attack on Ukrainian nuclear power plant as Putin's men spark blaze and seize control of the complex

Kremlin forces children to watch propaganda videos telling them that reports of a Ukraine invasion are 'Western misinformation' - as Russia also 'limits' access to BBC website

Meet the new Lord Haw Haws: Putin's British apologists who still appear on Kremlin's disgraced RT news channel pumping out Russian propaganda over invasion of Ukraine

How much more can they take? Putin unleashes terror on ANOTHER Ukrainian city as 47 civilians are confirmed dead in devastating 'cluster bomb' attack - as Kyiv minister claims Russian soldiers 'are raping women'

The White House has distanced itself from a US embassy tweet calling an attack on Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia power plant a war crime

Putin blocks Facebook access in Russia and is planning to ban TikTok - as he threatens 15 years in PRISON for anyone straying from the state narrative

Russian troops today took control of Europe's largest nuclear power plant after shelling it, as Downing Street issued a warning over the 'safety of all of Europe'.

Russian forces hit the power station in the city of Zaporizhzhia overnight, with the attack continuing even as emergency services tried to put out the resulting fire.

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky said he feared that an explosion at the site would be 'the end for everyone, the end for Europe, the evacuation of Europe'.

Boris Johnson has called for an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council in light of the attack, as the plant's staff continue to ensure its operations.

The assault prompted phone calls between Mr Zelensky and leaders including the UK Prime Minister, with the US activating its nuclear incident response team.

Meanwhile, the White House has distanced itself from a US embassy tweet calling an attack on Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia power plant a war crime.

Vladimir Putin's forces have launched hundreds of missiles and artillery attacks on cities and other sites around Ukraine and made significant gains in the south.

The Russians announced the capture of the southern city and Black Sea port of Kherson, which was the first major city to fall since the invasion began last week.

Heavy fighting continued on the outskirts of another strategic port, Mariupol, on the Azov Sea - which has knocked out the city's electricity, heat and water systems.

Putin blocked Facebook and Twitter access in Russia and is planning to ban TikTok - as he threatens 15 years in prison for anyone straying from the state narrative.

Meanwhile the exodus from Ukraine continued, with the UN saying more than a million people having fled so far, a figure which could soon rise to four million.

Also this week, the UN's human rights body voted 32-2 on a resolution to set up an expert panel to monitor human rights in Ukraine. Only Russia and Eritrea opposed.

And British supermarkets are committing to stop selling Russian-made vodka because of the war, with UK shoppers now searching for Ukrainian alternatives.

In addition, jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny today told Russians to protest against the war in Russian cities and across the world this Sunday.

In other news Microsoft is halting new sales of its products and services in Russia, the firm announced today in the latest fallout over the invasion of Ukraine.

The BBC is also 'temporarily suspending' the work of all its news journalists and support staff in Russia after authorities passed legislation cracking down on foreign outlets.

Here, follow MailOnline's live blog for all the updates on the crisis in Ukraine today:
A fifth person has died from the severe floods in northern NSW which have left many towns in ruins.

The body of a man believed to be in his 40s was found at Byrril Creek Road near Terragon, south of Murwillumbah, just after 2pm on Friday.

The man who is yet to be identified is the fifth life lost from recent floods in NSW, with harrowing photos showing towns left completely destroyed.

Lismore is one of the most heavily impacted towns after floods tore through the area this week.

Harrowing photos have shown the true extent of the damage from floods in Lismore, northern NSW

A building is seen completely destroyed in Lismore after it was ravaged by flood waters. Five people have died from the floods in northern NSW

Members from the ADF are seen helping with the clean up in Lismore

One man assesses the damage after days of flooding in Lismore

The entire town centre has now been littered with goods that were ruined from rising waters.

Huge piles of items line the streets as Lismore's 45,000 residents start the lengthy clean up process.

Countless locals have been left homeless while others rifle through whatever possessions they can salvage.

Businesses have also been left in tatters, with many stores now with no stock.

The community spirit in Lismore has remained strong with locals pulling on their gum boots and lending a hand to help repair their town.

Streets in Lismore's CBD are seen lined with items soiled by flood waters

Locals are now starting the lengthy clean up process

Pieces of furniture and items including a toaster are seen piled onto the road after floods devastated Lismore

But in south-east Queensland some residents have taken the opportunity to steal from those who've had to flee their homes and businesses.

A 15-year-old boy is the latest to be charged after he allegedly tried to steal from a car in a flooded carpark in West End in Brisbane on Thursday evening.

He allegedly threatened a woman with a tool in the carpark before police arrived and arrested him. The woman was unharmed.

The teen had also allegedly scoped out the back area of a brewery in the suburb.

The brewery's owner said one of his staff was forced to chased the boy away.

A 15-year-old boy was charged after allegedly tried to steal from a car in a flooded carpark in West End in Brisbane on Thursday evening

Flood-damaged goods line a main road in Lismore

A Lismore local walks past an endless stream of items destroyed from floods

'He was in the area basically taking advantage of people who had been hit by the flood and looting, which was really disappointing to see,' the owner told 7 News.

The 15-year-old was charged with two counts of stealing by looting in a natural disaster and one count of threatening violence. He will appear in Brisbane Children's Court.

A man and a woman were also caught with items allegedly stolen from properties inundated with floods just before midnight in the Oxley area.

The pair, both aged 26, will face court in April after being charged with stealing by looting in a natural disaster.

A total of seven people have been charged in relation to stealing from properties ravaged by flood waters in Queensland.

ADF soldiers walk past thousands of destroyed items in Lismore

It comes as the Bureau of Meteorology warns the bad weather isn't yet over.

Showers and thunderstorms are forecast for areas from NSW's Mid North Coast all the way down to the Victorian border on Sunday and Monday.

Saturday may be dry in some areas around NSW but there's likely more rain around the corner.

Up to 60mm of rain could fall in Sydney on Sunday, and another 30-50mm is forecast for Monday.

Brisbane is also likely to see a wet weekend but a dry day on Monday.

A woman carries debris during clean up efforts in Lismore on Friday
A key ally of Vladimir Putin has called for a blitzkrieg of savagery to be unleashed in Ukraine to force a surrender 'within a day or two'.

Ramzan Kadyrov, the leader of Chechnya who holds the rank of Major-General in the Russian National Guard and whose forces are deployed in Ukraine, is urging the despot to bombard Ukraine into submission to spare further Russian losses.

He told Putin to 'shut your eyes to everything, and allow us to finish it all'.

A key ally of Vladimir Putin has called for a blitzkrieg of savagery to be unleashed in Ukraine to force a surrender 'within a day or two'

The powerful Kadyrov - who has Putin's ear and has been likened to the son he never had - said Russia's current military tactics are too soft.

In an audio message to Putin, the 45-year-old said: 'Comrade President, Comrade Supreme Commander - I have said multiple times that I am your humble footman, that I am ready to give my life for you.

'But I cannot keep looking at my - and our - fighters dying, our defence ministry forces, national guards and others

'I am strongly asking you to shut your eyes to everything, and allow us to finish it all within a day or two.

Ramzan Kadyrov is the leader of Chechnya who holds the rank of Major-General in the Russian National Guard and whose forces are deployed in Ukraine

The leader (centre) is urging the despot to bombard Ukraine into submission to spare further Russian losses

Russian forces have been met by a fierce resistance from Ukraine despite their intense bombardment

'Only this will save our state and our people, this is my strong belief.'

His public call is a clear sign of frustration in Russia at the failure to seize Kyiv and Kharkiv at speed, and will be seen as an admission that Kremlin forces have stalled.

Kadyrov's Chechen fighters are already reported to have been foiled as they sought to assassinate Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky.

Kadyrov - a former fighter both against and for Russian forces during two wars in Chechnya - has a reputation for brutality with accusations in the West that he has ordered extra judicial killing.

As well as the head of the Chechen Republic, he was in 2020 made a Major-General by Putin.

The powerful Kadyrov - who has Putin's ear and has been likened to the son he never had - said Russia's current military tactics are too soft

His public call is a clear sign of frustration in Russia at the failure to seize Kyiv and Kharkiv at speed

Kadyrov's Chechen fighters are already reported to have been foiled as they sought to assassinate Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky, Pictured: a destroyed Russian tank

He told the Kremlin leader to abandon 'useless' negotiations and draft ceasefires or peace deals with the Ukrainians and speed up the war.

'All these negotiations are useless, the longer we wait, the more sanctions they produce,' he said, referring to the West.

'All these papers, negotiations are no good.. they can shove these papers up where they want to.

'As a fighter, as a general, I cannot watch our fighters getting killed not in a fight but while waiting, from shooting by these devils, these Bandera people, these Nazis.

'I am sure that you will make the right decision and order to completely take Ukraine, and to destroy these demons.

'The people of Ukraine will stand next to us against these devils.'
The China-backed Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank has said it will suspend business related to Russia and Belarus in a sign of the two countries' deepening pariah status over the war in Ukraine.

In a statement issued Thursday, the AIIB said that 'in the best interests of the bank, management has decided that all activities relating to Russia and Belarus are on hold and under review'.

China, whose bilateral relationship with Russia has strengthened in recent years, has thus far avoided criticizing Moscow over its invasion of Ukraine.

Beijing is the largest stakeholder in the multilateral institution - the brainchild of Chinese President Xi Jinping - with almost 27-percent voting power.

The bank's decision will be seen as the latest sign that Beijing's support for Putin is wavering amid international condemnation of the Ukraine war.

Representatives of the founding nations of the AIIB applaud as Chinese President Xi Jinping unveils a sculpture during the opening ceremony of the AIIB in Beijing on January 16, 2016

The bank was launched in 2016 to counter the West's dominance of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

Russia is also among the AIIB's founding members and holds around a six percent vote in its operations, the third-biggest after China and India.

It also holds a seat on the bank's board of directors.

The AIIB said it was 'actively monitoring the situation' in Ukraine and that management would do the 'utmost to safeguard the financial integrity' of the group.

The Shanghai-based New Development Bank, established around the same time and with similar goals to the AIIB, also said it has 'put new transactions in Russia on hold'.

Financial institutions and businesses around the world are scrambling to distance themselves from Russia and Belarus - from which some of the forces involved in the Ukraine invasion were launched - over the conflict.

Disclosures on the AIIB website showed that it has so far approved two Russia projects with financing of $800 million, but only a small portion of its loan portfolio is in the country.

Two projects for Belarus have also been proposed in the fields of public health and transport.

'AIIB stands ready to extend financing flexibly and quickly and support members who have been adversely impacted by the war,' the bank said without giving further details.

While Russia and Belarus are members of the AIIB, Ukraine is not.

AIIB assets are dwarfed by those under the World Bank's constituent institutions, the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the International Development Association.

The AIIB reported assets of around $40 billion as of September last year, while the IBRD and IDA's amount to over $536 billion, according to their latest reports.

The China-backed Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) said it will suspend business with Russia and Belarus following Russia's invasion of Ukraine

China is the only major government that hasn't criticized Moscow's attack on Ukraine and has also ruled out joining the United States and European governments in imposing financial sanctions on Russia.

Instead, Beijing has endorsed the Russian argument that Moscow's security was threatened by NATO's eastern expansion.

China abstained in Wednesday's UN General Assembly emergency session vote to demand an immediate halt to Moscow's attack on Ukraine and the withdrawal of all Russian troops.

An article published in the New York Times cited a 'Western intelligence report', considered credible by officials, alleging that China asked Russia not to invade until after the 2022 Winter Olympics held in Beijing.

A Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson called the report 'fake news' on Thursday, denying such a conversation had taken place.

Russia had previously launched an attack on Georgia during the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympic Games, angering some in the Chinese leadership.

Russian President Vladimir Putin met with and President of the People's Republic of China, Xi Jinping on February 4, hours before the Olympics opening ceremony, where the two discussed strengthen their cooperation in the financial, gas and oil sectors.

But the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) said Thursday it was banning Russian and Belarusian athletes from the Beijing 2022 Paralympic Winter Games, which begin on Friday, following speculation Russian athletes could be allowed to compete.

The latest development may be a sign that Beijing's support for Putin may be beginning to thaw as tensions rise over Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
The US should formally recognize Taiwan as a country to stop 'egomaniacal' Chinese President Xi Jinping from seizing the island after Beijing's 'brutally successful takeover of Hong Kong', former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said today.

Pompeo, speaking during a visit to the capital Taipei, urged the US to recognize Taiwan as a 'free and sovereign' country because the Chinese President will not 'be satisfied stopping at Hong Kong'.

Self-governed Taiwan's 23 million people live under the constant threat of invasion by authoritarian China, which views the island as its territory and has vowed to one day seize it, by force if necessary.

'The United States government should immediately take necessary and long overdue steps to do the right and obvious thing: that is to offer the Republic of China, Taiwan, America's diplomatic recognition to the self-ruled island China claims as its own territory,' Pompeo said in a speech organized by a Taiwan think-tank.

The US should formally recognize Taiwan as a country to stop 'egomaniacal' Chinese President Xi Jinping from seizing the island after Beijing's 'brutally successful takeover of Hong Kong', former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo (pictured) said today

Pompeo, speaking during a visit to the capital Taipei, urged the US to recognize Taiwan as a 'free and sovereign' country because the Chinese President (pictured) will not 'be satisfied stopping at Hong Kong'

Self-governed Taiwan's 23 million people live under the constant threat of invasion by authoritarian China , which views the island as its territory and has vowed to one day seize it, by force if necessary

Pompeo said after Beijing's 'brutally successful takeover of Hong Kong,' Chinese President Xi Jinping feels more powerful and 'won't be satisfied stopping at Hong Kong'.

'Taking over Taiwan, a necessary mission, is not only to boost Xi's egomaniacal claim of greatness, but indeed to solidify it,' Pompeo said.

Pompeo's demand for Taiwan to be recognized as a country drew a stern rebuke from Beijing for his 'babbling nonsense', whilst pro-China activists protested outside the hotel were the former secretary of state was delivering a speech.

'While the United States should continue to engage with the People's Republic of China as a sovereign government, America's diplomatic recognition of the 23 million freedom-loving Taiwanese people and its legal, democratically-elected government can no longer be ignored, avoided, or treated as secondary,' Pompeo said.

Washington ended formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan in 1979 when it recognised the People's Republic of China.

While Taiwan's official name is the Republic of China, politicians often add 'Taiwan' in their public comments.

Pompeo's comments cross a sensitive red line for China, which claims Taiwan as its own territory and has never renounced the use of force to bring it under Chinese control.

'Pompeo is a former politician whose credibility has long gone bankrupt. Such a person's babbling nonsense will have no success,' said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin.

Pompeo's demand for Taiwan to be recognized as a country drew a stern rebuke from Beijing for his 'babbling nonsense', whilst pro-China activists protested outside the hotel were the former secretary of state was delivering a speech (pictured)

Yesterday, Pompeo met with Taiwan's president Tsai Ing-wen to warn that Taiwan must not be allowed to suffer the same fate as Ukraine following Russia's barbaric invasion of the country.

'If any of us were mistaken or complacent about the risk to that freedom, I think we need only watch what's taking place in Europe today to see that this continues to demand deep concerted focus leadership from those of us who cherish freedom,' Pompeo said in a meeting with President Tsai Ing-wen on Thursday.

'I think these days call for the simple reminder that it is not provocative to say that one demands freedom,' he added, warning that 'those who desire to destroy freedom, to change human lives' will see silence as 'their opportunity'.

Pompeo, one of former President Donald Trump's most hawkish advisers on China, arrived in Taipei on Wednesday for a visit at a time of rising tensions between Washington and Beijing over the self-ruled island as well as the crisis sparked by Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Tsai bestowed a presidential honor to Pompeo during his visit on Thursday for his contribution to boosting relations with the island, as China's government lambasted his record as 'despicable'.

China placed sanctions on Pompeo when he left office at the end of the Trump presidency last year, angered by his repeated criticism, especially of its ruling Communist Party, and support for Chinese-claimed Taiwan.

Taiwan's President Tsai Ing-wen poses for pictures with Former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo after he was bestowed with an Order of Brilliant Star with Grand Cordon at the presidential building in Taipei, Taiwan, on Thursday

The visit comes a day after the US Air Force displayed its military force at one of its airbases in Japan, showcasing a fleet of more than two dozen warplanes in an apparent effort to deter Chinese forces from invading Taiwan.

Democratic Taiwan has watched the Ukraine situation closely, as many fear that Russia's invasion of Ukraine could trigger a Chinese invasion of the country.

But the circumstances are different. Taiwan lies 100 miles across the Taiwan Strait from mainland China and enjoys strong support from the U.S., which is legally bound to ensure the island can defend itself and to treat all threats to it as matters of 'grave concern.'

China has not condemned Russia's war against Ukraine and its criticism of sanctions leveled against Moscow is widely seen as a sign of commitment to the two countries' mutual defiance of Washington and the West, despite Beijing's longstanding defense of the principle of national sovereignty.

Meanwhile, Pompeo's visit to Taiwan came shortly after a separate trip by a delegation of former US security officials aimed at assuring regional allies that Washington 'stands firm behind its commitments'.

Pompeo announced in January last year as the outgoing state secretary that Washington was ending restrictions on official contacts with Taipei island in a move that angered Beijing.

Tsai praised Pompeo for facilitating 'multiple breakthroughs' in Taiwan-US relations after conferring him the Order of the Brilliant Star with Grand Cordon, one of Taiwan's top honours, in recognition of his contributions on Friday. Former U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is a previous recipient.

China put sanctions on 'lying and cheating' Pompeo and 27 other top Trump-era officials as President Joe Biden took office in January 2021.

Asked about his trip, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said: 'The relevant actions from Pompeo are despicable and inevitably a futile effort'.

Tsai praised Pompeo for facilitating 'multiple breakthroughs' in Taiwan-US relations after conferring him an honorary medal to recognise his contributions

China's top newspaper, the party's official People's Daily, weighed in with a commentary earlier on Thursday, calling Pompeo an 'extremely notorious' anti-China politician who 'took pride in lying and deceit' while in office.

The Donald Trump administration gave strong backing to Taiwan, despite the lack of formal diplomatic ties, including high-profile arms sales and visits by top U.S. officials.

China routinely protests U.S. contacts with Taiwan's government and announced in November that its military conducted air and naval readiness patrols in the direction of the Taiwan Strait after five U.S. lawmakers met with Tsai on an unannounced one-day visit.

Biden has followed his predecessors in stepping up contacts between Taiwan and both serving and retired administration officials, along with selling it military equipment.

China has ramped up its military and diplomatic pressure against Taiwan since the 2016 election of Tsai, who rejects its stance that the island is part of Chinese territory.

Its sabre-rattling has increased considerably over the past year, with warplanes breaching Taiwan's air defence zone on a near-daily basis.

Just weeks before Moscow's invasion of Ukraine, China and Russia signed a joint statement agreeing to a host of foreign policy goals, including Taiwan being 'an inalienable part' of the mainland.

Taiwan's democratically elected government says it wants peace but will defend itself if attacked, and that only the island's people have the right to decide their future.

Taiwan plans to more than double its yearly missile production capacity to close to 500 this year, Taiwan's defence ministry said in a report, as it boosts its combat power amid what it sees as China's growing military threat.

Taiwan last year approved extra military spending of T$240 billion ($8.6 billion) over the next five years as tensions with China, which claims the island as its own territory, have hit a new high and Chinese military planes have repeatedly flown through Taiwan's air defence identification zone.

In a report printed on Wednesday and sent to the parliament for review by lawmakers, a copy of which was reviewed by Reuters, the defence ministry said the extra spending included plans to boost annual missile production capacity to 497 from the current 207 a year.

The US Air Force displayed its military force at one of its airbases in Japan on Tuesday, showcasing a fleet of more than two dozen warplanes in an apparent effort to deter Chinese forces from invading Taiwan

The so-called 'Elephant Walk' - a term referring to the taxiing of large numbers of military aircraft before takeoff, when they are in close formation - saw a grouping of two dozen F-15 fighter aircraft and an HH-60 Pave Hawk helicopter, collectively valued at just over a billion dollars

Among them are Taiwan's self-made Wan Chien air-to-ground missiles as well as the upgraded version of the Hsiung Feng IIE missile, the longer-range Hsiung Sheng land-attack missile which military experts say is capable of hitting targets further inland in China.

The ministry was also planning to start manufacturing unspecified "attack drones" with an annual production target of 48 such aircraft.

Pompeo's visit to Taiwan came at a time when mass blackouts hit Taiwan, leaving more than five million households without power, with authorities blaming human negligence at a major power generation plant for the outage.

The power failures occurred on Thursday morning across the island, from the capital Taipei to central Taichung city and southern Pingtung county.

Hydro and other power plants are now being brought online to provide electricity, as Taiwan blamed negligence during the annual maintenance at the Hsinta power plant in the southern city of Kaohsiung for the mass outage.

Cabinet spokesperson Lo Ping-cheng said state-run operator Taipower's initial probe found the outage was caused by human negligence during annual repairs of a generator at the Hsinta plant.

The statement did not elaborate, though it added that Taipower's chairman Yang Wei-fu had submitted his resignation.

Meanwhile, the US Air Force displayed its military might at the Kadena Air Base in Japan on Tuesday, showcasing a fleet of warplanes in an apparent effort to deter Chinese forces from invading Taiwan.

The show of force comes after months of mounting and increased Chinese aggression directed at Taiwan, including nine Chinese aircraft entering the nation's air space Thursday - the day Russian troops invaded Ukraine

The display of military might at the base, which officials called a 'routine wing readiness exercise,' came two days after President Biden dispatched several former senior defense staffers to the island nation in a show of support, as many wonder whether Russia's invasion of Ukraine could trigger a Chinese invasion of the country.

The so-called 'Elephant Walk' - a term referring to the taxiing of large numbers of military aircraft before takeoff, when they are in close formation - saw a grouping of two dozen F-15 fighter aircraft and an HH-60 Pave Hawk helicopter, collectively valued at just over a billion dollars.

The fleet of jets are assigned to the 44th and 67th Fighter Squadrons, better known by their colloquial epithets, the Vampires and the Fighting Cocks, respectively. The chopper belongs to the 33rd Rescue Squadron, which boasts the motto 'That Others May Live.'

The formation also featured a $50million KC-135 Stratotanker refueling plane, assigned to the 909th Air Refueling Squadron, as well as a $270million E-3 Sentry aerial command and control craft, assigned to the 961st Airborne Air Control Squadron.

The show of force comes after months of mounting and increased Chinese aggression directed at Taiwan, including nine Chinese aircraft entering the nation's air space Thursday - the day Russian troops invaded Ukraine.
A Russian man enters an exchange office displaying U.S. dollar and euro currency signs, in St. Petersburg, Russia, March 2. SP Global Ratings downgraded Russia's debt rating to "CCC-," Thursday, citing Western sanctions imposed on Moscow over its invasion of Ukraine that the agency said increased the risk of a default. EPA-Yonhap





S&P Global Ratings downgraded Russia's debt rating to "CCC-," Thursday, citing Western sanctions imposed on Moscow over its invasion of Ukraine that the agency said increased the risk of a default.







"The downgrade follows the imposition of measures that we believe will likely substantially increase the risk of default," S&P Global Ratings said.







"Among these are capital controls introduced by authorities that aim at shielding the ruble from the impact of severe economic sanctions while preserving remaining useable reserve buffers."







The United States and European Union have responded with fury to the invasion of Ukraine, sanctioning Russia's central bank and banning some of its financial institutions from the SWIFT messaging network.






Meghan Markle is being sued by her sister for $75,000 over the 'false' narrative she peddled of a 'rags to riches' story during her bombshell chat with Oprah Winfrey.

In an explosive court document, Samantha claims the Duchess of Sussex launched a 'premeditated campaign to destroy' her and her father's reputation.

She claims her sister tried to ruin their credibility so 'they could not interfere with or contradict the false narrative and fairy tale life story concocted by the defendant'.

She also alleges Meghan lied when she claimed she 'essentially raised herself from virtual poverty' and from 13 had to take on low-paying jobs to 'make ends meet'.

Meanwhile Samantha, 57, launched an astonishing broadside on her sister's friend and biographer Omid Scobie as she blasted Finding Freedom as 'a book of lies'.

The Sussex's lawyer hit back at the lawsuit, claiming it was 'baseless' and they would give it 'the minimum attention necessary'. Scobie also dismissed the claims.

Meghan Markle is being sued by her sister for $75,000 over the 'false' narrative she peddled of a 'rags to riches' story during her bombshell chat with Oprah Winfrey

In an explosive court document, Samantha (pictured) claims the Duchess of Sussex launched a 'premeditated campaign to destroy' her and her father's reputation

Meanwhile Samantha, 57, launched an astonishing broadside on her sister's friend and biographer Omid Scobie (pictured) as she blasted Finding Freedom as 'a book of lies'

The defamation case, filed in Tampa, Florida, is the latest court battle Meghan finds herself in and yet another public spat with her family.

Samantha paints a picture of the Duchess weaving a 'rags to riches' story together story together while attacking her sister and father to maintain the narrative.

She claims the defendant had 'fabricated' details of her background to the Royal Family, the media and during TV interviews.

She cites Meghan's appearances on Oprah and Ellen in the US as occasions where she 'falsely claimed... she essentially raised herself from virtual poverty'.

Samantha says her sister's claim 'she was forced from the age of 13 to work in a series of low-paying jobs to 'make ends meet'' was untrue.

She claims the Duchess, 40, never worked to pay for her Northwestern college education and argues the story of her climbing through an old car's trunk was a lie.

The document also lists Meghan's claims she had no siblings, little contact with her family and that her family could only afford the $4.99 salad at Sizzlers as incorrect.

Samantha Markle is pictured with her half-sister Meghan Markle at her graduation in 2008

A young Meghan is pictured with her father Thomas Markle, from whom she is also estranged

Meanwhile Samantha also hits out at Scobie and Carolyn Durand's book Finding Freedom, which she dubs her sister's 'fairy tale life story'.

She claims the book caused 'substantial and irreparable prejudice, injury, and harm' to her reputation.

She listed a series of texts in the biography she disputes, including that she dropped out of high school.

Meanwhile Samantha also hits out at Scobie and Carolyn Durand's book Finding Freedom, which she dubs her sister's 'fairy tale life story'

The claim hits back at this, saying 'the truth is that Samantha was seriously injured from a fall from a rope swing, resulting in paralysis on her left side and blindness in one eye at that time, and she was then diagnosed with multiple sclerosis'.

Samantha rejected the notion Meghan and she had met only 'a handful of times' and that she had 'never had a relationship with' her or their father.

The lawsuit says: 'This is false. Samantha spent time with Defendant on a regular basis throughout her childhood and even lived in the same apartment house with Defendant for a period of time.

'Samantha picked up Meghan from school; took Meghan for ice cream and to the mall regularly, and spent many family holidays with the Defendant.

'Meghan's father was Meghan's primary care-giver and Meghan and Samantha saw each other regularly.'

It adds: 'This is an attempt by Meghan to create the false impression that Meghan was essentially an only child with no contact with other family members, or as Meghan stated on Oprah, that she had ''no siblings''.

'Meghan apparently wanted to convince the public that her family members knew nothing about her life and, thus, were not qualified to contradict the false narrative Meghan had fabricated about her life.'

Samantha seeks $75,000 from her sister and has demanded a trial by jury for the case, making one count of defamation and another of defamation by implication.

The Sussex's lawyer hit back at the lawsuit (pictured), claiming it was 'baseless' and they would give it 'the minimum attention necessary'. Scobie also dismissed the claims'

The document said: 'Plaintiff has suffered actual damages in the form of lost employment, lost income from sales of her autobiography, emotional and mental distress, including anxiety and fear due to the threatening and violent emails and messages she receives regularly, and harm to her reputation and credibility.'

The Duchesses lawyer dismissed the claims, telling TMZ: 'This baseless and absurd lawsuit is just a continuation of a pattern of disturbing behavior.'

The attorney added: 'We will give it the minimum attention necessary, which is all it deserves.'

Meghan's friend Scobie, who was named frequently in the lawsuit, repeated the lawyer's words, adding: 'A burn from Meghan's attorney Michael Kump.'

The sisters are thought to have last seen each other in 2008 but they have butted heads over versions of their childhoods in recent years.

Ms Markle's autobiography, titled 'The Diary of Princess Pushy's Sister: A Memoir, Part One', is expected to heavily criticise Meghan

Samantha's rocky relationship with Meghan exploded into public view after her sister's engagement to Prince Harry was announced in 2017.

She was quoted by journalists as saying 'The Queen would be appalled' and called her a 'ducha**' on Twitter.

She gave numerous interviews attacking the Duchess but has since backtracked and complimented her.

Samantha released a book about her sister last year titled The Diary of Princess Pushy's Sister: A Memoir, Part One.

It lays bare details of the Markles' upbringing, including the rivalry when their father was still married to the actress's mother Doria Ragland.

But Samantha also writes of her adoration for Meghan as a baby and described the infant as 'bi-racial, beautiful, and was both the color of a peach, and a rose'.
On 25 January 2022, Daily Mail Australia published allegations to the effect that Pete Evans, the well known chef, published a Twitter post claiming to have made a last minute pitch to be named Australian of the Year so that he can have Police charged with crimes against humanity against protestors.

Daily Mail Australia acknowledges that Mr Evans does not operate a Twitter account, and accepts that Mr Evans did not publish the post referred to.

Daily Mail Australia apologises to Pete Evans for any hurt caused to him by reason of its publication.
An 18-year-old has been sentenced to a 12-month community order after she downed a full bottle of vodka and attacked three police officers after trying to fight her friend.

Cleo McNally, from Macclesfield, Cheshire, swore as she wrestled an officer for a baton during the tantrum, a court heard.

The teenager was heard swearing and shouting as she was 'trying to start a fight' with her friend on November 14 last year.

Cleo McNally (pictured), from Macclesfield, Cheshire, swore as she wrestled an officer for a baton during the tantrum, a court heard

When one officer asked her to stop swearing, she replied with 'Don't care, she's a f***** little b***h' and 'Do you think I actually care - she is a s**g'.

McNally was told there were children and elderly people close by who may hear her language, but she refused to stop.

She then got close to the officer, shouting abuse at the girl who was standing behind her, Stockport Magistrates' Court heard.

Police were approached by a group ,including McNally, as they were dealing with another incident nearby.

Jeffrey Bird, prosecuting, said: 'She could see the defendant's hand on her baton and pushed her hand back, and told her to go home.

The teenager, pictured, was heard swearing and shouting as she was 'trying to start a fight' with her friend on November 14 last year

McNally was told there were children and elderly people close by who may hear her language, but she refused to stop

'The defendant said: "no, you f***** go home" and pushed her backwards. The officer tried to apprehend the defendant and gained control of her on the floor.

'A struggle then ensued, and the officer had to be assisted by two other officers.'

The teen kicked at all three police officers as she resisted, hitting one in the wrist and knee, and others to the knees.

She was arrested and taken for a police interview in which she told officers she had been in an argument with her friend after drinking a 'full bottle of vodka'.

McNally said she remembered the police arriving but didn't recall putting her hand on the officer's baton; but did remember pushing them. She added she was 'incredibly drunk'.

The court heard she had one previous conviction for racially aggravated harassment when she was a youth.

Lesley Herman, defending, said McNally was 'remorseful'.

She added: 'She said in the midst of it, she did kick the officer but it wasn't intentional. She is remorseful.

'There were no injuries - I don't think the officers had any bruising.'

McNally arrived almost two hours late to the afternoon hearing on Wednesday and told Stockport JPs she believed the case was due to be heard the next day instead.

Ms Herman said McNally was 'very concerned about being in court' and 'genuinely thought it would be heard tomorrow at 11am'.

Police were approached by a group ,including McNally (pictured), as they were dealing with another incident nearby

She added: ''Speaking of the offence, she was arguing with her friend, they were not involved in the other incident.

'They are still friends. She says, as a result of the incident, she is too scared to drink.'

JP Dominic Stone said: 'You are going to have to learn to respect people in authority.

'A police officer is there to serve and protect the whole community, including you. They show you courtesy, the least you can show to them is courtesy in return.

'This is going to land you in serious consequences. You were given the opportunity as a youth, and here you are again abusing a police officer; this has to stop.'

McNally pleaded guilty to three offences of assaulting an emergency worker.

As well as the 12 month community order, McNally has also been sentenced to 15 days of rehabilitation activity requirements and 60 hours unpaid work.

She must also pay 50 compensation to each police officer.
Russians are now starting to flee their own country and are packing trains to Finland over fears that President Vladimir Putin will shut the borders and leave them unable to escape the fall-out from Western sanctions.

Helsinki train station was packed with Russian passengers desperately fleeing from St Petersburg on Thursday.

'We decided with our families to go back as soon as possible, because it's unclear what the situation will be in a week,' Muscovite Polina Poliakova told AFP as she wheeled her suitcase along platform 9.

Travelling 'is hard now because everything is getting cancelled,' added Beata Iukhtanova, her friend who studies with her in Paris, where the pair were headed.

The Allegro express train linking St Petersburg to the Finnish capital is currently the only open rail route between Russia and the EU.

Helsinki train station was packed with Russian passengers desperately fleeing from St Petersburg on Thursday

It is therefore one of the few remaining ways out of the country since the widespread airspace closures in response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine a week ago.

'The trains coming from St Petersburg to Helsinki are now full for the next few days,' said Topi Simola, senior vice president of Finnish railway operator VR.

He said that passenger numbers jumped on Saturday, two days after Moscow began its assault on Ukraine.

Since then, people's motives for travelling on the 3.5 hour twice-a-day service appear to have changed, Simola said.

'We can see from the luggage they carry that people are moving to somewhere else, they are basically moving for good.'

The Allegro train to Helsinki is, however, only open to a select few.

'We decided with our families to go back as soon as possible, because it's unclear what the situation will be in a week,' Muscovite Polina Poliakova told AFP as she wheeled her suitcase along platform 9

People get off the Allegro train at the central railway station on March 3 in Helsinki

Russia stipulates that passengers must be Russian or Finnish citizens, a visa is required, and passengers must prove they have an EU-recognised Covid vaccination, not the Sputnik dose which is most commonly given in Russia.

Most passengers are therefore Russians who live or work in Europe, such as 14-year-old Maria and her mother Svetlana, who took a last-minute train to Finland after the cancellation of their flight on Sunday back to Austria, where they live.

'Everyone was like, ''I don't know what to do'',' Maria told AFP. 'First we thought we should travel through Turkey, but it's way more expensive than Finland, so we are lucky.'

VR, which operates the service in partnership with the Russian railways, is looking to have the service opened to EU passport holders, and to increase capacity.

'We know that there are tens of thousands of EU citizens still in Russia and we assume that many of them would like to come back home,' Simola said.

Since the start of the invasion large numbers of Russians are reported to be looking to leave the country, worried that the borders will close imminently and about the impact of Western sanctions.

Debris are seen after the shelling attack by the Russian army, following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, in Chernihiv, Ukraine, March 3

A view shows a residential building damaged by recent shelling, as Russia's invasion of Ukraine continues, in Chernihiv

'Many people are in a panic,' said Daria, arriving back in Helsinki a week or two earlier than planned, to resume her studies.

'I know some people who are quite desperate at the moment to go abroad,' said Elena, a Russian who lives and works in Finland and who did not want to use her full name.

Elena was visiting her native Moscow when the Ukraine assault began last Thursday, and changed her flight to return to Finland on the same day, becoming one of the last to travel before flights to the EU were frozen.

A lot of people 'don't feel safe, they know that the economic situation will be very hard from now on, and also many people from a moral perspective can't bear staying,' the 37-year-old told AFP.

While trains out of Russia have been sold out, the return service from Helsinki to St Petersburg has only been 30 percent full, Simola told AFP.

'I'm not planning to go back to Russia anytime soon, that's for sure,' Elena said.

But she added that despite the difficulties there, 'it's impossible to compare it to the horrors happening in Ukraine at the moment.'
Trapped inside her 17th-floor apartment in Kyiv since the Russian attacks began, 23-year-old journalist Karina Kurayan has kept a daily invasion diary for MailOnline.

In it, Karina reveals the horrors everyday citizens are forced to live through as Vladimir Putin's war continues to ramp up on its ninth day.

On the eve of Russia's bloody invasion, she recalls her phone calls with her mother and a symbolic toast to freedom she shares with her flatmate, Sasha.

The pair are plunged headfirst into the chaos of war, and are forced to learn how to shell-proof their home and extract their own clean water using charcoal.

In later entries, Karina details how she has been constantly awoken by the blare of air raid sirens throughout the night and armed herself with a knife after hearing of looters being on the loose.

23-year-old journalist Karina Kurayan, pictured outside Kyiv bus station with her cat Yasha, has provided a daily diary update on the Russian invasion of the Ukrainian capital

Wednesday, February 23

An ordinary sunny morning. I phone my mother (who lives on Ukraine's south coast) and tell her about a dream I had a few days ago in which I was in a city and a huge tsunami swept away everything in its path.

Thankfully, though, at the end of the dream, both I and my loved ones were alive and well.

Over the following days, the dream had replayed in my head a thousand times. I hoped it was a premonition - that the wave (the Russian threat) would pass and life would be fine again.

I went online to order several household items. Several days later, nothing had delivered and I fear it never will.

Around 7pm, my Mum calls - very worried. She advises me to pack up and leave the city as soon as possible. I tell my flatmate, Sasha, that we should act fast.

If the situation gets worse, we would leave Kyiv the next day to join her relatives in Ivano-Frankivsk, a city in the west of Ukraine, or go abroad to my relatives in Moldova.

We finish an open bottle of champagne and drink a toast to the peaceful sky above our heads.

WEDNESDAY FEBRUARY 23: 'Around 7pm, my Mum calls - very worried. She advises me to pack up and leave the city as soon as possible. I tell my flatmate, Sasha, that we should act fast'

If the situation gets worse, we would leave Kyiv the next day to join her relatives in Ivano-Frankivsk, a city in the west of Ukraine, or go abroad to my relatives in Moldova.

Thursday, February 24

I'm woken at 5:15am by a SOS phone call from my mother. Jumping out of bed, I shout to Sasha: 'Get up! Russian troops will be here in 20 minutes!'

Our phones keep ringing. Relatives and friends, who had woken up to the sound explosions, are full of fear and panic.

With our suitcases packed and having grabbed our cat Yasha, we rush outside, hoping to get a train or bus to Ivano-Frankivsk.

Having reached the station at 7am, it's overcrowded like never before. The ticket offices aren't working and there are hardly any buses because many drivers haven't come to work.

Suddenly, something invisible flies over us making a very loud noise. People fall silent. Then someone says 'I hope they don't hit us!'

Eventually, we did not board a packed bus, since we knew it would soon be trapped in a huge traffic jam. All routes out of Kyiv are paralysed.

With shells flying in the sky, our cat begins crying.

THURSDAY FEBRUARY 24: Having reached the station at 7am, it's overcrowded like never before. The ticket offices aren't working and there are hardly any buses because many drivers haven't come to work

THURSDAY FEBRUARY 24: With our suitcases packed and having grabbed our cat Yasha, (above) we rush outside, hoping to get a train or bus to Ivano-Frankivsk

We learn that with Russian air-strikes across the country, the airport in Ivano-Frankivsk has been blown up. Nowhere in Ukraine is safe.

So we decide to return to our apartment, wait out this mass hysteria and possibly try to leave again in a few days.

Living on the 17th floor means that if a rocket hits our buildings, we would be dead.

Meanwhile, to protect ourselves from possible shell fragments, we cover the bathroom mirror.

By 6pm, we learn that Russian troops and tanks are approaching the city Kherson, where my parents live. Dad has joined the city's defence volunteers and has been given a weapon.

I start to cry - then sing quietly to myself to stop the tears.

In the evening, we decided to go outside in search of a bunker - the safest place that we could find.

People board an evacuation train in the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv after days of war

Friday, February 25

A restless night sleeping in the bathroom. Every few hours, an air raid alarm sounds and we awake each time.

We could hear what is happening up in the street. Sometimes planes fly overhead. Sometimes it's quiet.

Time has turned into a continuous expectation of the worst. After being told that looters are on the loose, we arm ourselves with knives.

Using a telescope I used as a child to look at the stars, we watch what's happening in parts of the city.

Venturing to a cafe, we buy some coffee and cakes - realising that such an opportunity might not present itself again. But we don't have time to finish the drinks.

FRIDAY FEBRUARY 25: 'A restless night sleeping in the bathroom. Every few hours, an air raid alarm sounds and we awake each time. We could hear what is happening up in the street. Sometimes planes fly overhead. Sometimes it's quiet'

A man bursts into the cafe, announcing an air raid alarm. It's everyone back to the shelter.

Suddenly I realise that life may never be the same again in Kyiv. No cafes, taxis, post offices, markets, shops... No more work for me here.

Everything has lost its meaning. Within 24 hours, normal life has been upended.

The saddest thing is that no matter how I deceive myself, I know that wars do not last several days, or even a week or a month. War is for a long time.

We run out of drinking water and look on the internet about to learn how to clean unpurified water using charcoal.

Volunteers from the Territorial Defense Units gather in an outpost to collect weapons, train and get their assignments in Kyiv

Saturday, February 26

A curfew is announced - lasting to 8am on Monday.

Air raid alerts sound every two or three hours. As soon as it gets dark in the evening, we turn off the lights so that our building does not become a target for missiles.

Only our cat stays calm. He's not afraid of explosions but has noticed he's being given less food. We had to do this to ration canned food.

Tonight, we decide it's safer to sleep in the hallway, where we drag two sofas.

SATURDAY FEBRUARY 26: Air raid alerts sound every two or three hours. As soon as it gets dark in the evening, we turn off the lights so that our building does not become a target for missiles. Tonight, we decide it's safer to sleep in the hallway, where we drag two sofas.

Sunday, February 27

We clean the kitchen and sort through our diminishing food supplies.

All locals shops are shut but it's very dangerous to walk on the street.

We try to find any friend who has a car who might take us to a supermarket that's open.

We contact at least 100 people. Someone. Anyone. But no one will risk it.

In any case, many have already fled Kyiv.

SUNDAY FEBRUARY 27: Only our cat, Yasha, (above) stays calm. He's not afraid of explosions but has noticed he's being given less food. We had to do this to ration canned food.

Monday, February 28

Fast running out of food, we decide to walk to the supermarket. Once there, though, we find a massive queue.

While I get in line, prepared to wait several hours, my flatmate Sasha checks out three other supermarkets.

They have equally long queues. Undeterred, we walk much further to a wholesaler.

Although it has no fresh meat and there's a shortage of other items, we buy lots of smoked sausages and a brand of Indian cereal we'd never seen before.

Very relieved, we arrive home but find our apartment lift has been turned off.

By now, every hour seems like a day and every day seems like a week.

But we have the basics: food, water, mobile phone reception and electricity. And our parents are alive and well. We have each other.

I am sincerely grateful for all this, because some others have lost everything.

MONDAY FEBRUARY 28: Fast running out of food, we decide to walk to the supermarket. Once there, though, we find a massive queue. While I get in line, prepared to wait several hours, my flatmate Sasha checks out three other supermarkets. Pictured: Plumes of smoke rise from a building, which was caused by a cruise missile according to local media, in Kyiv, Ukraine

Tuesday, March 1

During the night, I awake to the sound of explosions.

I watch residential buildings being bombed. The destruction has become massive.

Anxiety and fear are our constant companions. It's become so hard to concentrate I can't even read a book.

Popping out to top up on groceries, we discover the sale of alcohol has been banned.

Smoke and flames rise up the side of Kyiv's 1,300ft TV tower after Russia bombed it on Tuesday. The tower remained standing but buildings around it were damaged, with some broadcasts knocked off air

Wednesday, March 2

Today it is impossible to buy bread so we bake our own.

It was far from perfect, but I think we will learn quickly!

We had woken up thinking of staying but it's scary now. Even the guys in the defence forces indicate that it's going to be bad. So we are leaving for Western Ukraine.

Some friends have done their bit for the war effort by donating blood. We will, too.

Others have volunteered to make Molotov cocktails and we have collected glass bottles for them to use.

That's the very least we can do for our country.

Make no mistake, we will fight to the last for life, for values and our freedom.

WEDNESDAY MARCH 2: We had woken up thinking of staying but it's scary now. Even the guys in the defence forces indicate that it's going to be bad. Pictured: Police Officers examine the aftermath of rocket strikes in Kyiv on Wednesday March 2
A high-profile columnist who released a bizarre 'rap' video urging workers to return to the office has copped widespread backlash after it was posted online.

Ticky Fullerton, The Australian's business editor-at-large, shot the clip in what appears to be an empty News Corp office, ordering staff back to work.

The video titled 'A Work from Work Anthem' apologises to Hamilton composer Lin-Manuel Miranda before Fullerton, 58, starts 'rapping' cringe-inducing lines like: 'CEO gets a doctor's note  hey daddy-o it's too much stress to work in the office.

'You got to dig the New Normal  transition, reposition, be agile and smile, digitisation, adaptation. But who calls out the vested interests with other motivation?

After two years working from home, the pressure is on to go back into the office and revitalise our CBDs  Ticky Fullerton makes the case for return  via rap. Go to the link to see the full video. https://t.co/3pj0VmSyIT pic.twitter.com/J98qyXOiVD  The Australian (@australian) March 4, 2022

Columnist Ticky Fullerton, 58, has released a bizarre 'rap' video urging workers back into the office - but has been stung by a brutal backlash after it was posted on Twitter

'You really want to rise up? You want a good career, white collar? Then you better wise up if you think you're worth top dollar. Walk out that door. Get back in the office. Go!

'Your bosses not calling you in? Why not? You know. You know. You know these bosses. They're all disempowered,' Fullerton raps.

But the awkward footage - which runs for six minutes - sparked a brutal response on Twitter, with viewers not only aghast but also confused over why the video was made in the first place.

A short clip posted on Twitter of the full video on The Australian's website prompted hundreds of replies - and few, if any, were complimentary.

'This is the worst f***ing thing I've seen all day, and I saw a nuclear power plant on fire today,' user Lee May said.

The Australian's business editor-at-large Ticky Fullerton shot the video in what appears to be an empty News Corp office, ordering staff back to work

The awkward footage - which runs for six minutes - sparked a brutal response online

Ms Fullerton says in the rap that women will lag behind unless they return to the office (pictured, a stock image of women at work)

'Do you guys have any, like, creative or media oriented people working for you that could have told you how cringingly awful this video is?' asked Tony Brown.

Melbourne-based comedy writer Deirde Fidge added: 'I have turned inside out from cringe.'

Another added: '"With apologies to Lin-Manuel Miranda"? An apology doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of reparations required for this monstrosity.

'Every single rapper from DJ Hollywood forwards deserves a handwritten apology, with this excretion struck from the internet forever.'

Fullerton was railing against millennials not returning to the office to work after mask mandates ended (pictured, a stock image of a workplace)

A short clip on Twitter of the full video on The Australian's website provoked hundreds of replies (pictured), with few if any complimentary

GetUp media advisor Alex McKinnon asked simply: 'Why would you think this is a good idea?'

Fullerton was previously on ABC's Lateline and Four Corners series before joining Sky News Australia to present her own show on the Business Channel.

She was appointed The Australian's business editor-at-large in 2021.
The mother of a British jihadi bride nicknamed 'the first lady of ISIS' who had an affair with a US congressman has insisted that she has no interest in her life and regrets giving birth to her.

Tania Joya, a mother-of-four who grew up in Harrow, Middlesex but now lives in Plano, Texas with her second husband, had a relationship with Representative Van Taylor after meeting him through her work as an ex-jihadist helping to de-radicalise extremists.

Earlier this week, Mr Van Taylor dropped his bid for re-election to Congress on and apologised for having a nine-month affair with the Ms Joya.

Tania Joya (pictured in 2019) had a relationship with Representative Van Taylor after meeting him through her work as an ex-jihadist helping to de-radicalise extremists

Earlier this week, Mr Van Taylor (pictured) dropped his bid for re-election to Congress on and apologised for having a nine-month affair with the Ms Joya

But her mother, Jahanara Choudhury told MailOnline that she had no knowledge of the illicit relationship because she 'disowned' her daughter almost 20 years ago when she left the UK for the US after marrying her first husband, John Georgelas.

He grew up in Plano, converted to Islam and became a top recruiter for the extremist Islamic State group.

In 2013, he took Ms Joya and their three children to northern Syria where, as Yahya Abu Hassan, he became the most important American fighting for ISIS. He was killed in 2017.

Ms Choudhury, 65 fumed: 'I have nothing to do with her and neither does the rest of the family. We cut off all communication when she married this man.

'I don't consider her my daughter anymore. She is not a part of this family and hasn't been for a long time. I'm sorry I even gave birth to her.

'She married against our wishes and we cut her off. I can't remember the last time I spoke or saw her, but it was many years ago.'

Ms Choudhry added that she had not seen media reports about Joya's affair with Mr Van Taylor and 'was not interested' in hearing about them.

Joya's ex-husband John Georgelas, who was from Texas, but travelled to Syria with his wife and three children to fight for the Islamic State. Joya went to Syria with him in 2013, but escaped

She said: 'I've not read about any of this because I'm not interested. This is the first time that I'm hearing what she's done.

'Nobody in the family is bothered with her. Please understand that she is not important to me or anybody else in the family. She's not my daughter.'

Three weeks after Ms Joya, who was pregnant at the time and Georgelas arrived in Syria, she fled to Turkey with the children, then to Plano to live near her in-laws.

The couple were covered for years by tabloids in Britain and profiled in US publications, earning the nickname 'first lady of ISIS.'

Speaking at the family home in Barking, East London, Mrs Choudhry added: 'We didn't agree with her politics at the time and this was also an important reason for us disowning her.

Joya is one of five children born to Nural and Jahanara Choudhury who raised their children as Muslims but also encouraged them to embrace a university education and embark on professional careers

Following reports that Taylor had been cheating on his wife Anne with the ISIS bride, the North Texas congressman admitted having an affair and dramatically announced that he was ending his re-election campaign

'As a family we've moved on and she's not part of us anymore.'

Following reports that Taylor had been cheating on his wife Anne with the 'ISIS bride', the North Texas congressman admitted having an affair and dramatically announced that he was ending his re-election campaign on Wednesday.

His statement, shared with supporters, does not mention Joya by name or reference her late ISIS group recruiting husband.

'About a year ago, I made a horrible mistake that has caused deep hurt and pain among those I love most in this world,' he wrote. 'I had an affair, it was wrong, and it was the greatest failure of my life.'

Taylor, a former Marine and Iraq war combat veteran, was considered one of the Texas delegation's most conservative members when he was elected in 2018.

But he has been sharply criticised by the party's Right wing for voting to certify the 2020 election results and supporting a commission to investigate the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol.

Several days before Tuesday's primary election, Ms Joya told The Dallas Morning News that she had an affair with Taylor that lasted from October 2020 to June 2021.

The interview went viral and caused the congressman to issue a grovelling apology.

Toward the end of the affair with Taylor, Ms Joya said she asked for help to pay off a credit card debt and some other bills. He gave her $5,000, she said.

'I needed help. I was like, just help me out because that's the least  the very least  he could do,' she told the newspaper.

'For him, it was like, "OK, on the condition you don't tell anyone"...I didn't want to tell anybody anything.'

The Dallas Morning News reported Wednesday that Ms Joya contacted Suzanne Harp, another candidate opposing Taylor in the primary, hoping Harp would confront Taylor privately and persuade him to drop out and resign from Congress.

Tania Joya pictured with John Georgelas. The pair fled to Syria from the US. Pictured in June 2009

'All I wanted was for Suzanne Harp to just say, "Hey, I know your little scandal with Tania Joya. Would you like to resign before we embarrass you?". But it didn't happen like that,' Joya told the newspaper.

Instead, the newspaper reported, Harp sent a supporter to interview the woman, then shared the interview with a pair of right-wing websites.

In a statement, Harp said the revelations were 'deeply concerning, and I'm praying for all involved'.

'Politics should build up our families, our communities, and our political parties. This story breaks my heart, both as a wife and as an American. Politics should never tear these sacred institutions apart,' she said.

Taylor tallied 48.7 per cent of the vote on Tuesday, falling 823 votes short of what he needed to avoid a runoff with 63,981 ballots cast. Self-scored 26.5 per cent of the vote, while Harp tallied 20.8%.

Ms Joya's story begins in Harrow, north-west London, where she was born Joya Jahan Choudhury, to 'culturally Muslim' Bangladeshi parents.

Her father Nural Choudhury moved between jobs including bank clerk and accounts assistant, while her mother ran a catering business. Ms Joya, one of five children, says she was brought up to believe men were 'on a pedestal'.

Several days before Tuesday's primary election, Ms Joya (pictured) told The Dallas Morning News that she had an affair with Taylor that lasted from October 2020 to June 2021

She claims she was radicalised after the family moved to Barking, East London, when she was 17. There she encountered schoolgirls who 'slut shamed' her for dressing in Western clothes.

Soon, she was wearing the full veil and being told by a friend to celebrate the bombing of the World Trade Centre in New York. By her own admission, she became 'a hardcore jihadist'.

Ms Joya said: 'We believed in jihad but the jihad we were thinking of was very rosy pictured.' Islam had become 'the solution to everything'.

She joined a Muslim matrimonial website and by February 2003 had met Georgelas. He was the son of Colonel Timothy Georgelas and his wife Martha and had spent part of his childhood in Cambridgeshire.

They were married within a month in a sharia ceremony that was made official at Rochdale Register Officer in October 2004.

Ms Joya had the 'escape' she craved, moving with her new husband first to an upmarket suburb where she was overawed by the Georgelas family's four-bedroom, five-bathroom home with a pool.

The couple travelled to England and Syria, initially funded by money from their marriage, then settled in California where Georgelas got a job as a data technician.

Joya was radicalised in east London and married a jihadi. She went to Syria with him but escaped in 2013. She has now turned her back on islam and lives in Dallas, Texas (pictured in 2018)

He was caught illegally accessing passwords for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, however, and was sentenced to 34 months in jail. He served his sentence, and Miss Joya stuck by him, and again during three years' further probation in Texas.

By 2011, she had given birth to the couple's third son and they were free to leave. They moved to Cairo where, according to Mr Wood, Georgelas met other jihadists and was a vocal supporter of 'pre-IS pro-caliphate voices'.

By 2013, Georgelas was determined to go to Syria and in August took his wife, who was five months pregnant, and three sons over the border to the city of Azaz in north-western Syria.

After fleeing the war-torn country, she made it to Istanbul, before heading to London and then eventually to Texas where she moved in with Georgelas's parents. Today, she shares custody of the four children with them.

She remained in touch with her husband for several years after she had fled Syria, she says, but said they lost contact in 2015 and he was reported killed in 2017.

Ms Joya re-married in 2015 after meeting IT executive Craig Burma within 24 hours of being on a dating website and receiving 1,300 replies to her post which stated: 'I have four kids. My husband abandoned me to go and become the next Osama Bin Laden.'
Twitter has told all its staff they can work from home forever if they wish.

The tech giant - co-founded by Jack Dorsey - announced yesterday it was reopening its offices around the world.

But in the same statement, which called staff Tweeps, CEO Parag Agrawal announced no-one had to go back in if they chose not to.

In his message sent to all staff and posted on Twitter, Mr Agrawal said: 'As we open back up our approach remains the same.

'Wherever you feel most productive and creative is where you will work and that includes working from home full-time forever.

'Office every day? That works too. Some days in office, some days from home? Of course. Thats actually how most of you feel.

Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal made the announcement on the social platform yesterday

He said people could now work wherever they wanted and not necessarily the office again

'Details on logistics, dates, safety message measures, and how we work will be coming soon from Pat and Tracy to whom I am deeply grateful, along with the amazing cross functional team that carried us through the past two years.

'And thank you to the tweeps who have in office roles, like our data centres, who have been coming into work for the past two years and continue to show up for us and our customers every single day. We appreciate you.

'I look forward to seeing you all back at the office or perhaps at an event, somewhere in your home city, or mine? Cant wait.'

Twitter was one of the first in the tech business to urge employees to work remotely when the coronavirus first emerged in the US in mid-March 2020.

Twitter was one of the first businesses to start working from home when the pandemic hit

A third of 1,000 office employees surveyed recently said they have not been in the workplace since March 2020. Pictured: Commuters at London Bridge station last month

At the time human resources boss Jennifer Christie said that the company would 'never probably be the same' in its work culture post-pandemic.

She predicted: 'People who were reticent to work remotely will find that they really thrive that way.

'Managers who didnt think they could manage teams that were remote will have a different perspective. I do think we wont go back.'

In January, Boris Johnson ended guidance to work from home where possible in England as the government scrapped the remaining Covid restrictions.

Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have been moving slower towards dropping the same rules.

But in research for insurance brokerage Gallagher, a third of employees who previously worked in offices said they had not returned in almost two years following the March 2020 lockdown.

A quarter of business leaders said their employees' contracts do not stipulate that they need to work from a specific location, the study suggests.

Bosses voiced concern about the risk of litigation, driven by changing working patterns, as staff are asked to return to the workplace, said a report.

The research found that most businesses are suggesting workers should be in the office full-time now or in the near future, or a minimum of part-time, as they implement a hybrid model.

But a third of the 1,000 business leaders surveyed said they are meeting resistance from their employees towards returning to the workplace even part-time.
Dr Richard Horton, the editor of scientific journal The Lancet (pictured), said the risk of local spikes in Ukraine where just a third of people are double-jabbed  during the ongoing crisis is 'likely'

Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine could trigger a Covid surge, the editor of a top medical journal has warned.

The Lancet's Dr Richard Horton said the risk of outbreaks in the war-torn country  where just a third of people are double-jabbed  during the ongoing crisis is 'likely'.

Around a third of vaccine doses administered in Ukraine were a Chinese jab that has shown to offer little protection against the dominant Omicron variant.

But the scale of any flare-ups will be nearly impossible to measure because surveillance systems will be disrupted, he said.

Dr Horton warned that crucial vaccinations against other diseases will also effectively ground to a halt.

He cautioned that the health impacts on Ukraine's population will be severe, as safe water and sanitation facilities will be destroyed, fuelling outbreaks of other infectious diseases.

And maternity care, treatments for cancer and kidney disease, insulin supplies and mental health care 'will be derailed', he warned.

Ukraine today faces its ninth day of conflict after Russian troops invaded last Thursday.

So far, citizens have been forced to take cover and sleep in crowded underground bunkers, while port city Mariupol has been cut off from water and power supplies for four days.

More than 1million refugees have fled since the start of the invasion, fuelling Covid outbreaks and health problems.

The UK has so far placed financial and trade sanctions on Russia and supplied Ukraine with military equipment.

But Dr Horton warned that 'amid the talk of punitive sanctions against Russia, the basic needs of the Ukrainian people are being overlooked'.

Dr Richard Horton, the editor of scientific journal The Lancet, said the scale of Covid outbreaks among Ukrainians will be nearly impossible to measure, as Covid surveillance systems will be disrupted. Health chiefs in the country have not posted any updated Covid data since last Thursday, the day of the Russian invasion. The graph shows the seven-day average of Covid tests conducted in Ukraine, Russia, the UK and US

Dr Richard Horton said the risk of outbreaks in the war-torn country  where just a third of people are double-jabbed  during the ongoing crisis is 'likely'. The graph shows the seven-day rolling average of daily Covid cases in Ukraine, Russia, the UK and US. However, Ukraine has not posted any Covid statistics since the day of Russia's invasion

Just 35 per cent of the population were double-jabbed against Covid by February 23, the day before the Russian invasion, while just one in 100 Ukrainians were boosted. The graph shows the proportion of people who are double-jabbed in Ukraine, compared to Russia, the US and UK

Just 35 per cent of the population were double-jabbed against Covid by February 23, the day before the Russian invasion, while just one in 100 Ukrainians were boosted.

Dr Horton warned 'in the midst of a continuing pandemic, with a population poorly vaccinated against SARS-CoV-2, the risk of local spikes of Covid-19 is likely'.

'Surveillance systems and vaccination programmes will be disrupted,' Dr Horton said.

Health chiefs in Ukraine have not posted any Covid data since last Thursday, the day Russian troops entered the country.

On top of the invasion and pandemic, safe water and sanitation facilities are being targeted by Russia's troops as part of Putin's cruel war strategy, which 'only adds to the danger', he said.

'The health and humanitarian crisis afflicting Ukraine has received far too little attention,' Dr Horton said.

Thousands of Russian scientists risk JAIL as they slam Putin's 'senseless' invasion of Ukraine Thousands of Russian scientists and journalist have condemned Vladimir Putin's 'senseless' invasion of Ukraine, risking fines or even prison sentences. In an open letter to the increasingly isolated dictator, they said there was no 'rational justification for this war' and warned the country was 'doomed to isolation'. Russian science and medicine could be left behind because of a lack of international funding as the world turns the country into a 'pariah' state, they claimed. More than 6,100 academics, scientific journalists and medics have put their name to the document despite Russia's strict anti-freedom of speech laws. Any public criticism of the Russian state can result in fines of up to 6,200 or jail sentences, under laws introduced in 2012. The coalition has demanded 'an immediate halt to all military operations directed against Ukraine'. The US has already cut ties with Russia's space industry as part of its package of sanctions, while Germany's biggest research funder has frozen all scientific cooperation with the country. Advertisement

He added that 'outbreaks of infectious diseases are common' during conflicts.

Studies have previously found that Lebanon and Turkey, which took in millions of Syrian refugees, experienced an influx of hepatitis A, a liver infection spread by the faeces of an infected person, and measles cases due to the crisis.

He warned that 'the burden of war falls mostly on women and children', with 10million children aged five and younger having died in conflicts in the 20 years up to 2015.

'Women and children will now be dying from preventable causes in Ukraine,' he said.

He said Western nations, which have so far been 'weak in both words and deeds', must put human security on the agenda through the UN Security Council and the World Health Organization.

Russia was previously accused of bombing humanitarian camps in Syria in 2016.

Bombing in the port city Mariupol, which is usually home to 450,000 citizens, has left the local population cut off from water supplies, as well as food and medicine deliveries, since Tuesday.

And terrified citizens have filled bomb shelters and underground stations to take shelter and sleep amid fears of rocket attacks overnight.

More than 1million citizens have left the country in the last week since Russian forces descended on the country. People have fled to Poland, Romania, Hungary and Moldova.

The UK has said it will offer visas to Ukranians with family ties in Britain, but opposition parties are calling for the Government to go further and waive visa requirements for refugees.

But the Prime Minister cited national security concerns, arguing it would not 'sensible' to do away with checks, given that people are coming from a 'theatre of war'.

Senior Tory MP Mark Harper yesterday warned against ditching the checks as he claimed Vladimir Putin could try to disguise Russian agents as Ukrainian refugees to gain entry to the UK and carry out a repeat of the Salisbury spy attack.

The UN has warned the refugee crisis will hit 4million in the coming weeks. For comparison, there were 1.3million refugees during the 2015 migrant crisis.

Dr Horton urged European nations to allow visa free entry for displaced families, 'warning that 'delay will be lethal'.

It comes as Putin's troops attacked the continent's largest nuclear power plant overnight, sparking a fire that raged for hours before emergency crews.

Emergency crews were eventually allowed to extinguish the flames as Russian soldiers seized the complex. Scientists have confirmed no radioactive material was released during the attack.

Boris Johnson accused Russia of 'threatening the security of the whole of Europe', condemning the attack as 'reckless'.

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky branded it 'nuclear terrorism'.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has warned Russia that NATO will 'defend every inch' of its territory against a Russian attack as he condemned Moscow's attack on a Ukrainian nuclear plant as 'reckless'.

Russia's barbaric invasion of Ukraine has seen a build-up of NATO troops deployed across eastern Europe in an effort to further reinforce the region.

Thousands of troops, backed by air and naval support, have been sent to protect allies near Russia and Ukraine in response to Putin's decision to invade.

And today, Blinken said the military alliance will defend all its allies and territory against a Russian attack.

'Ours is a defensive alliance. We seek no conflict. But if conflict comes to us we are ready for it and we will defend every inch of NATO territory,' Blinken said, while condemning Russian attacks on civilians in Ukraine.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has warned Russia that NATO will 'defend every inch' of its territory against a Russian attack as he condemned Moscow's attack on a Ukrainian nuclear plant as 'reckless'. Pictured: US soldiers seen near a military camp in Arlamow, southeastern Poland, near the border with Ukraine on March 3 as part of NATO's defense of its territory

Fire-damaged buildings at the Zaporizhzhya nuclear complex are pictured on Friday morning after coming under attack by Russian forces overnight, leading to international condemnation

Today, Blinken said the military alliance will defend all its allies and territory against a Russian attack

The size of NATO battlegroups in Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, once ruled from Moscow but now part of the European Union, are set to almost double from 3,400 troops at the start of the year to more than 6,000 in the near future.

In recent days, British troops have arrived in Estonia while Norwegian soldiers landed in Lithuania as they bolster NATO's eastern flank amid fears Russia will not stop at Ukraine and invade the former Soviet states as well.

The US recently reinforced the region with some 5,000 additional troops deployed to Poland and Romania. Both NATO countries border Ukraine, which is not part of NATO.

Blinken also accused Russia of being 'reckless' after Putin's troops attacked Europe's largest nuclear power plant overnight, sparking a fire that raged for hours before emergency crews were eventually allowed to extinguish it as Russian soldiers seized the complex.

'And overnight, we've also seen reports about the attack against a nuclear power plant,' Blinken said.

'This just demonstrates the recklessness of this was and the importance of ending it and the importance of Russia withdrawing all its troops and engaging in good faith in diplomatic efforts.'

The US recently reinforced the region with some 5,000 additional troops deployed to Poland and Romania. Both NATO countries border Ukraine, which is not part of NATO. Pictured: US troops in Poland on March 3

NATO troops have deployed to bolster NATO's eastern flank amid fears Russia will not stop at Ukraine and invade the former Soviet states as well. Pictured: US soldiers in Poland on March 3

Russian troops had attacked the Zaporizhzhia plant in the early hours of Friday, with CCTV capturing a fierce gun battle between Putin's men and Ukrainian defenders that sparked a fire in a six-storey training building just outside the main complex. Moscow's men then stopped firefighters getting to the building for several hours.

Eventually, emergency crews were allowed to go in and douse the flames before Russian troops moved in an occupied the site, which provides a fifth of Ukraine's electricity. The UN's nuclear monitoring agency said that, fortunately, none of the site's six reactors had been directly damaged and radiation levels remained normal.

Moscow has, predictably, attempted to deny responsibility for the attack, saying its forces had come under attack by Ukrainian 'saboteurs' while patrolling the plant, who then set fire to the building themselves.

Sparks erupt from an administration building (bottom right) as a live steam video shot from a larger office block behind it films Russian tanks opening fire on the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in the early hours of Friday morning

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has accused Russia of 'threatening the security of the whole of Europe' after the attack.

Mr Johnson condemned the attack as 'reckless' after a phone call with President Volodymyr Zelensky who branded it 'nuclear terrorism'.

NATO Secretary-Gernarl Jen Stoltenburg, who is in Brussels today to meet with NATO allies, denounced attacks on all civilian infrastructure and said the fire at the plant underlined the need to end Putin's war as soon as possible.

Stoltenberg said the shelling of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant 'just demonstrates the recklessness of this war, the importance of ending it, and the importance of Russia withdrawing all its troops and engaging in good faith in diplomatic efforts.'

Stoltenberg's remarks came before he chaired a meeting with Blinken and his NATO counterparts to take stock of the West's response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Blinken is set to meet later Friday with foreign ministers from the European Union.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy wants a no-fly zone to be imposed over his country in the wake of Russian shelling of Europe's largest nuclear plant.

The attack on the Zaporizhzhia plant did not produce elevated radiation levels, but Zelenskyy on Friday evoked the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear plant explosion and fire to raise alarm about further attacks.

The plant 'could be like six Chernobyls. The Russian tanks knew what they were shelling... This is terror on an unprecedented level,' he said.

Any attempt by European air forces to impose a no-fly zone would likely severely escalate the conflict.

Zelenskyy also called on Russian civilians to express outrage about the plant attack.

'Radiation does not know where the Russian border is,' he said.

An office block in central Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city, has been destroyed in Russian attacks in the last few days

People walk past the remains of a missile at a bus terminal, as Russia's invasion of Ukraine continues, in Kyiv

A view of damaged building after the shelling is said by Russian forces in Ukraine's second-biggest city of Kharkiv

Nuclear experts told the BBC that attacks on Zaporizhzhia were 'frightening', and that damaging nuclear plants risks creating a disaster similar to what happened at Fukushima in 2011 after it was hit by a tsunami - where a loss of power results in uncontrolled heating and an eventual meltdown.

Claire Corkhill, professor of nuclear materials at Sheffield University, told the corporation that the reactors at Zaporizhzhia now appear to be shutting down to remove the danger - which may have been Russia's intention in attacking the plant.

Russia's war against Ukraine is now entering its ninth day and shows no sign of stopping any time soon after talks between the two sides yesterday broke up without agreement, before Vladimir Putin went on TV to declare that he would keep battling for 'total victory' whilst spouting propaganda that Russia's forces are not deliberately targeting civilians and that the 'special operation' is proceeding on time with all of its major objectives completed to schedule.

Mykolaiv, a city to the west of Kherson which is now under Russian control, came under attack on Friday morning with the mayor saying troops had moved into the outskirts. Mykolaiv is located along the road to Odessa, Ukraine's third-largest city and main port, which is increasingly at risk of coming under siege.

The city of Mariupol, on the other side of the Crimean peninsula, also continues under heavy bombardment as Moscow's men try to bomb it into submission - with the aim seeming to be cutting off Ukrainian access to the Black Sea to deny the government access to lucrative trading routes.

Fighting is also continuing across the north and east, with Ukrainian special forces ambushing and destroying Russian tanks and armoured vehicles at Hostomel - to the west of the city - and Brovary - to the east - late yesterday and this morning. Ukraine also claimed its jets have targeted part of a 40-mile convoy currently stalled outside the city, amid fears it would encircle the capital and bombard it.

Meanwhile Chernihiv, to the north east of Kyiv, and Kharkiv, in Ukraine's east, were braced for more heavy shelling today after days of increasingly indiscriminate attacks including with banned cluster munitions have left dozens of civilians dead. Officials in Chernihiv said this morning that 47 people died in attacks yesterday.

Fire is seen in Mariupol at a residential area after shelling amid Russia's invasion of Ukraine

School hit during the Russian air raids in Zhytomyr, a city around 80 miles to the west of Kyiv, which was struck this week

President Putin is also stepping up actions on the home front, intended to head off internal dissent about the war as combat proves fiercer and harder than his generals anticipated, and western sanctions destroy large chunks of the economy.

Russia's rubber-stamp parliament on Friday approved new laws that would see anyone spreading 'fake news' about the invasion jailed for up to 15 years. Putin had previously threatened and shut down radio and TV stations referring to the 'war' or 'invasion' of Ukraine - which Moscow prefers to call a 'special military operation'.

Moscow also admitted to limiting news from outside sources getting into the country, with the BBC, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, independent Russian site Meduza and Germany's Deutsche Welle all restricted, while access to Facebook has been blocked.

Putin has also gone after peaceful protesters, with thousands arrested while marching in rallies around the country asking for the conflict to end.
Commentary: China's "two sessions" under global gaze for solutions to world challenges

Xinhua) 09:41, March 04, 2022

Journalists attend a press conference of the fifth session of the 13th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) via video link in Beijing, capital of China, March 3, 2022. (Xinhua/Chen Zhonghao)

At present, the world is still struggling in the deep water of an erratic pandemic and sluggish recovery. China's key development blueprints and initiatives will, at this juncture, definitely offer the world fresh impetus, effective measures as well as renewed confidence in working together for a shared future.

BEIJING, March 3 (Xinhua) -- As national lawmakers and political advisors are gathering for the "two sessions" to deliberate over key issues concerning China's political, economic and social life, the world once again shifts its eyes to the country for inspiration to tackle common challenges and make the global village a better place.

At present, the world is still struggling in the deep water of an erratic pandemic and sluggish recovery. China's key development blueprints and initiatives will, at this juncture, definitely offer the world fresh impetus, effective measures as well as renewed confidence in working together for a shared future.

Opportunities brought about by China's development and its market will continue to play the booster role for the global economy. Despite multiple headwinds last year, China strove to notch an 8.1-percent growth year on year, demonstrating enormous vitality and resilience.

Photo taken on April 9, 2020 shows the Lujiazui area in east China's Shanghai. (Xinhua/Chen Fei)

Proposed in the work reports by some local governments in China, a raft of pragmatic measures this year, aimed at building a strong domestic market, fostering new growth drivers, boosting consumer spending and unlocking potential for investment, will continue to invigorate the country's high-quality development and further opening up this year.

China's foreign direct investment will remain robust in 2022, as its large domestic market and strong manufacturing base continue to attract foreign investors, particularly in wealth management, new energy, and high technology sectors, according to a report by the global audit and consultancy firm KPMG in February.

Late last year, the world once again sensed China's sincerity to share the bounty of its vigorous market, when foreign ambassadors to China appeared in live-streaming e-commerce events to promote products from their countries, which were sold out within minutes.

A train carrying 33 refrigerated containers departs from the Tengjun International Land Port in Kunming, capital of southwest China's Yunnan Province, for Laos, Dec. 4, 2021. (Xinhua)

Facing a depressed world economy, China is committed to promoting common development of all nations. On top of a series of growth-driving measures, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has become the world's broadest-based and largest platform for international cooperation.

The BRI has become "the engine of growth and modernization of the economic and developmental infrastructure of many member countries," said an article by Azerbaijan State News Agency in November, stressing it inspires the majority of the world's people to work for "a better, more balanced and equitable future."

China's solutions will also prompt nations across the globe to fight adversity in close solidarity. Currently, the COVID-19 pandemic still poses the greatest challenge to the international community. China, as the world's biggest provider of outbound vaccines, has been devoted to setting up a "health shield" for developing nations, bridging the vaccine gap around the world and jointly building a "Great Wall of Immunity" for mankind.

Staff members supervise the operation of an automated packing line for inactivated COVID-19 vaccine at Sinovac Life Sciences Co., Ltd. in Beijing, capital of China, on Jan. 6, 2021. (Xinhua/Lu Ye)

As the pandemic has been hampering global poverty alleviation efforts, China has put forward the Global Development Initiative with a view to building global synergy on accelerating the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, so that no country or individual will be left behind. Upholding true multilateralism, China is also actively participating in reforming the global governance system so as to make globalization more open, inclusive, balanced and beneficial for all.

China's development is injecting more certainty and strength of peace into the world. Not seeking self-interest or stoking geopolitical conflicts, China's traditional value of "maintaining a global vision and developing itself to help others" has seen growing global recognition. In February, more than 30 foreign leaders came to Beijing to attend the opening ceremony of the Beijing Winter Olympics.

And at the beginning of the year, foreign ministers from Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Turkey and Iran, as well as the secretary general of the Gulf Cooperation Council visited China, indicating the Middle Eastern countries' growing enthusiasm for cooperation with China, and their appreciation of China's constructive role in the region and the world at large.

More importantly, the "China spirit" can inject more positive energy into global common development. China, the world's first country to host both the Summer and Winter Olympic Games, has demonstrated a notion that all countries on Earth belong to one big family sharing a common future, and offered to the world a choice other than zero-sum competitions.

The just-concluded Beijing Winter Olympics and the upcoming "two sessions" both epitomize a China striving forward. China, bearing the well-being of all mankind in mind, will surely contribute more to making the world a better place.

(Web editor: Xia Peiyao, Liang Jun)
Ukraine's ambassador Yevheniia Filipenko attends the special session on the situation in Ukraine of the Human Rights Council at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, March 4. Reuters-Yonhap



The U.N. Human Rights Council voted overwhelmingly on Friday for a resolution condemning alleged rights violations by Russia during its invasion of Ukraine and setting up a commission of inquiry to investigate them.



Thirty-two members of the Council voted in favor of the resolution brought by Ukraine, and two  Russia and Eritrea  voted against, while 13 abstained.



The Geneva-based body cannot make legally binding decisions but its decisions send important political messages and can authorize probes, such as the one to be carried out by the three-person commission created by Friday's vote.



Ukraine's ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, Yevheniia Filipenko, told the Council minutes before the vote that there was "irrefutable evidence of gross and systematic human rights violations as well as war crimes and crimes against humanity by Russia".



"It is our common duty to ensure accountability by mandating the documentation and verification of Russia's crimes and identification of those responsible," she said.






The eminent plastic surgeon who treated acid attack victim Katie Piper has been suspended for six months after he tried to hide his creepy past behaviour with a patient from his employers.

Dr Mohammad Jawad, who ran his own Harley Street clinic, was caught lying about his previous suspension when applying for two jobs. He has now been hauled back to a doctors tribunal and suspended again.

In 2015, he was suspended following allegations he drank vodka and wine with a patient, dimmed the lights, shut the blinds and asked her to dance to Julio Iglesias music before touching her breasts.

The 63-year-old surgeon came to prominence when he led pioneering reconstruction surgery on Piper, who suffered horrific burns to her face and body after an acid attack in 2008.

Piper, now 38, has praised her surgeon ever since, and just three weeks ago said he saved my life and paid tribute to him by having his name embroidered on the outfit she wore to receive her OBE.

Dr Mohammad Jawad, pictured with acid attack victim Katie Piper

Dr Jawad featured in the Oscar-winning documentary Saving Face, pictured above

Dr Jawad has won several humanitarian awards following his trips to Pakistan to perform reconstructive surgeries on female acid attack victims, which even featured in an Oscar-winning documentary.

In July 2020, the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service tribunal heard Dr Jawad applied for the role of locum consultant in plastic surgery at University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust, and another plastic surgeon role at London-based Omnes Healthcare.

But, when he was asked if he had any previous sanctions, he dishonestly said no.

Omnes were disappointed he lied and Birmingham NHS Trust said it was a big oversight.

Dr Jawad claimed he thought he had been fully exonerated as his 2015 suspension was lifted, but the MPTS panel dismissed his argument. He also said he had achieved excellence in his field in mitigation.

MPTS Chair Laura Paul said: The Tribunal was satisfied that Dr Jawad knew he was being dishonest in the way he answered the fitness to practise questions on the application forms.

Piper has praised her surgeon ever since, and just three weeks ago said he saved my life and paid tribute to him by having his name embroidered on the outfit she wore to receive her OBE

Dr Jawad knew he had been suspended, and knew that he had not been through an appeal process and been fully exonerated, and knew he was giving the wrong answer on the application forms.

The Tribunal expected that Dr Jawad would complete requested information, including job application forms, accurately and honestly even if he found them to be challenging or embarrassing from a professional point of view.

Dr Jawad should know that one of his biggest barriers to future employment is his GMC history, however he was required to complete forms accurately and honestly, providing fitness to practise history to allow prospective employers to make an informed judgement.

Dr Jawad also deliberately left out his reason for leaving the Golden Jubilee National Hospital in Glasgow, Scotland, which was because of his suspension.

He was suspended for six months.

Dr Jawad has been suspended for six months after he tried to hide his creepy past behaviour with a patient at his Nip n Tuck Surgery in Marylebone, London

His 2015 tribunal with the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service (MPTS) heard he gave a Polish patient alcohol after she visited him for facial scarring.

He was sexually motivated, inappropriately grabbed her, asked her do you see me as a man or a surgeon?, and even showed her a YouTube clip of him at the Pride of Britain awards with Piper.

The patient sent him an email saying: I cant believe you behaved so unprofessional... dimming the lights, playing the music, grabbing me... during consultation.

Im shocked as you were my hero... now Im not sure what I should do with that but you definitely crossed the line between the patient and the doctor.

Dr Jawad was suspended for a total of 13 months and later worked in Pakistan then Aberdeen, Scotland.

The surgeon used to run Nip n Tuck Surgery in Marylebone, London.
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Britain is to be battered by rain and snow from next week while temperatures could plummet to 0C this weekend, the Met Office has warned.

Despite March 1 marking the start of the meteorological spring, bookies predict it could be the coldest third month of the year in UK history.

Although next week will initially be dry with 'clear and sunny spells', conditions will soon deteriorate, with strong winds bringing a risk of coastal gales in the north and west of the country.

These will be followed by an Arctic blast, bringing 'bands of rain' with snow moving across the north east and central areas, the Met said.

Atlantic weather systems will bring 'spells of wet and windy weather' and make conditions 'rather cold across much of the UK', the forecast predicts.

In the latter half of March, the 'unsettled weather' will continue, reported the Met Office, adding that winds could be 'disruptive' to daily life.

Despite March 1 marking the start of the meteorological spring, bookies predict it will be the coldest third month of the year in UK history. (Pictured: Dog walkers brave the rain and cold conditions on Tynemouth beach, in North Tyneside on Friday)

Although next week will initially be dry with 'clear and sunny spells', conditions will soon deteriorate, with strong winds bringing a risk of coastal gales in the north and west of the country. (Pictured: Dog walkers brave the rain and cold conditions on Tynemouth beach, in North Tyneside on Friday)

A large swathe of rainfall can be seen falling across the east of the country on Friday morning

Atlantic weather systems will bring 'spells of wet and windy weather' and make conditions 'rather cold across much of the UK', the forecast predicts. (Pictured: Dog walkers brave the rain and cold conditions on Tynemouth beach, in North Tyneside on Friday)

Early showers will also fall in the southwest in England and Wales on Sunday, while nationwide, conditions from Sunday to Tuesday will be 'rather cold by day, with frosts overnight.' (Pictured: Commuters in London walk through the rain after experiencing disruption on the underground due to industrial action)

The frosty outlook comes as this weekend is set to get off to a wet start, with 'cloud and rain lingering' in the east of the country on Friday. (Car is driven through a flooded country lane in Oxfordshire)

Snow will remain likely but it is expected to become shorter-lived, however the end of the month may see 'a north-south split develop with high pressure across the south and more changeable conditions likely in the north.'

The frosty outlook comes as this weekend is set to get off to a wet start, with 'cloud and rain lingering' in the east of the country on Friday.

Weather forecast imaging shows a huge swathe of rainfall spreading across the entire eastern coastline today.

The Met forecast reads: 'Dull, chilly and cloudy with spells of rain and drizzle for the eastern side of the UK.

'Elsewhere, brighter with sunny spells, but also a few showers in the west.'

It will also remain cold in the west and north on Friday with the addition of frost, 'particularly in the northwest'.

A Met Office spokesperson told the Mirror: 'Most persistent rain will be in Aberdeenshire and towards Northumberland but further west drizzly bits and pieces cant be ruled out in the central belt towards Cumbria, even Lancashire and Yorkshire seeing a damp start to the day.

'A bit more in the way of persistent rain for east Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, down towards East Anglia for a time.

Atlantic weather systems will bring 'spells of wet and windy weather' and make conditions 'rather cold across much of the UK', the forecast predicts. (Pictured: Rainfall batters east of the country on Friday)

'Showers will run in across Cerrigydrudion, Pembrokeshire, Cornwall and Devon and we will see a few just developing across Northern Ireland.

'One or two just running in across north west Scotland but here some brighter weather where sunshine will develop during the day.'

On Saturday, south east and central areas will see clouds and rain while areas in the north and Midlands, including Manchester, Leeds and Birmingham, will see lows of 0C on Sunday.

Early showers will also fall in the southwest in England and Wales on Sunday, while nationwide, conditions from Sunday to Tuesday will be 'rather cold by day, with frosts overnight.'

It comes as bookmaker Coral predicts this March could be the coldest the UK has ever recorded, with odds for the record on at 4-5.

'Spring and summer are on the horizon but it won't feel like that this month, March now odds on in our book to break the record for the coldest third month of the year ever recorded,' said Coral's Harry Aitkenhead.
A captured Russian prisoner sobbed on the phone to his mother while telling her how Vladimir Putin's forces have destroyed kindergartens and hospital wards.

Harrowing footage shows the soldier captured in Ukraine desperately begging his mother to spread word of the truth back home.

He rocks back and forth in his chair while speaking on a video call to his mother telling her she needs to use social media so 'as many people as possible' can know the truth about Putin's attacks.

He says: 'Life has been peaceful here before our President started all of this.' And his distraught mother replies: 'I got you, I love you so much.'

It was reported last Saturday that a kindergarten and orphanage had been attacked in the city of Okhtyrka, a small city in the northeastern Ukrainian Sumy province.

Photos of the attack were shared by a Ukrainian lawmaker, who wrote: 'In a town Okhtyrka Russian missiles hit kindergarten and bomb shelter. Among dead and injured are children. What else Russian fascists should do for NATO to wake up and defend Ukraine?!'

The latest footage comes just two days after other weeping Russian prisoners of war said they have no idea they were being sent to invade Ukraine and were used like 'cannon fodder' by commanders.

Harrowing footage shows the soldier captured in Ukraine desperately begging his mother to spread word of the truth back home. He rocks back and forth in his chair while speaking on a video call to his mother telling her she needs to use social media so 'as many people as possible' can know the truth about Putin's attacks

He says: 'Life has been peaceful here before our President started all of this.' And his distraught mother replies: 'I got you, I love you so much'

It was reported last Saturday that a kindergarten and orphanage had been attacked in the city of Okhtyrka, a small city in the northeastern Ukrainian Sumy province

Photos of the attack were shared by a Ukrainian lawmaker, who wrote: 'In a town Okhtyrka Russian missiles hit kindergarten and bomb shelter. Among dead and injured are children. What else Russian fascists should do for NATO to wake up and defend Ukraine?!'

Earlier on Wednesday, a video of a Russian soldier breaking down in tears as he spoke to his mother on the phone after surrendering to Ukrainians went viral.

The footage showed a young fighter from Putin's forces being comforted by a group of women after throwing down his weapon. One of the women tells him 'everything his OK' while patting him on the back.

He is then seen drinking tea and eating a pasty as another woman offers him a phone. The young prisoner of war blows kisses as his mother answers, and bursts into tears as soon as he sees her. One of the other women is heard speaking to her down the phone, saying: 'Natasha, God be with you. We will call you later. He is alive and healthy.'

A male voice off camera is heard saying in Ukrainian: 'These young men, it's not their fault. They don't know why they are here. They are using old maps, they are lost.'

'This is not our war. Mothers and wives, collect your husbands. There is no need to be here,' an injured soldier sat in front of a Ukrainian flag was filmed saying. Other footage showed handcuffed Russian prisoner crying, while saying: 'They don't even pick up the corpses, there are no funerals'.

Captured Russian soldiers have been filmed describing themselves as 'cannon fodder' and warning 'everyone is going in columns and they all die'

Captured Russian soldiers (left and right), speaking in video posted to the Ukraine security services' Facebook page, claimed they were 'deceived' and did not realise they were going to invade Ukraine

Ukraine on Wednesday invited the worried mothers of Russian troops captured on the battlefield to come and collect their sons, in Kyiv's latest apparent attempt to embarrass Moscow after opening a telephone hotline for Russian parents to find out if their sons are among the dead or captured.

Ukraine says Russia has lost 5,840 soldiers in the opening days of the conflict - some of its fastest losses since the Second World War, if the figure proves accurate - with Putin's men suffering a series of embarrassing defeats as they tried to pull off a quick victory but instead met with stiff resistance from Ukrainian forces.

While both US and Ukrainian intelligence believes morale within the Russian ranks is low, Putin and his commanders have showed no sign they are about to give up the fight - and have instead vowed to press even harder to try and capture key objectives.

Sergey Shoigu, the country's defence minister, said on Tuesday that they offensive would keep going until all objectives had been completed - which he said was the removal of threats to Russia by the West.

Footage shows captured a handcuffed Russian prisoner crying over the death and destruction wrought by the war, saying: 'They don't even pick up the corpses, there are no funerals'

Footage shows a young surrendered soldier from Putin's forces breaking down in tears as he speaks to his mother on the phone after being comforted and fed by Ukrainian women

Volodymyr Zelensky has said that Russia is trying to erase Ukraine and its people as Vladimir Putin's invasion entered its seventh day today with renewed attacks on all fronts including an expected assault on the city which houses Europe's largest nuclear power plant.

Zelensky, who has become a symbol of Ukrainian defiance and courage since the war began, told his people today that Russians 'know nothing about our capital. About our history. But they have an order to erase our history. Erase our country. Erase us all.'

It comes after Putin yesterday hailed his soldiers as heroes who are fighting to save innocent lives and blamed Ukrainian 'neo-Nazis' for holding citizens hostage.

The Russian leader claimed 'gangster' Ukrainian leaders using 'human shields' was the real reason so many civilians had been killed by his troops' onslaught in the country.

Putin made the claim in his address yesterday, his first since announcing the start of his 'special operation' eight days ago, which did little to reassure anyone that the war is close to being over, or that Russia can be brought to the negotiating table without more blood being shed.

Debris are seen after the shelling attack by the Russian army, following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, in Chernihiv, Ukraine, March 3

A view shows a residential building damaged by recent shelling, as Russia's invasion of Ukraine continues, in Chernihiv

But it also hinted that Putin is rattled as the fighting proves harder than Russian commanders anticipated, and western sanctions go harder and deeper than even European or American observers predicted. All hope of a swift victory has now been dashed, leaving Putin facing a long, bloody and expensive war to achieve his aims.

Russian troops have seized Europe's largest nuclear power plant in Ukraine after a firefight that set part of the complex ablaze with President Volodymyr Zelensky accused Putin of resorting to 'nuclear terror' and risking a catastrophe 'six times worse than Chernobyl' that would affect the whole continent.

The world's leading nuclear authorities saw no immediate cause for alarm about damage to the facility, but the assault triggered a phone call between U.S. President Joe Biden and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and the U.S. Department of Energy activated its nuclear incident response team as a precaution.

Russian troops attacked the Zaporizhzhia plant in the early hours of Friday, with CCTV capturing a fierce gun battle between Putin's men and Ukrainian defenders that sparked a fire in a six-storey training building just outside the main complex. Moscow's men then stopped firefighters getting to the building for several hours as fighting raged.
Staff from an NHS charity group had last year expressed concerns about improper data use by the foundation set up in Captain Sir Tom Moore's name.

The Captain Tom Foundation (CTF) is understood to have emailed people who donated to his legendary Covid campaign, which raised his record-breaking total for NHS charities of almost 39 million in the end, through a JustGiving page.

NHS Charities Together reached out to a watchdog and an independent body regarding the concerns in April 2021.

The Ingram-Moores denied any wrongdoing, as his daughter yesterday tearfully told ITV's This Morning : 'I think we've been incredibly naive but I don't think that that means we're bad'

It's not known how many people were contacted by the foundation via email, but more than 250,000 provided their addresses via the fundraiser page, The Times reported.

NHS Charities Together staff contacted the Charity Commission and the Information Commissioner's Office last year.

According to the latter's site, 'mail marketing' is not permitted unless they have consented to this or 'they are an existing customer who bought (or negotiated to buy) a similar product or service from you in the past, and you gave them a simple way to opt out both when you first collected their details and in every message you have sent'.

Ellie Orton OBE, Chief Executive of NHS Charities Together, said: 'We are so grateful for the incredible fundraising of Captain Sir Tom Moore.

'As part of our Covid-19 urgent appeal his inspiring efforts helped us fund hundreds of projects supporting NHS staff, patients and volunteers across the UK, prior to the creation of the separate Captain Tom Foundation.

'Like all charities we are required to follow strict guidance around use of supporter data, so when in April 2021 we were alerted to the potential improper use of data from a closed third-party fundraising page, it was our responsibility to notify the relevant regulators for them to take action as needed.

'We can reassure supporters that this matter did not involve any of the data we hold.

'Captain Tom and his family achieved amazing things for the NHS and the impact of this achievement continues to be felt by the network of 238 NHS charities across the UK.'

According to The Times, The ICO said the 'case has been closed' and that the charity was given 'advice on data protection and direct marketing rules', after which it was decided 'no further action was needed'.

The Charity Commission opened a 'regulatory compliance case' into the foundation last March.

The Captain Tom Foundation (CTF) is understood to have emailed people who donated to his legendary Covid campaign, which raised his record-breaking total for NHS charities

The CTF, a charity which raises funds for 'selected charity partners' that focus on helping the elderly, was incorporated on May 5, 2020 with principal founders Hannah Ingram-Moore and her husband, Colin.

The Charity Commission received the first report of the CTF's trustees and financial statements last month, concerning activities in the period between incorporating and May 31 of last year.

Accounts showed that 162,000 was in the first year spent on management and administration; more than the amount on donations towards good causes.

The CTF was incorporated on May 5, 2020 with principal founders Hannah Ingram-Moore (pictured) and her husband, Colin

More than 50,000 of those non-charitable outgoings were paid to companies run by the Ingram-Moores.

The CFT's set-up and running has been under investigation by the Charity Commission.

It was also last month reported that the ICO and the Fundraising Regulator resolved or closed their inquiries into the CTF.

The Ingram-Moores denied any wrongdoing, as his daughter yesterday tearfully told ITV's This Morning: 'I think we've been incredibly naive but I don't think that that means we're bad.'

CTF said in a statement: 'The 38.9 million (including Gift Aid) raised by Captain Tom between the 6th and 30th April went directly to NHS Charities Together, who distributed the funds in support of front line NHS workers and services across the UK where they needed it most.

'We worked closely with the ICO during the course of their inquiry who were grateful for the Trustees cooperation and closed their case.'
Ministers were today accused of failing to learn lessons from the pandemic after scrapping free flu vaccines for millions of over-50s and children.

People aged 50 to 64 and pupils in years 7 to 11 will not be eligible for the jabs next winter  reversing a decision to scale up the free rollout during the Covid crisis.

The move, which only applies to England, will affect around 10million people who will need to pay up to 14.50 for a shot if they want to get vaccinated.

Pharmacists described the change as 'worrying', warning that two years of WFH and lockdowns has left people particularly vulnerable for next winter because immunity is 'lower than ever'.

Dr Simon Clarke, an infectious disease expert, told MailOnline that ministers seemed 'determined' to rapidly 'dismantle' the safeguards built up during the pandemic.

The move appears to go against advice from the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI), which said expanding the rollout was 'highly cost effective'.

NHS sources insisted the move had been approved on the back of updated guidance from the JCVI.

'We're not learning from lessons of the pandemic - the lack of preparedness we went into Covid with,' said Dr Clarke, from Reading University.

'They [ministers] have admitted we could have a new Covid variant next winter... do we really want flu tripping us up too? I don't think so. But they are not interested in learning any lessons and think they've beat this pandemic so everything can go back to normal.'

The NHS has scrapped free flu jabs for millions of people aged over 50 as the organisation chose to reverse its policy to pre-pandemic conditions (stock photo)

One source with close ties to the rollout told The Telegraph that the move was 'reckless' and financially driven.

He said: 'Given that the next pandemic might be caused by the influenza virus it seems extremely reckless to to cut the flu vaccine programme.'

The Government originally expanded the free flu vaccine rollout to all over-50s, households of those on the shielded patient list and children in the first year of secondary school in July 2020 amid fears of a post-lockdown surge in influenza cases.

The programme was expanded to even more children last year, with a record 35million invites sent out this winter  compared to 25million pre-Covid.

But in guidance issued this week on the NHS England website, officials say eligibility will be scaled back again in 2022/23.

The letter told NHS workers and pharmacies: 'We would like to extend a huge thank you to all those involved for your hard work during very challenging times which led to some of the best flu vaccine uptake rates ever achieved.'

WHO'S ELIGIBLE NEXT WINTER? People aged 65 and over

Children (over six months) and adults (under 65) in clinical risk groups

All children aged two to 10 on August 31, 2022

Pregnant women

Care home residents

Carers

Close contacts of immunocompromised people

Frontline health and social care workers Advertisement

Four million secondary school children will no longer be eligible for the free shots and neither will around 6million people aged 50 to 64.

But people who live with extremely vulnerable people will still receive an invite, along with those aged 65 and older and immunocompromised people.

Children aged two to ten, pregnant women, care home residents and carers will also still be eligible for the free flu jab.

Ms Guerrini, from Medino, told MailOnline that the scaling back of the programme was 'quite worrying'.

She added: 'It's important to note that immune systems are lower than ever due to our bodies having had a lower amount of exposure to viruses than normal over the last two years.

'Before the pandemic our bodies were exposed to microbes on daily commutes, in the office, nightclubs or supermarkets.

'Frequent exposure to germs and microbes builds up our immune system, but due to the lack of that and increased awareness of hygiene, we haven't been exposed as much as usual and we have all become a lot more vulnerable to viral colds and flus.'

There were warnings there could be a big flu outbreak this winter but those fears never materialised - possibly due to the ultra-infectious Omicron strain keeping it out.

The guidance comes despite the JCVI, Britain's expert vaccine advisory group, keen to continue with an expanded rollout in December.

Minutes from the meeting said the group 'remained supportive of fully extending the childhood programme on a routine basis which is highly cost effective'.

It added that it would be 'acceptable to vaccinate 50 to 64-year-olds for the 2022-23 season if funding available'.

The final decision on the rollout was made by the Department of Health and Social Care.

Dr Clarke told MailOnline that the decision to narrow the programme was short-sighted.

'I think that there are a lot of work days taken out by flu in bad flu year and that alone would be enough to justify the need for it.

'By announcing this now, it means we [England] probably aren't purchasing the extra doses in advance. If we do have a bad flu year, there wont be a lot of vaccine.

'Flu always has a chance of causing us trouble and the reason we haven't had it bad in the past couple of years is because there hasn't been a lot of mixing or international travel.'

But others believe the Government has made the right move.

Dr Karol Sikora, an oncologist and expert in medicine at the University of Buckinghamshire, said he was in favour of saving 'a few quid' if it meant more money could go to other things like cancer care.

Professor Paul Hunter said the country was simply 'getting back to the situation pre-Covid'.

He told MailOnline: 'It's not unexpected. Providing that Covid and the impact of Covid on health services continues to reduce, then I think it is appropriate.

'But if it all goes pear-shaped between now and winter, and Covid starts going off the rails again, then the decision might need to be reversed.'

A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said: 'Thanks to the success of the Covid vaccination programme and treatments available to individuals most at risk, we are now able to live with Covid and it is right that we return our other vaccination programmes such as flu back to pre-pandemic levels.

'In 2022/23, it is planned that NHS flu vaccines will be offered to patients eligible in line with pre-pandemic recommendations as set out in the reimbursement letter sent by the NHS to clinicians this week.

'We are incredibly grateful to all the staff across health and social care who played their part in the successful flu campaign over the last year.'
A married GOP congressman who abruptly dropped his bid for re-election after admitting to an affair with a former ISIS bride has been branded a sexual predator by the woman's American ex-husband.

Furious Craig Burma also blasted U.S. Rep. Van Taylor for sending filthy text messages to Tania Joya which he read for the first time when the eight-month tryst was exposed this week by a right-wing website.

British-born Joya, 38, was radicalized in her teens before marrying Texan Muslim convert John Georgelas and following him to Syria where she had ambitions of being a suicide bomber.

But she soon tired of the life and fled to Turkey with their four kids in 2013 before settling in the US where she abandoned Islam and embarked on a new life with Burma, her second husband, until they divorced this past January.

Tania Joyce dreamed of being a suicide bomber but abandoned Islam after being taken to Syria by her Texan Muslim husband John Georgelas, who is said to have been killed in 2017

Joya and second husband Craig Burma married in June 2018 bit within a year the couple had hit the rocks. They were eventually divorced in January

'About a year ago, I made a horrible mistake that has caused deep hurt and pain among those I love most in this world,' said Taylor (pictured with wife Anne). 'I had an affair, it was wrong, and it was the greatest failure of my life'

In an exclusive interview with DailyMail.com Burma, 52, said he had no idea that while he was trying to patch up his relationship with Joya from late 2020 to summer 2021 she was secretly bedding their congressman.

Two-term congressman Taylor, 49, apologized Wednesday for cheating on his wife Anne and announced he was no longer standing for re-election because of the horrible mistake  the greatest failure of my life.

Joya, 38, said she fell in love with Taylor while working on a re-education program for former extremists

Outraged Burma is in no mood to forgive, however, telling DailyMail.com: He says he made one horrible mistake. No, he made a mistake every single time he slept with her.

He made a mistake every single time he texted filthy stuff to her. He made thousands of mistakes and he should atone for all of them.

While their four-year marriage was already on the rocks, Burma said his wifes fling wrecked any chance of them reconciling.

But he blames the philandering father-of-three politician  not her.

He knew we were having problems in our marriage at that time. To me, that seems like predatory behavior. She was vulnerable and he targeted her for sex, he added.

Burma said he was especially disgusted to read how hardline conservative Taylor, the sitting representative for Texass 3rd congressional district  which is based around Collin County, north of Dallas  had been sexting his wife.

One such message, published by conservative news site National File, reeled off a string of degrading acts that the lawmaker said he wanted to do with petite Joya.

That text message tells me it certainly wasnt about love. People dont do that to each other. That is horrific, added Burma, a cybersecurity consultant.

'Im trying to think of some way to stay together and here he is taking advantage of her and not caring two craps about her emotionally.

How does that differ to how her first husband treated her? They both manipulated her to get what they wanted. And thats probably being a little unkind to terrorist John.

He was a teenage ideologue radicalized into fighting for ISIS, whereas Van Taylor is a Harvard-educated US congressman  he should know better.

Rep. Taylor 'made thousands of mistakes and he should atone for all of them,' Burma (pictured with Joya) told DailyMail.com

Rep. Van Taylor and his wife Anne on their wedding day. The Republican congressman publicly apologized to his wife and three daughters in a statement to supporters Wednesday as he withdrew from his primary race

Taylor's Republican opponent Suzanne Harp arranged for Joya to do an interview and then shared it with several right-wing websites who published the expose earlier this week  just ahead of Tuesday's primary

Tania Joya's traveled to Syria with first husband, Texan John Georgelas when he went to fight for the Islamic State. She dreamed of becoming a suicide bomber before she became disillusioned

In a series of interviews this week Joya outlined how she fell head over heels for Taylor while working on a re-education program for former extremists, a cause she took up after fleeing from Syria in 2013 and resettling in Plano, Texas.

She said she was deeply in love with the rugged former Marine and Iraq War veteran but felt bitterly betrayed and suicidal when he refused to leave his wife and daughters.

The Dallas Morning News reported Wednesday that Joya first confronted Taylor's wife Anne, a real estate mogul who has been married to Taylor since 2004, then contacted Suzanne Harp, a candidate opposing him in the 2022 Republican primary.

Harp arranged for the pretty former fundamentalist to do an interview then shared it with several right-wing websites who published the expose earlier this week  just ahead of Tuesday's primary.

Taylor was a captain in the US Maines. He said his wife sent him a letter every day that he served in Iraq

Taylor had been expected to win the race, but he fell just short of the required 50% of the vote and was headed for a runoff with another opponent, Keith Self, but he instead emailed supporters on Wednesday saying he was bowing out in disgrace.

Today I am announcing I will not continue my campaign to seek re-election to Congress, Taylor wrote.

About a year ago, I made a horrible mistake that has caused deep hurt and pain among those I love most in this world. I had an affair, it was wrong, and it was the greatest failure of my life.

For the duration of the fling Joya and her four boys were sharing a $620,000 Texas mansion with Burma, who has three adult sons himself.

The pair wed in June 2018 after she signed up for the dating site Match.com and reportedly wrote on her profile: I'm looking for a husband. I have four kids. I want someone older than me. My ex-husband's crazy. And I'm here applying for a Green Card.

Burma said he did his best to help Joya, who fell under the spell of ultra-conservative Islamists while growing up in London and once said she was thirsty for the Islamic state, adjust to suburban American life.

I doted on her. We had a good relationship for several years but there were obviously challenges that most people wouldn't take on, he told DailyMail.com.

Tania Joya was born in London to a Muslim Bangladeshi family and became radicalized after the September 11 terror attacks

Two-term congressman Van Taylor's political career now lies in ruins after he admitted his eight-month affair with Tania Joya

Joya joined a Muslim matrimonial website and by February 2003 had been matched with Texan John Georgelas, the son of a retired US Air Force colonel. They were married within a month in a sharia ceremony

After a few weeks in Syria with her first husband, Joya fled to Turkey with her four children, crossing a minefield on foot while pushing her youngest child in a buggy for the final few miles of the journey

'Once I knew about the affair a lot of things clicked in my head,' Burma told DailyMail.com. 'We may very well have gotten divorced anyway but at least I understand now why nothing was working'

Georgelas was the son on a US Air Force colonel. He adopted the name Yahya al-Bahrami when he rebelled against his conservative upbringing and converted to Islam. He was reportedly killed in Syria in 2017

For one she had four children with a man who declared America his sworn enemy. But I loved those boys, I was happy to raise them.

I wanted to see Tania get her voice back, her agency back, her free will back - all the things that were taken away from her or that she never even knew she had.

I wanted her to feel the way most Western women feel, to have a great sense of freedom, one most women probably take for granted.

By 2019 however the marriage had hit the skids with Joya determined to move to California and Burma wanting to stay in Texas where his sons were based.

They filed for divorce but reconciled and tried again, only for their problems to spiral when Joya began to suffer what Burma described as bouts of depression and suicidal thoughts.

In September last year Burma once more filed for divorce and this time it was finalized on January 7.

There were times when shed be ready to kill herself and other times when she was on cloud nine, he told DailyMail.com.

So here I was trying to register all this data about what's happening with her and wondering can we put it back together?

So once I knew about the affair a lot of things clicked in my head. We may very well have gotten divorced anyway but at least I understand now why nothing was working.

Born Joya Choudhury to Bangladeshi parents, Joya was raised in Harrow, northwest London, where she has said she was radicalized by Muslim girls who slut shamed her for wearing Western clothes.

Soon she was wearing the full veil and being told by a friend to celebrate the bombing of the World Trade Centre in New York. By her own admission, she became a hardcore jihadist.

Tania Joya (pictured in 2013) moved to Plano, Texas after fleeing Syria

Joya joined a Muslim matrimonial website and by February 2003 had been matched with Texan John Georgelas, the son of a retired US Air Force colonel. They were married within a month in a sharia ceremony and eventually settled in California.

Joya stuck by Georgelas after he was caught illegally accessing passwords for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and sentenced to 34 months in jail.

In 2011 they moved to Cairo where Georgelas met other jihadists and was a vocal supporter of pre-IS pro-caliphate voices.

By 2013, Georgelas was determined to go to Syria and in August took his wife, who was five months pregnant, and three sons over the border to the city of Azaz in north-western Syria.

Joya has insisted that she was tricked, and in any case did not have a choice because of the control her husband exerted over her.

There were shoot-outs on the street, food was scarce and Joya says she was locked inside and repeatedly raped by her hardline spouse.

After a few weeks she hired a car and headed for Turkey, crossing a minefield on foot while pushing her youngest child in a buggy for the final few miles of the journey.

She has not spoken to Georgelas, who changed his name to Yahya al-Bahrumi, since 2015 and its believed he died two years later.

She's an enigma in some ways but she's a fighter and she lands on her feet because there's really no choice, said Burma, explaining why he doesnt ultimately blame his ex-wife for the humiliating affair.

A lot of people are saying shes a homewrecker but I dont see it like that, he told DailyMail.com.

I hesitate to say things like gullible because I never like to put Tania down. But she has lived her life in a way that taught her women were second class.

The focus should be on how he manipulated her. I do think that there's a lot of parallels between her relationship with John and her relationship with Van.

I don't think it takes away from her intellect to say she was vulnerable and that Van Taylor played on that vulnerability. And that to me is whats so sad.
The Conservatives are facing demands to sack the Duchess of Cornwall's nephew as party co-chairman over his business links to Russia.

Sir Keir Starmer today called for Tory fundraiser Ben Elliot to be removed over his 'links' to cash being given to the party by super-wealthy Russians.

Mr Elliot runs Quintessentially, a concierge firm for ultra-high net-worth individuals. In recent days it has deleted from its website reference to its Moscow office that employs 50 'lifestyle managers' who pledge a 'bespoke luxury lifestyle at our clients' fingertips', including helping with the best schools, properties and Russian-speaking nannies.

He has been under the spotlight after it was reported he set up a so-called 'advisory group' of party donors, some of whom have links to Putin's regime.

In 2013 Mr Elliot told the Gentleman's Journal this was 'due to the influx in Russian-speaking clients coming into London'.

His position in the party is causing unrest among its own backbenchers as well as opposition MPs.

One senior Tory MP said concerns were raised about the handling of donations to the Tory party at 1922 committee meetings earlier this week, including Ben Elliot's role in the process.

The MP said there was 'no question everything is legal' in terms of donations the party had accepted, but colleagues were very anxious that it might not be enough to satisfy public opinion if issues arose.

'We must be clear all of the donations made to the party are above board,' the MP said.

Speaking during a visit to Birmingham Erdington, Sir Keir said: 'I think there is growing concern about the links between the Conservative Party and Russian money.

Mr Elliot runs Quintessentially, a concierge firm for ultra-high net-worth individuals. In recent days it has deleted from its website reference to its Moscow office that employs 50 'lifestyle managers' who pledge a 'bespoke luxury lifestyle at our clients' fingertips'.

Sir Keir Starmer today called for Tory fundraiser Ben Elliot to be removed over his 'links' to cash being given to the party by super-wealthy Russians.

Last summer Charles was dragged into a 'cash for access' row after the Tory party's co-chairman was accused of arranging a private meeting with a wealthy businessman.

'Ben Elliot is at the heart of that. We need to strip Russian money away from our politics, not to allow it to influence our politics.

'There will always be this danger if the Conservative government doesn't go really hard on this that people will say it must be because you are reliant on Russian money that you are not going more quickly.

'So, it's in everybody's best interests that Ben Elliot steps back from his role - and I think he should actually be sacked from it.'

But a Tory source accused Labour of trying to 'score cheap political points by smearing individuals based on their parentage'.

'He and his party have themselves received more than a million pounds from a hedge fund manager who made his money investing in Russian companies run by Putin's cronies and are now refusing to say whether or not they'll return it,' they said.

'He would be better off trying to rid his own party of the Putin apologists who blame NATO for the invasion of Ukraine, many of whom sit as Labour MPs.'

Labour has seized on the Ukraine crisis to urge the Tories to hand back money from any donor who had made money from Russia or had alleged links to the Putin regime.

Shadow foreign secretary David Lammy and Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, have claimed that such donors had given the Tories 1.93 million since Boris Johnson became Prime Minister in 2019.

In a letter to Boris Johnson, labour chairwoman Anneliese Dodds said: 'You appointed Ben Elliot co-chair of the Conservative Party. You have allowed him to blur the lines between private business activities with Putin-linked oligarchs and his public responsibilities.

'You have sat idly by while Mr Elliot has overseen a party fundraising operation that has seen almost 2 million pounds in donations from people with links to Putin's murderous regime flood into Tory coffers since you became Conservative Party leader.

'And you have failed to explain to the British people why the Conservative Party has accepted a total of 6.65 million in donations from Putin-linked donors since 2005, including 1.94 million from Lubov Chernukhin, the partner of Putin's former deputy finance minister.'

The Conservative Party and Quintessentially have been contacted for comment. Quintessentially told the Financial Times: 'The group continues to actively monitor its member base and corporate clients to ensure that it is not servicing any individual or corporate body that is on the sanctions lists that have been issued by the UK, EU and US governments.

'Moreover, it can confirm that it definitively is not engaged with anyone on those lists.'

The company has already become involved in controversy involving his step-uncle the Prince of Wales and a wealth Tory donor.

Last summer Charles was dragged into a 'cash for access' row after the Tory party's co-chairman was accused of arranging a private meeting with a wealthy businessman.

The heir to the throne is said to have had an 'intimate dinner' with telecoms tycoon Mohamed Amersi at Dumfries House in Scotland  allegedly arranged by Mr Elliot.

The meeting was said to have been organised via Quintessentially, to which Mr Amersi had paid an annual 15,000 fee as an 'elite' member.

In the wake of the dinner, the 61-year-old businessman provided more than 1.2million to the prince's charities and was given access to him.

But the Tory co-chairman insisted there was no conflict of interest and the meeting between Charles and Mr Amersi had been 'entirely about helping to raise money for charity'.

Last September Mr Elliot was cleared of lobbying but urged to keep a 'clear distinction' between his role and business interests.

The watchdog started an investigation over reports that Quintessentially had arranged access to top politicians.

The Registrar concluded that the company 'had not been engaging in consultant lobbying activity'.

However, the Registrar also advised Mr Elliott 'to be cautious about the possibility of engaging in consultant lobbying activity (perhaps unintentionally) by not making a clear enough distinction between his role as a director of Quintessentially and his other activities connected to government'.

The Conservative Party has been approached to comment.
A former BBC Radio DJ has claimed his Skype and bank accounts were hacked as he faces child sex abuse allegations.

Divorced father-of-three Mark Page is accused of trying to arrange sex with children as young as 12 in the Philippines.

The 63-year-old, who worked in British radio in the 1980s before becoming Middlesbrough FCs match announcer, allegedly committed three offences via a webcam linking his home to the Southeast Asian country in 2016.

Prosecutors claim that he contacted children and encouraged them to perform sex acts for him, paying them via the Western Union money transfer firm.

A further two offences allegedly occurred when he had travelled to that country, which he visited regularly for business reasons.

Page, of Ingleby Barwick, Teesside, denies five counts of arranging the commission of a child sex offence.

Giving evidence at Teesside Crown Court, Page said believes that one or more of his online accounts was hacked.

He also told Teesside Crown Court his career at Middlesbrough was destroyed after police barged into his home and searched the property in January 2020. He was later charged with child sex offences.

Former BBC Radio DJ Mark Page pictured outside Teesside Crown Court

Dressed in a grey suit, he told the jury that he frequently travelled to the Philippines, Singapore and Malaysia as a consultant to Filipino Forces Radio, and in his capacity with the Department of Trade and Industry.

Defence barrister Trevor Burke QC asked Page about Western Union payments to the Philippines, which the prosecution allege were money transfers and phone credit to pay children after online video chats.

In his defence, Page said up to 30 people had access to a work-related email used to set up a Skype account.

Page said he joined a Philippines-based dating site, but denied sending specific messages to a female there, which the prosecution have highlighted.

The 63-year-old worked in British radio in the 1980s before becoming Middlesbrough FCs match announcer

The defendant told the jury: I have the feeling, now looking at this case, that in some way, shape or form, I have been hacked. Somebody has had access to my accounts in different places along the line.

Asked why he made a voice-activated question on Google for the age of consent in the Philippines, Page said he had been talking to a woman online who told him how old she was when she lost her virginity.

He said: Afterwards I thought Hmm, yeah, ok.

Page said he had a Western Union account set up on his computer to make payments abroad as part of his work and that he didnt recognise numerous transactions made on his account.

He told his barrister there were many payments abroad from his account that he didnt make, but that he didnt check every payment that left his account on his bank statements at that time.

The former DJ claimed to have records of emails he sent to the money transfer company to try and sort the problems out.

Earlier, the court heard from digital police investigator Paul Ripley, who said that Western Union had never received complaints from Page.

Mr Burke also said that his client disputed some of the Skype conversations that the prosecution say he had.

Page told the court that there were 30 staff employed at his radio station Garrison FM and they all had access to the HQGarrisonFM hotmail account  the email account used to set up Pages Skype account.

He also told Teesside Crown Court his career at Middlesbrough was destroyed after police barged into his home and searched the property in January 2020

The defendant told the court that it was probably one of my team that set up his Skype account.

Page also said that he was in the habit of leaving his home computer on whilst he was away on business trips so he could log in remotely from abroad, if needed to.

He told the court that one of his girlfriends from the Philippines came to live with him, his two sons and daughter in 2016. She studied for a nursing qualification at university, but the relationship soured.

Page said she was still staying at his home when he went on holiday to Florida for two weeks with his daughter.

When asked by his barrister if it follows that his computer was accessible to anyone living in his home, Page replied: If the computer is on theyre got access, yes. I used to leave it on quite often.

Page said his ex later went onto trawl Boro FC forums and send him comments of people slating me and slagging me off, which is always the case.

He claimed his ex turned nasty and threatened to send private photos of us. To random people on Middlesbrough forums.

Page told the court he had a long career in radio, including working for Radio One when he was 23, and in later years he was granted a licence to run a station to broadcast to British garrisons.

The trial continues.
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Five years after Syria was rocked by civil war which left its most populous city Aleppo in a scene of death and destruction, harrowing images reveal how Ukraine's cities now appear in a similar state.

Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine on February 24 and dropped bombs in Kyiv after claiming his country could not develop because of a 'constant threat' from Ukraine.

Putin claims his invasion was started in a bid to rid Ukraine, a country led by Jewish President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, of 'neo-Nazism'.

Russia's war against Ukraine is now entering its ninth day and shows no sign of stopping any time soon after talks between the two sides yesterday broke up without agreement.

Putin then went on TV to declare that he would keep battling for 'total victory' whilst spouting propaganda that Russia's forces are not deliberately targeting civilians and that the 'special operation' is proceeding on time with all of its major objectives completed to schedule.

Russian troops have seized Europe's largest nuclear power plant in Ukraine after a firefight that set part of the complex ablaze with President Volodymyr Zelensky accused Putin of resorting to 'nuclear terror' and risking a catastrophe 'six times worse than Chernobyl' that would affect the whole continent.

The Russians announced the capture of the southern city of Kherson, a vital Black Sea port of 280,000, and local Ukrainian officials confirmed the takeover of the government headquarters there, making it the first major city to fall since the invasion began a week ago.

A Russian airstrike on Thursday destroyed the power plant in Okhtyrka, leaving the city without heat or electricity, the head of the region said on Telegram. In the first days of the war, Russian troops attacked a military base in the city, located between Kharkiv and Kyiv, and officials said more than 70 Ukrainian soldiers were killed.

'We are trying to figure out how to get people out of the city urgently because in a day the apartment buildings will turn into a cold stone trap without water, light or electricity,' Dmytro Zhyvytskyy said.

Heavy fighting continued on the outskirts of another strategic port, Mariupol, on the Azov Sea. The battles have knocked out the city's electricity, heat and water systems, as well as most phone service, officials said. Food deliveries to the city were also cut.

And heartbreaking images from Ukraine over just the last nine days show how similar the country looks to Aleppo after civil unrest in 2011 broke out into full-blown war by 2016.

Famous for textiles, soap and its UNESCO-listed citadel, Aleppo was Syria's economic hub and of huge historic and cultural importance.

It was reduced to rubble due to in-fighting between pro-government forces, US-backed rebel troops and terrorists in the form of ISIS, who all wanted to seize control of the city.

Houses were left inhospitable, schools and hospitals obliterated by bombs and Aleppo's once iconic structures are in ruin.

A wounded woman is seen as airstrike damages an apartment complex outside of Kharkiv, Ukraine on February 24

An injured woman reacts at a site hit by airstrikes in the rebel held area of Old Aleppo, Syria, April 28, 2016

Serhii, father of teenager Iliya, cries on his son's lifeless body lying on a stretcher at a maternity hospital converted into a medical ward in Mariupol, Ukraine, Wednesday, March 2

A Free Syrian Army fighter cries near the body of his comrade in front of Dar El Shifa hospital in Aleppo, Syria, Tuesday, September 25, 2012

A civilian trains to throw Molotov cocktails to defend the city, as Russia's invasion of Ukraine continues, in Zhytomyr, Ukraine March 1

An opposition fighter throws a Molotov cocktail into a building held by government forces during an offensive attack in the Saif al-Dawla neighbourhood of Syria's northern city of Aleppo, amid heavy street fighting on August 29, 2012

A woman fleeing Russian invasion of Ukraine hugs a child at a temporary camp in Przemysl, Poland, February 28, 2022

An Internally displaced Syrian woman carries a child in front of a tent at a camp, before being transported to a new housing complex in the opposition-held area of Bizaah, east of the city of al-Bab in the northern Aleppo governorate, built with the support of Turkey's emergencies agency AFAD

Ukrainian volunteers carry a victim out of the City Hall building, following shelling in Kharkiv, Ukraine, Tuesday, March 1, 2022

Men carry a dead body at a site hit by what activists said were barrel bombs dropped by forces loyal to Syria's President Bashar al-Assad in Aleppo's al-Shaar district April 24, 2014

Natali Sevriukova reacts next to her house following a rocket attack the city of Kyiv, Ukraine, Friday, February 25, 2022

Syrian Zakia Abdullah sits on the rubble of her house in the Tariq al-Bab district of the northern city of Aleppo on February 23, 2013

A view shows destroyed military vehicles on a street, as Russia's invasion of Ukraine continues, in the town of Bucha in the Kyiv region, Ukraine March 1, 2022

In this January 20, 2017 file photo, residents walk through the destruction of the once rebel-held Salaheddine neighborhood in the eastern Aleppo, Syria

A view of the square outside the damaged local city hall of Kharkiv on March 1, 2022, destroyed as a result of Russian troop shelling

Burnt vehicles are pictured in front of the damaged the Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF)-backed al-Quds hospital after it was hit by airstrikes, in a rebel-held area of Syria's Aleppo, April 28, 2016

A view shows a residential building damaged by recent shelling, as Russia's invasion of Ukraine continues, in Chernihiv, Ukraine March 3, 2022

Residents inspect damage in a site hit by what activists said was a barrel bomb dropped by warplanes loyal to Syria's President Bashar al-Assad in Aleppo, April 18, 2015

A view to a shelled gym building near the TV Tower on March 2, 2022 in Kyiv, Ukraine

An elderly Syrian sits outside a newly-reopened shop amid the destruction, where he sells tablecloths in the old city of Aleppo on July 22, 2017

A Czech medical team evacuates Ukrainian child patient Yaroslava Zun, 9, who they picked up from Lviv, at the border crossing in Korczowa, Poland on Wednesday, March 2, 2022

Relatives wheel a injured boy outside a hospital following shelling by Syrian government forces during battle with rebel fighters in the northern city of Aleppo on October 9, 2012

An aerial view shows a residential building destroyed by shelling, as Russia's invasion of Ukraine continues, in the settlement of Borodyanka in the Kyiv region, Ukraine March 3, 2022

An aerial view of the buildings destroyed by the Assad Regime forces and Russian Army in the Tariq al-Bab neighborhood of Aleppo, Syria on October 2016

A Ukrainian man stands in the rubble in Zhytomyr on March 02, 2022, following a Russian bombing the day before

Yousef Hayeni stands in front of the remains of his house following an air strike in the Syrian town of Azaz, near the northern restive city of Aleppo on August 15, 2012

Firefighters extinguish fire in a building after the shelling attack by the Russian army, following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, in Chernihiv, Ukraine, March 3, 2022

Syrian emergency personnel extinguish the smouldering facade of the Al-Dabbeet hospital after rockets reportedly fired by rebels hit the government-controlled neighbourhood of Muhafaza in the northern city of Aleppo on May 3, 2016

A firefighter works to extinguish fire at a warehouse that caught flames, according to local authorities, after shelling, as Russia's invasion of Ukraine continues, in the village of Chaiky in the Kyiv region, Ukraine March 3, 2022

Syrian firefighters try to extinguish a fire at a bakery after it was hit by a barrel bomb dropped by Syrian regime forces in Ansari neighborhood of Aleppo, Syria on June 9, 2015

People walk past a destroyed Russian military vehicle at a frontline position on March 03, 2022 in Irpin, Ukraine

Syrians inspect the destroyed buildings following a Syrian government air strike in Aleppo, Syria, on June 26, 2014

Flames and smoke rise from a damaged gym following shelling in Kyiv, Ukraine, Wednesday, March 2, 2022

A Syrian rebel walks inside the damaged Umayyad Mosque in the old city of Aleppo hours before the Syrian army retook control of the complex on October 14, 2012

A man rides his bike past destroyed buildings on March 03, 2022 in Irpin, Ukraine
A Polish charity worker is making regular runs into war-torn Ukraine to rescue dozens of abandoned pets.

Konrad Kuzminski is among a handful of staff from an animal shelter close to the Polish-Ukrainian border which has been flooded with calls from desperate Ukrainians asking for help.

Since the outbreak of hostilities last week Konrad and his colleagues from the animal charity Dioz have rescued more than 100 dogs, cats, rabbits, hamsters and even a chameleon.

Konrad said: 'There has been a lot of fake news and uncorroborated stories that Ukrainians are killing abandoned animals, that is just not correct.

'We have been involved in many rescue missions in over there, rescuing animals that we have been told about or who have been taken to shelters.

'A lot of them are in a bad way, they are sick, hungry or suffering from broken limbs we collect every animal we find and bring them back to our shelter to be looked after.'

A charity worker is making regular runs into war-torn Ukraine to rescue dozens of pets

Konrad Kuzminski is among a handful of staff from a Polish animal shelter close to the border which has been flooded with calls from desperate Ukrainians asking for help

Since the outbreak of hostilities last week Konrad and his colleagues from the animal charity Dioz have rescued more than 100 dogs, cats, rabbits, hamsters and even a chameleon

The shelter on the outskirts Przemysl has been working overtime the last week with the team making a crossing every day

The shelter on the outskirts Przemysl has been working overtime the last week with the team making a crossing every day.

Vital paperwork means they able to speed across the border without having to stop for long and they can take the animals quickly back to their centre.

MailOnline spotted Konrad and his van  a converted ambulance  at the border as he took a German Shepherd he had rescued from the Ukrainian city of Lviv for a walk.

He said: 'It hurts me so much to see these animals suffering and people sometimes forget about pets at times of war which I suppose is a natural consequence.

'Last weekend I had a call from a guy who was in Ukraine, and he said he was living on his own but had a dog and he wanted us to look after because he was going to fight the Russians.

'We arranged to meet just over the border, and he was in tears as he handed his dog over to me but I said we would look after him and he could collect him when all this was over.'

Konrad and his colleagues have been working round the clock for the last week and he even had to spend the night in his van because he had overrun into the curfew.

Konrad and his colleagues have been working round the clock for the last week and he even had to spend the night in his van because he had overrun into the curfew

The animals that are successfully treated are put up for adoption but others have asked for their pets to be kept safe until the war is over

A Polish animal shelter has been flooded with calls from desperate Ukrainians asking for help

Vital paperwork means they able to speed across the border without having to stop for long and they can take the animals quickly back to their centre

He added: 'Please forgive me if I dont make sense, Im tired physically and psychologically working in a war situation.

'We have received hundreds of calls to help people with their pets  some people do bring them across but others cant and they dont want to abandon their pets so contact us.

'We are sent drastic photos of peoples pets or animals that have been found abandoned and we try and help as much as we can but sometimes, we just cant get to them all.

'No other Polish organisation is working as hard as us to save animals and pets  we are sending convoys to Ukraine every day.'

When MailOnline visited the centre, vets were frantically dealing with an adorable looking mongrel called Miron who had been rushed from the border.

Dr Radoslaw Fedaczynski, 42, who specialises in cat and dog illnesses, said: 'Sadly this dog is very malnourished and suffering from exhaustion and several illnesses.

'I dont think we will be able to save him and sadly he may will have to be put down. Its very distressing for all of us working with the animals we want to help them but, in this case, we have no choice.

'Some of the dogs and animals we get are so weak and undernourished there is nothing we can do for them its very distressing.

Authorities in Poland have made it possible for refugees fleeing with their pets to enter the country without vaccinations, microchip and blood test

Animal charity Peta UK said: 'We strongly urge people not to leave their animals behind'

When MailOnline visited the centre, vets were frantically dealing with an adorable looking mongrel called Miron who had been rushed from the border

'We have seen dogs arrive with their ribs showing, living in their faeces and psychologically very disturbed.'

The animals that are successfully treated are put up for adoption but others have asked for their pets to be kept safe until the war is over.

In a heart-breaking Instagram Konrad posted a touching video showing several dogs sitting silently in cubicles with one desperate animal looking silently at the wall and not even responding to calls.

Konrad added: 'Pets during a war are not as big a problem as the military and in this case especially the Russian troops and their tanks, they have caused this problem.

Authorities in Poland have made it possible for refugees fleeing with their pets to enter the country without vaccinations, microchip and blood test.

Animal charity Peta UK said: 'We strongly urge people not to leave their animals behind. Just like humans fleeing from war, companion animals will be scared and stressed and depending on their human guardians for comfort and security.'

The Dioz charity works alongside the ADA Foundation and is asking for donations to help fund its work through their Facebook page here.
Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin talk to each other during their meeting in Beijing, Feb. 4. An isolated Russia could be driven further into China's arms economically in the wake of sanctions imposed over the invasion of Ukraine, but Beijing appears wary of offering a warm embrace. AP-Yonhap



An isolated Russia could be driven further into China's arms economically in the wake of sanctions imposed over the invasion of Ukraine, but Beijing appears wary of offering a warm embrace.



Western countries have hit Russia's economy hard including by closing airspace, freezing assets and excluding seven banks from the SWIFT interbank messaging network.



The impact is expected to be wide-ranging and impede Moscow's ability to shore up the beleaguered ruble and purchase imports.



China has avoided openly condemning Russia's attack and has the financial strength to soften the blow against its giant neighbor.



But analysts say Beijing will likely tread carefully to avoid violating the most severe international restrictions.





A police officer stands on duty near the Tiananmen area where the annual parliamentary meetings will be held at the Great Hall of the People, March 4. AP-Yonhap



'Financial muscle'



China is the only country with the "financial muscle to help Russia," said Paola Subacchi, professor of international economics at the University of London's Queen Mary Global Policy Institute.



Beijing holds massive foreign exchange reserves and a swap agreement between the Chinese and Russian central banks has been in place for years, Subacchi noted.



"When the ruble fell as a result of the sanctions during the Crimea invasion (in 2014), the swap agreement was activated and helped to pay for Russian imports," she told AFP.



"But it is not enough. It's negligible compared to what they (Russia) need in order to support their currency," she said.



Analysts also note that China is not a major importer of wheat  a key Russian export  and neither can it step in to provide all of the goods that Russia needs.



This week, Russian gas giant Gazprom said it had signed a contract to design a pipeline to China, taking a step towards a new supply agreement that could ease Russia's reliance on European buyers.



Chinese firms could export more to Russia and buy more Russian energy, but the gains for Moscow would be minimal considering the overall impact of the war, Julian Evans-Pritchard said in a report for Capital Economics.





Coins and banknotes of China's yuan are seen in this illustration picture taken on Feb. 24. Reuters-Yonhap







'Won't risk violations'



While China can in some cases provide yuan to Russia to help it buy what it needs from abroad, Beijing will likely "tiptoe" around anything more overt for now, said Leland Miller, CEO of data analytics firm China Beige Book.



Beijing will not want to appear to openly flout sanctions especially while fighting still rages, and probably "won't risk violating the more severe restrictions on SWIFT, central bank transactions, and technology exports", he added.



Violations could bring secondary sanctions on key Chinese companies that sell products to Russia containing U.S. intellectual property, Miller said, meaning China will need to tread a fine line.



Just a month ago Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian leader Vladimir Putin declared in Beijing that their bilateral friendship had "no limits"  a deepening embrace driven by their mutual desire to counter U.S. influence.



China cannot publicly oppose Putin without endangering that partnership, Chen Long, a partner at research firm Plenum, wrote in a report.



But Beijing also cannot support Russia too strongly without risking an international backlash, Chen said.



"It's just going to be business as usual," he added.



Commerce Minister Wang Wentao told reporters this week that China hoped to maintain normal trade with both Russia and Ukraine.



Beijing recently announced it was lifting restrictions on Russian wheat imports, but this merely marked the fulfilment of an earlier promise.





SWIFT logo and Russian flag are seen through broken glass in this illustration taken on March 1. Reuters-Yonhap
A Ukrainian tycoon who was found hanged in the garage of his Surrey mansion had been 'worried for two years' after being told he was on Vladimir Putin's hit list, a close friend has claimed.

A female neighbour of Mikhail Watford, 66, said the property mogul - who made his fortune in oil and gas - feared he was a prime target for the warring Russian president in the months leading up to his death.

The body of Mr Watford was found Monday at his home in the luxury Wentworth Estate in Virginia Water, where properties sell for up to 20million.

The neighbour also told the Sun that Mr Watford, known as Misha, had been a friend of Russian billionaire Boris Berezovsky, who was found hanged at his home in Ascot, Berkshire, in 2013.

She claimed Mr Watford had told her that Berezovsky was murdered by an intelligence agency.

The neighbour added: 'I find it hard to believe that Misha would have taken his own life. It doesn't add up.'

News of Mr Watford's death emerged on the day Boris Johnson told the Commons that he will publish a full list of people associated with Vladimir Putin's regime, a significant proportion of whom will face sanctions.

A female neighbour of Mikhail Watford, 66, said the property mogul (pictured) - who made his fortune in oil and gas - feared he was a prime target for the warring Russian president in the months leading up to his death

Mr Watford's Estonian wife, 41, (right) posted a photo on social media showing her kissing her husband in the grounds of their mansion

Police were called after the property magnate, who is not among those oligarchs already sanctioned, was found dead at midday on Monday.

His Estonian wife Jane, 41, posted a photo on social media showing her kissing her husband in the grounds of their mansion.

It comes after the 2012 death of millionaire Russian businessman Alexander Perepilichnyy, 44, who lived in the exclusive St George's Hill area of Weybridge.

Surrey Police were accused of 'incompetence' over their investigation amid claims he was poisoned, perhaps with a plant toxin known as 'heartbreak grass'  although a coroner concluded in 2018 that he died from natural causes.

According to The Sun, a family friend previously said that Watford's state of mind could have been rattled over the war in Ukraine, launched by Russia last week.

'The timing of his death and the invasion of Ukraine was surely not coincidental,' the source told the newspaper.

Another associate told The Sun Watford's death 'raises questions' after other suspicious deaths of Russian nationals.

Born Mikhail Tolstosheya in 1955 in Ukraine when it was part of the Soviet Union, Mr Watford made his fortune in oil and gas before building a property empire in Britain.

He changed his name to Watford when he moved to the UK, where he snapped up homes in Eaton Square in Belgravia, central London, an 18 million mansion in Virginia Water, Surrey, and, most recently, a series of properties on the Wentworth estate.

In 2015, he complained about how difficult it was to find a 'superyacht-perfect' mansion outside of London.

Unable to find a house to meet his exacting standards, Mr Watford commissioned his own 9,640 sq ft sprawling property, boasting that the wrought-iron gates were made by the company that supplied Kensington Palace, and the 56,000 driveway was modelled on the circular stone piazzas outside King's College, Cambridge.

'I want perfection, nothing less,' he said.

'In London  Mayfair, Knightsbridge, Belgravia  it's possible to find top quality.

'But outside London, no. Not even near. It wouldn't be right for me to say the houses are cheap.

'I don't want to be rude, but they're wrong style, wrong finishes, not high-end quality. Not for us.'

The 66-year-old's body was discovered in the garage of his luxury property on the exclusive Wentworth estate in Virginia Water, Surrey, where homes fetch up to 20 million (pictured)

Mr Watford claimed his weakness for 'top, top quality' came from building superyachts.

In 2007, the twice-married tycoon hit the headlines when he sued two women from his Chelsea property development and design firm, High Life Developments, after they claimed he had made improper advances at an office party.

In a High Court writ, he said the two women defamed him.

Friends reacted with shock and sadness to his death this week.

Gazolina Di Pitim wrote a message on Facebook to Mrs Watford, saying: 'He had such a beautiful life because he met you. To me your story is one of the greatest love stories. This is love for ever.'

A Surrey Police spokesman said: 'We were called around midday on February 28 following reports of the discovery of a man's body.

'An ambulance was called but the man, who was in his 60s, was sadly pronounced dead at the scene.

'An investigation into the circumstances of the death is under way but it is not believed there any suspicious circumstances.'
Vladimir Putin kept his cabinet in the dark about his plans to invade Ukraine and officials were left unprepared for the level of international sanctions on Russia, sources close to the Kremlin have claimed.

The Russian cabinet were aware that the Russian strongman planned to recognise two separatist regions in eastern Ukraine but were shocked to discover that he invaded the entire country, the Agentstvo media outlet reported.

It meant that many high-ranking Kremlin officials had not prepared for the scale of the West's economic sanctions against Moscow.

'This is f***ed up. They are out of their f***ing minds!' a source told the site.

Government officials wanted to resign in protest to the move, but feared it would be seen as treason by Putin, a source said, adding: 'Resignation will lead only to a prison camp.'

Moscow repeatedly denied an invasion was on the cards, insisting the build-up of 190,000 Russian soldiers and military arsenal was for 'exercise purposes'.

A Kremlin insider said that 'no one calculated' the West's strict financial sanctions, such as the banning of Russians banks from the use of the SWIFT banking system because Putin had kept his invasion plans secret from most of the leadership.

Vladimir Putin kept his cabinet in the dark about his plans to invade Ukraine and officials were left unprepared for the level of international sanctions on Russia, sources close to the Kremlin have claimed

The Russian cabinet were aware that the Russian strongman planned to recognise two separatist regions in eastern Ukraine but were shocked to discover that he invaded the entire country, the Agentstvo media outlet reported. Pictured: Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov

Some like the Secretary of the Security Council, Nikolai Patrushev, 70, (left) and the top Kremlin apparatchik Anton Vaino, 50, (right) who is the youngest are seen as ideologically committed to Putin's invasion

Uber-loyalist Viktor Zolotov, 68, the commander of the Russian national guards is also seen as a dedicated Putin fanboy

MailOnline can reveal the elite group of 14 men and one woman in Putin's cabinet who were blindsided by Putin's plans to invade Ukraine.

They are the most powerful people in the Kremlin including the heads of the army and the security service and are said to have had big fears about the ramifications of Russia invading Ukraine, and the devastation which would unfold.

But MailOnline has been told that the top aides are unlikely to ever stand against Putin because he has made them fabulously wealthy as a reward for their cronyism and - they remain in abject fear of Putin.

Four of the group of 15 named today by MailOnline are aged over 70, and eight are above 65.

Some like the Secretary of the Security Council, Nikolai Patrushev, 70, and the top Kremlin apparatchik Anton Vaino, 50, who is the youngest are seen as ideologically committed to Putin's invasion.

Uber-loyalist Viktor Zolotov, 68, the commander of the Russian national guards is also seen as a dedicated Putin fanboy.

Ex-FSB chief Patrushev - the security council's main puppet master  is thought to have convinced Putin, 69, that Ukraine is awash with Nazis, many believe. He is also angling for his son Anton Patrushev, 44, now Agriculture Minister, to be Putin's eventual successor, it is claimed.

The list includes ex-president and premier Dmitry Medvedev, and another former prime minister Sergei Kiriyenko, 59, who inherits his surname from his Ukrainian mother. Kiriyenko is also seen as a future candidate for the top job if Putin's health fails, although he is not so far a member of the security council.

Defence minister Sergei Shoigu, 66, and chief of the defence staff Valery Gerasimov, 66, both assured UK defence secretary Ben Wallace in Moscow last month there would be no invasion.

Defence minister Sergei Shoigu, 66, (left) and chief of the defence staff Valery Gerasimov, 66, (right) both assured UK defence secretary Ben Wallace in Moscow last month there would be no invasion

MailOnline can reveal the elite group of 14 men and one woman in Putin's cabinet who were blindsided by Putin's plans to invade Ukraine. Pictured: Chairman of the Government, Mikhail Mishustin

Valentina Matviyenko, 72, is Speaker of the upper house of parliament, and a firm Putin loyalist who was born in Ukraine

The only woman is Valentina Matviyenko, 72, the oldest of the group. She is Speaker of the upper house of parliament, and a firm Putin loyalist who was born in Ukraine.

She stuck to the Kremlin playbook recently, saying: 'Russians who oppose the special operation to demilitarise Ukraine, in particular, cultural figures, are thinking about their momentary difficulties and problems, and not about Russia's security and the peaceful life in the country.'

Most visible in the outside world is foreign minister Sergei Lavrov, 71, who many doubt is as supportive of the war and invasion as his public utterances indicate. His daughter has lived for many years in New York and London.

Many of this ageing inner circle with their Cold War mindsets were not informed in advance that the West was entirely correct in predicting that Putins invasion of democratic Ukraine would have catastrophic effects.

It is reliably believed that many of this petrified politburo had - and have - grave misgivings about his unfolding strategy to lay waste to Ukraine, yet are like rabbits in the headlights.

Several had personally - and solemnly - assured their Western interlocutors that there would be no invasion in the days before it came, only to be confounded.

Instead, at an excruciating security council meeting last month, they were forced to publicly sign up to his plan to recognise the Donetsk and Luhansk rebel republics.

Their worn, anguished faces and garbled reasoning - especially frightened SVR foreign intelligence chief Sergei Narishkin, 67, boss of the successor to the mighty and feared Soviet-era KGB - made clear they had significant doubts.

They are the most powerful people in the Kremlin including the heads of the army and the security service and are said to have had big fears about the ramifications of Russia invading Ukraine, and the devastation which would unfold. Pictured: Director of the Federal Security Service, Aleksandr Bortnikov (left) and Special Representative of the President on Issues of Environmental Activities, Ecology and Transport, Sergei Ivanov

The list includes ex-president and premier Dmitry Medvedev (left), and another former prime minister Sergei Kiriyenko, 59, (right) who inherits his surname from his Ukrainian mother. Kiriyenko is also seen as a future candidate for the top job if Putin's health fails, although he is not so far a member of the security council

Minister for Internal Affairs, Vladimir Kolokoltsev

Many of this ageing inner circle with their Cold War mindsets were not informed in advance that the West was entirely correct in predicting that Putins invasion of democratic Ukraine would have catastrophic effects. Pictured: Chairman of the State Duma of the Federal Assembly, Vyacheslav Volodin (left), Sergei Naryshkin, head of the SVR foreign intelligence service (right)

It is believed they were never asked about the far more serious step of a special military operation - or war  as it was Putins own personal decision.

One Moscow insider said: 'If Putin trusts them to run Russia, this trust is plainly limited - he no longer sits anywhere near them in face to face meetings.

'Because they had no idea of the full-scale war (which the state media is ordered to call a 'special military operation', rather than war or invasion), the Russian government did not predict the crippling blow to the country from Western sanctions.'

The Agentstvo news Telegram channel, which has sources inside the upper levels of the Russian government, said: 'Putin hid the invasion plan from many of his subordinates.'

A report added: 'Many high-ranking officials - members of the Cabinet and heads of large state-owned companies - were not ready for Vladimir Putin's decision to start a war in Ukraine'.

Agentstvo stated that Putin's current actions were in stark contrast to his behaviour in 2014 when the threat of harsh sanctions meant he 'abandoned too aggressive policies under the influence of economists' scenarios'.

The threats meant that he limited his ambition to grabbing Crimea, rather than following up by seizing contested areas of eastern Ukraine which have large ethnic Russian populations.

Agentstvo which cited a former senior official, added: 'For example, in March 2014, the government calculated the risks of joining the Donetsk, Luhansk and Kharkiv regions to Russia, and then this step was not taken, among other things, because the Russian economy, according to calculations, was not ready for this.'

Another Moscow source emphasised that the resignation of top Russian officials beneath Putin was impossible, despite their disquiet.

As Moscow turns back towards Stalinism, the top bureaucrat cautioned: 'You can only resign to go to a colony - a prison colony, that is'.

People walk past the remains of a missile at a bus terminal, as Russia's invasion of Ukraine continues, in Kyiv

A view of damaged building after the shelling is said by Russian forces in Ukraine's second-biggest city of Kharkiv

That is why the close-knit team of Putin's insiders and loyalists and would have the power to topple him if they acted together, it has been claimed.

Sources have revealed that the group who all apart from one sit on Russia's powerful security council know that they face possible imprisonment if they ever dare speak out.

But they also live in fear that they and their families will be stripped of their luxury lifestyles and their private fortunes which they have been allowed to build up.

The senior powerbrokers in Moscow political circles and in military, security and civil services are said to have been largely kept in the dark about Putin's invasion plans. Most are thought to have believed that the build up of Russian forces on Ukraine's borders was a bluff to force concessions, and a war would never happen.

The government was only aware that Putin planned to recognise the two Kremlin-backed separatist regions in eastern Ukraine, formulating its economic policies on the understanding that sanctions would be relatively light.

Experts say that the cabinet could technically stop Putin if they all refused to obey him. But it is feared that they will never act in collusion to put a halt to what most of them privately view as the 'madness' of Russia's invasion.

The aides face losing everything if Putin ever loses control, or if they resign from their posts, having 'sold their freedom to Putin and in exchange received a rich and free life'.

All are said to have become immensely wealthy on Government handouts compared to politicians, military commanders, secret services bosses, and top civil servants in the West.

An office block in central Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city, has been destroyed in Russian attacks in the last few days

School hit during the Russian air raids in Zhytomyr, a city around 80 miles to the west of Kyiv, which was struck this week

Fire is seen in Mariupol at a residential area after shelling amid Russia's invasion of Ukraine

They realise that their dacha palaces, expensive cars, offshore accounts and lavish lifestyles would vanish if they dared oppose Putin's aggression, even though much of their wealth is notionally in the hands of their children, or lovers.

The group also know that they could end up on trial themselves as well due to their roles as associates of Putin, if he ever lost power.

A Western diplomat who had two stints in Moscow said: 'Putin corrupted the entire upper echelon of Russia.

'They took top posts, served Putin loyally, and were allowed to milk the system, diverting government money to themselves.'

Even if the security and military apparatus could pull the plug on Putin, it won't happen, just as it didn't with Stalin.'

Political scientist Professor Andrey Zubov said Putin had created a top one or two per cent of the population who are the main beneficiaries of his system which is often described as a 'kleptocracy'.

Zubov added: 'Now in this 'elite' group reigns horror and frustration'.

'The main word in the offices of the Kremlin, Lubyanka and Staraya Square now is, 'He deceived us'.

'Another political analyst and former speechwriter Abbas Gallyamov warned a coup to topple Putin was unlikely, no matter how paranoid his behaviour may seem to the outside world or even his own henchmen.

He said: 'It would be wrong to expect any moves from them. The elite have always been afraid of Putin but now they are even more afraid of him.

'If he [is] ready to bomb Kyiv, he could imprison them  and not only that. They all know about the torture cells. There are no heroes left.'

It comes as Russian troops today seized Europe's largest nuclear power plant in Ukraine after a firefight that set part of the complex ablaze, with President Volodymyr Zelensky accused Putin of resorting to 'nuclear terror' and risking a catastrophe 'six times worse than Chernobyl' that would affect the whole continent.

Sparks erupt from an administration building (bottom right) as a live steam video shot from a larger office block behind it films Russian tanks opening fire on the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in the early hours of Friday morning

Fire-damaged buildings at the Zaporizhzhya nuclear complex are pictured on Friday morning after coming under attack by Russian forces overnight, leading to international condemnation

Russian troops had attacked the Zaporizhzhia plant in the early hours of Friday, with CCTV capturing a fierce gun battle between Putin's men and Ukrainian defenders that sparked a fire in a six-storey training building just outside the main complex. Moscow's men then stopped firefighters getting to the building for several hours.

Eventually, emergency crews were allowed to go in and douse the flames before Russian troops moved in an occupied the site, which provides a fifth of Ukraine's electricity. The UN's nuclear monitoring agency said that, fortunately, none of the site's six reactors had been directly damaged and radiation levels remained normal.

Moscow has, predictably, attempted to deny responsibility for the attack, saying its forces had come under attack by Ukrainian 'saboteurs' while patrolling the plant, who then set fire to the building themselves.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has accused Russia of 'threatening the security of the whole of Europe' after the attack.

Mr Johnson condemned the attack as 'reckless' after a phone call with President Volodymyr Zelensky who branded it 'nuclear terrorism'.

NATO Secretary-Gernarl Jen Stoltenburg, who is in Brussels today to meet with NATO allies, denounced attacks on all civilian infrastructure and said the fire at the plant underlined the need to end Putin's war as soon as possible.

Stoltenberg said the shelling of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant 'just demonstrates the recklessness of this war, the importance of ending it, and the importance of Russia withdrawing all its troops and engaging in good faith in diplomatic efforts.'
A violent thug faces the prospect of life behind bars for murdering his ex-girlfriend's two-year-old son after his period of sustained abuse was captured on secret mobile phone recordings.

Kemar Brown, 28, was found guilty at the Old Bailey of the murder of two-year-old Kyrell Matthews after subjecting him to months of beatings and taunting at a one-bedroom flat in Thornton Heath, south London.

The Metropolitan Police's Detective Chief Inspector Kate Kieran said Brown would abuse the child 'almost for fun' and treated little Kyrell 'like a punchbag in the gym'.

The toddler's mother Phylesia Shirley, 24, - who previously worked in child services at Croydon Council - was acquitted of murder but found guilty of manslaughter.

The court had previously heard snippets from the chilling moment Shirley phones 111 for advice rather than 999 as she nonchalantly tells the operator her son's body is 'going floppy' and his eyes are 'rolling back'.

Asked what was wrong with him, she casually explains: 'Basically Kyrell has been acting really funny. Like, his body is flopping, and his eyes is rolling back and his chest is not breathing.'

Kyrell - who was non-verbal - had 41 rib fractures by the time he died at Croydon University Hospital on October 20, 2019, as well as internal bleeding and a 1.6in (4cm) cut to his liver.

Jurors were told the 'happy and smiley' toddler was likely subjected to a 'significant period of abuse' - with non-fatal injuries occurring after at least five separate attacks over a 28-day period.

Little Kyrell would still have been able to express the pain he had endured throughout the final days of his life despite being non-verbal, the court heard.

Officers were able to uncover audio evidence of both adults hitting Kyrell on multiple occasions by listening through secretly mobile phone recordings made by Shirley because she suspected her partner was cheating on her.

Those in court were visibly upset as they listed to audio files during the five-week trial in which Kyrell could be heard screaming as he was repeatedly beaten by Brown - who at once stage mimics the child's cries.

Violent thug Kemar Brown, 28, was found guilty at the Old Bailey of the murder of two-year-old Kyrell Matthews after subjecting him to months of beatings and taunting at a one-bedroom flat in Thornton Heath, south London

Officers were able to uncover audio evidence of both adults hitting Kyrell on multiple occasions by listening through secretly mobile phone recordings made by a paranoid Phylesia Shirley, 24, (above) who suspected her partner was cheating on her

Two-year-old Kyrell Matthews (pictured) had 41 rib fractures by the time he died at Croydon University Hospital on October 20, 2019, as well as internal bleeding and a 1.6in (4cm) cut to his liver

The campaign of abuse that little Kyrell Matthews endured before his death May 2019: Kyrell Matthews suffers a significant injury to the side of his face and spent five days in Croydon University Hospital. A hospital-led investigation finds that Shirley's explanation that the boy had fallen from the sofa was 'plausible'. May 2019: Social services become aware of the couple and visit them at their home address. July 17, 2019: A passer-by warns police of a domestic incident after hearing shouting and screaming coming from the one-bedroom flat in Thornton Heath, south London. August 2019: Phylisia Stanley records her boyfriend Kemar Brown imitating Kyrell Matthews' crying, shouting 'stop crying, stop crying' which is followed by two loud slapping sounds. August 2019: Kyrell stays with grandparents but refuses to eat and whines all evening. October 2019: Kyrell stays with relatives again but refuses to get out of the car to return to his mother's flat. October 20, 2019: Kyrell suffers cardiac arrest and is found with 41 fractured ribs that were 'crushed or broken by blows' and a 1.6 inch cut to his liver caused by blunt force trauma. Advertisement

Brown, who has a string of prior convictions for violence, had tried claiming that the jury could not be sure if Kyrell had been accidentally killed when Shirley gave him chest compressions, having been wrongly advised in a 111 call to use two hands rather than one.

But experts for the prosecution rubbished that claim and said there were no recorded cases of a child suffering a macerated liver after being given CPR.

Both Shirley and Brown had consistently denied murder.

Shirley had previously admitted to to allowing death and serious physical harm to a child, Brown, who is not the child's father, had repeatedly denied both charges.

The court heard Shirley dialled 111 for advice when her son's body 'was going floppy' instead of 999 on 20 October 2019, the Old Bailey in London heard.

Shirley can be heard telling the operator: 'Basically Kyrell has been acting really funny. Like, his body is flopping, and his eyes is rolling back and his chest is not breathing'.

Paramedics rushed Kyrell to Croydon University Hospital while police followed and talked to Brown about what had happened before the emergency services arrived.

As he made his way to the hospital, Brown claimed he had gone to the shops and found Kyrell sleeping when he returned, the court heard.

Brown said the toddler began to twitch and became limp as the couple tried to wake him, at which point the couple decided to call emergency services.

While Shirley was 'distressed' when emergency services arrived and became 'hysterical' when Kyrell was declared dead, it was said that Brown was calm and disengaged throughout.

Heartbreaking videos released on Friday show the playful nature of little Kyrell before his death.

In one clip, Phylesia Shirley can be seen carrying a decorated birthday cake over and sings 'Happy Birthday' to Kyrell, just five weeks before her son would be dead.

Another video shows Kyrell in his pyjamas on the sofa, as his mother films him giggling into the lens of the camera.

Jurors were previously shown footage from the body-worn camera of one of the police officers in which Brown can be heard saying: 'It was like he [Kyrell] was having nightmares.

'We didn't know what was going on, we were watching as he was like, laying down'.

Jurors were told the 'happy and smiley' toddler was likely subjected to a 'significant period of abuse' - with non-fatal injuries occurring after at least five separate attacks over a 28-day period

Kyrell Matthews suffered a significant injury to the side of his face and spent five days in Croydon University Hospital just five months before his death. A hospital-led investigation finds that Shirley's explanation that the boy had fallen from the sofa was 'plausible'

Little Arthur Labinjo-Hughes and Star Hobson were let down by social services... Did child safeguarding failures contribute to the death of Kyrell Matthews too? Kyrell Matthews had been on the radar of child services and social workers had visited the property belonging to his mother and her abusive partner at least once, it was confirmed today. The Old Bailey heard how violent thug Kemar Brown, 28, would abuse the toddler 'for fun' and treated little Kyrell 'like a punchbag in the gym'. Social services had visited the family's home in south London at least once in the months before Kyrell's death. The toddler was rushed to Croydon hospital and spent five days there after suffering a facial injury in May 2019. A hospital-led investigation finds that Shirley's explanation that the boy had fallen from the sofa was 'plausible' And by July, neighbours had contacted police to warn them of a 'domestic incident' at Stanley's flat involving shouting and screaming. The news comes after the high profile case of Arthur Labinjo-Hughes broke hearts across the nation. Solihull authorities had failed to save once 'chubby, happy' Arthur from a relentless campaign of both physical and mental torture, including being poisoned with salt by Tustin, while Hughes inflicted 'pressure point' torture techniques as they made him stand on his own for up to 14 hours a day. After concerned relatives told the council about bruises on the youngster's back, social worker Jayne Kavanagh and support worker Angela Scarlett-Coppage visited Tustin's home but reported 'no concerns' after carrying out cursory checks. Prior examples of child safeguarding failures include social workers investigating the couple who killed innocent Star Hobson, before clearing them five times and even declaring a referral to them was 'malicious' the week before she was murdered. The authorities fell for mother Frankie Smith, 20, and her 28-year-old girlfriend Savannah Brockhill's lies, despite a series of concerns raised by relatives. The Early Intervention Foundation's Dr Jo Casebourne has called for a national strategy on child vulnerability and funding for intervention services. Advertisement

Brown told the officers he and Shirley tried to 'feed Kyrell cornflakes, juice, and sweets to help wake him up' as he lay unconscious - but he refused.

He said: 'At first we got him cornflakes to see if he would eat at all.'

After Kyrell refused to eat, Brown told the officers Shirley then decided to call 111.

'As she was on the phone I saw his eyes are rolling back. When he was born, he had problems breathing, I don't really know.

'It's crazy, it's crazy, it's crazy. He was just lying down, we thought he was tired, sleeping, lazy really,

'They said to do CPS, do mouth to mouth and then the next minute...'

Jurors were told that the ambulance arrived 12 minutes after the initial call and continued efforts to try and save the toddler's life, but they were unable to maintain his heartbeat.

An NSPCC spokesperson said: 'The pain and distress Kyrell experienced in the weeks leading up to his death, revealed through secret phone recordings, is heart-breaking.

'The two people who should have cared for and protected him from harm were the ones who made his short life unbearable, and eventually ended it.

'Their convictions are just the start of the process to uncover why a pattern of repeated and brutal assaults continued on a defenceless child.

'Croydon council's safeguarding practice review must establish the lessons that need to be learned to prevent this awful case from happening again.'

Jurors were not told that police had been called to an earlier domestic incident but no offences were identified and Kyrell was said to have appeared 'safe and well'.

A passer-by had alerted officers on July 17, 2019 after hearing shouting and screaming coming from their flat, with a female voice saying: 'Stop hitting my face.'

It followed an incident in May 2019 when Kyrell suffered a significant injury to the side of his face and spent five days in Croydon University Hospital.

The hospital carried out an investigation and found Shirley's explanation that the little boy had fallen off a sofa and hit his head on a highchair was 'plausible', police said.

Both defendants, who were unemployed at the time of Kyrell's death, were cannabis users and are understood to have been visited by social services at least once.

Brown even travelled to Northampton with four other men to raid a cannabis farm while under police investigation for murder.

It can now be reported that Brown had convictions for robbery, battery, having a knife, drugs and resisting an officer, as well as being subject to a non-molestation order relating to a former partner.

Edward Brown QC, prosecuting, previously told jurors at the Old Bailey: 'Kyrell had his ribs crushed or broken by blows within the four weeks before October 20.

'At least one of the defendants plainly inflicted a significant number of injuries in at least five separate incidents in the four weeks leading up to ... Kyrell's death.

'The pain and distress in those four weeks when he was abused was brought vividly to the fore by those harrowing recordings.

'On October 20, his ribs were crushed once more - it killed him.'

The court heard Shirley dialled 111 for advice when her Kyrell's body 'was going floppy' instead of 999 on 20 October 2019

A court sketch of Phylesia Shirley, and her partner, Kemar Brown, at the Old Bailey in London

Adjourning sentencing until March 25, Judge Mark Lucraft QC noted that the court had heard some 'harrowing' recordings made by Shirley of the abuse, saying she ought to feel 'utterly ashamed'.

Both defendants, who were unemployed at the time of Kyrell's death, were cannabis users and are understood to have been visited by social services at least once

Paramedics rushed Kyrell (above) to Croydon University Hospital while police followed and talked to Brown about what had happened before the emergency services arrived

Police later discovered secret audio files on Shirley's mobile phone - the apparent results of attempts to catch Brown being unfaithful - which inadvertently captured the abuse, the prosecution said.

They included multiple audio files where it appeared Kyrell was hit repeatedly, with Brown saying 'shut up', causing the toddler to cry and scream.

On another occasion, prosecutors said, Brown inflicted several blows on the little boy before telling him: 'You have to ruin the fun.'

Another file, the prosecution said, captured Shirley striking her own child and causing him to cry in distress.

Shirley is said to have carried out the covert phone recordings at her one-bedroom flat to check whether then-partner Kemar Brown was secretly contacting other women.

However, police investigating the death of her son, Kyrell Matthews, discovered that the recordings contained disturbing evidence of the non-verbal boy being hit repeatedly, with Brown saying 'shut up', causing the toddler to cry and scream.

Prosecutor Mr Brown told jurors: 'It makes for harrowing listening, because, say the prosecution, you will hear Kemar Brown hitting that child again and again on different days, and you will hear Kyrell crying and screaming as a result.'

Despite being non-verbal, jurors were told Kyrell (pictured in a month before his death) would still have been able to express the pain he had endured throughout the final days of his life

On one recording, the prosecution said Kyrell could be heard getting increasingly distressed amid 'slapping sounds' and 'hitting noises' as Brown told him to 'shut up'.

Jurors were told Brown admits it is his voice on the recordings.

The prosecution said Shirley could then be heard asking 'What did he do?', to which Brown is said to have replied: 'He got up'.

The prosecutor said: 'Plainly, she (Shirley) has seen distress at the very least, expecting punishment of Kyrell having taken place by Kemar Brown.

'It is plain, say the prosecution, what you can hear.'

In the fourth recording, taken in August 2019, Brown can be heard saying to Kyrell 'Stop crying, stop crying, yeah,' and imitating the baby's cries, followed by two slapping sounds minutes apart.

Minutes later, Brown can be heard saying 'What you crying for?', followed by two hits or slaps, at which point Kyrell yelps and faintly cries.

Brown showed no emotion as the recordings were played in court.
The Bank of England was today slammed for scrubbing its logo of the St George's Cross and replacing it with the Union flag because it is 'more inclusive'.

Officials were branded 'incompetent, woke idiots' for the rebrand, while another critic commented, 'And the metropolitan liberal (so-called) elite wonder why English nationalism is on the rise!'

The Bank has made several other controversial changes to its 328-year-old seal, including removing the pile of money at the feet of Britannia - the female personification of Britain.

While her right hand still holds a spear, she is depicted in a more passive stance, with her left arm - which wields an olive branch representing peace - now bent rather than thrusting forwards.

John Bell, a retired academic, said: 'So the Bank of England is ashamed of being a Bank (no pile of coins) and English (cross of St George replaced by the Union flag), and even of Britannia's (and its) role as the spreader of peace and prosperity (enfeebled Britannia).'

The old seal (pictured left) has been redesigned (right) in a move the Bank says 'reflects our commitment to be plainer and simpler'

Former MEP Rupert Lowe commented: 'The Bank of England is spending their time/our money redesigning their logo to become more ''inclusive''....

'I mean honestly what are these people playing at? Incompetent, woke idiots.'

Others also took to Twitter to express their anger at the politically correct rebranding.

Simon Barrall wrote: 'Why has the Bank of England removed the Cross of St George from its logo and replaced it with the Union flag? It is the Bank of ENGLAND?'

Meanwhile, another critic said: 'And the metropolitan liberal (so called) elite wonder why English nationalism is on the rise!'

The Bank has played up its 'woke' credentials in recent years, proudly declaring itself a Stonewall Diversity Champion, after joining a scheme run by the controversial charity.

The charity has recently been dropped by partners such as the BBC, House of Lords and Cabinet Office over concerns it could pressure employers to change their policies to reflect its agenda on trans rights.

MailOnline has asked the Bank to reveal the cost of the redesign. It has also made changes to its website.

While logo has not been entirely overhauled, there are a number of obvious differences between the new and the old.

A pile of what appear to be coins laying at the feet of Britannia have disappeared from the new seal, as have the feet themselves.

Meanwhile, the shield resting next to her has been redesigned, with the St George's cross on the previous version being replaced with the Union Jack.

And Britannia herself has shifted - no longer sat side-on, she has turned slightly to a more face-on position.

On its website, the Bank said its mission was 'to serve the people of the UK' and it had looked at this as part of the redesign, adding the new logo 'reflects our commitment to be plainer and simpler'.

The Bank of England, pictured, said it wanted to become more 'inclusive' and this was a driving force behind the changes

A history of 'The Old Lady of Threadneedle Street' The old seal of the Bank of England, which shows Britannia holding a shield, spear and olive branch, and sat on top of a pile of coins For almost all of its entire 328-year history, the Bank of England has been based on Threadneedle Street in the City of London. It has long been known as The Old Lady of Threadneedle Street, a name it takes from a picture by artist James Gillray in the 1797. The satirical image shows Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger pretending to 'woo' an old lady, who is a personification of the Bank. What he really wants though is the Bank's money, represented by coins which are falling out of her pocket, and a chest which she is sitting on. At the time the bank was still essentially a private company, with critics suggesting politicians were taking advantage of 'The Old Lady'. The image and the subsequent nickname has stuck over the years, with many still calling the Bank, The Old Lady of Threadneedle Street. Some get this mixed up with Britannia, who is the figure on the seal of the Bank. Britannia has been associated with the Bank since its inception, with a Court of Directors declaring the Common Seal of the bank should represent 'Britannia sitting and looking on a Bank of money', only days after it gained Royal Charter in 1694. One booklet found in the Bank's archives suggests the group had been inspired by the design found on the reverse of the halfpenny and farthing at the time . The motif was only brought into existence though 20 years later, when Flemish engraver John Roettier created the image after being inspired by a coin featuring the motif of Roman emperor Hadrian. Using the face of Frances Stuart, who later became the Duchess of Richmond as a model, he showed Britannia holding an olive branch in her right hand, a spear in her left, with a shield with the combined crosses of St George and St Andrew. This was minted onto coins, but the seal itself differed in some aspects - on the seal she sat higher up, looked to the right instead of the left, had a waist-high bank of money and the shield only showed the St George's cross. Over the years she has been designed a number of times - sometimes she was shown looking over her shoulder away from the pile of money, while on others she could be seen standing in a chariot being pulled by two horses. The pattern eventually settled on her being seated, holding a spear and shield in one hand, a sprig in the other, and with a crown above her head. Source: Bank of England Advertisement

It said: 'One part of how we communicate is the look and feel of our content. That includes things like our logo, and the colours and typography we use.

'We want to make these things more accessible and inclusive. So our in-house designers have worked with industry leaders to create a new, digital-first visual identity system for our website and publications.

'We will keep on working to improve the way we communicate because this will help us to carry out our mission.'

While the logo is the most obvious change, the Bank added it had redesigned its website and typface to make it easier to read for people with dyslexia.

It said: 'It's estimated up to 1 in every 10 people in the UK has some degree of dyslexia.

'So we have designed a new typeface that is easier to read.

'The design was created by industry-leaders in type design. Its based on guidance by the British Dyslexia Association.'

It added it had changed its use of colours, inspired by those used on its banknotes, to make the contrast between the colour of the text and backgrounds better.

Andrew Bailey, Governor of the Bank of England, said: 'The Bank of England has been around for hundreds of years, but it embraces advances in digital technology.

'These advances have brought many benefits. One is that it brings us closer to the public we serve. We know this means we have to explain what we do and why.

'How we communicate is part of how we carry out our mission. We intend to keep trying to make our communications more inclusive and accessible for everyone.'

The Bank proudly declares itself a Stonewall Diversity Champion, and it was ranked number 57 on the charity's list of Top 100 employers for LGBTQ+ people.

The charity has come under fire recently for the scheme, which tells employers how to create an inclusive environment for LGBT staff members and then ranks them based on how good they do.

Last month it was reported that Whitehall is being told to ditch the scheme, which costs 5,000-a-year to join, over fears the charity is advising members to rewrite their policies to reflect its agenda on trans rights.

The House of Lords has already pulled out of the scheme, as has the BBC and the Cabinet Office.

Instead, the Cabinet Office issued guidance saying schemes such as this should not be done with 'external assurance and benchmarking organisations', but should be done in-house.

Meanwhile, in June last year the Bank came under fire for removing portraits of former governors who were linked to the slave trade.

Governor Andrew Bailey was accused of taking part in a 'latter-day Bonfire of the Vanities' after the objects were removed following a review.

The seven figures include colonial trader Sir Gilbert Heathcote and slave traders Sir Robert Clayton, and Robert Bristow.

Sir James Bateman acted for the Royal African Company - the foremost slave trading enterprise of the time - while William Manning and John Pearse held investments in plantations.

The seventh figure is William Dawsonne, director of the bank from 1698 to 1719.

A spokesman for the Bank of England said: 'In June 2020, the Bank announced a review of its collection of images of former governors and directors, to ensure none with known involvement of the slave trade remain on display anywhere in the Bank.'
A second Australian is in intensive care with what is believed to be another case of the Japanese encephalitis virus.

The latest case is in a person from the New South Wales/Victoria border region and they are currently in a stable condition in the ICU.

Earlier on Friday it was revealed a Queensland woman in her 60s was in a critical condition on life support after contracting the disease - normally never seen south of Cape York - while on a campervan trip.

There are now 16 human encephalitis cases being investigated of 'unknown cause' around NSW, Victoria and South Australia, AAP reported. There are eight suspected cases in Victoria including two children under ten.

Several more residents in NSW are now undergoing testing for the virus, which is spread by mosquitoes, with health authorities expecting more cases will pop up within weeks.

A second Australian is in intensive care with what is believed to be a case of the Japanese encephalitis virus. The virus is spread through mosquitoes

The sudden flare up in cases have led to the virus now being declared a national health emergency.

The latest 'highly probable' case of the virus announced on Friday evening is the first to ever be locally acquired in NSW.

Australia's acting Chief Medical Officer Dr Sonya Bennett declared the virus a 'communicable disease incident of national significance' on Friday.

NSW Health Acting Chief Health Officer Dr Marianne Gale has warned residents planning on going camping and fishing to 'carefully consider their plans'.

'This is especially important for people planning activities near waterways or where mosquitoes are present, particularly the Murray River and its branches,' she said.

'People should be particularly vigilant given the recent wet weather conditions, which have led to very high mosquito numbers that may increase further in the coming days and weeks.'

Australia's health experts fear mosquitoes flourishing in the recent floods of Queensland and New South Wales could be contributing to the spread

Australia's health experts fear mosquitoes flourishing in the recent floods of Queensland and New South Wales could be contributing to the spread.

The disease is spread to humans by mosquitoes from infected pigs but can also affect horses. It can't be spread human to human and humans can't catch it from eating pork.

Most people affected will show mild or no symptoms, but around one per cent will develop encephalitis - swelling of the brain - leading to brain damage or death in one in three severe symptomatic cases.

Other symptoms include sudden vomiting, fever, chills, neck stiffness, sensitivity to light and severe headache, and can see victims slipping into a coma.

Children under five and the elderly are at risk of more severe symptoms.

The government is now rolling out a vaccine in danger areas and has launched an urgent education and awareness campaign to try to stem the spread of the disease.

There is no specific treatment for the virus.

One case reported on Friday was discovered in Goondiwindi, Queensland, with another case in the NSW-Queensland border town of Tenterfield.

The disease is spread to humans by mosquitoes from pigs (pictured) but can also affect horses. It can't be spread human to human and humans can't catch it from eating pork

Experts are concerned the flood conditions in south-east Queensland and rural northern New South Wales (pictured) could prove ideal for mosquitoes and the virus

The case in Queensland had recently travelled in regional southern parts of the state and is being treated in Brisbane's Prince Charles Hospital.

Experts are concerned the flood conditions in south-east Queensland and northern New South Wales could prove ideal for mosquitoes and the virus.

The disease is normally confined to the tropical north of Queensland, but the wet warm weather and climate change is feared to have brought it south.

'Clinicians at Queensland hospitals have been asked to be alert to the possibility of the Japanese encephalitis virus in people,' said QLD health minister Yvette D'Ath,

Australia's Chief Veterinary Officer, Dr Mark Schipp, said JEV had been confirmed in animals at 14 piggeries across NSW, SA, Victoria and including nine in Queensland.

'The key signs to look out for in pigs are stillborn or weak piglets, some with an impaired nervous system,' Dr Schipp said.

Australia's acting Chief Medical Officer Dr Sonya Bennett (pictured) declared the virus a 'communicable disease incident of national significance' on Friday

Queensland health minister Yvette D'Ath (pictured) said hospitals had been put on high alert to look out for people possibly infected with the disease

'Piglets can develop encephalitis or wasting, depression or hindlimb paralysis. Adult sows do not typically show signs of disease

'In horses, many cases show no signs of the disease. Some animals may show signs of elevated temperature, jaundice, lethargy or anorexia.

'Other signs may include lack of coordination, difficulty swallowing, impaired vision or over-excitement.'
An Israeli TV news channel has run 'live footage' of Russia's invasion of Ukraine featuring a crash-landed TIE fighter from Star Wars.

The clip even shows stormtroopers standing beside the Imperial aircraft on a snowy road.

An investigation at Channel 13 has been launched and the editor has been suspended after the video was aired during a montage of destruction in Ukraine.

An Israeli TV news channel has run 'live footage' of Russia's invasion of Ukraine featuring a crash-landed TIE fighter from Star Wars

The clip was originally an advert produced by Disney and Lucasfilm in 2014 to promote a new Star Wars channel on Sky Deutschland.

It shows the stormtroopers surveying the crashed starfighter on a German autobahn while cars zoom past.

The original caption said: 'Warning: Unsecured crash on the A3. Please turn right and not overtake!'

It is believed the video started circulating on the messaging app Telegram after the Russian invasion, duping people into believing it showed footage from the war.

Ukraine has warned about disinformation being shared online, saying Russia is preparing an online campaign to suggest senior military and political figures have surrendered.

The clip even shows stormtroopers standing beside the Imperial aircraft on a snowy road

An investigation at Channel 13 has been launched and the editor has been suspended after the video was aired during a montage of destruction in Ukraine

Ukrainian Defence Minister Oleksii Reznikov said that the campaign will include fake documents and doctored footage to shift the narrative around Russia's thus far unsuccessful attempts to topple Ukraine's top brass.

'To ''confirm'' this fake information, seemingly signed ''documents'', as well as fake, edited videos will be distributed,' Reznikov said in an online statement, before posting a similar message on Twitter.

Reznikov assured that the Ukrainian leadership remains in Kyiv despite the Russian onslaught, declaring: 'No surrender! Only victory!'

YouTube and Facebook have banned Russian state-owned media outlets RT and Sputnik's channels across Europe, after Facebook and Twitter announced over the weekend that it had blocked a set of pro-Russian fake accounts and hacked profiles sharing anti-Ukrainian messages on social media.

The EU has also introduced a ban on RT and Sputnik's channels, and levied targeted sanctions against key individuals thought to be involved in Russia's propaganda machine, including editor-in-chief of RT and Rossiya Segodnya Margarita Simonyan.

The BBC said it will continue efforts to make sure people in Russia have access to its news following reports that viewers are no able to access its Russian-language website service

Meanwhile, Russia's state communications regulator Roskomnadzor hit out at social media giant Meta - parent company of Facebook and Instagram - and Twitter for being complicit in spreading what it said were fake posts about what it described as Russia's 'special operation' in Ukraine.

Russia has also announced it will limit access to the BBC website.

Access to websites of the BBC, the independent news website Meduza, German broadcaster Deutsche Welle, and the Russian-language website of the US-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Svoboda, were 'limited' by Roskomnadzor following a request from prosecutors.

The agency said that in each case, the prosecutors' request was filed on February 24, the day Russian President Vladimir Putin launched his attack on Ukraine.

German public broadcaster Deutsche Welle reported that the BBC site was not working within Russia.

However, BBC Russia said the domain https://bbc.com has not been added to the country's registry of banned sites.

The BBC said it will continue efforts to make sure people in Russia have access to its news output following reports that its Russian Service website has been blocked in the country.

Vladimir Putin is stepping up his propaganda campaign and is preparing to claim Ukraine has surrendered, officials say

A BBC spokesman said: 'Access to accurate, independent information is a fundamental human right which should not be denied to the people of Russia, millions of whom rely on BBC News every week.

'We will continue our efforts to make BBC News available in Russia, and across the rest of the world.'

Russia is also stepping up its propaganda machine at home, even targeting children using a child star.

In the video obtained by The Daily Telegraph from the Ministry of Education, 12-year-old singing prodigy Sofia Khomenko tells child viewers 'we are going to have a lesson about world peace'.

She is joined by two male presenters who explain the truth behind the events in Ukraine, at least from the ministry of education's point of view.

Denis Polunchukov, the main presenter from the ministry, explained that many images circulating the web about the war in Ukraine are in fact from different conflicts.

The 12-year-old singing prodigy Sofia Khomenko (pictured left), sits next to ministry of education presenter Denis Polunchukov (pictured right) in a Kremlin propaganda video

The video was titled 'A lesson about world peace' and taught children about how Putin's 'special operation' in Ukraine were protecting Russians from Nazis

Some images are even from computer games, he added, warning about the dangers of believing photos shared on social media.

The Kremlin has in the past used video game footage to claim the US was supporting ISIS in the Middle East, shortly before Russian troops entered the Syrian Civil War in 2017.

Miss Khomenko asked bewildered questions to the two presenters, who assured her with recent-history lessons on how Nazis attacked Russian speakers and police during riots in Ukraine - a reference to the 2014 Maidan Revolution.

The attacks forced Russia to intervene in 2014, said the presenters, justifying the 2022 invasion by alleging that women and children in eastern Ukraine needed protection.

Polunchukov provided claims of rockets hitting a kindergarten, a column of tanks breaking down, or planes being shot out of the sky, as examples of misinformation on social media.

The video portrayed NATO as the aggressor, and the United States as a warmonger, according to the Telegraph.

He concluded by facing the camera, and telling the children directly:

'You are the heirs of our great country.'
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Britain's daily Covid cases soared more than 40 per cent in a week today amid mounting signs that the country's outbreak is growing again.

Government dashboard data shows another 44,740 infections were logged over the last 24 hours, a surge on the 31,933 recorded last Friday. It is the biggest week-on-week for two months, since the Omicron wave was starting to peak, and marks the third day in a row that cases have risen week-on-week.

Meanwhile, hospitalisations are also creeping up. Latest UK-wide admission data shows 12 per cent more infected people required NHS care on February 28 (1,316) than the week before.

But deaths are still trending downwards, with another 110 fatalities also registered today, down eight per cent on seven days ago.

Estimates from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) suggested cases in England fell to their lowest level since before Christmas last week.

But the gold-standard figures  which ministers have heavily relied on throughout the pandemic  lag behind daily cases, which offer a more up-to-date picture. But a lack of testing means even the dashboard data, which is no longer updated at weekends, misses thousands of cases.

The rise in infections comes after England's celebrated its Freedom Day last week, which saw all legally binding Covid restrictions lifted. Masks are no longer compulsory on public transport and infected people don't have to isolate at home.

It also coincides with the emergence of a more infectious version of Omicron, named BA.2, which has outstripped its parent strain to become dominant.

Experts warn it may cause some fluctuations in case rates, but say there is no reason to panic because there is no evidence the strain is more likely to cause severe disease. The original Omicron wave  which sparked fears of a pre-Christmas lockdown  never overwhelmed the NHS and was blunted by sky-high immunity rates.

Latest estimates from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) suggest 1.9million people in England, or one in 30, had Covid on any given day in the week up to February 26. The figure, based on random testing of around 150,000 people in the last fortnight, marks an eight per cent fall on last week and is the lowest figure reported since December 19

Boris Johnson ditched all of England's remaining coronavirus laws on February 24, with requirements to wear face masks on public transport and isolate coming to an end.

Mass testing is also set to be shelved on April 1, with the country shifting to relying on the ONS survey.

No Covid cases data will be published this weekend for the second time in a row, as another part of No10's plan to shift to 'living with' the virus.

SAGE to STOP meeting regularly as UK enters a new phase of pandemic SAGE will no longer meet on a regular basis as the UK enters a new phase of the Covid pandemic. The scientific advisory group, chaired by Sir Patrick Vallance and Sir Chris Whitty, 'stands ready' to reconvene if the virus rebounds. It marks another significant step in the return to normal and suggests even No10's famously cautious advisers recognise the worst of the pandemic is over. The influential panel  made up of 90 leading experts and officials  has met at least monthly since January 2020, and multiple times a week during surges. There had been growing calls for the group to be reviewed amid claims it held too much power over the Government and did not have enough diversity of opinion. Much of the criticism has been aimed at SAGE's pessimistic projections, most recently warning of up to 6,000 Omicron deaths per day this winter. It has also been accused of leaking proposals to the media in order to pressure ministers to back stricter measures. Sir Chris and Sir Patrick will continue to advise ministers on Covid, as will the UK Health Security Agency and Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI). It comes a week after Boris Johnson lifted all pandemic laws in England as part of his 'living with Covid' strategy, with free testing due to be axed next month. But despite the new direction of travel, Covid cases appear to be growing again in the UK despite swabs being rationed. Advertisement

In other Covid news:

SAGE today announced it would stop meeting regularly as the UK enters a new phase of the pandemic;

Britain's Covid fears fade as just 41 per cent say they are worried about the virus, the lowest proportion since the virus emerged;

Ukraine will face a spike in Covid cases due to the Russian invasion and low vaccination levels, the Lancet's editor warned today;

Ministers are accused of 'jumping the gun' after deciding to scrap free flu jabs;

Figures reveal only half of the country has got infected with Covid since the pandemic began.

UK Health Security Agency data showed the number of daily swabs carried out nationwide is currently flat-lining, while the positivity rate  the proportion of tests that pick up the virus  is rising, in another sign the outbreak is growing again.

Covid cases rose across all four UK nations today compared to a week ago, ticking up fastest in Scotland (up 74 per cent), followed by Wales (up 38 per cent), England (up 35 per cent) and Northern Ireland (up eight per cent).

The ONS survey  based on random swabs of around 150,000 people in the last fortnight  estimate marks an eight per cent fall on last week and the lowest reported figure since December 19.

Prevalence estimate from the ONS project  which will be scaled down in weeks as part of Boris Johnson's living with Covid strategy  suggests that 3.6 per cent of England's population were infected on any given day in the week to February 26.

Rates 'remained high across all regions', the statisticians said.

But prevalence in six of the nine regions, falling in the South East (to 4.2 per cent), London (4 per cent), East Midlands (3.3 per cent), Yorkshire and the Humber (2.9 per cent), the North West (2.8 per cent) and the North East (2.2 per cent).

Cases increased in the South West, where 4.8 per cent of people were infected  the highest rate across the country.

Meanwhile, trends in the West Midlands (3.1 per cent) and the East of England (3.5 per cent) were uncertain.

And virus prevalence fell in all age groups apart from the over-70s in the week to February 26. However, the infection rate remains lowest in this cohort, with 2.3 per cent carrying the virus.

Cases are highest among children aged two to 11, with 4.5 per cent of the group infected.

Adults aged 25 to 49 were the second-most infectious, with 3.6 per cent testing positive, followed by 17 to 24-year-olds (3.4 per cent), 12 to 16-year-olds (3.1 per cent) and 50 to 69-year-olds (2.7 per cent).

Covid cases also fell in Northern Ireland, where 106,300 people (one in 17) were carrying the virus.

Meanwhile, 94,200 individuals (one in 30) were infected in Wales, where statisticians admitted the trend in cases was uncertain.

Scotland's outbreak continued to grow, however, with 280,500 people (one in 19) thought to have the virus.

All Covid rules in England were lifted last week and replaced with guidance.

In Scotland, most Covid laws will come to an end on March 21 and be replaced with recommendations. However, people who test positive will still have to self-isolate for at least seven days.

As it stands, people are still legally required to wear face masks in shops, hospitality venues and public transport, while laws outline that businesses have to take steps to reduce the spread of Covid, such as through social distancing.

Wales will scrap its remaining Covid restrictions from March 28, including laws on mask wearing and self-isolation and replace them with guidance.

In Northern Ireland, Covid legal restrictions were lifted on February 15 and replaced with recommendations, including that face masks should be worn in crowded settings.

The graphs show ONS estimates of the percentage of the population testing positive for Covid in England, Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland in the week to February 26. It suggests less than 2million people in England had Covid on any given day in the week to February 26, equating to 3.6 per cent of the population. Covid cases also fell in Northern Ireland, where 106,300 people (one in 17) were carrying the virus. Meanwhile, 94,200 individuals (one in 30) were infected in Wales, where the ONS said the trend in cases was uncertain. Scotland's Covid outbreak continued to grow, with 280,500 people (one in 19) thought to have the virus

The graphs show the percentage of cases that appeared to be caused by Omicron variant BA.2 increased in England, Wales and Scotland in the week to February 26, but fell in Northern Ireland. In England, 1.9 per cent of people were infected with the original Omicron strain, BA.1, while 1.5 per cent of people were carrying BA.2. BA.1 was also behind most infections in Scotland and Wales, but BA.2 was more prevalent in Northern Ireland

The graphs show the percentage of people testing positive for Covid in England's nine regions. Cases fell in six parts of the country, including the South East, London, East Midlands, Yorkshire and the Humber, the North West and the North East. Cases increased in the South West, while, the trend in the West Midlands and the East of England were uncertain

The ONS graph shows the percentage of people testing positive for Covid per age group in England. Its study found prevalence fell in all age groups apart from the over-70s in the week to February 26. However, the infection rate remains lowest in this cohort, with 2.3 per cent carrying the virus. Cases are highest among children aged two to 11, with 4.5 per cent of the group infected

Britain's Covid fears fade: Just 41% of people are now 'very worried' about virus - the lowest proportion since pandemic began, official survey shows Britain's fears around Covid have fallen to their lowest level since the start of the pandemic, official data showed today. A survey by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) showed just 41 per cent of adults were 'very worried' by the virus in mid-February. The figure was less than half the proportion that were terrified by Covid at the start of the pandemic in March 2020 (86 per cent). It had been falling since January 22, when the Omicron wave started to subside. Since then, infections, hospitalisations and deaths had all been falling consistently until this week, with Boris Johnson dropping all restrictions on February 24. Britain's daily Covid cases rose for the second day in a row yesterday amid signs the country's outbreak is no longer shrinking. Government dashboard data showed 45,656 infections were logged yesterday, up 17 per cent on the tally last Thursday. Advertisement

The ONS data also shows that the percentage of cases that appeared to be caused by Omicron variant BA.2 increased in England, Wales and Scotland in the week to last Saturday  but appeared to fall in Northern Ireland.

The UK Health Security Agency revealed last week that BA.2 was behind 52 per cent of all cases in the seven days up to February 20.

The sub-variant completed its rapid rise to dominance just a month after it was first spotted in the UK.

BA.2 carries many of the same mutations as Omicron, alongside many new genetic quirks that make it more transmissible.

The variant is already behind almost every infection in Denmark.

But the country considers it to be such a low threat that the Government there has already thrown off the remaining Covid restrictions.

It was today announced that SAGE would no longer meet every week, as the country shifts to a new phase in the pandemic.

The scientific advisory group, chaired by Sir Patrick Vallance and Sir Chris Whitty, 'stands ready' to reconvene if the virus rebounds.

It marks another significant step in the return to normal and suggests even No10's famously cautious advisers recognise the worst of the pandemic is over.

The influential panel  made up of 90 leading experts and officials  has met at least monthly since January 2020, and multiple times a week during surges.

There had been growing calls for the group to be reviewed amid claims it held too much power over the Government and did not have enough diversity of opinion.

Much of the criticism has been aimed at SAGE's pessimistic projections, most recently warning of up to 6,000 Omicron deaths per day this winter. It has also been accused of leaking proposals to the media in order to pressure ministers to back stricter measures.

Sir Chris and Sir Patrick will continue to advise ministers on Covid, as will the UK Health Security Agency and Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI).

Tory MP Steve Baker told MailOnline there must be reforms to SAGE after scientific advice contributed to 'collateral damage' during the pandemic. 'We have seen that experts are only human too.

'As we now pick up the pieces after the collateral damage of lockdowns and restrictions, we see more clearly than ever before that we need competitive, multi-disciplinary expert advice with challenge. Boris ought to implement reforms now.'

SAGE meetings have a shifting membership drawn from a panel of about 90 scientists and medical experts.

Dozens more sit on sub-groups, including controversial epidemiologist Professor Neil Ferguson, who was kept on as an adviser despite being forced to apologise for breaking lockdown rules during an affair with a married woman.

It is unclear how often the SAGE subcommittees will meet.
In the world of pop culture, the Kardashians are the undefeated queens.

They are the first family of reality television, and for the past 15 years have reigned over everyone else in their space.

For better or for worse, they are media and marketing geniuses, who have made it their life's mission to include us in every single iota of their lives.

Events as small as Kim's daughter North buying a hamster and as big as arrests, marriages, divorces, and births have been broadcast for the world to witness.

They recently ended their E! show and have moved on to Hulu with what appears to be basically the exact same show just on a different streaming service.

I have met Kim several times, and true to her reputation, she is the consummate professional and incredibly pleasant and friendly.

Even backstage and at industry events, she will take every selfie and engage in every conversation.

Sadly, I cannot say the same for most of the mega-celebrities whom I have encountered during my time working in the media.

I don't love what the Kardashians have done to young women.

The overtly over-sexualized images that they put out keep much of the media's toxic focus on women's mostly naked bodies and away from their minds and feminist empowerment.

However, I cannot knock the Kardashians too much because they are supplying a product that America is more than eager to tune in to watch.

In Kanye West's recent music video (scene show above) there is a depiction of Kanye kidnapping Pete Davidson and burying him alive.

Whatever they have -- Americans consume it, like junk food, in a seemingly never-ending binge.

I, like millions of others, have kept up with their lives, but I have been more and more disturbed by the increasingly dark and unhinged behavior of Kim's ex-husband, mega-rapper Kanye West.

It is more than likely that many of you know their story.

They got married, had four children, and somewhere along the way Kanye started displaying more and more erratic behavior in public.

Kanye has done everything from pretend to run for president to publicly break down on stage at one of his 'political rallies' in South Carolina where he told the shocked crowd that he almost aborted his first daughter, North West.

It has been a lot to watch from the outside and has made me increasingly uncomfortable to witness as a consumer of pop culture.

Both Kim and Kanye have been open about his mental health issues, including him being diagnosed with bipolar disorder after being hospitalized for a psychiatric emergency in 2016.

Kanye has spoken about his manic episodes and let us all in on the experience of them, oftentimes doing it live on social media or during his performances.

The struggle with mental health issues is serious and something that no one should take lightly or treat with anything but the utmost respect and compassion.

I feel for Kim Kardashian. I can't imagine what it has been like to have four children with a man who is now very publicly sharing private text messages, pleading to the point of stalking and publicly threatening her new boyfriend, Pete Davison.

If Kanye were an average person and not a megastar, no one would be entertained by the way he is treating his ex-wife and her new boyfriend.

In a recent interview, comedian DL Hugley talks about this very issue of Kanye stalking Kim.

He takes it on with gravity and seriousness saying, 'The difference between Kanye and a restraining order is about twenty hits and a couple million dollars.'

DL is one hundred percent correct.

He echoed what so many of us are feeling watching Kanye -- that this isn't funny and should be taken more seriously.

If Kanye were an average person and not a megastar, no one would be entertained by the way he is treating his ex-wife and her new boyfriend.

I would go so far as to say if Kanye were still a megastar rapper but not a man, he would not be given the leeway that he is granted by so many in the media and there would be more accountability for his behavior.

Imagine if Cardi B were doing this to Offset on her social media platforms?

I believe we would be having a lot more conversations about her unraveling and less about her genius.

Why is it that we are continuing to give Kanye, a 44-year-old man the benefit of the doubt and not extend the same sympathy to Kim?

Is it because she has posed nude many times and is the star of a famous sex tape? Is it because she is a woman? Is it because she has opened her life to us so much that we feel like she is now a commodity instead of simply a mother with four children being threatened publicly?

In the text message that Kanye posted on his Instagram, Kim told him that he was being dangerous and putting her boyfriend Pete in a precarious situation.

Most of the commentary in the Instagram thread focused on Pete Davidson and how he has managed to land one of the most famous and beautiful women in the world.

There was little concern for Kim's safety and well-being.

In a text message that Kanye posted on his Instagram, Kim told him that he was being dangerous and putting her boyfriend Pete in a precarious situation. (Left) Kim Kardashian is seen at Milan Fashion Week on February 24, 2022 in Milan, Italy (Right) Pete Davidson is seen on the set of 'The Home' on January 31, 2022 in Woodland Park, New Jersey

In his most recent public act, Kanye released a new music video for his song 'Eazy.'

Now let me say, music is an art and it is meant to entertain us and I give a lot of artistic license to musicians and artists.

However, in his recent music video -- which is done in black and white claymation-style -- there is a depiction of Kanye kidnapping Pete Davidson and burying him alive.

Throughout the video, Kanye holds a severed head. And it bizarrely concludes with Kayne sprinkling rose seeds on Davidson's head and then harvesting the flowers.

Umm... ok.

The song is mediocre at best and nowhere near the type of chart-topping hit that we have become accustomed to Kanye releasing.

The video is abjectly disturbing.

There are articles by survivors of stalking and abuse, who find Kanye's behavior and his recent video triggering.

One of my friends texted me, half-jokingly, asking: So what happens next? Is Kanye going to shoot Pete Davidson?

In an era, when we are looking back on public figures, who were very open about their abusive actions and incorporated it into their work (Bill Cosby is one of the first to come to mind), why we are treating Kanye's strange behavior as a sign of his genius?

Kim deserves better from us as public consumers and Kanye deserves more pushback.

Right now, there is very little downside for Kanye and we can continue to expect him to release even more disturbing social media posts about his ex-wife and her boyfriend.

We are still buying his music and clothes. He is still partnered with Adidas and he will likely never be held to the standard that the rest of us will because he is a global superstar and because he is a man.

I wish our culture would evolve past all of this but sadly we have not.

I, for one, agree with DL Hughley, none of this is funny.
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Dozens of migrants have arrived in the UK by small boat for the fourth day running - bringing the total this year to 2,115 already.

More than 50 people are thought to have made the perilous journey across the English Channel this morning as temperatures remained steady at around 8C.

People smugglers took advantage of the calm conditions with at least three dinghies making the treacherous crossing through one of the world's busiest shipping lanes.

Newly arrived migrants were seen waving at onlookers as they arrived in the harbour at Dover, Kent, despite battling wet and cloudy conditions at sea.

Dozens of migrants have arrived in the UK by small boat for the fourth day running - bringing the total this year to 2,115 already

More than 50 people are thought to have made the perilous journey across the English Channel this morning as temperatures remained steady at around 8C

People smugglers took advantage of the calm conditions with at least three dinghies making the treacherous crossing through one of the world's busiest shipping lanes

The first group of around 20 migrants were escorted into the port on board an RNLI lifeboat shortly before 9am - sporting bright orange waterproof ponchos to shelter from the damp weather

The first group of around 20 migrants were escorted into the port on board an RNLI lifeboat shortly before 9am - sporting bright orange waterproof ponchos to shelter from the damp weather.

A further 30 people were detained by UK officials and escorted to shore on Border Force cutter Hunter, wrapped in blankets and warm clothing.

A third vessel is also thought to have arrived at Dover early this morning. This comes after 631 migrants reached Kent across 21 boats during the first three days of March.

They are thought to be taking advantage of the calm conditions at sea after heavy winds and storms throughout February temporarily prevented crossings.

Yesterday saw 253 people arrive on small boats, according to official Home Office figures.

While the majority were escorted to the Port of Dover by Border Force officials, some migrants managed to reach other coastal locations across Kent and Sussex.

A further 30 people were detained by UK officials and escorted to shore on Border Force cutter Hunter, wrapped in blankets and warm clothing

A third vessel is also thought to have arrived at Dover early this morning. This comes after 631 migrants reached Kent across 21 boats during the first three days of March

They are thought to be taking advantage of the calm conditions at sea after heavy winds and storms throughout February temporarily prevented crossings

Yesterday saw 253 people arrive on small boats, according to official Home Office figures. While the majority were escorted to the Port of Dover by Border Force officials, some migrants managed to reach other coastal locations across Kent and Sussex

One dinghy landed at Dungeness beach in Kent with around 25 migrants on board.

Civil Nuclear Constabulary police officers from Dungeness Power Station and medics were quickly on hand to assist, and a coastguard helicopter could be seen observing the scene from the air.

Another small boat came ashore at popular tourist destination Camber sands in East Sussex - it's unclear if those onboard were met by Border Force officials.

So far this year 2,115 people are known to have made the crossing in 72 boats so far in 2022. A total of 28,381 migrants crossed the Dover Strait last year - significantly higher than the 8,410 who arrived in 2020.

But Home Office officials have warned this year could see more than 65,000 people arrive in the UK by small boat.

Minister for Justice and Tackling Illegal Migration Tom Pursglove MP said: 'The rise in dangerous Channel crossings is unacceptable.

'Not only are they an overt abuse of our immigration laws but they also impact on the UK taxpayer and they risk lives. Rightly, the British public has had enough.

'Through our Nationality and Borders Bill, we're cracking down on people smugglers and fixing the broken system by making it a criminal offence to knowingly arrive in the UK illegally and introducing a maximum sentence of life imprisonment for those who facilitate illegal entry into the country.'

French authorities also intercepted 196 people on seven small boats from reaching the UK.

Between Wednesday and Thursday the French Regional Operational Centre for Surveillance and Rescue (CROSS) in Gris-Nez identified several boats in difficulty in the Calais strait.

French navy assistance and rescue tug (RIAS), Abeille Languedoc, saved 43 shipwrecked people at sea, while the French navy helicopter, Dauphin, carried out searches of the water to ensure everyone had been accounted for.

But Home Office officials have warned this year could see more than 65,000 people arrive in the UK by small boat

Civil Nuclear Constabulary police officers from Dungeness Power Station and medics were quickly on hand to assist, and a coastguard helicopter could be seen observing the scene from the air

Another small boat came ashore at popular tourist destination Camber sands in East Sussex - it's unclear if those onboard were met by Border Force officials

So far this year 2,115 people are known to have made the crossing in 72 boats so far in 2022. A total of 28,381 migrants crossed the Dover Strait last year - significantly higher than the 8,410 who arrived in 2020

Abeille Languedoc also intervened in a second rescue operation - recovering 49 shipwrecked people before dropping them off at the port of Boulogne-sur-Mer. The same tug then assisted a third operation, rescuing seven people in difficulty at sea.

All-weather boat Jean Bart II of SNSM - the French lifeboat institution - engaged in a rescue operation to recover 41 shipwrecked people who it deposited at the port of Dunkirk.

French navy public service patrol boat (PSP), Pluvier, also recovered 16 shipwrecked migrants who were deposited at the port of Calais.

A sixth rescue operation was carried out by the French customs coastguard - recovering 46 castaways to the port of Boulogne-sur-Mer.

Once back at the quay, the migrants were taken care of by the French border police and fire and rescue services.

The maritime prefect of the Channel and the North Sea has warned anyone who plans to cross the Channel about the risks involved due to difficult weather conditions and freezing temperatures.
New York City is reeling from a February crime wave that saw a nearly 60 percent spike in incidents over last year, according to statistics released Thursday.

The city's latest crime figures show 9,138 incidents last month, as opposed to 5,759 during the same period in 2021  with double-digit surges in nearly every major category.

There were 32 murders in February  three more than the same month last year.

Multiple other categories saw shocking jumps, including car theft, which soared by nearly 105 percent; grand larceny, which jumped nearly 80 percent over the previous year; robberies, which surged 56 percent; a 44 percent bump in burglaries and a 22 percent spike in assaults. Rapes also saw a terrifying 35 percent rise in February.

Residents have also reacted with horror to a string of high-profile incidents, including the vicious battering of a woman with a hammer by a homeless man in Queens and the smearing of feces on another woman in the Bronx - after which the alleged perpetrator, a violent criminal with a history of 44 arrests, was released without bail.

These incidents were in addition to the murder of Asian woman Christina Yuna Lee, 25, who was tailed to her apartment by another homeless man, Assamad Nash, 35, and stabbed to death.

During the month of February, the NYPD reported a 58.7 percent increase in total crime. The latest figures showed 9,138 incidents as opposed to 5,759 in 2021 - with double-digit surges in nearly every major category

The New York subway has been ground zero for the latent crime wave after an alarming 73.3 percent increase in underground incidents - including 182 in February alone.

Hate crimes have also doubled since last year  with anti-Asian attacks more than tripling and anti-Jewish complaints up by a whopping 54 percent over the same time last year, from 134 to 207 incidents.

One recent poll revealed that nearly 75 percent of all New York City voters consider crime to be a 'very serious' problem  the highest number since polling began in 1999.

The one small ray of light for New York is that shootings declined slightly in February, by 1.3 percent over the same period in 2021.

'The men and women of the New York City Police Department are proactively addressing the deep-rooted causes of criminal behavior,' Police Commissioner Keechant L. Sewell said in a statement.

'The NYPD will never relent, and the department has made far too much progress over the decades  and invested far too much in the communities it serves  to fall back by any measure. New Yorkers deserve better.'

Christopher Herrmann, a former Crime Analyst Supervisor with the NYPD and a Professor in the Department of Law & Police Science at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, told DailyMail.com he finds the new numbers startling.

'All of these numbers are bad, to be honest,' Herrmann said Friday. 'Generally, increases and decreases in crime would be in the single digits. These new numbers are not good.'

Herrmann says the increase can be traced back to lax bail laws, which mean perps often can walk out of jail quickly after being arrested - a situation that leads to more repeat offenses.

'There are certainly enough cases of people being released from incarceration who should have stayed in jail,' he said.

Herrmann added that the new numbers for February - typically a low-crime month due to weather and other factors - portend poorly for the rest of the year to come.

'There is no easy solution - these are longer term problems,' the crime analyst said. 'This is a new crime rate ... People should be worried.'

In addition, experts say the state government needs to address glaring issues, like homelessness and offenders' mental health, if New York City has any hope of quelling the crime wave.

Former NYPD officer and celebrity criminal defense attorney Peter Gleason told DailyMail.com that the crime increase stems at least in part from policies implemented by Adams' predecessor Bill De Blasio, including the failed $850 million Thrive NYC plan meant to assist New Yorkers with mental health issues.

'New York's subterranean transportation hub, or subways, was commonly referred to as sewer transport back in the dark days of the 1970s - 1980s,' Gleason said.

'Should Adams rebrand the DeBlasio failure of Thrive New York and other policies, then he alone will own the failure of the mental health crisis that infects New York City both above and below ground.'

In the five years since its inception in 2016, organizers at ThriveNYC failed to account for where nearly $1billion in taxpayer funds were allocated, apparently neglecting to keep records of the initiative's duties.

Adams, meanwhile, has made the city's crime problem a signature issue over the past month, pleading with lawmakers in Albany recently to consider a controversial bail reform law that would allow judges to consider whether a person is dangerous before releasing them from jail.

Adams wants to see changes in bail reform laws and other criminal justice measures, saying they will bring down crime rates in the city and reduce gun violence.

In his first visit to the Albany since becoming mayor, Adams said we knew what needed to be done.

The crime wave comes during Mayor Eric Adams' first few months in office. The former NYPD cop has vowed to crack down on the influx of incidents on the city's streets and subway system - which has seen a rash of violent incidents in recent weeks. Former Mayor Bill De Blasio's policies contributed to the current crime wave, experts said

'We walked away saying were not going to fall into the trap of saying we cant have justice and safety. We can have the justice we need and the safety we deserve. Ive said this over and over again.'

Last week, Adams, who campaigned last year on getting people to get back to work amid the pandemic and cleaning up the crime-ridden subway system, outlined his plans for city bail laws, which can allow for suspects to roam the street often within hours of an arrest.

'Let's remove the cash bail system, because one should not be able to get out of jail just because you can pay bail. Let's take that away. Judges should look at the case in front of them and say, "This person has two gun arrests, and he's continually saying to the people of the city that I don't care about the safety of you."' the mayor said.

'That judge should have the right to make the discretion that this person just be held.'

What does Adams's subway safety plan for NYC look like? The mayor's plan lays out how the Adams administration, in partnership with the MTA and other state entities, will confront these concurrent challenges on New York City's subway systems. Investments in people will provide immediate support and protection to New Yorkers, while investments in places like drop-in-centers, safe havens, stabilization beds, and Street Homeless Outreach Wellness vans, as well as policy changes at local, state, and federal levels will provide medium- and long-term solutions. These include: Deploying up to 30 Joint Response Teams that bring together DHS, the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, NYPD, and community-based providers in high-need locations across the city

Training NYPD officers in the city's subway system to enforce the MTA and New York City Transit Authority's rules of conduct in a fair and transparent way

Expanding Behavioral Health Emergency Assistance Response Division 'B-HEARD' teams to six new precincts, more than doubling the precincts covered to 11. These teams will expand on the already-successful pilot of answering non-violent 911 mental health calls with mental health professionals

Incorporating medical services into DHS sites serving individuals experiencing unsheltered homelessness. Expanded DHS Safe Havens and stabilization bed programs will offer on-site physical and behavioral health care to immediately address clients' needs

Immediately improving coordination across government with weekly 'Enhanced Outreach Taskforce' meetings that bring together senior leaders from 13 city and state agencies to address issues quickly

Creating new Drop-in-Centers to provide an immediate pathway for individuals to come indoors, and exploring opportunities to site Drop-in-Centers close to key subway stations to directly transition individuals from trains and platforms to safe spaces

Streamlining the placement process into supportive housing and reducing the amount of paperwork it takes to prove eligibility

Calling on state government to expand psychiatric bed resources and amending Kendra's Law to improve mental health care delivery for New Yorkers on Assisted Outpatient Treatment

Requiring  instead of requesting  everyone to leave the train and the station at the end of the line Advertisement

Many of New York City's most recent violent crimes have been perpetrated by repeat offenders - a development that comes after Manhattan's District Attorney Alvin Bragg, 48, downgraded many crimes to misdemeanors.

The new mayor also recently met with President Joe Biden, who pledged to New Yorkers and the nation that the federal government would step up its fight against gun violence.

Following the meeting, Adams hopped on an Amtrak train to the state capital, writing on Twitter: 'On my way to Albany to #GetStuffDone for New York City!'

Earlier this month, the mayor announced that the NYPD would deploy 1,000 additional officers and separate teams of health workers to the city's subway system to crack down on the influx of underground crime.

'No more smoking. No more doing drugs. No more sleeping. No more doing barbecues on the subway system. Not more just doing whatever you want,' Adam said at a press event announcing the plan, alongside New York Governor Kathy Hochul.

'Those days are over. Swipe your MetroCard. Ride the system. Get off at your destination.'

But Adams' enforcement plan, which had not yet taken effect on February 21 - the day the NYPD's crime data for the week began - has so far failed to produce measurable results. A rash of attacks, including an assault on a city-employed scientist with a hammer and another where an assailant smeared human feces on a victim, have complicated the mayor's messaging.

The day the program launched, New York police officers reported a two assaults on the subway - mere hours after Adams' address.

In one instance, a 58-year-old man was arrested for allegedly going after another man with a hatchet around 12:30 a.m. at a Brooklyn subway stop where police were already stationed.

Upon being arrested, officers discovered the suspect had both a screwdriver and a knife on his person.

Roughly two hours later, a homeless man hit a woman in the face with a metal pipe aboard a subway train in the Bronx, cops reported.

The woman, who declined medical care, told officers the man lashed out after asking her to stop talking with a friend. No arrest has been made in that case.

More than fifty incidents followed during the remainder of the month of February, the statistics confirm.

On February 24, a 58-year-old research scientist for the New York City Health Department was on her way home when she was kicked down the stairs at a Queens subway station and bashed in the head with a hammer.

Sickening surveillance video shows the suspect kicking Dr. Nina Rothschild down the station's steps and bashing her in the head repeatedly with a hammer, fracturing her skull.

Rothschild's brother, Gerson, is also a scientist in Upper Manhattan at Columbia University and managed to speak with his sister on Friday as she recovered from surgery. She remains critically ill.

One of the most headline-grabbing infractions occurred on Monday, when a woman waiting for a train at a Bronx subway station was approached by a stranger who 'struck her in the face and the back of the head with human feces,' police said.

Frank Abrokwa, 37, was arrested February 28 in relation to the stomach-churning incident - which was captured on security video - and charged with forcible touching, menacing, disorderly conduct and harassment.

The weekend also saw a slew of subway-related violent crimes.

A man was shot in the chest during an argument on a Brooklyn subway station around 10 p.m. Sunday, police said, and rushed to a nearby hospital. He is expected to survive.

The rash of incidents has not seemed to deaden this week, either. Police said three teenagers and a man were stabbed Tuesday, possibly during a fight, in a different Brooklyn subway station.

Experts blame a number of factors for the concerning rise in crime: the lingering effects of the pandemic, the closure of mental health facilities under the reign of former Mayor Bill de Blasio, fewer cops due to the pandemic and vaccine mandates, as well as an increase in anti-cop rhetoric spurred by the Defund the Police movement in 2020.

It's a worrying trend for a city still reeling economically from the COVID-19 pandemic, which forced many residents to move away and took a huge bite out of the city's all-important commercial real estate market.

Joseph Giacalone, a crime data expert, former cop, and professor at the city's John Jay College of Criminal Justice, told Fox News that the spate of subway crimes spells doom for a city 'trying to get back on its feet' after 'the two big C's'  COVID and crime.

'If you're thinking that people are going to be willing to come back after COVID, maybe,' Giacalone told the outlet.

'But now you're dealing with a crime issue  specifically in the subway, which is the lifeblood of New York City  if people fear going into the subways. And right now, when you look at these numbers, there is some reason to be hesitant.
People gather around the bodies of victims in a bomb explosion, outside a hospital in Peshawar, Pakistan, March 4. A suicide bomber struck inside a Shiite Muslim mosque in Pakistan's northwestern city of Peshawar during Friday prayers, killing at least 56 worshippers and wounding 194 people, hospital officials said. AP-Yonhap



A suicide bomber struck inside a Shiite Muslim mosque in Pakistan's northwestern city of Peshawar during Friday prayers, killing at least 56 worshippers and wounding 194 people, hospital officials said.



No militant group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack. Both the Islamic State group and the Pakistani Taliban  a militant group separate from the Taliban in Afghanistan  have carried out similar attacks in the past in the area, located near the border with neighboring Afghanistan.



According to the spokesman at Peshawar's Lady Reading Hospital, Asim Khan, many of the wounded were in critical condition. Scores of victims were peppered with shrapnel, several had limbs amputated and others were injured by flying debris.



Peshawar Police Chief Muhammed Ejaz Khan said the violence started when an armed attacker opened fire on police outside the mosque in Peshawar's old city. One policeman was killed in the gunfight, and another police officer was wounded. The attacker then ran inside the mosque and detonated his suicide vest.



Local police official Waheed Khan said the explosion occurred as worshippers had gathered in the Kucha Risaldar Mosque for Friday prayers. There are fears the death toll will rise further, he added.





Police officers examine the site of bomb explosion inside a mosque in Peshawar, Pakistan, Friday, March 4. AP-Yonhap



Ambulances rushed through congested narrow streets carrying the wounded to Lady Reading Hospital, where doctors worked feverishly.



Shayan Haider, a witness, had been preparing to enter the mosque when a powerful explosion threw him to the ground. ''I opened my eyes and there was dust and bodies everywhere,'' he said.



At the Lady Reading Hospital Emergency department, there was chaos as doctors struggled to move the many wounded into operating theaters. Hundreds of relatives gathered outside the emergency department, many of them wailing and beating their chests, pleading for information about their loved ones.



Outside the mosque, Shiites pressed through the cordoned-off streets. Kucha Risaldar Mosque is one of the oldest in the area, predating the creation of Pakistan in 1947 as a separate homeland for the Muslims of the Indian subcontinent.



The prayer leader, Allama Irshad Hussein Khalil, a prominent up and coming young Shiite leader, was among the dead. Throughout the city, ambulance sirens could be heard.





Relatives of the victims comfort each other, after a bomb blast in a mosque during Friday prayers in Peshawar, Pakistan, March 4. Reuters-Yonhap
The BBC is 'temporarily suspending' the work of all its news journalists and support staff in Russia after authorities passed legislation cracking down on foreign outlets.

Director-general Tim Davie said the new law appeared to 'criminalise the process of independent journalism' in the country.

The Russian parliament approved a law on Friday that would make it a criminal offence to spread 'fake' or 'false' news about the Kremlin's war in Ukraine.

It comes after foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova accused the BBC of playing a 'determined role in undermining the Russian stability and security'.

A statement from Mr Davie said: 'This legislation appears to criminalise the process of independent journalism.

'It leaves us no other option than to temporarily suspend the work of all BBC News journalists and their support staff within the Russian Federation while we assess the full implications of this unwelcome development.

BBC Director-general Tim Davie (pictured) said today: 'In a conflict where disinformation and propaganda is rife, there is a clear need for factual and independent news people can trust.'

Editors of BBC Russia (website homepage pictured) had earlier received notices from Roskomnadzor demanding to remove materials, claiming they contained 'inaccurate, socially significant information distributed under the guise of reliable messages, which creates a threat of harm to life.'

BBC Russia reports that it has been included in the register of mass media 'containing calls for riots, extremism and participation in illegal mass actions.' (Pictured: BBC Russia homepage)

BBC Moscow correspondent Caroline Davies flew out to Russia in January (Pictured in selfie next to St Basil's cathedral)

Top BBC journalists at risk of being prosecuted in Russia following Kremlin crackdown on foreign media outlets Steve Rosenberg BBC Moscow correspondent Steve Rosenberg Steve Rosenberg, 54, is a BBC Moscow correspondent who has been covering the Ukraine invasion from the Russian capital. In recent days he has reported how the Echo of Moscow radio station was taken off air - just as it was during the coup against Gorbachev in August 1991. 'An attempt to isolate Russians from information about whats really happening in Ukraine,' he tweeted. In a video report, he also spoke to Russians 'who believe what state TV is telling them about Ukraine' - and to those who think they are being lied to and have decided to leave the country. Mr Rosenberg graduated with a first class honours in Russian Studies from the University of Leeds in 1991, before spending 15 years in Moscow. During that time he first worked with CBS as translator before becoming a an assistant producer. He joined the BBC's Moscow Bureau in 1997, where he has remained ever since. Caroline Davies BBC Moscow correspondent Caroline Davies Caroline Davies was a Business and Transport Correspondent for BBC London News before heading over to Moscow in January this year. 'Change of scene for next few months,' she tweeted alongside a selfie of her next to St Basil's cathedral. 'I start as BBC Moscow Correspondent alongside incredible @BBCSteveR and the great team here tomorrow.' Ms Davies' latest report saw her visit a remote village in eastern Siberia - some 3,000 miles away from the front line, which is the home of a captured Russian soldier. One resident told her: I dont support anything. Why are our younglings sent there? Advertisement

'Our BBC News service in Russian will continue to operate from outside Russia.

'The safety of our staff is paramount and we are not prepared to expose them to the risk of criminal prosecution simply for doing their jobs.

'I'd like to pay tribute to all of them, for their bravery, determination and professionalism.

'We remain committed to making accurate, independent information available to audiences around the world, including the millions of Russians who use our news services.

'Our journalists in Ukraine and around the world will continue to report on the invasion of Ukraine.'

Interim BBC News director Jonathan Munro tweeted: 'Its with a heavy heart that we have had to suspend @BBCNews operations in Russia until we assess impact of new laws which outlaw independent journalism.

'Thoughts with colleagues in Moscow whose voices cannot be silenced for long.'

Russia's media regulator Roskomnadzor 'limited' access to bbcrussian.com and bbcnews.com on Friday.

BBC Russia reports that it has been added to the register of mass media 'containing calls for riots, extremism and participation in illegal mass actions.'

Editors of the site had earlier received notices from Roskomnadzor demanding they remove materials, claiming they contained 'inaccurate, socially significant information distributed under the guise of reliable messages, which creates a threat of harm to life.'

Other foreign websites have also been blocked, including independent news website Meduza, German broadcaster Deutsche Welle, and the Russian-language website of the US-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Svoboda.

BBC Director-general Tim Davie promised Friday to 'continue giving the Russian people access to the truth, however we can', as more shortwave frequencies to receive BBC radio in Ukraine were added.

'In a conflict where disinformation and propaganda is rife, there is a clear need for factual and independent news people can trust,' he said.

The BBC has also published advice on how internet users can circumvent Russia's block - including using the Psiphon app.

It comes after UK watchdog Ofcom opened 27 investigations into the 'due impartiality' of programmes broadcast on the Kremlin-backed RT news channel, formerly known as Russia Today.

Speaking in the House of Commons on Thursday, Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries said RT should lose its licence and 'never again' be able to broadcast 'poisonous propaganda'.

However Foreign Secretary Liz Truss warned on Monday that the BBC risked being banned in Russia if RT was shut down in the UK.

She also condemned the banning of Russian media RT and Sputnik globally, claiming the world was being deprived of Russia's point of view and Western media was only giving one side.

A BBC spokesman said today: 'Access to accurate, independent information is a fundamental human right which should not be denied to the people of Russia, millions of whom rely on BBC News every week.

'We will continue our efforts to make BBC News available in Russia, and across the rest of the world.'

The BBC has seen an increase in traffic to its Russian language news website since the invasion of Ukraine began.

It said the site's audience rose to a record 10.7 million people in the last week - more than triple its year-to-date weekly average.

The BBC has since published advice (pictured) on how internet users can circumvent Russia's block - including using the Psiphon app

Nadine Dorries said Russia Today, now known as RT, should lose its UK broadcasting licence (stock image)

Visitors to the English language bbc.com in Russia were up 252 per cent to 423,000 last week.

CNN has reported that the US arm of RT will be effectively shutting down while European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen announced last weekend the channel would be banned in the EU.

Nadine Dorries appeared close to tears yesterday as she praised the courage of journalists 'risking their lives' to cover the unfolding crisis in Ukraine.

The Culture Secretary paid tribute to those braving Russian bombs to provide 'unbiased and accurate news from a live war zone'  in stark contrast to 'poisonous propaganda' from the Kremlin.

'We are on the side of free media,' she told the Commons. 'It was brilliant to see the audience for the BBC's Russian-language news site has gone up from 3.1million to 10.7million in the past week.

The Culture Secretary paid tribute to those braving Russian bombs to provide 'unbiased and accurate news from a live war zone'  in stark contrast to 'poisonous propaganda' from the Kremlin

'Despite his best efforts to censor reporting in Russia, Putin's own citizens are turning to factual, independent information in their millions.'

At times pausing to maintain her composure, she continued: 'At this point, I would just like to offer my heartfelt thanks and admiration to all those journalists working for the BBC, ITV and other news outlets who are risking their lives to bring us unbiased and accurate news from a live war zone.'

Miss Dorries  who has previously called for an end to the licence fee  stressed yesterday: 'I have always said the BBC is a great British global brand and it needs protecting. We need to review the funding model in order to protect the BBC... including the World Service.'

She went on to say Russia Today, now known as RT, should lose its UK broadcasting licence.

Media watchdog Ofcom has launched 27 investigations into the channel, which is now no longer available on Sky or Freeview.

Putin 'must not be allowed to exploit our open and free media to spread poisonous propaganda into British homes', Miss Dorries vowed.

In Moscow, a foreign ministry spokesman claimed the BBC 'plays a determined role in undermining Russian stability and security'.

They claimed the only reason Russian journalists had not been banned from working in the UK was 'related to fears that the BBC might be targeted', adding: 'We haven't invented that... it stems from the British Foreign Secretary.'

Liz Truss had called for 'careful judgment' on RT earlier this week, warning that a ban in Britain could lead to Russia blocking the BBC in retaliation.

It comes as it was revealed today how Russia is targeting children with the message that its invasion of Ukraine is a disinformation campaign, releasing a 30-minute video with a child star to embellish the propaganda on Thursday.

The 12-year-old singing prodigy Sofia Khomenko (pictured left), sits next to ministry of education presenter Denis Polunchukov (pictured right) in a Kremlin propaganda video

The video was titled 'A lesson about world peace' and taught children about how Putin's 'special operation' in Ukraine were protecting Russians from Nazis

In the video obtained by The Daily Telegraph from the Ministry of Education, 12-year-old singing prodigy Sofia Khomenko tells child viewers 'we are going to have a lesson about world peace'.

She is joined by two male presenters who explain the truth behind the events in Ukraine, at least from the ministry of education's point of view.

Denis Polunchukov, the main presenter from the ministry, explained that many images circulating the web about the war in Ukraine are in fact from different conflicts.

Some images are even from computer games, he added, warning about the dangers of believing photos shared on social media.

The Kremlin has in the past used video game footage to claim the US was supporting ISIS in the Middle East, shortly before Russian troops entered the Syrian Civil War in 2017.

Satellite imagery captured by Maxar shows a large military convoy seen north of Kyiv which has not moved in the past three days, according to the UK Ministry of Defence

The air defense units of the Ukrainian Forces shot down another Russian Su-25 attack aircraft. The plane bombed civilian homes and civilian infrastructure.

Miss Khomenko asked bewildered questions to the two presenters, who assured her with recent-history lessons on how Nazis attacked Russian speakers and police during riots in Ukraine - a reference to the 2014 Maidan Revolution.

The attacks forced Russia to intervene in 2014, said the presenters, justifying the 2022 invasion by alleging that women and children in eastern Ukraine needed protection.

Polunchukov provided claims of rockets hitting a kindergarten, a column of tanks breaking down, or planes being shot out of the sky, as examples of misinformation on social media.

The video portrayed NATO as the aggressor, and the United States as a warmonger, according to the Telegraph.

He concluded by facing the camera, and telling the children directly:

'You are the heirs of our great country.'
New York City parents of children under five have furiously condemned rules forcing their little ones to mask-up when the rest of the city will be liberated from COVID-19 restrictions.

On Wednesday, Mayor Eric Adams announced that Big Apple public school children aged five and up will no longer be forced to wear face covering as the infection rate in the city has plummeted to 671 cases a day. That is an 11.6 per cent drop from the week before, with just 1.8 per cent of all tests now coming back positive.

The only exception to that will be children under the age of five, who are not currently eligible for the vaccine, with day care providers also ordered to enforce face masks. That comes even though just 307 children aged between 0 and four have died of COVID in the whole of the US since the pandemic began in spring 2020, according to the latest CDC data.

The school positivity rate is .18 percent, Adams said Friday. Thousands have since signed a Change.org petition taking aim at the seemingly unending rule.

It contains a letter addressed to New York Health Commissioner Dr Mary T Bassett, and links to articles which back up the petitions' point.

The authors write: 'The national conversation around mandatory masking is now shifting to acknowledge the development, mental and social detriments these policies are causing children right now.

A Change.org petition presented in the form of a letter to NY's health commissioner is calling for an end to masking for children aged four and under at preschools, nurseries and daycares

'In fact, the World Health Organization has never recommended masks for children under 5 years old and only limited circumstances for children under 11.

'We ask you to join surrounding states and end mandatory masking in schools and daycares now. ALL children but especially those with speech delays, learning disabilities, social anxieties, sensory issues and on the spectrum deserve better.'

The letter adds: 'There are now growing calls for children to learn with optional masking, as there is no clear evidence to show that masking children indefinitely has curbed this pandemic and kept schools safe.

'With most adults now vaccinated, our state of New York boasts an 84.3% completed vaccination series, the time is now to advocate for children who remain naturally protected against severe illness and death from COVID-19.'

One NYC mom, Daniela Jampel, 38, of Washington Heights in Manhattan, told DailyMail.com the new mask policy flies in the face of common sense and will create a series of 'mini-police states' and a culture of 'petty tyrants.'

Daniela Jampel, pictured here with her family, called on parents in New York City to reach out to Mayor Eric Adams to express their outrage about the requirements that kids under 5 continue to wear masks

Jampel, who has been outspoken about keeping schools open during the pandemic because of the lower threat that the virus poses to kids, said that she caught wind of the mayor's pediatric mask mandate earlier in the week.

'I was outraged, I was so disappointed, I was really flummoxed at how the only place that you have to mask is in their day care Pre-K or Three-K classrooms, it makes no sense,' she said.

Jampel said that it makes her question the Adams' judgement, after he was elected on the back of promises to be a more moderate Democrat mayor than his predecessor Bill de Blasio.

'I though we were getting a more moderate politician, someone who is more common sense and pragmatic approach to the city. Someone who wanted to open the city back up,' she said. 'Masking kids who are under five years old and no one else? It's certainly not a turn-the-page-on-COVID politician.

She said that her three daughters, aged eight, four and and six months, have grown used to wearing masks all the time and sometimes get nervous not wearing them.

Angry mom Daniela Jampel says that kids don't remember the days when masks weren't worn in school. 'We've normalized something that is not normal'

'We've normalized something that's not normal,' she said. 'My four-year-old has never gone to school without a mask, she can't conceive of it.'

She said that she's very comfortable with the risks that her kids would take on not wearing a mask indoors because she doesn't believe they're effective.

'It does not concern me at all,' Jampel, who's a lawyer. 'Kids are at an incredibly low risk. If you look at the data an unvaccinated two to five-year-old is the lowest risk even a vaccinated adult.'

A February study by the American Academy of Pediatricians found that children under five accounted for .026 percent of Covid-19 deaths in the US, three states reported no deaths in that age group.

The World Health Organization agrees with Jampel about mask mandates.

'In general, children aged five years and under should not be required to wear masks,' according to the global health group's website. 'This advice is based on the safety and overall interest of the child and the capacity to appropriately use a mask with minimal assistance.'

Jampel has seen this 'capacity to appropriately use a mask' first hand.

'They don't wear them properly. They're constantly fidgeting They're below their chin,' she said. 'My daughter comes home and her mask is soaking wet because she's been licking all day. It's disgusting.'

At her four-year-old's city-run Three-K program the children and the child care workers must be masked except for 45 minutes during nap time.

Last year, she said, she watched a video of a class birthday party in which the kids were sitting around a table prepared to eat cake.

Jampel with one of her daughters. She says facemasks for kids do more harm than good

'They're sitting around a tiny table, six to a table, singing Happy Birth Day and shouting at each other,' she said. 'It's ridiculous.'

For her four-year-old's birthday party, Jampel said, the girls did gymnastics with their masks on.

'Then they went into another room and ate pizza with their masks off,' she said. 'Where's the logic in that.'

She said that there are long-effects on the city's culture.

'What were doing is creating a mini police states,' she said. 'Were creating a class of petty tyrants and were teaching kids that theyre dirty.'



Jampel is pictured speaking at a rally against school closures in November 2020

Mask mandates are still mandatory in New York City despite cases of the virus sinking to summer 2020 levels

When Mayor Adams announced that kids under five would still be required to wear masks, Jampel took to Twitter to encourage like-minded moms and dads to let their outrage be known to city officials.

'I am furious over the Mayor's anti-science, anti-child policy of requiring NYC children under 5 to continue masking as literally everyone else in the world is able to remove their masks,' she posted, adding the number for the City Hall press office so that they could let their opinions be known.

Long Island Congressman Lee Zeldin, a Republican running for New York governor, pointed out that learning is impaired for kids who are masked in school.

'This is child abuse' Zeldin tweeted. 'Many kids under 5 are still learning how to speak and NYC wants them to do so where the teacher can't see the child's face and the child can't see the teacher's face. These little kids can't get this time back. It's a totally asinine policy.'

Kristen Walsh, 47, a pediatrician based in New Jersey, has been urging public officials to weigh the plusses of masking tykes against the drawbacks.

The New York City infection rate has dropped to city has plummeted to 671 cases a day. That is an 11.6 per cent drop from the week before, with just 1.8 per cent of all tests of tests now coming back positive

'I call it "Covid exceptionalism," she said. 'Ethically we're looking at this from the wrong side. We have to make sure that benefits of the intervention outweigh the harm.'

She said that studies show that socio-emotional development for children in this early stage of development is inhibited by not being able to see their friends' faces and their teachers' faces.

'Omicron is a threat to young children on par with seasonal ailments that we deal with all the time,' Walsh said.

'We have no proof that masking two to five year-olds slows the community spread, where's the proof that it protects them.'

On Friday, the mayor announced that 'New York City has its groove back,' lifting vaccine passport requirements across the five boroughs.

Ive said time and time again that the numbers and science will guide us as we continue to recover and rebuild,' he said at a press conference. 'Now New York City is back, and vaccinations are why were back. New Yorkers should be getting out and enjoying our amazing city. The fight may not be over, but were clearly winning the war. We are open for business.'
Downing Street rejected American demands for Vladimir Putin to be assassinated today, insisting the Russian leader had to be tried for his crimes in Ukraine.

The Government refused to back a call from right-wing Republican senator Lindsey Graham for a Julius Caesar-style ending of his leadership of Russia.

The Trump supporter used an appearance on Fox News and tweets to ask if there was 'a Brutus in Russia' or a 'more successful Colonel Stauffenberg' - a reference to the German officer who attempted to kill Adolf Hitler.

But asked if the PM agreed, his spokesman today told reporters: 'No, we stand with the Ukrainian people in demanding the immediate end to the Russian invasion.

'We've said before that Putin must be held (to) account in front of an international court for the horrific act he's committed.'

Conservative backbenchers also distanced themselves from the assassination call - but suggested regime change is the only way out of the standoff.

Tory MP Mark Francois, a member of the Commons Defence Committee, told MailOnline: 'It is now clear that Russia will remain a pariah state as long as Vladimir Putin - the man who commanded the invasion of a peaceful democratic country in Ukraine - remains as president.'

Senator Lindsey Graham called on Russians to carry assassinate their president Vladimir Putin

The Government refused to back a call from right-wing Republican senator Lindsey Graham for a Julius Caesar-style ending of his leadership of Russia.

The Republican Senator invoked a Julius Caesar-style assignation of Putin who is currently leading an invasion of Ukraine during an appearance on Fox News ' Hannity show

Tory MP Mark Francois told MailOnline: 'It is now clear that Russia will remain a pariah state as long as Vladimir Putin remains as president.' Fellow backbencher Craig Mackinlay said: 'The only way Russia can ever be ac'cepted back into the league of nations is regime change. That's obvious.

'You too, Brutus?' The most famous betrayal in Western history Marcus Junius Brutus helped lead the assassination of Julius Caesar in the Roman Senate, and his name is associated with betrayal. Caesar was a politician and general of the late Roman republic who lived from 100 - 44 BC, becoming its first dictator. As a general from 60 - 68 BC, Caesar added the whole of modern France and Belgium to the Roman empire, and crushed rebel Gallic forces across Europe in the Gallic wars. He won a civil war that effectively ended the republic and used his power to carry out much-needed reform, relieving debt, enlarging the senate, building the Forum Iulium and revising the calendar. But his ambition and success eventually led to his downfall when a group of republican senators assassinated him in 44 BC. Led by Brutus and Gaius Cassius Longinus, 60 co-conspirators stabbed him 23 times. Brutus struck Caesar in the groin. It was later written that Brutus, a former supporter of Caeser, was reproached in Greek with the words 'You, too, my child?' This was adapted to the Latin 'et tu, Brute?' by William Shakespeare, whose play 1,600 years later immortalised the betrayal. Advertisement

Fellow backbencher Craig Mackinlay said: 'The only way Russia can ever be accepted back into the league of nations is regime change. That's obvious.

'The West will not deal with Putin in the future.'

One MP pointed to claims that tip-offs from within Russia had been helping Zelensky dodge assassination attempts.

A former minister also warned against getting too carried away with hopes of a coup, pointing out that Russia had been subject to rule by autocrats for centuries.

'Fifty people might demonstrate against Putin in Moscow, but Siberia is a very big place,' they said.

In a separate tweet Graham added that the responsibility of eliminating Putin laid solely in the hands of Russian citizens.

The tweets prompted a furious response from the Russian ambassador to the US. Anatoly Antonov called Graham's remarks 'unacceptable and outrageous' and demanded an explanation.

'The only people who can fix this are the Russian people,' Graham tweeted. 'Easy to say, hard to do. Unless you want to live in darkness for the rest of your life, be isolated from the rest of the world in abject poverty, and live in darkness you need to step up to the plate.'

Graham's call for Putin to be assassinated drew a stern rebuke from Russia, with Ambassador Antonov accusing him of inciting terrorism.

Antonov said today: 'I find the statement of the American politician unacceptable and outrageous.

'The degree of Russophobia and hatred in the US towards Russia is off the charts. It's unbelievable that a senator of a country that promotes its moral values as a 'guiding star' for all mankind could afford to call for terrorism as a way to achieve Washington's goals in the international arena.

'It's getting scary for the fate of the United States, which has such irresponsible and unprofessional politicians at the helm.

'We demand official explanations and decisive condemnation of this American's criminal statements.'

Fire-damaged buildings at the Zaporizhzhya nuclear complex are pictured on Friday morning after coming under attack by Russian forces overnight, leading to international condemnation

Graham's call for Putin to be assassinated drew a stern rebuke from Russia, with the Ambassador to Russia to the US accusing him of inciting terrorism

School hit during the Russian air raids in Zhytomyr, a city around 80 miles to the west of Kyiv, which was struck this week

Putin criminal trial 'realistic' says Brown The prospect of Vladimir Putin ending up in the dock for the crime of aggression against Ukraine is 'a realistic option', Gordon Brown has insisted. The former prime minister called on countries to support the creation of a special tribunal to punish the Russian leader. Ukrainian foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba said on Friday that there have been 'numerous cases' of rapes in his country as the Russian invasion continues, and thanked people for their continued support of the under-fire nation. Mr Brown, said the plan to set up a new international tribunal is modelled on the actions of the nations which met in London during the Second World War to draft a resolution on Nazi war crimes, which led to the creation of the International Military Tribunals and the Nuremberg trials. The former Labour leader said a new international tribunal is needed as well as existing international investigations by the International Criminal Court. He said he believes it is 'a realistic option' that Mr Putin could end up at a tribunal, adding that governments in the European Union, some Baltic states as well as the UK have all been contacted about the idea of a setting up the legal mechanism. He said: 'I hope they are looking at it with an eye to making a decision to support this but they're certainly looking at this with a great deal of care and resilience in the way that they are wanting to find ways to deal with this problem.' Advertisement

Graham is not the first conservative to call for Putin's death this week.

Earlier this week Fox News host Sean Hannity said: 'Cut the head of the snake off and you kill the snake.'

'What we really need in this crisis, more than anything else, is a worldwide condemnation,' Hannity said on his daytime radio show.

'And it's a simple new rule that if you invade an innocent sovereign country, and you kill innocent men, women and children, you don't deserve to live. That's the bottom line.'

'Now currently the U.S. operates under a decades-old executive order signed by [former President] Gerald Ford that prohibits the U.S. government employees from engaging in political assassinations.

'And I'm like, 'You cut the head of the snake off and you kill the snake. Right now the snake is Vladimir Putin,' Hannity added.

It comes as Russian troops have seized Europe's largest nuclear power plant in Ukraine after a firefight that set part of the complex ablaze.

Russian troops attacked the Zaporizhzhia plant in the early hours of Friday, with CCTV capturing a fierce gun battle between Putin's men and Ukrainian defenders that sparked a fire in a six-storey training building just outside the main complex.

Moscow's men then stopped firefighters getting to the building for several hours as fighting raged.

Eventually, emergency crews were allowed to go in and douse the flames before Russian troops moved in an occupied the site, which provides a fifth of Ukraine's electricity.

The UN's nuclear monitoring agency said that, fortunately, none of the site's six reactors had been directly damaged and radiation levels remained normal.

However, news that Russian soldiers had put the plant at risk by opening fire close by and shelling it sparked dire warnings and international condemnation - with the head of the International Nuclear Energy Agency saying he was 'deeply concerned'.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who spoke with Zelensky after the plant was attacked, called the attack 'reckless' and said Putin is now 'threatening the security of the whole of Europe'.
The perfectly-preserved shipwreck of a coal barge, which sank in 1891 during a massive storm, has been found at the bottom of Lake Superior in Michigan.

Five of the seven sailors, including a woman who served as the Atlanta's cook, died, leaving only two survivors.

The ship, which was discovered at a depth of over 600 feet, was found amid 2,500 miles of Lake Superior bottom mapped in summer 2021 using side scan sonar. Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum announced its discovery on Thursday.

Video and photos of the discovery clearly show the ship's name, steering wheel, and broken-off mast as it sits roughly 35 miles off of the coast of Deer Park, Michigan.

Lake Superior's frigid, fresh waters are credited with preserving the wreck of the Atlanta in such an intact state.

Shipwreck hunters knew the Atlanta had sunk, and were finally able to track it down after a sonar survey of possible shipwrecks on the lake was carried out in 2021.

'No one has to ask where the Atlanta is anymore,' said Darryl Ertel, the shipwreck society's director of marine operations.

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Sonar image of The Atlanta, which was found 35 miles off Deer Park, Michigan in 650 feet of water in Lake Superior

No photos of the Atlanta before its sinking are known to exist, but the shipwreck society shared this snap of its identical sister ship, the Nirvana

The ship's wheel, pictured above after the discovery of the shipwreck this week

'It is rare that we find a shipwreck that so clearly announces what it is and the name-board of the Atlanta really stands out,' added Bruce Lynn, executive director of the shipwreck society.

'It is truly ornate and still beautiful after 130 years on the bottom of Lake Superior.'

The 172-foot-long Atlanta was under tow with a load of coal on May 4, 1891 when it sank as it was being towed by another vessel after the line snapped during a gale.

The surviving crew members boarded the ship's lifeboat and paddled for several hours until reaching the Crisp Point Life-Saving Station, however they ended up capsizing the lifeboat while attempting to make landfall.

'The Atlanta was soon at the mercy of the lake, and the crew took to the lifeboat,' the group said.

Video and photos of the discovery clearly show the ship's name on the side of the shipwreck

Pictured: one of three broken masts that were destroying when the ship sank during a storm in 1891. None of the three masts were recovered

The Atlanta's wooden caspian is pictured preserved and covered with algae at the bottom of Lake Superior

'They pulled at the oars for several hours and eventually came within site of the Crisp Point Life-Saving Station. While attempting to land their small boat near the station, it overturned and only two of the crew made it safely to the beach.'

The excessively cold temperatures of Lake Superior kept the Atlanta is well-preserved, according to shipwreck society executive director Bruce Lynn.

No photos of the Atlanta before its sinking are known to exist, but the Shipwreck Society shared a snap of its identical sister ship, the Nirvana, to give an idea of what the Atlanta would have looked like prior to its destruction.

The two survivors of the shipwreck had reported that all three masts had snapped amidst the storm, with sonar video confirming that account after finding the ship's deck to be missing all three masts, which have yet to be discovered.

Interestingly enough, another ship named Atlanta, a steamer built the same year the coal barge Atlanta sank, carried passengers and freight on Lake Michigan until it was destroyed in a fire in 1906.

That ship, which was towed toward shore as it burned, currently sits in only 17 feet of water, about 800 feet off Cedar Grove, Wisconsin.
President Biden scoffed at a Senate-passed bill to end the coronavirus national emergency, calling the Republican attempt a 'reckless and costly mistake.'

The bill to terminate the declaration under the National Emergencies Act passed the Senate 48-47, with three Democrats and two Republicans absent from the vote. The national emergency was first enacted in March 2020 under President Trump.

The White House said that if the bill were to reach the president's desk. It said that the national emergency declaration is needed for 'ensuring that necessary supplies are promptly available to respond to the virus and facilitating the delivery of health care.'

Absent on the Democrat side for the vote were Sens. Dianne Feinstein, who is mourning the loss of her husband, Alex Padilla, who recently tested positive for Covid-19, and Mark Kelly. Republicans Jim Inhofe, who also recently contracted Covid-19, and Richard Burr were absent from voting.

In Biden's State of the Union address this week, the president delivered a message of moving on from Covid-19.

'We can end the shutdown of schools and businesses. We have the tools we need. Its time for Americans to get back to work and fill our great downtowns again,' said Biden.

'People working from home can feel safe to begin to return to the office. We're doing that here in the federal government. The vast majority of federal workers will once again work in person. Our schools are open. Let's keep it that way. Our kids need to be in school,' said Biden.

'And with 75 percent of adult Americans fully vaccinated and hospitalizations down by 77 percent, most Americans can remove their masks, return to work, stay in the classroom and move forward safely,' he said.

President Biden scoffed at a Senate-passed bill to end the coronavirus national emergency, calling the Republican attempt a 'reckless and costly mistake'

'After nearly two years of living under this state of emergency, the American people are worn out and yearning to breathe free; they long for their God-given freedoms, and for leaders to take their side,' Sen. Roger Marshall said

His comments came as last week the Centers for Disease Control drastically eased masking recommendations to suggest that most of the country could safely enter public spaces without a mask.

The bill is unlikely to pass the House, where Democrats maintain control. Republican Sen. Roger Marshall, who introduced the bill, used a procedural tactic where a bill can be brought forth for a vote before the full Senate if it is not taken up in committee within two weeks.

It was yet another recent win for Republicans, who passed two bills to repeal the vaccine mandate for healthcare workers at facilities that receive federal funding and the mandate for large corporations. Neither made it through the House.

'After nearly two years of living under this state of emergency, the American people are worn out and yearning to breathe free; they long for their God-given freedoms, and for leaders to take their side. There is no doubt, it's time for our nation to learn to live with COVID,' Marshall R-Kansas, said in a statement on the bill's passing.

'I am proud my colleagues came together to repeal this emergency declaration and delivered a symbolic victory to our citizens that normalcy is around the corner and that limited government and our constitutional rights still reign supreme. It's high time to stop talking about restrictions and the unknown. We must chart a new course to victory today that respects the virus and our freedoms.'

Sen. Minority Leader Chuck Schumer pushed back. 'The best way to ensure that we keep schools open and cases low is by staying at the ready, and that is what these emergency powers enable us to do,' the New York Democrat said in a floor speech.

'By prematurely terminating the national emergency declaration on COVID, it will be harder to ensure we have enough supplies, enough support for health care workers, and it risks throwing tens of millions of student loan borrowers into needless uncertainty and anxiety.'
A drunken RAF employee was led off a domestic flight in handcuffs after he refused to stop vaping and vomited on seats.

Ben Munday, 23, drank his own alcohol and used an e-cigarette in the cabin of the easyJet flight from Gatwick to Inverness, a court heard.

The drink-fuelled antics had a knock-on effect on other flights and Inverness Sheriff Court heard that he single-handedly had lost easyJet 'thousands'.

Ben Munday, 23, drank his own alcohol and used an e-cigarette in the cabin of the easyJet flight from Gatwick to Inverness, a court heard

Munday ignored requests from flight crew to stop, leaving other passengers, including a mother and her two children sitting directly in front of him 'unsettled', before struggling with police removing him from the plane.

Munday pled guilty to being drunk on board an aircraft, smoking, and resisting, obstructing or hindering police officers in execution of their duty.

Fiscal Depute Hilary Michopoulou told the court: 'The flight took off as normal. A short time into the flight air crew were requested to attend where the accused was sitting.

'He was smoking an e-cigarette and appeared to have a bottle of his own alcohol. People sitting next to him said they were unsettled'.

'He was told by flight crew he should not be smoking his e-cigarette on the plane and he was not allowed to drink his own alcohol on the flight.'

The court heard that their warnings went unheeded and a short time later crew returned to find him 'stretched out across all three seats and again smoking his e-cigarette'.

The fiscal went on: 'He was challenged but took several more draws on the e-cigarette and blew the smoke around the cabin.'

Flight crew then alerted the captain to the situation, and a message was sent for police to meet the flight upon landing.

Mrs Micholpoulou told the court: 'Police boarded the flight and were directed to the accused. He was told he was under arrest for his behaviour on the flight.

'The police felt it was appropriate to handcuff him. As they went to put the handcuffs on him he struggled. He continued to struggle as he was taken down the steps.'

Munday was placed in leg restraints before being placed in a police van and taken to a police station. The court heard that the incident caused knock-on issues for the airline due to the time taken to deal with the incident on the tarmac and the fact that Munday had vomited on seats, meaning cleaning had to be undertaken before flights were resumed.

Solicitor Mhyrin Hill, for Munday, told the court that her client had 'very poor mental health' at the time of the incident and was 'using alcohol as a way of self-soothing'.

She said: 'He has shown utter shame and remorse surrounding this.

Inverness Sheriff Court heard the antics had cost easyJet thousands as a knock-on effect for the airline

'It is nothing like he has ever been involved in before and he continues to express regret, remorse and shame in recognising the impact that it would have had on other passengers on the plane.'

She added: 'He did not go out to cause any sort of problem but the alcohol essentially took control of him.'

Handing down a community payback order with 140 hours of unpaid work, Sheriff Gary Aitken told Munday, of West Hay Road, Hayling Island: 'This must have been an exceptionally distressing and frightening experience for many of those on the plane.

'You have no doubt cost easyJet thousands, if not more.

'You have got a job and seem to be well thought of, I trust that this will be the first and last time you will appear in court.'

An RAF spokesman said they were aware of the court case, will consider the court's findings and take any appropriate action.
A convoy of British tanks has been spotted moving towards the Russian border in Estonia.

At least seven tanks were being transported through the NATO country to ramp up defences against Vladimir Putin.

In the video, a driver is heard saying: 'We're following the tanks into battle, eh?'

The other replies: 'Literally, this is heading for the Russian border isn't it'.

Last month, Defence Minister Ben Wallace revealed Britain is deploying hundreds more troops to Estonia to bolster NATO's defences close to Russia.

A convoy of British tanks has been spotted moving towards the Russian border in Estonia

He also committed Typhoon fighter jets and Apache helicopters to strategic positions across Eastern Europe.

'Alongside our NATO allies, we are deploying troops and assets on land, sea and air to bolster European defences in response to the build-up of Russian military forces on the border of Ukraine,' Wallace said in a statement before the invasion was launched.

The Ministry of Defence declined to say how many UK soldiers are now in Estonia but it is thought to be in the high hundreds.

Norwegian soldiers have also landed in Lithuania to bolster NATO's eastern flank amid fears Russia will not stop at Ukraine.

At least seven tanks were being transported through the NATO country to ramp up defences against Vladimir Putin

The Ministry of Defence declined to say how many UK soldiers are now in Estonia but it is thought to be in the high hundreds

Last month, Defence Minister Ben Wallace revealed Britain is deploying hundreds more troops to Estonia to bolster NATO's defences close to Russia

The US recently reinforced the region with some 5,000 additional troops deployed to Poland and Romania.

Earlier this week, Boris Johnson visited Estonia to reinforce Britain's commitment to NATO.

An MoD statement published this week read: 'The UK is doubling the number of personnel in Estonia and sending additional equipment, including tanks and armoured fighting vehicles. The troops and equipment will begin to move to Estonia today.

'The Royal Welsh battlegroup, which includes armoured vehicles and personnel, will leave Sennelager in Germany and bases in the UK and begin to arrive in Estonia during the coming week. Apache helicopters will soon be making their way to conduct exercises with our Allies and partners in Eastern Europe.

Boris Johnson visited Estonia to reinforce Britain's commitment to NATO

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Estonia's Prime Minister Kaja Kallas meet NATO troops in Talinn

'Four additional UK Typhoon jets have also landed in Cyprus and will shortly begin to patrol the skies with NATO Allies in Eastern Europe.

'HMS Trent  a UK Warship  has already begun conducting patrols in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea alongside NATO Allies from Canada, Italy, Spain and Turkey. HMS Diamond is preparing to set sail in the coming days for the Eastern Mediterranean and will join up with NATO allies.'

Today, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told a summit in Brussels that NATO is 'ready' to defend 'every inch' of its territory if Putin decides to attack but is not seeking a war with Russia and will not get involved in Ukraine.

Jens Stoltenberg, head of the alliance who spoke alongside Blinken, said after a meeting of foreign ministers that NATO's responsibility is to protect its 30 member states and to stop the conflict from spilling over into a Europe-wide war.

Jens Stoltenberg (left) and Antony Blinken (right) have today warned Putin that NATO is ready to defend 'every inch' of its territory in the event of a Russian attack, but is not seeking a war

Stoltenberg said the allies did discuss the issue of a no-fly zone over Ukraine - which would involve sending NATO jets to seek and destroy Russian aircraft over the country along with anti-aircraft batteries capable of targeting the airspace - but dismissed it because 'we are not part of this conflict'.

The duo spoke amid concerns in Washington that a 'cornered' Vladimir Putin - who faces near-total condemnation of his invasion abroad, growing dissent at home, and stiffer Ukrainian resistance than he bargained for - may 'lash out' by invading another country or threatening the West with nukes, according to the New York Times.

It came as Russian troops launched an attack on another Ukrainian city - Mykolaiv, in the south - and renewed their bombardment on Kyiv, Kharkiv, Chernihiv and Mariupol.

The nuclear power plant at Zaporizhzhia also came under attack overnight, sparking a fire that raged for four hours before it was put out. America's embassy in Kyiv described the attack as a 'war crime. Russian troops now hold the site.
A San Francisco shoplifter was filmed filling a bag with stolen goods behind the counter of a Walgreens store as staff stood helplessly and watched.

The heist took place on Tuesday at a Walgreens in the Richmond area of the city, and saw the brazen shoplifter hurl bananas and cookies at one man who confronted him.

It is the latest in a long line of shocking shoplifting outrages to hit the famously-liberal Bay Area.

San Francisco and its Bay Area neighbors have been hit hard by a wave of property crimes and smash-and-grab robberies since the start of the pandemic. That has forced multiple branches of Walgreens to close in a bid to stem their theft-related losses amid mounting criticism of soft-on-crime DAs many say are enabling the widespread criminality.

Cellphone video captured by professional photographer Nicholas Stennet shows a man dressed in all black removing items from shelves behind the counter of the San Francisco drug store with utter disregard for two store workers standing right next to him.

One of the employees is on the phone with a 911 dispatcher, reporting a robbery in progress.

At the beginning of the clip, the brazen shoplifter can be seen behind the counter stuffing some of the Walgreens' most valuable items into a huge bag, while helpless staff look on

Moments later, he was confronted by a male shopper, pictured left, but didn't take kindly to the check on his behavior...

'We have this person that is... taking everything from the counter,' the woman says. 'Can you send the cops? Can you send them right away, please?'

The looter, meanwhile, calmly moves to a different section of the counter and continues to fill a plastic bag with a variety of goods, including COVID tests, batteries and electronics, according to one eyewitness.

After ransacking the shelves to his heart's content, the criminal emerges from behind the counter and makes it for the exit.

When a bystander makes an attempt to stand up to him, the audacious bandit grabs a bunch of bananas from a basket and forcefully hurls them at the man, who picks up some of the fruit and lobs them back at the attacker.

...and ended up hurling bananas at the would-be Good Samaritan, who then responded in kind

The shoplifter was evidently angered by the have-a-go hero's decision to stand up to him, and returned to hurl nuts and candy at the unfortunate man

Visibly angered by such a hostile reception, the shoplifter grabs packets of Chips Ahoy! from a nearby shelf and pelts the Good Samaritan with them, before storming out of he store and triggering the alarm on his way out.

Drug store chains like Walgreens and CVS have become attractive and easy targets for shoplifters, leading to numerous store closures in the Bay Area. In the area's largest city, San Francisco, low-level offenses, such as retail thefts, have been effectively de-criminalized under the leadership of progressive District Attorney Chesa Boudin.

Boudin, who in a recent interview with the New York Times argued that tough-on-crime policies do not work and blamed the police for the San Francisco's soaring crime rates, is facing a recall vote on June 7.

Liberal San Francisco DA Chesa Boudin, whose soft-on-crime policies have been blamed for San Francisco's soaring crime rates, is facing a recall vote in June

Roving gangs of criminals have been carrying out brazen smash-and-grab robberies, targeting high-end stores like Louis Vuitton and Burberry, but also national chains like Walgreens and CVS.

Walgreens said last year that retail theft in San Francisco was five times the chain average and security costs were 46 times the chain average, reported San Francisco Chronicle.

According to the latest available crime data, grand larceny rates in California's liberal bastion were up 19 per cent in late February, compared with the same period last year.

California Gov Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, has vowed to crack down on gangs of retail thieves, despite a controversial 2014 law - Proposition 47 - that barred prosecutors from charging suspected shoplifters accused of stealing less than $950 worth of merchandise with felonies.
Longtime GOP operative and Trump confidante Roger Stone denounced Donald Trump as 'a disgrace' who 'betrayed everybody' in new footage from Inauguration Day after he high-tailed it out of Washington on the day of the Capitol riot to avoid being associated with the chaos.

'I really want to get out of here,' he told an aide, as they were followed by a Danish film crew as rioters ransacked the Capitol on Jan. 6. He said he feared prosecution by incoming attorney general Merrick Garland. 'He is not a friend,' Stone said.

Stone allowed a Danish film crew to follow him around for two years for a documentary, A Storm Foretold. Footage, first reported by the Washington Post, was obtained by DailyMail.com.

He told the filmmakers the riot was a mistake and would be 'really bad' for the Trump movement. 'I think it's really bad for the movement. It hurts, it doesn't help. I'm not sure what they thought they were going to achieve.'

Since Election Day, Stone had worked with other right-wing operatives to raise money and put the Jan. 6 protest into action. Dictating text messages to an aide, Stone said he would resurrect the Stop the Steal campaign on Nov. 5. He told another aide his brand would be 'quite a bit hotter.' 'We're going to raise money from Stop the Steal  it will be like falling off a log,' he added.

And though Stone closely associated with several far-right operatives who have since been convicted for their role in the riot, he himself has maintained he was not associated with the violence and had no prior knowledge it would occur.

Stone has refused to testify before the Jan. 6 committee, invoking the Fifth Amendment, and sued members of the panel to prevent them from subpoenaing his phone records.

'I really want to get out of here,' he told an aide, as they were followed by a Danish film crew as rioters ransacked the Capitol on Jan. 6

He said he feared prosecution by incoming attorney general Merrick Garland. 'He is not a friend,' Stone said

Four months before voters even cast their ballot, Stone predicted Democrats would try to steal the election and devised a plot for Trump to hold onto the White House.

'It's going to be really nasty,' Stone said in front of the filmmakers at his home on July 9, 2020.

He told a staffer that Trump should reject the election results and pressure courts whose judges he had appointed rule in his favor.

' 'I'm the president. F--- you,' ' Stone said, imagining Trump's remarks. ' 'You're not stealing Florida, you're not stealing Ohio. I'm challenging all of it, and the judges we're going to are judges I appointed.' '

On Nov. 5, Stone drew up the Stop the Steal plan on his laptop in footage captured by the filmmakers. As protesters were to mobilize, Trump acolytes were to lobby state lawmakers to reject election results.

As rioters breached the Capitol, Stone packed up his belongings and fled D.C.

Stone, pictured above with aide Kristin Davis laying on the couch, said that the Capitol riot would be 'really bad' for the Trump movement

Stone was publicly downplaying his role in the Stop the Steal movement, as he sought a pardon from the president. He wrote in a Nov. 30 blog post that he was 'not a participant' in any of the organizations using the Stop the Steal name in 2020.

On Dec. 23, the White House announced that Trump would pardon Stone for his convictions in the Mueller case. By Dec. 30, Stone had launched a fundraising drive to help fund the rallies and pay for private security.

In early January, Stone returned to Washington and stationed himself near the White House at the Willard hotel, a hub of pro-Trump activity at the time. Stone, surrounded by four members of the far-right group Oath Keepers, attended a Save America rally on Jan. 5. Two of the group's members were charged with seditious conspiracy for allegedly storming the Capitol.

He told the crowd at the Jan. 5 rally he would stand 'shoulder to shoulder' with them the next day in what he described as a fight between good and evil.

But the next day, Stone did not show up for the rally at the Ellipse. He told aides that some of the rally's organizers were trying to exclude him. He told aide Kristin Davis that he had complained to Julia Fancelli, Publix supermarket heiress who bankrolled the day's events, that organizers had prevented him and InfoWars' Alex Jones from appearing on stage.

'I just caused a little problem for them with Julie Fancelli,' Stone said. 'I just told her, 'You spent 300 grand and neither Jones nor I are speaking.'

In the days following Jan. 6, Stone put forth his 'Stone Plan,' where Trump would preemptively pardon himself, Stone, allies in Congress along with other Trump backers including convicted mobsters.

Stone has since encouraged Trump to run again in 2024, and not shown any daylight between himself and the former president. Trump commuted Stone's sentence after he was convicted of obstructing the Russia investigation, but Stone was furious that Trump had put to bed his plan. He blamed White House counsel Pat Cipollone.

'Clearly, Cipollone f---ed everybody,' Stone said in a phone conversation with Steven Brown, who was in federal prison on a fraud conviction. The conversation was recorded by the filmmakers.

'See you in prison,' Stone texted to another Trump associate.

And in an Inauguration Day call with a friend, Stone denounced Trump as 'a disgrace,' and said he supported his impeachment. 'He betrayed everybody,' Stone said.

The plan included securing preemptive pardons for Sens. Ted Cruz, Texas, and Josh Hawley, Mo., and Reps. Matt Gaetz, Fla., and Jim Jordan, Ohio.

Stone was also running a side business pleading felons' cases to Trump for a pardon while he was still in office, and charging hefty fees for his work.

In his Willard hotel room, Stone, wearing a mic, could be heard on the phone with a man representing someone named Henry who, the attorney said 'would be willing to pay up to $100,000.' 'Everything would have to be legal,' the lawyer stressed.

'Actually, it is legal,' Stone said of the arrangement.

Stone then wanted to secure a second pardon for himself for Trump in the former president's final hours of his presidency. Trump was hesitant. He then issued a pardon for Steve Bannon, but not another one for Stone. Stone was enraged, calling Bannon a 'grifter scumbag' and other expletives on camera.

By Inauguration Day, Stone ranted about Jared Kushner, whom he blamed for the Stone plan's failure. 'He's going to get a beating. He needs to have a beating. And needs to be told, 'This time we're just beating you. Next time we're killing you,' Stone said on camera.

Stone pictured above packing his things to ditch DC as rioters stormed the Capitol

In his Willard hotel room, Stone, wearing a mic, could be heard on the phone with a man representing someone named Henry who, the attorney said 'would be willing to pay up to $100,000.' 'Everything would have to be legal,' the lawyer stressed

Aware that cameras were on, an aide urged Stone to say he was joking. 'No, no, it isn't joking. Not joking. It's not a joke.'

Stone said Kushner needed to be 'punished in the most brutal possible way' and would be 'brain dead when I get finished with him.'

Stone then said that Trump was the 'greatest single mistake in history.' He added that Trump could face prosecution by federal prosecutors in Manhattan.

'A good, long sentence in prison will give him a chance to think about it, because the Southern District is coming for him, and he did nothing,' Stone said.

He mocked the idea of Trump running again in 2024. 'Run again! You'll get your f---ing brains beat in.'
Shocking police bodycam footage shows the chaotic aftermath of a Colorado house party after the floor collapsed into the basement, as cops searched for at least a hundred teens feared trapped in the trashed property.

Bodycam footage from responding officers show the inside of the home, which was left completely destroyed after the collapse, as cops work to evacuate the home.

'You guys need to leave. You need to leave now,' one of the officers can be heard telling the group, who are frantically attempting to find their friends amidst the chaos.

Despite the scale of the incident - which saw between 100 and 150 youngsters crash through the floor - just three teens were taken to a hospital, one with serious injuries.

South Metro Fire Rescue said crews responded to the house southeast of Aurora around 9:30 pm on Saturday.

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Body camera video released by the Arapahoe County Sheriff's Office Thursday March 3, 2022 shows the aftermath of a floor collapse at a party in Colorado on February 26, 2022

A police officer responds to the scene, where three people were injured when a portion of the first floor collapsed into the basement during a party involving 100 to 150 juveniles

A fireman arrives on scene after the first floor collapsed into the basement during a party involving 100 to 150 teens, according to officials

Officers work to evacuate the home after the first floor collapsed into the basement

Arapahoe County Sheriff's Office told KUSA that the homeowners were hosting a birthday party for their 18-year-old grandson at the time of the collapse

South Metro Fire Rescue, pictured on scene Saturday, said the collapse caused a natural gas leak, but it has since been shut off and for now the house is not fit for occupancy

Earlier this week, the 18th Judicial District Attorney announced there would be no charges filed in connection with the floor collapsing. The case was closed soon after.

'A portion of the first floor collapsed into the basement due to a large party with 100-150 juveniles inside,' SMFR reported.

Video of the party shows the teens dancing and jumping up and down as the floor finally gives way beneath them in a violent crash.

Arapahoe County Sheriff's Office told KUSA that the homeowners were hosting a birthday party for their 18-year-old grandson at the time of the collapse.

It is not clear if they were home at the time.

A portion of the first floor of Denver home collapsed into the basement due to a large party with 100-150 teenagers dancing inside. Video of the party shows the teens dancing and jumping up and down as the floor finally gives way beneath them in a violent crash

Shocking video footage captured the moment at least a hundred teens fell through the floor of a massive house party in a Denver-area suburb of Colorado over the weekend. Three people were taken to a hospital, one with serious injuries, after the floor collapsed into the basement under the weight of more than 100 partygoers

Two of the partygoers who were among the teens who fell through the floor, said they found out about the party because address of the home was shared on social media

Two of the partygoers who were among the teens who fell through the floor, said they found out about the party because address of the home was shared on social media.

Cass Henry, 15, and his brother AJ Henry, 17, told KUSA that the party quickly got out of hand.

'I think it just got leaked around a little bit so everyone thought it was just an open house,' Cass said. 'People started just showing up.'

Cass went to the hospital for a broken ankle.

'Two seconds before the ground ended up breaking, you could hear it all snapping apart, but you didn't have enough time to do anything about it,' Cass said.

South Metro Fire Rescue said the collapse caused a natural gas leak, but it has since been shut off and for now the house is not fit for occupancy

Authorities have not identified the homeowners or those taken to the hospital, but said it appeared to be a horrible accident and as of right now, there is no criminal investigation.

South Metro Fire Rescue said the collapse caused a natural gas leak, but it has since been shut off and for now the house is not fit for occupancy.

'It's amazing that no one was seriously hurt or killed,' Scott Richardson, special operations chief for SMFR, told KUSA.

Richardson added that he's never before seen a floor collapse in his career quite like this one.

'It's not the static weight of us just standing on [the floor], but if people are jumping up and down, and that creates what we call a "shock load" to the floor, and then you can't really predict what's going to happen,' he said.
The Kentucky State Capitol dome breaks through the morning fog on Thursday, Oct. 14, 2021, in Frankfort, Kentucky. Photo by Martha McHaney | Staff
A police officer who was sacked for pursuing a sexual relationship with a 'highly vulnerable' domestic abuse victim has been named after a newspaper won a year-long legal fight to reveal his identity.

Terry Cooke was sacked after an April 2021 misconduct hearing which revealed he had abused his position to pursue relationships with vulnerable women.

He claimed that an anonymity order had been put in place to prevent his name from being revealed.

A legal challenge was launched by the newspaper Basingstoke Gazette to publish his name and Mr Cooke's solicitors later revealed that there was no anonymity order and referred to the incident as a 'genuine mistake.'

After a High Court hearing in January, Mr Cooke's fresh plea for anonymity was rejected and it was ruled that his details could be published as they were in the public interest.

It comes after ten months of legal exchanges and it can now be revealed that Mr Cooke targeted vulnerable women by using information he found at police scenes.

Mr Cooke was also found to have pursued a sexual relationship with a victim of domestic violence and tried to add a second victim on Facebook.

Terry Cooke (centre) was sacked after an April 2021 misconduct hearing which revealed he had abused his position to pursue relationships with vulnerable women. However, the former Hampshire Constabulary officer had said that an anonymity order protected his identity and prevented details about his misconduct from being made public

He had also asked the victim of a car crash on a date and then rang her friend the next day to ask again.

Justice Ellenbogan ruled that Mr Cooke 'acted improperly' as he falsely claimed an anonymity order had been put in place to prevent his name being revealed.

She also ordered that Mr Cooke pay the Basingstoke Gazette's legal costs.

Speaking after the hearing, Simon Westrop, head of legal at Newsquest, said: 'Police officers should be held to account in their own name when they commit wrongdoing.

'Statutory regulations require misconduct hearings to be held in public.

'Any attempt to suppress information about the identity of an officer is an insult to the victims of misconduct.

'In this case, the Basingstoke Gazette and its publisher Newsquest Media Group could not stand idly by, in spite of the risk and cost attendant on all legal action. It was an important thing to do on behalf of our readers.'

After a High Court hearing, Mr Cooke's plea for anonymity was rejected and said his details could be published as they were in the public interest. Pictured: Portsmouth Police Station

There were four separate incidents where Mr Cooke was found to have breached the police professional standards of behaviour.

- Used personal information gathered at the scenes of police incidents to contact vulnerable women he found attractive

- Pursued a sexual relationship with a victim of domestic violence

- Tried to add a second victim of domestic abuse on Facebook a number of times after being called to her home address

- Asked the victim of a car crash out on a date and called her friend the next day to repeat the invitation

After the misconduct hearing in April 2021, an investigation into the officer was launched by the Independent Office for Police Conduct.

Mr Cooke had messaged a domestic violence victim on Facebook after responding to her 999 call for help.

She had replied to his message: 'Naughty, taking my number from police records to get hold of me, I don't think you're supposed to do that, laugh out loud.'

Mr Cooke then pursued a sexual relationship with her.

Another woman had called the police as she feared for her safety because her ex-husband had come to her home and began to bang on the door.

He had sent her a number of friend requests and a 'wave' after searching the woman on Facebook and she did not respond.

The hearing heard that there was a 'degree of persistence' in his approaches.

And Mr Cooke said during the hearing that he wished to pursue a relationship with her as he found her 'attractive.'

The panel noted: 'The fact is that here again we find the officer abusing confidential information obtained in the course of police work to pursue a personal relationship with a vulnerable victim of domestic abuse.'

A third incident then occurred where the ex-police officer was responding to a car crash and asked one of the victims on a date, telling her to 'look him up' on Facebook.

Mr Cooke wrote her Facebook username into his notebook and called her friend the next day to remind her about his invitation for a date.

Pictured: Hampshire Police chief constable Olivia Pinkney who is responsible for ensuring that policing services meet the public need

Defending Mr Cooke, barrister Alexandra Felix had emphasised his 'long service and the many good things he has done', which the panel noted.

But they ruled Mr Cooke should be sacked from Hampshire Constabulary without notice as they said his misconduct was so serious.

When he was sacked, Mr Cooke and his lawyers threatened the Basingstoke Gazette with legal action as the newspaper sought to report his name.

A legal challenge was launched by the Gazette and its publisher Newsquest against the chair of the police misconduct panel, William Hansen QC.

It came after Mr Cooke's lawyers, Penningtons Manches Cooper, claimed that the chair placed an anonymity order to block reporting.

After proceedings started, it emerged that no anonymity order had been made.

Jonathan Scherbel-Ball, representing the Gazette, said at the High Court that Mr Cooke's claims through his solicitors that an anonymity direction had been made led to proceedings being launched on a false basis.

The Gazette and Mr Cooke's lawyers came head-to-head at the High Court on January 25 and January 28 after a 10-month-long dispute.

Defending Mr Cooke, Darryl Hutcheon claimed that his client's insistence there was an anonymity order was a 'genuine mistake.'

But Jonathan Price, defending the misconduct chair, said: 'Mr Cooke could have been under no misapprehension. Mr Hansen's covering email clearly summarised the orders which he had made.'

During the High Court proceedings in January, Mr Cooke applied for an anonymity order to prevent the paper from publishing his name. But it was rejected by the Judge Justice Naomi Ellenbogen. Pictured: The Hampshire Constabulary headquarters in Winchester

During the High Court proceedings in January, Mr Cooke applied for an anonymity order to prevent the paper from publishing his name.

But it was rejected by the Judge Justice Naomi Ellenbogen.

She said: 'Open justice is a fundamental principle of the common law. Its justification is the 'value of public scrutiny as the guarantor of the quality of justice' and 'its significance has, if anything, increased in an age which attached growing importance to the public accountability of public officers and institutions and to the availability of information about the performance of their functions.'

A spokesperson for Penningtons Manches Cooper said: 'We recognise and support the important role that the press plays as the public's watchdog for matters such as police misconduct proceedings, and the public interest in the responsible reporting of the same.

'However, it is not an unfettered right and there are sometimes compelling individual factors which mean that right should be restricted.'

Mr Cooke had worked for Hampshire Constabulary for 20 years and was commended in 2017 by chief constable Olivia Pinkney for his deployment helping the British Virgin Islands after Hurricane Irma.
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The brutal reality of war came to a village in western Ukraine today when a soldier who gave his life defending Kyiv was laid to rest.

Mykola Zhdanyanchyn was among hundreds of Ukrainian soldiers killed or wounded in fierce fighting at the battle of Vasylkiv  a strategically important town near the capital - in the first few days of the war.

Today his friends, neighbours and almost every resident of Turka, a village in the Carpathian mountain close to the border with Poland, packed the streets to honour Mykola, who had made the ultimate sacrifice for his country.

Mykola Zhdanyanchyn was laid to rest in Ukraine today in an open casket funeral as villagers paid their respects

He was among hundreds of Ukrainian soldiers killed or wounded in fierce fighting at the battle of Vasylkiv, pictured doing a pro-democracy salute

Today his friends, neighbours and almost every resident of Turka, a village in the Carpathian mountain close to the border with Poland, packed the streets

Hundreds of well-wishers stood for over an hour on the village's ice-packed pavements

He had been defending a strategically important town near the capital in the first few days of the war

Hundreds of well-wishers stood for over an hour on the village's ice-packed pavements in temperatures of minus 5 degrees Celsius to remember the 49-year-old.

Snowflakes fell from the sky as the mourners took part in the Christian Orthodox funeral service at the village's Church of St Peter and St Paul at lunchtime today, taking off their hats and crossing themselves.

Every pew in the church was full and the service was pipped out on to the streets by loud speakers.

Traffic came to a standstill and fireman stood to attention outside their fire station as Mykola was carried through the streets in an open coffin and draped in the Ukrainian blue and yellow flat to the village's frozen cemetery.

Snowflakes fell from the sky as the mourners took part in the Christian Orthodox funeral service

Traffic came to a standstill and fireman stood to attention outside their fire station as Mykola was carried through the streets

He was draped in the Ukrainian blue and yellow flat and was taken to the village's frozen cemetery

'Mykola is a hero,' one well-wisher told MailOnline. 'He died protecting our land, our country. No one will ever forget him.'

In a tribute to their fallen son, the Turka mayor's office said: 'Today, March 4th, the village of Turka said goodbye to the fallen hero Mykola Zhdanyanchyn.

'The funeral and farewell ceremony with the hero took place at the Church of St Peter and St Paul.

'Mykola Zhdanyanchyn was buried in the local cemetery.

'Eternal memory of the hero!'

Every pew in the church was full and the service was pipped out on to the streets by loud speakers

Mykola Zhdanyanchyn was a part of the Ukrainian Army's 128th brigade that fought off a Russian parachute regiment

He was killed in the early hours on 27th February, on the third day of the Russian invasion

Amid heavy fighting the Ukrainian forces managed to retain control of the city of Vasylkiv and the nearby air base, despite suffering many casualties

The mayor of Vaslkiv, Natalia Balasynovych, later confirmed that Mykola and his comrades had repelled the assault

The failure of the Russian Army mission to capture the military air base seriously hampered their planned onslaught on the capital Kyiv

On the day that Mykola was killed a Ukrainian fighter pilot shot down two Ilyushin II-76 Russian troop carrier plane killing hundreds of paratroopers

Mykola Zhdanyanchyn was a part of the Ukrainian Army's 128th brigade that fought off a Russian parachute regiment who had dropped from the skies to try to capture the Vasylkiv Military Air Base.

He was killed in the early hours on 27th February, on the third day of the Russian invasion.

Amid heavy fighting the Ukrainian forces managed to retain control of the city of Vasylkiv and the nearby air base, despite suffering many casualties.

The mayor of Vaslkiv, Natalia Balasynovych, later confirmed that Mykola and his comrades had repelled the assault by the Russian paratroopers on the military air base near the city.

On the day that Mykola was killed a Ukrainian fighter pilot shot down two Ilyushin II-76 Russian troop carrier plane killing hundreds of paratroopers.

The failure of the Russian Army mission to capture the military air base seriously hampered their planned onslaught on the capital Kyiv.
Victoria Coates served as the Deputy National Security Advisor for the Middle East and North Africa on the National Security Council staff and the Senior Policy Advisor to the Secretary of Energy in the Donald J. Trump administration

In a bombshell revelation, career State Department diplomats-turned-whistleblowers have allegedly told my former Trump administration colleagues that the new Iran nuclear deal being concluded in Vienna is so dangerous that they need to sound the alarm.

As the world is distracted by Russia's invasion of Ukraine and while President Joe Biden condemns Vladimir Putin on the world stage -- the U.S. is in talks with Kremlin negotiators to revive the agreement with the Islamic fundamentalist leaders of Iran.

And it is said to be 24 to 48-hours away from being finalized.

Former senior State Department official Gabriel Noronha blew the lid off of this earlier this week by publishing details of these alleged concessions on Twitter.

As reported, the terms of this new bargain are weaker than the agreement negotiated under President Barack Obama.

Bidens senior envoy for Iran, Rob Malley, is apparently so determined to deliver a 'win' for his boss that hes willing to make unprecedented concessions to get Tehran back into an agreement.

It is difficult to see how this new deal is driven by anything other than the Biden's administration's desire for a short-term political victory that they can tout to a domestic audience.

Bidens senior envoy for Iran, Rob Malley, is apparently so determined to deliver a 'win' for his boss that hes willing to make unprecedented concessions to get Tehran back into an agreement.

(Above) Robert Malley, US Special Representative for Iran

Unfortunately, it puts the world at greater risk.

For example, Irans Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) will be removed from the Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) list, and Irans President, Ebrahim Raisi, will have his human rights-related sanctions removed.

Neither terrorism nor human rights abuses have anything to do with the nuclear program, but the Iranians are known to drive a hard bargain.

As the Senior Director and then Deputy National Security Advisor for the Middle East and North Africa at the White House when the IRGC was designated and Raisi sanctioned, both in 2019, I personally oversaw the interagency process that produced the FTO designation recommendation for President Trump.

This unprecedented designation of a foreign military was not an action we took lightly, and it was critical that all voices were heard and the strongest possible case was built.

In the end, the evidence that the IRGC had crossed the line from sponsoring terrorism to becoming the active implementer of the terrorism directed by the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was overwhelming.

From Lebanon to Iraq to Yemen, the IRGC under (then) Quds Force commander Qassam Soliemani was embedding with terrorist proxies to not only train and equip them, but also to participate directly in the attacks.

According to Pentagon, proxies sponsored by the IRGC killed at least 603 U.S. military personnel during the war in Iraq.

During the Trump administration, the IRGC targets included civilian infrastructure such as the Dubai Airport, energy infrastructure such as commercial shipping vessels in the Red Sea and Persian Gulf, and even gatherings of Iranian opposition groups in Paris.

And even as these infrastructure attacks were being plotted and in some cases executed, senior Iranian regime officials continued to meet with their former Obama administration counterparts to keep dreams of reviving the 2015 deal alive after President Trump exited it in 2018.

The case against Raisi, who has acted as Supreme Leader Ali Khameneis family enforcer for decades, was even more damning.

Under an executive order issued by President Trump in 2019, Raisi was sanctioned for the 1988 extra-judicial murders of some 5,000 people.

In addition, he was complicit in the brutal 2009 crackdown on the Green Revolution, the mass political movement that arose in Iran following another fraudulent presidential election.

Instead of listening to our regional partners and critical ally Israel the administration has been listening to the Russians and Chinese. (Above) Russian envoy, Mikhail Ulyanov

Rather than holding him accountable, lifting the sanctions on him means that he will be able to travel to America for events such as the United Nations General Assembly and be able to engage with western media as his predecessor, Hassan Rouhani, did so effectively on behalf of the Supreme Leader.

But the reality is that the last time sanctions were relaxed on the regime in Tehran, we saw no improvement in either their practice of state-sanctioned terrorism or their abuse of human rights.

Rather, there was a direct corollary between the increased revenues coming into Iran due to increased oil sales and the regimes expenditures on offensive military capabilities and training and equipping proxiesas well as oppressing the long-suffering Iranian people, who saw none of these resources expended on the services they so desperately need.

In addition, we can have no confidence that the Supreme Leaders documented aspirations for a nuclear weapon have been assuaged.

Thanks to the Israeli exposure of the Iranian nuclear archive in 2018, we know that the original nuclear deal was based on a lie.

Throughout those negotiations, the Iranian regime insisted their nuclear program was peaceful and that they never wanted a bomb. But the carefully preserved and guarded plans for nuclear weapons discovered by the Israelis tell a different story.

Rather than giving these materials up to demonstrate their good faith when a deal was reached, the regime kept them secret so they could be revived once the sunsets on the nuclear deal expired.

Additionally, Noronha reports that the revived agreement will not extend the previously negotiated sunsets clauses, which stipulate how long provisions on Iran's nuclear program remain in place.

In the original 2015 deal, there were no restrictions to prevent Tehran from producing weapons-grade fuel for a nuclear bomb after 2031.

Reportedly, that timeframe has not been revised.

Observers of these negotiations are not entirely shocked.

In fact, one key member of the U.S. negotiating team, Richard Nephew, stepped down from his position in January over disagreements with Malley over the direction of the talks.

Additionally, Malley has a history of dealing with terror groups. He was terminated from his role as informal adviser to Obama's first presidential campaign when it was revealed that he was holding talks with Hamas.

The only thing that will slow Tehran down will be to deprive them of resources and hold them accountable for their crimes against America and our allies, as well as against their own people.

Yet the Biden administration insists on doing the opposite and is racing towards a deal that will not only legitimize but enrich the Iranians and give them the resources they will use to continue their pursuit of a bomb.

President Biden would do well to look at two embarrassing sanctions-related episodes from his first year in office to assess how badly these new moves may backfire: the removal of the Yemeni Iranian proxies the Houthi from the FTO list last March, and the refusal to uphold sanctions on Putins Nord Stream 2 pipeline, then to lobby against the Congressional attempt to reimpose them.

We can have no confidence that the Supreme Leaders (pictured above) documented aspirations for a nuclear weapon have been assuaged.

The Houthi action was ostensibly taken to facilitate humanitarian assistance to Yemen but it was in fact a concession to their Iranian sponsors to tempt Iran back to the negotiating table in Vienna.

The removal of the NS 2 sanctions was ostensibly in deference to Germany, but it was in fact a concession to Russia to maintain the Russian delegations participation in the nuclear negotiations in Vienna.

Instead of listening to our regional partners and critical ally Israel the administration has been listening to the Russians and Chinese, who have no doubt been pedaling appealing fictions about cementing Bidens legacy as a peacemaker to get into a deal they both want: China for the cheap gas and Russia for an enriched client state in the Middle East.

This deal will not only make the world less safe by financing Iranian terrorism, but even more dangerously will fuel Tehran in its race to build a nuclear weapon.

The US must return to the Trump administration's maximum pressure campaign so we can use leverage, rather than appeasement, to prevent Iran from getting a bomb.

In the end, however, there is no mechanism to ensure the provisions of this deal survive the Biden presidency unless it is passed as a treaty through the US Senatewhich will not happen because the American people do not want this deal with the devil.

As the horror of Ukraine should demonstrate to us all, appeasement of the world's worst actors will only embolden them to pursue greater power and domination.
Five women were arrested on suspicion of cocaine smuggling at a Colombian airport after cops allegedly caught one of them concealing the drug in a fake baby bump.

Agents made the bust early Friday when they noticed that one of the five women was pretending to be pregnant while passing through security screening area at Ernesto Cortissoz International Airport in Barranquilla.

The woman, who was traveling with the rest of the suspects to the capital city of Bogota, was pulled aside for a secondary inspection.

Airport police detected several plastic wrapped bundles of the Type A party drug wrapped around her abdomen and placed her under arrest.

Police at Ernesto Cortissoz International Airport in Barranquilla, Colombia, intercepted and arrested five women and a man who were trying to fly to Bogota on Friday with 16 and a half kilos of cocaine. Authorities busted the smugglers after they noticed that one of the women was faking a pregnancy by strapping several plastic wrapped bundles of cocaine to her stomach

Authorities at Ernesto Cortissoz International Airport in Barranquilla, Colombia, confiscated 16.5 kilos of cocaine from five women who had 14 bundles of the drug tapped to their abdomens

Subsequently, the flight was temporarily grounded at the gate, allowing officers to search her four female companions, who also had the cocaine packages over their bellies.

At least one of the women went inside the airplanes bathroom and removed three cocaine bundles before she was also busted.

Colombian newspaper El Heraldo identified the defendants as Olga Charris; Shelian De Leon; Sharon Naranjo; Laura Saenz; Angie Contreras; as well as a man who was also arrested named Wilmer Contreras.

In all, authorities were able to seize 14 bundles of cocaine and confiscated an unknown amount of psychedelic drugs that Contreras was in possession of.

Colombian airport police officers at Ernesto Cortissoz International Airport in Barranquilla stopped five women from smuggling 16 and a half kilos of cocaine aboard a Bogota-bound flight Friday morning

A spokesperson for the Barranquilla Metropolitan Police told DailyMail.com that the six suspects were turned over to the Attorney Generals office and are facing charges that include the manufacture, trafficking or possession of narcotics.

Prosecutors have 36 hours to formally charge each of the six suspects.

Fridays bust comes after customs agents at El Dorado International Airport in Medellin intercepts a box with six kilos of extasy pills that had been shipped aboard a flight from Madrid on February 12.

Police said the pills were scheduled to be delivered to Cartagena, near Barranquilla, and sold in nightclubs and bars.
Court heard couple had split after Chmielecki became increasingly 'controlling' and 'abusive'

He kept her body in bedroom before police raid on the property in Kettering

Pawel Chmielecki, 39, is facing life in prison after admitting to murdering his estranged wife Marta Chmielecka, 31, at a property in Kettering, Northants

A jealous thug who murdered his 'loving and vibrant' ex-wife and kept her body in his bedroom for two days before a botched suicide bid is facing life in prison.

Pawel Chmielecki, 39, stabbed Marta Chmielecka, 31, in the throat after she refused to rekindle their relationship.

Police were alerted by her family after they received suspicious text messages suggesting someone else was using her phone.

Officers raided a terraced property in Kettering, Northants., where Chmielecki was staying, on October 19 last year.

They found her body in Chmielecki's bedroom and as they tried to arrest him, he slashed his own throat with a knife.

He was rushed to hospital where he was treated for his injuries before he was charged with murder.

Yesterday, Chmielecki admitted murder when he appeared at Northampton Crown Court.

The court heard the couple, from Poland, were married but Marta left Chmielecki who had become increasingly 'controlling' and 'abusive'.

His Honour Judge David Herbert QC told him: 'You have pleaded guilty to murder.

'There can only be one sentence for the offence of murder, life imprisonment.'

Marta Chmielecka who was found dead after officers forced entry to a house in Kettering, Northamptonshire. After police found her body in Chmielecki's bedroom and as they tried to arrest him, he slashed his own throat with a knife

The court heard the couple, from Poland, were married but Marta left Chmielecki who had become increasingly 'controlling' and 'abusive'

Detective Inspector Pete Long, of Northamptonshire Police, said: 'Marta Chmielecka was a young, vibrant and much-loved woman who was killed at the hands of a jealous, controlling ex-husband.

'She had broken away from a relationship of domestic abuse and was starting to enjoy life again, meeting new people and coming out of her shell once more.

'Pawel Chmielecki could not accept this and at his hands, Marta's promising future was extinguished.

'He then tried to kill himself when officers forced entry into Wood Street, however was unsuccessful, and will now be looking at a long stretch in prison staring at the four walls of a cell.

Police at the property on Wood street in Kettering where Marta's body was discovered

'Violence against women, especially at the hands of a current or former partner, is a very real issue.

'No sentence or no amount of justice will bring Marta back but a small comfort is that they do not have to go through the trauma of a trial.

'I hope they also take comfort in the fact that Pawel Chmielecki will be spending a long time behind bars as a result of his actions.'

In a statement, Marta's family said: 'Marta was always smiling. She was a very kind and caring person and life will never be the same without her. We miss her every day.'

Chmielecki was remanded in custody and will return to court on March 28 when he will be told the length of his minimum jail term.
A judge ruled that two undercover FBI agents who poses as members of a far-right militia snared for plotting to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer will have to testify in court using their real names.

Chief U.S. District Judge Robert Jonker said the two agents, who have only been known as 'Mark' and 'Red,' will have to make their real identities known after the trial begins next week at the U.S. District Court in Grand Rapids, Michigan, the Detroit Free Press reported.

Jonker said it was to ensure militia members Adam Fox, 38, Daniel Harris, 24, Brandon Caserta, 33, and Barry Croft, 46, are given a fair trial for their alleged role in the 2020 plot orchestrated with five other members.

In his decision, Jonker wrote: 'Making it crystal clear to the jury and the public that inside the courtroom, nothing is undercover and everything is out in the open will best ensure fairness during trial and eventual acceptance and respect for whatever the jury ultimately decides.'

A federal judge said that militia members Adam Fox (top-left), Daniel Harris (top-right), Brandon Caserta (bottom-right) and Barry Croft (bottom-left) will be allowed face their accusers in person as he denied requests to allow two undercover FBI informants to testify against the men using their false identities of 'Mark' and 'Red'

The men are accused of plotting to kidnap Michigan Gov. Michell Whitmer in 2020 because of the COVID-19 mandates she put in place. The defense has argued that the plot was never real and that the men were entrapped by the FBI agents

The two agents will have to testify using their real names when the trial beings on March 8

Chief U.S. District Judge Robert Jonker said his decision was to ensure a fair and open trial for the accused men

'Mark' and 'Red' were among the agents who infiltrated the Wolverine Watchmen extremist group in a messy operation that saw some informants kicked off the case and others accused of misbehavior and inciting illegal activities within the militia.

According to court documents, 'Mark' had posed as a local resident and was tasked with scouting the governor's summer home while 'Red' was introduced to the group by 'Mark' as a demolitions expert who could make bombs for the group.

Prosecutors said Fox, Harris, Caserta and Croft joined the militia's plot to kidnap Whitmer because of her COVID-19 mandates and argued that the two FBI agents should be allowed to keep their identities hidden as they are involved in other anti-terrorism investigations.

Defense attorneys claimed hat the four men had a right to confront their accusers and know who they are and that keeping their identities a secret would also hinder proper cross examinations.

'At this point in the case, the court believes the balance of interests tips decidedly in favor of openness,' Jonker wrote. 'It is time for all guise and pretense to end and for the prosecution to present the evidence in an open forum with witnesses testifying using their true identity.'

The defense has argued that there was never any real plot to kidnap the Michigan governor and that the defendants were entrapped by the FBI.

Earlier this week, Jackson County Circuit Judge Thomas Wilson ruled that three other militia members, Joseph Morrison, 27; his 44-year-old father-in-law Pete Musico, and Paul Bellar, 23, were not entrapped by the FBI.

Another federal judge ruled earlier this week that Joseph Morrison (left), Pete Musico (center) and Paul Bellar (right) were not entrapped by the FBI into taking part in a thwarted plot to kidnap Michigan Gov Gretchen Whitmer in 2020

Paul Bellar is seen with a stars and stripes face mask inside the Michigan state capitol in Lansing on April 30. Bellar is one of three founders of the Wolverine Watchmen, which has been described as an anti-government militia

Joe Morrison (far right), Paul Bellar (second right) and Pete Musico (red checked shirt) are pictured during an April 30, 2020, protest against Whitmer's policies

In January 2021, Ty Gerard Garbin, 25, became the first of the nine men accused to plead guilty to the plot, with Kaleb Franks, 27, pleading guilty last month and also agreeing to testify against their fellow co-conspirators.

According to a court affidavit, Musico and Morrison are founding members of the Wolverine Watchmen.

In the case against the two men, an FBI informant identified in court on Monday as 'Dan' testified about his communications and conversations with the defendants.

He told the court that he was trying to de-escalate the group and provide accessibility to the FBI.

Defense attorneys, however, said some of their clients' activities were initiated by the informant who was controlled by the FBI.

Dan took over the training exercises, introducing a much higher level of military tactics, defense lawyers said.

In his plea deal, Franks denied that those he knew in the case were directed to act by informants.

'The defendant was not entrapped or induced to commit any crimes by these individuals,' Franks wrote in a signed, 19-page agreement.

Wilson ultimately said he found no basis for entrapment in the case against Morrison, Musico and Bellar.

In October, the US Attorney's Office released video and text messages which prosecutors say is evidence in their case against the six men who face federal conspiracy to kidnap charges against Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer

Men were seen carrying out supposed tactical training exercise after exiting a PT Cruiser

Despite Wilson's ruling, the FBI continues to be under fire for their handling of the case.

One agent was fired last summer after being charged with domestic violence, while another - who supervised 'Dan' - tried to build a private security consulting firm based in part on some of his work for the F.B.I.

Michael German, a former undercover F.B.I. agent, told The New York Times in January that he disagreed with the tactics, and accused the agency of manufacturing complicated, theatrical scenarios rather than pursuing the more complex task of unearthing actual extremist plots.

German, who is now a fellow at the Liberty & National Security Program of the Brennan Center for Justice, said: 'Rather than focus on those crimes and investigating them, there appears to be more interest in this method of manufacturing plots for the F.B.I. to solve.'

He said that the questions over the role of 'Dan' and other informants was a gift to the defense.

'There is certainly a lot of lumber that this case seems to have given defense attorneys to build a story about what happened,' he said.
A British veteran sniper said he told his wife he was going birdwatching before travelling to the Ukraine to help fight Vladimir Putin's forces.

The father-of-two, from Wirral, north west England, said his wife would 'freak out' when she realised that he had flew into Poland to join the fight in the Ukraine.

The veteran, who asked to remain anonymous, said he wanted to help the 'overwhelmed' Ukrainian army from the Russian president, who he described as a 'modern-day Adolf Hitler'.

Speaking in Medyka, Poland, he told The Sun: 'She's [wife] going to freak out when I tell her where I am, I'll ring her when I'm in Ukraine and explain.'

A British veteran sniper said he told his wife he was going birdwatching before travelling to the Ukraine to help fight Putin's forces. Pictured: Ukrainian military near Sytnyaky on Thursday

He said he felt like he couldn't sit back and watch when he has military experience, saying his children are grown up and he has done what he needed to do as a husband and father.

'If I don't come back, then so be it,' he added.

Grandfather Ian Parkinson, 60, from Wirral, was also at the border and said he understands that most people wouldn't travel to the Ukraine to fight.

Mr Parkinson, who is a former soldier turned photographer, added that everyone can do something to help the Ukrainian war as he criticised politicians for not doing enough.

He said: 'I'd rather not die, I haven't come here to die and I want to go back and see my family and my grandchildren.'

It comes after men were seen gathering outside the Ukrainian embassy in west London to answer Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky call to arms for foreign fighters to join his country's defence against Russia.

Foreign Secretary Liz Truss appeared to encourage Britons saying she would 'absolutely support' those who wished to sign up to fight as part of the Ukrainian armed forces.

But lawyers later warned that Britons who fight in Ukraine could be prosecuted under UK terror laws - much like those who took arms for Kurdish militia forces against ISIS in Syria.

UK 'Lads Army' volunteers eager to take on Vladimir Putin's Russian forces could be prosecuted under UK law if they go to fight in Ukraine, Boris Johnson (pictured) has hinted

And Prime Minister Boris Johnson has warned members of the so-called 'Lads Army' that they could be breaking British law by going over to Ukraine to fight.

Giving a speech in Estonia, Mr Johnson said: 'I can understand why people feel as they do but we have laws in our country about international conflicts and how they should be conducted.'

Asked if, in the wake of Ms Truss's comments, that the Government was encouraging Britons to fight, he replied: 'The UK is not actively doing any such thing.'

Meanwhile, ex-infantryman Shaun Pinner, who is fighting as a 'contract soldier' alongside the Ukrainian armed forces, said he has endured a 'week of intense fighting'.

The 48-year-old, who previously served in the Royal Anglian Regiment, also confirms a number of his squad have died saying: 'We've lost a couple of guys today'.

Mr Pinner filmed the dispatch two days ago as Vladimir Putin's men laid siege to Kyiv and other major Ukranian cities. In the video he does not reveal his location for security reasons.

'I can't tell you where we are, because of op sec (operations security),' he says.

'But this is a school that the Russians have just bombed. It's about 7km off the frontline. We're just taking a bit of respite, we've just had a week of intense fighting.

Meanwhile, ex-infantryman Shaun Pinner, who is fighting as a 'contract soldier' alongside the Ukrainian armed forces, said he has endured a 'week of intense fighting'

Leon Dawson, 37, is seen telling journalists he is prepared to lose his life fighting to defend Ukraine as a volunteer in the country's newly announced foreign legion

'We've lost a couple of guys today. It's chaos to be honest. This was a thriving little town. Until obviously the Red Army decided to show up.

'So we are till ongoing, we're putting up a resistance. Thanks for all the support you've given us.'

This week, a London banker arrived at the Ukrainian embassy in London to volunteer to fight against Russia.

The 'Lads Army' volunteering to fight in Ukraine Leon Dawson A 37-year-old gym boss from Surrey, Leon Dawson has no prior military experience. But speaking outside the Ukrainian embassy in London yesterday, where he volunteered for the country's newly established foreign legion, he said: 'We're young, strong, fit men and we can help, so why not?' Leon runs The Physique Warehouse Gym in Moseley, on the outskirts of west London. Tom Konarzewski Originally from Poland, and friends with Leon Dawson, Tom Konarzewski runs a dog care business in Surrey. His business is called Walk-Me. Founded in 2007, it is a dog-walking business aimed at high-flying professionals. It also offers daycare and overnight services. On signing up to join Ukrain's Foreign Legion, he said: ' 'What we've seen on the TV, in my opinion, is wrong,' he said. 'We'd like to get over there as soon as possible.' Brian Grove Brian Grove is a 60-year-old former Territorial Army (TA) member from Kent. He told Sky News reporters he had 'decided to do something' to help under siege Ukrainians. 'I used to be in the TA, I've also got a lot of first aid training so I've decided to come and do something,' he said. Asked if he's prepared to fight, Mr Grove, from Sittingbourne in Kent, replies: 'Yes, I can get on a flight tomorrow.' Roger Conway The 34-year-old from Newcastle went to the Ukrainian Embassy, where he collected an email address to volunteer his services, that he immediately wrote. Speaking to the PA news agency near the embassy in West London, he said: 'We've convinced ourselves that we're stepping in and we're helping by having Facebook photos and tweeting solidarity but it doesn't really make a difference to anyone. 'Solidarity doesn't look real if you don't do anything'. Mr Conway, who works as a contractor in finance, said he had never been in the army. 'I've never been in but I've not got kids, I'm 34, feel fit'. Asked if he was scared, he said: 'Possibly a little but that's no reason not to do anything in life. I'm ready, I think'. Sam Ottaway Sam Ottaway, 38, works at a bank in the City and has no combat experience, but came down to volunteer in his lunch break. Sam said: 'It's the right thing to do, can't see that happen. History has taught us that this stuff doesn't just stop does it? 'George Orwell is one of my heroes. Homage to Catalonia. 'People have done this before in history, volunteering for good causes. And if this isn't a good cause, I don't know what is.' Jason Luck Jason Luck has family in Mykolaiv, a city near the Black Sea in southern Ukraine. He served for 12 years in the British Army and feels he has something to offer in the fight. He is due to fly out on Wednesday. Jason said: 'My family are in Ukraine. Fighting isn't my priority. My family is my priority. I live in Surrey but go back and forwards. First it was the pandemic, now this idiot [Putin].' Shaun Pinner A 48-year-old ex-soldier with a Ukrainian wife. He is already on the front lines. He is married to a Ukrainian woman and has been in Donbas for the past four years. Mr Pinner previously served in the Royal Anglian Regiment and said he fought with the Ukrainian army as a 'contract soldier'. Liam Hawkins A 30-year-old father with no military experience. He drove to the Ukrainian embassy from Deptford, south-east London, to sign up to help refugees stuck at the border in a humanitarian capacity. 'I havent slept since this invasion and I just cant stay at home with my babies and my missus and do nothing. 'I know its dangerous, people are trying to talk me out of it, but I believe I can make a difference.' Matthew Green A 47-year-old from London, who retired as a Staff Sergeant six months ago. He said: 'I want to fight for diplomacy. 'I think the British military are stuck and I'm sure we would send our men if we could. It's the perfect timing for me as I was discharged six months ago. 'I have no connection with Ukraine or Russia, but I want to do my part.' Alex Pickett A 32-year-old from Andover, Hants, who works in private security. He said: 'I will do whatever I can in whatever way I can. 'I'm just slowly getting my affairs in order so that I can go when they tell me. I'm non-military, but I'm an Englishman. 'I'm a free man who is fighting for a free world and is willing to do his part. 'All it takes for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing.' Antony Zamparelli A father-of-seven who served in the Army but has never been in a conflict. Mr Zamparelli told GB News he was willing to die for the Ukrainian cause and urged other Brits to 'go to Ukraine if you're willing to fight for freedom'. Akos Horvadh A 28-year-old Hungarian man living in the UK. He says he is nervous about telling his parents but is adamant about going to fight. Akos said: 'I'm Hungarian. Ukraine is my neighbour. I can't stand to see what goes on there. 'As I see it, what they really need is people to go there and fight. I have a little experience. I know how to use a gun. 'If I go there there is a chance I could die. But that's the truth of war. I could die, lose my limbs, I'm aware. But someone needs to go.' Advertisement

Sam Ottaway, 38, works at a bank in the City and has no combat experience, but volunteered in his lunch break.

Mr Ottaway, who described British writer George Orwell as one of his heroes and an inspiration for his decision to join the fight, said: 'It's the right thing to do, can't see that happen. History has taught us that this stuff doesn't just stop does it?'

Gym owner Leon Dawson, 37, earlier this week told reporters he was prepared to lose his life fighting to defend Ukraine as a volunteer in the country's newly formed Foreign Legion.

Standing outside the Ukrainian embassy with other would-be-fighters, including his friend Tom Konarzewski, who is originally from Poland and who runs a dog care business, he told reporters from Sky News: 'We're young, strong, fit men and we can help, so why not?'

'We don't want to die. We're obviously scared. But if we're scared, we can imagine how the innocent women and children feel. I can't sit here and just let that happen.'

Asked if his family were aware, Mr Dawson, who has no military experience, said: 'My family are upset. Obviously it is a hard time.'

Among those attending the Ukrainian embassy earlier this week was Brian Grove, a 60-year-old former Territorial Army (TA) member from Kent. He told Sky News reporters he had 'decided to do something' to help under siege Ukrainians.

'I used to be in the TA, I've also got a lot of first aid training so I've decided to come and do something,' he said.

Asked if he's prepared to fight, Mr Grove replies: 'Yes, I can get on a flight tomorrow.'

Others to arrive at the embassy to volunteer included Akos Horvadh. The 28-year-old says he is nervous about telling his parents but is adamant about going to fight.

Akos said: 'I'm Hungarian. Ukraine is my neighbour. I can't stand to see what goes on there.

'As I see it, what they really need is people to go there and fight. I have a little experience. I know how to use a gun.

'If I go there there is a chance I could die. But that's the truth of war. I could die, lose my limbs, I'm aware. But someone needs to go.'

Though many who have arrived at the embassy have no previous combat experience, one man to volunteer, Jason Luck, does.

Jason Luck, who has family in Mykolaiv, a city near the Black Sea in southern Ukraine, served for 12 years in the British Army. He was due to fly out on Wednesday.

He said: 'My family are in Ukraine. They're in the east of the country. I've got my partner, her boy, my daughter.

'Fighting isn't my priority. My family is my priority. I live in Surrey but go back and forwards. First it was the pandemic, now this idiot [Putin].'

Jason, who is in his late 40s, refused the offer from Ukrainian authorities to pay for his flights.

'I'm going out Wednesday. I need to. I'm really worried. I've got a twisted feeling in my stomach,' he said.

'I want to go out there to protect my city. I don't want to end up in Kyiv. I want to be near my family. That's why I'm here.

'I don't want to join Ukrainian regular forces. This is why I'm here to explain to them. I'm happy to fight but I want to be there for my family.'

Matthew Green, 47, from London, who retired as a Staff Sergeant six months ago, said: 'I want to fight for diplomacy.

'I think the British military are stuck and I'm sure we would send our men if we could. It's the perfect timing for me as I was discharged six months ago.

'I have no connection with Ukraine or Russia, but I want to do my part.

Alex Pickett, 32, from Andover, Hants, who works in private security, said: 'I will do whatever I can in whatever way I can.

'I'm just slowly getting my affairs in order so that I can go when they tell me. I'm non-military, but I'm an Englishman.

'I'm a free man who is fighting for a free world and is willing to do his part.

'All it takes for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing.

'I'm just a normal Englishman, I've got a basic firearm skill and I'm reasonably fit.

'My heart is in the right place and that is the only reason why I'm doing this.'

If the 'Lads' Army' are given the green light to fight in Ukraine, they will be joined by more than 150 British ex-paratroopers who fought in Afghanistan are now on their way to Ukraine to battle Putin's forces.

Dozens of former Special Forces soldiers from Britain are also said to be heading out there to fight for Ukraine, including a crack team of retired SAS fighters who are on their way to join the war on the side of the Ukrainians.

Ukrainian expats living in Britain are also heading back to their home country to fight against Putin's invaders.

Meanwhile, military supply stores in the UK are said to be kitting out volunteers - with some even offering 50 per cent discounts for those heading out to Ukraine.

Yesterday, as the fighting raged on in cities such as Kyiv and Kharkiv, Defence Secretary Ben Wallace and a No 10 spokesman both appeared to contradict Liz Truss, who gave her backing to Britons who wanted to join the resistance movement.

In a surprising comment, the Foreign Secretary said she 'won't oppose' British nationals who travel to Ukraine to fight the Russian invasion.

But Mr Wallace urged Britons not to join the fighting, particularly those without military experience, saying that the 'very dangerous' situation could lead to them being killed.

The comments came as a former defence minister today said the Government should issue clear advice that Britons should not go to Ukraine to fight.

The British Army meanwhile are warning UK soldiers 'on or off leave' not to take up arms against Russia over fears that the sight of British insignias could spark a major escalation in the conflict.

Hundreds of troops have expressed interest in answering a request from Kyiv for international volunteers, it is believed, but commanders have told them not to sign up.

They cannot stop retired personnel from travelling to eastern Europe, but full-time and reserve troops have received a stern warning not to take part in the conflict.

One brigadier said he heard talk that some soldiers were considering going Awol to join the fight, The Times reports.

But a post on the Army's internal messaging service read: 'There has been some recent media coverage relating to foreigners being welcomed into Ukraine to help fight against Russia.

'To be clear, as members of the British Army, you are not authorised to travel to Ukraine to support the ongoing conflict against Russia in any form, whether you are on leave or not.

'Please remain professional and focused on your duty and your team.'

Despite the warning, a military source has said that 150 of former paratroopers were on their way to Poland.

Shane, 34, a former sniper with the Princess of Wales's Royal Regiment, said Ms Truss' comments on Sunday were 'the green light'

Ukraine's president Volodomyr Zelensky said he was forming his country's own foreign legion to fight Russia.

Several thousand people have volunteered to join the force, deputy defence minister Hanna Malyar said.

Among them are reportedly a group of SAS veterans eager to defend Ukraine.

According to The Mirror, the retired UK special forces soldiers have volunteered for missions deep inside Ukraine to back up the country's defence.

The veterans, aged between 40 and 60, have had meetings to discuss signing up for the dangerous mission, backing up Ukrainians in combat.

Key to their operation is among them there are highly-trained snipers and experts in the use of anti-aircraft and anti-tank missiles.

It comes as lawyers warned that Britons leaving to fight in Ukraine could face legal action on their return under UK terror laws.

However they said prosecutions would likely be a 'non-starter' - pointing to those who avoided legal action for fighting against for Kurdish militias against ISIS.

Under the UK's Terrorism Act 2000, terrorism is described as the use or threat of violence, to influence a government or the public, 'for the purpose of advancing a political, religious, racial or ideological cause'.

Jonathan Hall QC, the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation, said fighting in Ukraine would be captured by the definition.

Standing outside the Ukrainian embassy in west London with other would-be-fighters, including his friend Tom Konarzewski (pictured left), he tells reporters from Sky News: 'We're young, strong, fit men and we can help, so why not?

Brian Grove, a 60-year-old former Territorial Army (TA) member from Kent, told reporters he had 'decided to do something' to help under siege Ukrainians

Ukraine war, day 5: Russian forces are now attempting to skirt around Kyiv and encircle it from the west. Troops fighting out of Crimea continue to make gains and are likely to surround Mariupol soon, while also reaching the outskirts of a key Ukrainian nuclear plant. Fighting in the east continues to be heavy with no breakthrough for Putin

He told The Independent: 'Russia's aggression against the international legal order, and the importance of supporting Ukraine, makes any support for foreign fighters who want to travel to Ukraine at first glance attractive.

'Given the government's apparent support, prosecution of foreign fighters against Russia under terrorism legislation appears to be a non-starter even if the broad statutory definition of terrorism is satisfied in these cases.

'But there is always the possibility of less desirable cases at the edges - individuals who travel to Ukraine under false pretence either to support Russia or fight with an ideological group such as the [neo-Nazi] Azov battalion.'

British authorities have previously tried to prosecute British fighters who took up arms against ISIS in Syria.

Ex-paratrooper Daniel Burke originally fought against ISIS with the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) between late 2017 and June 2018.

No action was taken at the time. But he was later prosecuted for 'preparing acts of terrorism' after allegedly attempting to return to support the YPG against an invasion by Turkish-led forces in 2019.

However the charges were later dropped against Burke and two other men following a review by the Crown Prosecution Service.
The White House is distancing itself from a tweet sent out by the U.S. embassy in Kyiv calling Russian forces attack on the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant a 'war crime.'

'It is a war crime to attack a nuclear power plant. Putin's shelling of Europe's largest nuclear plant takes his reign of terror one step further,' the Twitter account for the American embassy in Ukraine's capital said.

Afterward, the State Department sent out an urgent message to U.S. embassies in Europe telling them not to spread that message, CNN reported.

The White House is distancing itself from a tweet sent out by the U.S. embassy in Kyiv calling Russian forces attack on the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant a 'war crime'

Russian shells hit the nuclear power plant Zaporizhzhya in Ukraine on Friday. Zaporizhzhya is the largest nuclear power plant in Europe

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said there was an ongoing review on the question of whether Russian President Vladimir Putin was commiting war crimes with his assault on Ukraine, but called the shelling of a nuclear power plant 'the height of irresponsibility'

'All - do not /not retweet Embassy Kyivs tweet on shelling of the facility being a possible war crime...If you have retweeted it  un-retweet it,' the message said.

At Friday's press briefing, a reporter pointed to the U.S. embassy in Kyiv's tweet and asked White House press secretary Jen Psaki if it was the U.S.'s position that Russian President Vladimir Putin had engaged in 'war crimes.'

'Well, we have an internal review that's been ongoing, prior to last night, to collect evidence and data of the targeting of civilians, of the reported use of weapons of war on the ground in Ukraine. That's an ongoing process,' Psaki said. 'We have not made conclusions. It's a legal review in a process that goes through the administration.'

Psaki reiterated that the intentional targeting of civilians or civilian objects would be considered a war crime.

'Regardless of the legality, this action was the height of irresponsibility,' Psaki said. 'The Kremlin was cease operations around nuclear infrastructure and we have, of course, remaining concerns.'

'Obviously, the Russian government's actions were extremely reckless and dangerous and they could have posed profound threats to the safety of civilians in the region and beyond,' Psaki continued.

'We do applaud the ability of Ukrainian operators to keep all six reactors in safe conditions while they were under attack. And to report, as they were able to, to the nuclear regulator,' Psaki added.

The press secretary noted that Biden spoke Thursday night with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and to the head of the National Nuclear Security Administration.

Psaki said the U.S. government remains concerned that the Russian military appears to have taken control of the plant - the largest nuclear power plant in Europe.

'The best step for nuclear safety would be for Russia to immediately withdraw its forces around the facility,' Psaki added.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has blocked Facebook for 'discrimination towards Russian media' - after the social media giant banned Russia Today (RT) and Sputnik in the UK at the request of the British government.

Russia's media regulator Roskomnadzor announced on Friday, a week after Moscow invaded Ukraine, that Facebook would be banned, citing '26 instances of discrimination toward Russian media'.

Earlier on Friday Facebook's parent company Meta announced that RT and Sputnik would be barred from Facebook and Instagram in the UK, three days after the sites were banned across Europe.

The latest big-tech clampdown on Moscow's propaganda machine came at the request of the British Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries who wrote to Meta, Twitter and TikTok on Thursday to request the ban.

Ms Dorries said in her letter that Russia's President Putin should not be allowed to 'exploit our open and free media to spread damaging propaganda into Britain' and described his invasion of Ukraine as 'intolerable'.

'I want to urge you to do everything you can to apply the approach you are taking across the EU to block access both to RT and to Sputnik's online output on your UK services,' she wrote in a letter seen by Sky News.

The change means RT and Sputnik's pages are not visible on Facebook, Instagram or YouTube's pages in the EU or UK.

Facebook and Instagram have blocked Russian state media channels Sputnik and Russia Today (RT) in the UK following a request from the British Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries

Both sites' parent company Meta banned the Russian platforms across Europe on Tuesday as big-tech finally clamped down on Moscow's propaganda machine following Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine

The Google-owned video platform said the ban on Russia Today and Sputnik was effective immediately, including in the UK, but said it may take some time for the block to become fully effective

Elsewhere, Russia's media regulator Roskomnadzor 'restricted access' to social media network Twitter after blocking Facebook in the country, Russian news agencies reported on Friday.

According to Interfax and RIA Novosti news agencies, access to Twitter was restricted on the basis of a request of the Prosecutor General from February 24.

An AFP journalist reported that Twitter was no longer refreshing its feed in Russia.

Earlier today, Russian lawmakers backed legislation that would impose harsh jail terms and fines for publishing 'fake news'.

Russia's lower house said in a statement that if fake news stories 'led to serious consequences, (the legislation) threatens imprisonment of up to 15 years'.

Amendments were also passed to fine or jail people calling for sanctions against Russia.

The BBC, which has a large bureau in Moscow and runs a Russian-language news website, reacted by announcing a halt of its operations in Russia.

'This legislation appears to criminalise the process of independent journalism,' BBC Director-General Tim Davie said in a statement.

He warned that journalists could face 'the risk of criminal prosecution simply for doing their jobs'.

Two Russian outlets, Nobel Prize-winning newspaper Novaya Gazeta and business news website The Bell, said Friday they will stop reporting on Russia's invasion of Ukraine to protect their journalists.

The past year has seen an unprecedented crackdown on independent and critical voices in Russia that has intensified since the invasion.

Russia's media watchdog said Friday it had restricted access to the BBC and other independent media websites, further tightening controls over the internet.

The independent news website Meduza, German broadcaster Deutsche Welle, and the Russian-language website of the US-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Svoboda, were 'limited,' said Roskomnadzor, following a request from prosecutors.

Valery Fadeyev, the head of the Kremlin's human rights council accused Western media of being behind 'a huge flow of false information that comes from Ukraine' and said the council had set up a project to stop it.

Russian media have been instructed to publish only information provided by official sources, which describe the invasion as a military operation.

For the moment, it appears the invasion has marked the beginning of the end for what remains of Russia's independent media.

Ekho Mosvky - a liberal-leaning radio station majority-owned by Russia's energy giant Gazprom - said Thursday it would shut down after being taken off air over its Ukraine war coverage.

Authorities had on Tuesday blocked the Ekho Moskvy website and took the station off air as punishment for spreading 'deliberately false information' about the conflict.

Its editor-in-chef Alexei Venediktov said on Telegram Friday that the station will be deleting its website and social media accounts.

Another independent outlet, Znak, said Friday it was ceasing work 'due to the large number of restrictions that have recently appeared for the work of the media in Russia'.

The BBC said this week that the audience of its Russian language news website had 'more than tripled... with a record reach of 10.7 million people in the last week'.

A BBC spokesperson said the company would 'continue our efforts to make BBC News available in Russia, and across the rest of the world' despite the restrictions.

YouTube and Facebook have banned Russian state-owned media outlets RT and Sputnik's channels across Europe (pictured on Tuesday)

Sputnik's youTube channel (pictured before the ban yesterday) was considered a mouthpiece of Russian President Vladimir Putin's regime

It is the latest retaliation following a big-tech clampdown on Moscow's propaganda finally imposed this week after the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24.

YouTube had previously limited the ability for RT and other Russian channels to make money for advertisements that appear on videos but has extended its sanctions to fully blocking such channels.

'Due to the ongoing war in Ukraine, we're blocking YouTube channels connected to RT and Sputnik across Europe, effective immediately,' a statement from Google Europe said.

'It'll take time for our systems to fully ramp up. Our teams continue to monitor the situation around the clock to take swift action.'

Following another request from the Ukrainian government, Google also removed Russia's state-run television network RT, formerly known as Russia Today, from its Google Play Store in Ukraine.

YouTube joined Meta which on Monday announced that it had blocked on Facebook both media organisations, which are considered mouthpieces of Russian President Vladimir Putin's regime.

Former UK deputy prime minister, Sir Nick Clegg, who is now vice president of global affairs at Facebook's parent company, Meta, said the firm had been asked by governments to take further action against Russian state-backed media.

'We have received requests from a number of Governments and the EU to take further steps in relation to Russian state-controlled media,' he said on Twitter on Monday night.

'Given the exceptional nature of the current situation, we will be restricting access to RT and Sputnik across the EU at this time.' He added Meta would continue to work closely with governments on the issue.

Facebook parent company Meta announced yesterday that it had blocked both media organisations, which are considered mouthpieces of Russian President Vladimir Putin's regime

European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen on Sunday announced they and their subsidiaries would be banned from broadcasting in the bloc for spreading 'lies to justify Putin's war'.

Canadian telecoms operators have also stopped offering the RT channel.

Meanwhile on Monday an international hacking organisation launched a 'cyberwar' on Putin's media, social media sites and Kremlin-backed broadcaster.

Anonymous targeted Russian state news agencies TASS, Fontanka, and Kommersant, as well as Kremlin-backed channel RT and the Kremlin website, taking the sites down - though they were back online on Tuesday morning.

When MailOnline tried to access Fontanka, a news outlet based in St Petersburg, on Monday morning, a message signed by Anonymous urged citizens to 'stop this madness' and said Vladimir Putin has 'put us in danger'.

All the sites appeared to be were back online by early Tuesday. Hackers have declared a 'cyber war' on Putin's government after he mounted a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on Thursday.

Moscow has been accused of producing Hollywood-style 'fake news' videos to inflame tensions with Ukraine.

Misinformation about the conflict includes the notion that Ukrainian soldiers are 'radical nationalists' who are defending a genocide against Russians.

When trying to access Fontanka, a message reads: 'Dear citizens. We urge you to stop this madness, do not send your sons and husbands to certain death'

When MailOnline attempted to access Kommersant's website on Monday morning, a message appeared saying 'the site can't be reached'
Babies born in some parts of the UK are expected to die at least a decade earlier than those in areas with the highest life expectancy, official figures reveal.

While boys born in Westminster can expect to live to the age of 84.7, those born in Glasgow have a life expectancy of just 73.1 years.

The figures, calculated by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), look at children born between 2018 and 2020.

In five other areas, four of which are also in Scotland, there is a difference of 10 or more years in life expectancy compared to the affluent London borough.

Boys born in Dundee City, Blackpool, West Dunbartonshire, Inverclyde and North Lanarkshire can expect to live until they are about 74.

Other areas with high life expectancies for boys include Kensington and Chelsea, Rutland, South Cambridgeshire and Camden.

The startling differences represent an ever-widening gap between areas with the highest and lowest life expectancy.

The ONS report only includes data from the first year of the pandemic. Covid is thought to have widened inequalities even further.

Best and worst areas in the UK for life expectancy among baby boys

The above graph looks at 'healthy life expectancy' for baby boys - how long they are expected to live before developing comorbidities

Between 2015-17 the gap for boys was 9.8 years compared to 11.6 years in 2018-20.

For baby girls, the lowest life expectancy was also recorded in Glasgow City at 78.3 years compared to a high of 87.9 years in Kensington and Chelsea.

In England, the figures show that infants under one in the North East had the lowest life expectancy.

A baby boy in the North East is expected to live 77.6 years, compared with 80.6 years for baby boys in the South West  a gap of around three years.

A baby girl was expected to live 81.5 years, compared with 84.3 years for baby girls in London  a difference of 2.8 years.

Overall, a boy in the UK born between 2018 and 2020 is expected to live until he is 79.0 years old, down from 79.2 years for the period 2015-2017.

Estimates for females are broadly unchanged, with a baby girl born in 2018-20 likely to live for 82.9 years, the same as in 2015-17.

Commenting on the figures Pamela Cobb, from the Centre for Ageing and Demography at the ONS, said: Life expectancy has increased in the UK over the last 40 years, albeit at a slower pace in the last decade.

However, the coronavirus pandemic led to a greater number of deaths than normal in 2020.

Consequently, in the latest estimates, we see virtually no improvement in life expectancy for females while for males life expectancy has fallen back to levels reported for 2012 to 2014, at 79 years.

This is the first time we have seen a decline when comparing non-overlapping time periods since the series began in the early 1980s.

She added that it is possible that life expectancy will return to an improving trend in the future with the end of the coronavirus pandemic, which led to unusually high levels of mortality.

Covid crisis has slashed life expectancy in four-fifths of countries Covid has slashed life expectancy in four-fifths of industrialised nations and erased a decade of progress in extending Britons' lifespans, according to a major report which lays bare the pandemic's impact on global health. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) said Covid 'contributed, directly and indirectly' to a 16 per cent rise in average deaths among its 38 member countries. Overall life expectancy has taken a hit in 24 out of the 30 nations (80 per cent) for which there was reliable data in the year-and-a-half of the pandemic so far, the report found. It fell the most in the US, with Americans losing 1.6 years of life per capita, followed by Spain where it fell one-and-a-half years, Lithuania and Poland (both 1.3 years), as well as in Belgium and Italy (1.2). In the UK, life expectancy dropped by a whole year during the pandemic, with Britons now living to an average age of 80.4  the lowest figure since 2010. The findings put the UK and the US in the bottom 10 countries for overall life expectancy, despite being among the richest in the OECD. The only nations which did not take a hit to life expectancy were Norway, Denmark, Finland and Latvia, as well as Japan and Costa Rica. In terms of confirmed Covid deaths, the US and UK had the 10th and 11th highest tolls, respectively, both recording around 2,000 deaths per million people. Advertisement

Will YOU live until you're 100? Online calculator works out your average life expectancy

One in five girls born in Britain are now expected to reach the age of 100, according to Government analysts who have created a calculator that estimates how long we live.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) says boys born in the same year have a slightly lower chance of becoming a centenarian  13.6 per cent (one in eight)  in line with the historic trend of women living longer than men.

On average, boys who were born in 2020 can expect to reach the age of 87 and girls are likely to breach 90, the agency said.

Despite figures showing children born today are likely to live to an older age than their parents, experts today warned life expectancy improvements have stalled.

Progress in the UK had already stalled before Covid took off, prompting much debate about the causes. Some attributed it to health cuts and austerity.

But experts fear the pandemic has exacerbated the issue and there are already signs it has reversed some of the gains made in recent decades.

Separate figures from the United Nations (UN) Population Division suggests Britain's overall life expectancy across ages and sexes is around 81-and-a-half.

It means the UK has the 29th highest life expectancy in the world, with Hong Kong topping the global chart at 85.3 years. For comparison, the US ranks 46th, with an expectancy of 79.8 years.

Select your age and sex below to see what your average life expectancy is:

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Separate figures from the United Nations (UN) Population Division suggests Britain's overall life expectancy across ages and sexes is 81-and-a-half. It means the UK has the 29th highest life expectancy in the world, with Hong Kong topping the chart at 85.3 years. For comparison, the US ranks 46th, with an expectancy of 79.8 years

These two maps of life expectancy in England show both the current situation and how it has changed since 2002. The top map shows the life expectancy of women (left) and men (right) colour coded with red tones representing lower than average and bluer tones representing higher than average. The bottom map shows the life expectancy change for women (left and men (right) between 2002 and 2019. It shows that women have seen smaller gains in life expectancy than men.

ONS data suggests 65-year-olds in the UK can expect to live on average a further 19.7 years if they are male, or 22 years if they're female. This is projected to increase to 21.9 extra years for men and 24.1 years for women who are aged 65 in 2045.

Analysts expect life expectancies for children who are born in 2045 to hit 90.1 for boys and 92.6 for girls.

But the data also suggests girls born in 2020 are now expected to die nearly five years earlier than predicted back in 2012.

David Finch, assistant director of healthy lives at the Health Foundation, said: 'Today's figures show that children born today can still expect to live longer than their parents.

'However, people living in the UK today are not expected to live for as long as previously predicted.

'The unprecedented increase in deaths caused by Covid should end as we move beyond the pandemic but there will be a lasting impact from the decade of stalling life expectancy prior to the pandemic.'

He continued: 'The government faces a massive challenge in delivering its promise to improve life expectancy for people in the UK.

'Improving health needs to be a key consideration in all government policy and investment decisions, the vast majority of which have the potential to help or hinder efforts.

'The pandemic has laid bare the extent of underlying poor health in the UK, with tragic consequences.

'Good health is vital to the countrys prosperity and government cannot delay any further in investing in our future.'

It comes after research suggested life expectancy was already falling before Covid struck in a fifth of communities in England.

Imperial College London scientists analysed mortality trends for all 7,000 districts scattered across the country.

Results showed life expectancy for women declined in approximately 18.7 per cent of neighbourhoods between 2014 and 2019, by an average of two months.

Meanwhile, in men it fell in around 11.5 per cent of communities, by an average of a month-and-a-half.

Experts claimed there was a gap of around 27 years between the richest and poorest parts of England  where the average life expectancy sits at around 79.8 for men and 83.4 for women.

People living in the north of England and in urban areas had the lowest life expectancy.

Lead author Professor Majid Ezzati said the findings were a warning sign of an ongoing policy failure to address health and socioeconomic disadvantages across the nation.
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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Soldier, whose name is not known, said Russian troops have been killing children

He said Kremlin is 'brainwashing' people and begged his family not to believe it

The serviceman said he had been captured by Ukrainian forces in the footage

A captured Russian soldier has begged his family not to believe Moscow 'propaganda' as he claimed Putin's troops are killing children in the Ukraine.

The soldier, who has been captured by Ukrainian forces, urged people not to trust what they hear on Russian television as he claimed that the Kremlin are 'brainwashing' people.

In a video, which was shared to Facebook by the Security Service of Ukraine, the soldier claims that Russian troops are killing civilians and babies in the Ukraine.

He says: 'What is happening here [in the Ukraine] is all Russia's fault. Neither Ukraine nor anyone else. They [Russian troops] killing people civilians. Babies are being murdered.'

A soldier, who has been captured by Ukrainian forces, urged people not to trust what they hear on Russian television as he claimed that the Kremlin are 'brainwashing' people

The fighter, whose name is not known, insists that although he is a 'captive of the Ukrainians' he is fine and there is 'nothing to worry about' as he sends a message to Russian citizens.

He claims the Russian government is 'brainwashing' its citizens and said it is not true that Ukrainians are 'a bad people' as he described Russian troops as 'cannon meat'.

The Kremlin has engaged in a propaganda campaign designed to favourably mould the narrative through state-owned media channels.

The serviceman claims that around 8,000 to 10,000 soldiers have been killed since the invasion began, a claim disputed by Moscow who released contesting figures for the first time earlier on Wednesday.

'We're the aggressor, we're the destroyers. So, as they say, we're the cannon meat,' he says.

The soldier goes on to say that he was wounded in the Ukraine but has since been treated as he described Ukrainian citizens as 'very kind'.

In a caption alongside the video, the Ukrainian Security Service wrote: 'The tanker-aggressor begs his relatives not to trust a single word that is heard on Russian television, because the Kremlin authorities are deliberately brainwashing with lies.

'The occupier admits that Russia is the aggressor, their troops are beating civilians and killing children. At the same time, he says that for him, captivity is 'the only chance for survival'."

'He will live, but will not go unpunished! Let's win together!'

It comes after footage shows a surrendered soldier from Putin's forces breaking down in tears as he speaks to his mother on the phone after being comforted and fed by Ukrainian women

It is the latest in a string of videos, which have gone viral on social media, showing Russian soldiers in the Ukraine surrendering and claiming they had no idea they were being sent into a war zone.

Earlier this week, another video showed a Russian soldier breaking down in tears as he spoke to his mother on the phone after surrendering to Ukrainians.

The footage showed a young fighter from Putin's forces being comforted by a group of women after throwing down his weapon. One of the women tells him 'everything his OK' while patting him on the back.

He is then seen drinking tea and eating a pasty as another woman offers him a phone. The young prisoner of war blows kisses as his mother answers, and bursts into tears as soon as he sees her.

One of the other women is heard speaking to her down the phone, saying: 'Natasha, God be with you. We will call you later. He is alive and healthy.'

A male voice off camera is heard saying in Ukrainian: 'These young men, it's not their fault. They don't know why they are here. They are using old maps, they are lost.'

The emotional clip shared on Twitter shows local Ukrainians welcoming the soldier with food after his reported surrender.

It was captioned: 'Russian soldiers, surrender, Ukrainian people will feed you, just surrender.'

The video has since gone viral in both Ukraine and Russia, with people praising the compassion shown by the Ukrainian women towards the man who has been ordered to invade their country.

Others have noted how young the man is - like many Russian soldiers that have been captured by Ukraine's forces.

Other footage showed Russian prisoners of war weeping and claiming they had no idea they were being sent into a war zone rather than to act as peacekeepers.

Captured men said they had no idea they were being sent to invade Ukraine and were used like 'cannon fodder' by commanders who threw them into battle against 'peaceful people defending their territory' after Vladimir Putin's forces took heavy losses in the opening days of the conflict.

Captured Russian soldiers (left and right), speaking in video posted to the Ukraine security services' Facebook page, claimed they were 'deceived' and did not realise they were going to invade Ukraine

In separate video posted on Telegram showed soldiers saying they were 'demoralised' when they realised they were being sent to fight in Ukraine. 'We were told we would be enemies of the state and because it's wartime, we might even be shot if we refused. We were thrown in as cannon fodder'

'This is not our war. Mothers and wives, collect your husbands. There is no need to be here,' an injured soldier sat in front of a Ukrainian flag was filmed saying.

Other footage showed handcuffed Russian prisoner crying, while saying: 'They don't even pick up the corpses, there are no funerals'.

Meanwhile, the Ukrainian Ministry of Defence said Russian mothers could could come to Kyiv and collect their sons who had been taken prisoner.

In a verified post on social media, officials claimed mothers could make the arduous journey to the Ukrainian capital from Russia if they had found that their child was in captivity.

'It was decided to give the captured Russian soldiers to their mothers if they come to Ukraine, to Kyiv for them,' it read.

The ministry provide an email address and phone numbers that could be used to find out if a soldier was 'in captivity or had died'.

Ukraine war, day 5: Russian forces are now attempting to skirt around Kyiv and encircle it from the west. Troops fighting out of Crimea continue to make gains and are likely to surround Mariupol soon, while also reaching the outskirts of a key Ukrainian nuclear plant. Fighting in the east continues to be heavy with no breakthrough for Putin

If they wanted to collect the child they would have to get to Kaliningrad or Minsk in Belarus before taking a taxi to the Polish border where they could then be escorted to a handover point.

It comes as Moscow admitted that nearly 500 of its troops have been killed and 1,600 more have been injured in its first report of casualties from fighting since President Vladimir Putin ordered Russia's savage invasion of Ukraine.

The figures, released on Wednesday, come days after Russia claimed it had not suffered any casualties in the war.

The Kremlin has engaged in a propaganda campaign designed to favourably mould the narrative through state-owned media channels, but has insisted its losses are considerably lower than the figures offered by Ukraine.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky this week claimed that around 9,000 Russian soldiers had been killed since the invasion began, a claim disputed by Moscow.

The leader of the besieged nation also said that his country had thwarted Russia's 'sneaky' plans, saying he was proud of the 'heroic' resistance to Moscow's shocking invasion.

'We are a nation that broke the enemy's plans in a week. Plans written for years: sneaky, full of hatred for our country, our people,' Zelensky said in a video posted across multiple social media channels.

The president said he 'sincerely admired the heroic residents' of cities who have resisted the advance of Russian forces.

'Our military, our border guards, our territorial defence, even ordinary farmers capture the Russian military every day,' he said in the video, similar to several others he has previously recorded during the war.

'All the captives say only one thing: they do not know why they are here. Despite the fact that there are dozens of times more than them, the morale of the enemy is constantly deteriorating.'

Zelensky's comments was posted before Ukraine's capital Kyiv and many other cities around the country came under heavy fire from Putin's forces. Videos in Kyiv showed at least two huge explosions light up the night sky at around 2am local time, while Kherson city in the south was reportedly brought under Russia's complete control.

Meanwhile, the command of Ukraine's Special Operations Forces warned that it would no longer take Russian artillerymen as prisoner of war in response to their 'brutal shelling' of cities.

'Each and every gun crew will be slaughtered like pigs,' a statement on Wednesday evening said.

The United Nations Refugee Agency reported Thursday morning that over 1 million refugees have fled Ukraine since the beginning of the war, which has so far claimed thousands of lives in its first week.

Pictures and videos from Kyiv have shown thousands crowding railways stations in a desperate bid to get a ride out of the city.

Captured Russian prisoner sobs as he tells his mother Putin's forces have destroyed kindergartens and hospital wards - and begs her to spread the truth back home

By Isabella Nikolic for MailOnline

A captured Russian prisoner sobbed on the phone to his mother while telling her how Vladimir Putin's forces have destroyed kindergartens and hospital wards.

Harrowing footage shows the soldier captured in Ukraine desperately begging his mother to spread word of the truth back home.

He rocks back and forth in his chair while speaking on a video call to his mother telling her she needs to use social media so 'as many people as possible' can know the truth about Putin's attacks.

He says: 'Life has been peaceful here before our President started all of this.' And his distraught mother replies: 'I got you, I love you so much.'

It was reported last Saturday that a kindergarten and orphanage had been attacked in the city of Okhtyrka, a small city in the northeastern Ukrainian Sumy province.

Photos of the attack were shared by a Ukrainian lawmaker, who wrote: 'In a town Okhtyrka Russian missiles hit kindergarten and bomb shelter. Among dead and injured are children. What else Russian fascists should do for NATO to wake up and defend Ukraine?!'

The latest footage comes just two days after other weeping Russian prisoners of war said they have no idea they were being sent to invade Ukraine and were used like 'cannon fodder' by commanders.

Harrowing footage shows the soldier captured in Ukraine desperately begging his mother to spread word of the truth back home. He rocks back and forth in his chair while speaking on a video call to his mother telling her she needs to use social media so 'as many people as possible' can know the truth about Putin's attacks

He says: 'Life has been peaceful here before our President started all of this.' And his distraught mother replies: 'I got you, I love you so much'

It was reported last Saturday that a kindergarten and orphanage had been attacked in the city of Okhtyrka, a small city in the northeastern Ukrainian Sumy province

Photos of the attack were shared by a Ukrainian lawmaker, who wrote: 'In a town Okhtyrka Russian missiles hit kindergarten and bomb shelter. Among dead and injured are children. What else Russian fascists should do for NATO to wake up and defend Ukraine?!'

Earlier on Wednesday, a video of a Russian soldier breaking down in tears as he spoke to his mother on the phone after surrendering to Ukrainians went viral.

The footage showed a young fighter from Putin's forces being comforted by a group of women after throwing down his weapon. One of the women tells him 'everything his OK' while patting him on the back.

He is then seen drinking tea and eating a pasty as another woman offers him a phone. The young prisoner of war blows kisses as his mother answers, and bursts into tears as soon as he sees her. One of the other women is heard speaking to her down the phone, saying: 'Natasha, God be with you. We will call you later. He is alive and healthy.'

A male voice off camera is heard saying in Ukrainian: 'These young men, it's not their fault. They don't know why they are here. They are using old maps, they are lost.'

'This is not our war. Mothers and wives, collect your husbands. There is no need to be here,' an injured soldier sat in front of a Ukrainian flag was filmed saying. Other footage showed handcuffed Russian prisoner crying, while saying: 'They don't even pick up the corpses, there are no funerals'.

Captured Russian soldiers have been filmed describing themselves as 'cannon fodder' and warning 'everyone is going in columns and they all die'

Ukraine on Wednesday invited the worried mothers of Russian troops captured on the battlefield to come and collect their sons, in Kyiv's latest apparent attempt to embarrass Moscow after opening a telephone hotline for Russian parents to find out if their sons are among the dead or captured.

Ukraine says Russia has lost 5,840 soldiers in the opening days of the conflict - some of its fastest losses since the Second World War, if the figure proves accurate - with Putin's men suffering a series of embarrassing defeats as they tried to pull off a quick victory but instead met with stiff resistance from Ukrainian forces.

While both US and Ukrainian intelligence believes morale within the Russian ranks is low, Putin and his commanders have showed no sign they are about to give up the fight - and have instead vowed to press even harder to try and capture key objectives.

Sergey Shoigu, the country's defence minister, said on Tuesday that they offensive would keep going until all objectives had been completed - which he said was the removal of threats to Russia by the West.

Footage shows captured a handcuffed Russian prisoner crying over the death and destruction wrought by the war, saying: 'They don't even pick up the corpses, there are no funerals'

Volodymyr Zelensky has said that Russia is trying to erase Ukraine and its people as Vladimir Putin's invasion entered its seventh day today with renewed attacks on all fronts including an expected assault on the city which houses Europe's largest nuclear power plant.

Zelensky, who has become a symbol of Ukrainian defiance and courage since the war began, told his people today that Russians 'know nothing about our capital. About our history. But they have an order to erase our history. Erase our country. Erase us all.'

It comes after Putin yesterday hailed his soldiers as heroes who are fighting to save innocent lives and blamed Ukrainian 'neo-Nazis' for holding citizens hostage.

The Russian leader claimed 'gangster' Ukrainian leaders using 'human shields' was the real reason so many civilians had been killed by his troops' onslaught in the country.

Putin made the claim in his address yesterday, his first since announcing the start of his 'special operation' eight days ago, which did little to reassure anyone that the war is close to being over, or that Russia can be brought to the negotiating table without more blood being shed.

Debris are seen after the shelling attack by the Russian army, following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, in Chernihiv, Ukraine, March 3

A view shows a residential building damaged by recent shelling, as Russia's invasion of Ukraine continues, in Chernihiv

But it also hinted that Putin is rattled as the fighting proves harder than Russian commanders anticipated, and western sanctions go harder and deeper than even European or American observers predicted. All hope of a swift victory has now been dashed, leaving Putin facing a long, bloody and expensive war to achieve his aims.

Russian troops have seized Europe's largest nuclear power plant in Ukraine after a firefight that set part of the complex ablaze with President Volodymyr Zelensky accused Putin of resorting to 'nuclear terror' and risking a catastrophe 'six times worse than Chernobyl' that would affect the whole continent.

The world's leading nuclear authorities saw no immediate cause for alarm about damage to the facility, but the assault triggered a phone call between U.S. President Joe Biden and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and the U.S. Department of Energy activated its nuclear incident response team as a precaution.

Russian troops attacked the Zaporizhzhia plant in the early hours of Friday, with CCTV capturing a fierce gun battle between Putin's men and Ukrainian defenders that sparked a fire in a six-storey training building just outside the main complex. Moscow's men then stopped firefighters getting to the building for several hours as fighting raged.
Two more Russian commanders have been killed on the frontline in Ukraine after a top general was shot dead by snipers, a Western official has claimed.

Major General Andrey Sukhovetsky, 47, was reportedly killed by a Ukrainian sniper while the latest deaths, since Russia invaded last week, were also both senior officers.

One was a divisional commander and the other was a regimental commander, the Telegraph has reported.

These losses will be taken in Ukraine as yet another encouraging sign that the Russian invasion is not progressing as planned.

Major General Andrey Sukhovetsky was reportedly killed by a Ukranian sniper while the latest deaths, since Russia invaded last week, were both senior officers.

These Russian losses will be taken in Ukraine as yet another encouraging sign that the Russian invasion is not progressing as planned

The Western official believes this is down to the commanders having to get 'closer to the front' as Russia feels progress still has not been made in Ukraine.

'The reason why that's happening is that commanders feel they have to move further forward to get greater impetus and control over operations,' the official said.

'That's an indication perhaps of some degree of frustration, some degree of lack of progress and they're trying to impose their personality onto the battlefield and then putting themselves at personal risk.'

Mr Sukhovetsky, who was the deputy commander of the 41st Combined Arms Army of Russia's Central Military District, died on Wedneday as Ukrainian defence forces repelled the Russian offensive.

Andrei Sukhovetsky, the deputy commander of the 41st Combined Arms Army of the Central Military District, on left, death was announced on social media by his colleague Sergey Chipilyov, right, and was widely reported by several Russian and Ukrainian news outlets

His death, announced on social media by his colleague Sergey Chipilyov, was widely reported by several Russian and Ukrainian news outlets and a military source confirmed that he was killed 'by a sniper'.

After days of denial, the Kremlin on Wednesday admitted that 498 of its troops have been killed and 1,600 injured in the 'special military operation' in Ukraine, but the true figure is almost certainly higher.

Kyiv says Russia has now lost around 9,200 men in the fighting, along with hundreds of tanks, almost a thousand armoured vehicles, and dozens of helicopters and jets.
A Houston woman faces three murder charges over claims she took out a hit on her married ex-girlfriend, then watched as an assassin murdered the woman, her husband and their six year-old daughter.

Alexus Williams, 29, was arrested on Thursday on three counts of capital murder and one count of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon for the June 2021 killings of her former lover Donyavia Lagway, 29, her husband, Gregory Carhee, 35, and their daughter, 6-year-old Harmony Carhee.

Williams is believed to have ordered the hit, which cops say was carried out by Xavier Davis, 28, after Lagway ended their relationship to return to Carhee.

The slain couple's 10-year-old daughter was gravely wounded but survived by playing dead, and comforted her one-year-old brother until help arrived.

Prosecutors said Williams was on FaceTime with the hired killer and may have witnessed the executions in real time.

Alexus Williams, 29 (left), faces three capital murder charges and an aggravated assault count for allegedly hiring her childhood friend, Xavier Davis, 28 (right), to kill her former lesbian lover and the woman's family, including her children

Police say on June 30, Davis barged into a Houston apartment and killed Donyavia Lagway (left) and her husband, Gregory Carhee (right)

Also killed was the couple's six-year-old daughter, Harmony Carhee

In July, Houston police arrested Davis on charges of capital murder and aggravated assault for his alleged role as a hitman in Williams' murderous plot.

Harris County prosecutors said Lagway had an extramarital affair with Williams, but the mom-of-four had broken up with her in mid-June and reconciled with her husband, reported KHOU11.

About a week after the split, the scorned lover allegedly decided to take her revenge by hiring Davis to exterminate Lagway's family.

Williams allegedly promised Davis that there were several thousands of dollars inside the victims' apartment in the 12100 block of Fondern Road and told him he could keep all the cash he found.

'It was simply greed for Xavier Davis,' Prosecutor Sean Teare told Click2Houston.

Prosecutors say Williams had enticed Davis by promising him that the victims had several thousands of dollars in their Houston apartment in the 12100 block of Fondern Road

It's been reported that the gunman lined up the family on the couch and shot each of them

The couple's 10-year-old daughter survived and called her grandmother, who summoned help

Teare added that there is evidence that Williams was on the phone with Davis during the murders and watched a portion of the massacre, or its bloody aftermath, on FaceTime.

Teare said it was even possible that she talked to the victims before they were executed one by one after being lined up on the couch.

A family member said Lagway and Carhee's 10-year-old daughter, Lyric, was struck by gunfire and pretended to be dead until the killer left.

Despite her injuries, she was able to lock the door, grab her baby brother, who had been thrown across the room by the gunman, and call her grandmother for help.

Williams was allegedly angry because Lagway (left) had broken up with her a week before the killings and reconciled with her husband. She had just found out she was pregnant with the couple's fifth child

Ten-year-old Lyric (left) was shot in the arm but survived by playing dead until the hitman left

The orphaned girl has undergone multiple surgeries to repair the damage to her right arm

Williams appeared in court on Thursday and was ordered held without bond

Davis, Williams' childhood friend, remains jailed without bond. He is seen in court

The orphaned survivor, who is now aged 11, has undergone multiple surgeries to repair damage to her arm and elbow, and is being cared for by her two grandmothers.

Lagway and Carhee also had an eight-year-old boy, who was not at home at the time of the murders, and the mom-of-four had just learned that she was pregnant with her fifth child, according to relatives.

Williams made her initial court appearance on Thursday, during which a judge declined to set a bond for her release, and also barred her from contacting the victims' family members, after learning that the suspected mastermind of the murder-for-hire plot attended the funerals of her ex-lover, her husband and daughter, reported ABC13.

Davis also remains jailed without bond pending his next court appearance set for March 23.
Women and children were today pictured learning to fire machine guns and strip an AK-47 as Ukraine called up people to fight to defend Kyiv.

It comes as Russia's invasion of Ukraine intensifies, with forces destroying port city Mariupol and seizing the largest nuclear power plant in Europe.

There are also fears that there could be around 100 people buried in rubble after a rocket strike on an apartment in the city of Boradyanka, 30 miles from Kyiv.

Women and children have been taught to make weapons and were today photographed being taught to use guns.

The images were taken during a civilian self-defence course on the outskirts of Lviv, Ukraine and women and children are seen pointing AK-47's and machine guns, as they are shown how they work.

For weeks now, ordinary citizens across the country have been receiving basic combat training in everything from handling guns to making incendiary Molotov cocktails to tossing grenades.

Women and children were today pictured on the outskirts of Lviv learning to fire machine guns and strip an AK-47 as Ukraine called up people to fight to defend Kyiv

The images were taken during a civilian self defence course and they are seen pointing AK-47's and machine guns, as they are shown how they work. Pictured: A child learns how to use a machine gun today on the outskirts of Lviv

Thousands of civilians have taken up arms to protect their country against Russian forces.

In Kyiv, as the country's capital prepared for attacks, Anastasiia Lenna, a former Miss Ukraine, was pictured with a huge rifle, complete with a pink scope, as she warned in an Instagram post: 'Everyone who crosses the Ukrainian border with the intent to invade will be killed!'

The now viral image came amid reports of long snaking queues of citizens waiting to be issued weapons in the capital.

For weeks now, ordinary citizens across the country have been receiving basic combat training in everything from handling guns to making incendiary Molotov cocktails to tossing grenades. Pictured: A boy learns how to use a gun on the outskirts of Lviv today

Ukrainians living abroad have even flown home to join the 'Territorial Defense Units' - which have been trained by military personnel in wooded or abandoned areas on the outskirts of cities.

The newly trained forces have been seen standing guard behind stacks of tires at checkpoints in the capital of Kyiv and patrolling its empty streets.

Most wear street clothes with yellow arm bands to identify them as volunteer soldiers.

Thousands of civilians have taken up arms to protect their country against Russian forces. Pictured: A woman at a self defence course today on the outskirts of Lviv

And women and children have also been encouraged to make Molotov cocktails to defend their cities against Russian forces.

Swathes were photographed making the incendiary bombs and a Ukrainian brewery has begun manufacturing them.

They were taught how to throw the weapons by military instructors in early February when Russia was preparing to invade as part of the government's 'Don't Panic, Get Ready' campaign.

In Kyiv, as the country's capital prepared for attacks, Anastasiia Lenna (pictured), a former Miss Ukraine, who was pictured with a huge rifle, complete with a pink scope, as she warned in an Instagram post: 'Everyone who crosses the Ukrainian border with the intent to invade will be killed!'

And women and children have also been encouraged to make Molotov cocktails (pictured) to defend their cities against Russian forces. Pictured: People make Molotov cocktails outside their home in Kyiv on Tuesday

They were taught how to throw the weapons by military instructors in early February when Russia was preparing to invade as part of the government's 'Don't Panic, Get Ready' campaign. Pictured: People learn to throw Molotov cocktails on Tuesday

Ukrainians have even resorted to putting shredded styrofoam in the bombs which can help the flames attach to targets.

Countless heroic Ukrainian civilians have been filmed battling Russian forces, with one unarmed group seen blocking a tank from entering the town of Koryukivka in the Chernihiv Oblast after forming a human barrier on the street.

The Russian soldiers were reportedly asking for directions when the Ukrainians swarmed the tank to keep it from moving into Kyiv.

Supplies are running low in Ukraine and groups including the 'People's Front' (pictured) have stepped in to send essential food and supplies to the country. Pictured: The People's Front office today

Others have been filmed swearing at soldiers and questioning why they are there.

Supplies are running low in Ukraine and groups including the 'People's Front' have stepped in to send essential food and supplies to the country.

In photographs taken today, the group were shown sorting through clothes and food as well as discussing evacuations for citizens of Kyiv.

In photographs taken today, the group were shown sorting through clothes and food as well as discussing evacuations for citizens of Kyiv
Islamist extremist preacher Anjem Choudary has been protesting outside the Saudi Arabian embassy.

The protest happened in London on Friday at the Saudi embassy near Green Park, London.

It is the first public protest since the 54-year-old's public speaking ban was lifted last year.

It also meant he was unable to carry out social media campaigns.

Choudary, the former leader of the banned Islamist group Al-Muhajiroun, was jailed for five-and-half years in 2016 for inviting support for the Islamic State.

Islamist extremist preacher Anjem Choudary has been protesting outside the Saudi embassy

It is thought to be one of the first times he has protested publicly since his public speaking ban was lifted last year

He served less than half that term, and was out in 2018.

The cleric is free to preach but security sources have said that if he stoked up extremism in this country, he could be put under a form of house arrest known as Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures and tried again in court on terrorism and hate law charges.

The extremist is known for his shocking hate speech on topics from 9/11 to the Charlie Hebdo attacks and his wish for Buckingham Palace to be turned into a mosque.

Choudary, the former leader of the banned Islamist group Al-Muhajiroun, was jailed for five-and-half years in 2016 for inviting support for the Islamic State

In May 2013 terrorist Michael Adebolajo killed soldier Lee Rigby near the Royal Artillery Barracks in Woolwich, southeast London.

After the attack Choudary said of Adebolajo: 'He is a practising Muslim, a family man and I'm very proud of him.'

Meanwhile, although he claimed not to condone the September 11 and 7/7 attacks, he said 'there are people that justify [them] on the divine text'.

The Islamic preacher has also suggested he condones the Charlie Hebdo attacks, which left 12 dead and a further 11 injured after the attack on the French magazine's offices in Paris.

He said: 'I think that this magazine went out of their way to insult the Prophet and they put their very nasty cartoons on their front pages in the past. It obviously angers many Muslims.

'I think it's completely ridiculous, the idea that I should say I don't condone the attack.'

On his plans to see Buckingham Palace made into a mosque, he said: 'This is an image of how Buckingham Palace will look one day, inshallah.'

Choudary is known to have associated with Michael Adebolajo (left), the killer of Lee Rigby (right)

Hate preacher Anjem Choudary has also complained about being abused online and demanded that the Government does more to target 'online hatred' - even though he is believed to have inspired 100 jihadis on social media. Above: Choudary seen near his home in East London earlier this week

Anjem Choudary has been at the centre of radical Islamic organisations for many years and accused of inspiring many of Britain's most notorious terrorists

Just last year Britain's most fanatical hate preacher urged the Taliban to impose a stricter form of Islamic justice  including stoning adulterers, chopping off the hands of thieves and lashing anyone caught drinking alcohol.

Choudary also said he wanted to ban music and mixing between sexes and said non-Muslims should pay an 'infidel tax'.

His outpourings were included in an extraordinary 3,500-word treatise entitled Sincere Advice To The Leadership Of The Taliban.
Joe Biden can continue to use a Trump-era rule that allows him to immediately expel undocumented immigrants who cross the southern border - as long as he doesn't send them to countries known for persecution and torture, a DC court ruled.

The ruling, by the US Court of Appeals, allows the U.S. government to keep in place restrictions first implemented under Democrat Biden's Republican predecessor Donald Trump in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic.

A group of affected migrants, represented by the American Civil Liberties Union and other non-profit organizations, challenged the legality of the expulsion policy, known as Title 42, in court.

The appeals court decided that the migrants covered by the policy likely 'have no right to be in the United States' and that Biden's administration 'can immediately expel them.'

Joe Biden can continue to use Title 42, Trump-era rule, that allows him to immediately expel undocumented immigrants who cross the southern border - as long as he doesn't send them to countries known for persecution and torture, a Washington, D.C. federal district court ruled Friday

U.S. Border Patrol agents and members of the Texas Army National Guard light the path as asylum seekers from Central and South America wade through the Rio Grande river into the United States from Mexico, in Roma, Texas, on Thursday

It added that the administration 'cannot remove aliens to a country where their 'life or freedom would be threatened' on account of their 'race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group or political opinion'' or 'to a country where they will likely be tortured.'

The Justice Department declined to comment on the ruling.

Biden has fought to retain the Title 42 order, which was issued by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in March 2020 as a pandemic-related public health measure. Many in Biden's party have joined some health experts and pro-immigrant advocates in opposing the order, saying it unlawfully cuts off access to asylum and is not supported by scientific evidence.

Biden reversed some of Trump's hardline immigration policies after taking office in January 2021. But government data shows that his administration has expelled migrants more than a million times under the Title 42 order.

Border data presented in a federal court in Texas this week showed a 14% drop in encounters with undocumented migrants at the southwestern border for the month of January 2022 compared with December 2021

A migrant family from Ukraine seeking asylum from the U.S. government stands near the border fence while waiting to be processed by the U.S. Border Patrol after they crossed from Mexico to Yuma, Arizona, on January 22

A group of migrants await to be tended to by U.S. Border Patrol moments after they crossed from Mexico via the Rio Grande river and voluntarily turned themselves in on February 24

According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection's most recent monthly report, at least 78,486 people were expelled to Mexico in January under the policy.

Under Trump, nearly 400,000 migrants were denied asylum and refuge at the border and sent back to Mexico. The Biden administration has expelled over 1.2 million, however, most of those expelled have been single adults.

The ruling raises the possibility of the U.S. government having to conduct screenings to determine whether or not a person caught crossing the border has a reasonable fear of persecution or torture if expelled.

Migrants scale the shore of the Rio Grande after crossing over from Mexico to the United States in January. U.S. Customs and Border Protection's recent monthly report released in late February showed a 14% drop in encounters with migrants who were stopped along the southwestern border for illegally entering the U.S. throughout January, when 153,941 encounters were reported in comparison with 179,219 encounters were recorded in December

Such screenings would make it difficult for the Biden administration to continue large-scale expulsions of families at the border, according to Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, policy analyst with the American Immigration Council, a pro-immigration group.

A federal judge ruled last September that the Title 42 policy could not be applied to families, but the Biden administration appealed that decision.

U.S. Border Patrol agents registered 1,957,133 encounters with migrants stopped at the border under the Biden administration between February 2021 and December 2021.

Interdictions of migrants dropped from by 14 percent in January 2022 (153,941) after 179,219 encounters were tallied in December.

Republicans have made immigration a major focus heading into the November 8 midterm elections in which they are seeking to regain control of Congress from Biden's party. Republican majorities in Congress could stymie Biden's legislative agenda.
Nick Clegg, vice president of global affairs at Facebook's parent company Meta, said Russians have been 'silenced from speaking out'

It comes a week after Russia limited access to the platform after it refused to stop fact-checking and labeling content from state-owned organizations

The country's communications watchdog, Roskomnadzor, said Facebook was blocked during the war due to 'cases of discrimination against Russian media'

Russia blocked access to Facebook for its 146 million citizens Friday, threatening to punish anyone who spreads 'false information' about its invasion of Ukraine with as many as 15 years in prison.

The move by President Vladimir Putin, who signed a law that effectively criminalizes public opposition to or non-state news coverage of the conflict, comes as the Kremlin struggles to curb widespread dissent over the war and cope with crippling Western sanctions.

Russia's media regulator Roskomnadzor announced Friday, nine days after the Russian invasion, that both Facebook and Twitter would be nixed as soon as Saturday under the new guidance, citing at least '26 cases of discrimination against Russian media.'

The watchdog has urged all outlets to use only 'trustworthy sources' when reporting on the invasion of Ukraine.

According to a source close to the Kremlin, Russian officials are also looking to ban TikTok as well, with the insider saying that a block on the video-focused social media platform is 'imminent' in the coming days.

Russia has blocked access to Facebook for its 144 million citizens amid the Ukraine invasion, a state regulator has said

The move by President Vladimir Putin, who signed a law that effectively criminalizes public opposition to or non-state news coverage of the conflict, comes as the Kremlin struggles to curb widespread dissent over the war and cope with crippling Western sanctions

Roskomnadzor said the social network ban served as a response to the social media giant's restricting of Kremlin-run media outlets over inaccuracies in reporting covering the conflict.

'Since October 2020, 26 cases of discrimination against Russian media and information resources by Facebook have been recorded,' the media watchdog wrote in a statement announcing the ban Friday.

Nick Clegg, vice president of global affairs at Facebook parent Meta, says the move by Putin has left Russian citizens 'silenced from speaking out' against the conflict, which carried over into its ninth day Friday.

'Soon millions of ordinary Russians will find themselves cut off from reliable information, deprived of their everyday ways of connecting with family and friends and silenced from speaking out,' Clegg said of the decision.

The new guidance comes on as the conflict in Ukraine reached its ninth day Friday. Above, Ukrainians removing personal belongings from a burning house after being shelled by Russian forces in Irpin, just outside capital Kyiv

On the Russian government's decision to block access to Facebook in the Russian Federation: pic.twitter.com/JlJwIu1t9K  Nick Clegg (@nickclegg) March 4, 2022

'We will continue to do everything we can to restore our services so they remain available to people to safely and securely express themselves and organize for action.'

Hours later, Russian news outlet Interfax reported that Roskomnadzor had also begun blocking Twitter.

Many contend that the crackdown is the Kremlin's response to public discontent over the war in Ukraine - a propagandist effort to control the narrative regarding their ongoing military operations in the country.

Following the outset of the invasion last Thursday, companies like Twitter and Google have committed to labeling state-owned media and suspending advertising in Russia.

Meanwhile, the new law would allow Russian authorities to jail anyone who spreads 'fake' news about the conflict.

Following Friday's announcement, the BBC suspended the work of its journalists in the country.

YouTube and Facebook have banned Russian state-owned media outlets RT and Sputnik's channels across Europe (pictured on Tuesday)

Last week, the Kremlin limited access to Facebook after staffers refused to halt its fact-checking and labelling of content from state-owned organizations.

On Thursday, Russian Twitter users began commenting that Facebook, along with the BBC and independent Russian news outlet Meduza, were blocked in the country.

Reports of Russia restricting internet bandwith last week also surfaced, with data from internet censorship tracking company GlobalCheck showing that Russia was limiting user traffic to Facebook.

According to the company, Facebook user connections in the country fell to 25 percent at one point last week, the most throttled the platform had been since the invasion began.

Twitter also said last week that Russians were being restricted from accessing its platform.

In a tweet at the time, the company said it was 'aware' that access to the platform has been restricted for some people in Russia, adding it was 'working to keep our service safe and accessible'.

The move against Facebook also follows blocks imposed on broadcasters including the BBC, the US government-funded Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, The Associated Press reported.

As the conflict in Ukraine rages on, companies in Silicon Valley have acted as de facto watchdogs themselves amid apparent misinformation efforts by Russian media.

Over the weekend, Facebook and Twitter both announced that they had taken down two anti-Ukrainian disinformation campaigns posted by Russian state-owned outlets.

Meta, TikTok, and YouTube, which is owned by Google, have also banned notable state outlets RT and Sputnik from their platforms in Europe.

Reddit, meanwhile, has banned users from posting links to Russian state-owned media. Apple and Google have also removed RT from their app stores outside of Russia.

For now, Russian social networks like VKontakte remain accessible to Russian internet users, along with Meta-owned Instagram and YouTube.

Experts and analysts foresee the crackdown continuing as long as the conflict rages, with information-sharing platforms like TikTok set to be next to be targeted by the Kremlin's efforts.
Were she still in a relationship with the sixth in line to the throne, Chelsy Davy's first born would have been celebrated around the world and introduced to the Queen within days.

As it was, when Prince Harry's ex-girlfriend gave birth to her baby, Leo, in January, barely anyone was notified at all. Indeed, so under the radar was Chelsy's pregnancy that even the name of her partner, Sam Cutmore-Scott, was little known.

Only last Saturday did the Daily Mail break the happy news that Chelsy had become a mother and seemed blissfully settled with Old Etonian Cutmore-Scott, who owns upmarket Norfolk hotel The Harper along with his family.

And it speaks volumes that one of the first people baby Leo was introduced to was not royalty but the chair of Chelsy's local Norfolk parish council, who had been called to the Cutmore-Scott's home to address minor complaints about parking issues with Sam and his parents Jo and Mark, the hotel's managing director.

'We as a parish council met with the Cutmore-Scotts, with Jo and Mark and Sam in January, and his wife came in with the baby,' recalls softly-spoken Langham parish councillor Paul Godfrey.

When Prince Harry's ex-girlfriend Chelsy Davy gave birth to her baby, Leo, in January, barely anyone was notified at all. Indeed, so under the radar was Chelsy's pregnancy that even the name of her partner, Sam Cutmore-Scott, was little known. Pictured: Chelsy and Sam together

'We had the meeting in their house, adjacent to the hotel. I did get to meet the baby. We were having a chat so it was not much of an introduction. Chelsy was holding the baby.'

Of course, we don't know if Chelsy is Sam's wife, or if that was Mr Godfrey's misunderstanding, although judging by the sparkling sapphire ring spotted on her finger this week, there is every chance a marriage is on the horizon.

But the idea of a woman once destined to be a princess, whose life was an endless whirl of cocktails and exclusive London clubs, helping to settle a parking dispute in the sticks illustrates just how much life has changed for Chelsy in the decade since she and Harry ended their seven-year relationship.

The Chelsy most of us remember from her time with Harry, of course, is a glamorous Zimbabwean with a privileged background that belied her ability to swill vodka and slum it in student digs while studying law at Leeds University; a woman whose raucous partying and infectious guffaw provided a refreshing antidote to the more naturally reticent Kate Middleton.

Yet after a decade spent largely out of the limelight since her relationship with Harry ended in 2011, Chelsy, now 36, appears barely recognisable.

Were she still in a relationship with the sixth in line to the throne, Chelsy Davy's first born would have been celebrated around the world and introduced to the Queen within days. The pair were said to have dated for around five years before parting ways in 2009

She's a successful businesswoman  after ditching a career in law, Chelsy launched her own jewellery company, Aya, which she recently expanded to include a luxury travel service  and, after years of short-lived romances, appears to have finally met Mr Right.

It's not known how they met, but a photograph from September 2019 shows Chelsy with a man who appears to be Sam walking down a street in London's Soho together at night.

The first indication she had found love came in 2020, when Chelsy gave a glossy magazine interview in which she revealed 'there is someone' she was 'quite taken by', but 'it's very new and I don't want to say too much.'

Around the same time, a picture on her Instagram showed Chelsy partying in Mauritius, cuddling a man who looks like Sam, while in another social media picture, taken six months later, the couple appeared to be holidaying in Istanbul together (constant holidays are one aspect of Chelsy's life that don't appear to have been erased).

Chelsy is now believed to have left her bachelorette pad in London's South Kensington to live in Sam's four-storey Victorian terrace on the banks of the River Thames in Chiswick, West London  baby Leo was born at Chelsea and Westminster hospital  although the couple regularly visit Norfolk.

Chelsy is now believed to have left her bachelorette pad in London's South Kensington to live in Sam's four-storey Victorian terrace on the banks of the River Thames in Chiswick, West London. Pictured: Chelsy attending a summer party in 2018

Her influence on Sam's life is clear  The Harper's spa is stocked with beauty products by Irene Forte, daughter of hotel magnate Sir Rocco Forte and one of Chelsy's closest friends.

Last November, Chelsy posted a picture of her beloved cockapoo, Biscuit, posing in one of the hotel's swanky roll top bathtubs.

In an interview with Irene Forte's website in 2020, meanwhile, Chelsy revealed she was spending time in Norfolk, running along its coast first thing in the morning.

So, the intimations of a burgeoning relationship were there, although Chelsy's romance certainly wasn't the talk of the tiny village of Langham, a mile inland from the north Norfolk coast.

And if her penchant for vodka still exists, she's hardly propping up the local bar  the Mail was told she didn't drink in Langham's local pub, The Blue Bell.

Given its proximity to the Queen's Sandringham Estate, and Anmer Hall, home to the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, this is an area where residents are used to royal sightings. But even though the Cutmore-Scotts are well known in the village, their link with Chelsy isn't.

The Chelsy most of us remember from her time with Harry, of course, is a glamorous Zimbabwean with a privileged background that belied her ability to swill vodka and slum it in student digs while studying law at Leeds University; a woman whose raucous partying and infectious guffaw provided a refreshing antidote to the more naturally reticent Kate Middleton

'I know at the turn of the year (they) said they were expecting a grandchild,' says villager Alan Smith, 63.

But far from fuelling speculation about a society baby, he says the only 'village gossip' was that one of Jo and Mark's four children had got married in the States.

Sam is the eldest of the four siblings. His younger brother is an actor who lives in America; one of his two younger sisters is believed to work for the Government; and the other is thought to be a video producer.

Their mother, Jo Cutmore, a former head hunter, is clearly a force to be reckoned with.

Having set up her own company when Sam was just a year old so she could be in charge of her career, Jo is reported to have conquered the corporate world by hiding her pregnancies from clients until she was almost due to give birth and taking just days off after.

A champion of flexible working for women long before it became fashionable, she set up a support group for other high-powered working mothers 'for a recognition of the sheer physical effort it takes'.

When Sam was 11 she took him to Eton's Open Day, unaware that Prince William would be in the same boarding house  or that Prince Harry would be in the year below.

Chelsy Davy and Prince Harry's other ex girlfriend Cressida Bonas were among those who attended his wedding to Meghan Markle in May 2018 at St George's Chapel in Windsor

'Had no idea we were in Prince William's house until we were asked if all the publicity would bother us. Should have known it was special from the wonderful upholstery that looked like The Ritz rather than a boys' school like the other houses,' Jo wrote in a newspaper diary of her working week in 1995, quipping that her baby daughter had 'chosen to fill her nappy in the Master's study' that day and explaining that 'to make up for that trip, I worked late into the night'.

Her husband Mark Scott, whom she met when both were tutors at London's Financial Training College and married in 1983, gave up his career in computer software to become her business partner, their equal footing reflected, perhaps, in the way their children took both their surnames.

Growing up, Sam combined his time between the family's house in London's Eaton Square and their weekend cottage in Norfolk.

After training as an accountant, working in the financial sector and studying for an MBA, Sam joined Bijou Weddings Group, the company his parents founded in 2000.

Holding weddings in idyllic venues across the South of England, as well as another property in France, the family is described by one source who knew them as belonging firmly to the same class as their clients  very upmarket.

But Bijou Weddings Group did not come out of the pandemic well  as much for the apparently shoddy way the firm treated its clients as the challenges caused by Government restrictions.

Because as lockdowns hit and weddings were cancelled, the company charged their about-to-be-wed couples an 80 per cent cancellation fee.

Their decision caused an uproar on social media. When Adam Gibbs and Sarah Summerskill, from Woking, Surrey, were informed their big day couldn't go ahead after 18 months of planning, they were told they still owed 13,600.

'It's not the kind of money you find down the back of the sofa,' Gibbs said in a news story at the time.

On industry review website, Trust Pilot, the company was described as having 'no remorse, no apologies, no regret, no moral compass' by one disgruntled client, while another described them as a 'morally bankrupt, money-grabbing, utterly ruthless business'.

In September, the Competition and Markets Authority launched an investigation into the company, but even then, Claudia Dickson and Jack Trowsdale, from Horsham, West Sussex, who had paid almost 21,000 towards their wedding at Botleys Mansion, Surrey, before it was called off, learned they would only get back 13,554  two thirds of what they'd paid.

The venue said it was keeping 7,261 after the regulator agreed the firm could hold back money to cover its costs. Claudia said that October: 'We were gobsmacked. We did not even get a breakdown of what this money would cover.'

Sam responded at the time: 'We have entered into a refund scheme agreed with the CMA. We are doing our best to ensure all our couples affected by the pandemic are treated fairly.'

The same year, the Cutmore-Scotts had intended to open The Harper, a hotel in a converted glass-blowing factory the family first saw in 2016 and bought from another developer to do up in what Sam describes as the family's 'artfully mismatched taste'.

He has said: 'It was a new business direction for us  a hotel rather than a wedding venue  but it looked exciting and it was in the right place so we decided to go for it.'

The hotel is named after his late grandfather, Stanley Harper Cutmore, who ran a mechanics' workshop in Norwich and inspired his descendants' love of the Norfolk coast.

Sam says the 'silver lining' to the pandemic was that he got locked down in the hotel for months, giving him an opportunity to finesse the business.

Having spent her early years in Zimbabwe, and with her family still based in southern Africa, it is easy to see how the close-knit Cutmore-Scotts could have provided solace for Chelsy.

As Chelsy suggested herself, in 2020, shortly after she's believed to have met Sam: 'Everything is falling into place.'

Additional reporting: Stephanie Condron and Mark Branagan
Long before her affair with a married U.S. congressman hit the news this week, there was enough drama in Tania Joyas life to fill a Hollywood movie script.

The 38-year-old daughter of a postmaster from Harrow, North-West London, was once the wife of one of ISISs most senior commanders, an American-born Muslim convert she met online.

Tania was a passionate espouser of the jihadi cause until nine years ago, when she fled war-torn Syria with her three children, while pregnant, and settled in America.

There, in 2018, Tania married for a second time and, having ditched her jilbab, transformed herself into an elegant, Unitarian church-going Texan wife.

She says she would tell her crazy whirlwind story to anyone who would listen, in the hope of educating others about the dangers of Islamic extremism.

But fast-forward nearly four years and her tireless campaign work has been somewhat overshadowed by the latest twist in the story of the woman once dubbed the First Lady of Isis  an affair with a married Republican congressman who also happens to be an Iraq war veteran.

The eight-month affair with 49-year-old Van Taylor  not to mention the eye-wateringly intimate texts he sent Tania  made headlines this week when the father-of-three admitted to cheating on his wife and announced he was dropping his bid for re-election.

Long before her affair with a married U.S. congressman hit the news this week, there was enough drama in Tania Joyas (pictured in 2018) life to fill a Hollywood movie script

Her tireless campaign work has been somewhat overshadowed by the latest twist in the story of the woman once dubbed the First Lady of Isis  an affair with married Republican congressman Van Taylor (pictured) who also happens to be an Iraq war veteran

The repentant politician, who describes himself as a family man, businessman and U.S. Marine, referred to the affair as a horrible mistake, adding: I want to apologise for the pain I have caused with my indiscretion.

He and his wife Anne, and their three daughters, are now attempting to repair the scars left by [his] actions.

So what does Tania have to say for herself? Speaking exclusively to the Mail this week, she portrayed herself very much as the broken-hearted victim. I was in love with Van but he used me, she says. He broke me first.

She believes the politician took advantage of her at a time when her second marriage was failing and she was suffering from depression and low self-esteem.

I did what I did because I was scared. I needed someone who could save me and my home, and afford to adopt my kids. Van told me that he wished Anne, his wife, would leave him.

I feel so foolish now, but at the time I wanted someone to rescue me. I needed to feel loved and I believed him when he said hed look after me. I was dreaming.

And then theres Tanias ex-husband, IT consultant Craig Burma, 52, from Plano in Texas, who has also spoken exclusively to the Mail. He says he only found out about the affair a week ago, when a U.S. newspaper reporter called him.

The person I am mad at is him, he says. I think he was terribly inappropriate with her. He didnt just make one mistake, he made a mistake every time he touched her, every time he slept with her or texted her the horrific things he either did or wanted to do with her. He made thousands of mistakes.

While Craigs divorce from Tania was finalised eight weeks ago, he says he still admires and loves his ex-wife.

Tanias ex-husband, IT consultant Craig Burma, 52, from Plano in Texas, (pictured together on their wedding day) who has also spoken exclusively to the Mail. He says he only found out about the affair a week ago, when a U.S. newspaper reporter called him

What on earth is it, then, about this British woman who enjoyed an utterly normal childhood in the suburbs of London that makes her cause ructions wherever she goes?

And how, having apparently set herself on the straight and narrow after her disastrous ISIS marriage, has she found herself back in the news once again?

Shes very, very smart, but shes also gullible. Its easy for people to take advantage of her, says Craig.

To many, that judgment will sound generous indeed. After all, Tania admits she initiated the affair after meeting Taylor in September 2019 through her work with the Washington-based Preventing Violent Extremism programme. At the end of the meeting, he gave her his card. Their affair started in October 2020 and ended in June 2021.

I thought he was charming and really hot, she tells me. The pair messaged occasionally for a year about work matters. Then, in September 2020, she told him that she found him attractive, in response to a self-deprecating remark he had made. After that he started messaging me all the time.

Later on, they shared explicit text messages and met for sex at Taylors residence in Plano. We were obsessed with each other, she says. We had different political views but he enjoyed being challenged. It was a fiery relationship.

It was Tania who, having already told Taylors wife of the affair by text last November, decided to go public this week. She claimed that she was provoked by the sight of Taylors campaign posters in her town.

She says that she initially decided to just tell one of his main rivals, hoping that the woman would quietly persuade Taylor to stand down.

I was so angry, she tells me. He had called out a rival politician whod had an affair. I thought he was a hypocrite. Playing at politics, of course, is a dangerous thing. Trump-backed Republican Suzanne Harp promptly sent someone round to interview Tania in full.

It was deeper than just sex for me, says Tania in the recorded interview. He enjoyed my company as I was happy and always complimenting him and praising him. We knew we had an unhealthy obsession with each other. Hed say: Youre my heroin. Youre my cocaine. Youre my weakness. Id say: Im in love with you.

Following reports that Taylor had been cheating on his wife Anne with the ISIS bride, the North Texas congressman admitted having an affair and dramatically announced that he was ending his re-election campaign

From the very beginning of our relationship, he was always telling me: Ill look after you. Ill do anything to make your life better. I want to help you. But it wasnt true. I needed a hero to save me and I thought Van was a hero because thats how he plays off in every interview. Hes the American war hero.

I thought that we could be together, me with my four sons, him with his daughters. She jokes that they could have been like The Brady Bunch, referring to the U.S. sitcom about a large blended family.

And, naive as it may seem, she appears to have believed at times that the pair had a future together. Taylor used to pick her up from her pole-dancing and Pilates classes, and theyd cook for each other.

She hoped this powerful, influential man would look after her and her children. Her sons live with their U.S. grandparents, with whom she has shared custody.

At one point I said to Van: My in-laws are old. You can afford to adopt them. You dont have a son, you have three daughters.

She also describes how she tried to persuade Taylor to buy her house, which is going up for sale this weekend. The proceeds are due to be split with her ex-husband, Craig.

Towards the end of their relationship, Taylor did give her $5,000 (3,780) to help her pay off her credit card bill, on the condition that she told no one. But it is clear she wished for more.

Tania readily admits being pathetic and lovesick. Such desperation is vastly at odds with the idealistic, if horribly misguided, woman she was when she set off for Syria with her ISIS commander husband in 2013, thirsty for an Islamic state, as she once put it.

In her interview with the Mail, she blames her poor choices on her upbringing within a conservative Bangladeshi-British family.

The women were oppressed by male members of the family, she says. I was never allowed to date. I didnt learn how to form healthy relationships with men.

She met John Georgelas on a Muslim matrimonial site in February 2003. They were married under Islamic law a month after meeting, and a year later they wed at Rochdale Registry Office.

Tania Joya pictured with John Georgelas. The pair fled to Syria from the US. Pictured in June 2009

Georgelas, the youngest son of U.S. Army Colonel Timothy Georgelas and his wife Martha, was from Plano, but spent part of his childhood in Cambridgeshire, where his father was stationed in the 1980s. He rebelled against his family and their politically conservative, Christian values, dropped out of school, became a prolific drug-user and converted to Islam shortly after 9/11.

During her teenage years in London, Tania had also rebelled against her hard-working, moderate Muslim parents, Nural and Jahanara Choudhury, who encouraged their five children to embrace university education and embark on professional careers. Nevertheless, Tania said she felt like the fourth unwanted daughter, and wanted to run away.

The family moved to East London and, while at a sixth-form college in Barking, she fell under the spell of a group of ultra-conservative students. She began reading the Koran and wearing a jilbab and a niqab, even though her family hated it.

According to Tania, Georgelas, who is believed to have been killed in Syria in 2017, promised travel, a big family and a stable life.

It was the first time someone was really nice to me, she said in a 2017 interview about her former life. Indeed, a desperate desire to be loved appears to be a common theme for this troubled woman.

She says her first husband tricked her into going to Syria after getting her onto a bus with their children.

When they arrived, they were put up in a villa belonging to a Syrian general. But within three days, she says, she had managed to phone Georgelass mother in Texas and told her to report her son to the FBI. With her husbands permission, Tania left the country three weeks later.

He was afraid Id be killed because I refused to cover up properly and kept mouthing off. I was a liability, she says. Its the one thing Im grateful to him for  he let me leave.

According to Tania, (pictured in Egypt in 2011) Georgelas, who is believed to have been killed in Syria in 2017, promised travel, a big family and a stable life. She says her first husband tricked her into going to Syria after getting her onto a bus with their children

Once she had fled Syria, she and her children turned up on the doorstep of her former in-laws, Timothy and Martha, in Plano. It wasnt long before she was hanging out in the Dallas shopping malls, having her hair done at the salon and learning to shoot at the local gun range.

She soon turned to internet dating sites to find a new man. She met her second husband, Craig, via match.com. He paints a picture of a lonely woman, isolated from her family in London, with whom she has almost no contact. Indeed, her mother has spoken of disowning her.

Its very lonely when you dont have a family network, he says. You can get everything you need but still feel the emptiness and not know how to cope with that. She doesnt have a support system.

Their marriage was in trouble within a year of their June 2018 wedding, with Tania leaving Craig and moving to California for three months. He filed for divorce before they reconciled in August 2019.

He moved out of their home in October last year and their divorce was finalised in January this year.

He says: Our marriage was going through a rough patch when the affair was going on, but things got catastrophically worse, which led to me filing for divorce. From my point of view, the marriage was unsupportable. I didnt understand why at the time, I just knew we couldnt live together any more.

He and Tania are still on amicable terms while they wait to sell the home they once shared and where, for now, she is still living. He describes the way Taylor moved in on his ex-wife as disgusting.

He had every advantage in life, hes from family money, hes had a Harvard education, hes in a position of power. And he decides to pick out someone like Tania who doesnt have those things and take advantage of her. Thats the part that makes it tough for me.

I know people are human. It infuriates me that he did not understand that he was taking advantage of a person.

Several days before Tuesday's primary election, Ms Joya (pictured) told The Dallas Morning News that she had an affair with Taylor that lasted from October 2020 to June 2021

So what next, then, for the so-called Isis bride now being described as a home-wrecker in the U.S media? Tania says she wishes she could start over again.

While she is training to be a hypnotherapist and has discussed the possibility of writing a book about her extraordinary life, she has already found herself a new man.

He is 44-year-old Chad Greenslade, another IT consultant, who already appears smitten. He has posted several photographs of Tania on his Facebook page, including one at the end of January with the words: Shes so beautiful.

Whether or not she has found the elusive happy-ever-after she is constantly seeking is another matter entirely.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki on Friday blamed rising gas prices on Vladimir Putin's invasion of the Ukraine as the administration indicated it was considering a ban on Russian oil as punishment on the Kremlin.

'The reason why the price of gas is going up is not because of steps the president has taken they are because President Putin is invading Ukraine, and that is creating a great deal of instability in the global marketplace,' Psaki said.

And Cecilia Rouse, the chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, hinted that a ban on Russian oil and gas into the American market was an option.

'We are looking at options that we can take right now, if we were to cut the U.S. consumption of Russian energy - but what's really most important is that we maintain a steady supply of global energy,' she noed.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki blamed rising gas prices on Vladimir Putin's invasion of the Ukraine

Previously President Joe Biden had said of a ban on Russian energy products: 'nothing is off the table.'

And he's facing pressure from both Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill to make such a move - one that observers say would be mainly symbolic given how little of the American energy supply comes from Russia.

Russia is the second largest producer of energy in the world but only makes up 3% of the supply coming into the U.S.

Gas and oil make up a huge percentage of Russia's income as it is the world's largest oil exporter, selling some 5 million barrels throughout the world each day. About 60 percent of those exports are to Europe, 20 percent to China.

Conversations are taking place between the administration and the U.S. oil and gas industry on the impact such a ban would have both on American consumers and on the global stage, Bloomberg reported.

Oil soared this week to almost $120 a barrel for the first time in a decade as the West slapped sanctions on Russia over Ukraine.

And the average price for a gallon of regular unleaded gasoline was $3.84 Thursday, according to AAA. Experts have warned that major cities can count on seeing $5 a gallon in the near future.

Congress has already got the ball rolling on a Russian energy ban.

Democratic Senator Joe Manchin and Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski introduced legislation that would block the flow of Russian oil and gas into the United States. Speaker Nancy Pelosi supports the idea as so many Republicans.

'Putin brings everybody together,' Manchin said.

But Psaki seemed to rule it on Thursday.

'Our objective and the president's objective has been to maximize impact on Russia while minimizing impact to us and our allies and partners,' she said. 'We don't have a strategic interest in reducing the global supply of energy, and that would raise prices at the gas pump for the American people, around the world.'

People remove personal belongings from a burning house after being shelled in the city of Irpin, outside Kyiv, Ukraine

A Ukrainian military vehicle speeds by on a main road near Sytnyaky, Ukraine

Psaki on Friday also didn't rule out Iranian oil returning to the marketplace should a deal be made with Tehran.

'Again, there's not an Iran there's not a deal at this point in time while we're close. We're not there. So if and when we get to that point, we can speak to that question,' she said when asked about it.

A deal to limit Iran's nuclear programme would lead to sanctions on its oil sector being lifted but it could take several months for any more Iranian crude to flow, and even then it may only offer short-term respite to tight oil markets, analysts told Reuters.

Data firm Kpler estimates that Iran had 100 million barrels in floating storage as of mid-February, meaning it could add 1 million barrels per day (bpd), or 1% of global supply, for about three months, but that would only be a short-lived boost.
Even for a Nobel Prize-winning leader of the free world, this had been one of the great nights of his life.

Back in his suite at Buckingham Palace, Barack Obama simply wanted to savour the moment.

He had just been honoured with a state banquet given by Queen Elizabeth II.

It wasnt the Midas-like display of George IVs gold and silver tableware collection or the quality of the delicious Echezeaux Grand Cru 1990 Romanee-Conti which had made this such an exceptional occasion.

It was the rapport he had formed with a host who could talk with such authority about so many of his predecessors.

Obama had been enjoying himself so much that the Queen had eventually taken the Chancellor of the Exchequer to one side to ask if he might, very discreetly, let the U.S. President know that it was bedtime.

Even for a Nobel Prize-winning leader of the free world, this had been one of the great nights of his life. Back in his suite at Buckingham Palace, Barack Obama simply wanted to savour the moment. He had just been honoured with a state banquet given by Queen Elizabeth II. Pictured: The Queen and President Obama in 2011

I just said: Yes, Maam, George Osborne recalls. I could see Obama with a drink in hand, and I was thinking: What do I do? I couldnt just interrupt and say: Oh, the Queen wants you to go to bed.

Fortunately, he was saved by the Queens private secretary, who gently nudged proceedings to a close.

Still buzzing, the President summoned his two closest aides, including senior speechwriter Ben Rhodes, for a modest after-party in the Belgian Suite, where the Queen accommodates her state visitors.

There was work to do. I really love the Queen, Obama told Rhodes. Shes just like Toot, my grandmother. Courteous. Straightforward. All about what she thinks. She doesnt suffer fools.

They developed a real affinity, says Rhodes. He saw how much the Queen went out of her way to make a black American President feel as welcome as possible.

She treated him a lot better than some other leaders [treated him], I can tell you that. That was very powerful.

She and Prince Philip  people who, generationally and racially, couldnt be more distinct from the Obamas  were trying to strike up a genuine friendship.

Obama was blown away. I have been writing about the Queen and the monarchy for 30 years (through good times and some very bad ones), during which I have interviewed her family, her staff, her ministers and her fellow world leaders.

In the course of writing this new biography, I have also studied documents and correspondence, much of it previously unseen.

Time and again over her 70 years on the throne  during which she has been a devoted Head of the Commonwealth  I have seen how the Queen has gone out of her way to promote inter-racial, multi-faith, cross-community cohesion.

All of which will have made it particularly upsetting, in her tenth decade, to find her monarchy facing imprecise yet wounding charges of racism not from republicans or culture warriors  but from within her own family.

From the Queens perspective, Harry and Meghan had promised so much, for the country and for the monarchy.

After leaving the Armed Forces in 2015, Prince Harry had thrown himself into several causes, notably the Invictus Games for wounded military personnel.

Eeek! Royal rodent that rattled the President While Michelle Obama was getting ready for bed in the Orleans bedroom of the Belgian Suite in Buckingham Palace during their first visit, her husband and his advisers sat in the sitting room, adding some final touches to the big speech he was due to make the next day. At which point, there was an interruption. It was a Palace butler bringing news of an intruder. Mr President, pardon me, whispered the man in the tailcoat. Theres a mouse. Without blinking, the President replied: Dont tell the First Lady. The butler assured him that all would be done to catch the unwanted guest. Just dont tell the First Lady, Obama repeated. As his aide and chief speechwriter Ben Rhodes recalls: He didnt care, except for the fact that Michelle Obama was terrified of mice. Looking back, a decade later, Rhodes remembers another amusing detail from the Obamas stay at Buckingham Palace. It was the only presidential guest quarters the couple ever encountered anywhere in the world without a n een-suite bathroom (there was just an Edwardian toilet in a compartment off the bedroom). Thanks to the palaces antiquated layout, state visitors were expected to nip across the corridor to clean their teeth in a bathroom which, owing to its vintage, contained a bath but no shower. Bundled off to bed early in a house with vermin and a walk to the bathroom, Obama might have been forgiven for viewing his stay at the palace as something of a disappointment. In fact, the experience reinforced his regard for one of the most impressive world leaders he encountered in his entire presidency. Advertisement

Harry has shot the lights out with Invictus, David Cameron observed.

The Prince did not just win admirers at home; he persuaded the U.S. First Lady, Michelle Obama, to become closely involved and secured an interview with Barack Obama during a stint as a guest editor of Radio 4s Today programme in 2017 (one BBC veteran recalls that the Prince was a grafter and one of the most hands-on guest editors the programme had seen).

Another ex-President joined Harry for the 2016 Invictus Games in Florida. I watched very carefully how he can relate to the soldiers, says George W. Bush.

He cared about them. I left with a very positive impression.

So when Harry sat down with his American actress fiancee, Meghan Markle, a year later for their engagement interview with the BBC, a new chapter seemed to be dawning for the Royal Family.

The couple had talked excitedly of their future in a Commonwealth context.

The Queen subsequently appointed him as her Commonwealth Youth ambassador.

Shortly before they married, Meghan had joined him as he toured the conference rooms and receptions at the 2018 Commonwealth Youth Summit.

If it was unusual for a royal brideto-be to have a central role at something as important as this, it was proof of the confidence which the Queen had in them both.

The omens would look even better, a month later, when the bride walked into St Georges Chapel, Windsor.

For there, in exquisite hand-stitched detail all over her 16ft veil, were the flowers of every nation of the Commonwealth, a touching and respectful homage to the Queens own Coronation gown.

Meghan's mother, Doria Ragland, a Los Angeles yoga instructor of African-American heritage, had flown from California  the only member of Meghans family present.

Her father, entirely unused to media attention, had been persuaded by a local news agency to pose for photos  seemingly taken by a paparazzo  of him preparing for his daughters big day.

When the ruse was exposed, he announced that to spare the couple any embarrassment, he was not coming to the wedding.

It then emerged he was in hospital with serious heart problems.

This unhappy sideshow was exacerbated by the venting of Meghans two half-siblings, angry at not being invited to the wedding.

However, there were no invitations either for other seemingly blameless members of the brides family, such as Meghans uncle, Michael Markle, the U.S. air force veteran and diplomat who had once secured her an internship at the U.S. embassy in Argentina.

The dynamics of her family certainly eclipsed the usual criticisms about the Royal Family being dysfunctional.

Feeling for his future daughter-in-law, the Prince of Wales offered to step in, saying he would be honoured to escort Meghan up the aisle of St Georges Chapel to the altar.

The reply, according to one friend, was not quite what he was expecting: Can we meet halfway?

Here was an indicator that this was no blushing bride, but a confident, independent woman determined to make a grand entrance on her own.

Across Britain, the overwhelming reaction was one of delight that Harry, one of the most popular members of the Royal Family, had finally found happiness. Windsor had looked its best and even the weather had been perfect.

What more could a monarch want? In October 2018, the Sussexes embarked on an extensive Commonwealth tour of Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific. Coverage was relentlessly positive, yet they made no effort to engage with the accompanying press corps.

On their own tours, the Queen and Prince Philip would usually arrange a reception for both the local media and the travelling press.

The monarch had always worked on the basis that a taxpayer-funded royal trip should be reported. If not, there wasnt much point to it.

The Sussexes had no such plans. At the end of 16 days of travelling and 76 engagements, from Tonga to Sydney, their officials asked them if they would, at least, acknowledge the press corps.

These were regular accredited royal correspondents and photographers, who cover the Royal Family all the time, not the grenade-throwing columnists or paparazzi whom the couple particularly detested.

Finally, during the last leg of the tour, the couple grudgingly walked to the back of the plane where the press were working.

The Duke kept things short. Thanks for coming, he told them, before adding: Not that we invited you.

This would be the high-water mark of the Sussexes relations with the British press.

Unfortunately, the couple were still feeling sore about the whole business around Meghans father and the press before the wedding, says a Palace staffer.

That was not going to change.

At times, it almost seemed as if frustrating the media had become a point of principle for the Sussexes.

Three months after their return from Australia, they were guests of honour at a gala evening for the Queens Commonwealth Trust at the Natural History Museum.

Having paid 120 a head, well wishers had at least expected to see and hear the Sussexes, if not receive a handshake.

As the couple arrived, however, huge screens were erected in the atrium to prevent anyone obtaining a photo or even a glimpse as the couple were swiftly ushered into a side room.

It was joyless, says one benefactor. It felt more like a witness-protection programme than a royal fundraiser.

By the end of 2018, more and more leaks were finding their way into the papers.

Reports emerged of pre-wedding arguments between Meghan and royal staff over her choice of tiara; between Meghan and the Duchess of Cambridge over a dress-fitting for the bridesmaids.

Among friends and fans of the Duke and the pregnant Duchess, this would all be cited as proof of an agenda of bullying, favouritism (towards the Cambridges) and an undercurrent of closet racism within the press.

The Duchesss decision to fly by private jet to be feted at a lavish celebrity baby shower in the penthouse of a New York hotel pointed to another factor in her troubled relationship with the British press.

What might be par for the course in U.S. celebrity circles simply jarred with what the public expected of members of the Royal Family.

This was not just the usual suspects being horrid or trying to polarise public opinion into Kate versus Meghan opposing camps.

From the environmental charity Friends of the Earth to regulars on the parental website Mumsnet, there was robust criticism of a trip which smacked of both excessive extravagance and eco-unfriendly double standards.

As for the Kate versus Meghan narrative, royal officials were managing to give that story new-found legitimacy anyway.

On March 14, 2019, the Palace announced that the Cambridges and the Sussexes would be splitting their offices and staff.

This was, in part, down to a fact of royal life. For the moment, both Princes were funded by their fathers Duchy of Cornwall revenues.

As soon as a change of reign occurred, the Duchy of Cornwall would go directly to William. Harry and Meghans public duties would then be supported by the new King at Buckingham Palace.

Since the Palace was undergoing a 369million, ten-year refurbishment programme, it made sense to allocate new office space to the Sussexes and their staff now rather than later.

Though there was a cool-headed managerial logic to the Cambridge/Sussex reorganisation, it looked like a rift to many  and the Sussexes felt it as such, says a friend. It could and should have been handled better, says one ex-staffer.

The Palace hierarchy were being very rigorous and technical about it, but these are two brothers, not a factory production line.

In 2018, a new private secretary had been appointed to the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. Simon Case, formerly private secretary to two prime ministers (David Cameron and Theresa May), was a Civil Service high-flyer.

He was evidently expected to deliver swift results at Kensington Palace, since he made it very clear to colleagues that he was not staying for long.

Sure enough, in 2020 he was heading onwards and upwards to become Cabinet Secretary and head of the Civil Service.

But in accelerating the parting of the offices, says a source close to the couple, the institution was unwittingly hastening the Sussexes ultimate departure from the royal fold altogether.

Having worked hard to make their Australian trip a success, the couple were also deflated by the lack of feedback from within the institution on their return.

It would not have taken much for the hierarchy to say, Well done, but the Palace isnt geared up for that, says a source.

Nor did it help that, when the Sussexes were told to move their offices out of Kensington Palace, they were initially offered a back office at Buckingham Palace so small and inadequate that Prince Harry rejected it instantly.

Eventually, an appeal to the Queen ensured that somewhere more appropriate was found alongside the Master of the Households team on a main corridor.

In May, relations with both the Palace and the press had reached such a low that the couple decided to handle the news of the birth of their baby on their own terms.

They issued a press statement to say that the Duchess had just gone into labour, even though their baby boy had actually been born hours earlier.

Later, the couple announced the childs name via Instagram (rather than the Palace).

He would be known as plain Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor.

Although he had a courtesy title as the heir to the dukedom of Sussex  the Earl of Dumbarton  his parents would not be using it.

According to the Telegraph, quoting multiple sources: They didnt like the idea of Archie being called the Earl of Dumbarton because it began with the word dumb.

The people of Dumbarton were not pleased. Early in 2020, the Sussexes dropped what almost every newspaper described as a bombshell.

They were quitting mainstream royal life, and on their own terms, too. We intend to step back as senior members of the Royal Family, and work to become financially independent, while continuing to fully support Her Majesty The Queen, they announced.

Harry and Meghan had given the Queen and her staff almost no notice, in case the news of their carefully prepared fait accompli should leak. So they were probably surprised when the Palace responded almost immediately.

Feeling for his future daughter-in-law, the Prince of Wales offered to step in, saying he would be honoured to escort Meghan up the aisle of St Georges Chapel to the altar. The reply, according to one friend, was not quite what he was expecting: Can we meet halfway?. Pictured: Prince Charles walks Meghan down the aisle in St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle

These are complicated issues that will take time to work through, said the statement.

In other words, no one, not even a much-loved and popular grandson, was going to tell the monarch how to run her monarchy.

Having listened to advisers with big ideas and little understanding of the complex latticework of conventions underpinning a 1,000-year-old institution, the couple had either misunderstood or miscalculated how the monarchy would have to respond.

Of the many lessons learned during the unhappiness of the 1990s, one that had left a clear impression on the Queen and her officials was that a problem deferred was a problem likely to get even worse.

In short, the Sussexes were offered the choice of in or out, and they plumped for the latter.

By the end of the week, the Queens press office issued a statement laying out a very different landscape from the one the couple had projected days before.

They would lose their patronages and military roles, would no longer use their HRH style and would receive no further public funds.

The Palace also revealed that the Queen had insisted on a review of the situation after 12 months, just in case the couple might be having second thoughts. Privately, she wasnt expecting them to.

Asked by one wellmeaning visitor if she expected them to resume royal life, the Queen replied firmly: Of course not. They took the dogs.

It wasnt easy for Meghan to adapt to this new life, but she did not allow herself much time, says a close charity associate of the Sussexes.

Meghan didnt like the way things were done. She decided it was all wrong and he stood by her. Even so, blowing the whole thing up was a strange thing to do.

The playboy prince could do no wrong Prince Harry along with friends and many females partied in an exclusive, heavily guraded, VIP Bungalow at Wet Republic in Las Vegas In his Army days, Prince Harry could do no wrong in the eyes of the public. Shortly before he was due to be deployed (for the second time) to Afghanistan in 2012, he slipped out of the country for a pre-deployment lads trip to Las Vegas with friends (left). Within days, pictures of a naked Prince playing a game of strip billiards with an equally naked girl at a private party (snapped by a guest, rather than a paparazzo) ended up online and then in the press, to Harrys eternal dismay. The public were unfussed. In the eyes of most people, a hugely popular unattached warrior Prince in his 20s, heading back to the front line, could do no wrong. Whatever had happened in Vegas, they believed, should stay there. The Queen and Royal Family were certainly not worried about Harry letting off steam in Nevada. Like any family sending a loved one off to war, they had much greater concerns. The Prince had received a forthright piece of advice from his grandfather, the Duke of Edinburgh. Going off to Afghanistan, he was very matter of fact, Harry recalled, and just said, Make sure you come back alive. The Prince was also touched by the reaction of the rest of the Armed Forces following the Las Vegas episode. Hundreds of fellow servicemen  and women  showed their solidarity with their royal comrade by posting naked images of themselves on a military Facebook page entitled, Support Prince Harry with a naked salute. That really did cheer him up a lot, says a friend. Advertisement

The couple made no attempt to conceal their irritation when the Palace warned their sussexroyal brand would have to go.

There is not any jurisdiction by the monarchy or Cabinet Office over the use of the word royal overseas, they responded in a petulant statement, effectively dismissing the authority of the Queen to determine who or what was royal.

In California, the Sussexes acquired a large house in the fashionable enclave of Montecito and were planning fresh ventures under the banner of their new creation, Archewell. Given its stated mission  to unleash the power of compassion to drive systemic cultural change  it was clear that the couple had moved on from royal awaydays to Rotherham.

Within the Palace, however, it was not what the Sussexes had said thus far which was the main cause for concern.

It was what was coming next.

In 2021, came news that the couple were planning an intimate conversation on U.S. television network CBS, with Oprah Winfrey.

It was now the Palaces turn to take the front foot.

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex, it said, would be relinquishing their remaining patronages and appointments  of which the most notable was Harrys position as Captain General of the Royal Marines.

There was an overtly peevish tone to the Sussexes almost immediate response.

We can all live a life of service, their statement concluded curtly. Service is universal.

Blast and counterblast continued. No sooner had CBS aired the first trailer from the Winfrey confessional than a newspaper revealed a member of staff at the Palace had made a complaint of bullying behaviour by the Duchess.

The Sussex team hit back, accusing the Palace of a calculated smear campaign. In their interview with Oprah Winfrey, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex made a series of very serious allegations against the Royal Family and the monarchy.

Most toxic of all was the claim that, when the Duchess was pregnant with her son, a member of the Royal Family had voiced concerns and conversations about how dark his skin might be.

She even alleged that Archies ethnicity was the reason he lacked a royal title or state protection.

The alleged remark about race rested on a conversation which the Duchess said she had not heard.

That was relayed to me from Harry, she acknowledged.

She said that it had taken place when she was pregnant.

However, when the Duke finally appeared towards the end of the 85-minute programme, he was clear that it had happened right at the beginning of their relationship.

The two accounts, therefore, contradicted each other.

Several other allegations made by them were found to be less than watertight.

Though the Queen very rarely comments when members of the family vent private grievances in public, she made an exception this time.

A Palace statement issued on her behalf contained a deftly diplomatic, yet unambiguous riposte: While some recollections may vary, they are taken very seriously and will be addressed by the family privately.

It was not just the accusations themselves which were painful and personal. It was the way in which the Sussexes were prepared to undermine the institution which had put them on their celebrity pedestal in the first place.

For Prince William, there was the added anguish of seeing the younger brother whom he had protected (and who had idolised him) now throwing incendiary and, in some cases, unanswerable charges into the public domain, fully aware of their likely impact.

William, says one friend, was as low as Id ever seen him.

Since the Oprah interview, the brothers have only met twice  at Prince Philips funeral and at the unveiling of the statue of their mother at Kensington Palace. Through it all, the one person for whom the Sussexes had nothing but warm words, however, was the Queen.

Nor was this synthetic. Harry adores her. She is the one who has kept the relationship going, says a senior aide.

He talks to her a lot, not unlike the way Prince Charles used to turn to the Queen Mother.

Regular communications between the family and the Sussexes have continued, but, given the profound loss of trust after the Oprah interview, the UK side has taken to treading warily.

People have been advised that calls may be recorded, so it doesnt make for a very relaxed situation, says one official.

However much the Sussexes departure and subsequent actions have upset family members and royal staff, there will have to be some acknowledgement of failings at every level of the institution prior to any sort of resolution.

The couple could and should have been a very great asset to the monarchy.

That they felt unable or unwilling to fulfil that role may have been down to some unrealistic expectations on their part, but that is not the whole story.

Beyond the Palace, there remains a sense of a lost opportunity for the country.

David Cameron, who regards Prince Harry as an enormous asset, does not believe that a parting of ways was inevitable.

I feel sad that they couldnt find some sort of halfway house, he says, adding that Prince Harry might have been happier with a more defined career path.

Last July, the Duke announced he would publish his autobiography during 2022, in a deal reportedly worth many millions of pounds.

Whether this exercise ultimately clears the air or further entrenches Prince Harrys sense of grievance remains to be seen.
Safe at last  with thanks to Mail readers  two-year-old Leonel escaped from hell and asked his mother: 'Is the monster coming?'

The bewildered toddler and his parents crossed from Ukraine into Slovakia yesterday and were welcomed by aid workers funded with donations from Mail Force.

Thanks to our readers' generosity, they were immediately given essential supplies  and a chocolate bar for Leonel. As the little boy munched on his treat, he seemed to sense the family's relief to be out of harm's way.

His mother Olga Legulska answered his question by saying: 'The monster is not coming any more, sweetheart,' as she tenderly brushed her fingers through his hair.

She explained that by 'monster' he meant the bombs that had rained down on their bombarded home city of Kharkiv. The shocked 30-year-old teacher and her husband Ravil Gaifullin, 31, took their son and a few belongings and set off on an 800-mile journey across Ukraine.

It took them 27 hours by train in a packed carriage to reach the frontier with Slovakia. Last night after crossing over, they were being made comfortable at a reception centre in the border village of Vysne Nemecke.

Sanctuary: Olga Legulska with son Leonel after crossing into Slovakia yesterday

The Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday and MailOnline UKRAINE REFUGEE APPEAL Readers of Mail Newspapers and MailOnline have always shown immense generosity at times of crisis. Calling upon that human spirit, we are now launching an appeal to raise money for refugees from Ukraine. For, surely, no one can fail to be moved by the heartbreaking images and stories of families  mostly women, children, the infirm and elderly  fleeing from Russia's invading armed forces. As this tally of misery increases over the coming days and months, these innocent victims of a tyrant will require accommodation, schools and medical support. All donations to the Mail Ukraine Appeal will be distributed to charities and aid organisations providing such essential services. In the name of charity and compassion, we urge all our readers to give swiftly and generously. TO MAKE A DONATION ONLINE Donate at www.mailforcecharity.co.uk/donate To add Gift Aid to a donation  even one already made  complete an online form found here: mymail.co.uk/ukraine Via bank transfer, please use these details: Account name: Mail Force Charity Account number: 48867365 Sort code: 60-00-01 TO MAKE A DONATION VIA CHEQUE Make your cheque payable to 'Mail Force' and post it to: Mail Newspapers Ukraine Appeal, GFM, 42 Phoenix Court, Hawkins Road, Colchester, Essex CO2 8JY TO MAKE A DONATION FROM THE US US readers can donate to the appeal via a bank transfer to Associated Newspapers or by sending checks to dailymail.com HQ at 51 Astor Place (9th floor), New York, NY 10003 Advertisement

The family is one of thousands to be helped by Eastern European charity People in Need, which is the local partner of CARE International  the UK and global aid organisation receiving 500,000 from Mail Force.

Donations from Mail readers and other benefactors are funding the charity workers who have already set up reception centres and supplies to help desperate Ukrainians as they arrive across the border.

People in Need's staff and volunteers offer food, blankets, children's activities and psychological counselling for the mainly women and children who have left everything behind.

Olga told the Mail: 'Taking into account all the countries that helped us, I think that the people in Britain are our best friends. They are always the first to support us. We are very damaged psychologically because, any noise or sound, we think it is bombs or rockets.

'It seems to be like a horror movie, to be honest.'

The young family escaped with just two suitcases of their possessions, along with their son's pushchair.

'I don't know what we are going to do,' Olga says.

'Thank god that we have some savings.' Their future remains uncertain. Yet they are already dreaming of when they can return to their besieged and beloved city of Kharkiv.

'I hope that we will be able to go back to my city and that our house will still be standing and not in ruins,' she said. Another refugee in the reception centre yesterday, who gave her name only as Kristina, was offered counselling.

It is here where many Ukrainian mothers can pause for a few hours after fleeing the hell of war. Specialists are on hand to offer 'psychological first aid' for those who need it.

Many refugees from the fighting suffer anxiety, depression, or simply struggle to sleep.

Kristina, 29, fled the capital Kyiv with her six-year-old son Artem, but without her husband or father  who stayed behind to defend their homeland from Vladimir Putin's slowly advancing Red Army. 'I still don't want to believe what's happened,' she said. 'It is like a bad dream.'

She watched the 'total chaos' of the first explosions in the Ukrainian capital last week.

'Just five or six hours later, we had all understood that the war had started,' the corporate HR manager said.

Kristina headed west to Chernivtsi and then onwards to Svalyava before crossing into Slovakia yesterday morning where she was met by People in Need aid workers.

She is defiant that her country will beat Putin and she will be back home soon.

'I hope that we are only there for one or two weeks. I am already dreaming of going home. I know my country will be beautiful once again.

Pictured: People fleeing fighting in Ukraine walk to an evacuation train in Irpin

The money raised by the Mail Force charity  in record-breaking time  has already been put to good use, with mothers and children arriving over the border to Slovakia yesterday greeted by aid workers funded by our generous readers

'It is our country, and we will never leave it.' As she spoke her son, a keen mathematician and swimmer, played with a Slovak volunteer. 'This is the first playground he has seen for eight days,' she said. 'He has already made lots of friends.' The young mother also praised Britain's contribution to helping Ukraine in its hour of need. 'Thank you for everything,' she said.

Her words were echoed by Jan Ciupa, People In Need's humanitarian coordinator, who praised Mail readers for their generosity, saying: 'A huge thank you to everyone for their solidarity and support.'

At the request of Lord and Lady Rothermere, the Mail's parent company DMGT has donated 500,000.

Women and children wait to board an evacuation train in Irpin, Kyiv, fleeing fighting

CARE International was founded in the US in 1945 to send packages of food and basic supplies to millions of people in Europe following the devastation of the Second World War.

CARE International UK  the British arm of the organisation  was founded in 1985.

It has teamed up with People in Need, a charity based in the Czech Republic which is also running convoys of aid trucks into war-torn Ukraine.

For details of ways to donate, go to www.mymail.co.uk/ukraine

Additional reporting: Sam Greenhill

Kindness amid the carnage: Britain launches three-year visa scheme for Ukrainian refugees - as Mail readers send donations to our appeal soaring past 3.5million

By DAVID BARRETT and SAM GREENHILL for the Daily Mail

Britain last night launched a three-year visa scheme to help Ukrainian war refugees.

The terms of the emergency programme were unexpectedly made much more generous just as it went live yesterday.

Those with a family connection to Britain were initially offered a 12-month stay.

But that has now been tripled  and the criteria widened to ensure more Ukrainians are eligible.

The Home Office expects to process 6,000 applications a week and there is no cap on the overall number who could escape the horrors of Vladimir Putin's barbaric invasion.

A house is on fire following shelling on the town of Irpin, 26 kilometres west of Kyiv, on Friday

Destroyed Russian armored vehicles in the city of Bucha, west of Kyiv, which has been under heavy attack in recent days

A Russian tank in the city of Irpin, west of Kyiv, sits abandoned after being attacked by Ukrainian forces

A dog wanders through the wreckages of Russian armoured vehicles left littering the streets of Bucha, near Kyiv

The announcement came as the Daily Mail's appeal to help desperate refugees passed the 3.5million mark last night  less than a week after the campaign was launched.

Online donations have poured in from generous readers and sacks full of cheques have been accompanied by heartfelt letters recalling the horrors of the Second World War.

The money raised by the Mail Force charity  in record-breaking time  has already been put to good use, with mothers and children arriving over the border to Slovakia yesterday greeted by aid workers funded by our generous readers.

A Russian armoured vehicle sits on a street of wrecked troop transports after several attacks trying to seize the town of Bucha

At the same time Putin continued his horrific bombardment of Ukraine's cities, with his bombs pulverising civilian areas. With the evidence of Russian war crimes  and the use of banned munitions  piling up, officers from Scotland Yard began working with the International Criminal Court on an inquiry into the Russian president's conduct.

In other developments:

Seven people were killed, including two children, after a Russian air strike hit a residential area near Kyiv;

Mariupol had no water, heat or electricity and was said to be running out of food after coming under a brutal barrage by Russian forces;

Nato secretary general Jens Stoltenberg warned the days to come were 'likely to be worse'  but ruled out a 'no-fly zone' over Ukraine;

Civilians in Chernihiv described being trapped under relentless shelling;

Pictures showed Russia had destroyed one of the world's biggest planes in an assault on a Ukrainian airfield;

Ukraine scuttled its flagship frigate to prevent the Russians seizing it;

It was reported that Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky had 'survived three assassination attempts;

Downing Street said it wanted Putin tried in a war crimes court rather than assassinated;

Russia blocked access to Facebook, with the company warning that as a result millions of ordinary Russians would 'find themselves cut off from reliable information';

Amid criticism of its inaction on oligarchs, the Government put forward a series of amendments to the Economic Crime Bill to hit 'corrupt elites';

The BBC was forced to abandon reporting from within Russia after Moscow passed draconian new censorship rules;

The Disasters Emergency Committee's appeal for Ukraine raised 55million in one day, including donations from the Queen, Prince Charles and Prince William;

Sainsbury's became the first supermarket to rebrand its Chicken Kievs as 'Chicken Kyiv'

It emerged yesterday that at least three senior Russian commanders had been killed in Ukraine already as they were forced to push forward to the front lines in the face of fierce Ukrainian resistance. Western officials said they believed it was a sign of Russia's growing frustration at the stalled advance.

There was outrage yesterday after Russian forces shelled Europe's largest nuclear power plant in a battle with Ukrainian forces  causing a major fire in its compound. Mr Zelensky branded Putin a 'nuclear terrorist' and the US envoy to the UN said the world had 'by the grace of God, narrowly averted a nuclear catastrophe'.

The Ukrainian president yesterday addressed thousands of people protesting against the war in several European cities.

An apartment building damaged following a shelling on the town of Irpin, 26 kilometres west of Kyiv

A school building damaged in yesterday's shelling in the city of Chernihiv in northern Ukraine, which saw 47 people die, according to local authorities

Rescuers and locals search through rubble of residential buildings destroyed by Russian shelling in the village of Markhalivka, to the south west of capital city Kyiv

A man stands in front of a residential building damaged in yesterday's shelling in the city of Chernihiv on March 4 after 47 people died in the city on March 3, according to officials

'If we fall, you will fall,' he told them. 'And if we win, and I'm sure we'll win, this will be the victory of the whole democratic world, this will be the victory of our freedom. This will be the victory of light over darkness, of freedom over slavery.

'And if we win we will become as blossoming as Europe. And Europe will be flourishing more than ever. All of you are Ukrainians today, thank you for this.'

Home Secretary Priti Patel yesterday flew to Medyka in Poland, a mile from Ukraine's western border, and met families who will be among the first to apply to come to the UK.

Condemning Russia's 'cold-blooded' war, she said: 'It's heart-breaking to have met families, women and children forced from their homeland because of the monstrous Russian invasion.

'Our expanded Ukraine Family Scheme is now fully open and to see the first people who will apply was wonderful.'

Home Office officials are scrambling to ensure accommodation will be in place for arrivals  but final numbers are impossible to predict. A source said 200,000 was an estimate but it was expected that most refugees would want to stay in the region.

Putin: Bombs are fake news... we've no ill will BY HARRIET LINE, CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT FOR THE DAILY MAIL A delusional Vladimir Putin pleaded against more sanctions yesterday as he tried to claim Russia had 'no bad intentions' and that reports of Ukrainian cities being bombed were 'fakes'. Despite the horrific destruction wrought by his forces, the Russian president dismissed damning evidence of war crimes by his forces as 'gross propaganda'. Instead he tried to encourage other countries to 'normalise' relations with his government. But in a sign the West's moves to isolate Moscow are working, Putin urged against fresh sanctions  claiming they would only exacerbate the situation. Forty-seven people died on March 3 when Russian forces hit residential areas, including schools and a high-rise apartment building, in the northern Ukrainian city of Chernihiv (pictured on March 4), officials said A man walks in front of a residential building damaged in yesterday's shelling in the city of Chernihiv on March 4 His extraordinary claims about the Russian bombing campaign came in a call with the German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, in which Putin said that 'the alleged ongoing air strikes of Kyiv and other large cities are gross propaganda fakes'. He also repeated demands for the recognition of Crimea as part of Russia and of the 'sovereignty' of separatist territories in eastern Ukraine as conditions for peace talks. Earlier, the president said: 'There are no bad intentions towards our neighbours. 'And I would also advise them not to escalate the situation, not to introduce any restrictions. We fulfil all our obligations and will continue to fulfil them.' He added: 'We do not see any need here to aggravate or worsen our relations. And all our actions, if they arise, they always arise exclusively in response to some unfriendly actions, actions against the Russian Federation.' European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen, meanwhile, said the EU was ready to hit Russia with more curbs, adding: 'To be very clear, we are ready to take further severe measures if Putin does not stop and reverse the war he has unleashed.' Ministers have been criticised over the speed of the UK response, but insist the measures are the most swingeing ever imposed by Britain. Yesterday Justice Secretary Dominic Raab said the UK was 'at the vanguard' of sanctions on Kremlin-linked money. Asked why Brussels had sanctioned more individual Russian elites than Britain, he said: 'The question is not whether it is individuals or companies  it is where the money is flowing.' Russia has been increasingly waging a war of terror against Ukrainian civilians after attempts to rapidly capture the country failed. Shelling has targeted small villages and towns, such as Markhalivka (pictured) Separately, he said: 'These measures... are all aimed at tightening the noose, if you like, and starving off the finance that is going into Putin's war machine.' Mr Raab also backed giving over seized Russian oligarch properties in the UK to Ukrainian refugees. The move has been called for by the Liberal Democrats and Housing Secretary Michael Gove. Mr Raab told LBC radio he would 'absolutely' support it, adding: 'We are looking at everything in the round, it is a team effort across Government... and, of course, the Prime Minister is driving this very hard.' Advertisement

Staggering generosity of Mail readers moves staff working on Ukraine Appeal to tears as cheques arrive by the sackload

By SAM GREENHILL and ISAAN KHAN For The Daily Mail

The astounding generosity of Mail readers reduced staff working on our Ukraine Appeal to tears yesterday.

Cheques have arrived by the sackload  and from all across the UK  since the campaign launched last Sunday.

And opening the envelopes yesterday, two Polish-born colleagues in our accounts department were overwhelmed with emotion.

They found many kind-hearted readers sparing whatever they could to help those desperately trying to flee the savagery of Vladimir Putin's forces.

Sylwia Pazyniak, 26, said: 'I am so proud of my company and my colleagues and the readers for the help they are giving.

'We are seeing people dying every day. It's terrible.'

And Angelika Dawson, 36, added: 'My family live on the Poland-Ukrainian border and say it is a humanitarian crisis.

So proud: Polish-born Mail accounts worker Sylwia Pazyniak with thousands of donations

'The pictures of the bombing and the Russian soldiers are so frightening. And the thousands of families fleeing their homes is heart-breaking. But people have responded with such generosity and kindness. I have cried a lot in the last week.'

2,000 in memory of my grandmother from Ukraine Mail Force's record-breaking Ukraine Appeal has reached the hearts of many across the UK. And the Kyral Charitable Trust  founded by Mike and Angela Schumann  is among the generous contributors, donating 2,000. The trust was set up in 1985 and contributes to about 20 charities a year, among them The Prince's Trust, British Legion and Salvation Army. But it was Mr Schumann's family links to Ukraine that encouraged him to donate Kyral's largest-ever single contribution to a charity. Mr Schumann, 80, said: 'I had a grandmother, Marina Oksiusov, who was born in Mariupol in 1885 and married my grandfather Carl Landsdorff in 1905.' Marina moved to the UK in 1923 and passed away in 1963 aged 78. Former engineer Mr Schumann, who has two daughters and five grandchildren, said: 'I think this appeal is absolutely the right thing to do and I hope the Mail have had lots of contributions. 'It is going to cost millions to support the children and women affected by this war. Mrs Schumann, 72, added: 'This is a great appeal, thank you to the Daily Mail. You always have great appeals.' Advertisement

It is less than a week since we launched our appeal to help families caught in the Kremlin's sickening blitzkrieg of Ukraine.

So much devastation has been wrought that already more than a million Ukrainians have fled to neighbouring countries.

In just six days, the Mail Force Ukraine Appeal has raised an astonishing 3.5million to help them, making it the fastest newspaper fundraiser in world history.

But it is not just money that is flooding in, for the cheques arriving at our nerve centre for donations in Leicester are invariably accompanied by messages to tug at the heartstrings.

Many of our readers are from the older generation, and have written eloquently about their memories of war and the chilling lessons from history.

Sylvia Cousins, 81, from Ashford, Kent, sent 50 and wrote: 'I was born in 1940 at the start of World War Two.

'My earliest memories are of my mother waking me and carrying me  still in my nightie  down to the local air raid shelter. Of watching my grandmother praying aloud, clutching her rosary.

'Her prayers were not just for us but her youngest son who later survived D-Day. I hate the thought of today's children still having memories of war when they are my age.'

A lot of the donations come from pensioners offering a fiver or tenner and often a note apologising that they cannot send more.

Jennifer Hancock, of Coventry, gave 20 and wrote: 'I am sorry this is not much, but as an OAP being born in the Second World War, this is all I can afford.'

A 30 cheque from Vivienne Card, of Swindon, was accompanied by the poignant note: 'This terrible situation reminds me of my dad in World War Two when he was a young boy.

'My late mother raised funds for aid to Russia when she was young and her brother was on the Russian convoys.

'I am glad that neither of them are alive to see what has happened to Ukraine and the dreadful aggression of the Russians.

'It is so sad to see such suffering again.' Rosemary Barry, of Potters Bar, Hertfordshire, wrote: 'My partner and I are in our eighties and are horrified at the situation in Ukraine.

'My late mother helped Hungarian refugees and I lived for two years in the British sector of Berlin in the 1970s. Well done for what the Mail is doing.'

Meanwhile a couple from Nottingham penned a heartfelt letter to the defiant president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky 'and the whole of the Ukrainian people'. Maureen and John Ward sent a 25 cheque and wrote: 'We are in awe of their courage and determination to save their country and the world.

'Be brave, cry freedom.' Mrs Ward, 84, added: 'Please excuse writing and spelling  recovering from a stroke.'

And there was a further 50 from Mr and Mrs Jones, of Holywell, Flintshire, Wales, who said it was 'a small donation for the brave people of Ukraine suffering at the hands of a deranged cowardly monster, happy to send his own people to war. May he rot in hell.'

Details of how to donate to the Mail Force Ukraine Appeal (pictured)

We have had cheques from 5 up to several thousand. Michael and Alison Gaskell, of Colden Common, Hampshire, sent 500, and Christopher Boyce from Newport an incredible 1,000.

Some of the letters are written beautifully and others seem hastily scrawled, but all convey the sense of utter despair at the horrific scenes unfolding in a European country in 2022.

It seems incomprehensible to so many that the appalling refugee crises of the Second World War in Europe and the Far East could happen again.

A man named Mr Alain, of Guernsey, who with his wife donated 100, recalled how his father fought in Burma with the Chindits  British empire troops who carried out guerrilla-style operations  and wrote: 'To the Ukrainian people in their fight against the Russians.

'In 1940, my mother evacuated with me, aged five months, my brother, 19 months, and grandmother. My father fought in the Chindits.'

Alan Jones, of Horley, Surrey, who with his wife donated 200, sent a message supporting the Ukrainian people which read: 'May they succeed in saving their country.'

On Wednesday, the Duchess of Cornwall gave a 'substantial' amount to the Mail's appeal after meeting British-based Ukrainians. And at the request of Lord and Lady Rothermere, the Mail's parent company DMGT has donated 500,000.
Britain last night launched a three-year visa scheme to help Ukrainian war refugees.

The terms of the emergency programme were unexpectedly made much more generous just as it went live yesterday.

Those with a family connection to Britain were initially offered a 12-month stay.

But that has now been tripled  and the criteria widened to ensure more Ukrainians are eligible.

The Home Office expects to process 6,000 applications a week and there is no cap on the overall number who could escape the horrors of Vladimir Putin's barbaric invasion.

The money raised by the Mail Force charity  in record-breaking time  has already been put to good use, with mothers and children arriving over the border to Slovakia yesterday greeted by aid workers funded by our generous readers

A house is on fire following shelling on the town of Irpin, 26 kilometres west of Kyiv, on Friday

Destroyed Russian armored vehicles in the city of Bucha, west of Kyiv, which has been under heavy attack in recent days

A Russian tank in the city of Irpin, west of Kyiv, sits abandoned after being attacked by Ukrainian forces

A dog wanders through the wreckages of Russian armoured vehicles left littering the streets of Bucha, near Kyiv

The announcement came as the Daily Mail's appeal to help desperate refugees passed the 3.5million mark last night  less than a week after the campaign was launched.

Online donations have poured in from generous readers and sacks full of cheques have been accompanied by heartfelt letters recalling the horrors of the Second World War.

The money raised by the Mail Force charity  in record-breaking time  has already been put to good use, with mothers and children arriving over the border to Slovakia yesterday greeted by aid workers funded by our generous readers.

A Russian armoured vehicle sits on a street of wrecked troop transports after several attacks trying to seize the town of Bucha

At the same time Putin continued his horrific bombardment of Ukraine's cities, with his bombs pulverising civilian areas. With the evidence of Russian war crimes  and the use of banned munitions  piling up, officers from Scotland Yard began working with the International Criminal Court on an inquiry into the Russian president's conduct.

In other developments:

Seven people were killed, including two children, after a Russian air strike hit a residential area near Kyiv;

Mariupol had no water, heat or electricity and was said to be running out of food after coming under a brutal barrage by Russian forces;

Nato secretary general Jens Stoltenberg warned the days to come were 'likely to be worse'  but ruled out a 'no-fly zone' over Ukraine;

Civilians in Chernihiv described being trapped under relentless shelling;

Pictures showed Russia had destroyed one of the world's biggest planes in an assault on a Ukrainian airfield;

Ukraine scuttled its flagship frigate to prevent the Russians seizing it;

It was reported that Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky had 'survived three assassination attempts;

Downing Street said it wanted Putin tried in a war crimes court rather than assassinated;

Russia blocked access to Facebook, with the company warning that as a result millions of ordinary Russians would 'find themselves cut off from reliable information';

Amid criticism of its inaction on oligarchs, the Government put forward a series of amendments to the Economic Crime Bill to hit 'corrupt elites';

The BBC was forced to abandon reporting from within Russia after Moscow passed draconian new censorship rules;

The Disasters Emergency Committee's appeal for Ukraine raised 55million in one day, including donations from the Queen, Prince Charles and Prince William;

Sainsbury's became the first supermarket to rebrand its Chicken Kievs as 'Chicken Kyiv'

It emerged yesterday that at least three senior Russian commanders had been killed in Ukraine already as they were forced to push forward to the front lines in the face of fierce Ukrainian resistance. Western officials said they believed it was a sign of Russia's growing frustration at the stalled advance.

There was outrage yesterday after Russian forces shelled Europe's largest nuclear power plant in a battle with Ukrainian forces  causing a major fire in its compound. Mr Zelensky branded Putin a 'nuclear terrorist' and the US envoy to the UN said the world had 'by the grace of God, narrowly averted a nuclear catastrophe'.

The Ukrainian president yesterday addressed thousands of people protesting against the war in several European cities.

An apartment building damaged following a shelling on the town of Irpin, 26 kilometres west of Kyiv

A school building damaged in yesterday's shelling in the city of Chernihiv in northern Ukraine, which saw 47 people die, according to local authorities

Rescuers and locals search through rubble of residential buildings destroyed by Russian shelling in the village of Markhalivka, to the south west of capital city Kyiv

A man stands in front of a residential building damaged in yesterday's shelling in the city of Chernihiv on March 4 after 47 people died in the city on March 3, according to officials

'If we fall, you will fall,' he told them. 'And if we win, and I'm sure we'll win, this will be the victory of the whole democratic world, this will be the victory of our freedom. This will be the victory of light over darkness, of freedom over slavery.

'And if we win we will become as blossoming as Europe. And Europe will be flourishing more than ever. All of you are Ukrainians today, thank you for this.'

Home Secretary Priti Patel yesterday flew to Medyka in Poland, a mile from Ukraine's western border, and met families who will be among the first to apply to come to the UK.

Condemning Russia's 'cold-blooded' war, she said: 'It's heart-breaking to have met families, women and children forced from their homeland because of the monstrous Russian invasion.

'Our expanded Ukraine Family Scheme is now fully open and to see the first people who will apply was wonderful.'

Home Office officials are scrambling to ensure accommodation will be in place for arrivals  but final numbers are impossible to predict. A source said 200,000 was an estimate but it was expected that most refugees would want to stay in the region.
Like most street violence, anywhere, it happens quickly and without warning.

I am talking to a young man called Konstantin who is queuing with a couple of dozen other Kyivans  mostly middle-aged women  outside a supermarket on Velyka Zhytomyrska Street when there is a sudden commotion.

Konstantin, who is tall and tough, lunges past me, seizing another man who has been hovering on the edge of the queue.

The man is small and wiry and has two very blackened eyes above his Covid mask.

Konstantin slams the mans already battered face into a nearby brick wall and then against the supermarkets plate glass frontage, which wobbles but does not shatter.

As I try to restrain Konstantin  what on earth is he playing at?  more men run up. The human punchbag is put into an arm lock and marched off to the nearest military checkpoint.

He is a stranger and was trying to listen to your conversation, one of the older ladies in the queue explains to me in English. He could be a Russian spy.

If so, this secret agent is more Mr Bean than James Bond, but who knows in these strange times?

Suspicions run high in a city braced for war. Here a man is grabbed by nervous locals at a local supermarket, after an elderly resident raised the alarm. He was handed over to soldiers

Scenes of Kyiv preparing for war: Some of the few who remain behind queue for the opening of a local supermarket, where food is still available

Daily Mail Writer Richard Pendlebury chats to Ukrainian Composer Roman Zagorodnyuk at the Buena Vista Cafe in central Kyiv as soldiers conduct searches of vehicles outside

When I woke yesterday morning, I found that the forecasters were correct: a day of intermittent sunshine and Russian shelling. The snow has melted and spring is on its way. But so too is Putins army.

The psychological screw, as the scene described above suggests, is being turned. Kyiv is on a knife edge and it is hard not to be affected.

It had been another uneasy night of distant and not so distant crumps and thumps and air raid sirens during which  if awake and sufficiently concerned  I sit fully dressed on the loo (no windows, so no danger of broken glass), listening to a podcast about the historical novels of Patrick OBrian. Its called escapism.

Elsewhere in the city, the Mails translator Lara is also in her own windowless bathroom. She spends the entire night in her bathtub, taking turns with her boyfriend to sit at the tap end. The perennial dilemma for couples anywhere.

Only if the concussions are very close will they go down to the basement bomb shelter. Otherwise she, I, everyone here, would be living a troglodyte existence. It hasnt come to that, yet. But it soon might.

Many of the citys homes are now devoid of children, sent away to safer places. There is some good news from a family I met on a metro platform at the main railway station on Thursday.

Daily Mail Writer Richard Pendlebury chats to an armed policeman, part of the city's defence force, in front of St. Michael's Golden-Domed Monastery

Destroyed Russian armored vehicles in the city of Bucha, west of Kyiv, which has been under heavy attack in recent days

A woman picks her way through the rubble of a destroyed school in the city of Zhytomyr, 80 miles to the west of Kyiv, as Russia renews its assault on the country for a ninth day

Data analyst Oleksandr contacts me to say he has managed to get his wife, Liza, and two young daughters on a train to Poland.

Today is Lizas birthday and I wish I could be with her now, he writes. But I could not wait any longer [to move them] because of the indiscriminate bombing of the Russian forces in Kharkiv, Chernihiv and Mariupol. I couldnt forgive myself if anything happened to them.

Oleksandr is staying here to fight as part of a territorial defence unit.

Later we give a taxi ride to a car mechanic called Yan. He had dropped his wife and 20-month-old child at the main station and then drove home to park his car. Now he was heading back to the station to wave them off. He too is staying to fight.

Not everyone is being so organised. In order to maintain access, the city authorities are towing away cars parked around the station  abandoned by their owners who have boarded trains out of Kyiv, perhaps never to return.

The hotel where I am staying is close to the cathedrals of St Sophia and St Michael. It is coping impressively, though staffing levels have fallen as some leave to fight or go to Poland and safety.

On my floor my neighbours are not paying residents but waiters, cleaners and cooks who will be staying at work for the duration. It is part of the national effort. They want people like me here to report on what is happening to Ukraine.

There are now only two meal servings, breakfast and lunch, though the latter extends to 6pm, and its buffet rather than a la carte.

But the selection is good  yesterday we were offered borsch soup, meatballs in tomato sauce, chicken kebabs, salads and a selection of bread and pastries with fruit juice.

The sale of alcohol is banned and bars are closed. In the evening, I use FaceTime to be with my own family in London as they eat  last night, fish pie and chocolate pudding. My daughters are old enough and engaged enough to know and be concerned; what is happening, when will I return?

The situation in Ukraine holds their attention like no other previous war I have covered, not even Afghanistan. It is shocking.

Sirens wail again. More distant crumps. We are back out and walking along a deserted Velyka Zhytomyrska Street. If you can rent an apartment here you are doing well in Ukrainian eyes.

Our journey takes us past the closed fashion boutiques and designer furniture stores  and a lost cat poster promising a reward  until we reach a military checkpoint outside the Buena Vista cafe.

A farm tractor is pulling a trailer up and down the highway dropping off lumber for roadblocks as Kyiv prepares for what is coming. One element of the makeshift chicane outside the cafe is an upright piano. Will that really stop a Russian tank  or anything else larger than a shopping trolley?

A Russian armoured vehicle sits on a street of wrecked troop transports after several attacks trying to seize the town of Bucha

Ukrainian troops take cover from Russian shelling in the city of Bucha, located to the west of Kyiv

People take cover from shelling in the city of Bucha, west of Kyiv, during a Russian assault to try and capture it

A man walks in front of a residential building damaged in yesterday's shelling in the city of Chernihiv on March 4

A house is on fire following shelling on the town of Irpin, 26 kilometres west of Kyiv, on Friday

A dog wanders through the wreckages of Russian armoured vehicles left littering the streets of Bucha, near Kyiv

The cafe was, until last week, a thriving hub for this hipster neighbourhood. There is a live music stage and dancefloor in the damp, un-plastered basement. On a busy night 200 revellers would be packed inside. Now its a bomb shelter-cum-canteen for staff and locals.

When I push through the door there is only one customer, nursing a coffee in a window seat. The composer Roman Zagorodnyuk, who lives nearby, is well known far beyond Ukraine. He has created music for films and documentaries starring such actors as Morgan Freeman and Michael York.

On his phone he plays me a new work he has composed in the cafe in the last five days, against a montage of images of the Russian invasion and Ukrainian defiance. He is 62 and looks very like the actor Robert Carlyle. He tells me he has a niece, Viktoria, in London.

His family have all left Kyiv but he remains. I am a citizen of this country, he explains. Each should ask what they can do to help Ukraine. We are all equal now in this grave crisis. But this is not just about Ukraine. We are Europes protective shell, the frontline against tyranny.

I too will probably leave for Europe, but only after the war is won. Then I will cross the border on a white horse, not a refugee train.

As we leave the cafe a huge, but far-off, explosion resonates along the street. The pavements are empty and most shops are closed, but a delicatessen is still open and advertising flat whites.

We buy some tinned tuna. The owner says he is doing his best but fresh produce is hard to come by.

Then we reach a supermarket queue. Two women tell us they have been waiting for half an hour for the shop to open.

I want something tasty! says one. We have nothing, I need the basics, confides her friend.

At that moment, there is a sharp detonation like cannon fire or a grenade bursting from somewhere further down the street. No one flinches. No one knows what it is.

Poor Kyiv, her nerves are frayed. The end, whatever that might be, gets closer every day.
The astounding generosity of Mail readers reduced staff working on our Ukraine Appeal to tears yesterday.

Cheques have arrived by the sackload  and from all across the UK  since the campaign launched last Sunday.

And opening the envelopes yesterday, two Polish-born colleagues in our accounts department were overwhelmed with emotion.

They found many kind-hearted readers sparing whatever they could to help those desperately trying to flee the savagery of Vladimir Putin's forces.

Sylwia Pazyniak, 26, said: 'I am so proud of my company and my colleagues and the readers for the help they are giving.

'We are seeing people dying every day. It's terrible.'

And Angelika Dawson, 36, added: 'My family live on the Poland-Ukrainian border and say it is a humanitarian crisis.

So proud: Polish-born Mail accounts worker Sylwia Pazyniak with thousands of donations

'The pictures of the bombing and the Russian soldiers are so frightening. And the thousands of families fleeing their homes is heart-breaking. But people have responded with such generosity and kindness. I have cried a lot in the last week.'

2,000 in memory of my grandmother from Ukraine Mail Force's record-breaking Ukraine Appeal has reached the hearts of many across the UK. And the Kyral Charitable Trust  founded by Mike and Angela Schumann  is among the generous contributors, donating 2,000. The trust was set up in 1985 and contributes to about 20 charities a year, among them The Prince's Trust, British Legion and Salvation Army. But it was Mr Schumann's family links to Ukraine that encouraged him to donate Kyral's largest-ever single contribution to a charity. Mr Schumann, 80, said: 'I had a grandmother, Marina Oksiusov, who was born in Mariupol in 1885 and married my grandfather Carl Landsdorff in 1905.' Marina moved to the UK in 1923 and passed away in 1963 aged 78. Former engineer Mr Schumann, who has two daughters and five grandchildren, said: 'I think this appeal is absolutely the right thing to do and I hope the Mail have had lots of contributions. 'It is going to cost millions to support the children and women affected by this war. Mrs Schumann, 72, added: 'This is a great appeal, thank you to the Daily Mail. You always have great appeals.' Family links: Mike Schumann Born in Mariupol: Marina Advertisement

It is less than a week since we launched our appeal to help families caught in the Kremlin's sickening blitzkrieg of Ukraine.

So much devastation has been wrought that already more than a million Ukrainians have fled to neighbouring countries.

In just six days, the Mail Force Ukraine Appeal has raised an astonishing 3.5million to help them, making it the fastest newspaper fundraiser in world history.

But it is not just money that is flooding in, for the cheques arriving at our nerve centre for donations in Leicester are invariably accompanied by messages to tug at the heartstrings.

Many of our readers are from the older generation, and have written eloquently about their memories of war and the chilling lessons from history.

Sylvia Cousins, 81, from Ashford, Kent, sent 50 and wrote: 'I was born in 1940 at the start of World War Two.

'My earliest memories are of my mother waking me and carrying me  still in my nightie  down to the local air raid shelter. Of watching my grandmother praying aloud, clutching her rosary.

'Her prayers were not just for us but her youngest son who later survived D-Day. I hate the thought of today's children still having memories of war when they are my age.'

A lot of the donations come from pensioners offering a fiver or tenner and often a note apologising that they cannot send more.

Jennifer Hancock, of Coventry, gave 20 and wrote: 'I am sorry this is not much, but as an OAP being born in the Second World War, this is all I can afford.'

A 30 cheque from Vivienne Card, of Swindon, was accompanied by the poignant note: 'This terrible situation reminds me of my dad in World War Two when he was a young boy.

'My late mother raised funds for aid to Russia when she was young and her brother was on the Russian convoys.

'I am glad that neither of them are alive to see what has happened to Ukraine and the dreadful aggression of the Russians.

'It is so sad to see such suffering again.' Rosemary Barry, of Potters Bar, Hertfordshire, wrote: 'My partner and I are in our eighties and are horrified at the situation in Ukraine.

'My late mother helped Hungarian refugees and I lived for two years in the British sector of Berlin in the 1970s. Well done for what the Mail is doing.'

Meanwhile a couple from Nottingham penned a heartfelt letter to the defiant president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky 'and the whole of the Ukrainian people'. Maureen and John Ward sent a 25 cheque and wrote: 'We are in awe of their courage and determination to save their country and the world.

'Be brave, cry freedom.' Mrs Ward, 84, added: 'Please excuse writing and spelling  recovering from a stroke.'

And there was a further 50 from Mr and Mrs Jones, of Holywell, Flintshire, Wales, who said it was 'a small donation for the brave people of Ukraine suffering at the hands of a deranged cowardly monster, happy to send his own people to war. May he rot in hell.'

We have had cheques from 5 up to several thousand. Michael and Alison Gaskell, of Colden Common, Hampshire, sent 500, and Christopher Boyce from Newport an incredible 1,000.

Some of the letters are written beautifully and others seem hastily scrawled, but all convey the sense of utter despair at the horrific scenes unfolding in a European country in 2022.

It seems incomprehensible to so many that the appalling refugee crises of the Second World War in Europe and the Far East could happen again.

A man named Mr Alain, of Guernsey, who with his wife donated 100, recalled how his father fought in Burma with the Chindits  British empire troops who carried out guerrilla-style operations  and wrote: 'To the Ukrainian people in their fight against the Russians.

'In 1940, my mother evacuated with me, aged five months, my brother, 19 months, and grandmother. My father fought in the Chindits.'

Alan Jones, of Horley, Surrey, who with his wife donated 200, sent a message supporting the Ukrainian people which read: 'May they succeed in saving their country.'

On Wednesday, the Duchess of Cornwall gave a 'substantial' amount to the Mail's appeal after meeting British-based Ukrainians. And at the request of Lord and Lady Rothermere, the Mail's parent company DMGT has donated 500,000.
Hundreds of miles away in war-torn Ukraine, Putin's bombs were razing apartment blocks and more than a million refugees have been displaced.

But in the glitzy shops surrounding Red Square in the heart of Moscow, it was  at least for now  business as usual despite the West's sanctions.

'Everything is a great bargain if you have euros,' trilled Maria, a sales assistant at the Chanel boutique inside the sprawling GUM department store.

'We have had good sales this week when the new stock comes in it will be much more expensive.'

Asked whether customers would still have the money to afford the luxury goods, Maria smiled. 'Our clients are wealthy. They will be able to pay.'

Oksana, in her late 20s, was perusing a selection of Chanel handbags (starting at 1,650 each).

'They're all so snooty and rude when you go shopping in Italy,' she told me. 'If we cannot travel to Europe, we can still get everything we want here.'

As Putin's bombs razed apartment blocks in war-torn Ukraine, it appeared to be business as usual for the glitzy shops surrounding Red Square in the heart of Moscow. Pictured: Small number of visitors walk inside the GUM department store in Moscow

Across the city, at the cavernous Khimki branch of Ikea, there was an even greater sense of urgency after the furniture company said it would suspend operations in Russia

Pictured: People line up to withdraw US dollars at a Tinkoff ATM in a supermarket on Tverskaya street in Moscow amid uncertainty about the Russian rouble

After the Swedish furniture giant announced on Thursday that it was joining the exodus of western companies abandoning the Russian market, Muscovites descended in droves. My friend Maria, 51, took the day off work yesterday to travel there. 'It looks like Kabul airport!' she texted me

An older lady carrying a prominently branded Gucci handbag chimed in: 'And after what they have done to us, I don't want to spend my money [in Europe] anyway.'

The Russian elite, it seems, are putting on a brave face as the West's sanctions are being felt ever more keenly.

Many of the poorest Russians support Putin's invasion, which leaves the educated middle classes and younger Russians by far the most concerned about the future.

At the Swatch watch shop in the same department store, the younger consumers feared the economic blowback from Putin's warmongering.

'My mother told me that when she was little, this place was full of herring and cabbages,' said Tatiana, 19, a law student at Moscow State University.

'I guess we might have to go back to all that, if that's how the West wants to punish us...'

Tatiana teased her friend, 20-year-old Galina, for posting antiwar slogans on her Instagram account.

A minority of Russians do oppose the war  though few will say so loudly and publicly. After a few days of minor demonstrations, some 6,000 protesters have been arrested nationwide this week

'Almost everyone who goes to [protest] meetings has been arrested, charged and fined,' said Sasha, 20, a video editor for a Moscow theatre festival

'I don't like war!' admitted Galina, an economics student. 'My dad was angry at me. He said I should stop watching western propaganda and stay off Instagram. I just pity the young lads out there  the war should stop.'

Across the city, at the cavernous Khimki branch of Ikea, there was an even greater sense of urgency.

After the Swedish furniture giant announced on Thursday that it was joining the exodus of western companies abandoning the Russian market, Muscovites descended in droves.

My friend Maria, 51, took the day off work yesterday to travel there. 'It looks like Kabul airport!' she texted me.

'We've been planning to get a new kitchen for a while  but it looks like we have to do it right now.'

Maria told me that most of her fellow shoppers were blaming the West for unfairly punishing Russia. 'Most people around me think that this is the West's revenge on us because they are scared of Russia's power,' she said.

But whatever Moscow's most well-heeled residents may be saying, life for ordinary people here is becoming increasingly difficult. Russian-issued Visas and Mastercards are now useless after those companies suspended service.

Hundreds of miles away in war-torn Ukraine, Putin's bombs were razing apartment blocks and more than a million refugees have been displaced. Pictured: Destroyed cars next to residential buildings damaged by heavy shelling in Irpin city, Kyiv province

Many of the poorest Russians support Putin's invasion, which leaves the educated middle classes and younger Russians by far the most concerned about the future

ApplePay has also stopped working, meaning that taxis can no longer be paid for on Yandex, Russia's equivalent of Uber.

Tap-in payments in Moscow's newly modernised metro have failed, leaving commuters queuing up at ticket windows to pay in cash, like the old days.

And Ikea is far from alone in leaving: General Motors, Volvo, Volkswagen and other western car companies are unceremoniously pulling out of manufacturing, too.

Some 150 miles outside Moscow, the director of a private school that relies on fees from the children of western car company executives told me she was in shock.

'Our school was a beacon of modernity for our region,' she said, begging me not to publish her name. 'We won prizes. The fees of our foreign students subsidised the best education possible for the Russian children. Now I don't think we will survive.'

A minority of Russians do oppose the war  though few will say so loudly and publicly. After a few days of minor demonstrations, some 6,000 protesters have been arrested nationwide this week.

'Almost everyone who goes to [protest] meetings has been arrested, charged and fined,' said Sasha, 20, a video editor for a Moscow theatre festival.

'The first time, it's 20,000 rubles (120). The second, it's jail for 15 days. Then much worse. People are scared.'

Russia is continuing to advance in southern Ukraine, with Mariupol under bombardment and Odessa and Mykolaiv under threat. Chernihiv, in the north, and Kharkiv, in the east, continue to come under heavy bombardment. The capital Kyiv is also under threat, though Ukrainian counter-attacks took out some Russian forces early on Friday

A Russian armoured vehicle sits on a street of wrecked troop transports after several attacks trying to seize the town of Bucha

A woman weeps in the streets of Irpin, a satellite city of the Ukrainian capital Kyiv, after it was destroyed by a Russian shell

At 1am on Friday, police arrived at the apartment of a prominent opposition activist and journalist, claiming he had been spotted at an 'unauthorised protest'.

In scenes reminiscent of a spy thriller, the man fled across a rooftop clutching his laptop and passport while his partner spoke to police.

Officers handed her a summons demanding the activist hand himself in at a police station within 24 hours. He is now in hiding.

'He's a fugitive and has no idea how to get out of the country now,' says his partner, who asked for their identity to be protected. 'He ditched his phone in case of surveillance. It's terrifying.'

But, to be clear, the vast majority of Russians still seem to support their president's war.

An official poll earlier this week showed that nearly 70 per cent of Russians backed what the Kremlin still calls a 'limited military operation'.

The support can partly be blamed on an increasingly supine and nationalistic media, as Putin has ruthlessly cracked down on his critics on television and in the press.

A radio station and an internet news channel were banned yesterday. Access to Russian-language news sites produced abroad has also been hampered  while the BBC's websites and Radio Liberty were restricted yesterday.

Open and sometimes furious dissent, however, is widespread on social media  especially secure platforms such as Telegram  which are now filled with photographs of graffiti including 'No to War' and 'F*** Putin's war' scrawled on bus stops and walls.

In Moscow's Khamovniki district, I saw a group of municipal workers wearing orange overalls busily painting over graffiti on the wall of a museum.

'I have no idea what was there. I didn't read it,' said a frightened worker, one of the millions of Central Asian labourers who perform much of Moscow's low-paid municipal work.

A few middle-class Muscovites are trying to leave  not least because all young men aged between 18 and 27 are being forced to register to be drafted into the increasingly hellish conflict.

Unable to use his own bank cards, Vasily, 20, a filmmaker and theatrical producer, had to borrow from friends, who banked with private Russian banks not yet under sanctions, to buy a one-way ticket to Armenia for 500.

Most neighbouring countries have closed their airspace to Russian flights, leaving Turkey, Serbia and Armenia as the only possible destinations for those seeking to escape.

But even those routes began to close yesterday as international aircraft leasing companies pulled the plug on their contracts with private Russian airlines.

A Nordwind airlines flight from Moscow to Yerevan had to land in a different Russian city as the pilot announced that the lease on the plane had been cancelled mid-air.

At Moscow's near-deserted Vnukovo airport yesterday, all daily Turkish Airlines flights to Istanbul were fully booked and long queues of passengers, most carrying large amounts of luggage, waited at the check-in stands. Some had paid 1,500 for a one-way ticket.

For now, most Russians are standing behind their president's dangerous campaign. But the sanctions are taking a real toll here  and worse is surely to come.
A career criminal was loaded on methamphetamine when police were forced to shoot him.

Daniel Charles Coad, 38, ought not have been on the streets at all.

The father of two, of Ararat in country Victoria, has spent most of his wretched life causing misery to others.

His list of prior offences goes on for pages.

Daniel Charles Coad, 38,

Police brought Coad's reign of terror to an end in a hail of bullets. Their cars are pictured as they were when rammed by the menace

On Friday, he was handed yet another chance in a long list of chances by a County Court of Victoria judge.

Coad had pleaded guilty to a swag of nasty offences, including aggravated and recklessly causing risk to multiple police officers, handling stolen goods, theft, using drugs and a litany of driving offences.

Police had been on his tail for months at the end of 2019 after a series of car thefts in and about his hometown.

When a senior-constable caught up with him in January 2020, Coad wasn't about to stop and chat.

The court heard Coad planted his foot and aimed the stolen car he was driving directly at the police car.

The cop took evasive action and Coad narrowly missed the stunned officer, who was forced to call off his pursuit.

Police spotted him again three days later as the desperate crook filled up the tank of the stolen car.

When police told him to stop what he was doing, Coad dropped the pump and took off in the car.

A sergeant had been clinging onto the driver's side door as the maniac sped off.

When police caught up with him hours later, Coad took them on a high speed chase that again needed to be abandoned due to safety concerns.

Daniel Coad's social media page reads like a tribute to crime, scum and villainy

Coad is no stranger to high speed pursuits.

In 2013 he was jailed what was then his 13th time after evading police seven times in less than a month.

Police would not catch up with him again until February 7, when an officer on patrol in Tullamarine, a stone's throw from Melbourne airport, suspected he was up to no good.

Coad had been parked in the car park of a McDonald's restaurant and appeared to be dealing drugs from a stolen vehicle.

The officer called in back-up and two police cars boxed Coad's vehicle in on both sides in a V-shape.

Coad had been in the car with his girlfriend.

With guns drawn an officer yelled: 'Police, get out of the car'.

Another officer saw Coad move his hand onto the gear stick.

'Don't do it,' the officer shouted.

The meth-addled villain didn't listen.

Daniel Coad started taking drugs as a teenager. They have now destroyed his life and seen him live a shocking life of crime

Daniel Coad, in what appears to be a shot captured from inside jail. He has spent much of his 38 years in and out of jail

Forensic analysis of the vehicle would later show Coad started the engine and put his foot flat to the floor.

As the stolen car rocketed forward into the police cars, one of the officers opened fire, putting four rounds into the car.

One of them struck Coad in the shoulder, passing directly through him into the driver's seat.

His reign of terror was at an end.

One officer told the court of the anguish the incident had caused him and his colleagues.

The officer said the incident had brought one of them to tears and he now struggled to trust members of the public to comply with directions.

On Friday, the court heard Coad will likely be back on the streets in under six months.

Judge Jeanette Morrish sentenced Coad to four years and three months in jail, with a non-parole period of just two-and-a-half years.

He has already spent 756 days behind bars, meaning he will likely be free well before Christmas.

Judge Morrish said she had taken into account Coad's early guilty plea, the hardship of life in jail due to Covid-19 restrictions and his expression of 'true remorse'.

Coad had scribbled a letter of apology to the court and insisted his life would now be dedicated to the straight and narrow.

His Facebook page remains littered with posts promoting hate against police.
Mr Putins invasion of Ukraine, and the crimes being committed in his name, feel very personal to me. It is where many of my family once lived.

I visited for the first time in October 2010, to give a lecture on crimes against humanity and genocide, two crimes invented in 1945 for the famous Nuremberg Trials, in which former Nazi leaders were indicted and tried as war criminals by an international military tribunal.

As an academic and lawyer, international crimes are my speciality, my day job. I decided to accept the invitation to Lviv  a city in west Ukraine I had barely heard of  after I realised that it was once called Lemberg and was the place of my grandfather Leons birth when the city was in the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

I found the house where he was born and learned that he fled the city in September 1914 aged ten, with his mother and two sisters, refugees from occupying Russian forces who had already killed his brother.

In recent days, thousands of refugees have again been descending on the wonderful railway station in Lviv from which Leon headed west.

Again they are trying to escape the Russian onslaught.

On that first visit to the city, I learned more about the terrible events that befell so many of those who would remain after Leon left  about the summer of 1942, when Hans Frank, governor-general of Nazi-occupied Poland and formerly Hitlers lawyer, delivered a speech unleashing the Final Solution in the area.

What followed was the extermination of hundreds of thousands of families, including my grandfathers.

Some 80 of my relatives died as 150,000 or more Jews were resettled from Lemberg to ghettos and camps.

Astonishingly, I also discovered that the inventors of those two legal terms crimes against humanity and genocide  Professor Hersch Lauterpacht of Cambridge University and Dr Raphael Lemkin, a former Polish prosecutor  happened to have studied at the very university which had invited me to give my lecture.

It is beyond tragedy that the land and city which gave birth to these definitions is once again the victim of the most terrible international crimes  this time being waged by President Putin in the name of Russia.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has been accussed of war crimes after his invasion of Ukraine

This week, the International Criminal Court  a child of Nuremberg  launched a war crimes investigation into Russias invasion, as an unprecedented 39 countries urged it to act. (Nazi Hermann Goering during cross examination at the Nuremberg Trials for war crimes)

This week, the International Criminal Court  a child of Nuremberg  launched a war crimes investigation into Russias invasion, as an unprecedented 39 countries urged it to act.

The bodys chief prosecutor Karim Khan QC said he would begin work as rapidly as possible to determine whether 'war crimes and crimes against humanity have been committed in Ukraine.

The prosecutors decision is a welcome development. But it is not enough.

Although I believe they are taking place, war crimes and crimes against humanity can take time to prove and the process of gathering evidence on individual cases can be complicated.

There is a crime, however, which Putin is undoubtedly committing.

His invasion of Ukraine is a crime of aggression, a term also first used at Nuremberg, although then it was called a crime against peace.

At the Nuremberg judgment, where more than half the Nazi defendants were found guilty of it, aggressive war was branded the supreme international crime. .

In Ukraine, it is being repeated. Which is why, yesterday, I joined Gordon Brown and others in supporting the call by Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba to set up an international tribunal  a new Nuremberg  to investigate Putin and his acolytes for the crime of aggression.

The crime is being committed before our eyes and is capable of being investigated and prosecuted without much difficulty, if there is political will.

And to those who say it is fanciful that Putin would ever end up on trial, I argue that it would at one stage have been unimaginable that Nazi leaders like Hermann Goring and others would find themselves in the dock.

Yet it happened. The same goes for Serbian leader and war criminal Slobodan Milosevic, whose trial by tribunal began in 2002.

As I say, this feels very personal to me. In the years since my first visit to Ukraine I have returned on many occasions  and not not just to Lviv.

In September I was in Kyiv, to attend the 80th anniversary commemoration of the terrible killings at Babyn Yar, right in the heart of the city, when tens of thousands of Jewish residents were murdered in just a few days, a round-up ordered by the Nazis who had recently occupied the city.

The citys National Museum of the History of Ukraine in World War II had asked me to donate some artefacts from my grandfather.

The Nuremberg trials led to the creation the Hague International Criminal Court, which has launched an investigation into Russian war crimes

As I wrote in my best-selling book East West Street, after leaving Lviv, he lived in Vienna.

He married and soon after his daughter  my mother  was born, he fled to Paris to escape the Holocaust.

There too he faced serious risks and was made to identify himself as a Jew: I donated to the museum in Kyiv two yellow silk squares he kept, with a Star of David and the words Juif (Jew) printed on them.

It is appalling that this week Babyn Yar, with its Holocaust memorial, was bombed by Putin.

Speaking after the missile attack, Ukraines President Volodymyr Zelensky said it was beyond humanity and accused the West of not doing enough to stop Putin.

What is the point of saying never again for 80 years, he said, if the world stays silent when a bomb drops on the same site of Babyn Yar?

He is right. Lviv and Ukraine are not the faraway places some people might imagine them to be: they are the beating heart of Europe, of our values and principles and of the legal order Britain did so much to create at Nuremberg.

If we do not act today to safeguard them, we will in due course pay an even greater price.

How did we get to this point? The warning signs have been around for years.

In 2008 I was part of the legal team representing the Caucasus country of Georgia that brought a case to the World Court in The Hague against Russia for violations of international law against ethnic Georgians in the break-away provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

It is appalling that this week Babyn Yar, with its Holocaust memorial, was bombed by Putin. Speaking after the missile attack, Ukraines President Volodymyr Zelensky said it was beyond humanity and accused the West of not doing enough to stop Putin

I worried when the court threw the case out for lack of jurisdiction.

Since then we have seen what Putin is willing to do in Chechnya and in the Donbas region of Eastern Ukraine. In 2014 he illegally annexed Crimea.

The current invasion is seen by some as the latest round in claims for a Greater Russia, evoking the model embraced by Milosevic two decades earlier in the quest for a Greater Serbia, a terrible and bloody conflict in which eventually the West recognised it had to use military force.

Putin justified his actions in the televised speech he gave last week, the evening before the military attacks were launched.

He offered a list of fanciful reasons for the invasion: that Ukraine is a fake country, that Russians and Ukrainians are one and the same, that Ukraine is run by a Nazi regime (a curious argument given that the country has a Jewish president and prime minister), that a genocide is being committed against ethnic Russians in the eastern parts of the country.

None of these claims stands up to scrutiny. They evoke memories of the spurious arguments made in 1938 in Munich, when Adolf Hitler somehow persuaded timorous Western powers to let him take the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia in the hope that his desires would somehow then be quelled.

They werent. For many Ukrainians, this weeks developments have come as no surprise.

Chief prosecutor at the ICC Karim Khan said he would begin work as rapidly as possible and is looking into war crimes and crimes against humanity' in Ukraine

But we in the West have turned a blind eye because our snouts have been in the Russian trough, bathing in the fruits of oligarchy.

Not just our politicians, but our bankers and financiers, our oil companies and our lawyers, growing rich at the expense of others and of decency, as our courts and rules are invoked to protect the dismal reputations of those who have gained entry with golden visas.

I hope we look back in shame on this period, as London was allowed to become the laundering capital of the world, a place which the anti-Mafia journalist Roberto Saviano has characterised as the most corrupt place on earth.

Putin has gambled on our weakness. After the disasters of a manifestly illegal war in Iraq and the debacle of our recent, messy departure from Afghanistan, he might be betting that we simply do not have the stomach to stand up to his authoritarian, lawless, bullying approach.

Maybe he is right. Maybe our embrace of the money and our dependence on Russian gas means we simply havent the guts to stand up to his actions.

I hope not. His bet poses the most fundamental challenge to European stability and the post-1945 international order.

This is not the first time Russia has invaded these territories: in September 1914, the country occupied Lviv, causing tens of thousands to flee, including my grandfather; the Soviet Union returned in September 1939 for a second bite, then again in the summer of 1944, remaining in control until Ukraine achieved independence in 1991.

The generation that lived those wars in Europe is almost gone and Europeans who have lived for three generations without experiencing military force on this scale are now feeling deeply shocked, untouched by personal experience of what war means.

But history does not just go away  and war is on our doorstep.

I believe sanctions and financial measures alone cannot address this grave challenge. More is needed. This is not the world of yesterday, of 1939 and Hitlers invasions.

There are now established, clear rules, drafted after World War II to protect us from such militarism.

These are reflected in the Charter of the United Nations, the closest thing we have to an international constitution.

It is the charters most significant commitments that Putin has shredded, along with other commitments, such as the Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances of 1994, by which Ukraine traded away its nuclear capabilities in return for commitments on independence, respect for territorial integrity and the non-use of force.

Those are commitments which we are party commanders and soldiers, and even its president and his top advisers, are subject to the ICCs jurisdiction in respect of Ukraine: the rules of the ICC make it clear that a head of state does not have immunity.

Alongside the ICC investigations, proceedings are also under way at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg and the International Court of Justice in The Hague.

Alongside the ICC investigations, proceedings are also under way at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg and the International Court of Justice in The Hague

But there is a gap in all these international matters: none has jurisdiction to investigate and prosecute the crime of aggression that is being perpetrated on the territory of Ukraine.

That is why we need the dedicated international criminal tribunal.

Last night the chairs of the foreign affairs committees of 11 European countries were supporting the call to create the tribunal to prosecute Putin.

Ironically, it was a Soviet jurist, Aron Trainin, who did much of the legwork to bring crimes against peace  today, remember, called the crime of aggression  into international law: it was largely his ideas that persuaded the Americans and the British to put crimes against peace into the Nuremberg Statute.

Putin himself knows all about Nuremberg: his older brother died in the Leningrad siege at the age of two and he has been a defender of the famous 1946 judgment which found 12 of the 22 defendants guilty of crimes against peace, including Hermann Goring, Rudolf Hess and Joachim von Ribbentrop.

It seems there can be no appeasing of Putin as Chechnya, Georgia, Crimea and now all of Ukraine make that clear.

The many wonderful times spent in the remarkable city of Lviv, the birthplace of my grandfather, have offered me an acute sense of history.

A tragic history that will go on and on unless we stand firm.

Let Putin reap what he has sowed.

Let him face the legacy of Nuremberg. Investigate him personally for this most heinous aggression.
The type of landlords who have been hardest hit by property tax changes have been revealed.

Among them are higher rate taxpayers who invest with a big mortgage. Previously, this was the most tax efficient way of investing in buy-to-let, but these investors have seen their income returns slashed by more than a half as a result of the stamp duty and tax relief on mortgage interest changes.

The findings are from research carried out exclusively by accountants Blick Rothenberg for MailOnline Property and ThisIsMoney.

He explained that these calculations do not factor in the capital growth of a property, but instead the income return. Many long-term landlords will have made big profits from house prices rising.

We take a look at which landlords have been hit hardest by the changes to stamp duty and tax relief on mortgage interest

In 2016, the then Chancellor, George Osborne, introduced a stamp duty surcharge of 3 per cent on the purchase of second homes and buy-to-lets, and began to withdraw the full tax relief available on mortgage interest.

The stamp duty change meant much bigger tax bills at the point of purchasing a property, but the removal of mortgage interest tax relief created an ongoing erosion of returns.

Before this was introduced, landlords could deduct all mortgage interest from rental income and only pay tax on their difference, which amounted to their profits.

Under the new system, landlords must add rental income to their other income and pay income tax on the amount in full and then receive a basic rate tax credit at a maximum of 20 per cent of their mortgage interest.

This effectively means they are paying tax based on revenue not profits.

PROPERTY RETURNS FOR HIGHER RATE TAXPAYER WITH A 25% DEPOSIT Purchase price 256,000 Add: SDLT 10,480 Add: legal fees (estimated) 1,000 267,480 Equity in property (25%) 64,000 Mortgage required 192,000 Rental income 11,628 Less mortgage interest 6,067 Less normal expenses 1,744 Profit before tax 3,817 Income tax at 40% 3,954 Less: 20% credit for mortgage interest 1,213 Income tax payable 2,740 Profit after tax 1,077 Return on investment 1.43% Source: Blick Rothenberg

Blick Rothenberg's research reveals who has lost out on the tax changes, and to what degree - with some landlords doing better than others.

For example, those landlords who are higher rate taxpayers and use a smaller deposit and bigger mortgage to invest in property have gone from being most tax efficient to hardest hit.

They have seen their returns fall by more than a half now that the effect of the full tax relief on mortgage interest has taken hold.

Combined with the capital gains tax that landlords already pay, the measures are a hard pill for landlords to swallow.

The tax relief reduction was phased in over four years and during that time, some landlords decided to quit the market.

Increased regulation of the sector, along with the new tax changes has meant some landlords believe investing is no longer worthwhile and many have sold up and cashed in their house price gains.

The profit after tax and return on investment for higher rate taxpayers investing in property with different sized deposits in 2022

How does it compare to the old tax regime? The profit after tax and return on investment for higher rate taxpayers investing in property with different sized deposits in 2016

What profit after tax can you expect?

Our figures show that investing in an averagely priced property with a deposit of 25 per cent produces a profit after tax of just over 1,000 for higher rate taxpayers under the current regime.

This equates to a return on investment of 1.43 per cent, down from a profit before tax of 2,290 and 3.38 per cent before the tax changes were introduced in 2016.

It means these investors have seen their returns cut by 52.96 per cent due to the tax changes.

And for the same type of higher rate taxpaying investor with a slighter larger deposit of 40 per cent, there is a profit after tax of around 2,000 under the current tax regime.

This equates to a return on investment of 1.80 per cent, down from a profit before tax of 3,018 and 2.84 per cent before the 2016 tax changes.

The figures assume an annual rent of 11,800 based on the average monthly rent of 969, the highest level in 13 years, according to Zoopla.

And we used the average price of a property of around 256,000, the average at the time of calculation according to Nationwide Building Society.

PROPERTY RETURNS FOR HIGHER RATE TAXPAYER WITH A 40% DEPOSIT Purchase price 256,000 Add: Stamp duty 10,480 Add: legal fees (estimated) 1,000

267,480 Equity in property (40%) 102,400 Mortgage required 153,600 Investment in property (equity plus stamp duty and costs) 113,880 Rental income 11,628 Less: Mortgage interest 4,854 Less: Normal expenses 1,744 Profit before tax 5,030 Income tax at 20% 3,954 Less: 20% credit for mortgage interest 971 Income tax payable 2,983 Profit after tax 2,047 Return on investment 1.80% Source: Blick Rothenberg

Higher rate taxpayers with a 40% deposit are among the hardest hit, seeing their returns slashed by as much as a third

The profit after tax and return on investment for basic rate taxpayers investing in property with different sized deposits in 2022

How does it compare to the old tax regime? The profit after tax and return on investment for basic rate taxpayers investing in property with different sized deposits in 2016

Landlords who are basic rate taxpayers fare better

By contrast, a basic rate taxpayer with a 40 deposit will currently see a profit after tax of around 4,000, which is similar to what was expected before the tax changes.

It is the equivalent of a current return on investment of 3.53 per cent, down from 3.79 per cent under the old tax regime.

That figure rises marginally to 3.83 per cent for basic rate taxpayers when the deposit is 30 per cent. The profit after tax for this group at this level of deposit is 3,377.

The return on investment goes down when the investment in the property is higher relative to the profit made - and the higher stamp duty means the investment in the property has increased under the new rules, hence producing a lower percentage return.

Nimesh Shah, of Blick Rothenberg, said: 'Property has become increasingly taxed in the last five years, with higher stamp duty and mortgage interest relief restriction taking full effect. There are now very few allowances and reliefs in the UK tax system.

Property has become increasingly taxed in the last five years

'This is illustrated by a higher rate tax payer with a 30 per cent deposit who invested in the average property now would generate an return on investment of 1.59 per cent now compared with almost double that return of 3.14 per cent prior to the tax changes.'

However, he went to explain that it is still possible to get a potentially reasonable return for landlords who are basic rate taxpayers.

He explained: 'For a basic rate taxpayer, it would be sensible for someone to have 30 per cent equity for a reasonable return of 3.83 per cent - this would require equity of about 77,000 to purchase an average priced property.

'For a higher rate taxpayer, the effect of the mortgage interest relief restriction means that the return is significantly more meagre. To generate a just over 2 per cent return, a 75 per cent deposit of 192,000 would be required, which is quite stark.'

The returns on investment for different types of landlords depending on their tax rate and their amount of equity

He also said investors need to consider the time and inconvenience of being a landlord, such as a late night call out to fix a boiler - although in this calculation, the figures factor in a property management fee to help deal with such events.

The management fee falls under the 'rental expenses' figure used in the calculation, which also includes service charges and some repair costs. The rental expenses are assumed to be 15 per cent of rental income.

For higher rate tax payers, the figures also assume that the personal allowance is fully used against other income.

Buy-to-let mortgage rates

The figures include a stamp duty surcharge of 3 per cent, paid when the property is purchased, and a rate of 3.16 per cent where a buy-to-let mortgage is used.

This mortgage rate is the average for a five-year fixed rate buy-to-let deal, according to Moneyfacts. The calculations do not take into account how mortgage rates vary depending on the amount of equity a borrower has.

Those investors with maximum equity and no mortgage in their property investment have seen returns unchanged in monetary values between the current and former tax regimes.

For higher rate taxpayers, the profit after tax for this group is 5,930, while for basic rate taxpayers it is 7,907.

For a basic rate taxpayer, the rental profit after tax remains the same under the current rules.

This is because the mortgage interest relief restriction effectively continues to provide full relief for mortgage interest at 20 per cent due to the 20 per cent tax credit. And 20 per cent is also the basic rate of income tax. So while the exact mechanics have been changed, the impact of the tax changes remains the same for these investors.

It is important to do your research before investing in property, including looking at whether it is beneficial to do so via a company structure, where different tax rules apply.

Within a company structure, full mortgage interest can still be claimed, with tax calculated solely on profits not overall revenue, and paid at the corporation tax rate.

However, there will be extra tax to pay on money taken out of the business and buying a property via a company will not suit everyone, particularly those who have a minimal amount of other assets and income.

Mark Harris, of mortgage broker SPF Private Clients, said: 'The buy-to-let market has undoubtedly become tougher to navigate in recent years with various tax and regulatory changes aimed at landlords.

'Making a profit has become more difficult so it is more important than ever to do your research carefully, making sure you buy in an area with strong yields. Many landlords are choosing to buy via limited companies rather than in their own names since the reduction in mortgage interest tax relief and those with the largest amount of equity in their investment properties tend to enjoy the highest returns.

'While the market is tougher, many people still prefer to invest in bricks and mortar rather than the more volatile stock market, or leave their money in a savings account, earning next to nothing in interest.'
A new species of stegosaur that roamed the Earth some 168 million years ago is the oldest ever discovered in Asia after being unearthed in China.

Remains of the stegosaur, which included bones from the back, shoulder, thigh, feet, and ribs, as well as several armour plates, were found at a site in Chongqing, south west China.

They date to the Bajocian stage of the Middle Jurassic period  much earlier than most known stegosaurs  and are possibly the oldest stegosaur fossils ever discovered worldwide, according to researchers.

The paleontologists say they hope their discovery will shed light on how stegosaurs evolved.

The new species has been named Bashanosaurus primitivus  'Bashan' in reference to the ancient name for the area of Chongqing in China where the dinosaur was found, and primitivus because it is the Latin for 'first'.

A new species of stegosaur that roamed the Earth some 168 million years ago is the oldest ever discovered in Asia after being unearthed in China. It has been named Bashanosaurus primitivus (pictured in an artist's impression)

WHAT ARE STEGOSAURS? Most known stegosaurs date from far later in the Jurassic period but some species may have lived as long ago as 168 million years ago. They are large herbivores that were heavily armoured. They are known for their iconic and famed bony plates which line their back. The armoured defence was made from bone and the plates allowed them to fend off predators. Advertisement

The relatively small, but fearsome-looking stegosaur measured about 9 feet (2.8 metres) from nose to tail  but scientists can't tell whether the remains are those of an adult or juvenile.

It has a smaller and less developed should blade, narrower and thicker bases to its armour plates and other features that are different from all other Middle Jurassic stegosaurs discovered so far.

However, it does have similarities with some of the first armoured dinosaurs, which are over 20 million years older.

'All these features are clues to the stegosaurs' place on the dinosaur family tree,' said lead author Dr Dai Hui, from Chongqing Bureau of Geological and Mineral Resource Exploration and Development.

'Bashanosaurus can be distinguished from other Middle Jurassic stegosaurs, and clearly represents a new species.

'What's more, our analysis of the family tree indicates that it is one of the earliest-diverging stegosaurs along with the Chongqing Lizard (Chungkingosaurus) and Huayangosaurus.

'These were all unearthed from the Middle to Late Jurassic Shaximiao Formation in China, suggesting that stegosaurs might have originated in Asia.'

Dr Hui added: 'Bashanosaurus is the oldest stegosaur discovered in Asia  and possibly the world.'

Instantly recognisable by the huge back plates, long tail spikes and tiny head, stegosaurs were four-legged, plant-eating dinosaurs that lived during the Jurassic and early Cretaceous periods.

Stegosaur fossils have been found on all continents except for Antarctica and Australia, and 14 species of stegosaur have been identified so far.

Well-known members of Stegosauria include Huayangosaurus (one of the most primitive stegosaurs), Gigantspinosaurus, notable for its enormous shoulder spines, and Miragaia for its extremely long neck.

However, the fragmentary fossil material has hindered attempts to understand how the stegosaurs evolved and how they relate to one another.

Bashanosaurus primitivus has several primitive features that are similar to the earliest stegosaurs  including longer tail vertebrae, a shoulder blade that is narrower and flares out, and features of the back vertebrae that are similar to the early armoured dinosaur Scelidosaurus, which lived during the Early Jurassic.

The bizarre armour would have been used to fight off meat-eating predators like Allosaurus and Ceratosaurus.

Pictured, a complete stegosaurus fossil on display at the Natural History Museum

Allosaurus fossils have been found with large holes thought to be made by a stegosaur's tail spike.

The natural weaponry also acted as a thermo-regulatory mechanism to keep the creature cool, and helped to attract mates.

The fossilised remains of Bashanosaurus also reveal a host of features that make it unique from other known stegosaurs.

For example, the bony point at the end of the shoulder blade is small and less well developed than in other stegosaurs; a bony projection of the thighbone (fourth trochanter) is positioned below the middle of the shaft; and the bases of the armour plates curve outwards and are thicker than the plates on the backs of its later relatives.

Study co-author Dr Susannah Maidment, of London's Natural History Museum, said: 'The discovery of this stegosaur from the Middle Jurassic of China adds to an increasing body of evidence that the group evolved in the early Middle Jurassic, or perhaps even in the Early Jurassic, and as such represent some of the earliest known bird-hipped dinosaurs.

'China seems to have been a hotspot for stegosaur diversity, with numerous species now known from the Middle Jurassic right the way through until the end of the Early Cretaceous period.'

Bashanosaurus is described in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.
I was in Florida walking the beach and looking for the closest coffee shop to me.

I picked up my cell phone and typed coffee shop near me. Up popped the search results in Google Maps. I clicked on directions and started to walk.

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Denise Grothouse is president/founder of Perfect Six (COURTESY OF DENNIS MARTIN / DENNIS MARTIN)

During my stroll, I compared the businesses on the Google Maps to the storefronts I saw visibly during my stroll. There were many actual businesses not showing on the map. In the virtual world, they simply did not exist. Having a website benefits businesses large and small, for all the same reasons.

Credibility

Consumers look for a website to learn more about your brand. In fact, 92% of website visitors do not make a purchase the first visit. They are just checking you out.

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Websites communicate your brand story, what you do, and how you do it. Conveying these three company sensibilities provides a solid foundation for forming a relationship with the visitor. It creates an emotional connection with the reader and compels them to delve deeper.

Clearly communicate what you do, how it benefits the consumer and the results they can expect. Share success stories for inspiration and client reviews. Credibility and trust are key elements in forming a virtual relationship.

Increase your credibility with a website that contains:

Your Brand Story.

What you do.

How your product or services benefit the visitor.

How you do it.

Provide examples and inspiration.

Include positive client reviews.

Visibility

Websites are up and running 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. They are a virtual billboard that connects people looking for your services and products.

Websites that have a consistent search engine optimization (SEO) program in place will prominently show in Google or Bing searches for specific search terms.

SEO is the process of improving your website by identifying search terms people type in to find your products and ensuring Google, Bing and others place your website on the first page for that search term. When connected with Google Maps, your website and location will show in maps to people searching for businesses near me.

Websites that have a Contact Us form that captures email address enables your company to further expand your visibility and touch points to the consumer or potential employee by emailing them. Including a blog post page on the website increases your visibility by providing search engines with new content and consumers with information and inspiration.

Improve your visibility with a website that includes:

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An ongoing search optimization initiative.

A connection to Google Maps.

A contact form that curates email addresses of potential clients.

New and inspirational content provided in blog posts.

Utility

Reducing redundant administrative tasks allows business owners to lighten the workload of existing employees, freeing them up to do higher level tasks.

Employment applications can be filled out online, automatically emailed to the appropriate staff while a friendly text acknowledging receipt is automatically sent to the applicant in tandem.

Chatbots can answer commonly asked questions, freeing up customer service to handle more complex tasks. As more companies expand to a virtual world, employee handbooks, required notices and events can be stored on the website for easy access.

Expand the efficiency of your organization by adding:

Auto Text Responders that reply with a helpful text immediately after receiving a website inquiry.

Employment applications, inquiries and notices.

Auto forwarding of completed website forms to the appropriate staff.

Chatbots that answer commonly asked questions.

Stability

Your website is your intellectual property, you are in the drivers seat overseeing this domain. It can collect information from visitors, and offer updates to employees and customers alike.

Business Buzz Daily The daily update for the Lehigh Valley business person. >

By enlisting search engine optimization tools, your visitors will grow and alleviate the need for paid digital advertising.

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Social media pages should augment your website, not replace it. Businesses that rely on a Facebook Business page to generate sales will be at the mercy of the social media platform.

For example, a Facebook Business page can be closed erroneously by Facebook, or worse, hacked with no chance of recovering all the work you put into it. Relying on a social platform 100% to support your sales and legacy information is not an ideal business model. Your own website is a priceless sales insurance policy.

I have helped companies large and small create their digital footprint, and build websites that work to improve leads, reduce the administrative burden and create sales growth that ranges anywhere from 20% to 100%.

The website is the workhorse of digital sales. I liken it to a salesperson, where the websites other social media platforms encircle the website and compliment it, much like a person attending networking events to promote their business.

Working in tandem with a trusted marketing firm to create a website benefits companies in many ways and provides unlimited and stable growth opportunities.

Denise Grothouse has an extensive background in international business, branding and marketing. She specializes in digital and social platforms and integrating them with traditional marketing and branding strategies. She is the founder of Perfect Six Marketing and Vice President of the Executive Forum of the Lehigh Valley.
It's a beloved snack that's been enjoyed in Britain for over a century  now, a scientist has finally come up with the formula for the perfect chip butty.

Dr James Hind, a statistician from Nottingham Trent University, refined the perfect chip butty recipe based on preferences of 2,000 Brits surveyed by supermarket chain Iceland.

According to the findings, a faultless butty has 12 thick cut chips, two 40g slices of medium sliced white bread, ketchup and butter  not mayo or margarine.

Dr Hind calculated a scientific formula  C  3b/4 + k + 3m, where C is the weight of chips(g), b is the weight of the bread(g), k is the amount of ketchup (ml) and m is the mass of butter (g).

According to the study, the perfect chip butty has 12 thick cut chips, two 40g slices of medium sliced white bread, ketchup and butter - not margarine

An Iceland spokesperson said: 'The Chip Butty is one of the greatest culinary inventions in UK history'

HOW TO CREATE THE PERFECT CHIP BUTTY The scientist's step-by-step guide to creating the perfect butty is: 1. Cook thick cut oven chips at 392F (200C) for 22 minutes 2. Thinly butter two slices of medium sliced white bread 3. While the chips are freshly cooked, place at least 12 on one slice of buttered bread so that their weight is three quarters that of the bread plus ketchup 4. Squeeze as much ketchup as you like but add more chips to compensate so it doesn't get too cold 5. Place the second slice of bread on top of the still steaming hot chips 6. Allow to cool for at least 30 seconds before enjoying. If it is too hot to hold, it is too hot to eat. Advertisement

'What makes white bread preferable is that it is usually the softest,' Dr Hind said.

'This makes it a perfect contrast to the crunchy chips. And sliced bread has a constant thickness, giving a more consistent chip butty.

'The most important thing is to have the weight of chips at least three quarters of the weight of the bread plus ketchup.

'But every type of bread and style of chip varies subtly, so I'd encourage people to experiment at home and devise their own perfect formula.

'Personally, I much prefer brown sauce and you can substitute it for ketchup in the equation as you like.

'One thing my formula ignores is salt. That's a matter of personal taste  and personal health  and so that's a great place for people to start their own experiments!'

Dr Hind developed his formula based on survey findings from 2,000 Brits as to how they most commonly create a chip butty.

The academic then experimented around the most popular methods with timings, temperatures and, crucially, portion sizes to refine his recipe.

The survey for Iceland found that the bread for a butty must be a sliced white loaf, preferred by over half (52 per cent) of respondents.

In terms of the less popular bread options, just 14 per cent said they favour a soft bread roll; 9 per cent a bap; and 8 per cent sliced brown bread.

Dr James Hind (pictured), a statistician from Nottingham Trent University, refined a recipe based on the eating habits of 2,000 Brits

HISTORY OF THE CHIP BUTTY According to Professor Rebecca Earle, a food historian at the University of Warwick, the chip butty  also known as a chip barm  has a mysterious history, although it's said to have originated up north in the 1800s. 'The specific phrase "chip butty" itself is really modern  20th century,' said Professor Earle, who authored the 2019 book 'Potato (Object Lessons)'. According to Historic UK, what's thought to be the first British fish and chip shop  Mr Lees in Mossely, near Oldham, Lancashire  opened around 1863. However, it's unclear whether chips between bread were sold at this particular establishment. 'I can't verify the 1863 story but it makes sense that people were putting chips into bread before the 1960s,' Professor Earle told MailOnline. Advertisement

It should be a medium sliced loaf  preferred by 49 per cent  rather than thick sliced (26 per cent) or thin sliced (7 per cent).

The bread must be buttered (65 per cent) rather than relying on margarine (23 per cent) or any other spread. 64 per cent said a thin layer of butter is best.

The chips should be thick cut (46 per cent) like those from the local chippy rather than standard oven chips (33 per cent) or skinny French fries (11 per cent).

Brits most commonly choose to use only seven or eight chips (37 per cent) in their butty.

However, after experimenting, Dr Hind concluded this is far too few  and has instead proposed 12 as the perfect number.

So a layer of 12 chips weighing around 60g should go between two medium slices of white bread, each weighing 40g.

Any fewer chips and there may not be enough to melt the butter, which is required to soften the bread and create a tasty contrast to the crispiness of chips.

Too many chips and it will be awkward to eat the butty and every mouthful will seem like it is almost all chips with the bread and butter going largely unnoticed, Dr Hind concluded.

As for the finishing touches, ketchup is the most popular condiment to add to a butty (49 per cent, followed by mayonnaise or vinegar (each 17 per cent).

According to the results, 73 per cent of respondents also agreed with Dr Hind that making the perfect chip butty is an 'exact science'.

An Iceland spokesperson said: 'The Chip Butty is one of the greatest culinary inventions in UK history.

'We felt it our duty to ensure the British public know the optimum way to build their crispy potato sandwich.'

Want to know the scientific formula for the perfect chip butty? It's C  3b/4 + k + 3m, of course

Skinny, curly, crinkled, waffled, crumbed or wedges? According to the findings, none of these will do for the perfect chip butty - only thick cut

According to Professor Rebecca Earle, a food historian at the University of Warwick, the chip butty  also known as a chip barm  has a mysterious history, although it's said to have originated up north in the 1800s.

Professor Earle also said a study to determine a scientific formula for a perfect chip butty is 'doomed to failure' because of personal taste.

'Its a highly subjective matter, dependent on both individual preference and national trends,' she told MailOnline.

'For example, the British I think generally favour "wetter" sandwiches, with more sauce, compared to the US market.

'Pret A Manger, I think, had to reformulate their sandwich fillings with less mayo when they launched in the US, if I recall.'
A discarded rocket that is believed to belong to China should have crashed into the moon's far side by now, scientists say.

The three-tonne piece of space junk would have left a massive crater if it smashed into the lunar surface as expected at 12:25 GMT (07:25 ET) today.

Astronomers first thought the rocket part had been launched by Elon Musk's SpaceX in 2015, before changing their mind and saying it was Chinese, something Beijing denies.

Scientists hope to get confirmation of the 5,800mph impact in the coming days, or weeks.

It would mark the first time that a piece of space junk has accidentally struck the lunar surface.

A discarded rocket that is believed to belong to China should have crashed into the moon's far side by now, scientists say

THE CHANG'E 5-T1 MISSION Chang'e 5-T1 is an experimental robotic spacecraft that was launched to the moon on October 23, 2014. Its purpose was to conduct atmospheric re-entry tests on the capsule design planned to be used in the Chang'e 5 mission (eventually launched in 2020). Chang'e 5-T1 rocket booster has been implicated in a collision with the moon that's set for March 4, 2022. Advertisement

The spent rocket part is believed to be from China's Chang'e 5-T1 mission launched in 2014.

Experts said it may take weeks to confirm the impact with the help of satellite images.

Low-orbiting space junk is relatively easy to track but because objects launching deeper into space are unlikely to hit anything, they are usually forgotten about by everybody but a handful of observers.

The leftover booster was originally thought to belong to SpaceX after asteroid tracker Bill Gray identified the collision course in January.

But he corrected himself a month later, saying the 'mystery' object was not a Falcon rocket upper stage from the 2015 launch of a deep space climate observatory for NASA.

Gray said it was likely the third stage of a Chinese rocket that sent a test sample capsule to the moon and back in 2014, but Chinese ministry officials said the upper stage had re-entered Earth's atmosphere and burned up.

However, there were two Chinese missions with similar designations  the test flight and 2020's lunar sample return mission  and US observers believe the two have been confused.

The US Space Command, which tracks lower space junk, confirmed Tuesday that the Chinese upper stage from the 2014 lunar mission never deorbited, as previously indicated in its database.

But it could not confirm the country of origin for the object about to strike the moon.

'We focus on objects closer to the Earth,' a spokesperson said in a statement.

Gray, a mathematician and physicist, said he is now confident that it is China's rocket.

'I've become a little bit more cautious of such matters,' he said. 'But I really just don't see any way it could be anything else.'

This image shows Chang'e 5-T1's re-entry module after vacuum thermal tests prior to its launch on a Long March 3C rocket from Xichang Satellite Launch Center in October 2014

Jonathan McDowell, of the Harvard and Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, supported Gray's revised assessment, but added: 'The effect will be the same. It'll leave yet another small crater on the moon.'

The moon already bears countless craters, ranging up to 1,600 miles (2,500 kilometers).

With little to no real atmosphere, the moon is defenseless against the constant barrage of meteors and asteroids, and the occasional incoming spacecraft, including a few intentionally crashed for science's sake.

With no weather, there's no erosion and so impact craters last forever.

China has a lunar lander on the moon's far side, but it will be too far away to detect Friday's impact just north of the equator.

NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter will also be out of range, while it is unlikely that India's moon-orbiting Chandrayaan-2 will be passing by then, either.

'I had been hoping for something (significant) to hit the moon for a long time. Ideally, it would have hit on the near side of the moon at some point where we could actually see it,' Gray said.

After initially pinning the upcoming strike on Elon Musks SpaceX, Gray took another look after an engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory questioned his claim.

Now, he is 'pretty thoroughly persuaded' it is a Chinese rocket part, based not only on orbital tracking back to its 2014 liftoff, but also data received from its short-lived ham radio experiment.

When the rocket was identified as hurtling towards the moon last month, it was mistakenly identified as originally belonging to SpaceX, owned by Elon Musk (pictured)

JPL's Center for Near Earth Object Studies endorses Gray's reassessment.

A University of Arizona team also recently identified the Chinese Long March rocket segment from the light reflected off its paint, during telescope observations of the careening cylinder.

It is about 40 feet (12 meters) long and 10 feet (3 meters) in diameter.

Gray said SpaceX never contacted him to challenge his original claim and neither have the Chinese.

'It's not a SpaceX problem, nor is it a China problem. Nobody is particularly careful about what they do with junk at this sort of orbit,' Gray said.

Tracking deep space mission leftovers like this is hard, according to McDowell. The moon's gravity can alter an object's path during flybys, creating uncertainty. And there's no readily available database, McDowell noted, aside from the ones 'cobbled together' by himself, Gray and a couple others.

'We are now in an era where many countries and private companies are putting stuff in deep space, so it's time to start to keep track of it,' McDowell said. 'Right now there's no one, just a few fans in their spare time.'

Jacob Geer, head of space surveillance and tracking at the UK Space Agency, said: 'Although this particular piece of space junk isn't likely to cause any significant damage, we are concerned about the growing amount of debris in orbit above the Earth.

'This debris could collide at any time with the satellites we depend upon every day for navigation, banking and communications.

'Thats why the UK is taking action, by funding new technology to track or even remove debris from space and working with international partners, including the UN Office for Outer Space Affairs to lead efforts to promote space sustainability.'
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Nuclear experts have quelled fears that Europe's largest nuclear power plant is at risk of becoming 'another Chernobyl', after Russia's 'reckless' overnight shelling attack sparked a fire at the site.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky branded the offensive 'nuclear terrorism', while Foreign Affairs minister Dmytro Kuleba tweeted: 'If it [the plant] blows up, it will be 10 times larger than Chernobyl!'

The latest chapter in the ongoing conflict has raised fears of a nuclear blast that could affect all of central Europe for decades, similar to Chernobyl near Pripyat in Ukraine in April 1986  the worst nuclear disaster in history.

But experts say this is very unlikely, in part because of the differences in design between Zaporizhzhia and Chernobyl.

The six nuclear power reactors at Zaporizhzhia are not Chernobyl-type reactors, but pressurised water reactors, brought online between 1985 and 1995.

Unlike Chernobyl, the reactors are also housed in thick steel reinforced concrete containment units which are built to withstand extreme explosions, such as an aircraft crash.

One nuclear expert said the 'worst-case scenario' for Zaporizhzhia would be similar to what happened at Fukushima in Japan in 2011, a disaster which unlike Chernobyl did not result in any direct fatalities.

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Zaporizhzhias nuclear reactors are contained  they have a shell of metal and cement around them. Chernobyl had NO containment around the nuclear reactors. Also, Zaporizhzhias nuclear reactors are water-moderated; Chernobyls were graphite-moderated. (Nuclear reactor moderators reduce the speed of neutrons and allow a nuclear reaction to be sustained)

Nuclear experts have quelled fears that Europe's largest nuclear power plant is at risk of becoming 'another Chernobyl', after Russia's 'reckless' overnight shelling attack sparked a fire at the site (pictured)

Six power units generate 40-42 billion kWh of electricity making the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant the largest nuclear power plant not only in Ukraine, but also in Europe

Russian armoured vehicles and troops attacked the nuclear power plant in the early hours of Friday, shooting and shelling guards holed up in administrative buildings near the nuclear reactors - setting one of them on fire

CHERNOBYL AND FUKUSHIMA The Fukushima meltdown of March 2011, caused by the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, was the most extensive nuclear disaster since Chernobyl. A steady stream of toxic, radioactive materials spewed into the atmosphere and forced thousands nearby to flee their homes. But most of the released radioactive material was dumped in the Pacific  and only 19 per cent of the released material was deposited over land  keeping the exposed population relatively small. There were no deaths directly caused by the meltdown, although in 2018 one worker in charge of measuring radiation at the plant died of lung cancer caused by radiation exposure. The April 1986 explosion at Chernobyl, meanwhile, blanketed the western Soviet Union and Europe with radiation  leading to the largest man-made environmental disaster in history  and the largest ever nuclear disaster. Chernobyl's number-four reactor, in what was then the Soviet Union and is now Ukraine, exploded April 25, 1986, sending a radioactive cloud across Europe and becoming the world's worst civilian nuclear disaster. Two reactor employees were killed in the explosion and 134 were hospitalized with acute radiation poisoning. Of them, 28 died and another 14 succumbed to suspected radiation-induced cancer in the years that followed. Advertisement

At Fukushima, water from a 33ft (10m)-high tsunami that killed nearly 19,000 people overwhelmed the defensive sea wall and flooded the power plant.

It also knocked out emergency generators which provide power to the cooling system.

Professor David Fletcher, who previously worked at UK Atomic Energy and is now at the University of Sydney, said: 'At present it seems as though it is only ancillary buildings that have been damaged by Russian missiles.

'The real concern is not a catastrophic explosion as happened at Chernobyl but damage to the cooling system which is required even when the reactor is shut down.

'It was this type of damage that led to the Fukushima accident.'

While Chernobyl had graphite moderated reactors, Zaporizhzhia uses water moderated reactors which are generally considered safer.

In nuclear reactors, a moderator is used to reduce the speed of fast neutrons. (At Zaporizhzhia, the moderator used is the same material as the coolant  water.)

'At Chernobyl, the graphite moderator (an essential part of maintaining the nuclear chain reaction) caught on fire and burned for 10 days,' Professor Claire Corkhill, nuclear materials expert at the University of Sheffield, told MailOnline.

'The radioactive smoke from the reactors was taken high up into the atmosphere, which is the reason why the spread of radiation was so vast, all over Europe.'

'The same could not happen at Zaporizhzhia because there is no graphite. Any release in radiation would be much more localised.'

Another advantage in the design of Zaporizhzhia, when compared to older style nuclear plants, is that the core of the reactor contains less uranium.

This lowers the risk of additional fission events happening and therefore makes the reactor safer and more controllable.

It stops the reaction from 'running away with itself' and exploding like it did at Chernobyl, when a sudden power surge caused by human error resulted in a massive reactor explosion.

This exposed the core and blanketed the western Soviet Union and Europe with radiation.

According to Dr Mark Wenman, Reader in Nuclear Materials at Nuclear Energy Futures, Imperial College London, Zaporizhzia's six pressurised water reactor units produce a fifth of Ukraines electricity.

Unlike Chernobyl, they are well-protected in the event of a direct strike  although whether doing this would be in Russia's interests is questionable.

'The plant is a relatively modern reactor design and as such the essential reactor components are housed inside a heavily steel reinforced concrete containment building that can withstand extreme external events, both natural and man-made, such as an aircraft crash or explosions,' Dr Mark Wenman said.

'The reactor core is itself further housed in a sealed steel pressure vessel with 20cm [8 inch] thick walls.

'The design is a lot different to the Chernobyl reactor, which did not have a containment building, and hence there is no real risk, in my opinion, at the plant now the reactors have been safely shut down.'

But despite the reassurance, some experts have warned that the containment structure may not hold up against missiles.

Russia is continuing to advance in southern Ukraine, with Mariupol under bombardment and Odessa and Mykolaiv under threat. Chernihiv, in the north, and Kharkiv, in the east, continue to come under heavy bombardment. The capital Kyiv is also under threat, though Ukrainian counter-attacks took out some Russian forces early on Friday

Rafael Grossi, Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), points on a map of the Ukrainian Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant as he informs the press about the situation of nuclear powerplants in Ukraine during a special press conference at the IAEA headquarters in Vienna, Austria on March 4, 2022

The April 1986 explosion at Chernobyl (pictured) blanketed the western Soviet Union and Europe with radiation - leading to the largest man-made environmental disaster in history and the largest ever nuclear disaster

Ukraine war: The latest Fire at Europe's biggest nuclear power station at Zaporizhzhia is put out after Ukraine accuses Russia of 'nuclear terror' in shelling the plant. Russian troops later take the reactors

Diplomats from NATO, the EU and G7 will all meet in Europe today to discuss next moves to contain crisis

Russia admits 'limiting' access to news websites including the BBC, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, independent Russian site Meduza and Germany's Deutsche Welle, with Facebook blocked

Russian lawmakers approve legislation providing up to 15 years in jail for any publication of fake news about the Russian armed forces

Thirty-three people are killed as Russian forces hit residential areas, including schools, in the northern city of Chernihiv

Russia and Ukraine agree to create humanitarian corridors to evacuate civilians from cities

Russian President Vladimir Putin says Moscow's advance is going 'according to plan'

Senior US Republican senator Lindsey Graham calls for 'somebody in Russia' to assassinate Putin

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky calls for direct talks with Putin as the 'only way to stop the war'

Russian forces take the Black Sea port of Kherson as it appears Moscow is trying to cut Ukraine's access to the sea

US and EU offer temporary protection for Ukrainian refugees so far numbering more than 1million

Russians pack trains out of the country to Finland, fearful that it is their last chance to escape the impact of swingeing Western sanctions

Sanctioned Russian oil giant Lukoil calls for a halt to fighting in Ukraine, one of the first major domestic firms to speak out

Russian tech giant Yandex warns it may default on its debt after it was suspended from trading on New York's digital stock exchange

The China-backed Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank suspends business with Russia and Belarus in a sign of their deepening pariah status

Ex-Soviet states Georgia and Moldova - which borders Ukraine's threatened south - apply to join the EU

The Beijing Winter Paralympics opens with Russian athletes banned Advertisement

Robin Grimes, professor of materials physics at Imperial College London, said: 'The pressure vessel is very robust and can withstand considerable damage from phenomena such as earthquakes and to an extent kinetic impacts.

'It is not designed to withstand explosive ordinance such as artillery shells.

'While it seems to me unlikely that such an impact would result in a Chernobyl-like nuclear event, a breach of the pressure vessel would be followed by the release of coolant pressure, scattering nuclear fuel debris across the vicinity of the plant and a cloud of coolant with some entrained particles reaching further.'

Only one of Zaporizhzhia's six reactors now appears to be operating, according to State Nuclear Regulatory Inspectorate of Ukraine, while the others are being cooled.

'Now we know that they are putting the reactors into cold shutdown, which means they do not need external electricity supplies to keep the fuel cool,' Professor Corkhill said.

'In this situation, the fuel is safe and not hot enough to cause a meltdown. Therefore, there would be no loss-of-coolant accident once the reactors are shut down.'

Since Russia's attack concerns have slightly subsided after Ukrainian authorities announced that the fire had been extinguished by the Ukrainian State Emergency Service units.

However, one concern, raised by Ukraine's state nuclear regulator, is that if fighting interrupts power supply to the nuclear plant, it would be forced to use less-reliable diesel generators to provide emergency power to operating cooling systems.

A failure of those systems could lead to a disaster similar to that of Japan's Fukushima plant, when a massive earthquake and tsunami in 2011 destroyed cooling systems, triggering meltdowns in three of its nuclear reactors.

Zaporizhzhia, which was built between 1984 and 1995, is the largest nuclear power plant in Europe and the ninth largest in the world.

One of the primary differences between Zaporizhzhia and Chernobyl (which began construction in 1972) is that Chernobyl did not have a containment system around its reactors.

So once they had an accident, they had massive releases of radioactive materials, according to Dale Klein, former chairman of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Klein told Bloomberg that Zaporizhzhia's reactors are protected with thick metal and cement shells, designed to withstand earthquakes and big explosions.

'Depending on what type of artillery shells they are firing, it is not likely they will break out the containment buildings,' Klein said.

Professor Tom Scott, Professor in Materials at the University of Bristol, also said: 'Shelling nuclear power plants is against the Geneva convention and this is obviously very worrying.

'The good news is that radiation levels around the plant are reportedly normal and five of the six reactors are now turned off, with one still operating.

'The reactors are all pressurised water reactors and hence don't have graphite cores which could set on fire as per Chernobyl.

'Their inherent safety design should mean they are naturally quite resilient to any external perturbations and hence I am not overly concerned that inadvertent damage could cause a major nuclear incident.

'However, it would be more concerning if the reactors were being deliberately targeted to induce a nuclear incident.'

A Nuclear Industry Association spokesperson said: 'We condemn in the strongest possible terms the Russian military attacks around the Zaporizhzhia plant that have endangered the lives of nuclear workers bravely discharging their duties.

'We commend the extraordinary dedication of the station's staff and operators in what are terrible circumstances and emphatically endorse the IAEA's call for a halt to all use of force around Ukraine's nuclear power plants.

'We understand that the fire at the plant was not in the reactor buildings, has been extinguished and has not affected essential equipment with no reported change in radiation levels.

The spokesperson said it will continue to monitor developments at Zaporizhzhia.

In this satellite view, the Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power plant is seen after the massive earthquake and subsequent tsunami on March 14, 2011 in Futaba, Japan

A power-generating unit at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in the city of Enerhodar, in southern Ukraine, is shown on June 12, 2008

Zaporizhzhia has six nuclear reactors, making it the largest of its kind in Europe, and accounts for about one quarter of Ukraine's power generation. One report said the fire was about 150 meters away from one of the reactors
Elon Musk has warned there is a high chance SpaceX's Starlink satellite broadband service in Ukraine could be 'targeted' by Russia.

The billionaire entrepreneur voiced his concerns just days after an internet security researcher cautioned that devices used for satellite communications could become 'beacons' that Russia may target for airstrikes.

'Important warning: Starlink is the only non-Russian communications system still working in some parts of Ukraine, so probability of being targeted is high. Please use with caution,' Musk tweeted.

He asked users to 'turn on Starlink only when needed and place antenna away as far away from people as possible' and 'place light camouflage over antenna to avoid visual detection.'

Elon Musk has warned there is a high chance SpaceX's Starlink satellite broadband service in Ukraine could be 'targeted' by Russia

'Important warning: Starlink is the only non-Russian communications system still working in some parts of Ukraine, so probability of being targeted is high. Please use with caution,' Musk tweeted

On Saturday, Musk said Starlink was activated in Ukraine and SpaceX was sending more terminals to the country, responding to a tweet by a Ukraine government official who asked Musk to provide the embattled country with Starlink stations.

Ukraine said earlier this week that it had received donated Starlink satellite internet terminals.

However, internet security researcher John Scott-Railton, from the University of Toronto's Citizen Lab project, warned that these could become Russian targets.

'If #Putin controls the air above #Ukraine, users' uplink transmissions become beacons ... for airstrikes,' he tweeted.

'#Russia has decades of experience hitting people by targeting their satellite communications.'

Ukraine Vice Prime Minister Mykhailo Fedorov thanked Starlink for 'keeping our cities connected and emergency services saving lives!'

Ukraine's vice PM Mykhailo Fedorov took to Twitter on Monday to thank Elon Musk for supplying the country with Starlink satellites

Musk asked users to 'turn on Starlink only when needed and place antenna away as far away from people as possible' and 'place light camouflage over antenna to avoid visual detection'

But he said the country needed generators to keep the satellite broadband service online because of Russian attacks on infrastructure.

In response, Musk said SpaceX was updating software to reduce peak power consumption, so Starlink can be powered from car cigarette lighters.

'Mobile roaming enabled, so phased array antenna can maintain signal while on moving vehicle,' he said.

Tim Farrar, a consultant in satellite communications, said Starlink antennas, which look like home satellite television dishes, are not designed to be used while in motion, and it was not clear what Musk meant by the tweet.

Russia and Ukraine have agreed on the need to set up humanitarian corridors and a possible ceasefire around them for fleeing civilians, both sides said after talks on Thursday.

It is their first sign of progress on any issue since the invasion, which Moscow calls a 'special operation.'
For the first time, astronomers may have spotted the afterglow from an epic cosmic event known as a 'kilonova'.

Kilonovas are immense explosions caused by neutron stars colliding into each other, sending an intense jet of of high-energy particles through space.

They produce a luminous flash of radioactive light that produces large quantities of important elements like silver, gold, platinum and uranium.

Researchers think they've detected an 'afterglow' from a 2017 kilonova event, in the form of X-rays captured by NASAs Chandra X-ray Observatory.

In this artist's representation, the merger of two neutron stars to form a black hole (hidden within bright bulge at center of image) generates opposing, high-energy jets of material (blue) that heat up material around the stars, making it emit X-rays (reddish clouds). X-rays also could be produced during violent collisions as material falls into the black hole (golden yellow disk around central bulge)

KILONOVA: A VAST COSMIC EVENT Kilonovas are immense explosions caused by neutron stars colliding into each other, sending an intense jet of of high-energy particles through space. They produce a luminous flash of radioactive light that produces large quantities of important elements like silver, gold, platinum and uranium. The merger between the two neutron stars  some of the densest objects in the universe  creates a blast 1,000 times brighter than a classical nova. Advertisement

The new study has been led by experts at Northwesterns Center for Interdisciplinary Exploration and Research in Astrophysics (CIERA) in Evanston, Illinois.

'We have entered uncharted territory here in studying the aftermath of a neutron star merger,' said Northwestern's Aprajita Hajela, who led the study.

'We are looking at something new and extraordinary for the very first time. This gives us an opportunity to study and understand new physical processes, which have not before been observed.'

Neutron stars  the collapsed cores of giant stars  have a very small radius (typically 18.6 miles, or 30 km) and very high density, composed predominantly of closely packed neutrons. They're among the densest objects in the universe.

When two neutron stars orbit each other closely, they gradually spiral inward due to gravitational radiation, almost like two coins spiralling closer and closer together as the reach the centre of a charity coin spinner.

When the two neutron stars meet, their merger leads to the formation of either a more massive neutron star, or a black hole, depending on mass.

A kilonova is essentially the blast that occurs from the merger event, which is 1,000 times brighter than a classical nova.

Artist's impression of neutron stars merging, producing gravitational waves and resulting in a kilonova

CHANDRA X-RAY OBSERVATORY Chandra is one of NASA's four Great Observatories  large, powerful space-based astronomical telescopes that were launched between 1990 and 2003. The fab four  Spitzer, Chandra, Hubble and Compton  were each built to specifically observe regions of the light spectrum. Satellite light readings can allow scientists to discern the mass and size of stars in other galaxies and their planets that pass in front of them. The Great Observatories program demonstrated the power of using different wavelengths of light to create a fuller picture of the universe, NASA said. Of the four, only the Hubble and the Chandra now remain active, as the Compton was decommissioned in 2000 and Spitzer in 2020. Advertisement

Back in 2017, scientists detected the merger of two neutron stars in a galaxy named NGC 4993, thanks to a gravitational wave signal called GW170817.

In this case, a narrow, off-axis jet of high-energy particles accompanied the GW170817 merger event.

Now, three-and-a-half years after the merger, the jet faded away, revealing a new source of mysterious X-rays.

As the leading explanation for the new X-ray source, astrophysicists believe expanding debris from the merger generated a shock  similar to the sonic boom from a supersonic plane.

This shock then heated surrounding materials, which generated X-ray emissions, known as a kilonova afterglow.

An alternative explanation is materials falling toward a black hole  formed as a result of the neutron star merger  caused the X-rays. Either scenario would be a first for the field.

To distinguish between the two explanations, astronomers will keep monitoring GW170817 in X-rays and radio waves.

If it is a kilonova afterglow, the X-ray and radio emissions are expected to get brighter over the next few months or years.

But if it involves matter falling onto a newly formed black hole, then the X-ray output should stay steady or decline rapidly, and no radio emission will be detected over time.

Artist rendering of the Chandra X-ray Observatory space telescope, with Uranus visible in the background

'Further study of GW170817 could have far-reaching implications,' said study co-author Kate Alexander, a CIERA postdoctoral fellow at Northwestern.

'The detection of a kilonova afterglow would imply that the merger did not immediately produce a black hole.

'Alternatively, this object may offer astronomers a chance to study how matter falls onto a black hole a few years after its birth.'

The study has been published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
The head of Russia's space agency, Dmitry Rogozin, said U.S. launch providers should 'ride their brooms' to space, as he announced an end to rocket sales with U.S. firms.

Russia has been selling and maintaining RD-180 engines, used in the first stage of the United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket, since the mid-1990s. So far, out of 122 delivered, 98 have been used.

'In a situation like this we can't supply the United States with our world's best rocket engines. Let them fly on something else, their broomsticks, I don't know what,' Rogozin said on state Russian television.

ULA has already started working on replacing RD-180 engines in the Atlas V, signing a deal in 2014 with Jeff Bezos-owned Blue Origin for BE-4 engines.

In addition to ending sales of engines to the U.S., Russia withdrew from a joint project with Germany and a launch agreement with the European Space Agency, as well as threatened the U.S. with an end to the International Space Station.

The Russian space agency has also covered U.S. and UK flags on its Soyuz rocket - painting a V in support of its country's military - and announced a shift towards building defense satellites in the future.

Russia has been selling and maintaining RD-180 engines, used in the first stage of the United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket, since the mid-1990s. Out of the 122 that have been delivered, 98 have been used

When Russia delivers rockets to the US for use by the ULA, they are given technical assistance on integration with the rocket, to ensure things run smoothly.

Of the 122 rockets delivered so far, 24 are still sitting in a warehouse, and Russia says it will not provide any support, maintenance, or assistance for those engines going forward.

These engines, that are used in the ULA Atlas V and Antares rockets, are among the most powerful and reliable ever made - having been in use for two decades.

However, launches from these rockets aren't keeping pace in terms of frequency with newer generation launch vehicles from the likes of SpaceX, or even the Chinese-made Long March family.

The head of Russia's space agency, Dmitry Rogozin (pictured), said U.S. launch providers should 'ride their brooms' to space as he announced an end to rocket sales with U.S. firms

Northrop Grumman's Antares rocket (pictured), which carries Cygnus cargo spacecraft to the ISS, is the most likely to be affected by the rocket engine restrictions

The OneWeb launch was due to use Russian Soyuz rockets at Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan (pictured) but has since been cancelled

RUSSIA'S THREATS, DELAYS AND CANCELLATIONS IN SPACE In response to sanctions imposed by the international community, Russia has made a series of threats, caused delays and cancelled projects. International Space Station Russia's space agency boss, Dmitry Rogozin said 'who would save the ISS' with Russia were to withdraw from the orbital laboratory project. The ISS is split into two halves, with life support coming from the US half, and propulsion, stopping it falling to Earth, from the Russia side. Rogozin said the ISS could fall on to the US or Europe if it pulled out. Rocket sales to the US Russia sells two major rocket engine types to the U.S., and has done so since the mid-1990s. The RD-180 and RD-181. It announced an end to these sales, and the maintenance of the engines in response to sanctions. Rogozin said that the U.S. launch providers should 'ride their brooms'. Building military satellites Russia has announced it will redirect funding towards the construction of military satellites and equipment. It is ending some upcoming science projects, in favor of defense. Ending science projects Russia has withdrawn cooperation with Germany on a space telescope and experiments on the ISS. It says it will continue with the telescope, which it temporarily switched off, and the experiments on its own without German support. No more launch Roscosmos pulled out of a Soyuz sharing agreement with the European Space Agency launch partner Arianespace in French Guiana. It has also threatened to withhold U.S.-built, UK-owned OneWeb satellites without a guarantee they won't be used for military purposes. OneWeb later cancelled its planned launch on a Soyuz rocket from the Baikonur cosmodrome. This prompted Roscomos to pain over. British and U.S. flags on the rocket. Advertisement

The long time lines involved in preparing for a launch has provided ULA with some security though, as they are prepared for eventualities like this one.

The deal with Blue Origin is to build engines that will operate in the next-generation ULA Vulcan launch vehicle, but the engines aren't ready for launch yet.

Tory Bruno, head of ULA, said in an interview with the Verge that they have enough RD-180s to get through the transition, even without Russian support or resupply.

Northrop Grumman's Antares rocket also uses RD-180s in its first stage, as it has a number of Cygnus flights planned to resupply the U.S. part of the ISS that uses the RD-181s - which have also been restricted to the US.

There are a number of rocket launch firms leaving legacy providers such as ULA in the dust - including SpaceX and Rocket Lab, which regularly launch to low Earth orbit.

Others, such as Relativity's Terran 1 and Astra are working on fast turnaround, low cost launches starting in the near future.

While there will be some short-term issues for some US. launch providers as a result of the Russian action, the industry as a whole is likely to be unaffected.

American aerospace engineer Robert Zubrin said of the comments by Roscomos 'we've got plenty of brooms,' referring to the vast range of launch providers.

As well as ending rocket sales to the US, Russia has responded to sanctions against its space program in a number of different ways, including withdrawal from existing science programs to a more military focus in its agenda.

Engineers at the Baikonur cosmodrome covered the British and American flags on a Soyuz rocket that was supposed to put American-made, British-owned OneWeb satellites into orbit - which will no longer happen after a clash with Roscosmos.

'The launchers at Baikonur decided that without the flags of some countries, our rocket would look more beautiful,' Rogozin said.

Roscosmos also confirmed it would change its entire space program, moving to focus on satellites designed for military purposes.

'Our space program, of course, will be adjusted. Firstly, priorities will be set,' he said, adding that 'the priority here is the creation of spacecraft in the interests of both Roscosmos and Russia's defense ministry.'

Rogozin has been making a number of threats and statements since the announcement of sanctions against the Russian space program.

Previous sanctions against Russia have left out the space program, in large part due to issues like rocket engines and cooperation on the ISS.

A Soyuz booster that was due to be used to send OneWeb satellites into space, but will now be put to other uses by the Russian space agency

Since the sanctions were imposed, as a direct result of Russia's decision to invade Ukraine, it has suspended a joint project with the European Space Agency, and threatened the U.S. with withdrawal from the space station.

If this were to happen, NASA would have to find a commercial partner to replace Russian spacecraft that are used to keep the ISS from falling to the Earth.

Elon Musk has said the Dragon spacecraft could be adjusted to perform this task, while the Northrop Grumman Cygnus spaceships are already able to do so if needed.

'We will closely monitor the actions of our American partners and if they continue to be hostile, we will return to the question of the existence of the International Space Station,' Rogozin said at the start of the war in Ukraine.

NASA has said it is considering the implications and looking at contingencies, but maintains the chance of Russia withdrawing is very low.

Russia's space agency boss, Dmitry Rogozin asked 'who would save the ISS?' if Russia were to withdraw from the orbital laboratory project

Rogozin also announced the end of cooperation with Germany over experiments held in the Russian side of the International Space Station.

It followed an announcement by the Alliance of Science Organisations in Germany that it would freeze cooperation with Russian universities and businesses.

Rogozin wrote: 'The termination of cooperation with the Russian Federation in the field of higher education, scientific research and professional training announced by the leadership of the Federal Republic of Germany, of course, causes irreparable damage to the established long-term cooperation ties and significantly slows down activities in the field of outer space exploration for peaceful purposes.'

Russia has also taken complete control over a space telescope project, that was originally a joint mission with Germany.

The long timelines involved in preparing for a launch has provided ULA with some security, though, as they are prepared for eventualities like this one

'Taking into account the completely unacceptable actions of our German colleagues, primarily the German Centre for Aviation and Cosmonautics, I turned off one of the telescopes of our space observatory 'Spektr-RG', which is located at a distance of 1.5 million kilometers from Earth at the La Grange point L2. This is a completely civilian international mission to explore the starry sky', Rogozin said.

He added that Russia has everything it needs to run the experiment without Germany.

Earlier this week Roscosmos revealed that the last 56 Russian employees had left French Guiana, the European space port after the Russian space agency ended cooperation with the European Space Agency over sanctions.

Before OneWeb announced it was suspending all launches from the Russian-run Baikonour spaceport, Rogozin called for the UK government to withdraw its investment in the satellite internet service.

Soon after, OneWeb said its 36 spacecraft, due to launch on a Soyuz rocket on Saturday, would no longer launch, and are being removed by Roscosmos.
Social media platform Reddit has blocked all links coming in from Russian domain names, including the state-sponsored news sites RT and Sputnik.

Some communities on Reddit already blocked links from Russian state media and their foreign language affiliates, but the new policy applies site wide.

'We have made such restrictions universal across the site in all geographies,' Reddit said in a blog post. 'Furthermore, we will continue not to accept advertisements that target Russia or originate from any Russia-based entity, government or private.'

An admin on Reddit confirmed that all domain names ending in .ru had also been blocked, and if added would be removed by Reddit automatically.

It follows moves from Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms to block Russia Today, Sputnik and other official Russian news sources.

Social media platform Reddit has blocked all links coming in from Russian domain names, including the state-sponsored news sites RT and Sputnik

Being blocked from Reddit is one of the most impactful forms of 'deplatforming' for official news sources, according to experts.

Other platforms, including Apple, Google, Microsoft and Meta, have paused ads, removed content and restricted the ability to find content from Russia-based services, or even blocked content within certain regions. None have blocked globally.

Reddit has also been rejecting ads that target Russia or come from any Russian-based business, government or private entity.

Moderators of some subreddits, as the communities are known, have already been manually blocking links, but now the links are blocked automatically.

It goes beyond that, as moderators won't even have the ability to manually approve a link from a Russian source.

Reddit also said it was spending time to help assist and house staff in the Ukraine.

'The conflict in Ukraine has been shocking and upsetting. Recognizing that this is first and foremost a human tragedy, we have been working to ensure that those in our community and colleagues who are impacted by these events have the support that they need during this difficult time,' Reddit wrote in a blog post.

The platform says it is also putting processes in place to deal with ongoing issues with moderation of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Some communities on Reddit already blocked links from Russian state media, and their foreign language affiliates, but the new policy applies site wide

Microsoft halts sales in Russia and Airbnb suspends all bookings there and in Belarus Airbnb and Microsoft have become the latest big global firms to halt operations in Russia, as a flood of Western companies add their own punishments to official sanctions against Moscow for invading Ukraine. Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on Thursday announced the suspension, which also includes Russian ally Belarus. It aligns his company with other major Western names severing ties with Russia including General Motors, Boeing and Google. The exodus of Western firms is adding to pressure on Vladimir Putin, and everyday Russians are no longer able to buy Apple's iPhone, Nike sneakers or IKEA furniture after those companies halted all exports to the country. As well, Microsoft said on Friday it was suspending new sales of its products and services in Russia, a further step after it removed RT's mobile apps from the Windows App Store and banned advertisements on Russian state-sponsored media. And New York Stock Exchange halted trading in a number of Russia-exposed ETFs, shutting off one of the only remaining avenues for average Americans to invest in Russian assets. Airbnb previously said its non-profit arm would offer free, temporary housing for up to 100,000 refugees fleeing Ukraine. Chesky also said that some people were using Airbnb to book accommodations in Ukraine even though they didn't plan to stay there, as a way to send financial support to Ukrainians. Advertisement

'We are in active contact with our moderators and communitiesparticularly those most affected by the conflictto provide support, resources, and specialized tooling so they can continue to function without interference,' a spokesperson wrote.

This is to reduce the risk of misinformation appearing on the website, including content not coming from a Russian source directly.

Reddit has also been escalating moderator requests related to the invasion, so they can be reviewed and acted on quickly, as well as daily guidance for the community and safety team, to ensure they don't remove newsworthy content.

'This is a live situation, and our response is evolving every day as we gain new information,' a spokesperson said.

'Reddit, at its core, is about community, and we will continue to do whatever we can to ensure that our platform remains available for people to connect, support each other, access reliable information, and express their authentic opinions and feelings during this difficult time.'

Russia has started to retaliate against broadcasters, websites and social media platforms that block content from RT and Sputnik.

Russian President Vladimir Putin blocked Facebook for 'discrimination towards Russian media', announced by its media regulator Roskomnadzor, citing '26 instances of discrimination toward Russian media'.

Earlier on Friday Facebook's parent company Meta announced that RT and Sputnik would be barred from Facebook and Instagram in the UK, three days after the sites were banned across Europe.

The latest big-tech clampdown on Moscow's propaganda machine came at the request of the British Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries who wrote to Meta, Twitter and TikTok on Thursday to request the ban.

Ms Dorries said in her letter that Russia's President Putin should not be allowed to 'exploit our open and free media to spread damaging propaganda into Britain' and described his invasion of Ukraine as 'intolerable'.

'I want to urge you to do everything you can to apply the approach you are taking across the EU to block access both to RT and to Sputnik's online output on your UK services,' she wrote in a letter seen by Sky News.

The change means RT and Sputnik's pages are not visible on Facebook, Instagram or YouTube's pages in the EU or UK, as well as Reddit worldwide.

Russia's lower house also backed legislation that would impose harsh jail terms and fines on newspapers and journalists that publish 'fake news', that 'led to serious consequences. With sentences of up to 15 years in prison being proposed.

In the US, at least 10 states have banned the sale of Russian vodka, and others have moved to divest state pension funds from any Russian assets or forbid state contracts with Russian companies

The exodus of Western firms is adding to pressure on Vladimir Putin, and everyday Russians are no longer able to buy Apple's iPhone, Nike sneakers or IKEA furniture after those companies halted all exports to the country

Amendments were also passed to fine or jail people calling for sanctions against Russia.

The BBC, which has a large bureau in Moscow and runs a Russian-language news website, reacted by announcing a halt of its operations in Russia.

'This legislation appears to criminalise the process of independent journalism,' BBC Director-General Tim Davie said in a statement.

He warned that journalists could face 'the risk of criminal prosecution simply for doing their jobs'.

Two Russian outlets, Nobel Prize-winning newspaper Novaya Gazeta and business news website The Bell, said Friday they will stop reporting on Russia's invasion of Ukraine to protect their journalists.
Liverpool star Mohamed Salah has spoken of his 'shock' at finishing seventh in the 2021 Ballon d'Or.

The 29-year-old enjoyed a sensational year, scoring 37 goals, but a lack of silverware ultimately cost the forward at the awards ceremony in December.

Salah picked up just 121 votes while the winner, Lionel Messi, won with nearly 500 more votes than the Egyptian.

Mohamed Salah has admitted he was 'shocked' at finishing seventh in the 2021 Ballon d'Or

'The results of the Ballon d'Or were shocking to me,' he told the Liverpool Echo.

'I don't have much to say about it, but there was nobody who expected me to finish seventh last year, but that is what happened.

'I don't think there's a conspiracy theory or anything, but there may be inaccurate choices and there are many countries who don't know how to vote.

'I have nothing to prove that there is something wrong. I really don't know, but I was shocked at the result.'

The Liverpool forward had enjoyed a sensational year, scoring 37 goals

Salah finished nearly 500 votes behind Lionel Messi, who collected his seventh Ballon D'Or

Salah also missed out on a place in the World XI as Erling Haaland, Lionel Messi, Robert Lewandowski and Cristiano Ronaldo were picked in a front four.

'I'm not happy that I was left out of the World XI, but there's nothing I can do,' Salah added.

'What satisfies me is that everyone shares my feelings, that I should be in the team.

'I don't think there's anything personal against me specifically, but that's the reality that I'm dealing with.'
Conor McGregor has entered the bidding war for Chelsea with an offer of 1.5billion as other global billionaires consider a purchase.

The Blues' Russian owner Roman Abramovich dramatically announced earlier this week he was looking to sell the club due to growing economic sanctions in the UK and amid Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and Sportsmail understands he is looking for a quick sale.

And MMA star McGregor, who previously expressed an interest in buying Chelsea despite being a self-confessed Manchester United fan, made a bid for the club on Twitter worth half the 3bn wanted by Abramovich.

Responding to a news story stating Abramovich's price tag for Chelsea is 3billion, 'the Notorious' tweeted: 'I hereby put forward my offer of 1.5bn' on the social media site.

The news comes as Turkish businessman Muhsin Bayrak, said to be worth 8bn, claims he is locked in talks with Abramovich's team regarding buying the club, rivalling tycoons Todd Boehly and Hansjorg Wyss.

MMA star Conor McGregor (pictured) has made an opening bid of 1.5billion to buy Chelsea

Blues owner Roman Abramovich dramatically announced earlier this week he will sell the club

Abramovich is said to value his Stamford Bridge empire at a staggering figure of 3billion

Russia's invasion of Ukraine has raised questions in UK parliament about potentially imposing sanctions on Abramovich, meaning he is now offloading all of his London assets before the British government can penalise him.

American and Swiss tycoons Boehly and Wyss appeared the frontrunners to meet his rumoured 3billion asking price, but Bayrak has now claimed he will be 'flying the Turkish flag in London soon'.

'We are negotiating the terms of the purchase of Chelsea with Roman Abramovich's lawyers,' the businessman, whose family is one of the most important in Turkey, told Turkish outlet Yeni Safak.

'We are in the negotiation phase for the signatures. We will fly the Turkish flag in London soon. We made our offer. Because of the war with Russia and Ukraine in the world.

Muhsin Bayrak claims he is in talks with Roman Abramovich's lawyers about buying Chelsea

Baryak, chairman of rumoured 8bn-business AB Group Holding, says he is close to a takeover

The Turkish billionaire has claimed he will be flying his country's flag in London 'soon'

'Because they find Turkey safe, they want to get most of the after-sales money in Turkey... we are planning to sign soon.'

Bayrak is the leader of the Mutki Tribe of Bitlis, one of the largest families in Turkey, as well as Chairman of the Board of AB Group Holding, which has investments in crypto, construction, tourism and energy sectors.

'Roman Abramovich has confirmed that he will sell Chelsea, which he bought in 2003, on the club's official website. Our Holding Lawyers and Roman Abramovich's lawyers have been in touch since the first day Chelsea entered the sales process,' Chelsea's potential suitor added.

'The negotiation process has come to an end and we are planning to sign soon. This sale is also very important for Turkey.'

Abramovich has reportedly instructed American bank Raine Group to handle the sale and it is understood the Russian is targeting American buyers as investment from China, the Far East and Eastern Europe has dried up for clear political reasons.

McGregor, 33, makes somewhere between 25m and 50m for a UFC fight, depending on pay-per-view sales.

He also famously made 100m for his huge crossover bout with Floyd Mayweather in 2017.

His Proper No 12 whiskey brand has proved to be his biggest earner, the Dubliner reportedly selling his majority stake for 430m last year - but questions remain over his ability to afford Chelsea.
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From McCaigs Tower on the hill above the harbour you may feel temporarily transported to the capital of Italy during the days of the Romans.

For this tower is nothing of the sort. Instead, it takes the form of a wide, granite amphitheatre, 650ft in circumference and based on the Colosseum in Rome.

The incredible structure was built in 1897 by local businessman, philanthropist and eccentric John Stuart McCaig, who intended to commission statues of himself and his family to be dotted around the site.

Colosseum lookalike: Pictured in the centre background is McCaigs Tower, which looks out over Oban

McCaigs Tower (pictured) was built in 1897 by local businessman, philanthropist and eccentric John Stuart McCaig

The purpose, apart from ensuring his posterity, was to provide work for stonemasons during a downturn in the local economy. But he died before these plans were realised and they were never completed.

Being a major ferry port for the Hebrides  Caledonian MacBrayne (known to all as CalMac) has a terminal here  there is a sense that Oban is a transient place.

Many people simply pass through it on their way to the likes of the Isle of Mull, Lismore, Iona and Coll. Yet, for this reason, it makes a perfect base for exploring the area, as Dr Samuel Johnson and James Boswell found in 1773, having found a tolerable inn, as described in Dr Johnsons A Journey To The Western Islands Of Scotland.

Tom reveals that in 1814, Sir Walter Scott waxed lyrical of Obans little Dunollie Castle (pictured)

Tours explaining the painstaking process of making whisky are organised at The Oban Distillery, as are tastings

A local single malt. The Oban Distillery is one of the oldest in Scotland, dating from 1794, Tom reveals

Meanwhile, in 1814, Sir Walter Scott waxed lyrical of the towns little Dunollie Castle. I have seldom seen a more romantic and delightful situation, he wrote.

Other artists to drop by soon after included the composer Felix Mendelssohn (in 1829), poet William Wordsworth (1831) and painter J. M. W. Turner (1831).

For a while in the mid-19th century it seems as though Oban was hot property in creative circles.

Perhaps the whisky had something to do with it.

The Oban Distillery is one of the oldest in Scotland, dating from 1794.

Before it was founded, the town relied on small-scale fishing, shipbuilding and quarrying, but the arrival of whisky turned around local fortunes, with houses built for workers and hostelries springing up.

Tours explaining the painstaking process of making the tipple are organised, as are tastings.

At these, you are provided with four wee drams of varying ages, told that you should never put ice in whisky, and that it should be served at room temperature.

Tom took a day trip to the tiny island of Kerrera, where he trekked to see the ruins of Gylen Castle (pictured)

On the Isle of Mull, Tom stopped to explore the little town of Tobermory (pictured), with its delightfully colourful buildings

TRAVEL FACTS Doubles from 71 B&B at Oban Premier Inn (premierinn.com). Visit oban.org.uk and calmac.co.uk. Advertisement

You are also invited to notice mouth-filling late autumn fruits, hints of orange zest and cloves, as well as Highland toffee and red berries. The nearby Oban Inn, established in 1790, is the place to keep the party going, with its old sea charts on the walls, captains wheels, portholes, first-rate battered fish, mussels and sea- salty, no-nonsense atmosphere.

Dont want to go to heaven  none of my friends are there, is the inscription carved on one table.

A pair of day trips by ferry enlivened our stay. One to the tiny island of Kerrera: two miles by five miles, and ideal for a walk with a stop-off to see the ruins of Gylen Castle.

This was once a MacDougall clan stronghold until it was besieged by Covenanter troops in 1647. Turner filled his sketch book with drawings of its dramatic setting.

The other was to Mull, stopping at the little town of Tobermory, with its delightfully colourful buildings, art galleries and the excellent Mishnish inn  blazing fireplace, good music, excellent oysters and seafood chowders.

Oban gets busy in summer. At this time of year, it has an unhurried air  and a confident one. Those literary associations and single malts might have something to do with it.
Sonja Engler, a crossing guard outside Dodd Elementary School in Allentown, says she hopes people will pay attention to new signs Thursday, March 3, 2022, indicating traffic patterns that are meant to make the area safer for students going to and from the school and neighboring South Mountain Middle School. (April Gamiz/The Morning Call )

Allentown will make streets around Dodd Elementary and South Mountain Middle schools one-way during pickup and drop-off times to fix longtime traffic problems, school district and city officials said.

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Two-way vehicle traffic and parking on both sides of the streets leading into and away from the entrance of the school often created congestion and a bottleneck during arrival and dismissal, district spokesperson Melissa Reese said.

To solve the problem, starting Friday South Church Street will be one way from Baker Street to Mohawk Street, then continue one way onto South Sixth Street, officials said in a notice to parents and the public. The traffic flow will then continue so that South Virginia Street will be one way from Mohawk Street to South Sixth Street.

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These changes will be in effect during student drop-off from 8-9 a.m. and student pickup from 3-4 p.m. on school days only.

Extending the one-way corridor on Mohawk from Virginia down to Sixth Street allows traffic to move more efficiently away from the building and buses to safely make the turn into the entrance, Reese said. Its our goal that these efforts will eliminate cross traffic and create a safer corridor for our students to walk to and from school.

Lauri Follweiler, a Mohawk Street neighbor since 1988, said she spoke with the city about implementing this one-way traffic pattern when her children attended Dodd Elementary years ago.

The traffic is horrible because people dont like to park and walk, Follweiler said. This is only for two hours during the day, so well see what happens.

One-way and no-parking signs have been installed at South Virginia and Mohawk streets to keep cars from parking at the corners of that intersection. No-stopping-or-standing signs are now on the east side of Church Street midway to the Mohawk Street intersection to prevent cars from interfering with students crossing.

We anticipate [this] will provide for safer areas for parents to pick up and drop off their children while allowing traffic to continue to flow safely, city spokesperson Genesis Ortega said. Police routinely patrol the area and can help with anything that comes up in the moment, although well rely on feedback from the school district if there are any outstanding issues.

Morning Call reporter Andrew Scott can be reached at 610-820-6508 or ascott@mcall.com.
Driving through south-west Alabama on Route 84, a near 2,000-mile east-to-west highway, the emptiness is striking.

Dense pine forest is broken by occasional wooden shotgun shacks and tiny churches set behind white picket fences.

Even the roadkill is fascinating  armadillo, raccoon and snake bodies line the dusty red verge next to clusters of ant hills.

Novel idea: Monroevilles fountain tribute to its celebrated writers. The quaint town is author Harper Lee's hometown

This corner of The Cotton State is the epicentre of Civil Rights history.

The most famous book about the region is Harper Lees To Kill A Mockingbird, and next week Aaron Sorkins 2018 play, based on story, previews at Londons Gielgud Theatre. Lee published her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel in July 1960. The 1962 film adaptation won three Oscars, including best actor for Gregory Peck as lawyer Atticus Finch.

Its for these reasons that quaint Monroeville, Alabama, Lees home town and the setting for the book and the film, is the literary capital of the state. The population is a mere 5,898 and, as a man at a gas station said when I mentioned where I was heading, you have to be going there to get there.

Strolling down Main Street in blazing June sunshine, magnolia and pear trees provide both sweet-scented shade and a carpet of blossom. Cheery locals greet each other while offering directions to strangers and its hard to believe anything less than loveliness ever existed in this appealing place.

Monroeville is a 90-minute drive from the Alabama state capital of Montgomery (pictured)

On the left is Harper Lee in 1960, the year her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel To Kill A Mockingbird was published. On the right is Truman Capote in 1968 - the Breakfast At Tiffanys author grew up in the same town as Lee

But those on a literary pilgrimage know better. The Book, as locals call Mockingbird, is dedicated to Lees father, A.C. Lee, a lawyer who practised in the towns Greek revival-style courthouse, with white bell tower. The character of Finch was based on him. Its a coming-of-age story about fairness and justice in a community riddled with prejudice and racial discrimination.

Monroeville is a 90-minute drive from state capital Montgomery. It was in Montgomery that Rosa Parks refused to give up her bus seat to a white passenger and also where a young Martin Luther King preached at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church.

The historic Old Monroe County Courthouse was re-created for the film because the real one was still in daily use. Its now a magnet for fans of Lee and her childhood best friend, Truman Capote, author of Breakfast At Tiffanys, who lived next door.

Sara explores the historic Old Monroe County Courthouse, pictured, which has been run by volunteers as a local attraction since 1968. Picture courtesy of Creative Commons

'Up a set of rickety wooden stairs is the courtroom itself, the most recognised in America,' writes Sara. Picture courtesy of Creative Commons

Classic: Gregory Peck and Brock Peters in the 1962 film adaptation of To Kill A Mockingbird, which won three Oscars

Dominating the elegantly decayed square where faded signs advertise long-closed businesses, the building has been run by volunteers as a local attraction since 1968.

This town is no different to any other, a woman tells me outside, except weve got The Book and they dont. Were always proud of what she did.

The $5 entry fee doesnt feel enough, but gives access to nostalgic exhibits dedicated to Lee and Capotes lives and work, alongside plenty of photographs. The museum is old-fashioned but this is part of its charm. Up a set of rickety wooden stairs is the courtroom itself, the most recognised in America, where you can take photographs at the judges bench, in the witness chair, on the balcony or in the jury seats.

Sara stays at 919 Felder Avenue in Montgomery (pictured), the former home of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald. Image courtesy of Creative Commons

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All this intellectual stimulation makes me hungry. Lee held meetings at Davids Catfish House, a faux log cabin a few minutes south of town off the 84. Fried Green Tomatoes and firecracker shrimp in a creamy spicy sauce are southern staples. Once you pop you really cant stop.

Lees old home on Alabama Avenue is now Mels Dairy Dream, a diner with a distinctive American vibe and excellent people watching. They get dressed up for milkshakes and church. Lee and Capote are not the only big-league writers from Alabama. I stay at 919 Felder Avenue in Montgomery, the former home of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, who wrote portions of Tender Is The Night and Save Me The Waltz respectively here in the 1930s. Downstairs is a museum and two atmospheric apartments above are rentable on AirBnB ($150/night).

This quirky corner of the Bible Belt isnt an obvious choice for a U.S. road trip, but for epic scenery, important history, lashings of old-world southern charm and literary nostalgia you cant beat it.
Ali & Ava (15, 95 mins)

Rating:

Verdict: A love letter to Bradford

Writer-director Clio Barnard is a throwback, a chronicler of Yorkshire rather in the way that the great Alan Bleasdale, on the small screen, used to chronicle Liverpool.

Her films portray working-class people, sometimes on the margins of society, struggling to get by. And yet, like Bleasdale, she finds warmth and even hope in their lives.

Her masterpiece, so far, was the 2013 film The Selfish Giant, which was set on the down-at-heel outskirts of Bradford. So is Ali & Ava, and it's almost as good.

Gritty and downright bleak at times, but also funny and full of love, it's a romance between two people damaged by previous relationships.

Her films portray working-class people, sometimes on the margins of society, struggling to get by. And yet, like Bleasdale, she finds warmth and even hope in their lives

Ali (gloriously played by Adeel Akhtar, whom you might remember as the accident-prone jihadi in 2010's Four Lions) feels too ashamed to admit to his close, caring, Anglo-Asian family that he and his wife Runa (Ellora Torchia) have grown apart.

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He is a kindly, loveable man-child, a part-time DJ who fell in love with Runa when he saw her dancing. But she is cleverer than him, studying hard to gain qualifications and has tired of his puppyish enthusiasms  for music, people, life in general.

The catalyst for the separation was the loss of a baby and now, to his despair, she is seeing someone else. Yet they continue to live under the same roof, and she is fond enough of Ali to play along with the sham, pretending that they're still a couple even as she makes plans to move out.

Ali's family own properties, and his job is to do maintenance work and collect the rent. Typically, he takes the young daughter of his tenants, an immigrant Slovakian family, under his wing.

That's how he meets Ava (Claire Rushbrook, also wonderful), a classroom assistant at the child's school and, like Ali, brimful with empathy.

Ava, a mother of four and grandmother of five, is also a widow, whose late husband was routinely violent to her.

She, too, is in need of tenderness, but the sweet, burgeoning relationship with Ali, fuelled by their shared love of music, is complicated by her troubled son Callum (the excellent Shaun Thomas, who was plucked from school to make his screen debut in The Selfish Giant).

Callum, himself a young dad, bitterly resents his mother's new 'friend' and appears to have inherited his father's capacity for violence.

Gritty and downright bleak at times, but also funny and full of love, it's a romance between two people damaged by previous relationships

Sensibly, Barnard does not over-egg the racial dimension in all this.

The potential is there for a highly politicised and racially charged film of the kind Ken Loach would doubtless have made with the same characters, but Ali & Ava is both subtler and less judgmental than that.

It is beautifully observed and full of charm, which is not a quality generally associated with a backdrop of urban blight, but then that's Barnard's great skill. She is a tremendously original and gifted storyteller.

Lucy And Desi (no cert, 103 mins)

Verdict: Anodyne documentary

Rating:

Lucy And Desi, a documentary, explores another love match, between those behemoths of American TV, Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz. If you have watched Being The Ricardos, Aaron Sorkin's Oscar-nominated drama about the couple, who played all-American housewife and immigrant Cuban bandleader Lucy and Ricky Ricardo in the hit Fifties sitcom I Love Lucy, then you will either relish the extra detail, or feel that theirs is a story already told far more entertainingly. I tilt towards the latter view.

The director is Amy Poehler, herself a fine comedic actress, and she has unearthed a few gems about Ball's meticulous approach to her craft. Her sublime comic timing didn't arrive fully-formed; it was the product of years of hard work, and some very useful mentoring by Buster Keaton. In one interview she stressed how important it was to study the movement of others. 'Cats, dogs, old ladies in the park, drunks, just observe,' she said.

Fascinating stuff, but otherwise it's disappointing to find such a workaday film, offering few insights that weren't in the drama and glossing over others that were, such as Arnaz's numerous infidelities.

The couple's daughter, Lucie, is one of the principal contributors, so it's understandable that she should emphasise how much her parents loved each other even after their 1960 divorce, but it makes for pretty anodyne viewing.

Ali & Ava is in cinemas. Lucy And Desi is available on Amazon Prime Video.

This Dark Knight could lighten up a little

The Batman (15, 175 mins)

Rating:

Verdict: Very dark and very long

Today's major cinematic event, addressed in these pages earlier this week, is the release of The Batman, with British star Robert Pattinson stepping into the costume filled in the past by Ben Affleck, Christian Bale, Michael Keaton and George Clooney.

Pattinson plays the Caped Crusader early in his crime-busting career, and his alter ego Bruce Wayne as an earnest young man troubled by what he learns about his rich parents, gunned down 20 years earlier.

In the meantime, a serial killer is at large, known as The Riddler (Paul Dano) after the cryptic messages he leaves every time he murders one of Gotham City's wealthy, corrupt elite.

His victims are no loss to society but with the help of Gotham's one honest cop, Lieutenant Gordon (Jeffrey Wright), the Batman must unmask him, while also grappling with the Gotham mob, led by Carmine Falcone (John Turturro).

All this is extremely dark, both in the physical, crepuscular sense, and in the chilling way the story is told. It is a film noir in more ways than one, borrowing from violent psychological thrillers such as Seven (1995) at least as conspicuously as it does from previous superhero movies, although Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy, with another Brit, Bale, as Batman, is plainly a strong influence.

Today's major cinematic event, addressed in these pages earlier this week, is the release of The Batman, with British star Robert Pattinson stepping into the costume filled in the past by Ben Affleck, Christian Bale, Michael Keaton and George Clooney

That said, The Dark Knight (2008) carried a 12 certificate whereas this is a 15, and I can't be the only one rueing the fact that a Batman film, for heaven's sake, is deemed inappropriate viewing for young teenagers. I loved 2019's disturbing Joker  also a clear influence here  but roll on the day when a director is bold enough to craft a new superhero movie with a proper nod to those comic-book roots, letting the kids back in.

Still, there are plenty of reasons to recommend The Batman to the over-15s, including a top-notch cast also featuring an unrecognisable Colin Farrell as the villain we know best as The Penguin, Zoe Kravitz as a nightclub waitress with a penchant for catsuits and cat-burgling (I'm giving no further clues), and Andy Serkis as Batman's grumpy mentor, Alfred. And those of you familiar with the great cities of Liverpool and Glasgow will enjoy recognising them as Gotham's stunt doubles.

However, the other thing you need to bear in mind before setting off for the cinema is that this film is a whisker under three hours long. Just when you think director Matt Reeves has finished telling the story, there's an unwanted added 20 per cent, almost as if The Batman has been crossed with the VAT man.

A longer review of The Batman ran in Tuesday's paper.
Harvey Weinstein has apologized after he was caught with a box of Milk Duds at a Los Angeles jail facility, against the rules of the jail.

'This was an innocent misunderstanding,' Weinstein, 69, told TMZ in a statement Thursday via his rep Juda Engelmayer. 'It will not happen again. I have been a model inmate, following the rules and regulations and I am sincerely sorry.'

Los Angeles County jail guards found the convicted rapist was in possession of the candy following a November meeting with his lawyer Shawn Burkley, sources told the outlet.

The latest: Harvey Weinstein, 69, has apologized after he was caught with a box of Milk Duds at an LA jail facility, against the rules of the jail. He was snapped in court in LA in July of 2021

The disgraced film producer told authorities that he had taken the candy with him the previous July during his extradition from New York to Los Angeles, while authorities suspect he might have been provided with the Milk Duds by a member of his legal team.

Mark Werksman, a lawyer for Weinstein, said that no punitive actions were taken against Weinstein by officials with the court or jail.

His lead lawyers Werksman and Alan Jackson told Variety: 'We have been informed about this and are very sorry it happened. It had not happened before, and never happened since. Harvey has been a model inmate and intends to continue as such.'

Weinstein remains in custody at the Twin Towers jail facility in downtown Los Angeles, where he is in the facility's Correctional Treatment Center medical unit.

The disgraced film producer told authorities that he had taken the candy with him the previous July during his extradition from NY to LA

Weinstein last July was extradited to LA in connection with his sexual assault case, as he faces 11 charges based on allegations from five women. He has pleaded not guilty to the charges

Weinstein was sentenced to 23 years in prison in NY in 2020 in connection with convictions of rape in the third degree in 2013, and forcibly performing oral sex in 2006

Weinstein last July was extradited to Los Angeles in connection with his sexual assault case, as he faces 11 charges based on allegations from five women. He has pleaded not guilty to the charges in the case.

He was sentenced to 23 years in prison in New York in 2020 in connection with convictions of rape in the third degree in 2013, and forcibly performing oral sex in 2006.

The New York City native, who produced films such as Shakespeare in Love, Silver Linings Playbook and Pulp Fiction, became the focal point in the #MeToo movement when he was accused of sexual misconduct by more than 85 women amid explosive pieces from The New Yorker and The New York Times.
Allison Langdon is back in hospital as she continues to suffer complications from a hydrofoiling accident one year ago.

In February last year, the 42-year-old TV host underwent surgery after badly injuring her knee while filming a watersports segment for The Today Show on the Gold Coast.

Ally's co-host Karl Stefanovic revealed she was 'holed up' in hospital on Friday's show as he continued to report he reported on the floods in Queensland and New South Wales

Ouch! Allison Langdon is back in hospital as she continues to suffer complications from a hydrofoiling accident one year ago. In February last year, the 42-year-old TV host underwent surgery after badly injuring her knee while filming a watersports segment for The Today Show on the Gold Coast

'Before we go to the weather, I just wanted to say a quick good morning to you all and particularly [highlight] some lovely messages from Ally, who has passed on her thanks from home to all the State Emergency Service for doing a great job,' he said.

After sharing a picture of Ally watching the show from her hospital bed, he added: 'She's unfortunately got... that knee of hers, it's just shonky. If she could replace it I'm sure she would.

'She's holed up watching the program this morning. All our love Ally, and to a speedy recovery.'

He then joked: 'She's laid up but she's been sending lots of messages - some of them support to me, others of advice. To know you is to love you, Ally. Get better, come back soon.'

Hosting alone: Ally's co-host Karl Stefanovic revealed she was 'holed up' in hospital on Friday's show as he continued to report he reported on the floods in Queensland and New South Wales

Injury: After sharing a picture of Ally watching the show from her hospital bed, he added: 'She's unfortunately got... that knee of hers, it's just shonky. If she could replace it I'm sure she would'

Last year, dramatic footage of Ally's accident showed the blonde being pulled from the water by her life vest by two male rescuers.

She was taken to hospital where she received treatment and flew back to Sydney for an operation on her knee.

The Nine presenter spoke about her 'horrible' injuries on Nova's Fitzy and Wippa.

Extreme sport: Back in February 2021, Allison underwent surgery after hurting her knee while filming a watersports segment for The Today Show on the Gold Coast

Accident: Dramatic footage of the accident showed Ally being pulled from the water by her life vest by two male rescuers

When asked how her knee felt now, she said: 'It's okay, it's still very sore.'

She added: 'I snapped the leg, I did the kneecap, I did the ligaments. I shattered the knee cap, snapped the leg, did the PCL, the meniscus... The tibia snapped.'

The TV presenter made her return to the Today show in March 2021, sporting a large brace over her knee and using a wheelchair and crutches to get around.

She has since been having regular sessions with a physiotherapist and her husband, media executive Michael Willesee Jr, has been taking care of her.
She has been ruling the runway during Paris Fashion Week and walked for both Isabel Marant and Ludovic de Saint Sernin on Thursday.

And following a busy day of shows, Bella Hadid enjoyed some downtime with her boyfriend Marc Kalman at L'Avenue resturant in the French capital.

The model, 25, showcased her tiny waist in a grey tweed co-ord, which consisted of a cropped tweed belted jacket with a matching mini skirt.

Dinner time: Bella Hadid enjoyed some downtime with her boyfriend Marc Kalman at L'Avenue resturant in the French capital

The stylish ensemble showcased Bella's lithe physique as she strutted into the resturant with her art director boyfriend.

Bella accessorised her look with a pair of pop socks and red trainers, while she wore a glizy bag on her shoulder full of her essentials.

Bella also added a pretty pendant necklace and quirky earrings.

Cool: Meanwhile Marc, 33, looked equally cool in a black vest which he layered with an unbuttoned red shirt and baggy black jeans

Despite the late hour, Bella was rocking a pair of chic red sunglasses, while she wore her brunette tresses sleeked back off her face and styled in braids.

Meanwhile Marc, 33, looked equally cool in a black vest which he layered with an unbuttoned red shirt and baggy black jeans.

Marc was also wearing a belt and necklace, along with a pair of Dr Martens.

Glam: The model, 25, showcased her tiny waist in a grey tweed co-ord, which consisted of a cropped tweed belted jacket with a matching mini skirt

So stylish: Despite the late hour, Bella was rocking a pair of chic red sunglasses, while she wore her brunette tresses sleeked back off her face and styled in braids

Looking good! Bella added a pop of colour to her look with a pair of red Adidas trainers

Accessory queen: She wore a glitzy bag on her shoulder full of her essentials and added a pretty pendant necklace and quirky earrings

Stunning: Despite the late hour, Bella was rocking a pair of chic red sunglasses, while she wore her brunette tresses sleeked back off her face and styled in braids

Flower power: Gigi joined her sister and Marc at the resturant

Bella went public with the romance this past July when she posted a picture of her and Marc locking lips at Cannes.

They are said to have carried on the romance in New York amid the coronavirus pandemic while assiduously making sure they never got caught together.

Bella has made a name for herself in the modeling world for the past several years.

At the beginning of her career in 2016, Bella was voted Model of the Year by industry professionals. This was the same year she walked in her first ever Victoria's Secret fashion show.

Busy day! Bella has been ruling the runway during Paris Fashion Week and walked for both Isabel Marant and Ludovic de Saint Sernin on Thursday

It is no surprise that Bella has rose to superstardom fame, following in her mother, Yolanda Hadid and sister, Gigi's footsteps.

The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star was a major model in the '80s and '90s and got Gigi into modeling when she was just two-years-old.

Bella recently walked in the Michael Kors runway show during New York Fashion Week. She was joined by her older sister, Gigi, 26, and other top models including Irina Shayk and Emily Ratajkowski.

Gigi Hadid's younger sister debuted an overhauled look during a trip to one of the international Vogue offices on Sunday, where she shared a slew of mirror selfies to Instagram.

Love: Bella went public with the romance this past July when she posted a picture of her and Marc locking lips at Cannes
She has kept her onoff relationship with John Miller out of the spotlight.

But Jennifer Garner made a rare public outing with her boyfriend on Tuesday, when they were spotted catching a flight at JFK International Airport in New York City.

The 49-year-old actress appeared to have been supported by the 44-year-old businessman as she dropped by New York for the premiere of her new film The Adam Project the day before.

Rare sighting: Jennifer Garner, 49, and her boyfriend John Miller (R) were seen in JFK International Airport in New York City on Tuesday, despite the fact that they're rarely seen in public

Jennifer was spotted walking down a hallway in the airport with John leading the way while other members of their entourage tagged along.

She was dressed in a muted style with a long black double-breasted overcoat atop a vibrant orange sweater.

The 13 Going On 30 star paired her top with dark jeans and a set of black loafers with thick multicolored socks.

She wore her lustrous brunette tresses down around her shoulders, and she had her dark-frame glasses perched up on her head as she stared down at her phone while walking.

On the move: Jennifer was spotted walking down a hallway in the airport with John leading the way while other members of their entourage tagged along

Low key: She was dressed in a muted style with a long black double-breasted overcoat atop a vibrant orange sweater

Comfy: The 13 Going On 30 star paired her top with dark jeans and a set of black loafers with thick multicolored socks. She stared at her phone while walking

Jennifer appeared to get so caught up that she let the belt from her coat dangle to the ground, where a woman following her appeared to step on it.

John showed off an elegant casual-chic look with a tie-free white dress shirt tucked into his slim black jeans.

He had on brown leather shoes and a charcoal jacket, and he carried a black leather backpack in his hand while walking ahead of his girlfriend.

They and everyone around them were masked up as they headed through the airport.

Looking good: John showed off an elegant casual-chic look with a tie-free white dress shirt tucked into his slim black jeans

Putting in an appearance: The lovebirds appeared to be leaving New York after flying to the West Coast for the premiere of Jennifer new film The Adam Project, which costars Mark Ruffalo and Ryan Reynolds

Sci-fi: The science fiction film, which also features Catherine Keener and Zoe Saldana, stars Ryan as the Adam of the title, who travels into the past to meet a young version of himself and his father (Ruffalo), who is already dead in his time; seen on Monday in NYC

The lovebirds appeared to be leaving New York after flying to the West Coast for the premiere of Jennifer new film The Adam Project, which costars Mark Ruffalo and Ryan Reynolds.

The science fiction film, which also features Catherine Keener and Zoe Saldana, stars Ryan as the Adam of the title, who travels into the past to meet a young version of himself and his father (Ruffalo), who is already dead in his time.

The two Adams will have to work together in the past to save the world of the future.

The film pairs Ryan again with veteran director Shawn Levy, who previously helmed his blockbuster Free Guy.

It's also a reunion for Jennifer and Mark, who costarred with her in their rom-com 13 Going On 30.

Jennifer and her costars can be seen in the Netflix-distributed film starting on March 11.

Back at it: The film is a reunion for Jennifer and Mark, who costarred with her in their rom-com 13 Going On 30. Jennifer and her costars can be seen in the Netflix-distributed film starting on March 11

Out of the spotlight: Even though John accompanied Jennifer to New York, he appears to have skipped the premiere, which is in line with how the lovebirds prefer to keep their relationship private

Even though John accompanied Jennifer to New York, he appears to have skipped the premiere, which is in line with how the lovebirds prefer to keep their relationship private.

The two were first linked in 2018, following her 2015 separation from her then-husband Ben Affleck.

At the time, the two were said to have been dating for six months, and John was in the process of divorcing his former wife, whom he had separated from years earlier.

The CaliBurger CEO reportedly managed to get a positive review from Jen's ex Ben, and sources close to him said he wanted to marry her, even though the Alias star wasn't ready for that step.

But the relationship appeared to fizzle out in 2020 amid reports that Jennifer just wasn't ready for such a big commitment.

Yet the two managed to patch things up when Us Weekly reported that they had reunited in May of last year, and since then her children Violet, 16; Seraphina, 13; and Samuel, nine  all of whom she shares with Ben  have spent more time with his daughters from his previous relationship.

Splitsville: The two were first linked in 2018, following her 2015 separation from her then-husband Ben Affleck, tut the relationship appeared to fizzle out in 2020 amid reports that Jennifer just wasn't ready for such a big commitment

Take two: Yet the two managed to patch things up when Us Weekly reported that they had reunited in May of last year

On Thursday, Jennifer shared her support for Ukrainian refugees fleeing the Russian attack on the country in a video posted to her Instagram.

She urged her followers to support the international aid organization Save The Children, which is offering humanitarian aid to children fleeing the conflict.

The group's website says that its staff are currently serving reception centers for refugees fleeing to Romania while also assessing starting up centers in Poland and Lithuania, where other Ukrainians have been fleeing to escape the violence.

The actress chatted with Dan Stewart, Save The Children's UK Head of News, to get a feel for the impact of the fighting on Ukrainians trying to get out of the country to safety.

Helping out: On Thursday, Jennifer shared her support for Ukrainian refugees fleeing the Russian attack on the country in a video posted to her Instagram
Love Island's Dr Alex George has been accused of messaging other girls while dating his ex Amelia Bath.

It comes after the A&E doctor turned reality star, 30, was last week reported to have been unfaithful to his last partner Ellie Hecht at least four times.

But it has now been claimed by The Sun that Dr Alex also had a wandering eye while with his girlfriend before Ellie, Amelia.

Rumours: Love Island's Dr Alex George has been accused of messaging other girls while dating his ex Amelia Bath (pictured with Amelia)

The publication claims to have seen a now-deleted TikTok video from a medical student claiming he sent her messages when he was believed to be with Amelia.

The woman showed her support for Ellie by sharing her own experience on the social media platform, reportedly writing: 'While no one believes Dr Alex cheated on his gf but you defiantly do because he was in your DMs during his relationship before Ellie.'

In the video, it is claimed that she then posted the messages in question sent in 2020.

They reportedly show him asking her if she wants his number but the rest of the correspondence is obscured, according to the newspaper.

Oh dear: It comes after the A&E doctor turned reality star, 30, was last week reported to have been unfaithful to his last partner Ellie Hecht at least four times (pictured with Ellie)

A representative for Alex has been contacted by MailOnline for a comment.

It comes after earlier this week his latest ex Ellie broke her silence after the star reportedly cheated on her four times before breaking up with her.

The barristers' clerk, 22, admitted she is going through a 'very difficult' time but 'values the kind messages' she has received amid her highly-publicised split from Alex.

Taking to Instagram on Monday, she began: 'This has been a very difficult time for me so I really do value all the kind messages, however I'd appreciate if you could respect my privacy at this time as well.

Difficult: But it has now been claimed by The Sun that Dr Alex also had a wandering eye while with his girlfriend before Ellie, Amelia (pictured with Amelia)

After being referred to as 'Hetch' by some, she hilariously continued: 'Also, FYI. My last name is spelt H-E-C-H-T [upside down smiling emoji].'

It came after Alex asked people not to judge situations they don't understand.

According to reports, the former reality contestant cheated on the blonde beauty four times before breaking up with her.

They had been together since January 2021 and went public with their relationship last June, but called it quits earlier this month.

Last Friday The Sun reported Dr Alex sexted a number of women during their relationship, with the publication claiming to have seen message evidence of these communications.

'It's been a very difficult time': It comes after earlier this week his latest ex Ellie (pictured) broke her silence after the star reportedly cheated on her four times before breaking up with her

A representative for Alex was contacted by MailOnline for comment at the time.

An insider told the publication: 'Alex cheated on Ellie very early on in their relationship but she chose to forgive him and move on.

'She has really been his rock during a very difficult time for him and decided to give him the benefit of the doubt.

'Unfortunately, Alex went on to sext a number of other women during their relationship and it all came to a head when someone contacted Ellie and spilled the beans about what he had been up to.

Candid: Taking to Instagram on Monday, she began: 'This has been a very difficult time for me so I really do value all the kind messages'

'Alex insisted he hadn't slept with anyone else. Ellie is struggling to believe him because he was often away on work trips and messages showed him begging to meet girls in hotel rooms.'

The newspaper went on to report Ellie forgave him but he ended the relationship last month - just three months after they bought a puppy together.

The source continued Ellie was shocked by the break up as they had just got a pet together.

Ellie has now reportedly moved out of his 1.6million south London flat where she was living with him and is finding somewhere else to stay with the dog, Freddie.

The pair went Instagram official last June when they headed off to Cornwall for a romantic holiday.

A source close to the couple told MailOnline at the time Ellie had been a pillar of support to Alex as he continues to mourn the devastating loss of his brother Llyr, who tragically took his own life aged 19 in July 2020.

'Alex and Ellie have been dating for six months now, and it's beginning to get serious between them,' an insider revealed at the time.

'Alex has had a difficult year, with the passing of his brother, and working nonstop on the frontline. His family are so pleased to see him happy in a new relationship.'

Happier times: The barristers' clerk, 22, admitted she is going through a 'very difficult' time but 'values the kind messages' she has received amid their split (pictured in January 2022)

Ellie also took to Instagram to post the same adorable picture with Alex, simply captioning the image: 'My love.'

Prior to his relationship with Ellie, Dr Alex dated Amelia but parted ways in July 2019.

The medic starred on the 2018 series of Love Island but after failed to find love after several couplings.

He went on to carve a career as a TV doctor and spoke last week on Lorraine about 'fat shaming' trolls and his mental health.

'Sadly, it's not even just me, it's people being shamed for how they look and a lot of people have said to me they feel uncomfortable going to the gym because people might judge them - movement is for everyone,' he told host Lorraine, 62.

'It's about how you feel - your health, your happiness, it's not about having a six pack. I don't care that I don't have a six pack quite frankly and I don't think other young people should either.'

Commenting on the suggestion he shouldn't be practising medicine due to past mental health issues, Dr Alex, who has spoken openly about taking anxiety medication, said: 'It's not the first time I've had it to be honest. 'If you've got mental health issues, should you be looking after. Shouldn't the medical council stop you'.'

He continued: 'If you have an understanding of what it's like to suffer or need help, I think you can relate to that person. Most of the time it's about what you can't see and that is why having an understanding and true empathy I think is so important.

'I've got no shame, and if people want to say that about me then fine. But I'm not going to stop and I don't think I'm a worse doctor for it.'
Ferne McCann has revealed she has finally found the one as she admitted that she would 'genuinely marry' her boyfriend Lorri Haines after a string of failed romances.

The former TOWIE star, 31, and the Dubai based estate agent went public with their hot new romance last month during a holiday to the UAE.

Speaking to The Sun, Ferne, who is mother to daughter Sunday, four, with jailed ex Arthur Collins, also told how she has learned from her 'mistakes' and would like to expand her brood with Lorrie in the future.

Couple: 'I can't wait to extend my family and for Sunday to have siblings': Ferne McCann, 31, has revealed that she would 'marry' her boyfriend Lorri Haines

The star confessed that she is ready to spend the rest of her life with Lorri and 'can't wait' to extend her family, just weeks after he was pictured sniffing suspicious white powder.

Ferne gushed: 'I have met someone that I can see the rest of my future with. I can't wait to extend my family and for Sunday to have siblings.'

'I have never thought about it until now because I have met someone now that I would genuinely marry.'

Loved-up: The former TOWIE star and the Dubai based estate agent went public with their hot new romance last month during holiday to the UAE

Ferne made clear that her life has changed a lot since her relationship with Collins, who is currently serving a 20-year prison sentence at Woodhill Prison, Milton Keynes, after carrying out an acid attack at a London nightclub in 2017.

Saying her life was turned upside down by the incident, Ferne added: 'I am different now  I am older and wiser. I have learned from mistakes.'

The reality TV star described Lorri as a 'loyal man' that she 'respects' and said they have a lot of 'parallels' in their lives.

Gushing: The reality TV star described Lorri as a 'loyal man' that she 'respects' and said they have a lot of 'parallels' in their lives

Lorri is based in the UAE and runs a jewellery firm, an investment business and a software company.

Ferne's words come after a video resurfaced of Lorri appearing to hold a bag of white powder to his nose.

In the film obtained by The Sun last month, Lorri, who has since insisted he was not taking drugs, is seen scooping the powder out of the bag and up to his nostrils, with a pal shouting in the background: 'No! No ket, no ket.'

MailOnline has contacted a representative for Ferne McCann for comment at the time.

Coupled-up: Ferne's words come after a video resurfaced of Lorri appearing to hold a bag of white powder to his nose

Oh no: Ferne's words come after a video resurfaced of Lorri appearing to hold a bag of white powder to his nose

Lorri, who was not dating Ferne at the time the video was filmed, was seen dancing shirtless in the clip while holding two small clear plastic bags.

Lorri's friend told him to 'put the ket down' before the entrepreneur was seen throwing the packet onto a nearby table. It has not been confirmed what substance Lorri was holding.

The man then says: 'That's none of your business,' prompting Lorri to shake his head and reply: 'None of my business.'

He then held the smaller bag up before before clapping his hands and dancing to the music.

Haines has told The Sun that he was not taking drugs and was 'joking about'.

Sources told The Sun Lorri had been partying on a yacht at the marina with six friends earlier in the day.

An insider told the publication: 'They went to an apartment and carried the party on until about 4am.'

The clip surfaced three weeks after Ferne shared her first picture with Dubai-based Lorri, with the reality star writing at the time: 'When you know, you know.'

Authorities in the desert country have a zero-tolerance policy with regards to drugs, with the standard minimum jail sentence for possession being four years.

Exciting: Speaking about marriage she added: 'I have never thought about it until now because I have met someone now that I would genuinely marry'

Ferne has famously had a rocky love life, most recently splitting from DJ Jake Padgett last year after they spent the second lockdown together.

After the split Ferne revealed she still wanted to find her happily ever after and is 'such a sucker for love'.

Ferne and Jack moved in together amid the winter lockdown shortly after they began dating, and admitted that taking the next step in their relationship was its downfall.

Before that she was in a relationship with Collins, with whom she shares her daughter Sunday, four.

Collins' attack saw sixteen people suffer chemical burn injuries and three people left temporarily blinded.

Exes: Ferne has famously had a rocky love life, most recently splitting from DJ Jake Padgett (pictured together) last year after they spent the second lockdown together

Tough times: Before Jack, she was in a relationship with jailed acid attacker Arthur Collins, with whom she shares her daughter Sunday, four

Mother-of-one Ferne dumped him after she learned about the incident which came just weeks after her pregnancy announcement.

Last year, the former TOWIE star confessed she previously 'struggled to come to terms' with being a single parent as she reflected on the challenges she has faced raising a child on her own.

Ferne said: 'I guess I was one of those people that might have had a misconception about single parenting, because I didn't want to be called a single parent when I was pregnant.'
Teen Mom's Farrah Abraham revealed she will be spending the next 28 days in a trauma treatment center to improve her physical and mental health.

In a video, uploaded to her Instagram account on Thursday, the 30-year-old Nebraska-born influencer said she would be going off grid to focus on herself and working toward a 'brighter future.'

'I am taking time for my healing. I have ignored people for over 11 months after having a sexual assault and having my whole body break down, my whole brain break down,' the reality star told her three million followers.

Brave: Teen Mom's Farrah Abraham revealed she will be spending the next 28 days in a trauma treatment center to improve her physical and mental health

The mom-of-one added 'No matter your traumas  whether they are physical or mental, people see them or dont see them  I wanted to take the time and say I am grateful for my family for hanging with me this year in one of my hardest years.'

She concluded: 'I am looking forward to understanding more medically what I can do for myself and transition.'

The My Teenage Dream Ended author also sent 'love and light to those who want to improve their lives [and] un-traumatize themselves.'

Seeking help: In a video, uploaded to her Instagram account on Thursday, the 30-year-old Nebraska-born influencer revealed she would be going off grid to focus on herself and working toward a 'brighter future'

A number of Abraham's fans of supportive comments praising her decision.

'So sorry for what youve gone through. Proud of you for getting help,' one wrote.

Another commented: 'Good luck Farrah!! Sending you Hope, , and blessings. As a person with lifetime of ptsd.. it is a road of struggles. Self-care is #1. Proud of you for this.'

'I am taking time for my healing. I have ignored people for over 11 months after having a sexual assault and having my whole body break down, my whole brain break down,' the reality star told her three million followers

In January, the MTV personality was arrested and taken into custody by the LAPD after allegedly assaulting a security officer at a club in Hollywood.

Abraham, who was issued a citation for the misdemeanor following the incident, addressed her brush with the law later in a statement to TMZ.

'Im tired of being maliciously battered, attacked, conspired against while having dinner at Grand Master Records, this was a private person's arrest my lawyer is handling from here,' she said.

Rough year: In January, the MTV personality was arrested and taken into custody by the LAPD after allegedly assaulting a security officer at a club in Hollywood; seen in October 2021

'It is terrifying and traumatizing that people attack me and I can not even enjoy dinner as Im the only person out of 3 attacked and harassed when. I look forward to court as always, warning this place is a danger to public figures [sic].'

According to the publication, the 16 And Pregnant star said that staff members of Grandmaster Records assaulted her.

She also claims that they had filmed the incident intending to leak it to new organizations.

Rough night: Farrah Abraham, 30, was arrested for allegedly slapping a security guard following a confrontation in an LA club on Saturday, law enforcement sources told TMZ

'It is terrifying and traumatizing that people attack me and I can not even enjoy dinner as Im the only person out of 3 attacked and harassed when. I look forward to court as always, warning this place is a danger to public figures [sic]' she told TMZ after the arrest

Later in the week, Farrah posted video of the altercation to her Instagram Stories, though she left it without audio.

The man held her leg and back down, and she appeared to have something tied around her wrists that kept them behind her back.

'Never again,' she captioned the first clip.

Legal woes: In 2018, she was arrested for allegedly hitting an employee of the Beverly Hills Hotel's Polo Lounge, which resulted in her being banned as punishment

'What a horrible dining experience being battered and assaulted by your staff. Such an unsafe, disturbing environment,' she continued in the next video, which also tagged Grandmaster Records.

'The staff yet again attack a paying customer and hold me against my will and hurt me,' she continued. 'The only 1 out of 3, woman abuse must stop. The staff @grandmasterrecords should be in jail.'

Farrah continued her quest to get the employee who had held her down fired in a subsequent video filmed before police arrived.

Traumatic: During an interview with In Touch magazine back in 2014, the 16 and Pregnant alum was 'drugged and raped more than once' following the release of her sex tape. (seen in 2021)

'Why is a male on top of me holding me down when I was walking. This is scary and he should be fired and in jail for batterment [sic].'

She claimed that the events leading up to her arrest were part of a pattern.

'I'm tired of people harassing me, holding me down, hurting me and lieing about me and selling things to tmz it's scary, it effects mothers, it is traumatizing and I'm hurt [sic],' she wrote.

Farrah has previously had physical altercations with staff.

Doing her best: As a single mother to 13-year-old daughter Sophia, whose father died in a car accident weeks before her birth, Abraham has worked hard to provide for her little girl and is currently focusing on becoming a lawyer; seen 2020

In 2018, she was arrested for allegedly hitting an employee of the Beverly Hills Hotel's Polo Lounge, which resulted in her being banned as punishment.

During an interview with In Touch Weekly back in 2014, the 16 and Pregnant alum reflected on her personal trauma, including getting 'drugged and raped more than once' following the release of her sex tape.

'It was a dark time,' Abraham, who has previously spoken about being abused as a child, told the outlet. 'Violence has been a big part of my life.'

As a single mother to 13-year-old daughter Sophia, whose father died in a car accident weeks before her birth, Abraham has worked hard to provide for her little girl and is currently focusing on becoming a lawyer.
X Factor star Jason Owen has revealed his newborn daughter and wife Becy have been rushed to hospital following post-birth complications.

The couple welcomed their daughter, who they named Lyla, on Thursday morning at Gosford Hospital in New South Wales.

But just one day after her arrival, Lyla and her mother had to be rushed to another hospital via an ambulance after the 'distressed' tot was having trouble latching on.

Health update: X-Factor Australia star Jason Owen and his wife Becy welcomed their first child on Thursday and on Friday he revealed their baby daughter Lyla has suffered from a bowel infection

Jason confirmed the pair still remain in Westmead Hospital - who were able to do more specialist tests - in Sydney.

They determined that Lyla has a suspected bowel infection.

'Its been nerve shattering. We went from being on top of the world when the baby was born to crying our eyes out not knowing whats going on,' the first-time dad told Daily Mail Australia in a statement.

After welcoming Lyla at 4:14am, the couple noticed their little girl was in distress early on and had trouble latching on.

Doctors were worried at her unresponsiveness so she had a battery of tests done, with it initially appeared that the baby possibly had a twisted bowel which can cut off blood flow to the intestine.

On the mend: Even still, he is grateful to report Lyla (pictured) will be on the mend in the near future. 'We are hopeful though that she will fully recover, my heart goes out to all parents of newborns who suffer complications,' he said

Bec and Lyla were then rushed by ambulance to Westmead as Gosford dont have the capacity to do the tests that were needed to find out exactly what was wrong.

'The baby wasnt able to feed properly all day and had to be syringe fed with Becy expressing. I was forced to spend the first night apart from them and still have spent barely any time with her,' he said.

Even still, he is grateful to report Lyla will be on the mend in the near future.

'We are hopeful though that she will fully recover, my heart goes out to all parents of newborns who suffer complications.

'Until you go through it yourself you dont know how distressing it can be. However she is perfect in every other way and we are besotted,' he added.

'It's so amazing to welcome our little girl into the world, especially as we'd tried to have a baby for years,' Jason told NCA NewsWire

The couple married in June last year, and announced they were expecting their first child together in September.

'It's so amazing to welcome our little girl into the world, especially as we'd tried to have a baby for years,' he told NCA NewsWire straight after his daughter's birth.

'Surprise!!!!! Bec and I are having a baby! We can't wait to meet Baby Owen in 2022,' Jason wrote on Instagram at the time.

He added: 'Happy Father's Day to all dads and I can't wait to be one myself'.

The couple hosted a gender reveal party a month later in October, where the proud parents-to-be discovered they were expecting a girl.
HARRISBURG  Pennsylvanias biggest public pension system will begin to sell off its investments in Russia and Belarus, after its board voted unanimously Thursday in light of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

The vote by the board of the $72.5 billion Public School Employees Retirement System  one of the nation's biggest public pension funds  targets what it said is almost $300 million directly invested in Russia and Belarus, less than one-half of 1% of the funds total assets.

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Belarus has been a key ally of Russia in its attack on Ukraine.

The board's motion has a caveat, that divesting must be consistent with the board prudent fiduciary duty. But the motion also decreed that the system will make no future investments in Russia or Belarus until it votes to change that policy.

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Governors and lawmakers in numerous U.S. states have been taking actions to pull state investments from Russian companies, while encouraging private entities to do the same.

In Pennsylvania, lawmakers have begun drafting legislation to require the state Treasury Department and the states three public pension funds to divest Russia-related holdings.

The Treasury Department said it sold off as much of its $2.9 million it had invested in Russian companies as it could.

The State Employees Retirement System, which reported almost $36 billion in assets to start 2021, said the funds exposure to Russia-related investments amounts to a fraction of 1%. Its board planned to discuss the matter Friday.
Scotland's Sacred Islands With Ben Fogle

Rating:

Meet the Richardsons

Rating:

Not so long ago, a British chap would never reveal his knees in public.

A hiker in shorts was practically a nudist.

Boys became men when they pulled on long trousers at the age of 11.

But now, most blokes seem to think they're overdressed in jeans or slacks.

Exploring the Outer Hebrides in Scotland's Sacred Islands (BBC2), where it was 2c (36f) at midday in May, Ben Fogle was wearing a cable knit pullover, a woolly bobble-hat, a thick waterproof jacket, a voluminous scarf... and tiny shorts.

At one point, he sat down with a Presbyterian lay minister on the Isle of Harris.

Scotland's Sacred Islands With Ben Fogle, pictured, is on BBC2

As he chatted to her about traditional values, he kept crossing and uncrossing his bare legs like Sharon Stone in Basic

Instinct. With admirable self-control, the poor woman managed to maintain eye contact, but I couldn't listen to a word they were saying.

Apart from Ben's naked thews, the views throughout the hour were magnificent. On Lewis, he spent the night in a stone bothy or shelter, dug into the face of a cliff with a 150ft drop to the Atlantic ocean.

Next morning, he went salmon fishing at the mouth of the Grimersta river with local musician Colin Macleod.

The flashing water and broad horizon made for a scene of enchanting beauty.

'A Lewis man would be homesick in heaven,' said Colin, quoting a local proverb.

Ben first became a TV celebrity when he spent a year on the nearby island of Taransay, for the reality show Castaway 2000.

He made a brief diversion to revisit the place, arriving on a former Falklands landing craft (how that got there, he didn't ask).

Though he insisted that the spiritual atmosphere pervading the Hebrides, a Christian stronghold for more than 1,500 years, encourages him to reflect on the past, Ben is not one for looking back.

He's at his best when interviewing people who have forged new beginnings for themselves in unlikely settings, like Pakistanborn Abdul  who after 28 years on Harris regards himself as 'a relative newcomer'.

A new series of Meet The Richardsons (Dave) saw them move back to Yorkshire, this time to a new build in Leeds. Jon Richardson with his wife in real life and the series Lucy Beaumont

With a few well-aimed questions, he persuaded artists Becca and Nikolai to open up about their lives.

They have converted a disused church into a studio, with a ceramics kiln.

Nikolai explained what they loved about the solitude: 'You are forced to examine yourself. I am not constantly distracted by who's doing what and what's happening where.'

That sounds especially inviting at the moment.

Jon Richardson and his wife Lucy Beaumont are forging a new beginning, after quitting their charming village home outside Halifax for a failed move to London.

A new series of Meet The Richardsons (Dave) saw them move back to Yorkshire, this time to a new build in Leeds. It's a celebrity postcode  they claim boxer Nicola Adams and Spice Girl Mel B are neighbours.

But they appear to have chosen the place because neither of them hates it, not because either actually likes it.

The show relies on guest stars and this episode achieved a coup, with David Tennant, pictured in the latest episode of Meet The Richardsons, and wife Georgia sending themselves up

The comedy continues to be hit-and-miss, a mix of awkwardly scripted scenes that labour to a punchline, and improvised dialogue that occasionally manages to be very funny.

The show relies on guest stars and this episode achieved a coup, with David Tennant and wife Georgia sending themselves up.

We first glimpsed them on the battlements of their private castle, quaffing cocktails.

Explaining why he'd agreed to do the show, David said: 'We thought we could sprinkle a little stardust for you. Perhaps it was arrogant of us.'

The problem is that, with costars as good as that, the rest of the skits fall flat by comparison.
Lara Worthington (nee Bingle) showed off her expensive taste when she flew out of Sydney Airport back to Los Angeles on Friday.

The 34-year-old model took flight in a stylish black Prada coat, which retails for $5284.

The wife of actor Sam Worthington looked chic in an all-black ensemble, wearing wide-leg trousers underneath her belted coat.

First class fashion! Lara Worthington (nee Bingle) showed off her expensive taste when she flew out of Sydney Airport back to Los Angeles on Friday. The 34-year-old model took flight in a stylish black Prada coat, which retails for 2,900 (AUD$5284)

She also donned a black top and maintained a level of comfort for the long flight ahead with a pair of black sneakers.

The bottom half of her face was concealed beneath a black face mask and her bobbed blonde hair was worn tucked behind her ears.

Lara clutched a bottle of water as she made her way inside the airport terminal, accompanied by an assistant.

Chic: The wife of actor Sam Worthington looked chic in an all-black ensemble, wearing wide-leg trousers underneath her belted coat

Comfort first: She also wore a black top, and maintained a level of comfort for the long flight ahead with a pair of black sneakers

Famous face: The bottom half of her face was concealed beneath a black face mask and her bobbed blonde hair was worn tucked behind her ears

A man walked alongside her pushing an airport trolley, which was loaded up with all of her luggage.

In addition to three sizable black suitcases, Lara also had an oversize brown tote bag and a Louis Vuitton carry-on case.

After entering the airport, Lara made her way over to a counter where she proceeded to check in her bags.

Lara arrived in Sydney in mid-February, leaving her husband of eight years and their three young sons, Rocket, six, Racer, four, and River, one, at home in Los Angeles.

The family moved back to Australia temporarily in January last year, after spending the better part of a decade living in New York and Los Angeles.

Not too posh to push! Lara wheeled her carry-on bag through the airport as she made her way to her gate, keeping her head down as she walked
Desiree Lindstrom, the fiancee of late rapper DMX, has opened up on how she's dealing with her grief in the wake of his death last year.

Lindstrom, speaking with It's Tricky with Raquel Harper on Thursday, chat about raising their son Exodus, five, and other aspects of life following the rap icon's April 9, 2021 death at 50 at White Plains Hospital in New York following a heart attack.

Lindstrom said her 'life changed so fast' following the death of the Party Up (Up in Here) artist, whose real name was Earl Simmons.

The latest: Desiree Lindstrom, the fiancee of late rapper DMX, has opened up on how she's dealing with her grief and raising their son Exodus, five, in the wake of the rapper's death last year

'I haven't moved on - it's hard, you know?' Lindstrom said. 'It's really hard. I just take it minute-by-minute. Some people say you could take it day-by-day, but it's second-by-second.'

Lindstrom said she's studying to be an esthetician and focused on raising her son as she looks to move forward amid the tough time.

'I just want to build myself to be a great mother to Exodus,' Lindstrom said. 'I want him to see that he has a strong mother that can stand up on her own, and I'm just trusting in God through the process.'

Lindstrom said she goes 'up and down with emotions' in the wake of the rapper's death, adding, 'I have to really force myself to keep it moving, keep going.'

Lindstrom last month took to Instagram to pay tribute to DMX on Valentine's Day

Lindstrom said she's studying to be an esthetician and focused on raising her son as she looks to move forward amid the tough time

She added, 'Holidays get lonely ... because Earl was my family, but I do have Exodus and I try to make the best of it, because I know that's what he would've wanted me to do.'

Lindstrom opened up about how son Exodus is 'stable' amid a battle with stage-three kidney disease, and how the child has stayed strong and positive.

'Sometimes it's hard, just looking at him,' Lindstrom said. 'He has so many different qualities of his father. So when I do shed a tear, he'll be like, "Mommy, are you okay?" And I'll say, "You just did something that was like your father." And he's like, "Mommy, it's okay, daddy's with God, he's watching over us. He's our angel."'

She said she thanks 'God that he gave me a son that is like that,' adding, 'He's just like his dad.'

Lindstrom, who was involved with the late rapper for a decade, said she felt like they were 'married,' though they never exchanged vows.

'A piece of paper ain't s***,' Lindstrom said. 'Our love was real. He was there for me, I was there for him, and people know what the f*** it was, period.'

Following the death of the Ruff Ryders' Anthem artist, who was on life support for a week, his family issued a statement calling him 'a warrior who fought till the very end.' He was pictured in 2017 in NYC

She added, 'One thing that Earl taught me was, who gives a f*** what people got to say about you? I knew that he loved me, he knew that I loved him.'

Lindstrom told Harper that she was 'not even thinking' about pursing a new romantic relationship following DMX's death.

Lindstrom last month took to Instagram to pay tribute to DMX on Valentine's Day, writing, 'I know you earned your wings baby. I pray that you are at peace. Missing you too much this Valentine's Day.'

Following the death of the Ruff Ryders' Anthem artist, who was on life support for a week, his family issued a statement calling him 'a warrior who fought till the very end.

'He loved his family with all of his heart and we cherish the times we spent with him. Earl's music inspired countless fans across the world and his iconic legacy will live on forever. We appreciate all of the love and support during this incredibly difficult time.'
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Heidi Klum is venturing into the music world once again, teaming up with Snoop Dogg and DJ duo WeddingCake for the new song Chai Tea With Heidi.

The 48-year-old supermodel previously released her first single Wonderland back in 2006 and she contributed to then-husband Seal's 2007 album System.

The America's Got Talent host appears in a number of scintillating outfits in the black-and-white music video, which was shot in Los Angeles.

Snoop and Heidi: Heidi Klum is venturing into the music world once again, teaming up with Snoop Dogg and DJ duo WeddingCake for the new song Chai Tea With Heidi

Heidi sings: The America's Got Talent host appears in a number of scintillating outfits in the black-and-white music video, which was shot in Los Angeles

The video opens with a shot of Klum in a skimpy bustier on the beach, and quickly cuts to the Germany's Next Top Model host in a variety of different outfits while also hanging with Snoop.

The title of the song is hinted in one of the first verses, when Snoop Dogg describes her as, 'fierce, feisty, girl you're hot and sweet like chai tea.'

Klum is seen spreading out on the sandy beach while Snoop continues rapping, before Heid is seen in one of Snoop's lowriders, taking a verse herself.

Beach look: The video opens with a shot of Klum in a skimpy bustier on the beach, and quickly cuts to the Germany's Next Top Model host in a variety of different outfits while also hanging with Snoop

Hot and sweet: The title of the song is hinted in one of the first verses, when Snoop Dogg describes her as, 'fierce, feisty, girl you're hot and sweet like chai tea'

'When I give my heart again, I know It's gonna last forever/No one tell me where or when, I know It's gonna last forever,' Klum sings.

Klum and Snoop are seen dancing around in a soundstage next to one of his lowriders, with Snoop in a full fur coat while Heidi is in a black mini-dress and thigh-high black boots.

The video ends with Klum joined by a number of other models, who all dance in a choreographed number on the beach and in the studio.

Heidi sings: 'When I give my heart again, I know It's gonna last forever/No one tell me where or when, I know It's gonna last forever,' Klum sings

Klum first spoke about Chai Tea with Heidi exclusively to the Daily Mail in January, where she revealed that the song was inspired by someone suggesting she sing the Germany's Next Top Model theme song, during the most recent season's wrap party.

'You don't have to ask me twice to sing something on the stage,' Heidi quipped adding that she immediately jumped at the chance.

'I'm a huge Snoop Dogg fan,' Klum said, adding, 'I know Snoop from seeing him out and about and living in Los Angeles.'

Heidi speaks: Klum first spoke about Chai Tea with Heidi exclusively to the Daily Mail in January, where she revealed that the song was inspired by someone suggesting she sing the Germany's Next Top Model theme song, during the most recent season's wrap party

Huge fan: 'I'm a huge Snoop Dogg fan,' Klum said, adding, 'I know Snoop from seeing him out and about and living in Los Angeles'

Snoop agreed and invited her to his Inglewood studio, where the video was shot in what Klum described as an, 'amazing compound.'

The rapper let Klum pick her favorite car out of the 10-15 cars he had at the compound, and that was used in the video.

''I'm a huge fan. I always loved Snoop Dogg. I love him even more now. My poor husband has been listening to me talking about Snoop Dogg for so long now. I've been talking his ear off!' Klum said.

Snoop's compound: Snoop agreed and invited her to his Inglewood studio, where the video was shot in what Klum described as an, 'amazing compound'
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Kim Kardashian channeled a sexy biker babe in a black leather Balenciaga jacket, matching pants and a pair of motorcycle gloves while attending the opening of Revolve Social Club's on Thursday in West Hollywood.

During the bash, complete with a lounge and bar, stocked with sister Kendall Jenner's 818 Tequila brand, the 41-year-old reality star was the epitome of cool in her $7,000 motorcycle jacket with ribbed detailing and reflective silver-tone stripes.

The mother-of-four, who was declared legally single from Kanye West after nearly seven years of marriage this week, wore her dark brown hair in a sleek super-sleek bun and toted a tiny, black crocodile embossed handbag .

Fierce! Kim Kardashian channeled a sexy biker babe in a black leather Balenciaga jacket, matching pants and a pair of motorcycle gloves while attending the opening of Revolve Social Club's on Thursday in Los Angeles

She completed her figure-hugging ensemble with oversized silver shades, a nude matte lipstick and lightweight foundation on her sun-kissed complexion.

Once inside, Kim shared a video of herself, in which she recalled attending an event for Revolve Social Club back in 2016.

'I'm so glad they're open again,' she said in a clip on her Instagram Story, before blowing her followers a kiss. 'You guys have to come check it out on Melrose.'

Beautiful: She completed her figure-hugging ensemble with oversized silver shades, a nude matte lipstick and lightweight foundation on her sun-kissed complexion

First event as a legally single woman: Once inside, Kim shared a video of herself, in which she recalled attending an event for Revolve Social Club back in 2016

'I'm so glad they're open again,' she said in a clip on her Instagram Story, before blowing her followers a kiss. 'You guys have to come check it out on Melrose'

The KKW Beauty also filmed around the pop-up location, filled with Insta-worthy interiors, fresh flowers and racks of 'cute' clothing.

'Of course there's an 818 bar!' Kardashian gushed upon spotting her supermodel siblings' alcohol line being served to guests. 'Look how pretty this is.'

While attending her first public event since a judge granted her request to restore her marital status to single, she was heard telling another attendee that she is 'doing so great,' according to E! News.

Documenting it all: The KKW Beauty also filmed around the pop-up location, filled with Insta-worthy interiors, fresh flowers and racks of 'cute' clothing

'Of course there's an 818 bar!' Kardashian gushed upon spotting her supermodel siblings' alcohol line being served to guests. 'Look how pretty this is'

Loving life: While attending her first public event since a judge granted her request to restore her marital status to single, she was heard telling another attendee that she is 'doing so great,' according to E! News

Strike a pose: Kim looked effortlessly cool as she posed for photos at the fun event

At peace: The star showed no signs of distress amid the drama surrounding her divorce from Kanye

The source also reported 'Kim looked stunning and was so sweet to everyone' as she explored the three-story space.

'Kim was smiling the entire time. She appeared relaxed and happy to be there,' the insider added.

At the party, she was seen mingling with Revolve cofounder Michael Mente and Raissa Gerona.

Turning heads: Other celebrity guests included Alessandra Ambrosio, who slid her enviably svelte frame into an aquamarine jumpsuit with a plunging neckline that flashed her cleavage

All eyes on her: She looked absolutely gorgeous as she posed up by a sign at the event

Swanking about: 'Ale,' as she is known affectionately to her fans, emphasized her slender waistline by cinching a belt around the glinting outfit

Simply stunning: The beauty pulled off her best poses as she turned heads in her stylish green jumpsuit

Making an entrance: Angus Cloud wore a plaid Burberry ensemble and an orange handkerchief around his head under a beige Kangol hat

His style: The 23-year-old actor also sported an orange handkerchief around his head under a beige Kangol hat

Other celebrity guests included Alessandra Ambrosio, who slid her enviably svelte frame into an aquamarine jumpsuit with a plunging neckline that flashed her cleavage.

'Ale,' as she is known affectionately to her fans, emphasized her slender waistline by cinching a belt around the glinting outfit.

Alessandra balanced expertly on a pair of stilettos for her latest big event, accessorizing with a small black handbag.

The supermodel, 40, styled her light brown hair in loose waves and appeared to be wearing the same or nearly identical bag to Kardashian.

Angus Cloud, best known for his role as Fezco on Euphoria, wore a plaid Burberry ensemble and an orange handkerchief around his head under a beige Kangol hat.

Friendly as always: The source also reported 'Kim looked stunning and was so sweet to everyone' as she explored the three-story space

'Kim was smiling the entire time. She appeared relaxed and happy to be there,' the insider added

Pals: At the party, she was seen mingling with Revolve cofounder Michael Mente and Raissa Gerona

Sara Sampaio also made it out to the highly-anticipated clothing store event. She donned a bright red dress that left her shoulders and long legs uncovered.

Her dark brown bangs were parted down the middle, and it was tied back in a bun. Sampaio's vibrant lipstick showed brightly against her face.

The Portuguese beauty elevated her height in an eye-catching pair of silver heels as she stepped out of the car and into the event.

The former Victoria's Secret Angel accessorised with a transparent rectangle clutch bag and some dainty silver jewellery to match her shoes.

At the event: Sara Sampaio also made it out to the highly-anticipated clothing store event. She donned a bright red dress that left her shoulders and long legs uncovered

Well-maintained makeup: Sampaio's vibrant lipstick showed brightly against her face

Stunning: The Portuguese supermodel wowed as she stepped out of the car in an eye-catching pair of silver heels

Glowing: The brunette beauty beamed as she wore her long locks slicked back in a bun and opted for a bright red lip to make her look pop

Elsa Hosk also checked out the event, wearing a black leather jacket and micro skirt along with white socks and chunky black shoes.

The stunner added a red shirt and white T-shirt to her look, accessorising with a red and tan patterned back while sweeping her blonde locks into an up do.

Meanwhile, Sofia Richie looked effortlessly stylish in a pale yellow jacket, which she wore over a simple white T-shirt.

She teamed the outfit with a pair of casual blue denim jeans, and added a touch of glamour with a pair of pointed white heels.

Eclectic fashion choice: Elsa Hosk checked out the event, wearing a black leather jacket and micro skirt along with white socks and chunky black shoes

Stylish: The stunner added a red shirt and white T-shirt to her look, accessorising with a red and tan patterned back while sweeping her blonde locks into an up do

Pastels: Sofia Richie showed up in a lemon jacket paired with a white top and blue denims

Fancy footwear: She teamed the outfit with a pair of casual blue denim jeans, and added a touch of glamour with a pair of pointed white heels

Accessories queen: She added several pieces of gold jewellery to bring some sparkle to her ensemble, wearing hoop earrings, several bangles and a thick gold chain

The model, 23, added several pieces of gold jewellery to bring some sparkle to her ensemble, wearing hoop earrings, several bangles and a thick gold chain.

Toting her essentials in a small grey handbag, the sister of Nicole Richie wore her honey coloured tresses down and in loose waves.

Kara Del Toro stepped out in very revealing silver dress that showed quite a bit of skin.

The cover girl put her womanly curves on display in see-through silver dress, without a bra, which provided plenty of sideboob for admirers.

Confidence: Kara Del Toro, 28, put her curves on display in a see-through silver dress for the opening of the Revolve Social Club

Revealing all: Kara stepped out in very revealing silver dress that showed quite a bit of skin

Open book: The silver dress was open along both sides, held together with tied strings

Seductive: Del Toro gave a seductive stare back before leaving the opening

The FHM model matched the number perfectly with a pair of silver strappy heeld that wound up to her calves.

She accessorized with hoop earrings and small pink purse that appeared to glisten under the bright lights of the photographers.

The British-born starlet looked like she was on the catwalk during her stroll to the entrance of the establishment.

Delilah Hamlin also showed up for the star-studded event, with the beauty opting for a clingy black mini dress with knee-high black boots and a gray blazer

Celebrity offspring: Delilah Hamlin also showed up for the star-studded event

Night out: She opted for a clingy black mini dress with knee-high black boots and a gray blazer

Striking: Delilah was a vision of beauty as she posed for photographers at the bash

The thigh's the limit! Delilah showed off her tanned and toned pins in a thigh-grazing little black dress

Meanwhile, Winnie Harlow made quite the entrance as she showcased her statuesque figure in a zebra-patterned ensemble.

She definitely turned heads as she put on a leggy display in the shimmering strapless top and mini skirt combination.

Winnie teamed the look with a pair of silver metallic heels which wrapped around the ankle, further accessorising with a matching silver bag and tiny sunglasses.

Her raven-colored locks were combed down the middle with the bangs hanging down the side as she made her fashionable entrance.

Leggy look: Winnie Harlow made quite an entrance in a patterned two-piece of strapless top and mini skirt

Sizzling: Winnie was a vision of beauty as she strutted through the club in her platform heels

Posing up a storm: Winne looked sensational as she worked her angles for the camera

Work it: She put on an animated display as she made her way across the room

Out and about: The 27-year-old Jamaican-Canadian fashion model donned a zebra-patterned ensemble for her evening out

The Revolve Social Club is only open for a limited time and will feature pop-ups from designer brands, private events, and Instagrammable content.

It has hosted many famous guests including Kim Kardashian, Jessica Alba and Paris Hilton and is opening its doors to the public for the first time.

Guests will be invited to shop styles from the fashion retailer, hang out in lavish lounge areas, and experience panel discussions and master beauty classes from special guests.

The club will be open from March 4 until Aril 24 and will operate everyday 11am until 7pm.

On the VIP list: Other guests included Emma Brooks, left, and Olivia Ponton, right

Bumping along nicely: Matthew Cooper and Rocky Barnes also attended the bash

Eye-catching: Peter Dundas stood out in a Britney Spears T-shirt worn with bright yellow jeans and matching trainers

Look who it is: Shanina Shaik looked incredible in a black cut-out gown, a glittering cardigan and statement black heels
Jade Tuncdoruk seemed determined to keep a low profile when she arrived at Sydney Airport on Thursday following her recent racially insensitive Uber Eats rant and travel refund saga.

The 27-year-old influencer was returning home from a holiday in Paris with her mother Handan.

After spotting cameras, she put on her grey hooded sweatshirt, pulling the hood down low over her face and walking with her head down.

Feeling shy: Jade Tuncdoruk seemed determined to keep a low profile when she arrived at Sydney Airport on Thursday

Jade pulled her own luggage along, trailing behind her mother as they exited the airport together.

She had initially stepped off the flight with the sweatshirt knotted around her waist, and paired dark blue leggings with a grey marle T-shirt.

The social media star also donned a pair of black sneakers and she appeared makeup-free underneath a black face mask.

Incognito: After spotting cameras, she pulled on her grey hooded sweatshirt, pulling the hood down low over her face and walking with her head down

Her long brunette hair sat loose as she pulled a large blue suitcase and a smaller green carry on bag alongside her.

A black handbag and neck pillow sat on top of the green bag while Handan had her hands full with her own luggage.

In January, Jade was forced to apologise for a racially insensitive Facebook post about Uber Eats drivers.

Flying in: The 27-year-old influencer was returning home from a holiday in Paris with her mother, Handan (left)

The resurfaced post from 2017 saw Jade complaining about the company's 'annoying non-English speaking delivery drivers'.

'I order off you guys all the time and I'm starting to find it really annoying that you have so many non-English speaking delivery people who can't follow basic delivery instructions,' she wrote.

'I got a notification today saying my food was arriving and it took the person a further 20 mins to get to my door because he didn't read my delivery instructions properly and when I called him to explain he didn't understand a word I was saying.'

Saying sorry: In January, Jade was forced to apologise for a racially insensitive Facebook post about Uber Eats drivers

She continued: 'Your GPS is consistently sending drivers to the wrong address which I've explained in my instructions which most people read and have no problem with but when foreigners are delivering it takes twice as long for me to receive my then cold food. Sort it out.'

Jade later apologised for her 'hurtful comments' after her post was uploaded by the Celeb Spellcheck Instagram page.

'I'm sorry to anyone I've hurt with my comments. I hold myself accountable for my actions,' she wrote.

The rant came after backlash for demanding that a small business refund her $2,000 honeymoon deposit, after ignoring the terms and conditions.

Keeping it in the family: Jade travelled to Paris with her mother a month after the scandal emerged, celebrating her 27th birthday in the French capital

'It doesn't excuse anything but know that I have grown immensely in the past several years. I always do my best to be someone others can look up to and I know I've let people down and for that I'm truly sorry.'

Jade travelled to Paris with her mother a month after the scandal emerged, celebrating her 27th birthday in the French capital.

'Eternally grateful for my 27 years of life. Feeling so lucky to be spending my birthday in such an incredible place with the woman who made my entire existence possible,' she wrote on Instagram last week.
Dead Eyes podcaster Connor Ratliff is set to chat with Tom Hanks, who famously fired him from his 2001 HBO miniseries Band of Brothers for having 'dead eyes.'

Ratliff, 46, has gained notoriety for his podcast, which is focused on rebounding from defeat after he lost a role in the war-based miniseries, which Hanks, 65, executive produced.

'Not everyone has one that is so star-studded,' Ratliff told Vanity Fair on Thursday. 'But everybody has some story like, "Boy, I really was feeling good and confident. And then I got thrown for a loop."'

The latest: Dead Eyes podcaster Connor Ratliff, 46, is set to chat with Tom Hanks, 65, who famously fired him from his 2001 HBO miniseries Band of Brothers for having 'dead eyes'

Ratliff told Deadline Thursday that he 'was fully prepared for this to never happen, but [is] thrilled that it has.

'I think for listeners who have been following along, it will be a very satisfying experience. And for new listeners, it's a Tom Hanks episode, so what's not to like?'

Ratliff opened up to the outlet about the overall tone of the episode, which he said has an intimate feel.

'We want it to feel as if you're just there in the room with me and Tom,' said Ratliff. 'I have been a fan ever since I heard him scream the line, "I am not a fish" in Splash, and doing this podcast has only made me a bigger fan, even before he agreed to be a guest.'

Hanks was seen on the set of the HBO miniseries, which debuted in September of 2001

Ratliff has gained notoriety for his podcast, which is focused on rebounding from defeat after he lost the role in the war-based miniseries

In a preview of the forthcoming episode, Hanks told Ratliff he initially 'was aghast' about learning about the format of the podcast.

'When I found out about this from my daughter and my son, I literally said, "How bad is it?"' Hanks said. 'I go right to the cheesy, melodramatic narrative, which is, like, "Oh, okay, so this is going to essentially be an ongoing poison-pen letter." But it's not.'

Hanks also opens up about his rise to fame, the unspoken rules of being on a Hollywood set, and how he picks out projects and actors to work with.

Ratliff has gone on to appear on The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, The George Lucas Talk Show and Search Party. He was snapped in November of 2016 in NYC

Hanks on the podcast also opens up about his rise to fame, the unspoken rules of being on a Hollywood set, and how he picks out projects and actors to work with

Ratliff, who has gone on to appear on The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, The George Lucas Talk Show and Search Party, has made 30 episodes of the podcasts featuring guests including Judd Apatow, Jon Hamm, Seth Rogen and Colin Hanks.

Amir Blumenfeld and Jake Hurwitz, the founders of the company Headgum that produces the Dead Eyes podcast, told Deadline they were 'actually not surprised at all that Tom Hanks decided to be a guest' with the 'incredible job' Ratliff and his staff have done with the show, which first began airing in 2019.

'When Connor shared the pilot episode in 2019, we instantly loved how unique and funny the show was, but we never could've predicted that this podcast would grow into such a beautiful exploration of disappointment, rejection, and ultimately taking those feelings and turning them into something positive,' Blumenfeld and Hurwitz said.

The Dead Eyes podcast featuring the Oscar-winner is slated to debut March 10.
Alessandra Ambrosio proved her fashionista credentials when she was spotted at a star-studded Los Angeles event this week.

The 40-year-old supermodel, who achieved international fame as a Victoria's Secret Angel, was attending a fete for Revolve.

She slid her enviably svelte frame into an aquamarine jumpsuit with a plunging neckline that flashed her cleavage.

Looking fab: Alessandra Ambrosio proved her fashionista credentials when she was spotted at a star-studded Los Angeles event this week

All eyes on her: She looked absolutely gorgeous as she posed up by a sign at the event

'Ale,' as she is known affectionately to her fans, emphasized her slender waistline by cinching a belt around the glinting outfit.

Accentuating her screen siren features with makeup, the Brazilian-born bombshell let her dark hair cascade freely in waves over her shoulders.

Alessandra balanced expertly on a pair of stilettos for her latest big event, accessorizing with a small black handbag.

The Revolve event was quite the celebrity-strewn affair, welcoming Euphoria star Angus Cloud as well as Kim Kardashian herself.

Swanking about: The 40-year-old supermodel, who achieved international fame as a Victoria's Secret Angel, was attending a fete for Revolve

When you got it: She slid her enviably svelte frame into an aquamarine jumpsuit with a plunging neckline that flashed her cleavage

Simply stunning: She put on her best poses

Alessandra recently covered the 'Women's Issue' of Harper's Bazaar Mexico, glamming up in a Gucci dress that was perfectly fitted to her knockout figure.

For over a year she has been involved with her smoldering fellow model Richard Lee, whom she was seen holidaying with in Florianopolis, Brazil over New Year's.

Although she was born in Erechim she clearly has a special place in her heart for Florianopolis where both of her children were born.

GAL Floripa, the swimwear line she started with her sister Aline and their pal Gisele Coria, takes the second part of its title from a nickname for Florianopolis.

Hello, gorgeous: Accentuating her screen siren features with makeup, the Brazilian-born bombshell let her dark hair cascade freely in waves over her shoulders

Alessandra confirmed her romance with Richard when they were spotted on a romantic dinner date in February 2021.

She was previously involved with Italian fashion designer Nicolo Oddi who founded the brand Alanui with his sister Carlotta.

Meanwhile Alessandra shares her two children Anja, 13, and Noah, nine, with her ex-fiance Jamie Mazur who co-founded RE/DONE.
She has enjoyed every second with her baby girl Grace Warrior since she welcomed her into the world 11 months ago.

And on Friday, Bindi Irwin felt extra sentimental as she shared a sweet selfie alongside her little one on Instagram and paid tribute to her adorable bub.

'Beautiful Grace... Thank you for being my sunshine,' she wrote in the caption.

Mama's girl! Bindi Irwin felt extra sentimental on Friday, sharing a sweet selfie alongside her little girl Grace Warrior on Instagram as she paid tribute to her adorable bub

In the picture, the two appeared to be enjoying some time outdoors at the beach as they sat in the shade under a tent.

Bindi was sporting a huge smile while the cheeky tot is seen poking her tongue out.

Earlier this week. Bindi documented her daughter's adventures by filming the moment she met a new tortoise at Australia Zoo.

In the video, Grace appeared to be puzzled by the reptile while sitting on a rug in front of her.

Cute: Earlier this week. Bindi documented her daughter's adventures by filming the moment she met a new tortoise at Australia Zoo

Despite initially appearing a little hesitant, Grace soon petted its shell.

'I'm starting to think her favourite animals are tortoises,' Bindi wrote alongside the clip.

Grace is certainly gaining traction in the spotlight as she continuously appears on her mother and father's Instagram.

Friend of the animals: Despite initially appearing a little hesitant Grace soon proved her love for the slow-moving reptile who was on the rug with her

In February, she was seen on a trip to the ocean and Bindi shared a sweet reel on Instagram showcasing their seaside adventures.

In the footage, the tiny tot can be seen frolicking in the sea with her dad and walking along the sand beaming from ear to ear.

Also documented in the home video was Uncle Robert Irwin, 18, photographing Grace's day by the water.

Too cute! In February, Bindi shared sweet footage of her 'ray of sunshine' Grace Warrior enjoying a day at the beach with her beloved family

Grace also cheekily ripped his sunglasses off as the family posed for a photo with their surfboards.

Elsewhere in the reel, Bindi's brother and mum Terri joined in on the seaside fun, helping the baby collect shells while watching the surf.

'Beach day with this ray of sunshine,' Bindi captioned her clip.

Her wakeboarder husband Chandler, 25, also looked to be in his element, sporting board shorts and fitted rash shirt.

Bindi and Chandler announced their daughter's birth on March 26 last year, just one day after she was born on their first wedding anniversary.

The couple met in 2013, when the young American athlete went on a guided tour of Australia Zoo in Queensland.
Australia's long-running soap Neighbours was officially axed on Thursday, and now one of its popular stars has announced his plans to say goodbye in a very personal way.

Matt Wilson, who plays the hunky Aaron in the series, told his Instagram followers he will be sharing his special memories of the show until production concludes on 10 June.

'I love this place and will miss it dearly,' he said on Instagram.

Goodbye Neighbours! Star Matt Wilson has revealed his plans to say goodbye to the long-running soap in his own special way after Network 10 confirms show will be axed after 37 years

He promised to post a picture and a story to go with it once a week, drawn from his own album of photos.

'Sad to say Fremantle are officially resting the show after 37 solid years!,' Matt posted.

'Ive got a lot to say about my life changing experience on the show and the incredible crew and cast Ive been fortunate to work with.'

He said, 'if not for you, for me to look back and remember the 7 years I've had here. Time to celebrate Neighbours.'

Wilson, who plays the hunky Aaron in the series, told his Instagram followers he will be sharing his special memories of the show until production concludes on 10 June

He posted the message with a photo of himself in character with co-star Takaya Honda, who plays his husband on the show, David.

The actors featured in a landmark moment - the first same-sex marriage on Australian TV.

The Aaron and David characters tied the knot on the show in 2018, soon after gay marriage was legalised in Australia in 2017.

Magda Szubanski, an outspoken advocate for the gay, lesbian and transgender community, played the celebrant.

Meanwhile, Neighbours executive producer Jason Herbison has given fresh hope that the iconic Aussie soap could one day return to screens, emphasising that the soap is 'rested' rather than fully cancelled.

News of its abrupt departure from UK's Channel 5 sent the show into a tailspin, with network bosses in Australia scrambling to find a new international broadcasting deal to cover production costs or face the closure of Ramsay Street for good.

Network 10 and Fremantle, the show's producer, confirmed the news that Neighbours was cancelled on Thursday, and said the final episode will be filmed in June.

In a statement issued to MailOnline, they confirmed: 'It is with sadness that after nearly 37 years and almost 9000 episodes broadcast, we are confirming that Neighbours will cease production in the summer.

He posted the message with a photo of himself in character with co-star Takaya Honda, who plays his husband on the show, David. The actors featured in a landmark moment - the first same-sex marriage on Australian TV

'Following the loss of a key broadcast partner in the UK, and despite a search for alternative funding, we currently have no option but to rest the show.

'Everyone at Neighbours has been overwhelmed by the love and support from the audience since the news came out. The show has brought a sunny slice of Australia into the homes of millions of viewers around the world launching the careers of dozens of household names along the way.

'But as this chapter of Ramsay Street comes to a close, we promise to do everything we can to give the show the send-off it deserves.'

Network 10 addressed the end of the series in a statement to Australian media on Thursday, admitting it had been a 'difficult decision'.

'This difficult decision came after the search for an alternative UK broadcast partner proved unsuccessful.'

They added that the series would 'not air on 10 Peach beyond September 2022', marking the end of its decades-long run.

'A much-loved stalwart of our program schedule for over 35 years it has been a staple of Australian television drama, and Australian cultural exports,' they added.

'Ramsay Street, Erinsborough, is a cul-de-sac recognised all over the world and has been home to Scott and Charlene, Des and Daphne, Dr Karl and Susan, Dee and Toadie, Aaron and David and many, many more neighbours.

'Network 10 thanks the cast, crew, all the production team and Fremantle for bringing the perfect blend of soap and sunshine to audiences in Australia and around the world.'

They also praised 'the Australian fans and audiences for their continued support of the series'.

'Their encouragement particularly in the past few weeks has been incredible. It shows that our audience still want Australian scripted drama,' continued the statement.

'We have listened to them and there are exciting new local projects in the pipeline, which is great for our audience and for the local industry.

'We are confident that the cast, crew and writers will bring their distinctive warmth, style and humour to the Neighbours set as they embark on filming the final episodes over the coming months.'
HARRISBURG  The question of whether the state should divvy up $1.7 billion in unspent federal money among small businesses, many households and other pandemic-affected entities remains on the table in Harrisburg.

Its the core of Democratic Gov. Tom Wolfs proposal, unveiled in February, to spend most of the $2.2 billion in American Rescue Plan Act funds still held in the states General Fund. Discussion of it will happen amid regular budget discussions in the next few months.

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Contrary to opinions of Republicans who control the state House, Wolf believes the states finances are solid enough to push out $1.7 billion of that money in immediate relief.

And on Friday morning, a top Republican in the Senate  Allentown Sen. Pat Browne, chairman of the Appropriations Committee  said there was financial room for discussing the proposal.

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Browne said some of Wolfs ideas for ARPA money have appeal and merit and funding part of the proposal could be possible.

But, he said, We may not be able to accommodate all the things he is proposing. An attempt to carry out all of the proposal, Browne said, would mean the state would have no money for other things.

Wolf, who is in his last year as governor, on Thursday said the state was in a very good place financially after seven years of his leadership.

The state General Fund balance of $8.8 billion includes the approximately $2.2 billion of ARPA money. It must be spent by the end of 2024 or be returned to the federal government.

All of us on the Democratic side up in Harrisburg are open to good conversation as to where we want to spend the money, but it should be spent now, Wolf said during an appearance at a small business in Lancaster. We cant send it back to Washington and we cant just sit on it. We gotta do something.

House Republicans see things differently. The tone of their leaders response to Wolfs idea was set in early February.

The Wolf proposals were developed in a fiscal fantasy land where concern for future fiscal years apparently doesnt exist, a statement from House Speaker Bryan Cutler of Lancaster County, Majority Leader Kerry Benninghoff of Centre County and Appropriations Committee Chairman Stan Saylor of York County said.

On Friday, House Republicans spokesman Jason Gottesman said the sound financial picture portrayed by Wolf was a myth  being perpetuated by Democratic leaders  that we have this money to fulfill their talking points.

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The current budget surplus in Harrisburg is based on artificial growth produced by billions of dollars of federal aid that came to state government and individuals, according to Gottesman.

Both he and Browne said the new layer of global economic worries created by Russias invasion of Ukraine made Pennsylvania revenue projections for the next few years less reliable.

This is all the more reason we need to be prudent with the funds we have, Gottesman said.

$2,000 per household

Wolfs concept includes devoting $500 million to direct payments of up to $2,000 per household to workers, individuals and families with household incomes up to $80,000.

The PA opportunity program would let those households apply for direct payments, and the money could be used for child care or various other expenses. Those would include paying for opportunities to complete a degree, credential or license, according to Wolf.

Senior citizens would be eligible.

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Another $225 million would be run through a small-business grant program, and other segments would be earmarked for health care, agriculture and conservation, and property tax relief.

Wolf on Thursday focused on those grants. He wants to use the same program that pushed out $192 million in federal money to about 10,000 businesses early in the pandemic.

His proposal, he said, was for another $225 million injection into that program so that the businesses that did not get funding in that first round have a second chance, as well as businesses that continue to struggle with the aftermath of the pandemic, so they have the support they need to get back on their feet.

The other components of the Wolf proposal include $204 million for the existing Property Tax Rent Rebate program, for a one-time bonus rebate to program users.

It would double existing rebates. Wolf said it would give an estimated 466,000 Pennsylvanians an additional $475.

Another $325 million would go toward health care, and $450 million would be devoted to another round of Growing Greener conservation and recreation initiatives, as well as for agriculture conservation programs.

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Clashing opinions

The feelings of two Lehigh Valley region rank-and-file lawmakers illustrate Harrisburgs mixed thinking on using the federal money.

There is no reason not to spend those dollars, Democratic Rep. Peter Schweyer of Allentown said.

In his own district, he said, average household income is $34,000, many residents lack a full education and there are a disproportionately large number of young people.

Last Call Daily Get top headlines from The Morning Call delivered weekday afternoons. >

All would benefit from more federal aid, he said.

And small businesses, he said, remain in an adjustment period coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Republican Rep. Doyle Heffley of Carbon County said it seems that Wolf wants to spend all the money the state has on hand before he leaves office.

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If you take these dollars in a one-time way and give it out, its gone, Heffley said.

His preference, he said, would be to sow the money into capital projects and thus give it lasting impact.

There are still buildings standing in Carbon County from the Great Depression, that get public use, he said.

Morning Call Capitol correspondent Ford Turner can be reached at fturner@mcall.com
Following news that Neighbours will be ceasing production in June, the show's stony-faced cast and crew returned to set on Friday.

Many appeared sombre as they arrived at Nunawading Studios in Melbourne following the official announcement.

Longtime star Stefan Dennis was seen carrying a piece of furniture and appeared deep in thought as he walked.

End of an era: Following news that Neighbours would be ceasing production in June, the show's stony-faced cast and crew returned to set on Friday. Pictured: Stefan Dennis

The 63-year-old actor kept his head down and looked solemn as he made his way through the studio, which is home to the long-running soap.

Jemma Donovan appeared a tad stressed as she made her way across the lot while dressed in a peach toned shirt and shorts.

The 21-year-old daughter of Neighbours alum Jason Donovan wore a tense expression.

Taking stock: Longtime star Stefan was seen carrying a piece of furniture and appeared deep in thought as he walked

Beloved: Stefan plays Paul Robinson on the soap and is a fan favourite

On his way: He crossed the lot with the chair under his arm

Concerns: Jemma Donovan appeared a tad stressed as she made her way across the lot

Casual: She was dressed down in a peach toned shirt and shorts

She appeared to be talking to a crew member beside her as she stood holding her phone.

Others chatted to colleagues and spoke on their phones as the series begins to wind down after 37 years on the air.

The mood on set appeared glum as the once hopeful cast and crew undoubtedly come to grips with the devastating news.

Tense: The 21-year-old daughter of Neighbours alum Jason Donovan wore a tense expression

Calling in: She glanced at her phone while appearing downcast

Relaxed look: The actress added a pair of simple slides to the informal look

Uncertain times: Many appeared sombre as they arrived at Nunawading Studios in Melbourne following the official announcement

It has also left die-hard fans of the long-running show - which commanded as many as 16 to 20 million viewers a day at its peak - completely distraught.

More than 60,000 viewers of the Melbourne-based series signed a petition to keep it on British TV, but to no avail.

The series announced that production would be ceasing on the long-running soap in a tweet on Thursday.

Over: The series announced that production would be ceasing on the long-running soap in a tweet on Thursday

Out of luck: More than 60,000 viewers of the Melbourne-based series signed a petition to keep it on British TV, but to no avail

'We are so sorry to say that after nearly 37 years and almost 9,000 episodes broadcast we have to confirm that Neighbours will cease production in June,' they wrote

'We are so sorry to say that after nearly 37 years and almost 9,000 episodes broadcast we have to confirm that Neighbours will cease production in June,' they wrote.

'Following the loss of our key broadcast partner in the UK and despite an extensive search for alternative funding, we simply have no option but to rest the show.

'To our amazing, loyal fans, we know this is a huge disappointment, as it is to all of us on the team. We thank you for all your messages and support and promise to end the show on an incredible high. From here on, we are celebrating Neighbours.'

'Following the loss of our key broadcast partner in the UK and despite an extensive search for alternative funding, we simply have no option but to rest the show,' they announced

'To our amazing, loyal fans, we know this is a huge disappointment, as it is to all of us on the team,' they wrote

Network 10 addressed the end of the series in a statement to Australian media on Thursday, admitting it had been a 'difficult decision'.

'Today, Fremantle confirmed that Neighbours will cease production in June, after nearly 37 years and almost 9,000 episodes,' a network spokesperson announced.

'This difficult decision came after the search for an alternative UK broadcast partner proved unsuccessful.'

'We thank you for all your messages and support and promise to end the show on an incredible high. From here on, we are celebrating Neighbours,' they wrote

'Everyone at Neighbours has been overwhelmed by the love and support from the audience since the news came out,' said Fremantle

Shell-shocked: Cast and crew appeared to have the weight of the world on their shoulders

They added that the series would 'not air on 10 Peach beyond September 2022', marking the end of its decades-long run.

'A much-loved stalwart of our program schedule for over 35 years it has been a staple of Australian television drama, and Australian cultural exports,' they added.

'Ramsay Street, Erinsborough, is a cul-de-sac recognised all over the world and has been home to Scott and Charlene, Des and Daphne, Dr Karl and Susan, Dee and Toadie, Aaron and David and many, many more neighbours.

'This difficult decision came after the search for an alternative UK broadcast partner proved unsuccessful,' Network 10 said in a statement

End of the road: They added that the series would 'not air on 10 Peach beyond September 2022', marking the end of its decades-long run

'Network 10 thanks the cast, crew, all the production team and Fremantle for bringing the perfect blend of soap and sunshine to audiences in Australia and around the world.'

They also praised 'the Australian fans and audiences for their continued support of the series'.

'Their encouragement particularly in the past few weeks has been incredible. It shows that our audience still want Australian scripted drama,' continued the statement.

'A much-loved stalwart of our program schedule for over 35 years it has been a staple of Australian television drama, and Australian cultural exports,' they added

'Ramsay Street, Erinsborough, is a cul-de-sac recognised all over the world and has been home to Scott and Charlene, Des and Daphne, Dr Karl and Susan, Dee and Toadie, Aaron and David and many, many more neighbours,' Network 10 announced

'We have listened to them and there are exciting new local projects in the pipeline, which is great for our audience and for the local industry.

'We are confident that the cast, crew and writers will bring their distinctive warmth, style and humour to the Neighbours set as they embark on filming the final episodes over the coming months.'

Meanwhile, Fremantle - the production company behind the soap - said they had been unable to come up with 'alternative funding' for the series.

Unwavering: They also praised 'the Australian fans and audiences for their continued support of the series'

Silver linings: 'We have listened to them and there are exciting new local projects in the pipeline, which is great for our audience and for the local industry,' said Network 10

'It is with sadness that after nearly 37 years and almost 9,000 episodes broadcast, we are confirming that Neighbours will cease production in June,' they began in a statement on Thursday.

'Following the loss of a key broadcast partner in the UK, and despite a search for alternative funding, we currently have no option but to rest the show.

'Everyone at Neighbours has been overwhelmed by the love and support from the audience since the news came out.

'We are confident that the cast, crew and writers will bring their distinctive warmth, style and humour to the Neighbours set as they embark on filming the final episodes over the coming months,' said Network 10

Money problems: Fremantle - the production company behind the soap - said they had been unable to come up with 'alternative funding' for the series

'The show has brought a sunny slice of Australia into the homes of millions of viewers around the world launching the careers of dozens of household names along way.

'But as this chapter of Ramsay Street comes to a close, we promise to do everything we can to give the show the send-off it deserves.'

In a post on Instagram on Thursday, one of the show's longest serving cast members, Alan Fletcher, paid tribute to the series.

'Following the loss of a key broadcast partner in the UK, and despite a search for alternative funding, we currently have no option but to rest the show,' said Fremantle

'As this chapter of Ramsay Street comes to a close, we promise to do everything we can to give the show the send-off it deserves,' said Fremantle

A gracious Alan, 64, called it 'a sad day indeed' after it was announced production on the series would cease.

'It's official, all attempts to #SaveNeighbours have been unsuccessful and #fremantle has confirmed the show will end production in June this year,' he began.

'This is a sad day indeed. I want to express my deepest gratitude to the millions of fans all around the world who have supported our iconic drama for 37 wonderful years.

Looking back: In a post on Instagram on Thursday, one of the show's longest serving cast members, Alan Fletcher, paid tribute to the series

'And huge thanks to our broadcast partners @channel10au and @channel5_tv who have been incredible supporters of the show for so long.'

He added: 'Please stick with the show right to the end because the final episodes will be an incredible celebration with returning characters and extraordinary story lines.'

Speaking about his own experience on the show, Alan - who plays Dr Karl - said it had 'been my creative home for almost 28 years'.

'It's official, all attempts to #SaveNeighbours have been unsuccessful and #fremantle has confirmed the show will end production in June this year,' wrote actor Alan Fletcher

'This is a sad day indeed. I want to express my deepest gratitude to the millions of fans all around the world who have supported our iconic drama for 37 wonderful years,' Alan said

'It has provided me with enormous artistic satisfaction and deep, everlasting friendships that I will treasure forever,' he continued.

'Most especially my artistic partnership with the spectacular #jackiewoodburne who has truly made the journey the greatest joy imaginable.

'The show has also connected me to thousands of people who have supported my work on and offscreen through my music and stage appearances.'

'Huge thanks to our broadcast partners @channel10au and @channel5_tv who have been incredible supporters of the show for so long,' Alan added

'Please stick with the show right to the end because the final episodes will be an incredible celebration with returning characters and extraordinary story lines,' Alan went on

He added: 'I am filled with #gratitude #staytuned #celebrateneighbours #farewellneighbours #pleasestickwithus'.

His post attracted an outpouring of emotion from several cast members - both past and present - who left comments.

'Beautiful words mate. Sending lots of love,' wrote Rob Mills, while Charlotte Chimes commented with a broken heart emoji.

'It has provided me with enormous artistic satisfaction and deep, everlasting friendships that I will treasure forever,' Alan continued

'Most especially my artistic partnership with the spectacular #jackiewoodburne who has truly made the journey the greatest joy imaginable,' Alan went on

Rebekah Elmaloglou left a series of red love hearts, while former cast member Daniel MacPherson wrote: 'I'll never forget my time with the Kennedy's mate'.

Added Takaya Honda: 'Thank you for your endless kindness, leadership, and generosity Fletch'.

In a post on her own Instagram Stories, Charlotte, 28, wrote: 'So grateful to have been a small part of this amazing production'.

Weighing in: Alan's post attracted an outpouring of emotion from several cast members - both past and present - who left comments

Meanwhile, Takaya, 34, wrote a message to the show's fans: 'We will be #CelebratingNeighbours not for us, but for you. It's always been for you'.

Commenting on a post on the Neighbours Instagram page, Rob, 39, added: 'Thanks for the memories. And thank you for teaching me so much.'

Former Neighbours actress Madeleine West appeared lost for words, also leaving a comment on the Neighbours Instagram page: 'Nothing more I can say'.

'Beautiful words mate. Sending lots of love,' wrote Rob Mills, while Charlotte Chimes commented with a broken heart emoji

Mentor: Added Takaya Honda, 'Thank you for your endless kindness, leadership, and generosity Fletch'

Added fellow actress Jane Hall: 'So sorry I adored my time as Rebecca for many years'.

Reports emerged last month that Neighbours' future was in jeopardy after British broadcaster Channel 5 announced it would no longer air the show.

According to a report by TV Tonight at the time, production was brought to a halt on the long-running soap and cast were called into a meeting.

Up in the air: Reports emerged last month that Neighbours' future was in jeopardy after British broadcaster Channel 5 announced it would no longer air the show

'As outlined in the email to Neighbours cast and crew, it is our intention to continue our association with Neighbours if another broadcast partner comes forward,' a spokesperson for Network 10 told TV Tonight

'As outlined in the email to Neighbours cast and crew, it is our intention to continue our association with Neighbours if another broadcast partner comes forward,' a spokesperson for Network 10 told TV Tonight.

'Network 10 has an ongoing commitment to the show, the cast and crew and is hopeful that Fremantle will find a new production partner. We will provide further updates as they become available.'

In a statement to Digital Spy last month, a spokesperson for Channel 5 said the network was focused on 'increasing our investment in original UK drama'.

Changing direction: In a statement to Digital Spy last month, a spokesperson for Channel 5 said the network was focused on 'increasing our investment in original UK drama'

Meanwhile, Fremantle executive producer Jason Herbison said the show would be 'rested', according to a report by The Sydney Morning Herald.

'Our audience remains steady and Channel 10 would love the show to continue if we could find another broadcast partner to replace Channel 5,' Herbison said in an email to staff last month.

'These discussions are ongoing, however, there is no new broadcaster at the moment and production must end, effectively resting the show.'
She got her start as a Bond girl all the way back in 1970's Live and Let Die.

But despite being a iconic actress, whose acting career expands 47 years, Jane Seymour brings more than her acting credentials to set.

Speaking exclusively to Daily Mail Australia, Ruby's Choice director Michael Budd has revealed what it's really like working with British-American actress.

He's a fan! Australian director Michael Budd, 47, (right) has revealed what it's really like working with British-American Jane Seymour, 71, on Ruby's Choice

'Jane's passion for Ruby's Choice contributed to bringing character to life, and she brought a lot of her wardrobe and design ideas,' Budd, 47, said.

'I worked closely with Jane incorporating some of her excellent skills as a dancer and a painter, which we brought into (her character) Ruby's story lines.

The Australian director added Jane brought in her own grey wig for the film which was perfect for her character.

'Jane's passion for the project contributed to bringing character to life, and she brought a lot of her wardrobe and design ideas,' Budd, 47, told Daily Mail Australia. Pictured together on set

'I worked closely with Jane incorporating some of her excellent skills as a dancer and a painter, which we brought into (her character) Ruby's story lines

Jane plays the titular character in Ruby's Choice, which is about a loving grandmother who is suffering from dementia.

Shot during the Covid lockdowns of 2020, Ruby's Choice is a poignant tale that follows three generations of strong Australian women.

Ruby (Seymour), a sweet, creative elderly lady who lives along, has undiagnosed dementia.

Passionate: The Australian director added Jane brought in her own grey wig for the film which was perfect for her character. Pictured in the film

Big night: Michael pictured arriving at the film's Australian premiere on February 22

After accidentally burning her house down she is forced to move into her daughter Sharon's (Jacqueline McKenzie) crowded home and share her granddaughter Tash's (Coco Jack Gillies) bedroom.

Family dynamics are shifted as family secrets are unravelled, and Ruby soon has a surprising advocate when the time comes to move her into a nursing home.

Unable to access services required to keep Ruby safe, Sharon is faced with the ultimate dilemma to go against her mothers wishes or do what she thinks is best for Ruby.

Ruby's Choice is in Australian cinemas now.
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She takes on the role of the ultimate femme fatale, Catwoman in The Batman.

And Zoe Kravitz looked the part as she posed for a sizzling Wonderland magazine shoot alongside her co-star Robert Pattinson.

The actress, 33, looked sensational as she stripped off for a sizzling bedroom shoot that saw her get up close and personal with Robert, 35.

Sultry: New Catwoman Zoe Kravitz looked the part as she posed for a sizzling Wonderland magazine shoot alongside her co-star Robert Pattinson

Wrapped in just a sheet, Zoe oozed sex appeal in the snaps while caressing her co-star's face.

Despite being the picture of confidence in the images, Zoe told the magazine that she wasn't always so sure of herself, and felt like an 'outsider' growing up.

Zoe - who is the daughter of Lenny Kravitz and Lisa Bonet - told the publication: 'Growing up with parents that people recognised and living in predominantly white neighbourhoods, and people wanting to touch your hair, and come over and gawk at what your parents are wearing or doing, I never felt like I fitted in at school.'

Wow: Wrapped in just a sheet, Zoe oozed sex appeal in the snaps as she pouted down the lens

Yet she insisted that the experience made her stronger, noting: 'I think the people who don't fit in usually are ahead, in a way, because we're not clinging on to what we think we're supposed to be like, and what's in trend right now.

'I think those of us who were willing to really go on that journey, even if it was uncomfortable, came out the other side in a very clear place, knowing who we are.'

Rather than being an origin story, The Batman, directed by Matt Reeves, sees Batman pursue The Riddler in his second year of crime fighting, uncovering corruption that is connected to his own family in the investigation, forcing him to make new allies to bring the supervillain to justice.

Two of a kind: The pair star in The Batman, with Robert taking on the titular role while Zoe is playing Catwoman

Steamy: The actress, 33, looked sensational as she stripped off for a sizzling bedroom shoot that saw her get up close and personal with Robert, 35

Stunning: Zoe looked sensational as she modelled a bra top and pencil skirt while Robert donned a leather trench coat

Sitting pretty: Zoe wowed in fishnet tights as she draped herself over Robert

Cover stars: Zoe and Robert proved that they could always rely on a career in modelling if they turn their backs on acting

An all-star cast features Robert as Batman and Zoe as Selina Kyle, or Catwoman.

Also appearing is Paul Dano as Edward Nashton / Riddler, Jeffrey Wright as James Gordon, John Turturro as Gotham City crimelord Carmine Falcone, Andy Serkis as Alfred Pennyworth and Colin Farrell as Penguin.

Many early viewers have criticized the highly-anticipated film for its nearly three-hour runtime, as well as its characters' 'bland' performances.

Sweet: Elsewhere in the interview, Zoe - who is the daughter of Lisa Bonet and Lenny Kravitz - spoke about her upbringing (pictured in 2016)

One to watch: Rather than being an origin story, The Batman, directed by Matt Reeves, sees Batman pursue The Riddler in his second year of crime fighting

In contrast, a number of critics have come forward to label The Batman as an overall 'good film' despite its flaws - with several citing its impressive car chases and fight scenes.

The Batman is released in the UK and the States on Friday, March 4.

Though it's on track premiere globally this week, Warner Bros revealed on Monday that it had cancelled the film's Russian release as the deadly conflict in Ukraine rages on. It was originally slated for March 2.
Amanda Seyfried cut a casual figure in a long white coat with black buttons while exiting the Good Morning America studios in Manhattan on Thursday.

After promoting her series The Dropout, about the rise and fall of Elizabeth Holmes, on ABC's daytime talk show, the actress, 36, slipped out of a plaid suit into a pair of light-wash jeans and navy sneakers with white stripes.

While wearing a light pink face amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, she toted a large black quilted tote bag.

Out and about: Amanda Seyfried cut a casual figure in a long white coat with black buttons while exiting the Good Morning America studios in Manhattan on Thursday

The mother-of-two has been busying promoting her drama, which hit Hulu in the US and Disney+ in the UK on March 3.

Development began in 2019, when it was announced that a show would focus on the disgraced Theranos founder.

At the time of the announcement, Kate McKinnon was set to portray Elizabeth and serve as one of the project's executive producers.

Outfit change: After promoting her series The Dropout, about the rise and fall of Elizabeth Holmes, on ABC's daytime talk show, the actress, 36, slipped out of a plaid suit into a pair of light-wash jeans and navy sneakers with white stripes

However, the Saturday Night Live cast member later dropped out of the production for unspecified reasons last February.

It was announced that Amanda had stepped in to fill the show's lead role the following month, and Naveen Andrews was brought in to play Sunny Balwani not long after.

In addition to starring in the series, the Oscar nominee served as one of its executive producers.

Out and about: She was also seen in a fashionable pink checked suit

Friendly to fans: She waved to a few admirers

Making the rounds: She appeared on Good Morning America for an interview

Good spirit: She enjoyed a laugh

Several other cast members, including Stephen Fry, William H. Macy and Laurie Metcalf, signed on to appear in the project in the following months.

The Mamma Mia star recently spoke about initially turning the project down during an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, where she recalled that she was unenthusiastic about the show at first.

'I promised I wasn't going to give myself a hard time and try to completely mimic this other human being. It'd be impossible. And just not fun,' she said.

The performer later changed her mind and spoke about Elizabeth's desire to live privately in the midst of her highly publicized trial.

Exciting: The mother-of-two has been busying promoting her new miniseries The Dropout, which hit Hulu in the US and Disney+ in the UK on March 3 (pictured in-character)

Shock: The Mamma Mia star spoke about initially turning the project down, where she recalled that she was unenthusiastic about the show at first (pictured in-character)

'It's crazy that she can still be such an enigma with all the information surrounding her,' she stated.

Amanda also pointed out that, in addition to telling Elizabeth's story, The Dropout would feature deeper themes about popular culture as a whole.

'We're investigating why we love a fall from grace, why we want to watch train wrecks,' she said.

The actress went on to express that, although Elizabeth's actions were not morally sound, she believed that the case surrounding Theranos had more unstated context than many would anticipate.

'She made bad choices, and she's got to be held accountable. But it's nuanced, like everything and everybody,' she said.
Sara Sampaio put on a very leggy display as she head to the opening of Revolve Social club in West Hollywood on Thursday.

The 30-year-old supermodel flaunted her incredible figure in a bright orange halter neck mini dress.

The Portuguese beauty elevated her height in an eye-catching pair of silver heels as she stepped out of the car and into the event.

Incredible: Sara Sampaio put on a very leggy display in a fluorescent orange min dress as she head to the opening of Revolve Social club in West Hollywood on Thursday

The former Victoria's Secret Angel accessorised with a transparent rectangle clutch bag and some dainty silver jewellery to match her shoes.

The brunette beauty wore her long locks slicked back in a bun and opted for a bright red lip to make her look pop.

Sara posed up a storm as she stepped out onto the sidewalk and entered the exclusive event,

Stunning: The Portuguese supermodel wowed as she stepped out of the car in an eye-catching pair of silver heels

Glowing: The brunette beauty beamed as she wore her long locks slicked back in a bun and opted for a bright red lip to make her look pop

The Revolve Social Club is only open for a limited time and will feature pop-ups from designer brands, private events, and Instagrammable content.

It has hosted many famous guests including Kim Kardashian, Jessica Alba and Paris Hilton and is opening its doors to the public for the first time.

Guests will be invited to shop styles from the fashion retailer, hang out in lavish lounge areas, and experience panel discussions and master beauty classes from special guests.

The club will be open from March 4 until Aril 24 and will operate everyday 11am until 7pm.

Fierce! Kim Kardashian channeled a sexy biker babe in a black leather Balenciaga jacket, matching pants and a pair of motorcycle gloves while attending the opening of Revolve Social Club

Inside: The Revolve Social Club is only open for a limited time and will feature pop-ups from designer brands, private events, and Instagrammable content

The Lions-backed talent recently enjoyed a quick getaway to Las Vegas where she celebrated her fellow model friend Jasmine Tookes' 30th birthday in style.

Sara went for a fun look with a long-sleeved white mini dress.

The dark-haired beauty was scorching as she showed off her long stems and pulled her locks up into a cute topknot bun.

The full look was elevated by a pop of color provided by a swipe of red lipstick.

Quick trip: The Lions-backed talent recently enjoyed a quick getaway to Las Vegas where she celebrated her fellow model friend Jasmine Tookes' 30th birthday in style

Sara turned to Instagram to share a slideshow of snapshots and videos from the quick getaway.

She wrote in the caption of the carousel, 'One night is Jas Vegas!' and added a dice emoji.

The top model gave her 7.9 million admirers on Instagram a closeup look of her white hot outfit and red hot lip.

Her statement-making pout even ended up on the birthday girl's bum, which she shared in one picture.
Love Island's Georgia Harrison was forced to deny she's pregnant on Thursday after a prank gone wrong.

In a now deleted caption to a joint Instagram post, Georgia and her pal Joshua Ritchie, both 27, seemingly announced they were expecting.

The pair posted an image of themselves at the launch of Georgia's lifestyle brand at Indigo Hotel Roof Bar, in which Georgia was holding her stomach.

Joke gone wrong: Georgia Harrison and Joshua Ritchie were forced to deny they were expecting a baby together after posting a prank to Instagram on Thursday

In the post, Georgia wore a green maxi dress as she cradled her stomach.

The caption read: 'Cant believe we have managed keep it a secret for this long at least the cat is out the bag. To new beginnings'

'Obviously we're hoping it has my brains, both our sense of humours and 80 percent my looks after editing.'

Adding fuel to the fire, Georgia then posted to her story, asking comedic personality Paige Ginn if she would 'f**t reveal' the gender of their baby.

Instagram blunder: The Love Islander shared the post to her 1.1m followers, gathering a slightly different reaction than she had hoped

One step further: Adding fuel to the fire, Georgia then posted to her story, asking comedic personality Paige Ginn if she would 'fart reveal' the gender of their baby

Backtracking: Georgia quickly started to assure fans that she was not pregnant, in a series of Instagram stories

As messages from fans began to flood in, of both congratulations and disbelief, the two former Love Islanders then backtracked - quickly removing the image caption and turning off the comment feature of the post.

Georgia then took to her story to set the record straight, writing: 'i'm obs not pregnant we was just lolling cause i held my belly for some reason in half the pics' (sic)

She also gave fans a glimpse at Whatsapp messages she had sent to Joshua, in which she wrote: 'why am I holding my belly like this like it's my baby shower.'

Denial: Alongside confirming it in her stories, Georgia also removed all comments and the caption from the joint Instagram post

Confirming: She then gave fans a glimpse at Whatsapp messages she had sent to Joshua

Georgia seemed to have quickly grown tired of the joke, posting a final clarification to her story which said: 'Just to confirm I never said I was pregnant..xx'

Later, Georgia posted a picture of a half-filled champagne flute to her story - providing another subtle confirmation.

Joshua stayed quiet on the topic, not posting anything else after the initial joint post.
Sofia Richie exuded elegance as she attended the Revolve Social Club VIP Opening on Thursday.

The 23-year-old Elle model looked effortlessly stylish in a pale yellow jacket, which she wore over a simple white T-shirt.

She teamed the outfit with a pair of casual blue denim jeans, and added a touch of glamour with a pair of pointed white heels.

Wow: Sofia Richie exuded elegance as she attended the Revolve Social Club VIP Opening on Thursday in a pale yellow jacket

She added several pieces of gold jewellery to bring some sparkle to her ensemble, wearing hoop earrings, several bangles and a thick gold chain.

Toting her essentials in a small grey handbag, the sister of Nicole Richie wore her honey coloured tresses down and in loose waves.

Sofia opted for minimal makeup, allowing her youthful good looks and natural beauty to shine through.

Trendy: The 23-year-old Elle model looked effortlessly stylish in a pale yellow jacket, which she wore over a simple white t-shirt

Fancy footwear: She teamed the outfit with a pair of casual blue denim jeans, and added a touch of glamour with a pair of pointed white heels

Accessories queen: She added several pieces of gold jewellery to bring some sparkle to her ensemble, wearing hoop earrings, several bangles and a thick gold chain

Absent from the evening was Sofia's current boyfriend Elliot Grainge, despite the fact that their relationship is said to be 'very serious' to the point where they're already living together and have talked about the future.

'They have talked about getting engaged and it's something that Sofia wants and is looking forward to,' an insider divulged to E! News in November 2021.

'They are a great match and it's going really well. Sofia and Elliot currently live together and the adjustment has been so easy and seamless.'

It was added that the ex of Scott Disick loves that her relationship with the more age appropriate music executive is free of 'drama.'

Flawless: Toting her essentials in a small grey handbag, the sister of Nicole Richie wore her honey coloured tresses down and in loose waves

Stunning: Sofia opted for minimal makeup, allowing her youthful good looks and natural beauty to shine through

Missing in action: Absent from the evening was Sofia's current boyfriend Elliot Grainge

Getting serious: Their relationship is said to be 'very serious' to the point where they're already living together and have talked about the future

Making things public: The pair first aired their romance to the world in the spring 2021 but had known each other for years as family friends

'They have truly formed a solid bond recently and Sofia loves that they don't have any drama,' the source shared, noting that she 'loves how chill and calm' he is.

The pair first aired their romance to the world in the spring 2021 but had known each other for years as family friends.

Elliot's dad, Lucian Grainge (the CEO of Universal Music Group), and Sofia's dad, Lionel, had forged a bond over the years, making the pair's relationship a 'natural progression' per a source.

On Elliot's birthday (November 6) she gushed: 'You are everything to me. I love you, happy birthday babe.'
Sir Ian McKellen has rejected calls for only gay actors to play gay roles.

The formidable performer, who is himself gay, questioned whether it would mean he should be denied straight roles and the ability to 'explore the fascinating subject of heterosexuality' on stage and screen.

He also backed gender-neutral awards as he sat down for an hour-long interview with Amol Rajan as part of the presenter's new BBC2 series.

Having his say: Sir Ian McKellen has rejected calls for only gay actors to play gay roles

Of the recent criticism over the casting of Dame Helen Mirren as Israel's first female leader, Golda Meir, Sir Ian, 82, said: 'There are two things - is the argument that a gentile cannot play a Jew, and is the argument therefore that a Jew cannot play a gentile?

'Is the argument that a straight man cannot play a gay part, and if so, does that mean I can't play straight parts and I'm not allowed to explore the fascinating subject of heterosexuality in Macbeth? Surely not. We're acting. We're pretending.'

He continued: 'Now, are we capable of understanding what it is to be Jewish? Are we going to convince a Jewish audience that we're Jewish? Perhaps we don't need to because we are just acting.'

Opinion: The formidable performer, who is himself gay, questioned whether it would mean he should be denied straight roles and the ability to 'explore the fascinating subject of heterosexuality' on stage and screen

In January a 'Jewface' row erupted after Dame Maureen Lipman led a backlash against the casting of Dame Helen. Dame Maureen said she wished Jewish actresses had been considered.

And last year Russell T Davies said straight actors should not play gay characters.

'You wouldn't cast someone able-bodied and put them in a wheelchair, you wouldn't black someone up,' he told Radio Times around the release of his acclaimed Channel 4 drama It's A Sin, which explored the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s.

Conversation: He also backed gender-neutral awards as he sat down for an hour-long interview with Amol Rajan as part of the presenter's new BBC2 series (both pictured)

Argument: Of the recent criticism over the casting of Dame Helen Mirren (pictured) as Israel's first female leader, Golda Meir, Sir Ian, 82, said: 'There are two things - is the argument that a gentile cannot play a Jew, and is the argument therefore that a Jew cannot play a gentile?'

Sir Ian, famous for playing Gandalf in Lord of the Rings and Magneto in X Men, also waded into the debate over genderless categories at awards ceremonies, insisting he 'absolutely' welcomes the change.

'I think it's stupid to try and compare one performance with another, that's what I think about awards,' he said on Thursday's show.

'It's not a level playing field is it. They're not all on the same track running towards the tape. You're playing different parts. It is ridiculous to try and compare.

'We're acting': 'Is the argument that a straight man cannot play a gay part, and if so, does that mean I can't play straight parts and I'm not allowed to explore the fascinating subject of heterosexuality in Macbeth? Surely not'

'But, if you're going to have the process then of course, non-gender, absolutely.'

Sir Ian was nominated for best actor at the 1999 Academy Awards for his role in Gods and Monsters and was twice nominated for the accolade at the BAFTAs, for Richard III and The Fellowship of the Ring, which earned him a SAG award in 2002. He is also decorated with a Golden Globe, a Tony Award and multiple Olivier Awards.

He rejected the suggestion that institutional prejudice was the reason no gay actors have ever won best actor at the Oscars, claiming it is simply because 'there aren't very many of them, I mean openly gay'.

Verdict: Ian also waded into the debate over genderless categories at awards ceremonies, insisting he 'absolutely' welcomes the change
His latest movie, Death On The Nile, has just hit cinemas.

But Sir Kenneth Branagh was still riding high on the success of Belfast as he cosied up to his wife Lindsay Brunnock at the 37th Annual Santa Barbara International Film Festival on Thursday night.

The British actor and filmmaker, 61, looked sharp as he headed to watch the Outstanding Directors of the Year Award at Arlington Theatre.

Couple goals: Sir Kenneth Branagh cosied up to his wife Lindsay Brunnock at the 37th Annual Santa Barbara International Film Festival on Thursday night

Kenneth cut a dapper figure in a blue two-piece suit which he buttoned up and teamed with a crisp white shirt.

The Henry V star completed his smart ensemble with a polka dot tie and matching pocket square as he rocked a pair of brown suede shoes.

Meanwhile, his film art director wife, 52, looked effortlessly chic in a black dress with lace features.

All smiles: The British actor and filmmaker, 61, looked sharp attending the Outstanding Directors of the Year Award at Arlington Theatre in Santa Barbara, California

Sharp: Kenneth cut a dapper figure in a blue two-piece suit which he buttoned up and teamed with a crisp white shirt

Kenneth only had eyes for his pretty wife and dutifully held her hand in front of the cameras.

Lindsay is Kenneth's second wife who he keeps a fiercely private relationship with after the break down of six-year marriage to Emma Thompson in 1996.

Kenneth and his wife Lindsay married secretly in 2003 after two years together and still look utterly besotted.

Dapper: The Henry V star completed his smart ensemble with a polka dot tie and matching pocket square as he rocked a pair of brown suede shoes

Stunning: Meanwhile, his film art director wife, 52, looked effortlessly chic in a black dress with lace features

Work colleagues: Kenneth posed with fellow director Paul Thomas Anderson (Licorice Pizza) and SBIFF Executive Director Roger Durling

Work colleagues: Kenneth also posed with Roger Durling who is known for his work on The Inn Crowd (2012), BNow! (2015) and Dinner: Impossible (2007)

Love: He only had eyes for his pretty wife and dutifully held her hand in front of the cameras

Married: Lindsay is Kenneth's second wife who he keeps a fiercely private relationship with after the break down of six-year marriage to Emma Thompson in 1996

It comes after Kenneth's semi-autobiographical film Belfast bagged eight Oscar nominations, including Director for Kenneth, Supporting Actress for Judi Dench and Supporting Actor for Ciaran Hinds.

Speaking after the nominations came out, Sir Kenneth thanked Academy voters for their 'generous recognition'.

He said: 'Its a long way from the streets of Belfast to the Academy Awards. Today, I think of my mother and father, and my grandparents - how proud they were to be Irish, how much this city meant to them. They would have been overwhelmed by this incredible honour - as am I.'

The movie, which was inspired by his early childhood growing up in Northern Ireland during the Troubles, also landed a spot in the coveted Best Picture list as it continued to dominate awards season.
They married in 2011 and are now parents to five children.

And David Tennant's wife Georgia has revealed that she wooed him by watching him on stage in Hamlet 27 times, when they first started dating back in 2008.

The actress, 37, has explained that she 'put the work in' by driving to Stratford twice a week to see the Doctor Who star, 50, perform in the Shakespeare classic at the Courtyard Theatre from July to November 2008.

Anniversary: David Tennant's wife Georgia, 37, has revealed that she wooed him by watching him in Hamlet 27 times, when they first started dating back in 2008 (Pictured in 2020)

Georgia told The Mirror: 'I'd just learnt to drive, and the only place I knew how to drive to was to drive to Stratford.

'So I would do it twice a week. I couldn't really drive anywhere else. I just knew that road. Then I would be forced to go and watch Shakespeare plays.

'Hamlet on repeat is a bit much. I put the work in, it was like 27 times I saw it. I really liked him.'

The actress confessed that she would sometimes skip watching the play and instead go on ghost walks through Stratford, and visit the town's historic buildings.

'I put in the work!' The actress explained she 'put the work in' by driving to Stratford twice a week to see the star perform at the Courtyard Theatre from July to November 2008

The couple met in 2008, when Georgia starred in the BBC hit series Doctor Who, as she took on the role of David's character's genetically engineered daughter Jenny, and they married three years later.

David adopted Georgia's son, Ty, 19, from a previous relationship, and they went onto have three daughters, Olive, 10, Doris, six, and Birdie, 23 months, and a son, Wilfred, eight.

In December, the couple celebrated their tenth wedding anniversary by sharing a rare glimpse into their nuptials with an unseen snap.

History: The couple met in 2008, when Georgia starred in the BBC hit series Doctor Who, as she took on the role of David's character's genetically engineered daughter

The actress took to Instagram to share the sweet photo of the newlyweds and their son, Ty Tennant, now aged 19 at the altar after exchanging their vows.

Alongside the adorable photo Georgia penned: 'The happiest day followed by the happiest life. Thanks DT.'

She added the hashtag, 'tenwithten' a cheeky reference to David's role as the tenth incarnation of the titular Time Lord in Doctor Who.
How China secures pension payment through reform, state asset supplement

Xinhua) 09:54, March 04, 2022

BEIJING, March 3 (Xinhua) -- The Chinese government has been coordinating efforts to put into place a national pension program to tackle the strains from an aging population and regional imbalance.

The tactics came out of a holistic approach that is to upgrade the previously fragmented pension system like "playing a chess game on a nationwide chessboard."

Through a central coordination mechanism, over 930 billion yuan (147.58 billion U.S. dollars) from the national pool went to make up for the shortfalls of local pension schemes last year alone.

China's basic old-age insurance, a key program to ensure people's well-being after retirement, has been evolving to a larger-scale management system since its establishment in the 1990s. The central coordination mechanism was set up in 2018 as the first step prior to building a national system to further address unbalanced pension burdens nationwide.

But issues deriving from disparities in regional economic development and demographic structure still exist.

"Some regions have more surpluses, while the others with older populations are under heavier pressure to make pension payments," said Qi Tao, an official from the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security.

In 2021, over 210 billion yuan from the coordination mechanism went to the central and western regions as well as the northeastern "rust belt" provinces, as a greying population weighs on their pension payments and growing labor outflows squeeze pension income.

Using a nationwide chessboard as a metaphor, the head of the China Association of Social Security Zheng Gongcheng said the new national system will make the pension benefits fairer. "People won't need to sacrifice their pensions for migrating to work, and retirees won't have to deal with the risks from local pension fund shortfalls."

Qi said a mechanism that assigns the respective expenditure responsibilities of central and local governments on pension funds will be built after the national program comes into force and the central government will not roll back its subsidy to the pension funds.

Apart from the coordination efforts and central subsidy, state assets totaling 1.68 trillion yuan from 93 centrally-administered enterprises and financial institutions have also been transferred to replenish the pension schemes.

China first piloted transferring state assets in five centrally-administered firms and financial institutions including the China Unicom and China Reinsurance Group in 2018. The transfer amount was 10 percent of their state-owned equity.

"Advancing the state-asset transfer to reinforce social security funds attests to the intergenerational equity of basic old-age insurance regime and the state-owned enterprises' dedication to share their development benefits to the public," said Lu Qingping, an official at the Ministry of Finance.

China was among the most improved performers in the 2021 global pension index as a result of significant pension reform, according to the index report released by Mercer, a global human resources consulting firm.

The Chinese index value increased from 47.3 in 2020 to 55.1 in 2021 primarily due to higher net replacement rates and improved regulations, the report said.

The country has the world's largest social security system, including pensions, medical and health care, and social assistance. By 2021 end, a little over 1 billion people had subscribed to basic old-age insurance across the country.

"The provision of financial security in retirement is critical for both individuals and societies as most countries are now grappling with the social, economic and financial effects of aging populations," the report said.

Official data showed that China has shown a deepening aging trend. By the end of 2021, people aged 60 and above accounted for 18.9 percent of the total, 0.2 percentage points higher than that of the previous year.

Noting that many systems face similar problems in the decades ahead, the report suggested "encouraging higher levels of private saving, both within and beyond the pension system, to reduce the future dependence on the public pension," among other measures for improvement.

(Web editor: Xia Peiyao, Liang Jun)
Laura Anderson was ready for a night on the tiles on Thursday as she headed to Menagerie restaurant in Manchester.

The Love Island star, 32, showed off her lithe frame in a little black dress and layered up with a bright pink blazer.

The TV personality looked incredible wearing a pair of Gucci tights which brought attention to her svelte legs.

Pretty in pink! Laura Anderson showed off her lithe frame in a little black dress and bright pink jacket as she enjoyed a night out in Menagerie restaurant in Manchester on Thursday

The Scottish influencer teamed the bright ensemble with a pair of embellished mules.

She added to the dazzle with a chunky curb chain silver necklace while toting her essentials in a nude Balenciaga bag.

The reality star, who jetted in on Tuesday from sunny Dubai, looked in high spirits as she braved the rain.

She wore a radiant palette of makeup with lashings of mascara while her blonde waves were styled to perfection.

Wow: Laura looked incredible wearing a pair of Gucci tights which brought attention to her seriously leggy pins

Razzle dazzle: The Scottish influencer teamed the bright ensemble with a pair of embellished mules

Out and about: The TV personality, who arrived in style at the city's airport on Tuesday from sunny Dubai, looked in high spirits as she braved the rain

Flawless: She wore a radiant palette of makeup with lashings of mascara while her blonde waves were styled to perfection

It comes after Laura recently underwent a hair transformation, chopping her long extensions into a chic bob after being inspired by Nicole Scherzinger.

The TV personality took to Instagram last week to debut the new look, filming herself with her long blonde tresses before cutting to the glamorous shorter hairdo.

Wearing a full face of glamorous makeup accentuating her pretty features, she donned a simple grey t-shirt for the first clip, with her hair styled poker straight.

Wow! Laura underwent a hair transformation last week, chopping her long locks into a chic bob after being inspired by Nicole Scherzinger

She then underwent both a hair makeover and an outfit change, slipping into a hot pink blazer, with her new hair styled in curls.

Laura was inspired by Nicole who also underwent a chop earlier this week, and revealed her new hairdo the same way with the same audio.

Captioning the video, Laura wrote: 'I did it. Inspired by the Scherzy'.

Inspiration: Laura was inspired by Nicole who also underwent a chop earlier this week, and revealed her new hairdo the same way with the same audio

The transformation comes after Laura explained why she forgave her boyfriend Dane Bowers and took him back three years after he cheated on her.

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.'
Sir Paul McCartney and Kendrick Lamar have officially been confirmed as headliners for Glastonbury 2022 as the annual festival prepares to return following a two-year absence caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

The Beatles legend and 34-year-old hip-hop megastar are set to join Friday night headliner Billie Eilish and Diana Ross, who has landed the Sunday afternoon legend's slot at Worthy Farm this June.

McCartney - who last played in 2004 - will top the Pyramid Stage on Saturday, June 25.

Headliners: Sir Paul McCartney (L) and Kendrick Lamar (R) have officially been confirmed as headliners for Glastonbury 2022 as the annual festival prepares to return

The legendary star was due to perform in 2020, before the event was called off due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Organiser Emily Eavis told the BBC: 'When he finally confirmed, we were beyond [excited].

'For us, having Paul McCartney is obviously a dream, a huge moment in our history. It means the world getting Paul McCartney to Glastonbury.'

Getting involved: The Beatles legend and 34-year-old hip-hop megastar are set to join Friday night headliner Billie Eilish at the annual music festival

McCartney, who will be 80 when he plays the world-famous festival, appeared to confirm his headline slot when he dropped a Wordle clue on social media recently.

Meanwhile Los Angeles based rapper Kendrick is set to headline on Sunday, June 26.

The first lineup announcement also featured the likes of Olivia Rodrigo, Lorde, Megan The Stallion, Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds, Wolf Alice, Years and Years, Charli XCX, Crowded House, Celeste, Arlo Parks, Doja Cat, and Haim.

She's coming out: Motown legend Diana Ross has landed the Sunday afternoon legend's slot at Worthy Farm this June

Centre stage: Olivia Rodrigo had previously been confirmed for this year's festival

Diana - who initially shot to fame as part of The Supremes - previously expressed her excitement about performing at Glastonbury.

She wrote: 'I'm so excited and grateful to finally know that I'll be seeing you at #Glastonbury while on my UK Thank U Tour celebrating my new album of songs! See you at @glastonbury on Sunday, June 26, 2022.'

Diana was originally due to make her debut at the festival in 2020, but her planned appearance was scrapped because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Just the (super) tonic: Noel Gallagher (pictured at Glastonbury with Oasis in 2004) will return to the festival with his High Flying Birds this June

Now, though, she's set to perform on the Pyramid Stage in front of one of the event's largest crowds.

Eavis also announced that the festival will be raising funds for the Red Cross Ukraine appeal, alongside WaterAid, Oxfam and Greenpeace.

Glastonbury takes place in Somerset between June 22 and June 26.
Chris Hemsworth's wife Elsa Pataky has been impacted by the devastating floods of northern New South Wales, a new report has claimed.

According to The Daily Telegraph's Confidential on Saturday, the Spanish actress, 45, and the couple's children were isolated at their $30million Byron Bay home after the entrance was 'completely flooded'.

'She was there on her own with her three young children because Chris is currently overseas filming (Extraction 2),' a source reportedly told the publication.

New report: Elsa Pataky 'was stuck inside for days' after the entrance to her $30million home in Byron Bay in northern New South Wales, shared with husband Chris Hemsworth (both pictured), was 'completely flooded', a new report claimed on Saturday

The insider also revealed that 'Elsa was stuck in her house for a number of days with no phone reception', and is now helping friends and neighbours with the water having cleared.

Daily Mail Australia has reached out to Elsa's representative for comment.

On Tuesday, Elsa praised the heroes helping save people in flood-stricken northern NSW.

The Fast & Furious actress shared a series of photos to Instagram of the flood crisis and thanked people saving those stranded by the floodwaters.

Claims: 'She was there on her own with her three young children because Chris is currently overseas filming,' a source told The Daily Telegraph's Confidential. Elsa, 45, is now reportedly helping neighbours with the water having cleared. Pictured is Elsa and Chris' mansion

'You are real heroes': On Tuesday, Elsa praised the heroes helping save people in flood-stricken northern NSW. The Fast & Furious actress shared a series of photos to Instagram of the flood crisis and thanked people saving those stranded by the floodwaters

'Northern Rivers and beyond had been hit by the worst floods in history. People have spent hours waiting on rooftops to be rescue,' Elsa wrote.

'Thanks to all those who are able to help save people and animals stranded by the floodwaters, you are the real hero's.'

She continued: 'So amazing to watch how everyone pulls together in a disaster and helps the community. Our hearts go out to those affected by the floods. Stay safe.'

Countless towns in Northern NSW and Queensland have been left devastated by catastrophic floods in recent days, with the clean up effort only now able to begin in some areas while others remain submerged.

Crisis: Countless towns in Northern NSW and Queensland have been left devastated by catastrophic floods in recent days, with the clean up effort only now able to begin in some areas while others remain submerged

Floodwaters are easing but the state is not out of danger yet as attention turns to the recovery effort ahead of more bad weather forecast for the weekend.

More than 280 Australian Defence Force members are being deployed to support the clean-up, working alongside about 600 police and emergency crew members.

Premier Dominic Perrottet said the state has a mammoth task ahead and "it is vital we get boots on the ground to begin the immense recovery process".

While the Premier has focused on the recovery he acknowledged the disaster is not yet over.

Using her platform: 'So amazing to watch how everyone pulls together in a disaster and helps the community. Our hearts go out to those affected by the floods. Stay safe,' Elsa wrote

NSW SES Commissioner Carlene York gave a similar warning.

"We are not past the danger period yet. The rivers are very high, fast-flowing," NSW SES Commissioner Carlene York said.

Over the next four days parts of NSW could see up to 100mm of rain and parts of the Hunter up to 150mm with severe thunderstorms, heavy rains and damaging winds forecast, said the BoM.

The estimated current cost of claims across Queensland and NSW is now just over $1 billion, the Insurance Council of Australia said on Friday.
Alison Steadman reunited with her Gavin and Stacey co-star Larry Lamb for an emotional cause on Friday.

The pair, who played Pam and Mick Shipman on the sitcom, appeared on This Morning to support Marie Curie's 2022 Great Daffodil Appeal.

Alison, 75, discussed losing her mother Marjorie to pancreatic cancer 26 years ago and how Marie Curie 'made a terrific difference'.

Emotional: Alison Steadman reunited with her Gavin and Stacey co-star Larry Lamb for an emotional cause on Friday

Meanwhile, Larry, 74, talked about reconnecting with his brother Wesley after they 'stopped communicating' before his death from cancer in 2019.

Alison Hammond and Dermot O'Leary asked the pair how the care and support charity had touched them.

Actress Alison said: 'Well, they helped my mum. My mum was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. It was 26 years ago, but I still miss her every day. Never goes away. And it was very frightening.

'And Marie Curie. Well, the sister in the hospital said, we're going to send your mum to Marie Curie because they will be able to help her. We haven't got the staff. We haven't got the time.

Gavin and Stacey: The pair, who played Mick and Pam Shipman on the sitcom, appeared on This Morning to support Marie Curie's 2022 Great Daffodil Appeal

'She went to see Marie Curie and chatted to a doctor. When she came back, she was changed. It really. They really helped her.

'And every time she went into the hospice, they looked after her, they were kind they had time to talk to her you know, and it really made a terrific difference.'

Actor Larry said: 'I mean, I with great reluctance drove up to Newcastle. My brother and I we weren't getting on at all, but my sister went ahead.

'She said he really wants to see you and I arrived and I was taken on by the family of the Marie Curie hospice in Newcastle and I spent a week there eating in the canteen, sitting with my brother sleeping in the bed next to him.'

Sad: Alison, 75, discussed losing her mother Marjorie to pancreatic cancer 26 years ago and how Marie Curie 'made a terrific difference'

She said: 'She went to see Marie Curie and chatted to a doctor. When she came back, she was changed. It really. They really helped her'

He continued: 'They made me up a bed and I just slept there with him. We hadn't slept in the same room for years and he still snored and we just we got ourselves back together again.'

TV presenter Alison then proceeded to ask Larry how he had drifted apart from his brother.

Larry said: 'We had plenty of fall outs, but there wasn't one specific one. It was just a gradual sort of, you know, he went one way I went another and we just we stopped communicating.

'Him being in that situation. And as soon as I walked in the room, I looked at him and because he couldn't speak because everything had been taken out and it was like bang. We were back in tune with each other just like that.'

Watch Gavin and Stacey only on Stan in Australia.

Good cause: Larry, 74, talked about reconnecting with his brother Wesley after they 'stopped communicating'
Frankie Essex cut a stylish figure as she showed off her growing bump as she attended The Baby Show at ExCel London on Friday.

The pregnant former TOWIE star, 34, who is expecting twins with her partner Luke Love, 31, was glowing as she stepped out at the UK's biggest parenting event.

Frankie looked radiant as she wrapped up in a tan trench coat.

Mum's the word! Frankie Essex cut a stylish figure as she showed off her growing bump as she attended The Baby Show at ExCel in London on Friday after revealing she's expecting twins

Keeping with the autumnal tones, she looked stunning in a matching cream three-piece loungewear set.

She stepped out in a pair of Golden Goose super-star sneakers while toting her essentials in a cream bag which she draped over her shoulder.

Her long mane of wavy hair tumbled down onto her shoulders as her blonde face-framing highlights added to her glam look.

Mum-to-be: The pregnant former TOWIE star, 34, is expecting twins with her partner Luke Love, 31, was glowing as she stepped out at the UK's biggest parenting event

Beauty: Her long mane of wavy hair tumbled down onto her shoulders as her blonde face-framing highlights added to her flawless look

The natural beauty appeared to be in great spirits as she enjoyed the event which also featured stars Binky Felstead, Iwan Thomas and Jamie Jewitt.

The appearance comes after Frankie shared a family photo of herself, Luke and their baby's ultrasound scan with her 232,000 Instagram followers.

The mum-to-be captioned the post: 'Our First Family Photo. This scan picture is so adorable its like one of our twins is kissing its twins forehead, mummy and daddy cant wait to hold you both in our arms.'

Frankie is set to welcome her first children with boyfriend of three years Luke, and admitted she was 'so shocked' to find out that they are expecting two bundles of joy.

glowing: Keeping with the autumnal tones, she looked radiant in a matching cream three-piece loungewear set

While she admitted that pregnancy has been 'overwhelming', Frankie insisted that she's 'not nervous' and has been keeping busy renovating their new home.

'I was just so shocked!' Frankie told new! magazine. 'How we found out was really lovely. The lady scanning me was focusing on one baby and was then like, "What else do we have here then?" and I was so shocked and asked, "Are we having twins?"

'I burst out crying, tears of happiness. It was just so beautiful. It was lovely.'

Family: Frankie shared a snap of her and Luke to Instagram as she proudly showcased their baby scan photo

Frankie revealed that she fell pregnant shortly after coming off contraception but has had no time to feel nervous as she's been busy working on her new home with Luke.

She explained: 'I'm not nervous. I'm focused on getting the house finished at the moment as we moved in just as I found out I was pregnant,' she said.

'I love looking after people, so I hope I'm going to be a good mum! It's so overwhelming, being pregnant with all the emotions you go through. But with having the house, I've had a lot to focus on.'

Baby joy! Frankie revealed that she fell pregnant shortly after coming off contraception but has had no time to feel nervous as she's been busy working on her new home with Luke

Frankie added that the couple originally didn't want to know the sex of their baby, but now plan to find out so that they don't have any more 'surprises'.

The star also gushed over her pregnancy news on Instagram, posting: 'Roses are red violets are blue were not just having one baby were having two.

'I love you so much @lukeluv HAPPY VALENTINES DAY Double Blessed.'
Kate Garraway commanded attention in her pink ensemble as she arrived at the Smooth Radio studios in London on Friday.

The smiling Good Morning Britain presenter, 54, looked effortlessly chic as she wrapped up in a bright pink coat which she teamed with black jeans.

The natural beauty donned a pink jumper underneath and teamed the look with a pair of shiny pink shoes.

Looking good: Kate Garraway commanded attention in her pink ensemble as she arrived at the Smooth Radio studios in London on Friday

Kate accessorised with a cosy pink scarf to match her coat as she strolled along the street with a grey bag over her shoulder and dragged a suitcase behind her.

The broadcaster opted for a pink makeup look to stick with the them and her blonde locks blew behind her in the wind.

She looked in high spirits as she head to her regular weekday 10am-1pm stint on Smooth Radio.

Happy: The presenter looked effortlessly chic as she wrapped up in a bright pink coat which she teamed with black jeans

Blonde beauty: Kate accessorised with a cosy pink scarf as she strolled along the street with a grey bag over her shoulder and dragged a suitcase behind her

Paid with love: The outing comes after Kate revealed that she is 'paid with love' when caring for her husband, Derek Draper, during an appearance on The One Show on Wednesday

The outing comes after Kate admitted that caring for her husband Derek Draper amid his battle with Covid 19 is tough on her and their children, but said they are 'paid with love.'

Appearing on The One Show on Wednesday, Kate joined Alex Jones and Ronan Keating on the show to talk about her recent ITV documentary, Caring For Derek.

The show focused on the upheaval and uncertainty that has dominated their family's lives as they care for Derek, also 54, following being critically ill in hospital with Covid-19 - with Kate taking on the role as a carer.

During the appearance, Kate revealed that she wanted this documentary to focus on the work of professional carers but also the 'unpaid' carers - friends and family who get 'paid with love'.

Kate explained the incredible response she has had from the public on the documentary, saying the public have been 'amazing'.

She went on to detail the struggles of caring for a family member, saying: 'It's such a wonderful thing, to be able to care for someone you love. But, it's a tough thing.'

'It's tough for the carer and the person who's being cared for. I'm trying to say, salute everybody out there and give them some support.'

Kate Garraway: Caring For Derek came out on February 22nd, giving an inside look into how Kate and her family's lives have changed since Derek contracted Covid in March 2020.

Difficult: She went on to detail the struggles of caring for a family member, saying: 'It's such a wonderful thing, to be able to care for someone you love. But, it's a tough thing'

Kate and Derek share two children; Darcey, 15 and Billy, 12.

It comes after Kate recently revealed that Derek can only sit in his wheelchair for 20 minutes before he flags.

She gave an update on her husband's condition while talking on This Morning, after the couple took a 5,000 mile trip to Mexico to receive treatment from a doctor there as part of a clinical trial.

On the show she said: 'He can sustain sitting in a wheelchair for about 20 minutes before he flagged so the thought of going 5,000 miles seemed bonkers.'

Despite Kate's woes, the couple managed the long trip, as Kate said they are starting to see 'little improvements.'
She's known for her gruelling workout regimes and Ferne McCann certainly knows how to showcase her amazing results as she stepped out in London on Friday.

The former TOWIE star, 31, looked sensational as she flashed her incredible abs in some form fitting gym gear.

The outing comes after she claimed she will marry new beau Lorri Haines and plans to extend her family after he was pictured sniffing a suspicious white powder.

Wow: Ferne McCann, 31, looked sensational as she flashed her incredible abs in some form fitting gym gear as she stepped out in London on Friday

Couple: 'I can't wait to extend my family and for Sunday to have siblings': Ferne McCann, 31, has revealed that she would 'marry' her boyfriend Lorri Haines

Strutting her stuff through Leicester Square, Ferne displayed her killer figure in the khaki co-ord.

She flaunted her rock hard abs in the long-sleeved crop top while her leggings brought attention to her tiny waist.

The TV personality wrapped up with a Balenciaga all-over logo wool scarf.

Fit: Ferne certainly knows how to showcase her amazing figure as she ran some errands

Gorgeous: Strutting her stuff through Leicester Square, Ferne displayed her killer figure in the khaki co-ord

Work it: She flaunted her rock hard abs in the long-sleeved crop top while her leggings brought attention to her tiny waist

Glowing: The natural beauty went make-up free as she walked through the busy thoroughfare, wearing just a pair of thick framed glasses leaving her sleek tresses down

The natural beauty went make-up free as she walked through the busy thoroughfare, wearing just a pair of thick framed glasses leaving her sleek tresses down.

She stepped out in a pair of tan ultra mini Ugg boots while carrying her luxurious Louis Vuitton suitcase along the pavement and carried the rest of her essentials in a Goyard tote bag.

The outing comes as Ferne recently revealed she has finally found the one as she admitted that she would 'genuinely marry' her boyfriend Lorri Haines after a string of failed romances.

The reality star and the Dubai based estate agent went public with their hot new romance last month during a holiday to the UAE.

Speaking to The Sun , Ferne, who is mother to daughter Sunday, four, with jailed ex Arthur Collins, also told how she has learned from her 'mistakes' and would like to expand her brood with Lorrie in the future.

Happy: Ferne was all smiles for her day of running errands

Back in style: She stepped out in a pair of tan ultra mini Ugg boots

Loved-up: The former TOWIE star and the Dubai based estate agent went public with their hot new romance last month during holiday to the UAE

The star confessed that she is ready to spend the rest of her life with Lorri and 'can't wait' to extend her family, just weeks after he was pictured sniffing suspicious white powder.

Ferne gushed: 'I have met someone that I can see the rest of my future with. I can't wait to extend my family and for Sunday to have siblings.'

'I have never thought about it until now because I have met someone now that I would genuinely marry.'

Ferne made clear that her life has changed a lot since her relationship with Collins, who is currently serving a 20-year prison sentence at Woodhill Prison, Milton Keynes, after carrying out an acid attack at a London nightclub in 2017.

Saying her life was turned upside down by the incident, Ferne added: 'I am different now  I am older and wiser. I have learned from mistakes.'

The reality TV star described Lorri as a 'loyal man' that she 'respects' and said they have a lot of 'parallels' in their lives.

Gushing: The reality TV star described Lorri as a 'loyal man' that she 'respects' and said they have a lot of 'parallels' in their lives

Lorri is based in the UAE and runs a jewellery firm, an investment business and a software company.

Ferne's words come after a video resurfaced of Lorri appearing to hold a bag of white powder to his nose.

In the film obtained by The Sun last month, Lorri, who has since insisted he was not taking drugs, is seen scooping the powder out of the bag and up to his nostrils, with a pal shouting in the background: 'No! No ket, no ket.'

MailOnline has contacted a representative for Ferne McCann for comment at the time.

Coupled-up: Ferne's words come after a video resurfaced of Lorri appearing to hold a bag of white powder to his nose

Oh no: Ferne's words come after a video resurfaced of Lorri appearing to hold a bag of white powder to his nose

Lorri, who was not dating Ferne at the time the video was filmed, was seen dancing shirtless in the clip while holding two small clear plastic bags.

Lorri's friend told him to 'put the ket down' before the entrepreneur was seen throwing the packet onto a nearby table. It has not been confirmed what substance Lorri was holding.

The man then says: 'That's none of your business,' prompting Lorri to shake his head and reply: 'None of my business.'

He then held the smaller bag up before before clapping his hands and dancing to the music.

Haines has told The Sun that he was not taking drugs and was 'joking about'.

Sources told The Sun Lorri had been partying on a yacht at the marina with six friends earlier in the day.

An insider told the publication: 'They went to an apartment and carried the party on until about 4am.'

The clip surfaced three weeks after Ferne shared her first picture with Dubai-based Lorri, with the reality star writing at the time: 'When you know, you know.'

Authorities in the desert country have a zero-tolerance policy with regards to drugs, with the standard minimum jail sentence for possession being four years.

Exciting: Speaking about marriage she added: 'I have never thought about it until now because I have met someone now that I would genuinely marry'

Ferne has famously had a rocky love life, most recently splitting from DJ Jake Padgett last year after they spent the second lockdown together.

After the split Ferne revealed she still wanted to find her happily ever after and is 'such a sucker for love'.

Ferne and Jack moved in together amid the winter lockdown shortly after they began dating, and admitted that taking the next step in their relationship was its downfall.

Before that she was in a relationship with Collins, with whom she shares her daughter Sunday, four.

Collins' attack saw sixteen people suffer chemical burn injuries and three people left temporarily blinded.

Exes: Ferne has famously had a rocky love life, most recently splitting from DJ Jake Padgett (pictured together) last year after they spent the second lockdown together

Tough times: Before Jack, she was in a relationship with jailed acid attacker Arthur Collins, with whom she shares her daughter Sunday, four

Mother-of-one Ferne dumped him after she learned about the incident which came just weeks after her pregnancy announcement.

Last year, the former TOWIE star confessed she previously 'struggled to come to terms' with being a single parent as she reflected on the challenges she has faced raising a child on her own.

Ferne said: 'I guess I was one of those people that might have had a misconception about single parenting, because I didn't want to be called a single parent when I was pregnant.'
Fay Ripley appeared on Lorraine Kelly's ITV chat show on Friday to discuss her new podcast, but viewers were left distracted by her choice of shoes.

The 56-year-old Cold Feet actress joined Lorraine in the studio to promote Baddiel and Ripley's Buy Leave It or Not, which she co-hosts with David Baddiel, but viewers couldn't take their eyes off her bright green platform shoes.

As the interview came to an end, Lorraine couldn't help but address the elephant in the room and asked Fay about the unusual slip on shoes.

What are those: Fay Ripley appeared on Lorraine Kelly's ITV chat show on Friday to discuss her new podcast but viewers were left distracted by her unique choice of shoes

The presenter said: 'Now, look, today's fashion day as you know. Can we just talk about your shoes? Can we just talk about the shoes.'

Lifting her foot into the air to show off her green platform shoes, Fay was thrilled to talk about the item.

'I've got a theory now, at my age, draw the eye away from this to this,' she replied pointing to her face to her shoes.

'I go, at the extremes, hat, glittery shades and big shoes. It makes everyone go "hello" and then look down.'

Unique sense of style: Fay was thrilled when Lorraine asked about her shoes as she lifted her feet in the air and showed them off to the viewers

Faye said: 'I go, at the extremes, hat, glittery shades and big shoes. It makes everyone go "hello" and then look down'

Lorraine smiled and said: 'They're brilliant. Are they actually comfy? Can you walk?'

Faye replied: 'Yes they are so comfy and I will show you my matching toes,' and flaunted her matching green pedicure.

Lorraine laughed: 'Oh come on, the attention to detail!'

Fay couldn't get enough of the shoes as she went on to show them more and added: 'It's got a nice furry lining. I mean, I had a bit of a fall in them.

'That wasn't a good look, I'm going to say, on the bus. But I have to walk fairly steadily like a deep sea diver.'

Work it: Fay couldn't get enough of the shoes as she went on to show them more and added: 'It's got a nice furry lining. I mean, I had a bit of a fall in them'

Bold: The actress joined Lorraine in the London studio to promote her new podcast Baddiel and Ripley's Buy Leave It or Not but viewers couldn't take their eyes off her bright green platform shoes

Viewers rushed to Twitter to express their mixed opinions on Fay's shoes with many not a fan of the colour or shape.

One viewer wrote: 'Watching Lorraine talking to Fay Ripley and I'm so distracted by Fay's awful green massive shoes !! how on earth can she walk'

Another added: 'What the heck is Fay Ripley wearing on her feet? #Lorraine'

'Has Fay Ripley got her feet stuck in two blocks of oasis?'

One viewer was a fan of the bold shoes: '@FayRipley your shoes have brought me much joe this morning'
Natasha Kaplinsky has revealed she was recently rushed to hospital after being bitten by her own dog.

The newsreader 49, was trying to stop Dot, her 'fierce' Coton de Tulear, fighting with her other dog, a Tibetan Terrier named Molly, when the shocking incident occurred.

She told Great British Life: 'Dot is in my bad books. She was supposed to be this lovely little lap tap and she's turned out to be the fiercest.

'She's turned out to be fierce': Natasha Kaplinsky has revealed she was rushed to hospital after being bitten by her own dog Dot while breaking up a shocking altercation with another mutt

'Recently I tried to separate her from Molly, fighting over a bone, and she bit me. I ended up in hospital.'

Despite the dramatic event, the self confessed 'Dr Doolittle' insisted she 'couldn't be without her dogs, adding: 'Life is a bit chaotic with them in it but never boring.'

The former Strictly winner shares a jaw-dropping five furry friends, comprising of Doodle, Dot, Scribble, Natasha, Teddy and Molly with her husband Justin Bower.

Menacing: She said: 'Dot is in my bad books. She was supposed to be this lovely little lap tap and she's turned out to be the fiercest'

It comes after Natasha revealed suffering multiple miscarriages left her feeling 'barren as a woman'.

The broadcaster struggled to conceive due to an undisclosed medical condition in the years after marrying Justin in 2005 and said the experience made her feel like she had 'let her husband down'.

Speaking on This Morning, Natasha told of the private heartache she felt before falling pregnant with son Arlo, who was born in 2008, and daughter Angelica, born two years later.

Wow! The former Strictly winner shares a jaw-dropping five dogs, comprising of Doodle, Dot, Scribble, Natasha, Teddy and Molly with her husband Justin Bower

The TV personality explained what made it especially difficult was the feeling she was robbing Justin of the joy of fatherhood.

'I felt I could manage my own disappointment,' she said, 'But I desperately wanted to make Justin a father and I just felt barren as a woman.

'Anyone [who has suffered miscarriages] will know that feeling of letting your partner down, for me it was that heartbreak. I was going to take away that joy for Justin and that made it extra hard.'
Alexa Chung oozed style as she arrived at the Loewe Womenswear show during Paris Fashion Week on Friday.

The model and designer, 38, flashed her legs in a purple minidress featuring a pastel marble colour-way and a black horse design on the front.

Bracing the chilly temperatures, she soon wrapped up in a brown faux fur longline coat, while storing her essentials in a baby blue handbag.

Wow! Alexa Chung flashed her legs in a purple marble minidress with a black horse print as she attended the Loewe show during Paris Fashion Week on Friday

She added inches to her enviable frame with a pair of shiny red heels and beamed from ear-to-ear towards onlookers.

The brunette kept her bobbed locks loose, with a slight wave to them - donning a natural makeup look. The cover girl seemed in high spirits as she beamed outside of the event.

Other stars such as Emily In Paris's Samuel Arnold and Gala Gonzalez attended the Loewe show.

Alexa, who is a regular at Paris Fashion Week has been spending her week hopping through different shows and events in Paris.

Model: She added inches to her enviable frame with a pair of shiny red heels and beamed from ear-to-ear towards onlookers

Natural: The brunette kept her bobbed locks loose, with a slight wave to them

However, the model and fashion designer also posts Youtube videos, alongside keeping fans up to date via her Instagram.

The Brit has shared that she has been enjoying a European getaway alongside fashion events, recently visiting Venice.

She posted a picture in the Italian city, joking in the caption: 'It's Venice Fashion Week though really.'

Stunning! Bracing the chilly temperatures, she soon wrapped up in a brown faux fur longline coat, while storing her essentials in a baby blue handbag

Sharing a glimpse at her travels, she shared images of herself in a gondola to her 4.9m followers, alongside some traditional Italian food.

While she is seemingly attending Fashion Week events in Paris solo, she is reportedly living with her boyfriend Orson Fry in London.

The low-key couple are thought to have been together since 2019, with Orson, who is heir to Fry's chocolate dynasty, having reportedly moved in with Alexa.
Noel Gallagher and his glamorous wife Sara MacDonald had all eyes on them as they left swanky private members' club Maison Estelle on Thursday night in London.

Sara, 50, flaunted her incredible physique in a latex dress as she joined her husband to celebrate film producer Darren Strowger's birthday at the club in Mayfair.

The mother-of-two stunned in the figure-hugging black maxi dress which she teamed with a pair of leather boots.

Out and about: Noel Gallagher's wife Sara MacDonald showed off her incredible figure in a ruffled latex dress as they attended Darren Strowger's birthday in London on Thursday

The Scottish beauty wore her brunette tresses straight and accentuated her features with a bronzed makeup palette.

Meanwhile, Noel, 54, looked dapper in an all black ensemble as he headed out with his partner,

He kept things casual in a jacket, jeans and some fashionable trainers as he left the venue with Sara following.

Noel and Sara have been married since 2011 and have two sons together, Donovan and Sonny.

Stunning: Sara, 50, flaunted her incredible physique in a latex dress which she teamed with a pair of leather boots

Natural beauty: The Scottish beauty wore her brunette tresses straight and accentuated her features with a bronzed makeup palette

Looking good: Noel looked dapper as he donned a black jacket, a pair of jeans and some fashionable trainers as he left the venue

Other A-list celebrities such as Mary Charteris, Jack Whitehall, Pete Townshend and his wife Rachel Fuller also attended the luxury night out and partied until 3:30am.

Not in attendance was Darren's ex partner Sadie Frost, who he split from in Octoberafter eight years together.

Private member's club Maison Estelle is the newest hotspot from hospitality group the Ennismore, and attendees since it opened have included Angelina Jolie and Idris Elba.

Incredible: Mary Charteris cut a chic figure in a dragon printed coat layered over a black crop top and leather trousers as she left the party

Fancy: Jack Whitehall (left) and Pete Townshend (right) both dressed to impress at the birthday

Pretty in pink: Rachel Fuller oozed sophistication in a pink blazer and matching skirt which she wore over a white shirt and tie

Meanwhile, Noel recently claimed that Harvey Weinstein once leered at his wife while they were in a bistro.

The musician said the incident happened a few years ago while he and Sara were enjoying a trip to Paris.

Speaking on his friend Matt Morgan's podcast, as reported by The Mirror, Noel said: 'We happened to go for lunch. Harvey Weinstein happened to be sat at quite a big table with loads of similar looking men.'

Newly-single: Darren Strowger recently split from Sadie Frost after eight years together (pictured in May) - she was not present on the night

Embrace: Pete Townshend and Darren hugged at the end of the night

Noel said disgraced film producer Weinstein, 69, looked at Sara while the couple were making their way to their table at L'avenue.

He added: 'He stared at her throughout the meal.'

Noel also said that he recently dreamt he was in a bar with Weinstein and the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

The former Oasis star said he thought: 'Oh no, I've got to wake up, this is too weird.'

Weinstein was dismissed from his film company in October 2017 after sexual abuse allegations against him were made public.

He was arrested and charged with rape in 2018 and found guilty of two of five felonies in February 2020.

The former producer was sentenced to 23 years in prison.

Rock star: Pete Townshend, 76, cut a dapper figure with his wife Rachel Fuller, 48, as they celebrated on Thursday

Birthday boy: The Who guitarist and his musician wife joined a star-studded guestlist including Mary Charteris, Robbie Furze, Jack Whitehall, Noel and Sara
She is well known for showing off her impeccable form on catwalks and in promotional campaigns for Victoria's Secret.

And on Thursday, Jourdan Dunn shared an insight into her dreamlike vacation in Jamaica as she posted a video and several photos to her Instagram Story.

The 31-year-old fashion industry personality appeared to be enjoying her time in paradise as she held a drink while floating in the calm Caribbean waters.

Having fun: Jourdan Dunn shared an insight into her dreamlike vacation in Jamaica as she posted a video and several photos to her Instagram Story

Hot stuff! Dunn wore a sparkling dual-tone bikini that left little to the imagination of her 3.1 million followers while taking the video

Dunn wore a sparkling dual-tone bikini that left little to the imagination of her 3.1 million followers while taking the video.

The fashion industry personality also wore an equally eye-catching blue bottom that prominently showed off her toned upper thighs.

The runway regular accessorized with a stylish pair of rectangular sunglasses during her time on the water.

Her gorgeous hair was tied into numerous braids that were also pulled back into a ponytail.

Chilled out: The 31-year-old fashion industry personality appeared to be enjoying her time in paradise as she enjoyed a drink while floating in the calm Caribbean waters

Dunn was also seen sitting on a swing that had been hung over a pool of turquoise-colored water.

She also shared a shot of her floating lounger, which had been painted with the colors of the Jamaican flag.

In addition to her career as a model, the fashion industry personality has announced that she is looking into starting up as an actress.

The runway regular spoke about her future plans during an interview with Harper's Bazaar, where she expressed that she began focusing on her ambitions after the onset of the global pandemic.

In paradise: She wore sunglasses as she held up her red plastic cup during her day out

Cheers to me: The leggy wonder seemed to be celebrating her day off from modeling

A closer look at this model: Her tummy was flat and her waistline very trim

'Before lockdown, I decided I wanted to take the time to focus on acting. When lockdown happened, it felt like the perfect time to dedicate to it,' she stated.

Dunn also stated that she was ready to begin her new career, although she was happy to be able to fall back on her status as a model.

'I feel like I'm building the foundations for the next stage in my life. Fashion will always be there, but I want to dive into something new,' she said.

Good to go: Dunn also stated that she was ready to begin her new career, although she was happy to be able to fall back on her status as a model

The fashion industry figure also noted that she had to ask herself about why exactly she wanted to give up her career as a model.

'I've had conversations where I said that I want to retire from fashion: "Is this my purpose? What is my life purpose?" I was asking these questions about where I was going,' she stated.

Dunn noted that she had always planned on being an actress, although her fashion career ended up taking most of her time.

Lazy day on the water: The star seemed to have sleepy eyes in this image on the raft

'I really believed that that was what I'd do when I grew up, but then things took a different turn,' she said.

The model pointed out that she was entirely committed to embarking on an acting career.

'I want to do this the right way; I don't want to go down the cheat route. I want to be taken seriously,' she said.
Bethenny Frankel announced that her organization B Strong has raised over $10 million in aid to help relocate Ukrainian refugees and $15 million in humanitarian aid for those remaining in the war-torn country.

On Thursday, the 51-year-old Real Housewives of New York City alum updated her fans with a post on her Instagram Story and shared a video in which she described her fundraising efforts.

'I haven't been giving you updates because I've been so swamped and just in the soup,' Bethenny said as she addressed her followers in the clip.

Helping out: Bethenny Frankel announced that her organization B Strong has raised over $10 million in aid to help relocate Ukrainian refugees and $15 million in humanitarian aid for those remaining in the war-torn country

Update: On Thursday, the 51-year-old Real Housewives of New York City alum updated her fans with a post on her Instagram Story and shared a video in which she described her fundraising efforts

She continued, 'So we are up to $15 million dollars that will go into Ukrainian in aid and now $9 million dollars donated.

'We are partnering with different apparel companies, food companies, lodging companies to be announced later, to place these people in lodging.

'Thousands of people in lodging and you already knew that we already partnered with travel companies for trains and planes, so it's planes, trains, lodging food and clothing for refugees and aid going in.

Busy: 'I haven't been giving you updates because I've been so swamped and just in the soup,' Bethenny said as she addressed her followers in the clip

'Everything from all kinds of food and survival to medical supplies, etc. So now we are in full strategy/ execution mode. Thank you!'

Bethenny also provided her fans with a link to her website where they can contribute to assist the citizens of the embattled nation.

Last week, the philanthropist jumped into action to assist Ukrainians fleeing the Russian invasion.

Fundraising: Bethenny also provided her fans with a link to her website where they can contribute to assist the citizens of the embattled nation

Acting quickly: On the day the takeover began, Bethenny announced she was preparing to ship supplies to NATO countries bordering Ukraine through her worldwide initiative B Strong

Fleeing to safety: The United Nations estimates that over one million refugees have fled Ukraine in the last seven days

On the day the takeover began, Bethenny announced she was preparing to ship supplies to NATO countries bordering Ukraine through her worldwide initiative B Strong.

Frankel's organization initially committed to distributing $10 million worth of aid, but last Friday, the entrepreneur announced she had now upped her goal to $20 million.

The television personality documented the relief efforts on her Instagram account, posting video of boxes being packed with supplies by members of her B Strong team and her warehouse full of countless boxes.

Frankel gave fans real-time updates on the situation in various videos posted to her account.

Doing her part: Last week, Bethenny jumped into action to assist Ukrainians fleeing the Russian invasion

Bethenny revealed her team was mostly working with women and children as young men were being asked to remain in Ukraine to defend their country.

'We're really dealing with women and children at the border in Poland. We just had an incident with a woman whose husband was pulled out of the car, he was taken because he's Ukrainian and the men can't leave, and so he's never held a gun before in his life and now he's a soldier.

'So she's coming through with her family and we have to get her family to Spain where she has family, 'cause she doesn't have family in Poland.

'So now a lot of money is going to individual cases and families through cash cards and plane tickets. So, initially we're trying to raise money, initially just $100,000 for these families to try to get them where they need to get to. This happened during Hurricane Maria too, where people needed to get home for different situations.

'But we're dealing with mostly women and children, unless the men are young men.'

She also revealed her $20M relief effort goal in another video posted last Friday.

'Our team is in Poland, and will reach the border of Budomierz - Hruszow... in one and a half hours.

'This is a crisis': The television personality documented the relief efforts on her Instagram account, posting video of boxes being packed with supplies by members of her B Strong team and her warehouse full of countless boxes

'One family every ten minutes is fleeing and coming to this particular border. We have committed to $10 million in aid. That's 40 containers containing $250,000 of aid each. Our goal is now $20M in aid which would be 80 containers.

'If it becomes a mass exodus, that would require 100 containers which we have done before, we did that in Hurricane Maria and Irma.'

Speaking with People, Bethenny said her organization were in a position to act quickly as they already had a warehouse filled with $16M worth of aid.

'We can just be very quick': Speaking with People , Bethenny said her organization were in a position to act quickly as they already had a warehouse filled with $16M worth of aid.

'Here, we can just be very quick,' she told People. 'We're very immediate because we already have a warehouse that's filled with $16 million in aid.'

Aid includes 100,000 crisis kits containing basic items, including blankets, sleeping bags, and water.

Frankel told People her organization has begun sending the kits to Poland, where they will create refugee camps and distribute supplies by Monday.

Lending a hand: Frankel posted video of her team organizing the aid

The containers being sent contain $250K worth of aid with donations from partners such as Goya, Delta and Away.

'It's the things that people would need immediately, if displaced. Just the basic, basic needs,' Bethenny said of the supplies being shipped.

In the early hours of Thursday morning Russian forces launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, thought to be Moscow's most aggressive action since the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979.

By the end of the day, the Ukrainian government said 137 civilians and military personnel had been killed. Several explosions were heard in the capital of Kyiv early this morning as Russian forces pressed on with their assault.
Andrew Scott looked dapper on the set of Ripley in Rome on Friday as he filmed scenes for the upcoming Showtime series.

The actor, 45, was dressed in a grey suit and a checked coat in the same shade while holding a plastic face shield to protect himself and others from coronavirus between takes.

Irish star Andrew, who takes the lead role, sat at a table and read a newspaper as he filmed a scene outside a cafe in a typical Italian piazza.

At work: Andrew Scott, 45, looked dapper in a grey suit on the set of Ripley in Rome on Friday as he filmed scenes for the upcoming Showtime series

Cast and crew as well as technical equipment could be seen nearby Andrew as he worked.

Andrew plays the iconic Tom Ripley - the arch conman previously played to aplomb by Matt Damon in the hit 1999 film - in the new Showtime series while Dakota Fanning portrays Marge Sherwood.

The character of Tom Ripley was created by late novelist Patricia Highsmith and played a defining role through five of her novels and several subsequent film adaptations.

Movie magic: Irish star Andrew, who takes the lead role, sat at a table as he filmed a scene outside a cafe in a typical Italian piazza

In the new series, set in the 1960s, Ripley is hired by a wealthy New Yorker to travel to Italy to convince his wayward son Dickie Greenleaf to return home.

But along the way, he starts to weave a complex web of deceit with murderous consequences.

Dickie's Venice based American girlfriend - played by Dakota - will slowly suspect Ripley's motives when he shows up looking for him.

Leading man: Cast and crew as well as technical equipment could be seen nearby Andrew as he worked

The drama is being adapted from Highsmith's novels by Schindler's List writer Steve Zaillan.

The 1999 film The Talented Mr. Ripley, directed by the late Anthony Minghella, starred Matt Damon as Tom Ripley with Gwyneth Paltrow as Marge and Jude Law as doomed jazz musician Dickie.

Ripley's US release date in the USA is confirmed to be 2022. A UK release is to be announced.
Lily Collins has celebrated half a year of marriage with Charlie McDowell.

The 32-year-old actress and her husband, 38, were seen fist-bumping each other in one of the pictures shared to Instagram on Friday. 'Today marks 6 months of marriage,' she wrote in her caption.

Also in the post she plugged their upcoming Netflix feature Windfall which she stars in and he directed.

Working well: The actress made a point of remarking that being able to collaborate with her husband was a particularly enjoyable part of the production process

Collins also shared it was two weeks until Windfall is released.

The actress made a point to say collaborating with her husband was a particularly enjoyable part of the production process.

'One of my favorite parts of shooting this film was getting to work with my director and love @charliemcdowell,' she wrote.

Collins went on to express that she was happy to have worked with her spouse and that she was excited about the movie's upcoming debut.

Going for double: Lily Collins celebrated six months of marriage to Charlie McDowell and the upcoming release of the Netflix feature Windfall with a post that was shared to her Instagram account on Friday; they are seen in 2021

'Thank you for being my partner in all things and for trusting me with this character (and holding the camera!) I'm so proud to have been part of this incredibly special project and can't wait for you guys to see it,' she wrote.

The couple initially met while working on the set of McDowell's upcoming feature Gilded Rage.

The filmmaker had previously been romantically linked to figures such as Emilia Clarke and Rooney Mara.

Collins and her now-husband went Instagram official in 2019, and they made their first public appearance as a couple the following year.

On set: The now-married couple initially met while working on the set of McDowell's upcoming feature Gilded Rage

The actress went on to announce that she had become engaged to the filmmaker with a post that was shared to her Instagram account in October of 2020.

The happy couple eventually made their union official during a wedding ceremony that was held in Colorado last October.

The involvement of Collins and McDowell in the production of Windfall was initially revealed last July, when several sources reported that they were working on the feature.

The movie will follow a young couple who make a last-minute trip to their vacation home only to find it being robbed by a stranger.

Heading to work: The now-married couple initially met while working on the set of McDowell's upcoming feature Gilded Rage

In addition to the actress, the flick will feature the talents of Jason Segel and Jesse Plemons.

The feature's leads, along with McDowell, all serve as producers on the film, which was filmed last year.

Collins spoke about collaborating with her husband during an interview with Vogue Australia, where she stated: 'Honestly, it was so easy working together.'

The performer went on to note that she initially had reservations about working with her husband, although she enjoyed the filming process.

It all works out: Collins spoke about collaborating with her husband during an interview with Vogue Australia, where she stated: 'Honestly, it was so easy working together'

'I thought it would be harder, I have to say. I thought it would be more stressful to have to work with him, but it honestly was really amazing and freeing,' she said.

Collins also noted that her part in the film would stand in contrast to much of her other work, stating: 'It's a different type of role for me.'

Windfall is currently set to make its debut on the Netflix streaming service on March 18th.
Shay Mitchell looked glamourous as she head to a lunch meeting with friends in New York City.

The mom to be, who is expecting her second child, chose a multi-colored Fendi dress with an abstract print which skimmed over her baby bump.

The looker added sheer textured stockings and high heel black sandals to highlight her long, toned legs.

Pretty little mama: Shay Mitchell strolls around New York in a multi-colored Fendi dress with an abstract print which skimmed over her baby bump but highlighted her long legs

The 34-year-old Pretty Little Liars alum had her hair styled in a sleek bun. Simple hoop earrings, a white coat, black Fendi bag, wired framed sunglasses completed the look.

Earlier in the week, the very-pregnant Shay shared a not so glamorous post with her 32.2million Instagram followers.

The picture shows The Heiresses star enjoying a some time off her feet and baring her belly while wearing a pair of gray sweat pants, white t-shirt, sneakers and black overcoat with the comment, 'I never appreciated a couch in a store until my third trimester.'

She and partner, producer Matte Babel, announced the pregnancy in February. They are parents to two-year-old daughter Atlas Noa.

No ring, yet: The star, who shares a daughter, age two, with partner Matte Babel, says the couple have no plans to get married at this time. Baby number 2 is due in May

The couple is not married and Shay has said she doesn't feel the need to tie the knot.

'There's no pressure here. I love it. I love the fact that we come home and every day I'm like, "I choose you and you choose me." It keeps us on our toes. I'm like, "Hey, I can walk out. I don't need to go through a lawyer, I can just walk out." And same with him. It keeps it sexy.'

The new baby is due in May.

While she waits for her latest production to arrive, the Trese star has been keeping busy.

It's a wrap: Shay chose to wear a white winter coat for her lunch date. The actress recently filmed a mystery role in the upcoming rom-com Something From Tiffany's

Last month, the Canadian actress wrapped filming a mystery role in Something From Tiffany's alongside Kendrick Sampson, Zoey Deutch, and Ray Nicholson.

The romantic comedy is based on Melissa Hill's 2011 novel about a woman whose life is upended when an engagement ring that was destined for someone else leads her to the person she's meant to be with.

In the meantime, Shay's fans can find her starring in Dollface on Hulu, reprising her role as bisexual entrepreneur Stella Cole. The 10-episode second season of the comedy series started streaming February 11.
Heidi Klum was seen with her husband Tom Kaulitz, 32, in Los Angeles on Thursday afternoon.

The 48-year-old German supermodel made the rare move of hiding her figure in what appeared to be an olive green silk pajama set with a black jacket and gray scarf as added layers to her already baggy look.

The blonde TV host and her musician spouse were shopping for tiles in the West Hollywood neighborhood.

So close: Heidi Klum was seen with her husband Tom Kaulitz, 32, in Los Angeles on Thursday afternoon as they both dressed casually

Heidi appeared to be between glam sessions as she opted for comfort.

The former Victoria's Secret catwalk queen had on an olive green silk top and matching slacks that had a Chevron pattern.

She also had n a heavy black jacket with long sleeves to keep warm as she held a dark green leather purse in the crook of her arm.

Her dark gray scarf with a black print was knotted on the side and hug low on her chest.

No skin today: The 48-year-old German supermodel made the rare move of hiding her figure in what appeared to be an olive green silk pajama set with a black jacket and gray scarf as added layers to her already baggy look

She added brown oversized sunglasses that had a straight line on the top and appeared to have very little makeup on. The Project Runway host wore her hair down in soft natural wave though her nails looked heavily manicured as they were long and red.

Sandals completed her casual daytime shopping look.

Her husband went with a black-and-white knit sweater over a white T-shirt with dark trousers and black lace-free sneakers with a thick white sole. He added green tinted round sunglasses with a thin gold frame.

A remodel ahead? The blonde TV host and her musician spouse were shopping for tiles in the West Hollywood neighborhood

Both were carrying their cell phones in their hands as they left the tile store.

The pair were last seen all dressed up at the Billboard Awards in Los Angeles on Wednesday evening.

Heidi selected a perfectly fitted dress that emphasized her cleavage and threw her svelte midriff into relief during her latest big event.

The outfit featured frills around her slender waistline and was hemmed a mid-calf allowing for a full view of her ankle-strap stilettos.

Date night: The pair were last seen all dressed up at the Billboard Awards in Los Angeles on Wednesday evening. Heidi selected a perfectly fitted dress that emphasized her cleavage and threw her svelte midriff into relief during her latest big event

Accentuating her screen siren features with makeup including a slick of scarlet lipstick, she wore her signature blonde hair down.

The superstar accessorized her ensemble with a fuzzy pink handbag that featured a design of heavily lashed eyes.

Tom meanwhile had buttoned himself into a fitted navy suit with a black t-shirt and a matching black pair of gleaming leather shoes.
John Stahl has died at the age of 68, his agent has said in a statement.

The actor, who played Rickard Karstark in two series of Game of Thrones, died on the Isle of Lewis in his native Scotland.

His agent Amanda Fitzalan Howard described him as 'an actor of remarkable skill and a stalwart of Scottish theatre'.

Star of stage and screen: Game of Thrones and Take the High Road actor John Stahl has died at the age of 68, his agent has said in a statement

The statement read: 'We are very sad to announce the death of John Stahl.

'John was an actor of remarkable skill and a stalwart of Scottish theatre, where he appeared in numerous productions as well as at The Royal Shakespeare Company and The National Theatre.

'He was well known for playing Inveradarroch in Take the High Road from 1982 - 2003 and for the role of Rickard Karstark in two series of Game of Thrones.

Talent: His agent Amanda Fitzalan Howard described him as 'an actor of remarkable skill and a stalwart of Scottish theatre' (pictured in Royal Shakespeare Company's Pedro, The Great Pretender in 2005)

'He died on the Isle of Lewis on March 2 2022 and is survived by his wife, Jane Paton.'

An additional message on Twitter read: 'Were deeply saddened to report the death of our beloved friend and client, John Stahl.

'He was an actor of the most remarkable skill, with a decades-long career gracing our screens and stages. We will miss him terribly.'

TV star: John (left) played Tom 'Inverdarroch' Kerr in the long-running soap Take the High Road between 1982 and 2003.

John played Tom 'Inverdarroch' Kerr in the long-running soap Take the High Road between 1982 and 2003.

His co-star Derek Lord, who played Davie Sneddon in the series, said: 'Sorry to hear my old High Road colleague John Stahl has passed.

'Hell always be Inverdarroch to me, the only man to best Sneddon in a fair fight.'

Paying tribute: A number of actors, writers and former co-stars of John took to social media to pay their respects

Scottish screenwriter Peter May, who recently attended John's online wedding, wrote: 'Terribly sad to hear that my old friend, John Stahl, has passed. I wrote so many scenes for the character of Inverdarroch that he portrayed in Take The High Road.

'Only recently attended his online wedding. Saw him last in Adelaide Australia for a fun reunion. RIP John.'

Also paying tribute, comedian and actor Andy Cameron tweeted: 'John Stahl was a big man in every way.

'Thank you for being a pal, John, rest in peace.'

Writer Ian Rankin tweeted: 'Sad and shocking news. He was a terrifying and charismatic Cafferty in my play Long Shadows. Id so hoped to work with him again.'

Scottish playwright and theatre director David Greig posted: 'I'm so sad to hear of the death of John Stahl: a truly great actor and beloved company member on so many Scottish shows including Winter's Tale at The Lyceum, The James Plays, Gagarin Way & my own play, The Architect.

'Scottish theatre will miss him. Love to his family & friends.'

Playing the part: John Stahl (left) performed as Colonel in Father Comes Home From The Wars at the Royal Court Theatre in London in 2016

Former EastEnders actor Bailey Patrick tweeted: 'Rest In Peace #JohnStahl. Learned so much from you in my first ever gig #Othello what a gent and absolute powerhouse.

'Helped me practice speeches on that beautiful stage, loved by all. A voice that filled any space. Loved a bitta fried chicken. Lost a titan.'

National Theatre of Scotland bosses also paid tribute, writing: 'We are deeply saddened to hear of the death of John Stahl.

'We were fortunate to work with John on Mary Stuart and The James Plays.

'His passing is a huge loss to the industry, and he will be sorely missed. Our thoughts are with his loved ones.'

John studied at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama before embarking on a successful career that spanned five decades.

In recent years he appeared in Being Human and Game of Thrones.

He was born in Sauchie in Clackmannanshire and resided on the Isle of Lewis.
Nikki Bella and Artem Chigvintsev have 'hesitated' over getting married because of the cost.

The couple, who share an 18-month-old son named Matteo, have been engaged since 2009 but have still not set a date for their big day.

The Total Bellas star, 38, also admitted they want to make sure they can splurge on their dream wedding day, rather than compromise on their celebrations because they need to use their money for other things.

Taking their time: Nikki Bella and Artem Chigvintsev have 'hesitated' over getting married because of the cost

She said during an episode of The Bellas Podcast: 'I will be getting married, and I can't wait. I do me, for me. So that means I'll marry Artem when I want, for me and Teo and him, for my life.'

Bella went on to express that she and her fiance, 39, had put off their wedding in an effort to spend their funds on other pressing matters.

'There are also things that Artem and I don't talk about. Like, financially, we have so much more going on in our lives to think, for Artem and I, for the past two years, of putting our money into a wedding  it's probably the main reason we've hesitated.'

She added, 'We just never wanted to say to people, "We don't want to spend the money on that right now."'

Being honest: She added that 'we just never wanted to say to people, "We don't want to spend the money on that right now"'

Bella stated that 'we're building a home that costs us four to five times more than we thought, and we want Matteo to have an amazing education, so we started to put all of our money in other places.'

The former professional wrestler then stated that she and her fiance felt 'like, "Do we really want to spend all this on a wedding?"'

The media personality then noted that she and Chigvintsev were looking forward to hosting a lavish wedding ceremony when they felt financially secure.

'I want it to be a dream. I don't want to do something little because it's all that you can afford right now... We have just never really wanted to say that,' she said.

Other endeavors: Bella stated that 'we're building a home that costs us four to five times more than we thought, and we want Matteo to have an amazing education, so we started to put all of our money in other places'

When Bella and Chigvintsev eventually do get married, she knows exactly what she wants their wedding to be like.

She said: 'I don't want to get married at a courthouse! I wanna get married in Paris with a gorgeous couture dress and Artem in a gorgeous couture tux.'

The AGT: Extreme judge dismissed suggestions she doesn't want to marry Artem, insisting she 'can't imagine' her life without the Dancing With the Stars professional.

Speaking on a special edition of her podcast, she said: 'When Artem's on tour, when Artem's gone, I get really sad. I love my life with Artem in it and I can't imagine Artem not in my life.'

Still committed: The AGT: Extreme judge dismissed suggestions she doesn't want to marry Artem, insisting she 'can't imagine' her life without the Dancing With the Stars professional

She added: 'I truly feel like, deep down in my heart, I've found the person that I do want to spend the rest of my life with and I do want to get married to him.'

Artem added: 'When one proposes to another, they definitely have a better understanding of what that person wants to do. I proposed to you, knowing how I [felt] and what I wanted.'

The media figure also noted how she has been 'very careful' with their relationship after being 'traumatized with a public break-up,' in reference to her ending her engagement to John Cena shortly before they were due to marry in 2018.
Marisa Tomei claims she did not get paid for her role in the King of Staten Island film, directed by Judd Apatow.

In a new interview with Rolling Stone published on Thursday, the actress, 57, said she reached out to her co-star Pete Davidson, 28 - who also wrote the script along with Apatow and Dave Sirus - to see whether he received his paycheck. The movie was shot in 2019 and released in 2020.

'I actually just was talking to Pete today, because I was like, "I never got paid for that. Did you? In this age of transparency, can we talk?"' she said.

Waiting for the paycheck: Marisa Tomei, 57, claims she did not get paid for her role in Judd Apatow's movie King of Staten Island; Pictured on Dec 13, 2021 at Spider-Man: No Way Home premiere in Los Angeles

Despite the financial issue, the Spider-Man: No Way Home star reveled she had a great time on the set of the movie.

'I had a rollicking good time. [With director] Judd [Apatow]s approach to improv  which is extensive  I was intimidated. Im with all these stand-ups. It was so freeing. [It] really changed how I approach each character going forward,' she explained.

The King of Staten Island was released in 2020 and is a semi-biographical take on Davidson's life, and how he and his mother Amy Waters Davidson coped with his father's death.

The Saturday Night Live star's late father Scott Davidson was a New York City firefighter who died in the September 11 terrorist attacks when Pete was just 7 years old.

Co-stars: The actress said she reached out to her co-star Pete Davidson, 28, saying, 'I never got paid for that. Did you? In this age of transparency, can we talk?'

In the film, Tomei portrayed Davidson's mother, a process she previously spoke about with Screen Rant in June 2020.

'For me, I didnt really want to do, like, a method thing. Really, I respect her and I actually adore her. Shes one of the most patient, kind [people and] has a great laugh. Shes just a great person, but I didnt really want to get into her [head or] try to be her.'

Meanwhile Davidson opened up about how the movie helped him 'just really lay it all out there and be able to heal and move on from it, instead of, every day, feeling sorry for myself.'

In a conversation with the New York Times in June 2020 he revealed, 'It was really hard because its stuff I would share with my therapist. But Judd really cares, and the hard work that he was doing to find out about my life made me feel so comfortable.'
When her sister got married, the wedding was held in splendour at Chester Cathedral with guests including the Queen, Prince Philip and Prince William.

But Lady Viola Grosvenor, who was named as one of Britains three most eligible young women, has got married in secret, I can disclose.

Not only did the Duke of Westminsters sister, 29, manage to keep the British wedding ceremony unknown to anyone outside her tight circle of family and friends, but she also had a big second celebration in Africa.

Lady Viola Grosvenor, who was named as one of Britains three most eligible young women, has got married in secret, I can disclose

Her husband is dashing Dragoon Guards officer Angus Roberts, 30, whose parents, Andy and Caragh, run a hotel resort on the private island of Manda Bay in Kenya.

It was all very hush-hush, a source tells me. Viola didnt want any publicity at all.

Lady Violas family fortune is estimated at 10.1 billion, with Grosvenor Estates owning 300 acres of Mayfair and Belgravia, the 11,500 acre Eaton Estate just outside Chester, the Halkyn Estate in Wales, as well as land in more than 60 cities around the world.

The couples African celebration was held at the Roberts hotel on the exclusive  and highly fashionable  white sand island in the Lamu archipelago on Kenyas coast.

Its described as the ultimate no shoes, no news experience, perhaps explaining the media blackout of the happy event.

Angus Roberts is pictured above. Not only did the Duke of Westminsters sister, 29, manage to keep the British wedding ceremony unknown to anyone outside her tight circle of family and friends, but she also had a big second celebration in Africa

Her husband is dashing Dragoon Guards officer Angus Roberts, 30, whose parents, Andy and Caragh, run a hotel resort on the private island of Manda Bay in Kenya

The couples African celebration was held at the Roberts hotel on the exclusive  and highly fashionable  white sand island in the Lamu archipelago on Kenyas coast

The Roberts family introduced flying safaris to Kenya and have entertained many dignitaries including Prince Philip.

Before joining the Army, Angus worked for a renewable energy company after graduating in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Edinburgh. He also worked as a host at his parents hotel, entertaining guests on safaris, fishing expeditions and kitesurfing adventures.

Lady Viola, whos described as extremely passionate and big-hearted, runs her own childrens art therapy business, Magic Canvas, which aims to help kids understand their past with artistic practices.

The 2004 wedding of her sister Lady Tamara to royal pal Ed van Cutsem was of historical significance because its said to have led to Prince Charles finally announcing his engagement to Camilla Parker Bowles.

Camilla was reportedly so infuriated to discover that royal protocol dictated she wouldnt be permitted to sit with her boyfriend Charles and would have to arrive separately, that she told him the status quo was no longer acceptable. Three months later, Buckingham Palace announced their wedding date.

A family spokesman declines to comment. However, a close friend confirms: Viola is married and her surname is now Roberts.

The smart sets talking about...

The royals sport club going woke

It is a 153-year-old institution known as Britains snootiest sports enclave, but now the Hurlingham Club has gone woke.

The country club by the Thames in Fulham, where the Duke and Duchess of Cambridges children have tennis lessons, is proposing a ban on the use of gendered pronouns such as he or she. It plans to replace both with they in the clubs rules. It also suggests replacing chairman with chair.

One of the outraged members splutters: This place is meant to be a haven from that sort of nonsense.

The Georgian clubhouse is a favourite of the royals and the late Prince Philip was its patron. He  or rather they  especially loved to watch the polo there.

Queens bank accused of hyping green credentials

Prince Harry and Meghan, who preach about the environment while taking private jets, are not the only ones who could be guilty of eco hypocrisy.

I hear the Queens bank, Coutts, has been accused of greenwashing by a major environmental auditor.

When it secured a coveted B Corp status, denoting it as an ethical company, Coutts declared this meant it was treading lightly on the planet and its HQ was swiftly covered in pictures of bees and plants. However, in its application to be a B Corp, seen by this column, it admits the environment isnt a high priority in decision making, and that it invests none of its vast wealth in schemes which tackle green issues.

Marc Laine, founder of Environmental & Social Impact Monitor, is not impressed. It seems all too common to see an organisation that includes mediocre environmental components focus their communications on having a high rating as evidence of being a leader on environmental performance, when in fact they are not.

Grandson helps heal Di dressmakers rift

Princess Dis wedding dress designers David and Elizabeth Emanuel could barely stand to be in the same room following their split in the 1990s.

I can disclose that the pair are, however, healing their rift, thanks to the birth of their first grandchild, pictured with David.

The one thing we could agree on is that were so excited and delighted to have a grandchild, Elizabeth tells me.

Their lawyer daughter, Eloise, has named her son Atticus. Elizabeth, who is launching a kids clothing range, adds: Atticus is going to have to wait a little bit before he gets any clothes.

I can disclose that the pair are, however, healing their rift, thanks to the birth of their first grandchild, pictured with David

How gossip Gavin got his gong?

The big question in Westminster is: how on earth did Gavin Williamson manage to secure a knighthood, despite having been sacked from the Government not once but twice?

Well, I think I may have found the answer: his love of the most scurrilous gossip.

Williamson  nicknamed Private Pike by critics who compared him to the inadequate young soldier in Dads Army  was once the parliamentary private secretary for former prime minister David Cameron. And Cameron is gushing about the South Staffordshire MP, 45. He was likeable, fun and different, with the face of a 23-year-old researcher and the mind of a wizened whip, he relates in his memoirs.

He would try to lighten my mood with stories or quotes about what MPs had been getting up to. Which Tory minister has had carnal relations with a Labour MP?, he once asked me as he wandered into my office. Sadly, Cameron does not reveal the answer.

Celebrity Gogglebox star Woody Cook confirmed his romance with Game Of Thrones actress Nell Williams in the most public way before Christmas by kissing her on the red carpet at an awards ceremony.

Sadly, the 21-year-old son of Radio 2s Zoe Ball and DJ Norman Cook tells me theyve split and hes back looking for love online.

Ive had no luck on dating apps, Woody wails at the EE Rising Star Party at 180 House in London. At a party, Ive got all the charm and chat [but] on apps, Im useless. Woody is bisexual and, I hear, pop star Sam Smith, 29, has been sending him messages on social media.

Watch this space...

Daisys heels  probably not for Normal People

Daisy Edgar-Jones was literally walking on eggshells at the premiere of her latest film

Daisy Edgar-Jones was literally walking on eggshells at the premiere of her latest film.

The 23-year-old actress, who starred in hit BBC drama Normal People, matched her silver dress with a pair of 1,200 poultry-inspired shoes to promote U.S. comedy thriller Fresh.

The strappy white heels by luxury Spanish designer Loewe were made to look as if the heel was piercing through an eggshell and causing the yolk to spill out.

Privately educated Daisy has made public her love affair with shoes.

She became the face of a Jimmy Choo collection for her first major fashion campaign.

The TV executives daughter has also previously credited her cousin Jacqueline, a shoe designer, with encouraging her passion for fashion.

The strappy white heels by luxury Spanish designer Loewe were made to look as if the heel was piercing through an eggshell and causing the yolk to spill out

David Cameron has a new ride. I hear hes acquired a steed, Uma, from former model Jemma Kidd, Countess of Mornington. Former owner Callie Coles, ex-fiancee of Jemmas brother Jack Kidd, says Uma has the kindest heart shes ever come across. Shes pleased Uma is enjoying her retirement with one of Englands previous Prime Ministers.

(Very) modern manners

Lord Heseltines grandchildren Mungo and Isabella were delighted when their parents gave them the go-ahead for a gap-year adventure before they go to university.

The 19-year-old twins may have been less thrilled when their mother, Annabel, 58, announced that shed decided to join them. They are currently in Belize, Central America, working on a conservation project.

Im following the rainbow, declares former education magazine editor Annabel, who divorced the twins father, surgeon Peter Butler, four years ago. The European Nature Trust is doing amazing things to highlight different conservation issues and also the successes.

Society model Frankie Herbert and musician Eliot Sumner are celebrating their romance by launching a new project together

Frankie and Eliot share love letters

Society model Frankie Herbert and musician Eliot Sumner are celebrating their romance by launching a new project together.

Frankie, 24, whos the daughter of royal confidant Harry Herbert, and rock star Stings child Eliot, 31, are encouraging members of the public to share love letters they wrote but decided not to send online, as part of a cathartic, healing process.

The pair have never officially confirmed theyre a couple, but TV chef Clodagh McKenna, who is married to Frankies father, tells me of the project: Frankie and her partner Eliot are doing it. Its a fantastic idea.

Falconers son faces 8m Ghana law suit

Tony Blair was so impressed by the legal skills of his former flatmate Charlie Falconer that he made him Lord Chancellor.

Now, Lord Falconer may need to use his mastery of a brief to help his son. I hear that former Army officer William Rocco Falconer faces legal action in Ghana over claims that he and others owe another businessman millions.

The Cambridge graduate set up social enterprise businesses in West Africa, securing funds from donors such as the Princes Trust.

But one of these projects, Demeter Ghana, has been sent a summons from Ghanas high court after a dispute with a business it worked with, financing and supplying seed and fertiliser.

The business, Sustainable Trading, claims Rocco and others owe around 8.7 million. Rocco strenuously denies each and every allegation and Demeter Ghana has launched its own counterclaim for 2.5 million, alleging that it is, in fact, Sustainable Trading which owes money to them.

Any suggestion of wrongdoing on our part is simply untrue, Rocco tells me.

We have honoured all of our financial commitments and have, unfortunately, found ourselves on the wrong side of a commercial dispute.

We are confident that justice will prevail.
A Canadian gang leader wanted for murder committed a decade ago has been finally arrested while hiding out in the United States territory of Puerto Rico.

Conor Vincent DMonte, 44, who oversaw the operations of the notorious United Nationals criminal organization, was apprehended by U.S. Marshals during a traffic stop in the Carolina seaside neighborhood of Isla Verde on February 25.

D'Monte had been on the run following the February 6, 2009 murder of Kevin LeClair, a member of the Red Scorpion gang, at a mall in Langley, British Columbia.

Last week, phones across the Caribbean island began to ring as members of a private WhatsApp group dedicated to helping others in the U.S. territory stared at their screens in disbelief following the arrest of D'Monte, who was living under the fake name of Johnny Williams.

The businessman they knew as administrator of that chat - someone who organized philanthropic efforts such as a Christmas toy drive for needy children and renovations for an elementary school - had just been arrested.

'It's like a Netflix story,' said Antonio Torres, chief deputy U.S. Marshal for the district of Puerto Rico.

Authorities don't know exactly when DMonte arrived in Puerto Rico, but they believe he had been using the alias 'Johnny Williams' for at least several months.

Conor Vincent D'Monte, known as Johnny Williams in Puerto Rico, was allegedly a leader of the violent United Nations gang and sought by Canadian authorities on charges including first-degree murder of rival gang member Kevin LeClair on February 6, 2009. He was arrested by U.S. federal agents in the oceanside neighborhood of Isla Verde on February 25

Authorities in Puerto Rico on February 25 apprehended Canadian fugitive Conor Vincent D'Monte, who was wanted for murdering Kevin LeClair (pictured), at a mall in British Columbia on February 6, 2009. LeClair was a member of the Red Scorpion gang, a rival of D'Monte's United Nations gang

The 6-foot, 1-inch fugitive settled into a rural, eastern mountain community near El Yunque rainforest, living in a house on a street with no name in a working-class neighborhood, Torres said.

Every month, DMonte would accompany employees of a nonprofit organization known as Karma Honey Project to a farmer's market in the nearby city of Carolina, said a woman who lived in the same community and sold goods next to his stall. She declined to give her name out of fear.

'No one knew anything,' she said, adding that she always was struck by his quiet demeanor. 'We were surprised.'

D'Monte remains in federal prison in Puerto Rico as he awaits an extradition process. His public defense attorney declined comment, but she noted in a court hearing on Thursday that D'Monte, who has Canadian and Irish citizenship, requested that the consulates of those countries be notified.

Those who met DMonte said he never made any efforts to hide. He even met with Puerto Rico's agriculture secretary and a local senator and was invited to the governor's mansion last month for his role in trying to save honeybees after Hurricane Maria as part of his involvement with the Karma Honey Project, a nonprofit company created in February 2019.

Its president, Candice Galek, is a Miami entrepreneur and former model. Neither Galek nor her company returned messages for comment.

In its 2020 annual report, the most recent one available, the company stated that its volume of business did not exceed $3 million. Its balance sheet reported no assets or liabilities, according to filings with Puerto Rico's Registry of Corporations and Entities.

'The guy fooled us all,' said a Puerto Rican businessman who asked that his name not be used out of fear.

He said he met DMonte in the early days of the pandemic after being added to his WhatsApp group, and that DMonte was known as 'Johnny Teeth,' because his teeth were so white and straight. The businessman described DMonte as a 'tremendous sales guy' who was very jovial.

'It struck me that he didn't have Facebook or any of those things because he truly was a great networker,' the businessman said, adding that DMonte once called him asking if he could borrow a hammer since he was helping repair a school.

When he was working on the Christmas toy drive, D'Monte messaged his WhatsApp group warning they were 500 presents short and that he was 'grinding' to get donations as he noted that the prices went up 40% at the toy distributor warehouse: 'Caught us off guard. Will figure it out. Universe conspires,' he wrote, adding three different star emojis.

It's unclear why DMonte chose Puerto Rico or if he knew anyone in the U.S. territory.

D'Monte's murder of LeClair took place at at a time when that part of British Columbia was experiencing one of the worst gang violence outbreaks in its history, according to a police statement.

DMonte also is accused of conspiring to murder two alleged rival gang members known as the Bacon Brothers, according to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

Canadian authorities were offering a reward of approximately $78,000 for information leading to his arrest.

U.S. Marshal agents arrested Canadian fugitive and gang leader Conor Vincent D'Monte in Puerto Rico on February 25

The 'United Nations' gang that DMonte allegedly belongs to is considered one of the most powerful ones in British Columbia and is best known for exporting one of the most popular marijuana strains in the U.S. mainland: the B.C. bud.

At its height, the gang had an estimated 200 members, and they often sport tattoos of tigers, dragons and Chinese characters.

The gang also imports firearms and other drugs including cocaine, making millions of dollars a year, said Keiron McConnell, a criminal justice expert and professor at Kwantlen Polytechnic University in Surrey, British Columbia.

'Anyone thinking that Mr. DMonte was a street corner hustler, it couldn't be further than the truth,' he said in a phone interview. 'Mr. DMonte was a fairly sophisticated individual.'

McConnell said it's highly unusual for fugitives to be on the run for as long as DMonte and to successfully assimilate themselves into a community.

DMonte, who police said has traveled to Spain and Asia and allegedly is associated with a drug network in Mexico, was last seen in the Vancouver area in January 2011. After that, he vanished until he reappeared in Puerto Rico more than a decade later.

Torres said high-profile fugitives often assume the profile of a very wealthy person because they have the means.

'It doesn't raise any red flags,' he said. 'It will draw attention, but not suspicion. They just act like a businessman.'

Three weeks before federal agents arrested DMonte, Torres said his agency finally had collected enough information to identify the fugitive, noting they never received any tips.

'He acted surprised,' Torres said, adding that he didn't resist arrest.

DMonte was alone, except for a 9mm at his side.
Its Day 9 of the Ukraine-Russia war and things seem to have taken a turn for much worse. Russian forces shelled Europes largest nuclear power plant causing a fire at the site.

Zaporizhzhia NPP is under fire! The entire Europe is at risk of a repeat of the nuclear catastrophe. Russians must stop fire! pic.twitter.com/P46YxKZZ0W    (@Podolyak_M) March 4, 2022

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russias targetting of the nuclear plant has risked all of Europe, while Ukraines Foreign Minister warned that if it blew up it would be 10 times bigger than the Chernobyl disaster.

Fortunately, Ukrainian fire emergency services have been able to put out the fire. No casualties have been reported from the incident.

On the other hand, another Indian student was shot in the conflict and has been hospitalised in Kyiv.

The latest:

UK calls for emergency UNSC meeting over Russia-Ukraine matters. On the other hand, Kremlin asked Russians to unite behind President Putin while responding to pleas from public figures to end the war.

Ukraine claims the Russian military has suffered over 9,000 casualties in the war so far.

     24.02  04.03  : pic.twitter.com/COs3LbWiJt  Defence intelligence of Ukraine (@DI_Ukraine) March 4, 2022

IAEA DG Rafael MarianoGrossi says the physical integrity of the nuclear plant in Ukraine has been compromised and that he's available to travel to the site for checks as soon as possible.

Video shows Romanian Mayor losing his cool at Aviation Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia at a shelter. The Mayor could be heard saying, "I am the one providing them with food & shelter."

"I was the one providing them with food & shelter." - Romania's city mayor gives shut-up call to Modi's minister Scindia for taking the credit for safe protection of Indian students. ? pic.twitter.com/PtlVDz9X8J  OSINT Insider (@OSINT_Insider) March 3, 2022

Indian student Harjot Singh who was shot multiple times told India Today TV that he was escaping in a car from Kyiv when he got injured. He also said that he got 'no clear response from Indian embassy'.

Russia to reportedly punish those circulating 'fake' news on the Army with jail terms. Lawmakers are set to adopt a bill introducing jail terms.

Video shows the destruction in Ukraine town of Borodianka, 60 km from Kyiv caused by Russian artillery strikes.

VIDEO: Devastation in Ukraine town of Borodianka after Russian artillery strikes.Images show numerous buildings destroyed or badly damaged by Russian artillery strikes in the town of Borodianka, 60km northwest of Kyiv on March 3 pic.twitter.com/9KiNd54c4K  AFP News Agency (@AFP) March 4, 2022

Russian troops have reportedly entered the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant territory. However, so far no radiation leak from the plant has been detected.

Russia cracks down on Western and Russian-liberal media outlets. Access to websites of BBC, Deutsche Welle and Russian-language US-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, limited.

Russia's news agency TASS reports that 130 Russian buses are ready to evacuate Indian students and other foreigners from Kharkiv and Sumy region to Russias Belgorod Region.

130 Russian buses are ready to evacuate Indian students and other foreigners from Ukraines Kharkiv and Sumy to Russias Belgorod Region, Russian National Defense Control Center head Colonel General Mikhail Mizintsev announced Thursday: Russian News Agency TASS#RussiaUkraine  ANI (@ANI) March 4, 2022

Home rental company Airbnb said it is suspending all operations in Russia and Belarus in view of the invasion of Ukraine. Several big brands and companies, including Ikea, have already suspended their operations in Russia in solidarity with Ukraine.

Airbnb is suspending all operations in Russia and Belarus  Brian Chesky ?? (@bchesky) March 4, 2022

WHERE ARE THE INDIAN NATIONALS?

Three IAF special flights brought back 630 Indians from Ukraine. The flights landed at the Hindon airbase in Ghaziabad. Currently, Operation Ganga is in full swing, with Union Ministers in neighbouring countries coordinating the process and the IAF roped in for the evacuation.

Indian Embassy in Ukraine has asked those stranded in Kharkiv excluding Pisochyn to fill up a registration form.

All Indian Nationals who are in KHARKIV excluding PISOCHYN, please fill up details contained in the form on an urgent basis: https://t.co/hm5ayU5UgC  India in Ukraine (@IndiainUkraine) March 3, 2022

Prime Minister Narendra Modi chaired another high-level meeting on the Ukraine situation on Thursday.

WHATS THE LATEST ON THE BATTLE? Reports suggest that the Russian forces have slowed down their advance in the northern region of Ukraine, but are continuing progress in the southern region. The nearly 65 km long Russian military convoy heading towards the capital Kyiv has been stalled for more than 2 days now due to alleged logistical problems.

NEWS: Russian Invasion Stalled in Ukraine's North, Progress in South. https://t.co/itEBHXPLSQ  Department of Defense ?? (@DeptofDefense) March 3, 2022

WHAT IS RUSSIA SAYING? Russian President Vladimir Putin in his phone call with French President Emmanuel Macron said that Moscow will continue with its fight against militants of nationalist armed groups and that everything is going by the plan. Putin continued to feed the same excuse he has been saying on Ukraine invasion.

WHAT IS UKRAINE SAYING? Ukraine has been demanding a ceasefire from Russia, but to no avail so far. However, the two warring states have been able to agree on the need to create humanitarian corridors for citizens to escape the war.

?         :   ,   ,         ! ,        https://t.co/afD92NDehL pic.twitter.com/MvNAw62ga5  Defence of Ukraine (@DefenceU) March 3, 2022

Ukraines President Volodymyr Zelenskyy also held the first news conference since the Russian invasion at his office now protected by sandbags. Zelenskyy spoke to Western media and local media wearing a military T-shirt and with a haggard look. Zelenskyy has become the icon of hope and Ukraines resistance in the face of a Russian invasion.

WHAT IS THE WORLD SAYING?

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson hit out at Russian President Vladimir Putin for endangering the safety of all of Europe with his actions targetting the continents largest nuclear power plant in Ukraine.

US President Joe Biden announced new sanctions against Russian oligarchs, including a travel ban.

Facebook and various other media outlets were partially inaccessible on March 4, 2022 in Russia as Kremlin cracked down on critical voices on Ukraine invasion.

Google and Tripadvisor removed war news from reviews on restaurants and destinations.

The ICC prosecutor has launched an investigation into Russia's alleged war crimes in Ukraine.

WHAT ELSE IS HAPPENING?

Zoo Lions and Tigers have been evacuated from Ukraine safely to Poland as Russia continues its invasion.

Six lions and six tigers evacuated from near Kyiv have arrived at a zoo in Poland following a two-day odyssey skirting battle frontlines and coming face to face with Russian tankshttps://t.co/mX7ZcJmbr3  AFP News Agency (@AFP) March 4, 2022

Church bells in France and Germany rang in solidarity with Ukraine amidst the war with Russia.
The 51st Annual Spring Powwow, organized by First Nations @ UW in April, marked the events post-pandemic return. Drawing both Indigenous people and nonnatives from across the country, the powwow is one of the largest student-run events on campus and has been an important event for Pacific N
Instead of restricting schools from teaching young kids about sexual orientation and gender identity, Sen. Jeff Brandes, R- St. Petersburg, proposed an amendment that would require schools to stop conducting lessons on human sexuality or sexual activity. Above is an aerial photo of the Florida State Capitol in Tallahassee.


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TASHKENT, March 4 (Xinhua) -- A high-level international conference on the implementation of the United Nations (UN) Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy in Central Asia opened in the Uzbek capital on Thursday.

In his welcoming speech, Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev proposed opening a branch of the UN Counter-Terrorism Office in the Central Asian region.

"It is obvious that the further successful implementation of the counter-terrorism strategy in the region requires the strengthening of mechanisms for continuous monitoring and critical evaluation ... coordination of interaction between the countries of Central Asia," he said.

Mirziyoyev also noted the importance of forming a unified electronic network to counter regional cyberterrorism.

The two-day event, proposed by Mirziyoyev during the 75th session of the UN General Assembly, is co-organized by the Institute for Strategic and Regional Studies under the President of the Republic of Uzbekistan, the Uzbek Foreign Ministry, the UN Office of Counter-Terrorism, the UN Regional Center for Preventive Diplomacy for Central Asia and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

The conference has gathered over 600 senior officials and leading experts from Central and South Asia, the European Union and the Middle East, together with representatives of international and regional organizations, such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. 
New Delhi: Parle Agro on Friday said it has signed actor Ram Charan as a brand ambassador for its mango juice brand Frooti.

Charan and Alia Bhatt, who is already a brand ambassador, will become the face for Frooti.

The company is looking at an "action packed" summer of 2022, two years after major beverage companies missed out on the peak season because of the coronavirus pandemic, Parle Agro said in a statement.

"I'm excited about entering into an action packed summer after a two-year hiatus. We kick-start our season announcing Ram Charan and Alia Bhatt as the face for Frooti; both admirable personalities whose appeal and popularity is rooted deep in the hearts of the people," Parle Agro Joint Managing Director and CMO Nadia Chauhan said.

On the company's campaign plans for the summer, she said, "...for the first time, four mega campaigns this summer. Unlike the last two seasons, we are eager to connect and engage with our consumers' whole heartedly and make this summer our best ever."

Charan joins a list of stars as brand ambassador of Parle Agro's different brands, including Priyanka Chopra for Appy Fizz, Arjun Kapoor for B Fizz and Varun Dhawan for flavoured milk Smoodh.
Nanis upcoming Ante Sundaraniki, a romantic drama directed by Vivek Athreya, has special backdrops, particularly a 90-year-old house which has been given a makeover.

The films production designer Latha Naidu says Nani plays a Brahmin guy, and they wanted a house which looks authentic. They found the vintage house at West Marredpally in Hyderabad after a three-month search.

The director, the cinematographer (Niketh Bommireddy) and I brainstormed to understand what a Brahmin house should look like. We were looking for a house with a big front yard, high ceilings, rooms set one behind another, and a distinctive style of windows and doors. We eventually found a suitable one, which we were told was built 90 years ago, says Latha.

One of the rooms of the house that has artefacts and photo frames reflecting the desired culture

She used her own childhood memories and inputs from the director to create the desired effect. (Latha said was raised in a Brahmin locality in Bengaluru, and studied in a Brahmin school, so she had a good idea of what was needed.)

I had ideas about the colour palate, the artefacts, curtains and furniture, etc., even elements like ceramic pickle jars. I knew how the exteriors should look. We believed that the house could be modified for our needs, she adds. She saw the house as a blank canvas, and repainted it multiple times to suit the films aesthetics.

The living room of the transformed house with all the artefacts, articles and set properties

Around 20 people worked for 15 days for the makeover. We built a well and planted several saplings including a Tulsi in the front yard to give the feel of a Brahmin house, Latha explains. Most of the artefacts for the house were purchased from old city (Charminar).

Around 40 per cent of the film was shot in that house. We shot nearly 30 days in the house, so it is literally a character in the film, she adds.

The challenge was to get the sets ready for the continuity scenes, says Latha. Because of Covid we could not shoot the film at one go; we had to do it in stages, and the shooting schedules were erratic. To get the art work, especially for continuity scenes, was difficult, she elaborates.

A water well that was built outside the house premises

The actors were very appreciative of the sets. When Nani stepped into the set on the first day, he said, I havent seen such an authentic set in recent times. So that was a huge compliment, beams Latha, who was also the production designer for #Pelli Choopulu that won a National Award.

Latha was born and raised in Bengaluru, although her roots are in Rayalaseema. She holds bachelor's degrees in journalism and psychology, but, being the daughter of a Kannada film producer (Madhu Abbiaha Naidu), she was naturally drawn to cinema at an early stage.
A volunteer near a damaged house after a massive explosion ripped through a three-storey building, under Tatarpur Police station, in Bhagalpur district, on March 4, 2022. (PTI)

Patna: At least 14 persons lost their lives and nine others were seriously injured in an explosion at an illegal cracker factory in Bihars Bhagalpur late Thursday night.

The incident occurred in a three-storied building in Kajbalichak locality under Tatarpur police station which is close to the blast site, sources from Bhagalpur said.

Local residents who witnessed the incident said the explosion was so powerful that it damaged other buildings in the area. Reports suggest that three houses were completely damaged and reduced to debris.

Officials said that the injured are admitted to a local government hospital for treatment.

Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar expressed concern over the explosion in Bhagalpur and directed Chief Secretary and DGP to probe the matter and take appropriate action.

Earlier on Friday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi also expressed grief over the loss of lives in the Bhagalpur blast incident and discussed the issue with Bihar Chief Minister.

Its painful to hear about the loss of lives due to blast in Bhagalpur. Discussed the matter related to the blast with Chief Minister Nitish Kumar. The administration is engaged in relief and rescue operations and all possible assistance is being provided to the victims, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in a tweet on Friday.

Reports suggest that the house where the explosion occurred were being used as an illegal firecracker factory. Sources said that local residents on many occasions earlier had raised objections and asked the owner of the factory to stop illegal operations but nothing happened.

The matter was also reported to the local police but no action was taken against the accused, sources from Bhagalpur said.

However, after the incident, senior officials on Friday ordered the suspension of the SHO Tatarpur police station. A probe has also been ordered against him, sources from Bhagalpur said.

Police probing the incident said that prima facie it appears that the family who lived in the house was involved in making illegal firecrackers. We are waiting for reports from FSL and bomb squad for further action.
While speaking to the media along with Soren after their meeting, Rao said no front of political parties had been formed so far. (Twitter: @TelanganaCMO)

HYDERABAD: Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao, who has been camping in Delhi since February 28, flew to Ranchi and visited his Jharkhand counterpart Hemanth Soren on Friday.

While speaking to the media along with Soren after their meeting, Rao said no front of political parties had been formed so far. "Some people say I am forming an anti-BJP or anti-Congress front. Some others say third front, fourth front. This is not an anti-BJP or anti-Congress front, no front has been formed so far, but what will be made, you will see in the coming days, Rao said.

This cannot be decided by one or two people. We will all meet shortly and decide what needs to be done in this regard. We have just begun and what will turn out, whether a front or something else, will be decided later," Rao said.

Chandrashekar Rao was accompanied by his wife Shobha, daughter and MLC K. Kavitha, former MP B. Vinod Kumar, Rajya Sabha member J. Santosh Kumar and tourism minister V. Srinivas Goud. Chandrashekar Rao also met Shibu Soren, father of Hemanth Soren, and president of Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM).

Chandrashekar Rao was peeved at the repeated questions posed by media personnel on forging an anti-BJP front. I am clever. You cannot get anything out of me with these questions. But whatever I say, I say it with a good heart and intention. We want a better country and better development for the benefit of all the people," Rao remarked.

He said one did not need to be hasty in drawing conclusions at this stage as this was an effort to take India on the right path of development. He stated that his effort for unification of like-minded forces was for the development of the country as it needed to progress on all fronts. Chandrashekar Rao stated that even seven decades after Independence, India had not achieved the desired development that China and a few other countries could achieve. He said the onus was on every citizen to rectify it and he was meeting several leaders in this regard. "We are very clear. We need to lead this country to a new direction and take a new path. We have triggered a discussion in this direction," he said.
Washington: It seems like Taiwanese tech-company HTC might be looking to bring a flagship Android phone as early as next month.

According to GSM Arena, the confirmation for the news was given by HTC Vive Asia-Pacific GM Charles Huang at an HTC event part of MWC 2022.

HTC's new flagship would be the first of its kind since the HTC U12+ from back in 2018. The upcoming HTC flagship will focus on VR and AR with deep integration to HTC's own open-source metaverse platform dubbed Viveverse.

As per GSM Arena, it would be interesting to see how HTC fares given that it sold a large chunk of its smartphone business to Google back in 2018 and has since been releasing a few low-end and mid-range Android phones in limited markets.

Click on Deccan Chronicle Technology and Science for the latest news and reviews. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter.
Addressing a rally in Ghazipur, Union Home Minister Amit Shah said the BJP government has worked to free Uttar Pradesh from the clutches of mafias. On Friday, while Modi continued taking digs at the Opposition, Congress's Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra were seen offering prayers in Varanasi in an apparent 'Hindutva' push. The last phase of Uttar Pradesh and Manipur election will be conducted on Monday.
Home rental company Airbnb Inc on Thursday became the latest big global firm to halt operations in Russia as Western sanctions build against Moscow for invading Ukraine.

Chief Executive Officer Brian Chesky tweeted the suspension, which also includes Russian ally Belarus. It aligns his company with other major Western names including General Motors Co , Boeing Co and Alphabet Inc's Google.

"People are booking Airbnbs in Ukraine they don't intend to stay in just to help Hosts," Chesky added, noting a way some outsiders have found to send financial support to Ukrainians.

Follow live updates on Russia-Ukraine crisis, here

Airbnb, which is recovering from a pandemic-induced lull, has forecast bumper first-quarter results on strong demand in the United States and longer stays by guests.

It did not immediately respond to a request for additional details on the suspensions in Russia and Belarus. Europe, the Middle East and Africa is Airbnb's second-biggest market after North America.

Shares of the short-term home rental company were down 1.4% before the bell.

Airbnb said on Monday its non-profit arm would offer free, temporary housing for up to 100,000 refugees fleeing Ukraine.

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The National Stock Exchange (NSE) of India, the country's largest bourse, began a search on Friday for a new chief executive as it grapples with accusations of governance lapses that have long delayed an initial public offering (IPO).

The effort comes after the market regulator penalised former chief executive Chitra Ramkrishna, among others, following an investigation that showed she had sought advice for years from an outsider she described as a Himalayan yogi.

In a newspaper advertisement, the NSE specified that candidates must have a "track record of strengthening corporate governance" and a minimum of 25 years of experience.

Having led an organisation through an IPO will be an added advantage, added the advertisement, which showed that executive search firm Korn Ferry is assisting in the task.

The NSE did not immediately respond to a request from Reuters for comment on the advertisement.

Also read: Centre looking into governance lapses that happened at NSE: Sitharaman

India's market regulator has said NSE and its board were aware of the interactions with the controversial adviser, but had chosen to "keep the matter under wraps".

In response to public criticism, NSE said it was "committed to highest standards of governance and transparency", and described the issue as being "almost six to nine years old".

The exchange's plan to go public in 2017 was derailed by accusations that some officials provided high frequency traders unfair access to speed up algorithmic trading.

Its current chief executive, Vikram Limaye, is set to end his five-year term in July.

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Corporate actions to censure Russia after its invasion of Ukraine vary widely and include some measures required by law and some voluntary, with comments ranging from harsh condemnations to more measured promises to review business in the country.

Here are some actions by large multi-national companies:

Leaving Russia

Energy companies led by BP, Shell and Exxon Mobil are promising to sell Russia stakes and exit the country. Among many others, Accenture, with 2,300 employees in Russia, said it would discontinue business and Mercedes-Benz Group said it plans to spin off its stake in Russia's Kamaz.

Halted Services

Boeing has cut sales and support for aircraft, saying it was and would follow US sanctions. Washington's export rules were changed to clamp down, particularly on technology that could be used by the military, affecting a broad swath of industry, such as PC maker Dell Technologies, which has stopped sales to Russia. Russia has banned Western airlines from Russian space.

United Parcel Service Inc and FedEx Corp, two of the world's largest logistics companies, halted delivery service to Russia and Ukraine. Travel booking software provider Sabre Corp said it has terminated its distribution agreement with Aeroflot, hurting the Russian flag carrier's ability to sell tickets.

Closed and opened stores

Clothing retailer H&M, car companies including GM and BMW as well as spirits maker Diageo and motorcycle maker Harley Davidson are among global companies that are not selling. Most are not exporting goods to Russia, which would be difficult given decisions by shipping companies to drop Russian service. Nike and IKEA , a Swedish furniture retailer with a chain in Russia, are temporarily closing their stores.

Also Read  Big tech grapples with Russian state media, propaganda

By contrast, restaurateurs Burger King and Papa John's underscored that the restaurants flying their flags in Russia were owned by local businesses. "We do not have plans to ask the independent franchisee who owns and operates Papa Johns stores in Russia to close their stores," the pizza maker said.

Halted production

Ford has discontinued operations, but its joint venture partner still has a factory in the country. Many other automakers, including France's Renault and Japan's Toyota Motor Corp, have described shutting local manufacturing, some noting a lack of supplies.

Harsh words

Many major global brands are using rarely heard corporate language that clearly blames Russia for attacking Ukraine. Apple and Ford used very similar language to describe deep concern about the invasion of Russia. Occidental Petroleum Chief Executive Vicki Hollub labelled the invasion "insane and inhumane" in comments made a day after the invasion.

Shock actions

Oil company BP's decision to sell out of Russia at a cost of as much as $25 billion was a shock for an industry that has worked very closely with Russia. Condemnations by Apple and Disney were also unusual.

On the sidelines

Many commodity traders such as Cargill are not saying much. Big consumer brands include Nestle, Procter & Gamble, Pepsi, Oreo-cookie maker Mondelez have yet to comment on the status of their operations in Russia.

McDonald's Corp, which has 847 restaurants in Russia, 84 per cent of which are company-owned, has not commented on its operations.

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A harvester is seen at Wanbao rice farm in Gaza province, Mozambique, April 4, 2018. (Xinhua)

by Xinhua writer Guo Yage

BEIJING, March 3 (Xinhua) -- Milagre Abel Massingue was piloting a drone on his farm in Xai Xai city in southern Mozambique. He set up pre-mapped routes on his cell phone, and the drone started to spray pesticides accordingly.

The buzzing machine does farmwork more precisely and efficiently than the 44-year-old farmer could do alone. With the help of the China-developed BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS), it could spray pesticides over about one hectare of farmland per hour, 25 times faster than manual operation.

While technological innovation nurtures modern agriculture, it has changed the life of Massingue and many other farmers on the Wanbao Mozambique rice farm. Through high-tech innovations such as the BDS, the farm has seen a 13.6-percent increase in crop yield in the last three years.

"I like what we have been doing here," said Massingue, a father of three, who has moved to a cement dwelling from a thatched roof house and sent his eldest son to college. "We are living a decent life because we managed to earn something through this project."

The Mozambican farm is just one of many projects in which China shares its technology with its worldwide partners to stimulate economic vitality. Rewards are reaped on both sides.

A carrier rocket carrying the last satellite of the BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS) blasts off from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in southwest China's Sichuan Province, June 23, 2020. (Photo by Hu Xujie/Xinhua)

Over the past decade, China has stepped up technology innovation to power growth, both domestically and globally, practicing "Xiconomics," the economic philosophy of Chinese President Xi Jinping.

The BDS eyes rapid development for various industrial applications in China. It is also used for land mapping, transportation, disaster relief and mitigation, precise agriculture, forestry and small ports in over 120 countries and regions.

The Chinese president has reiterated that innovation is the basis for the development of productive forces, said Diego Pautasso, visiting professor at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil.

"China's modernization is a case of great success in this direction, producing notable effects in improving people's living conditions," he said.





ECONOMIC ARTERY

About 150 km away from Beijing, a group of engineers use drones to patrol power grids of the ultra-high-voltage (UHV) substation in Baoding city over BDS-defined paths, similar to what Massingue has done on his farm.

The super grids transmitted electricity from a renewable energy farm, about 310 km away from Baoding, and powered the Beijing Winter Olympics.

The grids of UHV projects have greater transmission capacity over long distances and can significantly reduce power losses compared with ordinary power lines.

Using the world's most advanced power transmission technology, the UHV provides a solution to solving resource imbalances in China, the first country to fully grasp the technology and put it into commercial use. It sends excess electricity from China's resources-rich west to the more developed east.



As of 2020, the UHV power projects have delivered 2.1 trillion kWh of electricity since the first station was put into operation in 2009 in China. The technology has not only fostered new engines of economic growth but also helped the country fulfill its carbon commitments by increasing the transmission of electricity generated by green energy.

"China's economy has enjoyed rapid growth over the last few decades," said John McLean, chair of the Institute of Directors for the City of London. "To continue the growth and sustain the momentum, there has been a significant investment in scientific and technological innovation which will increase GDP (gross domestic product) and maintain China as the powerhouse for Asia."

For Xi, innovation should never be developed and applied behind closed doors. "Let the power of innovation drive us to upgrade our economic, energy and industrial structures, and make sure that a sound environment is there to buttress sustainable economic and social development worldwide," said the Chinese leader.

Photo taken on Dec. 5, 2021 shows a technician working at the construction site of the Chongqing section of the "Baihetan-Jiangsu" ultra-high-voltage (UHV) power transmission project over the Yangtze River in southwest China's Chongqing Municipality. (Xinhua/Huang Wei)

In Brazil, a country also abundant in energy but limited by unequal distribution, a UHV power transmission lane stretching from north to south has significantly met energy needs and enhanced efficiency.

With the help of China, it is delivering electricity to where it is most needed, like an artery of Brazil's economy, bringing benefits to 22 million Brazilians, or 10 percent of the country's population.

"China's cooperation with Brazil in terms of technology and innovation in a variety of sectors has already been helping the development of the Brazilian economy," said Jose Ricardo dos Santos Luz Junior, CEO of Sao Paulo-based company LIDE China.





PEOPLE-CENTERED APPROACH

During the past decade, the Chinese president has been championing a people-centered development philosophy to meet the people's ever-growing needs for a better life.

Innovation in energy transmission is an example of raising living standards. So too is China's flourishing digital economy.

In southwestern China, Guizhou province was once home to the country's biggest poverty-stricken population.

As China was pooling efforts to digitalize its economy, the province was determined to build a big-data industry utilizing its climate and geographical advantages.

Today, the province is among the regions with the most mega-data centers globally. In 2021, the digital economy contributed about 34 percent to Guizhou's GDP and helped lift 9.23 million people out of poverty.

A staff member checks equipment at a data center of China Mobile in southwest China's Guizhou Province, May 24, 2021. (Xinhua/Ou Dongqu)

Developing a digital economy is a strategic choice for grasping the new opportunities in the new round of revolution in science and technology and industrial transformation, Xi said when presiding over a study session of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee last year.

"The philosophy of President Xi Jinping about high-quality development through technology innovation can be already seen in China's move by investing a lot on research and development," Luz said.

In the Global Innovation Index, China moved up in the rankings from 14th in 2020 to 12th in 2021 among 132 economies. Regarding efforts to digitalize its economy, China has ranked second in the world for years, according to statistics from the Global Digital Economy Conference.

Meanwhile, with China's help, many developing countries have had their first taste of success in digital transformation with the development of e-commerce. Sitoyo Lopokoiyit, CEO of Africa's leading fintech platform operator M-Pesa Africa, said that secure, stable and innovative technology provided by Chinese companies has transformed millions of lives in Africa.

"As an example for myself, my family is 550 km from Nairobi. And it meant taking a whole day's journey to go and give my mother money every other time," Lopokoiyit said. The technology "changed it all and has been key in driving financial inclusion across the African continent."

M-pesa payment information is displayed at the checkout counter of a coffee shop in Nairobi, capital of Kenya, Sept. 16, 2021. (Xinhua/Zhang Yu)

From cooperation on soybean breeding with Thailand to collaboration with Europe on optical fibers, from providing communication services via satellite in Algeria to jointly exploring new perspectives on prevention and treatment of cancer in China's space station, China has been honoring its commitments to promoting common prosperity through cooperation on innovations that change the lives of people, like Massingue and Lopokoiyit.

Following Xi's vision for development featuring innovative, coordinated, green, open, and shared growth, China has grown its economy in a way that benefits its people and people around the world.

"These development concepts did not emerge from the ether," Xi said, "they came from the domestic and foreign experience of development, and from analysis of both domestic and foreign trends in development." 
By Vrishti Beniwal, Suvashree Ghosh and Baiju Kalesh

The mega initial public offering of Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) of India is set to be delayed into the next financial year amid market swings triggered by Russias invasion of Ukraine, people with knowledge of the matter said.

Bankers and officials are preparing to shift the listing of the state-run insurer to after the current fiscal year, which ends in March, the people said, asking not to be identified because the matter isnt public. A formal announcement could be expected this week or next, they added, with one person saying the sale may happen as soon as April if market volatility eases.

LICs underwriters have seen muted interest during early meetings with potential anchor investors, according to the people. Many fund managers have been wary of making major commitments amid the market volatility, the people said.

A finance ministry spokesman didnt immediately respond to a call on his mobile phone. LIC declined to comment.

LICs IPO will be the biggest to be impacted by the war, which has wiped out 6 per cent of BP Plcs market value and over $3 trillion of global market capitalisation since tensions started rising on February 18.

Also Read  LIC appoints insurance veteran Sunil Agrawal as CFO ahead of mega IPO

Prime Minister Narendra Modi had sought to raise as much as Rs 65.4 lakh crore ($8.7 billion) from the deal, Bloomberg reported earlier, cash that is crucial to plug a gap in the budget deficit for the year through March 31.

India Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said this week she wouldnt mind taking another look at the timing of the LIC offering, though ideally, shed like to go ahead with it. Even if it doesnt pursue the share sale on the original timeline, the government is still hoping to complete the IPO in the next few months, the people said.

The deferment will be another setback for India, which has massively scaled down its asset sale target after the delay in the privatisation of other state-run companies, including Bharat Petroleum Corp Ltd. Modis administration had hoped to shrink the shortfall to 6.9 per cent of gross domestic product, with the LIC IPO accounting for some 3 per cent of revenue.

The government had also pencilled in a record market borrowing for the financial year starting April 1.

India had offered to sell a 5 per cent stake, or about 316 million shares in the insurer in what was seen as Indias Aramco moment. Just like the Gulf oil giants $29.4 billion listing, the worlds largest LICs debut would test the depth of the nations capital markets and the global appetite for the state-owned entity.

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By Antony Sguazzin

Moderna Inc is heading for a clash with the South African government and the World Health Organization (WHO) over patent claims that vaccine advocates say could threaten the continents access to Covid-19 shots.

Medecins Sans Frontiers and other health and relief groups are calling on the vaccine-maker to abandon three patent applications filed years ago in South Africa, saying they could impede a WHO-backed effort to make messenger RNA shots for low-income countries at a hub in Cape Town.

The patents effectively give Moderna the right to stop anyone from making or selling an mRNA vaccine in South Africa, said Charles Gore, the director of the Medicines Patent Pool, which is helping the WHO establish the mRNA hub. Other countries have already shot down similar applications from the company, he said. The very broad patent has not been accepted anywhere else, Gore said in an interview.

Also Read  Covid-19: mRNA vaccine access carves up world into haves and have-nots

Moderna has already rebuffed Afrigen Biologics & Vaccines, part of the mRNA hub, when it asked for help making a low-cost version of the companys vaccine for distribution in poor nations, some of which have immunized just 0.5 per cent of their populations. While Afrigen now says it can make the shot based on publicly available information, Modernas patent filings in South Africa hang over the humanitarian effort.

These patents and applications pose barriers to production and supply of mRNA vaccines by alternative developers in South Africa, MSF and the Peoples Health Movement said in a technical brief dated January this year. Particularly, they create uncertainties for any outputs of the Covid-19 mRNA vaccine technology transfer hub.

Vaccine access

Moderna has said it wont enforce its patents during the pandemic. The company said in a statement that its committed to continuing to be part of the solution in terms of the equitable access to Covid-19 vaccines and its intellectual property wont create a barrier to equitable mRNA Covid vaccine access in those countries most in need.

Yet vaccine advocates still see problems in the companys stance: Moderna can determine on its own when it sees the pandemic as having ended, at which point it could potentially try to legally block copycat vaccines. They say Moderna may require Afrigen to pay for a commercial licence, boosting the cost of the shots for some of the worlds poorest nations.

Our preference is a royalty-free voluntary license for low- and middle-income countries or a revocation of that claim, said Petro Terblanche, Afrigens managing director. Whether they will is a different question. Its a really bad claim. The discussion will continue and the pressure will continue.

While the hub will focus initially on a Covid-19 shot, its ultimate purpose is to target the diseases that plague Africa such as HIV, tuberculosis and malaria with mRNA shots it plans to develop. The patents could block those from being produced, said Terblanche.

The root of the problem lies in South Africas patent office, which accepts applications without examination as long as the paperwork is in order and the fees are paid, said Jetane Charsley, a director of regulatory and compliance affairs at the governments National Intellectual Property Management Office. In most other countries patent applications are examined and rejected when theyre too broad.

Also Read  Reinfection with different subtypes of Omicron possible, study finds

The countrys Department of Trade, Industry and Competition is working toward a substantiative examination of patent filings through new legislation. The department has hired and is beginning to train patent examiners, said Charsley.

Modernas patents, which will start expiring in 2034, cover the method of production of an mRNA vaccine and gene sequences used in that vaccine, MSF said in its technical brief. The company has also applied for some additional patents related to mRNA vaccines. Similar claims have either lapsed or been rejected elsewhere including China, Israel, Australia and Canada, MSF said.

Various South African government departments are working with the WHO, the mRNA hub and the Medicines Patent Pool to try to resolve these issues, said Nicholas Crisp, deputy director-general for the countrys Department of Health. If a solution cant be found, the government could potentially seek to revoke the patents or issue a compulsory license, allowing the hub to produce an mRNA vaccine, according to Gore. Both could potentially lead to lengthy and costly procedures.

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Facebook and multiple media websites were partially inaccessible in Russia on Friday, as authorities crack down on critical voices and fighting rages in Ukraine.

AFP journalists in Moscow were not able to access Facebook, as well as the sites of media outlets Meduza, Deutsche Welle, RFE-RL and the BBC's Russian-language service. The monitoring NGO GlobalCheck also said the sites were partially down.

On its Telegram account, independent outlet Meduza said that its site was no longer available to "some of its users" in Russia, but added that it had not received notification from the authorities about a block.

Since Moscow's invasion of Ukraine last week, Russian authorities have stepped up pressure against independent media, though press freedoms in the country were already rapidly waning.

Also read: Ukraine nuclear plant on fire after Russia shelling

Earlier this week, Russia's prosecutor general ordered the country's media watchdog to "restrict access" to the liberal Ekho Moskvy radio station and the independent Dozhd TV channel.

Those shutdowns were due to the outlets refusing to toe the official line on the war in Ukraine.

According to the Kremlin, the action in neighbouring Ukraine is a military operation, not an invasion, designed to protect Russia from the West and Russian speakers from "genocide".

Dozens of media workers and outlets -- including Dozhd -- have recently been designated "foreign agents" by authorities.

A term with Soviet-era undertones, the status obliges those hit with the label to disclose sources of funding and label publications -- including social media posts -- with a tag or face fines.

A bill providing for up to 15 years in prison for any publication of "fake news" concerning the Russian armed forces will be examined in the Duma during an extraordinary session on Friday.
Chicago wheat futures jumped nearly 7 per cent on Friday, taking the weekly gain to more than 40 per cent as Russia's invasion of Ukraine entered a second week, curbing supplies from one the world's top grain exporting regions.

Corn rose to its highest in a decade, while soybeans edged higher.

"We didn't expect such a sharp rally in prices," said one Singapore-based grains trader at an international trading company which sells wheat to millers in Asia.

"Buyers are not making any big purchases as of now but eventually they will have to return to the market to cover supplies."

The most-active wheat contract on the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) rose 6.6 per cent to $12.09 a bushel, as of 0410 GMT, the highest since March 2008.

Corn gained 2.4 per cent to $7.66 a bushel and soybeans added 0.2 per cent to $16.70-3/4 a bushel.

For the week, wheat has risen 40.1 per cent, corn is up 17 per cent and soybeans have added 5 per cent.

Ukrainian ports will remain closed until Russia's invasion ends, the head of Ukraine's Maritime Administration said on Monday, adding that the port of Mariupol has sustained damage from Russian shelling.

Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, calling its actions a "special operation".

Unprecedented Western financial sanctions against Moscow have reduced supplies from Russia, the world's biggest wheat exporter.

Russia and Ukraine account for about 29 per cent of global wheat exports, 19 per cent of corn exports and 80 per cent of exports of sunflower oil, which competes with soyoil.

Demand for US corn perked up as the US Department of Agriculture said exporters sold 337,000 tonnes to unknown destinations for delivery in the 2021/22 marketing year.

Some traders predict the Ukraine conflict could shift up to 300 million bushels of additional demand to the United States, said Karl Setzer, a commodity risk analyst for AgriVisor.

US President Joe Biden's administration is studying whether waiving biofuel blending mandates could help offset a surge in prices for key food ingredients like corn and soyoil following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, two sources familiar with the matter said.

Commodity funds were net buyers of CBOT corn, soybean and soymeal futures contracts on Thursday and net sellers of soyoil, traders said.

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The cancellation of Prime Minister Narendra Modis scheduled visit to Bengaluru in December has proved to be a blessing in disguise.

The change of plan helped save four eucalyptus trees that were certain to be axed for the landing of Modis helicopter on the campus of the National Law School of India University (NLSIU) in western Bengaluru.

Documents accessed by DH show that authorities had issued orders for tree felling in November 2021, weeks before Modi was scheduled to inaugurate the new building of the Dr BR Ambedkar School of Economics (BASE) University Bengaluru on December 6.

The permission had been sought on the grounds that the trees would obstruct helicopter landing at the NLSIU helipad, the documents show.

The deputy conservator of forests (Bengaluru Urban) had given the permission by citing the high court order in the writ petition 17841/2018, which states: The tree officer can give permission for chopping of the trees in case they are posing threat to the lives of people or property.

After the tree cutting, the timber was to be moved to the regional forest office in Kaggalipura.

Modis visit had also spurred the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) to repair badly damaged roads around Jnanabharathi at a cost of Rs 1.5 crore.

Following the cancellation of Modis visit, the inauguration of the 43-acre BASE University campus was also put off.

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The presence of a large number of people carrying banners and posters with slogans written in Bengali at his joint election meeting with West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee in Varanasi, the Lok Sabha constituency of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, on Thursday must have heartened Samajwadi Party (SP) president Akhilesh Yadav, who was nurturing dreams to make a dent into the saffron bastion.

After all, Varanasi had a large presence of Bengali voters and their support could be crucial in deciding the outcome of the polls there. A large number of Bengalis had made Varanasi their home in the past few decades. Their concentration was more in Bangali Tola, Bhadaini, Assi, Bhelupur and its adjoining localities.

The electoral significance of the Bengali voters could be comprehended from the fact that BJP leader Shyamdeo Roy Chowdhury, had won the Varanasi South assembly seat in seven consecutive assembly polls till 2017. In the previous polls, Chowdhary was dropped and replaced by Neelkanth Tewari. Tewari had won by a margin of over 17 thousand votes.

As Chowdhary showed signs of rebellion, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had to intervene to placate him and assure him that he would be ''accommodated suitably'' after the elections. Chowdhary had not been very active in politics since then.

Though the seat had been a BJP stronghold since 1989, the SP, in a bid to dent this saffron bastion, fielded a local priest Kishen Dixit, whose family was associated with the famous Mahamrityunjay Temple in the city. Dixit, who himself was the 'Mahant' (head) of the Temple, appears to be giving a tough fight to the BJP nominee and UP minister Neelkanth Tewari.

Tewari had, a few days ago, sought forgiveness of the electorate of the constituency for ''not being able to serve'' them effectively and sought another chance from them to rectify his mistakes.

The locals feel that a shift in the support of the Bengali voters could tilt the scale in favour of the SP on this seat, which also had 80 thousand Muslims, who were considered to be the core vote bank of the party. ''We are already in a strong position here...support from the Bengali voters will make our win a certainty,'' said Dheeraj Yadav, a resident of Godaulia in the town.

No wonder, Mamata, who was initially scheduled to spend two days in Varanasi, decided not only to extend her stay by a day, but also agreed to hold a roadshow with Akhilesh in the town on Friday. Her roadshow would also be passing through the areas dominated by the Bengali voters.

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Party hopping before or during elections is a common feature in Uttar Pradesh, but not all leaders are fortunate enough to get a bigger and more visible role in the new party.

The majority of these leaders are now left with no option but to campaign for other candidates.

The luckiest defector in this scenario has been former Union Minister Jitin Prasada, who joined the BJP, months before the polls, got a seat in the Vidhan Parishad and was then inducted into the Yogi Adityanath ministry.

Follow live updates on Assembly Elections 2022, here

Initially, touted as the new Brahmin face of the BJP in the state, Prasada is now restricted to campaigning for the party in and around his home district Shahjahanpur.

Former Union Minister R P N Singh, who joined the BJP in the midst of elections, is another defector who is not contesting the elections.

Singh is also not seen campaigning for the BJP outside his home district Kushinagar.

The biggest example of a defector being left out in the cold is Aparna Yadav, the younger daughter-in-law of Mulayam Singh Yadav, who left her Samajwadi Party to join the BJP in January.

A claimant for the Lucknow Cantt Assembly seat, Aparna was not given the ticket. Though she put up a brave front saying that the party's decision was best, sources said that she was sorely disappointed at being denied a ticket.

Aparna is now campaigning for the BJP and has ruffled a number of feathers in her family with statements against the Samajwadi Party.

A senior BJP functionary, meanwhile, said, "In most cases, those who come in from other parties are given a cooling period before being given the opportunity to contest elections. It is only in some exceptional cases that tickets are given to those who join the party. Besides, for those who join the BJP, contesting elections is not necessarily a priority."

In the Samajwadi Party too, a similar situation is seen.

BJP MLA Rakesh Rathore, who joined the SP just before the elections, was not given a ticket to contest his Sitapur seat.

Imran Masood, a senior Congress leader, was also left out in the cold after he joined the SP.

Masood was later pacified and asked to campaign for the party.

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In an apparent 'hindutva' push ahead of the last phase of the Uttar Pradesh assembly polls in the eastern region, former Congress president Rahul Gandhi and his sister and party general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra on Friday paid obeisance at the famous Kashi Vishwanath Temple in Varanasi, the Lok Sabha constituency of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Rahul and Priyanka performed 'puja' at the Temple in accordance with the religious traditions. A video of the duo performing the puja also went viral on social media.

Sporting 'tripunda' (tilaka on the forehead), Rahul and Priyanka walked all the way to the Temple from its entrance amid shouts of slogans by hundreds of Congress supporters.

Also read | Name game in Ambedkar Nagar: 'Mulayam', 'Manmohan' vote for BJP

The visit to the Kashi Vishwanath Temple assumes significance as it comes two days before polling in nine districts of Poorvanchal, including Varanasi, on Monday and is being viewed in the political circles as an attempt to counter the BJP's charge that the grand old party indulged in appeasement of the Muslims.

''Almost all the nine districts where polling is scheduled to be held on Monday, are very close to Varanasi...a large number of people from these districts visit the Kashi Vishwanath Temple regularly,'' said a Varanasi-based political analyst while speaking to DH.

Priyanka, who was also the in-charge of the state party unit, had earlier taken a dip in the holy waters at the holy 'Sangam' (the confluence of Ganga, Yamuna and the mythical Saraswati rivers) on the occasion of 'Mauni Amavasya' (a scared day on which millions take dip in holy rivers across India) at Prayagraj, and had also visited the famous 'Mankameshwar Temple'.

Earlier, the Congress leader had paid obeisance at the famous Shakambhari Devi Temple near Saharanpur.

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In Uttar Pradesh Assembly Election 2022, Allahabad West Assembly Constituency (AC No. 261) in Allahabad district goes to polls on February 27, 2022.

Uttar Pradesh Election Result 2022: Allahabad West Assembly constituency result will be declared on March 10, 2022.

In Uttar Pradesh Assembly Election 2017, BJP candidate Sidharth Nath Singh won Allahabad West constituency seat securing 85518 votes, beating SP candidate Richa Singh by a margin of 25336 votes. In 2017, the total voters in Allahabad West constituency were 418849. Of that, 1,97,033 voters cast their ballot visiting polling booths or exercising their voting franchise through postal ballots.

Use the map below to get the latest updates, winners and losers in Allahabad West assembly constituency.
In Uttar Pradesh Assembly Election 2022, Karachhana Assembly Constituency (AC No. 260) in Allahabad district goes to polls on February 27, 2022.

Uttar Pradesh Election Result 2022: Karachhana Assembly constituency result will be declared on March 10, 2022.

In Uttar Pradesh Assembly Election 2017, SP candidate Ujjwal Raman Singh won Karachhana constituency seat securing 80806 votes, beating BJP candidate Piyush Ranjan Nishad Sonu by a margin of 15024 votes. In 2017, the total voters in Karachhana constituency were 331690. Of that, 1,96,426 voters cast their ballot visiting polling booths or exercising their voting franchise through postal ballots.

Use the map below to get the latest updates, winners and losers in Karachhana assembly constituency.
Cast: Surya Sharma, Dibyendu Bhattacharya, Aanchal Singh, Harsh Chhaya and Meiyang Chang

Rating: 3.5/5

Platform: SonyLiv

Director Aashish R Shula's latest release Undekhi 2 is a reasonably compelling thriller that works mainly because of Surya Sharma's intense performance and its riveting screenplay. The series, which starts off where the first season had ended, revolves around what happens when police officer Barun Ghosh decides to hunt down the arrogant Rinku in order to settle a past score. As the story progresses, it becomes clear that nothing is what it seems as all characters have their fair share of secrets. The basic storyline is quite easy to relate to as it explores the quest for power and vengeance, a universal theme that was previously used in Mirzapur and even the cult show Game of Thrones.

Undekhi 2 reaches its potential as the chilling screenplay does justice to the inherently engaging premise. The series starts off as a slow burner as the opening episode re-introduces one to the main characters and highlights the complex equations between them. The writers succeed in recreating the aura of the first season courtesy of the scenes between Rinku and his 'Papaji'. Similarly, the track involving the Saloni and Sashwat adds the cat and mouse element, the hallmark of the first season, to Undekhi 2. The series features a liberal dose of violence but, just like in Mirzapur, the bloodshed isn't glorified. The same applies to the strong language used on the show as it gels with the situation. In other words, there is absolutely no sensationalism.

The confrontation scenes hit the right notes with their organic intensity. A key sequence involving Harsh Chhaya's Papaji and a lawyer, in particular, stands out because of the realistic presentation. The makers also need to be lauded for the way they have handled Aanchal Singh's character. Teji's graph takes one by surprise, which makes it quite hard-hitting.

That said, Undekhi 2 is not a flawless attempt at storytelling by any stretch of the imagination as the new additions to the series namely Meiyang Chang and Nandish Sandhu, don't make the desired impact as their characters haven't been fleshed out as well as expected. Moreover, some of the twists feel a bit predictable. These, however, are not major issues in the grand scheme of things.

Coming to the performances, Surya shines as Rinku, the character that helped him find a foothold in the industry. The actor uses his eyes to bring out the Atwal scion's unhinged nature. His approach here is similar to the one he adopted in Hostages where he played the role of a kidnapper. Harsh plays the loud and aggressive Papaji with effortless ease. His intensity in several intense scenes is hard to miss. Dibyendu Bhattacharya is sincere but does not make the type of impact he made in the first season. He, however, deserves full marks for mixing it up as this character is completely different from the ones played by him in Criminal Justice and the recently-released Rocket Boys. Meiyang and Nandish deserved better. The former Indian Idol contestant, however, shines in a slick action scene.

Aanchal sinks her teeth into a well-written character, which goes from being 'in danger' to (occasionally) being 'the danger'.

Undekhi 2 features several strong dialogues that add depth to the characters while highlighting the gravity of the situation in question. It features lines in Hindi, Punjabi and Bengali, which makes it a pan-India offering. The action scenes are raw and realistic. The other technical aspects are up to the mark.
The White House has imposed new sanctions on 50 Russian oligarchs, including Kremlin press secretary Dmitry Peskovt, and their families in the latest attempt to target President Vladimir Putin for ordering an invasion of Ukraine.

President Joe Biden said the sanctions will target those who line their pockets with the Russian peoples money as the Ukrainian people seek shelter from airstrikes.

The new penalties will cut members of the Russian elite, their families and close associates, from the US financial system. Today, Im announcing that were adding dozens of names to the list, including one of Russias wealthiest billionaires. Im banning travel to America by more than 50 Russian oligarchs, their families, and their close associates, Biden told reporters at the top of his Cabinet meeting at the White House on Thursday.

Also Read  Harsh words, tough action: How companies have rebuffed Russia

The US, he said, continues to impose very severe economic sanctions on Russian President Vladimir Putin and all those folks around him, choking off access to technology as well as cutting off access to the global financial system. It's had a profound impact already. And the goal was to maximise the impact on Putin and Russia and to minimise the harm on us and our allies and friends around the world. Our interest is in maintaining the strongest unified economic impact campaign on Putin in all of history, and I think we're well on the way to doing that, Biden said.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken, in a statement, announced the names of some of the wealthiest Russian elites close to Putin who has been subject to the latest sanctions. They are Alisher Usmanov, Boris Arkady, and Igor Rotenberg, and their family members and entities connected to them.

Among them is Dmitry Peskov, a prominent spokesperson for the Kremlin, as well as Yevgeniy Prigozhin, a wealthy Russian businessman known as Putins chef, NBC News reported. These actions also target influential Russian executives: Nikolai Tokarev, President of Transneft; Sergei Chemezov, CEO of Rostec; and Igor Shuvalov, Chairman of VEB.RF. These individuals, part of President Putins inner circle, have enriched themselves at the expense of the Russian people, and their support has facilitated Putins war of choice against Ukraine, Blinken said.

In addition to them, 33 other Russian individuals were added to the sanctions list. The Department of State imposed substantial sanctions on 22 defence-related firms. These far-reaching sanctions target entities that develop and produce fighter aircraft, infantry fighting vehicles, electronic warfare systems, missiles, and unmanned aerial vehicles for Russias military. These sanctions strike at the core of Putins war machine, Blinken said.

Also Read  Fire at Ukraine nuclear plant extinguished, Kyiv claims 'nuclear terror'

Further, the Department of Commerce also imposed export controls on oil and gas extraction equipment that support Russias refining capacity. Because a significant portion of the Russian governments revenue comes from the sale of oil and gas, these actions will degrade Russias ability to raise revenue to support and sustain its military aggression. These measures also align U.S. export controls in this area with those of the European Union, Blinken said.

Later in the day, Secretary of State Blinken spoke with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba. They discussed the remarkable resolve and actions taken by nations around the world to support the Government of Ukraine and the Ukrainian people in the face of Putins war against Ukraine. They also discussed additional security, economic, and humanitarian support needs, State Department Spokesperson Ned Price said in a readout of the call.

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki told reporters that we don't have a strategic interest in reducing the global supply of energy.

That would raise prices at the gas pump for the American people, around the world, because it would reduce the supply available. It's as simple as less supply raises prices. That is certainly a big factor for the president at this moment. It also has the potential to pad the pockets of President Putin, which is exactly what we are not trying to do. So, as the president has said, we carved out payments for energy, trade, and transport from our financial sanctions with that in mind, Psaki said.

The US, she said, has been taking steps to degrade Russia's status as a leading energy supplier over time. That includes, of course, shutting down Nord Stream 2 or preventing Nord Stream 2 from operating. That's why we're surging LNG to Europe to help accelerate its diversification from Russian gas, she said.

Also Read  Wheat jumps 40% this week to 14-year high on Black Sea supply woes

Meanwhile, the US said that with Ukraines agreement, 45 countries have invoked the OSCE Moscow Mechanism. This action will establish an expert mission to address our grave concerns regarding the humanitarian and human rights impacts on the people of Ukraine caused by Russias further invasion with the support of Belarus, State Department Spokesperson Ned Price said.

The OSCE expert mission, he said, will work impartially to establish the facts and circumstances surrounding possible contraventions of OSCE commitments and violations and abuses of international human rights law and international humanitarian law by Russias forces. The expert mission will prepare a report that will be shared with all OSCE participating States and relevant accountability mechanisms, including national, regional, and international courts and tribunals. The United States and our partners will hold Russia and its forces accountable for all human rights abuses, violations of international humanitarian law, war crimes, and crimes against humanity they committed in Ukraine, Price said.

The UK also announced further sanctions against two Russian oligarchs on Thursday. The European Union announced this week that it would sanction more than two dozen prominent Russians.

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Russian forces advanced deeper into southern Ukraine Thursday, appearing intent on seizing the countrys entire Black Sea coast, as the number of people fleeing Ukraine reached 1 million.

Ukrainians, bolstered by a huge influx of weapons from NATO countries, have put up surprisingly effective resistance, while Moscows forces have run into a host of logistical problems, according to Western military and intelligence assessments.

But the Kremlin insisted in a statement that the war was going according to plan.

Russian forces surging out of Crimea cut off Mariupol, a port city to the east. To the west, where they seized the city of Kherson Wednesday, they advanced on the port of Mikolaiv, leaving them just 60 miles from Odessa, the largest city in the south.

Also read: NATO broke promises, ignored Russias concerns

In a second round of talks, Russia and Ukraine agreed to establish humanitarian corridors for civilians to evacuate the most dangerous areas, and to allow food and medicine to reach those places.

For eight years, President Vladimir Putin of Russia has been building what amounts to a massive military staging area in Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula he invaded and annexed from Ukraine in 2014, and forces stationed there appeared well equipped to charge out of their bases and seize swaths of southern Ukrainian territory the moment the order came.

Russias near-monopoly on naval power in the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov should have provided additional firepower to assist ground troops. Instead, their advance has been sluggish. While Russian forces have extensively shelled large cities like Kharkiv, Chernihiv and Kyiv, none have fallen to Moscows control.

Russians have seized a coastal corridor along the Sea of Azov, linking their forces in Crimea to those in southeastern Ukraine. In that stretch, only Mariupol held out Thursday.

Putin, acknowledging Russias war casualties for the first time, said Thursday that he would pay the equivalent of almost $50,000 to the family of each Russian soldier killed. Ukraines president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said 9,000 Russian troops had been killed, a day after Moscow said it had lost fewer than 500 troops.

Also read: Russia has suffered a crushing moral defeat

Such figures could not be verified, but even by the Russian count, it is already the bloodiest conflict for Russias military since the 1999-2000 Chechen war.

Nonetheless, the Kremlin, in a statement, said that its aims of ensuring a demilitarized and neutral Ukraine will be achieved no matter what.

Zelenskyy, in his first news conference since the invasion, expressed willingness to compromise but did not specify on what issues and held out little hope of reaching an agreement anytime soon. President Emmanuel Macron of France emerged pessimistic from a long phone conversation with Putin, according to an aide to Macron, who said the Russian leader seemed determined to control all of Ukraine.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi, said 1 million people had fled Ukraine for neighbors to the West, an increase of more than 300,000 from the day before.

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NATO's chief said on Friday the Western military alliance would not set up a no-fly zone over Ukraine nor send its troops there, but promised other help to Kyiv and urged President Vladimir Putin to end immediately Russia's invasion.

"This is President Putin's war, one he has chosen, planned and is waging against a peaceful country. We call on President Putin to stop this war immediately, withdrawal all his forces without conditions and engage in genuine diplomacy now," NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told a news conference.

Track live updates of Russia-Ukraine crisis here

After a meeting of NATO foreign ministers, Stoltenberg also said: "Allies agree we should not have NATO planes operating in Ukrainian air space or NATO troops on Ukraine's territory."

He said Russia's was in Ukraine was "horrific".

"At the same time, we have a responsibility as NATO allies to prevent this war from escalating beyond Ukraine because that would be even more dangerous, more devastating and would cause even more human suffering."

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British Prime Minister Boris Johnson accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of endangering all of Europe Friday, after invading Russian forces attacked a Ukrainian nuclear power plant.

"The Prime Minister said the reckless actions of President Putin could now directly threaten the safety of all of Europe," according to a Downing Street statement, adding that Johnson will seek an emergency UN Security Council meeting in the coming hours.

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Europe's largest nuclear power plant caught fire Friday after Russian strikes hit the Ukrainian facility, sparking concerns of a disaster. The fire was put out without any casualty or increase in radiation levels. Meanwhile, an Indian student was shot at in Kyiv while trying to get out of the capital. Russian President Vladimir Putin said Moscow's advance in Ukraine was "going to plan." Stay tuned to DH for the latest updates.
A German bakery is selling a "peace donut" to support Ukraine in a sweet way, with the pastries decorated in Ukrainian national colours to raise money for children forced to flee after Russia's invasion.

As Russia's campaign in Ukraine enters its second week, leaving hundreds of Ukrainian civilians killed and displacing more than a million, Huck bakery in Frankfurt started offering the donuts on Thursday.

Topped in blue and yellow frosting, the donuts are sold for one euro ($1.11) per piece and 100% of the money collected will be donated to Ukrainian children seeking refuge in Frankfurt.

"We thought we had to do something very quickly, unbureaucratically," bakery co-owner Tanja Huck said.

Also read: Ukraine war: Focus on airlift, not on political gains

"We decided to ... make an extra product that is not that expensive, so it is affordable for everyone and which you can take many with you to the office," Huck added.

The campaign seems to be successful with 600 pieces sold on Thursday morning at the bakery's 10 branches and 300 pre-orders for Friday.

"Yesterday, we only posted it very briefly on social media, then the first orders came in straight away, and by eight this morning most of the branches were sold out," Huck said.

"We didn't expect it to be so well received," she added.

Therese Rinschen-Piechocinski, a Polish woman living in Frankfurt, bought the solidarity pastry and was touched by the campaign.

"If they serve the cause, if they can help the really poor people who are also fighting for us, then I'm ready, I've already made a donation," Rinschen-Piechocinski said.
Up to a dozen explosions were heard in downtown Kyiv on Friday morning and air raid sirens wailed, in an apparent sign Russian missile strikes on and around the capital were intensifying.

Reuters witnesses in the centre of the city of 3.4 million people could not immediately confirm the cause of the blasts, but they were more frequent than in recent days and some were louder. There were no immediate reports of casualties.

While no major assault has been launched on Kyiv yet, the capital has been shelled and Russian forces unleashed fierce firepower to try to break resistance in the nearby town of Borodyanka.

Also Read: UN atomic agency: No radiation release at Ukraine plant

Drone footage from the town to the northwest of Kyiv on Thursday showed flattened houses and a badly damaged apartment block, with some homes charred and still on fire. Burned out military vehicles littered a main road.

In Kyiv's Borshchahivka neighbourhood, some 18 km west of the centre, the twisted metal remnants of a missile, which Ukrainian air defences apparently downed overnight, lay in the middle of a street a few metres from a bus station.

Tens of thousands of residents have fled the capital to the relative safety of the west of Ukraine and neighbouring countries. Many remain, and on Friday some people's message for the Russian military was one of defiance.

Liliya, a woman wearing a black coat and pointing at the missile debris, said Moscow was guilty of "genocide" against Ukraine.

"These bloodthirsty creatures came to kill us," she said.

Nearby, Igor Leonidovich, a bespectacled man of 62, described himself as an ethnic Russian and said he moved to Ukraine as a boy over 50 years ago.

"They all (Russian invaders) should go to hell," he said. "I cannot believe what I am seeing with my own eyes. The situation is deteriorating for everyone, but especially for occupying forces."

Russia says its actions in Ukraine are a "special operation" not designed to occupy territory but to destroy its neighbour's military capabilities and capture what it calls dangerous nationalists.

Ukraine and its Western allies dismiss that description and call it an unjustified invasion. Hundreds of civilians have been killed in the biggest attack on a European state since World War Two and more than a million people have fled abroad.

In downtown Kyiv, the streets were a far cry from their pre-war vibrancy. But people went about their daily business and soldiers at a checkpoint of concrete blocks and metal spikes laughed as they shared breakfast.

As air raid sirens went off, some residents remained in queues outside pharmacies and food stores, while others took a stroll in a park.

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Russia and Ukraine have agreed on the need to set up humanitarian corridors and a possible ceasefire around them for Ukrainian civilians fleeing the war, negotiators for both sides said following talks on Thursday.

But while Russian negotiator Vladimir Medinsky said the talks had made "substantial progress," Russian invasion forces surrounded and bombarded Ukrainian cities as the conflict entered its second week.

A Ukrainian negotiator said the talks had not yielded the results Kyiv hoped for but the two sides had reached an understanding on evacuating civilians.

In Moscow, Russian President Vladimir Putin, brushing aside worldwide condemnation of the invasion, said the military operation was going according to plan.

Also read: Russia and Ukraine must compromise to end war, says Zelenskyy

Ukrainian soldiers and civilians kept up their resistance to the invading force and the capital Kyiv and other main cities remained in their hands on Thursday evening.

But the humanitarian crisis deepened, with the United Nations saying one million people had now fled their homes.

Those who stayed were enduring shelling and rockets strikes on several cities, often on residential areas. Swathes of central Kharkiv, Ukraine's second city with 1.5 million people, have been blasted into rubble.

The talks, at an undisclosed location, marked the first time the two sides had agreed any form of progress on any issue since the Russian invasion.

Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak said the two sides envisaged a possible temporary ceasefire to allow for the evacuation of civilians, and the creating of humanitarian corridors to evacuate civilians.

Also read: Putin vows 'uncompromising fight' as Ukraine appeals for Western military aid

"That is, not everywhere, but only in those places where the humanitarian corridors themselves will be located, it will be possible to cease fire for the duration of the evacuation," he said.

They had also reached an understanding on the delivery of medicines and food to the places where the fiercest fighting was taking place.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said earlier Kyiv and Moscow could find a way out of the war if the Kremlin treated Ukraine on an equal footing and came to talks with a will to negotiate in good faith.

"There are things in which some compromises must be found so that people do not die, but there are things in which there are no compromises," Zelenskyy said in a televised interview, saying he was willing to have an open conversation with Putin.

Putin remained outwardly oblivious to the almost universal global condemnation of his actions and to the international economic and financial sanctions aimed at bringing Russia's economy to its knees.

Russia's military operations in Ukraine were going according to plan, he said in televised comments, praising its soldiers as heroes.
Western allies on Friday condemned Russia over the shelling of a nuclear plant in Ukraine, but pushed back against calls for a no-fly zone from Kyiv to halt Moscow's bombardments.

Foreign ministers meeting in Brussels at NATO and the European Union said they were weighing more sanctions to keep up the pressure after hitting Moscow with a wave of economic punishment over its invasion.

"Overnight we have also seen reports about the attack against the nuclear power plant. This just demonstrates the recklessness of this war and the importance of ending it and the importance of Russia withdrawing all its troops and engaging good faith in diplomatic efforts," NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg said.

"NATO is not part of the conflict. NATO is a defensive alliance, we do not seek war or conflict with Russia."

Also read | Got no help from Indian Embassy: Student injured in Ukraine

French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said allies "strongly condemn" the attack and called on Russia to stop its "aggression".

The fears around Europe's largest nuclear plant added fresh urgency to the string of meetings set to showcase the West's unity in trying to confront Russian President Vladimir Putin.

NATO members have rushed thousands of troops to eastern Europe to bolster the alliance's flank closest to Russia and are sending weapons to help Ukraine defend itself.

NATO has ruled out intervening militarily over fears of getting into a direct conflict with Moscow that could spiral into nuclear war.

That has so far included rebuffing Ukrainian calls for a no-fly zone over their country to halt bombings by the Kremlin's forces.

"NATO shouldn't be dragged into this conflict," Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavsky said.

"No-fly zone means NATO being in a conflict since it will be NATO forces enforcing this no-fly zone."

Canada's top diploomat Melanie Joly said: "We know that our red line is to make sure that there's no international conflict."

"At the same time, I would say that we want to make sure that scenarios are being discussed, and we want to make sure also, that throughout the alliance, and throughout all the countries that support Ukraine, that we can have discussions, because we need to stop this war," she said.

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy demanded more sanctions from the West in the wake of the attack on the nuclear plant as the allies take stock of the economic toll they have impacted on Moscow so far.

"Everything remains on the table," EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said.

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock insisted more sanctions would be on the way.

"Beyond the three severe packages of (EU) sanctions that we have already decided on, we will take further measures that target Putin's centre of power," she said.

Latvian Foreign Minister Edgars Rinkevics said it was time to target Russia's key oil and gas exports despite reluctance from major EU economies to hit crucial energy supplies.

"I understand how difficult it would be for all of us, but then... make a choice," Rinkevics said.

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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Moscow Friday of resorting to "nuclear terror" and wanting to "repeat" the Chernobyl disaster after he said invading Russian forces attacked a nuclear power plant. He begged world leaders to wake up and prevent Europe from "dying from a nuclear disaster" after the continent's largest plant caught fire after it was shelled.

"No country other than Russia has ever fired on nuclear power units," he said in a video message released by his office. "This is the first time in our history. In the history of mankind. The terrorist state now resorted to nuclear terror."

The station at Zaporizhzhia, an industrial city in the southeast, supplies an estimated 40 per cent of the country's nuclear power and, according to Zelenskyy, houses six of Ukraine's 15 reactors.

Also Read  Kremlin vows victory in Ukraine as refugees swell to 1 million

According to Kyiv, the blaze started after Russian troops fired on the facility. "These are tanks equipped with thermal imagers, so they know where they are shooting," said Zelenskyy.

But "essential" equipment at the station was unaffected and radiation levels were normal, local officials told the UN's atomic watchdog.

Ukraine's nuclear facilities have been a main point of concern after Russia's military invaded the country last week and began bombarding cities with shells and missiles. "If there is an explosion, it is the end of everything. The end of Europe," Zelenskyy said. "Only immediate European action can stop Russian troops."

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Nearly 1,000 Indians, mostly students, are still stranded in the war-hit regions of northern and eastern Ukraine with the Ministry of External Affairs arranging adequate numbers of buses to extricate them.

The highest attention is on the eastern Ukraine, particularly Kharkiv and Pisochin. We have managed to get some buses there. Five buses are already operational and more buses will be available later in the evening. There are around 300 Indians in Kharkiv and 700 in Sumy. We are concerned about Sumy Arindam Bagchi, spokesperson for the MEA said at a briefing.

Earlier, a group of Indian students stuck inside a hostel at Sumy in northern Ukraine posted a video requesting the government to rescue them. They said they had no water or food and the temperature outside was sub-zero.

Also watch: Russia-Ukraine Crisis | Indian students stranded in Sumy running out of water

In the video, the students said they have been trying to contact the Indian Embassy for the last seven days but with no avail. They said another group of African students who went out of the hostel looking for an escape route, were shot by the gunmen.

Evacuation looks difficult without a ceasefire. We urge the parties concerned- Ukraine and Russia- to have a local ceasefire at least, so that we can evacuate our people and students, Bagchi said, adding over 20,000 Indians left the Ukraine border, but more were still there. Around 900-1000 Indians are also stranded in Pisochin.

Bagchi said more than 10,300 Indians were brought back in 48 flights under Operation Ganga - the Indian evacuation mission following the Ukraine crisis. Sixteen flights are scheduled for the next 24 hours including the Indian Air Forces C-17 aircraft.

We cant say we are moving downward (as of yet). We will continue Operation Ganga till the last person gets evacuated. Roughly 2,000-3,000 more Indians are likely to be there but the number can vary, he said.

Asked about the Indian student Harjot Singh who received bullet injuries and is being treated at a hospital in Kyiv, Bagchi said the central government would bear the expenses for his medical treatment.

We are trying to ascertain his medical status. Our embassy is trying to get an update on his health status. We are trying to reach out but facing trouble as it's a conflict zone, he said.

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Meghalaya Governor Satya Pal Malik on Friday expressed hope that the state's border problem with Assam will be resolved soon in at least six areas of differences.

Addressing the assembly on the first day of the budget session, Malik said the state government is focused on enhancing services delivery in health and education sectors.

We are confident and hopeful the border issue in six areas of difference will be resolved soon. My government is committed to resolve the long-pending border dispute between Assam and Meghalaya to usher peace and development for our citizens living in border areas, he said.

He said Meghalaya Chief Minister Conrad Sangma and his Assam counterpart Himanta Biswa Sarma have had several meetings on the issue in the last six months and they have agreed to resolve the dispute in six locations - Tarabari, Gizang, Hahim, Boklapara, Khanapara-Pillangkata and Ratacherra - in the first phase.

Also Read | Assam, Meghalaya to resolve border disputes in 6 places; solution to 6 others soon: Sangma

A memorandum of understanding in this regard was signed by both the chief ministers on January 29 last in Guwahati, and it was sent to the Ministry of Home Affairs for further examination, the governor said.

Meghalaya was carved out of Assam as a separate state in 1972 and it had challenged the Assam Reorganisation Act, 1971, leading to disputes related to 12 areas in different parts of the shared 884.9 km long border.

In his address, the governor said his government is focused on enhancing the service delivery in health and education sectors and making investments in physical infrastructure such as roads, bridges, power and drinking water.

He, however, mentioned that the critical focus of the state government is on improving rural livelihoods and promoting enterprises in the sectors of agriculture, horticulture, fisheries and animal husbandry.

Asserting that the overall law and order situation in the state was peaceful in the past one year, Malik said the police quickly arrested the culprits involved in a few incidents of IED blasts.

He also informed the assembly that the outlawed militant outfit Hynniewtrep National Liberation Council (HNLC) has written to the state government expressing its willingness for unconditional talks within the framework of the Indian Constitution.

The state government welcomes this move and has written to the Ministry of Home Affairs to take this process forward. This is a major development towards bringing about lasting peace in the state and my government is committed to ensure that the peace talk reaches its logical conclusion, he said.

Malik said the state government has also initiated the Meghalaya Health Systems Strengthening Project funded by the World Bank with the aim to infuse around USD 40 million (4 crore) within five years to strengthen the overall health system.

With an objective to improve management capacity, quality, and utilization of health services in Meghalaya, Malik said that till date works worth Rs 45 crore has been awarded for strengthening the infrastructure of health facilities across the state.

Stating that the scheme, Farmers' Collectivisation for Upscaling of Production and Marketing Systems, addresses the key challenges of production, productivity, and value chain enhancement by bringing the farmers together.

Under the scheme, the government is providing support of Rs 5,000 to each farming household for undertaking agriculture related activities.

The governor said the state government has taken up programmes to promote the production of turmeric, mushroom and jackfruit.

He also said that the implementation of second phase of the Meghalaya State Aquaculture Mission launched in 2018 to further address the gaps in the fisheries sector is on, catapulting fish production from 12,330 Metric Tonnes in 2016-17 to 16,123 Metric Tonnes in 2020-21.

For Covid-19 related expenses, the governor said the Chief Minister's Secretariat had spent Rs 29.24 crore in 2021-22 which included an assistance of Rs 50,000 as a one-time ex-gratia payment to the next of kin of those who died.

Noting that air connectivity is crucial for the overall development of the state, the governor said the Shillong Airport at Umroi has seen a great increase in passengers and Shillong is now connected to eight cities - Kolkata, Guwahati, Dimapur, Dibrugarh, Lengpui, Agartala, Imphal and Silchar.

More flights are likely to be introduced in the coming year connecting other regions, he said.

The Meghalaya Eco Tourism Infrastructure Development Project, an externally aided project under New Development Bank for a cost of Rs 750 crore has also been initiated in the state to create iconic infrastructure at some of the key tourist destinations like Sohra, Shillong, Tura and accommodation units in villages like Kongthong," Malik said.

He also informed the House that the government aims to construct 500 homestays in the coming financial year under the Meghalaya Homestays Scheme in convergence with the Prime Minister Employment Generation Programme.

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Union minister for AYUSH, shipping and ports, Sarbananda Sonowal on Friday announced investment of over Rs 100 crore to develop the AYUSH healthcare facilities in Christian-dominated Nagaland, a day before Naga-dominated areas in neighbouring Manipur goes for Assembly elections.

Making the announcement in Nagaland capital, Kohima, Sonowal said one 30-bedded AYUSH hospital and three 10-bedded hospitals along with one Ayurvedic college will be developed in the state with the allocated funds.

Sonowal, who served as Assam Chief Minister between 2016 and 20121, before becoming the Union Minister, inaugurated an integrated AYUSH hospital at Razha Chedema in Kohima on Friday. The 30-bedded AYUSH hospital will be developed at Kihpire, while the 10-bedded AYUSH hospitals will be developed, one each at Mokokchung, at Nagaland University in Dimapur and Wokha. In order to give the higher education in AYUSH a fillip in the region, the Union Minister announced setting up of a state-of-the-art Ayurvedic college at Longleng. The cost of this college is estimated at Rs 70 crore.

"The North East has an immense potential to become the hub in the AYUSH sector. The beautiful state of Nagaland is no exception with a lot of potential to be tapped. With our rich traditional knowledge base in folk medicine and the bounty of flora that Mother Nature has blessed us with, it is important that we seize this opportunity. We can become the springboard for AYUSH sector in the country and create an ecosystem to provide health and wellness solutions for people of India as well as our neighbouring countries. This will give us economic strength and our community will be blessed with a healing touch to treat human illness, Sonowal said.

Stating that the Ministry of AYUSH has been making efforts to unlock the huge value that the rich bio-diverse region of North East possess, Sonowal said the AYUSH ministry announced investments of Rs 172 crore in Nagaland and Mizoram. As many as 10 new AYUSH hospitals and an ayurvedic college will be built in the two states.

"In order to learn and leverage the folk medicine, the AYUSH ministry is conducting a multi-centric research project to critically appraise and validate Local Health Traditions (LHT), Oral health Traditions (OHT) and Ethno Medicinal Practices (EMP), among ethnic communities of the North East," Sonowal said.

The annoucement was made a day before 22 Assembly constituencies, including 11 in Naga-dominated constituencies in Ukhrul, Senapati and Tamenglong districts of Manipur will go for elections.

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Thirty countries attended a special meeting organised by the West Bengal government on Thursday, before the Bengal Global Business Summit (BGBS) takes place in April this year.

The interactive meeting - a precursor to BGBS, was attended by ambassadors, high commissioners, consul generals, honorary consuls and bilateral chambers, an official note stated.

A presentation on the structure of the summit, and offerings for partner countries was made. Amit Mitra, principal chief advisor to chief minister and finance department, delivered the keynote address virtually. West Bengal Chief Secretary HK Dwivedi who addressed the meeting, and Rajiva Sinha, chairman, West Bengal Industrial Development Corporation, were a part of the meeting that was held at Nabanna Sabhaghar (auditorium at the state secretariat).

The participants included ambassadors and high commissioners of Italy, Netherlands, Paraguay, Kenya, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Malaysia, Morocco and Slovenia. The representatives joined the session virtually.

According to available information, senior embassy officials from Luxembourg, Poland, Singapore, Switzerland, Japan, Finland, France, Republic of Korea were also part of the virtual interaction.

Ambassador of Argentine Republic to India, consul generals from USA, UK, Japan, Italy, Australia, Bhutan, Nepal, Thailand in West Bengal and honorary consuls from several countries attended the meeting, according to the official note. Ambassadors who joined the meeting showed keen interest to attend BGBS 2022 and also indicated to join as partner countries for BGBS 2022, it added.

The West Bengal government has been attempting to draw investors to the state. Industry and jobs are now the government's priorities, Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee has already stated. The BGBS, scheduled to take place on 20-21 August, has infrastructure, agri & allied activities, industries (including MSME), services including health and education, tourism, exports, IT & ITeS, and mining as its focus sectors.

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A new set of guidelines notified by the West Bengal government, now, strongly define fares, surge pricing and cancellation penalties for aggregator-based vehicles.

The guidelines for regulating On-Demand Transportation Technologies Aggregators (ODTTA), state that the base fare chargeable to customers will be the city taxi fare as notified by the state transport department. The maximum surge pricing will not be more than 50 per cent of the base fare. Aggregators are also permitted to charge a fare 50 per cent lower than the base fare.

Under the section regulation of fares, the guidelines also specify that the owner/ driver of a vehicle with the aggregator will receive at least 80 per cent of the fare applicable. The guidelines also add that passengers will be charged only from the point of boarding to the point of alighting, and there will not be a charge for dead mileage, except when the distance for availing the ride is over 3 km.

The new notification is also tough on the cancellation of rides. The driver will be charged a penalty of 10 per cent of the total fare, not exceeding Rs 100, if the cancellation is made without a valid reason. This amount will be credited to the riders app account. If the reason for dropping a ride is a medical emergency or disorder of the vehicle, the driver will not be allotted any ride for a minimum of the next six hours.

Similarly, if a rider cancels a booking before the waiting time (without a valid reason), a penalty of 10 per cent will be imposed on him. This amount accumulated will be divided between the driver and the aggregator.

Besides listing conditions for grant of license for aggregators, the guidelines also specify compliances with regard to drivers, vehicles, aggregators app and website, and safety.

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"The Ukrainian government is not allowing us to travel to the Russian border. Please do whatever you can or else we will die for sure," a group of Indian students stuck in Sumy State University said on Thursday late night as they rushed themselves into a bunker in the campus after hearing loud explosion sounds.

Anzeena Noushad and her friends Raifa Fatima and Shabna Ashique, who are pursuing MBBS at the Sumy State University, said they were running out of water and there was power cut in the area.

Also read: India resists US bid to get Quad to condemn Russia for invading Ukraine

Anzeena told DH over the phone from a bunker in Sumy, "right now there is no power. Soon after we heard the sound of an explosion, we ran inside the bunker. We just took our passports. We are really scared."

Frantic message from Indian students at Sumy State University in #Ukraine. They say there was loud explosion, they could hear it. There is powe cut there, they say @DeccanHerald pic.twitter.com/QbfnYBXxBt  Shemin (@shemin_joy) March 3, 2022

Raifa said the explosion was huge and they could feel the vibration inside the bunker as the explosion continued. Shabha said there were running out of water and food.

The students at Sumy State University are around 90 minutes away from the Russian border and the buses are waiting for them but they are not able to get out of the campus.

"We were waiting to get out. We are told that the buses are waiting for us at the Russian border. The Ukrainian government is not allowing us to get out. Please do whatever you can or else we will die for sure," the three friends said.

Anzeena said they heard that the power sub-station that supplies to the locality has been damaged and they may not have electricity for the next few days.

"We saw the explosion. We just got out with our passports. We are not even taken our clothes or shoes. It is too cold. The Indian government should take whatever steps to engage with the Ukrainian government to ensure that we get out of the war zone," she said.
An Indian who sustained multiple bullet injuries in war-torn Ukraine on Friday said that he received no support from the Indian Embassy in Ukraine.

"No support from the Indian Embassy yet. I have been trying to get in touch with them, every day they say we will do something but no help yet," Harjot Singh, who is receiving treatment at a Kyiv hospital, told ANI.

Track live updates of Russia-Ukraine crisis here

Slamming the Indian government, he said, ""It doesn't matter if you send a charter (plane) after death..."

It doesn't matter if you send a charter (plane) after death...God has given me a second life, I want to live it. I request the embassy to evacuate me from here, provide me facilities like a wheelchair, help me with documentation...: Harjot Singh pic.twitter.com/m5EVdjVhD6  ANI (@ANI) March 4, 2022

Singh said that the incident happened on February 27. "We were three people in a cab on our way to the third checkpoint where we were told to return due to security reasons. While coming back, multiple bullets were fired at our car due to which I sustained multiple bullet injuries," he said.

"God has given me a second life, I want to live it. I request the embassy to evacuate me from here, provide me facilities like a wheelchair, help me with documentation," he added.

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An Indian student was reportedly shot while trying to escape Ukrainian capital Kyiv during Russian shelling, Minister of State for Civil Aviation V K Singh told ANI.

"I received information today that a student coming from Kyiv got shot and was taken back into Kyiv and immediately taken to hospital. We're trying for maximum evacuation in minimum loss," he is quoted as saying.

I received info today that a student coming from Kyiv got shot and was taken back midway. We're trying for maximum evacuation in minimum loss: MoS Civil Aviation Gen (Retd) VK Singh, in Poland#RussiaUkraine pic.twitter.com/cggVEsqfEj  ANI (@ANI) March 4, 2022

Singh is one of the four ministers sent as special envoys to Ukraine's neighbouring countries to oversee the evacuation of Indians from war-hit Ukraine.

Recently on March 1, a young Indian medical student, Naveen SG of Karnataka, was killed in shelling in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv when he ventured out to buy food for himself and fellow students.

India has been evacuating its citizens through special flights from Ukraine's western neighbours such as Romania, Hungary and Poland as the Ukrainian airspace has been shut since February 24 due to the Russian military offensive.

(With PTI inputs)

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Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday chaired the fifth high-level meeting to review the progress of the ongoing evacuation of Indians from Ukraine under Operation Ganga.

The meeting was attended by External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal, National Security Advisor Ajit Doval, Principal Secretary to Prime Minister P K Mishra, Cabinet Secretary Rajiv Gauba, Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla and senior officials of the external affairs ministry.

During the meeting, Jaishankar and Shringla briefed Modi about the progress of the evacuation mission and informed him that over 18,000 Indians have been brought back since the initial advisories issued by the Indian Embassy in Kyiv were put out.

Also Read  SC appreciates India's Ukraine evacuation efforts, raises concerns over public anxiety

The Prime Minister was also briefed on the status of Indians, mostly stuck in Odessa and Sumy areas close to the Russian border and discussed the possible ways for their safe evacuation. Sumy is located close to the Russian border and a gunfight is going on there.

Modi is chairing meetings almost every day since Sunday evening to discuss the evacuation despite his election campaigns in Uttar Pradesh. The evacuation process was ramped up soon after the four union ministers went to the neighbouring countries of Ukraine to oversee Operation Ganga.

Meanwhile, the officials in the Indian mission in Slovakia have also identified a new checkpoint at Vysne Nemecke, which is close to the Uzhhorod in Ukraine. The Union Minister Kiren Rijiju personally visited the site to see the arrangement made there for the Indian students who have been advised to get into Slovakia instead of going to Budapest in Hungary.

Rijiju also received a group of Indian nationals, mostly students on Thursday evening and they will depart for India during the day.

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The Supreme Court on Friday decided to take up on March 11 a plea challenging the bail granted to Ashish Mishra, the prime accused and son of Union Minister Ajay Mishra Teni in a case related to mowing down of farmers in Lakhimpur Kheri.

Advocate Prashant Bhushan, who filed the petition against the Allahabad High Court's order on bail, orally mentioned the matter before a bench presided over by Chief Justice N V Ramana seeking an urgent hearing.

He said the High Court disregarded all the guidelines fixed by the top court while allowing bail to Mishra. He said the matter was to be heard urgently as other accused have now applied for bail citing Mishra's order.

The court said the matter would be considered on March 11 as the same combination of the bench which had dealt with the Lakhimpur Kheri case previously, was not available until then.

A special leave petition filed on behalf of the victims by Bhushan contended that the High Court's February 10 order was "perverse" and "unsustainable in eyes of law" as there has been no meaningful and effective assistance by the state to the court in the matter.

The petitioners led by Jagjeet Singh said, in their plea, said that they approached the top court as the State of Uttar Pradesh where the political party of the accused and his father is in power has failed to file an appeal against the order.

Also read: UP Polls: Angry farmers may hurt BJP in Lakhimpur Kheri

They contended that the High Court made an "improper and arbitrary exercise of the discretion" in the grant of bail.

The High Court failed to consider the heinous nature of the crime, the character of the overwhelming evidence, position and status of the accused with reference to the victim and witnesses, the likelihood of him fleeing from justice and repeating the offence and the possibility of him tampering with the witnesses and obstructing the course of justice, their plea said.

"Even the victims were prevented from bringing the relevant material to notice of High Court as their counsel got disconnected from the hearing on January 18, 2022 and repeated calls to the court staff to get reconnected were to no avail and the application filed by them for effective hearings was rejected," it claimed.

Mishra was arrested on October 9 last year in a case related to the October 3 incident. As many as eight people, including four farmers, were killed, when a car allegedly ferrying the Union Minister's son ran over a group of protesters, gathered to oppose a programme attended by Uttar Pradesh's Deputy Chief Minister Keshav Prasad Maurya in Lakhimpur Kheri. The farmers were then demanding the repeal of three controversial farm laws.

Earlier, last month, an application for cancelling Mishra's bail was filed by advocates C S Panda and Shiv Kumar Tripathi, who had approached the top court last year, leading to the setting up of the SIT headed by Justice Rakesh Kumar Jain, retired judge of the Punjab and Haryana High Court.

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Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) working president KT Rama Rao has slammed the Narendra Modi government for what he called its "PR exercise" during the evacuation of Indians from war-torn Ukraine.

Rama Rao on Friday took to Twitter to hit out at the Centre over the PR exercise. He posted a video in which minister of state for defence Ajay Bhatt is heard telling students evacuated from Ukraine that their lives were saved due to the grace of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

KTR, as Rama Rao is popularly known, called it 'height of nonsense'.

"Jeevan Bach Gaya Hai Modi Ji ki Krupa Se!!! Seriously, what a terrible way of doing PR with distressed & tired students. Heights of nonsense," wrote KTR, who is state minister for industries, information technology, municipal administration and urban development.

Jeevan Bach Gaya Hai Modi Ji ki Krupa Se!!! Seriously, what a terrible way of doing PR with distressed & tired students. Heights of nonsense By the way who is this Jeevan jo Bach Gaya? https://t.co/Tjrago6qxh  KTR (@KTRTRS) March 4, 2022

The video clip was from Ajay Bhatt's interaction with evacuees on Indian Air Force (IAF) aircraft after it landed at the Hindon airbase near Delhi on Thursday. He is also seen prodding evacuees to raise slogans of 'Modi ji zindabad'.

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The tragic death of a student from Karnatakas Haveri district, Naveen Gyanagoudar, in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv as a result of shelling highlights the plight of thousands of Indian students trapped in the war zone. It has made the terror and misery of a faraway war real for India and made the need to evacuate all Indian nationals much more urgent. It has also given rise to a debate on the governments efforts to ensure their safe evacuation in time. The 21-year-old medical student was killed in shelling when he stepped out of a bunker to buy groceries. Reports from the main cities of Ukraine where there are large numbers of students and their phone calls to parents and others back home have underlined the desperate situation in which they are caught. More troubling reports keep coming in as days pass. The distress and anxiety of the students is shared by their kin and others in the country.

A major effort is under way with Air India and other airlines bringing back many students in batches from countries that border Ukraine. India has expressed its concerns over the safety of its citizens and Prime Minister Narendra Modi has talked to Russian President Vladimir Putin, Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky and leaders of neighbouring countries. India has strongly and emphatically asked Ukraine and Russia to create urgent safe passage for its nationals. Evacuation of people caught in conflict zones is a major challenge as communications and logistics are difficult and evacuation efforts can themselves endanger lives. There are reports of students in places like Kharkiv assembling in railway stations for passage by train. The government has assigned four ministers to co-ordinate and supervise the operation.

While the government did well to launch the efforts that it is making now, it should be noted that it started acting late. The Indian embassy first issued an advisory on February 20, urging students and others to leave the country for the time being. But arrangements should have been made for mass evacuation as many thousands of students would not have been able to leave in a few days by normal flights. Air fare and transit visa issues that forced many of them to stay back should have been resolved quickly. While the students were once told to stay where they were, they were later told to leave even by foot. This may be due to the changing conditions of war, but a clear and early response would have largely eased the situation. Unfortunately, there was also a tendency to blame the students for their present plight, and worse, to make electoral capital out of the situation by making claims during the UP election campaign.
BSP president Mayawati on Thursday said her party will form the government in the state and send Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath back to his mutt, alleging that he worked with a narrow and casteist mindset, and ignored Dalits, backwards and Muslims at every level. She also slammed a section of the media and accused it of bringing out exit polls in favour of the BJP and other rival parties of the BSP.

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The best-kept secrets of any culture remain in its cuisine. Taking the first opportunity to dive deeper into the history of original Goan delicacies, I joined a local experiences company on a secret food trail in the heart of Panjim, the state capital.

The colourful streets of Fontainhas in Goa have always been a popular tourist attraction and are a great place to find hole-in-the-wall cafes and bars, selling a part of Goa's culinary history even today.

With my guide Joshua, we start walking, discussing the intriguing history of Xacuti, the most famous Goan curry made with complex spices. To my enlightenment, I found that Xacuti was born in India, in the kitchen of an Islamic ruler of Bijapur, and does not have any Portuguese provenance.

Also Read  Opulent and rarethe scents of India

Delighted with this newfound secret, we step into one of Goa's oldest cafes, Tato. The interiors of the little cafe have been remodelled with contemporary additions, but their food remains close to tradition.

They offered me a delightful plate of bhajis with a sweet bun, also called Goan Banana buns. Goans prefer their bhajis well defined; hence 'sukki bhaji' is a mish-mash of finely chopped potatoes with local masalas, whereas the 'alsande' is a kidney bean curry. One can also choose from 'patal bhaji' (dry green pea curry with potatoes) or go for a mixture of different bhajis, called 'sangam.'

Notably, potatoes, a Portuguese import, found their place in Goan cuisine much earlier than most other places.

Careful not to stuff ourselves, we moved to our next stop, a lovely bakery next door called Mr Baker 1922. The name carries its legacy, but the delight is amplified upon meeting Ninnette and Nathan Fernandes, the mother-son duo who run the place now. They heartily treated me with 'doce' a Goan fudge made with 'chana dal' and grated coconut; Bolinhas is a coconut cookie with semolina, and Perada, guava cheese that tastes like a sweet, chewy melt-in-your-mouth fudge.

Panjim's bylanes are full of cute nondescript bars serving a refreshing drink of feni and more. Inching into a chilly January evening, I settle myself into the only vacant seat at Ashok Bar, with a plate of hot lamb Xacuti with fresh 'poee' (Goan wholewheat bread). It will be fair to say the Xacuti gravy was the best that I had ever tried.

Also Read  No more tipsy dates: The rise of dry dating

"You can discover a place through its food, and a food trail is the best way to bring this out. Our secret food trails involve going to some of the most authentic places and houses in an area," said Varun Hegde, founder of Soul Travelling, a company that curates authentic experiences in Goa.

My last stop for the evening was Aires Fernandes' home in the heart of Fontainhas. They welcomed me with a delicious plate of 'Forminhas' (Goan stuffed canapes), 'empadinhas' (savoury mini pies), prawn rissois (a popular cheese-filled savoury snack) and tea.

It reminded me of the cold winter evenings of my childhood, as I fondly sipped my tea, chatting with Aires and his wife Ayesha, about their passion for making Goan cuisine live through the memory of an experience.

Chandreyi Bandyopadhyay is a freelance writer and communications professional with a keen interest in food and travel.

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A mountain of expectations. Thats how Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommais office described the anticipation surrounding his maiden Budget that he will present at 12.30 pm on Friday in the Legislative Assembly.

This is likely to be the last full-fledged Budget before the 2023 Assembly polls. The 2023-24 Budget may be presented early next year, but it will be a vote-on-account considering the polls.

Also read: Forum demands Rs 1,000-crore budgetary allocation for BMTC

Bommai will have an eye on elections and is likely to focus on welfare and infrastructure.

Government employees pay hike, facelift for Anjanadri Hill in Koppal and Bengaluru and schemes for women and SC/STs are among the expectations from the Budget.

Check out latest videos from DH:
"A mountain of expectations." Thats how Karnataka Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommais office described the anticipation surrounding the maiden Budget. CM Bommai has announced an increased allocation in welfare schemes for the socially and economically weaker sections. Also, the chief minister has announced Rs 1000 crore for the Mekedatu water project that will greatly help Bengaluru city.

Here is the full text:

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Release: March 4, 2022

Announcing the Approval of the Delaware County Health Department! Delaware County Health Department Director Melissa Lyon announced the official approval of the Delaware County Health Department at the Countys Board of Health meeting on March 3.

The County received the Certificate of Approval from the Pennsylvania Department of Health stating that the Delaware County Health Department is ready to exercise its powers and duties.

In a letter addressed to Council, Acting Secretary of Health Keara Klinepeter noted, Throughout the proposed establishment of this county department of health, including after submission of the Plan, your staff have regularly met with the Pennsylvania Department of Health, sought feedback, and made strides to create a successful health department. The amount of effort and work achieved is commendable and demonstrates the importance that Delaware County Council has placed on providing comprehensive public health services in Delaware County.

The County notified all municipalities on March 3, 2022, and will be able to officially act as a Health Department 30 days later- making April 2, 2022, the official operational start date for the Delaware County Health Department.

The Health Department leadership team, under the direction of Melissa Lyon, will lead a team of 53 local health experts to improve the quality of life and health outcomes for Delaware County residents.

The Delaware County Health Department will, at the local level, address fundamental public health issues including, but not limited to communicable, infectious diseases, vaccines preventable diseases and maternal child health issues, said Melissa Lyon, Director of the Delaware County Health Department. We will have the ability to efficiently collect data that drives positive health outcomes for residents, and fully operate in what I call the 3 Ps: Prevention of illness and injury, Protection for all populations, and Promotion of healthy habits and lifestyles. The Delaware County Health Department has already started the process to address health equity, establishing the following Divisions:

Environmental Health Division- responsible for the prevention of human injury and illness, the promotion of a healthy environment, and protecting the community from environmental hazards. The department prevents, minimizes, and contains adverse health events and conditions resulting from communicable diseases like food, water, vector-borne outbreaks, chronic disease, environmental hazards, injuries, and health disparities.

Personal Health Division- to promote healthy behaviors and habits that prevent chronic illness and the spread of infectious diseases and ensure access to clinical services and programs to all residents of Delaware County.

Population Health Division- to serve as the chief health strategist and build cross-sector partnerships that foster collaboration, create funding opportunities, and promote collective action with community partners, agencies, and healthcare institutions to ensure health equity across all communities.

The Health Department Teams presentation to the community can be found here:

For more information about the Delaware County Health Department please visit https://delcopa.gov/health.
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PORTLAND (AP)  The Portland City Council has voted to ban the sale and use of fireworks in the city.

The unanimous vote Wednesday comes after a temporary ban in 2021 around the Fourth of July, The Oregonian/OregonLive reported.





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By LAUREN McGEE

Timeshares Only

On Feb. 21, Australia's Prime Minister officially lifted the tourist embargo in place since March of 2020, due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Neighboring New Zealand is delaying a bit more, opening to select visitors in July, and fully by October of this year.

Both of these countries have some incredible sights and beautiful vistas. Check out these seven must-see places to visit to get the most out of these long-awaited vacation destinations.





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China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is gaining momentum in Africa through its infrastructure footprints such as the Addis Ababa-Djibouti Standard Gauge Railway, an Ethiopian official has said.

Tilahun Sarka, the general manager of Ethiopia-Djibouti Standard Gauge Railway Share Company (EDR), said in a recent interview with Xinhua that the Addis Ababa-Djibouti railway is "a living example of China's Belt and Road Initiative in Africa, set to linking Djibouti in the east to Senegalese capital, Dakar in the west of Africa through railway."

"This line goes to West Africa, usually, they name it Djibouti-Dakar route. Addis Ababa-Djibouti railway is exactly the starting point of Djibouti-Dakar line," Sarka said in the interview.

The 752-km Chinese-built transnational railway, which was launched in October 2016, is a flagship project of China-Africa cooperation under the BRI, bringing Ethiopia, Djibouti and China together for a common goal, Sarka said, underscoring the need for African governments along the intended east-west railway line to work together with China toward the realization of Africa's integrated high-speed railway network.

"Respective governments are supposed to work closely with the Chinese government and fill the gap and if that is realized, it (will be) very simple to take a train from here and go to Dakar. This is really a big vision," he said.

According to the EDR chief, the BRI coincides with Africa's 2063 vision of establishing an integrated railway network, connecting the continent also from Egypt in the north to South Africa in the South.

"The good thing with the Chinese investment is that they are coming with financial resources; they are coming with the technology transfer to the local people. They also believe in a win-win kind of partnership," he said.

The Ethiopia-Djibouti railway company has reported increasing revenue during its four years of operation while driving economic growth and industrialization along the route.

Figures from the EDR show that Africa's first fully electrified transboundary railway earned 86.1 million U.S. dollars in 2021, up 37.4 percent from the previous year, with some 449 passenger and 1,469 freight trains running along the route, and fertilizers, wheat and commodities such as cooking oil, small cars and chilled fruits and vegetables transported.

The electrified railway has cut the transportation time for freight goods from more than three days to less than 20 hours and reduced the cost by at least one-third.

"Our report showed that we moved about 2 million metric tons of cargo in 2021. We transported 1 million metric tons of cargo during the first year of freight operation. So there is a significant increase in the volume of cargo of about 25 percent per year," Sarka said.

The Addis Ababa-Djibouti electrified railway, also known as the Ethiopia-Djibouti railway, was contracted by China Rail Engineering Corporation (CREC) and China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation (CCECC). It is the first transboundary railway on the African continent.

The CREC-CCECC joint venture is a management contractor of the Addis Ababa-Djibouti Railway, which presently provides both passenger and freight services between Ethiopia and Djibouti. The management contractor is in charge of operating the line, maintaining the whole infrastructure along the route and transferring knowledge to the local staff.

According to Sarka, the railway has enjoyed relatively safe operations and reported no accidents during four years of operation. He commended the Chinese management contractor for the safe operation of the railway while emphasizing the ongoing knowledge transfer endeavor.

"We have 3,000 newly recruited railway staff, among whom 1,000 are already certified by the Chinese side, we are also waiting for the rest to be certified in the coming two years," Sarka said.





Produced by Xinhua Global Service








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ISSAQUAH  Lake Sammamish State Park will host the Shamrock Stroll, an all-ages event held March 16-28 from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Shamrock signs posted throughout the trail from Sunset Beach to Tibbetts Beach will teach visitors about about Irish legends, just in time to celebrate St. Patrick's Day.

In addition to discovering how to catch a Leprechaun, guests will also learn Irish words and blessings.





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Rendering by CollinsWoerman [enlarge] This view looks north at the half block, with the developers prior Boren Lofts at left, on Virginia. The new building will go on the corner of Stewart.





Since acquiring its Denny Triangle site last summer for $49 million, Trammell Crow Co. has been moving swiftly on its life-science plan at 1916 Boren Ave. CollinsWoerman is designing the 11-story building, which has its next design review on April 19.





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China's defense budget expected to grow at around 7% in 2022 amid security threats: experts

By Liu Xuanzun and Leng Shumei (Global Times) 10:41, March 04, 2022

An army main battle tank rolls out of a naval air cushioned landing craft during a joint combat training exercise conducted by an army brigade and a naval landing ship group under the PLA Southern Theater Command on Feb 8. (Photo: China Military)

Ahead of China's announcement of its defense budget for 2022, analysts and observers predict that the country will likely continue to steadily increase its military expenditure, at a rate possibly slightly faster than last year, as China enjoys a positive economic development but faces security threats. The two factors provide a foundation and need for China to further develop its national defense capabilities to safeguard national sovereignty, territorial integrity and rightful interests.

The amount is expected to be released in a draft budget report at the opening of the annual session of the National People's Congress, the country's top legislature, on Saturday.

Multiple military experts reached by the Global Times believe that the budget could grow by about 7 percent.

In March 2021, China announced a defense budget of 1.35 trillion yuan ($209 billion), a 6.8 percent increase, faster than the 6.6 percent increase in 2020, despite COVID-19, which had an impact on China's economic growth in both years.

China has maintained a single-digit growth in its annual defense budget since 2016.

China will likely continue to expand its military expenditure this year, as the defense spending should be closely related to the development of the national economy, Fu Qianshao, a Chinese military expert, told the Global Times.

While the economy has been affected by COVID-19, China did well with epidemic prevention and control, and is enjoying a relative healthy economy development. So it is likely that China will spend more on national defense, Fu said.

China's GDP expanded at 8.1 percent in 2021, growing the fastest in nearly a decade and landing well above the government's annual target of achieving a growth rate above 6 percent for that year.

Despite the 8.1 percent GDP growth last year, China could still face pressure in its economic development this year under the uncertainties of the coronavirus, so a 7 percent growth in the defense budget should make sense, as this is also a rough average of the past six years, Shi Hong, executive chief editor of the Chinese magazine Shipborne Weapons, told the Global Times.

Song Zhongping, a Chinese military expert and TV commentator, also predicted a 7 percent hike.

"I estimate this year's GDP growth not to be as high as last year's 8.1 percent, and the target will likely be put at 5 to 6 percent. But there is no way China will cut its military budget growth because of this. On the contrary, I think it should be higher than last year's," Song said.

China increased its 2021 defense budget by 6.8 % to 1.35 trillion yuan ($209 billion) in a quicker pace than last year's 6.6% growth, which analysts believe is normal, steady and restrained as China resiliently emerges from COVID-19 pandemic.

Spending needed

While economic development provides a foundation for a possible defense budget increase, the security threats China is facing and the demands for national defense capability enhancement caused by those threats are the driving factors, analysts pointed out.

The US has been applying military pressure on China over the past few years, stirring up trouble on the doorsteps of China through operations like provocative, monthly warship transits in the Taiwan Straits, close-in reconnaissance missions with spy planes in the East China Sea and the South China Sea of more than 1,200 times in 2021, and a number of warship intrusions in Chinese territorial waters in the South China Sea in the name of "freedom of navigation."

Over the past year, the US also rallied its allies and partners around the world to provoke and confront China militarily. Under the US' bullying banner, countries far away from the region like France, Germany and the UK sent warships to the South China Sea. The US also organized the security dialogue Quad with Japan, India and Australia, and formed the new security pact AUKUS with Australia and the UK, both designed to surround China militarily.

The US conducted intensive military exercises near China in 2021, as its aircraft carrier strike groups and amphibious ready groups entered the South China Sea 13 times, more than double the activities of 2020, and at least 11 US nuclear-powered attack submarines were spotted in or near the South China Sea, according to monitoring from the South China Sea Strategic Situation Probing Initiative, a Beijing-based think tank.

The US' new weapons and equipment, like the next-generation attack nuclear submarine, destroyer, fighter jet, and B-21 bomber and hypersonic missiles, are also being developed with China in mind, another Chinese military expert told the Global Times, requesting anonymity.

US President Joe Biden is expected to ask US Congress for a defense budget exceeding $770 billion for the next fiscal year, eclipsing the record budget requests by former president Donald Trump, Reuters reported on February 17. This means the US' defense budget will remain about four times China's.

China remains the only permanent member of the UN Security Council that has yet to realize complete national reunification. The secessionist Democratic Progressive Party authority on the island of Taiwan repeatedly made provocations over the past years, attempting to resist reunification by developing new weapons and purchasing them from foreign countries, including recent plans to buy US-made howitzers and Patriot missile upgrades.

While the situation along the China-India border has been kept stable and manageable, the standoffs remain to be completely solved after rounds of talks.

These circumstances also mean that China needs to continue to increase its national defense capabilities with steadily growing budgets, Fu said, noting that China will also not be involved in an arms race, as it has kept its defense spending at only 1.3 percent of its GDP in recent years, far lower than the US.

The money will be used to boost the modernization of the Chinese military, including procuring and commissioning more advanced weapons and equipment in terms of both quality and quantity, strengthening the realistic combat-oriented training, and the welfare of military personnel, experts said.

In 2022, China will likely launch its third aircraft carrier, expand production of the J-20 stealth fighter jet, and modernize its nuclear arsenal, which all needs the support of a sufficient budget, observers said.

The communique of the fifth plenary session of the 19th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, held in Beijing in October 2020, made "making significant strides in the modernization of national defense and armed forces in the next five years" one of the main goals for the development of the economy and society in the 14th Five-Year Plan, and stressed that the development of the economy should go side-by-side with the strengthening of the military.

By the 100th anniversary of the founding of the PLA in 2027, the centennial goal of military development should be achieved; by 2035, the country should achieve modernization of the national defense and armed forces, it was announced at the plenary session.

To meet this roadmap, increasing defense budgets over consecutive years is needed, analysts said.

(Web editor: Zhong Wenxing, Liang Jun)
BEIJING, March 4 (Xinhua) -- The one-China principle is the political foundation for China to develop bilateral relations with all countries, a spokesperson told a press conference Friday.

Zhang Yesui, spokesperson for the fifth session of the 13th National People's Congress, made the remarks in response to a question about relations between China and Lithuania.

The one-China principle is an overwhelming consensus of the international community and a widely recognized norm governing international relations, Zhang said.

"In last November, the Lithuanian government allowed the Taiwan authorities to set up a so-called 'Taiwanese Representative Office in Lithuania,' which severely violates the one-China principle and the political commitment made by Lithuania in the communique on the establishment of diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of China," Zhang said.

Lithuania should take full responsibility for the problems in the current relations with China, the spokesperson noted. 
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The Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage, Darragh OBrien TD, has today made a final call for homeowners, landlords, directors of Owners Management Companies and Property Management Agents throughout Louth, to share their experiences of housing defects relating to fire safety, structural safety and water ingress in purpose-built apartment and duplex buildings constructed in Louth between 1991 and 2013. The deadline for completing the surveys is Monday 14 March 2022.

These experiences are sought by the Independent Working Group to Examine Defects in Housing which was established by Minister OBrien in February 2021. Views are sought from people across Louth regardless of whether such defects in those properties in Louth are currently known, unknown or where no such defects have arisen.

Encouraging as many people as possible to participate in the survey before the March 14th deadline, Minister OBrien emphasised:

Since this consultation was launched in late January there has been a very positive public response. Today, Im making a final call to homeowners, landlords, directors of Owners Management Companies and Property Management Agents across Louth, who own or manage purpose-built apartments or duplex buildings constructed in Ireland between 1991 and 2013, to complete these surveys. We want you to complete them whether the property in question has defects or not, or if the presence of defects is not known.

I understand the working group wants to hear in particular from Owners Management Companies and Property Management Agents of these types of properties as we know there is a significant number who have not yet responded to the survey. If you live in a duplex or purpose-built apartment complex in Louth, built between 1991 and 2013, we ask you to contact your Owners Management Company to encourage them to participate.

Acknowledging the Working Groups work to date, the Minister added: I look forward to receiving the Working Groups report later this year and will give it my full consideration.

The working group will use the survey information to inform its report to the Minister with particular regard to the following:

the nature and scale of the issue of fire safety, structural safety and water ingress defects

the difficulties that arise following the discovery of these defects

the costs and levies associated with the remediation of the defects

Separate surveys for each stakeholder group are available at https://www.gov.ie/en/consultation/7e319-online-survey-in-relation-to-defects-in-apartment-and-duplex-buildings/
We have been celebrating various events relating to the birth of our nation over the past six years, but one which has been scarcely mentioned and has greatly affected Dundalk over the past 100 years is fast approaching.

That is the arrival of the Civic Guards in Dundalk on November 1, 1922!

I write Civic Guards deliberately because that is how ordinary Dundalk people referred to members of An Garda Siochana police force for many years  and some older people still do! The reason is simple, because that is how they were officially known when they first arrived in Dundalk and the name was not changed until after the Free State Government passed An Garda Siochana Act in 1924.

The history of policing Dundalk is long and complicated and I am aware that many honest citizens of the Town treat any policeman on duty with a certain degree of suspicion and that feeling needs to be understood and respected by anybody in authority.

This was only a general feeling, and I developed very good relations with many people over the years who have been involved in something that would bring them under suspicion and I very quickly learned to keep my mouth shut!, in many circumstances.

In general, however, the people of Dundalk always had a very high regard for most members of An Garda Siochana stationed locally and, indeed, they relied on them for simple things like filling out official forms and getting in touch with relatives who had emigrate during times of trouble and grief!

All this has become even more important at the present time of the COVID-19 lock-down and the Guards are often being called upon to act over and above the ordinary call of duty; especially in looking after the elderly and the infirm!

The earliest form of organised policing in Dundalk seems to have been the establishment of a Night Watch in about 1825 by the Corporation that were then in charge of municipal affairs.

This seems to have been an almost laughable force composed of elderly and, sometimes, infirm, men who went about the Town during the hours of darkness armed with oil or candle-lit lanterns and long staff.

They also had a wooden rattle with which they could summon their comrades when they came across any suspicious activities.

There were only about a dozen of them at the start and they operated from a small hut at the side of the Market House at the Square.

I suppose, however, that they must have been some sort of comfort to decent citizens asleep in their beds to keep thieves from breaking into their properties!

Sir Robert Peel organised the Irish police force in 1822 as the Constabulary of Ireland and enrolled about 6,000 men in the following years.

They did not get the name Royal Irish Constabulary until 1867, during the reign of Queen Victoria.

They first patrolled around Dublin City and do not seem to have reached Dundalk until the 1840s when a police barrack was opened in Clanbrassil Street near the present G.P.O., and later moved to the other end of Clanbrassil Street to premises that was later to become Duffners jewellers shop.

There was also a police barracks in Crowe Street, opposite the old Jail and Courthouse that was to become the Tempest Building where the Dundalk Democrat had offices for over ten years at the beginning of the present century.

I do not know when this barrack was being used but believe that it must have been mainly for service at the Courthouse.

Shortly after the arrival of the Irish Constabulary in Dundalk, the old Night Watch were abolished by the newly formed Town Commissioners in 1855.

The R.I.C. left Dundalk on March 29, 1922, from their barracks at Bridge Street and Anne Street - they had earlier evacuated a barracks at Quay Street and other at various stations around the rural areas - and members of the I.R.A., took over the Anne Street Barrack.

A voluntary civilian force took over the patrolling of Dundalk streets shortly afterwards.

They wore just armbands to indicate that they were acting as auxiliary police and were unarmed.

The first members of the Irish Civil Guards were enrolled at Ballsbridge, Dublin , on February 21.

1922 and the first Garda Commissioner, Michael Joseph Stains, from Newport, Co. Mayo, was appointed in March but the first Civic Guards did not arrive in Dundalk until after Halloween.

There was a very interesting account published in the Dundalk Democrat on the following Saturday, November 4, which reads - The long expected Civic Guards arrive on Tuesday.

The first thing they did was to remove the elaborate sand-bag barricades and entrenchments from the front of Anne Street barrack which they had taken over from the Military (the Civil War was still raging in the area at the time) and the place no longer looks like a beleaguered outpost in Waziristan.

One result will probably be that the people in Anne Street and Park Street will be allowed to sleep in peace at nights.

The report goes on to state that - For four months past the Anne Street Barrack has been the obvious target of the Gentle Sniper crouched in some clump in the Demesne and the residents around have come to apprehend that there are more sedative things than a snipers bullet hopping off the roof at regular intervals between nightfall and 4 am.

The Civic Guard, being an unarmed force, there will be no excuse sniping at their quarters.

The writer then goes on to make an interesting comment about the new police force.

They are big hefty fellows recruited, no doubt, from the farming community, for the most part.

They look as if they could use their fists, not to speak of their truncheons, very effectively.

We wish them the height of luck and bespeak for them the sympathy of every law-abiding citizen.

An Garda Siochana remained at the Anne Street Barrack, using it as their head-quarters for the District, until they moved to what had been the Governors House at the former Dundalk Jail at the Crescent since 1854, which had been renovated at a cost to the State of about 8,000, in January 1946 and have remained there ever since.
The Monastery of the Caves, also known as Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra, one of the holiest sites of Eastern Orthodox Christians, is seen in Kyiv, Ukraine, Wednesday, Oct. 10, 2007.
Photo taken on March 3, 2022 shows high-rise buildings in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Chinese investment in Cambodia had increased significantly in 2021 despite the negative effect of the COVID-19 pandemic, which truly reflected Chinese investors' trust in Cambodia's business environment, officials and experts said on Friday.(Photo by Phearum/Xinhua)

PHNOM PENH, March 4 (Xinhua) -- Chinese investment in Cambodia had increased significantly in 2021 despite the negative effect of the COVID-19 pandemic, which truly reflected Chinese investors' trust in Cambodia's business environment, officials and experts said on Friday.

Cambodia attracted fixed-asset investment of 2.32 billion U.S. dollars from China last year, up 67 percent from 1.39 billion dollars in the year before, according to a report from the Council for the Development of Cambodia.

China remained as the top foreign investor to the Southeast Asian nation, accounting for 53.4 percent of the total investment of 4.35 billion dollars the kingdom approved last year, the report said.

Heng Sokkung, secretary of state and spokesman for the Ministry of Industry, Science, Technology and Innovation, said close ties, the Cambodia-China Free Trade Agreement (CCFTA) and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) trade deal are the main factors encouraging more Chinese investors to Cambodia.

Both the CCFTA and the 15-member RCEP trade deal took effect on Jan. 1, 2022.

"I believe that these free trade agreements, together with Cambodia's favorable investment law, peace and political stability, have provided a great opportunity for foreign investors, particularly Chinese ones, to invest in Cambodia," he told Xinhua.

Sokkung said a high COVID-19 vaccination rate, which has allowed Cambodia to fully reopen since mid-November last year, is also a conducive atmosphere for attracting both foreign investors and tourists.

China's investment in Cambodia focuses on the fields of real estate, garment, footwear and travel goods industry, tourism and agriculture, among others.

"Chinese investment has not only brought in new capital, but also advanced technologies for Cambodia's socio-economic development," he said.

Lim Heng, vice-president of the Cambodia Chamber of Commerce, said the ironclad friendship and the Belt and Road Initiative are also the major factors attracting more Chinese investors to the kingdom.

"Chinese investment, especially during the pandemic, is essential to help boost Cambodia's economy and create new jobs for Cambodian people," he told Xinhua.

Heng said both the CCFTA and RCEP free trade deal would provide greater market access for Cambodian products to China and other RCEP member countries.

Hong Vannak, an economic researcher at the Royal Academy of Cambodia, said besides these free trade pacts, Cambodia has received trade preferences from some countries, which are also a favorable factor for foreign investors to base their production lines here.

"Chinese investors are keen to explore investment opportunities overseas, and Cambodia is one of their most favorite destinations thanks to our excellent ties, enormous potential for investment, investment incentives, and inexpensive labor resources," he told Xinhua.

"There's no doubt that Chinese investors will continue to come to Cambodia in coming years, and our bilateral trade volume will be bigger," he said.

The trade volume between Cambodia and China was valued at nearly 11.2 billion U.S. dollars in 2021, up 38 percent from 2020, according to the Ministry of Commerce.

Cambodian Ministry of Commerce's undersecretary of state and spokesman Penn Sovicheat said China is a huge market for Cambodia, particularly for potential agricultural products such as rice, bananas and mangoes, among others.

"Under the CCFTA and the RCEP trade pact, we hope Cambodia's export to the Chinese market will be larger, especially the export of agricultural produce, industrial products, and processing goods," he said. 

Photo taken on March 3, 2022 shows high-rise buildings in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Chinese investment in Cambodia had increased significantly in 2021 despite the negative effect of the COVID-19 pandemic, which truly reflected Chinese investors' trust in Cambodia's business environment, officials and experts said on Friday.(Photo by Phearum/Xinhua)

People work at a construction site in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, March 3, 2022. Chinese investment in Cambodia had increased significantly in 2021 despite the negative effect of the COVID-19 pandemic, which truly reflected Chinese investors' trust in Cambodia's business environment, officials and experts said on Friday.(Photo by Phearum/Xinhua)

Photo taken on March 2, 2022 shows high-rise buildings in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Chinese investment in Cambodia had increased significantly in 2021 despite the negative effect of the COVID-19 pandemic, which truly reflected Chinese investors' trust in Cambodia's business environment, officials and experts said on Friday.(Photo by Phearum/Xinhua)
Songwriter Sarah Hickey features in our My Weekend

Tell us a little bit about yourself:

My name is Sarah Hickey, I am a songwriter from Cork. Between performing, teaching and writing, music is what fills my day.

I have just released my first track of the year Looking For Trouble.

I love anything creative and songwriting has been a constant for me for a long time and Im very grateful to have the opportunity to write and release my own work.

What is your ideal way to spend a Friday night?

I love a night in with family or friends. Im not into night clubs but if I do go out I like being somewhere I can have a dance and a laugh with friends.

Lie ins or up with the lark.. which is it for you?

I love the morning time. I cant say I get up at the crack of dawn but I definitely like to be up early. I dont always have a set in stone routine between writing and performing so my daily schedule varies. Its the beauty of my work but also the downfall.

Sarah Hickey has launched her first track of the year 'Looking for Trouble'.

Does work creep into your weekend at all?

Yes definitely. When it comes to writing music I get ideas at any given time but it doesnt feel like work.

For me if I dont follow through with an idea when it comes to me then it slips away so you might come across me in my car pulled in at the side of the road recording a voice memo on my phone just in case I forget the idea before I get home.

If money was no object where would you head to on a weekend city break? And who would you bring with you?

Maybe somewhere in Greece with some friends. I love the sea so once I get somewhere close to the coast Im happy.

Closer to home, is there some place you like to head to recharge the batteries?

Parts of West Cork are magical. I love to be by the water and go for walks and swims.

Do you like to catch up with family/friends at the weekend?

Yes, I think family and friends are so important and Im very lucky with mine.

Do you get to indulge any hobbies? Even as a spectator?

I love writing music. It feels like a hobby I get to work on. I also enjoy painting from time to time, swimming in the sea or going on some sort of adventure.

Entertain or be entertained? If its the latter do you have a signature dish?

Probably be entertained. If I do have you over for dinner I could make a curry but I have a sweet tooth so Im more interested in the dessert.

We have so many places to eat out in Cork  where are your go to spots for coffee / lunch / special meal?

There are so many and Im definitely leaving out a lot but I love Cork Coffee Roasters for a coffee or Filter. Sonnys Deli is great for a takeaway lunch or Good Day Deli is like a little haven in the middle of a city.

Sunday night comes around too fast.. how do you normally spend it?

Relaxing and spending time with family.

What time does your alarm clock go off on Monday morning?

Each week can be different but I would try be up some time around 8.30am.
A Cork charity initiative is asking the public to support an appeal to help bring humanitarian aid to Ukrainian refugees.

Cork Humanitarian Aid Ireland, which is made up of volunteers from local charities Cork Missing Persons Search and Recovery (CCMPSAR) and Cork Penny Dinners, is working with a Cork-based Redemptorist priest to bring a convoy of humanitarian aid to Ukrainian refugees on the Polish-Ukrainian border.

Caitriona Twomey, who is well-known as the co-ordinator of Cork Penny Dinners, said the volunteers hoped to bring four full vans to Poland next week, and she added they were all travelling in a personal capacity, and were paying their own way.

Its very important that every penny people donate goes directly to help people on the ground who are living in fear and uncertainty, Ms Twomey said, adding that for her it was a chance to follow in the footsteps of her mother, the late Breda Lynch, who had delivered humanitarian aid to Kosovo two decades ago.

Fr Gerry OConnor, who works with Scala Redemptorist Youth Ministry in Blackrock, told The Echo he had been in contact with Redemptorist priests in Ukraine and in Poland, and they will help distribute the aid when it arrives.

He said they had told him refugees fleeing the Russian invasion of Ukraine had been very moved to hear that people in Cork wanted to help.

When I have shared the news that a group called Cork Humanitarian Aid Ireland are planning to travel, they just have a wonderful feeling of being less isolated, and they are deeply appreciative, Fr OConnor said.

When you're caught up in a situation of isolation, a situation of fear and terror, the sense that there are people outside who are on your side that are trying to help you, it's really, really reassuring.

Fr OConnor said he knew people in Cork want to help, and he said donations of essentials such as tea, coffee, alcohol swabs, baby food, female hygiene products, warm clothing, thermal underwear and non-perishable goods would make a real difference to people in desperate situations.

Chris ODonovan, treasurer of CCMPSAR said the charities plan to leave Cork on Wednesday next and bring humanitarian aid to people desperately in need of help.

Right now there are a million refugees displaced from Ukraine, and by the end of next week it will be multiples of that, so we want to get food and warm clothing to people living in their cars, Mr ODonovan said.

These are people who had to flee their homes with the shirts on their backs, and the people of Cork can make a real difference in helping them.

Caitriona Twomey thanked the Catholic Bishop of Cork, Bishop Fintan Gavin, who has opened the visitor centre at the Visitor Centre at the North Cathedral as a drop-off point and storage depot for donations to Cork Humanitarian Aid Ireland, and she added that anyone wishing to make a contribution is asked to visit CCMPSARs or Penny Dinners Facebook pages.
The Honduras government is banning new permits for open-pit mining projects due to their negative environmental impact, including pollution and deforestation. However, it is unclear when the ban officially takes effect.

The approval of extractive exploitation permits is canceled for being harmful, threatening natural resources, public health and limiting access to water as a human right, the Ministry of Energy, Natural Resources, Environment and Mines said in a statement.

The ministry also stated it would begin a process to review and suspend or cancel existing licenses and permits, but there is an unspecified timeline for this process.

Open-pit mining involves extracting resources from an open pit and is one of the most common forms of mining, but this process poses many environmental challenges.

Environmental hazards are present during every step of the open-pit mining process. Hardrock mining exposes rock that has lain unexposed for geological eras, Massachusetts Institute of Technology reported. When crushed, these rocks expose radioactive elements, asbestos-like minerals, and metallic dust. During separation, residual rock slurries, which are mixtures of pulverized rock and liquid, are produced as tailings, toxic and radioactive elements from these liquids can leak into bedrock if not properly contained.

The pollution can leach into local waterways, disrupting the aquatic ecosystems. Aside from the pollution, miners also need to clear land for the project site. That often means deforestation and a loss of biodiversity, as many wildlife lose their habitats.

Once the mines have closed, they still cause problems for the environment due to risks of contamination over time.

In Central America, Honduras is the third country to ban open-pit mining after El Salvador and Costa Rica. The country has 217 mining concessions and reserves spanning 131,515 hectares, according to the Social Forum on Foreign Debt and Development of Honduras, as reported by Mongabay.

Mining project approvals have increased by 40% since 2018, and over half of the existing mining concessions and reserves are located on Indigenous lands. The areas are violent for locals and environmental activists who protest the mines, and many have been killed or jailed for doing so.

Mining unions and supports have plans to talk with the government over concerns about losing thousands of jobs. This could slow down the timeline of the ban.

We would love for this initiative to move forward, Andrea Regina Pineda, an attorney with the Honduran Center for the Promotion of Community Development, told Mongabay, but we want it to be in accordance with the law, to possibly go through congress or different government bodies to ensure that these actions are within the law.
Russian forces have captured Europes largest nuclear power plant after launching a Friday night attack that started a fire at the Ukrainian facility.

The fire has since been extinguished and both UN and Ukrainian officials say that no radiation was released, AP News reported. However, the incident marks the second time since Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an invasion of Ukraine that fears of nuclear catastrophe have been reignited.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky warned that the attack on the Zaporizhzhia plant could have instigated a disaster worse than six Chernobyls, BBC News reported.

If there is an explosion, it is the end of everything. The end of Europe, he said.

Russias invasion of Ukraine began on February 24, according to Reuters. The same day, Russian forces seized the abandoned Chernobyl nuclear plant, the site of the worst nuclear disaster in world history in 1986. This caused radiation to spike when military equipment churned up the soil, but experts at the time said the plant itself was likely safe. However, they expressed concern about the fate of Ukraines active nuclear plants.

Those concerns were validated Friday when news of the fire at the Zaporizhzhia plant broke.

For the first time this morning, Im frightened, Sheffield University nuclear materials expert professor Claire Corkhill told BBC News.

UNs International Atomic Energy Agency chief Rafael Mariano Grossi said that the fire started when a Russian projectile hit a training center, not any of the plants six reactors, AP News reported. World leaders widely condemned the attack. The U.S. Embassy in Ukraine called it a war crime, according to Reuters, while UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson said it was reckless and could directly threaten the safety of all of Europe, according to BBC News.

Russias defense ministry, for its part, made the unsubstantiated claim that the attack was an act of sabotage by Ukrainian actors.

For now, the plant is under Russian control but the plant workers continue to operate it, AP News reported. Grossi said that only one reactor was currently running. The Ukrainian state nuclear plant operator told Reuters that radiation levels at the plant were normal, though it no longer controls the facility.

But could this attack, or future attacks on Ukraines other nuclear plants, cause a disaster similar to Chernobyl? There are a few key differences between the Chernobyl plant and contemporary facilities, The Guardian explained. For one thing, the Chernobyl disaster was caused by a graphite fire. Todays plants use pressurized water reactors, not graphite, to keep the nuclear material under control.

Further, these reactors keep all nuclear material inside a steel vessel that is itself protected by a concrete building reinforced with steel, something Chernobyl did not have. To cause a Chernobyl-style disaster, therefore, Russia would probably have to attack these protective layers directly with heavy explosives.

A greater concern is damage to the cooling capabilities at one of the plants, which are powered with diesel generators. The danger would come if a plants cooling abilities lost power.

[W]e could be looking at a scenario similar to what happened at Fukushima in 2011, where a loss of power led to a loss of cooling, which caused a meltdown of three of its nuclear reactors, Corkhill told BBC News.

While the Zaporizhzhia plant appears stable for now, experts are concerned about the fact that it was attacked at all.

Its very clear that this is against the Geneva conventions, University of Bristol materials professor Tom Scott told The Guardian. It is a flagrant breach of international laws and agreements to do this.
Six abandoned coal mines in southwest Virginia are being transformed into solar energy installations as part of an effort by the Nature Conservancy, The Washington Post reports.

TNC hopes the project can be a model for similar sites nationwide. The conservation group views the Appalachian Mountains as one of the most critical regions on the planet for conservation and has purchased more than a quarter million acres of forest in the region.

Partnering with Dominion Energy and Sun Tribe, TNC hopes to capitalize on the large areas flattened by mining operations near existing transmission lines and bring clean energy jobs to the overwhelmingly rural and Republican area that has lost more than 27,000 people since 2010.

Were very proud to be an energy-producing community, Lou Wallace, whose family has relied on coal for generations and who now chairs the Russell County Board of Supervisors, told the Post. This is helping us to reimagine how we produce energy. So were still able to say were keeping the lights on somewhere.

As reported by The Washington Post:

In 2019, the Nature Conservancy acquired 253,000 acres of forest in the central Appalachian Mountains that it calls the Cumberland Forest Project. Its one small part of the groups efforts in the mountain range, which reaches from Alabama to Canada. Weve identified the Appalachians as one of the most important places on Earth for us to do conservation, says Brad Kreps, the Nature Conservancys Clinch Valley program director, who is leading the solar projects. We put the Appalachians in a very rare company along with the Amazon, the wild lands of Kenya and the forests of Borneo.

For a deeper dive:

The Washington Post

For more climate change and clean energy news, you can follow Climate Nexus on Twitter and Facebook, sign up for daily Hot News, and visit their news site, Nexus Media News.
Effingham, IL (62401)

Today

Rain likely. High 64F. Winds ESE at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 90%. Rainfall around a half an inch..

Tonight

Rain with thunderstorms by morning. Low 59F. Winds SE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 80%.
Emporia, VA (23847)

Today

Partly cloudy skies in the morning will give way to cloudy skies during the afternoon. High near 75F. Winds NE at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

Mostly cloudy. Slight chance of a rain shower. Low 56F. Winds light and variable.
Athens, AL (35611)

Today

Mainly cloudy. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. High 86F. Winds S at 10 to 15 mph..

Tonight

Scattered thunderstorms during the evening becoming more widespread overnight. Low 66F. Winds SSW at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 70%.
Airbnb is halting operations in Russia and Belarus, CEO Brian Chesky announced in a tweet. That includes around 90,000 active short-term rentals across different platforms in Russia and just over 1,800 in Belarus, according to Reuters.

Airbnb is suspending all operations in Russia and Belarus  Brian Chesky  (@bchesky) March 4, 2022

Chesky brought the situation up yesterday saying "all things are on the table" due to Russia's invasion of Ukraine. On Monday this week, Airbnb offered free housing for up to 100,000 Ukrainian refugees fleeing to European nations including Poland, Germany, Hungary and Romania.

Airbnb users have been taking things into their own hands, too. Members of the public purchased Airbnb rentals in Ukraine to help get money to residents facing severe economic hardship, as The Guardian reported. "My wife and I have just booked your apartment for one week, but of course we will not be visiting. This is just so you can receive some money," wrote one user to an Airbnb renter in Ukraine. Airbnb has also agreed to waive guest and host fees on all bookings in the nation.

Over a million refugees have fled the country since Russia's invasion started, according to the UN, and it estimates that up to four million people could eventually leave.
Apple's tougher stance on Russia following the invasion of Ukraine now includes a reversal of its policy on Crimea. Mashable noticed that Apple Maps once again shows Crimea as belonging to Ukraine, at least for people outside of Russia. The company previously tried to strike a middle ground when it showed the region as belonging to no one, and in 2019 conceded to Russian pressure by showing Crimea as Russian territory when viewed within that country.

It's not clear when Apple made the change, or whether Maps still includes concessions for Russian users. We've asked Apple for comment.

Russia forcefully annexed Crimea in 2014, prompting widespread international condemnation and penalties. Many countries still refuse to recognize Russia's control of the area, and other technology firms have tried to negotiate the issue in different ways. Google Maps, for instance, continued to display Crimea as belonging to no nation.

The decision comes just days after Apple halted sales in Russia and clamped down on content in the country by limiting Apple Pay and removing the apps for state-backed Russian media outlets RT and Sputnik. The company is no longer willing to be as conciliatory as it once was, even if it means losing business.
ZANU PF turned the heat on Citizens for Coalition for Change (CCC) leader Nelson Chamisa and accused him of trolling President Emmerson Mnangagwas rallies to stoke political violence.

Addressing a press conference, Zanu PF spokesperson Christopher Mutsvangwa accused Chamisa of mischief.

Why is Chamisa trolling the President? We were in Epworth; he wants to be in Highfields. He wants to say I can pull up a bigger crowd to have comparisons as if crowds vote.

Why cant Chamisa be in Mutare and the President in Binga. Why is he trying to make sure that where Zanu PF is the following day he is also there? This is mischief on his part. He wants to generate tensions between political parties, said Mutsvangwa.

Last week, a CCC supporter died after he was stabbed by a suspected Zanu PF activist during a rally addressed by Chamisa in Kwekwe, Midlands.

In this instance in Kwekwe and in Gokwe, he wanted to cause chaos and mayhem so that the white countries in Western Europe can have an excuse for sanctions, Mutsvangwa added.

The United States yesterday renewed sanctions against Zimbabwe for another year.

Chamisas CCC has bemoaned an unfair electoral playing field ahead of the March 26 by-elections but Mutsvangwa said this was expected and nothing untoward.

Mutsvangwa said: There are always these accusations that there is no level playing field, that Zanu PF abuses incumbency in elections. I want to make it very clear, all over the world an incumbent party has an advantage of being in power to use the position of incumbency for campaigning. Newsday
Apple is starting to eliminate mask requirements for both retail and corporate US employees, according to Bloomberg. The company reportedly told corporate staff that masks are now optional for vaccinated employees in regions where indoor-mask mandates have been dropped. Retail staff at specific locations were also told that masks will be optional starting today.

The company is following the lead of the CDC and states that are quickly dropping mask mandates as COVID-19 cases plummet around the country. It plans to relax mask rules across more regions as well, depending on local laws. In addition, Apple is reinstating in-person "Today at Apple" classes at US retail stores starting on March 7th, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman.

Apple has already dropped mask requirements for Store customers in a number of regions, including Kansas, North Carolina and Ohio. Most New York locations don't require customers to wear masks anymore either, so long as they've been fully vaccinated.

Apple previously dropped mask mandates last June, but that didn't last very long. It reinstated them just a short time later as the Delta variant surged, and kept them on during the spread of the Omicron variant.

If things go to plan, Apple may also set a deadline for employees returning to the office. It planned to do that in June of 2021, but delayed it once again as cases surged. It then projected a September return, but eventually admitted that employees wouldn't likely return until 2022.
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A number of gadgets from smartwatches to headphones to smart thermostats went on sale this week. You can get a total of $50 off many 41mm Apple Watch Series 7 models at Amazon right now, while Bose's QuietComfort 45 headphones are back down to their Black Friday price. A few AMD Ryzen 5000 processors are still on sale, plus a bunch of Samsung storage devices have received decent discounts  including the T7 Touch portable drive. Here are the best tech deals from this week that you can still get today.

Apple Watch Series 7

Engadget

Certain colors of the Apple Watch Series 7 are down to $349, or $50 off their normal price. Apple's latest flagship smartwatch earned a score of 90 from us for its slightly larger display, faster charging and handy watchOS8 features.

Apple AirPods (3rd gen)

Billy Steele/Engadget

Apple's latest AirPods are down to $145 at Woot, or $35 off their normal price. We gave them a score of 88 for their improved design, better sound quality and long battery life.

Bose QuietComfort 45

Billy Steele/Engadget

The Bose QC45 headphones are on sale for $279, which is their all-time-low price that we saw last Black Friday. We gave the cans a score of 86 for their excellent sound quality, strong ANC and comfortable fit.

AMD Ryzen 5000 series

AMD

Some of AMD's Ryzen 5000 processors are down to record-low prices at Amazon right now. The six-core Ryzen 5 5600X, arguably the best value of them all, is down to for $230 in the US and 210 in the UK. The 16-core Ryzen 5950X is also on sale for $599 in the US and 539 in the UK.

Nintendo eShop gift card

Kris Naudus/Engadget

Amazon knocked 10 percent off Nintendo's $50 eShop gift card, bringing it down to $45. It's a modest discount, but a good one if you want some extra funds to add games to your Switch.

Samsung T7 Touch (1TB)

Samsung

The T7 Touch portable SSD in 1TB is on sale for $140 across the web. This palm-sized drive works with most devices thanks to the duo of cables it comes with, and it supports 1,050 MB/s read speeds, 1,000 MB/s write speeds, AES 256-bit encryption and Dynamic Thermal Guard.

Samsung 980 Pro SSD (2TB)

Samsung's 980 Pro internal drive in 2TB is 35 percent off and down to $280  a great price for a powerful SSD that works with the PS5 (provided you have a heatsink). It has read speeds up to 7,000 MB/s, advanced thermal controls and works with Samsung's Magician Software, which lets you check its health and optimize settings as you'd like.

Google Nest Thermostat

Google

Google's Nest Thermostat is on sale for $93 right now, which is 29 percent off its normal price. It's a more affordable version of the Nest Learning Thermostat and it uses a feature called Savings Finder to suggests ways you can conserve energy in your home.

Google Nest Hub Max

Nicole Lee/Engadget

The Google Nest Hub Max is on sale for $169 right now, which is close to its record-low price. We gave the large smart display a score of 86 for its good sound quality, gesture controls and ability to work as a Nest Cam.

Paramount+ anniversary sale

Paramount+

Through March 7, new subscribers can get a few months of Paramount+ for only $1. Use the code BIRTHDAY when you sign up to get the ad-supported Essential plan for $1 per month for three months, or the ad-free Premium plan for $2 per month for the same amount of time.

Eero Pro 6

Laurie Frankel / Amazon

The Eero Pro 6 two-pack is $80 off for Prime members, bringing the price down to $319. This system can cover up to 3,500 square feet and it supports WiFi 6, gigabit speeds and a built-in Zigbee smart home hub.

Samsung Galaxy S22 series

Amazon's offering a $100 credit to those that order any of the three smartphones in the new Samsung Galaxy S22 lineup. All you have to do is enter the promo code on the product page before you check out, and you'll get an email after your handset ships with the details of the credit being added to your Amazon account. Those considering the Galaxy S22 have an extra incentive on top of that  $100 off in the form of an on-page coupon that you can clip, which will bring the price of the base model down to $700.

Roku Streaming Stick 4K+

Roku's new Streaming Stick 4K+ is down to $49, or 30 percent off its normal price. In addition to 4K streaming, it supports HDR10+, a faster processor and it comes bundled with the Roku Voice Remote Pro, which lets you use voice commands to search and issue verbal commands.

Instant Pot Max

The six-quart Instant Pot Max is down to a record low of $74, or half off its normal price. This multicooker has a large touch screen for easy programming, 15psi of pressure so you can experiment with canning and a sous vide cooking option.

New tech deals

Apple MagSafe battery pack

Apple's magnetic battery pack for iPhones is down to $88, which is 11 percent off its normal price. We have seen it cheaper in the past, but this is the best price we've seen since December. The accessory attaches magnetically to the back of the latest iPhones and provides up to 15W of wireless charging.

NordVPN

NordVPN's latest sale knocks the price of a two-year subscription down to just under $96, plus you'll get a free gift on top of it. The prize isn't anything physical, but rather additional subscription time on top of the two-year plan you paid for. Prizes are chosen at random, but after you make your purchase, you'll get either an extra month, and extra year or an extra two years added on to your subscription.

Amazon Luna

Amazon's Luna controller is 29 percent off right now, bringing it down to $50. It's designed to work with the company's Luna cloud gaming platform, and it's wireless and works with a bunch of operating systems including Mac, Windows, iOS, Fire TVs and others.

Anker Eufy RoboVac X8 Hybrid

This Eufy robot vac-and-mop machine is $200 off and down to $450. It's a good robot vacuum to consider if you want strong suction as well as a mopping feature that can better clean hardwood floors and tile. Plus, this machine maps out your home as it cleans, so you can send it to specific rooms and areas during future jobs.

Insta360 One X2

This tiny camera is 10 percent off and down to a record low of $387. It's a waterproof action cam that can shoot 360-degree video in 5K, and it supports advanced stabilization without the need for a gimbal and features like hyperlapse.

UK deals

AirPods (2nd gen)

Apple's second-generation AirPods are down to 99 at Amazon. These don't have some of the bells and whistles that the new third-gen models do, but they remain a decent option for Apple users on a budget. We gave them a score of 84 when they first came out for their improved wireless performance and solid battery life.

Kindle Paperwhite

A bunch of Kindle e-readers are on sale in the UK right now, including the new Paperwhite for 100. The Signature Edition, which we called the best e-reader by far, is down to 150 as well.

Fitbit Sense

Fitbit's most advanced smartwatch, the Sense, is down to 189 right now. That's not a record low, but it's still 37 percent off its usual rate. We gave it a score of 82 for its comprehensive health tracking features and big, bold display.

Jabra Elite 75t earbuds

John Lewis has the Elite 75ts for 79, which is nearly half off their usual rate. We gave the buds a score of 87 when they first came out for their good audio quality, long battery life and small, comfortable design.

Anker Nano II 65W GaN charger

The Anker Nano II 65W GaN charger is down to 38 right now, or 16 percent off its norma price. Not only is this brick much smaller than most other chargers with similar wattage, but it also has GaN technology, which will help reduce overheating and keep it power efficient.

Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.
Disney has announced an ad-supported tier is coming to Disney+ later this year. It will be available to folks in the US at first and there are plans to expand it to other countries starting in 2023.

The company hasn't revealed pricing for the new tier, though it'll cost less than the current ad-free plan. That costs $8 per month in the US. Nor did Disney say in its press release exactly when the ad-supported version of the service will be available.

Disney believes the move will help it reach its target of having between 230 million and 260 million Disney+ subscribers by the end of its 2024 fiscal year. As of the end of 2021, the streaming service had 129.8 million subscribers , a third of whom are in the US and Canada.
SpaceX chief Elon Musk has warned Starlink users in Ukraine that there's a high probability of the service being targeted, as it's the only working non-Russian communications system in some parts of the country. On Twitter, Musk advised people to use Starlink with caution by turning it on only when needed and placing it as far away from other people as possible. He also told users to place light camouflage over the antenna to avoid visual detection.

Important warning: Starlink is the only non-Russian communications system still working in some parts of Ukraine, so probability of being targeted is high. Please use with caution.  Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 3, 2022

As Reuters reports, Musk's warning comes after John Scott-Railton, a senior researcher at University of Toronto's Citizen Lab project, said Russia could use Starlink's uplink transmissions in Ukraine as beacons for airstrikes. In a lengthy Twitter thread, he explained Russia's extensive experience when it comes to targeting people while they're using satphones and other kinds of satellite technologies.

Re: @elonmusk's starlink donation.



Good to see.



But remember: if #Putin controls the air above #Ukraine, users' uplink transmissions become beacons... for airstrikes.



Some background 1/ pic.twitter.com/0p6J87TtUF  John Scott-Railton (@jsrailton) February 27, 2022

Internet connection has become spotty in Ukraine since the Russian invasion began. The intense combat and explosions in major cities like Kyiv had disrupted the operations of GigaTrans, the country's main internet provider that also supplies connectivity to other networks. SpaceX activated the Starlink broadband internet service in Ukraine following a plea from Mykhailo Fedorov, who serves as the country's Minister of Digital Transformation. The company also quickly sent terminals to the country, which arrived just a couple of days after the service's activation.

Days after receiving SpaceX's shipment, Fedorov tweeted a photo of a Starlink dish installed and in use on a rooftop. He also asked for ideas on how to keep the antenna powered in the middle of Russia's ongoing attacks. Musk responded that SpaceX is updating the terminal's software to reduce its peak power consumption and so that it can be powered from a car's cigarette lighter socket. He also said the company enabled mobile roaming so that a Starlink antenna can maintain its signal even on a moving vehicle.

A consultant in satellite communications told Reuters that Starlink terminals weren't designed to be used while in motion, so it's not quite clear what Musk meant. One user in California stuck a Starlink antenna to the hood of his car for internet connectivity, though  they even got a ticket for it. SpaceX has also long been planning to connect moving vehicles to the Starlink network and previewed a ruggedized version of the service's dish meant for ships, aircraft and bigger land vehicles like RVs last year.
Google has stopped selling ads in Russia completely, according to Reuters. The tech giant's decision applies to YouTube, search and outside publishing partners, expanding the more limited ad bans it implemented since the Russian invasion of Ukraine began. "In light of the extraordinary circumstances, we're pausing Google ads in Russia," the company told the news organization in a statement. "The situation is evolving quickly, and we will continue to share updates when appropriate."

The tech giant blocked RT and other Russian channels from generating ad revenue on YouTube in late February before barring Russian state media from being able to monetize their content across its platforms. It had also prohibited all kinds of ads that seek to take advantage of the situation, unless they're anti-war advertisements.

Google is far from the only tech company that has implemented ad-related changes across the region. Twitter had quickly paused ads and recommendations in Russia and Ukraine after the invasion began "to ensure critical public safety information is elevated and ads don't detract from it." Facebook blocked Russian state media from running ads on its platform after the country's authorities partially restricted access to the social network. More recently, it blocked access to RT and Sputnik within the EU and Ukraine before demoting all Russian state media on its website around the world. Microsoft banned RT and Sputnik from its ad platform, as well, and pulled their news apps from its store.

As The New York Times notes, Google has been very careful with its decisions involving Russia. It has over 100 employees in the country, and Russian authorities previously threatened to prosecute individuals if their employers don't abide by their rules.

Google's decision to ban all ad sales in the country comes shortly after Russian communications watchdog Roskomnadzor demanded the takedown of YouTube video ads it says are spreading "false political information" about Ukraine. According to a Wall Street Journal report, Roskomnadzor is accusing YouTube of running "advertising campaigns to misinform the Russian audience" and are "aimed at creating a distorted perception of current events."

The regulator didn't say whether it would limit YouTube in Russia if Google doesn't comply, but Russian authorities have been blocking websites that provide information contradicting their country's official narrative about the invasion. In addition to restricting access to Facebook within the country, the Russian government also limited people's access to Twitter and previously threatened to block Wikipedia.
As of September, new episodes of some NBCUniversal shows such as Saturday Night Live, The Voice and American Auto will no longer hit Hulu the day after they air. NBCUniversal has ended a content deal between the two sides, meaning those series will stream exclusively on Peacock. It's not clear which other shows will be affected by the move, according to The Hollywood Reporter and Deadline.

The decision to sever ties with Hulu comes as NBCU tries to drive more subscribers to Peacock. At the end of last year, it had 9 million paying subscribers (most of whom opt for the $5 ad-supported tier) and 24.5 million monthly active accounts. It's unclear how many of those are using the free tier. Comcast subscribers can access an ad-supported version of Peacock Premium at no extra cost.

Much of our strong NBC content premieres on Hulu. Over time wed like to bring that back to Peacock, NBCUniversal CEO Jeff Shell said during Comcast's January earnings call. Comcast CFO Mike Cavanagh said the company planned to spend $3 billion on Peacock content this year.

Keeping popular shows like SNL and The Voice as streaming exclusives could help NBCU boost Peacock user numbers. NBCU has invested in other types of content to bring in subscribers, including live sports rights, local news channels and making WWE Network exclusive to the platform. Peacock also has a slate of originals, including Bel-Air and an upcoming Twisted Metal series.

Having many broadcast and cable shows available to stream the day after they air has long been a selling point for Hulu. It'll be a blow for the service to lose some notable NBC series.

Although Disney has been fully in charge of Hulu since 2019, Comcast still owns 33 percent of the service. Comcast can require Disney to buy out its stake, but not until 2024. At the end of 2021, Hulu had 45.3 million subscribers.

Update 3/4/22 8:30pm ET: "With the proliferation of streaming services entering the marketplace, we have long anticipated changes to our third-party content offering and over the past few years have increased our investment in original content, including popular and award-nominated titles," a Hulu spokesperson told Engadget via email. "As a leading destination for breakthrough storytelling, we continue to transform Hulu into an exclusive home for stories from across The Walt Disney Company and beyond to bring our viewers even more premium content led by Hulu Originals and next-day television programming."
Apple isn't the only tech behemoth pulling its products from the Russian market in response to the invasion of Ukraine. Microsoft is 'suspending' all new sales of products and services in Russia, and is halting "many aspects" of its business in the country to honor US, UK and EU sanctions. The move comes days after Microsoft restricted Russian state media across its platforms, and after Ukraine's Vice Prime Minister called on the company to block Russian Xbox accounts.

Microsoft saw the withdrawal as virtually necessary. "Concrete steps" like this would have the most impact, according to company president Brad Smith, and there will be "additional steps" as the Ukraine situation develops. The Windows creator was unambiguous in its criticism of Russia, calling the invasion "unjustified, unprovoked and unlawful" and pointing out its efforts to identify and counter Russian cyberattacks against Ukraine.

The initiative could have a significant impact on Russian use of technology. Microsoft products play important roles for computing in Russia like they do in many countries, including Windows, Office and services like Microsoft 365 or Azure. While existing users might not lose access, this could pose problems for anyone needing to buy a new product or renew a subscription. We've asked Microsoft how this might impact Russian PC vendors  they'll need licenses if they intend to sell Windows-based computers.

Whatever the exact damage, the sales freeze follows a string of crackdowns at tech companies like Google, Meta, Reddit and Twitter. Russia won't necessarily bend in response to these actions, but there's clearly concerted pressure on the country to act.
Microsoft has closed its $19.7 billion takeover of speech-tech company Nuance Communications. It announced the acquisition last April and cleared the final regulatory barrier this week when the UKs Competition and Markets Authority signed off on the deal. Regulators in the EU, US and Australia rubber stamped the buyout last year.

Mark Benjamin will remain as Nuance CEO, though he now reports to Microsoft Cloud and AI executive vice president Scott Guthrie. The duo wrote in a blog post that Microsoft and Nuance will build on "AI, digital and cloud advancements to create solutions that transform how we  as global citizens  work, shop, bank, engage and receive care." Healthcare will be a major focus of their work.

Microsoft has another massive deal in the works: its proposed $68.7 billion takeover of Activision Blizzard. It expects the deal to be completed by mid-2023 if regulators give the thumbs up.
Samsung will at least partly address complaints that it's throttling the performance of apps on some Galaxy phones. As The Verge reports, the company has promised an update to its Game Optimizing Service to give users more control over throttling. In a statement to Engadget, Samsung said the option was coming at an unspecified point in the future in response to both feedback and "careful consideration." You can read the full statement at the end of this article.

However, Samsung disputed claims GOS was throttling as many as 10,000 apps across numerous categories. The service "does not manage" apps beyond games, the company said. Users have accused Samsung of throttling the performance of non-gaming software like Netflix and TikTok while disabling the restrictions for benchmarks like 3DMark and GeekBench, skewing expectations for real-world speed.

GOS is now known to be present on the Galaxy S22 series. While the exact range of phones with GOS isn't clear, the software is known to exist on older phones like the Galaxy S21 lineup and S20 FE.

Samsung isn't alone. In 2021, OnePlus admitted that it throttled the OnePlus 9 while popular apps were in use. This was ostensibly meant to preserve battery life, but didn't include benchmarks. Huawei, Oppo and other phone makers have been caught cheating on benchmarks in the past, but those methods relied on ramping up performance when a test app was in use, not slowing down for other apps.

It's difficult for phone vendors to completely avoid throttling. Chips like the Galaxy S22's Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 and Exynos 2200 can run hot, and Samsung even introduced vapor chamber cooling to the S22 to manage that heat. As Apple learned years ago, though, at least some users want more control and transparency for throttling  they're willing to sacrifice battery life and heat to see devices reach their full potential.

"Our priority is to deliver the best mobile experience for consumers. The Game Optimizing Service (GOS) has been designed to help game apps achieve a great performance while managing device temperature effectively. GOS does not manage the performance of non-gaming apps. We value the feedback we receive about our products and after careful consideration, we plan to roll out a software update soon so users can control the performance while running game apps."
Russia has moved to block access to Twitter just after a similar crackdown on Facebook, Interfax reported. Russian regulator Roskomnadzor reportedly said it was complying with a February 24 request from Russia's Prosecutor General.

Twitter didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. The company had previously confirmed its service was being "restricted for some people in Russia," and there were widespread reports of throttling. Now, it seems Russia is looking to make Twitter completely inaccessible, just as it has with Facebook. Twitter said earlier this week it would label all tweets with links to Russian state media outlets, as social media companies have rushed to limit the influence of RT and Sputnik.

Update 3/1 5:23pm ET: A Twitter spokesperson said they haven't seen "anything significantly different" compared with the earlier limitations on the service in Russia. "Were aware of reports, but we don't currently see anything significantly different from what we previously shared that would point to a block," the company said in a statement.
A fight has erupted in the gold rich Mazowe area  40km north of Harare where a group of farmers are reportedly disrupting operations at a mine.

A long running attempt to have the alleged intruders at Zawadi Mining removed have drawn blanks as the provincial leadership in government and police are accused of failing to resolve the matter.

The fight over the lucrative gold claims has since spilled into the courts as owners of Zawadi Mining Private Limited led by Asante Mayeka are battling a group of farmers operating under Revmark Mining Syndicate.

Zawadi has sought protection from the alleged invaders but the police are taking longer than expected to act. Zawadi Mining filed a complaint against Revmark syndicate members with the police in June 2020 under case number RRB 471475 ZRP Concession. Again, no action was taken.

The matter was also reported to the Mashonaland Central provincial Mines and Mining Development ministry and polices Minerals Flora and Fauna Unit. The Provincial Affairs minister Monica Mavhunga is also said to be in the know of the raging dispute and has failed to resolve the matter.

Sources said Revmark Mining Syndicate was given an opportunity to present its case to Mavhunga. This was after Revmark syndicate members gained entry into the Zawadi mining claims.

Mavhunga did not respond to questions sent via WhatsApp while her mobile phone went unanswered several times.

The fight over the mine spilled into the High Court where Justice David Mangota referred the matter to the Mines and Mining Development ministry for resolution. Revmark (the applicant) had escalated the matter with the High Court against Zawadi Mining.

In part the July 21, 2021 judgment reads, Where upon after reading documents filed of record and hearing counsel it is ordered by consent that the application be and is hereby withdrawn.

The dispute between the parties be and hereby referred to the ministry of Mines and Mining Development for resolution. 1st respondent (Zawadi) shall continue erecting its fence around the claim known as Murodzi 45 and shall provide access for the applicants to and from their fields and pastures between the hours of 6am and 6pm.

The applicant hereby undertakes not to, in any way interfere with the mining operations of Zawadi Mining Pvt Ltd including carrying out any mining activities within that mining companys claim known as Murodzi 45. In the event that the applicant breach paragraph (4) of this order, the 1st respondent be and is hereby authorised to close the entrance leading to its claim known as Murodzi 45.

But Revmark has allegedly been in breach of the court order.

The dispute is raging like veld fire, prompting Zawadis lawyers to petition police Commissioner General Godwin Matanga.

In a letter dated December 23, 2021, Joel Mambara and Partners representing Zawadi Mining pleaded for Matangas intervention.

The letter reads: We act on behalf of our client Zawadi Mining Pvt Ltd, a company duly registered with the laws of Zimbabwe. Hence note our legal interest. Our client made a report of theft of gold against Vavarirai Revesai and his accomplices, Isaac Mukazi, Christopher Mukazi, Anymore Makarichi, and Andrew Chaboka under RRB4714575.

They are threatening our clients employees as of December 23, 2021 in violation of a court order HC 37557/1. As of today nothing has happened and the police did not go to collect samples to determine the correct value of gold stolen as well as conduct any investigations, the letter reads.

What it basically means is that the police are now under-policing /investigating and as such the case runs the risk of being thrown out of court for lack of evidence. I must state that I am a holder of mining rights and our client mine is registered under Murodzi 45 concession.

Revmark Mining Syndicate leader Vavarirai Revesais phone went unanswered after several attempts to get his comment while Zawadi representatives declined to discuss the matter, saying it was subjudice.

Police spokesperson Paul Nyathi was not available for comment. Zimbabwe Independent
President Biden's Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy has formally called on tech companies to provide information on sources and the scale of COVID-19 misinformation, The Washington Post has reported. "This is about protecting the nations health," he told The Post in a written statement. "Technology companies now have the opportunity to be open and transparent with the American people about the misinformation on their platforms."

Murthy's request pertains to social networks, search engines, crowdsourced platforms, e-commerce and instant messaging companies. To start with, he wants data and analysis on typical vaccine misinformation already identified by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That includes falsities like "the ingredients in COVID-19 vaccines are dangerous" and "COVID-19 vaccines contain microchips."

The administration seeks to learn how many users have been exposed to such misinformation, and which demographic groups may have been disproportionally affected. On top of that, it's looking for data about the major sources of COVID-19 misinformation, including individuals or businesses that sell unapproved COVID-19 products or services. Tech companies have until May 2nd to comply, though they won't be penalized if they don't.

Last summer, Murthy called health misinformation an "urgent threat to public health" that tech platforms needed to address, adding that "health misinformation has already caused significant harm."

The request is part of the White House's COVID National Preparedness Plan announced yesterday, designed to achieve "minimal disruption" by COVID-19. The administration also asked health providers to submit statements on how coronavirus misinformation has hurt patients and communities. "Were asking anyone with relevant insights  from original research and data sets to personal stories that speak to the role of misinformation in public health  to share them with us."
Weather Alert

...FLOOD WATCH NOW IN EFFECT THROUGH THURSDAY EVENING... * WHAT...Flooding caused by excessive rainfall continues to be possible. * WHERE...Portions of Oklahoma and northern Texas, including the following counties, in Oklahoma, Alfalfa, Atoka, Blaine, Bryan, Caddo, Canadian, Carter, Cleveland, Coal, Comanche, Cotton, Garfield, Garvin, Grady, Grant, Hughes, Jefferson, Johnston, Kay, Kingfisher, Lincoln, Logan, Love, Major, Marshall, McClain, Murray, Noble, Oklahoma, Payne, Pontotoc, Pottawatomie, Seminole, Stephens and Tillman. In northern Texas, Archer, Clay, Wichita and Wilbarger. * WHEN...Through Thursday evening. * IMPACTS...Excessive runoff may result in flooding of rivers, creeks, streams, and other low-lying and flood-prone locations. Creeks and streams may rise out of their banks. Flooding may occur in poor drainage and urban areas. Low-water crossings may be flooded. Extensive street flooding and flooding of creeks and rivers are possible. Area creeks and streams are running high and could flood with more heavy rain. * ADDITIONAL DETAILS... - Showers and thunderstorm chances will continue through Thursday evening, with an additional 1 to 3 inches of rainfall expected in the watch area. Rainfall totals across the watch area have already exceeded 4 inches for some locations near the I-44 and I-40 corridors across eastern Oklahoma. - 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. &&
Attention Love is Blind fans! There's a new dating show coming to Netflix.

For those who have been following this exciting season of Love is Blind, we know that we have watched the couples that were meant to be make their way down the aisle and say "I Do." Now, of course, fans of the show are left with the deflated knowledge that it is all over.

Well, don't worry anymore! According to an article on The Hollywood Reporter, the Love is Blind creators are bringing a new dating series to Netflix. This series is called Ultimatum: Marry or Move On.

The trailer for this new show was released alongside the Love is Blind season two recap episode. The show pointedly asks the question: are you ready to get married?

Ultimatum: Marry or Move On will follow six couples who are not sure whether or not they want to get married. Well, more specifically, one of the partners is certain that they want to get married and they have told their significant other that it is either marriage or splitsville.

They come on the show and start dating one of the people from one of the other couples. By the end of the series, the couples that arrived will either get married or break up.

By description alone, we can be confident that this series is an immediate obsession. The first eight episodes of the series will come out on Netflix on April 6th. We can't wait to watch it!
The Russian leader has shown he cares enough about Ukraine to shed blood over it. He needs to know the gain wont be worth the pain. Vladimir Putins recognition of two Russian-backed separatist regions in eastern Ukraine as independent, along with his subsequent deployment of troops and tanks to the regions, has moved Europe closer to the brink of war.

Despite many differences, there are echoes of 1938 in current developments. Putin may not be Hitler; Ukraine in 2022 isnt Czechoslovakia in 1938; and French president Emmanuel Macron, Olaf Scholz, the German chancellor, and their western colleagues arent some sort of collective Chamberlain. But 1938 does carry important lessons: the most important being that deterrence may seem more expensive and risky than accommodation today, but it is essential for Europes long-term security. Putin, though a brutal authoritarian leader, is not a charismatic madman like Hitler. He has used targeted repression and assassinations to control the Russian opposition, rather than concentration camps. His ideology is flexible: for all his anti-western rhetoric, he and his associates have often kept their money and their families in the west.

What Putin has in common with Hitler, however, is a mystical belief in a nation stretching beyond his countrys current borders. Putin sees Ukraine as the key to this Russian world. In his speech on Monday (21 February), announcing the recognition of the Donetsk and Luhansk peoples republics, Putin spoke of Ukraine as an integral part of our own history, culture and spiritual space and described the creation of a Ukrainian Soviet republic by Lenin as the tearing away from Russia of a part of its own historical territories. Last year he wrote that there was no historical basis for a Ukrainian people separate from Russians.

Ukrainians disagree. Despite the lazy cliche that Ukraine is divided into a Russian-speaking, pro-Russian east and a Ukrainian-speaking, nationalist west, in 1991 every region of Ukraine, even Crimea, voted in favor of Ukrainian independence. President Volodymyr Zelenskiy is more comfortable speaking Russian than Ukrainian, yet won almost three-quarters of the vote in the 2019 presidential election, and was the leading candidate even in most parts of the supposedly nationalist west. Many of the Ukrainian soldiers on the frontline are Russian-speakers and also Ukrainian patriots.

Ukraine in 2022 is more important strategically and economically than Czechoslovakia was in 1938. It is Europes largest country after Russia. Many of its population of more than 44 million have become refugees since the Russian invasion. Globally, it is a crucial exporter of maize and seventh for wheat, and a key supplier of agricultural produce to the EU. World food prices have rocket if Ukraines fields were full of tanks rather than tractors. And Ukraine is an important transit route for Europes energy.

Western leaders now grappling with Russias escalating aggression have one advantage over Neville Chamberlain in 1938: they know that appeasement can have disastrous consequences. They can see, too, thanks to Russias December proposals on European security, that Putins ambitions arent limited to controlling Ukraine: he wants to reverse changes in Europes post-cold war security arrangements. If Joe Biden, Macron, Scholz and Boris Johnson want to prevent a horrendous war  on a much larger scale than the Balkan wars of the 1990s  they need to focus on deterring Putin, not accommodating him.

Deterrence will be impossible, however, if leaders keep telling Putin what they are not prepared to do, or if they turn up the pressure on him so slowly that he can always adapt. Biden has said that he wont send US forces to fight in Ukraine; the German foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, has publicly expressed doubts about cutting Russia off from the global payments system Swift; the Italian prime minister, Mario Draghi, has said that sanctions should not hit gas imports from Russia; and the EU, US and UK have already indicated that the recognition of the peoples republics looks unlikely to trigger full-scale economic sanctions at this stage, despite Putins deployment of troops.

The western desire not to escalate is understandable. Putin is doing his best to show that Ukraine matters enough to him to shed blood over it, and he has past form: in the war he launched in Chechnya thousands of Russian troops were killed, according to Russian human rights organizations. But now that Putin has gone on to attack Ukraine, the costs of the resultant war for the west will be much higher than those of wide-ranging sanctions or providing military support to Ukraine, and Europe will be destabilized for decades. With Putins onslaught on Ukraine well underway and with Russian troops closing in on Kyiv, if he is to be deterred from going further, the West needs to make him uncertain that the gain will be worth the pain. Everything must be on the table.

The West Knows the Cost of Appeasement: We Cant Rule Out Any Option for Stopping Putin  Opinion by Ian Bond  Centre for European Reform / CER.

The Opinion can be downloaded here
The European Union said it would seriously look into Ukraines application to become a bloc candidate country, recognizing the moves political weight and dramatic circumstances as well as hesitation from many member states. In a passionate address made by video link from Kyiv, Ukrainian president Volodomyr Zelensky on Tuesday (1 March) made an emotional plea to EU lawmakers and leaders gathered in the plenary chamber of the European Parliament, asking the EU to prove that you are with us. Ukraine has been under attack from by Russian forces since Thursday (24 February), in an invasion involving its air force and ground troops and heavy artillery, in the most serious war in Europe since the Balkan wars of the 1990s. Were fighting for survival, and this is the highest of all motivation, but we are fighting also to be equal members of Europe. I believe that today we are showing everybody thats exactly what we are, Zelenskiy told the EUs political elite.

Meanwhile, explosions have rocked Ukraines capital Kyiv overnight amid widespread uncertainty over whether Russia will launch a full assault on the capital in the coming hours and days. More than 1 million Ukrainians have fled the country since the start of the Russian invasion a week ago, but many have stayed and taken up arms to fight Russian forces. In the latest development, a second round of talks between Ukrainian and Russian delegations is due to begin in Belarus sometime on Thursday (3 March) afternoon. Kyivs minimum goal is to set up humanitarian corridors  routes for civilians to escape conflict-hit areas. Alongside diplomatic efforts, a European Arms-to-Ukraine program is continuing to gather momentum, despite Russian president Vladimir Putins threats of a nuclear response against what he calls Western interference in the war. The EU has set aside 450m to buy lethal weapons for Ukraine, and that comes on top of pledged shipments of fighter jets, anti-tank, and anti-aircraft weapons from a growing list of member states.

Faced with the prospect of civilian massacres on their eastern doorstep, NATO and the EU may need to resort to covert military operations as options narrow amid the Russian onslaught against Ukraine. Both NATO and EU countries are moving weapons into the war-torn country in an operation shrouded in secrecy out of fear of Russian reprisals. Some shipments are being coordinated via logistics hubs in Poland, where NATO secretary general Jens Stoltenberg flew Tuesday (28 February) to a military base in ?ask, some 300km from the Ukrainian border, accompanied by Danish F-16 warplanes. This comes as the EUs foreign policy chief Josep Borrell told the blocs lawmakers on Tuesday (1 March) that the EU must significantly increase its capacity to deter wars. Addressing the second taboo in a few days, after the bloc approved supplying arms to Ukraine, Borrell said that one of the lessons that we have to learn is that more than ever Europe must think strategically about itself, its environment and the world.

In what was described as a watershed moment for its defense policy, the EU agreed on Sunday (27 February) to unblock some 500 million for member states to buy arms for Ukraines armed forces, with the aim to stop Russias invasion. We need to increase our deterrence capacity in order to prevent war, Borrell said, adding that the bloc needs to think about the instrument of coercion, retaliation, and counterattack in the face of reckless adversaries. This is a moment in which geopolitical Europe is being born, the EUs top diplomat said. In a separate but related development, Brussels is also considering measures to bolster its energy security as increasingly harsh sanctions against Russia and the escalating violence in Ukraine have raised concerns about the security of supply of Russian energy commodities for the next winter. Europe imports about 40% of its gas, 35% of its crude oil and upwards of 40% of its coal from Russia. As uncertainty grows around these imports and EU gas reserves are dropping below 30%,Our present situation is tense, admitted the EUs Energy Commissioner, Kadri Simson,
Investigators from the International Criminal Court set off for 'the Ukraine region' to start looking into possible war crimes, the tribunal's top prosecutor said.
Ukraine's defense lines were holding against the Russian attack, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in his latest video on Thursday, adding there had been no respite in Moscow's shelling of Ukraine since midnight.
Three more soldiers (serving and retired) from the First Presidential Guard Battalion appeared at Chitungwiza Magistrates Court yesterday morning facing armed robbery charges.

The three appeared before Magistrate Tendai Mutamba on the same day that a different group of soldiers and Policemen were appearing at Masvingo Magistrates Court in a different case of armed robbery.

Zimbabwe is facing a spate of armed robbery cases committed by members of the security forces.

Shadreck Kadira (33), (retired) Force Number 832196K, Munyaradzi Munyuki (27) Force Number 843244T and Busani Moyo (29) Force Number 840921T allegedly robbed a Beatrice white farmer of US$ 2 135 and property valued at $722.

The robbery allegedly happened on Monday at Houmoed Farm, Beatrice and the court heard that the soldiers were armed with a pistol.

The Mirror attended the court case which is under CRB73-5/22 and was postponed to March 15, 2022.

Three other suspects also believed to be members of the National Army are still at large, according to the State.

It is the State case that on February 28 at 8pm the soldiers broke into a cottage at the farm where Luke Williams (19) was sleeping, dragged him out of the house and robbed him of US$250 and an iPhone XR, a bracelet and a knife.

The robbers then proceeded to the main house and attacked David George Rickards (67) who was in the dining room and his wife Philliper Rickards (62) who was sleeping in the bedroom. They demanded money and got US$850 that was in Phillipers purse.

The robbers then force-marched Williams, David and Philliper to the farm office where they opened a safe box with $1 000 RTGS in $5 notes which the robbers left. They switched off the farmhouse lights which triggered an alarm and they escaped.

Phillipers son Jack Richards (36) called Beatrice Police who setup a trap and arrested the three at the 20km peg into Harare where a roadblock was mounted.

The other three robbers went in a different direction and are still at large. Masvingo Mirror
Jalan Kalrock Consortium, the Successful Resolution Applicant and new proposed promoters of Jet Airways, has appointed Sanjiv Kapoor as the Chief Executive Officer.

Kapoor, who is currently President of Oberoi Hotels & Resorts, will be joining from April 4, 2022.

Prior to joining the Oberoi Group, he was the Chief Strategy and Commercial Officer at Vistara, a TATA - Singapore Airline Joint Venture, from 2016 until 2019.

Prior to Vistara, Kapoor led SpiceJet through its unprecedented turnaround in 2014-2015 as its COO and de facto CEO from November 2013 until October 2015, shepherding the airline through a period of record high oil prices and a cash crunch, to cultural and operational transformation, ownership change, and profitability within 15 months of assuming charge, in the process fundamentally changing the Indian airline industry in terms of its earlier approach to pricing, marketing, and customer delight.

Murari Lal Jalan, Lead Partner of the Jalan-Kalrock Consortium and proposed NonExecutive Chairman of Jet Airways said I am happy to have Sanjiv join our team. Sanjiv is a peoples person and has all qualities of a great leader. I am certain he will be able to lead Jet Airways and make it become the most preferred full-service carrier of India. Sanjiv is a seasoned aviation professional who has the right blend and demeanour to stitch a team together.

Jalan further said, I always believe in investing in human capital and by having Sanjiv as the CEO and Vipula as the CFO, I am certain Jet Airways will reclaim its lost glory and surpass everyones expectation.

Speaking on his accepting the role as the Chief Executive Officer, Kapoor said I am looking forward to getting back to aviation, an industry I am passionate about, with Jet Airways, one of the warmest, classiest and most loved brands to have graced Indian aviation. Even though Jet Airways has been out of operation for three years, it still has a large fan base of loyal customers who miss it every day and cant wait for it to take to the skies again. Working together with a very strong team of experienced aviation professionals that is being put together by the Jalan-Kalrock Consortium, I look forward to leading the charge in rebuilding Jet Airways into the most preferred customer-oriented airline once again, a people-focused airline for the digital age.

Read more news about (internet advertising India, internet advertising, advertising India, digital advertising India, media advertising India)
Thursday, March 3, 2022

Research Update: Fighting COVID with Hyperbaric Oxygenation

Latest Research and UHMS CLINICAL TRIAL DESIGN AND RESEARCH PROTOCOL

Several studies are showing positive results when treating COVID patients with Hyperbaric Oxygenation.

Hyperbaric oxygen as an adjuvant treatment for patients with COVID-19 severe hypoxaemia: a randomised controlled trial.

Cannellotto M, et al., Emerg Med J. 2022 Feb;39(2):88-93. doi: 10.1136/emermed-2021-211253. Epub 2021 Dec 14.

Hyperbaric oxygen therapy for the treatment of long COVID: early evaluation of a highly promising intervention.

Tim Robbins, et al. Clin Med November 2021 https://doi.org/10.7861/clinmed.2021-0462

Hyperbaric oxygen therapy for patients with COVID-19.

John Kirby http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/emermed-2021-212015

Efficacy and safety of hyperbaric oxygen treatment in SARS-COV-2 (COVID-19) pneumonia: a systematic review.

Boet S, et al., Diving Hyperb Med. 2021 Sep 30;51(3):271-281. doi: 10.28920/dhm51.3.271-281.

Hyperbaric oxygen therapy in preventing mechanical ventilation in COVID-19 patients: a retrospective case series.

Thibodeaux K, et al., J Wound Care. 2020 May 1;29(Sup5a):S4-S8. doi: 10.12968/jowc.2020.29.Sup5a.S4.

The effects of hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT) on coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19): a systematic review.

Oliaei S, et al., Eur J Med Res. 2021 Aug 19;26(1):96. doi: 10.1186/s40001-021-00570-2.

https://www.uhms.org/images/MiscDocs/Rational_and_study_design_for_treating_COVID_patients_with_HBO2.pdf

RATIONALE, STUDY DESIGN CONSIDERATIONS, AND PROTOCOL RECOMMENDATIONS FOR TREATING COVID-19 PATIENTS WITH HYPERBARIC OXYGEN

SUMMARY OF POTENTIAL MECHANISMS UNDERLYING COVID-19 PATIENT RESPONSES TO HBO2

. . . . Patients with COVID-19 experience hypoxia, a profound inflammatory response, hypercoagulability, and may incur an oxygen debt. Hyperbaric oxygen may have an influence on all of these.

A prominent feature of COVID-19 is hypoxia due to lung dysfunction. These patients are subject to severe hypoxemia and resultant tissue hypoxia. They can be exceedingly difficult to oxygenate in spite of high oxygen levels in their breathing mix and ventilatory support. The use of extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) has not offered a noticeable advantage in this group of severely affected patients. Anecdotally, hyperbaric oxygen has been very successful in delivering adequate oxygen to COVID patients in the chamber. Many of these patients show persistent improvement after a hyperbaric treatment when returned to their ICU room. . . .

Patients experiencing days of inadequate oxygenation may incur an oxygen debt. This is an additional insult related to but not identical to acute hypoxia. It has been observed in severe chronic anemia, CO poisoning, and even in sepsis. Van Meter has explained this phenomenon and reviewed the favorable effects of HBO2 in paying the oxygen debt. Untreated, oxygen debt is a major cause of multiorgan failure [40]. With the improvement in oxygenation that occurs, HBO2 therapy may pay the oxygen debt incurred during the patients severely hypoxic interval. The putative benefits of HBO2 for COVID-19 patients, therefore, include relief of hypoxia that persists after leaving the chamber, possible repayment of any accrued oxygen debt, reduced inflammation, and a possible improvement in hypercoagulation. (For Full Report)

Multiple Countries and over a dozen U.S. Hospitals demonstrate effectiveness of HBOT in fighting COVID

https://local12.com/news/investigates/new-treatment-promises-hope-during-pandemic-cincinnati-duane-pohlman-coronavirus-covid

HBOT treatment promises hope during pandemic.

Duane Pohlman reports

From Louisiana to Long Island, hyperbaric chambers, once used only to treat divers suffering from the bends, are increasingly being used to treat COVID-19 patients with surprising success.

While the numbers are small, doctors at more than a dozen hospitals across the country say hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT) is saving the lives of even the most critically ill coronavirus patients.

The results thus far are pretty impressive, Dr. Thomas Serena, founder and director of the SerenaGroup, a family of wound, hyperbaric and research companies, said in a recent interview.

At NYU Winthrop Hospital in Mineola, New York, Dr. Scott Gorenstein, the director of hyperbaric medicine, said, Im encouraged that hyperbaric oxygen could be a benefit.

Dr. Paul Harch, the director of hyperbaric medicine at LSU in New Orleans and founder of HBOT.com, says HBOT appears to be working for most coronavirus cases. . . . (more)

The information provided by TreatNOW.org does not constitute a medical recommendation. It is intended for informational purposes only, and no claims, either real or implied, are being made.
Kroger, one of the largest grocery retailers in the country, said Friday in a news release that it will return to San Antonio with a 67,000-square-foot warehouse on the Northeast Side for its local delivery service.

The Ohio-based grocer closed its 15 San Antonio stores in 1993 over a labor dispute.

Although Kroger is not opening a physical store, its new fulfillment hub is expected to create more than 160 jobs in various departments, including technology, operations, logistics and transportation, inventory, and more, according to the news release.

On ExpressNews.com: Tesla eyeing a second service center in the San Antonio area

Kroger said the lease for the facility is still pending, but expects that its delivery service will be operational later this year. The grocer did not provide the address for the hub.

The company will also open a hub in Austin, which, along with the facility in San Antonio, will work closely with the high-tech customer fulfillment center in Dallas. The Dallas facility is expected to open this spring.

In 2018, Kroger began a relationship with Ocado, an e-commerce grocery company, to begin delivering its groceries. In 2021, the grocer successfully entered Florida's market with a model that did not require opening physical stores.

Kroger has also expanded its grocery delivery service in U.S. locations like Oklahoma City, Birmingham, Ala., and the East Coast

Malak.Silmi@express-new.net
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David Blancas didnt set out to become San Antonios paleta artist  it just happened that way.

I can do more than just paletas, said Blancas, 48. As long as youre doing what you love, Ill shut my mouth and keep doing popsicles.

Blancas has been creating the paletas for about 10 years. He isnt sure how many hes done in that time, but he knows its a lot. Hes made them in a range of sizes, including some that are much, much larger than life. That category includes Sabor del Mercado, a 10-foot-tall sculpture featuring a swirl of blues and purples that seem to melt onto the white platform it rests upon.

Kin Man Hui /Staff photographer

Sabor del Mercado, which he made in 2014, is now on display at the entrance of Centro de Artes in Market Square.

Blancas was set on the paleta path about a decade ago. He had been experimenting with color and texture for the backgrounds of some paintings and showed what he had been working on to friends. A certain shade of red caught their attention.

On ExpressNews.com: Immersive Van Gogh announces SA location, new dates

They said it should stay as is because it looks tasty, he said. It looked like chamoy, it looked like candy.

A friend said it would be perfect for an artwork suggestive of Jolly Ranchers, but Blancas thought it was better suited to a paleta-shaped piece.

I made three of them, and I put them on the wall just for fun to see if I liked them, he said. And there was never a visitor thereafter that wasnt touching them. They tried to lick on them  its resin; I wouldnt advise that, guys. But something was happening organically  people were interacting with them so much that I thought, Theres something there. Let me explore that some more.

Blancas paletas are now in the University of Texas at San Antonios permanent art collection as well as in a private collection in New York. He recently completed a large, red steel paleta commissioned by a San Antonian who now lives in California and wanted a little bit of home there.

Kin Man Hui /Staff photographer

Blancas thinks people often respond to his paleta pieces out of nostalgia.

It connects it to your youth, when you were running behind the paleta man or the ice cream truck, he said.

Blancas, who was partial to lime paletas as a kid and now favors mangonada, has a few paleta pieces on display at RePublic Arts, the West Side studio and gallery he moved into in 2020. They can be found in the restroom  Every space should be part of the experience  and theres also a large Star Wars-themed piece on the back wall that gives the paleta treatment to Han Solo frozen in carbonite.

RePublic Arts is currently showing Glow, an exhibit of works that all involve illumination. A closing reception will be 6 to 10 p.m. March 26.

Blancas said he would someday like to have an event that would include a way for visitors to share their paleta stories.

Kin Man Hui /Staff photographer

Its something thats going to contribute to the conversation, because I know why I explored the thing, but how people relate to them, thats something that only the person that is interacting with it can share, he said. So thats kind of an organic way of gathering the artist statement.

He would like to take the concept into deeper territory, including identity. Hes made a maquette of a piece bearing two paletas, one painted with the Mexican flag and the other with the American flag. Hes also made one in which the paletas are painted to resemble dollars, and another resembling Spurs jerseys.

All of those are taking the concept further than just big and pretty and lick on it, he said.

Blancas also is a muralist who may be best known for La Musica de San Anto, the enormous work at the foot of the Commerce Street bridge as drivers come into the West Side. It features larger-than-life portraits of legendary San Antonio musicians Randy Garibay, Clifford Scott, Rocky Morales, Felix Villareal, Eva Garza, Doug Sahm, Rosita Fernandez, Lydia Mendoza and Manny Castillo. Each is depicted in performance, playing in front of giant handbills bearing biographical information.

Kin Man Hui /Staff photographer

On ExpressNews.com: David Blancas works to restore La Musica de San Anto

The mural, which is just a few blocks from RePublic Arts, was completed in 2009 as part of San Anto Cultural Arts' Community Mural Program. Its taken a beating over the years from the elements. Blancas wants to do something about that.

I feel its definitely my duty to restore it, he said.

The mural wasnt quite finished when it was unveiled, he said, and it was always his intent to get back to it. He had started fund-raising and working toward the restoration just as the pandemic hit. He plans to get the project rolling again soon.

Public art projects like La Musica de San Anto helped him find his artistic voice, he said.

You dont see that in the paletas, he said. Those are fun. They are like vacations to me.

dlmartin@express-news.net | Twitter: @DeborahMartinEN
Rating: Solid neighborhood option

Bryan Rojas was working as a sous chef at Piatti at Alamo Quarry Market when he and his wife Mariana Wong set the wheels in motion to start Bilia Eatery & Coffee, their sandwich and arepa shop in Castle Hills that opened in 2019.

Bilia, named for the bougainvilleas outside the Miami restaurant where they met, allowed the couple to fold in the influences that shaped their lives. Shes from Mexico, hes from Colombia, and Bilias menu is a kind of United Nations of gastronomy, from Colombian arepas to sandwiches that incorporate Mexican milanesa, Argentinian chimichurri, Vietnamese banh mi herbs, Cuban pork and straight-up San Antonio barbacoa.

Mike Sutter /Staff

That sounds about right for Rojas, who grew up in Miami, cut his professional teeth cooking French and Persian food, worked in San Francisco, came back to Miami for culinary school and wound up in San Antonio in 2018.

He and Wong have made a place thats bright, casual, busy and small  something they hope to remedy as they look for a larger location toward the end of the year, Rojas said.

On ExpressNews.com: San Antonio Mexican seafood restaurants El Bucanero, El Golfo de Mexico, El Siete Mares do battle in Mike Sutters Lenten showdown

Mike Sutter /Staff

Best sandwich: Im from Miami, so I should know how to make a Cubano. Thats how Rojas begins a conversation about Bilias Cubano sandwich, that classic combination of roasted pork, ham, Swiss cheese, pickles and mustard pressed between toasted slabs of French bread.

The key to Bilias Cubano ($11 with plantain chips or soup) is pork shoulder marinated with sour oranges for 24 hours, then braised for 18 hours. Its lush tones melded effortlessly with the ham and Swiss, set off by tangy pickles made in-house, a dense package on sturdy bread that proved soft, strong and toasty, all at the same time.

Mike Sutter /Staff

Other sandwiches: That same style of bread anchored the Steak Argentino sandwich, a robust compilation of ham, melted provolone cheese, avocado and chimichurri, all anchored by a strip steak pounded wide and flat and fried crispy in the milanesa style familiar to San Antonio torta fans. The chimichurri took the sandwich ($13 with plantain chips or soup) to South American territory, with a complex bouquet of aromatic herbs.

On ExpressNews.com: Classic Vietnamese banh mi sandwich tops at San Antonios SP Cafe near North Star Mall

Mike Sutter /Staff

At a good sandwich shop, grilled cheese is never out of place  especially one as over-the-top as Bilias Jalapeno Barbacoa Melt ($11 with plantain chips or soup). Three kinds of cheese  provolone, Swiss and Monterey Jack  battle over whos the white-hot meltiest on barbacoa with a velveteen texture as decadent as confit or rillette or of the other now-bougie preparations we reserve for duck or pork. And while barbacoas a weekend-only indulgence at some places, Bilia is up for it anytime.

Bilias version of the Monte Cristo sandwich ($10), on the other hand, is just a weekend thing. And Im fine with that, because while it was a nice pile of French toast with ham and cheese and syrup, it got lost on the way to becoming its namesake sandwich, missing the alchemy of the whole thing getting an egg-batter dip before hitting the skillet.

Bilia Eatery & Coffee Location: 2211 NW Military Highway, Suite 131B, 210-530-1333, Facebook: @eatbilia Hours: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Wednesday-Saturday; 10 a.m.-3 p.m. Sunday See More Collapse

msutter@express-news.net | Twitter: @fedmanwalking | Instagram: @fedmanwalking
Gone are the days when the Texas Hill Country was just that  rolling hills as the backdrop to a country way of life, a relatively undeveloped and untouched region of the Lone Star State.

Gone are the days when dark skies were actually dark, longhorns roamed in wide-open fields for miles and miles, and major rivers from the Sabinal to the San Marcos snaked unobstructed through the plains.

The Texas Hill Country has officially been discovered, and theres no turning back.

Theres a gold rush mindset in terms of development in the Hill Country, said Connie Barron, a city councilwoman in Blanco and a board member of the Hill Country Alliance. And, unfortunately, theres little to no regard for what that will mean for the future of the region.

Top hits: Hill Country Headlines: Get top stories from the region sent to your inbox

William Luther /Express-News

The Hill Country is one of the fastest-growing regions in the nation, according to the 2020 census, and leaders of the small towns that dot the region say that makes them increasingly concerned. Developers are flooding the Hill Country with thousand-plus-homes subdivisions, often overwhelming small-town infrastructure and placing the Hill Country way of life in jeopardy.

The Hill Country Alliance, a nonprofit that counts more than 11 million acres in 18 counties as its namesake region, works to preserve the environment and strengthen conservation efforts amid explosive growth. In addition to the big cities of San Antonio and Austin, the region is home to the headwaters of 12 Texas rivers.

But as growth soars in the major metro areas, spillover has led to a development boom in the Hill Country. Homebuilders from across Texas are gobbling up available land, which is often in unincorporated parts of rural counties that have little government oversight.

Katherine Romans, executive director of the Hill Country Alliance, said the pandemic has only accelerated the rate of fragmentation in the region  the splitting up of large tracts of land to make way for dense development.

We always knew that to be a challenge  the loss of family ranching land, the subdivision of large tracts of wildlife habitat and open spaces, she said. But it has intensified over the last two years.

Blanco, for instance, is attempting to fend off a 1,500-home subdivision that would more than double the citys population of 1,800 when finished. And Buda is preparing for a 2,500-home subdivision in its extraterritorial jurisdiction thats being built despite near universal opposition from city leaders who say they just cant handle the additional stress on their infrastructure.

Ranchers in Dripping Springs are preparing for the possibility that Hays County will exercise eminent domain over their lands to build a four-lane highway through the hills to accommodate increased traffic associated with the population boom.

The developers are often at odds with city leaders who want to preserve the once-quiet Hill Country way of life, said Colin Strother, a political strategist who lives in Buda and served on the towns planning and zoning commission for 10 years.

These developers, they dont give a damn about us, he said. They just dont care.

Cities cant manage growth

William Luther /Express-News

The Hill Country Alliance, or HCA, has carefully tracked population growth in the region over the past 20 years.

Nearly 3.8 million people lived in the Hill Country as of 2020, according to the HCA, a growth of almost 50 percent since 2000. The region is expected to grow by 35 percent over the next 20 years, reaching 5.2 million people by 2040.

And while some of that growth has taken place within city limits, in cities such as Fredericksburg, Boerne and Kerrville, most of it has happened in unincorporated areas  places that are not located within city limits and arent subject to city rules and regulations.

More than 864,000 people lived in unincorporated areas of the Hill Country in 2020, according to the HCA  a jump of 103 percent since 1990.

The mass migration into unincorporated areas of the Hill Country is reflected best in places like Bandera and Medina counties. According to the 2021 State of the Hill Country Report  for which the HCA analyzed the regions population growth, water quality and conservation efforts  the population in unincorporated areas of Bandera County more than doubled after 1990.

Meanwhile, the city of Banderas population stayed nearly the same. And in Medina County, the populations of several cities decreased after the 1990s, while the countys overall population expanded.

The growth of unincorporated areas is important because counties have fewer tools to manage and plan for responsible growth than cities do, per Texas law. Developers are able to build subdivisions in unincorporated areas of counties without having to be subject to cities density, zoning or wastewater regulations.

William Luther /Express-News

Texas is the only state in the country that does not allow counties tools to plan for and manage growth, the HCAs Romans said. We are seeing this huge amount of growth come to our region, and more and more incompatible land uses coming in next to each other.

That can look like a concrete plant coming in across from a hospital, or an amphitheater with large outdoor lights coming in next to a quiet neighborhood.

Representatives from the Greater San Antonio Builders Association, the Home Builders Association of Greater Austin and the Hill Country Builders Association did not return multiple requests for comment for this story.

Many city leaders point to the passage of House Bill 347 in 2019 as the impetus for a lot of developer takeover in the Hill Country. The bill ended involuntary municipal annexation, or the ability of a city to annex parts of unincorporated county territory into its city limits without voter approval.

The bill was heralded by many as a way for those who live in unincorporated areas to not have to be involuntarily annexed into a city, thereby becoming subject to increased city regulations and taxation.

But the bill has had the unintended consequence, some say, of preventing cities from being able to get a better handle on development on the outskirts of their limits, most often in their extraterritorial jurisdictions, or ETJs. Developers will take advantage of the little county oversight and build large subdivisions in a citys ETJ, while being close enough to a city to still require its water, wastewater, emergency and public service resources.

Barron, the Blanco councilwoman, said the bill effectively stripped cities of their ability to have more control and protection, and greater opportunity for revenue necessary to sustain a small town in the Hill Country.

At the same time, it is empowering developers to come into these unincorporated areas and build their own infrastructure to create incredibly dense communities right on our outskirts, she said.

Strother, the political strategist in Buda, said HB347 was akin to the Legislature taking a meat cleaver to cities abilities to control growth and development.

William Luther /Express-News

They just lopped off a whole section of the code that gave cities what little power we did have to help manage our own growth, Strother said.

Effect on water supply

One of the main concerns of increased development is the effect on the environment, particularly with the strain that all the new houses are placing on the Trinity and Edwards aquifers  the two main aquifers that supply drinking water to the Hill Country.

Barron likened the current water supply situation to a glass of water that used to have just one or two straws in it. Now it has 10 or 11.

We just cant keep putting more and more straws into the same glass of water and expect it to last as long as it lasted when there was just one in that glass, she said.

Simply put, more houses and subdivisions means more groundwater pumping from the aquifers, which could, in theory, lead some of the wells that pump from them to dry up.

William Luther /Express-News

Jacobs Well, one of the most well-known and important spring wells in the region, went dry for the first time in the late 2000s because of a combination of excessive pumping and drought, after never having run dry in recorded geographical history. Its run dry a number of times since then, Romans said.

We know the Hill Country was once the land of 1,100 springs, but unfortunately we dont know how many of the original springs are still running, she said. The point is, once we start losing those springs, we see dramatic and irreversible impacts on the surface water.

The Edwards Aquifer Authority and local groundwater conservation districts manage and cap water permits. They have been working for years to manage the number of new water permits that are issued so new homes or businesses can be built.

But developers and environmental purposes still can be at odds with each other sometimes, said Roland Ruiz, general manager of the Edwards Aquifer Authority. He said its up to developers and environmental stakeholders to take into account things such as groundwater supply, endangered species and conservation efforts when planning for new growth in the Hill Country.

Its complicated and complex, Ruiz said. But we believe theres a workable path forward, and thats why we do what we do  so that we can, perhaps, move forward together.

Strother said the draw of the Hill Country is still its rolling hills, starry skies and proximity to the big cities.

But the big-city folks who want to live in the Hill Country are ultimately going to be its demise, he said.

William Luther /Express-News

These actions arent just hurting the small communities. Its hurting the entire region because we dont have adequate infrastructure to handle this at all, he said. As a result of this unchecked growth, were damaging the entire region.

Annie Blanks writes for the Express-News through Report for America, a national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms. ReportforAmerica.org. annie.blanks@express-news.net.
A Hollywood Park City Council member is suing the city he represents, saying that the noise from a community center next to his house is affecting his quality of life.

Michael Voorhies and his wife, Norelle, filed a lawsuit against the city in the 255th District Court on Feb. 9. They live 60 feet from the Voigt Center, an indoor and outdoor event venue that is often rented for weddings and corporate and community events.

On ExpressNews.com: Medina Valley ISD administrator compiled list of complaints  then hit send

In the lawsuit, first reported on by Community Impact Newspaper, Voorhies says noises generated at and around the Voigt Center are a recurring nuisance that has kept them from enjoying their home.

The couple has filed complaints with law enforcement, the city council and Mayor Oscar Villarreal. According to the lawsuit, Villarreal responded to Voorhies concerns by telling him to wear noise-canceling headphones.

Voorhies did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Neither did other members of the Hollywood Park City Council.

Citing the pending litigation, Villarreal declined to comment.

Hollywood Park is located near the intersection of U.S. 281 and Loop 1604. The Voigt Center is on the Voigt Park property, which sits at the end of a neighborhood street at the western edge of the city.

The lawsuit alleges that parties held at the Voigt Center often last well past the stated lease agreement time. According to the lawsuit, Hollywood Park has little to no oversight, and complaints filed with law enforcement result in "no action."

Hollywood Park

The Voorhies also say that two large air-conditioning units at the community center are loud and run continuously. Post-party cleanup efforts and city ground maintenance employees working around the facility are also noisy.

Voorhies says he works from home and can hardly hear himself think while in his home office, and this disruption is adversely affecting his employment, according to the lawsuit.

On ExpressNews.com: Anti-trans Texas House candidate Jeff Younger shouted down by University of North Texas students

Voorhies says noisy parties hosted at the Voigt Center violate both city ordinances and the propertys deed restrictions. The nuisances are devaluing their property, he said in the court documents.

The lawsuit aims to obtain a permanent mandatory injunction against the city regarding Voigt Center events. The city council member and his wife are also asking to recover legal fees and damage to their home and property value.

In an email blast on Thursday, Villarreal, the citys mayor, alerted Hollywood Park residents of the lawsuit, according to Community Impact Newspaper. Villarreal included a copy of the lawsuit in the email after he said he received questions from residents and because it is a public document.

Timothy.Fanning@express-news.net
Police on Thursday arrested a man accused of fatally shooting a woman he was in a relationship with outside a North Side business park.

Enrique Lara, 54, was charged with murder in connection with the death of 51-year-old Maria Virginia Hernandez. He is being held on $250,000 bail.

San Antonio police were called to the business park at 121 Interpark Blvd. for a shooting in progress on Feb. 28, according to an affidavit supporting Laras arrest. There, they found Hernandez dead from several gunshot wounds.

Witnesses told police that Hernandez had recently received flowers from Lara and that she threw them in the trash at work. Police found texts on Hernandezs phone that showed the two had been in a relationship, the affidavit said.

On ExpressNews.com: Man, woman arrested in fatal shooting of woman near Fort Sam

On the day of the shooting, Hernandez was seen around noon getting into a dark-colored Chevrolet Silverado similar to Laras, the affidavit said. About an hour later, the truck dropped Hernandez off by the buildings front doors.

But as Hernandez exited the truck and started walking away, the person in the truck began firing at her through the passenger window, the affidavit said.

Video surveillance footage showed the truck speed off after the shooting.

Laras family members told police that he came to their house at about 2 p.m. crying, saying that he had done something bad and that he wouldnt see his family anymore, the affidavit said.

Investigators didnt say what they believe led Lara to shoot Hernandez.

taylor.pettaway@express-news.net
OLIVER Tuku Mtukudzis widow, Daisy, has expressed shock and dismay at South African scammers who are duping desperate jobs-seekers using a bogus agency registered in their family name.

A link, under the name Tuku Music Job Agency, has been circulating on social media where unsuspecting job-seekers have reportedly been swindled of cash by the con artists.

Under the terms and conditions of the agency, run by one Derby Mtukudzi, stay out maids who want jobs in Kempton Park, Johannesburg, are required to pay a non-refundable R400 agent fee.

In return, claims the agency, maids will be paid R200 per day.

The same advert stipulates that one should be in possession of a valid passport or asylum records.

Locals should simply produce their South African passports to be employed after paying the agent fee.

However, it turned out that the agency is bogus after scores of people made enquiries with Tukus family.

We have learnt with shock and dismay that there is someone using our family name to con people in South Africa promising them jobs. There is nothing like that and we have never established a job seeking agency under our stable.

In fact, there is nothing like that (Tuku Music Job Agency) in our business interests so we urge people to be cautious that they dont become victims of the scammers, she said.

Daisy also told H-Metro that there is nobody like Derby Mtukudzi, in Tukus family.

Its very unfortunate that there is no one like Derby Mtukudzi that I know in Tukus family.

In short, I urge people to stop being scammed by dubious people. Those who want to get authentic information about the family should, at least, call us here in Zimbabwe and find out from us the authenticity of the agency, she said.

She, however, conceded it was hard bringing to book the scammers, who had duped several people.

In these days of social media, its hard to find who is behind this because these con artists are clever.

My only advice to the people is that we are distancing ourselves from the scammers.

I am happy in Norton and I am currently doing my best to fend for my family so I dont have all the time for that scam, she added. Similar sentiments were echoed by Tukus daughter Selmor who laughed off the claims.

It has just come to my attention that there are criminals in South Africa who are using our family name to steal money from innocent and naive people.

There is no Tuku Music Job Agency in South Africa, there is nobody called Derby Mtukudzi in our family; we distance ourselves from all these WhatsApp groups.

We do not know these people. If you know who they are please report them asap.

Hanzi Tuku Music Dancing Girls . . .Kana mazogara guys, musabirwe mari nezvakapusa kudai.

Makambonzwa Dancing Girls kwaTuku rinhi nhai/

Ndotoseka hangu nhamo kunge rugare. Mwari ivai nevanhu venyu, wrote Selmor in her Facebook post.

Some of her friends claimed they were victims of the scammers while others urged desperate job seeks to be on the lookout. H Metro
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said Thursday it deported a Mexican banker accused of laundering millions of dollars in San Antonio that was stolen from depositors.

Rafael Olvera Amezcua had for years fought against returning to Mexico, where ICE says he faces fraud charges and where he says he faces persecution. According to ICE, he came to the U.S. in 2014 on a work visa. His time in San Antonio was dogged by scandals involving the collapse of his savings and loan in Mexico, a massive real estate empire and COVID-19 relief funds.

Olvera Amezcua, 64, was turned over to Mexican authorities Wednesday at one of the international bridges in Laredo, ICE said in a news release. Hed been in detention since May 2019. His immigration attorney, San Antonio lawyer Javier Maldonado, said Thursday that Olvera Amezcuas criminal charges are being pushed by corrupt folks in Mexico.

Maldonado, along with the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, had sued the Department of Homeland Security on Olvera Amezcuas behalf demanding his release from ICE detention. Olvera Amezcua was at high risk of contracting COVID-19 and was not a flight risk, according to the lawsuit. At the same time, according to court records, Olvera Amezcua was requesting asylum.

They certainly treated him differently and unnecessarily and unjustifiably prolonged his detention, Maldonado said. Were disappointed. There was no reason for them to detain him that long. He was known to DHS for many years, so any claims that he might flee are just bogus.

A 2015 investigation by the Express-News found that companies connected to Olvera Amezcua owned 100 pieces of real estate here and in the Miami area. Mexican banking officials at the time said hed stolen hundreds of millions of dollars from depositors in his now-defunct savings and loan Ficrea, transferring tens of millions of dollars to the U.S.

Olvera Amezcua has consistently denied the allegations, but in 2019 he agreed to turn over 80 pieces of real estate, 19 of them in Bexar County, along with high-end automobiles to settle a lawsuit filed by a trustee tasked with liquidating Ficreas assets.

In 2020, Leadman Trade Inc., a San Antonio company at the center of the scandal that identified Olvera Amezcua as its director, received a COVID-19 relief loan of between $150,000 and $300,000.

Jorge Eduardo Jimenez, a Ficrea depositor who lost 800,000 pesos, about $38,700 today, said he has little confidence the same authorities who failed to spot Ficreas financial problems before it collapsed will be able to effectively prosecute him.

Whatever restitution depositors receive will come from the sale of the 80 properties Olvera Amezcua turned over in 2019, Jimenez said. So far, depositors have received 20 percent of what they lost, he said.

I think Olvera should face a criminal trial in Mexico, but everything indicates he wont, because the authorities dont see this as an attack against society, Jimenez said. I think the prosecution will let him go, and he, already exonerated, will try to return to the U.S. legally.
Getty Images

A San Antonio man was arrested Tuesday after Google reported him to authorities more than a dozen times about files containing child pornography being uploaded to his account, court documents said.

Mel Alan Loeffler, 65, was charged with five counts of possession of child pornography. He is being held on $375,000 bail.
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The Texas Department of Transportation's Bridge Division may not sound exciting, but its dive team consists of six men facing dangerous situations to keep the state's bridges safe and up to code.

Some of the hazards the team of underwater divers face are snakes, alligators and poor bridge construction. The team consists of mostly former Navy and commercial divers, along with others who were trained in-house.

They travel all over the state to inspect bridges. By law, the federal government requires states to inspect bridges at least once every five years. It's a daunting task, considering there are more than 55,000 bridges in Texas, 927 of which are over waterways.

On ExpressNews.com: Texas dispensary launches states first 20-mg medical marijuana gummy

Jerry Moreno, 50, is the senior team leader and has 30 years of diving experience, including during his time as a Navy diver when he performed inspections and repairs on piers and ships and took part in salvage recoveries.

"I served my country and now I get to serve the great state of Texas," said the San Antonio native, who has been a member of the TxDOT dive team for the last eight years.

He said the team of divers travels 60 to 70 percent of the time to mainly prevent potential accidents by regularly inspecting and cleaning bridges underwater as well as immediately assessing bridges after storms pass.

On ExpressNews.com: The 10 worst restaurant inspections in Corpus Christi going into spring break

Among the bridges that are inspected by the dive team are those over the San Antonio River.

As far as danger level, the San Antonio River does not compare to the swamps of East Texas, where the dive team faces the dangers of reptiles and alligators. Dives on the Gulf Coast come with the threat of marine life.

The team has also had to pull out cars stuck under bridges from accidents and flooding.

"Every time a diver enters the water, he's already endangering his life because of the compressed air that they're breathing," he said. "It's a high-risk job; it takes specialized skills and training to do this type of work."

Through the dangers, Moreno said the team has developed deep trust over the years.

"The guys on the surface are responsible for (the other diver's) safety, and any risk or risk of life is in their hands," he said. "They're like my family away from my family."

Malak.Silmi@express-news.net
Its generational: 28-year-old Jessica Cisneros challenging 66-year-old Henry Cuellar.

Its ideological: Cisneros, a pro-labor, pro-choice advocate of Medicare for All and the Green New Deal, against Cuellar, a pro-business, anti-choice Democrat beloved by the fossil-fuel industry and wary of massive social spending programs.

Cisneros, a Laredo immigration attorney, champions a humane border policy, while Cuellar is a border hawk who supports the controversial use of a federal public-health policy known as Title 42 to turn away asylum seekers.

The May 24 Democratic runoff in the 28th Congressional District is an opportunity for voters in this sprawling South Texas constituency  which covers nine counties and runs from the Rio Grande Valley to the edge of New Braunfels  to weigh the benefits of Cuellars insider Beltway experience versus Cisneros grassroots idealism.

On a deeper level, the runoff is nothing less than a battle to define what the Democrat Party should represent in the 2020s.

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Apart from that, not much is at stake.

Much has changed in the two years since Cisneros, in her first political campaign, put a major scare into Cuellar, a veteran congressman who has been a political institution in Laredo for the past 35 years.

The dynamics have changed. Cisneros is no longer an unknown quantity and Cuellar is not taking her lightly, as he seemed to do in 2020.

Also, Cuellar is now running under the cloud of potential scandal. On Jan. 19, FBI agents raided his Laredo home and campaign headquarters as part of an apparent investigation into Azerbaijani influence peddling in the United States.

The district itself has changed. The 2021 redistricting process made District 28 a safer Democratic seat, added precincts in the urban core of San Antonio, dropped Hidalgo County and added part of Guadalupe County.

For all these changes, however, the results in Tuesdays primary were pretty similar to what we saw two years ago.

In 2020, Cuellar defeated Cisneros by 3.6 percentage points. In this weeks primary, he finished 1.6 percentage points ahead of her. The presence of a third candidate, Laredo activist Tannya Benavides, meant that no candidate won a majority of the vote, setting up the head-to-head runoff between Cuellar and Cisneros.

Cuellars nine terms in Congress, 31 years as an elected official, long list of political friends and fulsome campaign war chest argue for the notion that he will not go quietly or easily.

At the same time, movement progressives who have long dreamed of ousting Cuellar will never get a better chance. If you cant beat him in a runoff with a passionate, determined challenger while rumors swirl about what the FBI was looking for in his home, you might as well think of him as congressman for life.

There are several reasons for the Cisneros camp to feel optimistic.

For one thing, anytime an incumbent gets pushed to a runoff, thats a troubling sign.

Also, we know that turnout for the runoff will be much lower than the approximately 48,000 District 28 residents who voted in the primary. That will cut out many casual voters drawn by Cuellars name-recognition advantage.

Cisneros supporters are not casual voters. They are true believers, and theyll make a special effort to turn out for the runoff. A low-turnout election should work to her benefit.

Cisneros also benefits from the fact that the Democratic primary for Bexar County judge also was pushed to a runoff (between Peter Sakai and Ina Minjarez).

Cisneros dominated the congressional primary in Bexar County, racking up 73.4 percent of the vote and building up a cushion of nearly 6,300 votes over Cuellar.

The county judge runoff will bump up the turnout in the most crucial part of the district for Cisneros.

At the same time, it bodes well for Cuellar that even after the FBI raid, his home base, Webb County, stuck with him in the primary.

Cuellar drew more than 59 percent of the vote in the county where both he and Cisneros reside. If Cisneros had been able to bring that down to 52 percent, she would have collected a majority of the vote and won the primary outright.

The runoff will be high drama, and its already attracting considerable national attention. But I find myself frustrated for District 28 voters, who are being asked to go to the polls without knowing the circumstances behind the FBI raid involving Cuellar.

Voters deserve to know if their congressional representative is in legal trouble and what the nature of that trouble might be.

Cuellar has offered little information, apart from saying that he has done nothing wrong.

Its the kind of cautious messaging that any lawyer would advise for a client under these circumstances. And its possible  though unlikely  that Cuellar himself doesnt know much about the federal investigation.

Nonetheless, the voters of District 28 deserve some answers before they go to the polls. The stakes are too high for them to have to guess.

ggarcia@express-news.net | Twitter: @gilgamesh470
I was dismayed by the article on the front page of last Sundays Express-News about J. Frank Dobie Jr. High School, where I taught until a year ago.

Reporter Danya Perez described how a seventh grade class debated with English teacher Pamela Orr-Atwood about her use of the N-word during a different class while reading from the Newbery Award-winning Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, a novel about 9-year-old Cassie Logan and her family in Depression-era Mississippi.

During the class discussion, Orr-Atwood, a new Dobie Jr. High teacher whom Ive never met, said the word again at least twice in trying to justify using it. She later apologized.

On ExpressNews.com: After San Antonio-area teacher used the N-word, parents tried to make students reaction the teachable moment

Its worth watching the video of the Feb. 15 board meeting on the Schertz-Cibolo-Universal City Independent School District YouTube channel  around the 31-minute mark, right after a district staff member reads about recognizing Black History Month  to hear Aisha Collier-McGarity and her 13-year-old son, Tristan McGarity, an honor student and athlete, eloquently describe what happened Jan. 6 and why it was deeply offensive.

Collier-McGarity told me she still grapples with the question she asked in closing her public comments: How is it possible in 2022 a teacher doesnt understand the impact of the N-word  the same word that was often the last word Black men and women heard before being lynched and has been used to degrade and dehumanize Black people?

Collier-McGarity told me her son doesnt use the N-word and that the teacher was insensitive, unprofessional and dismissive.

The teacher was also brave. It took courage to teach that book amid our nation and states deeply divided political landscape, a state where Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Ken Paxton spread baseless claims that students are being indoctrinated with critical race theory. A state where lawmakers legislate against teaching history.

But the teacher made mistakes  and theres no space for error. Out of this disgraceful incident must come genuine change.

Implicit bias and diversity training must be required for all teachers of all backgrounds who need guidance in speaking about race. Senate Bill 3, enacted in September, requires civics training be developed for only one teacher and administrator for each district or campus for certain grades, and it can be implemented as late as 2025. Its woefully inadequate.

When I taught the Pulitzer Prize-winning To Kill A Mockingbird, I told my students we would be reading the offensive word as the N-word. No one had to tell me to do that. There wasnt a policy I was adhering to or a training I was recalling. But my background  growing up as Mexican American in South Texas, mom to a biracial African American and Mexican American son and wife of an African American man  informed my perspective. In my 41 years, I have never uttered the N-word, and I never will.

But teachers are from all backgrounds, and a new rule is necessary. Collier-McGaritys idea is to change district policy so teachers are held to similar standards as students, who face consequences for name-calling, ethnic or racial slurs, or derogatory statements that school officials have reason to believe will substantially disrupt the school program or incite violence.

In response to my questions, an SCUCISD spokesperson said the district plans to implement McGaritys idea. Excellent. But this isnt only about SCUCISD or Dobie Jr. High or Orr-Atwoods classroom. Its about all schools, all students. The State Board of Education should amend the Texas Administrative Codes Educators Code of Ethics to permit teachers to read the N-word but not say it in conversation.

SCUCISD is also developing new training for teachers, and I hope it considers all the politics, nuances and responsibilities facing teachers and do it in a way that still empowers them. Collier-McGarity told me that during the meeting with the principal, the teacher said she no longer would teach controversial topics.

And thats the biggest threat  to limit access to information, books or topics, to limit education out of fear of discomfort or incompetency. And that must not happen.

In her authors note, Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry author Mildred D. Taylor wrote: By the fireside in our northern home or in the South where I was born, I learned a history not then written in books but one passed from generation to generation on the steps of moonlit porches and beside dying fires in one-room houses, a history of great-grandparents and of slavery and of the days following slavery: of those who lived still not free, yet who would not let their spirits be enslaved.

Stories in history, literature and current events, with all their racial slurs and deep discomfort, are Americas story. If we have any chance of changing our present and future, teachers must teach them, and they must teach them with purpose, care and empathy.

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Nancy.Preyor-Johnson@express-news.net
Among the great attributes of San Antonio and South Texas is the abundance of historical, cultural, geographic and environmental diversity, and the migratory pathways and stopping points, from north to south and east to west, for a range of animals, including humans.

San Antonio is a designated Monarch Champion City and a designated Bird City Texas Community because we love the natural gifts that pass through, but also because we are committed to the stewardship of our friends.

We participate because we value not only the birds and monarchs but also recognize their importance as teachers, as indicators of well-being and as points of reflection outside ourselves. We share this unique relationship with everyone and every community along this pathway, and our solidarity extends to those protecting and valuing these corridors with us.

Its alarming that the National Butterfly Center, a sanctuary for migratory butterflies that was run by the North American Butterfly Association, was shuttered last month.

On ExpressNews.com: Threatening ecosystems and economies: National Butterfly Center unsure when it can reopen safely

/

As reported by the Express-News, more than 35,000 people visit every year to observe an enormous diversity of migratory butterflies along the southern border. Today, the center believes it can no longer protect visitors and staff.

A mob led by far-right conspiracy theorists has intimidated the sanctuary into closure. The mob falsely claims the center is illegally harboring people crossing the border and engages in sex trafficking. Without legal right, they are infringing on the ability of the center to remain open and fulfill its mission because it fears violence.

On ExpressNews.com: National Butterfly Center on Texas border closing indefinitely after attacks from right-wing conspiracy theorists

Monarch butterflies, widely viewed as an indicator species, mirror the health of the ecology or community in which they live. Butterflies are also a metaphor for possibility, new beginning and hope  but the National Butterfly Center is now closed with no foreseeable future.

As citizens, we should reflect on these truths and ironies. Some have lost connection to the founding principles of this republic. They believe freedom is an entitlement and that they are above the law.

Our government at every level  and San Antonio residents  must denounce the mob and protect this association.

Chris Soulsby is a social worker and a naturalist who has lived in San Antonio for seven years.
Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick is in a huff

He vehemently brays that he has had enough

High schools teaching critical race theory made him extremely gruff

Now college professors who poison minds will make him truly tough

Dan Patrick, the former conservative radio talk-show host-turned-Texas lieutenant governor, has morphed into the states thought police. Seventy-two years ago, Wisconsin Republican U.S. Sen. Joseph McCarthy did the same by targeting political scorn on those he labeled subversive communists.

One of the most often-cited quotations of Karl Marx is a riff on the philosopher G.W.F. Hegel. In the mid-19th century, Marx wrote that history repeats itself the first time tragedy, the second time farce.

Flash forward to the Great Farce in 2022 as Patrick aims his political contempt on professors who teach critical race theory, or CRT, and have the audacity to make Texas look bad for its subjugating, exploiting and killing of people of color and, in the process, making the white students of today uncomfortable. Never mind that Patrick has no sense of what CRT is and that for centuries Texas educators have made students of color extremely uncomfortable with glorified tales of white supremacy that erase their histories and contributions.

Patrick seeks to promote the atrophy of minds throughout the educational system. This emphasis on uncritical, unreflective and ahistorical thinking is what keeps the likes of Patrick in power. Not surprisingly, Texas has been ranked nationally at the bottom in political participation and civic engagement.

As demographic forces catch up to Texas Republicans  with Latinos projected to outnumber whites this year  the Republicans political machinations have escalated to demonize high school teachers and professors accused of teaching CRT. It does not matter that Patrick and Gov. Greg Abbott are ignorant about CRT; they use it to get conservative white voters to keep Republicans in power.

Now for tenure, which Patrick seeks to kill in the upcoming Texas legislative season. As many observers, including the Express-News Editorial Board, have stressed, Patricks threat to eliminate tenure for new faculty at Texas public colleges and universities, and get rid of tenured faculty who teach CRT, is inappropriate and is why tenure exists in the first place.

Think about the consequences of getting rid of tenure at public universities in Texas. The best and brightest faculty will avoid coming to Texas. Patrick, Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton already have established the state as hostile territory for people with progressive politics. And top universities around the country will raid the states top professors. A long line of scholars in Texas will be applying for jobs outside of Texas, where they would be treated with professional dignity and respect and their tenure would be honored.

Patrick, the self-appointed thought police, has devised a ludicrous plan. The Texas economy that is the pride of the states business community depends heavily on intellectual talent in our colleges and universities.

Where to begin on Patricks inanity? My tia Marta, a very wise woman who lives in the state of Coahuila in Mexico, has a succinct phrase to describe absurdity: Que babosada,! or what a bunch of drool!

Despite its absurdity, Patricks attack on tenure cannot be easily dismissed. In the current political climate, inanity and farce play big among many Republicans, especially in Texas. Republicans have used scare tactics to establish draconian voter suppression and abortion laws, and to advance cultural wars against CRT, transgender children and women. They went after public schools first and now increasingly zoom in on higher education. Faculty and our allies need to push back strongly and call out the absurdity of Patricks plan.

Rogelio Saenz is a professor in the Department of Demography at the University of Texas at San Antonio.
Recently, Gov. Greg Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton issued nonbinding directives and opinions targeting transgender youth and their families. It is important to understand there are laws in place to protect our citizens from state leaders who use state resources and state agencies to persecute specific groups of people.

I feel it is incumbent upon me to correct some of the misconceptions raised by Abbott and Paxton.

First and foremost, there is no such thing as medically sanctioned gender mutilation for minors. It is an unfortunate falsity, not to mention a reckless statement, from an elected government official.

In addition, medically sanctioned gender reassignment surgeries involving minors are exceedingly rare; statements to the contrary are nothing more than a distraction from the real issues facing our criminal justice and child welfare systems.

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On the topic of gender affirming medical care, I encourage you to look to the leading national medical organizations for guidance. I rely heavily on the Pediatric Endocrine Society, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Psychological Association. These organizations voice overwhelming support for expression of gender identity and have reiterated the need for gender-affirming care.

Medical professionals, not politicians, should be trusted to provide the best medical care for Texans, and that includes transgender youth.

On the topic of removing a child from the parents custody, the governor and attorney general have not changed the law. The attorney generals opinion glaringly omits any reference to evidentiary rules under current law, which require evidence from medical professionals to establish medical child abuse.

As it relates to criminal prosecution for child abuse or failure to report child abuse, the governor and attorney general have not changed the law. My office is bound to prove our cases under the law as it was passed by the Legislature. The opinions of the governor and attorney general have no impact on that.

Texas law states that it shall be the primary duty of all prosecuting attorneys  not to convict, but to see that justice is done.

Christopher Lee / New York Times

There is no justice in prosecuting or removing a child from a loving parent who follows a doctors advice when consenting to medical care for a minor. There is no justice in prosecuting a medical professional who follows accepted medical standards to provide lifesaving care for transgender youth. There is no justice in prosecuting doctors, nurses, teachers or members of the public who do not report knowledge of such care.

Instead of focusing on transgender youth, state leaders should turn their attention to the real issues plaguing the child welfare and criminal justice systems. Child Protective Services caseworkers should be applauded and supported for their efforts to keep children safe; resources should be allocated to reduce the high levels of burnout and turnover.

My primary focus is public safety, and my office, prosecutors and staff focus efforts on gun violence, domestic violence and protecting our community. We will not be distracted by partisan games.

As the elected district attorney, I expect detractors and naysayers. We can continue to have spirited policy debates. However, this negative attention should not be directed at our children.

On ExpressNews.com: Preyor-Johnson: Texas leaders just cant quit bullying transgender kids

I encourage elected officials to show compassion for all Texas children, including transgender youth.

I will also continue to act as a safeguard for our citizens when there is a government overreach, as justice is not served by simply achieving a desired outcome. Until then, I will continue to see that justice is done and the rule of law is upheld.

Joe D. Gonzales has been Bexar County district attorney since January 2019.
Building a school under the approach path for military jets is a bad idea.

One would think local governments would ground such a plan before it took off, but thats not what happened with IDEA Public Schools proposal to build a school in Schertz under Joint Base San Antonio-Randolphs T-38 Talon traffic pattern.

As reported by senior reporter Sig Christenson in the Feb. 20 Express-News, the charter school network acquired 23 acres to the north of JBSA-Randolphs Runway 15L, where various aircraft, including aging T-38 supersonic jet trainers, fly at altitudes as low as 300 feet.

JBSA-Randolph classifies the acreage as part of Accident Potential Zone 2, denoting an elevated risk for a crash in the area.

According to the bases own study, higher-density uses (e.g., schools, apartments, or churches) should be restricted because of the greater risk in these areas.

On ExpressNews.com: Proposal to build school under Randolphs jets put Air Force on tilt  but it was perfectly legal

And with the 60-year-old T-38, the risk is real.

On Nov. 19, a student pilot was killed when two T-38s crashed on the runway at Laughlin AFB near Del Rio. Its one of five fatal T-38 crashes since 2017 that have claimed the lives of seven pilots. There have been at least three other nonfatal accidents in the same time.

For 15 months, Air Force and Schertz city officials warned IDEA about the proposal, but the project was legal under the citys zoning laws.

Finally, on Jan. 22, IDEA announced it had canceled its plans and would sell the property.

But this was too close a call, not only because of the potential risks for students, staff, aircrew and first responders but also because of the threat of encroachment into the bases Air Installation Compatible Use Zone, or AICUZ.

AICUZs limit certain types of development in areas near military airfields. The more surrounding communities close in on bases, the harder it is for them to do their missions  and the more vulnerable they become for closure under a congressional Base Realignment and Closure Commission.

On ExpressNews.com: Editorial: AFs silence on T-38 crash doesnt stop the questions

San Antonio has learned the tough lessons of BRAC with the loss of Brooks and Kelly AFBs.

While Congress says it isnt interested in BRAC right now, that doesnt mean it wont be in the future, especially considering the Defense Department has, for a while now, called for divesting unnecessary bases and infrastructure.

The argument: The military is spending too much in upkeep on facilities it doesnt need when it should be investing in people, weapon systems and new technologies as the United States focuses on competing with China and Russia.

A 2017 Defense Department report said the military has 22 percent more infrastructure capacity than it needs.

The COVID-19 pandemic also showed the military that working from home and hybrid work arrangements are viable options, so it has less need for massive office buildings and workspace.

On ExpressNews.com: With Randolph-area homes demolished, Air Force wins skirmish in long war on encroachment

The military and municipalities must be vigilant in keeping residents safe. And if the San Antonio area also wants to keep its military installations safe, now is the time to take tangible steps to protect them. From purchasing or annexing land around military posts and bases to insulate them against incompatible development to updating zoning laws, community leaders must stay engaged and proactive.

Views & Voices: Editorials, columns and commentary, delivered to your inbox

Theres no easy solution to the long-running and expensive battle against encroachment. Local military installations, however, have strong allies in Bexar County and local city governments.

In a small victory in November 2020, Schertz and Universal City demolished 10 homes within the 3,000-by-3,000-foot clear zones at the end of JBSA-Randolphs runways.

The Express-News reported the land and homes were acquired under a $4.7 million grant from the Defense Economic Adjustment Assistant program approved in 2016 by the Texas Military Preparedness Commission.

Jerry Lara /San Antonio Express-News

Bexar County matched it with $1.3 million, and an additional $4.78 million in federal and county in-kind services brought the project to $10 million.

We agree with Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolffs assessment that putting a school in a flight path was pretty stupid, and we look forward to continued engagement between local government and the military to protect the areas military installations.
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As dominating as Gov. Greg Abbotts GOP primary victory on Tuesday looked at first blush, a closer look at the results shows a nagging problem within his own party that could ultimately cost him in his race against Democratic nominee Beto ORourke.

Although two-thirds of the Republican Party voters statewide backed Abbott for a record-tying third term as governor, some of the most important GOP counties in Texas signaled the continuation of a mini-revolt against him.

In fast-growing Montgomery County, Abbott won 56 percent of the vote. Thats a strong number in most counties, but in rock-solid red Montgomery its eyebrow raising. No county was more important for former President Donald Trump in Texas in 2020 than Montgomery. He won 71 percent of the vote there  the biggest win of any county with at least 100,000 voters in Texas.

And in Collin County, a GOP suburban stronghold north of Dallas with a strong tea party contingent, Abbott hit 60 percent. Again good, but well behind the 70 to 80 percent he won in places like Bexar, Cameron on the border and Potter County in the Panhandle.

The results hint at a problem other Republicans have been talking about for months. Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller said there is a contingent of voters within the Republican Party who are very angry with Abbott over the way he handled the pandemic and who might just skip the race.

Theres no way theyll ever vote for Beto, but they arent going to vote for Abbott, Miller said.

IN-DEPTH: Gov. Greg Abbott and Beto ORourke fire away at each other in San Antonio

Despite the 56 percent vote percentage in Montgomery County, Abbotts campaign doesnt see it as a long-term problem.

No chance in hell that they are going to sit this one out, said Dave Carney, Abbotts top political adviser.

He said the campaign will spend big to spread the message that ORourke is a danger to Republican values and Texas as a whole.

Were going to take the wood to this guy, Carney said of ORourke.

Hell never convince them

The anti-Abbott sentiment was evident in The Woodlands back in January when an influential GOP group called the True Texas Project packed a church for a candidates forum for the primary challengers to Abbott. The leader of the statewide group, Julie McCarty, made clear the mission.

As an organization, we are very firmly, anyone but Abbott, McCarty said to a roar from a crowd of more than 300 people at Grace Woodlands.

McCarty said this week that Abbott can expect a lot more pressure coming from Republicans who backed the other candidates.

Greg Abbott may have won that election, but hes not going to enjoy being held accountable by these newly aware and newly trained activists, she said.

Bryan Christ, the Montgomery County Republican Party chairman, similarly believes that when November rolls around, even Republicans who have problems with Abbott now are no way going to skip the race and risk ORourke winning. He said a lot of businesses suffered because of lockdowns early in the pandemic that Abbott was slow to lift.

While Abbott ended all state restrictions last spring as the vaccines became more readily available, Christ said the frustrations have really stuck around and lingered.

PRIMARY POLITICS: Abbotts GOP rivals crisscross Texas ahead of election day

Late last year, Abbott issued an executive order banning private businesses from forcing workers to get the COVID vaccine. Christ said he and others have been pushing Abbott to call a special session to ensure the Legislature makes that executive order a law. He said that would go a long way in thawing the frosty reception Abbotts getting from some Republicans in Montgomery County.

Former State Sen. Don Huffines, who finished a distant third in the primary against Abbott, said hes not sure Abbott will ever be able to get that hardcore, energized Republican voter to cast a ballot for him.

He will never convince them, Huffines said this week. Hes never going to convince the grassroots that hes a conservative.

But in past races, Abbott, an attorney and former judge originally from Wichita Falls, hasnt had any trouble with the Republican base. In his races for attorney general and governor since 2002, Abbott never had serious primary opponents. This year he drew two of them in Huffines and former Texas Republican Party chairman Allen West. Huffines spent more than $15 million and West $2 million in their bids to challenge Abbott.

Both got in the race last year, citing Abbotts handling of the pandemic. Abbott easily weathered the attacks, winning 66 percent of the Republican Primary vote.

Still, public polling shows the problem Abbott has with the GOP base. In the latest Texas Politics Project poll from the University of Texas, 74 percent of Republicans approved of the job Abbott has done as governor. While high, it is more than 10 percentage points lower than where Abbott was two years ago just before the pandemic hit. At times, Abbott had an 89 percent job approval rating from Republicans before the pandemic, according to past University of Texas polls.

It all partly explains why Republicans had Trump hold a rally in Montgomery County in January to give Abbott a boost and assure suspect Republicans that the governor had his complete and total endorsement.

ORourke amasses 55,000 volunteers

Abbott, 64, enters the race as a big favorite by virtue of having $50 million in his campaign account, a Republican wind at his back thanks to President Joe Bidens declining approval ratings, and a historical advantage. And public polling has consistently shown him ahead of ORourke as they start their battle against one another.

Still, ORourke, a 49-year-old former congressman from El Paso, sees a pathway to victory in hammering Abbott for his handling of the electricity grid and focusing on a core set of issues that he thinks will have broad appeal. On Tuesday in Fort Worth, he told supporters he will push for more high-paying jobs in Texas, increase funding for public school teachers, expand Medicaid and legalize marijuana.

While Texas Democrats havent won a governors race since 1990, some trends give hope to ORourkes campaign.

Democrats have seen a surge in support over the last four years in Texas as they have increased voter registrations and built dominating advantages in cities like Houston and San Antonio.

In 2014, Abbott won both Harris County and Bexar County as he won his first term in office by 20 percentage points statewide over Democrat Wendy Davis. But in 2018, Abbott lost both counties and won re-election by 13 percentage points against Democrat Lupe Valdez, who had little campaign money or name identification statewide.

That same year, ORourke came within 3 percentage points of beating U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz.

The passionate base of supporters who helped fuel ORourkes campaign in 2018 is showing signs of re-emerging this year. More than 55,000 volunteers statewide have already signed up to help his campaign. Its that passionate base of support that is critical for going door-to-door and doing the basic get-out-the-vote operations.

That is where Huffines sees a problem for Abbott. The governor clearly has supporters, but Huffines wonders aloud about how passionate his backers are. He said traveling the state this year, he has seen few Abbott bumper stickers or diehard Abbott fans.

There arent many Abbott supporters out there that are going to walk on coals for the guy, Huffines said. If theyre out there, theyre very quiet.

jeremy.wallace@chron.com
GOVERNMENT has started disciplinary hearings for teachers and school heads who did not report for duty or disrupted learning activities when schools opened last month.

The Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education said the disciplinary action is part of efforts to bring back sanity and confidence in the education sector.

Schools reopened on February 7 but teachers declared that they were too incapacitated to report for duty. In some instances, it was reported that teachers reported for duty, but did not conduct lessons or sent pupils back home.

Last month, Treasury announced a 20 percent salary increase for all civil servants plus an additional US$100 cash allowance, as well as school fees allowance for teachers among other non-monetary benefits.

In a circular, the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education has directed all provincial education directors to charge teachers who had not reported for duty since the start of the term.

Please take appropriate action against the members. This means that investigations should commence and where necessary misconduct charges be preferred against the members. Provinces should conduct the disciplinary actions as quickly as possible to avoid a situation where suspension orders lapse before the completion of disciplinary processes, reads the circular.

The circular takes note that the Zimbabwe National Association of School Heads openly defied the order by the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education permanent secretary Mrs Tumisang Thabela who had directed them to submit names of teachers who had not reported for duty.

In an interview, Primary and Secondary Education Ministrys communication and advocacy director Mr Taungana Ndoro said the disciplinary hearings are standard procedure in line with any work place.

This is the remedial action that we have always been talking about; that when an employee or worker conducts themselves in a certain manner the intention behind will be investigated.

So, we will be investigating members who did not report for duty and this will be on a case-by-case basis. Every individual will have to state their individual circumstances as to why they were not on duty, said Mr Ndoro.

This is the procedure anywhere in the world where you become answerable individually on your own alleged cases of misconduct. Obviously if there are others who did not report for duty without good cause they may have to face some penalties. That is what the circular is actually saying.

He said there were instances where teachers reported for duty but did not deliver their duties which includes conducting lessons, providing homework, marking exercises and ensuring that there is discipline within the school.

This is part of the job description of our teachers and there is also the job description of the head or any other education official.

Anybody who joins an organisation they have a job description which they are supposed to abide by and flouting that job description may result in one having to answer as to why they had deviated from their job description, he said.

Mr Ndoro said the ministry wants to restore confidence in the countrys education system.

There might be those with valid reasons, they may be exonerated. And there are those who probably were just staying away and this is in the public domain.

We want to continue to provide quality education for our learners and also to reinstate public confidence for parents and stakeholders alike about our education delivery system, said Mr Ndoro.

Because if we do not take action, it is as if that may happen in subsequent terms without any action being done.

These actions are there to show that going forward we do not expect anyone not to report for duty for reasons that are not valid enough.

Teachers unions have said they have taken note of the scheduled disciplinary actions and will be taking action to protect their members.

Zimbabwe Teachers Association chief executive officer Dr Sifiso Ndlovu said it was their hope that teachers who had reported for duty by February 22 were not going to be charged. Chronicle
In late 2018, Conduent Business Services, the giant information company formerly part of Xerox, was on the edge of a financial cliff.

For more than four years, the Texas attorney generals office had aggressively pursued the company for what it asserted was Conduents massive fraud overseeing a government program to fix poor childrens teeth. Instead of evaluating treatment requests as it had been hired to do, Conduent simply rubber-stamped them while taxpayer dollars streamed out the door. The company tried to blame the dentists, but in June 2018 the Texas Supreme Court said Conduent alone was responsible.

A civil trial that could cost the company billions of dollars was rapidly approaching. Texas had indicated it would settle, but Conduent had a money problem: Its liability insurance policy refused to pay legal costs involving fraud.

So with the help of Attorney General Ken Paxtons office, Conduent hatched a plan to get the insurer to pay tens of millions of the legal settlement, according to documents the insurer, AIG, filed in Delaware state court. If Texas agreed to add lesser charges to its case at the last minute  even if it never intended to pursue them  Conduent could then collect on the insurance claim AIG was refusing to pay.

This case is about Conduent's improper scheme to manipulate its settlement with the State of Texas in order to trick my clients, to deceive the insurers, one of AIGs lawyers said at the trial. Two weeks ago, a jury found the deal defrauded AIG.

The jurys verdict did not implicate Texas, Paxton or his lawyers in the scheme to deceive the insurer. Yet trial documents also show the attorney generals staff knew Conduent was asking the agency to amend its case against the company to help with insurance claims, and that the AGs office agreed to do it.

Raymond Winter, chief of the attorney generals Medicaid Fraud Division, referred questions about agencys role in the case to its press office, which did not respond. Jack Stick, who oversaw the states investigations into Xerox from 2011 to 2014, said the agency acted legally and responsibly.

RELATED: Texas cut Medicaid staffing during the pandemic. Millions are now at risk of being dropped from the program.

The state has an obligation to taxpayers to be a good steward of their money, he said. When youre settling a case like this, everything is on the table. Where Xerox gets the money is not the states concern.

That may be technically true, said Jason Ray, an attorney who has represented many of the dentists in the long-running legal mess. But, he added, Its completely unethical. They did this only to generate the appearance of insurance coverage. It looks bad, smells bad, and sends the wrong message to the public.

The attorney generals role in a deal a jury found fraudulent is the latest in a string of recent episodes raising questions about Paxtons stewardship of the agency. Paxton, who is seeking a third term, faces a May runoff election against George P. Bush for the Republican nomination.

In October 2020, seven of Paxtons top deputies accused him of misusing his office to help wealthy Austin real estate developer and campaign contributor Nate Paul escape a legal bind. The allegations formed the basis of a reported FBI investigation and whistleblower lawsuit. Both Paul and Paxton have denied any wrongdoing.

More recently, Paxton has had legal complaints filed against him for his quickly dismissed lawsuit seeking to overturn the 2020 presidential election; and for encouraging supporters to improperly pressure judges on the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals after Paxton disagreed with one of the courts decisions. He has spent millions on a small handful of voter-fraud cases. Last month his office issued an opinion concluding some accepted medical treatments for transgender children qualify as abuse, a legal reading opponents decried as political posturing.

Dental reviews done in only seconds

Problems in the State of Texass Medicaid dental program first became public in 2011, when a Dallas television station reported some clinics were billing more for childrens orthodontic care than entire states. Although the practitioners were first to be blamed, court documents later revealed Xerox had hired workers with little or no knowledge of dental procedures to process the applications for treatment as quickly as possible, with scant review.

About 90 percent were approved, often in a matter of seconds. Evidence such as molds and X-rays that dentists submitted with the applications often were never even looked at. Xerox had only a single dentist to review hundreds of daily requests.

The company said Texas officials were aware of how it was handling the Medicaid work and did nothing, but the state removed Xerox from the dental program in 2012 and fired it two years later. Since then the case has spawned a thicket of legal disputes as the various parties have tried to pin blame and costs on the others.

Texas has repaid the federal government $133 million, the amount the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services calculated it was due for the state allowing Xerox to approve unnecessary dental payments. Texas regulators, in turn, have tried with limited success to recover money from dentists they say abused the program.

But the states main target has been Xerox, which in 2016 spun off its business services division into Conduent. Launched in 2014, the states Medicaid fraud lawsuit against the company meandered through the court system for years. By late 2018 a trial was scheduled.

Texas was seeking $2 billion. Conduent denied it committed fraud, but it had reason to avoid risking a bad verdict at trial. The federal government prohibits companies convicted of fraud from contract work; a jury finding against it would jeopardize Conduents business in other states.

The company entered a round of intensive negotiations with the attorney generals office in late 2018, legal documents from the Delaware case show. With AIG already having denied its liability insurance claims because of the fraud charge, Conduent needed the foundation of the case against it to fundamentally change if it wanted to collect.

Getty Images

And for that it required an assist from Paxtons office.

This was all cooked up

The Texas case against Conduent had always been about one thing. In versions of the states official complaint, filed in 2014 and 2016, the attorney generals lawyers were clear they were pursuing the company only for Medicaid fraud.

Ray, the dentists attorney, said he tried to convince Paxtons office to prosecute the case as a contract violation for years, a legal adjustment he said could have helped his clients settle their disputes. The agency refused, he said.

But in early January 2019, Conduent asked the attorney generals office to file a new petition, court documents filed by AIG said. Typically, defendants try to convince prosecutors to drop crimes theyve been accused of. In this case, Conduent asked Paxtons office to add two new charges against it: breach of contract and negligence.

The reason, according to the Delaware lawsuit: If Texas prosecutors officially declared they were pursuing Conduent for those violations, AIGs liability insurance policy would kick in, allowing the company to collect tens of millions of dollars.

Winter, the assistant attorney general, suggested that was his understanding, as well. Conduent indicated to the state that if the state amended its pleadings, it would be helpful to [Conduent] in their efforts to recover on their insurance claims, he wrote in response to AIGs lawyers questions about the deal.

Texas had no intention of ever pursuing the breach of contract and negligence charges, he added. But by late January, when Conduent said it was the only way it would agree to settle the case, the attorney generals office agreed to the change, documents show.

In a sign of the agencys active involvement in the deal, AIGs lawyers pointed out how the two supposedly opposing sides worked closely together throughout January 2019, sending drafts of the new petition back and forth to hone the wording Conduent sought. Paxton announced a $236 million settlement less than a day after the new petition was filed, proving that it did nothing except give Conduent the opportunity to hand it to insurers, AIG attorney Michael Carlinsky said during the trail.

This was all cooked up, he said in his closing. This was all designed to create insurance.

Conduents lawyers argued the deal was an above-board settlement that benefited everyone. The company could keep its business in other states and Texas would recover hundreds of millions of dollars without having to prove a difficult case at trial. Paxtons office may have even been the one to suggest it, they said.

But the jury took less than two hours to find Conduent had defrauded AIG by orchestrating the arrangement only to collect insurance, although it declined to find Conduent and Paxtons office had colluded.

The verdict means AIG wont have to pay on Conduents insurance claim. The company also could be asked to pay AIGs costs.

Conduents attorneys said they will continue fighting. The company firmly disagrees with the jurys decision and will pursue all options to correct the verdict, one told Law360, including seeking recovery for the remaining insurance for which Conduent paid significant premiums and for which it strongly believes it is entitled to receive.

eric.dexheimer@chron.com
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WASHINGTON - Jackson Reffitt said he felt guilty and gross after submitting an anonymous tip to the FBI about his father, a member of a far-right extremist group whose messages in the family group chat had left him increasingly concerned.

Jackson knew his father, Guy Reffitt, a 49-year-old out of work oilman from Wiley, was a member of the Texas Three Percenters who regularly wore a handgun on his hip, occasionally donned a bulletproof vest and kept an AR-15 rifle with a pretty bulky scope on it in a closet safe.

So when the familys typical political disagreements drew increasingly alarming responses from his father in the weeks after the 2020 election, Jackson Reffitt felt he had to do something.

I was scared, he said. I didnt know what was going to happen.

Fourteen months later, Jackson Reffitt was testifying against his father, the first defendant to stand trial in the Jan. 6 Capitol attacks. His testimony in a D.C. courtroom Thursday was the culmination of a months-long family drama that has left Jackson Reffitt estranged from his family.

He gave the FBI screenshots of the family text thread and recordings of his father  evidence that led to the arrest. He has gone on TV to describe his father threatening himself and his sister: If you turn me in, youre a traitor and traitors get shot, he says his father told them.

I dont have words to really describe it, Jackson Reffitt said on the witness stand, where he appeared to briefly break down as he talked about his decision to turn in his father: I think this is the best-case scenario.

Jackson Reffitt spoke quietly, occasionally pushing his shoulder-length hair out of his face as he gave hours of testimony. He had to be reminded repeatedly to speak up as he offered a window into the suburban Dallas familys life with an increasingly extremist father.

Not really onboard

He read from text messages presented by the prosecution, and sat quietly as recordings were played, taken on his phone in the family dining room while his father giddily recounted his experience at the Capitol after returning home.

People were coming up to me constantly, going youre such a (expletive) patriot. You lit the fire, Guy Reffitt said in one of the recordings. I didn't drive 20 (expletive) hours to come here and not do what needs to be done.

Guy Reffitt is one of at least 66 Texans who have been charged in the riot, which left five dead, including a Capitol police officer, and 140 other officers injured. Other Texans charged include Stewart Rhodes, who founded and leads the far-right extremist group Oath Keepers, as well as Tam Dinh Pham, a former Houston police officer who was sentenced to 45 days in jail last year.

Guy Reffitt faces five felony counts including transporting an AR-15 and a .40-caliber Smith & Wesson semiautomatic pistol for unlawful use in a riot, breaching Capitol grounds while armed with the holstered handgun, impeding police and obstructing an official proceeding of Congress before threatening to kill family members if they turned him in to law enforcement. The charges are punishable by up to 20 years each.

Jackson Reffitt testified that he first became concerned about his father in late December 2020, when the typical political disagreements between the left-leaning teen and his far-right father were growing increasingly disturbing.

On Dec. 24, Jackson Reffitt sent a message to the thread he said he thought everyone could agree on.

I still hate Mitch, he wrote, referring to then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. I think every living soul does.

Hes another politician, his father responded. Why Im going to DC. They all must go. They all play games with our money and they still get paid buy (sic) our money. They must go.

Whats about to happen will shock the world, Guy Reffitt wrote.

Im not really onboard with the whole lets blow up the White House way of handling it, Jackson Reffitt wrote in a later message. Im more of, Im voting for someone new.

With the true power over the American people, voting! he added, with a peace sign emoji.

The entire house of legislation has committed unthinkable acts on our people, Guy Reffitt wrote. We have had enough. Time a new partyTakes over.

That was when Jackson Reffitt, sitting alone in his bedroom in his parents home, searched Google for how to report his father to the FBI. He found a page where he was able to submit an anonymous tip.

Telling patriots to hold my beer

I just felt gross, he said in court. I decided to shut off my day, lay in bed, watch TV  Not to linger on what I did.

Jackson Reffitt said he didnt find out his father had actually traveled to D.C. until his sister texted the family thread on Jan. 6.

Dad please be safe!! she wrote. You know you are risking not only your business but ur life too and that isnt just something to through away lol.

Guy Reffitt responded: I have no intentions on throwing it away. I love ALL of you with ALL of my heart and soul. This is for our country and for ALL OF YOU and your kids. God Bless us one and all 

In the days after the riots, Guy Reffitt sent his family Fox News clips showing himself in action.

Me telling patriots to hold my beer and watch this, he wrote with one.

Im looking for the video of me sitting after being pepper sprayed and trying to flush my eyes with watet (sic), he wrote in another.

A hero, Jackson Reffitt responded.

It was sarcasm, he told the courtroom.

Jackson Reffitt took screenshots of the exchanges that he eventually handed over to the FBI.

Later, when Guy Reffitt returned home, Jackson recorded his father bragging and showing video from the riots. At one point, Jacksons mother tried to stop Guy Reffitt from talking about it, but he said he wasnt worried, he was in the safety of his own home.

I mean if you guys want to turn me in  thats fine, Ill take it, Guy Reffitt said in the recording. I was willing to die when I was there. I was willing to die.

Days later, his tone would change.

Traitors get shot

Jackson Reffitt testified about an exchange in his younger sisters bedroom, where he said his father believed the two children were cornering him about Jan. 6. He said his father grew increasingly agitated.

If you turn me in, youre a traitor and traitors get shot, Guy Reffitt said.

Later in the kitchen, Jackson Reffitt said his sister was looking through her phone, and his father snapped at her and said, You better not be recording this or Im going to put a bullet in your phone.

Jackson Reffitt met with an FBI agent later that day.

In a cross examination, defense attorney William Welch questioned Jackson Reffitt about his fathers drinking, noting two empty Corona bottles on his fathers nightstand that could be seen in a picture shown earlier in the day. He asked what sort of medication his father took.

Jackson Reffitt said his father drank often, including the day he recorded him talking about the riots. He said his father took Xanax, he believed for back pain.

Welch asked Jackson Reffitt about an online fundraiser he set up after falling out with his family and moving out of their home. He testified he raised $158,000 to help pay for college and living expenses and to buy a car.

Welch asked whether he had offered to help his family with the money.

Didnt you say its GoFundMe, not go fund us? Welch asked.

Jackson Reffitt denied saying it. It was something his sister had posted on Snapchat, not a direct quote, he said.

Welch later asked Jackson Reffitt why he would needle his father about politics, knowing the two disagreed so strongly.

You choose to argue with him about that, you dont choose to let it go, Welch said.

I learned my lesson, Jackson Reffitt responded. I learned to pick my battles.

Editor's note: An earlier version of this story incorrectly quoted Guy Reffitt's threat to his daughter; he said he would shoot her phone.

benjamin.wermund@chron.com


The Ryanair Group is continuing to expand its operations out of Croatia this summer and has said further growth can be expected in the near future. Speaking to EX-YU Aviation News, the Director of Operations of Ryanairs subsidiary Lauda Europe, Tadej Notersberg, said the Group sees that Croatia has huge potential. We can see that demand in Croatia is generally very high. We can also see that the Croatian market has huge potential. There were many routes missing and the whole potential of Croatia wasnt utilised in the past. The Ryanair Group recognised this potential and we as Lauda Europe are very happy that we can operate these flights for the Ryanair Group. There is also further growth planned for the future. This year we will operate three aircraft, not only from Zagreb, but out of Zadar as well. We wont stop with these six aircraft in Croatia, Mr Notersberg said. He added, Currently we are planning operations with three aircraft from Zagreb this year. However, future growth is planned, and we are quite sure and optimistic that we will be able to increase operations out of Zagreb and out of Croatia in general soon.





The growth in operations has also led Ryanair to launch a recruitment drive in Croatia. Following last weeks successful recruitment days, the company has confirmed that its recruitment partner Crewlink will host two more open days in Zadar on March 5 and 7. Furthermore, there will also be a recruitment desk at Zagreb Airport in the arrivals hall from March 3 until March 14, where walk-in applications and questions are welcome, with potential interviews taking place on the same day. The recruitment desk will be open daily from 09.00 until 12.00 and from 14.00 until 18.00. Crewlink is expecting to recruit over 35 new cabin crew. We were so overwhelmed by the response of our recruitment open day last week, that we are very excited to offer another chance to join Lauda Europes expanding Croatian bases, where Lauda Europe will operate six A320s this summer. Over the coming years, the Ryanair Group and Lauda Europe will expand opportunities in Croatia that will deliver more traffic, new jobs and career benefits, Mr Notersberg said, adding that there are also a number of Slovenian staff working for the company in Croatia, especially among pilots. Those interested in applying for the recruitment events can do so here





Commenting on Ryanairs existing operations out of Zagreb, Lauda Europes Director of Operations said, Currently, we are really satisfied with the majority of the markets served out of Zagreb. For example, the UK market performs really well, as well as Ireland with the Dublin route, despite Croatia Airlines not operating the service in the winter. Then we see German markets, Swedish markets  so we are very happy with current demand. Of course, we are adding some new routes out of Zagreb in the summer like Bratislava and Corfu. There are some tourist destinations in the future that are of interest to us too. We really believe that Zagreb can be attractive all-year round, not just for families and the diaspora, but for tourists as well, so we want to use all these opportunities in the future. Due to the ongoing war in Ukraine, Ryanair has suspended its launch plans for the Zagreb - Lviv route for the time being. Mr Notersberg noted, We see a lot of passengers from Slovenia on our Zagreb flights. Even if you go to Zagreb Airport, either in departures or arrivals, you will see that there are lot of Slovenians. At the airports parking one will notice many cars with Slovenian car plates. We know and we are sure that we are covering the Slovenian market well from Zagreb Airport.




In September 2020, about 200 parents, students and community members, most of them Asian Americans and immigrants to the United States, protested the removal of merit-based admissions to Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology.
Sterling, VA (20165)

Today

Cloudy. High around 70F. Winds NE at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

Cloudy in the evening, then off and on rain showers after midnight. Low 57F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 50%.
By Clayton Fox, RealClearInvestigations

March 2, 2022

Despite promises from President Biden and top health officials that COVID-19 vaccines would prevent severe illness, death, and perhaps even transmission of the virus, data indicate that thousands of Americans are dying from the disease even after having been vaccinated.

Striking evidence comes from California, Georgia, and Illinois, where a third of people dying with COVID had been vaccinated  even some who had received a third booster shot. In the absence of publicly available federal data, the three states offer some of the best numbers on the post-vaccine impact of a pandemic that has claimed 950,000 American lives.

Some health experts say such deaths were predictable. After all, initial reports on the Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson jabs promised vaccine efficacy rates in the 90%-plus range  not perfection. So even if a substantial percentage of the population is vaccinated, vaccinated people will still die. And the vaccines were designed to combat a strain of the virus before the delta and omicron variants appeared, suggesting the new scourges may have played a major role in the vaccines disappointing effectiveness.

Nevertheless, on July 21, 2021, President Biden assured Americans at a Cincinnati town hall that If you are vaccinated, you are not going to be hospitalized, you are not going to be in the ICU unit, and you are not going to die.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, echoed his remarks in an interview later that month: The vaccines are very effective in protecting you and extremely effective in protecting you against severe disease.

The president has largely held to his stance, allowing during his State of the Union address on Tuesday that new vaccines might be needed, even as reality increasingly undermined it. In December, he asserted, This is a pandemic of the unvaccinated  words soon to become an administration mantra.

He would later warn: We are looking at a winter of severe illness and death for the unvaccinated  for themselves, their families and the hospitals they'll soon overwhelm.

With such debatable claims, authorities have arguably harmed the vaccinated and unvaccinated alike. The vaccinated  especially the elderly or immunocompromised  have been given a false sense of invincibility. The unvaccinated have been not only scapegoated; some have lost their jobs as the administrations pronouncements were used to enforce inflexible employer vaccine mandates.

It is true that COVID mortality statistics are uncertain. They are clouded in many cases by failures to distinguish those who died from COVID versus those who died with COVID, and by variations in how unvaccinated is defined  with numerous deaths classified as unvaccinated up until two weeks after a victims second jab.

But the fairly detailed and unambiguous data from California, Georgia, and Illinois show the vaccinated making up a significant percentage of those dying from COVID as the new strains became prevalent. When the delta strain circulated from mid-November to mid-December of last year, the vaccinated accounted for 21% of all COVID-related deaths in California and Georgia, and 38% in Illinois. After delta was overtaken by the omicron variant, the proportions in California and Georgia rose substantially to over 33% -- a level comparable to Illinois, which remained at its already higher rate.

The paucity of overall national data was illustrated by a remarkable Feb. 20 New York Times story, in which COVID reporter Apoorva Mandavilli wrote that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has published only a tiny fraction of the data it has collected. She quoted an official speaking anonymously saying that the CDC was reluctant to make detailed information about hospitalizations sorted by vaccination status available because it "might be misinterpreted as the vaccines being ineffective.

Yet available state and other statistics suggest just that -- at least when measured against the original Biden standard that the vaccinated "are not going to die": The proportion of fully vaccinated and/or boosted deaths against the number of total deaths is substantial, and appears to have been gradually increasing in recent months at least in several states.

Of the eight states publishing detailed, so-called "breakthrough" death data on the vaccinated to the present, RealClearInvestigations found that Massachusetts  with a substantial 75% fully vaccinated rate  suffered the highest percentage of vaccinated deaths: 55% from January 1 to February 12, 2022.

Even a recent little-publicized and less comprehensive CDC report notes that among those 18 years of age or older across 25 U.S. jurisdictions, from early April to late December 2021, there were approximately 7 million COVID cases and 95,000 deaths among the unvaccinated, versus approximately 3 million cases and 23,000 deaths among the vaccinated. That one in five deaths were associated with the vaccinated, according to the study, suggests protection weaker than the public has been led to believe.

But in a Jan. 19, 2022 op-ed in The Hill, Dr. Lyndon Haviland of the CUNY School of Public Health castigated dissenters for making much of vaccinated deaths:

By trumpeting the term breakthrough cases, public health authorities are spreading the impression that these infections are novel, unique and unanticipated by the scientific community. In fact, the vaccine was designed precisely with this likelihood in mind, and it is working exactly as intended. With cases of hospitalization and death largely isolated among the unvaccinated population, it clearly shows the vaccines are doing their job and achieving the desired outcome.

But given the significant and rising proportions of double- and triple-vaccinated deaths, this assertion  representative of much of the U.S. public health establishment  is obviously misleading. Haviland did not reply to a request for comment from RealClearInvestigations.

Dr. Peter Hotez, Dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, urged a rethinking of the term fully vaccinated as it applies to severe illness.

I think the key here is to understand that by last fall it was clear that fully vaccinated, meaning 2 doses, was anything but, he said. Hotez points out that by six months past the second dose, CDC data have shown only 57% protection vs hospitalizations and 38% vs ER visits. He says mRNA vaccines should be viewed as a three-dose series and people with two doses only partially vaccinated. He cites data showing that after three doses, there is a 90% reduction in hospitalization and 82% reduction in ER visits.  Those who receive three doses are highly protected against hospitalization and presumably death as shown by the CDC.

Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla made the same point more bluntly in an interview with Yahoo News on January 10, 2022. We know that two dose[s] of the vaccine offer very limited protection, if any, he said. The three doses with a booster  offer reasonable protection against hospitalization and deaths, and against deaths I think very good. On Feb. 11, the Washington Post reported that a new CDC study shows booster protection against hospitalization waning to 78% after four months.

At a recent press briefing, Dr. Fauci stated: The potential future requirement for an additional boost or a fourth shot for mRNA or a third shot for J&J is being very carefully monitored in real time and recommendations, if needed, will be updated.

Dr. Fauci did hint at the need for boosters very early on; as early as January 2021, he was contemplating the need for updated shots to handle new variants. But he, the president, and the media pushed the widespread uptake of shots designed to stymie the original Wuhan strain.

RealClearInvestigations asked for comment from the authorities on issues of vaccine messaging and effectiveness, including the White House, Dr. Faucis NIAID, and the CDC. They did not respond.

If nothing else, it seems clear that this is not a pandemic of the unvaccinated. A question that remains to be answered is whether public health officials had an obligation to be more forthright about the vaccines limitations.

Meanwhile, the administration has been keen to call for the censorship of those it views as peddling pandemic misinformation  linking them to violent extremist attacks during 2021 in a recent Department of Homeland Security bulletin. Largely unacknowledged is a variety of research papers from leading institutions, dating back to at least December of 2020, suggesting that mutations could undermine the effectiveness of coronavirus vaccines.

In Tablet Magazine on Feb. 14, Dr. Vinay Prasad, an oncologist and public health researcher at the University of California, San Francisco, decried the politicization of the Centers for Disease Control: The agency is not in fact impartial (and thus not sufficiently scientific), but captured by the countrys national political system.

This is a precarious situation he wrote, as it undermines trust in federal agencies and naturally leads to a trust vacuum, in which Americans feel forced to cast about in a confused search for alternative sources of information.
Property taxes are the lifeblood of local governments and municipalities across the United States, accounting for over 70% of all local tax revenue. Property taxes - such as taxes levied on homeowners and landowners - go to fund schools, parks, roads, and other public works and services.

While states typically impose a minimum property tax, property taxes are mostly determined at the local level - and are often a percentage of a property or home's overall value. Depending on where you choose to buy a home, property taxes can range from negligible amounts to nearly matching a mortgage payment.

Across Montana, the effective annual property tax rate stands at 0.74%, the 18th lowest among states. For context, homeowners in the U.S. pay an average of 1.03% of their housing value in property taxes a year.

The effective property tax rate is calculated by taking the total amount of taxes paid on owner-occupied homes in a given area as a share of the total value of those homes. While an effective property tax rate is useful for comparing taxes at the state level, it is important to note that property tax rates can still vary considerably within a given state.

Because property taxes are typically levied as a share of a given home's value, Americans living in places with higher home values often pay more in property taxes in dollar terms, even if the effective property tax rate is relatively low. In Montana, the typical home is worth $253,600, slightly higher than the national median home value of $240,500.

All data in this story is from the Tax Foundation, a tax policy research organization, and the U.S. Census Bureau's 2019 American Community Survey.
Over the last two decades, an energy company founded in 2001 has become the largest natural gas well owner in the U.S.  without drilling wells.

Diversified Energy has bought about 70,000 mostly conventional oil and gas wells across the U.S., largely in the Appalachian Basin. The company now owns more than 7,000 in Ohio, 22,000 in Pennsylvania and 23,000 in West Virginia, making it a big player in the regions oil and gas industry.

Many of these wells are already decades old, long past their early days of high production levels. Some have fallen into disrepair over the years. Some dont look like much.

When I bought my first  my wife couldnt believe I was taking out home equity to buy a pipe in the ground, said Rusty Hutson, founder and chief executive officer for Diversified Energy.

The company focuses on keeping these older wells up and running as long as possible by repairing and maintaining them. Diversified estimates on average, the wells it owns can keep producing for another 40 or 50 years.

We dont need as many new wells if were keeping the wells in this country that have capable reserves producing, Hutson said.

Older wells

Diversifieds model is atypical, but its not uncommon for wells to change hands several times over their life spans, said Tom Murphy, of Pennsylvania State Universitys Marcellus Center for Outreach and Research.

Wells usually produce a lot up front, when they are first drilled, then decline dramatically, but continue to produce at a lower rate for decades. There are conventional wells that have been producing for upwards of 100 years, so many wells, depending on when they were drilled, can be expected to produce for decades, he added.

So, the companies that do the work in the beginning and make a profit on that start selling some of those wells to others that have different business models  but still produce those wells in a profitable way, Murphy said. Its just a different model.

Diversified is based in Alabama, but Hutson is from West Virginia and bought his first well there. The conventional wells that make up most of Diversifieds purchases may be as old as 30 or 40 years. Most were drilled in the 1970s or 80s.

For a company with a business model focused on drilling new wells, or a smaller company without as much capital to spend on maintaining and upgrading wells, it might not make sense to hold onto them. But for a company with resources available to fix up and maintain the wells, they can continue to produce at lower rates for a long time. And because Diversified owns so many of them, the lower rates add up.

Work

What, exactly, Diversified does with a well once it buys it varies. If a well is in fairly good condition, it might just keep going along the way it has been. Wells that need repairs or upgrades go on a list. They might end up near the top of the list if they have potential to be very productive after they get some attention.

The company can determine that partly by looking at the wells history on state websites. Depending on how close to the top of the list a well is, it could get fixed up very quickly, or it could take a while for Diversified to get to it.

So we can see, well, this well averaged, when it was newer, 300 barrels a year, or whatever it is, and then now we see five years of zeroes. So then, this becomes a good candidate, explained Tom Vosick, vice president of operations in Ohio for Diversified. Thats how we base our decision on which well we want to go to first, and we just keep working down.

Location also plays a part. It doesnt make sense to move equipment all over the state and back again, so workers will work on several wells in one area before moving onto another area.

One conventional well, near Caldwell, Ohio, was still producing when Diversified bought it in 2018. But the pump in the well had been down for about five years, so it was declining and not working efficiently.

After Diversified bought it, they pulled that pump out and put a new one in. The well went from producing 1,000 cubic feet of natural gas per day, to 3-5,000 cubic feet per day. The well site is also producing about three or four barrels of oil each week.

So, basically, what we spent, probably $6,000  were going to recoup probably $20,000 off of just this well this year, Vosick said.

Sustainability

Often, once those improvements or fixes are done, it doesnt take a lot of maintenance to keep a well going. A newer, larger well site, like a well Diversified bought from EdgeMarc Energy near Woodsfield, Ohio, might have someone on-site every day, keeping an eye on it and making sure things are running smoothly.

For older, smaller sites, a well tender has a list of about 100 wells to take care of, with an average of about 20 well visits every day.

Conversations about the oil and gas industry often lead to concerns about environmental stewardship and sustainability. Older wells, in particular, sometimes have issues with methane leaks. Hutson views fixing them as one important part of that  the company bought detectors in late 2021 for well tenders to check for methane leaks at their well sites  as well as following state and federal regulations and preventing and cleaning up spills.

He also said financial sustainability allows Diversified to take care of wells so they can keep producing and provide royalties for landowners.

Plugging

Sometimes, wells really are at the end of their lives. States have regulations that require companies to plug wells that are no longer producing at commercial levels. That takes time, and money  Murphy said plugging a well in Pennsylvania can cost anywhere from $10,000 to $100,000.

Keeping much of its well plugging in-house, instead of hiring third party companies to handle it, in addition to having wells spaced out over a schedule to be plugged, also helps Diversified keep its costs down when it comes to retiring wells.

Diversified puts wells that need to be plugged on an asset retirement list and are scheduled to be plugged  the company has deals with individual states to do a certain number each year. If theres a safety or environmental issue, the well goes to the top of the list.

Diversified currently plugs about 20 wells in Ohio each year, and plugged a total of about 115 in 2021. The company has committed to retiring at least 200 wells per year across the Appalachian Basin by 2023.
The government is likely to miss its targets for reducing emissions to net zero by 2050, a parliamentary committee has warned today.

The government is also being urged by the House of Lords Industry and Regulators Committee to explain how the transition to net zero will be funded.

The UK has committed to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050, while the farming industry is aiming to reach it across England and Wales 10 years earlier.

But peers warn there is 'insufficient policy detail' to incentivise the 50bn a year of investment that will be required every year to transform the UK's energy system.

In a new report, they say that the targets "have not been matched by the policies and the clarity over financial incentives necessary to unlock the substantial private investment needed to fund new energy tech for industrial and domestic use."

Providing greater clarity requires political decisions over the range of options available and their consequences for consumers, taxpayers and security of supply, their new report says, decisions which cut across government and cannot be left to independent regulators.

The Committee calls for the establishment of a new Transformation Taskforce within government, reporting to the Prime Minister and housed within the Cabinet Office.

The taskforce would work across government departments, including the Treasury, to set out a roadmap for the development of energy policies, and act as a coordinator and monitor of progress.

Lord Hollick, Chair of the Committee, said the government 'haven't got a clue' how the UK would reach net zero by 2050, and how it would be paid for.

We now need urgent action from the government to answer outstanding questions on issues, such as how they will incentivise households to replace gas boilers with heat pumps.

"What plans for the 6 million homes where heat pumps may be unsuitable? What funding mechanisms will be established to encourage investment in small modular nuclear reactors and how the upgrade of our infrastructure to allow the use of hydrogen for heating will be funded?"

"These are basic questions that need to be answered before we will get the investment we need to get to net zero."

What else does the committee's report say?

The Committee concludes that the use of government borrowing is fairer from an intergenerational perspective than requiring all costs to be met by upfront charges, as future taxpayers benefit more from the move to a carbon-free energy system than current billpayers.

Ensuring security of energy supply alongside responding to climate change must remain a key priority for the government, the report says.

Government should set out the future role for nuclear and gas as backups to more weather-dependent intermittent energy sources. The will include facilitating greater exploitation of our own national gas resources.

The responsibilities and role of Ofgem should also be reviewed, peers say, to ensure it is not creating barriers to a net zero energy system.

Ofgem should also move away from a focus on switching, as well as introducing a more robust supervisory framework to ensure firms entering the market are viable with new capital requirement and a fit and proper person test.

The report says this will help avoid a repetition of the collapse of multiple energy suppliers as we have seen in recent months.
Farmers in Northern Ireland are 'at end of their tether' over inaction in tacking bovine TB in the region, the Ulster Farmers' Union (UFU) has warned.

It comes as farmers eagerly await an announcement by the Department of Agriculture (DAERA) on the intended route for bTB eradication following a consultation.

Possible new measures include new steps to tackle TB in wildlife, the testing of non-bovines for bTB, and the increased use of the interferon gamma blood test in cattle.

Farmers could also see changes to the level and rates on which compensation is paid out to those who lose cows to the disease.

Compensation is currently paid at 100% of an animals full market value with no fixed upper limit, but the government is proposing to reduce this to 75%.

The NI government said the change would ensure a 'more appropriate balance' between reasonable compensation for farmers and protecting the interests of taxpayers.

The UFU said it was prepared to 'employ any resource' that was required to ensure delivery of a meaningful eradication strategy for Northern Ireland.

At the recent executive meeting on 28 February, members agreed to use all possible means, including a judicial review on the matter if necessary.

UFU president Victor Chestnutt said: To say that farmers are extremely frustrated and fed up with the ongoing burden of TB in NI is an understatement.

"Too many families have already suffered mentally as well as financially. Action that is in line with the expert, scientific advice on how to eradicate TB once and for all, needs to be taken immediately."

To protect the livelihoods of farm families, the UFU said Northern Ireland needed a TB strategy that includes tackling the disease in all of its hosts.

There were over 3,300 respondents to DAERA's bovine TB consultation which closed for comment in September 2021.

Of those who responded, almost 95 percent were opposed to changes being made to the livestock valuation payments which farmers currently receive.

"The UFU will not tolerate any amendment to payments within the TB programme," Mr Chesnutt said.

The UFU will continue to exhaust every avenue that is available to ensure DAERA fully addresses this disease which has been a terrible plague on our farmers, with immediate effect.
Sunderland will soon be the site of one of Europes largest dedicated liquid fertiliser terminals, providing a major boost to British farmers amid surging prices.

Construction has started to significantly expand a fertiliser import terminal at Port of Sunderland, with fertiliser giant Brineflow saying it will be 'critical' to the UKs food and drink supply chain.

Liquid fertilisers are the fastest growing area of the fertiliser industry, as farmers recognise the economic and environmental benefits over solid products, including reductions in emissions.

With fertiliser prices having shot up by 350% in 12 months, farmers are being incentivised to be more accurate about the placement of fertilisers and the use of liquid fertilisers helps with that.

Farmers could soon find some solace in Brineflows announcement, as work starts on Phase Two construction of one of Europes largest liquid fertiliser import terminals at Port of Sunderland.

The investment comes just months after the opening of the companys first purpose-built terminal at the port, which will see it increase its handling and storage capacity by almost a third.

John Fuller OBE, chairman of Brineflow, said: Fertilisers form the foundations of a global food chain. For the last 30 years, Britain has become increasingly reliant on Russian gas to produce its fertilisers as factories in western Europe have ceased production.

The dramatic expansion of our new terminal will not only make it one of Europes largest liquid fertiliser terminals, it will open us up to the largest ship tankers from global markets instead of smaller vessels that are restricted to European ports.

Our investment will make a substantial contribution to the food security of our nation and will place Sunderland at the crossroads of international supply lines that keep our country fed.

Recent fertiliser supply issues have exposed a key fragility in the UK agricultural sector and this development will likely play a role in alleviating the pressures on farmers and growers.

Mr Fuller said producers from the Humber to the Scottish Borders had already gained new sources of supply.

Its all given us the confidence to build one of Europes largest dedicated liquid fertiliser import terminals right here in Sunderland," he said.

"It will set new standards for environmental efficiency and emission control whilst allowing the largest ships to bring this crucial national ingredient to our shores reducing Britains reliance on Russian gas.
Farm businesses held in a company structure are being advised that a property re-valuation could result in tax savings, but action should be taken now.

The next Annual Tax on Enveloped Dwellings (ATED) re-valuation date is scheduled for 1 April 2022.

Property consultancy Fisher German is advising farm businesses held in a company to commission an up-to-date property valuation.

ATED is an annual tax payable by companies which own residential property in the UK with a value of 500,000 or above.

With farmhouses often having a value in excess of this, especially with recent price increases, there is a potential liability for many to be caught by the tax.

Currently, residential properties valued from 500,000 up to 1m attract an annual charge of 3,700, and for those between 1m and 2m the charge is 7,500.

Tom Lockton, of Fisher Germans valuation team said that for properties with a valuation on the cusp of two bands, a reliable, up-to-date valuation could result in significant savings.

Furthermore, there are a number of reliefs and exemptions available, such as where a farmhouse is occupied by farm workers or let to a third party on a commercial basis.

For farms, ATED is only applicable to the apportioned value of the residential element, not land, buildings or woodland," he explained.

"Thus an accurate valuation is vital to ensure that no tax is unnecessarily paid, and no penalties are incurred for undervaluing.
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A federal judge ruled Wednesday evening in favor of 12 parents of students with disabilities that put them at a high risk for complications due to COVID-19 who challenged Virginias mask-optional law in public schools. But the ruling is limited in scope to only the plaintiffs involved in the case. Their lawyer, however, says the decision will likely be persuasive for other parents seeking similar accommodations for their children with disabilities.
Ein Paar Augen, zwei Perspektiven

Les Cracks & Vincen Beeckman :

Les Cracks & Vincen Beeckman : Ein Paar Augen, zwei Perspektiven

Funf Jahre hat die Gruppe Wohnungsloser Les Cracks mit Einwegkameras ihr Leben um den Brusseler Hauptbahnhof dokumentiert. Initiiert hat der belgische Fotograf Vincen Beeckman das Projekt, welches nun im Museum Folkwang in Essen zu sehen ist.

ohne Titel (Cracks) Bild: Les Cracks & Vincen Beeckman

Les Cracks & Vincen Beeckman ist die erste Museumsausstellung der Bilder von Rene, Franck, Jackie, Patti und anderen Obdachlosen, die ihren Alltag, ihre Beziehungen, Hohen und Tiefen, Feten und Freundschaften fotografierten. Der durch Beeckman gepragte Titel Les Cracks bezieht sich auf den umgangssprachlichen Ausdruck Crack, der so viel wie Champion bedeutet. Von 2015 bis 2020 hat die Gruppe um die 750 Fotos aufgenommen. Gemeinsam mit Rene, Franck, Jackie, Patti und Vincen hat das Team der Fotografischen Sammlung des Museum Folkwang rund 30 Aufnahmen ausgewahlt und im Ausstellungsraum inszeniert.

Fara Phoebe Zetzsche Bildredakteurin. Folgen Ich folge

Rene, Franck, Jackie, Patti und Vincen waren bei der Ausstellungseroffnung am 18. Februar in Museum Folkwang anwesend und haben uns folgende Fragen zu ihrem Projekt beantwortet. Das Interview wird in der gefuhrten Sprache veroffentlicht.

Fragen an Les Cracks

Was it your first time taking photos or did you already have any experience?

Rene: It was the first time I took pictures. I just had one experience of photography before with an association.

Franck: Vincen gave us Cameras and I didnt take any pictures before for an artistic project. This was the first time.

Jackie: Yes it was the first time and it was fantastic, I love to look at these photographs.

Patti: 3 years ago, I took the first photograph and I was surprised to look at life as an observer.

What is photography for you?

Rene: It is a memory to never forget.

Jackie: A photograph is a memory. It makes us remember all our friends. Most of all the ones who left us too soon.

Franck: Photographs are images, meomries, WE  people from the street  We can show ourselves in a museum like this, it feels incredible.

Patti: A kind of magic to capture the moment you are feeling.

How did you experience observing others and being behind a camera? Did it change your point of view?

Rene: It didnt change my own point of view, but it changes the way the people look at us because they realize our true situation.

Jackie: When you see the others every day, you dont realize the situation. Taking photographs changes your way of looking. You see the situation we are in differently and with clarity.

Franck: This is a crazy experience and the book got me a lot happiness. To have now the opportunity to show our lives to others and to explain how we live in the streets with the exhibition is very important.

Patti: No, it didnt change me, because I am just like them. I used to be homeless myself and that way I am included in these photographs on both sides of the camera.

What was important for you while editing the images and putting together an exhibition?

Rene: What is important to me is to exhibit them publicly, to present the pictures to society and to express ourselves. I am very proud of the exhibition.

Jackie: I wanted to put the picture of Chris in a huge size, he is my friend and also, I chose the color yellow on the wall, in order to make it more attractive, like bees, like the sun.

Franck: We did the exhibition design all together with Jackie, for the selection and editing we chose the images we like and that matter the most.

Patti: It is very important that the people can understand what life is like on the street.

How did this project surprise you?

Jackie: I never came to this kind of museum, it is unbelievable.

Franck: The project surprised me, I didnt expect travelling, I never thought I was going to travel to Germany. The book contains moments of life and is like a Family Album and the exhibition is beautiful to see the images so big. The museum is gorgeous and to be exhibited aside such great artists as Renoir, Gaugin,  brings a lot of appreciation.

Which question should be asked concerning the project which wasnt asked yet?

Jackie: I wanted to thank Vincen, Nadine and Thomas without whom the project couldnt have happened.

Patti: If we are planning for a Second Project Cracks II? If the people will want to see and know more?

Fragen an Vincen Beeckman

How did you get the idea to do this project and what does it mean for you?

Vincen: The Project began with the idea to give the voice to the homeless people.

What is the most beautiful outcome that derived from Les Cracks & Vincen Beeckman?

Vincen: The fact that they decide the format, the composition, the color on the wall and that they could travel to Essen.

Where and to whom else would you like to show Les Cracks & Vincen Beeckman after the exhibition at Folkwang?

Vincen: They would like to show the exhibition in many cities, Berlin Tokyo, Paris and Los Angeles, but it is not easy.

How did this project inspire your own photography?

Vincen: This project influenced me a lot in the way of taking pictures. Very direct and simple, without complex framing. As simple and immediate, as a picture taken by a grandmother or a child I try to copy this fantastic direct way of taking images.

Die Ausstellung 6  Wochen. Les Cracks & Vincen Beeckman ist noch bis zum 3. April im Museum Folkwang in Essen zu sehen. Eintritt frei.
Next Story : Celebrating The Art & Business Of Indian Hairdressing At IHA 2021

We all love messy, dramatic, wavy hair, right? The chic and bohemian vibe that such a hairdo exudes easily sweeps each one of us off our feet. But, did you know that such hairdos were a major rage in the 80s and 90s? Simply go search Julia Roberts 80s hair and the first three results that pop up will prove it. The wild, textured hairdo is one of the blazing beauty trends that has made a comeback, and, honestly, were all for it.Today, youll see several runway looks and numerous celebrities sporting this kinda hairdo. But, with a slew of upgrades and twists! While some prefer adding a touch of glam and high-fashion braids, others opt for quirky adornments and accessories to level-up the final outcome of their voluminous, textured locks. From Shraddha Kapoor to Deepika Padukone , many celebs have experimented with this do and a similar look was also spotted at The London Fashion Weeks digital schedule last year. But why do we love this hairstyle so unabashedly, you ask? Simple  it is because of its versatility. Wild and textured waves are super easy to create, very wearable and greatly versatile.However, when the case in point is hairstyles, we just cant seem to skip on showcasing hair expert Daniel Bauers take on it. This wild blend of French braids, extreme volume and accents of colour is wow; from head to toe, says Bauer. This is my version of  big hair, dont care, he adds, as he shows us how to spruce up the hairstyle with his very own twist. He makes use of the Livon Heat Damage Protect Spray that keeps heat damage at bay and lets you get the style you want without the fear of damage due to heat styling. Heres how he goes about getting the look.
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MONTREAL, March 4, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Following Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the ensuing sanctions imposed under the Special Economic Measures Act, in order to respond to the gravity of Russia's violation of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine, and grave human rights violations that have resulted, the Public Sector Pension Investment Board (PSP Investments) states that:

PSP Investments does not have material exposure to Russian investments and does not hold any private direct investments in Russia. The exposure that PSP Investments has is mainly through passive index replication activities and external investment manager activities. PSP Investments has taken steps as of late last week to divest of all its Russian investments. All residual positions will be written down to zero and PSP Investments is committed to exiting this market as soon as market conditions permit.

PSP Investments is deeply concerned about the humanitarian impact inflicted by this situation on the people of Ukraine. As part of our PSP Gives Back Program, PSP Investments will support the humanitarian relief efforts in Ukraine by partnering with the International Committee of the Red Cross. PSP Investments has set up a matching donation program and will match employee donations (up to C$2,000 per employee) toward Ukrainian humanitarian relief.

About PSP Investments

The Public Sector Pension Investment Board (PSP Investments) is one of Canada's largest pension investment managers with $204.5 billion of net assets under management as of March 31, 2021. It manages a diversified global portfolio composed of investments in public financial markets, private equity, real estate, infrastructure, natural resources and credit investments. Established in 1999, PSP Investments manages and invests amounts transferred to it by the Government of Canada for the pension plans of the federal Public Service, the Canadian Forces, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Reserve Force. Headquartered in Ottawa, PSP Investments has its principal business office in Montreal and offices in New York, London and Hong Kong. For more information, visit investpsp.com or follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn.

For further information: Maria Constantinescu, PSP Investments, Phone: (514) 218-3795 | 1 844 525 3795, Email: media@investpsp.ca

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RANCHO CUCAMONGA, CA / ACCESSWIRE / March 3, 2022 / Arkansas State Library awarded Auto-Graphics, Inc. a two-year contract for a new integrated resource sharing system and secure hybrid union catalog.

Through their SHAREit product, which was the first Web-based library resource management solution in the industry, Auto-Graphics will build, host, and maintain a secure hybrid union catalog and library system-neutral resource sharing system for the state of Arkansas. The new system will allow users to search across all participating library systems in the state and request library materials using an unmediated request.

"The Arkansas State Library has long recognized the need for a statewide virtual union catalog (VUC), connecting participating libraries' existing catalogs and making their collections discoverable in real time," said Jennifer Chilcoat, Director of Arkansas State Library. "Funding through the American Rescue Plan Act has allowed us to finally take the plunge and get this project underway."

Implementation of the new system began in February 2022 and plans to be live by June 2022, with 55-75 libraries estimated to participate in the first year. The contract runs through January 2024.

"[The statewide VUC] can be used as a tool for collection management, benchmarking, and overall broader knowledge of the resources around the state that may be of use to our community of users," Chilcoat said. "We are grateful for the ARPA funds that have allowed us to address this critical need."

Arkansas' decision to sign with Auto-Graphics stems from several reasons; namely, that SHAREit can work with any ILS. "The statewide VUC will facilitate resource sharing among Arkansas libraries of all sizes and types," said Chilcoat. "We most certainly didn't want to end up with a VUC that excluded full participation by all libraries, regardless of finances and geography. Full access was what we were aiming for."

Albert Flores, Auto-Graphics' VP of Sales and Marketing, said that SHAREit is the "perfect model to support a state without a history of providing resource sharing."

"Our greatest satisfaction with implementing a new statewide system like Arkansas is leveraging SHAREit's inherent value," he said. "It shows the utility of SHAREit that it's flexible to adapt to a state's ecosystem and their origins. That has always been its strength."

Flores added that he and the Auto-Graphics team are pleased and eager to welcome Arkansas to the SHAREit family.

Arkansas will be Auto-Graphics' 15th statewide system, continuing an expansion throughout the southeast United States, including Mississippi, Florida, Louisiana, and Tennessee.

Auto-Graphics, Inc. is a library management and sharing software company serving customers' needs and technology to improve, assist, expand, and engage the communities they serve. Auto-Graphics was the first to provide Cloud-based library resource management to library consortia in 1994. For over 60 years, Auto-Graphics has sustained growth in carefully targeted directions, using the most state-of-the-art tools and good old-fashion business relationships. Its focus on industry requirements, high standards, product warranty, technically oriented staff, and serviceability have all contributed to the success we see today. For more information, please visit the A-G website at www.auto-graphics.com.

Media Contact:

Becky Bates

Auto-Graphics, Inc.

(909) 569-1514

rlb@auto-graphics.com

SOURCE: Auto-Graphics, Inc.

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/691541/Arkansas-State-Library-Selects-Auto-Graphics-SHAREit-for-Resource-Sharing




TOKYO, Mar 4, 2022 - (JCN Newswire) - Honda Motor Co., Ltd. today announced that the company will issue U.S. dollar-denominated Green Bonds totaling US$2.75 billion for its initiatives toward the realization of a society that aims for zero environmental impact. The proceeds from the issuance of the Green Bonds will be used exclusively toward environmental initiatives(1). This will be the first time for Honda Motor Co., Ltd. to issue Green Bonds.Since its founding in 1948, Honda has been conducting its corporate activities based on its original desire to "help people and society" and "expand people's life's potential." In light of changes happening to our society, Honda believes that working in pursuit of the "elimination of its environmental impact" and "realization of safety protecting precious human lives" are values Honda should provide in the future. Based on this belief, Honda has been working comprehensively to address challenges in the areas of the environment and safety. In the area of the environment, Honda is striving to realize carbon neutrality (net-zero CO2 emissions) for all products and corporate activities Honda is involved in by 2050.By allocating the proceeds from the issuance of the Green Bonds to eligible green projects including the development of zero-emission vehicles such as EVs and FCVs, Honda will further accelerate its initiatives toward the realization of a society that aims for zero environmental impact.(1) Projects that fit within the eligible Green Projects categories specified in the Honda Sustainable Finance Framework.(2) For the issuance of these Green Bonds, Honda has developed a Sustainable Finance Framework (the "Framework") and obtained a Second Party Opinion from Vigeo Eiris, an independent entity, that the Framework is aligned with the Green Bond Principles 2021 (the "GBP"), the Social Bond Principles 2021 (the "SBP"), and the Sustainability Bond Guidelines 2021 (the "SBG") as administered by the International Capital Market Association ("ICMA").- Honda Sustainable Finance Framework: URL:https://global.honda/investors/stock_bond/rating_bond.html- Second Party Opinion provided by Vigeo Eiris: URL:https://vigeo-eiris.com/spo_honda_sustainable_frameworkThis document does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy any securities. The securities described herein have not been approved or disapproved by any regulatory authority, nor has any such authority passed upon the accuracy or adequacy of the shelf registration statement, the base prospectus contained therein or the supplements to the base prospectus.Source: HondaCopyright 2022 JCN Newswire . All rights reserved.
RTHK: Fire at Ukrainian nuclear plant after Russian attack

Russian troops attacked Europe's largest nuclear plant on Friday, starting a fire at the Ukrainian facility, with the country's leader accusing Moscow of "nuclear terror".

Local authorities reported no immediate radiation rise was detected and "essential" equipment was unaffected by the fire, but it remained unclear what the invading forces planned next.

President Volodymr Zelenskyy accused Moscow of trying to "repeat" the Chernobyl nuclear disaster and said he had spoken with international leaders including US President Joe Biden about the crisis at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant.

Biden urged Russia to allow emergency responders to go to the site.

Images on a live feed from the site earlier showed blasts lighting up the night sky and sending up plumes of smoke, with the International Atomic Energy Agency urging an immediate halt to fighting there.

"No country other than Russia has ever fired on nuclear power units," Zelenskyy said in a video message.

"This is the first time in our history. In the history of mankind. The terrorist state now resorted to nuclear terror."

Zelenskyy appealed for global help.

"If there is an explosion, it is the end of everything. The end of Europe. This is the evacuation of Europe. Only immediate European action can stop Russian troops," he said.

But after several hours of uncertainty, Ukrainian authorities said the site had been secured.

"The director of the plant said that the nuclear safety is now guaranteed," Oleksandr Starukh, head of the military administration of the Zaporizhzhia region, said on Facebook.

"According to those responsible for the plant, a training building and a laboratory were affected by the fire," he added.

And the IAEA said it had been told by Ukraine's regulator that "there has been no change reported in radiation levels at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant site."

"Ukraine tells IAEA that fire at site of Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant has not affected 'essential' equipment, plant personnel taking mitigatory actions," the watchdog added in a tweet.

Russia has intensified strikes across the country eight days into the conflict, with fresh reports of civilian casualties and devastating damage, particularly in southern areas near the first city to fall to Moscow's troops.

In a second round of talks held on Thursday, Moscow agreed to a Ukrainian request for humanitarian corridors to allow terrified residents to flee, but there was no immediate clarity on how they would work, and no sign of any move towards a ceasefire.

Zelenskyy called for direct talks with Putin, but also urged the West to step up military assistance and "give me planes."

The offensive has continued despite punishing international sanctions, and Zelenskyy warned other former Soviet states were now at risk of Russian attack.

"If we are no more then, God forbid, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia will be next," he told a news conference, adding that direct talks with Putin were "the only way to stop this war".

Much of the international community has rallied behind Ukraine since Putin attacked on February 24, making Russia a global outcast in the worlds of finance, diplomacy, sport and culture.

Western analysts say the attacking forces have become bogged down  but warn that the early failures could lead to a frustrated Moscow deciding to unleash all its power on Ukraine.

Putin's comments on Thursday did nothing to dispel that fear.

He said Russia was rooting out "neo-Nazis", adding in televised comments that he "will never give up on (his) conviction that Russians and Ukrainians are one people".

French President Emmanuel Macron, who spoke to Putin on Thursday, believes "the worst is to come," an aide said.

While a long military column appears stalled north of Ukraine's capital Kyiv, Russian troops have already seized Kherson, a Black Sea city of 290,000 people, after a three-day siege that left it short of food and medicine.

Russian troops are also pressuring the port city of Mariupol east of Kherson, which is without water or electricity in the depths of winter.

"They are trying to create a blockade here, just like in Leningrad," Mariupol mayor Vadym Boichenko said, referring to the brutal Nazi siege of Russia's second city, now re-named Saint Petersburg.

In the northern city of Chernihiv, 33 people died on Thursday when Russian forces hit residential areas, including schools and a high-rise apartment block.

And Ukrainian authorities said residential areas in the eastern city of Kharkiv had been "pounded all night" by indiscriminate shelling, which UN prosecutors are investigating as a possible war crime.

Many Ukrainians were digging in.

Volunteers in industrial hub Dnipro were making sandbags and collecting bottles for Molotov cocktails as they prepared for an onslaught.

In Lviv, volunteers organised food and supplies to send to other cities and produced home-made anti-tank obstacles after watching YouTube tutorials.

But for others, the worst has already come.

Oleg Rubak's wife Katia, 29, was crushed in their family home in Zhytomyr, west of Kyiv, by a Russian missile strike.

"One minute I saw her going into the bedroom. A minute later there was nothing," Rubak, 32, said amid the ruins in the bitter winter chill.

"I hope she's in heaven and all is perfect for her," he said, in tears.

Gesturing at the pile of rubble, he said what remained was "not even a room, it's... maybe it's hell."

The conflict has already produced more than one million refugees who have streamed into neighbouring countries to be welcomed by volunteers handing them water, food and giving them medical treatment.

Both the EU and the United States said they would approve temporary protection for all refugees fleeing the war  numbered by the United Nations at more than one million and counting.

"We left everything there as they came and ruined our lives," refugee Svitlana Mostepanenko said in Prague.

The fear of igniting all-out war with nuclear-armed Russia has put some limits on Western support for Ukraine, though a steady supply of weaponry and intelligence continues.

The main lever used to pressure Russia globally has been sanctions, piled on by the West.

The rouble has gone into free-fall, while Russia's central bank  whose foreign reserves have been frozen in the West  imposed a 30-percent tax on all sales of hard currency, following a run on lenders by ordinary Russians.

And Putin's offensive has seen some eastern European countries lean even harder West, with both Georgia and Moldova applying for EU membership on Thursday.

In Russia, authorities have imposed a media blackout on the fighting and two liberal media groups  Ekho Moskvy radio and TV network Dozhd  said they were halting operations, in another death-knell for independent reporting in Putin's Russia.

On Friday, Facebook and multiple media websites were partially inaccessible in Russia, as authorities crack down voices criticising the war. (AFP)

This story has been published on: 2022-03-04. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
Washington urged to show China respect

10:47, March 04, 2022 By YIFAN XU in Washington ( China Daily

Issues such as sovereignty vital, expert says in highlighting common interests

A Chinese scholar has expressed the hope that the United States will pay more heed to China's concerns, especially on matters relating to territorial integrity and national sovereignty.

Wang Jisi, president of the Institute of International and Strategic Studies at Peking University, made the comments last week at an event called "A Beijinger in Washington", which was held by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, or CSIS, a think tank in Washington.

Scott Kennedy, a senior adviser and trustee chair in Chinese business and economics at the CSIS, asked Wang for his views on a document issued by the administration of US President Joe Biden on the country's strategy for the Indo-Pacific region.

According to the document, issued on Feb 11, the strategic objective of the US "is not to change the PRC but to shape the strategic environment in which it operates, building a balance of influence in the world that is maximally favorable to the United States, our allies and partners, and the interests and values we share."

Wang said the paper shows that the Biden administration no longer expects there will be a change in China's domestic structure. He said the "rules-based international order" is interpreted differently by the US and China, and the differing interpretations have led to competition between them.

"We emphasize more international rules like the United Nations Charter, with respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity," he said. "Chinese are critical of the American position over the Indo-Pacific regional strategy because China's strategic interests are not taken very seriously."

With attention to the 50th anniversary of former US president Richard Nixon's visit to China and the signing of the Shanghai Communique, Wang gave his thoughts on the visit and on the Taiwan question.

Wang stressed that unlike the "secret diplomacy" around the visit, modern technology, especially telecommunications, has made today a different situation to improve US-China relations.

"Very much today we are influenced by domestic factors in the US-China relations, a variety of interest groups, multiple dimensions are involved, and the situation is very complicated," he said. "So, when you think about the old days, we could be somewhat nostalgic. But there is no way for us to go back to the old days."

On Taiwan, Wang said: "We are still in favor of peaceful unification with Taiwan. War is the last solution," he said. "But before an all-out war and peaceful settlement, there are a lot of things we can do."

Wang said he could "recite word by word" what was said at the time in the Shanghai Communique. As he recalls, "The United States acknowledges the Chinese position that all Chinese across the Taiwan Straits think there is only one China, and Taiwan is part of China; the United States does not challenge that position."

Essence unchanged

Wang disagrees with suggestions that the essence of that has changed dramatically, but concedes "there are some changes". Some people in the United States favor more contact with Taiwan, some even think that the US should recognize the so-called independence of Taiwan, he said, and "that would be dangerous".

At the event, Wang touched on the issue of whether China and the US can build trust in each other.

"Mutual distrust is there, and this is a new reality not only between China and the United States but also in international relations at large," he said.

At the event, Wang and Kennedy said the past two years have presented an opportunity for US and Chinese scholars to exchange their views, against the backdrop of the pandemic and the deterioration in relations between the two countries.

"I hope our exchange program marks the beginning of the restoration of academic exchanges between the two sides," said Wang, and he hopes that the prospect of more visits will mark stabilization or improvement in US-China relations.

"I wholeheartedly agree, whether we're competing or cooperating, we've got to understand each other," Kennedy said in response.

(Web editor: Zhong Wenxing, Liang Jun)
London, Ontario--(Newsfile Corp. - March 4, 2022) - On February 28, 2022 and March 2, 2022, George Lunick (the "Acquiror") acquired 262,500 common shares (the "Common Shares") in the capital of Pearl River Holdings Limited. (the "Corporation"). The Common Shares were offered and purchased through the facilities of the TSX Venture Exchange for an aggregate purchase price of $73,395.

Immediately before the acquisition, the Acquiror owned and controlled 1,867,393 Common Shares, being approximately 6.84% of the issued and outstanding Common Shares.

Immediately after the acquisition, the Acquiror, owned and controlled 2,129,893 Common Shares, being approximately 7.80% of the issued and outstanding Common Shares.

The securities of the Corporation were acquired for investment purposes. The Acquiror reserves the right, directly or indirectly, to acquire ownership or control over additional securities in accordance with applicable securities legislation or from time to time to dispose of any securities of the Corporation that she may own.

A copy of the Early Warning Report will appear on the Corporation's profile on SEDAR.

The address of the Acquiror is Suite 500 - 383 Richmond Street, London, Ontario, N6A 3C4.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/115658
DKSH Management Ltd. / Key word(s): Corporate Action/Strategic Company Decision

Changes in DKSH's Executive Committee



04-March-2022 / 07:00 CET/CEST

Release of an ad hoc announcement pursuant to Art. 53 LR

The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement.





Ad hoc announcement pursuant to Art. 53 LR

DKSH appoints Sam Oh, Chief Information Officer, as new member of the Executive Committee. At the same time, Daniel Culverhouse, currently Head Supply Chain Management, has decided to leave the company for personal reasons.

Zurich, Switzerland, March 4, 2022 - DKSH increases further its strategic focus on digitalization by appointing Sam Oh, Chief Information Officer, to the Executive Committee.

Sam Oh, who joined DKSH in February 2021 as Chief Information Officer, has been appointed as a new member of the Executive Committee from March 4, 2022. Sam is a Korean American leader with over 25 years of work experience gained at Tesco, Fujistu, and Dairy Farm International across Asia and the US. The elevation of the Chief Information Officer role also underlines the strategic importance of DKSH's digital transformation and IT infrastructure.

At the same time, Dan Culverhouse, Head Supply Chain Management currently reporting to the Group CFO Ido Wallach, has decided to leave DKSH for personal reasons. His last day in the company is August 31, when he also leaves the Executive Committee. Dan has been in this position since October 2018, overseeing the group-wide Supply Chain Management function. Ido Wallach, Group CFO, will continue to be in charge of Supply Chain Management until a suitable successor is found.

Stefan P. Butz, CEO, said: 'I am very pleased to appoint Sam as new member of the Executive Committee. I am confident that he will continue to accelerate our digital transformation and contribute to our strategy for sustainable profitable growth. I would like to thank Dan for his valuable contributions in the past three years. We wish him all the best in his future endeavors.'

About DKSH

DKSH's purpose is to enrich people's lives. For more than 150 years, we have been delivering growth for companies in Asia and beyond across our Business Units Healthcare, Consumer Goods, Performance Materials, and Technology. As a leading Market Expansion Services provider, we offer sourcing, market insights, marketing and sales, eCommerce, distribution and logistics as well as after-sales services. Listed on the SIX Swiss Exchange, DKSH operates in 36 markets with 33,100 specialists, generating net sales of CHF 11.1 billion in 2021. www.dksh.com

For more information please contact:

DKSH Holding Ltd.



Till Leisner

Head, Group Investor & Media Relations

Phone +41 44 386 7315

till.leisner@dksh.com



Rafael Duarte

Director, Group Investor Relations

Phone +41 44 386 7318

rafael.duarte@dksh.com



Demet Bicer

Manager, Group Media Relations

Phone +41 44 386 7217

demet.bicer@dksh.com
On March 7, the 14km Forum launches its series of webinars, with Ghanaian tourism as the first theme on the occasion of the National Day of Ghana.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220303005963/en/

Wow, Kakum National Park. Invest in tourism in Ghana now. Listen to our Ghana webinar on March 7. (Graphic: Business Wire)

Exploring Ghana's unparalleled tourism investment potential is the first step in the 14km Forum webinar series. Launched in 2020 during the confinement, this international platform of mobility accompaniment to the African continent, organizes its first webinar from this Monday, March 7, 2022, at 10:00 am (UTC+1).

Ghana is quickly becoming a leading international tourism destination, contributing 4.8% to the country's GDP. How can we build on this momentum to fuel this high growth sector? How can we change the discourse on Africa as a tourist destination? These are the questions that this first webinar will answer.

Indeed, at a time when Ghana is multiplying its campaigns and initiatives to encourage African diasporas to settle and invest on the continent, this webinar aims to give an overview of the country's tourism sector and its investment opportunities, but also to change the paradigms: private investment has a central role to play to enable the development of a sustainable and competitive tourism ecosystem in Ghana.

For Keshia Dupros, founder of 14km, "this series of webinars is a catalyst to accompany all those who want to succeed in Africa. We meet to discover and listen to inspiring success stories, network with successful entrepreneurs and top leaders, develop our skills to interact with the African continent or discover leverage solutions to implement our project."

Why 14km?

14km for 14 kilometers. This is the shortest distance between Europe and Africa at the Strait of Gibraltar. It is a living reminder of the contiguity of Europe and Africa. Of their common history. A call to recognize this geographical proximity and to translate it into strong ties and shared success.

About the 14km Forum

Created in 2020, the 14km Forum has the ambition to become the first international platform around mobility to Africa. The objective is to promote and have a better access to knowledge related to the continent, to foster a better understanding of African regions without stereotypes. Initiated by Keshia Dupros, the 14km initiative wants to become a key player providing all the necessary tools to succeed and prosper in Africa.

To participate in the webinar: https://14km.fr/

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220303005963/en/

Contacts:

Keshia Dupros contact@14km.fr +33(0)628342562
Regulatory News:

ESI Group (FR0004110310 ESI) (Paris:ESI), leader and pioneer in Virtual Prototyping solutions, hereby releases the total number of shares making up the company's capital and the total number of voting rights in February 28, 2022, in accordance with articles 223-16 and 221-3 of the General Regulations of the "Autorite des Marches Financiers".

Number of shares Number of theoretical voting rights * Number of voting rights ** 6,065,304 8,108,311 7,763,944

* The number of theoretical voting rights is calculated based on all shares eligible for voting right (single or double), including shares temporarily deprived of voting rights (treasury shares).

** All Group shares have equal right to vote, except treasury shares, which are deprived of the right to vote, and registered shares held for more than four years that are eligible for double voting rights.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220303005948/en/

Contacts:

ESI Group
LONDON (dpa-AFX) - Property development and investment company Hammerson plc (HMSO.L) reported Friday that its fiscal 2021 IFRS loss was 429.1 million pounds, compared to prior year's loss of 1.74 billion pounds. Basic loss per share were 9.8 pence, compared to loss of 62.4 pence a year ago. Adjusted earnings were 81 million pounds, compared to 37 million pounds last year. Adjusted earnings per share were up 38 percent to 1.8 pence, compared to 1.3 pence a year ago. Gross rental income declined to 241.6 million pounds from 286.9 million pounds last year. Like-for-like net rental income climbed 21.7 percent. Further, the company announced that subject to shareholder approval, the Board is proposing a final dividend of 0.2 pence per share in cash with an enhanced scrip dividend alternative of 2.0 pence per share. Both will be paid as a Property Income Distribution. Separately, Hammerson announced that Andrew Formica, Non-Executive Director, will not stand for re-election at the 2022 Annual General Meeting. Gwyn Burr, Senior Independent Director and Chair of the Remuneration Committee, also will not stand for re-election at the AGM. Formica and Burr will step down at the conclusion of the meeting. Mike Butterworth, Non-Executive Director and Chair of the Audit Committee, will succeed Burr as Senior Independent Director and Habib Annous, Non-Executive Director, will succeed her as Chair of the Remuneration Committee. 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.
Elliptic Labs (OSE: ELABS), a global AI software company and the world leader in Virtual Smart Sensors, is announcing today that it has been uplisted to the main list of the Oslo Stock Exchange (OSE). Elliptic Labs has traded on the Euronext Growth trading platform in Oslo since October 2020.

"Joining the main listing at the OSE is a momentous occasion for Elliptic Labs," said CEO of Elliptic Labs Laila Danielsen. "We are excited about our continued success in the smartphone market and our growth prospects in new markets like the PC/laptop and IoT markets. We maintain a solid advantage with the value our software-only AI Virtual Smart Sensor Platform brings to our industry-leading customers."

About Elliptic Labs

Elliptic Labs is a global enterprise targeting the smartphone, laptop, IoT, and automotive markets. Founded in 2006 as a research spin-off from Norway's Oslo University, the company's patented AI software combines ultrasound and sensor-fusion algorithms to deliver intuitive 3D gesture, proximity, and presence-sensing experiences. Its scalable AI Virtual Smart Sensor Platform creates software-only sensors that are sustainable, eco-friendly, and already deployed in hundreds of millions of devices around the world. Elliptic Labs is the only software company that has delivered detection capabilities using AI software, ultrasound, and sensor-fusion deployed at scale. The company joined the Oslo Brs main listing in March 2022.

Elliptic Labs is headquartered in Norway with presence in the USA, China, South Korea, Taiwan, and Japan. Its technology and IP are developed in Norway and are solely owned by the company.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220304005008/en/

Contacts:

PR Contacts:

Patrick Tsui

pr@ellipticlabs.com

Investor Relations:

Lars Holmy

Lars.Holmoy@ellipticlabs.com
Award-Winning Product Bundling Technology To Help 1WorldSync's Expansive Retail E-Commerce Network Drive Profitable Sales Growth

CHICAGO, March 4, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- 1WorldSync, the leading provider of omnichannel product content solutions, today announced the acquisition of Swogo, an award-winning e-commerce bundle technology that helps retailers in over 30 countries drive profitable growth. Retailers like Staples, Decathlon, Office Depot, Sephora and others leverage Swogo's technology to display the highest converting bundle offers to consumers shopping on their websites.

"There's a lot to love about Swogo," said Steve Sivitter, CEO of 1WorldSync, a company backed by global investment firm Battery Ventures. "Firstly, they enable significant upsell and cross-sell revenue to their clients, and we look forward to introducing their capabilities to a wider set of retailers and categories. Secondly, they greatly expand 1WorldSync's footprint in Europe, with offices in the United Kingdom and Portugal. This acquisition is yet another milestone in 1WorldSync's strategy to provide our 14,000-plus customers with best-of-breed technology and support via an end-to-end platform for omnichannel commerce."

Driving profitable growth and building bigger shopping baskets is a priority for all retailers, yet most struggle to effectively bundle products in a way that is compatible, relevant and personalized. Too often they rely on manual suggestions within their legacy systems, or on what their consumers are frequently buying together. Both approaches lead to incompatible and irrelevant matches. By combining an understanding of the retailer's product range alongside consumer behavior, Swogo's technology drives immediate results for its customers, while eliminating manual work for their teams.

"The Swogo team is thrilled to join forces with 1WorldSync," said Anthony Ng Monica, Founder and CEO of Swogo. "Our bundling technology can provide immediate margin and sales growth benefits to their vast, growing network of retail customers."

To learn more about 1WorldSync's omnichannel product content solutions, or about Swogo, please www.1worldsync.com and www.swogo.com.

About 1WorldSync

1WorldSync is the leading provider of omnichannel product content solutions, enabling more than 14,000 companies in over 60 countries to share authentic, trusted content that empowers confident commerce and intelligent consumer purchasing decisions. Through its technology platform and expert services, 1WorldSync solves revenue-impacting product content challenges faced by leading brands and retailers in the CPG/retail, DIY, consumer electronics, healthcare, and foodservice industries. 1WorldSync is one of the only product content providers and GDSN Data Pools to achieve ISO Certification 27001. For more information, please visit https://www.1worldsync.com.

About Swogo

Swogo is an award-winning provider of bundle product recommendations, enabling more than 100 retail customers in over 30 countries to increase their margin and basket size. Through the Swogo Product Graph technology, Swogo is able to guarantee compatible and relevant bundles at scale - driving immediate value for the world's leading retailers, like Staples, Decathlon, Office Depot and Sephora. For more information, please visit https://www.swogo.com.

Media Contact

Matt Galassini

mgalassini@1worldsync.com


CANBERA (dpa-AFX) - The euro lost ground against its major rivals in the Asian session on Friday amid risk aversion, as fire has broken out at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine following intense shelling by Russian forces.



Russian troops intensified their efforts to seize the plant and the heavy shelling of buildings and units of the facility caught fire in one of its six reactors.



In a tweet, the International Atomic Energy Agency said that the fire at the nuclear power plant has not affected essential equipment and plant personnel is taking mitigatory actions.



U.S. President Joe Biden joined Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in urging Russia to cease its military activities in the area and allow firefighters and emergency responders to access the site.



The United States and Britain imposed sanctions on more Russian oligarchs on Thursday in retaliation to its attacks on Ukraine.



The euro depreciated to a 1-year low of 126.93 against the yen and near a 2-year low of 1.1010 against the greenback, following its prior highs of 127.82 and 1.1068, respectively. The euro is poised to challenge support around 125.00 against the yen and 1.08 against the greenback.



Retreating from its early highs of 1.0158 against the franc and 0.8292 against the pound, the euro weakened to more than a 7-year low of 1.0117 and a 5-1/2-year low of 0.8262, respectively. The currency is likely to find support around 0.99 against the franc and 0.80 against the pound.



The euro pulled back from its previous highs of 1.5105 against the aussie and 1.6282 against the kiwi and dropped to a 5-1/2-year low of 1.4988 and more than a 3-month low of 1.6156, respectively. The euro is seen facing support around 1.45 against the aussie and 1.58 against the kiwi.



The euro edged down to 1.3989 against the loonie, off an early high of 1.4031. On the downside, 1.37 is possibly seen as its next support level.



Looking ahead, U.K. construction PMI for February and Eurozone retail sales for January are due in the European session.



U.S. jobs data for February, Canada building permits for January and Ivey PMI for February will be featured in the New York session.







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New and exciting titles cover the breadth and depth of the African experience

Johannesburg, March 04, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- JOHANNESBURG, 1 MARCH 2022: MultiChoice Studios, the content sales and distribution arm of the MultiChoice Group, will be taking a new selection of premium African content to the world in 2022. The MultiChoice Group is home to one of Africa's largest digital satellite television services, which includes the DStv and GOtv bouquets of channels as well as Showmax. A wide selection of content produced and commissioned by MultiChoice stars the very best talent from across the continent and delivers consistently superior production value, making it highly sought-after in both the Group's core African markets and in diverse international markets.

Established in 2013, MultiChoice Studios offers over 65 000 hours of content in a range of different formats and genres, showcasing African stories to the world. And further top-drawer content will be added throughout 2022.

"MultiChoice Group is the largest producer of original television content on the continent," says Mauro Black, director of content sales and distribution for MultiChoice Studios, "and our extensive catalogue features titles that appeal to a wide range of audiences.

"All of our co-produced and commissioned titles are in high demand and, in 2021, we saw incredible growth in that demand. We licensed seven times more series and movies than we did during the previous year, placing us firmly on the world stage as a leading television content provider."

With its continuing focus on and investment in African storytelling and talent, the Group has recently launched The Wife, a true African original, which is based on characters from the critically acclaimed series of novels by leading author, Dudu Busani-Dube. This title has proven to be immensely popular in both South Africa and the SADC region. Filmed in isiZulu, the telenovela is due to be dubbed into French for distribution to intercontinental and international markets through Canal+, a premium French-language television channel.

MultiChoice has a long history of licensing titles to Canal+ and demand for its content in the markets the channel serves is growing. The licensing of The Wife also highlights a developing trend among many buyers, who are requesting bundled packages that contain both evergreen dramas and new releases. This is testament to the quality of the productions on offer and also to the fact that they meet all technical requirements for dubbing into other languages.

Additional titles in the MultiChoice's world-class catalogue of series include the romantic comedy-drama, Entangled; the gripping human drama, Lioness; the haunting crime series Reyka; and the exciting political drama, The Republic, which showcases the very best scriptwriting, acting and production talent the continent has to offer.

The line-up of movies is just as broad, with Glasshousebeing an outstanding recent example. The paranormal drama, produced in 2020, received glowing reviews at several festivals around the world, including at Fantasia in Canada and at the New Zealand Film Festival. Kelsey Egan's dystopian take on family, secrets and survival was released in the UK on Sky, iTunes, Amazon, Google X Box and Virgin Media, followed by releases in Australia and New Zealand. The interest in and demand for this film is well earned, and it has led to even more buyers taking an interest in MultiChoice's catalogue of movies, many of which have global appeal.

"Just one of the many defining features of the authenticity of our content is that we produce many shows in African languages," says Black. "The hugely entertaining Afrikaans comedy, Troukoors, which tells the story of a wedding planner and her friends as they navigate life and love, is just one example."

In the docuseries genre, the gripping series, Devilsdorphas proven to be equally popular, weaving the chilling tale of a religious cult's murderous spree.

"As a leading and credible source of the African narrative, MultiChoice is not only showcasing and advancing filmmaking in Africa," says Black, "it is also showcasing African talent on the global stage.

"MultiChoice Studios offers access to this vast treasure trove of storytelling and is the destination of choice for content buyers from around the world. It is the best place for the international film and television industry to find quality, award-winning African content."

Attachment
The third edition of the Reply Investment Challenge is underway the second of these challenges on the theme of sustainability. Aimed at students and young professionals, in 2021 the international online competition had 14,600 members from 91 countries around the world and a total volume of 76,746 trading operations were carried out.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220304005019/en/

This year, the theme of sustainability will play an even more central role. The objective of the Challenge, set to take place from Monday, March 28th to Friday, April 8th of this year, will be to invest in a sustainable way. Participants will be asked to present sustainable but profitable investment strategies, making choices influenced by the ESG ratings of the companies they will invest in.

In addition to expanding their knowledge of the ESG rating system, the competition will enable participants to broaden their general finance and investment skills, thanks to the exclusive e-learning content that will be made available on the Challenge platform the month prior to the competition.

Participants in this year's Challenge will have a virtual $1,000,000 capital at their disposal to invest in real-time within the US market. On March 28th, the sum will be credited to the participants' virtual wallets and the challenge will start. Participants will be ranked and evaluated based on their sustainable investment choices and only the top three those who have maximised their result in terms of profit and sustainability will win the challenge.

To demonstrate the commitment to sustainability, the Reply Sustainable Investment Challenge 2022 will have a zero negative impact on the environment and will be completely green. In collaboration with LifeGate, a referent on themes related to sustainability, the overall environmental impact generated by organising and conducting the event has been calculated. The amount of CO2 produced will thus be offset through the creation and protection of forests in Madagascar.

This year, the Reply Sustainable Investment Challenge will once again have Banca Generali as its partner. The first Italian bank to embark on the path of offering ESG investment solutions for families, Banca Generali will accompany students through the different stages of the competition, concretely measuring the results not only financially, but also in terms of their environment and social implications.

The 2022 edition of the Challenge will also count with to the participation of CFA Society Italy, MainStreet Partners and the MIP Politecnico di Milano Graduate School of Business.

CFA Society Italy which, since its foundation, has promoted the highest standards of ethics, education and excellence within the entire financial community, is constantly focused on the latest ESG issues that are revolutionising the sector.

MainStreet Partners, a London-based company specialising in sustainable investments and portfolio analysis, will provide ESG ratings that will be used in the competition.

Moreover, with its participation in the Reply Sustainable Investment Challenge, the MIP Politecnico di Milano Graduate School of Business confirms its commitment to educating and training financial operators who are attentive to risk and to the sustainability of their investments.

The Reply Sustainable Investment Challenge is part of the Reply Challenges Programme which, together with the Reply Code For Kids programme and Reply's 2nd level Master's Degree in AI Cloud offered at the Polytechnic University of Turin, are just some of the examples of the Group's continued commitment to the development of innovative training models, capable of engaging the new generations of high performers. Today, Reply's Challenges is made up of a community of over 140,000 players.

Registrations to the Reply Sustainable Investment Challenge will be open until March 25. Full information is available on: challenges.reply.com.

Reply

Reply [MTA, STAR: REY, ISIN: IT0005282865] specialises in the design and implementation of solutions based on new communication channels and digital media. As a network of highly specialised companies, Reply defines and develops business models enabled by the new models of AI, big data, cloud computing, digital media and the internet of things. Reply delivers consulting, system integration and digital services to organisations across the telecom and media; industry and services; banking and insurance; and public sectors. www.reply.com

Banca Generali

Banca Generali is a leading private bank in Italy in financial planning and customer asset protection, backed by a strong network of consultants and private bankers who rank at the very top of the sector in terms of their skills and professionalism. The Company's strategy is based on four key pillars: the qualified advisory services of professionals specialised in protecting the wealth of families and in supporting the planning of their future; a cutting-edge product portfolio with solutions tailored to the clients' personal needs, innovative wealth management services for financial assets and other types of activity, and innovative tools which, through the adoption of new technologies, enhance the relationship of trust between consultant and client. The Bank's mission highlights the role of trusted People alongside the Customer over time, to build and take care of their life projects. Listed on the Milan Stock Exchange since November 2006, it manages over 85.7 billion of assets from Assicurazioni Generali on behalf of customers (data as of December 31, 2021). With a strong presence throughout the country, it operates 45 branches and 137 offices available to over 2,150 financial consultants, together with an advanced digital contact service for its operations. Added to this is its digital banking platform, www.bancageneraliprivate.it, which enables customers to independently access banking services.

MainStreet Partners

We are the trusted ESG partner of many investors for one simple reason: we provide a single platform for their portfolio-level sustainability needs. Our clients are among the most sophisticated wealth managers, investment banks, insurance companies and institutional investors in the financial sector.

MainStreet Partners is headquartered in London, regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority and consists of two main divisions:

ESG Advisory - We have been collaborating with our partners for over 10 years to create multi-asset and multi-manager ESG portfolios containing mutual funds, stocks and bonds. We develop solutions for thematic products or products aligned with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs); Portfolio Analytics - We provide a holistic approach to ESG data analysis that includes: transparent and detailed ESG ratings on a wide universe of funds or the evaluation of clients' portfolios to improve their sustainability profile and align them with the latest "green" regulations.

Our proprietary and database models are available on a pragmatic and intuitive ESG platform. Our clients can create sustainable portfolios and/or analyse their portfolios thanks to:

ESG ratings at the issuer level (shares, credit, government bonds, green and social bonds);

ESG ratings for funds with the addition of extra-financial results and alignment of the SDGs;

exclusion lists and analysis of activities and behaviours.

MIP Politecnico di Milano Graduate School of Business

MIP is the Graduate School of Business of the Politecnico di Milano which, for more than 40 years, has been providing management training programmes for graduates, professionals, companies and institutions. In 2014, the School launched the first Executive MBA in digital learning in Italy and today, where digital training is an integral part of the entire training offer. The School operates paying particular attention to issues related to sustainability as the only European Business School among B Corp certified companies, an important recognition given to companies characterised by their commitment to sustainable development and to building a more inclusive society. MIP constantly collaborates with nationally and internationally renowned companies, building partnerships that make it possible to design training courses aimed at providing the best tools to face the challenges of contemporary markets. The training offer consists of more than 40 Master's programmes each year, including MBAs and Executive MBAs, a catalogue of over 200 Open Programmes dedicated to executive profiles and various training courses tailored to the business world. www.som.polimi.it/

CFA Society Italy

CFA Society Italy is the reference association in Italy for professionals who have achieved the qualification of Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA), the most important certification in the world of finance. Founded in 1999 as an affiliate of the CFA Institute, the Association is the point of reference in Italy for CFA Charterholders. CFA Society Italy promotes professional ethics and the value of the training and certification path in the country and provides a series of services for professionals and for those who are following the demanding exam process. Like other affiliated associations in the world, the activities carried out by CFA Society Italy are largely based on the voluntary commitment of its members. CFA Society Italy has about 600 members.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220304005019/en/

Contacts:

Media contacts:

Reply

Fabio Zappelli

f.zappelli@reply.com

Tel. +39 0117711594

Aaron Miani

a.miani@reply.com

Tel. +44 2077306000

Banca Generali

Davide Pastore

davide.pastore@bancagenerali.it

Tel. +39 337 1115357

MainStreet Partners

Laura Regi

regi@mspartners.org

Tel. +44 (0)20 3997 4930

MIP Politecnico di Milano Graduate School of Business

Alessandro D'Angelo

adangelo@l45.it

+39 329 41392262

CFA Society Italy

Elena Giffoni

elena.giffoni@giffonipr.com

+39 347 2626681
The Italian authorities have introduced new provisions in the DL Energia decree to reduce energy bills for households and businesses. Italian companies will be able to secure rebates for projects and several southern regions have also been granted a fiscal break for rooftop PV and energy efficiency.The Italian government has published a new package of measures, the DL Energia decree, in order to reduce energy bills for Italian households and businesses. The new provisions include an extreme simplification of permits to install commercial rooftop PV systems with a capacity of between 50kW and 200kW, ...

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.


BERLIN (dpa-AFX) - Germany's exports and imports logged unexpected declines in January, data published by Destatis revealed on Friday.



Exports were down 2.8 percent month-on-month, reversing a 1.2 percent rise in December. Shipments were expected to climb 1.0 percent. This was the first decline in four months.



Likewise, imports decreased 4.2 percent, in contrast to the 4 percent increase a month ago. Economists had forecast a monthly growth of 2.0 percent. Imports fell for the first time since last July.



As the decline in imports exceeded the fall in exports, the trade surplus rose to a seasonally adjusted EUR 9.4 billion from EUR 8.1 billion in the previous month. The expected level was EUR 6.1 billion.



On a yearly basis, exports growth slowed to 11.0 percent from 15.5 percent in December. Similarly, growth in imports eased to 25.6 percent from 28.1 percent a month ago.



The trade surplus declined to an unadjusted EUR 3.5 billion from EUR 14.2 billion in the same period last year.



Exports were up 4.0 percent and imports by 17.8 percent in January compared with February 2020, the month before restrictions were imposed due to the corona pandemic in Germany.



Data showed that German exports to the EU countries dropped 9.6 percent and imports from those countries by 6.8 percent. At the same time, shipments to euro area decreased 8.8 percent and imports from those nations fell 7.1 percent.



Most German exports went to the United States in January, with goods exports up 3.0 percent and shipments to China advanced 13.7 percent. Exports to the United Kingdom gained 2.4 percent.



As the trade with the Russian Federation was not yet restricted in January by the sanctions imposed in response to Russia's attack on Ukraine, German exports rose 14.4 percent to EUR 2.6 billion from December.



Most imports to Germany came from China. Imports from China dropped 6 percent, while imports from the US grew 2 percent.



Imports from Russia advanced 18.9 percent and that from the UK gained only 0.4 percent.







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London, March 4, 2022



CNH Industrial (NYSE: CNHI / MI: CNHI) today announces a $500,000 donation to support Ukrainians impacted by the current crisis. In order to ensure the effective deployment of this donation, CNH Industrial will rely on the support of NGOs who are providing on the ground assistance to those in need. In addition, CNH Industrial will establish a global fund to which employees can donate, with the Company matching their contributions dollar for dollar.

"CNH Industrial strongly condemns any and all acts of unprovoked violence and aggression, which have led to the current lamentable situation in Ukraine. Our thoughts and prayers are with everyone affected, and we are prioritizing the safety of our employees and their families in the country," said Scott W. Wine, Chief Executive Officer, CNH Industrial. "I am humbled by our employees' determination to contribute in assisting the population of Ukraine, which is in urgent humanitarian need. I, alongside my fellow 37,500 CNH Industrial colleagues, wish for a positive and quick resolution to this unfolding crisis."

CNH Industrial has 38 employees based in Ukraine, and a dedicated team is actively providing them with ongoing support.

CNH Industrial (NYSE: CNHI / MI: CNHI) is a world-class equipment and services company.Driven by its purpose of Breaking New Ground, which centers on Innovation, Sustainability and Productivity, the Companyprovides the strategic direction, R&D capabilities, and investments that enable the success of its five core Brands: Case IH, New Holland Agriculture and STEYR, supplying 360 agriculture applications from machines to implements and the digital technologies that enhance them; and CASE and New Holland Construction Equipment delivering a full lineup of construction products that make the industry more productive. Across a history spanning over two centuries, CNH Industrial has always been a pioneer in its sectors and continues to passionately innovate and drive customer efficiency and success, driven by its purpose of Breaking New Ground. As a truly global company, CNH Industrial's 35,000+ employees form part of a diverse and inclusive workplace, focused on empowering customers to grow, and build, a better world.

For more information and the latest financial and sustainability reports visit: cnhindustrial.com

For news from CNH Industrial and its Brands visit: media.cnhindustrial.com

Media contacts:

Rebecca Fabian

North America

Tel. +1 312 515 2249

Anna Angelini

United Kingdom

Tel. +44 (0)7725 826 007

Email: mediarelations@cnhind.com

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BRUSSELS/FRANKFURT/PARIS (dpa-AFX) - German stocks tumbled on Friday amid heightened geopolitical tensions after Russia took control of Europe's biggest nuclear power plant. The benchmark DAX fell 263 points, or 1.9 percent, to 13,435 after falling 2.2 percent in the previous session. Cyclical stocks were among the worst hit, with banks Commerzbank and Deutsche Bank falling round 4 percent. Germany's exports and imports declined unexpectedly in January, data published by Destatis revealed earlier in the day. Exports were down 2.8 percent month-on-month, reversing a 1.2 percent rise in December. Shipments were expected to climb 1.0 percent. Likewise, imports decreased 4.2 percent, in contrast to the 4 percent increase a month ago. Economists had forecast a monthly growth of 2.0 percent. On a yearly basis, exports growth slowed to 11.0 percent from 15.5 percent in December. Similarly, growth in imports eased to 25.6 percent from 28.1 percent a month ago. 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.
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.
GOTHENBURG, Sweden, March 4, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Vicore Pharma Holding AB (publ) ("Vicore"), a clinical-stage pharmaceutical company developing medicines targeting the angiotensin II type 2 receptor (AT2R), will host a virtual R&D Day with a focus on its primary drug development programs and this new class of medicine, AT2R agonists (ATRAGS), on Thursday, March 10, 2022, from 15:00-17:00 CET/9-11 AM EST.

The R&D Day will feature presentations from Key Opinion Leaders (KOL's) Toby Maher, M.D. Ph.D., from the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California, Gerry Coghlan, M.D., from the University College Dublin, and Maureen Horton, M.D. Ph.D., from Johns Hopkins University, who will discuss Vicore Pharma's drug development programs for the treatment of severe lung disorders.

Program:

ATRAG - angiotensin II type 2 receptor agonists - a new class of medicine.

C21, the first in class oral ATRAG in clinical development for the treatment of COVID-19 and idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF).

Pulmonary artery hypertension (PAH) will be explored as a new indication for C21.

In IPF there is also a program on digital cognitive therapy to treat anxiety and depression and a program addressing IPF cough.

The first new follow-up ATRAG, C106, is entering the clinic and 4 more compounds are in late-stage preclinical development.

Tentative new indications for the new ATRAGS will be explored.

A live question and answer session will follow. To register for the event, please click here.

Toby Maher, M.D. is Professor of Medicine and Director of Interstitial Lung Disease at Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California, Los Angeles (USC). Dr Maher has spent the last 18 years specializing in the management of all forms of pulmonary fibrosis and orphan interstitial lung diseases (ILD). He previously ran the ILD unit at Royal Brompton Hospital. Since June 2020 he has been Director of ILD at Keck Medicine of USC. He remains Professor of Interstitial Lung Disease at Imperial College London and is British Lung Foundation Professor of Respiratory Medicine. His research interests include: biomarker discovery, the lung microbiome and host immune response in the pathogenesis of IPF and clinical trials in interstitial lung disease. He has been involved in >50 trials in fibrotic lung disease from phase 1b through to phase 4, including those assessing IPF, scleroderma, rheumatoid arthritis and inflammatory myositis. He is an associate editor for American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine and is on the Editorial Board of Lancet Respiratory Medicine. He has authored over 270 papers and book chapters on pulmonary fibrosis.

Gerry Coghlan, M.D. qualified from University College Dublin in 1983. He trained in cardiology at the National Cardiac Centre (Baggot Street) Dublin, Harefield Hospital and The Royal Free Hospital. He was appointed consultant cardiologist at the Royal Free Hospital in 1997. He is a founding member and ex-chair of the National Pulmonary Hypertension Physicians Association and has developed the Royal Free National Pulmonary Hypertension Service, with a particular interest in connective tissue disease associated Pulmonary Hypertension. He has developed an 'outreach' model for pulmonary hypertension care attending clinics at Guys & St Thomas' Hospital, Kings College Hospital, Royal United Hospital Bath, Derriford Hospital Plymouth, Queen Alexandra Hospital Portsmouth, Royal Sussex County Hospital, QEQM Hospital, and Ulster Hospital Dundonald. From 1999, he was clinical lead in cardiology with the Regional Health Authority, lead for the North Central Sector collaborative program from 2002 - 2004 and from August 2004 - 2013 medical chair of the North Central Sector Cardiac Network. Furthermore, he was the Head of Service for medical specialties in the Royal Free Hospital from 2001, clinical director of acute medical specialties from July 2004 and Deputy director for medical specialties 2005 - 2009. With the advent of UCL partners he is now leading a group to co-ordinate pulmonary hypertension services & research across 4 hospitals linked to University College London (UCL).

Maureen Horton, M.D. is Professor of Medicine at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, MD, Co-Director of the Interstitial Lung Disease Program in the department of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, and an attending physician at the Johns Hopkins Hospital Medical Intensive Care Unit. Professor Horton's research aims to understand the immunological dysregulation that promote lung injury and fibrosis. Her initial focus on the expression of chemokines, cytokines, and growth factors in immune cells in lung injury led her to propose and develop a novel vaccine-induced immunotherapy treatment for lung fibrosis. Her research continues to discover novel metabolic treatments for both lung fibrosis and acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). She has been the principal investigator or site PI in approximately 10 clinical trials of treatments for lung disease and has over 80 publications pulmonary conditions including IPF, IPF cough, and lung fibrosis as well as respiratory infections such as influenza and COVID-19. Since 2020, Professor Horton has been involved in several studies looking at immune dysregulation in COVID patients. Recently she co-authored a publication identifying distinct T cell and myeloid cells associated with acutely ill COVID-19 patients, providing an important mechanistic insight into the mechanism of pathogenesis of COVID-19. Professor Horton received her MD from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine as well as her internship, residency and fellowship training in Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at the Johns Hopkins Hospital. She is triple board certified in Internal Medicine, Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine.

C21 - a first-in-class AT2R agonist

C21 is a first-in-class, orally available, low molecular weight, angiotensin II type 2 receptor (AT2R) agonist that activates the "protective arm" of the renin-angiotensin system (RAS) leading to resolution and regeneration following tissue damage. The compound is currently in a phase 2 proof-of-concept trial in IPF and in a pivotal phase 3 trial in COVID-19.

For further information, please contact:

Carl-Johan Dalsgaard, CEO

Phone: +46 70 975 98 63

E-mail: carl-johan.dalsgaard@vicorepharma.com

This information was submitted for publication on March 4, 2022, at 10:00 CET.

This information was brought to you by Cision http://news.cision.com

https://news.cision.com/vicore-pharma-holding-ab/r/vicore-to-host-r-d-day,c3518785

The following files are available for download:
BRUSSELS/FRANKFURT/PARIS (dpa-AFX) - European stocks fell sharply on Friday and were on course for their third consecutive week of declines after Russia took control of Europe's biggest nuclear power plant. As Russia's offensive in Ukraine entered the ninth day, Russian forces have seized Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant after intense fighting during which shelling caused a fire to break out at a training facility on the site. The pan European Stoxx 600 fell 2.1 percent to 428.35 after plummeting 2 percent on Thursday. The German DAX lost 2.8 percent, France's CAC 40 index shed 2.9 percent and the U.K.'s FTSE 100 was down 2.6 percent. ArcelorMittal declined 3.7 percent. The company said it has halted its steelmaking operations in Kryvyi Rih, Ukraine to ensure the safety and security of its people and assets. British media firm ITV lost over 8 percent after announcing it would launch a revamped streaming service. Murray International dropped 1 percent. The investment trust reported return before taxation of 204.87 million pounds for the full year, significantly higher than 2.74 million pounds in the previous year. Dassault Aviation SA shares rose about 1 percent in Paris. The aircraft manufacturer reported that its fiscal 2021 profit doubled from last year amid strong revenue growth as well as higher order intake. Michelin slumped 5.5 percent. The tyre maker said it would temporarily halt production at some of its plants in Europe due to significant supply-chain issues. In economic releases, German exports were down 2.8 percent month-on-month, reversing a 1.2 percent rise in December, Destatis reported. Shipments were expected to climb 1.0 percent. Likewise, imports decreased 4.2 percent, in contrast to the 4 percent increase a month ago. Economists had forecast a monthly growth of 2.0 percent. French industrial output rose 1.6 percent month-on-month, in contrast to the 0.1 percent fall in December, figures from the statistical office Insee revealed. This was the first increase in three months and exceeded the expected rate of 0.5 percent. 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.
TOKYO, Mar 4, 2022 - (JCN Newswire) - Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Aero Engines, Ltd. (MHIAEL), a group company of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd. (MHI) has announced the appointment of Masanori Ushida as President & Chief Executive Officer (CEO), effective April 1, 2022. He succeeds Katsuyuki Shimauchi, who will continue to serve as Member of the Board of MHIAEL after serving as the first President & CEO of MHIAEL for more than seven years.Mr. Ushida assumes the role of President & CEO after serving as Member of the Board and Senior Vice President of Commercial Engines since October 2020. He brings his more than 30 years of experience in MHI's aerospace business which includes multiple leadership roles ranging from manufacturing engineering, engine design to program management. He has also successfully grown MHIAEL's commercial engine maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) business to become one of the company's core businesses.During his tenure as President & CEO, Mr. Shimauchi has successfully led the establishment of MHIAEL by ways of company split from MHI in October 2014 and managed to grow its revenues in three folds by 2019. He has also successfully navigated the company through one of the most challenging periods in aerospace history and formed a pathway for continued and further growth of the business including establishment of MHIAEL's second production site in Nagasaki.Commenting on the appointment, Katsuyuki Shimauchi said, "The time has now come for me to step down and hand over to the next generation. Mr. Ushida is a tested leader who has successfully led our commercial engine programs with deep industry expertise and a fundamental understanding of our business. He also has a proven track record of building strong relationships with our stake holders, including customers and business partners. This is a crucial time for aero engine business, and I am very confident that he will help advance MHIAEL's further growth."Masanori Ushida added, "I am honored to take up this opportunity at such an important time for MHIAEL. Under Mr. Shimauchi's strong leadership, MHI's aero engine business has grown significantly and strengthened our position in the aviation industry. Inheriting his great achievements, I look forward to continue working with our customers, business partners and our team to realize our full potential."Source: Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd.Copyright 2022 JCN Newswire . All rights reserved.
DUBAI, UAE, March 4, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Breakthrough India's three-day Pan-Asia summit "Reframe" started a dialogue on raising awareness on concerns around accountability in the sphere of transforming masculinities and engaging men and boys to achieve gender equality.

As India struggles to keep pace with its gender equality targets, national reports of progress against Sustainable Development Goal 5 on Gender Equality evidence the need for an increased understanding and awareness of the unequal power relations between men and women in society.

Anthony Keedi, Program Manager, Masculinities and engaging men in Gender Equality, Lebanon, said "Accountability is about acknowledging and understanding the part one plays in the harm done against women and other groups in patriarchy, through our hidden powers and privileges. On the other hand, the work on engaging men and masculinities should be in conversation with women. Women, and other marginalised groups need to be at the forefront of this process to ensure that we recognize who we are doing this for."

Currently, involving men and boys to achieve social equality varies by country and context. But one needs to consider the various factors that influence men and boys, and thus, the work on men and masculinities.

Madhumita Das, Feminist Researcher, Faculty, The George Washington University, India, noted, "If you look at growing evidence about involving men and boys in transforming injustices, most initiatives have a very narrow focus and have been adapted as an instrumental approach rather than strategy. It has been observed that these initiatives tend to over justify the reason for integrating the component rather than deeply understanding how this move will help achieve the overall goal of gender equality. Accountability to women's rights activists, SRHR, and LGBTQIA+ movement will ensure that our efforts are more effective and impactful and it must be central to all our work with men and boys."

The majority of the work with men and boys focuses on individual behavior change. While this is important, it is equally vital to ensure that work on men and masculinities centers the systems change agenda in order for this field to meaningfully add value to advance the broader feminist agenda of equality and justice.
BARCELONA, Spain, March 4, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Omio, the world's leading multi-modal transportation platform, is thrilled to announce a partnership with cutting-edge technology company, Huawei. The partnership launched in Barcelona at this year's Mobile World Conference, representing both the organization's belief in cross-country collaborations and the importance of digitalization in delivering user-centric products.

Omio's unique Search API has been integrated into Petal Search and Petal Maps, allowing users to easily discover and compare multi-modal transport options - train, bus, plane, and ferry, before being redirected to the Omio platform to book tickets.

"Through the pandemic, our engineering team was able to strengthen our technology's data processing power, meaning Omio's Search API is more powerful than ever before at the real-time assessment and integration of data, which simplifies the search for travel options," stated Tomas Vocetka, Omio's Chief Technical Officer. "We are thrilled that users of Petal Search and Maps have this technology at their fingertips."

Omio's technology will be available on all Huawei devices where they can access a portfolio of 1000+ providers, and search for and compare routes in 37 countries and 21 languages.

Huawei's Petal Search has garnered more than 40 million monthly active users since its launch in 2020 and is available in over 70 languages and more than 170 countries.

Julian Persaud, Omio's Chief Commercial Officer, stated: "We believe in making the travel experience as effortless as possible, and are delighted to partner with Huawei to empower travellers to search for and compare multi-modal journeys that suit their needs. Partnerships are incredibly important to us, and we want to collaborate with those who share our belief in digital-first solutions to drive the recovery of the tourism sector."

The partnership is also a signal that international travel is on the rebound and reflects Omio data that shows there was a 50% increase in travel discovery (January 2022) compared to 2019.

"Travelling far and wide has finally become a reality again. As a result, Huawei has partnered with Omio to deliver precise options for transportation for users of Petal Search and Maps to make the most of their newfound travel freedom. This innovative partnership will allow us to partner with top global and local partners to offer endless travel options and give users the best experience possible", says William Tian, President of Huawei Consumer Business Group Western Europe.

About Omio

Since launching in 2013, Omio has helped customers discover different ways to travel. It is an all-encompassing travel hub that supports customers' needs to explore Europe, the United States and Canada via train, bus, flight and ferry.

About Huawei Petal Search

Petal Search is Huawei's AI powered mobile search engine that makes it easy to find virtually anything online - from shopping and travel to news. It prioritises user privacy and adheres to strict privacy and copyright protection standards. Petal Search has been certified by the European Privacy Seal for GDPR compliance.

Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1759581/image_1.jpg
EATONTOWN, NJ / ACCESSWIRE / March 4, 2022 / American CryoStem Corporation (OTC PINK:CRYO) a clinical stage biotechnology company, global licensor, and a pioneer in autologous cellular processing and cellular therapies, announced today that it has reached the midway point of its ATCell autologous mesenchymal stem cell therapy for Phase I Clinical Trial for Post-concussion syndrome (PCS).

The Company's autologous mesenchymal stem cell infusion therapy Investigational Drug is part of a single center study under the protocol entitled: "ATCell Expanded Autologous, Adipose-Derived Mesenchymal Stem Cells Deployed via Intravenous Infusion for the Treatment of Post-Concussion Syndrome (PCS) in Retired Military and Athletes." Patient recruitment, screening and dispensing of the research therapy is being conducted by BioSolutions Clinical Research Center, LLC ("BioSolutions") at its clinical site located in La Mesa, CA. The surgical tissue collection, ATCELL stem cell treatments, and follow-up clinical visits are being conducted under the direction of Dr. Peter Hanson, Principal Investigator. The BioSolutions multidisciplinary team has over 25 years of collective experience in the fields of medicine and clinical trials from orthopedics to stem cell therapies.

Anthony Dudzinski, COO, stated, "To date, participants have completed the initial screening process, meeting our extensive inclusion/exclusion criteria, and treatments and follow up assessments have begun. We believe that ATCELL for PCS is a 'first of its kind' autologous cellular therapy protocol subject to FDA clinical studies that has the ability to become an industry standard to treat patients suffering from the effects of post-concussion syndrome resulting from mild traumatic brain (mTBI) injuries. Treatments will become available upon completion of clinical studies and FDA marketing approval."

Overall, it is estimated that the cost of traumatic brain injuries (TBI) in the United States, including concussion injuries, is approximately $48.3 billion annually, of which $31.7 billion is spent on hospitalization costs; an additional $16.6 billion is associated with costs attributed to fatalities. According to the Centers for Disease Control, acute care and rehabilitation of brain injury patients in the United States costs $9 to $10 billion per year. This does not include indirect costs to society and family caretakers due to lost productivity, work time and earnings, as well as costs linked to providing social services.

https://www.brainandspinalcord.org/cost-traumatic-brain-injury

For further information please visit: www.americancryostem.com, send email to: info@americancryostem.com or contact the Company directly at 732-747-1007.

About American CryoStem

American CryoStem Corporation (OTC PINK:CRYO), is a clinical stage biotechnology company, global licensor and a pioneer in autologous (one's own) cellular processing and therapies. The Company's centralized laboratory model and patented foundational "CryoStem Platform" is a best-in-class, end-to-end cellular therapy solution to treat injuries, disorders and chronic diseases. Through a single adipose-tissue (fat) harvest and ATCELLBank cryopreservation, the Company creates personalized adipose-derived mesenchymal stem cell infusion therapies designed to ultimately deliver consistent samples for successive multiple treatments of genetically matched cells as needed, directly to patient point-of-care, on demand. American CryoStem is dedicated to helping the world's physicians, hospitals, and clinics improve clinical outcomes by developing and delivering effective leading-edge stem cell therapies that improve patient health and quality of life. The Company maintains an FDA registered cGMP compliant laboratory located in Monmouth Junction, New Jersey.

SOURCE: American CryoStem Corporation

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/691553/American-CryoStem-Announces-Patient-Treatment-Status-for-its-Phase-I-Clinical-Trial-for-Post-Concussion-Syndrome-PCS
SHANGHAI, March 4, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Arctech, the world's leading tracking, racking, and BIPV solutions provider, just launched a new white paper that explains the benefits of a truly stiff tracker design in increasing energy yield. This is obtained by enabling superior stow parameters in terms of wind speed and tracker tilt.

Larger format, high-power modules are becoming the current trend in PV plants, as they lower the levelized cost of energy and balance of system costs. Nevertheless, larger modules increase the PV system area and also loading and defection of the trackers' structure.

Savvy tracker manufacturers like Arctech have increased the rigidity of their systems to cope with these new panels and not only keep, but even increase stability under challenging wind conditions.

Arctech has been the first supplier who upgraded both their 2P and 1P tracker lines to a truly rigid design through an innovative "multi-drive" mechanism. These stiff trackers can safely stow horizontally, which is vital to lower the wind pressure onto the new large-format modules and prevent cracking and delamination. Stiff trackers also enable increasing the wind stow speed threshold and thus extend the operational wind speed range. These optimized stow parameters can also help prevent energy losses and increase energy generation and revenue to a considerable extent, as shown in the whitepaper.

This study uses easily accessible methods to prove this particular benefit by comparing Arctech's stiff trackers and traditional flexible trackers through numerical analysis. It analyses how solar trackers with the multi-point drive mechanism enable power generation with an example of a case study in Texas, USA. SkyLine II allows for 1.6% higher annual energy collection, when compared with traditional trackers that stow at much lower wind speeds. For typical plant Capex and PPA pricing in the area was equivalent to an IRR increase of about 0.2% or $3M more in revenue throughout the life of the project.

Click here to download the white paper.

Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1759587/Arctech_Announces_Launch_White_Paper_Increasing_PV_Energy_Yield_Superior.jpg
Insurers and reinsurers holding large books of East European business are being urged to stress test their portfolios against the threat of Russian and Ukrainian cyber attacks.

A new report published today by cyber risk analytics expert CyberCube identifies a series of potential cyber attack scenarios. The report "War in Ukraine creates fundamental shift in the cyber threat landscape" encourages insurers and reinsurers to urgently re-evaluate their exposures.

According to the research, the range of relevant scenarios include cyber attacks on off-shore oil rigs, utility suppliers, mobile phone network operators, hospitals, airlines, the SWIFT banking system, plus the widespread use of wiper malware.

CyberCube confirmed that it had observed cyber attacks on Ukrainian critical infrastructure, government services, banks and telecoms. Russian government institutions and enterprises are also being targeted by cyber attackers. Some of these attacks, the company said, have spilled over into neighbouring Belarus, Poland, Lithuania and Latvia.

William Altman, CyberCube's Principal Cyber Security Consultant, said: "This conflict will undoubtedly push the boundaries of acceptable behaviour in cyberspace. What's worrying is that the cyber elements of this conflict could escalate quickly. We have the potential for unprecedented cyber-physical impacts, including attacks on critical infrastructure. However, before a full-blown cyber disaster becomes likely, we believe there will be several levels of escalation needed to reach that stage."

CyberCube's report recommends that insurance brokers and risk carriers encourage their clients to focus on threat modeling Russian advanced persistent threats (APTs), known criminal gangs' tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs), and cyber security best practices.

Since the conflict began, both Ukraine and Russia have openly recruited a global volunteer cyber force to attack their enemies' IT systems and networks. The infamous hacking collective Anonymous has joined the conflict alongside Ukraine, while prolific ransomware gang Conti has sided with Russia. As of 1 March, there were at least 33 different cyber threat actor groups actively assisting Ukraine (22) and Russia (9).

The report states that companies in the high-risk geographies of Ukraine, Russia and CIS countries are most at risk of experiencing losses due to cyber attacks. Business interruption claims are likely to stem from cyber attacks on critical infrastructure and key IT Single Points of Failure (SPoF).

Darren Thomson, Head of Cyber Security Strategy, said: "The risk of a cyber disaster impacting (re)insurers' portfolios is higher as a result of Russia's intent, opportunity, and capability to compromise SPoF targets that give them widespread and unfettered access to critical computer networks and data. Hacktivist coalitions and cyber criminals are taking sides, with prolific groups pledging services to aid the Russian government's war machine."

CyberCube's Portfolio Manager is used by the global insurance industry and the Lloyd's of London market to evaluate portfolios of cyber risk against a series of realistic cyber threat scenarios.

CyberCube's report War in Ukraine creates fundamental shift in the cyber threat landscape is available from https://insights.cybcube.com/war-in-ukraine-report.

ENDS

About CyberCube

CyberCube delivers the world's leading analytics to quantify cyber risk for the insurance industry. With best-in-class data access and advanced multi-disciplinary analytics, the company's cloud-based platform helps insurance organizations make better decisions when placing insurance, underwriting cyber risk and managing cyber risk aggregation. CyberCube's enterprise intelligence layer provides insights on millions of companies globally and includes modeling on thousands of points of technology failure.

The CyberCube platform was established in 2015 within Symantec and now operates as a standalone company exclusively focused on the insurance industry, with access to an unparalleled ecosystem of data partners and backing from ForgePoint Capital, HSCM Bermuda, MTech Capital and individuals from Stone Point Capital. For more information, please visit www.cybcube.com or email info@cybcube.com.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220304005227/en/

Contacts:

Yvette Essen

Head of Content Communications

yvettee@cybcube.com
4 March 2022

MediaZest Plc

("MediaZest", the "Company" or the "Group"; AIM: MDZ)

Notice of AGM and Financial Report

MediaZest (AIM: MDZ), the creative audio-visual company, announces that the 2022 Annual General Meeting ("AGM") of the Company will be held at Unit 9, Woking Business Park, Albert Drive, Woking, GU21 5JY on 30 March 2022 at 10.00 a.m.

The Notice of AGM and the Report and Financial Statements for the year ended 30 September 2021 will be posted to shareholders today and are available on the Company's website: www.mediazest.com.

Please monitor the Company's website for any updates, including the latest safety measures in place, should you wish to attend. Please do not attend in person if you have (or may have) COVID-19, if you (or anyone you live with) are suffering from COVID-19 symptoms even if those symptoms are mild, if you have come into close contact with someone who has tested positive for COVID-19 or if you are required to self-isolate in accordance with UK Government guidance for any reason. Anyone arriving at the AGM venue with COVID-19 symptoms will not be admitted.

The Board strongly recommends that shareholders should vote by appointing the chairman of the AGM as their proxy (giving the chairman instructions on how to vote the shareholder's shares) by completing the proxy form sent today to shareholders, in accordance with the instructions printed on the form and return it to Share Registrars Limited at 3 The Millennium Centre, Crosby Way, Farnham, Surrey, GU9 7XX or by scan and email to voting@shareregistrars.uk.com by no later than 10.00 amLondon time on 28 March 2022.

In addition, should a shareholder have a question that they would have raised at the AGM, the Company asks that they instead send their question in advance by email to info@mediazest.com by no later than Monday 28 March 2022.

The Directors will consider all questions received and where appropriate provide a written response which will be upload to the Company's website. Similar questions will be grouped together.

Certain information contained in this announcement would have been deemed inside information for the purposes of Article 7 of Regulation (EU) No 596/2014, which was incorporated into UK law by the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018, until the release of this announcement.



Enquiries: Geoff Robertson

Chief Executive Officer

MediaZest Plc 0845 207 9378 David Hignell/Adam Cowl

Nominated Adviser

SP Angel Corporate Finance LLP 020 3470 0470 Claire Noyce

Broker

Hybridan LLP 020 3764 2341

Notes to Editors:

About MediaZest

MediaZest is a creative audio-visual systems integrator that specialises in providing innovative marketing solutions to leading retailers, brand owners and corporations, but also works in the public sector in both the NHS and Education markets. The Group supplies an integrated service from content creation and system design to installation, technical support, and maintenance. MediaZest was admitted to the London Stock Exchange's AIM market in February 2005. For more information, please visit www.mediazest.com


MOSCOW (dpa-AFX) - The Biden administration announced sanctions targeting an expansive list of Russian elites and family members who continue supporting President Vladimir Putin.



The White House said the United States and its allied governments will work to identify and freeze the assets Russian elites and their family members hold in their respective jurisdictions including their yachts, luxury apartments, money, and other ill-gotten gains.



The list includes Nikolai Tokarev, his wife Galina, daughter Mayya, and his two luxury real estate companies; Boris Rotenberg, his wife Karina, and his sons Roman and Boris; Arkady Rotenberg, his sons Pavel and Igor and daughter Liliya; Sergei Chemezov, his wife Yekaterina, his son Stanislav, and stepdaughter Anastasiya; Igor Shuvalov, his five companies, his wife Olga, his son Evgeny and his company and jet, and his daughter Maria and her company; Yevgeniy Prigozhin, his three companies, his wife, Polina, his daughter Lyubov, and his son Pavel; Dmitry Peskov, President Putin's press secretary; and Alisher Usmanov, his superyacht, and his private jet.



Washington said Germany seized Usmanov's 512-foot yacht the Dilbar, which is one of the world's largest. But Forbes quoted the Ministry for Economy and Innovation in the German state of Hamburg as saying that the country's authorities have not seized it.



Usmanov's private jet is one of Russia's largest privately owned aircraft.



The United States Department of State will also impose visa restrictions on 19 oligarchs and 47 of their family members and close associates. 'As President Biden said, we will continue to work with our Allies and partners to hold accountable the Russian oligarchs and corrupt leaders who are profiting from this violent regime,' the White House said.



'These individuals have enriched themselves at the expense of the Russian people, and some have elevated their family members into high-ranking positions. Others sit atop Russia's largest companies and are responsible for providing the resources necessary to support Putin's invasion of Ukraine,' the White House said in a fact sheet.



These individuals and their family members will be cut off from the U.S. financial system, their assets in the United States will be frozen and their property will be blocked from use. The Department of Treasury will share financial intelligence and other evidence with the Department of Justice to support criminal prosecutions and seizure of assets.



The Department of Treasury will designate seven Russian entities and 26 Russia and Ukraine-based individuals who play central roles in these organizations, enabling the Russian Government's efforts to spread disinformation and influence perceptions as a part of their invasion of Ukraine.



The targeted Russian entities are SDN Strategic Culture Foundation and associated outlets Odna Rodyna, Rhythm of Eurasia, and Journal Kamerton; SouthFront; SDN InfoRos; New Eastern Outlook; Oriental Review; United World International; and Geopolitical.



In response to Russia's deadly military attack against Ukraine, assets owned by Putin's enablers are emerging as key targets of the US and European allies.



French authorities last week had seized a Russian cargo ship as it was heading to Saint Petersburg.



French officials also took the Amore Vero, the yacht they said is owned by Sechin, the CEO of the Russian oil company Rosneft.







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BRUSSELS (dpa-AFX) - The pound slipped against its major counterparts in the European session on Friday, as Russian forces seized control of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine following a fire that broke out amid heavy shelling of the facility.



Ukrainian authorities said that the fire at the nuclear plant has been extinguished and its radiation levels remained unaffected.



Russia took control of the nuclear power plant and fighting had temporarily ceased.



European stock markets fell, tracking losses in Asia, as news of the Russian attack on the nuclear power plant escalated tensions over its war against Ukraine.



The NATO secretary general said that even though the organization did not seek war with Russia, it must 'make sure there's no misunderstanding about our commitment to defend our allies.'



The pound weakened to 2-day lows of 1.3294 against the greenback and 153.30 against the yen, down from its prior highs of 1.3354 and 154.22, respectively. The pound is seen facing support around 1.30 against the greenback and 149.00 against the yen.



The pound weakened to 1.2187 against the franc, its lowest level since December 21. If the pound falls further, 1.18 is likely seen as its next support level.



In contrast, the pound resumed its early gains against the euro, touching a 5-1/2-year high of 0.8260. On the upside, 0.80 is likely seen as its next resistance level.



Looking ahead, U.S. jobs data for February, Canada building permits for January and Ivey PMI for February will be featured in the New York session.







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Toronto, Ontario--(Newsfile Corp. - March 4, 2022) - High Fusion Inc. (CSE: FUZN) ("High Fusion" or the "Company") is pleased to announce that it has signed a distribution agreement with Punch Edibles.

Effective immediately, Punch Media LLC have agreed to distribute High Fusion's products through its subsidiary, Punch Edibles which sells to approximately 300 stores throughout California. The Company together with Punch will be working with a defined marketing budget to promote its award-winning OutCo-branded, vape products and expects to achieve adoption in approximately 200 dispensaries over the first a year of the agreement.

"This is a perfect match for us," stated Lincoln Fish, President of OutCo. "Unlike many distributors that work with dozens of companies and hundreds of SKU's, Punch moves only their own product and a few other complementary brands. There will be no overlap and it will provide their team a chance to get to know our products intimately and sell the unique advantages of our offerings."

Punch distributes to approximately 300 stores throughout California, and OutCo expects that Punch will achieve strong market penetration with its award-winning vapes, new line of infused prerolls, flower and other offerings. "I wouldn't be surprised if we see substantial adoption by dispensaries within a year," said Fish. "50-75% of current Punch dispensary accounts could drive significant revenues. Punch has that kind of relationship with its stores, and once people try an OutCo product, they generally come back for more."

Andrew O'Donnell, CEO of Punch, commented on the deal: "Punch is excited to bring on Outco's catalogue of premium products, as it falls in line with our model of providing the best products at affordable prices. While other companies look to cut corners, Punch and its affiliated brands are always willing to go the extra mile. We feel that Outco's premium products are a perfect complement to our award-winning portfolio."

About High Fusion Inc.

High Fusion Inc. (formerly Nutritional High International Inc.) is focused on developing and manufacturing branded products in the cannabis industry with a specific focus on flower, pro-rolls, vapes, edibles and oil extracts for medical and adult recreational use. The Company operates and controls licenses in California, Colorado and Oregon.

High Fusion has manufacturing, retail and grow operations in California through its acquisition of the business of OutCo and owns and operates oil extraction and edible manufacturing facilities in Colorado and Oregon. The Company's brand portfolio includes its award winning FLI edibles and vape product, along with a number of new brands including Red Octopus and Dubbi Brothers in addition to the OutCo and Thrive brands recently acquired.

For updates on the Company's activities and highlights of the Company's press releases and other media coverage, please visit www.high-fusion.com.

For further information, please contact:

High Fusion Inc.

Robert Wilson, Chief Financial Officer

416-666-4005

Email: rwilson@nutritionalhigh.com

Caution Regarding Forward-Looking Information:

NEITHER THE CANADIAN SECURITIES EXCHANGE NOR OTC MARKETS GROUP INC., NOR THEIR REGULATIONS SERVICES PROVIDERS HAVE REVIEWED OR ACCEPT RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE ADEQUACY OR ACCURACY OF THIS RELEASE.

This news release may contain forward-looking statements and information based on current expectations. These statements include statements regarding: the anticipated adoption by 200 dispensaries, the anticipated impact of the distribution agreement on revenues and statements regarding the development of the Company's business. These statements should not be read as guarantees of future performance or results. Such statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from those implied by such statements. This forward-looking information reflects the Company's current beliefs and is based on information currently available to the Company and on assumptions the Company believes are reasonable. These assumptions include, but are not limited to: the ability for Punch Edibles to achieve market penetration of the Company's products and the anticipated adoption by Customers, the ability of the Company to successfully execute its business plans; legal changes relating to the cannabis and psychedelic industries proceeding as anticipated; and the Company's continued response and ability to navigate the COVID-19 pandemic being consistent with, or better than, its ability and response to date.

The Company's securities have not been registered under the U.S. Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "U.S. Securities Act"), or applicable state securities laws, and may not be offered or sold to, or for the account or benefit of, persons in the United States or "U.S. Persons", as such term is defined in Regulation S under the U.S. Securities Act, absent registration or an applicable exemption from such registration requirements. This press release shall not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy nor shall there be any sale of the securities in the United States or any jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful.

Additionally, there are known and unknown risk factors which could cause the Company's actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking information contained herein. Such risks and other factors may include, but are not limited to: general business, economic, competitive, political and social uncertainties; general capital market conditions and market prices for securities; the actual results of the Company's future operations; competition; changes in legislation affecting the Company; obtaining and maintaining regulatory approvals including acquiring and renewing U.S. state, local or other licenses, the uncertainty of existing protection from U.S. federal or other prosecution, regulatory or political change such as changes in applicable laws and regulations, including U.S. state-law legalization, market and general economic conditions of the cannabis sector or otherwise; the timing and availability of external financing on acceptable terms; lack of qualified, skilled labour or loss of key individuals; risks related to the COVID-19 pandemic including various recommendations, orders and measures of governmental authorities to try to limit the pandemic, including travel restrictions, border closures, non-essential business closures, service disruptions, quarantines, self-isolations, shelters-in-place and social distancing, disruptions to markets, economic activity, financing, supply chains and sales channels, and a deterioration of general economic conditions including a possible national or global recession; and a deterioration of financial markets that could limit the Company's ability to obtain external financing.

A description of additional risk factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from forward-looking information can be found in the Company's disclosure documents on the SEDAR website at www.sedar.com. Although the Company has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in forward-looking information, there may be other factors that cause results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking information. Readers are cautioned that the foregoing list of factors is not exhaustive. Readers are further cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking information 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 information contained in this press release is expressly qualified by this cautionary statement. The forward-looking information contained in this press release represents the expectations of the Company as of the date of this press release and, accordingly, are subject to change after such date. However, the Company expressly disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking information, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as expressly required by applicable securities law.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/115651
GUANGZHOU, China, March 4, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- GAC MOTOR has been operating in Panama since 2019, earning a solid foothold in the local market with quality vehicles and innovative designs. As Chinese smart manufacturing and automobile technology make a strong reputation worldwide, GAC MOTOR Panama hosts a vibrant exhibition. The Chinese-Panamanian artists at the exhibition represent a shared love for craftsmanship - the combination of beauty and skill - present in visual arts and the art of creating cars.

Progenie | The Spirit of Craftsmanship Across Cultures

The exhibition, named "Progenie," displayed the paintings of Chinese-Panamanian artists of three different ages, highlighting the contribution of Chinese painters to the multicultural tapestry of Latin America and notably Panama today.

The concept of Chinese craftsmanship has been a key pillar of GAC MOTOR's overseas brand identity for some time now, with the GAC development strategy focusing on bringing outstanding Chinese designs and technology onto the world stage.

Cross-cultural art exhibitions like this one are important in communicating the amazing creativity that Chinese brands and individuals have to offer the world.

Ms. Mai Yap, one of the exhibiting artists based out of Florida, USA, said that "China lives in us, and although we came from and were born in different countries, we carry all that culture within us."

Mai Yap's colorful works were displayed alongside another young visual artist, Nicole Rumaldo Choy, who represents merging these two cultures' creative prowess.

The Spirit of Craftsmanship: Continued Efforts in the Americas

GAC MOTOR has become the top-performing Chinese brand in local sales since entering the Panama market in 2019. The nation is now home to more than 400 new GAC MOTOR owners.

Ever since the launch of the All New GS4 and extensive engagement in car rental projects last year, GAC MOTOR has attracted more attention. It has become a representative of Chinese car brands in Panama.

In the new year, GAC MOTOR will continue to provide Panamanian users with a high standard of travel experience. The brand looks forward to a future of further healthy development in the Americas.

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QUEBEC, QC / ACCESSWIRE / March 4, 2022 / NuRAN Wireless Inc. ("NuRAN Wireless") (CSE:NUR) (OTC PINK:NRRWF) (FSE:1RN), a leading supplier of mobile and broadband wireless infrastructure solutions, is pleased to announce that it was selected as the winner of the 2022 Mobile World Live Pitch 2Pitch Contest at Mobile World Congress ("MWC") in Barcelona, Spain with over 60,000 attendees.

This was the second edition of the Pitch2Picth which gives exhibitors at MWC Barcelona the chance to pitch their products or services during the event on Mobile World Live TV, the award-winning broadcast service of Mobile World Congress (MWC).

The winner of the three-day competition was given the opportunity to formally present and demo their product or service to Mobile World Live, in-person or virtually, to be broadcast on screens across the Fira Gran Via, the site of MWC, on social media and on MobileWorldLive.com.

There were 3 finalists among several participating companies and the selection criteria for the winner included serving a huge market, example of progress and success, rapid growth and the social impact where many people will ultimately benefit.

 Winning this award is a recognition of many years of combined effort and dedication by our team. We are driven by our mission to connect as many people around the world as possible. Providing mobility has become a necessity for the entire population of the world and NuRAN is at the forefront of achieving this goal in a cost effective yet profitable way  stated Francis Letourneau, CEO at Nuran Wireless Inc.

The NuRAN NAAS model facilitates network expansion for mobile operators by managing and controlling the build, operation, and maintenance of cellular sites along with associated capital expenditures. The sites are then monetized by providing connectivity on a paid for service basis. Leveraging its carrier-grade mobile network infrastructure solutions as well as its extensive expertise in the building of cost-effective cellular infrastructure, NuRAN is able to setup network operations from the ground up with an exceptional return on investment. While deployments under the NAAS model require the Company to make upfront investments, they generate significant value whereby NuRAN benefits from long-term recurring revenues with compelling returns. The Company intends to fund such deployments mostly through asset-based project financing or similar debt-oriented facilities. Such financing options and sources are being investigated with a view of carrying out deployments in the most efficient manner.

About NuRAN Wireless

NuRAN Wireless is a leading supplier of mobile and broadband wireless infrastructure solutions. Its innovative radio access network (RAN), core network, and backhaul products dramatically drop the total cost of ownership, thereby creating new opportunities for established, as well as emerging mobile network operators. Indoor coverage, isolated rural communities, offshore platforms and ships, NuRAN Wireless is set to bridge the digital divide.

For further information about NuRAN Wireless

www.nuranwireless.com

Francis Letourneau, Director and CEO

info@nuranwireless.com

Tel: (418) 264-1337

Frank Candido

Investor relations

Frank.candido@nuranwireless.com

Tel: (514) 969-5530

Cautionary Statement: Neither the Canadian Securities Exchange nor its Market Regulator (as defined in the policies of the Canadian Securities Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

SOURCE: NuRAN Wireless Inc.

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/691566/NuRan-Wins-Mobile-World-Congress-Pitch2pitch-Contest-in-Barcelona-Spain
David Guernsey to Serve as Acting CFO; William (Bill) Christensen to Lead Europe

CHARLOTTE, N.C., March 4, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- JELD-WEN Holding, Inc. (NYSE:JELD), a leading global manufacturer of building products, today announced a transition of its chief financial officer role, effective April 1. Current CFO John Linker has decided to resign to pursue another CFO opportunity in a different industry and will transition his responsibilities by the end of March. David Guernsey, currently EVP and president of JELD-WEN Europe, will serve as acting CFO while the company conducts a search for a permanent replacement. As part of a previously planned transition, William (Bill) Christensen will join JELD-WEN as EVP and president of JELD-WEN Europe on April 1.

"As a member of JELD-WEN's senior leadership team for nearly three years, David brings deep knowledge of our business combined with an extensive financial background, making him well-positioned to serve as acting CFO. I have full confidence in our world-class finance team and expect the transition to be seamless," said Gary S. Michel, chair, president and CEO. "I appreciate John's many contributions to JELD-WEN over the past 10 years and wish him well in the next stage of his career."

Christensen most recently served as CEO and group executive board chair of REHAU AG, a privately held Swiss-based global manufacturer with more than 3.0 billion in sales and approximately 20,000 employees. He has more than 25 years' experience in senior management roles comprising general management, finance, sales and marketing in both public and private companies.

"Bill's proven track record in building high-performing teams to drive profitable growth for global companies makes him an excellent choice to lead our European business," said Michel. "We look forward to Bill joining JELD-WEN and continuing to accelerate our customer-focused strategies to grow the business in Europe."

"I'm thrilled to be joining JELD-WEN at an exciting time to further build on the company's growth trajectory," said Christensen. "The breadth and scale of the company's products, commitment to sustainability and its premier performing culture are key differentiators and represent the type of organization I want to be a part of."

About William (Bill) Christensen

Christensen joins JELD-WEN after six years at REHAU AG, where he led transformation efforts to drive profitable growth.

Prior to joining REHAU AG, Christensen was CEO of AFG Holding, a Swiss-based global building products manufacturer. In addition, he spent 10 years at Geberit International AG, a Swiss-based global plumbing manufacturer, in several executive roles including group executive board member and head of international sales, as well as president and CEO of The Chicago Faucets Company.

He also served in various finance and business development roles at J.P. Morgan Securities and Rieter Automotive Systems.

Christensen has a bachelor's degree in economics from Rollins College and an MBA from the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business. He is on the board of directors at VELUX A/S.

About David Guernsey

Guernsey joined JELD-WEN in 2019 as senior vice president and president, Europe and was promoted to executive vice president in 2020.

Prior to joining the company, he held various positions of increasing responsibility at Trane Technologies (formerly Ingersoll Rand) including vice president and CFO for both the Residential Business and the Commercial Business in North America, Europe and the Middle East.

Previously, Guernsey served in various finance, business development and strategy roles at Pepsi Bottling Group, Sea-Land Service, United Technologies and Unisys.

Guernsey holds a bachelor's degree in finance and business administration from Ball State University and an MBA from Butler University.

About JELD-WEN

Headquartered in Charlotte, N.C., JELD-WEN is a leading global manufacturer of high-performance interior and exterior building products, offering one of the broadest selections of windows, interior and exterior doors, and wall systems. JELD-WEN delivers a differentiated customer experience, providing construction professionals with durable, energy-efficient products and labor-saving services that help them maximize productivity and create beautiful, secure spaces for all to enjoy. The JELD-WEN team is driven by innovation and committed to creating safe, sustainable environments for customers, associates, and local communities. The JELD-WEN family of brands includes JELD-WEN worldwide; LaCantina and VPI in North America; Swedoor and DANA in Europe; and Corinthian, Stegbar, and Breezway in Australia. Visit JELD-WEN.com for more information.

Forward-Looking Statements

This release contains certain "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including statements by our CEO and statements regarding our business strategies and future financial performance. Forward-looking statements are generally identified by our use of forward-looking terminology such as "anticipate", "believe", "continue", "could", "estimate", "expect", or "intend" or comparable terminology. Although we believe these statements are based on reasonable expectations, assumptions, estimates and projections, they are only predictions and involve known and unknown risks, many of which are beyond our control that could cause actual outcomes and results to be materially different from those indicated in such statements. Risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from such statements include but are not limited to the factors discussed in our Annual Report on Form 10-K and our other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The forward-looking statements included in this release are made as of the date hereof, and except as required by law, we undertake no obligation to update after the date of this release.

Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1759295/JELD_WEN_Holding_David_Guernsey.jpg

Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1759296/JELD_WEN_Holding_Bill_Christensen.jpg

Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1503082/JW_Logo.jpg
NEW YORK, NY / ACCESSWIRE / March 4, 2022 / Millennium Fine Art, Inc. (MFAI):

On March 4, 2022; MS Token (XT.com:$MSTO) is pleased to announce a NFT dividend for March 18, (UTC+8) for our loyal token-holders. Title: The MS Token Ace of Spades

Description: The first Millennium Sapphire Playing Card NFT. Featuring the Eagle Brooch of Empress Gisela of Swabia (circa 1025 AD).

This valuable NFT is worth 1 ETH and is minted on Opensea. https://opensea.io/assets/matic/0x2953399124f0cbb46d2cbacd8a89cf0599974963/42995330837766887080786904056638882087391301351320279434444200418953947775076/

MSTO token owners that own 1000 MSTO or more on March 18th at (UTC+8) will be entitled to one (1) Ace of Spades playing card. We will deposit this NFT into the qualified wallets as per the Ether-scan record on that day. This NFT will be a valuable card for the future card games that the Company is developing.

Please view the card: https://mstoken.art/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/0001-0600.mp4

Millennium Sapphire Studios is producing a large series of individually unique 3D NFT playing cards featuring the historical figures and events portrayed on the Millennium Sapphire. These playing card NFTs (minted on ERC-721) will be incorporated into a series of card games that will allow holders of specific combinations of playing card NFTs to win awards consisting of additional NFTs and significant quantities of $MSTO Tokens. These card games will increase in complexity over time as the potential winnings and the number of available minted NFTs increase.

The Company also pleased to confirm that its token $MSTO is now quoted on both CoinMarketcap and CoinGecko.

You can buy $MSTO on XT.com.

MS Token is trading on the XT.com digital exchange. Please sign up at: https://www.xt.com/user/register

Only non-USA citizens can trade $MSTO on XT.com. We will list $MSTO on another exchange in future where USA citizens can trade.

Please see our recent art investment medium article: https://mstokensto.medium.com/fine-art-as-a-key-part-of-your-portfolio-9b58425d1c71

About XT.com

XT.COM Exchange was established in 2018 and registered in Seychelles. Its operating headquarters is located in Singapore. It has operation centers in Tokyo, Singapore, Seoul and other countries and regions, and its business covers the world.

The platform owns the global top-level domain www.xt.com, and currently has more than 3 million registered users, more than 300,000 monthly active users, and more than 30 million users in the ecosystem. XT.COM is a comprehensive trading platform that supports 100+ high-quality currencies and 300 trading pairs. It has a rich variety of transactions such as currency transactions, leveraged transactions, OTC transactions, contract transactions, and credit card purchases. Provide users with the safest, most efficient, and professional digital asset investment services.

About Millennium Fine Art Inc., and MS Token LLC With a treasure trove of exclusive content to draw upon, MS Token, the owner of the Millennium Sapphire, www.millenniumsapphire.com, has assembled a team of industry leaders to create a powerful NFT production studio, leveraging the content carved on the sapphire. Carved on the Millennium Sapphire are 134 scenes, representing the high points in human civilization over the past 5,000 years. These carvings form the inspiration of MS Token's NFT productions.

The Millennium Sapphire is widely considered iconic in the world of art and gems. It was designated as, "The World's Largest Carved Sapphire" by Guinness World Records in 2001 and is one of the most documented gemstones in modern times. Since its discovery in Madagascar in 1995, this remarkable blue gem has appeared on CNN, BBC, NBC, FOX and numerous other television networks around the world. It has been written about in virtually every major newspaper and has been the subject of articles published in dozens of magazines, including Forbes, WSJ and others. The MS was showcased at an Academy Awards event in 2002 and in Seattle in 2004 as part of the festivities surrounding the launch of Princess Cruise Line's newest ship, The Sapphire Princess.

MS Token pursues a strategy of partnering with leading digital artists and studios to develop unique NFTs. This strategy allows the company to have an ongoing flow of fresh content drawing inspiration from the original carvings on the sapphire. From carvings of some of history's most infamous people to landmarks, such as the Pyramids and the historic Sputnik launch, the Millennium Sapphire will be developed into NFTs over time. The content produced will form the basis of the collaborations with world-famous digital artists and their interpretations via NFT animations to bring these pieces to life. www.mstoken.art

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements, particularly as related to, among other things, the business plans of the company, statements relating to goals, plans and projections regarding the company's financial position and business strategy. The words or phrases "plans," "would be," "will allow," "intends to," "may result," "are expected to," "will continue," "anticipates," "expects," "estimate," "project," "indicate," "could," "potentially," "should," "believe," "think," "considers" or similar expressions are intended to identify "forward-looking statements." These forward-looking statements fall within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Act of 1934 and are subject to the safe harbor created by these sections. Actual results could differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements as a result of a number of risks and uncertainties. Such forward-looking statements are based on current expectations, involve known and unknown risks, a reliance on third parties for information, transactions or orders that may be cancelled, and other factors that may cause our actual results, performance or achievements, or developments in our industry, to differ materially from the anticipated results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from anticipated results include risks and uncertainties related to the fluctuation of local, regional, and global economic conditions, the performance of management and our employees, our ability to obtain financing, competition, general economic conditions and other factors that are detailed in our periodic reports and on documents we file from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Statements made herein are as of the date of this press release and should not be relied upon as of any subsequent date, and the company specifically disclaims any obligation, to update any forward-looking statements to reflect occurrences, developments, unanticipated events or circumstances after the date of such statement.

Contact Dennis Burns, Investor Relations:

Tel (567) 237-4132

dburns@nvestrain.com

SOURCE: Millennium Fine Art Inc.

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/691568/MS-Token-to-Dividend-an-NFT
DXC Technology condemns the unwarranted aggression from the Russian Government that is leading to the death, injury, and displacement of innocent civilians in Ukraine. DXC stands with every person, company, and government across the world that is calling for an immediate end to this unprovoked attack on Ukraine.

Currently, our number one priority is to care for our colleagues in the region. Our dedicated DXC team is working around the clock to provide shelter, financial assistance, health care, and relocation support to our colleagues and their families.

Based on the aggression from the Russian Government, we are no longer pursuing business in Russia and have committed to exit this market. We have approximately 4,000 colleagues in Russia and are supporting them in this time of need. We continue to support and maintain rigorous compliance with all applicable sanctions levied against Russia.

Aligned with our "People-first" strategy, DXC is matching employee donations to the Red Cross humanitarian efforts at 200% which includes providing direct financial support to our impacted colleagues. We are caring for all our people regardless of their nationality or country of origin.

We will continue to assess the situation and take the required measures leveraging the strength of our global team to help minimize any impact on our DXC colleagues and customers.

About DXC Technology

DXC Technology (NYSE: DXC) helps global companies run their mission critical systems and operations while modernizing IT, optimizing data architectures, and ensuring security and scalability across public, private and hybrid clouds. The world's largest companies and public sector organizations trust DXC to deploy services across the Enterprise Technology Stack to drive new levels of performance, competitiveness, and customer experience. Learn more about how we deliver excellence for our customers and colleagues at DXC.com.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220304005261/en/

Contacts:

Media

Sean B. Pasternak

Corporate Media Relations

1-647-975-7326

Sean.Pasternak@DXC.com

John Sweeney, CFA

Vice President, Investor Relations

+1-980-315-3665

John.Sweeney@DXC.com
Existing partnership expands to resell Glia as an integrated part of the core Duck Creek Platform

Boston, MA, March 04, 2022), a leading, global technology solutions provider to the property and casualtyServiceDuck Creek will offer Glia's DCS platform as part of the Duck Creek Suiteunder a new reselling agreement. This will allow insurers to engage digitally with policyholders and agents in real time, leading to a more collaborative, frictionless agent and policyholder experience.

With this strategic alliance, Glia's DCS platform will be embedded into the Duck Creek Suite and be directly available to Duck Creek customers. This pre-built integration speeds time to market and is designed to create a seamless customer experience, enabling insurers to enhance customer loyalty, extend producer sales channels, reduce support costs, and increase online sales.

"Delivering exceptional experiences and simplifying insurance carriers' business is a top priority for us. I am excited that our strategic alliance creates an opportunity for Glia to be easily implemented for our customers," said Eva Harris, Chief Strategy Officer of Duck Creek Technologies.

According to the Global Consumer Insurance Insightssurvey recently conducted by Duck Creek, consumers highlighted clear communications gaps with carriers, strong interest in more engaging digital channels, and more frequent and relevant communication. With Glia, insurers can meet agents and policyholders during any online insurance process and support them using the methods they prefer-including messaging, voice, and video-and guide their online journey.

"Insurance carriers face mounting pressure to evolve their service strategies, making engagement more proactive and personalized," said Dan Michaeli, CEO and Co-Founder of Glia. "By embracing a digital-first approach to customer service, carriers can meet their policyholders and agents where they are within the digital journey to more seamlessly complete online, self-service functions."

The joint Duck Creek-Glia solution helps agents connect with field sales or underwriting teams during an online quote or any complex process where they might need insurer advice.

About Glia

Glia is reinventing how businesses support their customers in a digital world. Glia's Digital Customer Servicecompany and a Great Place to Workwith Wiley. The company has raised over $100 million in funding from top investors. To learn more visit glia.com.

About Duck Creek Technologies

Duck Creek Technologies is a leading provider of core system solutions to the P&C and general insurance industry. By accessing Duck Creek OnDemand, the company's enterprise software-as-a-service solution, insurance carriers are able to navigate uncertainty and capture market opportunities faster than their competitors. Duck Creek's functionally-rich solutions are available on a standalone basis or as a full suite, and all are available via Duck Creek OnDemand.

For more information, visit www.duckcreek.com

# # #
VANCOUVER, BC, March 4, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The global 4D printing market size was USD 87.8 Million in 2021 and register a revenue CAGR of 41.3% over the forecast period, according to latest analysis by Emergen Research. Increasing demand for technological innovation in aerospace and defense sectors is a major factor expected to drive market revenue growth.

Drivers:

Increasing need to reduce manufacturing and processing costs and deploy more efficient material and resource management required for conventional manufacturing practices are some key factors expected to support demand for 4D printing solutions and drive market growth. The self-transforming ability of 4D printed structures enables use of a limited number of materials for multiple purposes, resulting in reduced waste of natural resources and reduced environmental impact. Growing emphasis on ensuring a sustainable environment is expected to drive demand for 4D printing over the forecast period.

Get Free Sample PDF Copy of the Report@ https://www.emergenresearch.com/request-sample/931

Restraints:

High development costs, growing concerns among policymakers as the technology is still emerging, increasing issues related to intellectual property rights, and potential safety hazards are some of the factors expected to hamper the growth of the 4D printing market over the forecast period.

Growth Projections:

The global 4D printing market is expected to register a CAGR of 41.3% over the forecast period and revenue is expected to increase from USD 124.3 Million in 2022 to USD 1,971.4 Million in 2030. Increasing need for resource management and reduced manufacturing costs of various parts, implants, and structures, among others are key factors fueling revenue growth of the market.

COVID-19 Impact Analysis:

The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in a significant decrease in businesses worldwide and created a number of challenges across various sectors. Industries were also impacted by social and economic disruptions, implementation of extended lockdowns and social distancing norms, and other restrictions created significant growth challenges across the economic landscape.

Despite the pandemic, 4D printing continued to gain traction and the technology has proven to be useful in the manufacture of smart medical devices to treat COVID-infected patients. This printing technique allows manufactured parts to change shape in varying environmental temperatures, resulting in increased innovation in the treatment of patients.

Discount Available on 4D Printing market report [Click Here]@ https://www.emergenresearch.com/request-discount/931

Current Trends and Innovations:

4D printing technology allows customers to use fewer materials for a variety of products and purposes, and also aids in the development of materials with ability to change properties, behavior patterns, and to transform in response to external stimuli such as temperature, pressure, and others. These cutting-edge features are expected to result in further advancements in the technology, which is a trend in the global 4D printing market.

Industry 5.0 is expected to support traction of 4-D printing as it will enable designers to focus on the design process rather than the manufacturing process. The freedom to design will result in creation of more bespoke and personalized products.

Geographical Outlook:

Market in Asia Pacific is expected to register a significantly rapid revenue growth rate during the forecast period as a result of increasing use of 4D printing in the automotive industry and increasing manufacturing of passenger and luxury vehicles.

Strategic Initiatives:

Some major companies in the global market report include 3D Systems Corporation, Autodesk, Inc., Hewlett-Packard Company, Organovo, Materialise NV, EnvisionTEC, Inc., Dassault Systemes SE, ExOne, Heineken N.V., and Aerojet Rocketdyne Holdings Inc.

In January 2019 , Autodesk developed a new generative design software that works directly with HP Multi Jet Fusion 3D printers. The design-to-print workflow for additive manufacturing was designed specifically for HP's 3D printers to streamline the conversion of digital designs into physical parts. In addition to working with HP, the company is also working with GE Additive to create an integrated workflow for GE 3D printers, which will lead to advancements in 4D printing techniques.

Explore Complete Report Description and Table of Contents of 4D Printing Market Report@https://www.emergenresearch.com/industry-report/4d-printing-market

Emergen Research has segmented the global 4D printing market on the basis of material type, end-use, and region:

Material Type Outlook (Revenue, USD Million; 2019-2030)

Programmable Carbon Fiber



Programmable Wood - Custom Printed Wood Grain



Programmable Textiles

End-Use Outlook (Revenue, USD Million; 2019-2030)

Aerospace & Defense



Automotive



Construction



Clothing



Healthcare



Utility



Others

Customization Available as per your Specific Requirement@ https://www.emergenresearch.com/request-for-customization/931

Regional Outlook (Revenue, USD Million; 2019-2030)

North America



U.S.





Canada





Mexico



Europe



Germany





France





U.K.





Italy





Spain





Benelux





Russia





Rest of Europe



Asia Pacific



China





India





Japan





South Korea





Rest of APAC



Latin America



Brazil





Rest of LATAM

Middle East & Africa

& Saudi Arabia





UAE





South Africa





Turkey





Rest of MEA

Latest Published Reports by Emergen Research:

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About Emergen Research

Emergen Research is a market research and consulting company that provides syndicated research reports, customized research reports, and consulting services. Our solutions purely focus on your purpose to locate, target, and analyze consumer behavior shifts across demographics, across industries, and help clients make smarter business decisions. We offer market intelligence studies ensuring relevant and fact-based research across multiple industries, including Healthcare, Touch Points, Chemicals, Types, and Energy. We consistently update our research offerings to ensure our clients are aware of the latest trend's existent in the market. Emergen Research has a strong base of experienced analysts from varied areas of expertise. Our industry experience and ability to develop a concrete solution to any research problems provides our clients with the ability to secure an edge over their respective competitors.

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NEW YORK, NY / ACCESSWIRE / March 4, 2022 / Currency.com , the high-growth global crypto exchange, has today announced it is donating a total of $1million to support the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine.

The funds will be distributed to four charities - The Red Cross Society of Ukraine, The Humanitarian Relief Fund under the Ministry of Social Policy for Ukraine, ASAP Rescue and Global Giving.

"Our hearts go out to the citizens of Ukraine who are engulfed by this war. Many have had to flee their homes amid freezing temperatures, power cuts and food shortages. Every day is a struggle to survive," said Steve Gregory, US Chief Executive Officer, Currency.com. "We want to help where we can."

Currency.com is contributing $500,000 to support the joint emergency relief efforts of the Ministry of Health in Ukraine and the Red Cross Society of Ukraine . The funds will be used to provide medical aid and basic amenities to displaced Ukrainians. In addition, it is providing a further $200,000 to ASAP Rescue , a Ukrainian volunteer organisation that helps evacuate citizens during times of natural disaster and social turmoil, as well as donating $300,000 to The Ministry of Social Policy and Global Giving to help Ukrainians access food, shelter and medical care.

"Like everyone in the world, we are extremely concerned about the shocking events taking place in Ukraine. As a global company with an international team, we feel it is our duty to help those impacted by this war. We will continue to monitor events closely and stand ready to provide additional support to the people of Ukraine," Gregory added.

Currency.com has transferred the funds immediately.

ENDS

Notes to Editors

About Currency.com

Currency.com is a high-growth, crypto exchange helping everyone securely connect with the booming world of cryptocurrencies. An innovator in the fiat-to-crypto space, it allows investors to buy, store and invest in top-traded cryptocurrencies. To help investors trade with confidence, the exchange is fitted with robust risk management controls, transparent pricing and extensive financial education content

In 2021, the crypto platform reported a 343% growth in its client base, making it one of Europe's fastest growing cryptocurrency exchanges platforms.

Currency Com US LLC is registered with FinCEN as a Money Services Business. Its parent entity, Currency Com Limited, is authorised by the Gibraltar Financial Services Commission to provide Distributed Ledger Technology services under licence number 25032. Currency.com has offices located in Cyprus, US, UK, Gibraltar and Ukraine.

To find out more, visit www.currency.com .

SOURCE: Currency.com

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/691563/Currencycom-Responds-to-Ukraine-Humanitarian-Effort-with-1M-Donation
The Central and Eastern Europe Fund, Inc. (NYSE: CEE) (the "Fund") announced today that it has provided its portfolio holdings as of March 2, 2022 at www.dwsfunds.com in light of material changes made to its portfolio due to, among other things, recent and current events in Russia and Ukraine; the imposition of sanctions on Russia and certain Russian companies by the United States, the European Union, the United Kingdom and other countries; and actions taken by the Russian Central Bank that have had the effect of freezing investments in Russian securities by foreign investors, making them illiquid and difficult to value. Securities for which market quotations/evaluated prices are not readily available, such as certain of the Fund's Russian securities, are valued at their "fair value" as determined in accordance with the Fund's valuation procedures. Such "fair value" is the amount that the Fund might reasonably expect to receive for the security upon its current sale. Each such determination is based on a consideration of relevant factors, which are likely to vary from one pricing context to another. Under the Fund's valuation procedures, the Fund may consider as a factor whether there is a proxy for the market that can be used to accurately estimate the impact of a significant valuation event (for example, one or more exchange traded funds may serve as a proxy for the market represented by such exchange traded fund or funds). Whether or not a Russian security held in the Fund's portfolio requires fair valuation may be subject to change. Moreover, any fair valuations assigned to the Fund's Russian securities are also subject to change and may be reduced to potentially as little as zero.

The Fund also noted that MSCI Inc. announced yesterday that effective March 9, 2022, it is removing Russian securities from the MSCI Emerging Markets Indexes (including the Fund's current benchmark, the MSCI Emerging Markets Eastern Europe Index) after deeming the Russian equity market "uninvestable."

For more information on the Fund, visit www.dwsfunds.com or call (800) 349-4281.

IMPORTANT INFORMATION

Investing in foreign securities, particularly those of emerging markets, presents certain risks, such as currency fluctuations, political and economic changes, and market risks. Any fund that concentrates in a particular segment of the market will generally be more volatile than a fund that invests more broadly.

The Central and Eastern Europe Fund, Inc. is non-diversified and can take larger positions in fewer issues, increasing its potential risk, and also concentrates its investments in the energy sector. Investing in foreign securities presents certain risks, such as currency fluctuations, political and economic changes, and market risks. Emerging markets tend to be more volatile and less liquid than the markets of more mature economies, and generally have less diverse and less mature economic structures and less stable political systems than those of developed countries. Any fund that focuses in a particular segment of the market or region of the world will generally be more volatile than a fund that invests more broadly.

The shares of most closed-end funds, including the Fund, are not continuously offered. Once issued, shares of closed-end funds are bought and sold in the open market through a stock exchange. Shares of closed-end funds frequently trade at a discount to net asset value. The price of a fund's shares is determined by a number of factors, several of which are beyond the control of the fund. Therefore, a fund cannot predict whether its shares will trade at, below, or above net asset value.

Investments in funds involve risk. Additional risks of the Fund are associated with international investing, such as currency fluctuations, political and economic changes, market risks, government regulations and differences in liquidity, which may increase the volatility of your investment. Foreign security markets generally exhibit greater price volatility and are less liquid than the US market. Additionally, the Fund focuses its investments in certain geographical regions, thereby increasing its vulnerability to developments in that region and potentially subjecting the Fund's shares to greater price volatility. Some funds have more risk than others. These include funds, such as the Fund, that allow exposure to or otherwise concentrate investments in certain sectors, geographic regions, security types, market capitalization, or foreign securities (e.g., political, or economic instability, which can be accentuated in emerging market countries).

War (including Russia's recent invasion of Ukraine), terrorism, economic uncertainty, trade disputes, public health crises (including the recent pandemic spread of the novel coronavirus) and related geopolitical events could lead to increased market volatility, disruption to US and world economies and markets and may have significant adverse effects on the Fund and its investments, including making investments illiquid and/or difficult to value.

This press release shall not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation to buy, nor shall there be any sale of these securities in any state or jurisdiction in which such offer or solicitation or sale would be unlawful prior to registration or qualification under the laws of such state or jurisdiction.

Certain statements contained in this release may be forward-looking in nature. These include all statements relating to plans, expectations, and other statements that are not historical facts and typically use words like "expect," "anticipate," "believe," "intend," and similar expressions. Such statements represent management's current beliefs, based upon information available at the time the statements are made, with regard to the matters addressed. All forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed in, or implied by, such statements. Management does not undertake any obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. The following factors, among others, could cause actual results to differ materially from forward-looking statements: (i) the effects of adverse changes in market and economic conditions; (ii) legal and regulatory developments; and (iii) other additional risks and uncertainties, including public health crises (including the recent pandemic spread of the novel coronavirus), war, terrorism, trade disputes and related geopolitical events.

Past performance is no guarantee of future results.

NOT FDIC/ NCUA INSURED MAY LOSE VALUE NO BANK GUARANTEE

NOT A DEPOSIT NOT INSURED BY ANY FEDERAL GOVERNMENT AGENCY

DWS Distributors, Inc.

222 South Riverside Plaza Chicago, IL 60606-5808

www.dws.com

Tel (800) 621-1148

 2022 DWS Group GmbH Co. KGaA. All rights reserved

The brand DWS represents DWS Group GmbH Co. KGaA and any of its subsidiaries such as DWS Distributors, Inc. which offers investment products or DWS Investment Management Americas, Inc. and RREEF America L.L.C. which offer advisory services. (R-088516) (03-2022)

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220304005314/en/

Contacts:

For additional information:

DWS Press Office (212) 454-4500

Shareholder Account Information (800) 294-4366

DWS Closed-End Funds (800) 349-4281


MOSCOW (dpa-AFX) - The UN Security Council will hold an emergency meeting at 11:30 a.m. ET Friday in New York in the wake of Russian attack on a nuclear power plant in Ukraine.



Fire broke out at the Zaporizhzhia plant, the largest nuclear plant in Europe, after a missile sent by Russian forces overnight hit it, Ukrainian authorities say.



The fire was extinguished in the early hours of Friday, and the International Atomic Energy Agency said there is no release of radioactive material.



'Overnight a projectile hit a building within the plant site. The building is not part of the reactors. This caused a localised fire that was extinguished by the local fire brigade. All the safety systems at the plant were not affected. [There was] no release of radioactive material,' IAEA director general Rafael Grossi said in a statement.



U.S. President Joe Biden spoke with his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelenskyy to receive an update on the fire at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant. Both the Presidents urged Russia to cease its military activities in the area.



Russian forces are continuing to attack Ukrainian cities from the north, east, and south.



At least 47 people were killed in air strikes on a residential district of the northern city of Chernihiv on Thursday.



Russian tanks and military vehicles roamed around the streets of Kherson after taking control of the southern city.



As Mariupol came under consistent attack, its Deputy Mayor Sergei Orlov called on NATO leaders to send troops to the strategic port city.



Meanwhile, foreign ministers of western countries are meeting in Brussels Friday for a day of intense diplomacy to assess their response to the war in Ukraine and to consider future course of action.



The European Commission on Friday suspended cooperation with Russian entities in research, science and innovation over Russia's heinous military aggression against Ukraine.



NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said Friday that Russia used cluster bombs and other types of weapons in Ukraine, 'which would be in violation of international law.'







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LONDON, March 4, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Aquadrill LLC ("Aquadrill" or the "Company") has entered into a charter hire agreement with a subsidiary of Diamond Offshore Drilling, Inc. (the "Manager") to provide the Vela, an MPD outfitted 7th generation drillship, for a one well drilling contract plus one well priced option for operations in the US Gulf of Mexico. The charter hire agreement will be extended if the optional term is exercised.

The terms of the charter hire agreement are consistent with the current management services agreements in place between the Company and the Manager. Further, the resulting financial benefits are as if the Company had entered into the drilling contract directly.

The total contract value for the firm portion of the drilling contract is expected to be $30 million and commencement is expected in September 2022 following the completion of the rig's current contract, transitioning the rig to the new Manager and contract preparation. The firm well is expected to run until November 2022.

In the event the option is exercised and the work scope is similar to the firm well, the rig is expected to be available in February 2023 and the total additional contract value is expected to be approximately $28.5 million.

FORWARD LOOKING STATEMENTS

This news release includes forward looking statements. Such statements are generally not historical in nature, and specifically include statements about the Company's plans, strategies, business prospects, contracts, agreements, changes and trends in its business and the markets in which it operates. The duration, timing (including both starting and ending dates) and total contract value of customer contracts and any related agreements are estimates only. The actual total contract value over the course of any given contract or agreement may be lower and could be substantially lower, depending on a number of factors (cancellation, suspension, delays, rig downtime, etc.). These statements are made based upon management's current plans, expectations, assumptions and beliefs concerning future events impacting the Company and therefore involve a number of risks (some beyond the control of the Company), uncertainties and assumptions that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied in the forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date of this news release. Consequently, no forward-looking statement can be guaranteed. When considering these forward looking statements, you should keep in mind the risks described from time to time in the Company's regulatory filings and periodic reporting. The Company undertakes no obligation to update any forward looking statements to reflect events or circumstances after the date on which such statement is made or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events. New factors emerge from time to time, and it is not possible for the Company to predict all of these factors. Further, the Company cannot assess the impact of each such factor on its business or the extent to which any factor, or combination of factors, may cause actual results to be materially different from those contained in any forward looking statement.

CONTACT:

aquadrill@aquadrilloffshore.com

This information was brought to you by Cision http://news.cision.com
DGAP-News: Ameramex International

AmeraMex International Reports Sales of Heavy Equipment Totaling Approximately $ 900,000



04.03.2022 / 16:10

The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement.





AmeraMex International, Inc. (OTCQB: AMMX), a provider of heavy equipment for logistics companies, infrastructure construction and forestry conservation, announced that it has received equipment orders totaling $901,000. This brings Y-T-D sales totaling $4.8 million. The equipment is expected to ship before the end of the first quarter.

The first order consists of two Taylor TEC950 Loaded Container Handlers. The Container Handlers are shipping to a California-based dry port.

The second order is for a Taylor TX550 Forklift with 55,000 pound capacity. The forklift is shipping to a manufacturing company in Utah.

The third order is for a Hyster H210 that has been converted to a hay squeeze. The equipment is shipping to a California-based commercial farmer.

The fourth order is for an ASV RT-135 Max F Series Forestry Compact Loader Walkaround.

The final order is for a Taylor TEC-950L Loaded Container Handler shipping to Southern California.

For more information and pricing of equipment for the logistics, construction, and forestry industries, or to book a demonstration of the Kovaco Electric's 100 percent electric skid steer loaders, ASV Posti-Tract and Skid Steer Loaders or a Magni Telescopic Handler, contact the AmeraMex/Hamre Equipment sales team at 530.895.8955.

AmeraMex International

AmeraMex International sells, leases, and rents heavy equipment to companies within multiple industries including construction, logistics, mining, and lumber. The company has over 30 years of experience in heavy equipment sales and service. Follow AmeraMex on Twitter @ammx_intl and visit the AmeraMex website, www.AMMX.net or www.hamreequipment.com for additional information and equipment videos.

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements. All statements other than statements of historical facts included in this press release are forward-looking statements. In some cases, forward-looking statements can be identified by words such as "believe," "expect," "anticipate," "plan," "potential," "continue" or similar expressions. Such forward-looking statements include risks and uncertainties, and there are key factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Investors are encouraged to review the Company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Investors should not place any undue reliance on forward-looking statements since they involve known and unknown, uncertainties and other factors which are, in some cases, beyond the Company's control which could, and likely will, materially affect actual results, levels of activity, performance or achievements. Any forward-looking statement reflects the Company's current views with respect to future events and is subject to these and other risks, uncertainties and assumptions relating to operations, results of operations, growth strategy and liquidity. The Company assumes no obligation to publicly update or revise these forward-looking statements for any reason, or to update the reasons actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in these forward-looking statements, even if added information becomes available in the future.

Investor and Media Relations

McCloud Communications, LLC

Marty Tullio, Managing Member

Office: 949.632.1900 or Marty@McCloudCommunications.com

Marty Tullio

+1 949-632-1900

marty@mccloudcommunications.com

https://www.ammx.net

04.03.2022 Dissemination of a Corporate News, transmitted by DGAP - a service of EQS Group AG.

The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement.



The DGAP Distribution Services include Regulatory Announcements, Financial/Corporate News and Press Releases.

Archive at www.dgap.de




BASEL (dpa-AFX) - Novartis (NVS) said that its shareholders approved all resolutions proposed by the Board of Directors at the Annual General Meeting.



The company's shareholders approved the 25th consecutive dividend increase since the creation of Novartis in 1996, with an increase of 3.3% to CHF 3.10 per share. Payment for the 2021 dividend will be made as of March 10, 2022.



The company noted that its shareholders re-elected Joerg Reinhardt as Chair of the Board of Directors, and all members of the Board who stood for re-election, for one year. In addition, Ms. Ana de Pro Gonzalo and Mr. Daniel Hochstrasser were newly elected to the Board of Directors.



The company's shareholders also re-elected the following members of the Board of Directors to the Compensation Committee for one year: Patrice Bula, Bridgette Heller, Simon Moroney and William T. Winters. The Board of Directors intends to redesignate Simon Moroney as Chair of the Compensation Committee.



The shareholders elected KPMG AG as statutory auditor for the financial year starting on January 1, 2022.



The shareholders approved the total maximum aggregate amount of compensation for the Board of Directors, covering the period from the 2022 AGM to the 2023 AGM, and the total maximum aggregate amount of compensation for the Executive Committee for the financial year 2023.







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Along With US$100 Million Global Sustainability Fund to Nurture Over 10,000 Entrepreneurs in ESG Solutions

In keeping with the relentless pursuit towards its vision Be the Future of Mobility Hero MotoCorp, the world's largest manufacturer of motorcycles and scooters, unveiled Vida, Powered by Hero, a brand-new identity for its emerging mobility solutions, including upcoming Electric Vehicles (EV).

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220304005159/en/

Dr Pawan Munjal, Chairman CEO, Hero MotoCorp at the unveiling of the new brand logo and the 'sunrise' visual identity of Vida, a world new brand for electric mobility. (Photo: Business Wire)

Introducing Vida, Powered by Hero at a one-of-its-kind Carbon Neutral event at the exclusive Clarence Island in Dubai on Thursday evening (March 3), Dr. Pawan Munjal, Chairman CEO, Hero MotoCorp, also announced a US$100 Million Global Sustainability Fund. The fund will aim to establish global partnerships, spearheaded by the BML Munjal University (BMU) and Hero MotoCorp, with the objective of nurturing more than 10,000 entrepreneurs on ESG solutions that have a positive impact on the planet.

With a focus on sustainability, and the vision of a flourishing, meaningful world for future generations, Dr. Munjal highlighted focused action-points for bringing his vision to life at the event.

Unveiling the new brand logo and the 'sunrise' visual identity of Vida, Powered by Hero Dr. Pawan Munjal said, "Vida means life, and the brand's sole purpose is to create a positive impact on the world and move us all forward in meaningful ways. We believe the name is perfect for what we are building for our children and the next generation. This is truly the dawn of something special. In only 17 weeks from today we will unveil our Vida platform, products and services to make the world a better place."

"When I see our future generations, especially my grandchildren, all I want to do is build a future of optimism, a future of positive energy, a future which is clean, where everyone has something to look forward to and participate in something bigger and better. With the creation of 'Vida' we will offer everyone the opportunity to thrive, grow and live better while continuing to move the way they want. I will lead this initiative from the front," Dr Munjal added.

As a central pillar of the future-ready strategy, Dr. Munjal unveiled the new brand to lead the mobility transformation across the world. Vida, Powered by Hero will be the brand under which Hero MotoCorp's initiatives for emerging mobility solutions will be introduced, the first of which will be an electric vehicle that will be officially unveiled on July 1, 2022, to coincide with the birth anniversary of Dr. Brijmohan Lall, legendary Chairman Emeritus of Hero MotoCorp.

The production of the new Vida model will be done at Hero MotoCorp's 'Green' manufacturing facility in Chittoor, India. Dispatches to customers will begin later in 2022.

The one-of-a-kind event was attended by global thought leaders, senior government representatives and the diplomatic corps in the UAE, policy makers and various stake holders of Hero MotoCorp, including the Board of Directors, senior employees from around the world, dealers, global distributors, supply chain partners and other associates.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220304005159/en/

Contacts:

Press Contacts:

corporate.communication@heromotocorp.com

AvianWE

Dhirendra Negi

098186 28096

Nishank Anand

9913398442
STOCKHOLM, March 4, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Storytel AB (publ) ("Storytel") is deeply concerned about the current war in Ukraine and the humanitarian crisis it is causing. Storytel will therefore pause its operations in Russia until further notice, including halting all content production and new content acquisitions in Russia.



Storytel stands with the Ukrainian people suffering the consequences of the war. The commitment in helping the deeply afflicted citizens is profound among Storytel's employees around the world and we are currently coordinating a range of initiatives through our country organization in Poland, which has a direct border with Ukraine and is directly exposed to large refugee flows.



Storytel's vision is to make the world a more empathetic and creative place, with great stories to be shared and enjoyed by anyone, anywhere and at any time. For the first time since our inception, we are pausing sales, marketing, production, business development and content investments in a key market. We can only regret that this impacts the passionate and book loving Russian people.



Storytel will continue to closely monitor and evaluate the developments and keep a dialogue with all relevant stakeholders.

FNCA Sweden AB is the company's certified adviser. FNCA can be reached at info@fnca.se or +46 8 528 00 399.



For further information, please contact:



Dan Panas, Head of Global Communications & PR

Tel: +46 70 186 52 90

Email: dan.panas@storytel.com

About Storytel

Storytel is one of the world's largest audiobook and e-book streaming services and offers over 700 000 titles on a global scale. Our vision is to make the world a more empathetic and creative place, with great stories to be shared and enjoyed by anyone, anywhere and anytime. The streaming business within the Storytel Group is conducted under the brands Storytel, Mofibo and Audiobooks.com. The publishing business is managed by Storytel Books, and by the audiobook publisher StorySide. The Storytel Group operates in over 25 markets. The headquarters is located in Stockholm, Sweden.

This information was brought to you by Cision http://news.cision.com

https://news.cision.com/storytel/r/storytel-pauses-its-russian-operations-until-further-notice,c3519187

The following files are available for download:
provided pursuant to article L.233-8 II of the Code de commerce (French Commercial Code) and article 223-16 of the Reglement generalde l'Autorite des marches financiers (General regulation of the French financial market authority)

Regulatory News:

CARMILA (Paris:CARM):

Date Total number of

issued shares Number of real

voting rights (excluding

treasury shares) Theoretical number of

voting rights (including

treasury shares)* 28 February 2021 145,898,168 145,620,803 145,758,862

*Pursuant to article 223-11 of the Reglement General de l'Autorite des marches financiers.

CARMILA

French societe anonyme with a share capital of 875,389,008

Registered office: 58 avenue Emile Zola 92100 Boulogne-Billancourt France

Registered at the Nanterre Commercial and Companies Registry under number 381 844 471

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220304005295/en/

Contacts:

CARMILA
Berlin, Germany--(Newsfile Corp. - March 4, 2022) - Staiy announces their expansion in Europe as it grows its reputation. Staiy was founded as a platform meant to cater to a growing demographic of consumers looking for a more sustainable way to engage with the world of fashion. Its business model came to life after its founders realised that fashion had become a particularly dynamic industry that was turning in recent years towards a more digitalised, sustainable and transparent model. With that in mind at all times, Staiy has ridden the wave of digitalisation to make processes more lean, efficient, and equitable across the industry as a whole.



Staiy's logo



To view an enhanced version of this graphic, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/8637/115411_32847b9c849eab6b_001full.jpg

Staiy has reached over 170,000 people since its launch and delivered to more than 17 different European countries, proof of the foothold it has gained in Europe as well as its significant potential to scale. The number of unique products on Staiy's platform jumped from around 1,000 at launch to more than 109,070, with its total stock value above 50 million showing the growth in sustainable offerings over the past years.

Since its foundation, Staiy has managed to save over 4 million litres of water and 3,000 kilograms of CO2 through providing consumers with sustainably-made fashion from its 220+ partner brands, a number that has grown significantly from its initial list of 40, and continues to grow day by day. It has been a rollercoaster for the team so far, but thanks to their skills and motivation - as well as their unwavering dedication to their mission, they have built a well-deserved reputation as a powerhouse in the sustainable fashion industry.

From Business Students To Sustainability Pioneers

After meeting in the UK a few years back during their time at international university ESCP, Alessandro Nora, Adrian Leue, Chiara Latini and Ludovico Durante founded Staiy in Berlin in 2019. Leveraging the combined experience they had gained in consulting, finance, startups, and fashion, as well as their shared passion for starting a business that would make a tangible impact, the four young entrepreneurs joined forces to brainstorm which industry to apply their knowledge and skills to. Inspired by Berlin's forward-thinking lifestyle and existing enthusiasm for sustainable solutions, they knew that their startup would inevitably focus on the environment and supply chains, but there was more research to be done.

Staiy team



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The four went through a range of different options before discovering some shocking facts about the industry which was to become their main target: fashion. They knew that fashion was a major global polluter, currently accounting for 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions and predicted to account for as much as 25% of the global carbon budget by 2050, but they also found out that dyeing and textile treatment processes account for 20% of industrial fresh water pollution. While this was indeed a general problem for the world as a whole, it was even more dramatic for the millions of underpaid, poorly treated factory workers for whom access to clean water isn't always guaranteed anyway. Adrian, Alessandro, Chiara, and Ludovico knew that they had to do something about it.

From a business perspective, it made perfect sense as well. The sale of sustainable products was growing 5.6x faster than their mass-produced counterparts, driven by the 5% (and increasing) portion of consumers who consider sustainable alternatives to be very important, 66% of whom are inclined to spend more on products from ethical brands.





Staiy offering



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United in their belief that understanding the real problems people and businesses face was the key first step towards building the right product, they set out to speak to major players within the industry and discover the lay of the land. After weeks of interviewing potential customers, partners, business owners, and other fashion experts, Staiy finally started to take shape.

Staying Resilient And Raising The Bar

However, it wasn't all smooth sailing. In COVID times, the entrepreneurs faced multiple challenges, particularly when it came to adapting to the 'new normal'. At the beginning of the pandemic, they were attending the Startup Bootcamp accelerator in Milan, but travel restrictions soon forced them to move back to Berlin. This impacted several potential investor leads and some deals with larger brands that were in the pipeline. It also brought up challenges with communication and strategic planning, which were further exacerbated by some changes within the team.

After a short hibernation period, the founders were successfully able to restrategise in order to become even more bottom-line efficient. Emerging from this period last October with a high six-digit seed round under their belt, the Staiy team achieved some major milestones over the last few months, proving that no challenge is too big for them. Since then, they've proved the strength and scalability of their business model despite the unexpected shocks of the pandemic - a real trial by fire for a startup that launched prior to COVID.

Onwards And Upwards

Staiy has a lot to be proud of at the moment. Not only has it established itself as a solution that allows consumers to buy products from sustainable brands with a focus on quality, it has done so in such a way that speeds up the process significantly - namely through its proprietary selection and evaluation process. In addition, with the numbers demonstrating the extent of its growth, Staiy has made it clear that what it has created is more than just a simple platform. It's a movement, a data-driven ecosystem of experts, producers, designers, and brands, all together representing the future of fashion.

Continuing along their path to accelerate the global transition to a more sustainable model for the fashion industry, Staiy's team have set themselves some ambitious targets for 2022. Most importantly, they aim to build a user community around their platform and offer their services to an even more diverse group of brands and suppliers across the world, connecting them with an exponentially increasing population of conscious consumers searching for a one-stop shopping destination that fits their values.

Keep up with the founders of Staiy

Company Website: https://staiy.com/

Company Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/staiyofficial

Company Twitter: https://twitter.com/Staiy_official

Company Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/staiy_official/

Company LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/staiy

Co-founder LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alessandro-nora-bb6ba213a/

Co-founder LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adrian-leue-49002a136/

Co-founder LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chiara-latini/

Co-founder Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ludovico-durante-893a13158/

SOURCE: The PR Genius

PRESS CONTACT: zaki@theprgenius.com

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/115411
VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / March 4, 2022 / Vancouver, BC - Group Ten Metals Inc. (TSXV:PGE)(OTCQB:PGEZF)(FSE:5D32) will be hosting a live webinar on March 8, 2022, at 10:00 am PT (1:00 pm ET) with special guest, Jeffrey Christian, Managing Director of CPM Group. Group Ten President, Michael Rowley, will provide a concise overview and update on the Company and our Stillwater West Ni-PGE-Cu-Co+Au project in Montana, followed by an in-depth discussion on the global macro-economic picture, trends and implications for the broader commodities sector and critical minerals, in particular.

This will be an interactive event with participants encouraged to submit questions and comments throughout.

To register, click here or on the graphic below.

About Jeffrey Christian

Mr. Christian is considered one of the most knowledgeable experts on precious metals markets, commodities in general, and financial engineering using options for hedging and investing purposes. He is the author of Commodities Rising 2006.

Jeffrey Christian has been a prominent analyst and advisor on precious metals and commodities markets since the 1970's, with work spanning precious metals, energy markets, base metals, agricultural markets, and economic analysis. He founded the company in 1986, spinning off the Commodities Research Group from Goldman, Sachs & Co and its commodities trading arm, J. Aron & Company.

He has advised many of the world's largest corporations and institutional investors on managing their commodities price and market exposures, as well as providing advisory services to the World Bank, United Nations, International Monetary Fund, and numerous governments.

About CPM Group

Founded in 1986, CPM Group was created via a management acquisition of the Commodities Research Group at Goldman Sachs. We are an independent commodities research, consulting, commodities and asset management, and investment banking firm that provides comprehensive research, analysis, and advisory services, which services are driven by the results of our research and analysis.

CPM Group is the trusted advisor to producers, consumers, institutional investors, governments, regulatory authorities, and high net worth individuals regarding commodities markets and the financial management of exposure to commodities-oriented investments.

CPM Group is known for its research, analysis, and commentary on metals markets and other commodities, its overall economic analysis of commodities markets, and its expertise in financial engineering using derivatives to structure optimized positions for commercial, investor, and financial market participants.

We provide a suite of research and consulting services related to the financial management of commodities exposure, including fundamental market research and analysis, consulting and advisory services, commodities management and asset management services, and investment banking advisory services. Founded in 1986, CPM Group has extensive experience in commodities research, trading, banking, and financing. CPM Group is known for its research and analysis of the metals markets, its overall economic analysis of commodities markets, and its expertise in financial engineering, using derivatives to structure optimized positions for commercial hedgers, and for institutional and high net worth individual investors.

The firm is focused on precious, industrial, and specialty metals, as well as energy and agricultural commodities. CPM Group is unsurpassed in research and analysis in gold, silver, and platinum group metals. In the ferroalloys and specialty metals markets, CPM Group has developed specialized expertise in molybdenum, vanadium, chromium, manganese, tungsten, cobalt, indium, and other specialty metals.

About Group Ten Metals Inc.

Group Ten Metals is a Canadian mineral exploration company focused on advancing the Stillwater West PGE-Ni-Cu-Co + Au project towards becoming a world-class source of low-carbon, sulphide-hosted nickel, copper, and cobalt, critical to the electrification movement, as well as key catalytic metals including platinum, palladium and rhodium used in catalytic converters, fuel cells, and the production of green hydrogen. Stillwater West positions Group Ten as the second-largest landholder in the Stillwater Complex, with a 100%-owned position adjoining and adjacent to Sibanye-Stillwater's PGE mines in south-central Montana, USA. The Stillwater Complex is recognized as one of the top regions in the world for PGE-Ni-Cu-Co mineralization, alongside the Bushveld Complex and Great Dyke in southern Africa, which are similar layered intrusions. The J-M Reef, and other PGE-enriched sulphide horizons in the Stillwater Complex, share many similarities with the highly prolific Merensky and UG2 Reefs in the Bushveld Complex. Group Ten's work in the lower Stillwater Complex has demonstrated the presence of large-scale disseminated and high-sulphide battery metals and PGE mineralization, similar to the Platreef in the Bushveld Complex. Drill campaigns by the Company, complemented by a substantial historic drill database, have delineated five deposits of Platreef-style mineralization across a core 12-kilometer span of the project, all of which are open for expansion into adjacent targets. Multiple earlier-stage Platreef-style and reef-type targets are also being advanced across the remainder of the 32-kilometer length of the project based on strong correlations seen in soil and rock geochemistry, geophysical surveys, geologic mapping, and drilling.

Group Ten also holds the high-grade Black Lake-Drayton Gold project adjacent to Treasury Metals' development-stage Goliath Gold Complex in northwest Ontario, now subject to an earn-in deal by Heritage Mining, and the Kluane PGE-Ni-Cu-Co project on trend with Nickel Creek Platinum's Wellgreen deposit in Canada's Yukon Territory.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION, PLEASE CONTACT:

Michael Rowley, President, CEO & Director

Email: info@grouptenmetals.com Phone: (604) 357 4790

Web: http://grouptenmetals.com Toll Free: (888) 432 0075

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

SOURCE: Group Ten Metals Inc.

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/691626/Group-Ten-to-Host-Live-Global-Commodities-Markets-Discussion-with-Jeffrey-Christian-Managing-Director-of-CPM-Group
Kipushi, Democratic Republic of Congo--(Newsfile Corp. - March 4, 2022) - Ivanhoe Mines (TSX: IVN) (OTCQX: IVPAF) announced today that the company has filed a new National Instrument 43-101 (NI 43-101) technical report covering the planned resumption of commercial production at the Kipushi Mine in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The updated NI 43-101 technical report includes an independent feasibility study (Kipushi 2022 Feasibility Study) for the redevelopment of the Kipushi Mine and the mining of Kipushi's zinc-rich Big Zinc and Southern Zinc zones, with an estimated 11.8 million tonnes of Measured and Indicated Mineral Resources grading 35.3% zinc.

The Kipushi 2022 Feasibility Study was independently prepared on a 100%-project basis by OreWin Pty. Ltd., MSA Group (Pty.) Ltd., SRK Consulting (Pty) Ltd. and METC Engineering.

The technical report titled "Kipushi 2022 Feasibility Study Technical Report" has been filed on the SEDAR website at www.sedar.com and on the Ivanhoe Mines website at www.ivanhoemines.com.

Information contacts

Investors: Bill Trenaman +1.604.331.9834 / Media: Matthew Keevil +1.604. 558.1034

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/115684
VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / March 4, 2022 / Sassy Resources Corporation ("Sassy" or the "Company") (CSE:SASY) (FSE:4E7) (OTCQB:SSYRF) is pleased to announce that its spinout Gander Gold Corporation ("Gander Gold" or "Gander") has been approved for listing by the British Columbia Securities Commission (the "BCSC") and the Canadian Securities Exchange (the "CSE"). The common shares of Gander Gold (the "Gander Shares") are expected to commence trading on Tuesday, March 8, 2022 under the symbol "GAND".

Gander Gold's assets consist of eight gold-focused projects covering 2,257 sq. km (9,032 claims) in Newfoundland, making Gander Gold one of the largest claim holders on the island and a leading force in the developing Newfoundland Gold Rush.

To view the Gander Gold trailer video, visit the temporary Gander Gold landing page at https://temp.gandergold.com/ or use this direct link to the video on YouTube.

Watch for the official debut of "GanderGold.com" in the near future.

CEO Comments

Mr. Mark Scott, Sassy Resources and Gander Gold CEO, commented on the occasion of Gander Gold's listing approval: "On behalf of the Board of Directors and management teams of both Sassy Resources and Gander Gold, I wish to thank and congratulate everyone on our teams who have worked so effectively over the past year to execute this vision. We have layered in more value for Sassy shareholders by creating an all-Newfoundland vehicle with tremendous upside potential, both geologically and in the market."

Mr. Mark Scott continued: "Gander Gold starts its new life as a public company with eight highly prospective Newfoundland projects already generating very positive early stage exploration results. Gander Gold also features a strong cash position, no debt and a tight public float. Sassy's motto is "Think Big and Make it Happen", and our teams have done exactly that so far with both Sassy and Gander Gold in the 18 months in which Sassy has been a public company."

Gander Gold Share Structure

Gander Gold will have 73,193,721 Gander Shares issued and outstanding when it commences trading on March 8, 2022, of which only 21,830,368 will be free trading due to Gander Gold's share structure along with regulatory escrow requirements for insider individuals and entities and 4-month holds placed on recent annual share issuances made pursuant to Gander's four option agreements in Newfoundland.

Special warrants purchased by Gander Gold investors who participated in the $0.15, $0.20 or $0.25 rounds of private placement financing have been converted to Gander Shares and DRS advices have been distributed. With the exception of those Gander Shares held by Gander insiders which are subject to escrow, these Gander Shares will be free trading as of the listing date.

Sassy Resources possesses a commanding share position in Gander Gold, with a total of 44,162,056 Gander Shares, of which 8,833,333 Gander Shares will be distributed to those holders who were Sassy shareholders of record as at the close of business on February 1, 2022 (the "Distribution"). Sassy shareholders who are entitled to receive Gander Shares from the Distribution will receive their pro-rata Gander Shares in two separate transactions, the first of which will occur on or around the listing date of March 8, 2022. As Sassy's Gander Shares are subject to escrow pursuant to BCSC regulations, the first 10% of Sassy's total 44,162,056 Gander Shares, or approximately 4.16 million Gander Shares, will be available for immediate distribution on the listing date. This represents approximately 49% of the total Distribution to Sassy shareholders. The outstanding distribution of approximately 4.67 million remaining Gander Shares will be completed on the six month anniversary of the listing date, when the first 15% tranche of Gander shares held by Sassy is released from escrow. This is expected to be on or about September 8, 2022. Upon completion of the Distribution, Sassy Resources will hold approximately 35.3 million Gander Shares.

As of the record date (February 1, 2022), there were 51,235,006 common shares of Sassy outstanding. Accordingly, the ratio for the Distribution is approximately one (1) Gander share for every 5.80 Sassy shares held.

Following Gander Gold

Once listed, Gander Gold will provide news releases and company information under its own banner, website and social media channels. Investors are invited to bookmark www.gandergold.com and sign up for news updates to stay abreast of Gander Gold corporate and exploration developments.

Subscribe for Sassy Updates

Photographs and videos from the Company's projects in Northwest B.C., Newfoundland and Saskatchewan are added regularly to the Sassy website. Visit SassyResources.com and sign up for news alerts to stay informed as exploration and corporate development continues year-round.

About Sassy Resources Corporation

Sassy Resources is an exploration stage resource company currently engaged in the identification, acquisition and exploration of high-grade precious metal and base metal projects in North America. Its focus is the Foremore Project located in the Eskay Camp, Liard Mining Division, in the heart of Northwest B.C.'s prolific Golden Triangle, the Central Newfoundland Gold Belt, and the Company's newly-acquired Highrock uranium project in the Athabasca basin.

Caution Regarding Forward Looking Statements

Investors are cautioned that, except for statements of historical fact, certain information contained in this document includes "forward looking information", with respect to a performance expectation for Sassy Resources Corporation. Such forward looking statements are based on current expectations, estimates and projections formulated using assumptions believed to be reasonable and involving a number of risks and uncertainties which could cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated. Such factors include, without limitation, fluctuations in foreign exchange markets, the price of commodities in both the cash market and futures market, changes in legislation, taxation, controls and regulation of national and local governments and political and economic developments in Canada and other countries where Sassy carries out or may carry out business in the future, the availability of future business opportunities and the ability to successfully integrate acquisitions or operational difficulties related to technical activities of mining and reclamation, the speculative nature of exploration and development of mineral deposits, including risks obtaining necessary licenses and permits, reducing the quantity or grade of reserves, adverse changes in credit ratings, and the challenge of title. The Company does not undertake an obligation to update publicly or revise forward looking statements or information, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, unless so required by applicable securities laws. Some of the results reported are historical and may not have been verified by the Company.

Contact Info:

Mark Scott

Chief Executive Officer & Director

info@sassyresources.ca

Terry Bramhall

Sassy Resources - Corporate Communications/IR

1.604.833.6999 (mobile)

1.604.675.9985 (office)

terry.bramhall@sassyresources.ca

In Europe:

Michael Adams

Managing Director - Star Finance GmbH

info@star-finance.eu

The CSE has neither approved nor disapproved the contents of this news release. Neither the CSE nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the CSE) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

SOURCE: Sassy Resources Corporation

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/691583/Sassy-Spinout-Gander-Gold-Approved-For-Public-Listing
DGAP-News: Eleving Group S.A. / Key word(s): Miscellaneous

Eleving Group S.A.: Eleving Group scales back operations in countries affected by the war in Ukraine



04.03.2022 / 19:47

The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement.



Riga, Latvia, 04 March 2022. Eleving Group, a Latvian head-quartered leading provider of financial solutions in Central Europe, CIS & East Africa, is following the situation in Ukraine very closely and greatly regrets the current development. The Company's top priority is to ensure the safety of its employees. So far, only the business activities in Ukraine are directly affected, while further development in Belarus is being closely evaluated.

With less than 3% of the total portfolio, Eleving Group has a limited presence in Ukraine. Already in the prewar period, the Company had significantly curtailed new issuances and stopped them completely as of 24 February 2022. Currently, Eleving refrains from strict collection measures and offers all its customers to defer payments without additional fees or interest being calculated. Collections from the portfolio declined significantly, although significant payments are still being made by customers daily. Given the digital-only business in Ukraine, the scale back of the local portfolio is not exposed to any material risks. The Company is not planning any new issues for the foreseeable future and will focus on collection activities while maintaining a lean cost structure. Eleving Group is focused on supporting its employees and their family members in Ukraine.

The scope and impact of possible sanctions against Belarus as a result of its engagement alongside the Russian Federation cannot yet be assessed. Although the business activity in Belarus historically shows the greatest resilience of the operating countries against crises of various kinds, Eleving Group has decided to stop issuances in Belarus and focus on reducing the existing exposure. The Company is optimizing its costs structure in Belarus and is putting full focus on collection activities and incentivizing customers to repay their outstanding loans early. At this point, collections are unaffected, and the Company is receiving a significant amount of positive cashflows, with a focus on developing several secure ways to transfer foreign currency out of Belarus. Excess cash is being repatriated to EU countries.

Eleving Group itself is not a sanctions target and does not maintain business relations with Russian banks. The proactively initiated contingency management to ensure business continuity includes, in particular, real-time assessment of the situation in the affected countries of operation, liquidity management, and securing foreign exchange transfers across the borders of sanctioned countries.

To support the people of Ukraine, Eleving Group has joined the "Entrepreneurs for Peace" movement and donated EUR 100,000. In cooperation with the Latvian Ministry of Defense, the Ukrainian Embassy, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and organizations providing international humanitarian aid, the charity platform Ziedot.lv and others, the comprehensive and coordinated support network aims to provide the most targeted assistance possible to the war-affected people in Ukraine, in line with the current needs of Ukraine and its population.

Modestas Sudnius, Group CEO of Eleving Group commented:

"The situation in Ukraine deeply saddens us and our hearts at Eleving Group are with all those affected. Wars only know victims, on all sides. To protect the workforce and the Company, we have decided to scale back activities in Ukraine and Belarus - in line with our crisis plans - in an orderly and controlled manner. As a result of our preparations over the past weeks and months, the corresponding measures are proceeding according to plan. On behalf of the entire Management Board and all employees at Eleving Group, I would like to thank all the teams on the ground for their hard work and commitment during this difficult and special time. We sincerely hope for an early, peaceful end to the conflict and thus a quick return to a normalized situation."

About Eleving Group

Eleving Group comprises a number of international and fast-growing financial technology companies with a global presence. The Group operates in the vehicle and consumer finance segments in 3 continents, providing financial inclusion and disruptively changing financial services industries in its countries of operation. Founded in 2012 in Latvia, the Group has revolutionized the way people purchase cars. Having expanded all across the Baltics within its first year in business, the Group continued expansion in the following years, servicing a total of 14 active markets.



With its headquarters in Latvia, the Group operates in the Baltics, Central, Eastern, and South-Eastern Europe, Caucasus, Central Asia, and Eastern Africa.



For two consecutive years since 2020, the Group has appeared on the Financial Times list of Europe's 1000 fastest growing companies.



Further information:

Maris Kreics

Group Chief Financial Officer

maris.kreics@eleving.com



04.03.2022 Dissemination of a Corporate News, transmitted by DGAP - a service of EQS Group AG.

The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement.



The DGAP Distribution Services include Regulatory Announcements, Financial/Corporate News and Press Releases.

Archive at www.dgap.de


Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - March 4, 2022) - Tribe Property Technologies (TSXV: TRBE) (OTCQB: TRPTF) today announced that Joseph Nakhla, CEO will be attending the Q1 Virtual Investor Summit. In this presentation, Tribe CEO, Joseph Nakhla, will present how the Company disrupted the traditional property management industry through a SaaS-based approach. This sector has always been a labour-intensive and low-margin business, not traditionally considered growth. Tribe provides an attractive exposure opportunity for investors to learn about the industry's digitization, a solution to labour intensity resulting in significantly higher gross margins, and the ability for growth in the business not yet seen in current markets.

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) - Crude oil prices moved up sharply on Friday as worries about supply disruptions grew amid an escalation in Russia-Ukraine conflict after Russia attacked and seized Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.



As the war continues to rage, it is feared that Western countries will likely impose more stringent sanctions on Russia, which could significantly disrupt oil exports from the country, which is the world's biggest exporter of crude and oil products combined.



The Biden administration is reportedly weighing a ban on U.S. imports of Russian crude oil, as the Congress looks to punish the Kremlin for its invasion of Ukraine.



West Texas Intermediate Crude oil futures for April ended up by $8.01 or about 7.4% at $115.68 a barrel, the highest settlement since September 2008. WTI crude futures gained as much as 26.3% this week, the steepest climb in percentage terms, since the week ending April 3, 2020.



According to reports in Iranian media, Mikhail Ulyanov, Russia's chief negotiator at the nuclear talks, said an agreement was likely over the next few days. A deal will likely pave the way for the legitimate return of Tehran's oil to the market.



A report from Baker Hughes said the oil rigs count in the U.S. dropped by 3 to 519 in the week ending March 4. The number of total active drilling rigs in the U.S. remains unchanged at 650, the report said.



The report says the total active rig count - oil, gas and miscellaneous - is 247 more than the rig count this time last year.







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Mineral exploration company Ubique has secured ~25% of Resource 500 Group

Deal will provide entry to rich mineral reserve sites in Namibia with new exploration licenses

TORONTO, ON / ACCESSWIRE / March 4, 2022 / GreenBank Capital Inc. ("GreenBank" or "the Company") is pleased to report that its portfolio mineral exploration company Ubique Minerals Limited ("Ubique") has expanded its global mining interests to Namibia with a significant share acquisition.

Toronto-based Ubique, of which GreenBank owns over 20%, has secured 24.99% of the existing shareholding of Resource 500 V ltd ("R500"), an Irish mineral exploration interest holding six Exploration Licenses ("EPLs") in Namibia. These sites, primarily in the northern part of the country, are recognised to be potentially rich in high-grade ore of zinc, copper, lead, cadmium, and other metals, and historically have been subject to less intense exploration and mining than other regions of Namibia.

This significant minority shareholding in R500 by Ubique Minerals is the latest strategic investment to bolster GreenBank Capital's credentials as an identifier and enabler of highly scalable, highly profitable companies around the world. Ubique also owns interests in the Daniel's Harbour zinc exploration property in Newfoundland Canada at a time when the global demand for zinc appears to be increasing to meet the requirements for energy grid-level battery storage, a key component in the move to decarbonisation.

Ubique's investment in R500 follows a series of successful developments in the three years since the firm's public listing. In August 2021, it secured Private Placement Financing to fund key drilling operations in Newfoundland, $200,000 of which was provided by GreenBank Capital. Mark Wettreich, chairman of GreenBank, holds a seat on Ubique's Board of Directors.

Ubique is a mineral exploration company listed on the CSE (CSE:UBQ). It was funded for its first two years by private equity including that from GreenBank. With the help of GreenBank's consulting services, Ubique became a publicly listed company in September 2018. The company has an experienced management group who have a track a record of multiple discoveries of mineral deposits worldwide and owns an extensive and exclusive database of historic exploration results from sites in Newfoundland and Labrador.

Terry Pullen, CEO of GreenBank Capital, said: "We have great confidence in Ubique's management team, and this substantial share acquisition of Resource 500, and subsequent interest in its operations in Namibia, is an exciting next step in its fast growth equity story. We look forward to continued progress in future"

-Appointment of Sapience Communications as PR Advisers-

In addition to this, GreenBank is pleased to announce the appointment of Sapience Communications ("Sapience") as its PR Advisers, effective immediately for an initial three month term. Sapience, co-founded by CEO Richard Morgan Evans in 2011, is a London, UK-based but globally facing corporate, financial, and digital communications consultancy, with expertise advising clients in the public capital markets, private equity, fintech, and ESG arenas, amongst others. Sapience will be advising GreenBank's senior management and board on corporate positioning and will manage all external media relations and social media channels in the company's core markets.

Sapience has been appointed by GreenBank's management on an initial three-month contractual period for a fee of 7000 per month , after which GreenBank's board of directors will consider engaging them thereafter as the Company's permanent PR Advisers.

For further information, please contact:

PR Advisers: Sapience Communications

James Gittings/Richard Morgan Evans

Email: Greenbank@sapiencecomms.co.uk

Tel: +44 (0)7308 509 608

About GreenBank

GreenBank is a next generation merchant banking business that has a flexible low-cost overhead structure designed to maximize profitability. Our management are based in Toronto, Dallas and London and are used to working across borders remotely. Our model of remote working, dynamic space and flexible contracts -rather than large, fixed costs - establishes GreenBank as a global merchant bank for the future, both during and after COVID19.

GreenBank is listed on the Canadian Securities Exchange, the Frankfurt Boerse and on the OTC Markets in the USA. GreenBank invests in undervalued exponential growth companies focused on building consistent capital appreciation for its shareholders.

SOURCE: GreenBank Capital Inc.

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/691659/Greenbank-Capital-Portfolio-Company-Ubique-Expands-Mining-Interests-to-Sub-Saharan-Africa
Closed-end funds are traded on the secondary market through one of the stock exchanges. The Fund's investment return and principal value will fluctuate so that an investor's shares may be worth more or less than the original cost. Shares of closed-end funds may trade above (a premium) or below (a discount) the net asset value (NAV) of the fund's portfolio. There is no assurance that the Fund will achieve its investment objective. Past performance does not guarantee future results.

Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.
Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - March 4, 2022) - Plurilock Security Inc. (TSXV: PLUR) (OTCQB: PLCKF) and related subsidiaries ("Plurilock" or the "Company"), an identity-centric cybersecurity solutions provider for workforces, participated in the CyberVoices panel hosted by Absolute Software, a leader in next generation Endpoint Resilience solutions.

Plurilock's CEO, Ian L. Paterson, joined other cybersecurity leaders from Malwarebytes and Ericom Software during yesterday's CyberVoices panel to discuss the state of cybersecurity, self-healing cybersecurity systems, and the impact the COVID-19 pandemic is having on organizations' ability to secure their networks and devices.

The Company has partnered with Absolute Software, as previously announced on November 9, 2021, for its Plurilock DEFENDTM Persisted offering, a self-healing zero trust identity solution that pairs Absolute's Application Persistence with DEFEND's continuous authentication capabilities.

"With more than 1,200 cyber attacks reported in 20211, it is more critical than ever for cybersecurity leaders to speak widely about the growing cyber threat and how cutting-edge, self-healing technologies can play a role in securing enterprise networks," said Ian L. Paterson, CEO of PlurilockTM. "Plurilock is pleased to participate in the CyberVoices event series and share our perspective as a zero trust identity solutions provider."

To watch the replay of the panel, visit https://www.absolute.com/webinars/cybervoices-mar2022.

About Absolute Software

Absolute Software is a leader in next generation Endpoint Resilience solutions, delivering a unique security platform that unites the power of self-healing devices, applications, and network connectivity. Absolute is the only endpoint security provider embedded in more than half a billion devices that offers a permanent digital connection to see, manage, secure, and automatically heal every device, and provides deep insights into the health of devices, applications, and network connections.

To learn more, visit www.absolute.com.

ABSOLUTE, ABSOLUTE SOFTWARE, the ABSOLUTE logo, PERSISTENCE, APPLICATION PERSISTENCE, and ENDPOINT RESILIENCE are trademarks of Absolute Software Corporation in the United States and/or other countries.

About Plurilock

Plurilock provides identity-centric cybersecurity for today's workforces. The Plurilock family of companies enables organizations to operate safely and securely while reducing cybersecurity friction. Plurilock offers world-class IT and cybersecurity solutions through its Solutions Division, paired with proprietary, AI-driven and cloud-friendly security through its Technology Division. Together, the Plurilock family of companies delivers persistent identity assurance with unmatched ease of use.

For more information, visit https://www.plurilock.com or contact:

Ian L. Paterson

Chief Executive Officer

ian@plurilock.com

416.800.1566

Roland Sartorius

Chief Financial Officer

roland.sartorius@plurilock.com

Prit Singh

Investor Relations

prit.singh@plurilock.com

905.510.7636

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release may contain certain forward-looking statements and forward-looking information (collectively, "forward-looking statements") related to future events or Plurilock's future business, operations, and financial performance and condition. Forward-looking statements normally contain words like "will", "intend", "anticipate", "could", "should", "may", "might", "expect", "estimate", "forecast", "plan", "potential", "project", "assume", "contemplate", "believe", "shall", "scheduled", and similar terms. Forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance, actions, or developments and are based on expectations, assumptions, and other factors that management currently believes are relevant, reasonable, and appropriate in the circumstances. Although management believes that the forward-looking statements herein are reasonable, actual results could be substantially different due to the risks and uncertainties associated with and inherent to Plurilock's business. Additional material risks and uncertainties applicable to the forward-looking statements herein include, without limitation, the impact of general economic conditions, the success of the Company in obtaining new or extended contracts or orders; the Company's ability to maintain existing customers or develop new customers; the Company's ability to successfully integrate acquisitions of other businesses and/or companies or to realize on the anticipated benefits thereof; and unforeseen events, developments, or factors causing any of the aforesaid expectations, assumptions, and other factors ultimately being inaccurate or irrelevant. This list is not exhaustive of the factors that may affect the Company's forward-looking statements. Many of these factors are beyond the control of Plurilock. All forward-looking statements included in this press release are expressly qualified in their entirety by these cautionary statements. The forward-looking statements contained in this press release are made as at the date hereof, and Plurilock undertakes no obligation to update publicly or to revise any of the included forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise, except as may be required by applicable securities laws. Risks and uncertainties about the Company's business are more fully discussed under the heading "Risk Factors" in its most recent Annual Information Form. They are otherwise disclosed in its filings with securities regulatory authorities available on SEDAR at www.sedar.com.

Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

https://www.govtech.com/blogs/lohrmann-on-cybersecurity/data-breach-numbers-costs-and-impacts-all-rise-in-2021

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/115693
Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson delivers remarks on her nomination by President Joe Biden to serve as Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court at the White House on Feb. 25.
Attorneys for a Pikeville businessman who was convicted last year of wire fraud and health care fraud are asking that he either be sentenced to probation or that his sentencing, currently set for March 8, be stayed pending resolution of his appeal.

Eugene Sisco III, 36, of Flora Street, was found guilty by a jury in U.S. District Court in Pikeville in November of the charges and faces a maximum possible sentence of 20 years in the case.

The indictment filed against Sisco charges him with wire fraud, which carries a maximum prison sentence of 20 years, and healthcare fraud, which carries a maximum prison sentence of 10 years.

From about May 2016, and through Oct. 1, 2019, according to the indictment in the case, Eugene Sisco III devised and intended to devise a scheme to defraud and to obtain money and property by means of materially false and fraudulent pretenses, representations and promises.

The indictment charges that, although Eugene Sisco III was aware that the Medicaid program prohibited Medication Assisted Treatment providers, such as his companies ASAP Addiction Treatment and Renew from charging patients cash for Medicaid covered services, Eugene Sisco III charged patients cash for the MAT services and also billed the Medicaid program for those MAT services.

Prosecutors said following the trial that the jury also found that Sisco engaged in a health care fraud scheme, by causing his laboratory, Toxperts, LLC, to bill for medically unnecessary urine drug testing of samples collected from patients at his clinics. The physician witnesses at trial testified that they did not order this urine drug testing, and that some of it was done at Siscos direction for billing purposes, as opposed to any medical reason, a statement from the office U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Kentucky Carlton S. Shier IV said.

Jonah Stevens and Justin C. Hamilton  Siscos post-conviction attorneys  wrote in a sentencing memorandum filed Feb. 24 that Siscos lack of criminal history and other factors, such as a lack of likelihood that he will reoffend, argue toward a light sentence.

This conviction, public humiliation in the local paper and TV, social (media), diminished social status within the community, loss of income and his outright contrition has been seared into him, the attorneys wrote. Probation or an alternative sentence as a downward departure or variance would be an adequate punishment or of consequence to (Sisco). (Sisco) would successfully complete probation, because he wants to redeem himself. (Sisco) realizes there is no benefit to swimming upstream and defying the criminal justice system.

The attorneys wrote in the memorandum that, although Sisco owned the clinics, he was not a medical treatment provider, but an administrator, and that Sisco was probably naive in his interpretation of the law and did not seek legal advice, including from his wife, who is an attorney, on the matter.

(Sisco) thought he could single-handedly navigate the complex Medicaid/Medicare rules, and, as the government successfully contended at trial, submit billing for services under an ill-conceived, illegal loophole, and thus, became adrift of the law, the memorandum said.

The attorneys wrote that patients were diverting prescriptions and selling them on the streets, leading to a conclusion that doctors were over-prescribing medications.

Therefore, the defendants purported blanket urine testing orders could reasonably be interpreted as being a well-intended medically necessary precaution from his perspective, the memorandum said.

The attorneys wrote that, if Sisco is given probation or an alternative sentence, he will work to compensate through restitution those whom the court deems necessary.

In December, U.S. District Judge Robert Wier ordered that Sisco forfeit $3.2 million in funds alleged to have been obtained through criminal activity, and began the process of determining how that money will be distributed.

Sisco, the attorneys wrote, developed emotional scarring from the work he did with the addiction treatment clinics which, gave people actual hope for a second chance.

(Sisco) hopes, that for the sake of hope in and of itself, that a second chance is open to him, because he has seen it work for many people, and if he may take some credit in some small capacity, that he has helped others along the same journey, might it not offend the court that he ask for some degree of shade or relief under the same tree he himself had planted long ago for others, the attorneys wrote in the memorandum.

The motion was also accompanied by letters from several people in the community, including family, friends and others, including the mother of two individuals who were treated at the clinics Sisco owned, all asking for leniency in sentencing.

Siscos sentencing hearing is set for March 8 in U.S. District Court in Pikeville.
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Gainesville, TX (76240)

Today

Partly to mostly cloudy skies with scattered thunderstorms in the morning. High 72F. S winds shifting to WNW at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 50%..

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The driver, a 33-year-old man, crashed his Infiniti into a retaining wall near E. 72nd St. on the Upper East Side at 4:37 a.m. Video captured him trying in vain the rescue two passengers as his ride exploded into a fireball. (Theodore Parisienne/for New York Daily News)

Two women were killed in a fiery one-car wreck on FDR Drive early Friday, police said.

The driver, a 33-year-old man, crashed his Infiniti into a retaining wall near E. 72nd St. on the Upper East Side at 4:37 a.m. Video captured him trying in vain the rescue two passengers as his ride exploded into a fireball.

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Two women were killed in a fiery one-car wreck on FDR Drive early Friday. (Theodore Parisienne/for New York Daily News)

The victims are believed to be the drivers girlfriend and her sister, police said.

Firefighters put out the flames and the bodies were recovered.

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Two women were killed in a fiery one-car wreck on FDR Drive early Friday. (Theodore Parisienne/for New York Daily News)

The driver, burned on his face, back and body, was rushed to nearby NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center and is in critical but stable condition.
Galveston, TX (77553)

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Decreasing cloudiness and windy. A stray afternoon thunderstorm is possible. High 84F. Winds SSE at 20 to 30 mph..

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Thunderstorms likely in the evening. Then a chance of scattered thunderstorms later on. Low 77F. Winds S at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 60%.
Downtown Corvallis is one of the best downtowns in Oregon, with a vibrant mix of restaurants and shops, a stellar Saturday market, parks and plenty of public art.

So it seemed strange and surprising when news broke that the Downtown Corvallis Association was dissolving after nearly four decades.

As a result of the organizations demise, the city of Corvallis, which has an economic improvement district that helps fund the association, requested a close-out audit of the groups records.

In a statement, the Downtown Corvallis Association blamed the pandemic for the development, saying that COVID-19 resulted in the cancellation of most large fundraising events. Membership in the taxing district that helps fund the association also had shrunk, leading to declining revenue, said Kate Porsche of the Corvallis-Benton County Economic Development Office.

Corvallis Chamber of Commerce President/CEO Simon Date, a nonvoting board member of the Downtown Corvallis Association, said the departure of Jennifer Moreland, the associations executive director, was a complicating factor, as well.

Morelands Facebook page indicates she is moving to Florida. Replacing her would be difficult under the pandemics lingering financial blow, Date said.

Still, pandemic or not, the Downtown Corvallis Associations demise is shocking and sad, in part because the organization has accomplished good things over the years. Sure, we heard grumbling from sources about how the association could have helped businesses more, and our editorial board certainly thinks it could have done a better job promoting its community events.

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But overall, for nearly 40 years, the consensus was that the association had a positive impact on Downtown Corvallis and the city in general.

The organization offered businesses marketing and networking assistance, acted as an advocate at City Hall, and held community events to showcase the area.

At this point, its unclear who will absorb those important duties, though the Corvallis Chamber of Commerce may pick up some of the pieces.

Meanwhile, across the Willamette River, the Albany Downtown Association continues chugging along, serving as an important voice for stores and eateries in Hub City.

Albanys downtown has enjoyed a resurgence in the last decade, and it continues to improve. The Albany Downtown Association deserves ample credit for that, as its leaders have been tireless supporters and cheerleaders for businesses.

Still, despite Albanys downtown Renaissance, Corvallis is still seen as the standard-bearer for quality downtowns, and for good reason. Were sure downtown is big part of why Corvallis remains atop the lists for Forbes and Livabilitys best college towns, a fact Oregon State has plastered all over campus in its Best Pac-12 college town posters.

Downtowns stature didnt happen by magic. It took decades of effort and savvy. And it will take hard work to retain that lofty reputation for Downtown Corvallis.

Arrest highlights top issues for law enforcement

The Feb. 12 case of a man accused of breaking into a home, strangling and sexually abusing a woman in her shower  this individuals third arrest on the same day  highlights some of the toughest issues facing law enforcement agencies in Corvallis and Benton County, and shows how officers often dont have good options.

The first issue is the shortcomings of the Benton County Jail. Regardless of what you think of the site for a proposed new jail or eminent domain, its clear we need more jail beds. Within about two hours of the alleged attack, the suspect was taken into custody twice on suspicion of criminal trespass. He was cited and released because the severity of the alleged crimes didnt meet the criteria for keeping him behind bars. There simply isnt space to hold people, even those who appear to be having a mental health crisis.

Secondly, the incident shows the intersection between law enforcement and mental illness. We should note that Benton Countys proposed justice system improvements, besides a new jail, include a mental health crisis center and more.

Thankfully, authorities also are developing more nuanced methods to help those with mental health issues, such as the Crisis Outreach Response and Engage team in Corvallis, which we featured in Tuesdays newspaper.

We hope to see more collaborations and new strategies to deal with a growing mental health problem in the mid-valley and the United States.

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A Sweet Home family medicine and urgent care health clinic could break ground as soon as July, project leaders said on Thursday, March 3.

The 15,000-square-foot Samaritan Health Services site will include a family medicine clinic, an urgent care unit and a helipad. It will include a retail pharmacy, dental care provider, lab and telehealth space, all intended to operate seven days a week.

On Thursday, Samaritan Lebanon Community Hospital CEO Marty Cahill shared schematics for the project with the public at a virtual town hall with other project leaders.

The new site will complement Sweet Home's existing walk-in clinic which lacks urgent care services and sufficient parking, according to Cahill. The current clinic operates from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday and is ill-suited to meet round the clock demand for urgent care.

Patients at Sweet Home's current walk-in clinic, Cahill said, can expect to wait as many as 18 days to schedule regular appointments with a doctor. New patient appointments can see delays of up to 120 days.

"The goal is to have our new space open when our patients need it," Cahill said.

Based on designs by Mahlum Architects, the new clinic will boast 18 exam rooms, nine onsite providers, and four urgent care units. Samaritan will begin hiring staff for the new clinic in the coming months, Cahill said.

The cost of the new Samaritan clinic is pegged at $9.5 million. Construction is expected to be completed by 2023, according to Cahill.

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Funding for the project will be paid for in part with proceeds from the hospital chain's sale of Wiley Creek Senior Living to Salem-based Mosaic Management in 2021. Samaritan will also put up its own money paired with $1.14 million in donations.

The new clinic is set to go up on Highway 20 on the corner lot across from Wiley Creek Senior Living. It will have about 30 employees or more, Cahill said. The current walk-in clinic employs 28 people total, Samaritan spokespeople confirmed.

The clinic is part of a bigger effort by Samaritan to expand critical care in East Linn County where residents often call on nearby cities for emergency services.

"Sweet Home is a place people want to live," Cahill said. "It's also a tapped resource that's got less to tap every year."

Between 2010 and 2020, Sweet Home grew from 8,925 people to 10,439 people, U.S. Census data show. One out of five people in the city are 65 or older, and one out of four have a disability.

According to Samaritan Health Services Board Chair Milt Moran, many Sweet Home residents often call on emergency services in Lebanon more than 20 minutes up the road.

"I drive around everywhere, but a lot of other people can't," Moran said during Thursday's town hall. "We have a lot of people calling Lebanon Fire for help and when I heard that, that was concerning."

Cahill said on Thursday public transit and medical transports will be available for most Sweet Home residents traveling to the new clinic.

John Tacy, division chief of operations at the Lebanon Fire District, said in an interview the district has responded to 14 calls for medical services in Sweet Home over the past 180 days.

Tacy said he was unsure the new Samaritan clinic would satisfy all demand across the board.

"I'm not certain the clinic would impact a lot of what these calls were about," Tacy said. "Maybe a couple but definitely not the majority."

Ultimately, Moran said, building the new clinic is about making health care as available as possible when some calls can't wait.

"We want health care to be where folks live," Moran said.

Samaritan will accept donations for the new Sweet Home clinic throughout 2022 to free up funds for upgrading its other facilities in East Linn County.

Editors note: This article has been edited to correct the anticipated hours of operation.

Tim Gruver covers the city of Albany and Linn County. He can be contacted at 541-812-6114 or Tim.Gruver@lee.net. Follow him on Twitter via @T_TimeForce.

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Gettysburg, PA (17325)

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Partly cloudy skies during the morning hours will become overcast in the afternoon. High 71F. Winds NE at 5 to 10 mph..

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Rain developing after midnight. Low around 55F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 70%.
Four Queens residents turned their homes into workshops of death where they stashed 27 illegal ghost guns built from parts ordered online, prosecutors said Thursday.

Police uncovered the build-it-yourself weapons along with six commercially manufactured firearms and attachments like silencers, sights and a laser targeting system in a series of early-morning raids Tuesday on three houses in Bayside and Flushing, and an apartment in Auburndale.

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Some of the weaponry seized in the arrests of four Queens residents on firearm possession charges included 27 "ghost" guns. They were displayed Thursday at the Queens District Attorney's Office. (Shawn Inglima/for New York Daily News)

The weapons have been dubbed ghost guns because theyre essentially untraceable  and theyre showing up with more and more frequency on city streets.

The individuals that are building, trafficking and using these illegal, self-made firearms no longer need to travel the Iron Pipeline to Southern states to acquire firearms and distribute them in our community, said Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz.

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Now at the stroke of a keyboard, the Polymer Pipeline continues to allow gun traffickers to build weapon from the comfort of their homes.

Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz on Thursday examined the weapons seized in the homes of four Queens residents. (Shawn Inglima/for New York Daily News)

Polymer parts are common in guns and are the basis of do-it-yourself gun building kits sold at gun shops and on the internet. Polymer materials are based on nylon-type plastic, and can also include fiberglass.

The Daily News Flash Weekdays Catch up on the days top five stories every weekday afternoon. >

The cops seizures included 22 semiautomatic home-built pistols, four home-built assault weapons, a home-built assault shotgun, 78 large-capacity magazines, 16 polymer-based lower receivers, about 10,000 bullets, silencers, holographic gun sights, bulletproof vests and a nighttime laser targeting system, as well as $50,000 cash.

The raids early Tuesday marked the sixth ghost guns bust in Queens since August, Katz said.

Police and investigators pulled the weapons and weapon parts from the two Bayside homes of Andrew Chang, 34, the Flushing home of Kai Zhao, 45, and Michael Frankenfeld, 55, and the Auburndale apartment of Seongwoo Chung, 35. None of them had licenses for any of the weapons, Katz said.

The weapons seizures in Queens included magazines, body armor, firearm parts, and other equipment. (Shawn Inglima/for New York Daily News)

All four face a variety of weapon possession and sale charges.

Unlike factory-manufactured firearms, home-built ghost guns do not have serial numbers. Gun builders buy them in parts, and make them with help from instructional videos on YouTube and other sites.

Someone with skilled hands can build one from the parts in 20 minutes, Queens Assistant DA Shanon LaCorte told reporters Thursday.

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According Deputy Inspector Courtney Nilan of the NYPD Intelligence Bureau, cops have recovered 85 ghost guns so far in 2022, up from 20 in the same timeframe of 2021.
By Charlene Badasie | 2 months ago

Antony Starr of The Boys fame was arrested in Spains Costa Blanca over an alleged pub fight this week. The incident left the eaterys 21-year-old chef Bathuel Araujo, needing four stitches. The young man told police officers that the actor had punched him twice. He also had a glass smashed in his face. After terrorizing the chef, the fight continued in the street after the 46-year-old was kicked out of the pub by doormen.

Police officers from Spains National Police arrested Antony Starr at the scene and escorted him to a nearby holding cell where he spent the rest of the night. The actors trial took place within days and Alicante Court of Investigation Number Nine handed down a 12 month suspended sentence with one condition. Hed only escape prison time if he paid his young victim $7855 within 72 hours.

According to the Daily Mail, Antony Starrs state of drunkenness was taken into account as an extenuating factor. The reduced sentence was the result of an agreement between the state prosecution service and the convicted New Zealand actor on the condition that he doesnt commit another crime in two years. The pub where the incident occurred was not named.

Antony Starr gained international recognition for his role as Homelander on Amazon show The Boys, which is based on the comic book series of the same name by writer Garth Ennis and illustrator Darick Robertson. In his home country, he is famous for his dual role as twins Jethro and Van West in the comedy/drama Outrageous Fortune, and Billy Newwood in Without a Paddle. He was also played the series lead, Lucas Hood in the four-season run of Banshee.

Antony Starr is currently in Spain for work. He is filming for British director Guy Ritchies latest project. The Interpreter will star Oscar nominee Jake Gyllenhaal as a soldier who returns to a warzone in Afghanistan to repay a debt to his interpreter. According to Deadline, the filmmaker was inspired to tell the emotional story after talking to soldiers and the interpreters who risk their lives to help them.

The Interpreter will follow the story of Sgt. John Kinley (Gyllenhaal), who is teamed with a local interpreter named Ahmed to survey the region. When their unit is ambushed on patrol the pair are the only survivors. With enemy forces in pursuit, Ahmed risks his life to carry an injured Kinley to safety across miles of grueling terrain. Back in the U.S, Kinley learns that Ahmed and his family were not given passage to America as promised. Determined to protect his friend, Kinley returns to the warzone to retrieve Ahmed before the local militias get to him first. Antony Starrs role is still undisclosed.

Joining Antony Starr and Jake Gyllenhaal in the cast is Dar Salim as Ahmed (the interpreter). The movie also features the talents of Alexander Ludwig, Jason Wong, Bobby Schofield, Sean Sagar, and Emily Beecham. The highly anticipated Guy Ritchie film doesnt have a release date at this time.
By James Brizuela | 6 days ago

Zack Snyder is staying busy after the success of the Netflix hit Army of the Dead. It seems the partnership between Snyder and Netflix is going to continue beyond the already announced sequel to Army of the Dead and the spin-off series. He will return to the streaming platform for the announced sci-fi fantasy epic, Rebel Moon. What do we know so far? This page will stay updated with everything we learn as Zack Snyders Rebel Moon is made.

The First Images From Rebel Moon

Zack Snyders upcoming space opera epic finally has some visuals. The director of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice has always been lauded for his stylistic panache, and it seems his upcoming new collaboration with Netflix will not disappoint. Snyder has recently posted some pictures from the production of his new film Rebel Moon, which began as a Star Wars pitch (pre-Disney takeover) that he has now rewritten to be a standalone piece. Here is what we have so far:

Honored to welcome this incredible cast to Rebel Moon. Charlie Hunnam, Djimon Hounsou, Doona Bae, and Ray Fisher join previously announced Sofia Boutella. Jena Malone, Staz Nair, E. Duffy, Charlotte Maggi, & Sky Yang round out the cast. More to come. Let's go! #RebelMoon @Netflix pic.twitter.com/a9Zpmt2BzW  Zack Snyder (@ZackSnyder) February 9, 2022

Is Rebel Moon Star Wars?

The new Rebel Moon was once reportedly a failed Star Wars pitch that Zack Snyder made back in 2012 when George Lucas was still running the show. However, since the more family-friendly Disney bought the rights to the entire Star Wars universe, Snyders more adult-themed Star Wars film was quickly cast to the side. Since that occurrence, it appears that he has continued cultivating the script and concepts behind this would-be sci-fi epic. The concept art for Rebel Moon was revealed by Snyder and threw fans into a tizzy immediately. Although the concept art showed looked to be different-looking soldiers of some kind, fans immediately began to formulate theories that these could have very well been his version of stormtroopers.

Whether or not the reports are true and Rebel Moon was meant to be the more adult version of a Star Wars film that has been cast aside, Zack Snyder is now throwing his hat in the ring of creating a sci-fi epic that could change the course of his career. With how successful the Dune reboot was, it could be Snyders time to give fans a different look at what Star Wars might have been or could have been under his creative control.

Zack Snyders Rebel Moon Cast So Far

Charlie Hunnam

Zack Snyder is a self-proclaimed Star Wars fan, so this new Rebel Moon film could be what he needs to showcase in order to allow Disney to hand him the keys to a potential future Star Wars film. However, Snyder is more intuned with allowing the more adult side of things to take over, so that might not be the best idea. The Hollywood Reporter recently revealed that some new cast members are joining the Netflix film. Those stars include Charlie Hunnam, Djimon Hounsou, Bae Doona, and Ray Fisher. They join the already announced Jena Malone, Staz Nair, E. Duffy, Charlotte Maggi, and Sky Yang. Sofia Boutella is set to play the titular role.

Ray Fisher as Cyborg

The additional character descriptions are vague and minimal. Hounsou is reportedly going to be playing General Titus, but there is no word on if hes the villain or a hero. Bae is set to be some sort of proficient sword wielder, and Fisher is playing a resistance fighter who is aptly named Blood Axe. Little to nothing else is known about who each actor is going to be portraying, and that could be due to Zack Snyder doing his best to hide details i.e. Star Wars.

Rebel Moon Plot Details

So far, the plot for Zack Snyders Rebel Moon is as follows: a peaceful colony at the edge of the galaxy finds itself in peril, as a tyrannical army known as the Regent Belisarius threatens their existence. The colony enlists a woman with a strange past (Boutella) to seek out warriors from across the galaxy in order to stop the impending threat of this army. It sure sounds to be that the makings of a Star Wars film, as the Belisarius could be the empire, and the strange past woman might be reminiscent of Rey, or even a play on Luke Skywalker. Although the similarities are there, this film might be something completely different.

Zack Snyder Success And Controversy

Netflix picked up Rebel Moon immediately but that could be due to the fact that Army of the Dead became one of the highest viewed films in Netflix history. During its first four weeks on the streaming platform, the film racked up an astounding 75 million viewers in July. Per a Complex article written in December of 2021, Army of the Dead sits at #9 all-time with 187 million viewers. That number might be a bit higher or lower as of right now, but that is likely why Zack Snyder was able to court Netflix again for the upcoming Rebel Moon. It is no secret that Snyder is controversial and wildly popular among fans of pop culture and comics.

Speaking of the controversial news, Zack Snyder will be pairing again with Ray Fisher, as both worked together on the 2017s Justice League and the more accepted 2020 Justice League: Snyder Cut. Fisher famously called out the treatment of Joss Whedon along with his other coworkers that included Ben Affleck and Gal Gadot. Snyder left Justice League for personal reasons, while Whedon stepped in to help guide the film to finished status. However, due to his alleged treatment of the actors, the film was marred with controversy right from the start. Its good to see that Fisher and Snyder will be working alongside one another again.

When Will Zack Snyders Rebel Moon Be Released?

It has already been announced that filming will start in April of 2022, and go well into November. This long shooting schedule means that the film is going to be broken up into a two-part epic. Everyone knows that the original Star Wars story was turned into a trilogy, so Snyder might also be doing his best to make his sci-fi film a part of the same formula. I wonder if there will be some wise-cracking droids? Zack Snyder has co-written the script alongside co-writer for Army of the Dead, Shay Hatten, and Kurt Johnstad, who co-wrote 300. Snyder will be directing and producing the film alongside his producing partner and wife, Deborah Snyder.

Rebel Moon is currently in pre-production and with a lengthy filming schedule that is set to last eight months, we are likely not going to see the first part of this two-part epic until spring of next year. Then again, Netflix usually has some quick turnaround, so we might be surprised with the first part at some point later this year. This is all just speculation, but its going to be interesting to see this would-be Star Wars film from Zack Snyder.
Gillette, WY (82718)

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A mainly sunny sky. High 69F. Winds SSW at 10 to 15 mph..

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A few clouds from time to time. Low 49F. Winds S at 10 to 20 mph.
Tibetans cheer for the Year of the Water Tiger

By PALDEN NYIMA and DAQIONG in Lhasa (China Daily) 10:56, March 04, 2022

Drolkar (right), a resident of Gape, a village in Shigatse, Tibet autonomous region, offers homemade barley wine to her sister-in-law Phurbu on Thursday, which was Losar, or Tibetan New Year. LHAMO/FOR CHINA DAILY

Greetings, singing, dancing, wine and laughter filled the air in Lhasa, capital of the Tibet autonomous region, on Thursday for the Tibetan New Year Festival, known locally as Losar.

According to the Tibetan calendar, this is the Year of the Water Tiger.

Lhasa was in a holiday mood, with Tibetan shop owners closing their stores to celebrate and people wearing their newest and best Tibetan robes.

Tsering, a member of the Tibetan ethnic group from the Tashi Choten community in Nedong county, said he and fellow villagers enjoyed welcoming the new year as their livelihoods have improved significantly.

"In the past, some villagers worried about the new year, as they did not have nice food and clothes to show off in the village during the festival. Now it's different. We enjoy multiple choices for shopping as we no longer suffer from poverty," said Tsering, adding they had made big preparations for the celebrations.

"We have prepared various delicacies, including pastries, cheese, yak meat, butter and new clothes for everyone in the family."

Tibetans start the festival from the 29th day of the 12th month on the Tibetan calendar. On that night, family members gather to enjoy noodles called guthok.

Activities during the event also include giving gifts to other families, hanging prayer flags on roofs, and visiting monasteries and temples.

According to Tibetan legends, the tradition of the Losar celebration dates to about 100 BC, the time of the ninth king of the Tubo kingdom, Pude Gungyal. Celebrations can run for as long as 15 days.

(Web editor: Zhong Wenxing, Liang Jun)
A 72-year-old man whose foot was run over by a city bus near Brooklyn College last month has died, police said Friday.

The senior was crossing Ave. H and Nostrand Ave. in Midwood about 6:15 p.m. on Feb. 18 when the MTA bus struck him, rolling over his foot and lower leg.

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EMS rushed the man to Kings County Hospital, where he died Wednesday from complications stemming from the foot injury, cops said. His name was not immediately disclosed.

The bus operator, 50, was turning from Ave. H onto the heavily congested Flatbush Ave. when he struck the victim. He remained at the scene and was given a summons for failure to yield and exercise due care, cops said.
Lori and Dainis Vober adopted three siblings. That is shared in her new book, Choices. She will sign copies of the book on Saturday, March 5, at Ribbons Tea House in Litchfield Park. (Photo courtesy of Lori Vober)
The adoptive parents of two California toddlers have pleaded not guilty to their murders some 15 months after they stood before news cameras, begging for help in finding the missing boys.

Trezell and Jacqueline West were arraigned Thursday in Kern County Superior Court in Bakersfield on two counts of second-degree murder, two felony counts of child abuse and a misdemeanor charge of making a false report of an emergency. The pair were arrested earlier this week in connection with the disappearance and deaths of Orrin West, 4, and his 3-year-old brother Orson.

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Jacqueline West, left, stands at her arraignment with attorney Alekxia Torres-Stallings in Kern County Superior Court in Bakersfield, Calif., Thursday, March 3, 2022. (Rodney Thornburg / For The Bakersfield Californian/AP)

The Wests reported the boys missing on Dec. 21, 2020, telling authorities they vanished from the backyard after their adoptive father briefly stepped inside. It triggered a massive, but ultimately unsuccessful search effort. More than a year later, the boys have still not been found.

Trezell initially begged members of the community for help during an interview with KGET.

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Thats all I want, is to find my babies. I searched a bunch of corners, I searched and searched and I called their names, he said.

Trezell West, right, stands next to Mia Shawwa, an attorney from the Kern County Indigent Defense Program, during his arraignment in Kern County Superior Court in Bakersfield, Calif., Thursday, March 3, 2022. (Rodney Thornburg / For The Bakersfield Californian/AP)

Kern County District Attorney Cynthia Zimmer said during a recent press conference that investigators uncovered evidence to suggest Trezell and Jacqueline West killed the toddlers before they were reported missing.

The Daily News Flash Weekdays Catch up on the days top five stories every weekday afternoon. >

This morning, I am saddened to announce that the investigation has revealed that Orrin and Orson West are deceased, Zimmer said Wednesday.

The investigation has also revealed that they died three months before their adoptive parents reported them missing.

Zimmer said she could not provide further details, adding only that a combination of direct and circumstantial evidence convinced jurors that the boys were dead.

I would like to emphasize that the fact that law enforcement has not found their bodies does not preclude a murder prosecution, Zimmer said. As a matter of fact, there have been many, hundreds of what we call no-body homicides prosecuted across the United States successfully.

The Wests were initially foster parents to Orson and Orrin, who came to live with them in 2018. They officially completed the adoption process the following year. The couple also have another four children, who are now in protective custody.

If convicted on the murder charges, each of the defendants could face 30 years to life in prison, Zimmer said. A judge ordered them held without bail Wednesday and scheduled their trial for May.

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READING, Pa., March 03, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- EnerSys (NYSE: ENS), the global leader in stored energy solutions for industrial applications, announced today that it has begun the process of indefinitely suspending its operations in Russia following Russias illegal military action against a sovereign Ukraine.



David M. Shaffer, President and Chief Executive Officer of EnerSys, stated, We are deeply saddened by the violence in Ukraine and stand firmly with the Ukrainian people. As the situation continues to unfold, our top priority is the safety of our employees in Ukraine and in Russia. We are suspending our operations in Russia and will comply fully with all sanctions.

The Company has 8 employees in Ukraine and 43 in Russia. It does not expect the suspension to have a material impact on financial results.

About EnerSys:

EnerSys is the global leader in stored energy solutions for industrial applications, manufactures and distributes energy systems solutions and motive power batteries, specialty batteries, battery chargers, power equipment, battery accessories and outdoor equipment enclosure solutions to customers worldwide. Energy Systems, which combine enclosures, power conversion, power distribution and energy storage, are used in the telecommunication, broadband and utility industries, uninterruptible power supplies, and numerous applications requiring stored energy solutions. Motive power batteries and chargers are utilized in electric forklift trucks and other industrial electric powered vehicles. Specialty batteries are used in aerospace and defense applications, large over-the-road trucks, premium automotive, medical and security systems applications. EnerSys also provides aftermarket and customer support services to its customers in over 100 countries through its sales and manufacturing locations around the world. With the NorthStar acquisition, EnerSys has solidified its position as the market leader for premium Thin Plate Pure Lead batteries which are sold across all three lines of business.

More information regarding EnerSys can be found at www.enersys.com.

Sustainability

Sustainability at EnerSys is about more than just the benefits and impacts of our products. Our commitment to sustainability encompasses many important environmental, social and governance issues. Sustainability is a fundamental part of how we manage our own operations. Minimizing our environmental footprint is a priority. Sustainability is our commitment to our employees, our customers and the communities we serve. Our products facilitate positive environmental, social and economic impacts around the world. To learn more visit: https://www.enersys.com/en/about-us/sustainability/.

Caution Concerning Forward-Looking Statements

EnerSys is making this statement in order to satisfy the Safe Harbor provision contained in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Any of the statements contained in this press release that are not statements of historical fact may include forward-looking statements that involve a number of risks and uncertainties. A forward-looking statement predicts, projects, or uses future events as expectations or possibilities. Forward-looking statements may be based on expectations concerning future events and are subject to risks and uncertainties relating to operations and the economic environment, all of which are difficult to predict and many of which are beyond our control. For a discussion of such risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those matters expressed in or implied by forward-looking statements, please see our risk factors as disclosed in the Risk Factors section of our annual report on Form 10-K for the most recently ended fiscal year. The statements in this press release are made as of the date of this press release, even if subsequently made available by EnerSys on its website or otherwise. EnerSys does not undertake any obligation to update or revise these statements to reflect events or circumstances occurring after the date of this press release.

CONTACTS

Melissa Maycott

Public Relations Manager

Harris, Baio & McCullough

215-440-9800

E-mail: melissa@hbmadv.com

Lisa Hartman

Investor Relations and Financial Media

EnerSys

610-236-4040

E-mail: investorrelations@enersys.com
Morehead, Kentucky (USA), March 03, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Rajant Corporation, the pioneer of Kinetic Mesh wireless networks, headquartered in Malvern, Pennsylvania, with manufacturing and development operations in Morehead, Kentucky, is among the 2022 Best Places to Work in Kentucky. This second-year distinction was announced yesterday by the Kentucky Chamber of Commerce, the Kentucky Society for Human Resource Management (KYSHRM) and ClearPath Mutual Insurance Company. The selection process is based on assessing the companys employee policies and procedures and anonymous employee survey results.

A total of 100 companies earned this distinction in this 18th annual program and are categorized by the size of Kentucky-based staff. Rajant is one of 39 companies in the small-sized employer category with 15-149 employees. Winner rankings will be made at an awards dinner on June 9th in Lexington, Kentucky, and Rajant will be in attendance to celebrate with fellow winners.

The caliber of Kentuckys workforce is exceptional, and our Morehead staff epitomizes integrity, drive, and enthusiasm on behalf of Rajant. I am proud of this consecutive second-year accomplishment, says Rajant CEO and Co-founder Robert Schena. Kentucky is a great place to do business. That is why Rajant has expanded operations within Morehead and will grow its employment within the area due to the quality of the people. U.S. Congressman Hal Rogers put Kentucky on Rajants radar when we were looking to grow our operations beyond the headquarters in Pennsylvania, and we could not be more grateful. Thanks to the Kentucky Chamber of Commerce, KYSHRM, and ClearPath for this award.

####

About Rajant Corporation

Rajant Corporation is the broadband communications technology company that invented Kinetic Mesh networking, BreadCrumb wireless nodes, and InstaMesh networking software. With Rajant, customers can rapidly deploy a highly adaptable and scalable network that leverages the power of real-time data to deliver on-demand, mission-critical business intelligence. A low-latency, high-throughput, and secure solution for a variety of data, voice, video, and autonomous applications, Rajants Kinetic Mesh networks provide industrial customers with full mobility, allowing them to take their private network applications and data anywhere. With successful deployments in more than 70 countries for customers in military, mining, ports, rail, oil & gas, petrochemical plants, municipalities, and agriculture. Rajant is headquartered in Malvern, Pennsylvania, with additional facilities and offices in Arizona and Kentucky. For more information, visit Rajant.com or follow Rajant on LinkedIn and Twitter.

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Pune, March 04, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Battery Management System Market :The development in power generation industries will contribute significant growth to the battery management system market, says Fortune Business Insights in a report, Titled Battery Management System Market Size, Share and Global Trend By Type (Centralized, Distributed, Modular), By Battery Type (Lithium-ion Battery, Lead-Acid Battery, Nickel Battery, Flow Battery, Others), By Application (Automotive, Energy Storage, Consumer Electronics, Renewables, Telecom, Healthcare, Military & Defence, Others) and Geography Forecast till 2022-2029. The increasing production and demand for hybrid vehicles will enable the growth of the market.

According to the report, the centralized battery management segment is expected to witness high growth during the forecast period owing to its economical price and least expandable as compared to other battery management systems. Furthermore, lithium-ion batteries will account for maximum share in the market owing to its increasing application in various end-use industries. In addition, surge in the renewable, telecom, and power generation industries will aid the expansion of the battery management system market size.

Request a Sample Copy of Report: https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/enquiry/request-sample-pdf/battery-management-system-market-101311

Companies in the Battery Management System Market are:

Toshiba Electronic Devices and Storage Corporation

FICOSA

Schneider Electric

Lithium Werks

Johnson Matthey

Analog Devices

Nuvation Energy

Texas Instruments Incorporated

Renesas Electronics

Orion BMS

NXP Semiconductors

Accurate Ampere

PowerTech Systems

AVL among others.

The report provides a meticulous study of the battery management system market trends. It further shes lights on some of the recent innovations and developments made by companies. It discusses every aspect in detail and provides factual data for the same.

Click here to get the short-term and long-term impact of COVID-19 on this market.

Please visit: https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/industry-reports/battery-management-system-market-101311

Key Industry Development

In July 2019, Vertical Partners West LLC announced a collaborative agreement with Teledyne Energy Systems Inc for expansion of the product portfolios. The companies are involved in the supply and servicing of the batteries, battery management system, drones, and fuel cells among others

In February 2018, Lithium Werk B.V acquired Valence Technology Inc to expand its footprint and strengthen the product portfolio. The company is focused on increasing the battery management system and valence module sales by expanding the product portfolio

Increasing Sales of Hybrid Vehicles Will Back Growth

The growing application of battery management systems in calculating peak power, maximum DoD, and average power among others. This factor will impetus growth and fuel demand for batter management systems. The collaborative agreement between Vertical Partners West LLC and Teledyne Energy Systems Inc will create lucrative growth opportunities for the market. The aim of the former company is to expand its product portfolio. The companies are involved in the supply and servicing of the batteries, battery management system, drones, and fuel cells among others. Moreover, the acquisition of Lithium Werk B.V is predicted to accelerate the growth of the market. For instance, Lithium Werk B.V acquired Valence Technology Inc. to expand its footprint and strengthen the product portfolio. The company focusses on increasing the battery management system and valence module sales by expanding the product portfolio.

However, the battery management systems need battery monitoring systems for generating additional required information related to different parameters which add in the cost of the battery management systems. This factor is expected to restrict the growth of the market during the forecast period.

Speak to Our Analyst: https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/enquiry/queries/battery-management-system-market-101311

Battery Management Systems Market Historic Data:

Industry Trends: Global Revenue, Status, and Outlook.

Global Revenue, Status, and Outlook. Market Segment: By Types, By Applications, By Regions/ Geography.

By Types, By Applications, By Regions/ Geography. Competitive Landscape: By Manufacturers, Development Trends .

By Manufacturers, Development Trends Product Revenue for Top Players: Market Share, Growth Rate, Current Market Situation Analysis.

Market Share, Growth Rate, Current Market Situation Analysis. Sales Revenue: Market Share, Growth Rate, Current Market Analysis.

Increasing Energy Demand Will Boost Growth in North America

In order to curb the changing climatic conditions, the U.S is planning to add new renewable capacities in the coming future. For instance, Texas, Lowa, and Illinois are planning to add wind power capacities of more than 6 GW in the year 2019 as reported by the U.S Energy Information Administration. The market in North America is expected to grow at a decent pace in the near future owing to increasing energy demand in the region. Europe has witnessed significant growth in the sales of electric vehicles in the recent past and the automotive industry is booming. As electric vehicles run on batteries, therefore this factor will boost the battery management market revenue in the region. Latin America is expected to witness significant growth owing to the increasing focus on adding new renewable capacities to meet the energy demands in the region. The surge in renewable solar capacities in South Africa and GCC countries will aid the market growth in the Middle East and Africa. The market in Asia Pacific is expected to grow rapidly owing to the increasing electric vehicle fleet along with the rising concern for CO2 emissions. The surge in the telecom industry and automotive industry will further contribute to the growth in Aisa Pacific.

Pre-Book Battery Management System Market Research Report: https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/checkout-page/101311

Geographical Regions covered in the report:

North America (USA and Canada)

Europe (UK, Germany, France and the rest of Europe)

Asia Pacific (China, Japan, India, and the rest of the Asia Pacific region)

Latin America (Brazil, Mexico, and the rest of Latin America)

Middle East and Africa (GCC and rest of the Middle East and Africa)

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 Value Chain

Key Mergers, Acquisitions, Partnerships, etc.

Covid-19 Impact on the Market

TOC Continued...!

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About Us:

Fortune Business Insights delivers accurate data and innovative corporate analysis, helping organizations of all sizes make appropriate decisions. We tailor novel solutions for our clients, assisting them to address various challenges distinct to their businesses. Our aim is to empower them with holistic market intelligence, providing a granular overview of the market they are operating in.

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Johannesburg, March 04, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- JOHANNESBURG, 1 MARCH 2022: MultiChoice Studios, the content sales and distribution arm of the MultiChoice Group, will be taking a new selection of premium African content to the world in 2022. The MultiChoice Group is home to one of Africas largest digital satellite television services, which includes the DStv and GOtv bouquets of channels as well as Showmax. A wide selection of content produced and commissioned by MultiChoice stars the very best talent from across the continent and delivers consistently superior production value, making it highly sought-after in both the Groups core African markets and in diverse international markets.

Established in 2013, MultiChoice Studios offers over 65 000 hours of content in a range of different formats and genres, showcasing African stories to the world. And further top-drawer content will be added throughout 2022.

MultiChoice Group is the largest producer of original television content on the continent, says Mauro Black, director of content sales and distribution for MultiChoice Studios, and our extensive catalogue features titles that appeal to a wide range of audiences.

All of our co-produced and commissioned titles are in high demand and, in 2021, we saw incredible growth in that demand. We licensed seven times more series and movies than we did during the previous year, placing us firmly on the world stage as a leading television content provider.

With its continuing focus on and investment in African storytelling and talent, the Group has recently launched The Wife, a true African original, which is based on characters from the critically acclaimed series of novels by leading author, Dudu Busani-Dube. This title has proven to be immensely popular in both South Africa and the SADC region. Filmed in isiZulu, the telenovela is due to be dubbed into French for distribution to intercontinental and international markets through Canal+, a premium French-language television channel.

MultiChoice has a long history of licensing titles to Canal+ and demand for its content in the markets the channel serves is growing. The licensing of The Wife also highlights a developing trend among many buyers, who are requesting bundled packages that contain both evergreen dramas and new releases. This is testament to the quality of the productions on offer and also to the fact that they meet all technical requirements for dubbing into other languages.

Additional titles in the MultiChoices world-class catalogue of series include the romantic comedy-drama, Entangled; the gripping human drama, Lioness; the haunting crime series Reyka; and the exciting political drama, The Republic, which showcases the very best scriptwriting, acting and production talent the continent has to offer.

The line-up of movies is just as broad, with Glasshouse being an outstanding recent example. The paranormal drama, produced in 2020, received glowing reviews at several festivals around the world, including at Fantasia in Canada and at the New Zealand Film Festival. Kelsey Egans dystopian take on family, secrets and survival was released in the UK on Sky, iTunes, Amazon, Google X Box and Virgin Media, followed by releases in Australia and New Zealand. The interest in and demand for this film is well earned, and it has led to even more buyers taking an interest in MultiChoices catalogue of movies, many of which have global appeal.

Just one of the many defining features of the authenticity of our content is that we produce many shows in African languages, says Black. The hugely entertaining Afrikaans comedy, Troukoors, which tells the story of a wedding planner and her friends as they navigate life and love, is just one example.

In the docuseries genre, the gripping series, Devilsdorp has proven to be equally popular, weaving the chilling tale of a religious cults murderous spree.

As a leading and credible source of the African narrative, MultiChoice is not only showcasing and advancing filmmaking in Africa, says Black, it is also showcasing African talent on the global stage.

MultiChoice Studios offers access to this vast treasure trove of storytelling and is the destination of choice for content buyers from around the world. It is the best place for the international film and television industry to find quality, award-winning African content.

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Dublin, March 04, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The "Global IoT in Agriculture Market: Focus on System, Application, and Country-Wise Analysis - Analysis and Forecast, 2019-2026" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

The global IoT in agriculture market was valued at $21.99 billion in 2021, which is expected to grow with a CAGR of 10.1% and reach $35.55 billion by 2026.

With the recent advancements in the industry, a transformation is expected to be witnessed as more and more companies are enhancing their product portfolio by introducing data acquisition, agricultural robotics, and analytic services.

IoT in Agriculture

Internet of Things (IoT) is a term which refers to the connection of devices to the internet that allows the generation and transfer of massive amounts of data. IoT creates a virtuous cycle that can generate even more precise and tailored products, pushing the boundaries, which helps in digitalization for agriculture.

IoT enables devices entrenched with sensors to connect and interact with each other by using the internet. In the agriculture sector, various devices can be remotely monitored and controlled in real-time, including anything from sheds, tractors, pumps, and weather stations, and computers.

IoT enables one to monitor farm conditions and infrastructure remotely which helps reduce time on field, labor efforts, and investment capital among others allowing the farmers to focus on other things.

Impact of COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on almost all major industries throughout the world, including the agricultural industry. The pandemic has led to economic instability throughout the world, and the GDP for all countries declined in 2020. The pandemic's potential impact on the adoption of the Internet of Things (IoT) has increased the traction of sensing technology in the agricultural sector.

Market Segmentation

IoT in Agriculture Market by System Type

The IoT in agriculture market (by systems) was dominated by sensing systems which generated a revenue of $6.72 billion in 2021. Sensor technology constitutes one of the most crucial parts of the development of IoT solutions.

These sensor developments aid in the measurement of various production factors such as soil moisture, nutrients in the soil, weed density, and solar radiation.

IoT in Agriculture Market by Application

The IoT in agriculture market (by application) was dominated by the precision crop farming application area, which generated a revenue of $8.60 billion in 2021. The gradual adoption of smartphones, access to high-speed internet, availability of affordable and reliable satellites for positioning and imagery, and technological advancements in farming equipment have led to the high prevalence and popularity of precision crop farming techniques and equipment.

IoT in Agriculture Market by Region

North America was estimated to hold the highest share of about 35.7% in 2021, thereby accounting for a value of $7.84 billion in the same year. The highest contributing country in the North America IoT in agriculture market is the U.S. due to the prevalence of advanced technology and its implications in the farming sector to increase production.

Key Market Players and Competition Synopsis

Key players operating in the global IoT in agriculture market analyzed and profiled in the study involve companies that provide the required technology for deployment in the agriculture industry. Moreover, a detailed competitive benchmarking of the players operating in the global IoT in agriculture market has been done to help the reader understand how players stack against each other, presenting a clear market landscape.

Recent Developments in IoT in Agriculture Market

In June 2021, Bosch and BASF partnered to expand business in smart farming technologies.

In July 2021, John Deere and Ericson, Brazil partnered to provide mobile IoT solutions in the agricultural sector.

In August 2021, John Deere acquired Bear Flag Robotics for technology service solutions.

Key Topics Covered:

1 Markets

1.1 Industry Outlook

1.1.1 Market Definition

1.1.2 Emerging Trends in Global IoT in Agriculture Market

1.1.2.1 Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the Agricultural Industry

1.1.2.2 Securing the Agriculture Value Chain with Blockchain Technology

1.1.3 Ecosystem/Ongoing Programs

1.1.3.1 Government Initiatives

1.1.3.2 Consortiums and Associations

1.1.3.3 Regulatory Bodies

1.2 Supply Chain Analysis

1.3 Patent Analysis

1.3.1 Patent Analysis (by Status)

1.3.2 Patent Analysis (by Inventor Type)

1.3.2.1 Patents Analysis (by Patent Office)

1.4 Business Dynamics

1.4.1 Business Drivers

1.4.1.1 Increasing Demand for Global Food Production

1.4.1.2 Surging Use of Advanced Technologies in Agriculture

1.4.1.3 Emerging Complexities in Data-Driven Farming

1.4.1.4 Decreasing Workforce in Agricultural Sector

1.4.2 Business Challenges

1.4.2.1 Lack of Proper Internet and Network Connectivity

1.4.2.2 Cyber and Online Data Security

1.4.2.3 Huge Setup and Subscription Costs

1.4.2.4 Reluctance to Adopt and Lack of Technical Awareness

1.4.3 Business Strategies

1.4.3.1 Product Development and Innovation

1.4.3.2 Market Developments

1.4.3.3 Other Strategies

1.4.4 Corporate Strategies

1.4.4.1 Mergers and Acquisitions

1.4.4.2 Partnerships, Collaborations, and Joint Ventures

1.4.5 Business Opportunities

1.4.5.1 Growing Trend of Agriculture Service Economy

1.4.5.2 Increasing Investments in Agricultural Technology Sector

1.4.5.3 Increasing Market Opportunities in Developing Countries

1.4.5.4 Favorable Government Initiatives to Support IoT in Agriculture

1.4.6 Impact of COVID-19 on the Global IoT in Agriculture Market

2 Application

2.1 Global IoT in Agriculture Market (by Application)

2.1.1 Precision Crop Farming

2.1.2 Livestock Monitoring and Management

2.1.3 Indoor Farming

2.1.4 Aquaculture

2.1.5 Others

2.2 Demand Analysis of the Global IoT in Agriculture Market (by Application)

3 Products

3.1 Global IoT in Agriculture Market (by System Type)

3.1.1 Sensing

3.1.2 Communication

3.1.3 Cloud Computing

3.1.4 Data Management System

3.2 Demand Analysis of the Global IoT in Agriculture Market (by System Type)

4 Regions

4.1 North America

4.1.1 Market

4.1.1.1 Key IoT in Agriculture Systems Providers Operating in North America

4.1.1.2 Business Drivers

4.1.1.3 Business Challenges

4.1.2 Application

4.1.2.1 North America IoT in Agriculture Market (by Application), $Million, 2019-2026

4.1.3 Country

4.2 South America

4.3 Europe

4.4 Middle East and Africa

4.5 Asia-Pacific and Japan

5 Markets - Competitive Benchmarking & Company Profiles

5.1 Competitive Benchmarking

5.2 Precision Crop Farming

5.3 Company Profiles

DEERE & COMPANY

Microsoft Corporation

CNH Industrial NV

Robert Bosch GmbH

Agrivi

The Climate Corporation

Granular Inc.

Harvest Croo Robotics, LLC

AeroFarms

OSRAM GmbH

AmHydro

Kalera

Heliospectra AB

Signify Holding (Koninklijke Philips N.V.)

Connecterra B.V.

DeLaval

Allflex USA Inc.

Boumatic LLC

Aquabyte, Inc.

AKVA Group ASA

Eruvaka Technologies

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/pkda0q

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Dublin, March 04, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The "Global Intelligent PDU Market (2021-2026) by Application Type, Type, Power Phase Type, Industry Type, Geography, Competitive Analysis and the Impact of Covid-19 with Ansoff Analysis" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.



The Global Intelligent PDU Market is estimated to be USD 1.45 Bn in 2021 and is expected to reach USD 2.15 Bn by 2026, growing at a CAGR of 8.15%.



Market Dynamics

The Global Intelligent PDU Market is driving due to the increasing demand for intelligent power distribution units for high-power capabilities in high power density environments. Rising environmental and safety concerns are fuelling the market's growth.

Additionally, rising demand for intelligent products and power monitoring solutions integrated with intelligent PDUs, and increasing adoption of intelligent PDU in various industries such as telecom & IT, healthcare, transportation, BFSI, energy, government, and industrial manufacturing for making competent manufacturing bodies are driving the growth of the market. On the other hand, the high implementation cost of intelligent power distribution units (PDU) compared to basic PDU, and rising density in more prominent data centers restrict the market's growth.



Furthermore, increasing demand and adoption of cloud computing and other communication solutions worldwide and the rising implantation of portable data centers will create potential opportunities for the market to grow in the forecasted period. Moreover, lacks of awareness related to the benefits of intelligent PDU is a challenge for the market's growth.



Market Segmentation

The Global Intelligent PDU Market is segmented further based on Application Type, Type, Power Phase Type, Industry Type, and Geography.

By Application Type, the market is classified into Educational Labs, Datacentres, VoIP Phone Systems, Industrial Power Solutions, and Commercial Applications/Networks Closet.

By Type, the market is classified into Metered, Monitored, Switched, Automatic Transfer Switch, Hot Swap, and Dual Circuit.

By Power Phase Type, the market is classified into Single Phase and Three Phase.

By Industry Type, the market is classified into Telecom & IT, BFSI, Healthcare, Transportation, Industrial Manufacturing, Energy, and Government.

By Geography, America is projected to lead the market.

Company Profiles

Some of the companies covered in this report are ABB Ltd, AGC Networks Limited, Cisco Systems, Inc, Cyber Power Systems, Inc, Eaton Corporation plc, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Legrand, nVent Electric plc, Schneider Electric SE, Vertiv Group Corp, etc.



Countries Studied

America (Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru, United States, Rest of Americas)

Europe (Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Russia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, Rest of Europe)

Middle-East and Africa (Egypt, Israel, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, United Arab Emirates, Rest of MEA)

Asia-Pacific (Australia, Bangladesh, China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Taiwan, Rest of Asia-Pacific)

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 Intelligent PDU 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 competitive positioning tool.

Key Topics Covered:



1 Report Description



2 Research Methodology



3 Executive Summary



4 Market Influencers

4.1 Drivers

4.1.1 Increasing Demand in High-Power Density Environments

4.1.2 Rising Demand for Power Monitoring Solutions in Data Centres

4.1.3 Rising Concern Related to Environment and Safety

4.2 Restraints

4.2.1 High Implementation Cost of Intelligent PDU

4.2.2 Rising Density in Data Centres

4.3 Opportunities

4.3.1 Growing Demand and Adoption of Cloud Computing

4.3.2 Rising Portable Datacentres

4.4 Challenges

4.4.1 Lack of Awareness of Intelligent PDU



5 Market Analysis

5.1 Porter's Five Forces Analysis

5.2 Impact of COVID-19

5.3 Ansoff Matrix Analysis



6 Global Intelligent PDU Market, By Application Type

6.1 Introduction

6.2 Educational Labs

6.3 Datacentres

6.4 VoIP Phone Systems

6.5 Industrial Power Solutions

6.6 Commercial Applications/Networks Closet



7 Global Intelligent PDU Market, By Type

7.1 Introduction

7.2 Metered

7.3 Monitored

7.4 Switched

7.5 Automatic Transfer Switch

7.6 Hot Swap

7.7 Dual Circuit



8 Global Intelligent PDU Market, By Power Phase Type

8.1 Introduction

8.2 Single Phase

8.3 Three Phase



9 Global Intelligent PDU Market, By Industry Type

9.1 Introduction

9.2 Telecom & IT

9.3 BFSI

9.4 Healthcare

9.5 Transportation

9.6 Industrial Manufacturing

9.7 Energy

9.8 Government



10 Global Intelligent PDU 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 ABB Ltd

12.2 AGC Networks Limited

12.3 Anord Mardix

12.4 BMC Manufacturing, LLC

12.5 Chatsworth Products, Inc

12.6 Cisco Systems, Inc

12.7 Cyber Power Systems, Inc

12.8 Cyber Switching Solutions

12.9 Delta Electronics, Inc

12.10 Eaton Corporation plc

12.11 Elcom International Pvt Ltd

12.12 Emerson Electric Co

12.13 Fujitsu Limited

12.14 General Electric Company

12.15 Hewlett Packard Enterprise

12.16 Labhya Tech Systems

12.17 Legrand

12.18 Leviton Manufacturing Company, Inc

12.19 NETRACK

12.20 nVent Electric plc

12.21 PDU eXpert UK Ltd

12.22 Powertek

12.23 Rittal Holdings Ltd

12.24 Schneider Electric SE

12.25 Shenzhen HaiPengXin Electronics Co Ltd

12.26 Sunshine Networking Solutions

12.27 The Siemon Company

12.28 TIM Infratech Private Limited

12.29 Vertiv Group Corp

12.30 VLP Electric Company Private Limited



13 Appendix



For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/fcxndv

Attachment
Not for distribution to United States newswire services or for release publication, distribution or dissemination directly, or indirectly, in whole or in part, in or into the United States.



TORONTO, March 04, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- SAVANNA CAPITAL CORP. (Savanna) (TSX-V: SAC.P) is pleased to announce that, further to its press release dated January 27, 2022, it has entered into a definitive agreement dated March 1, 2022 (the Definitive Agreement) with 1000090242 Ontario Inc., a privately held corporation existing under the laws of the Province of Ontario (San Luis ON), relating to the proposed business combination (the Proposed Transaction) with Exploranciones de SL Cordero, S.A. de C.V. (San Luis MX), a wholly-owned subsidiary of San Luis ON (San Luis MX and San Luis ON are collectively referred to hereinafter as San Luis).

San Luis holds the mineral claims covering approximately 1,216.99 ha in the Municipality of San Luis del Cordero in the State of Durango, Mexico (the San Luis Property). The San Luis Property features three different mineralisation styles, high-grade silver-copper veins, which have been mined in the 70's, a silver, copper, zinc-bearing skarn deposit and manto-style mineralisation. The skarn has been drill tested for a strike-length of 750 metres, but has a potential of 3.5 kilometres of total strike length with known mineralisation zones.

Figures accompanying this announcement are available at

https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/965079fa-4e25-4940-8b7f-0c7241de717d

https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/77b3bdff-dc91-4481-8707-eebbd5dfc11c

Definitive Agreement and Proposed Transaction

The Proposed Transaction is to be completed pursuant to a three-cornered amalgamation among Savanna, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Savanna (Subco), and San Luis ON, whereby Subco and San Luis ON will amalgamate and continue as one corporation (the Amalgamation), and the shareholders of San Luis ON will receive shares of Savanna (referred to on a post-closing basis as the Resulting Issuer).

Pursuant to the Definitive Agreement, and upon the satisfaction or waiver of the conditions set out therein, in connection with the closing of the Proposed Transaction, among other things:

Savanna will change its name to Plata Corp. or such other name requested by San Luis and acceptable to Savanna and the applicable regulatory authorities (the  Name Change );

); following completion of the foregoing, the Amalgamation will be completed, and the San Luis ON shareholders will exchange each San Luis ON common share (the  San Luis Shares ) for one common share of the Resulting Issuer (the  Resulting Issuer Shares ); and

) for one common share of the Resulting Issuer (the  ); and the board of directors and management of the Resulting Issuer will be replaced with nominees of San Luis.

The Resulting Issuer will hold, on a consolidated basis, all of the assets and will be subject to all of the liabilities of Savanna and San Luis, and will continue the business of San Luis.

Completion of the Proposed Transaction is subject to a number of conditions, including, but not limited to, San Luis ON completing a non-brokered private placement of subscription receipts for minimum gross proceeds of $1,500,000 (the Concurrent Financing), as discussed in greater detail below; Savanna completing the Name Change; TSX Venture Exchange (TSXV) acceptance of the Proposed Transaction; and receipt of the necessary approvals of the shareholders of Savanna and San Luis ON.

The Definitive Agreement will be posted to Savannas SEDAR profile at www.sedar.com and contains additional details regarding the Proposed Transaction, including as to break fees. As well, further details with respect to the Proposed Transaction are summarized in Savannas news release dated January 27, 2022.

Management

Following the completion of the Proposed Transaction, the Resulting Issuer will be led by: Kenny Choi, CEO; Ryan Ptolemy, CFO; and Aaron Atin, Corporate Secretary. The Resulting Issuers board of directors is expected to consist of four directors.

Kenny Choi  CEO

Kenny Choi is a corporate lawyer who graduated from Western Universitys JD/HBA program in 2013. He was previously an associate at a top-tier Bay Street firm, where he honed his skills in areas including equity and debt financing, mergers and acquisitions, fund formation and private and public securities law. Mr. Choi has occupied various management roles in publicly-traded CSE, TSXV, TSX and NEO companies, in particular in the mining industry.

Ryan Ptolemy - CFO

Mr. Ptolemy is a CPA, CGA and CFA charterholder who also attained a bachelor of arts from Western University. Mr. Ptolemy serves as chief financial officer to many public and private companies in the investment, fintech and resource sectors. Mr. Ptolemy formerly served as chief financial officer for an independent investment dealer in Toronto, where he was responsible for financial reporting, budgeting and the company's internal controls.

Aaron Atin  Corporate Secretary

Mr. Atin is a corporate and securities lawyer with extensive experience in securities, M&A and corporate finance. Mr. Atin is currently a legal consultant to various Toronto Stock Exchange, TSX Venture Exchange and Canadian Securities Exchange-listed companies in various sectors. These include mining, financial services, agriculture and technology. Mr. Atin began his legal career as a securities law associate at a large Toronto corporate law firm. He holds an engineering diploma from Centennial College, a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Waterloo and a J.D. from the University of Toronto, Faculty of Law.



Russell Starr Chairman of the Board

Mr. Starr is an entrepreneur and financial professional, focused on private and public mining & exploration, corporate advisory, corporate development, and M&A. Mr. Starr has over 20 years of corporate finance, M&A, investment and business development experience. Mr. Starr is currently the Chief Executive Officer and Executive Chairman of DeFi Technologies Inc. (NEO: DEFI) and a director of Trillium Gold Mines Inc. (TSXV: TGM), and Leviathan Gold Ltd. (TSXV: LVX).

Vincent Chen  Director

Mr. Chen is a Chartered Professional Accountant (CPA) who obtained his BBA of Accounting from the Beedie School of Business at Simon Fraser University. Mr. Chen has an extensive background in the mining and precious metals industry having previously worked as a Senior Analyst at Yamana Gold Inc.  one of Canadas largest gold producers  where he honed his skills in financial reporting, financial modelling, equity and debt financing, and Life of Mine assessment. Mr. Chen was also formerly a Senior Associate at PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) working within the mining assurance practice where he specialized in IFRS and US GAAP reporting standards for large public mining corporations in Toronto.

Craig Marchuk Director

Mr. Marchuk is a seasoned M&A leader with deep experience in M&A lifecycle management and transaction execution. Mr. Marchuk has 10+ years of experience managing M&A transactions, structuring unique solutions and raising capital. He started his career at boutique energy-focused investment banks but was most recently at Nutrien, the worlds largest provider of agricultural inputs, services and solutions. In his role, he was responsible for the analysis and execution of mergers, acquisitions, and divestitures that further Nutriens global strategy implementation. He played a key role in 20+ transactions totalling over $75Bn in enterprise value. He attended the University of Calgary, where he earned a bachelors degree in Commerce majoring in Finance and a bachelors degree in Arts majoring in Economics. He also holds the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) designation.

Dmitri Kralik Director

Mr. Kralik is a financial consultant who provides corporate finance and advisory services. Mr. Kralik currently works with several public and private companies in various sectors and has an entrepreneurial background with experience growing companies from early-stage operations. Mr. Kralik is a CFA charterholder and holds an HBA from Ivey Business School.

Savanna Shareholder Meeting and Anticipated Closing

It is anticipated that an annual general and special shareholder meeting of Savanna to approve, among other matters, the Name Change, will take place on April 6, 2022. Further information on the Savanna Meeting Matters can be found in the management information circular of Savanna to be posted on Savannas SEDAR profile at www.sedar.com.

Concurrent Financing

Savanna has no material liabilities, approximately $40,000 in cash, 4,615,000 common shares (the Savanna Common Shares) and 443,200 options (the Savanna Options) issued and outstanding. Prior to the completion of the Transaction, it is anticipated that San Luis will complete a non-brokered private placement of approximately 10,000,000 units (the Target Units) at a price of C$0.15 per Target Unit for gross proceeds of approximately C$1,500,000.00 (the San Luis Offering). Each Target Unit shall entitle the unitholder to receive, upon satisfaction of certain escrow release conditions, and without payment of additional consideration, one common share in the capital of San Luis (a San Luis Common Share) and one common share purchase warrant (a Target Warrant) exercisable for 24 months from the date of the issuance at a price of C$0.25 per Target Warrant.



Qualified Persons

The scientific and technical information contained in this press release has been reviewed, prepared and approved by Dr. Andreas Rompel, PhD, Pr. Sci. Nat. (400274/04), FSAIMM, who is a Qualified Person as defined by National Instrument 43-101  Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects.

About Savanna

Savanna is a Capital Pool Company (as defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) listed on the Exchange.

About San Luis

San Luis ON is a private Ontario corporation that has a 100% interest in San Luis MX. San Luis MX. holds the mineral claims covering approximately 1,216.99 ha in the Municipality of San Luis del Cordero in the State of Durango, Mexico (the San Luis Property). Further details on the historical activities of San Luis and the San Luis Property will be provided in the listing statement for the Resulting Issuer and the National Instrument 43-101: Standards of Disclosure of Mineral Projects with respect to the San Luis Property.

Further Information

For further information regarding the proposed Transaction, please contact:

Savanna Capital Corp.

Kenny Choi

Tel: (416) 861-2262

E-mail: Kenny.choi@fmresources.ca

San Luis

Aaron Atin

Tel: (416) 861-5888

Email: aaron.atin@fmresources.ca

All information contained in this news release with respect to Savanna and San Luis was supplied by the parties respectively for inclusion herein, and each party and its directors and officers have relied on the other party for any information concerning the other party.

Completion of the Transaction is subject to a number of conditions, including but not limited to, Exchange acceptance. Where applicable, the transaction cannot close until the required shareholder approval is obtained. There can be no assurance that the transaction will be completed as proposed or at all.

Investors are cautioned that, except as disclosed in the management information circular or filing statement to be prepared in connection with the transaction, any information release or received with respect to the transaction may not be accurate or complete and should not be relied upon. Trading in the securities of a capital pool company should be considered highly speculative.

The TSX Venture Exchange Inc. has in no way passed upon the merits of the proposed transaction and has neither approved nor disapproved the contents of this news release

CAUTIONARY NOTE 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. In this news release, forward-looking statements relate, among other things, to: the terms and conditions of the proposed Transaction; the terms and conditions of the proposed Offering; use of proceeds raised in the Offering, the proposed officers and directors of the Resulting Issuer; and the business and operations of the Resulting Issuer after the proposed Transaction. Forward-looking statements are necessarily based upon a number of estimates and assumptions that, while considered reasonable, are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors which may cause the actual results and future events to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Such factors include, but are not limited to: general business, economic, competitive, political and social uncertainties; and the delay or failure to receive board, shareholder or regulatory approvals. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on the forward-looking statements and information contained in this news release.

Readers should not place undue reliance on the forward-looking statements and information contained in this news release. Savanna and San Luis assume no obligation to update the forward-looking statements of beliefs, opinions, projections, or other factors, should they change, except as required by law.

The securities to be offered in the Offering have not been, and will not be, registered under the U.S. Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the U.S. Securities Act) or any U.S. state securities laws, and may not be offered or sold in the United States or to, or for the account or benefit of, United States persons absent registration or any applicable exemption from the registration requirements of the U.S. Securities Act and applicable U.S. state securities laws. This news release shall not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy securities in the United States, nor shall there be any sale of these securities in any jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful.
VANCOUVER, British Columbia, March 04, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Silver Hammer Mining Corp. (CSE: HAMR/OTCQB:HAMRF) (Silver Hammer or the Company) is pleased to provide an update on ongoing targeting and permitting work at the Companys Silver Strand and Silverton Projects, respectively.



The Company has updated and refined its 3D model at its flagship Silver Strand Project with a series of proposed drillholes for a Phase II drill campaign that is designed to test continuity up to 220 metres below the existing mine workings and a further 165 metres down dip from Phase I drilling (see Figure 1).

The Company also continues to assess shallow targets along Silver Hammers 5.5 kilometre strike, where significant gold and silver surface samples were obtained during successful 2021 field work. The Company is in active discussions with local contractors and expects to commence its Phase II program during Q2/2022.

A graphic accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/334667ae-ada0-405b-a6d5-94390c392a9c

*Proposed holes shown in figure correspond to up to 17 drill holes totalling 2200 metres. Silver Hammer will drill a subset of the proposed hotels during the Phase II program.

Finally, the Company has applied for several drill permits at its Silverton Project in Nevada and expects to have permits in place by the end of Q2/2022. Recent sampling and mapping highlighted an interpreted extension of known surface mineralization to the SW under shallow cover, which prompted additional staking to expand the property. (See press release dated February 16, 2022 for more information).

Annual General Meeting

The Company also announces that its annual general meeting (the AGM) of shareholders has been scheduled for Thursday, March 31, 2022 at the offices of McMillan LLP located at Suite 1500, 1055 West Georgia Street, Vancouver, British Columbia. The proxy materials for the AGM have been filed on SEDAR and include, among other general matters, the election of the directors. Effective March 3, 2022, Mr. Dake resigned as a director of the Company to pursue other interests and will no longer be slated for election at the AGM.

The Company wishes to thank Mr. Dake for his contribution to the Company as one of the original members of the Companys board of directors.

Silver Hammer President and CEO, Morgan Lekstrom, stated: We are very pleased with how quickly and cost-effectively we have moved from the project acquisition stage to field work, targeting, permitting, and drilling during 2021. We look forward to building on our successful 2021 and are actively progressing towards a Phase II program at Silver Strand while concurrently advancing our targeting and permitting at Silverton.

Lekstrom continued, Wed also like to thank Michael Dake, who served as an initial board member of Lakewood Exploration before our recent progress and transition to Silver Hammer Mining and wish him all the best in his future endeavors.

Qualified Person

Technical aspects of this press release have been reviewed and approved by Philip Mulholland, P.Geo., the designated Qualified Person (QP) under National Instrument 43-101.

About Silver Hammer Mining Corp.

Silver Hammer Mining Corp. is a junior resource company advancing the flagship past-producing Silver Strand Mine in the Coeur dAlene Mining District in Idaho, USA, as well both the Eliza Silver Project and the Silverton Silver Mine in one of the worlds most prolific mining jurisdictions in Nevada and the Lacy Gold Project in British Columbia, Canada. The Company has commenced an initial drill program at Silver Strand that will test for silver and gold mineralization immediately below the mines lowest level extending only 90 metres below surface. Silver Hammer strives to become a multi-mine silver producer and will focus near-term exploration and drilling plans at the Companys Idaho and Nevada silver-gold assets.

(Mineralization hosted on adjacent and/or nearby properties is not necessarily indicative of mineralization hosted on the Companys property.)

On Behalf of the Board of Silver Hammer Mining Corp.

Morgan Lekstrom, President and CEO

Corporate Office: 551 Howe Street, Vancouver, British Columbia V6C 2C2, Canada

For investor relations inquiries, contact:

Kristina Pillon, High Tide Consulting Corp.

T: 604.908.1695

E: investors@silverhammermining.com





For media inquiries, contact:

Adam Bello, Primoris Group Inc.

T: 416.489.0092

E: media@primorisgroup.com

The CSE does not accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

The Canadian Securities Exchange has neither approved nor disapproved the contents of this press release.
Dublin, March 04, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The "Global Light Meter Market (2021-2026) by Application Type, Display Type, Type, Lux Range Type, Geography, Competitive Analysis and the Impact of Covid-19 with Ansoff Analysis" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.



The Global Light Meter Market is estimated to be USD 356.8 Mn in 2021 and is expected to reach USD 499.96 Mn by 2026, growing at a CAGR of 6.98%.



Market Dynamics

The Global Light Meter Market is driving because of government initiative towards standardization of protocols increasing demand from various industries. On the other hand, the availability of substitutes products such as light measuring devices and smartphone applications, including an in-built camera as a light sensor, restricts the market's growth.



Furthermore, increasing-price competitiveness due to many manufacturers with different pricing strategies is the challenge affecting the market's growth. Moreover, technological development such as wireless light meters, sharing data vis cloud computing for building automation, and Internet of Things (IoT) embedded solutions are creating opportunities for the market to grow in the forecasted period.



Market Segmentation

The Global Light Meter Market is segmented further based on Application Type, Display Type, Type, Lux Range Type, and Geography.

By Application Type, the market is classified into Clinics and Hospitals, Commercial Spaces, Manufacturing Plant and Warehouses, Photography and Cinematography, University Campus, Schools, and others.

By Display Type, the Light Meter market is classified into Analog and Digital.

By Type, the Light Meter market is classified into General-Purpose Light Meters, LED Light Metres, and UV Light Metres.

By Lux Range Type, the Light Meter market is classified into 0-200K Lux and Above 200K Lux.

By Geography, Asia Pacific is projected to lead the market.

Company Profiles

Some of the companies covered in this report are B&K Precision Corporation, Danaher Corporation, Hioki E.E. Corporation, KERN & SOHN, Konica Minolta Sensing Americas, Inc, Line Seiki Co Ltd, PCE Deutschland GmbH, Sekonic, and Testo SE & Co. KGaA, etc.



Countries Studied

America (Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru, United States, Rest of Americas)

Europe (Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Russia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, Rest of Europe)

Middle-East and Africa (Egypt, Israel, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, United Arab Emirates, Rest of MEA)

Asia-Pacific (Australia, Bangladesh, China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Taiwan, Rest of Asia-Pacific)

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 Light Meter 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 competitive positioning tool.

Key Topics Covered:



1 Report Description



2 Research Methodology



3 Executive Summary



4 Market Influencers

4.1 Drivers

4.1.1 Increasing Demand by Various Industries

4.1.2 Government Initiative Towards Standardising the Protocols

4.2 Restraints

4.2.1 Availability of Substitutes Products

4.3 Opportunities

4.3.1 Developing Light Metre Wireless Technologies

4.3.2 Technological Advancement with IoT Integration

4.4 Challenges

4.4.1 Competitive Price Due to Growing Manufactures



5 Market Analysis

5.1 Porter's Five Forces Analysis

5.2 Impact of COVID-19

5.3 Ansoff Matrix Analysis

6 Global Light Meter Market, By Application Type

6.1 Introduction

6.2 Clinics and Hospitals

6.3 Commercial Spaces

6.4 Manufacturing Plant and Warehouses

6.5 Photography and Cinematography

6.6 University Campuses and Schools

6.7 Others



7 Global Light Meter Market, By Display Type

7.1 Introduction

7.2 Analog

7.3 Digital



8 Global Light Meter Market, By Type

8.1 Introduction

8.2 General-Purpose Light Meters

8.3 LED Light Metres

8.4 UV Light Metres



9 Global Light Meter Market, By Lux Range Type

9.1 Introduction

9.2 0-200K Lux

9.3 Above 200K Lux



10 Global Light Meter 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 ATP Instrumentation Ltd

12.2 B&K Precision Corporation

12.3 Caltech Engineering Services

12.4 Center Technologies

12.5 Danaher Corporation

12.6 Edmund Optics, Ltd

12.7 Hanna Instruments

12.8 HIOKI E.E. Corporation

12.9 Huato Electric Co Ltd

12.10 International Light Technologies, Inc

12.11 KERN & SOHN

12.12 KIMO Instruments

12.13 Konica Minolta Sensing Americas, Inc

12.14 Kyoritsu Electrical Instruments Works Ltd

12.15 Line Seiki Co Ltd

12.16 Lutron Electronics Co, Inc

12.17 Martindale Electric Co Ltd

12.18 Nordic Scientific & Natural Solutions AB

12.19 Panomex, Inc

12.20 PCE Deutschland GmbH

12.21 Reed Instruments

12.22 Sekonic Corporation

12.23 Shenzhen Sanpo Instrument Co Ltd

12.24 STEP Systems GmbH

12.25 Sunshine Instruments

12.26 Testo SE & Co. KGaA

12.27 TENMARS ELECTRONICS CO LTD

12.28 Teledyne Technologies Incorporated

12.29 TQC Sheen B.V

12.30 Yokogawa Test & Measurement Corporation



13 Appendix

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/tp14fm

Attachment
SAN MIGUEL DE ALLENDE, Mexico, March 04, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Sovereign X (SX) announced the release of its public Beta platform (SovereignX.com). SX utilizes a unique one-platform, two-channel approach geared to audiences interested in crypto technical trading and/or expat and international living.

SX Wealth provides premium subscription advisory services that include innovative technical models and indicators, trading signals, and real-time market analysis for the crypto market. SX International delivers digital products to prospective expats interested in living and working abroad. Both channels offer consulting services and will release separate Master Class series this year.

The platform has been in development since late 2018. Until now, SX's free and premium digital content, products, and services have been available to a private group of Beta users. However, products and services can be purchased or reserved during its public Beta.

SX Wealth Your life. Your assets. Your terms

The SX Wealth VolatilityEdge system is the engine for SX Wealth Advisory Servicespowering institutional-grade research and proprietary trading signal systems and technical indicators to inform human-curated briefings, drive advanced trading analysis, and deliver actionable next steps.

Co-founder L. Glenn Lawrence, a commodity trading advisor and risk management & trading consultant, writes the SX Wealth crypto advisory's daily commentary.

SX Wealth's crypto advisory shows users how to turn crypto market volatility into their greatest asset versus a conventional "buy and hold" strategy. In addition, SX Wealth's 30-day trial subscription includes a free private consultation with Lawrence.

Lawrence developed SX's Wealth's trading signals using the high-tech, old-school trend following models he created in 1998 and has used successfully for private global institutional and individual clients, primarily in the energy and financial derivatives markets.

In 2018, co-founder Brett Holmes and Lawrence recruited a colleague of Lawrence's, Damon Hart, a Greenwich, Connecticut-based commodity trading advisor and systems consultant. Hart collaborated in backtesting and optimizing SX Wealth's algorithmic models specifically for crypto assets. The results exceeded expectations.

Based on these findings, SX built a team, retaining a technical designer and programmer, a former tenured analyst for Goldman Sachs and crypto expert, and a content editor. SX also engaged an initial group of Beta-testers. For more than 30 months, SX Wealth's team tested their web-based models for functionality, usability, reliability, and accuracy.

"Too many investors mistakenly use a traditional 'buy and hold' strategy or try to use their own 'crystal ball' to make sense of crypto's market volatility," said Lawrence. "SX Wealth's technical trading methodology provides a systematic way to buy and sell crypto that helps remove uncertainty, giving you a disciplined approach designed to make more from your investments while managing the crypto market's wild swings."

SX Wealth | Crypto Advisory's models will cover Bitcoin and Ethereum (Ether), and cover crypto's top 50 coins starting this summer.

SX International Life on your terms

SX International demystifies expat life, helping users identify and simplify strategies for "internationalizing" their lives. The channel offers digital books, reports, and briefsinexpensive, easy-to-digest solutions for living and working anywhere in the world.

SX International's digital products are sourced, written, and produced by Sovereign X team members who have lived, worked, run businesses, and raised children as expats.

Digital products range from the 'Ultimate Plan A Blueprint to an International Life' to the '5 Best Global Second Passports [Third Edition]' to 101 briefs and reports for top-ranked countries for expats, including editions written explicitly for prospective women expats.

"SX International includes SX Expat Advisor, a free online assessment that provides the perfect starting point for becoming an expat," said Holmes, an entrepreneur and marketing consultant who has spent the majority of his time since 2001 living and working from outside of the United States.

Holmes and Lawrence met in San Miguel de Allende, a colonial-era town in the mountains of central Mexico, in November 2001. Holmes had recently moved from Los Angeles to San Miguel, seeking a better lifestyle for his young family following the dot-com bubble burst. They met during a visit by Lawrence, who was exploring a move from New York. Lawrence and his family relocated in August 2002.

Their commonality? Both Holmes and Lawrence were highly successful yet seeking to build a more rewarding lifestyle outside of the conventional for themselves and their families.

Some 15 years later, they started work in earnest on the Sovereign X business model, convinced that there were significant growth opportunities in the crypto technical trading space and the expat and international living segment. Furthermore, they recognized important synergies among these demographics, thus their one platform, two-channel approach.

Sovereign X will formally launch in fall 2022.

For more information, contact Brett Holmes at brett@SovereignX.com or +1 (713) 244-4178.

Related Images











Image 1: Sovereign X platform releases public Beta platform









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A transgender woman who was fatally shot inside her Houston apartment late last week had recently immigrated to the U.S. fleeing anti-trans violence in Central America, her friends said.

Paloma Vazquez was found inside her apartment in Gulfton, in southwest Houston, on Saturday. She had been shot twice, authorities said. There was no sign of forced entry into her apartment.

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Vazquez, who had arrived in the U.S. six months ago, was involved with the Organization for Latina Trans in Texas. A spokesperson for the group told the Daily News that the 29-year-old was from Honduras and that she had fled her native country because she was afraid of being targeted because she was trans.

On Thursday, a large group of friends, human rights activists, as well as members of the transgender community gathered outside Houston City Hall to honor her life and bring attention to the alarming increase in the number of killings of transgender women of color in the U.S.

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Last year marked the deadliest year on record for trans people in the United States, with at least 56 deaths  nearly all of them were Black and Latina trans women. The previous record was registered in 2020, when at least 44 trans people were murdered in the country.

Vazquez is likely the fifth trans person life killed by violence in 2022. The other four were trans women of color, according to the Human Rights Campaign.

Paloma Vazquez, a transgender woman, was found shot inside her Gulfton-area apartment on Houston's southwest side on Saturday.

Some of Vazquezs friends at the rally said that she was killed because of her gender identity.

Whenever a trans person is killed, they are killed because they are trans, her friend Gia Pacheco told KTRK-TV, adding that she had moved to the U.S. hoping that she would be safer here.

As most trans women who are here from Latina America, they are here because they are scared of being killed in their own country, she said.

Another friend, Valentin Terrazas, agreed. Theres a lot of transphobia in Latin America. They come here for refuge and to better their lives and have a future here.

Authorities are still searching for possible suspects.
Dublin, March 04, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The "Global Acoustic Wave Sensor Market (2021-2026) by the Type, Device, Sensing Parameters, End-User, Geography, Competitive Analysis and the Impact of Covid-19 with Ansoff Analysis" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.



The Global Acoustic Wave Sensor Market is estimated to be USD 460.89 Mn in 2021 and is expected to reach USD 1,082.4 Mn by 2026, growing at a CAGR of 18.62%.



Increasing applications of acoustic wave sensors in poor radio frequency areas and vehicles are escalating the growth of the Global Acoustic Wave Sensor Market. The rising demand for surface acoustic wave (SAW) temperature sensors due to their higher response rate, accuracy, low cost, among others, are majorly driving the market. These acoustic wave sensors have also found their applications in smart environment monitoring and surveillance, further accelerating the market growth. However, the technical issues associated with the sensors, such as high energy consumption and sensitivity, are likely to hinder the market growth.



Technological advancements are anticipated to propel acoustic wave sensor application in medical, consumer electronics, and other industry verticals.



Market Segmentation

The Global Acoustic Wave Sensor Market Is Segmented further based on the Type, Device, Sensing Parameters, End-User, and Geography.

By Type, the market is classified as Surface Acoustic Wave Sensor and Bulk Acoustic Wave Sensor.

By Device, the market is classified as Resonators and Delay Lines.

By Sensing Parameter, the market is classified As Temperature, Pressure, Humidity, Chemical Vapor/Gas, Torque, Mass, Viscosity, and Others.

By End-User, the market is classified as Defence, Automotive, Industrial, Healthcare, Food and Beverages, Environment, and Others.

By Geography, America is projected to lead the market.

Countries Studied

America (Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru, United States, Rest of Americas)

Europe (Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Russia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, Rest of Europe)

Middle-East and Africa (Egypt, Israel, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, United Arab Emirates, Rest of MEA)

Asia-Pacific (Australia, Bangladesh, China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Taiwan, Rest of Asia-Pacific)

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 Acoustic Wave Sensor 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 competitive positioning tool.

Key Topics Covered:



1 Report Description



2 Research Methodology



3 Executive Summary



4 Market Influencers

4.1 Drivers

4.1.1 Growing Need for Acoustic Wave Sensors in Poor Radio Frequencies

4.1.2 Rising Demand for SAW-Based Temperature Sensors

4.1.3 Increasing Security and Surveillance Issues

4.2 Restraints

4.2.1 Technical Issues Associated with Energy Consumption, Compatibility, and Sensitivity

4.3 Opportunities

4.3.1 Advancements in Micro-Technology That Necessitates Mass Production and Lower Cost

4.3.2 Increasing Applications in the Automotive Industry

4.4 Challenges

4.4.1 Compatibility of Acoustic Wave Sensors with other Processes and Technologies



5 Market Analysis

5.1 Porter's Five Forces Analysis

5.2 Impact of COVID-19

5.3 Ansoff Matrix Analysis



6 Global Acoustic Wave Sensor Market, By Type

6.1 Introduction

6.2 Surface Acoustic Wave Sensors

6.2.1 Rayleigh Surface Wave Sensors

6.2.2 SH-SAW Sensors

6.2.3 FPW Sensors

6.3 Bulk Acoustic Wave Sensors

6.3.1 TSM Sensors

6.3.2 SH-APM Sensors



7 Global Acoustic Wave Sensor Market, By Device

7.1 Introduction

7.2 Resonators

7.3 Delay Lines



8 Global Acoustic Wave Sensor Market, By Sensing Parameter

8.1 Introduction

8.2 Temperature

8.3 Pressure

8.4 Humidity

8.5 Chemical Vapour/Gas

8.6 Torque

8.7 Mass

8.8 Viscosity

8.9 Others



9 Global Acoustic Wave Sensor Market, By End-User

9.1 Introduction

9.2 Defense

9.3 Automotive

9.4 Industrial

9.5 Healthcare

9.6 Food and Beverages

9.7 Environment

9.8 Others



10 Global Acoustic Wave Sensor 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 ALTHEN GmbH Mess- und Sensortechnik

12.2 API Technologies

12.3 Boston Piezo-Optics

12.4 Burkert

12.5 CTS Corporation

12.6 Defiant Technologies

12.7 Emerson Electric

12.8 Fierce Electronics

12.9 GE Sensing Inc.

12.10 Heinz H. Mewiderstande GmbH

12.11 Hawk Measurement Systems

12.12 Honeywell International

12.13 Mercury United Electronics

12.14 Microsemi

12.15 NanoTemper Technologies

12.16 Panasonic Industrial Solutions

12.17 Precision Acoustics

12.18 Pro-Micron

12.19 Qualtre

12.20 Sensor Technology

12.21 Siemens

12.22 STMicroelectronics

12.23 Teledyne Microwave Solutions

12.24 Transense Technologies



13 Appendix



For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/2570x2

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Dublin, March 04, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The "Worldwide Cloud Kitchen Industry" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.



The cloud kitchen market was valued at US$32.460 billion in 2019 and is expected to grow at a CAGR of 12.28% over the forecast period to reach a market size of US$73.024 billion by 2026.

A cloud kitchen, also known as a Ghost Kitchen, is a place where food is made and delivered to customers' doorsteps by taking orders over the phone or through online ordering systems. They primarily do not provide dine-in services. They are mostly involved in food preparation and delivery or have partnerships with food ordering websites such as Swiggy, Zomato, Dine Out, and others.



Cloud kitchens are built for speed, efficiency, and scale, making it simple to operate a delivery restaurant with little risk and investment. They allow an entrepreneur to collaborate with many brands from a single location, increasing the chances of improved cost management in the existing infrastructure. It also provides greater flexibility. Cloud kitchens can continuously review what they provide by assessing what works and what doesn't. All of this results in cheaper costs, more efficiency, and reduced risks.



However, with each consecutive shutdown, there has been a significant increase in the number of Cloud kitchens. Many home businesses and cloud kitchens have launched and have listed themselves as food aggregators which increases the competition in the market. Due to the lack of a physical storefront, it is difficult to cultivate a loyal and regular fanbase for the brand. The curator's aim to offer an experience in a box is also a hurdle because it is dependent not just on the packaging but also on the care with which the food is delivered.



In India, well-known brands such as Punjab Grill, Pino's Pizza, and Zambar, as well as international fried chicken giant Kentucky Fried Chicken, aim to establish cloud kitchens in order to expand in the country. Furthermore, In China, Starbucks has partnered with Alibaba to run its Star Kitchen cloud kitchen brand out of the latter's Hema supermarkets in Hangzhou, Shanghai, and Beijing.



Driver

Low risk and low capital requirements

The most significant benefit of the cloud kitchen model is the removal of costs such as restaurant space, ambiance, furniture, costly silverware, electrical fixtures, and so on. All of them are eliminated, which leaves just a bare minimum of expenses for culinary personnel, cooking supplies, kitchen equipment, and some maintenance expenses such as power bills. Cloud kitchens can easily invest in new menus and ingredients by effectively utilizing their resources.

Restaurant owners and operators can change their menu ingredients, establish competitive prices, and operate their businesses much more efficiently if they use real-time consumer data. Cloud kitchens also provide convenience to customers to order from anywhere at any time. According to the National Restaurant Association consumer trendS 2020, 52% of customers believe that ordering takeaway or delivery meals are essential to their way of life.



Restraint

A high influx of Cloud kitchens

The pandemic has led to an increase in the number of cloud kitchens. Especially after a nationwide lockout and layoffs, the number of home businesses and cloud kitchens has increased since it is one of the most cost-effective ways of generating a profit in the food business.

However, this has created the major problem of keeping costs low while attempting to establish a presence in a relatively overcrowded market. The majority of customers so prices sensitive that loyalty takes a back seat. There is a need to get the best bargain which increases the price competition. This in turn starts a loop of providing more and more discounts in order to attract clients.



COVID-19 Impact

The Covid19 pandemic had negatively affected the Food industry but presented an opportunity for Cloud kitchens. According to the National Restaurant Association, the restaurant sector lost an estimated $25 billion in revenue and more than 3 million jobs during the first 22 days of March 2020. The demand for cloud kitchens has risen substantially in the last year or so, as restaurants were forced to close down due to lockdowns. With consumer footfall virtually disappearing overnight, restaurants were able to operate by implementing a cloud kitchen approach. The research conducted by National Restaurant Association found that 54% of restaurant operators have made the shift to completely off-premises services, while 44% have been forced to temporarily close down. While the initial idea was to provide takeout or delivery, many operators are discovering how this approach can add value to their business in a variety of ways.



Key Developments:

Franklin Junction established a partnership with EAT in May 2021 to target the MENA Region for global expansion. The collaboration will allow current kitchens in the MENA area to become Franklin Junction Host Kitchens, and restaurant brands headquartered in the MENA region or the United States to establish a global reach through the relationship.

Mad Grass, a Jakarta-based startup, open the world's first brick-and-mortar vegan dining and cloud kitchen collaborative space in September 2021.

CloudKitchens, a shared kitchen business launched in 2015 and backed by Uber co-founder Travis Kalanick, was planned to be launched in Brazil in the first half of 2020. Earlier that year, the Saudi Arabian sovereign wealth fund granted the company $400 million.

Market Segmentation:

By Business Model

Standalone Cloud Kitchen

Multi-brand Cloud Kitchen

Commissary (Aggregator) Kitchen

Outsourced Cloud Kitchen

Co-Working Cloud Kitchen

By Order Source

Customer call-in

Delivery App

Firm's App

Aggregate App

By Geography

North America

United States

Canada

Mexico

South America

Brazil

Argentina

Others

Europe

Germany

France

United Kingdom

Spain

Others

Middle East and Africa

Saudi Arabia

UAE

Israel

Others

Asia Pacific

China

India

South Korea

Taiwan

Thailand

Indonesia

Japan

Others





Key Topics Covered:



1. Introduction



2. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY



3. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY



4. MARKET DYNAMICS

4.1. Market Drivers

4.2. Market Restraints

4.3. Porter's Five Forces Analysis

4.3.1. Bargaining Power of Suppliers

4.3.2. Bargaining Powers of Buyers

4.3.3. Threat of Substitutes

4.3.4. Threat of New Entrants

4.3.5. Competitive Rivalry in Industry

4.4. Industry Value Chain Analysis



5. CLOUD KITCHEN MARKET, BY BUSINESS MODEL

5.1. Introduction

5.2. Standalone Cloud Kitchen

5.3. Multi-brand Cloud Kitchen

5.4. Commissary (Aggregator) Kitchen

5.5. Outsourced Cloud Kitchen

5.6. Co-Working Cloud Kitchen



6. CLOUD KITCHEN MARKET, BY ORDER SOURCE

6.1. Introduction

6.2. Customer call-in

6.3. Delivery App

6.3.1. Firm's App

6.3.2. Aggregate App



7. CLOUD KITCHEN MARKET, BY GEOGRAPHY

7.1. Introduction

7.2. North America

7.2.1. United States

7.2.2. Canada

7.2.3. Mexico

7.3. South America

7.3.1. Brazil

7.3.2. Argentina

7.3.3. Others

7.4. Europe

7.4.1. Germany

7.4.2. France

7.4.3. United Kingdom

7.4.4. Spain

7.4.5. Others

7.5. Middle East and Africa

7.5.1. Saudi Arabia

7.5.2. UAE

7.5.3. Israel

7.5.4. Others

7.6. Asia Pacific

7.6.1. China

7.6.2. India

7.6.3. South Korea

7.6.4. Taiwan

7.6.5. Thailand

7.6.6. Indonesia

7.6.7. Japan

7.6.8. Others



8. COMPETITIVE ENVIRONMENT AND ANALYSIS

8.1. Major Players and Strategy Analysis

8.2. Emerging Players and Market Lucrative

8.3. Mergers, Acquisition, Agreements, and Collaborations

8.4. Vendor Competitiveness Matrix



9. COMPANY PROFILES

9.1. KLC Virtual Restaurants

9.2. The Food Corridor (Fort Collins, CO)

9.3. Kitopi

9.4. CloudKitchen

9.5. Muy

9.6. Mimic

9.7. Franklin Junction

9.8. Zullu

9.9. Virturant

9.10. Keatz

9.11. Travis Kalanick

9.12. Karma Kitchen

9.13. Deliveroo

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/84rx5t

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Dublin, March 04, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The "Global Digital Smart Borders Growth Opportunities" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.



The study period is 2020-2030 with forecasts offered for 2021-2030

This study intends to provide insights about digital smart borders and their benefit for different ports of entry (land, air and sea) as well as the key technologies, trends, programs, and threats for global security leaders, businesses, and governments. It illustrates how markets and business models are evolving and discusses potential growth opportunities for OEMs.

The COVID-19 pandemic has hit the travel industry hard, with a total collapse of international travel. In 2020 and 2021, airline passenger numbers decreased by 60%, causing massive job and cumulative revenue losses of about $498 billion. The last 2 years have demonstrated that the world will likely continue to grapple with some form of the COVID-19 virus for at least the next couple of years. Since the new Omicron variant is already raising concerns globally about travel, the travel sector must prepare to stay ahead of the curve.



The pandemic has had an equal impact on all 3 types of ports of entry: land ports, airports, and seaports. It has forced ports of entry operators to rethink their business continuity strategies and seek additional revenue streams to mitigate the risks of similar unexpected events in the future. As such, the focus on cargo and non-aeronautical revenues is gradually increasing, while technology investment has taken the front seat to address the need for contactless and safe travel.



A touchless passenger journey is critical to guarantee passengers' safety and well-being. By implementing touchless automated technologies, passengers can comfortably speed through airport processes, from check-in to boarding, without having to interact with other people.

As the travel industry is directly dependent on passenger confidence, port-of-entry operators will prioritize the provision of a self-service, contactless passenger experience and ensure compliance with safety regulations to reduce COIVD-19 infection risk among passengers and employees.



Key questions are answered for each region:



What are the main projects in the region?

Who are the suppliers for those projects?

What are the main regulations?

What are the main observations and findings that will lay the foundation for future growth opportunities?

Key Issues Addressed:

What are smart borders and how do they affect different ports of entry, such as air, land, and sea?

What are the main global programs driving the smart borders market?

What technologies impact the smart borders?

How do touchless biometrics and ID management affect smart borders?

What are some of the main global contracts awarded for smart borders?

How does smart border development vary by region?

What are the competitors across the system integrator (SI), technology vendor, and original equipment manufacturer (OEM) domains?

What are the current growth opportunities for companies in smart borders?

Key Topics Covered:



1. Strategic Imperatives

Why Is It Increasingly Difficult to Grow?

The Strategic Imperative

The Impact of the Top 3 Strategic Imperatives on the Digital Smart Borders Industry

Growth Opportunities Fuel the Growth Pipeline Engine

2. Growth Opportunity Analysis

Digital Smart Borders Scope of Analysis

Key Questions This Study Will Answer

What are Digital Smart Borders?

Transformation from Traditional to Smart Borders

Building Blocks of Smart Borders for Seamless Passenger Journeys

Building Blocks of Automated Smart Borders

Impact Analysis - Building Blocks of Automated Smart Borders

Trends Impacting Digital Smart Borders at Ports of Entry

Digital Smart Borders - Market Segmentation

Challenges of Implementing Smart Border Solutions

Digital Smart Borders - Regional Segmentation

Growth Drivers for Digital Smart Borders

Growth Restraints for Digital Smart Borders

Key Competitors in Digital Smart Borders

Trends Impacting the Digital Transformation of Airports

Key Growth Metrics

Forecast Criteria

Revenue Forecast - Digital Smart Borders

Revenue Forecast By Vertical - Digital Smart Borders

Revenue Forecast By Region - Digital Smart Borders

Revenue Forecast Discussion

Pricing Trends and Forecast Analysis

Competitive Environment

Market Share

Market Share Analysis

The Next Wave of Competition

Other Industry Applications

Market Analysis: Europe

Key Growth Metrics

Revenue Forecast

Revenue Forecast By Vertical

Main Findings

Key Regulations Around Smart Borders in Europe

EES Explained

Timeline for Schengen EU-EES

EU and Schengen Countries Under EES

Schengen EES - Data Flowchart

Smart Border Equipment in Europe

Systems in the United Kingdom

3. Market Analysis: North America

Key Growth Metrics

Revenue Forecast

Revenue Forecast By Vertical

Main Findings

Key Regulations Around Smart Borders, North America

Smart Border Equipment in North America

4. Market Analysis: Latin America

Key Growth Metrics

Revenue Forecast

Revenue Forecast By Vertical

Main Findings

Smart Border Equipment in Latin America

5. Market Analysis: Africa

Key Growth Metrics

Revenue Forecast

Revenue Forecast By Vertical

Main Findings

Smart Border Equipment in Africa

6. Market Analysis: The Middle East

Key Growth Metrics

Revenue Forecast

Revenue Forecast By Vertical

Main Findings

Smart Border Equipment in the Middle East

7. Market Analysis: Central Asia

Key Growth Metrics

Revenue Forecast Central Asia

Revenue Forecast By Vertical

Main Findings

Smart Border Equipment in Central Asia

Market Analysis: Asia-Pacific

Key Growth Metrics

Revenue Forecast

Revenue Forecast By Vertical

Main Findings

Smart Border Equipment in APAC

8. Growth Opportunity Universe

Growth Opportunity 1 - Seamless Passenger Journey

Growth Opportunity 2 - Decentralized and Transparent User Control Via Blockchain-based Digital Id Management

Growth Opportunity 3 - Total Airport Management for Optimal Efficiency

Growth Opportunity 4 - Cybersecurity for Improved Operational Resilience

9. Next Steps

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/bbgoy7




Toronto; Oxford; Paris; Atlanta; Madison; Seattle; Vancouver; Montreal; Calgary; Halifax, March 04, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- With CDLs expert mentors behind them every step of the way, program participants have managed to create more than $18 billion in equity value  and several of its alumni are now unicorns.

In CDLs 11th cohort year, over 675 companies will be accepted into 16 different streams, across 10 locations around the world  five sites across Canada (CDL-Atlantic, CDL-Montreal, CDL-Rockies, CDL-Toronto, and CDL-Vancouver), two in Europe (CDL-Oxford, and CDL-Paris), and three in the US (CDL-Atlanta, CDL-Wisconsin, CDL-Seattle).

CDL has truly been a game-changing experience for us as an early-stage business, notes Allan Cannon, co-founder of R3-IoT, a CDL Space alum that has since grown into a multi-million international company. The access to global industry experts and the quality of feedback, advice, and mentorship received was invaluable. If you are willing to roll up your sleeves and are open to rebuild the box then I can confidently say that your business and leadership skills will benefit greatly.

Applications for the 2022/23 Program Year will close on July 21, 2022  except for the CDL Quantum and CDL Blockchain streams, which have an earlier deadline of May 23, 2022.

CDLs founder, Professor Ajay Agrawal, notes: CDLs mission is to enhance the commercialization of science for the betterment of humankind. The perfect CDL applicant is one that arrives with a great technology and a terrible business plan. CDL is a process, not an event. Its about changing a start-ups trajectory.

The 16 streams that companies are encouraged to apply to participate in include: AgTech, Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain, Climate, Commerce, Energy, FinTech, Health, Matter, Neuro, Oceans, Prime (General Technology), Quantum, Risk, Space, and Supply Chain.

To learn more about the CDL program, join a 15 minute CDL Intro Webinar.

ABOUT CREATIVE DESTRUCTION LAB

Creative Destruction Lab (CDL) is a nonprofit organization that delivers an objectives-based program for massively scalable, seed-stage, science- and technology-based companies. Its nine-month program allows founders to learn from experienced entrepreneurs, increasing their likelihood of success.

Founded in 2012 by Professor Ajay Agrawal at the University of Torontos Rotman School of Management, the program has expanded to ten sites across four countries: Oxford (Said Business School, University of Oxford), Paris (HEC Paris), Atlanta (Scheller College of Business, Georgia Institute of Technology), Madison (Wisconsin School of Business, University of Wisconsin-Madison), Seattle (University of Washington, Foster School of Business), Vancouver (Sauder School of Business, University of British Columbia), Montreal (HEC Montreal), Calgary (Haskayne School of Business, University of Calgary), and Halifax (Rowe School of Business, Dalhousie University).

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MEMPHIS, Tenn., March 04, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Apartments Near Me is unveiling its newest affordable housing option, The Summit Park Apartment Complex, which offers various spacious floor-plan options in the beautiful city of Memphis, Tennessee.

Apartments Near Me is a leader in the affordable housing industry which contains a portfolio of numerous other affordable housing options such as Winbranch Complex, Thompson Court Flats, Thompson Heights Apartments & Cottonwood Apartments all located in Memphis. The new affordable living community is located in the Whitehaven area, only minutes away from the Memphis International Airport and Interstate 240/55. Furthermore, it provides easy access to nearby shopping and numerous food options and is only 15 to 20 minutes from anywhere in the city. The Apartments Near Me team headed into Summit Park Apartment Complex on Feb. 22, 2022, to begin the multi-million dollar renovations to this newly acquired affordable housing community.

The Summit Park Apartment Complex will showcase appealing design quality like walk-in closets, large bedrooms, patios and balconies. This affordable living community will feature single-story floor plans which include up to four bedrooms and two baths and range in footage from approximately 700 to 1,400 square feet. Floor plans vary depending on the size of the apartment which gives renters the ability to find the best housing accommodations for their family size. This community is open for everyone but caters to low-income and second-chance renters to provide the best affordable housing options Memphis has to offer.

As an affiliate of the Apartments Near Me brand, Summit Park Apartment Complex will operate under high standards to provide renters with a top-of-the-line affordable living experience. Summit Park Apartment Complex expands its tenant living experience through numerous amenities such as two playgrounds, a pool and laundry facilities, as well as a staff that puts the tenant first. This prime location comes with numerous schooling options for children ranging from infant to teen. As with other Apartments Near Me brand communities, this one is enclosed and on-site security is provided to help maintain a peaceful living experience. In addition, as a member of the Apartments Near Me brand, the Summit Park Apartment Complex is actively participating in community initiatives that help to provide different resources to affordable housing renters.

Summit Park Apartments is located at 1770 Piping Rock Drive, Memphis, TN 38116 and can be contacted via telephone, Facebook or directly through the ApartmentsNearMe.biz website. The team looks forward to serving the community and providing current and future residents a top-of-the-line rental experience. Although renovations are underway, the Summit Park Apartment Complex office is open and taking applications.

CONTACT:

Christiane Porter

PR Director

Apartments Near Me

info@apartmentsnearme.biz

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Image 1: Apartments Near Me logo





Apartments Near Me logo









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KYIV, Ukraine, March 04, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- In the midst of war, no pet should be left behind. The World Dog Alliance (WDA) has expressed concerns over Ukrainian citizens and their pets and is arranging measures to provide emergency assistance.

The escalating military conflict between Russia and Ukraine might result in the biggest refugee crisis in Europe in the 21st century. According to a report by the United Nations, nearly 700,000 Ukrainian citizens have fled the country so far. The UN estimates that 12 million people inside Ukraine will need relief and protection and that more than four million Ukrainian refugees may need humanitarian aid from neighboring countries in the coming months.

Amid gunfire and sirens, Ukrainian citizens were forced to leave their homeland for shelter, some with children in their arms, and some with their beloved pets, who are also part of the family.

For most pet owners, it is a natural instinct to bring along their pets when fleeing from war. Even when displaced, a family remains whole as long as all members are together, and there is always hope for tomorrow.

The World Dog Alliance is collaborating with its partners in Italy and France to provide assistance to pet owners in Ukraine, such as publishing guidelines on traveling with pets during emergency situations and basic first aid procedures for injured animals.

Genlin, the founder of the World Dog Alliance, shares the sentiment of pet owners in Ukraine, as he has had a similar experience. In late 2018, the Woolsey Fire started in California, putting many areas at risk. Genlin, who was in Hong Kong, was extremely concerned about his three dogs in California. Although Genlin's housekeeper assured him that the wildfire was far away from his house, he still decided to bring the dogs back to Hong Kong to keep them safe. Given how difficult it was to arrange a flight for the three dogs, Genlin went to California himself, chartered a jet and came back to Hong Kong with his furry kids.

Shortly after arriving in Hong Kong, Genlin's house in California was razed to rubble by the wildfire.

The World Dog Alliance campaigns around the world for legislation to ban dog and cat meat, and to increase penalties for dog theft. "What people steal and eat are not just animals, but someone's family," Genlin said during an interview.

The world may be full of wars, but love knows no boundaries. The World Dog Alliance hopes our love for animals can bridge the differences between countries and bring peace to the planet.

CONTACT:

Him Lo

info@wdalliance.org

Related Images











Image 1: Genlin





Genlin stood before his house after the Woolsey Fire









This content was issued through the press release distribution service at Newswire.com.

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London, England, March 04, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Net Savings Link, Inc. (OTC Pink: NSAV), a cryptocurrency, blockchain and digital asset technology company, today announced that the Company is launching an NFT Marketplace in partnership with Vagabond https://vagabondapp.io/ . The launch further expands NSAVs presence in the $25 billion global NFT market. The Beta version of the NSAV NFT Exchange will be launched next week.

https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/01/20/jefferies-sees-the-nft-market-reaching-more-than-80-billion-in-value-by-2025/

The management of NSAV believes that the time is right for the Company to enter the lucrative NFT Marketplace arena and the partnership with Vagabond enables NSAV to take advantage of Vagabonds legal and technological infrastructure. OpenSea https://opensea.io/ , the worlds largest NFT Marketplace, was valued at $13.3 billion in its recent $300 million Funding Round.

https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/01/05/nft-marketplace-opensea-valued-at-133b-in-300m-funding-round-report/

Dr. Thomas Riegler, Vagabond CEO and Silverbear Capital partner stated, We are proud that our valued Vagabond infrastructure is powering this unique NFT marketplace. NFT has played a vital and dominant role recently in the blockchain arena, and I am thrilled to see that NSAV is taking advantage of this market space.

Dato Sri Desmond Lim, Interim CEO and Senior Vice President of Cryptocurrency Operations for NSAV and Silverbear Capital partner stated, This is truly an exciting time for NSAV and VAGABOND. This is the first of many promised projects NSAV will pursue with Vagabond. The performance of VAGABOND is truly amazing. NSAV and VAGABOND will be announcing additional joint projects in the weeks to come.

About Vagabond:

Vagabond is a Blockchain-as-a-Service Platform that enables businesses to implement the benefits of Blockchain into their operations. We see a significant market potential that addresses the most notable challenges companies face in deploying blockchain solutions - the cost and time of implementation and adoption. Vagabond sets to build its community for individuals and supports users to experiment, learn or run their dApps (e.g. NFT Marketplace) based on the Vagabond platform. Vagabonds primary strengths are predefined processes and modules that the user can use and adapt without writing a single line of source code.

For further information please contact Vagabond at hello@vagabondapp.io

The Vagabond Twitter account can be accessed at https://twitter.com/Vagabondappio

The Vagabond corporate website can be accessed at https://vagabondapp.io/

About NSAV:

NSAV's vision is the establishment of a fully integrated technology company, which provides turnkey technological solutions to the cryptocurrency, blockchain and digital asset industries. Over time, the Company plans to provide a wide range of services such as software solutions, e-commerce, financial services, advisory services and information technology.

For further information please contact NSAV at info@nsavholdinginc.com

The NSAV Twitter account can be accessed at https://twitter.com/nsavtech

The NSAV corporate website can be accessed at http://nsavholdinginc.com

The NSAV Centralized Cryptocurrency Exchange (CEX) website can be accessed at https://ex.nsavexchange.com/main

The NSAV CEX Twitter account can be accessed at https://twitter.com/nsavcex

The NSAVDEX 1 Exchange website can be accessed at https://nsavdex.org/#/home

The NSAVDEX 2 Exchange website can be accessed at https://nsavdex.io/

The NSAV Premium OTC Crypto Trading Desk website can be accessed at https://nsavholdinginc.com/otc-desk/

The NSAV Hong Kong OTC Crypto Trading Desk website can be accessed at

https://hkotc.co/

The NSAVDEX Exchange Telegram account can be accessed at https://t.me/NSAVDEXorg

Silverbear Capital Inc. https://www.sbcfinancialgroup.com.hk/ , a leading, global investment banking firm, will be advising NSAV on strategic matters relating to the Companys cryptocurrency exchanges and OTC Crypto Trading Desks. Silverbear will also help guide NSAV in ensuring that its exchanges and OTC Desks are continually in compliance, given the rapidly increasing regulatory environment in the cryptocurrency industry.

Silverbear Capital Inc. (SBC) has a dynamic of disciplines on a broad commercial level and practice. SBC has a strong group of Partners in a wide range of disciplines with seasoned experience in finance, management, and professional practice. https://www.sbcfinancialgroup.com.hk/meet-our-team/ .

Disclaimer: Silverbear Capital Inc. does not constitute investment advice, or an offer or solicitation to sell, or a solicitation to buy, or any other investment product (nor shall any such shares or product be offered or sold to any person) in any jurisdiction in which an offer, solicitation, purchase or sale would be unlawful under the securities law of that jurisdiction.

This press release contains certain forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, which are intended to be covered by the safe harbors created thereby. Investors are cautioned that, all forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties, including without limitation, the ability of Net Savings Link, Inc. to accomplish its stated plan of business. Net Savings Link, Inc. believes that the assumptions underlying the forward-looking statements contained herein are reasonable, any of the assumptions could be inaccurate, and therefore, there can be no assurance that the forward-looking statements included in this press release will prove to be accurate. In light of the significant uncertainties inherent in the forward- looking statements included herein, the inclusion of such information should not be regarded as a representation by Net Savings Link, Inc. or any other person.

Contact

Net Savings Link, Inc.

info@nsavholdinginc.com

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NEW YORK, March 04, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- via InvestorWire -- The Investor Summit Group (ISG), widely recognized as the host of North Americas largest independent investor conferences, today announces additional details for its upcoming Q1 Virtual Investor Summit slated for March 8-9, 2022.

Designed to provide carefully selected companies and their corporate management teams with valuable opportunities to meet and connect with qualified investors in an entirely virtual format, ISGs quarterly investment summit is a must-attend event. Among the nearly 70 companies participating in the Q1 Virtual Summit are those focused on the healthcare, industrial, technology, materials, consumer, biotech, communications, cryptocurrency and energy sectors.

The upcoming Q1 Virtual Summit provides participating small and micro-cap companies with a dedicated window of time to share insights, provide operational updates and raise their overall exposure to a host of institutional, RIA, family office and high-net-worth investors. To see the full list of participating companies and to register for the upcoming Q1 Virtual Summit, visit www.investorsummitgroup.com.

Our team focuses on carefully selecting small and micro-cap companies that are looking for high-value opportunities to meet and interact with some of the worlds most influential investors in the space, said Fred Rockwell, founder of ISG. Given the ongoing volatility across equity markets, we believe investors are increasingly looking to discover small and micro-cap gems. ISGs upcoming summit provides a valuable service at an increasingly complex time for companies and investors alike.

About Investor Summit Group

Investor Summit Group (formerly MicroCap Conference) hosts the largest independent investor conference on the East Coast. Its independence allows conference organizers to focus on customer service and scheduling high-quality meetings between the executives and investors who attend. The ISG team sets the bar for quality service in a space traditionally dominated by banks that focus more on selling their services than on building the connections companies need to succeed. ISG has facilitated countless valuable interactions for its presenting companies, which have often led to increased exposure, market value appreciation and long-term growth.

For more information, visit www.investorsummitgroup.com.

General Inquiries:

Sasha Murray

Director of IR and Sales

Sasha@InvestorSummitGroup.com

Corporate Communications:

IBN (InvestorBrandNetwork)

Los Angeles, California

www.InvestorBrandNetwork.com

310.299.1717 Office

Editor@InvestorBrandNetwork.com
MADISON, Miss., March 04, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Vertex Aerospace today announces that going forward, it will be known as The Vertex Company. The announcement follows a successful acquisition of the new Vertex Technology & Training Solutions division from Raytheon Intelligence & Space. The acquisition closed on December 6, 2021.

The Vertex Company will operate two divisions consisting of Aerospace & Defense Services and Technology & Training Solutions. The Vertex ADS division will include the legacy Vertex Aerospace business. The Vertex TTS division will include all businesses acquired from Raytheon.

The Vertex Company name reflects our strategy of offering expanded engineering and technical solutions to customers inside and outside the aerospace market, said Ed Boyington, President and CEO of The Vertex Company. Our new offering, combined with our existing operations and maintenance services, positions The Vertex Company to address the entire lifecycle of major programs  from concept to sustainment.

The Vertex ADS division provides all levels of aviation maintenance, worldwide contractor logistics support, assembly services, systems integration engineering and integrated supply-chain solutions.

The Vertex TTS division provides critical mission support to strategically important systems, training solutions and customized engineering solutions for military, civil and commercial customers.

The company also updated its corporate identity imagery and website: www.vtxco.com. Email addresses will use the @vtxco.com domain. The companys headquarters will remain in Madison, Mississippi with locations around the globe.

About The Vertex Company

The Vertex Company provides vertically integrated turnkey lifecycle support from concept definition, to engineering and manufacturing, through end-of-life support of complex systems. Our offerings include all levels of aviation maintenance, worldwide contractor logistics support, systems engineering and integration, specialized onsite mission execution, high consequence training programs, and integrated supply-chain solutions. With over 200 locations worldwide, the Mississippi-based company offers integrated solutions for defense and commercial customers. Over our 50-year history, we have perfected the balance of cost, schedule, and performance to offer high-quality solutions that consistently exceed customer requirements. Information about The Vertex Company can be found at www.vtxco.com.
Luxembourg  4 March 2021 - Subsea 7 S.A. (Oslo Brs: SUBC, ADR: SUBCY) today announced the award of a contract by Equinor for the front-end engineering and design (FEED) study for the marine installations associated with the Krafla development project, offshore Norway.

The awarded work is required to finalise the technical definition of the proposed development prior to Equinor and its partners making the final investment decision (FID) planned late 2022. The FEED study will begin immediately.

Subsea 7 has recognised the FEED award in its order backlog in the first quarter of 2022. The value of a potential, subsequent EPCI contract would only be recognised by Subsea 7 in its backlog upon FID, and would represent a large1 project award.

Project management and engineering will take place in our offices in Stavanger and Aberdeen. Offshore installation activities would be scheduled for 2024, 2025 and 2026.

Monica Bjrkmann, Vice President for Subsea 7 Norway said: This award continues our long-standing collaboration with Equinor. The study enables Subsea 7 to engage early in the field development process, optimising design solutions and contributing to the final investment decision. We are delighted to be a trusted partner for Krafla field development, and we look forward to working closely with Equinor to successfully deliver our scope with safety and quality at the forefront throughout.

(1) Subsea 7 defines a large contract as being between USD 300 million and USD 500 million.





*******************************************************************************

Subsea 7 is a global leader in the delivery of offshore projects and services for the evolving energy industry, creating sustainable value by being the industrys partner and employer of choice in delivering the efficient offshore solutions the world needs.

Subsea 7 is listed on the Oslo Brs (SUBC), ISIN LU0075646355, LEI 222100AIF0CBCY80AH62.

*******************************************************************************

Contact for investor enquiries:

Katherine Tonks

Investor Relations Director

Tel +44 (0)20 8210 5568

katherine.tonks@subsea7.com

Contact for media enquiries:

Jan Roger Moksnes

Communications Manager, Norway

Tel +47 415 15 777

janroger.moksnes@subsea7.com

www.subsea7.com

Forward-Looking Statements: This announcement may contain forward-looking statements (within the meaning of the safe harbour provisions of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995). These statements relate to our current expectations, beliefs, intentions, assumptions or strategies regarding the future and are subject to known and unknown risks that could cause actual results, performance or events to differ materially from those expressed or implied in these statements. Forward-looking statements may be identified by the use of words such as anticipate, believe, estimate, expect, future, goal, intend, likely may, plan, project, seek, should, strategy will, and similar expressions. The principal risks which could affect future operations of the Group are described in the Risk Management section of the Groups Annual Report and Consolidated Financial Statements for the year ended 31 December 2020. Factors that may cause actual and future results and trends to differ materially from our forward-looking statements include (but are not limited to): (i) our ability to deliver fixed price projects in accordance with client expectations and within the parameters of our bids, and to avoid cost overruns; (ii) our ability to collect receivables, negotiate variation orders and collect the related revenue; (iii) our ability to recover costs on significant projects; (iv) capital expenditure by oil and gas companies, which is affected by fluctuations in the price of, and demand for, crude oil and natural gas; (v) unanticipated delays or cancellation of projects included in our backlog; (vi) competition and price fluctuations in the markets and businesses in which we operate; (vii) the loss of, or deterioration in our relationship with, any significant clients; (viii) the outcome of legal proceedings or governmental inquiries; (ix) uncertainties inherent in operating internationally, including economic, political and social instability, boycotts or embargoes, labour unrest, changes in foreign governmental regulations, corruption and currency fluctuations; (x) the effects of a pandemic or epidemic or a natural disaster; (xi) liability to third parties for the failure of our joint venture partners to fulfil their obligations; (xii) changes in, or our failure to comply with, applicable laws and regulations (including regulatory measures addressing climate change); (xiii) operating hazards, including spills, environmental damage, personal or property damage and business interruptions caused by adverse weather; (xiv) equipment or mechanical failures, which could increase costs, impair revenue and result in penalties for failure to meet project completion requirements; (xv) the timely delivery of vessels on order and the timely completion of ship conversion programmes; (xvi) our ability to keep pace with technological changes and the impact of potential information technology, cyber security or data security breaches; and (xvii) the effectiveness of our disclosure controls and procedures and internal control over financial reporting;. Many of these factors are beyond our ability to control or predict. Given these uncertainties, you should not place undue reliance on the forward-looking statements. Each forward-looking statement speaks only as of the date of this announcement. We undertake no obligation to update publicly or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

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Two Chicago police officers were shot and wounded early Friday morning when a man who dropped a gun in line at an eatery picked it up and started firing.

The pair were on their meal break during their overnight shift, according to Chicago Police Superintendent David Brown, when one of the uniformed cops spotted a customer in front of him drop the weapon out of his pocket while trying to pay for food around 3:30 a.m. at the eatery on the citys West Side.

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Chicago Police Department officials investigate an overnight shooting on the West Side in Chicago, on Friday. (Pat Nabong/Sun-Times/AP)

The offender picks up the gun, and without any warning, began shooting at the officers, striking one officer with a graze wound to the head, and the other officer whos waiting in the squad car ... striking him once in the leg, Brown said at a press conference Friday morning.

One officer radioed in the code for an officer emergency: 10-1! 10-1! I got shot in the head! I got shot in the head! he said.

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The suspect then fled but other nearby officers who saw and heard the incident unfolding were able to capture the offender a few blocks away. The weapon used has also been recovered.

Chicago police investigate the scene where two police officers were shot at the Original Maxwell Street hot dog stand in the 3800 block of West Harrison Street in Chicago on Friday. (Jose M. Osorio / Chicago Tribune)

The Daily News Flash Weekdays Catch up on the days top five stories every weekday afternoon. >

Both officers were taken to Mount Sinai Hospital and have non-life-threatening injuries, according to a police spokesman.

One officer is going to be held at the hospital for a few days, Brown said Friday. The other officer was released early this morning and is at home recovering.

Brown added that there is video of the incident that cops are retrieving, as well as witnesses that detectives are working to talk to.

Chicago police investigate the scene where two police officers were shot at the Original Maxwell Street hot dog stand in the 3800 block of West Harrison St. in Chicago on Friday. (Jose M. Osorio / Chicago Tribune)

The officers did not return fire, according to a police statement.

The two cops have been put on routine administrative duties for 30 days while detectives investigate the incident.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot said the shooting underscores that there are way too many people carrying illegal firearms and proves why diligent law enforcement action against illegal firearm possession is essential, Lightfoot said.

Brown did not say whether the gun used in the shooting was illegal.
Boston, MA, March 04, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- SVN International Corp. (SVNIC), a full-service commercial real estate franchisor of the SVN brand, announces the addition of its new franchise office, SVN | Accel Commercial Real Estate headquartered in Brentwood, Tennessee.

Led by Managing Director Jana Truman, SVN | Accel CRE consists of nine experienced brokers, each with specialties, as well as a dedicated operations team. SVN | Accel is known for their strong multifamily and land/development services, buyer/seller advisory for all asset types including hospitality and investment, and landlord/tenant representation for office, retail, and industrial assets.

Aligning with SVN amplifies our national coverage while allowing our firm to maintain local accountability, says Truman. With SVNs culture of cooperation, cutting edge tech tools and systems for success, we anticipate tripling in size and revenue within the next two years, as well as adding a commercial property management platform.

SVN President and CEO Kevin Maggiacomo stated, As the SVN brand expands across the globe, we are partnering with market leaders who share our vision of a collaborative, open, and transparent approach to commercial real estate. SVN | Accel CRE has long been an impactful leader in the Brentwood area and is a strong addition to this organization. We look forward to growing the SVN presence in Brentwood and beyond.

About SVN | Accel Commercial Real Estate

SVN | Accel Commercial Real Estate provides integrated real estate and business brokerage services for clients in virtually any market worldwide. No matter the property type or service need, our commercial specialists are committed to your needs. Combining business expertise and unsurpassed market intelligence, SVN | Accel brokers are well-equipped to determine, exceed, and accelerate your business goals. We help our clients create, grow and maintain generational wealth.

Website



Instagram

Facebook

LinkedIn

About SVN

The SVN organization is a globally recognized commercial real estate entity united by a shared vision of creating value with clients, colleagues, and our communities. The SVN brand is comprised of over 1,600 advisors and staff in more than 200 offices across the globe in six countries. Our brand pillars represent the transparency, innovation, and inclusivity that enables all our advisors to collaborate with the entire real estate industry on behalf of our clients. SVNs unique Shared Value Network is just one of the many ways that SVN advisors create amazing value with our clients, colleagues, and communities. For more information, visit www.svn.com.

All SVN offices are independently owned and operated. To learn more about becoming an SVN commercial real estate business owner, visit http://www.svn.com/franchising-opportunities/.

LinkedIn: SVN International Corp.

Instagram: @svninternationalcorp

Twitter: @SVNic

Facebook: @SVNIC

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QUINCY, Mass., March 04, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- On behalf of its 2,500 associates, Retail Business Services, the services company of leading grocery retail group Ahold Delhaize USA, today announced that it will donate $13,000  a tribute to its 13 departments  to Junior Achievement, the worlds largest organization dedicated to educating students about entrepreneurship, work readiness and financial literacy through experiential, hands-on programs.



Every day, Im proud of the hard work, dedication and determination of each of our associates, said Roger Wheeler, President of Retail Business Services. What our teams have accomplished in recent years in an industry tremendously impacted by the pandemic is truly remarkable. As each of our team members delivers for our partners every day, they do it with care for one another and the communities we serve. In their honor, we are proud to help empower the next generation of the workforce through this donation.

The donations, part of Retail Business Services RBS Cares community engagement program, will be allocated to Junior Achievement chapters throughout the companys footprint, including:

JA Central Carolinas (Salisbury, N.C.)

JA Northern New England (Quincy/Boston, Mass.)

JA Maine (Scarborough, Maine)

JA Chicago (Chicago)

JA Greater South Carolina (Greenville, S.C.)

JA Central Maryland (Randallstown, Md.)

JA Western Pennsylvania (Carlisle, Pa.)



We are thrilled to be top of mind for Retail Business Services as they give in honor of their employees, said Dorothy Gorman, President & CEO, JA Central Carolinas. The gift helps Junior Achievement of Central Carolinas create educational opportunities for students in places Retail Business Services associates care about. Its a meaningful way to invest in the community and a great beginning for our partnership.

About Retail Business Services

Retail Business Services, is the services company of leading grocery retail group Ahold Delhaize USA, currently providing services to five omnichannel grocery brands, including Food Lion, Giant Food, The GIANT Company, Hannaford and Stop & Shop. Retail Business Services leverages the scale of the local brands to drive synergies and provides industry-leading expertise, insights and analytics to local brands to support their strategies with services including Business Integrity Services (Legal, Risk Management, Quality Assurance), Business Services (HR Technology Systems and Process Management), Communications & Omnichannel Service, Finance Business Services, Financial Planning & Analysis, Human Resources, Indirect Sourcing, Information Technology, Pharmacy Services, Retail Innovation, Store Development, Leasing and Facilities Support, and Strategy & Business Development. We are committed to diversity, equity and inclusion and we foster a community of belonging where everyone is valued. For more information, visit www.retailbusinessservices.com.

MEDIA CONTACTS:

Christy Phillips-Brown

704-310-2221

Erin DeWaters

704-310-3884
FRANKFURT, Germany, March 04, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Leading Web3 and Blockchain pioneer, Advanced Blockchain AG, opens up to a broader investor audience as it lists on Scale segment of the German stock exchange in Frankfurt.



Deutsche Borse AG / M. Joppen.

Advanced Blockchain AG was established in October 2017 and has since grown to become a leading blockchain and Web3 incubator for innovative DeFi solutions. After five years of consistent growth, Advanced Blockchain AG is now moving to the "Scale" growth segment of Deutsche Borse AG.

Since its listing on the primary market, Borse Dusseldorf on 17.12.2018, Advanced Blockchain Group has expanded rapidly and now employs over 160 people across 6 continents.

In 2021, Advanced Blockchain AG made a significant number of investments and incubated multiple impactful projects. Taking into account the latest investments and incubations in 2022, the Advanced Blockchains portfolio grew over 25 blockchain protocols and Web3 infrastructure projects, mostly early-stage. Advanced Blockchain AG and its subsidiaries are expected to advance the vision of Web3 and help its acceleration.

Advanced Blockchain is a robust value-adding investor that provides hands-on support in technology, marketing, and general operations for blockchain and Web3 focussed entities. By working with top-tier technology firms in the blockchain sector, Advanced Blockchain AG has developed the requisite internal technological competence that allows it to provide tailored support and incubation for projects from the idea to a successful market launch stage.

"Through an investment in Advanced Blockchain AG, our shareholders have the opportunity to benefit from our unique early-stage deal flow, which is otherwise only available to an exclusive group of investors with the corresponding industry expertise. For example, in 2017 we were able to secure an early-stage investment in Polkadot, which reached a value in the tens of millions and funded further early-stage investments within the Polkadot ecosystem." says board member and CIO of Advanced Blockchain AG, Simon Telian

With its expertise in diverse blockchain ecosystems and global networks, Advanced Blockchain is one of the fastest-growing tech companies in the industry. The business is diversified across Web3 and Blockchain projects at all different phases and different revenue streams. As such, the company is already profitable and is able to continuously generate further profits.

"The Scale listing allows greater visibility to institutional investors, and thus further expands our market base, transparency, and liquidity in the stock," says Michael Geike, member of the board and CEO of Advanced Blockchain AG.

Advanced Blockchain's upgraded listing to the Scale segment has far-reaching implications which will provide shareholders with even more transparency. These include consolidated annual and bi-annual reports, support from a Deutsche Borse Capital Market Partner, and ongoing share research.

In line with the rapid operational development of the company, public relations and shareholder communications will focus on the success of Advanced Blockchain's businesses in the future.

For more information on Advanced Blockchain AG, as well as our holdings and incubations, please visit our website at https://www.advancedblockchain.com. Also, our PR and IR team will support you at any time if you have any questions.

More about Advanced Blockchain AG

Advanced Blockchain AG is a venture builder and investor in the blockchain industry with an extensive team of analysts, developers, programmers, economists and mathematicians dedicated to developing the future of Web 3.0. Group-wide, the team consists of more than 160 developers worldwide, covering various disciplines enabling the firm to innovate in different ecosystems of the industry.

For more information about Advanced Blockchain AG and its various projects and investments, please visit https://www.advancedblockchain.com/ .

Social Links

Twitter: https://twitter.com/BlockchainAG?s=20&t=NZil9tjhNA621Ey-U_ukPg

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/blockchainag/

Media ontact

Brand: Advanced Blockchain

E-mail: vivian@advancedblockchain.com

Website: https://www.advancedblockchain.com

SOURCE: Advanced Blockchain
Toronto, March 04, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Sixteen infrastructure and technology initiatives across Senecas campuses are benefiting from Ontario government funding through the College Equipment Renewal Fund (CERF) and Facilities Renewal Program (FRP).

Seneca received $4.8 million in 2021-22 for deferred maintenance and building repairs and to equip the learning spaces that will prepare students for their careers. This includes a new lab for creative advertising and marketing students called The Agency.

This funding from the Ontario government will help Seneca invest in our academic spaces as we welcome more students back on campus, said Seneca President David Agnew. It will also provide students access to the technology and equipment they need to reach their academic and professional goals.

Funding from CERF and FRP will be committed to projects at the King, Markham, Newnham and Seneca@York campuses, including opticianry and broadcast studio equipment, technology for academic work stations, laptops for students to loan and various building renovations.

Ontarios postsecondary institutions offer world class education, which is critical to the future of the province, and our economy, said Jill Dunlop, Minister of Colleges and Universities and MPP for Simcoe North. Our governments investments to build Ontario will help colleges and universities renew and modernize their facilities and buy vital training equipment so they can continue to deliver high-quality education to students  anytime and anywhere.

These funds are part of the Ontario governments three-year $583 million commitment to help colleges and universities provide a modern, sustainable and safe learning environment virtually and on campus. It builds on $5.6 million in CERF and FRP funding Seneca received from the province in 2020-21.

This support will ensure students at Seneca have access to modern instructional equipment to meet business and industry standards, increase student access to micro-credentials and enhance the overall student experience, said Vincent Ke, MPP, Don Valley North who made the announcement at Newnham Campus. By investing in postsecondary infrastructure, we are not only supporting our local economy, but ensuring students get the skills needed for the in-demand jobs of today and tomorrow.

About Seneca

Seneca is taking on the great challenges of our time  rebuilding the economy, equity and sustainability  while navigating through the pandemic safely. Were delivering great polytechnic education that combines rigorous academics with practical training. From health care to technology, business to creative arts, community services to arts and sciences, we help students get ready to make their mark in the world. Were #SenecaProud of our expert faculty, excellent staff and outstanding facilities. We have deep connections with industry and offer thousands of co-op and work placements to get our graduates job-ready. Full-time or part-time, in-person or online, students choose the option that suits them. Learn more: senecacollege.ca

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COLOMBO, Sri Lanka, March 04, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- GROW, an incubation service for blockchain and emerging technology projects, has announced the opening of its operational offices in Sri Lanka. Located in One Galle Face Tower, Colombo, the GROW office opening had in attendance personnel from all sectors of government, including Namal Rajapaksa, the Sri Lanka Minister of Digital Technology and Enterprise Development.



At the ceremony, Namal Rajapaksa relayed the Sri Lanka government's stance on the remarkable achievement.

"We are proud and happy to have you guys here as young entrepreneurs in the blockchain technology sector and taking Sri Lanka, leading Sri Lanka into the new era. As a Government, myself, my secretaries here, the Central Bank, Deputy Governors, all of us, are excited to be here today and to welcome you all," Minister Rajapaksa said.

GROW is Committed to Bolstering Innovation and Adoption of New Technologies

GROW aims at harnessing innovation in the budding Web3 space, creating innovation for youths, building sustainable business models via Web3, and advancing a national strategy for Web3 education with an emphasis on gaming, token economics, and the metaverse.

GROW capitalizes on Sri Lanka's refreshing approach to new technologies and developing markets like Web3, blockchain, and the metaverse. GROW recognizes the untapped potential that is the South Asian market and has set up an operating base in Colombo. This move, GROW hopes, will inspire other emerging platforms in the new technology space to leverage Sri Lanka's excellent approach to these new markets.

GROW is pioneering the introduction of lenient and progressive legislative regulations and policies that will aid Web3 experts in developing decentralized applications [DApps] and ecosystems that will open an avalanche of earning opportunities for the people of Sri Lanka. Additionally, GROW is committed to creating national awareness about these emerging markets and highlighting the undeniable positive impacts on the economy.

Peter Carroll, CEO & Founder of GROW, while speaking at the opening ceremony, reiterated GROW's commitment to recognizing and widening the opportunities in the metaverse, blockchain, gaming, and Web3 markets. Mr. Carroll believes forward-thinking leadership could put Sri Lanka at the center stageas a vehicle for the proliferation of these exciting and newfangled technologies.

"New technological economies are combining with widespread technological infrastructure and forming the building blocks of our economic future. How they are utilized and regulated will define social mobility for today's youth. At GROW, we firmly believe these times are part of a shift, from the innovation phase of a technology breakout to the early adoption phase of the blockchain-based industries of Web 3.0," CEO Peter Carroll further said.

Citing "sandbox" as what Sri Lanka could be, GROW's founder unequivocally stated that Colombo could be one of the leading hubs for frontier technologies globally.

"I mean, think about it, what drives an entrepreneur? Building! We build ideas, products, and businesses, so what could be more exciting than being here in Colombo and helping to develop the people, economy, and tech infrastructure of a $120 billion state-of-the-art Smart City?

For us, the answer is simple: nothing! We want to engage with the blue-chip companies of Web 3.0 like Animoca Brands, Polygon and encourage them to help us drive opportunity, to educate and build traction because we believe Central and Southern Asia can drive actual adoption.", Peter Carroll said.

About GROW

GROW is an incubation service for blockchain-based projects and emerging markets like Web3 and the metaverse. GROW aims at facilitating the real-world impact of blockchain technology. To achieve this, GROW offers a complete set of innovative features and ideas, advisory networks, and connections for Web3 builders.

Social Links

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/growgrouphq/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/GrowGroupHQ

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/79858038/admin/

Medium: https://thegrowgroup.medium.com/

Media Contact

Brand: GROW

Email: ash.m@thegrowgroup.com

Website: https://thegrowgroup.com/

SOURCE: GROW
RADNOR, Pa., March 04, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The law firm of Kessler Topaz Meltzer & Check, LLP (www.ktmc.com) informs investors that a securities class action lawsuit has been filed in the United States District Court for the District of Colorado against Gatos Silver, Inc. (Gatos) (NYSE: GATO). The action charges Gatos with violations of the federal securities laws, including omissions and fraudulent misrepresentations relating to the companys business, operations, and prospects. As a result of Gatos materially misleading statements to the public, Gatos investors have suffered significant losses.



Kessler Topaz is one of the worlds foremost advocates in protecting the public against corporate fraud and other wrongdoing. Our securities fraud litigators are regularly recognized as leaders in the field individually and our firm is both feared and respected among the defense bar and the insurance bar. We are proud to have recovered billions of dollars for our clients and the classes of shareholders we represent.

CANNOT VIEW THIS VIDEO? PLEASE CLICK HERE

CLICK HERE TO SUBMIT YOUR GATOS LOSSES. YOU CAN ALSO CLICK ON THE FOLLOWING LINK OR COPY AND PASTE IN YOUR BROWSER: https://www.ktmc.com/gato-class-action-lawsuit?utm_source=PR&utm_medium=link&utm_campaign=gato

LEAD PLAINTIFF DEADLINE: APRIL 25, 2022

CLASS PERIOD: OCTOBER 28, 2020 THROUGH JANUARY 25, 2022

CONTACT AN ATTORNEY TO DISCUSS YOUR RIGHTS:

James Maro, Esq. at (484) 270-1453 or via email at info@ktmc.com

GATOS ALLEGED MISCONDUCT

Gatos focuses on the production, development and exploration of silver and zincrich mineral deposits. On October 29, 2020, Gatos conducted its initial public offering (IPO), selling approximately 24,644,500 shares of common stock at a price of $7.00 per share, and received net proceeds of approximately $156.1 million from the offering.

On January 25, 2022, after the market closed, Gatos revealed in a press release that there were errors in the technical report entitled Los Gatos Project, Chihuahua, Mexico with an effective date of July 1, 2020 . . . , as well as indications that there is an overestimation in the existing resource model. On a preliminary basis, Gatos estimated a potential reduction of the metal content of the mineral reserve ranging from 30% to 50% of the metal content remaining after depletion.

Following this news, Gatos stock price fell $7.02, or 69%, to close at $3.17 per share on January 26, 2022. As of the date the initial complaint was filed, Gatos shares were trading as low as $3.20 per share, a nearly 54% decline from the $7.00 per share IPO price.

WHAT CAN I DO?

Gatos investors may, no later than April 25, 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 Gatos 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

(484) 270-1453

info@ktmc.com

A video accompanying this announcement is available at: https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/49f50011-810e-4895-8242-d79514e222e6
LADERA RANCH, Calif., March 04, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- ALKEME, one of the nation's top retail insurance platforms, announced the acquisition of Chergey Insurance, a Thousand Oaks, California-based brokerage operating in 50 states, specializing in workers compensation, property, liability, and commercial auto. Chergey has carved out a unique niche in serving contractors and tow truck operators in California.

"We look forward to welcoming the dedicated and talented team at Chergey to the ALKEME family," said Curtis Barton, CEO of ALKEME. "Chergey's entrepreneurial spirit and passion for delivering quality services to a unique client base fit well with ALKEME's mission and our plans to expand our footprint in California."

"We are thrilled to be joining the family of ALKEME companies," said Dan Chergey, owner of Chergey Insurance. "We are extremely confident that this new partnership will expand the value we deliver to our existing clients and will help us further expand our business with the additional markets, products, and resources available through ALKEME."

ABOUT ALKEME

ALKEME helps insurance brokerages realize sustainable growth and success through the creative use of innovation, shared services, consultation, and marketing. Our proven methodology, unmatched expertise, and externally validated results have quickly propelled us into the top-100 privately held insurance agencies in the U.S. Partners across the country rely on ALKEME's proven platform coupled with experience, resources, and long-term perspective to help them realize sustainable growth and success in a rapidly modernizing insurance world. Based in Ladera Ranch, California, and backed by GCP Capital Partners, ALKEME serves thousands of clients with a wide range of offerings including P&C, Benefits, Surety, Risk and Wealth Management. For more information, please visit alkemeins.com.

PRESS CONTACT

hello@alkemeins.com

Related Images











Image 1: ALKEME Acquires Chergey Insurance





ALKEME Acquires Chergey Insurance









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PHOENIX, March 05, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- In a show of bipartisan support for its flagship project, American Rare Earths (ASX: $ARR, OTCQB: $ARRNF, FSE:1BHA) has welcomed a delegation of elected officials from all levels of government to its flagship La Paz project.

Key members of the group of 25 dignitaries delivered enthusiastic and encouraging speeches about American Rare Earths and its work underway to help secure the United States' domestic critical minerals supply chain.

The federal, state and county officials and staff were updated by company geologists on progress across eight diamond drill holes in the La Paz Southwest Project area. The current drill program is targeting a potential 740-930 million tonnes (mt) that could expand the existing JORC resource of 170.6mt.

Steve Trussell, Executive Director of the Arizona Mining Association, said the project would help the state play "a pivotal role" in developing a domestic U.S. supply of rare earths.

"Projects like these matter to Arizona because Arizona has an incredible mineral endowment, and we need to secure a domestic supply of these critical minerals," he said. "We just need to get these projects quickly permitted to supply what we need, so we're not reliant on other countries for these materials. Arizona is a great destination for mining. We are ranked number two globally as an investment-friendly jurisdiction.

"These minerals and the demand for these minerals are going up exponentially. We're part of the transition to renewable energy. And so, without us, I just don't know how we can get there. Having that domestic supply is going to be of paramount importance."

A Vice President at the Arizona Commerce Authority, Jamie Kerr congratulated American Rare Earths on making "a great start" to advancing rare earths production in the U.S.

"American Rare Earths is doing wonderful things. The Commerce Authority is here to assist and help them in any way we can to make their project successful," Mr. Kerr said.

State Representative at Arizona House of Representatives Leo Biasiucci emphasized the importance of La Paz to the region with his optimistic comments. "What's happening here with this huge project  the potential for this is enormous."

"For a very long time," he added, "a lot of people didn't think this would be an area that would grow. That's changing. It's changing a lot of things we are doing at the legislature, lowering the taxes, making this business-friendly, getting rid of some of the regulations, so we get projects like this moving forward."

Following the success of this latest VIP event, Company executive Marty Weems, President North America, American Rare Earths Limited, will speak to several dozen State Legislators about La Paz at an event held with the Arizona Mining Association.

About American Rare Earths

American Rare Earths Limited (ASX: ARR, OTCQB: ARRNF, FSE: 1BHA) has assets in the growing rare earth metals sector of the United States, itself emerging as an alternative international supply chain to China's market dominance of a global rare earth market expected to balloon to US$20 billion in this decade. The Company's mission is to supply Critical Materials for Renewable Energy, Green Tech, Electric Vehicles, National Security, and a Carbon-Reduced Future. Western Rare Earths (WRE) is a wholly-owned, US subsidiary. ARR owns 100% of the world-class La Paz Rare Earth Project in Arizona. The La Paz project area is potentially the largest, rare earths deposit in the USA and benefits from extraordinarily low penalty elements, such as radioactive thorium and uranium. Additionally, since first half of 2021, the company owns 100% of the Searchlight Heavy Rare Earths Project in Nevada and the Halleck Creek Rare Earths Project in Wyoming.

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains certain statements that are not historical facts and are forward-looking statements for purposes of the safe harbor provisions under the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements may be identified by the use of the words such as "estimate," "plan," "project," "forecast," "intend," "expect," "anticipate," "believe," "seek," "will," "target," or similar expressions that predict or indicate future events or trends or that are not statements of historical matters. These forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, statements regarding the Company's plans for exploration, development, production and/or processing of materials, including the timing and associated costs and expenses. Such statements are all subject to risks, uncertainties and changes in circumstances that could significantly affect the Company's future financial results and business.

Accordingly, the Company cautions that the forward-looking statements contained herein are qualified by important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those reflected by such statements. These forward-looking statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties, including the ability of the Company to successfully permit, plan, develop and/or construct a facility to mine, process and/or refine critical minerals, which may be delayed, and related costs and expenses, which may be increased beyond our current estimates; changes in domestic and foreign business, market, financial, political and legal conditions, which may or may not occur; the impact of the global COVID-19 pandemic, on any of the foregoing risks; and those factors discussed in the Company's JORC 2012 compliant technical reports as submitted to the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX). The Company does not intend to update publicly any forward-looking statements except as required by law. In light of these risks, uncertainties and assumptions, the forward-looking events discussed in this press release may not occur.

MEDIA CONTACT: Susan Assadi

347 977 7125 susan@gapr.biz

Related Images











Image 1: Bipartisan Delegation at American Rare Earths La Paz Project





A group of bipartisan elected officials and American Rare Earths staff at American Rare Earths La Paz Project.









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Austin, TX, March 04, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- (via Blockchain Wire) NFT Carnival (www.nftcarnival.io), the first digital gallery event series for non-fungible tokens (NFTs), today announced it will be featured at ImmersiVerse ATX 2022, (www.iverse.events), the premiere private experiential destination for arts, tech, finance, and future-culture on March 11-14, 2022 during SXSW in Austin, Texas. NFT creators and collectors as well as anyone with an affinity for art & music are encouraged to apply for an invite. Once approved, registration is free. Learn more on the event page.

The NFT Carnival (aka Fair from the Future) art gallery will take over the second floor of the event venue, Speakeasy, with up to 30 up-and-coming NFT and art displays. The gallery and all other floors of ImmersiVerse are powered by Token Frame, NFT displays built for authenticity. During the event, guests will have access to experience the gallery displays and have the opportunity to meet the artists. In the evening, ImmersiVerse ATX 2022 will showcase the legendary Austin music scene with four local acts each night.



On the first floor, ImmersiVerse keynote speakers will take the main stage each day offering expert, actionable, and provocative insight on the hottest topics in the art world, the ever-changing tech universe, the financial industry, and future-culture areas including digital wellness and public policy.



For investors, following the NFT Carnival and ImmersiVerse content on Saturday, March 12 and Monday, March 14 will be the debut of Satoshi Salon Austin from 4:30-7:30 pm CST. Satoshi Salon is a private event club where leaders, innovators, and investors in blockchain, fintech, and emerging technology are invited to enjoy dinner, drinks, investment opportunities and thought-leader discussion to drive the industry forward. Early-stage blockchain startups are invited to present. Learn more at www.satoshi.salon



ABOUT NFT CARNIVAL



NFT Carnival ( www.nftcarnival.io/) is a digital gallery event series for non-fungible tokens (NFT), bringing together NFT creators, innovators, collectors and media in key cities globally. NFT Carnival is organized by Layer1 Events and Transform Ventures, which have been producing high-end crypto investor events globally since 2014.

ABOUT SATOSHI SALON



Satoshi Salon (www.satoshi.salon) is a private event club for leaders, innovators, and investors in blockchain, fintech, and emerging technology to enjoy dinner, drinks, investment opportunities, and thought-leader discussion to drive the industry forward. Dinners take place at the home or selected venue of Satoshi Hosts, who personally curate their dinner guests. Satoshi Salon events are invite-only. Apply for an invitation on satoshi.salon.

ABOUT IMMERSIVERSE:



ImmersiVerse (iverse.events) is a premium destination experience with thought leaders in four tracks: Arts,Tech, Finance, and Future/Culture founded by Amanda Pool and Seth Shapiro. ImmersiVerse curates programs of leading-edge experiences, thought leaders in meaningful discussions with an emphasis on transformative technologies and art. ImmersiVerse destinations are signature events offering a showcase for local artists and venues and tailored for VIP invite-only audiences alongside major annual events including SXSW, Sundance, Tribeca and IBC.
NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION TO UNITED STATES NEWSWIRE SERVICES OR

DISSEMINATION IN THE UNITED STATES

TORONTO, March 04, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Zacatecas Silver Corp. (TSXV:ZAC) (the Company) is pleased to announce today that, due to strong demand, it has agreed with Clarus Securities Inc. (Clarus) as lead agent on behalf of a syndicate of agents including Eventus Capital Corp., Haywood Securities Inc., and Canaccord Genuity Corp. (collectively, the Agents), to increase the size of its previously announced C$15,000,700 offering. Pursuant to the upsized deal terms, the Agents have agreed to sell, on a best efforts private placement basis, up to 15,000,000 subscription receipts of the Company (the Subscription Receipts) at a price of C$1.10 per Subscription Receipt (the Offering Price) for aggregate gross proceeds to the Company of up to C$16,500,000 (the Offering). In addition, the Company intends to complete a concurrent non-brokered private placement offering of 1,364,000 Subscription Receipts on the same terms as the Offering for gross proceeds of $1,500,400 which brings the total amount of the financing to $18,000,400.

The proceeds raised from the Offering will be used partially to satisfy the USD$5,000,000 cash consideration in connection with the acquisition of the Esperanza Project from Alamos Gold Inc., begin advancing the Esperanza Project towards production, fund the ongoing drill program at the Companys existing silver project, and general working capital purposes.

The Offering is subject to certain conditions including, but not limited to, the receipt of all necessary approvals including the acceptance by the TSX Venture Exchange. The securities to be issued under this Offering will be offered by way of private placement exemptions in all the provinces of Canada, and in the United States on a private placement basis pursuant to exemptions from the registration requirements of the United States Securities Act of 1933, as amended.

The securities being offered have not, nor will they be registered under the United States Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and may not be offered or sold within the United States or to, or for the account or benefit of, U.S. persons absent U.S. registration or an applicable exemption from the U.S. registration requirements. This release does not constitute an offer for sale of securities in the United States.

Additionally, the Company has granted Clarus, on behalf of the Agents, an agents option (Agents Option), which will allow the Agents to offer up to an additional 15% of the Offering on the same terms as the Subscription Receipts. The Agents Option may be exercised in whole or in part at any time prior to the Closing Date of the Offering. The Offering is expected to close on or about March 22, 2022.

About Zacatecas Silver

The Zacatecas Silver property is located in Zacatecas State, Mexico, within the highly prospective Fresnillo Silver Belt, which has produced over 6.2 billion ounces of silver. The company holds 7,826 ha (19,338 acres) of ground that is highly prospective for low and intermediate sulphidation silver-base metal mineralization and potentially low sulphidation gold dominant mineralization. On December 15, 2021, Zacatecas announced a mineral resource estimate at the Panuco Deposit consisting of 2.7 million tonnes at 187 g/t AgEq (171 g/t Ag and 0.17 g/t Au) for 16.4 million ounces AgEq (15 million ounces silver and 15 thousand ounces gold) (see news release dated December 15, 2021).

The property is 25 km south-east of MAG Silver Corp.'s Juanicipio Mine and Fresnillo PLC's Fresnillo Mine. The property shares common boundaries with Pan American Silver Corp. claims and El Orito which is owned by Endeavour Silver.

There are four main high-grade silver target areas within the Zacatecas concessions: the Panuco Deposit, Muleros, El Cristo and San Manuel-San Gill. The Property also includes El Oro, El Orito, La Cantera, Monserrat, El Penon, San Judas and San Juan silver-base metal vein targets. These targets are relatively unexplored and will be the focus of rapid reconnaissance.

In addition, Zacatecas Silver Corp. has entered into a share purchase agreement dated Feb. 28, 2022, with Minas De Oro Nacional SA De CV, a subsidiary of Alamos Gold Inc., to acquire the advanced-stage Esperanza gold project, located in Morelos state, Mexico.

The Esperanza gold project as an attractive low-cost, low-capital-intensity and low-technical-risk growth project located in Morelos state, Mexico. Alamos has advanced the project through advanced engineering, including metallurgical work, while also focusing on stakeholder engagement, including building community relations.

On Behalf of the Company,

Bryan Slusarchuk, Chief Executive Officer and Director

For further information, please contact:

Jonathan Richards, Chief Financial Officer

+1 604 802 4447

jrichards@redfernconsulting.ca

www.zacatecassilver.com

Forward-Looking Statements

Information set forth in this news release contains forward-looking statements that are based on assumptions as of the date of this news release. These statements reflect managements current estimates, beliefs, intentions and expectations. They are not guarantees of future performance. Zacatecas Silver cautions that all forward looking statements are inherently uncertain and that actual performance may be affected by many material factors, many of which are beyond their respective control. Such factors include, among other things: risks and uncertainties relating to Zacatecas Silvers limited operating history, its proposed exploration and development activities on is Zacatecas Properties and the need to comply with environmental and governmental regulations. Accordingly, actual and future events, conditions and results may differ materially from the estimates, beliefs, intentions and expectations expressed or implied in the forward-looking information. Except as required under applicable securities legislation, Zacatecas Silver does not undertake to publicly update or revise forward-looking information.

Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.
A Northern California police officer who fatally shot an unarmed man driving a slow-moving car in 2018 was sentenced Friday to six years in prison.

Andrew Hall of the Danville Police Department fatally shot Laudemer Arboleda, a 33-year-old Filipino-American man, while he was driving six miles per hour.

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Andrew Hall walks into a courthouse for his arraignment. (Doug Duran/AP)

Hall was convicted of assault with a firearm in October 2021, but the jury couldnt reach a verdict on a manslaughter charge. He couldve faced anything from probation to 17 years in prison.

The people of Contra Costa (County) put their trust in Deputy Hall to protect them, and he violated it on this occasion, Judge Terri Mockler said while handing down the six-year sentence, according to the East Bay Times.

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Officers began interacting with Arboleda on Nov. 3, 2018, when they got a call about a man knocking on doors and loitering outside homes in Danville, about 15 miles east of Oakland in the East Bay.

Weeks earlier, Arboleda had been involuntarily committed to a mental hospital and prescribed medicine for psychosis and schizophrenia, according to his family. His used to live in the neighborhood where he was door-knocking.

Breaking News As it happens Get updates on the coronavirus pandemic and other news as it happens with our free breaking news email alerts. >

Arboleda proceeded to lead police on a low speed, stop-and-start car chase through Danville. Hall was not involved for most of the chase, but he joined at the end, using his police vehicle to block Arboleda in an intersection.

Hall then walked in front of Arboledas vehicle, as seen on body-camera and dashboard-camera videos. He opened fire while backing away; his shots traveled through the windshield and passengers seat window.

Of the 10 shots that Hall fired, nine struck Arboleda. Arboledas car was moving six miles per hour when he was killed.

Despite video evidence being available since 2018, Hall wasnt charged until April 2021. Contra Costa County District Attorney Diana Becton said the delay was caused by a backlog of investigations into police shootings.

Bay Area civil rights attorney John Burris told the East Bay Times that Becton prosecuted Hall despite opposition within her own office.

Tyrell Wilson (left), is seen moments before Andrew Hall killed him. Hall has not been charged in Wilson's death. (AP)

Arboledas case drew renewed attention in spring 2021 after Hall fatally shot Tyrell Wilson, a 32-year-old Black man, in March of that year. Wilson was carrying a knife when Hall killed him. Hall was not immediately charged in that case.

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Contra Costa County settled a federal civil rights lawsuit with Arboledas family for $4.9 million in October 2021.
English French

PRESS RELEASE

Arcueil, March 4, 2022

Availability of documents and information relating to

the Combined General Meeting of March 25, 2022

The shareholders of Aramis Group (the "Company") are invited to attend the Combined General Meeting (Ordinary and Extraordinary) to be held on Friday, March 25, 2022 at 3 p.m. CET at the Company's registered office at 23 avenue Aristide Briand, 94110 Arcueil, France.

The meeting notice, including the agenda and the text of the draft resolutions, was published in the Bulletin des Annonces Legales Obligatoires (BALO) n19 of February 14, 2022 and the meeting summon will be published on Monday, March 7, 2022 in Les Affiches Parisiennes, a legal advertisement newspaper. The terms of participation and voting at this Combined General Meeting are set out in these notices.

Shareholders can view and download information and documents relating to the Combined General Meeting on the Aramis Group website at https://aramis.group/ (under the Investors/ Shareholders General Meeting tab).

The documents provided for in Article R.22-10-23 of the French Commercial Code may be consulted on the Company's website at the address indicated above, from today, the twenty-first day preceding the General Meeting.

In accordance with articles R. 225-83 and R. 225-89 of the French Commercial Code, the documents that must be made available to the shareholders in connection with the General Meetings will be available at the head office of Aramis Group, 23 avenue Aristide Briand, 94110 Arcueil, France, from Thursday,

March 10, 2022, the fifteenth day before the General Meeting.

In accordance with applicable regulations:

any registered shareholder may, up to and including the fifth day before the General Meeting, request that the Company send him these documents. For holders of bearer shares, the exercise of this right is subject to the provision of a certificate of participation in the bearer share accounts held by the authorised intermediary;





any shareholder may consult these documents at the registered office of Aramis Group or send a request by email to the following address: investor@aramis.group during a period of 15 days preceding the date of the General Meeting.





***

About Aramis Group

Aramis Group is a leading European B2C platform to acquire a used car online and brings together four brands: Aramisauto, Cardoen, Clicars and CarSupermarket, in France, Belgium, Spain and the UK respectively. The Group is transforming the used car market and is putting digital technology at the service of customer satisfaction with a fully vertically integrated business model. For the full 2021 fiscal year, Aramis Group generated revenues of 1.36 billion, sold more than 80,000 B2C vehicles, and recorded more than 73 million visits to its websites. At the end of September 2021, the Group had more than 1,800 employees, a network of

60 agencies and three industrial refurbishing sites. Aramis Group is listed on compartment A of the Euronext Paris stock exchange (Ticker: ARAMI  ISIN: FR0014003U94). For more information, visit www.aramis.group.

Investors contact

Alexandre Leroy

Head of investor relations

alexandre.leroy@aramis.group

+33 (0)6 58 80 50 24

Press contact

Brunswick

aramisgroup@brunswickgroup.com

Hugues Boeton +33 (0)6 79 99 27 15

Alexia Gachet +33 (0)6 33 06 55 93

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Alexandria, Va., March 04, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Prevent Cancer Foundation will host its 13th annual Health Fair and 5k Walk/Run on Sunday, March 13. After shifting to a virtual format in 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic, this years event returns to Nationals Park.

The Prevent Cancer Foundation will bring the Washington metropolitan community together for a day of exercise, education and fun for individuals and families to support cancer prevention and early detection screening and health education programs to medically underserved communities. All kids ages 12 and under can attend for free, and a virtual option is being offered for those unable to attend in person. Dogs are also welcome and must be on their leashes at all times. The event includes an unofficial, un-timed 5k route that starts and finishes in Nationals Park and takes participants around the Capitol Riverfront neighborhood. There is also a Fun Run for children and dogs.

Tommy McFLY, host of Walk a Mile with Tommy McFLY and NBC4's Scene Correspondent, will be at the event as the program emcee. Once participants return to the stadium after completing the 5k, they are invited to walk through the Health Fair, where they will enjoy exclusive access to the Nationals' batting cages and dugouts, free health and wellness screenings, (like We Rock Cancers skin cancer screening vehicle), the Prevent Cancer Super Colon and more.

As we all prepare to spring forward an hour next weekend, Prevent Cancer Foundation's annual 5k is the perfect way to start daylight saving time on the right foot. Were looking forward to seeing everyone in person once again at Nationals Park and are eager for our attendees to take advantage of our free Health Fair screenings being offered because early detection of a health issue could save your life, said Jody Hoyos, President and COO of the Prevent Cancer Foundation.

The event will take place rain or shine. Cost of in-person registration is $35 for adults 17 and older and $20 for kids 11-16. Cost of virtual registration is $8 for all ages. Teams are highly encouraged.

WHO:

Prevent Cancer Foundation

WHAT:

Health Fair and 5k Walk/Run

WHERE:

Nationals Park

1500 South Capitol Street SE

Washington, DC 20003

WHEN:

Sunday, March 13 at 7:45 a.m.

TO REGISTER:

https://www.preventcancer5k.org

MEDIA:

Must RSVP before the event to Kyra Meister, kyra.meister@preventcancer.org

###

About the Prevent Cancer Foundation

The Prevent Cancer Foundation is the only U.S. nonprofit organization focused solely on saving lives across all populations through cancer prevention and early detection. Through research, education, outreach and advocacy, we have helped countless people avoid a cancer diagnosis or detect their cancer early enough to be successfully treated.

The Foundation is rising to meet the challenge of reducing cancer deaths by 40% by 2035. To achieve this, we are committed to investing $20 million for innovative technologies to detect cancer early and advance multi-cancer screening, $10 million to expand cancer screening and vaccination access to medically underserved communities, and $10 million to educate the public about screening and vaccination options.

For more information, please visit www.preventcancer.org.
GALVESTON, Texas, March 04, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- American National Insurance Company has been listed by Forbes as one of Americas Best Insurance Companies for 2022. The Galveston-based insurer was one of only 90 insurance companies across the nation to be recognized by the publication on its list of top insurers.



To determine which companies were best serving consumers, Forbes partnered with Statista to survey more than 16,000 customers and get their feedback on these companies' performance.

This is not the first time American National has been honored by Forbes. In both 2009 and 2017, American National earned a spot on Forbes Most Trustworthy Financial Companies list. These prestigious honors are a testament to the companys solid business practices and dedication to doing whats right.

Serving clients is a top company value, and we are proud to be recognized by Forbes for staying true to our principles of integrity, service, and value. For more than 100 years, American National has been dedicated to putting its clients first.

Founded in 1905 on the principles of strong management and prudent investment, our company has earned the faith of its policyholders and shareholders in the face of world wars, recessions, the Great Depression, and technological advancements.

Once a fledging business with merely 10 employees and 500 square feet of office space in Galveston, Texas, American National has expanded in both size and strength. With a wide-reaching network of local agents in all 50 states and Puerto Rico, American National serves more than five million policyholders and has over $136 billion of life insurance in force.

About American National

American National Group, Inc. is the corporate parent of the American National companies, which include American National Insurance Company and its insurance affiliates. American National Insurance Company, founded in 1905 and headquartered in Galveston, Texas, is licensed in all states except New York. American National offers a broad line of products and services, which include life insurance, annuities, health insurance, credit insurance, pension products and property and casualty insurance for personal lines, agribusiness, and certain commercial exposures. The American National companies operate in all 50 states.

For corporate and investor relations information, please visit the website of American National at www.AmericanNational.com.

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/a051548d-c403-47bc-9fce-494bb73a82ed
Board update

ICG plc (ICG or the Company), the global alternative asset manager with $71bn assets under management, announces that the Chairman of the Board of Directors, Lord Davies of Abersoch, has informed the Company of his intention to step down from the Board with immediate effect.

ICG's Nominations and Governance Committee, led by the Senior Independent Director Andrew Sykes, will lead the search for a successor. Andrew Sykes, who has been a member of the Board since 2018, has been appointed as Interim Chairman while the search process is underway.

Lord Davies of Abersoch, outgoing Chairman, commented: It has been an honour to serve as Chairman of ICG, a fantastic company with exceptional prospects and one for which I have huge respect. I am facing a significant increase in the time I need to devote to my other responsibilities, and I believe it is in the best interests of ICG and its stakeholders that I now, with regret, step back from the Board. I wish the Board and the whole ICG team every success for the future.

Andrew Sykes, Senior Independent Director and Interim Chairman, commented: On behalf of the Board I would like to thank Lord Davies for his outstanding leadership. He has helped ICG navigate the unprecedented challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic, supported our management through a period of continued strong growth, and reinforced the Company's emphasis on sustainability and good governance. We respect his decision to devote himself to the other significant claims on his time.

Benoit Durteste, CEO and CIO of ICG, commented: On behalf of the management team, I would like to thank Lord Davies for his guidance and leadership as Chairman of ICG, and for his support of the Board, the Executive and the wider firm.

This announcement is made in accordance with Listing Rule 9.6.



ENQUIRIES

Shareholder / Analyst enquiries:

Andrew Sykes, Senior Independent Director and Interim Chairman, +44 (0) 20 3545 2000

Chris Hunt, Head of Shareholder Relations, +44 (0) 20 3545 2020

Andrew Lewis, General Counsel, +44 (0) 20 3545 2000

Media enquiries:

Fiona Laffan, Global Head of Corporate Affairs +44 (0) 20 3545 1510



ABOUT ICG

ICG provides flexible capital solutions to help companies develop and grow. We are a leading global alternative asset manager with over 30 years' history, managing $71bn of assets and investing across the capital structure. We operate across four asset classes: Structured and Private Equity, Private Debt, Real Assets, and Credit.

We develop long-term relationships with our business partners to deliver value for shareholders, clients and employees, and use our position of influence to benefit the environment and society. We are committed to being a net zero asset manager across our operations and relevant investments by 2040.

ICG is listed on the London Stock Exchange (ticker symbol: ICP). Further details are available at www.icgam.com. You can follow ICG on LinkedIn.




TORONTO, March 04, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Ontario Federation of Labour (OFL) is building the fight for a workers-first agenda in Ontario.



On Sunday, March 6 at 9:30 a.m.  2:30 p.m., hundreds of people from every region of Ontario will join the OFLs virtual Activist Assembly. The half day-Assembly will cover what workers need for a just recovery, including:

Good jobs and decent work

A $20 minimum wage

High quality, affordable housing

Accessible, well-funded, and publicly delivered health care, long-term care, education, child care, and other public services

Justice for racialized people and First Nations, Metis, and Inuit communities

Real supports for all Equity-seeking groups

Climate justice and a livable planet



The Assembly will also include discussions about mobilizing thousands of people for a province-wide day of action for a workers-first agenda on May 1.

Date: Sunday, March 6, 2022

Time: 9:30 a.m.  2:30 p.m.

Link: Email mpalermo@ofl.ca to receive the Zoom link

For more information, please contact:

Melissa Palermo

Director of Communications

Ontario Federation of Labour

mpalermo@ofl.ca l 416-894-3456
AUDUBON, Pa., March 04, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Globus Medical, Inc. (NYSE: GMED), a leading musculoskeletal solutions company, today announced that its Board of Directors has expanded the Companys share repurchase program by authorizing the repurchase of an additional $200 million of the Companys common stock. The new authorization, plus the approximate $95.3 million currently available under its existing share repurchase program, approved in March 2020, provides the Company with over $295 million available for future share repurchases.



Our announcement today reflects the continued confidence that we have in our long-term growth profile and underlying earnings strength, noted David Paul, Executive Chairman. We continue to view Globus as an attractive investment opportunity over the long-term and our strong balance sheet provides us with the financial flexibility to drive continued strategic investments, both organic and inorganic, while also providing returns to our shareholders through this share repurchase program.

The timing and actual number of shares repurchased will be determined by management at its discretion and will depend on a variety of factors, including market price of the shares, general business and market conditions, applicable legal requirements, and alternative investment opportunities. The repurchase program will be executed consistent with the companys capital allocation strategy of prioritizing investment to grow the business over the long term.

Repurchases may be made through privately negotiated transactions or open market transactions, including pursuant to a trading plan in accordance with Rule 10b5-1 and/or Rule 10b-18 under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. The repurchase program has no time limit and may be suspended for periods or discontinued at any time. The Company intends to utilize its cash reserves to fund the share repurchase program.

About Globus Medical, Inc.

Based in Audubon, Pennsylvania, Globus Medical, Inc. was founded in 2003 by an experienced team of professionals with a shared vision to create products that enable surgeons to promote healing in patients with musculoskeletal disorders. Additional information can be accessed at www.globusmedical.com .

Safe Harbor Statements

All statements included in this press release other than statements of historical fact are forward-looking statements and may be identified by their use of words such as believe, may, might, could, will, aim, estimate, continue, anticipate, intend, expect, plan and other similar terms. These forward-looking statements are based on our current assumptions, expectations and estimates of future events and trends. Forward-looking statements are only predictions and are subject to many risks, uncertainties and other factors that may affect our businesses and operations and could cause actual results to differ materially from those predicted. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, health epidemics, pandemics and similar outbreaks, including the COVID-19 pandemic, factors affecting our quarterly results, our ability to manage our growth, our ability to sustain our profitability, demand for our products, our ability to compete successfully (including without limitation our ability to convince surgeons to use our products and our ability to attract and retain sales and other personnel), our ability to rapidly develop and introduce new products, our ability to develop and execute on successful business strategies, our ability to comply with laws and regulations that are or may become applicable to our businesses, our ability to safeguard our intellectual property, our success in defending legal proceedings brought against us, trends in the medical device industry, general economic conditions, and other risks. For a discussion of these and other risks, uncertainties and other factors that could affect our results, you should refer to the disclosure contained in our most recent annual report on Form 10-K filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including the sections labeled Risk Factors and Cautionary Note Concerning Forward-Looking Statements, and in our Forms 10-Q, Forms 8-K and other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. These documents are available at www.sec.gov . Moreover, we operate in an evolving environment. New risk factors and uncertainties emerge from time to time and it is not possible for us to predict all risk factors and uncertainties, nor can we assess the impact of all factors on our business or the extent to which any factor, or combination of factors, may cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in any forward-looking statements. Given these risks and uncertainties, readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on any forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements contained in this press release speak only as of the date of this press release. We undertake no obligation to update any forward-looking statements as a result of new information, events or circumstances or other factors arising or coming to our attention after the date hereof.
Gloucester, MA (01930)

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An alleged stalker is accused of breaking into the New Hampshire home of his favorite OnlyFans model, camping out in her attic and recording her as she slept.

Mauricio Damian-Guerrero is currently facing four counts of burglary, WCVB5 reported. Officials have also said he could face additional charges in connection with the creepy case.

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According to court documents released this week, the 20-year-old suspect drove nearly 400 miles from Bensalem, Pa., to the New Hampshire home of a woman he met through OnlyFans, a subscription service popular among sex workers and often used to share racy and explicit content online.

He was taken into custody on Feb. 9, as he tried to climb out of the victims attic and onto her roof. That night, the woman said she awoke to see Damian-Guerrero standing in the doorway of her bedroom, according to the newly unsealed documents, obtained by McClatchy News.

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Mauricio Damian-Guerrero drove 400 miles on his creepy quest, court documents allege.

Following his arrest, the suspected stalker confessed to stealing her key and then making a copy of it at Home Depot so he could easily enter her home. Investigators said that Damian-Guerrero broke into the residence on several occasions and recorded the woman as she slept in the nude.

Multiple videos of the victim were found on the mans phone, according to police.

The victim also told investigators she discovered food, a cup of urine and Damian-Guerreros head phones in the attic. Authorities also found a Tile Bluetooth tracking device the suspect said he planned to place on her car.

The woman said she initially met her alleged stalker in October and that he seemed nice at first. According to court documents, she gave him her address because he wanted to buy her a TV and fireplace.

She never really wanted to meet him, but he was very pushy and eventually she was walking to her car and noticed a car pulled over close to her, investigators wrote in the affidavit. She saw him ducking and hiding inside his car.

Damian-Guerrero was released on bail earlier this week. Hes not allowed to travel to New Hampshire, contact the woman and has been ordered to wear a tracking device.
Goshen, IN (46526)

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Purdue Pharma has agreed to an updated settlement over its role in enabling the opioid crisis after members of the Sackler family upped their contribution to as much as $6 billion in return for protection from lawsuits.

The deal, worth $10 billion over time, will settle thousands of pending lawsuits over Oxycontin, a painkiller that addicted countless of its users and believed to have killed 500,000 people over the last two decades.

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It also supersedes an earlier settlement that was disputed by eight states and the District of Columbia largely because they felt it did not hold the Sackler family responsible.

The eight states signed on to the new deal after the Sacklers agreed to add $1.2 billion to the $4.3 billion contained in the original deal reached in 2021, and to other terms.

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The new deal must still be approved by a federal bankruptcy judge in White Plains.

Paige Niver of Manchester, Conn. listens during a news conference Thursday about the Sackler family's settlement in the Purdue Pharma case at Connecticut Attorney General William Tong's office in Hartford. Niver's daughter became addicted to opioids after she was prescribed OxyContin at age 14. (Jessica Hill/AP)

As part of the deal, the family will relinquish control of Stamford, Conn.-based Purdue Pharma, so it can be converted into an entity whose profits are used to fight the opioid crisis.

While no criminal charges have been filed against the Sacklers over the opioid crisis, the deal does not shield the family from any that might come in the future.

The Sacklers have not outright apologized, but have expressed regret about the role of OxyContin, a moneymaker for Purdue Pharma. The company marketed OxyContin as a treatment for a broad range of ailments that doctors had previously considered off-limits for such strong, addictive medication.

While the families have acted lawfully in all respects, they sincerely regret that OxyContin, a prescription medicine that continues to help people suffering from chronic pain, unexpectedly became part of an opioid crisis that has brought grief and loss to far too many families and communities, the Sacklers said in a statement.

Liz Fitzgerald of Southington, Conn. (left) and Paige Niver of Manchester, Conn. (right) listen Thursday as Connecticut Attorney General William Tong, center, speaks at a news conference in Hartford. Fitzgerald lost two sons to opioids and Niver's daughter became addicted after getting prescribed OxyContin at age 14. (Jessica Hill/AP)

Part of the settlement allows victims to address some of the Sacklers by videoconference in court next week  the first time theyve been able to do so in a public setting.

The agreement was struck after weeks of mediation between the Sackler family and the attorneys general for eight states and the District of Columbia. It increases the familys payment from $4.3 billion to $5.5 billion in cash, with another $500,000 contingent on the sale of overseas operations.

Breaking News As it happens Get updates on the coronavirus pandemic and other news as it happens with our free breaking news email alerts. >

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U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Robert Drain is to rule on whether to accept the agreement at a hearing next Wednesday. Under the plan, Purdue Pharma will give way to a new company, Knoa Pharma LLC, which will be owned by the National Opioid Abatement Trust, an organization controlled by Purdues creditors.

Purdue Pharma's headquarters in Stamford, Conn. (Mark Lennihan/AP)

Once hailed as philanthropists and patrons of the arts, Sackler family members closely associated with Purdue have slowly been closed out of major institutions in New York City and elsewhere. In May 2019, the Metropolitan Museum of Art said it would no longer accept gifts from the Sacklers, who had been major donors. The American Museum of Natural History followed suit.

In December 2021, the Met scrubbed the Sackler family name from its exhibit halls. The American Museum of Natural History on Thursday had not indicated whether it had any such plans for its Sackler Educational Laboratory.

Fake pill bottles with messages about OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma are displayed during an Aug. 2021 protest outside the White Plains federal courthouse where the company's bankruptcy case was played out. (Seth Wenig/AP)

While the agreement frees up money to help those afflicted and their families, the Sacklers will remain wealthy.

Guess what? They still made billions and billions of dollars, said Ed Bisch of Westampton, N.J., whose 18-year-old son died of an overdose 20 years ago. Without any jail time, where is the deterrent? Weve lost two generations to their greed.

With News Wire Services
For Amy Poehler and millions of millions of Americans, I Love Lucy wasnt just something that was on television. It was a show that came with your TV and was on your whole life, she said.

But its also one that, in the 65 years since it ended, loomed so large as a defining pillar of sitcom comedy that it and the vibrant couple behind the show have been flattened under the weight of words like icon and trailblazer. Its why Poehler was especially excited to dive into the world of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz for the new documentary Lucy and Desi, streaming on Amazon Prime Video on Friday, and bring them back to earth.

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One of my goals was to really make it feel like we were seeing them again as human people, Poehler said.

This image released by Amazon shows Lucille Ball, left, and Desi Arnaz in a photo from the documentary "Lucy and Desi." (Amazon via AP) (Library of Congress/AP)

The doc explores their unlikely ascent to Hollywood moguldom as well as their fascinating relationship on screen and off. She was a girl from Jamestown, N.Y., who saw modeling and acting as a way out; he was a child of wealth and privilege whose life was upended during the Cuban revolution in 1933, when he and his family fled to America and had to start from scratch.

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I think one of the coolest things about this story is you have two genuine outsiders: You have a Cuban-American immigrant, a refugee, if you will, who arrived to the country with no money and a poor grasp of the language. And then you have a woman in her 40s whos been working in the business for a long time and is very skilled, but certainly hasnt reached the amount of power that shed like, Poehler said. And its these two people, very confident in their skills but not gatekeepers in any way, who take over the business.

Amy Poehler attends the premiere of "Lucy and Desi" at Directors Guild of America on Feb. 15, 2022, in Los Angeles, Calif. (Kevin Winter/Getty Images)

This image released by Amazon shows Lucille Ball, right, and Desi Arnaz in a photo from the documentary "Lucy and Desi." (Library of Congress/AP)

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 treasure trove of previously unreleased personal recordings and interviews found at their daughter Lucie Arnazs Palm Springs home proved vital for letting Ball and Arnaz tell their own stories.

There could be so many different approaches to their story because they represented so many things, whether they wanted to or not, they represented a changing business, they represented a changing America, Poehler said. What I found so fascinating is the way both respected and loved each others process up until the very end. They really brought out the best in each other.

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ALBANY  An upstate judge declined to delay New Yorks upcoming elections on Thursday as a lawsuit over the states redistricting process plays out.

Steuben County Supreme Court Judge Patrick McAllister said he will not make a ruling on whether to strike down recently redrawn congressional and state maps, approved by the Democrat-controlled Legislature, until after he hears expert testimony from both sides.

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Even then, McAllister said, he believes the tight timeframe means that this years federal and state elections should carry on since its highly unlikely new maps could be drawn up ahead of the June primaries or even the November general election.

Voters mark their ballots at Frank McCourt High School, in Manhattan, New York on Tuesday, June 22, 2021. (Richard Drew/AP)

Therefore, striking these maps would more likely than not leave New York State without any duly elected congressional delegates, he said after hearing arguments from lawyers representing a group of voters who contend the maps have a blue bias.

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In the event McAllister does determine the new lines are unconstitutional, elections could be reheld in 2023.

I do not intend at this time to suspend the election process, he added, noting that, while he would not dismiss the case outright as requested by lawyers for legislative leaders, there is a high burden of proof that needs to be met.

The Republican-led legal challenge was brought last month on behalf of 14 New York residents who claim the maps violate the state constitution.

The Democratic-led Legislature took the lead on drawing up the maps after the Independent Redistricting Commission split along party lines and failed to reach a compromise or submit one set of plans to lawmakers.

Plaintiffs in the suit say Dems gerrymandered the maps to favor themselves, violating a 2014 constitutional provision that created the independent commission that was meant to take politics out of the process.

Former Republican congressman John Faso, who has been assisting in coordinating support for the plaintiffs, said he was pleased McAllister granted a request for expedited discovery, so that evidence of partisan gerrymandering can be more fully established.

Our efforts to overturn this unconstitutional gerrymander of congressional and state Senate districts will continue on an expedited basis, Faso added.
A Brooklyn restaurant with ties to two admitted felons who are friends of Mayor Adams was seized by state authorities this week for failing to pay nearly $400,000 in back taxes, the Daily News has learned.

Forno Rosso, an upscale pizzeria on Gold Street in Downtown Brooklyn, got two brightly-colored SEIZED notices from the State Department of Taxation and Finance slapped on its front door Wednesday because of the hefty tax debt.

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This property has been seized for nonpayment of taxes, and is now in the possession of the state of New York, the notices stated in all caps. Any person who attempts to tamper or interfere with this property will be prosecuted.

Forno Rosso in Brooklyn, New York as seen on Wednesday, Feb. 2, 2022. (Noah Goldberg)

But by Thursday, the notices had been covered up with handwritten signs that read Closed for renovations. It was not immediately clear who put up the new signs.

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A spokesman for the State Department of Taxation and Finance confirmed Thursday that the property was seized for an outstanding balance of $380,785 that has accrued since warrants were first issued in 2018.

Public records show the restaurant is partially controlled by Zhan and Robert Petrosyants, twin brothers who pleaded guilty to federal criminal charges in 2014 and have recently landed in the headlines over their connections to Adams and his top City Hall adviser.

Forno Rosso's front door in Brooklyn, New York on Thursday, March 3, 2022, one day after the New York tax authorities seized the building. (Obtained by Daily News)

In happier times, then-Brooklyn Borough President Adams beamed alongside Zhan Petrosyants as the duo attended the 2014 ribbon-cutting ceremony for Forno Rosso, where a personal burrata, provola, and speck pizza used to cost $23.

According to the state tax warrants, the principal owner of Forno Rosso is Akiva Ofshtein, a Brooklyn lawyer who has been in business with the Petrosyants for years.

The Petrosyants twins, in turn, hold an ownership stake in the restaurant, according to a lawsuit filed against them in 2016 by four former business partners that remains pending in Brooklyn Supreme Court. Robert Petrosyants is also listed in the restaurants lease as a guarantor and testified as part of an unrelated lawsuit last year that he is Forno Rossos manager, according to a sworn deposition obtained by The News.

Ofshtein confirmed Robert Petrosyants has been employed by Forno Rosso, but disputed the idea that either of the brothers own the restaurant.

I am the sole owner, he wrote in an email.

Ofshtein also said hes working with the state to pay off the tax debt and suggested he doesnt envision reopening the restaurant for business.

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COVID-19, and then omicron was a double whammy that Forno Rosso could not recover from. The lease is expiring in April 2022 and isnt being renewed, he said.

Congratulations Forno Rosso Pizzeria on their grand opening & ribbon cutting! @BPEricAdams @CarloScissura pic.twitter.com/yGmQGiVLZM  Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce (@BrooklynChamber) November 3, 2014

On top of their tax issue, Robert Petrosyants and Ofshtein are being sued separately in Brooklyn Supreme Court by the landlords of the swanky pizzeria for allegedly failing to pay rent since April 2020 to the tune of $363,355 as of October 2021.

These people run a restaurant, theyve been taking in a fortune, and theyre not paying rent, said Scott Loffredo, a lawyer for the landlords, Robert Ianucci and Sonia Ewers.

The Ianucci suit, which is pending, also notes that despite not paying rent, Forno Rosso collected more than $500,000 in two pandemic-related Paycheck Protection Program loans, one for $235,200 in April 2020 and the other for $315,400 in February 2021.

In a counterclaim filed against Ianucci, a lawyer for Robert Petrosyants and Ofshtein claims that the landlord actually owes the restaurant $90,000 because he habitually ate, drank ... used the space for personal and business meetings and private events, without payment over a seven-year period.

Zhan Johnny Petrosyants (right) and his twin brother, Robert Petrosyants (left).

In addition to Forno Rosso, Ofshtein and the Petrosyants siblings used to co-run Woodland, a defunct restaurant in Park Slope that shut down in 2020 after the state revoked its liquor license due to quality of life complaints from neighbors.

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Despite being closed, the Woodland business is deep in tax debt, too, records show.

A flurry of state warrants dating back as far as 2014 reveals that Woodland still owes nearly $1.9 million in withholding, sales and corporate taxes.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams (GREGG VIGLIOTTI/for New York Daily News)

The Petrosyants checkered pasts have not stopped them from maintaining a presence in Adams tight-knit inner circle of friends and advisers.

Zhan Petrosyants, who goes by Johnny, regularly spends time with the mayor at Manhattan restaurants and bars, like the exclusive members-only Zero Bond club in NoHo. Politico reported last month that Adams sometimes even sleeps at Zhan Petrosyants apartment in Trump World Tower on the Upper East Side  an allegation the mayors team vehemently denies.

Both Zhan and Robert Petrosyants, meantime, are connected to Frank Carone, Adams chief of staff, via a no-fault medical insurance business that Carone used to control, as first reported by The News last month.

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The Petrosyants, an Adams spokesman said, are just friends with Carone.

With Michael Gartland
Israel-based Electreon, a provider of wireless and in-road wireless electric vehicle (EV) charging technology will collaborate with global technical professional services firm Jacobs on select wireless EV charging projects across the US for fleet operators including city and state authorities.





Electreons wireless charging technologyfor both stationary applications and wireless Electric Road System (wERS)is fast to deploy. Copper coils are placed just below the surface of the roadalong highways, at bus stations, in parking lots and at logistics centers. Deployment takes place at night to minimize disruption. The coils are then covered with asphalt.

Electreons wireless charging technology is deployed in dedicated zones and along electric roads, allowing e-fleets to charge conveniently throughout their operational day. This reduces the need for heavy batteries and flattens the electricity demand curve. The end-to-end solution includes underground infrastructure, vehicle-side technology, and advanced charging management software.

The expanded partnership is a continuation of a successful collaboration between Electreon and Jacobs in securing a project implementing the first public electric road system for wireless EV charging in the US. In February, Electreon was awarded a Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT) contract for a dynamic wireless charging pilot program in downtown Detroita project supported by Jacobs among others such as Ford Motor Co., NextEnergy, and the City of Detroit.

The Michigan project includes a 1.6-kilometer (1-mile) wireless charging road and static charging stations; Michigan is providing US$1.9 million in funding for the project.

In keeping with Jacobs commitment to support innovation aligned to its Beyond If accelerators, the company intends to invest in Electreon to demonstrate its commitment to the EV ecosystem.





To date, Electreons patented technology has been integrated with a range of vehicles as part of its ongoing collaborations with auto manufacturers including Renault, Stellantis, Iveco, and Volkswagen.
Greensburg, IN (47240)

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For the past three years, the middle of March has been significant for chef and restaurateur Brian Lewis.

Like every other restaurant owner in Connecticut, he had to pivot and reinvent as COVID-19 forced the temporary closing of dining rooms in 2020. But almost exactly a year later, in March 2021, he closed a deal to open a new location of The Cottage in Greenwich.

After a yearlong buildout, The Cottage's second outpost, in a coveted location on Greenwich Avenue, is about to open its doors. Lewis plans a March 22 grand opening for his new 2,400-square-foot restaurant and bar, which joins his original concept in Westport and his Japanese-inspired OKO restaurants in Westport and Rye, N.Y.

The new space is designed in cool shades of white, blue and gray, with a marble bar top and a chef's counter with four seats offering direct views into the kitchen. Seating is available for about 70 guests.

Tyler Sizemore/Hearst Connecticut Media

Like the Westport restaurant, which opened in December 2015, The Cottage Greenwich will feature seasonal menus with locally-sourced ingredients from Connecticut and New York-based farmers and purveyors. The new location will spotlight some of the Westport menus favorites, like Wagyu beef brisket steamed buns, duck fried rice, spicy squid and broccoli and The Cottage burger with Comte cheese, sriracha aioli and bacon and onion jam.

Lewis didn't want the Westport and Greenwich menus to exactly mirror each other, but he understands that his guests love these now-signature items from the original restaurant. He's looking forward to expanding and experimenting with new dishes in Greenwich.

"It's taken me a while to accept that people really want that signature kind of feeling," he said. "They're wonderful dishes. I really love them. It's like when you go to the concert of [an artist] you love and they don't play your favorite song. I felt there's an importance to that...But I want to grow, and continue down the creative path."

Tyler Sizemore/Hearst Connecticut Media

The opening menu features appetizers like "maple bacon and eggs" (soft farm eggs presented in half-shells with candied bacon and robiola, served with toast fingers), wild fluke sashimi with clementine ponzu and pickled Fresno chili, and spicy scallop tartare, served atop crispy sushi rice and dusted with nori furikake. Lewis is particularly excited about a dish of miso black cod served atop a buckwheat crepe, prepared with shiitake marmalade and an aioli made with burnt onion and embers.

Another Greenwich signature offering will be the "la grand frutti di mare," a selection of raw bar and seafood items like chilled oysters, cocktail shrimp, king crab and sashimi. The display will serve two to four guests, and the items will rotate, Lewis said.

Pastas, like lobster spaghetti with sea urchin butter and Calabrian chile, wild nettle sacchetti in brown butter and wild mushroom and black truffle farroto, are available in half and full portion sizes. Main courses include Maine halibut baked in fig leaves and king salmon in cedar paper.

Tyler Sizemore/Hearst Connecticut Media

With a new ice cream machine in the Greenwich kitchen, Lewis decided to expand the dessert menu, adding five sundae options. The hot fudge and peanut butter sundae, a mainstay in Westport, headlines a list with pistachio and raspberry, white chocolate and rhubarb and chocolate hazelnut confections. Other desserts include a decadent sticky toffee pudding and a selection of New England-area farmstead cheeses.

At the bar, the Spicy Pear (pear vodka, Bartlett pear, cayenne and cinnamon), a Westport favorite, makes its way to the Greenwich menu, along with new drinks featuring pisco, tequila, bourbon, rum and chipotle tequila. Classic martini fans are in luck: the Greenwich bar offers four different varieties, from "filthy dirty" to "squeaky clean."

Tyler Sizemore/Hearst Connecticut Media

There's also an international wine list, a full selection of craft beer heavy on picks from Connecticut breweries, and low ABV or alcohol-free options.

Tyler Sizemore/Hearst Connecticut Media

Lewis was nominated for a James Beard Foundation award last month, known as one of the most prominent honors in the culinary industry. He was named a semifinalist for the "Best Chef: Northeast" award for the second time in his career; his first nomination came in 2018. Though he was personally nominated, he credits his all of his team members for their work and dedication.

Executive chef Christian Wilki and director of hospitality Ralph Leon are part of their third opening with the group, Lewis said, and he's added sous chef Gianfranco Oliver and bar manager James Lucchesi to help oversee the Greenwich launch.

"It's a celebration of the people who work with me; it's everybody," he said. "I'll have 100 employees by the time we open [in Greenwich.] It's what they do with the execution."

Tyler Sizemore/Hearst Connecticut Media

"It's such an honor," he said. "And it could not have come at a better time, for everyone to celebrate [this] opening."

The Cottage will be open Tuesday through Saturday for dinner service, expanding to offer lunch, Sunday brunch, Sunday dinner and full menu offerings for takeout later this spring. Follow social media updates at @thecottagegreenwich on Facebook and Instagram.
Chinese mainland reports 61 new local COVID-19 cases

Xinhua) 11:01, March 04, 2022

Residents receive nucleic acid tests at a community in Hohhot, north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, Feb. 24, 2022. (Xinhua/Liu Lei)

BEIJING, March 4 (Xinhua) -- The Chinese mainland on Thursday reported 61 locally transmitted COVID-19 cases, the National Health Commission said Friday.

Of the new local infections, 22 were reported in Guangdong, nine in Inner Mongolia, five each in Hebei and Jilin, four each in Hubei and Yunnan, three each in Heilongjiang and Guangxi, two each in Shanghai and Zhejiang, and one each in Tianjin and Jiangsu, the commission said in its daily report.

A total of 233 imported COVID-19 cases were reported on Thursday, said the commission.

Four new suspected cases, all arriving from outside the mainland, were reported in Shanghai, said the commission. It added that no deaths from COVID-19 were reported on the day.

A total of 150 asymptomatic cases were reported Thursday, including 94 arriving from outside the mainland, according to the commission.

The total number of confirmed COVID-19 cases reported on the mainland, both local and imported, had risen to 110,258 by Thursday.

There were 3,304 patients still under treatment on Thursday, of whom 18 were in severe condition. A total of 4,636 patients had died of the virus on the mainland since the outbreak of the disease.

(Web editor: Xia Peiyao, Liang Jun)
Mayor Adams said Friday that hes in alignment with the White House in its mission to punish Russian oligarchs by seizing their assets, but he didnt offer details on how the city might assist the feds in helping locate those assets.

During his State of the Union address, President Biden announced that in addition to sanctions leveled against the Russian government and its leader Vladimir Putin, hed also punish the billionaire oligarchs who serve as allies to the Russian autocrat.

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Those sanctions could include seizing assets such as properties in the United States, yachts and other pricey items owned by the oligarchs.

Were going to reach out to the White House and ask how can we help send a strong message to Putin that this is unacceptable, Adams said of Russias war against Ukraine.

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New York City Mayor Eric Adams (Michael M Santiago/Getty Images /Getty Images)

What happens on the global scale plays out in New York, and so we want to help out the White House any way we can, the mayor continued. We will communicate with the White House and find out how we can help  within legal boundaries.

Seizing assets owned by Russian oligarchs in New York City will almost certainly prove to be a challenge. Many apartments and homes in the Big Apple believed to be owned by oligarchs are often listed in public records as being owned or controlled by limited liability companies.

Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine, who began calling on sanctions for oligarchs last week, suggested that the city could potentially assist the federal government by piercing through LLCs to get to the bottom of who actually controls those shell companies.

The citys role can be in helping to determine ownership, he told the Daily News. I have no doubt that if we put these entities under a microscope, we will find tax evasion, money laundering, and other illegal activities ... Broader scrutiny is warranted.
An attempt by Republicans to add an amendment that could have created a major legislative obstacle to this years version of the aid-in-dying bill failed Friday in the Democratic-controlled Public Health Committee.

After the amendment was defeated, the bill, similar to other states in which terminally ill patients may use a lethal combination of drugs to take their own lives, passed with support from three Republicans including Sen. Tony Hwang, R-Fairfield. Currently, there are aid-in-dying laws in Washington, D.C., California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington.

It next goes to the Senate, where it might have its the best chance for passage since it was first introduced in the General Assembly, back in 1994. The Republican amendment, defeated 17-12, mostly along party lines, would have required the legislation to next go to the Judiciary Committee, where in recent years it has failed.

This has been a tough conversation. We are granting a choice for a small group of people, said state Rep. Jonathan Steinberg, D-Westport, co-chairman of the committee, noting that it also failed last year, so committee members were familiar with the issues. I cant tell you what incomparable pain they have. Were telling them they are allowed to do something that they can choose to do. Its a very emotional subject, in and of itself.

This bill is somewhat more restrictive than the bills in other states, said Sen. Saud Awar, D-South Windsor, a physician who is co-chairman of the committee. Its far-more restrictive. I think the safety net we have created is much more than many of the other states.

Now, if Senate leaders decide that it can immediately go to a floor debate rather than other committees, the aid-in-dying bill may soon be acted on, and then go to the House of Representatives well before the General Assemblys midnight, May 4 deadline.

Real people from Connecticut need your help, said first-term state Rep. Aimee Berger-Girvalo, D-Ridgefield, a committee member recalling testimony of terminally ill patients going back to at least 2013, many of whom have died while the General Assembly has annually shelved the bill.

Under the legislation, physicians would have to rule that a patient has terminal illness with less than six months to live. Four witnesses would be required to watch the patient sign a declaration of intent. Patients who take their own lives would not be ruled suicides, but as having availed themselves of the aid-in-dying law.

State Sen. Heather Somers, R-Groton, a top Republican on the committee, submitted the amendment, which would have created criminal penalties in cases of misuse of the drugs used in what opponents of the bill call assisted-suicide. If we truly are trying to be a little more diligent than other states in providing stopgap measures and safety measures, we should absolutely have this in there, Somers said.

Steinberg and other Democrats replied that the amendment isnt needed because there are already statutes in place on the misuse of such substances. Given the history now, which year after year expands in other states, we believe that the other states experience gives us reason to be confident the legal restrictions we put in this bill are adequate and appropriate, Steinberg said.

Members of the committee admitted they are conflicted over what has become a perennial committee debate, especially after the recent public hearing in which patients and families from throughout the state, in emotional pleas, asked again for the option to determine when to end their own lives in battles with terminal illness.

This is something thats such a personal issue, said Sen. Julie Kushner, D-Danbury, adding that her fathers death after suffering from terminal lung cancer was aided by about five days of morphine supervised by medical professionals. What I think the people in my district want are these choices.

Rep. Michelle Cook, D-Torrington, shared similar stories of her family members who suffered from terminal illness. While she has opposed the legislation in the past, she is keeping an open mind this year. Were talking about people who can make decisions for themselves, she said. We treat our animals often better than we treat humans. She voted in favor of the bill.

kdixon@ctpost.com Twitter: @KenDixonCT
The American Contract Bridge League has released its annual Ace of Clubs list for top performances in its Connecticut Unit during 2021  and four players from Greenwich finished in the top three in each of the lists 14 subdivisions.

The rankings indicate how many master points players won during club duplicate games conducted both online and in face-to-face competition last year.

Three of the four players topped their respective categories. They were Rich De Martino, Sandy De Martino and Cliff Wald.

Rich De Martino earned 706 master points in club play to beat out all other Connecticut players who started the year with more than 10,000 master points. Sandy De Martino came in first in the 7,500- to 10,000-point division, with 551 points. Cliff Wald was first with 224 points in the 1,000- to 1,500-point category.

The De Martinos daughter, Cindy Lyall, finished third in the 300- to 500-point division by collecting 249 points in 2021.

Todays quiz: Here is another in the current series of quizzes on interpreting partners bids. In the following problem, you are given an auction accompanied by three hands, only one of which could actually fit the bids your partner has made. Which of the three hands do you think partner could have?

The bidding: Partner-Pass; Opponent-Pass; You-1S; Opponent-Pass; Partner-2NT. Partner could hold:

a) S 63 H KQ5 D A962 C Q1076

b) S 94 H KJ52 D 765 C AK104

c) S J4 H A102 D KQ64 C K763

Answer: Partners jump to two notrump after passing initially shows a balanced hand of 11 or 12 points with stoppers in the unbid suits, such as hand a). Partner could not have hand b), since it does not contain a diamond stopper (two clubs would be the best response), or hand c), with which partner would certainly have opened the bidding originally.
Ben Lambert / Hearst Connecticut Media

A Nevada man who authorities said submitted false documents to a Connecticut immigration agency got probation this week and was ordered to pay nearly $10,000 in restitution to his victims, prosecutors said.

Arash Vakhshouri, 43, of Las Vegas, was sentenced Thursday by Judge Janet Bond Arterton in New Haven to three years of probation.
A data expert for former President Donald Trump's campaign told him bluntly not long after polls closed in November 2020 that he was definitely going to lose his campaign for reelection.

In the weeks that followed, multiple top officials at the Justice Department informed Trump that they had closely examined allegations of fraud that were being circulated by Trump's close allies - and had found them simply untrue.

And in the days leading up to the joint session of Congress on Jan. 6, 2021, even Trump's loyal vice president, Mike Pence, repeatedly conveyed to Trump that he did not believe the Constitution gave him the power to overturn the election as he presided over the counting of electoral college votes giving the presidency to Joe Biden.

These and other new details were included in a legal brief filed late Wednesday by lawyers for the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol as they began to build a case that Trump was knowingly misleading his followers about the election and pressuring Pence to break the law in the weeks and hours before the assault.

According to the panel and others, at least 11 aides and close confidants told Trump directly in the weeks after the election that there was no fraud and no legal way to overturn the result.

The committee's goal was to convince a federal judge there is a "good-faith basis" for concluding Trump and others engaged in a "criminal conspiracy" to defraud the United States and obstruct Congress before the attack on the Capitol - and to prove that Trump was acting corruptly by continuing to spread false claims about the election long after he had reason to know he had legitimately lost.

The committee has no law enforcement powers and the filing has no bearing on whether the Justice Department will file criminal charges against the former president in connection with his post-election activities. Indeed, several witnesses whose statements or emails were cited by the committee in the filing said Thursday that they have not been contacted by law enforcement as part of any investigation.

But the committee could put pressure on the Justice Department to act by unspooling evidence Trump was lying to his supporters and pushing his vice president to break the law. And the filing could be the start of an attempt to build the case to the public that Trump bears moral culpability for the violence that erupted on Jan. 6.

"I mean, he, he understood what he was doing was wrong," said committee member Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., in an interview. "I've never really doubted that from the beginning. But all of this evidence makes it certain that he had consciousness of guilt as he proceeded to try to overthrow the election result."

In a lengthy statement Thursday, Trump rejected the committee's allegations, claiming once again that his election loss was "fraudulent."

"The Unselect Committee's sole goal is to try to prevent President Trump, who is leading by large margins in every poll, from running again for president, if I so choose. By so doing they are destroying democracy as we know it," he said.

For now, the committee's immediate aims with the court filing were limited. The panel is trying to convince a federal judge presiding over a lawsuit to order former Trump lawyer John Eastman to turn over thousands of pages of emails and other documents from the days around the Jan. 6 attack.

Eastman has said the records are protected by attorney-client privilege. But the committee argued that a federal judge should privately review the documents to see if they show evidence that Eastman helped Trump commit a crime, which would void the privilege. In a statement, Eastman's lawyer said he looks forward to responding in court but complained that the committee was using an unrelated civil proceeding to accuse Eastman of criminal conduct.

The committee's assertion that Trump may have broken the law provided the strongest hint to date that the panel may conclude its work by formally asking the Justice Department to launch a criminal investigation into the former president.

In the court filing Wednesday, the committee argued that the fact that Trump's claims that the election was marred by fraud were repeatedly refuted by knowledgeable aides led to "a good-faith inference" that Trump's statements came "with knowledge of the falsity of these statements and an intent to deceive his listeners in hopes they would take steps in reliance thereon."

What's more, following the convening of the electoral college on Dec. 14, they wrote, Trump and his close aides knew he had not collected enough "legitimate" electoral votes to win the election. "The President nevertheless sought to use the Vice President to manipulate the results in his favor," committee lawyers wrote.

But the filing also points to some of the complications investigators would face in establishing that Trump committed a crime. While the committee might be able to show that Trump was repeatedly warned his rhetoric was untrue, it may be more difficult to prove that Trump believed those warnings - a potentially important step to establishing that Trump acted corruptly and broke the law.

"To some extent his craziness is his best defense," said former federal prosecutor Randall Eliason. "The fact that he often appears to actually believe some of this stuff could cut in his favor when it comes to a criminal case, where prosecutors would have to show corrupt or fraudulent intent."

People interviewed by the committee have said the panel's investigators have zeroed in on moments when Trump was informed his rhetoric was not rooted in fact or warned that he was urging others to break the law.

Investigators have focused even on events that took place before Election Day, apparently attempting to establish that Trump's claims that ballots sent by mail could lead to fraud were part of a plot to allow him to overturn the election if he lost, according to two people who have been quizzed by the committee, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss their private depositions.

One of those people said the committee spent five hours focused particularly on the role of former chief of staff Mark Meadows and Trump attorney Cleta Mitchell in casting doubt on the election even before the vote. The committee is probing extensive text messages between Meadows and Mitchell, the two people said.

Neither Meadows nor Mitchell responded to requests for comment Thursday.

The committee has also focused on how quickly some of Trump's top advisers came to believe that allegations circulated by some of his allies that Dominion Voting Systems machines had been hacked were not true, one of the people said. And they have been interested in why campaign lawyers disengaged from Trump's elections challenges, allowing Trump's personal attorney Rudy Giuliani to take the lead instead.

Wednesday's court filing also included excerpts of depositions where investigators asked witnesses pointed questions about whether they had informed Trump that the voter fraud allegations were not true.

Then-acting deputy attorney general Richard Donoghue told the committee that during a phone call with Trump on Dec. 27, 2020, he told the president: "Sir, we've done dozens of investigations, hundreds of interviews. The major allegations are not supported by the evidence developed."

Separately, former attorney general William Barr writes in a new book that he told Trump in an explosive meeting in the Oval Office on Dec. 1, 2020, that his claims of election fraud were groundless.

"I've told you that the fraud claims are not supported . . . And others have also told you this. But your legal team continues to shovel this . . . out to the American people. And it is wrong," Barr recounts in his new memoir, which was obtained by The Washington Post ahead of its March 8 publication.

The committee also appears focused on moments when Trump was advised that the law did not allow Pence to use the joint session of Congress to refuse to recognize Biden electors.

In his closed-door deposition, Greg Jacob, an aide to Pence, was repeatedly asked by investigators about moments when he believed Eastman conceded his advice might constitute a violation of the Electoral Count Act that governs the presidential transition, according to a person familiar with the matter. Eastman had urged Pence to call for a delay in the counting of the electoral college votes on Jan. 6.

The committee has also obtained a legal memo Jacob wrote for Pence after a Jan. 4 meeting in the Oval Office in which Eastman told Trump that Pence was not bound to recognize electoral college votes for Biden. Jacob concluded in the memo that Eastman was counseling the vice president to violate the law, the person said.

In its court filing, the committee also cited an email from Eastman to Jacob at 9:44 p.m. on Jan. 6 - after the Capitol had been cleared of rioters and Congress had reconvened - in which he continued to push for Pence to delay the vote. Arguing that Congress had already violated the law's exact procedure, Eastman wrote, "I implore you to consider one more relatively minor violation" and have Pence adjourn the session before the votes were counted.

Despite the evidence that Trump was repeatedly warned he was misleading people, several people said Trump spent the weeks between the election and Jan. 6 consulting with other confidants, including Giuliani, who insisted the election was rife with irregularities and fraud. People who have spent extensive time around Trump say he fiercely insists even in private he was the election's true winner.

Former campaign adviser Jason Miller testified to the committee that a campaign data expert had told Trump days after the election that he had lost, according to the committee's Wednesday court filing. Miller has told others privately that Trump repeatedly rejected such briefings and was "never going to give it up."

Legal experts said it might be difficult to prove in a courtroom that Trump acted with criminal intent if Trump was persuaded of his own falsehoods. Raskin insisted that the committee is not trying to solve "the question of criminal culpable intent."

But he pointed to the evidence gathered by the committee so far and the dozens of court cases Trump lost in the weeks after the election in which judges appointed to the bench by presidents of both parties rejected allegations of fraud. "He had to know that was a lie," Raskin said.
The team behind the Essential PH-1 has been working on a new device from the Osom brand called the OV1. Its a privacy-focused smartphone that will tell the user what information is being accessed by apps at all times. Back in December, a photo of the unreleased smartphone arose, and it was expected to be released sometime in the summer of 2022.

During MWC, the companys founder and CEO Jason Keats gives Tech Crunch more details about the upcoming OV1. To start, the company has decided to delay the phones release to sometime in Q4. Based on the timing of that release, it is speculated that the flagship-grade smartphone could be powered by the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1s successor.

One of the selling points of the OV1 will be privacy, which will be integrated into the USB-C cable that ships with the phone. A render was shared with Tech Crunch that shows the USB-C plug has a physical switch on it that would allow the user to decide whether the cable should allow data to pass through or only power. Osom intends to sell this cable separately as well  though pricing is yet to be confirmed.

On to the phones hardware. The OV1 will have a stainless-steel frame with a display protected by Gorilla Glass Victus. Plus, the back of the phone will feature a ceramic back cover. The phone will arrive in white, matte black, and a fun color. The phone will also be physically larger than the Essential PH-1, but with a larger battery that should last beyond all day.

The dual camera setup will consist of all Sony-made sensors, including a 48MP main and a 12MP secondary camera. The front will have a 16MP selfie camera.

Its noted that the company doesnt want to be tied to any carriers like Essential was with Sprint, so the OV1 will arrive be capable of supporting dual physical SIM cards. It will also support Ultra-wideband connectivity and is said to cost well under $1,000.

We wonder if Osom will manage to use the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1s successor, as the cost of using Qualcomms newest chipsets (especially in recent times) usually drives the cost of any device closer to 1K territory. Details of the devices software privacy features (aside from the USB-C cable) are slim.

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The Realme C35 unveiled last month will debut in India next week - on March 7. Realme hasn't revealed the C35's Indian pricing and availability yet, but since the smartphone has been official for about a month now, we know what's on offer.

The Realme C35 is built around a 6.6" FullHD+ LCD and is powered by the Unisoc Tiger T616 SoC. It runs Android 11-based Realme UI 2.0 out of the box and has three memory options - 4GB/64GB, 4GB/128GB, and 6GB/64GB. However, it's unclear whether Realme will bring all these to India or not.

The Realme C35 features an 8MP selfie shooter, and around the back is a 50MP primary camera joined by 2MP macro and 2MP depth units. The smartphone also comes with a side-mounted fingerprint reader for biometric authentication.

Fueling the entire package is a 5,000 mAh battery charged through a USB-C port at up to 18W.

Once Realme is done with the C35's launch, the company will introduce two new accessories on March 10 - TechLife Watch S100 and TechLife Buds N100.

The Realme TechLife Watch S100 was said to arrive last month with a circular dial, but that information turned out to be entirely inaccurate since the smartwatch's case has a rectangular design.

It packs a 1.69" color touchscreen, with the dial having a metallic finish. It will come with a heart rate monitor and blood oxygen level measurement and also tell you about your wrist skin and body temperature.

The Realme TechLife Watch S100 will be IP68 dust and water-resistant, but Realme says it is "not suitable for swimming and shower." The company hasn't revealed the Watch S100's battery size but says it will offer 12 days of endurance on a single charge.

Talking about the Realme TechLife Buds N100, we are looking at 9.2mm Dynamic Bass Drivers on the neckband-style wireless earphones with a metal sound chamber and Bluetooth 5.2 connectivity. The buds have IPX4 water resistance, while the silicone neckband is IPX6 rated.

Realme doesn't tell us about the Buds N100's battery capacity either but says the earphones will provide 17 hours of playback between charges when the audio is played at 50% volume with AAC codec enabled.

We'll find out more about the TechLife Watch S100 and TechLife Buds N100's pricing and availability next Thursday.

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Russias President Vladimir Putin is getting even less social.

The countrys telecommunications regulator, Roskomnadzor, said Friday that it plans to cut Russia off from Facebook.

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The move amounts to a major escalation in the Kremlins efforts to freeze Russians access to independent reporting on their countrys bloody invasion of neighboring Ukraine.

In a statement, Roskomnadzor portrayed its block on Facebook as a move to improve media freedom and cited 26 cases of discrimination against Russian news outlets since October 2020.

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Last week, the Kremlin said it partially restricted Facebook access in Russia, accusing the social media giant of illegally censoring Russian media.

Russian President Vladimir Putin takes part in the launch of a new ferry via a conference call at the Novo-Ogaryovo residence outside Moscow Moscow, Russia, Friday, March 4, 2022. (Andrei Gorshkov/AP)

Meta, Facebooks parent company, said at the time that Russian authorities had ordered it to stop fact-checking content from four news outlets, all government mouthpieces. Meta said it had declined.

On Friday, Nick Clegg, the president of global affairs at Meta, said the social media giant intends to restore Russias access.

Soon millions of ordinary Russians will find themselves cut off from reliable information, deprived of their everyday ways of connecting with family and friends and silenced from speaking out, Clegg said in a statement.

On the Russian government's decision to block access to Facebook in the Russian Federation: pic.twitter.com/JlJwIu1t9K  Nick Clegg (@nickclegg) March 4, 2022

We will continue to do everything we can to restore our services, so they remain available to people to safely and securely express themselves and organize for action.

The Kremlin aggressively curtailed press freedoms after launching its ruthless and relentless attack against Ukraine, a nation of 42 million people, on Feb. 24.

The BBC said Friday it was pausing its reporting from inside Russia in response to a freshly passed law that seems to criminalize independent newsgathering in the country.

Tim Davie, the director-general of the BBC, said the broadcaster was concerned about the safety of its reporters, but would continue to cover Russia from beyond the borders of the country.

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Facebook app is shown on a smartphone. (Wilfredo Lee/AP)

CNN and Bloomberg did likewise on Friday.

CNN will stop broadcasting in Russia while we continue to evaluate the situation and our next steps moving forward, the news outlet said in a statement.

Putin has weaved together a falsehood-filled rationale for his war, which has met protests in Moscow and other Russian cities.

Horrified and united by the invasion, the West has slammed the Russian economy with sanctions. Ukrainians, meanwhile, have fought hard against the invaders, stalling their push outside the capital city Kyiv.
Samsung listed four new phones on its official Mobile Press site today - we already told you about the Galaxy A23 and A13 - and now we move on to Galaxy M23 and M33.

The two are very similar in specs, if not in looks. Both phones have 6.6-inch 1080p TFT displays, as well as 50MP main cameras, 8MP ultrawide cameras, and 2MP depth sensors. But here's where things differentiate.

The Galaxy M33 has a larger 6,000mAh battery, an additional 2MP macro camera, and more RAM - starting at 6GB and going up to 8GB. Samsung hasn't released the full details just yet - so far we know the Galaxy M33 has an octa-core chipset.

Physically, the Galaxy M33 measures 165.4 x 76.9 x 9.4 mm and weighs 215g.



Samsung Galaxy M33

Samsung hasn't revealed either the price or the specific launch dates or markets for the Galaxy M33 yet. But it will come to Europe and India.

The Galaxy M23 has a smaller 5,000mAh battery and lacks the 2MP macro camera. It ships in a single 4/128GB configuration.

It has the same 6.6-inch TFT display but is overall lighter at 198g and a bit thinner. Samsung hasn't specified price and shipping details about the Galaxy M23 either, but we expect it to also arrive in Europe and India.



Samsung Galaxy M23

The Galaxy M22 and M32 both came with 6.4-inch 90Hz Super AMOLED displays of 720p and 1080p resolutions, respectively, which makes their successors look like a downgrade. We'll fill in the gaps, once Samsung releases detailed information about the Galaxy M23 and M33.

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Guam Community College honored 22 participants in the Diesel Mechanic I and Construction III boot camps in a completion ceremony on Feb. 28, 2022.
Reading this title, you might think Im a little late for a Valentine story. True, but this week my husband, Tom, and I are celebrating our anniversary. We met each other in Wimereux, a coastal town in the north of France. We were both botanist students at the University of Ghent in Belgium and were taking part in a seaweed field course.

Although my interest in seaweed increased during the field course because Tom pursued a Ph.D. in marine botany, I followed my passion and focused on terrestrial dune ecology for my masters thesis.

As social media was not a thing back in the day, we passed by each others labs to catch a glimpse of one another and throw a smile. But after a while, I wanted to make it clearer that I liked him.

One of my best friends owned a chocolate bar in Ghent. I bought a chocolate cookie and wrote my name on the bag and added XXX representing three old-fashion kisses, (what would now be kiss emojis) and dropped by Toms lab and gave the chocolate cookie to him.

Tom told me later everyone at the lab thought this move was so obvious, because I passed everyone and went straight to him, leaving the others in disbelief asking, Why did we not get a cookie?

Anyway, he got the message because a few days later he asked me out and we have been together ever since.

Belgium chocolate history

My husband and I are from Belgium, which is famous for its chocolate. Because of this cultural link and because chocolate is part of my love story, I make a dessert with chocolate every March 1st. Some of my readers have asked for more recipes, so I decided to share one of my famous chocolate cake recipes along with this story.

Chocolate plays a big part in Belgiums economy and culture. The average Belgian consumes 13 pounds of chocolate a year, which I can relate to. Cacao was first brought to Belgium when our country was under Spanish occupation.

The Spanish brought the chocolate from South America, where they consumed it as hot chocolate. My Colombian friend Eliana Walker usually enjoys chocolate in this traditional way.

In the 17th century, Ghent was one of the first cities to introduce chocolate. First, pharmacists sold it as a tonic.

In the 18th century, Belgians pressed into chocolate bars and figurines. In 1912, Neuhaus invented the praline in Belgium. The praline is a hollow chocolate shell filled with sweet filling.

In 1952, Cote dOr invented the chocolate spread. But the reason why Belgium chocolate is so good is that it needs to contain at least 35% cacao. The way chocolatiers roast and grind the cacao seeds is also very specific.

Traditional manufacturing is still practiced today, therefore many small independent chocolatiers conduct business and pass on their traditional recipes within the family.

Today, Belgium has about 2,000 chocolatiers. As a college student, I worked in a chocolate factory and was able to bring the broken pieces home.

Kakao on Guahan

The Spaniards also introduced cacao or kakao (in CHamoru) to Guahan. While cacao is not native to the Pacific Islands, cacao grows well in tropical climates.

In Guahan, kakao grows best under the shade of other trees, such as dokduk or lemai. They can also form nice hedges and serve as windbreaks on farms.

The cultivation of kakao is rather specific as the growers recommend certain horticultural practices such as maintaining a single stem until the plant reaches one yard in height, after which it can branch off.

While flowers appear in the third year, growers recommend removing them until the plant is older. The plant will typically start producing fruit when the shrub is about seven years old. If you would like to read about Guahans kakao history, check out William Saffords Useful Plants of Guam.

I know a few young farmers on Guahan started to grow and harvest kakao and shared some pictures with me. If anyone knows more about the traditional horticultural practices and usage of kakao on Guahan, please send me an email. I would love to learn more about how to grow and roast the chocolate beans.

I hope to share another chocolate story sometime soon and will also share more on chocolate and sustainability as 90 % of the Belgian chocolate industry strives to meet the zero-deforestation mark and maintain a viable income for cacao farmers and their families.
The gated entrance to Andersen Air Force Base, near the junction of Route 3 and Marine Corps Drive in Yigo, March 20, 2021.
The Guam Police Department, Guam Fire Department and several government agencies began learning to pilot remote-controlled drones to assist in their ultimate goal of saving lives.

When we get a report of a fall, a distressed swimmer or if we can send these drones out to make the assessment before we send our people out, it will benefit us so much as far as time and as far as human life, said GFD spokesman firefighter Kevin Reilly.

Training started with representatives from several government agencies flying drones over buckets that laid on the ground and determining the amount of targets they could see placed inside the buckets. The training, which was located at the Aviation Concepts hangar in Tiyan, was to improve accuracy and get used to making observations from the drone, a skill that will be useful in real-life situations.

Art Dawley, president of Tech Center Guam, provided the drones. He said the government agencies were going through training tailored for public safety operators. The training is anticipated to be completed by the summer. Upon completion, the agencies will be able to use the drones at their full capacity.

The quicker and sooner we can get them into the system and prevent the potential for injury... the better, Dawley said.

Leading the training were David Danielson and Tom Haus, who were instructing the government agencies on how to use the drones, which they both believe are valuable tools.

Bottom line, the drone technology today is amazing, said Los Angeles Fire Departments lead remote pilot firefighter David Danielson. The sensor capabilities, that just the overall positive impact goes back to a pictures worth a thousand words.

As for Haus, who retired from the LAFD and now working at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, a national government agency that specializes in the utilization and pilot training of drones, the benefits of using a drone can have are endless.

Imagine the typhoon coming through to the island here and being able to quickly get these assets up and looking and coordinated with manned helicopters are out doing search and rescue, Haus said.

"Its going to make the ability to completely cover the island quicker because youre going to have more assets, Haus said.
A traffic stop Thursday led to the arrest of five people in connection with six store robberies and several thefts, according to police and court documents.

On Thursday afternoon, a man walked into Number 1 Market on Marine Corps Drive in Tamuning, pointed a pistol at the cashier and demanded money. The cashier complied. The man, later identified as 23-year-old Eddie Addy, grabbed $493 and a pack of Marlboro menthol cigarettes, according to a magistrates complaint filed in Superior Court.

Addy, who was wearing a green-and-blue shirt, black hat and blue bandana over his face, ran behind Oasis Empowerment Center.

Police in the area saw a white car with several men inside, so they pulled it over.

The car was occupied by Addy, Javick Chutaro, 23, Kopich Chutaro, 29, Johno Souken, 27, and Chercy Yosi, 26.

Police said the five were involved in the robberies at Number 1 Market, New Ypao Store, Dream Market, Inarajan Market, Charlie Ray Market and North Mobil in Yigo. Three of them were charged in the Superior Court of Guam Friday.

Traffic stop

Yosi, the driver of the vehicle, gave officers consent to search the car. Police found a bag containing plastic resealable bags of methamphetamine. Javick Chutaro told police the drugs belonged to him, according to the complaint.

Javick Chutaro waived his right to remain silent and told officers he bought the ice before leaving his residence, the complaint stated.

Kopich Chutaro and Yosi told police Addy had been wearing the clothes the robber was seen wearing, according to the complaint.

Addy and Javick Chutaro were charged as co-defendants in connection to the robbery and meth possession.

Yosi

Yosi was charged in court Friday for previously reported crimes, including a stolen car and a stolen purse.

In December 2020, Yosi was found sitting in a suspected stolen vehicle after officers received reports of a woman screaming and a loud bang behind the Mangilao Pay-Less. Yosi told officers there was an accident and the two men she was with left, according to the complaint.

Officers later processed the car and found Yosis fingerprints on the rear-view mirror and confirmed it was a stolen Yaris.

April 2021, Yosi was reported to have stolen a womans purse after she had dinner with Yosi and Souken, who were using aliases at the time, the complaint stated.

The woman said she discovered her purse was missing after the two left. She called Yosi, who promised to return the purse but never did, according to the complaint.

The woman reported jewelry, cash and credit cards were in the purse when it was stolen.

When asked about the reports of the stolen car and purse on Thursday, Yosi said she used to drive a red Toyota Yaris. Yosi denied taking the car, but said she knew it was taken from someone else, the complaint stated.

As for the purse, Yosi said she went to the womans house and the woman gave her a bag of clothes. Yosi said she found a wallet and tried to return it and never used the bank card, according to the complaint.

Yosi also had three outstanding warrants from a 2019 felony, a misdemeanor case and a restitution case.

Yosi was charged with theft as a second-degree felony with a special allegation of vulnerable victim and theft by receiving as a second-degree felony, both with notices of commission of a felony while on felony release.

Kopich Chutaro and Souken were arrested but not charged as of Friday.
Family, friends and members of the islands medical community are mourning the loss of the first CHamoru woman to ever become a medical doctor, Dr. Olivia Torres Cruz, who died early Friday morning.

Cruz earned her medical degree in 1962, at a time when it was rare for both CHamorus and women alike to enter into medicine. The Guam Memorial Hospital Authority, where Cruz worked for over 30 years in internal medicine, the emergency room and as medical director released a statement of condolence to Cruzs family on behalf of the GMH staff.

Dr. Cruz was a trailblazer, paving the road for many young CHamoru women to follow in her footsteps, and today the island can be proud of the magnitude, professionalism and capabilities of our female healthcare leaders, the release stated.

Guam Regional Medical City also issued a tribute to Cruz stating, We would like to thank Dr. Cruz for her many contributions to Guam as a physician caring for patients and as an inspiration to women and young girls striving to reach for their dreams.

We join the island of Guam in mourning the passing of Dr. Olivia Cruz, former nurse Gov. Lou Leon Guerrero said in a statement, a close friend, cherished colleague and vocal advocate of more accessible, affordable health care for the people of Guam.

After surviving the war, Dr. Cruz took every opportunity to transform her life. She prized education and became a local scholar prior to taking a historic first step for CHamoru women. With her academic research earning praise in 1962, she went on to join the 8% of women who graduated from a medical school in the U.S., Leon Guerrero said.

Life

According to a biography from Cruzs family, she was born in the village of Sumay on Oct. 24, 1934, to parents Ignacio Alcantara Cruz and Olivia Torres Cruz. She was the oldest girl out of nine siblings.

Her schooling was disrupted by World War II, and when the war ended, she was enrolled in the 1st grade. Cruz took a series of exams to catch up to the grade-level appropriate for her age. She eventually graduated in the top ten of George Washington High Schools Class of 1953.

She earned her undergraduate degree from the University of Wisconsin in 1957, supported by a partial scholarship from the Government of Guam, her mother and working at the school cafeteria and elsewhere.

Cruz applied to two medical schools after graduation, due to a lack of finances, and was rejected from both. After briefly taking graduate chemistry courses at the University of Cincinnati, she enrolled in the Womens Medical College of Pennsylvania. She graduated in 1962.

Guams first CHamoru woman doctor returned home in 1968, after a series of residencies at stateside hospitals. On Guam, she would work with both GMH and with the agency previously known as the Department of Public Health and Welfare.

Lifesaver

On Dec. 28, 1989, a 25-ton roller compactor plummeted off a cliff and into the ocean while working on an expansion for GMH, PDN files show. Then 57-year-old Black Construction worker Celedonio Delizo broke his femur after he jumped from the compactor and was thrown 25 feet down the cliff face. Cruz, who was 55 and working as medical director for GMH at the time, was lowered down the side of the cliff where she set Delizos leg so that he could be lifted up and rushed to the ER.

The following May, GovGuam presented Cruz with a Medal of Valor.

She officially retired from the government in 1998, but continued to work as a part-time doctor at GMH and at her private practice.

She was my dads doctor, and would always tell me Your dad is very handsome but stubborn, recalled local historian Roland Blas. She was though sweet to my dad and me while admitted in GMH in 2007. She said we had beautiful eyes, ai adai.

Honored

In 2019, GRMC honored her years of service for Mes CHamoru, National Womens History Month, National Physicians Week and Doctors Day.

Cruz is survived by her husband since 1972, Robert Haddock, children Ray and Michele, daughter-in-law Carla and her seven grandchildren.
Santino Pius Addy was indicted by a grand jury on charges connected to a series of robberies in February.

Addy, 21, was indicted on 17 charges ranging from robbery, attempted robbery, terrorizing, theft and theft and burglary to motor vehicles, according to court documents.

Addy was also accused of using deadly weapons in the commission of some of the felonies that included a firearm, knife, machete and screwdriver, the indictment stated.

The indictment did not provide any other details about the incidents.

Addy was charged with the following:

Four charges of second-degree robbery as a second-degree felony.

Three charges of third-degree robbery as a second-degree felony.

Two charges of third-degree robbery as a third-degree felony with a special allegation of possession or use of a deadly weapon in the commission of a felony.

Two charges of terrorizing as a third-degree felony with a special allegation of possession or use of a deadly weapon in the commission of a felony.

Theft as a second-degree felony with a special allegation of possession or use of a deadly weapon in the commission of a felony.

Burglary of a motor vehicle as a second-degree felony.

Theft by receiving a motor vehicle as a third-degree felony.

Attempted second-degree robbery as a second-degree felony.

Attempted third-degree robbery as a third-degree felony with a special allegation of possession or use of a deadly weapon in the commission of a felony.

Arrest

Addy was arrested on Feb. 27 following a wanted flyer issued by the Guam Police Department.

He was arrested on suspicion of the following:

Feb. 12:

Robbery at the Guahan Court Condo, Toto.

Robbery at Z Market Finegayen Road, Harmon.

Theft of a motor vehicle at 64 Chalan Antonio Won Pat, Sinajana.

Feb. 18: Robbery at Naomi Market, Yigo.

Feb. 19: Robbery at Dededo Retail Store, Dededo.

Feb. 20:

Robbery at Fatima Mobil, Dededo.

Robbery at Charley Raes Store, Inalahan.

Theft of motor vehicle at Leon Guerrero Dr, Tamuning.

Burglary of a vehicle at Leon Guerrero Dr, Tamuning.

Feb. 21: Robbery at Route 8 Mini Mart, Mongmong.

Feb. 23: Robbery at Charley Raes Store parking lot, Inalahan.
Dr. Olivia Cruz, Guams first CHamoru woman medical doctor, upon graduating with a medical degree from the Womens Medical College of Pennsylvania in 1962.
Robert Underwood is the former president of the University of Guam and Guams former delegate in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) called for the assassination of Russian President Vladimir Putin  and is facing plenty of pushback from just about everyone.

The only way this ends is for somebody in Russia to take this guy out, Graham tweeted, repeating a statement he made on Fox News late Thursday. You would be doing your country - and the world - a great service.

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As the strongman continues to push ahead with his bloody invasion of Ukraine, Graham suggested that Russias ruling elite have the best chance to save themselves and the world from more devastation.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

The only people who can fix this are the Russian people, Graham said. Easy to say, hard to do.

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Graham even went back in history to call for someone in Putins inner circle to repeat the feat of Brutus, who bumped off Roman Emperor Julius Caesar or the German officer who tried to assassinate Hitler at the height of World War II.

The only people who can fix this are the Russian people.



Easy to say, hard to do.



Unless you want to live in darkness for the rest of your life, be isolated from the rest of the world in abject poverty, and live in darkness you need to step up to the plate.  Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) March 4, 2022

Perhaps fellow Republicans did not agree with Grahams comments due to an executive order signed by then-President Gerald Ford in 1976, which prohibits any member of the U.S. government from engaging or conspiring to engage in any political assassination anywhere in the world.

The order was enacted in response to the post-Watergate revelations that the CIA had staged multiple attempts on the life of Cuban President Fidel Castro.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), who spoke before a white nationalist crowd that chanted support for Putin last weekend, called Graham irresponsible, dangerous & unhinged.

We need leaders with calm minds & steady wisdom, MTG tweeted. Not bloodthirsty warmongering politicians trying to tweet tough by demanding assassinations.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) denounced Graham for floating an exceptionally bad idea.

We should not be calling for the assassination of heads of state, Cruz tweeted.

According to The Daily Beast, Twitter decided that Grahams post did not violate its rules against violent threats and no action would be taken.

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Graham also came under fire from Anatoly Antonov, Russias ambassador to the U.S., who called the assassination push unacceptable and outrageous.

The South Carolina lawmaker softened his call in response during a Friday appearance on Fox.

He needs to go to jail, Graham said of Putin.
In separate declarations, both Intel and AMD clarify that they would no longer deliver products to Russia and Belarus. Intel has also established a fundraising effort to assist individuals affected by the Ukraine conflict.

AMD announced a halt to all chip shipments on Thursday morning. By Thursday afternoon, Intel had followed AMD's lead and issued a similar statement.

The chip prohibition, according to AMD, extends to Belarus, which Russia has utilized as a staging area for its offensive forces. "At this moment, AMD is halting its sales and delivery of our goods into Russia and Belarus due to sanctions imposed on Russia by the United States and other nations," an AMD representative stated in an email. "All AMD goods and items that we power (PCs, etc.) in Russia and Belarus."

Intel issued the following statement on the war in Ukraine:

Intel condemns the invasion of Ukraine by Russia and we have suspended all shipments to customers in both Russia and Belarus. Our thoughts are with everyone who has been impacted by this war, including the people of Ukraine and the surrounding countries and all those around the world with family, friends and loved ones in the region.

We are working to support all of our employees through this difficult situation, especially those with close ties to this region. We have launched an employee donation and matching campaign through the Intel Foundation that has already raised over $1.2 million for relief efforts, and we are proud of the work our teams in surrounding areas including Poland, Germany and Romania are doing to aid refugees. We will continue to stand with the people of Ukraine and the global community in calling for an immediate end to this war and a swift return to peace.

Chipmakers TSMC and GlobalFoundries have also acknowledged that they are banning chip exports to Russia.

Updated:

Microsoft will stop selling products and services in Russia as well:

Like the rest of the world, we are horrified, angered and saddened by the images and news coming from the war in Ukraine and condemn this unjustified, unprovoked and unlawful invasion by Russia. I want to use this blog to provide an update on Microsofts actions, building on the blog we shared earlier this week. We are announcing today that we will suspend all new sales of Microsoft products and services in Russia. In addition, we are coordinating closely and working in lockstep with the governments of the United States, the European Union and the United Kingdom, and we are stopping many aspects of our business in Russia in compliance with governmental sanctions decisions; Like so many others, we stand with Ukraine in calling for the restoration of peace, respect for Ukraines sovereignty and the protection of its people.

Updated (2) and not Netflix, as well as NVIDIA, halted their activities also. Nvidia has halted the shipment of video cards and other devices to Russia. A spokeswoman for Nvidia verified the statement to PCMag, but did not elaborate on the reasons behind the move. It is unclear if this solely applies to Nvidia video card sales or to devices made by other manufacturers that use Nvidia technology.

Netflix has announced the suspension of its operations in Russia. Previously, in compliance with local regulations, the service refused to transmit 20 Russian channels. The service will continue to function for Russian accounts with a valid subscription until the subscription expires. Your subscription will not be able to be renewed.










Haiti - Argentina : Signing of a diplomatic training agreement





On the sidelines of the 33rd Intersessional Meeting of Heads of Government of the Caribbean Community, in San Pedro (Belize) https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-36073-haiti-politic-the-prime-minister-ai-ariel-henry-in-belize.html Prime Minister ai Ariel Henry signed on Wednesday, March 2nd, a partnership agreement between the Jean Price Mars Diplomatic Academy of the Haitian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Foreign Service Institute of the Nation of the Republic of Argentina.



This agreement, signed by the Argentine Undersecretary of State for Latin America and the Caribbean, Gustavo Martinez Pandiani, concerns the development of cooperation and training in the field of diplomacy and the development of diplomats from both countries. It materializes the need to strengthen research in the political, economic, cultural and financial fields. It is devoted to the exchange of information on the subjects of international law, diplomatic law, international trade, international negotiations, international cooperation and all other disciplines useful for the conduct of diplomacy and international relations.



It is also envisaged, within the framework of this agreement, the exchange between academicians, lecturers, experts and researchers from the two countries. It also targets the publications of public or private institutions of the two signatory countries. In addition, this protocol provides for the alternative organization of courses and seminars in Haiti and Argentina.



See also :

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-36081-haiti-politic-towards-a-strengthening-of-bilateral-cooperation-with-suriname.html



HL/ HaitiLibre






















Haiti - Diaspora Covid-19 : Daily Bulletin #714





GLOBAL SITUATION 2019-2022:

Epidemiological situation:



Friday March 4, 2022 the number of people infected worldwide with the Covid-19 coronavirus and its variants since the start of the pandemic (March 11, 2020) amounts to 442,522,053 cases (+1,757,609 in 24 hours ), the day before (+1,628,758)



Number of infected countries: 224



*Healings: 375,464,619 people have been cured of Covid-19 worldwide (+2,121,080 in 24 hours), the day before (+1,669,717)

*Deaths: 6,003,023 people died of Covid-19 worldwide (+8,898 in 24 hours), the day before (+8,466)

*Active cases (less deaths and recoveries) in the world is currently 61,054,411 cases (-372,369 in 24 hours), the day before (-494,250)



Average cure rate in the world: 84.84% (+)



Average mortality rate in the world: 1.35% (=)



World: Number of daily confirmed cases





(Day-1)



Vaccination: 10.88 billion doses of vaccine injected (+20 million doses injected in 24 hours. Update March 4, 2022 (latest data available).



HAITI:

Epidemiological situation:

Warning: The Ministry of Public Health and Population (MSPP) did not make available daily data on the Covid-19 situation in Haiti after February 26. Accordingly, the data below on the situation in Haiti are the latest available.



According to the Ministry of Public Health, +14 new of Covid-19 and its variants have been confirmed in Haiti as of February 26, 2022 (latest partial data available) for a total of 30,350 confirmed cases throughout the national territory (48.7% women and 51.3% men), since the first case (March 19, 2020 https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-30319-haiti-health-origin-of-the-first-2-cases-of-covid-19-in-haiti.html ). Previous update (+6 cases on February 24, 2022).



Heals: 25,230 (+20)



Cure rate: 83.13% (+)



Deaths: 820 deaths (+0)



Death rate: 2.70% (=)



5th Wave (Omicron Dominant):

Total of the 5th wave (starting December 27, 2021) amounts to 4,355 confirmed cases and 54 deaths



Haiti: Active Cases Trend: (less recoveries and deaths)





(Day-1)



Screening since the start of the pandemic: 179,117 tests (+340 in 4 days) since March 19, 2020, latest data available. Note that the very small number of people screened every day at the national level out of a population estimated at 11.6 million citizens, does not statistically allow us to make a representative estimate of the situation in Haiti, which translates into a < B>number of daily confirmed cases largely underestimated.



TOP 5 of the most affected municipalities in the West (2022):

Delmas: 726 (+1); Petion-ville 612 (+0); Port-au-Prince 404 (+0); Tabarre 278 (+0); Cross-Bouquets 224 (+0)



Confirmed cases by department (2022 / 2021 / 2020):

West: 2022: 2,490 cases; (2021: 9.890); (2020: 6,945 cases)

North: 2022: 261 cases; (2021: 664); (2020: 677 cases)

Center: 2022: 211 cases; (2021: 1.001); (2020: 508 cases)

Artibonitis: 2022: 162 cases; (2021: 855); (2020: 593 cases)

Northeast: 2022: 147 cases; (2021: 404); (2020: 314 cases)

Southeast: 2022: 229 cases; (2021: 768); (2020: 274 cases)

South: 2022: 211 cases; (2021: 891); (2020: 262 cases)

North West: 2022: 243 cases; (2021: 383); (2020: 229 cases)

Grand'Anse: 2022: 138 cases; (2021: 861); (2020: 176 cases)

Nippes: 2022: 33 cases; (2021: 249) (2020: 149 cases)



Cumulative deaths by department (2022-2021):

West: 292 deaths (2020: 104 deaths)

North: 53 deaths (2020: 34 deaths)

Center: 74 deaths (2020: 13 deaths)

Artibonite: 39 deaths (2020: 39 deaths)

North East: 7 deaths (2020: 6 deaths)

South: 51 deaths (2020: 6 deaths)

Southeast: 14 deaths (2020: 9 deaths)

North West: 15 deaths (2020: 12 deaths)

Grand'Anse: 7 deaths (2020: 13 deaths)

Nippes: 27 deaths (2020: 5 deaths)



Distribution of deaths by age (since the start of the epidemic):

0-9 years: 15 deaths

10-19 years: 10 deaths

20-29 years: 29 deaths

30-39 years: 54 deaths

40-49 years: 78 deaths

50-59 years: 133 deaths

60-69 years: 186 deaths

70-79 years: 181 deaths

80 years and over: 134 deaths



Vaccination:

155,233 Haitians (1.33% of the population) +4,499 in 11 days received a 1st dose of vaccine since July 16, 2021, date of the first injection through 149 open vaccination centers https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-35051-haiti-covid-19-list-of-149-vaccination-centers-open-in-the-country.html and 104,389 Haitians are fully vaccinated (2 doses, 0.89% of the population) +4,263 in 11 days. Update February 26, 2022 latest information available (source MSPP).



List of 149 Vaccination centers open in Haiti (and hours) by department:

(updated October 20, 2021, latest information available)

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-35051-haiti-covid-19-list-of-149-vaccination-centers-open-in-the-country.html



DIASPORA:

Epidemiological situation:



USA:

*Cases since the first case (February 29, 2020): 80,843,570 cases (+72,966 in 24 hours), the day before (+72,680)

*Healings: 54,136,964 healings (+191,175 in 24 hours), the day before (+214,984)

National Cure Rate: 66.96% (+)

*Deaths: 981,729 deaths (+2,004 in 24 hours), the day before (+2,323)

National death rate: 1.21% (=)

*Active cases (minus deaths and recoveries): 25,724,877 (-120,213 in 24 hours), the day before (-144,627)

Tests: 954,367,702 last data available.



USA: Number of daily confirmed cases





(Day-1)



Vaccination: 554.27 million doses of vaccine injected since December 14, 2020, date of the first injection in the United States (+370,000 doses in 24 hours). Update March 4, 2022 (latest data available).



DOMINICAN REPUBLIC:

Confirmed cases since March 1, 2020: 575,436 cases (+279 in 24 hours) the day before (+245 in 48 hours). First case (March 1, 2020)

Healings: 569,294 healings (+347 in 24 hours), the day before (+143)

National Cure Rate: 98.93% (+)

Deaths: 4,370 deaths (+0 in 24 hours), the day before (+1)

Death rate: 0.75% (=)

Positive rate over 4 epidemiological weeks: 5.07% (-)

Active cases: (excluding deaths and recoveries) 1,772 cases (-68 in 24 hours) the day before (+101)



Dominican Republic: Trend of active cases: (minus recoveries and deaths)





(Day-1)



TOP 5 Provinces with the most new cases in the last 24 hours:

La Altagravia: + 89 new cases in 24 hours ()

Santo Domingo: +63 new cases in 24 hours

Santiago: +42 new cases in 24 hours

National District: +33 new cases in 24 hours

Monte Cristi: +27 new cases



Tests (since the 1st case): 3,129,690 tests (+6,439 in 24 hours), the day before (+6,769)



Vaccination: 15.28 million doses of vaccine injected since February 16, 2021, date of the first injection in the Dominican Republic (+10,000 doses injected in 24 hours). Update March 4, 2022 (latest data available).



QUEBEC:

Warning: Quebec health authorities inform that due to technical problems the data is not available for March 3 Only the vaccination has been updated.



Confirmed cases since the first case (February 27, 2020): 924,309 (+1,630 in 24 hours), previous (+698)

Healings: 895,073 people (+1,228 in 24 hours), previous (+65)

Cure rate: 96.83% (-)

Deaths: 14,016 deaths (+20 in 24 hours), previous (+14)

Death rate: 1.51% (=)

Active cases: (excluding death and recovery) 15,220 cases (+382 in 24 hours), previous (-14,838)



Quebec: Confirmed case trend:





(average weekly trend)



Test: 16,733,572 people tested since the first case (+15,779 in 24 hours)



Vaccination: 18,448,103 doses of vaccine injected since December 14, 2020, date of the first injection (+7,221 doses in 24 hours), latest data available - MSSS as of March 3, 2022)



FRANCE:

*Confirmed cases since the first case (January 24, 2020): 22,900,531 cases (+60,225 cases in 24 hours), previous (+57,697)

*Healings: 21,364,712 healings (+131,196 in 24h), previous (+152,839)

National Cure Rate: 93.29% (+)

Deaths: 138,942 deaths (+180 in 24 hours), previous (+186)

Death rate: 0.60% (=)

Active Cases: 1,396,877 (-71,151 in 24h), previous (-95,328)

Test: 246,629,975 (last data available February 27, 2022)



France: Number of daily confirmed cases:







(Day-1)



Vaccination: 140.99 million doses of vaccine injected since December 27, 2020, date of the first injection in France (+50,000 doses injected in 24 hours. Update March 4, 2022 (latest data available)



Previous bulletin : https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-36090-haiti-diaspora-covid-19-daily-bulletin-713.html



See also :

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-30319-haiti-health-origin-of-the-first-2-cases-of-covid-19-in-haiti.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-30165-haiti-flash-first-case-of-covid-19-in-the-dominican-republic.html





HL/ HaitiLibre


















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Published on 2022/03/03 | Source

Actor Lee Young-ae donated 100 million won to Ukraine, which was damaged by the invasion of Russia.

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Ukrainian Ambassador to Korea Dmytro Ponomarenko said on his Twitter on the 1st, "I was very moved by the letter and donation of Lee Young-ae, a famous Korean actress who supports Ukraine", adding, "The donation will be delivered to victims attacked by Russia as needed".

In a letter released along with this, Lee Young-ae wrote, "As a family of veterans who went through war, I feel the horrors of the war more deeply than anyone else".

"I sincerely hope that the war will stop and peace will be settled in Ukraine as soon as possible and I pray for the well-being of all Ukrainian citizens", she said. "I hope you don't lose hope and courage, Ukrainian citizens who love freedom and peace".

She also added, "As a free Korean citizen who loves peace, I want to convey my small but precious heart to the Ukrainian people".

Meanwhile, Lee Young-ae's father and father-in-law are known to be veterans of the Korean War.
Russias brutal bombardment of Ukraine turned early Friday to Europes largest nuclear power plant, setting part of it on fire and leading the nations president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, to issue a harrowing warning of a massive catastrophe.

But while nuclear experts outside Ukraine were concerned about the situation  which led to a discussion between Zelenskyy and President Biden  they were not panicked.

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One of the six reactors at the Zaporizhzhya nuclear plant  in southern Ukraine, 500 miles from the Chernobyl site in the northern part of the country  was in flames. Firefighters attempting to battle the blaze were shot at, said a video on the plants Facebook page.

The scope of the damage was unclear. A spokesman for the plant told the Daily News that the radiation level at the plant was normal. Ukrainian officials told the International Atomic Energy Agency that the attack has not affected essential equipment, and that plant personnel were taking mitigatory actions.

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The reactor on fire is under renovation and not operating  but it still contains nuclear fuel, said the AP.

Earlier in the morning, Zelenskyy said in an emotional speech: If there is an explosion  thats the end for everyone. The end for Europe. The evacuation of Europe.

Only urgent action by Europe can stop the Russian troops. Do not allow the death of Europe from a catastrophe at a nuclear power station, Zelenskyy said.

A similar warning came from Ukraine Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba amid reports that Russian shells scored direct hits on the plant.

If it blows up, it will be 10 times larger than Chornobyl! Kuleba said on Twitter. Russians must IMMEDIATELY cease the fire, allow firefighters, establish a security zone!

Besides getting briefed by Zelenskyy, President Biden also got updates from top U.S. nuclear officials with the Department of Energy.

Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said the nuclear plants reactors are protected by robust containment structures and reactors are being safely shut down.

Though the Russian advance on key areas of northern Ukraine continued to lag on Thursday as Ukrainians put up a rigid defense of the two largest cities, Kyiv and Kharkiv, Russian President Vladimir Putin kept battering his neighbor with bombs and pushed more than 100,000 troops over the border.

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The Pentagon estimated that about 90% of the troops that Russia massed around Ukraine last month have now entered the country. Ukraine has benefited from a strong showing by its air defenses, but has still watched its urban civilian areas endure crushing attacks in recent days.

A building burns after shelling in Kyiv on Thursday. Russian forces have escalated their attacks on crowded cities in what Ukraine's leader called a blatant campaign of terror. (Efrem Lukatsky/AP)

The center of Kharkiv, a city of more than 1 million people, has been decimated by air assaults, and Russian troops have reached the edge of the city, according to the U.S. Defense Department. A stalled miles-long convoy still menaces Ukraines capital, Kyiv, home to almost 3 million.

In the south, Russia has squeezed the coastal city of Mariupol, surrounding it with troops and riddling it with missiles. And the Russian military seems to have seized its first large Ukrainian city, Kherson, also located off the coast of the Black Sea.

The U.S. government would not confirm on Thursday that Kherson had fallen. But the Pentagon suggested that the situation in the south was worsening, and that attacks were intensifying in several areas of Ukraine.

Putin claimed the invasion was going according to plan, despite widespread belief in the West that the assault has fallen behind schedule.

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The U.S., which has delivered air defense equipment to Ukraine, said Thursday that it would also designate the country for temporary protected status for 18 months.

The designation provides sanctuary to migrants who are living in the U.S. and cannot return to their home country due to unsafe conditions. The Ukrainian government has already pegged the count of civilians dead in the conflict above 2,000.

In a statement, Alejandro Mayorkas, the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, said America will offer support and protection to Ukrainian citizens in the U.S.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, cheered the move.

Ukrainians around the world are experiencing the fear and uncertainty caused by President Putins premeditated and unprovoked invasion of their country, Schumer said in a statement, praising President Biden for taking decisive action so that Ukrainians can stay safely in America.

More than 1 million refugees have flooded out of Ukraine, according to the U.N. The White House has asked Congress to approve $10 billion in aid for Ukraine, a nation of 42 million people.

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The Biden administration also said Thursday that it was imposing travel restrictions on 19 Russian oligarchs and 47 of their family members and associates, and growing the list of Kremlin-allied elites facing American sanctions.

Biden said sanctions against Russia have had a profound impact already.

Our interest is in maintaining the strongest unified economic impact campaign on Putin in all of history, Biden said before a cabinet meeting. And I think were well on the way to doing that.

Britain also ordered new sanctions on two top oligarchs on Americas list of Russian elites, Igor Shuvalov and Alisher Usmanov, hitting them with asset freezes and travel bans. The two men are said to have a combined net worth of some $19 billion.

FILE - Russian President Vladimir Putin, center, listens to Lebedinsky GOK Managing Director Oleg Mikhailov, left, as businessman and founder of USM Holdings, Alisher Usmanov, right, and Minister of Industry and Trade Denis Manturov stand behind him while visiting the Lebedinsky GOK JSC, in Gubkin, Belgorod Region, Russia in July 2017. (Mikhail Klimentyev/AP)

For as long as Putin continues his barbaric attack on innocent Ukrainians, we will continue to exert every power we have to inflict maximum economic pain on Putin and his war machine, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said in a tweet.

The West has lined up in support of the beleaguered Ukrainians, and slapped escalating sanctions on Russias economy. But global condemnation and currency depreciation have done little to deter Putins bloody drive to topple Kyiv.

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On Thursday, President Emmanuel Macron of France delivered a pessimistic assessment after a 90-minute phone call with the Russian president.

He refuses to stop his attacks on Ukraine at this point, Macron tweeted. It is vital to maintain dialogue to avoid human tragedy. I will continue my efforts and contacts. We must avoid the worst.

Macron took a leading role in Europes fruitless efforts to head off the war last month. He sat across a lengthy table from the coronavirus-fearing Putin in Moscow shortly before the invasion.

The in-person diplomatic rendezvous could not head off the conflict, but it generated chatter in France about Putins increasingly odd behavior.

With Russia staging the largest invasion in Europe since World War II, Biden has declared that there has been a complete rupture in the relationship between the U.S. and Russia.

Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, said Thursday that there were no plans for any meetings or phone calls between Biden and Putin.

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Right now, theyre invading a sovereign country and continuing to escalate every day, Psaki said of Russia. Asked about a sit-down between the presidential foes, she said: Now is not the moment.

With Michael McAuliff
Published on 2022/03/03 | Source

Actress Park Min-jung has confirmed her appearance in OCN's new drama "A Superior Day".

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According to her agency Alien Company on the 2nd, Park Min-jung was cast in the role of Detective Choo Seon-woo, who fiercely tracks a series of murders in "A Superior Day".

"A Superior Day" is a thriller set in 24 hours where only the superior survives, and the ordinary man who has to save his kidnapped daughter by killing a serial killer. It is based on a popular thriller webtoon, consisting of Kim Kan-bi, author of "Sweet Home", and Aruani, author of "Dr. Hound". Actors such as Jin Goo, Ha Do-kwon and Lee Won-geun appear.

Detective Choo, played by Park Min-jung in the drama, is a character who digs into the case without hesitation with a meticulous personality, sharp intuition and fierce tenacity to the extent that she does not miss any minor clues.

Park Min-jung announced her return to the drama about two years after SBS's "Nobody Knows" (2020). "A Superior Day" is scheduled to premiere at 10:30 PM on the 13th.
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Open house March 10 at Havre Inn and Suites

Press release

Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks will host an open house and present information on the Fresno fishery in Havre on March 10, starting at 6 p.m., at Havre Inn and Suites at Boot Hill Plaza, 1425 U.S. Highway 2 NW.

Havre-area fisheries biologist Cody Nagel will provide an update of:

 The newly adopted 10-year fisheries management plan for Fresno.

 FWP update on the status of the Fresno fishery, including a review of the 2021 netting results and other projects.

 Bureau of Reclamation project updates and 2022 water forecasts.

Fresno Reservoir ranks as the fifth most-popular fishing destination in northeast Montana and records more than 12,350 angler days annually. Fresno also generates approximately $1 million in angling related revenue annually.

The public is encouraged to attend to learn more about the Fresno fishery and get an update on the newly drafted management plan.

To review the Fresno fisheries management plan, people can go to https://fwp.mt.gov/conservation/fisheries-programs/fresno-reservoir online. Hard copies of the plan are available at the Glasgow and Havre FWP offices.

Questions can be directed to the Havre FWP office at 406-265-6177 or the Glasgow office at 406-228-3700.
Ukainian President Volodymyr Zelensky speaks to the press in the town of Bucha, northwest of the Ukrainian capital Kyiv, on April 4, 2022. (Ronaldo Schemidt/Getty-AFP)

KYIV, Ukraine  Russian troops Friday seized the biggest nuclear power plant in Europe after a middle-of-the-night attack that set it on fire and briefly raised worldwide fears of a catastrophe in the most chilling turn yet in Moscows invasion of Ukraine.

Firefighters put out the blaze, and no radiation was released, U.N. and Ukrainian officials said, as Russian forces pressed on with their week-old offensive on multiple fronts, though they did not appear to make significant gains in fighting Friday, including their offensive to cut Ukraine off from its coastline. The number of refugees fleeing the country eclipsed 1.2 million.

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With world condemnation mounting, the Kremlin cracked down on the flow of information at home, blocking Facebook, Twitter, the BBC and the U.S. government-funded Voice of America. And President Vladimir Putin signed a law making it a crime punishable by up to 15 years in prison to spread so-called fake news, including anything that goes against the official government line on the war. CNN announced Friday that it would stop broadcasting in Russia while it assessed the situation and Bloomberg temporarily suspended work in the country.

While the vast Russian armored column threatening Kyiv remained stalled outside the capital, Putins military has launched hundreds of missiles and artillery attacks on cities and other sites across the country, and made significant gains on the ground in the south in an apparent bid to cut off Ukraines access to the sea.

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In the attack on the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in the southeastern city of Enerhodar, the chief of the U.N.s International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Mariano Grossi, said a Russian projectile hit a training center, not any of the six reactors.

The attack triggered global alarm and fear of a catastrophe that could dwarf the worlds worst nuclear disaster, at Ukraines Chernobyl in 1986. In an emotional nighttime speech, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he feared an explosion that would be the end for everyone. The end for Europe. The evacuation of Europe.

But nuclear officials from Sweden to China said no radiation spikes had been reported, as did Grossi.

Authorities said Russian troops had taken control of the overall site but plant staff continued to run it. Only one reactor was operating, at 60% of capacity, Grossi said in the aftermath of the attack.

Two people were injured in the fire, Grossi said. Ukraines state nuclear plant operator Enerhoatom said three Ukrainian soldiers were killed and two wounded.

In the U.S., Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said the episode underscores the recklessness with which the Russians have been perpetrating this unprovoked invasion. At an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council, Ukraines U.N. ambassador, Sergiy Kyslytsya, said the fire broke out as a result of Russian shelling of the plant and accused Moscow of committing an act of nuclear terrorism.

Without producing evidence, Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov claimed that a Ukrainian sabotage group had set the fire at Zaporizhzhia.

The crisis unfolded after Grossi earlier in the week expressed grave concern that the fighting could cause accidental damage to Ukraines 15 nuclear reactors at four plants around the country.

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Atomic safety experts said a war fought amid nuclear reactors represents an unprecedented and highly dangerous situation.

These plants are now in a situation that few people ever seriously contemplated when they were originally built, said Edwin Lyman of the Union of Concerned Scientists in Washington. No nuclear plant has been designed to withstand a potential threat of a full-scale military attack.

Dr. Alex Rosen of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War said the incident was probably the result of military units overestimating the precision of their weapons, given that the prevailing winds would have carried any radioactive fallout straight toward Russia.

Russia cannot have any interest in contaminating its own territory, he said. He said the danger comes not just from the reactors but from the risk of enemy fire hitting storage facilities that hold spent fuel rods.

In the wake of the attack, Zelenskyy appealed again to the West to enforce a no-fly zone over his country. But NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg ruled out that possibility, citing the risk of a much wider war in Europe. He said that to enforce a no-fly zone, NATO planes would have to shoot down Russian aircraft.

In a bitter and emotional speech, Zelenskyy criticized NATOs reluctance, saying it will fully untie Russias hands as it escalates its air attack.

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All the people who die from this day forward will also die because of you, because of your weakness, because of your lack of unity, he said in a nighttime address. The alliance has given the green light to the bombing of Ukrainian cities and villages by refusing to create a no-fly zone.

Russian forces, meanwhile, pressed their offensive in the southern part of the country but appeared not to have made as much progress Friday. Severing Ukraines access to the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov would deal a severe blow to its economy and could worsen an already dire humanitarian situation. There were also no changes in the north and the east where the Russian offensive has stalled, meeting fierce Ukrainian resistance.

A round of talks between Russia and Ukraine yielded a tentative agreement Thursday to set up safe corridors to evacuate citizens and deliver food and medicine. But the necessary details still had to be worked out.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres discussed the matter with Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu on Friday morning, U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said, adding that U.N. humanitarian officials are welcoming a Russia-Ukraine agreement on a plan that allows for safety, dignity, and protection of civilians.

The U.N. human rights office said 331 civilians had been confirmed killed in the invasion but the true number is probably much higher.

In Romania, one newly arrived refugee, Anton Kostyuchyk, struggled to hold back tears as he recounted leaving everything behind in Kyiv and sleeping in churches with his wife and three children during their journey out.

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Im leaving my home, my country. I was born there, and I lived there, he said. And what now?

Appearing on video in a message to antiwar protesters in several European cities, Zelenskyy continued to appeal for help.

If we fall, you will fall, he said. And if we win, and Im sure well win, this will be the victory of the whole democratic world. This will be the victory of our freedom. This will be the victory of light over darkness, of freedom over slavery.

Inside Ukraine, frequent shelling could be heard in the center of Kyiv, though more distant than in recent days, with loud thudding every 10 minutes resonating over the rooftops.

Breaking News As it happens Get updates on the coronavirus pandemic and other news as it happens with our free breaking news email alerts. >

Ukrainian presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovich said battles involving airstrikes and artillery continued northwest of Kyiv, and the northeastern cities of Kharkiv and Okhtyrka came under heavy fire.

He said Ukrainian forces were still holding the northern city of Chernihiv and the southern city of Mykolaiv. Ukrainian artillery also defended Ukraines biggest port city, Odesa, from repeated attempts by Russian ships, Arestovich said.

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Another strategic port, Mariupol, on the Sea of Azov, was partially under siege, and Ukrainian forces were pushing back efforts to surround the city, Arestovich said.

Amid the warfare, there were occasional signs of hope.

As explosions sounded on the fringes of Kyiv, Dmytro Shybalov and Anna Panasyk smiled and blushed at the civil registry office where they married Friday. They fell in love in 2015 in Donetsk amid the fighting between pro-Russian separatists and Ukrainian forces that was a precursor to the countrywide war.

Its 2022 and the situation hasnt changed, Shybalov said. Its scary to think what will happen when our children will be born.

Karmanau reported from Lviv, Ukraine. Chernov reported from Mariupol, Ukraine. Sergei Grits in Odesa, Ukraine; Jamey Keaten in Geneva; Vanessa Gera in Warsaw, Poland; Frank Jordans in Berlin; Matt Sedensky in New York; Robert Burns in Washington; and other AP journalists from around the world contributed to this report.
Peggy Lamb, a research scientist at Northern Agriculture Research Center, runs her hands through a sample of barley seeds during judging at the 70th Annual Montana Seed Show in 2019 at Harlem High School. The seed show didn't happen in 2021 due to COVID-19 restrictions but is back at Harlem High School March 10-12.

One of the top agricultural events in the state is returning to Harlem next week, after missing only two of the last 74 years.

The 72nd Montana Seed Show will be held in Harlem High School Thursday through Saturday, March 10-12.

Paul Rasmussen, chair of the organizing committee, said many of the events of the show - which started 74 years ago and only has missed two years, to his knowledge - are the same as in the past.

The show has a long history, starting as a seed potato show in the 1940s, but growing into a three-day event featuring vendors, agriculture, crafts, cooking, auctions a...
Press release

Organizers of the Quilt Show at the Montana Seed Show are reminding quilters that the Quilt Show is Friday, March 11, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Saturday, March 12, from 10 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.

The show is again being held in the band room at the Harlem High School.

The Silent Auction will have several items for people to bid on. Numerous items will be for sale. The Nimble Thimble Quilt Guild from Harlem, Hogeland and Turner is sponsoring this event.

Hope to see all of you there, organizers said.

Vonnie Klungland

...
From time to time, the so-called settlements or reconciliation by the Syrian government return to the surface the last of which were in Raqqa and Deir Ezzor.

A notable of the Sheikh Issa clan wondered in an interview with ANHA on the offense committed by the Syrian people to go to these settlements'' what have the Syrian people done to go to settlements''.

Sheikh Majed Arak adds the so-called settlements is a complicated issue and it has no positive aspects at all, this issue make people to believe that they have committed sins.

The sheikh added ''these are bids by the government to blow up all demands of the people to give up democracy, freedom, justice and equality showing them as if they were agents or traitors, and showing the government as an embracing homeland that forgives its peoples''.

Member of the Administrative Body of the Intellectuals' Union in the Jazira Region, writer Mohamed Bashir confirms the bid by the Syrian government and that these individual moves run under two sections;

the first is clinging to the authoritarian mentality of the one party and to revert the country to the 2011 status ruling it by a fist of iron with no political or economic rights given to the people.

While the second one is to give legitimacy to the Syrian government and to disregard the ten years plight of the people showing it provides forgiveness and the people as criminal''.

He went on to say that all avert any solution that meets aspiration of the Syrian people based on UN decisions that makes Syria a civil state after years of marginalization and exclusion.

The return of security branches of the Syrian government under the so-called 'settlements or reconciliations raised discontent and dissatisfaction of peoples in Raqqa and Deir Ezzor especially by tribal circles that were rejected in declarations and statements released.

Sheikh Arak believes any solution to the Syrian crisis that sweeps the country since ten years ago up to date should be based on internationally adopted decisions and not based on any bids that reverts the country to the status 2011 that was known for the security branches oppression

While Bashir himself says all parties ought to make concessions the first of which the Syrian government otherwise neither solution would appease the Syrian people or end the crisis that sweeps the country.

Bashir laid stress on holding conferences and meeting on the Syrian geography far away from any external powers that deepen the crisis and calling for a constitution that guarantees all rights of peoples according to the law.

l..a

ANHA
FRIDAY, March 4, 2022 (HealthDay News) -- Florida legislators voted on Thursday to ban most abortions after 15 weeks, a move that would severely restrict access to the procedure for women in that state.

The bill -- modeled after a similar abortion ban in Mississippi that the U.S. Supreme Court is expected to rule on this summer -- now heads to Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has expressed his support for signing the bill into law.

Florida now allows abortions until 24 weeks, with fewer restrictions than other Southern states. The new bill, which includes no exceptions for rape or incest, passed by a 23-15 vote late Thursday night after an emotional debate in the State Senate, The New York Times reported.

Other restrictive legislation on the verge of passage in Florida includes banning instruction about sexual orientation or gender identity in some elementary school grades, and allowing parents to sue public school districts if students believe that their teacher sought to make them feel discomfort about a historical event because of their race, sex or national origin, the Times reported.

Weve accomplished more in this state than anyone thought possible, DeSantis told a rowdy crowd at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando last week, but Ill tell you this: We have only begun to fight.

But critics of the raft of measures have claimed that the sexual orientation and gender identity bill would cause a chilling effect in classrooms and harm LGBTQ youth, who are already at higher risk of bullying and suicide than their peers. They added that the bill on how to teach history penalizes teachers and dismisses the countrys racist past, the Times reported.

Florida Democrats expressed dismay over the passage of the abortion legislation.

This [abortion] bill puts politicians, bureaucrats and the government between a woman and her access to health care, Sen. Janet Cruz, a Tampa Democrat, said of the abortion bill on Thursday, the Times reported. It will absolutely result in a women seeking unsafe abortions and dying as a result.

But Democrats number so few in the Florida Legislature that they are unable to block or amend most legislation. Minority Leader Sen. Lauren Book, of Plantation, referred to the remaining days of the legislative session as hell week.

This is probably one of the worst sessions that Ive seen, where were taking issues that are going to deeply, deeply affect Floridians, she noted.

Not all U.S. states are moving to restrict abortions, however: A bill to permit some nurse practitioners in California to perform some abortions without doctor supervision has been introduced in that state legislature.

The proposal announced Thursday comes as California prepares to deal with a possible surge of women from other states if the U.S. Supreme Court allows states to ban or severely limit abortion in a ruling that could come this summer, the Associated Press reported.

The bill is meant to boost the number of health care workers in California who can perform abortions.

As states like Texas and others start to restrict further abortion, it just makes sense that women are going to find other places to go. California will be one of those states, State Senate leader Toni Atkins, a Democrat from San Diego, told the AP.

Currently, nurse practitioners, certified nurse midwives and physician assistants in California can perform abortions during the first trimester of pregnancy if they've completed special training and are supervised by a doctor, the AP reported. The proposed bill would let nurse practitioners with the required training perform first trimester abortions without doctor oversight.

It's unclear how many more of the state's 30,000 nurse practitioners would be permitted to perform abortions if the bill becomes law, the AP reported.

More information

Visit the U.S. National Institutes of Health for more on abortions.

SOURCE: The New York Times
In an assembly on Feb. 28, Hazard High School (HHS) welcomed home alumnus Jimmy Nick Eversole, a graduate of the Hazard High School Class of 2019, who was just returning from Parris Island, South Carolina. The assembly was held to honor and recognize Eversole for his completion of Basic Training for the U.S. Marine Corps.

School officials said they are proud of Eversole.

HHS Principal Donald Happy Mobelini said that typically a lot of the students are unsure of their career and educational options around graduation, but Eversole knew what he wanted to do. After graduating many students are unsure if they want to go to college, trade or technical school, but Nick chose the Marine Corps, said Mobelini.

Hazard Independent Superintendent Sondra Combs was Eversoles preschool teacher and said the district is very proud of Eversole and his accomplishments.

We are so proud of Nick. He is a great example of how hard work and dedication can pay off. He is an awesome example of courage and strength, said Combs.

During the assembly, Eversole spoke to the student body about his time at Hazard High School and how his experience has changed his life. The military showed me respect, how to carry myself and

appreciate the little things in life. HHS helped me because like the Marines it is one big family at Hazard High with Happy and the teachers. I had some great influences to help me get to where I am today, said Eversole. Once a bulldog, always a bulldog.

Upon addressing the school, Eversole was presented with the title Duke of Hazard by Mayor Mobelini and other city officials. Eversole was also presented with a flag that flew over the city of Hazard the day of his graduation.

After his visit home to his alma mater, Eversole shipped out Tuesday for his assignment.
On March 1, Lt. Gov. Jacqueline Coleman held a meeting at Hazard City Hall during which she awarded $4,717,104 in funding to Breathitt, Knott, Lee, Leslie, Owsley, Perry and Wolfe counties. The funding, said Coleman, comes through Gov. Andy Beshears Cleaner Water Program, the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet (KYTC) and the Department for Local Governments Community Development Block Grant (CDBG).

In addition to those sources of funding, Coleman said several others made this possible, including state and local leaders.

Perry County will receive nearly $1 million through the funding for water infrastructure work.

That funding has been made possible because of a bipartisan agreement between legislature and the governors office, said Coleman. We want to say thanks to the folks at the local level who did the work in bringing these projects to life and taking the funding and prioritizing it in a way you know it needs to be used in this community and making it happen, she said.

As part of Gov. Beshears Better Kentucky Plan, the Cleaner Water Program is funded by the American Rescue Plan Act and administered by the Kentucky Infrastructure Authority (KIA). Through this agreement, $250 million was appropriated through a bipartisan agreement at the close of the 2021 General Assembly for clean drinking water and wastewater grants to fund projects across Kentucky. The Kentucky River Area Development District submitted the funding request for this project to the KIA.

The Department for Local Government administers approximately $26 million annually from the U.S. Housing and Urban Development Community Development Block Grant program. The CDBG program provides assistance to communities for use in revitalizing neighborhoods, expanding affordable

housing and economic opportunities, providing infrastructure and/or improving community facilities and services.

More than $106 million has been awarded to grantees to fund transformative projects since the call for projects was announced June 1. Eligible government agencies, such as city-owned water or sewer utilities, water commissions, water and sewer districts and counties, collaborated with their local Area Development Districts and Area Water Management Councils to submit projects for Cleaner Water Program funding. There are 713 public drinking water and wastewater utilities in Kentucky.

Cleaner Water Program funding is allocated in three ways including:

 $150 million based on each countys proportion of the states population, with the exception of Jefferson Countys share, which is discounted by 50 percent based on its high per capita allocation from the federal act.

 $50 million is available for utilities to provide drinking water services to unserved, rural customers or to utilities under a federal consent decree. The KIA shall consider social, economic and environmental benefits in determining the allocations.

 $49.9 million is available to supplement a project grant for a project with a cost in excess of a countys allocation amount and other available grant sources. The social, economic and environmental benefits shall be considered in determining project allocations. KIA will receive $75,000 to administer the grant program.

Gov. Beshear said all Kentuckians deserve access to clean water, and he is glad the funding is able to help achieve this goal. Kentucky families deserve clean water  a basic human right  as well as access to safe and well-maintained roads, educational opportunities and support when they need help, said Gov. Beshear. Todays investments show what we can accomplish when we put our values into action.

Lt. Gov. Coleman agreed, and added that local and state leaders are working together to continue to make this goal possible for all Kentucky residents. Investments made in infrastructure, said Coleman, provide Kentucky with a solid foundation for the futures economy.

As we continue to talk about infrastructure and new jobs and all those things, you hear us talk about the jobs of the future a lot. One of the things that we know for sure is that Kentuckys current infrastructure is not set up to handle the jobs of the future so we have to make sure that were investing in things like high-speed internet, clean water, roads and bridges, so that we can start to build tomorrows economy today, said Coleman. Its important for economic development as these businesses make decisions about where they want to locate or relocate or expand but its also really important to our families. This is something so many of us take for granted, and we believe that clean water and access to clean water is a basic human right, she said.

The state, Coleman said, has made a lot of progress in the last few years and is expecting to continue doing so.

We broke every economic development record in the book in the last year with over $11 billion worth of investments that created over 18,000 jobs in Kentucky, said Coleman. We are now at a very unique crossroads. As we are hopefully coming out of the pandemic and putting that behind us, were looking at economic prosperity like weve never seen.

By awarding this funding and others like it to work on issues such as infrastructure, Coleman said the state is bettering the futures of their communities. This is our opportunity to turn two years of progress into 20 years of prosperity, Coleman said.

Funding announced on Tuesday included:

 Breathitt County received $463,850 to the City of Jackson for the Beverly Heights and Sigman Drive waterline extension project.

 Knott County received $418,455 to the Knott County Water and Sewer District to improve service for 95 customers, and $125,311 to the City of Hindman to provide potable water to five households.

 Lee County was awarded $271,883 to the City of Beattyville for water treatment plant improvements and $600,000 to Lee County through KYTC to resurface River Drive.

 Leslie County received $181,371 to the City of Hyden for improvements at a wastewater plant; $181,372 to the Hyden-Leslie County Water District to replace 12 miles of waterlines; and $303,880 to Leslie County through KYTC to resurface River Road and Stinnett-Wendover Road.

 Owsley County was awarded $162,145 to the City of Booneville to replace existing meters and $800,000 to the Owsley County Fiscal Court through CDBG funding to purchase a new location for the Partnership Housing Food Pantry.

 Perry County received $945,989 to the Perry County Fiscal Court for new waterlines, new pressure stations and list station improvements.

 Wolfe County was awarded $262,848 to the City of Campton for improvements to a booster station.

Perry County Judge-Executive Scott Alexander said the county is grateful for the funding and what it means for the area.

This is exciting times as we continue to grow, said Alexander. Its also an exciting time when we see not only us (the county)  the mayor from day one has been totally invested in redoing our water system and seeing our neighboring communities investing in their water systems, he said.

Alexander said there are seven areas in Perry County that still do not have access to water.

Hazard Mayor Donald Happy Mobelini said the funding will help supply those areas. This right here will take care of them, said Mobelini. We hope over the next two years everyone has access to water, he said.

The investment were making today into our systems is going to set our communities up to succeed from now on. For years to come people will locate here because we have good water, said Alexander.

The American Society of Civil Engineers in 2019 projected that Kentucky faces nearly $14.5 billion in water/wastewater infrastructure needs over the next 20 years, including over $8.2 billion in drinking water upgrades and $6.2 billion in sewer system improvements.

Information about the Cleaner Water Program, as well as grants for high-speed internet expansion, school facility upgrades and vocational education center renovations, can be found at governor.ky.gov/BetterKy.
(The Center Square)  Kentucky had another strong showing in Site Selection magazines annual Governors Cup rankings.

Gov. Andy Beshear announced Thursday the state finished in the top three nationally for economic development projects per capita for the eighth consecutive year. Kentucky also had more projects per population than any other South Central state.

Beshear said the rankings further confirm the unprecedented growth in the state within the past year.

Hundreds of new and expanding companies are selecting Kentucky for their projects and creating jobs throughout the commonwealth, the governor said in a statement. I am proud to see not only recognition for what we have accomplished as a state but also significant growth in so many of our communities.

The magazine tracks projects that include at least one of the following criteria: private-sector investment of at least $1 million, the creation of 20 jobs or a new workspace of at least 20,000 square feet.

There were 199 such projects announced in Kentucky last year. For overall announcements, Kentucky just missed the top 10. However, the 44.1 projects per million residents were the third-best per capita rating, trailing only Kansas (47.4 projects per million) and South Dakota (45.8 projects per million).

Kentucky enjoyed a record-setting 2021 for economic development. The $11.2 billion in new projects was highlighted by Ford Motor Companys decision to build an electric-vehicle battery plant in Glendale. That $5.8 billion project, a joint partnership with SK Innovation, ranked as the seventh-largest investment in 2021, according to Site Selection.

That plant is expected to open in 2025.

Urban and rural areas of Kentucky were honored by the magazine in its rankings.

Northern Kentucky, part of the Cincinnati metropolitan area, ranked second in large metro areas in per capita projects. The Louisville area finished seventh per capita in that category.

Bowling Green had 16 qualifying projects, the second-highest number of any metro area with fewer than 200,000 people. Elizabethtown, the metro region where Ford will build the battery plant, finished in a tie for sixth with eight qualified projects.

In micropolitan areas, which include cities with 10,000 to 50,000 residents, Kentucky finished fifth overall. Frankfort had seven projects, good enough to finish in a tie for seventh nationally among smaller communities. It was one of eight Kentucky towns that finished in the top 100 nationally.

While Kansas claimed the Governors Cup for per-capita projects, Texas won the Governors Cup for most overall projects with 1,123.
Habitat names new president

Linda Berta Saturno has been named the new president and CEO of Henderson County and Thermal Belt Habitat for Humanity. She succeeds Ron Laughter, the president and CEO for the past 13 years who will retire after assisting with the transition.

A native of Morganton, Saturno earned an undergraduate degree from Appalachian State University, an MBA from Queens College and a Master of Social Work degree from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.

She has extensive nonprofit experience on local, national and international levels. She returns to the area after leading Child Advocacy Centers in Missouri. She has also worked with the United Nations in Central Asia and Eastern Europe.

In her spare time, she enjoys hiking and kayaking and says she looks forward to enjoying the outdoors of Western North Carolina.
City honors MVP of 2021

Will Hutchinson accepts MVP of 2021 award from Mayor Barbara Volk.

Will Hutchinson, a technology whiz in the city engineering department, was honored Thursday night as the 2021 MVP of the year for his development of a city app that allows people to report non-emergency problems such as potholes, litter and traffic problems.

Hutchinson developed the citizen reporter app, collaborated with other city departments to develop categories and workflow for response and assisted with a video and marketing of the service. The achievement was recognized at a North Carolina Geographic Information System conference and touted as a model for other cities.
We dont like the bail reforms Albany passed in 2019 and revised in 2020. Wed rather see defendants released, remanded or allowed to post bail based on a judges discretion, after a review that includes an assessment of their dangerousness. Thats the law in 49 other states. But not every case makes the argument for shredding bail reform  not even a case as disgusting as that of Frank Abrokwa.

Abrokwa is accused of smearing feces on a womans face on a Bronx subway platform late last month. When arraigning him Tuesday, Judge Wanda Licitra could have set bail. The charges against him werent on the states prescribed list of bail-eligible crimes  but the law also allows for bail if and when a defendant is rearrested for harming a person or property while other charges are pending.

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Frank Abrokwa, a homeless defendant with a double-digit rap sheet, accused of smearing his own feces on a woman inside a Bronx subway station, is pictured smiling after leaving a courtroom in handcuffs on Tuesday, March 1, 2022. (Kerry Burke/New York Daily News)

Prosecutors sought bail; Licitra didnt set it, claiming that police statements about previous crimes, which were informed by victims, amounted to hearsay. That was her mistake, a big one.

The bail law did rear its head Wednesday, when Abrokwa was arraigned on different offenses, including second-degree aggravated harassment as a hate crime. Cops say that in September, he spit on a man and chased him down a street, yelling f--king Jew. In this case, the judge had no power to set bail because none of the crimes are on the magic list, and the bias incident happened before other charges against Abrokwa were pending. So the defendant was freed on supervised release, presumably exiting the courthouse through a revolving door.

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Abrokwa has 44 past arrests  including three others this year. On Jan. 7, he allegedly punched a passenger on a Manhattan subway platform. On Feb. 5, he allegedly punched a man in the Port Authority Bus Terminal. On Feb. 22, he allegedly pointed a screwdriver at an employee in a Bronx hardware store.

The system New York has built for itself, in which those accused of a prescribed list of crimes are almost reflexively sprung no matter their criminal history, should change. As we were reminded this week, giving judges more flexibility is not a perfect answer. Humans fail, too. But at least when they do, they can be held accountable.
Anderson, IN (46016)

Today

Cloudy with occasional rain in the afternoon. High 62F. Winds E at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 70%..

Tonight

Cloudy with periods of rain. Low 56F. Winds ESE at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 80%. Rainfall around a half an inch.
At a Bed-Stuy wine bar Wednesday, Gov. Hochul promoted one of the most down-to-earth proposals in her budget proposal: permanently allowing to-go drinks. Its 5 oclock somewhere, she said, and I concur.

Allowing restaurants to sell take-out or delivery beer, wine and cocktails with their food is popular, it provides a lifeline to thousands of small businesses across the state, and there are no measurable negative impacts (other than giving liquor stores a bit more competition). Its a win-win for everyone involved.

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But when you take a deeper look at New Yorks arcane, incredibly outdated Alcoholic Beverage Control laws (known as ABC laws), youll find that restrictions on alcohol delivery are just the tip of the iceberg. To truly help our small businesses recover, we need to make wholesale changes to these laws, and make them now.

Many of New Yorks ABC laws are a remnant of so-called Blue Laws that were instituted in the post-colonial era (so-named because they were printed on blue paper). The primary function of these laws was to restrict secular activity on Sundays. These laws survived, largely unchanged, right through the early 20th century and the Prohibition era. While they took on a more modern form in 1934 when Prohibition ended, many of the restrictions persisted into the current era.

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A view of a man walking by a sign outside a bar reading 'Food and drinks to go' as the coronavirus continues to spread across the United States on March 21, 2020 in New York City. (Cindy Ord/Getty Images)

For example, it was not until 2003 that liquor stores were even allowed to be open on Sunday. As it stands today, much of how we regulate alcohol sales in New York is left over from the Al Smith era, and while weve gone along with the old ways until now, our small businesses today need all the help they can get.

Given that were in the process of legalizing marijuana sales and mobile casino gambling throughout the state, it also seems especially odd to keep in place onerous restrictions on the way alcohol  a legal, regulated product  is distributed and sold in New York.

The Daily News Flash Weekdays Catch up on the days top five stories every weekday afternoon. >

During the pandemic, New York City saw hundreds of its restaurants close forever. While alcohol-to-go will help existing restaurants bounce back, we need new businesses owners to take over the empty storefronts that have been left vacant for months or years.

But when liquor licenses take months (at best) to secure, it has a ripple effect that slows down the entire citys recovery. Redesigning the licensing process  and speeding up the approvals process  is perhaps the easiest and most impactful change we can make this session. We are happy to see that one of the initiatives Hochul announced this week was a review of the licensing process and a commitment to streamlining this presently onerous and lengthy endeavor for those small business owners and entrepreneurs seeking to open a restaurant, bar or liquor store.

But it doesnt stop there. While New York States brunch law allowed bars and restaurants to sell alcohol starting at 10 a.m. on Sunday, liquor stores must still wait until 12 p.m. This is another Prohibition-era law whose history dates back to the Blue Laws. Can you imagine if laws from the late 18th century still dictated how we teach our children? How we police our streets?

Beyond those examples, things like the 500-foot law (not allowing more than four alcohol-selling establishments within 500 feet of each other) and restrictions on multiple liquor store licenses and the sale of complementary items at a liquor store such as cheeses and cigars are ripe for change. We must also look to change our laws to support the continued growth of our New York wine and distilled spirits by expanding access to larger consumer markets.

In 2019, the restaurant industry made up one in 12 private-sector jobs in New York City. Thats a huge portion of our economic livelihood that we are letting die on the vine every day we let these outdated laws stay on the books.

Like Gov. Hochul, I am squarely focused on bringing New Yorks small businesses back from the brink. I know the arguments against these changes, because theyve been made since legislators rode to Albany in a horse and buggy. There is simply no reason to continue this self-inflicted harm when a solution is finally in sight. I raise my glass to alcohol-to-go, to wine in movie theaters, and to ABC laws that finally work for our small businesses, not against them.

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Zuber is executive vice president of the Business Council of New York State.
BENTON HARBOR  The U.S. Environmental Protection Agencys report over the efficacy of the certified water filters has received mixed reactions from the Benton Harbor community.

After the federal agency released the study Thursday, Benton Harbor Mayor Marcus Muhammad said he was glad to hear the water filters that were previously handed out were found to be filtering out the lead from the citys drinking water.

I think its a confirmation  as well as a validation  that the city of Benton Harbor, the Berrien County Health Department and all concerned parties were working together in good faith to address the problem since 2018, Muhammad said Thursday.

He said more than 2,800 certified water filters were handed out over the past three years from the state by the health department since the city was put under a state advisory for having higher-than-acceptable amounts of lead in some of its drinking water.

But not everyone was happy with how the information was released by the state in a virtual meeting Thursday morning.

Benton Harbor City Commissioner MaryAlice Adams, who attended the meeting, said when she asked if the residents were being taught how to properly install the water filters, she was told she would receive her answer offline.

Im so sick of the politicking and politricking with the lives of the people in Benton Harbor, she said. I dont know what to do if people arent going to be open and honest and transparent about whats going on with our water.

The Herald-Palladium was told it could not attend Thursdays meeting because it was a private stakeholder meeting, which is not open to the public or the media, according to an email from Regina Strong, environmental justice public advocate with the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy.

Adams said she doesnt understand why the media wasnt invited.

My residents need to know why they would not want the media to help put out the truth if what theyre serving is the truth, she said. ... Once you have an engaged community, you need to let the community know that youre being transparent if youre not hiding anything.

Adams also said Thursday she believes the state is trying to find a way to close the citys water treatment plant.

I think theres a land grab going on because we know it sits on a very valuable piece of property, Adams said. Im thinking this whole thing has been manufactured.

In November, the EPA ordered the city to correct deficiencies and violations at the water plant that were found during a September inspection.

Among the orders outlined in the 23-page document was the city must have an alternatives analysis done by an independent third party. The alternatives to be looked at included the physical or managerial consolidation of the system with one or more other systems and the possible transfer of ownership.

Taylor Gillespie, strategic communications coordinator with the EPA, said the alternatives analysis being done by an independent third party is expected to be done by August.

She said it will give a list of options, with pros and cons for each recourse for the city commissioners to choose from.

Concerns with the study

Edward Pinkney, president of the Benton Harbor Community Water Council, said he still has a lot of questions about the study that need to be answered before residents should feel safe drinking the citys tap water.

One of his main concerns is how only 20 percent of the houses tested had their water off for six hours or more. He said that invalidates 80 percent of the tests.

Elin Betanzo, president and founder of Safe Water Engineering in Detroit, who has been working with Pinkneys group, said the filters are only certified for lead reduction, but there are other problems at the water plant.

The EPA Unilateral Administrative Order detailed many violations of the Safe Drinking Water Act at the Benton Harbor Water Treatment Plant regarding surface water treatment and microbial treatment, she said. We dont have any evidence yet that those issues have been addressed. My big concern right now is switching to filters when lead is not the only issue that were concerned about.

She said the EPA order found some of the problems have been going on since 2017, including the failure to calibrate chlorine monitoring devices on a regular basis and not handling disinfection in the system properly.

The EPAs news release on Thursday stated recent inspections show that the priority operational problems have been fixed.

However, Betanzo said she needs data to back up that statement.

(The problems) have been going on for a very long time, she said. Just to suddenly say those issues have been resolved without any transparency, about what exactly has been fixed ... I think its fair to ask for some support for that statement.

She said if there are microbial concerns, filters are not the way to go.

Filters are carbon-based. Theyre food for bacteria, for microorganisms, she said.
BENTON HARBOR  Certified water filters given to Benton Harbor residents can effectively filter lead out of the citys tap water, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced after releasing its study Thursday.

However, the federal agency cautioned that the study showed filters are most effective when properly installed and maintained.

In November and December, EPA scientists tested unfiltered and filtered water at (about) 200 locations in the community, said Tera Fong, EPA Region 5 Water Division director. We found that the properly operated filters were successful in reducing lead considerably and consistent with performance expectations of those filters.

Of the 199 homes that were sampled, 45 homes had unfiltered drinking water samples come back with lead detected above 5 parts per billion (ppb). None of the homes had filtered drinking water come back above 5 pbb.

The federal action level is 15 ppb for lead in drinking water  whereas the lead limit for bottled water is 5 ppb, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

In an interview with The Herald-Palladium on Wednesday, Fong said that although the filters were found to be working, some problems were noted. Fong said EPA officials collecting the water samples saw first-hand some filters were not properly installed or maintained.

That highlights the importance and opportunity to do a little more outreach with the community to assist with proper installation and maintenance, Fong said. Were committed to working with the state and local government on disseminating information on the safe use of filters.

Bottled up

Despite the study confirming water filters were effective, state officials are still recommending city residents use bottled water for cooking, drinking, brushing teeth and mixing powdered infant formula.

Michigan will continue to provide free bottled water to Benton Harbor residents until all lead service lines are replaced, an EPA news release stated Thursday.

This comes after, in October 2021, state officials recommended city residents use bottled water out of an abundance of caution, until a study on how well the filters were removing the lead was done by the EPA.

In an emailed statement Thursday, Lynn Sutfin from the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services confirmed free bottled water will continue to be given to residents  at least until the city continues to replace its lead pipes.

The EPA study confirms that certified filters, properly installed and maintained, are effective in reducing lead in Benton Harbor drinking water, Sutfin said in the email. Since bottled water has been appreciated by the community and has helped address families concerns about lead exposure, we are continuing to provide bottled water throughout the lead service line replacement project. Berrien County Health Department has filters available free of charge for residents who wish to use filters.

The study results were released Thursday morning after EPA officials presented the information to state and community stakeholders at a private meeting.

The meeting was not open to the public or media, according to Regina Strong, environmental justice public advocate with the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy. Strong did not give a reason why the meeting was kept private.

The raw data from the EPA study is available at www.epa.gov/mi/benton-harbor-drinking-water.

A timeline

In January, Benton Harbor city commissioners awarded $33.2 million in contracts to five contractors to replace the citys water service lines by April 19, 2023.

Darren Lytle, environmental engineer with the EPA, said Wednesday the EPA collected water samples from a variety of homes in Benton Harbor.

We did a good job of capturing locations where we expected to see the highest lead concentrations to challenge the filters and the results ... show that the filters all reduce lead in excess of the expectations, he said.

Lytle said residents need to be reminded to not run hot water through the filters and to change the filter when the light turns red.

While the EPA study was focused on lead, Fong said the federal agency is also helping the city bring its water plant up to code in other areas.

During an inspection of the water plant last September, EPA officials found several violations to the federal Safe Drinking Water Act.

The city was ordered in November to make several corrections to the water plant, including to improve the applications of chlorine for disinfection and orthophosphate for corrosion control, to implement stricter requirements for better monitoring of residual disinfectants and its byproducts and to use an independent third-party to conduct an analysis of alternatives for the long-term operation of the system.

According to the EPA news release, recent inspections of the water plant show the priority operational problems have been fixed.

No family should ever have to worry about the quality of water coming from their tap and the Benton Harbor community is no exception, EPA Region 5 Administrator Debra Shore said in the release. The information collected in Benton Harbor expands our existing knowledge that filters are effective at removing lead, affirming our confidence in their use nationwide. However, using a water filter addresses the symptom and not the cause of the problem, which is why EPA is committed to President Bidens goal of removing 100 percent of lead pipes, the primary source of lead in drinking water across the country.

Benton Harbor was first put under an advisory for having too much lead in its drinking water in October 2018 and for the next three years, residents were given water filters by the state through the health department to filter out the lead until the lead water service lines could be replaced. That was anticipated to take up to 20 years due to the citys financial hardships.

However, state officials announced they were helping the city replace all of the lead water service lines in the city in the next 18 months.

Filter dos and donts

According to information released Thursday by the EPA, hot water is never to be run through faucet water filters.

Instead, residents should use the bypass valve when using hot water. And hot water is never to be put in a pitcher filter.

The proper use of water filters includes:
BENTON HARBOR  Benton Harbor residents now have another way to provide city workers permission to replace lead water service lines on private property  at no cost to them.

An online right-of-entry form and electronic signature are now available, according to a news release from the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services.

The form can be found at dtmb.state.mi.us/BentonHarbor.

Residents without internet access or who prefer to sign the form by a different method may obtain information from Sandy Riehl at sriehl@abonmarche.com or by calling 926-4557.

The form gives workers temporary access to the property to excavate, investigate and replace non-copper water services from the property line to 18 inches inside the home.

The city has agreed to pay for any repair costs for up to one year after construction. After one year, the property owner is responsible for any repairs on the private side of the service line.

The states lead and copper rule mandates that lead and galvanized water service lines be replaced.

In addition, Benton Harbor city commissioners approved in February mandating property owners replace their lines within 180 days or be faced with fines up to $500 and jail time up to 90 days, along with being required to serve up to 250 hours of community service.

The new city ordinance also allows renters to grant access to buildings if the owner is not available.

Benton Harbor Mayor Marcus Muhammad said this new online service provided by the state is a testament to Gov. Gretchen Whitmers commitment to help the city remove all of the lead water service lines quickly.

Historically, water service lines from the property line to the house were the responsibility of the homeowner. That changed in 2018, when the states new standards on drinking water required public water systems replace all lead service lines up to within 18 inches inside homes starting Jan. 1, 2021.

In January, Benton Harbor city commissioners awarded $33.2 million in contracts to five contractors to replace the citys water service lines by April 19, 2023, at no charge to the residents. In the past 30 days, 30 service lines have been replaced and 26 have been verified not to be made of lead, according to an online dashboard, which can be found on the citys website, www.bhcity.us.

To date, 465 of the 4,322 assumed lead service line have been replaced.

Free bottled water continues to be provided by the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services and distributed by local, paid residents of the city.

Residents are being encouraged to use bottled water for cooking, drinking, brushing teeth, rinsing foods and mixing powdered infant formula as part of an accelerated, across-the-board effort to reduce the risk of exposure to lead in drinking water while the city replaces all lead service lines.

To arrange water delivery to homebound or residents without transportation in the city, contact 211, which is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Phones that cannot contact 211 should contact 844-875-9211.
Fox News host Greg Gutfeld counts his mother-in-law among the people in Ukraine who have been displaced by Russias unprovoked invasion. But his colleagues are coming to her rescue.

The Gutfeld! star said Wednesday night that his wifes mom had been put up in a hotel in Lviv, which is near the Polish border. The plan is for Gutfelds mother-in-law and his wife to be reunited in the next day or so.

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People have been helping me out  somebody who has been obnoxious to them before and will probably be obnoxious to them after, he said.

[ Volodymyr Zelenskyy bobblehead raises money for Ukraine ]

Gutfeld, who is also a panelist on the Fox News program The Five, married Russian former model Elena Moussa in 2004, according to The Heavy. She and her sister reportedly owned a clothing store in Moscow at one point.

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[ Fox News celebrates a quarter-century of ... whatever it is theyre doing over there ]

Some of Gutfelds Fox News colleagues have been faulted for downplaying the violence in Ukraine. Prime time host Tucker Carlson dismissed Russian aggression as a border dispute and complained Democrats in Washington have told you its your patriotic duty to hate Vladimir Putin.

Fellow Fox News prime-timer Laura Ingraham welcomed Donald Trump on her show last week to speak about the situation in Eastern Europe. The former president used the opportunity to continue pushing the false claim that the 2020 U.S. election was rigged against him and claimed Russia would not have invaded Ukraine had he still been in office.
Secretary will work with partners and elected officials across the country to address the nation's mental health and behavioral health crises, which have been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Following President Joe Biden's State of the Union Address on Tuesday, Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Xavier Becerra kicked off the National Tour to Strengthen Mental Health in an effort to hear directly from Americans across the country about the behavioral health challenges they're facing and engage with local elected officials and leaders to strengthen the mental health and crisis care system in our communities.

"The pandemic has not only taken a physical toll on all of us, but also brought on greater behavioral health challenges for everyone," said Secretary Becerra. "From small towns to big cities, I'll be traveling nationwide with members of my leadership team to meet with people who have been hit particularly hard, and partnering with local leaders to find ways to save lives in our communities. The Biden-Harris Administration will continue to deliver on our promise to build back better  and healthier."

As President Biden launches a whole-of-government strategy to transform mental health services for all Americans, Secretary Becerra is leading HHS to address the mental health challenges that have been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, including substance use, youth mental health, and suicide. Building on work that agencies and offices across the Department have already been doing, Secretary Becerra and HHS leaders will hit the road in a concerted effort to deliver on the Biden-Harris Administration's priorities to tackle these challenges.

Over the next few months, Secretary Becerra will make announcements on new initiatives and various resources provided by HHS, such as increasing the number of behavioral health professionals and community and behavioral health support workers in underserved and under-resourced communities, expanding pediatric mental health care access through telehealth services, and the transition to 988: America's Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. Through meetings with partners, local leaders, and elected officials across the country, the Secretary will highlight the work HHS is doing and also take time to listen and gather ideas about ways to partner with states and communities to strengthen mental health services, and what more the Department can do.

The term "behavioral health" refers to the promotion of mental health, resilience and wellbeing; the treatment of mental and substance use disorders; and the support of those who experience and/or are in recovery from these conditions, along with their families and communities.

Provisional data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)'s National Center for Health Statistics indicate that there were an estimated 100,306 drug overdose deaths in the United States during the 12-month period ending in April 2021, an increase of 28.5 percent from the 78,056 deaths during the same period the year before. To combat this crisis, Secretary Becerra announced the release of the new HHS Overdose Prevention Strategy, designed to increase access to the full range of care and services for individuals who use substances that cause overdose, and their families.

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, mental health challenges were common, with 1 in 5 adults experiencing a mental illness in any given year. Mental health challenges were the leading cause of disability and poor life outcomes in young people, with up to 1 in 5 children ages 3 to 17 in the United States having a mental, emotional, developmental, or behavioral disorder.

Additionally, from 2009 to 2019, the share of high school students who reported persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness increased by 40 percent, to more than 1 in 3 students. The share of high school students who seriously considered attempting suicide also increased during this period, by 36 percent. The pandemic only exacerbated youth mental health challenges. In December 2021, the U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy issued a new Surgeon General's Advisory to highlight the urgent need to address the nation's youth mental health crisis.

"Our country faced a mental health pandemic long before the COVID-19 pandemic began, and it was exacerbated by the traumatic effects of the past two years. That's why, last December, I issued a Surgeon General's Advisory on protecting youth mental health  because it will take policy, institutional, and individual changes alike to reframe and address this crisis with the urgency it deserves," said Surgeon General Vivek Murthy. "I am grateful to Secretary Becerra and the Biden-Harris Administration for recognizing this, and for their commitment to work with communities across the country to strengthen and protect mental health."

According to the CDC, in 2020, suicide was among the top 5 leading causes of death for people ages 10-64. Suicide was the second leading cause of death for people ages 10-14 and 25-34. Some groups have higher suicide rates than others. Among the highest rates are American Indian/Alaska Native and White populations, veterans, people who live in rural areas, and young adults who identify as lesbian, gay, or bisexual.

The National Tour to Strengthen Mental Health will also promote health equity and prioritize hearing from diverse voices. The Secretary will travel to traditionally underserved communities and hold conversations in spaces and places that are under-resourced. As the Secretary leads the Administration's efforts to ensure equitable access to health care, HHS will continue working across the Department and in partnership with other agencies to close behavioral health disparities and invest in comprehensive treatment, early intervention, prevention, and recovery support services for all Americans.

The Secretary also intends to bring with him a message of hope  because in the face of startling statistics, there are prevention strategies that work and stories of resilience that should be shared. For example, providing 24/7, free and confidential support to people in crisis works  numerous studies have shown that the existing SAMHSA-funded National Suicide Prevention Lifeline helps thousands of people overcome crisis situations every day. The transition to 988 in July will make it more accessible.

Photos and videos of the National Tour to Strengthen Mental Health stops will be available at: HHS.gov/HHSTour.

Tour stop details will be announced in the coming weeks and throughout Spring 2022.
Dancing With the Stars pro Maksim Chmerkovskiy spoke Friday about his mental state after fleeing Ukraine for Los Angeles.

Im a big boy, but I know for a fact that Im going through something mentally, Chmerkovskiy said on Good Morning America. I get into these cry moments, Im emotional, I cant control it.

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The 42-year-old Ukrainian-American publicly chronicled his journey out of Ukraine after Russia invaded, including a train ride to Poland and a flight to Los Angeles, which landed Wednesday.

But in Fridays interview, Chmerkovskiy sounded remorseful.

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I cried from the airport, I felt embarrassed ... the entire ride back cause I was the only man on the train amongst all women and children, he said. I feel guilty. I feel bad. I feel ashamed. I feel upset.

Maksim Chmerkovskiy sits at Build Studio on March 10, 2020 in New York City. (Michael Loccisano/Getty Images)

Reports out of Ukraine had suggested that men between the ages of 18 and 60 were prevented from leaving the country and expected to join the war effort. Chmerkovskiy, who was born in Odessa and moved to Brooklyn as a teenager, didnt directly address that situation in his sit-down on GMA.

[ Russia shells, sets fire to Ukraines largest nuclear plant, experts concerned but not panicked ]

Chmerkovskiy was in Kyiv when Russia began attacking the city on Feb. 24.

Theres ALWAYS another way! WAR is NEVER an answer! he wrote on Instagram.

Expand Autoplay Image 1 of 191 Firefighters work to extinguish a fire after an airstrike hit a tire shop in Lviv, Ukraine, Monday, April 18, 2022. Russian missiles hit the city of Lviv in western Ukraine on Monday, killing at least six people, Ukrainian officials said, as Moscow's troops stepped up strikes on infrastructure in preparation for an all-out assault on the east. (Mykola Tys/AP)

On Monday, Chmerkovskiy boarded a packed train to Poland and arrived in Ukraines western neighbor about 23 hours later. He then caught a flight to Los Angeles.

I just dont want to resent peace somewhere else because of what I just saw, thats the reality, Chmerkovskiy said at the airport. I dont know really what to say right this second.

More than 1 million people have fled Ukraine since Russia invaded, according to the United Nations.
Responding to pressure to condemn the dont say gay bill in the Florida Legislature, the Walt Disney Co. issued a statement this week saying it understood the issues importance to employees and customers  without taking a stance against the legislation.

Disney has been criticized by employees, fans and legislators for not taking a firmer position against discrimination against the LGBTQ community.

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The statement released on Good Morning Americas website said Disney is a unifying force that brings people together. The program is part of the ABC network, a Disney-owned property.

The biggest impact we can have in creating a more inclusive world is through the inspiring content we produce, the welcoming culture we create here and the diverse community organizations we support, including those representing the LGBTQ+ community, it read.

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An internal video sent to Disney employees Friday featured Disney Parks Chairman Josh DAmaro broadly referencing current Florida legislation as concerning and painful to our LGBTQ+ cast, allies and many in our community.

DAmaro emphasized Disneys commitment to inclusivity in the video but did not specifically condemn the bill.

Disneys statement feels a little like a slap in the face to fans, said Alicia Stella, a theme park blogger and member of the LGBTQ+ community.

We wanted a statement from Disney because we want Disney to have our backs, she said. ... Its worse than a response. This is a non-response.

Stella, a former Disney employee, said the statement is so vague that had Good Morning America not put it in context, the meaning would have been unclear.

Thats almost more upsetting than them saying nothing at all, she said.

Eric Clinton, president of Unite Here Local 362, said the company has historically been a leader on LGBTQ+ issues, but that was not the case of late.

I just hope their statements not too little, too late, said Clinton, who represents unionized employees across Walt Disney World. ... Theres no neutrality in an issue of this much injustice.

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The Florida House approved the bill Feb. 24 in a mostly party-line vote. Seven Republicans broke ranks with their party and voted against the legislation.

Supporters say it protects parental rights, while opponents dubbed it dont say gay because it targets the LGBTQ community.

Specifically, it states, Classroom instruction by school personnel or third parties on sexual orientation or gender identity may not occur in kindergarten through grade 3 or in a manner that is not age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students.

The Senate is expected to take up the measure on Monday and could approve it as soon as Tuesday.

That debate comes as students across the state walked out of class in protest on Thursday and Friday. Students demonstrated Thursday at the Capitol, chanting we say gay and waving signs outside the House and Senate chambers.

Gov. Ron DeSantis has signaled he will sign the measure into law, saying he thought it was inappropriate for teachers to discuss sexual orientation with young children without parental involvement.

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NEW: Disney responds to protests and calls for action surrounding Florida's "Don't Say Gay" Bill, saying in part, "The biggest impact we can have in creating a more inclusive world is through the inspiring content we produce."



MORE: https://t.co/AwwtfrXXVI pic.twitter.com/79iyWyt02B  Good Morning America (@GMA) March 4, 2022

Disneys statement drew criticism from State Rep. Anna Eskamani, D-Orlando, after it was posted on Twitter on Thursday night.

Inspiring content we produce  meaning, well keep putting rainbows on our products to make $$ but wont actually do anything to protect our employees or their families in Florida. Looks like getting tax breaks is just more of a priority. Got it, she responded on Twitter.

In an interview with the Orlando Sentinel, Eskamani said Disneys limited response shows it is prioritizing its political clout over the inclusive values it professes to have.

Whats most frustrating is that Disney has arguably one of the most LGBTQ+ friendly corporations in the country, with Gay Days being hosted, and so many of their employees identify as LGBTQ+, she said. And so it might be a safe environment and workplace, but when it comes to the policies that we all have to operate within, they dont seem to really express that much concern for it.

Disney has consistently been named one of the best places to work for LGBTQ+ Equality by the Human Rights Campaign and is a member of its Business Coalition for the Equality Act.

It has been a host for Gay Days, an Orlando gathering that generally attracts over 150,000 people each June, at its Florida parks since 1991.

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In March 2020, CEO Bob Chapek pledged Disney would represent and reflect LGBTQ+ fans in the companys content and parks. Disneys Parks division launched its inclusion key, or operational guideline, the following year and promised increased diversity efforts.

Disney should also vocally oppose the legislation because of its potential to harm Floridas business and tourism communities, Eskamani added.

If we want to retain and hire top talent in a state like Florida for any business, small [or] big, you want an environment that embraces diversity, she said. And so Disneys silence is not only detrimental to their employees and their employees families, but its also detrimental to just having a strong economy in Florida.

Last week, former Disney CEO and chairman Robert Iger tweeted his disproval of the bill, saying it would put vulnerable, young LGBTQ people in jeopardy. Iger ended his nearly 48-year tenure with the company in December.

I'm with the President on this! If passed, this bill will put vulnerable, young LGBTQ people in jeopardy. https://t.co/fJZBzre4yM  Robert Iger (@RobertIger) February 25, 2022

Abigail Disney, granddaughter of Walt Disney Co. co-founder Roy O. Disney and great-niece of Walt Disney, said earlier this week she could not be more unhappy with [Disneys] political activities. Her family has not been involved in Disneys management since 2003 but still owns a small percentage of the company.

On Thursday, she tweeted a Hollywood Reporter article on Disneys reticence to take a public stance on political and social issues, calling for it to get a spine.

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When laws are being passed that are this hateful and dripping with prejudice, there is no neutrality, she wrote.

Its pretty fundamental. As Einstein said, you cant stand still on a moving train. When laws are being passed that are this hateful and dripping with prejudice, there is no neutrality. Not saying anything is saying a lot. @WaltDisneyCo get a spine https://t.co/amek38qsAC  Abigail Disney (@abigaildisney) March 3, 2022

The article asserted that Chapek is less willing than Iger to publicly advocate for political and social issues. It cites an unnamed source as saying Chapek is staunchly opposed to bringing Disney into issues he deems irrelevant to the company and its businesses.

Internal messages obtained by the Hollywood Reporter showed Chapek was looking to meet with leaders of Disneys LGBTQ+ community to discuss how to support them, and the company has scheduled a conversation centering on the LGBTQ+ community March 22.

Over the past few weeks, Disney fans have taken to social media to criticize the companys inaction.

Stella, who runs Orlando Park Stop, said Disney owes it to its employees and fans to disown the bill since they donated to its sponsors.

She also wants Comcast, which owns Universal Studios and has contributed to legislators, to denounce it. Spokespeople for Universal did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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Staff writer Skyler Swisher contributed to this report. krice@orlandosentinel.com and @katievrice on Twitter
Chinese lawmaker suggests pilot projects for resuming international tourism

By Zhang Hui (Global Times) 11:21, March 04, 2022

Ahead of China's annual two sessions, a Chinese lawmaker called on the country to prepare pilot projects for resuming international tourism under the normalized COVID-19 prevention and control strategy in a bid to boost the economy and show the world a real China, after some Western media reports deliberately distorted facts and fabricated lies about China which exerted a serious negative influence on foreigners' understanding of China.

The pilot projects could be set up in Hainan island in South China's Hainan Province, Chongming island in Shanghai and Zhoushan islands in East China's Zhejiang Province, after assessment of the epidemic prevention and control, and outbound tourism could first pick up some island countries and regions, the lawmaker suggested.

As this year's two sessions are scheduled to kick off this week, Huang Xihua, a deputy to the National People's Congress (NPC) from South China's Guangdong Province and an official from the Huizhou government in Guangdong, proposed an inter-department decision-making mechanism covering foreign affairs, culture and tourism, transportation, finance, internet and information technology, public security and other departments to guide the development of inbound tourism, and make policies to facilitate inbound tourism.

Huang told the Global Times that some Western countries, out of prejudice and national interests, strengthened their strategic containment and suppression of China, and their media also took advantage of it to conduct negative reports on China to mislead international readers.

But during the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics, many foreign athletes and delegations had a positive view of China after they visited the country.

When some overseas media smeared the Beijing Winter Olympic Games' COVID-19 policies, claiming that they were too strict and would cause a "psychological burden" for athletes, US freestyle skier Aaron Blunck criticized American media for their irresponsible reports during a press conference in February, according to Xinhua News Agency.

"They have done a stellar job with the COVID protocols," said Blunck.

"I didn't really know what to expect being stateside. You hear some pretty bad media and that is completely false," he said.

China's State Council released the 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-25) for the Tourism Industry in January, saying the country will adjust policies related to exchanges of inbound and outbound tourists on the basis of ensuring pandemic prevention.

Huang suggested that related governments should come up with detailed measures in optimizing visa policies, entry requirements, remote payments and internet service, to prepare for resuming inbound tourism.

The outbound tourism industry has to make changes to adapt to the normalized COVID-19 prevention and control, Huang said.

The international community should discuss the mutual recognition of nucleic acid testing results and COVID-19 vaccine to establish an international health code system for travel, Huang said.

(Web editor: Zhong Wenxing, Liang Jun)
COVID-19 tests are administered at the City of Orlando's free COVID-19 testing site at Camping World Stadium on Feb. 28, 2022, the site's last day of operations. The site administered more than 45,000 tests since its opening January 10 but closed due to dwindling demand as the omicron variant wave waned. (Joe Burbank/AP)

Though coronavirus infections are plummeting in Orange County, deaths caused by COVID-19 continue to pile up here.

In the wake of record-high infections blamed on the uber-infectious omicron variant, January was the third-worst month for COVID-19 deaths in Orange County as 235 people died from the disease, according to figures provided this week by the Florida Department of Health.

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The virus also claimed 129 more lives in the county in February, though a lag in data reports may mask a death toll likely to creep higher.

From the start of the pandemic through March 1, COVID-19 is blamed for 70,247 deaths in Florida, including 2,689 in Orange County.

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Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings described the countys COVID-19 death total as staggering.

While more contagious than other strains, omicron on average was less likely to cause severe illness and death, said Jason Salemi, an associate professor of epidemiology at the University of South Florida, who maintains online dashboards that track health impacts of COVID-19 in Florida.

But because infection transmission was so widespread, we still saw high numbers of hospitalizations and now deaths, he said.

From Jan. 7 to Jan. 13, state health officials reported a record-high 430,000 COVID-19 infections in Florida, about 31,000 in the county.

COVID deaths have trailed infections by weeks throughout the pandemic, said Salemi, who measures COVID deaths on seven-day averages.

He said Floridas seven-day average of 405 COVID deaths on Sept. 1, 2021, was far and away the pandemics death peak. COVID also was most deadly in Orange County around that time with 416 deaths in August 2021 and 319 more in September 2021.

Those deaths occurred when delta was the dominant strain, according to wastewater surveillance figures.

Salemi said Floridas previous peak of 224 average deaths in a seven-day run occurred in August 2020  before vaccines were available.

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In Orange County and across the U.S., COVID-19 cases have fallen to their lowest level in months after a mid-winter spike. From Feb. 18 to Feb. 24, state health officials reported 25,640 new COVID-19 infections in Florida, including 2,018 in the county.

In January, COVID positivity rates soared throughout Florida and cracked 40% in Orange County. The county rate as of Thursday hovered at around 6%, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported.

Salemi said the seven-day average of COVID deaths was 212 deaths per day Jan. 26, the third-highest peak.

So again, it does not shock me, he said of the COVID death figures.

COVID deaths are still elevated across the nation, averaging nearly 1,700 a day.

Health officials emphasize that most instances of serious illnesses and death in the U.S. occur among those who are unvaccinated or who have not received a booster dose of vaccine.

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The Health Report Weekly A weekly update on health news in Florida. >

Meanwhile, new wastewater tests in Orange County showed low concentrations of COVID-19 viral fragments, data that offers optimistic news of the virus current spread in our community, said Ed Torres, director of Orange County Utilities, which has a service area of about 870,000 people.

The latest test results from the Altamonte Sewer Service Area also suggest the virus grip was weakening.

We have not seen COVID-19 virus concentrations in the Altamonte Sewer Service Area this low since before Thanksgiving, said Frank Martz, Altamonte Springs city manager. Overall, it is very encouraging to see viral concentrations remaining low. This is good news for our community.

The system serves about 90,000 people in Longwood, Altamonte, Maitland, Eatonville, Winter Park and unincorporated Seminole County.

The wastewater surveillance data has served the region as an early warning to outbreaks or resurgence of the virus.

shudak@orlandosentinel.com

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Information from the Associated Press was used in this report.
Woodside Hotel Group, a collection of independent boutique hotels throughout Northern California, today announces the rebranding and renaming of Bodega Bay Lodge to The Lodge at Bodega Bay. Timed to its 50th anniversary, The Lodge at Bodega Bay was originally purchased in 1972 by the Alden family as a small motor lodge on a beautiful bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean in Sonoma County, marking the creation of Woodside Hotel Group. Since, the Lodge has transformed into an elegant coastal hideaway, featuring 83 guest rooms with stunning ocean views and private balconies, most with wood-burning fireplaces.

Combining comfort and luxury for a distinctly memorable getaway, the Lodge will soon introduce the newly reimagined Captain's Quarters - its largest accommodation choice. Serene and spacious, the 1,200-square-foot suite features a generous living area ideal for relaxing with family or friends, complete with its own fireplace, half-bath, two pull-down, queen-sized murphy beds and a 600-square-foot wrap-around sundeck with idyllic views of Bodega Bay. A separate, private bedroom offers a king bed and en-suite balcony overlooking the bay, among an airy bathroom sanctuary with a soaking tub and walk-in shower. Additionally, fifteen guest rooms and suites, each featuring private balconies with views of the bay and nearby bird sanctuary, are currently undergoing renovation and will be completed this spring. The Lodge's spacious Ocean Club Suites were also recently renovated and each offer a king bed and queen sofa bed, sea-inspired artwork, granite fireplaces, spa-like bathrooms, private patios and vaulted ceilings that bring in ample natural light.

Located on four acres of meticulously landscaped grounds, amenities of The Lodge at Bodega Bay include a dramatic, infinity-edge hot tub with unobstructed water views; heated swimming pool; sauna; intimate spa with treatments inspired by the Pacific; large fitness center; outdoor fire pits; meeting and event spaces; and complimentary Electra cruiser bikes. A home base for exploration along the California Coast, guests of The Lodge at Bodega Bay can enjoy the beauty of nature just steps from their guest room, with sights of rare birds prized by the National Audubon Society, among views of migrating whales down the coast throughout winter.

The Lodge at Bodega Bay offers two distinct dining options reflecting the rich bounty of local seafood, meats, produce, cheeses and wines of Sonoma County. Signature restaurant Drakes Sonoma Coast offers an authentic culinary experience designed to complement the natural and strong sense of place, offering award-winning Sonoma coastal cuisine with unparalleled views. Menus change frequently to highlight local seafood and sustainable, seasonal ingredients paired with an exceptional hand-picked Sonoma County wine list that is updated regularly. The recently renovated Drakes Fireside Lounge offers a more casual, relaxed dining and bar experience. After a day of adventure, guests can unwind indoors next to the large stone fireplace or 300-year-old elm tree bar, or cozy up to the outdoor fire pits in teak rocking chairs.

With two tranquil spa treatment rooms and in-room spa services, the intimate spa at Bodega Bay Lodge offers an extensive menu of massages, facials, and signature body treatments. From the signature warm shell massage to the decadent Cabernet grape sea scrub and sea enzyme facial, all treatments are inspired by the healing powers of the Pacific.

Woodside Hotel Group is a multi-generational family business dedicated to earnest and gracious hospitality around the West, stewarded by the second generation of family leaders who grew up among these magical getaways across California. Embracing the independent and entrepreneurial spirit of the company's founding, Woodside delivers service that is warm and engaging, hotels that are distinguished, and experiences that are authentically local. Among The Lodge at Bodega Bay, its current portfolio includes distinct boutique hotels throughout California, including Monterey Plaza Hotel & Spa in Monterey; The Hotel Drisco in San Francisco; The Stanford Park Hotel in Menlo Park; Harvest Inn in St. Helena; Napa Valley Lodge in Yountville; and Lafayette Park Hotel & Spa in Lafayette.

Hotel website
Kempinski Hotel Chengdu is pleased to announce the appointment of Ms. Victoria Shi as Director of S&M.

Vitoria graduated from Tourism Management School, Sichuan Normal University in 2007. Till now she owns nearly 15 years' working experience in hospitality. She started her career as Front Desk Agent in Sheraton Chengdu Lido Hotel in October 2006. Then she joined Wynn Macau, working as club marketing representative from 2007 to 2009. Coming back to Chengdu in 2010, she was offered as a Sales Executive in InterContinental Century city until 2012. From May 2013 to April 2018, she worked in Crown Plaza Chengdu West & Holiday Inn Chengdu Hi-tech Center as Sales Manager, Senior Sales Manager and Assistant Director of Sales. April 2018 to April 2020, she worked in Sands Macau as Regional Director of Sales - Southwest China. April 2020 to December 2021, she worked in InterContinental Residences Chengdu City Center as Director of Sales and Marketing.

As a member of outstanding female leaders, Victoria has evolved in the past years with her extensive experience and outstanding leadership. Her experience and results driven leadership will lead Kempinski Hotel Chengdu to deliver a beautiful performance and lift Kempinski's brand influence in the market.
DUBAI, UAE - Leading independent hotel management company, Aleph Hospitality, has signed a management agreement to operate Accors luxury five-star MGallery hotel, as well as all facilities at the new Century Park Hotel and Residences development in Rwandas capital Kigali.

A signing ceremony took place in Kigali yesterday between Aleph Hospitality respectively, the international hospitality group Accor, and Century Park Hotel and Residences Ltd, the developers of the project.

Located in the pristine and calm hills of Nyarutarama, Kigalis most esteemed neighbourhood, Century Park Hotel and Residences is an all-in-one mixed-use residential and leisure park. The unique lifestyle destination offers luxury villas, two- and three-bedroom apartments, four- and five-bedroom duplexes and penthouses as well as three restaurants and bars. In addition, the development features the luxurious MGallery Hotel, the first for the brand in Rwanda, featuring beautifully appointed guest rooms and suites, leisure facilities including an outdoor pool as well as conferences and meeting rooms. Century Park Hotel and Residences is ideally situated just 5 minutes from Kigali Convention Centre, 15 minutes from Kigali International Airport and 20 minutes from the capitals central business district.

Billy Cheung, Chairman of Century Park Hotel and Residences Ltd said: We are delighted to formally launch our hotel and residences with agreements with two leading international organizations  Aleph Hospitality and Accor.

Bani Haddad, Founder and Managing Director of Aleph Hospitality said: We are very excited to be part of this incredible new mixed-use development in Kigali, which marks our first entry into Rwanda. We are delighted to be entrusted with the operations of the first MGallery hotel in Rwanda, our first Accor branded property, alongside the management of the facilities and restaurants at Century Park Hotel and Residences, including Billys Bistro and Bar, which was voted Best Restaurant of the Year in 2021 by the Consumers Choice Awards. We look forward to building on the success of the incredible food and beverage offerings of Century Park to make it the leading dining, lifestyle and nightlife destination in Kigali.

Aleph Hospitality, which has targeted 50 hotels in the Middle East and Africa by 2026, manages hotels directly for owners, either on a franchise basis for branded properties or as a white label operator for independently branded hotels.

About Aleph Hospitality

Born and based in Dubai, Aleph Hospitality is a dynamic hotel management company, working for owners to maximise the value of their assets in the Middle East and Africa. The regional specialist's customised, results-driven alternative to traditional hotel management models includes third party and white label operations. Aleph Hospitality manages hotels directly for owners and facilitates franchising partnerships with leading global brands. With in-depth market knowledge, several decades" experience working with the world's largest hotel companies, and a company culture based on trust, responsiveness and flexibility, Aleph Hospitality delivers superior results for hotel owners, an exceptional hospitality experience for its guests and a professional environment for its workforce. Aleph has 10 operating hotels in its portfolio and has earmarked a pipeline of 50 hotels in the Middle East and Africa by 2026. To find out more, visit alephhospitality.com.

Anne Bleeker

Managing Partner, In2 Consulting

+971 56 603 0886

Aleph Hospitality
MUMBAI - Indian Hotels Company (IHCL), Indias largest hospitality company, has announced that it will collaborate with UNESCO to help preserve and promote the intangible cultural heritage of India, as part of a major new initiative meant to transform the travel landscape in the post pandemic world.

Together, IHCL and UNESCO will offer experiential tours for travellers at various IHCL hotels, so that they can experience the living heritage of the country better. The first phase will include visits to local communities practicing art forms like Patachitra  a traditional scroll painting technique in West Bengal, Ganga Aarti  the prayer ceremony at Dasashwamedh Ghat at Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh, as well as Kalbelia performances, blue pottery making, Bagru hand block printing, and the Terracota art of Molela. Visitors will also be able to experience the unique tribal life of the Bishnoi village in Rajasthan, and Mysuru Dasara and Janpadaloka in Karnataka.

Speaking on the occasion, Gaurav Pokhariyal, Senior Vice President & Global Head  Human Resources, IHCL said, Long been heralded as the custodians of Indian heritage, IHCL for over a century, has been providing sustainable platforms that preserve and promote local art and culture. We are delighted to partner with UNESCO in this industry-first collaboration to work towards preserving Indias intangible cultural heritage. Leveraging our business strengths, value chains and partner networks, IHCL hotels will work towards a holistic plan to safeguard the living heritage of the country while empowering local communities.

Eric Falt, Director, UNESCO, New Delhi said, Together with IHCL, we want to showcase to Indians and foreigners alike, the diversity of Indias living heritage. The objective is that when they visit an IHCL hotel, they are offered a chance to discover at least one cultural practice they have probably never witnessed before. Rather than bringing a dance troupe to their hotel, we will bring the visitors to the practitioners of that art form  in the midst of their community. They will see their pride, they will see their uniqueness, they will see the incredible diversity of intangible India.

The 2003 UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage, adopted by 178 countries, emphasizes the importance of Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) for ensuring cultural diversity. ICH represents the living heritage of a country and is made up of practices, representations, expressions, knowledge, and skills, including instruments, objects, artefacts, and cultural spaces that communities, groups and, in some cases, individuals, recognize as part of their cultural heritage.

About UNESCO

UNESCO is the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. It seeks to build peace through international cooperation in Education, the Sciences and Culture. Its programmes contribute to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals defined in Agenda 2030, and adopted by the UN

General Assembly in 2015. In this spirit, it develops educational tools to help people live as global citizens free of hate and intolerance. UNESCO works so that each child and citizen has access to quality education. By promoting cultural heritage and the equal dignity of all cultures, it strengthens bonds among nations. UNESCO fosters scientific programmes and policies as platforms for development and cooperation. UNESCO stands up for freedom of expression, as a fundamental right and a key condition for democracy and development. Serving as a laboratory of ideas, UNESCO helps countries adopt international standards and manages programmes that foster the free flow of ideas and knowledge sharing.

About The Indian Hotels Company Limited

The Indian Hotels Company Limited (IHCL) and its subsidiaries bring together a group of brands and businesses that offer a fusion of warm Indian hospitality and world-class service. These include Taj the iconic brand for the most discerning travellers and the World"s Strongest Hotel Brand and India"s Strongest Hospitality Brand as per Brand Finance 2021, SeleQtions, a named collection of hotels, Vivanta, sophisticated upscale hotels and Ginger, which is revolutionising the lean luxe segment.

Incorporated by the founder of the Tata Group, Jamsetji Tata, the Company opened its first hotel - The Taj Mahal Palace, in Bombay in 1903. IHCL has a portfolio of 235 hotels including 59 under development globally across 4 continents, 11 countries and in over 100 locations. The Indian Hotels Company Limited (IHCL) is India"s largest hospitality company by market capitalization. It is primarily listed on the BSE and NSE.

Please visit: www.ihcltata.com ; www.tajhotels.com ; www.seleqtionshotels.com ; www.vivantahotels.com ; www.gingerhotels.com

Parinita Gawri

IHCL
Atrium Hospitality is ranked one of the nations largest hotel owners and operators. Headquartered in Alpharetta, Georgia, the company oversees a portfolio of 82 hotels in 29 states, representing well-known brands such as: Hilton, Marriott, and IHG, among others. With nearly 10,000 passionate associates, Atrium operates 21,595 guest rooms/suites and approximately 2.3 million square feet of event space. Being a responsible community partner is a part of the Atrium culture, including supporting a range of civic and community activities. Atrium is proud to financially support the Clean the World initiative of shipping recycled hotel soap and plastic amenity bottles for distribution with humanitarian purposes in communities domestically and around the world. In addition, several Atrium properties nationwide participate in Project SEARCH, a nine-month school-to-work program for students with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention no longer recommends masks for residents of Orange, Osceola, Seminole, Lake and Volusia counties.

Osceola dropped to a low level of COVID-19 in the community on Thursday, and Orange, Seminole, Volusia and Lake counties have a medium level. Mask-wearing in indoor, public areas is only recommended in communities with high levels of COVID-19. Polk has a high level.

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The CDC recommends people who are immunocompromised or at high risk for severe disease, or know someone who is, should talk to their health care provider about masking even if they live in a community with low or medium spread.

The CDC looks at three pieces of data in an attempt to gauge the severity of COVID-19 outbreak in a community: hospitalizations, hospital capacity and new COVID-19 cases.

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The CDC previously relied on cases and test positivity to measure COVID-19 spread in a community, which in turn influenced masking guidance. Orange and all surrounding counties have high COVID-19 transmission based on the old metrics, according to the White House Thursday community profile report.

There were 14,148 new coronavirus cases this week among Florida residents to bring the cumulative total to 5,814,517. With 1,207 more fatalities on record, 70,997 Florida residents have died.

The Health Report Weekly A weekly update on health news in Florida. >

This weeks death total reflects an increase from the 888 reported last week, but deaths can take several days or weeks to be reported. The majority of the newly reported deaths are people who died before this week.

The number of weekly cases decreased compared to the previous weeks 25,640. Positivity decreased to 3.3%. Thats for new cases only and excludes anyone who previously tested positive.

Of note, the state reports deal only with Florida resident cases and exclude non-residents cases, which are no longer available.

Across the state, 2,462 people were hospitalized with COVID-19 from Feb. 23-March 1, according to the latest White House report. In comparison, 3,661 were hospitalized the previous week. The week before that, it was 5,355.

Statewide, 15,418,039 residents, or 74% of people age 5 and up, have received at least one vaccination shot, including 8,226,833 who have completed their shot regimens but not received an additional dose through March 3. Meanwhile, 15,427 received an additional dose last week, bringing the total to 5,057,173.

Central Florida added 3,229 resident infections this week, based on the actual date the state opened the case, for a total of 1,140,674: 1,130 more in Orange for 372,777; 314 more in Osceola for 112,508; 463 more in Polk for 198,831; 264 more in Lake for 84,142; 123 more in Sumter for 21,466; 372 more in Volusia for 115,798; 350 more in Brevard for 132,397; and 213 more in Seminole for 102,755.

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Cars wait in line for COVID-19 testing at Barnett Park, in Orlando, Florida, on Thursday, July 29, 2021. (Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel/TNS)
WASHINGTON - President Joe Biden is facing competing pressures over what to do about rising fuel prices driven by the war in Ukraine, torn between calls to inflict pain on Russias oil and gas industry and protecting American consumers and businesses.

A growing, bipartisan coalition of senators and House members is calling for the United States to cut off Russian oil imports to support Ukrainian fighters  even if it means driving up fuel prices at home.

If there was a poll being taken and they said, Joe, would you pay 10 cents more per gallon to support the people of Ukraine and stop the support of Russia? I would gladly pay 10 cents more per gallon, Sen Joe Manchin, D-W.V., said at a press conference Thursday.

On HoustonChronicle.com: Gasoline prices keep rising as Ukraine conflict rattles oil markets

Manchin, along with Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, has introduced legislation banning Russian oil imports into the United States, with the support of 16 other senators representing both Democrats and Republicans. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, and Angus King, I-Maine, announced Friday they were introducing a bill ordering the State Department to report within 90 days its plans to counter Russian President Vladimir Putins efforts to weaponize Russias energy sector, threatening global energy security and economic stability.

But Biden has so far shown a reluctance to do anything that might further drive up U.S. gasoline prices, which are already up 18 percent since the beginning of the year, according to GasBuddy.com.

And Russian crude constitutes an increasingly important piece of American energy. In December the United States imported more than 12 million barrels of crude from Russia, a 50 percent increase from five years ago.

The shift has come since U.S. oil production fell off during the COVID-19 pandemic, with production at less than 360 million barrels per month in December, 10 percent below the record levels in late 2019.

Increasing U.S. production to replace that Russian crude would take time, said Kevin Book, managing director of Clearview Energy Partners, a Washington consulting firm.

Theres lots of options, just none of them are going to happen right away, he said. The West is engaged in economic warfare with one of the worlds three largest energy suppliers, and if sanctions or Russia want to stop exports to the world, there isnt much that can be done to sustainably fill the void.

In the meantime, Biden has chosen to use the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to counter rising prices. On Tuesday the Department of Energy announced it was coordinating with countries abroad to release 60 million barrels of crude onto the world market  30 million barrels from U.S. reserves.

So far, that announcement has had limited effect, with West Texas Intermediate, the U.S. benchmark, settling at $115.68 a barrel in New York on Friday, up 20 percent since Monday.

We dont have a strategic interest in reducing the global supply of energy, White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki said at a press conference Thursday. That would raise prices at the gas pump for the American people.

In the minds of U.S. oil companies, now is the time for the federal government to take action to ramp up U.S. oil and gas production, both for the benefit of U.S. consumers and allies abroad.

In a call with reporters Thursday, the American Petroleum Institute called for the Biden administration to speed up permitting for drilling in federal lands and waters as well as new liquefied natural gas export facilities. Both drilling and LNG permits have become bogged down in the debate over their contributions to climate change.

The world will continue to demand more energy, not less, said Frank Macchiarola, a senior vice president at the lobbying group. The question is whether that energy comes from the U.S. or hostile regimes like Russia.

On Friday Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, introduced legislation ordering the administration to speed up approvals of energy projects across the board, including oil and gas, solar, wind and geothermal.

In the past year with Joe Biden as president, the United States has lost its status as a net petroleum exporter, Cruz said in a statement. Why? Because on day one of his administration, President Biden issued illegal and hostile orders aimed at American oil and gas producers, which have increased energy prices and directed profits to other oil exporting countries.

Developing oil and gas fields and LNG export facilities takes years, offering Biden limited opportunity to increase U.S. production in the short term. Not to mention building pipelines to get the oil and gas to market, a process that has become increasingly litigious in recent years.

But it could help counter high prices at the pump, showing oil traders that U.S. crude production is on the way up, Book said.

Future expectations affect prices today, he said. Its a real thing, and it matters, even if it doesnt necessarily effect molecules today.

james.osborne@chron.com
Brazos Electric Power Cooperative and the Electric Reliability Council of Texas agreed Thursday to mediate their dispute over a $1.9 billion utility bill stemming from last Februarys winter storm after U.S. Bankruptcy Judge David Jones urged both sides to do whats best for Texans.

I want a resolution, Jones said, for the person that lives in a trailer in Central Texas and lives somehow on $1,800 a month that cant afford a doubling of their electric bill because that means they cant buy groceries on the last week of the month. Thats who we need to be working for.

After the judges not-so-gentle encouragement, the two sides in one of the largest bankruptcy cases pending in Texas broke for more than two hours and came back with news to please Jones who had suggested it.

ERCOT worries about Texas and Texans as much as anyone does, said Jamil Alibhai, one of the lawyers for the nonprofit entity that manages the states power grid.

Brazos, the states largest and oldest electric co-operative, filed for protection under Chapter 11 of the federal bankruptcy code after being socked with extraordinary bills for power it purchased during the crippling storm of February 2021 that left millions of Texans without electricity. In court filings, Brazos blamed its bankruptcy on ERCOT for imposing a staggering rate of $9,000 per megawatt-hour - hundreds of times the normal rate - on electricity buyers during the storm.

On HoustonChronicle.com: Ex-ERCOT chief says Abbott directed freeze blackouts to stop before decision to run up billions in bills

ERCOT contends that price was justified, given the extraordinary market conditions created by the storm and, moreover, that it had no choice but to impose the high rate because it was ordered to do so by the Texas Public Utility Commission.

The matter presently before Jones, who is overseeing the Brazos bankruptcy case, is an adversarial proceeding Brazos filed against ERCOT challenging the grid operators creditor claim of $1.9 billion for power provided during the storm.

Joness suggestion that the two sides find a solution to their differences came during testimony Thursday by Kenan Ogelman, ERCOTs vice president of commercial operations. Ogelman explained that ERCOT is a nonprofit, invoice in, payment out entity that matches buyers of electric power with sellers in a fluid market. If one party defaults on paying for power, he said, everyone else in the market, ultimately, has to make up the difference. Those costs, he said, eventually are passed on to ratepayers.

Jones, frequently interrupting Ogelmans testimony, said: We ought to be trying to figure out a way to make this all work. The ERCOT grid is not just a company. Its a lifeblood for everybody that lives in this state.

After a series of recesses and closed-door meetings, ERCOT and Brazos returned to Joness courtroom to say they agreed with his distinct suggestion that they mediate their dispute before U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Marvin Isgur, Joness colleague on the bankruptcy bench in the Southern District of Texas. Isgur and Jones are longtime friends and former law partners.

Depending on what happens in mediation, the bankruptcy proceeding before Jones is scheduled to resume in mid- to late April.
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Nataliya Pashchenko, 61, said she tossed and turned over the past 10 nights at her home in the Heights as she worried about her sister in Kyiv.

Her sister, who is disabled and constrained to her seventh-floor apartment, sent a message early Thursday: I dont have food.

Pashchenko, a retired engineering manager for Chevron, was among a handful of protesters at the entrance to Schlumbergers offices in Sugar Land on Thursday to draw attention to the plight of people suffering in Ukraine. She held one side of a banner that read: Stop Rosneft Project.

They claim that Schlumberger, the worlds largest oilfield services company, is working with Russian oil firm Rosneft and called on the Houston- and Paris-based company to join other global corporations who have cut ties with Russia.

Schlumberger did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

RELATED: While other oil majors pull out of Russia, Chevron says Caspian pipeline is key

Several energy companies have said they will stop doing business in Russia. Exxon Mobil said Tuesday it would cease oil production in Russia. BP and Shell announced plans to withdraw from oil and gas partnerships in the country this week.

Oilfield service giants Baker Hughes and Halliburton have declined to comment on what, if any, business theyre doing in Russia.

Schlumbergers protesters drew support from people driving along U.S. Route 90, who honked and waved. One slowed, rolled down his window and called out: Im with you.

The whole point, Pashchenko said, is we wanted the people who work at Schlumberger to know that theyre making money off Ukrainian death.

Protesters Sergey Makhotkin, a Moscow native, said companies continuing to do business in Russia need to know there is opposition here in Houston.

Its going to hurt their image, he said.

Makhotkin said its sad to watch what his native country is doing in Ukraine.

Major companies such as Apple, Nike and Ikea have pulled out of Russia at huge cost, Mahotkin said.

Its the position that everyone should take, Makhotkin said.

Without Schlumbergers technology, it would be difficult for Russia to pump oil, protesters said.

Countries with a combined 60 percent of the worlds gross domestic product have announced sanctions against Russia, said Jarand Rystad, chief executive of Norwegian energy research firm Rystad Energy.

Western contractors account for a combined 25 percent of all oil and gas investments in Russia, he said, often with leading-edge technologies.

Should those contractors leave the country, it will undoubtedly cause delays and disruptions to ongoing operations, said Rystad, adding that the result would be higher crude prices, potentially more than $130 per barrel.

U.S. benchmark West Texas Intermediate settled nearly $3 lower at $107.67 on Thursday.

Oil money feeds the Russian government, which is investing in weaponry to use against Ukraine, the protesters said.

Belarus native Paulina Miakish, a former oil and gas geologist, said she understands business is business. Still, she said, Schlumbergers technology is supporting projects that funnel money to the Russian government.

Supporting Russia means supporting fascism, said Larysa Drobot, who said her family texted her Thursday to say Russian soldiers have begun taking over peoples homes and kicking people out into the Ukrainian winter weather.

Theyre doing the same things the Nazis were doing, she said.



amanda.drane@chron.com
Courtesy

Online retailer Amazon.com is throwing in the towel on some of its brick and mortar store concepts.

The Seattle-based company plans to close all 68 of its Books stores, 4-star and Pop Up shops in the U.S. and the U.K., including two in the suburbs of Houston. The company, which got its start selling books online, opened its first physical bookstore to broaden its business in 2015. The timing of the closures was not disclosed.
Monday

JS101 Work Teams  A Weekly Accountability Group:

Hosted by JS101, 2-4 p.m. Registration: JS101.org/workshops.

Tuesday

Irish Women in Energy:

Panel discussion hosted by Irish Network Houston to celebrate International Womens Day. 5:30 p.m., Highline Park, 600 N. Shepherd, Suite 499. In attendance will be the Honorable Robert Hull, the Consul General of Ireland in Austin. Register for this free event at https://lnkd.in/eis9zNcU.

Digital Marketing: Simple, Affordable and Efficient:

Hosted by the University of Houston Texas Gulf Coast SBDC/Galveston County SBDC. 9-11 a.m., Johnny Arolfo Civic Center, Meeting Room 1, 400 W. Walker, League City. Information: sbdc.uh.edu/.

Introduction to Bookkeeping:

Webinar hosted by SCORE. 10 a.m.-noon. Registration: www.houston.score.org.

The Art of Marketing Yourself to Recruiters:

Hosted by JS101, 10 a.m.-1 p.m. Registration: JS101.org/workshops.

Wednesday

Economy Series: March Economic Update:

Webinar hosted by the Greater Houston Partnership. Noon-1 p.m. Information: houston.org/events.

Owning a Business from Start to Finish: Succession Planning:

Seminar hosted by the Fort Bend Chamber of Commerces Business. 11:30 a.m.-1 p.m., 445 Commerce Green Blvd., Sugar Land. Also held on Zoom. Information: www.FortBendChamber.com or contact Rebekah Beltran at 281-566-2158 or rebekah@fortbendcc.org.

Are You a Fit, Resume Creation 101:

Hosted by JS101, 10 a.m.-noon. Registration: JS101.org/workshops.

The Small Business Guide To Effective Branding:

Hosted by the University of Houston Texas Gulf Coast SBDC. 2-4 p.m., Houston Center SBDC, 1455 W. Loop South. Information: sbdc.uh.edu/.

Thursday

CCIM Houston/Gulf Coast Chapter:

March luncheon. 11:30 a.m.-1 p.m., The Junior League, 1811 Briar Oaks Lane. Speaker: Luis Torres, Texas A&M Real Estate Research Center. Topic: The great migration to Texas and how it is affecting our economy. Registration: ccimhouston.org/event-4580391.

Greater Houston Port Bureau:

Luncheon. 11 a.m.-1 p.m., Houston Marriott South at Hobby Airport, 9100 Gulf Freeway. Speaker: Brig. Gen. Christopher G. Beck, Commander, Southwestern Division, Army Corps of Engineers. Cost: $50. Registration: txgulf.org/events.

Rise to the Top:

Event celebrating International Women's Day hosted by the Greater Houston Partnerships Womens Business Alliance. 10:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m., Marriott Marquis, 1777 Walker. Speakers: Paula Harris, executive director, Astros Foundation; Nataly Marks, managing director & region manager, JPMorgan Chase & Co.; and Irma Diaz-Gonzalez, president and CEO, Employment & Training Centers, Inc. Information: houston.org/events.

LinkedIn Keywords:

Hosted by JS101, 10 a.m.-noon. Registration: JS101.org/workshops.

Mental Strength and Imagination  Keys to Creating Your Reality:

Hosted by JS101, 10 a.m.-noon. Registration: JS101.org/workshops.

Storytelling for Job Search:

Hosted by JS101, 2-4 p.m. Registration: JS101.org/workshops.

Job Search After 50:

Hosted by JS101, 10 a.m.-noon. Registration: JS101.org/workshops.

Friday

Leveling the Paying Field: Personal Accomplishment and Fair Pay:

Hosted by JS101, 10 a.m.-noon. Registration: JS101.org/workshops.

Saturday

Starting and Running Your Own Business:

Two-part webinar hosted by SCORE. 9 a.m.-noon. Registration: www.houston.score.org.
Marthann Masterson inverts a ketchup bottle and sends a fresh stream of blue paint down a canvas. This rivulet runs parallel to hundreds of others. They create a certain depth of field and language between them. In this case, the painting is designed for a home in Cabo San Lucas, and the buyer wants something representative of his surroundings, particularly the ocean.

Ive had so many people ask me how I get these lines so straight, Masterson says. I tell them, Gravity.

Mastersons process yields interesting little rubbery pools of paint, too. But the canvases are what draw viewers and buyers. Its been a process, she says. I learn by mistakes. Once I had a beautiful one with autumnal colors, but when I looked closely the stripes were slanted.

Now she keeps a level atop her canvases prior to letting the paint loose and letting gravity do its thing.

Masterson came to painting late. Shed already run a successful high-end catering business, where she cooked food for kings and Rolling Stones. But painting has consumed her energy for nearly two decades. And that energy has been transformational. She recalls early days of addiction and excess, including those where she started drinking in the mornings.

I just want to make things  just beautiful paintings, she says. Paintings where when people walk by they feel better when they see them. Abstract paintings can make you feel something, but sometimes they make people feel confused. I want people to see paintings and feel peace. I mean, I want that when I look at paintings.

Masterson grew up in Houston, with a family both famous and troubled. Her parents, both alcoholics, she says, were dead when she was a teenager. She felt alienated by much of her family, except for her cousin Peter Masterson, 17 years older but successful as an actor and writer, best known for helping create The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.

She saw her cousin, who died in 2018, as the rare family member with whom she connected. Masterson also saw in Peter a Houston native in her family who made a living in the world of art.

After getting sober, Masterson sought some peace and comfort through art, starting with a beginning drawing class at the Glassell School of Art. There, she eventually started what would become her first series of paintings: She painted chairs to represent the ways families can be organized and disorganized. Masterson was often the chair set apart from the others.

Her early paintings are heartbreaking for their sense of solitude but also hopeful in the implied resilience. She pulls out a few of the paintings from her workspace in the Silos at Sawyer Yards. One is titled All Dressed Up and Nowhere to Go.

Thats about my senior prom, she says. I got stood up, me dressed in a little yellow strapless dress.

Another is titled Cinderella. Youthful trauma seeps into the grain of the wood in her early paintings. One of her chair paintings inspired an opera in Florida. That trauma is present in her drip paintings, too. Theyre full of colors that argue with one another and also resolve some, not all, of those arguments. And the radiant colors that suggest a painter finding her way. One transitional painting has a chair with some of the dripped lines behind it. The canvas has storm clouds, but also yellow drips for sunshine and white drips for divine intervention, Masterson says, indicating Im on the other side of it.

Masterson worked for years to formalize the process for her drip paintings. She experimented with different paints, different elements to thicken them and add a little gloss, and a distribution mechanism. Her earliest paintings in this style featured hand-painted lines, but she didnt like the way they wobbled. She tried a turkey baster: The lines were too thick and viscous. Ketchup bottles provided the solution.

Its been about color, she says. Its also been about patience.

Her commissioned works are done to specifications created by the buyer. But left to her own devices, Mastersons lush layers of lines cover a glowing yellowish center. It could represent faith, it could represent stability, it could represent any number of things. Viewers and buyers are also intrigued by the way the paint behaves once it runs off the canvas: Some of her drips extend as much as an inch past the bottom edge.

More recently she took inspiration from artist friends who were doing bold, huge, incredible abstracts. Not surprisingly, her version of such abstracts found its own groove. Masterson works with ethereal, heavenly blues and purples on canvases that have a cloudlike lushness.

They have a dreamy look that I like, because faith is a big part of my life, she says. So why not paint something that gives people some peace? But the drips are really what people want right now. So Im stuck. But if the drips give people peace, too, Im OK with that.
Sugar Lands Steven Carty, 52, has been sentenced to 22 years in prison for sexually assaulting a minor girl, the Fort Bend County Sheriffs Office said in a Friday release.

The defendant was arrested by the Sheriffs Office deputies in 2017. When put to question, Carty, then 47, claimed he had married the 13-year-old girl based on his religious practices.

The case was tried before 400th District Court Presiding Judge Tameika Carter. Carty was sentenced on Feb. 22 to 22 years and 20 years for the offenses of aggravated sexual assault of a child and sexual assault of a child respectively. He will serve both sentences concurrently in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice-Institutional Division.

Cartys co-defendant, Cherry Payton, was also charged with sexual abuse and her trial will take place later this spring. Payton, 44, is the girls mother. She was was arrested and charged with endangering a child by allowing the marriage.

Carty and Payton identify as Hebrew Israelites, African Americans who believe they are descendants of ancient Israelites.

The marriage took place when the girl was 13. The child and the defendant had been living under the purported covenant for nearly a year, according to evidence presented by prosecutors Charann Thompson and Jessica Ramos.

In Texas, when a 47-year-old man engages in sexual acts with a 13-year-old, its a crime, even if he insists on calling it a covenant, said Thompson. This case was about getting justice for a child who was convinced that the abuse she endured was her religious obligation. The defendant wanted to make this case about his religious beliefs and that was never the issue. Carty was convicted for what he did, not for his claimed beliefs.

The situation came to light when the child victim revealed during a routine doctors visit that she was married and sexually active. Police were notified on June 5, 2017, by Child Protective Services.

It was a powerful moment in the courtroom when the child victim gave her victim impact statement after her abuser was sentenced, said Ramos. She thanked the jury for their service at the end of her statement, echoing all of our gratitude for their time and attention to this case.

Now 19 years old, the girl is living with an adoptive family and doing well, according to defense counsel Tyrone Moncriffe.

Thompson and Ramos praised Fort Bend County Sheriffs Detective Dawn Welch and expressed gratitude for the Childrens Advocacy Center at Child Advocates of Fort Bend for their therapy services for children in cases involving child victims.

All adults in our society have a duty to protect and nurture children, and not take advantage of them, said District Attorney Brian Middleton. I applaud this child for her strength and resilience as she continues to recover from the crimes committed against her, and hope she has a bright future ahead.

Aggravated sexual assault is a first-degree felony punishable by five to 99 years, or life, in prison and a fine up to $10,000. Sexual assault of a child is a second-degree felony punishable by two to 20 years in prison. Both offenses require the defendant to register as a sex offender for the rest of his or her life.

juhi.varma@hcnonline.com
Watching the news on the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Sugar Land resident Anna Lykoudis-Zafiris decided she couldnt stand idly by and would show her support for the Ukrainian people.

Just three days later, on March 2, she and dozens of other supporters from across Fort Bend County gathered for the We Stand with Ukraine vigil at Sugar Land Town Square. In attendance were Ukrainian natives and descendants, community members, and faith and political leaders.

Lykoudis-Zafiris, the events principal organizer, is first-generation Greek American but said the invasion of a democracy like Ukraine should trouble everyone, no matter their national origin.

This is a humanitarian issue, she said. And myself along with the others that helped organize and the people that attended and the thousands of others who are watching on TV feel helpless, feel that we have to speak out against the cruelty of a barbaric behavior of this war criminal (Vladimir) Putin against the innocent people of Ukraine.

Calling the invasion a threat to freedom across the globe, Lykoudis-Zafiris said families are suddenly becoming homeless refugees to evade violence, trekking miles and miles toward the safety of tents amid winter temperatures.

Organizing the vigil introduced Lykoudis-Zafiris to Ukrainian natives and descendants living in the Fort Bend area, and they quickly became friends united in a cause. She said many of them planned to send pictures of the event to their familes back in Ukraine to encourage them that people in the U.S. and across the world care about them and are standing with them and praying for the situation.

One such new friend was Vita Budgett. Thirty-four years ago, she came to America with her family as Ukrainian refugees. Her thoughts were with the family members she had left behind. And now to see them actually live what we ran away from 30-plus years ago, for them to hear bombs and hear, you know, planes flying over their homes and not able to get the basic essentials, is hard, Budgett said.

She has a cousin in Ukraine who is struggling to find and afford diapers for a 4-month-old child. They have doubled in price, Budgett said. Her relatives are also having to keep their lights off at night to protect against attacks.

Many Ukrainian women and their children are fleeing and heading west to nations like Poland or Moldova. The men are told to stay behind and defend their country, so families are split apart.

Budgett said she hopes the European Union and nations will work together to end the invasion. While it is difficult for her to consider sending military to Ukraine because it would be American men and women going, she said Ukraine could cease to exist. They dont stand a chance on their own. If the U.S. does not send military support, she hopes it will allow refugees to come here.

Leaders of different faiths offered prayers over the situation.

You created life, and life is valuable, prayed Pastor David Sincere of Fort Bend Transformation Church in Missouri City. You dont worry about it. You dont care about our color, creed. Youre not worried about how much money we have or what size house we have. You care about us because you created us as living beings that should love and care for one another. And so, were asking for intervention.

Fort Bend County Constable Precinct 3 Nabil Shike, Fort Bend County Judge KP George, former U.S. Rep. Pete Olson and Missouri City Mayor Robin Elackatt were among elected officials in attendance. Elackatt said he was glad to be at the vigil to represent support in his city for Ukraine and asked for attendees to pray for peace and de-escalation.

Lykoudis-Zafiris said supporting Ukraine is important and that she may organize another vigil in the coming weeks if the invasion continues.

I just want to let you know that what is happening in Ukraine is an attack on our humanity, she said. And this is not a partisan issue. It affects all faiths, it affects all parties, and it affects all of us because at the end of the day, were all human.

tracy.maness@hcnonline.com
On March 4, 1987, an article inside the local section of The Orlando Sentinel quoted several property owners opposed to a S.R. 417 extension through Seminole County.

In the late 1980s, confused and angry Seminole County property owners showed up at expressway authority meetings to oppose plans for a new highway cutting through their neighborhoods.

Today, the Seminole Expressway section of State Road 417 begins at Interstate 4 in Sanford, curves east of Lake Mary, and crosses Lake Jesup before winding its way south through Oviedo.

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When the highway was still in the planning stages, it was Central Floridas most significant road-building project since I-4 opened in 1965.

On this day 35 years ago, on March 4, 1987, an article inside the local section of The Orlando Sentinel quoted several property owners who peppered Seminole County Expressway Authority officials with questions.

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The first part of State Road 417 opened that same year, but a key Seminole County segment would not be completed until 1994.

Before construction began in Seminole, many residents were worried a highway would hamper quality of life in their neighborhoods as well as value in their real estate investments.

A Winter Springs homeowner complained that one proposed route would be 150 feet from my house, a leafy bedroom community that now abuts the Cross Seminole Trail.

The toll road is now 1.3 miles east of that home.

Another homeowner, in Oviedo, lamented Ill never get my money back. The article described LaVerne Lynchs property, off Bear Gully Creek, as a $200,000 house.

The multi-lane highway is now a mere 1,300 feet from that homes front door. But its market value today is nearly half a million dollars, according to a Realtor.com estimate.

Home values werent the only worry. There were major environmental concerns as well.

Cecilia Height, chair of the of the Sierra Club of Central Florida, called the planned bridge over Lake Jesup disgraceful.

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The 1.5 mile Greenway Bridge, part of State Road 417, passes over Lake Jesup. This view is looking north. (Red Huber/Orlando Sentinel) (RED HUBER / ORLANDO SENTINEL )

Many local residents shared her opinion, heartbroken at the thought of further degradation to the alligator-filled Jesup, with its wild shoreline and large floodplain.

Officials acknowledged that the road would harm or destroy 140 acres of wetlands and release oil pollutants from the bridge onto the lake, according to a 1992 Sentinel article.

The compromise: a $1.2 million wetlands restoration project on the lakes north shore.

Despite the Lake Jesup Conservation Area, the lake is one of the sickest in Florida, and road-building amputated Jesup from the cleaner currents of the St. Johns River, the Sentinels Kevin Spear wrote in 2018.

In the end, the outcry made no difference. A route was approved, and in May 1994, a 6-mile segment of the Seminole Expressway from S.R. 434 to U.S. 17/92 in Sanford opened.

In exchange for a more polluted environment and paved-over acreage, the county gained easier access to downtown Orlando, the theme parks and Orlando International Airport.

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S.R. 417s half-circle beltway is now 55 miles long and stretches down to Osceola County.

The Orange County section is called the Central Florida GreeneWay, named after Jim Greene, the late chairman of the Orlando-Orange County Expressway Authority.

Floridas Turnpike Enterprise, created in 2002, now oversees the parts of the road that are in Seminole and Osceola counties.
Jay Jordan

Houston police are investigating a man's death after his body was found with "suspicious wounds" at a house fire on Kinglet Street in southwest Houston.

David Lind, 63, was found dead around 6 a.m. Tuesday in the home in the 4800 block of Kinglet Street. Firefighters extinguished the fire and then called police for assistance.
A man authorities said fled the country after he shot and killed his girlfriend -- whose body has yet to be recovered -- is now in the Harris County Jail nearly five years later, police said Friday.

Miguel Angel Buezo, 32, is charged with murder in the disappearance of Karen Ramirez. She was last seen on March 24, 2017. Authorities suspect he shot her the next day.
Harris County was the only one in Texas that failed to report complete election results from Tuesdays primary election within 24 hours, as required by the Election Code, the secretary of states office said.

The countys new election administration office needed 30 hours to fully report results from this years Democratic and Republican primaries, announcing the final tally at 1 a.m. Thursday. In the past three midterm primary elections, run by the county clerk, voters needed to wait between five and seven hours for full, unofficial results.

Elections administration officials on Wednesday, however, sounded dismissive of calls to speed things up.

Chief Director of Voting Beth Stevens said the county has no obligation to provide results to voters on election night. Moreover, going forward, she said, the county regularly may need up to a day or more to count votes.

Voters expectations should be in line with the amount of time it takes to count their vote accurately, Stevens said. Our position, since this office was created, has been accuracy over speed.

Election Administrator Isabel Longoria said voter unfamiliarity with the countys new voting machines required more than 1,600 ballots to be re-scanned, causing some of the delays. Tarrant County experienced problems while using the same voting machines, however, and was able to report full results within 11 hours. At that time, Harris County had counted little more than half of Election Day votes, leaving the outcome of several close races in doubt.

On HoustonChronicle.com: Why the slow vote count? Harris County elections officials blame the voters

Stevens said the main driver of the slow vote counting is a new counting procedure that takes more time than the one used with the old voting machines.

The slow pace of vote-counting has left many voters wondering how Harris County officials, despite trumpeting several voting reforms in recent years, have somehow made the tabulation process less efficient. The countys Republican and Democratic party leaders also reported problems in the distribution of voting equipment over the weekend, which led to hiccups at some polling sites on Election Day.

Political issue

As in past elections, there is no evidence of widespread fraud or other voting irregularities in these primaries. At a time, however, when some Americans, and especially conservatives, have a wavering faith in elections, political observers said it is imperative that Harris County improve its election administration ahead of this falls general election.

Harris County needs to up its game to keep up with Tarrant, Dallas, Bexar and Travis counties, said Rice University political science professor Mark Jones. Harris County doesnt have much of an excuse for not getting (the job) done.

Jones acknowledged Harris is the most populous county, and thus has the most votes to process. This years primaries had 358,000 voters, compared with 324,369, 193,491 and 261,000 in the three previous ones in midterm years. Harris County also has the most resources to hire necessary elections staff, he said. Commissioners Court spent a record $30 million on the 2020 presidential election.

Both major political parties have made voting a political issue. Some Republicans have alleged without evidence that the 2020 presidential election was rigged, including in Harris County. In fact, vote counting was halted for several hours on Wednesday after Republicans sued the county, alleging voting irregularities.

On HoustonChronicle.com: Trautman apologizes for long lines on Super Tuesday

Meanwhile, Democrats claim the voting restrictions in SB 1, the law passed by the Texas Legislature last year, are tantamount to voter suppression. About 30 percent of Harris County mail ballots cast in the primaries were flagged for rejection under the laws more stringent identification requirements.

Republican Precinct 3 Commissioner Tom Ramsey said repeated problems in election administration undermine trust in Harris Countys government.

The repetitive dysfunction of the unelected and apparently unaccountable County Elections Administrators office is unbelievable, Ramsey said in a statement Wednesday.

Harris County election administrators, under Democratic and Republican administrations, long have lagged behind other counties in reporting election results, in part because of the time it takes to drive ballot boxes or voting machines to a central counting headquarters in a county of almost 1,800 square miles. Even Republican County Clerk Stan Stanart, whom Democrats lampooned as incompetent before ousting him in 2018, never took more than a day to fully report election results.

Major changes

Harris County has made three major changes to how it runs elections since Democrats took control of Commissioners Court and all countywide posts in 2019.

That year, the county switched to voting centers, where residents can visit any polling place instead of their assigned precincts. Crucially for getting ballots counted quickly, this switch did away with Stanarts method of transmitting election results to headquarters electronically, instead requiring poll workers to use couriers to ferry the voting machines hard drives to the counting center.

In 2020, Commissioners Court created an independent elections office, taking the traditional election roles away from the county clerk and tax assessor-collector. And last year, the court spent $54 million on a new fleet of voting machines that produce a paper backup, switching away from aging machines that produced only electronic records.

The new devices require voters to feed a paper ballot into a counting machine. The elections office said 1,629 Election Day ballots were not scanned correctly because voters wrinkled, folded or smudged their ballots, or fed the sheets too quickly. Re-scanning those ballots at the countys election headquarters caused delays, elections office spokeswoman Leah Shah said.

University of Houston political scientist Brandon Rottinghaus said Harris County is right to prioritize accuracy over speed in counting votes. He said the elections office and the Democratic majority on Commissioners Court could do a better job tempering voters expectations of quick results.

This voting process is new to Harris County, Rottinghaus said. He said these machines eventually will be better, because its the best practice. But theres a learning curve which can lead to errors.

Jones said even with new voting machines, the county should be able to provide full election results within about six hours after polls close. Since the three Democrats on Commissioners Court created an independent elections office that is not directly accountable to voters, over bipartisan opposition, he said they bear the responsibility for making improvements in time for Novembers general election.

If youre Lina Hidalgo, Rodney Ellis, or Adrian Garcia, you have to be very concerned, Jones said. Going to a professional elections administrator isnt inherently bad  most of the largest counties have done it. But when you make a shift like that, youre accountable for any problems that emerge.

Hidalgo, the county judge, said Thursday that state leaders lost their moral authority to criticize local leaders on elections since adding voting restrictions in last years legislative session.

Still, that does not absolve our own elections administrator from being expected to run a smooth and efficient election for our voters, she said in a statement. I am eager to get a full accounting from the elections department, including any state, local, and party-level issues.

She did not answer a question about how quickly voters should expect to receive results.

Garcia, the Precinct 2 commissioner, said the 24-hour reporting requirement is an antiquated law that values speed over accuracy, and does not account for Harris Countys population growth since it was added to the Election Code in 1986.

zach.despart@chron.com
WASHINGTON  The Biden administration can no longer use a public health rule to justify expelling migrant families who cross the border without documentation if doing so would subject them to persecution or torture, according to a federal appeals panel ruling issued Friday.

At the beginning of the pandemic, the Trump administration turned to the obscure provision of public health law, known as Title 42, issuing an order that gave border officials the authority to immediately turn migrants away at the Southwest border, even if they were seeking asylum.

The Biden administration has kept the order in place for all migrants except children who arrive at the border without a parent or guardian. Officials have said it falls to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to decide when the rule can be lifted. The agencys next review of the policy will be in April.

For now, the Executive may expel the Plaintiffs, but only to places where they will not be persecuted or tortured, said the ruling, issued by a panel of the District of Columbia U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. To convey that, immigration law experts say migrants need to tell officials that they are at risk of such an outcome. By law, that is done through a so-called credible fear hearing, a time-consuming, resource-intensive step that immigration officials have largely been able to avoid during the pandemic because of the public health rule.

NEWS IN YOUR INBOX: Sign up for breaking news email alerts from HoustonChronicle.com here.

Expulsions under Title 42 have proved an efficient way to expel immigrants living in the country illegally at a time when a record number have crossed the Southwest border. The Biden administration did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the ruling.

The ruling does not apply to single adult migrants  only to families arriving at the border together. But the courts opinion could make it harder for the administration to justify that no migrant is entitled to express a fear of persecution or violence.

Since the order was put in place in March 2020, more than 181,000 migrant families have been expelled under it. But that is only 25% of the families who have been caught crossing the border since then. Many have been allowed into the country to face deportation proceedings for a variety of reasons, including humanitarian exceptions.

Critics of the rule, including a number of public health experts, have said there is no public health benefit to expelling migrants to prevent the spread of COVID-19 in the United States. The appeals panel appeared to agree.

To be sure, as with most things in life, no approach to COVID-19 can eliminate every risk, the panel wrote. But from a public-health perspective, based on the limited record before us, its far from clear that the CDCs order serves any purpose.

The order, it added, looks in certain respects like a relic from an era with no vaccines, scarce testing, few therapeutics and little certainty.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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Update, March 2

In two videos posted on Instagram Wednesday, Laika Cheesecake and Espresso owner Anna Afanasieva said her dessert shop raised $72,405 in three days to help support the Ukrainian army following Russia's invasion of the country.

She said the total includes every dollar spent at the shop and another $25,000 in donations. The money will be donated to Ukraine's army, Afanasieva said.

"We are still accepting donations and we are still gonna keep doing that until the war ends," she said in one of the videos.

Original, Feb. 28

Cheesecake has emerged as an unlikely hero in San Antonio, becoming a rallying point for support of Ukraine as that nation of 44 million people enters its second week of war with invading Russian forces.

Over the weekend, Laika Cheesecake & Espresso, a petite dessert shop tucked into an Alamo Heights shopping center, became ground zero for San Antonios efforts to support military and humanitarian efforts in Ukraine. Ukraine native Anna Afanasieva, who co-owns Laika with her husband, Viktor Krizma, announced Thursday on Instagram that the business would donate all of its weekend profits to support the Ukrainian army.

Many innocent lives are being affected- including personal friends and family, the post read. This donation will go to help secure not only our friends and family but an entire peaceful country being confronted with needless violence.

Kin Man Hui /Staff photographer

San Antonio got the message. Throngs of customers queued up in lines that stretched half a block around the building Friday through Sunday, many waiting two hours or more to make a purchase. Laika sold out well ahead of its closing time each day, although most would-be customers who were denied sweet treats still donated money.

Weve sold over 1,500 cheesecakes today alone, Laika employee Melissa Jiang said Sunday evening. It was long after the stores supply was exhausted, but about two dozen people still remained in line to donate money. The support of San Antonio has been amazing.

A manager at Laika said Monday afternoon that proceeds and donated funds were still being calculated, and a total would be announced by the end of the week.

IN HOUSTON: 'Be Someone' graffiti bridge has a new message in response to Russia-Ukraine invasion

Kin Man Hui /Staff photographer

Nicole Dufault and her daughter were among the many who weathered the long line Sunday but were unable to secure a cheesecake. So they came back Monday morning, queuing up with almost two dozen others 20 minutes before the shop opened to make a donation and finally get a sweet taste of cheesecake.

My fiance is in the military. He heard about this and said it would be a good way to show support, Dufault said.

Also in line Monday was Chloe Akers, whose fiance trains military working dogs at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland. Early on we saw news coverage of the Ukrainian military parading with their working dogs, and it really hit home, Akers said. I wanted to do my part.

Laika employee Ricardo Perez hefted 300 pounds of cream cheese into the bakerys refrigerators Monday morning but warned the supply would last only for a day or two at the current rate of sales. He said Laikas owners have scrambled to find alternative sources for cream cheese as demand ramps up amid a U.S. shortage.

MORE: Houston's heartbroken Ukrainian community shows their pain over Russian invasion in downtown mural

Kin Man Hui /Staff photographer

A cyber attack in October against Schreiber Foods, the nations largest cheese manufacturer, shut down production for several days. Combined with lingering supply chain issues caused by the pandemic, the schmear shortage has been felt by businesses and consumers alike, who are frequently faced with empty shelves in the dairy department of their grocery stores.

But while San Antonio showed up to support this local business, some residents have called for a boycott of another.

The war in Ukraine has brought different challenges to Web House Cafe & Bar owner Mischka Timofayev.

Timofayev, who moved to the United States from his native Moscow in 1996, said he started receiving vague threats and calls for a boycott of his Beacon Hill business via social media messages over the weekend. Web House, which he opened in 2006, is mostly a neighborhood bar with the usual pub grub, but Timofayev serves a number of Russian dishes, including pelmeni, vareniki and borscht.

Kin Man Hui /Staff photographer

Timofayev believes most of the threats are coming from prankster kids with fake accounts, but he is concerned by increasingly anti-Russian sentiment in Texas. On Saturday, Gov. Greg Abbott tweeted a request that Texas restaurants, bars and retailers remove Russian products from their shelves.

Im kind of surprised by what Abbott did, Timofayev said. All these dishes come from all over. My Russian mixed veggie salad is the same salad they make in Georgia. Its the same salad in Poland. And its the same salad in Ukraine.

Timofayev said he has no plans to pull the Russian vodka or beer from his bar or the Russian dishes from his menu. But he does plan to follow through on installing several community pantry shelves in Beacon Hill-area businesses to provide free food for those in need  an effort in the works for months.

Ive been (in the U.S.) for 26 years. Im more concentrated on the community, he said. There are lots of people in need right here.

pstephen@express-news.net | Twitter: @pjbites | Instagram: @pjstephen

Express-News staff writer Malak Silmi contributed to this story.
Lorraine Rutherford was pleasantly surprised to find an H-E-B gift bag full of snacks and socks waiting on her doorstep.

The McKinney-area resident was one of many in her neighborhood to receive a gift bag as the site of a nearby H-E-B breaks ground to become the DFW area's third store.

"I took it as a friendly gesture, kind of like they were saying, 'we are here, were happy to be a part of your community and by the way, pardon our dust'," Rutherford said.

On HoustonChronicle.com: H-E-B honors teachers with new limited-edition ice cream flavor

At the groundbreaking ceremony, H-E-B announced that it will be donating $10,000 to five area non-profits and there was a performance by the McKinney Boyd High School Jazz Ensemble.

Today is an exciting day for our community as we break ground on this highly-anticipated store in the City of McKinney. H-E-B is famous for its wildly committed fanbase and unwavering commitment to the communities they serve, McKinney Mayor George Fuller said at the ceremony. We are proud to be part of the growing H-E-B family in Texas and give our residents more options to keep their dollars local.

Rutherford posted an image of her gift bag on social media and said that many were envious.

"I felt like one of the lucky ones," Rutherford said.

The McKinney H-E-B is slated to open in late 2023.
Democratic gubernatorial candidate Beto ORourke is making Texans a promise: If they elect him as governor, hell legalize marijuana.

Shortly after his resounding victory in Tuesday nights primary, ORourke asked a crowd of supporters in Fort Worth: Don't you think it's time we legalize marijuana in the state of Texas? I do too. We can get that done.

He reiterated his position again on Twitter in the days following.

The issue could come up often on the campaign trail later this year, as ORourke prepares for a face-off against Gov. Greg Abbott in November. Abbott, a Republican, has only gone as far as to suggest the drug should be decriminalized.

Marijuana is fully legal in 18 states and the District of Columbia. Texas has so far rejected recreational access to the drug, though the state Legislature recently approved a minor extension of its medicinal use.

Abbott has been lukewarm on the subject, suggesting for years that marijuana possession should not lead to jail time. Possession of up to two ounces of cannabis in Texas is a Class B misdemeanor punishable by up to 180 days in jail and a $2,000 fine.

IN-DEPTH: Gov. Abbott signs Texas medical marijuana expansion into law

One thing that I believe in  and I believe the state Legislature believes in  and that is prison and jail is a place for dangerous criminals who may harm others, and small possession of marijuana is not the type of violation that we want to stockpile jails with, Abbott said in January.

Still, the Legislature has made no moves to decriminalize the drug over the course of Abbotts two terms in office. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, a conservative Republican, has been the main source of resistance  and the state Senate, the chamber he leads, has killed or watered down several proposals that would relax marijuana laws.

In 2019, a Patrick spokesman told the Texas Tribune that he was strongly opposed to weakening any laws against marijuana (and) remains wary of the various medicinal use proposals that could become a vehicle for expanding access to this drug.

The November general election is widely expected to benefit Republicans, and Abbott is the favorite in the gubernatorial contest. But if ORourke pulled off an upset, hed still have to work with the conservative state Legislature  including Patrick, potentially  on any proposals.

A June 2021 poll by the University of Texas at Austin found that 60 percent of Texans believe possession of small or large amounts of marijuana for any purpose should be legal.

Another 27 percent said the drug should only be allowed for medical purposes, and 13 percent said it should be outlawed entirely.

cayla.harris@express-news.net
Regarding Pelosi supports halting Russian oil imports to US: 'Ban it', (March 3): As if we need another example where our dependence on fossil fuel hamstrings our resolve to act with clarity, now we appear to still be buying Russian oil exports because we don't want to pay $4 gasoline at the pump. And the apologists for oil here are clamoring for more federal lease sales like somehow the intervening 20 years between sales and product delivery will have some effect on the Ukrainian response. I say use a fourth of the time to lay the infrastructure for the renewables that can be built in the next 5 years. That still is no direct impact on the current Ukrainian situation, but its a lot closer to a strategic response and message to the Russians than a few more holes in the ground or the ocean. Wouldn't it be nice to wake up 5 or 10 years from now and no longer have the Saudis, Venezuela and the Russians digging in our wallets to fill up our gasoholic vehicles?

Walt Lind, Nassau Bay

Obviously, the current situation between Russia and Ukraine has developed into higher gasoline prices at the pump. This past weekend in the Dallas area, I paid $3.37 per gallon for my trip back to Houston. Why not consider eliminating the federal and state taxes on gasoline, which are approximately $0.38 per gallon in Texas.

W.E. Strader, Sugar Land

There is something terribly wrong with what is going on with our reaction to the war being raged upon the country of Ukraine. How can we sit by and do so little to stop this invasion of another country that is trying valiantly to protect themselves but does not have the luxury of a large military? They have begged for help. We have seen the pictures. We have heard the audio. We have seen the mothers fleeing the country with their babies and their men staying behind to take up arms and fight. But to expect Ukraine to wage war against Russia, one of the largest, most equipped countries of the world, is not right. I dont care that there isn't a piece of paper saying they are not in the club of NATO. Putin is not going to back down. This is wrong. Why are we not doing everything humanly possible to help them repel Putin? If Putin takes this country, where will he stop?

Julia Purtill, Richmond

As a full-blooded Ukrainian, I watch both in horror and pride as this tragedy is played out like a melodrama. Since I am American-born I have never been to Ukraine, but seeing the faces of the Ukrainian people is like old home week to me. We are so much alike in body and face and in the actions of that stolid babcha that passed out sunflower seeds to the Russian soldiers. This is all great newscasting, but people are dead, many terrified, and a world is united in anger and retribution. Where is Putins fire escape from the mess he created? He needs a back door and an excuse to use it. If the world offered a significant financial safety net to the Russian oligarchy, they could be a great lever into opening Putins mind and show him the back door. The excuse to pull out can be anything the Russians want to sell. The reason for attacking Ukraine was ridiculous to begin with.

Bill Klimko, Spring

Regarding Letters, (March 1): I found it very curious that the Chronicle chose to include a comment from a reader in the letters section this week comparing the Russian invasion of Ukraine with the breach of the Capitol on January 6, 2021. It would be my guess that this opinion would be held by only one in one thousand Americans, all of them Democrats. The Russian invasion is an unlawful attempt by a dictator to occupy a sovereign country and is being condemned by the vast majority of the world. The January incident was the misguided reaction of a few patriotic Americans.

Philip Tereskiewicz, Houston
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Leaders from diverse communities in Houston said at a meeting Thursday a new voting law in Texas and exhaustion from COVID-19 played a significant role in a lower-than-expected turnout of their constituencies in Tuesdays Harris County primary election.

The new, stricter SB1 Texas voting law impacted disadvantaged and communities of color at a greater level than the general population of registered voters, leaders said at the event, March Madness: Primary Elections, Voter Suppression & Beyond.

After increasing mobilization efforts that produced greater turnout in recent elections, particularly in 2020, the challenges and confusion generated by the new law represented a setback for communities of color, said Amatullah Contractor, a team leader of Emgage, a civic organization that works with Houstons Muslim community.

The new law, which is being challenged in federal court, added requirements and rules to vote by mail. It also expands the power of poll watchers, restricts the discretion of election officials, and makes it more difficult to assist some voters.

Angelica Razo, Texas state director of Mi Familia Vota (My Family Votes) said that Latinos and other communities where many voters are naturalized immigrants or first-generation Americans face numerous challenges to voting. Many of them are monolingual or with limited English speakers and are from families with scarce resources who require translation or transportation assistance to vote.

On HoustonChronicle.com: Latino leaders plan lawsuit to change 'gross' underrepresentation in Houston City Council

These are folks that have recently become U.S. citizens, so they're not used to voting in this country or are young people voting for the first time (and) didn't grow up in a voting household, said Razo. And SB1 one is just coming in adding an overload of information and an overload of confusion that is really just actively making people work harder to just go and cast a ballot.

Juan Cardoza-Oquendo, Director of Public Policy of Houston in Action, a civic engagement organization, cited as a positive outcome. According to their data, more than 13 percent of early voters in the Republican primary and 12.2 percent of early voters in the Democratic primary were voting in a primary election for the first time.

Still, Cardoza-Oquendo said the turnout was pretty low overall.

Turnout in primary elections tends to be low, particularly in non-presidential elections.

Preliminary data from Harris County indicate that turnout was better among Republicans this year than Democrats in the primaries, in a reversal of 2018.

Related: Latinos break their voting record in Harris County 2018 elections

Just under 160,000 people, or 4.4 percent of the 2.5 million registered voters in Harris County, voted in the Democratic primary this year, compared to 183,507, or around 7 percent of the electorate, in the Republican primary.

Voter turnout performed better for Democrats in the 2018 primaries. That year, 167,982 people from that party cast their ballot, comprising 7.47 percent of the total 2.2 million registered voters in Harris County at the time.

Among Republicans, 156,387 voted, representing 6.95 of registered voters.

Leaders at the meeting said that frustrations over social stressors from COVID-19 played a role in low turnouts.

On HoustonChronicle.com: 2022 Texas Primary Election Results

People are still struggling to make their rent, people are still struggling to have a job, to have their kids going to school during a pandemic, said Megan Joy Macias, electoral strategy coordinator for Texas Organizing Project. She said that mobilizations this year have been more difficult among communities of color who have been the most impacted during the pandemic.

SB1 has thrown a monkey wrench into everything, said Tana Pradia, co-chair of the Positive Womens Network, an civic organization working with Black women and HIV-positive people.

Pradia said the law increases the challenges for organizers to educate low propensity voters yearlong. "It goes beyond this election time.

olivia.tallet@chron.com

Twitter.com/oliviaptallet
Volunteers Anna Kozak Left, and Lydia Luczynski, Right, organize and prepare to ship the donated items at St. Mary Protectress Ukrainian Catholic Church in Apopka to the Ukraine in Apopka, Fla. on Friday, March 4, 2022. Kozak is from Khmelmtsky, Ukraine and still has family there. (Willie J. Allen Jr./Orlando Sentinel)

Natalya Riabokon smiled as she wiped sweat from her forehead and tears from her eyes while packing baby formula into boxes Friday morning at St. Mary Protectress Ukrainian Catholic Church in Apopka.

Most of Riabokons family is in Ukraine, including a nephew and a brother fighting against invading Russian forces near Kyiv. An American citizen, Riabokon said she offered her entire family refuge in her Florida home but they refused to leave their country.

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I almost went back to Ukraine too, Riabokon said. My sister is there with her 20-year-old son and she wont leave, because her son has to fight, so she is going to fight alongside him.

Riabokon and many others  both with and without Ukrainian heritage  came out to the Lake McCoy Drive church on Friday to box donated supplies to send to Ukraine just over a week after Russia invaded the Eastern European nation.

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Dozens of volunteers, pack, organize, label and move boxes at St. Mary Protectress Ukrainian Catholic Church on Friday, March 4, 2022. (Willie J. Allen Jr./Orlando Sentinel)

A semi-truck full of boxes of medical supplies, canned food and winter clothes will be driven to Chicago, then loaded onto a plane flown to the Ukrainian border with Poland, where Ukrainian volunteers will take the supplies to help Ukrainian families and soldiers, said Ivanna Polusmak, one of the donation drive organizers.

The church partnered with Meest, a package delivery company that pays for the trucks to pick up donations for Ukrainians and fly them to the border. Polusmak also created an Amazon wish list where people can buy items or donate money.

We are a small church so theres no time for us to do logistics. So this company does it for us, Polusmak said. I have friends on the border who are helping so I send them money directly to help buy food or tourniquets.

Polusmak said Meest has collected over 2 tons of supplies from small neighborhoods in New Jersey and hopes her church can collect a similar haul. Medicine, tourniquets, bandages, tactical clothing, bulletproof vests and non-perishable foods are the main items the church still needs, she said.

Hundreds of volunteers have pitched in to pack boxes and load a semi-truck over the three days since donations started pouring in.

On Friday, the church was full of boxes and sweaty volunteers coming in and out. As the morning turned to afternoon, more volunteers kept pouring into the roughly 1,000-square-foot church to help.

Joe Tessitore, an 83-year-old Italian American, stopped by to drop off a check.

I wish I could do more but right now this is all I can do, Tessitore said. I just needed to do something.

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Lydia Luczynski wore a hand brace as she lifted boxes and packed food. Luczynski, whose parents were born in Ukraine, said shed suffered numerous broken bones in a fall in 2020 but wouldnt let that stop her from helping her ancestral homeland.

Breaking News As it happens Be the first to know with email alerts on important breaking stories from the Orlando Sentinel newsroom. >

Its the Ukrainian energy that lifts me up and helps me feel no pain, Luczynski said. Ukrainian women have this can-do energy and they inspire me to do everything.

Volunteer Anna Kozak translates labels on boxes into English as the volunteers organize and prepare to ship the donated items at St. Mary Protectress Ukrainian Catholic Church in Apopka. (Willie J. Allen Jr./Orlando Sentinel)

Longwood resident Rick Brinker, 68, sat writing labels for boxes and trying to understand the instructions of volunteers who only spoke Ukrainian.

Theres a need to do something so I drove in to help, Brinker said. I called Sen. Marco Rubios office and left a message because I think our government needs to do more.

Riabokon said she sees a surge in support for her homeland now that she didnt in 2014, when Russia invaded the Crimean Peninsula. Back then, she said her 36-year-old brother fought with no gun and no training.

Now, he has weapons and support from the world.

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I just want the families and soldiers to know that we are packing these boxes with love and support from everyone, not just Ukrainians, Riabokon said. We stand with the Ukrainian soldiers.

njaramillo@orlandosentinel.com
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The Orlando Police Department released body camera footage Thursday that showed the arrest of a 31-year-old man at a Signal Hill shopping plaza last month, who later died in custody.

OPD released nearly 30 clips from the body cameras of 16 officers who responded to the scene of Isaiah Paynes Feb. 1 arrest in the 5100 block of North Lane.

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Footage from Officer Shuaib Moondas camera shows he arrived first in his patrol SUV around 10:30 a.m. to a convenience store in the North Lane Plaza, where he spotted Payne.

Moonda rushed behind Payne, who was facing a glass window, and yelled at him not to move, the video showed.

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Why are you bothering me? Payne asked.

I saw your baggie, Moonda replied.

I got a weed card, sir, Payne said.

Moonda told Payne to stop digging around or hell put you to the ground.

Footage released by the Orlando Police Department shows the Feb. 1 arrest of Isaiah Payne, who later died in police custody. (Orlando Police Department)

A few seconds later, Moonda took Payne to the ground, knocking his headphones and hat off. Payne wiggled away and Moonda began hitting him with a baton on the back of his legs as he stood up, the video showed.

Youre hurting me, Payne said.

Moonda then pulled out his Taser, pointed it at Payne and yelled at him again to get on the ground, according to the video.

Im scared, Payne said as he held his hands up. Whyd you beat me?

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Moonda later told another officer who responded to the scene that he used the baton twice, although the footage shows he struck Payne six times on his legs.

As Moonda continued to point his Taser at Payne, he got on his knees before Moonda pushed him to the ground.

Footage showed Payne face down as Moonda tried to get Paynes hands behind his back. Payne was never stunned with the Taser.

Stop [expletive] chewing, youre destroying evidence, Moonda yelled as three more officers arrived and cuffed Payne.

Payne is rolled on his side, handcuffed, and appeared to have trouble breathing.

Multiple officers tell Payne to breathe and Moonda administered Narcan, the first of three doses used on him.

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Officers can be seen removing the cuffs from Payne as he loses consciousness. His pulse is slow and it appeared that Payne choked on something, officers said.

Officer Kip Bolin performed CPR on Payne and set up a defibrillator until paramedics arrived and took Payne to a hospital, where he later died.

In a statement, OPD Chief Orlando Rolon said he spoke to Paynes mother and invited her to view the footage before the department released it publicly.

The loss of a loved one, regardless of the circumstances, can be very difficult, Rolon said. The Orlando Police Department extends its deepest sympathies to the family of Mr. Payne for his untimely passing.

Rolon said the footage showed officers immediately rendered aid to Payne when they noticed he was in medical distress.

The Florida Department of Law Enforcement is investigating Paynes in-custody death. The Orange County Medical Examiner has not determined yet how he died.

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lgarza@orlandosentinel.com
10 influential women leading electronic music right now

As we step into Womens History Month, it is a perfect time to support some amazing female musicians. Luckily weve made the search quite easy for you.

A guest post by Angela Mastrogiacomo of Soundfly.

Every year, we celebrate Womens Month in March. Although technically every month is worth celebrating the contributions of women in the creative industries, there are just so many women dominating the electronic music space right now that we just couldnt wait to put this list together.

We tried to highlight women from different all corners of electronic music  from the chillest ambient to the hardest hitting dance beats  as well as from different cultures, each voicing something truly unique within the music community, and doing it at a remarkably high level.

Whether or not youre into electronic music, we hope you discover some new artists and deepen your love for the ones youve already been listening to.

Lets start with someone very special to Soundfly

1. Jlin

Jlin has been called one of the most prominent producers of our generation  male or female  and theres good reason for it. With material that is 100% original, Jlin has risen to fame quickly through an initial release on Planet Mus Bangs & Works Vol 2. compilation in 2011 with her tracks Erotic Heat and Asylum. The former track was used in a 2014 Rick Owens fashion show, which helped grow her influence amongst creators and fans alike.

What makes Jlin such a powerful and inspiring force is her unique ability to unify sound and motion through her music, often collaborating with dancers and choreographers, and leading the charge in the Chicago footwork scene as one of the rare women producers of the genre. Beyond her raw talent, what really sets her apart is her overall philosophy on music making and her commitment to helping others grow in their craft as well, that makes her a true icon.

We wanted to capture those philosophies and processes at work in our brand new online course with Jlin! If youre a producer or beat maker looking for inspiration and invigoration in your sound, and the validation that youre worthy and on the right path as an artist, check out Soundflys Jlin: Rhythm, Variation, & Vulnerability.

2. Yu Su

Yu Su is the multicultural electronic artist you need to know. Owning a special talent for blending cultures, bringing East and West together in organic and intriguing ways, Yu Su was born in central Chinas Henan province but moved to Vancouver in her youth, which is where she discovered her passion for making electronic music. Bringing her own multicultural influence and creativity to audience, shes inspiring a new generation of music makers following in those very same idendity-bending foot steps.

3. Pauline Anna Strom

Lets hear it for Pauline Anna Strom, who although she made her debut in the 1980s had an extraordinary career later in her life, proving that even after a 30-year hiatus, you truly can chase your dreams at any age. Unfortunately Strom passed away in 2020, but her legacy goes on with new and archival releases coming out recently.

Strom is a noteworthy artist to put on this list, for not only her music, but the proof that youre never too old to follow your dreams.

4. Ulla

Already grabbing the attention of tastemaking media, Ullas most recent release, Limitless Frame, outlines what Pitchfork calls reverberating guitar melodies with subtle electronic sound design and foggy atmospheres for an ambient sound you cant ignore. Its subtle yet enveloping  and while it might sound cliche to say, her music has been said to feel alive; a sentiment that only becomes all the more clear once you listen in for yourself.

It is this that makes her such an important woman to take notice of  it is an almost obsessive attention to her craft to create entire worlds out of her music, while continually taking the listener on a journey of self-love  what is it, and more importantly, how do we achieve it?

5. Perila

Russian-born, Berlin-based artist Perila is another force in the world of ambient electronic music. What makes hers stand out, however, is the way she takes everyday sonic moments and turns them into soft, curious pieces of art, music that you cant help but try to sneak into in order to understand (even though, as she says, it is meant to be as abstract as it is intimate).

It is that focus on intimacy that caught our attention. The way she takes the sounds of the every day and infuses them into her music to create music that makes you feel. Shes well aware that everyone hears music differently and feels inspired by different sounds, and she aims to deliver that inspiration and captivation no matter who you are.

6. Tammy Lakkis

https://open.spotify.com/track/4suMA6HLaH4gbXBPtoAbBy?go=1&sp_cid=083b7bc8d9efe9aa655c2fb5d87bc79f&utm_source=embed_player_m&utm_medium=desktop&nd=1

Tammy Lakkis has already caught the attention of NPR for not only incredibly catchy tracks that are dance-floor ready, but a smart, playful approach to her music. A quick listen to her diverse catalog will have you planning poolside parties in the summer just for the opportunity to blast these songs,

Beyond just the catchy music, Lakkis, whose parents emigrated from Lebanon, has explained in the past that a source of inspiration for her is helping first generation immigrants forge their own path. She explains that because so many feel pressure to assimilate to American culture, they end up robbing themselves of establishing and creatively pursuing their own stories.

7. Anz

https://open.spotify.com/track/1id17JhaBs6kgbUa1eJUS3?go=1&sp_cid=2014367d2fea3bf3afe0fdf2749d85e3&utm_source=embed_player_m&utm_medium=desktop&nd=1

Known for her genre-bending music that draws deeply from Black cultural history, Anz, a UK-based artist, is as inspiring as she is innovative. (After all, with her EP, All Hours, each track corresponds with a different time of day, so you could listen depending on your mood. Youve gotta admit, thats pretty cool.)

When it comes to her latest album, she has said that this music is all about showcasing who she is as a producer, and whats gone into creating the music she makes. Showcasing her own culture and history is just one way she does it.

8. Maral

https://open.spotify.com/track/2F7aAhzzy84eYl65Hf8fNK?go=1&sp_cid=817ba894fa73c9913167744531842fd0&utm_source=embed_player_m&utm_medium=desktop&nd=1

Embracing her Iranian heritage and mixing folk field recordings into her music truly organically, Los Angeles based artist, Maral, is blazing a path with her recordings, unforgettable live shows, and the way she embraces her own culture through that inspiration and those captivating, curious field recordings.

9. Suzi Analogue

https://open.spotify.com/track/0OTChYGDIYDRf6pVw9B9A1?go=1&sp_cid=fadaf283539bbd649ead6fadfd0f2b0d&utm_source=embed_player_m&utm_medium=desktop&nd=1

Whenever an artist who has reached some level of success uses that platform to help the artists who are still building their way to the top, youve got to take notice. Suzi Analogue does this with her label, Never Normal Records, to highlight upcoming artists on her blog. Not only that, she has worked as a cultural ambassador for the US via the Next Level Hip-Hop Diplomacy Program.

10. Anja Schneider

Anja Schneider has been building a name for herself for over a decade and now helps up-and-coming producers through her imprint, SoUs Music. She describes SoUs Music as a creative project where anything is possible and everyone is invited, and for any creative making their way in the industry, we all know how powerful it can be to have a mentor on your side.



Angela Mastrogiacomo is the founder of Muddy Paw PR, where her artists have seen placement on Alternative Press, Spotify, Noisey, Substream, and more, as well as the Director of Community and Events for Music Launch Co. Her free training Reaching a Wider Audience Without Spending A Dime helps emerging artists cut through the noise and get in front of fans and industry influencers in just a few steps. She loves baked goods, a good book, and hanging with her dog Sawyer.

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The Financialization Of Song: How to successfully invest in music

As the worlds of music and finance converge, there are a number of lessons the music industry stands to learn from finance, including how to invest in music.

by Sasha Stoikov from Chartmetrics How Music Charts.

Decentralized finance, royalty exchanges, and global investment funds are changing the landscape of the music business. Record labels and publishers, the traditional investors in music rights, are seeing some new competition from fintech.

The emergence of financial products linked to music rights  also known as the financialization of music  has progressed on three main fronts. First, investment funds (Hipgnosis, Blackstone, KKR, Primary Wave, Mills Music Trust) are acquiring the steady cash flows of top musicians. Second, royalty exchange platforms (Royalty Exchange, Songvest, Anote Music) are facilitating the trading of music rights. Third, decentralized finance marketplaces (Foundation, OpenSea, Royal, sound.xyz) are proposing NFTs as a new investment vehicle for musicians.

All these developments aim to address a fundamental problem in the music business: How can a musician get paid now, allowing investors to benefit later? The main pitch to investors is that royalties are uncorrelated with the markets. There are also some tax benefits.

Lets compare music rights to stocks. If companies can raise money and allow investors to benefit later, why cant musicians do the same? Understanding this analogy between corporate stocks and music rights may shed some light on the development of a market for allocating music resources more efficiently.

The dataset: Using Monthly Listeners data for 1.1M artists on Spotify going back to 2019, we split the data into a training set (12 months of 2019) and a testing set (24 months of 2020-2021). We chose to focus on Monthly Listeners because this metric is strongly related to revenue. On their Loud and Clear website, Spotify has published data on average Monthly Listeners and royalties generated by various classes of artists. The relationship between the two variables is close to linear, with chart toppers generating slightly more revenue per Monthly Listener than emerging artists, most likely due to their deeper catalogs.

Diversifying Your Music Portfolio

The portfolio theory developed by Harry Markowitz in 1952 is based on the idea that a rational investor will minimize risk for a target level of expected return. In 1964, William Sharpe took this theory to its logical conclusion: If all investors are rational and invest in efficient portfolios, then they should hold investments proportional to the market capitalization of investments.

In the same spirit, we look at the performance of a portfolio of Top 500 streaming artists of 2019, weighted by Monthly Listeners. We compare this portfolio to the growth in Monthly Listeners of individual artists: Taylor Swift, Drake, Ariana Grande, and Kanye West. Despite the well-established nature of these artists, their streaming revenues can be volatile. When spreading this risk across the Top 500 artists, we see that diversification greatly reduces the volatility of revenues.

Smaller Artists Grow Faster

In the 1990s, finance researchers started uncovering new factors that impact the future returns of stocks. For instance, Fama and French found that size, i.e., the market capitalization of a stock, matters. In particular, they found that small stocks tended to outperform large stocks. In recent years, the opposite has been true, as large companies have dominated smaller ones.

Similarly, we split artists into four tiers:

Tier 1 : Top 500

: Top 500 Tier 2 : Next 2.5K

: Next 2.5K Tier 3 : Next 10K

: Next 10K Tier 4: Next 20K

What we find is that the Tier 2 artists have grown more than twice as fast as Tier 1 artists on average.

Past Performance Is No Indication of Future Results

In 1993, Jagdeech and Titman found that stocks that performed well in the past year tended to outperform in the next year. This momentum factor has not persisted in more recent decades, but the recipe is very simple: Just buy the stocks that performed best in the last year.

In the case of Monthly Listeners, we can see that the opposite is true. Among Tier 1 artists, the Trending 100 (100 artists that performed best in 2019) tend to perform worse in the next two years. This seems to support the idea that listenership decays faster among artists who have performed unusually well in the year prior. This may be a natural reversion for an artist who is off-cycle, after having trended due to an album release in the previous year.

Artists With Steady Monthly Listeners Do Better

In a majority of markets, researchers have observed that stocks with a lower volatility tend to outperform those that are highly volatile. This is referred to as the low-volatility anomaly, since lower risks in finance are usually associated with lower rewards.

We found a similar effect among Tier 1 artists when selecting the 100 artists with the lowest volatility, shown in the graph below as the Stable 100. These artists represent the evergreen or legacy artists who have a very consistent following. This may justify why artists such as Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, and Neil Young were recently able to sell their rights at high multiples of their recent revenue.

Alternative Music Data

In recent years, investment funds have gone beyond the standard stock features that are publicly available (size, momentum, volatility, etc.) and have pursued other sources of data made available by new data vendors. Some examples include web traffic, social media sentiment, satellite imagery, and geolocation.

When using data from Piki, an app that collects like and dislike feedback from its users on a variety of music videos, we find that out of the Tier 1 artists, those with the highest like-to-dislike ratios  the Piki 100  have outperformed the Tier 1 portfolio. This group represents high-value artists whose streaming revenue is most likely to grow. As a result, these artists may be valued at higher multiples of their yearly revenues.

Conclusion

Top artists have recently sold rights to their catalogs for multiples of 15 to 20 times the yearly revenue. Royalty exchanges typically sell rights at multiples in the 5 to 15 range. The next waves of music rights transactions will depend on reliable sources of data that can help predict future music revenues for lesser known artists.

Ultimately, successful financial products need to be linked to cashflows. This is why we explored technical factors, constructed from historical data, to help predict future Monthly Listeners. For example, we showed that past growth, size, and volatility of Monthly Listeners can help identify groups of artists whose streams are likely to grow faster than average in the future.

Additionally, buyers of financial instruments linked to music rights will want to consider alternative music data sets that can predict the long term viability of music, particularly in our era of exploding music supply. By combining such fundamental analysis to technical indicators based on historical data, prospective music investors will be able to make more informed investment decisions.

Sasha Stoikov is a Senior Research Associate at Cornell Financial Engineering Manhattan, and hes also the founder of Piki, a music tech company. He works on high-frequency trading algorithms and music recommendation algorithms. is a Senior Research Associate at Cornell Financial Engineering Manhattan, and hes also the founder of Piki, a music tech company. He works on high-frequency trading algorithms and music recommendation algorithms.

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A party of 14 left a Central Florida restaurant without paying leaving the business and its server at a loss with a $320 bill.

The group of 10 adults and four children racked up the bill at Davenports Ale House in Posner Park near the intersection of Interstate 4 and U.S. Highway 27 in January, according to a report on WFLA.com, an NBC-affiliate serving Tampa Bay. The station interviewed Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd about the incident.

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Were just going to lock you up and feed you a nutritious meal. It wont be delicious like it was at the Ale House. Thats a guarantee, Judd said. Were not even gonna ask you to pay for it.

The manager of the Ale House, Ian Marks, told the station that once their meal was over, the group asked for their server to split their checks and get to-go boxes. Marks said the server noticed some left to use the bathroom while others went outside, and by the time she was back with the to-go boxes, they were gone.

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Marks said his servers do not follow customers outside for their own safety, WFLA reported. To battle similar issues from happening again, he told the station that the restaurant would begin asking a credit card be supplied ahead of dining for large parties.

Judd said reward money for information leading to the identification of the offending party is available through Crime Stoppers at 800-226 TIPS (8477).

Read more on WFLA.com.
Adams Selectmen Lift Mask Requirement for Town Buildings

ADAMS, Mass.  Nearly two years after the first positive COVID-19 case in Berkshire County and as COVID-19 case numbers continue to decline, the Board of Selectmen unanimously voted to lift mask requirements for municipal buildings.

"Based on the CDC guidance, based on the rapid steep decline of the coronavirus virus numbers, both nationally and regionally," said Town Administrator Jay Green on retracting the mask rules at Wednesday's board meeting. "At this point, I would say if the board just wanted to say that the town buildings will be governed accordingly based on the CDC and be consistent CDC guidelines, that would adequately suffice to protect the safety of the public and staff."

Green thanked visitors and town staff for complying with the rule when it was in effect and said those who wish to continue wearing masks should.

"I've said that to the staff as well," he said. "That if you feel compelled, based on your personal situation, you're more than happy to wear masks. No one is going to ask you not to."

Between Feb. 19 and Feb. 25, Adams recorded seven new COVID-19 cases, and Berkshire County is now considered moderate risk for transmission rather than high risk. Board of Health Chair David Rhoads said it is crucial to respect those who choose to or need to continue wearing masks.

"We're dropping off the peak as we did last spring. So I think we're in good shape," Rhoads said at the Board of Health's meeting on Wednesday, explaining recently updated state mask guidelines now recommend vulnerable individuals need to wear a mask indoors.

As of Feb. 22, 71 percent of Adams residents are fully vaccinated, with 38 percent received a booster shot. Rhoads urged residents to continue to get vaccinated and boosted and hopes the town can soon reach 80 percent vaccinated.

Green said the mask rule was effective while it was in place and allowed Adams' public buildings to operate with few issues throughout the pandemic.

"Our public buildings have been consistently open five days a week for quite a long time, even in the middle of the surge," he said. "So we were able to safely conduct the people's business open even in the middle of that because we have really good compliance with our masking mandate."

Selectman Joe Nowak said Wednesday's meeting was the first in-person meeting since the pandemic that he did not wear a mask.

"This is the first meeting that I haven't had a mask on; I feel quite comfortable with what I've been seeing with COVID cases," he said. "And I've seen big cities like Boston allowing masks to be taken off in public places. I think it's time."

Chair John Duval also reiterated that those who want to wear a mask are welcome to continue to do so.

"Immunocompromised individuals, please continue to wear a mask if that is what you want to do. That is up to you," he said.

"We believe it's time, and it's a good time to do it," Green said.
Hoosac Valley Regional School District Lifts Mask Requirements

ADAMS, Mass.  Starting Friday, students in the Hoosac Valley Regional School District no longer had to wear masks in class.

The district's School Committee voted 6-1 Thursday night to end masking requirements in the classroom. Nearly 60 people attended the meeting virtually to provide feedback to the committee and hear the decision.

"The position we're in with the policy is it's not necessarily enforceable," said Superintendent Aaron Dean before the vote. "It is kind of the way things have gone with DESE ... We're going to be spending a lot of time trying to enforce something that I think we'll be spinning our wheels on if we keep the policy in place."

Currently, 45.7 percent of the district's students are vaccinated, which committee member Erin Milne, the only dissenting voter, said is lower than other local school districts and communities.

"We are at 45.7 percent fully-vaccinated, compared to 62 percent of Berkshire County children ages 5 through 19 and almost 60 percent of Massachusetts ages 5 through 19," she said. "So we are lower than the same age peers in different portions of our community."

Dean said even with the masking rules lifted, the district respects student choice, whether they decide to continue wearing masks or not. Students will only be required to wear masks if they are symptomatic or coming out of quarantine.

"We won't tolerate harassment of others for not wearing a mask or for wearing a mask," he said. "And we will impose our handbook and our guidelines to make sure that doesn't happen."

Additionally, Dean explained that vaccines are still readily available, and students have the option to do at-home testing for COVID-19 whenever they wish.

"That's a family choice. Those are family options at this point in time," he said.

Committee Chair Michael Mucci said he thinks it is best from this point on to follow state guidelines regarding masks to avoid confusion. Gov. Charlie Baker's administration lifted state mask rules for schools on Feb. 28.

Public health officials are still encouraging those who are unvaccinated or who have compromised immune systems to continue masking and social distancing indoors.

"I can't tell you how many times I've overheard people say, 'Why does our school committee make us wear masks? Why don't they vote to let us take these masks off?'" he said. "Masks have been on this entire time because we follow DESE rules and regulations. We're a public school, and we've been bound to follow them. I think the timing that DESE did with this made it a little bit of a hiccup for schools to deal with."
Clark Art Names Recipients of 2022 Prize For Excellence in Writing

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass.  Helen Molesworth and Hilton Als will receive the 2022 Clark Prize for Excellence in Arts Writing.

Molesworth is a writer and a curator. Als is a writer for The New Yorker magazine and a curator and teaching professor.

"The Clark Prize raises awareness of the importance of writing that bridges scholarly and popular interest and seeks to encourage support for clear and engaging writing that inspires readers to connect with the arts," said Olivier Meslay, the Hardymon Director of the Clark Art Institute. "Helen Molesworth and Hilton Als are two of the most interesting writers in the field today, producing compelling and thought-provoking prose. Celebrating the work of both Helen and Hilton through the award of the Clark Prize is doubly delightful."

Als is a Pulitzer Prize-winning staff writer and a theater critic for The New Yorker magazine. He is the curator of the recent exhibition, Toni Morrison's Black Book, at the David Zwirner Gallery, New York, and is the author of several books including "The Women" (1996), "White Girls" (2013), and "Alice Neel, Uptown" (2017). Based in New York, Als is a teaching professor at the University of California, Berkeley and an associate professor of writing at Columbia University's School of the Arts.

"I can't tell you how moved and encouraged I feel by this honor," Als said. "My predecessors are all writers and thinkers I admire and continue to learn from. To be in their august company, and to be acknowledged by the great Clark Art Institute, feels extraordinary because it is."

Based in Los Angeles, Molesworth's career as a curator is the basis of her ever-expanding sphere of projects. Most recently, she hosted PROGRAM, two days of live-streamed interviews with artists and writers hosted by the David Zwirner Gallery; presented the Recording Artists podcast with the Getty Institute; and organized the group exhibition Feedback for The School gallery in Kinderhook, New York. She is the author of numerous catalogue essays and her articles have appeared in Artforum, Art Journal, Documents, and October.

"It's a wonderful honor to receive the Clark Prize. Though, truth be told, I find the company I'm in, from my PhD advisor Hal Foster, to one of my favorite poets Eileen Myles, to Kobena Mercer, whose version of art history has always been a beacon, even more pleasing than receiving the prize itself," Molesworth said. "That I should share this honor with Hilton Als, one of our most important public intellectuals, is as flattering as it is joyful."

Meslay led the 2022 jury for the Clark Prize. Other members of the panel included Joao Ribas, Steven D. Lavine Executive Director of REDCAT, the Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater; Sebastian Smee, Pulitzer Prize-winning art critic for The Washington Post; Julia Bryan Wilson, Doris and Clarence Malo Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art, University of California, Berkeley; Kobena Mercer, Professor in History of Art and African American Studies, Yale University and a 2006 Clark Prize recipient; Marc Gotlieb, Halvorsen Director of the Williams College Graduate Program in the History of Art; Esther Bell, the Clark's Robert and Martha Berman Lipp Chief Curator; and Caroline Fowler, the Starr Director of the Clark's Research and Academic Program.

An event honoring Molesworth and Als with the presentation of the Clark Prize will take place later this spring.
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A man working for American Airlines pleaded guilty on Tuesday for trying to smuggle cocaine on a flight to Florida.

Luis Ortiz Jr., of St. Croix, confessed to the charge of conspiracy and intent to distribute more than five kilos of cocaine, according to the Department of Justice. On June 20, 2019, Ortiz, a then contractor with American Airlines, and a co-defendant, recruited two people to smuggle the cocaine bricks from St. Croix to Miami. They planned to transport them on a July 11 flight.

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Surveillance footage on July 10 captured Ortiz boarding the flight in an oversized jacket, walking directly to rows 17 and 18, then closing the window of both rows. Eight minutes later, he exited the plane carrying packages consistent in size with the life vests removed from rows 17 and 18, the DOJ reported.

Ortizs co-defendant worked with an American Airlines gate agent to preboard the two smugglers. Once they were on the plane, the co-defendant told both smugglers to retrieve the cocaine from the life vest compartments in rows 17 and 18.

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The flight departed from St. Croix at 8 a.m. and landed in Miami at 11 a.m., the DOJ reported. Customs agents arrested the smugglers, who both pleaded guilty for possession and intent to distribute narcotics.

Ortiz faces a mandatory minimum of 10 years in prison and a maximum fine of $10 million. Hes also facing supervised release for five years and a special assessment of $100.
A Florida man known as the Monkey Whisperer pleaded guilty Thursday to selling an endangered primate to an unnamed celebrity client in California.

Jimmy Wayne Hammonds, 57, of Parrish pleaded guilty to violating the federal Endangered Species Act and Lacy Act, which protects wildlife from illegal trade, according to the U.S. Attorneys Office Middle District of Florida.

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Hammonds could face a maximum sentence of up to eight years, but his sentencing hearing has not been set.

He was the owner and operator of the Monkey Whisperer LLC, which bred and sold wildlife.

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His legal problems began between 2017 and 2018, when he arranged a deal to sell and transport a capuchin monkey to a California buyer who could not lawfully possess the animal.

Hammonds booked travel for the capuchin with wildlife transporters who were not permitted to possess the capuchin species of monkey in neither Florida nor Nevada, where the buyer agreed to meet for the deal.

Hammonds received $12,650 for the transaction.

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Authorities learned of the illegal trade and seized the monkey from the California buyers residence.

On top of that indictment, Hammonds is facing charges due to illegally selling other primates as well.

Investigators learned Hammonds sold a cotton-top tamarin to a Wisconsin buyer for $4,500.

In April of 2017, Hammonds made a similar deal to an Alabama buyer, and later that same year he sold two cotton-top tamarins to a South Carolina buyer for $9,000.

He made an additional $1,200 in transportation.

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Prosecutors say he submitted false records to a law enforcement officer, and also informing his buyers to tell anyone who asked where they purchased the monkeys that they got them from flea markets.

Jpedersen@orlandosentinel.com
PHILADELPHIA  An Amtrak engineer was cleared of charges related to a deadly, high-speed derailment that left eight people dead and hundreds injured in Philadelphia in 2015.

The jury acquitted 38-year-old engineer Brandon Bostian of causing a catastrophe, involuntary manslaughter and reckless endangerment after a little more than an hour of deliberations.

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FILE- In this Wednesday, May 13, 2015, file photo, emergency personnel work at the scene of a derailment in Philadelphia of an Amtrak train headed to New York. A Philadelphia jury is expected weigh criminal charges Friday, March 4, 2022, against Amtrak engineer Brandon Bostian over the deadly derailment. (Patrick Semansky/AP)

Eight people died and more than 200 people were injured when the train rounded a curve at more than twice the speed limit and derailed in north Philadelphia. Amtrak agreed to pay $265 million in civil settlements to victims and their families.

Bostians lawyer described him as a lifelong train buff who had a perfect work record until he was distracted by people throwing rocks in the area just before the crash. Prosecutors say he acted with reckless disregard for the safety of his passengers, who were traveling from Washington to New York that Tuesday evening. The train had stopped at Philadelphias 30th Street station about 10 minutes earlier and was heading north.

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Federal safety investigators concluded that Bostian lost what they call situational awareness on the track, thinking he was past an S-curve and on a straightaway when he accelerated from about 65 mph to 106 mph. In fact, he was in the middle of the S-curve, and going more than twice the speed limit. Investigators found no evidence he was impaired or using his cellphone at the time.

Amtrak settled the civil litigation with victims and their families in 2016 for $265 million, a new, higher limit set by Congress after the crash. The criminal case had a more unusual history.

Philadelphias top prosecutor declined to pursue criminal charges after the National Transportation and Safety Board released its findings. The state Attorney Generals Office later took the case to trial, after some victims families pressed for charges.

The jury had begun weighing the charges Friday morning when the judge announced around noon that an alternate would step in. The jury then began its deliberations from the start.

The jury had to decide whether Bostian sped up intentionally, knowing the risks  the threshold required for criminal negligence.

Common Pleas Judge Barbara McDermott said the juror whose sister died Thursday night came to court Friday and began deliberations before asking to be relieved.
A family runs over the tracks trying to board a Lviv bound train, in Kyiv, Ukraine, Thursday, March 3, 2022. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's office says a second round of talks with Russia aimed at stopping the fighting that has sent more than 1 million people fleeing over Ukraine's borders, has begun in neighboring Belarus, but the two sides appeared to have little common ground. (AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda)
Prosecutors drop charges against man in 2020 crash near Orondo after learning of his death
State transportation officials have identified 11 potential sites along Interstate 4 in Central Florida as part of plans to build hundreds of truck parking spaces to help alleviate a dire shortage of places where long-haul truckers can stop to rest.

But Florida Department of Transportation officials acknowledged that even if all the proposed truck stops are constructed between Interstate 95 and the Polk County line over the next decade, there are no plans to shutter the two existing rest areas just north of State Road 434 in Longwood that have become increasingly clogged with semis.

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The news angered Harry Jaeger and other nearby residents who for years have urged FDOT to close those facilities, saying the big rigs create too much noise and exhaust fumes for the residential area.

Why wouldnt they close them? I dont understand that, Jaeger said Thursday as he studied a map showing FDOTs plans to build a 200-space truck rest area on a 26-acre tract of industrial land southwest of the Orange Boulevard and Monroe Road intersection, and east of I-4.

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The noise has gotten worse and worse, said Jaeger, who has lived near the current eastbound I-4 rest area for 32 years. Its painful.

Jessica Ottaviano, an FDOT spokeswoman, said up to 20,000 big trucks use that section of I-4 every day. But there are only 36 designated truck parking spaces along that 75 mile stretch of highway, making it the worst place in the state for truck drivers to find a place to pull off the road and rest.

And by the year 2040, there will be a need for 883 more truck parking spaces on I-4, according to FDOT.

Right now, we need to meet the current demand, Ottaviano said. Every new spot is going to make a difference because there is a great need.

After the new truck rest area in Seminole is built, then well take into consideration closing the existing Longwood rest stops, Ottaviano said.

But we build one [rest area] with 200 spaces and take away two with 36 spaces? It makes no sense, she said. We want to balance the needs of the truckers and work with the community.

The two Longwood rest areas  on each side of I-4  were built in the mid-1960s when the interstate was constructed, primarily with cars in mind. But over the past decade, an increasing number of truckers have parked their vehicles at the rest areas.

Truckers generally are required to rest for 10 consecutive hours after driving up to 11 hours. They are also limited to 11 hours of driving within a 14-hour window.

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Because each rest area has fewer than 20 parking spaces, many truckers park along the side of the highway. In 2019, FDOT limited parking at the facilities strictly to truckers, to allow more spaces.

Dominick Salfi, an attorney and former circuit court judge who has long lived near the rest area on westbound I-4, angrily said there is no reason to have truck rest areas in an urban area surrounded by homes.

These shouldve been closed a long time ago, he said. Truckers are able to find places [off the interstate] in urban and suburban areas to park and to rest and to go to the bathroom, and so forth.

FDOTs plans to build a larger truck parking area near Sanford is better than nothing, Salfi said. But hes pessimistic about the states plans.

I dont have a lot of faith in DOT or the fact that its their fourth or fifth study thats been done since 2013, Salfi said. I cant be enthusiastic. Im 85 years old.

Stacy Dudley, whose home is within sight of the eastbound rest area, said he would love nothing more than for FDOT to close the facility. But like Salfi, he also is not optimistic.

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It doesnt make a lot of sense to keep a rest stop open where there is a residential area, said Dudley, who has lived in the area for 18 years. Im not anti-truck. I understand that we need trucks to get us our merchandise.

The 10 other potential sites in Central Florida being studied by FDOT for future truck rest areas include:

Two spots in Osceola County off Osceola Polk Line Road, just west of U.S. 17.

Seven areas in Orange County, including at Sand Lake Road and South John Young Parkway; on Landstreet Road West, just west of State Road 528; on Landstreet Road West, near Parkers Landing; on Landstreet Road West, west of Tussway Boulevard; on Tradeport Drive, east of South Orange Avenue; and two on Tradeport Drive near Ringhaver Drive.

One site in Volusia County straddling I-4 just west of I-95.

Because the FDOT study is still in the preliminary stages, officials could not say the costs, when construction would begin, or when the areas would be completed. Its likely that the FDOT would work with landowners to operate and maintain the facilities, officials said.

The Seminole County rest area, however, would likely be the first one built, officials said.

Seminole Commissioner Lee Constantine called the Seminole site near Sanford perfect because it sits in an industrial area easily accessible from I-4.

It is the most logical, Constantine said. And it will take the pressure off, and the number of trucks, at the Longwood rest areas. If I was a trucker, this one would be my first choice.

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mcomas@orlandosentinel.com
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NUJ members at RTE gathered in Dublin on March 3 to express solidarity with the people of Ukraine and to highlight the plight of media workers under attack from Russia.

Seamus Dooley, Assistant General Secretary condemned the Russian invasion of Ukraine and urged NUJ members to support the IFJ Journalist Safety Fund.

The NUJ has asked the Department of Foreign Affairs to provide practical assistance to Ukraine journalists through the IFJ.

The IFJ thanks the NUJ and all its members for its amazing solidarity with journalists under threat in Ukraine  and with the national Union of Journalists of Ukraine (NUJU) and Independent Media Trade Union of Ukraine (IMTUU) following the invasion by Russian troops.

 Helped evacuate journalists in danger

 Secured vital funds to provide first aid and other urgent medical supplies

 Provided safety equipment to journalists covering the war

 Met with UNESCO, the UN and media freedom groups to build support for journalists and independent media in Ukraine

 Been in constant contact with our Ukrainian affiliates to assess their needs

But there is much still to do. As the war goes on and the fighting intensifies, now more than ever it is important to increase our efforts and deliver greater solidarity.
Aldwin Quitasol, a correspondent for the Daily Tribune, was walking home on March 1 when two unidentified assailants shot at him. The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) and its affiliate, the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP) condemn the attack on Quitasol and urge Filipino authorities to expedite their investigation into the case to bring the perpetrators to justice.

According to the NUJP, Quitasol, who is also the president of the Baguio Correspondents and Broadcasters Club (BCBC), was walking home at 10:00pm along Quezon Hill in Baguio City, when two assailants fired at him.

Quitasol allegedly dropped to the ground when he heard the gunshot and was not hit. His wife claimed he saw two men driving off the scene on a motorcycle.

Quitasol filed a police report on March 3, however, when police searched the area, they could not find any bullet casing or fragment.

In a statement to Inquirer, Quitasol maintained that he had not received any threats prior to the attack.

This is not the first time the journalist has been targeted. Earlier this year, Quitasol was invited by the police to join a dialogue under the Community Support Program White Area Operation (CSP-WAO). This, however, turned out to be an offshoot of a controversial plan by government officials to target journalists and activists suspected of sympathising with communist rebels.

The NUJP said: An attack to one is an attack to all. We call on Baguio City Police Director, PCol. Glenn Degawan Lonogan, to immediately investigate the case and ensure the safety of every journalist in the city amidst these persistent attacks.

The IFJ said: The attack on Aldwin Quitasol is deeply concerning. The IFJ urges Filippino authorities to thoroughly investigate the case, punish the perpetrators and cease impunity for crimes against journalists in the Philippines.
OPPO, the leading global smart device brand, made big strides at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2022 held in Barcelona, Spain. From unveiling its new brand proposition to introducing breakthrough technologies, OPPO is solidifying its leadership and strength in the global tech scene.

Driving Global Leadership Through Inspiration

OPPO believes that the digital age has brought a lot of unprecedented challenges and uncertainties to the world. To help bring together its clients, partners, communities, and even consumers, OPPO unveiled its newest brand proposition, Inspiration Ahead. OPPO aims to channel optimism and inspiration to rise against challenges and difficulties, and to reinforce the proper mindset needed to move forward.

Our new brand proposition Inspiration Ahead is rooted on our value of Benfen, which guides us to always do the right thing and keep an open mind as we strive to seek truth. We draw from inspiration the strength and confidence we need to face the future no matter the challenge it brings. We also hope to inspire and encourage more people to be more optimistic and similarly believe in the future being better, said Chiqui Tapawan, OPPO Philippines Marketing Communications Head.

Unveiling the Ultimate 5G Flagships

Among the many innovations that OPPO introduced at MWC 2022 is its cutting-edge flagship Find X5 Series, raising the bar on smartphone imaging and premium design.

It boasts a futuristic aesthetic which includes a dedicated imaging Neural Processing Unit, MariSilicon X, to overcome night time recording; a dual flagship IMX766 camera system in partnership with Sony; Hasselblad Natural Color Calibration to elevate smartphone photography; unrivaled performance and ultra-fast 5G connectivity; and, an incredible SuperVOOC Flash Charging technology.

Powered by the latest generation, multi-core Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 processor, Find X5 Pro is OPPOs most powerful flagship to date. Qualcomms integrated 2022 flagship GPU offers 30% higher performance, and 25% more power efficiency than the previous generation, in addition to enhanced AI capabilities.

Pushing Boundaries through SuperVOOC Flash Charge technologies

At MWC 2022, OPPO officially unveiled the latest 150W SuperVOOC flash charge. charge can charge a 4,500 mAh battery to 50% in 5 minutes and deliver a 100% charge in just 15 minutes. It also helps keep the battery performing at 80% of its original capacity after as many as 1,600 charge cycles, doubling the current industry standard of 800 cycles.

To improve the charging experience, 150W SuperVOOC flash charge features the Battery Health Engine, which is powered by OPPOs customized battery management chip and includes two key technologies: Smart Battery Health Algorithm and Battery Healing Technology. Together, they improve battery health, safety, and performance by optimizing the hardware and software.

OPPO also introduced a record-breaking charging technology with its 240W SuperVOOC flash charge. By taking a holistic approach to the safety of the adapter, charging cable and the handset, OPPO minimizes potential safety hazards and risks, providing an efficient and secure charging solution.

240 SuperVOOC adopts five safety protection measures and an intelligent control chip to control the voltage, current, and temperature to deliver a safe charging solution. It also has a customized battery safety monitoring chip to monitor battery damages, and 13 temperature sensors to reduce overheating and avoid abnormalities. It can charge a 4,500mAh battery to 100% in about 9 minutes, truly pushing the boundaries of charging power.

Converting 5G Signals into Better Wi-Fi Connections

5G CPE devices convert 5G signals into Wi-Fi or LAN network connections, allowing multiple devices to connect to a 5G service in environments such as the home, office, and more. OPPO 5G CPE T2 is the latest in OPPOs 5G CPE product lineup.

It features a Qualcomm Snapdragon X62 5G modem-RF system and OPPOs updated O-Reserve 2.0 smart antenna technology. This allows the device to convert 5G signals into fast and stable Wi-Fi connections. OPPO has currently reached agreements with operators across the Middle East, Africa, Asia-Pacific, and Europe to empower even more people in more regions with the connective power of 5G CPE in the second half of 2022.

These are only some of the groundbreaking innovations that OPPO unveiled at MWC 2022, making it a true leader in the global tech scene. Customers and partners will soon see and get their hands on these innovations as OPPO prepares to make its newest offerings commercially available throughout 2022.
Years ago, when I worked for the world's largest commercial printer, the company bought a factory in Pennsylvania with a strong union presence. I was part of a team sent to that location to help integrate that facility into the larger organization.

And also to attempt to lay the groundwork for an eventual vote by employees to decertify the union.

Which was awkward, since the rules regarding what we could and couldn't say were clear. We couldn't criticize the union. We couldn't stop people from meeting. By law, we couldn't threaten or promise or entice or imply, yet somehow we were supposed to convince employees they didn't need a union.

We decided (among ourselves) that safe was way better than sorry, and all we would do is answer questions if asked. About pay rates at our plant. About benefits. About overtime rules. Whatever people asked, we would tell them. That's all we would do.

Because the rules regarding unions were, and still are, clear.

Except maybe not to Elon Musk.

Or at least maybe not in the past.

In 2019, a judge found Tesla management at the company's Fremont, California, factory guilty of a number of illegal anti-union tactics. In all, 12 actions violated U.S. labor laws. Like banning employees from wearing pro-union buttons and T-shirts. Like allowing security workers to "harass" employees distributing union pamphlets. Like repeatedly "interrogating" union organizers, firing one of them. Like moving four pro-union employees to salaried positions so they could no longer advocate on behalf of the union.

So when President Biden mentioned General Motors and Ford during his recent State of the Union address, Musk apparently felt slighted. After all, GM and Ford have a strong union presence.

Tesla does not. (In fact, Tesla recently moved some operations to Texas, a right-to-work state.)

Musk's response?

Sounds good: Musk openly invites the UAW, the United Auto Workers union, to hold a union vote at their convenience, and he -- and Tesla -- will do nothing to stop them.

Yep, sounds good.

But is also basically meaningless.

By law, Musk can't do anything to stop them. Attempting to organize is their right. Musk's saying "Tesla will do nothing to stop them" is like me telling Navy SEALs they can't work out on the public beach in front of our house.

Sure, I can tell them they can't, but I risk getting my butt kicked in response. (Not really; they're nice guys.)

Musk can tell the union they can't hold a vote, but he would risk getting his butt kicked by the government.

Even so, Musk's tweet is still a good move. Where unions are concerned, his past is clearly checkered. He got in trouble for a 2018 tweet the National Labor Relations Board found to be unlawful. There's the 2019 ruling.

Musk is famous for taking strong stands, but taking an anti-union stand is one he's unlikely to win, whether practically or in terms of perception.

Because sometimes safe really is better than sorry.
At age 11, Semyon Dukach and his family fled the Soviet Union in 1979 with just $100 among them. He would become a professional blackjack player, a founder of technology companies Vert and Fast Engines, and an angel investor to more than 100 companies. In 2017, he founded his venture capital firm, One Way Ventures, which invests in immigrant-founded businesses. Last week, Russia's invasion of Ukraine prompted Dukach and his wife, Natasha--a health care data analyst who emigrated from Ukraine on a cultural exchange visa as a musician a little over a decade ago--to quickly get deeply involved. They rushed to the Ukraine-Romania border and quickly figured out refugees' biggest need: cash, which they provided, no questions asked. The pair have since launched a website, CashForRefugees.org, and are looking to ramp up their efforts. --As told to Rebecca Deczynski

My wife, Natasha, and I were very upset about the events that were unfolding in Ukraine. She's Ukrainian, and we both have a lot of friends who live there. Last Thursday, the day that Russia invaded, she started booking Airbnbs in Romania for people who were crossing the borders by foot, but by Friday, it started to feel overwhelming--there were so many logistical questions and it wasn't clear that this was what people actually needed.

So, she looked at me and said, "I'm going over there." I said, "OK, I'm going with you." We got our 17-year-old to step up to watch our younger child, and we got on a plane Friday night with about $5,000 in cash.

We landed in Romania on Saturday and drove for about six hours in a rental car to get to a border crossing in a town called Siret. It was incredibly emotional and heart-wrenching. We saw so many women who had spent hours traveling, sometimes walking in the snow, having just said goodbye to their husbands, maybe to never see them again. They were in a daze and didn't know what they needed--so we had to figure out how to help.

By Sunday morning, we realized that arranging housing for refugees wasn't much of a help--there were already bigger organizations effectively doing that and busing people to hotels. There were also plenty of people giving away food, blankets, and diapers. It dawned on us that what these women actually needed was a little bit of money in local currency, just to maintain a feeling of freedom.

It wasn't that all the refugees were poor--many of them just weren't able to grab cash before they had to leave, so many were in a position of needing food and shelter and not having any money on them. So, we started giving them cash--we landed on about $100 in Romanian currency as the ideal amount, and got some more money from all the ATMs we could find.

It took us a while to figure out the best way to approach people--at first many were reluctant, but once they realized what we were offering, it became very emotional. We ended up distributing about $7,000 to 100 women, most of them with children. On the plane back, I built a website and started thinking about how we could scale this. We raised about $50,000 in 24 hours, and my wife is returning this weekend with about six other people to try to distribute about $100,000 at a few different boarder crossings.

We don't think this will become a huge nonprofit, but it can certainly be more than two people, and it has the potential to help other refugees beyond this crisis. Ideally, we want to have people working in pairs--one person giving out the cash and another person taking photos as a verification that the money's going to the right place. We've had to move very quickly, so we don't yet have the structure to raise tax deductible donations--we're working on partnering with an established charity for that.

I'm sure other people have given out cash to refugees before, but it's challenging to work with physical bills--there's a lot of overhead that has to go on to make sure it's secure. Eventually, it might be better to figure out a way to send money directly to recipients for several months to help them get on their feet. But for now, a little bit of cash right at the border crossing itself feels like a good place to start.

I'm very passionate about immigrants--I myself was a refugee who came to the U.S. from Moscow in 1979, and my VC firm invests in immigrants from all over the world who come to the U.S. to build big, disruptive businesses. We believe that people should be able to go anywhere in the world, regardless of their papers, to start a company. The world should be more open for opportunity.
Bringing lots of people together into shared spaces was not a great business to be in when Covid struck. Despite strong growth since launching as a co-working space in 2018, it was clear that Columbus, Ohio-based Hopewell would need to pivot to survive.

In March of 2020, the company was operating as a place for entrepreneurs and freelancers to work, but also as office space for large corporations to offer to their team members. A partnership with a high-end office furniture distributor also allowed Hopewell to serve as "a living showroom." Annual revenue reached $225,000 in 2019, and co-founders Emily Kaplan and Brian Zuercher were looking to grow their team and expand to Kentucky.

But even before the pandemic got going, it was clear that the corporate clients utilizing their space had a deeper need. Using Hopewell's space was "filling a gap" with corporate clients, Kaplan remembers, but the co-founders foresaw an opportunity to "solve an even bigger problem than the space problem," which was the need to improve the overall work experience for corporate employees. Did employees and teams for their customers want more flexibility with their schedules, access to alternative working environments, or the opportunity to meet people from other firms housed in a shared space? All or some of those things? And how much?

What Hopewell found was a desire on the part of corporations "to understand the work experience at their company."

That was a need that ramped up just as Covid emptied out their co-working space: "No one knew what the future of work experience was going to look like," Kaplan says. She and Zuercher had already begun researching the opportunity to provide an assessment tool for companies that wanted to know how best to serve their teams.

As the pandemic hit, they pivoted hard into building a platform that could provide a survey to employees assessing the work experience at a given company and a dashboard of results. By April 2020, their minimum viable product was ready, and they were preparing to rebrand under the name Align.

The tool asks employees to respond to 10 minutes of questions, the answers to which enable Align to "analyze the good, bad, and ugly of the current work experience." It delivers insights to its customers about what employees need more or less of, what they spend their time working on, and what environments and other circumstances help them do their best work. In addition to the initial delivery, add-on consultations are made available.

Conveniently, Align already had a way to get its tool to market. The corporate furniture dealer Kaplan and Zuercher were partnered with also needed a way to help customers understand their work experience needs, and was getting questions along those lines. So where Hopewell had been a sales channel of sorts for corporate furniture dealers prior to the pandemic, in the company's new model, the existing enterprise relationships of those furniture dealers became a sales channel for Align.

While corporations were figuring out how to get employees back to the office--and which office, and when, and more--"we were the tool to help gather facts and data," Kaplan recalls.

In 2021, the company generated $650,000 in revenue, nearly triple that of 2019, before the pandemic and the pivot to a platform. Its customers included the public utility NiSource, the national accounting firm BKD, and the Army Corps of Engineers. Today, those customers can learn what employees think about their current work experience, and also what kinds of changes could be meaningful to support their teams, according to Kaplan. "That may be something as hard as a policy, or it may be as soft as the time of day people like to get their work done," she says.
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France's Macron announces bid for presidential re-election

Xinhua) 11:24, March 04, 2022

File photo taken on Dec. 10, 2021 shows French President Emmanuel Macron greeting German Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz (not in picture) at the Elysee Palace in Paris, France. French President Emmanuel Macron

PARIS, March 3 (Xinhua) -- French President Emmanuel Macron officially announced on Thursday that he would run for a second term in office in the upcoming presidential elections scheduled for April.

In a letter addressed to the French people, Macron described the different reforms of the government and the challenges faced by the country. "All of this has allowed us to be credible and to convince our main neighbors to start building a powerful Europe."

"This is why I request your trust for a new term as President of the Republic. I am a candidate to invent with you, in the face of the challenges of the century, a singular French and European response," he wrote.

Speaking of his goals for a possible second term, Macron said that he would try to make France "become a great ecological nation that will be the first to exit its dependence on gas, petroleum and coal."

He also promised to continue to lower taxes.

Macron won France's presidential election runoff in 2017, beating his far-right rival Marine Le Pen.

File photo taken on Nov. 11, 2021 shows French President Emmanuel Macron delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the 4th Paris Peace Forum at la Grande Halle de la Villette in Paris, France. French President Emmanuel Macron officially announced on Thursday that he would run for a second term in office in the upcoming presidential elections scheduled for April. (Xinhua/Gao Jing)

File photo taken on Nov. 11, 2021 shows French President Emmanuel Macron arriving to attend the opening ceremony of the 4th Paris Peace Forum at la Grande Halle de la Villette in Paris, France. French President Emmanuel Macron officially announced on Thursday that he would run for a second term in office in the upcoming presidential elections scheduled for April. (Xinhua/Gao Jing)

File photo taken on July 14, 2021 shows French President Emmanuel Macron attending the annual Bastille Day military parade in Paris, France. French President Emmanuel Macron officially announced on Thursday that he would run for a second term in office in the upcoming presidential elections scheduled for April. (Xinhua/Gao Jing)

File photo taken on Nov. 11, 2021 shows French President Emmanuel Macron arriving to attend the opening ceremony of the 4th Paris Peace Forum at la Grande Halle de la Villette in Paris, France. French President Emmanuel Macron officially announced on Thursday that he would run for a second term in office in the upcoming presidential elections scheduled for April. (Xinhua/Gao Jing)

File photo taken on Feb. 28, 2022 shows French President Emmanuel Macron waiting for guests at the Elysee Palace in Paris, France. French President Emmanuel Macron officially announced on Thursday that he would run for a second term in office in the upcoming presidential elections scheduled for April. (Xinhua/Gao Jing)

(Web editor: Xia Peiyao, Liang Jun)
TALLAHASSEE  President Joe Biden says his administration will not stand for a 15-week abortion ban approved by the Florida Legislature.

Biden blasted Floridas push to prohibit most abortions after 15 weeks with no exceptions for rape and incest in a tweet Friday morning.

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Last night, the Republican-controlled Florida Legislature passed a dangerous bill that will severely restrict womens access to reproductive health care, Biden wrote. My Administration will not stand for the continued erosion of womens constitutional rights.

Last night, the Republican-controlled Florida legislature passed a dangerous bill that will severely restrict womens access to reproductive health care. My Administration will not stand for the continued erosion of womens constitutional rights.  President Biden (@POTUS) March 4, 2022

Vice President Kamala Harris also issued a statement Friday, saying the bill is extreme by any standard.

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The right of women to make decisions about their own bodies is non-negotiable, she said. If signed into law, Floridas bill would violate the constitutional right to abortion that the Supreme Court has recognized for nearly 50 years.

The Florida Senate approved the ban Thursday night, sending it to Gov. Ron DeSantis. At a news conference in Jacksonville, DeSantis said he would sign the bill.

I think the protections are warranted, and I think well be able to sign that in short order, he said Friday. He also said he considered an abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy to be late term.

Asked about Bidens criticism, Christina Pushaw, a DeSantis spokeswoman, said in an email, The bill has not yet been delivered to the governors office. However, Governor DeSantis is pro-life and is looking forward to it hitting his desk.

Political Pulse Weekly Get latest updates political news from Central Florida and across the state. >

Abortion is currently legal up to the 24th week of pregnancy in Florida.

Senate President Wilton Simpson predicted the measure will pass muster with the U.S. Supreme Court, which has become more conservative because of appointments made by former President Donald Trump.

The high court is expected to rule on Mississippis 15-week ban over the summer.

[ RELATED: Florida Legislature votes to ban most abortions after 15 weeks ]

The legislation, with an effective date of July 1, would allow an abortion to be performed after 15 weeks only if two doctors certify a fatal fetal abnormality that will result in death upon birth or imminently thereafter. It also includes an exception if an abortion is necessary to save the pregnant womans life or avert serious bodily injury.

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Biden has clashed with Floridas Republican leaders over other legislation. The White House denounced a measure known by opponents as the dont say gay bill. That proposal seeks to limit classroom instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity and could get final approval as early as Tuesday.

Bidens administration also supported school districts that imposed school mask mandates, which DeSantis opposed.

sswisher@orlandosentinel.com
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In its exchange filing, Angel One Limited informed the investors that the Fintech company has appointed Dr. Pravin Bathe as the Chief Legal & Compliance Officer. He will be responsible for managing and guiding the companys dynamic regulatory environment.Dr. Bathe has a rich experience of 21 years in providing strategic guidance to companies. Prior to being associated with Angel One, Dr. Bathe was working with the Citi group as their compliance Head for India. There he headed compliance for investment banking, institutional equities, and research analysis as well as certain global compliances.Angel Ones Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Narayan Gangadhar stated that the company is thrilled to be welcoming Dr. Pravin Bathe as its Chief Legal & Compliance Officer. He brings with him an impeccable experience of 21 years that will add value to the company and strengthen the corporate processes and laws in the company.
On Thursday, Vodafone Idea Limited , in its Board meeting, has approved a fund raise of Rs14,500 crore from its promoters  UKs Vodafone Group and Aditya Birla Group, India. It will also raise funds from external investors.The company will be raising Rs4,500 crore through a preferential issue at Rs13.30 per share to its promoters or other related entities. Out of the total amount, Vodafone Groups share will be Rs3,375 crore or $450 million which will be infused by sale of companys stake in Indus Towers.So far, the Board has agreed to an issue of up to 3,38,34,58,645 equity shares at Rs. 13.30 a share, aggregating Rs4,500 crore to Euro Pacific Securities Ltd and Prime Metals Ltd. of the Vodafone Group and Oriana Investments Pte Ltd.Companys Board also approved another fund raise worth Rs10,000 crore via equity and debt instruments, mentioned the company in its statement.Post this development, Vodafone Ideas stock opened higher at Rs11.30, but speedily erased all the gains and was trading 3.60% lower at Rs10.70 against its previous closing price of Rs11.10.


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Ukrainian patriots are fighting for what we believe in
Sanjiv Kapoor, who has been seen in senior management positions at SpiceJet and Vistara, is the new CEO at Jet Airways 2.0, as per TNN. Right now he is the president of Oberoi Hotels & Resorts and he will begin his new role on April 4.

I am happy to have Sanjiv join our team I am certain he will be able to lead Jet Airways and make it become the most preferred full-service carrier of India. Sanjiv is a seasoned aviation professional. I always believe in investing in human capital and by having Sanjiv as the CEO and Vipula as the CFO, I am certain Jet Airways will reclaim its lost glory and surpass everyones expectation, said Murari Lal Jalan, lead partner of the Jalan-Kalrock consortium and proposed non-executive chairman of Jet Airways.

PTI

I am looking forward to getting back to aviation, an industry I am passionate about, with Jet Airways, one of the warmest, classiest and most loved brands to have graced Indian aviation. Even though Jet Airways has been out of operation for three years, it still has a large fan base of loyal customers who miss it every day and cant wait for it to take to the skies again. Working together with a very strong team of experienced aviation professionals that is being put together by the Jalan-Kalrock Consortium, I look forward to leading the charge in rebuilding Jet Airways into the most preferred customer-oriented airline once again, a people-focused airline for the digital age, said Sanjiv.

Ahead of joining the Oberoi group, in 2021, Kapoor was the chief strategy and commercial officer at Vistara and COO of SpiceJet.

PTI

Vast experience

Kapoor has done his MBA from Wharton and began his airline career with Northwest Airlines, which is now merged with Delta, in USA in 1997. There his role was in finance and corporate planning.

In 2004, he joined Bain and Company (in Singapore, and subsequently in Dallas and London) as a leader in their airline practice. He has also worked inTemasek Holdings, Singapore, and Oracle Corporation.

He brings a lot to the table with his vast experience and there is a lot to look forward to.

For more on news and current affairs from around the world, please visit Indiatimes News.


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TALLAHASSEE  A ban on most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy is now headed to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is expected to sign it into law.

State senators voted 23-15 Thursday night in favor of the measure with no exceptions for rape or incest, an issue that spurred hours of emotional debate and protests.

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Senate President Wilton Simpson predicted the measure, which opponents say is aimed at severely restricting abortion rights granted under the U.S. and Florida constitutions, would survive court review.

For the first time in many years, you are going to have a bill that I believe will be tolerated in the U.S. Supreme Court, Simpson said.

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Abortion is currently legal up to the 24th week of pregnancy in Florida.

The legislation, with an effective date of July 1, would allow an abortion to be performed after 15 weeks only if two doctors certify a fatal fetal abnormality that will result in death upon birth or imminently thereafter. It also includes an exception if an abortion is necessary to save the pregnant womans life or avert serious bodily injury.

Republicans rejected numerous attempts by Democrats to amend the legislation to include exceptions for rape, incest and human trafficking. Democrats also tried to remove a requirement that two doctors  instead of one  approve an abortion after 15 weeks.

The debate included personal testimony from Democratic Leader Sen. Lauren Book, who publicly disclosed for the first time she was drugged and raped by several men when she was a child. The Plantation Democrat is known as an advocate for survivors of sexual assault and abuse, having previously spoken about how she had been abused by a live-in nanny.

Book pleaded with senators not to put women on the clock who had suffered serious trauma. She said she expects lawmakers will face a backlash from the public for what she later called an all-out attack on womens rights.

It is very scary to people all over the country, and people are paying attention, Book said.

State Sen. Kelli Stargel, R-Lakeland, defended excluding an exception for rape and incest, saying a fetus is a child that shouldnt be aborted because of the manner in which it was conceived.

These are babies, she said. It is not a choice. It is a child. I know weve seen it on the posters, but it is the truth.

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Abortion is the womans decision, Sen. Gary Farmer, D-Fort Lauderdale, argued. It is not the governments decision.

And the male-dominated Legislature, and men in general, will never know what it really feels like to make that choice, he said.

Political Pulse Weekly Get latest updates political news from Central Florida and across the state. >

DeSantis has called the 15-week ban very reasonable and said he thought it was something he would be able to sign.

The Florida House approved the abortion ban last month in a nearly party-line vote after vocal protestors in the gallery were removed by Capitol police.

Anti-abortion groups see 2022 as the year to act.

Roe v. Wade, the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case that established a constitutional right to abortion, is on shaky ground because of conservatives appointed to the court by former President Donald Trump.

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Floridas Supreme Court is now solidly conservative with DeSantis appointees filling three of the seven seats during his first year in office. Previous justices have protected abortion rights using a privacy clause in the state constitution.

Mississippis 15-week abortion ban, which lower courts have blocked from taking effect, served as the model for Floridas proposal. The Supreme Court is expected to rule on Mississippis law over the summer.

sswisher@orlandosentinel.com
This post is part of a series sponsored by CoreLogic.

When a natural catastrophe hits a community, there can be significant long-term impacts. When a large portion of the local population leaves the area during the rebuild process, local economies struggle, contributing to job displacement and the destruction of real estate and other assets. And even after reconstruction efforts are completed, the financial and social costs continue to be a burden on impacted areas. 2021 was a year of a thousand paper cuts, with wildfires, hurricanes, severe weather, and winter storms occurring all across the country.

Not all risk is the same

Data indicates that natural hazards are elevating risks and costs for insurers and homeowners, as indicated by the increase in total written premiums. For example, according to the California Department of Insurance, from 2017 to 2020, the total written premium in the state of California for dwelling fire and homeowners insurance combined has increased by more than 27%, from $8.7B to $11.1B.

CoreLogic data indicates that the combined sum of losses from major natural catastrophe events in 2021 totaled an estimate $56.92B. Wildfires, severe weather, hurricanes, and winter storms all contributed to this behemoth of a number. In the 2021 Climate Change Catastrophe Report, CoreLogic highlights the magnitude of damage coming from each of these perils, covering critical pieces of information such as dollars of property damage, reconstruction cost value, and number of homes impacted.

Not all risk is the same, and every natural hazard event has its own unique consequences  from total destruction, to personal property loss, to structural damage. For each of the four perils outlined in the report, the impact on homes will vary in degree, reinforcing the importance for insurers to regularly assess their portfolios using appropriate risk models to simulate the possible degrees of peril severity. By understanding various scenarios, insurers may be able to better protect their policyholders, rebuild faster and help establish community resilience.

Recovery can be complicated and costly

Reconstruction costs are an important element of a communitys recovery. While costs for various construction materials and laborers have always been in flux, this has especially been the case amid the COVID-19 pandemic. CoreLogic Residential Component Technology (RCT) data indicates that costs significantly increased between March 2021 and June 2021. More recent data, however, indicates that costs leveled out between June 2021 and September 2021 as supply chains normalized after a year of disruption. This leaves costs meaningfully higher than they were two years ago, creating challenges for insurers in 2022. These price and supply uncertainties were and continue to be a strain on response and recovery efforts to the wide range of major natural catastrophe events that occurred throughout the nation.

Resilience is a combined effort

Using modern insurance solutions can play a significant role in addressing increasing climate change-induced hazard events and the impact they have on real estate economies. With nearly every property in the U.S. holding some exposure to hazard risk, it is critical for governments, insurers, mortgage servicers, and homeowners to work together to mitigate the impact. To learn more about resilience in the face of natural catastrophes, see the CoreLogic 2021 Climate Change Catastrophe Report.

Topics Catastrophe Profit Loss Homeowners
Maryland lawmakers highlighted a package of measures Wednesday to tighten cybersecurity in the state.

Maryland House Speaker Adrienne Jones noted that Baltimore County was one of about 50 school systems across the nation attacked with ransomware in 2020, costing the county millions of dollars. In December, Marylands health department was hit by a ransomware attack that impeded information about health metrics relating to COVID-19.

This package will help give our state agencies and local governments every tool in the toolbox to secure our IT networks and ensure our response to a cyberattack is swift, unified and coordinated, Jones, a Baltimore County Democrat, said during a videoconference.

One of the measures would increase coordination between state and local governments in cybersecurity.

Other states have moved toward centralization, and we join them in that move nationally, which makes it easier to address a threat as well as makes it, at least from what weve seen, less expensive to then recover from a threat, said Del. Pat Young, a Baltimore County Democrat.

Another measure would provide funds to local governments for information technology upgrades. Lawmakers are planning to use federal money, as well as some of the states budget surplus.

A third bill addresses emergency response. It would create a Cyber Preparedness Unit to support local governments in assessing how vulnerable they are to cyberattacks. The bill also would create a Cybersecurity Fusion Center to serve as a central location for information about incidents.

Mark Ripper, director of Carroll Countys Department of Technology Services, said the fusion center will better enable the sharing of information so local governments can take steps to protect themselves from an attack that has happened elsewhere.

Its really great to know, if somebody else has been attacked, exactly what happened, Ripper said.

Keith Young, an official in Montgomery Countys Enterprise IT Security Office, called the package of legislation an important first step. He said a chain is only as strong as the weakest length.

Unless (the) state and counties work together to build a statewide strong chain of cybersecurity defenses, cyber attackers will find government entities who do not have the proper protections in place and use those weaknesses to attempt to gain access to connected entities like Montgomery County, Young said.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Legislation Cyber Maryland
A Ukrainian cyber guerrilla warfare group plans to launch digital sabotage attacks against critical Russian infrastructure such as railways and the electricity grid, to strike back at Moscow over its invasion, a hacker team coordinator told Reuters.

Officials from Ukraines defense ministry last week approached Ukrainian businessman and local cybersecurity expert Yegor Aushev to help organize a unit of hackers to defend against Russia, Reuters previously reported.

On Monday, Aushev said he planned to organize hacking attacks that would disrupt any infrastructure that helps bring Russian troops and weapons to his country.

Everything that might stop war, he told Reuters. The goal is to make it impossible to bring these weapons to our country.

Aushev said his group has already downed or defaced dozens of Russian government and banking websites, sometimes replacing content with violent images from the war. He declined to provide specific examples, saying it would make tracking his group easier for the Russians.

Russia calls its actions in Ukraine a special operation that it says is not designed to occupy territory but to destroy its southern neighbors military capabilities and capture what it regards as dangerous nationalists.

A Ukrainian defense attache in Washington declined to comment on Aushevs group or its relationship with the defense ministry. Aushev said his group has so far grown to more than 1,000 Ukrainian and foreign volunteers.

The group has already coordinated with a foreign hacktivist organization that carried out an attack on a railway system.

After word spread of the formation of Aushevs team, the Belarusian Cyber Partisans, a Belarus-focused hacking team, volunteered to attack Belarusian Railways because they said it was used to transport Russian soldiers.

The Cyber Partisans disabled the railways traffic systems and brought down its ticketing website, Bloomberg News reported on Sunday.

On Monday, a Cyber Partisans spokeswoman told Reuters the group carried out those attacks and confirmed her organization was now working with Aushevs group.

The spokeswoman said because her group had brought down the reservation system, passengers could only travel by purchasing paper tickets in person. She sent Reuters a photo of a paper, handwritten ticket issued on Monday.

We fully side with Ukrainians, she said. They are now fighting for not only their own freedom but ours too. Without an independent Ukraine, Belarus doesnt stand a chance.

Reuters could not confirm attacks against the Belarus railways traffic system. The companys reservation website was down on Tuesday afternoon. A railway spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.

Officials at the Russian embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told a Russian news outlet on Tuesday that Russian embassies were under cyberattack by cyber terrorists from Ukraine.

Beyond striking back at Moscow, Aushev said his team would help Ukraines military hunt down undercover Russian units invading cities and towns.

He said his group had discovered a way to use cellphone tracking technology to identify and locate undercover Russian military units moving through the country, but declined to provide details.

Russian troops are reportedly using commercial cell phones in Ukraine to communicate, multiple media outlets reported.

Over the last week, numerous Russian government websites have been publicly interrupted by reported distributed denial of service (DDoS) style attacks, including one for the office of President Vladimir Putin.

(Reporting by Joel Schectman and Christopher Bing from Washington, and James Pearson from LondonEditing by Kieran Murray and David Gregorio)

Topics Cyber Washington Russia Ukraine
With this weeks U.N. climate science report laying bare the staggering economic costs and losses already faced from climate change, an inevitable question arises: who should pay?

Within U.N. climate negotiations, loss and damage refers to the costs countries are incurring from climate-related impacts and disasters  costs that disproportionately hit the worlds poor and vulnerable who did least to cause global warming.

Drawing on more than 34,000 references from the latest scientific papers, the report released on Monday by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) confirmed that economic sectors from agriculture and fishing to tourism were already being damaged.

Extreme heat has fueled crop losses. Rising seas have turbo-charged cyclones that have razed homes and infrastructure, slashing economic growth.

And as the bills mount up, poorer countries are left with even less to spend on heath, education and infrastructure  compounding suffering.

Its an unending situation, said Anjal Prakash, a lead IPCC author and research director at the Indian School of Business.

The report is likely to intensify a years-long political fight over funding to pay for climate-linked losses, ahead of the next U.N. climate summit, COP27, in Eygpt in November.

Vulnerable countries for years have sought funding to help them shoulder these costs. So far, it hasnt arrived, and rich nations have resisted steps that could legally assign liability or lead to compensation.

The mention of loss and damage in the 2015 Paris Agreement came with the caveat that it does not involve or provide a basis for any liability or compensation.

Last November at the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, poor countries called for a special loss and damage fund to be established, but the United States and other rich nations resisted. The delegates agreed to set up a U.N. body to help countries address loss and damage, and to continue discussions towards making arrangements for funding.

But there is no clarity on where the money would come from.

We cant just create more talk shops when people are dying, said Harjeet Singh, senior adviser at Climate Action Network. He said COP27 needed to establish the funding facility that developing countries, including China, had called for at COP26.

Singh and other campaigners said the IPCC report  which has been approved by nearly 200 governments  could intensify pressure on the worlds most powerful nations.

It will help us to say that science is clear, the impacts are clearer now. So you are accountable for this, and you have to pay for this, said Nushrat Chowdhury, a policy advisor at NGO Christian Aid.

ACCOUNTING FOR COSTS

The reports discussion of climate losses is bolstered by recent improvements in attribution science, which allows scientists to confirm when climate change caused or worsened a specific extreme weather event.

Still, putting a number on the resulting losses remains contentious. For example, can climate-linked losses from a weather event be separated from losses caused by poor disaster planning? Can costs be counted for losses outside our economic systems, such as when nature is degraded or a community burial site is destroyed?

We are still debating that in the scientific community, said another IPCC lead author Emily Boyd, a professor at Swedens Lund University.

As climate disaster costs mount and U.N. negotiations remain stuck, some are considering other options.

Liability and compensation have other avenues to be taken forward, which are courts, said Saleemul Huq, an adviser to the Climate Vulnerable Forum group of 55 countries.

Sophie Marjanac, lawyer at environmental law firm ClientEarth, said the IPCC report will generally support litigation to address climate change.

The legal avenue faces other obstacles, however.

Last year a federal appeals court rejected New York Citys attempt to use state law to hold five oil companies liable to help compensate harm caused by global warming. The court said the regulation of greenhouse gas emissions should instead be addressed under federal law and international treaties.

Challenges in climate change litigation are related to the law, not to do with the science, Marjanac said. The science has been clear, very clear for years.

(Reporting by Kate Abnett; Additional reporting by Valerie Volcovici in Washington, D.C.; Editing by Katy Daigle and Alex Richardson)

Topics Profit Loss Talent Climate Change
Leading Italian insurer Generali said on Thursday it was pulling out of Russia after Moscows invasion of Ukraine, while Intesa Sanpaolo, Italys biggest bank, is reviewing its presence there.

Generali said that it would be closing its Moscow office and would wind down its Europ Assistance business in Russia, confirming an earlier source-based Reuters report.

Intesa Sanpaolo, Italys biggest bank, is conducting a strategic review of its presence in Russia, while helping staff in Ukraine leave the country, a spokesperson said.

Earlier, Societe Generale warned of the possibility that Russia could strip the bank of its local operations, in one of the starkest warnings yet from a Western company about the potential impact of the Ukraine crisis.

The French bank, whose $20 billion exposure to Russia is one of the largest among foreign lenders, said it was working to reduce risks in the country.

Generali said in a statement that it will also give up its seats on the board of Ingosstrakh, one of Russias largest insurers in which it holds a 38.5% stake.

There are no immediate plans to sell the stake in the short term but the group is assessing its options, a source close to the matter told Reuters of the Generali move.

Europes No 3 insurer said its exposure to the Russian market in terms of investments and insurance business was under constant evaluation.

The moves come as Western countries seek to distance themselves from Russian business after President Vladimir Putin ordered his troops into its neighbor Ukraine.

Intesa has financed major investment projects in Russia, such as the Blue Stream gas pipeline and the sale of a stake in oil producer Rosneft. It handles more than half of all commercial transactions between Italy and Russia.

Condemnation

With 800 staff in Ukraine, Intesa said it was providing assistance to its employees on the ground by offering accommodation in the other countries where it operates.

In central and eastern Europe, Intesa also has subsidiaries in Slovakia, Slovenia, Hungary and the Czech Republic.

We fully condemn what is happening, its spokesperson said.

Intesas credit exposure to Russia was 5.57 billion euros ($6.16 billion) at the end of 2021, or 1.1% of its total, while its subsidiaries in Russia and Ukraine have assets of 1 billion euros and 300 million euros respectively, which together represent just 0.1% of its total.

A UniCredit spokesperson declined to comment on whether Italys second-biggest bank could take similar action over its business in Russia, where it runs the countrys 14th largest bank with around 4,000 staff.

UniCredit, whose exposure to Russia totals 14 billion euros, could easily absorb a full writeoff of its Russian business given its ample capital reserves.

But that would still leave it with some 6 billion euros in cross-border exposure, including loans to large corporates.

A full write-off of its Russian business would cost UniCredit just over 1 billion euros, sources told Reuters on Wednesday, shaving 35 basis points off the banks highest-quality capital ratio.

($1 = 0.9045 euros)

(Reporting by Valentina Za, Gianluca Semeraro, Agnieszka Flak and Stephen Jewkes; Editing by Giulia Segreti, Jason Neely, Jane Merriman, Jonathan Oatis and Alexander Smith)

Topics Carriers Russia Generali Life Assurance (Thailand) Plc.
The state of Michigan sued the owner and operator of a hydroelectric dam, alleging that its mismanaged drawdown of a lake to do repairs created sediment that has choked a 30-mile stretch of the Kalamazoo River, impeded recreational use and threatened public safety.

The lawsuit, filed March 1 in Ingham County court, seeks compensation for damages and fines along with an order to restore the ecosystems of the river and Morrow Lake and clean up sediment deposits that in some places are 12 feet deep. The defendants are Eagle Creek Renewable Energy and its subsidiary STS Hydropower, the owner and operator of the dam in Kalamazoo Countys Comstock Township.

The lack of urgency by the companies to address these hazards left no other alternative than to take this civil action, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel said in a statement.

Liesl Clark, director of the state Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy, said it prefers to work cooperatively to ensure prompt, effective cleanups, but in this case the responsible party has not fulfilled their obligations to the law and the community.

The firms parent company is Ontario Power Generation, which is owned by the government of Ontario, Canada, according to the suit.

In a statement, STS Hydropower said the emergency drawdown of the lake _ which began in the fall of 2020 _ enabled repairs that eliminated the risk of a dam failure that could have caused disastrous flooding. It said it reduced the drawdowns depth at the direction of state agencies and released water at a reduced rate until refilling the lake in early 2021.

STS said it had been in settlement discussions with the state for over a year but was sued almost five months after their last contact.

We are still open to a fair resolution _ in court or otherwise _ that takes into account all the circumstances and the best interest of everyone involved, the company said.

The suit alleges the sediment has trapped deer and, in one case, a man who had to be rescued. It also has reduced water quality, smothered critical habitat for wildlife and restricted public boat access to the river, according to the state.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Lawsuits Michigan
The Texas Department of Insurance, Division of Workers Compensation (DWC) reported more than 78,000 COVID claims and 422 fatalities as of Feb. 6, 2022.

DWCs March report, COVID-19 In The Texas Workers Compensation System, is based on a data call with 74 selected insurance carriers.

According to the report, 48% of COVID claims and 52% of fatalities included first responders and correctional officers. 61% of claims involved injured employees who tested positive or were diagnosed with COVID. Insurance carriers accepted 52% of COVID positive test claims and denied 45% of COVID positive test claims. There were only 166 disputes filed with DWC as of Feb. 6.

Insurance carriers and employers paid approximately $55.5 million in indemnify benefits on COVID claims, including $29.8 million in employer salary continuation, $23.2 million in workers compensation income benefits, $2.2 million in death benefits and $292,850 in burial benefits. Political subdivisions have paid 72% of costs, while commercial insurance carriers have paid 23% and the State of Texas has paid 5%.

Carriers paid $35.1 million in medical costs on COVID claims. Hospital / facility services made up four-fifths, or $27.8 million, of medical payments. Of medical payments, 74% have been paid by political subdivisions, followed by insurance carriers at 22% and the State of Texas at 4%.

About one out of five claims that received professional or hospital/facility services received these services beyond one month post-injury, the report said. COVID claims peaked in Jan. 2022 with 11,161 reported to DWC, up from 4,492 in Dec. 2021. The total number of workers compensation claims reported to DWC from Jan. 2020 through Dec. 2021 was 15% higher than the two prior years. The increase in COVID claims bucked a 20-year trend in Texas of fewer workers compensation claims reported each year.

Topics COVID-19 Texas Claims Workers' Compensation
After several months of investigation, Florida regulators have filed an official action against a public adjuster that insurance companies had complained about, a move that could soon lead to the suspension of his license and fines of several thousand dollars.

The Florida Department of Financial Services on Wednesday lodged the administrative complaint against Scott David Thomas, an all-lines adjuster based in Weston, near Miami. The document alleges that Thomas, president of Indemnity Public Adjusters, repeatedly stonewalled insurance company adjusters, appraisers and engineers, and attempted to block access to properties when the insurers tried to inspect after claims were filed.

Thomas is hereby notified that the Chief Financial Officer intends to enter an order imposing such penalties as may be provided under the provisions of state law, reads the 36-page complaint.

Statutes outlined in the complaint show that Thomas could have his adjusters license suspended, revoked or non-renewed, and could face fines of $5,000 for each violation of the adjusters code of ethics. Thomas now has 21 days to request a proceeding to contest the allegations, the DFS document notes.

If he does not respond, a final order of suspension or revocation will be entered against you, the complaint reads.

Thomas could not be reached for comment Thursday.

The Thomas complaint appears to be one of the few official actions taken by DFS against adjusters in the past several months, despite allegations from insurers that bad practices are escalating losses and adjustment expenses.

Insurance companies have argued that some adjusters have fraudulently jacked up the extent of damage in claims and have gone to great lengths to thwart insurers own inspections. Others have charged that some adjusters have conflicts of interest and have ownership in or have family members who own construction companies that get most of the restoration work recommended by the public adjusters.

Last summer, Universal Property & Casualty Insurance Co. asked DFS for a declaratory statement on the legality of adjusters having interest in restoration firms, naming three adjusters with apparent conflicts.

Universal surprised some in the Florida insurance community when it withdrew its petition in September, saying it would pursue the matter through other avenues. A week later, DFS dismissed a court petition against another adjuster firm, Contender Claims, and the notorious Strems law firm. The petition alleged that Contender may have used unlicensed adjusters.

Contenders principals refused to comply with subpoenas issued by DFS seeking company records. A court upheld the department on the subpoenas, but the department later notified the court that it had voluntarily dismissed its petition. DFS did not explain why it dismissed the petition.

The licenses for the Contender and Strems public adjusters that were named in the DFS court papers remain active and valid, the DFS website showed Thursday.

On the Scott Thomas investigation, the Insurance Journal filed an open records request with the DFS in early November, but no documents or information have been produced. A spokesman for DFS said this week that the request is still being processed.

The complaint against Thomas gives eight examples of the tactics the adjuster allegedly used to block insurers and appraisers efforts to inspect properties, or which violated rules and statutes in other ways. In some instances, Thomas became belligerent and disparaging toward the insurers adjusters, refused to answer questions and directed questions to the homeowners attorney.

In other cases, Thomas demanded proof of the insurance adjusters liability insurance or workers compensation insurance before he would grant access to the property. He also demanded resumes and documentation to show if the insurers experts had any conflicts of interest. In a few cases, Thomas made it difficult for the insurers to schedule a time, or changed the available times, or would agree to inspections only on Saturdays, outside Citizens Property Insurance Corporations working hours, the complaint notes.

All of those tactics ran afoul of the law, DFS said.

Section 626.854(14)(b), Florida Statutes  provides that a public adjuster may not restrict or prevent an insurer, company employee adjuster, independent adjuster, attorney, investigator, or other person acting on behalf of the insurer from having reasonable access at reasonable times to any insured or claimant or to the insured property that is the subject of a claim, the DFS document reads.

In one case, Thomas accused Citizens of acting in bad faith.

He wrote: I mean the fact that three separate letters were sent to my client on 3 May 2019 ( only two of which that could be read) is just an example of what appears to be a clear act of Bad Faith Claims Handling on the carriers part (sic), the complaint said, quoting from correspondence from Thomas.

In at least one instance, Thomas requested a criminal background check on Citizens adjusters.

Frankly speaking, I think it essential to know that the person entering my clients home is not only a threat to my client or their family but also, that he or she is competent to act in the capacity as a claims adjuster in the State of Florida, Thomas wrote in an email to a Citizens adjuster.

In one claim filed with Tower Hill Insurance, Thomas provided a compact disk that he said contained more than 100 photos of the damage to a property. But a Tower Hill attorney said the disk contained no photos but included the film, Hotel Transylvania.

Topics Carriers Florida Property
The Florida Senate approved a bill that could limit many homeowners roof claims, which some insurers have called a major factor behind the states insurance crisis, but the bills future in the House chamber is far from certain.

The Senate on Thursday voted 28-11 in favor of Sen. Jim Boyds SB 1728, which would allow more policies to pay actual cash value on roofs, instead of full replacement, and would address many other aspects of insurance that supports said are driving up losses and premiums. But with just a week left in the 2022 session, time may be running on the other side of the Capitol.

A similar bill in the House, HB 1307, has passed committees but it differs from SB 1728 in a number of ways. And House Speaker Chris Sprowls, speaking to reporters this week, did not heartily endorse the need for an insurance rescue bill.

Were evaluating all the proposals  but Im also cognizant of the fact that we just passed a very significant insurance bill last session, Sprowls said, in a video segment on the Florida Channel. If what has been told to me in the eight years that Ive been here, from the insurance lobby, is true, that it takes 18 months to see an impact on rates, then were not yet seeing the impact on rates from 2021s SB 76.

SB 76, signed into law last summer, attempted to limit solicitation by aggressive roofing companies; limited attorney fees and required advance notice of claims lawsuits. But the insurance industry has said more reforms are needed in the long term and the short term, especially after a major property insurer was put into liquidation this week and others have stopped writing new policies.

Boyd said that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has said the insurance changes are important, according to the Florida Politics news site. But Sprowls said this week that he has not heard from the governors office about the insurance reform bills.

Im optimistic that (the House will) consider what weve done and then well talk about how to fine tune it as we move forward, Boyd told Florida Politics. If we do nothing  the market will get worse, rates will continue to go up. We just cant continue to let that happen to Floridians that were here to represent.

Photo: Florida House Speaker Chris Sprowls addresses the chamber.

Topics Florida Politics
TALLAHASSEE  Florida lawmakers are daring Gov. Ron DeSantis to veto new congressional district lines that he says are dead on arrival at his desk.

After the governor declared he would reject the plan, the House and Senate on Friday approved a bill (SB 102) that includes a pair of maps that DeSantis and Democrats oppose for different reasons.

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The House crafted the unusual two-map plan to try to satisfy DeSantis, who contends that a sprawling North Florida district is unconstitutional and should be condensed in the Jacksonville area. That district was drawn in the past to help elect a minority and is held by Al Lawson, a Black Democrat.

The House plan includes a primary map and a backup map, which would be used if courts reject the primary version. House members Friday voted 67-47 to approve the plan, with the Senate then quickly voting 24-15 to pass it.

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The plan will go to DeSantis, who has veto power over the maps.

Senate Reapportionment Chairman Ray Rodrigues, R-Estero, argued both maps drawn by the House would be deemed constitutional by the Florida Supreme Court. He also said the House plan is similar to a proposal approved earlier by the Senate in the way it addresses minority-held seats in Central Florida.

They havent matched our lines up exactly, Rodrigues said. But based upon what they have done, and a functional analysis has been performed on those (minority access) seats after they have proposed them, it is clear that we are preserving the opportunity for minority voters, which makes it constitutional.

Rodrigues added that gubernatorial vetoes typically include letters that can provide guidance about how proposals should be changed.

I would prefer to see whats articulated for the reason that this map is vetoed, should he choose to go down that road, Rodrigues said.

Before the votes Friday, DeSantis objected to the plan.

I will veto the congressional reapportionment plan currently being debated by the House. DOA, DeSantis tweeted.

Later, during an appearance in Jacksonville, DeSantis added that his legal folks have concerns about the House proposal and that he doesnt bluff.

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What makes you think after seeing me for however many years, what makes you think when I say Im going to do something that Im not going to follow through? DeSantis said.

Political Pulse Weekly Get latest updates political news from Central Florida and across the state. >

But Sen. Randolph Bracy, an Ocoee Democrat running for Congress this year, said during a Senate discussion that DeSantis goal is to remove Black districts and as a Senate, we should stand against what the governor is trying to do.

Rep. Carlos Guillermo Smith, D-Orlando, said the House just got played.

House Redistricting Chairman Tom Leek, R-Ormond Beach, said the House reached a different conclusion on the same information,

Say what you will about the governors involvement, at least he engaged, Leek said.

Rep. Tyler Sirois, a Merritt Island Republican who chairs the House Congressional Redistricting Subcommittee, said the House plan is far from an embarrassment and correctly balances the concerns and feedback of people who would be affected.

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The highest-profile issue has been North Floridas Congressional District 5. The Senate passed a congressional map in January that largely kept the current sprawling design of the district. But DeSantis contends the design is unconstitutional and wants to dramatically revamp it by condensing the district in the Jacksonville area.

The House-drawn primary map takes a similar approach to DeSantis in putting the district in Northeast Florida. The backup plan would be more in line with what the Senate proposed, continuing to stretch the district across North Florida.
Cadence Bank, found in parts of the South and Midwest, has merged two of its own subsidiaries to provide customers with a wider range of financial, human resource and insurance services, the company announced.

Cadence Bank is a commercial bank headquartered in Tupelo, Mississippi. It was formerly known as Bankcorp South, and now has offices in 10 states. The firm said that, effective March 1, its subsidiaries, BXS Insurance and Altera Payroll & Insurance will be combined.

BXSI already is the second-largest bank-owned insurance broker in the U.S., and the merger will allow human resources, employee benefits, banking, health insurance, property casualty insurance, risk management, payroll, taxes and other functions all in one place.

Topics Mississippi Human Resources
A Washington judge issued a stay on a rule banning the use of credit scoring by insurers in that state, and consolidated cases challenging the ruling, until the merits of the cases are decided.

The rule handed down from Insurance Commissioner Mike Kreidler was set to take effect Friday. It bans the use of credit-based insurance scores in the rating and underwriting of insurance to be in effect starting March 4 through three years after either the federal or state emergency declaration ends, whichever is longer.

Last week the American Property Casualty Insurance Association along with co-petitioners the Professional Insurance Agents of Washington, and the Independent Insurance Agents and Brokers of Washington joined with the National Association of Mutual Insurance Companies in filing a joint motion to transfer and consolidate separately filed petitions in Thurston County Superior Court.

The court consolidated the cases and e until the merits of the case are decided.

The groups issued a statement from Claire Howard, APCIA senior vice president, general counsel, and corporate secretary.

Commissioner Mike Kreidlers permanent rule is raising rates for over a million Washington consumers, Howards statement reads. We are pleased the court consolidated the legal challenges, transferred the separately filed petitions to a single court, and approved an immediate stay on the permanent rule. We look forward to explaining our legal arguments against this onerous and unnecessary rule that is ignoring risk-based pricing and raising premiums for lower risk Washington consumers.

A spokesperson for Kreidlers office declined to comment.

In mid-February the APCIA along with co-petitioners the PIA, and the IIABW together with NAMIC filed a joint motion to transfer and consolidate separately filed petitions in Thurston County Superior Court challenging Commissioner Kreidlers permanent rule banning credit history for at least 3 years.

The joint motion was submitted to Judge Wilson. On Feb. 23, Judge Wilson denied the transfer of both petitions to her court and assigned the consolidation and embedded transfer issue to NAMICs Judge Indu Thomas. A hearing took place before Judge Thomas on Feb. 25, 2022.

Thomas consolidated the APCIA, PIA, IIABW and NAMIC petitions in her court and stayed the permanent rule effective immediately. The permanent rule, which would have been effective on March 4, will remain stayed until the Judge reaches a final decision on the merits. We do not expect any order setting forth the schedule for briefing and arguing the merits will be entered until the Office of the Commissioner produces the agency record compiled in support of the permanent rule that is the subject of the stay.

Kreidler is also proposing a new transparency rule requiring insurers to provide policyholders with a written explanation for any premium change.

Related:

Topics Agencies Washington
Las Vegas police have agreed to a $300,000 settlement with the estate of a California man who said he was illegally questioned by officers during a traffic stop of a van carrying members of a motorcycle club.

James Iiams, a passenger in the van that was stopped in 2017, filed a lawsuit the following year accusing the police of violating the passengers constitutional rights by demanding their identification without probable cause.

Iiams died in June following a battle with colon cancer, but a lawyer for his estate told the Las Vegas Review-Journal he wouldve been satisfied with the settlement.

The main part of the settlement isnt the money, Stephen Stubbs said Monday after the Metropolitan Police Committee of Fiscal Affairs approved the settlement.

More important, he said, was that a federal judge also approved negotiated changes in the departments policy and training related to the questioning of a passenger during a traffic stop.

The van with a dozen passengers was headed to a charity event for a fallen motorcycle rider before police stopped them for driving without headlights. After an officer demanded identification, Iiams summoned Stubbs, who was at the nearby event.

Stubbs said police violated Iiams rights by asking him to identify his club affiliation.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Auto Law Enforcement
Russia and Ukraine have agreed on the need to set up humanitarian corridors and a possible ceasefire around them for fleeing civilians, both sides said after talks on Thursday, in their first sign of progress on any issue since the invasion.

Russian negotiators say another round of talks will likely be held shortly.

Vladimir Medinsky, Russian president Vladimir Putins adviser who led the Russian delegation in the talks in Belarus near the Polish border, said the parties positions are absolutely clear, they are written down point by point, including issues related to a political settlement of the conflict.

He added without elaboration that mutual understanding was found on part of them.

Leonid Slutsky, a senior Russian politician who was part of the Russian delegation in talks, said that the details of safe corridors will need to be worked out quickly.

He said that the next round of talks could lead to agreements, some of which would need to be ratified by Russian and Ukrainian parliaments.

Fighting continues

Russian forces are battling for control of a crucial energy-producing city in Ukraines south and gaining ground in their bid to cut off the country from the sea.

Ukrainian leaders, meanwhile, are calling on citizens to rise up and wage guerrilla war against the invaders.

Fighting continues at Enerhodar, a city on the Dnieper River that accounts for about one-quarter of the countrys power generation.

The mayor of Enerhodar, the site of the biggest nuclear plant in Europe, said Ukrainian forces were battling Russian troops on the citys outskirts.

Dmytro Orlov urged residents not to leave their homes.

Moscows advance on Ukraines capital in the north has apparently stalled over the past few days, with a huge armoured column outside Kyiv at a standstill.

And stiffer than expected resistance from the outmanned, outgunned Ukrainians has staved off the swift victory that Russia may have expected.

(PA Graphics)

But the Russian forces have brought their superior firepower to bear in the past few days, launching missile and artillery attacks on civilian areas and making significant gains in the south as part of an effort to sever the countrys connection to the Black and Azov seas.

Cutting Ukraines access to the coastline would deal a crippling blow to the countrys economy and allow Russia to build a land corridor stretching from its border, across Crimea, which has been occupied by Russia since 2014, and all the way west to Romania.

The Russians announced the capture of Kherson, and local Ukrainian officials confirmed that forces have taken over local government headquarters in the vital Black Sea port of 280,000, making it the first major city to fall since the invasion began a week ago.

Heavy fighting continued on the outskirts of another strategic port, Mariupol, on the Azov Sea, plunging it into darkness, isolation and fear. Electricity and phone service were largely down, and homes and shops faced food and water shortages.

Without phone connections, medics did not know where to take the wounded.

The Ukrainian and Russian delegations hold talks in Belarus (Maxim Guchek/AP)

A second round of talks between Ukrainian and Russian delegations were concluded in neighbouring Belarus.

Vladimir Medinsky, Russian president Vladimir Putins adviser who led the Russian delegation in the talks in Belarus near the Polish border, said the parties positions are absolutely clear, they are written down point by point, including issues related to a political settlement of the conflict.

He added without elaboration that mutual understanding was found on part of them.

Both parties confirmed a third round of talks would be held soon.

Mr Putin has long contended that Ukraines turn toward the West is a threat to Moscow, an argument he used to justify the invasion.

Mr Putin told French President Emmanuel Macron that he was determined to press on with his attack until the end, according to an official in the French presidents office.

I spoke to President Putin this morning. He refuses to stop his attacks on Ukraine at this point. It is vital to maintain dialogue to avoid human tragedy. I will continue my efforts and contacts. We must avoid the worst.  Emmanuel Macron (@EmmanuelMacron) March 3, 2022

Mr Macron admitted his efforts to broker peace had not yet borne fruit, saying in a tweet: I spoke to President Putin this morning.

He refuses to stop his attacks on Ukraine at this point.

It is vital to maintain dialogue to avoid human tragedy.

I will continue my efforts and contacts.

We must avoid the worst.

Russian President Vladimir Putin (Andrei Gorshkov/AP)

Despite a profusion of evidence of civilian casualties and destruction of civilian infrastructure by the Russian military, Mr Putin also called accusations that his military had attacked residential areas part of an anti-Russian disinformation campaign and insisted that Russia uses only precision weapons to exclusively destroy military infrastructure.

Ukrainians still in the country faced another grim day.

In Kyiv, snow gave way to a cold, grey drizzle as long lines formed outside the few pharmacies and bakeries that remain open.

New shelling was reported in the northern city of Chernihiv, where emergency officials said at least 22 civilians had been killed in a Russian bombardment of a residential area.

They warned that the number of casualties could grow as rescuers search the debris.

The mayor said he was struggling to organise safe passage for civilians.

Families with children fled via muddy and snowy roads in the eastern region of Donetsk, while military strikes on the village of Yakovlivka near the eastern city of Kharkiv destroyed 30 homes, leaving three dead and seven injured, and rescuers pulled 10 people from the ruins, according to emergency authorities.

Ukrainian authorities called on the people to wage guerrilla warfare against Mr Putins forces by cutting down trees, erecting barricades in the cities and attacking enemy columns from the rear.

Total resistance.  This is our Ukrainian trump card and this is what we can do best in the world, Ukrainian presidential aide Oleksiy Arestovich said in a video message, recalling guerrilla actions in Nazi-occupied Ukraine during the Second World War.

In just seven days of fighting, more than 2% of Ukraines population has been forced out of the country, according to the tally the UN refugee agency released to The Associated Press.

(PA Graphics)

The mass evacuation could be seen in Kharkiv, Ukraines second-largest city, with about 1.4 million people.

Residents desperate to escape falling shells and bombs crowded the railroad station and pressed onto trains, not always knowing where they were headed.

At least 227 civilians have been killed and 525 wounded in that time, according to the office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, though it acknowledged that is a vast undercount, and Ukraine earlier said more than 2,000 civilians have died. That figure could not be independently verified.

Meanwhile, a senior US defence official said the immense Russian column of hundreds of tanks and other vehicles appeared to be stalled roughly 16 miles from Kyiv and had made no real progress in the last few days.

The convoy, which earlier in the week had seemed poised to launch an assault on the capital, has been plagued with fuel and food shortages, the official said.

An outside kitchen and eating area is set up for displaced persons fleeing Ukraine, in Przemysl, Poland (Czarek Sokolowski/AP)

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that Russian land forces have stalled and Moscow is now unleashing air attacks, but that they are being parried by Ukrainian defence systems, including in Kherson.

Kyiv withstood the night and another missile and bomb attack. Our air defences worked, he said.

Kherson, Izyum  all the other cities that the occupiers hit from the air did not give up anything.

Kyiv mayor and former boxer Vitali Klitschko said explosions heard overnight in the Ukrainian capital were Russian missiles being shot down by air defence systems.

In Kherson, the Russians took over the regional administration headquarters, said Hennady Lahuta, governor of the region.

But he added that he and other officials continued to perform their duties.

From Kherson, Russian troops appeared to roll toward Mykolaiv, another major Black Sea port and shipbuilding centre to the west.

The regional governor, Vitaliy Kim, said that big convoys of Russian troops were advancing on the city.

A group of Russian amphibious landing vessels also headed toward the port of Odesa, farther west, the Ukrainian military said.
Michael Lynn told a bank manager that he intended to stay in the country in the wake of newspaper reports regarding his business affairs, his multi-million euro theft trial has heard.

Former solicitor Michael Lynn (53) is on trial at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court accused of the theft of around 27 million from seven financial institutions.

Mr Lynn, of Millbrook Court, Red Cross, Co Wicklow, has pleaded not guilty to 21 counts of theft in Dublin between October 23, 2006, and April 20, 2007.

It is the prosecution case that Mr Lynn obtained multiple mortgages on the same properties in a situation where banks were unaware that other institutions were also providing finance.

The financial institutions involved are Bank of Ireland Mortgages Bank Ltd, Danske Bank, Irish Life and Permanent, Ulster Bank, ACC Bank PLC, Bank of Scotland Ireland Ltd, and Irish Nationwide Building Society (INBS).

On Friday, Thomas Brennan, a senior manager at Bank of Scotland Ireland from 2004 to 2010, gave evidence. Mr Brennan told John Berry BL, prosecuting, that he was introduced to Mr Lynn when Mr Lynn was already a client of the bank. After this introduction, he said he took over managing the relationship with Mr Lynn.

Mr Brennan said that in November 2006, Mr Lynn sent him a letter outlining a proposal to purchase 10 investment properties and seeking 70% financing to fund these purchases. The court heard evidence of 10 loans that Mr Lynn took out with the bank over a three-month period between February and May 2007.

The court heard that in October 2007, a number of newspaper reports were published in relation to Mr Lynn's business affairs. As a result of these reports, we arranged a meeting, Mr Brennan said.

Mr Brennan said he attended the meeting with a number of colleagues, while Mr Lynn had two colleagues with him. During the meeting, Mr Lynn asserted he fully intended to address the claims made against him, Mr Brennan told the court. He asserted his intention to stay in the country to address these issues.

Mr Lynn also asserted his intention to remain available to bankers to resolve this, Mr Brennan said. When Mr Berry asked if another meeting was held with Mr Lynn after this, Mr Brennan replied: No.

After the October 2007 meeting, the bank took the decision to review all of Mr Lynn's affairs, the court heard. As a result of the review, it was found that nine of the 10 properties were registered and the bank's interest had been secured, Mr Brennan said.

In these nine properties, the bank's own solicitors were involved in registering the bank's interest, the court heard. In relation to the tenth property, Mr Lynn undertook to provide security and a bank solicitor accepted this proposal, the trial heard.

The bank was left at a loss of the mortgage value of around 224,000 in relation to this property. Mr Brennan said that searches of the registry of deeds and land registry found that other banks had also provided security for the nine properties secured by Bank of Scotland Ireland, including Bank of Ireland, Permanent TSB and Ulster Bank.

Mr Brennan said the bank was never informed other loans had been drawn down on these properties. He said he would not have advanced money to Mr Lynn if he had known these other loans had been drawn down.

The trial resumes next week before Judge Martin Nolan and the jury.
Alan Kelly has backed Dublin TD Ivana Bacik to succeed him as leader of the Labour party.

Mr Kelly announced he was stepping down from the position earlier this week amid concerns over the direction the party was headed.

Yesterday, TDs Aodhan O Riordain and Duncan Smith confirmed they would not be contesting the leadership.

In his first interview since confirming the move to step down, Mr Kelly told Tipp FM that Ms Bacik would "almost certainly" become leader and that he hoped the party would coalesce around her.

Ivana is incredible, she was fighting issues before they became fashionable. She deserves her chance, so let's give it to her, Mr Kelly said.

Mr Kelly said after his colleagues informed them of their views on the party, the decision to step aside was a straightforward one.

"They approached me and said I didnt have the collective support of them, and to be honest with you I accepted it straight away," he said.

He also said that given his long relationships with them, particularly the likes of Sean Sherlock and Duncan Smith, there was "no point" in fighting back against the heave.

TDs Aodhan O Riordain and Duncan Smith confirmed they would not be contesting the Labour Party leadership. Picture: Sasko Lazarov / RollingNews.ie

However, he said their conversations contained no drama.

Mr Kelly told Tipp FM on Friday that there were three primary reasons for his resignation.

Firstly, he said his accession to the top of the party during the Covid pandemic left him in a very strange place politically.

There was only one topic for two years: coronavirus, and how we were going to deal with it.

"It was very difficult to do opposition politics during those first two years," he said.

The second reason Mr Kelly cited was Labours performance in recent opinion polls.

Stats, polls, its very simple: We werent rising in them. The party poll numbers were stagnant.

Lastly, Mr Kelly said, that from a party perspective, it was time we moved on from the period in which he was a member of the government from 2011 to 2016.

He said this was a very significant factor which was referenced to him by his Labour colleagues.

Quizzed about whether speculation over a proposed appointment of one of his relatives to Labours backroom team influenced his decision, Mr Kelly said there were no other reasons involved.

It is what it is, he said.

Commenting on surprise among grassroots party members to his resignation, Mr Kelly acknowledged that some were upset and angry and lots of other things as well.

However, Mr Kelly insisted stepping aside was the right thing to do.

Alan Kelly has backed Dublin TD Ivana Bacik to succeed him as leader of the Labour party. Picture: Sasko Lazarov / RollingNews.ie

Despite a seemingly uncomfortable on the plinth appearance on Tuesday, Mr Kelly said he and his colleagues went for a drink afterwards.

We were together throughout, we knew what we were doing, and we were together after," he said.

And look, I was doing leaders yesterday in the Dail with my colleagues sitting around me, and thats life.

As for what he will do in his post-leadership life, Mr Kelly said he was looking forward to spending more time with his family, particularly his parents.

Theres upsides to everything," he said.

Speaking more generally about politics in Ireland in 2022, Mr Kelly said it was a very tough game and that if he knew when he began his political career what he knows now, he may have thought twice about entering the political arena.

It's different now. It's social media, its constantly on.

That said, Mr Kelly said his intention was to run again, but that he would reflect on that closer to the time.
Ukraine has informed the International Atomic Energy Agency that staff who have been kept at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant since Russian troops took control of the site a week ago are facing psychological pressure and moral exhaustion, the United Nations atomic watchdog has said.

IAEA director general Rafael Mariano Grossi said that the staff must be allowed to rest and rotate so their crucial work can be carried out safely and securely.

Mr Grossi received a joint appeal from the Ukraine Government, regulatory authority and the national operator which added that personnel at the Chernobyl site have limited opportunities to communicate, move and carry out full-fledged maintenance and repair work, the IAEA said in a statement.

Update 8: #Ukraine tells IAEA that #Chornobyl NPP staff facing psychological pressure and moral exhaustion since #Russia took control of site; @RafaelMGrossi says they must be allowed to rest & rotate in order to carry out crucial work safely & securely. https://t.co/58muzu2bYv pic.twitter.com/KG4CFcEf7l  IAEA - International Atomic Energy Agency (@iaeaorg) March 3, 2022

Reactor number four at the power plant exploded and caught fire in 1986, shattering the building and spewing radioactive material high into the sky.

Even 36 years later, radioactivity is still leaking from historys worst nuclear disaster.

Ukraine has lost regulatory control over all the facilities in the Chernobyl exclusion zone to the Russians and asked the IAEA to undertake measures in order to reestablish legal regulation of safety of nuclear facilities and installations within the site, the statement added.

An abandoned Ferris wheel stands in the park in the ghost town of Pripyat, Ukraine, close to the Chernobyl nuclear plant (Efrem Lukatsky/AP)

Mr Grossi has repeatedly stressed that any military or other action that could threaten the safety or security of Ukraines nuclear power plants must be avoided.

I remain gravely concerned about the deteriorating situation in Ukraine, especially about the countrys nuclear power plants, which must be able to continue operating without any safety or security threats, he said.

Any accident caused as a result of the military conflict could have extremely serious consequences for people and the environment, in Ukraine and beyond.
An Argentinian court sentenced a Roman Catholic bishop to four and a half years in prison for sexual abuse of two former seminarians in a major blow to Pope Francis, who had defended Gustavo Zanchetta following initial allegations.

The prosecutors office in the northern province of Salta reported the conviction and sentence on its Twitter account and said he had been ordered arrested.

The conviction in the popes homeland hits at Francis personal credibility since he had initially rejected accusations against Zanchetta, the former bishop of Oran, and created a job for him at the Vatican that got him out of Argentina.

Francis has defended his handling of the case, insisting that the bishop defended himself well when confronted with the first allegations that he had pornographic images on his mobile phone.

Francis also defended the decision to give him a job in one of the most sensitive Vatican offices, the treasury that manages the Holy Sees investments and assets, saying Zanchetta had been prescribed psychological retreats each month in Spain and it did not make sense for him to return to Argentina between each session.

Pope Francis (Gregorio Borgia/AP)

Local authorities began to investigate after the allegations emerged publicly in early 2019, when the newspaper El Tribuno de Salta reported complaints about Zanchettas conduct as bishop in Oran, about 900 miles northwest of Buenos Aires.

Five priests made a formal accusation before church authorities against the bishop in 2016, accusing him of authoritarianism, financial mismanagement and sexual abuse at the Saint John XXIII Seminary.

Prosecutor Maria Soledad Filtrii Cuezzo told the court that investigators had established the truthfulness of witnesses against the bishop, citing their internal logic, context and precise details.

Zanchetta had flown back to his home country from Rome to face the charges.

He has denied the charges and said he is victim of revenge by priests in Oran with whom he had differences.

The pope had ordered a church trial into the case, though the results of that are not known.
Burma ASEAN Special Envoy To Visit Myanmar This Month

Cambodia's Foreign Minister Prak Sokhonn addresses the media at the ASEAN foreign ministers' retreat in Phnom Penh on February 17. / AFP

A special envoy for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is to visit Myanmar for four days later this month.

Cambodias foreign minister Prak Sokhonn told the Cambodian media he would visit from March 20 to 23.

State-run Agence Kampuchea Presse said the visit will focus on the five-point consensus endorsed by ASEAN in April last year, referring to agreements to address the crisis and stop the violence, between regime leader Min Aung Hlaing and the blocs leaders.

Min Aung Hlaing failed to honor the agreement and more than 1,500 people have been killed by the junta.

ASEAN has since barred the junta chief from further summits.

In January, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen visited Myanmar after the country took over the rotating ASEAN chair from Brunei.

He later admitted Myanmars regime has made no progress in resolving the crisis and said a solution is unlikely during the remainder of his year as chair.

It is unclear if Prak Sokhonn will meet detained State Counselor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi during his visit.

Brunei refused to send an envoy last year after the junta denied access to the jailed leader.



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Myanmar Junta Set to Axe Police Units Because of Shortage of Officers

Myanmar Military Conglomerate Shifts HQ to Capital Amid Juntas Security Fears

Myanmar Junta Seizes Hundreds of Opponents Homes
Burma Myanmar Junta Set to Axe Police Units Because of Shortage of Officers

Police at a crowd management training session in 2015. / The Irrawaddy

Myanmars military regime is planning to axe six units from the Myanmar Police Force and transfer the personnel from the axed units to other police departments, according to striking police officers.

Among the units set to be cut are the Maritime Police Force, Aviation Police Force, Tourist Security Police Force, Oil Field Security Police Force, Forestry Security Police Force, and Highway Police Force, a striking police captain from the Maritime Police told The Irrawaddy.

The decision to axe the units was reached at a recent police meeting in Naypyitaw, and the cuts are expected to begin once they are approved by the juntas Minister of Home Affairs.

The Myanmar Police Force has at least two dozen departments besides the six units set to be axed. Before last years coup, the police was reported to have 100,000 personnel. The current number of police is unknown, as thousands of officers have joined the Civil Disobedience Movement (CDM), while others have retired or been killed by anti-regime resistance groups.

Personnel from the units to be scrapped have not yet been officially informed about the details of the planned cuts. But rumors and speculation on social media have resulted in low morale, with some officers complaining.

One police major from the Tourist Security Police Force in Sagaing Region said: We know nothing more than what we have seen on social media. There is still no official notice about it.

Some 7,000 police have joined the CDM, according to striking police officers. The police are also having difficulty recruiting new officers, as soldiers wearing police uniforms have taken part in brutal crackdowns on peaceful anti-coup protesters, marring the image of the force.

Now the junta is planning to use personnel from the six units set to be axed to fill shortages in the departments of the police regarded as more important, said striking police officers.

A township police chief who is still serving said: There are not enough police for highway security. But they are working in emergencies in cooperation with relevant organizations. It is not OK to axe the Highway Police Force. It is necessary for the security of highways. Travelers will suffer if it is disbanded. The Highway Police Force helps people in cases of road accidents, vehicle breakdowns and other emergencies.

Although police who have served for 30 years are entitled to voluntary retirement, the regime has now banned them for retiring, as well as preventing officers from retiring on health grounds, according to family members of police.

Myanmars military has looked down on the Myanmar Police since the time of the former junta led by Senior General Than Shwe. And there has always been tension between police officers and personnel transferred from the military to take up senior positions in the police force. Former military personnel also receive more rapid promotion and better jobs, despite not being trained as police officers.

Police officers who oppose military rule have been detained by the junta, including police Lieutenant Colonel Zaw Win from the Criminal Investigation Department and police Lieutenant Colonel Aung Nwe Oo, the police chief of Yinmabin District, Sagaing Region.

The Myanmar Police CDM Channel, a group of striking police officers, said that the regimes trust in the police is declining, and that personnel from military security affairs are sharing less information with police forces. The junta is also believed to be using civilian informants to spy on the police.



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Myanmar Military Conglomerate Shifts HQ to Capital Amid Juntas Security Fears

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TALLAHASSEE  The Florida House avoided a vote Thursday that would have prohibited the state from investing in Russian companies, citing a technicality for not taking up the proposal.

State Rep. Andrew Learned tried to amend a bill dealing with the states retirement system to divest holdings in Russian-based assets.

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The Republican-controlled Florida House ruled Learneds amendment out of order on a technicality. His proposal sought to punish Russia for its invasion of Ukraine. It would have prohibited the Florida Retirement System from investing in any company doing business with the Russian Federation.

Ill say it, Im 100% OPPOSED to dictators like [Russian President Vladimir] Putin, the Brandon Democrat tweeted. I stand with the people of #Ukraine, and Im willing to put my $ where my mouth is.

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My amendment to divest #Florida's Retirement System's $300m in Russian-based assets was just defeated by House Republicans. I'll say it, I'm 100% OPPOSED to dictators like Putin, I stand with the people of #Ukraine, and I'm willing to put my $ where my mouth is.   Rep. Andrew Learned (@AndrewLearned) March 3, 2022

Floridas $195 billion in assets include about $300 million in holdings in Russian-domiciled investments, Dennis MacKee, a spokesman for the State Board of Administration, said Monday, which manages state retirement funds.

Political Pulse Weekly Get latest updates political news from Central Florida and across the state. >

International and U.S. sanctions have sent the value of Russian companies plummeting.

Floridas Republican leaders havent called for pulling the states investments in Russian companies. Gov. Ron DeSantis said during a press conference Monday he supports establishing U.S. energy independence as a way to punish Putin.

[ RELATED: Florida is evaluating Russian investments as governors in other states cut financial ties ]

The Florida House adopted a resolution Wednesday condemning Russias invasion.

DeSantis has called for Florida to pull its investments in response to other world events.

In December, DeSantis vowed to take on Communist China and asked for a review of the states investments in Chinese companies. Hes also called for the state to stop investing in Ben & Jerrys parent company over its decision to stop selling ice cream in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and contested east Jerusalem.

DeSantis is one of three trustees overseeing the State Board of Administration, along with Floridas Chief Financial Officer Jimmy Patronis and Attorney General Ashley Moody.

sswisher@orlandosentinel.com
Burma Myanmar Military Conglomerate Shifts HQ to Capital Amid Juntas Security Fears

One of MEHL's subsidiaries, Myawaddy Trading Limited, on Yangon's Strand Road. / The Irrawaddy

The Myanmar military regime is building a new headquarters for one of its major income sources, Myanmar Economic Holding Ltd (MEHL), in the countrys capital Naypyitaw out of safety concerns, according to sources close to the matter.

MEHL is one of the Myanmar militarys two major holdings, the other being Myanmar Economic Corporation (MEC). Both are involved in nearly all of the countrys lucrative business sectors including oil and gas, copper and gemstone operations.

The billions of dollars of revenue they generate for the military bypass formal government channels and the funds are unaccounted for, according to reports by the UN and Amnesty International. The UN Fact-Finding Missions 2019 report said revenue from MEHL provides financial support for the Tatmadaws operations with their wide array of international human rights and humanitarian law violations. The Tatmadaw is Myanmars military. Since last years coup, the junta has killed more than 1,500 people for opposing military rule in the country.

MEHL owns Myawaddy Bank and operates the Myanmar militarys pension fund. Currently, its headquarters are in Yangons Botataung Township.

The construction of the new 10-story MEHL head office on Mandalay Street in Naypyitaws Oattarathiri Township was confirmed by at least two sources, including a retired military major. It is located in one of the capitals busiest areas near the Ocean Supercenter shopping center and just behind Kanbawza Banks Naypyitaw headquarters.

Residents of the neighborhood said construction started in January and the foundation is currently being laid.

As far as Im concerned the SAC thinks Naypyitaw is a safe haven for them so they want the [conglomerates] head office to be moved there as soon as possible, the retired major told The Irrawaddy, referring to the State Administration Council, the regimes official name.

He explained that the military was concerned about resistance attacks on regime targets in Yangon, especially since suspicious simultaneous blazes at its supermarket and wholesale mall in Yangon in April last year. While its true that many government offices in the city have been bombed by the local Peoples Defense Forces, the headquarters of MEHL and MEC in the former capital have been largely spared so far.

The military established MEHL (then known as UMEHL) as its economic arm in 1990 after its coup in 1988. Its businesses include gem mining, banking, food and drink sales, tourism and transport.

MEC was established in 1997 with a greater focus on raw material production, including coal and gas, and manufacturing. Its main purpose is to supply the military with natural resources and factory goods, the UN report said. In the same year, it opened Innwa Bank.

Its not known whether the regime has any plan to move MEC to Naypyitaw.

Traditionally, the position of MEHL chairman is held by the militarys adjutant-general. Lieutenant General Tin Aye was head of MEHL before he was appointed as the chairman of the Union Election Commission ahead of the 2015 election. The current MEHL chairman is Lieutenant General Myo Zaw Thein, the sitting adjutant-general.

Both MEHL and MEC have entered various joint ventures with foreign firms like Japanese drinks maker Kirin, South Korean steelmaker POSCO and Indias Adani, the latter on a port development project.

However, Kirin announced last month that it would withdraw from Myanmar after pressure from human rights groups. Adani also said in October that it would exit Myanmar by June this year.

POSCO said in April that it was considering buying out its local partner or finding other ways to cut ties with MEHL.



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Commentary Six Decades After the Mother of Coups, Myanmar Military Maintains Its Brutal Grip

Protesters step on a banner showing an image of Myanmar military chief Senior General Min Aung Hlaing during a demonstration against the military coup, in Yangon on Feb. 11, 2021. / AFP

The coup staged by military chief General Ne Win on March 2, 1962 was the mother of a series of coups in Myanmar and spawned the endless devastation that would see a fledgling democratic country fall victim to one of the worlds longest-lasting military dictatorships.

On March 2, 2022, 60 years after the mother coup, Myanmars 55 million people still found themselves under an oppressive military dictatorship. It has been a painful fate.

Ne Wins coup was followed by two bloody military takeovers in 1988 and 2021, continuing the devastation that has been visited on Myanmar and its entire population for three generations, during which time its neighboring countries in Southeast Asia, despite their limited political liberty, and even authoritarian or military rulers, have found themselves much more prosperous and stable.

Coups are inevitable here in Myanmar whenever the generals fear that the military might bethrough revolutionary or democratic meansforced to return to its barracks and give up its role in the political arena. (Here I dont count the military takeover in 1958, because that was regarded as happening in accordance with the constitution; the then ruling elected civilian government led by Premier U Nu agreed to transfer power to the military.)

The coups are the root cause of all the political, social and economic problems of Myanmarthe deterioration in fundamental rights, political liberty, democracy and autonomy for ethnic people, as well the decline in the economy and livelihoods of the entire population.

Myanmar has always been a diverse country confronted with a complex range of issues such as demands for autonomy and equality fromand conflicts amongethnic or political groups, even before the coup in 1962. But those problems would have been surmountable had the military and its generals stayed in their barracks without intervening in politics by force. That diversity could have even have turned into a strength in building a nation if it had been dealt with from the start with respect, integrity and political maturity through negotiations.

Everything, however, went wrong when the military and its generals staged a coup and appointed themselves as the countrys rulers against the will of the people. Since the first day, nothing has been right; nothing has been just; nothing has been fair.

The mother of the coups was the first and main source of all the ills that have brought Myanmar down.

But the Myanmar people have always resisted the generals, refusing to let them rule as they wish. They have repeatedly struggled to eliminate the terrible military dictatorship over the past six decades. Anti-regime protests and even nationwide uprisings have occurred even under the generals iron-fisted rule. But in the end these attempts were always crushed as the generals brutal mindset and sheer military might prevailed.

The only things that keep the ruling generals in power are their cruelty, their undemocratic mindset and actions, and, of course, their deadly weapons. The main justifications they offer for preserving the militarys role in politics and their takeovers are always the same: the need to preserve sovereignty, and to prevent disintegration and foreign invasion.

The last coup in February 2021 was based on a blatant liethat the ruling National League for Democracy led by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi committed electoral fraud. The claimespoused only by the generals led by their chief, coup leader Min Aung Hlaingflies in the face of the fact that the NLD won more than 80 percent of the votes in the election of November 2020.

Over the generations, in their efforts to eliminate or reform the ruling generals, most Myanmar people have chosen the path of nonviolence, taking to the streets against the various regimes over the past six decades. Some took up weapons in the belief that only armed struggle can terminate dictatorial and ruthless regimes. Thats one of the reasons we find so many ethnic and political armed groups along the countrys borders, having fought consecutive regimes.

But after last years coup, things are totally different. Most people in Myanmar have come to believe that only fighting back against the military or eliminating the ruling generals led by Min Aung Hlaing will bring an end to this vicious circle of military rule.

Thats a major difference from the past. After the juntas indiscriminate crackdowns against all kinds of people in the wake of its coup on Feb. 1, 2021, weve seen unprecedented resistance from people in all walks of life, from young students to professionals. Resistance to the regime has taken various forms from guerrilla-style nonviolent protests in urban areas to the new young armed resistance groups, generally calling themselves Peoples Defense Forces, that have mushroomed over almost the entire country from Yangon and Naypyitaw regions to Chin and Kayah states.

Never before have we seen such varied and strong resistance against a military regime. While its virtually impossible to see how that resistance will be able to defeat the powerful military, one impressive thing is that the resistance forces and boycotts against the regime have in many ways managed to disrupt its rule. So far, the regime cant control the country, despite its excessive restrictions and crackdowns against its opponents and the entire population.

I think the resistance forces and opponents will hold out as long as they can. Their bottom line at the moment is that as long as the regime cannot control or rule the country, they have not lost this battle.

More than one year after his coup, Min Aung Hlaing should know that he simply cannot do what he hoped to do. His rule over the past year has produced no victories, only total failure and shame. But we all know that he is a shameless general.

The reason he will fall at the end of this battle is his own evil. He has no qualms about repeatedly committing crimes and violations of all kinds, including crimes against humanity and war crimes. Every crime he commits brings his own end nearer.

All Min Aung Hlaing has done is to turn Myanmar into a killing field, a more intense battlefield, a state with even more displaced people, a massive graveyard for COVID-19 patients (especially during the third wave last year when the health care system failed), a failed economy, a much more corrupt state plagued by cronyismthe list goes on and on. Myanmar has become an absolute pariah state again under his rule, within a year. Nothing good has come about since the coup; it has had only terrible consequences.

All he has done is to dig his own grave.

The fact that he is evil and nothing but a criminal, and that his regime is the enemy of all that is good, are the very reasons that this regime and he himself will lose this battle. It is only a matter of time for him and the six-decade-long military dictatorship he continues.

Lose early or lose late.

Naing Khit is a commentator on political affairs.



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Trinity, TX (77320)

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Strong thunderstorms likely. Damaging winds, large hail and possibly a tornado with some storms. High around 85F. Winds S at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 90%..

Tonight

Thunderstorms in the evening will give way to partly cloudy skies overnight. Low around 65F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 70%.
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Trumansburg Liquor Store was purchased Aug. 13, 2021, by Trumansburg native Greg Van Ness, who plans to make some small changes to the store.
Coles, one of Australia's two big supermarket chains, says it will offer delivery of some 250 grocery items by drone in some suburbs of Canberra.

In a statement issued on Wednesday, the company said it would be using the services of Wing, an initiative of Alphabet, the parent company of Google, and promised delivery within minutes.

The suburbs which will have this service are: Crace (2911), Palmerston (2913), Franklin (2913), Harrison (2914), Mitchell (2911), Giralang (2617), and Kaleen (2617).

The orders can be made through the Wing app, which is available on the Google Play Store or on the Apple App Store, and residents can check whether their address is covered by entering it into the app. The list of items that can be ordered by drone are also provided within the app.

Coles also said that while most deliveries would take less than 10 minutes, this was not guaranteed for all orders.

A little more than two years ago, Wing carried out tests of deliveries in Crace, Palmerston and Franklin as part of it called an Early Flyer Program.

An employee of Wing readies a grocery pack for delivery. Courtesy Coles

The delivery service will be available from 8am to 4.30pm on weekdays and Saturday and from 9am to 4pm on Sunday.

Coles chief executive eCommerce Ben Hassing said: We are passionate about finding innovative ways to help our customers to shop with us and we aim to deliver anytime, anywhere, anyhow shopping.

By partnering with Wing, were able to offer our online customers another convenient option to purchase the Coles items they know and love and get them delivered straight to their door.

Wing Australia general manager Simon Rossi said: Were delighted to be teaming up with Coles, one of Australias leading retailers, to expand their delivery options for customers by taking to the skies of Canberra.

Whether youve run out of milk and eggs for breakfast, forgotten to pick up a loaf of bread for school lunches, or are just after a fresh grab and go snack, customers in our delivery service area in Canberra can now get those urgent items they need in a hurry, delivered by drone.

In the last year, weve seen a significant increase in use of our on-demand drone delivery service, with many customers finding the service especially useful as they stayed home, and relied on our contactless delivery service to deliver the items they needed.

"Wing made more than 100,000 deliveries in Australia in 2021, and strong demand for drone delivery has continued in 2022. Wing has already made more than 30,000 deliveries in Australia this year.
In what is an unusual turn of events, a Chinese security firm has revealed details about malware that it says emanated from the portals of the US National Security Agency.

What makes this event even more of an outlier, is the fact that the details, released by Pangu Lab last week, come nine years after it claims to have discovered the malware.

Chinese security firms rarely, if ever, do what American infosec outfits do as a matter of course: provide the details of some exploit or the other and attribute it to one country or another. Most of the time, the countries that are blamed are Russia, China, North Korea and Iran  which, rather coincidentally, happen to be the top four enemies of the US Government.

The Pangu Lab report, which runs to 56 pages and is a fairly well-written document, says the malware was found in 2013 without specifying a month, and during an in-depth investigation of a host in a key Chinese government department [again, no names].

The researchers say they extracted advanced backdoors on Linux "which used advanced covert channel behaviour based on TCP SYN packets, code obfuscation, system hiding, and self-destruction design in case of failure to fully decrypt".

The backdoor, to which they gave the name Bvp47, needed checking code which was bound to the host in order to function correctly. The name was based on the most common string in the sample and the numerical value 0x47 which was found in the encryption algorithm.

The researchers then cracked the checking code and successfully ran the backdoor. "Judging from some behavioural functions, this is a top-tier APT [advanced persistent threat or nation-state malware] backdoor, but further investigation requires the attacker's asymmetric encrypted private key to activate the remote control function," they wrote.

The Pangu team said it had found a private key to trigger the backdoor after going through the files released by the Shadow Brokers in 2016 and 2017. Given this, they concluded that the backdoor was spread by the Equation Group, a term coined by the Russian security firm Kaspersky in 2015 as an alias for the NSA.

The Brokers announced they were in possession of hacking tools in 2016 and sought interested parties to negotiate a sale. When nobody engaged with them, they dumped the exploits on the Web in 2017.

One of these exploits, known as EternalBlue, was used to craft the Windows ransomware known as WannaCry which wreaked havoc in many countries in May the same year.

The identity of the Brokers has never been revealed, with the NSA telling iTWire as recently as September 2020 that it had no information to offer as to who was behind the group. Incidentally, no American technology reporter has ever followed up and tried to find out the identity of the Brokers.

Pangu Lab additionally found that a number of procedures and the attack operation manuals leaked by the Shadow Brokers were consistent with the lone identifier used in the NSA network attack platform operation manual which was part of the material leaked by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden in 2013.

The team said: "In view of the US Government's prosecution of Snowden on three charges of 'spreading national defence information without permission and deliberately spreading confidential information', it can be determined that the documents published by the Shadow Brokers are indeed NSA [material], which can fully prove that the Equation Group belongs to NSA; that is, Bvp47 is the top-tier backdoor of NSA.

"Besides, the files of the Shadow Brokers revealed that the scope of victims exceeded 287 targets in 45 countries, including Russia, Japan, Spain, Germany, Italy, etc. The attacks [using Bvp47] lasted for more than 10 years. Moreover, one victim in Japan is used as a jump server for further attack."

Expectedly, Pangu Labs' disclosures did not get the wide coverage that are accorded to the research from American and other western infosec firms when they attribute malware to the four countries cited above. Outlets like Ars Technica, Security Week, Vice and The Register were the exceptions.

But then, given that most American technology writers are stenographers  they depend on intelligence agencies for much of their output  any mention of an NSA exploit would probably not result in them received a card this Christmas from the spook agency.

It was, however, amusing to see that The Record, a recent arrival on the security website scene, carefully avoided any mention of the research. The Record is run by Recorded Future, a threat intelligence group that is funded in part by In-Q-Tel, the CIA's investment arm.

Only twice prior to this has a Chinese research team publicly released details about malware emanating from American spy agencies; that was when 360 Core Security (Qihoo Security) named former CIA employee Joshua Adam Schulte as being the person who leaked material to WikiLeaks which the latter published under the name Vault 7.

The other time this happened was in September 2019, when researcher Qi An Xin accused the American intelligence agency of breaching aviation industry targets between 2012 and 2017.
Sleeping bags are hung up in the camping section at REI Winter Park. (Patrick Connolly/Orlando Sentinel)

Its a weird sensation to see your breath while camping in Florida.

Even in the tropical Sunshine State, Ive experienced some recent outdoor overnights where the temperature has dipped into the 30s, perhaps even sliding into the 20s.

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Regardless of how many layers Im wearing while huddled around a blazing campfire, it can be hard to stave off the shivers. However, I know as soon as I crawl into my trusty Slumberjack sleeping bag, Ill be nice and toasty.

That, combined with my Thermarest NeoAir XLite, ensures I stay plenty warm on even the most frigid nights. The sleeping pad weighs less than a pound but carries an R-value of 4.2, meaning its pretty well insulated against the cold ground.

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Even though camping requires sacrificing many of the creature comforts of home, it doesnt have to mean giving up a good nights sleep. Here are tips and advice when choosing the perfect sleeping system with input and outdoor know-how from REI camping specialist Sheridan Becht.

Sheridan Becht, a camping specialist at REI Winter Park, shows a Marmot sleeping bag at REI Winter Park. (Patrick Connolly/Orlando Sentinel)

First: Where are you going, and how cold will it be?

Almost every sleeping bag has a temperature rating, which suggests the coldest conditions a sleeper can tolerate when using a given bag.

The first question we have to ask is, Where are you going? What kind of temperatures do you need? Thats going to affect everything in the conversation from that point on, Becht said. If it shows a 30-degree rating, thats really going to be the lower limit. Thirty-nine degrees would be considered the comfort level.

A bags tested comfort temperature will likely run five to 10 degrees warmer than the listed rating, which more likely reflects the lower limit of a bags capability. REI has a board listing its array of sleeping bags, many of which have gone through real-world temperature testing.

After determining what temperature bag is needed, the next step is to choose the kind of fill: synthetic or down, the latter of which is typically made of duck or geese plumage.

Synthetic tends to be less expensive, but bulkier. But the thing you always hear about down is that you cant get it wet, Becht said. That being said, down bags are typically treated now. They have water-repellent shells and the bags have some treatment. You cant let it, you know, go floating in the water.

Sleeping bags are lined up in the camping section at REI Winter Park. (Patrick Connolly/Orlando Sentinel)

Down bags tend to be the choice for longer-distance backpacking excursions due to their impressive warmth to weight ratio, but they often carry a higher price tag. Bags with an RDS label contain down sourced from animals that have not been subjected to unnecessary harm.

Whether its synthetic or down, sleeping bags generally cost $60 to $500, averaging in the $200-$300 range.

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Sleeping bags come in three main shapes: mummy, a snug fit that seeks to boost warmth while cutting weight, rectangular, which allows for more room and can act as a comforter when unzipped, or semi-rectangular, which is a hybrid bag of sorts.

Its not necessary for all gear to be gendered, but there are some differences between mens and womens sleeping bags.

A regular womens bag is five-and-a-half feet and the mens regular is six. A mens long is six-and-a-half feet and a womens long is six, Becht said, noting there can be differences in the overall shape of the bag.

While this may not apply across the board, sleeping bags are designed based on the idea that men tend to sleep slightly warmer than women. Becht also noted that mens and womens bags, especially of the same brand, will have zippers on opposite sides so they can be zipped together by couples.

Sleeping pads are stacked up in the camping section at REI Winter Park. (Patrick Connolly/Orlando Sentinel)

Picking pads and pillows, perhaps

As Becht pointed out, its not enough to consider the sleeping bag alone. The insulating capability of a bag is nothing without an appropriate layer between a sleeping camper and the ground.

Closed-cell sleeping pads are made of dense foam and are generally lightweight, inexpensive and durable. Air pads are comfortable, lightweight and compact but can be punctured or ripped. Self-inflating pads provide a combination of open-cell foam insulation and air and prove cozy, but these are heavier and bulkier than air pads. Pads come in either rectangular or mummy shapes.

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Each sleeping pad comes with a standardized R-value rating, which reflects its insulating abilities. An R-value of 2 is suitable for warmer conditions, while a value of 4 or higher may be necessary for cold-weather excursions. Pads can also be combined to achieve a higher overall rating.

Sleeping pads generally range in price from about $35 to $250.

Camping pillows are sometimes luxuries reserved for car camping. When backpacking, a top layer or puffy jacket can be rolled up to form a makeshift headrest.

But for backpackers looking for a little extra comfort, inflatable pillows are available and can weigh as little as three ounces.

Small inflatable pillows and sleeping bag liners are available in the camping section at REI Winter Park. (Patrick Connolly/Orlando Sentinel)

Cool tech: The One Bag, quilts, liners and Thermo Gills

While sleeping bags seem to have remained largely the same in the last several decades, some small pieces of new technology are helping make outdoor overnights smarter and more comfortable.

Some sleep systems aim to give campers an all-in-one solution for dealing with various seasons and temperatures. For example, The North Face offers a $300 One Bag with an 800-fill goose down, 20-degree mid bag and two other layers that extend its temperature range up to 40 degrees or as low as 5 degrees.

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Sleeping quilts offer a lightweight alternative for backpackers looking to shed weight, as these contain a closed toebox but strap underneath a sleeping pad.

The North Face's "One Bag" is available with three interchangeable layers at REI Winter Park. (Patrick Connolly/Orlando Sentinel)

The logic behind a quilt is that when youre laying in a sleeping bag, youre kind of crushing that insulation underneath you, Becht said. Quilts particularly appeal to people who are going to be on the trail for a long time.

Travel Unraveled Weekly Get away from it all with vacation ideas, trip planning help and money-saving tips. >

For recreationists looking to extend the temperature range of their current setup, REI and other outfitters offer sleeping bag liners that can add up to 20 degrees of insulating capability.

Other improvements in sleeping bag technology include waterproof footboxes to help withstand tent condensation and Thermo Gills, found specifically on Nemos bags. These unzip as vents to help sleepers shed warmth on nights that arent nearly as frigid.

Sleeping bags are stacked up in the camping section at REI Winter Park. (Patrick Connolly/Orlando Sentinel)

Storage and care

Outdoor gear manufacturers build products with durability and longevity in mind, meaning that your sleep system can last for years under proper care.

My Slumberjack Odyssey 10-degree bag has synthetic fill, weighs about three pounds and is still keeping me warm on sub-40 degree nights, even after more than a decade of use.

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Sleeping bags can last longer when theyre stored on a hanger or in a large storage sack at home. Keeping bags in compression sacks constantly could damage the fill, resulting in a loss of insulation over time.

Some sleeping bags are machine washable if theyre showing enough grime to warrant a full cleaning. Hand washing is a good alternative, or there are professional bag-laundering services available. Spot cleaning is better for small stains and blemishes. Be sure to follow the washing instructions from the manufacturer.

Find me @PConnPie on Twitter and Instagram or send me an email: pconnolly@orlandosentinel.com. For more fun things, follow @fun.things.orlando on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.




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Johnson City, TN (37604)

Today

Sunshine and clouds mixed. High 82F. Winds WNW at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

Cloudy skies. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low 64F. Winds SSE at 5 to 10 mph.
Tripoli, Libya (PANA) - Protesters mounted a huge demonstration on Friday in Tripoli against moves by the Libyan Parliament to establish a new transitional phase with the formation of a new government, saying legislative elections must be held as soon as possible
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...FLASH FLOOD WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL 345 AM CDT EARLY THIS MORNING FOR CHEROKEE, BARTON, JASPER AND NEWTON COUNTIES... At 1221 AM CDT, Trained weather spotters reported thunderstorms producing heavy rain across the warned area. Between 2 and 4 inches of rain have fallen. Additional rainfall amounts up to 1 inch are possible in the warned area. Flash flooding is ongoing. HAZARD...Flash flooding caused by thunderstorms. SOURCE...Trained spotters reported. IMPACT...Flash flooding of small creeks and streams, urban areas, highways, streets and underpasses as well as other poor drainage and low-lying areas. Some locations that will experience flash flooding include... Joplin, Carthage, Neosho, Lamar, Baxter Springs, Columbus, Webb City and Carl Junction. This includes the following low water crossings... Center Creek at Azalea Drive, North Indian Creek at Orchid Drive, East Fork Dry Wood Creek at NW 110th Lane, Dry Fork at Pine Road and Fidelity Branch at County Road 130. PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS... Turn around, don't drown when encountering flooded roads. Many flood deaths occur in vehicles. Be especially cautious at night when it is harder to recognize the dangers of flooding. && FLASH FLOOD...OBSERVED
Geneva, Switzerland (PANA) -The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), is appealing for US$205 million to deliver life-saving assistance and protection to over 1
If you were looking for the Charlestown Democratic Town Committee website and ended up here, try this





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Wharton, TX (77488)

Today

Scattered thunderstorms developing during the afternoon. High 87F. Winds S at 15 to 25 mph. Chance of rain 50%. Higher wind gusts possible..

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Scattered thunderstorms during the evening, then partly cloudy overnight. Low 68F. S winds shifting to NW at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 50%.
Consumer Issues and Advice Columnist

Harlan was a full-time reporter and columnist for the JI from August 1997 to September 2017, after which he has continued to write weekly Consumer Diary and Leave it to Levy advice columns. Harlan graduated from Princeton University and NYU School of Law.
Scott Showalter, CPA, CGMA, calls himself an "eternal optimist." He believes that accounting research can do more to better serve practitioners, and he's now noticing that happen. Across more than 20 years of research experience  both as a faculty member and a partner with KPMG  the professor of the practice in accounting at North Carolina State University, in Raleigh, N.C., has seen increasing overlap between the industry and academia.

Other faculty would like to see more research with more practical applications as well. Bob Allen, Ph.D., president of the American Accounting Association, addressed this topic in his plenary talk at the AAA's 2021 Annual Meeting. Allen, an accounting professor at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, said he believes accounting research can help address many issues in the profession and beyond  from the high price of health care to the human and financial costs of homelessness.

"Higher education is expensive, and taxpayers and students pay a lot of money for our services. An important part of our jobs is research, and I believe we have a responsibility to make a difference in the world in which we live," he said.

Many academics greatly favor research that is more theoretical than practical, and with good reason. Departments are more likely to recognize faculty whose work appears in elite journals, but such journals are incredibly competitive, said Alan Reinstein, CPA, DBA, an accounting professor at Wayne State University in Detroit. Faculty members can improve their chances of publication by examining complicated questions and using advanced methods to answer them. However, that type of research can take a long time and doesn't always address the everyday issues facing professional accountants, Reinstein said.

Tenured faculty, Showalter and Allen both observed, are more likely to publish in journals where they're able to highlight issues facing the practice. Often, those with tenure don't face the same pressure to have their work appear in specific publications. "Tenured faculty, faculty who are further along in their careers, are in a better position to take these kinds of risks," and invest precious time and energy into publishing in a wider variety of journals, Allen said.

Some schools and organizations are taking steps to encourage faculty to publish research with a more direct impact upon the profession. Some departments (like NCSU's, Showalter said) do recognize faculty for publishing in a variety of journals.

Showalter, as senior co-editor at Accounting Horizons, is also trying to promote more pragmatic research. The co-editors have outlined a new format for articles in the journal, which is published quarterly by the AAA. Authors need to submit articles that are shorter  with main text of about 3,500 words or fewer and formatted in a way that's friendlier for readers and editors. For instance, each article must now begin with a short section outlining its contribution to the practice.

Research needs to be available to practitioners at the time when they're facing problems, not years after the fact, Showalter said. Though articles will still be peer-reviewed, reducing their length will likely allow researchers and editors to turn them around more quickly. It'll be a real, live experiment "to see if we can have a top journal with research that's written for practitioners," Showalter said.

Showalter feels hopeful that the interests of academics and accounting practitioners will continue to become more aligned. And these tips can help accounting faculty ensure their research is helpful to those outside of academia:

Connect with practitioners. Reinstein attends about 150 breakfast and lunch meetings with accounting industry professionals each year. "My job as a professor is to help my students succeed in the profession," he said. "How can I do that if I don't know what the profession wants for my students?" He speaks to practicing accountants about new technology they're using, trends they're seeing, and what's hot in the field. Then he takes what he learns into the classroom, and he also incorporates it into his research. For example, discussions with practitioners led him to write articles on implementing new FASB leasing standards, applying new AICPA attestation standards, developing cases on sustainability reporting, and providing benefits of mentoring professional accountants.

Allen agreed with this approach. "I think talking to practitioners is an important first step. Being aware of issues faced in the practice and using your skill in research methods to study those issues is something that can be really valuable when done well," he said.

It's important for faculty members and practitioners to talk early in the process, Showalter said. If practicing accountants can offer advanced insight on emerging issues, researchers can get a jump-start on working to address them.

Regulators and practicing accountants do want to be informed, he said.

"But if faculty want to influence regulators, they need to figure out how to get research, reviews, and publishing done in a quicker way," he said.

Influence change. Senior faculty members and those in leadership roles may be able to help steer their departments toward a place where they encourage publishing in a variety of different publications.

"I think it's valuable for individual schools to be careful [to not be] so narrow that we lose practicality," Allen said. "We can become so narrow that we miss out on the opportunity to be a greater resource to accounting practice and the community at large."

Consider the end user. When Reinstein retires from teaching, he plans to continue doing research, he said. "I love what I do. The profession has been wonderful for me, and I want to help the profession," he said. Faculty members wanting to influence change in the profession should focus on the final reader.

That's the idea behind changing the format for articles in Accounting Horizons, and it's something academics can consider when it comes to which projects to take up and where to publish. "I think academics do a lot of research that informs practice," Showalter said. But the "way it's packaged," he continued, "makes it difficult for the practice to consume it."

There's room for both the kind of research that appears in top journals and the type that's more accessible to practitioners, said Allen, a past winner of the Deloitte Foundation Wildman Medal Award for research that impacts the profession. "We should look for ways to have both rather than reasons why we can't," he said.

 Megan Hart is a freelance writer based in Wisconsin. To comment on this article or to suggest an idea for another article, contact Courtney Vien at Courtney.Vien@aicpa-cima.com.
Russian troops attacked Europes largest nuclear plant on Friday, starting a fire at the Ukrainian facility, with the countrys leader accusing Moscow of nuclear terror.

Local authorities reported no immediate radiation rise was detected and essential equipment was unaffected by the fire, but it remained unclear what the invading forces planned next.

President Volodymr Zelensky accused Moscow of trying to repeat the Chernobyl nuclear disaster and said he had spoken with international leaders including US President Joe Biden about the crisis at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant.

Biden urged Russia to allow emergency responders to go to the site.

Images on a live feed from the site earlier showed blasts lighting up the night sky and sending up plumes of smoke, with the International Atomic Energy Agency urging an immediate halt to fighting there.

No country other than Russia has ever fired on nuclear power units, Zelensky said in a video message.

This is the first time in our history. In the history of mankind. The terrorist state now resorted to nuclear terror.

Zelensky appealed for global help.

If there is an explosion, it is the end of everything. The end of Europe. This is the evacuation of Europe. Only immediate European action can stop Russian troops, he said.

But after several hours of uncertainty, Ukrainian authorities said the site had been secured.

The director of the plant said that the nuclear safety is now guaranteed, Oleksandr Starukh, head of the military administration of the Zaporizhzhia region, said on Facebook.

According to those responsible for the plant, a training building and a laboratory were affected by the fire, he added.

And the IAEA said it had been told by Ukraines regulator that there has been no change reported in radiation levels at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant site.

Ukraine tells IAEA that fire at site of Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant has not affected essential equipment, plant personnel taking mitigatory actions, the watchdog added in a tweet.

Russia has intensified strikes across the country eight days into the conflict, with fresh reports of civilian casualties and devastating damage, particularly in southern areas near the first city to fall to Moscows troops.

In a second round of talks held Thursday, Moscow agreed to a Ukrainian request for humanitarian corridors to allow terrified residents to flee, but there was no immediate clarity on how they would work, and no sign of any move towards a ceasefire.

Zelensky called for direct talks with Putin, but also urged the West to step up military assistance and give me planes.

 Just like Leningrad 

The offensive has continued despite punishing international sanctions, and Zelensky warned other former Soviet states were now at risk of Russian invasion.

If we are no more then, God forbid, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia will be next, he told a news conference, adding that direct talks with Putin were the only way to stop this war.

Much of the international community has rallied behind Ukraine since Putin invaded on February 24, making Russia a global outcast in the worlds of finance, diplomacy, sport and culture.

Western analysts say the invading forces have become bogged down  but warn that the early failures could lead to a frustrated Moscow deciding to unleash all its power on Ukraine.

Putins comments Thursday did nothing to dispel that fear.

He said Russia was rooting out neo-Nazis, adding in televised comments that he will never give up on (his) conviction that Russians and Ukrainians are one people.

French President Emmanuel Macron, who spoke to Putin Thursday, believes the worst is to come, an aide said.

While a long military column appears stalled north of Ukraines capital Kyiv, Russian troops have already seized Kherson, a Black Sea city of 290,000 people, after a three-day siege that left it short of food and medicine.

Russian troops are also pressuring the port city of Mariupol east of Kherson, which is without water or electricity in the depths of winter.

They are trying to create a blockade here, just like in Leningrad, Mariupol mayor Vadym Boichenko said, referring to the brutal Nazi siege of Russias second city, now re-named Saint Petersburg.

In the northern city of Chernihiv, 33 people died Thursday when Russian forces hit residential areas, including schools and a high-rise apartment block.

And Ukrainian authorities said residential areas in the eastern city of Kharkiv had been pounded all night by indiscriminate shelling, which UN prosecutors are investigating as a possible war crime.

 Maybe its hell 

Many Ukrainians were digging in.

Volunteers in industrial hub Dnipro were making sandbags and collecting bottles for Molotov cocktails as they prepared for an onslaught.

In Lviv, volunteers organised food and supplies to send to other cities and produced home-made anti-tank obstacles after watching YouTube tutorials.

But for others, the worst has already come.

Oleg Rubaks wife Katia, 29, was crushed in their family home in Zhytomyr, west of Kyiv, by a Russian missile strike.

One minute I saw her going into the bedroom. A minute later there was nothing, Rubak, 32, told AFP amid the ruins in the bitter winter chill.

I hope shes in heaven and all is perfect for her, he said, in tears.

Gesturing at the pile of rubble, he said what remained was not even a room, its maybe its hell.

The conflict has already produced more than one million refugees who have streamed into neighbouring countries to be welcomed by volunteers handing them water, food and giving them medical treatment.

Both the EU and the United States said they would approve temporary protection for all refugees fleeing the war  numbered by the United Nations at more than one million and counting.

We left everything there as they came and ruined our lives, refugee Svitlana Mostepanenko told AFP in Prague.

The fear of igniting all-out war with nuclear-armed Russia has put some limits on Western support for Ukraine, though a steady supply of weaponry and intelligence continues.

The main lever used to pressure Russia globally has been sanctions, piled on by the West.

The ruble has gone into free-fall, while Russias central bank  whose foreign reserves have been frozen in the West  imposed a 30-percent tax on all sales of hard currency, following a run on lenders by ordinary Russians.

And Putins invasion has seen some eastern European countries lean even harder West, with both Georgia and Moldova applying for EU membership on Thursday.

In Russia, authorities have imposed a media blackout on the fighting and two liberal media groups  Ekho Moskvy radio and TV network Dozhd  said they were halting operations, in another death-knell for independent reporting in Putins Russia.

On Friday, Facebook and multiple media websites were partially inaccessible in Russia, as authorities crack down voices criticising the war.

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Senior US senator Lindsey Graham called for somebody in Russia to assassinate President Vladimir Putin after Moscows invasion of Ukraine in a televised interview Thursday evening.

How does this end? Somebody in Russia has to step up to the plate and take this guy out, the senator told conservative Fox News TV host Sean Hannity.

He repeated the call later in a series of tweets, saying the only people who can fix this are the Russian people.

Is there a Brutus in Russia? asked the senator, referring to one of Roman ruler Julius Caesars assassins.

The former presidential candidate also wondered if a more successful Colonel Stauffenberg existed in the Russian military, alluding to the German officer whose bomb failed to kill Adolf Hitler in 1944.

You would be doing your country  and the world  a great service, he added.

The senator, who has served in congress for over twenty years and has at times been a close ally to former president Donald Trump, had earlier in the day introduced a resolution condemning the Russian president and his military commanders for committing war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Ukraine says at least 350 civilians have been killed since Putin launched the invasion last week, and over 1 million have fled the country.

Moscow claims it does not target civilian areas, despite widespread evidence to the contrary.
Russias media watchdog said Friday it had restricted access to the BBC and other independent media websites, tightening controls over the internet more than one week after Russia invaded Ukraine.

Access to websites of the BBC, the independent news website Meduza, German broadcaster Deutsche Welle, and the Russian-language website of the US-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Svoboda, were limited by Roskomnadzor following a request from prosecutors.

The agency said that in each case, the prosecutors request was filed on February 24, the day Russian President Vladimir Putin launched his attack on Ukraine.

The invasion has claimed hundreds of lives and spurred allegation of war crimes.

The past year has seen an unprecedented crackdown on independent and critical voices in Russia that only intensified after the start of the invasion.

Ekho Mosvky  a liberal-leaning radio station majority-owned by Russias energy giant Gazprom  said Thursday it would shut down after being taken off air over its coverage of the Ukraine war.

Authorities had on Monday blocked the Ekho website and took the station off air as punishment for spreading deliberately false information about the conflict.

Editor-in-chief Alexei Venediktov said in a post on Ekho Moskvys Telegram channel Thursday that it would continue to publish content on YouTube and social media despite the decision of the board of directors who voted to liquidate the radio station and website.

Ekho Moskvy was founded in 1990 during the final days of the Soviet Union.

Russian media have been instructed to only publish information provided by official sources, which describe the invasion as a military operation.

Russias state-controlled television channels meanwhile have doubled down on Kremlin narratives about nationalism in Ukraine, while accusing Kyiv of using civilians as human shields in the conflict.

bur/cr-ach

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Interview: Mexico-China trade cooperation fruitful, economy minister says

Xinhua) 12:09, March 04, 2022

MEXICO CITY, March 3 (Xinhua) -- Mexico and China have made significant gains from cooperation in trade and other areas since the establishment of their diplomatic relations 50 years ago, Mexican Economy Minister Tatiana Clouthier has said.

"We are very pleased" with the "significant achievements that have been cultivated over time," Clouthier said in a recent interview with Xinhua.

"China is Mexico's second largest trading partner. We have an institutional economic dialogue that has been developed by the private sectors of both countries," she said, noting that Mexico has a vibrant Chinese community.

Mexico has become China's second largest trading partner in Latin America. In 2021, the bilateral trade volume between China and Mexico reached 86.6 billion U.S. dollars, a year-on-year increase of 41.9 percent, hitting a new high, according to the Chinese Ministry of Commerce.

Mexico's exports to China increased by 17 percent annually in 2021, while its imports from the Asian country grew by 37 percent, according to data from Mexico's central bank.

Chinese investment in Mexico is increasing, with many Chinese companies setting up branches in Mexico, generating job opportunities for the local community, according to the minister.

In Clouthier's view, China has "played a leading role" in Mexico's fight against COVID-19.

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has expressed "great appreciation (to China) for its solidarity regarding vaccines as well as medical supplies," Clouthier said.

Looking to the future, Mexico and China can further improve their bilateral ties through "win-win" cooperation, she said, highlighting China's potential in the technology and e-commerce sectors.

"I think the pandemic showed us the need to make progress in the use of e-commerce," she said. "E-commerce is very beneficial for any country, and helps people who normally wouldn't be able to export or trade."

Meanwhile, China can take better advantage of Mexico's privileged location to boost trade in the region, considering that Mexico links the countries in Central and South America to the United States and Canada in North America, Clouthier said.

The China-Mexico diplomatic relations were established on Feb. 14, 1972 and were upgraded to a comprehensive strategic partnership in 2013.

(Web editor: Xia Peiyao, Liang Jun)
Welcome Guest! You Are Here:
In her book The danger of a single story, Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie said in 2018 that the voices of people who have been systematically oppressed should be given precedence over those who have historically narrated the history of any conflict. For the author, having a single narrative of the past deprives people of their dignity and hinders the recognition of others, thus undermining a sense of shared humanity.

Peace talks offer important opportunities to change this dynamic. They can create space for new narratives, especially when they help make the voice of victims visible. This can build a sense of dignity for the victims, ensure any peace deal is informed by the realities of the local context, contribute to the legitimacy of the process, facilitate bridge building between elite and community level concerns  all of which contributes to more sustainable peace.

Victims participation in the process of building legal frameworks for peace is no different.

The Peace Treaty Initiative is a new global project that aims to fill this critical gap, by introducing an international legal instrument that would create incentives for state and non-state actors to privilege dialogue over confrontation. But while developing a legal framework to promote and protect peace negotiations is an honourable and necessary undertaking, the way it is established is as relevant as the final content of the legal text itself.

Victims participation in Colombias peace talks

The Colombian peace process may serve to illustrate the relevance of including victims voices, as well as to provide creative ideas on how to achieve meaningful participation without endangering the bigger goal: whether it be to achieve peace, or in this case, to ensure the creation of a new international law of peace negotiation.

From the early phases of Colombias peace talks in Havana, several mechanisms were established to give voice to victims and to citizens more generally. This included visits to Havana, encompassing special delegations of womens groups and by 60 individual victims of the armed conflict who addressed the parties over the course of five successive visits, each one comprised of 12 victims. The process also included major regional and thematic summits and forums held in Colombia, as well as a procedure through which, physically or electronically, any citizen or group could submit proposals to the negotiating parties. By the end of the talks, about 67,000 proposals (addressing different agenda items) reached the delegations.

At the victim hearings in particular, the parties were able to hear victims key concerns, reflections and proposals. This not only allowed for the recognition of these groups and communities  including their history and the ongoing risks they faced as a result of the continued violence  but also directly contributed to shaping the transitional justice framework that was ultimately agreed.

The voice of specific communities

The Colombian process also provides lessons about the participation of specific communities such as women and ethnic groups, which require an approach that is in sync with their customs and traditions. When they were not initially included in the negotiations, indigenous and Afro-Colombian organisations advocated for their own participation, ultimately succeeding in the creation of an influential Ethnic Commission. Jesus Chavez, indigenous leader and senior advisor to one of the most important platforms of indigenous peoples in Colombia, said of the process: The time when others spoke for us is over; today what we express is that feeling of collective peacebuilding, which allows us to recognise and understand each other in [our] diversity and build a true social fabric.

Meaningful participation by victims, women, rural workers, ethnic groups, human rights defenders, and young people made the difference. It ultimately helped bring about peace and improve the content of the final agreement, including in the period of its re-negotiation after the deal was narrowly rejected in a plebiscite.

Getting legitimacy at the local level

The value of participation by victims and survivors is not limited to local peacemaking but extends to global lawmaking and policymaking. The International Campaign to Ban Landmines is a good example. Led by Jody Williams jointly with the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation (VVAF) and the German organisation Medico International (MI), the campaign engineered an international Mine Ban Treaty prohibiting landmines through a bottom-up approach. From the start, leading NGOs took ownership of the process at all levels (sub-national, national, international) and it wasnt until later that governments started supporting the initiative. Legitimacy at the local level was key for the success of this global goal.

Beyond the sphere of peacebuilding, the UN High Level Panel on Internal Displacement is another good example. In this case, due to Covid-19, the Panel was unable to travel and meet as it had initially foreseen and faced several challenges connecting victims  who still now, more often than not, live in marginal areas with limited access to technology. Working through its partners, the Panel consulted thousands of internally displaced persons in 22 countries and received hundreds of written submissions. The recommendations included in its final report reflect the main comments gathered via the participation process, leading to a very positive reception internationally, nationally and locally within the participating countries.

No one understands the consequences of war more than its victims

In the words of Francia Marquez, emblematic leader for the Afro-Colombian population: It is in the courtyard of our houses that the fighting has taken place; it is on our rooves that the bombings have taken place; it is in the sowing of our subsistence cropsthat the landmines have been planted. It is our territories that have been invaded with coca and then poisoned with glyphosate; it is our markets that have been attacked by the armed actors; it is our sons, brothers, cousins and nephews that have been recruited and killed by one side or the other; it is our daughters, nieces, sisters, aunts and cousins who were sexually abused, prostituted, enslaved and murdered; it is our rivers that became cemeteries; it is our families and neighbours who had to flee the territory where they were born; and it is our freedoms that ceased to exist, imposed by others.

These words, which could have been expressed by victims in just about any armed conflict in the world, underscore how much the world needs more peace. The simple truth is that no one understands the consequences of war more than its victims.

The value of a global consultation process

The global consultation process for the Peace Treaty Initiative presents an important opening to build on the lessons described above as regards the value of incorporating victim voices and participation  something that appears to be embedded in the very design of the process.

Ensuring the meaningful participation of conflict-affected societies and of organisations of victims and survivors represents a win-win opportunity. By making use of different tools and spaces, the global consultation process can build upon valuable precedents of victim participation, ensuring both a better final text for the treaty and a greater baseline of public legitimacy which could then serve as positive leverage for reaching the ultimate goal of widespread state ratification.

For this to happen, it is important to think of participation through the broad lens of inclusivity, ensuring diverse forms of input and voice, both in writing and in person. In addition, especially in the context of the pandemic, building alliances with ground-level or intermediary-level leaders and organisations will prove vital as they can help connect community-level actors with this global initiative  thus ensuring meaningful grassroots participation.

Incorporating follow-up mechanisms that allow constituencies to see the evolution and impact of the consultation process would further help to bolster the legitimacy of the whole initiative.

The potential benefits are countless, and include the symbolic value of the proposed treaty and its real potential to address the needs of conflict-affected societies, build on good practices in the field, give legitimacy to the choice of dialogue, and engage political will at the highest levels to commit to a rights-based order that puts humanity first.
Ukraine accused the Kremlin of nuclear terror on Friday, after Europes largest atomic power plant was attacked and taken over by invading forces, sparking Western horror at the threat of Russias war contaminating all of Europe.

Blasts lit up the night sky as the plant at Zaporizhzhia came under shell fire, while Russian forces advanced in southern Ukraine and continued their sometimes indiscriminate bombardment of several cities elsewhere.

Ukrainian firefighters said they were prevented from accessing the site initially, before the attack was paused and they were able to douse a blaze at a training facility on the site.

The six reactors at Zaporizhzhia, which can power enough energy for four million homes, were apparently undamaged and international monitors reported no spike in radiation.

But the attack was slammed in Washington, London and other Western capitals as utterly irresponsible.

We survived a night that could have stopped the story, the history of Ukraine, the history of Europe, Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelensky said.

An explosion at Zaporizhzhia would have equalled six Chernobyls, he said, referring to the plant in Ukraine that was the site of the worlds worst nuclear disaster in 1986.

Russian tank commanders knew what they were firing at, Zelensky alleged, adding: The terrorist state now resorted to nuclear terror.

After phoning Zelensky during the night, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson demanded an urgent meeting of the UN Security Council.

He accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of reckless actions that could now directly threaten the safety of all of Europe, and pressed anew for a ceasefire.

Putin, however, has been unrepentant about an offensive that has cast Russia into the economic, sporting and cultural equivalent of exile to Siberia.

He said Thursday that the invasion was going strictly according to schedule, according to plan in its aims of driving out the neo-Nazis in Kyiv led by Zelensky  who is Jewish.

Addressing security chiefs in televised comments, Putin added that he would never abandon his conviction that Russians and Ukrainians are one people.

French President Emmanuel Macron, after speaking to Putin on Thursday, believes the worst is to come, an aide said.

 Like Aleppo 

Russia has intensified strikes across the country during the nine days of conflict, with fresh reports of civilian casualties and devastating damage, particularly in southern areas near Kherson, the first city to fall to Moscows troops.

In a second round of talks held Thursday, Moscow agreed to a Ukrainian request for humanitarian corridors to allow terrified residents to flee, but there was no clarity on how they would work, and no sign of any move towards a ceasefire.

Zelensky called for direct talks with Putin, saying they were the only way to stop this war. But he also urged the West to step up military assistance and give me planes.

Ukrainian leaders warn that Russia, with its offensive stalling north of Kyiv, is bent on reprising the horrific tactics that used to level the Syrian city of Aleppo in 2016.

The port city of Mariupol, east of Kherson, is cut off without water or electricity in the depths of winter.

Mariupols deputy mayor Sergei Orlov told BBC radio his citys humanitarian situation was terrible, after 40 hours of continuous shelling including on schools and hospitals.

Today Putin style of war is like Aleppo. So Mariupol goes to Aleppo, Orlov said in English. I believe that he wants to destroy Ukraine as a nation, and Mariupol is on this way.

In the northern city of Chernihiv, 33 people died Thursday when Russian forces hit residential areas, including schools and a high-rise apartment block, according to local officials.

Authorities say residential parts in the eastern city of Kharkiv have also come under indiscriminate shelling, which UN prosecutors are investigating as a possible war crime.

Many Ukrainians were digging in, with volunteers in the southern industrial hub of Dnipro filling sandbags and collecting bottles for Molotov cocktails.

In the western city of Lviv, others organised food and supplies to send to cities under attack and produced home-made anti-tank obstacles after watching YouTube tutorials.

 Facebook, BBC blocked 

The conflict has already produced more than one million refugees who have flooded into neighbouring countries to be welcomed by volunteers giving them water, food and medical treatment.

Both the EU and the United States said they would approve temporary protection for all refugees fleeing the war.

It is also driving some Russians to flee west.

On one of the few remaining routes from Russia to the EU, trains from Saint Petersburg to Finland have been packed with Russians fearful that now is their last chance to escape ever-tougher Western sanctions or a Kremlin crackdown on domestic opposition.

I know some people who are quite desperate at the moment to go abroad, said Elena, a 37-year-old Russian living in Finland who did not want to give her full name.

A lot of people dont feel safe, they know that the economic situation will be very hard from now on, and also many people from a moral perspective cant bear staying, she told AFP in Helsinki.

The fear of igniting all-out war with nuclear-armed Russia has put some limits on Western support for Ukraine, though a steady supply of weaponry and intelligence continues.

The main lever used to pressure Russia globally has been sanctions, which have sent the ruble into free-fall and forced the central bank to impose a 30-percent tax on sales of hard currency after a run on lenders.

Putins invasion has also pushed some eastern European countries to lean even harder West, with both Georgia and Moldova applying for EU membership on Thursday.

In Russia, authorities have imposed a news blackout and two liberal media groups said they were halting operations, in another death-knell for independent reporting under Putins regime.

On Friday, Facebook and multiple media websites including the BBC were partially inaccessible in Russia, as authorities crack down on voices criticising the war.

Intel and Airbnb were among the latest Western companies to announce they were pausing business in Russia and Belarus.

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A court in Sweden on Friday sentenced a mother to six years in jail for allowing her son to fight for the Islamic State (IS) group as a child soldier in Syria.

The 49-year-old was convicted of aggravated of war crimes, violations of international law and for not stopping her son, then aged 12 to 15, from being recruited and used as a child soldier for IS in the armed conflict in Syria, the Stockholm district court said in a statement.

The woman and her husband had been part of a cult-like Islamist environment and in April 2013 she brought her son to join his father and an older son in Syria.

The court found that she must have understood that her son was used as a child soldier.

She has not taken adequate steps to stop this, neither has she wanted to stop it, but his role as a child soldier had been in accordance with her convictions, the court said.

When she was charged in January, the prosecution authority said it was the first time charges are being brought in Sweden for the war crime of using a child soldier.

It also said that from August 2013 and to May of 2016 the boy allegedly took part in hostilities performed by armed groups, including the terrorist organisation IS.

The authority added that he died in 2017, without providing the cause of death.

Around 300 Swedes or Swedish residents, a quarter of whom are women, joined IS in Syria and Iraq, mostly in 2013 and 2014, according to the Sapo intelligence service.

Sweden did not have existing legislation at the time to prosecute people for membership in a terrorist organisation, so prosecutors instead sought other crimes with which to charge returnees.
Russia appeared more isolated than ever following a historic vote at the UN Human Rights Council on Friday to launch an investigation into violations committed in Moscows Ukraine war.

The message to (Russian President Vladimir) Putin has been clear: Youre isolated on a global level and the whole world is against you, Ukrainian ambassador Yevheniia Filipenko told reporters after the overwhelming vote.

Thirty-two of the councils 47 members voted to establish the highest-level probe possible, in a bid to hold perpetrators responsible.

Only Russia itself and Eritrea voted against, while 13 countries abstained, including Moscows traditional backers China, Venezuela and Cuba.

The heavy blow to Russia came after the UN General Assembly in New York on Wednesday issued its own powerful rebuke, with a 141-5 vote to deplore Moscows invasion and demand an immediate withdrawal.

The council in Geneva also condemned in the strongest possible terms the human rights violations and abuses and violations of international humanitarian law resulting from the Russian Federations aggression against Ukraine.

The text, presented by Kyiv, called for the swift and verifiable withdrawal of Russian Federation troops and Russian-backed armed groups from the entire territory of Ukraine.

Most importantly, Fridays vote opens the way to create an independent international commission of inquiry  the highest level probe that can be ordered by the council  to investigate all alleged violations and abuses in the context of the Russian Federations aggression against Ukraine.

 Hold perpetrators accountable 

It calls for the appointment of three investigators to establish the facts, circumstances, and root causes of any such violations and abuses, and to gather evidence with a view to ensuring that those responsible are held accountable.

The International Criminal Court in The Hague has already begun investigating possible war crimes in Ukraine, where hundreds of civilians have been killed and more than 1.2 million have fled the country since Russia launched its invasion just over a week ago.

I thank all those who voted for the right cause, Filipenko said, calling for the investigation to start as soon as possible, given the urgency of the situation.

This will be an important body to complement the work of the ICC, she said.

Flanked by a large number of her counterparts from around the world, Filipenko celebrated that the whole world is standing by Ukraine.

And she stressed that those from Russia directing and committing violations against my people should be paying attention.

The evidence is going to be collected. Youre going to be identified and youre going to be held to account.

 Russia stands alone 

Many of Ukraines supporters also stressed the importance of Fridays rights council decision.

The vote was a powerful condemnation of Russias actions, supported from council members from every geographic region of the world, US ambassador Sheba Crocker said.

Members of the international community stand with Ukraine, and it is clear that Russia stands alone.

Before the vote, Russias representative Evgeny Ustinov had flatly rejected the resolution, insisting its purpose is to deflect attention from Kyivs alleged crimes.

He said the co-sponsors of the resolution, 68 countries at the last count, will use any means to blame Russia.

During the preceding debate, Russia received cautious support from a handful of countries, like Belarus, Eritrea, Venezuela, Cuba and China, whose representative decried the politicisation of human rights.

But most countries spoke out forcefully in support of Ukraine.

Fridays decision was considered an extremely strong one by the rights council, which has never before passed a resolution directly targeting Russia.

Nonetheless, rights groups had suggested the text should have gone further, and called for the investigation to extend to widespread abuses inside Russia itself.

A number had also called for the text to include a request for the General Assembly to consider revoking Russias membership of the Human Rights Council, with some countries also seeming to back the idea.

Asked about it, Filipenko stressed to reporters that nothing is off the table.
Ukraines Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba on Friday accused Russian troops of raping women and backed a call for the creation of a special tribunal to punish Moscows aggression.

We have numerous cases of, unfortunately, when Russian soldiers rape women in the Ukrainian cities, Kuleba told a briefing at Londons Chatham House think-tank.

He did not provide details but supported an appeal by former British prime minister Gordon Brown and a swathe of international law experts for a special tribunal.

International law is the only tool of civilisation that is available to us to make sure that in the end, eventually, all those who made this war possible will be brought to justice, Kuleba said, as civilian casualties mount in Ukraine.

We are fighting against the enemy who is much stronger than us, Kuleba said.

But the international law is on our side, and hopefully it will make its own contribution to help us prevail.

Dignitaries including Brown, former judges and law experts on Wednesday called for the creation of a special tribunal, as the International Criminal Court (ICC) studies whether to prosecute alleged war crimes in Ukraine.

Russian President Vladimir Putins decision to launch attacks on Ukraine poses a grave challenge to the post-1945 international order, they said in a statement.

He has sought to replace the rule of law and principles of self-determination for all peoples by the use of force. The whole world needs to be made aware of the act of aggression he has instigated and the atrocities he has ordered.

We will leave no stone unturned in bringing to an end the terrible events we are now seeing, thereby ensuring that those who have unleashed such horrors are subject to personal accountability under the criminal law, so that justice can be done.

 Nuremberg 

ICC chief prosecutor Karim Khan said on Wednesday that an active probe into possible war crimes in Ukraine will immediately proceed after his office received the backing of 39 countries.

Ukraine has also brought a case against Russia before the International Court of Justice  the only court that can rule on conflicts between states.

We propose the creation of a special tribunal with a limited focus on the crime of aggression, the dignitaries said, calling for governments to sign up to recognise such a tribunal.

The Special Tribunal for the Punishment of the Crime of Aggression against Ukraine can be set up with speed, echoing the creation of the Nuremberg Tribunal by the Allies to prosecute Nazis after World War Two.

The declaration was signed by around 40 dignitaries and intellectuals, including former Nuremberg prosecutor Benjamin Ferencz.

The UN Human Rights Council on Friday overwhelmingly voted to create a top-level investigation into violations committed following Russias invasion.

Thirty-two members of the 47-seat council voted to establish the highest-level probe possible into alleged rights violations, in a bid to hold perpetrators responsible.

That decision came after the UN General Assembly in New York on Wednesday issued its own powerful rebuke, with a 141-5 vote to deplore Moscows invasion and demand an immediate withdrawal.
Ukraine accused the Kremlin of nuclear terror and the West expressed horror on Friday after Europes largest atomic power plant was attacked and taken over by invading Russian forces.

The shelling of the plant at Zaporizhzhia triggered an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council, and came as President Vladimir Putin intensified a crackdown on opposition in Russia to his nine-day-old war.

The six reactors at Zaporizhzhia, which can power enough energy for four million homes, were apparently undamaged by a fire at a nearby training facility. International monitors reported no spike in radiation.

But the attack killed three Ukrainian soldiers, according to Kyivs nuclear operator Energoatom, and was slammed by Western capitals, NATO and environmental groups as utterly irresponsible.

We survived a night that could have stopped the story, the history of Ukraine, the history of Europe, Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelensky said.

An explosion at Zaporizhzhia would have equalled six Chernobyls, he said, referring to the plant in Ukraine that was the site of the worlds worst nuclear disaster in 1986.

Russian tank commanders knew what they were firing at, Zelensky alleged, adding: The terrorist state now resorted to nuclear terror.

 Russia blames Ukraine 

Moscow said the attack on Zaporizhzhia was staged by Ukrainian sabotage groups with the participation of foreign mercenaries.

The goal of the provocation at the nuclear station was to try to accuse Russia of creating a radioactive flashpoint, Russian defence ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov claimed.

This shows the Kyiv regimes criminal plan, he said, adding that the plant had been secured by Russian troops and was functioning normally.

After phoning Zelensky during the night, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson accused Putin of reckless actions that could now directly threaten the safety of all of Europe.

At the urging of Johnson and Western allies, the UN Security Council prepared to convene on the attack, although Russias veto on the world body would stymie any concerted condemnation.

Putin has been unrepentant as Russia is cast into the economic, sporting and cultural equivalent of a Soviet-era exile to Siberia.

The Kremlin said that in a call Friday with one of his few remaining allies, President Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus, Putin restated his view that the tasks set for the (Ukraine) operations are going according to plan and will be fulfilled in their entirety.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov called on Russians to unite around our president, after thousands braved mass arrests at anti-war demonstrations this week.

Authorities have imposed a news blackout and two liberal media groups have halted operations. On Friday, Facebook and multiple media websites including the BBC were partially inaccessible in Russia.

And Russian lawmakers approved legislation to impose fines and jail terms of up to 15 years for anyone publishing fake news about the army.

Western social media companies carry hatred and lies against Russia, parliament chairman Vyacheslav Volodin said.

But some Russians appear keen to bypass their state-controlled media.

The BBC says the audience of its Russian-language news website has more than tripled this week, to a record 10.7 million people, and the UK broadcaster vowed to keep the site running.

 Like Aleppo 

Russia has intensified strikes across Ukraine with fresh reports of civilian casualties and devastating damage, particularly in southern areas near Kherson, the first city to fall to Moscows troops.

In a second round of talks held Thursday, Moscow agreed to a Ukrainian request for humanitarian corridors to allow terrified residents to flee.

But there was no clarity on how the corridors would work, and no sign of any move towards a ceasefire.

Zelensky urged the West to step up military assistance and togive me planes. He also called for direct talks with Putin.

NATO, fearful of provoking its own war with nuclear-armed Russia, again ruled out enforcing a no-fly zone over Ukraine. And the Kremlin ruled out direct talks, insisting any contacts should come via negotiators.

Ukrainian leaders warn that Russia  given signs that its offensive on the capital Kyiv has stalled  is bent on reprising the horrific tactics that it used to level the Syrian city of Aleppo in 2016.

The port city of Mariupol, east of Kherson, is cut off without water or electricity in the depths of winter.

Mariupols deputy mayor Sergei Orlov told BBC radio that its humanitarian situation was terrible, after 40 hours of continuous shelling including on schools and hospitals.

Today Putin style of war is like Aleppo. So Mariupol goes to Aleppo, Orlov said in English. I believe that he wants to destroy Ukraine as a nation, and Mariupol is on this way.

In the northern city of Chernihiv, 33 people died Thursday when Russian forces hit residential areas, including schools and a high-rise apartment block, according to local officials.

 Whole world against you 

Authorities say residential parts of the eastern city of Kharkiv have also come under indiscriminate shelling, which UN prosecutors at The Hague are investigating as a possible war crime.

Ukraines Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba demanded a special tribunal, alleging that there were numerous cases of, unfortunately, when Russian soldiers rape women in the Ukrainian cities.

In Geneva, the UN Human Rights Council overwhelmingly voted to create a top-level investigation into violations committed in the invasion.

The message to Putin has been clear: youre isolated on a global level and the whole world is against you, Ukrainian ambassador Yevheniia Filipenko said after the vote.

The conflict has already produced more than 1.2 million refugees who have flooded into neighbouring countries in Europe.

Both the EU and the United States said they would approve temporary protection for all refugees fleeing the war.

It is also driving some Russians to flee the country, fearful it is their last chance to escape the economic pain from ever-tougher Western sanctions, or the Kremlin crackdown on domestic dissent.

On one of the few remaining routes from Russia to the EU, trains from Saint Petersburg to Finland have been packed with Russians.

I know some people who are quite desperate at the moment to go abroad, said Elena, a 37-year-old Russian living in Finland who did not want to give her full name.

A lot of people dont feel safe, they know that the economic situation will be very hard from now on, and also many people from a moral perspective cant bear staying, she told AFP in Helsinki.

It is not just people fleeing.

Six lions and six tigers evacuated from a shelter near Kyiv arrived at a zoo in Poland, following a two-day odyssey skirting battle frontlines and coming face to face with Russian tanks.

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Ukraine accused the Kremlin of nuclear terror and the West expressed fury on Friday after Europes largest atomic power plant was attacked and seized by invading Russian forces, who continued to shell major cities.

The fighting and a fire at the plant at Zaporizhzhia triggered an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council, and came as President Vladimir Putin intensified a crackdown on opposition in Russia to his nine-day-old war.

The six reactors at Zaporizhzhia, which can power enough energy for four million homes, were apparently undamaged by the fire in a training facility. Monitors reported no spike in radiation.

But the attack killed three Ukrainian soldiers, according to Kyivs nuclear operator Energoatom, and was slammed by Western capitals, NATO and environmental groups as utterly irresponsible.

We survived a night that could have stopped the story, the history of Ukraine, the history of Europe, Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelensky said.

An explosion at Zaporizhzhia would have equalled six Chernobyls, he said, referring to the plant in Ukraine that was the site of the worlds worst nuclear disaster in 1986.

Russian tank commanders knew what they were firing at, Zelensky alleged, adding: The terrorist state now resorted to nuclear terror.

 Russia blames Ukraine 

Russian defence ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov claimed the attack on Zaporizhzhia was staged by Ukrainian sabotage groups, with the participation of foreign mercenaries.

This shows the Kyiv regimes criminal plan, he alleged, adding that the plant had been secured by Russian troops and was functioning normally.

After phoning Zelensky during the night, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson accused Putin of reckless actions that could threaten the safety of all of Europe.

At the urging of Johnson and Western allies, the UN Security Council was convening after the attack, although Russias veto on the world body would stymie any concerted condemnation.

We are faced together with what is President Putins war of choice, unprovoked, unjustified, and a war that is having horrific, horrific consequences, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in Brussels.

Were committed to doing everything we can to make it stop.

But Putin has been unrepentant as Russia has become an economic, sporting and cultural pariah.

The Kremlin said that Putin, in a call Friday with one of his few remaining allies President Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus, restated his view that the tasks set for the (Ukraine) operations are going according to plan and will be fulfilled in their entirety.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov called on Russians to unite around our president, after thousands braved mass arrests at anti-war demonstrations this week.

Authorities have imposed a news blackout and two liberal media groups have halted operations. On Friday, Facebook and multiple media websites including the BBC were partially inaccessible in Russia.

And Russian lawmakers approved legislation to impose fines and jail terms of up to 15 years for anyone publishing fake news about the army.

Western social media companies carry hatred and lies against Russia, parliament chairman Vyacheslav Volodin said.

But some Russians appear keen to bypass their state-controlled media.

The BBC says the audience of its Russian-language news website has more than tripled this week, to a record 10.7 million people, and the UK broadcaster vowed to keep the service running.

 Like Aleppo 

Russia has intensified strikes across Ukraine with fresh reports of civilian casualties and devastating damage, particularly in southern areas near Kherson, the first city to fall to Moscows troops.

In a second round of talks held Thursday, Moscow agreed to a Ukrainian request for humanitarian corridors to allow terrified residents to flee.

But there was no clarity on how the corridors would work, and no sign of any move towards a ceasefire.

Ahead of a third round of talks this weekend, Zelensky urged the West to step up military assistance and to give me planes. He also called for direct talks with Putin.

NATO, fearful of provoking its own war with nuclear-armed Russia, again ruled out enforcing a no-fly zone over Ukraine. And the Kremlin rejected direct talks, insisting any contacts should come via negotiators.

Ukrainian leaders warn that Russia  given signs that its offensive on the capital Kyiv has stalled  is bent on reprising the horrific tactics that it used to level the Syrian city of Aleppo in 2016.

The port city of Mariupol, east of Kherson, is cut off without water or electricity in the depths of winter.

Mariupols deputy mayor Sergei Orlov told BBC radio that its humanitarian situation was terrible, after 40 hours of continuous shelling including on schools and hospitals.

Today Putin style of war is like Aleppo. So Mariupol goes to Aleppo, Orlov said in English.

I believe that he wants to destroy Ukraine as a nation, and Mariupol is on this way.

In the northern city of Chernihiv, 47 people died Thursday when Russian forces bombed residential areas, including schools and a high-rise apartment block, according to a new toll given by local officials.

According to the UN, at least 331 civilians have died since Russia invaded in the night of February 24, purportedly to erase a Western-leaning, Nazi threat on its borders.

Ukraine says it has killed thousands of Russian troops. Moscow on Wednesday said it had lost 498 soldiers.

 Whole world against you 

Ukraine authorities say residential parts of the eastern city of Kharkiv have also come under indiscriminate shelling, which UN prosecutors at The Hague are investigating as a possible war crime.

Ukraines Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba demanded a special tribunal, alleging there were numerous cases of, unfortunately, when Russian soldiers rape women in the Ukrainian cities.

In Geneva, the UN Human Rights Council overwhelmingly voted to create a top-level investigation into violations committed in the invasion.

The message to Putin has been clear: youre isolated on a global level and the whole world is against you, Ukrainian ambassador Yevheniia Filipenko said after the vote.

The UN says more than 1.2 million refugees have flooded from Ukraine into neighbouring countries.

Both the EU and the United States said they would approve temporary protection for all refugees fleeing the war.

It is also driving some Russians to flee the country, fearful it is their last chance to escape the economic pain from ever-tougher Western sanctions, or the Kremlin crackdown on domestic dissent.

On one of the few remaining routes from Russia to the EU, trains from Saint Petersburg to Finland have been packed with Russians.

I know some people who are quite desperate at the moment to go abroad, said Elena, a 37-year-old Russian living in Finland who did not want to give her full name.

A lot of people dont feel safe, they know that the economic situation will be very hard from now on, and also many people from a moral perspective cant bear staying, she told AFP in Helsinki.

It is not just people fleeing.

Six lions and six tigers evacuated from a shelter near Kyiv arrived at a zoo in Poland, following a two-day odyssey skirting battle frontlines and coming face to face with Russian tanks.

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A forum on Ivory Coasts future wrapped up on Friday with an appeal for the country, scarred by a civil conflict more than a decade ago, to stay on the path of peace.

Running for two and a half months, the talks brought together the government, around 20 political parties and more than two dozen civil-society organisations.

It came after a spurt of political tension, including deadly electoral clashes that stirred traumatic memories of the countrys brief but bloody conflict in 2011.

A report endorsed by participants urged political forces to depart from violence as a means of acceding to power.

It also called for work to compensate victims of the 2020 electoral violence and efforts to strengthen democratic culture in Ivorian society.

One of the economic stars of West Africa, Ivory Coast plunged into a crisis when incumbent president Laurent Gbagbo refused to yield after losing elections to rival Alassane Ouattara.

A short civil conflict flared, claiming 3,000 lives, ending when Gbagbo was arrested and flown to the International Criminal Court in The Hague to face charges of crimes against humanity.

Violence erupted anew in 2020, leading to 85 deaths, when Ouattara sought a third term of office  a bid that critics said breached constitutional limits.

With the country in dangerous gridlock after Ouattara, 80, re-elected after a near-total boycott by the opposition, Gbago, 76, returned home after being acquitted by the ICC.

Welcomed by his former rival, he donned a statesman-like role and the two staged a meeting that declared the turbulent past was over..

The dialogue that ended on Friday was showcased as a chance to cement the mood of reconciliation.

The report said the talks took place courteously, in a good atmosphere and a climate of peace.

Prime Minister Patrick Achi claimed that Ivory Coast has turned the page  it is once again that country of peace, hospitality and progress.

All the main political parties took part in the forum, although Gbagbo, as head of the African Peoples Party (PPA-CI), and fellow former president Konan Bedie, head of the Ivory Coast Democratic Party (PDCI), were represented by stand-ins.

Despite the improved tone of Ivorian politics, some dark clouds remain  Gbagbo has recently hurled several barbs at Ouattara, notably condemning his third presidential term as a civilian coup detat.

The next elections are at local and regional level in 2023, while the next presidential ballot is due in 2025.
G7 foreign ministers warned Friday that Russia would face further severe sanctions for its invasion of Ukraine, and called on Moscow to stop its attacks near nuclear power plants.

We will continue to impose further severe sanctions in response to Russian aggression, enabled by the Lukashenko regime in Belarus, the ministers from the G7 club of wealthy nations said in a statement.

The foreign ministers from Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Britain and the United States condemned the overnight attack on Ukraines Zaporizhzhia atomic power plant, Europes largest.

We urge Russia to stop its attacks especially in the direct vicinity of Ukraines nuclear power plants, they said.

Any armed attack on and threat against nuclear facilities devoted to peaceful purposes constitutes a violation of the principles of international law.

The ministers said they support an offer by Rafael Grossi, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), to travel to Ukraine to negotiate with Ukraine and Russia on ensuring the safety of nuclear sites.

In view of the rapidly worsening humanitarian situation, the G7 ministers also welcomed the announcement of an arrangement between Kyiv and Moscow to create evacuation corridors for Ukrainian citizens as an important step.

These humanitarian corridors need to be implemented reliably and swiftly, the seven nations said.

We re-emphasise that indiscriminate attacks are prohibited by international humanitarian law.

We will hold accountable those responsible for war crimes, including indiscriminate use of weapons against civilians, the statement said.

Allies will also counter Russias disinformation campaign.

Their steady stream of fabricated claims is putting additional lives at risk, the G7 ministers added.
London polices war crimes unit on Friday launched an appeal for information about alleged atrocities in Ukraine, as part of a probe by the International Criminal Court.

The ICCs chief prosecutor on Wednesday announced an active investigation into possible war crimes in Ukraine, after his office received the backing of 39 countries.

Metropolitan Police detectives said they wanted anyone in the UK who may have direct evidence of war crimes in Ukraine to get in touch.

The forces specialist War Crimes Team has national responsibility for investigating anyone under UK jurisdiction over alleged war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide or torture around the world.

Counter Terrorism Command chief Richard Smith said detectives were looking for any evidence from November 21, 2013 to the present day.

This could be in the form of direct messages, images or videos that friends or relatives here in the UK have been sent by those in Ukraine, he added.

Or it could be somebody who was previously in Ukraine and who may have witnessed or even been a victim of a war crime and has since travelled to the UK.

He added: To be clear though, we specifically want to hear from people who are now here in the UK, and who have a direct link to any relevant information or evidence.

This is not about the general public highlighting or telling us about things they might have simply come across or seen in the media, online or on social media.

The evidence gathered may then be shared with the ICC. Officers at UK borders have been told to make new arrivals from Ukraine aware of the appeal.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson in an interview on Friday said he saw a close analogy between Russian President Vladimir Putin and late Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic, who was charged with war crimes.

Johnson told journalists from Italys La Repubblica, Spains El Pais and Germanys Die Welt that he saw links between Putins behaviour and the last years of Slobodan Milosevic.

The late Serbian president was charged with war crimes in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo during the break-up of Yugoslavia and died in a United Nations court cell in 2006 before the end of his trial.

Johnson said that Milosevic invoked ideas about Kosovo being the birthplace of the nation to justify a brutal crackdown on ethnic Albanians in Kosovo in the late 1990s, and inspired his people with this misbegotten idea that it needed to be rescued and liberated.

Theres a very close sort of analogy between that catastrophic mistake, and what the President of Russia has been saying about Kiev and the origins of Russian religion and culture and civilisation and his objectives in Ukraine, Johnson said.

Modern-day Russia and Ukraine both trace their roots to the medieval state of Kievan Rus and Putin has claimed this means Russians and Ukrainians are one people.

Johnson described both Putin and Milosevic as increasingly autocratic and seeking to shore up their domestic position and found a great nationalist cause.

The International Criminal Court has started an active probe into possible war crimes in Ukraine.

Johnson on Thursday said Putin was guilty of a war crime after civilians were bombed in Ukraine, echoing an earlier accusation by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Asked if the West should try to put Putin in front of an international court, Johnson said Friday that when it comes to the International Criminal Court, thats a matter for them.

If there is evidence of the use of illegal munitions, cluster bombs, barrel weapons, this clearly will have to be brought (to the) Netherlands.
Ukraine and the West expressed fury on Friday after Europes largest atomic power plant was attacked and seized by invading Russian forces, which continued to shell major cities.

The six reactors at Zaporizhzhia, which can power four million homes, appeared undamaged by the fighting and a fire that broke out in a training facility.

But Ukraine accused the Kremlin of nuclear terror, and US envoy to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield said the attack was incredibly reckless and dangerous.

Moscows UN ambassador said accusations that Russian forces had shelled the plant were simply part of an unprecedented campaign of lies.

Ukraine says thousands of civilians have died since President Vladimir Putins military invaded in the night of February 24, purportedly to erase a Western-leaning Nazi threat on its borders.

In a Kyiv hospital, wounded soldiers told AFP of their grim battle against the Russian advance on the capital, and vowed to return to the frontline.

We were on reconnaissance and came across an enemy column that had made a breakthrough, said Motyka, 29, who was hit by shrapnel on his right side.

We fought them and killed their soldiers on foot, but they showered us with mortar fire.

On Friday, missile and bomb attacks on cities continued, the Ukrainian military said on Facebook, adding that the main focus of Russian troops was to encircle Kyiv.

It added that Russian artillery and multiple launch rocket systems were pounding residential buildings and infrastructure.

President Volodymyr Zelensky called for further protests across Europe against the invasion, saying that if Ukraine does not survive, the whole of Europe will not survive.

Zelenksy said the attack at the nuclear plant could have stopped the story, the history of Ukraine, the history of Europe.

Russian tank commanders knew what they were firing at, he alleged, adding: The terrorist state now resorted to nuclear terror.

The Ukrainian presidency also denied fresh Russian reports that Zelensky fled the country.

 Horrific, horrific consequences 

We are faced together with what is President Putins war of choice, unprovoked, unjustified, and a war that is having horrific, horrific consequences, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in Brussels.

Were committed to doing everything we can to make it stop.

But Putin has been unmoved as Russia has become an economic, sporting and cultural pariah.

The Kremlin said that Putin, in a call with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko Friday, restated that the tasks set for the (Ukraine) operations are going according to plan and will be fulfilled in their entirety.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov called on Russians to unite around our president, after thousands braved mass arrests at anti-war demonstrations this week.

Authorities have imposed a news blackout and two liberal media groups have halted operations.

Multiple media websites, including the BBC, were partially inaccessible in Russia.

Twitter was restricted and Facebook blocked.

The BBC said it was suspending work in Russia after Russian lawmakers approved legislation to impose fines and jail terms of up to 15 years for anyone publishing fake news about the army.

Independent Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta said it would be removing Ukraine content in the wake of the new law.

Russia has intensified strikes across Ukraine with fresh reports of civilian casualties and devastating damage, particularly in southern areas near Kherson, the first city to fall to Moscows troops.

NATO, fearful of provoking its own war with nuclear-armed Russia, again ruled out enforcing a no-fly zone over Ukraine.

The terrible expectation is that the suffering weve already seen is likely to get worse before it gets better, Blinken admitted to reporters.

Mariupol, east of Kherson, is cut off without water or electricity in the depths of winter.

The port citys deputy mayor Sergei Orlov told BBC radio that its situation was terrible after 40 hours of shelling of sites including schools and hospitals.

I believe that (Putin) wants to destroy Ukraine as a nation, he said.

In the northern city of Chernihiv, 47 people died Thursday when Russian forces bombed residential areas, including schools and a high-rise apartment block, according to a new toll given by local officials.

Putin has denied bombing cities.

 Whole world against you 

Ukraine authorities say residential parts of the eastern city of Kharkiv have also come under indiscriminate shelling, which UN prosecutors at The Hague are investigating as a possible war crime.

Ukraines Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba demanded a special tribunal, alleging there were numerous cases of, unfortunately, when Russian soldiers rape women in the Ukrainian cities.

In Geneva, the UN Human Rights Council overwhelmingly voted to create a top-level investigation into violations committed in the invasion.

The message to Putin has been clear: youre isolated on a global level and the whole world is against you, Ukrainian ambassador Yevheniia Filipenko said after the vote.

The UN says more than 1.2 million refugees have flooded into neighbouring countries from Ukraine.

The conflict is also driving some Russians to flee their country, fearful it is their last chance to escape the economic pain from ever-tougher Western sanctions, or the Kremlin crackdown on domestic dissent.

On one of the few remaining routes from Russia to the EU, trains from Saint Petersburg to Finland have been packed with Russians.

With fears growing of nuclear conflict, the US and Russian armed forces have set up a new direct phone line to reduce the risks of miscalculation, the Pentagon said Friday.

burs-jit-bgs/bfm

Meta
The writer is Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance of Canada

Martin Luther King believed that the arc of the moral universe is long but that it bends toward justice.

But he also knew that there are evil men in the world, who seek to thwart that benign curve and push us all back into darkness.

Because of those men, there are moments in history when the great struggle between freedom and tyranny comes to down to one fight, in one place, which is waged for all of humanity.

In 1863, that place was Gettysburg. In 1940, it was the skies above Britain. Today, in 2022, it is Kyiv.

On the cobbled streets of that golden-domed city, a fierce and united citizenry, led by its cheerfully resolute president Volodymyr Zelensky, is fighting a barbaric invasion. Those courageous Ukrainians are fighting for themselves, and they are also fighting for us all. Right now, indeed, brave Ukraine is the moral leader of the free world.

But there is another side to this story. While Ukrainian civilians gamely learn to make Molotov cocktails to defend their homes, one of the worlds most brutal war machines is bombarding them.

Not content with terrorising his own people, President Vladimir Putin is seeking to impose his tyranny on his democratic, freedom-loving neighbours. In launching this war against Ukraine, Putin attacked the values ??and the international rules that are the foundation of all the democracies of the world.

And in so doing, he has forfeited the right to partake in the global prosperity that we, the worlds democracies, have built together since we first established that rules-based international order after the second world war.

Russia cannot simultaneously open fire on our system, while also enjoying its fruits. You cannot bomb Kyiv in the morning and dock your yacht on the Cote dAzur in the evening.

That is why, in close collaboration and in solidarity with the Ukrainian government, the G7 has put in place the toughest sanctions ever imposed on a major economy.

We have personally imposed sanctions on Putin and his hangers on. We have done the same to Russian oligarchs. We have cut Russias major financial institutions and its sovereign wealth funds out of the global economy. We have frozen the assets of its central bank.

These measures will sever Russia financially from the western world, and will render useless much of the war chest of reserves that Putin has amassed.

The Russian president and his enablers may have believed that they had built an economic Fortress Russia, but we have shown that there are no fortresses in the interconnected global economy. No country is sanction-proof.

And to the Russian technocrats who are this week vainly struggling to prop up a rouble in freefall, let me say: We warned you.

Two weeks ago at the meeting of G20 finance ministers and central bank governors, I urged Elvira Nabiullina, the governor of the Russian central bank, not to allow her government to launch an illegal and unprovoked war. I cautioned her that if her country took this horrible step, it would be, as Talleyrand reportedly said, worse than a crime  it would be a mistake.

Our economic sanctions, I warned, would be swift, co-ordinated, sustained and crushing. They are. And they will continue to be.

Dictators, very much including the Kremlins tyrant, often fail to understand democracies. We can seem, to them, to be weak and divided, compared with the servile conformity they impose on their societies at the barrel of a gun. But our very openness to debate and dispute means that once we are agreed on a course of action, we are strong and we are united.

Indeed, with their remarkable resistance, the people of Ukraine have shaken the worlds older democracies out of our malaise. In dying for freedom and democracy, Ukrainians have shown us that these values ??can come at a high price, but that it is a price worth paying.

And Ukraines courage has renewed our confidence that democracies can actually win.

The people of Ukraine are today showing the incredible strength of a free people fighting for their democracy. That is why the worlds democracies are equally resolute in our support for the people of Ukraine.

This is one of those times, and one of those places, where freedom confronts tyranny. We are determined that freedom will triumph, and it will.
Panelists lead a conversation at Wednesday's event at The Commons. The panel was over Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Jo In Sung finally opened his very own social media account and is ready to spend more time communicating with his fans.

Continue reading to see his first Instagram posts!

It's Official! You Can Now Follow Jo In Sung on Instagram

On March 3, the "It's Okay, That's Love" star surprised the public by launching his first-ever personal Instagram account. The Korean actor also revealed behind-the-scenes photos of his variety show "Unexpected Business 2."

The "Memories of Bali" star wrote in his first caption, "Hello, this is Jo In Sung's official Instagram. Please continue to show your warm love and support in the future!."

Jo In Sung uploaded another set of pictures of him working inside the supermarket and invited the fans to watch for the upcoming episode of "Unexpected Business 2," which airs every Thursday at 8:40 p.m. (KST).

You can start following Jo In Sung @zoinsung_official!

Jo In Sung to Release New Drama and Movie This Year

A-lister Jo In Sung made his return with the movie "Escape From Mogadishu" in 2021. It was his first project after almost three years of hiatus.

After the film, Jo In Sung joined his real-life best friend Cha Tae Hyun in the ongoing variety program "Unexpected Business," which is now on its second season.

In addition, the actor will have his long-awaited small screen comeback as he is confirmed to lead webtoon-based series "Moving."

Jo In Sung will work with Han Hyo Joo, Cha Tae Hyun, Ryu Seung Ryong, Kim Sung Hyun, Kim Hee Won, and more.

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT: NU'EST Hwang Minhyun Joins Jung So Min, Lee Jae Wook in New Fantasy Romance Drama

Though there's no confirmed date yet of its official release, Jo In Sung's first drama after eight years following "It's Okay, That's Love" is expected to meet the viewers this year.

The action fantasy drama is said to have a production budget of 42 million USD and is about to produce 20 episodes.

"Moving" can be streamed via Disney+ Korea.

Jo In Sung is also preparing for another big screen comeback with "Smuggling," which is scheduled to premiere anytime soon this 2022.

Are you excited for Jo In Sung's upcoming projects? Share your comments with us!

Visit KDramastars for more Korean drama, movie and celebrity updates.

Shai Collins wrote this. KDramastars owns this article.
Go Eun Gang (Chae Soo Bin) and Wi Seung Hyun (Kang Daniel) get suspicious of Jo Han Sol's (Kim Kwon) agenda in "Rookie Cops" episode 12.

'Rookie Cops' Episode 12: Go Eun Gang and Wi Seung Hyun Find Hae Ji's Lifeless Body

Wi Seung Hyun watched the sunrise with Go Eun Gang at the beach. But while they were busy walking around the area, they found a dead person who was later on identified as Min Hae Ji (Lee Se Mi), Ko Mi Kang's friend.

They immediately phoned the police to report the incident. Upon investigation, the cops found drugs from the victim's items. Eun Gang mentioned to her sister Ko Mi Kang (Son So Mang) about the death of her friend, and was shocked about her sudden demise.

Kim Tak Meets Wi Seung Hyun's Family

After their beach trip, Wi Seung Hyun invited Kim Tak (Lee Shin Young) to their house where he finally introduced his parents to his best friend. The Judo player was amazed by how big Seung Hyun's house and powerful his parents are.

But he didn't expect to receive such hurtful words from Wi Seung Hyun's dad, a high-ranking police officer. He was supposed to have a sleepover in Seung Hyun's house but decided to return to the dorm due to Seung Hyun's father.

Meanwhile, when Kim Tak had already left, Seung Hyun confronted his father and told him how disappointed he was for humiliating his friend.

Yoon Daeil and Ki Han Na Become More Comfortable at Each Other

Daeil is already attracted to Ki Han Na (Park Yoo Na) and he couldn't stop thinking about her. He decided to talk to her over the phone and check how her day was. Han Na also feels the same and is not afraid to open about her worries and struggles to him.

Since Han Na has a part-time job to support herself, Daeil decided to sell one of his grandfather's stone collections, which he failed to do because he got caught.

Go Eun Gang Discovers Culprit Behind Hae Ji's Case

Eun Gang felt something off about the man who introduced himself as Hae Ji's friend and asked for her laptop. She got even more worried when an unexpected person came, disguising as a WiFi installer.

Eun Gang noticed Hae Ji's laptop got swapped by the stranger. She immediately followed him, thanks to her parents, and they were able to secure the gadget.

The female student went to the university and told the story to Wi Seung Hyun and Kim Tak.

To know why someone is desperate to get Hae Ji's laptop, they first needed to unlock the laptop and search whether there's evidence that could be used to know the reason behind Hae Ji's death.

When they were able to gain access to the device, Seung Hyun, Kim Tak, and Eun Gang were shocked about the video they found. It was a clip showing the victims used as experiments to try out new drugs.

At night, Eun Gang saw her father's watch and remembered something. She checked Shin Ah Ri's photo with the famous entrepreneur Jo Han Sol (Kim Kwon) and discovered that the watch is exactly the same one worn by the unidentified person in the confidential video.

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT: 'Rookie Cops' Episode 11: Cheon Young Min Shows Affection To Lee Shin Young

Thoughts on "Rookie Cops" episode 12? Tell us in the comments!

For more Korean drama updates, visit KDramastars!

Shai Collins wrote this. KDramastars owns this article.
"Thirty-Nine" episode 6 shows Son Ye Jin's desperation to protect Jeon Mi Do and make her happy in the remaining days of her life that she forgot to look after herself too.

As the tvN series reached the end of its first half, the life drama hit a new rise in rating after a slump from its previous episode.

'Thirty-Nine' Viewership Rating

Per Nielsen Korea, "Thirty-Nine" episode 6 garnered a major increase in viewership rating.

From dipping to 5.5 percent in the 5th episode, it now garnered an average nationwide rating of 7 percent.

Hopefully, the increase will continue, especially in the forthcoming episode where it tackles the reason behind Jang Chan Young and Kim Ji Seok's relationship fallout.

'Thirty-Nine' Episode 6 Recap: Cha Mi Do Defends Kim So Won

The episode continues with Cha Mi Do (Son Ye Jin) meeting Kim Seon Woo's (Yeon Woo Jin) family alongside her sister Kim So Won (Ahn So Hee) and father.

At the restaurant, the vibe seems uncomfortable after their father insulted So Won at the clinic and in front of Mi Jo.

He blamed it all on his daughter for making everyone feel uncomfortable and took a swipe at her for being an orphan and acting like one.

Being an orphan herself, Cha Mi Jo couldn't help but politely call out Seon Woo's father. She noted that she is lucky to be raised by loving parents. On the other hand, the father lauded his adopted parents for raising her well.

Does Jang Joo Hee's Mother Know Cha Mi Jo's Real Parents?

After Jang Chan Young (Jeon Mi Do) announced her bucket list, Jang Hoo Hee (Kim Ji Hyun) started by asking her mom about her friend's birth parents.

However, she seems uncomfortable with the topic, suggesting that she might have an idea who and where they were.

In the next scene, Joo Hee's mom pulled out an old diary in her drawer containing Yeongwol Prison's address and a certain name, Lee Gyeong Suuk.

"If You raised her, she wouldn't have grown up so well," she said, hinting that it might be Mi Jo's real mom.

Jang Joo Hee Quits Her Job

The cosmetics manager seems to be fed up with her work, especially how they get treated by customers.

After ranting with Park Hyun Joon (Lee Tae Hwan) and with her two best friends, it's time for her to get to work again.

At the store, one customer was really rude towards her; Joo Hee reached her limit and quit her job on the spot.

She calls Mi Jo, who is on her way for a camping trip with Kim Seon Woo, was shocked to hear the news. Cha Mi Jo explained to Seon Woo that Joo Hee would never make such rash decisions.

Seeing how worried she is, Seon Woo decides to go back to Seoul for Mi Jo to comfort her friend.

Cha Mi Jo Kneels for Jang Chan Young's Sake

The latter part of "Thirty-Nine" episode 6 illustrates a heartbreaking scene after Cha Mi Jo begged to protect Jang Chan Young.

Chan Young was surprised to see that everyone was at her place. First was Kim Ji Seok, who decided to have a sleepover at her house. It was followed by her mother, who paid her a surprised visit and brought her food.

Lastly, the duo decides to chill at her house after an exhausting day.

Expecting another visitor, Kim Seon Woo, Mi Jo hurriedly opened the door but was shocked to see Kim Ji Seok's wife.

Knowing that she'd make a scene, she pushed her to the elevator. Outside the building, she begged her to leave and turn a blind eye just this once.

However, the wife seemed persistent, which prompted Cha Mi Jo to kneel and plead not to make a scene.

For Cha Mi Jo, she had to protect Chan Young; unfortunately, it took a toll on her health, leaving her unconscious. Luckily, Kim Seon Woo came in just on time and rescued Mi Jo.

KDramastars owns this article

Written by Geca Wills
A year after Youn Yuh Jung made history at the 93rd Academy Awards, the South Korean actress returns to the Oscars this year as a presenter!

'Pachinko' Actress Youn Yuh Jung To Present for the 94th Academy Awards

On March 4, The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences officially announced its first lineup of presenters for this year's Oscars.

93rd Academy Awards Best Supporting Actress Youn Yuh Jung will present an award this year at the upcoming ceremony, along with artists Kevin Costner, Zoe Kravitz, Rosie Perez, Chris Rock and Lady Gaga.

Meet the first slate of presenters for the 94th Academy Awards . #Oscars https://t.co/nmkMhMfsCF  The Academy (@TheAcademy) March 3, 2022

Last year, Youn Yuh Jung became the first South Korean actor to win an acting award at the Academy Awards. She brought home the gold-plated award for Best Supporting Actress for "Minari."

Following his win, which made history, she was officially invited to join the Academy as a voting member.

94th Academy Awards Ceremony To Air This Month

The highly lauded Academy Awards is set to make history once again this year!

The 94th Academy Awards, presented by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, honors the films released in 2021.

It is scheduled to take place at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, hosted by Amy Schumer, Wanda Sykes and Regina Hall.

The 94th Academy Awards will air live from Hollywood on March 27, 2022 at 8:00 p.m. ET.

Youn Juh Jung's Award-Winning Film 'Minari'

"Minari," a 2020 American drama film directed by Lee Isaac Chung, tells the story of a South Korean immigrant family who try to survive in the rural United States during the 1980s.

The film stars South Korean-American actors Steven Yeun, Han Yeri, Alan Kim, Noel Kate Cho, "The Punisher" actor William Patton and Youn Yuh Jung.

It grossed $3.1 million in the United States and Canada combined, and a worldwide total of $14.9 million.

In 2020, "Minari" bagged six nominations at the Academy Awards for its brilliance and gripping story.

Youn Yuh Jung To Star in Multicultural Epic Film 'Pachinko'

Based on the best-selling novel by Lee Mi Jin, "Pachinko" is a family saga depicting four generations of a poor Korean immigrant family fighting to control their destiny in Japan.

The epic drama stars big names such as Youn Yuh Jung, Lee Min Ho, Soji Arai, Jin Ha, Kaho Minami, Anna Sawai, Jimmi Simpson and Kim Min Ha.

"Pachinko" is a masterpiece that discusses the themes of power, racism, stereotyping, and discrimination while still longing for the family's hopes, dreams and triumphs.

Moreover, "Pachinko" will premiere on Apple TV+ on March 25 with its first three episodes. It will be followed by weekly episodes every Friday until April 29.

Watch "Pachinko" teaser here, in case you missed it:

KDramaStars owns this article.

Written by Elijah Mully.
The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine is on fire according to the mayor of the nearby town of Energodar, Dmytro Orlov.
Many municipalities are showing support for Ukraine as that country tries to fight off the Russian invasion by flying Ukrainian flags atop civic properties. The town of Peachland has illuminated trees along the Okanagan Lake waterfront in Heritage Park in lights of blue and yellow.
A Place for All Conservatives to Speak Their Mind.
When opportunity knocks, Ralph Yerex answers, even if it's from a long distance away.

This week Yerex, a local veterinarian, is taking the unique opportunity to visit Alaska as he volunteers his services at the annual Iditarod dog sled race.

When the race kicks off Sunday, he will be one of 49 vets from around the country lending assistance along the 975-mile course from Anchorage to Nome.

An independent vet, for the past year Yerex has been working part-time at Willow Springs Veterinary Clinic, Pleasant Prairie.

A veterinarian colleague who has been doing the Iditarod for the past decade suggested Yerex look into it, he said before leaving for Alaska on Feb. 27.

(Race organizers) needed vets and my (veterinary) ER experience and ability to take time off made me an ideal candidate, he said.

Yerex will be helping some of the 23 checkpoints along the route during the races 50th anniversary run. The race takes about 10 days to complete.

Checking the racers

This years race is comprised of 49 mushers, each with a team of 16 racers, or sled dogs. As they stop at each checkpoint, vets conduct quick physicals to monitor the racers weight, hydration and heart and lung function, Yerex said.

The dogs, which average about 50 pounds each, will consume somewhere around 12,000 calories a day during the race, he said.

To learn the intricacies of the racers needs, Yerex said that each of the veterinarians new to the Iditarod attend a three-day seminar on what to look for during the race.

Sometimes theres the perception that the dogs are not well treated, he said. But these are racers, theyre well-trained and love to run.

To enhance their comfort and that of their charges, the volunteer vets were instructed to pack a sleeping bag, mat, appropriate clothes, a stethoscope and some vet supplies.

A history with hounds

Born and raised in Milwaukee, Yerex, 60, got into veterinary care as a teen working at the Milwaukee Humane Society. I got my Eagle Scout award and when they asked what I wanted to do professionally they hooked me up with a Racine vet clinic. I worked there summers and holidays.

After obtaining an undergraduate degree in River Falls, Yerex studied to become a vet at the University of Glasgow, Scotland, then returned to the U.S. to begin private practice.

Yerexs career has taken him around the country and the world. He has done emergency canine work and worked with greyhound rescue organizations in Spain and in the U.S.

Before COVID he was offered an opportunity to work doing cardiac ultrasounds on small animals in Singapore. The gig went away as it was impossible to travel there during the pandemic, he said.

Taking new opportunities has been a theme for him, he says. You can stay in one place or think, Heres an opportunity, why not?

After 33 years, Yerex has become semi-retired and now does relief veterinary work. Its nice to work when I want, he said.

New Alaska experience



In addition to providing needed care for the sled dogs, Yerex said he was looking forward to exploring a little of Alaskas back country.

Anchorage is a big city so will have big city stuff but I want to see what small towns like Ruby (the races half-way point) will be like. Id like to see what people do differently and how they deal with temperatures like 50 below.

Its a chance to do something I dont usually do and learn something new, he said. Moose stew, I heard, is something to try.

Yerex said he gets his sense of adventure from his parents. My mom and dads thing was, You got an opportunity, do it.

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Gov. Tony Evers announced millions of dollars worth of grant funding for both the city and county of Kenosha during a stop here Thursday.

Evers announced that the state has awarded $15 million in stimulus funds to help boost development of the proposed Kenosha Innovation Neighborhood at the former 107-acre Chrysler engine plant property. Evers also announced $9.85 million for the county to help relocate the County Human Services/Job Center campus to Sun Plaza, 3446 52nd St.

Evers made the announcements at the Kenosha Human Development Services center at Sun Plaza. He was flanked by city council members, county supervisors, state representatives and local activists.

We dont just want to rebound and recover. We want to see Wisconsin families and communities and our economy succeed for years to come. We need to make these investments today, Evers said during the hour-long event. It is my pleasure to invest these critical funds in Kenoshas communities and their people.

Innovation Neighborhood

The Kenosha Innovation Neighborhood is a proposed $1 billion project that aims to revitalize the Chrysler site east of 30th Avenue between 52nd and 60th Streets into a hub for innovation. It is proposed to include a new facility for LakeView Technology Academy, a Kenosha Unified School District choice school that specializes in science, technology, engineering and mathematics education. The neighborhood would also include much-needed affordable housing, green space and retail stores.

It will bolster entrepreneurships and start-ups in the area, as well as provide education and training opportunities for Kenoshans, Evers said

Kenosha Mayor John Antaramian said hes grateful for the support.

This is something that is going to impact this community dramatically, Antaramian said. Governor, I want to again thank you so much because with this we are going to change and move Kenosha forward faster. And in the state of Wisconsin, I hope that this becomes a bit of a template for other communities to follow and do.

The sites proposed Innovation Center is expected to be a 60,000 square-foot incubator facility for new business start-ups.

The center will be a focal point for entrepreneurs and startup businesses to develop programs that encourage job creation, technology development and building skills. Collaborative programs will engage the resources of regional colleges: University of Wisconsin-Parkside, Carthage College, Gateway Technical College and Herzing University, according to a media release from community relations liaison Kris Kochman.

New Job Center campus

Under a public-private partnership, Bear Development would purchase the existing Human Services/Job Center property, 8600 Sheridan Road, and redevelop Sun Plaza to better suit the needs of the county. The aging facility off of Sheridan Road, which is more than 50 years old, would require millions of dollars worth of repairs over the next few years.

I want to thank Gov. Evers and his team for helping us strengthen this project with these much-needed funds so we can maximize the utility of (Sun Plaza) to do outreach in our communities, said Kenosha County Executive Jim Kreuser. This will result in our bringing our human services closer thousands and thousands of the public that we serve.

The Department of Human Services provides job training, veterans services and health services, among other things.

Evers on Kenosha impact

When questioned about how these funds and projects would actually benefit the people of Kenosha after a difficult two years for the city in the wake of the pandemic and riots, Evers said it will make a huge difference.

If you look at whats going on in the county and the city, this is really going to make a huge difference  economic development, job training, people being able to access services easier than ever before, he said. Its so forward looking. Its not just going to be for the next year, its going to be for generations. Really good thinking here and Im really glad that we are able to persevere.

Elected leaders respond

State Rep. Samantha Kerkman, R-Salem Lakes, praised the announcements.

I am thrilled that the needs of Kenosha County and the City of Kenosha are being recognized and that our families, students, and workers will get to enjoy the revitalization, growth, and opportunities for the community that both the county services building relocation and the KIN project will bring, Kerkman said in a statement. The events of the last two years were economically devastating to small, local businesses and start-ups and underscored the need to build a truly diverse regional economy. These grants will not only help the area bounce back, but help fund the transformational groundwork needed to bridge gaps in training and opportunity. I look forward to both projects advancing to meet the needs of our residents and to continue building a robust, inclusive economy in southeastern Wisconsin.

State Sen. Bob Wirch, D-Somers, thanked Evers for his commitment to Kenosha.

This money moves both of these great, important local projects one step closer to reality, and I am very excited about the ripple effect this will have on economic and workforce development in our community, Wirch said in a statement.

The Kenosha Innovation Neighborhood, located on the 107-acre Chrysler engine plant site, will focus on developing opportunities in education, workforce development and job training, and entrepreneurial development and will connect Kenosha residents with opportunities in high-growth fields. Through a public-private partnership, Kenosha County plans to move its Human Services and Job Center building to the former Sun Plaza shopping center on 52nd Street. Construction is set to begin this year, and the new center should be operational by 2024.

State Rep. Tip McGuire, D-Kenosha, expressed similar sentiments in a statement.

We are extremely grateful for his steadfast commitment to our community and to making the Kenosha Innovation Neighborhood a reality, he said.

McGuire said Evers previously sought to fund the Kenosha Innovation Neighborhood plan in his budget but Legislative Republicans stripped it out.

Despite roadblocks along the way, Gov. Evers made it a priority to get this critical project over the finish line for our city. We are extremely grateful for his steadfast commitment to our community and to making the Kenosha Innovation Neighborhood a reality, McGuire said.

State Sen. Van Wanggaard, R-Racine, who represents a large part of Kenosha County, in a statement said both he and Kerkman have requested for months that the pandemic funds be used for the Kenosha Innovation Neighborhood.

Im so glad that Governor Evers finally recognized the importance of and his ability to spend American Rescue Plan Act funds for the Kenosha Innovation Neighborhood (KIN) in an election year. Its great news, he said in a statement. Imagine how much progress could have been made on this vital redevelopment project in the last nine months. Of course, we know that Evers is typically slow to react to help Kenosha.

More than $200M awarded statewide

Evers announced Thursday that more than $212.9 million has been awarded statewide through the Neighborhood Investment Fund Grant program to address the needs of communities through long-term investments and economic recovery projects.

From Rice Lake to Kenosha, our Neighborhood Investment Fund is providing support to address a variety of community needs, and whether its affordable housing, area revitalization, or improving the access and delivery of public services, these projects will be transformational in the daily lives of the folks who call these neighborhoods home, Evers said in a press release after Thursdays event in Kenosha.

Over the last week, Ive had the pleasure of visiting with grant recipients all across the state, and the dedication, ingenuity, and passion folks have demonstrated through their creative proposals is proof that these grant dollars are building a foundation for a brighter future for Wisconsinites.

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Hopkinsville, KY (42240)

Today

Scattered thunderstorms in the morning becoming more widespread in the afternoon. A few storms may be severe. High around 80F. Winds SE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 70%..

Tonight

Scattered thunderstorms during the evening becoming more widespread overnight. Low 64F. Winds S at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 70%.
The Tuskegee Syphilis Study is widely acknowledged as a violation of ethics today, but the social conditions of the time allowed the grave injustices to happen in plain sight. In the 1930s, social Darwinism emerged as justification for racist practices. The perceived inevitability of African Americans natural extinction was used to justify many unethical practices within the study, including the decision to withhold known treatment from participants. The USPHS earned the approval of the United States government after making the case that African Americans would not seek out treatment of their own volition, a harmful preconception linked to the theory of social Darwinism.

Bintou Diarra is a premedical student.

She shares her story and discusses her KevinMD article, COVID-19 and the Tuskegee syphilis study.

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I recently had an opportunity to assist a hospital organization with its electronic health records implementation in Las Vegas. Im usually working non-stop during implementations, but I was ecstatic when I could get a break from work to sightseeing. I arranged with a tour bus to explore the Grand Canyon (Im not much into gambling).

I reported to the tour bus at 6 a.m. and was ushered inside the remarkably comfortable bus with my fellow travelers. I sat across from a young Japanese man named Ginjz. We proceeded to engage in small talk. The topic eventually came to Kintsugi, the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery by mending the areas of breakage with mixed gold, silver, or platinum. In Japanese culture, when valuable pottery breaks, there is a process where the breaks are highlighted with metal ornamentation to emphasize the imperfection, not hide it. The broken crockery that is rebuilt becomes more valuable than the previous form.

I couldnt help but relate this story to the acquisition of Cerner by Oracle last year for just over $28 billion. It remains to be seen how Oracle will incorporate Cerner into its larger business. Its also a mystery how Oracle will change Cerner as the company moves into the future. As John Moore, author of the article, The Repercussions of Oracles Acquisition of Cerner, explains, Oracle has set up Cerner as a stand-alone division within Oracle that may provide some autonomy and unlike previous Oracle acquisition(s) where the company had some domain expertise. Its uncharted territory for both entities.

Oracle has been an exceedingly small player in the electronic health records (EHR) provider market and is heavily dependent on Cerner to make this acquisition work. However, Oracles expertise in cloud-based technology could be a game-changer for the health care IT world.

Cerner is coming off a challenging year. In addition to being acquired by Oracle, the companys other big headline in 2021 was the failed rollout as the replacement EHR at Veterans Administration hospitals. A successful integration by Oracle could provide the synergy the company needs. While Cerner is a significant player in EHR, Oracle dwarfs the companys size with annual revenue of over $40 billion. That revenue could open up new opportunities for Cerner that didnt exist before. Its prominent presence in tech-heavy locations such as Silicon Valley and headquarters in Austin, Texas, will help the company attract the talent it needs to grow.

Perhaps by being acquired by Oracle, Cerner has found the gold bond needed to Kintsugi the cracks created by the past. The strength of this acquisition would be an innovative force that makes the electronic health record giant more potent than before.

Afua Aning is a physician informaticist.

Image credit: Shutterstock.com
CORVALLIS, Ore. -- Russia's invasion of Ukraine is causing great distress for the Corvallis community, which has strong ties to Ukraine.

The city established its relationship with Uzhhorod, Ukraine, about 30 years ago, according to the Corvallis Sister Cities Association's past president, Alice Rampton.

Uzhhorod is located in Western Ukraine, bordering Slovakia. As attacks persist in other parts of the country, Uzhhorod -- a city with a population of about 130,000 -- is welcoming refugees. According to Rampton, about 70,000 refugees have fled to the city, straining their infrastructure.

The Corvallis Sister Cities Association is working with community organizations to gather medical supplies and is accepting donations to help Uzhhorod and the people in Ukraine.

"We are raising funds," Rampton said. "We have a local bank, the Citizens Bank of Corvallis, that has opened up an emergency fund for us. People can drop off cash. They can drop off checks right now made out to Uzhhorod Refugee Fund."

Rampton said there will also be links on the Corvallis Sister Cities' website and the city of Corvallis' website in the coming days. She said that money will be wired over to Hungary because the banks in Ukraine are closed currently. From there, she said there are connections who are able to get the money to Ukraine.

Samaritan Health Services is providing medical supplies, according to Rampton.

Rampton said she has traveled to Ukraine about 30 times throughout the past decade. She runs a nonprofit through the Sister Cities Association for 400 children in Uzhhorod. The nonprofit is called the TOUCH Project. It stands for Take One Ukrainian Child's Hand.

The organization has purchased a large bus for people with disabilities, built a classroom, installed three playgrounds, bought 100 beds and bedding for an orphanage, and more, Rampton said. Through the organization, she's also taken children shopping and thrown pizza parties for them.

The current president of the Corvallis Sister Cities Association, Carol Trueba, said the program, in which people travel between the two cities to learn about each other, is beneficial to the community.

"It's been a long running relationship and we have many, many friends there," Trueba said.

Both Trueba and Rampton have been in contact with members of their delegation in Ukraine.

"They're sending messages to us just like you're seeing on television from the people in the hit areas," Trueba said. "They're scared. They're frightened. They're angry, and they don't blame the Russian people either. They certainly think that the government and Putin are the problem."

On Monday, Corvallis' city council passed a resolution expressing support for both Ukraine and Uzhhorod.

Corvallis' mayor, Biff Traber, said he's been in contact with the mayor of Uzhhorod during the past few weeks.

"I met Mayor Andriyiv two years ago when they visited," Traber said. "Before the invasion, I had responded with our support for them in a letter. Then after the invasion, it was clear we needed to do more, and I communicated both the resolution we passed at city council as well as our support and our intention with Sister Cities program to put up the fundraising effort."

In his letter to Uzhhorod's mayor Monday, Traber wrote: "The unprovoked attack by Russia is outrageous, bordering on crimes against humanity."
SPRINGFIELD, Ore.  Following weeks of searching for a missing man in the Springfield area, police say he has been located on the other side of the country.

Shawn Leone, 22, was reported missing on Feb. 16. Family members said hed planned on traveling from Pennsylvania to Oregon to be with family, but he never arrived to their home.

While many reports of possible sightings in the Springfield area came in to the Springfield Police Department, officials said none led to his location.

Investigators later learned that Leone may not have left Pennsylvania and started working with law enforcement in that state. Millvale police officers tracked Leone down just outside of Pittsburg.
Looking to update your home? Watch the KHQ Spring Home Design Guide featuring the areas top home improvement businesses on Sat, May 7 at 4:30pm on KHQ. And click here to win a $500 VISA gift card, courtesy of our presenting partner - VPC Electric!
Kilgore, TX (75662)

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Strong thunderstorms likely. Damaging winds, large hail and possibly a tornado with some storms. High 78F. Winds SSW at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 100%. 1 to 2 inches of rain expected..

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Scattered thunderstorms during the evening, then partly cloudy overnight. A few storms may be severe. Low 58F. Winds W at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 50%.
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The first Active Retirement Ireland digital ambassador from Kilkenny graduated at a special event in the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland in Dublin.

Volunteer Christy OCarroll from Callan will be leading free digital skills classes for older people in their communities as part of the Vodafone Ireland Foundation Hi Digital programme, in partnership with Active Retirement Ireland and ALONE. Over the past three months, he has undergone technology training, Hi Digital train-the-trainer training and Hi Digital platform training.

The Hi Digital programme has been developed to empower older people in Ireland to build basic and essential digital skills, and help them to stay connected in their communities. Active Retirement Ireland in-person classes will follow the Vodafone Ireland Foundation Hi Digital online learning platform and cover essential topics including using the internet, using smartphones, sending emails, keeping in touch through social media or video calling, accessing online banking and government services, and shopping and making electronic payments online.

Tuition is also provided in online communication and recreational services including how to use WhatsApp, watch television or listen to the radio online, plan driving routes and other travel, and book events, outings and holidays online.

Commenting on the graduation of the digital ambassadors, Maureen Kavanagh, CEO of Active Retirement Ireland, said: Digital exclusion of older people is a real and growing problem in Ireland, and one that is leading to increased feelings of isolation and disconnectedness.

"Through this new stage of the Hi Digital programme, our digital ambassador-led, in-person classes will further support older peoples participation online. This will help ensure they have the appropriate access and skills to engage with digital services, along with expanding the possibilities on offer to them from the digital shift. We are so proud of our digital ambassadors who have given up so much of their time for training and who now want to share their skills with others in their communities.

National President Active Retirement Ireland Anne Drury said: There is a clear national need for more older people to learn online skills. Digital literacy levels of older people In Ireland are among the lowest in the EU and when you pair that with the way Irish life is moving online, this is of particular concern. Hi Digital is a significant step on the path to digital inclusion and I am so proud of Active Retirement Irelands graduating digital ambassadors for volunteering their time to support this important programme and their communities.

Older people wishing to learn or refresh their digital skills can start today with the free, self-guided Hi Digital online courses, in both English and Irish, at www.hidigital.ie. The online courses can be completed at home, either independently or with help from friends, family or other people in their community.
A Ukrainian woman living in Ireland has made a plea for donations after her parents turned their rehabilitation centre into a makeshift refuge shelter in western Ukraine.

Nataliya OConnor said her home city of Chernivtsy is overflowing with refugees, many of whom are children and women, travelling from Kyiv and eastern cities amid the Russian invasion.

Many children and women fleeing war-torn cities have travelled to the west of the country and are staying in school halls and other buildings.

Ms OConnor, who moved to Ireland 21 years ago when she was 18, said her parents turned their rehabilitation centre for children with disabilities into a rescue centre.

They are providing shelter and dinners to around 300 refugees, the youngest of whom is two months old.

Ms OConnor, who lives in Dublin, said her parents declined an offer to leave Ukraine and travel to Ireland after the Irish Government waived visa requirements.

They feel responsible to help their country and to help all Ukrainian people who were left without a roof over their head and also to protect their country, Ms OConnor said.

My parents Vasyl and Anastasia and their work colleagues have been cooking dinners, buying all the supplies and taking a good care of everybody who came to the city.

These people have travelled through the front lines of war and some of them trapped between battlefields of Russian and Ukrainian army.

There are around 10,000 adults and 2,000 children who fled to her hometown of Chernivtsy, and the numbers are increasing every day.

Ms OConnor has raised almost 5,000 euro, but urgently needs more donations.

Its just incredible to see because the money will go straight in to the hands of my familys organisation that are dealing directly with the crisis, Ms OConnor told PA news agency.

Its heart-breaking and at this point they need money. They have supplies and goods.

They need something now and they need money for diesel to drive a bus to deliver goods.

Every night they have sirens and curfews and have to sit in darkness and talk in the darkness.

My mums sister who is aged in her 80s and lives on a sixth floor apartment cant rush to the basement, so she sleeps in the bath.

She puts pillows in the bath and sleeps there by herself.

Every time I call them theyre busy, theyre doing something which is great because it keeps them going, they are distracted because otherwise they will go crazy.

A big worry for everyone are the bombs.

When the Russians launch rockets and the air warning goes off.

They know the missile is being launched.

But they dont know where it is going to end up.

My parents dont want to come to Ireland, they are helping too many people now.

We had a big fight because once we heard that they didnt need a visa I wanted them to come over.

But they said no. I was upset and heart-broken. I am very scared for them.

They only started cooking around 50 dinners and now they are cooking for a large amount of people, maybe 300 people and making lunches and dinners and sending food to Kyiv too because it has been cut off.

They deserve to be free.

They deserve to live in democracy, theyre fighting so hard for their democracy.

The world has to stand with them.

The fundraising link is https://www.gofundme.com/f/vdyg6-help-ukraine/vdyg6-help-ukraine/share
Minister for Housing Darragh OBrien TD has made a final call for homeowners, landlords, directors of Owners Management Companies and Property Management Agents throughout Kilkenny to share their experiences of housing defects relating to fire safety, structural safety and water ingress in purpose-built apartment and duplex buildings constructed in Kilkenny between 1991 and 2013.

The deadline for completing the surveys is Monday March 14, 2022.

These experiences are sought by the Independent Working Group to Examine Defects in Housing which was established by Minister OBrien in February 2021.

Views are sought from people across Kilkenny regardless of whether such defects in those properties in Kilkenny are currently known, unknown or where no such defects have arisen.

Encouraging as many people as possible to participate in the survey before the March 14 deadline, Minister OBrien emphasised: Since this consultation was launched in late January there has been a very positive public response. Today, Im making a final call to homeowners, landlords, directors of Owners Management Companies and Property Management Agents across Kilkenny, who own or manage purpose-built apartments or duplex buildings constructed in Ireland between 1991 and 2013, to complete these surveys. We want you to complete them whether the property in question has defects or not, or if the presence of defects is not known.

I understand the working group wants to hear in particular from Owners Management Companies and Property Management Agents of these types of properties as we know there is a significant number who have not yet responded to the survey. If you live in a duplex or purpose-built apartment complex in Kilkenny, built between 1991 and 2013, we ask you to contact your Owners Management Company to encourage them to participate.

Acknowledging the Working Groups work to date, the Minister added: I look forward to receiving the Working Groups report later this year and will give it my full consideration.

The working group will use the survey information to inform its report to the Minister with particular regard to the following: the nature and scale of the issue of fire safety, structural safety and water ingress defects; the difficulties that arise following the discovery of these defects; and the costs and levies associated with the remediation of the defects.

Separate surveys for each stakeholder group are available HERE.
Women hold a placard against Russian President Vladimir Putin as they attend a pro-Ukraine protest against Russia's invasion of Ukraine in Tel Aviv, Israel, Thursday, March 3, 2022. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)
An Espanola Fire Department engine, fire truck and brush truck responded at 9:30 a.m., Feb. 25 to a report of a fire in an abandoned house on North Railroad Avenue. A homeless man had started the fire in a fireplace, which firefighters extinguished with a hand-held fire extinguisher.
Jasper, TX (75951)

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Cloudy skies during the morning hours followed by scattered showers and thunderstorms in the afternoon. High 86F. Winds S at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 40%..

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Thunderstorms likely in the evening. Then a chance of scattered thunderstorms later on. A few storms may be severe. Low 63F. Winds WSW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 80%.
Shenandoah, IA (51601)

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Steady light rain in the morning. Showers continuing in the afternoon. High 56F. Winds ENE at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 70%..

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Kokomo, IN (46901)

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Cloudy skies with periods of rain later in the day. High near 60F. Winds E at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 70%..

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Cloudy with periods of rain. Low 54F. Winds E at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 80%. Rainfall near a half an inch.
Kokomo, IN (46901)

Today

Cloudy with rain developing later in the day. High near 60F. Winds E at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 70%..

Tonight

Cloudy with periods of rain. Low 54F. Winds E at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 80%. Rainfall near a half an inch.
Ceramist to promote heritage projects

China Daily) 13:50, March 04, 2022

Tian Jing works at her purple pottery learning center in Jianshui, Yunnan province. CHINA DAILY

Tian Jing can't wait to share her ideas about protecting intangible culture heritage and inheritance during the upcoming two sessions, the annual gatherings of China's national legislative and top political advisory bodies.

The 45-year-old was born in Jianshui county, Southwest China's Yunnan province, and is a member of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference.

Tian said she would suggest increasing joint efforts between governments, schools and companies linked to culture to strengthen intangible culture heritage training at vocational schools in areas inhabited by ethnic minority groups.

She called upon the parties concerned to take into account associated needs such as schools setting up relevant academic majors and offering employment support.

Theory and practice should also be organically integrated during teaching, she added. "Since the 18th CPC National Congress, China's intangible cultural heritage protection and inheritance work has achieved tangible results," Tian said.

"A large number of intangible cultural heritage projects have been protected, and conditions have been significantly improved for intangible cultural heritage inheritors to carry on their traditions."

At last year's two sessions, Tian proposed increasing the number of intangible cultural heritage teachers at medium-level vocational schools in areas inhabited by ethnic minority groups and building national intangible cultural heritage digital museums.

"Both proposals have advanced," she said.

Since a guideline was released in August by the general offices of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and the State Council, China's Cabinet, efforts have been stepped up to protect, promote and popularize intangible cultural heritage, including through government funds for preservation, reduced interest on loans and tax incentives.

"It was a substantial protective policy, and many vocational schools now offer classes in intangible cultural heritage skills," Tian said.

She was named a provincial inheritor of Jianshui's national intangible culture heritage of "purple pottery firing" in 2014. Jianshui's purple pottery, which flourished during the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), is made from the county's "five-color" clay, which consists of red, yellow, purple, white and green clays colored by various minerals. Finished pieces are hand-painted and coated in an unglazed polish.

Apprentices watch Tian making a teapot at the center. CHINA DAILY

Jianshui pottery is also often decorated with Chinese calligraphy and painting, adding to its cultural worth.

Tian's love of pottery was born of her love of tea, and when she was 17, she decided she wanted to make her own tea set. She first trained with local potters to learn basic skills, and each had their own area of expertise. She said that some were good at making clay, some at fashioning clay models, and others excelled at firing.

Tian realized that few potters at the time were experts in every skill, and that creating a fine piece of purple pottery required a lot of work and patience.

"The biggest difficulty for me was systematically acquiring the knowledge I needed to make traditional Jianshui purple pottery," Tian said.

Back then, purple pottery was mostly made in family workshops, and mainly in the form of cooking pots and vases. There were only a few types of teapot. Tian felt that it was a pity the workshops weren't making teapots of more artistic value.

With her family's support, Tian got a place at Jingdezhen Ceramic University in 2012, where she spent five years studying porcelain modeling, clay making, decorating, sculpting and firing.

She gradually developed her own style of making teapots. She went on to establish a purple pottery learning center in 2018.

Under her influence, many of Tian's apprentices have gone from merely knowing purple pottery to loving it, and their hometown.

Most of the apprentices she has recruited over the years have been young villagers for whom the direct benefit of learning the craft is the ability to make a living.

Lyu Baojing has been studying purple pottery for four years.

"I started by drawing patterns and then created designs on my own, and whenever I was confused, Tian always answered my questions with patience," said the 28-year-old, who used to take odd jobs outside Jianshui.

Lyu was finally able to produce marketable items after about 18 months of practice.

"Learning purple pottery has raised my monthly income from about 3,000 yuan ($475) to more than 10,000 yuan," Lyu said. "At the same time, I feel reborn and have found direction in life."

Tian said most of her apprentices have seen their annual incomes increase from 10,000 yuan to 60,000 yuan over the past decade.

To date, she has trained 500 young women, who are now able to work flexibly from home. Many apprentices have also gone on to set up their own workshops and have brought more people into the craft.

(Web editor: Zhong Wenxing, Liang Jun)
Son testifies about texting with his father after January 6 and turning him in to the FBI
Student shot and arrested after opening fire on school resource officer and administrator in Kansas, police say




A group of U.S. senators has expressed concerns over the possibility of such "adversaries" as North Korea and Russia using cryptocurrency to evade international sanctions and urged the relevant authorities to ensure strong enforcement of sanctions compliance in the cryptocurrency industry.







Gettyimagesbank

In a joint letter sent to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, Wednesday (local time), amid Russia's invasion of Ukraine, four senators  Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Mark Warner (D-VA), Sherrod Brown (D-OH) and Jack Reed (D-RI)  pointed out that "rogue states" and other actors could use digital currency to conceal cross-border transactions for "nefarious purposes."







"Given the need to ensure the efficacy and integrity of our sanctions program against Russia and other adversaries, we are seeking information on the steps Treasury is taking to enforce sanctions compliance by the cryptocurrency industry," it read. "Strong enforcement of sanctions compliance in the cryptocurrency industry is critical given that digital assets, which allow entities to bypass the traditional financial system, may increasingly be used as a tool for sanctions evasion."







The letter cited a U.N. report last month that North Korea used stolen cryptocurrency possibly worth as much as $400 million to fund its nuclear and ballistic missile program. (Yonhap)






Kendallville, IN (46755)

Today

Mostly cloudy in the morning then periods of showers later in the day. High 59F. Winds ESE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 60%..

Tonight

Cloudy with periods of rain. Low 49F. Winds E at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 80%. Rainfall near a half an inch.
Angola, IN (46703)

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Increasing clouds with showers arriving sometime in the afternoon. High around 60F. Winds ESE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 50%..

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Rain. Low 48F. Winds E at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 80%. Rainfall around a half an inch.
At least two robbers, including a civil defence volunteer, have been arrested for robbing a cab driver using a toy gun, an official said on Friday.

The accused have been identified as Sachin (29), a civil defence volunteer, and Mausam alias Manoj (27), both residents of Delhi's Rangpuri. They would often hire cabs as passengers and then stop at a deserted place to rob the driver.

DCP Gaurav Sharma said, a cab driver had lodged a complaint stating that his car was booked for Munirka from Rangpuri Vasant Kunj on February 27.

Posing as passengers, the two robbers looted him at gunpoint and fled. The firearm used in the crime was later found to be a toy gun.

The police registered a case under section 394 of the Indian Penal Code and initiated an investigation.

On Wednesday, a tip-off was received about the presence of both the accused after which the police swung into action and nabbed the offenders.

A Wagon R car, a motorcycle and a mobile phone was recovered from their possession by the police.
(The Center Square)  Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb said Thursday he has agreed to lower the states income tax rate to 2.9%, making Indianas individual income tax among the lowest in the country in states that tax residents.

Holcomb made the announcement in a statement sent to media, citing the states increasingly strong financial position and surplus revenue.

Indiana is fiscally strong and continues to grow at a rapid rate, Holcomb said in the statement. As our revenues exceed forecasts month after month, it has become clear that the time is now to act on a tax plan that gives back to our growing business community and to hardworking Hoosiers.

The tax plan Holcomb outlined includes cutting the state income tax from 3.23% to 2.9% over time and the already-announced automatic taxpayer refund that will return a total of $545 million to 4.3 million taxpayers, as is required by state law when the state has a surplus.

The Indiana General Assembly passed a bill that said that even those who do not owe state income taxes this year will get the refund.

The governors plan includes paying off $2.6 billion on the Indiana State Teachers Pre-96 Retirement Fund at the end of this fiscal year and eliminating the utility receipts tax and the 30% tax floor on business personal property for all new equipment  something the National Federation of Independent Business has been lobbying the Legislature to do this year.

Individual income taxes make up almost 36% of total state revenues in Indiana, with sales tax contributing another 53%  the largest part.

Indiana is one of 43 states that has a state income tax, though only 41 states tax wage and salary income.

California has a rate of 13.3% and New York is at 10.9%, according to the Tax Foundation. If knocked down to 2.9%, Indianas top state income tax rate would be tied for lowest with North Dakota, which already has a rate of 2.9%.

Nine states have no state income tax: Alaska, Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas and Wyoming.

Until this week, it looked unlikely Indiana would cut taxes this year.

The Indiana House had passed a bill in January that included more than $1 billion in tax cuts and cutting the state income tax rate to 3%.

The Indiana Senate, however, stripped the tax cut provisions from the bill, and Sen. Rodric Bray, R-Martinsville, the Senate leader, said the Senate did not want to pass tax cuts in a non-budget year.

The Indiana General Assembly passes a two-year state budget every other year. The budget bill that was passed last year, which forecasts state revenues and includes all spending, was passed while the state was still in a period of economic recovery from measures taken during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Holcomb said he is confident the tax cut plan he has agreed to can be responsibly achieved while balancing the states priorities and maintaining prudent levels of fiscal reserves.

The sooner we execute this plan the sooner we can: make Indiana tied among states with the lowest individual income tax rate of the states that impose the tax; assist businesses in town of their biggest areas of concerns  energy costs and the close of new capital investment over time; significantly improve the states pension fund ranking; and maintain Indianas low debt burden status, the governor's statement read.
Property taxes are the lifeblood of local governments and municipalities across the United States, accounting for over 70% of all local tax revenue. Property taxes - such as taxes levied on homeowners and landowners - go to fund schools, parks, roads, and other public works and services.

While states typically impose a minimum property tax, property taxes are mostly determined at the local level - and are often a percentage of a property or home's overall value. Depending on where you choose to buy a home, property taxes can range from negligible amounts to nearly matching a mortgage payment.

Across Indiana, the effective annual property tax rate stands at 0.81%, the 21st lowest among states. For context, homeowners in the U.S. pay an average of 1.03% of their housing value in property taxes a year.

The effective property tax rate is calculated by taking the total amount of taxes paid on owner-occupied homes in a given area as a share of the total value of those homes. While an effective property tax rate is useful for comparing taxes at the state level, it is important to note that property tax rates can still vary considerably within a given state.

Because property taxes are typically levied as a share of a given home's value, Americans living in places with higher home values often pay more in property taxes in dollar terms, even if the effective property tax rate is relatively low. In Indiana, the typical home is worth $156,000, lower than the national median home value of $240,500.

All data in this story is from the Tax Foundation, a tax policy research organization, and the U.S. Census Bureau's 2019 American Community Survey.
Two years ago when her son was in distress, she rode 1,400 km on her scooter to bring him home but today she feels helpless as he is stranded in another country.

Razia Begum, a teacher at a government-run school in Telangana's Nizamabad district, is worried about the safety of 19-year-old son, this time stranded in war-hit Ukraine.

Though 260 students from Ukraine have returned to Telangana, Razia is still waiting for her son - Nizamuddin Aman, who is pursuing MBBS first year at Sumy in the north-eastern part of Ukraine.

Aman is among several Indian students at Sumy State Medical University located in Sumy city close to the Russian border.

Reports from Sumy suggest that more than 500 Indian students are waiting to be evacuated. Most of the students are reported to be in bunkers due to continuous Russian shelling. The electricity and water supply systems in the city are said to have suffered in the war.

Sumy is also reported to be cut off from other cities in Ukraine making it very difficult for Indians and other nationals stranded there to move out.

Razia Begum is praying for the safe return of her son. The 50-year-old teacher said she received a call from him two days ago to convey that he is safe. "He told me not to worry as he is safe but I am worried as he is stuck amid war in a foreign land," she said.

Razia Begum has appealed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao to take all necessary steps to ensure safe evacuation of her son and other Indian students stranded there.

She admits that this time she is feeling helpless as her son is stranded thousands of kilometres away and that too in another country.

Razia Begum had displayed exemplary courage and determination to undertake a 1,400 km-long arduous journey on her scooter to bring home her son from Nellore district in neighbouring Andhra Pradesh where he was stuck due to the nationwide lockdown. She rode on highways even at night to reach her son.

This was in April 2020. Nizamuddin had gone to Rahmatabad in Nellore district to a friend's place but was stuck due to the sudden imposition of the lockdown following the Covid-19 breakout.

Armed with permission from the police, she overcame all odds to reach Rahmatabad riding solo on her two-wheeler and brought her son back home.

Teacher at a school in Bodhan town in Nizamabad district, Razia lost her husband due to kidney failure a few years ago and has two sons with Nizamuddin being the younger one. She said her younger son opted for the medical profession so that he could serve patients suffering from kidney related ailments.
Ronald Greene smiles in an undated photo provided by his family. Text messages obtained by The Associated Press show Louisiana's governor was informed within hours of the deadly 2019 arrest of Ronald Greene that troopers engaged in a violent, lengthy struggle that ended with the Black motorists death. (Courtesy of the Greene family via AP)
GREAT FALLS, Mont. - As the crisis in Ukraine continues to escalate, people in the Electric City gathered in a sea of blue and yellow to show support for Ukraine, using one flower to symbolize the need for peace.

People lined 10th Ave. South with signs and sunflowers in support of the Ukrainian people.

The flower didn't just match the flag colors of blue and yellow, but it was also a sign of hope.

"Hope... That they can stand this attack and get back to their lives and rebuild Ukraine," said resident Larry Stimac.

It didn't matter that it was a little chilly, they just wanted to stand in solidarity with those in Ukraine.

"They didn't ask for this kind of war," said Stimac.

Garnering support from those who drove by with honks of their horns.

People we spoke with at the rally say it's very personal for them.

"I have friends in Ukraine that I care about, that I'm concerned about... I want them to be safe, to have choice, to have their country, to have freedom to travel, to take care of themselves and take care of their kids, their families, without interference," said Lance Bischoff, Great Falls resident.

Bischoff says his friends are hiding in basements hoping they won't be bombed next.

For those who may not know someone on the ground, this still hits close to home.

"My family, my ancestry came from that part of the world. My grandfather came from Yugoslavia, his sister brought him over here. They were running away from the communist. This is really a repeat of what happened with my grandfather and so it hits really close to home," said Stimac.

While much of the world is divided by politics, Barbara Bessette, a Great Falls Resident, says peace is something everyone can get behind, regardless of your political party.

"This shows they have support from all over the world, no matter what. You can hear the cars beeping in the background, you can hear the support. And we may be small, but I feel like together we are mighty," said Bessette.

"I was thinking about the picture of however many thousands were in Madrid, and in other countries, even in South America. This is hitting home everywhere. Not just here or in the European or the Baltic or Slavic states. This is big. Stakes are enormous," said Bischoff.

Right now, they are planning on more rallies and prayer meetings but have yet to set dates and times.
Have a news tip or would like to report a typo? Email Anthony Victor Reyes at areyes@kvoa.com.
President Joe Biden spoke with President Vladimir Putin prior to the Russian invasion of Ukraine on a diplomatic solution to the crisis on Feb. 12, 2022.
Young former Coralville firefighter and eastern Iowa native died in the line of duty
The Northern New England Red Cross is installing smoke detectors this weekend. Do you have a fire evacuation plan for your home? How about when you are traveling?
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba on Friday warned against Russian troops firing at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which is the largest in Europe, saying that if it blows up then the catastrophe would be "10 times larger" than the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.

In a tweet early Friday morning, the Minister said: "Russian army is firing from all sides upon Zaporizhzhia NPP, the largest nuclear power plant in Europe. Fire has already broke out.

"If it blows up, it will be 10 times larger than Chernobyl! Russians must immediately cease fire, allow firefighters, establish a security zone."

Also in an emergency address from Kiev, President Volodymyr Zelensky is appealing for urgent help and warned of a possible nuclear disaster.

"Europeans, please wake up," he said.

Citing Ukrainian officials, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said that there has not been any change in the radiation levels at plant site in the wake of the fire.

The IAEA also said that the fire has not affected "essential" equipment and personnel at the nuclear power plane were "taking mitigatory actions".

The global nuclear organisation further said that it is consulting with Ukraine "and others with a view to provide maximum possible assistance to the country as it seeks to maintain nuclear safety and security in the current difficult circumstances".

But in the wake of the "serious situation" at the plant, IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi has warned Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmygal and the country's nuclear regulator and operator of the severe danger if the reactors were hit by the ongoing Russian firing.

Ukraine currently has four active nuclear plants, including Zaporizhzhia which reportedly accounts for some 25 per cent of the country's power, the BC reported.

It also deals with nuclear waste at sites like Chernobyl, which is now under Russian control.

The latest developments come on the ninth day of Russia's continuous military assault on Ukraine.

Since the Russian invasion began on February 24, intense shelling and bombing has continued across Ukraine, including capital Kiev and the second largest city of Kharkiv.

On Wednesday, Russian troops seized the port town of Kherson, a provincial capital home to about 250,000 people, making it the first major Ukrainian city to fall.

Ukraine has so far reported over 2,000 civilian casualties and UN estimates have revealed that over one million people have fled to neighbouring countries such as Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Hungary and Moldova.

At least 160,000 others are currently displaced within Ukraine.

Meanwhile, the European Union believes that figure could climb to seven million, and that 18 million Ukrainians will be affected by the war.
LAKE OF THE OZARKS, Mo.  The Lake of the Ozarks water level has reached 654 feet of elevation, as the annual winter drawdown is now in full-effect.

But new dock and homeowners at the Lake may be asking: what is the drawdown, why does it happen, what does that number mean?

Ameren owns and operates Bagnell Dam, and regulates the Lake level throughout the year, in cooperation with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and the Army Corps of Engineers (ACOE). The utilities company drops the Lake level by about 6 feet during the winter in anticipation of spring rains, which can fill the Lake quickly. During the winter months, the water level at the Lake is lowered to the 654 mark. Dock owners and residents can visit AmerenMissouri.com/Lake to view the guide curve, which is a series of target water levels over the course of the year.

Currently, the Lake is at some of its lowest levels of the whole year, hovering right around the 654 mark. The "low-level limit" for Ameren is 651 feet, and in recent years, the water level has dropped close to that point. Dam operators are always working with rainfall  or the lack thereof  as well as the outflows from Truman Dam, which feeds directly into Lake of the Ozarks.

This year, we have many new residents at the Lake who havent experienced our winter drawdown before, and we want to make sure they are prepared for the drawdown process, said Travis Hart, interim operations manager at Ameren Missouri's Osage Energy Center. During this time, the Lake and Osage River levels will fluctuate as the Bagnell Dam releases more water, and we want everyone to be aware of these changing conditions, so they can avoid damage to their property.

Dock owners in shallow coves should be prepared, as many return to their Lake home in March to discover their dock is sitting on dry ground. Dock professionals say it's not necessarily bad for a dock to be resting on the Lake floor, as long as it's not a rocky area. But that doesn't mean there aren't some things to take care of before the water level drops.

Ameren Missouri offers the following tips to help both Lake of the Ozarks and Osage River dock owners prepare for the drawdown and winter season:

Below the dam, docks should be removed from the Osage River before freezing occurs.

Ensure that hinges, pins and other connections linking docks to seawalls or piers have the flexibility to follow water level fluctuations.

Lengthen cables to allow docks to drop as the lake or river levels drop.

Use a dock deicer to help protect docks from ice damage. Be aware that a deicer may not provide protection from large ice sheets and blocks.

Ask neighbors to keep an eye on the dock or retain a local dock builder or similar contractor to care for the property when the site is unoccupied.

However, at this time in the spring, its a bit late for winter preparation. But the draw-down does give dock-owners the opportunity to do repairs that are easiest when the Lake is down. Now is also a good time for riprap installation, seawall construction and seawall repairs, as lake levels drop and before fish spawning begins. Shoreline property owners should submit their permit applications for evaluation as soon as possible. Permitting forms and more information about shoreline stabilization can be found at AmerenMissouri.com/Lake or by calling the Shoreline office at 573.365.9208.

Bagnell Dam water releases can occur at any time. To ensure everyones safety, a warning siren will sound from the dam before generators start and stop. Dock owners can obtain up-to-date information on lake water levels and river flows online at AmerenMissouri.com/Lake or by calling for the Lake level daily report at 573.365.9205.
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo.  Missouri Governor Mike Parson has appointed a new State Health Director: Paula Nickelson.

Nickelson will be the Acting Director of the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services (DHSS) and her appointment will have to be confirmed  or rejected  by the Missouri Senate. The Senate recently ousted Parson's previous pick, Don Kauerauf, who was appointed to the position by Governor Mike Parson in July of 2021. He had served since then, but was subject to confirmationor notby Missouris legislature in the 2022 legislative session, since the appointment was made after the end of the 2021 session. The Missouri Constitution requires such appointments to be confirmed by the Senate within 30 days of the Senate convening for its next legislative session.

The Governor's Office issued a press release about the announcement, republished below:

Today, during a press conference at the State Capitol, Governor Mike Parson announced that he has selected Paula Nickelson to serve as the Acting Director of the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services (DHSS), effective March 1, 2022.

"Today, we are excited to announce Paula Nickelson as the new DHSS Acting Director," Governor Parson said. "Paula was a key player in Missouri's COVID-19 response efforts and has been a valued member at DHSS for more than 22 years. We are confident in her abilities and proud to welcome her to our Cabinet as we move forward from the COVID pandemic and prepare for what comes next in public health."

Nickelson, a Missouri native, has served within DHSS for more than 22 years and has a distinguished career in public health and health care management. For most of her time with the Department, she has been a leader in several program areas, including maternal-child health, chronic disease prevention, and emergency preparedness and response.

Nickelson was also involved in the state's H1N1 response and planning efforts following the 9/11 attacks. Most recently, she was instrumental in a number of COVID-19 response efforts.

Over the past two years, Nickelson has put her vast experience to work as a reliable, calming, and realistic leader to implement game-changing solutions during COVID-19. She helped establish the states first PPE warehouse, led an interagency team that implemented the "box it in" COVID mitigation strategy for long-term care facilities, oversaw the states antigen testing program, and led the implementation of the states decontamination system for N95 masks for health care workers when resources were still scarce.

Nickelson also developed strategies to establish state-funded monoclonal antibody infusion sites and was part of the team responsible for providing health care staffing support during two separate occasions.

It is a great privilege to be asked to lead the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services, said DHSS Acting Director Paula Nickelson. I am committed to enhancing our collaborative work with our local public health partners, our health care and behavioral health partners and all community partners. We will be focusing on the states leading causes of morbidity and mortality; prioritizing health equity; and ensuring updated data systems, performance management, and operational excellence tools are in place so we can serve Missourians in the best ways possible.

Nickelson earned a Bachelor of Science in psychology from the University of Central Missouri and a Master of Education in counseling psychology at the University of Missouri-Columbia.
CALEDONIA  A Kenosha man has been accused of driving drunk and allegedly almost backed up into a sergeants squad car.

Patrick J. Gattie, 41, of the 5000 block of 19th Avenue, was charged with two misdemeanor counts of bail jumping and misdemeanor counts of operating while under the influence (as a second offense) and possession of a controlled substance.

According to a criminal complaint:

On Tuesday, a Caledonia Police sergeant was traveling on Seven Mile Road when he saw a car about to begin traveling into oncoming traffic via a left turn. It then stopped, the driver waved out his hand and began backing up, almost striking the sergeants car.

The sergeant activated his emergency lights to conduct a traffic stop. While the car was doing a turn, it struck a curb and began turning into the entrance of the Sai Mart gas station, 13600 Seven Mile Road. It then weaved through the parking lot before beginning to stop at a gas pump.

As the sergeant approached the car, he heard the driver say something about him having just changed his front tire. When he was asked why he was reversing into oncoming traffic, he said he did not know what was wrong with his car.

The man, identified as Gattie, had slurred speech and a confused look on his face. When asked how much he had to drink, he said he did not drink anything. A passenger, though, said the two of them drank a lot.

Gattie then admitted he drank some Fireball whiskey several hours prior, but felt he was safe to drive.

Gattie was given a preliminary breath test, which yielded a result of 0.094, above the legal limit of 0.08. He was placed under arrest and his vehicle was searched. Inside was an open bottle of Fireball and several Alprazolam pills.

Gattie was given a $3,000 signature bond in Racine County Circuit Court on Wednesday. A status conference is set for March 30 at the Racine County Law Enforcement Center, 717 Wisconsin Ave., online court records show.
Badger High School Jazz Ensemble students will have the opportunity to share the stage with professional musicians from the Chicago area.

The jazz ensemble will host a free concert 7 p.m., March 5 at the Badger High School, auditorium, 220 E. South St. in Lake Geneva. The concert will be led by professional jazz musician Bob Lark and members of his band.

Lark, who is a jazz professor at DePaul University in Chicago, has been a guest artist, along with his band members, at Badger High School for about 25 years.

The jazz ensemble will be performing several songs on their own and some songs with Lark and his band, and Lark and his band will be performing some of their own tunes, as well.

Its really cool. We get to do a little workshop with them, said senior Logan Wade. We play some tunes with them, then they do their own thing. Its pretty cool.

Caleb Monge, also a senior, said he has performed with Lark during previous Badger Jazz Ensemble concerts and is looking forward to sharing the stage with him again.

He has been a big inspiration to the band throughout all the years Ive been here and so many years before that, Monge said.

Victor Hernandez, senior, said several of the jazz ensemble students had an opportunity to meet Lark during a competition at Purdue University, where he served as a judge. He said several of the students also performed with Larks band during a concert in Chicago.

Not everybody got to go on the trip, but about half of the band got to go, Hernandez said. We got an idea of what hes like.

Badger High School Band Director Gregory Bunge said performing alongside professional musicians is a learning experience for the students.

Its great, but its stressful because the level of musicianship has to be raised really fast, Bunge said. Theyre going to be expected to play professional music in a professional amount of time.

Performing classic jazz tunes

The concert will feature tunes from Nat King Cole, Frank Sinatra and other jazz legends.

Theres a lot of classic songs that a lot of people will know, Monge said. A lot of times Bob Lark will take songs that have a normal structure, and he will spice up the rhythm.

Wade said the concert will feature a mix of fast-paced jazz songs and slow-paced jazz tunes.

When jazz was created, it was all about dancing and getting you on the dance floor, Wade said. A lot of the songs are upbeat and jazzy, and then we do some of the slower ones where you can feel the blues and get into the mood of the song.

Bunge said even though some of the songs are difficult to perform, he feels the students are up to the challenge.

We play these tough arrangements, but it raises their performance level, Bunge said. But we wouldnt be playing them if the band couldnt handle them.

Not much time to prepare

The students only have been preparing for the concert during the past couple of weeks, because they previously were recording music for an upcoming jazz competition.

Monge said preparing for the concert in a short amount of time has been a lot of work.

Its been kind of stressful, Monge said. Its a lot to take on, because we have such a short amount of time from start to finish. We only have about two to three weeks where we can really work on it.

Wade said even though there has not been much time to prepare, the music has not been too difficult to learn.

Its been pretty laid back. These tunes arent super difficult, Wade said. Theyre kind of fun, just to get something new going and learn something new.

More opportunities to perform this year

Because of the coronavirus, the students have not had too many opportunities to perform during the past couple of years. However, they have conducted more performances during the current school year.

The jazz ensemble has performed concerts at Badger High School, Popeyes on Lake Geneva, Topsy Turvy Brewery and during Lake Genevas Oktoberfest.

So weve had a lot more opportunities to play this year than last year, which is good, Wade said.

Monge said he has enjoyed being able to perform more often this school year.

To play in front of a live audience again, its nice to have that support from the community, Monge said.

Continuing with music after high school

Badgers jazz program has about 60 students. Several of the students said they plan to continue to be involved with music after they graduate.

Hernandez said he has been studying music since middle school and has been involved with Badgers music program all four years of high school.

Its a lot more than a class, Hernandez said. Theres really no homework, but you really have to know your stuff and just put effort in.

Hernandez is looking for opportunities to be involved with music after he graduates high school.

Ive been looking into colleges and their music programs, but theres a lot of places in the community where you can go, Hernandez said. In Milwaukee and Chicago, theres a lot of places to perform.

Monge said he has been studying music since the fifth grade and has been involved with Badgers jazz band and concert band all four years of high school.

Being involved with music has been a learning experience, he said.

I appreciate all the things that it teaches us, Monge said. Especially being a section leader this year, it definitely teaches me how to guide my peers. Ive learned a lot of leadership qualities from that.

Monge is set to attend the University of Wisconsin-Madison after graduation and plans to audition for the universitys jazz band and marching band.

So Im really excited for that, he said.

Wade started playing the trumpet when he was in fifth grade and has been involved with middle school and high school bands. He especially enjoys playing jazz music.

You just dont get to play your instrument, but you get to play it in different ways, Wade said. Theres soloing involved. Theres a lot of upbeat songs. Its just not classic tunes.

Wade plans to attend the University of Wisconsin-Stout after graduation but is not certain whether he is going to continue with music.

Im going to be a business major, so Im not really sure how much time Im going to have, Wade said. But I definitely have an interest in seeing what they have up there and possibly joining their jazz band or concert band.

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Looking outside Big Foot High School, you may not know that inside the students are raising fish to donate to the food pantry. There is also an animal lab for hands-on experience and an atrium filled with plants year-round.

The schools agriscience program is model program for the state, said State Superintendent Dr. Jill Underly who toured Big Foot High Schools program on Wednesday, Feb. 23.

She was there in honor of National FFA week and to see the program she had heard so much about.

Touring Big Foots science department Underly said, I love it because it gets the wheels churning for sure.

Every kid should have the opportunities of these model programs  Big Foots ag program is heads and shoulders beyond others.

The students in these programs are the future of our state, she said.

Wisconsin has so much when you look at agriculture, said Underly, whose family lives on a small hobby farm.

There is dairy and cheese, but also honey, cranberries, wine, maple syrup, and so much more, Underly said.

Lisa Konkel, head of Big Foots agriscience department, said the students in her class do much more than memorize facts.

They are able to have real life experiences. For instance, in the schools animal lab there are rabbits, chickens, lambs and even a calf.

In one case, a calf in the lab had a hernia.

The vet came in and did the whole surgery for the class. The kids were able to help participate. That was great, Konkel said.

Another time, two tiny baby bunnies were together in a cage and one attacked the other, ripping its skin off.

When they found the rabbit, Konkel said, Lets learn from this. We pulled it (the rabbit) out and the kids took care of it.

In addition to the animal lab, the school has a 400-gallon fish farm where the students raise fish. And in spring they raise plants in the greenhouse, learning both about the chemistry of the soil as well as the art of floral arrangements, along with so much more.

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In response to the fire at Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, US Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm said on Friday that the Department of Energy has "activated its Nuclear Incident Response Team" and is monitoring the situation.

In a series of tweets, Granholm said: "I just spoke with Ukraine's energy minister about the situation at the Zaphorizhizia nuclear plant. Russian military operations near the plant are reckless and must cease."

She added that the Department of Energy "has activated its Nuclear Incident Response Team and is monitoring events in consultation with Department of Defense, Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the White House. We have seen no elevated radiation readings near the facility".

Granholm added that the Zaphorizhizia plant's reactors are "protected by robust containment structures and reactors are being safely shut down".

The fire erupted earlier in the day on the third, fourth and fifth floor of the plant's training building after Russian troops shelled the complex.

The blaze was brought under control at about 6.20 a.m.

In the wake of the incident, share prices tumbled in Asia, the BBC reported.

Tokyo and Hong Kong faced the steepest falls, with Japan's benchmark Nikkei index 2.5 per cent lower and the Hang Seng in Hong Kong down by 2.6 per cent.

Oil prices rose in Asia during morning trade, with Brent crude above $112 a barrel.
A generic drug company involving SSM Health and UnityPoint Health plans to make insulin at significantly lower prices than brand-name versions of the drug taken by many people with diabetes, the company said Thursday.

Civica, a Utah-based company formed in 2018, was co-founded by SSM Health, which owns St. Marys Hospital in Madison and many other facilities and services in Wisconsin. St. Louis-based SSM Health is a governing member of Civica. Iowa-based UnityPoint Health, which owns Meriter Hospital in Madison, is a founding member.

Civica said it will produce three types of insulin  glargine, lispro and aspart  interchangeable with the available brand names Lantus, Humalog and Novolog, respectively. The company will co-develop and manufacture the drug products, complete the clinical trials and apply for federal approval.

The drugs will be available in vials and prefilled pens, Civica said. The recommended consumer price will be no more than $30 per vial and no more than $55 for a box of five pen cartridges, considerably lower than prices charged to uninsured patients today.

Diabetes is arguably Americas most expensive chronic condition, and it is heartbreaking that millions of people are rationing their care and putting their lives at risk because they can no longer afford insulin, Dan Liljenquist, Civica board chair, said in a statement. Through mission-driven partnerships, we are choosing to create a new market reality where no one is forced to ration essential diabetes medications.

Civicas business model is rooted in civic responsibility and stewardship for all people, said Carter Dredge, SSM Healths lead futurist.

Civica provides about 60 generic sterile injectable medicines to more than 55 hospital systems that include more than 1,500 hospitals and a third of licensed hospital beds in the country. Among its earlier products are antibiotics and the blood thinner heparin.

The company is building a manufacturing facility in Petersburg, Virginia, that will be the future home of Civica Insulin. For the three insulin biosimilars, or generic biologic drugs, Civica has entered into a co-development and commercial agreement with GeneSys Biologics, based in Hyderabad, India.
A convoy of potentially 500 semitrucks and other vehicles is expected to drive through Wisconsin Friday into Saturday and will likely cause an influx in traffic along Interstate 90 and 94, authorities said.

Two groups of the American Truckers Freedom Convoy  which is protesting against mask and vaccine mandates and in support of health freedom, according to the convoys website  plan to meet in Oakdale Friday afternoon, then drive along I-90 through Portage and South Beloit, Illinois, according to the convoys route and the Monroe County Sheriffs Office. The truckers are headed to Washington, D.C.

The route passes through Dane County, but its unclear exactly what time the truckers will get there. The State Patrol said the timing is variable because the convoy is sometimes behind or ahead of schedule.

The State Patrol said the truckers plan to be in Wisconsin Friday into Saturday, but did not provide a more specific time. The State Patrol is working with local law enforcement to monitor the convoy.

Officials are prepared for any potential incidents, but do not anticipate major traffic disruptions, the State Patrol said.

Other officials have said they expect some disruptions.

The Monroe County Sheriffs Office said its planning for an influx of traffic around Oakdale, where the two groups are meeting.

The Tomah Area School District, which is near Oakdale, said it plans to have a district-wide early release because of the logistical concerns and interruption to normal traffic flow. School is being let out two hours early, but after-school activities will still take place.

The district said Wednesday that estimates suggest there could be upwards of 500 semis in the area from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. Plans call for the truckers to spend the night around Portage, which could put them outside Madison around 9 a.m. Saturday.

In Dane County, the DeForest, Marshall and McFarland school districts said they have no plans to change their schedules. The Dane County Sheriffs Office said it doesnt have anything specific planned for the convoys arrival, and that the State Patrol is the agency focused on responding.

One of the trucker groups started its route in North Dakota, while the other is coming from Washington, according to the convoys website. When the Washington group left Spokane earlier this week, it had about a half-dozen semis and roughly 75 other vehicles, according to The Associated Press. Its unclear how many vehicles are coming from North Dakota.

Several convoys have cropped up in the U.S. after truckers formed blockades and caused other disruptions in Canada to protest COVID-19 restrictions.

The Monroe County Sheriffs Office and the State Patrol said their main priority is keeping truckers and residents safe as the convoy passes through.

WisDOTs primary goal is to make sure everyone is able to travel through the state safely, the State Patrol said.

State Journal reporter Elizabeth Beyer contributed to this report.

Editor's note: This story has been updated to correct the approximate time the convoy will be passing by Madison, which is around 9 a.m. Saturday morning.
Osage Beach, MO (65065)

Today

Rain in the morning. Scattered thunderstorms in the afternoon. High 67F. Winds SE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 80%..

Tonight

Thunderstorms in the evening, then variable clouds overnight with still a chance of showers. Low 54F. Winds S at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 80%.
This week on the Lancaster Farming Podcast, our guest is Morgan Tweet, executive director of the Hemp Feed Coalition, who responds to a recent letter from the AAFCO concerning the allowance of hemp in animal feed.
Phil Gruber is the news editor at Lancaster Farming. He can be reached at 717-721-4427 or pgruber@lancasterfarming.com. Follow him @PhilLancFarming on Twitter.
With humor and heart, Zippy Duvall told Pennsylvania farmers Tuesday night that they have an important role in the politics and fabric of the nation.
We tried something new at Lancaster Farming this year with the National Hemp Tour. Ten thousand miles in six weeks, visiting hemp farmers, pro
Ukrainian officials said on Friday that Russian forces have seized the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant, where a fire had erupted earlier in the day due to shelling.

In a Facebook post, the State Inspectorate for Nuclear Regulation of Ukraine said "the administrative building of the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant and the entrance to the plant are controlled by the occupiers. The staff are continuing to work on the power units, ensuring the stable operation of nuclear facilities. Radiation levels are normal.

"Unfortunately, there are dead and wounded among the Ukrainian defenders of the station."

It said that the plant's power unit 4 is the only one working currently, while planned preventive maintenance is underway at unit 1 and units 2 and 3 have been disconnected from the grid.

Cooling of nuclear reactors is presently underway in units 5 and 6, as well as 2 and 3, the Inspectorate added.

"Currently, the cooling of nuclear fuel at the Zaporizhzhya NPP energy units is provided by projection systems in accordance with the requirements of technological regulations for safe operation.

"The loss of cooling nuclear fuel will lead to significant radioactive emissions into the environment. Following the consequences, such an event may outgrow all previous NPP accidents, including Chernobyl and Fukusima-Daichi.

"It should be reminded that in addition to six energy blocks on the Zaporizhzhya NPP site there is a reservoir of processed nuclear fuel, which damage as a result of the shelling will also lead to radioactive discharge," it said in the post.

The fire erupted earlier in the day on the third, fourth and fifth floor of a training building after Russian troops shelled the nuclear power plant which is the largest in Europe.

The blaze was brought under control at around 6.20 a.m. after responders entered the site about an hour earlier.

The attack, which came on the ninth day of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, has been condemned by world leaders.

While UK Prime Minister Boris Jonson said Russia's "reckless" attack could "directly threaten the safety of all of Europe", US President Joe Biden urged Moscow to stop its military activities around the site,

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said the "horrific attacks" from Russia "must cease immediately".

Ukraine currently has four active nuclear plants, including Zaporizhzhia which reportedly accounts for some 25 per cent of the country's power.
Gurugram (Haryana)/ New Delhi [India], March 4 (ANI/NewsVoir): Max Life Insurance Company Ltd. ("Max Life" / "Company") in line with its commitment to support the collective fight against the COVID-19 pandemic, has donated 8500 Covid Care Kits to the Gurugram Police Department.

Comprising N95 masks and sanitizers, the donation will ensure frontline protection for the entire police workforce of the city. The same is in continuation of the company's PEHAL initiative to assist frontline workers during the pandemic.

Also Read | Google Testing Darker Dark Mode for Its Android Search App: Report.

As part of the 'Culture of Giving' initiative, Max Life donated 20,000 PPE, health and safety Kits to frontline warriors, 36,300 safety kits to police officials, and 5000 kits to recovering patients from government hospitals in 2020. The Company had further distributed 5500+ antigen testing kits to hospitals and 6000+ safety kits to RWA's in Delhi-NCR.

Continuing into 2021, Max Life had contributed over 50,000 safety kits across 350 locations Pan-India. The social drive included the distribution of masks, shields, and sanitizers to the police & defense officials, healthcare workers, frontline workers in the state administration & the education sector.

Also Read | Delhi Police Arrest Two Robbers Including Civil Defence Volunteer For Robbing Cab Driver With Toy Gun.

Shailesh Singh, Senior Director & Chief People Officer, Max Life said, "Max Life is a responsible corporate citizen. In the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic, we remain committed to supporting society with our humble contributions. We express our gratitude to the Gurugram Police Department and DCP HQ Gurugram, Astha Modi (IPS), for accepting our gesture and enabling us to contribute our support in securing the lives of our frontline heroes."

This initiative is a part of the larger pledge for COVID-19 combat assistance announced last year. Max Life has created a separate fund pool for pandemic-related support that is nearly 16% of its total Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) budget. Under this, the Company has contributed ration to the needy, along with material supplies to various organizations.

Max Life Insurance Company Limited is a Joint Venture between Max Financial Services Limited and Axis Bank Limited. Max Financial Services Ltd. is a part of the Max Group, an Indian multi-business corporation.

Max Life offers comprehensive protection and long-term savings life insurance solutions, through its multi-channel distribution including agency and third-party distribution partners. Max Life has built its operations over almost two decades through a need-based sales process, a customer-centric approach to engagement and service delivery and trained human capital.

As per public disclosures and annual audited financials for FY20-21, Max Life has achieved a gross written premium of Rs. 19,018 crore. As of 31st March 2021, the Company had Rs. 90,407 crore of assets under management (AUM) and a Sum Assured in Force of Rs. 1,087,987 crore.

For more information, please visit the Company's website at www.maxlifeinsurance.com.

This story is provided by NewsVoir. ANI will not be responsible in any way for the content of this article. (ANI/NewsVoir)

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Amid the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict, the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences has decided to disqualify the entries funded by the Russian Government for Emmys 2022. As per The Hollywood Reporter, on Thursday, NATAS released a statement about the body's decision of discontinuing its business with Vladimir Putin-led country. Tim Allen Denounces Russias Military Operation in Ukraine, Says Its the Definition of Wrong.

"Like countless individuals and organizations worldwide, NATAS has been appalled by Russia's unprecedented and unprovoked attack on the sovereign territory of Ukraine," read a statement Thursday from chairman Terry O'Reilly, whose group oversees the Daytime Emmys, along with those for sports, news, docs, tech and engineering. Amid Russia-Ukraine Conflict, Netflix Pauses All Its Future Projects and Acquisitions From Russia.

"As creators who depend on robust freedoms to shed light on stories which elucidate and impact the world around us, our members feel a deep kinship with and concern for all the Ukrainian people whose liberties are at risk of being overtaken by these hostile actions," the statement continued. NATAS has clearly made the determination that it cannot "in good conscience" do business with any entity associated with or funded by the government of Russia.

"Any entries currently submitted to the 2022 Emmy Award competitions administered by NATAS which fall under this determination have been disqualified," the message continued," the statement concluded. The conflict began escalating after Russian President Vladimir Putin on February 24 announced the military operation in Ukraine and warned other countries that any attempt to interfere with the Russian action would lead to "consequences they have never seen", and since then thousands of Ukrainians, both civilians and troops, have been killed.

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Thiruvananthapuram (Kerala) [India], March 4 (ANI): Thiruvananthapuram (Kerala) [India], March 4 (ANI): As part of the ongoing 'Operation Ganga' to evacuate the stranded Indian citizens from Ukraine, 18 students hailing from Kerala reached Thiruvananthapuram via an Indigo flight on Friday.

Speaking to ANI, Manu Ajai who returned today said that they were supported by the officials of the Romanian and Indian governments.

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"They started the attack on February 25 from the Army bases. We evacuated as soon as possible and reached the border on February 27. It was very difficult and it was with the support of so many other people also. Romanian government volunteers, the Indian government, Norka officials everyone helped us. With their help, we have reached here and I am so happy that we reached here. There are still students in Kharkiv," he said.

Another student Anusree also credited the government officials for her return to India.

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"We started our journey on February 25, and on March 4, we reached here with the help of the Indian government and especially I want to thank the Romanian government," she said.

Meanwhile, a total of 5,245 Indian nationals were airlifted from Romania to the country till March 3 amid Russia's military operations in Ukraine, informed the Government of India on Friday.

Russian forces launched military operations in Ukraine on February 24, three days after Moscow recognized Ukraine's breakaway regions - Donetsk and Luhansk - as independent entities. (ANI)

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Chennai, March 4: R Priya of DMK was sworn in as the mayor of Chennai on Saturday. The 28-year-old councillor is the youngest and the third woman mayor of Chennai. The oath of office was administered by GCC commissioner Gagandeep Singh Bedi.

Priya, who is the first Dalit woman to hold the post of mayor of Chennai, was elected as a councillor of ward 74 Mangalapuram in the recently-concluded civic body polls.

A mayor was sworn into the Greater Chennai Corporation (GCC) for the first time after a hiatus of 11 years.

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Shillong, Mar 4 (PTI) Meghalaya Governor Satya Pal Malik on Friday expressed hope that the state's border problem with Assam will be resolved soon in at least six areas of differences.

Addressing the assembly on the first day of the budget session, Malik said the state government is focused on enhancing services delivery in health and education sectors.

Also Read | OBC Reservations Bill: Maharashtra Govt to Introduce Bill on Other Backward Classes Reservations in State Legislature on Monday.

We are confident and hopeful the border issue in six areas of difference will be resolved soon. My government is committed to resolve the long pending border dispute between Assam and Meghalaya to usher peace and development for our citizens living in border areas, he said.

He said Meghalaya Chief Minister Conrad Sangma and his Assam counterpart Himanta Biswa Sarma have had several meetings on the issue in the last six months and they have agreed to resolve the dispute in six locations - Tarabari, Gizang, Hahim, Boklapara, Khanapara-Pillangkata and Ratacherra - in the first phase,

Also Read | Razia Begum, Who Once Rode 1,400 km To Rescue Her Son Nizamuddin Aman Awaits His Return From Ukraine.

A memorandum of understanding in this regard was signed by both the chief ministers on January 29 last in Guwahati, and it was sent to the Ministry of Home Affairs for further examination, the governor said,

Meghalaya was carved out of Assam as a separate state in 1972 and it had challenged the Assam Reorganisation Act, 1971, leading to disputes related to 12 areas in different parts of the shared 884.9 km long border.

In his address, the governor said his government is focused on enhancing the service delivery in health and education sectors and making investments in physical infrastructure such as roads, bridges, power and drinking water.

He, however, mentioned that the critical focus of the state government is on improving rural livelihoods and promoting enterprises in the sectors of agriculture, horticulture, fisheries and animal husbandry.

Asserting that the overall law and order situation in the state was peaceful in the past one year, Malik said the police quickly arrested the culprits involved in a few incidents of IED blasts.

He also informed the assembly that the outlawed militant outfit Hynniewtrep National Liberation Council (HNLC) has written to the state government expressing its willingness for unconditional talks within the framework of the Indian Constitution.

The state government welcomes this move and has written to the Ministry of Home Affairs to take this process forward. This is a major development towards bringing about lasting peace in the state and my government is committed to ensure that the peace talk reaches its logical conclusion, he said.

Malik said the state government has also initiated the Meghalaya Health Systems Strengthening Project funded by the World Bank with the aim to infuse around USD 40 million (4 crore) within five years to strengthen the overall health system.

With an objective to improve management capacity, quality, and utilization of health services in Meghalaya, Malik said that till date works worth Rs 45 crore has been awarded for strengthening the infrastructure of health facilities across the state.

Stating that the scheme, Farmers' Collectivisation for Upscaling of Production and Marketing Systems, addresses the key challenges of production, productivity, and value chain enhancement by bringing the farmers together.

Under the scheme, the government is providing support of Rs 5,000 to each farming household for undertaking agriculture related activities.

The governor said the state government has taken up programmes to promote the production of turmeric, mushroom and jackfruit.

He also said that the implementation of second phase of the Meghalaya State Aquaculture Mission launched in 2018 to further address the gaps in the fisheries sector is on, catapulting fish production from 12,330 Metric Tonnes in 2016-17 to 16,123 Metric Tonnes in 2020-21.

For COVID-19 related expenses, the governor said the Chief Minister's Secretariat had spent Rs 29.24 crore in 2021-22 which included an assistance of Rs 50,000 as a one-time ex-gratia payment to the next of kin of those who died.

Noting that air connectivity is crucial for the overall development of the state, the governor said the Shillong Airport at Umroi has seen a great increase in passengers and Shillong is now connected to eight cities - Kolkata, Guwahati, Dimapur, Dibrugarh, Lengpui, Agartala, Imphal and Silchar.

More flights are likely to be introduced in the coming year connecting other regions, he said.

The Meghalaya Eco Tourism Infrastructure Development Project, an externally aided project under New Development Bank for a cost of Rs 750 crore has also been initiated in the state to create iconic infrastructure at some of the key tourist destinations like Sohra, Shillong, Tura and accommodation units in villages like Kongthong," Malik said.

He also informed the House that the government aims to construct 500 homestays in the coming financial year under the Meghalaya Homestays Scheme in convergence with the Prime Minister Employment Generation Programme.

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Mumbai, Mar 4 (PTI) Private carrier Go First on Friday said it has operated first evacuation flight to New Delhi from Budapest in Hungary to bring back 177 Indian evacuees from war-hit Ukraine.

The city-based airline also said it will operate two flights every till March 10 as part of the Operation Ganga mission.

Also Read | R Priya, 28-Year-Old, Sworn in as Chennais Youngest Mayor.

The first evacuation flight of Go First from Budapest departed at 5.58 pm (local time) on Thursday and arrived in New Delhi at 9.20 am (local time) on Friday with 177 passengers onboard, the airline said in a statement.

For the evacuation, the flight had departed from New Delhi at 10:30 am (local time) on Thursday and landed at Budapest via Kuwait at 4 am (local time), it said.

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"This is a massive humanitarian crisis. Go First will support Indians with many more evacuation flights that are required to help Indians return to their loved ones.

"The airline has always been at the forefront and stands committed to providing our services during a crisis situation for helping our fellow citizens when they need it the most," said Go First CEO Kaushik Khona.

The city-based airline said it will also endeavour to provide any additional flights as the Ministry of External Affairs may require.

Ukraine's airspace has been closed since February 24 and India is evacuating its citizens by special flights from the eastern European country's western neighbours like Romania, Hungary and Poland. HRS hrs

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New Delhi [India], March 4 (ANI): Rishab Kaushik, a Dehradun resident who refused to leave war-torn Ukraine without his pet dog Maliboo, arrived in India early on Friday via Budapest (Hungary).

Kaushik is an undergraduate student of software engineering at the Kharkiv National University of Radio Electronics Engineering.

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He had posted a video on Instagram regarding the difficulties he is facing in bringing his dog along with him to India, urging the Government to allow NOC.

His video led People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) to appeal to the Indian government to press for allowing the Indians to take their pets along with in the flights.

Also Read | Bihar Blast: 7 Killed, Others Injured in Explosion in Bhagalpur.

Earlier on Tuesday, the Government of India issued a memorandum facilitating "a one-time relaxation measure" for bringing back pet dogs and cats along with stranded Indians who are being evacuated from war-hit Ukraine.

"There was a lot of documentation in India, the procedure was long. But in war-like situations, they should've allowed their own citizens. So, I had put up the appeal. A memorandum had come recently which stated that pets and even strays are now being allowed without NOC," Kaushik told ANI.

A special flight from Hungary carrying 219 Indian nationals stranded in conflict-torn Ukraine reached Delhi on Friday.

The special IndiGo flight under Operation Ganga departed from Hungary's capital Budapest on Thursday.

Minister of State for Home Affairs Nisith Pramanik received the Indian students on their arrival at Indira Gandhi International Airport. He also interacted with the students.

The Ministry of External Affairs, in close coordination with the Ministry of Civil Aviation, is making all efforts to bring the Indian students back to India at a fast pace.

Four Union Ministers -- Hardeep Singh Puri, Jyotiraditya M Scindia, Kiren Rijiju and Gen (Retd) VK Singh -- have gone to countries adjoining Ukraine to support and supervise evacuation operations. Indian civilian planes as well as Indian Air Force planes are regularly bringing back stranded Indian students.

The Ministry of External Affairs said more than 7,400 persons are expected to be brought through special flights in the next two days. Further, 3,500 persons are expected to be brought back on Friday and over 3,900 on March 5.

Russian forces launched military operations in Ukraine on February 24, three days after Moscow recognized Ukraine's breakaway regions - Donetsk and Luhansk - as independent entities.

Several countries including the UK, the US, Canada, and the European Union have condemned Russia's military operations in Ukraine and imposed sanctions on Moscow. These countries have also promised Ukraine to help with military aid to fight Russia.The US, Canada and European allies agreed to remove key Russian banks from the interbank messaging system, SWIFT which means Russian banks won't be able to communicate securely with banks beyond Russia's borders. President Putin has also signed a decree on special economic measures against the US and its allies. (ANI)

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Mumbai, March 4: Maharashtra BJP MLAs protest on the stairs of the state Assembly on Friday, demanding the resignation of minister and NCP leader Nawab Malik, who is in the Enforcement Directorate's custody in connection with Dawood Ibrahim in a money laundering case.

Leader of Opposition in Maharashtra Legislative Assembly and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Devendra Fadnavis on Thursday along with the BJP leaders held a protest in the premises of the Vidhan Sabha amid the ongoing annual Budget session of the state seeking Malik's resignation.

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Fadnavis also accused the Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government of trying to shield the Maharashtra minorities welfare minister. Speaking to media persons here, Fadnavis said, "Why does the government not want to take his resignation? This is a 'Dawood samarpit', 'Dawood sharan' government. This government is coming together to save people who keep relations with Dawood. That's why we've started protests and we demand that his resignation be taken immediately."

State Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar on Wednesday said that at present Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray is of the view that there's no need "to take Nawab Malik's resignation."

Also Read | Razia Begum, Who Once Rode 1,400 km To Rescue Her Son Nizamuddin Aman Awaits His Return From Ukraine.

Special PMLA court on Thursday extended the Enforcement Directorate (ED) custody of Maharashtra minister and NCP leader Nawab Malik till March 7 in connection with Dawood Ibrahim's money laundering case. Defence lawyer Amit Desai hitting out at the ED, argued in the court that the agency has said today that the "terror funding" by the Minister to Haseena Parkar was Rs 5 lakh as against Rs 55 lakh in the first application, which was due to a "typing error".

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New Delhi [India], March 4 (ANI): A special flight from the Romanian capital Bucharest carrying Indian nationals stranded in Ukraine reached Delhi on Thursday.

Minister of State for External Affairs Meenakashi Lekhi received the passengers at Indira Gandhi International Airport on their arrival.

Also Read | Russia-Ukraine War: PM Narendra Modi Emphasised Upon Path of Dialogue and Diplomacy in QUAD Summit.

"The Government of India is trying to bring each and every citizen back to India. We welcome all the students who have arrived. I also want to thank all the teams involved in the safe evacuation of Indians. The students were thanking PM Narendra Modi," said Lekhi.

The Ministry of External Affairs, in close coordination with the Ministry of Civil Aviation, is making all efforts to bring the Indian students back to India at a fast pace.

Also Read | Operation Ganga: India Deploying Russian-Origin Ilyushin-76 Planes for Evacuation of Indian Citizens from Russia.

Four Union Ministers -- Hardeep Singh Puri, Jyotiraditya M Scindia, Kiren Rijiju and Gen (Retd) V.K. Singh-- have gone to countries adjoining Ukraine to support and supervise evacuation operations. Indian civilian planes as well as Indian Air Force planes are regularly bringing back stranded Indian students.The Ministry of External Affairs said more than 7,400 persons are expected to be brought through special flights in the next two days. Further, 3,500 persons are expected to be brought back on Friday and over 3900 on March 5.

Russian forces launched military operations in Ukraine on February 24, three days after Moscow recognized Ukraine's breakaway regions - Donetsk and Luhansk - as independent entities.

Several countries including the UK, the US, Canada, and the European Union have condemned Russia's military operations in Ukraine and imposed sanctions on Moscow. These countries have also promised Ukraine to help with military aid to fight Russia.

The US, Canada and European allies agreed to remove key Russian banks from the interbank messaging system, SWIFT which means Russian banks won't be able to communicate securely with banks beyond Russia's borders. President Putin has also signed a decree on special economic measures against the US and its allies. (ANI)

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New Delhi [India], March 4 (ANI): The Delhi High Court on Friday refused to issue notice and adjourned the matter while hearing a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) seeking direction to the Delhi Government to prohibit/control the production, distribution and consumption of intoxicating drinks and drugs, which are injurious to health, in order to secure the right to health, guaranteed under Article 21 of the Constitution.

The Bench of Justice DN Patel and Justice Neena Bansal Krishna on Friday refused to issue a notice in the matter "at this stage" and also asked the other side to accumulate all the PILs filed by Advocate Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay.

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Justice DN Patel said, "We are adjourning the matter for July 4. Counsel for other side, keep accumulating all the petitions filed by him, we will see what is to be done on next date. Daily you are filing petitions. How many petitions you have got typed, in your drawer and in printing, etc?"

Upadhyay sought direction to the Government to publish health warnings on liquor bottles and packages, like health warning signs used on cigarette packets, and advertise 'Health and Environment Hazard' of intoxicating drinks through electronic, print and social media in order to secure citizen's right to know, right to information and right to health, guaranteed under Article 21.

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The petitioner further sought the issuance of direction to the Government to carry out Health Impact Assessment and Environment Impact Assessment of production distribution and consumption of intoxicating drinks and drugs in the spirit of Articles 21 and 47.

The plea further stated that Delhi has a total of 280 municipal wards and until 2015, there were only 250 liquor shops, that is, on average, one liquor shop in every ward and 30 wards without liquor shop. But now State is planning to open three liquor shops in every ward, which is not only arbitrary and irrational but also offends rule of law and right to health guaranteed under Article 14 and 21 of the Constitution. Article 47 is nevertheless fundamental in the governance and the State is obligated to prohibit the consumption of liquor and drugs but rather than advertising about health hazards of intoxicating drinks and drugs, the State is promoting liquor consumption, alleged petitioner Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay.

The plea further stated that drinking is ten times more dangerous than smoking but health warning is not used on liquor bottles. All alcohol bottles must carry health warnings alike cigarette packets. These statutory warnings on labels must include requests to consumers to not consume alcohol and drive and outline how alcohol consumption is harmful for health, the plea added.

Apart from the warning, the specific labelling requirements also need a declaration about alcohol content, allergen warning, no nutritional data, no health claim, restriction on words such as "non-intoxicating" or words implying similar meaning on the label of beverage containing more than o.so/o alcohol by volume. But it has been more than 3 years since the regulation came up for all manufacturers to comply with, still there is no sign of strict and sincere compliance with it. No health warning or proper display of liquor contents has been complied with. FSSAI has proved to be completely incompetent, plea stated. (ANI)

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Ferrari Energy Describes How the Oil and Gas Industries are Refueling Reinvention

The outset of the pandemic in early 2020 completely upended the oil and gas industry. As Ferrari Energy explains, though, the sector rebounded quite well, better than most even expected.

That being said, many companies in the industry are expected to reinvent themselves as investors may become reluctant to dedicate capital to an industry that's constantly facing outside pressure from governments around the world.

Here's what's expected for the industry in 2022 and some future trends to keep an eye on.

Demand Will Still Be Strong

So much of the discussion around the energy sector is on renewables. Many countries are putting into place mandatory moves away from fossil fuels to reduce emissions.

At the same time, the demand for oil and natural gas will remain strong in 2022 and beyond. It's going to take time -- and lots of it -- for the world to move away from fossil fuels. In the meantime, the demand for oil and gas is likely to rise.

For economies to grow, they need oil and natural gas, because renewable energies aren't prolific or affordable yet.

As the world continues to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, the need for affordable and reliable energy is accentuated. That affordability and reliability currently comes from oil and gas.

The Response to Changing Regulations Will Prove Critical

There's no denying that oil and gas companies face increasing pressure from governments to convert to renewable energies and reduce emissions. But, of course, this is nothing new to energy companies, which constantly face pressure from outside forces.

Yet, this time seems different from others in the past. How energy companies respond to this pressure known as ESG -- environmental, social, and governance -- will determine how successful they are for the long term.

Some oil and gas companies are viewing this ESG as a business opportunity. They're adjusting to using modern technology to collect and report carbon data that they can then monetize and trade via carbon credits. At the same time, they're investing in research and development projects centered around alternative energy that doesn't rely on carbon -- sources such as geothermal, solar, hydrogen, and wind energy.

In fact, in just the last three years, oil and gas companies have invested $10 billion in projects related to renewable energy.

Diversification Will Balance Budgets

The outside pressure to decarbonize will force many oil and gas companies to re-examine their balance sheets and diversify their business practices. This will start in earnest in 2022 for any companies that haven't already begun the process.

Many experts forecast that the oil demand will drop over the next five years, even as travel picks up again once the pandemic ends. So companies need to plan for that by adjusting their approach.

By diversifying the assets they hold in their portfolios and potentially divesting in some of their fossil fuels, they'll be investing in transitioning to renewable energy.

New Investments Will Take Capital

Ferrari Energy explains that all of this investment in renewable energy and a potential changing energy landscape will take capital. Therefore, those companies that have a healthy balance sheet and access to that capital are the ones that are likely to emerge in the industry going forward.

Companies are likely preparing their financial portfolio to look as attractive to investors as possible while at the same time planning for some investors to be wary of a complete overhaul to their business practices.

About Ferrari Energy

Ferrari Energy, founded by Adam Ferrari, is a family-owned private oil and gas company focused on mineral and leasehold acquisitions. Founded in Denver, CO, with a focus on educating landowners, Ferrari Energy has consistently served the needs of the landowner community in the basins in which it works. Its operation covers several areas throughout Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, and ND. Ferrari Energy has provided oil and gas leases to over 850 homeowners and held multiple lease signing events to accommodate the residents of Broomfield, Colorado.
Chandigarh (Punjab) [India], March 4 (ANI): The incumbent Punjab Governor and Administrator, UT, Chandigarh, Banwarilal Purohit on Friday expressed grief over the demise of former Indian Army chief and ex-Governor of Punjab and Administrator, UT, Chandigarh, General (Retd.) SF Rodrigues.

In his condolence message, Purohit said, "General Rodrigues was a great strategist who served as the Chief of Army Staff of the Indian Army as well as served on the National Advisory Board".

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He also added, "During his tenure as Governor Punjab, General Rodrigues was very popular and rendered a great service to the people of the State. His demise is an irreparable loss to the people of the Nation."

Former Indian Army chief General SF Rodrigues passed away on Friday at the age of 88.

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He served as the Chief of Army Staff between 1990-93. In addition to his more than 40 years of illustrious service in the Army, he served two terms on the National Security Advisory Board and was Governor of Punjab between 2004 to 2010. (ANI)

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Ghazipur (Uttar Pradesh) [India], March 4 (ANI): Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Friday said it has been clear after the first six phases that the BJP is winning the Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls while the Samajwadi Party (SP) and Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) have been completely wiped out from the state.

Addressing an election rally in Jangipur, Ghazipur, Shah said, "In Uttar Pradesh, six phases of elections are over. After these phases, it is clear that SP and BSP have been wiped out. In UP again, BJP will form the government by getting over 300 seats."

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Listing the works done by the incumbent BJP government, Shah said that they freed the state from the clutches of criminals and mafia.

Under the leadership of Chief Minister Yogi Adiytanath, Shah said BJP provided houses to the poor "by freeing the land worth Rs 2,000 crores from the possession of the mafia."

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"The work of reducing crime in Uttar Pradesh has been done under the BJP government," he asserted.

"Earlier in Uttar Pradesh, there was no electricity in the houses of the poor. Yogi ji's government has done the work of providing electricity in Uttar Pradesh for 18 to 24 hours. Today electricity is reaching the houses of the poor. This change has come under the BJP government," he said.

Shah also said that for the "first time after independence, the welfare of the poor has been done in the PM Modi government."

With BJP retaining its power, Shah assured of making Uttar Pradesh the number one state of the country.

A total of 54 Assembly seats across nine districts including Azamgarh, Mau, Jaunpur, Ghazipur, Chandauli, Varanasi, Mirzapur, Bhadohi and Sonbhadra, will go to polls in the seventh and final phase on March 7. (ANI)

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New Delhi, Mar 4 (PTI) Eleven civilian and four Indian Air Force (IAF) flights will return to India on Saturday with Indians from Ukraine's neighbouring countries, the Civil Aviation Ministry stated on Friday.

The 11 civilian flights on Saturday are expected to bring back more than 2,200 Indians, with 10 landing in Delhi and one in Mumbai, the ministry's statement noted.

Also Read | Maharashtra BJP MLAs Demand Nawab Maliks Resignation, Protest Outside Assembly.

The statement did not say how many Indians will be coming on the four IAF flights.

India has been evacuating its citizens through special flights from Ukraine's western neighbours such as Romania, Hungary, Slovakia and Poland as the Ukrainian airspace has been shut since February 24 due to a Russian military offensive.

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On Friday, 14 civilian and three IAF flights brought 3,772 Indians back, the statement noted.

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New Delhi, Mar 3 (PTI) Delhi AAP MLA Akhilesh Pati Tripathi sustained serious injuries on Thursday after his car overturned on the Lucknow-Agra expressway in Uttar Pradesh's Unnao while he was returning from the Assembly poll campaigning, party said.

Five other people who were travelling with Tripathi in the car sustained minor injuries in the incident, AAP's Uttar Pradesh unit spokesperson Mahendra Singh said in a statement.

Also Read | Russia-Ukraine War: PM Narendra Modi Emphasised Upon Path of Dialogue and Diplomacy in QUAD Summit.

Tripathi, along with his associates, was returning from Gorakhpur after participating in the party's poll campaigning when the incident took place in the Behta Mujawar police station area, he said.

His car overturned as one of its wheels suddenly came off, he said.

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"The MLA sustained critical injuries in the accident as he was sitting in the front seat of the car," he said.

After the incident, the Delhi Model Town MLA was rushed to Medanta Hospital in Lucknow for treatment.

"The doctors have said that he is out of danger," Singh said.

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Varanasi (up), Mar 4 (PTI) Prime Minister Narendra Modi started his roadshow here on Friday afternoon, drumming up support for BJP candidates ahead of the last phase of the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections on March 7.

Modi arrived in his Varanasi Lok Sabha constituency after addressing a rally in neighbouring Mirzapur. He began the roadshow after garlanding a statue of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel at Maldahiya crossing.

Also Read | Maharashtra BJP MLAs Demand Nawab Maliks Resignation, Protest Outside Assembly.

The crowd chanted "Jai Shri Ram" and "Har Har Mahadev", and showered rose petals as the prime minister's convoy moved through the city to cover a distance of a little over three kilometres. Modi wore a saffron cap and a "gamcha" (towel) around the neck.

According to the planned route, the roadshow would end close to the recently renovated Kashi Vishwanath complex, where the PM would offer prayers.

Also Read | OBC Reservations Bill: Maharashtra Govt to Introduce Bill on Other Backward Classes Reservations in State Legislature on Monday.

Modi had begun his first roadshow in Varanasi from the same spot after filing his nomination papers for the 2014 Lok Sabha election.

BJP city president Vidyasagar Rai said Modi will stay the night at the Diesel Locomotive Works (DLW) guesthouse.

Modi's roadshow will cover the three assembly segments of Cantonment, Varanasi North and Varanasi South.

The prime minister will wind up his trip on Saturday with a rally in Khajuria village under the Rohaniya assembly seat, also addressing there people from the other five assembly segments under the Varanasi Lok Sabha constituency, Rai said.

During an earlier stay at the DLW guesthouse, Modi had written in the visitors' book that it reminded him of his childhood days when he used to vend tea at Vadnagar railway station in Gujarat.

After the mega Modi event, Varanasi will see another roadshow by Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav from 8 pm to 10 pm.

SP's Varanasi district president Vishnu Sharma told PTI that earlier they had sought permission from the district administration to hold the event from 5 pm to 10 pm.

As the UP elections near their end, Varanasi is abuzz with the arrival of top leaders from all major parties.

Congress leaders Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra landed in Varanasi Friday and headed to Phulpur middle school grounds for a rally after praying at the Kashi Vishwanath temple.

The two reached the rally venue after holding a roadshow of their own in favour of Congress candidate Ajay Rai from Pindara assembly segment.

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
Varanasi (Uttar Pradesh) [India], March 4 (ANI): Ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's election campaign in his Lok Sabha constituency Varanasi, Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan has urged people to greet and welcome him in large numbers on Friday.

The Prime Minister, who has been on the campaign trail for the seven-phased Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections, will be holding rallies and roadshows in the district today.

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"The Prime Minister is going to come tomorrow (Friday), will you be there? PM Modi will come to greet you. It is my invitation to you all that you come," the minister said while addressing 'Yuva Samvaad' at DAV Degree College in Daranagar, Uttar Pradesh on Thursday.

Speaking to children at the school about the Ukraine crisis the minister said that several Indian students have been evacuated and more are to set to return under the leadership of the Prime Minister.

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"There is a war going on between Russia and Ukraine. Indian students are stranded there. Today, when I read the newspaper in the morning, I read that about 4,000 students have returned to the country. In the forthcoming days, the Government of India under the leadership of the Prime Minister will bring all the people back and not leave anyone behind."

The minister also urged the people to vote in large numbers in the seventh phase of the Assembly elections in the state.

"Celebrating the festival of democracy, people of Varanasi on March 7 should cast 70 per cent votes," he said.

Heaping praise for the Prime Minister, the minister said, "PM Modi has brought New Education Policy. It's been 75 years since independence. I say this with great humility, even admit it, and I am not the one to run away from it. We can say today that the youth of our country are self-reliant in terms of employment."

Urging the voters to chose wisely, the minister said, "A decisive government is needed for progress. There will be a corruption-free system, only then society will progress. We have resolved to serve you with this kind of decisive leadership. Today, the sixth phase of the state Assembly elections is over. After four days, you will have to decide whether a decisive government will be formed in the state, or a communal government will be formed."

He also said, "I will keep my side in democracy. I cannot say that my system is right and this is the speciality of the republic. It is the feature of democracy that the people vote in four kinds of elections. The irony is, the educated don't vote in our country. It is everyone's responsibility that we vote. There is also an appeal to the students that they must come to vote."

The Prime Minister's Lok Sabha constituency Varanasi will go to the polls on March 7. Varanasi district comprises Pindra, Ajagara, Shivpur, Rohaniya, Varanasi North, Varanasi South, Varanasi Cantt, and Sevapuri Assembly seats. A total of 54 Assembly seats across nine districts including Azamgarh, Mau, Jaunpur, Ghazipur, Chandauli, Varanasi, Mirzapur, Bhadohi and Sonbhadra, will go to polls in the seventh and final phase. (ANI)

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Mau (Uttar Pradesh) [India], March 4 (ANI): Additional Director General, Law and Order, Prashant Kumar, has ordered a probe against Abbas Ansari, son of jailed don turned politician Mukhtar Ansari for his controversial statement at a public rally in Mau.

Ansari said that if Samajwadi Party (SP) and its alliance government is formed in Uttar Pradesh, he has asked the SP chief Akhilesh Yadav not to transfer the government official for the next six months as he would do their 'Hisab Kitab.'

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He said, "I recently met Akhilesh Yadav and have told him that if the SP and alliance win the UP election 2022, he should not transfer the government officials for six months as their 'Hisab Kitab' would be done."

The Director-General of Police (DGP) office took cognizance of the statement after which ADG Kumar probed the video and has ordered legal action against Ansari.

Also Read | Sensex Drops Over 850 Points on Weak Global Cues Amid Russia-Ukraine Tensions.

Ansari is contesting from Mau Sadar constituency in Uttar Pradesh elections as a candidate of Suheldev Bhartiya Samaj Party (SBSP), an ally of the SP.

Mau Sadar will go to the polls on March 7 in the seventh phase of the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections. (ANI)

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Shimla, Mar 4 (PTI) Presenting the Budget 2022-23 in the state Assembly, Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Jai Ram Thakur on Friday announced to increase the Member of Legislative Assembly Local Area Development (MLALAD) fund from the existing Rs 1.80 crore to Rs 2 crore.

The MLALAD fund has been increased by Rs 20 lakh.

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Presenting his fifth and last budget for the fiscal 2021-22 of the current government, Thakur stated that a total increase of Rs 90 lakh had been made in the MLALAD fund during his government.

Thakur also announced to increase the discretionary grant for MLAs from Rs 10 lakh to Rs 12 lakh for the next fiscal.

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A total of 789 plans from NABARD worth Rs 3,200 crore had been approved during the five-year tenure of the previous Congress government, whereas the current government got approval of 826 plans from NABARD worth Rs 3,452 crore, he added. HRS hrs

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Washington [US], March 4 (ANI): American tech giant Google has been testing an even darker dark mode for its Android search app, however, this new shade still isn't the same as the one presented in Google's test of a pitch-black dark mode on desktops last month.

According to The Verge, this new iteration, the one spotted in the mobile app, is darker than the usual dark gray but still lighter than pitch black.

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The new dark mode in Google's mobile app will look more attractive for devices with OLED displays looking to save battery life, or who just prefer to use dark mode more.

A source suggested that Android users can go the official route of getting this feature by joining the beta test group.

Also Read | Karnataka: Police Arrest Man For Blackmailing Women With Nude Selfies Video, Photos and Exorted Money in Bengaluru.

Last year, after Google confirmed that it was testing dark mode on desktops, the company confirmed a wide rollout of dark mode for Google Search in February for its desktop users.

As per The verge, though one can access the app's new color shade on their own, a wider release could take months to get to more people officially. (ANI)

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Fresno (US), Mar 4 (AP) Four members of a family from Washington state were killed and three were injured in a crash on Interstate 5 in central California, authorities said Thursday.

All seven victims were in a Chrysler minivan when it struck a big rig parked on the shoulder Wednesday morning near Fresno, according to California Highway Patrol Officer Rory Marks.

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Much of the right side of the van was sheered off and four of the passengers were ejected, Marks said.

The highway patrol said those killed were 43-year-old Lute Katalina Fekitoa, 25-year-old Naomi Cook, and two children  a 13-year-old boy and 9-year-old girl.

Also Read | Russia-Ukraine War: Ukraine Destroys Columns of Russian Troops, Says Defense Ministry.

The minivan's driver, 52-year-old Maikolo Fekitoa, was injured along with 37-year-old Henry Cook and an 11-year-old girl, officials said.

The children's names have not been made public.

The three survivors suffered major injuries, the highway patrol said.

The Fresno Bee reported that the Fekitoas are from Auburn and the rest are from Edmonds, both cities in Washington.

Investigators will try to determine why the big rig was parked on the shoulder and why the minivan veered out of lanes.

The southbound side of the highway was shut for about six hours after the collision. (AP)

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
The Russian truth is only a convenient myth to justify Putins imperial vision, and the best way for Europe to counter it is to build bridges to developing and emerging countries, many of which have a long list of justified grievances against Western colonization and exploitation.

by Slavoj Zizek

After the Russian attack on Ukraine, the Slovene government immediately proclaimed its readiness to receive thousands of Ukrainian refugees. As a Slovene citizen, I was not only proud but also ashamed.

After all, when Afghanistan fell to the Taliban six months ago, this same government refused to accept Afghan refugees, arguing that they should stay in their country and fight. And a couple of months ago, when thousands of refugees  mostly Iraqi Kurds  tried to enter Poland from Belarus, the Slovene government, claiming that Europe was under attack, offered military aid to support Polands vile effort to keep them out.

Throughout the region, two species of refugees have emerged. A tweet by the Slovene government on February 25 clarified the distinction: The refugees from Ukraine are coming from an environment which is in its cultural, religious, and historical sense something totally different from the environment out of which refugees from Afghanistan are coming. After an outcry, the tweet was quickly deleted, but the obscene truth was out: Europe must defend itself from non-Europe.

This approach will be catastrophic for Europe in the ongoing global struggle for geopolitical influence. Our media and elites frame that struggle as a conflict between a Western liberal sphere and a Russian Eurasian sphere, ignoring the much larger group of countries  in Latin America, the Middle East, Africa, and Southeast Asia  that are observing us closely.

Even China is not ready to support Russia fully, although it has its own plans. In a message to North Korean leader Kim Jong-un a day after Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine, Chinese President Xi Jinping said that China is ready to work to develop China-DPRK relations of friendship and cooperation under a new situation. There is a fear that China will use the new situation to liberate Taiwan.

What should worry us now is that the radicalization we see, most clearly with Russian President Vladimir Putin, is not just rhetorical. Many on the liberal left, convinced that both sides knew they could not afford a full-on war, thought Putin was bluffing when he massed troops at Ukraines borders. Even when Putin described Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelenskys government as a gang of drug addicts and neo-Nazis, most expected that Russia would just occupy the two breakaway peoples republics controlled by Kremlin-backed Russian separatists or, at most, extend the occupation to eastern Ukraines entire Donbas region.

And now some who call themselves leftists (I wouldnt) are blaming the West for the fact that US President Joe Biden was right about Putins intentions. The argument is well-known: NATO was slowly encircling Russia, fomenting color revolutions in its near-abroad, and ignoring the reasonable fears of a country that had been attacked from the West in the last century.

There is, of course, an element of truth here. But saying only this is equivalent to justifying Hitler by blaming the unjust Treaty of Versailles. Worse, it concedes that big powers have the right to spheres of influence, to which all others must submit for the sake of global stability. Putins assumption that international relations is a contest of great powers is reflected in his repeated claim that he had no choice but to intervene militarily in Ukraine.

Is that true? Is the problem really Ukrainian fascism? The question is better directed at Putins Russia. Putins intellectual lodestar is Ivan Ilyin, whose works are back in print and given to state apparatchiks and military conscripts. After being expelled from the Soviet Union in the early 1920s, Ilyin advocated a Russian version of fascism: the state as an organic community led by a paternal monarch, in which freedom is knowing ones place. The purpose of voting for Ilyin (and for Putin) is to express collective support for the leader, not to legitimate or choose him.

Aleksandr Dugin, Putins court-philosopher, closely follows in Ilyins steps, adding a postmodern garnish of historicist relativism:

Every so-called truth is a matter of believing. So we believe in what we do, we believe in what we say. And that is the only way to define the truth. So we have our special Russian truth that you need to accept. If the United States does not want to start a war, you should recognize that [the] United States is not any more a unique master. And [with] the situation in Syria and Ukraine, Russia says, No you are not any more the boss. That is the question of who rules the world. Only war could decide really.

But what about the people of Syria and Ukraine? Can they also choose their truth or are they just a battlefield for would-be world rulers?

The idea that each way of life has its own truth is what endears Putin to right-wing populists like former US President Donald Trump, who praised Russias invasion of Ukraine as the act of a genius. And the feeling is mutual: When Putin talks about denazification in Ukraine, we should bear in mind his support for Marine le Pens National Rally in France, Matteo Salvinis Lega in Italy, and other actual neo-fascist movements.

The Russian truth is only a convenient myth to justify Putins imperial vision, and the best way for Europe to counter it is to build bridges to developing and emerging countries, many of which have a long list of justified grievances against Western colonization and exploitation. Its not enough to defend Europe. The true task is to persuade other countries that the West can offer them better choices than Russia or China can. And the only way to achieve that is to change ourselves by ruthlessly uprooting neo-colonialism, even when it comes packaged as humanitarian help.

Are we ready to prove that in defending Europe, we are fighting for freedom everywhere? Our disgraceful refusal to treat refugees equally sends the world a very different message.

Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2022.

Slavoj Zizek, Professor of Philosophy at the European Graduate School, is International Director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities at the University of London.
Washington, March 4: US President Joe Biden spoke with his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelenskyy to receive an update on the fire at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant and urged Russia to cease its military activities in the affected area and allow access to emergency responders, the White House has said.

On Thursday, Russian forces pressed their attack on a crucial energy-producing Ukrainian city by shelling Europe's largest nuclear plant early Friday, sparking a fire and raising fears that radiation could leak from the damaged power station.

President Biden joined President Zelenskyy in urging Russia to cease its military activities in the area and allow firefighters and emergency responders to access the site, the White House said in a readout of the call on Thursday. Russia-Ukraine War: Fire Breaks Out at Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant.

Biden also spoke with the Under Secretary for Nuclear Security of the US Department of Energy and Administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) to receive an update on the situation at the plant. The President will continue to be briefed regularly, the White House said.

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
Sacramento, Mar 4 (AP) A Northern California woman whose disappearance and mysterious reappearance set off a frantic three-week search more than five years ago was arrested Thursday on charges of lying to federal agents about being kidnapped and defrauding the state's victim compensation board of $30,000.

Sherri Papini, 39, of Redding, was found in November 2016 after days of searching in California and several nearby states, with bindings on her body and injuries including a brand on her right shoulder.

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She had been reported missing Nov. 2. She told authorities at the time that she had been kidnapped at gunpoint by two Hispanic women, even providing descriptions to an FBI sketch artist.

In reality, authorities said, she was staying with a former boyfriend nearly 600 miles (966 kilometers) away from her home in Orange County, in Southern California, and hurt herself to back up her false statements.

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When a young mother went missing in broad daylight, a community was filled with fear and concern, US Attorney Phillip Talbert said in a statement.

"Ultimately, the investigation revealed that there was no kidnapping and that time and resources that could have been used to investigate actual crime, protect the community, and provide resources to victims were wasted.

Papini does not yet have an attorney because she was just arrested, Talbert's office said.

She was still lying about the kidnapping in August 2020 when she was interviewed by a federal agent and a Shasta County sheriff's detective, the charges allege.

They showed her evidence indicating she had not been abducted and warned her that it was a crime to lie to a federal agent.

But she still made false statements, the charges allege.

She also was reimbursed more than $30,000 by the California Victim's Compensation Board based on the false story, the charges said.

They included money for visits to her therapist and for the ambulance ride to the hospital after she surfaced near Sacramento. (AP)

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
Jayapura (Indonesia), Mar 4 (AP) Separatist gunmen killed eight technicians repairing a remote telecommunications tower in Indonesia's restive Papua province, authorities and the rebels said.

More than a dozen gunmen stormed Telkomsel's tower while the workers were fixing its transceiver Wednesday in the mountainous village of Beoga in Puncak district, which only can be reached by helicopter, Papua military spokesperson Col. Aqsha Erlangga said.

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One technician managed to escape the attack and called for help through a video from a security camera at the tower that was monitored at the company's headquarters three hours later, Papua police spokesperson Ahmad Musthofa Kamal said.

The survivor is waiting to be rescued at the scene, Kamal said.

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An attempt to recover the bodies by helicopter Thursday was hampered by bad weather and heavy fog in the hilly district, a stronghold of separatists who have battled Indonesian rule in the impoverished region since the early 1960s.

This is an extraordinary crime by the armed separatist criminal group amid the government's efforts to bring economic development, Erlangga said in a statement.

He said police and the military were searching for the attackers, who authorities believe belong to the West Papua Liberation Army, the military wing of the Free Papua Organisation.

Separately, about 15 members of an armed group attacked a military post in Dambet village in the same district on Thursday, injuring a soldier.

Rebel spokesman Sebby Sambom confirmed the group's fighters carried out both attacks and said the group has warned all civilians to leave the areas claimed by the rebels as a war zone for years.

There is no reason to justify that they are civilians when we have announced all immigrants to immediately leave the war zone, Sambom said in a statement sent to The Associated Press early Friday.

The TPNPB under the leaders of Goliath Tabuni and Lekagak Telenggen is responsible for this attack," he said, using the local acronym of the group.

He urged all workers to leave all Indonesian government projects, or they would be considered as part of security forces.

The attacks are the latest violence in recent years in Papua, a former Dutch colony in the western part of New Guinea that is ethnically and culturally distinct from much of Indonesia. Conflicts between indigenous Papuans and Indonesian security forces are common.

Papua was incorporated into Indonesia in 1969 after a UN-sponsored ballot that was widely seen as a sham. Since then, a low-level insurgency has simmered in the region, which is divided into two provinces, Papua and West Papua.

Indonesia's government, which for decades had a policy of sending Javanese and other Indonesians to settle in Papua, is now trying to spur economic development to dampen the separatist movement.

The workers involved in the development are considered outsiders by the separatists.

In December 2018, at least 31 construction workers and a soldier were killed by the West Papua Liberation Army in one of the worst separatist attacks in the province.

Attacks have spiked in the past year, with dozens of rebels, security forces and civilians killed. (AP)

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Siret (Romania), March 4 (ANI): Thousands of people have fled conflict-ridden Ukraine and crossed over to Romania's Siret in the past few days amid Russia's ongoing military operation in Ukraine.

Volunteers, charity organisations and Romanian firefighters are providing immediate relief to them at the border-- including food, mobile phone sim cards and free transportation to various cities in Romania.

Also Read | NATO Rules Out Policing No-Fly Zone Over War-Hit Ukraine.

A total of 5,245 Indian nationals were airlifted from Romania to India till March 3 amid Russia's military operations in Ukraine, informed the Government of India on Friday.

In north Romania's Siret border, mostly women with small children, elderly people, some with their pets and luggage were seen.

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In the Siret border, there are camps from various charity organisations that are working 24x7 to provide support to these refugees escaping war. There is everything from blankets to tents to hot food to anything one can need on a daily basis. There are feeding bottles for babies as well. The warmth that's showered on these refugees whether through the relief camps or through the willingness to help by volunteers is an incredible thing to experience. The weather conditions are extreme. There is snow everywhere and it's freezing. But the warmth of the volunteers is keeping it going even in these hard situations.

One of the volunteers at the Red Cross said, "There are huge numbers of Indians coming in. Last night almost 800 Indians crossed over and today morning 450, camps are being arranged to accommodate them so they can rest and have something to eat."

Some camps even have arranged special vegetarian food for Indians. "Indians were refusing to accept food containing meat and since then veg food is also being served", informed a volunteer from Siret.

Raju, who has been in Romania for the last 20 years and is assisting the Indian embassy at Siret said, "Flight arrangement is a big relief. Now Indians don't have to wait for another two days. Romania govt providing everything round the clock- including food and sim cards for free."

Russian forces launched military operations in Ukraine on February 24, three days after Moscow recognized Ukraine's breakaway regions - Donetsk and Luhansk - as independent entities. Several countries including the UK, the US, Canada, and the European Union have condemned Russia's military operations in Ukraine and imposed sanctions on Moscow.

The Indian embassy in Romania on Friday issued a hotline number for Indians who have been evacuated from Ukraine and are still in Romania.

"+40 725964976 is the 24x7 hotline number for any Indians evacuated from Ukraine and still in Romania. Please call for any assistance required," the embassy said in a Tweet.

Meanwhile, three more Indian Air Force's C-17 aircraft returned to the Hindan airbase late last night and early morning today carrying 630 Indian nationals from Ukraine, using airfields in Romania and Hungary under Operation Ganga. (ANI)

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Washington, Mar 4 (PTI) A top American Senator has urged the Ukrainian government to end racial discrimination at its border, a prickly issue that has been pointed out by numerous students who have been frantically trying to flee the war-ravaged country.

As the Russian invasion of Ukraine intensified, foreign students, especially Africans and Asians, who are attempting to flee the country have been complaining that they have been experiencing racist treatment by Ukrainian security forces at border check-posts.

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I want to call attention to a growing body of disturbing reports along Ukraine's western borders, which allege discriminatory treatment and processing of certain non-Ukrainian individuals  in particular, individuals from African nations, Senator Mark Warner said in a letter to Oksana Markarova, Ambassador of Ukraine to the US on Thursday.

Warner is Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and is also Co-Chair of Senate India Caucus.

Also Read | Russia-Ukraine War: Another Indian Student Shot in Kyiv, Hospitalised.

According to online videos circulating on social media, individuals from Morocco, Nigeria, Egypt and India, as well as other nations seeking to escape the war in Ukraine, have been physically abused, barred from boarding trains and buses, and denied entry into border nations, among other things, the Senator's office said.

Many of these individuals are students studying in Ukraine. As you well know, at least 20 per cent of the more than 80,000 international students studying in Ukraine come from an African nation, with sizable populations of Moroccan, Nigerian, and Egyptian students, Warner wrote.

These students and other individuals must be able to seek safety, and any discriminatory treatment or actions that deny them that ability are unacceptable. I echo the sentiments of the African Union, the US Department of State, and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, and highlight this right of all people who are fleeing conflict, he said.

Acknowledging the challenging circumstances being navigated by Ukrainian security personnel who are rapidly working to facilitate historic refugee flows, Warner in his letter has stressed the importance of affording all individuals the ability to seek safe evacuation, regardless of race, religion, or nationality.

Warner also stated this point in his letters to the ambassadors of neighbouring nations  Poland, Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, and Moldova  who are working with Ukraine to process and provide refuge in response to the mass migration spurred by Russia's aggression.

The Senator also stated he will continue to monitor the conditions relating to the African diaspora and others who are being forcibly displaced at the Ukrainian borders.

An international coalition of activists and human rights lawyers on Wednesday filed an appeal to the United Nations on behalf of African and Asian refugees who were facing discrimination and abuse while trying to evacuate from the eastern European nation.

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
Tokyo [Japan], March 4 (ANI): The leaders of the Quad, during a virtual summit on Thursday voiced a unified position condemning "unilateral changes to the status quo" in the Indo-Pacific region, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said.

"Unilateral changes to the status quo by force or coercion like the recent Russian aggression against Ukraine are also unacceptable in the Indo-Pacific region. It is critically important for us to bring about a free and open Indo-Pacific," Kishida was quoted as saying by his office on Twitter.

Also Read | Russia-Ukraine War: Tasks of Ukraine Special Operation Will Be Completed in Any Case; Vladimir Putin to Emmanuel Macron.

The Quad's joint readout echoed this position, saying the four met to reiterate the adherence to "a free and open Indo-Pacific, in which the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all states is respected."

On Thursday, the Quad Leaders including Prime Minister Narendra Modi convened a virtual meeting to reaffirm their dedication to the Quad as a mechanism to promote regional stability and prosperity.

Also Read | Russia-Ukraine War: Ukraine Destroys Columns of Russian Troops, Says Defense Ministry.

"The Quad leaders discussed the ongoing conflict and humanitarian crisis in Ukraine and assessed its broader implications," the joint statement said.

They agreed to stand up new humanitarian assistance and disaster relief mechanism which will enable the Quad to meet future humanitarian challenges in the Indo-Pacific and provide a channel for communication as they each address and respond to the crisis in Ukraine, the statement added.

In their continuing pursuit of a free and open Indo-Pacific, the Quad Leaders agreed to meet in person in Tokyo in the coming months.

This was the first meeting since the leaders of four Quad countries held a summit in September last year in Washington.

A PMO statement said that the leaders discussed other topical issues, including the situation in Southeast Asia, the Indian Ocean region and the Pacific Islands.

PM Modi reiterated the importance "of adhering to the UN Charter, international law and respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity". (ANI)

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Washington [US], March 4 (ANI): The United States is imposing full blocking sanctions on Russian "oligarchs" and other persons, including President Vladimir Putin's press secretary Dmitry Peskov in response to Russia's special military operation in Ukraine, the White House said on Thursday.

"Full blocking sanctions on an expansive new list of Russian elites and their family members who enable Putin: ... Boris Rotenberg (his wife Karina, and his sons Roman and Boris), Arkady Rotenberg (His sons Pavel and Igor and daughter Liliya), ..., Igor Shuvalov (His five companies, his wife Olga, his son Evgeny and his company and jet, and his daughter Maria and her company), ..., Dmitry Peskov, President Putin's press secretary," the White House said in a press release.

Also Read | Russia-Ukraine War: Tasks of Ukraine Special Operation Will Be Completed in Any Case; Vladimir Putin to Emmanuel Macron.

The White House said that full blocking sanctions have also been imposed on Nikolai Tokarev, Sergey Chemezov, Yevgeniy Prigozhin, and Alisher Usmanov.

"Imposing Visa Restrictions on 19 Russian Oligarchs, their 47 Family Members and Close Associates: Today the Department of State is announcing a new visa restriction policy to restrict the issuance of visas to certain Russian oligarchs, their family members, and close associates," the White House said.

Also Read | Russia-Ukraine War: Ukraine Destroys Columns of Russian Troops, Says Defense Ministry.

The statement added said these oligarchs are known to direct, authorize, fund, significantly support, or carry out malign activities in support of Russia's destabilizing foreign policy. "In an initial action under this policy, we have taken steps to place visa restrictions on 19 oligarchs and 47 family members and close associates."

Separately in a tweet, US President Joe Biden said the United States has banned the travel of more than 50 Russian oligarchs, their families, and close associates.

"In my State of the Union Address, I said the United States is going after the crimes of Russian oligarchs. Today, we're adding dozens of names to the list -- and banning travel to America by more than 50 Russian oligarchs, their families, and close associates," Biden tweeted.

The US and Europe have launched a series of sanctions against Russia in response to the large scale military conflict in Ukraine.

These sanctions will prevent Moscow from accessing its hundreds of billions of dollars of reserves worldwide and cut short its state revenues from oil and natural gas. (ANI)

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
Washington, March 4: Calling for the assassination of Russian President Vladimir Putin, US Republican Senator Lindsey Graham asked whether there is a Brutus or a "more successful" Colonel Stauffenberg in the Russian military. Julius Caesar, a Roman general, was assassinated by Brutus while Colonel Stauffenberg, a German army officer, had attempted to assassinate Adolf Hitler on July 20, 1944.

In a series of tweets, Graham said, "Is there a Brutus in Russia? Is there a more successful Colonel Stauffenberg in the Russian military? The only way this ends is for somebody in Russia to take this guy out. You would be doing your country - and the world - a great service."

He further said, "The only people who can fix this are the Russian people. Easy to say, hard to do. Unless you want to live in darkness for the rest of your life, be isolated from the rest of the world in abject poverty, and live in darkness you need to step up to the plate." Russia-Ukraine War Live Updates: Fire at Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant; Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy Accuses Moscow of 'Nuclear Terror'.

This comes against the backdrop of Russian forces launching military operations in Ukraine on February 24, three days after Moscow recognized Ukraine's breakaway regions - Donetsk and Luhansk - as independent entities.

Several countries including the UK, the US, Canada, and the European Union have condemned Russia's military operations in Ukraine and imposed sanctions on Moscow. These countries have also promised Ukraine to help with military aid to fight Russia.

The US, Canada and European allies agreed to remove key Russian banks from the interbank messaging system, SWIFT which means Russian banks won't be able to communicate securely with banks beyond Russia's borders. President Putin has also signed a decree on special economic measures against the US and its allies.

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
The cinephiles have been unable to contain their excitement ever since Yash Raj Films aka YRF shared release dates of some of the major films featuring the superstars of Bollywood. It has been a long, long time since fans were waiting for the official announcement on the release dates of Pathaan, Jayeshbhai Jordaar and Tiger 3. These announcements were indeed one of the best treats for the movie buffs. Along with the release dates, the makers even shared a glimpse of the superstars through the announcement teaser videos. Salman Khan Confirms Cameo Crossovers With Shah Rukh Khan in Tiger 3, Pathaan.

Pathaan marks Shah Rukh Khans return to the movies after four years. Billed as a high-octane spy thriller, the Siddharth Anand directorial also stars Deepika Padukone and John Abraham. The release date announcement video teases a glimpse of King Khan, whod be seen playing the titular role. The film is all set to be released on January 25, 2023. Pathaan: Fans Thrilled To Watch Shah Rukh Khan On The Big Screen, Trend King Is Back On Twitter.

Jayeshbhai Jordaar starring Ranveer Singh promises to be a roller-coaster ride of emotions. The actor, whod be seen as a superhero of a very unconventional type, shared a fun video on social media to announce about the films release date that also stars Shalini Pandey as the female lead. The film will hit the big screens on May 13. Jayeshbhai Jordaar: Ranveer Singhs Film To Arrive In Theatres On May 13 (Watch Video).

Tiger 3 is an espionage action thriller with audiences favourite onscreen pair in the lead, Salman Khan and Katrina Kaif. The handsome hunks dialogue in the teaser Tiger is always ready has impressed netizens already and one just cant wait to know what more is in store for them. Its an Eid special release, set to arrive in theatres on April 21, 2023. Tiger 3 To Release On April 21, 2023! Netizens Say Salman Khan, Katrina Kaifs Film Will Be A Blockbuster (Watch Video).

Which YRF Date Announcement Teaser Impressed You The Most? 54% Pathaan

8% Jayeshbhai Jordaar

38% Tiger 3



Pathaan, Jayeshbhai Jordaar and Tiger 3 are the biggest releases that would be produced under Yash Raj Films banner. Do let us know which YRF date announcement teaser impressed you the most by casting your vote!

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Mar 04, 2022 06:28 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).
Fire at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine has extinguished and radiation levels are currently normal on Friday, said Ukrainian authorities. The fire on the Power Plant was ignited by Russian forces by shelling bombs.

Ukrainian authorities say fire at Europe's biggest nuclear plant ignited by Russian shelling has been extinguished, reports AP  Press Trust of India (@PTI_News) March 4, 2022

(SocialLY brings you all the latest breaking news, viral trends and information from social media world, including Twitter, Instagram and Youtube. The above post is embeded directly from the user's social media account and LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body. The views and facts appearing in the social media post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY, also LatestLY does not assume any responsibility or liability for the same.)
Western media simplifies the conflict in Ukraine in ways that divide us. But what if instead, we chose to unite against those who profit from all wars throughout the world?

by Roger Waters

I figured something out after tossing and turning all night. We on the left often make the mistake of still looking upon Russia as a somewhat socialist enterprise. Of course, it isnt. The Soviet Union ended in 1991. Russia is an unadulterated neoliberal capitalist gangsters paradise, modeled during the time of its horrific restructuring under Boris Yeltsin (1991-1999) on the United States of America. It should come as no surprise that its autocratic, and possibly unhinged leader, Vladimir Putin, has no more respect for the UN Charter and international law than recent presidents of the United States or prime ministers of England have had. (For example, remember George W. Bush and Tony Blair during the Iraq invasion.) I, on the other hand, do care about international law and the UN Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and can unequivocally state that if I had been eligible to vote in the General Assembly on March 2, I would have voted with the 141 ambassadors who supported the resolution condemning Russia for its invasion of Ukraine and demanding that it withdraw its armed forces.

Would that the General Assembly had a mandate to govern, sadly it doesnt, which means its even more beholden on all us freedom-loving, law-abiding anti-war activists to stand shoulder to shoulder with all our brothers and sisters all over the world, irrespective of race, religion, or nationality, in pursuit of elusive peace. That of course means standing with the Russian people and the Ukrainian people, the Palestinian people, the Syrian people, the Lebanese people, the Kurds, African Americans, Mexicans, Ecuadorian rainforest dwellers, South African miners, Armenians, Greeks, the Inuit, the Mapuche and my neighbors the Shinnecock, to name but a few.

It has been monstrous to hear white Western news reporters (such as Charlie DAgata of CBS News) bewailing the plight of Ukrainian refugees on the grounds that they look like us when addressing what they must assume are white Western audiences and that the conflict in Ukraine is exceptional because this isnt Afghanistan or Iraq. That is outrageous. The implication is that its somehow more acceptable to make war on people whose skin is brown or black and drive them from their homes than people who look like us. Its not. All refugees, all people who struggle are our brothers and sisters.

In these difficult days, we should resist the temptation to pour good guy/bad guy gasoline on the fire; demand a ceasefire in the name of humanity; support our brothers and sisters fighting for peace internationally, in Moscow and Santiago and Paris and Sao Paulo and New York, because we are everywhere; and stop pouring weapons of war into Eastern Europe, further destabilizing the region just to satisfy the insatiable appetite of the international armaments industry.

Maybe we should raise our voices to encourage the idea of a neutral Ukraine, as has been repeatedly suggested by wise individuals of good faith for many years. First things first, of course, Ukrainians should demand a ceasefire; but after that, maybe Ukrainians would welcome such an arrangement. Maybe someone should ask them. One things for sure: It cant be left up to the gangsters. Left to their own devices, the gangsters will kill us all.

This article was produced by Globetrotter.

Roger Waters is a musician.
States like California and Texas are offering cash assistance programs for their cash-strapped residents. The project aims to provide help to pay for their basic needs.

Cash assistance in California is called CalWorks, which serves all 58 counties in the state and is operated by welfare departments, according to California's Department of Social Services site.

If a family has little to no cash and needs housing, food, utilities, clothing, or medical care, they may be qualified to apply for CalWorks, an immediate short-term help.

Meanwhile, Texas also offers cash assistance for their residents, which the state calls Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.

READ NEXT: SNAP Benefits 2022: Schedule of March Benefits in California, EBT Cardholders Gets New Online Options

Cash Assistance in California: How to Apply, Eligibility

To be qualified for cash assistance in California, one must be a resident of California, a U.S. citizen, a legal migrant, or a qualified migrant.

In addition, one must be unemployed or underemployed and have low or very low income, according to a benefits.gov site.

People who are eyeing to apply for cash assistance in California must have a child 18 years of age or younger, pregnant or be 18 years of age or younger, and the head of your household.

The amount of a family's monthly assistance relies on a number of factors, such as the number of people who are eligible and the special needs of any of those family members.

The income of the household is also considered in computing the amount of cash aid the family receives.

People who qualify for the cash assistance can apply online https://www.benefitscal.org or contact the local county social services agency in their respective county.

Family requesting assistance must complete application forms and provide proof of income and property, citizenship status, age, social security number, residence, shelter costs, work or school status, and other required information.

Adult family members must also be fingerprinted and have their photos taken.

Cash Assistance in Texas: How to Apply, Eligibility

Temporary Assistance for Needy Families in Texas provides the same kind of help to its residents as California does.

However, it covers medical supplies not paid for by Medicaid and other basic needs.

TANF for families can be given to eligible residents. Texas officials look at the amount the family pays for basic needs such as rent, utilities, child care, and work-related expenses.

Resources such as cash on hand, money in the bank, as well as the type of vehicles are also considered, according to a Texas site.

Families in Texas who are approved for TANF will receive payments for six months. Texas Health and Human Services Commission will then send a renewal application to the family before the end of the six months.

Households qualified for TANF can get Medicaid benefits, and they can choose if they want to receive one or both types of benefits.

HHSC provides TANF payments through the Lone Star Card, an electronic debit card used as a credit card at the cash register.

There is also a one-time TANF that hands out $1,000. It is given to families in crisis who have children age 18 and younger and do not have a lot of money or have a way to get more money, according to HHS Texas site.

Maximum monthly TANF amount range from $107 for a family size of one with child-only cases, while a family size of five with child-only cases can get as much as $329.

READ MORE: SNAP Benefits 2022 Schedule for California, Florida, Texas and More: When to Get Food Assistance Each Month

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Written by: Mary Webber

WATCH: What Is CalWORKs? - from County of Los Angeles DPSS






Melinda Gates was candid with her relationship with ex-husband Bill Gates in her first interview after the divorce.

Melinda also talked about Bill's relationship with sexual abuse convict Jeffrey Epstein, saying that meeting the accused pedophile left her "having nightmares," according to The Blaze news report.

The American philanthropist described Epstein as "abhorrent, evil personified." Melinda said that it was why her heart breaks for the young women who came forward.

She then went on to say that it was how she felt, saying, "and I am an older woman. He was awful."

Melinda then said that she did not like her ex-husband having meetings with Epstein and that he made her feelings clear to Gates.

She then went on to imply that Gates' connection with Epstein played a role in their divorce.

READ NEXT: Bill and Melinda Gates' Relationship: A Timeline of Their Marriage, Life Post-Divorce

Melinda Gates and Bill Gates Divorce

Melinda opened that she cried numerous times during her marriage with Bill Gates, sometimes while lying on the floor, according to The Guardian report.

She added that she gave "every single piece of myself of this marriage," and that she was committed on the day they got engaged until the day she got out of it.

She added that society tends to put things on women like it was her fault when it comes to their separation.

Melinda said that she did nothing wrong so "I hold my head high."

Microsoft asked its board to investigate Bill Gates shortly after his resignation from the board in 2020.

Last year, the Microsoft founder acknowledged that he had an affair with a Microsoft employee.

Melinda was asked about one report claiming that her ex-husband had multiple affairs, to which she answered that she thinks those questions should be answered by him.

Bill Gates' Affairs and Connection with Jeffrey Epstein

The Microsoft CEO had developed a reputation for having questionable conduct in work-related settings. The issues were amplified amid his divorce from Melinda.

He reportedly pursued women who worked for him at Microsoft and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, according to The New York Times report.

In October 2019, the relationship of Gates and Epstein came to light. Melinda then hired divorce lawyers and set the motion in the process.

Multiple people noted that during their marriage, Bill had engaged in work-related behavior they described as inappropriate for a person under a major publicly-traded company.

Bridgitt Arnold, a spokeswoman for Bill Gates, disputed the reports and said that it is "extremely disappointing" that there have been so many untruths published about the cause of the divorce.

Bill and Melinda met at work. He was technically Melinda's boss as he ran Microsoft and she started working there in 1987 as a product manager.

Gates had asked his ex-wife out when they ran into each other in a company parking lot, according to Melinda, describing their relationship's start during a public appearance in 2016.

After they were married, Bill reportedly would on occasion pursue women in the office.

READ MORE: Bill Gates Turned a Blind Eye to Jeffrey Epstein's Reputation for a Nobel Peace Prize

This article is owned by Latin Post

Written by: Mary Webber

WATCH: Melinda French Gates on having no regrets: "I gave every single piece of myself to this marriage." - from CBS Mornings






Officials from the Biden administration are weighing if they will send Vice President Kamala Harris to Poland and Romania amid the tension between Russia and Ukraine.

Sources familiar with the matter told The Hill on Thursday that officials are "actively discussing" whether the vice president will go to Warsaw and Bucharest to show solidarity with Ukraine.

The exact date of Harris' visit with the two countries was not discussed by the sources, but New York Post reported that the trip could happen "in the coming weeks."

The sources then noted that there are no talks in connection to President Biden's visit to the region.

"The source then explained that a visit from the president is a heavier "logistical lift" while a travel for the vice president is "more nimble."

The unnamed official also noted that people can expect that Vice President Kamala Harris "will continue to engage with allies and partners in these issues."

It can be recalled that Harris previously spoke to the leaders of Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Romania, and Poland to discuss the Russian attack in Ukraine. According to reports, the vice president spoke to each leader through calls, as she affirmed the Biden administration's support for the Kyiv government and Washington's allies from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO.)

The news about Kamala Harris' possible travel to the European region came as Secretary of State Antony Blinken departed on a six-day trip to Belgium, Poland, the Baltic states, and Moldova.

State Department noted that Blinken will continue "extensive consultations and coordination" with the NATO allies and European partners about the war Russia has started against Ukraine.

READ NEXT: Joe Biden State of the Union Address: U.S. President Denounces Russia's Vladimir Putin's Attack on Ukraine

Kamala Harris Reiterates U.S. to not Send Troops to Ukraine to Fight Russians

In an interview with "CBS Morning" on Wednesday, Kamala Harris reiterated President Joe Biden's words, saying that the U.S. will not send its troops to Ukraine to fight the Russian army, whether on the ground and on-air, CBS News reported.

Harris also pointed out that the U.S. will continue to collaborate with its allies in defending the NATO territories.

As of Thursday, the United States sent nearly 3,000 additional troops to Poland and Romania as the tension between Russia and Ukraine escalated into war.

In addition, the U.S. and other Members of NATO also imposed sanctions against Russia in support of Ukraine. However, the treaty pointed out that they won't take "direct military action," per The Hill.

Kamala Harris Criticized Over Explanation on Ukraine-Russia War

Harris's comments about the stand of the U.S. on the Russia and Ukraine war came after she faced criticism on how she explained the conflict surrounding the countries from the European region.

Speaking slowly, Harris began by saying that Ukraine is a country located in Europe, per The New York Post.

"Russia decided to invade a smaller country called Ukraine. So basically, that's wrong, and it goes against everything we stand for," Harris added.

Several GOP entities mocked the vice president on how she delivered and explained the Ukraine-Russia war.

GOP campaign consultant Nathan Wurtzel said that Harris sounded like a fifth-grade student reading notecards, per The New York Post.

Meanwhile, Ex-Trump White House counselor Kellyanne Conway said that the way Harris explained was "embarrassing."

READ NEXT: Ukraine Russia Conflict: Here's How Ashton Kutcher, Other Celebrities, and the GOPs Reacted to the Ongoing Conflict

This article is owned by Latin Post.

Written By: Joshua Summers

WATCH: Vice President Harris on Russia-Ukraine war, Cost of Sanctions on Americans - From CBS Mornings
Honduras President Xiomara Castro has announced the ban of open-pit mining in the Central American nation, saying it would cancel environmental permits for mining operations across the country.

However, it is not yet clear whether the cancellation will apply only to new projects or also to those already operating, according to a BBC News report.

The Ministry of Mining noted that "extractive exploitation" is "harmful to the state of Honduras."

Honduras mines gold, silver, copper, lead, and zinc.

The ministry argued that mining threatens natural resources and public health and limits access to water.

The Ministry for Mining and Environment said in a statement that all Honduran territory is declared free of open-pit mining, according to a France24 News report.

Castro announced that banning open-pit mining was on top of her priorities when she took office on January 27.

Among her top priorities were fighting crime, poverty, and corruption that she described being rife during her predecessor's, Juan Orlando Hernandez, administration.

The ministry also promised to intervene "immediately" to conserve areas labeled as having high ecological value while also securing their benefit to the population.

The office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights in Honduras lauded the ban, saying it is in line with the "principle of climate justice and protection of natural resources."

The U.N. High Commissioner also said that it aligns with public health and access to water as a human right.

However, a member of the National Association of Miners, Santos Gabino Carvajal, said that the ban is "ambiguous and potentially in violation of mining legislation."

He added that it also prohibits the extraction of stone and sand for construction. Carvajal noted that it would kill the "possibility of development."

READ NEXT: Honduras Travel: Safety Advisories and Tourist Attractions You Should See During Your Visit in Honduras

Honduras Mining Industry

Canada's Aura Minerals operates an open-pit mine in western Honduras. It has faced local opposition in its operations due to alleged disturbances to a Maya-Chorti indigenous cemetery, according to a Reuters report.

The company suspended its operations last year due to what they described as illegal blockades.

In 2020, Aura Minerals' San Andres mine processed more than 4.4 million tons of ore, as well as produced around 61,000 ounces of gold.

Central bank data noted that Honduran mining export revenue from silver, zinc, and lead projects totaled nearly $130 million last year. It has not yet included any revenue from gold shipments.

Meanwhile, mining projects have continued to affect local communities despite being closed years after, such as the case of the San Martin mine in the Valle de Siria region.

Anti-mining activist Pedro Landa noted that the San Martin mine is a clear example of the environmental damage and the consequences for human health from mining, according to a Global Sisters Report.

The mining project was reported to have left sulfur bank deposits open when the mountains were cut.

Sulfur mingles with the rivers and drinking water, which made people sick with skin diseases and cancer.

More than 200 organizations in Latin America wrote a letter to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau asking for greater accountability in the Canadian mining operations in their countries.

READ MORE: Honduras Ex-President Juan Orlando Hernandez Surrendered After U.S. Requests ExtraditionWhy Was He Arrested?

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Written by: Mary Webber

WATCH: Dangers of Traditional Gold Mining and Smelting in Honduras - from Raptor Mining






The U.S. government announced on Thursday that it will resume its visa services for Cubans after the processing of the said document was halted in the embassy for about four years.

According to Al Jazeera, the move was announced by U.S. Diplomat for Havana Timothy Zuniga-Brown announced the move at a news conference on Thursday.

"[The embassy] will begin the limited resumption of some immigrant visa services, as part of a gradual expansion of the embassy's functions," Zuniga-Brown added.

Associated Press reported that the embassy would soon begin the processing of "some immigrant visas" for which documentation is already complete.

A statement from the U.S. Embassy pointed out that most of the visas will be processed in their facility located in Guyana. Meanwhile, the embassy located in Havana will reportedly focus on other consular services, as well as "limited emergency non-immigrant visa processing."

Despite the announcement of the visa processing resumption in Cuba, authorities did not mention the exact date when will the move be effective, La Prensa Latina Media reported. Furthermore, the outlet also mentioned that the number of Cubans seeking immigrant visas was also not identified by the authorities.

READ NEXT: Kamala Harris May Be Sent to Poland, Romania Amid Ukraine-Russia War

Cuba's U.S. Embassy to Increase Staff

Aside from the announcement of the visa processing resumption in Cuba, reports also highlighted that the U.S. Embassy in the country will beef up its staff and personnel.

Officials did not reveal how many diplomatic personnel will be sent back to Cuba's U.S. Embassy in Havana.

However, officials noted that the number of personnel to be deployed will help in addressing the more than four years of backlog of requests for immigration visas by Cubans who have relatives in the United States, per Al Jazeera.

Authorities also added that the deployment of the additional staff in Havana is a result of President Joe Biden's ongoing review of Cuba's policy.

It can be recalled that most of the U.S. diplomats in Cuba were withdrawn in 2017 after former President Donald trump's administration accused the nation of targeting some of the personnel with weapons that caused several symptoms called "Havana syndrome," per Associated Press.

However, the said condition was reported among other U.S. personnel around the world.

The government of Cuba denied any involvement in the accusation slammed by the U.S. government during that time.

Cuba: Number of Cubans Seeking U.S. Visa per Records

In the light of the visa processing pause, Associated Press noted that Cuba saw "unauthorized" migration attempts to the U.S. fueled by several factors, including the economic crisis, the pandemic, and cutbacks in aid from Venezuela.

The U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) indicated that around 9,827 Cuban would-be migrants were detained in January 2021, per La Prensa Latina Media.

Reports also noted that Cubans who wish to earn asylum in the U.S. traveled through boats or trekked through Central America to reach the U.S.-Mexico border.

However, the majority of these Cubans were sent back to their home country due to a health order that was issued during the pandemic.

READ NEXT: Scientists Warn of Massive California Earthquake That Could Hit Anytime; Here's How You Can Be Prepared

This article is owned by Latin Post.

Written By: Joshua Summers

WATCH: U.S. to Pull Embassy Staff out of Cuba After Health Attacks - From CBS News
A former police officer in Mexico was sentenced to life in prison by a federal judge in Texas on Thursday for his role in the Sinaloa Cartel under Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada.

Court documents showed that Arturo Shows Urquidi, 50, also known as "Chous," was convicted on several drug trafficking, weapon, and money laundering charges.

KFOX 14 reported that Urquidi is a former police officer of Chihuahua state in Mexico and a long-time member of the Sinaloa Cartel.

In a statement, the U.S. Attorney's Office Western District of Texas said Urquidi allegedly assisted in the security of stash houses where thousands of kilos of cocaine were unloaded from tanker trucks and then reloaded with weapons and money returning to Culiacan in Sinaloa, Mexico.

With the former policeman's involvement, the Sinaloa Cartel successfully imported thousands of kilos of cocaine, worth over $1 billion, into the U.S.

In October 2021, a federal jury in El Paso, Texas convicted Urquidi of one count of conspiracy to violate the Racketeering Influenced Corrupt Organization statute (RICO) for his role as a Sinaloa Cartel member; conspiracy to import cocaine and marijuana; conspiracy to possess cocaine and marijuana; conspiracy to launder money; and conspiracy to possess firearms in furtherance of drug trafficking crimes.

Co-Defendant of Sinaloa Cartel Member 'Chous' Is Also Convicted

Arturo Shows Urquidi's co-defendant Mario Iglesias-Villegas, alias "Grim Reaper," was also found guilty of five counts of violent crimes in aid of racketeering activity; conspiracy to kill in a foreign country; and kidnapping.

Iglesias-Villegas reportedly joined the Sinaloa Cartel in 2008, when the group was led by the notorious drug kingpin Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman Loera. He was the head of a group of Sinaloa Cartel sicarios or assassins until his arrest in 2012.

Iglesias-Villegas' presence has allowed the Sinaloa Cartel to control the drug corridor in Juarez, leading to the successful import of cocaine and marijuana into the U.S. He is scheduled for sentencing on March 24.

Chous and Grim Reaper were among 24 alleged Sinaloa Cartel members indicted in 2012 over their roles in the group. The other defendants included El Chapo and El Mayo, who allegedly took over the Mexican drug cartel after El Chapo was arrested in Mexico in 2016.

According to the Attorney's Office Western District of Texas, the Sinaloa Cartel's criminal activity in the Ciudad Juarez and El Paso area included the violence that occurred during the war between Sinaloa Cartel and Juarez Cartel.

It led to the death of thousands of people in Ciudad Juarez and throughout Mexico's states of Chihuahua and Durango. The violence gave rise to Ciudad Juarez being named the "deadliest city in the world."

U.S. Attorney Ashley C. Hoff said Arturo Shows Urquidi's sentence was "a significant step in holding the members of the Sinaloa Cartel accountable for the crimes they have committed for years."

READ NEXT: El Chapo's Wife Emma Coronel Aispuro to Be Released as Early as May 2023 and She'll Have to Look for Work After Prison

El Mayo and El Chapo of Sinaloa Cartel

The Sinaloa Cartel is one of Mexico's largest and most powerful drug trafficking organizations. The Mexican drug cartel has been known to carry out assassinations, murders, and torture to protect its turf.

Both El Chapo and El Mayo were among the people who established the Sinaloa Cartel from the remnants of the Guadalajara Cartel after its leader Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo was arrested in 1989.

El Mayo was reportedly left in command of the Sinaloa Cartel after the drug kingpin was arrested and extradited in the U.S.

The U.S. State Department said El Mayo also has wide real estate holdings and has invested in multiple businesses in Mexico. The department has already increased its offer from $5 million to $15 million for information that will result in the arrest of El Mayo.

A federal court found El Chapo guilty of drug trafficking, money laundering, murder conspiracy, and use of a gun in crimes involving drugs. He was sentenced to spend the rest of his days in the ADX Florence "supermax" prison after being sentenced to life imprisonment in 2019.

READ MORE: El Chapo's Wife Emma Coronel Could Dismantle Sinaloa Cartel by Cutting Deal With U.S.: Report

This article is owned by Latin Post.

Written by: Mary Webber

WATCH: Former Member of the Sinaloa Cartel Tells of His Life as a Gangster in Tijuana - From CGTN America
Meghan Markle is being sued for defamation by her half-sister Samantha Markle for her explosive interview with Oprah Winfrey that rattled even the royal family.

In court documents obtained by Page Six, Samantha claimed Meghan made "false and malicious statements" during the interview she and Prince Harry gave Oprah Winfrey last year.

Samantha accused the Duchess of Sussex of falsely claiming to be "an only child." She also said that Meghan lied about the timeframe of when they last saw each other.

Meghan's lawyer, Michael Kump, plans to give minimum attention to the lawsuit, saying it "is all it deserves." Kump told TMZ that "this baseless and absurd lawsuit is just a continuation of a pattern of disturbing behavior."

READ NEXT: Prince Harry, Meghan Markle Had Considered Naming 'Royal Racist' Who Asked About Archie's Skin Color

Meghan Markle's Half-Sister Files Lawsuit Against the Duchess of Sussex

According to the court documents, Samantha Markle was also pissed on Meghan Markle for spinning a "rags to royalty" story about herself, which she claimed was not true.

Samantha also accused Meghan of bashing their father, Thomas Markle, in a bid to sell the false narrative of her life. She said Meghan's stories of growing up in "virtual poverty" were fabricated.

Samantha said Thomas paid for Meghan's "elite and expensive private schools," acting and dance classes, and her tuition and living expenses when she went to Northwestern University, which was something she told Oprah she worked to pay for herself.

Samantha further noted that Meghan misled the public regarding their father's absence from her wedding in May 2018. She said Thomas did not refuse to attend Meghan's wedding but was instructed by his doctor not to participate because he was too sick to travel to England.

Weeks before the Duchess of Sussex's wedding, Samantha said their father suffered two heart attacks due to stress associated with the royal wedding, the constant hounding and harassment by paparazzi and other media, and the upsetting text messages he received" from Meghan and Prince Harry.

Samantha further noted that Meghan's harsh words had affected the sales of her autobiography and prevented her from getting jobs, causing emotional and mental distress.

According to reports, Meghan Markle's half-sister is asking the Duchess of Sussex for $75,000 in damages, plus the cost of court and lawyer's fees.

Meghan Markle and Prince Harry's Oprah Interview

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex revealed in a March 2021 Oprah Winfrey interview that one member of the royal family had concerns about the skin color of Archie before he was born.

At the time, Prince Harry noted that it was not his grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II, nor his late grandfather, Prince Philip. In discussing the incident, Meghan Markle claimed it was a "discriminatory effort" to not make her unborn son a prince.

Prince Harry also mentioned in the interview that he felt his father, Prince Charles, had let him down and that he had felt trapped in his royal life.

Among other things discussed was the royal family's reluctance to give Prince Harry and Meghan any security assistance. The couple added that their home address in Canada was also revealed by a media outlet, raising concerns for their safety. And eventually, it resulted in their move to California.

The interview was one of the latest scandals the royal family has faced ever since Princess Diana died in 1997. Many criticized the family, led by Queen Elizabeth, for being too slow to address the late princess's death.

READ MORE: Meghan Markle' Cold-Calls' Republican Senators as She Push for Paid Parental Leave

This article is owned by Latin Post.

Written by: Joshua Summers

WATCH: Meghan Markle & Prince Harry Kick Off Women's History Month With Big Announcement From Archewell - From Access
NYSIF, New York State's largest workers' compensation carrier, hosted its 12th Annual Minority- and Women-Owned Business Enterprises (MWBE) Investment Symposium and strengthened its commitment to expanding opportunities for participation in all areas of its investment portfolio. At the event held Tuesday, March 1, in New York City, NYSIF announced it far exceeded its established annual MWBE participation goal of 35% for State Fiscal Year 2020-2021, and will continue to recruit MWBE financial firms to further increase their participation in 2022 and beyond.

READ NEXT: SBA New York Opens Nominations for National Small Business Week 2022 Awards, Invites Small Business Owners to Apply for Recognition

New York State Insurance Fund (NYSIF)

"NYSIF continues to be a leader in meeting and surpassing the goals of the state's MWBE initiative" said Kenneth Theobalds, Board of Commissioners Chairman, NYSIF. "But we must reaffirm our commitment and strive to do even better so that our values of encouraging diversity and inclusion continue to reflect in the pursuit of our core mission, delivering superior financial returns and value to NYSIF's customers."

For State Fiscal Year 2020-21, NYSIF allocated nearly 44% of dollars paid to asset management firms and financial institutions to MWBE-certified firms. In all, 54% ($1.9 billion) of the $3.6 billion in NYSIF's externally managed assets were under the management of MWBE firms, including 100% of NYSIF's equities portfolio.

"NYSIF's commitment to identifying opportunities for diverse MWBE firms is foundational to our strong support for New York businesses," said Gaurav Vasisht, Executive Director and CEO, NYSIF. "As the state reemerges from the COVID-19 pandemic, NYSIF will redouble its efforts to utilize a variety of outreach programs in order to cultivate relationships with MWBE firms, boosting innovation and benefiting New York State employers."

Now in its 12th year, NYSIF's MWBE Investment Symposium is a forum to further spark statewide job growth and expand investment opportunities to a diverse group of financial firms. This year's event was held in a hybrid format to accommodate both virtual and in-person attendees. It featured programs and panel discussions that addressed a wide range of topics, from informative conversations on increasing diversity in capital markets and the pros and cons of being a woman-owned firm, to transforming environmental, social and governance impact in the financial sector.

The MWBE Investment Symposium is one of several events that NYSIF participates in to attract MWBE vendors in all categories and helps to advance the organization's commitment to hire MWBE asset managers to invest a portion of NYSIF funds.

NYSIF's efforts in financial services participation are governed by Workers' Compensation Law  87-i, which establishes NYSIF's MWBE Asset Management and Financial Institution Strategy. This strategy includes investing assets with MWBE asset managers, conducting trades of public equity securities with MWBE financial institutions, conducting trades of fixed-income securities through MWBE financial institutions and recruiting other MWBE financial services firms.

For more information, visit nysif.com.

READ MORE: Entrepreneurship on the Rise for Women of Color, Hispanic Women Own Nearly 1.5 Million Businesses Nationwide
Elk Point, SD (57025)

Today

Overcast with rain showers at times. High 56F. Winds ENE at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 60%..

Tonight

Rain showers in the evening becoming more intermittent overnight. Low 47F. Winds NE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 40%.
Portland, TN (37148)

Today

Cloudy skies during the morning hours followed by scattered showers and thunderstorms in the afternoon. A few storms may be severe. High 81F. Winds SE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 60%..

Tonight

Scattered showers and thunderstorms. Low 64F. Winds S at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 70%.
NPC deputy dedicated to carrying forward Chinese handicrafts

14:09, March 04, 2022 By Yuan Meng, Liu Ning, Zhang Liya, Xiang Shizhen ( People's Daily Online

Hou Zhanying, an experienced craft designer and also a deputy to the 13th National People's Congress (NPC), has been devoted to integrating Chinese elements into her design works. This year, she will file motions for the continued development of the industry at the upcoming Two Sessions.

Hou, head of the designing department of Beijing Orafi Jewelry Co., Ltd, has designed Chinas national medals and gifts, as well as ornaments for daily use, together with her team. One example is a national gift provided to spouses of foreign leaders at the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation in 2017. It is a Chinese-style jewel box, which integrates traditional Chinese craftsmanship such as lacquer carving, filigree inlay and engraving with 3D printing. A national gift must embody the culture and image of China, said Hou. Its design and manufacturing must include Chinese elements, she added.

Hou Zhanying, an experienced craft designer and also a deputy to the 13th National People's Congress. (Peoples Daily Online/Yuan Meng)

Her confidence in Chinas traditional culture has grown in the process of designing. My team and I are ready to present Chinese culture accumulated over thousands of years in our artworks, she said.

Hou believes innovation is vital for Chinese-style handicrafts to go global, and modern fashion can inject more vitality into traditional artworks. Traditional Chinese culture is always the foundation of the design. In the meantime, our team captures some fashion trends and blends them together. The whole process requires exploration and learning new things, as well as summarizing a unique design method, she explained.

Hou, whos in her final year of a five-year term as a deputy to the 13th NPC, is now very familiar with her political work, but still feels stressed somehow. I come from the frontline of the industry, so my proposals and motions must reflect the true situation and help address problems in the industry. All my fellow deputies are representatives from all walks of life, and their motions are all very professional. I must work tirelessly to improve myself, she said.

Photo taken on Feb. 28 shows "Harmony Under Heaven: Jewelry Box Set" designed by Hou's team. (Peoples Daily Online/Yuan Meng)

Hou has two motions for the upcoming Two Sessions  brand building that mainly focus on bridging the final gap in removing barriers for passing on intangible cultural heritage and opening up for the survival and development of art and design enterprises and the sustainable and high-quality cultivation of talents for the industry. She hopes relevant measures such as the assessment and evaluation of inheritors of intangible culture heritage, pricing, and inclusion in government procurement plans will be rolled out to help workers in the industry enhance their confidence, build brands, and ultimately, boost the development of the whole industry.

As for cultivating talents, she hopes schools and enterprises will work together to cultivate professionals, and calls for a talent incubation mechanism involving the government, industry and enterprises.

Hou believes that increasingly more young people will devote themselves to the art and design industry in the future. "Many young people love traditional Chinese culture, and they will feel pride in this career. We inherit not only a craft, but also thousands of years of civilization.

(Web editor: Liu Ning, Liang Jun)
A Laois GAA groundskeeper is among the Irish Ukrainian men who have taken the brave decision to return to their home country to defend it from Russian onslaught.

Vadym Binko has the backing of Rosenallis GAA Club and the wider community, with a collection underway.

He was interviewed by RTE News in Dublin airport as he left last Sunday February 28, in a video shared by his club.

"I live in Ireland over 20 years. I love Ireland too. My kids Irish, my wife as well," he said.

A Rosenallis transport company has undertaken to bring supplies from Laois to Ukraine.

Rosenallis GAA club is asking the community to show solaridity with Vadym Binko and his family.

"Hyland Transport have arranged a Ukrainian Relief Appeal and Rosenallis GAA along with all other local clubs have come on board to show our support for the people of Ukraine and especially to our own Vadym Binko and his family, if you have any items you can spare please drop them to Hyland Transports yard R32 E264 on Saturday the 19th March from 10am - 4pm we will also be asking our own players and committee to help out on the day."

Vadym's wife Maryna told national press that he is ringing her every two hours to let her know he is ok. He is posted in an abandoned building in Kyiv with other volunteers, waiting for battle.

I am good as long as I get the text messages every two hours, Ms Binko told the Irish Independent.

I know then that Vadym is alive, that he is OK. But I dont know exactly where they are, what they are doing. I dont need to know this information because its not safe for him for me to know this information.

I sit all day and night waiting on the messages to come in."

The couple have two children, Ben, 15 and Veronica, 7, while Vadym has an older daughter living in Kyiv, which is part of the reason her father chose to leave Ireland.

Ben is very close to her, and since last Thursday he has found things very difficult. Then when his dad left it was even harder. After the war started, Vadyms daughter moved to [the] north with her boyfriend. Her boyfriends mother lives in a small village and they decided it was safer there. They are safe so far.

We did not expect war, she said. Although we had been watching how things were developing, Vadym and I did not believe this would happen.

My father lives in a small village in Ukraine and we had been getting messages from him about what was going on. I have friends that I grew up with sending information and pictures of their kids sleeping in shelters.

Vadym couldnt look at this. Then his daughter is over there and he said, I will never forgive myself if I just sit here and watch all this on the news.

I didnt try and stop him. If it wasnt for the kids, I would go there myself and try to help. You can help in the hospitals, or cooking, helping make Molotov cocktails, there would be many ways I could help, she told the Irish Independent.

Laois people are being asked to help fill the truck for Hyland Transport to bring to refugee camps in Poland and Romania.

Items required include nappies and baby formula, dried food, bottles of water, powerbanks, medical bandages, yoga mats and sleeping bags, raincoats, disposable cutlery, torches and batteries, masks and disposable gloves.

The collection takes place on March 19 from Hyland Transport in Rosenallis, eircode R32EC64
The Chair of Aontu Cill Dara, Anita Mhic Gib, has praised the people of Kilcullen and greater surrounds for their overwhelming reaction to her call for help for the people of Ukraine, desperately fleeing from the Russian invasion.

The well-known school principal says she was bowled over by the spontaneous show of generosity and kindness to her call for help for the desperate Ukrainian people , displaced by the War.

I am volunteering for the group Support Ukraine, an Irish group who are linked to the to the Rzeszow Reception Centre in Poland on the border of Ukraine , for the thousands of mostly women and children who are fleeing from the invasion of Ukraine," she said.

I just put out a call on my social media and the response has been truly heart-warming. I am overwhelmed by the generosity of people. Ordinary people who felt powerless at the awful human tales of misery we see on our screens each day were moved to try and do what they could and they responded in droves. They called to my home morning, noon and night and it is so incredibly touching. I also called Derek Walsh, Manager of Eurospar in the village, and they rallied. They were so amazingly generous too, donating badly needed baby food, medicines, sanitary products for ladies and toiletileries . They gave an unreal amount of stuff. I would like to warmly thank everybody who has donated to date, go raibh mile maith agat gach duine.
A jury has begun deliberating in the trial of a builder accused of trying to get a woman into his car in the middle of the night by pretending to be a garda and intimidating her.

Declan McGowan (33) of Branswood, Athy, Co Kildare, has pleaded not guilty to attempting to coerce Andra Calauz on the Kimmage Rd in Dublin city on the night of September 18 last year.

He has also pleaded not guilty to assaulting her by kissing and hugging her, impersonating a member of An Garda Siochana and assaulting her husband Daniel Ion, causing him harm.

On day three of the trial at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court, Judge Patricia Ryan charged the jury on the law before sending them out just after lunchtime to begin deliberations.

After a little under two hours of deliberations, she sent the jury home for the weekend. Deliberations will resume on Monday morning.

Ms Calauz told the trial that at around 2.30am she was walking alone on the Kimmage Rd Lower in Dublin city. She was having an argument with her husband on a video call on her mobile phone when the defendant pulled his car up beside her.

She said this man told her he was a garda and told her to get into his car. She said he told her she was beautiful, kissed her hand, and hugged her.

Her husband Daniel Ion testified that he came down to his wife and the defendant began choking him with one hand, told him he was a garda and that his wife was coming with him.

Mr Ion told the jury that Mr McGowan said he had a gun in his car. Her husband contacted gardai, who arrived within minutes.

Mr McGowan told gardai that the woman had told him she was in danger from her husband and he told her he would bring her to a garda station. He said that he only restrained Mr Ion after Mr Ion struck the woman.

Under cross-examination both Mr Ion and his wife separately denied this account of events.

Mr McGowan said he never told anyone he was a garda and said this may have been a misunderstanding because of a massive language barrier.

Defending counsel Garnet Orange SC told the jury that the only thing his client did wrong was to make a foolish decision to act the good Samaritan.

He made the critical mistake of placing himself between a husband and wife, counsel said.

John Moher BL, prosecuting, said that Mr McGowan's account was fantastical. He said that when the defendant's efforts to get the woman into his car were interrupted by her husband's appearance, he flew into a rage and assaulted the man.
Fianna Fail TD for Cavan and Monaghan, Brendan Smith, has made a direct appeal for urgent Garda resources for the former Ballyconnell Garda District following a despicable attack on a member of the force near Blacklion last week.

In a question to the Tanaiste in the Dail, Deputy Brendan Smith commented, There was a horrific and despicable assault on a young member of An Garda Siochana, Padraig Scott, early last Monday morning near Blacklion which has shocked the local community. This was a serious and concerning attack involving the use of an accelerant and possibly a gun. Physical injuries were inflicted on this young garda. Sadly, there has been an increase in the number of vicious assaults on members of An Garda Siochana recently. This attack could have had serious consequences.

Deputy Smith continued: The Tanaiste will have heard me talk in this House on numerous occasions about the unique policing requirements of the Border region. We have a land border between two jurisdictions with all the additional demands related to policing on both sides thereof. Thankfully, there is good cross-Border policing co-operation between An Garda Siochana and the PSNI today.

He added: There is an urgent need for additional Garda resources for the former Ballyconnell Garda District which covers a large rural Border area with a dispersed population. In forthcoming allocation of Garda resources, I appeal to the Government to recognise the needs of this area and I hope the Tanaiste will support this appeal for more resources. In the past, those of us living in that community suffered far too much due to paramilitary thugs, criminals and murderers and we will not go back there. This criminal element needs to be eradicated quickly.

In response, the Tanaiste stated: I join the Deputy in utterly and unreservedly condemning the attack on Garda Scott in County Cavan the other day. The House is united in horror and condemnation of that attack. An attack on the Defence Forces or An Garda Siochana is an attack on all of us because it is an attack on the State. In relation to Garda resources, we have more gardai in Ireland than ever before and the Garda budget is larger than ever before.

That does not mean we do not need to increase it further. We do. I hear what the Deputy says on the need for additional resources for his county but that is a matter for the Garda Commissioner. I will make sure the Minister for Justice, Deputy McEntee, is made aware it was raised here today.
If you are feeling hopeless looking on at the invasion and war situation in Ukraine, you can help provide aid to those most affected.

A number of Leitrim collections have been organised to assist the people of Ukraine with some basic supplies.

Willow Beauty and Mary McEvoy in Carrick-on- Shannon have a courier company arranged that is willing to deliver donations to the Polish border to assist the people of Ukraine during these terrible times.

There is also a daily collection and drop-off point at Unit 2 Carrick Retail Park on the Sligo Road (beside Synergy) - see poster on the right.

The Sammon Builders, Aughnasheelin are also collecting items for donation. You can drop off items at Eircode: N41 V12.

Kelly's Londis in Boyle are also appealing for donations this week along with St Angela's College, Sligo and Sami Swoi Ksaw - Pol shop in Bundoran.

Required Items:

Disposable gloves and face masks

Sterile dressings

First aid bands with dressings

Corn removal plasters

Bandages

Thermal blankets, sleeping bags, sleeping mats (with foil insulation)

Care products: towels, tampons, panty liners, cotton wool, baby wipes.

Toiletries including toothpaste and shampoo

Baby formula, baby food, (with long best before date)

Non-perishable food

Powerbanks, USB charging cables

Battery operated flashlights

Batteries

Noise cancelling headphones and earplugs

Thermal flasks/mugs

Gloves & Hats

Warm clothes and underwear

All donations will be gratefully received.
GARDAI are appealing to people carrying large amounts of cash to be vigilant amid new concerns about so called 'jugging'.

It's the second time this year that advice has been issued locally about the phenomenon.

The term is used by gardai and other police forces throughout the world to describe a situation where thieves follow customers suspected of carrying large quantities of cash from a bank or a financial institution.

"The thieves follow the customer with the cash and then attempt to take the cash by using force or else break into the customers car if they believe that the money is locked inside," said Gardai John Finnerty.

The garda advise is that cash should not be used and, where possible, funds should be transferred electronically.

"If you simply must use cash be discreet and be aware of your surroundings as you enter and leave the financial institution.

Always vary your routes and times of cash drops and collections. Keep the cash on your person and dont leave it in your car," said Garda Finnerty.

Any member of the public who thinks they are are being followed are advised to ring 999 or 112 and to make their way to a

garda station.
A WOMAN who told a garda at a checkpoint that she was going to visit her sick mother was later observed at what was described in court as an anti-mask protest outside a courthouse.

Martina Gorham, who has an address at Elm Drive, Bloomfield, Annacotty, Limerick, was summonsed, to appear before Nenagh District Court, for breaching Covid-19 travel restrictions at Tullaheady, Nenagh, on January 27, 2021.

Garda Brian Mulcahy told the court that he was conducting a checkpoint at 9.58am when he stopped Ms Gorham. He said she would not engage with him and said she did not recognise Covid-19 as an issue.

The defendant told Garda Mulcahy she did not recognise Covid-19 legislation and that her constitutional rights were being breached.

The garda said that he used the four Es - engage, explain, encourage and enforce - while talking to Ms Gorham.

She couldnt give a reasonable excuse for being outside her 5km limit. I explained that to her and I didnt let her through the checkpoint, said Garda Mulcahy.

He said he told her she would have to return home. However, he said that Ms Gorham then told him that she was going to visit her sick mother, so he allowed her to pass.

Garda Mulcahy later received a call from the sergeant at Nenagh Garda station to return to the town to attend what Garda Mulcahy said was an anti-mask protest.

I observed Ms Gorham taking part and her car was parked in the courthouse car park, he said. She remained at the courthouse for approximately two hours.

He subsequently issued a fixed notice penalty charge for 80 which was not paid.

Ms Gorham handed in a letter, dated July 22, 2021, in which she stated that any further correspondence will be seen as harassment.

Judge Elizabeth MacGrath asked Ms Gorham if she would like to cross-examine Garda Mulcahy, to which Ms Gorham replied: Are you ignoring the letter?

Judge MacGrath said: "You are here. It is a criminal matter. If you dont want to cross-examine the garda, he can step down.

Ms Gorham asked if the garda was aware that she had made an offer to pay at Thurles Garda station.

However, the court heard that she had offered to pay 5.

Ms Gorham asked: What is an anti-mask protest? I was at no anti-mask demonstration. It is false to say I was.

However, Garda Mulcahy again stated that Ms Gorham had been in the confines of the courthouse for about two hours and her car had been parked there.

She was at a gathering, he said.

Sgt Michael Keating, prosecuting, pointed out that the alleged offence had happened at Tullaheady and not in the grounds of the courthouse.

Ms Gorham, who did not give evidence during the hearing, said that she was the mother of five children and occasionally worked in childcare, including for the Daughters of Charity.

The Health Act has made a criminal out of a lot of people, she said.

Judge MacGrath imposed a 200 fine.
A SPEEDING motorist, who failed to stop for gardai, was banned at the time and was transporting three young children  none of whom were properly restrained, a court has heard.

Thomas OReilly, aged 41, who has an address at Green Road, Waterford was jailed when he appeared before Newcastle West Court on Tuesday morning.

He pleaded guilty to multiple offences relating to an incident which occurred near Adare village on November 16, 2019.

Judge Carol Anne Coolican was told the defendant was initially detected travelling at 127km/h at Monearla, Adare and that he failed to stop for gardai.

He continued to travel at speed towards the village and was subsequently stopped at Blackabbey, Adare.

The court was told there was a strong smell of alcohol emanating from the vehicle and that Mr OReilly was found to be over the legal limit.

The three children in the rear of the car included a three-month-old baby. The other two were both aged under three.

Inspector Padraic Sutton said the defendant  a father-of-12  has 26 previous convictions including seven for driving without insurance and five for drink-driving.

He was disqualified at the time and did not have insurance.

Solicitor Michael ODonnell said his client has received a number of separate disqualifications since the Adare incident and is currently serving a ten month prison sentence for other offences.

Judge Coolican imposed a three month prison sentence which, she directed, is to be served consecutively to the sentence he is currently serving.
ANALOG Devices is to announce the creation of 250 new jobs at its premises in Raheen this morning.

An Taoiseach Micheal Martin is due in Limerick to announce the good news, which will see the multi-national semi-conductor manufacturer also confirm a 100m investment over three years in a new purpose-built facility at its premises.

Named ADI Catalyst, the building will serve as a research centre to develop solutions. It will utilise technologies in simulated and real world environments to accelerate the development and droption of new solutions.

Expected to come on stream between now and 2025, the new jobs will focus on the development of software and artificial intelligence innovations.

Vincent Roche, the president and chief executive of Analog Devices said of the centre: "ADI Catalyst is our latest investment in the future of innovation, not just in Ireland or Europe, but globally. It provides the ideal environment for experts in their fields to connect, collaborate, test, and pilot new technologies, business models, and ecosystems. Opening ADI Catalyst enables us to share ideas, capabilities, and resources with teams in Europe, and around the world, for the greater good.

Local TD Kieran O'Donnell has welcomed the jobs boost at Analog, which set up in Ireland in 1977, and has 1,200 people on its payroll locally.

"This latest investment re-enforces Analog Devices' strong commitment to Limerick and this entire region. I wish to extend a warm congratulations to Analog Devices and ADI Catalysts management teams on this very ambitious and exciting investment here. This is a great news day for Limerick," he said.

Minister of State and local TD Niall Collins added: "Analog Devices is one the first business to locate in the Raheen business park when it was developed in the 1970s. Over the years it has proven to be a excellent employer in Limerick and the Mid-West. The programme of ongoing investment and expansion has provided many more opportunities for people to work there. Todays announcement is a further demonstration of this and is very welcome news."
BROWN THOMAS have announced they will invest 50 million in their shops and online store with the Limerick store set to benefit.

The company will invest the money over the next five years with their store on O'Connell Street in Limerick city receiving a significant investment. It is not known exactly how much will be invested in the Limerick store which was acquired as part of a multi-billion euro deal last year.

Managing director of Brown Thomas Arnotts Donald McDonald said the company has significant investment plans for Limerick over the next 12 to 18 months.

The Weston family sold the luxury retail group Selfridges, who owned the Limerick city store, to retailer Signa Holding and property company Central Group in December.

A statement released by Central Group at the time said the acquisition would create one of the worlds leading omni-channel luxury department store groups.

The sale was made for 4 billion, the BBC reported.

The Selfridges portfolio includes 18 department stores across England, the Netherlands and Ireland.

Built in 1874, the Brown Thomas store at O'Connell Street in Limerick city centre, is best known by many as the site of the former Todds store which was rebranded to Brown Thomas 20 years ago.

Brown Thomas opened their brand new 12 million store in Dundrum last week which will employ 400 people.

The new store will offer brands such as Loewe, Givenchy and Balmain as well as BOSS and The North Face.
LIMERICK City and County Council being fined 110,000 over its use of CCTV cameras is a scandalous disgrace, says one of the leading voices in the Community Alert movement.

As revealed in the Limerick Leader last month, the Data Protection Commission identified multiple breaches of GDPR and data protection regulations relating to the council's use of CCTV cameras.

Diarmuid Cronin, Muintir na Tire Community Alert development officer for the southern region, addressed the issue during a presentation at a Cappamore-Kilmallock municipal district meeting. Community Alert is a crime prevention and community safety programme. It operates in partnership between Muintir na Tire and An Garda Siochana.

The decision made in relation to CCTV is a scandalous disgrace. If Im out walking Id like to be under a camera, said Mr Cronin, who spoke of the fear that existed among some about going walking on their own, in particular after recent tragic events.

I hope changes are introduced to the scheme and your ANPR (automatic number plate recognition) and facial recognition cameras are not taken from you. You have been doing a fantastic job, said Mr Cronin.

Cll Martin Ryan, cathaoirleach, said he wholeheartedly agrees.

Its an absolute tragedy for peoples security. Hopefully we can get a resolution and get past it sooner rather than later, said Cllr Ryan.

Cllr Ger Mitchell agreed, saying it was a retrograde step.

The criminals are laughing at us. It needs to be sorted out. Its a terrible message to be sending out. The criminals have smiles on their faces after this, said Cllr Mitchell.

Mr Cronin described it as a charter for criminals.

Cllr Mike Donegan welcomed his comments on the CCTV and stressed how valuable the cameras are both in preventing and helping gardai to solve crimes.

Cllr Brigid Teefy highlighted the crimes perpetrated on the late Ashling Murphy and Sligo pensioner Tom Niland.

There are so many terrible instances. People are very nervous. The public is in favour of CCTV. All community groups want it, said Cllr Teefy.

Cllr John Egan said gardai have their hands tied behind their back in relation to CCTV.

Common sense is gone. There are too many protections for criminals, said Cllr Egan.

Cllr Martin Ryan brought up a ruling in a case where mobile phones couldnt be tracked to ascertain the movements of their owners.

Anybody who is going about their business have nothing to worry about from CCTV or mobile phone data, said Cllr Ryan.
LIMERICK people are empowering Direct Provision residents within the county by teaming up together for the Great Limerick Run.

Sanctuary Runners Limerick are calling for runners of all levels to join them in UL over the next eight weeks to get in shape.

Bringing together Irish people and those based in Direct Provision on the one running team, its hoped the Sanctuary Runners will be able to enter a team in this years Great Limerick Run 10K in May.

Sanctuary Runners will join forces with local Parkruns in the city and county so that members of the team can run together each Saturday morning.

Gillian Fenton, from the Sanctuary Runners Limerick group hopes members of the wider public will join the group.

Often people dont know how they can help people in Direct Provision. They dont know if and how they can meet with them and show their solidarity.

This is a simple, uplifting and positive way of making that connection, she explained.

She added that the past two years have been tough for people based in the centres, so the group want to celebrate the fact that they can run together again.

A bus service is running from the Limerick Direct Provision Centres from March 7 until April 25, up until the last Monday before The Great Limerick Run on May 1,2022.

The bus will pick up residents at Knockalisheen at 6pm and at Hanrattys at 6.15pm to be in UL to meet the bigger group of runners at 6.30pm and will also drop everyone back after the run.

The Sanctuary Runners initiative is about solidarity rather than charity so we will never ask any of our members to fundraise or donate a cent.

Blue running tops, sponsored by companies and local authorities, will be given to every Sanctuary Runner for free, Gillian added.
Irelands foreign affairs minister has described the shelling of a nuclear power station in south-eastern Ukraine as a reckless act and one that breaches international law.

Russian forces shelled the power station in the city of Zaporizhzhia overnight, with the attack continuing even as emergency services tried to put out the resulting fire.

Simon Coveney also warned that the war in Ukraine will get a lot worse in the coming days.

This was an extremely reckless act by Russia to be militarily attacking a nuclear power station of this size and scale, Mr Coveney told Today with Claire Byrne.

Russias attack on the #Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station is utterly reckless. Russias military activity in the area must cease immediately. This is a grave threat to the European continent. Our full support to the @iaea and DG @rafaelmgrossi in their essential work. @dfatirl https://t.co/BPaYnJwBOu  Simon Coveney (@simoncoveney) March 4, 2022

Let me just give you a sense of the scale of this particular plant.

It produces almost half of all of nuclear power in Ukraine.

Its the largest plant in Europe produced but it produces about 6,000 megawatts of power, which effectively would power the entire island of Ireland.

Irish people will be familiar with the story of Chernobyl.

This is very different plant, in terms of makeup, and technical operation from what I understand, but its still, apart from anything else a complete breach of international law.

Mr Coveney is in Brussels, where foreign ministers are meeting in for an emergency session to respond to the crisis in Ukraine.

The Fine Gael minister also said that the war is expected to get worse in the next few days.

All of the briefings that Ive got from various partners, whether its the EU, the UK, the US, the signs are not good, Mr Coveney added.

President (Vladimir) Putin yesterday was very direct, unfortunately, with (French) President (Emmanuel) Macron that he intends on finishing this war.

He wants all of Ukraine and things are going to get a lot worse in the next few days.

That is what Russia is saying.

That is a very bleak outlook.

Mr Coveney said that the EU will discuss adding further sanctions against Russia.

He said the intent is to isolate Russia internationally and send a strong signal to Moscow to show the world is disgusted by the events in Ukraine.

There will be more Russian banks taken out of the Swift system, he added.

I suspect all Russian flagged ships will be banned from entering EU ports, which is a huge decision given the need to trade in bulk products that only arrive by ship coming from Russia.

I also expect that well be banning other imports, like steel, timber, aluminium, possibly coal as well which would have a huge impact on potentially, on energy prices in the European Union, given how much coal is imported from Russia.

These are big decisions by the European Union that are going to have an impact on Ireland and EU countries.

But their decisions that need to be taken to send very, very strong messages to Russia that this madness must stop.
The fracking boom made America the worlds biggest oil producer a few years ago, but the U.S. still imports millions of barrels each day from other parts of the world, including Russia.

In the wake of Russias invasion of Ukraine, some in Congress have urged the Biden administration to come down swiftly on U.S. imports of Russian crude, going so far as to recommend banning the cargoes.

Here is a look at why the U.S. still imports Russian crude and where it goes.

How much oil does the U.S. import from Russia?

The U.S. still consumes far more oil than companies extract domestically, requiring it to import some supplies. But it is less reliant on Russias oil than Europe and takes only a small portion of its imported crude from Russia.

America gets most of its crude imports from Canada, Mexico and Saudi Arabia. Smaller countries in Latin America and West Africa also typically send more crude to the U.S. than Russia does.

About 8% of U.S. imports of oil and refined products, or about 672,000 barrels a day, came from Russia last year, said Andy Lipow, president of Lipow Oil Associates LLC in Houston, citing figures from the Energy Information Administration. Of that, Russias crude made up roughly 3% of the nations imports, about 200,000 barrels a day.

In mid-2021, U.S. imports of Russian crude hit the highest levels in about a decade, and had been trending higher in recent years, EIA data show. But Russian crude has never made up a large part of the U.S. oil supply system, Mr. Lipow said.

If the U.S. exports millions of barrels a day from the Gulf Coast, why does it import Russia oil?

The Jones Act, passed a century ago, has effectively limited the size of vessels that are allowed to transport goods between U.S. ports. That has left oil buyers on the West Coast and East Coast effectively unable to get supplies shipped out of the Gulf Coast.

The Gulf Coast, where oil companies shipped out about 3 million barrels a day in December, is connected by pipelines to the Permian Basin of West Texas and New Mexico and Cushing, Okla., the nations oil storage hub.

It isnt profitable for companies to ship oil from that region to the U.S. East and West Coasts by such small ships, so refiners along those coasts, lacking pipeline connections from the Permian and Cushing, mostly import it from overseas.

Why do U.S. refineries need different varieties of crude?

The U.S. buys Russian oil in part to feed refineries that need different grades of crude with a higher sulfur content to make fuel at top capacities. U.S. refineries were designed decades ago to use heavier grades of crude, often with higher levels of sulfur, when domestic supplies were lower.

In recent years, Russian crude has filled some of the gap around the world left behind by sanctions on Venezuela and Iran, which crippled the flow of that type and similar types of oil from those two countries to refiners in the Gulf Coast and elsewhere, Mr. Lipow said.

Where does Russias oil go in the U.S.?

Roughly half of the oil that the U.S. imports from Russia goes to the West Coast, where refiners take crude deliveries from overseas largely because they arent connected by pipelines to the Permian Basin, the largest U.S. oil field. West Coast refiners take Russian crude that is shipped out of the port of Kozmino on the countrys eastern side on the Pacific Ocean.

Another quarter of that oil, roughly 50,000 barrels a day, goes to the East Coast, where refiners also arent connected by pipeline to the current top sources of U.S. oil production. The remaining quarter often ends up in the Gulf Coast, where Russias Urals grade of crude, which has a higher level of sulfur than most of the crude produced in the U.S., is considered profitable for use in refineries designed to run so-called sour grades of oil.

What might happen if the U.S. and other countries slow the flow of Russian crude?

Moves to hamper the flow of Russian crude could be interpreted by the oil market as another hit to already tight global supplies, which could further raise costs on consumers. The U.S. and other major oil-consuming nations said that they would release 60 million barrels from emergency stockpiles to boost global supplies. Still, oil prices jumped past $110 a barrel Wednesday after some refiners refused to buy Russian oil due to the risk that they could be ensnared by sanctions.
SHIMLA : Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Jai Ram Thakur on Friday announced the state's budget for the financial year 2022-23. In that he declared that the state had decided to reduce the age limit for pensioners to 60 years and increase the monthly old-age pension amount to 1,500.

The earlier monthly pension amount was 1,001. The age limit for pension was 70 years earlier.

Thakur, who also hold the state's finance portfolio, presented his fifth and last budget of the current government. He also announced to increase the Member of Legislative Assembly Local Area Development Scheme (MLALAD) fund from the existing 1.80 crore to 2 crore.

The MLALAD fund has been increased by 20 lakh in the Budget, which is the last one before the next Assembly elections scheduled to be held in December.

Thakur stated that a total of 90 lakh increase had been made in the MLALAD fund during his government.

The chief minister also announced to increase the discretionary grant for MLAs from 10 lakh to 12 lakh per annum for the next fiscal.

On the health sector, the chief minister declared to create 500 new posts for doctors in the state.

Thakur announced that a provision would be made whereby the Himcare Card for availing free health services for various ailments will be required to be renewed after three years instead of every year.

Honorarium for Mayor, Deputy Mayor and councillors in municipal corporations has been increased from 12,000 to 15,000, from 8,500 to 10,000 and from 5,050 to 6,050 per month, respectively, he added.

He announced that that Sardar Patel University in the Mandi district would start functioning in April 2022.

Thakur also announced to construct 1000 new Anganwadi Bhawans in the state.

A total of 789 plans from NABARD worth 3,200 crore was approved during the five-year tenure of the previous Congress government, whereas that during the current government stood at 3,452 crore for 826 plans, he added.
ARISS to support Axiom space crew members on first private ISS mission

Amateur Radio on the International Space Station, Inc. (ARISS-USA) is pleased to announce that two crew members scheduled to fly on Axiom Mission-1 (Ax-1), the first private astronaut mission to the International Space Station, will utilize the ARISS on-board radio resources to conduct six school connections via amateur radio.

These ARISS school contacts will be conducted with Ax-1 crew members Mark Pathy, from Canada, and Eytan Stibbe, from Israel. Both Pathy and Stibbe are fully trained on the use of the ARISS radio system, located in the ISS Columbus module, and have studied and passed their amateur radio license exams. Mark Pathys amateur radio callsign is KO4WFH. Eytan Stibbes amateur radio callsign is 4Z9SPC.

As part of the "Rakia" mission, EytanStibbe will use ARISS facilities aboard the International Space Station to hold talks with middle school and high school students in Israel while the ISS will be above Israel. A total of 40 school classes are expected to participate in the project, and in the weeks preceding the launch, the students from Israel will participate in theoretical and practical sessions to learn about radio-based communication .

Mark Pathy, under the personal mission theme of 'Caring for people and the planet', will connect with elementary and high schools across Canada while on board the ISS. Pathy will be answering questions developed by the students, ranging from how his body has reacted to being in space to how to do everyday things in zero gravity and thoughtful questions around the state of our planet. The conversations are part of Pathys educational program through which schools also benefit from STEM content and mentorship.

The long-held dream of private missions to stations in space becomes a reality on Ax-1. ARISS is proud to collaborate with Axiom Space, Mark Pathy, and EytanStibbeon this flight and support the Ax-1 crew members through amateur radio contacts that will inspire, engage and educate school students in science, technology, engineering,arts, and math (STEAM) topics, said Frank Bauer, KA3HDO, Executive Director of ARISS-USA and Chair of ARISS International.

Axiom is proud to help enable the educational work of ARISS-USA on this historic mission, said Dr. Mary Lynne Dittmar, Executive Vice President of Government Operations and Strategic Communications for Axiom Space. For years, ARISS and its programs have inspired students across the globe to pursue interests in science, technology, engineering and math, and we are pleased that Ax-1 will join the list of missions that have contributed to this important educational work.

The Ax-1 mission includes an international crew of four with Axioms Michael Lopez-Alegria, former NASA astronaut and Axiom VP,serving as commander. The Ax-1 mission is currently scheduled to launch on March 30, 2022.

About ARISS:

Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) is a cooperative venture of international amateur radio societies andthe space agencies that support the International Space Station (ISS). In the United States, sponsors include the Radio AmateurSatellite Corporation (AMSAT), the American Radio Relay League (ARRL), the ISS National LabSpace Station Explorers,NASAs Space Communications and Navigation program (NASA SCaN) and Amateur Radio Digital Communications (ARDC).

The primary goal of ARISS is to promote exploration of science,technology, engineering, the arts, and mathematics topics. ARISS does this by organizing scheduled contacts via amateur radiobetween crew members aboard the ISS and students. Before and during these radio contacts, students, educators, parents, andcommunities take part in hands-on learning activities tied to space, space technologies, and amateur radio. For moreinformation, see www.ariss.org , www.ariss-usa.org .

Media Contact:

Rita M. DeHart, PE KC4RMS

ARISS-USA Director of Public Engagement

Like us on Facebook  Follow us on Twitter  Check out ARISS on Youtube.com

Search Amateur Radio on the ISS and @ARISS_status.
Quantum mechanics is a subfield of physics that describes the behavior of particles  atoms , electrons, photons and almost everything in the molecular and submolecular realm.

Developed during the first half of the 20th century, the results of quantum mechanics are often extremely strange and counterintuitive.

How is quantum mechanics different from classical physics?

At the scale of atoms and electrons, many of the equations of classical mechanics, which describe the movement and interactions of things at everyday sizes and speeds, cease to be useful.

In classical mechanics, objects exist in a specific place at a specific time. In quantum mechanics, objects instead exist in a haze of probability; they have a certain chance of being at point A, another chance of being at point B and so on.

When was quantum mechanics developed?

Quantum mechanics developed over many decades, beginning as a set of controversial mathematical explanations for experiments that the mathematics of classical mechanics could not explain, according to the University of St. Andrews in Scotland . It started at the turn of the 20th century, around the same time Albert Einstein published his theory of relativity , a separate revolution in physics that describes the motion of things at high speeds. Unlike relativity, however, the origins of quantum mechanics cannot be attributed to a single scientist. Rather, multiple scientists contributed to a foundation that gradually gained acceptance and experimental verification between the late 1800s and 1930.

In 1900, German physicist Max Planck was trying to explain why objects at specific temperatures, like the 1,470-degree-Fahrenheit (800 degrees Celsius) filament of a light bulb, glowed a specific color  in this case, red, according to the Perimeter Institute . Planck realized that equations used by physicist Ludwig Boltzmann to describe the behavior of gases could be translated into an explanation for this relationship between temperature and color. The problem was that Boltzmann's work relied on the fact that any given gas was made from tiny particles, meaning that light, too, was made from discrete bits.

This idea flew in the face of ideas about light at the time, when most physicists believed that light was a continuous wave and not a tiny packet. Planck himself didn't believe in either atoms or discrete bits of light, but his concept was given a boost in 1905, when Einstein published a paper, " Concerning an Heuristic Point of View Toward the Emission and Transformation of Light. "

Einstein envisioned light traveling not as a wave, but as some manner of "energy quanta." This packet of energy, Einstein suggested in his paper, could "be absorbed or generated only as a whole," specifically when an atom "jumps" between quantized vibration rates. This is where the "quantum" part of quantum mechanics comes from.

With this new way to conceive of light, Einstein offered insights into the behavior of nine phenomena in his paper, including the specific colors that Planck described being emitted from a light bulb filament. It also explained how certain colors of light could eject electrons off metal surfaces  a phenomenon known as the photoelectric effect.

What is wave-particle duality?

Here is a diagram of the double-slit experiment where electrons produce a wave pattern when two slits are used. (Image credit: grayjay via Shutterstock)

In quantum mechanics, particles can sometimes exist as waves and sometimes exist as particles. This can be most famously seen in the double-slit experiment, where particles such as electrons are shot at a board with two slits cut into it, behind which sits a screen that lights up when an electron hits it. If the electrons were particles, they would create two bright lines where they had impacted the screen after passing through one or the other of the slits, according to a popular article in Nature .

Instead, when the experiment is conducted, an interference pattern forms on the screen. This pattern of dark and bright bands makes sense only if the electrons are waves, with crests (high points) and troughs (low points), that can interfere with one another. Even when a single electron is shot through the slits at a time, the interference pattern shows up  an effect akin to a single electron interfering with itself.

In 1924, French physicist Louis de Broglie used the equations of Einstein's theory of special relativity to show that particles can exhibit wave-like characteristics and that waves can exhibit particle-like characteristics  a finding for which he won the Nobel Prize a few years later .

How does quantum mechanics describe atoms?

In the 1910s, Danish physicist Niels Bohr tried to describe the internal structure of atoms using quantum mechanics. By this point, it was known that an atom was made of a heavy, dense, positively charged nucleus surrounded by a swarm of tiny, light, negatively charged electrons. Bohr put the electrons into orbits around the nucleus, like planets in a subatomic solar system, except they could only have certain predefined orbital distances. By jumping from one orbit to another, the atom could receive or emit radiation at specific energies, reflecting their quantum nature.

Shortly afterward, two scientists, working independently and using separate lines of mathematical thinking, created a more complete quantum picture of the atom, according to the American Physical Society . In Germany, physicist Werner Heisenberg accomplished this by developing "matrix mechanics." Austrian-Irish physicist Erwin Schrodinger developed a similar theory called "wave mechanics." Schrodinger showed in 1926 that these two approaches were equivalent.

The Heisenberg-Schrodinger model of the atom, in which each electron acts as a wave around the nucleus of an atom, replaced the earlier Bohr model. In the Heisenberg-Schrodinger model of the atom, electrons obey a "wave function" and occupy "orbitals" rather than orbits. Unlike the circular orbits of the Bohr model, atomic orbitals have a variety of shapes, ranging from spheres to dumbbells to daisies, according to an explanatory website from chemist Jim Clark .

What is the Schrodinger's cat paradox?

Schrodinger's cat is an often-misunderstood thought experiment describing the qualms that some of the early developers of quantum mechanics had with its results. While Bohr and many of his students believed that quantum mechanics suggested that particles don't have well-defined properties until they are observed, Schrodinger and Einstein were unable to believe such a possibility because it would lead to ridiculous conclusions about the nature of reality. In 1935, Schrodinger proposed an experiment in which the life or death of a cat would depend on the random flip of a quantum particle, whose state would remain unseen until a box was opened. Schrodinger hoped to show the absurdity of Bohr's ideas with a real-world example that depended on the probabilistic nature of a quantum particle but yielded a nonsensical result.

According to Bohr's interpretation of quantum mechanics, until the box was opened, the cat existed in the impossible dual position of being both alive and dead at the same time. (No actual cat has ever been subjected to this experiment.) Both Schrodinger and Einstein believed that this helped show that quantum mechanics was an incomplete theory and would eventually be superseded by one that accorded with ordinary experience.

Conceptual artwork of a pair of entangled quantum particles or events (left and right) interacting at a distance. Quantum entanglement is one of the consequences of quantum theory. Two particles will appear to be linked across space and time, with changes to one of the particles (such as an observation or measurement) affecting the other one. This instantaneous effect appears to be independent of both space and time, meaning that, in the quantum realm, effect may precede cause. (Image credit: MARK GARLICK/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY via Getty Images)

Schrodinger and Einstein helped highlight another strange result of quantum mechanics that neither could fully fathom. In 1935, Einstein, along with physicists Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen, showed that two quantum particles can be set up so that their quantum states would always be correlated with one another, according to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy . The particles essentially always knew about each others properties. That means that measuring the state of one particle would instantaneously tell you the state of its twin, no matter how far apart they were, a result that Einstein called spooky action at a distance, but which Schrodinger soon dubbed " entanglement ."

Entanglement has been shown to be one of the most essential aspects of quantum mechanics and occurs in the real world all the time. Researchers frequently conduct experiments using quantum entanglement and the phenomenon is part of the basis for the emerging field of quantum computing .

Are quantum mechanics and general relativity incompatible?

At the moment, physicists lack a full explanation for all observed particles and forces in the universe, which is often called a theory of everything. Einstein's relativity describes large and massive things, while quantum mechanics describes small and insubstantial things. The two theories are not exactly incompatible, but nobody knows how to make them fit together.

Many researchers have sought a theory of quantum gravity, which would introduce gravity into quantum mechanics and explain everything from the subatomic to the supergalactic realms. There are a great deal of proposals for how to do this, such as inventing a hypothetical quantum particle for gravity called the graviton, but so far, no single theory has been able to fit all observations of objects in our universe. Another popular proposal, string theory, which posits that the most fundamental entities are tiny strings vibrating in many dimensions, has started to become less widely accepted by physicists since little evidence in its favor has been discovered. Other researchers have also worked on theories involving loop quantum gravity , in which both time and space come in discrete, tiny chunks, but so far no one idea has managed to gain a major hold among the physics community.

This article was originally written by Live Science contributor Robert Coolman and was updated by Adam Mann on March 2, 2022.

Bibliography

Bow, E. (2019, June 19). A quick quantum history of the light bulb. Inside the Perimeter https://insidetheperimeter.ca/quick-quantum-history-of-the-light-bulb/

Clark, J. (2021, May). Atomic orbitals. https://www.chemguide.co.uk/atoms/properties/atomorbs.html

Coolman, R. (2014, September 11). What is classical mechanics? Live Science. https://www.livescience.com/47814-classical-mechanics.html

O'Connor, J. J., & Robertson, E. F. (1996, May). A history of quantum mechanics. https://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/HistTopics/The_Quantum_age_begins/

Einstein, A. (1905). On a heuristic point of view concerning the production and transformation of light. Annals of Physics. https://einsteinpapers.press.princeton.edu/vol2-trans/100

Mann, A. (2020, February 28) Schrodingers cat: The favorite misunderstood pet of quantum mechanics. Live Science. https://www.livescience.com/schrodingers-cat.html

Mann, A. (2019, August 29) What is the theory of everything? Space.com. https://www.space.com/theory-of-everything-definition.html

Moskowitz, C. (2012, March 25). Largest molecules yet behave like waves in quantum double-slit experiment. Live Science. https://www.livescience.com/19268-quantum-double-slit-experiment-largest-molecules.html

Schirber, M. (2019, July 9). What is relativity? Live Science. https://www.livescience.com/32216-what-is-relativity.html

The Nobel Prize (n.d.). Louis de Broglie facts. https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1929/broglie/facts/

Tretkoff, E. (2008, February). This month in physics history: February 1927 Heisenbergs uncertainty principle. American Physical Society. https://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/200802/physicshistory.cfm
Denham Springs, LA (70726)

Today

Partly cloudy. High 89F. Winds S at 10 to 20 mph..

Tonight

Scattered thunderstorms during the evening becoming more widespread overnight. Low near 70F. Winds SSW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 90%.
A man has been arrested for allegedly beating his ex-girlfriend at a parking lot of the Laredo College Fort McIntosh Campus, according to an arrest affidavit.

Luis Alexis Lozano, 21, was served with an arrest warrant on March 1 charging him with assault.

At about 5:16 p.m. Feb. 7, a woman reported that her ex-boyfriend had assaulted her at a Laredo College Fort McIntosh Campus parking lot facing the Visual Performing Arts Building. Authorities said she had bruises on the upper left side of her face and on the right side of her neck. LC Campus Police would identify the suspect as Lozano.

An investigation revealed that the woman had agreed to meet with him one last time to give him items that belonged to him. Lozano arrived and asked her if it was the last time. She told him yes because she did not want to see him or speak to him, state the affidavit.

Lozano asked for his things and got upset. He then punched her on the left side of her face, cutting her nose. Lozano began insulting her and told her that she wasnt worth it. He then spat on her multiple times, according to court documents.

When she spat back at Lozano, he then started punching her all over her head. Lozano then allegedly grabbed her by the hair to kiss her and tell her how sorry he was, states the affidavit.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers arrested two men wanted for sexual offenses involving children in unrelated incidents, authorities said.

The first fugitive apprehension occurred on Tuesday at the Juarez-Lincoln International Bridge. A CBP officer inspecting vehicle traffic referred Irineo Salgado Catalan to secondary inspection.

Authorities would confirm through biometric verification via law enforcement databases that Catalan, a 69-year-old U.S. citizen, had an outstanding felony warrant for sexual assault/sexual battery of a young child younger than 13 years old out of the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department in Nashville, Tennessee.

CBP officers turned over Catalan to the Webb County Sheriffs Office to await criminal proceedings.

A second arrest occurred on Wednesday at the Gateway to the Americas International Bridge. A CBP officer referred Sergio Miguel Gomez, a 38-year-old U.S. citizen, to secondary inspection.

Mexican officials escorted Gomez into the United States. Further investigation revealed Gomez had multiple felony warrants out of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department, in Charlotte, North Carolina for probation violation of the original charges placed for statutory rape/no force and indecent liberties with a child.

Gomez was turned over to the U.S. Marshals.

Sexual abuse can have devastating consequences for the lives of those who suffer it. Collaborative efforts with federal, state, county and city law enforcement officials, as well as international counterparts, contribute to bringing those allegedly committing these offenses to justice, said Port Director Alberto Flores, Laredo Port of Entry.
Modern bluetooth is reliable and capable of transmitting high quality audio, which has made bluetooth speakers, both portable and at-home, increasingly popular. Two of the biggest players in the audio industry, Marshall and Bose, both have robust lineups of bluetooth speakers to choose from.

With endorsements from musical legends such as Jimi Hendrix, Slash and Eric Clapton, Marshall is steeped in the history of rock. Founder Jim Marshall, colloquially known as the father of loud, began the company by developing amplifiers that delivered the volume and tone rock musicians were looking for. Marshalls first amplifier was an instant hit, and he was even awarded an Order of the British Empire (OBE) award for his contributions to the arts.

Today, Marshall continues to adhere to its rock music roots, and Marshall bluetooth speakers have an incredibly wide frequency range that allows for deep bass and twangy highs to shine through.

Great Marshall bluetooth speakers

Best Marshall bluetooth speaker with voice assistant

Marshall Uxbridge Voice Speaker

Marshall Uxbridge Home Voice Speaker with Amazon Alexa Built-In Marshall amazon.com $185.35 Shop Now

Quick Take: With the option to choose from Google Assistant or Amazon Alexa and the fidelity Marshall is known for, the Uxbridge is a practical home audio device.

What youll love: This speaker is loud, but doesnt sacrifice sound quality in the least. And you wont want to hide the Uxbridge out of sight because of its iconic amplifier-inspired aesthetic. Another great feature of the Uxbridge, in addition to being equipped with voice assistant software, is the fact that you can pair it with other Marshall speakers to create multi-room audio.

What you should consider: In order to take advantage of the voice assistant feature of the Uxbridge, you need to connect the speaker to your device through WiFi, which means that the quality will only be as strong as the WiFi signal.

Best Marshall bluetooth speaker for at-home use

Marshall Woburn II

Marshall Woburn II Wireless Bluetooth Speaker Marshall amazon.com $549.99 Shop Now

Quick Take: The Woburn II produces truly room-filling sound and has a whopping 100 watts of power, making it ideal for anyone chasing that signature rock music loudness.

What youll love: Although this speaker has a commanding physical presence, thanks to its large amplifier-esque look, it punches well above its weight class in terms of sound quality and loudness. The Woburn II has two 1 inch tweets and two individually powered 5.25 inch subwoofers, which are also supported by a full bass reflex system. Under the durable rubber exterior is a solid wood cabinet that lends the Woburn II an inviting sound.

What you should consider: As Marshalls flagship speaker, the Woburn II is quite expensive. Another thing to consider is the fact that it isnt portable.

Best portable Marshall bluetooth speaker

Marshall Kilburn II

Marshall Kilburn II Portable Bluetooth Speaker Marshall amazon.com $299.99 Shop Now

Quick Take: The Kilburn II is only 5.5 pounds and more than 20 hours of playtime per charge, making it a great companion for outdoor adventures.

What youll love: In addition to high quality sound, the Kilburn II is rugged  though you wouldnt know it from the design. The Kilburn II has a hardened rubber exterior, a convenient leather carry handle, and an IPX2 water-resistant rating (meaning it can withstand light rain or splashes) as well as bluetooth 5.0 technology, which allows you to connect multiple devices from up to 30 feet away.

What you should consider: Some users reported that the bass would slightly distort at maximum volume.

What makes Bose bluetooth speakers unique?

Founded in 1964 by Amar Bose, Bose has built a reputation for being a fierce innovator in the audio industry. In keeping with their technological roots, Amar Bose donated the largest single share of the company to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2011.

While this donation reflects Boses technological foundation, nothing is a greater testament to the quality of Bose audio than the popularity of their products. Proudly featuring a function-forward design, Bose bluetooth speakers have the latest bluetooth and WiFi streaming technology, which makes them a leader in the multi-room and portable speaker markets.

Great Bose bluetooth speakers

Best Marshall bluetooth speaker with voice assistant

Bose Smart Speaker 500

Bose Home Speaker 500: Smart Bluetooth Speaker with Alexa Voice Control Built-In Bose amazon.com $349.00 Shop Now

Quick Take: Complete with a digital display, room-filling audio and voice assistant compatibility for Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant, this is a top-of the line smart speaker.

What youll love: The Smart Speaker 500 contains two powerful drivers that are strategically placed in opposing directions to maximize the extent to which it can completely fill a space with warm, even audio. You can control this speaker entirely handsfree, which makes it ideal for the kitchen and living room. The Bose Smart Speaker 500 can also be connected to any other Bose smart speaker.

What you should consider: Although this speaker supports most audio streaming services, it doesnt connect to Chromecast.

Best portable Bose bluetooth speaker

Bose SoundLink Revolve II

Bose SoundLink Revolve (Series II) Portable Bluetooth Speaker  Wireless Water-Resistant Speaker with 360 Sound, Silver Bose amazon.com $219.00 Shop Now

Quick Take: The SoundLink Revolve II is a well designed, easy to use and highly portable speaker that offers robust sound quality.

What youll love: One of the best features of the SoundLink Revolve II is the true 360 sound, which allows it to fill small rooms with ease. If you want to play music in a larger room, you can place the Revolve II in the corner and the 360 sound will reverberate off the walls and throughout the room. The Revolve II is also splash proof, which is always an asset if you plan to take it outside. You can also activate and use your phones voice assistant, such as Siri, with the touch of a button.

What you should consider: Although the design is sleek and pleasing, it shows dents and scratches quite easily.

Should you get Marshall or Bose bluetooth speakers?

When it comes down to it, both Bose and Marshall make high quality bluetooth speakers, so choosing between the two is an exercise in personal preference.

However, there are a few differences between the two that are worth noting. First and foremost, all Marshall bluetooth speakers feature the same amplifier-inspired design. Some users find this bulky and prefer the more modern, sleek designs from Bose.

Another thing to consider is that Marshall speakers are known for having outsized bass that benefits genres like rock and hip-hop, while Bose takes more of a balanced approach, which results in a generalist high-fidelity sound profile.

Lastly, Bose speakers tend to be a bit more expensive than their Marshall counterparts  though you couldnt really call either cheap.
The ARRL reports that radio amateurs in Ukraine appear to be diligently maintaining radio silence as the state of emergency declared there just prior to the Russian military invasion remains in effect. A February 24 decree from President Volodymyr Zelensky included a ban on the operation of amateur radio transmitters for personal and collective use. The Ukraine Amateur Radio League ( UARL/LRU ) reported this past week that it has received many messages of encouragement from the worldwide amateur radio community.

The LRU informed international amateur radio organizations about Russias military invasion of Ukraine, said the message from UARL Vice President Anatoly Kirilenko, UT3UY. To date, there have been many reports from radio amateurs around the world in support of Ukraine.

The International Amateur Radio Union (IARU) has adopted a neutral stance. IARU is an apolitical organization focused on promoting and defending amateur radio and the amateur radio services, the IARU said. The amateur radio service is about self-instruction in communications and friendship between people. IARU Region 1 has said it continues to monitor the development and expects all radio amateurs to follow their national laws and regulations.

IARU Region 1 also re-posted part of an advisory from the Deutscher Amateur Radio Club (DARC) HF Committee on February 27. Any radio amateur currently transmitting from Ukraine is risking his or her life. If you hear a Ukrainian station, do not broadcast its call sign, location, or frequency  whether on the band, in a cluster, or on social media. You may be putting lives at risk. The DARCs overarching advice: In the current situation, the best we can do is listen.

Ukraines assigned amateur radio call sign prefixes include EMA  EOZ and the more commonplace URA  UZZ. Some stations with Ukrainian call signs may still be active, because an exception to the amateur radio ban was made for stations in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine (eastern Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts), which have special legal status owing to Russias occupation since 2014.

In a Facebook post, Polands IARU member-society PZK has offered available Winlink nodes in Poland for any licensed refugees. If you are a licensed amateur radio operator, you can send information by email to your relatives in Poland or Emergency Services via the Winlink system. Polish Winlink nodes are active on 160, 80, and 20 meters: SR5WLK, 3.5955 MHz USB; SR3WLK, 14.111 MHz USB, and SP3IEW, 1.865 MHz USB.

W9IMS, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Amateur Radio Club  known for its special events commemorating major races at the Speedway  has posted a statement on its QRZ.com profile expressing its concern for well-known QSL maker Gennady V. Treus, UX5UO. The statement reads in part, His last email to us said: This moment we are safe, but we hear strong explosions near Kyiv. Do not know what will happen in nearest hours/days. We have not heard from him for days now. We are greatly concerned for Gennady and his family along with all the other citizens of Ukraine.  Thanks to The Daily DX, PZK, and to Brian D. Smith, W9IND, for some information

Source ARRL http://www.arrl.org/news/ukraine-maintains-ham-radio-silence-in-state-of-emergency
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Businesses across County Longford are being encouraged to take advantage of the array of events and topics at this years Local Enterprise Week.

The initiative of the Local Enterprise Offices takes place from Monday, March 7 to Friday, March 11 with over 220 events for businesses and entrepreneurs taking place in person and online across the country.

The theme of this years Week is Making It Happen and is focused on helping businesses to look forward and to future proof themselves for the years ahead. The full listings for the week have been announced with a number of events taking place in Longford.

Some of the events being organized by LEO Longford include Green for Micro Clinics, Marketing Clinics, Business and Social Media training, and the County Longford Enterprise Awards.

The awards this year will have a green theme focusing on companies involved in the circular economy or trying to reduce their carbon footprint.

Along with the specific local events the Local Enterprise Offices have 12 national Spotlight events that are available online, taking place across the week and open to all small businesses and entrepreneurs across the country. These events are free to join online and cover everything from digitalisation and exporting to future proofing your business and boosting your business online.

According to Michael Nevin, Head of Enterprise with Longford LEO, Enterprise Week seeks to spotlight the valuable contribution micro enterprises make to the Irish economy but also to provide supports to businesses to aid their development and growth

Local Enterprise Week is the perfect opportunity for many businesses to dip into a specific area of interest and gather information on a topic that may be relevant to their business now or in the future. It also provides the perfect opportunity for someone who may be interested in starting a business to get an idea of some of the key areas of focus and how to take those first steps.

The Local Enterprise Offices located in the local authorities and funded through Enterprise Ireland support thousands of small Irish businesses and entrepreneurs nationwide. Since their establishment in 2014 they have helped provide a range of supports for small businesses including mentoring, training, sector specific expert consultancy and financial supports to help guide businesses at any stage of their development.

For more information on Local Enterprise Week and to find information on the National Spotlight Events and specific events in your area go to www.LocalEnterprise.ie/Week. Register at https://bit.ly/3vl8pEL.

LONGFORD EVENTS  LOCAL ENTERPRISE WEEK 2022

Monday, March 7

9.30am to 13.30pm - Business Training: How to Master Your VAT in one day.

Tuesday, March 8

9.30am to 12.30pm - Social Media: How to create marketing videos for your website & social media 

Level 1

10am to 5.30pm - Green for Micro Clinics

Wednesday, March 9

7pm to 9.30pm - Business Training: Start Your Own Business

Thursday, March 10

9.30am to 5.30pm - Marketing Clinics

Friday, March 11

9.30am to 5.30pm - Marketing Clinics

County Longford Enterprise Awards

Longford County Enterprise Awards highlighting the growing focus on sustainability and climate action across our business community. Recognising six local companies from across the county who have championed Greening their Business over the past 12 months.

NATIONAL SPOTLIGHT EVENTS  LOCAL ENTERPRISE WEEK 2022

Monday, March 7

9:30am  10:45am  Drive Growth by Digitising Your Business

2:00pm  3:30pm  Food: Consumer Trends for 2022

7:00pm  8:45pm  Retail: Adapting and Innovating in an ever-changing trading environment

Tuesday, March 8

10:00am  12 noon  Internationalising Your Business

2:00pm  4:00pm  From Good to Great: Using Lean for a Competitive Edge

Wednesday, March 9

9:00am  11:00am  Going Green: Small Steps, Big Impact

11:00am  12:30pm  Agile Ambition: Funding for Innovation

2:00pm - 4:00pm  Intellectual Property: First Steps in Protecting Your Business

Thursday, March 10

9:30am  12:30pm  Future Proofing Your Small Business using Smart Tech Tools

2:00pm  4:00pm  Social Media Mashup: Future Opportunities for your Business

Friday, March 11

11:00am  12 noon  Boost Your Business Online: How to stand out from the crowd

2:00pm  3:45pm  Show Me The Money: How to raise finance for your business.
A man has pleaded guilty to possession of stolen vehicles and parts at a sitting of Longford Circuit Court last week.

Amadeusz Dziubinski, with an address at 59 Kilnavara Heights, Cavan, appeared before Judge Francis Comerford last Friday on foot of a bench warrant executed by Detective Garda Paul McDermott.

The court heard that Mr Dziubinski was on bail for various counts but breached his bail conditions and left the jurisdiction in January 2019 for pschiatric treatment in Poland.

A bench warrant was issued and he is currently in custody on Cavan matters and a Dublin matter after being returned to the country by way of a European arrest warrant.

He has been in custody since January 19, 2022.

Mr Dziubinskis case was initially set for trial, with six weeks to be set down for it.

However, on Friday last week, when arraigned on three counts, he pleaded guilty on a full facts basis.

It is alleged that on March 14, 2016, at Ferriskill, Granard, Mr Dziubinski was in possession of a Ford Transit minibus and a Ford Transit campervan, both stolen and both with false registration numbers.

It is further alleged that on April 19, 2016, at Teemore Industrial Estate in Granard, Mr Dziubinski was in possession of a Ford Transit engin, snowing it was stolen or being reckless as to whether it was stolen.

He pleaded guilty on all three counts and was remanded in custody to May 17, when he will be sentenced by Judge Comerford.
Longford's growing repute as one of the country's leading brewing and distilling locations came in for further acclaim this week, courtesy of Carrickboy man Sean Murray.

The 33-year-old became one the first group of people to graduate from a third level institution that has a special dedicated course in brewing and distilling at Carlow IT.

A former pupil of Ballymhon VEC, Sean was among a group of 11 graduates to be conferred with Bachelor of Science (Honours) in Brewing and Distilling from the south east Leinster based facility.

I was kind of home brewing for a good while and when I saw the course come up, I leapt at the opportunity, said Sean.

The son of John and Bridie Murray, Sean said his decision to enrol in the course was, in part, influenced, by the recent proliferation of local independent brewery firms that have popped up locally.

And he predicted how the growing trend was one which would continue to grow over the months and years ahead.

There are so many jobs out there at the minute (in the industry) for anyone that's looking to get involved in it, he said.

The four-year course Sean completed is the first undergraduate brewing and distilling degree in Ireland which equips students with the necessary scientific knowledge designed to specifically meet the demands of a growing industry.

Successful completion of this course allows exemption from the Brewing and Distilling Diploma level examinations to sit the Master level professional qualifications of the Institute of Brewing and Distilling (IBD).

Now employed in Crolly Distillery near Dunloe in Co Donegal, Sean said that while he still holds designs to further his studies in the future, for now the opportunity to make a decent living is what most excites him.

In the future, definitely I would like to go onto a higher grade, but I am happy enough at the moment, he said.

A student monetary lifestyle isn't the greatest so I am quite happy for now doing what I am doing.

He also had this advice for anyone looking to follow in his own footsteps.

I was always very into beers and whiskeys from a sensory point of view, he added.

I suppose I would be an enthusiast and what this (course) does is it blends science, engineering, manufacturing and marketing.

It's a multi-disciplinary industry, no matter where you end up.
Junior Minister and Longford Westmeath TD Peter Burke has revealed additional funding for the N4 between Longford and Mullingar has been secured.

Mr Burke has revealed 1m has been set aside for this year, less than 24 hours after Transport Infrastructure Ireland (TII) officials held talks with local politicians in a bid to safeguard the long term viability of the project.

I have been engaging with Westmeath County Council and the Roads Office on this key project for both Longford and Westmeath and the need for it to progress after years of development," he said.

"The landowners assets have been ultimately sterilised with the various delays over the years and I understand the preferred corridor is to be announced in the coming period. To cut funding at this point to me was completely counter-productive, and hugely wasteful of all the time, effort and public money spent to date deciding on the correct route.

I sat down with the Tanaiste to discuss this matter, who agreed that it was a vital project for the development of jobs and industry in the midlands and north west.

I am delighted to confirm that a decision has been made and communicated to me by the Tanaiste this afternoon. The project has been given the additional funding to continue to be developed, with 1 million allocated for 2022.

I am glad to see common sense prevailing, and I look forward to the further progression of the project which will lead to more balanced regional development, and a safer experience for motorists between Mullingar and Longford
Longford-Westmeath Fianna Fail TD Joe Flaherty has said the announcement of 1m to underpin the protracted upgrade of the main N4 between Longford and Mullingar is the result of several weeks of painstaking behind the scenes talks with government bosses.

Mr Flaherty expressed his delight at the news this afternoon after speaking publicly on the matter in the Dail on Monday.

The Lanesboro native revealed he had held "extensive negotiations" with both Transport Minister Eamon Ryan and Public Expenditure Minister Michael McGrath in recent weeks in an effort to ensure the project's future sustainability.

Mr Flaherty said the fact only two projects out of a total of eight were now in receipt of much needed supplementary State funding illustrated the benefits of those discussions.

"It goes to show the benefit of having strong representation at government level," he said.

"I was delighted to have been contacted by Minister Ryan's office this afternoon to say that the funding had been made available and that work on the project can now restart."

Pressed as to whether 1m would suffice in ensuring the N4 upgrade remained on the table of Transport Infrastructure Ireland (TII) officials, Mr Flaherty said he had received assurances the project would "proceed to route selection" stage.
Colorado School of Mines students, from center; Carter Noehre, 22, Weston Hunt, 22, and Jack Damenti, 22, watch as Anderson Salisbury, 22, sculpts a large dolphin out of sand while on Spring Break on Fort Lauderdale Beach on Tuesday, March 22, 2022. (Amy Beth Bennett / South Florida Sun Sentinel)

Fort Lauderdale  Roads leading to Fort Lauderdale beach were jammed with traffic Friday afternoon, and the sand on Fort Lauderdale beach was jammed with college students. That means  you guessed it  spring break is underway, and Fort Lauderdale police and Fort Lauderdale Fire Rescue offered reminders to keep everyone safe.

Perhaps the most exciting new feature is the Fort Lauderdale AssisTent, which will be staffed by Community Emergency Response Team members during peak hours on the beach and downtown.

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The AssisTent is a 10x10 tent and offers no-questions-asked medical or police assistance for people in uncomfortable or potentially dangerous situations, including being too intoxicated, having a medical issue, or a dead cell phone.

They can come to that tent and these staff, who are medically trained, will assist them in that regard, said Maj. Bill Schultz of the Fort Lauderdale police. But they will also assist them if they have lost their friends, theyre not familiar with the area, which many visitors are not, theyll assist them in getting either to their hotel or their Airbnb by making phone calls for them or locating their friends with them.

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Theyll also assist individuals who may have a dead cell phone and need assistance in that regard. Either way, the tent is there to answer our visitors, answer questions and assist them as they continue their celebrations here in Fort Lauderdale.

Fort Lauderdale Police Maj. Bill Schultz discusses safety measures visitors and beachgoers can take during spring break. The news conference was conducted at Las Olas Oceanside Park on Friday. (Amy Beth Bennett / South Florida Sun Sentinel)

Traffic will remain jammed and slow, officials said, which is why ride shares such as Uber are encouraged as well as the water taxi and public buses.

Javi Correoso, spokesperson for Uber in Florida, reminded those who use Uber to take trips booked only through the app, and to confirm the make and model of the car, license plate number, and name and picture of the driver before getting in a car.

Uber has designated pick-up and drop-off areas in the city and on the beach to ease the ride-sharing process by not having people run across streets and not disrupting traffic flow.

[ IN OTHER NEWS: A new round of mask-shaming could be looming ]

The downtown rideshare zone is in the 200 block of Southwest Fourth Avenue, south of Southwest Second Street, and the beach rideshare zone is Cortez Street, west of State Road A1A.

Correoso said rideshare patrons must be patient. He said Uber will have enough vehicles to satisfy demand, but he said high demand and traffic will mean rides could take a little more time than usual.

Weve seen our business rebound already to pre-pandemic levels, he said, so from a driver supply perspective here in South Florida, were at the historic levels weve always seen.

This is the first time since 2019 spring break wont be heavily affected by COVID, and Schultz said police are prepared.

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We absolutely expect double, if not triple, what we saw last year as far as attendance, he said, adding theres the potential for tens of thousands of spring breakers during the next few weeks.

[ IN OTHER NEWS: Fort Lauderdale police chief fired after six months on the job ]

Schultz said police will have extra officers working, including plain-clothes officers.

Alex Bagwell, Fort Lauderdale Ocean Rescue chief, suggested being near a lifeguard while on the beach because lifeguards can point out the safest places to swim in the ongoing rip currents.

Lifeguard hours are 9:15 a.m. to 6 p.m. every day until March 12. On March 13, hours change to 9:45 a.m. to 7 p.m.

Bagwell also reminded beachgoers to read the flags on the lifeguard stands (red, yellow, green and/or purple) and the signs on the lifeguard stands, including how to get out of a rip current (swim parallel to shore and then swim inward).

As far as other reminders and regulations, alcohol is prohibited on the beach, tents, tables and similar structures are prohibited on the beach, and music volume should be kept to a limited level.

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Spring break in Fort Lauderdale, in general, is March 4 through April 3.

Chris Perkins can be reached at chperkins@sunsentinel.com.
Gardai in Carrick-on-Shannon are investigating a fatal road traffic collision that occurred this evening Thursday, March 3, 2022 on the R208 near Drumcong, Co. Leitrim.

At approximately 5pm a motorcyclist and car collided at Aghacashlaun, Carrick- on-Shannon.

Man (30s) appears in court after alleged Longford town assault A man has appeared in court in Mullingar charged in connection to an alleged assault in Longford town yesterday evening.

The male motorcyclist (late 40s) was fatally injured in the collision. His body has been removed from the scene to University Hospital Sligo where a post mortem will take place in due course.

The male driver (late 30s) of the car and sole occupant was uninjured and did not require medical attention.

The road is currently closed and the services of Forensic Collision Investigators have been requested. Local diversions are in place.

The road will remain closed overnight and the examination of the scene will begin tomorrow morning Friday, March 4, 2022 at first light.

Gardai are appealing for any witnesses to this collision to come forward. Any road users who were travelling in the area at this time and may have camera footage (including dash-cam) are asked to make this footage available to Gardai.

Anyone with any information is asked to contact Carrick-on-Shannon Garda Station on (071) 9650103, the Garda Confidential Line on 1800 666 111, or any Garda Station.
People who suffer from chronic cough may be offered new hope thanks to a drug that can ease the symptom.

Researchers suggest the medication called gefapixant has the potential to have a significant impact on the lives of thousands of sufferers.

Chronic coughing is defined as lasting more than eight weeks.

Although many patients improve with treatment of associated conditions such as asthma, gastroesophageal reflux disease and nasal disease, many do not.

As well as the often distressing cough, the condition can cause abdominal pain, urinary incontinence in women, as well as anxiety, depression and difficulty sleeping.

The new study reports on the worlds first late-stage clinical trials which have shown that the drug can ease the symptom of chronic cough with few side effects.

Principal researcher Jacky Smith, professor of respiratory medicine at The University of Manchester, said: These global trials have confirmed that this drug has exciting potential for patients who suffer from chronic cough, an often distressing condition.

Effective treatments for cough are a significant unmet clinical need and no new therapies have been approved in over 50 years.

Billions of pounds are spent annually on over-the-counter cough and cold medicines despite a lack of evidence to support their efficacy, concerns about the potential for abuse and risk of harm in overdose.

Retired journalist Nick Peake, from Warrington, who was a television director at ITV and the BBC, has been suffering from chronic cough for 25 years.

He said: Coughing has blighted my life  every day without fail I cough for the first two hours, soon after I wake up often every 30 seconds. It wears me out.

He added: The coughing interferes with conversations, sometimes it stops me singing which I love to do.

Its embarrassing when Im with people  I find myself apologising a lot, and I have no control over it.

So Im often in despair about it and it can make me miserable.

How my wife has put up with it all this time I dont know.

Its been going on for so long and Im thoroughly fed up with it, and desperate for a cure to be found.

Two clinical trials that lasted 52 weeks- called Cough 1 and Cough 2  recruited 2,044 people from 17 countries who had been suffering from chronic cough for an average of 11 years.

In the Cough 1 trial, 730 people were given either a 45mg dose of gefapixant, 15mg or a placebo and in the Cough 2 trial, 1,314 patients were given either a 45mg dose of gefapixant, 15mg or a placebo.

The study published in The Lancet found that the larger dose of the drug demonstrated an 18.5% reduction in how often people coughed in 24 hours in Cough 1 in versus the placebo, and a 14.6% reduction in Cough 2.

In both studies the drug resulted in a reduction in coughing for up to six months, the research suggests.

The 15mg dose did not demonstrate a significant reduction in cough frequency versus the placebo.

The drug, which is being developed in collaboration with the pharmaceutical company MSD, who funded the trials, was initially developed as a painkiller, until the researchers discovered it had a significant impact on chronic cough.

Professor Smith added: We cant say this drug is a cure for chronic cough, but it can and often does reduce the frequency of coughing substantially.

Now these phase 3 trials have been successful, we feel this is a major step towards this treatment becoming available for our patients with chronic cough.

That could make a big difference to patients who often struggle with this condition which can make such a big impact on their lives.
Local News, Politics

By Chris Boyle Published: March 04 2022

"President Biden, expel these Russians from Nassau County. We dont need them here and lets get this property back on the tax rolls," Blakeman said.

Nassau County Executive Bruce A. Blakeman joined Congressman Lee Zeldin, Glen Gove Mayor Pam Panzenbeck, and Ukrainian Americans of Long Island outside of the Killenworth Estate in Glen Cove recently to call on President Biden to immediately close the Killenworth Estate; a Russian compound and expel any remaining Russian Diplomats.

County Executive Bruce A. Blakeman said President Biden, expel these Russians from Nassau County. We dont need them here and lets get this property back on the tax rolls so the people of Nassau County and Glen Cove don't have to finance thugs and dictators and people who invade innocent countries.

President Barack Obamas administration ordered a Russian-owned Brookville mansion, described by the U.S. government as a recreational compound to be closed on December 28, 2016, because of Russias alleged interference in the U.S. presidential election and harassment of U.S. diplomats in Russia. December 29, the next day, 35 Russian diplomats were expelled from the premises in Brookville.

President Obama, however, did not touch the Killenworth Estate, which is still an operational Russian property. Nassau County loses approximately $50,000 a year in tax revenue; there has been a long-standing conflict with the City of Glen Cove over the propertys tax status.

Rep Lee Zeldin said The United States cannot let Putins people doing his bidding to live in tax-free compounds on Long Island. President Biden must immediately close Russias Killenworth Estate and send their diplomats packing today!
Nature & Weather, Local News, Business & Finance, Politics

By Long Island News & PR Published: March 04 2022

Locust Valley Water Commissioner Patricia Peterson named President.

At a recent meeting of the Nassau Suffolk Water Commissioners Association (NSWCA) at Spuntino Restaurant in Williston Park, the Association elected a new Board for the 2022 term, which runs through December 31, 2022. The meeting was hosted by Commissioners Mark B. Laykind, Andrew N. Bader and Amanda R. Field of the Plainview Water District.

The newly elected NSWCA 2022 Board includes incoming President Patricia Peterson, Commissioner of the Locust Valley Water District who succeeds outgoing President Amanda R. Field of the Plainview Water District; 1st Vice President John F. Coumatos, Commissioner of the Bethpage Water District; 2nd Vice President Ralph Atoria, Commissioner and Chairman of the South Farmingdale Water District; Secretary Joseph Perry, Commissioner of the South Huntington Water District; and Treasurer Michael J. Kosinski, Commissioner and Chairman of the Roslyn Water District.

Its a privilege to be part of this distinguished board and to lead the membership of the Nassau Suffolk Water Commissioners Association in 2022, President Peterson remarked. NSWCA commissioners from all 21 districts which compose our organization are elected by voters to represent their best interests in water supply, quality and regulatory compliance. Long Island has one of the worlds greatest freshwater aquifers. As stewards of the public trust, the NSWCA will continue to promote sustainability, conservation and transparency through education, as well as to protect the invaluable aquifer that supplies the more than 620,000 people we serve.

About Nassau Suffolk Water Commissioners Association:

Organized and chartered in 1981, the Nassau Suffolk Water Commissioners Association (NSWCA) is comprised of voter-elected commissioners from 21 Nassau County and Suffolk County water districts servicing over 620,000 people in Nassau and Suffolk Counties. The NSWCA is dedicated to promoting environmental excellence and best practices as well as to maintaining the highest standards of water quality and supply. The NSWCA sponsors monthly educational meetings on topics that include the environment, security, economics, water treatment, rules and regulations, among other related issues. For more information, www.nswcawater.org

For More Information: Agency Contact:
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All thats been found of the plane that dropped from the sky on a journey to Key West on Sunday are pieces.

The couple who were onboard the single-engine 2020 Vans RV-12 plane, Ali Tufo, 36, and Tommy Campana, 37, are still missing.

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The U.S. Coast Guard said Friday they suspended the search effort Thursday night. The two pieces of the plane pulled to the surface from the ocean floor were found in the search area, about 15 miles north of Big Pine Key.

A diver with the Monroe County Sheriff's Office holds a piece of a plane that went missing on Sunday, Feb. 27, 2022, with two people onboard. The debris was found Thursday on the ocean floor, about 15 miles north of Big Pine Key, according to the U.S. Coast Guard. Crews have suspended their search. (U.S. Coast Guard 7th District Southeast)

Our thoughts and prayers go out to the family and friends of Alexandra Tufo and Thomas Campana, Cmdr. Lindsey Seniuk, the search and rescue mission coordinator for the Coast Guards 7th District, said in a news release. This was a challenging case, and it made the decision to suspend that much harder after our partners found the debris field.

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Ali Tufo, 36, left Palm Beach County on a small, single-engine plane Sunday morning with her boyfriend, Tommy Campana, 37. (Courtesy of Lana Tufo)

The multi-agency search, including the Monroe County Sheriffs Office Dive Team, a Coast Guard cutter and the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, started Tuesday afternoon.

[ RELATED: A couple left for a trip to Key West. Days later, they, and the plane they flew, have yet to be found. ]

Tufo and Campana left the Palm Beach County Park Airport on Sunday morning to travel to Key West, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.

Crews found an oil sheen Thursday in the search area and the plane pieces not long after.
(Alliance News) - The following stocks are the leading risers and fallers on AIM in London on Friday.

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AIM - WINNERS

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Griffin Mining Ltd, up 8.2% at 86.55p, 12-month range 80.80p-149.00p. Underground mining operations at the Caijiaying zinc-gold mine in China are scheduled to restart on March 15. The processing facilities will be initiated shortly thereafter, and then underground drilling at both zones two and three will commence earlier than planned on Monday next week. "I am grateful to all our professional staff, employees and contractors in keeping to the scheduled re-start of operations announced by the company late last year. This is even more critical in light of the spot zinc price trading over USD4,000 tonne, the highest price in over 15 years, and the significantly positive effect that will have on the cash generated by our operations," says Chair Mladen Ninkov.

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AIM - LOSERS

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CVS Group PLC, down 2.8% at 1,664.00p, 12-month range 1,580.00p-2,770.00p. The UK Competition & Markets Authority says it could the clear veterinary services firm's acquisition of Quality Pet Care following undertakings offered by the Norfolk-based veterinary services provider. The undertakings offered by CVS include the divestment of the entire The Vet business. The UK watchdog now has until May 4 to decide on whether it will accept the undertakings, but has the option to extend its timeframe to July 1 should there be exceptional reasons for doing so. In August, CVS announced its acquisition of Quality Pet Care, which trades as The Vet for GBP20.4 million. However in September, the UK CMA had opened an investigation into the deal, and in February had judged that the acquisition would reduce competition in Bristol, Nottingham, Portsmouth, Southampton and Warrington.

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Globalworth Real Estate Investments Ltd, down 5.1% at EUR5.58, 12-month range EUR5.58-EUR7.48. Swings to profit in 2021, thanks to a reduced fair value loss on its investment property portfolio. It reported pretax profit of EUR62.1 million last year, compared to a loss of EUR30.5 million in 2020. Globalworth recorded a fair value loss on investment property of just EUR5.7 million, compared to EUR116.2 million in 2020. Revenue slipped slightly by 1.7% to EUR219.4 million in 2021 from EUR223.3 million, with higher expenses driving net operating income down 8.3% to EUR144.3 million from EUR157.3 million. Total combined portfolio value rose 3.9% to EUR3.2 billion as of December 31. Preliminary EPRA net reinstatement value was EUR1.9 billion, or EUR8.66 per share at December 31, a slight decrease from EUR8.68 a year before.

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Ten Lifestyle Group PLC, down 24% at 80.70p, 12-month range 80.50p-122.00p. Expects earnings for its 2022 financial year to be below expectations, due to the effect of the Omicron variant. For the year ending August 31, Ten Lifestyle expects to report a rise in adjusted earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation above the GBP4.4 million posted the year before, but the figure is set to be below expectations. This is due to a reduction in member requests since December after the emergence of the Omicron variant of Covid-19. In addition, net revenue for the year remains in line with management expectations, as new contract wins launching in the second half and the easing pandemic offset the effect of Omicron. Looking further ahead, Ten Lifestyle expects the new contract wins to increase revenue and profitability in line with its expectations for the 2023 financial year.

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By Paul McGowan; paulmcgowan@alliancenews.com

Copyright 2022 Alliance News Limited. All Rights Reserved.
(Alliance News) - The following is a round-up of updates by London-listed companies, issued on Friday and not separately reported by Alliance News:

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Verici Dx PLC - Cardiff, Wales-based clinical diagnostics developer - Raises GBP9.6 million through a placing of 27.3 million shares at 35 pence per share, representing 19% of its share capital. The subscription is expected to generate further gross proceeds of approximately GBP450,000 and will remain open until further notice.

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BlueRock Diamonds PLC - Reading, England-based diamond producer operating in South Africa - Sells four gem quality stones for USD460,000 in its February tender. The average tender price is USD638 per carat.

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Gore Street Energy Storage Fund PLC - London-based fund investing in energy storage assets - Completes acquisition of a 90% stake in a 28 megawatt hour operational storage asset in Germany. Gore Street says the acquisition represents its first step to diversify beyond the UK and Irish markets. The company's assets under management increase by 232 megawatts to 629 megawatts following the acquisition.

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Zenith Energy Ltd - Calgary, Canada-based oil & gas company - Fully repays a GBP647,500 unsecured convertible loan facility. Chief Financial Officer Luca Benedetto says: "Our significantly increased revenue generation and associated profitability has enabled the company to progressively reduce its exposure to debt and improve its balance sheet. We shall look to continue this exercise as we generate additional financial resources by maximising our energy production activities across the portfolio".

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Pantheon Resources PLC - London-based oil and has company focused on Alaska - Suspends testing of the Shelf Margin Deltaic horizon at the Talitha A well in Alaska. Operational focus will now move to the Theta West well site where the company will commence testing operations of the 950 foot Basin Floor Fan horizon. Company switches to Theta West due to a blockage preventing any additional reservoir fluid from entering the well bore at Talitha A.

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Phoenix Global Resources PLC - London-based upstream oil and gas company focused on Argentina - Commences drilling activity for Pad 2 at Mata Mora, consisting of three wells with 2,600 metre horizontal lateral lengths and 37 frac stages. The Company is planning to commence the Pad 3 program by mid-March 2022. Completes drilling at Corralera South of a vertical exploration well to a depth of 3,639 metres and its horizontal branch with a 2,134 metre lateral length and 30 frac stages. Finishes drilling at Corralera North-East of a vertical exploration well to a depth of 2,970 metres and its horizontal branch with a 2,000 metre lateral length and 29 frac stages. The well is currently shut in for well testing with pressure build up, isotope sampling and tracer analysis currently being carried out. At Rio Atuel, the company completes activities of a conventional vertical exploration well. The well is currently in production and under initial evaluation, which is expected to complete by the end of March.

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Secure Property Development & Investment PLC - Nicosia, Cyprus-based commercial property investor - Temporarily closes its Ukrainian office and is housing some of its Ukrainian staff in company accommodation in Romania. Secure Property expects "minimal" financial impact as a result of the invasion.

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Avation PLC - Singapore-based commercial passenger aircraft leasing company - Enters into a letter of intent to transition one ATR 72-600 aircraft from Golden Mynmar Airlines to a new unnamed customer. Enters into another letter of intent for the lease of one ATR 72-500 to an unnamed Asian airline. Enters into an additional letter of intent for the sale of two ATR 72-600, formerly on lease to Loganair. Assuming all complete, the company will have three unused aircraft remaining from the 20 aircraft returned or repossessed during the Covid-19 pandemic.

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Goodbody Health Inc - Vancouver-based medical laboratory company - Intends to acquire up to 18.2 million shares of the company via a normal course issuer bid, representing 5% of its share capital. The bid will commence on March 11 and end no later than March 10, 2023. Company also announces a restricted share unit plan.

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Cornerstone FS PLC- Buckingham, England-based international payment platform - Amends certain terms of its convertible loan note announced on March 17. Now, the loan notes may be converted at a subscription price of 26.5 pence in the event of a drawndown and the company issuing William Newton with unsecured convertible notes. All other details remain unchanged. Newton is a substantial shareholder in the company, Cornerstone FS explains.

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Borders & Southern Petroleum PLC - London-based hydrocarbon exploration company - Announces fundraising of USD600,000 via a subscription of 34.7 million shares and USD1.2 million via an open offer of 69.2 million shares. The issue price is 1.3 pence per share. Chair Harry Dobson is the sole participant in the subscription and has agreed to invest USD600,000 in shares by subscribing for all of the subscription shares.

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JPMorgan Global Core Real Assets Ltd - London-based real estate, transportation and infrastructure investor - Says USD1.1 million of its committed capital has been called and funded into the US Real Estate Mezzanine Debt strategy. This investment, the company explains, will provide it with exposure to a portfolio of 15 existing loans. The weighted average duration of the portfolio of loans is 2.7 years. Adds that the its portfolio is not directly exposed to Ukrainian or Russian assets, either on a NAV or income basis.

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88 Energy Ltd- Western Australia-based oil exploration company focused on Alaska - Notes light oil during two separate production tests at Pantheon Resources PLC's Talitha A well which is on the same formation that hosts 88 Energy's Lima complex. The results of Pantheon's Talitha-A well, combined with its earlier Alkaid-1 well, have been considered as part of a re-evaluation of 88 Energy's Icewine-1 well data. Subsequent and independent comparisons of the Icewine-1 well have revealed the porosity and resistivity of the well to be significant.

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Resolute Mining Limited - Perth-based gold mining company - Updates group life of mine plan to reflect an average annual production of 370,000 ounces over the five years to 2026 at an average all-in sustaining costs of USD1,191 per ounce. Total group life of mine gold production 3.5 million ounces at an average all-in sustaining cost of USD1,110 per ounce to 2033. Chief Executive Stuart Gale says: "Our latest LOM plan reflect an improved production profile over the current 12-year mine life at Syama incorporating the successful exploration campaigns which have extended oxide production for an additional two years together with exceptional drilling results at Tabakoroni."

Separately, Resolute says its mineral resources have increased by 1.0 million ounces to 9.5 million ounces of gold, net of depletion and sale of the Bibiani Gold Mine. Ore Reserves maintain at 4.1 million ounces of gold. The sale of the Bibiani Gold Mine in 2021 removed 660,000 ounces of ore reserves and 2.5 million ounces of mineral resources from Resolute's global inventory, the company adds.

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By Heather Rydings; heatherrydings@alliancenews.com

Copyright 2022 Alliance News Limited. All Rights Reserved.
(Alliance News) - The UK is "bolstering" its package of sanctions against the Kremlin with "new powers in our arsenal to go further and faster", Prime Minister Boris Johnson has said.

Johnson said the changes will "ramp up the pressure on those criminal elites trying to launder money on UK soil", ensuring they have "nowhere to hide".

It comes as the UK government has been under pressure to speed up punitive action against people linked to Russian President Vladimir Putin's regime.

The amendments to the Economic Crime (Transparency and Enforcement) Bill being put forward by the government will "help streamline the current legislation so we can respond even more swiftly and effectively to the current crisis in the way we sanction individuals", the Foreign Office said.

The FCDO said the provisions will allow the UK to align more rapidly with the individual designations imposed by allies such as the US, Canada and the EU.

This will be achieved via an "urgent designation procedure".

The changes also include shortening the length of time foreign owners of UK property will be given to declare their true identity as part of a new register of overseas entities, from 18 months to six months.

A further amendment will increase criminal penalties for non-compliance from fines of up to GBP500 per day to up to GBP2,500 per day.

As set out in the existing legislation, other sanctions will include prison sentences of up to five years.

Another change will commit the government to publishing an annual report on the use of Unexplained Wealth Orders.

Data on the use of UWOs is already published in the annual Asset Recovery Statistical Bulletin, but the additional report will be laid before Parliament and provide further information beyond how many UWOs have been obtained and their estimated value, the FCDO said.

Johnson said the UK has "led the way" with its package of sanctions against Putin's regime, and is now "bolstering" this with "new powers in our arsenal to go further and faster".

"We will ramp up the pressure on those criminal elites trying to launder money on UK soil and close the net on corruption," he said, adding: "They will have nowhere to hide."

Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said the changes will "allow us to go faster and harder on those closest to Putin, including oligarchs".

"Our message to Putin and his cronies has been clear from day one  invading Ukraine would have serious and crippling consequences," she said.

"We have been true to our word, introducing the largest and strongest sanctions package in our history, but we are not stopping here.

"The changes we are making will allow us to go faster and harder on those closest to Putin, including oligarchs, as we continue to ratchet pressure in the face of illegal and unprovoked Russian aggression."

The amendments follow calls from Labour to massively cut the length of time foreign owners of property in the UK will be given to declare their true identity, in an effort to "tighten the net on dirty Russian money as soon as possible".

Labour said on Wednesday it wanted to speed up the process of bringing the new register of overseas entities into force, with applications required within 28 days of the legislation passing.

Shadow foreign secretary David Lammy said: "We welcome the government's U-turn under pressure from Labour to tighten the law, so we can move on more oligarchs tied to Putin's regime, but we must also move faster, acting against these individuals in days not months."

Amendments to the Economic Crime Bill will be expedited through all its Commons stages on Monday, the FCDO said.

It added that the government is looking for "swift passage" in the Lords in order to get royal assent as soon as possible.

On Friday morning, Labour leader Keir Starmer called for the government to go "further and faster" with sanctions.

Speaking during a visit to Birmingham following Labour's by-election win, he said: "Where the government is taking action on sanctions, we support them. But they have got to go further and faster."

Labour Party Chair Anneliese Dodds also told Sky News the UK has got to "stop dragging" its feet in clamping down on funds that have come from figures linked to Putin.

But Justice Secretary Dominic Raab told BBC Breakfast "we've not been slow" on sanctions.

"We've been at the vanguard of taking action and, of course, what is really important is we act in concert with our allies, European, American and other Nato allies," he said.

source: PA

Copyright 2022 Alliance News Limited. All Rights Reserved.
(Alliance News) - The UK competition regulator has launched an investigation into whether outsourcing firm Mitie Group PLC has broken competition law in relation to a procurement process for immigration removal centre contracts run by the Home Office.

The Competition & Markets Authority said it had launched a probe on Tuesday over "suspected anti-competitive conduct" related to the ongoing process to find firms to operate certain services at Heathrow and Derwentside immigration removal centres.

The regulator added that "no assumption should be made at this stage" that competition law has been infringed.

Mitie confirmed it has engaged with the tender process for the immigration removal centre contracts and said it expects to be "fully exonerated" through the CMA investigation.

The investigation was launched into the Mitie Group, Mitie Care and Custody Ltd and PAE Inc entities.

Mitie told shareholders it withdrew from the tender process for the Derwentside centre due to rules stopping one firm from winning both contracts.

It added that it remains engaged in the process for the Heathrow contract, though its Care & Custody arm.

In a statement, the company said: "Mitie strongly condemns anti-competitive practices and is co-operating fully with the CMA and the investigation.

"Mitie is confident that it has no case to answer and will be fully exonerated.

"Mitie will not be issuing any further announcements in relation to the CMA's investigation, until its conclusion."

Mitie shares were down 5.3% at 50.21 pence early Friday in London.

By Henry Saker-Clark, PA City Reporter

source: PA

Copyright 2022 Alliance News Limited. All Rights Reserved.
Karnataka land records management in Karnataka is fully backed by the Information and Communication Technology (ICT). To better manage the Karnataka land records in a digital format, the Government of Karnataka had launched the Bhoomi portal in the year 2000. The primary aim of the Bhoomi portal is the seamless providence Karnataka land records to the citizens in a digital format.

Bhoomi Portal for Karnataka Land Records

The official Bhoomi portal of Karnataka provides services such as viewing revenue maps, citizen registration on the portal, viewing RTCs, conversion request application, tracking the conversion request, and mutation services among others (land records Karnataka gov in online).

The Karnataka government has also set up offices across the states for services related to Karnataka land records. There are over 6000 Gram Panchayats across the states which provide services related to the Karnataka land records.

Bhoomi portal for Karnataka land records is an excellent tool for digital land records management. It can be accessed at landrecords.karnataka.gov.in/Service84

Bhoomi online for Karnataka land records management

Also Read: A Khata and B Khata in Bangalore

Services Provided on Bhoomi Portal

The Bhoomi portal designed for the Karnataka land records management provides the following services to the citizens.

Checking i-Record of Rights, Tenancy and Crops (i-RTC)

Mutation Register

Tippan Services

Viewing Revenue Maps

Check Mutation Status

Check Mutation Extract

facilitation of Registration of Citizen

Bhoomi Citizen Login

XML verification of RTC

Registration of Disputed Cases

View list of New Taluks

How to check Karnataka land records @ Bhoomi Online Portal?

Karnataka land records digitisation has been the top priority of the Karnataka government. The Bhoomi portal is a significant step in that direction, and it has significantly helped in the digital management of Karnataka land records. Here is the step-by-step process to check Karnataka land records online on Bhoomi portal (land records Karnataka gov in online).

Step 1: login to the official Bhoomi Karnataka Land Records website i.e. https://landrecords.karnataka.gov.in/ and click on Bhoomi icon.

Step 2: you will be redirected to the following page https://landrecords.karnataka.gov.in/Service84/ or land records karnataka gov in online.

Step 3: Click on the For Citizen Services- Click here option

Step 4: Click on the View RTC and MR option.

Step 5: You will be redirected to the following page.

Step 6: Fill in the details such as

District

Taluk

Hobli

Village

Survey number

Surnoc

Hissa Number

PeriodYear

Owner details

And click on the Go button.

Step 7: All the details of the land records will be displayed on the screen.

Also Read: Places to buy plots in Bangalore

What are the benefits of the Bhoomi portal?

The Bhoomi portal has enabled the digital delivery of Karnataka land records services in a seamless manner. The benefits of Bhoomi portal can be enumerated as follows-

A copy of land records can be obtained which can be used by the farmers for availing loans and credit facilities

Copy of the RTC can be obtained using name of the owner and plot number

It facilitates online mutation requests which are useful in case of sale or inheritance

The data related to crops can be used for the insurance of crops and insurance claims

The application status of the land mutation request can be tracked via Bhoomi portal

What is RTC?

In Karnataka, land records management is primarily done through the Bhoomi portal. Record of Rights, Tenancy and Crops or RTC is an important land record in Karnataka. It is also known as Pahani in Kannada. The key components of an RTC document are as follows-

Details of the landowner or joint owners (if applicable)

Details of soil type

Description of the type of land

Crops grown on the concerned land

Area measurement

Water consumption charges i.e., the amount water used to maintain the land

Commercial, non-agricultural, agricultural, residential and flood area description

Nature of possession

Bank loan details

Tenancy details

Also read: FSI/FAR in Bangalore

How to view RTC information survey number-wise?

Karnataka land records RTC can also be viewed with the help of survey number, owner details and registration number wise. To view Karnataka land records online using the aforementioned details, follow the step-by-step process.

Step 1: login to the official Bhoomi Karnataka Land Records website i.e., https://landrecords.karnataka.gov.in/ and click on Bhoomi icon.

Step 2: Click on the View RTC Information tab

Step 3: You will be redirected to the following window. You will be redirected to the following window. https://landrecords.karnataka.gov.in/service53/

Step 4: If you want to get the land details Survey No Wise, click the button and fill in the following details.

District

Taluk

Hobli

Village

Survey number

Surnoc

Hissa Number

Step 5: Click on the View land Details button. The details will be displayed online.

Step 6: If you want to get the land details Owner Wise, click the button, and fill in the details such as District, village, Taluk and Hobli and click on View Details

Step 7: If you want to get the land details Registration Number Wise, click the button.

Fill in the details such as District, Taluk, registration date and registration number and click on Fetch. The details will be displayed online.

The aforementioned services of Karnataka land records on Bhoomi portal can be availed of in both English and Kannada languages.

Also Read: 7 Best Places to Live in Bangalore

Karnataka land records: Fees and charges

The State government of Karnataka has enabled the digital delivery of citizen specific services via Bhoomi portal. In addition to the digital services provided on the portal, the land record services can be availed at the citizen services Kiosks in every city. In lieu of the services rendered, the State government charges a certain fee. The applicable fees for key services related to Karnataka land records is as follows.

Documents Charges Tippan Rs 15 RTC or Records of Rights, Tenancy and Crops Rs 10 Mutation Extracts Rs 15 Mutation Status Rs 15

Karnataka Land Records Revenue Map online

Bhoomi portal in Karnataka has brought the services related to land registration online. On the Bhoomi portal, citizens can view the revenue map online in the following steps.

Step 1: login to the official Bhoomi Land Records Karnataka website i.e., login to the official Bhoomi Land Records Karnataka website i.e., https://landrecords.karnataka.gov.in/ and click on the Bhoomi icon.

Step 2: Under the Survey (SSLR) services, click on the Revenue Maps tab.

Step 3: You will be redirected to the following window. Here, you can choose the District, Taluk, Hobli and Map types and proceed to view the maps in PDF format.

You can even download the revenue maps in the PDF format.

How to Extract Mutation Report on Bhoomi Portal of Karnataka?

Step 1: Login to the Bhoomi homepage or bhoomi land records Karnataka. Here, click on the View RTC and MR under Bhoomi services to redirect you to the mutation report webpage.

Step 2: Choose the Mutation Report (MR) tab to check the Status of Mutation.

Step 3: Fill in the required information such as the Hissa Number, district, Hobli, Taluk, Village, Survey No, and Surnoc Number. Once you have entered all the details, click on Fetch Details

Step 4: In accordance with the data entered, the mutation data will be displayed online.

How to apply for land conversion on Bhoomi portal?

The Bhoomi portal allows a user to apply for land conversion online in Karnataka.

Login to the official website of the Karnataka land records department, Karnataka. The home page will be displayed In the next step, click on Bhoomi link. Here, Click on the services tab After this, you have to click on Apply online for land conversion tab. Enter the username, password, and the captcha code And click on login A form will be displayed Enter all the necessary details in this form and click on submit.

How to view land conversion requests on Bhoomi Karnataka?

Once you have applied for the land conversion, you can check the land conversion request online in the following steps.

Step 1: Login to the land records department website.

Step 2: Click on view Conversion request status tab

Step 3: You will be redirected to the following page

Step 4: Enter either affidavit id or the user id and click on the Search button.

The details of the conversion request status will be displayed on the screen.

Also Read: Affordable Housing in Karnataka under Smart Cities Mission

How to check mutation status reports on Bhoomi Karnataka?

Karnataka land records portal or Bhoomi portal allows a user to check the mutation status report online. The mutation status report can be checked in the following steps.

Step 1: Login to the official Bhoomi Land Records Karnataka website i.e., Login to the official Bhoomi Land Records Karnataka website i.e., https://landrecords.karnataka.gov.in/

Step 2: Click on the View RTC and MR tab.

Step 3: You will be redirected to the following page

Step 4: fill in the details such as

District

Taluk

Hobli

Village

Survey number

Surnoc

Hissa Number

And click on Fetch Details. The details will be displayed online.

Conclusively, the Karnataka land records management has become streamlined through the Bhoomi portal. You can apply online for RTC and land conversion on the Karnataka land records department website and track the status of such application. Bhoomi land records Karnataka is a popular and tech savvy method of maintenance and preservation of Karnataka land records. You can contact the Karnataka land records department at Bhoomi Monitoring Cell, SSLR Building, K.R. Circle, Bangalore  560001.

Also Read: How to check the zone of land in Bangalore?




The Real Estate Regulation and Development Act, 2016, abbreviated as RERA, is an act that regulates the real estate market of India. The Act was passed in Parliament 2016, and it came into force on May 1, 2016. However, RERA Act 2016 has subsets of every state's RERA authority. Similarly, Uttar Pradesh also has a real estate regulatory body known as UP RERA. The body, RERA UP, came into existence on October 27, 2016, and its aim is to protect the interest of home buyers and boost real estate investments in the state of Uttar Pradesh.

How RERA benefits homebuyers

In this blog, we give you the low down on UP RERA project details, UP RERA registration process, RERA UP charges, documents and more.

Salient Features of UP RERA

UP RERA is beneficial for home buyers, real estate agents, and promoters. Following are the features of UP RERA:-

The Act aims to regulate the Real Estate Regulatory Authority and promote the real estate sector.

It ensures transparency in real estate projects.

A speedy dispute resolution mechanism is established to protect the interests of home buyers.

A buyer can check all the information regarding a builder or a promoter.

The State Real Estate Regulatory Authority should be approached in case of any discrepancy.

The authority governs both residential and commercial property transactions.

All developers and real estate agents must register with the RERA UP. They have to provide information like project plan, layout, government approvals, land title status, sub-contractors, etc.

In case of rule violation, the appellate tribunal penalizes with a penalty of up to three years of jail or both.

A home buyer will not suffer if the project is delayed; in this case, the developer is liable to pay the same EMI paid by the consumer.

It is mandatory for every project measuring more than 500 sq meters or eight apartments to register with the UP RERA.

How to Check Registered Projects on UP RERA?

It is advised to check the registered projects on the UP RERA website to avoid discrepancies in future. You can easily do it by visiting the official UP RERA website. Once on the website, click on the Registered Project from Important links. A new page will open up, where you will be asked to fill in details like Project Name, Registration Number, Promoter and then enter Captcha. Now, click on Search and click View Details to check the details of the project. You can also choose to download the project summary or other information.

Give the screenshots for the above process

How to Check Registered Promoters or Agents on UP RERA?

To check registered Promoters or Agents, go to the UP RERA website and visit Important links on the home page. If you wish to check Promoters, click on Registered Promoters; click on Registered Agents to check the agent's list. Then fill in the required details like Promoter/Agent Name, District, Tehsil, etc. Then click on Search. Information related to agents or promoters will be displayed on the screen.

How to Check the Defaulter Project list on UP RERA?

To check the defaulter project list on UP RERA, you must go to the RERA UP website and then go to Important Links. Then click on Deregistered Projects, now you can see a list of Deregistered projects with project registration number, project name, project location details, promoter's name and photo.

How to Register a Project under UP RERA

To register as a Promoter, perform the following steps:-

Step 1: Visit the official UP RERA website

Step 2: Click on Registrations from the menu bar and click on Promoter from the drop-down menu.

Step 3: Enter the mobile number and OTP, which you will receive on your mobile phone. Then click on Verify.

Step 4: A new web page for promoters registration will open up. On that page, enter details like name, contact information, address, PAN and Aadhaar card, etc. Once a promoter is registered, then a project can be registered.

Step 5: Go back to the home page and click on Registrations and then Project. Now, you will be redirected to a new login page. There, select a User Type, Username, Password, Enter Captcha, and click on Log in.

Step 6: Now, a form will open up, enter all the required details, pay the registration charges online, and the registration will be completed.

Read More: RERA registration process - How to apply and get RERA number

How to Register as an Agent under RERA UP

To register as an agent with UP RERA, follow the below-given steps:-

Step 1: Visit the UP RERA website, go to Registrations, and click on Agent.

Step 2: Enter all the required information like Aadhar number, address proof, personal details, bank details etc.

Step 3: Then click on Save and Pay. The payment page will open, make the payment online using credit card/debit card/NEFT/RTGS or UPI method.

Also read: How to become a RERA real estate agent

UP RERA Fees and Charges

Following are the UP RERA registration charges for agents:

Agent Registration fee Renewal fee Individual Rs.25,000 Rs.5,000 Other than Individual Rs.2,50,000 Rs.50,000

Registration fees for Promoters:- Not clear what this table is showing?

Project type Area Up to 1,000 Sq. m. More than 1,000 Sq. m. Residential project Rs.10 per Sq. m. Rs.500 per 100 Sq. m. Commercial project Rs.20 per Sq. m. Rs.1,000 per 100 Sq. m. Other Charges in UP RERA

There are few other charges which will have to be paid as per your requirements. These could be filing a complaint, withdrawal of application or an appeal. Following are the charges for the same:

Particulars Fees Any appeal under subsection (1) under Section 44 Rs.1,000 Complaint against any one Rs.1,000 Withdrawal of application of registration Rs.50,000 or up to 10% of the registration fee, whichever is higher.

Documents Required for Registration Under UP RERA

A promoter will have to submit the scanned copies of following documents to register a project under RERA UP:-

PAN Card

Previous years Balance sheet

Last three years Income Tax Returns

Project Plan copy

Number of parking areas in the project

Title deed of the promoter or land

Encumbrance Certificate of the project or land on which the project is built

Collaboration agreement or joint agreement

Document List for Agent in RERA UP

A promoter will have to submit the following documents to register a project under RERA UP:-

PAN Card

Real estate agent details- Name, registered address, enterprise type etc

Registration particulars

Memorandum of Association.

Articles of Association.

Last three years ITR

Address proof of business entity.

How to Register Complaint on RERA UP Website

If you face any discrepancy as a home buyer, agent or promoter, you can file a complaint on the RERA UP website. Visit the official website, click on Complaints from the menu bar, and click the tab against whom you wish to complain.





Head office:

Naveen Bhavan, Rajya Niyojan Sansthan, Kala Kankar House, Old Hyderabad,

Lucknow  226007

Regional Office:

H - 169, Chitvan State Rd, Estate Sector, Block H, Gamma II,

Greater Noida, Uttar Pradesh 201308

Contact number: 0522-2781452 (Lucknow), 0120-2326111 (Greater Noida)

Email ID: contactuprera@up-rera.in

Conclusion to RERA UP

The RERA UP Act came into force on October 27, 2016. The RERA UP aims to safeguard the interests of homebuyers and regulate the state's real estate sector. The state government has also launched an online portal to make things easy for all the parties involved in the market. UP RERA website can be used for registration as a promoter or agent, file a complaint, or even check the defaulter list.
GAINESVILLE  For over 25 years, Gloria Jefferson Anderson researched her fathers side of the family, trying to figure out what happened to her ancestors once slavery ended.

When I found out where my fathers people were on the plantation  the next question was, Well, where are these people buried? said Anderson, 74, a Tallahassee resident.

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Andersons quest for her past led her to New Hope Cemetery in Tallahassee, a historic African-American burial gound believed to hold the graves of former slaves from Welaunee and Fleischmann plantations in Leon County. This site, where no graves are marked and there are no headstones, is located behind Testerina Primitive Baptist Church, which Anderson had coincidentally been attending her whole life, along with many of her neighbors.

In recent years, forgotten, neglected and abandoned Black cemeteries have begun to receive more attention. Across the United States, many unmarked African American graveyards have been rediscovered  often hidden under more recently built parking lots, schools and housing complexes.

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In Tampa, archaeologists confirmed in 2019 that a historic African-American cemeterys graves had not been not exhumed before the land was developed. Under some warehouses, public housing and a tow lot remained the burial sites of Zion Cemetery.

The Testerina Primitive Baptist Church sits at 5520 Miccosukee Road in Tallahassee on March 15, 2022. The New Hope Cemetery, where the enslaved people were buried, is located behind the church in the woods. (Lawren Simmons/Fresh Take Florida)

Zion has received a lot of media attention and action from local officials seeking to safeguard the graves and honor those buried there, but New Hope Cemetery  virtually in the state Legislatures backyard, only 7 miles from the Capitol  has received far less.

Last year, Gov. Ron Desantis approved the creation of the Task Force for Abandoned Florida Cemeteries, which held public meetings around the state during the summer and fall to produce a 200-page report earlier this year. Sen. Janet Cruz said last year that there are nearly 3,000 abandoned African-American cemeteries in Florida that have not yet been identified, according to estimates by state archaeologists.

Now, a pair of bills aims to enact the task forces recommendations and prohibit or limit development on abandoned grave sites. The House bill was making steady progress through the final weeks of the legislative session, but its companion bill in the Senate has been stalled since January, threatening to imperil the efforts.

There was a time in our state when even cemeteries were segregated, Rep. Fentrice Driskell, D-Tampa, one of the sponsors, along with Cruz, D-Tampa, said during a House Infrastructure and Tourism Appropriations Subcommittee meeting earlier this month.

Historically, African American cemeteries were not subject to regulations, upkeeping and other necessary efforts to uphold the dignity of the deceased, compared to their counterparts, she added. Moreover, the lands on which African-American cemeteries were contained, at times, were sold without any regard to who was buried there.

In this Friday, June 5, 2020 photo, Gloria Jefferson Anderson holds a photo of her father, Fred Cruel Jefferson, at Testerina Primitive Baptist Church on Miccosukee Road, where she believes New Hope Cemetery is located in the adjacent woods in a section of the Miccosukee Greenway near Tallahassee. (Tori Lynn Schneider/Tallahassee Democrat via AP, File) (Tori Lynn Schneider/Tallahassee Democrat/AP)

In November 2019, Anderson and her brother, Elder Wilbert Jefferson Sr., decided to walk a trail behind the Testerina Primitive Baptist Church. Her brother spotted some depressions in the ground. There were no grave markers or headstones, but Anderson knew she had found something.

I came home and I looked at my fathers picture and cried, Anderson recalled about her father, Fred Jefferson, in an interview. I said, Dad, Ive found your people.

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A regular attendee of the Tallahassee Historical Society Meetings, Anderson connected a few years ago with Lonnie Mann, a member of the Panhandle Archeological Society in Tallahassee. He organized a cadaver canine survey in an attempt to confirm the presence of human remains along the trail behind the church in 2020.

Manns survey indicated that burials were likely in the area, according to the task forces final report. That finding spurred the state Division of Historical Resources to create new boundaries for New Hope Cemetery and recommend the site be protected and preserved.

Mann said the state did two additional cadaver dog studies and outlined an area near the church of about seven acres that might hold graves.

Since then, Anderson formed the New Hope Cemetery Project Committee and has been collecting oral histories and historical records from the local community in an effort to identify and memorialize those who may be buried there, including the ancestors of members of the nearby St. Peter Primitive Baptist Church  Andersons home church.

The more people see this, the more people realize, Hey, I have an ancestor. Where can I find them? Anderson said.

Anderson said she is glad to have found New Hope Cemetery before it was desecrated by development.

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Theres so much information in the news about finding these cemeteries in homes and parking lots and schools, and everything being built on top of them, Anderson said. Well, I think we caught this one before  we were able to save the cemetery.

Anderson and Mann hope it stays that way.

We would like the city to develop some form of protection, either as an easement or some sort of agreement with descendants that would perpetually protect the cemetery from development or any use other than that of a cemetery, Mann said. The right mechanism for protecting cemeteries is one of the questions that were dealing with.

In this Friday, June 5, 2020 photo, Gloria Anderson Jefferson holds a photo of an unidentified man born on the Welaunee plantation she believes is related to her and who is likely buried in New Hope Cemetery, which may be located under a section of the Miccosukee Greenway near Tallahassee. (Tori Lynn Schneider/Tallahassee Democrat via AP, File) (Tori Lynn Schneider/Tallahassee Democrat/AP)

The legislation under consideration would create the Office of Historic Cemeteries within the Department of State and it would focus on restoration, research and maintenance efforts for all abandoned cemeteries, not just African-American sites. The office would be staffed with three full-time employees at an estimated cost of $200,000 a year.

As an indication of the measures broad support, Rep. Jayer Williamson, a Republican from Santa Rosa County who chairs the subcommittee, congratulated Driskell on her efforts.

Its been a labor of love over the last two years, and (its) good to get this thing moving, Williamson said at the subcommittee meeting.

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Rep. Dianne Hart, an African American lawmaker from Tampa, also thanked Driskell.

Its sad to say that we were forgotten people, and thats basically what transpired in many African-American cemeteries back at home, Hart said.

Like Jefferson, Driskell recognizes the power of knowing your own history.

I think one of the great things about this is we can all understand heritage, Driskell said. We can all understand how important it is to understand where you came from and the importance of the sanctity of the dead.

This story was produced by Fresh Take Florida, a news service of the University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications. The reporter can be reached at agalo@ufl.edu.

Editors Note: This article has been updated to include the correct image of the Testerina Primitive Baptist Church.
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...FLOOD WATCH REMAINS IN EFFECT THROUGH THURSDAY AFTERNOON... * WHAT...Flooding caused by excessive rainfall continues to be possible. * WHERE...Portions of Arkansas and Oklahoma, including the following counties, in Arkansas, Benton, Carroll, Crawford, Franklin, Madison, Sebastian and Washington AR. In Oklahoma, Adair, Cherokee, Choctaw, Craig, Creek, Delaware, Haskell, Latimer, Le Flore, Mayes, McIntosh, Muskogee, Nowata, Okfuskee, Okmulgee, Osage, Ottawa, Pawnee, Pittsburg, Pushmataha, Rogers, Sequoyah, Tulsa, Wagoner and Washington OK. * WHEN...Through Thursday afternoon. * IMPACTS...Significant and potentially life threatening flash flooding is ongoing just south of I-44 across Okfuskee and Okmulgee counties. Numerous main-stem rivers will likely rise above flooding. Extensive low land flooding will be likely, especially where the heavier rain has already occurred. Many low-water crossings will likely become flooded. Area creeks and streams are already running high and will likely flood with more heavy rain. * ADDITIONAL DETAILS... - Additional rounds of thunderstorms with very heavy rain are expected this evening through the overnight hours. Widespread 2 to 3 inches of rain is expected with locally higher amounts of 5 to 7 inches. The heavier rain will begin to shift east of far southeast Oklahoma and northwest Arkansas Thursday afternoon. - 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. &&
Natalia Kadenuyk is consoled by her 11-year-old son, Galaktion, in Sunny Isles Beach on Wednesday, March 2, 2022, as she talks about fleeing their home in Ukraine along with her daughter, who is nearly 2 years old. (Mike Stocker / South Florida Sun Sentinel)

All that was on Natalia Kadenuyks mind was escaping Ukraine with her two little kids. Worried, she packed the familys clothes, grabbed some cash and started driving toward the Zurich airport, preparing to travel thousands of miles to South Florida.

She kept close watch of her 11-year-old son and nearly 2-year-old daughter at all times. There is no chance for mistakes, Kadenuyk recalled.

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Kadenuyk, 35, is among the many civilians who have fled Ukraine for neighboring countries as Russia invaded. She considers herself fortunate that she left in time  uncertain of her familys future but relieved to be in the U.S.

Kadenuyks salvation in Florida was a stroke of luck for the family: Six years ago, she and her best friend had applied for a U.S. tourist visa that is good for 10 years. They have all come twice, to visit Los Angeles and Miami. The children also have their own tourist visas and came along for the vacations.

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But this latest trip is no holiday.

While staying with friends in Sunny Isles Beach, she has been in constant contact with friends and cousins still in Ukraine, getting only a few hours of sleep a night. Shes getting a steady dose of details of the harsh reality: the fear, the noise, the friends who are cooking food for the soldiers, and the people cramped together in subway stations hiding from rockets, sharing a public bathroom and depending on volunteers to dole out food.

The setting in South Florida stands in sharp contrast to where Kadenuyks heart remains and what she left behind. I want to help them, Kadenuyk told the South Florida Sun Sentinel while sitting outside a Sunny Isles Beach condo, just a block from the ocean. But how can I? Im so angry. Theyre dying. Kids are dying.

Heeding the warning

It was a week before the invasion when Kadenuyk started readying to leave. She worried when President Joe Biden told the world that Russia would imminently invade Ukraine. Could anything so crazy even be possible? her neighbors asked aloud.

Natalia Kadenuyk and her children, Golda, nearly 2, and Galaktion, 11, are seen on Wednesday, March 2, 2022. They were able to flee from Ukraine to Sunny Isles Beach. (Mike Stocker / South Florida Sun Sentinel)

All the signs were there that she needed to do something. In addition to Bidens dire warning, there was exhaustive media coverage in her hometown of Kyiv. And her best friend insisted that the children could be in danger. Her family saw her packing.

Her precious photos of her children were already on her cellphone, so she grabbed clothes and their toothbrushes.

Why are we moving? her son, Galaktion, asked.

She made sure to calm him, but to steady her nerves, too. Think of it like a vacation that starts early, she told him.

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It was the night of Feb. 13. With her best friend traveling with them, she packed them all in her white Audi and headed to the Romanian border. From there it was on to Prague in the Czech Republic, where they stayed a few days.

Then she drove to Switzerland, where they flew to the U.S. aboard a Swiss Air Lines jet.

Arriving in Florida

South Florida beckoned because Ukrainian immigrants who are former classmates of her mothers offered her a room at their Sunny Isles Beach condo.

The family arrived Feb. 25, and spent a few days with her mothers friends. It was just a day after Russia launched a full-scale assault on Ukraine. That day brought shelling that sliced through a Kyiv apartment building and pummeled bridges and schools.

After a few days with the family of Anatoly and Bronya Glazer, Kadenuyk and her best friend moved on to stay with another friend on the same block of high-rise luxury condos.

She worries shell have to move every few days, and without a permanent address, she cant rent an apartment. And with only a tourist visa, she cant look for work to pay for it all.

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To date, an estimated one million civilians have fled Ukraine into Poland and other neighboring countries. The European Union has estimated that up to four million people may try to leave the country as the war escalates.

The rest of Kadenuyks family has had a harder time getting out.

On the third day of the war and without American visas, one sister and her mother and her 11-year-old twin nieces walked to the Romania border, waited in the three mile long line, in the cold, to cross customs.

They are hoping to eventually make it to Greece, where a family friend offered them refuge. That sisters husband, a businessman, has stayed behind.

We love our country, we love our president, we were free people, we had a good life, Kadenuyk said. It was the best place for me. (Mike Stocker / South Florida Sun Sentinel)

Her other sister stayed by choice because her son broke his leg and would be unable to flee.

Her sisters husband, a dentist, could possibly become part of the civilian resistance.

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For now, she worries. Almost all of her money is back home in a Ukrainian bank account.

She abandoned her car in the Zurich airport parking lot.

Her home, and everything she owns, are all in Kyiv.

She hugs her baby, Golda, tight.

The material things can be replaced, she said.

And it will have to be, because there might not be any turning back.

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We love our country

What happens next for Kadenuyk and her children is a source of worry. Her preference is to go home.

But if given the opportunity, she said shed love to stay in the U.S. and work, the legal way, she reassures. Back home she worked in real estate, buying and selling apartment buildings.

We can be useful for U.S., she said. Wed be happy to have this chance.

There was some good news: The Biden administration said Thursday that it is granting temporary protection from deportation for 18 months to Ukrainians already in the U.S. as of this past week.

Russias premeditated and unprovoked attack on Ukraine has resulted in an ongoing war, senseless violence, and Ukrainians forced to seek refuge in other countries, said Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. In these extraordinary times, we will continue to offer our support and protection to Ukrainian nationals in the United States.

For now, Kadenuyks tourist visa is good for only 180 days at a time, and she can feel the clock ticking. Even if she were to go home, what will she be going back to?

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As Russian President Vladimir Putin destroys towns and cities, how is it possible to live with kids? she asks. Hes already destroyed schools and hospitals.

Her voice chokes and then she cries.

Her son rushes to give her a reassuring hug.

Make sure people know the truth of the Ukrainian plight, she whispers to a reporter.

Make sure they know of what is happening back home, she said.

We love our country, we love our president, we were free people, we had a good life, she said. It was the best place for me.

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Lisa J. Huriash can be reached at lhuriash@sunsentinel.com or 954-572-2008 or Twitter @LisaHuriash
Jared Moskowitz on Friday became the first major candidate to announce hes running to fill the congressional seat being vacated later this year by U.S. Rep. Ted Deutch, instantly becoming a top contender.

The announcement comes just four days after Deutch announced he was leaving Congress to become CEO of the American Jewish Committee. It wasnt a surprise. On the day of Deutchs announcement, Moskowitz sounded prepared to run, a move hed long contemplated making whenever the current congressman left office.

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In the hours and days since Deutchs announcement, current and former elected officials in both parties began weighing candidacies. The Democratic and Republican primaries are Aug. 23. The general election is in November.

[ RELATED: Ted Deutchs decision to not seek re-election sets off scramble among potential successors ]

I am excited to announce my plans to run for United States Congress and will work every day to uphold the high bar set by Congressman Ted Deutch, Moskowitz said in a written statement.

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It is hard to not see what is happening abroad in Ukraine  who we stand strongly with  and not think of my grandparents, who had to flee Europe from a murderous dictator. Democracy is not just under assault abroad, but as we saw on January 6th, it is under attack here at home by an agenda spearheaded by Donald Trump, he said.

Moskowitz pledged to protect Social Security and Medicare, work for real gun safety measures and fight for the safety and protection of the State of Israel.

He was the state representative from Parkland when a gunman killed 17 people and injured 17 others in the Feb. 14, 2018, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School massacre. Moskowitz is a Stoneman Douglas graduate.

[ RELATED: Ethics Commission approves settlement over congressional candidate Dale Holness violations  after dissenting commissioner argues $1,000 penalty is too light ]

His emotional floor speech in the state House of Representatives helped win passage of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Act, which raised the age to purchase a rifle from 18 to 21, created a statewide waiting period for long-gun sales and made it easier for law enforcement to seize weapons from people suspected of being dangerous. It also earned him an F-minus rating from the National Rifle Association  a grade which Moskowitz has said meant he was doing the right thing.

Moskowitz is a well known political leader in Broward County.

Gov. Ron DeSantis, left, announced Nov. 23, 2021, that he was appointing Jared Moskowitz, right, to the Broward County Commission. Moskowitz has announced his candidacy for the Democratic nomination to succeed U.S. Rep. Ted Deutch, who is leaving Congress. (Susan Stocker / South Florida Sun Sentinel)

Currently he is an appointed member of the County Commission. He was a state representative in northwest Broward  a major part of the Deutch congressional district  when he was tapped in 2019 to become head of the state emergency management agency. Earlier, hed served as a Parkland city commissioner.

Two of those jobs  county commissioner and emergency management director  may not endear him to some Democratic primary voters because of the man who appointed him for both: Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis.

[ RELATED: Congressman Ted Deutch will resign and not seek re-election. Hes becoming CEO of major Jewish organization. ]

But Moskowitz has long family ties to the Democratic Party. Within minutes of Moskowitz announcement, his friend and close political ally, state Sen. Shevrin Jones, a Broward-Miami-Dade County Democrat, texted I support! Writing on Twitter, Jones said Moskowitz is more than just my best friend, but hes also a damn good public servant. I am proud of my brother! Good luck, J!

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Moskowitz has a family history of political involvement. His late father, Mike Moskowitz, was a widely admired in political circles. Mike Moskowitz, who died of pancreatic cancer in January, was a lawyer-lobbyist, a major Democratic Party fundraiser, and the countys former state Democratic Party committeeman.

Mike Moskowitz, a prominent lawyer-lobbyist, former Broward state Democratic committeeman, and major party fundraiser, has died of pancreatic cancer. He was 68.

His death was announced by his son, @JaredEMoskowitz, a Broward County Commissioner and former state representative. pic.twitter.com/Aw0tkIFMOx  Anthony Man (@browardpolitics) January 16, 2022

He left his previous position as emergency management director last year so he could spend more time with his father during his illness. Moskowitz said if elected he would work to support President Joe Bidens Cancer Moonshot initiative aimed at finding cures for cancer which has taken far too many good people from us, including my father.

Years ago, Moskowitz was an intern for then-Vice President Al Gore and worked on the presidential campaign of Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connectitut.

Moskowitz, 41, is a lawyer. Before DeSantis hired him to head the emergency management agency, Moskowitz was executive vice president and general counsel at AshBritt Environmental, a national disaster-recovery company, where he oversaw the companys contracting and procurement department.

Moskowitz and his wife have two children and live in Parkland.

The exact contours of the district arent certain because congressional districts are being redrawn to reflect population changes uncovered in the 2020 census. But given voter registration in Broward and Palm Beach counties, the district is likely to favor a Democrat.

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[ RELATED: Candidate who lost a 2020 Democratic primary by less than half a percent may run for Ted Deutch congressional seat ]

Not running

Also Friday, former state Rep. George Moraitis, R-Fort Lauderdale, began telling political associates he would not seek his partys nomination to run for Congress. Moraitis, a former chairman of the Broward Republican Party, said Tuesday he was thinking about entering the race.

I did consider it. It just decided not to run at this point. It is not a good time right now for our family, Moraitis said.

Moraitis said it would be a tough race for the Republicans. Even with redistricting, I think its going to be a lean Democrat seat, and I think itll be very challenging, adding that his party would nominate someone who would put up a good fight for the Republican Party.

Still a possibility: another Moraitis running in 2022. Fort Lauderdale Mayor Dean Trantalis is considering seeking the Democratic nomination for Deutchs seat, something that would require him to resign his current position.

If Trantalis leaves, Fort Lauderdale Commissioner Heather Moraitis, George Moraitis spouse, said she is prepared to run for mayor.

Palm Beach County State Attorney Dave Aronberg announced Friday that he wouldnt seek the Democratic nomination to succeed Deutch, a decision that was expected.

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Anthony Man can be reached at aman@sunsentinel.com or on Twitter @browardpolitics
MBABANE  Three more women have come out to claim that they were also harassed by Royal Eswatini Police Service (REPS) officers over their dress code.

The officers in question are stationed at The Swazi Plaza Police Post. The women said their speaking out was triggered by a recent encounter with police officers over a dress code that left a 27-year-old female traumatised.*Luthandos quick errand into town ended on a sad note when she was called into the Swazi Plaza Police Post over what she was wearing. The incident took place on March 2, 2022. Luthando, who is from one of the townships in Mbabane, narrated on social media platform, Twitter, how she was allegedly humiliated by about 12 police officers over her outfit, which she said they deemed as too revealing and short.

The thread reached thousands of people and was further circulated on other social media platforms like facebook and instagram. Since then, three more women have come out to complain about the treatment they had beem subjected to at the Swazi Plaza Police Post. When I saw her thread, I was triggered and I could relate because I had once been harassed by the police officers and the treatment seemed to be the same. In my case, I was wearing a white thigh high slit dress. They called me into their offices and asked me if I thought my dress was appropriate. They kept saying mean things to me, alleged*Sibonelo when sharing her ordeal. She further mentioned that she was kept at the station for over three hours and was threatened with jail. She claimed the incident took place around January this year.

Another woman, who also shared her experience with the police officers, claimed that she was clad in black leggings when the officers allegedly verbally abused her and accused her of being a sex worker. The police station has been harassing women for years, they have been doing this for years and by the look of things, they are always getting away with it.

My case was similar to what they did to the other girl I saw on twitter. They kept asking me to explain what my tights meant, alleged *Palesa.

Supermarket

The third woman, when sharing her story, said it took place last year December and she had just come out of a supermarket when she was called by the officers. I was wearing black leggings paired with an oversized T-shirt but they still harassed me, she claimed. Worth noting is that The Swazi Plaza and Swatini Action Group Againts Abuse (SWAGAA) have endorsed a demonstration against sexual harassment set to take place today. Speaking on the demonstration, SWAGAA National Director Nonhlanhla Dlamini said as an organisation advocating against abuse, they were disappointed by the police officers act. Dlamini said with the demonstration they had specifically targeted the Swazi Plaza Police Post. She said they also wanted to raise awareness on the term flashing. We were very disappointed. Police officers are supposed to be protecting us and now they are the ones harassing us. We need everyone to show up today and for an hour we will be demonstrating, she said.

Echoing Dlaminis sentiments was Swazi Plaza Marketing and Promotions Officer Siphiwe Nxumalo, who said they were in full support of the event. She said they were aware of the event that will take place within their premises today. We are for women empowerment and we stand against abuse. We welcome every woman today with open arms, she said.

Meanwhile, in a previous interview,Chief Police Information and Communications Officer Superintendent Phindile Vilakati said the police service was shocked by the interpretation of events (relating to the 27-year-old woman) because, according to what they knew, the police officers were simply trying to protect her from perpetrators and rescued her from a mob that was harassing her for the way she was dressed.

Ours is to serve and protect and we were doing just that. We are shocked because the police were simply trying to protect her from a mob which was harassing her over the way she was dressed and we are sad to hear that was harassment. On another note, if she feels she was not treated appropriately, she has a right to lodge a complaint, said Vilakati.
Policies should focus on green and growth

14:39, March 04, 2022 By CHEN WEIHUA in Brussels ( Chinadaily.com.cn

Former head of UN body advises NPC deputies to aid environment, economy

Erik Solheim, former executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme, has some advice for deputies to the National People's Congress who will meet for the annual session in Beijing starting March 5.

Solheim has closely followed and been involved in the green and sustainable development of China.

"They should truly embrace the win-win proposition that all policies can be good for the environment and good for the economy at the same time," he said.

Citing a long list of related development projects, from green infrastructure and agriculture to electric mobility, Solheim said NPC deputies should ensure that the green transition is occurring properly in both developed and less-developed regions.

He added that the United States and European nations are facing similar challenges.

"So to focus on win-win and focus on fair transition, that's my advice as a foreigner," he said.

Solheim has been tweeting a lot about China's green development, including its high-speed rails, solar and wind mills and electric cars.

He called the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympic Games the first "net zero" Olympics, as they made use of renewable energy as well as electric and hydrogen vehicles.

"It was a breakthrough to have this focus on net zero to show Paris and Milan, which will hold the next two Olympics," he said, referring to the 2024 Summer Olympics and 2026 Winter Olympics, respectively.

Solheim said he was very impressed by China's shift from high-speed development to high-quality development. He said China has achieved the fastest economic development of any nation in human history and lifted all its citizens out of extreme poverty in the first few decades of its reform and opening-up efforts, which began in the late 1970s.

"Building on that, I think China is now into the next phasehigh quality rather than just high quantity growthand transitioning to an ecological civilization," he said.

He noted that China leads the world in terms of scale in every green technology, from solar and wind power to hydrogen and electric mobility, and it is becoming a leader in environmental protection practices.

"Certainly, it can still learn from the rest of the world, but the rest of the world can learn a lot from China," said Solheim, who served as Minister of Environment and Minister of International Development in Norway.

He was confident that China can fulfill its pledge to reach carbon neutrality by 2060, a promise President Xi Jinping made at the UN General Assembly in September 2020.

As an example of China's achievements, Solheim cited the fact that it produces 80 percent of the world's solar panels. This is one way in which it has been able to create jobs and boost its economic prosperity while being green. "That's the way forward."

He said that the world needs to cooperate more to tackle global challenges. As the Indian proverb says, the whole world is one family.

"If you work together, the sky is the limit. You can achieve everything," he said.

He added that this way of thinking also applies to building infrastructure in Africa, which some Western politicians and news media describe as regions in which major powers are vying for influence.

Solheim said that developing countries want firm partnerships with China, the US, the European Union and every nation in the world.

"They want investment and partnership, friendship and political contacts, and no one wants to choose (sides)," he said.

He said the initiatives by various countries in Africa should be seen as complementary instead of confrontational. "They should work together," he said.

Solheim cited China's strength of building some 40,000 kilometers of high-speed railways domestically.

"The United States has none. So how you can go to Africa with high-speed rails that you can't build at home?" he asked.

However, he added the US has some of the best universities in the world.

"They can invite African students to study in those universities," Solheim said.

(Web editor: Zhong Wenxing, Liang Jun)
MBABANE  Eswatini has taken a decision not to participate in voting on the ongoing situation between Russian Federation and Ukraine.

This comes after a resolution adopted by the UN General Assembly for African countries to vote. The UN Assembly has voted to demand that Russia stops its offensive and immediately withdraw all troops. About 28 countries voted in favour of the UN resolution, while 17 abstained and one vote was against the resolution. The country and seven others, including Bukina Faso, Cameroon, Ethopia, Guinea, Ginea-Bissau, Morocco and Togo, did not participate. According to the Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, Thuli Dladla, Eswatini is very concerned about the continued deterioration of relations between the Russian Federation and Ukraine. Dladla stated that the developments signified by the military action between the two brotherly countries was regrettable.

Noting the difficult issues under contention between the two nations, Eswatini is encouraging a process of rapprochement through an honest engagement in dialogue and negotiation, that will find a lasting solution and a permanent de-escalation of tensions, said the minister. She said in essence, all member states of the United Nations (UN), should work towards a unified purpose to bring Russia and Ukraine on the negotiation table, bringing along all means possible to broker a peaceful resolution, in accordance with the UN Charter, which was a constant reminder about the goodness of humanity. The minister said Eswatini had a commitment to all countries, big and small, to show equal regard of dignity and relevance, in a world that continued to be divided.

Dladla said the country was of the view that International Law should take precedence and that the UN is very significant in playing its all important role to mediate and persuade an inclusive process that will end the conflict with immediate effect. She said the UN may not fail in this regard, and should find its relevance to build bridges of peace and security, by confronting the geopolitical challenges of this lifetime.
Meadville, PA (16335)

Today

Some sun in the morning with increasing clouds during the afternoon. High 68F. Winds light and variable..

Tonight

Cloudy with occasional light rain after midnight. Low 53F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 80%.
TAMPA, Fla.

March 3, 2022

Kathy Ireland

Kathy Ireland

Marilyn McCoo

Billy Davis Jr

Nic Mendoza

Kathy Ireland

Marilyn McCoo

Billy Davis Jr.

Austin, Texas

March 6th

Gabriella Graves

Delaware

Cami Ask

Rona Menashe

/PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- The National Pediatric Cancer Foundation (NPCF), a leading nonprofit organization dedicated to eradicating childhood cancer, is launching "Music Funds the Cure" in support of the 43 children diagnosed with pediatric cancer daily. Supermodel turned super mogul, who serves as NPCF's International Youth Chair, proclaims the relevance of merging the joy of music in support of the fight against pediatric cancer.Music is something that everyone enjoys, and cancer is something that everyone despises. Engaging people to share their passion for music and align it with raising awareness and funds to support pediatric cancer research is the intent of "Music Funds the Cure". "We are so excited to joinand the National Pediatric Cancer Foundation, to lift our voices and talents to benefit this extraordinary organization for children who are battling cancer. This is our third year of supporting Kathy, as International Youth Chair of NPCF, and we are grateful for the opportunity to participate in such a meaningful way," said eight-time Grammy Award-winners,, heralded as the 'First Couple of Pop & Soul', stars of the Academy Award-nominated film, "Summer of Soul" directed by Questlove, and recording artists, whose latest album, "blackbird: Lennon-McCartney Icons" on EE1 BMG, produced by, returned the duo to the Billboard charts after an absence of over 40 years."Funding research will help save the lives of children fighting cancer," says, whose record label, EE1 (under music giant BMG), recently returned music iconsto the top of the album charts with their first studio album in over thirty years, Lennon-McCartney Icons. "Music Funds the Cure has various ways for people to get involved. Artists and corporations can donate a percentage of their proceeds for their product or services. Musicians of all ages can post a donate link to their social media and challenge their network to listen to their music and donate to the NPCF," adds the philanthropist.Orpheus Academy of Music in, https://secure.qgiv.com/event/orpheusacademy/ is currently raising funds with students demonstrating to their network their skills and requesting support for their classmate Theo who lost his battle with cancer. The Academy will also be hosting a concert onto celebrate Theo's life and passion for music. This event is being streamed live.Actor and musicianis also supporting pediatric cancer research by encouraging patients to be courageous and continue to dream. She is hosting a "video dream series via YouTube" highlighting participants in the NPCF's Fashion Funds the Cure events across the country. Gabriella is known for her recurring role as, the quirky best friend, on Disney Channel's Coop andthe World. When she is not working, Gabi's passions are creating YouTube videos of cover songs (singing to piano, ukulele, and guitar).To put in perspective how important the support of this program is -- only four percent of the billions of dollars annually spent on cancer research is directed towards treating childhood cancer, and yet childhood cancer is the number one cause of death by disease in children. Moreover, fewer than 10 drugs have been developed for use in children with cancer since 1980. These are staggering statistics that we, as a society, can't ignore. As the top-rated cancer charity, the National Pediatric Cancer Foundation is dedicated to putting 100% of our efforts towards developing safer, more effective treatment, to ensure these children not only survive but thrive after treatment.Since its inception, the NPCF has been working to develop these treatments through their innovative Sunshine Project, a business model unlike any other in the field of pediatric cancer research. Consisting of a consortium of over 32 leading pediatric hospitals nationwide, the Sunshine Project was founded with the goal of leveraging collaboration, both scientific and philanthropic, to identify promising, less toxic, novel therapies to treat and eliminate childhoodTo join - log onto: https://nationalpcf.org/programs/music-funds-the-cure/About National Pediatric Cancer Foundation The National Pediatric Cancer Foundation is a nonprofit organization dedicated to funding research to eliminate childhood cancer through the Sunshine Project, the Foundation's collaborative research initiative. By partnering with doctors and researchers from the country's top institutions, the Sunshine Project is fast-tracking the development of new drugs and therapies that will ultimately lead to the cure of childhood cancers. The NPCF has received a perfect 100% score for financial health and transparency and is recognized as the top-rated cancer charity in the U.S. by Charity Navigator. For more information, visit http://www.NationalPCF.org or connect via Facebook, Twitter or Instagram., Guttman Associates, +1 (310)246-4600, rona@guttmanpr.comSOURCE National Pediatric Cancer Foundation
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Whereas nuclear DNA (the famous double helix, which encodes most of the genome) is inherited from both parents, mtDNA is inherited solely from the mother.At birth, a female infant's ovaries already contain all the eggs she will ever have. During the reproductive cycles that begin at puberty, some of these immature eggs develop under the influence of hormones, leading to ovulation and potentially to fertilization.The study shows for the first time that mutant mtDNA builds up in the final stages of egg formation. The researchers conducted experiments in mice, reporting that the proportion of mutant molecules increased as the eggs matured, that these mutants can impair the functioning of mitochondria, and that they are responsible for the development of disease.At most 90% of the mtDNA was subject to mutation, the researchers discovered. The existence of an upper limit is important to an understanding of how mutant mtDNA is transmitted and can cause disease.When mutant and wild-type mtDNA coexist in a cell (heteroplasmy), the effects of mutant mtDNA may be masked, facilitating transmission to offspring. "Until now, no one knew if this buildup occurred, but our study proved it does. Now that we understand where and how it occurs, it's possible to work out ways of avoiding it," said Marcos Roberto Chiaratti, a professor in the Department of Genetics and Evolution at the Federal University of Sao Carlos (UFSCar) in the state of Sao Paulo, Brazil.Chiaratti and graduate student Carolina Habermann Macabelli are among the authors of the article. The study was supported by FAPESP via two projects (17/04372-0 and 16/07868-4).Chiaratti also received a Newton Advanced Fellowship from the UK's Academy of Medical Sciences. He collaborates with the group led by Patrick Francis Chinnery, last author of the article. Chinnery is Professor of Neurology at the University of Cambridge, and Wellcome Trust Principal Research Fellow for its MRC Mitochondrial Biology Unit."The most effective treatment entails identifying the mutation in the mother in order to prevent inheritance by the children. This is the context for our research, which aims to verify which mutations are transmitted and analyze the mechanism involved. The study of mitochondrial disease in Brazil is still very incipient," Chiaratti said.The symptoms of mitochondrial disease vary according to the mutation, the number of damaged cells, and the tissue affected. The most common include weak muscles, loss of motor coordination, cognitive impairment, brain degeneration, and kidney or heart failure.Such hereditary metabolic diseases can appear at any age, but the earlier the mutation manifests itself, the more likely it is to lead to severe symptoms and even death. Diagnosis is difficult, typically requiring genetic and molecular testing, and statistics on prevalence are therefore deficient.According to estimates, diseases caused by mtDNA mutations affect at least one in every 5,000 people worldwide. However, the frequency of pathogenic mtDNA mutations is about one in 200. The mutation m.3243A>G, which causes MELAS syndrome (Mitochondrial Encephalopathy, Lactic Acidosis, and Stroke-like episodes), occurs in some 80% of adults with pathogenic heteroplasmic mutations.ExperimentThe researchers studied genetically modified mice with two types of mitochondrial genome: the wild type, which does not cause disease, and the pathogenic mutation m.5024C>T, similar to m.5650G>A, a pathogenic mutation present in humans.Analysis of 1,167 mother-pup pairs detected a strong tendency for females with low levels of m.5024C>T to transmit higher levels of the mutation to their offspring. In females with high levels of the mutation, however, the opposite tendency was detected, pointing to purifying selection against high levels of the mutation (over 90%).Analysis of mouse oocytes (immature eggs) at different stages of development showed rising levels of m.5024C>T over wild-type mtDNA. This suggests mutant mtDNA is preferentially replicated during oocyte maturation, regardless of the cellular cycle, as eggs do not undergo cell division until ovulation. The researchers tested several mathematical models, and the one that best explained the phenomenon pointed to a replicative advantage favoring mutant mtDNA and purifying selection that prevents the mutation from reaching high levels.They first measured heteroplasmy in 42 females and 1,167 descendants. Next, they measured levels of mutant mtDNA in eggs at different stages of development and compared them with levels of mutation in different organs at different ages.They found evidence that the results applied to mice bearing another pathogenic mutation (m.3875delC tRNA) and to humans, as indicated by analysis of 236 mother-child pairs. This pointed to positive selection when the mutation was transmitted from mothers with low heteroplasmy levels and purifying selection against high heteroplasmy levels (over 90%). They concluded that positive selection resulted from a preference for replication of the mutant over the wild-type molecule."This preferential replication enabled the level of mutation to reach the 90% ceiling, above which the negative effect of mutations is too great and other mechanisms appear to act on the egg to prevent them from reaching 100%," Chiaratti said.He plans to travel to the UK soon to conduct new experiments. A possible next step would be to proceed to the pharmacological treatment stage with the aim of combating levels of mtDNA mutation so as to prevent transmission of disease. "Once we understand how the buildup in mutations leading to mitochondrial disease occurs during the final stage of egg formation, we're in a position to produce eggs in vitro and manipulate them, pharmacologically as well as genetically, in order to reduce mutation levels, lowering the probability that a child will develop the disease," he said.Source: Eurekalert
Weve all made at least one (or more) boss moves in our life. For some, it could have been coming up with the best and most savage comeback, for another it could be to get the girl and how.

But for this gentleman in South Kivu, it meant getting not one, but three women, without even having to lift a finger.

 Twitter

Emerged as what can only be called the real OG, a man from the Democratic Republic of Congo recently married three women - all of them triplets, after they proposed to him simultaneously.



Clearly, the guy had done something exceptionally great and noble in his past life, to have luck like this.

Luwizo is now married to the triplets, all of whom he claims to have proposed to him for marriage simultaneously. The three sisters didnt just imprint on the same man, they decided to share their husband going forward, considering they had shared everything since the time they were little.

 Twitter

Polygamy as a concept has reinvented itself with this wedding, it seems, as the four of them walked towards their happily ever after.



Luwizo revealed that he had first fallen in love with Natalie before meeting her two other sisters. And when they came along, it was probably too good a deal to pass along. After all, who would say no to this?

 Twitter

He revealed, Unexpectedly, I met three girls with one face, I was very much surprised that I almost fainted. As much as I was dreaming, I asked, amongst all of you, who is Nathalie? They said, consequently, you never met with one girl. For the first time, you met Nadege, the second time, you met Natasha, and the third time, you met with the social media girl, Nathalie.



He went on to share his feeling as he said, I immediately fell into a trance and I became confused as I had already agreed to marry Nathalie but the most surprising to me, is that I found out that I cant marry one of the girls and leave the two of them behind.

The wedding took place in Kalehe, which is a territory located in South Kivu near Rwanda, and since marrying more than one person is legal in Congo, the decision didnt invite any legal trouble. However, it did stir up a cause of concern for Luwizos parents.

He exchanged his vows with three women in a private ceremony attended by close friends and family and even though his parents didnt understand him, he said, I was obliged to marry all of them because they are triplets. It wasn't an easy decision because until now, my parents don't understand what I'm doing."

 Twitter

He also shared, You have to lose something in order to gain another. In addition, one has their preferences and their own way of doing things. So I'm happy to marry the triplets no matter what others think. My parents despised my decision that's why they didn't attend my wedding. But all I can say is love has no limits."



At the time of the proposal when all three sisters - Natalie, Nadege and Natasha all popped the big question to him, he said he almost fainted out of sheer surprise calling it no less than a dream. Yeah well, no shit Luwizo.

 Twitter

As they are all married now, one sister even shared, Today we are very happy, as you can see, because our dreams came true without being separated by husbands, but God heard our prayers.


MANZINI  Civil servants should heave a sigh of relief as government has addressed the issue of non-access to loans from credit providers.

This follows that government had recently not renewed its contract with credit providers, which prevented all civil servants from accessing loans. The delayed renewal of the contract lasted for two days, beginning from March 1, 2022. orth noting is that the challenge of accessing loans for civil servants had only applied to credit providers and not banks. According to a member of the His Majestys Correctional Services, he had a financial challenge which compelled him to apply for a loan at First Finance on Monday. The civil servant shared that he had a long and short-term loan which he had settled.

He disclosed that he was informed that he was eligible for a short-term loan and the specific amount of money. However, due to that he was pressed for time, the government employee narrated that he could not go through the process of getting the loan and returned on the following day (Tuesday). When I got there, I was told that they could not access civil servants systems. They could not get access to my employment number, he said. The employee added that due to his desperation for money, he decided to opt for another prominent credit provider, where he was told about the similar challenge. To verify this, the employee said he approached another financial services provider, where he was also told that they could not access his employment details. The warder mentioned that he then went to the Public Service Pensions Fund to get his statement, where they required his employment details and identity number. Still, he could not get a loan from the credit providers. The civil servant highlighted that this was a great inconvenience to him as he had an indisposed relative who required to seek medical attention.

He said he was running from pillar to post, in search for the loan to help his sickly relative. In an almost similar case, a teacher who had to pay off her childs school fees and repair her car which was involved in an accident shared that she needed a quick loan to pay off her debts. The educator highlighted that she was disheartened when she was told that she could not be assisted in accessing a loan in one of the financial institutions as there was a system failure.

She said she could not even perform her duties well because she was stressed. Ministry of Finance Communications Officer Setsabile Dlamini confirmed that there was a challenge in civil servants getting loans from credit providers because government had not renewed their contract. Nonetheless, the communications officer mentioned that they had since renewed the contract yesterday. We have signed the agreement to renew the contract, it has since been sorted, so it should be up and running as of today, she said.
Gloria Brown Bruister, 81, passed away on Tuesday, May 3, 2022, at UAB Hospital in Birmingham, Ala., with her loving daughters by her side. Born on July 21, 1940, to Jay Lavell and Mattie Noblin Brown, Gloria graduated from Meridian High School in 1958. Married soon after to Hubert L. Bruist
LOBAMBA - They might have taken an oath to ensure security in the country, but police officers are no longer keen.

This is the message that Members of Parliament (MPs) communicated to Prime Minister Cleopas Sipho Dlamini yesterday. According to the MPs, the morale among most police officers was low and they were not motivated as their welfare was not taken care of. This was during the portfolio committee debate of the annual performance report of the three entities which fall under the PMs Office, which are Cabinet, the Royal Eswatini Police Service (REPS) and Parliament. As if they had dedicated yesterdays debate to the police officers, almost all the MPs spent some time talking about how they (officers) were not motivated. First to send the message across was Nkhaba MP Zakhele Magongo, who asked if the PM was happy with the work of the police officers in the country.

Injured

Magongo asked where the police were when people were either injured or died amid the political unrest last year. The Nkhaba MP said had he been the one in charge, he would have fired all the police officers. Motshane MP Robert Magongo had his colleagues in stitches when he submitted that some police officers had been assigned to provide security for the Speaker in the House of Assembly, Petros Mavimbela, and other top officials, something he said they were not happy about. You have provided security to people like the Speaker. The police do not like this. During their own discussions, they do not speak well. This is because they are made to sit outside while the Speaker sits inside comfortably in his office or at events enjoying good food, said Magongo.

Lobamba Lomdzala MP Marwick Khumalo also touched on the issue, saying the budget for the REPS came from the taxes paid by emaSwati. He said while he appreciated the police, he could not hide the fact that things had changed. Khumalo said he never thought that in his life he would one day witness an incident where a police officers house was torched. The Lobamba Lomdzala MP said even the people outside no longer saw police officers the same way they did some years ago. Instead, he said, the people now talked of police who shot people.

He then called on the PM to solve the issue of the salary review of junior police officers, saying the morale was low. Still on the same issue, Nhlambeni MP Manzi Zwane submitted that in terms of salaries, the gap between senior and junior police officers was too wide. Maseyisini MP Mduduzi Small Joe Dlamini said it was obvious that the police officers were demotivated and said they should be given the money they were supposed to receive as per the 2015 salary review. He said not taking care of the welfare of police officers had the potential of causing violence, which was not good since the country claimed to be a peaceful nation. Also demotivating police officers, according to the MPs, was the tendency to extend contracts of superintendents when they had already reached retirement age. The MPs said it was wrong to do that as there were other capable officers who could fill up the positions.

Once a person reaches retirement age, akahambe (he must go), submitted MP Magongo.

Demanded

Meanwhile, some of the MPs demanded answers on reports that more top officials were now provided with security by government. The Maseyisini MP, Dlamini, said the provision of security for top officials was too much as he had seen one individual heavily guarded. He mentioned that this was sending the wrong message. Mhlume MP Victor Malambe also questioned the provision of security to some top officials. He said while he understood that there had been incidents which instilled fear across the country, there was a Constitution in place, which detailed the benefits of politicians and the hierarchy. Since as a country we deemed it fit that some people should be provided with security, we must consider certain aspects. If we breach the Constitution, then it must cut across the board, he said. Malambe then asked to know the criteria used in deciding the officers who deserved security.

He then asked if the welfare of the officers who provided the security for the top government officials was considered. If you want to provide security for certain people, hire a private company that will accommodate all of us, submitted Malambe.

Ndzingeni MP Lutfo Dlamini, who emphasised on the need to act on the Speech from The Throne to reconcile differences, said it was surprising that some politicians had asked to be provided with security because they either feared for their lives or had their structures invaded by unknown arsonists.

In vernacular he asked; Ugadvwa kutsi unani? Ngulonjani yena lolotsi uyesaba yena ufuna kugadvwa, usabani ube uyi-politician?

Rebuild

The King said we need to rebuild what we have lost. This is the essence of todays debate. Something has gone wrong, we need to do something and make things right. The PM needs to tell us how the dialogue will happen. Let us go to the people and hear their concerns, said the Ndzingeni MP. In his summary of responses, the PM acknowledged the concerns raised by the MPs. In particular, he noted that the unfilled posts at the police service were a concern and said it was an issue that cut across all government departments. He said within the REPS, the standard hierarchy was known and that it would be considered when the posts were filled and that this would be done in consultation with the Ministry of Public Service. Regarding the salary review, the PM said it had to happen but that such would be possible once funds were available. On another note, the MPs raised other issues to which they sought answers from the PM. These included the proposed construction of a new Parliament building. The issue of an incident which occurred during the political unrest last year where tear gas was thrown into a bus carrying protesters was also raised with the PM. MP Khumalo said throwing the tear gas inside the bus was tantamount to mass killing.

Condemn

You cannot do that, no matter what had happened. It is sad that government did not make an effort to condemn such an act. It showed that this is no longer a country, he said. On another note, Nkilongo MP Timothy Myeni criticised the PM for having told the world that it was only a small fraction of emaSwati who were calling for change. Myeni wondered when the PM conducted a survey to ascertain what exactly the people wanted. Worth noting during yesterdays debate was that Myeni praised police officers for doing a commendable job by responding promptly whenever communities reported crime. He submitted that police officers showed up for him when his 15 cattle were stolen. Police officers are our brothers, fathers, children and sisters. They are unhappy right now because those holding senior positions had their salaries reviewed, while the junior ones have still not received anything since 2015. I must state, however, that I will not praise them for shooting people during the political unrest, said Myeni. He then called on the PM to ensure that the recruitment in the police service did not delay.
House Majority Caucus Chair Suzanne Miles filed legislation Tuesday that aims to address the states health care worker shortage through a partnership with educational institutions.

Miles serves as state representative for part of Daviess and Henderson counties and all of Union County.

The bill Miles introduced, House Bill 751, targets the issue of staffing shortages within the health care field throughout 18 western Kentucky counties by establishing the Commonwealth West Healthcare Workforce Innovation Center in Owensboro.

The center would serve as a health education and training facility where postsecondary, high school and nontraditional students enrolled in public and private schools would partner with and learn from health care providers like Owensboro Health, as well as businesses and other public and private entities.

The goal, according to Miles, is to create a talent pipeline that would cultivate more interest in health care from local students and ultimately increase the number of individuals seeking careers in the field.

We faced a nursing and health care worker shortage before the pandemic began, she said. Like so many things, COVID made the problem worse, with more people leaving the profession and fewer entering it. No one knows more about the problem than our hospitals and long-term care providers, and it makes sense to listen to them and support their efforts to solve that problem.

According to a membership poll released by the Kentucky Nurses Association in October, 73% of nurses polled said the driving factor behind their burnout and the overall workforce shortage were large patient loads and not enough staff.

The health care worker shortage predates COVID-19, stemming from a decrease in nursing students and an aging workforce, with 61% of survey participants having more than 21 years of experience in the field.

Additionally, the American Association of Colleges of Nursing notes that the shortage is national and attributes the fact that nursing school enrollment is not keeping up with demand, with jobs in rural areas being historically more difficult to fill.

We must plan for the future now and proactively address the nursing and health care workforce shortages to ensure residents of western Kentucky have access to quality care, particularly in rural communities where there is a dire need, said Mark Marsh, president and CEO of Owensboro Health. The CWHWIC has the potential to shape the next generation of health care professionals and make western Kentucky a model for education and innovation.

Under the provisions of HB 751, the legislature would provide a portion of the startup funds for the center, which will be administered through the Kentucky Community and Technical College System, according to the bill summary.

This is an investment in our community, Miles said. While these students will likely make a career in communities across the state, many will remain right here in our region.

This talent pipeline will provide the next generation of west Kentucky health care providers.

Christie Netherton, cnetherton@messenger-inquirer.com, 270-691-7360
Kentucky Lt. Gov. Jacqueline Coleman announced Thursday that more than $4.7 million in funding has been awarded to Daviess County to use for clean water projects and the OASIS Womens Shelter, which alone received $1 million.

Coleman made the announcements at the Daviess County Courthouse with a group of elected officials, city and county employees, and community members in the crowd.

The water projects are part of the states Better Kentucky Plan announced last summer, which includes $250 million to improve the commonwealths water infrastructure.

The county has earmarked the funds for 13 projects: $1,310,000 for a waterline upgrade at Wing Avenue/Wimsatt Court; $847,596 for the Jack Hinton Road water main project; $275,000 for Highway 54 waterline relocation; $269,823 for a square pump station and force main in Williamsburg Square; and $200,000 for a Daviess County Water District master meter installation project.

It also has planned to spend $198,679 for a waterline upgrade on Ward Road; $165,000 for a pump upgrade on Reed Road; $165,000 for a pump station upgrade on Carter Road; $128,000 for a small main replacement on Cedar Street; $60,000 for a small main replacement on Stonewall Court; $55,000 for a small main replacement on Jeff Place; $54,000 for a small main replacement on Birkhead Avenue; and $198,679 for a waterline upgrade on Ward Road in Whitesville.

Judge-Executive Al Mattingly said several agencies met last summer to decide how to spend the funds. He said the projects represent what is possible when members of a community come together for the common good.

The groups that met last summer to decide where to delegate these funds recognize the importance of good, clean, potable water ... and also being able to dispose of waste associated with water, he said. I really am proud of all those agencies that met for a months period last June to discuss and come to a consensus as to how we would spend the $3.7 million that was designated for Daviess County.

Coleman said the Better Kentucky Plan was also made possible with a bipartisan compromise by legislators, who recognize the states aging infrastructure cannot support jobs of the future.

The plan will be good for the economy and bringing more business, she said, but it will also be good for families, with having good, clean drinking water being a basic human right.

What we are doing is we are building the foundation for tomorrows economy today, and that is not just an investment today, that is an investment that is long-term and for generations, she said. These systems make such a difference for economic development because it helps businesses to decide where theyre going to locate or relocate or expand.

Even more than that, it makes such a huge difference for families.

The $1 million grant for OASIS, Owensboros domestic violence shelter, will be used to acquire a new location for the facility. About six months ago, leadership at the organization was told they had less than a year to vacate its home of 26 years.

Andrea Robinson, OASIS director, said that information alone was unnerving and unsettling, but having to navigate that process in the middle of a pandemic was a little terrifying.

With the help of the governors office, the Department of Local Government, the Green River Area Development District, Daviess County Fiscal Court and other community leaders, OASIS will become the first domestic violence service provider in Kentucky to offer noncongregate shelter to survivors, Robinson said.

Its very emotional, because our survivors are trying to rebuild their lives, so not only will we continue to be able to offer them the safety and support they need, but theyll be able to do it in their own space, she said, and its a big deal.

Following her announcements at the courthouse, Coleman visited Hager Preschool, where she read Dr. Seuss Mr. Brown Can Moo! Can You? and walked through each of the preschool classrooms. Students presented her with a book signed by each of them, as well as art they created in her honor.

Bobbie Hayse, bhayse@messenger-inquirer.com, 270-691-7315
The Daviess County Sheriffs Department will host a community event Saturday to give people an opportunity to chat with deputies and ask questions.

The event will be from 9 to 11 a.m. at Bittel Hall on the Daviess County Lions Club Fairgrounds, 6191 Kentucky 54 in Philpot.

Sheriff Barry Smith said the event will be informal. Equipment such as patrol vehicles will be on display.

You can call it a community outreach, but its also a way to get to know your sheriffs office as well, Smith said. People can ask any questions about the sheriffs office and learn about the offices responsibilities.

We hope to have several staff on hand, just as a meet-and-greet.

The event is a way for deputies to start interacting with the public in an informal way again, Smith said. There wont be a presentation. People can arrive any time during the event.

With COVID, we havent had as many events we have been able to participate in, Smith said. We just thought we would do something of our own.

If anyone is interested in learning how to apply to be a deputy, we wont shy away from handing out applications, if someone asks, he said.

The office is looking at holding future events in other parts of the county, Smith said.

The event is a way to create closer ties to the community, he said.

We depend on the community quite a bit for information about cases, Smith said. Any kind of good rapport we can have with the community will hopefully pay dividends in the future.

James Mayse, 270-691-7303, jmayse@messenger-inquirer.com, Twitter: @JamesMayse
Hannah Thurman has been named the next public information officer for Daviess County Public Schools.

Thurman will replace Lora Wimsatt, who has been in the position for 20 years. Wimsatt will retire at the conclusion of this school year.

Currently, Thurman works for the Greater Owensboro Chamber of Commerce as the director of talent programs, communications and events. She began with the chamber in 2019 as the events and communications coordinator and was responsible for planning and implementing chamber events and meetings, as well as producing video content and virtual events.

She also has coordinated all chamber print publications, according to information provided by DCPS.

She will begin in her position with the school district on April 4.

Matt Robbins, DCPS superintendent, said Thurman brings a strong background of experience and talent to the position.

I am confident she will represent DCPS as a positive ambassador of our districts Kids First mission of service to students, families and staff, he said.

In her role as the school district PIO, Thurman will plan, organize and administer public information services for the district. Her responsibilities will include working with district- and school-level administrators to communicate information to families, students, staff and the community. She also will be the DCPS spokesperson to the media and the community, according to DCPS.

Thurman has a bachelor of arts degree in advertising from Western Kentucky University, where she also earned a masters degree in recreation and sport administration, with an emphasis in media and branding. She is currently working toward a doctor of education degree in educational leadership from WKU.

Thurman said it is an honor to join the DCPS team and to serve DCPS students, families and staff as the PIO.

As a proud graduate of DCPS, I look forward to being part of the continued tradition of preparing and supporting our communitys students for success, she said.

Bobbie Hayse, bhayse@messenger-inquirer.com, 270-691-7315
Amidst national healthcare staffing shortages that have been made worse by the COVID-19 pandemic, paramedic Julie DeJarnette has remained in her role, where she feels she is meant to be right now.

DeJarnette has been a paramedic for Owensboro American Medical Response (AMR) for about seven years. She has worked in emergency management services for more than 20 years.

Although she didnt initially intend on a career in emergency services, she found her calling as a first responder, despite any negatives associated with the career, such as low pay.

That, coupled with the pandemic, theres been many who have dropped out, she said.

The pandemic has worsened staffing levels, but DeJarnette said there was already a shortage before COVID-19.

With low pay for the skills and services provided by paramedics and other EMS workers, she said many had already decided to go in a different direction with their careers.

COVID-19 and the new challenges it presented, especially in regards to how contagious it is, caused even more workers to leave the field.

With the pandemic and staff members getting sick and being exposed to what were exposed to, its just a lot more work, she said. There just arent enough of us to cover the call volume.

DeJarnette said many staff members falling ill to COVID-19 during the pandemic added to the staffing issues.

At times, she said, an entire shift can be out sick and in quarantine, meaning the staff who are not sick have to cover even more hours.

DeJarnette said she was infected, despite being vaccinated, and worries regularly about being exposed at work and possibly spreading it to her family, especially those who might be immunocompromised.

It is not just COVID-19, however, that EMS workers have to be concerned about, she said, but many other illnesses that theyre exposed to on a regular basis.

Were exposed to blood-born pathogens daily, like HIV and hepatitis, and it is scary knowing we could have COVID and transmit it to a family member, she said.

Despite challenges, DeJarnette said she knows her job is an important one and that she is helping many in big ways.

This isnt necessarily a glorified job, but its a needed job, she said.

She said this is what she needs to be doing, whether it is saving a life or helping a senior who has fallen and needs assistance.

Those individuals that she helps are the reason she continues the work.

I just feel like this is where Im supposed to be, she said. I cant imagine doing anything else.

Christie Netherton, cnetherton@messenger-inquirer.com, 270-691-7360
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

February 16, 2022

Contact: press@michigan.gov

Governor Whitmer Announces Additional $400 Million to Support Businesses, Retain or Create Jobs, and Boost Michigan's Economy

LANSING, Mich. - Governor Gretchen Whitmer today announced a new grant program beginning March 1, 2022 that will provide business with additional financial support totaling $409 million to help retain or create jobs and boost our state's economy.

"This program will support Michigan businesses that were impacted by COVID-19 and help us build on our economic momentum," said Governor Whitmer. "I'm focused on putting Michiganders first and growing Michigan's economy as we work together to take advantage of our $7 billion surplus and make investments in the issues that matter most to families. Right now, Michigan's resilient, innovative small businesses need support, and we should keep having their backs as they work to expand operations and create more jobs."

Under this program, eligible businesses in operation before October 1, 2019, may receive a percentage of their loss in total state sales through a grant, up to $5 million. Eligible businesses that began operating between October 1, 2019, and June 1, 2020, may receive a grant equal to 25% of certain specified costs. The grants may be prorated depending upon the number of businesses that apply to ensure that all eligible businesses can receive funding.

"Treasury is committed to ensuring these payments are received by eligible businesses," State Treasurer Rachael Eubanks said. "We are working with our business and community partners to ensure potential applicants are aware of this funding opportunity. I encourage businesses to check if they're eligible for a grant."

Businesses must submit a completed online application to the Michigan Department of Treasury no later than 11:59 p.m. EST Thursday, March 31. Grant awardees will be notified in the spring and grant awards will be distributed by July 1, 2022.

The application will become available at 8 a.m. EST on Tuesday, March 1, at www.michigan.gov/abr.

Businesses interested in applying are encouraged to attend one of the following informational webinars hosted by the state Treasury Department:

Thursday, Feb. 17 at 9-10 a.m. EST

Tuesday, Feb. 22 at 10-11 a.m. EST

Monday, March 7 at 1-2 p.m. EST

Details for signing up for a webinar can be found on the grant program's website.

To learn more about the Afflicted Business Relief Grant Program or read frequently asked questions, go to www.michigan.gov/abr.

###
When Sydney Cannarozzi was young, she told us that she didnt know that I was going to work in beer. But as a teenager, I always thought that working in beer would be a dream job.

Cannarozzi has now been a professional brewer for over 10 years, but it hasnt been exactly easy.

Women have to prove themselves ten times more than any man, she said. It seems like we have to explain ourselves all the time.

Being a woman in the beer industry is still a bit of a rarity. According to a study by the national organization the Brewers Association in 2021, only 7.5% of brewers are female, and only 2% of breweries are wholly owned by women. About 51% of breweries are owned by a male/female team. We dont know the percentages of women brewers and owners in Michigan, as the Michigan Liquor Control Commission doesnt ask for demographics when people apply for a license.

Originally from Riverside, California, Cannarozzi moved to Michigan after meeting her now-husband during a summer spent working in Colorado. Chris Fischer was a Michigan native, so the couple moved back here, where Cannarozzi promptly fell in love, not just with Fischer but with Michigan as well.

Lake Michigan just blew me away, she said. Everything was so green. The cost of living was great, I couldnt believe how affordable it was.

Cannarozzi delivered pizzas for two years, while she continued her homebrewing escapades. She got started early with fermenting.

At 16 I was making prison wine in my closet, she said with a laugh.  I was making hooch in my closet. In a 5-gallon water jug. I used that so I could watch the fermentation since it was a clear jug. And it just blew my mind. I never read a book on brewing. I just started mixing juice, bread yeast, sugar and fruit. It was such a mess!

Two good things came out of this closet hooch, Cannarozzi said.

We always had backup booze, and it sparked an interest in me a long, long time ago," she said.

Amy Sherman/Courtesy Photo

As Cannarozzi approached the legal age of 21, she had a revelation.

A light bulb went off, she said. I was close to 21. I could actually work in the beer industry.

She started dropping off resumes to breweries along the Lake Michigan lakeshore, and ended up scoring a job at Our Brewing in Holland as a bartender. It was one foot in the brewery door, so to speak.

No shy wallflower, Cannarozzi knew of an opportunity when she saw one.

I would force my way into the production facility at Our all the time, Id say teach me all the things," she said.

A few months later, she attended an event that would really change her life. And in the spirit of full foreclosure, Ill let you know that I was there for that fateful day. In fact, there were several women in attendance that would become mentors for Cannarozzi as she entered the brewing industry.

Amanda Pants Geiger was brewing at Hudsonville Pike 51 Brewery at the time.

A regular at Pike had met her when she moved here from California, Geiger said And she told her about the Fermenta brew day.

Fermenta-A Womens Craft Collective is a charitable non-profit organization, founded in 2014 by brewer Stacey Roth, Shorts Brewery sales manager Pauline Knighton-Preuter and brewer Angie Williams.

Created as a way to encourage more women to become involved in the beer industry, the group focuses on education, collaborative brewing, sharing of knowledge and mentorship. Currently, the group is open to any female involved in any and all fermented beverages and food industries. They offer educational events and seminars, and special scholarships to help promote education amongst its members.

Sydney Cannarozzi/Courtesy Photo

That special day, a group of some of the top, and only, women brewers in West Michigan for a special collaborative brew in honor of Fermenta.

Amanda Geiger, who was a brewer at Pike 51 at that time, hosted a women's collaboration brew day, said Laura Houser, brewer at Founders Brewing in Grand Rapids.

She was in attendance that day, along with her partner Tara Durkin. Also in attendance were Sheryl Rose and Bonnie Steinman, who currently works at Bells.

It truly was a fantastic day," she said. "It brought in so many different women. All of them chomping at the bit to hang out with other women and brew and talk about beer with only other women. Maybe that doesn't sound like a big deal, but it was the first time most of us had been a part of anything like that.

I popped into the party a little late, after the ladies had been brewing for a while, to catch the story of this exciting gathering. I remember walking through the door and being inundated with peals of delighted laughter.

We laughed so much that day, my sides were sore, Houser remembered.

I was terrified, said Cannarozzi. I had never met any of you. Someone had said that these women wanted to make beer with me. That day was so much fun, that day I didnt even know where I could go with my career, and that day gave me a lot of opportunities.

She was the first one to show up that morning, Geiger said. And she was straight-up super sunshine energy, just ready to brew and learn everything she could.

I think Syd was like the third person to arrive that morning after Tara and I, said Houser. She was just a baby, maybe 22 or 23. I remember how nervous and excited she was to brew and to meet all the other women. And we all got along with her immediately. She was so friendly and helpful, and had a great sense of humor.

Cannarozzi also brought some presents to share that day.

I remember she even brought in bottles of her own homebrew to share with everyone, and it was phenomenal, said Houser. I knew then that if she could figure out a way to break into the industry, she would do great things.

She started bouncing around to different breweries, stopping by on brew days to help and gain knowledge.

I built up a resume of these experiences, she said.

She ended up applying for and getting, a full-time job at Trail Point Brewing in Allendale.

I was the only person doing all the production," Cannarozzi said. "Id work here during the week, and then go back and bartend at Our Brewing on the weekends.

At Trail Point, Cannarozzi came under the tutelage of Gary Evans and Jeff Knoblock.

Jeff has always been super supportive of me, she said. Gary was fantastic, he taught me a lot. I give him a lot of credit. Beer-making can be kind of easy, but there are alot of mistakes you can make, and he taught me discipline. I give him a lot of respect.

Sydney Cannarozzi/Courtesy Photo

From there, Cannarozzi moved on to managing the cellar at Our Brewing, and then took the leap to the big dog in town, Founders.

I wanted a challenge, she said. I applied for a cellar position, as there were a lot more of those than brewing positions.

Here, she blossomed.

The cellar position at Founders back then, we were responsible for everything on the cold side until packaging," she said. "So that meant, sanitzing, cleaning tanks, working the centrifuge, and clarifying beer without a filter. I learned about dry hopping, fruit additions, and was there for all of their seltzer trials. I got to work in the 300 barrel brewhouse, 3 days a week.

Cannarozzi brewed some of Founders' experimental and small-batch beers.

The process on such a large scale was fascinating, said Cannarozzi.

Dry-hopping here might mean 1400 pounds of hops being dumped from a bulldozer dangling over the tanks. Some days it might mean just filling and emptying barrels all day long.

Founders was super strict about how things were done," she said. "They really taught me everything I could possibly learn. It was just such a different scale of things."

She was the only woman on her 28 person team at the time. Over on the brewing side, there were three women out of 15, one of who was, and is, Houser.

After taking a break in 2020, Cannarozzi had the opportunity to create an all-female brew team at Elk Brewing in Comstock Park.

It was the chance of a lifetime, she said. I like to be challenged, to force myself to learn new things. I went in blind.

Elk was in a state of disrepair at the time, had recipes that had to be pieced together, needed to be reorganized, and cleaned up. If Cannarozzi could do that, she could hire her female production staff, and have some creative freedom in the beers.

I knew she was capable of cleaning it up and making good beer there, but I warned her that it was going to be an enormous and insane undertaking, said Houser. It was, but Cannarozzi was up to the task.

Elk Brewing recently had to close their Comstock Park facility, which resulted in Cannarozzi losing her job. Their Wealthy Street taproom remains open, while the Comstock Park location will become strictly a production facility.

It was a good experience overall, she said. I will never lose all that knowledge. I can bring all that with me.

Sydney Cannarozzi/Courtesy Photo

Since losing her job, Cannarozzi has been feeling the love.

West Michgian is seriously the best community I have ever been a part of, she said.Ill never find this kind of support anywhere else. I have a long list of friends I can call at any point to get answers, or help. I could say so many nice things about people in this industry.

Cannarozzi reflected on the changes shes seen in the industry since she started.

Its a lot different now, she said. Ive met more women working in production in the last few years than I had in the first six. The brewing school at GRCC and Kalamazoo, there are a lot of women doing these programs. There is a lot of support now. Maybe we, as women, are not questioned as much as before. Its much more positive.

That one day changed everything for Cannarozzi.

Bless Manda's heart for hosting because although it was an epic day, I'm sure it was a lot like herding drunk cats, said Houser about that fateful Fermenta brew day.

Ever since that day weve been forever friends, said Geiger. She has learned so much since that day. Shes always willing to learn and I love that shes come so far in this industry.

Her sparkling personality just makes people want to be around her, Geiger continued. She isnt afraid to be herself and I think that openness has enabled her to absorb all and any info about brewing and cellaring.

I know she'll continue on to do more amazing things, because that's just what Sydney does, no matter where she is or what she's doing, said Houser. She's intelligent, kind, humble, and I'm really proud to have her as a friend.

Cannarozzi is currently looking for her next great opportunity in the brewing industry and hopes to continue to make her mark on Michigan beer in the future, so if you are looking for a brewer, here she is.

Im feeling good now, she said. I have so much support in the community. I have been overwhelmed by the amount of love given to me.

Houser guessed right on that first day she met Cannarozzi when she guessed that she would do great things in the beer industry.

Although I love to be right, I especially love being right about women doing great things, she said.
BIG RAPIDS  During spring break, heading south is a reflex response for many Ferris State University students. Approximately 20 of the thousands of students ready to depart for a week away from classes will include bonding time with their fellowship groups along with physical labor to improve the lives of others.

His House Christian Fellowship will continue its relationship with Casas por Cristo, an El Paso, Texas-based nonprofit. Kate Hogoboom, a 2012 graduate of Ferris Marketing program, is an administrative assistant for His House. She participated in similar trips as a student and said their traveling party heads out of Big Rapids Friday, March 4, as spring break officially starts on Saturday, March 5, and runs through Sunday, March 13.

Our project this year will create the 53rd house that Ferris students have worked on over the years, Hogoboom said. This makes our 21st journey to Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. It is so cool to see places we have built, knowing that families can live in safe housing, which makes all the work and fundraising for these projects worth it.

Hannah Haynes, an Accounting major from Traverse City, is a His House participant who traveled with the groups project team in 2020.

I loved the experience enough to make that long journey to Mexico, once again, Haynes said. It really gives you an opportunity to get close to your peers on the van ride; coming to understand the level of poverty in Ciudad Juarez was an entirely new experience. It makes you grateful for everything you have.

Haynes said Casas por Cristo has made them aware of their supporting family by constructing this simple one-story structure.

They currently live in a one-room plywood shed, Haynes said. When I went in 2020, I was very taken by a family member saying how happy they were to have a home with a locking door.

His House student groups build homes in various Ciudad Juarez neighborhoods based on the available properties to the families involved.

Wesley House in Big Rapids will rally their spring break travelers to Lowell, where they will meet Saturday, March 5, with plans to depart early the following morning. Wesley House Pastor Kim Bos said they continue collaborating with Central Michigan University students and alumni. Big Rapids Wesley House will send 11 students and four supporters to Hayesville, North Carolina, along the

Georgia border, two hours east of Chattanooga, Tennessee.

This trip is always the highlight of our program year, in terms of the opportunity it affords all of us, Bos said. This year, we will be helping an inter-generational family revise their home, as one resident needs an accommodation to safely exit and enter the property.

After their construction project is complete, Bos said they plan to pursue group learning and fellowship.

We look to explore the cycles of poverty, taking time to go through a poverty simulation, Bos said. We believe this trip offers valuable perspectives to our students and volunteers, along with a chance to really know each other better. Every years trip presents a lot of work, but it is always worthwhile.
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MECOSTA COUNTY  Emergency medical technicians from Mecosta County and across the state are part of what is known as a Flight Support Team, flying with the Mid-Michigan Honor Flight veterans when they make the trip to Washington D.C. each year.

These volunteers, many veterans themselves, make sure those who take the trip stay safe and healthy, making sure all their medical needs are met.

Allen Sutherby, fire chief at Morton Township Fire Department and head of the medical support team, told the Pioneer that the volunteers are all first responder licensed, most of whom work for fire departments and EMS agencies throughout the state.

The team has been accompanying the Honor Flight veterans since the mid-Michigan organization began.

The framework for the flight support team was set up by the Honor Flight national organization. When the Mid-Michigan Honor Flight organization began, they asked Sutherby if he would be willing to organize a group to support their trips.

We fly out of Grand Rapids in the spring and out of Traverse City in the fall, so we have a north team and a south team, plus floaters that can step in on either team as needed, Sutherby said.

The role of team members is to monitor the health and safety of each veteran on the trip.

Our duties include watching the veterans  keeping tabs on them to make sure they dont get overheated, that they stay hydrated, and monitoring for signs of distress, Sutherby said. The veterans come with an array of medical needs, and we try to accommodate that to the point of where if they need immediate medical help, we can call 911 for additional assistance.

Depending on the needs of the veterans, he said, there will be at least two support team members on each transport bus as they tour Washington D.C.

The number of support team members on each trip varies, depending on the needs of the veterans, Sutherby said. If there are terminally ill veterans that need two support members, then the number will be higher.

The trip starts at noon the day before the flight, with a luncheon, then the support team members will accompany the veterans on the flight, will spend one day with them touring Washington D.C., join them for breakfast the following morning and the return home flight, he said.

Although the trip is at no cost to the support team members, many of the volunteers have full time jobs, so must use vacation time to go, he added.



I am currently looking for available members to go on the upcoming trip, he said.

Sutherby has been on all but two trips since the groups inception.

Veterans or their families that are interested in the Honor Flight program can find more information on the website at midmichiganhonorflight.org.
Though Upper Thumb native Alesha Watchowski moved to Fort Myers, Florida, in 2016, she has been using her small-town background and construction experience to connect with and serve her new area.

Watchowski grew up in Bad Axe after moving there in her sixth grade year from Cass City.

In her first or second year of high school, Watchowski's dad asked her what she wanted to do. While she hadn't given it much thought to that point, she did know she was good at math, so her dad suggested she become an engineer. She didn't know what that meant at the time, so her father explained it to her.

Her parents knew an architect who went to their church and asked her if she would let Watchowski shadow for a day. The day sparked something in her and she thought architecture might be the job for her.

She went to the local tech center, learning everything she could about becoming an architect, but in the end she found she wasn't creative enough for the job.

However, she still loved the idea of building something with her hands and seeing it built before her eyes, so she kept an eye out for any job that could offer that.

"So, I thought, 'I don't think I can be an architect, maybe I can be an engineer.,'" she said. "I was kind of up in the air about it, but I was still thinking along those lines."

She found her love of engineering when she went to Ferris State University, which she chose because of their hands-on way of teaching.

After getting her two-year associate degree in civil engineering, she went on to the engineering program, which she fell in love with almost immediately. She found that it involved people skills, organization, and everything else she felt she had a knack for.

"It was something I was really good at," she said. "It felt like all the skills I figured out I had, it was all of them rolled into one."

"I think it made my father-in-law like me a little more, too," she said, chuckling, as her now father-in-law is an architect and it gave them something to connect with.

Watchowski's husband plays a big part in the story, as he was how she ended up living in Fort Myers.

Though the two of them met at band camp in 2006 ("I've heard every joke about that," she said with a laugh), they didn't have much contact until they reconnected at Ferris. By the time Watchowski graduated in 2014 with her bachelor's degree in construction management, her now-husband was living in Fort Myers, which suited her pretty well.

"I was born in Arizona, so my goal was always to move somewhere warmer," she said.

After finding a job with Owen-Ames-Kimball Co. near where her husband lived, she moved to Fort Myers in 2016. What pleasantly surprised her was that her community still had the small-town feeling she and her husband had in Bad Axe. This sense of familiarity helped her settle in to not only her new home, but her work as well.

Owen-Ames-Kimball is a construction company primarily concerned with non-residential or multi-family housing projects, such as schools, runways, airport and healthcare buildings, and much more. Watchowski's position of assistant construction project manager instantly gripped her.

"It was the perfect niche for me, keeping the organization they need and all the paperwork and processes and it's something I'm interested in, too," she said.

Watchowski has recently had a lot of contact with the local middle school market, as she recently helped construct a new school building for Lehigh Acres Middle School. Through the project, she was able to connect with the principal and the school's builders club, whom she can now give presentations and job site tours with.

"I spent 12 months on site helping build this school, so it's very near and dear to my heart," she said. "It's my baby. It's the first school I built."

Watchowski's work has not gone unnoticed, as she was promoted to senior construction project manager in February 2022 and was recognized by Gulfshore Business magazine's 40 Under 40 section in 2021.

From her first time in Ferris University's engineering program, Watchowski has felt like this was what she was made to do.

"I still know a lot of people trying to figure themselves out and I feel so fortunate. Never would I have thought at 29 years old I'd be doing the job I wanted in a beautiful place... But here I am, waiting for someone to pinch me, I guess."
MISSAUKEE COUNTY  A man from LeRoy is facing multiple felonies for allegedly sexually assaulting his ex-girlfriend.

Joshua Thomas Lutzke, 23, was arraigned Thursday, March 4, in Missaukee County's 84th District Court on three counts first-degree criminal sexual conduct, one count assault with a dangerous weapon, one count assault with intent to do great bodily harm less than murder, and one count home invasion.

Michigan State Police troopers out of the Cadillac Post responded to the Oasis Family Resource Center in Cadillac for a report of sexual assault, a news release from the MSP Seventh District Headquarters read. The complainant alleged that Lutzke, her ex-boyfriend with whom she had a personal protection order against, contacted her Friday evening, Feb. 25, via Snapchat, saying he wanted to see her. He contacted her again at 10:40 p.m. and told her he was at her apartment.

According to the release, when she opened the door, he reportedly forced his way into the apartment and sexually assaulted her throughout the evening. He also reportedly threatened her with a kitchen knife and strangled her. He left the following morning.

Troopers obtained an arrest warrant from the Missaukee County Prosecutors Office, then arrested Lutzke without incident at his residence in LeRoy. He was lodged in the Missaukee County Jail.

The judge set Lutzke's bond at $250,000 cash surety. He is set to appear in court again on March 17.
The Aspen Group chairman and CEO Bob Fontana, left, and executives tour the Aspen Group Oral Care Center, a free dental clinic for low-income people in Illinois, in Chicagos West Loop, on Feb. 25.
CROMWELL  A peer review of the proposed Project Highlands development on Shunpike Road shows those who provided feedback want more details on soil, water runoff and impact to animal species.

That data will be collected beginning this spring.

Indiana-based developer Scannell Properties was looking to construct a 1.04 million-square-foot warehouse on a plot of land east of Shunpike Road, north of Geer Street, and south of the Rocky Hill line. It first presented plans at the Nov. 3 meeting of the towns Inland Wetlands and Watercourses Agency.

During the public hearing portion, dozens of residents voiced their opposition to the proposal, with the majority of concerns surrounding a potential detrimental impact on the environment and nearby neighborhoods. Others expressed their feeling that this particular type of development is not what the town needs.

Wetlands agency members voted to continue the public hearing at their December meeting, where they were again urged by residents to block the proposal.

The agency then unanimously approved a peer review for the project proposal, and Westport-based engineering firm LandTech was tasked with completing it.

Certified Ecologist and Wetland Scientist for LandTech Thomas Ryder and Director of Site Planning and Engineering Robert Pryor presented their findings to Cromwells wetlands, planning and development staff before the wetland agencys February meeting.

They indicated that improvements are needed in the project design, including to a proposed road crossing culvert which, in the current design, could cause increased erosion at its inlet and outlet.

LandTech reviewers said the soil erosion and sediment control plans were well-thought-out and designed, but indicated that they need more details about the building process.

The construction sequence lacks sufficient detail for a project of this scope, LandTech officials said in the review. Additional detail is required, including the approximate duration of each phase, as well as overall project duration.

According to the review, residents worries about the proposed construction access road to the site were warranted. LandTech officials recommended developers construct a concrete binder course on the base of the access road before construction starts.

We believe that the length of the access road, proximity to wetlands, and amount of trucks required for the import/export activities warrant this approach, LandTech officials said.

One of the main concerns expressed by residents involved a potential impact to wildlife. Reviewers want to know how the project would affect breeding and migration activities of local reptile and amphibian species, as well as other information.

Additional data could be collected when the breeding season begins in March, LandTech officials said.

The review indicated that more testing is needed before the proposal can proceed. Two soil/field infiltration tests were recommended.

Additional testing of groundwater levels and monitoring wells were also recommended, which would also likely be carried out in the spring.

Cromwell Director of Planning and Development Stuart B. Popper said the applicant would then bring their renewed proposal before the wetlands agency once the tests are done. Then theyll come back with a new application, he said.

The peer review document can be viewed at cromwellct.com.
Ron Chapple / Getty Image

ENFIELD  The medical examiner has performed an autopsy of the baby found dead in the Motel 6 this week, the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner confirmed Thursday.

The medical examiner said the cause of death is pending the autopsy results and it could take several weeks to determine.
One is Russian, the other Ukrainian. They dance together in Philadelphia Ballet
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MIDDLETOWN  A public hearing was held Thursday with Senate President Looney and Speaker of the House Ritter to address an act concerning increasing the earned income tax credit. Connecticut has the opportunity to take meaningful action now to support the nearly 123,000 Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed families in our state with children.

The Connecticut United Ways spoke in favor of the proposed increase, and outlined the benefits by highlighting four practical and proven actions that build a bridge to stability for Connecticut families and essential workforce.

The first goal is to maintain the Connecticut EITC at 41.5 percent of the federal rate into future years. EITC is refundable state income tax credit for low to moderate income workers that is benchmarked to the federal Earned Income Tax Credit, and we need to take action to maintain the 41.5 percent of the federal rate into future years.

On average, the Connecticut EITC provides $925 of flexible income for over 200,000 working state households to meet gaps in essential family budget areas, including child care, rent, food, transportation and medical expenses. The impact the CT EITC has on individuals and families is immense. For every EITC dollar a recipient earns, they return $1.24 to the economy, supporting local businesses and communities.

Our next action is to create a fully refundable Connecticut Child Tax Credit for families that is benchmarked to the federal Child Tax Credit. This tax credit is important because it works to reduce the high costs of raising children for nearly 123,000 CT families by providing $600 to $1,800 of much-needed flexible income. This tax credit reduces childhood poverty and invests money in local economies. For every CTC dollar a family receives, they return $1.38 to the economy.

Our next step is to eliminate Asset Limits for Connecticut Temporary Family Assistance applicants and recipients. Currently, Connecticut assets limits for Temporary Family Assistance that require a family to have less than $3,000 in savings and a car worth no more than $9,500 in order to be eligible for TFA.

Eliminating this constraint helps families save to escape poverty and maintain essential assets, like reliable transportation to get to and from work, child care and essential services. The impact this would have in Connecticut would produce administrative cost-savings, as evidenced by the eight states that already have eliminated asset limits: Alabama, Colorado, Hawaii, Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland, Ohio and Virginia.

Lastly, we need to adopt a Federal Poverty Limit-based eligibility standard for TFA and Husky C.

This would replace the outdated standard of need that determines eligibility for Temporary Family Assistance and Husky C (health insurance for people living in poverty who are aged, blind or disabled) with eligibility standards based on federal poverty limits, similar to other benefits.

It would expand access for the approximately 130,000 Connecticut residents who, despite living in deep poverty, dont qualify for critical supports under the current standard. This would provide health care for people living in poverty who are aged, blind or disabled, who are currently being left behind by the most restrictive Husky C eligibility in the nation. The impact this would have would be expanding the stability and health of Connecticut residents and workforce.

We are hopeful that we see these improvements made so those who are struggling in our community have access to more capable and comprehensive support. If you would like to see these changes as well, we encouraged you to contact your elected officials to let them know you support these actions.

To learn more about Connecticut United Ways efforts to make these programs have greater reach, please visit CTUnitedWay.org. To learn more about other programs supported by Middlesex United Way, please contact our Community Impact Director Christina Heckart at christina.heckart@middlesexunitedway.org.

Shawonda Swain is president and CEO of the Middlesex United Way.
The first figures of COVID infections in schools since the statewide mask mandate lifted showed that cases have declined slightly from the previous week, setting a new low for the second half of the academic year.

The latest report, which captures infections from Thursday to the following Wednesday, shows that 24 fewer infections were reported among students in Connecticut schools this week for a total of 607, the lowest since students returned from winter break.

Infections among teachers saw a similar decline. In the past week, there were five fewer infections for a total of 133. Since mask mandates were lifted for most school districts on Monday, a portion of the weekly report encompasses days when masks were still required.

The state education department said this week it sent a survey to school districts about masking policies, but had yet to receive all of the responses. While an exact tally of school districts that no longer require masks was not immediately available, state officials estimated it was roughly 90 percent. Some of the larger school districts have opted to keep mandates in place for several more weeks.

Is it permanent? I dont know, Gov. Ned Lamont said this week. But obviously, I think its 85, 90 percent of our schools have elected to end the mask mandate.

Overall, COVID-19 metrics have remained stable at lows not seen since the summer and fall after a surge in late December and January set new highs for the positivity rate and daily infections.

On Thursday, the state reported that 589 COVID-19 cases were found among 27,761 tests for a positivity rate of 2.12 percent, the lowest since early November. Hospitalizations dropped by a net of 21 patients for a total of 171, the lowest figure since early August. A total of 72 new deaths were reported in the past week, 47 fewer than the previous week.

While a vast majority of school districts no longer require masks, there are still many students who are wearing them. But, anecdotally, it appears there are sizable gaps among age groups and, overall, it differs from district to district.

Im told anecdotally that a third, maybe 40 percent of the kids, depending on where you are, still prefer wearing the mask, Lamont said.

Mask wearing has varied in some schools in the Danbury area. On the first day when masks were optional Tuesday, roughly half of the students still wore masks, but that may have been because the school board dropped the mandate the night before, Superintendent Kevin Walston said. Additional students decided to take off their masks the next day, he said.

In Westport, about 25 percent of students were wearing masks at the middle school level, while about 70 percent of students wore masks at the kindergarten level.

Darien Superintendent Alan Addley said only around 10 to 20 percent of teachers and students across the district were wearing masks on Monday, but he thought that number would change in the future.

Some parents also expressed a desire for their children to still wear masks in schools given the ongoing pandemic.

Jannette Blancovitch, a mother of a Stamford kindergarten student, said she wants her daughter to keep the mask on in school.

I told her not to take it off even if shes being asked to because its my family I have to protect, she said.

After announcing plans to lift the mask mandate, the state Department of Public Health sent guidance to school leaders that encouraged they support students and staff who decide to continue wearing face coverings.

Make sure that they can wear the mask without being ridiculed, Lamont said this week.

Despite an overall drop in infections statewide, the broad lifting of school mask mandates comes at a time in which vaccinations among children ages 5 to 11 are still lagging behind older age groups.

The latest state figures on Thursday show that 47 percent of these children are vaccinated, trailing other school-aged students by as much as 34 percentage points.

However, this week a study was released that suggested the efficacy of the two-dose Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine wanes faster for children ages 5 to 11.

In the omicron era, the effectiveness against cases of (Pfizers vaccine) declined rapidly for children, particularly those 5-11 years, a study from researchers from the New York State Department of Health and the State University of New York at Albany School of Public Health said. These results highlight the potential need to study alternative vaccine dosing for children and the continued importance (of) layered protections, including mask wearing, to prevent infection and transmission.

Staff writers Serenity Bishop, Raga Justin, Julia Perkins, Ignacio Laguarda and Jordan Fenster contributed to this story.
It was humid outside, so John Sanford was riding around on a tractor, cautiously monitoring for wildfires around his family's South Carolina plantation when he received a call telling him that a fighter jet had crashed and exploded on the property.

John, the brother of former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford and himself a civilian pilot for 31 years, drove to a nearby field to examine the crash site. He saw a white parachute dangling from one of the hundreds of grand live oak trees on the plantation, and hopped off the tractor to run toward it.

"I assumed the worst," John Sanford told Military.com, "I knew what I might be seeing, and I knew it might be ugly."

Read Next: Navy Recovers Sunken F-35 Jet That Crashed Off the Deck of a Carrier into the South China Sea

When he arrived at the tree line, he saw a young man in uniform and a woman with a cut near her mouth, walking towards him out of some nearby bushes.

"I knew it was the pilots because they were carrying their survival gear, their seat and their helmets," he recalled. "They walked up to the fence, and the man asked me, 'Are there any civilians where the plane went down and do you think anyone got hurt?'"

"He just got ejected out of an airplane and had the presence of mind to ask that question, which I thought was very impressive," John Sanford continued. "When the pilots popped out of the bushes, I just could not possibly have been more happy."

Around 3:15 p.m. Thursday, Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort reported that an F/A-18D Hornet from the base's 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing had crashed. The pilots survived, and no civilians were hurt.

"There were no fatalities as a result of the crash," MCAS Beaufort said in a statement. "Both Marines onboard the jet safely ejected with no injuries and are in stable condition."

Military investigators, base personnel and fire and rescue teams from the nearby town swamped the property shortly after the plane went down.

The crash did cause damage to a portion of the family's 3,000 acre property. Mark Sanford, a former U.S. congressman and governor, told Military.com that a large fire broke out when the plane exploded on impact and it wasn't extinguished until much later that evening.

The former governor, who was not at the scene when the incident happened, said the crash wasn't too far from where his dad is buried on the plantation. It was his father's final wish to be laid to rest under the centuries-old live oaks.

"So, those big oaks where we buried dad, any number of them are definitely goners with the explosion and fire that ensued," Mark Sanford said. "Within the scope of things, it's a much bigger loss for taxpayers with the loss of the jet and, thankfully, there was no loss of life."

Thursday's incident is not the first time an aircraft from MCAS Beaufort has crashed in the surrounding community.

Devastation struck on April 21, 2007, when Lt. Cmdr. Kevin Davis, a Blue Angels pilot, crashed his F-18 into a residential neighborhood near the base. A temporary decrease in blood flow to his brain caused by the gravitational pull likely caused Davis to experience tunnel vision and become disoriented, according to military investigators.

Davis broke formation and crashed, dying on impact. The crash caused extensive damage to nearby homes, and eight people on the ground were injured.

More recently, in September 2018, an F-35B Lightning II jet crashed on Little Barnwell Island, a marshy area west of the base. The pilot ejected safely from the single-seat jet, and no civilians were injured.

MCAS Beaufort said a safety investigation into Thursday's mishap is ongoing.

-- Thomas Novelly can be reached at thomas.novelly@military.com. Follow him on Twitter @TomNovelly.

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The military's U.S. European Command has become the organizer of a global coalition of nations sending weapons and security aid to Ukraine as it fends off Russia's efforts to conquer the country.

The command, based in Germany under Air Force Gen. Tod Wolters, is coordinating shipments to the war zone from 14 countries. That includes the latest $350 million in aid from the U.S., as well as newly pledged support from Germany and Sweden, as outrage over Russian President Vladimir Putin's move on Ukraine intensifies.

Ukrainians, who so far had managed an effective resistance to the Russians, are already well-trained on equipment such as anti-tank weapons and had been able to distribute the aid where needed on the front lines as of Friday, a senior U.S. defense official said.

Read Next: Ukraine War Sparks Call for Billions More in Pentagon Funding

"I think all of us have been tremendously impressed by how effectively the Ukrainian armed forces have been using the equipment that we've provided them," the defense official said. "And I think Kremlin watchers have also been surprised by this, at how they have slowed the Russian advance and performed extremely well on the battlefield."

The aid from the U.S. and others has included Javelin guided anti-tank missiles, which could put Russian armor in jeopardy, and reportedly Stinger air defense missiles to take out Russian piloted aircraft or drones. Countries have also been sending small arms, body armor, helmets and food rations.

Ukraine managed to hold approaching Russian forces at bay north of the capital Kyiv this week. For days, Putin's military waged missile attacks on the country and attempted to push closer to key cities, but it was unable to capture many or take control of Ukraine's airspace due to the resistance of Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky's forces.

Amid the fighting, European Command tapped into a liaison officer network among allies and partner nations to coordinate support to Zelensky. The U.S. and NATO have bolstered forces along the alliance's eastern European flank, including Poland, Romania and the Baltic states, but have made clear that they will not intervene militarily in the conflict.

"They are leveraging that [network] to build this coordination cell to be able to have real-time understanding of what allies are prepared to provide and how they might be able to get it to Ukraine, and common understanding of the Ukrainian requirements," said the defense official, who spoke to reporters on the condition of anonymity.

The command is working specifically with the U.K. on how to deliver the weapons across borders and into a conflict that has raised the specter of Russia using its nuclear arsenal, after Putin ordered those forces on alert Sunday. The U.S. has declined to provide many details about the specific amounts of weapons and security aid or how it is getting into Ukraine, due to concerns it could be useful to the Russians on the battlefield.

There has been no indication that Russia has tried to disrupt the flow of arms, despite its public condemnation of the support, and the speed of deliveries was being ratcheted up significantly, the defense official said.

President Joe Biden has approved more than $1 billion worth of security aid to be drawn from the U.S. military arsenal and sent to Ukraine over the past year. About 70% of the latest tranche of $350 million in aid approved by Biden last week had already arrived in the country, and most of the remainder was expected to be delivered within the next week.

Putin's invasion came after he spent nearly a year massing forces on Ukraine's border, yet still shocked the world, prompting some European nations to reverse prior policies on weapons aid. It has also led to speculation about the further expansion of NATO and the start of a new Cold War with Russia.

Last week, both Germany and Sweden announced they would join other nations in sending weapons to Ukraine. Berlin, which previously prohibited such aid, pledged 1,000 anti-tank weapons and 500 Stinger missiles, and Sweden said it would send 5,000 anti-tank weapons, along with other military aid, according to Reuters.

-- Travis Tritten can be reached at travis.tritten@military.com. Follow him on Twitter @Travis_Tritten.

Related: Weapons Used in the Russia-Ukraine War
FILE  Pastor Ed Litton, of Saraland, Ala., answers questions after being elected president of the Southern Baptist Convention Tuesday, June 15, 2021, in Nashville, Tenn. On Tuesday, March 1, 2022, Litton announced he will break with tradition and not seek a second term in the top office. (AP Photo/Mark Humphrey, File)
As Russia marches on its warpath, encircling Ukrainian cities and bombing civilian buildings, the Pentagon has deployed some 12,000 troops to NATO member nations within spitting distance of Ukraine, a massing of infantry, aircraft and tanks not seen since the Cold War.

President Joe Biden has vowed those troops will not fight for Ukraine, instead framing their presence as a warning to Russian President Vladimir Putin that any advance past Ukraine's borders and into NATO territory would trigger direct conflict.

Nearly 5,000 troops with the 82nd Airborne Division serve as the largest component of U.S. combat power in Poland -- training with Polish forces and available to provide humanitarian assistance as more than one million Ukrainians have fled their country.

Read Next: F-18 Crashes and Explodes at Former South Carolina Gov's Family Plantation; Pilots Eject Safely

Next week, a group of 300 additional, mostly administrative, soldiers will deploy to Germany and Poland from V Corps, out of Fort Knox, Kentucky.

Another 7,000 troops, many of them from the 1st Armored Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division, are also trickling into Europe. The rapid mobilization triggered the Army to draw from stocks of vehicles and armor already stationed on the continent.

That cache includes M1 Abrams tanks, Bradley fighting vehicles, Paladin artillery systems and other heavy combat vehicles and gear.

Last week, 800 paratroopers with the 173rd Airborne, based out of Vicenza, Italy, deployed to Latvia. In addition, the Pentagon moved at least eight F-35 Joint Strike Fighters from Germany closer to NATO's front line. At least 32 AH-64 Apache helicopters were also repositioned from Germany and Greece to the Baltic region and Poland.

Roughly 200 soldiers with the 101st Airborne Division, out of Fort Campbell, Kentucky, also deployed.

All of that firepower is meant to deter Putin from expanding his land grab beyond Ukraine, but is doing little to impact the humanitarian crisis that is unfolding.

At least 2,000 Ukrainian civilians have been killed so far, according to Ukraine's State Emergency Service. Independent verification of casualties during the conflict has been impossible.

The Russian Defence Ministry on Wednesday claimed 498 of its soldiers died in the first week of fighting. Even if the Kremlin's figures are artificially low, that would mark one of the deadliest periods of combat for Russian forces in decades. For comparison, 2,400 U.S. troops were killed in Afghanistan over 20 years.

As the war rages, NATO is continuing to bolster its front lines with thousands of troops from countries including France, the United Kingdom and Italy. Meanwhile, Ukraine is being armed with missiles and other equipment to stave off the Russian advance, an arming mission being organized by U.S. European Command. So far, Ukrainian forces have managed to stall much of the Russian advance, holding on to many of the country's largest cities.

In addition to the American mobilizations, 8,500 troops in the U.S. are on alert to deploy in case more forces are needed. And other units, such as the 1st Armored Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division, were already in countries such as Poland, Latvia and Romania on pre-planned missions.

The National Guard makes up a major chunk of the force on those pre-planned missions, further boosting NATO's combat power. Before the invasion, 160 soldiers with the Florida National Guard were in Ukraine, but were eventually pulled out to avoid a confrontation with Russian forces.

These National Guard missions include California's 1st Battalion, 185th Infantry Regiment; 200 troops from Washington state's 2nd Battalion, 146th Field Artillery Regiment, and 898th Brigade Engineer Battalion; and 100 soldiers from Oregon's 1st Squadron, 82nd Cavalry Regiment.

-- Steve Beynon can be reached at Steve.Beynon@military.com. Follow him on Twitter @StevenBeynon.

Related: Global Weapons Pipeline into Ukraine Is Being Managed by US European Command
When we think of siege warfare, most of us probably think of medieval castles surrounded by a large attacking force. Siege towers, archers and catapults hurling large stones are probably a part of that vision.

But sieges didn't end when people stopped holing up in castles or started using giant cannons. It just morphed into another battlefield tactic, where a large force surrounds an enemy position, cuts off supply and escape routes, and then either attacks or forces an enemy surrender through attrition.

Although there are many significant sieges in military history, there are also a few standouts worthy of mention, because the battle, the outcome or the aftermath were so consequential. Here are a few of those incredible sieges.

1. Battle of Megiddo

Egypt vs. Canaan, 15th-century BC

Megiddo wasn't the first time masses of humans gathered around to kill one another, but it was the first time anyone wrote down what happened during the battle and how many people died.

Spoiler Alert: There were a lot of dead people. Spoiler Alert: There were a lot of dead people.

Led by Pharaoh Thutmose III himself, the Egyptians completely chariot-whipped the Canaanites, who fled to the safety of the city walls. The first recorded battle quickly turned into the first recorded siege, as the Egyptians besieged the city for seven months. The battle itself must have been pretty brutal, because it's remembered even today by its other name, Armageddon.

2. Battle of Vienna

Ottoman Empire vs. Holy Roman Empire, 1683

The Ottoman Turks had been trying to capture Vienna for hundreds of years. This time, they were pretty sure they had it -- and they almost did. The Battle of Vienna is significant for two reasons: how the siege was broken and what happened the centuries following the battle.

Defenders of Vienna used a Polish spy to gather intelligence on the Ottoman forces and coordinate the battle with a Polish relief force. As the battle raged on, Polish King Jan III Sobieski led the largest cavalry charge in history, routing the Turkish forces and ending the Ottoman threat to Europe for good.

The face you make when you personally save all of Europe forever. Thanks, Poland. The face you make when you personally save all of Europe forever. Thanks, Poland.

3. Siege of Ceuta

Kingdom of Spain vs. Morocco, 1694-1720

Moroccan Sultan Ismail bin Sharif consolidated power in North Africa by using well-trained and loyal slave and professional armies rather than conscripted tribesmen. With these, he expelled Europeans and Ottomans from Moroccan ports. Then he set his sights on the fortified Spanish city of Ceuta.

Which, looking at this map, seems like a terrible idea. Which, looking at this map, seems like a terrible idea.

The first siege of Ceuta lasted 26 years and is still the longest siege in history. The Moroccans eventually took the city in 1720, but it was recaptured when Spain brought in thousands of reinforcements. When Ismail bin Sharif died in 1727, the Moroccans simply gave it up.

4. Siege of Vicksburg

Union vs. Confederate Armies, 1863

The Union victory at Vicksburg is often overshadowed by the Union victory at Gettysburg, which happened the day before. Separately, the battles were both critical to winning the war. Together, they marked a turning point, from which the South never recovered.

Like that guy next to the flag bearer. (Library of Congress) Like that guy next to the flag bearer. (Library of Congress)

Since the beginning of the Civil War, the Union had hoped to cut the Confederacy in two, and capturing Vicksburg was the key. For 40 days, the Union Army of the Tennessee laid siege to the city. When it fell on July 4, 1863, it gave control of the Mississippi River to the Union and set the stage for the collapse of the Confederacy.

5. Siege of Paris

German Confederation vs. France, 1871

In 1870, France was concerned it would lose its dominance over Europe if the German states were to form one large German country. The Germans formed an alliance anyway, which caused France to declare war. It did not go as well as the French hoped. Within two months, the Germans were surrounding Paris.

The end of the resulting four-month siege led to everything France had hoped to avoid. The German Confederation became the much larger German Empire, the French government fell and German supremacy was on the rise. French resentment toward Germany led to World War I, which led to World War II. The Siege of Paris was an early step in the creation of the modern world.

Have you ever failed so hard it changed the world? France has. (Museen Nord) Have you ever failed so hard it changed the world? France has. (Museen Nord)

6. Siege of Leningrad

Soviet Union vs. Nazi Germany, 1941-1944

When Germany launched its invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, one of its primary targets was the industrial center at the former imperial capital of Leningrad, which is today St. Petersburg. German forces with Finnish allies reached Leningrad within three months, encircling the city and cutting it off from the outside world.

For 872 days, the defenders of the city held out in any way they could. A trickle of supplies did not reach Leningrad until January 1943, and the city itself would not be relieved until January 1944. The systematic destruction of the siege was the costliest siege ever, in terms of both human lives and destruction. An estimated 1 million civilians and another 1 million Red Army troops were killed, captured or missing by the end.

In case you wondered why the Russians tend to be defensive of border encroachment. (Museum of the Siege of Leningrad) In case you wondered why the Russians tend to be defensive of border encroachment. (Museum of the Siege of Leningrad)

7. Battle of Sadr City

United States and Iraq vs. Mahdi Army, 2008

When the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority tried to close a newspaper controlled by Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, violence broke out between American forces and al-Sadr's militia, the Mahdi Army. For the next few years, violence defined the area of Baghdad that was al-Sadr's power base, Sadr City.

The Sadr City neighborhood became the source of insurgent attacks on U.S. forces and on the fortified International Zone of Baghdad, also known as "The Green Zone." To stem the attacks, the U.S. employed a reverse siege, building a wall around the neighborhood to keep enemy fighters in. For a month, Mahdi Army militia fought the U.S. 3rd Infantry Division, the 4th Infantry Division, the 10th Mountain Division and the 25th Infantry Division, along with U.S. and Iraqi Special Forces.

Sandstorms definitely didn't help things. (U.S. Air Force/Tech. Sgt. Adrian Cadiz) Sandstorms definitely didn't help things. (U.S. Air Force/Tech. Sgt. Adrian Cadiz)

The nonstop assault brought the Mahdi Army to the negotiating table. The U.S. agreed to stay out of Sadr City, the Mahdi Army ended its attacks on American forces and the Iraqi Army occupied the Sadr City area of Baghdad.

-- Blake Stilwell can be reached at blake.stilwell@military.com. He can also be found on Twitter @blakestilwell or on Facebook.

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Fort Madison, IA (52627)

Today

Periods of rain. High near 55F. Winds E at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 100%. Rainfall near a half an inch..

Tonight

Showers early, becoming a steady rain late. Low 51F. Winds ENE at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 80%. Rainfall around a quarter of an inch.
Keokuk, IA (52632)

Today

Rain likely. High near 55F. Winds E at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 100%. Rainfall near a half an inch..

Tonight

Rain showers in the evening will evolve into a more steady rain overnight. Low 53F. Winds ENE at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 80%. Rainfall near a quarter of an inch.
Popular Ghanaian musicians, Charles Nii Armah Mensah famed as Shatta Wale and Samuel Adu Frimpong known widely as Medikal are currently in the United States of America.

The two stars who automatically became best pals after they were made to put to prison custody for one week are preparing to thrill the people of London with electrifying performances as they embark on a worldwide tour.

In a new video sighted on Instagram, the two popular Ghanaian musicians were spotted on a plane flying to the United States of America.

Another excerpt of the video saw the duo at an airport in USA as they were warmly welcomed by some Ghanaians.

The two musicians will be beginning their tour in USA at Washington DC on Ghanas Independence Day, 6th March 2022.

Well, they have finally arrived in the States with their team as they make preparations for the concert scheduled for this Sunday.

Watch the video below:
04.03.2022 LISTEN

Award-winning Nigerian Ken Erics has got social media talking with a video of him playing on a piano a rendition of a popular Ghanaian hymn.

In the video, the actor is seen singing along the 'Daa Daa Nyinaa Mesum Awurade' as he keyed it note for note on a piano.

The only contradicting factor with the video is the vast difference in his ethnic background and his ability to sing the song.

Ekenedilichukwu Ugochukwu Eric Nwenweh, born February 28, 1985 professionally known as Ken Erics Ugo or simply Ken Erics.

He is a Nigerian film and television actor, writer, producer, and occasional musician.

He is popularly known for his role as Ugo in the movie 'The Illiterate' alongside Tonto Dikeh and Yul Edochie.

Ken is from Anambra State.
Algerian journalist and press freedom activist Khaled Drareni had a two-year jail term reduced on appeal to a six-month suspended sentence on Thursday, a detainees' rights group said.

The 41-year-old -- who became a symbol of the country's struggle for media freedom -- used to work for French channel TV5 Monde and press freedom group Reporters without Borders (RSF).

He was sentenced in September 2020 for "inciting" demonstrations and "attacking national unity".

The National Committee for the Liberation of Detainees announced the reduction in his sentence.

Charges related to his coverage of demonstrations held by the Hirak opposition movement in 2020, a year after the mass protests toppled longtime president Abdelaziz Bouteflika.

In February 2021, President Abdelmajid Tebboune pardoned Drareni after 11 months behind bars, but the following month the high court ruled his case could be re-examined.

The prosecution had requested a heavier sentence against him.

On Wednesday Drareni had tweeted: "Thank you everyone for your ongoing support. Whatever the verdict... I will continue my work fully independently."

RSF had called the two-year sentence "absurd and arbitrary".

Algerian rights group LADDH says several journalists remain behind bars in the country, which ranks 146th out of 180 countries on RSF's World Press Freedom index.
As hundreds of Nigerians in Ukraine are struggling to return home, some 115 young men, recently, offered to join Ukraine in its fight against Russia.

The men, who besieged the Ukraine Embassy in Abuja, also put down their names in a register provided by the embassy, Guardian reports.

The Second Secretary, Ukraine Embassy, Bohdan Soltys, confirmed the development, adding that no step had yet been taken to that effect.

The volunteers may have been responding to a recent call by Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelensky, urging people around the world to join the fight.

In a statement released last Sunday, the President accused the Russian army of killing civilians and praised Ukrainians for having the courage to defend themselves.

He said that the assault by Russia was not just Russias invasion of Ukraine but also the beginning of a war against democracy and basic human rights.

Zelensky had called on anyone who wished to join the defence of Ukraine, Europe and the world to come and fight side by side with Ukrainians.

This came as rights group, Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA), faulted the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari for its response to the evacuation of Nigerians in Ukraine.

In a statement by its national coordinator, Emmanuel Onwubiko, HURIWA said, Like other aspects, President Muhammadu Buharis Presidency fumbled again. This time, woefully, because it failed to effectively and timeously evacuate Nigerians from Ukraine many weeks before the eventual war started, following the needless invasion of Ukraine by Russia on the illegal orders of President Vladimir Putin.

Source: Sahara Reporters
Some mothers have complained of exposure to mosquito bites at the Tamale Teaching Hospital (TTH) due to the lack of space to accommodate them while their babies were on admission.

A new mother at the hospital, who pleaded anonymity, disclosed that the facility do not have rooms to accommodate mothers whose babies were on admission, thereby exposing them to mosquito bites as they wait their turns at the clinic.

She said she tested positive for malaria days after being at the hospital after delivery, whiles her baby was in an incubator.

Some other patients and relatives, who had received healthcare at the TTH and wanted to remain anonymous, also shared their frustrations and challenges whilst seeking medical attention at the facility.

They complained of negligence on the part of health care officials which in some cases resulted in the loss of loved ones.

Speaking to the Ghana News Agency at the hospital, some patients and relatives expressed worry over the poor reception given them on arrival at the hospital and poor attitude of some health workers, which made them feel unwelcome to the facility.

Mr Eliasu Issah, who accessed health care at the TTH, said he was tired of moving around just to locate relevant units at the facility, because there were no signposts and directions to the various units at the hospital.

Mr Misbao Mohammed, Acting Public Relations Officer at the TTH, in response to the patients' complaints, said the exposure to mosquito bites are peculiar to mothers of newborn babies, who were at the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU).

He said that mothers at the Pediatric ward had enough space to stay with their children, who were usually between 28 days and 12 years old.

He however hinted that plans were advanced to get a hostel to house mothers, while their babies were at the Neo-Natal Intensive Care Unit (NICU).

On the issue of negligence, the Acting PRO said health workers at the emergency ward considers the severity of patients' conditions to determine who needed most attention, but most times however, patients or relatives referred to such steps as negligence. Which is not the case.

He urged visitors to the TTH to contact the facility's security post for directions to various units and speak to health workers for further assistance.

He said, "People think health workers are not welcoming, simply because they assume everyone they meet and speak to at the hospital is a health worker, which is not the case."

GNA
Some of us, to be quite honest, are extremely surprised to read that the NDC operatives have found it somewhat convenient to petition the Commonwealth Office to investigate on their behalf the alleged human rights abuses and persecutions of selected members of the Umbrella fraternity by the NPP administration.

If such seeming laughable action is not a sign of irresoluteness or defeatist mentality, what is it?

If you would recall, it was the same NDC operatives who hastily and gleefully trooped to America to report the Finance Minister over an international bond issued by the Government of Ghana a few years ago.

Obviously, the NDC operatives have a penchant for running helter-skelter to seek help and advice from the people they deem to have superior intellectual ability. How pathetic?

Wasnt the same NDC government under Mahama that joyously ran to the International Monetary Fund(IMF) to seek policy credibility?

If, indeed, there are human rights abuses and persecutions in Ghana, the NDC operatives are within their democratic rights to act accordingly.

The overarching question however is: is that really the case? I am afraid, it is rather a subjective fit and nothing else.

To me, the only period the innocent citizens lost their inherent dignity and human rights in Ghana was in the days of the despotic founders of the NDC.

I have stressed severally that some of us regrettably witnessed the squeamishly ugly events which took place over a period of three decades (1970-1990s) and therefore cannot be misinformed by the remorseless coup enthusiasts.

It is important to note that the founders of NDC bamboozled onto the scene under the pretext of redeeming Ghanaians from human rights violations, economic mismanagement and wanton corruption. And yet ended up abusing and exterminating innocent Ghanaians and couldnt even get rid of the rampant sleazes and corruption in their P/NDC administrations, let alone the entire nation.

I have always held a firm and unadulterated conviction that we cannot make sense of the present happenings if we refused to take stock of the past events. Thus, some of us, as a matter of principle, cannot help but to relentlessly shrill, grouch, censure and highlight the risible and inherent proclivities of the devotees of the June 4 1979 and 31st December 1981 coup detats.

The fact of the matter is that when the coup enthusiasts (the founders of NDC) burst onto the scene, they went haywire and barbarically tortured and murdered people with minimal offences.

I hate to admit though, but the fact remains that there is nothing wrong for a group of people to come together and identify themselves as the coup enthusiasts, or the ideologues of transparency, probity and accountability.

However, it is hypocritical and somewhat deceitful if a group of people who claim to be the exponents of such ethos turn around and commit the same crimes they inexorably preach against.

It has, however, been well-documented that when the coup enthusiasts (the founders of NDC) burst onto the scene, they went berserk and tempestuously tortured and murdered people with more than two vehicles.

However, as I write, the same coup enthusiasts are hypocritically in possession of not less than two vehicles per household. How deceitful?

Dearest reader, you may take my word for it, the vast majority of house owners were punished severely for having more than one toilet facility in their households.

But the last time I checked, the vast majority of the so-called revolutionaries have uncountable toilet facilities in their luxurious mansions. How pathetic?

Besides, the founders of the NDC unabashedly exhibited their communist ideals by going into war with business men and women in the country.

The founders of NDC, regrettably, tortured and murdered innocent business men and women, many of whom were bizarrely accused of legally borrowing meagre sums of money from banks to support their businesses.

Strangely, albeit veracious, the so-called revolutionaries who repugnantly collapsed innocent peoples businesses now own business outlets all over the place.

Some innocent business men and women, so to speak, were abhorrently humiliated and their businesses were either seized or destroyed by the despotic NDC founders.

Worst of all, billions of cedis (in 50 cedi denominations) were impertinently and capriciously seized from ordinary Ghanaians, albeit without a trace. How bizarre?

The NDC founders, ironically, replaced our educational system with that of a communist model, while deceitfully turned around and sent their children abroad to study in what they saw as a superior educational system.

In their attempts to get rid of alleged sleazes and corruption, many Ghanaians were unjustifiably murdered or tortured mercilessly for apparent infinitesimal offences.

Some market women were regrettably stripped naked in the public and whipped for hauling their products or selling on high prices. While their male counterparts were wickedly shaved with broken bottles and whipped for offences that would not even warrant a Police caution in a civilized society.

As if that was not enough, three eminent High Court Judges and a prominent Army Officer were barbarically murdered by some mindless stooges of PNDC on 30th June 1982 for carrying out their constitutionally mandated duties.

The human rights violations were so rampant and appalling to the extent that many citizens seized the slightest opportunity and left the country after the 1992 general elections.

What incensed some of us so much is that despite their much touted mantra of transparency, probity and accountability, we have been witnessing so much scheming guiles in the successive NDC administrations. Who are they trying to deceive?

Clearly, their much trumpeting ethos of probity, transparency and accountability is a charade. It is rather an illustrative case of preaching virtue and practising vice.

Given the circumstances, some of us will continue to squall, speak and write about the apparent double standards by the NDC apparatchiks, which the party faithful perceive as a benign or an inconsequential issue.

But I, for one, wont abandon my duty as a bona fide Ghanaian, far from it. I will rather stick to my guns, be true to the faith, and, keep upholding and defending the good name of our beloved Ghana.

K. Badu, UK.

[email protected]
The National Democratic Congress (NDC) branch in Glasgow, Scotland has appealed to the ruling government to use the occasion of the 65th Independence Day Celebration of the country to listen to the plight of Ghanaians.

On Sunday, March 6, 2022, Ghana will celebrate its 65 years of anniversary to honour the day the great forefathers of the country successfully secured independence from the British colony.

Looking back in time and the current state of the country, NDC Glasgow notes that there is more work to be done.

While pushing for a collaborative effort from the government and the citizenry, the NDC group has called on President Akufo-Addos administration to listen to the cries of the people.

As a nation, we can be proud of our still nascent democracy, one of the most successful on the African continent. There is more work to be done to consolidate our democracy. We must do all in our power to uphold justice, to uphold the rule of law and to uphold individual liberties and fundamental human rights. The dividends of our democratic dispensation must flow to the benefit of our path, part of the NDC Glasgow release signed by communications officer Tabbi Wilberforce Awotwe has said.

It adds, It is in view of this, that we make a clarion call to President Akuffo Addo to address the plight of our students, farmers, market women/men, public servants, teachers, nurses, university lecturers, taxi/trotro drivers etc and to find sustainable solutions to the myriad of problems our country is confronted with due to bad governance. We must demand that we have discipline, probity, and accountability at the heart of national affairs as our country currently deserves better.

Read the full release from NDC Glasgow below:

Use this Independence Day celebration to listen to the plight of Ghanaians  NDC Glasgow to government

NDC Glasgow (Scotland) branch would like to seize the opportunity to wish the citizenry of our beloved country both home and abroad a wonderful Independence Day celebration.

On an occasion as blissful as this, its best we sit back as people with common destiny to have a sobber reflection on our future as a country based on current and past political antecedent. In times when the identity of our country is gradually being subverted to depict an obvious diluted narrative, we can only echo the truth about our history based on cramps and pieces picked up from the table of honesty and integrity since the powers that be have chosen to drink from the cup of deception and lies.

We commend Ghanaians both home and abroad for their priceless sacrifices, dedication, commitment and selflessness that motivated our forefathers, led by Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, to fight for freedom from the shackles of colonial rule on the 6th March 1957. As we celebrate this 65th anniversary, Ghana is a pale shadow of what our founding fathers toiled for. There are several questions that demand answers particularly from the current ruling government.

As people, we can only look forward and comprehend the fact that our future is in our owns hands even in the face of adversity from an oppressor in government.

We salute our fisherfolk, teachers, nurses, doctors, media men/women and all hard-working people of the country on whose toil our nation is built. We must continue to crave for excellence and demand accountability from the government on whose coffers our taxes are paid to. As a nation, we can be proud of our still nascent democracy, one of the most successful on the African continent. There is more work to be done to consolidate our democracy. We must do all in our power to uphold justice, to uphold the rule of law and to uphold individual liberties and fundamental human rights. The dividends of our democratic dispensation must flow to the benefit of our peoth.

It is in view of this, that we make a clarion call to President Akuffo Addo to address the plight of our students, farmers, market women/men, public servants, teachers, nurses, university lecturers, taxi/trotro drivers etc and to find sustainable solutions to the myriad of problems our country is confronted with due to bad governance. We must demand that we have discipline, probity, and accountability at the heart of national affairs as our country currently deserves better.

To the average Ghanian, we say dont be afraid. Stand your ground and watch the Lord rescue you today, for the Egyptians cometh in the night to kill and destroy but the Egyptians you see today, you shall see no more after 2024. The high increase in fuel prices coupled with unprecedented level of corruption, high import duties, taxes and the recent deliberate introduction of the E  levy are key indicators of a failed government. The economy of our country rest solemnly on a quicksand as the Ghanaian cedis remains one of the weakest currencies in Africa. Issues on borrowing and profligate spending even in the office of the first gentleman of the land is best left unsaid. Today the prophecy of Dr. Nyaho Tamakloe of Ghanaians paying a bitter lesson should Akuffo Addo becomes a president has sadly become our reality but what makes it more heart breaking is the fact that Ghanaians would have to endure this bad leadership for the next 2 years.

Long live Ghana

Long live the NDC

Eye Zu, Eye Za!!!!!!

Tabbi Wilberforce Awotwe (Ph.D)

Communication Officer,

NDC Glasgow (Scotland), Branch

UK/Ireland Chapter
Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia Thursday swore-in the newly constituted Governing Board of the Ghana AIDS Commission at the Jubilee House in Accra, charging then to work harder towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goal's (SDG) target of ending AIDS by 2030.

Dr Kwaku Afriyie, the Minister of Environment, Science, Technology and Innovation, chairs the 19-member Board.

The Vice President said since the Government assumed office in January 2017, Ghana had made tremendous progress in her response to the fight against HIV, with new HIV infections and AIDS related deaths fallen by 14 per cent and 19 per cent, respectively, between 2016 and 2020.

The gains, he said, was made possible due to direct scaling up of testing and anti-retroviral treatment services using differentiated service delivery models throughout the country.

Additiionally, within the same period, the uptake of HIV testing increased by 80 per cent, while the number of HIV positive pregnant mothers receiving anti-retroviral therapy to prevent mother-to-child transmission had increased by 159 per cent, he said.

Currently, there is an average of 21,000 HIV and AIDS related deaths annually over the past five years, with more than 245,000 of the estimated 346,000 persons living with HIV on anti-retroviral treatment.

Members of the Governing Board are Mr Kyeremeh Atuahene, the Director-General of the Commission, Mr Kwaku Agyeman-Manu, the Minister of Health, Mrs Cecilia Abena Dapaah, Acting Minister of Gender, Children and Social Protection, Mr Daniel Botwe, the Minister of Local Government and Rural Decentralisation and Dr Patrick Kuma-Aboagye, the Director-General of the Ghana Health Service.

Others are: Dr Leticia Adalaide Appiah, the Executive Director of National Population Council, Professor Samuel Kobina Annim, the Government Statistician, Mr Victor Attah Ntumi, President, Ghana HIV and AIDS Network, Rev. Dr Cyril G. K. Fayose, the General-Secretary of the Ghana Christian Council of Churches, Alhaji Muhammed Baba Shajbu, a representative from the Federation of Muslim and Ahmadiyya Mission, Pimampim Yaw Kagbrese V, representative from the National House of Chiefs, Mr Franklin Owusu Ansah, a representative from the Trades Union Congress and Mrs Elsie Cornelia Arkorful-Ayeh, President of Network of Association of Persons Living with HIV.

Vice President Bawumia said the number of persons living with HIV and receiving anti-retroviral therapy had increased by nearly 100 per cent over the last five years.

The Vice President said significant progress had also been made in the area of data system strengthening, which had enhanced data capture and data use in health facilities across the country.

He said the positive developments had placed Ghana in a much stronger position to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals' (SDGs) target of ending AIDS by 2030.

"Our work, however, is far from done. HIV remains a major public health concern, and AIDS is one of the leading causes of death in Ghana, with an average of 21,000 deaths annually over the last five years.

"With more than 245,000 of the estimated 346,000 persons living with HIV on anti-retroviral treatment, we should not be seeing such significant numbers of new infections and AIDS-related deaths."

Dr Bawumia urged the Board members to use their experiences and technical expertise to help strengthen the "Back to Care Campaign," which the Commission had embarked to end the HIV and AIDS spread.

He said the Government was fully committed to providing domestic resources to meet the demands of the National HIV & AIDS Fund in order to enable the Commission respond financially to its responsibilities and make it self-resilient on a sustainable basis.

"Currently, under the Treat All Policy, clients are initiated on anti-retroviral treatment within seven days of diagnosis using standard models of care and patient-centred approach that assures improved linkage to care and retention in care," he said.

"Yet, clients on life-saving anti-retroviral treatment switch to herbal or spiritual substitutes in response to false claims of cure. Discontinuation of anti-retroviral treatment often results in increased viral load, and eventually death," Dr Bawumia said.

"On addressing the issue of inadequate laboratory equipment and supplies in health facilities, I have been informed that the Global Fund is procuring additional numbers of GeneXpert machines to mitigate this challenge.

"As a matter of urgency, these machines must be installed as soon as they become available to improve patient monitoring and early infant diagnosis."

He observed that the National HIV and AIDS programme had shown remarkable resilience in the face of COVID-19 in the last two years.

However, the country had not been spared its devastating impact. COVID-19 disrupted HIV testing, prevention and treatment services in Ghana, and continued to pose a significant threat to persons living with HIV, he added.

He noted that with COVID-19 still present, the country faced a serious challenge in ending AIDS by 2030, because it had the potential to reverse the gains made in the HIV response.

"Therefore, we cannot afford to see the significant gains achieved in the HIV and AIDS response reversed.

"I am fully aware of underfunding of HIV programmes, with donor expectation that government must fill the funding gap of more than 60% per cent of the estimated cost of the National HIV and AIDS Strategic Plan 2021-2025," Dr Bawumia said.

"Specifically, government is required to provide funding to meet the costs of rapid diagnostic test kits, reagents and other laboratory supplies, anti-retroviral medicines to treat some 225,000 persons and the provision of condoms.

"Costs of prevention services for the general population, coordination and management of the national response will equally be borne by government," he assured.

The Vice President said since the Ghana AIDS Commission Act 2016 (Act 938) did not provide any dedicated sources of revenue for the Fund, the previous Governing Board identified additional sources of funds that could ensure continuous inflow of revenue into the Fund.

He was of the belief that HIV financing should be a shared responsibility, and, therefore, industries whose activities created conditions for the spread of HIV should share the burden of funding.

He reminded the Board of the Commission's mandate to prevent and control the HIV and AIDS epidemic, to promote and protect the rights of persons living with HIV, and to provide for related purposes.

That, he said, should guide the decisions and actions of the Governing Board at all times.

"The Commission has domesticated the HIV and AIDS related SDGs in the National HIV and AIDS Strategic Plan 2021-2025. Ending AIDS and achieving epidemic control are the goals of the National HIV and AIDS Strategic Plan (NSP) 2021-2025.

"These goals are to be achieved by reaching the 95-95-95 fast-track testing and treatment targets, which requires that, by 2025: 95 per cent of all persons living with HIV in the country must be diagnosed; 95 per cent of the people diagnosed must be placed on anti-retroviral treatment; and 95 per cent of people on anti-retroviral treatment must be virally suppressed," the Vice President reminded the Board

The National Strategic Plan, he said, intended to reduce new infections and AIDS deaths by 85 per cent, as well as eliminate mother-to-child transmission.

"The Strategy ensures that prevention, testing and treatment are given as a comprehensive package through standard models of differentiated services, to ensure that groups, communities and individuals receive tailor-made services that meet their specific needs," the Vice President said.

Dr Kwaku Afriyie, chairperson of the Board, in his acceptance address, thanked the President for the confidence reposed in them and believed that with support from the government they would deliver on their mandate.

GNA
Ghana's Second Lady, Her Excellency Samira Bawumia

04.03.2022 LISTEN

The Second Lady, Her Excellency Samira Bawumia has implored Ghanaians in the diaspora to take advantage of the enormous opportunities of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) and bring investments home, Ghana.

On Thursday, March 3, 2022, the Second Lady was the Special Guest Speaker at the Ghana Action Forum event organised by Ahaspora in Accra at the Kempinski Hotel.

The event is part of activities planned for the celebration of Ahasporas 10 years anniversary.

Delivering her keynote address, Her Excellency Samira Bawumia applauded the decision of Ghanaians in the diaspora to return home to help grow the country.

She said under the current government ably led by President Akufo-Addo, efforts have been made to create an enabling environment for businesses to thrive.

Her Excellency Samira Bawumia used the opportunity to charge Ghanaians in the diaspora to capitalise on the many opportunities emanating from the African Continental Free Trade Area and bring investments into the country.

I know that the coming in of the African Continental Free Trade Area agreement also brings us a lot of opportunities. And so this is an area that we all have to look at. This will create the largest free trade area in the world. So the opportunities are immense.

The AfCFTA will play a vital role in aiding countries establish trade partnerships, thereby facilitating the establishment of businesses across borders on the continent. I encourage all Ghanaians in the diaspora to take advantage of this to bring investment into the country, Her Excellency Samira Bawumia said at the Ahaspora event.

In her concise but rich speech, the second lady also charged all Ghanaians to come together and work to help the government to make the country better for everyone.

She said while the government is doing its best to develop the country and improve the lives of the citizenry, it cannot do it alone.

I urge all Ghanaians and those in the diaspora to participate in the development efforts of Ghana and the Ghanaian government. Government cannot do it alone. We need the participation of all our citizens whether home or abroad, the Second Lady of Ghana stressed.

About the Ghana Action Forum:

The Ghana Action Forum is an event organised by Ahaspora with the aim to engage Ghanaians living abroad and at home in an action-oriented, forward-thinking conference to contribute towards advancing Ghanas development.

The Forum is organised by young Ghanaians who are contributing their quota to the countrys policy and business environment, both home and abroad and have a drive and passion for seeing a better country and continent in the near future.

The two-day event features keynote speakers, panel presentations, goal-and-results oriented round tables discussions, and industries fairs for Ghanaian companies to showcase their products and services both in-person and online.

The ultimate goal of the conference is to support participants by fostering professional engagement while highlighting the immense potential that exists for propelling development in Ghana if Diaspora engagement is leveraged.
Self-incrimination is one of the most unpleasant and destructive mental processes of a person. Kennedy Agyapong, the Member of Parliament, representing the Assin Central, in the past and today, has made serious incriminating comments with impunity. Does it mean he has no respect for the law?

At times, I have been wondering why Ken Agyapong keeps incriminating himself over and over without facing the law for his despicable actions. Is the Member of Parliament for the Assin Central above the law? Or he is just capitalizing on the weak fragile judiciary system as an NPP politician?

Frankly speaking, Ken Agyapong, has traveled a lot, therefore, he will agree with me that many of the self-incriminatory comments he has made in Ghana with impunity, will either keep him in a very tight corner or prison in any developed country.

And on moral issues, it is completely wrong for Agyapong to assume that Ghana is a 'shithole,' nation, therefore, I don't care about what I do or say.

The Member of Parliament for the Assin Central, Kennedy Agyapong, should have been in prison by now if Ghana's judiciary system is not a 'shithole'

That makes me believe that he undervalues Ghanas judiciary system. Once he educates his children and seeks medical attention in the United States of America, means he doesn't even have respect for a country in which is a Member of Parliament.

The incriminating statements Ken Agyapong has made are too numerous to count, however, this article will reflect on just three of them which could have kept the Member of Parliament behind bars for several years if Ghana has an effective judiciary system and not corrupt.

Incriminating case 1 - Ahmed Hussein-Suale

On January 16, 2018, Ahmed Hussein-Suale, an investigative journalist and a member of Tiger Eye Private Investigations, working with Anas Aremeyaw Anas, was brutally murdered by assailants on a motorbike. Till now the murder case remains cold since the culprits are yet to be arrested.

The disturbing fact about this case is before the murder of the journalist, Ken Agyapong appeared on television, threatening his life and requesting for the diseased to be beaten. In any country with a serious judiciary system, Agyapong wouldnt have gotten off the hook very easily.

The Member of Parliament for Assin Central would have faced the full strength of law caught between investigations to find out if he had a hand in Ahmed Husseins death but that never happened in Ghana. Today, Ken Agyapong continues to live his ostentatious life with impunity.

Incriminating case 2  The death of J. B. Danquah

Calling someone a witness to a murder or accusing someone of knowing something about a murder case, is a serious case that anyone who finds himself in such a problem shouldnt take for granted.

Yet, Ken Agyapong had said Dampare, the Inspector General of Police, know something about J.B. Danquah-Adus death. According to him, since Dampare knows the one who murdered Danquah, he was transferred to another place to avoid the IGP pursuing the case. What a serious accusation?

I hope IGP Dampare, Chief Justice Anin-Yeboah, and other judges  lawyers in Ghana, wouldn't be angry with me for repeating in every article I write expressing my disappointments in them?

Because if Dampare and Anin-Yeboah are sincere, they will agree with me that regards to Agyapong's self-incriminatory comments, he will never be free in some developing countries, let alone a developed country.

Even though both Dampare and Anin-Yeboah know that a person who intentionally makes false accusations against another to tarnish the person's reputation may be subject to several penalties under the law, they refused to act according to the law, leaving Agyapong to continue breaking the law with impunity.

Do they expect me to praise them over this kind of ineffective, tribalistic, nepotic, and selective law they are practicing in Ghana today under Nana Dankwa Akufo Addo? That will never happen.

I lost 10,000 Euros of investment in Ghana because the chief who sold my land to another person knows that this is the kind of law that exists in Ghana, therefore, he will surely avoid prison with impunity. Why does such bogus law exist in Ghana yet you judges pray for a better country?

IGP Dampare should have arrested Ken Agyapong immediately because this is not a case he can sweep under the carpet since the family of JB Danquah has no clue as to who is responsible for the murder.

I dont hate anybody in that country but I am not happy about how Ghana is being run today. The current crisis could have been avoided because they are all human errors that cant be blamed on COVID, after all, the countries such as Italy, Spain, America, etc; hit with severe COVID cases economies are doing better.

Corruption has increased rapidly in Akufo Addo's government, yet he keeps telling Ghanaians, "I Nana Addo Danakwa Akufo Addo, I'm not corrupt," while he has so many corrupt politicians, including Eugene Arhin, Charles Bissiw, Kwasi Anin-Yeboah, and Paul Adom-Otchere in his government.

Incriminating case 3  Ken Agyapong threatens to burn down the house of Mahama

Traveling is not only enlightening but an education, therefore, if Ken Agyapong boasts he has traveled a lot why does he say things that would put him in trouble only in Ghana but not in any of the developed countries he has visited?

That means he undervalues Ghanas law and, therefore, has no respect for the countrys judiciary system. Arson threat can put one behind bars between 2 to five years in any developed country, yet, Ken Agyapong threatened to burn down the house of John Mahama without any questions from the judiciary.

According to him, John Mahama was behind fires that occurred in various markets in the country. There is no need to compile serious allegations and self-incriminating comments made by Ken Agyapong, which could have led him into prison in some developing countries, let alone a developed country.

Ken Agyapong might feel like a superman or probably he thinks he is above the law but what I will remind him is that if today, he has possibly escaped punishment for every crime he has committed under the umbrella of the NPP government, he may not be so lucky under a new government in Ghana.

Agyapong has too many self-incriminating videos to the extent that when any new government in power in Ghana, wants him to pay for whatever wrong he has done or said in the past, those videos will be used against him. It is that day he will regret being born into this world, he should, therefore, be careful if he is a wise person.
04.03.2022 LISTEN

The Oti Regional Police Command has disclosed that it managed to successfully rescue 36 people who were trafficked on Volta Lake at the end of 2021.

This has been confirmed by the Oti regional commander of the Ghana Police Service, DCOP Charles Domanba.

Speaking during a stakeholder engagement led by the International Justice Mission (IJM) at Kete-Krachi in the Oti region on the theme: "Proactive Lake Patrol-with a focus on marine police operations and collaborations aimed at tackling human trafficking activities on the Volta Lake," the Commander said through great efforts, there were many success stories last year.

Before the introduction of the marine police, police in the Oti region have assisted the IJM in the handling of child and human trafficking cases on the Volta Lake -and for 2021, we recorded eight(8) cases.

Out of these, four persons have been sent to the court; one has since been convicted while three others are still facing trial. four other cases are also under investigation and we had thirty-six (36) rescues for 2021, DCOP Charles Domanba shared.

Keen on helping in the fight against human trafficking activities in Ghana, particularly on the Volta Lake, the International Justice Mission is currently piloting a project where some personnel of the marine police is being trained under the Volta Command.

Commenting on the importance of the project, DCOP Charles Domanba expressed his delight while insisting that it will play a vital role to halt the activities of human traffickers.

With the coming of the marine police, they will be assisting the IJM in a professional way because they are going to patrol the Volta lake, the Oti Regional Police Commander said.
Deputy Minister Thomas Mbomba has started his visit with meetings with all stakeholders involved in the temporary resettlement of stranded Ghanaian students from Ukraine to Hungary.

Participants in that meeting included the Honorary Consul, Mr. Boldizsar Peter Entz, Mr. Kpodo, an architect, an elder from the church of Pentecost, Mr. Kwesi Asemanyi, consular officers from our Berlin, Berne, and Vienna Missions, who were on the ground to assist in the evacuation exercise.

He stated that he was in the country on the instructions of the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration to have firsthand information about the plight of the students and to advise government on how best to assist our stranded compatriots to return to Ghana in the meantime, as government contemplate longtime solution to their predicament depending on the outcome of the situation in Ukraine.

He expressed gratitude to the stakeholders for their efforts in ensuring the safety and comfort of the students.

The various stakeholders took turns to brief the Deputy Minister on what has transpired prior to his arrival. The Honorary Consul intimated that as of 2nd March, 2022, 205 Ghanaian students had entered Hungary following the unfortunate events in Ukraine.

Following that development, a number of individuals and organizations had come to the aid of the students by providing them with accommodation and essential supplies to take care of their immediate needs. He singled out a Hungarian company with business interests in Ghana, Purico, with operations in Kumasi and Tamale, which had graciously offered accommodation to 25 Ghanaian students, while a Nigerian-Ghanaian businessman on his part helped sheltered more than 30 students. He added that ordinary Hungarians were also assisting in taking in Ghanaian students. The Honorary Consul however expressed concern that the offer of accommodation to the compatriots was for a limited period and the students were expected to make arrangements to leave such facilities after about four days to make way for new refugees.

He then suggested that the Ministry on behalf of the Government of Ghana may wish to write officially to the Hungarian authorities to seek their assistance for all Ghanaian students who may be passing through or transiting in Hungary.

On his part, Mr. Kpodo stated that when there was steady stream of Ghanaian students into Hungary at the initial stage of the conflict, he stood in for the Honorary Consul who was then in the United Arab Emirates at the time. He stated that he worked closely with the leadership of the Ghana students union and the church of Pentecost, with the latter offering its place of worship to accommodate the stranded students. He therefore called for recognition of the critical role the two bodies played by the government of Ghana. He however cautioned that students under government scholarship in Hungary were not particularly happy, owing to non-payment of their stipends and called on the Deputy Minister to intervene to help salvage the situation. He disclosed that at least eight students were at the verge of being ejected from their hostels by the end of the month due to their inability to pay their rent and called on the Government to come to their aid.

On his part, the president of the Ghana students union in Hungary, Mr. Gabriel Asante, stated that when the conflict between Russia and Ukraine started, he was informed by the Honorary Consul of the decision of the Hungarian government to allow entry of refugees fleeing the conflict into its territory on humanitarian grounds. He subsequently contacted the church of Pentecost to allow for its church to be used as holding facility. He joined Mr. Kpodo in calling for the recognition of the efforts of such organizations and individuals by the government of Ghana. He expressed concern that most students fleeing the violence in Ukraine were unfortunately not ready to return to Ghana. He then informed the Deputy Mnister that he had since compiled a list of two groups of students, including those who are willing to return to Ghana and those who have chosen to stay in Hungary for now, with the latter group comprising a paltry 40 students.

He disclosed that their immediate concern now is the 93 students currently being holed up in a school in Ukraine near the Russia-Ukraine border. He said due to high risk of attack, they were being advised to remain in bunkers for their own safety.

The student leader, in reference to a press release by his office on the non-payment of their monthly stipends by the Scholarships Secretariat , urged that urgent steps be taken to avert ejections of many of the students from their hostels, as their rent payments were due by the middle of March 2022.

Subsequently, the Deputy Minister paid visits to a number of shelters housing Ghanaian students. He began his visit at the Church of Pentecost, an underground structure housing a large number of stranded Ghanaian and other African students. There, he informed the students that the Government of Ghana was deeply concerned about their welfare and safety, and as such, he had been delegated by the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration to visit them to have firsthand information about their plight and to reaffirm the commitment of the government of Ghana to assist all students currently stranded in Hungary, Romania and Poland, as well as those who were still at the epicentre of the conflict in Ukraine, to return safely to Ghana, as government contemplates long term solution to their plight taking into account the unfolding situation in that country.

The Hon. Deputy Minister praised the students for their courage and bravery in organizing themselves to flee the conflict in Ukraine

He informed the students that the Government of Ghana had put in place a team to identify all those who were ready and willing to return to Ghana to be provided with air tickets to do so. He said this exercise was being carried out in concert with the student leadership in Ukraine, who were compiling the list of such students and urged them to take advantage of the opportunity to return to Ghana. He assured them that they would still have the opportunity to return to Ukraine when normality return to the country.

He reminded the students that the humanitarian permit granted them by the Hungarian government was a temporary one and limited to their stay in Hungary only, and not the wider Schengen region. He added that per that regulation, they were expected to return to their country within the shortest possible time, as failure to do so will make them illegal immigrants in Hungary; that could have negative consequences for them.

With regards to the delay in payment of stipends of Ghanaian students based in Hungary, Hon.Mbomba assured the students that the government was seized with the matter and that everything was being done to mobilize funds to pay them as soon as possible.

He used the opportunity to express the gratitude of the government of Ghana to all stakeholders who have played various roles, ranging from provision of basic supplies to transportation to safety and accommodation of the students in Hungary. He thanked the student leadership, the Church of Pentecost, private organizations and individuals, including ordinary Hungarians, who graciously made donations of various items to support the students. The Deputy Minister also visited three other shelters, including Kulker Hotel, Torokbalint Koran Munkacsy communication centre and Semmelweis University and interacted with our students, where similar concerns were raised

Concerns of the students

That the government of Ghana delayed in coming to their aid; as they had to make private arrangements to get into Hungary by themselves

The students sought to know what government was doing to rescue their colleagues who were still trapped in Sumy, near the Russian border;

They wanted assurances that arrangements would be made by the Government of Ghana to integrate them into institutions in Ghana for them to continue their education, particularly, the medical students who were at the verge of completing their programmes of study;

Others were concerned about the retrieval of their original certificates that were deposited with their universities in Ukraine.

---3news.com
A veteran and outspoken opposition leader who was branded a terrorist in a controversialcourt case against him, Freeman Mbowe's destiny has been closely linked with his native Tanzania.

The youngest of 10 children, Mbowe was baptised the day after the former British colony known as Tanganyika won its freedom in 1961, inspiring his parent's choice of name.

His businessman father played an influential role in the independence movement and was close to Julius Nyerere, the first president of Tanganyika.

The pair fell out over the government's support for "African socialism" in the years after Tanganyika merged with Zanzibar to form Tanzania in 1964.

Following a mandatory stint of national service, Mbowe's first job was at the central bank, where he spent four years while also trying to learn the ins and outs of the family business during his spare time.

But as Tanzania grew increasingly socialist under Nyerere's ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi party (CCM), struggling to shake off years of failed economic experiments, calls for political reform began to mount.

In 1992, Nyerere's successor president Ali Hassan Mwinyi opened the door to multi-party democracy, allowing opposition parties to contest elections three years later.

Mbowe was among those championing a centre-right alternative to socialism, and at the age of 30 became the youngest founding member of the Chadema party.

He contested a presidential election in 2005, losing to the CCM candidate, but retained his parliamentary seat until 2020 when he was defeated in an election disputed by his party.

In March 2020, Mbowe and seven other opposition MPs and officials were convicted on charges related to a banned demonstration and ordered to pay 350 million shillings ($151,000) in penalties.

The charges included sedition, unlawful assembly and inciting violence during a 2018 rally in which police fired live rounds to disperse Chadema supporters demanding accreditation in a local election.

A 22-year-old student who was not taking part was shot dead by a stray bullet from police.

The demonstration had been banned by the government of former president John Magufuli, who was nicknamed "Bulldozer" for his uncompromising leadership style and his refusal to brook any dissent.

Optimism turns sour

Mbowe was a trenchant critic of Magufuli.

His authoritarian regime was accused of jailing critics, passing draconian laws and taking a reckless approach to the coronavirus pandemic that saw him shun masks and vaccines.

The appointment of President Samia Suluhu Hassan in March, following Magufuli's sudden death, sparked a measure of optimism among observers, as Tanzania's new leader sought to reverse some of her predecessor's autocratic policies.

But the arrest of Mbowe and other senior Chadema officials last July ahead of a planned public meeting to demand constitutional reform prompted opposition warnings of a slide into "dictatorship."

Mbowe was transferred to a prison in Dar es Salaam and charged with terrorism-related offences in a case that raised international concern about the state of democracy in Tanzania.

But the case was dramatically dismissed on Friday, and a judge in Dar es Salaam ordered the release of Mbowe and his three co-defendants.
04.03.2022 LISTEN

Ahaspora Professionals Network (Ahaspora) has this week finally held its much-anticipated Ghana Action Forum event aimed at engaging Ghanaians living abroad and at home in an action-oriented conference, to advance Ghana's development.

The two-day event commenced with an in-person conference held in Accra at the Kempinski Hotel, on Thursday, March 3, 2022.

The conference which is part of Ahasporas 10 years anniversary has been put together in partnership with Ghana Diaspora Public Affairs Collective (GHPAC), the USA, and The Diaspora Drive, Ghana/ UK hosts Ghana Action Forum.

Delivering a speech as a Special Guest of Honour on Day One of the event, the Second Lady of Ghana, Her Excellency Samira Bawumia congratulated Ahaspora for the successes achieved in the last ten years and wish the outfit more of the same in the future.

Congratulations on ten years of work to bridge the diaspora and indeed ten years for any organization is remarkable and worth celebrating and I wish you continued success in the years to come.

It is inspiring to see that many of you in this room are contributing significantly to entrepreneurship to our nations development and rising to the challenges that are posed by this pandemic, Her Excellency Samira Bawumia shared.

Her Excellency Samira Bawumia

[/PHOTO]

The Second Lady said under the current government ably led by President Akufo-Addo, efforts have been made to create an enabling environment for businesses to thrive.

Her Excellency Samira Bawumia used the opportunity to charge Ghanaians in the diaspora to capitalise on the many opportunities emanating from the African Continental Free Trade Area and bring investments into the country.

I know that the coming in of the African Continental Free Trade Area agreement also brings us a lot of opportunities. And so this is an area that we all have to look at. This will create the largest free trade area in the world. So the opportunities are immense.

The AfCFTA will play a vital role in aiding countries establish trade partnerships, thereby facilitating the establishment of businesses across borders on the continent. I encourage all Ghanaians in the diaspora to take advantage of this to bring investment into the country, Her Excellency Samira Bawumia said at the Ahaspora event.

The Second Lady further assured Ahaspora that the Akufo-Addo government is committed to creating an enabling environment for businesses to thrive and this will also ensure that all Ghanaians and those in the diaspora will be able to invest in Ghana, open businesses through simplified processes, agencies, institutions, and government initiatives such as the government investment promotions and the Ghana tourism authority.

Mounting the stage to deliver her address, the Founder of Ahaspora, Christabel E. Dadzie stressed that through the Ghana Action Forum, her outfit wants to turn discussions into actions to contribute to the development of the country.

This is how and why we are here today - to ensure that in our own small way, in our own small corner we put a stamp on our world by contributing to make Ghana a better place, together with all the different stakeholders in our country - political, economic, social, religious - remembering that there is definitely a place for each of us to make a difference, she told the gathering.

According to the Ahaspora Founder, the opportunities in Ghana and on the continent are vast and its about time people in the diaspora returned home to utilise those opportunities by applying the knowledge and experience acquired abroad.

Christabel E. Dadzie told the gathering, Today I encourage every participant to help tap into this movement - to identify a system or initiative to create, support, or scale up because together we are the change we want to see, and this change should start now.

Through the Network she founded in 2011, she has managed to grow Ahaspora over the years to become the most vibrant group of people from the diaspora pushing to inspire change for the development of Ghana.

Having graced the conference as keynote speakers, Akwasi Aqua-Ababio, Director of Diaspora Affairs at the office of the President, and Akwasi Agyeman, CEO of Ghana Tourism Authority both assured Ahaspora of the governments readiness to collaborate to embark on projects geared towards the development of the country.

In addition to several other keynote speakers that featured at the Ghana Action Forum, there were panel presentations, goal-and-results oriented round tables discussions all focused on channeling the knowledge and skills acquired by people from the diaspora to help Ghanas development.
The President of the Republic of Ghana, H.E Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has stressed that Africa needs to focus on good governance and don't dream about coups.

There have been incidents of coups in several countries in the region.

Although some failed, other attempted coups were successful, leaving many organisations including ECOWAS with worries over the safety of the region.

Speaking to the Pan African Youth Union after the Union paid a courtesy call on him at the Jubilee House, President Akufo-Addo kicked against Military coup detats.

He emphasised that those years where the African continent suffered because of coups must be left in the past.

Coups only retard progress. Lets not entertain them, the president of Ghana said.

According to President Akufo-Addo, instead of coups, there should be a focus on insisting on good governance to chart a new path to develop the continent.

We have to insist on good governance and democratic responsibility in our continent. We have seen what the years of coup and military intervention did to our continent in the past, H.E Akufo-Addo said.

Amid the talks of coups, there are fears Ghana could experience one.

Security experts have warned of the glaring signs with some people including NPP Bono Regional Chairman Abronye DC and FixTheCountry Convener Mr. Barker-Vormawor already picked up by the Police over comments that can incite a coup.
04.03.2022 LISTEN

The Member of Parliament for Ellembele, Emmanuel Kofi Buah and four other persons have been arrested by the Airport Divisional police for careless and inconsiderate driving.

In a statement released by Ghana Police Service today, it noted that the five persons were arrested on March 3, 2022 for traffic offences which included driving in the middle of the road facing oncoming vehicles.

The police added that the four persons were duly processed on March 3 and will face court today.

It however added that the MP for Ellembele failed to cooperate with the police.

According to the police, after the MP's license was taken he drove off.

The statement stressed that he reported this morning and has been duly processed for court today.

Find the full statement here.
04.03.2022 LISTEN

Foster Kwadwo Agyei Korang, a 45-year old Health Systems Manager of Happy Hospital in Berekum has been sentenced to 20 days in prison with hard labour by the Sunyani High Court for contempt of court in a disputed Nsoatre Chieftaincy case.

Also sentenced for the same offence are the Nifahene of Nsoatre Traditional Area, Nana Amoah Appiah and the Saanahene, Nana Amankwa who are said to have connived with the Queen-mother of the area, Nana Yaa Asuama-Kesse II to install Mr. Agyei-Korang as the chief of the town on the 15th and 17th of October 2021 when the King-makers of the town had already enstooled another person.

The two are also going to jail for 20 day in hard labour.

The court presided by Justice Patrick Baryeh in his ruling also fined the queen mother of the traditional area, Nana Yaa Asuama Kese II and her acting Queen mother, Nana Afia Gyamaah Gh 20.000 each or in default within seven days must go to jail for 15 days.

The Nifahene, Nana Amoah Appiah and Saanahene, Nana Amankwa are said to have connived with the queen mother to contemptuously install one Foster Kwadwo Agyei Korang as a rival chief of Nsoatre despite of a petition brought against them at the Bono Regional House of Chiefs by the plaintiff, Nana Obeng Effah Okokodurufo.

Counsel for the plaintiff, Asante Akwasi Foster prayed the court to convict the defendants since the queen mother and the rest exhibited or indulged in conducts intentionally and willfully calculated to enstool Agyei Korang as the chief of Nsoatre knowing the pendency of a petition at the Judicial Committee of the Bono Regional House of Chiefs.

He noted the queen mother intentionally and willfully undermined the administration of Justice amounting to contempt of court'.

It must be recalled that since the death of the late chief of Nsoatre, Prof Amoah Boakye Komansah II there has been in-fighting among some members of the kingmakers of the traditional council with the queen mother, Nifahene and the Sanaahene on one hand and the Krontihene and others, on the other hand.

According to lawyer of the plantiff, Foster Akwesi Asante, Nana Obeng Okukudrufo, the Krontihene of the Nsoatre Traditional area, Obrempong Hinneh Aframfo II the current Omanhene of Nsoatre traditional area was properly and duly installed by kingmakers of the traditional council in a peaceful manner in accordance with customs, tradition and culture of people of Nsoatre.

Thus, an attempt to install a rival chief, Foster Kwadwo Agyei Korang by the queen mother supported by Nifahene and Sanaahene spark in the face of tradition and customs of the people of Nsoatre so petitioned the Bono Regional House of Chiefs. He, therefore, prayed the court to convict the defendants for contempt.

The court thus presided over by Justice Patrick Baryeh upheld the motion by the plaintiff and consequently found them guilty of them offence and convicted them.

Facts of the matter

At the last sitting of the court on the case last December, Counsel for the applicants, Foster Akwasi Asante prayed the court to commit the respondents to prison for exhibiting or indulging in a conduct, intentionally and willfully calculated to undermine the administration of justice enstooling or purporting to enstool Foster Agyei-Korang as Chief of Nsoatre on 15th October 2021 at the family house of Nana Yaa Asuama-Kesse II, the Queen-mother of the area.

This, according to Lawyer Foster Akwasi Asante, happened at the time when the respondents knew very well of the pendency of a Chieftaincy Petition filed at the instance of the 1st and 2nd respondents before the Judicial Committee of the Bono Regional House of Chiefs.

He further argued, among others, that the action by the respondents was intentionally and maliciously undermining the administration of justice by treating with contempt all the court processes pending before the Judicial Committee of the Bono Regional House of Chiefs.

No enstoolment

In their joint affidavit in opposition to the charges leveled against them, all the respondents denied that they enstooled the alleged parallel chief saying, what took place on both days in October was not an installation or enstoolment

They contended that, ..what took place did not involve any black stool or the Omanhenes Palace. We did not go to Nsoatrehenes Palace and the 4th Respondent was not put on the Black Stool. The Family House where the ceremony took place in Nsoatre had no stool room. What took place was therefore not an enstoolment.

They further told the court that Foster Agyei-Korang remains a nominee of the Nsoatre paramount stool awaiting the final outcome of the chieftaincy proceedings commenced by the queen-mother of the area.

The 4th Respondent has not been enstooled on the Hinneh Aframfo Stool and does not reside in the Nsoatrehenes Palace and therefore what took place and has been tacitly admitted by the applicant was not enstoolment, they added.

The Respondents, who were represented in the Court by Lawyer Nii Ayikoi Otoo, contended that if the applicants are certain an enstoolment had indeed taken place they would not be using words in one purporting to enstool and in another breath enstool because in a quasi-criminal matter such as the one under consideration where proof is beyond reasonable doubt and doubts should be resolved in favour of the respondents.

Lawyer Ayikoi Otoo stated that what took place was just for the optics and it was a symbolic re-enactment of the nomination process and the oath was a symbolic one.
President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo

04.03.2022 LISTEN

President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has indicated that his government is establishing a solid foundation that will set Ghana on a path of economic success.

In the last few months, the administration of President Akufo-Addo has come under all sorts of criticisms.

The Minority in Parliament, in particular, has constantly accused the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) of poorly managing the economy.

Speaking at the 2022 Head of State Awards in Accra on Thursday, March 3, 2022, President Akufo-Addo said contrary to the accusations against his government, it is setting up the country to excel.

We are establishing a solid foundation for the economic take-off of our country. In peace and in unity, I am certain that we will, H.E Akufo-Addo shared.

According to President Akufo-Addo who is also chair of ECOWAS, Ghanaians should be patient and support the government to build on the positive strides it has achieved so far.

We must have the pride to acknowledge that we have made positive strides. We must also have the humility to appreciate that we still have some way to gohave the patience to accept that just as our fight for freedom and independence was not achieved in a day, so too, national prosperity will not come overnight, President Akufo-Addo said.
An international diplomacy consultant has asked African leaders to position themselves well for some investments from Eastern Europe.

According to Farouk Al-Wahab, the war in Ukraine can become a good omen for some African countries, if they position themselves well.

He was of the view that the two countries neck-deep in the war over supremacy in the defunct Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) are home to billionaires in Europe.

These billionaires as a result of the war will be looking for new places to invest their wealth, he said.

Mr. Al-Wahab speaking on the Ghana Yensom morning show on Accra 100.5 FM Friday, March 4, 2022 furter noted that Many of these Russian-Ukrainian billionaires will be seeking new safe havens for their investments, adding Europe will not be favourable for them stemming from the alleged sanctions that will arise from Russias decision to invade one of its allies

He said this is not the time for African leaders to be taking a hardline stance in the ongoing war but to position themselves to take advantage of the inflows as a result of the war.

Africa stands a better chance to attract many of the investments as a result of the war, he stressed.

The war in Ukraine is an economic war, it will not lead to any third world war as it is being speculated by some analysts, he noted

Source: Classfmonline.com
Government of Russia has agreed to allow Ghanaians trapped in the Ukrainian cities of Sumy and Kharkiv safe passage as they escape the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war.

Russia has launched an attack on Ukraine for its decision to join North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO).

According to Russia, Ukraines move will open the floodgate for NATO to draw very close to Russian territory.

Many countries are evacuating their citizens and Ghana is no exception but some Ghanaians have been stranded in the cities of Sumy and Kharkiv where Russian attack is heavy.

But addressing some 25 Ghanaian students who have arrived in the country today, Friday, 4 March 2022 after fleeing Ukraine through Romania and Poland, the Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister, Kwaku Ampratwum-Sarpong said the government has successfully had talks with the Russian government through the EU and AU, to allow free passage of Ghanaians caught up in Sumy, Kharkiv, and the other areas immediately.

The other good news is that the Hungary government has agreed to take those of you willing to transfer to the Universities in Hungary, and they are prepared to assist with financial assistance like you were paying in Hungary, he added.

The first batch of 16 students in arrived in Accra Tuesday morning, 1 March 2022, at the Kotoka International Airport.

They came via Qatar Airways.

More Ghanaians are expected to arrive in the country in the coming days.

The government has promised to evacuate every Ghanaian willing to return home.

Source: Classfmonline.com
The Minister for Roads and Highways, Kwasi Amoako-Atta has disclosed that the government plans to leverage the Electronic Transaction Levy (E-Levy) when it is approved to raise bonds.

The controversial E-Levy was introduced to Parliament late last year when the Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta presented the 2022 Budget Statement and Economic Policy proposal of the government.

After five months, the government has failed to secure the approval of Parliament for the implementation of the levy.

Speaking on the floor of Parliament on Friday, March 4, 2022, Kwasi Amoako-Atta who is the Roads and Highways Minister told the house that the E-Levy will be securitized for loans to address challenges in the roads sector.

The government in its wisdom has proposed the passage of the E-levy to bring more revenue to build the road infrastructure of our country for all of us.

So the government is looking forward for the passage of the E-levy that will bring in greater revenue that would be securitized and then used to raise bond if possible to build the road infrastructure, Minister Kwasi Amoako-Atta shared.

Despite the determination of the ruling government to implement the Electronic Transaction Levy, it remains unclear if it will have its way.

This is because the Minority in Parliament has consistently stressed in an assurance to the Ghanaian public that it will not allow for the house to pass the new levy.

It describes the E-Levy as draconian and insists that the government must abandon plans to impose such a tax on the citizenry.
Leading member of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) Gabby Asare Otchere-Darko has described the coup comments made by some members of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) as attempts to thwart governments efforts to revive the economy.

This follows assertions by the Dean of the Law Faculty at the University of Ghana Professor Raymond Atuguba that the country had become a fertile ground for a coup.

According to the DI founder, the comments by some of the NDCs members is geared towards scaring away potential investors to the country in order to defeat governments efforts at reviving the economy.

In a tweet on Thursday, 3 March 2022, the DI founder said: Members of the Opposition fanning the ashes on the dead logs of instability may have at least one sinister aim in mind: to scare away investors and hurt efforts to revive the economy. And, yes, investors have started asking questions should they be worried.

Members of the Opposition fanning the ashes on the dead logs of instability may have at least one sinister aim in mind: to scare away investors and hurt efforts to revive the economy. And, yes, investors have started asking questions should they be worried.  Gabby Otchere-Darko (@GabbyDarko) March 3, 2022

The Dean of the University of Ghana, School of Law, had said Ghana may be ripe for a coup unless the government acts quickly.

His assessment, he noted, partly stems from a doctoral research conducted on why some coups succeed and others do not, using Ghana as a case study.

The government has acknowledged there is no money, thus, an urgent need to pass the e-levy to expand the tax base for sustained development and reduce the debt burden.

At a forum organised by Solidare Ghana, Prof Atuguba said: My current assessment that Ghana may be ripe for a coup partly springs from the knowledge I gained from accompanying my friend through part of his doctoral research on this topic.

It does not help matters if we consider Samuel Huntingtons thesis on the snowballing effect of coups in the sub-region and the closeness of recent coups to home.

He, thus, urged the Minister of National Security, Mr Albert Kan-Dapaah, to have a conversation with his friend at the War College, who conducted the study to avert same.

Prof Atuguba explained further that a big part of why certain coups succeed and others fail is the economy.

What is the state of Ghanas economy today? At the level of the most irreducible idiomaticity, Ghana is broke; your nation is radically broke  so broke the Speaker of Parliament has publicly warned that we may not be able to pay the salaries of public sector workers in some three months unless a miracle happens, he stated.

Source: classfmonline.com
Tanzanian opposition leader Freeman Mbowe was a free man on Friday after prosecutors dropped terrorism charges against him, ending a case that his supporters had branded a government bid to crush dissent.

President Samia Suhulu Hassan had come under mounting pressure to dismiss the case against the Chadema party chairman, which raised concerns at home and abroad about the state of political and media freedoms in the East African country.

"Justice won today," Chadema's deputy secretary general Benson Kigaila told a crowd of jubilant supporters gathered at party headquarters hoping to see Mbowe.

"We told them in vain from the very beginning that there is no case and today they confirmed that."

The party posted a picture of Mbowe and his three co-defendants on Twitter after their release.

They had been behind bars for more than seven months, charged with conspiracy to commit terrorist acts and funding terrorism.

"Because the (prosecution) has submitted an intention to drop the case and the defence side has accepted it, the case is now removed from the court and I order the suspects to be released unconditionally," said Judge Joachim Tiganga.

'Huge victory'

None of the accused were in the Dar es Salaam court for Friday's hearing -- when the defence had been due to present its case.

But the decision triggered scenes of celebration in court, according to a video posted on Twitter by Chadema and was also welcomed by the US ambassador to Tanzania.

"At the moment we are savouring our huge victory, both morally and legally," Mbowe's lawyer Peter Kibatala told AFP.

Tanzania's President Samia Suluhu Hassan has been making overtures to the opposition recently. By HANNAH MCKAY POOLAFPFile

Mbowe was arrested in July along with a number of other senior party officials in a nighttime police raid in the lakeside city of Mwanza just hours before they were to hold a public forum to demand constitutional reforms.

The 60-year-old veteran opposition leader accused police of torturing him during his time in custody.

His arrest had dimmed hopes Hassan would turn the page on the autocratic rule of her predecessor John Magufuli, nicknamed the "Bulldozer" for his uncompromising style and crackdown on dissent.

Chadema had accused Hassan's government of meddling in the case and said the arrests reflected a deepening slide into "dictatorship" since she became president in March last year.

'Turn the page'

Recently however, the government has made seemingly conciliatory overtures to the opposition.

"Today's dismissal of the case against Freeman Mbowe is a welcome opportunity for Tanzania to turn the page and focus on the future," US ambassador to Tanzania Donald Wright posted on Twitter.

"Now let's work together to seize the immense opportunities that exist, and build a future of peace, prosperity, and freedom for all."

In February, Hassan met in Brussels with Chadema's deputy chairman Tundu Lissu, who was the party's candidate in the 2020 presidential election but lives in exile in Belgium following an attempt on his life in 2017.

Also last month, the government lifted a Magufuli-era ban on four Swahili-language newspapers, including Daima -- a daily owned by Mbowe.

Prosecutors had said the allegations against Mbowe did not relate to the planned constitutional reform conference, but to alleged offences last year in another part of Tanzania.

Chadema has said the charges included conspiring to attack a public official, and giving 600,000 Tanzanian shillings ($260, 230 euros) towards blowing up petrol stations and public gatherings and cutting down trees to block roads.
Oliver Mawuse Barker-Vormawor

04.03.2022 LISTEN

A leader of the #FixTheCountry Movement, Oliver Mawuse Barker-Vormawor, has finally heeded the advice of the Ashaiman District Court and filed an application for bail at a Tema High Court.

The former Presidential Staffer in the previous National Democratic Congress (NDC) administration is facing treason felony charges at the Ashaiman court.

He has been remanded twice by the court presided over by Eleanor Kakra Barnes-Botchway's after he took to social media to threaten a coup if the controversial Electronic Transfer Levy commonly called E-levy is passed by Parliament.

On his Facebook timeline, Barker-Vormawor posted that If this E-Levy passes after this cake bullshit, I will do the coup myself.

He went ahead to insult the Ghana Armed Forces by describing the military as Useless Army!

The activist was subsequently arrested immediately he touched down at the Kotoka International Airport from the United Kingdom where he is pursuing a doctorate degree.

He was subsequently remanded into police custody by the Ashaiman District Court.

Several attempts to secure bail for the social media activist from the district court to the Supreme Court, the courts rejected those requests with a advise for them to put in a bail request at the High Court since the liberty of an individual is at stake.

Supreme Court struck out the application to quash a ruling of the High Court B Tema, which declined to order the Inspector General of Police and the Attorney General to justify the continued detention of #FixTheCountry activist.

The court also advised Mr. Barker-Vormawor's lawyers to apply to the High Court for bail.

Interestingly, a Deputy Attorney General, Diana Asonaba-Dapaah who led the charge of the State reportedly described the application as a salad.

She said the AG was even unable to file a response to the application for the mixed nature of it, stating that We did not file anything in response because a look at the application that has been served and the reliefs that have been served we think that in one breath they are seeking to invoke the supervisory jurisdiction of the Court, and in another breath, they are seeking to invoke the Court's original jurisdiction.

President of the panel, Justice Jones Dotse pointed out that Your 2nd and 3rd Reliefs are problematic for you.

His Lordship consequently noted that what you have come for, with respect, you cannot succeed, much as we sympathise with your client.

The application was filed by the brother of the activist, Elinam Philip Vormawor, and directed at the Inspector General of Police, Dr. George Akuffo Dampare, and the Attorney-General, Godfred Yeboah Dame.

His lawyers say they applied to the High Court on Wednesday, February 16, 2022, for the order after the Ashaiman District Magistrate Court declined jurisdiction in a bail application, without making any orders for Mr. Vormawor's continuous detention by the Ashaiman Police.

Prior to the ruling, the lawyers say Mr. Vormawor had been detained between Friday, February 11, when he was arrested at the Kotoka International Airport, and Monday, February 14, when he was first presented before the Court without considering the question of his personal liberty.

They also say though, a charge sheet containing a charge of Treason Felony was read out to Mr. Vormawor at the District Court, his plea was not taken, neither was a bill of indictment presented to the Court.

Per a statement from the #FixTheCountry Movement, it appears Barker-Vormawor has finally heeded to the advise and filed a bail application at a High Court.

In all these sessions, however, the courts have told Oliver one and only one thing which is contrary to Article 14(3)b) of the Constitution  that he rather should take his detainers to the court which has jurisdiction to ensure his right to personal liberty.

By that, it is now well-established that the constitutional duty of the police to bring persons they have arrested to a court of competent jurisdiction no longer exists. That duty is now on the individual to perform.

Accordingly, Oliver has agreed to perform that duty. He has signed the affidavit in support of an application for bail at the High Court. The application has since been filed and will be heard on Thursday, March 10, 2022, at the Tema High Court, part of the statement reads.

Barker-Vormawor was remanded into police custody for another two weeks after his appearance on Tuesday.

He will return to court on March 15, 2021.

During the hearing, Mr. Barker-Vormawor' was walked out of the courtroom after his lawyer raised issues with the jurisdiction of the Ashaiman District Court to preside over a matter that bordered on the personal liberty of his client.

---DGN online
Mr Kwaku Ampratwum-Sarpong, the Deputy Minister in charge of Political and Economic, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration, says government has released US$2 million for evacuation of Ghanaian students from war-stricken Ukraine.

The amount, he said, was the first tranche of money released to the Ministry for the evacuation exercise.

He said, once that was exhausted, another tranche would be made available to ensure that all Ghanaians who had moved to neighbouring countries in Ukraine were evacuated to Ghana.

He refuted assertions by some persons that the evacuation effort was tied to the passage of E-Levy, and said without it, the country was on course to get stranded Ghanaians from harm's way as that was the government's pre-occupation.

The Minister disclosed this when he led some government officials to welcome the second batch of 24 Ghanaian students in Ukraine who were being sheltered in Poland.

Out of the 24 who arrived at the Kotoka International Airport in the early hours of Friday, 16 of them came via Qatar Airways paid for by the Government and eight of them on Turkish Airlines self-funded.

Earlier this week, 17 of the students had arrived in the country from Romania, adding up to 41, the total number of Ghanaian students who have arrived.

The Government has arranged with five airlines - Qatar, Turkish, Ethiopian, KLM, and Lufthansa Airlines, to airlift Ghanaians from various neighbouring countries of Ukraine.

As at 1700 hours on 28th February 2022, an estimated 527 Ghanaian nationals had crossed the Ukrainian border to other neighbouring European countries.

Out of the number, some 49 Ghanaians, including one child were received by the Diplomatic Mission in Prague, Czech Republic, and are awaiting processing for departure to Ghana.

In Slovakia, 25 Ghanaians had arrived and were on their way to Prague to be received by Ghana's Diplomatic mission, while in Romania, 134 Ghanaians were received by an official of the Prague Diplomatic Mission and were also awaiting relevant processes for departure to Ghana.

Mr Ampratwum-Sarpong, speaking shortly after welcoming the students, confirmed that there were still other Ghanaians caught up in parts of Ukraine particularly Sumy and Kharkiv  the second largest city in Ukraine, and said Russians had surrounded those cities making it unadvisable for them to be moved.

He disclosed that some 91 Ghanaian students, many from the Sumy State University, were trapped in bunkers and bomb shelters and that efforts made to get them out had proven futile due to the risk involved.

We have joined other African countries to lobby the European Union, and a presentation was made to the Russian Government. The Russian President has given the clearance to facilitate the movement of foreign nationals in Sumy, Kharviv, and other dangerous areas to give them a safe passage to neighbouring countries, he said.

The Deputy Minister said in the next four days, there would be arrivals of Ghanaian students and that there was an elaborate plan to bring home stranded Ghanaians and students.

He said the Government had delegated the Deputy Minister in charge of Administration and Finance of the Ministry Of Foreign Affairs And Regional Integration, Thomas Mbomba, who was currently at the frontline in neighbouring countries where Ghanaians were taking shelter to ensure safety and facilitate efforts to bring them home.

He was in Hungary and met some of the students and other compatriots who had managed to cross over from Ukraine to Bucharest and from there he would be continuing to Poland and Warsaw to interact with those who had managed to get there for firsthand information as to what is really happening there, he said.

GNA
Dr Yaw Osei Adutwum, Minister of Education, says government is committed to expanding infrastructural projects at the University of Ghana Medical School to admit more students to study medicine and dentistry.

He said other medical schools would also have their facilities expanded to absorb the pool of eligible students graduating from the Free Senior High Schools programme to improve the doctor-patient ratio.

That, the Minister explained, was crucial in achieving Sustainable Development Goal three- Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages.

Mrs Gifty Twum Ampofo, the Deputy Minister for Education in charge of Technical and Vocational Education and Training, said this in a speech on behalf of the Minister at the 6oth anniversary of UGMS, on the theme: Building on 60 Years of Quality Medical Education: The Role of Technology.

Dr Adutwum said the Government recognised that there had not been any major expansion of facilities of the School since its establishment for, which reason it was unable to admit more students.

I am reliably informed that issues like hostel accommodation, transportation of students and expansion of clinical teaching sites have been some of the challenges hampering teaching and learning in the school, he said and called on corporates and international organisations to collaborate with the Government to support the expansion drive for medical training in the country.

We are all potential patients who stand to benefit from these investments for the ultimate benefit of ourselves, families and society.

The Minister stated that while the Government was working on the provision of laptops to students and faculty of the University of Ghana, Legon, the Ministry also recognised that advanced simulation was the future for medical schools.

We are prepared to dialogue to see how we can support the transition so that UGMS becomes the leader in the use of technology for medical education in the sub-region. This will widen its reach to more students interested in studying medicine while leveraging the technological revolution of our time.

Mr Kwaku Agyeman-Manu, the Minister of Health, said medical education had evolved with the introduction of electronic platforms for didactic lectures and demonstrations, stressing that the dissection of real bodies for students had now been replaced with simulations in the teaching of anatomy.

Technology, he stated, had helped in diagnosing and sequencing COVID-19 virus and its variants and enhanced automatic interpretation of heart sounds.

He said Artificial Intelligence was now the engine that drove improvement across the care continuum because it allowed humans to gain insights into diagnostics, care processes, treatment variability and patient outcomes.

The Ministry, he announced, would soon launch the e-health project and leverage technology to improve processes at agency levels towards ensuring that no one was left behind in accessing healthcare delivery.

Professor Julius Fobil, Provost, College of Health Sciences, University of Ghana, said the anniversary would be commemorated with a line of activities, including blood donation, public lectures, symposium, exhibition, awards ceremony and thanksgiving service.

The idea to establish a Ghana Medical School was conceived in 1919 when the Korle-Bu Hospital was built by the then Governor of the Gold Coast, Sir Frederick Gordon Guggisberg.

It was, however, shelved when the Governor left office and revived in the 1960s under the Kwame Nkrumah regime.

Korle-Bu became a teaching hospital because it temporarily housed the School.

In 1969, when the School was about to graduate its first batch of students, it became necessary to incorporate it into the University of Ghana to enable it to issue academic certificates to the graduating students and the name became the University of Ghana Medical School.

GNA
Hurray! At last, Ghana has crossed another milestone of her independence. It's a great feeling to be free, and at such freedom always comes with a price. Ghana, just like many other nations, had to fight fiercely to have her freedom to decide her own destiny, visions, and aspirations.

During our fight for freedom, we lost some of our great men, and many others were imprisoned for standing for what's right . May the souls of our ancestors continue to rest in peace.

Today, we can boldly say we are free. We have made our own laws and have the liberty to lead our nations to her destiny.

Freedom is not an event, or simply ; it is something that we fight for and deliberately protect to sustain it . On 6th March 1957 at the Apollo Grounds in Accra , Kwame Nkrumah said, " Ghana Our Beloved Country is Free Forever."

To some of us, we thought that was the end of the struggles for our independence, but no, it's actually the beginning of the struggles.

Our nation has gone through different phases to come this far , such as Coup D'etat , economic and financial crisis. All these phases have actually shaped us into very strong and courageous people in the Sahara region. Our hilife music and cultural diversity as a nation makes us so unique among our neighboring countries. Ghana's freedom in the 1957 made us the political "Mecca" in Africa. We had great men like the late President of Zimbabwe Robert Mugabe who attended Achimota College and also being mentored by His political idol Dr Kwame Nkrumah.

We have proven to the world that we are warriors who have what it takes to fight to the end.

Today, when we look around Ghana, the river of freedom of which once flew at the shores of our nations has gradually dried up. Gone are the days when people of all walks of life traveled to drink from our well of freedom.

There is a new form of slavery that is far heavier and greater than what we fought for.

It's the slavery of greed, hypocrisy, ethnocentrism, and lack of good moral conscience in the lives of the citizenry. It's so alarming that greed has taken away the Spirit of patriotism from our nation. The Father's who laid down their lives for this nation were driven by the Spirit of patriotism and passion to see both the rich and the poor free. That spirit of patriotism seems to have been eroded away quickly, which has given rise to selfishness. Today, a lack of passion to protect our freedom has paved the way for certain elements both within and outside to come and once again to dictate how we should live our lives as a sovereign nation.

This is a critical moment for us to rise up to champion the course of our freedom. Ghana is indeed free but not absolutely free. Our freedom seemed to have only given us the option to choose who becomes our leaders and representatives in our nation and institutions, but economically , we have still become hewers of wood and drawers of water .

Our fight tor freedom can only be complete when we have total control of our resources that poor man's son at Sefwi or Walewale will have a fair share of the national cake .

Freedom is a right and not a privilege, and therefore, leaders must put in measures to address the growing cases of inequalities that threaten the freedom of the citizenry.

Corruption, ethnocentrism, and hypocrisy that have infected our institutions should be purged to pave the way for unity. There can never be freedom when we are divided as a nation.

It's time to move beyond religion and partisanship to rally together as one people to move our nation forward . Our leaders should exemplify our freedom by embracing our culture and implementing strategies for us to consume our homemade goods. Above all, Ghanaian languages should be strongly prioritized in our educational system and there should be measures to curb foreign contents that find their way in our media space which do not represent who we are as Ghanaians and Africans.

God bless our home land Ghana and Happy 65th Independence anniversary.

By Richard Tawiah
The Ghana School of Law (GSL) has inducted the 499 students who were earlier denied admission for allegedly failing to meet the cut-off point for entry.

The students were inducted on Friday, 4 March 2022.

The 499 students were refused admission despite scoring 50 percent which is the required pass mark.

On Friday, 29 October 2021, Parliament resoundingly voted in support of a motion filed by Majority Chief Whip Alexander Afenyo-Markin to compel the GLC to admit all students who had passed the entrance exams per the advertised rules of the examination.

The Minority Chief Whip, Mr Muntaka Mubarak, seconded the motion.

Following the resounding vote in support of the motion, the First Deputy Speaker of Parliament, Joe Osei-Owusu, directed the GLC to proceed and admit all the students who passed in accordance with the advertised rules of the examination.

But responding to Parliaments directive, the attorney General and minister of justice Godfred Dame in a stament said Whilst recognising the general legislative powers of parliament in Ghana, except as have been circumscribed by the constitution, I am constrained to advise that parliament is devoid of a power through the use of Parliamentary resolution, to control the process of admission into the Ghana School of Law. The mode of exercising legislative power enshrined in article 106 of the constitution does not admit of resolutions.

The AG directed the General Legal Council (GLC) to admit the 499 students who were denied entry into the GSL.

According to the AG, the students are either to be admitted to the GSL this November or in May 2022.

However, the AG recommended that the GLC ensure that both sets of students are called to the bar in the next two years.

Source: classfmonline.com
Madam Ophelia Dei Adubea, Nutritionist at the Nutrition Department of the Ridge Hospital, says "waakye", a popular Ghanaian dish is not only nutritious but medicinal.

She said the meal was 'health-giving' when cooked with the sorghum bicolor leaves and packaged or served in the "katemfe" leaves also known as the miracle plant or sweet prayer plant.

Madam Adubea said this in an interview with the Ghana News Agency on local dishes to commemorate the Heritage Month.

She said sorghum bicolor leaves, also known as sorghum red leaves, were usually used as a colouring additive in the preparation of "waakye", - a meal comprising rice and beans boiled together, but the leaves add more than colour to the meal.

Madam Dei Adubea said the "sorghum bicolor leaves have chemical components that help the human digestive system and also helps in free bowel."

Those phytochemicals, especially antioxidants, which were extracted by adding a little saltpetre "kanwe" were critical for maintaining optimum health and wellbeing.

The antioxidants provide protection against diseases caused by oxidation stress such as cancer, diabetes, amongst others. It also prevents cell damage, according to health experts.

Research also shows that sorghum bicolor is used in the treatment of abdominal pain, epilepsy, and anaemia due to its high iron constituent.

The leaves contain calcium, which is good for bone health and anti-inflammatory properties.

She urged the public to always add vegetables to the meal and use the saltpetre in moderation.

"Whoever is eating 'waakye' should look out for saltpetre, too much of it can be harmful and they must always eat with vegetables," Mad Dei Addobea cautioned.

Hajia Latifa Kande, a food vendor adjacent to the Registrar General Department, told the GNA that the leaves contained nutrients that boosted the production of blood.

A lot of people love eating waakye and it is a good business to do but you must prepare it well to give your customers the best satisfaction, she added.

Miss Abena Serwaa Mensah, a public servant, after buying some wakye from Hajia Kande, said the "katemfe" leaves gave a good flavour to the meal and made one salivate.

She said the leaves could preserve foods for longer period, adding that she had on countless occasions preserved waakye in the leaves from afternoon till evening.

The leaves are from a plant species in Africa called Thaumatococcus daniellii, known for being the natural source of thaumatin, an intensely sweet protein.

In West Africa, the plant is mostly cultivated for the leaves. The lamina of the leaves is used for wrapping foods while the petiole is used to weave mats. The entire leaf is also used for roofing.

GNA
Accra, 4 March 2022: In the framework of a working visit to Accra, the Deputy Prime Minister of the German Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), Dr. Joachim Stamp, and the Minister of Employment and Labour Relations, Hon. Ignatius Baffour Awuah, held talks on how to improve the development impact of migration and further contribute to internationally competitive skills development in Ghana. The discussions centred on the cooperation between North Rhine-Westphalia and Ghana regarding building the technical capacity of Ghanaian youth to leverage on labour migration opportunities to Germany. Both sides expressed great appreciation for the collaboration they have enjoyed so far around migration, employment promotion, diaspora engagement and reintegration support.

German Cooperation in Ghana and its main implementing agency, the Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), are actively engaged in leveraging the development potential of migration in Ghana: As such, GIZ supports the Ghanaian diaspora to engage in the development of their home country, it assists migrants in their socio-economic reintegration, provides the local youth with livelihood prospects in the country and advices on options of regular migration, while creating awareness of the risks of irregular migration. The Ghanaian-German Centre for Jobs, Migration and Reintegration (GGC) is the main institution of German Cooperation in Ghana in these matters. It is located on the premises of the Ministry of Employment and Labour Relations in Accra, and counsels returned migrants and local population alike on how they can build economic success in Ghana and advices on options of migration. Since its inception in 2017, the GGC has provided more than 60,000 support measures in these areas to Ghanaians.

The delegation from North Rhine-Westphalia met the Ghanaian Minister for Employment and his team at the GGC. Present at the meeting were the Deputy Minister for Employment and Labour Relations, Hon. Bright Wireko-Brobbey; the Chief Director of the Ministry, Mr Kizito Ballans; the Chief Labour Officer, Mr Eugene Korletey; the German Ambassador to Ghana, H.E. Daniel Krull; the Head of German Development Cooperation, Ms Dorothee Dinkelaker; GIZ Country Director, Ms Regina Bauerochse Barbosa, and the leadership team of the Ghanaian-German Centre.

The Head of the Ghanaian-German Centre for Jobs, Migration and Reintegration, Benjamin Woesten, expressed appreciation to the delegation for choosing to be at the Centre for such an important meeting. As the go-to-hub in Ghana for employment and migration related issues, we are excited to be hosting the delegation and providing the platform for deliberations on making migration as beneficial as possible: For the migrants, for the country of origin and for the country of destination said Mr. Woesten.

The delegation was also taken on a visit to the ZPRIME Professional Driving Institute, where the German development cooperation through the Ghanaian-German Centre and the Adventist Development and Relief Agency supports returnees and local population to find employment, by providing them with marketable skills in heavy equipment operations. The delegation received an introduction to the services of the institute and also witnessed a demonstration of the institutes graduates skills in forklift and backhoe excavator operation.
04.03.2022 LISTEN

What happened to the COVID-19?

For over two years, we were locked up, masked up, restricted in every possible way. Our liberties were curtailed, our rights trampled upon. We couldnt visit sick relatives or attend family gatherings. We were denied the right to bid proper farewell to dead relations.

We were told that it was all designed to save us from ourselves.

Then, Russia invaded Ukraine and COVID-19 appears to have made a sudden and mysterious vanishing act.

Suddenly, borders that were closed for two years were thrown wide open. Unlike non-European refugees who were refused entry because of COVID-19, Ukrainian refugees were welcome with open arms. No one asked for masks or vaccine certificate.

So, what happened?

Femi Akomolafe

Femi Akomolafe is a writer and author
04.03.2022 LISTEN

The United Nations (UN) Eminent Peace Ambassador and the Country Director for International Association of World Peace Advocates, Ghana Chapter, Dr Samuel Owusu has urged the President of Ghana, Nana Addo Dankwah Akufo Addo to reduce his salary and cut down certain privileges.

He has also advised political leaders, including Ministers of State and Members of Parliament to willingly reduce their salaries and review certain privileges offered them.

That, he said will encourage the public to accept the E-Levy and pay it willingly.

Speaking with the media, Dr Samuel Owusu said he is not against the E-levy but he was of the belief that people will be encouraged to accept it if the President and all other leaders cut down their salaries and allowances.

Mr President and Ministers of State, I am appealing to you to look at how the President of Ukraine is leading his country. If you had reduced your salaries and allowances at the time you introduced the E-Levy, will it not help the country? Will it not encourage the youth to embrace it, but at the time we are asking for the E-levy, it is the same time we are traveling with private jets, he said.

Dr Samuel Owusu added that, We are appealing to our leaders to suspend certain things. If you listen to what I am saying, it will help you. It will be prudent to hear that the Presidents fuel allowances and that of the Ministers have been cut at the upcoming 65th Independence Day celebration, Per diem has been cancelled and you will see how Ghanaians will hail you. You will see how Ghanaians will hail you when they hear that you have cut down on salaries by 20 or 30 per cent.

He continued, The President can say that because we want the country to develop and we want to do things with our own money, I am bringing this or that, the Ministers are also bringing theirs, leadership by example. Let us start with the leaders and this will boost the confidence in the people.
04.03.2022 LISTEN

Could the ensemble of the NPP leadership and certain of their supporters and members be described as being absurdly obstinate and politically myopic?

I am very much persuaded that they are, from the look of things. They keep on repeating the same politically incorrect policies that cost them parliamentary seats not only in the 2020 general elections but in the previous ones.

Why at all does the NPP leadership see it fit to impose certain persons, thus, candidates, on some constituencies and districts contrary to the choices of the constituents?

Very often, the NPP as a party has come to suffer some defeat because of such completely irresponsible decisions they take, yet, they are never ready to change.

Is he not a fool he who does not learn from their past mistakes to avoid repeating them?

NPP once lost their stronghold seat in Bekwai in 2008 election to an independent candidate.

The said independent candidate prior to going independent was a strong member of the NPP. He was the favourite choice of the constituents, however the NPP leadership for unknown but obviously absurd reasons bordering on favouritism, had preferred someone else.

Tried as the constituents choice did, the NPP ignored him, disallowed him from contesting on their ticket hence his decision to go independent.

He won the seat while all the other candidates including that of the NPP's lost.

In the 2020 general elections, the NPP leadership repeated the same stupid behaviour which cost them not only the Obuasi-Adansi parliamentary seat but also, that of Atiwa and other areas.

Asiamah of Obuasi-Adansi constituency had to go independent when NPP denied him the chance to contest in their primaries for the seat.

I understand Bernard Antwi-Boasiako aka Chairman Wontumi was behind the ploy to deny Asiamah the form to fill to contest for the NPP primaries for the seat.

The NPP leadership repeated their absolutely stupid infatuation with imposing their choices of candidates on some districts, metropolis and municipalities for the MMDCE positions in 2021, contrary to the preferred choices by the citizens of the districts, municipalities or metropolis.

My own Kumawu Sekyere District encountered same much abhorrent NPP short-sighted policy of imposing their preferred candidate on the district in contrast to the choice by the people or the elected assembly members.

They used police intimidations and other completely irresponsible actions to force their candidate on Kumawu.

The NPP leadership never learn but keep on repeating same politically incorrect policies all of the time.

This is an indication of them taking the people for fools and if yes, they will pay dearly for it.

Do they care at all? I hope not, or else, they would not keep on repeating same all of the time.

From the news l listened to this afternoon as coming from sefwi Akontombra or thereabouts, the NPP leadership is orchestrating same nonsense to the detriment and insecurity of their parliamentarian in that area.

No wonder that the proofs currently on the ground indicate that the NPP is surely going into opposition come election 2024.

Any wise person will not dare do anything silly when they become very much aware of the danger ahead of them but the NPP leadership doesn't give a hoot.

I have more to inform the worldwide Ghanaians of, as regard the fate of NPP come election 2024.

Their sloganized "break the 8" is just a fantasy to fool themselves, concluding from empirical observations as ongoing in Ghana today.

Rockson Adofo

Friday, 4 March 2022
04.03.2022 LISTEN

Hurray!!! Ghana is 65, can we all joyfully sing a birthday song for Ghana? Five years after retiring if Ghana was a Ghanaian. Is Ghana proud of the successes chalked while in active service or is Ghana retiring home to the village to fight for a room in the family house and struggle over family properties? Big Brother Ghana at her age should be a great counselor and mentor to many young African countries after living independently for 65 solid years yet our dear country is now animal hunting with the young boys in the farm else there will be no food on the table.. What an accomplishment!!!

We are a nation of sheep and someone else owns the grass- George Carlin. This quote probably is the exact description of the current state we find ourselves as a country after gaining political independence. A flock probably without a Good Shepherd! Hungry and desperate sheep yet we have no grass and even with the little available, only a select, chosen and privileged few have access to it. Politically liberated sheep from the cage yet we cant seem to find grass to eat unless we go back to the cage for which we fought fearlessly to leave. A flock of sheep wandering around at the direction and mercy of the wind Kwame Nkrumahs Ghana??

65 years and proud of ourselves I guess..Proud of physical brutalities in our legislative house? Proud of political intolerance? Proud of industrial strikes? Proud of its many political and juicy campaign promises? Proud of only delivering economic sermons on how to manage the economy? Proud of losing lives and properties to flood every year? Proud of the cedi breaking jail even after the Vice President personally handed the key to the IGP? Proud of fuel prices breaking the eight? Proud of trying to impose the e-levy at all cost? Proud of rising youth unemployment? Proud of our NABCO trainees who havent been paid for months? Proud of our quest to digitalize yet we still have to queue and spend several hours to get our NIA cards? Proud of data harmonization yet after registering for our Ghana card, we still have to physically visit offices of telecommunication and SSNIT to merge our data in the midst of covid? Proud of our country where fraud (sister nie oo London among others) is becoming the means of survival?

Today as Ghana celebrates its 65th independence, I share this piece as a young Ghanaian. I write this as a son of the country hoping to have been enjoying the fruits and labor of my dear mother Ghana by now. I write joining and asking my age mates and fellow youth if we can even afford a birthday party for our 65 year old mother Ghana. I ask my fellow youth to go into the boxes and wardrobes of our dear mother Ghana and see her belongings if we are proud of them. I ask our leaders if this is the best they can offer. I ask our forefathers if this is indeed the country they envisaged for us. I ask Ghanaian workers if they are content with the wage bill. I ask consumers of our utility if they are proud of the services being offered. I ask government communicators if they can continue to defend everything and anything the government introduces. I ask government functionaries if they are proud of their accomplishments. I ask opposition political parties what they would have done differently if they had the opportunity. I ask other politicians if they will continue to paint the government black at all times.. And then finally, I ask the Ghanaian voter if they have ever been proud of the ballot cast?

6th March presents us with a golden opportunity to have a national discourse about the future of Ghana. A great opportunity to do a self-introspection of our journey as an independent country. But the sad reality is that, social media and the traditional media have always focused on trivial issues such as plagiarized speeches of Presidents, whether Presidents exchange warm handshake with former Presidents or not, the costume, facial make ups and fashion of our first and second ladies among others.

Today, I humbly appeal to us all as a nation to change the narrative and focus on our progress as a country. Let us have an honest discussion of our socio- economic and political status as a country. Let us talk about the future we are building for our youth. Let us talk about the quality of students we are producing. Let us talk about the role of academia and media in economic liberation. Let us talk about the abuse of power and office. Let us talk about our farm produce that get rotten in the farms due to poor roads. Let us talk about communities in Ghana with no access to education, electricity, potable water among others. Let us talk about our university students of whom, a good number have no clue on what the future holds for them. Let us talk about the labor force leaving the shores of the land to secure greener pastures. Let us indeed talk about the abuse some women are being subjected to due to culture and religion. And most importantly, let us talk about our identity and values as a people.

Fellow Ghanaians, My brothers and sisters, Fellow country men and women. Indeed Ghana as a country has come a long way. Let us not overlook our successes we have chalked as a country. However, let us not be in denial of the real and hard truth facing our country today. Ghana has enjoyed a relatively stable democracy, some good investments in infrastructure, some social interventions in education and health among others. These are gains we should be proud of but we should not be deceived that all is rosy and glamourous.

For Policy and Development practitioners, what happened to vision 2020 by Chairman Rawlings? Ghana Poverty Reduction Strategy I, Growth and Poverty Reduction Strategy II by President Kuffour? Ghana Shared Growth and Development Agenda I and II by Prof. Mills and President Mahama and now what is happening to the famous Ghana beyond Aid by President Akuffo-Addo  I call on development practitioners, academics, politicians, bureaucrats, Civil Society Organizations, Media among others to critically review these policy frameworks/ visions, consolidate our findings and then charter a clearer path for our nation. Let this new path be the Ghana dream. Let us think and start developing a dream for mother Ghana. A dream that will inform policies and plans. A dream that will not die with an Individual. A dream that will not exit with the ruling government.

Indeed, as I write this piece, I still have lots of hope in our potential as a country to change the narrative. This is indeed the time where research publications by academics should not be left to rot. This is indeed the time where political actors especially the Executive and Parliament must take the opportunity of a hung parliament given by Ghanaians to work together in the interest of mother Ghana. This is surely the time, to cut down on the luxury and extravagant lifestyle of the ruling class. This is surely the time to have a national discourse about a plan and vision for Ghana. This is indeed the time to celebrate success and not mediocrity. This is surely a time to forge ahead as a people irrespective of ones political or cultural affiliation.

To the political and ruling class, this is indeed the time to think about the people for whom power, authority and resources have been entrusted in your care.

May God bless our dear country and make our nation great and strong.

Vincent Ohene-Ntow

YALI Dream

A Better Ghana

A Brighter Africa

Facebook; Kwame Ohene-Ntow

Email: [email protected]

Personal Blog; mirrorofafrica.blogspot.com

The writer is a Development Practitioner and a Local Government Enthusiast. He holds a Masters degree in Development Policy and Planning from KNUST and a Bachelors degree in Public Administration from the University of Ghana Business School. He is an Alumnus of the Young African Leadership Initiative (YALI, RLC).
On February 28, 2022, the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) released an evaluation of its recently concluded five-year strategy. The media outlet Devex, which covers international development issues, reported on the evaluation under the headline, AGRA has failed to improve Africa's food security, report finds. While noting the range of mixed results reported in the evaluation, the article highlighted the key finding of importance to all who want to understand the impacts of this billion-dollar initiative on Africas small-scale farmers: AGRA did not meet its headline goal of increased incomes and food security for 9 million smallholders.

While the evaluation is limited in its scope and its access to reliable data, that finding confirms earlier studies that have shown that there is little evidence that this 15-year investment in promoting market-driven development based on expanded use of commercial seeds and fertilizers has improved farmers yields, incomes or food security. My own 2020 study documented that yields were increasing slowly and only for a few supported crops, farmers incomes were not rising significantly and the number of hungry people in AGRAs 13 focus countries had increased 31%.

That study also documented the lack of rigorous evaluations of AGRAs work by either AGRA itself or its lead donors. The lack of accountability, combined with the poor outcomes, prompted African civil society organizations in 2021 to call on donors to withdraw support for AGRA and shift funding to more promising and effective farmer-based strategies such as agroecology.

The new evaluation is a welcome, if limited, contribution to our understanding of AGRAs performance. Undertaken by the consulting firm Mathematica, the evaluation examines only the last five years of AGRAs activity, which was carried out under the banner, Partnership for Inclusive Agricultural Transformation in Africa (PIATA). The evaluation was funded by AGRAs lead donor, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) on behalf of all five PIATA donors, including the U.K. Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office; the Rockefeller Foundation; the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID); and Germanys Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development. It includes a summary of findings, a statistical appendix, and AGRAs formal responses to the findings, all available publicly.

Since the 2020 publication of my own evaluation of AGRA and the Green Revolution strategy for Africa, I have closely monitored efforts by AGRA and its donors to provide better data and analysis of its impacts. Last year I assessed AGRAs 2020 Outcome Monitoring reports, published following a public records request to USAID, and AGRAs subsequent 2020 Annual Report, published alongside an Emerging Results report offering additional impact monitoring. I found those monitoring and reporting efforts to be deeply flawed, pointing out that they largely failed to show accountability to AGRAs original goals to double yields and incomes for 30 million smallholder families while cutting food insecurity in half.

While the new evaluation is quite narrow in scope, it at least assesses AGRAs performance in improving yields and welfare for Africas small-scale farming households. Here, I examine those findings in detail, focusing on the parts of the evaluation that relate to farmer outcomes. AGRA, under its 2017-21 PIATA strategy, has focused on creating an enabling environment for agricultural transformation, including private sector development, government capacity-building and policy support, agricultural extension to supplement underfunded government efforts, and other initiatives.

As Devex summarizes in its coverage, Researchers from Mathematica found that PIATA was successful in developing key policy reforms, mobilizing flagships and partnerships, and reaching farmers with extension and seeds. The strategy also helped incentivize private sector engagement in the production and delivery of improved seeds in some countries.

These are all intermediate objectives that need to be evaluated for their impacts on the larger goals of improving farmers productivity, incomes and food security. Here, I focus on those larger goals. If the intermediate objectives are being accomplished but are failing to produce the desired outcomes for farmers, after 15 years of AGRA programming, it may well be an indication that what AGRA calls its theory of change is fundamentally flawed.

That is indeed what the new evaluation suggests: the Green Revolution strategy is failing to achieve AGRAs stated goal to catalyze a farming revolution in Africa. There is little evidence that such transformative change is taking place, which is why donors should reconsider their continued support for AGRA.

AGRA did not meet its headline goal

The evaluation is quite clear that when it comes to impacts on African farmers, AGRA did not meet its headline goal of increased incomes and food security for 9 million smallholders. Here is the evaluators summary statement on the disappointing contributions of AGRAs current PIATA programs to farmers productivity, incomes and food security:

PIATAs impact on farmer-level outcomesadoption of inputs, yields, sales, food security, and resiliencewas mixed. Notably, PIATA improved maize yields in Ethiopia, Ghana, and Nigeria, but not in Tanzania, Burkina Faso, or Kenya. Across these six countries, only farmers in Burkina Faso experienced improved maize sales as a result of PIATA. These mixed results likely reflect remaining farmer constraints in access to affordable inputs and output markets, as well as low per-farmer investment levels. These findings suggest that AGRA did not meet its headline goal of increased incomes and food security for 9 million smallholders, despite reaching over 10 million smallholders through its systems development work. (p. 2)

Let us look at those areas of weak performance one by one. Together, they highlight the continued failures of the entire Green Revolution model.

PIATA improved maize yields in Ethiopia, Ghana, and Nigeria, but not in Tanzania, Burkina Faso, or Kenya.

Maize is one of the crops most heavily supported by AGRA, and the Green Revolution package of seeds and fertilizers is additionally supported with generous government subsidies in all those countries. The failure to register any yield growth in half of the six countries, in the crop AGRA has most heavily supported, should be alarming to donors.

Elsewhere the data suggests maize yield increases in only two of the six countries. The evaluation is often unclear on the magnitude of the yield increases in the countries that registered improvements. In part that is because the evaluators were left to use inconsistent data from AGRAs poor monitoring over time. Their methodology involved drawing data from three different sources: country-level U.N. data, AGRAs Outcome Monitoring reports from 2019, and phone surveys with stakeholders which AGRA began conducting in recent years and which were the basis for its 2021 Emerging Results report. These represent poor sources of data for evaluators to draw on for the following reasons:

They fail to include all AGRA countries. The new evaluation refers to only six of AGRAs current 11 focus countries: Ethiopia, Ghana, Tanzania, Burkina Faso, Kenya and Nigeria. That leaves out Malawi, Mali, Uganda, Rwanda and Mozambique, as well as Zambia, which was part of AGRA for many years, left, but is now rejoining. Those six are not all included in the full analysis in the evaluation, leaving confusing references, such as the one above, to maize yields rising in three or two of the six countries.

With such spotty and inconsistent coverage, the evaluation fails to present an aggregate picture of AGRAs impact. As such, it offers no response to our findings using national-level data that AGRA has failed to catalyze a productivity revolution.

Data focuses almost entirely on maize, with passing references to data on rice. But AGRAs mission was to improve food crop productivity overall, not just maize and rice productivity. The evaluation thus replicates one of AGRAs key flaws: its narrow and destructive focus on two cereal crops at the expense of other important crops such as millet, sorghum, cassava and legumes. My Staple Yield Index presented an aggregate measure of yield growth across a range of important crops and showed that AGRAs claimed improvements in maize and rice yields were undercut by stagnant or declining yields in other crops. Overall, yield growth for that basket of staple crops was just 18% over 12 years, roughly the same as before AGRA began.

Nearly all of the data is from too short a time period  the last five years  to draw meaningful conclusions about yield or income trends, as I explained in an assessment of AGRAs 2020 Annual Report. Neither AGRA nor its donors has yet provided any evaluation of the initiatives entire history of work since 2006. That is why we did our own analysis using national data. (In fact, the Gates Foundation in the acknowledgment to the new evaluation notes the value of the 2016 evaluation of AGRAs first 10 years commissioned by the foundation, but it has refused to make the document publicly available or share it with researchers. Donors, not just AGRA, must be faulted for the lack of transparency and accountability.)

Evaluators are left to use a range of methodological tools to try to extract meaningful measures of AGRAs impacts, but the results are unconvincing because they fail to assess growth over time. They show, for example, that higher maize yields and sales correlate with better access to inputs and extension services in two countries (Vol. 2, p. E32), but they do not have the data to show that this was because of AGRAs interventions or that the correlation is not simply the product of those farmers being wealthier to begin with.

Most evaluator mentions of yield increases fail to note the magnitude of those increases. This reflects AGRAs current limited ambition, simply to increase yields with no clear target for how much it intends to raise productivity. Given such limited goals, it is striking that evaluators still find such scant evidence of impact.

In the end, evaluators relied on only a narrow set of AGRA-generated data, much of it flawed. The list of references used in the evaluation includes just eight documents, five AGRA studies and three methodological texts. (Vol. 1, p. 51) (They fail to list AGRAs 2020 Outcome Monitoring country reports, though they rely on some of them in their analysis.)

To their credit, the evaluators note in the recommendations that AGRAs mechanisms for monitoring and evaluation do not allow for meaningful impact assessment, a finding that for donors should be an important red flag. It should also be a red flag that AGRA no longer has its Outcome Monitoring reports available to the public on its website, which AGRA posted in 2021 only after a public-records request to the U.S. government revealed them.

Returning to the evaluators summary statement:

Across these six countries, only farmers in Burkina Faso experienced improved maize sales as a result of PIATA.

This means that AGRAs core theory of change, its entire Green Revolution rationale, proved false even in two countries in which maize yields increased. In other words, rising yields failed to translate into rising incomes for farmers. And improved maize sales alone are not proof that farmer incomes have increased, since the Green Revolution package of seeds and fertilizers is more expensive for farmers.

The reasons are clear from the data presented in the evaluation. As evaluators acknowledge, even for maize, PIATAs farmer-facing interventions had modest impacts on farmers adoption of improved inputs Overall, PIATA had a positive impact on only two of eight measures of farmers adoption of improved inputs across the four countries for which data were available. (p. 40)

In other words, Green Revolution programs and subsidies failed to convince farmers to use the promoted seeds and fertilizers. As a result, according to the evaluators, PIATAs farmer-facing interventions led to increased productivity in two of six countries: Ethiopia and Nigeria. (p. 40)

Using a different data source, evaluators suggest even worse outcomes. AGRAs farmer outcome surveys suggest that AGRA increased targeted farmers maize productivity in Nigeria but had no impact on maize yields among targeted farmers in Burkina Faso and Ghana, even though targeted farmers in all three countries report consistently higher access to extension relative to comparison farmers. (p. 40)

Note, again, that there is no claim of particularly dynamic productivity growth where yields increased, an indication of just how low the bar is now set by AGRA and its donors. Where they initially set out to double productivity by 2020, and not just for maize, they now struggle to find instances where yields increased at all as a result of their interventions. Note, too, that the evaluation leaves out nearly half of AGRAs focus countries, so donors are getting a very limited picture of the impacts of their millions of dollars in support. And that picture looks bleak for Africas farmers.

Returning again to evaluators summary conclusion:

These findings suggest that AGRA did not meet its headline goal of increased incomes and food security for 9 million smallholders, despite reaching over 10 million smallholders through its systems development work. (p. 2)

It is telling that in its published response to the evaluation, AGRA states: This finding is an expected outcome and a true reflection of the realities that farmers, AGRA, and other institutions that support farmers today live with daily.

An expected outcome? AGRA failed in its core mission to increase incomes and food security for small-scale farming households. And it failed to do so despite reaching one million more farmers than it had set as its goal. In fact, AGRA President Agnes Kalibata has claimed that AGRA surpassed its original goal of reaching 30 million smallholder families, directly and indirectly, reaching 44 million over AGRAs 15-year history. Clearly, AGRAs programs are failing to produce the kinds of outcomes it claims they will produce. In part that may be because their expected outcomes are so poor.

In fact, the evaluation provides scant evidence on food security in any of the countries included in the study. This reflects the limited importance given such a crucial goal by AGRA and its donors. As we documented in our 2020 assessment of AGRA, the number of severely undernourished people in AGRAs original 13 countries increased by 31%, and that was even before the pandemic added to the suffering. We know now from United Nations data that the number of severely hungry people in Sub-Saharan Africa as a whole has increased 50% since AGRA was founded in 2006.

Recommendations identify but do not address failures

The evaluators recommendations include some hard-hitting critiques of AGRAs prevailing practices, but they fail to address the underlying flaws in the Green Revolution model itself. To examine a few of the recommendations:

Tackle critical issues facing agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa. (p. 6)  This was supposed to be AGRAs core mission, but 15 years on it seems to be something AGRA needs to be reminded of. Consider each of the recommendations under this point:

AGRA already promotes climate-smart and drought-resistant crop varieties, which is highly commendable. However, its systems development work does not appear to fully account for farmers poor access to irrigation and growing exposure to drought and other severe weather conditions. AGRAs next strategy should articulate these acute challenges and make more explicit investments in improving farmers water use efficiency and climate resiliency. Irrigation, more than seeds and fertilizers, was at the heart of yield gains in the first Green Revolution in India and elsewhere. Sustainable water management and climate resilience are achieved through intercropping, water catchment and carefully managed farms, not monocultures of maize and rice.

AGRAs next strategy could also formally recognize that agricultural technologies and practicessuch as fertilizer use and rice cultivationcan negatively impact environmental conditions and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. It is alarming that in 2022 AGRAs evaluators are just now alerting it to the negative environmental impacts of fertilizer-intensive monocrop cultivation of maize and rice.

In contrast, other agricultural technologies can help to reduce GHG emissions and store carbon. Cognizant of these linkages, AGRA could make more explicit investments in eco-friendly technologies and practices among smallholders. Such agricultural technologies include: intercropping, cover cropping, organic fertilizer use, agro-forestry, permaculture, all consistent with agroecology, which is at odds with the Green Revolution model and inconsistent with AGRAs approach.

As it develops the next set of country strategies, AGRA could also assess the environmental impact of its fertilizer recommendations, as well as the alignment of its full set of proposed investments with national pathways to net zero. My institute has shown that the Gates Foundation and AGRAs goal for nitrogen fertilizer use would have the equivalent climate impacts of deforesting half a million hectares of Amazon rainforest (about 1.2 million acres) every year. By contrast, the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA) has proposed the adoption of agroecology as part of African governments National Adaptation Plans under the climate accords.

AGRAs response, in its formal document after the evaluation, is weak: We must therefore rethink our models and focus our support, and that of our partners, on building resilience and adaptation specifically for smallholder farmers.

Rethinking the Green Revolution model is indeed what AGRAs poor results over 15 years call for. There is no indication that AGRA is prepared to stop promoting this deeply flawed agricultural development model. It remains to be seen if AGRAs donors will take more decisive action.

Wealthier male farmers seem to be the main beneficiaries  As the evaluators note, Farmers who adopted improved inputs and experienced yield increases were typically younger, male, and relatively wealthier. In particular, male farmers with larger dwellings, access to electricity, greater total landholdings, and lower rates of disability were more likely to adopt improved maize varieties and inorganic fertilizer, and engage with extension services. In addition, productivity and income gains were also concentrated among these relatively high-resource farmers. (p. 40-41)

This finding flies in the face of AGRAs repeated claims that it is prioritizing poor women farmers with its programs. In their recommendations, the evaluators stress this, calling on AGRA to Expand gender and youth inclusion efforts. Only a small portion of AGRAs portfolio features intentional diversity, equity, and inclusion programming. (p. 6)

This finding also directly contradicts the stated goals of USAID and other bilateral donors to ensure that their assistance programs benefit and empower women.

Unlikelihood that AGRA initiatives can be sustained  Evaluators were clear that they did not see evidence that many of the initiatives AGRA launched would be self-sustaining over time without continued donor support. Donors should take this concern particularly seriously. The entire premise of the Green Revolution strategy is that yields will increase to the point that rising incomes from sales of surplus crops will not require continued government subsidies and support because farmers will have the money to invest in ongoing productivity improvements on their farms. That is not happening. Similarly, AGRAs extension programs, based on its funded Village Based Advisors (VBAs), are identified in this and previous evaluations as unlikely to continue when donor support runs out.

As evaluators write of AGRAs flagship program, one of its key partnership initiatives, this evaluation found no evidence that governments would continue to design and execute the next generation of agriculture flagships without AGRA support. (p. 4)

Poor monitoring and evaluation, still  AGRAs poor track record in monitoring and evaluating its work and impacts was supposed to be addressed by the PIATA initiative in 2017. Evaluators still find deep flaws in AGRAs systems for collecting and analyzing data. AGRA surveys are currently not suited for rigorous impact analysis, according to the evaluation, and they fail to cover all AGRA countries. (pp. 46-47)

Donors should pay particular attention to the flaws identified by the evaluators:

AGRA relies on a series of in- person farmer outcome surveys and Geopoll phone surveys to estimate the impact of its work on farmers. However, farmer outcome surveys sampled both treatment and comparison farmers in only three focus countries from 2017 to 2021

from 2017 to 2021  and outcome surveys commonly feature no baseline data collectiononly endline. These two factors greatly limit the utility of AGRA farmer outcome surveys for rigorous impact analysis.

AGRA also relies on a Geopoll phone survey to assess farmer, agro-dealer, and extension activities, needs, and outcomes. This is likely to produce unreliable data biased in favor of AGRA, according to evaluators. The phone survey asks farmers to recall activities and outcomes from several years prior to the survey date. The Geopolls absence of a valid comparison groupcombined with its strong reliance on farmers recall from previous yearsis likely to produce biased estimates of AGRAs impact. (pp. 46-47)

More deeply engage with and empower civil society and smallholders. AGRA should engage with civil society and smallholders more deeply and even earlier in the policymaking and flagship development process. (p. 6) The exclusion of African farmer and civil society voices by AGRA and its donors is an endemic part of the institutions lack of accountability. Consider:

This evaluation, commissioned by the Gates Foundation on behalf of its partners at the Rockefeller Foundation, and U.S., U.K. and German aid agencies, failed to consult with AFSA or any of the 200 organizations that signed its open letter to AGRA donors in September 2021 calling on donors to reconsider their support for AGRA and other Green Revolution programs.

Both AFSA and African church leaders wrote directly to the Gates Foundation in June 2021 demanding changes in these policies. Church leaders still have received no reply. AFSA got a response from the Gates Foundation in early January of this year expressing an interest in discussing AFSAs concerns, but only after making a $40 million December grant to AGRA.

AGRA officials in August 2020 shut off communications with African civil society groups when they demanded evidence of AGRAs effectiveness. Even after the new evaluation, those questions remain unanswered.

Time to change course away from a failing model

AGRA gets more positive marks from evaluators for its partnerships, consortia, and support for state capacity and policy development. But success in forming partnerships, working with the private sector and supporting African governments in designing and implementing policies is only beneficial if those activities are moving things in a positive direction. By failing to examine the content of those policies and interventions, evaluators ignore the connections between AGRAs failing outcomes for farmers and the policies that contribute to those failures.

Evaluators, for example, lauded AGRAs outsized role in improving the policy environment and stimulating private investment, particularly seed system reforms in Rwanda, Ghana, and Nigeria. (p. 2) Such policy reforms, which pave the way for Green Revolution programs, have been widely criticized by farmer organizations in AGRA countries. They are actually part of the failing model, not something that necessarily deserves praise from evaluators.

As AFSAs Million Belay wrote last year, African food producers are not in favor of these and many of the other policies being advocated by AGRA and its public and private-sector partners:

The strategy has indebted our farmers, ruined our environment, harmed our health and undermined our seeds and culture. We object to the flurry of initiatives to amend our seed laws, biosafety standards, and institutionalize fertilizer rules and regulations that seek to entrench Africas overreliance on corporate agriculture.

Donors should demand better

The poor farmer outcomes evidenced in the recent commissioned evaluation of AGRAs recent five-year strategy should be a wake-up call for donors that have failed for too long to hold AGRA accountable to its goals. AGRA is making no significant progress toward its original goals of doubling yields and incomes for 30 million small-scale farm families while halving food insecurity by 2020. It is even failing to achieve its scaled-back goals to increase incomes and improve food security for 30 million smallholder farm households in 11 African countries by 2021.

The evaluation if anything confirms rather than refutes the findings from our comprehensive review of AGRAs progress toward its goals using national-level data:

Yields for a basket of staple crops grew just 18% over 12 years through 2018, far below the goal of doubling productivity, which would be a 100% increase. Yield growth was barely higher than before AGRA.

There was no sign of significant increases in farmer incomes thanks to rising yields and marketable surpluses. Overall, poverty remained endemic in most AGRA countries.

The attention to favored crops such as maize, supported by government subsidies for the purchase of Green Revolution inputs, resulted in a decline in the land and resources devoted to key staples such as millet, sorghum and sweet potato. This had negative impacts on soil fertility, as well as nutritional diversity.

Excessive support to maize and rice contributed to unsustainable and destructive land use rather than productivity improvements, as I show in more detail in a recent study.

Hunger rose dramatically, with the number of undernourished people increasing 31% across AGRA countries, not decreasing 50% as promised by AGRA.

AGRAs donors should reconsider their support for such an unsuccessful and unaccountable initiative. They should shift their funding to agroecology and other low-cost, low-input systems. These approaches have shown far better results, raising yields across a range of food crops, increasing productivity over time as soil fertility improves, increasing incomes and reducing risk for farmers by cutting input costs, and improving food security and nutrition from a diverse array of crops.

Originating at www.iatp.org
04.03.2022 LISTEN

Parliament is likely to consider the Electronic Transaction Bill (E-Levy Bill), 2021 next week.

Mr Alexander Kwamena Afenyo-Markin, the Deputy Majority Leader, announced that the E-Levy Bill falls under the programmes proposed for consideration by the House next week.

Presenting the Business Statement of the House for the Seventh Week of the First Meeting of the Second Session of the Eighth Parliament of the Fourth Republic of Ghana, Mr Afenyo-Markin said it was important to bring to the attention of Members of the House that the E-Levy falls under the programmes they had proposed for the seventh week.

So, as and when it is supposed to be taken, members would be noticed, the Deputy Majority Leader said.

He added: So, once we see that papers and response could be laid and motions could be taken; papers and reports include bills that had come and committee works, so it is at large and all that. So, Mr Speaker, members should be rest assured that they will be on notice. There will be no surprises here.

On the proposed scrapping road tolls contained in the 2022 Budget Statement, Mr Afenyo Markin said: So, if members want to know about road tolls, and why road tolls are not being taken, of course, in the 2022 budget there is zero rate for 2022.

And then also even as we delay in the E-Levy, you know we've already passed the Appropriation Bill, Government is spending, and even as we delay as a house Government has already lost January and February revenues.

So, I believe that when the time comes, we will do the needful to let the people of Ghana know that we mean business.

Mr Kofi Iddie Adams, the Member of Parliament for Buem, said the Minority side wanted a specific date on which the E-Levy Bill would be considered by the House.

He said his side had been insisting that the E-Levy Bill be brought to the House for Members to determine; stating that the Minority were not the ones causing the delay on the E-Levy and that the Finance Minister was out there doing consultations on it.

GNA
This years Two Sessions kicks off. Here's why you should be interested

15:01, March 04, 2022 By Xian Jiangnan, Peng Yukai, Liu Ning, Zhang Wenjie ( People's Daily Online

What is up, everyone? Its that time of year again when Chinas biggest political event, known as the Two Sessions or lianghui, kicks off. More than 5,000 deputies of the National Peoples Congress (NPC) and members of the Chinese Peoples Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) are gathering in Beijing to provide a road map for China's future development.

2021 is a remarkable year since China already realized its first centenary goal of building a moderately prosperous society in all respects. The Two Sessions will highlight the achievements China has made on different fronts in 2021 and shed light on China's next steps towards realizing the second centenary goal of becoming a modern socialist country by the middle of this century.

According to an online survey conducted by People's Daily Online among 5.6 million people, rule of law, full and strict governance over the Party, and social security are the top three topics of public concern for Chinese citizens during this year's Two Sessions.

But its not just about Chinese people.

This years Two Sessions will attract more global attention as it commences just after the conclusion of the successful Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic Games and against the backdrop of the ongoing global COVID-19 pandemic and geopolitical tensions.

As the country takes measures to stabilize growth despite global challenges, topics like economic and social development, innovation, and international cooperation will be discussed heatedly during the Two Sessions. Work plans rolled out for Chinas next 12 months will surely inject much needed confidence into the rest of the world.

Want to find out more about the upcoming Two Sessions? Stay tuned with us here at Peoples Daily Online!

(Web editor: Zhang Wenjie, Liang Jun)
The Vice President, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia on Friday, March 4, 2022, joined his fellow Muslims at the National Mosque in Kanda, Accra for a special Independence national thanksgiving.

Ghana will mark her 65th Independence Anniversary on Sunday, and as has been the norm in previous years, Islamic and Christian thanksgiving prayers precede the independence celebration on the last Fridays and Sundays before Independence Day.

Dr. Bawumia was accompanied by the Second Lady, Hajia Samira Bawumia, and a host of Muslim government officials to the National Mosque for Jummah Prayers (Friday congregational prayer), and the thanksgiving session.

After Jummah prayers, Vice President Bawumia requested for special prayers to be offered to the Almighty Allah for His immense grace to the nation in the midst of diseases, political and religious turmoil across the West African Sub-region and the continent as a whole.

The Imam of Takoradi, Imam Awal Ibn Sheikh Shuaib Korafiri who stood in for the National Chief Imam, led supplications exalting the Almighty Allah for His blessings on the nation.

Prayers were also said for the leadership of the country for Gods guidance and protection, as well as for the sustenance of the peaceful co-existence among citizens.

Citizens were not left out, as prayers were said for more prosperity for the nation and citizens.

Notable government officials who accompanied the Vice President included the Deputy Minister of Energy, Amin Anta, the Presidential Coordinator for Zongo Development Fund, Ben Abdallah, Greater Accra Regional Minister, Henry Quartey, former Ghana Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Sheikh T.B. Damba, the Executive Secretary of the Pharmaceutical Council of Ghana, Dr. Abdul Rauf, as well as the National Nasara Coordinator, Abdul Aziz Haruna Futa.
The fourth patriarch of the Ethiopian Orthodox church, who is credited with being key in unifying two feuding factions of the church has died, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed said on Friday.

Abune Merkorios took over the leadership of the church -- one of the world's oldest Christian churches -- in the late 1980s after his predecessor died of natural causes.

But the church split in 1991 over the naming of a new patriarch after the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) removed the Derg military junta from power

Merkorios, seen as hostile to the new regime, was forced to abdicate and later escaped the country to settle in the United States where a led a breakaway church.

Another patriarch Abune Pawlos was elected following Merkorios' exile.

"I'm deeply saddened by the passing of the fourth patriarch of Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church," Abiy said on Twitter.

Merkorios "played the decisive role to have the two synods united," he said.

The patriarch returned to Ethiopia from his 27-year-exile in 2018 following a reunification of the two rival wings in a process overseen by Abiy.

Talks between the two synods had been going on for years.

Under the new arrangement, Merkorios was allowed to "return to the holy land of Ethiopia with the rank and dignity of Patriarch, and resume the patriarchal throne," the church said at the time.

After the reconciliation, there were two patriarch in Ethiopia, Africa's second most populous country.

Since returning to the war-hit country, Merkorios was wheelchair bound and kept a low profile, occasionally being photographed with dignitaries.

Abiy described his death as "a heavy damage" as he "was looking and meditating at things and helping our country with prayer."

The US Embassy in Addis Ababa said it was condoling with everyone mourning his death.

Tracing its roots back to the fourth century, the Orthodox church is Ethiopia's largest, accounting for more than 40 percent of the country's 110 million people.

The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church was part of the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria until the mid-20th century.

Its first patriarch was installed in the 1950s. Merkorios was the fourth patriarch in that line.

Ethiopia is also home to a Muslim minority and a growing protestant population that includes the prime minister.
The Fair Wages and Salaries Commission (FWSC) has announced that the negotiations between government and the leadership of the University Teachers Association of Ghana (UTAG) has ended successfully.

In a press release issued shortly after the final negotiations on Friday, March 4, the Commission expressed gratitude to all stakeholders in bringing finality and sanity to the matter.

Government also acknowledges and appreciates the patience and tolerance of parents and students, the press release concluded.

UTAG is, however, yet to come out with its position on the development.

Leadership had given government two weeks within which to meet their demands, having suspended their strike action on Monday, February 21.

They had, however, asked their branches to vote on the decision taken by the National Executive Committee (NEC) at an emergency meeting at the University of Professional Studies, Accra (UPSA)

All but two voted to reject the NEC decision, therefore calling for a resumption of the strike after the two-week ultimatum.

Fridays final negotiations had in attendance representatives from the Ministry of Employment and Labour Relations, Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Education and National Labour Commission (NLC).

FWSC thanked the Ghana Tertiary Education Commission (GTEC) and Vice Chancellors Ghana (VCG) for their immense help during the seven-week strike.

---3news.com
Professor Felix Kofi Abagale, Pro-Vice-Chancellor of the University for Development Studies (UDS) and Director of the West African Centre for Water, Irrigation and Sustainable Agriculture has made history by becoming the first alumnus of UDS to deliver an inaugural lecture at the University.

He also became the first youngest Professor at the age of 44 years to deliver the inaugural lecture at the University.

It was a moment of pride and great achievement for the University community when he (Professor Abagale) took the stage at the University's Multipurpose Auditorium on February 25, 2022 to deliver such an important lecture on the topic: "Damming the Reservoirs for Sustainable Livelihoods: Challenges and Emerging Opportunities in the Global South".

It was therefore, not surprising that such a historic moment was greeted with loud applause from the creme de la creme of the University community, high ranking state officials, family and friends amongst other dignitaries, who graced the occasion.

Prof. Abagale was born in December, 1978 in Navrongo, Ghana and had his Basic Education at Balobia at Navrongo and Secondary School Education at the Ghana Secondary School (Ghanasco) in Tamale.

He obtained a Bachelor in Science Degree in Agriculture Technology in 2003 from the UDS, Tamale.

He graduated in Master of Science (MSc) in Agro-Environmental Engineering and Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in Soil Water Engineering from the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi in 2008 and 2014 respectively.

Also, in 2008 he obtained a Certificate in Research Methodology from the University of Pretoria, South Africa and also undertook a research internship in the same year in Kyoto University, Japan.

He was inducted into the Ghana Institution of Engineers as a Corporate Member and licensed to practise Engineering in his specialty.

In an interview with Prof. Abagale, moments after delivering the lecture to know what such a feat meant for him, he said "It is a very difficult task at the beginning to take the decision that I had to deliver a lecture. I will tell you that I was promoted as the first alumnus Professor at the University and working to that level means that I need to put in more to allow other products, who have come out of the University to emulate what I do."

He added that "So, if I am promoted as Professor and I end it there because the last stage of it is to give this lecture and I relent in that effort, then that means I have not completed the race. So, it is very important to inspire new and young faculty alumni that are in our system so that those days that you have to be an old man to be a professor are gone. We need to believe in ourselves as young people and also deliver what is expected of us at the right time."

Professor Abagale also spoke about what was next for him saying "The next thing is to invest in what I do everyday. Currently, I am the Pro-Vice-Chancellor and I am into administration. I will tell you that in the history of our University, I am the youngest Pro-Vice-Chancellor and the first alumnus to also be a Pro-Vice-Chancellor. It takes a lot to actually go through it."

He added that "What is next is that I do my administration, core duty of teaching, research and community service as we have been doing and I believe that whatever comes after that we will embrace it."

Professor Gabriel Ayum Teye, Vice-Chancellor of UDS, who chaired the event, commended Professor Abagale for his patience and dedication to duty, which had defined his academic journey, urging young people especially those at the UDS to emulate him.
Africa's largest airline and one of the few international airlines to have serviced the Kotoka International Airport, Accra for about six decades, has announced special fares to commemorate Ghana's 65th Independence anniversary.

The cost of flights to Athens, Geneva, Milan, Paris and Rome starts from US$599 in the month of March.

Flights to Rome/Milan costs US$649, Geneva US$675, Paris US$640, Athens US$599 and London US$625.

Additionally, fares to popular destinations from Ghana such as New York, Newark, London, Nairobi, Dubai, Johannesburg, Cape Town and Beirut have been heavily discounted.

Fares to Johannesburg is US$545, Dubai US$620, Beirut US$475, Nairobi US$655, and New York / Newark US$799 for the month of March.

This means families, groups and individuals can take advantage of this offer and explore these beautiful destinations in this 'Ghana Month of March.

This special Ethiopian Airlines offer for the Ghanaian market is to make it possible for Ghanaian travellers to explore the world, as they celebrate 65 years of self-rule.

Area Manager of Ethiopian Airlines, Yemesrach Alemayehu, said there is a "long-standing bilateral relations between the two countries.

She added that Ethiopian Airlines will continue to offer the Ghanaian market unmatched passenger and cargo services in the years ahead.
Communication team member of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Saka Salia has called out on MP For Dome Kwabenya, Sarah Adwoa Safo for what he describes as disrespect to Ghanas democracy.

According to Saka Salia, she [Adwoa Safo] is taking her job for granted. It looks like Adwoa Safo is taking us for a ride. She is playing with our democracy and what is worrying is that she even told the majority leader to not call but text her if he needed anything. The Chief of Staff cannot even get in touch with her which means by extension the President cannot also get in touch.

He noted Adwoa Safos presence was vital in the party passing the e-levy bill which will go a long way to improve the countrys economic fortunes and now her absence might affect us if we vote today without her.

Saka Salia believes Adwoa Safo is well aware of this fact and is trying to hold it over the NPP. Adwoa Safo shouldve considered this a national call and fought for the nation as her vote on the e-levy matters. If we had a clear majority we wouldnt have worried about her vote but because she knows how essential her vote is she is behaving this way.

In a panel discussion with Happy98.9FMs Don Kwabena Prah on the Epa Hoa Daben political talk show, the politician indicated that as an MP who loves her constituents, Adwoa Safo couldve been circumspect and returned to help us gain the votes required. She should remember she won the Dome Kwabenya seat on the ticket of the NPP and not as an independent candidate.

It has emerged that Dome-Kwabenya MP, Sarah Awdoa Safo, has requested another leave extension from Parliament.

Majority Leader in Parliament, Osei Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu, who revealed this, explained that the extension was contained in a new letter the legislator sent.

What I can say now is that on Wednesday, she brought a letter, asking for four weeks extension. She explained that her injured child is still responding to treatment.

On October 6, last year, President Akufo-Addo extended the leave of absence from office, for the Gender Minister.

The MPs leave, which she sought for personal reasons, was supposed to have ended on August 31, 2021.

However, the former Procurement Minister was unable to resume and requested an extension. It did not, however, state when she will resume.

---happyghana.com
Ghanaian controversial speaker and spiritualist, Kwaku Peprah, popularly known as Quotation Master, has said that Ghanaians would have retorted to prayers if they were in Ukraine crisis.

According to him, Ukraine had no idea what Russia had planned, adding that they would have prepared for it if they knew

Talking to Rev. Nyansa Boakwa on Happy 98.9FMs NsemPii, Quotation Master said, Were always saying Ghana is a peaceful country because were yet to experience the worst and that is why we are always relaxed and waiting on God for everything.

He emphasized that, if what happened in Ukraine was to happen in Ghana, we would have been in church praying instead of finding a quick solution to the situation.

Because prayer is not the answer, if they direct a bomb to us, it will have actually destroyed us.

Quotation Master stated that the war between Russia and Ukraine has nothing to do with Jesus, they are looking for ways and means to solve the situation and be safe.

My question to Ghanaians is simple, what will we do if we find ourselves in such a situation? he asked.

He furthered that, Ghanaians need to be smart enough to be able to differentiate spiritual situations from real life situations. What we are currently experiencing is a real life situation which needs a real life solution and not one that needs spiritual intervention as Ghanaians always resort to.

The spiritualist believes that, not all situations demand spiritual intervention but rather, some need immediate thinking and solution.

---happyghana.com
Amidst the recent controversy over the dubious appointments, severe lapses in corporate governance and a spate of ongoing investigations, the National Stock Exchange (NSE) has begun the hunt for a new managing director (MD) and chief executive officer (CEO).

In an advertisement published today, the Exchange has invited applications from candidates with initial public offering (IPO) experience. The five-year term of Vikram Limaye, NSE's incumbent MD and CEO, ends on 16 July 2022 and he is eligible to apply for another term. The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) stipulates that the incumbent has to compete with another candidate to win his next term, so it is possible that the advertisement is a mere formality. It is not immediately known if he is seeking a second term. Mr Limaye was appointed in July 2017 replacing Chitra Ramkrishna who stepped down in December 2016 citing personal reasons.

NSEs past practice of appointing MDs without proper processes has now turned controversial. The manipulation of the appointment process by an NSE committee (appointed by the board and including senior directors) has been documented in the book Absolute Power by the editors of Moneylife Sucheta Dalal and Debashis Basu. The post of non-executive vice-chairman for Ravi Narain, when he stepped down as MD was similarly problematic. This time around, the appointment process will take place under a new chairperson at the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) and at a time when NSEs actions over the past decade are under scrutiny and being investigated by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). Anand Subramanian, the former group operating officer (GOO) who was appointed in violation of all internal rules and HR practices is under arrest and both Chitra Ramkrishna and Ravi Narain, from the founding team, have been interrogated.

The NSE advertisement for MD candidates requires them to have a track record of strengthening corporate governance, enterprise risk management and compliance management framework. Further, the notice says candidates with exposure to working in a publicly listed company or having led an organisation through an initial public offering process will be an added advantage. The committee has to select at least two names (of which one has to be an external candidate), which will be sent to SEBI for approval after which it has to be cleared by shareholders.

Since stock exchanges and depositories are key market infrastructure companies, SEBI has the final say on the appointment of the MD and CEO. Hence, there is growing trepidation that the government may interfere and try to colour or, even worse, scuttle the ongoing probe.

Allegations of corporate governance lapses have been plaguing NSE for several years. The probe into what is called the co-location (Colo) scam, where certain top brokers were allowed to profit from faster access to NSE systems had derailed NSEs plan to go public in 2017. This has been further complicated by a fresh order dated 11th February on how the former MD, Chitra Ramkrishna was embarrassingly sharing information with someone she claims is a Himalayan Yogi who also communicated with her on email, copying his emails to her personal appointee Anand Subramanian.
Russias credit ratings have been downgraded deep into the 'junk' territory by Moodys Investors Service and Fitch Ratings, with the duo highlighting the economic toll inflicted by wide-ranging sanctions and rising doubts about whether Moscow will honour its debts, The Wall Street Journal reported.

"The severity of international sanctions in response to Russia's military invasion of Ukraine has heightened macro-financial stability risks, represents a huge shock to Russia's credit fundamentals and could undermine its willingness to service government debt," Fitch said in a statement issued.

Both the credit-rating companies cut their assessment of Russia by six notches, to a single-B rating in Fitch's case and to B3 for Moody's. The two rating firms, which had previously given Russia low investment-grade ratings of BBB and Baa3, respectively, both signaled further downgrades could follow, WSJ reported.

Fitch warned that sanctions on Russian banks were likely to be ratcheted up. It also cautioned that Western sanctions, plus the large fall in the ruble, "markedly increase the risk of a broad-based loss of domestic confidence triggering bank deposit outflows and dollarisation."

"The significant concerns around Russia's willingness to service its debt are a reflection that Russia's institutional strength has very materially weakened with increasing evidence that the executive faces few checks and balances," Moody's said in a statement on Thursday, WSJ reported.

The moves mean all three of the world's major ratings firms now judge Russian debt to be sub-investment grade, after S&P Global Ratings downgraded Russia last week.

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.
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March 04, 2022

Disarming Ukraine - Day 9 - Europe Increases Its Own Losses

I feel too outraged and frightened about what is now happening in our societies to write about it. I thus continue to quote others at some length.

Patrick Armstrong continues to be the best military intelligence analyst on Russia:

So far the Russian military operation in Ukraine has been a reconnaissance in force preceded by the destruction of the supplies and headquarters of the Ukrainian Armed Forces by standoff weapons. The object being to suss out where the Ukrainian forces are, to surround them, to check existing Russian intelligence against reality and, at the same time, destroy known headquarters, air and naval assets, supplies and ammunition depots. And, perhaps, there was the hope that the speed and success (Russian/LDPR forces dominated an area of Ukraine about the size of the United Kingdom in the first week) would force an early end (aka recognition of reality). At the moment they are readying for the next phase. The long column that so obsessed the experts on CNN is the preparation for the next phase.

...

As far as I can see theyve created three cauldrons (encirclements). Probably the most important one is the one around Mariupol where the main concentration of Azov, the principal nazi force, is. Another is being established around the main concentration of the Ukrainian Armed Forces facing LDPR. And there appears to be another developing to the east of Kiev. A super cauldron of all three is visible. The nazis will be exterminated; the ordinary Ukrainian soldier will be allowed to go home. The nightmare question is how many ordinary Ukrainians will be free to choose.

Hardline commentator Bill Roggio confirms Armstrong's take:

Putin is NOT crazy and the Russian invasion is NOT failing. The West's delusions about this war - and its failure to understand the enemy - will prevent it from saving Ukraine, writes military analyst BILL ROGGIO

M.K. Bhadrakumar points out that the now beginning larger war is part of a millennium old conflict within the Christian believe:

At the core is the feud among Christians that began with the Great Schism of 1054 when the main church at that time, based in Rome, split into two divisions, Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox. Theyve since come to be the two largest denominations of Christianity. The Euro-Atlantic leaders will shy away from admitting that this ancient feud all along complicated Russias inclusion in any common European home  just as the European Union, a Christian club, will never admit Turkey as a member. The feud within Christianity began intensifying in the recent decade or two with Russias resurgence under Putins leadership, when Russian Orthodox Church entered a golden era of state patronage.

...

The Ukraine crisis cannot be understood unless we factor in the swirling primeval passions behind the desperate attempt by Euro-Atlantic countries to attack Putin and weaken Russia and, if possible dismember it, like they did to former Yugoslavia, another Slavic country of Eastern Orthodoxy. It is no accident that two sentinels of Roman Catholicism, France and Poland, and that gladiator of Protestantism, Germany, are at the barricades of the contestation over Ukraine. This is reminiscent of the Crusade to conquer pagan areas in the Middle East and recapture formerly Christian territories.

Bhadrakumar does not mention that the different flavors of Christianity are also exactly what has caused the problems within the Ukraine.

The parts of Poland and Romania that were attached to the Ukraine after World War II are predominantly catholic. These are also the parts where core members of the Ukraine fascist 'ultranationalists' are coming from.

The religious split is also underlying the age old western racism against Slavs that is currently again prominent. You see, Orthodox Slavs aren't 'civilized people'.

Puck, 1903



bigger

Whitney Webb writes that the CIA is creating a new al-Qaeda. This time as a white supremacist rightwing militia. A part of these are mercenaries currently getting recruited by western 'security' companies. These militia will use all the 'small' weapons NATO countries are now delivering to the Ukraine to attack Russian troops and their supporters.

This will have serious backlashes in Poland and Romania from where these troops get deployed. In the longer run it will lead to rightwing terror coming back to those countries who are now supporting these forces. It will also help the longterm trend of rightwing parties increasing their share of votes.

Together with the economic devastation that U.S. and European sanctions on Russia are causing in their own economies this will end in regime-changes in several European countries. The U.S. is of course again protecting itself from as much as it can at the cost of others.



Source: Bloomberg - bigger

Tony Wood asks:

The question remains, why did all those who for so long foretold this war do so little to stop it, and so much to hasten the disaster Russia has now set in motion?

Indeed. Why didn't the government of Germany guarantee in writing that it would veto any additional NATO membership? It would have solved at least half of the problem. Why didn't any other NATO government do so?

And what are they doing now? Where are their initiatives for peace?

It is over. The Ukraine is gone. Russia has won.

Energy and wheat prices have doubled. With inciting a longer fight Europe only increases its own loses.

Posted by b on March 4, 2022 at 15:47 UTC | Permalink

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Energy markets, already rattled by the pandemic, rebounding oil and gas demand and tightening oil and gas supplies, have been thrown into further turmoil by Russias invasion of Ukraine.

Europe particularly is in a precarious position amid the invasion, said Dustin Meyers, vice president, natural gas markets with the American Petroleum Institute.

Participating in a media call to discuss the domestic industrys role in supporting energy security in the US and globally, Meyers noted that in Europe, spot natural gas prices have soared to $60 per MMBtu or the equivalent of $340 for a barrel of oil. In Asia, prices have risen to $40 per MMBtu.

Meyers pointed out that European gas markets had been tight before the invasion. Clearly the market is sending a strong signal the world needs more natural gas. That call has become even more urgent.

The US is the worlds largest producer of natural gas and largest exporter of liquefied natural gas, shipping 100 cargoes of LNG a month, mostly to Europe.

Frank Macchiarola, APIs senior vice president, policy, economics and regulatory affairs, said the association supports the administrations release of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve earlier this week, in conjunction with other nations. He said the SPR was designed for international crises like the invasion.

The invasion, he said, underscored the point the API and others have been making that the surge in US oil and natural gas production  particularly in the Permian Basin  has provided the nation with energy security and helped the energy security of American allies while helping lower prices at home.

But long-term, he said, US energy leadership will be needed and he called on the Biden administration to recognize the role of US energy, specifically LNG as Europe looks to the US for its energy.

The administration must recognize the role of LNG but also back that with action to allow expansion of exports, he said.

The Department of Energy and Federal Energy Regulatory Commission must act on applications for LNG export facilities pending before them and also establish a clear timeline for approval.

Ukraine, said Meyers, will fundamentally alter Europes energy markets. Already, he said, Germany is fast-tracking two LNG import facilities and the International Energy Agency is falling more imports of US LNG to diversify European sources away from Russia.

We believe its imperative President Biden reassure our allies the US will be a reliable supplier of energy, Meyers stated.
Things to know about the Midland County Utility District

The topic of water delivery to residents inside the county has come up during county election campaigns and even during the most recent Midland City Council planning session.

When the delivery of water is discussed, it often leads to a district created to ultimately provide water for those residents. It is called the Midland County Utility District or MCUD.

Here are some things to know about the Midland County Utility District offered in a question and answer with MCUDs Shelton Viney.

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MRT: What is the Midland County Utility District?

MCUD: The Midland County Utility District (MCUD) is a special law district created under Section 59, Article XVI, Texas Constitution and confirmed by voters of the district in May of 2013. The MCUD service area consists of approximately 84.5 square miles of land in Midland County, just south and east of Midland City limits. The district is governed by a five-member board of directors elected under section 49.102 of the state water code.

Its mission is provide dependable, safe drinking water to the residents of the district. The population within the district is estimated at approximately 40,000 people. The district provides an affordable place to live for many of the communitys residents and workforce population. These residents and the many businesses in the district contribute to the overall success of the Midland Community.

MRT: Dont these homes depend on groundwater?

MCUD: Over the past eight years, local groundwater wells in the district have become less reliable, resulting in many residents and businesses not having safe drinking water. Numerous residents are now regularly hauling water and storing it for use in their homes or businesses because their wells have run dry.

Several locations within the district have had their groundwater sources contaminated. These areas are under regulation from the Environmental Protection Agency, requiring water to be filtered and/or treated before it is suitable to drink or can be used in the home.

MRT: Are there other government entities involved?

MCUD: The district is grateful that the county and the city have expressed their concern for the lack of reliable drinking water within the district and have been cooperatively participating in developing a long-term solution for the good of the overall Midland community. The district board believes that a win-win solution is possible between the three entities that not only would benefit the residents within the district, but also all Midland residents living in the city limits and within the county.

In 2014, the groundwater resources within Midland County were evaluated and it was determined that there is not enough reliable groundwater within the county to sustain the population growth and increasing demand for water throughout the county. Therefore, the county studied potential water sources in the region and ultimately decided to purchase groundwater rights in Winkler County, approximately 12 miles away from the City of Midlands T-Bar Well Field. With this purchase, the county commissioners stated that it was their hope that this additional groundwater would eventually be made available to all the residents in the county, including those living inside and outside the city limits.

MRT: How can the city factor in the delivery of water to county residents?

MCUD: The county and the city have continued to discuss the best way to utilize the communitys valuable water sources, it has been determined that the best use of the countys water in Winkler County is to combine it with the citys water resources in Winkler County. By combining the countys water source in Winkler County with the city of Midlands, the available water for the city is increased by approximately 50 percent from a projected supply of 40 years to 60 years.

With the Citys utility department controlling the Countys water supply in Winkler County, the production and transportation of the water to Midland can be done most efficiently and effectively. In return, the city will begin to provide wholesale water to the district from the citys supply provided by the Colorado River Municipal Water District. The city has determined two locations within their existing water distribution system and one additional location within the citys future system that can be tapped by the Midland County Utility District as wholesale delivery points within the county. This will provide a reliable, safe source for drinking water within the district.

MRT: Once water is set up, whats the next step?

MCUD: With the source of reliable drinking water established, the Midland County Utility District is now able to begin development of a potable water utility system for its residents. The development of the system will be prioritized for the residents with the greatest need for water receiving services first and ultimately all district residents having access to a reliable, safe drinking water system.

The district will pursue all avenues of funding available for the development of the utility system. There are funding programs available through state and federal agencies for the areas with contamination. The district also will apply for other state and federal funds for other areas within the district that may qualify for specific programs

MRT: How will county residents be impacted financially?

MCUD: After all grant and assistance funding has been evaluated, the district will consider funding infrastructure development from users fees. The district will seek input from its residents before setting rates for purchase of drinking water. It is the intent of the district to provide drinking water to its residents at a rate that is affordable to them, while covering the operation and maintenance costs of the system. It is possible that the rates could also cover the cost of necessary installation of tanks, pump stations, piping, meters, etc.

Finally, after all other funding mechanisms have been fully vetted, the district may ask the voters within the district to approve the issuance of bonds at an election, which would increase property taxes if approved.

The district will continue to study all the financing options available to it to determine the best plan for funding the improvements needed to provide a reliable water supple to the community before the district asks the residents to approve any proposed bond program. However, the district wants to assure its residents that no bond program will be pursued without significant opportunity to receive input from its residents.

Again, the district is grateful for the spirit of cooperation and assistance in getting to this point from the county and the city. The entire community will benefit from these efforts by insuring all the communitys residents have safe and reliable drinking water for generations to come.
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New Conditions for Gibraltar Ambulances to Operate in Spain

Government has confirmed that Gibraltar ambulances will only be able to transfer routine patients for treatment to Spanish hospitals if they are staffed by GHA employees who live in Spain or by EU nationals.

This means that ambulance drivers and staff are being classed in the same way as the drivers of commercial vehicles with a requirement to register their employment status in the European Union.

There will be an exception made for emergency patients in life or death situations, when GHA staff resident in Gibraltar will be able to carry out the transfer, on the basis that prior warning is given and evidence of the condition of the patient is provided.

The same rules have been applied to St John Ambulance even though this is a charity largely manned by volunteers not by employees and evidently also not a commercial operation.

In addition to patient transfers, there is also another urgent and important issue with the transfer of platelets from Spain. Gibraltar relies on Jerez who supply platelets when required in an emergency. In the past, these have been couriered to La Linea and then collected by GHA Ambulance to transfer to St Bernards Hospital. The GHA is making alternative arrangements.

In summary, the new situation is as follows:

1. Gibraltar Ambulance Service to carry out ROUTINE transfers to and from Spain will have to be done by GHA staff that resides in Spain. In addition to this, they will need a Spanish contract of employment and this will also apply to everyone within the ambulance with the exception of the patient.

2. Spanish Ambulances to carry out ROUTINE transfers to and from Spain will have no issue unless Gibraltar stops them from operating. This one of the contingencies at present while the issue is resolved.

3. St John Ambulance to carry out ROUTINE transfers to and from Spain will have to be done by their staff that resides in Spain. In addition to this, they will need a Spanish contract of employment and this will also apply to everyone within the ambulance with the exception of the patient.

4. Spain will ONLY allow GHA staff resident in Gibraltar to convey a patient to Spain if it is a matter of life or death, the clinician in the ambulance (Paramedic or Doctor) provides evidence on the condition of the patient, and this will also have to be done with prior warning to the frontier Spanish authorities.

Given that the issue at stake is the health of citizens, and the potential for life or death situations to emerge, the Government has said it is extremely concerned at these developments and have already raised the matter at a higher level both with the United Kingdom and with Spain.
From 23 to 25 February 2022, the Algerian Customs hosted a national workshop on Customs laboratories, which was delivered within the framework of the EU-WCO Programme for the Harmonized System in Africa (HS-Africa Programme), funded by the European Union. It was conducted to follow-up to the outcomes of the first workshop on Customs laboratories that the Programme had organized in Algeria in 2020. The workshop was aimed at assessing the action plan drafted by the Algerian Customs for setting up a modern Customs laboratory in the country. The workshop was facilitated by two chemistry experts from the Spanish Customs Administration.

In his opening remarks, Mr. Saci Toufik, Director of Taxation and Tax Bases of the General Directorate of the Algerian Customs, confirmed the commitment of his administration in implementing a modern Customs laboratory as another step in the modernization of the Algerian Customs. He stressed the importance of Customs laboratories for the purposes of revenue collection, protection of the society and the environment as well as trade facilitation. He thanked the WCO and the European Union for the support and collaboration in this area of Customs work, and expressed his Administrations interest in becoming part of the WCO Regional Customs Laboratories programme.

Participants were informed of the structure and the functioning of the Spanish Customs Laboratories network and of the possibilities of replicating that model for the new Algerian Customs laboratory. Discussions focused on the WCO Customs Laboratory Guide, sampling procedures, analysis of narcotics, security and safety issues, as well as laboratory information management systems (LIMS). Experts visited several locations considered for setting up the future laboratory to examine their suitability for that purpose. Furthermore, it was agreed that a study visit to Customs laboratories in Madrid and Barcelona would be organized for a group of experts from the Algerian Customs in 2022, with the support of the HS-Africa Programme.

The workshop was also an opportunity for participants to deepen their knowledge of the relevant technical standards with regard to the infrastructure, instruments and staff of a Customs laboratory. Following comprehensive discussions of various aspects of the project, an assessment was made as to the way forward and concrete action for establishing a Customs laboratory in Algeria. The conclusions of the workshop were presented to the Director of Taxation and Tax Bases at the end of the workshop and will serve as the basis to plan next steps in the implementation of a Customs laboratory in Algeria.

For more information, please, contact capacity.building@wcoomd.org.
EDWARDSVILLE  A lawsuit has been filed against a Shipman woman who pleaded guilty to providing inadequate concealed carry classes for several hundred people, and the court is being asked to certify it as a class-action claim.

The suit, filed by attorney Thomas Magg on behalf of Madison County resident Lucinda Klotz, contends Terry Lumma, 61, of Shipman offered classes to more than 200 people interested in obtaining an Illinois concealed carry permit but the classes did not meet state standards, and that the certificates issued were false.
Provided

The family of longtime Routt Catholic High School supporters Mike and Mary Flynn is honoring the couple through a gift to establish two new scholarship funds at the high school and at Our Saviour Grade School.

The J. Michael Flynn Scholarship Fund and the Mary Evelyn Flynn Scholarship Fund will provide annual scholarships for a number of students starting next school year.
Gov. J.B. Pritzker denied any wrongdoing Thursday after the indictment of former House Speaker Michael Madigan.

The governor took questions from the media that revolved around a federal indictment handed up against Madigan the day before.

The longtime House speaker was charged on Wednesday with 22 counts of corruption, including racketeering and bribery while he was a member of the Illinois General Assembly and a Democratic Party of Illinois chairman. Madigan lost his speakership in January 2021 and resigned from office shortly after. He was then replaced as chairman of the Democratic Party.

Pritzker was asked about speaking with federal investigators back in February at his home.

"They wanted to talk about any interactions, and I was happy to cooperate and answer any of their questions," Pritzker said. "I have answered all of them in fact, and if you want more detail about what those questions were I would refer you to the U.S. attorney's office."

The governor is mentioned in the indictment and according to federal prosecutors, Madigan was to speak with Pritzker in person and instruct him to make certain appointments to state boards.

Pritzker said the last time he spoke with Madigan was on March 1, but Pritzker says the conversation was unrelated to the recent events.

"On March 1, I called to let him know that we would be making changes at the Illinois Arts Council," Pritzker said.

Madigan's wife, Shirley Madigan, is chairman of the Illinois Arts Council. Message to the council's executive director were not returned.

A major factor of the federal probe into Madigan involved former Chicago Alderman Danny Solis, and allegedly show wrongdoing by Madigan.

Pritzker was asked if he was ever instructed by Madigan or had any conversations with the former speaker about offering Solis a job. Pritzker responded quickly with a "no."

The governor's office released a statement regarding the incident.

"When I ran for office, I made clear that I would be beholden to no one, and that I would serve the best interests of the people of Illinois," the statement reads. "For the past three years, my administration has made clear that such abuses will not be tolerated, and we've tightened our ethics laws. I will continue to work with the General Assembly to restore the public's trust."
A Jacksonville native who has been living and working in Ukraine's capital city of Kyiv for the past nine years was scrambling Tuesday to leave his home for safety as Russian forces make their way toward the city.

Michael "Mykel" White, 57  an English teacher, pet lover and Marine who served during the 1980s  talked with his niece on Feb. 25 about possibly leaving.

"Scared, no. Concerned is the better word," White said, explaining his reaction to hearing explosions and the sounds of gunfire from his porch. "The main reason for not being scared came from my early childhood in Literberry. I was able to judge by the sounds the distance."

Before the initial invasion on Feb. 24, White, his neighbors and friends waited patiently to see what Russia was going to do. When the first explosions came, the country stood by in shock during the first hours, he said.

"I felt a mixture of disbelief and panic," White said.

White, who has two cats, noticed that a lot of people who left Kyiv abandoned their pets in a local park as they went.

"That is what tore me up most," he said. "Seeing family four-legged loved ones wandering around looking for their owners and food. People can understand, but pets do not. So every morning I walked with food and water. Then I walked around looking for them. I met an elderly couple walking their dogs. My Russian is non-existent, same for his English, so we spoke German and they were going help search. Before I left, I spent my rent money on cat and dog food and gave it to them."

It wasn't until late Monday that White made the decision to leave Kyiv, he said. It was a decision that broke his heart, mainly because he didn't want to leave his students  he still was holding class to try to help his students understand what was going on.

"I had pep talks for some of my students," he said. "I told them I was still in Kyiv, I still had internet, so we were still having class. We discussed that it is OK to be scared, fear is just your brain warning you of danger. Panic is not okay, because when you panic, you stop thinking. In a war, it is important to think. My fellow teachers all had plans. One of my students was at his home in the next region. We talked and I encouraged him to come with me. We also practiced ... a breathing exercise."

As Russian troops made their way through the country, White worked with Tampa, Florida-based group Dynamo, which has been helping Americans leave Kyiv.

On Tuesday morning, White and his two cats took a taxi to the train station.

"What is normally a $5 trip became a $70 trip," he said. "All the bridges were closed."

Once at the station, which was crowded, White learned that a train soon would be heading to Lviv, southwest of Kyiv.

"A train directly to Lviv would depart at 12:40" p.m., White said. "Ten minutes before the train arrived, the platform was packed. A rumor spread that it would be a different track. People became crazed animals  in other words, they panicked. They tossed their possessions and children off the platform onto the tracks. Ran two different rails and made the 5-foot climb.

"Well, now there were two platforms that could not be used (because there were) too many people on platforms 3 and 5. So it came in on Track 1. Hundreds of people ran across the four tracks. By the time I got there, it was full."

White eventually was able to get on a train. but no seats were available. He and others stood.

"At this point it was 1:30 p.m.," he said. "It turns out that the train was headed to Khmelnytskyi, halfway between Kyiv and Lviv, The cars were mostly full, so I rode between the wagons. It was a cold ride. We arrived in Khmelnytskyi around 9 p.m. Air raid sirens welcomed us. I needed a different train. At 11:30 p.m., as we were waiting for our train, another air raid siren blasted. Again, I rode between the two wagons. We arrived to Lviv at 4 a.m."

White's friends were assisting him with his travels as he made his way to Poland, but they couldn't meet until 9 a.m. Wednesday, because of the curfews in effect.

"They arranged a house for me for two days. While we greeted each other, her husband received a call stating there would be a bus at 3 p.m. There was a seat for me," White said. "They fed me, then introduced me to the man bankrolling the operation. The bus left promptly at 3 p.m. I made the bus with moments to spare."

White arrived in Wroclaw, Poland, around 11 p.m. After spending more than 36 hours on his feet and traveling, he stretched out on the floor with his feet elevated.

White's niece, Eren Williams, said she is extremely close with her uncle and has been terrified for him as she watches news reports of Russia bombing Ukrainian cities and learns of the death toll of innocent people.

"I was shaking," Williams said. "I have been a train wreck for a week. It feels longer."

Although communication was sporadic  cellphone coverage was sporadic and White was trying to preserve his phone's charge, Williams said she was relieved to receive a message that he was on a train and heading toward Poland.

"I feel a lot better now because he's on the train," Williams said midday Wednesday.

Williams tried to persuade White to leave Kyiv during their talk on Feb. 25, but he kept giving reasons to stay, she said.

"He was worried for everyone; he was worried for his kids; he was worried for his animals and himself," she said.

During the phone conversation  one Williams said cost her $200 because of international calling rates  Williams could hear explosions in the background as they talked.

"It sounded like car doors slamming," she said.

Explaining that her uncle has always been outgoing and adventurous and has a big heart, Williams said family members stateside were going to assist in getting White to Chicago but regulations would have prevented him from bringing his cats.

"We don't know what he's going to do, but I don't see him coming home because he won't leave his cats," she said, adding that he doesn't have children but considers his students and pets to be his family.
South Jacksonville continues to have a vacant trustee seat after the appointment of former Trustee Jason Hill failed Thursday.

The board was set to vote on the appointment, but a motion to approve it was not seconded and died.

Hill is a past trustee. He resigned in June after an altercation with then-Mayor Tyson Manker that lead to a police investigation, though no charges were filed against Hill.

Hill and former Village Clerk Krystin Hill submitted their letters of resignation in June, just a month following the incident.

President Dick Samples said Hill was the second person to be brought to the board for appointment.

"I told Jason to stay home because I didn't want him embarrassed like Todd [Warrick] if the vote didn't go his way," Samples said. "If the board had approved him, I would have called him and we probably would have had a special meeting to get him in before the committee meeting."

However, because the vote did not take place, Samples said the process will be different now.

At this time, Samples will be able to make the appointment without a board vote after 30 days.

"I will wait 30 days and will likely appoint Todd Warrick," Samples said. "I don't need anyone's approval for that at that point."

The appointment will likely take place at the board's April meeting.

Warrick was a former trustee who resigned in May after citing issues with Manker. Warrick was voted down by the board in a 3-2 vote in February, with Trustees Jordan Stewart, Stacy Pinkerton and Tom Jordan voting down the appointment. Trustees Paula Belobrajdic-Stewart and Jackie Killion voted in favor of the appointment.

Prior to the vote, Warrick said he was looking forward to returning to the board and finding ways to move forward.

The village still remains without a clerk as well.

Samples said he hasn't received any interest in the position and there hasn't been a high priority in finding someone to fill the spot as they are currently being covered.

The duties associated with the position have been covered by intern Clay Johnson during meetings for several months.

"I haven't done much with it," Samples said. "We have someone filling in and we are getting by."
On 15 February 2022, the World Customs Organization (WCO) successfully held its 9th series of webinars aimed at improving Customs administrations awareness of counterfeit COVID-19-related goods, in collaboration with high-level representatives from Novavax.

These webinars are among the measures taken to ensure thorough implementation by the Secretariat of the WCO Covid-19 Action Plan. The Action Plan was developed shortly after the adoption of the Resolution on the Role of Customs in Facilitating the Cross-Border Movement of Situationally Critical Medicines and Vaccines, as a temporary and overarching priority in the Implementation Plan 2021-2002 for the WCO Strategic Plan.

The latest webinars were designed to provide Customs with knowledge of the essential characteristics and specifications of the Nuvaxovid COVID-19 vaccine for emergency use. In December 2021, the World Health Organization (WHO) issued an emergency use listing (EUL) for Nuvaxovid, following its assessment and approval by the European Medicines Agency (EMA).

The knowledge gained during these webinars will ensure that Customs administrations are better equipped to identify trafficking in genuine and counterfeit COVID-19 vaccines.

This latest series of webinars, conducted in English with French and Spanish translation, brought together some 357 Customs officials from 71 countries across the WCOs six regions: Americas and the Caribbean; Asia/Pacific; Europe; East and Southern Africa; North of Africa, Near and Middle East; and West and Central Africa.

The WCO Secretariat highlighted the fact that Customs constituted the first line of defence at Members' borders for seizing counterfeit goods and thus protecting citizens health and safety. Customs also helped facilitate the trade in genuine vaccines and, to that end, cooperation with right holders was essential.

The huge interest shown by participants was noted and they asked a lot of questions during each of the webinars, while actively exchanging views with the presenters in order to gain an understanding of the new vaccine presented by Novavax.

The WCO Secretariat continues to work closely with the WHO, pharmaceutical companies producing COVID-19 vaccines and a wide range of stakeholders to ensure that counterfeit vaccines are not in circulation around the world.
Governor Gavin Newsom unveils CARE Court plan at a press conference in San Jose View Photo

Sacramento, CA  Governor Gavin Newsom today unveiled a plan to assist people living with untreated mental health and substance abuse, which, in turn, he says will also aid Californias homeless crisis.

Newsoms proposal involves creating mental health courts in every county, allowing treatment for more homeless people with severe mental health and addiction disorders. It also would compel some into care, a move that many homeless advocates oppose as a violation of civil rights.

Countering those concerns at a press conference, the Governor stressed that he has no intention of rounding people up and locking them away. Instead, he said his plan would offer a way for people to get court-ordered psychiatric treatment, medication and housing, preferably before they are arrested.

Theres no compassion stepping over people in the streets and sidewalks, stated Newsom. We could hold hands, have a candlelight vigil, talk about the way the world should be, or we could take some damn responsibility to implement our ideas and thats what were doing differently here.

Dubbed, CARE Court, the plan builds on Newsoms $14 billion multi-year investment to provide 55,000 new housing units and treatment slots and nearly $10 billion annually in community behavioral health services.

Californias Health and Human Services Agency Secretary Dr. Mark Ghaly suggests that the plan could apply to an estimated 7,000 to 12,000 people.

CARE Courts would have to set up a mental health branch in civil court and provide comprehensive and community-based treatment to those suffering from debilitating psychosis. If approved, they would be obligated to accept the care or risk criminal charges, if those are pending, and if not, they would be subject to being held in psychiatric programs involuntarily or lengthier conservatorships in which the court appoints a person to make health decisions for someone who cannot.

The governor advised that people would have a say in their treatment plan and have a public defender to represent them. A noted improvement, said Newsom, is that the proposal also allows a broader array of people, including a family member or first responder, to refer the person for help. Care could last up to 24 months. However, that idea did not sit well with some civil rights groups like the ACLU, which argue locking people up and drugging them against their will does not solve the problem. Another group in opposition is the California State Association of Counties which objects to the requirements put on counties.

It was not immediately clear how much the program could cost. Last year, the Legislature approved $12 billion for new housing and treatment beds for the homeless, and this year Newsom has proposed an additional $2 billion, primarily to shelter people suffering from psychosis, schizophrenia and other behavioral health disorders.
At the joint invitation of Mr. Abdulaziz Kamilov, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Uzbekistan, Ms. Helga Maria Schmid, Secretary General of the Organization for Security and Cooperation (OSCE), and Mr. Vladimir Voronkov, Under-Secretary General of the United Nations Office of Counter Terrorism (UNOCT), Dr. Kunio Mikuriya, Secretary General of the World Customs Organization (WCO), participated through a video message in the High-Level International Conference on Regional cooperation of Central Asian countries within the framework of the Joint Action Plan for the Implementation of the United Nations Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy held in a hybrid format on 3 and 4 March 2022 in Tashkent, Uzbekistan.

The Conference was co-organized by the Institute for Strategic and Regional Studies under the President of the Republic of Uzbekistan, the countrys Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the UNOCT, the UN Regional Center for Preventive Diplomacy for Central Asia (UNRCCA) and the OSCE.

The event gathered over 600 senior officials and leading experts from Asia, Europe, and the Middle East, as well as representatives of international and regional organizations, think-tanks, and non-governmental organizations.

At the opening ceremony, the President of the Republic of Uzbekistan, Mr. Shavkat Mirziyoyev addressed the participants and emphasized the importance for the international community to consolidate its efforts to address the increasing global and regional security threats in such difficult circumstances. He mentioned that successful implementation of the counter-terrorism strategy in the region requires to strengthen mechanisms for constant monitoring and critical evaluation of the Joint Plan of Actions implementation and coordination of cooperation among the Central Asian countries.

In his video message, Dr. Kunio Mikuriya said that Customs is the first line of defence to prevent organized crime and terrorist groups from exploiting illicit trade and highlighted in this regard the important role played by the WCO in setting international standards to secure and facilitate supply chain and ensure connectivity at borders.

The Secretary General Mikuriya stated that, in order to assist Customs administrations in the Central Asia and surrounding countries in fulfilling their responsibilities, the WCO had supported the participation of Customs in broader UN initiatives to build capacity to prevent and combat terrorism at the borders. In this regard, he mentioned the recent WCO Operation Cosmo Central Asia for addressing the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and other dual-use goods and demonstrating the effective implementation of the UN Security Council Resolution (UN SCR) 1540.

Dr. Mikuriya went on to say that the WCO had also been actively involved in the recent UN SCR 2370 Deep Dive assessments, examining a States ability to prevent terrorists from acquiring weapons in Central Asian countries, with a focus on the effectiveness of border control of firearms, ammunition and explosives. In this connection, he stressed the need to include Customs in Committees and other mechanisms designed to combat terrorism.

The Secretary General said that the WCO is committed to working with its partners to enable Customs to contribute to counter-terrorism in Central Asia.
Courtesy of SAPD

When Lina Sadar Khil went missing in San Antonio in December 2021, the story of the 3-year-old girl's disappearance made national news. CBS News, ABC News and the Washington Post all reported on Lina's last known whereabouts on December 20. Popular gossip blogger Perez Hilton also added a write-up on his website.

Now, Investigation Discovery, an American multinational television network dedicated to true crime documentaries owned by Discovery, Inc., was the latest to highlight Lina's case on March 1. The network focused on how the reward for information leading to finding Lina has been increased to $250,000.
City officials and the police union negotiators reached a collective bargaining agreement on a five-year contract for San Antonio police officers. The talks have been ongoing for over a year, with both parties heavily vetting wages and disciplinary processes. They both came to a tentative agreement on Wednesday, March 2.

RELATED: Ex-San Antonio officer indicted two years after shooting at fleeing juveniles

The Express-News reports that the new contract is over 100 pages, so here's a quick explainer of what's in the new contract.

Wages

Police will receive a 3.5% increase in 2023 and 2024.

Police pay will then increase by 4% in 2025 and 2026.

Officers will also receive a 2% lump sum when the contract is approved.

The union agreed to not use funding received from the American Rescue Plan Act.

The $10 million in ARPA funding set aside for police can now go to civilian employees.

Disciplinary action

The police chief can discipline officers within 180 days of receiving misconduct allegations, instead of after 180 days of the incident.

The chief can't discipline officers for misconduct two years after the incident unless the officer is accused of a crime.

Arbitrators can only overturn indefinite suspensions if the chief fails to identify whether the officer's employment is detrimental to the police department.

Officers must be notified within 24 hours of being investigated by internal affairs, which investigates police misconduct.

The previous contract set a timeframe of 48 hours.

The officers being investigated can review statements, pictures as well as video and audio recordings during the course of the investigation.

Officers can't look at statements from other officer under investigation.

What happens next?

The San Antonio Association of Police Officers will bring the contract to its members for approval and then it will head to the city council.
Yves here. Its hard to find decent nursing home care in the US to begin with, but the standard of care in predominately Medicaid-supported facilities is very poor. And staffing is a big part of the problem. We pointed out before the vaccine mandates for nursing homes were about to kick in that they were already understaffed industry-wide, IIRC at 93% levels. Several factors have conspired to make that worse:

Far more opportunities to work as home health care aides at comparable pay and with much better work conditions. Families that had options stopped putting relatives in nursing homes with the onset of Covid and some even pulled them out. The shift to more elderly needing care in non-institutional settings greatly increased the overall need for aides, since serving someone in their own house is more labor-intensive than in a facility. We had quite a few aides who had worked in nursing homes and told tales of how abusive the management was. And if an aide can get private clients and cut out the home health care agency middle-man, they can earn much more than in a nursing home. Strong preference of some health care workers to avoid a high Covid risk setting. Of our many aides, we had one that quit nursing home work to reduce Covid exposure, and another who quit a nursing job at a hospital when her floor was turned into a Covid floor. Some quitting to escape vaccine mandates. This issue does not appear to be a significant factor, but from what I can tell, it wasnt the nothingburger that the officialdom wanted you to think it was. Recall that nursing homes were already short staffed, so any further losses would hurt. Health care organizations tried to depict the vaccine mandates as having no impact, pointing to low levels of firings on the date the mandate kicked in. But thats not a good measure. To preserve continuity of employment and not have a termination in your record, most would quit before the vaccination deadline. And nurses and CNAs/orderly level staff, as indicated, could easily get hired by a home health agency as a stopgap or a lasting option.

In other words, the already difficult staffing situation has gotten worse, meaning more pay is needed to compensate for having to do the work of 1.2 staffers (at least) in the meantime, plus the inherent difficulty of the job getting worse due to Covid. Yet the industry whinges that since paying more didnt solve their staffing problem, why should they be expected to hire more people, which presumably will require even better hourly wages? Key howler from the KHN story:

A February study in JAMA Health Forum found that, compared with other parts of the health sector, nursing homes experienced the greatest relative wage growth during the pandemic yet saw the biggest drops in employment. By singling out nursing home care for attack, President Biden is only further demoralizing struggling providers and their workers, Brendan Williams, CEO of the New Hampshire Health Care Association, which lobbies for long-term care facilities, said in a statement. Mark Parkinson, CEO of the American Health Care Association in Washington, D.C., said in a statement that we cannot meet additional staffing requirements when we cant find people to fill the open positions nor when we dont have the resources to compete against other employers.

What about, Yes, you need to pay more dont you understand? And its been endemic across the health care industry that organizations used Covid as an excuse to increase executive pay a lot while only increasing nurse and other low-level worker pay a smidge. Id like to see theses companies top level pay and profits before I believe their poor-mouthing.

By Rachana Pradhan, a Kaiser Health News correspondent who previously worked for Politico, and Harris Meyer. Originally published at Kaiser Health News

President Joe Bidens top Medicare official suggested Wednesday that forthcoming rules to bolster nursing home staffing wont be issued under a mechanism, known as interim final rules, that would allow regulations to take effect more or less immediately.

While we want to move swiftly, we want to get comments from stakeholders, Chiquita Brooks-LaSure, administrator of the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, said in an interview about the overhaul Biden promised during his State of the Union address.

Medicare is going to set higher standards for nursing homes and make sure your loved ones get the care they deserve and that they expect, Biden said.

But Brooks-LaSure suggested the administrations sought-after nursing home changes are not considered urgent even as nursing homes and other long-term care facilities register shocking numbers of covid deaths. A KFF analysis estimated that more than 200,000 residents and staff members of long-term care facilities had died from covid as of Jan. 30, amounting to at least 23% of all U.S. deaths.

When we do interim final rules, those tend to be things that are absolute emergencies, Brooks-LaSure said when asked whether they would be considered for nursing home staffing levels, or tight timelines.

The White House this week said CMS will first study the issue and then propose minimum staffing standards within one year, but officials have been otherwise vague about timing. When issuing regulations, federal agencies generally release a proposal and then seek public feedback before finalizing it. The entire process can take months or even years. But theres an exception that allows newly issued regulations to kick in much faster even if the agency allows for public comment  a move that Biden officials have exercised recently when issuing a covid vaccine mandate for health workers and implementing a ban on surprise medical bills that took effect this year.

Marjorie Moore, executive director of Voyce, a St. Louis nonprofit that advocates for long-term care residents, said the speed of this is a little frustrating. She said shes seen situations where residents hadnt had their diapers changed for days because staffing shortages are so dire.

Thats not what we expect for our most vulnerable, she said.

Still, she said, I think one year, knowing that this is government stuff, may be the best we can hope for. Thats not going to be an overnight thing. We just knew there was no way.

Bidens proposal would amount to the biggest increase in federal nursing home regulation in nearly four decades. CMS could pursue several elements under the agencys existing authority, such as investigating the role of private equity in the sector, increasing its scrutiny of the poorest-performing facilities, and making public more information about facilities finances and operators.

Some ideas would require congressional action. They include allowing CMS to ban from the Medicare and Medicaid programs those facilities owned by people or corporations with subpar track records and to increase penalties on poor-performing facilities from $21,000 to $1 million.

Most states have standards for nursing home staffing levels, but the minimums vary widely. Some states have been criticized for granting exemptions so facilities can provide less care for each resident.

Forthcoming federal rules on staffing must be designed to avoid unintended consequences, said David Grabowski, a professor of health care policy at Harvard Medical School, who is supportive of the effort. Figuring out the right kind of threshold for facilities is going to be challenging.

He said unintended consequences might come from boosting staffing levels by disproportionately hiring nursing assistants, who earn less and have limited responsibilities, at the expense of positions for licensed practical nurses and registered nurses, or depleting resources in other important areas like housekeeping.

Brooks-LaSure declined to say whether CMS would allow nursing homes to seek exemptions, instead arguing that minimum staffing rules will help with retention.

Were hearing from staff over and over about the strain that staffing is placing on them personally and on residents. And we have got to address the quality of care for people who are enrolled in our programs, she said. We want to work with industry, absolutely, to get there, but everything we hear is about what kind of strain the insufficient staffing is putting on residents and on the workers themselves.

The industry, for its part, hasnt minced words in criticizing Bidens plan, especially after the pandemic exacerbated existing workforce retention problems. A February study in JAMA Health Forum found that, compared with other parts of the health sector, nursing homes experienced the greatest relative wage growth during the pandemic yet saw the biggest drops in employment.

By singling out nursing home care for attack, President Biden is only further demoralizing struggling providers and their workers, Brendan Williams, CEO of the New Hampshire Health Care Association, which lobbies for long-term care facilities, said in a statement. Mark Parkinson, CEO of the American Health Care Association in Washington, D.C., said in a statement that we cannot meet additional staffing requirements when we cant find people to fill the open positions nor when we dont have the resources to compete against other employers.

Central to Bidens plan is getting facilities to open their books to make public information about their opaque finances and operating structures. Among other moves, CMS plans to create a database to identify nursing home owners and operators.

There is an international movement to more closely monitor and improve nursing home staffing levels, staff pay, and quality of care.

To achieve that, 106 investor groups and labor unions in the U.S., Canada, and Europe that manage more than $3 trillion in assets have published staffing, pay, and quality goals for nursing homes. They are pressing large companies and real estate investment trusts that operate nursing homes to publicly disclose whether they are complying with those targets. They seek greater financial transparency in nursing home operations.

Some of the investor groups have told nursing home operators that if they fail to meet the expectations, they may take shareholder actions against management and ultimately divest from the companies.

But those investors and unions are facing tough challenges in getting the information they seek, said Adrian Durtschi, head of the health care section at UNI Global Union, which spearheaded the international effort.

He noted greater cooperation from nursing home operators in European countries with more heavily regulated national health care systems and stronger unions. Its been slower in the U.S., he said, where there are so many private nursing home companies.

Transparency is key for investors to make good investments, and unions need it for good negotiations, Durtschi said. But its generally not easy to access the information. Some companies are willing to disclose it, while others are more resistant.

Bidens plan could inspire others to enact similar disclosure laws and regulations, he added.

For instance, French authorities are under pressure to toughen nursing home oversight following revelations of severe quality-of-care problems at nursing homes run by Orpea, a large publicly traded operator of high-end facilities. As a result, some investment funds have reduced their nursing home holdings.

Demands for higher standards, more transparency, and more union rights, Durtschi said, are great to see.

In the U.S., Brooks-LaSure said CMS can use its leverage. As part of our requirements to participate in the Medicare and Medicaid program, we have authority to require entities to report information to us, she said. However, Grabowski, noting the industrys skill at staying steps ahead of the government and weak agency enforcement, said that it sounds like a great objective, but its going to be really challenging.

Im a little skeptical theyll make the necessary investment, he said of CMS.

One advocate for vulnerable older adults, whove especially suffered during the pandemic, saw hope in Bidens statement.

Nursing homes getting literally three lines in the State of the Union is profound, said Dr. Michael Wasserman, a geriatrician in California. Let us stop and realize that the White House has recognized improving quality in nursing homes as a priority.
The 2022 Mobile World Congress, themed Connectivity Unleashed, opened in Barcelona on Monday, which many see as a symbol of social and economic recovery following the COVID-19 pandemic.

Produced by Xinhua Global Service 
Poetry nook:

This poem really spoke to me pic.twitter.com/Ni2WawzZ5J  Rudy Havenstein fixes this. (@RudyHavenstein) September 21, 2019

The END of ATMs in Australia? Thousands of cash machines are removed across the country as banks go digital Daily Mail

Climate

#COVID19

China?

As Chinas yuan gets stronger while Ukraine crisis drives up raw material prices, exporters shy away from US dollar South China Morning Post

Ukraine puts ASEAN in with us or against us bind Asia Times. Commentary:

The mere discussion of secondary sanctions against India over Russia in Washington D.C arguably marks the day the Indo-Pacific strategy died.  Tom Fowdy (@Tom_Fowdy) March 3, 2022

It has occurred to me that the dominant factions of The Blob are Atlanticist both out of ideology (Fiona Hill) and careerism (Fiona Hill) and have never accepted a Pivot to Asia. At least for the Clintonites, why would they? They moved our industrial base to China, after all. Too simplisitic?

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(Natural News) The Peoples Republic of China has slammed the United States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) for provoking Russia and President Vladimir Putin into invading Ukraine.

In a Twitter thread, Chinas Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying quoted various U.S. news reports, which she said backed her argument that President Joe Biden could have prevented the invasion by simply assuring that Ukraine would never be accepted by NATO.

NATO notably promised Ukraine in 2008 that it would ultimately become a member of the coalition after the former Soviet republic applied for membership in the early 2000s. However, most Western leaders worry that admitting Ukraine could provoke Russia in an even more hostile stance.

In support of this idea, Hua shared a pair of clips from Fox News, including a slip of the tongue from a Department of State spokesman, who said that this is not the outcome we sought to prevent.

Biden, NATO did not prevent Russia-Ukraine war from happening

In another clip shared by Hua, Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard told Tucker Carlson that the Biden administration actually wanted Russia to invade Ukraine so they could impose draconian sanctions and boost defense spending.

Hua proceeded to explain that should Ukraine become a member of NATO, that would put the U.S. and NATO troops directly on the doorstep of Russia. The spokeswoman asked why Biden and NATO didnt even try to ease the tension between Russia and Ukraine.

In the long run, the military industrial complex is the one that benefits most, which is something that is already becoming apparent as the investment banks endorse defense stocks to their clients.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen during an interview with Euronews on Feb. 26, mentioned that she would like to see Ukraine join the European Union. However, many observers have argued that Ukraine doesnt meet the demands for membership and that this would further provoke Russia.

Meanwhile, Hua avoided giving a yes or no answer to reporters asking whether she would call Russias attacks on Ukraine an invasion. Instead, Hua said: The U.S. has been fueling the flame, fanning up the flame, how do they want to put out the fire?

China calls for a dialogue between Russia, Ukraine

Hua added that Russia is an independent major country that could take its own actions.

China is closely following the development of the situation. What you are seeing today is not what we have wished to see. We hope all parties can go back to dialogue and negotiation, Hua said.

The ministry also said on February 24 that Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi had a call with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. Wang declared that China always respects each countrys sovereignty and that the Ukraine issue is complex.

China is clearly sympathetic to Russian perspectives. China thinks that its the NATO expansion and other threats from the U.S. and NATO that ultimately prompted Russia to defend its legitimate interests. In other words, I think China feels Russia feels it is forced to do what it is doing, said Tong Zhao, a senior fellow in the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace based in Beijing.

Zhao added that Russia is now receiving wide international condemnation and criticism, which China wants to avoid being seen as part of. He also pointed out that China has been very careful when it comes to public statements.

Its hard for China to openly support this Russian behavior given this implications for Chinas own security and Chinas relationship with Taiwan, Zhao said. (Related: Trump: China will DEFINITELY attack Taiwan following Russia-Ukraine example.)

Beijing has many times asserted that it intends to reunify with Taiwan, a democratic island nation that is off the coast of mainland China.

More related stories:

China, Russia, working on weapons that can kill US GPS satellites.

China, Russia sign agreement to build space station on the moon, the high ground above planet Earth.

NATO may have just declared war on Russia with latest move to counter Putins invasion of Ukraine.

Putin demands Ukraine surrender so as to spare the country bloodshed as Kyiv mayor calls on citizens to hold the capital.

Watch the video below to know why China will be the ultimate winner in the Russia-Ukraine war.

This video is from the Iron Age News channel on Brighteon.com.

Follow WWWIII.news to know more about the Russia-China political connection.

Sources include:

WeAreChange.org

CNBC.com

Brighteon.com
(Natural News) Lawyer Thomas Renz talks straight to the point to support his case. Asked by America Unhinged host Dr. John Diamond about his views on the alarming increase in side effects caused by the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccines, Renz gave an irrefutable answer.

The numbers are what they are and theyre out there, Renz told Diamond in the February 28 episode of the show on Brighteon.TV. (Related: Tom Renz slams Pentagon for HIDING vaccine injury data  Brighteon.TV)

In other words, the data will reflect the truth. Unless tampered with, theyre the strongest proof.

Dr. Anthony Fauci and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) harbor the same thought before. They even cited unverified data as justification for the vaccine mandates being imposed by the government since the pandemic went full-blown in March 2020.

But the winds of change have shifted.

Fauci, President Joe Bidens chief medical adviser, the CDC and even the Department of Defense (DOD) are now trying to discredit the data emerging after more than two years of the deadly global scourge. They are harping that data arent reflective of the current situation, they are a misrepresentation, even downright wrong.

Case in point: the data on the side effects of the vaccines to military personnel.

An Instagram post in January showed military members experienced spikes of 300 percent in miscarriages, almost 300 percent in cancer diagnoses and 1,000 percent in neurological issues.

Military members see spike in numbers of various illnesses following vaccine mandate

These are just a few of the various illnesses that pole vaulted in numbers after the DOD mandated mass vaccination for the men and women in uniform.

The figures didnt just pop up. They came from the Pentagons Defense Medical Epidemiologist Database (DMED), which in turn got the medical records from the militarys Defense Medical Surveillance System server.

Not only that, three military doctors  Peter Chambers, Theresa Long and Samuel Sigoloff  surfaced during a roundtable called by Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson on January 25 to attest to the veracity of the numbers, which are baffling if not shocking even to their fellow doctors.

Truth is, Renz said a couple of doctors told him that cancer is typically a slow-developing type of thing and to see a 300 percent rise in cases seems improbable.

My response is this. So Pfizer and Moderna, and numerous others have all admitted in their documents filed with the federal government that these jabs are gene therapies, not vaccines, okay. Now, the CDC, because theyre corrupt, changed the definition of vaccine so that they could include these gene therapies, but theyre still gene therapies, Renz said.

So theyre really a new class and category of drug. Well, you [doctors] say that it would be unlikely for a drug to cause cancer this quickly. I said, well, lets compare these gene therapies to other gene therapies.

The doctors said they cant because there arent any. Voila, Renz got them flushed.

Precisely, there arent any. So how can you compare them? And so when you tell me its unlikely, well, maybe for a typical vaccine, but not for gene therapy.

No long-term testing for COVID-19 vaccines

Renz, whos representing the three military whistleblowers, also pointed out that there was no long-term testing for the vaccines before they were granted emergency use approval (EUA) by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), so the risks of side effects are really high.

And theres no need for further explanation.

The data is what it is. And weve listened to Fauci lie for two years about him following the data which he hasnt. But now all of a sudden, when the day that the true data come out, and it looks bad, then they want to say no, this cant be.

There are only two sides to this issue, according to Renz: Well, are we following the data? Or were we not following the data? Which way we go in here? I mean, the numbers are what they are, I dont care if theyre unlikely, I didnt make them up. They just are what they are.

Renz offered a reason for the sudden shift in data perception by the government.

So, when its convenient, we follow the data. When the data show what we want it to show, we follow the data. When the data start becoming inconvenient or telling (the) truth, all of a sudden, we dont want to follow the data anymore. Well, thats the issue.

The shocking numbers came up and theres nowhere to point to, according to Renz, because its a brand new drug. Its not even tested or tried, theres no historical context for this.

Citing an extreme example, Renz said: If you inject anti-freeze in your vein, your veins, youre probably gonna see some crazy side effects that are unexpected. Well, yeah, its just another chemical. These jabs are another chemical. They were untested, they were unproven.

He continued: And yet, we rushed to get them out. And now theyre poisoning people. And so yes, there are unexpected and shocking side effects. The data is what it is.

Ultimately, however, the perpetrators of the dastardly act must be held accountable. And Renz will be grilling them all.

More related stories:

Tom Renz reveals the names of vaccine damage Pentagon whistleblowers during Johnson roundtable.

Lawyer Thomas Renz accuses military of COVID cover-up, urges immediate investigation  Brighteon.TV.

Thomas Renz: People behind COVID vaccines belong in jail.

Watch the February 28 episode of America Unhinged below. Catch new episodes of the program from Monday to Friday at 9-10 a.m. on Brighteon.TV.





Follow Pandemic.news for more news related to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Sources include:

Brighteon.com

RonJohnson.senate.gov
(Natural News) As the world is focused on the war in Ukraine, Big Pharma company Pfizer quietly released documents that the Food and Drug Administration wanted to be sealed until 2097.

The FDA came into conflict with a Texas judge over the release of data the agency used to license Pfizers Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccine. The FDA wanted the Big Pharma company to only produce 500 pages of data per month.

But District Judge Mark T. Pittman of Northern Texas ruled that the FDA had to turn over 55,000 pages of data a month starting on March 1. According to the courts order: The FDA shall produce the remaining documents at a rate of 55,000 pages every 30 days, with the first production being due on or before March 1, 2022, until production is complete.

This means all of Pfizers COVID-19 vaccine trial data should be made public within eight months. (Related: Congress refuses to investigate FDAs failure to look into claims that Pfizer falsified COVID vaccine trial data.)

The FDA originally requested that Pfizers data be made public over the course of 75 years. When this was taken to court, the agency lowered its request to 55 years. What this means is that if the FDA had gotten its way, the public would not have full access to Pfizers COVID-19 vaccine data until 2077 at the earliest and 2097 at the latest.

Some Pfizer documents are already available, but nothing groundbreaking released yet

Public Health and Medical Professionals for Transparency is the non-profit organization that successfully sued the FDA into releasing the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine data faster.

PHMPT released all of the currently available Pfizer data on the organizations website but did not offer any sort of proper context or any other explanation of what the data shows.

Speaking to Endpoints News, Siri & Glimstad managing partner Aaron Siri, who represented PHMPT in its lawsuit, said: Our job was to get the documents. We leave it to the scientists and others to analyze.

The documents the FDA and Pfizer have already released are mostly technical documents, including one that shows the Big Pharma company paying the standard $2.9 million user fee to the FDA for its application.

Other documents released include the FDA granting Pfizer and BioNTechs request to get its experimental vaccine fast track designation.

Some of the documents currently available include one labeled as a priority review request. It includes more than 100 pages worth of anonymous safety data tables. Another document includes tables listing the genders, ages and body mass indexes of COVID-19 vaccine trial participants.

Other information from the document release includes a confidential nonclinical overview of the vaccine, a request from Pfizer to waive the requirement to add a suffix to the end of the vaccines name and a long list of anonymized trial subjects who did not receive the vaccine.

Journalist Zachary Brennan, senior editor for Endpoints News, noted that some of the documents that Pfizer and the FDA released were unnecessary documents that did not need to be released. These include Pfizers fast track designation approval and its request for a waiver regarding the name of the vaccine.

The sheer volume of pages and document types will give readers a good overall sense of the required documentation necessary to apply for a drug or vaccine approval at the FDA, wrote Brennan. But its still unclear if the documents will offer any new insight into the vaccines safety or efficacy, especially given the real-world data on the vaccine thats already been published in major medical journals.

What this shows is that the FDA and Pfizer may be colluding to release documents that they are not required to release in order to delay the publication of documents that may have more important information regarding Pfizers vaccine.

More related stories:

Bombshell study: Pfizers covid jab contents enter the liver, alter human chromosomes and rewrite DNA.

To expand profits, Pfizer reportedly partnered with CCP-linked pharmaceutical company that engaged in military combat with Chinas Peoples Liberation Army.

Pfizer admits in confidential document that COVID-19 vaccine causes Vaccine-Associated Enhanced Disease (same thing as Antibody Dependent Enhancement).

Pfizer has effectively dominated the COVID-19 vaccine market in Europe, raking in billions of dollars in the process.

Criminal conspiracy unraveling: Pfizer and the government concealed thousands of deaths, mass injuries caused by experimental covid jabs.

Listen to this episode of the Health Ranger Report as Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, talks about a smoking gun document from Pfizer that shows it covered up COVID-19 vaccine deaths with the help of the FDA.

This video can be found in the Health Ranger Report channel on Brighteon.com.

BigPharmaNews.com has the latest news and information about Big Pharma companies like Pfizer.

Sources include:

DailyExpose.uk

StrangeSounds.org

Endpts.com

Brighteon.com
(Natural News) Once again, a Western democracy has lied big time to its people, but what comes of it is anyones guess, given that such lies are so commonplace now it is impossible to distinguish the truth.

Canadians were told last month that the government had every right to regulate and intercept millions in donations to the Freedom Convoy truck drivers and their supporters because the money was actually supporting domestic terrorism.

While sane observers knew that was BS at the time, the countrys currency regulator has now officially admitted as much.

The deputy director of the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre noted in a finding that Canadians were fed up with COVID and were upset and saw the demonstrations as an outlet, and they just wanted to support the cause.

It was their own money, said the official, Barry MacKillop, in testimony to a House of Commons finance committee last week, as reported by Blacklocks Reporter.

He also admitted that the money that was raised wasnt cash that funded terrorism or was in any way money laundering, both accusations of which were absurd on their face, given that donors attempted to use a couple of very mainstream crowdfunding platforms  GoFundMe, which wound up capitulating to the Canadian government; and GiveSendGo, a U.S.-based Christian-themed crowdfunding app.

In addition, MacKillop noted that Freedom Convoy donations financially supported the cause before it was declared illegal by the same tyrants who leveled the terrorism accusations.

According to the outlet, the government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, after he invoked the Emergencies Act, used anti-terrorism funding laws to persecute some Canadians who had the audacity to believe they lived in a democracy and were still free enough to financially support a cause they believed in.

Lifesite News adds further:

The Freedom Convoys original GoFundMe?page was canceled?February 4 after raising more than $10 million. The group subsequently started a GiveSendGo page as a result. However, both Canadian and U.S. mainstream media outlets came under fire for using hacked information from the truckers GiveSendGo list to dox donors who donated to the cause.

The hack of the Freedom Convoys GiveSendGo donor list was detailed and included ones name, email address, IP address, and payment details, along with postal/zip codes.

In addition to pressuring GoFundMe, Trudeaus left-wing authoritarians also tried to freeze donations made to the truckers via GiveSendGo on Feb. 14, when demonstrators had been in the capital of Ottawa for three weeks.

We require that fundraisers be transparent about the flow of funds and have a clear plan for how those funds will be spent. In this case, we are in touch with the organizer to verify that information, Rachel Hollis, a spokeswoman for GoFundMe said in an email declaring cooperation with the Trudeau regime last month.

Funds will be safely held until the organizer is able to provide the documentation to our team about how funds will be properly distributed, the email continued.

Our current government is implementing rules and mandates that are destroying the foundation of our businesses, industries and livelihoods, the convoys GoFundMe page says.

We are a peaceful country that has helped protect nations across the globe from tyrannical governments who oppressed their people, and now it seems it is happening here, the page continued.

The entire purpose of the Freedom Convoy was to push back on Trudeaus insane COVID-19 vaccine mandate for drivers who were by themselves for the bulk of their workday. But in fact, the COVID pandemic is obviously being used as a tool for further implementing tyrannical government. And left-wing big tech platforms had no issues with aiding the process.

Democracy is collapsing around the world, and freedom lovers will have to fight to keep it.

Sources include:

LifeSiteNews.com

NaturalNews.com
(Natural News) Vaccine manufacturer Pfizer last month withdrew the emergency use authorization (EUA) application for its Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccine in India. The New York-based firms withdrawal followed its refusal to conduct a domestic safety trial for its vaccine, which Indias drug regulator required.

Pfizer decided to rescind its EUA application in India during a Feb. 2 meeting with the Central Drugs Standard Control Organization (CDSCO), the countrys regulatory agency. CDSCO ordered the pharmaceutical giant to conduct a local trial in India to determine if the vaccine is safe and generates an adequate immune response in citizens.

According to the regulator, the trial is a prerequisite before an EUA can be granted to Pfizers BNT162b2 vaccine  made in partnership with German company BioNTech.

Dr. Vinod K. Paul, the head of Indias National Expert Group on Vaccine Administration for COVID-19, said a bridging trial for foreign vaccines such as the one from Pfizer is needed before receiving approval. He explained that bridging trials are important as they serve to determine how safe and effective are the vaccines when injected into populations with a different genetic makeup than that of Western nations.

Pfizer applied for an exemption from this bridging trial. It cited evidence of EUA approvals BNT162b2 received in other countries, which were based on clinical trials conducted in the U.S. and Germany. Despite the presence of provisions that allow vaccine bridging trials to be waived in certain circumstances, CDSCO opted not to grant Pfizer an exemption.

The regulator pointed out serious adverse effects linked to the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine, adding that the causality of [these] events with the vaccine is being investigated. It continued: The firm has not proposed any plan to generate safety and immunogenicity data in [the] Indian population. After detailed deliberation, [CDSCO] has not recommended for grant of permission for emergency use [of the Pfizer vaccine] in the country at this stage. (Related: Beloved doctor in India succumbs to coronavirus despite being fully vaccinated.)

Pfizer vaccine out, other vaccines in

Aside from the serious adverse effects linked to the vaccine and Pfizers refusal to conduct a local vaccine trial, India also deemed the BNT162b2 vaccine as unsuitable for the country due to its stringent temperature requirement.

Officials from the Indian Ministry of Health and Family Welfare said the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine is not the best choice for the country. It requires a storage temperature of -70 degrees Celsius (-94 degrees Fahrenheit)  which only expensive freezers are capable of. Such freezers are not readily available in India.

Pfizer confirmed the move to rescind its EUA application in a statement to Reuters. Based on the deliberations at the meeting and our understanding of additional information that the [Indian drug] regulator may need, the company has decided to withdraw its application at this time. Pfizer will continue to engage with the authority and re-submit its approval request with additional information as it becomes available in the near future.

The drug manufacturer originally sought authorization for the BNT162b2 vaccine in India in late 2021. The Indian government approved the EUA applications for two subsequent vaccine candidates: the CoviShield shot made by AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford, and the homegrown vaccine candidate Covaxin by Bharat Biotech and the Indian Council of Medical Research.

Another homegrown vaccine maker joined the list of potential COVID-19 vaccine candidates. Dr. Reddys Laboratories has been conducting a bridging trial for a local version of the Russian Sputnik V shot, dubbed as Sputnik Light. The company, based in the Indian state of Telangana, is in charge of manufacturing the single-dose vaccine, with approval for emergency use in the works.

More related articles:

Pfizer is threatening governments around the world and demanding RANSOM to protect against future vaccine injury lawsuits.

FDA wont back Pfizer booster vaccine, warns White House is essentially conspiring with Pfizer to bypass FDA authority.

Pfizer using children as legal human shields to protect itself from covid vaccine lawsuits.

Documentary accuses Pfizer of paying experts to spread lies about covid vaccines.

Watch the World Is One News report below about Pfizers withdrawal of its vaccine EUA application.

This video is from the InfoWarSSideBand channel on Brighteon.com.

Head over to BigPharmaNews.com for more stories about Pfizer and its COVID-19 vaccine.

Sources include:

GlobalResearch.ca

DW.com

Reuters.com

Brighteon.com
(Natural News) After two long years of unbridled media-induced hysteria, the pandemic narrative finally began losing steam, only to be replaced by the latest bogeyman in globalists crosshairs  Putin and his Ukraine war.

(Article by Dragan Filipovic republished from DailyExpose.uk)

Shortly before, even Bill Gates was forced to admit that the battle against Covid had definitely been lost  as far as the pharma industry was concerned; however, the war against future pandemics continues unabated.

At the Munich Security Conference he revealed that Sadly, the virus itself  particularly the variant called Omicron  is a type of vaccine. That is, it creates both B-cell and T-cell immunity, and its done a better job of getting out to the world population than we have with vaccines, he stated.

His belated confession is what everyone with a (half functioning) brain knew from the outset: that vaccines are absolutely powerless against rapidly-mutating coronaviruses, and that nothing beats natural immunity, as confirmed by an Israeli study last year.

However, Gates is nothing if not persistent, immediately predicting a new pandemic  and an even deadlier pathogen, thus confirming that he and his cohorts will be keeping busy with their comprehensive plans for our collective well-being and will not be abandoning their agenda to compassionately rule over our collapsing planet.

That the leaky SS Corona is quickly sinking had already been confirmed by Stephane Bancel, CEO of Moderna Therapeutics, the second largest manufacturer of mRNA vaccines, who recently sold company shares worth some $300 million and quickly deleted his Twitter account. Other directors followed suit and sold their Moderna stocks whose value has fallen 72% since August of last year.

Prior to that, and below media radar, news seeped out of India that the countrys authorities had denied Pfizers request for approval of their Covid-19 vaccine, signifying that their Covid serum is absent form the two biggest world markets, India and China  as well as Russia. The drug regulator stated on its website that it was unable to recommend the vaccine due to the numerous side effects reported abroad as well as Pfizers refusal to generate safety and immunogenicity data in domestic Indian studies.

One of these side effects is myocarditis as confirmed in a study published by the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) and disclosed by the Israel National News under the headline New study: 133x risk of myocarditis after COVID vaccination.

Ministry of Health of Israel  the pioneer in administering Pfizers experimental vaccine  had on February 9th issued the results of a survey recording adverse effects in those who received the third shot, which had revealed that two-thirds of them reported health problems; that report was quickly removed from the ministrys website.

Indian authorities presumably noted the fact that Africa, where only 6% of the population is vaccinated, counted the fewest infections and had practically eradicated the virus. Also, the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, with 230 million inhabitants, has successfully treated Covid patients using Ivermectin, a drug that costs less than $2 dollars for a five-day treatment, while developed countries rely heavily on Remdesivir which has been shown to be a largely ineffective and toxic drug whose five-day treatment costs over $3,000.

While Bill Gates and his cohorts are busy preparing their new, deadlier pathogen, public attention has been diverted to the events in Ukraine and the long-planned war involving Russia. The media line is that the Russian bear had awoken from its slumber and suddenly decided that now was the perfect time to chop off another chunk of Ukrainian soil.

However, that fairy tale doesnt hold an ounce of water as Russia was in a perfect position to capture eastern Ukraine with little or no resistance when it reclaimed the Crimean peninsula in 2014 without a shot being fired. The Ukrainian militarily was much weaker back then and their two attempts to forcibly reclaim runaway Donetsk and Lugansk republics ended in miserable failure.

It has certainly not been lost on Russia that NATO has since supplied Ukraine with military equipment and training valued at 3 billion dollars so that a war now will end up being exponentially costlier than eight years ago. Russia had in 2014 turned down the recognition of the two republics, but it could no longer ignore the constant shelling of the mostly Russian civilian population, with almost 14,000 lives lost since the secession.

It was also left with no alternative after US and NATO categorically refused Russias security demands and exclude the possibility of a future Ukrainian accession to that organization, thereby forcing Putins hand and his recognition of the two republics on February 21st when he stated:

Western organizations show direct influence on practically all spheres of life in Ukraine. There is no independent statehood in Ukraine  everything depends on what Westerners say. Western organisations get so involved in Ukraine to struggle against corruption, but nothing has been flourishing in Ukraine, but corruption lately, he said.

Foreign advisors are in charge of Ukrainian intelligence services. The USA and NATO have proceeded to openly develop the territory of Ukraine as a theatre of military actions.

NATO plans to conduct a number of major military exercises with Ukraine as a cover to build up its military forces in the country.

NATO has established a command centre in the city of Ochakov to be able to target and destroy Russias Black Fleet. The USA and NATO had similar plans for the Crimea, but the people of the Crimea disrupted those plans.

NATO has come too close to Russias borders, and the appearance of military infrastructure in Ukraine is a question that has already been decided. NATO wants to come to Ukraine to be able to strike Russia hard and all of a sudden. Ukraine will be used as a platform for this attack against Russia. From Ukraine, NATO will be able to control all of Russias territory to Urals. Tomahawk missiles will be able to fly to Moscow in 35 minutes, whereas NATOs ICBMs will be able to reach Moscow in 5 minutes.

NATO has for years unabashedly worked on setting the Ukraine trap for the Russian bear, but the media inevitably downplayed these obvious machinations, disparaging Russias alarm about the nefarious activities on its borders.

The scenario eerily parallels the subterfuge preceding WWI, with the exception that the World Powers are now armed with nuclear weapons, this being the reason why Russia desperately tried to find a way out. It eventually became clear even to prudent Putin that, if Ukraine and her mentors had sought peace, they would have long ago implemented the 2015 Minsk II agreement; that treaty was approved by the UN Security Council, making it mandatory for all the signatories  including the UK and the US  to abide by its conditions, but they instead supported Kievs intransigence and insistence for a centralized nationalist state, rejecting the promised autonomy for Donetsk and Lugansk.

In any case, it is not Russia which occupied Ukraine first, as that distinction goes to the US, which had spent $5 billion organizing the violent Maidan revolution and the overthrow of a democratically elected president at a time when Russia was preoccupied preparing the winter Olympic Games in Sochi in February 2014.

Severe Russian sanctions forced Germany to halt the Nordstream 2 pipeline certification, despite the fact that this gas will be of vital importance to its economy due to the imminent closure of the remaining German nuclear power plants. If a nuclear exchange can be avoided, the only country benefiting from this war is the US which will tighten its grip on Europe, and NATO which has for three decades been searching for a raison detre.

In an interview with film director Oliver Stone, president Putin disclosed how back in 2000 he was rebuffed by Bill Clinton when he proposed that Russia enter NATO. The West always needs an enemy  in the absence of a real threat, an artificial one will do, and their goal now is to financially weaken, isolate and destabilize Russia and create maximum domestic discontent within the population and resistance to Putin by the oligarchs, eventually returning Russia to the nineties when Yeltsin surrendered the country at the mercy of the Western capitalist vultures.

For good measure, Klaus Schwab of World Economic Forum (WEF) fame, had previously announced that the world shall soon face a comprehensive global cyber attack, which will inevitably be blamed on Russia, tantamount to a declaration of war.

While most Americans are oblivious to how their tax dollars are being spent abroad, there are also those who are not, and who vehemently disagree with the US policy in Ukraine. One of them is Russell Bentley, who came to Donbass as a volunteer in 2014 to fight the Ukrainian fascist forces, as he calls them.

He revealed in early February that the demarcation line was five miles from the city center, and that the Ukrainian forces were shelling civilian infrastructure with heavy artillery on a daily basis. Along the front line, which stretches for some 200 miles, their 30,000-strong volunteer force faces some 150,000 regular Ukrainian troops, of whom he estimates that 80% are demoralized conscripts who would rather flee than fight, but are forced to stay put by the thousands of zealots of the infamous Azov battalion as well as Blackwater mercenaries and ISIS terrorists  imported from Syria, courtesy of Erdogan.

Since late last year, dozens of cargo planes landed in Ukraine with military equipment and NATO calibre ammunition; in addition to heavy artillery and Turkish drones, Ukrainian forces are equipped with modern night scopes and encrypted communications equipment, whereas the separatists are forced to defend their homes with obsolete weapons and analog radios which are easily jammed.

Russian intervention was their only hope for survival, as was the case for Abkhazia and South Ossetia, two pro-Russian enclaves which Georgia attacked with US and Israeli military assistance in 2008. President Mikheil Saakashvili asserted at the time that he acted in self-defense and did not initiate the five-day war  which took place during the Beijing olympics  but in 2009 an investigative team dispatched by the EU concluded that Georgia had been the instigator.

When the war in Ukraine comes to an end, the world can look forward to a new, more dangerous pandemic that the philanthropist Bill Gates predicted in Munich. Malleable politicians across the globe will hastily introduce a new wave of restrictive measures, resulting in a permanent loss of the few remaining human rights, including freedom of speech and free movement, including the right to protest.

Sceptics should observe Canada, where the devoted student of Klaus Schwab and his WEF global puppet school, the self-appointed dictator Justin Trudeau, had single-handedly declared a state of emergency and eliminated political discourse, with all who participated in, or had financially backed the anti-government protests, being at risk of arrest, property confiscation and blocked bank accounts; even non-regime reporters covering the protest were subjected to police harassment and threats of imprisonment.

It must become clear to everyone that Pathogens and Putin are not a threat to mankinds existence  while parasites in human form are  and that a new Dark Age is imminent if they continue believing the government propaganda and behaving like everything it decrees is perfectly normal.

Those who sacrifice freedom for security deserves neither  Benjamin Franklin

Read more at: DailyExpose.uk
(Natural News) On Tuesday morning the Wisconsin Assembly Committee on Campaigns and Elections held an informational hearing on the Gableman 2020 Election Report featuring invited speakers Special Counsel and Former Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman and Attorney Eric Kaardal.

(Article by Jim Hoft republished from TheGatewayPundit.com)

During his presentation, Justice Gableman played video of several victims of elderly abuse and voter theft. Several brave Wisconsin families reached out to Gableman and his committee after they discovered someone had voted for their loved one who resides in a nursing home. This happened all over Wisconsin.

Justice Gableman disclosed during the hearing that the nursing homes in the Zuckerberg-funded cities had a 95% to 100% turnout. This is clear voter fraud they discovered.

The video that played during the hearing today was heartbreaking.

It takes a special kind of evil to abuse disabled seniors.

On Wednesday Just the News published more information on the nursing home voter fraud.

The special counsel investigating suspected irregularities in Wisconsins 2020 election has found that 91 nursing homes in the counties of Milwaukee, Racine, Dane, Kenosha, and Brown had voter turnout rates ranging from 95% to a 100% in 2020  as compared to overall nationwide participation rates of 67% in 2020 and 60% in 2016. The nursing home data only reflects voting at the facilities that the special counsel has been able to vet to this juncture, according to the report compiled by retired state Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman for the state Assembly. There are more facilities in these counties, and after auditing the votes from other facilities, the above percentages may change. The Mark Zuckerberg-funded Center for Tech and Civic Life gave $8.8 million towards the administration of the 2020 election in Wisconsin. One of Sinkulas colleagues knew ahead of time how the outcome was going to come in November, Sinkula claimed, because the colleague knew people who had registered nursing home residents who didnt normally vote and apparently voted for them.

Slowly we are learning the full picture on the 2020 election steal.

And what we learn from Wisconsin was likely duplicated in state after state.

Read more at: TheGatewayPundit.com
(Natural News) Never has our future been more unpredictable, never have we depended so much on political forces that cannot be trusted to follow the rules of common sense and self-interestforces that look like sheer insanity, if judged by the standards of other centuries.Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism

(Article by John W. Whitehead & Nisha Whitehead republished from Rutherford.org)

Let me tell you about the state of our nation: things are getting worse, not better.

Easily distracted by wall-to-wall news coverage of the latest crisis and conveniently diverted by news cycles that change every few days, Americans remain oblivious to the many governmental abuses that are still wreaking havoc on our freedoms: police shootings of unarmed individuals, invasive surveillance, roadside blood draws, roadside strip searches, SWAT team raids gone awry, the military industrial complexs costly wars, pork barrel spending, pre-crime laws, civil asset forfeiture, fusion centers, militarization, armed drones, smart policing carried out by AI robots, courts that march in lockstep with the police state, schools that function as indoctrination centers, and bureaucrats that keep the Deep State in power.

These are dangerous times for America and the world.

Yet while you may hear plenty about the dangers posed by Russia and COVID-19 in President Bidens State of the Union address, its still the U.S. government that poses the gravest threat to our freedoms and way of life.

Consider for yourself.

Americans have little protection against police abuse. The police and other government agents have been generally empowered to probe, poke, pinch, taser, search, seize, strip and generally manhandle anyone they see fit in almost any circumstance, all with the general blessing of the courts. It is no longer unusual to hear about incidents in which police shoot unarmed individuals first and ask questions later. What is increasingly common, however, is the news that the officers involved in these incidents get off with little more than a slap on the hands.

Americans are little more than pocketbooks to fund the police state. If there is any absolute maxim by which the federal government seems to operate, it is that the American taxpayer always gets ripped off. This is true, whether youre talking about taxpayers being forced to fund high-priced weaponry that will be used against us, endless wars that do little for our safety or our freedoms, or bloated government agencies with their secret budgets, covert agendas and clandestine activities.

Americans are no longer innocent until proven guilty. We once operated under the assumption that you were innocent until proven guilty. Due in large part to rapid advances in technology and a heightened surveillance culture, the burden of proof has been shifted so that the right to be considered innocent until proven guilty has been usurped by a new norm in which all citizens are suspects. Indeed, the governmentin cahoots with the corporate statehas erected the ultimate suspect society. In such an environment, we are all potentially guilty of some wrongdoing or other.

Americans no longer have a right to self-defense. While the courts continue to disagree over the exact nature of the rights protected by the Second Amendment, the government itself has made its position extremely clear. When it comes to gun rights in particular, and the rights of the citizenry overall, the U.S. government has adopted a do what I say, not what I do mindset. Nowhere is this double standard more evident than in the governments attempts to arm itself to the teeth, all the while viewing as suspect anyone who dares to legally own a gun, let alone use one in self-defense. Indeed, while it still technically remains legal to own a firearm in America, possessing one can now get you pulled over, searched, arrested, subjected to all manner of surveillance, treated as a suspect without ever having committed a crime, shot at, and killed.

Americans no longer have a right to private property. If government agents can invade your home, break down your doors, kill your dog, damage your furnishings and terrorize your family, your property is no longer private and secureit belongs to the government. Likewise, if government officials can fine and arrest you for growing vegetables in your front yard, praying with friends in your living room, installing solar panels on your roof, and raising chickens in your backyard, youre no longer the owner of your property.

Americans no longer have a say about what their children are exposed to in school. Incredibly, the government continues to insist that parents essentially forfeit their rights when they send their children to a public school. This growing tension over whether young people, especially those in the public schools, are essentially wards of the state, to do with as government officials deem appropriate, in defiance of the childrens constitutional rights and those of their parents, is at the heart of almost every debate over educational programming, school discipline, and the extent to which parents have any say over their childrens wellbeing in and out of school.

Americans are powerless in the face of militarized police forces. With local police agencies acquiring military-grade weaponry, training and equipment better suited for the battlefield, Americans are finding their once-peaceful communities transformed into military outposts patrolled by a standing military army.

Americans no longer have a right to bodily integrity. The debate over bodily integrity covers broad territory, ranging from abortion and euthanasia to forced blood draws, biometric surveillance and basic healthcare. Forced vaccinations, forced cavity searches, forced colonoscopies, forced blood draws, forced breath-alcohol tests, forced DNA extractions, forced eye scans, forced inclusion in biometric databases: these are just a few ways in which Americans continue to be reminded that we have no control over what happens to our bodies during an encounter with government officials.

Americans no longer have a right to the expectation of privacy. Despite the staggering number of revelations about government spying on Americans phone calls, Facebook posts, Twitter tweets, Google searches, emails, bookstore and grocery purchases, bank statements, commuter toll records, etc., Congress, the president and the courts have done little to nothing to counteract these abuses. Instead, they seem determined to accustom us to life in this electronic concentration camp.

Americans no longer have a representative government. We have moved beyond the era of representative government and entered the age of authoritarianism, where all citizens are suspects, security trumps freedom, and so-called elected officials represent the interests of the corporate power elite. This topsy-turvy travesty of law and government has become Americas new normal.

Americans can no longer rely on the courts to mete out justice. The U.S. Supreme Court was intended to be an institution established to intervene and protect the people against the government and its agents when they overstep their bounds. Yet through their deference to police power, preference for security over freedom, and evisceration of our most basic rights for the sake of order and expediency, the justices of the Supreme Court have become the architects of the American police state in which we now live, while the lower courts have appointed themselves courts of order, concerned primarily with advancing the governments agenda, no matter how unjust or illegal.

I havent even touched on the corporate state, the military industrial complex, SWAT team raids, invasive surveillance technology, zero tolerance policies in the schools, overcriminalization, or privatized prisons, to name just a few, but what I have touched on should be enough to show that the landscape of our freedoms has already changed dramatically from what it once was and will no doubt continue to deteriorate unless Americans can find a way to wrest back control of their government and reclaim their freedoms.

This steady slide towards tyranny, meted out by militarized local and federal police and legalistic bureaucrats, has been carried forward by each successive president over the past seventy-plus years regardless of their political affiliation.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Big government has grown bigger, and the rights of the citizenry have grown smaller.

We are walking a dangerous path right now.

Having allowed the government to expand and exceed our reach, we find ourselves on the losing end of a tug-of-war over control of our country and our lives. And for as long as we let them, government officials will continue to trample on our rights, always justifying their actions as being for the good of the people.

Yet the government can only go as far as we the people allow. Therein lies the problem.

The pickle we find ourselves in speaks volumes about the nature of the government beast we have been saddled with and how it views the rights and sovereignty of we the people.

Now you dont hear a lot about sovereignty anymore. Sovereignty is a dusty, antiquated term that harkens back to an age when kings and emperors ruled with absolute power over a populace that had no rights. Americans turned the idea of sovereignty on its head when they declared their independence from Great Britain and rejected the absolute authority of King George III. In doing so, Americans claimed for themselves the right to self-government and established themselves as the ultimate authority and power.

In other words, in America, we the people sovereign citizenscall the shots.

So when the government acts, it is supposed to do so at our bidding and on our behalf, because we are the rulers.

Thats not exactly how it turned out, though, is it?

In the 200-plus years since we boldly embarked on this experiment in self-government, we have been steadily losing ground to the governments brazen power grabs, foisted upon us in the so-called name of national security.

We have relinquished control over the most intimate aspects of our lives to government officials who, while they may occupy seats of authority, are neither wiser, smarter, more in tune with our needs, more knowledgeable about our problems, nor more aware of what is really in our best interests.

The government has knocked us off our rightful throne. It has usurped our rightful authority. It has staged the ultimate coup. Its agents no longer even pretend that they answer to we the people.

Worst of all, we the people have become desensitized to this constant undermining of our freedoms.

How do we reconcile the Founders vision of the government as an entity whose only purpose is to serve the people with the police states insistence that the government is the supreme authority, that its power trumps that of the people themselves, and that it may exercise that power in any way it sees fit (that includes government agents crashing through doors, mass arrests, ethnic cleansing, racial profiling, indefinite detentions without due process, and internment camps)?

They cannot be reconciled. They are polar opposites.

We are fast approaching a moment of reckoning where we will be forced to choose between the vision of what America was intended to be (a model for self-governance where power is vested in the people) and the reality of what it has become (a police state where power is vested in the government).

We are repeating the mistakes of historynamely, allowing a totalitarian state to reign over us.

Former concentration camp inmate Hannah Arendt warned against this when she wrote:

No matter what the specifically national tradition or the particular spiritual source of its ideology, totalitarian government always transformed classes into masses, supplanted the party system, not by one-party dictatorships, but by mass movement, shifted the center of power from the army to the police, and established a foreign policy openly directed toward world domination.

So where does that leave us?

Aldous Huxley predicted that eventually the government would find a way of:

making people love their servitude, and producing dictatorship without tears, so to speak, producing a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies, so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them, but will rather enjoy it, because they will be distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda or brainwashing, or brainwashing enhanced by pharmacological methods. And this seems to be the final revolution.

The answer? Get un-brainwashed. Stop allowing yourself to be distracted and diverted.

Learn your rights. Stand up for the founding principles.

Make your voice and your vote count for more than just political posturing.

Never cease to vociferously protest the erosion of your freedoms at the local and national level.

Most of all, do these things today.

Ultimately, I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, we need to shift the center of power back to we the people.

Read more at: Rutherford.org
(Natural News) Nurses in England are no longer required to be vaccinated against the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) after it was found that around 90 percent of health and social care workers do not support the policy. The legislation that supported the mandate will now be revoked as critics warned the government that the mandates could cripple health services.

In a press release, the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) stated that it will revoke the legislation ordering the National Health Service and social care staff to subject themselves to a COVID-19 vaccine mandate.

U.K. Health Secretary Sajid Javid confirmed to parliament that the previous mandate will now be dropped. I have concluded that it is right and proportionate to proceed with the revocation of COVID-19 vaccination as a condition of deployment in all health and social care settings, and have today published the governments full response to the consultation on GOV.UK, he said in a statement.

The mandatory vaccinations were announced in November 2021, despite the governments own assessment warning that over 100,000 unvaccinated healthcare staff could leave the already backlogged health service. The mandate warned that unvaccinated staff would be fired from as early as February 3, with staff required to be fully vaccinated by April 1.

The large-scale protests and repeated concerns over the effect of the mandate on the healthcare sector led to a U-turn on the mandate in late January, placing it under review. As part of this review, a two-week consultation was opened to the public.

With over 90,000 responses received over the eight-day period of consultation, 90 percent of respondents supported revoking the vaccination mandate. Out of these, 84 percent of healthcare workers said that they were highly likely to support dropping the mandate.

Javid referenced these results in explaining his move, saying that the DHSC carefully analyzed the consultation responses.

Despite pulling back the mandate, Javid still strongly advocated for the vaccination of healthcare staff, saying that it is a professional responsibility for healthcare staff and others in the industry to be vaccinated. (Related: Boris Johnson pauses the idea of vaccine passports for Great Britain but is likely to restart the effort soon.)

Royal College of Nursing General Secretary and Chief Executive Pat Cullen welcomed the lifting of the mandate, saying that the government made the right decision and that it listened to the concerns of the nursing staff.

She also said that vaccines are safe and effective, and getting vaccinated remains to be the best defense against COVID-19. However, she also noted: Holding the threat of losing their jobs over the heads of the small minority of staff who had not been vaccinated was the wrong approach and this decision will be welcomed by those whose jobs were at risk.

Workers welcome news of mandates being lifted

In opposition to the mandate, a group of NHS staff had been set up, called the NHS100k. This group is named after the number of staff members still predicted to leave over the mandates. They grouped together wearing purple ribbons on their uniform to demonstrate their rejection of the mandate and lobbied to prevent its catastrophic effects on the health service.

The group welcomed the news and urged the many thousands who previously lost their jobs to reapply and seek compensation for any pensions that they have lost during their time of employment.

The chief executive of Care England said that the social care sector had already lost an estimated 20,000 staff through the mandate in care homes due to workers quitting or being let go. The change made will mean that vaccination as a condition of deployment will also end in care homes on March 15.

In social care, as much as 95 percent of care home staff, for whom vaccination is currently mandatory, have had two doses. Staff in other social care settings, however, have as much as 76 percent with only one dose. (Related: Great Britain MP encourages workplaces and social venues to require vaccination proof from the public.)

A revealing passage in the government consultation response noted that the omicron variant is intrinsically less severe and that a full primary course of an approved vaccine does not provide the intended longer-term public health protection against the spread of the virus.

Official data from the U.K showed that the COVID infections and deaths are higher in the fully vaccinated or boosted compared to those who didnt get the jab. Unvaccinated individuals account for only 599 of the 4,861 deaths associated with COVID-19 between January 24 and February 20. The triple-jabbed accounted for 3,120 deaths, while the remaining 1,182 deaths were split between the single- and the double-dosed.

More related stories:

COMPLIANCE MIND GAMES: United Kingdom to change definition of fully vaccinated to require COVID-19 booster shots.

UK health minister says COVID-19 vaccine mandate is UNETHICAL and WOULD NOT WORK.

Employees file suit against United Airlines over draconian COVID-19 vaccine mandate.

The vaccine mandate is a hoax, and no entity or person in America is obliged to follow it.

AstraZeneca ready to vaccinate half of Great Britain for coronavirus by SEPTEMBER.

Watch the video below to know why many healthcare workers are against the COVID-19 vaccine mandate.

This video is from the Heaven Reigns channel on Brighteon.com.

Follow Pandemic.news for more updates.

Sources include:

LifeSiteNews.com

NursingTimes.net

Brighteon.com
(Natural News) A delegation sent by the United States to Taiwan reiterated that America stands firm to its commitments to the independent island nation amid the conflict in Ukraine.

The delegation made up of former defense and national security officials arrived in the capital Taipei on March 1, where they were welcomed by Taiwanese Foreign Affairs Minister Joseph Wu. Retired Admiral Mike Mullen, who formerly led the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 2007 to 2011, led the five-member delegation. It met with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen the next day, March 2.

We come to Taiwan at a very difficult and critical moment in world history. Now more than ever, democracy needs champions. I do hope by being here with you, we can reassure you and your people, as well as our allies and partners in the region, that the U.S. stands firm behind its commitments, Mullen said in remarks delivered at the Presidential Office in Taipei.

The erstwhile Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman also praised the Taiwanese president for standing up against the leading challenges of the times  a clear reference to Taiwans western neighbor, the Peoples Republic of China (PRC). Whether itd be a global pandemic or corrosive disinformation and malign influence, [Tsais government addressed them] without sacrificing core democratic values. (Related: China says it will attack any American forces that come to the defense of Taiwan.)

According to Tsai, the ongoing crisis in Ukraine  currently besieged by Russia  underscores the importance of cooperation and coordinated action among democratic countries. History teaches us that if we turn a blind eye to military aggression, we only worsen the threats to ourselves. Now is the time for all democracies around the world to come together, she said.

Mullen concurred with the Taiwanese leader, noting that the island nation stands at the front lines of defending democracy. Maintaining peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait is not just a U.S. interest, but also a global one.

Chinas potential invasion of Taiwan mirrors Russias invasion of Ukraine

The unannounced two-day trip came amid looming threats from Russia and China, two authoritarian nations threatening much smaller neighbors. The invasion of Ukraine ordered by Russian President Vladimir Putin drew parallels to a potential attack by Chinese President Xi Jinping on the island nation.

Taipei has rejected such comparisons in response, citing the islands geographical advantages and global roles. Despite this, it has since stepped up its alert level. The island nation argued that Beijing might take advantage of Taiwans western allies being distracted by the Ukraine conflict and launch an assault.

Former U.S. President Donald Trump pointed out the possibility of communist China launching an attack on democratic Taiwan. He warned that Russias invasion of Ukraine serves to embolden Beijing into reclaiming the island nation by force. The PRC has long claimed that Taiwan, officially the Republic of China, is a province of the mainland. Given this, it has repeatedly committed to reclaim the island by force.

Trump issued this dire warning during a February interview on The Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Show. He said: China is [going to] be next. You know, China is [going to attack Taiwan.] Not with me, they wouldnt have. Theyre waiting [until] after the [Winter] Olympics. Now the Olympics [has] ended.

Lisa Haven of The Restricted Republic expounded on Trumps warning about China.

Trump is seizing up this opportunity to issue a dire warning to the American people. A warning that I myself have given quite a few times, and a warning that we should all take to heart and take seriously  because so much is at stake, she said. Its safe to say [that] according to Trump, he believes that the invasion of Taiwan is imminent and could happen sometime soon.

More related stories:

US would quickly lose against China if they invaded Taiwan.

Trump: China will DEFINITELY attack Taiwan following Russia-Ukraine example.

China preparing for what it claims is a morally justified war with US, Taiwan over sovereignty.

Taiwan says it is preparing for war as China continues to provoke conflict with massive incursions of fighters, bombers.

Watch Lisa Haven of The Restricted Republic elaborating on former U.S. President Donald Trumps warning about China below.

This video is from the Lisa Haven channel on Brighteon.com.

Visit WWIII.news for more stories about the China-Taiwan conflict.

Sources include:

TheEpochTimes.com

ClayAndBuck.com

Brighteon.com
(Natural News) Ann Vandersteel told The Right Side host Doug Billings that America is waking up and answering the call to humanity.

What we are seeing in this country right now is America waking up and answering the call to humanity. This is not a partisan journey that the Peoples Convoy started at Barstow, California last Wednesday. This is nothing about partisanship. Its not about right or left at this point. Its truly a We the People movement right now. Recognizing that our own government, our own elected officials have become the domestic terror threat in the country, said Vandersteel during the March 1 episode of The Right Side on Brighteon.TV.

The Steel Truth host has been entrenched in the Peoples Convoy since it began. (Related: Wheels of freedom: American truckers set to launch Peoples Convoy against Bidens tyrannical COVID mandates.)

Vandersteel pointed out that the present administrative state, which she said is unconstitutionally made up of unelected officials like National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) Director Dr. Anthony Fauci, is mandating the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) poison death shots.

Peoples Convoy addresses peoples right t0 choose

The Peoples Convoy is addressing the free peoples right to choose whether they want to experiment with their bodies on something that may or may not stop this bioweapon that has been launched, in addition to the common cold, which is out there, and the common flu viruses, which are organically out there. This is life. This is what happens. God gave us great immune systems. I dont believe you need these shots to protect yourself, Vandersteel said.

The Peoples Convoy says we dont care whether you want to do it or not. Its not about that. What we do care about is these unconstitutional and unlawful mandates that have been thrust upon the public not only here in this country, but around the world.

The investigative reporter added that the American people are rising up and answering the call after the Canadians lit the candle of protest against the COVID mandates.

Vandersteel took note that the Oklahoma State Troopers counted 7,000 vehicles in the Peoples Convoy when it passed through Oklahoma. She also mentioned that her show made a 30-minute compilation of the convoy which captured the overpass after overpass field of people showing up out of nowhere and waving as the convoy went by every highway.

America is coming back to God

This journey is leading back to Him. People are coming back to Him. This is a revival like none other. And its encompassing politics. So when people say separation of Church and State, they forget that we were founded as a Christian nation, the second covenant nation, Vandersteel said.

We are people coming back to God, but more importantly, we are coming back to the Constitution at this moment in time which leads us to God through our fundamental God-given rights.

Billings agreed, saying that the American people are already beginning to see bits and pieces of the great reawakening or the return to the realization  the recognition and the understanding of the divine providence of God Himself.

Were seeing an entire nation being awakened to the call of Gods divine providence. And you mentioned separation of Church and State. We understand that the quote from Thomas Jefferson is taken out of context throughout history. All of the Founding Fathers, including Jefferson, fully intended God to be part of not only the public debate and politics but also the curriculum within schools and so forth, the author and podcaster said.

Billings added that the Peoples Convoy is a peaceful convoy that has no intention to go to Washington, D.C. and stir up trouble. Vandersteel said the Peoples Convoy will not go there at all.

Thats not the point of this. Its about uniting people behind the fact that were demanding that our public servants lift these unconstitutional mandates. This is a true show of unity for humanity. Its not even an American thing at this point. This is so much bigger than that. And thats what the Peoples Convoy is representing, Vandersteel said.

More related stories:

The Peoples Convoy hits the road to DC  in time for Bidens State of the Union Address.

California truckers vow to Let Freedom Roll in convoy to Washington, D.C. in pushback on pandemic mandates.

Tens of thousands of truckers on their way to National Mall to peacefully protest COVID-19 mandates.

American, European, Australian truckers gear up to follow anti-vaccine mandate strategy pursued by Canadian truckers.

Watch the full March 1 episode of The Right Side below. The The Right Side airs every Tuesday at 7-8 p.m. on Brighteon.TV.

Follow Awakening.news for more on the great awakening happening in the U.S. and around the world.

Sources include:

Brighteon.com

KFOR.com
(Natural News) The New York Times has dropped a major bombshell about the Ukraine invasion that suggests collusion on the part of Russia and China as to its timing.

Senior Chinese officials reportedly told senior Russian officials in early February to hold off on a planned invasion of Ukraine until after the Winter Olympics in Beijing, citing officials from the Biden regime as well as one in Europe who made this claim.

The Times reported that a Western intelligence report revealed that the senior Chinese officials had some level of prior knowledge about Russias plans or at least intentions to invade Ukraine roughly one week before the invasion commenced.

The revelation came after the White House announced additional sanctions against Russia and its ally Belarus, which include extending export controls that target Russian oil refining and entities that support both the Russian and Belarusian military.

Interestingly, though, the Biden regime has not hit Russia where it really hurts: oil and gas. Bidens sanctions in this sector are at a bare minimum, and the United States is actually more crippled right now by Bidens anti-energy independence policies than Russia is.

Among Wednesdays new measures are sanctions targeting 22 Russia defense entities that make combat aircraft, infantry fighting vehicles, electronic warfare systems, missiles, and unmanned aerial vehicles for Russias military, AgWeb reported.

Ukraine invasion could lead to global food shortages caused by lack of fertilizer

The United Nations General Assembly has also voted to demand that Russia stop its offensive in the Ukraine and withdraw all troops immediately.

In a 141 to 5 vote, with 35 abstentions, countries all around the world from major powers to tiny islands condemned Russia for the invasion. The vote was held during the 193-member assemblys first emergency session since 1997.

Concerning possible oil and gas sanctions against Russia, the U.S. said it is very open to the idea, but is not yet ready to do anything. The domestic regime says it is concerned about the potential market impact of oil and gas sanctions, especially as global oil prices have now touched eight-year highs. It would appear as though the war could also be a catalyst for an impending global financial reset.

Tech giant Apple also announced on Tuesday that it has paused all product sales in Russia as punishment for the invasion.

Some reports suggest that the Russian military may be stalling in its massive convoy outside of Kyiv. Food and fuel shortages coupled with logistical problems are causing morale to suffer, one senior Defense official alleged.

At the same time, this same official added, the Russians still have a significant amount of combat power that has not yet been tapped. It is expected that no matter the hurdles they face, Russian troops will regroup, they will adjust and they will change their tactics.

Canadas Nutrien Ltd., the worlds biggest fertilizer producer, meanwhile, announced that prolonged disruptions to the global supply of potash and nitrogen crop nutrients are likely to result from the ongoing conflict.

Interim CEO Ken Seitz said that Nutrien is planning to boost potash production if it sees sustained supply problems in both Russia and Belarus, which are the worlds second- and third-largest potash-producing countries after Canada.

The worlds three largest container lines  Swiss-headquartered MSC, Denmarks Maersk, and Frances CMA CGM  have also temporarily suspended cargo shipments to and from Russia for the time being.

Maersks suspension covers all Russian ports, including foodstuffs and medical and humanitarian supplies.

The International Energy Agency also announced that its 31 member countries have agreed to release 60 million barrels of oil from strategic reserves.

WWIII.news contains more war coverage.

Sources include:

AgWeb.com

NaturalNews.com
(Natural News) Commodity markets have been experiencing a huge upheaval thanks to President Vladimir Putins invasion of Ukraine, with European natural gas rising by as much as 60 percent on Wednesday as Russias descent into a commercial pariah continues.

Dutch gas, the European benchmark, climbed to a record high of nearly 195 Euros per megawatt-hour at one point, and Brent crude topped $114 a barrel as buyers pull away from Russian energy products. As the fighting starts to enter a more intense stage, fears are growing that damage to infrastructure in Ukraine will cause major disruptions to gas flow. There are also concerns that sanctions could soon extend to energy.

Traders, shippers and buyers have been avoiding Russian gas entirely, with sources telling Bloomberg that power and gas traders have been shying away from new deals with Russias Gazprom PJSC. Experts believe European companies could soon unwind contracts and clearing houses will stop trading with the Russian state-owned energy company. For now, however, gas supplies are still flowing from Gazprom into Europe, and the company declined to comment on whether firms have been cutting trading with them.

Russia currently supplies roughly a third of Europes gas needs, and they have said they expect gas delivery through pipeline networks to continue. However, Gazprom has warned of serious challenges when it comes to replenishing gas storage facilities in Europe for next winter, something that has never happened before at this time of year.

JTD Energy Services Chief Strategist John Driscoll said: Geopolitics are throttling supply chains and keeping markets on edge. He added that the wild swings being seen in intraday trading ranges are scary.

Uncertainty swirls around future of Russian gas

On Tuesday, the European Parliament called on the EU to close its ports to Russian ships and those headed to or from Russia. Although their vote was non-binding, traders viewed it as an indication of the potential for tightening measures against Russia, who supplies around 40 percent of the European blocs natural gas. Although not all countries receive their supply directly from Russia, if their biggest consumers, such as Germany, start getting less gas from Russia, theyll need to make up for it with gas from other countries, like Norway, thereby impacting the availability of gas to other nations.

Cornwall Insight Senior Consultant Dr. Craig Lowrey told Reuters: With the potential supply disruption from Russia reverberating throughout the European energy market, volatile energy prices are likely to continue for the foreseeable future.

The important role that Russias energy industry plays in the global market led Western governments to leave oil and gas out of their sanctions. By cutting some banks, but not all, off from the financial system messaging infrastructure SWIFT, other countries did leave some avenues open for traders to pay for gas and oil. However, fears of a full embargo on Russian oil output have left many energy buyers worried about ending up with billions in Russian oil they wont be able to sell, which could see the whole Russian oil supply chain collapsing.

In a recent interview on Face The Nation, World Bank President David Malpass said there will be alternatives to Russian natural gas within five years.

Markets look forward so they can look at the five-year time horizon and realize that theres a lot of energy available if its mobilized, there are alternatives to the Russian dominance of the gas market, for example, he said, adding: And so whether those changes are made will be important.

However, replacing Russian gas in the short-term is nearly impossible, analysts say.

Sources for this article include:

ZeroHedge.com

Reuters.com
(Natural News) Everything Tony Fauci of the U.S. National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and Rochelle Walensky of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have been telling us about the safety and effectiveness of Wuhan coronavirus (Covid-19) vaccines is proving to be false.

Scientists from Sweden published the results of a study they piloted showing that Fauci Flu shots do, in fact, alter human DNA permanently. It remains to be seen what the long-term effects of these alterations will be for the fully vaccinated herd.

Published in the peer-reviewed journal Current Issues of Molecular Biology, the paper fully deconstructs the myth that the messenger RNA (mRNA) injection from Pfizer and BioNTech dissipates not long after being injected into the body.

After being injected, the so-called vaccine travels to cells within the human liver and invades their nuclei. Once inside, the injection spurs the production of LINE-1, a gene expression enzyme that produces natural DNA.

What the Pfizer injection does is cause the cell to overproduce LINE-1. Its synthetic mRNA then leaves the nucleus and moves to the cells cytoplasm, translating into LINE-1 protein.

A segment of the protein called the open reading frame-1, or ORF-1, then goes back into the nucleus, where it attaches to the vaccines mRNA and reverse transcribes into spike DNA, reports explain about the process.

Reverse transcription, in case you are unfamiliar with it, is when DNA gets produced from RNA instead of a portion of DNA serving as a template to produce an mRNA molecule inside cell nuclei.

In this study we present evidence that COVID-19 mRNA vaccine BNT162b2 is able to enter the human liver cell line Huh7 in vitro, the researchers wrote in their paper.

BNT162b2 mRNA is reverse transcribed intracellularly into DNA as fast as 6 [hours] after BNT162b2 exposure.

Will covid vaccines turn the fully jabbed herd into transhuman zombies?

The world was repeatedly told that none of this was possible, just to emphasize that point once again. We were browbeaten nearly to death with the claim that Fauci Flu shots have a temporary effect on the body before dissipating.

The CDCs website still to this day, even following the Swedish studys publishing, falsely claims that the genetic material delivered by mRNA injections never enters the nucleus of your cells. This is supposedly a fact that the CDC has presented to dispel the myths surrounding Covid-19 vaccination.

As you may recall from last spring, researchers from Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) published their own study highlighting the threat of covid injections permanently altering human DNA.

That study was actually published as a pre-print in late December of 2020 before the masses started getting mass-injected with the poisons. Their research was largely ignored, just like this latest research out of Sweden is being ignored by the CDC and the military-industrial complex at large.

At the time, Childrens Health Defense (CHD) warned that under normal circumstances, the human body makes, or transcribes, natural mRNA from the DNA that is present inside cellular nuclei, just like the new study out of Sweden reiterated.

The mRNA then travels out of the nucleus into the cytoplasm, where it provides instructions about which proteins to make, CHD added.

By comparison, mRNA vaccines send their chemically synthesized mRNA payload (bundled with spike protein-manufacturing instructions) directly into the cytoplasm.

As 5G technology continues to roll out and get activated, some suspect that the new synthetic DNA present inside the bodies of the fully vaccinated could behave in ways that at the current time might seem like some crazy conspiracy theory.

Others believe, based on emerging evidence, that at the very least the fully injected will manifest autoimmune diseases such as vaccine-induced AIDS, or VAIDS.

This patented thing is not cancer but AIDS, wrote one person at The Covid World.

This toxic cocktail called a vaccine is filled with mRNA and graphene oxide. Time will tell, but obviously one of the main goals is depopulation. The mRNA creates a spike protein that slowly destroys the immune system and the graphene oxide, in my opinion, will react with 5G signals.

The same people who refuse to eat GMO food have now become GMOs themselves, suggested someone else, speculating as to the transhuman implications of the mass vaccination campaign. This is literally transhumanism. This is bad feng shui.

Someone else responded to this by speculating that perhaps the more GMOs fully jabbed people eat, the more the glyphosate and other toxic chemicals will interact with the spike proteins and other jab toxic to wreak havoc on their disintegrating immune systems.

DNA is altered to change humans into cyborgs in the future, wrote another. It is part of the Great Reset.

The latest news about the bodily destruction caused by Wuhan coronavirus (Covid-19) vaccines can be found at ChemicalViolence.com.

Sources for this article include:

TheEpochTimes.com

NaturalNews.com

TheCovidWorld.com
South Africa: Recommendations to be made on COVID-19 vaccine mandates

Health Minister, Dr Joe Phaahla, says a team of senior government officials is ready to make recommendations to the National Coronavirus Command Council (NCCC) on COVID-19 vaccine mandates.

Addressing a virtual media briefing on government efforts in the fight against COVID-19, Phaahla on Friday said the issue of vaccination mandates remains a difficult topic.

A team of senior government officials has been leading consultations with various stakeholders, including NEDLAC, and they should be ready to report at the next NCCC with recommendations.

While there are different views on the matter, the undisputed fact is that the more people are vaccinated, the more we can open many economic and social activities safely.

The Minister said during the State of the Nation Address, President Ramaphosa said government intends to do away with the state of disaster as a tool to manage the pandemic.

He said his department and other departments were given the task of coming up with other instruments that can be used to provide whatever safety measures are still required to limit the spread and impact of the pandemic.

The NDOH [National Department of Health] has been hard at work revising its regulations to control notifiable infectious diseases and is ready to present at the next NCCC meeting.

Phaahla said he hopes the reviewed health regulations and other recommendations from other departments will assist in a guided reopening of various economic and social activities, especially in the leisure and tourism areas, with less risk of super spreaders.

The proposals will include amendments to travel requirements, which could make it easier and cheaper to travel safely. Details will only be available after discussion at the NCCC.

We want to make a clarion call again to all South Africans that COVID-19 can be defeated if we all work together to protect ourselves and those around us with vaccination.

Vaccination rollout

Phaahla said vaccination continues to move steadily but still not at the desired pace.

After remaining at between 60 000 - 70 000 doses per day on weekdays over most of January and February, there has been an uptick over the last seven days to over 100 000 doses over the last two days. This after a steady rise.

As of yesterday evening, 31 879 000 doses of vaccines had been administered to 19.08 million adult individuals, constituting 47.95% coverage of adults, with at least one jab (56.5% coverage for women and 43.5% coverage for men). Individual adults fully vaccinated are 17 million, at 43% coverage, the Minister stated.

Phaahla said South Africa should be able to pass the 48% coverage over the next few days, which is still a far cry from the 70% coverage required for population immunity.

The 60+ cohort remain our best performers at 68%, while the 50 - 59 age group stand at 64%, with the over 50s at an overall 60% full vaccination."

The Free State is still the leading province at 57.2% coverage. In terms of absolute numbers, Gauteng is leading by far with 8.9m doses administered to just over five million peopl. However, coverage is at 45% due to the big population.

Our biggest drawback is the 18 - 34 years age cohort, with 34% coverage and 29.3% full vaccination. We need at least another five million of this cohort to get to 60% coverage, Phaahla said.

The Minister hopes that the initiative by young people to drive the vaccination campaign of their peers, which was launched two weeks ago, will bear fruit.

Meanwhile, the total doses administered to the 12 - 17 cohort currently stands just over 1.65 million.

Timeframes for booster shots

The timeframes for second doses of Pfizer and boosters of both Pfizer and J&J have been narrowed due to available capacity and the need to protect those who want to be protected.

Acting Director-General of Health, Dr Nicholas Crisp, emphasised that COVID-19 is not yet over, as there are still people dying from the virus. - SAnews.gov.za

This story has been published on: 2022-03-04. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
U.S. human rights situation in 2021: Abuse of force, sanctions violate human rights in other countries

People's Daily Online) 15:44, March 04, 2022

The U.S. undergoes a complete withdrawal from Afghanistan at the end of August 2021. In the ensuing chaos at Kabuls main airport, a U.S. C-17 transport plane forcibly takes off, with people falling to their death from mid-air. (Cartoon by Lu Lingxing)

The human rights situation in the United States, which already has a long notorious record, worsened in 2021. On Feb. 28, 2022, China issued its The Report on Human Rights Violations in the United States in 2021.

According to the report, the U.S. has always pursued hegemonism, unilateralism and interventionism. The country frequently uses force, resulting in a large number of civilian casualties. Its abusive use of unilateral sanctions has caused humanitarian crises. The U.S. is challenging justice with hegemony, trampling on righteousness with its own self-interest, and wantonly violating human rights in other countries. It has become the biggest obstacle and destroyer of the sound development of the international human rights cause.

The U.S. War on Terror has killed large numbers of civilians. The website of USA TODAY reported on Feb. 25, 2021, that the so-called anti-terrorism wars launched by the U.S. in the past 20 years has claimed the lives of more than 929,000 people, according to the latest costs of war study published by the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University. The 20-year period of U.S. military operations in Afghanistan has killed 174,000 people, including more than 30,000 civilians, while having injured more than 60,000 people.

The website of USA TODAY commented on Aug. 26, 2021 that the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan was a total disaster. Tragedies like the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and Vietnam show that Washington has a history of ignoring basic humanitarianism for its own selfish ends.

Amidst the chaos at Kabuls main airport, a U.S. C-17 transport plane forcibly took off regardless of the safety of Afghan civilians on the ground, with someone crushed to death by a wheel while the plane retracted its landing gear, and with still others falling to their deaths from mid-air. Even in the last minutes of the frantic evacuation, the U.S. armys air strikes caused heavy civilian casualties.

Related:

U.S. human rights situation in 2021: American people pay heavy price for U.S. governments manipulation of COVID-19 prevention and control

U.S. human rights situation in 2021: Indulging in racial discrimination in U.S. exacerbates social injustice

(Web editor: Hongyu, Liang Jun)
UNITED NATIONS, March 3 (Xinhua) -- Supplies to treat severe acute malnutrition in young children were flown into the northernmost Tigray region in Ethiopia, the first time since mid-December, a UN spokesman said on Thursday.

The move has contributed to a limited expansion in medical services, said Stephane Dujarric, the chief spokesman for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.

However, a lack of truck fuel limited the distribution of medical supplies to only some health facilities, he said.

Deliveries of aid and fuel by road through neighboring Afar remain suspended, he said. There was no distribution of food aid reported from Feb. 17 to 23 because supplies and fuel nearly ran out.

"Our humanitarian colleagues tell us that the situation in northern Ethiopia remains extremely concerning," he said. "In the Afar region, people continue to be displaced by ongoing fighting adding to growing needs."

During the past week, some 18,000 people received food assistance in accessible areas affected by the conflict, Dujarric said. Some health services, water trucking and household items were provided to those recently displaced. There is a need to scale up assistance.

Overall, the number of people targeted for food assistance in Afar has grown to more than 620,000 people, he said. The last aid round in mid-October assisted about 530,000 people.

The spokesman said that aid deliveries continue in the neighboring Amhara region. The United Nations and humanitarian partners provided food for more than 283,000 people last week in Dessie and Kombolcha towns and in the North Gondar zone to complement government distributions.

Overall, more than 7 million people have been assisted in the current round of food distribution which began in late December, he said. Some areas in the north of Amhara remain inaccessible due to insecurity.

Extremely concerning levels of malnutrition continue to be reported in all three northern regions, said Dujarric. 
(Natural News) Many disabled individuals are falling victim to a large, horrifying system that prevents them from making decisions about their lives. The National Womens Law Center, a pro-abortion organization, has revealed that sterilization is still legal in over 30 states in the U.S.

According to the report, these states, plus Washington D.C., allow people to be forcibly sterilized. There are also 17 states that allow forced sterilization on disabled children, and only three explicitly prohibit such procedures on disabled children. Meanwhile, 11 states plus Washington, D.C., do not have specific language regarding minors.

This sterilization procedure is most often used on people with disabilities, especially those who are also people of color. While some parents or guardians are complicit in these procedures, it is not always the case. In some instances, the person being sterilized isnt always told what has been done to them until later.

Forced sterilization laws are not an aberration. They are part of a larger, horrifying system that prevents disabled people from making decisions about their lives, families and futures.

These laws are part of a long history of state-sanctioned sterilizations and are rooted in false, paternalistic assumptions about disabled people. No judge, guardian, or politician should have the right to take away anyones fundamental right to decide whether to have children. Its long overdue to fully transform this ruthless system.

Evil system takes advantage of children and persons with disability

One case is that of Linda Kay Sparkman, a person with intellectual disability. The teens mother asked a judge for permission for Linda to get sterilized, which the judge agreed to. However, nobody told Sparkman about the procedure, until she decided to try to get pregnant years later. (Related: Reprogramming Females: Sterilization of most US girls and women is the next phase for mRNA vaccine technology.)

Another case is of a girl named Ashley, whose parents successfully sought to have her sterilized at only six years old, through hysterectomy. Her parents did not want her to grow breasts or get taller, so doctors performed an operation to ensure that her breasts wont grow. They also put her on hormones so that she will remain small, like a child.

Ashley was not the only child to have suffered through this. Other children have also undergone the same treatment, which has caused the ire of a disability rights advocacy group. In a statement, the group called Not Dead Yet, condemned what is now known as the Ashley Treatment, which has largely received positive feedback.

Not Dead Yet founder, Diane Coleman, said: We are saddened but not surprised by the fact that this was publicized and met with a great deal of public approval. The public is willing to sanction the murders of disabled children by their parents, so its hardly surprising they would rush to the support of parents and their medical partners in a matter like this.

Colemans also said that despite striving for diversity in their membership, ethics committees have historically excluded representation from the disability community, about whom they are making these life and death decisions. (Related: Tetanus vaccines found spiked with sterilization chemical to carry out race-based genocide against Africans.)

It is not only those with disabilities who have been forcibly sterilized, either. Prison inmates suffered the same situation in 2021 in states like California and Tennessee. Over a thousand female inmates in California alone were sterilized under false pretenses. Doctors reportedly believed that it was better to sterilize these inmates while they are in prison so that when they leave, they will be unable to have children, who will also likely end up on welfare.

More related stories:

The Nazis werent defeated they went underground and now run CANADA and the WORLD, pushing eugenics and depopulation agendas aligned with Adolf Hitler.

More than 1,000 published studies show covid jabs are dangerous.

Women are wasting money on expensive treatments when its MALE infertility that has doubled, according to experts.

Death Cult Democrats say killing newborn babies the day theyre born is good for the economy  so whats next, exterminating all kids with autism and senior citizens?

Bill Gates and the Worlds Elite DO NOT VACCINATE their own children and for good reason.

Watch the video below to learn about eugenics.

This video is from the SecureLife channel on Brighteon.com.

Follow Medicine.news for more updates related to forced sterilization.

Sources include:

LifeSiteNews.com

NWLC.org

Brighteon.com
(Natural News) Fully vaccinated individuals accounted for 90 percent of Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) deaths, and four out of five are those who have received their boosters. This information released by the U.K. Health Security Agency included statistics that backed up the data.

As of February 28, around 73.5 percent of the English population had been fully vaccinated, while 56.9 percent already received their booster shots.

Top officials around the world have acknowledged that the COVID-19 vaccines have not stopped infection or transmission of the omicron variant, but were still insisting that the shots prevent hospitalizations and death.

Between January 24 and February 20, there had been 9,230 COVID-19 hospitalizations in England, with the fully vaccinated accounting for 6,689 of them, while the unvaccinated totaled only 2,341.

During the same period, there had been 4,861 COVID-related deaths, with the boosted population accounting for 3,120 of them, while only 559 were unvaccinated.

Overall, the vaccinated population accounted for 89 percent of the COVID-19 deaths during the four-week period.

Whats more concerning is that while the rate of hospitalizations and deaths has declined for the unvaccinated, it has increased in the vaccinated and boosted.

Between November 22 and December 19, 2021, the vaccinated population also accounted for 77 percent of COVID-19 deaths. The latest figures represent a 48 percent increase from the previous months, while COVID-19 deaths among the unvaccinated decreased by 37 percent. (Related: Vaccine die-off: Fully vaccinated and triple-vaccinated deaths skyrocket.)

Data similar in other parts of the globe

Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also showed a massive increase in COVID-19 infections and hospitalizations since the emergence of the omicron strain among the fully vaccinated in the United States.

Cardiologist and epidemiologist Dr. Peter McCullough, who remains to be one of the leading critics of the COVID vaccines, pointed out that the reductions in hospitalizations and deaths were never demonstrated in randomized controlled studies.

Meanwhile, Public Health Scotland reported in January that four out of five COVID hospitalizations and deaths are vaccinated individuals. Overall cases have significantly dropped in the last month in all demographics compared to the number of cases recorded from December 11, 2021 to January 7, but in both months the vaccinated accounted for most of the cases.

The difference between the two months is that the double vaccinated accounted for the majority of cases between December 11, 2021 and January 8, with 145,890 cases. However, from January 8 to February 4, the triple vaccinated accounted for the majority of cases, with 46,951.

Mainstream media also tried telling people that they would have a milder infection, or would be less likely to be hospitalized with COVID if they get vaccinated. However, data showed that this is not true.

Unvaccinated individuals are doing much better when it comes to hospitalizations, and are doing better overall, while the fully vaccinated are doing worse overall.

The PHS data showed that hospitalization among the unvaccinated fell by 24 percent in January compared to the month before. Hospitalizations among the triple vaccinated, meanwhile, increased by 88 percent.

Deaths also increased from 40 among the triple vaccinated between December 4 to 31, 2021, to 238 between January 1 to 28. This represents a 495 percent increase in deaths for those who received three shots of the vaccine. Comparatively, the deaths in the unvaccinated rose only 30 percent, from 46 to 60 in the same time frames. (Related: Triple vaccinated deaths skyrocketed 495% in January; 80% of all new covid cases are fully jabbed.)

Professor Sucharit Bhakdi, a microbiologist and prominent source of information during the pandemic, said the COVID vaccines were designed to fail. The antibodies produced in the bloodstream, such as those produced after an injection into a muscle, cannot protect anyone from a respiratory infection. If a person is infected after being injected, it is not a breakthrough infection. It simply means the vaccine did not do anything to protect the person against infection in the first place.

Dr. Richard Fleming, a cardiologist, reached the same conclusion as Bhakdi. Using Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson trial data to calculate the efficacy of their COVID injections, he demonstrated that there is no statistical reduction in COVID cases between the vaccinated and unvaccinated.

More related stories:

RIGGED worse than a ballot counting machine: CDC allowing hospitals to classify fully vaccinated deaths as unvaccinated.

Backfire: Detroit TV station asks for stories of unvaccinated covid fatalities, gets bombarded with vaccinated deaths and injuries instead.

More vaccinated soccer players fall ill with sudden chest pains; incidents linked to COVID-19 vaccines.

More than three-quarters of covid deaths in Vermont are among the fully vaccinated.

Excess mortality rates rise as more people get vaccinated.

Watch the video below about top doctors confirming occurrence of vaccine genocide.

This video is from the Truth or Consequences channel on Brighteon.com.

Follow Pandemic.news for more updates.

Sources include:

WND.com

SHTFPlan.com

DailyExpose.uk

Brighteon.com
(Natural News) The founder of a cryptocurrency company linked to a billion-dollar Ponzi scheme is nowhere to be found. Satish Kumbhani reportedly disappeared following his indictment over an alleged $2.4 billion Ponzi scheme.

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) acknowledged the BitConnect founders disappearance in a Feb. 28 filing. Senior trial counsel Richard G. Primoff wrote in the filing that the SEC did not know the whereabouts of Kumbhani, an Indian citizen, at the time it filed this action. He added that at present, Kumbhanis location remains unknown and that the [SEC] remains unable to state when its efforts to locate him will be successful, if at all.

In October 2021, the [SEC] learned that Kumbhani has likely relocated from India to an unknown address in a different foreign country. Since November [2021], the [SEC] has been consulting with [Indian] financial regulatory authorities in an attempt to locate Kumbhanis address.

A federal grand jury in San Francisco indicted the 36-year-old Kumbhani on Feb. 25, according to the Department of Justice (DOJ). Court documents stated that the BitConnect founder, who hails from Hemal in the westernmost Indian state of Gujarat, is orchestrating a global Ponzi scheme.

Kumbhani and his co-conspirators were accused of misleading investors through BitConnects Lending Program that promised substantial profits and guaranteed returns by using investors money to trade in crypto exchange markets. However, BitConnect operated as a Ponzi scheme by paying earlier investors with money from later investors, said the DOJ.

Established in 2016, BitConnect managed to raise billions of dollars from investors around the globe by promising a 10 percent interest through its BitConnect Coin (BCC) token. But after approximately one year of operation, Kumbhani shut down the BitConnect Lending program. (Related: BitConnect shuts down after accusations it was running a cryptocurrency Ponzi scheme.)

The DOJ said he and his collaborators fleeced approximately $2.4 billion from investors. Kumbhani faces a maximum penalty of 70 years in prison if convicted.

Scams abound in the crypto world

The scheme involving Kumbhani and BitConnect is not the first time investors were swindled into shelling out their money as part of a scam. Back in April 2021, many small investors in the United States were fleeced of their hard-earned crypto tokens stored in their digital wallets because of the ElonFarms crypto scam.

The Epoch Times reported that hundreds of crypto investors lost their money in their digital wallets after they approved token purchase transactions. According to the victims, the perpetrators misled investors into allowing access to their entire wallet  enabling the scammers to steal the funds.

ElonFarms investors initially thought they approved a contract for purchasing the digital tokens. However, they later discovered that the contract also allowed ElonFarms  and the scammers behind it  to access their entire digital wallet. The investors lost all assets kept in their digital wallets, with the total number of victims unclear.

One victim who called himself Mr. Ray said all he saw on his end was a prompt to approve the transfer fee to receive $300 of crypto tokens. But he received no tokens and ended up with an empty digital wallet, losing $6,000 in assets. I just couldnt believe it. I have come to terms with the loss, [but] I hope those responsible for hurting so many people get their fair shares, he said.

Another victim who called himself Mr. Crypto invested an initial $100 in one of the crypto mining farms linked to the ElonFarms token. He accepted the contract and confirmed the payment, expecting to receive interest for his initial cash out. It was only days later that he found that more than $60,000 in his digital wallet was transferred to another wallet.

Thats when I knew I was scammed. I dont care so much about getting my money back as catching [the scammers] and putting them in jail, he told the Epoch Times.

More related stories:

Bitcoin mining rigs now LOSING money daily as the Bitcoin Ponzi scheme continues to unravel.

Another Crypto Ponzi scheme collapses: DavorCoin caught defrauding investors who lost nearly everything.

Investigation: Many cryptocurrencies are nothing but a massive Ponzi scheme promoted by paid influencers.

Watch the video talking about the 2019 arrest of Konstantin Ignatov, one of the key figures in the OneCoin crypto scam.

This video is from the Speak Project Media channel on Brighteon.com.

Head over to CryptoCult.news for more stories about crypto Ponzi schemes.

Sources include:

ZeroHedge.com

Storage.CourtListener.com [PDF]

Justice.gov

TheEpochTimes.com

Brighteon.com
(Natural News) A study by researchers from the New York State Department of Health and the State University of New York found that Pfizers Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccine for children only offers 12 percent protection against the B11529 omicron variant.

The Feb. 28 pre-print study published in medRxiv examined vaccination data from two groups of children in the Excelsior State. The first group is made up of children aged five to 11 years old, and the second group is made up of children aged 12 to 17 years old. The study authors looked at figures from Dec. 13, 2021 to Jan. 30, 2022  which coincided with an omicron-driven surge in infections.

According to the paper, vaccine effectiveness against omicron infection in the five- to 11-year-old cohort during that period dropped from 68 percent to a measly 12 percent. It added that the vaccines ability to prevent COVID-19 hospitalizations for the same group dropped by more than half. From a 100 percent protection recorded on Dec. 13, it dropped to 48 percent come Jan. 24.

Meanwhile, the 12- to 17-year old cohort also reported a decline in vaccine effectiveness during the same period. Vaccine-induced protection against infections in the group dropped to 51 percent at the end of January compared to 66 percent in December. Protection against hospitalizations also saw a drop, with 85 percent recorded in December to 73 percent in January.

There is limited evidence on the effectiveness of the [Pfizer] BNT162b2 vaccine for children, particularly those [aged five to 11] and after the omicron variants emergence. In the omicron era, the effectiveness against cases of [the Pfizer shot] declined rapidly, wrote the study authors.

The authors proposed that the decline in vaccine effectiveness among children aged five to 11 was likely due to the lower dosage they received. Currently, children five to 11 years old are injected two doses of 10 micrograms (?g) each. Older children  those aged 12 to 17  have received a higher dosage of two 30 ?g shots. (Related: Injecting children with Pfizers COVID-19 vaccine is reckless and dangerous.)

Malone: NY health officials pushing an agenda

Physician and mRNA vaccine technology inventor Dr. Robert Malone put in his two cents on the pre-print study by New York health officials. He summed up his observations in a March 2 piece on his Substack profile.

Malone pointed out that while the observation about the Pfizer vaccine being ineffective was the studys actual conclusion, the successive sentences after it that call for mask-wearing had no place there.

Why are these authors stating an opinion about public health recommendations? This is neither justified nor supported. This Relevance statement is basically yet more propaganda which the authors appear to have inserted, because academic journal editors require this type of genuflection to the approved narrative. They have written the relevance section in a way that demonstrates that they have an agenda, commented Malone.

New York State Health Commissioner Dr. Mary T. Bassett was among the authors of the Feb. 28 study. Interestingly, the findings of her and other co-authors followed an admission she made two months before the studys release. During a Dec. 28, 2021 press conference, Bassett admitted to over-reporting the number of hospitalized children due to COVID-19.

She revealed that there was no epidemic of infection in the entire state at all, and only a small number of children were admitted to hospitals because of COVID-19. To inflate the number of COVID-19 hospitalizations, the state health department lumped in a handful of rare pediatric hospitalizations in the actual count.

The numbers that we gave on pediatric admissions werent intended to make it seem that children were having an epidemic of infection. These were small numbers that we reported in our Health Alert [and were] based on 50 hospitalizations. It really is to motivate pediatricians and families to seek the protection of vaccination, said Bassett.

More related stories:

More than 80% of children who received Pfizers covid injection suffered side effects.

Omicron variant spreading faster in highly vaccinated states like New York and New Jersey.

NY health commissioner admits to INFLATING kids hospitalization rates to push Covid vaccines.

Pfizer is using predatory manipulation tactics to abuse children, while censoring kids who were injured in clinical studies.

Watch parents in New York protesting against the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine for children below.

This video is from the Free4eva Media channel on Brighteon.com.

Vaccines.news has more stories about the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine for children.

Sources include:

WND.com

medRxiv.org [PDF]

CNBC.com

RWMaloneMD.Substack.com

LifeSiteNews.com

Brighteon.com
(Natural News) President Donald Trump has said that the 2020 presidential election was stolen.

(Article by Bob Unruh republished from WND.com)

In fact, Joe Biden won by narrowly capturing victory in a list of swing states, and dozens of subsequent court cases were dismissed by judges over issues like standing, which mostly didnt address the actual claims involved.

But the establishments defense to arguments over the legitimacy of the vote count always has been that theres been no widespread election fraud found.

Now there has.

Margot Cleveland, a graduate of Notre Dame Law, a former law clerk for a federal appellate judge and a senior contributor to The Federalist, pointed out thats exactly what the Wisconsin Office of Special Counsel concluded was involved in that states 2020 presidential election results from nursing homes.

She reported, Special Counsel Michael Gableman, the retired state Supreme Court justice appointed by the Wisconsin Assembly to investigate integrity concerns about the 2020 election, vetted more than 90 nursing homes in five different counties before concluding there was widespread election fraud at Wisconsin nursing homes in November of 2020.'

She explained, According to the report, nursing home staff and administrators illegally handled absentee ballots, illegally assisted with marking residents ballots, illegally witnessed the voting, and possibly included forgery of the elderly residents signatures. Under Wisconsin law, these violations of the election code constitute fraud.

She noted that just one of the key findings in the OSC report that was given to the Wisconsin Assembly found, Rampant fraud and abuse occurred statewide at Wisconsins nursing homes and other residential care facilities.

Gablemans conclusions mirrored those reached by the Racine County sheriffs office earlier, an investigation that resulted in Sheriff Christopher Schmaling recommending election fraud charges be filed against five members of the Wisconsin Election Commission.

The district attorney, Patricia Hanson, then claimed she didnt have jurisdiction and she would not be filing any charges.

Thats after the sheriffs investigator, Sgt. Michael Luell, explained the only legal way for residential care home residents to vote requires municipalities to send two special voting deputies, who must personally deliver ballots, which can be filled out by the voter with help from only a relative or an SVD. The deputies then must seal the ballot and delivered it to an elections clerk.

The Ridgewood Care Center in Racine County violated every one of those mandates, Luell explained, with the Wisconsin Election Commission (WEC) holding blame for the blatant disregard of state election law taking place at residential facilities because the commission had directed municipalities not to use the Special Voting Deputy process to service residents in care facilities, and to instead transmit absentee ballots to those voters by mail,' The Federalist report said.

Schmaling had warned it was unlikely the problems developed in only one nursing home, and Gableman confirmed that, exposing rampant fraud and abuse occurred statewide at Wisconsins nursing homes and other residential care facilities in relation to absentee voting at these facilities.

Further, Gablemans report cited the improbably high voting rates of 100% in many of the care facilities alone creates a strong inference of fraud, the report said.

Gableman cited Resident D of Brown County. Her family took Resident D to vote at her assigned polling location, but when she presented herself to vote on election day, the election workers informed her she had already voted. After questioning from her family, Resident D recalled someone at the nursing home had talked with her about voting, but she denied voting at the residential facility. Nonetheless, records from 2020 show Resident D cast an absentee ballot, the report explained.

Gableman found that some 92,000 people in Wisconsin reside in such facilities, so the failure of Wisconsin election officials to prevent wards and incapacitated persons from voting in the 2020 presidential election casts doubt on the election result, Gableman said.

WND reported, too, when Gablemans report came out that it found that Mark Zuckerbergs decision to donate some $420 million to various leftist elections officials across America to help them accommodate COVID during the 2020 president race violated Wisconsins bribery statute.

Previously, study of Zuckerbergs purchases during that election cyctem confirmed those deals essentially bought the vote for Joe Biden.

In Wisconsin, Zuckerbergs money, some $9 million, went solely to five Democratic strongholds and the special counsels report to the Wisconsin Assembly said those actions violated the ban on bribes.

Gablemans report also recommended:

Eliminating the Wisconsin Election Commission, which, in fact, had delivered to elections officials improper instructions for the election.

Maintain a single statewide voter registration database and making it available and secure.

Establishing oversight procedures for elections.

Establishing a process for challenging results.

Minimizing pre-voting, because that denies citizens their right to observe the process.

Allowing the creation of alternative slates of electors for challenged races.

Providing ways to challenge those certifications.

Banning outside funding in elections.

What is known about the 2020 election is that study of Zuckerbergs money concluded the results essentially were bought for Biden. Also, various state and local elections officials simply canceled their own state laws regarding mail-in ballots to accommodate COVID, actions that were not legally allowed. Third, legacy and social media all worked to conceal accurate  and damaging  reporting about the Biden family overseas business schemes just before the election. A Media Research Center study revealed had those reports been more widely published, enough voters would have turned away from Biden to cost him the election.

Read more at: WND.com
At the turn of 150, it's fair to assume Yellowstone National Park is still in terrific shape.

On March 1, 1872, President Ulysses S. Grant enacted the Yellowstone National Park Protection Legislation, making it the country's inaugural nature reserve.

150th Anniversary of Yellowstone National Park

In a recently published journal under Smithsonian Magazine, the facility, which extends into Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho, is noted for its breathtakingly beautiful landscape, abundant animals, and rich heritage.

As per Chuck Sams, the head of the National Wildlife Administration, it also aided in the larger united reserve campaign in the United States.

The National Park Service today operates 63 parks around the nation. According to Sams, Tuesday's anniversary was more than simply a Yellowstone festivity.

Sams quipped in a declaration that the administration of the nature park furthermore commemorates something far larger than the nature reserve on its own which is the birth of the wildlife conservation concept, an indication that has scattered throughout the United States and abroad, uplifting authorities to safeguard ecological and historic riches 'for the gain and satisfaction of the folks.

Yellowstone was abode to dozens of Native American communities until it established a conservation area, and many of them traversed the same routes that tourists do now.

While the US Geological Survey remarked that representatives of numerous of communities, such as the Kiowa, Blackfeet, Cayuse, Coeur d'Alene, Shoshone, and Nez Perce, have associated with Yellowstone over the last 11,000 years.

The native people were finally driven out of Yellowstone. For a while, park managers presented Yellowstone as a place formerly unexplored by humanity, particularly Amerindians.

Also read: Pantagonia Glaciers Melting at Alarming Rate, Marking Largest Glacial Changes in History





The Rich Heritage of Yellowstone National Park

Yellowstone's well-known Old Faithful eruption is only one of the park's many seismic phenomena.

Based on the article published under NPS website, there are approximately 10,000 geothermal structures in the United States, accounting for half of the globe's operational geothermal, including hot springs or fumaroles.

Yellowstone also has the highest density of animals in the bottom 48 jurisdictions. The reserve is home to badgers, wolves, foxes, calves, and a significant number of tiny creatures.

It is the sole location in the United States where bison have resided consistently throughout earlier period. It was sounding bleak for a while in the 1900s, when the species was preyed from hundreds or thousands to fewer than 2 dozen.

This bison ecological restoration is still going on today. All through the facility's existence, there have been several reports of tourists messing with the animals. A lady was previously sentenced to four days in prison for venturing too near to grizzly bears.

Yellowstone's stunning look and rich heritage draw large number of tourists yearly. Yellowstone National Park halted its borders in March 2020 owing to coronavirus worries, and it stayed restricted for over two months. However, after reopening, the park set new attendance figures.

The nature reserve claimed 4.9 million leisure visitors in 2021, a 28% increase over the previous year and the biggest year on documentation. July 2021 was perhaps the most visited month in Yellowstone's record, with over 1 million visitors in a one period for the unprecedented period.

"The 150th annual celebration of Yellowstone is a watershed point in time for the planet," stated Yellowstone Superintendent Cam Sholly.

"It's a great chance for us to contemplate on previous experiences while concentrating our time and exertion on strengthening Yellowstone and our numerous collaborations for the present."

Related Article: Yellowstone Park: Montana Hunters Killed 3 Wolves During State's Hunting Season




The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a harsh warning on Monday that the time to adapt to climate change is running short.

According to a recent assessment from the scientific council, the warming that has occurred so far - around 1.09 degrees Celsius (1.96 degrees Fahrenheit) over pre-industrial levels - is already having "widespread, pervasive repercussions" on people worldwide.

Warning from Warmings

The paper cautions that global warming has consequences for humanity beyond affecting the weather and melting the ice caps. It also has far-reaching ramifications for how insects and other species travel throughout the planet, interact, and carry illness to humans.

According to the paper, "climate-sensitive food-borne, water-borne, and vector-borne illness risks are anticipated to rise at all degrees of warming." (Vector-borne illnesses are carried by blood-sucking insects such as ticks and mosquitoes.)

Furthermore, global warming has already resulted in enormous disease consequences worldwide. Climate change isn't just a distant threat; it's already making people sick.

"One of the most startling outcomes in our analysis is that unfavorable repercussions are far more pervasive and worse than projected in past assessments within the current 1.09 degrees," Camille Parmesan, a coordinating lead author of the paper, told reporters on Sunday.

"Some of the things we're seeing now that we weren't expecting at 1.09 degrees are illnesses spreading to new locations."

Related Article: Experts Warn of Another Deadly Global Outbreak to Strike Within 60 Years

Disease-Carrying Insects

Because disease-carrying insects and other creatures spend so much of their life in the same spot, certain illnesses are endemic to certain places.

Lyme disease, for example, is carried by black-legged ticks, which are small, eight-legged, blood-sucking organisms found in the Northeastern United States and other regions of the Northern Hemisphere.

However, climate change is wreaking havoc on the environmental conditions that limit these ticks regionally. Warming temperatures and changing weather patterns across the United States make it easier for ticks to spread and spread into new places where individuals and clinicians treating them are unfamiliar with Lyme disease.

According to the research, ticks are preying on larger areas of the population and becoming more widespread.

According to the paper, climate change will continue to contribute to the geographical expansion of the Lyme disease vector.

Similar Stories

Similar stories are being told in every part of the world, as illnesses emerge in previously unknown locations.

Dengue fever, a mosquito-borne tropical disease that causes fever, headache, and vomiting and has a 20% mortality rate if left untreated, is expected to become a bigger risk for people in Asia, Europe, Central, and South America, and Sub-Saharan Africa as the warm season lengthens and the aedes aegypti mosquito expands its geographic range.

On Sunday, Kristie Ebi, an epidemiologist at the University of Washington and a co-author of the paper, stated, "There are projections of billions of more individuals at risk of dengue fever later in the century."

Worsening Climate Change

As climate change worsens, other mosquito-borne diseases such as Zika virus, Chikungunya disease, and West Nile virus are in danger of becoming more frequent.

Vibriosis and cholera, which cause nausea, diarrhea, and vomiting, are dangerous water-borne infections. Diarrheal diseases have decreased globally due to improved medicine distribution and low-tech medical interventions such as treating patients orally with a mixture of water, glucose, and salts.

Still, the report notes that increased rainfall and flooding in many regions have increased diarrheal diseases like cholera and other gastrointestinal infections.

If present illnesses aren't frightening enough, thawing permafrost and coastal erosion in the Arctic might expose historical cemeteries, campsites, and reindeer burial places, exposing old diseases to which modern humans are immune.

The paper's authors admit that putting a number on future climate-related mortality is challenging. Still, they estimate that by 2050, 250,000 more people would die from heat, malnutrition, malaria, and diarrheal illness combined.

Hundreds of diseases are already present, and more will arise in the following years, adding to the death toll.

Feasibility

It is feasible to reduce the burden of sickness on individuals, but the research warns that time is running out to make the required changes.

Producing vector-borne disease surveillance systems, establishing early warning systems to alert communities to those diseases and the prevalence of novel vectors, and developing medicines to inoculate individuals against vector-borne illnesses are essential contributions to the preparation arsenal.

The research suggests that governments enhance access to potable water and safeguard water and sanitation infrastructure against flooding to adapt to water-borne and food-borne infections.

Protecting and conserving natural places like wetlands, peatlands, and forests from human development provides the dual benefit of sequestering carbon dioxide while minimizing disease transmission to humans by restricting interaction between wild animals and people.

Concerns

According to Zak Smith, head of the Natural Resources Defense Council's wildlife program, governments are typically unwilling to take the required precautions to safeguard public health from the increasing danger of illness caused by climate change.

Also Read: Natural-Born Killers: Which Animals Have the Highest Humans Kill Rate?

For more animal news, don't forget to follow Nature World News!
Cats and dogs in dire health conditions were rescued by local authorities from a house in the city of Diamond Bar in Los Angeles County, California, on Tuesday, March 1.

In a case of animal hoarding, more than 80 animals, including cats and dogs, were found inside the home of a lone woman in her 70s.

Dozens of Animals Found

According to the Los Angeles Times, members of the Inland Valley Human Society (IVHS) and Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) along with the police and fire brigade rescued the animals in Diamond Bar after receiving a call from a neighbor and reported the situation inside the home.

Based on the initial report of the neighbor, a house located at 1100 block along Flintlock Road is sheltering more than 80 animals that are experiencing distressing living conditions.

The IVHS and SPCA investigated the report and considered the incident to be a case of animal hoarding.

Read More: Over 300 Small Animals Rescued From Being Hoarded in Nashville

Rescue Operation

In a Facebook video posted by the IVHS and SPCA, an emergency rescue unit went to the said house, characterized as an old one and had a foul odor.

The unit retrieved the animals, mostly kittens, who were placed inside cages and sent to IVHS' facility in the city of Pomona, California, for treatment.

Additionally, health authorities found multiple dead cats at the house.

In the IVHS and SPCA Facebook video, it can be seen that one of the health officials was carrying an animal skull; which seem to belong to a kitten.

The animals are being kept at the facility indefinitely.

Local law enforcement said the house owner exceeded the allowed maximum number of pets inside the house, as per the investigation.

The neighbor reportedly told KTLA-TV Channel 5 the woman was around 70 years old and was living without electricity and water supply for around five years.

Local authorities sealed off the house and placed signs outside its premises to warn of hazardous materials.

Furthermore, there were no immediate reports on whether a criminal or civil charge was filed against the elderly woman, who was sent to the hospital for treatment due to an unspecified health condition, according to IVHS officials.

Animal Hoarding

According to the local US animal rights organization American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA), approximately 250,000 animals becomes a victim of animal hoarding in the United States each year.

The organization considers animal hoarding as a complex issue that violates animal welfare, mental health, and public safety since the action weighs the number of pets and the owner's capability that would determine a conducive living situation for the animals.

On the other hand, the ASPCA defines animal hoarding as owning a certain number of animals or pets beyond one's capability to provide the necessary care, including food, water, hygiene, and adequate space.

Animal hoarding often leads to either animal starvation, degradation of health, or even death.

Related article: Cats Locked Inside a House Forced to Eat Each Other to Survive
A satellite image taken in 2020 captured a "monster wave" in the Portuguese coast near Nazare, crashing towards the shore. At the same time and day, an 18-year-old surfer reportedly rode a massive 101-foot-wave, a potentially record-breaking swell.

The big coast of Nazare is known to have the largest submarine canyon and considered by some to be among the best in Portugal. The undersea canyon just off the coast of Nazare, Portugal, in the eastern North Atlantic Ocean is the largest underwater canyon in Europe.

On Oct. 29, 2020, a NASA satellite (Landsat 8) captured the massive waves along the famous North Beach (Praia do Norte) - widely considered to be one of the world's best locations for big-wave surfing. The waves on that day in particular were enhanced by high winds from the remnants of Hurricane Epsilon, causing the monstrous seven-story-high wave, LiveScience reported.

A Portuguese surfer's record-breaking ride

Portuguese surfer Antonio Laureano who was just 18 years old at the time told Surfer Today about the massive wave, and sent a video of it to researchers at the University of Lisbon in Portugal for analysis. The young surfer believed it was the biggest of the day.

"As soon as I started to ride that wave, I realized it was massive," Laureano said. "But it was only when I kicked out [finished surfing] that I understood what I had accomplished."

And he wasn't wrong. Miguel Moreira, an oceanographer at the University of Lisbon, also told Surfer Today in 2020 that the wave measured 101.4 feet (30.9 m) high, the largest wave ever surfed by a human, although it was not officially recognized by the World Surf League (WSL) because of how the researchers measured it using the height of the surfer as a scale reference "and then look for the crest of the wave [the highest point] and the trough [lowest point]," Miguel explained.

WSL officials measure the height of waves compared to sea level either from the shore or behind the wave as it breaks. Unfortunately, in Laureano's case, no WSL officials were at Nazare on that day, so the record remains unverified.

Also read: Pantagonia Glaciers Melting at Alarming Rate, Marking Largest Glacial Changes in History

Monstrous waves off the coast of Nazare

Surfer Today explains the Nazare Canyon geomorphologic phenomenon and the size of its local waves, and how the once-quiet village turned into a world-renowned big wave surfing arena.

"First of all, it's important to highlight the most common swell direction in the region - west and northwest," the website said. According to the website, the prevailing wind from northwest to southwest is associated with atmospheric depressions. Given the east-west orientation, the headland interferes with the winds and dramatically influences the sea's dynamic conditions near the beach.

The drastic differences of depth between the continental shelf and the canyon a few miles off the coast of Nazare also explain the giant waves. Furthermore, water current channeled along the shore - from North to South additionally contributing to wave height, among others.

Nazare currently holds three Guinness World Records for the largest waves ever surfed by a male (Rodrigo Koxa) surfer, a female (Maya Gabeira) surfer, and a kitesurfer (Nuno "Stru" Figueiredo).

Related article: 50 People and Five Horses Rescued from Dreadful Rising Flood Water in Australia
Russian military forces shelled the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Station, also called the Zaporizhzhya NPP, in the city of Enerhodar, Ukraine, overnight from Thursday to Friday, March 3 to March 4. The Ukrainian nuclear plant caught fire and emitted significant radiation levels.

The incident forced an emergency meeting between Ukraine, the US, and other countries. The Ukrainian power plant attack manifests both the threat posed by the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the nuclear radiation-triggered explosion-which was not seen for a long time since the Chernobyl disaster in 1986.

The potential risks from the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Plant attack raise biological and environmental repercussions since the stored radiation poses health hazards, which are also detrimental to animals, plants, and trees.

Shelling Attack on Ukrainian Power Plant

The artillery assault of the nuclear power plant prompted an emergency call between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, US President Joe Biden, and other world leaders, as per the Associated Press. The incident also prompted the US Department of Energy to activate its nuclear response team.

The nuclear plant attack came as Russian forces continued their advancement in the city located in eastern Ukraine. Latest reports said shells or artilleries struck the nuclear facility and damaged one of its six reactors, causing fire and the emission of radiation.

The Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Station is reportedly the largest nuclear facility in Europe. The Zaporizhzhya NPP is situated approximately 200 kilometers (125 miles) west of Donetsk city. The region served to be the first pathway when the Russian invasion started last week.

Also Read: Nuclear War Threat Looms amid the Russia-Ukraine War; Nuclear Winter Explored

Potential Explosion

According to Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba as cited by CNN, the nuclear plant had its vicinity surrounded by Russian firing, including shelling. Kuleba added if the Zaporizhzhya NPP explodes, its impact will be 10 times greater than the Chernobyl disaster of 1986.

The Ukrainian power plant's spokesman Andriy Tuz said firefighters were unable to extinguish the fire due to the continuance of Russian firing into the power plant, as per the Associated Press. Local authorities consider it may pose a nuclear threat from the largest atomic plant on the continent.

Chernobyl Disaster of 1986

The recent incident was compared to the Chernobyl disaster in Ukraine on April 26, 1986-wherein the Chernobyl nuclear power plant near the city of Pripyat had one of its reactors burned and exploded. The disaster resulted in several casualties, environmental damage, and economic repercussions.

According to the International Atomic Energy Agency (AIEA), the cause of the Chernobyl disaster was when the Chernobyl plant's number four reactor containing uranium malfunctioned; due to both technical and human error-related factors. The malfunction led to an initial explosion and fire.

The AIEA reported 30 people died from the incident, including two plant workers from the initial explosion and 28 responding firefighters who eventually died after several months. The disaster prompted a large-scale evacuation of thousands of people surrounding the plant.

Russian Invasion

Since the invasion of the Russian military forces of Ukraine on Feb. 24, multiple cities and towns have been affected across the country due to recurring airstrikes and shelling. Russia's entry to Ukraine began after several weeks of tension due to the build-up of Russian troops along Ukraine's borders.

As Russian forces continue to advance, the Russia-Ukraine conflict has led to the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians and posed a growing regional threat that concerns not only Ukraine but also its neighboring European countries and the United States.

With the recent attack on the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Station, the incident poses the threat of health hazards not only to its nearby inhabitants but also to the environment.

Related Article: Ukraine's Save Wild Bear Sanctuary Near Kyiv Evacuates its Animals to Poland's Zoo Poznan
Drought conditions in the US Pacific Northwest are expected to get even worse this year than in the past two years, which saw diminishing reservoirs, massive wildfires, and substantial cuts to agricultural irrigation.

Severe Drought Across Oregon, Idaho

Experts from the states of Oregon, Washington, and Idaho spoke at a press conference held by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), saying the region should get ready now for severe drought, wildfires, and record-low stream flows that will harm salmon and other sensitive species.

According to the U.S. Drought Monitor, 74% of the Pacific Northwest is suffering from drought, with nearly 20 percent in extreme or exceptional drought.

This winter's storms, which regularly replenish water levels and build up a snowpack to feed streams and rivers, were thwarted by an unusual ridge of high pressure off the West Coast of the United States, according to scientists.

At this time last year, Oregon was doing quite a bit better, said Larry O'Neill, Oregon's state climatologist. According to O'Neill, one of the points is to make people aware that Oregon is going through some tough times this summer, he said. Oregon is currently in a state of increased concern because of this year's drought, as per Phys.org.

A 22-year megadrought worsened last year to the point that the region as a whole is now experiencing its driest period in at least 1,200 years, according to a research published only last month. Human-caused climate change is responsible for 42% of this megadrought, according to a new study.

Also Read: 6 Million Children Driven to Hunger Due to Severe Drought Brought by El Nino

Places to Experience Worst Impacts From the Drought

The worst effects of this summer's drought will be felt in Oregon, where critical winter storms that normally moisten central and southern Oregon and southern Idaho will be missed. In the Pacific Northwest. According to O'Neill, scientists are discussing the origin of the shift in the weather pattern and some feel that a warmer northern Pacific Ocean could be a factor.

Two years of record-breaking dryness have swept through seven counties in central Oregon, according to the National Drought Monitor (NDM). As a whole, Oregon has seen the driest two-year stretch since 1895, according to researchers.

Irrigators who rely on reservoirs in Oregon to supply water to their crops face major challenges as reservoir levels fall between 10% and 30% from last year's levels, according to the Oregon Department of Agriculture.

According to Idaho Department of Water Resources official David Hoekema, southern Idaho is also suffering from severe drought, and a key reservoir in the Boise Basin has water supply levels below average.

In his words, it takes more than just an average year to recover, he predicted that this year will be anything but typical. Southern Idaho is expected to remain in a state of drought for the time being, with chances that the condition will worsen, according to AP News.

Water Crisis Due to Drought

Water wells in southern Oregon's Klamath Basin are running dry following a water crisis that left dozens of households without water last summer.

There has been a significant decrease in underground aquifer water levels throughout Oregon this winter, according to Ivan Gall, field services division administrator for the Oregon Water Resources Department.

Farms and ranches in the basin didn't get any federally owned irrigation water last summer because of drought conditions, so irrigators had to pump significantly more water from the subterranean aquifer to keep their operations going, Gall explained.

Anti-government protesters briefly camped out along an irrigation canal and threatened to open the water valves, prompting global attention to the water crisis.

Related Article: Western US is Experiencing the Worst Drought Since Medieval Times

For more news, updates about drought and similar topics don't forget to follow Nature World News!
Letter to the Editor,

Unless we as a community decide to do something about the present state laws that allow developers to trump local zoning laws, developers will continually come in and build out-of-place multi-story buildings in out-of-place neighborhoods and legally have every right to do so. Write to your legislators and let them know that you want them to correct the affordable housing rules so they are not so draconian.
According to the latest news from the Russian disinformation machine and its American counterparts, it turns out that President Bidens weakness and incompetence are the prime causes of Russias invasion of Ukraine. Thank goodness, they claim, that Russia has summoned its peace-keepers to pacify the war-mongering Ukrainians, who like nothing better than to harass and murder ethnic Russians living peaceably within Ukrainian borders.

It turns out that these same Ukrainians also have their eyes on Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk  independent states that would like nothing better than to join the new and improved Russia. In fact, the true Ukrainian plot isnt merely to incorporate just those territories. Their real plan is to encircle their friendly neighbor, Russia, with tanks, artillery and infantry, soften it through the shock and awe of bombardment and missile strikes, launch a blitzkrieg the likes of which even that other genius, Herr Hitler, would admire, and quickly occupy the capital city Moscow.

Once the Russians are neutralized and their capitol is secured, the overarching Ukrainian objective  making Russia a satellite of Ukraine  will be achieved by removing Russias democratically elected president and installing a puppet answerable only to Ukraine. Peace, liberty, prosperity and fraternity will descend upon the lucky Russians. Only Biden, with his arrogance and corruption, stands in the way of accomplishing these ideals.

Trouble is, it was Donald J. Trump who held onto the $400 million that Congress had allocated for the defense of democratic Ukraine, not Biden  money that would have helped fulfill the promise the U.K., the U.S. and yes, Russia, made when Ukraine gave up its nuclear arsenal, which at the time was behind only Russias and Americas.

The Ukrainians did their part to denuclearize for the sake of world peace. They had faith in our word that we would protect them in case they were attacked.

Instead of defending them and keeping our promise, Trump demanded that the Ukrainians provide him with political dirt that he could use against Biden in the 2020 election. He was impeached for this extortion. And it was Trump who gave Putin the green light by never standing up to him.

Do you remember Helsinki on July 20, 2018, when Trump was asked during an internationally attended press conference if Russia interfered in our elections, as the Mueller Report uncovered? Instead of heeding 19 of his own intelligence agencies (the FBI, CIA, DIA, NSA plus 15 others), he chose to believe Putin, who strongly proclaimed Russian innocence.

He attacked NATO for being outdated. He disparaged our long-term allies. On this day of infamy, second only to December 7, 1941, Trump weakened America  and Putin understood that any outrage goes.

As an American of Russo/Ukrainian heritage, I am proud that I voted for Biden. And I am reassured that all Americans of good conscience admire and support the Ukrainians, as do the thousands of Russians who took to the streets in protest, only to be beaten and arrested by Putins thugs.

Gene Burshuliak, of Orange, is a retired Math and English teacher.
New Castle, PA (16103)

Today

Considerable clouds early. Some decrease in clouds later in the day. High near 70F. Winds light and variable..

Tonight

Rain showers in the evening will evolve into a more steady rain overnight. Low 54F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 80%.
WELLINGTON, March 4 (Xinhua) -- Three Paralympic alpine skiers will represent New Zealand at the Beijing 2022 Paralympic Winter Games.

Paralympian Corey Peters and Aaron Ewen will compete in the sitting category, and Adam Hall will take part in the standing category.

The team arrived in Beijing last Saturday, and the competition gets underway on March 5.

Hall and Peters are no strangers to the Paralympics, having achieved multiple medals for New Zealand in past Paralympic Winter Games.

Beijing 2022 will be Aaron Ewen's Paralympic debut after an injury forced him to withdraw just before the PyeongChang Paralympic Winter Games in 2018.

Five Para alpine ski events are contested at the Winter Paralympics, and the three New Zealand Para athletes are likely to compete across both speed and technical disciplines.

The Beijing 2022 Paralympic Winter Games have rigorous pandemic prevention measures in places such as daily testing, physical distancing, temperature checks, and a closed-loop system, said Jane Stevens, Chef de Mission of the New Zealand team.

Minister for Disability Issues Carmel Sepuloni spoke highly of the organizers of the Beijing 2022 Paralympic Winter Games, saying more than 289,000 facilities have been renovated barrier-free for the Paralympics. 


New trustees boost charity for prison leavers New trustees boost charity for prison leavers

Community Chaplaincy Norfolk (CCN), which supports people coming out of prison, is celebrating four new additions to its Board of Trustees.

Established in 2018, the charity delivers vital support to those leaving prison in Norfolk, providing trained Volunteer Mentors to help with the transition back into wider society, with the aim of reducing re-offending.



Following an interview process, CCN has appointed four new Trustees to ensure that the charitys vision is upheld. The Chair of Trustees, Rev Matthew Hutton DL said: We are immensely proud of what CCN is achieving. The new Board Members will bring fresh perspective and energy to our vision - to see our clients become integrated, confident and fulfilled members of the community.



The newly engaged Trustees are Sarah Watson, Laura Bell, Rev Danny Doran-Smith and His Honour Stephen Holt.



With a specialism in employment and education, Laura Bell (pictured above) currently works at the University of East Anglia as an Outreach Worker. I'm really excited to be joining CCN as a trustee, she said. I like the charity's mission of meeting people where they are at and walking alongside them as they reintegrate into society following release from prison. It is such a practical demonstration of Jesus' concern for justice and care for the marginalised. I'm looking forward to bringing my experience of working in higher education, specifically around employability and widening participation, to the role.







Rev Danny Doran-Smith is both a curate and the director of a Norfolk-wide youth charity. I am delighted to become a trustee of CCN and to bring my experience to the charity, he said, especially my understanding of the relationship between providers and service users at individual, group, and community levels. As a charity founder and director, I believe I can bring my wisdom around strong strategic leadership to the team. Having had the privilege to work in different contexts, supporting various deprived, disadvantaged and marginalised groups for over 25 years, I think I'll fit the needs of CCN well.







Stephen Holt is a retired circuit judge who practiced as a barrister and was the Recorder of Norwich and Resident Judge at Norwich Crown Court from 2014 until April 2021. Having worked in the Criminal Justice System since 1978, he said I very much looking forward to using my experience to help support CCN, both volunteers and clients. I think this is a very exciting time to be joining as a trustee this hugely worthwhile charity and helping to support the excellent work it does.







Sarah Watson is a professional musician and brings a passion for supporting people facing multiple disadvantages. Commenting on her recent appointment, Sarah said: I am so delighted to be joining CCN as a trustee. Their work is of huge importance. They see the individual for who they are, not what theyve done, as is integral to the Christian faith. I am so excited to see what God has in store for the future of CCN and my role as a trustee. I studied music at university and believe that music making can have a huge positive impact on mental health and wellbeing, so I am keen to see whether this is something that could be looked at within the work of CCN.



The new Board Members are currently undertaking a training and induction process and will take the number of Trustees supporting CCN to ten. You can find out more or pledge your support for Community Chaplaincy Norfolk at www.norfolkchaplaincy.org.uk or by contacting the Manager, Melanie Wheeler, on 07710 303909.





Eldred Willey, 03/03/2022
Kings Lynn churches to hold vigil for Ukraine Kings Lynn churches to hold vigil for Ukraine

Kings Lynn Churches Together is organising a candlelit prayer vigil for Ukraine on Saturday outside the Minster.

The vigil will take place on Saturday March 5 from 6pm to 6.30pm. Participants are encouraged to wear yellow and blue. There will be an opportunity to make a donation for Ukraine.



Meanwhile Access, a charity that supports migrants in East Anglia, is collecting medical supplies at its King's Lynn building at 41 St James Lodge, Old Hospital Mews, Hospital Walk, King's Lynn PE30 5RU.



There is an urgent need of medical and first aid supplies to treat the injured. Items needed include anti diarrhoea tablets, Nurofen, activated charcoal, bandages, gauze, antiseptic spray and wipes, Sudocrem, Corvalol, Baclofen, antihistamines, batteries, torches, candles, first aid kits and sleeping bags.



Clothes can also be donated, at Vets1, The Old Bank, Hardwick Road, Kings Lynn, PE30 4NA. Vets1 is a family operated and owned veterinary hospital and has transformed its reception area into a humanitarian aid collection point. Once donated, the items will be taken to the St Olga Ukrainian Catholic Church in Peterborough, which has created a centralised donation drop off facility for East Anglia.



The donations will be driven over to refugee camps in Poland.



Pictured above are members of St Olgas church in Peterborough (image ITN news).























Eldred Willey, 03/03/2022
While the physical war in Ukraine is already a humanitarian disaster, the virtual war over the internet and the tech companies that run it and use it will likely get a lot worse.

Thats because for the most part the actual internet network has withstood the onslaught since Russia invaded Ukraine. There have been outages and extreme slowness in parts of the country and malware or other threats have proliferated but in generalto the surprise of manythe network has been pretty resiliant considering the extreme circumstances, experts say.

Thats not to say there havent been serious problems. The internet research team at ThousandEyes said it detected significant levels of internet traffic disruption and reduced availability of key Ukrainian banking, defense and other government websites. The patterns of disruption are consistent with network behavior we have observed during other distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, as well as indicative of potential countermeasures that may have been taken by service operators to mitigate impacts to their service, ThousandEyes stated March 4.

DDoS mitigation, when employed via cloud services providers, has largely been effective, the group said.

The websites and services that have deployed large-scale cloud-based security providers (such as Imperva, Cloudflare, etc.), either for a period of time or switching recently during the last week, have been able to more effectively maintain uptime and access, ThousandEyes stated. These DDoS mitigation providers typically redirect traffic through their own infrastructure, which can manage higher traffic volumes as well as use techniques to scrub malicious traffic and send legitimate traffic to the actual destinations.
Newburyport, MA (01950)

Today

Generally sunny despite a few afternoon clouds. High 67F. Winds NNW at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

Partly cloudy skies early will become overcast later during the night. Low 46F. Winds WNW at 5 to 10 mph.
* The Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference National Committee, China's top political advisory body, started annual session in Beijing on Friday.

* The National People's Congress, China's top legislature, will convene annual session on Saturday.

* The "two sessions" are of great importance in the country's political calendar, during which development targets will be made for the year and beyond.

BEIJING, March 4 (Xinhua) -- China's top political advisory body started its annual session on Friday, marking the beginning of the country's major political gatherings in a crucial year for its march toward modernization.

President Xi Jinping and other Chinese leaders attended the opening meeting of the fifth session of the 13th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.

In the past year, the CPPCC National Committee and its standing committee had performed their duties with a focus on getting a five-year blueprint off to a great start, further built the CPPCC as a special consultative body to improve the performance of the CPPCC system, and made new contributions to the cause of the Party and the country, Wang Yang, chairman of the CPPCC National Committee, said at the meeting.

In 2022, the CPPCC committees will see their work revolving around the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, said Wang.

The fifth session of the 13th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) opens at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, March 4, 2022. (Xinhua/Ding Lin)

Dubbed the "two sessions," China's major political season also includes the annual gathering of the National People's Congress (NPC), the country's top legislature. The NPC session will open on Saturday.

The "two sessions" are of great importance in the country's political calendar, during which development targets will be made for the year and beyond.

This year's "two sessions" carry extra weight, as the Party will convene its national congress in the second half of the year. Meanwhile, the gatherings are held in the second year of the 14th Five-Year Plan period (2021-2025) and at a time the world is reeling from the lingering COVID-19 pandemic, weak economic recovery and volatile regional situations.

Liu Zhongmin, a national political advisor, said the "two sessions" will forge a synergy among the Chinese people and firm up their confidence in overcoming difficulties.

The government work report, to be unveiled on Saturday, sits high on the agenda of the "two sessions," and a slew of key economic targets, such as gross domestic product (GDP) growth, employment and foreign trade, are set to be announced.

Despite sporadic COVID-19 resurgences and a complicated external environment, China's GDP in 2021 expanded 8.1 percent to 114.4 trillion yuan (about 18 trillion U.S. dollars), while its GDP per capita rose to 12,500 U.S. dollars, surpassing the global average.

Observers say that China's role in the global economic recovery is extremely important, and it is perhaps the only major power that can play such a role today.

Zhang Lianqi, a member of the CPPCC National Committee, said the "two sessions," held at a new crucial juncture, will specify goals and missions in reform and development in the "crucial year."

Economic stability will be a priority for policymaking. Although the targets for economic and social development will not be unveiled until Saturday, experts have been optimistic about the economic outlook.

"As long as China stabilizes the economy, it can overcome the adverse effects of the pandemic, maintain people's livelihoods and get a head start in the new round of development," said Zhang Liqun, a researcher with the Development Research Center of the State Council.

Having successfully eliminated absolute poverty and realized the goal of building a moderately prosperous society in all respects, China is now striding forward on a new journey of building a modern socialist country. A focus of the "two sessions" will be how to make progress in key fields.

Earlier this year, China unveiled its "No. 1 central document" for 2022, outlining vital tasks to comprehensively advance rural vitalization. The year 2022 will be a crucial year for aligning the efforts of consolidating and expanding poverty alleviation achievements with rural vitalization endeavors.

Promoting common prosperity and improving people's lives are also poised to be included in the roadmap for the new journey.



Liu Xueliang, a researcher with the Institute of Economics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said that high-quality development is the foundation for common prosperity. Liu highlighted efforts to address problems such as regional, urban-rural and income disparities.

Stabilizing employment is an issue that garners widespread attention, as it is a key to protecting people's livelihoods.

Guo Weimin, a spokesperson for the fifth session of the 13th National Committee of the CPPCC, told a press conference on Thursday that China's continued economic recovery and robust growth in new industries and business models will help stabilize employment by creating more jobs.

Journalists raise hands to ask questions during a press conference of the fifth session of the 13th National People's Congress (NPC) via video link in Beijing, capital of China, March 4, 2022. (Xinhua/Chen Zhonghao)

Members of the CPPCC National Committee have advised that special attention be paid to key groups, such as university graduates, migrant workers and people with difficulties, calling for targeted assistance to these groups, Guo said.

In addition, a wide range of topics, such as housing, child policy, and elderly care, are expected to be discussed.

At the NPC annual session, Chinese lawmakers will review a draft amendment to the Organic Law of the Local People's Congresses and Local People's Governments. Adopted in 1979, the law will go through its sixth amendment, in which a people-centered philosophy of development and whole-process people's democracy are highlighted.

Lawmakers will deliberate a draft decision on the number of deputies to the 14th NPC and their election. They will also review two draft methods for the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR) and the Macao SAR to elect their deputies to the 14th NPC.

On the diplomatic front, it is highly anticipated that China will continue to play a vital role in the multilateral agenda of global governance in 2022.

Ruan Zongze, executive vice president of the China Institute of International Studies, said that by leveraging the leading role of head-of-state diplomacy, China will further expand its circle of friends and cooperation with other countries for win-win results.

Zhou Hanmin, a national political advisor from Shanghai, said that the Chinese people often say victory should be secured at the starting line, and the principle applies to the goal of basically achieving socialist modernization by 2035.

"The year 2035 is not far away. We should seize every minute," Zhou said. 
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.
by Hayati Nupus

JAKARTA, March 4 (Xinhua) -- Lili Handayani, 30, has been using the Redmi 4x since two years ago when many of her friends switched to the smartphones produced by a Chinese company. They liked the Chinese mobiles being affordable and with high capacities.

The 5-inch white smartphone with 3 GB RAM and 32 GB ROM has supported her busy activities as being an online media journalist in terms of researching, recording interviews, transcribing, writing news, taking photos and surfing social media.

"This smartphone really helps me to work smoothly. It looks stylish with high specifications and many features, while the price is affordable. Thus, I can save more money," Handayani told Xinhua.

Chinese smartphones have been dominating the mobile phone market in Indonesia over the last five years, with leading brands such as Xiaomi, Redmi, Oppo, Realmi and Vivo, said Didy Riandy, a manager at Kino Phone Cell in central Jakarta, which has sold hundreds of thousands of smartphones via e-commerce since October 2015.

Apart from Chinese brands, Indonesian consumers' favorite smartphones also include iPhone from the United State and Samsung from South Korea.

Specifications such as processor, memory capacity, camera and sound quality are the important factors taken into consideration by Indonesian consumers in choosing smartphones, Riandy said.

"The prices of Chinese smartphones are very competitive, with processor specifications, screen quality and capabilities above average," Riandy explained the reason why Indonesians fancy Chinese smartphones.

The head of the Trade Research and Development Agency of the Ministry of Trade, Kasan, said Indonesia is a lucrative market as the world's third largest smartphone consuming country after China and India.

In this Southeast Asian country 355.75 million pieces of smartphone were in use in 2020, posing an average growth of 5.53 percent per year.

"Complete features but affordable are suitable for the majority of Indonesians who belong to the lower-middle class. They pay attention to the price factor when buying items," Kasan said.

"The prospect of this (smartphone) market is still growing amidst the COVID-19 pandemic which has prompted offline activities to go online and the development of the digital economy," Kasan said.

A gadget expert from the Gadtorade community, Lucky Sebastian, said that Samsung once accounted for more than 50 percent of the smartphone market in Indonesia, but since about five years ago, that leading position was gradually taken over by Chinese products.

Marketers have promoted Chinese smartphones through flash sales on e-commerce platforms and made them a topic among people who failed to get the discounted price. They also promote the Chinese products in gadget enthusiast communities.

"The overwhelming presence of Chinese smartphones (in the market) targets Samsung's weak point in mid-range consumers with affordable phones," said Sebastian.

In general, the marketing strategies of Chinese and South Korean smartphone companies are the similar when entering the Indonesian market, he said.

They offered competitive prices to encourage people to shift to their products, he said, adding that this was the way Samsung did when years ago replacing other brands such as HTC, Motorola and Sony.

After dominating the market, they would increase the specifications of their products and raise prices, he added.

Now, most of the old brands are no longer seen in the Indonesian smartphone market, except Samsung, which still dominates the upper-middle market even though the company has started releasing cheap smartphones to reach lower-class consumers. And iPhone is another exception, which remains consistent with a 2 percent to 3 percent share of the market.

After successfully dominating the market, the challenge for Chinese smartphone companies in the future is how to keep their brands in the hearts of the Indonesian consumers.

"The Indonesian market is very dynamic as in every period, it is very possible to change," said Sebastian. 
Champaign, IL (61820)

Today

Periods of rain. High 58F. Winds ESE at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 100%. Rainfall near a half an inch..

Tonight

Rain likely. Low around 55F. Winds E at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 80%. Rainfall near a quarter of an inch.
Champaign, IL (61820)

Today

Rain. High 58F. Winds ESE at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 100%. Rainfall around a half an inch..

Tonight

Thundershowers following a period of rain early. Low around 55F. Winds E at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 80%.
TOKYO, March 4 (Xinhua) -- Japan's Supreme Court on Friday ruled that Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) should pay 1.4 billion yen (12 million U.S. dollars) in damages to about 3,700 residents whose lives were stricken by the Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011.

This is the first finalized decision of such damages which cover three class-action lawsuits out of more than 30 filed against the company, averaging about 380,000 yen (3,290 dollars) per plaintiff, according to NHK. 
Longview, TX (75601)

Today

Variable clouds with thunderstorms - possibly severe in the afternoon. Damaging winds and large hail with some storms. High 78F. Winds SSW at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 90%. Rainfall may reach one inch..

Tonight

Scattered thunderstorms early. Skies will become mainly clear overnight. A few storms may be severe. Low 57F. Winds W at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 50%.
On Wednesday, U.S. Rep. Louie Gohmert was uncertain about whats next for him except that he knows he has a job to finish and said he remains committed to a few principles that were important to him when he signed up to run for Texas attorney general.

I still and will to my dying breath fight to preserve Texas and her republic, the country, the greatest ever in terms of opportunity and individual enjoyment, assets, he said. Theres never anybody greater than America. Theres never been another country that fought just on the basis of whats right and fair.

Gohmert came up last in Tuesdays primary in a four-way race for the Republican nomination for Texas attorney general, shutting the 17-year congressman out of the May runoff and ensuring this is his last year to serve as the District 1 representative in Congress. He took office in 2005.

Ive got the rest of the year to finish in Congress, he said. I have no idea what comes after that, but it will be trying to preserve things, really freedom, for the next generation, because I dont believe its been properly preserved so far.

He added freedom is in grave danger.

Gohmert said he had a goal to save Texas and feels the country has a tough road ahead.

I have great hope that Gods not through with us yet, he said to a group gathered at Rick's on the Square in downtown Tyler on Tuesday night. We have a chance to get back on track; were gonna have to do it in a hurry. I hope and pray that we will have people elected in November that will be able to lead us in that direction, but in the meantime Ill do everything I can to help my country and be thankful to God.

Gohmert attributed his loss to low voter turnout and to not having enough funding to finish the campaign the way it needed to be.

There were people that were telling me that if I didnt get more money raised, it would be very difficult to win, he said. He added that a month ago a very accurate poll had put him in second place.

In the interim, the other three candidates including Paxton averaged six times more money being spent than I had, he said. We spent what we had and that made a real difference. It clearly did. The goal was to have a runoff, to be in the runoff and on May 24 win the runoff. Everything was going good until we got closer to the election.

He campaigned all over the state, he said, an experience he called gratifying and rewarding. In the end, though, low voter turnout shaped election results.

We only had about 13 percent get out and vote, he said. That doesnt bode well when youre trying to right the ship.

Gohmert said he will not endorse either of the candidates headed to the runoff for the Republicans nomination Texas attorney general  Paxton or George P. Bush. He continues to be concerned about Paxtons legal troubles and about the amount of legal experience Bush has.

He said he and the other candidate who was knocked out of the race, Eva Guzman, had agreed to endorse the other if one advanced to the runoff.

I dont plan to endorse right now, he said.

The day after the primary, Gohmert was pleased by a map showing he carried every county in his district and some others in East Texas.

I also have to say one of the feelings I have as I look at the map of Texas and the counties that each candidate won  East Texas, I love East Texas, Gohmert said. Ive always lived in East Texas except for my four years in the Army and I always want to live in East Texas. I love the people.

In Smith County, 62.4% voted for Gohmert, while 44.9% of voters in Gregg County cast a vote for him.

To carry every county in my district plus some, including where I grew up in Mount Pleasant and Camp County and Franklin County  Im really touched deeply by East Texas. They know me best and they voted for me and carried each one of the counties. It just deepens my love and affection for the people of East Texas. This is the best place in the world to live.
The teaching of grammar in primary schools in England (a key feature of England's national curriculum) does not appear to help children's narrative writing, although it may help them generate sentences, according to new UCL-led research.

The study, which is funded by the Nuffield Foundation and co-authored by researchers from UCL and the University of York, is the first randomized controlled trial worldwide to examine how Year 2 pupils' writing (six to seven-year-olds) might benefit from grammar teaching. The research assessed the impact of a new grammar teaching intervention called Englicious.

70 Year 2 teachers in 70 primary schools, and 1,736 pupils, were recruited to the study. The teachers and their pupils were allocated at random to either receive the Englicious intervention programme or to have their usual grammar teaching. The results showed that while children who followed the programme had encouraging results when it came to generating sentences, there was no statistically significant improvement in their narrative writing.

Children's writing was tested by a narrative writing test and a sentence generation test before and after the end of the grammar intervention. The teachers' lessons in the Englicious classes differed from those in the 'business as usual' control group classes because they linked the grammar teaching more closely with the pupils' practising of writing - a feature of the Englicious approach.

The lack of impact of grammar teaching on pupils' narrative writing raises questions about the extensive grammar specifications that are part of England's national curriculum. Currently, the content of England's national curriculum requires children aged six to seven to be taught grammatical terms such as: noun phrase, statement, command, and tense. Older primary school children have to learn terms such as subordinate clause; adverbial; modal verb; active and passive. Although teachers praised the Englicious intervention for its hands-on and interactive approach, our results match other experimental trials which do not provide enough robust support for extensive grammar teaching as the best way to improve writing." Professor Dominic Wyse, Lead Author, IOE, UCL's Faculty of Education and Society

Co-investigator Professor Bas Aarts (UCL English Language and Literature and Engilcious lead) added: "The free resources on the Englicious website did help teachers to deliver the specifications of the national curriculum in an engaging way, and led to a positive effect on children's ability to generate sentences by combining clauses.

"We would have liked, however, to have seen stronger evidence of the benefits of grammar teaching on children's narrative writing and more must be done to help children learn to write."

The authors say their study and previously published research calls into question the current way grammar is specified: they suggest that a review of the requirements for grammar in England's national curriculum is needed.

They also suggest the curriculum should focus more on what helps children to develop their writing skills at different points in development, such as focusing on teaching approaches such as sentence-combining, strategy instruction and emphasizing the processes of writing.

Professor Wyse added: "The national curriculum needs to reflect robust evidence on what works much more closely. Until an in-depth review of England's national curriculum is undertaken children are unlikely to be receiving the optimal evidence-based teaching of writing that they deserve."
Blood pressure measurements routinely taken at home are more likely to provide the basis for accurate diagnoses of hypertension than those taken in a clinic setting, according to a new study led by Kaiser Permanente investigators.

The findings come from a randomized controlled trial of 510 adults who visited one of 12 Kaiser Permanente primary care centers in Western Washington between 2017 and 2019 published today in the Journal of General Internal Medicine.

"Blood pressure varies a lot over the day -; about 30 points systolic -; and 1 or 2 measurements in clinic may not reflect your average blood pressure," said Beverly B. Green, MD, MPH, the study's first author, who is a senior investigator at Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute and a physician at Washington Permanente Medical Group. "Home blood pressure monitoring allows you to collect many more readings and average these."

To conduct the study, researchers used electronic health records to identify potential participants who were at high risk of having hypertension based on a recent clinic visit. They then randomly divided the participants into 3 groups based on the method for obtaining follow-up blood pressure measurements: in clinic, at home, or at kiosks in medical clinics or pharmacies.

In addition to these measures, every participant received 24-hour ambulatory blood pressure monitoring, or ABPM, the gold standard test for making a new diagnosis of hypertension. ABPM uses a full upper-arm cuff connected to a waist-carried device that is worn continuously for 24 hours and inflates every 20 to 30 minutes during the day and every 30 to 60 minutes at night. ABPM provides the most precise diagnostic information but is not available for widespread use. The researchers were able to determine the accuracy of the 3 other methods by comparing their results with the ABPM results.

The study found:

Blood pressure readings taken at home were consistent with ABPM

Blood pressure readings based on follow-up clinic visits were significantly lower for the systolic measure, leading to over half of the people with hypertension based on ABPM being missed

Blood pressure readings from kiosks were significantly higher than measures based on ABPM, resulting in a higher likelihood of overdiagnosis of hypertension

Home blood pressure monitoring was a better option, because it was more accurate than clinic blood pressure readings. Furthermore, a companion study found that patients preferred taking their blood pressure at home." Dr. Beverly B. Green, MD, MPH, study's first author

The companion study findings were presented at an American Heart Association Hypertension meeting.

The number of people in the United States with undiagnosed hypertension is likely to be in the millions. One recent analysis published in JAMA estimated that 23% of U.S. adults with high blood pressure were unaware that they had the condition and were not receiving treatment.

Proper diagnosis of hypertension can save a patient's life. When hypertension is identified, physicians will typically prescribe medication to lower blood pressure. Without treatment, hypertension can cause heart attack, stroke, and kidney damage, among other problems.

Current guidelines for diagnosing hypertension recommend that patients who have high blood pressure readings in clinic have another test to confirm the results. While the guidelines recommend ABPM or home blood pressure monitoring before making a hypertension diagnosis, research shows that providers continue to use in-clinic measurement when conducting the second reading.

While previous studies have found similar benefits to home blood pressure reading, this one may offer the most powerful evidence to date because of its large number of participants, its involvement of primary care clinics, and its use of real-world practitioners to take blood pressure measures instead of research personnel. Also, this study is the first to compare kiosk and ABPM results.
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, prediabetes is a serious health condition in which blood sugar levels are higher than normal, but not high enough to meet the threshold for type 2 diabetes. If diagnosed early, experts say, lifestyle changes such as weight loss and regular exercise can prevent or delay the development of type 2 diabetes and the increased risks it poses for heart disease, stroke, kidney failure and nerve damage.

Because the incidence of type 2 diabetes in the U.S. population (6.7 per 1,000 adults in 2018) has not changed significantly since 2000, it's likely that individuals with prediabetes are not getting diagnosed and treated soon enough to prevent it from progressing. Johns Hopkins Medicine researchers analyzed electronic health records and insurance claims data to better understand patients with prediabetes in the Johns Hopkins Health System, and then used that information to recommend improvements in prediabetes care applicable to all medical institutions.

In their paper published March 2 in the Journal of General Internal Medicine, the Johns Hopkins Medicine researchers analyzed data from more than 3,800 patients. They found that 13% were formally diagnosed with prediabetes, referred to a nutritionist or prescribed metformin, a medication used to prevent the development of type 2 diabetes.

The research team, led by Eva Tseng, M.D., M.P.H., assistant professor of medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, evaluated the follow-up care that patients with prediabetes received over a five-year period, including whether they had repeated laboratory testing of their A1C level (the measure of a person's average blood glucose, or blood sugar over the previous three months). Patients with prediabetes, they explain, have an A1C of 5.7 to 6.4. A normal A1C is below 5.7.

The researchers also determined if patients were diagnosed and medically coded for prediabetes, and if they were referred for nutrition therapy or started on metformin therapy.

Tseng says her team's findings are similar to what previous studies by researchers outside Johns Hopkins have shown.

Six percent of the patients evaluated developed diabetes within 12 months, which is similar to other studies. But these are people who we can potentially prevent from developing type 2 diabetes. Our results show that we have considerable room to improve in the identification and care of people with prediabetes within our health system and likely in many other places across the United States." Eva Tseng, M.D., M.P.H., assistant professor of medicine, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine

Tseng recommends that patients be appropriately screened for prediabetes, and if diagnosed, begin discussing options for treatment with their providers.

"We want to make sure patients are aware they have this diagnosis and know of some basic steps they can take to address prediabetes," Tseng says. "We hope to create a standardized dialogue about treatments, such as the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Diabetes Prevention Program, starting metformin and seeing a nutritionist."

Tseng and her colleagues plan to use their findings to guide the continued improvement of prediabetes care for the health system. This model of care can then be used by other health systems.
Last week, Olympus joined the University of Maryland (UMD) in celebrating the grand opening of its new Olympus Discovery Center. The event included a bioengineering seminar presented by Dr. Andrew Tsourkas of the Tsourkas Lab at the University of Pennsylvania and a tour of the new facility.

Image Credit: Thai Q. Nguyen, University of Maryland

Instrumental tools for bioscience and biotech innovators

The inauguration of the Olympus Discovery Center at UMD equips its bioengineering scientists with crucial imaging tools to expand and progress their research. Providing a suite of powerful, high-performance microscopy systems, the new facility enables observation deep into living tissue to encourage ground-breaking study of cellular and subcellular events.

Housed in A. James Clark Hall, the new Olympus Discovery Center is located in a hub of engineering innovation and cross-disciplinary collaboration. Under the same roof, students exploring novel approaches and strategies in a range of bioscience and biotechnology research areas can share and benefit from the centers imaging resources.

Image Credit: Thai Q. Nguyen, University of Maryland

Supporting breakthroughs in bioengineering research

To enable the observation of cell cultures and living tissues down to the subcellular level, equipment at this Olympus Discovery Center includes a FLUOVIEW FV3000RS laser scanning confocal system, a FVMPE-RS multiphoton system, an IX83 IXplore live cell system, as well as a CKX53 cell culture microscope and SZ/SZX series stereo microscopes.

The cutting-edge equipment made available through the Olympus Discovery Center at the University of Maryland will provide our world-class researchers with additional tools to advance knowledge in critical areas such as cancer diagnosis and treatment, cell biology and tissue engineering. I look forward to the future discoveries this partnership will help unlock. Gregory Ball, Vice President, Research University of Maryland

Inaugurating an Olympus Discovery Center at UMD fits with our continued efforts to provide bioscience innovators the resources they need to further their scientific aims, says Lee Wagstaff, Vice President of Sales and Marketing for Olympus Scientific Solutions Americas. We are proud that Olympus microscopy technologies will assist UMD scientists in making discoveries that will shape the way we treat injuries and diseases.

Olympus Discovery Centers provide researchers the ability to acquire and analyze vital imaging data using advanced microscopy tools. They also serve as a nexus for histology training, information and technique development, as well as a center for learning sample preparation, imaging and image processing. Olympus works closely with its academic partners to develop new products to meet the changing needs of researchers.
Resistance exercise may be superior to aerobic exercise as a way to get better sleep, and sleep is important for cardiovascular health, according to preliminary research to be presented at the American Heart Association's Epidemiology, Prevention, Lifestyle & Cardiometabolic Health Conference 2022. The meeting will be held in-person in Chicago and virtually Tuesday, March 1  Friday, March 4, 2022, and offers the latest in population-based science related to the promotion of cardiovascular health and the prevention of heart disease and stroke.

It is increasingly recognized that getting enough sleep, particularly high-quality sleep, is important for health including cardiovascular health. Unfortunately, more than a third of Americans don't get enough sleep on a regular basis. Aerobic activity is often recommended to improve sleep, yet very little is known about the effects of resistance exercise versus aerobic exercise on sleep. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' 2018 Physical Activity Guidelines Advisory Committee Scientific Report identified the need for more research into resistance exercise and sleep outcomes. Our study is one of the largest and longest exercise trials in a general adult population to directly compare the effects of different types of exercise on multiple sleep parameters." Angelique Brellenthin, Ph.D., study author, assistant professor of kinesiology, Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa

Previous research has confirmed that not getting enough sleep (the recommended amount for adults is seven to eight hours a day) or getting poor quality sleep increases risks for high blood pressure, elevated cholesterol and atherosclerosis, which happens when fatty deposits build up in arteries. Not getting enough sleep is linked to weight gain, diabetes and inflammation, all of which can worsen cardiovascular disease. Sleeping too much or too little also has been shown to increase the risk of stroke, heart attack and death.

For this study, researchers enrolled 386 adults who met the criteria for overweight or obesity, which was a body mass index from 25-40 kg/m. Participants were inactive and had elevated blood pressure, measuring from 120-139 mm Hg systolic (top number) and 80-89 mm Hg diastolic (bottom number). Participants were randomly assigned to a no-exercise group (for comparison) or one of three exercise groups (aerobic only, resistance only, or combined aerobic and resistance) for 12 months. Everyone in the exercise groups participated in supervised 60-minute sessions, three times a week, with the combination exercise group doing 30 minutes of aerobic and 30 minutes of resistance exercise.

The various workouts included:

Aerobic exercise participants could choose among treadmills, upright or recumbent bikes or ellipticals for their aerobic modality during each session. Researchers monitored their heart rates to keep them continuously in the prescribed heart rate range for a moderate-to-vigorous intensity exercise.

The resistance exercise group completed their sets and repetitions on 12 resistance machines to work all the major muscle groups in a session. The machines included leg press, chest press, lat pulldown, leg curl, leg extension, biceps curl, triceps pushdown, shoulder press, abdominal crunch, lower back extension, torso rotation and hip abduction. Participants performed three sets of 8 to 16 repetitions at 50-80% of their one-rep maximum.

The combination group did 30 minutes of aerobic exercise at a moderate-to-vigorous intensity, and then two sets of 8 to 16 repetitions of resistance exercise on 9 machines instead of 12.

Study participants completed a variety of assessments at the start and at 12 months including the self-reported Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI), which measures sleep quality. Researchers also measured sleep duration; sleep efficiency (how much time one is actually asleep divided by the total amount of time the individual is in bed); sleep latency (how much time it takes to fall asleep after getting into bed); and sleep disturbances (how frequently sleep is disturbed by things like being too hot or too cold, snoring or coughing, having to use the bathroom or having pain). Lower scores on the PSQI indicate better quality sleep, ranging from 0 for the best sleep to 21 as the worst possible sleep. Scores greater than five are considered "poor quality sleep."

The study found:

More than one third (35%) of study participants had poor quality sleep at the beginning of the study.

Among the 42% of participants who were not getting at least 7 hours of sleep at the study's start, sleep duration increased by an average of 40 minutes in 12 months for the resistance exercise group, compared to an increase of about 23 minutes in the aerobic exercise group, about 17 minutes in the combined exercise group and about 15 minutes in the control group.

Sleep efficiency increased in the resistance exercise and combined exercise groups, but not in the aerobic exercise or no exercise group.

Sleep latency decreased slightly, by 3 minutes, in the group assigned to resistance exercise only, with no notable change in latency in the other participant groups.

Sleep quality and sleep disturbances improved some in all groups including the group that did not exercise.

Based on these findings, interventions focused on resistance exercises may be a new way to promote better sleep and improve cardiovascular health.

"While both aerobic and resistance exercise are important for overall health, our results suggest that resistance exercises may be superior when it comes to getting better ZZZs at night," Brellenthin said. "Resistance exercise significantly improved sleep duration and sleep efficiency, which are critical indicators of sleep quality that reflects how well a person falls asleep and stays asleep throughout the night. Therefore, if your sleep has gotten noticeably worse over the past two stressful years, consider incorporating two or more resistance exercise training sessions into your regular exercise routine to improve your general muscle and bone health, as well as your sleep."

A study limitation is the researchers' use of a self-reported sleep questionnaire to assess sleep rather than objectively monitoring sleep.
When Gov. Gavin Newsom took office in 2019, he promised to lower prescription drug costs for all Californians.

But now, as Newsom nears the end of his first term, his ambitious ideas  such as requiring California to make its own insulin and forging drug partnerships across state lines  have failed to get off the ground or haven't produced the hefty savings he promised.

"There are powerful forces arrayed against us  not just politicians in Washington, but drug companies that gouge Californians with sky-high prices," Newsom said on his inauguration day in January 2019. "Here in California, we have the power to stand up to them, and we will."

A few months later, he vowed California would save "hundreds of millions of dollars right away  potentially billions"  by using the state's massive purchasing power to negotiate lower drug prices for California's counties, its businesses, and other states. But so far only a few counties are participating in the program, and savings have fallen far short. Another program, which debuted Jan. 1, is intended to save the state hundreds of millions of dollars a year by consolidating drug purchasing for the 14 million low-income Californians enrolled in Medicaid, but how those savings will materialize isn't clear.

Newsom's third initiative requires the state to manufacture generic drugs, but it hasn't gotten off the ground.

Drug spending by public and private health insurers grew 5% in California during Newsom's first year in office, according to the most recent state data available  and costs are expected to continue rising in California and across the country because of increases in both pharmaceutical prices and prescription drug use.

Yet Newsom, a Democrat who is running for reelection in November, argues that California's initiatives are leading the nation and that realizing cost savings can take years.

Newsom's office declined to answer questions about the cost savings shortfalls, but his administration provided written responses to some KHN queries.

Leveraging the power of government

When Newsom announced that California would contract with its counties, its businesses, and other states to buy drugs in bulk  and expand existing bulk purchasing agreements across state agencies  he said the initiative would save "hundreds of millions," if not billions.

Three years later, the state has seen some modest savings  but nothing near what Newsom predicted.

Although it seemed as though Newsom was announcing a new program to partner with California's counties, its businesses, and other states, he was building on state drug discount agreements that predated his administration.

"The state was already doing it," said Jane Horvath, a consultant who advises state policymakers on health care costs. "They've sort of opened it up to counties to participate."

California for years has negotiated with drug manufacturers to get discounts on prescription drugs for state-run hospitals, jails, and other entities that buy and dispense drugs. Newsom's 2019 executive order expanded those agreements to allow other entities to benefit, akin to giving them a coupon code that is applied at checkout. Though Newsom initially said two other states were interested in joining the program, none have.

So far, three populous counties  Los Angeles, Orange, and Sacramento  have joined. County officials and the Newsom administration say the state's pricing agreements have saved money, but how much is unclear  they have given different figures and time frames.

The state Department of General Services, which oversees the Statewide Pharmaceutical Program, said the three counties saved about $500,000 from January 2021 to September 2021. But Sacramento County in February reported saving nearly $700,000 on drugs for its jails "in a little over a year."

How many state agencies have banded together to buy cheaper drugs is also unclear. The Newsom administration said the California State University system joined the program and saved $476,000 over five months. The governor's office also said the state saved $3 million over five months on mental health medications under an August 2021 bulk purchasing arrangement.

Other states have been banding together for years to get discounts.

Oregon Health Authority pharmacy director Trevor Douglass runs a drug purchasing consortium with Washington that has saved both states at least $142 million since 2016. Nevada plans to join the consortium, and Douglass said he is in talks with Delaware and Wisconsin  but hasn't heard from California.

"I would be happy to hear from California tomorrow," Douglass said. "I would have been happy to hear from them yesterday."

Overhauling Medicaid drug purchasing

Starting in January, a single company started administering prescription drugs for all of California's Medicaid patients, most of whom previously got their medications through about two dozen managed-care plans.

But the state contractor, Magellan Health, was woefully understaffed and unprepared when the transfer occurred Jan. 1, and thousands of patients were left without critical medications. The state and Magellan have worked to address some of the shortfalls, but some physicians say problems persist.

Newsom's administration projects the state will save $414 million in the 2022-23 budget year, mostly by securing rebates from drug companies now forced to deal with the nation's most populous state at the negotiating table. The state expects to double those savings the following budget year.

However, it's too soon to tell whether Newsom's experiment will succeed. Health insurance plans are skeptical, citing industry-backed studies that show high prescription drug costs in the few states that run their own programs.

"We think the assumptions, the savings, are exaggerated," said John Baackes, CEO of L.A. Care Health Plan, the largest publicly operated health plan in the country. "That would be a polite way to say it."

Newsom isn't alone in pushing his state away from managed care as a cost-saving measure.

In July, Ohio will begin using a single health contractor for its Medicaid program, which the state estimates will save the Buckeye State $186 million in fiscal year 2022-23. New York is planning to make the switch in April 2023.

In Missouri, Josh Moore, the state's Medicaid pharmacy director, said there's no question that the state's move in 2009 to buy drugs for Medicaid enrollees has saved taxpayers millions of dollars through rebates alone. Today, he said, the state collects 99% of drug rebates offered by drug companies to state and federal governments, compared with the 90% to 95% that states typically claim through managed-care plans, which don't always catch or follow up on billing errors.

"Small percentages make large numbers whenever we talk about the kind of money that were talking about in Medicaid pharmacy systems," Moore said.

Diving into the generic drug market

In 2020, Newsom's proposal to create a California generic drug brand, CalRx, became law and required the state to manufacture the drugs or partner with drug manufacturers.

The law calls on the state to "enter into partnerships" to produce or distribute generic prescription drugs and at least one form of insulin. The Newsom administration is in discussions with drug manufacturers and has made some progress, but no contracts have been inked, according to prepared responses from Rodger Butler, a spokesperson for the state Health and Human Services Agency.

Vishaal Pegany, assistant secretary for the Health and Human Services Agency, told lawmakers at a hearing in January that the state is focusing on developing insulin and other generic drugs that would serve a large population, as well as drugs that are high-cost or in short supply. But the state isn't sharing details about which other drugs California might produce, the names of the drug companies it's negotiating with, or how long producing the first CalRx drugs might take.

The state had previously been in talks with Utah-based nonprofit drug company Civica Rx, but Senior Vice President Allan Coukell declined to say whether the company is still working with the state.

State Sen. Richard Pan (D-Sacramento), who authored the 2020 generic drug bill, said California must also eventually develop the ability to manufacture its own generic drugs. "You can't just stand up a factory overnight and we have a learning curve, so right now we have to find a generic manufacturer that wants to play ball with California," Pan said. "But I hope in the long run we will stand up our own manufacturing capacity so we're not constrained by a company willing to work with us."

Phillip Reese, an assistant professor of journalism at California State University-Sacramento, contributed to this article.

This story was produced by KHN, which publishes California Healthline, an editorially independent service of the California Health Care Foundation.
An analysis of health data for nearly 312,400 current drinkers suggests consuming alcohol, most notably wine, with meals is associated with a lower risk of developing type 2 diabetes, according to preliminary research to be presented at the American Heart Association's Epidemiology, Prevention, Lifestyle & Cardiometabolic Health Conference 2022.

The meeting will be held in-person in Chicago and virtually Tuesday, March 1  Friday, March 4, 2022, and offers the latest in population-based science related to the promotion of cardiovascular health and the prevention of heart disease and stroke.

The effects of alcohol consumption on health have been described as a double-edged sword because of its apparent abilities to cut deeply in either direction  harmful or helpful, depending on how it is consumed. Previous studies have focused on how much people drink and have had mixed results. Very few studies have focused on other drinking details, such as the timing of alcohol intake." Hao Ma, MD, PhD, Study Author and Biostatistical Analyst, Obesity Research Center, Tulane University

Alcohol consumption is linked to short- and long-term health risks, including motor vehicle crashes, violence, sexual risk behaviors, high blood pressure, obesity, stroke, breast cancer, liver disease, depression, suicide, accidents, alcohol abuse and alcoholism. These health risks increase as the amount of alcohol an individual drinks increases. For some cancers and other health conditions, the risk increases even at very low levels of alcohol consumption  less than one drink daily.

The American Heart Association and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommend that adults who do not drink alcohol should not start. Among those who drink alcohol regularly, they should talk with their doctors about the benefits and risks of consuming alcohol in moderation. Some people should not drink at all, including women who are pregnant or trying to get pregnant, people under the age of 21 and people with certain health conditions.

A key for those who already drink alcohol is moderation. Moderate drinking is defined as one glass of wine or other alcoholic beverage daily for women and up to two glasses daily for men. That works out to be up to 14 grams, or about 150 ml, of wine a day for women and up to 28 grams, or about 300 ml, of wine daily for men, according to Ma.

"Clinical trials have also found that moderate drinking may have some health benefits, including on glucose metabolism. However, it remains unclear whether glucose metabolism benefits translate into a reduction of type 2 diabetes," he said. "In our study, we sought to determine if the association between alcohol intake and risk of type 2 diabetes might differ by the timing of alcohol intake with respect to meals."

In this study researchers specifically examined the effect moderate drinking may have related to new-onset type 2 diabetes among all study participants over about 11 years (between 2006 and 2010). Data was reviewed for nearly 312,400 adults from the UK Biobank who self-reported themselves as regular alcohol drinkers.

The participants did not have diabetes, cardiovascular diseases or cancer at the time of study enrollment. People who reduced their alcohol consumption due to illness, doctor's advice or pregnancy were excluded from the study. The average age of participants was about 56 years, slightly more than half of the adults were women and 95% were white adults.

The analysis found:

During an average of nearly 11 years of follow-up, about 8,600 of the adults in the study developed type 2 diabetes.

Consuming alcohol with meals was associated with a 14% lower risk of type 2 diabetes compared to consuming alcohol without eating food.

The potential benefit of moderate drinking on type 2 diabetes risk was evident only among the people who drank alcohol during meals, although the specific time of meals was not collected in this study.

The beneficial association between alcohol drinking with meals and type 2 diabetes was most common among the participants who drank wine vs. other types of alcohol.

Consuming wine, beer and liquor had different associations with type 2 diabetes risk. While a higher amount of wine intake was associated with a lower risk of type 2 diabetes, a higher amount of beer or liquor was associated with a higher risk of type 2 diabetes.

"The message from this study is that drinking moderate amounts of wine with meals may prevent type 2 diabetes if you do not have another health condition that may be negatively affected by moderate alcohol consumption and in consultation with your doctor," Ma said.

Despite the findings of this robust analysis of healthy drinkers, the relationship between alcohol consumption and new-onset type 2 diabetes remains controversial, according to Robert H. Eckel, M.D., FAHA, a past president (2005-2006) of the American Heart Association, who was not involved in the study.

"These data suggest that it's not the alcohol with meals but other ingredients in wine, perhaps antioxidants, that may be the factor in potentially reducing new-onset type 2 diabetes. While the type of wine, red versus white, needs to be defined, and validation of these findings and mechanisms of benefit are needed, the results suggest that if you are consuming alcohol with meals, wine may be a better choice," said Eckel, professor of medicine, emeritus in the Division of Endocrinology, Metabolism and Diabetes and the Division of Cardiology at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus.
Thought Leaders Peter Simpson

Michael Girardi

Simon Meffan-Main



In partnership with SLAS, News-Medical attended the 2022 press briefing where Peter Simpson (Chief Scientific Officer, Medicines Discovery Catapult ), Michael Girardi (Vice President of Sales and Marketing, Hamilton ), and Simon Meffan-Main (Vice President of Product, Tetra Partner Network ) gave their thoughts on the life sciences sector post-COVID-19. Read their thoughts below!

Peter please can you tell us about all the work Medicines Discovery Catapult has been doing over the last couple of years?

My story begins back in March 2020 when it was recognized that, in the UK, we did not have the testing infrastructure that was going to be needed as the true scale of the pandemic began to emerge.

I got asked to help set something up. There were no buildings, laboratories, automation, assay equipment, or people. It was a case of begging, borrowing, and bartering for everything because in the early days of this pandemic you could not suddenly find hundreds of scientists, dozens of tissue culture hoods, a whole load of liquid handling systems, et cetera. We had to find ways to make that happen.

We had fantastic engagement from our sector - volunteers from 15 different businesses dropped what they were doing and came to work in the facility. We found a hotel that was still open at Manchester Airport and put up several hundred scientists in that hotel, operating a shuttle bus from hotel to site. We got some architects and builders in, a whole load of equipment, help to move in from the army, assistance from universities around the UK, and an assay in place. Within 16 days we were testing clinical samples for the UK.

The scale of the collaboration endeavor was unlike anything I have ever seen before and hopefully unlike anything I will ever be involved in leading again. Medicines Discovery Catapult was at the heart of it. We had fantastic help from Alderley Park, landlords, companies like AstraZeneca, and universities such as Manchester and Leeds.

There are too many people I could thank for making it happen. I think everybody recognized, as scientists, that doing some science to help the pandemic was better than sitting at home worrying about the pandemic. There was a real mobilization at our site, the UK and internationally, of scientists who could help. We had senior professors back in tissue culture hoods prepping samples into vials because they wanted to help.

It was heartwarming to see how much this industry pulled together. From diagnostic suppliers to automation specialists, to pharma companies, to not for profits, to universities, all were doing what they could do to help. We coordinated the efforts at Alderley Park, as one of three national labs. While I am no longer directly involved, that lab is continuing and has now done more than 20 million samples and employed 700 people at any one time. Well over a thousand staff have been trained in how to do diagnostic testing. Hopefully, that is something that has helped the UK and can leave a fantastic legacy for the future.

Michael, can you share with us Hamilton's story during the pandemic, and looking forward?

Like all of us in March 2022, the world came roaring at us. We are a supplier of sample preparation, sample processing, and sample access technologies that include storage systems, labware, and processing equipment, at temperatures from ambient down to -80 degrees celsius. We are deployed at academic institutions, research hospitals, and large pharma around the world.

As March hit us, we were impacted by protecting our employees, moving remotely to work offsite, and the challenge of supporting and deploying critical equipment in the COVID research pipeline. Each day was an interesting, unexplored avenue for all of us.

Our equipment, based on where it sits in R&D organizations, was critical to keep working and our employees needed to be there. From our field service engineers to our sales folks, everyone needed to figure out ways to do that. Many of us worked from our home offices, but many of us could not. Our production facilities continued to work. We were open every day of the week since March 2020 and had to figure out how to do that.

On top of that, we were also in the supply chain, and much of our equipment and technologies were needed by new labs. We had to manage and allocate products and resources carefully.

We had much more demand than supply. We wake up every day trying to help the world, our families, and our friends be healthy, live longer, and survive things like the pandemic. Thank goodness we have that in our hearts and souls and we work to do that.

Collaborations came at us quickly. For example, there is one we are doing now with a startup at Harvard and their partner Rhinostics, a company here in Wayland, Massachusetts, that created some alternative swab testing hardware. This was deployed in very high volumes because testing demand went up. We have robots and automation that can make this stuff work in high throughput labs.

They came to us with the challenge to remove the tops of test tubes. We got together with LabElite DeCapper technologies and created an automation that allows caps to be capped and decapped in a very, very high throughput manner. That relationship continues.

The pandemic continues to take turns left and right. Even as the throughput needs are diminishing and we make progress on the virus, we are challenged with other cases. Our storage products, where we store research samples at up to -80, continue to be in demand.

There are lots of large repositories and organizations filling and building facilities to house R&D samples. We are a global supplier with facilities in Switzerland, Tokyo, and Australia, with days of more than eight to five across weekends in different time zones around the world. I think we are looking forward to a little calming in the market and some shorter days.

Image Credit: iunewind/Shutterstock.com

Simon, can you tell us what you were doing when the pandemic began? And how did your work, or even life projects, change?

I was working for Waters Corporation when the pandemic came out, responsible for software engineering with 450 employees spread across three continents and five different countries. First off, we needed to protect those employees and we were quite fortunate in that respect in the software team at Waters.

We had invested quite dramatically in new, state-of-the-art development tools for our software teams in the previous couple of years, which was lucky, to be honest. Within the course of a week, we were able to get all 450 employees to home offices to keep productivity going. In fact, during my tenure at Waters, we actually increased productivity during that first year and a half of the pandemic. However, it was perhaps not completely sustainable because the effort everyone was putting in was 120%.

Once we had made our employees safe, we started to think about the business and how we could get business continuity to keep procurement for our customers moving and to keep critical technologies moving. After we had executed that, we started to think about, "Okay, what does this mean? How do we plan ahead to start making life better and more effective for our customers?" What became abundantly clear was that unlike the software engineering kind of world that I just talked about, our customers still had to send their scientists into the labs.

The highest value asset that a pharma company has in their portfolio are the people that do the science. It turned out that those scientists were being forced to go into the laboratory still because a lot of the existing technologies in the labs could not be run remotely. It was still workstation-based or enterprise class-based, with very little cloud-based technology in the laboratory, unlike the software industry which could pivot because everything was running in the cloud.

This concept of a lights-out laboratory came to the forefront of our customers minds. How could the industry start to enable a lab that did not need a person per instrument feeding samples, analyzing the data, reviewing the data, collaborating on the data, in front of a whiteboard? It was quite shocking to some extent, speaking to those customers about what they do in the lab. In some cases, they were putting sticky notes on the front of instruments to schedule what experiments would need to be done.

At a personal level, that led me to question whether I was placed professionally to right this within the pharma industry. It was at that point that I decided to jump across to TetraScience. TetraScience is a cloud-first company working on the digitalization of laboratories, removing those data silos to allow data to be liquid across the laboratory.

The entire industry was already re-platforming. At the beginning of COVID, Tetra had about 20 employees. When I joined about seven months ago, we had about 50 employees, and now we have about 160 employees.

I think the reasons for that are clear. I remember speaking to a top 10 pharma company in the midst of the first three months of the pandemic, and I will never forget the words they said. "We had a plan for digital transformation that was going to ride over the next five years. We are now compressing that plan into the 18 next months." I think that is now the way that TetraScience is riding, and we are seeing this increasing need to make data available for anyone and to create an open ecosystem that crosses the vendor divides.

Why is that important? At the simplest level, the pharma industry has been sped up and companies want to be able to look at what is happening in manufacturing. Say you have a presented yield difference in manufacturing. They want to be able to search that molecule and search all of the analytical technologies that analyze that molecule during early research discovery, and process scale-up.

Today, you cannot actually do that, because the data is in silos both within the pharma value chain and within each analytical technology. It becomes clear that the wave of digital transformation and automation required to get this lights-out laboratory is now going to be the primary post-pandemic focus for the entire biotech and pharma industry.

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of collaboration on a global scale. Are you hopeful that this level of collaboration will continue after the pandemic? How are your respective companies trying to promote collaboration?

Peter: I have been a massive advocate for companies working together for a decade or more. I think often what they get stuck on is contracts, who owns what, and what if that guy does not do their bit? I remember going to one negotiation when I was in the pharma world, and the other pharma company turned up with seven lawyers it had flown in from America. They wanted to know whom to sue when things went wrong, to protect themselves.

When you just want to get stuff done, you do not have the time for that, and I think what we saw here is that sense that actually we do not have to do that, particularly when people trust each other and are trying to see the bigger picture. It is not always about who gets sued when things go wrong. It is not even always about who gets to sell the product at the end. One of the things I have always said in my career is that we are all patients as well as scientists, and we all know patients as well as scientists.

So, if that other guy makes a drug that cures cancer, that is great. It does not have to be me that makes the money, because I might be the person who needs the medicine. I think the philosophy of coming into science to do something good for people is probably back at the forefront of people's minds now. I hope that philosophy sticks with us.

Simon: Even before the pandemic, I think an average of seven companies would collaborate on any new molecule. I think we are only going to see more of that as contract research and contract development organizations participate in new modalities.

I think another thing that has also come out of the pandemic is that collaboration is not just for the pharma companies, but the vendors that serve the pharma companies. Today, at TetraScience, we are seeing this drive to create an open ecosystem where data is independent because the data is not owned by any particular company and it is ultimately owned by the patient, which is what that data is for.

Today, all that data tends to be in different formats that are undecipherable between different technologies used by different parts within a pharma company, and then different companies. This is why the digital transformation aspect of what is happening within lab automation is so important. We call it data liquidity. If you think about a JPEG picture today, you can look at that picture on any device, and you can take a picture on any device. You cannot actually do that with scientific data, which is arguably humankind's most valuable asset as we are challenged with more episodes like the COVID pandemic.

Michael: We invest a good amount of money in new product development at the Hamilton Company. Some of the development of new products is done through collaborations or organically done through our own R&D. The collaboration with Rhinostics and Harvard was good in the sense that we trusted each other. None of us knew where it was going or what the COVID path was going to be. In the end, we came up with something quite fruitful which is now out in the market helping patients.

The roadmap on collaboration is never really clear, in my experience. It takes a good amount of trust from the collaborators. They are not always fruitful, but it sure does feel good when they are, and we are always looking for more of those.

Image Credit: fotogestoeber/Shutterstock.com

What is your current assessment of the biotech and scientific community's approach and progress two years into the pandemic?

Michael: I think it has been quite good from where I sit as a patient. I am proud of the advancement in the vaccine. Nothing else has been ever done that fast in the history of mankind, and I am proud to be part of it.

Peter: Medicines Discovery Catapult works with the smaller companies, the biotechs, and the SMES, and I think we have seen a real focus around future vaccine technologies, drug delivery technologies, and planning for the future.

The things that have been delivered with existing technologies, or nearly existing technologies, have been amazing, and the speed of getting these vaccines through has been beyond what the industry probably felt it was able to do. I think it is fantastic to see the logistical capabilities of companies, and organizations working together.

I am also delighted to see the boost this has given to the next generation of drug and vaccine delivery technologies. People have seen what has been possible with lipid nanoparticles and they are now looking at a whole range of additional delivery approaches. I think that broadens out the future because it is great that we now have more tools in the toolbox.

We are in a pretty amazing place, two years into a pandemic. But we also all recognize this is not, sadly, the last pandemic of our lifetime, and that it is really important that we continue to support the next wave of innovators so that for whatever comes at us next time, we have got more tools to combat it.

Simon: I think one of the most eyeopening things has not just been the emergence of new tool providers and new biotech players, but the excitement of a new generation of scientists. I think this has shone a light on science, particularly life sciences. It has become instantly recognizable as a career to work in and make an impact, which I think had become diluted with the emergence of the tech industries over the last kind of 10, or 20 years.

To be a graduate in biology, biochemistry or biophysics is exciting, cool, hip, and trendy again, which I think can only accelerate the development of new modalities for all sorts of disease states.

Recent advancements in machine learning and AI is helping to tackle volumes of research data, but what more needs to be done? Are there any limitations when adopting AI for data analysis?

(Simon): The advancements in AI, certainly in life sciences, are currently limited entirely by the ability to get the data in a usable form. You need to first harmonize the data and make it follow some kind of pattern that you can recognize. The most simple, basic terms like the date and time format are different depending on the type of software and hardware that produces that data.

To be able to do anything you need to transform the data into a machine-readable form that is understandable. That is probably the biggest lift that the industry is undergoing at the moment, and some multiple projects and companies are trying to focus on preparing the data for AI. The example I gave before of just being able to search your data at Novo Nordisk gives an indication of the infancy of preparing data for AI. If you cannot actually search the sample name or the molecule type, then it is unclear how you can do advanced machine learning and AI.

Fortunately, our company, and other companies, are really focused on making that data available right now. We are engaged with all of the top 10 pharma companies, as well as tens of biotech companies, trying to prepare that data for advanced data science.

Image Credit: PopTika/Shutterstock.com

What are the byproducts or legacies of the pandemic for the biotech and scientific communities? Are you willing to make any predictions of what those legacies might bring?

(Peter): A better understanding of the importance of diagnostics. In the drug discovery industry, people get very excited about a new medicine and typically not very excited about a new diagnostics. Historically, it has been Cinderella science. What we have seen is not just scientists, but now the entire population understanding diagnostic tests, having detailed opinions on the benefits of a PCR assay over a lateral flow test, and being willing to do diagnostics across a range of situations, in their home or their workplace.

That is not limited to importance within a pandemic. If we could get the population to be willing to engage with diagnostics, take it seriously and understand its nuances in community diagnostic hubs, hospitals, and at home, there are a whole range of industry opportunities that open up. If we can get governments to be willing to invest and support the diagnostics innovation industry, there are a whole raft of opportunities in innovative diagnostic tests and sophisticated data analysis of population changes.

(Michael): Due to the pandemic, all of us are more connected with pharma and biotech in the sense of the impact that they have played with the vaccine and other therapies. I think we are all more aware of taking medicine, pills, or getting vaccines. The pharma and biotech industries have come front and center to us. Even just the names of these pharma companies that have been in the play are much more familiar to my children, my wife, and my friends now.

(Simon): I think the publics expectations from the industry have changed now. Everyone expects us to be able to run faster and safer and that those trends are going to continue. But it is going to be a challenge to manage these expectations. A new molecule for every disease state cannot be developed in 40 days, or 100 days. The industry cannot cure cancer at the same speed as we were able to take an RNA platform and adapt it for COVID.

Another prediction is that I expect we will start to see more and more digital-first organizations in contract manufacturing. A few have come to the fore that are scaling themselves as completely digital organizations, designed to be able to take a modality and get it to market in days, rather than years.

The speed within the wider industry is re-normalizing big pharma, and will then enable the biotech industry, which has very novel ideas but has not necessarily been able to get the scale they need, to bring the product to market as quickly as they would expect. Now, with the investment in contract manufacturing, I think there is going to be a heightened sense of expectation that any new molecule, once proven safe, can be consumed by patients within six months.

With rapid advancements in all areas of life sciences due to the COVID-19 pandemic, what are you personally most looking forward to in the next 10 years within the life sciences industry?

(Michael): Being an R&D-focused professional, I am looking forward to the spark in that area of pharma and biotech continuing. I think it came along at a good time for us drug discovery folk. If you look back 20 years, high and ultra-high-throughput screening took the industry by storm and we got the most out of that. One of the silver linings from the COVID outbreak is that that spark has been ignited again, allowing us to take more risks and have more successes.

(Simon): The focus on science has been fantastic. I have spent a lot of my personal career on the manufacturing side of pharmaceuticals and running the safer side of things. I think the technology gains that we have seen in research and development have been incredible: scaling-up manufacturing to make it faster and safer and being able to look across data sites with advanced machine learning and AI.

We are reimagining the scientific manufacturing space, moving to a space that is like financial services where you never have to check your credit card statement anymore because your bank will come and tell you if there has been a false transaction on it. To be able to do similar things across the pharma value chain, to look for patterns of where there might be a problem, indicate it, and solve it before any therapy ever gets to patients is the bit that I am most personally excited for, as I spent 20 years of my career working in the compliant end of the pharma value chain.

(Peter): In the Lighthouse Lab we set up, we had kids from 17, fresh graduates, and fresh PhDs thrust into the heart of the industrial setting very early in their career, taking on incredible levels of responsibilities and showing their efforts and capabilities. I am really looking forward to seeing those people coming through the industry into leadership positions because we were able to identify some fantastic young people and give them real opportunities to get started in the industry. I am sure many of them will go on to thrive.
Helsingin yliopisto (University of Helsinki) Insulin is a vital hormone produced by pancreatic beta cells. Type 1 diabetes is caused by the destruction of these cells, which results in patients having to replace the lost insulin with multiple daily injections.

Insulin secretion can be restored in diabetic patients by transplanting beta cells isolated from the pancreas of a brain dead organ donor. However, this treatment has not been widely introduced, since cells from at least two donors are needed to cure one diabetic.

For a long time, attempts have been made to produce functional beta cells from stem cells, which could make this treatment increasingly common. However, the beta cells produced from stem cells have so far been immature, with poorly regulated insulin secretion. This may be a partial explanation for why no breakthroughs have been achieved in the clinical trials based on immature cells ongoing in the United States.

A research group headed by Professor Timo Otonkoski at the University of Helsinki, has carried out pioneering efforts to optimize the functionality of pancreatic cells produced from stem cells.

In a recently published extensive article, the group has demonstrated, for the first time, that stem cells can form cells that closely mimic normal pancreatic islets, in terms of both structure and function.

The article was published in the Nature Biotechnology journal and it has been mainly funded by the Academy of Finland Center of Excellence MetaStem.

In our study, insulin secretion was regulated as usual in cells, and the cells responded to changes in the glucose level even better than the pancreatic islets isolated from organ donors that were used as controls." Vaino Lithovius, Member of the Research Group, University of Helsinki

The most comprehensive survey of beta cell function

The researchers demonstrated the function of stem cell-derived beta cells in both cell cultures and mice studies. In the latter, the researchers demonstrated that stem cell-derived beta cells transplanted into mice started effectively managing the glucose metabolism of the mice.

"Blood glucose levels are higher in mice than in humans, roughly 8-10 millimolar. After the cell transplantation, the level decreased to that seen in humans, roughly 4-5 millimolar. It remained at this level, proving that the stem cell-derived transplant was capable of regulating blood glucose levels in mice," says researcher Jonna Saarimaki-Vire, who was responsible for the cell transplantation.

The survey of beta cell function now published is the most comprehensive in the field: in addition to insulin secretion, the researchers investigated the functionality of systems that regulate insulin secretion, including metabolism and ion channels, also connecting the findings to gene expression occurring during development.

"Our study will help further improve the production of stem cell islets, which will make it easier to utilise them in disease modelling and cell therapies," Timo Otonkoski says.

"I believe the international scholarly community values our efforts to validate stem cell islets as tools for diabetes research and cell therapies," says Professor Anders Tengholm from Uppsala University, who contributed to the study.
Jeffersonville, IN (47130)

Today

Partly cloudy skies during the morning hours will give way to occasional showers in the afternoon. High 74F. Winds E at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 40%..

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Rain showers in the evening with thunderstorms developing overnight. Low 64F. Winds SE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 80%.
BEIJING, March 4 (Xinhua) -- Zhang Boli, a Chinese epidemiologist and academician with the Chinese Academy of Engineering, has prepared sufficient suggestions for this year's "two sessions."

The two sessions are the country's annual meetings of the National People's Congress (NPC), China's top legislature, and the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, the national political advisory body. The gatherings are major events on China's political calendar as the national agenda will be set for the year.

As an NPC deputy, Zhang said he was "very busy" last year. Zhang participated in multiple remote consultations and discussions to help local authorities and medical workers combat the COVID-19 resurgence in China's Hebei, Henan, Jiangsu, Guangxi and other areas in 2021.

He also conducted relevant legislative research in the field of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), as the treatment solutions inspired by TCM have proven to be effective in curing COVID-19 patients.

In January, north China's Tianjin Municipality became the first Chinese city to encounter an Omicron spread on a large scale. Zhang said that, judging from the characteristics of the Omicron variant, its infectiousness is indeed very strong while the incubation period is shorter compared with some other previous variants. However, the symptoms of the patients infected with the Omicron variant are relatively mild and the proportion of severe cases is lower.

The use of TCM in early intervention and the whole medical treatment process have proven effective in prevention, treatment and recovery from the disease, said Zhang based on his experience in curbing the COVID-19 spread in Tianjin.

"We dispatched a medical team of pediatric experts to treat patients together with practitioners of Western medicine. The effect of the joint treatment was good and the child patients recovered quickly," Zhang recalled.

In terms of recovery, Zhang added that though the nucleic acid testing results of some patients have turned negative, they are still regarded as not fully recovered. There may still be some inflammation in their lungs and their immune function is still suffering from disorders, Zhang explained.

He has formulated an integrated treatment and rehabilitation plan with joint efforts and support from other medical experts. After the patients test negative for the virus, they can be directly transferred to a rehabilitation hospital for further comprehensive rehabilitation, according to Zhang.

Since the global outbreak of the pandemic, Zhang has put forward a series of proposals in terms of epidemic prevention and control as well as vigorously developing TCM, many of which have been adopted.

"As an NPC deputy, it is my duty to put forward relevant concerns and suggestions to promote China's economic and social development. I feel very happy and have a sense of accomplishment to have made my own contributions to China's legislation and policy making," Zhang said.

This year, Zhang plans to continue his in-depth research and field trips. "The research can help me a lot in getting first-hand information, understanding the grassroots situations, the difficulties encountered by the industry and the bottlenecks of grassroots medical reform."

Zhang suggested that more efforts should be made to take precise and targeted prevention measures, such as accurately delineating different risk areas and implementing quarantine more strictly while minimizing the possible impact on the daily life of other residents.

He hailed China's firm implementation of its dynamic zero-COVID approach as the country has always put the safety and lives of its people on the top of its agenda. Zhang believes that China should also closely observe the global trend of the pandemic outbreak, conduct careful research and judgment on the variation, prevalence and toxicity of the virus, and then make policy adjustments cautiously and prudently.

"I hope that our government can comprehensively summarize our experience, achievements and shortcomings in fighting the epidemic over the past two years, and supplement and perfect its successful experience into the existing laws, regulations, policies and mechanisms so as to benefit future disease prevention and control," Zhang said. 
(Newser)  Update: Frequent stowaway Marilyn Hartman was sentenced to more than three years in prison on Thursday. Hartman pleaded guilty to felony counts of criminal trespass and escape from electronic monitoring in connection with a trespassing incident at Chicago's O'Hare Airport in 2019, the Sun-Times reports. A Cook County judge gave her 18 months in prison on the trespassing charge and two years on the escape count, to be served consecutively. But she received credit for time served in the Cook County Jail, meaning she could go free almost anytime. Her lawyer said she has nowhere to go, though she's eligible for housing programs that would continue her mental health treatment. Hartman apologized to the court and said, "I've struggled with depression and medication management my whole life." Our story from March 2021 follows:

Just one day after CBS Chicago published an in-depth interview with "Serial Stowaway" Marilyn Hartman on how she's been able to sneak onto so many flights over the years, there was another "Marilyn sighting" this week at O'Hare International Airport. WGN reports that Hartman, 69, was arrested Tuesday afternoon at the airport after she escaped custody at a halfway house where she was being electronically monitored. CBS notes Hartman's ankle bracelet didn't seem to be initially pinging, which afforded her the opportunity to flee the facility and head over to her old haunt O'Hare, where she's been busted multiple times before. Once it was discovered Hartman was missing, the Cook County Sheriff's Office tried to reach her on the monitoring device's built-in phone, but she didn't pick up.

Authorities were able to track her movements through the device's GPS, however, and once it was determined she seemed to be headed to O'Hare, Chicago police rushed to intercept her. Hartman was found in Terminal 2, before she'd passed any TSA security checkpoints, and detained. In her earlier correspondence with CBS' Brad Edwards, whom she's been in contact with since 2019, Hartman revealed her rather unsophisticated method for illicitly boarding flights to travel around the country and the world, which she estimates she's gotten away with at least 30 times. "I got by them ... by following someone ... carrying like a blue bag," she said. "I get into the TSA line and TSA lets me through, and they think I'm with the guy with the blue bag." Hartman, who told Edwards she's bipolar, said she was usually in a "depressed state of mind" when she'd sneak onto flights. Police say they'll seek felony escape charges for this week's antics. More from Hartman here. (Read more Marilyn Hartman stories.)
(Newser)  As members of Congress and others have urged, the Biden administration on Thursday created a Temporary Protected Status program to protect Ukrainians living in the US from deportation. Homeland Security announced that the 18-month program will apply to Ukrainians who have lived in the US since March 1, CBS News reports, including those on temporarary student, tourist, or business visas. Eligible people will be able to apply for work permits, as well as deportation protections. Ukrainians in the US without permission also will be eligible; data show about 4,000 Ukrainians currently face deportation proceedings.

Twelve other nations have TPS designations, per Axiosincluding Haiti, Somalia, and Myanmarwhich are usually granted when it's not safe for immigrants' home country to safely accept them. Russia's attack has forced Ukrainians to seek safety in other countries, said Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. "In these extraordinary times, we will continue to offer our support and protection to Ukrainian nationals in the United States," he said. To receive the designation, Ukrainians will have to pass background checks, per the Washington Post.

Members of the House and Senate of both parties had urged the administration to act, with dozens of senators sending President Biden a letter this week. "Forcing Ukrainian nationals to return to Ukraine in the midst of a war would be inconsistent with America's values and our national security interests," the letter says. Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez told CNN, "You can't take Ukrainians who legally enter the United States and happen to be here, to then send them back to a war zone." (Read more Russia-Ukraine conflict stories.)
(Newser)  Update: Ukrainians have put out the fire at Europe's largest nuclear power plant after it was shelled by Russian troops, Reuters reports. Initial reports conflicted on whether there were one or two fires, reports the AP. A plant spokesman told Ukrainian TV overnight that a reactor not in use was on fire, but later reports mentioned only a fire at an administrative building. An official says there is no indication of elevated radiation levels, and the reactors are being safely shut down, NBC News reports. UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson says he will request an emergency UN Security Council meeting on the issue. Our original story from Thursday follows:

Russian troops are shelling Europe's largest nuclear power station in Ukraine. "We demand that they stop the heavy weapons fire," Andriy Tuz, spokesperson for the plant in Enerhodar, said in a video posted on Telegram. "There is a real threat of nuclear danger in the biggest atomic energy station in Europe." The plant accounts for about one-fourth of Ukraine's power generation, the AP reports. Tuz told Ukrainian television early Friday that shells were falling directly on the Zaporizhzhia plant and had set fire to one of its six reactors. That reactor is under renovation and not operating, but there is nuclear fuel inside, he said.

Ukraine's foreign minister pleaded with the Russians to halt their attack, per the Guardian. About 2:30am, Dmytro Kuleba tweeted: "Russian army is firing from all sides upon Zaporizhzhia NPP, the largest nuclear power plant in Europe. Fire has already broke out. Russians must IMMEDIATELY cease the fire, allow firefighters, establish a security zone!" Ukrainian firefighters cannot get near the blaze because they are under fire, Tuz said. Just the day before, the UN atomic watchdog agency expressed grave concern that the fighting could cause accidental damage to Ukraine's 15 nuclear reactors.

A live-streamed security camera linked from the homepage of the plant showed what appeared to be armored vehicles rolling into the parking lot and shining spotlights on the building where the camera was mounted. There are then what appear to be bright muzzle flashes from vehicles and nearly simultaneous explosions in surrounding buildings. Smoke then rises and drifts across the frame. The mayor of Enerhodar said Ukrainian forces were battling Russian troops on the city's outskirts. Video showed flames and black smoke rising above the city of more than 50,000, with people streaming past wrecked cars. (Read more Russia-Ukraine conflict stories.)
(Newser)  Houston, we have a problem. Rather, three of them, and they were all booted from an Aeromexico flight that had to be diverted to the Texas city after a reportedly drunken confrontation over face masks. According to an incident report from the Houston Police Department cited by CNN, Aeromexico Flight 617 was set to fly from Toronto to Mexico City this week, but instead ended up landing at Houston's George Bush Intercontinental Airport at almost 4 in the morning on Thursday after crew told two men and a woman midflight they couldn't drink alcohol and the individuals pushed back. "Following that incident, all three individuals kept refusing to cover their faces with their masks, were rude, confrontational, and appeared to be intoxicated," a police spokesman says.

The captain was alerted, the plane made its unexpected landing in Houston, and police removed the three passengers from the aircraft. One male passenger and the female were taken to the city's Sobering Center, which lets people chill out while the booze works its way out of their system. KHOU notes that the third person, a male passenger, couldn't be brought to the sobering-up facility because, for reasons not made clear, he wasn't allowed to come into the United States. No charges have been filed. A Houston Airport System rep tells CNN that after the passengers were removed from the plane, it took off again for Mexico City.

Although the CDC last week issued guidance saying most people in the US no longer need to wear face masks, there's still a federal transportation mask mandate in place until at least March 18, reports Jalopnik. Per WebMD, the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA union representing flight attendants has asked the Biden administration to extend that deadline, as crew feels some passengers, especially younger children who have yet to get access to vaccines, would still be at risk. (Read more unruly passenger stories.)
(Newser)  A Northern California woman who claimed to have been kidnapped and held for three weeks in 2016 was arrested Thursday and accused of making up the whole thing. Sherri Papini, 39, disappeared Nov. 2 of that year after going jogging near her home north of San Francisco; her husband went looking for her when she didn't pick up their kids at day care and reported her missing when all he could find were her phone and earphones. After a frantic 22-day multi-state search, she was found on Thanksgiving Day, injured and almost 150 miles from her home, USA Today reports. She told authorities two Hispanic women abducted her at gunpoint and she ultimately made a harrowing escape.

But authorities now say she faked her own kidnapping, and actually spent the time with an ex-boyfriend in Southern California, the AP reports. Papini, who claimed she had been abused, branded, and tortured by her captors, was actually allegedly picked up by the ex at her request, he told police. He then took her to his apartment, and three weeks later drove her back up north. As for the wounds Papini suffered, police say they were self-inflicted. She had both male and female DNA on her clothing when found, and by 2020, the male DNA had led police to question the ex-boyfriend. He told them his story, and authorities also found that he and Papini had been communicating via prepaid cellphones since Dec. 2015.

A witness also placed Papini in the man's apartment during the period of time she was missing. But even after authorities in 2020 presented Papini with evidence that her story was false, she allegedly continued to lie to them under questioning. She is charged with lying to federal agents about being kidnapped and defrauding the state's victim compensation board of $30,000, which carry maximum penalties of 5 and 20 years behind bars, respectively, as well as fines of up to $250,000 each. "Time and resources that could have been used to investigate actual crime, protect the community, and provide resources to victims were wasted," a US attorney says in a statement. A GoFundMe campaign also raised more than $49,000 for Papini's family. (Read more Sherri Papini stories.)
MOSCOW, March 3 (Xinhua) -- Russia's special military operation in Ukraine is proceeding in strict accordance with the schedule and plan, President Vladimir Putin said Thursday.

"All the assigned tasks are being successfully fulfilled," Putin said at a meeting with the permanent members of Russia's Security Council.

Russian soldiers and officers "act courageously" and "fight steadfastly, with a full understanding of the rightness of their cause," he told the country's top officials.

The operation is aimed at clearing the threats caused by the West over past years right at Russian borders, including threats from nuclear weapons, said Putin.

The Russian Defense Ministry announced Wednesday that 498 Russian servicemen had been killed during the special military operation in Ukraine that started on Feb. 24. 
(Newser)  A car smashed into a Northern California preschool on Thursday, sending 19 children and an employee to the hospital with injuries that were not life-threatening, police said. A Suzuki sport utility vehicle plowed through the wall of Great Adventures Christian Preschool around 2:30pm in Anderson, a Shasta County community northwest of Sacramento, the AP reports. The SUV ended up completely inside the main area of the building, according to an Anderson Police Department photo and Facebook statement.

Fourteen children were taken by ambulance to hospitals with varying levels of injuries, "with the majority of those transported being for precautionary reasons," the statement said. No fatalities have been reported or are expected." Two of the children were taken to a pediatric intensive care unit at UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento, the Record Searchlight of Redding reported. However, there was no immediate word on their conditions.

Police Chief Jon Poletski said earlier that five other children were taken to hospitals by parents. The driver, a woman from Anderson, cooperated with authorities, didn't show any sign of being under the influence of drugs or alcohol, and was released after providing a statement, police said. The cause of the crash is under investigation, police said. Anderson is 10 miles south of Redding and about 150 miles north of Sacramento.

(Read more California stories.)
(Newser)  The fire is out at a Ukrainian nuclear power plant hit by Russian shellingbut the invading forces have now seized control of Zaporizhzhya facility, authorities say. "Russian forces are controlling the administrative building and passage into the plant," Energoatom, the Ukrainian state firm that runs the plant, said in a Telegram message Friday, per NPR. "Our employees are still inside, ensuring the stable operation of nuclear facilities. Radiation levels are normal." The company said three Ukrainian soldiers were killed in the fight for control of the plant. More:

World leaders condemn attack on plant. Western leaders strongly condemned the attack on Europe's largest nuclear plant, the BBC reports. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson warned that the "reckless" attack could "directly threaten the safety of all of Europe."

"Projectile" hit training center. Initial reports said a reactor not currently in use had caught fire, but later statements from officials referred only to a fire at a training center at the plant that had injured two people, per the AP. International Atomic Energy Agency Director-General Rafael Mariano Grossi said a "projectile" hit a building that "was not part of the reactor."

Initial reports said a reactor not currently in use had caught fire, but later statements from officials referred only to a fire at a training center at the plant that had injured two people, per the AP. International Atomic Energy Agency Director-General Rafael Mariano Grossi said a "projectile" hit a building that "was not part of the reactor." Zelensky calls it a "terror attack." Russian tanks "know what they're shooting at," Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky said in a statement on Facebook early Friday, calling the Russian assault on the plant a "terror attack." "There are 15 nuclear reactors in Ukraine. If one of them blows, that's the end for everyone, that's the end of Europe," he said, per CNN. "All of Europe will have to evacuate."

Russian tanks "know what they're shooting at," Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky said in a statement on Facebook early Friday, calling the Russian assault on the plant a "terror attack." "There are 15 nuclear reactors in Ukraine. If one of them blows, that's the end for everyone, that's the end of Europe," he said, per CNN. "All of Europe will have to evacuate." Authorities say disaster is still possible. The Ukrainian state inspectorate for nuclear regulation said reactors had been disconnected and no radiation had been released, but a large-scale nuclear disaster is still possible, the Guardian reports. In a statement, the inspectorate warned that the "loss of the possibility to cool down nuclear fuel will lead to significant radioactive releases into the environment."

Grossi offers to facilitate talks . The IAEA director-general offered to travel to Ukraine to facilitate talks on keeping nuclear facilities safe during the conflict. "The situation continues to be extremely tense and challenging," Grossi said, per the Guardian. The physical integrity of the plant has been compromised with what happened last night. We are fortunate that there was no release of radiation and the integrity of the reactors themselves were not compromised."

. The IAEA director-general offered to travel to Ukraine to facilitate talks on keeping nuclear facilities safe during the conflict. "The situation continues to be extremely tense and challenging," Grossi said, per the Guardian. The physical integrity of the plant has been compromised with what happened last night. We are fortunate that there was no release of radiation and the integrity of the reactors themselves were not compromised." Company says statements could be made under duress. Energoatom warned Friday that statements from plant managers and local officials could have been made under duress, the New York Times reports. "There is a high probability that the recent speech of the mayor of Enerhodar was recorded under the barrel of a machine gun," the company said, apparently referring to a speech that has not been released yet.

(Read more Russia-Ukraine conflict stories.)
(Newser)  Several independent news outlets in Russia shut down Friday after the country's parliament passed a strict ban on distributing "fake" news about the country's invasion of Ukraine. The law brings in a maximum penalty of 15 years in prison for spreading information deemed to have discredited the country's armed forces, reports Reuters. Russia has banned use of words like "war," "invasion," and "attack" in reference to the war it is waging after it invaded Ukraine in a Feb. 24 attack, which Moscow is calling a "special military operation," the Washington Post reports. The country insists that its military is doing its best to avoid civilian casualties, though real-time videos still currently available on social media in Russia show the shelling of civilian areas. The law is expected to take effect on Saturday. In other developments:

Ukraine sinks flagship Black Sea vessel . With Russian forces advancing across the south, trying to cut off Ukraine's access to the Black Sea, Ukraine's defense minister says the country's navy sank its flagship Black Sea vessel to keep it out of Russian hands, the New York Times reports. The frigate was undergoing repairs and couldn't be fixed in time to assist Ukrainian forces, the minister says.

. With Russian forces advancing across the south, trying to cut off Ukraine's access to the Black Sea, Ukraine's defense minister says the country's navy sank its flagship Black Sea vessel to keep it out of Russian hands, the New York Times reports. The frigate was undergoing repairs and couldn't be fixed in time to assist Ukrainian forces, the minister says. UN human rights council calls for investigation. The United Nations Human Rights Council voted overwhelmingly in favor of a resolution to condemn and investigate alleged Russian war crimes in Ukraine on Friday, the Guardian reports. Russia and Eritrea were the only two countries to vote against the resolution. Another 13 members abstained.

UK PM calls for emergency Security Council meeting . British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has called for an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council to address Russia's attack on a Ukrainian nuclear power plant, the AP reports. Authorities said Friday that Russian forces had seized the plant, but no radiation was released in a fire apparently caused by Russian shelling.

. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has called for an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council to address Russia's attack on a Ukrainian nuclear power plant, the AP reports. Authorities said Friday that Russian forces had seized the plant, but no radiation was released in a fire apparently caused by Russian shelling. Russian access to foreign news blocked. The BBC reports that access to its services and those of other outlets, including Radio Liberty and Voice of America, has been blocked as part of Moscow's crackdown on the media. Independent Russian outlet TV Rain showed staff walking off set in its final broadcast before it shut down on Thursday.

Putin issues warning to Russia's neighbors . Vladimir Putin warned Russia's neighbors Friday that they shouldn't "escalate tensions" with moves including tightening sanctions, reports Reuters. The Russian leader said the country has no "bad intentions" toward its neighbors and "all our actions, if they arise, they always arise exclusively in response to some unfriendly actions, actions against the Russian Federation."

. Vladimir Putin warned Russia's neighbors Friday that they shouldn't "escalate tensions" with moves including tightening sanctions, reports Reuters. The Russian leader said the country has no "bad intentions" toward its neighbors and "all our actions, if they arise, they always arise exclusively in response to some unfriendly actions, actions against the Russian Federation." Mayor pleads for NATO to send troops. The mayor of the southern city of Mariupol, which has been heavily bombarded by Russian forces for days, is pleading for NATO to send troops or at least introduce a no-fly zone. "There is no way to stop Putin from killing our civilians from the sky until NATO wakes up and understands that it's not a regional conflictit's a war against democracy, against freedom," Sergei Orlov tells the BBC. In Chernihiv, northern Ukraine, authorities say the death toll from Russian shelling Thursday has risen to 47.

(In talks Thursday, negotiators agreed to set up humanitarian corridors for refugees .)
(Newser)  Harvey Weinstein's attorneys are now having their legal binders and laptop bags searched after an alleged attempt to smuggle contraband candy to their client. According to Los Angeles Country jail records seen by Variety, the convicted rapist was reprimanded by guards after they found Milk Duds on him after a Nov. 10 visit from attorney Shawn Burkley. Weinstein claimed he had brought the Milk Duds with him when he was brought to California from New York, where he was serving a 23-year sentence, in July. Jail officials, however, said nothing was found when he was searched on arrival and they strongly suspected the Milk Duds were passed onto Weinstein during Burkley's visit.

The Milk Duds were confiscated and Weinstein has apologized. "This was an innocent misunderstanding. It will not happen again," he said in a statement, per Variety. "I have been a model inmate, following the rules and regulations and I am sincerely sorry." Two other Weinstein attorneys, Mark Werksman and Alan Jackson, also issued an apology, saying, "We have been informed about this and are very sorry it happened." Werksman tells TMZ that the jail hasn't taken any action against Weinstein. The 69-year-old, who suffers from multiple health issues, is being held at the jail's medical unit while he awaits trial on 11 counts of sexual assault. (Elijah Woods says one of the orcs in Lord of the Rings was modeled on Weinstein.)
(Newser)  Western sanctions on Russia's oil industry are becoming more and more likely, analysts tell CNBC, despite continued resistance from the White House. "We don't have a strategic interest in reducing the global supply of energy and that would raise prices at the gas pump for the American people around the world because it would reduce the supply available," Press Secretary Jen Psaki said Thursday, per the Hill. Less supply will mean higher prices, and that has the potential to pad the pockets of President Putin, which is exactly what we are not trying to do."

But as NPR reports, oil traders are self-sanctioningvoluntarily refusing to buy barrels of Russian oil, even at a discounted rate. Per Forbes, "analysts report that 70% of Russian crude exports are effectively blocked, amounting to 2.5 million barrels per day (bpd), because counterparties refuse to trade." Oil companies are also abandoning billions of dollars of investment in Russia. On Sunday, BP said it would incur up to $25 billion in penalties to end its Russian investments, including selling its $19.75% stake in Russian oil giant Rosneft, per NPR. And on Monday, Shell said it would exit $3 billion worth of projects in Russia, including those with Russian state-owned energy giant Gazprom.

The result is "the current spike in prices," George Hay writes at Reuters. And Ukraine Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba is calling for more, urging foreign governments to impose a "full embargo" on Russian oil and gas, per CNBC. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi backed the idea on Thursday as a bipartisan bill to ban Russian energy imports was introduced in the Senate, per Bloomberg. "There should not be a single additional American dollar allowed to finance these atrocities," said Alaska Republican Lisa Murkowski. As Russia supplies about 8% of oil imports to the US (compared to about 50% to Europe), per Bloomberg, gas prices would continue rising in such a case. (Read more Russia stories.)
(Newser)  Lacking many of his later tricks, Bruce Wayne takes on a serial killer and his own doubts about himself in The BatmanMatt Reeves' take on the hero played for the first time by Robert Pattinson. The nearly three-hour running time hasn't turned off critics, who give the film a 85% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Pattinson should like what they have to say. Four takes:



Placing Batman in his second year as a vigilante, the film "plays more like a detective thriller than a comic-book epic" to its benefit, writes Peter Travers at ABC News. It's "a mesmerizing mind-bender that grabs you hard and never lets go." Through it all, "Pattinson is brooding perfection," Travers adds. "By returning the Batman to his DC Comics roots as the 'world's greatest detective,' Pattinson distinguishes himself from other movie Batmen and puts him in league with the best of them."

"Reeves has created the best iteration of Batman in years, in a film that examines the humanity behind the character," writes Alex Abad-Santos at Vox. Up against an especially sadistic Riddler played by Paul Dano, Batman must rely on his investigation skills"a staple in the comic books that havent really been reflected in the movies of late"while battling doubts about himself. The result "enriches Batman's legacy, complicating it by trusting its audience to interrogate his heroism and eventually ponder what makes Batman a heroor if he's even a hero at all."

But for Ann Hornaday, the flick was worthy of only 1.5 stars out of 4. "Pale and wraithlike, Pattinson's bummer of a Batman slugs and slashes his way through his crime-fighting duties" in "yet another lugubrious, laboriously grim slog masquerading as a fun comic book movie," she writes at the Washington Post. "Underlit and overlong," it's "as ponderous as it is convoluted and, ultimately, devoid of meaningful stakes."

Yes, Pattinson's Batman is "as grim as a ghost" but he's also "magnificent," counters Peter Howell at the Toronto Star. "Pattinson digs deeper and goes darker into the psychological sickness of vigilante justice than Christian Bale did in Christopher's Nolans Batman trilogy, which is really saying something." Howell could've used more sexual intrigue between Batman and Zoe Kravitz's "spiky" Catwoman, "who is every bit as vengeful, obsessive and fetish-suited as her male antagonists." But the best thing about the film is that "it makes us want to see what happens next."

(Read more movie review stories.)
(Newser)  Justice was finally served Thursday in the case of a young California teen murdered more than two decades ago by MS-13 gang members. The Whittier Daily News reports that Santos Grimaldi, 39, and Melvin Sandoval, 42, were convicted of first-degree murder in the case of 13-year-old Jacqueline Piazza, who was kidnapped, raped, and then shot in a remote area in the Elysian Park section of Los Angeles. A third man, 44-year-old Rogelio Contreras, was convicted of second-degree murder, and all three men were found guilty of weapons and gang charges. A fourth MS-13 member, Jorge Palacios, now 43, had already been found guilty of murder and kidnapping in the case in 2018 and is serving life in prison without parole.

It's a case that remained a cold one for more than a decade, and then stuck in the legal system for a decade more. Per court documents and testimony cited by the Los Angeles Times, Jacqueline, a runaway, met Palacios while living on the streets of LA in June 2001. For unknown reasons, Palacios deemed Jacqueline an enemy of MS-13, and so he and his girlfriend beat the teen, then instructed Grimaldi and Sandoval to take her somewhere, rape her, and "get rid of her," per witness testimony. Contreras is said to have driven Grimaldi, Sandoval, and a female MS-13 member, with Jacqueline crammed in the trunk, to Elysian Park, which is where the two men raped her. The girl was shot twice in the head and her body left in a hilly area.

The female MS-13 gang member was key to breaking open the case, though it took 10 years for her to come forward, and another witness backed up her claim, noting that the three men had confessed the crime to him. DNA evidence from Jacqueline's body clinched the case, and all four men, including Palacios, were indicted in 2012. Palacios later started working as an FBI informant, infiltrating MS-13 gangs in multiple states starting around 2004. The three men convicted Thursday are set to be sentenced on May 13. A spokesman for the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office notes that because Grimaldi and Sandoval killed Jacqueline while committing a rape and lewd act on a child, they face mandated life in prison without the possibility of parole, per the Daily News. (Read more MS-13 stories.)
(Newser)  A suicide bomber struck inside a Shiite Muslim mosque in Pakistan's northwestern city of Peshawar during Friday prayers, killing at least 56 worshippers and wounding about 200 others, hospital officials said. No militant group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack. Both the Islamic State group and the Pakistani Talibana militant group separate from the Taliban in Afghanistanhave carried out similar attacks in the area, located near the border with neighboring Afghanistan, per the AP. Scores of victims were peppered with shrapnel, several had limbs amputated, and others were injured by flying debris.

Peshawar Police Chief Muhammad Ejaz Khan said the violence started when an armed attacker opened fire on police outside the mosque in Peshawar's old city. The attacker then ran inside the mosque and detonated his suicide vest. The suicide bomber had strapped a powerful explosive device to his body, packed with 12 pounds of explosives, said Moazzam Jah Ansari, the top police official for Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, of which Peshawar is the capital. The device was hidden beneath a large black shawl that covered much of his body, as seen on CCTV footage reviewed by the AP. I opened my eyes and there was dust and bodies everywhere, one witness knocked to the ground by the blast tells the AP.

Prime Minister Imran Khan condemned the bombing. His national security adviser, Moeed Yusuf, said the bombing was a heinous terrorist attack" and promised that those behind the carnage would be brought to justice. In majority Sunni Pakistan, minority Shiites have come under repeated attacks. Also, in recent months, the country has experienced a significant increase of violence and dozens of military personnel have been killed in scores of attacks on army outposts along the border with Afghanistan. Many attacks have been claimed by the Pakistani Taliban, who analysts say have been emboldened by the Afghan Taliban seizing power last August in Afghanistan.

(Read more Pakistan stories.)
(Newser)  Tucker Carlson has been attracting attention of late with seemingly supportive comments on Russian President Vladimir Putin, who's been decried by much of the world for the war he's waging in Ukraine. The Fox News host has since walked his remarks back a bit, but that didn't stop Jon Stewart from weighing in, and adding to, the backlash during an appearance this week on the podcast of New York Times reporter Kara Swisher, per the Hill. "When you deal with such a dishonest propagandistand that is what he isthere's nothing you can take out of context, because none of it is real," Stewart said of Carlson. "He's admitted when he's cornered, he lies. It's all a game and a performance. I mean, honestly, I have no idea what the f--- that guy believes, truly."

Stewart places part of the blame on Fox News co-founder Rupert Murdoch, accusing him of "trying to destroy the fabric of this country." "What's in it for him?" Stewart wonders. The 59-year-old comedian and ex-Daily Show host, now host of the Apple TV+ show The Problem With Jon Stewart, also touches on a variety of other topics, including backlash he himself received for offering his thoughts on recent controversy swirling around podcaster Joe Rogan. On that matter, Stewart said he advocated for engagement over censorship, which led to accusations that Stewart was making excuses for Rogan's misinformation.

"You watch this thing explode, and it has very little resemblance to what actually occurred," Stewart said, noting that what he'd said had been warped and diluted into clicky headlines that didn't quite capture his full meaning. He acknowledges, however, that "the thing that they're reacting to is a caricature of me. Not me." Swisher also asks if Stewart has ever considered running for political office himself. "Oh, god. How do you not? When you see the s---heads that are," he replied. Listen to the entire podcast with Stewart here, or read the transcript. (Read more Jon Stewart stories.)
(Newser)  Update: NATO doesn't appear to be budging on setting up a no-fly zone over Ukraine, and on Friday, Volodymyr Zelensky blasted this hesitancy in a scathing Facebook video, per the Hill and Axios. "All the people who will die starting from this day will also die because of you," he said. "Because of your weakness, because of your disunity." He addressed the argument that closing the skies would cause a direct war between Russia and other nations, calling that narrative "self-hypnosis" of "weak" and "underconfident" players. "Is this the NATO we wanted?" he asked. "Is this the alliance you were building? ... You will not be able to buy us off with liters of fuel for liters of our blood, shed for our common Europe, for our common freedom, for our common future." Zelensky did end his speech by thanking nations, including the US, that have provided military and other support. "That's why we do NOT feel alone," he said. Our original story from Friday follows:

President Volodymyr Zelensky has called on the Western allies to establish a "no-fly zone" over much of Ukraine to put an end to the bombing. "If the West does this, Ukraine will defeat the aggressor with much less blood," he said. No-fly zones usually are put in place to keep out aircraft carrying troops or weapons, conducting surveillance, or mounting attacks, Axios reports. They have to be enforced, which can mean shooting down aircraft. That would escalate the situation instantly. "If NATO imposes it, and we shoot down even one Russian plane, we're at war with Russia," said Howard Stoffer, a professor at the University of New Haven.

NATO's chief made clear Friday that he doesn't see meeting Ukraine's request. "We understand the desperation," Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said, "but we also believe that if we did that, we would end up with something that could lead to a full-fledged war in Europe, involving much more countries and much more suffering." NATO members, including the US, are supplying weapons to Ukraine but don't want to do anything that could give Russia cause to fire at them. And they don't want their troops involved. White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Thursday that a no-fly zone could lead to the US shooting down planes and "a potential direct war with Russia."

The US has established no-fly zones before, including in Libya in 2011 and Iraq in the 1990s, per Yahoo Newsbut never when a military as powerful as Russia's was involved. Nonetheless, a few members of Congress advocate the action. Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger said a no-fly zone would "give the heroic Ukrainians a fair fight." Republican Sen. Roger Wicker said it's justified on humanitarian grounds, as civilians are trying to get out of Ukraine safely. Americans should be clear on the risks, said Republican Sen. Marco Rubio. Enforcing a no-fly zone "means a willingness to shoot down Russian planes," he said. "And that would mean World War III." (Read more Russia-Ukraine conflict stories.)
Li Zhanshu, chairman of the National People's Congress (NPC) Standing Committee, presides over a preparatory meeting for the fifth session of the 13th NPC at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, March 4, 2022. (Xinhua/Ju Peng)

BEIJING, March 4 (Xinhua) -- Deputies to the 13th National People's Congress (NPC), China's national legislature, on Friday elected the presidium and set the agenda for the fifth session of the 13th NPC.

Li Zhanshu, chairman of the NPC Standing Committee, presided over a preparatory meeting for the session.

All the preparations for the annual session are completed, Li said.

A 175-member presidium was elected, with Wang Chen as the secretary-general of the NPC session.

The preparatory meeting also adopted the agenda of the session:

-- Deliberate the report on the work of the government;

-- Review the report on the implementation of the 2021 plan and on the 2022 draft plan for national economic and social development, and the draft plan for national economic and social development in 2022;

-- Review the report on the execution of the central and local budgets for 2021 and on the draft central and local budgets for 2022, and the draft central and local budgets for 2022;

-- Deliberate the draft amendment to the Organic Law of the Local People's Congresses and Local People's Governments;

-- Deliberate the draft decision of the fifth session of the 13th NPC on the number of deputies to the 14th NPC and their election;

-- Deliberate the draft method for the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR) to elect deputies to the 14th NPC;

-- Deliberate the draft method for the Macao SAR to elect deputies to the 14th NPC;

-- Deliberate the work report of the NPC Standing Committee;

-- Deliberate the work report of the Supreme People's Court;

-- Deliberate the work report of the Supreme People's Procuratorate.

Li Zhanshu, chairman of the National People's Congress (NPC) Standing Committee, presides over the first meeting of the presidium for the fifth session of the 13th NPC at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, March 4, 2022. (Xinhua/Shen Hong)

The presidium of the session met shortly after the preparatory meeting concluded. Attendees to the presidium meeting decided on the schedule of the NPC session, among other matters. The NPC will be in session from March 5 to 11 this year.

Li Zhanshu, chairman of the National People's Congress (NPC) Standing Committee, presides over the 112th meeting of the Council of Chairpersons of the 13th NPC Standing Committee at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, March 4, 2022. (Xinhua/Huang Jingwen)

Prior to the preparatory meeting, the Council of Chairpersons of the NPC Standing Committee met for the meeting's preparation. 
(Newser)  Assassins backed by Russia have tried to kill President Volodymyr Zelensky at least three times in the past week, media reports and Ukrainian officials say. Mercenaries and Chechen special forces made the attempts to kill Zelensky, the Times of London reported. One Chechen team consisting of special forces called Kadyrovites sent over the weekend was stopped after Ukrainian security officials were tipped off by informants in Russia's Federal Security Service, per the Washington Post.

"We have received information from the FSB, who today do not want to take part in this bloody war," Oleksiy Danilov said. "And thanks to this, the Kadyrov elite group was destroyed, which came here to eliminate our president." When the Russian invasion began, Zelensky often went out on the streets of Kyiv, but he's lately been staying out of sight, per the Insider. The president has said he realizes the danger he faces from assassins, saying he's the Russians' "target No. 1" in a speech to the nation. "They want to destroy Ukraine politically by destroying the head of state," Zelensky said.

About 400 agents have been dispatched to Kyiv by the Wagner Group, a private army owned by an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, per the Times. They've been given a list of 20 names of top officialsincluding Zelenskyand offered bonuses for killing them. The agents reportedly couldn't establish a safe escape route because of the Russian convoy stalled outside Kyiv, per Yahoo News. (Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham has suggested somebody assassinate Putin.)
(Newser)  The idea of booking an Airbnb rental in Ukraine at the moment may sound nuts. But as it turns out, people in the US and around the world are grabbing openings quickly in Kyiv and elsewherenot to use them, but as a way to donate money directly to ordinary Ukrainians, reports NBC News. The idea has been catching on this week after the company waived fees for both renters and hosts, notes the Guardian. "It's really cheap and can make a small difference right now," tweets one person who booked in the capital. They're right on the cost: A post at Curbed notes that rentals there go for as low as $50. "It brings tears to my eyes," wrote a Ukrainian host to an American renter in an exchange highlighted at NBC. (Read more Russia-Ukraine conflict stories.)
(Newser)  President Biden's approval rating jumped 8 percentage points in the aftermath of his first State of the Union address on Tuesday, a new poll shows. The NPR-PBS NewsHour-Marist National Poll released Friday put the share of Americans who approve of the job he's doing at 47%; it was 39% in the same poll a month ago, the Hill reports. "This is an unusual bounce," Lee Miringoff, director of the Marist Institute for Public Opinion, said in a statement. "It gets him back to where he was pre-Afghanistan."

Presidents usually aren't helped by their State of the Union addresses, per NPR. In fact, only six times since 1978 has a president's approval rating risen 4 or more points after the speech, poll officials said. Biden is now at his high point since August, when he registered 49% approval. Respondents gave the president more credit on big issues. He was up 8 points on his handling of the economy, to 45%; 8 points on the pandemic, to 55%; and 18 points on the Ukraine crisis, to 52%. "He has forged a consensus in the US on his policy toward Ukraine," Miringoff said. "Americans are even willing to sacrifice higher energy prices in support of the Ukrainian people." The poll reported a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points. (Read more Biden approval ratings stories.)
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Two charged in burglary spree

SHAMOKIN  State police at Stonington have charged two people with felony burglary offenses relating to a three-month crime spree in Northumberland and Montour counties.

Joseph James Kemper Jr., 34, of 138 Bainbridge St., Sunbury, was arraigned Wednesday by Magisterial District Judge John Gembic III on 16 felony counts of burglary and misdemeanors of receiving stolen property and theft by unlawful taking.

Kemper was initially committed to Northumberland County Jail in Coal Township in lieu of $50,000 cash bail, but was released after posting bail shortly before 7 p.m. Wednesday.

Nicco N. Aurand, 30, of 1152 Poplar St., Kulpmont, was arraigned Thursday morning by Gembic on 12 counts of burglary and two counts of theft. He was committed to the county jail in lieu of $50,000 cash bail.

Trooper Raymond Snarski, of state police at Stonington, filed all the charges.

The arrests began after a high-risk warrant was served Tuesday at Kempers home, where Kemper was taken into custody and transported to the state police station in Stonington.

According to state police, Kemper allegedly admitted to being a driver in numerous February incidents in Northumberland to Montour counties.

Kemper initially told troopers he was not involved, but later admitted to being the driver in some of the burglaries. He told state police he needed to support his family and said he was paid for his involvement with the crimes, police reported.

During the investigation, it was discovered a gift card to Lowes Home Improvement store was stolen. Troopers reviewed surveillance video from the Selinsgrove store and saw a man fitting the description of Aurand using the cards.

The man was wearing a bandana, which was consistent to video surveillance reviewed at Massers Farm Market in Shamokin Township, where another burglary had occurred.

State police said burglary targets included the following churches: Clarks Grove United Methodist Church in Shamokin Township; Christian Assembly in Rockefeller Township; Redeemer Orthodox Church and Mooresburg United Methodist Church, both in Montour County; and a church in the Milton area, according to state police.

Other businesses burglarized were Witmer Fuels, Northumberland County State Health Center and Massers Farm Market.

Troopers said they also discovered gift cards were stolen from vehicles and one of them was used at a local hardware store.

Sunbury police worked in conjunction with state police during the investigation that led to reviewing multiple video surveillance footage from businesses.
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Pilot Cadet Larry Campbell's official photo is likely from sometime in 1945. Campbell, who became a colonel, was discharged at the end of World War II before he completed training, but he would earn his wings in 1948 and ultimately become the first black jet fighter pilot and Air National Guard group commander of 176th Tactical Airlift Group, Alaska Air National Guard. (Photo courtesy of the National Air and Space Museum)
A line of military Heavy Equipment Transport line-haul trucks is staged at Coleman work site in Mannheim, Germany. Each truck is hauling equipment and vehicles, such as M1 Abrams main battle tanks as seen here, to Grafenwoehr Training Area in Germany. There, the vehicles and equipment pieces will be issued to the 1st Armored Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division deploying to Germany from Fort Stewart, Georgia. (Maj. Allan Laggui)
Jeffrey DePaolis, machinist, Rock Island Arsenal-Joint Manufacturing and Technology Center, works on a special project involving pulling old material manufactured or purchased that is no longer needed, at Rock Island Arsenal, Illinois, Feb. 4. (Photo by Jon Micheal Connor, ASC Public Affairs) (Courtesy)
U.S. Air Force Airman 1st Class Chase Smith, right, 8th Airlift Squadron loadmaster, marshals a K-loader toward a C-17 Globemaster III, assigned to Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington, at Travis Air Force Base, California, Feb. 14, 2022. U.S. Airmen with the 60th Aerial Port Squadron and 8th Airlift Squadron load K-loaders onto the C-17. K-loaders are used to transport cargo into and out of aircraft. Under the direction of U.S. Transportation Command, the 60th Air Mobility Wing supported the 621st Contingency Response Wing during the movement of security assistance cargo to Ukraine via commercial cargo aircraft. The Defense Security Cooperation Agency coordinated the effort. (U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Karla Parra) (Senior Airman Karla Parra)
Ranger devotes himself to capturing magnificent wildlife photos to raise public awareness in support of biodiversity protection

People's Daily Online) 16:36, March 04, 2022

For more than two decades, a ranger at a national nature reserve in east Chinas Zhejiang Province has dedicated himself to capturing fantastic images of endangered South China sika deer, a subspecies of sika deer, to raise public awareness in support of biodiversity protection.

Zhang Shuyan nurses a fawn from a herd of South China sika deer, which is under first-class state protection in China. (Photo courtesy of Zhang Shuyan)

The ranger, named Zhang Shuyan, works at the Qianqingtang protection station in the Qingliangfeng National Nature Reserve in the Linan district of Hangzhou, capital city of Zhejiang Province, and first started taking pictures of South China sika deer in 1998. After the national nature reserve was established that same year, Zhang has continued to take on responsibilities for monitoring, protecting and photographing the species.

The South China sika deer is under first-class state protection in China and was added to the International Union for Conservation of Natures Red List of Threatened Species. The population of the animal in the country is less than 2,000, Zhang introduced.

The ranger added that the species population has seen its numbers increase from less than 80 when they were discovered in the nature reserve to more than 300 now, all thanks to consistent conservation efforts over the past years.

Photo shows South China sika deer, a species that is under first-class state protection in China. (Photo courtesy of Zhang Shuyan)

In addition to the South China sika deer, Zhang has also shot images of birds, snakes, insects and other animals at the nature reserve and has been captivated by its rich biodiversity. He previously purchased better photographic equipment so that he could take high-quality photos of the wild animals.

Meanwhile, Zhang has used his photographs of wild animals for publicity activities related to biodiversity protection, hoping to arouse peoples curiosity about nature. According to him, photographing a species is not only to tell people what the species is, but also to show them its beauty so that everyone can promote the protection of all wild animals.

Photo shows South China sika deer, a species that is under first-class state protection in China. (Photo courtesy of Zhang Shuyan)

Photo shows Zhang Shuyan, a ranger working at the Qianqingtang protection station in the Qingliangfeng National Nature Reserve in the Linan district of Hangzhou, capital city of Zhejiang Province, China. (Photo courtesy of Zhang Shuyan)

(Web editor: Hongyu, Liang Jun)
JERUSALEM, March 3 (Xinhua) -- The Israeli Tax Authority (ITA) on Thursday announced that it had thwarted the smuggling of 7,000 9mm caliber bullets destined for the Palestinian enclave of Gaza Strip.

The bullets were seized after arriving from abroad at the Ashdod Port in southern Israel by customs inspectors in cooperation with the ITA's national cargo detection center, the ITA said in a statement.

The bullets, intended for a Gazan importer, were found hidden inside rolls of insulation material, which were stored inside a container with various household products, it noted.

Using advanced detection means, customs inspectors were able to identify the bullets, it said.

Cooperation between the detection center and customs inspectors in Ashdod in the past led to the detection of several attempts to smuggle ammunition and raw materials for the munitions industry in Gaza, the ITA said. 
TDT | Manama

The Daily Tribune  www.newsofbahrain.com

The citizens and residents of Bahrain could expect some rain today and tomorrow, said Bahrains weather officials yesterday, citing a numerical prediction model.

Today, the sky will remain cloudy with a small chance of rain at times, with northwesterly winds of up to 12 to 17 kt and 20 to 25kt.

Tomorrow also the sky will remain cloudy with a chance of rain at times and can expect winds of 8 to 13kt and 15 to 20 kt. On Sunday, the weather will be generally okay.

The Arabian Peninsula experienced active to strong north-westerly winds, especially during evening hours for the past few days, the Meteorological department said.

From the weather maps, it is clear that the winds will shift to the southeast on Thursday, March 03, to reach moderate to active speed.

 This will create warm weather during daytime with varying amounts of clouds. Citing numerical prediction models, experts pointed out, it is now clear than an air depression in the upper air is affecting the region.

"Thus, creating an opportunity for rain on Friday and Saturday, with the possibility of strong gusts, especially in the northern region leading to dust and big sea waves.

The forecast, met experts say, might change according to weather model updates.

The expectation is that the north-westerly winds will regain control later today and continue until the middle of next week, creating moderate to partly cloudy conditions.

The Meteorological department has called upon citizens and residents to exercise extreme caution during weather fluctuations.
TDT | Manama

The Daily Tribune  www.newsofbahrain.com

The Public Prosecution has completed an investigation into a human trafficker accused of smuggling two girls into the Kingdom and forcing them into prostitution.

The head of the Prosecution of Trafficking in Persons said the suspect and the victims are both Asians by nationality.

The Public Prosecution referred the suspect to the First High Criminal Court for trial, which begins on the 14th of this month.

Police arrested the suspect following a phone call received from one of the victims.

The victim told police that they were locked up in an apartment by the suspect.

Police officers then traced the phone to an apartment, from where they managed to free two girls.

The girls told the police they reached Bahrain for domestic work, but the suspect seized their passports and forced them into prostitution.

The Chief Prosecutor took the testimonials of the victims and put them up in a safe house of the National Committee to Combat Trafficking in Person.
Former Nissan Motor executive Greg Kelly has appealed the conviction that found him guilty of underreporting the remuneration of ousted chairman Carlos Ghosn.

Kelly was accused of conspiring to underreport Ghosn's executive pay by about 9.1 billion yen, or nearly 79 million dollars, over eight years through fiscal year 2017.

The Tokyo District Court on Thursday sentenced Kelly to six months in prison, suspended for three years. The court named Ghosn as the principal offender, and said Kelly conspired with him only in fiscal 2017. Kelly was acquitted of charges for fiscal years 2010 to 2016.

A lawyer for Kelly filed the appeal with the Tokyo High Court on Friday.

Kelly issued a statement after the ruling, saying he does not understand why the court found him guilty for just one year. He added that he is completely innocent. ...continue reading
A mysterious story that is depicted with vibrant visuals that combine live-action with 3DCG and 2D animation.

High school student Aki wanders into a strange world created by the mysterious entity "Hitotsume-sama" in search of her friend Taki, who suddenly disappeared before her eyes. Guided by Takis voice, she finds a fictional Shibuya district that is neither dream nor reality. But what lies there? Netflix Film "Adam by Eve: A Live in Animation" is set for worldwide release on Netflix on Tuesday, March 15, 2022!
A medical worker prepares a dose of COVID-19 vaccine at a vaccination site in Beijing, capital of China, Dec. 9, 2021. (Xinhua/Zhang Yuwei)

BEIJING, March 4 (Xinhua) -- China is the country that provides the most COVID-19 vaccines globally, a spokesperson said Friday.

China has provided over 2.1 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines for more than 120 countries and international organizations, accounting for one third of the total number of vaccines administered outside China, said Zhang Yesui, spokesperson for the fifth session of the 13th National People's Congress, at a press conference.

"Among the over 120 countries and international organizations, most are developing countries. The vaccines provided by China have played an important role in building immune barriers and restoring life in many developing countries, and enhanced their capability, confidence and determination to fight the pandemic," Zhang said.

"China will continue to prioritize developing countries as major partners in vaccine cooperation," said Zhang, adding that China will supply another 1 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines for Afrian countries, of which 600 million doses are provided free, while 400 million doses will be jointly produced by Chinese enterprises and African countries.

"It will help African countries achieve the goal set by the African Union of vaccinating 60 percent of the African population by 2022," Zhang said.

Zhang also noted that China will provide another 150 million doses of vaccines to the ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) countries free of charge. 
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A lawsuit filed in federal district court against the Town of Redding by a former town employee last year could wind up in front of a jury as early as this summer if the sides are unable to reach a settlement in the coming months.

According to his complaint, former town employee Mark Lubus contends perceived anti-Semitic language used to promote a vigil held on the Town Green in July 2019 led to a dispute with First Selectwoman Julia Pemberton that resulted in alleged retaliation culminating in a July 2020 decision to terminate his position.

We think that he was retaliated against for confronting the person in charge of running the town for something that he perceived to be an untoward political statement and he was punished for it, said Lubus attorney, Matthew Paradisi.

Reached for comment Thursday, Pemberton said the decision to eliminate the position came as a result of regular budget decisions.

We reorganized a number of positions that year as part of the budget process, due to COVID, Pemberton said. We made some staffing changes and that was one of them, but beyond that I cant comment.

A resident of Bridgeport, Lubus began working for the town in 2007 as an assistant building official licensed to perform building inspections.

The alleged retaliation claims stem from interactions he had with Pemberton in the lead up to a July 2019 Lights for Liberty vigil that took place on Reddings Town Green to protest of conditions at U.S. migrant detention camps, according to court documents.

The town promoted the event on its official website, publishing a notice from local organizers which referred to migrant detention facilities as concentration camps.

Lubus, whose ancestors had been personally subjected to Nazi concentration camps, during World War II, felt deeply offended by the language used in the notice, according to the lawsuit, and in his capacity as a private citizen, approached Pemberton in a town-owned building to express his political opinion, that the post should be taken down.

Immediately after the encounter, the first selectwoman caught up with Lubus across the street and, rather than engage in any meaningful dialogue on the topic, Pemberton immediately advised [Lubus] that he was being suspended and placed on involuntary leave, the lawsuit stated.

Court filings note Pemberton rescinded the suspension against Lubus; but months later initiated a written disciplinary action against him based on the exchange, accusing the town employee of, behaving belligerently towards [Pemberton] both verbally and physically andrefusing to cease such behavior upon being told to do so.

Paradisi denied Pembertons characterization behind the discipline, saying his client was, engaging in cordial discourse with Miss Pemberton, and subsequently we believe that they utilized the pretext of a budget cut to terminate his employment, so we think that the evidence will ultimately show that.

The lawsuit claims the apparent back and forth over the vigil led to alleged ill will from Pemberton and contributed to the towns decision to terminate his position in July 2020, based on a purported reorganization of various positions.

In a separate count, the complaint alleges the retaliation also played a role in how the town treated time off requests approved under the under Family Medical Leave Act, alleging Pemberton expressed dissatisfaction with [his] need to utilize such leave in order to attend to his fathers medical condition.

Lubus is seeking monetary damages, claiming the first selectwomans unlawful conduct resulted in lost wages and benefits employments and led to, substantial emotional distress while hurting his chances to gain future employment.

Paradisi referred to second post made to the towns website the morning of the vigil that clarified the event was organized by individual residents of the town and was, NOT a town-sponsored event, according to the complaint.

His protest work to a certain degree, but he was punished for it, Paradisi added.

Lawyers representing the town and Pemberton deny any mistreatment or of the former employees time off requests and contend the decision to terminate his position is unrelated to the alleged friction with Pemberton that is described in the lawsuit.

At all timesthe defendant acted in good faith and has not violated any rights secured under any federal, state, or local laws, rules, regulations or guidelines, reads the federal court filing made by the defense.

The case was moved to the U.S. District Court for Connecticut in Hartford from Danbury Superior Court on Feb. 5, 2021.

Depositions and discovery in the matter are ongoing and expected to be completed by April 25. Pending any future settlement, a trial before a federal jury could take place as soon as July 21, 2022.
BEIJING, March 4 (Xinhua) -- The U.S. side has repeatedly spread false information related to the Ukraine issue to smear and discredit China in order to shirk their own responsibility, which is hypocritical and despicable, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson said Friday.

Wang Wenbin made the remarks when asked to comment on the report that an unnamed senior U.S. defense official said on Thursday that China continues to express concerns over the situation in Ukraine, but is unwilling to condemn and sanction Russia like other countries, and has no intention of participating in any form of diplomatic solution to the Ukraine issue.

"Spreading false information cannot cover up the responsibility of the initiators of the Ukrainian crisis, but rather exposes the real intention of the U.S. side to take advantage of the crisis," Wang said.

He said the United States should honestly answer the following questions:

-- The United States claimed that promoting NATO expansion is for the sake of peace. Has it achieved this?

-- The United States claimed it would prevent war in Europe. Has it done so?

-- The United States claimed to be committed to a peaceful solution to the crisis. But apart from providing military aid and increasing deterrence, what has the U.S. side done for peace?

China always decides its own position and policy based on the merits of the matter itself, Wang said.

"We welcome all diplomatic efforts conducive to the political settlement of the Ukraine issue, and support Russia and Ukraine in seeking a political solution through dialogue and negotiation that accommodates the legitimate concerns of both sides and is conducive to lasting peace and stability in Europe," Wang said.

China will continue to play a constructive role in seeking and realizing peace, he added. 
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STAMFORD  In response to the dire humanitarian crisis in Ukraine amid the Russian invasion, Gov. Ned Lamont said Connecticut would welcome refugees from the area if needed.

Speaking at the global nonprofit Americares, Lamont said the state has not been asked but would cooperate if it is approached.

We took refugees from Afghanistan when there was a need, and if there is a need from Ukraine as well, then absolutely we will do the right thing, Lamont said. We have a significant Ukrainian population in Connecticut already in Stamford and Hartford, I believe. We will do the right thing.

Lamont joined Stamford Mayor Caroline Simmons in a visit to Americares global headquarters on Thursday. The Stamford-based organization is preparing a 3-ton relief shipment of medicine and supplies and already has an emergency response team in Poland, where many Ukrainians are seeking refuge.

Kate Dischino, vice president of emergency programs at Americares, said Russias invasion had triggered a mass exodus and refugee crisis.

In one week, more than a million people have fled, including families with young children now seeking refuge in neighboring countries, Dischino said. Up to 200,000 people are fleeing every day  and theres no end in sight. The United Nations estimates as many as 4 million people will leave Ukraine in the coming weeks and, of course, the situation inside Ukraine is dire. The images coming out of the country are distressing beyond words.

Many in Ukraine have gone days without clean water, food, electricity and other essential supplies, she said. The invasion has also had an impact on an already fragile health system, stressed by rising COVID-19 cases and a polio outbreak, Dischino said.

Across the region now there is an urgent need for medicines, medical supplies and basic relief items to save lives and protect health, she said. We are getting requests for supplies, IV solutions, and antibiotics and Americares is responding.

The 3-ton shipment will be on its way to the in the eastern European nation as quickly as possible and many more shipments will follow, Dischino said. An emergency medical team, she said, remains on standby if needed to help people fleeing the crisis.

Lamont, Simmons and other speakers at Thursdays press conference pledged their support for Americares relief efforts and encouraged Connecticut residents to donate at www.americares.org.

We were all devastated to see Russias invasion of Ukraine and the horrific aftermath of innocent lives being taken and 1 million Ukrainians having to flee this devastating crisis, Simmons said. I am so grateful and proud that we have Americares headquarters right here in Stamford and for the live-saving work they are doing around the world right now, especially with respect to this crisis.

Lamont recalled how Americares helped Connecticut two years ago when the COVID-19 pandemic started and the state was in desperate need of personal protective equipment.

People need Americares more than ever, and I hope people are there to support them, he said.

State Rep. Matt Blumenthal, D-147, also attended the press conference, as did newly elected state Rep. Hubert Delany, D-144, a former member of the U.S. Army who served in Eastern Europe.

One of the things that I realized while I was over there was the strength of America and our allies isnt dependent on our nuclear weapons, Delany said. It isnt even dependent on our supply lines. Its dependent on the relationships we have, our ability to see past ourselves and to work with each other on the things that matter. Thats what Americares is doing here today.

When Stamford resident Lyudmila Fuks heard about Russias invasion, she said she immediately started looking for an organization to donate to and quickly landed on Americares. The Ukrainian native, who works for the citys Engineering Department, wanted to do her part to help.

I cannot concentrate, Fuks said. I feel numb that somebody I know and love is out there in Ukraine and suffering. I worry that this might be the last day of their life. It is terrifying knowing I might not see my relatives and friends again, but I am hopeful and I am praying every single day that this war will stop.

She said she came to America 30 years ago and has many family members, friends and former classmates in Ukraine that she tries to keep in touch with daily.

I am very happy right now that our technology is so advanced that we have so many different applications to connect us to the world, Fuks said. I am speaking to them constantly, every day, in messages.

Fuks, who attended the press conference with Simmons, spoke afterward with the governor.

Lamont offered all our prayers to her and others affected by the invasion. The world is united behind Ukraine, he said.

kborsuk@greenwichtime.com
Journalists attend a press conference of the fifth session of the 13th National People's Congress (NPC) via video link in Beijing, capital of China, March 4, 2022. (Xinhua/Chen Zhonghao)

BEIJING, March 4 (Xinhua) -- China's national legislature will open its annual session on Saturday morning in Beijing, a spokesperson said Friday.

The fifth session of the 13th National People's Congress (NPC) is scheduled to conclude on March 11, with 10 items on the agenda, Zhang Yesui, spokesperson for the session, told a press conference.

Zhang Yesui, spokesperson for the fifth session of the 13th National People's Congress (NPC), speaks during a press conference via video link in Beijing, capital of China, March 4, 2022. (Xinhua/Chen Yehua)

Zhang Yesui (C), spokesperson for the fifth session of the 13th National People's Congress (NPC), speaks during a press conference via video link in Beijing, capital of China, March 4, 2022. (Xinhua/Chen Yehua)

Lawmakers will review documents including the government work report and deliberate the draft amendment to the Organic Law of the Local People's Congresses and Local People's Governments, Zhang said.

They will also deliberate the draft decision on the number of deputies to the 14th NPC and their election, and two draft methods for the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR) and the Macao SAR to elect their deputies to the 14th NPC, Zhang said.

Journalists attend a press conference of the fifth session of the 13th National People's Congress (NPC) via video link in Beijing, capital of China, March 4, 2022. (Xinhua/Chen Zhonghao)

Journalists attend a press conference of the fifth session of the 13th National People's Congress (NPC) via video link in Beijing, capital of China, March 4, 2022. (Xinhua/Chen Zhonghao)

Journalists raise hands to ask questions during a press conference of the fifth session of the 13th National People's Congress (NPC) via video link in Beijing, capital of China, March 4, 2022. (Xinhua/Chen Zhonghao)

Journalists attend a press conference of the fifth session of the 13th National People's Congress (NPC) via video link in Beijing, capital of China, March 4, 2022. (Xinhua/Chen Zhonghao)

Zhang Yesui, spokesperson for the fifth session of the 13th National People's Congress (NPC), speaks during a press conference via video link in Beijing, capital of China, March 4, 2022. (Xinhua/Chen Yehua)

A reporter asks a question during a press conference of the fifth session of the 13th National People's Congress (NPC) via video link in Beijing, capital of China, March 4, 2022. (Xinhua/Chen Zhonghao)

Journalists attend a press conference of the fifth session of the 13th National People's Congress (NPC) via video link in Beijing, capital of China, March 4, 2022. (Xinhua/Chen Zhonghao)
Before donating to help the humanitarian crisis in Europe, Ohioans urged to do research
Statement from Massimo Bergamini, chief executive officer of the Canadian Museums Association (CMA) on the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

OTTAWA, ON, March 3, 2022 /CNW/ - "Even as the world struggled to right itself from a pandemic that has already claimed six million lives, Russian president Vladimir Putin decided to use his country's vastly superior military to rain fire on the people of Ukraine.

Images of the suffering that this war of aggression is visiting not only on Ukrainians, but also on young Russian conscripts and the families many of them will never see again, are being broadcast in real time across the world.

And while it may be too soon to determine if Russia's reckless action, and that of the government of Belarus in supporting it, will result in a redrawing of maps, those graphic images have forever changed our perceptions of the world we live in.

Now, the targeting by Russian forces of civilians and civilian infrastructure marks a violent and frightening escalation in the conflict.

In addition to missile strikes against hospitals and residential buildings, amidst the growing violence, we are seeing Russian forces targeting Ukrainian museums and other cultural and historical institutions .

Museums, art galleries, libraries and archives are the guardians of the collective stories of a people or a nation. To destroy a nation's cultural institutions and collections is to strike at its heart.

Efforts to destroy Ukraine's cultural institutions must be viewed as part of larger attempt to erase the foundations of its national identity and existence.

The author and cultural critic Neil Postman famously said that the purpose of museums was to provide answers to the question: 'What does it mean to be a human being?'

Efforts by Mr. Putin and his generals to burn these houses of culture and history to the ground is further evidence of how far removed from the accepted norms of humanity the occupants of the Kremlin have become and, therefore, how dangerous.

As representatives of Canada's museums sector, today we add our voices to the global chorus calling for an immediate end to the Russian and Belarussian aggression in Ukraine.

In the next days we will convene a meeting of Canadian museological institutions to identify concrete actions that can be taken to support Ukraine's museum and cultural community and advance the cause of peace.

To the people of Ukraine, know that you are not alone: We stand with you in solidarity."

SOURCE Canadian Museums Association

For further information: Rebecca MacKenzie, Director of Communications, [email protected]
HONG KONG, March 4 (Xinhua) -- Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) Carrie Lam on Friday said that the current priority for the government was to focus resources on COVID-19 patients most in need, prevent mild cases from turning severe, and reduce the number of severe cases and deaths.

Lam made the remarks during a meeting on Friday with the mainland medical expert team led by Liang Wannian, head of the COVID-19 response expert panel under China's National Health Commission.

Lam said that the Hospital Authority had been gradually converting beds in suitable hospitals in its different clusters for admitting confirmed COVID-19 patients, so as to focus healthcare manpower and resources on coping with the confirmed cases on the rise.

The government was also pressing ahead with vaccination arrangements for residents in residential care homes for elderly and disabled persons, mobilizing more medical workers in both the public and private sectors to form outreach medical teams and aiming to complete the outreach vaccination exercise within two weeks' time, Lam added.

"The ceaseless support from the country is testimony to the care of the central authorities and the institutional strength of 'one country, two systems' and has boosted our anti-epidemic efforts," Lam said, expressing her heartfelt gratitude to the three mainland medical expert teams which came to Hong Kong thus far.

"As long as members of the public stay confident and united, we can soon overcome the epidemic," she added. 
'In the event of war, the gun bullet does not look at anyone's religion and nationality', says General VK Singh on an Indian student being shot in Kyiv.

Amid efforts to bring Indian nationals back home safe and secure, an Indian student has been hospitalised after being shot in Kyiv. While further details are awaited, MoS for Ministry of Civil Aviation General VK Singh has confirmed the news.

Speaking to media. Genenal VK Singh that a student from Kyiv was reported to have been shot and was immediately admitted to the hospital. He added that the Indian embassy had earlier cleared on priority that everyone should leave Kyiv, stressing that in the event of war, the gun bullet does not look at anyones religion and nationality. As per early reports, the student was shot while trying to flee Ukraine.

Speaking exclusively to NewsX, Col. Sodhi said, We have already lost one student a few days earlier. It is really disturbing. My advice to the student community in Ukraine is that at this critical time, they have to maintain peace. I understand that they are stuck in a war zone. It is very difficult to fathom what a person might go through. Since i was in the army, i know that when bullets fire, things are very difficult. My advice to them is that they should be calm. Secondly, they should have faith in the Indian government, which is working around the clock to evacuate them.

Earlier, a 20-year-old Indian student named Naveen Gyanagoudar, hailing from Karnataka, was killed in Russian shelling while he was standing in a queue to get food. Naveen had spoken to his father 2 days before being killed in Ukraine. The news of his death broke out after his friend got a call from Naveens phone regarding the latters demise. Naveen was a final year student at Kharkiv National Medical University.
As the students return home, NewsX is nearing its Day 3 of #OperationJamuna, in which we find out what do our students need and how to rehabilitate the youth.

Indian nationals, who went to Ukraine with the hopes and dreams, of becoming a doctor and earning a good life for themselves, are now waiting for a chance to come back home, as tensions between Russia and Ukraine take a violent turn. Amid threats of the war turning into a nuclear war, the Indian government is now rushing to evacuate Indians at the earliest.

Under Operation Ganga, the Indian government has planned more than 80 repatriation flights to evacuate about 17,000 Indian citizens from Ukraine by March 10. These repatriation flights include 35 flights from Romania, 28 flights from Hungary, 9 flights from Poland, 5 from Romania and 3 from Slovakia. IAF, on the other hand, has deployed C-17 planes in the mission.

As the students return home, NewsX is nearing its Day 3 of #OperationJamuna, in which we find out what do our students need and how to rehabilitate the youth. The 6 key requests that have been shared by the students with Team NewsX include

Smooth transfer and acceptance of students in alternate universities Accommodating students in Indian universities to allow them to complete their education. Cost-efficient passage to complete ongoing degree in other universities Easy procedures to finish ongoing semesters in private universities Shifting students to other foreign universities to help complete their education Concessions for students, provide degree before completion of tenure.

There are multiple options ahead of the government to help these students. The government is likely to take advice from medical councils on how to rehabilitate medical students. It is exploring possibilities to accommodate students in Indian medical colleges. The government is considering the transfer of students to medical colleges in other countries and even considered allowing students to appear for NEET-FMG if students transferred to other countries.
In the SOS messages that now taking over the Internet, students from Sumy and Kharkiv have said that getting to the border is difficult for them. The electricity and water supply has been stopped, no transportation is available, the shops have run out of supply and the banks have run out of cash.

As the government rushes to evacuate Indian citizens from Ukraine via neighbouring countries like Romania, Belarus, Hungary and Poland, one of the primary areas of concern remains the eastern cities of Sumi and Kharkiv. Extreme shelling in the region has made it impossible for Indians to seek help and remain safe in a war-ravaged zone. As the evacuation process continues in the west, students are sending SOS calls from Sumy and Kharkiv.

In the SOS messages that now taking over the Internet, students from Sumy and Kharkiv have said that getting to the border is difficult for them. The electricity and water supply has been stopped, no transportation is available, the shops have run out of supply and the banks have run out of cash. To save themselves, they have to seek refuge in basements or bunkers, which smell and have sewage leakages.

Considering the plight of these students and constant appeals by the Indian government, Russia announced a safe passage today, along with the arrangement of 130 Russian buses to facilitate the movement of Indian students from these areas to Belgorod, one of the closest Russian cities. From Belgorod, these students will be transported to India by air. Earlier, an advisory issued by the Indian embassy advised the students to move to border areas like Pisochyn, Babai and Bezlyudivka.

However, it is important to come up with an action plan and see what needs to be done next. Some of the steps that can be undertaken include communicate locations to board the Russian buses, along with timings of their departure. 2 helplines need to be set up dedicated to Sumy and Kharkiv evacuation. The first hotline should be for FAQs, travel timings and bus locations and the second hotline should be for any emergencies during travel to the border. A coordination cell should also be set up with the Russians for safe passage. The check posts should be equipped with adequate means, medicines and rest zones. Along with this, a cell should also be set up to coordinate travel from Belgorod to India.
In a bid of evacuate stranded Indians from war-ravaged Ukraine, 3 more IAF C-17 returned to India early morning today as part of the ongoing Operation Ganga. The aircrafts returned to the Hindan airbase carrying 630 Indian nationals, using the airfields in Romania and Hungary.

Meanwhile, a special IndiGo flight from Hungarys capital Budaptest reached Delhi early morning carrying 219 Indian nationals. Minister of State for Home Affairs Nisith Pramanik received the Indian students at the Indira Gandhi International Airport.

As per reports, the Indian government has planned more than 80 repatriation flights under Operation Ganga to evacuate about 17,000 Indian citizens from Ukraine by March 10. These repatriation flights include 35 flights from Romania, 28 flights from Hungary, 9 flights from Poland, 5 from Romania and 3 from Slovakia, along with the C-17 planes deployed by IAF.

Union Minister VK Singh, who is in Poland, spoke to the media earlier today and said about 200 Indian citizens have been evacuated with each flight in the last 3 day. Some more flights have been scheduled and the government is trying to evacuate 800-900 students from Warsaw.
Amid escalating tensions between Russia and Ukraine, the quad leaders on Thursday participated in a virtual summit. The virtual summit witnessed the attendance of Prime Minister Narendra Modi along with US President Joe Biden, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida.

The leaders discussed the broader implications of the war between Russia and Ukraine, including its humanitarian implications. As earlier expressed by India previously at the UN, PM Modi emphasised the need to opt for the path of dialogue and diplomacy. The leaders further discussed the ways to come up with a new humanitarian assistance and disaster relief mechanism, which will enable the Quad to meet such challenges in the future in the Indo Pacific region. The objective of which, would be to provide a channel of communication as they each address and respond to the Russia-Ukraine crisis.

Along with the developments in Ukraine, the leaders reviewed the progress of Quad initiatives since last year and agreed on accelerating cooperation. Stressing on the objective to achieve concrete outcomes, the leaders agreed to meet in Tokyo later this year.

Underlining the need for concrete and practical forms of cooperation in the Indo-Pacific region, PM Modi said that Quad must be focus on its core objective of promoting peace, stablility and prosperity in the region and cooperate in areas like Humanitarian and disaster relief, debt sustainability, supply chain, clean energy, connectivity and capacity building.
Russia Ukraine war is on the brink of turning nuclear with the fire at Ukraines power plant Zaporizhzhia, A day after the second round of talks between the two countries in Belarus, the fire raises question whether the crisis would reach stalemate anytime soon. In an emergency address, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenksy raised alarm that the Russian side is firing nuclear units equipped with thermal imagers and such an incident has happened first time in the human history. He added that there are 15 nuclear power units in Ukraine. If all of them explore, this would mean the end of Europe.

As world leaders rush to demand for an emergency session of UNSC, NATO is likely to hold an emergency meeting over Russias launch of a full-scale attack in Ukraine and are rushing to bolster their eastern flank.

Meanwhile, Russia conducted air strikes on Chernihiv residential areas on Thursday. As per the numbers shared by Ukraines State Emergency Service, 33 people died and 18 people were injured as of 6:20 pm.

Talking about the second round of talks between Russia and Belarus, the two countries agreed on evacuation corridors for civilians. Russian President Vladimir Putin, on the other hand, said that the military advance, now in its second week, was going as per plan.

Follow NewsX live blog for latest updates!
Volodymyr Zelenksy, in an emergency address after the nuclear plant fire, accused the Russian side of firing nuclear units, equipped with thermal imagers.

In a fresh blow to Ukraine from the Russian side, the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine has been targeted. Adviser to the Head of the Office of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenksy tweeted a video of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. The news was later confirmed by a spokesman of the plant.

Volodymyr Zelenksy, in an emergency address after the nuclear plant fire, accused the Russian side of firing nuclear units, equipped with thermal imagers. Expressing concern, he that such an incident has happened first time in the human history and no country in the world has ever fired on nuclear power units. He added, There are 15 nuclear power units on the territory of Ukraine. If everyone explodes, this is the evacuation of all of Europe, the end of everything, the end of Europe.

VIDEO: Ukraine nuclear plant on fire after Russian shelling.



Europe's largest nuclear power plant was on fire Friday after the station came under fire from invading Russian forces, with Ukraine's foreign minister demanding an immediate ceasefire at the site to avoid disaster pic.twitter.com/AkVuT9dizu  AFP News Agency (@AFP) March 4, 2022

The fire at the key Ukrainian nuclear power plant has caused panic among not just Ukrainian but also world leaders. US President Joe Biden has spoken to Zelensky about the Ukraine nuclear station, while UK has called for an emergency meeting of the UN security council.

Speaking about the fire at Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has said that IAEA is aware of reports of shelling at the nuclear power plant and is in contact with the Ukrainian authorities regarding the situation. Rafael Mariano Grossi, Director-General, IAEA, also dialled Ukrainian PM and appealed for a halt of use of force and warned of severe danger if reactors are hit as it could be disastrous if reactors hit.
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Plans for as many as three Amazon Fresh stores and the states first Wegmans are indications Connecticut remains an attractive destination for regional and national retailers, industry experts and economists say.

Although some of Connecticuts shopping malls have noticeable vacancies and are struggling to remake themselves amid the pandemic, there are still a number of retailers that are looking at Connecticuts retail landscape and whether they want to be here, said Tim Phelan, president of the Connecticut Retail Merchants Association, a New Haven-based trade group.

Phelan said confidentiality agreements prohibit him from naming specific companies that are eyeing Connecticut locations.

Burt Flickinger, managing director of New York City-based Strategic Resource Group, said the COVID-19 pandemic has kept retailers expansion plans in check in Connecticut.

With COVID apparently clearing up again, they are going to start reexamining the landscape, Flickinger said.

But any suggestion Connecticut is facing a retail apocalypse just isnt true, Phelan said. A variety of factors contribute to the state remaining an attractive place for new retailers to set up shop, he said.

The state remains a place where we have consumers with a little higher income, he said. And we are doing a better job of making our cities more attractive places where people want to be. Retailers go where people go.

Even in malls and retail centers that are struggling to remake themselves, Phelan said there is a silver lining.

Malls here are trying consistently to stay fresh, so there's a lot of innovation taking place, a lot of thinking outside of the box, he said. Retailers take notice of that.

One example of that kind of innovation may be taking place in Meriden.

The retail center lost three of its anchors  Sears, Macys and JCPenney  since the middle of the last decade. The latest significant national retailer to leave was Best Buy, which closed its store there in October 2021.

But the Meriden Malls future prospects may be taking a turn for the better.

Yale-New Haven Health officials announced last October that they were purchasing the former Macys space for a comprehensive ambulatory center. Renovations of the two-story, 179,285-square-foot retail space are expected to be completed by the end of 2023 or in early 2024.

And adjacent to the Meriden Mall, discount grocer Aldi is moving into the former Savers thrift store space at 495 Chamberlain Highway. The store, which is expected to increase consumer traffic to the mall, is scheduled to open at the end of March.

Wayne Pesce, president of the Connecticut Food Association, said for supermarket operators considering expansion, the state is not for the faint of heart as a place to do business.

There has been some real turbulence. Its getting harder to get and maintain labor here, Pesce said. And Im of the opinion that we are a state that is over-stored.

Still, he acknowledged some supermarket chains frequently come up in conversation about grocery chains opening new stores in Connecticut.

One of them is Lidl, the German discount grocery chain that is considered a rival of Aldi, which has 20 Connecticut stores. That is about as many New York locations as Lidl has just on Long Island alone.

Pesce said if Lidl is to enter the Connecticut market, it will buy existing stores from chains in the market. He said thats how Lidl moved into New York, buying 24 Best Market locations on Long Island and three in New Jersey in January 2019.

I know they build locations from the ground up in places that are growing population-wise, Pesce said. But Connecticuts population growth over the past decade is up only slightly, which he said would likely rule out the chain building new stores in the state.

This week, Wegmans announced it plans to open its first Connecticut location with a 95,000-square-foot store in Norwalk.

Another factor that favors Connecticut in terms of future supermarket expansion is what Donald Klepper-Smith, an economist with DataCore Partners, refers to as economies of scale.

Because of Connecticuts location between Boston and New York City, retailers that do business in the state benefit from easy access to products and merchandise, according to Klepper-Smith.

The grocery sector is very much about economies of scale, he said. When you talk about the ability to move more goods, you can buy more in bulk, which allows you to sell cheaper and achieve larger margins.

Another grocery chain that has set its sights on Connecticut is Food Emporium, a subsidiary of the Key Food Stores Cooperative, which is based in Staten Island, N.Y. Plans call for a Food Emporium to be built near Brookfields town center, although construction of the store hasnt started yet.

Food Emporium previously had several supermarkets in Fairfield County when it was owned by the now defunct A&P supermarket chain. Before A&P went out of business in 2015, Key Food Stores acquired the Food Emporium brand name.

Pesca said he doesnt expect the new edition of Food Emporium to open multiple stores in Connecticut.

I don't see it as a big play, Pesce said. Given where the store is going to be, they are probably trying to take advantage of the brand recognition that Food Emporium had in New York City area.

luther.turmelle@hearstmediact.com
HONG KONG, March 4 (Xinhua) -- A team of mainland health experts led by Liang Wannian, head of the COVID-19 response expert panel under China's National Health Commission, agreed that reducing the mortality in severe cases is the top priority of the current anti-epidemic efforts in Hong Kong.

The next step should be to focus on key groups, identify risks with precision, strengthen inter-department collaboration, speed up information integration and exert utmost efforts to save lives.

When meeting the press on Thursday, Liang elaborated on what the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) should do next to secure a final victory against the raging fifth wave of infections. Here are some key points of his suggestions.

MAINLAND EXPERIENCE

Hong Kong's current anti-epidemic efforts should focus on reducing infections and mortality in the critically ill, Liang told reporters, noting that the city's limited resources and energy should be directed to the priorities.

He suggested learning from Wuhan's experience in reducing severe case fatalities, noting that patients in severe or critical conditions should be treated in designated hospitals by top-level doctors and with all necessary resources guaranteed.

"The adoption of this approach can significantly bring down mortality," Liang said, adding that less deaths are very important to stabilize the society and people's morale.

A large number of mildly ill patients should be admitted to community isolation facilities, where they are treated through various methods, including traditional Chinese medicine, to ease patients' fear and increase their confidence in overcoming the disease, he added.

The HKSAR government is taking a series of active measures to control the epidemic and doing its best to protect the health and lives of Hong Kong people, which has played a positive role in maintaining stability in Hong Kong, Liang said.

IDENTIFY RISKS

Liang suggested that the next step of anti-epidemic measures should focus on key groups, regions and facilities. This requires joint discussions between mainland and Hong Kong experts to see which measures are to be implemented immediately, how large the coverage is, and how to translate them into concrete actions.

He said that about 94 percent of the fatal cases were senior residents aged 60 or above, and a significant proportion of them were living in elderly care homes. The vaccination rate among the elderly who died was far below the average vaccination rate in Hong Kong.

An important task at hand is to devise more targeted and effective measures such as increasing vaccination coverage among and enhancing monitoring of the elderly residents, he said.

As for regions and facilities, a core task of Hong Kong's current prevention and control work is to identify the risks of each site and take appropriate measures according to the different risk levels, he noted.

In addition, extra attention should be paid to the anti-epidemic work of Hong Kong's disciplined services, such as the police and fire services, as well the public utilities, Liang stressed.

UNITY FOR VICTORY

Liang said that although the fifth wave is still rapidly spreading, Hong Kong has strong medical resources and urban management capabilities.

Hong Kong also has staunch support of the central government, the HKSAR government's strong leadership, and community solidarity -- all favorable conditions to beat the outbreak, he added.

The expert said the Hong Kong community has been widely mobilized in the fight against COVID-19, including the HKSAR government, medical institutions, all sectors of society and the general public. The Hong Kong people are doing a good job in wearing masks, practicing social distancing, and reducing non-essential outdoor activities.

"The HKSAR government bears the main responsibility in fighting the epidemic, and the people of Hong Kong are the main force," Liang said. "With unity and confidence, the Hong Kong society is bound to beat the epidemic." 
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Jason Capozucca, a Junior at Staples High School, has won the Norwalk Youth Symphonys concerto competition.

He will perform the concerto with the Norwalk Youth Symphony on Sunday at 71 East Ave., Suite N. in Norwalk.

He has also been selected as the 2022 principal bassoonist for the Connecticut Music Educators Associations All State Honors Orchestra, Western Region Orchestra, and the associations 2021 All State Band. He has also been selected for the associations All State Honors Band 2022, the Western Region Band 2021 and 2022 for the classical alto saxophone.

He plays the bassoon with the Staples Symphonic Orchestra and the Staples Wind Ensemble and the alto saxophone with the Staples High School Band, and Staples Jazz Band.

The Norwalk Youth Symphony has musicians in fourth through 12th grade from more than 30 neighboring cities and towns. Symphony orchestra membership is secured by audition only.

Call 203-866-4100, or visit norwalksymphony.org for more information.

Jewelry appraisal, consignment event returns to historical society

Auction house Rago is returning to Weston from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Tuesday, for its fourth jewelry appraisal and consignment event at the Weston Historical Society, at 104 Weston Road.

The event is by appointment only. For more information and to RSVP, contact Robin Daum, of Rago, at robin@ragoarts.com, or call 609-460-3619.

Rago will donate a portion of its commission on property consigned from the event to the historical society.

Rago has been featured on PBSs The Antiques Road Show.

Masks will be required for all attendees, regardless of their COVID-19 vaccination status. Social distancing protocols will be in place to keep all attendees safe.

Parking will be in the historical societys lot and the event will take place in the red building next to the parking lot.

More information, and an opportunity to donate are available at info@info@westonhistoricalsocietyorg, 203-226-1804, or by visiting westonhistoricalsociety.org.

Opening reception, panel discussion March 10

The Westport Library is presenting Stepping Out on Faith Exhibit Opening and Panel Discussion, in the Trefz Forum of the library, at 7 p.m., March 10.

It opens the art exhibit, The Art and Journey of Charles Joyner in the librarys Sheffer Gallery.

Book novelist, filmmaker, playright, and professor Trey Ellis, will moderate the discussion with the artist, Joyner, and fellow academic Bonnyeclarie Smith Stewart.

The discussion will be preceded by a reception at 6:30 p.m.

Visit westportlibrary.org for more information.

Great Westport salad contest launches

The Westport Weston Chamber of Commerce has announced a new event for the community, and its residents: The Great Westport Salad Contest.

The event is a follow up to the pizza, burger, soup, and sandwich contests that ran the previous four years.

Restaurants, delis and markets will compete in eight different categories and a Best Salad Maker in Westport will be crowned. The contest launched this week at the Granola Bar at 275 Post Road East in Westport.

Residents will vote online in each category until March 31 on the Chamber of Commerces website. Each participant is entered into a drawing to win a free salad from one of the eight winning restaurants.

The competitors are: A & S Fine Foods, Calises, Capuli, Don Memo, Granola Bar, Joes Pizza, Kawa Ni, La Plage, Manna Toast, Match Burger Lobster, Mystic Market, Organic Krush, Pane e Bene, Parker Mansion, Planet Pizza, Rizzutos, Romanacci, Spotted Horse, The Boathouse, The Whelk, Tuttis and Winfield Street Deli.

The eight categories are: Best Cobb Salad, Best Chef Salad, Best Caesar Salad, Best Deli Salad, Best Mediterranean Salad, Best Make Your Own Salad, Best Unique Salad and Best Greens Salad.

Each eatery can enter up to four categories, but can only win two at most.

People can also use the social media hashtag #greatwestportsalad throughout the competition.

Visit westportwestonchamber.com/salad for more information and to vote.

Viewing area in YMCA gymnastics center to be dedicated

The Westport Weston YMCA Sally Silverstein Viewing Area in the Gymnastics Center will be dedicated at 6:30 p.m. on Friday, at the YMCA at 14 Allen Raymond Lane in Westport.

It is in honor of the retiring Westport Weston YMCA Senior Gymnastics Director Sally Silverstein, after her 34 years of service with the organization.

The YMCA gymnastics program serves more than 500 gymnasts in the facilitys new 11,000 square feet space between developmental classes, showtime and competition teams.
Dr. Veronica Maria Pimentel, who specializes in obstetrics and gynecology at St. Francis Hospital in Hartford, recalls a patient who suffered a stroke soon after delivering her baby prematurely. The womans Medicaid eligibility ended just two months after she gave birth, despite the complications caused by her stroke and the babys premature birth.

Although the womans medical coverage ended, Pimentel said, her needs didnt. She still needs physical therapy. She still needs occupational therapy. She still needs to be prepared for the rest of her life so she can care for her pre-term baby and herself, Pimentel said.

Experiences like the new mothers made Pimentel determined to advocate for changes to Medicaid coverage for women in Connecticut. Those changes will take effect April 1.

Pimentel testified before lawmakers last year as the General Assembly considered a bill that would address the coverage gap. The measure was included in the biennial state budget and will take effect April 1, extending postpartum Medicaid coverage to one year. Currently, women whose labor and delivery are covered by Medicaid, but who do not qualify for full Medicaid coverage, are entitled to 60 days of postpartum care.

The extension means that women in a family of three earning between $37,000 and $60,000 will become eligible for a full year of postpartum coverage. The federal government estimates that represents about 4,000 women in Connecticut each year.

Money to fund the Medicaid extension program for five years is included in the federal American Rescue Plan Act.

Prenatal coverage for undocumented women under the states Childrens Health Insurance Program (CHIP) will also be expanded. Previously, undocumented women were ineligible because of their immigration status.

I did my residency in Boston, where there was coverage for all pregnant people, Pimentel said. And then coming from Massachusetts, with that sort of universal coverage, and going to Connecticut, you notice that there is a difference.

The eligibility rules for the new CHIP program will be in the same systems as the rest of our medical programs, and all of these folks will start through the Access Health CT door, like the vast majority of HUSKY Health recipients, said David Dearborn, a spokesperson for the state Department of Social Services.

More changes are scheduled for next year, Dearborn said. For example, medical coverage for undocumented immigrant children up to the age of 8 will go into effect Jan. 1, 2023, and postpartum care for undocumented immigrant women will follow in April of 2023.

Amy D. Gagliardi, director of the maternal and infant program for Community Health Center Inc., said data supports the need for extended coverage. Gagliardi is co-chair of the women and childrens health committee of the states Medical Assistance Program Oversight Council, which recommended the postpartum extension. She said some of the most dangerous pregnancy-related complicationspreeclampsia, blood clots and heart problems such as cardiomyopathymay not surface until weeks or months after delivery.

The biggest reason women die nationally is cardiovascular disease, Gagliardi said. I think the average is over 5 months after birth, Gagliardi said.

Theres a lot of chronic diseases that present during pregnancy, she said. Women may have a predisposition to diabetes, but it will develop in pregnancy. She may have an existing diabetes or an existing hypertension, but it exacerbates during pregnancy.

While chronic disease presents a threat, pregnancy-related deaths are relatively rare. In a 2021 report by the Connecticut Maternal Mortality Committee that reviewed state data from 2015 to 2019, there were 25 pregnancy-related deaths. Significantly, according to the report, 48% of pregnancy-related deaths occurred late postpartum, between 43 and 365 days after the end of the pregnancy.

The extension of postpartum Medicaid coverage will also help address racial inequities in maternal health. According to the Connecticut report, Black women accounted for 13% of live births from 2015 to 2019 but 20% of pregnancy-related deaths. Women of all races who were covered by Medicaid accounted for 37% of live births but 60% of pregnancy-related deaths from 2015 to 2019.

Infants born on Medicaid are guaranteed coverage through the first year of life. Advocates say aligning the mothers coverage is also important to ensure compliance with well-child visits.

That first year is critically important, said Tiffany Donelson, president and CEO of the Connecticut Health Foundation. Having coverage means that a woman has access to get treatment for a variety of things like postpartum depression, and that also impacts an infants health and well-being and development.

Pimentel is glad she and her colleagues will no longer have to attempt to squeeze treatments for a new mother into the two-month Medicaid eligibility window. That gives us a lot more leeway trying to figure out how to help our patients take care of themselves.

Donelson cautions that the Medicaid changes are only a piece of the puzzle when addressing racial inequities in maternal health outcomes. National figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) show that Black women are more than three times as likely to die from a pregnancy-related cause than white women, and the inequity cuts across socio-economic lines.

A 2020 study by the CDCs National Center for Health Statistics found that maternal mortality in the U.S. increased from 20.1 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2019 to 23.8 in 2020, with mothers of color accounting for the increase. Maternal deaths among Black women rose from 44 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2019 to 55 in 2020. One-third of the pregnant women and new mothers who died in 2020 were Black.

There is a huge disparity that we need to address within child-maternal health, Donelson said.

The CDCs recommendations to reduce Black maternal mortality rates call on hospitals and health systems to address unconscious bias and standardize the coordination of care.

This is one of the steps in really trying to address the inequities in maternal health outcomes, Donelson said of the Medicaid changes, and theres more that still needs to be done.

Pimentel said another benefit to the Medicaid coverage extension is establishing a relationship of trust with medical providers.

Trust is super important. If a patient has found somebody that they trust, theyre more likely to go to their visits, she said. When patients know the provider's name, they feel more satisfied with their care.

This story was reported under a partnership with the Conn. Health I-Team (c-hit.org), a non-profit news organization dedicated to health reporting.
The Connecticut Supreme Court upheld the conviction of a New York man for an execution-style killing in a New Haven nightclub that occurred in 2013, rejecting his attempts to toss witness testimony that tied him to the crime.

In a unanimous ruling, the court noted that despite a lack of direct witnesses, security footage from inside the Cheetah Club captured Jean Bruny walking up within several feet of the victim, Torrance Dawkins, and shooting him in the back of the head before fleeing the club.

There were no such eyewitnesses, Justice Raheem Mullins wrote in the majority opinion. The overwhelming nature of the states case hinged, instead, on the fact that the defendant was captured on the surveillance video shooting the victim.

Bruny was arrested more than two years after the killing when police reviewed footage from the scene. During a trial in 2018, four witnesses testified that Bruny was the person seen in the footage shooting Dawkins.

A forensic expert also presented enhanced footage tracking individuals through the club before, during and after the shooting.

The victim was celebrating his 22nd birthday by attending a concert at the Cheetah Club the night of the shooting. Some of his family who were with him that night later testified that they had bad blood with members of Brunys group at the club.

Bruny was convicted of murder and a firearms charge and was sentenced to 50 years in prison.

On appeal, his attorneys sought to reverse the conviction on the grounds that the witnesses should not have been allowed to testify as to Brunys identity in the surveillance footage.

The court rejected that argument, with Mullins writing that the state's code of evidence should not prohibit such testimony.

We conclude that, viewed under the totality of the circumstances, the trial court acted within its discretion in admitting the testimony of all four witnesses, which was rationally based on their perception and helpful to the jury, Mullins wrote.

Brunys attorney, Pamela Nagy, did not respond to a request for comment Thursday.

The case was a companion to another appeal brought by a Hartford man, Antron Gore, who challenged his conviction for a fatal 2017 shooting in that city. Gore similarly argued about bar witnesses testifying to his identity in surveillance footage, but the court ruled to amend the states evidentiary rules to allow such testimony.

Both decisions were handed down by the court in early February, and published in the Connecticut Law Journal on Tuesday.

A single concurrence in the case, written by Justice Steven Ecker, argued that another witness who testified at Brunys trial saw the defendant with a handgun weeks before the shooting should have qualified as a jailhouse informant, with the judge instructing the jury to consider this when weighing the testimony.

However, Ecker wrote that the error was harmless and that he agreed with the rest of the justices in the decision to uphold Brunys conviction.

Bruny is incarcerated at the Cheshire Correctional Institution with the maximum date of release set in 2066.
COVID stayed relatively level Friday, according to data released by the state.

Hospitalizations from the virus decreased by four to 167, and though there were fewer new cases identified Friday than the previous day  432 compared to 589  the percent positive remained relatively flat.

Of 19,425 COVID tests reported to the state, 2.22 percent were found to be positive, an increase of one-tenth of 1 percent from Thursday.

Ulysses Wu, chief epidemiologist at Hartford HealthCare, said this week that he expects a sawtooth pattern, in which case rates decrease but not in a straight line.

Rates will continue to decline, but at a slower pace than once would expect, he said.
TRIPOLI, March 3 (Xinhua) -- The newly-approved government of Libya on Thursday was sworn in before the House of Representatives, the country's parliament, in the eastern city of Tubruk, Libyan National TV reported.

"The government should create all suitable conditions for the elections, in accordance with the established roadmap," Aguila Saleh, the speaker of the House of Representatives, said in a speech during the oath session.

"The government must lift the state of force majeure that impeded the holding of the elections on December 24 last year," Saleh said, demanding the government of national unity to hand over power to the new government democratically.

Prime Minister-designate Fathi Bashagha of the parliament-approved government said his administration would begin to consider all options and necessary arrangements to resume office in the capital Tripoli "legally and not by force."

Bashagha pledged that his government would work to "end the transitional phases and support the electoral process" in the country.

The House of Representatives on Tuesday granted confidence to a new government to replace the incumbent government of national unity led by Prime Minister Abdul-Hamid Dbeibah.

The House of Representatives withdrew confidence from Dbeibah's government in September last year and kept it as a caretaker government. On Feb. 10, it unanimously voted to appoint Bashagha, former interior minister, as the new prime minister.

However, Dbeibah vowed his government would remain in office until an elected government is established. On Feb. 21, he announced a plan to hold general elections in June.

Dbeibah's government on Tuesday accused the House of Representatives of approving the new government "without achieving quorum" during the session, confirming that it would continue to work and prepare for elections in June.

General elections in Libya were scheduled for Dec. 24 last year, but were postponed indefinitely due to technical and legal issues, according to the country's elections commission. 
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DANBURY  Former New Hope Baptist Church pastor and community leader, the Rev. Ivan S. Pitts is recovering after being violently attacked outside his home in California last week.

Pitts sustained a brutal attack in Long Beach the morning of Feb. 24, when he was stabbed multiple times.

In a Facebook post, Kelita Gardner  executive director of operations at Second Baptist Church in Santa Ana, Calif., where Pitts has served as senior pastor since October 2012  described the attack as random. Long Beach police could not be reached Thursday for comment.

Gardner said Pitts had returned from dropping off his son at school when a man approached him in his driveway and stabbed him seven times.

Despite having both lungs punctured and bones in his left eye socket and shoulder broken, according to Gardner, 53-year-old Pitts managed to get away and flag down some construction workers who came to his aid.

Although its been nearly a decade since he left Danbury for the West Coast, Pitts remains well known in the local community.

Its been so long since hes been in this community, but hes still so popular here, said Carrie Amos, former executive director and president of Jericho Partnership. Hes such a good guy.

During his time in Danbury, Pitts sat on the board of directors for Jericho Partnership, Pathways Danbury and the Association of Religious Communities, and was president of the Danbury branch of the NAACP and the Congress of Christian Education for the Connecticut Missionary Baptist Convention.

Amos said shes been told that Pitts is recovering well.

I have not talked to him, but a mutual friend says hes doing great, she said. It was a horrible thing that happened, but hes expected to make a full recovery.

Faye Walton of Danburys New Hope Baptist Church said shes been in touch with Pitts.

Pastor Pitts has been released from the hospital, his injuries are not life-threatening and he is recovering well, she said Thursday.

It didnt take long for police to find the man who stabbed Pitts, according to Long Beach police, who said the suspect was captured in nearby Huntington Beach, Calif., shortly after the attack.

The man had been involved in multiple crimes since Feb. 24, according to a post on the Long Beach Police Departments Facebook page that said he stabbed another person and vandalized a vehicle by puncturing a tire with a knife that same morning.

Police did not identify the man in the Facebook post, but said he was admitted to a hospital for medical attention and would be facing attempted murder, felony vandalism and assault with a deadly weapon charges.
HARTFORD  A man was found shot on Broad Street Thursday evening, according to the Hartford Police Department.

Police were called to the 1800 block of Broad Street around 8:20 p.m. Thursday for a report of a person who had been shot, according to Hartford Police Lt. Aaron Boisvert.

At the scene, police found a man in his 30s who had been injured by gunfire. The man was taken to an area hospital where he was listed in stable condition, Boisvert said.

The Hartford Police Major Crimes and Crime Scene divisions are investigating the incident. Anyone with information should call the Hartford Police Departments Tip Line at 860-722-TIPS (8477).
Yi-Chin Lee, Houston Chronicle / Staff photographer

LITCHFIELD  In anticipation of the upcoming holiday of Purim, Chabad of Northwest Connecticut is hosting a Pre-Purim Family Hamantash Bake at 2 p.m. March 6, at 69 West St.

Participants will make their own dough and choose from a variety of toppings to fill their hamantashen while learning about the customs of the Purim holiday. This event is for people of all ages; admission is $8 per person.
MILFORD  A new school policy ensures that students whose parents or guardians have unpaid meal charges in their account are not shamed or treated differently, according to administrators.

This is a brand new policy, and it comes before us as the result of new legislation that deals with what has become known as shaming, said James Richetelli, school district chief of operations. That is how you treat a student that has an unpaid balance in the food service accounts.

A goal of the Milford Board of Education and Milford Public Schools is to provide students with access to nutritious no-or-low-cost meals every day, he added.

Richetelli said the district, by state law, must come up with a policy on how it handles unpaid balances and students who need to charge their meals.

Eileen Faustich, director of food services, said the district has always had a lunch credit policy, but it wasnt required to have a board policy until the new legislation required it this year for the first time.

We want to make sure every child can have lunch or breakfast whether they have money in their account or not, said Faustich. We have always made sure we are not shaming a child, that we would always feed them.

The policy prohibits the public identification or shaming of a student for any unpaid charges, including, but not limited to, delaying or refusing to serve a meal to the student, designating a specific meal option for the student or taking disciplinary action against the student.

We cant shame a child or give them a different meal or in any way single them out or embarrass them because they dont have any money in their account, said Faustich. That is what is outlined in this policy, and it also specifies how many meals (30 meals) we can give the student before we refer the account to our homeless liaison.

Unpaid meals charges have not been a significant problem in the past because Faustich and her team send reminders to get in touch with parents.

With all the efforts we take to give parents an opportunity to put money in the accounts, it hasnt been an issue in the past, said Faustich. The only concern we have is that this Connecticut new law that went into effect doesnt allow us to limit the number of meals that students can charge.

Faustich said this policy is irrelevant this year because the schools offer breakfast or lunch to all students free.

Nobody has to worry about if they have money in their account because we feed everyone, she said. But it is limited to one meal. So if our free meals for all doesnt get extended past June 30 of this year, then we would go back to using the childrens account and having parents putting money into their account.
NEW HAVEN  Police have charged a suspect in the killing of Richard Whitaker Jr., officials announced Friday.

Whitaker, 21, was fatally shot near Columbus Avenue June 15, 2021. He was the brother of DayShon Smith, a distinguished boxer killed in 2020.

Dominguez said officers that June day had been called to the area for a ShotSpotter alert and 911 calls, finding Whitaker wounded in a residence. He was transported to the hospital, where he died of his injuries.

After an investigation headed by Detective Christian Bruckheart, Travon J. Hobby, 23, of New Haven, was arrested Feb. 24 and charged with murder and criminal possession of a pistol, Dominguez said.

Mayor Justin Elicker, speaking to Whitakers father, said he remembered being there the night of the slaying, and expressed his condolences, both for the passing of Whitaker Jr. and of Smith.

I cant imagine what you have gone through and your family has gone through, said Elicker. We are here for your family.

Whitakers family declined to comment Friday.

Little Richard was not fond of being in the spotlight but had a smile that would light up the room. He loved joking around and was goofy, but very straight forward, his family said in his obituary. No matter what Little Richard made time for his family creating memories that would leave you reminiscing on the time you spent with him. ... For those that knew Richard he was a man of few words unless he really liked you. To know him was to truly love him.

In other law enforcement-related matters, Elicker noted the city intends to promote 10 officers to detective in the coming days, as the city seeks to invest more in solving homicides.

Dominguez said the city had seen 17 nonfatal shootings so far in 2022, up from 15 at this point last year.

There have been no homicides so far, as compared to seven at this time in 2021.

She said the department has seized 40 guns, including five ghost guns, and made 34 associated arrests, as compared to 24 guns seized, none of which were ghost guns, and 27 associated arrests at this point last year.

The men and women of the Police Department, both patrol and the detective bureau, are doing good work in trying to get guns off the street in multiple ways, Dominguez said.

Dominguez also noted Friday mornings shooting on Rosette Street, saying that, while the investigation is very active, the shooting is believed to have been targeted at this time.

Hobby is being held in lieu of $2 million bail, according to state judicial records, and is scheduled to appear in court March 9.

william.lambert@hearstmediact.com
Hearst Connecticut Media file photo

NEW HAVEN  A New Haven man was sentenced to 55 years in prison for the fatal shooting of 18-year-old Javier Martinez in 2013, according to New Haven States Attorney Patrick Griffin.

Judge Elpedio Vitale sentenced Tyhitt Bember, 25, of New Haven in Superior Court in New Haven Thursday. A jury found Bember guilty in December 2021 of felony murder, first-degree criminal attempt to commit robbery and carrying a pistol without a permit in connection with Martinezs homicide.
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NEW HAVEN  Crystal R. Emery, who has worked to advance women in medicine and STEM careers, directed film and theater and launched a COVID-19 prevention campaign, will be one of 120 women whose statues will be featured on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.

The Smithsonian Institution is celebrating Womens Futures Month from March 5-27 by installing the bright orange life-size, 3D-printed statues in various locations on the Mall. Its titled #IfThenSheCan - The Exhibit.

Emery, who uses a wheelchair and breathing assistance because of two diseases, credits her hometown with giving her the foundation to success despite her disabilities. She has Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease and diabetes.

I am a child of New Haven, Emery said. I grew up in Brookside, when all dreams could be possible. The people helped each other. People looked out for me. This statue represents all of those people who helped me become who I am.

Founder of URU The Right to Be Inc., Emery has created films and other media to inspire women in medicine and STEM fields. She also has created fliers and posters seen throughout New Haven to provide information about prevention from the pandemic.

For me as a Black woman quadriplegic, this breaks every stereotype, she said of being included as one of 120 women, all innovators in science, technology, engineering or mathematics. They include women who are working to protect wildlife, discovering galaxies, building YouTubes platform and working to cure cancer, according to the Smithsonian. Emerys statue will be featured in the Arts and Industries Building, 900 Jefferson Drive, S.W.

These striking 3D-printed figures of remarkable women in STEM careers help us celebrate the incredible impact women continue to make on vital scientific endeavors, said Lonnie Bunch, secretary of the Smithsonian, in a release. This exhibition highlights how a more diverse, more inclusive workforce will strengthen our shared future.

Emery said her 2010 documentary, The Deadliest Disease in America, about racism and shot in New Haven, has been picked up by a distributor, and she is working on Our Humanity, a 10-part series looking at inequities in health care. She is also working on a project to help students in the New Haven Public Schools and Southern Connecticut State University learn computer coding, she said.

I am really happy with the work that I do and I am really proud to be a New Havener and this statue is a celebration for New Haven, a celebration of our past and something for our young people to look forward to, Emery said.

edward.stannard@hearstmediact.com; 203-680-9382
LOCKPORT  A Wheatfield mom, who vanished in 2019 with her two young children, is back in Niagara County to faces charges in both family and c
The Niger State Council of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) and Trade Union Congress(TUC), has directed all its affiliates in the state to ...

The Niger State Council of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) and Trade Union Congress(TUC), has directed all its affiliates in the state to proceed on seven days warning strike over lingering payment of salaries of civil servants on percentage in the state.





The state NLC in a communique issued and signed by its Chairman, Comrade Yakubu Garba during an expanded State Executive Council (SEC) Meeting at Labour House, directed its affiliates in the state to commence the industrial action effective midnight on Sunday the 6th of March, 2022, while those operating at the Local Government Area levels are to proceed effective midnight of Thursday the 3rd of March, 2022.





It stated,  the stand taken by the Ministry for Local Government and Joint Account Committee in administering the content of FAAC redistribution which birthed the unfortunate payment of salaries on a percentage to the staff of some LGAs was misleading and illegal. The action contradicts the existing legislation of Niger State House of Assembly Joint Account Laws; Principal Law Section 3 as Amended 2001.





The NLC expressed shock by the lack of concern by the Abubakar Sani Bello led administration over the plight of primary school pupils and teachers who have been at home for the past 8 weeks in protest of payment of salaries on a percentage basis.





The unions said, unfortunately, despite several appeals for Mr Governor to intervene to stop the illegal payment of salaries on percentage, the problem still lingers.





The communique noted that to ensure that all contentions related to percentage salary payments are resolved once and for all, the NLC had transmitted its demands to government that payment of salaries across the 25 LGAS in Niger State be made a first-line charge





That effective February 2022, the Ministry for Local Government should abide by the State Joint Local Government Accounts Laws (Section 3 of the Principal Law as Amended February 2001) in wholesome for the payment of salaries





That consequential adjustment of all LGA workers from GL 7 (and equivalent) upwards and other demands by our affiliate unions should be squarely addressed within the window period of this ultimatum.





The unions said forthwith, the Ministry for Local Government should stop all forms of financial transactions with the joint local government funds that are not backed by the instrument of legislation of Niger State House of Assembly; Section 3 of the Principal Law as Amended 2001.
Operatives of the Delta State Police Command have foiled a four-man Point of Sale armed robbery syndicate just as one of the hoodlums met ...

Operatives of the Delta State Police Command have foiled a four-man Point of Sale armed robbery syndicate just as one of the hoodlums met his waterloo following a gun duel.





It was gathered that the police patrol team attached to B Division, Warri on March 1, 2022, while on routine patrol along Okere market junction Warri, intercepted the four-man gangsters operating with a minibus with reg. no. Delta DSZ 912 XA.





On sighting the police team, the robbers reportedly shot at the police and zoomed off.





But the patrol team chased the robbers to MacCaiver Market and engaged them in a gun duel, our correspondent gathered.





However, on getting got to the market, the police were said to have ceased fire due to the crowd while the robbers jumped out of their vehicle and ran into the crowd.





It was however gathered that the police arrested one of the suspects with gunshot injuries he had sustained during the gun duel.





On interrogation, the suspect identified simply as Christopher confessed to being a member of the armed robbery gang that robbed a POS lady at Osubi-Orerokpe earlier in the day.





The police took the suspect to the General Hospital, Warri where he died while receiving treatment.





Confirming the incident, the commands public relations officer, DSP Bright Edafe, told The PUNCH that the minibus used by the gangsters, one expended cartridge, two POS machines, two female bags containing two Zenith Bank ATM cards, one drivers license bearing Ogagbe Godspower, one power bank, and a Bible were recovered from the robbers.





The PPRO further stated that manhunt for the fleeing members of the gang is ongoing.
The second batch of Nigerian evacuees from Ukraine has arrived in Abuja, the Federal Capital Territory. They arrived at the Nnamdi A...

The second batch of Nigerian evacuees from Ukraine has arrived in Abuja, the Federal Capital Territory.

They arrived at the Nnamdi Azikiwe Airport, at 6:35 pm on Friday on an Air Peace flight.

The 181 evacuees arrived from Poland.

The stranded Nigerians were evacuated to Nigeria following the intervention of the Federal Government with the cooperation of governments of countries neighbouring Ukraine.

According to Gabriel Aduda, the Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Federal Government has made all necessary arrangements to ensure that no Nigerian is left stranded in any of the countries where they have fled to.

Aduda said that Nigerian airlines  Air Peace and Air Max  would transport stranded Nigerians from Romania, Hungary, and Poland.

The Federal Government gave all returnees from Ukraine $100 (about N48,000) to ameliorate their sufferings.

This is contained in a statement by Mr Abdur-Rahman Balogun, the Head of Media and Public Relations, Nigerians in Diaspora Commission, Abuja.

The first batch of 450 Nigerians stranded in Ukraine returned home from Romania through the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja.

Balogun said that the returnees, mostly students, arrived in Nigeria with Max Air flight 747 at 7:10 a.m.

He, however, said that the evacuees from Poland could not return on Thursday because their flight was rescheduled for Friday.

He added that Air Peace left on Thursday to pick the passengers from Hungary.
President Muhammadu Buhari, on Friday, returned to Abuja after attending the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) summit in Nairo...

President Muhammadu Buhari, on Friday, returned to Abuja after attending the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) summit in Nairobi, Kenya.

The presidents plane touched down in Abuja at about 1pm on Friday.

Buhari was supposed to proceed to London from Kenya for a two-week medical checkup, as earlier stated by the presidency.

While in Kenya, the president participated in the special session to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the United Nation body.

During the summit, Buhari called for broader action to combat climate change.

He also reiterated Nigerias commitment towards addressing the devastating effects of climate change and the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.

As we celebrate the 50th anniversary of UNEPs existence, we laud the efforts of UNEP and encourage broader action to overcome climate change, biodiversity, rising levels of pollution and waste being three major crises threatening our planet, Buhari had said.

The president also met with Ibrahim Thiaw, executive secretary of the UN convention to combat desertification (UNCCD).

During the meeting, Buhari directed collaboration between the ministries of environment, water resources, agriculture and rural development, and power to combat desertification.

The president also had a meeting with diaspora Nigerians in Kenya.
Undated photo shows Anna Titus Laroya taking a selfie in the cockpit of an airplane in Dodoma, Tanzania. (Xinhua)

DAR ES SALAAM, March 4 (Xinhua) -- As the world marks International Women's Day on March 8, soft-spoken Anna Titus Laroya deserves a pat on her back for one reason. She is the only female pilot flying an anti-poaching patrol aircraft in Tanzania's game reserves, national parks and the renowned Ngorongoro conservation area authority.

Captain Anna Titus Laroya's name deserves to be inscribed in Tanzania's list of heroines as the east African nation joins other nations across the globe in commemorating International Women's Day, a global day celebrating the social, economic, cultural, and political achievements of women.

"From 2010 when I started flying to date, I have accumulated more than 1,600 flying hours," Laroya told Xinhua ahead of International Women's Day to be marked next Tuesday.

Laroya said she flies a Cessna 182 aircraft which is a typical plane used for aerial animal census and aerial wildlife anti-poaching patrols.

She said depending on the objective of a specific animal census, most animal census are conducted in all protected areas in the country, including game reserves, national parks and the Ngorongoro conservation area authority.

"It was my childhood dream to be a pilot," said Laroya, an employee of the Tanzania Wildlife Research Institute (TAWIRI) headquartered in the Tanzania's northern tourist city of Arusha.

The female pilot said currently she is doing aerial patrols at the Ngorongoro conservation area authority where she has been seconded to work with the conservation authority.

Previously, Laroya conducted anti-poaching patrols in almost all the country's game reserves, including Selous, Rungwa, Ugalla, Moyowosi, Kigosi, Maswa, Biharamulo and Burigi.

"Balancing family life and flying schedules requires a committed and supportive partner as most of our work is field work," she said, "when I am at work I am a pilot and when I am home I am a wife and a mother. Differentiating and not mixing the two makes my life simple and easier."

"Being the only female pilot in the wildlife sector does not really bother me much because I just do what I am required to do like any other pilot who is doing the same type of flights," said Laroya.

She said she looks forward to continuing flying for conservation and continue making an impact in conserving wildlife resources in Tanzania.

"Through my work I would also like to continue inspiring more young women to pursue their dreams and become who they want to be in life," she said. 

Undated photo shows a portrait of Anna Titus Laroya, a Tanzania's female pilot, in Arusha, Tanzania. (Xinhua)

Undated photo shows Anna Titus Laroya posing for a photo with an airplane in Selous Game, Tanzania. (Xinhua)
No. The money should go to something that would benefit all citizens of the county, not just Watertown.

Yes. The community would benefit from the indoor pools the project would provide.

Vote

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YAOUNDE, March 3 (Xinhua) -- At least five people have died in a road accident in Cameroon's commercial hub of Douala, according to the police.

The accident occurred early Thursday at the Bekoko neighbourhood of the city when a passenger bus collided with a truck, police said.

Eye witnesses told Xinhua that the bus driver improperly overtook a vehicle and met head-on with the incoming truck.

The driver of the bus and four passengers died on the spot and over 10 people seriously injured were rushed to the hospital, police said.

Such accidents in Cameroon are often linked to the poor state of roads and drivers' ignorance.

The Ministry of Transport estimates that 1,500 people die in road accidents each year in the Central African nation. 
If you're looking for a fun way to help your child become a lifelong reader, try attending one of the weekly outdoor storytimes at three Orleans Parish Library locations: Algiers Regional Library, 3014 Holiday Drive; Milton H. Latter Memorial Library, 5120 St. Charles Ave.; and East New Orleans Regional Library, 5641 Read Blvd.

Every Tuesday at 10:30 a.m., children and their caregivers are invited to read, sing, talk, write and play together in a format designed for infants to 5-year-olds at these locations.

The library also produces prerecorded, on-demand storytime content. A new storytime video is released every Monday at nolalibrary.org/early-literacy or on the librarys YouTube channel, @NOLALibrary.

There's another way to help get your child ready to read from a young age, too. The librarys monthly early literacy activity calendar gives fun suggestions of ways to talk, sing, write, play, and read together every day. Pick up a calendar at any library location or download a PDF at nolalibrary.org/early-literacy.

TAX HELP: The New Orleans Public Library is once again partnering with AARP Foundation Tax-Aide to provide in-person tax preparation assistance. This free service is available to all but is designed with a focus on low- to moderate-income taxpayers older than 50.

Through April 11, Algiers Regional Library, 3014 Holiday Drive, and Milton H. Latter Memorial Library, 5120 St. Charles Ave., will host AARP tax assistance. Algiers appointments are available from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Mondays; Latter appointments are 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Tuesdays.

AARP Foundation Tax-Aide volunteers are certified by the IRS to prepare federal returns, which includes most items on Form 1040, the U.S. Individual Income Tax Return. AARP volunteers can also prepare Louisiana tax returns, if applicable. The volunteers are not able to help with:

Rental property income

Farm income

Moving expenses

Casualty and theft losses

Alternative Minimum Tax

Loss from a self-employment business

Registration is required. Call (504) 233-2316 to book an appointment.

TEEN TECH: The New Orleans Public Librarys Best Buy Teen Tech Center will host a virtual open house at 4 p.m. March 16 on Twitch. Attendees will meet the centers staff while engaging in games like "Among Us," "Minecraft" and "Roblox," and exploring what tech is available to Teen Tech Center members.

The Best Buy Teen Tech Center is an interest-based learning environment for teens to experiment with new technologies with help from their peers and adult mentors. The center is equipped with technology and multimedia tools that can be used for music and video production, interactive programming, graphic design and more.

Located on the second floor of Main Library, 219 Loyola Ave., the center is designed to be a safe and engaging space for teens. Membership is limited to ages 13 to 18, and all members must complete an application with signed permission from a parent or legal guardian.

Adult mentors in the Best Buy Teen Tech Center support youth members in pursuing their interests. Interested adults should emailbbttc@nolalibrary.org.

Visit bbttc.nolalibrary.org for information and to submit an application.

Jane LeGros is the director of marketing and communications for the New Orleans Public Library.
Chef Octavio Ycaza has worked in local restaurants including RioMar, Domenica and Bootys Street Food. Since leaving restaurants, hes been a private chef, a culinary consultant and worked with culinary tours. Currently, hes a member of the board of directors of Good Trouble Network, a local chef-run charity that once a month sells food boxes, which include several prepared dishes and cocktails, and donates the proceeds to local charities and nonprofit groups. Since its inception in June 2020, GTN has donated a total of more than $100,000 to groups including Lift Louisiana, Innocence Project New Orleans, the Music and Culture Coalition of New Orleans, Louisiana Fair Housing Action Center and more.

Ycaza and fellow GTN chef and board members Nick Martin and Cristina Quackenbush are participating in a special four-course brunch at Mister Mao on Sunday, Feb. 20, and proceeds benefit New Orleans Prison Reform Coalition. For information about the brunch, visit mistermaonola.com. For information about GTN, visit goodtroublenetwork.org. Its monthly food boxes are posted on its Instagram account, @goodtroublenetwork.

Gambit: How did you get involved with the Good Trouble Network?

Octavio Ycaza: I am the newest board member for Good Trouble. I have been working with them through last summer. These people are all friends, so I would see their social media accounts, and I was like, these people are doing some neat stuff. I started to volunteer to be one of the contributing chefs that cooks and donates to the box. It seemed like an excellent way to get cooking again.

Every month the box is different. There are different chefs and donating restaurants. Youll see which bars are participating, and what the cocktails are. We dont tell the chefs who are volunteering what to cook. We do our best to give them a theme. For February, the theme was For the Love of Mardi Gras. Whatever that means to you. When sales close, our chefs and restaurant partners have a few days to prepare orders. Our team brings them to one location, and we assemble boxes. Each box feeds two people but super well. It is advertised through our Instagram account. Usually there is an action button, like buy now.

Gambit: How has GTN grown?

Ycaza: The group is at a cool and critical point. Its achieving its goals and its still 100% volunteer workforce, and its also growing. When you have you and nine friends doing a small thing, getting people to show up is not that difficult if youre engaging. But over time, as it requires more people, it starts to require partnerships. Were working out how to maintain that when you buy a box, 100% of the money you pay goes to the charity of the month.

But now, we are trying to branch out into a new format. Currently you just go pick up the box youve ordered. They show up, get their box and leave. At the last board meeting, I suggested we build a community around that. At first there was only pickup. Then to expand, we added delivery. And while delivery is great for sales, it doesnt do much for community gathering. I suggested that when we do pickups, we have a live event, so people who are purchasers can meet some of our volunteer team and the contributors. People can network. In March, we may be able to do the first live event to build our community beyond social media.

Gambit: What are you contributing to the brunch?

Ycaza: Its a really cool community. If you work in the service industry, especially in New Orleans, and you enjoy doing it, youre going to make all sorts of friends. Sophina (Uong of Mister Mao) had her first paid gig in town working for me. I was doing this crazy Alice in Wonderland dinner at the Music Box during Jazz Fest one year. Sophina was new in town and didnt have a job. She knows Amy Sins. I know Amy Sins. I asked Amy to work the gig, and she said do you need an extra person? So, I met Sophina four years ago. Now, I get to go to her restaurant.

At GTN, one of the things we talk about as the chefs, even the other board members, we like to think of ourselves as the Wu-Tang Clan. One person may take the lead on one thing, and somebody else will take the lead on something else, but we all back up the person taking the lead. Sophina has been a multiple time contributor to the box GTN offers. She understands our dynamic and how we like to work. She was down to invite the GTN as a team  The Wu Tang Clan  over, and everybody does a thing.

Someone asked if I would do an egg dish, and I was like, sure, I love eggs. The most successful egg dish I made in a restaurant is a dish I used to make at Bootys. Its an eggs Benedict, but its pupusas instead of English muffins, and the pupusas are stuffed with pork instead of ham on top. Theres pickled shredded cabbage, called repollo, which is like a little nest on top of the pupusa, and it holds the egg, because I dont poach eggs in water. I poach eggs in their shell. Its a really neat method. You take an egg and drop it in boiling water for like three minutes and it cooks the outside of the egg. You pull it out and put it in ice water. Then you peel it and you have an egg-shaped egg thats still raw in the center. Then you warm that up in warm water and you have a soft egg thats in its original shape and it sets neatly on the nest, and theres hollandaise to make it pretty.
Commentary: Mardi Gras 2022 was a welcome taste of normalcy, but we can still do better
The Cantrell administration is cracking down on the size of Sundays VIP Ladies & Kids second line, warning the group they must limit the 
The New Orleans Fire Department responded to a fire in Mid-City Friday morning that caused significant damage to a double shotgun house and displaced four residents, Captain Edwin Holmes said.

The fire department responded to a 911 call at 10:12 a.m. Nine companies carrying 26 personnel arrived on scene and hosed down the structure at 3001 Banks St. Fire heavily damaged one side of the double, and the other sustained smoke and water damage, rendering both units uninhabitable. Two residents lived on each side.

The fire was under control at 10:49 a.m. No injuries were reported, and the cause of the blaze remains under investigation.
Mardi Gras was a joyous, sunny occasion this year in contrast to last year's festival-free deep freeze, when a power outage marked a low-point for New Orleans area businesses during the pandemic. This year, the city's hospitality businesses reveled in the returning crowds that were almost back to their former grandeur.

"We really needed this," said Kelly Schulz, a spokesperson for New Orleans & Co., the city's official tourism promotion organization. The return of the city's marquee annual event, even with masking requirements and some other pandemic restrictions still in place, "was tremendously significant economically and emotionally for our industry and our residents," she added.

The preliminary data indicate that visitor numbers were running about 10-15% below those seen during the last Carnival, in 2020, when about 1.4 million tourists came to the city, which at the time was not yet fully aware of the coronavirus threat.

Downtown and French Quarter hotels, whose 26,000 rooms make up more than half the city's total capacity, were about 59% full on the Thursday before Mardi Gras, rising to a peak of just over 85% on Saturday. That compared to 70% and 98% for the equivalent days in 2020, according to New Orleans & Co. data.

Hotel occupancy was held back somewhat by the ongoing problem of staff shortages, which has stymied efforts by hoteliers to bring back full service. It's an issue that restaurants, music venues, and other public-facing businesses also grapple with.

"The Mardi Gras energy levels were really high here and we really enjoyed having it back as most of the team are native New Orleanians," said Patrick Barrett, general manager at Loews New Orleans Hotel on Poydras Street. However, he said the hotel's restaurant, Poydras & Peters, is still able to offer breakfast only three times a week, while amenities such as room service also are curtailed because of staffing.

"We really can't put our finger on it," said Barrett. "Maybe people have chosen to leave the industry for something else. But we're hopeful that now we've gotten through Mardi Gras and are looking to keep the momentum with some of these other upcoming events (and) we'll see an uptick" in hiring.

First-time visitors

Pat OBriens, the landmark French Quarter bar and birthplace of the Hurricane, also has not fully re-staffed. Though the crowds may have been smaller and more local this year, the bar crew stayed very busy, said company president Shelly Oechsner Waguespack.

Many of the bar's patrons this year said they were visiting the city for the first time, Waguespack said.

Usually the Mardi Gras visitors you see have been coming back year after year, so I was pleasantly surprised about that. It seemed like a lot of people were looking forward to coming down to visit and were ready to do it, she said.

New Orleans & Co. put forth considerable effort, as well as federal stimulus money, promoting the city in an effort to lure tourists.

Mardi Gras' return this year was featured on two of the big TV network morning shows -- ABC's "Good Morning America" and NBC's "The Today Show" - and in large metro newspapers such as The Washington Post and The New York Times. The stories mostly emphasized the cultural significance of the holiday and what its absence has meant, putting the city in a positive light.

Making the papers

"It's incredible when you think about where we were two months ago," said Mary Beth Romig, a spokesperson for New Orleans & Co. She said the agency now hopes the good publicity around Mardi Gras will be a platform to promote upcoming events in New Orleans, starting with the NCAA Men's Final Four at the Caesars Superdome at the beginning of April.

"That's the next big push, the next great opportunity to showcase the city and what a great major sporting event hosting city we are," Romig said.

There are particularly high hopes for the music festivals that were absent the last two years, including the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, the French Quarter fest, and Essence Fest, which are expected to see crowds driven by pent-up demand.

Mardi Gras attendance at some of the city's landmark venues underlined the urge for live music.

Tickets sales were even higher at Tipitinas than Mardi Gras 2020, general manager Brian Tank Greenberg said. But this year, more online ticket-buyers didnt show up to redeem their tickets, continuing a trend that Tipitinas has experienced since reopening following the COVID shutdown.

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Still, Greenberg said, I consider Mardi Gras 2022 a success. All of our shows had great turnouts, with a very solid mix of locals and tourists. Customers were in great spirits and ready to cut loose.

Though the crowds were solid, Tipitina's was among the Uptown businesses that lost some business because of the curtailed parade routes this year.

Typically, we have a few days of parades starting on our corner (at Tchoupitoulas Street) that bring great daytime business, Greenberg said. But since we were near the end where floats were mainly just staging, the lack of spectators was a noticeable loss for us.

Parades cut shorter

The bars and restaurants along Magazine Street were likewise affected. More than a dozen parades had a mile lopped off their route, which meant some establishments on Magazine that are usually parade hotspots saw just a trickle of business.

At SukhoThai, co-owner Keith Scarmuzza was hoping that by losing parade day business hed at least be able to boost dining room and takeout business. But then he learned a day before the parades started rolling that floats would use Magazine Street as a staging area, which meant the restaurant lost business from parade goers and also from customers who still couldn't reach SukhoThais door.

Having the parades go by was never super great for business but having them line up was just devastating, Scarmuzza said. It pretty much killed our business on parade days; I was just ready for it to be over.

John Blancher, owner of Rock 'n' Bowl on South Carrollton Avenue, also had low expectations for Mardi Gras.

It followed the pattern of the last 25 years, awful, Blancher said. The parades go too late to allow people to go out afterward. If you're not on the route, you're pretty much restricted.

A low point of this year's festivities that could not be avoided was crime.

The violent crime rates had been surging during the pandemic, as they had in many American cities. But the murder by stray bullets of two visitors to the city during Mardi Gras, as well as the still unexplained death of a young woman who was dropped at a hospital by a ride-share driver, undermined the image the city was trying to project.

Lt. Gov. Billy Nungesser, who is also the commissioner of the Louisiana Department of Culture, Recreation & Tourism, said the city needs new initiatives to deal with the crime before it does serious harm to the hospitality industry.

"Every year during Mardi Gras week we hold our breath hoping that the next murder isn't going to be the one that is the death" of the city's reputation, Nungesser said.

He said there has been progress with city politicians, including Mayor LaToya Cantrell and state Sen. Jimmy Harris, whose district covers the French Quarter, over his proposal for creating a new city district to run the French Quarter.

A new Vieux Carre

Nungesser has been promoting an idea for the last 18 months or so that would see the French Quarter run in a manner similar to the Gaslamp District in San Diego. Though the history of such state-run districts has been fraught in New Orleans, Nungesser argues that something needs to be done to provide the money and authority to improve security and other quality-of-life issues in the French Quarter.

"We're just spinning our wheels if we cannot make it a family-friendly place that re-establishes some of the French Quarter special in the first place," he said. "We need to get back live jazz music, and get the musicians back to work rather than have loud places with DJ's selling daiquiris."

CORRECTION: Early versions of this story incorrectly spelled Billy Nungesser's name.
The Northshore Technical Community College held a SHE Means Business luncheon with Women in Coastal Geoscience on Feb. 16 that drew business and community leaders from across the north shore to the Harbor Center. It was emceed by Baton Rouge native/NASA engineer Renee Horton, an LSU grad who also earned the first doctoral degree in material science the University of Alabama awarded to a Black student. It would have been hard to find a more appropriate group to celebrate and encourage women in science, technology, engineering and math, the so-called STEM careers. Joining Horton was well-known TV meteorologist Shelby Latino and Pontchartrain Conservancy Director Kristi Trail. Despite women making up 48% of the American workforce, men still hold 73% of the STEM jobs, Census figures show.
Hypocritical, despicable for U.S. to discredit China through Ukraine issue: spokesperson

Xinhua) 18:31, March 04, 2022

BEIJING, March 4 (Xinhua) -- The U.S. side has repeatedly spread false information related to the Ukraine issue to smear and discredit China in order to shirk their own responsibility, which is hypocritical and despicable, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson said Friday.

Wang Wenbin made the remarks when asked to comment on the report that an unnamed senior U.S. defense official said on Thursday that China continues to express concerns over the situation in Ukraine, but is unwilling to condemn and sanction Russia like other countries, and has no intention of participating in any form of diplomatic solution to the Ukraine issue.

"Spreading false information cannot cover up the responsibility of the initiators of the Ukrainian crisis, but rather exposes the real intention of the U.S. side to take advantage of the crisis," Wang said.

He said the United States should honestly answer the following questions:

-- The United States claimed that promoting NATO expansion is for the sake of peace. Has it achieved this?

-- The United States claimed it would prevent war in Europe. Has it done so?

-- The United States claimed to be committed to a peaceful solution to the crisis. But apart from providing military aid and increasing deterrence, what has the U.S. side done for peace?

China always decides its own position and policy based on the merits of the matter itself, Wang said.

"We welcome all diplomatic efforts conducive to the political settlement of the Ukraine issue, and support Russia and Ukraine in seeking a political solution through dialogue and negotiation that accommodates the legitimate concerns of both sides and is conducive to lasting peace and stability in Europe," Wang said.

China will continue to play a constructive role in seeking and realizing peace, he added.

(Web editor: Hongyu, Bianji)
ADDIS ABABA, March 3 (Xinhua) -- Marking African Environment Day, African experts and pan-African organizations on Thursday emphasized the need to tackle the continent's continued climate change-induced disasters.

Africa Environment Day, celebrated annually on March 3, was established in 2002 by the Organization of African Unity (OAU), the predecessor of the African Union, as a way of raising awareness of the pressing environmental challenges facing the continent. Since 2012, the Africa Environment Day has been celebrated in conjunction with Wangari Maathai Day in honor of the late Nobel laureate's legacy in nature conservancy.

The African continent, in a bid to address the twin effects of climate change and desertification, is in recent years bracing itself to devote undiluted attention to integrating sustainable environmental management into the mainstream development policies at both continental and national levels.

Experts, however, argued that albeit the commendable efforts underway to counter the impact of climate change, the continent is in urgent need to exert strong efforts to end the scourge.

Adefris Worku, a senior forestry expert at the Environment, Forest and Climate Change Commission (EFCCC) of Ethiopia, said the extent of climate change in Africa is growing due to various causes, including the expansion of the agricultural sector.

Agriculture, which is the backbone of African economies, is said to be one of the major drivers of desertification in Africa. With a growing population, an increasing forest area is being harvested across Africa.

"Desertification is becoming a very significant threat to Africa. African countries have to do strategic interventions and approach to combat desertification because desertification has become overwhelming, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa," Worku told Xinhua in a recent interview.

The AU, in its call for action issued Thursday in relation to this year's Africa Environment Day, stressed that Africa continues to endure serious environmental challenges, saying the unfolding phenomena of climate change, biodiversity depletion, desertification, land degradation and unsustainable use of finite natural resources remain a serious risk for Africa as they pose real impediments to achieving the sustainable development goals envisioned in Africa's Agenda 2063.

While saying environmental deterioration has exacerbated crises such as droughts, armed conflicts, or other natural disasters on the continent, the AU emphasized that sustainable environmental management is fundamental to the pursuit of food security, peace, security, and stability in Africa.

"To address the twin effects of climate change and desertification, Africa is bracing itself to devote undiluted attention to integrating sustainable environmental management into the mainstream development policies at both regional and national levels," the pan-African bloc said.

According to the latest figures from the UN Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), despite representing just 17 percent of the world's population and emitting just 4 percent of global pollution, Africa stands as the most affected continent in terms of climate change.

"African economies are losing on average 5 percent of GDP because of climate change, increasing up to 15 percent in some countries," said Linus Mofor, a senior environmental expert from the ECA, Wednesday.

Mofor, speaking during a virtual meeting on partnerships for tools and capacities to integrate climate resilience in investments for sustainable development, said in the absence of global concerted action on keeping warming at below 1.5 degrees Celsius, African countries must be supported with the tools and capacities needed to integrate climate resilience in the huge investments needed to close development gaps.

Mofor insisted that African countries have shown "great leadership" on climate action, stating "all but two African countries have ratified the Paris Agreement with ambitious nationally determined contributions requiring up to 3 trillion U.S. dollars for implementation."

Despite the daunting challenges, however, African countries have been introducing a number of ambitious initiatives to contain the rapid expansion of desertification in the continent, thereby mitigating the impacts of climate change on communities' livelihood.

The Great Green Wall or Great Green Wall of the Sahara and the Sahel Initiative, which was launched by the African Union (AU) in 2007 with an overarching aim of planting a wall of trees across Africa at the southern edge of the Sahara desert, is one of the African-led initiatives aiming to restore Africa's degraded landscapes.

According to the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), the Great Green Wall initiative will be the largest living structure on the planet once realized, covering 8,000 km of land stretching across the entire width of the continent from Senegal in West Africa to Djibouti in the east.

According to Worku, Ethiopia, one of the signatory countries of the initiative, considers the ambitious project as "a very important and relevant strategy to combat desertification and ensure sustainable development in the country."

More than 20 countries across Africa have been implementing the initiative in hopes of restoring 100 million hectares of currently degraded land and sequestering 250 million metric tons of carbon by 2030. 
A state judge recently ruled that a former Orleans Parish Sheriffs Office investigator, who claimed he was forced out for sounding the alarm about an inmates secret trysts with his girlfriend, doesnt meet the legal definition of a whistleblower.

But John Ladd says he will appeal the decision of Orleans Parish Civil District Court Judge Ellen Hazeur, potentially putting his lawsuit against current Sheriff Marlin Gusman on the desk of Sheriff-elect Susan Hutson when she is sworn in May 2.

Ladd left the agency after clashing with top brass under disputed circumstances in 2015. The next year, he filed a lawsuit alleging that the Sheriffs Office conspired against him because agency leaders thought he was leaking to the media information about an inmates repeated escapes.

The case lingered until last November, when Ladd and other witnesses testified at a two-day bench trial in front of Hazeur.

Ladd said he wasnt the leaker. As a supervisor in the agencys investigative branch, he oversaw another deputys probe into the jailed arsonists trips to a house in Gentilly. He waved the red flag because the escapes continued even after the agency was made aware of them, he said.

Top agency leaders admitted on the stand that they had placed Ladd on suspension while the escapes were being investigated. But they said it had nothing to do with a separate leak probe. Instead, they alleged that Ladd was mucking about in a lower-ranking deputys reports on the escapes.

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No evidence, judge says

The fate of the lawsuit hinged on a specific legal question: Was Ladd really a whistleblower under state law? He said that he spoke out because he suspected obstruction of justice.

However, Hazeur said Jan. 20 that Ladd could offer no proof that anything resembling that crime had occurred.

It is clear to the Court that obstruction of justice as defined by the statute did not occur, Hazeur said. On cross-examination, Ladd testified that to his knowledge OPSO never altered any evidence, never tampered with any evidence, never threatened force to cause a witness not to testify, and never threatened force to get a witness to change his testimony.

Other claims, such as the Sheriffs Office violating its own policies in order to suspend Ladd and deny him a hearing, fell short of creating a basis for Ladd to sue, Hazeur said.

Ladd on Feb. 4 began his appeal to the state 4th Circuit Court of Appeal. He is seeking four years of back pay.
Relatives of Byron Nicholas had spent just over a year trying to cope with the loss of his stepfather and family patriarch, Ronald Taylor Jr., after the 45-year-old died in a boating accident on Lake Pontchartrain in November 2020.

But the family was devastated anew when Nicholas, 24, was shot and killed in Metairie last month.

Our family really has been hit twice with tragic incidents in a short period of time, said Trina McLemore, 43, Nicholas' mother.

The Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office is investigating Nicholas' homicide. No arrests have been made in the case.

Nicholas was fatally shot about 3:15 p.m. on Feb. 21 in the 6200 block of Riverside Drive in Metairie, authorities said. He was brought to a hospital with multiple gunshot wounds, and died of his injuries.

"My son was human, and he got gunned down in broad daylight," McLemore said. "Our hearts are broken.

Authorities have not released any information about a suspect or a motive in the case.

Nicholas was the second oldest of McLemore's four sons. He was born premature and came home from the hospital wearing a heart monitor, according to his mother.

"For the first year, we fought for his life every single day," she said.

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McLemore described Nicholas as an outgoing, sometimes outspoken person, and a real burst of sunshine.

"He was a people person. His heart was bigger than his body," she said.

Nicholas and the family were lost when Taylor, who raised Nicholas as his own, died on the lake, McLemore said. Taylor had gone shrimping with a friend on Nov. 21, 2020, when the trawl snagged on something in the lake, according to the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries.

The boat began taking on water. The vessel's operator was able to put on a life jacket, but Taylor didn't get one on in time, according to authorities. His body was recovered a short time later.

Nicholas' funeral was held Monday in Kenner. He leaves behind a 5-year-old daughter and another daughter who is due in April.

McLemore said she's focused on doing everything she can to bring her son's killer or killers to justice.

"I just dont want him to be another cold case, another person shot in the streets," she said. "Our family, our community, our friends, everybody, were all in mourning, and we want answers."

Anyone with information about the death of Byron Nicholas is asked to call the Sheriff's Office investigations bureau at 504-364-5300. The public can also call Crimestoppers at 504-822-1111 or toll-free at 1-877-903-7867. Callers do not have to give their names or testify and can earn a reward of up to $2,500 for information that leads to an indictment.
A SWAT team was sent to a Kenner apartment after police say gunfire was reported and the person inside refused to answer the door.

The gunfire was reported to Kenner police at 8:15 p.m. Thursday in the 1600 block of 42nd Street (map).

A man was seen running into an apartment immediately after the gunfire, police said, and then he refused to answer the door. Multiple bullet casings outside led to the front door, they said.

Kenner police said they had been at the apartment several weeks earlier executing a search warrant related to a vehicle burglary. They collected a handgun, an AR-15 assault rifle and what they said was stolen property during their search, police said.

No arrests have been made in burglary investigation, which is still ongoing.

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On Thursday, police obtained another search warrant after the gunfire, citing the apartment's previous history and the person's refusal to come to the door. The SWAT team was sent in, police said, and "several individuals" were located and detained inside the apartment.

Police did not say if any of the people inside were arrested, and if so, what charges they could face.

No other details were immediately available about this ongoing investigation, police said.
The mother of a University of New Orleans student who died last month after being dropped off at a hospital by the driver of an Uber stood outside the school Thursday and demanded answers from authorities, saying they have stonewalled her about the investigation into her daughters death.

Flanked by attorneys and lawmakers from both New Orleans and their home state of South Carolina, Miranda Ferrand  the mother of 21-year-old Ciaya Whetstone  pleaded for anyone with information about her daughters death to come forward and help her family understand exactly what happened.

I brought her here to graduate  not to pack her up and bury her, Ferrand said while holding a photo of her daughter at a news conference on the edge of UNOs lakefront campus. Whoever knows anything, please  be honest and come forward, so my family can rest and she can rest.

A police spokesperson later Thursday issued a statement saying that detectives had been in touch with Whetstone's biological father  who is not married to Ferrand  "from the outset" of the case. The spokesperson added that detectives had met with Ferrand by Thursday afternoon.

Friends of Whetstone, who is from Bamberg, South Carolina, said she attended Carnival parades in Metairie the night of Feb. 18, went to a bar with friends, and then another pal brought her to her boyfriends place in Harahan afterward. Whetstone apparently decided to go check on her dog Zoe at her Lakeshore Drive apartment in Gentilly, and used the Uber ride-hailing app to get there.

The Uber driver then purportedly left with Whetstone to go find her car. One of Whetstones friends who was on the phone with her has previously described overhearing the driver ask her do you like to party?

Hours later, about 7 a.m. on Feb. 19, the driver dropped Whetstone off at a hospital, and she was later pronounced dead.

The Orleans Parish Coroners Office hasnt released any details about a cause or manner of death, saying the agency is awaiting the results of a toxicology test before making a ruling, a process that can take months. Generally, cause of death describes the illness or injury that killed a person, and manner of death describes whether a person died naturally or as a result of an accident or a killing.

A senior law enforcement source confirmed Thursday that police are examining the possibility that Whetstone ingested intoxicating substances that contributed to her death. Legally, anyone who may have provided such a substance could be charged with murder under Louisiana law, but the probe remains in a holding pattern until the toxicology test results return.

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Whatever the case, on Thursday, Ferrand and the attorneys complained about a lack of information from police, the coroner, the hospital and Uber regarding Whetstones final hours.

Atlanta civil rights attorney L. Chris Stewart said nearly two weeks have passed and investigators are no closer to learning whether Whetstone was assaulted or surreptitiously drugged in the hours leading up to her death. Stewart said they dont even have the Uber drivers name, and Ferrand was ready to pursue a lawsuit that would arm her family with subpoena powers in its search for answers as soon as the coming week.

South Carolina State Rep. Justin Bamberg, who is also a civil rights attorney, added that he was in touch with federal lawmakers about possibly crafting legislation that would require services such as Uber to equip their drivers with video surveillance. He said there was precedent, alluding to a law passed in South Carolina that required drivers for ride-hailing services to display their vehicles license plate information after the murder of a college student who mistook her killers car for an Uber.

Why arent there cameras in Ubers in 2022? Bamberg asked. If so, we would know what conversations took place in the ride that Whetstone hailed during her last hours alive.

Louisiana State Rep. Royce Duplessis, D-New Orleans, agreed, adding, The drivers job is to get the passenger from point A to point B.

Stewarts prior clients include the families of George Floyd, who was murdered by a Minneapolis police officer on Memorial Day 2020, and Ahmaud Arbery, a Black man killed by three White men in Georgia in a racist hate crime in February 2020.

Bamberg has previously represented the family of Walter Scott, the South Carolina man who was fatally shot in the back in 2015 by a police officer now serving a 20-year prison sentence.

Local attorneys Michael Adams and Brandon DeCuir were also at the press conference.

I will not rest the rest of my life  until I figure out what happened to my daughter, Ferrand said.

Note: This post was updated to add a statement from police.
Hurricane Harvey dumped more than 50 inches of rain on parts of the Texas coast in 2017. Then in 2020, ferocious winds from Hurricane Laura destroyed homes across coastal Louisiana. Hurricane Ida hit in 2021, leaving the entire city of New Orleans without power for days.

Such extreme weather is becoming more common, and that's just one of the warnings for the Gulf of Mexico region in a United Nations report released this week. The devastating effects of climate change in the region also include rising seas, collapsing fisheries and toxic tides, even if humanity somehow manages to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial era.

"The hurricanes that we get, there's a higher probability that they can bloom up into major hurricanes," Louisiana's state climatologist Barry Keim said, agreeing with the report's details on more dangerous weather.

The report, an "atlas of human suffering," details numerous ways in which climate change will affect the gulf. From Texas to Florida, which has the longest coastline of any state, the entire U.S. Gulf coast is under serious threat from rising seas as the planet's polar ice caps melt, the U.N. report says.

The region, home to major oil and gas production in Texas and Louisiana and tourist destinations in Mississippi, Alabama and Florida, tends to be conservative politically, and its mostly Republican leaders have stressed adaption to climate change  higher roads, sea walls, preventing saltwater intrusion  more than broad efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions or promote cleaner energy.

For example, the Republican-led Florida House of Representatives refused on Tuesday to add clean-energy measures to a plan to bolster the state against sea level rise and flooding. The bill's sponsor, GOP Rep. Demi Busatta Cabrera of the Miami area, said her aim is to do "what we can fix today."

Democratic Rep. Ben Diamond, who is running for a St. Petersburg-area congressional seat, was disappointed lawmakers didn't do more.

Improved climate change resiliency is good, he said, but "then there's also stopping the causes of those problems in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, in terms of reducing our carbon emissions." The Florida House bill does not get into that.

People considering 30-year mortgages are already looking for homes and commercial buildings that pose lower flood risks. One study cited by the U.N. says the trend is evident in Florida's Miami-Dade County, where some buyers are shying away from expensive waterfront homes.

In Miami Beach, streets already flood on sunny days, especially during the so-called King Tides, and the report says the Tampa Bay area, surrounded by shallow seas, and is considered one of the most vulnerable places in the nation for storm surges.

Sea level rise poses an existential threat to much of Louisiana, because so much of the Mississippi River delta has been sinking due to human interventions. The loss of sediment from leveeing the river and saltwater intrusion caused by coastal oil and gas development are two big culprits, Keim noted.

"South Louisiana is probably the most vulnerable place to climate change in the United States," Keim said.

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Other parts of the Gulf face different problems, the report warns. Tourism and fishing industries depend on thriving habitats off the coasts of Florida and the Yucatan Peninsula, but coral reefs are bleaching due to "warming ocean waters interacting with non-climate stressors." In Florida alone, the decline of the reefs could translate into $24 billion to $55 billion in economic losses by 2100, the report said.

The report details efforts in the region to adapt to climate change. Miami-Dade released a strategic sea level rise response plan in 2021 that calls for adapting infrastructure, elevating roads, building on higher ground and expanding waterfront parks and canals.

The city of Miami Beach has already spent more than $500 million installing pumps to flush water off the island, with no guarantees that this will keep the tourists' feet dry. The city of Miami is spending potentially billions of dollars to keep the ocean at bay and limit saltwater intrusion into freshwater supplies.

"The most common question I get asked is whether Miami is going to be here in 50 years, whether it's going to be here in 100 years," Miami Mayor Francis Suarez said at a recent news conference. "This is the beginning of having a comprehensive plan to answer that question in the affirmative."

In Louisiana, the state's Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority has a plan with "very specific projects," the U.N. report said, such as dredging to replenish wetlands and rebuilding barrier islands damaged by storms.

Alex Kolker, an associate professor of coastal geology at the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium in Cocodrie, noted that on Feb. 1, Louisiana also announced a plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050.

Outbreaks of red tide, which are natural toxic organisms originally noticed by the Spanish explorers, have become more frequent and more deadly because of warmer air and water, experts say.

The increasing outbreaks kill more fish and sea life and harm the tourist industry with smelly fish-strewn beaches, poor fishing and the possibility of harms to human health, especially among people with asthma or other lung conditions.

From 2017 to 2019, according to a University of Florida study, tourism sectors lost $184 million in revenue because of red tide. The warmer water also fosters algae blooms, caused by pollution from agricultural, urban and other sources, that are getting worse along Florida's coasts, contributing to the lack of seagrass that has led to a record die-off of manatees in the past year. The state resorted to feeding one group of starving manatees romaine lettuce instead.

"You can't just go out and plant a bunch of seagrass," said Tom Reinert, regional director of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.

Anderson reported from St. Petersburg, Florida.
Perry Young. Place: First Baptist Church of Norman 211 W. Comanche. May 26th, 2022. 1:30 pm. Lunch will be served 12:00pm at FBC before the service. If wanting to attend lunch, please let us know so there is enough food.
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.
ADDIS ABABA, March 4 (Xinhua) -- Continental response against the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and rebuilding Africa from the impacts of the pandemic took center stage at the ongoing 8th African Regional Forum for Sustainable Development (ARFSD-8).

This year's edition of ARFSD is underway in a hybrid format in Kigali, Rwanda and virtually from March 3 to 5 under the theme "Building forward better: A Green, Inclusive and Resilient Africa Poised to Achieve the 2030 Agenda and Agenda 2063."

Senior experts and policymakers attending the high-level meeting called on Africa to acknowledge the progress the continent has made towards targets in 2030 and 2063 and to improve upon them while mitigating the impacts induced by the COVID-19 pandemic, the UNECA said in a statement issued Friday.

The ARFSD-8, organized by the United Nations Economic Commission of Africa (ECA) and the government of Rwanda in collaboration with the African Union (AU) Commission, the African Development Bank (AfDB) and other entities of the UN system, envisaged reviewing and catalyze actions to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030 and goals of the Africa's 50-year continental development Agenda 2063.

Rwanda's President Paul Kagame addressing the forum expressed his hope that Africa will use the COVID-19 pandemic as a springboard to speed up progress and innovate smarter ways to invest in human capital development.

"The COVID-19 pandemic has slowed development gains, and in some cases reversed the progress that have been made," Kagame told the high-level meeting, as he emphasized that as part of the continental COVID-19 response efforts "we can build an Africa that is greener and more resilient with a sustainable development goals and Agenda 2063 as our blueprint."

President Kagame's sentiments were shared by Amina Mohammed, UN Deputy Secretary-General, as she applauded the progress made on the African Vaccine Acquisition Trust (AVAT).

The African continent must build "stronger and more resilient health systems by investing in healthcare," a UNECA statement quoted Mohammed as saying during the opening session of the ARFSD-8.

UN Under-Secretary-General and Executive Secretary of UNECA, Vera Songwe, explained that progress achieved by Africa in the areas of climate change, the continental free trade pact, the management of COVID-19, and education must be applauded.

Songwe said despite the tendency for the AfCFTA to be perceived as far-fetched, the fact that African countries have traded more among themselves during the pandemic than the five years before that period is a testament to the potential of the partnership.

The ARFSD is an annual multi-stakeholder platform organized by the ECA and the host government. This year, Rwanda, in collaboration with the AU Commission, the AfDB and other entities of the United Nations systems, is hosting the high-level gathering.

According to the UNECA, the three-day ARFSD-8 brings together African ministers, senior officials, high-level policymakers and experts from ministries and agencies and practitioners from UN member states, private sector, civil society, academia and UN organizations.

The regional forum is one of the three mechanisms mandated by theUN General Assembly to follow-up, review and catalyze actions to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development adopted by UN member states in September 2015. 
Williamsport, Pa. - A 62-year-old Bellefonte woman was sentenced to jail for participating in a wire and mail fraud conspiracy, according to the United States Attorneys Office for the Middle District of Pennsylvania.

U.S. District Court Chief Judge Matthew W. Brann sentenced Mildred Hoy to 18 months' imprisonment.

According to United States Attorney John C. Gurganus, Hoy pleaded guilty before Chief Judge Brann in May 2021 to a charge of conspiracy to commit wire and mail fraud.

The conspiracy to defraud involved victims sending money to Hoy in the belief that they had won the lottery and needed to remit fees to cover taxes. Hoy then sent cash to others in the conspiracy and converted cash into Bitcoin and deposited it in the bank accounts of other co-conspirators.

Hoys participation in the conspiracy defrauded victims of $489,000 dollars.

The case was investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Assistant U.S. Attorney Geoffrey W. MacArthur prosecuted the case.

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Williamsport, Pa.  A woman from Tennessee was sentenced to 24 months imprisonment for passing contraband to an inmate through an open-mouth kiss, according to a release from the United States Attorneys Office for the Middle District of Pennsylvania.

Lisa Montpelier, 48, of Johnson City, Tennessee, was visiting an inmate at the United States Penitentiary at Allenwood in 2017 when she used an open-mouth kiss to pass a balloon containing 21 suboxone strips to an inmate. The incident was monitored via a closed-circuit camera and the suboxone was later recovered from the inmate, according to the release.

Montpelier pleaded guilty in federal court on March 26, 2021. United States District Court Chief Judge Matthew W. Brann handled the sentencing.

The case was investigated by the FBI and the Bureau of Prisons. Assistant U.S. Attorney Geoffrey W. MacArthur prosecuted the case.

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by Marwa Yahya, Emad al-Azrak

CAIRO, March 4 (Xinhua) -- Egypt has been endeavoring to localize the electric vehicle industry as part of the Middle Eastern country's efforts to reduce dependence on fossil fuels, transit toward a green economy, and keep pace with global progress in the automobile industry, according to analysts.

Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi recently held several meetings with officials, businessmen, and companies to follow the latest progress of localizing the electric car industry in Egypt.

Sisi had seen some models of made-in-Egypt electric cars, according to the presidency statement.

"Achieving local production of electric vehicles is part of the country's national transition strategy toward a green economy, given its positive impacts on the country and the people on the economic, health, and environmental levels," the statement said.

Ayman Mohamed, the founder of Electrified, an online platform to promote electric cars in Egypt, sees that electric vehicles "will generate economic, technological, developmental and environmental benefits for Egypt."

Egypt is one of the few countries in the Middle East interested in this cutting-edge industry, Mohamed told Xinhua, adding the emerging industry will open new markets for Egypt in the region.

He explained that Egypt now has a large surplus in the output of electricity that can be directed for charging electric vehicles, noting that "the government has a strong tendency to produce electric passenger cars and buses, and to provide auto parts and maintenance centers."

Mohamad expected in the next three years, a sharp rise in electric cars will be seen in Egypt since the government aims to set up a network of 3,000 electrical-charging stations in the near future.

He stressed that the expansion in the production of electric cars will have significant economic benefits and reduce the state's huge expenditures for importing fossil fuels and subsidizing its prices for citizens.

Minister of Public Business Sector Hisham Tawfiq on Thursday met with the shareholders of electrical-charging station companies to discuss establishing a firm, in a bid to administer and establish electrical-charging stations in cities and along the roads in Cairo, Giza, and Alexandria provinces and Sharm El-Sheikh city that will host the 27th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP 27) in November 2022.

Waleed Gaballah, professor of financial and economic jurisdictions at Cairo University said that Egypt has diversified strategies to reduce emissions and implement measures to improve the environment and achieve sustainable development.

"Transition to a green economy will play a great role in luring foreign investments and increasing exports," he added. 
Samsung has unveiled the Galaxy A23, one of two Galaxy A series smartphones announced today. The Galaxy A23 offers a 6.6-inch and 1080p display, expandable storage and up to 8 GB of RAM, along with a 50 MP primary camera. The Galaxy A23 will be available in four colours, including blue and peach.

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Samsung has announced the Galaxy A23, one of many Galaxy Ax3 smartphones that the company has its sleeve for the early part of 2022. Revealed by way of a press release, Samsung describes the Galaxy A23 as bringing people 'all the Galaxy innovations they need in a mobile-first world'. In other words, the Galaxy A23 is on the cheaper side and does not contain as many features as the more expensive Galaxy A53 5G.

As the graphic below shows, the Galaxy A23 measures 165.4 x 76.9 x 8.44 mm and weighs 195 g. Also, Samsung pre-installs Android 12, unlike recent Xiaomi smartphones. Predictably, the Galaxy A23 runs One UI 4.1, not stock Android. Samsung adds that it has equipped the Galaxy A23 with a 6.6-inch 'TFT V-Cut' display, which operates at 2,408 x 1,080 pixels. Samsung does not mention a refresh rate in its promotional material, so we expect this to be 60 Hz, not 90 Hz or 120 Hz.

Additionally, the Galaxy A23 has a 5,000 mAh battery and five cameras, including an 8 MP front-facing sensor (f/2.2). In comparison, a 50 MP primary camera adorns the smartphone's rear (f/1.8), along with a 5 MP ultra-wide-angle lens (f/2.2) and dual 2 MP depth and macro sensors (f/2.4). Unfortunately, none of these cameras feature optical image stabilisation (OIS).
We must never be passive or negligent in the fight against antisemitism or any other form of bigotry, says Amb. Ronald S. Lauder

NEW YORK / News Aktuell  The World Jewish Congress applauds the Council of the European Unions adoption today of measures to combat racism and antisemitism. The declaration makes the fight against antisemitism a priority of Europes executive branch. France, which holds the presidency of the Council until June 2022, announced the measures, known as conclusions.

WJC has worked closely with European governments at all levels, as well as Jewish communities across Europe, to codify measures to fight the hatred of Jews.

The just-released conclusions demonstrate that France and the entire leadership of the European Union recognize the danger that antisemitism poses to the Jewish people and society at large, said WJC President Ronald S. Lauder. We must never be passive or negligent in combating antisemitism or any other form of bigotry.

As antisemitism continues to surge across Europe  one recent study found 10 antisemitic incidents daily around the globe, almost half of them in Europe  the Councils commitment to fighting the worlds oldest hatred is more critical than ever. Member States will now need to adopt the specific policies laid out to ensure that the hatred of Jews is tackled head-on, perpetrators are held responsible, and future generations learn that all forms of hatred are unacceptable.

We also echo the sentiments of Francis Kalifat, WJC Vice President and head of the Conseil Representatif des Institutions juives de France, who has called for France and other nations to develop a targeted national strategy to combat antisemitism in recognition that it is distinct from other forms of hate.

The European Council comprises the heads of state or government of the EU Member States, as well as the President of the European Council and the President of the European Commission.

About the World Jewish Congress

The World Jewish Congress (WJC) is the international organization representing Jewish communities in more than 100 countries to governments, parliaments and international organizations.

Media contact Andreas Scheuermann wjc@leadership-communications.eu +49 177 5057300
GARDEZ, Afghanistan, March 4 (Xinhua) -- Two people were killed and over 20 others wounded when an improvised bomb was detonated outside a mosque in Afghanistan's eastern Paktia province, a provincial official said on Friday.

"The incident occurred when worshippers were leaving Kharoti Mosque after Friday prayers in Dand-e-Patan district at around mid-day. The affected people were transported by the local villagers and security personnel to the district hospital," Paktia Information Director Khaliqyar Ahmadzai told Xinhua.

The Taliban security forces have cordoned off the area for precautionary measures.

The district security authorities have launched an investigation into the case, the official said.

No group or individual claimed responsibility for the attack so far.

Afghanistan's Taliban-led administration has vowed to crack down on outlaws and criminals to ensure law and order in the Asian country. 
The annual Bolt for the Heart 5K/10K Hallowrun supplied police in LaPorte County with 68 life-saving automatic external defibrillators.

Organizers of the run at Washington Park in Michigan City, now in its third year, donated the defibrillators last week to law enforcement at Franciscan Health Michigan City, one of the main sponsors.

Franciscan Health Michigan City President and CEO Dean Mazzoni said the annual fundraiser was about service to the community.

"Its about a beautiful partnership between two service providers: law enforcement and health care, he said. Getting these devices into their hands will help them save lives in our community. We at Franciscan Health could not be more excited to be part of this wonderful effort."

More than 500 people participated in the run last year, twice as many as the previous year. Runners raised $106,000 for life-saving AEDs, enough to buy 40 for the Michigan City Police Department and 28 for the LaPorte Police Department.

You can see the dedication of these officers that want to get out there and start using these AEDs," LaPorte Police Chief Paul Brettin said. "And the big winner is those unknown victims out there. We dont know how many saves well have with these.

Last year, an Indiana State Police Trooper used an AED to save a man who had a heart attack on the side of the road. Police in Carmel saved a 4-year-old with an AED after she suffered cardiac arrest in her home.

The satisfying thing for us at Bolt is in both of these situations, we placed the AEDs in those cars, Bolt for the Heart President Pierre M. Twer said.

Over the past 10 years, the Bolt for the Heart nonprofit has donated more than 2,000 AEDs to police in Indiana, including 465 AEDs to the Indiana State Police.

This was a special time for us, seeing law enforcement agencies come together for a common cause. Even those that were not recipients of the AEDs came together," Michigan City Police Chief Dion Campbell said. "Its kind of a preview of the future of law enforcement where we all know that we are dependent on one another.

The Play for Jake Foundation has supported Bolt for the Heart. Founder Julie West has helped raise funds since her son Jake died on a LaPorte High School practice field in 2013 after his heart condition went undetected.

Knowing that AEDs are going into the first responders vehicles just warms my heart. I know theres going to be so many lives that are saved, and thats why I do what I do with our foundation, West said.

Bolt for the Heart is looking to establish a sustainability fund that would pay for pads and batteries.

Our mission continues to grow and expand, Twer said.

For more information, visit www.boltfortheheart.com or playforjake.org.

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CRETE  Fitness Premier 24/7 Club will host a blood drive this Saturday in Crete.

The gym at 1379 Main St. in Crete will host the blood drive in partnership with Versiti Blood Centers from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday.

Blood shortage has become a real problem across the United States, said Mary Haynes, Fitness Premiers marketing director. It is important for us at Fitness Premier, and especially at our locations in smaller communities, to participate in events like these that give back to locals. Community is at the heart of all that we do.

The growing group-workout gym chain has 16 locations, including in Cedar Lake, Beecher, Homer Glen, Monee and Manhattan.

Lisa Stasko, who owns Fitness Premier 24/7 Club's franchise in Crete, has a personal stake in the blood drive. Her son was given a 70% chance to die within a year after he was diagnosed with a rare medical condition.

"For Stasko, this drive is more than a chance to save lives. When her son was a freshman in high school, he contracted Severe Aplastic Anemia, a rare blood and bone marrow condition with high rates of mortality (about 70% within one year)," Fitness Premier 24/7 said in a news release.

"Staskos son was in and out of the hospital for a year and required blood and platelet transfusions multiple times a day. They were dependent on donations. Stasko is proud to say that her son has been in remission for two years thanks to life-saving blood donations  and now he's a college sophomore."

For more information, email lstasko@fitnesspremierclubs.com or call (708) 367-0707.

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Franciscan Health is partnering with the Rush University System for Health and adding state-of-the-art robotic technology to its lung cancer program.

The health care system is bringing in RUSH's nationally recognized thoracic surgeons to perform surgery at the Franciscan Health Munster and Dyer hospitals.

Chicago-based RUSH, which is opened an outpatient center in Munster this year, is ranked by U.S. News & World Reports as one of the best in the country in several medical specialties.

Franciscan also added the new, state-of-the-art Auris MONARCH system to help surgeons perform robotic bronchoscopy surgery that can detect small nodules in the lung so they can diagnose lung cancer when it's still in the early stages and more treatable.

The robotic technology enables doctors to precisely guide biopsy instruments deep into lungs while maintaining continuous vision. The MONARCH platform combines endoscopes, instruments, navigation and robotics, giving the surgeon a full suite of capabilities for diagnostic and therapeutic treatments.

"Bringing in RUSHs dedicated thoracic surgeons and introducing the latest in robotic bronchoscopy with the Auris MONARCH system demonstrates the commitment Franciscan Health has to raising the bar for diagnosing and treating lung cancer. Patients dont need to travel to the city for the best care, they can find it right here, said Patrick Maloney, president and CEO of Franciscan Health Dyer, Hammond and Munster.

The hope is the partnership between Franciscan and RUSH will develop into a multidisciplinary lung cancer clinic that will provide patients with screening, diagnosis and a comprehensive treatment plan.

Franciscan Health Cancer Center Munster operates a comprehensive lung cancer program that encompasses genomic and molecular testing, radiation therapy, robotic surgery, a $49 lung and heart screening program, lung cancer nurse navigation and robotic bronchoscopy that provides early detection, improving the odds of survival.

Franciscan Health has a strong lung cancer screening program. Now with the Auris MONARCH system and our partnership with RUSHs thoracic surgeons, we will be able to move quickly to get patients who have a positive lung nodule into treatment, said Dr. Cory Hogue, a radiation oncologist with Franciscan Physician Network.

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Economic Development Corp. Michigan City will host an upcoming virtual seminar on business tax abatements.

Business owners can learn how they can qualify for reductions in their property tax bills if they invest in or grow their operations.

Dan Botich with Short Elliott Hendrickson will lead the informational session from 8 to 10 a.m. March 8.

Attendees can learn about the tax abatement process, filing for one and requirements to maintain the benefits, which are typically phased over a 10-year period in Indiana, though the legislature recently allowed local governments more flexibility in setting length.

Companies that get tax abatements in exchange for investment and job creation in the Hoosier State typically get most of their property taxes on the new facility or addition waved in the first year. The property taxes then get phased in more and more every subsequent year until the full tax burden is realized after a 10-year period.

Botich also will cover Urban Enterprise Zone tax benefits and compliance.

The seminar will be conducted via Zoom. Advance registration is required. For more information, visit edcmc.org, call 219-873-1211 or email info@edcmc.com.

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The LaPorte County Historical Society Museum is now asking the public for submissions for its annual photo contest.

The historical museum's 2022 Photo Contest has the theme "LaPorte County Streets and Signs." It's meant to be an intentionally broad theme open to interpretation.

"We're hoping to see some great photos of everyone's favorite roads, signs and avenues in LaPorte County," LaPorte County Historical Society Museum Assistant Director Danielle Adams said in a press release. "Entries could include photos of the advertisements painted on the sides of our brick buildings, the street where you live, the sign for your favorite intersection or business, a bustling road covered in fall leaves, and so much more. The options are nearly endless in our large county. Submissions for photos are open today."

The photos must have been taken in 2021 or 2022 somewhere in LaPorte County. All ages can take part in the contest.

All entries will be displayed at the museum at 2405 Indiana Ave., Ste. 1 during the month of May. A curated selection of photos will be published in the LaPorte County Historical Society Museum's 2023 calendar.

Submissions must be received by 4:30 p.m. April 22. The results of the contest will be announced to the public on April 29.

"The full list of rules will be available on our website this month, or you can stop by the museum to pick up the rules and submission form," Adams said.

Any questions can be directed to Adams at assistantdirector@laportecountyhistory.org.

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Photographer Libby McArthur is exhibiting work she created during the coronavirus pandemic at a new exhibit at South Suburban College.

"Coping with the Pandemic: The search for a sense of control" is now on display in the Photo Four Gallery at South Suburban College at 15800 South State St..

McArthur will deliver an artist talk about the series of photographs from 1 to 2 p.m. on March 15.

"Libby McArthur is an art teacher and artist, born and raised in the suburbs of Chicago," South Suburban College said in a press release. "She has a Bachelors in Art Education and a Masters in Art. When the pandemic started, McArthurs anxiety was ripping her apart and she began searching for ways to make her photography more meditative."

The solo exhibition will be on display through April 22.

"As she began manipulating her photographs, she found the process of duplicating, rotating, and cropping her photos extremely therapeutic," South Suburban College said in a press release. "As she worked, she found some days her photographs seemed more pointed and darker, while others seemed light and airy. But most often they began reflecting her moods and became an easy coping mechanism for her to detach from the worry around her, and the pain of so many caused by this uncertain time. "

The gallery is open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Thursday. It's free and open to the public.

Masks, social distancing and temperature checks are required.

For more information, call 708-596-2000, ext. 2211 or email at pplanera@ssc.edu.

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McNulty then said there are "tens of millions of dollars" in upgrades being made at West Side and other schools in the district.

"We continue to invite stakeholders to the table as we tackle challenges together. We all want whats best for our students," McNulty said.
JAKARTA, March 4 (Xinhua) -- Eight civilians were allegedly shot dead by Papuan separatist group, which Indonesia called an armed criminal group on Wednesday, in Boega district, Puncak Regency, Papua province, Provincial Police's Spokesman, Senior Commissioner Ahmad Kamal, confirmed to journalists on Friday.

The eight victims -- identified as B, R, BN, BT, J, E, S and PD -- were employees of telematics company Palaparing Timur Telematika (PTT). They were fixing a Tower Base Transceiver Station (BTS) owned by Indonesia's state-owned telecommunications operator Telkomsel when the incident happened.

Kamal said that as of Friday, the authorities still could not evacuate the victims due to bad weather, while the crime location could only be reached using air transportation.

"We have instructed our team to immediately evacuate them as soon as possible and conduct further investigation into the case," Kamal said.

The PTT released a statement in January that there had been 174 vandalism acts damaging the PTT's facilities allegedly committed by the armed criminal group across Papua and West Papua provinces.

"One of the vandalism acts carried out by the armed group was the burning of two of our BTS facilities and forced termination of our fiber optic cables. Most of the acts occurred in mountain areas," PTT General Manager for Operations, Widodo Yuli Prasetyo, said as quoted from the company's official website. 
CROWN POINT  A Lake Criminal Court jury convicted a Gary man Thursday of two counts of murder in what prosecutors described as an execution-style killing of two teenagers over a missing handgun.

Alvino S. "Vino" Amaya, 37, also was found guilty of a firearm enhancement in connection with the Oct. 16, 2020, shooting deaths of 18-year-old Elijah Robinson and his friend Maxwell Kroll, 17, in the boys' home in the 3900 block of West 51st Avenue in Calumet Township, officials said.

Lake County Deputy Prosecutor Jacquelyn Altpeter told jurors in closing arguments that Robinson and Kroll were two kind, caring teenagers who also were very naive.

"They were caught in a world that they should never have been a part of," she said. "They were surrounded by firearms, drugs and dangerous people."

Amaya and his girlfriend and co-defendant, Dawn "Mama D" Carden, 43, knew the teenagers because they worked with Carden's son at a fast-food restaurant, according to trial testimony.

Co-defendant Elijah D. Robinson, 20, also worked at the restaurant and thought it was "cool" that he and the victim Robinson shared a name. The two Robinsons were not related, police said.

When Amaya arrived at the teens' house demanding a handgun, he didn't know the victim Robinson's girlfriend was listening on a still-open phone line, Altpeter said.

The 18-year-old girlfriend testified Tuesday she was 100% certain it was Amaya she overheard say, "Where the (expletive) is the Glock 19? Where is the gun?" after her boyfriend fell asleep and her screen went dark.

Defense attorney Steven Mullins asked the jury why the woman didn't call police after she heard yelling over her phone and initially gave police Amaya's name to police if she knew who he was.

The woman testified she never thought Amaya would kill her boyfriend, and she didn't want to get Kroll and Robinson in trouble.

After finding the teens dead, she was scared for her safety, she said. In a second interview with police days later, she identified Amaya as the man she overhead on the phone.

Altpeter replayed a portion of the 911 call the woman's mother made after the woman and Robinson's sister went into the house to check on Robinson and Kroll and came out screaming hysterically because they found the teens dead.

"It was (expletive) (Carden's son's) stepdad," Robinson's girlfriend could be heard screaming in the background of the 911 call.

Alterpeter told the jury, "The girls knew from Day 1 who it was."

The deputy prosecutor commended Lake County sheriff's Detective Cory House for quick thinking that led to the recovery of the murder weapon.

House was monitoring text messages and obtained a search warrant for a storage unit Carden and her father rented hours after Kroll and Robinson were killed, she said.

"Dawn was getting rid of the murder weapon for her lover," Altpeter said.

Sheriff's Capt. Henry Hatch, a firearms examiner, testified he determined a Taurus 9mm semiautomatic handgun recovered from the storage facility fired the spent cartridge casings found at the crime scene.

DNA analysis excluded defendant Elijah D. Robinson as someone who had touched the Taurus, but Kroll, Carden and Amaya were found to be contributors, Altpeter said. Amaya's DNA was found on the trigger, she said.

Robinson didn't see any crime scene photos before testifying Wednesday afternoon, but he described the position of the victims' bodies in detail, Altpeter said.

Mullins questioned how the girl could have heard a voice but not a gunshot, which  according to Elijah D. Robinson's testimony  happened minutes after Amaya yelled at the victim Robinson about the Glock 19.

Kroll and Robinson's bedrooms were next to each other in a basement, and Hatch testified he had to wear ear protection when he test fired the Taurus handgun, Mullins said.

"Black Eli, let's get to him, from the very, very beginning lied to the police," Mullins said.

Elijah D. Robinson was facing a possible sentence of 150 years in prison before signing a plea agreement that called for him to testify against Amaya. If Judge Salvador Vasquez accepts Robinson's plea to one felony count of residential entry, he would face a sentence of six months to 2 1/2 years.

Altpeter urged the jury to consider Amaya's own words to a police officer while en route to the Lake County Jail after his arrest: "You don't have to rush to county. I'm going to be there for a long time."

Amaya could face 45 to 65 years on each of the two murder counts when he's sentenced next month. He also could face a mandatory consecutive sentence of five to 20 years on the firearm enhancement.

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It's about to be Groundhog Day all over again at the Lake County Government Center with the sheriff seeking approval to purchase a new boat for service on Lake Michigan and the county commissioners once again turning him down.

The Lake County Council sits in between those two entities. The council signaled Thursday it's likely to use its authority, either Tuesday or next month, to appropriate $777,557 for the 38-foot long by 12-foot wide full cabin patrol boat requested by the sheriff.

That's $7,497 more than the council approved last year for the sheriff's boat request. Vincent Balbo, chief of the sheriff's police, said that boat, a Metal Shark Defiant with a top speed of 60 mph, now costs $818,000.

As a result, Balbo said Sheriff Oscar Martinez Jr. has found a different boat, manufactured by SAFE Boats, that can similarly meet the sheriff's patrol and rescue needs on Lake Michigan at a price comparable to the spending the county council approved last year.

But he said the money needs to be allocated for the new boat immediately because it will take at least eight months for the boat to be manufactured.

"We're identifying this as a critical need in the area of public safety," Balbo said.

Balbo explained to the council the sheriff's current heavy-duty boat on Lake Michigan is 28 years old and beyond its useful life span.

Though he said that boat, along with a second, swifter sheriff's watercraft, still will go into the lake in coming days to preserve and protect lives and property this spring, summer and fall along the 20 miles of Lake County's shoreline, as well as in Porter County when needed.

Records show the sheriff's office never has had a problem getting the seven-member county council to endorse its requests to fund the purchase of various equipment, including boats, all-terrain vehicles, jet skis, high-powered vehicles and space to store it all in.

However, the three-member board of commissioners, which exclusively exercises purchasing authority on behalf of the county, repeatedly has declined to spend all the money appropriated by the council on behalf of the sheriff.

The commissioners have said they have a duty to ensure taxpayer dollars are spent wisely and they aren't going to be buying a boat until they're convinced it's an appropriate use of the county's limited funds.

"The sheriff has yet to demonstrate to the board of commissioners that the purchase of this boat is in the best interest of the taxpayers of Lake County," said Commissioner Mike Repay, D-Hammond.

The kerfuffle has sparked an ongoing lawsuit between the council and the commissioners for control of county purchasing, as well as a suit filed by the sheriff against the commissioners in January seeking independent purchasing authority.

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CROWN POINT  The special prosecutor in a case against Lake County Sheriff Oscar Martinez Jr. said in court filings Thursday he repeatedly reminded a grand jury of its independence and asked a judge to deny the sheriff's motion to dismiss his indictment.

In a separate filing, Special Judge Jeryl Leach granted Martinez's request to stay a comprehensive search of a cellphone seized Tuesday.

Leach is slated to hear arguments Monday from Special Prosecutor Stanley Levco and defense attorneys Paul Stacci and Michael Woods on the sheriff's motions to dismiss and to prohibit or limit a comprehensive search of the sheriff's Samsung Galaxy S10 cellphone.

The defense said a search warrant for the sheriff's phone was overly broad and should be limited to Sept. 18 and 19, the dates pertinent to allegations that led to the sheriff's indictment on felony resisting law enforcement and misdemeanor reckless driving charges.

Martinez is accused of driving at speeds of up to 50 mph over the speed limit on Taft and Main streets in Crown Point and Merrillville and not stopping for two Crown Point officers, who were chasing his unmarked Jeep TrackHawk with their lights and sirens activated.

The sheriff denied the charges and said the indictment doesn't prohibit him from holding office. A jury trial is currently set to begin April 11. If convicted of a felony, he would be automatically removed from office.

In his response to the sheriff's motion to dismiss, Levco wrote neither he nor an Indiana State Police commander who testified before the grand jury violated the state's grand jury statute or Martinez's constitutional due process rights.

In their motion, Stracci and Woods accused Levco and the police commander of unduly influencing "the neutral and detached atmosphere" of the grand jury proceedings.

The alleged imposition on the grand jurors' will or independent judgment was so "flagrant," a dismissal of the indictment is required, the defense attorneys wrote.

Stracci and Woods took issue with Levco's statement to grand jurors that he "would be embarrassed to go in front of a jury with simply a speeding charge."

Levco said the grand jury statute requires a prosecutor to identify each offense the target of an investigation is alleged to have committed.

Levco said he told grand jurors he was looking at reckless driving and resisting law enforcement, but  to Martinez's benefit  he deferred to them multiple times while discussing possible charges.

He said, "You can do what you want to do," and, "If you do it, I'll pursue it," and, "But my thought would be  ultimately this is your decision."

Levco wrote he did not tell grand jurors they should not consider a speeding infraction.

Not only did Levco remind grand jurors of their independence on the potential choice of a speeding infraction, he also told them several times they could choose not to indict the sheriff, he wrote.

He also "imposed a higher standard of proof" on himself than is required in a grand jury proceeding, he said.

"And one of the reasons I took this case to the grand jury is, I'm not interested in getting an indictment if you think it's just barely probable that he's guilty of these charges," Levco told grand jurors. "Because if you do charge him, I'm going to go ahead with it, and I want to feel like there's some legitimate chance of proving him guilty at trial. ... I mean I will be trying to present it as fairly as I can, and if you don't think he's very, very, very probably guilty, then I wouldn't want you to charge him."

Levco told grand jurors he would accept whatever decision they reached, and that he wanted them to do what they though was right, he said.

The special prosecutor also allowed Stracci to address the grand jury on Martinez's behalf, which undermines the sheriff's claims that the grand jury process was unfair, Levco wrote.

Rather than interfering with Martinez's right to a detached and neutral atmosphere, "the special prosecutor was overly fair to the defendant by telling the grand jurors they could disregard his tendered criminal offenses and indict on a lesser infraction," Levco wrote.

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GARY  Aspire Charter Academy was placed on a precautionary lockdown early Thursday afternoon while police investigated a report of threats toward the school, Gary police Cmdr. Jack Hamady said.

As of 3 p.m. students appeared to have been released at the end of the school day and there was no significant police presence visible at the school any longer.

Police received the call at 1:14 p.m., and officers arrived a short time later to the school at 4900 W. 15th Ave., he said.

The lockdown was initiated by the school, and the threat was made anonymously, Gary police Lt. Dawn Westerfield said.

"Officers are on scene," she said earlier Thursday afternoon.

The Gary Police Department has not yet released updates about the threat or investigation.

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A quick-acting motorist is being credited with pulling an injured semi driver out of his overturned vehicle Friday on I-65, allowing a state trooper to use a tourniquet to control the man's bleeding leg, state police said.

All southbound lanes near the crash were blocked for 12 hours until 5:15 p.m., when the area was reopened for the flow of normal traffic.

The driver, who was not identified, rear-ended a slow moving semi-truck shortly after 5:30 a.m. in the right-hand lane of southbound Interstate 65 about three miles north of the Lowell exit, said Indiana State Trooper James M. Brasseur.

The collision caused the faster-moving semi to drive off the highway and overturn, police said. The first truck, which had been driving slowly due to an unknown mechanical issue, was able to pull over on the shoulder.

The trailer being pulled by the first truck was damaged and its contents  fast-food restaurant container items  spilled across all lanes of the highway, Brasseur said.

The driver of the overturned truck was trapped in his vehicle and suffered serious injuries, Brasseur said.

After being pulled from his truck and treated at the scene, the driver was taken to Franciscan St. Anthony Health hospital in Crown Point, police said.

The driver of the first truck also was taken to the hospital with complaint of pain. The conditions of the individuals are unknown at this time.

State police were assisted by Crown Point emergency responders.

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MICHIGAN CITY  An investigation is ongoing after a victim suffered life-threatening injuries in a Michigan City shooting.

First responders were called at 5:15 p.m. Thursday to a shooting in the 500 block of Holiday Street, said Michigan City Police Department Sgt. Steve Forker.

A 911 call to LaPorte County E-911 Regional Dispatch Center reported there were shots being fired and that one person had been struck.

Several Michigan City Uniform Patrol Shift 2 officers arrived at the scene and found a wounded victim. The victim was suffering life-threatening injuries and was immediately taken to Franciscan Health Michigan City Hospital.

LaPorte County Sheriffs Department, Trail Creek Police Department, Michigan City Fire Department and LaPorte County EMS assisted Michigan City officers.

Michigan City police asked anyone who witnessed this incident, has any additional information or has video of this incident to contact Cpl. Kay Pliske at 219-874-3221, extension 1086, or email her at kpliske@emichigancity.com.

Information can also be provided to the Michigan City Police Department Crime Tip Hotline at 219-873-1488 or by messaging the departmental Facebook page. 

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VALPARAISO  The Multi Agency Academic Cooperative honored Porter County Commissioner Jeff Good with its initial Excellence in Public Service Award.

The MAAC Foundation also used the opportunity to introduce new initiatives.

At the award presentation Thursday at the MAAC facility, Good was cited as someone honest, a leader who values efficiency, public service, fiscal responsibility, and collaboration.

Im very proud of what this group has done, Good said about the Porter County Commissioners and Council. Its about teamwork.

A Valparaiso resident Good said local leaders have worked on Porter County finances to the extent that the county has the lowest tax rate in Indiana.

You create a plan, get people together, and you work to get it done, Good said.

The MAAC is a not-for-profit foundation that provides training opportunities for first responders at no cost to them. The MAAC also provides classes for the public on its five-acre property, including CPR and womens self-defense.

Purpose for the award is to honor a distinguished individual in public or voluntary service leadership who has made exceptional contributions in public service, specifically contributing to the first responder community.

Honorees service will be exemplary of the MAACs mission and such values as inclusiveness, collaboration, integrity, respect, fiscal responsibility, and servant leadership.

A Porter County commissioner since 2014, Good, 61, is a past board member of Porter-Starke Services and Northwest Indiana Regional Development Authority. As president/owner of Good Hospitality Services Inc. of Valparaiso, he owns 21 hotels in six states.

MAAC founder Stewart McMillan described Good as a level 5 leader, someone who can tell you to go to hell and enjoy the ride. McMillan said Good has mastered the art of managing disappointment.

Hes managed Porter County well and he understands hes not going to make everyone happy, McMillan said.

Noting how Porter County finances are in good shape, Good said, Porter County has a very, very bright future. We just need to work together. If there is a problem, we work together to get it done. We have a great future in front of us. Lets not screw it up.

Bill Hanna, executive director of the Dean and Barbara White Family Foundation, introduced Good and the foundations support for an upcoming MAAC project.

The foundation is committing $1 million to the MAACs residential tactical village, a $2.2 million project designed to better prepare first responders to potentially dangerous situations in home settings.

Valparaiso Police Chief Jeff Balon cited the example of police responding to a domestic call or other violent situation. Officers would receive training in how to approach these calls without putting themselves in jeopardy.

Balon said the MAAC is the best way for police and fire and other first responders to work together on location, and it makes for overwhelming better response for communities.

Celina Weatherwax, president of the MAAC Foundation, said that with the White Foundation funds, the facility has $2 million for the tactical village and is working on the remaining $200,000.

Plans call for construction to begin next month, with completion slated in time for the MAAC open house in August.

Weatherwax said the sole purpose of MAAC is to support first responders. That, she said, includes improving quality of life and public safety overall.

Another project in the works is Bedford Falls, a facility that would provide indoor training for first responders, even in inclement weather, and provide additional training space. Named for the village in the movie Its A Wonderful Life, the project would cost an estimated $5.5 million. Weatherwax said a capital campaign for this project is in the works.

Weatherwax also reported that the MAAC has exceeded expectations, with class attendance growing annually by 25%.

McMillan called the MAAC a sandbox where everyone is welcome. No one dominates it; everyone loves it.

Noting that the facility opened originally to help volunteer firefighters, McMillan said, It has grown into something special.

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The pleasures of visiting a cocktail bar extend well beyond the libations. Its just as much about the company, the atmosphere, all the accouterments. At home, a thoughtfully designed bar can create a similar feeling and serve as a special place for after-work drinks and celebrations with family and friends.

A home bar is just really festive, collective and inviting, said Andrew Suvalsky, an interior designer based in New York. When you set up a bar, it shows that you care about entertaining and helping people have an experience.

And because a home bar is often tucked away in an inconspicuous spot, it offers a chance to take design risks, said Leslie Martin, a founder of M & M Interior Design, a firm with studios in Chicago and San Diego: Its sort of a powder-room situation, where you have this opportunity to make it a bit of a jewel box. Theyre often behind closed doors, so you might as well go big.
When I got in the car I started crying, said Irina Boicharenko, one of the tens of thousands of Ukrainians making the journey westward. I just started to cry because I realized I am leaving my country and running from a war. Its an awful feeling.

Ukraines railway company said today that all passenger trains moving east to west were now being used only for evacuating civilians, with women, children and older people given priority. A day after Kyivs central railway station was damaged by a Russian missile strike, Ukrainians continued to pack trains in an attempt to escape the city.

Russia-Ukraine War: Key Developments Card 1 of 4 Fears of an expanded war rise. With the Russian military still struggling, Western officials are looking with increased alarm to Russias Victory Day holiday on May 9. Anxiety is growing that President Vladimir V. Putin will exploit the celebration of the Soviet triumph over the Nazis to intensify attacks and formally declare war. Russian oil embargo. The European Union unveiled a plan to halt imports of Russian crude oil in the next six months and refined oil products by the end of the year. If approved as expected, it would be the blocs biggest and costliest step yet toward ending its own dependence on Russian fossil fuels. Support for Moldova. The E.U. promised to provide additional military support for Moldova, the increasingly pressured neighbor of Ukraine. Security fears have grown there during the invasion, swelling after a series of explosions rocked Transnistria, the countrys own breakaway region, where Russia has maintained soldiers since 1992. On the ground. Moscow continued to demonstrate its destructive power. In the western city of Lviv, strikes on three power substations knocked out electricity in many areas. In the eastern region of Donetsk, 21 people died on May 3, the highest number of casualties in a day since last month.







For those who stay, a modicum of safety can be found underground, in subways and bomb shelters. Up to 15,000 people, most of them women and children, have taken up residence in Kyivs subway system, the citys mayor said. Doctors at a maternity hospital have set up chambers in the basement to provide women a safe place to give birth. So far, five babies have been born there, according to the clinics director.

The historic westward movement of people has caused lines of up to 24 hours at border checkpoints along Ukraines borders with Poland, Moldova, Hungary, Slovakia and Romania.

At the Ukrainian-Moldovan border, Anna Rogachova pointed to a suitcase she had packed at her home in Odessa and said: We left everything. We put all our lives in this single bag.

The U.N. said today it expected that 10 million people (out of Ukraines population of 44 million) would be displaced by the conflict.
ISLAMABAD, March 4 (Xinhua) -- The death toll from a bomb blast that hit a mosque in Pakistan's northwestern Peshawar city of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province has risen to 30, and over 50 people were wounded, police said on Friday.

Police sources in the area told Xinhua that the blast occurred inside the mosque during Friday prayers in the Kocha Risaldar area of Peshawar.

Rescue teams, police and security forces reached the site and shifted the injured to a nearby hospital.

No group or individual has claimed the attack. 
Note for Teachers: Please preview the film to make sure it is appropriate for your students. It includes some graphic language.

Trayvon Martin Is Still Making America Confront Its Original Sin is a seven-minute Opinion video featuring Barack Obama, the Rev. Al Sharpton and the Harvard historian Henry Louis Gates Jr. On the 10th anniversary of the 17-year-old Martins death, the film examines the legacy of the tragic killing and how it led to the awakening of a new generation of civil rights activism. As President Obama says, My hope is that when we look back at what happened with Trayvon and are able to say that that was the start of America looking inward, and, in fits and starts, coming to terms with what was our original sin.

What is the meaning and legacy of Trayvon Martins death? What can we learn from it 10 years later? What connections can you make to civil rights movements, past and present?

Students

1. Watch the short film above. While you watch, you might take notes using our Film Club Double-Entry Journal (PDF) to help you remember specific moments.
The fresh New York boundaries would make that harder, giving Democrats an advantage in 22 of the states 26 congressional districts, while potentially cutting the current number of Republican House members from New York in half and effectively eating into gains won by redistricting measures in other states. Analysts have suggested the new State Senate lines could be just as favorable to Democrats, helping the party maintain its supermajority in Albany.

Legal analysts who study redistricting said that Justice McAllister or an appeals court could still conceivably rethink his approach, but a court-ordered delay to this years elections was an increasingly unlikely scenario, now that candidates have begun collecting petitions to get on the June primary ballot.

If I were a candidate, I think the smart bet is that the maps we have today are the maps that are going to be used in November, said Michael Li, senior counsel for the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice. There doesnt seem to be the will to change them for this cycle.

Still, Republicans left the hearing room in Bath, N.Y., on Thursday with some reasons for optimism.

Justice McAllister rejected motions to dismiss the case and indicated that he was open to arguments that the maps had violated language added to the New York Constitution in 2014 that barred mapmakers from drawing lines to benefit one political party or candidate.

The judge also ordered Democrats to hand over a raft of documents by March 12 that might shed light on how the Democratic drafters settled on the lines, and he told both sides to appear a few days later to argue over the merits of the Republicans challenge.
The specificity with which this new technology is able to determine individual origins is staggering. For example, one of us, Henry Louis Gates Jr., knows, purely through his DNA, that he is descended from an Irish American man who fathered his great-great-grandmothers oldest son, because Dr. Gatess y-DNA signature is one that he shares with a ton of men in Ireland. CeCe Moore, a well-known genetic genealogist, has identified that forebears name and biographical details, long a mystery in the Gates family, by analyzing the family trees of all of the people with whom Dr. Gates shares DNA in publicly available databases. On his mothers line, he is descended from a white woman, most likely from England, who had a child with a man of sub-Saharan African descent at some point during the time of slavery, though their identities have been lost.

It would be an understatement to say that he was astonished to learn that his recent ancestral mutations trace back equally to sub-Saharan Africa and to Europe. As a friend of his joked: Who could have guessed that a Black scholar who has spent so much of his professional life searching for his long-veiled African ancestry would finally find it  only to discover that hes half a white man. That friends joke allowed him to make a point: There is no category for white in genetic analysis; half of his ancestry traces back to regions in Europe. We should never forget that whiteness, like Blackness, is just another social fiction.

There can be few more powerful demonstrations that race is a social construction than his own DNA results. And therein lies the promise of this new science. DNA, used in this way, can restore a remarkable amount of information about the ancestors whose traces we carry around every day in our genomes. The multitude of population clusters, regions and genetic groups reflected in DNA tests counters existing narratives that try to reduce the astonishing variety of the human community to the four or five socially constructed races of man about which prior generations of students learned in biology class.

Thats why, as historians who study race, we believe that were once again entering a new era. If, throughout the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, science put an enormous amount of effort into dividing the human species into separate categories, 21st-century genetic analysis promises to reveal just how meaningless those categories are  and how connected weve been all along.

At a time when our society is deeply divided and when a surge of antisemitic, anti-Asian, Islamophobic and anti-Black racism threatens the social fabric, it feels urgent that we develop new language for discussing the relationship between identity, ancestry, history and science. DNA analysis could help create that language by offering more nuanced ways of looking at individual origins and a more unifying narrative about our shared heritage

But, of course, where there is promise, there is also peril. Race is, to steal a line from Wordsworth, too much with us. Its history is too long, its presence and usage too common, for it to magically disappear anytime soon. While, biologically speaking, the idea of individual human races with different origins is as farcical as the medieval belief that elves cause hiccups, the social reality of race is undeniable. And genetics  or, for that matter, any science  has the potential to be misused, co-opted by racist ideologies and employed to bolster harmful narratives about racial purity or biological superiority.

But if we can, at the very least, embrace the understanding that race (a toxic social construction) and ancestry (a shared genetic history) are not only distinct but also fundamentally opposed  and teach that in our classrooms  it could go a long way toward freeing us from some of the binds in which scientific racism have trapped us.
Architecture is how the Facebook whistle-blower Frances Haugen  featured at President Bidens State of the Union address this week  termed it in a Sway interview with me last year. I really think we are way at the beginning in terms of thinking about what to do with these problems, because Facebook has done a really good job of distracting us with the censorship debate, she said. So we are very hotly arguing over, should you take off the platform XYZ content? Is there enough censorship, not enough censorship, when, in reality, the things we should be talking about are about platform design choices.

In just a few days, tech has shown it can make meaningful and tough choices about who can use its platforms and how they can be used and make the world a better place in the bargain  a silver lining amid all this gloom in Ukraine.

4 Questions

This week I reached out to Ali Partovi, a longtime tech entrepreneur whose latest effort is Neo Accelerator, a new start-up creator that is trying to reinvent the approach to mentorship and innovation. Ive edited his answers.

What has changed in the start-up sector and in the investment landscape, especially with venture capital? Do they, like finance, need to be decentralized?

Theres never been a better time in history to start a company. The start-up world is larger, more vibrant, and more varied than ever. It has subsectors with diverging needs. As a result, investors are becoming more specialized. For example, while capital is abundant, access to it isnt distributed equally: Some founders can raise money easily, whereas others struggle to get funded. Incredible start-ups sprouting in emerging markets have different strengths and needs than Silicon Valley companies.

The investment landscape has shifted to serve these different needs, and start-up accelerators are no exception. For example, Y Combinator appeals to founders with less access to capital. Today, it focuses on large and lucrative emerging markets like Africa and Latin America. The fund is 70 percent international, 90 percent male, and 100 percent online. An online academy is ideal for a global program of its scale: YC graduates 2,000 people a year. This focus diverges from YCs origins as a tight-knit community. If Patrick and John Collison were starting Stripe today, I wonder if theyd drop out of M.I.T. and Harvard for a program that graduates more people than those colleges. Neo Accelerator will appeal to strong technical founders who have no trouble raising capital  by offering a more intimate, in-person community of 20 teams and a more relevant demo day focused on recruiting. Today, these founders arent applying to any other accelerator.

Why is there a need to remake the Y Combinator model, which has been a real touchstone of tech start-ups? Is it antiquated, or does everything need to be disrupted?
OneWeb, a satellite internet company partly owned by the British government, has canceled an upcoming satellite launch using a Russian rocket and suspended all future launches that relied on Russia, the company announced on Thursday after a tense public standoff with Roscosmos, Russias space agency.

Also on Thursday, Roscosmos announced it would stop selling rocket engines to American companies.

The moves, both fallout from Moscows invasion of Ukraine, stand to further isolate the Russian space agency from its Western space partners, and limit Russias private space activities dramatically. OneWebs loss of a reliable rocket provider for launches also poses novel challenges for the company as it had aimed to complete its constellation of 648 satellites in orbit later this year.

OneWeb was rescued from bankruptcy in 2020 by the British government and other investors. It was scheduled to launch 36 satellites aboard a Russian Soyuz rocket from Kazakhstan on Friday. The company has sent roughly 400 satellites to orbit since 2019, every time using Soyuz, a workhorse rocket thats been active since the days of the Cold War space race.

But on Wednesday, just after the Soyuz rolled out to the pad ahead of its launch, Dmitry Rogozin, Russias space chief, announced two conditions aimed at countering the sanctions placed on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine: The space agency would not proceed with the satellite mission unless Britain withdrew its multibillion dollar stake in OneWeb and the company provided a guarantee that its satellites will not be used for military purposes.
And yet Saul extols the virtues of being a soldier and encourages his teenage son, Addis (a profoundly forlorn Caleb Eberhardt), to imagine himself a warrior  while forbidding him to enlist because Addis is intellectually disabled. Tending to Sugarland is Tisha (the underused Lizan Mitchell), a woman in her 60s who speaks to her deceased son through the sacred memorial and lives with her vain, irreverent sister Evelyn (Stephanie Berry, the plays comic delight). Watching everything unfold mostly from the sidelines is Sadie, who doesnt speak except for her long soliloquies to the audience. She can raise the dead, she reveals, and summons several generations of ancestors to help her find her mother from beyond the grave.

There are a lot of characters and a lot of story lines in this nearly three-hour production. A Greek chorus of neighborhood children called the Rowdy round out the cast of 14. The chorus isnt the only element Harris borrowed from the Greeks; On Sugarland was inspired by the Sophocles play Philoctetes, about two soldiers who try to persuade a master archer with a chronically festering foot wound to rejoin the Trojan War. Both works involve an ailing soldier, but whether Harris makes any deeper connections to the Sophocles work, or aspires to some dialogue between her piece and the classic, is unclear.

Harris certainly isnt the only playwright who writes lyrical dialogue with its own internal meter, but she is one of the best navigators of shifts in language and registers, even within a single scene. So we get tasty figurative gumdrops that subtly illuminate the inner thoughts of the characters, like the glamorous Evelyns description of the setting sun, which, she says, looks like a starlet whose solo is over. But Harris struggles with an overambitious story. On Sugarland is unable to adequately unpack its cornucopia of themes: post-traumatic stress disorder, Black masculinity, the history of Black soldiers, Black women fighting racism and misogyny, the ways Black women respond to grief, the choices Black women make about their bodies in a world of prejudice.
MIAMI  Florida legislators voted to ban most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy on Thursday, a move that would severely restrict access to the procedure in a state that for decades has been a refuge for women from across the South.

The bill  modeled after a similar abortion ban in Mississippi that the U.S. Supreme Court appears poised to uphold  now heads to the desk of Gov. Ron DeSantis as part of a sweeping push by Republicans to put the state at the forefront of the nations culture wars. Other legislation on the verge of passage includes banning instruction about sexual orientation or gender identity in some elementary school grades, and allowing parents to sue public school districts if students believe that their teacher sought to make them feel discomfort about a historical event because of their race, sex or national origin.

Impassioned critics have nicknamed that first proposal the Dont Say Gay bill. Eager proponents have called the second bill the Stop Woke Act. Both are expected to pass before the final day of the legislative session on March 11.

Weve accomplished more in this state than anyone thought possible, Mr. DeSantis told a raucous crowd at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando last week, but Ill tell you this: We have only begun to fight.
WASHINGTON  Senior White House officials designing the strategy to confront Russia have begun quietly debating a new concern: that the avalanche of sanctions directed at Moscow, which have gained speed faster than they imagined, is cornering President Vladimir V. Putin and may prompt him to lash out, perhaps expanding the conflict beyond Ukraine.

In Situation Room meetings in recent days, the issue has come up repeatedly, according to three officials. Mr. Putins tendency, American intelligence officials have told the White House and Congress, is to double down when he feels trapped by his own overreach. So they have described a series of possible reactions, ranging from indiscriminate shelling of Ukrainian cities to compensate for the early mistakes made by his invading force, to cyberattacks directed at the American financial system, to more nuclear threats and perhaps moves to take the war beyond Ukraines borders.

The debate over Mr. Putins next moves is linked to an urgent re-examination by intelligence agencies of the Russian leaders mental state, and whether his ambitions and appetite for risk have been altered by two years of Covid isolation.

Those concerns accelerated after Mr. Putins order on Sunday to place the countrys strategic nuclear weapons on a combat ready alert to respond to the Wests aggressive comments. (In the ensuing days, however, national security officials say they have seen little evidence on the ground that Russias nuclear forces have actually moved to a different state of readiness.)
Top federal health officials said Thursday that they intended to begin offering low and middle-income nations access to the technology developed by government scientists that might be used to prevent or treat Covid-19. They did not specify which technologies might be included, but hinted that the policy could eventually apply to the Moderna vaccine if the Biden administration won a patent dispute with the company.

President Bidens health secretary, Xavier Becerra, and his top medical adviser for the coronavirus, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, made the comments to reporters after a meeting with health ministers from around the world. Mr. Biden is preparing to convene his second global summit on Covid-19, expected sometime in the coming weeks.

Dr. Fauci said the National Institutes of Health had already offered to license several N.I.H.-owned technologies to the World Health Organizations Covid-19 Technology Access Pool, known as C-TAP, which the health organization describes as a global one-stop shop for drug developers to share their intellectual property. The technologies would then be made available to the Medicines Patent Pool, a United Nations-backed public health organization that works to increase access to medicines in poor and middle-income nations.

Mr. Biden has been under intense pressure from activists and W.H.O. officials to do more to press the pharmaceutical industry to share its technology with the world. The new policy, officials say, will enable poor nations to manufacture inexpensive vaccines and therapeutics that are developed in the United States.
On Thursday, the son, Jackson Reffitt, faced his father from the witness stand in Federal District Court in Washington, testifying against him in a remarkable tableau that captured the painful rupture in one family  and in some ways the nation  caused by the events of Jan. 6, 2021.

He said, If you turn me in, youre a traitor, Jackson Reffitt told the jury as his father watched him intently from across the courtroom and then looked down. And traitors get shot.

The older Mr. Reffitt, 41, is the first defendant out of more than 700 to go on trial in connection with the Capitol attack, and in the past two days the prosecution has documented how he drove to Washington with a fellow member of a Texas militia and, armed with a pistol, led a pro-Trump mob in an advance on the police outside the building.

But with the appearance of his son on the witness stand, the trial took an unusually personal  and emotional  turn.

Testifying for more than three hours, Jackson Reffitt, now 19, told the jury how his father had become more distant and severe in his beliefs in 2016, the same year Donald J. Trump was elected president. Father and son, he said, did not see eye-to-eye on politics.
CANBERRA, March 4 (Xinhua) -- Living in a large household and maintaining family ties could slow the progression of dementia, according to an Australian research released on Friday.

In a global study, a team from the University of Adelaide analyzed variables in living standards for people aged over 60 from more than 180 countries and regions.

They found that people living in large households or with families were significantly less likely to develop -- and die from -- dementia than those living alone regardless of other factors such as age and urbanization.

Maciej Henneberg, senior author of the study, said the research proved there were practical benefits to humans living in communities.

"We are one of the few species that have adapted over thousands of years to rely on extended family groupings from cooperative breeding, and then evolved alloparental care, until shaped for flourishing in small communities," he said in a media release.

"There are usually regular mealtimes, there is conversation, people to check to see if you have taken your medications, and family members encouraging regular activity.

"That engagement, when it is positive, stimulates the production of oxytocin, often dubbed the happiness hormone, and that has been shown to have a positive effect on physiological wellbeing by protecting cardio-vascular systems associated with vascular dementia and may exert a beneficial slow-down on dementia development."

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), more than 55 million people around the world are living with dementia, with Alzheimer's disease accounting for up to 70 percent of cases.

It is the seventh-leading cause of death worldwide and has an estimated global cost of 1.1 trillion Australian dollars (about 0.8 trillion U.S. dollars).

You Wenpeng, a researcher on the study, said it could have a significant impact on how dementia is treated.

"It's a significant finding in informing how we plan care and living services for people as they age, because it shows that human factors --relationships, a sense of connection and purpose, encouragement and praise, meaningful engagement with others -- are all quite important in combatting the progress of dementia," he said. 
Pat A. Cipollone, the White House counsel, also tried to get Mr. Trump to stop pursuing baseless claims of fraud. He pushed back against a plan from a rogue Justice Department lawyer, Jeffrey Clark, who wanted to distribute official letters to multiple state legislatures falsely alerting them that the election may have been stolen and urging them to reconsider certified election results.

That letter that this guy wants to send  that letter is a murder-suicide pact, Mr. Cipollone told Mr. Trump, according to Mr. Donoghue. Its going to damage everyone who touches it. And we should have nothing to do with that letter. I dont ever want to see that letter again.

The account is part of a court filing in a civil case in California, in which the committees lawyers for the first time laid out their theory of a potential criminal case against the former president. They said they had evidence demonstrating that Mr. Trump, the lawyer John Eastman and other allies could be charged with obstructing an official proceeding of Congress, conspiracy to defraud the American people and common law fraud.

The committees filing shows how some of Mr. Trumps aides and advisers repeatedly  and passionately  tried to get him to back down from his various false claims and plans to try to stay in power.

It started almost immediately after the polls closed in November 2020, when members of Mr. Trumps campaign data team began trying to break through to the president to impress upon him that he had been defeated.

During a conversation in the Oval Office, Mr. Trumps lead campaign data guru delivered to the president in pretty blunt terms that he was going to lose, Jason Miller, another top campaign aide, told the panel. The president said he disagreed with the data experts analysis, Mr. Miller said, because he thought he could win in court.

Mr. Miller also told the committee that he agreed with Attorney General William P. Barrs analysis that there had not been widespread fraud in the election, and said that to the president on multiple occasions, the panel wrote in its filing.
In publicly sharing its work, the committee has only escalated expectations that Mr. Trump will be prosecuted, regardless of whether its evidence meets the standard that a federal prosecutor must clear to secure a unanimous guilty verdict.

In its court filing, the panel suggested it had evidence to support allegations that Mr. Trump committed two crimes: obstructing an official proceeding by working to disrupt the electoral vote count and conspiring with his allies, including the conservative lawyer John Eastman, to defraud the United States by working to overturn the election results.

The evidence supports an inference that Mr. Trump, Mr. Eastman and several others entered into an agreement to defraud the United States by interfering with the election certification process, disseminating false information about election fraud, and pressuring state officials to alter state election results and federal officials to assist in that effort, the filing said.

However, the filing was not necessarily a path to prosecution. The committee made its claim in the context of the court fight that prompted it  a dispute over a subpoena for documents written by Mr. Eastman. The standard it must meet to invoke crimes is much lower than it would be for prosecutors to win a criminal conviction, legal specialists said.

Specifically, Mr. Eastman has invoked attorney-client privilege to block the subpoena, and the committee wants a judge to enforce it anyway under an exception for materials that involve crimes or fraud.

It is asking the judge to view the disputed materials privately, and to do so it need only convince the court that it has a good faith reason to believe that such a private viewing may reveal evidence that the exception applies  a far lower bar than proving something to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt.

The central theory put forward by the Jan. 6 committee is that Mr. Trump tried to disrupt an official proceeding  Congresss certification of the election results  by pressuring Vice President Mike Pence to illegally reject the electoral votes from certain states.
WASHINGTON  The Biden administration announced on Thursday it would offer humanitarian relief to Ukrainians who have been living in the country without legal documentation since March 1 or earlier, signaling additional support for citizens of Ukraine as Russia advanced in the south of the country.

Canada announced similar relief on Thursday, as did the European Union, which said it would offer three years of protection for Ukrainian refugees.The United Nations predicted that 10 million Ukrainians, about a quarter of the countrys population, could be displaced by the Russian invasion. Already, a million people have fled the country as refugees.

Lawmakers and advocacy groups have been calling for the relief, known as temporary protected status. Some have estimated that 28,000 to 30,000 Ukrainians could be eligible for it; the designation gives them permission to stay and work in the United States for 18 months. Often, temporary protected status is extended. In this case, it will not apply to any Ukrainians who entered the country after March 1.

Russias premeditated and unprovoked attack on Ukraine has resulted in an ongoing war, senseless violence and Ukrainians forced to seek refuge in other countries, Alejandro N. Mayorkas, the homeland security secretary, said in a statement.
It could be harder to get into one of Californias most prestigious universities after the states highest court on Thursday declined to reverse a lower-court ruling that capped enrollment at the University of California, Berkeley, at 2020-21 levels.

The decision by the Supreme Court of California left in place a ruling issued last August that ordered the university to freeze student enrollment at 42,347.

The decision was the result of a legal battle with a residents group, Save Berkeleys Neighborhoods, that had accused the university of failing to provide enough on-campus housing while at the same time admitting high numbers of students, many of them from other states or countries.

University officials said on Thursday that, as a result of a new analysis that concluded that they needed to include in their head count hundreds of students who would be studying abroad or in Washington, the university would have to cut in-person enrollment by at least 2,500 students in the fall of 2022.
A few years ago, as his 40th birthday loomed, the pianist Eric Wubbels had reasons to be content. He had a steady career as a performer and composer in New York, where he gave frequent concerts with the Wet Ink Ensemble  the celebrated contemporary classical group he had directed with a close crew of collaborators for more than a decade. But he could also see another route for himself, one that led outside the city.

What would it be like to have a grand piano at home? Getting off the treadmill of commissions and performances seemed worth considering, too. Still, he wasnt looking for a holiday.

The idea I came to around that time is that this is the last moment to do the big growth, Wubbels said in a recent interview. Whatever growth is going to happen as a musician, as an artist  psychologically, like in my personality  better get started on it.

To many outside observers, Wubbels was in no need of a maturity makeover. Other musicians have described him as one of the most engaged and generous collaborators on the new music scene. In my experience as a listener, he conducts the complex orchestral music of composers like Ingrid Laubrock with the same care he devotes to his own scores.
THE BALD EAGLE

The Improbable Journey of Americas Bird

By Jack E. Davis

Having written about elephants in Burma during World War II, I get a particular thrill when readers tell me they picked up my book for the history but fell in love with the elephants. As an animal writer, I had that experience in reverse with Jack E. Daviss The Bald Eagle: The Improbable Journey of Americas Bird: Who knew the powdered wig set could be so interesting?

OK  Im half joking, and in any case Im referring only to an opening section in which members of the Continental Congress contemplated, among other things, the bald eagle and the Great Seal of the United States. But Davis, the Pulitzer-winning author of The Gulf, makes clear in his rollicking, poetic, wise new book that cultural and political history are an integral part of this natural history, not to be omitted if we want to tell the whole story.

His frame is wide, taking in Benjamin Franklin (not a fan of the bald eagle), Thomas Jefferson, John James Audubon (who slaughtered and shot his way through studying and painting them), Native Americans who see the bald eagle as a spiritual bird, the environmental hero Rachel Carson, President Nixon (who created the Environmental Protection Agency, the beginning of the end of DDT), Dolly Parton (eagle hospital funder) and Andy Warhol, among others.

Along with the famous humans, Davis never neglects the birds themselves. He writes of their long-term bonds, their massive nests, as stout as an old warship, to which they return year after year, and of their eclectic appetites: Seizing prey from land, water and sky, balds are the rare airborne species that feeds at all three tables. Their courtship is spectacular, with couples barrel-rolling and scissoring their flight paths, or with one flying upside down beneath the other. And its not all sexy stunts. Mates defend each other and work together. Davis even makes the case, using the latest neuroscience, that we could call their bond love.
As Rutkow observes at the beginning of his book, it is a reasonable certainty that no one in the industrialized world will escape having an illness for which effective treatment requires a surgical operation. I myself would probably be blind in at least one eye (from retinal detachments), walk with a limp (from a complex ankle fracture) and possibly be dead (from urosepsis) if not for the help of my surgical colleagues. Yet until 150 years ago, as Rutkow explains, surgery was limited to the external parts of the human body, such as amputations for trauma. The only internal surgery was the occasional foray into the bladder for bladder stones and trepanning of the skull. Indeed, skulls have been found all over the planet, dating back thousands of years, with deliberately made holes that had healed over with new bone, meaning that the patient survived the procedure. But it is anybodys guess as to whether the earliest trepanning was done to release a traumatic blood clot from inside the skull, or to release an evil spirit responsible for epilepsy or some similar, misunderstood disorder.

As Rutkow writes, the emergence of surgery from its barbaric past rested on four pillars  the understanding of anatomy, the control of bleeding, anesthesia and antisepsis. The story, however, is not one of steady, rational progress. The surgeon Galen, working in the second century A.D., wrote extensively on anatomy; some of his experience came from treating wounded gladiators but much of it was based on dissecting animals, and was simply wrong with respect to human anatomy. His writings were passed down by the Andalusian physician Abu al-Qasim al-Zahrawi, among others, to become dogma in the Middle Ages.

The first breakthrough came more than a thousand years later with the Renaissance, and the relaxation of taboos about dissecting the dead. The Flemish physician Andreas Vesalius, the greatest of the early anatomists, carried out his dissections on the corpses of executed criminals, often removed surreptitiously from the gallows at night. Surgeons such as Ambroise Pare in France, working on battlefield injuries, established ways of controlling bleeding  tying off blood vessels, for instance, rather than using red-hot irons and plunging the stump of an amputated limb into boiling oil.

But the greatest change came in the mid-19th century, with the use of ether as an anesthetic, and Joseph Listers work on antisepsis. This was based on Louis Pasteurs work showing that infection was caused by living microbes, and not (as had been previously thought) by smells and foul air. And yet, as the medical historian David Wootton has pointed out in his book Bad Medicine, the Swiss physician Paracelsus was using ether to anesthetize chickens in the 16th century and Antonie van Leeuwenhoek had discovered bacteria, using a microscope of his own making (although of rather an awkward design), in the 17th century. The German Hungarian obstetrician Ignaz Semmelweis showed that hand-washing made a massive difference to the incidence of fatal postnatal infections in women. This was 20 years before Listers and Pasteurs work, yet Semmelweis was dismissed by his colleagues and he died in obscurity. The history of surgery, especially until the modern era, is as much about doctors innate conservatism as it is about innovation.

It is, however, ultimately a history of triumphant progress  although not without dark episodes, such as the abuse of psychosurgery in the middle of the 20th century.
NEW FROM HERE

By Kelly Yang

Moving  the abandonment of familiar rhythms for the dislocation of new people and places  is hard. Moving during a global health crisis is harder. And moving as a child, in the middle of a pandemic that is fueling racism and curtailing in-class education, is perhaps hardest of all.

In New From Here, Kelly Yang (of Front Desk fame) takes on the perspective of Knox Wei-Evans, a 10-year-old boy who is uprooted from his home in Hong Kong as the coronavirus spreads from China to the rest of the world. Knox, his siblings and his mother, a workaholic banker born in Beijing, shelter in California while his father, a white San Francisco native who always has time for a tickle session despite his job as a lawyer, stays in Hong Kong with their beloved labradoodle.

Knox has a habit of blurting things out. It drives everyone in my family crazy, he says, without knowing, just yet, that there is a clinical diagnosis for his candor. But at the dawn of 2020, as the United States seems far safer than an international city appended to the Chinese land mass, there is little to be forthright about, except raw emotion. The struggle for face masks and hand sanitizer, along with employment and refuge, induces a global anxiety that washes over the Wei-Evans family, most powerfully over a young boy with A.D.H.D.

As the story begins in Hong Kong, the angst Knox feels is that of a Mandarin speaker in a place where that dialect is associated with the Chinese government, which has dismantled the territorys civil liberties. More than a million Hong Kong people gathered in peaceful rallies before the police cracked down. Some mainlanders, as those from the rest of China are called, fear reprisals from riled Cantonese-speaking crowds. Knoxs mother instructs her mixed-race children not to speak Mandarin in public and to emphasize their American and Hong Kong heritage.
Russias challenges

It still seems possible that Russia will not be able to win a quick victory.

Russia does not yet control the skies over Ukraine, and its military is struggling to make much progress in the north, near Kyiv. A miles-long convoy of hundreds of military vehicles has largely stalled, about 18 miles from Kyiv. It is facing fierce Ukrainian opposition, as well as shortages of fuel and spare parts, a reflection of the failure to conquer Kyiv immediately.

Morale among Russian troops may also be a problem. Pentagon officials told Eric that some Russian soldiers appeared not to have known that they would be invading Ukraine until the war began. Ukrainian officials quoted what they claimed was a Russian soldiers text to his mother, recovered from his phone after he died: There is a real war raging here. Im afraid. We are bombing all of the cities together, even targeting civilians.

The U.S., E.U. and Britain are continuing to send arms to Ukraines military, over land routes. And the West has continued to impose sanctions, which seem to be inflicting significant damage on Russias economy.

All of which raise the prospect that the war, which already seems to be somewhat unpopular within Russia, will become even more so.

No matter what

Still, Vladimir Putin is signaling that he will respond to setbacks with more destruction. He also seems willing to allow Russia to pay a high price, in both economic terms and soldiers lives.

During a 90-minute call yesterday with French President Emmanuel Macron, Putin said that Russia would achieve its goal in Ukraine no matter what. In a televised address yesterday, Putin told Russians that he was determined to fight the war.

Paul Poast, a political scientist at the University of Chicago, pointed out on Derek Thompsons Plain English podcast that Russian leaders have a long history of accepting large casualties among their own troops to win wars. Im starting to think that that is what theyre expecting is going to happen here, Poast said. It doesnt matter about the morale, it doesnt matter if the equipment breaks down. Theyre just going to be able to overwhelm eventually the Ukrainians because they dont expect direct military involvement by the West.
MANILA, March 4 (Xinhua) -- The Philippines has put "pro-business" measures to lure foreign investors into the Southeast Asian country recovering from the two-year COVID-19 pandemic.

"Visit us and witness the recovery and revival of many of our enterprises as we have now allowed greater mobility, greater opening of the economy, and thanks to our high vaccination rate," Trade Secretary Ramon Lopez said in a recent speech.

Philippine officials tagged the country as "a premier investment destination" where foreign companies can invest in "areas with excellent growth potential," saying it is the time to do business in the Philippines that is returning to new normal, with the economy expected to expand between 7 and 9 percent.

The government has downgraded the pandemic restrictions in Metro Manila and 38 other areas to alert level 1, the lowest at a scale of 5, from March 1 to 15 as the COVID-19 transmission slowed and the hospitalization rate declined.

It also allowed the entry of fully vaccinated travelers from 157 countries and regions with visa-free arrangements, after almost two years of travel bans and border closure.

"Our economy is recovering rapidly," Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez told investors in a recent forum attended by business leaders and policymakers.

He added that even with the pandemic, the government focused on instituting reforms to boost foreign direct investment to speed up the economic recovery, referring to several business acts that favor foreign investment in public service.

The Philippine economy had witnessed its longest decline since the second quarter of 2020, shrinking by 9.6 percent in 2020 before growing by 5.6 percent in 2021. The revival makes "the country's expansion the highest in the ASEAN (the Association of Southeast Asian Nations) region and among its credit peers globally."

Despite challenges from the pandemic, Manila and Beijing, its key trading partner, have kept their economies open for each other.

As early as November last year, Trade Undersecretary and Board of Investments (BOI) Managing Head Ceferino Rodolfo has sounded off to Chinese investors to "expand and diversify" further their businesses in the Philippines.

Rodolfo said the Philippines has one of the largest deposits for both nickel and cobalt, the key ingredients for making lithium-ion batteries. He also highlighted investments in energy storage products such as electric vehicle batteries and renewable energy battery banks.

Last year, the BOI had greenlighted two Chinese projects in the field of motorcycle assembly and bicycle assembly, including electronic ones. "The Philippines, similar to other countries, is experiencing a surge in demand for this solo mobility type of transportation equipment," Rodolfo said.

Rodolfo also promoted investment opportunities in health-related products, a booming industry in the Philippines due to a supply chain for manufacturing.

Another investment area for the Philippines is the Business-Processing Outsources, particularly animation, contact center, game development, global shared services, healthcare, IT and software development activities.

The BOI recorded 655.4 billion pesos (roughly 12.6 billion U.S. dollars) worth of investment approvals from 235 projects in 2021, increasing foreign investments by 218 percent despite the setbacks brought by the persisting pandemic.

"This goes to show that the pandemic did not stop the flow of foreign investments into the country, and we are looking forward to getting more in 2022," Trade Secretary and BOI Chairman Lopez said. 
Fly By Jing, an artisanal food business in Los Angeles, is known for its Sichuan chili crisp and good-humored online presence.

The companys Instagram feed is a mix of photos of luscious dumplings and simmering hot pots, along with more playful visuals, like a surrealist photo collage of chicken feet holding a stack of bok choy heads with a little man nestled inside the leaves. For Lunar New Year, the company featured a video of an older couple calmly eating while a fireworks display exploded outside the window behind them. Even the merchandise has character, like the Auntie Visor, a rainbow-tinted face shield.

Dozens of artisanal food businesses like Fly By Jing  founded by women, immigrants or children of immigrants from East or Southeast Asia  have started over the past several years. They proudly sell items rooted in and inspired by their heritage, like jars of chili oil, spice blends, frozen dumplings, kimchi, imported coffee beans and teas, and ice cream.

For many, a singular online personality helps to create a loyal and passionate consumer base. However, the same technology that allows a company to connect directly with customers can also bring a steady stream of hostility on social media feeds, in DMs and in email inboxes. Besides the standard complaints about late orders or leaky containers, some receive nasty remarks about prices being too high for Asian products or challenging the brands authenticity, as well as more blatantly racist and misogynist messages.
Hours after Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, the Chinese Communist Party tabloid, Global Times, posted a video saying that a large number of Ukrainian soldiers had laid down their arms. Its source: the Russian state-controlled television network, RT.

Two days later, Chinas state broadcaster Central Television Station (CCTV) flashed a breaking news alert, quoting Russias parliamentary speaker, that President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine had fled Kyiv. CCTV then created a related hashtag on the Twitter-like platform Weibo that was viewed 510 million times and used by 163 media outlets in the country.

On Feb. 28, as Russia became an international pariah, the Russian state-owned news agency Sputnik shared a message of strength with its 11 million Weibo followers. The Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman, Sputnik said, said Russia still had friends in the world, especially a real giant like China.

Add oil, Russia, Sputniks Weibo follower @fengyiqing cheered on, using a Chinese expression of support. All the people in the world who love justice are friends of Russia.
Your book is about small businesses. How would you measure the success or failure of the Paycheck Protection Program?

I think it was inefficient. I think for certain communities, it was ultimately wholly ineffective. I know that the first run of PPP, if you were a Black-owned business, your ability to secure those loans was almost negligible. And the same thing was true for other communities of color. I know that small businesses were often outmatched by large companies who had faster access to banks willing to allocate those dollars. I think we forget what we learned in the economic crisis of 2008: We have to treat small businesses as small businesses, and we have to reassess what we call a small business.

Do you think the private sector should be apolitical or political?

Businesses operate as part of the fabric of society. You dont get to exempt yourself from that participation.

The question is, how vocal should you be? And what impact should you have? I think that there are political human rights issues that are important and vital because they affect your customers. They affect your ability to operate as a business.

It is important though, to calibrate where we enter politics. And the most important point of entry is that you are protecting the customers that you serve and that you are protecting the business that makes your living possible.

But what about when speaking out has negative political implications? Im thinking of the Georgia House voting to revoke a tax break for Delta after the company spoke up about voting rights.

Is the issue important enough that youre willing to accept the consequences and will your voice have an effect on the outcome? Delta speaks up because Delta has an effect on the outcome of ideas in the state, as they should. And so we have seen that play out on issues affecting the L.G.B.T. community and transgender community. Weve seen it affecting civil rights. Weve seen it affect apartheid. So we know that when businesses speak up, it has an effect. Now, retaliation is also real. The larger you are, the more outsized your influence, the more I think you should be responsible for using your influence.
To offset weak consumption, Premier Li announced another round of heavy, debt-fueled spending on infrastructure and on assistance to very poor households, particularly in rural areas. Transfers from the central government to provincial governments, which mainly pay for social programs and infrastructure, will jump 18 percent this year.

Zhu Guangyao, a former vice minister of finance who is now a cabinet adviser, had said at a news conference in late January that he expected the target to be about 5.5 percent. But Jude Blanchette, a China specialist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, had suggested that global supply chain difficulties and the economic and financial fallout from the war in Ukraine might prompt China to set a lower target.

At the congress, Mr. Blanchette predicted, the biggest concern and the central focus is going to be the economy.

How long will China seek to keep Covid out?

China has kept the coronavirus almost completely under control within its borders after the initial outbreak in Wuhan two years ago, but at considerable cost: intermittent lockdowns, particularly in border cities, as well as lengthy quarantines for international travelers and sometimes domestic ones as well. Hints could emerge of how China intends to follow the rest of the world in opening up, although possibly not until next year.

Experts say China is unlikely to throw open its borders before the Communist Party congress late this year. When China does start opening up, it will want to avoid the kind of uncontrolled outbreak that has overwhelmed nursing homes and hospitals in Hong Kong, largely taking a toll on the citys oldest residents, many of whom are unvaccinated.

But in interviews with state media, posts on social media and in public remarks in the past week, Chinas top medical experts have begun dropping clues that the country is looking for a less stringent approach that protects lives without being overly disruptive to the economy.
Remote work is often favored by established employees who know their manager, are comfortable in their role and want to balance work with family responsibilities or other personal obligations. For those just starting their careers, working in isolation can make fitting into an organization  and eventually progressing up its ranks  more difficult.

Companies have become more open to remote work during the pandemic. Now, as they plan for what work will look like going forward, theyre paying more attention to what it means to build a career without the traditional opportunities for networking, mentorship and visibility that come with a full-time physical office, Corinne Purtill reports for The New York Times.

Prithwiraj Choudhury, an associate professor at Harvard Business School who focuses on the changing geography of work, said he had seen three common practices at companies that managed remote work successfully. These companies:

Took the time to compile information and practices in handbooks or guides that employees can consult from anywhere.

Paired remote workers with mentors outside their department so that they could speak frankly without endangering team relationships.

And created what he called the virtual water cooler.

In one study, Mr. Choudhury and his colleagues randomly assigned some interns at a global bank to take part in one-on-one video meetings with senior executives. Others met virtually with fellow interns, and some were assigned no extra meetings at all. Those assigned to meet with the senior employees had better performance reviews at the end of the summer and were more likely to receive job offers.

Managed effectively, remote work can lead to more in-depth conversations, Mr. Choudhury said.

Among the employees most likely to prefer remote work are women and people of color, who even before the pandemic often reported feeling underrepresented and isolated in the workplace. Going remote without proper support can create a vicious cycle that exacerbates that sense of alienation while also decreasing the chance that those workers will be pulled in for career- and morale-boosting projects.
The French luxury giants LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton and Hermes each said Friday that they would temporarily close their stores in Russia as the crisis in Ukraine continued to escalate.

LVMH, which is estimated to have more than 120 stores in Russia, said that it would close them effective Sunday given the current circumstances in the region, according to a spokesperson. The spokesperson added that the company would continue to pay salary and benefits to its 3,500 employees in the country. Hermes said in a LinkedIn post that it would temporarily close its stores and pause commercial activity in Russia as of Friday evening.

Deeply concerned by the situation in Europe at this time, its with regret that we have taken the decision to temporarily close our stores in Russia and pause all our commercial activities, Hermes said in the post.

Western retailers like Ikea, H&M Group and Nike have made announcements about halting sales and temporarily closing stores in Russia in recent days and expressed their support for the people of Ukraine. Most have said that they will continue to pay their Russian employees. In addition to the escalating violence in Ukraine, retailers are responding to the broader trade disruption in Russia and the sanctions aimed at financial transactions in the country.
For Cave, who is single, mining this world was no easy task. It took her months to finish reading the script, which didnt hold back when describing Steves disturbing fetish. There are certain scenes that are quite upsetting, so I had to put it down and then come back to it, she said. I was terrified of it.

She also understood it at a base level, specifically the coded language Kahn inserted for female viewers that wouldnt necessarily register with men, like when Noa is walking to her car with her keys in her hands for protection or when Steve says to her, Stop being so dramatic.

Those details kept gnawing at her. The script felt both personal and scary, a tightrope walk that would succeed or fail depending on how she handled the material. Caves pitch, Kahn said, relied heavily on sound and music over visual elements. It was a strategy that ultimately raised the scare factor without turning audiences off with gore. It also puts viewers squarely inside Noas perspective.

Certain scenes were about knowing what was happening or imagining what was happening, but not actually seeing it, so you could then get into peoples psychologies a little bit, Cave said. The audience was then imagining whatever their worst fear was instead of telling them.
They acknowledge that E.S.G. investing has become a big deal in the United States and, even more so, in Europe. And they say that stocks that are identified as E.S.G. or green  those of companies with relatively low carbon emissions  are trading at a premium. They were unavailable for an interview, but in a series of research notes and in a conference call with clients since Feb. 1, they noted that with the rise of the E.S.G. movement, military contractors have fallen out of favor with many investors, particularly in Europe.

They would like that to change, in part through a technical measure: by labeling military contractors as E.S.G. compliant in the European Unions so-called taxonomy regulations, which aim to be a gold standard in guiding private and public investors. Those regulations have already been the subject of fierce debate because of a decision to label some nuclear power and natural gas plants as transitional green investments.

A boon for military stocks

Weapons companies will be included as acceptable socially responsible investments if the tide keeps turning, the analysts contend. In a note on March 2, they said Russias assault on Ukraine had accelerated geopolitical shifts that are making military spending more popular among NATO countries, both with masses of people and government elites. The conflict in Eastern Europe is leading to increases in military spending by NATO countries, and that bodes well for military contractors and their stocks, they say.

Germany, France, Britain and other nations are likely to exceed the long-deferred target of spending at least 2 percent of their gross domestic product on the military, the analysts added, creating great opportunities for military contractors.

Russias invasion has already led to a steep rise in the shares of military stocks. The Fidelity Select Defense & Aerospace Portfolio, which tracks the industry, leapt 7.7 percent from Feb. 24, the date of the invasion, through Friday, compared with a gain of 2.5 percent for the S&P 500 stock index, including dividends. The German DAX index fell 10.5 percent in the same period.

The Fidelity fund includes Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon Technologies, Airbus and Lockheed Martin among its holdings.

The analysts said that without strong military forces, growing tensions, particularly in Eastern Europe, are likely to remind investors that safe and free societies cannot be taken for granted. We believe defense is likely to be increasingly seen as a necessity that facilitates E.S.G. as an enterprise, as well as maintaining peace, stability and other social goods.
My first real job in terms of a sort of a professional job was the Boston Consulting Group, and that was a great first job because what it does is it gives you rapid exposure to a whole bunch of industries. What I liked about it was that rapid learning rate, just being able to get immersed in something really quickly and use the abilities that I developed at college to synthesize a lot of information.

You were at Yahoo in a number of roles, including advertising, for some of the pivotal years. What do you think was going wrong at the company?

Boy, theres a lot of things. We were offering a lot of different products and that got really complicated. We were competing with Google in search, and I think its difficult to be really good at a lot of things. Theres the classic question: What are you going to be very focused on? What are you going to succeed at and really put your effort behind? Yahoo was working across so many different areas, it was difficult to prioritize and focus.

You took over as C.E.O. of GoFundMe just the pandemic began. What has running the company for these two years taught you about how the world works?

Human lives have pretty well-defined moments for all of us. Were born and go through certain experiences, many of them are the same, and ultimately we pass away. What we see is that in those moments of life  they can be hard moments, they could be wonderful moments, they could be getting married, having a baby, going to college  people want to come together, family and friends want to support each other. Its exactly the case in the hard times. Something difficult happens and pretty much the first thing that anyone who knows you says is: How can I help? So that is all still happening, and overlaid on that are all these massive sort of impacts that have been affecting our societies from Covid and social justice and some of these climate effects that youre seeing, whether they be floods or hurricanes or fires and so on. And it does seem that the rate and intensity of those is increasing at the moment.

Do you think the gaps have always been there or are they becoming more common now?

The situations that are coming up now seem like they are more frequent. But its really important to understand that we dont think of ourselves as a substitute for social safety nets. What we are is a complement to whatever youre getting from the government or the institutions in the society that you live in. The thing that we do as well, which is very, very different, is the emotional support that a GoFundMe campaign offers. Its the fact that your family, your friends, some people in your community that you dont know, some strangers who arent even in your community, would rally around and say: Im really sorry this happened. We just want to help you. We provide a place to convey that.

Ive had just recently a few friends go through some really difficult things in their lives, and in each case, people have put together a GoFundMe. And this exact conversation: How can I help? So thats how we something we provide is quite distinctive.
If the major elements of the European proposal are carried out, Russias war in Ukraine could have a huge, albeit unwitting, consequence: It could hasten Europes transition away from fossil fuels.

The developments in the energy markets over the last months have underscored the necessity to accelerate the clean energy transition and reduce permanently our dependence on imports of natural gas, the draft document states. Diversifying supplies, frontloading renewable energy and improving energy efficiency is the best insurance against price shocks.

To reduce Europes reliance on Russia, lots of new infrastructure is being built to take in liquefied gas from the United States and elsewhere. In Europe, as my colleagues Liz Alderman and Stanley Reed told me recently, L.N.G. import terminals are already being expanded in Belgium and Poland; a new one was recently approved in Greece with European Union funding; Germany this week fast-tracked the construction of two new import terminals.

In the United States, my colleague Clifford Krauss noted, a new L.N.G. export facility is scheduled to start operating in Calcasieu Pass, La., this year; expansions are underway in two Texas export facilities; and an additional 10 export projects are under consideration. Nearly a quarter of American L.N.G. exports went to Europe in 2021. Over the last few months, Europe has been the top destination for U.S. exports.

So, could Europe survive without Russian gas next winter?

A recent analysis by Bruegel, a think tank based in Brussels, suggests it could, but not without reducing demand, changing regulations and spending a lot more money. Some Europeans seem to be taking action to protect themselves. Electric heat pumps, one of the most cost-effective ways to replace gas-fired boilers, spread swiftly in Europe for the first time in 2021, though nowhere as fast as is necessary, as Jan Rosenow, a director at the Regulatory Assistance Project, explained in a Twitter thread this week.

Britain, meanwhile, has said it intends to continue drilling in its part of the North Sea, but its secretary for business and energy, Kwasi Kwarteng, said this week that his countrys energy security would ultimately have to come from renewables, which in Britain includes nuclear power.

It would be complete madness to turn off our domestic source of gas, he said on Twitter. But the long-term solution is obvious: Gas is more expensive than renewable energy, so we need to move away from gas.
JAKARTA, March 4 (Xinhua) -- Flag carrier Garuda Indonesia on Friday reopened the flight route between Sydney to Bali's Denpasar, President Director of the airline Irfan Setiaputra said.

The plane carrying 60 passengers departed from Sydney at 11:30 a.m. local time (0030 GMT) and arrived at Denpasar at 2:45 p.m. local time (0645 GMT), marking the reopening of the route.

"This is the beginning of optimism for the revival of the Indonesian economy in the tourism sector in the long term. It can answer their longing for enjoying tourism in Bali, while strengthening the business climate between the two countries," Setiaputra said in a statement.

This flight also transports various commodities weighing up to 20 tons, including fishery products and fresh fruits.

So far Indonesia and Australia are connected through two flight routes every week -- the Sydney-Denpasar route and the Jakarta-Sydney route.

In 2019, 1.38 million Australian tourists visited Indonesia, including 1.23 million who vacationed in Bali, data from Statistics Indonesia showed. 
In any case, Ms. An, who had experience with Chinese and French cuisines, felt that the restaurant would find more success by eschewing authenticity in favor of dishes that were designed specifically to appeal to the local clientele. After a trip to a Nob Hill Italian restaurant, where she was served a disappointingly bland bowl of garlic spaghetti, Ms. An created Thanh Longs famous garlic noodles, a potent concoction flavored with fistfuls of garlic and a number of secret ingredients that my taste buds (and most copycat recipes) suggest are fish sauce, oyster sauce, soy sauce, lots of butter and a smattering of Parmesan cheese. Its an umami party, and all of the big names are invited.

Since then, the An family has built an empire of restaurants in San Francisco and Los Angeles out of those noodles, and its easy to taste why.

I had them for the first time in 2014, nearly 40 years after their creation. I had recently moved to the Mission District of San Francisco and had been invited out for dinner by a friend. I, not understanding the intricacies of San Francisco weather, set out on a warm summer afternoon, riding my friends little black Vespa from the Mission to the Outer Sunset, through San Franciscos winding streets and hills, in nothing but a T-shirt. By the time we finished our fourth bowl of noodles, San Franciscos thick fog had set in, and the temperature had dropped into the low 50s. By the time I made it home, soaking wet and shivering, the only thing I could think about was remembering my jacket the next time I went back.

The Outer Sunset is a long way from where I live now, and the several trips Ive made back the restaurant since have all been accompanied by long waits to snag a table. Fortunately, over the years Ive worked out my own recipe, inspired by Ms. Ans original, suited to fit my own preferences. I start by smashing fresh garlic cloves in a mortar and pestle, then sweating them gently in butter in my wok. Once the garlic loses its sharp bite and starts to develop some mellow sweetness, I add the umami triple-threat of soy sauce, fish sauce and oyster sauce. Meanwhile, I cook my spaghetti in a large skillet on another burner.
With such a busy career in the city, Ms. de Boer had imagined a solo restaurant in the Hudson Valley more as a project for retirement. (She and her husband, Luke Sherwin, own a house in Dover Plains, about 20 miles away.) But when she heard that the French restaurant occupying the Pine Plains building  also named Stissing House  would close at the start of last year, she decided to look at the space.

I could hear the sound of my children running down the hallways, she said. I could see them getting married here.

She also loved the idea of restoring the building, which dates to 1782, to return to its roots as a tavern serving simple, homey food. This restaurant has always been the center of this community, she said. Stissing House was once one of the oldest continuously operating inns in the United States.

I am not inventing Stissing House, she added. I definitely think of myself as the next caretaker.
The Russian filmmaker Kirill Sokolov has spent the past week distraught at the horror unfolding in Ukraine. Half his family is Ukrainian, he said in a telephone interview, and as a child he spent summers there, staying with his grandparents.

His maternal grandmother was still living in Kyiv, he said, hiding from bombs in a bunker.

Since Russias invasion began, Mr. Sokolov said he had signed two online petitions calling for an end to the war, an act that carries a risk in Russia, where thousands have been arrested for protesting the conflict, and some have reportedly lost their jobs.

Yet despite his antiwar stance, Mr. Sokolov on Monday learned that the Glasgow Film Festival in Scotland had dropped his latest movie, No Looking Back.

A spokeswoman for the festival said in an email that Mr. Sokolovs film  a comedy about a mother and daughter trying to kill each other  had received Russian state funding. The decision to exclude the movie was not a reflection on the filmmaker himself, she said, but it would be inappropriate to proceed as normal with the screenings while the assault on the Ukrainian people continues.
BERLIN  A turning point arrives for Viktor and Hans, the central characters in the new film Great Freedom, when Viktor sees the concentration camp tattoo on Hanss arm.

Its 1945, and Viktor has already forcibly thrown Hans out of the cell they share in a German prison after learning that Hans was jailed for having sex with men. But when Viktor, an ice block of a man with a murder conviction, discovers the tattooed number, he offers to give Hans a new design to cover up the past.

They put you from a concentration camp into the slammer? Seriously? Victor (Georg Friedrich) stammers in disbelief, more to himself than to Hans (Franz Rogowski).
The performers, who trace their roots to a dozen Indigenous nations within the borders of the United States, Canada and the Philippines, created the piece using the story weaving method. Spiderwoman Theater developed the technique in the 1970s, when the group was a fixture of the downtown theater scene. Over the years, the company has used it to intertwine narratives about everything from family violence to cultural appropriation with pop songs and bawdy jokes and dreamlike images.

Its important to tell these stories, but they have to be done in a certain way where people dont feel like theyre being hit over the head, Ms. Miguel said. You can tell a painful story and then tell an awful disgusting joke and give a raspberry. You can take things and turn them around.

On a recent Monday, Ms. Miguel took a break from her rehearsal schedule to ride around her neighborhood, telling stories about her own childhood. She sat in the back of a 2012 Toyota Matrix, a red leather hat trimmed with wolf fur resting on the seat beside her, while her wife, Deborah Ratelle, handled the driving. Ms. Miguel has short, silvery hair and a cascading, shoulder-shaking laugh. She wore turquoise rings on most of her fingers and had on mismatched earrings  one turquoise, the other made of oyster shell. I dont like sameness, she said.

Heading down Court Street, she pointed at Cobble Hill Cinema, a longtime movie theater that used to be called the Lido. That was one of the places that my father used to stand outside in his outfit to ballyhoo all these movies, she recalled. Her father, a Kuna from Panama, would supplement the money he earned as a dockworker by donning the war-bonnet of a Plains Indian chief and beckoning people into the theater to see the latest John Wayne picture. He had lots of jobs like that: playing a generic Indian at Thanksgiving pageants, performing at ceremonies commemorating the supposed sale of Manhattan to the Dutch.

In the summer, he would take Ms. Miguels older sisters to Golden City, a long-since-forgotten amusement park in the Canarsie neighborhood of Brooklyn, where they would dance and sing and sit around in teepees. Gloria, who plays the role of The Elder in Misdemeanor Dream, dreaded these outings. People would come and look and say, Oh, look at the Indians, theyre eating spaghetti, she recalled. It turned her off from doing any theatrical work that involved her heritage until, as a divorced mother of two in her late 40s, she joined her sisters in establishing Spiderwoman Theater. We got to tell our stories our own way, she said.
The arc of the pandemic, from the dark beginnings to this new awakening, is efficiently told through the story of the chef Sean Rembold, who has worked in some of Brooklyns best loved kitchens. For him, the past week was clearly a turning point. Mr. Rembold and his wife, the fashion designer Caron Callahan, had Covid in the initial phase of the pandemic, that long, terrifying stretch when you could not be sure that you would get a hospital bed if you needed one. He spent a lot of time worrying, and he lost his taste for four months.

Immediately before that he had been working as a private chef and taught cooking to people who had come out of prison. But when the crisis upended everything, he somehow saw an opportunity to open a restaurant of his own. He had wanted to do that for a long time. During the preceding five years he had looked at every available space in Cobble Hill and Carroll Gardens, but nothing quite worked.

Then, last winter he found something on a residential stretch of Hicks Street on the north end, a block off the water. The space had previously been occupied by a longstanding neighborhood restaurant that closed early in the pandemic.

We said were not going to move upstate; were not going to move to Nashville, he told me. We are going to stay and commit and be a part of whatever was going to happen next in the city. Mr. Rembold had always wanted a neighborhood restaurant, not a concept.

His restaurant, Ingas Bar, quietly opened this week after many months of stops and starts. At one point it was to open in early December and then in February, but supply chain issues, the labor shortage and the increasingly slow pace of the states liquor-licensing apparatus  also a result of the shrinking labor pool  delayed everything.

On Wednesday, the restaurant received friends and family. Neighbors walked by and took pictures. Mr. Rembold imagined a place where an architect might land at the bar next to a contractor, a writer next to an editor and so on. He was, in his heart, a cross-pollinator.

But at the same time it was true that you might walk several blocks and still find many people wearing masks outside. And why was it that, despite the science about surface viral transmission, some restaurants continued to deal only in those pointless digital menus? For the immuno-compromised, the pandemic is certainly not over but its unclear how a measure like that will help them. It will take a long time for all of us to recalibrate, to shed pandemic worn habits. But for now, at least, it feels like a moment.
I know that terminology can matter. For instance, given the deep stain that slavery left on our society, I am in favor of nudging consciousness a bit by replacing the term slave with enslaved person. One can sense an attitude here and there, after all, a notion that slavery is inherent to some people, and its not a new one  Aristotle argued, For that some should rule and others be ruled is a thing not only necessary, but expedient; from the hour of their birth, some are marked out for subjugation. I understand why we now refer to Ukraine as Ukraine and have abandoned the old quirk of calling it the Ukraine, which implies that it is merely a region, a locale  and specifically one subsumed by Russia  rather than the separate historical, linguistic, political and cultural entity that it is (a distinction that has had its relevance grimly demonstrated in recent days).

I have also never much liked the term African American, because of its implication that Black Americans are African in a way relevant to our current lives. To stress that connection in what we call ourselves always struck me as forced. Although opinions will differ on such things, in my view, the connection to Africa, for most of us, is too many generations removed for African American to truly work.

But the capitalization issue is about style and usage, rather than replacing one word with another, and the written rather than the spoken word. And it seems to me that people can process the written word black as having many meanings, just as they do when its spoken, when, of course, no capitalization is possible.

In writing as well as speech, we effortlessly process that to pick up refers to lifting objects, fetching children from school, getting a disease and increasing in speed. We can even handle words able to refer to nearly opposite things: a fast learner versus a chair stuck fast to the floor. Or the literal and figurative use of literally, which so exasperates many but does not create actual confusion. No one thinks someone who announces that theyre literally boiling to death on a hot day is melting away like Looney Tunes Abominable Snowman.

With the black issue, my ultimate sentiment is that we spend an inordinate amount of time concerning ourselves with how matters of power and diversity are expressed. I suspect that activists and agitators of yore would find our obsession with such things rather peculiar and worry that it siphoned off energy from more grounded efforts.
Yet the United States lacks an organized response. The weekly reports of ransomware attacks and data breaches make it clear that were losing this battle. Thats why Americas leaders must rethink the current cyberdefense system and rally around a centralized regulator to defend both citizens and the private sector against current and future attacks.

The decentralized nature of the American government does not lend itself to fighting foreign cyberthreats. Government agencies handle cyberregulation and threats in the sectors they oversee  an inefficient and ineffective way to address an issue that cuts across our entire economy. In just the past few months, the D.H.S.s Transportation Security Agency announced new cybersecurity requirements for pipelines and railroads; the Federal Communications Commission put out its own proposal for telecommunication companies; the Securities and Exchange Commission voted on rules for investment advisers and funds; and the Federal Trade Commission threatened to legally pursue companies that fail to fix a newly detected software vulnerability found in many business applications. And on Capitol Hill, there are approximately 80 committees and subcommittees that claim jurisdiction over various aspects of cyberregulation.

These scattered efforts are unlikely to reduce, let alone stop, cybercrime.

Echoing a number of expert studies, our first national cyber director says that the United States needs a fresh approach that meaningfully alters the relationship between public and private sectors. But social and bureaucratic inertia, industry resistance and partisan divisions have stood in the way of centralizing cyberdefense efforts and regulations. At a recent congressional hearing, several industry representatives and Republican members of Congress objected to stricter requirements for notification of breaches. Its time to move past partisanship and standard objections to regulation.

From a private-sector perspective, the case for a centralized effort makes sense as well. Almost every industry runs its computers on one of three operating systems: Windows, macOS and Linux. In many cases, they also use the same business software  a defense contractors payroll system isnt much different from a pharmacys. That means vulnerabilities are similar across industries, and will therefore require similar solutions. A centralized government response center, then, makes sense. Getting information about hacks and vulnerabilities flowing quickly and effectively between the government and the private sector  as a central agency would  is essential to stopping cyberattacks before they spread too far. And such an agency would help standardize security products and services, which in turn would reduce the overall burden on businesses by lowering costs.

The overarching goal for a central cyberregulator would be to have standards uniformly applied, yet specifically tailored where necessary to the needs of a particular sector. Im not envisioning a rigid one-size-fits-all policy, but it should be possible to design cross-industry regulation effective enough to safeguard the public without crimping innovation.
To the Editor:

Im writing this letter from western Ukraine. I fled my home in Kyiv after hearing the first explosions on Feb. 24. Here, the fear is indescribable: Were always listening for air raid sirens, always ready to run to the bunker.

Simple actions like taking a shower or cooking breakfast are turning into missions that can be interrupted by the sirens at any moment. Some unexpected talents are surfacing, like giving each other a massage, or offering comfort when emotions are rising.

Despite the danger, Im not planning to leave the country. No one in Ukraine is safe right now, and many are bravely joining the battle, by volunteering for the military or paramilitary, by treating the wounded or by sourcing supplies from abroad.

Right now, Im fighting for Ukraine on the front lines of the information war. Im doing everything possible to share the brutal situation in my country with the world through news outlets and social media. Im calling on journalists around the world to continue telling our stories with truth and rigor.
Despite the astonishingly effective fight Ukraine has put up against invading forces, most military experts seem to believe that Russias sheer advantage in firepower will eventually prevail. Having no relevant expertise, I see no reason to question their judgment.

Still, its clear that Vladimir Putin made a huge miscalculation. Russia began the invasion with a dash for Kyiv and Kharkiv by small, lightly armed forces, obviously expecting to achieve a quick victory as the defenders resistance collapsed. Instead, the initial attack was repelled, and the follow-up with tanks and artillery has been bogged down  in some cases literally, because its still mud season in much of Ukraine.

And that wasnt his only miscalculation. Putin evidently believed that Russia could easily weather the economic fallout from his war. Oh, the West might slap on a few sanctions, but Europe needed Russian gas and oil, and he had built up a huge war chest of foreign currency reserves that was supposed to tide him over until things settled down.

His political judgment wasnt entirely wrong. Western economic sanctions have conspicuously and pointedly exempted sales of fossil fuels, which make up most Russian exports. Instead, the sanctions have mainly been financial, excluding major Russian banks from the international payments system and freezing the assets of the Russian central bank  in effect, impounding a large fraction of Putins vaunted war chest.
A man casts his ballot in the presidential election at a polling station in Seoul, South Korea, March 4, 2022. An early voting for South Korea's presidential election kicked off Friday ahead of the election day on March 9. (Photo by James Lee/Xinhua)

SEOUL, March 4 (Xinhua) -- An early voting for South Korea's presidential election kicked off Friday ahead of the election day on March 9.

The early voting, which was adopted in 2013 and first applied to the 2014 local elections, will be carried out for two days through Saturday.

Over 44 million eligible voters, who wish to cast ballots before the election day, will be allowed to vote at 3,552 polling stations across the country from 6:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. local time.

As of 1:00 p.m., the early voting turnout was a highest 8.75 percent, surpassing the previous record high of 5.98 percent for the parliamentary election in April 2020.

It was also compared with the previous presidential election's early voting turnout of 5.8 percent for the same time.

COVID-19 patients and those in quarantine will be allowed to cast ballots if they arrive at polling stations between 5:00 p.m. and 6:00 p.m. on Saturday. 

Voters fill in ballots in the presidential election at a polling station in Seoul, South Korea, March 4, 2022. An early voting for South Korea's presidential election kicked off Friday ahead of the election day on March 9. (Photo by James Lee/Xinhua)

A man has his temperature checked before voting in the presidential election at a polling station in Seoul, South Korea, March 4, 2022. An early voting for South Korea's presidential election kicked off Friday ahead of the election day on March 9. (Photo by James Lee/Xinhua)

A voter prepares to vote after filling his ballot in the presidential election at a polling station in Seoul, South Korea, March 4, 2022. An early voting for South Korea's presidential election kicked off Friday ahead of the election day on March 9. (Photo by James Lee/Xinhua)

A woman casts her ballot in the presidential election at a polling station in Seoul, South Korea, March 4, 2022. An early voting for South Korea's presidential election kicked off Friday ahead of the election day on March 9. (Photo by James Lee/Xinhua)

Voters fill in ballots in the presidential election at a polling station in Seoul, South Korea, March 4, 2022. An early voting for South Korea's presidential election kicked off Friday ahead of the election day on March 9. (Photo by James Lee/Xinhua)

South Korean presidential candidate Yoon Suk-yeol of the People Power Party casts his ballot in the presidential election at a polling station in Busan, South Korea, March 4, 2022. An early voting for South Korea's presidential election kicked off Friday ahead of the election day on March 9.

The early voting, which was adopted in 2013 and first applied to the 2014 local elections, will be carried out for two days through Saturday. (Photo by James Lee/Xinhua)

South Korean presidential candidate Sim Sang-jeung of the Justice Party prepares to vote in the presidential election at a polling station in Seoul, South Korea, March 4, 2022. An early voting for South Korea's presidential election kicked off Friday ahead of the election day on March 9.

The early voting, which was adopted in 2013 and first applied to the 2014 local elections, will be carried out for two days through Saturday. (NEWSIS/Handout via Xinhua)

South Korean presidential candidate Lee Jae-myung of the Democratic Party casts his ballot in the presidential election at a polling station in Seoul, South Korea, March 4, 2022. An early voting for South Korea's presidential election kicked off Friday ahead of the election day on March 9.

The early voting, which was adopted in 2013 and first applied to the 2014 local elections, will be carried out for two days through Saturday. (Xinhua/POOL)
In 1992, months after Justice Thurgood Marshall retired from the Supreme Court, Justice Sandra Day OConnor published an appreciative essay in the Stanford Law Review titled The Influence of a Raconteur.

She described sitting at the justices conference table with the older man, a hero of the civil rights movement and the first Black justice, listening to the stories he told from his action-filled life. The experiences he recounted were a source of amazement and inspiration, she wrote, not only for what they revealed about him but also because of what they instill in, and ask, of us. She said she found herself hoping to hear, just once more, another story that would, by and by, perhaps change the way I see the world.

I was touched by the essay when I first read it, but also puzzled. If I had been asked to name justices who were immune to Thurgood Marshalls influence, Justice OConnor, who had been on the court for 11 years and had served with him for 10 years, would have been on the list. She opposed affirmative action, and her states-rights orientation made her antagonistic to federal court review of state criminal justice issues. I was taken aback by her first line in a 1991 majority opinion that rejected an appeal from an inmate on Virginias death row. This is a case about federalism, she declared. Justice Marshall dissented.

And yet. By the time of her own retirement in 2006, Justice OConnor was in a very different place. She wrote the majority opinion that preserved affirmative action in university admissions. She modulated her views on federalism. It would be ridiculous to ascribe Justice OConnors migration in late middle age solely to the influence of Justice Marshall, who died in 1993. But it would be equally ridiculous to discount his influence entirely. Why not take her at her word? She must have sensed something in 1992, a pull in a different direction.
We should all agree, President Biden declared in his State of the Union address on Tuesday:

the answer is not to defund the police. Its to fund the police. Fund them. Fund them. Fund them with resources and training. Resources and training they need to protect their communities.

Its not hard to understand why this paragraph was in the speech. For more than a year, moderate and conservative Democrats have been in a state of panic over the impact of defund the police  a controversial slogan from the George Floyd protests of 2020  on their electoral fortunes.

Despite slim evidence of any particular impact on voters and despite even slimmer evidence that defunding the police is a priority for much more than a handful of elected Democrats, anger and consternation over the slogan continue to shape political and strategic thinking in the Democratic Party.

What doesnt, somehow, shape political and strategic thinking about law enforcement within the Democratic Party is the reality of police budgets in this country. The presidents rhetoric notwithstanding, police departments in the United States are not actually strapped for funds.

Lets just look at the numbers. Despite some cuts, according to a 2021 analysis of police budgets in the nations 50 largest cities by Bloomberg CityLab, law enforcement spending as a share of general expenditures rose slightly, from 13.6 percent in 2020 to 13.7 percent in 2021, even as many cities cut spending in other areas as a result of the Covid pandemic. And out of 42 major cities where Democrats gained votes from 2016 to 2020, more than half increased police spending for fiscal year 2021. Some cities that cut spending or pledged to cut it later reversed or restored that funding.
The debate between these two schools of thought  the self-ID and gatekeeping models  lies at the heart of every argument we have about the lives of trans adults, from fights over access to gender-affirming procedures to whether transgender athletes should be allowed to compete. Is someone trans because they say they are? Or does it take an outside expert to know for sure?

How the world decides this question will have huge implications for the lives of transgender people. In recent years, self-ID has become the law in about 15 countries, including Ireland, Portugal and Uruguay, and it is likely to become law in Spain, where the government approved a draft bill last June. This week, a self-ID law was introduced in the Scottish Parliament. But elsewhere, transition treatment remains more complicated to get. Despite Germanys liberated Weimar history, its requirements are outdated and onerous. Under the countrys 40-year-old Transsexuellengesetz (Transsexual law)  which forces people to undergo expensive, lengthy and often demeaning tests before they can transition  the process to change ones name and documentation can take years.

A movement to change that law is underway. In September, two openly transgender women were elected to the Bundestag as representatives of the liberal Green Party: 27-year-old Nyke Slawik and 44-year-old Tessa Ganserer, whose supporters had to vote for her under her deadname because she has declined to undergo the governments invasive process to change it. In late November, the new coalition government, which has united the Green Party with the Social Democratic Party and the Free Democratic Party, pledged to reform the law and move to self-ID for legal name change; they also plan to create a compensation fund for transgender people who were compulsorily sterilized as recently as a decade ago.

To better understand the toll of current gatekeeping measures in Germany and around the world, I traveled to Berlin in September to interview Felicia Rolletschke, a young woman who has become one of the faces of the push for change. High above her apartment in a converted shipping container in the woods of the Atl-Treptow neighborhood of Berlin waves a transgender flag, visible from the S-Bahn trains that pass by. The flag is secured to a five-meter-tall birch branch that she found in the woods and lugged home. I was sore for a week! she told me, laughing, as we sat on her balcony. But it was important to her that she have it. Without the flag, her neighbors might not know shes trans.

By the time I met Ms. Rolletschke, she was about to turn 27 and had lived openly as a woman for six years. She told me that she had known she was transgender since childhood, but having been raised in a small conservative town in southern Germany, she had never met an openly transgender person and kept her identity a secret. Until 2011, all German parents were required to give their children sex-specific names. If a child grew up and realized they wished to change their gender, they were legally required to consent first to sterilization or gender reconstruction surgery.

When Ms. Rolletschke was 17, she moved to Berlin. At 21 and with the help of a therapist, she began the paperwork required to transition. To start hormones, the law mandated that she first live openly as a woman for a year. This has historically (and to many transgender people, offensively) been referred to as the real-life test and remains a requirement to get access to surgery in parts of the United States. The requirement can be brutal, even encouraging of abuse and discrimination, because it mandates that people present as one gender without the cosmetic help of medical transition while still carrying paperwork that outs them.

Ms. Rolletschke had a sympathetic therapist who understood the dangers of the requirement and agreed to circumvent it, allowing her to start hormones, but there was still the matter of her name and legal gender. She would need two psychotherapists to vouch that she was truly trans to qualify for the legal name change. To be evaluated by those experts would cost her 1,600 euros, money she did not have. An aunt eventually gave her the money, causing a family rift because other relatives were not supportive.
One way to reinforce this message is for the White House to continue sharing its intelligence on the doings in the Kremlin. Predicting every move Putin made before the invasion has, so far, been an effective strategy. It allowed the world to see the full hypocrisy of his scheme, has strengthened unity in the United States and Europe and is opening eyes in Russia. And it might create a healthy element of paranoia in the Kremlin.

European countries dependent on Russian oil and gas, Germany first among them, have to start preparing for a future as independent of Russia as possible. Germany has suspended certification of the Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline; the next step must be to rapidly expand facilities for handling liquefied natural gas and alternate sources of energy. This would be a good moment for Mr. Scholz to reopen the case in Germany for nuclear power and for continuing to operate its remaining nuclear power plants.

And both Europe and the United States must re-evaluate their relations with China, a far more important economic partner than Russia. A similar breakdown in Americas relationship with China is not inevitable. While significant issues divide the two nations, Chinas foreign minister, Wang Yi, spoke publicly recently about the potential for cooperation with the United States on global infrastructure projects. After issuing a 5,000-word declaration of friendship with Russia weeks before the invasion and amplifying Russian misinformation, the Chinese government may now be trying to put some distance between itself and the Russian war of choice.

At home, the Biden administration should stop reassuring the American public that our nation will pay little to no cost for this conflict. For one, while it is clear that Mr. Putins current aim is to take over all of Ukraine, his erratic behavior makes it impossible to predict his next move. If he took military action against Poland or the Baltic States, the United States would have to honor its pledge to defend its NATO allies.

More immediately, while the U.S. government is right to combat inflation and a rapid rise in prices, the administrations duty is to warn that standing up to Mr. Putin may well contribute to higher prices and that Americans should be prepared to accept a measure of sacrifice as part of the free, democratic, interconnected world. It is not too late to sound that call.

In the near term, the need to support Ukraine  short of putting Western boots on the ground there  is obvious, and much of the world has responded. But one week after the invasion began, Russian forces had seized the strategic port city of Kherson in the south; a roughly 40-mile line of military vehicles stood poised to move on Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital; and Russian forces were encircling the northeastern city of Kharkiv. More than a million Ukrainians have already crossed Ukraines borders, creating an epic humanitarian challenge. Many more may be displaced internally.

Whatever new order might emerge from this terrible war and the likely occupation of Ukraine, it is the duty of all leaders to prepare their countries for it, even if the pain it will cause is still unknown.
Ms. Gwin is also an actress who says her biggest break yet was on the horizon in 2020  a role in the Will Smith film King Richard. But Covid restrictions pushed shooting back multiple times and then, when filming finally resumed, her role was cut. Selling homes seemed like a job that could offer her the flexibility to continue auditioning and to support her family  even as the pandemic slowed other industries down. Real estate made so much sense, said Ms. Gwin.

When the market looked like it was coming to a standstill at the beginning of the pandemic, Redfin, the Seattle-based brokerage with branches nationwide, furloughed about a third of its more than 3,000 agents, said Glenn Kelman, the chief executive of the firm. (Unlike most brokerages, Redfin pays their agents a salary with benefits, in addition to commission  making them costly to keep on staff during market lulls).

By May 2020, when the market picked up, the company started bringing furloughed employees back and more were recruited, it was a nonstop hiring frenzy, said Mary Gallagher, a senior director of recruitment for the company.

In 2022, she said Redfin is taking it week to week to monitor the market and see if hiring should continue at the same pace.

Historically, the number of agents tends to grow in boom markets. In 2005 and 2006  the frenzied years leading up to the market collapse in 2007  more than 250,000 people became agents. In 2008, after the market crashed, the ranks of real estate agents declined by more than 10 percent, according to data from the Realtors association.

But, unlike during previous booms, the number of homes for sale today is at a record low. In December, there were 910,000 homes on the market, down 14 percent from a year prior. That same month, the association said its membership hit a record high of more than 1.5 million.
Visit Queen Elizabeth National Park in Uganda or Lake Manyara National Park in Tanzania and youll see something unusual: lions that climb trees and spend a good part of their lives resting on branches high above the ground. Elsewhere, lions rarely climb and look rather silly when they try to do so.

They can get up there pretty well, said Craig Packer, who oversaw the Serengeti Lion Project for some 35 years. But he added that they get up there and then theyre like, Whoa, how do I get down?

Other big predatory cats climb trees all the time. Anatomically, leopards are just better built for climbing, said Luke Hunter, executive director of the big cats program of the Wildlife Conservation Society in New York City. Theyre lighter, and a leopards scapula, their shoulder blades, are proportionally bigger, flatter and more concave than a lions.

Lions, on the other hand, are built with enormously powerful forequarters, and a very, very stiff back, he continued. Thats for wrestling heavyweight prey, such as a buffalo, to the ground. Their enormous power, he added, comes at the cost of the agility and the vertical power that a leopard has in being able to whip up a tree with an impala.
PARIS  A few months ago, when the designer Rick Owens started thinking about his fall collection, he was thinking about Covid and the re-emergence, and discos, and parties, and whether all of that was good or bad, and how he had mixed feelings, and so on and so forth. Sound familiar? But then last week happened, and everything changed.

He listened to the music he had chosen for the show, and thought the driving, acid bass of Eprom, with its percussive beat, sounded like artillery fire. At the last minute, he decided to use Mahlers Symphony No. 5  the one inextricably linked to Viscontis film Death in Venice  instead. It was, said Mr. Owens in a preview conversation, a little sentimental for him. But, he said, its an emotional moment. So he leaned in.

I dont know, he said. It will either be totally rapturous or totally corny.

Actually, it veered to the sublime.
The hackers came from around the world. They knocked Russian and Ukrainian government websites offline, graffitied antiwar messages onto the home pages of Russian media outlets and leaked data from rival hacking operations. And they swarmed into chat rooms, awaiting new instructions and egging each other on.

The war in Ukraine has provoked an onslaught of cyberattacks by apparent volunteers unlike any that security researchers have seen in previous conflicts, creating widespread disruption, confusion and chaos that researchers fear could provoke more serious attacks by nation-state hackers, escalate the war on the ground or harm civilians.

It is crazy, it is bonkers, it is unprecedented, said Matt Olney, the director of threat intelligence at the security firm Cisco Talos. This is not going to be solely a conflict among nations. There are going to be participants that are not under the strict control of any government.

The online battles have blurred the lines between state-backed hackers and patriotic amateurs, making it difficult for governments to understand who is attacking them and how to retaliate. But both Ukraine and Russia appear to have embraced tech-savvy volunteers, creating channels on the chat app Telegram to direct them to target specific websites.
Andrei Belgrader, who directed numerous high-profile stage productions off Broadway and in regional theaters and was an important influence in the careers of John Turturro, Cherry Jones, Tony Shalhoub and other respected actors, died on Feb. 22 in Los Angeles. He was 75.

His wife, Caroline Hall, said the cause was lung cancer.

Mr. Belgrader, who emigrated from his native Romania in the 1970s after chafing at the artistic censorship there, caught the eye of Robert Brustein, founder of the Yale Repertory Theater, who by the end of the 1970s had him directing there. When Mr. Brustein, who had also been dean of the Yale School of Drama, moved to Harvard University and founded the American Repertory Theater there in 1980, Mr. Belgrader began directing productions there as well.

Both A.R.T. and Yale Rep were proving grounds for young actors, and Mr. Belgrader challenged them in ways that had a lasting effect.

He would make odd but incredibly imaginative requests of you as an actor and would be delighted when you could fulfill these requests, Mark Linn-Baker, who was Touchstone in Mr. Belgraders 1979 production of As You Like It at Yale Rep while still a student at the Yale drama school, said by email.
Such efforts are being encouraged statewide, putting Tennessee at the forefront of a nationwide conservative effort to reshape what students are learning and reading in public schools.

One proposed Tennessee law prohibits textbooks that promote L.G.B.T.Q. issues or lifestyles; one that passed in June would prohibit materials that make someone feel discomfort based on their race or sex. Another allows for partisan school board elections, which critics worry will inject cultural grievances into education policy debates. State legislators in Nashville are considering a ban on obscene materials in school libraries as well as a measure requiring school boards to establish procedures for reviewing school library collections. Gov. Bill Lee recently announced a partnership with a Christian college to open 50 charter schools designed to educate children to be informed patriots.

The combined effect of all this activity has alarmed educators and others in the state who are concerned about academic freedom. Its just not one or two people here  theres a mind-set coming from the governor on down to ban conversation and to segment communities and to erase life experiences from classroom discussion, said Hedy Weinberg, director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee.

Kailee Isham, a ninth-grade English teacher in McMinn County, said the environment had changed her teaching. She hesitates to tackle topics like racism and socioeconomic or L.G.B.T.Q. issues in her classroom for fear of being targeted by conservative parents.

A lot of my job is trying to figure out what is OK, Ms. Isham said, adding, Not being able to speak to the things that I think are really important  not being able to express myself  is a little bit frustrating at times when it seems like everyone else is having no trouble expressing themselves louder and louder.
30 killed, over 50 injured as blast hits mosque in NW Pakistan

Xinhua) 19:27, March 04, 2022

ISLAMABAD, March 4 (Xinhua) -- A powerful blast hit a mosque in Pakistan's northwestern city of Peshawar in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province on Friday, leaving at least 30 people dead while wounding over 50 others, police and hospital officials said.

Two terrorists tried to enter the mosque and engaged in an exchange of fire with the police personnel on duty there, with one policeman killed and another seriously injured, Haroon Rasheed, senior superintendent of police operations of Peshawar, told Xinhua.

He said that soon after the firing incident, the explosion inside the mosque occurred, adding that according to initial investigation, it was a suicide attack on the worshippers.

Rescue teams, police and security forces reached the site and shifted the injured to Lady Reading Hospital in the city. At least 10 of the injured were in critical condition.

Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan has condemned the deadly attack on the mosque and ordered immediate medical aid for the wounded.

The prime minister also urged a detailed report on the blast from related departments.

No group or individual has claimed the attack.

(Web editor: Hongyu, Bianji)
ISLAMABAD, March 4 (Xinhua) -- At least five people were killed and over 30 others wounded when a bomb went off near a mosque in Pakistan's northwestern Peshawar city of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province on Friday, police said.

Police sources in the area told Xinhua that the blast occurred during Friday prayers in the Kocha Risaldar area of Peshawar, adding that the death toll might rise as several injured were in critical condition.

Rescue teams, police and security forces reached the site and shifted the injured to a nearby hospital.

No group or individual has claimed the attack. 
NEAR UKRAINES BORDER  Some 14 wide-bodied aircraft transported a bristling array of Javelin antitank missiles, rocket launchers, guns and ammunition to an airfield near Ukraines border on Friday, as the United States and European allies ramped up their efforts to give the Ukrainian military a leg up in battling a foreign enemy that far outguns it.

The top U.S. military adviser to President Biden inspected the weapons transfer operation in an unannounced trip, meeting with troops and personnel from 22 countries who were working around the clock to unload the armaments for transport by land to the Ukrainian forces.

The American weaponry, which included the Javelins as well as small arms and munitions, was part of a $350 million package that Mr. Biden authorized on Saturday; within two days, one official said, the deliveries were landing at an airfield near the border that can process 17 airplanes a day. What began as a trickle  with only two or three planes arriving a day  is now a steady flow, the official said, with 14 loads from one airfield alone.

Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, included a stop at the airfield as part of a trip to the region. As he spoke to troops, cargos of Javelins rolled behind him. Nearby, two C-17s, the enormous cargo workhorses of the U.S. Air Force, sat on the tarmac.
If California were to provide reparations for Black residents, who exactly should qualify for the payments?

Thats a question that has stumped the expert panel in charge of Californias historic reparations effort, the first undertaking of its scale and one that could have major implications for the rest of the nation.

In 2020, California approved legislation to accomplish a tall order: Establish a task force to study and develop reparation proposals for African Americans, with a special consideration for African Americans who are descendants of persons enslaved in the United States.

As you can see from that language, the law prioritizes people whose ancestors were enslaved, but doesnt detail exactly what that means. Some task force members want to limit payments to go only to people who can trace their lineage to someone enslaved in the United States, while others bristle at the idea of excluding any Black Californians.
WASHINGTON  The Supreme Court on Friday unanimously rejected an argument that could have limited the sweep of the state secrets doctrine in a case arising from the surveillance of Muslims in Southern California in 2006.

The decision came a day after the justices weighed in on another case involving the state secrets doctrine, which sometimes requires the dismissal of lawsuits that would disclose information that could harm national security. In a fractured decision on Thursday, the court ruled that the doctrine barred Abu Zubaydah, who was waterboarded more than 60 times and is being held without charge at Guantanamo Bay, from obtaining testimony from two C.I.A. contractors who were instrumental in his brutal interrogations.

Fridays ruling was more modest and technical. It concerned surveillance undertaken by Craig Monteilh, an F.B.I. informant, that failed to produce any public evidence of wrongdoing. To the contrary, after Mr. Monteilh started talking about jihad and violence at a mosque in Irvine, Calif., a community leader contacted the F.B.I. to report him.

Three of the men Mr. Monteilh spied on sued the F.B.I. and the agents responsible for directing him, claiming, among other things, that their right to exercise their religion had been violated. The government moved to dismiss those claims, invoking the state secrets privilege and saying that disclosure of the information it needed to mount a defense to the lawsuit would threaten national security.
Roads and rail lines remain open to the citys southwest. But trains for evacuees, so packed that only children get seats, have not nearly been able to take everybody.

In time, a train did finally pull into the station and open its doors. The people were quite calm and civil, and there was little shoving, as a couple of thousand women and children packed in tightly.

Yet, even as the train pulled away, bound for Lviv, the platform remained thronged.

Its not the first day we tried, said Oksana Gorbula, a Kyiv resident who was traveling with her sister and two nieces. Look at this crowd. We will never get on, you can see it clearly. She said they would probably give up on escaping the city and instead seek shelter in the citys subway system.

In one worrying sign, even as swarms of people sought to travel west, a new flow of displaced persons was surging into the city from the northwest. The trains came from Irpin, an outlying town where the Ukrainian army has mounted a fierce defense against the Russian forces. The cars are filled entirely with women and children, as all men between the ages of 18 and 60 have been ordered to stay behind and aid the war effort.
Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, called on Thursday night for the assassination of President Vladimir V. Putin, saying in a television interview as Russian forces shelled a nuclear power plant in Ukraine that somebody in Russia should step up to the plate and take this guy out.

Is there a Brutus in Russia? Mr. Graham asked on Fox News. Is there a more successful Colonel Stauffenberg in the Russian military? The only way this ends is for somebody in Russia to take this guy out.

The only people who can fix this are the Russian people, Mr. Graham continued. Easy to say, hard to do. Unless you want to live in darkness for the rest of your life, be isolated from the rest of the world in abject poverty and live in darkness, you need to step up to the plate.

In Russia, the Kremlins spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, described Mr. Grahams statement as an instance of a hysterical Russophobic fit that had captured the United States. These days, not everyone can keep a sound mind, Mr. Peskov said. Unfortunately, many people go mad.
We are faced together with what is President Putins war of choice  unprovoked, unjustified, Mr. Blinken told journalists ahead of the meeting. Were committed to doing everything we can to make it stop. So the coordination between us is vital.

The crisis has reminded Europeans of how much they depend on the United States for leadership and military muscle, as well as the nuclear umbrella that serves as the most important element of deterrence against countries like Russia, China or even Iran.

And if the European Union, under a French presidency, chafed about Americas leading role at the start of the crisis, President Biden and Mr. Blinken have gone to great lengths to inform and consult with the Brussels institutions as well as member states.

But as the crisis unfolded, Washington provided convincing intelligence to its allies and organized the response. It brought the European Union, Britain, Canada and Australia along on a tough package of economic sanctions and was quick to start supplying weapons to Ukraine and to move troops and materiel to shore up allied forces along NATOs eastern flank.

While our focus should remain on Ukraines sovereignty and the restoration of Ukrainians safety, I believe Putins war will also elevate Americas global standing, wrote Kori Schake, a former American defense official. Indeed, it has already strengthened Americas position at the center of the international order that it created from the ashes of World War II.

Other countries also played a key role, with France volunteering to lead a new NATO battalion in Romania and with Germany mothballing Nord Stream 2, the gas pipeline from Russia to Western Europe, and allowing the export of weapons to Ukraine. The European Union, too, moved to Europeanize the efforts of many of its 27 member states  21 of which belong to NATO  and promised for the first time to reimburse them for weapons sent to Ukraine.
Russia clamped down harder Friday on news and free speech than at any time in President Vladimir V. Putins 22 years in power, blocking access to Facebook and major foreign news outlets, and enacting a law to punish anyone spreading false information about its Ukraine invasion with up to 15 years in prison.

The crackdown comes as the Kremlin scrambles to contain discontent over the war and to control the narrative as Russia faces its most severe economic crisis in decades as a result of this weeks crushing Western sanctions. Fearing prosecution, more independent Russian news outlets shut down on Friday, and the BBC said it had suspended all of its operations in Russia.

Mr. Putin signed a law that effectively criminalizes any public opposition to or independent news reporting about the war against Ukraine. Taking effect as soon as Saturday, the law could make it a crime to simply call the war a war  the Kremlin says it is a special military operation  on social media or in a news article or broadcast. Announcements that the law was coming had already pushed Russian independent media outlets to shut down in recent days, and more followed on Friday.

In addition, the government blocked access inside Russia to the websites of major Russian-language outlets that are based outside the country, and to Facebook, the social network popular with the Westward-looking urban middle class where many have posted fierce criticism of Mr. Putins war.
LONDON  It took the invasion of a sovereign nation, the bombardment of its cities and the continents biggest security challenge in decades to make it happen. But for the first time in years, Britain and the European Union are working together again.

On Friday, Britains foreign secretary, Liz Truss, attended a meeting of European Union ministers in Brussels to discuss the crisis in Ukraine, a move that, in pre-Brexit days, would have been routine, but one that now underscores a striking rapprochement.

In the poisonous aftermath of Britains exit from the European Union, the relationship between the two sides degenerated into discord, distrust and open sniping.

But confronted with the war in Ukraine, and resulting issues that are several orders of magnitude graver than rifts over fishing rights or the movement of sausages, the chasm opened up by Brexit is beginning to narrow.
BRUSSELS  Ukrainians waved European Union flags when they put their lives on the line in 2014 during their revolution in Maidan Square, in the center of Kyiv, provoked by their desire to draw closer to the West. It was a pivotal moment, choosing Europe over Russia and incurring the Kremlins wrath.

Now, fighting a Russian invasion and seeking meaningful help from the European Union, Ukrainians are asking to become E.U. members, and soon. The call is being joined by two neighboring countries, Moldova and Georgia, who also feel vulnerable to Russia and seek to shelter under the E.U. umbrella.

The European Union is going to be stronger with us, said President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine via video link from his bunker at a special session in the European Parliament this week. Prove that you are with us, and you will not let us go.

The European Union has already done much for Ukraine. In just weeks, the bloc has begun to step forward as a military power as it funnels across millions of euros in aid and arms. Member states are taking in hundreds of thousands of refugees from the conflict.
BRUSSELS  NATO foreign ministers rejected any possibility of intervening against Russian forces in Ukraine, whether on the ground or in the air, the alliances secretary general said Friday.

Allies agree we should not have NATO planes operating over Ukrainian airspace or NATO troops operating in Ukrainian territory, Jens Stoltenberg, the secretary general, said at a news conference after a meeting of foreign ministers.

Ukrainian officials have called for a no-fly zone over Ukraines airspace, but NATO is resisting for fear that it could draw member states into a war with Russia.

We understand the desperation, but if we did that, we would end up with something that could lead to a full-fledged war in Europe involving much more countries and much more suffering, Mr. Stoltenberg said. We will provide support, but we will not be part of the conflict.
COLOMBO, March 3 (Xinhua) -- Sri Lanka's two gas companies, LAUGFS and Litro Gas on Thursday announced that they would not be able to import any more liquefied petroleum gas as banks were not letting them open letters of credit (LCs) in U.S. dollars.

The two companies warned that this would lead to a gas shortage in the South Asian country.

Chairman of LAUGFS Holdings Ltd, W.K.H. Wegapitiya said the banks were not opening LCs because of the U.S. dollar shortage currently, warning that the country's existing gas stocks would probably run out by the weekend.

Retailers across the country have already said that they were running out of gas.

Meanwhile, the island nation was suffering fuel shortages and power outages as diesel power plants stopped operating.

The country has seen 7.5-hour scheduled power cuts from Wednesday as President Gotabaya Rajapaksa has pledged adequate diesel supply to power plants in a bid to ensure uninterrupted electricity power from Saturday.

Sri Lanka experienced its last gas shortage at the end of 2021. 
The American pharmaceutical company Ocugen said on Friday that the Food and Drug Administration had rejected its application seeking emergency authorization for an India-made Covid vaccine for those ages 2 to 18.

The vaccine, made by the Indian pharmaceutical company Bharat Biotech, has not yet been tested in the United States, nor has it been authorized for any age groups in the United States. It is not clear if the vaccine has a path forward with American regulators, when the country already has a surplus of authorized doses.

A clinical trial in India that enrolled those ages 2 to 18 found that two doses of the vaccine generated strong immune responses and did not cause serious side effects. Another large-scale clinical trial in adults in India found that the vaccine provided good protection against Covid, with very strong protection against severe disease. Both of those studies were conducted pre-Omicron, when earlier versions of the virus were circulating.

The vaccine is widely used in India. It has been authorized in about 20 countries as well as by the World Health Organization. Ocugen has a deal with Bharat to try to bring its vaccine to the U.S. market.
Today

Cloudy. High around 60F. Winds NE at 10 to 15 mph.

Tonight

Partly cloudy during the evening followed by cloudy skies overnight. Low 52F. Winds light and variable.

Tomorrow

Rain showers in the morning will evolve into a more steady rain in the afternoon. High 59F. Winds E at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 70%.
A Chinese man was recently diagnosed with crocodile tear syndrome, a rare medical condition that causes people to shed tears whenever they eat.

Crying is usually triggered by a strong emotional reaction, such as sadness, pain or uncontrollable laughter, but in rare cases it can be activated by something as benign as eating. Last year, an elderly man, referred to only as Mr. Zhang by Chinese media, reportedly started shedding tears when he ate. He didnt think much of it at first, but the crying got noticeably worse when he needed to chew for longer, and this interfered with his social life. Zhang started avoiding eating in public, for fear of tears rolling down his face in front of people, so he became isolated. Luckily, he realized that this wasnt something he could hide forever, and decided to see a doctor.

Last month, Mr. Zhang went to a hospital in Wuhan for a checkup, and was diagnosed with a rare medical condition commonly known as crocodile tear syndrome. Dr. Cheng Mian Chinh, head of the Department of Ophthalmology at the hospital explained that the condition was closely related to the mans previous facial paralysis.

The process of recovering from facial paralysis had affected the activity of the lacrimal glands, particularly the one in his left eye. During the recovery period, the facial nerve fibers become misdirected, and the salivary nerve ends up innervating the lacrimal gland instead of the submandibular gland.

The result of this facial nerve misdirection is that stimuli such as the smell or taste of food, instead of causing salivation, excites the lacrimal gland to produce tears.

The symptoms of crocodile tear syndrome vary from patient to patient, and more mild cases are generally managed by counseling and regular monitoring. In more severe cases, the most popular treatment is botulinum toxin injections into the lacrimal gland, to stop transmission along aberrantly regenerated nerve fibers to the affected gland. The effects of the toxin last about 6 months.

Surgical interventions are also a solution, and that was the option of choice in Mr. Zhangs case. His condition improved greatly, but sources do not clarify if the relief is permanent.
WPP announced on March 4 that it is discontinuing its operations in Russia due to Vladimir Putins decision to invade Ukraine, which has created a humanitarian crisis in Europe.

The ad/PR holding company, which has nearly 1,400 people in Russia, thanked them for their service to clients. It promised to work closely with clients during the winddown of operations.

WPP has 200 staffers in Ukraine who have shown extraordinary resilience and bravery in the face of the horrific attack on their country, according to its statement.

The British firm has partnered with the UN Refugee Agency to run a fundraising appeal to help Ukrainians forced to flee their homes.
Arkady Ostrovsky

There is a sense of terror in Moscow as Vladimir Putin has put an undeclared state of martial law into place in the aftermath of his invasion of Ukraine, according to Arkady Ostrovsky, Russian and Eastern European correspondent for The Economist.

"Everybody is so tense," he told an Economist webinar on March 4. "People are being followed. Cars are being searched. It's like an inside junta has seized power."

Russian-born Ostrovsky, who has reported from Moscow for The Economist and Financial Times for nearly 20 years, has never seen the city so on edge and controlled by such a militaristic totalitarian regime.

He noted that Russians have become comfortable accepting the "Big Lie" spewed by the Kremlin's propaganda machine because they are afraid to challenge the government and just want to go on with their lives.

Since Putin has muzzled what was left of the free press, there's also a dearth of credible information outlets.

Ikea Shutdown is Big Psychological Blow

Ostrovsky, who left Moscow on March 3 for Istanbul, spoke about the huge impact Ikea's decision to close its stores and factories has had on the Russian people.

He said when Ikea first opened in Moscow in 2000, it symbolized that Russia was becoming a "normal European country."

The Swedish retailer was "more than just a shopping beacon, it was what the people wanted their country to be," said Ostrovsky, whose Moscow apartment was furnished by goods from Ikea.

The psychological impact of Ikea's shutting down signals to Russians that "Your Past Life is Gone," said Ostrovsky.

Ikea operates 17 retail facilities across Russia and employs 15K people in the country. Russians flocked to shop at Ikea following news of the shutdown.

"There will soon be nowhere to spend money," said Ostrovsky, who noted that Russia is heavily dependent on imported consumer goods.

Ostrovsky is the author of "The Invention of Russia: From Gorbachev's Freedom to Putin's War," which was published in 2017.

No Qualms About Using Nukes

Zanny Minton Beddoes, Economist editor-in-chief; Ed Carr, deputy editor; and Shashank Joshi, defense reporter, also participated in the webinar.

They praised the leadership of Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky and the will of the Ukrainian people to resist the Russian invaders.

Zelensky's decision to remain in Kyiv rather than flee the country inspired NATO members to get their acts together and coordinate policies.

Germany, for instance, dropped its policy that blocked the shipment of arms to Ukraine. At first, it only planned to ship helmets to Ukraine, which drew widespread scorn. The Germans also abandoned the notion that the way to "tame Russia is to embrace it."

Putin, the editors noted, is already "at war with NATO" and would be willing to attack ammunition dumps in Poland or Romania, if the flow of sophisticated weapons to Ukrainian fighters stalls the Russian invasion.

The Russian leader has no qualms about deploying tactical nuclear weapons. The editors said Putin views nuclear weapons as a license to be as aggressive as he wants to be, rather than a deterrent.

What is a likely "off-ramp" for Putin to defuse the Ukrainian crisis?

It was suggested that he is waiting for a phone call from Joe Biden to propose a peace conference, preferably at Yalta, where Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin carved out the post-World War II world.
CAOIMHE Spain, a student at Colaiste Naomh Cormac Kilcormac, Co. Offaly, has this week been chosen as a Leinster Final winner in ActionTalks, which is a national speech writing competition run by ActionAid and open to all students aged 14 to 17. Caoimhe won a 50 One4All voucher and will now proceed to the national final of the ActionTalks Competition, which is taking place in Dublin on March 28th.

ActionAid provides long term support and focuses on the human rights of women and children in developing countries, so they can overcome the obstacles holding them back. The approach is to empower women to take control over their own lives. Irish Aid, Department of Foreign Affairs, funds an ActionAid Womens Rights programme in Kenya, Nepal and Ethiopia. ActionAid uses this funding to work with marginalised communities in an effort to prevent gender-based violence and help women gain an independent income.

The ActionTalks competition aims to engage young people with global issues, gender equality and sustainable development, and challenges them to use their voice to create positive change. This year the prize is a 500 One4All voucher for the national winner and a 100 voucher for their teacher.

CEO of ActionAid Ireland Karole Balfe said: We were blown away by the quality of delivery in the Leinster Final, as well as the research, critical thinking and time that went into writing the speeches. It was a very difficult decision to choose the winner as all finalists submitted very high-quality videos, but Caoimhe won out for their outstanding delivery and well written speech on vaccine inequity. It is wonderful to see so many young people engaging with international development and learning about the work that Irish tax payers fund through Irish Aid.

You can read more about the ActionAid Womens Rights programme here https://actionaid.ie/womens-rights-programme/
Minister Joe OBrien praised the role of the community and voluntary sector in Offaly for pandemic efforts and asks organisations to be prepared to assist re Ukrainian crisis

On a visit to community and voluntary groups in Offaly this week, Minister for Community Development and Charities Joe OBrien thanked local groups for their efforts during the pandemic.

The Minister said: I was particularly glad to visit the Ard Aoibhins Centre in Mount Bolus where I met with the team providing Meals on Wheels service to the local community as well as a weekly Social Food event - which was in full swing when I visited. It was also of particular interest to me in my role as Chair of a government Working Group on Food Poverty.

"The role of volunteers in the pandemic was particularly important and Im delighted that tomorrow I will be officially opening the Offaly Volunteer Centre. This means we will have a better resourced focal point for volunteerism in Offaly and it means we will be able to offer people interested in volunteering a more structured and supported experience and indeed likewise for organisations who are interested in engaging volunteers."

Minister OBrien indicated that the government may be engaging with community and voluntary groups in Offaly and across Ireland in terms of the nations response to refugees from Ukraine.

He said: Government is currently developing its response to how we are going to welcome and support and refugees from Ukraine. The pandemic has further shown us what a key partner the community and voluntary sector is times of crisis. And indeed the sector is already responding to the current crisis. I think its likely we will be further engaging with the community and voluntary sector across the country in terms of developing a whole of society response to refugees arriving from Ukraine.

Minister OBrien also visited Green Offaly, a Just Transition funded project in Kilcormac where he met members of the Offaly Public Participation Network (PPN). The project aims to facilitate the Green Regeneration of Offaly through the involvement of the people who live and work there.

He continued to Faithful Fields, Offaly GAAs Centre of Excellence where he met the Secretary of Offaly County Board and those participating in the Rural Social Scheme (RSS) and TUS scheme who maintain the grounds that provide a range of high quality facilities for training and games, as well as a walking track for use by the community.

Minister OBrien went on to visit an activity project for Asylum Seeker Direct Provision Centre residents funded under SICAP. He met with Community Development Workers who have been assisting residents integrate into the community and helping them overcome barriers that prevent them getting jobs.

Minister O'Brien will speak at the ILDN Council meeting at the Tullamore Court Hotel on Friday before formally opening the new Offaly Volunteer Centre in Tullamore.
THURSDAY, March 3, 2022 (HealthDay News) -- A deal has been reached between members of the Sackler family and their company, Purdue Pharma, to settle thousands of lawsuits over their role in the U.S. opioid epidemic.

In return for an end to all current and future civil claims against them over the companys prescription opioid business, the Sacklers will pay as much as $6 billion to assist communities harmed by the opioid crisis, according to a court filing on Thursday, the New York Times reported.

However, that liability protection does not extend to criminal prosecutions linked to the marketing of Purdue's prescription opioid painkiller OxyContin.

The settlement has to be approved by Judge Robert Drain, who has presided over the company's bankruptcy proceedings, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit would have to approve, reversing a December ruling that rejected an earlier settlement deal for $4.55 billion. A federal judge had vacated that plan, questioning the legality of the protections from liability granted to the Sacklers, the Times reported.

Also, the immunity shield for the Sacklers from civil suits is being challenged by the U.S. Trustee program, which serves as a watchdog over the bankruptcy system.

"This settlement is both significant and insufficient -- constrained by the inadequacies of our federal bankruptcy code," said Connecticut Attorney General William Tong, who helped lead the effort to get the new deal, the Times reported.

"But Connecticut cannot stall this process indefinitely as victims and our sister states await a resolution. This settlement resolves our claims against Purdue and the Sacklers, but we are not done fighting for justice against the addiction industry and against our broken bankruptcy code," Tong added.

Purdue pleaded guilty to criminal charges of misleading marketing and minimizing OxyContin's risk of addiction, but no individual Sackler has ever apologized or admitted wrongdoing, the Times reported.

"While the families have acted lawfully in all respects, they sincerely regret that OxyContin, a prescription medicine that continues to help people suffering from chronic pain, unexpectedly became part of an opioid crisis that has brought grief and loss to far too many families and communities," read a statement from two branches of the Sacklers, the Times reported.

Negotiations over the new settlement were mediated by Judge Shelley Chapman of U.S. federal bankruptcy court, who is recommending a hearing where people who suffered from addiction to OxyContin could describe the harm they suffered. At least one Sackler family member from each of two branches would have to attend.

Chapman also said if any medical centers and art or educational institutions bearing the Sackler name ask to have it removed, the Sacklers must agree.

"This bankruptcy needs to end. And the Justice Department needs to flex their muscle and investigate the Sacklers criminally, which is permissible under the bankruptcy plan," Ryan Hampton, who monitored the settlement proceedings on behalf of victims, told the Times.

More information

For more on the U.S. opioid epidemic, see the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

SOURCE: New York Times
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ISLAMABAD, March 4 (Xinhua) -- Several people were injured in an explosion near a mosque in Peshawar city of Pakistan's northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province on Friday, local media reported. 
Zee News 30 Apr 2022

His party has staged three huge rallies in Karachi, Peshawar, and Lahore where he demanded fresh elections, reports ANI.
Former cabinet minister Gavin Williamson will be given a knighthood by Boris Johnson, after being sacked as education secretary last September. The Tory MP for South Staffordshire was also sacked in 2019 as Theresa Mays defence secetary for allegedly leaking National Security Council documents. Williamson came under fire during his time as education secretary for [...]
State Emergency Service members are seen near a flooded area in Richmond of New South Wales, Australia, March 4, 2022. Severe weather system, which has been ravaging Queensland and the northern New South Wales since last week, is expected to continue this week. (Xinhua/Bai Xuefei)

SYDNEY, March 4 (Xinhua) -- Although the East Coast Low weather affecting Australia's New South Wales (NSW) state since last week has weakened, local residents are still told to keep preparing for severe weather for the weekend.

Till Friday, NSW police confirmed at least five deaths in the state's ongoing flood rescues, with many people reported to be missing or trapped. The NSW State Emergency Service (SES) Deputy Commissioner Daniel Austin warned the flooding is "far from over" around Sydney and suggested there may be a new weather system from Sunday.

Currently, the state has 68 evacuation orders and 14 evacuation warnings in place, with more evacuation centers opened to people affected by the severe weather.

NSW Northern Rivers town of Mullumbimby, one of the worst-hit areas, is out of phone or internet access and is cut off from essential supplies, while rescuers cannot access anyone west of the town.

"We currently have no phones, internet and communications in a number of areas across Mullumbimby and our smaller communities. It is very challenging to get help to communities," the SES Mullumbimby said in a statement on Friday.

The severe weather ravaged NSW hard on Thursday, and SES said it responded to 3,133 requests for assistance in 24 hours, including 219 flood rescues, 56 of which were in the Greater Sydney area.

NSW Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) said that while most floodwaters are receding, enormous flood warnings remain, including major flood warnings for Clarence, Hawkesbury, Nepean, Richmond, Gloucester and Weir rivers.

For the rest of NSW, residents are told to prepare for some likely heavier rainfalls during the weekend, which may lead to renewed river rises and flooding. Communities are encouraged to keep up to date with the latest forecasts and warnings and to follow the advice of emergency services. 

A child paddles a boat in flood water in Richmond of New South Wales, Australia, March 4, 2022. Severe weather system, which has been ravaging Queensland and the northern New South Wales since last week, is expected to continue this week. (Xinhua/Bai Xuefei)

A road is closed due to flood in Richmond of New South Wales, Australia, March 4, 2022. Severe weather system, which has been ravaging Queensland and the northern New South Wales since last week, is expected to continue this week. (Xinhua/Bai Xuefei)

A child stands in flood water in Richmond of New South Wales, Australia, March 4, 2022. Severe weather system, which has been ravaging Queensland and the northern New South Wales since last week, is expected to continue this week. (Xinhua/Bai Xuefei)

A man stands in front of a cordon in the flooded area in Richmond of New South Wales, Australia, March 4, 2022. Severe weather system, which has been ravaging Queensland and the northern New South Wales since last week, is expected to continue this week. (Xinhua/Bai Xuefei)
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Mila Kunis and husband Ashton Kutcher have set up a fund to support Ukrainian refugees, saying they will match donations of up to $3m (2.25m).
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had spoken with United States President Joe Biden and pleaded for assistance from the West against Russia. The situation comes as Moscow continues to move into its neighbor with violent military operations.
The UN Security Council will hold an emergency meeting at 11:30 a.m. ET Friday in New York in the wake of Russian attack on a nuclear power plant in Ukraine. Fire broke out at the Zaporizhzhia plant, the largest nuclear plant in Europe, after a missile sent by Russian forces overnight hit it, Ukrainian authorities say. The fire was extinguished in the early hours of Friday, and the Internatio
The Supreme Court was reviewing the decision of a federal appeals court in Boston that overturned the death sentence imposed on Dzokhar Tsarnaev. The 2013 attack killed three people.
Major General Andrei Sukhovetsky, Deputy Commander of the 41st Combined Arms Army of the Russian Ground Forces, was killed during a special operation in Ukraine, his comrade-in-arms Sergey Chipilev wrote on social media. "With great pain, we learned the tragic news of the death of our friend, Major General Andrey Sukhovetsky, on the territory of Ukraine during the special operation. We express our deepest condolences to his family," he wrote. Andrei Sukhovetsky graduated from the Ryazan Higher Airborne Command School in 1995. As reported on the website of the Ministry of Defense, he started his career path as a platoon commander and went up to the chief of staff of the Guards airborne assault unit.
Rumble 01 Apr 2022

South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham calls on President Biden to secure the U.S. border and reduce reliance on foreign oil on..
Laxman Pai, Opalesque Asia:

The fintech investment in the Asia-Pacific region reached US$27.5 billion in 2021 across a record 1,165 deals, said a study.

While total investment fell well shy of 2019's peak, it was almost twice the US$14.7 billion seen in 2020, according to the report 'Pulse of Fintech H2'21' by KPMG.

The Asia-Pacific fintech investment market remains vibrant amid the regulatory activities in China. In 2021, China continued to step up regulations in the fintech space, most notably through banning cryptocurrency transactions, bitcoin mining, and the facilitation of cryptocurrency trading.

While the uptick in regulatory activity in China led some fintech investors to pull back from China, it also raised the profile of other fintech hubs in the region - including India and Singapore.

Among the top 10 deals in the region this year, China's MediTrust Health ranked 9th with US$308 million raised, while deals in Japan, South Korea, India, and Singapore accounted for the others.

According to KPMG, during 2021, interest in embedded finance propositions grew in the Asia-Pacific region, particularly Southeast Asia where banks are increasingly looking for assistance to improve their embedded finance, digital wallet, and supply chain finance capabilities. Interest in BaaS solutions was also on the rise during the year with numerous banks and startups across the region focused on the issue, whether as service providers, partners, ......................

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Oskaloosa, IA (52577)

Today

Cloudy with periods of rain. High around 55F. Winds E at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 80%. Rainfall near a quarter of an inch..

Tonight

Rain showers in the evening will evolve into a more steady rain overnight. Low 49F. Winds NE at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 70%. Rainfall around a quarter of an inch.
Explosions, gunshots, sirens, but above all a lot of confusion. In addition to being scared, people are very confused. Nobody knows what to do, feeling even unable to decide whether to escape and where to escape to. There is amazement, incredulity. War simply cannot be learned. You live only if and when you survive. With these words, Father Daniel Botvina ofm, Minister Provincial of the Friars Minor in Ukraine, reported on the dramatic situation unfolding in the country. There are about 60 Franciscans in Ukraine, divided into 17 houses scattered all over the country, except Donbas. Franciscans are the largest and most widespread Catholic presence in the country. I am constantly hearing from all the friars I know, from whom I receive different news according to the area in which they are located. In some cases they tell me of ongoing fighting, violence and destruction, but generally, the more you move west, the less dramatic the situation appears. But the advance of the occupiers proceeds inexorably. I was very worried about our friars who are in the city of Konotop, which is already entirely occupied by Russian troops. However, they assured me they are all fine. They left the Church open, and many civilians found assistance, support and comfort in our friaries.

Father Romuald of the Konotop community reported that the attack felt like like a cyclone that involved less than 24 hours of hard fighting. After conquering the city, calm returned. The Russians left the city, continuing their advance westward. Indeed, he added, Konotop has already returned to almost ordinary life, but people still have eyes full of fear. Our Church remains, the Franciscan continues, to be filled with people. It is not just a question of requests for help: they come above all to pray and to confess.

Friars in Zytomyr, a city in which Benedictine nuns also reside, echoed a similar story. In Odessa, Fr. Daniel said, some families with children were staying with them, simply because they are afraid to stay in their homes hearing the sound of fighters and missiles above their heads. The friars are expecting many more people. We will not send anyone away, he stressed, adding that Fr. Massimo Fusarelli, Minister General of the Order of Friars Minor, had called him to find out about our conditions and those of the refugees and to assure us of any help he can give us.

How will the situation evolve? Its hard to say now. Just as it is difficult to say what we need and to show you how you can help us; it all happened so quickly, Father Daniel continued. Last Wednesday evening, people were still going to restaurants and the next morning we woke up with rockets and tanks in the street. We will probably need food and medicines in the next few days. But already we certainly need two things now. Firstly, we need your prayers, so much prayer in communion with ours, with us the friars and with our people. Secondly we need to feel the closeness of Europe.

Father Daniel highlighted that Ukrainians share the values and culture of Europe. We feel deeply European, he said.  We are Europeans, and there will be no occupation that will make us stop being so.

By Roberto Cetera
BERLIN, March 4 (Xinhua) -- German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said on Friday that his country and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) will not play an active role in the Ukraine conflict.

"It is absolutely clear to us that there will be no NATO military involvement in this conflict," Scholz said at a press conference after visiting the Bundeswehr's operations command. "We will rule that out with all that we do."

Scholz said that the German government would use all diplomatic means "to ensure that the possibility of a joint way out of this crisis is attempted, although it has already come this far."

Meanwhile, he said it would be necessary to ensure that no attacks occurred on NATO territory. Efforts to secure the allies' borders with Russia and Ukraine had been stepped up, Scholz added. "But they are purely defensive and they remain on NATO territory." 
Time now in Lent to find a face to whom you can confess what is hidden in the valley of your heart and behind your eyes, where your tears start, in those reservoirs that hold your memories of having been wrong at the right time or having been right but at the wrong time, time after time. A priest has smudged your forehead with blessed ashes, but not all sin burns away until you voice repentance for the part you played in wounding others. Find an ear willing neither to soothe nor dismiss, but to hear the old, nagging music of sad experience bottled up inside you.

And if you are alone, finding no one to listen, then in your solitude pray in the shadow of the Most High and abide in the shade of your Almighty  the God in whom you trust. This from Psalm 91 is sung every night at Compline by Cistercian communities everywhere. Gods mercy and over-shadowing are, they know, the only holy alchemy that turns every wound you inflicted into a useful blessing for the one you should have loved but did not or could not.

There is an ancient Cistercian prayer from the Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary that strikes the right notes for Lent and every season in which you desire more than ever to cling to Jesus, who was also tempted but could only love His Fathers Will. Pray this song during Lent alone or with others, but always in the name of the Church:

I have found him whom my soul loves: I grasp him and will not let him go. I embrace you, my Jesus, and experience the joy of my love. I encompass you, the treasure of my heart, from whom I have all that is mine. May my mind feel the power of your presence. May it taste how sweet you are, so that captivated by your love, I might not seek anything outside of you, and love nothing except because of you.

You are my King: forgive my indigence and tribulation. You are my Judge: forgive my sins and have mercy on me. You are my Physician: heal my infirmities. You are the Bridegroom of my soul: wed me to you for all eternity. You are my Guide and my Defender: keep me at your side. You became a Victim for my sake: I will sacrifice to you an oblation of praise. You are my Redeemer: redeem my soul from the power of hell and save me. You are my God and my All. What is there to seek in the heavens? Apart from you, what do I desire on earth? You are the God of my heart and my souls fate, O God, for all eternity! *

Praying these words alone and together in the name of the Church during Lent and remembering the whole world and all human beings at war within it, let us enable hope in one another, hiding our grim faces, trusting that our Father is Most Merciful and Compassionate, that our Lord overcame all human temptations to abandon the world He had created, and that the Holy Spirit is forever near us, in our mouths, so in our hearts.

* Westmalle, Ex Typographia OCSO, 1930: 226-227, under the heading Pia suspiria post Missam.

Jonathan Montaldo
Two thousand five hundred years ago Aeschylus said that the first casualty of war is truth. This statement can be repeated for every war that has been fought since then, and the war in Ukraine is no exception. The first casualty is the truth of each individual, of communities, of peaceful coexistence. All have been slaughtered in the name of interests masked by historical and identity-based justifications which, sooner or later, will be unmasked by time and its inexorable judgment. In the meantime, however, people are dying, the innocent are suffering and terror is spreading.

In this tragic situation taking place in the heart of Europe, and even more so in the many wars that are quickly forgotten because they are being fought in areas considered irrelevant to geopolitical arrangements, information has a fundamental role to play. This was strikingly recalled last year when the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to two journalists committed to seeking the truth in dramatically difficult contexts. A war (and its horrors) somehow does not exist for the rest of humanity if there is no one to tell the story.

We must therefore be grateful to those journalists who, in these days, keep us informed from Ukraine, even risking their own lives. They tell us about the suffering of the population, giving voice to those who otherwise could not make the world feel their pain and despair due to a war that is as senseless as it is ferocious in its effects. It is essential that journalists are able to continue to work freely and safely and report without hindrance, stressed ebu, the European Broadcasting Union, which brings together European public radio and television stations. Supporting media freedom must be a priority, it added, not despite these difficult circumstances, but because of them.

It is not uncommon for reporters in conflict areas to be touched by what they see and hear and to share these emotions in their reports and articles. This does not detract from the quality of their work. Far from it. It is the empathy of those who, while exercising a profession that requires objectivity and a certain detachment, cannot, and indeed must not, remain indifferent to the suffering and stories of people. Pope Francis has repeatedly recognised this role of journalists, defining it as a mission  especially those who wear out the soles of their shoes to meet people where and how they are. Sometimes, this mission can cost their lives, as happened to Anna Politkovskaya, who was murdered for reporting on the horror of another war, the one in Chechnya. Fifteen years have passed since that murder, but her spirit has not been killed, the spirit that made her say (and bear witness to, with her work) that a doctors job is to heal patients, a journalists is to write what he or she sees.

By Alessandro Gisotti
The Pope, through the Office of Papal Charities, has sent a first batch of aid and medical supplies destined for Ukraine to the Basilica of Santa Sofia in Rome, where donations are being organized to be sent to the eastern European nation. A point of reference for the Ukrainian community in Rome, the Basilica of Sant Sofia is where many come to share their sorrows and ask for practical needs.

For several days now, trucks loaded with food and basic necessities have been departing from the Basilica to bring aid to the people who have been living through the dramatic consequences of the war.

Vehicles have been patiently lining up in the forecourt of the Basilica, waiting to unload the material collected. This concrete gesture of closeness to the people of Ukraine arose spontaneously soon after the outbreak of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine.

The Holy Fathers donations were brought to the Basilica of Santa Sofia by Cardinal Konrad Krajewski, Almoner of the Office of Papal Charities, in response to an appeal made by the Ukrainian community, asking for medical supplies. The first batch of the Popes gift, containing among other things syringes, plasters and disinfectants, will be followed by a another one with medicines.

Donations will be delivered to Lviv, the city closest to the Polish border. The Vatican is ready to help those in need, the Cardinal said, without looking at nationality distinctions but at the man in need. He added that nuncios living in the most difficult areas will also receive sums of money intended to support their communities. The Nuncio in Romania, who is supporting Ukrainian refugees hosted in various structures, was the most recent nuncio to receive aid.
Your country has its own dignity, its own freedom, and cannot be reduced to a battlefield, the Holy Father stressed in his discourse to Representatives of the Churches in Iraq, whom he received in audience on Monday, 28 February, to mark the anniversary of his Apostolic Journey in the Middle Eastern country in March 2021. In his address, the Holy Father recalled that Iraq is the cradle of civilization and of Christianity, remarking that it has also been a land of exiles since biblical times. Referring to the tragic events of these recent years, he expressed his deep gratitude to the Christian communities of Iraq for their courageous witnesses of fidelity to the Gospel amid persecution. The following is a translation of Pope Francis words.

Dear Brothers in Christ,

I

t is with emotion and joy that I meet you, representatives of the different Christian Churches in Iraq, here in Rome again, one year after my unforgettable visit to your country. Through you, I wish to extend my cordial greetings to all the pastors and faithful of your communities, borrowing the words of the Apostle Paul: Grace to you and peace from God (Rm 1:7).

Your lands are lands of beginnings: beginnings of the ancient civilizations of the Middle East, beginnings of the history of salvation, beginnings of the history of Abrahams vocation. They are also lands of Christian beginnings: of the first missions, thanks to the preaching of the Apostle Thomas, of Addai and Mari and their disciples, not only in Mesopotamia, but as far as the Far East. But they are also lands of exiles: think of the exile of the Jews at Nineveh, and that of Babylon, of which we are told by the prophets Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Daniel, who sustained the hope of the people uprooted from their land. But many Christians in your region have also been forced into exile: the persecutions and wars that have followed one another up to the present day have forced many of them to emigrate, bringing the light of the Christian East to the West.

Dear Brothers, if I recall these episodes from the biblical and Christian history of your country, it is because they are not foreign to the present situation. Your communities belong to the most ancient history of Iraq and they have known truly tragic moments, but they have offered courageous witnesses of fidelity to the Gospel. For this I thank God and I express my gratitude to you. I bow before the suffering and martyrdom of those who have preserved the faith, even at the expense of their lives. Just as the blood of Christ, shed out of love, brought reconciliation and made the Church flourish, may the blood of these many martyrs of our time, belonging to different traditions but united in the same sacrifice, be a seed of unity among Christians and a sign of a new springtime of faith.

Your Churches, through the fraternal relations which exist between them, have established many links of collaboration in the field of pastoral care, formation and service to the poorest. Today there is a deep-rooted communion among the countrys Christians. I would like to encourage you to continue along this path, so that, through concrete initiatives, constant dialogue and, what is most important, fraternal love, progress may be made towards full unity. In the midst of a people that has suffered so much division and discord, may Christians shine as a prophetic sign of unity in diversity.

Dear friends, with you I wish to state once again that it is not possible to imagine Iraq without Christians. This conviction is based not only on religious foundations, but also on social and cultural evidence. Iraq without Christians would no longer be Iraq, because Christians, along with other believers, contribute strongly to the countrys specific identity as a place where co-existence, tolerance and mutual acceptance have flourished ever since the first centuries; a place that has the vocation of demonstrating, in the Middle East and throughout the world, peaceful coexistence in diversity. Therefore, no stone should be left unturned in ensuring that Christians continue to feel that Iraq is their home, and that they are citizens in their own right called to give their contribution to the land where they have always lived (cf. Common Statement of Pope Francis and the Catholicos-Patriarch Mar Gewargis III, 9 November 2018, no. 6). For this reason, dear Brothers, Pastors of the People of God, always be devoted and diligent in caring for and comforting your flock. Be close to the faithful entrusted to your care, bearing witness first and foremost by example and with the conduct of evangelical life to the closeness and tenderness of Jesus the Good Shepherd.

You, Christians of Iraq, who from apostolic times have lived side by side with other religions, have, today especially, another indispensable vocation: to make efforts to ensure that religions may be at the service of fraternity. In fact, the different religions, based on their respect for each human person as a creature called to be a child of God, contribute significantly to building fraternity and defending justice in society (Encyclical Letter Fratelli Tutti, 271). You are well aware that interreligious dialogue is not a matter of mere courtesy. No, it goes beyond that. It is not a matter of negotiation or diplomacy. No, it goes beyond that. It is a path of brotherhood towards peace, a path that is often arduous but which, especially in these times, God asks for and blesses. It is a path that takes patience and understanding. But it makes us grow as Christians, because it requires openness of heart and the commitment to be, in a practical sense, peacemakers.

To engage in dialogue is also the best antidote to extremism, which is a danger for the followers of any religion and a grave threat to peace. However, it takes work to eradicate the root causes of fundamentalism, of these forms of extremism that take root more easily in contexts of material, cultural and educational poverty, and are fuelled by situations of injustice and vulnerability, such as those left behind by wars. And how many wars, how many conflicts, how many harmful interferences have afflicted your country! It is in need of autonomous and cohesive development, without being damaged by external interests, as has sadly happened all too often. Your country has its own dignity, its own freedom, and cannot be reduced to a battlefield.

Dear brothers in Christ, know that you are in my heart and in the prayers of very many people. Do not be discouraged: while so many, at various levels, threaten peace, let us not avert our eyes from Jesus, Prince of Peace, and let us not tire of invoking his Spirit, maker of unity. Saint Ephraim, following in the footsteps of Saint Cyprian, compared the unity of the Church to Christs incorruptible and undivided tunic (cf. Hymns on the Crucifixion, VI, 6). Although he was brutally stripped of his garments, his tunic remained intact. In history too, the Spirit of Jesus preserves the unity of believers, despite our divisions. Let us ask the Most Holy Trinity, the model of true unity which is not uniformity, to strengthen communion among us and among our Churches. In this way we will be able to respond to the Lords heartfelt desire that his disciples be one (Jn 17:21)!

I thank you most sincerely for coming and I now propose that we pray the Lords Prayer together, each in his own language.
The Holy See has called for the opening of humanitarian corridors in the face of the increasing and concerning number of civilian casualties. Speaking at the Joint Launch of the Humanitarian Flash Appeal and the Regional Refugee Response Plan for Ukraine on Tuesday, 1 March, Archbishop Gabriele Caccia, Permanent Observer of the Holy See to the United Nations, noted that the number of people fleeing ongoing hostilities and crossing into neighbouring countries is fast approaching 700,000, and is likely to increase.

Reiterating Pope Francis appeal at the Sunday Angelus, he stressed the urgency of opening humanitarian corridors, as well as ensuring full, safe, and unhindered access to humanitarian workers so they can deliver assistance to civilian populations in need. Protecting civilian populations, as well as humanitarian personnel, in accordance with international humanitarian law, must be the priority, he said.

Archbishop Caccia thanked the States that are accepting refugees in a spirit of solidarity as well as those offering the much-needed humanitarian assistance. Welcoming, protecting and assisting the hundreds of thousands of refugees is a common responsibility, he said. At the same time, he emphasized that efforts to respond to the needs of those fleeing for safety must respect the principle of non-refoulement (which prohibits States from transferring or removing individuals from their jurisdiction or effective control when there are substantial grounds for believing that the person would be at risk of irreparable harm upon return), as well as shared obligations under international law.

The Archbishop then joined other Member States in calling for an immediate cessation of hostilities and a return to diplomacy and dialogue. He also noted the efforts of the Catholic Church and its institutions, and the help they are providing to thousands in need.

Taking up the same appeal at the 11th Emergency Special Session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York on Wednesday, 2 March, Archbishop Caccia recalled that the United Nations was founded to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war and live together in peace with one another as good neighbors.

He expressed the Holy Sees conviction that there is always time for goodwill, as well as room for negotiation and wisdom that can prevent the predominance of partisan interest, safeguard the legitimate aspirations of everyone, and spare the world from the folly and horrors of war.
The History of the Evangelization of Japan. The Marega Collection of the Vatican Apostolic Library, was presented at the Holy See Press Office on Tuesday morning, 1 March. The Marega documents will enable historians to better understand the presence of Christianity in Japan from the 17th to the 19th century, and to learn about Japanese history. The presentation included addresses from Cardinal Jose Tolentino de Mendonca, Librarian and Archivist of the Holy Roman Church, Msgr. Cesare Pasini, Prefect of the Vatican Apostolic Library, Dr. Delio Vania Proverbio, Scriptor Orientalis, Dr. Angela Nunez Gaitan, head of the Restoration Laboratory and Professor Silvio Vita, Kyoto University of Foreign Studies. The following is a translation of the discourses given by Cardinal Jose Tolentino de Mendonca and Msgr. Cesare Pasini. The other speeches may be found on: https://press.vatican.va.

Cardinal Jose Tolentino de Mendonca

The cultural and ecclesial significance of

the Marega project

Martin Scorseses Silence (2016) was the last of the three film adaptions of the eponymous historical novel by Japanese writer Shusaku Endo. The story of two young Jesuits who covertly landed in Japan in the aftermath of the Shimabara massacre (1637) is the starting point for the description of the tragedy of the persecution of Japanese Christians during the Edo period, when, having effectively ousted the emperor, the Tokugawa shogun took full power in the Land of the Rising Sun and promulgated the Kinkyo-rei, a ban on Christianity in Japan, in 1612. When the American director visited the Vatican Library in November 2016, he was shown one of its precious holdings: ancient Japanese documents dating from that period (1603-1868) which take us back to that precise historical situation. These documents are the focus and subject of this press conference.

As history would have it, the largest feudal archive outside Japan is now preserved here in the Library. These papers, collected in the 1930s by the Salesian Mario Marega, were the starting point in 2013 for the largest cultural cooperation project undertaken by the Library in recent years. This project has seen the Library and the Japanese National Institute for the Humanities undertake the study, restoration and cataloguing of thousands of documents (about 14,000), with dozens of Japanese researchers spending long periods of time in the Library each year. During these years of fruitful collaboration between the Japanese team and officials and researchers of the Vatican Apostolic Library, several conferences and meetings were held in Rome and in Japan. In 2019, the first promoter of this initiative, the then Librarian Cardinal Raffaele Farina, was awarded the Order of the Rising Sun, conferred to him by the Emperor of Japan, for his important work in favour of the reordering of historical documents of the Edo period collected by the Salesian missionary Don Mario Marega. But one must also note the extremely intense and decisive activity of the scientific staff of the Vatican Library as a whole. And I would like to mention three names in particular: the Prefect, Msgr. Cesare Pasini, the scriptor orientalis, Professor Delio Proverbio, who assiduously accompanied this project, and Dr. Angela Nunez Gaitan, head of the Vatican Librarys Restoration Laboratory.

The considerable scientific activity developed in recent years around the Marega Collection is an unmistakable mark of the international interest it has inspired. I think, for instance, of the various publications, among which I recall the two latest titles: Naohiro Ota, Reading Japanese documents from the Marega Collection. An introductory manual with selected texts and Kazuo Otomo & Naohiro Ota, The Marega Collection in the Vatican Library. A Comprehensive Study.

Furthermore, by opening its archival fonds, both modern and contemporary, to the investigation of researchers, the Vatican Apostolic Archive is providing a considerable contribution to the study of relations between Japan and the Holy See.

The documents preserved in the Marega Collection are fundamental for reconstructing the history of Japanese Christianity. But their historical value goes far beyond this context. The documentation produced constitutes a nuanced portrait of Japanese society in the premodern era.

Msgr. Cesare Pasini

A significant collaboration between

the Vatican Library and

Japanese institutions

The Marega Project relates to an early history of Christianity in Japan and a modern history of discoveries and rediscoveries, starting in the 1930s, when Salesian Mario Marega collected many documents that were at risk of being lost, and sent them to Rome. The greater part arrived at the Vatican Library in 1953. It was not immediately inventoried, like other collections that require careful and complex verification; the wait was prolonged, also because the material was in a language that was not immediately accessible (Japanese) and, moreover, in an ancient script that required special palaeographic skills. The opportunity to bring them back to light came in 2011 when Dr. Delio Proverbio, scriptor orientalis of the Library, took them into his care, enabling them to be appreciated.

To proceed, it was necessary to create close collaboration with the Japanese world and with the skills that only its research institutes could offer. In 2013, a joint project was established between the Vatican Library and, for Japan, with the Institutes for Research in the Humanities ( nihu ), specifically with Professor Kazuo Otomo, project director, with the Historiographical Institute of the University of Tokyo and with the Oita Prefecture Ancient Sages Historical Archives. On the Japanese side, the Kyoto Italian School of East Asian Studies, with Professor Silvio Vita, and the municipality of Usuki, the locality in Kyushu where most of the documents come from, also participated in the project. The Salesian University also participated on the Italian side.

The project involved the reorganization of the material, its conservation and the restoration of part of it because of its precarious condition when it was collected by Marega, its high-definition digitization as part of the project to digitize the Vatican Librarys 80,000 manuscripts, the cataloguing of the documents and the preparation of a database that would allow access to individual documents and a description of them. The project is now complete. But we are not stopping here: research and studies on the documents made available to everyone (to all those who can read them!) are now beginning, and highly constructive contacts with the Japanese institutions continue.

It is important to recall the profound symbolic significance of the collaboration between the Japanese institutions and the Vatican, and all the people involved. By working together on documents that bear witness to a persecution that lasted two and a half centuries, it was possible to build a common experience, which took the form of an exchange of expertise and which was broadened and deepened in mutual knowledge and esteem. Even where history has inflicted wounds or known contrasts or pitted one against the other, we can build understanding and acceptance, harmony and respect, by researching and investigating, explaining and contextualizing, and respectfully remembering everyone and everything. And we come to know the lives of peoples even better. Not a random message, least of all in our times.
Ottumwa, IA (52501)

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VIENNA, March 4 (Xinhua) -- Austria's gross domestic product (GDP) grew by 4.5 percent year-on-year in real terms in 2021 to 403.4 billion euros (440.2 billion U.S. dollars), Statistics Austria said here on Friday.

The country's economic expansion last year was driven by growth in almost all sectors, said Tobias Thomas, director general of Statistics Austria.

The manufacturing sector registered the strongest annual growth of 8.7 percent, while the sectors of business-related services and trade rose 7.7 percent and 7.3 percent, respectively.

However, accommodation and gastronomy shrank by 15.9 percent in 2021 compared to the previous year due to the COVID-19-induced lockdown measures.

Thomas said Austria's economy last year failed to return to pre-pandemic levels. The country's GDP in 2021 was 97.4 percent of that in 2019. 
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The Four Lakes Task Force (FLTF) is seeking an additional $10 million through a grant and/or bond in order to continue progress on restoring the Tittabawassee River dams and their corresponding lakes in Midland and Gladwin counties.

This comes as an update to the task force's May 2021 restoration plan. It still anticipates receiving state funding.

The FLTF was required to hold a public hearing regarding its intentions to comply with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), a hearing which preceded its regular board meeting scheduled for Thursday at the Grace A. Dow Memorial Library in Midland.

Now, the FLTF is requesting resolutions from Midland and Gladwin counties to approve its plan of financing and to request "full faith and credit" as secondary security for these potential notes. This comes after the FLTF board approved a resolution declaring intent for seeking the funds and voted to approve the financing plan.

The FLTF, a delegated authority for the two counties, has the intention of receiving a bond, loan and/or grant after anticipating it may need more funding when the restoration plan was developed and shared with the four lakes communities last May. The board plans to meet again on March 31. The action it takes at that meeting will depend on the potential state funding.

State Sen. Jim Stamas, R-Midland, of the 36th District and chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, was virtually in attendance while sitting at his office desk in Lansing to update the residents. He said the state does not typically 100% fund a proposed bill package. In addition, FLTF Dave Kepler said this is probably one of the largest monetary requests to the state of Michigan in recent times.

"I feel strong that we will see something soon," Stamas said.

The property owners near the Secord, Smallwood, Sanford and Wixom lake communities voiced concerns and points of support to the board during the public comment portion of the gathering.

Thursday's regular board meeting

More chaos unfolded as FLTF forged forth with its efforts to restore the lakes. On Thursday, FLTF said it will need an additional $10 million as it awaits state support. That left a lot of uncertainty among some residents during the board meeting.

In terms of regular business, the board members talked about the overall recovery progress.

Kepler said this includes winter shoreline stabilization projects that secured eight homes on Wixom Lake and 20 homes on Sanford Lake. To date, the task force has completed 12 projects and has protected two miles of shoreline and 89 homes. A cost of $9.05 million in total spending for this effort was paid for by the National Resource Conservation Service and the FLTF.

The group has completed post-dam stabilization on Secord, Smallwood and Edenville dams and is in progress of completing the Sanford dam project. The cost for these stabilization projects is expected to total $25.3 million.

The total spending estimate for flood debris removal is $500,000 to date. This includes removal from the Sanford Dam, Sanford Village, and Sanford Lake County Park. These projects are complete. Work is starting on River Trails County Park with Midland County.

Kepler talked about the Secord and Smallwood stabilization progress, noting that most of the work has been completed and there is a total investment of $2 million. Engineering for the final restoration is underway, with the FLTF engineers finalizing alternative options and in the permitting process.

The Edenville Dam stabilization progress on the Tobacco River side is expected to need a $4.5 million investment through NRCS and the state of Michigan, Kepler said. Portions have been demolished, other parts have been stabilized with concrete, and the tailrace (the water channel below the dam) is stable.

The Edenville Dam work on the Tittabawassee side is expected to cost $7.4 million. The work includes the embankment being stabilized between M-30 and the dam, demolition of the former spillway, and restoring the tailrace and downstream riverbanks. It also includes the I-wall being installed through the breachway, finishing the breachway grading, and seeding by late spring this year.

Sanford Dam stabilization is expected to be completed in the fall. There are three phases to the project. The first phase is expected to be completed this month, including installing the temporary bridge and prepping the site for construction. Phase two is the spillway modification, which includes partially demolishing the spillway, constructing a new mass concrete weir, removing the spillway gate and re-routing the river to its natural path.

The third phase includes driving steel sheet pile through the breachway, placing a riprap (used to protect soil) downstream along the riverbank, and removing sediment from the river.

FLTF member Adam Beebe talked about the safety booms that will be added this spring or summer to all the dams. They will provide safety for recreation and will be engineered to sustain debris and ice. Beebe said the cost to cover all four dams with the safety booms is $1.2 million.

Kepler said the timeframe for the lakes to come back has not changed.

Smallwood and Secord lakes are expected to return in 2024. Sanford Lake is expected to return in 2025 and Wixom Lake in 2026.

The restoration planning cost estimates are $25 million for Secord Lake, $18 million for Smallwood Lake, $121 million for Wixom Lake and $51 million for Sanford Lake.

Some residents are all for the lakes coming back at any cost, such as Secord Lake resident Jeff Sorensen.

One, we have a plan, two, there is an end game and three, we have people capable of doing the work, he said at the meeting.

Karen Licquia disagreed.

I dont want any of this. I dont understand any of you people," she said.

I didnt make this mess and I dont want to clean it up."

Resident Elaine Arnold was supportive of the board.

I think you are doing all you can to restore what was ours in the first place, she said.

Other residents, like Allen Dodge, who lives on Wixom Lake, wants to see the lake come back, but he is not sure at what cost. He fears the money needed from residents will force him out of his 400-square-foot cabin with two bedrooms which he planned to retire in.

Do I just have to walk away now? Dodge asked, wondering if should do that or wait to be taxed out of his home later when the Special Assessment District (SAD) tax comes due.

Sanford Lake resident Darin Lunsford said there are three types of residential approaches: those who live on the back lots; those like him who dont mind paying but dont want to pay a different amount every three years, such as the special assessment district; and those who are about doing whatever it takes to bring the lakes back.

Endre Sefcsik, of Wixom Lake, said he wants to see more oversight on the project. He works on a website titled, No-2-SAD.

He said county commissioners would balk over the sheriff asking for $200 for bullets, but they will easily hand over thousands of dollars to the FLTF.

The FLTF notes there was no action taken related to the Four Lakes Special Assessment district at the Thursday meeting.

How do we know at the end of this we wont have to pay another $250 million? Sefcsik asked. There needs to be oversight.
A 26-year-old woman was found dead from a gunshot wound on Thursday by Midland Police Department at her residence in Forest Glen.

Officers were dispatched to the 200 block of Redwood Circle at 8:25 a.m. Thursday in response to a missing person report filed by the woman's father.

A 34-year-old man, who was the suspect in the apparent shooting of the Midland woman, was found dead later Thursday at a residence in Bay City. Police said he died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Officers believe he was dating the woman.

The names of the victim and suspect were not immediately released by the Midland Police Department.

As of Friday afternoon, the police were still withholding the names.

"Out of respect to the families involved, we don't feel it is an appropriate time to release the names," MPD Community Resource Officer Brennon Warren said on Friday.

Warren said the Midland woman had recently moved to the area.

He was able to confirm that the children who lived with the victim at the Forest Glen residence have been accounted for. He said the children are safe and staying with family members at this time.

The incident is still under investigation.

Those with further information can contact the Midland Police Departments Detective Bureau at 989-631-4244.
Director of Content and Operations

Spencer McKee is OutThere Colorado's Director of Content and Operations. In his spare time, Spencer loves to hike, rock climb, and trail run. He's on a mission to summit all 58 of Colorado's fourteeners and has already climbed more than half.
Paducah, KY (42003)

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Thunderstorms. A few storms may be severe. High 76F. Winds SE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 80%..

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LONDON, March 3 (Xinhua) -- Homeless people in the United States had to grapple with rising gas prices as the economic fallout of the Ukrainian crisis rippled, The Guardian has reported.

Gas prices grew sharply in the past year and were expected to continue climbing as the ongoing crisis further disrupts oil supply, according to the British newspaper on Wednesday.

Citing the American Automobile Association, the newspaper said a gallon of gas cost an average of 3.6 U.S. dollars in the United States as of Tuesday, compared with 2.7 dollars one year ago.

The rising prices were "disproportionately hurting low-income Americans," the newspaper added.

Louie Vashiomiattii, who lived in the State of Washington, told the Guardian that he moved into his van about two months ago as he could not afford a new apartment.

"It's the most stressful thing I deal with every day," Vashiomiattii said. "I didn't realize how much gas would cost when I moved into my van."

He spends about 40 dollars a day on gas, with much of it used to keep warm through the winter, The Guardian said. 
Antony Starr Arrested for Drunkenly Assaulting a 21-Year-Old Chef in Spain

By Mike Redmond | Pajiba Love | March 3, 2022 |

Antony Starr, best known as Homelander on The Boys, was reportedly arrested in Spain for drunkenly assaulting a 21-year-old chef and pulling the Do you know who I am? card in the process. According to reports, hes already confessed to the assault and was sentenced to 12 months in prison, which will be suspended as long as he reimburses the victim in 72 hours. All of this went down on Wednesday, yet its received almost zero attention in the U.S. trades. Apparently, they dont know who Starr is either. (Daily Mail)

Hulus The Girl From Plainville starring Elle Fanning skirts a tricky edge of shock and catastrophe in first trailer. (Lainey Gossip)

Suzanne Somers says the ThighMaster made how much?! (Dlisted)

Matthew McConaughey didnt get a hair transplant. He uses a special ointment. (Celebitchy)

From Jen: The Kids Are All Right (mostly, but protect the ones who need our help, please):

A student just emailed these photos from Largo High Schools walk out in opposition to the #DontSayGay bill. These walk outs are happening across the State of FL!  pic.twitter.com/vmwz3WeVh2  Rep. Anna V. Eskamani  (@AnnaForFlorida) March 3, 2022

From Petr:

Look up "The Movies" in the dictionary and you'll find this photo pic.twitter.com/MxGUlQWBo0  Will Sloan (@WillSloanEsq) March 3, 2022

From Roxana:

I will never tire of hearing these Terrence Malick stories.  pic.twitter.com/AhRakCOdhh  InSession Film (@InSessionFilm) March 3, 2022

Shutting down RT America is good, actually. (Daily Beast)

Why Captain Picard is still single, based on all available evidence. (Polygon)

Joe Biden and Gretchen Carlson work together to ban sexual harassment cases from going to arbitration. Damn, dudes out here knocking out a pandemic, world war, and somehow pulling off a rare unicorn of bipartisanship. Its almost like he was a good candidate that we dont have to constantly say wasnt our first choice. Food for thought. (Deadline)

A new Phoebe Waller-Bridge Amazon series is coming. (Variety)

Do you do something to commemorate your travels? New Cannonballer anana likes to visit a local bookstore and buy a book as a memento. She was thrilled to find E. Shaver Booksellers in Savannah, Georgia had an excellent drama section. "Also, there were cats in the bookstore, so I had to buy something to support the kitties care and keeping." (Cannonball Read 14)

 5 Shows After Dark: 'The Dropout' Premiere Hulu, 'Our Flag Means Death' Premiere HBO Max | Jon Stewart Praises the News Media's Coverage of Ukraine, Except for That 'S--thead' Tucker Carlson 

Mike is a Staff Contributor living in Pennsyltucky. You can follow him on Twitter.

Header Image Source: Amazon
Palestine, TX (75801)

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Variable clouds with strong thunderstorms. Damaging winds, large hail and possibly a tornado with some storms. High 78F. Winds SSW at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 90%. Rainfall near an inch..

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Several state attorneys general have initiated a probe to investigate the effects of the popular app TikTok on children and teens' physical and mental health.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta and seven other attorney generals from Florida, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Nebraska, New Jersey, Tennessee, and Vermont will look into whether TikTok, an app from a China-based company, is putting children at risk and violating consumer protection laws.

According to press releases, the probe will look into the negative impact of TikTok on children and whether or not TikTok is aware of these harmful effects of the app on its young users. The investigation will focus on the strategies that the app employs to increase the time spent by young users on the app and their techniques to boost engagement among children and teens.

Endangering physical and mental health of young users

Several US lawmakers and federal agencies have criticized the app saying that the promotion of content of TikTok endangers both the physical and mental health of its young users. According to 2021 statistics, about 80 million active users of TikTok in the United States and about 1 billion users worldwide. Youngsters aged 10 to 19 years old make up the largest demographic among the platform's users.

Attorney General Bonta said that children are growing in the social media age and that they may feel the burden of living up to the unreasonable expectations or filtered versions of reality that they see on social media, particularly on the famous platform. Bonta explained that this could have a significant toll on children's mental health, and the investigation will center on determining the management's level of involvement and awareness regarding these harms. The probe will also determine if the social platform is violating the law.

Late last year, a nationwide probe was also done to investigate Meta, the parent company of Facebook. According to Bonta, Meta promoted Instagram, another platform under the parent company, to young users. Promoting social media use and platforms for kids under the age of 13 is harmful to their physical and mental health. This is why 44 attorneys general last year urged the social media giant to drop their plans of creating an Instagram version for younger users. Due to widespread criticism, Meta announced that they would pause the development of the said social media platform.

Read Also: Father Kills 3 daughters and a Chaperone Inside Sacramento Church

Features to help parents and young viewers

It can be recalled that the Trump administration wanted to ban TikTok and WeChat over issues on security. TikTok, which ByteDance, a Chinese company, owns, had to resolve concerns over data collection and national security for the prohibitions to be lifted.

Child safety advocates are concerned about algorithms feeding inappropriate video content to their young viewers. TikTok defended that they have features in place to help parents and young people moderate what they see on the app and how long they can use it. Some features for adults, such as direct messaging, are not available for children. The social media platform has also tightened its privacy practices for minor users.

Related Article: Lucky Find: Couple Finds Pearl Worth Thousands in a Clam while Dining
Photo: (Photo : PAU BARRENA/AFP via Getty Images)

A group of school kids was allegedly detained by the Russian police for expressing their opposition against the Ukrainian invasion. The children were caught carrying "No War" signs as they laid some flowers at the Ukrainian embassy in Moscow.

According to reports, photographs and videos of the school kids behind bars, who were below 12 years old, were shared by Russian opposition leaders like Ilya Yashin on social media. He implied in his post that Pres. Vladimir Putin's men had a cruel response towards the anti-war protests.

This came after more than a million Russian citizens have signed an online petition to stop the war. More than 7,000 adults also stormed the streets demanding for Putin to end the Ukrainian invasion.

  :       .   , .   . pic.twitter.com/9IprkFu5VE    (@IlyaYashin) March 1, 2022

Read Also: Ukraine Pres. Volodymyr Zelenskyy Lent His Voice to Paddington Bear in Beloved Kids' Movie

Kids Cried for their Moms

Some of the children cried for their mothers as they were detained in jail. Sociologist Alexandra Arkhipov said that those arrested were Sofya Gladkova, 7, David Petrov, 7, Matvey Petrov, 9, Liza Gladkova, 11, and Gosha Petrov, 11. They went to the Ukrainian embassy with mothers Ekaterina Zavizion and Olga Alter who were also jailed by the police, per Daily Mail.

The authorities also took the mothers' phones and were told that their children could be placed in social care if they continued with the protests. It's unclear, however, how those detained were allowed to speak in the viral videos but one of the mothers was able to relay that the police does not want the people gathering in one space.

Zavizion said that she decided to take action after watching the videos of the Ukrainian invasion. She said she could not pretend that the inhumane acts against their neighbor were not happening.

The parents said that they had planned on a peaceful protest to honor the memory of the civilians, including children, that have been killed in the bombings in Ukraine. They brought her kids and their friends along because they wanted to teach the children not to be indifferent to the injustices.

It is understood that the kids and the moms were detained overnight.

Parents Will Be Blamed

Yashin said that the propaganda machine of Putin's government will likely put the blame on the parents for bringing their children to the streets to protest. He said, however, that it's normal for children to protest against the war because this is what they have learned in school. He also said that in his generation, his teachers have instilled in him and his classmates that the worst thing that can happen is war because peace should reign above all.

Meanwhile, school children in Russia are reportedly taught that the Ukraine invasion is necessary for their liberation. A directive from the Russian Ministry of Education indicated that a mandatory "All-Russian Open Lesson" was taking place in all government schools this week.

Manuals of the lesson plan included details of how Ukraine became a puppet of the U.S. government in 2014. The lesson also justified the genocide that happened in eastern Ukraine a few years ago as a peacekeeping operation.

Related Article: Ukraine Invasion: Young Mom Gives Birth to Daughter Inside Bomb Shelter
Photo: (Photo : Getty images )

Doctors at Cleveland Clinic, Ohio, perform fetal surgery to remove a rare heart tumor. The delicate operation involved partially removing the baby from his mother's womb at 26 weeks, removing the tumor, and placing the baby back in his mother's womb for ten more weeks before being born at full term, the Cleveland Clinic said in a statement. Today, the baby is doing well.

In 2021, Rylan Harrison Drinnon was diagnosed with intrapericardial teratoma with fetal hydrops in utero. Cleveland Doctors said it is an extremely rare condition leading to heart failure if left untreated.

Dr. Darrell Cass, director of Cleveland Clinic'sClinic's Fetal Surgery and Fetal Care Center, said that Cleveland Clinic is the second academic medical center globally that has performed this fetal surgery successfully with continued pregnancy and delivery.

Time was of the essence.

According to Cass, when the patient arrived at Cleveland Clinic, imaging tests showed that the tumor kept growing and the 'fetus' heart function deteriorated.

The tumor, which was the size of a peach pit, was constricting the left side of the fetus, cutting off circulation and causing an accumulation of fluid around the heart and other organs.

Doctors referred the parents to Cleveland Clinic for this particular case. A multidisciplinary team from Cleveland Clinic and Children's Clinic was formed to perform the surgery in May 2021 to address the tumor tissue.

The team, led by Dr. Hani Najm, Cleveland Clinic'sClinic's chair of pediatric and congenital heart surgery, made a "caesarian section-like incision" that exposed the mother's uterus. She then used ultrasound to locate the placenta and fetus. The team opened the uterus, lifted Ryan's arms to reveal his chest, then removed the tumor from the baby's beating heart before placing him back in the uterus. The procedure lasted 3  hours.

Read Also: Eight Additional Babies Sickened by Abbott Formula Powder Recall

As soon as doctors removed the tumor, the compression of the left atrium disappeared. The heart also showed a "nice" blood flow that was almost back to normal, Najm reported.

The Cleveland Clinic wrote that the baby and the mom recovered well. Baby Ryan was able to remain in the womb until near full term.

On July 13, ten weeks after the surgery, maternal-fetal medicine specialist Dr. Amanda Kalan, who attended the surgery, monitored Sam'sSam's aftercare and delivery of the healthy baby boy by C-section.

Cass then proudly announced the massive success of the team's operation. He also said that there was only one previous incidence similar to this documented in the world's medical literature.

According to Najm, the innovative fetal surgery gives hope to other families who may receive "similar devastating diagnosis."

Close heart monitoring

The doctors said that Ryan would likely need surgery to reposition his sternum, which did not heal properly in the womb. Doctors will closely monitor his heart health to ensure that the tumor does not reappear.

The parents are beyond grateful for the rare, lifesaving intervention.

Related Article: Mom Raises Awareness About Her Son'sSon's Rare Uncombable Hair Syndrome
Photo: (Photo : Daniel Berehulak/Getty Images)

A New York doctor will go to prison for three years for violently shaking his baby to death. Dr. Neiman Ramjattan, who worked as a cardiologist in Bellport, expressed his deep regrets for his reckless actions.

According to the Suffolk County News Release, the father admitted in court that he's a monster for what he did to his baby. He acknowledged that he was a jerk for hurting and killing his four-week-old son. Ramjattan also expressed deep remorse for forcefully shaking the infant that led to his broken legs and caused bleeding in his soft brain.

"I hurt my child," the father told the judge during the sentencing.

Read Also: Bus Driver Offers Students Money for COVID-19 Swabs on the Cheeks

Infant Was Hemorrhaging

In August 2020, Ramjattan was looking after his infant son who became fussy in his crib. In his frustration, the father picked up the boy and started violently shaking him without noticing that his legs broke.

The baby was brought to Stony Brook Hospital where he was treated for fractures and brain bleed. Doctors also determined that the baby was hemorrhaging thus he could not survive the extent of his injuries from the violent shaking.

The hospital alerted Child Protective Services on the baby's case, prompting the authorities to arrest the boy's father. Two months following his arrest, the court convicted Ramjattan of endangering the child's welfare and reckless assault.

Apart from this prison sentence, Justice Timothy Mazzei also ordered that Ramjattan must be subjected to supervised probation for another three years once he gets out of prison. His lawyers did not issue any statement after the sentencing.

Shaken Baby Syndrome

The case is but another incident of the shaken baby syndrome, a tragedy that victimizes more than 1,400 babies a year. Experts said that this is a serious form of abuse by frustrated parents or caregivers.

Babies are at risk of injuries or death from a violent shake because they still have underdeveloped and weak neck muscles. Some parents do not realize that if they shake their infants too much, even with no intention to harm, their large and heavy heads would move back and forth and cause a strain on their necks.

Thus, violently shaking a baby could lead to a hematoma, hemorrhage, direct trauma in the brain, breaking off of the nerve cell branches, and damage to the brain cells. The abuse may also lead to fractures in the skull, the ribs, the collarbone and the limbs given the fragile size of the baby.

Sadly, most cases of shaken baby syndrome are 100 percent preventable if only parents or caregivers are aware of the risks. Parents who are frustrated and stressed should instead walk away from the situation if they can't control a fussy and crying baby. It's better to seek help from someone trusted, with a calm demeanor, than to deal with the situation head-on.

Those minding the child must also check for indicators of why the baby can't stop crying. The baby could be sick and might need a doctor's attention.

Related Article: Shaken Baby Syndrome Lands Florida Babysitter in Court For Murder 37 Years Later
Photo: (Photo : Getty images )

Marine Sgt. Joshua Ashley was on duty in Afghanistan in 2012 when he was hit by an improvised exploding device and got killed. He was 23 and a military dog handler.

Before Joshua died, he told his sergeants that he wanted to adopt Sirius one day and bring him home. Sirius was his best friend, partner, and his other half.

After her son's death, Ashley took care of the dog until his last remaining days.

Weeks after her son's death, Ashley planned to bring Sirius home. However, since the dog was still young, they chose a family to let Sirius serve so he would not just sit home in the backyard. Ashley said the dog had another deployment, Today reported.

A hero's welcome

After the dog's second deployment in 2016, Sirius was allowed to go home to Ashley and her family.

Ashley said they gave the dog an actual retirement ceremony. After signing up the paperwork, Ashley took him to Dunkin Donuts for some treat. They then came back to Camp Lejeune to bid goodbye to everyone.

Sirius had his bouts of adjustments as well. He disliked other dogs and was anxious towards them. Ashley said she had to watch him closely anytime there were fireworks as he would get terrified.

After his second deployment, Sirius has injured his kennels. The injury was initially in his mouth. The treatment was expensive, and it required putting metal plates in his mouth.

The military spent thousands of dollars to get the dog well enough to send him to Ashley. The mom said they would probably put him down if she was not promised to her.

Living with Sirius was comforting. His son never had children, and he considered the dog his baby.

Ashley said that Sirius saved her, and she saved Sirius.

The dog's injury meant he could not bite, and he also required constant care. Ashley would liquefy his food and blend it every day. She did everything for him, significantly when his problems with his hips and back worsened. The dog had acupuncture CBD drops and moved to a one-story house. She also sold her car and brought a vehicle to accommodate the dog.

Read Also: Dog Microchip Reunites Zoey, lost for 12 Years, With Owner

Coming Home to Daddy

As time went on, it became clear that Sirius was suffering. Ashley would accompany him for walks, and she would have to carry Sirius home. At some point, the dog would relieve himself inside the house.

The mom called her oldest son, and he came over to help care for Sirius at night so Ashley could sleep.

It became clear to them that Sirius was in pain. They finally decided to call the vet to let him go to be with his dad.

On May 22, 2021, Ashley and her son took Sirius to the vet to put him to sleep.

Ashley said it was the hardest thing she had ever done in her life. She told Sirius that she was sorry and assured him that he would be with his dad.

Ashley left the room and cried in her car, but her son stayed with Sirius at his very last moments.

Channing Tatum's latest movie, "The Dog" is inspired by Josh, Ashley's and Sirius' stories.

Related Article: Passerby Did Not Only Rescue a Family from House Fire But Also Bought New Clothing, Other Essentials for Them
WASHINGTON, March 3 (Xinhua) -- COVID-19 "continues to spread rapidly throughout" detention centers run by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), threatening the lives of people detained across the nation, according to an attorney with the nonprofit American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

"ICE officials have known for months that they must provide booster shots to people in detention, but have failed to do so," Eunice Cho, senior staff attorney at the ACLU's National Prison Project, has recently said in a statement.

"ICE's callous failure to provide this necessary protection is cruel and unconstitutional," Cho alleged.

The ACLU and its legislative office in Washington, D.C. filed a lawsuit Tuesday on behalf of "medically vulnerable people detained" by the ICE "who have requested and been denied COVID-19 vaccine booster shots."

The lawsuit demands that the plaintiffs, who are medically vulnerable to severe illness and death in the event of infection, as well as all medically vulnerable people in ICE detention, be offered booster shots.

It was the second lawsuit the ACLU has filed to obtain booster shots for people held in immigration detention.

More than one out of every 20 people in ICE detention are currently infected with COVID-19, according to ACLU data.

It also claimed ICE has provided only a total of 1,436 boosters to people detained in ICE detention facilities over four months between November 2021 and Feb. 21, 2022, despite holding between 18,800 to 22,000 people on average daily.

Anna Sorokin, also known as Anna Delvey and now the subject of the popular Netflix series "Inventing Anna," is among the four named plaintiffs in the civil action against U.S. authorities and officials.

Sorokin, according to the ACLU lawsuit, said that she caught COVID-19 as a result of the ICE refusing her multiple requests for a booster shot.

A 31-year-old German woman convicted in 2019 of posing as a wealthy heiress to scam banks, hotels, and New York socialites, Sorokin was sentenced to four to 12 years in prison for her crimes and is presently detained by the ICE at a correctional facility in Goshen, New York, awaiting deportation to Germany, which she is legally contesting. 
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In late February Patently Apple posted a report titled "Ukraine's Minister of Digital Transformation Urges Apple's CEO to take action and stop selling products and services in the Russian Federation." With the Russian Ruble crashing due to the war in Ukraine, Apple had to stop selling products on their Russian online store as they had with Turkey when their currency crashed last November. It wasn't necessarily a move to assist Ukraine as it was a simple straight forward business decision to not lose money when a currency was in freefall.

We noted in our report that back in 2019 after Russia took over Crimea (Ukrainian territory), Russia demanded that Apple make a change to their Maps app to recognize Crimea as Russian territory and Apple complied.

This morning, Apple Maps now shows that Crimea is Ukrainian territory, a complete reversal as illustrated in the Apple Maps screenshot below.

(Click on image to Enlarge)

Although the change may only apply to Apple Maps outside of Russia, this is still a rather significant reversal.

In 2019 Vasily Piskaryov, chairman of the Duma security and anti-corruption committee, said Apple had complied with the Russian constitution. He further stated that representatives of the company were reminded that labelling Crimea as part of Ukrainian territory was a criminal offence under Russian law, according to Interfax news agency.

"There is no going back," Mr Piskaryov said. "Today, with Apple, the situation is closed - we have received everything we wanted."

The Maps change was first spotted by Mashable. The report was honest enough to note that it's unknown when the changes were actually made to Apple's apps. So it's unknown whether Apple recently made the change as an in-your-face move against Russia's invasion of Ukraine or a decision that was made a year ago or so to appease the international community's anger over the issue.

We'd like to think it's the former, but only time will tell if Apple will clarify the timing of the changes made.
Nokia, famous for phones that can shrug off a fall from several stories and maybe even a bullet or two, is making laptops. Well, sort of: in the same way that HMD Global is now the company merely licensing the Nokia line for modern Android phones, another company, OFF Global, is doing the same for the PureBook series of budget notebooks. At Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, TechAdvisors Dominic Preston hopped over to the PCWorld YouTube channel to check out these new affordable designs.

The PureBook Pro is on the higher end of the line, but thats still well within the budget category: Nokia is planning on selling these for around 700 euro when they reach the market later this year. At that price the company is aiming for the bread-and-butter sales of huge players like Dell, Acer, and HP. Even so, this design might turn some heads. Offered in both 15- and 17-inch models, the PureBook Pro will come with Core i3, Core i5, and Core i7 chips, all from Intels new 12th-gen P-series.

While the laptop offers just 8GB of RAM (definitely pokey for 2022), it has up to 512GB of storage, dual USB-C ports with charging at up to 65 watts, USB-A for older devices, and MicroSD for easily swapping files with a mobile device or camera. The 16:9 screens wont wow anyone, but at this price they dont really need to. The design is a bit chunky and plasticky according to Dominic, but the two-tone red and black styling on a minimal chassis isnt bad for the category.

OFF Global is launching the PureBook Pro in Europe, but a global license for the Nokia label (sans India) means we might be seeing these laptops in the US before too long.
The Donkorkrom Magistrate Court Presided over by His Worship Augustine Akus-Am has sentenced Benjamin Amaoko, an ex-convict, to six months in prison for posing as a staff of the Electricity Company of Ghana Limited (ECG) to defraud unsuspecting customers of the company.



He pleaded guilty to defrauding by false pretence and was sentenced to six months in prison in hard labour while his suspected accomplice, Michael Aledzi, a motorbike operator, who pleaded not guilty was remanded in police custody to reappear on March 15, 2022.



The court on Tuesday March 1, 2022 heard that Amoako, riding at the back of the motorbike of Aledzi went to a complainant in the cases house at Brubeng, near Donkorkrom in the Affram Palins North District, posing as an ECG disconnector on February 14, 2022.



The complainant, who was owing the ECG, then issued an amount of GHs200 to Amoako, to offset the amount and that prevented him from disconnecting his power supply. Amoako was therefore expected to settle bill and produce a receipt later.



The convict later resurfaced in Brubeng with the electricity bill without proper payment receipt and upon interrogation by the complainant, it resulted in exchange of words.



The complainant became suspicious and called his assembly member, who consequently informed the police to arrest Amoako. His alleged accomplice, Aledzi, managed to flee the scene.



Amoako was then arraigned before court and remanded in police custody while a bench warrant was issued for the arrest of Aledzi. Upon the arrest of Aledzi on Monday, the two were brought before court for prosecution by Chief Superintendent Samuel Entsua-Annan.



Meanwhile, the Eastern Region Public Relations Officer of the ECG, Mr. Emmanuel Halm, has advised the general public to desist from making payments to disconnectors and meter readers, who visit their house for special exercises, saying, such people are not mandated to collect cash on behalf of the company.



If we deploy disconnectors to customers premises, it is their duty is to disconnect the defaulting customers, and not to collect monies from them. The customer would then have to pay a reconnection fee to the company, before supply is restored to their premises. In any case, if ECG is undertaking a special exercise, we cause announcements and our disconnectors would visit the communities with bonded cashiers, who are mandated to receive monies on our behalf. They will issue receipts to customers as evidence of payments, anytime they receive your money, he said.



Customers should therefore take note that if you make any payment to ECG, you have to demand an instant official receipt. Without that, be sure that the money you are giving to that person cannot be accounted for. I therefore take this opportunity to advise our Cherished customers not to pay monies just to anyone but to only ECG accredited cashiers at our offices or those assigned with teams that usually visit their communities for special revenue mobilisation exercises, he added.



Information gathered from the district indicates that Amoako is on record to have posed as a disconnector of the company to dupe some other unsuspecting customers of the company. This prompted the District ECG official to mount a surveillance of his activities until his arrest

Source: Peacefmonline









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The COVID-19 National Trust Fund received about GH60 million in cash donations between April 2020 and December 31, 2021 to combat the pandemic, the administrator of the Fund, Dr William Collins Asare, has revealed.

So far, he said, GH50 million of the donations had been disbursed to deal with the pandemic.



In addition, donations received in kind, including vehicles, fuel coupons and non-perishable food items, amounted to about GH10.7 million, he said.



Dr Asare made this known at a public forum on the accountability gap in the COVID-19 responses of Ghana in Accra last Tuesday.



It was jointly organised by the Ghana Anti-Corruption Coalition (GACC) and the Economic Governance Platform.



The forum, attended by representatives of development partners and civil society organisations (CSOs), afforded the participants the opportunity to examine the findings of a research on bridging COVID-19 accountability gaps.



Details



Giving details, Dr Asare said funds were transferred to 23 public and private institutions, including schools, for sensitisation, as well as the provision of personal protective equipment (PPE).



There were also laboratory supplies, the provision of oxygen plants, among other items, to some health facilities, while funds were given to the Ebeye Yie Foundation for the training of hearing-impaired persons.



Other institutions covered under the exercise included the National Commission for Civic Education (NCCE), the Institute for Statistical, Social and Economic Research (ISSER), the Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research (NMIMR), Ingenius Africa Limited, the Kumasi Centre for Collaborative Research (KCCR), the Ghana Atomic Energy Commission (GAEC), the Judicial Service, the Ghana Police Service and the ARB Apex Bank.



Waning enthusiasm



According to the administrator, during the first four months of its establishment (April-July 2020), the fund received GH57 million in cash donations.



Additionally, he said, there were material contributions such as food and non-food items for subsequent distribution to relevant institutions and facilities.



Dr Asare further explained that other donations, including mechanical and solar hand-washing basins, as well as non-perishable food items such as biscuits and Indomie, were made.



Accountability



The Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee of Parliament, Mr James Klutse Avedzi, and the Director-General of the Internal Audit Agency, Dr Eric Oduro Osae, stressed the need for a water-tight accountability system to be put in place to ensure that individuals and public institutions in the country did not take advantage of pandemic situations such as the COVID-19 to enrich themselves.



While Mr Avedzi suggested that the Auditor General consider expenditure on COVID-19 as a separate project for auditing purposes and not to put it under the regular annual auditing of public institutions, Dr Osae entreated public institutions to strike a balance between financial audit and performance audit to be able to track effectively public expenditure, particularly in terms of service delivery.



Speaking to journalists later, Mr Avedzi said the government had budgeted about GH15.66 billion, as against $1.630 billion received from the Contingency Fund, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, to deal with the pandemic.



Research findings



Delivering the research findings, the Head of Programmes of the GACC, Mr Bright Sowu, said metropolitan, municipal and district assemblies (MMDAs) received an average of GH236,280 each for COVID-19-related activities in 2020.



According to him,the total amount spent on the 260 MMDAs was GH61 million.



Mr Sowu said per the findings of the research, there was no reported COVID-19 funding for MMDAs in 2021 and 2022.



He said the MMDAs reported that they were asked to use their District Assemblies Common Fund (DACF) for COVID-related activities.



He, however, observed that the DACF disbursement to MMDAs was irregular.









Source: graphiconline.com









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Dr Charles Kwowe Nyaaba, Head of Programmes and Advocacy, Peasant Farmers Association of Ghana (PFAG), says the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the economic sanctions on Russia are likely to worsen fertilizer shortage in the country.



The situation, he said, would adversely affect agriculture production if the government failed to take urgent contingency plans to secure enough fertiliser for farmers.



We are foreseeing that the fertilizer shortage we experienced in 2021 is likely to escalate this year because already the subsidised fertiliser price for the 25kg which was GH53.00 in 2021 is GH160.00 today. We know that most countries where fertilizer is manufactured get their natural gas from Russia and those countries have already placed economic bans on Russia, which means that the situation is going to be worse, he stressed.



Dr Nyaaba expressed these concerns in an interview with the Ghana News Agency on the sidelines of a gender sensitization workshop organized by PFAG with support from the International Budget Partnership for women peasant farmers in Bolgatanga, Upper East Region.



In 2021, as a result of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, many fertilizer producing countries like China and Russia could not produce at full capacity, forcing the international market price to increase with a heavy toll on food production and the implementation of the governments Planting for Food and Jobs programme, he said.



Dr Nyaaba noted that most of the farmers under the fertilizer subsidy programme were vulnerable such as women, youth and persons with disability and the government needed to pay fertilizer import companies to enable them to secure enough fertilizer before the heat of the sanctions were felt.



Government needs to encourage companies which are producing organic fertilizer to increase production because we need to start shifting from inorganic fertilizer to organic fertilizer because of the benefits and this will also afford farmers alternatives in case we are unable to get the inorganic fertilizer, he said.



He said apart from the government needing to put measures in place to support farmers to adopt composting as means of fertilizing farms, farmers needed to produce local crops which did not need much fertilizer to ensure good yields.



We need to begin to promote our own staple foods such as millet, guinea corn, sorghum, groundnuts, yam, cassava, frafra potato, plantain, nuts among others, these crops do not require too much fertilizer, he added.





Source: GNA









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WASHINGTON, March 3 (Xinhua) -- U.S. police said on Thursday that they are preparing for potential vehicle convoys "affecting traffic in and around the National Capital Region."

Virginia State Police posted on social media that they continue to monitor and prepare for potential convoys consisting of commercial and passenger vehicles.

The police described the situation as "still-fluid," adding that motorists can expect to see an increased patrol presence.

"These efforts are to mitigate the impact of additional traffic volume on already congested roadways and Northern Virginia communities," they noted.

The National Capital Region includes all of Washington, D.C. and parts of the states of Maryland, Virginia, and West Virginia.

A convoy of truckers is reportedly heading to the region in protest of COVID-19 restrictions and will arrive this weekend.

Fencing was recently reinstalled around the U.S. Capitol in light of "the possibility of demonstrations in the next couple of weeks," according to the Capitol Police.

The Pentagon last week authorized hundreds of unarmed National Guard members to be deployed in the U.S. capital to help police with traffic control.

Truckers held weeks-long protests in Canada against the nation's COVID-19 restrictions earlier this year by blocking city traffic and border crossings with the United States, prompting some Americans to organize similar demonstrations. 
President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo Wednesday presented awards to 36 pupils who passed last year's Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE), with distinction and charged them to maintain a strong moral character as they ascend the educational ladder.



Presenting the awards at this year's President's Independence Day Awards in Accra, he urged the award winners to work to maintain the standards they had set for themselves, and not to allow their current successes get into their heads.



I urge you not to allow your current successes to get to your head because this is only the beginning. Continue to work hard in order to maintain your standards.



"Know that you can go as far as you want if you are diligent, hardworking, and holding on to a strong moral compass. "Honesty and integrity are important values in any worthwhile existence," he said.



The 2022 Presidents Independence Day Awards was under the theme: "Working Together Bouncing Back Better."



The award winners, drawn from schools across the 16 regions in the country, included persons with disabilities.



They all received tablets each and a years supply of Nestle Ghana limited products.



The President asked Ghanaian students not to lose sight of the need to work hard to ensure that they rise up to the highest academic heights.



He expressed the government's readiness to commit more resources to education to help secure the country's future and pledged to expand opportunities in education for every child through the Free Senior High School education programme.



"Government intends to continue to deepen the education of our population so as to attain our industrialisation objective This means there will be increased emphasis in our educational system on science and technology education and technical and vocational training," he said.



The Presidents Independence Day Awards, since its inception in 1993, provides scholarships each year to young brilliant students between the ages of 14 and 19 from all the regions of Ghana.



The awardees are selected based on raw scores obtained at the Basic Certificate Examination (BECE).







Source: GNA









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The Member of Parliament for North Tongu constituency and Ranking Member on the Foreign Affairs Committee in Parliament, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, has met with Ghanaian students who escaped from Ukraine to Romania.



In a Facebook post, Mr Ablakwa said:



This morning I arrived in Bucharest, Romania which shares a southern border with Ukraine to visit our Ghanaian students who escaped from the conflict in Ukraine.



The visit affords me the opportunity to closely assess their conditions and to better understand from their unique perspective how our nation can be more helpful to them as I engage them directly.



I do this not merely because it is a constitutional imperative of oversight imposed on parliamentarians; there is a higher obligation of our common humanity and nationhood.



Romania now hosts the largest number of Ghanaian students  an estimated 200, expected to be evacuated to Ghana.

I have been greatly inspired by the amazing stories of survival and resilience as narrated by our heroic compatriots.



I salute Ahmed Tijani Abubakr of our diplomatic mission in Prague for his impressive consular services which have been praised by the students.



The Romanians have been awesome with their exceptional kindness. Our nation owes them a debt of gratitude.

It gave me great pleasure to host our courageous compatriots to lunch, convey messages of hope for a brighter future, and to make a modest donation into the NUGS-Ukraine welfare account.



I assured our much-cherished compatriots that the entire nation led by government is with them in prayers and solidarity. Evacuations shall continue and we would also never forget their colleagues who remain trapped in Ukraine, particularly those in the city of Sumy.



Together, as one nation with a common humanity, we shall ensure the complete protection and rehabilitation of our beloved citizens.

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Twenty-six (26) teams of researchers from thirteen (13) universities and research institutions across the country have received grant from the Jospong Group of Companies (JGC) Environmental Sanitation Research Fund (ESRF) to investigate issues in the space of environmental sanitation.



The grant is expected to fund research projects led by these researchers to help keep Ghana clean, and more importantly, for governments to achieve the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).



The maiden ESRF awards saw the Africa Environmental Sanitation (AfES) Consult Limited, the administrators of the fund, present certificates to all the successful applicants.



The teams and their number of researchers are from institutions including Akenten Appiah-Menka University of Skills Training and Entrepreneurial Development (4), C.K. Tedam University of Applied Science (2), Council for Scientific and Industrial Research  Institute for Industrial Research (1), Ho Technical University (2), Institute of Local Government Studies (1), Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (5), Kumasi Technical University (1) and Koforidua Technical University (1).



The rest are University for Development Studies (1), University of Energy and Natural Resources (1), University of Environment and Sustainable Development (2), University of Education, Winneba (2), University of Ghana (1) and University of Professional Studies (2).



In her welcome address, the Managing Director of, AfES Consult Ltd., Dr. (Mrs.) Abena Asomaning Antwi, said these institutions will conduct their research within their respective regions, adding that they constitute eight (8) out of the sixteen (16) regions of the country.



These projects will help in development and the realisation of the SDGs on climate action, clean water, and sanitation. The research topics include waste to energy, improvements to the solid and liquid waste management systems, and enhancement of compost quality, among others, she disclosed.



According to her, the 26 teams of successful researchers were selected out of 45 applications.



While congratulating the winners and commending the organisers including JGC and AfES Consult Ltd., the Board Chair of AfES Consult Ltd., Dr. Mercy Gardiner Tenkorang, underscored the importance of research and development on the environment and sanitation.



She explained that this funding scheme will provide the necessary support for practical and empirically based sustainable research in the field of environmental sanitation.



This, she added, will help bridge the ever-widening gap between academia and industry: specific industry problems within the eco-system of waste management will be identified and researched for sustainable solutions.



Private sector development has resulted in a significant improvement in the investment of technologies for waste service delivery since the privatisation of the sector some decades ago.



It is obvious that private sector players, such as the Jospong Group of Companies with keen focus on its waste companies, have given critical components for developing models aimed at guaranteeing sustainable waste collection, recovery, and disposal. Over time, this progress has improved economic growth, reduced poverty, and ensured a safe, clean, and habitable environment, Dr. Gardiner Tenkorang said.



However, the board chair of AfES Consult Ltd., indicated that thriving private sector in environmental sanitation was saddled with socioeconomic and environmental challenges in their day-to-day business operations.



These challenges, she pointed out, included finding new ways to add value to the waste collected by adopting circular economy models, and other environmentally friendly approaches such as green and smart cities.



She said these challenges required innovation and long-term solutions that were both cost-effective and environmentally beneficial in order to promote and sustain economic growth and well-being.



To foster economic growth and social inclusion, a knowledge-based society is required, thus investment in research and development (R&D). However, this will not happen by itself. It will need a long-term commitment to quality scientific inquiry, and innovation to steer continuous progress in business and policy while also ensuring that a competent peer-review procedure is in place to lead funds toward high-quality science, Dr. Gardiner Tenkorang urged.



The Chief Operating Officer (COO) of Environment and Sanitation Group of the JGC, Mrs. Florence Larbi, in a speech read for her, stressed that for the gains along the waste management value chain to be sustained and further improved, there was the need for a strong research, development and innovation framework.



An integrated system should focus on both the technical and non-technical elements of waste management and strategic and appropriate partnership with stakeholders. Elements to be considered will not only include research and development. Findings should be integrated with good governance, adequate funding and communication, she suggested.

In this regard, Mrs. Larbi underscored the need for waste management solutions to look beyond just disposal of waste and move up the so-called hierarchy which factors waste prevention, minimisation, re-use and recovery.

Source: Peacefmonline.com/Ghana









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The Fair Wages and Salaries Commission (FWSC) has indicated that the negotiations between government and the leadership of the University Teachers Association of Ghana (UTAG) have ended successfully.



In a press release issued shortly after the final negotiations on Friday, March 4, the Commission expressed gratitude to all stakeholders for bringing finality and sanity to the matter.



Government also acknowledges and appreciates the patience and tolerance of parents and students, the press release concluded.



UTAG is, however, yet to come out with its position on the development.



Leadership had given government two weeks within which to meet their demands, having suspended their strike action on Monday, February 21.



They had, however, asked their branches to vote on the decision taken by the National Executive Committee (NEC) at an emergency meeting at the University of Professional Studies, Accra (UPSA)



All but two voted to reject the NEC decision, therefore calling for a resumption of the strike after the two-week ultimatum.



Fridays final negotiations had in attendance representatives from the Ministry of Employment and Labour Relations, Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Education and National Labour Commission (NLC).



FWSC thanked the Ghana Tertiary Education Commission (GTEC) and Vice Chancellors Ghana (VCG) for their immense help during the seven-week strike.

Source: 3news









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The frequent use of earpieces and headphones on high volumes for prolonged periods can cause gradual or instant hearing loss.



Mrs Rhoda Binney, a Principal Nursing Officer, Ear, Throat and Nose (ENT) at the Greater Accra Regional Hospital, has said in an interview with the Ghana News Agency (GNA).



She said it was, therefore, necessary for people who used earpieces to take breaks in between and keep the volume of the gadget and the earpiece below 60 percent.



Mrs Binney said the consistent exposure to loud sounds could cause hearing loss, especially when the sound level was above 80 decibels.



If the normal volume of hearing around us is more than 70 decibels, it causes an effect on our hearing, because the loud noise damages the hair cells in the inner ear that picks sound to the brain for interpretation.



As Ghana joins the world to observe World Hearing Day (WHD) today, March 03, she encouraged the public to visit the hospitals to have their ear checked because ENT care was under the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS).



World Hearing Day is celebrated on March 3 every year to share information and promote actions towards the prevention of hearing loss and improved hearing care.



To hear for life, listen with care is the theme for this years World Hearing Day.



For this year, the World Health Organisation (WHO) called on governments, industry partners and civil society to raise awareness for and implement evidence-based standards that would promote safe listening.



The Principal Nursing Officer also urged the public to avoid inserting foreign objects like cotton buds, pen tops, feathers, match sticks, Bobbie pins and broomsticks in the ear because they could damage the eardrum and cause hearing loss.







Source: GNA









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Johnson Asiedu Nketia, General Secretary of the opposition National Democratic Congress has accused the government of deliberately targeting him for financial persecution.



The man popularly referred to as General Mosquito alleged that the government had deliberately set out to cripple him financially by running his businesses aground.



He disclosed on Starr Chat on Accra-based Starr FM, March 2, 2022; that his four blockmaking factories are suffering because of the failure of the government to honour financial obligations to contractors he works with.



Asked about life in opposition being hell, he responded: As far as I am concerned, I wouldnt say life (in opposition) is hell that much because as a General Secretary, my life doesnt change whether we are in government or we are in opposition.



The only area where I think it hurts is where there is a deliberate effort by a ruling government to destroy your business with the thinking that when you are weak financially, you will come begging them.



My businesses have been destroyed. Everybody knows me to be into blockmaking, and all four block factories I was operating, none of them is functioning properly now. One is limping, as for the three I have stopped production completely, he revealed.



He recounted an instance with a District Assembly in Dodowa, where he supplied pavement blocs to a contractor, who had been given assurances of payment by the Assembly after a pressing task was discharged.



General Mosquito said his factory supplied blocks for a project that has been completed and commissioned but the Assembly has refused to pay the contractor so I remain unpaid. So, all the money that I should be using to buy material is locked up. It is deliberate.



He added that the deliberate nature of the incident is because funding for the project was from a secured source and the Assembly had expressly committed to pay prior to supply.



Asiedu Nketia said he has reported to two local government ministers but nothing has happened yet.



He stressed: I dont have the appetite to take them to court yet.





Source: ghanaweb.com









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Minister of Agriculture, Hon. Owusu Afriyie Akoto, who has been tipped by some supporters of the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP) to contest for flagbearer of the party, in a one-on-one interview on Peace FM's ''Kokrokoo Thursday morning, swerved a question regarding his Presidential ambition.



Hon. Owusu Afriyie Akoto refused to let the public in on whether or not he will join the Presidential race in 2024 elections.



The Agric Minister stopped short of a straight yes or no answer to the question posed by host Kwami Sefa Kayi about some billboards displaying his ambition to be President of Ghana.



The billboards of the Minister were spotted at vantage points with grapevine reports indicating he is gearing up to take the Presidential baton from His Excellency Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo.



But up until the exclusive interview on Kokrokoo, Hon. Owusu Afriyie Akoto had kept mute on these speculations.



The host Kwami Sefa Kayi asked; ''Minister, would you run for President? Would you like to run for President?''



Reacting to the query, Hon. Afriyie Akoto gave a loud laughter and replied it doesn't lie in his mouth to tell whether or not he desires to be President of Ghana.



''It's not for me to say that I will run for President...if it impresses the party that the work that Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has given me, I have done it well to the extent that they have a belief that I should go a notch higher, it's for them to say, not me'', he stated emphatically.



With regard to the billboards erected in his name, he asserted they are meant to send his greetings to farmers in the communities.



To him, for now, his focus is to support President Akufo-Addo and his government to succeed saying ''there cannot be an Owusu Afriyie government. We are serving the Akufo-Addo government from the bottom of our heart. And we are very determined that this Akufo-Addo government will succeed and is succeeding. The people of Ghana, the silent majority, they know that the good works of Akufo-Addo are unprecedented''.



He added; ''So long as the Akufo-Addo government is in existence, we have to use 110 percent of all the resources, the endowment God has given us, to support that government to succeed and the government is succeeding.''







Source: Ameyaw Adu Gyamfi/Peacefmonline.com/Ghana









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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Information Minister, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, has criticized the Dean of the University of Ghana Law School, Professor Raymond Atuguba.



Prof Atuguba has been severely criticized for suggesting that Ghana is susceptible to a coup, looking at the hardship in the country.



According to him, we do not want coup in this country but if we do not act quickly we may have one in our hands. There is one thing to do now, prevent coup in Ghana since the climate and the environment, national and immediate international, are conducive for one. We must compel the government to acknowledge the current economic mess, they mostly, and previous governments, to a larger extent."



Ghana's economic problems started before Covid-19. On balance, Covid-19 was a good thing for Africa and Ghana, he said at a forum held by Solidare Ghana.



Speaking to this in an interview on Peace FM's morning show 'Kokrokoo', Kojo Oppong Nkrumah said as a learned person, Prof Atuguba should have known better.



"As an intellectual, he should have known better . . . he could have just expressed his mind instead of sowing such seeds in the minds of people. The government is not against free speech but you cant take advantage of that and preach coup," he stated.







Source: Peacefmonline.com









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Ashanti Regional Minister, Simon Osei Mensah, has condemned the utterances of some political activists and members of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) which go to support a coup d'etat to happen in Ghana.



Youth activist, Oliver Barker-Vormawor is in the grips of the Ghana Police for having disclosed an intention to stage a coup in the country.



Mr. Oliver Barker-Vormawor took to his social media platform and in criticizing the Akufo-Addo administration stated, "if this E-Levy passes after this cake bullshit, I will do the coup myself. Useless Army!''



The Police, in response, said the post contains a clear statement of intent with a possible will to execute a coup in his declaration of intent to subvert the Constitution of the Republic of Ghana and arrested him, charging him with treason felony.



Speaking on Peace FM's morning show 'Kokrokoo', Simon Osei Mensah noted that a coup is never an option for Ghana stressing the nation cannot go back to the dark days of torture and persecution in the hands of the Military.



He added, the Military, in today's dispensation, are civilized and professional that they wouldn't commit to the statements by the NDC members and sympathizers.



Although not shocked by the utterances of the opponents of the Akufo-Addo government, he however wondered why they are suddenly with one voice calling for a coup.



"Is it that we are desperate for power, that's why we are calling for coup? Is it so? . . . Is it because you are not in power?'' he queried.



He admonished the opposition party to calm their nerves and wait for the decision by Ghanaians during the 2024 elections, saying, "2024, NPP will account for 16 years. NDC will account for 16 years . . . Everybody is going to account sector by sector regarding what they have done . . . Let everyone tell Ghanaians what they have done and Ghanaians will make the decision themselves".



He added; "NPP has never been in opposition and, in all their criticisms, called for a coup before. Any time NDC is in opposition, especially the second term of the governing party, they begin to talk about coup. I don't know if they are saying it to pump tension into the country, so people will leave it to them, but I'm telling them it's because of this that we will leave it to them.''





Source: Ameyaw Adu Gyamfi/Peacefmonline.com/Ghana









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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Ashanti Regional Minister, Simon Osei Mensah, has cautioned those calling for a coup in Ghana to desist from it.



Speaking on Peace FM's 'Kokrokoo' programme, the Regional Minister reminded Ghanaians of the consequences of a coup d'etat, alluding to some events that took place during the times when Ghana was thrown into a state of chaos as a result of a coup.



He made reference to incidents where some Ghanaian men and women were tormented and others killed without provocation because of the Military takeover.



To him, if the coup activists knew the terrible things a coup brings, they wouldn't attempt uttering it as a solution to Ghana's problems.



"I will never ever pray for a coup because it won't help any person," he said.



He also asked the opposition National Democratic Congress, whose supporters are calling for a coup, if they will be able to govern should there be a coup d'etat.



"You want to rule the country but are calling for a coup. Will you be able to govern the country should a coup occur?'' he questioned and advised the opposition to stop making such statements stressing it's distasteful for any person to hope for a coup in Ghana.





Source: Ameyaw Adu Gyamfi/Peacefmonline.com/Ghana









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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An inside view of a RV is seen during the 2022 Toronto Spring Camping & RV Show in Mississauga, the Greater Toronto Area, Canada, on March 3, 2022. As one of the largest RV shows in Canada, the annual event is held here from March 3 to March 6 with over 300 RVs. (Photo by Zou Zheng/Xinhua)

A travel trailer is seen at the 2022 Toronto Spring Camping & RV Show in Mississauga, the Greater Toronto Area, Canada, on March 3, 2022. As one of the largest RV shows in Canada, the annual event is held here from March 3 to March 6 with over 300 RVs. (Photo by Zou Zheng/Xinhua)

People visit the 2022 Toronto Spring Camping & RV Show in Mississauga, the Greater Toronto Area, Canada, on March 3, 2022. As one of the largest RV shows in Canada, the annual event is held here from March 3 to March 6 with over 300 RVs. (Photo by Zou Zheng/Xinhua)

An inside view of a luxury RV is seen during the 2022 Toronto Spring Camping & RV Show in Mississauga, the Greater Toronto Area, Canada, on March 3, 2022. As one of the largest RV shows in Canada, the annual event is held here from March 3 to March 6 with over 300 RVs. (Photo by Zou Zheng/Xinhua)

People visit the 2022 Toronto Spring Camping & RV Show in Mississauga, the Greater Toronto Area, Canada, on March 3, 2022. As one of the largest RV shows in Canada, the annual event is held here from March 3 to March 6 with over 300 RVs. (Photo by Zou Zheng/Xinhua)

People visit the 2022 Toronto Spring Camping & RV Show in Mississauga, the Greater Toronto Area, Canada, on March 3, 2022. As one of the largest RV shows in Canada, the annual event is held here from March 3 to March 6 with over 300 RVs. (Photo by Zou Zheng/Xinhua)
Ukraine should be bridge between East, West, not frontline for confrontation: Chinese envoy

Xinhua) 20:14, March 04, 2022

GENEVA, March 4 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Ambassador for Disarmament Affairs Li Song said here on Thursday that Ukraine should become a bridge between the East and the West, not a frontline for confrontation between major countries.

The situation in Ukraine is rapidly evolving and China has been paying close attention to the developments, Li said when briefing a plenary meeting of the Conference on Disarmament on China's position.

The current situation in Ukraine is not in the interest of any party, he said, adding that China always forms its own position according to the merits of the matter at hand, and China's basic position on the Ukraine issue is consistent and unequivocal.

"We always believe that all countries' sovereignty and territorial integrity should be respected, and that international disputes should be resolved peacefully in accordance with the purposes and principles of the UN Charter," he noted.

"The immediate priority is to prevent further worsening of the situation, while stepping up diplomatic efforts for a political solution," he said.

Li said that in their first round of negotiations, Russia and Ukraine have shown their willingness to continue talks, and China welcomes this.

Facing the highly complex and sensitive situation, Li said, China does not support any approach that may exacerbate tensions, and calls on the international community to abide by the principle of political settlement and create favorable conditions for direct dialogue between the parties concerned.

The Ukraine issue did not emerge overnight, but stems from the interplay of various factors in a long term, the diplomat said. "The Cold War has been long over, and a new Cold War will be unpopular."

"Blindly exerting pressure and imposing sanctions and creating division and confrontation will only further complicate the situation, and result in a rapid negative spillover of the crisis, and affect even more countries," he warned.

The final settlement of the Ukraine crisis requires abandoning the Cold War mentality, the "zero-sum" logic of security, and the approach to seeking regional security by expanding military blocs, he stressed.

He highlighted the importance to give full attention and respect to the legitimate security concerns of all countries, and on that basis to construct a balanced, effective and sustainable European security mechanism through dialogue, so as to achieve lasting peace and stability on the European continent.

China advocates the concept of common, comprehensive, cooperative and sustainable security, he said.

"We call on the international community to take a responsible attitude, and promote the relevant parties to immediately return to the track of political settlement, and use dialogue and consultation to seek a comprehensive solution to the Ukraine issue. China is ready to continue its constructive role in this regard," Li concluded.

(Web editor: Hongyu, Bianji)
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Rain. Low 52F. Winds E at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 80%. Rainfall around a half an inch.
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BEIJING, March 3 (Xinhua) -- The development of China's AG600 large amphibious aircraft has gained support from the financial-leasing sector, the Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC) announced Thursday.

China Aviation Industry General Aircraft Co., Ltd., a subsidiary of AVIC, signed a strategic cooperation agreement with Everbright Financial Leasing Co., Ltd. on Thursday to jointly boost research and development of the AG600 and its future operation, said AVIC.

According to the agreement, the two sides will explore innovative financial plans to support further research on the AG600, as well as purchasing the first batch of aircraft products.

Both sides will also explore building an innovative industry-finance community to boost the country's aviation emergency-rescue system, said the agreement.

The move represents a major step forward for the AG600 in entering the market and playing a role in the country's emergency-rescue system.

The two sides will hold further discussions on the leasing plan for the first batch of AG600 aircraft and the signing of the purchase agreement, said AVIC.

They will join efforts in exploring the integration of industry and finance, actively carry out business-model innovation, and fully promote "independent innovation" activity, with the aim of boosting the development of the AG600 and its related industrial chain, AVIC added.

Codenamed Kunlong, the AG600 is a key piece of aeronautical equipment in China's emergency-rescue system.

As a model of special-purpose aircraft, the AG600 has been developed by AVIC to meet the needs of firefighting and marine-rescue missions, as well as other critical emergency-rescue operations.

The AG600 successfully completed its maiden flight in 2017, its first take-off from a water reservoir in 2018, and its maiden flight over the sea in 2020.

For 2022, the AG600 project has set a target of seeing three new aircraft enter the final assembly phase and three aircraft to take maiden flights, according to AVIC. 
As the demand for in-person COVID-19 testing has given way to at-home testing, South Carolina's top health agency will start scaling back testing sites across the state.

The S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control said the reduction is based on declining appetite as at-home tests have become more readily available.

Testing site reduction, DHEC said, also signifies the state and nations transition out of a pandemic, and into an endemic, as public health officials provide guidance on how to live normal, safe lives with an ongoing presence of COVID-19.

By March 14, three in-person testing locations in Aiken County will have closed: Gregg Park Civic Center, USC Aiken Convocation Center and the Aiken County Health Department.

Residents can still get at-home COVID-19 rapid tests at the health department, located at 222 Beaufort St. N.E. It is recommended to call ahead for availability at 803-642-1687.

DHECs testing locator, scdhec.gov/covid19/covid-19-testing-locations, will be updated in real time to reflect when a specific site is no longer open.

On March 15, DHEC will begin only reporting COVID-19 data once per week rather than each weekday to "best track where the virus impact is most severe."

This change comes as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced it is changing its approach to tracking COVID-19 by reducing focus on daily case counts and putting emphasis on severe cases that result in hospitalizations.

We announced last month that our goal is to bring cases down to a level that allows us to live our normal lives with very little interruption, stated Dr. Edward Simmer, DHEC director. The CDCs announcement reflects that thinking by using severe COVID-19 cases to measure how the virus is impacting local communities. We agree with this methodology, especially as cases continue declining and rapid at-home tests become even more accessible.

Specifically, DHEC is switching its focus from eliminating transmission entirely to recommending prevention measures.

COVID-19 Community Levels combine hospital capacity and COVID-19 hospital admissions with cases to identify when a community is facing a low, medium, or high level of risk from COVID-19, according to DHEC.

The updated guidance also provides masking suggestions for when a community is experiencing high, medium, or low levels of transmission.

For low-level transmission in a community, masking is not needed in most settings, according to the CDC, but remains optional for individuals.

In times of medium transmission, individuals who are at higher risk of contracting COVID-19, as well as those who are regularly around immunocompromised individuals, are encouraged to mask up, while it is optional for others.

In times of high transmission, community masking is recommended in indoor settings, including schools and workplaces.

Recent state and federal guidelines are geared toward creating a sense of normalcy weve all been waiting for, Simmer added. But this new normal has to account for the fact that COVID-19 is still a deadly virus that is here to stay. We must continue following updated guidance and doing our part to protect ourselves and our loved ones.
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WASHINGTON  A California doctor known as a leading purveyor of coronavirus misinformation pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge on Thursday for joining the mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol last year.

Dr. Simone Gold, founder of the anti-vaccine group America's Frontline Doctors, entered the plea to a charge of entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds. The conviction carries a maximum sentence of six months in jail.

As part of her guilty plea, Gold acknowledged she and her co-defendant John Strand, while outside the building, were directly in front of a police officer who was assaulted and dragged to the ground. The doctor also acknowledged then entering the building and giving a speech in Statuary Hall about her opposition to coronavirus vaccine mandates and lockdowns imposed by the government, as Strand filmed her comments.

Gold, 56, of Beverly Hills, later told The Washington Post that she followed a crowd into the Capitol, didn't witness any violence and didn't think she was breaking any laws.

"I can certainly speak to the place that I was, and it most emphatically was not a riot," she said. "Where I was, was incredibly peaceful."

Gold, who has over 400,000 followers on Twitter, is an outspoken figure in the anti-vaccine movement in the U.S. and is known for spreading misinformation about COVID-19. She has promoted the use of unproven and potentially dangerous drugs, including the anti-worm treatment ivermectin and the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine, as coronavirus treatments.

Dr. Irwin Redlener, founding director of Columbia University's National Center for Disaster Preparedness, said Gold has had "a starring role" in the anti-vaccine propaganda movement, using her medical credentials and platform to "undermine science" and politically pollute efforts to tamp down the pandemic.

"In some ways, her extremist voice seems to weigh with greater impact than the vast, vast majority of doctors who are saying, 'Of course you need to take the vaccine. It will save your life,'" Redlener said.

U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn, a South Carolina Democrat who chairs a special House subcommittee on the coronavirus crisis, announced in October that the panel would investigate online groups spreading COVID-19 misinformation and promoting potentially hazardous treatments. In a letter addressed to Gold, Clyburn cited news reports that her group and its partners have generated millions of dollars in revenue by selling hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin and offering online COVID-19 consultations.

"While (America's Frontline Doctors) is not alone in providing these services, it is reportedly among the top purveyors of questionable treatments nationwide and a prominent source of misinformation related to the coronavirus," Clyburn wrote.

Gold told the Post that she had traveled to Washington to speak at a "Rally for Health Freedom" on the East side of the Capitol on the afternoon of Jan. 6, 2021. She said she was worried that photos of her inside the Capitol would distract from her advocacy work.

"I do regret being there," she said less than a week after the siege.

The Medical Board of California's database shows Gold remains licensed to practice medicine in the state and has a Beverly Hills office address.

Strand, the communications director for America's Frontline Doctors, told the Post that he was at the Capitol to help Gold and "ensure her safety." He has pleaded not guilty to the charges again him. A trial for Strand is scheduled to start on July 18.

Gold's sentencing is scheduled for June 16.

More than 750 people have been charged with federal crimes related to the Capitol riot. Over 220 of them have pleaded guilty, mostly to misdemeanors, and more than 100 riot defendants have been sentenced.

___

Associated Press writer Jacques Billeaud in Phoenix contributed to this report.
A Charleston private school expanded its footprint recently after paying nearly $26 million for a pair of office buildings near its West Ashley campus.

Porter-Gaud School bought the structures at Albemarle Point from Insite Properties of Charlotte on Feb. 28 for $25.925 million, according to public land records.

The sale included a recently renovated, four-story office structure at 176 Croghan Spur Road and an adjacent one-story building at 238 Albemarle Road.

The nearly 150-year-old school added nearly 84,000 square feet of building space and 247 parking spaces to its campus near the Fielding Connector and the Ashley River.

The school's leaders said the commercial acquisitions are investments that will allow Porter-Gaud to diversify its income stream without relying primarily on tuition, generate cash to support operations and expand the boundaries of its property.

"We are confident this space will provide the school with critical flexibility in the fulfillment of its mission over the long term," according to a letter sent to family members of the school by Headmaster DuBose Egleston and board chairman Walker Coleman IV.

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"This acquisition propels us to stronger financial sustainability, a pillar of our schools recently launched strategic plan, and provides the flexibility to revise and to further enhance the schools long-term campus master plan," the letter stated.

Porter Gaud officials said rental income from the tenants in the buildings "entirely covers the school's financing obligations from the first day of ownership. No current operating dollars are being used for this real estate acquisition."

The property, they added "is self-sustaining."

The multitenant buildings were 92 percent occupied when they were sold, according to the commercial real estate firm Cushman & Wakefield, which represented the seller.

"This is one of the highest quality assets in the submarket that has benefited from strategic capital improvements and growth of the overall Charleston market, said Rob Cochran, the real estate company's executive director.

He said the site across the Ashley River from the Charleston peninsula has few competitive properties nearby, which should allow it to attract and retain tenants more easily.

Insite paid $21.5 million for the two buildings in 2017, according to Charleston County land records.
GREENVILLE  When Rick Erwin's dining group first opened its Saltwater Kitchen seafood brand nearly two years ago in Haywood Mall, the operative word was "casual."

It would be different than the old-school group's cache of upscale dining establishments like downtown's West End Grille or Nantucket. Still, the servers wore black shirts, black pants, black aprons  a testament to the tier of food the restaurant intended to maintain despite the dressed-down atmosphere.

It opened in May 2019. Then COVID hit. The restaurant closed and stayed closed for 18 months. Until this week.

The operative word still is "casual." Except now the uniform is t-shirts.

It's a transformation for founder and owner Rick Erwin, who is resurrecting the Saltwater Kitchen concept in hopes of drawing a new, post-COVID crowd.

In a preview March 2 ahead of the official opening, Erwin described how the restaurant's fate was uniquely tied to the restrictions not only placed on dining establishment but also the mall.

"When the mall closed at 7 o'clock, it really didn't work well for us," Erwin said.

Now the mall is "doing extremely well," he said, and the intention is to provide a casual option with upscale menu.

Erwin said the word "casual" nearly a dozen times.

In addition to the t-shirt uniforms, the addition of "adult slushies" behind the bar lined with televisions exemplifies the shift. "The Pain Killer" with Pusser's rum, coconut rum, orange juice, pineapple juice topped with nutmeg, and the "Saltwater Lemonade," a simple mixture of Tito's vodka and lemonade.

There's crab and flounder almondine and cedar plank salmon for $23.95 and alongside it Budweiser or Bud Light buckets 5 for $16, a significant markup from the gas station cooler but a noticeable departure from the formal slate of Erwin restaurants.

The restaurant will offer brunch on Saturdays and Sundays 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. with lobster egg bake ($21.95) and crab cake benedict ($21.95) accompanied by live music each day.

Meanwhile, the group is in the planning stages of where to relocate from the former location of Nantucket Seafood in the Downtown Marriott Courtyard, where it operated for more than a decade. The hotel is transforming a portion of the nearby courtyard next to City Hall into an outdoor restaurant space that will bring in two restaurants envisioned by Charleston-based The Indigo Road.

Erwin was tight-lipped about plans for Nantucket, but the group recently announced it intends to keep the restaurant somewhere downtown.

Saltwater Kitchen is open every day. Full hours and menu can be found at saltwatergvl.com.
Summerville, SC (29483)

Today

Mostly sunny skies. High 92F. Winds WNW at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

A few clouds from time to time. Low 69F. Winds light and variable.
Kingstree, SC (29556)

Today

A few clouds from time to time. High 89F. Winds light and variable..

Tonight

Partly to mostly cloudy. Low 64F. Winds light and variable.
MYRTLE BEACH  Residents who live in an affluent section of Myrtle Beach are heading to court to prevent construction on two separate nearby projects.

A group of 24 Grande Dunes-area residents wants to keep a proposed 7-Eleven away from the corner of 82nd Parkway and North Kings Highway which is next to their subdivision.

Separately, a group of eight residents who live near Grande Dunes does not want a 305-unit apartment complex from being constructed on a piece of land just north of 71st Avenue North.

Both groups have asked a Horry County judge to intervene in their favor in separate appeals to city board decisions, both similarly arguing that both projects, roughly four miles apart, would decrease the value of their homes.

The city of Myrtle Beach said it does not comment on pending litigation.

The Myrtle Beach Healthy Neighborhoods Coalition, a group of Living Dunes neighborhood residents, is appealing the Board of Zoning Appeals Feb. 4 blessing of the proposed gas station.

The residents have long argued the 7-Eleven would lower the value of their homes, endanger their health and increase traffic.

In the latest appeal, the group claims the city's Board of Zoning Appeals was pressured into voting in favor of the gas station after they were given documents of a similar project that was approved nearby in 2011 by Myrtle Beach Zoning Administrator Kenneth May.

Both Myrtle Beach and the neighborhood group disagree whether the 7-Eleven is allowed under city zoning rules for Grande Dunes. The rules allows retail, but the group says that state law puts gas stations into its own separate classification.

The neighborhood group is asking for a judge to overturn the decision by the zoning appeals board. They were granted a temporary-restraining order to block a vote by the Community Appearance Board, the last step before a building permit is issued.

No hearing has been set for that case, according to online court records.

Meanwhile, a separate group of Grande Dunes-area residents wants a judge to reverse the Community Appearance Boards Jan. 27 approval of a 305-unit apartment complex called the Cottages.

Just like the opposition of the convenience store, the group said they want to protect public health, safety and welfare and the apartments will cause substantial lose of value to area properties in the area with increased density and traffic issues, the appeal said.

The group also argues the apartments do not follow zoning rules for Grande Dunes. The only acceptable uses in the area are horse farms, single-family homes and residential care facilities, the complaint said.

The appeal also alleges the city of Myrtle Beach violated the state's open-records law when one of the residents asked for all plans and records relating to the apartment project. Instead of receiving information about the Cottages, the appeal claims they received documents on the Willows, an adjacent 325-unit complex that is already under construction.

They allege the city withheld the information until the Community Appearance Board approved the project, and then requested $1,000 for the search and production of documents that it has in its possession in digital format, the appeal said.
SUMMERVILLE  Two people were fatally shot outside a public library in Berkeley County.

Berkeley County sheriff's deputies responded just after 9 p.m. on March 2 to the Brighton Park Emergency Center regarding a possible shooting victim, sheriff's spokeswoman Carli Drayton said.

Deputies found two people, both with gunshot wounds. One died in the emergency room and the other was taken to a hospital, where he died March 3, Drayton said.

Investigators determined the victims were shot in the parking lot of the Sangaree Branch Library on Sangaree Parkway, Drayton added.

The Berkeley County Coroner's Office will identify the deceased. Deputies have not said whether they've found possible suspects.

Anyone with information about the double homicide can contact the sheriff's office at 843-719-4412.
Two Charleston-area events in the coming days will benefit those being displaced by the crisis in Ukraine.

Euro Foods Bakery and Cafe will collect supplies at 9 a.m. March 5 at the city of Charleston's 14 Sumar Street site in West Ashley.

The site is located down the street from the Euro Foods store.

People can bring medical supplies, military boots, socks, nonperishable food items, candles, flashlights and other emergency items.

The supplies will be placed on a truck donated by Bulmaks Inc. and driven to New Jersey, where it will be shipped by delivery company Meest-America Inc. to individuals housing refugees in Eastern Europe.

Euro Foods is partnering with the city of Charleston and Kinga Madro, a Charleston-area resident who immigrated from Poland in the '90s. Madro first started collecting donations to send to a friend who opened up her Poland home near the Ukrainian border to welcome refugees. Madro's aunt, Jadwiga Miloszewicz, has also opened her house to women and children fleeing Ukraine.

Euro Foods, whose owner is a native of Ukraine, reached out to Madro about hosting the collaborative event to benefit refugees.

Madro will be taking the donations Saturday to send to her aunt helping those in need.

"She needed financial support because she can't feed and clothe and medically supply all of these people," Madro said. "Were just trying to help (refugees) survive."

In downtown Charleston, St. Matthew's Lutheran Church will host a drop-in daytime concert from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. March 9 to raise funds for refugees. The church is located at 405 King St.

All donations will go to nonprofit United Help Ukraine. People can give online at unitedhelpukraine.org or with a physical donation at the church.

Florence native Gabriel Smallwood, who is studying harpsichord at a German college, will perform at St. Matthew's. He'll offer renditions from renowned European composers.

Jason Bazzle, director of music at St. Matthew's, will play the church's organ.

Smallwood initiated the idea out of a desire to use his gift to help others in their time of crisis, Bazzle said. The church agreed because it's important for Christians to help people in need, Bazzle said.

More than 1 million people have been driven from their homes in Ukraine to neighboring countries, according to the United Nations.

Russia's invasion comes after almost eight years of active fighting in Ukraine, according to the United Nations. The U.N. had identified 2.9 million people living in conflict-affected regions of eastern Ukraine who were already in need of humanitarian assistance before the current crisis.
Dorchester County is about to get wired.

Officials announced on March 4 a public-private partnership with Home Telecom and Palmetto Rural Telephone Cooperative to expand high-speed internet access across the western, rural part of the county.

The three-year project is funded with as much as $8.5 million from the American Rescue Plan Act, which will be matched by the two telecom companies.

The effort will result in 325 miles of buried fiber-optic lines to more than 4,100 homes that do not have access to reliable high-speed internet service.

The project will be implemented in five phases and impact 11 communities: Cowtail, Reevesville/Shady Grove, Indian Field, Rosinville, First and Second Texas, Geddisville, Spring Branch, Thomas Kate Road, South Dorchester, Herdons Pond and Taylor Pond.

Our goal is to help close the technology gap for many of our countys rural residents who have historically had extremely limited options for accessing the internet, Dorchester County Councilwoman Harriet Holman said in a statement.

More than 365,000 homes and businesses throughout South Carolina are not connected to broadband internet services  and it will cost an estimated $1.42 billion to get them wired, the state's Office of Regulatory Staff reported last year.

The coronavirus pandemic heightened the problem since so many schoolchildren were compelled to learn remotely.

Shelissa Bowman, director of elementary education and the gifted and talented program for Dorchester District 4, told The Post and Courier in 2021 that about one-third of the district's 2,200 students have limited or no access to the internet. Providing it required more than newly installed fiber optic lines.

The district must install equipment at schools and in private homes, and families must be trained how to use it. Teachers and IT staff need to devise a troubleshooting system, Bowman said.

The state Legislature put $50 million of federal COVID aid, South Carolina's share of CARES Act money, into broadband expansion in June 2020, which was used to improve infrastructure, purchase and distribute hot spots, and develop an expansion plan. The state budget that took effect July 1, 2021, included $10 million for broadband expansion drawn from surplus funds.

The Office of Regulatory Staff launched its Rural Broadband Grant Program last year, making $30 million available to 16 internet service providers in 22 counties.

For the 2022-23 fiscal year, Gov. Henry McMaster has proposed a $300 million investment in the states broadband infrastructure and connectivity. The expenditure would be combined with $100 million in Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act funds to improve access to high-speed internet for residents and businesses.

Expanding access to high-speed internet provides opportunities for business development, job creation, and economic growth while helping to bridge the digital divide for residents, Dorchester county officials said in a news release. And its essential for health care delivery and public education, they said.

Home Telecom CEO William Helmly called fiber optics a future-proof technology.

"By providing access to this technology to some of the most rural areas in our communities, we have the opportunity to improve the quality of life for not only current residents, but for future residents, he said in a statement.

County officials encourage those without high-speed internet who will benefit from this project to visit scdigitaldrive.org and click the link for the I Need Internet survey. The information provided will help the South Carolina Office of Regulatory Staff identify areas without high-speed, fiber-based internet.

Residents can access the survey at computers located at the Dorchester County St. George-Jennie J. McMahan Library (506 N. Parler Ave., St. George), Summerville-George H. Seago Jr. Library (76 Old Trolley Road, Summerville) and Dorchester County QuickJobs Training Center (5164 E. Jim Bilton Blvd., St. George).
Syndicated and guest columns represent the personal views of the writers, not necessarily those of the editorial staff. The editorial department operates entirely independently of the news department and is not involved in newsroom operations.
Editorials represent the institutional view of the newspaper. They are written and edited by the editorial staff, which operates separately from the news department. Editorial writers are not involved in newsroom operations.
Page Content

At last nights annual meeting of the Greater Gainesville Chamber of Commerce, Alachua County Commissioner Ken Cornell received the Chambers Presidents Award for his leadership as Commission Chair during the pandemic. The Presidents Award is given at the Presidents discretion to recognize an individual who has made an outstanding impact in our community and distinguished themselves as a leader in Greater Gainesville.





"During the past two years, our businesses have struggled with pandemic rules and regulations changing frequently. I received and facilitated many calls and questions from various businesses and industries. There was one individual who was instrumental in helping us keep up to date and who worked with us to help our businesses succeed," commented Chamber President and CEO Eric Godet. "We held enumerable calls and meetings, and it would have been a much more difficult task without the help of Alachua County Commissioner Ken Cornell. Ken made sure to include Chamber board leadership as well as the leadership of key industries and organizations during every conversation.





I was overwhelmed by this honor, Cornell said. I accepted this award on behalf of my colleagues on the Commission, staff, and all of people and agencies that helped in our communitys exemplary response to the pandemic. I am so grateful to the Alachua County businesses that played a critical role in keeping our community safe.




COLUMBIA  Divesting South Carolina's pension fund of all Russian investments would cost more than the "very small" amount the state indirectly owns, according to the agency that manages the portfolio.

Legislation intended to signify South Carolina's condemnation of Russia's invasion of Ukraine forbids having any state retirement funds invested in Russian companies. Similar proposals were filed in both chambers on March 1, with Democrats and Republicans saying the state must do what it can to oppose Russian President Vladimir Putin's unprovoked attack.

But that's perhaps a more complicated directive than the sponsors realized.

South Carolina's $40 billion pension portfolio includes an estimated $33 million in Russian-related investments  at least, that was their worth on Feb. 25, before the Moscow stock market closed as Russia's economy tanked amid worldwide objection to the onslaught.

In terms of the overall portfolio, the state's exposure is statistically insignificant, said Michael Hitchcock, CEO of the Retirement System Investment Commission.

"Its very small, and its going to get even smaller," he told The Post and Courier.

None of it is directly owned, and the bulk of it will be divested by the company that oversees an index South Carolina has bought into. No action by state officials is necessary to unload an estimated $29 million worth of Russian stocks, he said.

That's because Morgan Stanley Capital International, known as MSCI, is doing it for them, announcing earlier this week it is purging Russian investments, once the Moscow exchange reopens and it can.

"Morgan Stanley kicking them out of the index has the effect of us divesting our exposure," Hitchcock said.

As part of an investment in another fund for emerging markets' debt, South Carolina additionally indirectly owns $700,000 worth of Russian debt. The investment commission was already planning to get out of that fund entirely.

"Were in the process of winding it down anyway," he said.

That will leave about $3.4 million worth of Russian real estate left from investments made in 2006 and 2009. Those are tiny pieces of more than $4 billion the state's invested in real estate overall.

And the commission can't simply divest that portion.

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"We're investors in the fund. It chooses the investment to make. We cant just go in and say, 'Take that exposure off.' The manager controls that decision," Hitchcock said. "We didnt make the decision to go buy this real estate in Russia. Were not picking individual stocks in Russia."

And because what will remain invested is real estate, a non-liquid asset, there are additional complications.

If it's even possible to sell, the state would take a hit: "It would cost more than the exposure," Hitchcock said.

Senate Minority Leader Brad Hutto, the main sponsor of the Senate bill, said March 4 he certainly doesn't want to do anything to hurt the pension fund that benefits 600,000 South Carolinians.

"The goal is to send a message this is totally unacceptable," the Orangeburg Democrat said of Putin's aggression.

Filing the legislation itself was part of that message, as it hopefully raises awareness of what's happening 5,300 miles away, Hutto said.

"I never thought introducing the bill would end the war," he said. "Maybe this highlights we really are citizens of the world, and we can't ignore what's thousands of miles away."

A madman like Putin may not listen to anyone, he added, "but we've got to do what we can do."

Rep. Russell Fry, the main sponsor of the House bill, said he's pleased to learn most of South Carolina's Russian investments are being shed anyway. The Surfside Republican, who's running for Congress, still wants the commission to get it down to zero.

"I think its great news the world community is coming together, from the public sector to the private sector, to send a strong message to Putin that we dont support this," he said. "Its encouraging to see this."

Fry noted there's also more to his bill, co-signed by 32 other House members. It would additionally ban the Department of Commerce from providing any incentives to a business at least 50 percent owned or controlled by Russians.

That's unlikely to happen anyway.

Commerce has no record of working with any Russian company interested in locating in South Carolina, said spokeswoman Alex Clark, noting her files go back about 15 years.
1. Of monkeys

MORGAN ISLAND  As your boat speeds toward South Carolinas island of monkeys, you see a forest of tall pines and oaks rising from the salt marsh. Then a sliver of beach. And signs warning that youre under surveillance.

Slowing now in the shallows, you see no movement, except high in the pines as branches catch the breeze  no movement until your eyes adjust to the shadows below, and there they are. Monkeys with pink faces and brownish gray fur. Lots of them.

About 3,500 rhesus monkeys live on this remote island  more than the human population of Folly Beach. Unlike Folly Beach, Morgan Island has no roads or restaurants. Just lots of monkeys. They leap from limb to limb. Two groom each other on a fallen tree. A scuffle suddenly breaks out, triggering screeches and blurs of arms, legs and tails.

It's an odd sight, monkeys roaming on an island in the heart of the ACE Basin, coastal South Carolinas conservation jewel. And it marks an equally out-of-place arrangement between industry and government.

In this relationship, a pharmaceutical and animal breeding company, Charles River Laboratories, pays the state Department of Natural Resources nearly $1.5 million a year to lease the island.

DNR then uses this $1.5 million windfall to help pay salaries of employees, including some who regulate Charles River's other money-making ventures, a Post and Courier Uncovered investigation found. And just last fall, Charles River dangled an additional $500,000 for a special "biomedical research license," an offer DNR eventually refused.

Critics say the cozy relationship between DNR and Charles River distorts the agencys priorities and taints its independence. They argue that DNR can't properly regulate a $3.5 billion company that covers some of its paychecks. And that offer of $500,000?

"I've never seen anything like it," said Christian Hunt of the environmental group Defenders of Wildlife. "It's a gross conflict of interest, to put it simply."

Charles River executives said their $500,000 offer didn't come with strings. They merely wanted to help an agency that has seen its budget slashed.

"It wasn't a pay-to-play, you know," said Greg Marshall, a corporate vice president. "We know they have limited resources. We've been working with them for 25 years. They didn't accept. That's fine."

And Robert Boyles Jr., DNR's director, said his agency depends on the Charles River money, for better or worse. If the agency wasn't a landlord to a monkey farm, he said, "there'd be quite a few people looking for other work."

He added that DNR's relationship with Charles River evolved over time, sometimes with surprising twists. But in the wake of the Uncovered project's findings, he said he has concerns.

"I'll just be blunt. It never crossed my mind that there's a conflict of interest or an appearance of a conflict."

The agency's predicament offers a larger lesson: How conflicts of interest can form incrementally until an agency finds itself mired in an ethical swamp.

In this case, it's a lesson that goes beyond monkeys, one that involves tens of millions of dollars, scientific discoveries, politics and lobbyists.

And blood.

Blue blood.

2. Of blood

Horseshoe crabs have existed for at least 445 million years, before the dinosaurs, and their blood is milky blue. The tint comes from copper, which turns bluish when exposed to oxygen, just as iron in human blood turns red when exposed to air.

The crabs blue blood is incredibly valuable. It contains amebocytes, part of the crabs ancient immune system. A chemical in these amebocytes has a special ability to detect toxins. Decades ago, scientists figured out how to create an extract that detected deadly bacteria and fungi. They named the extract LAL, short for Limulus amebocyte lysate. They used it to make sure vaccines and other drugs were free from contamination.

It was a huge advance that made medicines safer, including coronavirus vaccines. Astronauts on the International Space Station even used LAL to detect toxins. Demand for LAL rose like the rockets that propelled it into space. A gallon might fetch $60,000. Today, Charles River is one of the worlds main producers of this lifesaving extract.

The companys roots stretch back to 1947 when its founder, Henry Foster, bought a thousand rat cages from a farm in Virginia. Traps in hand, Foster set up a rodent-breeding lab along Bostons Charles River and delivered rats to researchers.

Over time, Charles River expanded across the world, building its business largely on animal breeding operations, then moving into drug development. By 2021, the company had about $3.5 billion in revenue, $400 million in profits and 18,000 employees. Part of its ongoing success involved bleeding horseshoe crabs.

Horseshoe crabs are tough creatures that can live for months without eating. Genetically, theyre closer to scorpions and spiders. Unlike scorpions, horseshoe crabs are harmless, though with their spikes and helmet-shaped shells they look scary.

People get freaked out because they have squirmy legs. And they look like small tanks because they've got a big shell and a spiny tail, said David Mizrahi, co-leader of the Horseshoe Crab Recovery Coalition, a group pushing for more restrictions on crab harvesting. Its just a creature that most people are not used to seeing in the wild. But theyre not dangerous at all.

Beginning in the 1850s, harvesters collected horseshoe crabs for fertilizer and livestock feed. Later, they used them as bait in whelk and eel fisheries. Then, in the late 1960s, a pharmacologist named James Cooper helped pioneer a new use: Using their blood to detect toxins.

Cooper eventually formed a small biotech company in Charleston called Endosafe. He and his colleagues began pushing South Carolina lawmakers to ban commercial harvesting  except for biomedical uses. In 1991, legislators passed a law that did just that. Coopers company suddenly had a protected supply of horseshoe crab blood.

Charles River bought Endosafe in 1994.

Today, the company hires licensed fishers to collect crabs on the South Carolina coast in spring when they come ashore to breed. The exact number they cull is kept under wraps  state law prohibits DNR from releasing trade secrets to the public. Charles River contractors then haul the crabs to holding ponds or directly to the companys extraction lab in Charleston.

The lab is in an industrial building off Wappoo Road, west of downtown Charleston. There, staffers line crabs on long metal counters and strap them into place. Then they insert tubes into the crabs hearts and extract their blood. A large crab can produce as much as a cup and a half.

Cooper, the founder of Endosafe, last year likened the process to human blood transfusion. But unlike human blood drives, anywhere from 6 percent to 30 percent of these crabs die after being bled, studies have shown. Survivors are often left weaker.

Along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts, five companies, including Charles River, harvest more than 550,000 crabs a year, up 63 percent from 2004. Populations have crashed in some places, especially the Northeast where commercial fishers and LAL harvesters compete. The crab's decline rippled through the food web.

A female horseshoe crab can lay tens of thousands of eggs. Those eggs are a critical source of food for shorebirds such as the red knot, now an endangered species. South Carolinas crab numbers appear to be stable but show troubling downward signs.

Charles River Labs officials insist its harvesting has had little or no impact, though they acknowledged that data on South Carolina's crab population is lacking.

"We believe that were only collecting a small percentage of the amount of horseshoe crabs that are out there, but we dont have the data," said Marshall of Charles River. "Were the first ones to admit it.

Still, conservation groups fear for the ancient creature's future given the demand for its blood. They want the government and medical industry to use a synthetic alternative.

Theres really no reason to harvest crabs, Mizrahi said.

Against this backdrop, Charles River has taken pains to protect its business interests.

Which takes us back to Monkey Island.

3. Of money

The monkeys arrived in South Carolina in 1979, packed in crates and stowed in the belly of chartered DC-3s.

Theyd come from a colony in Puerto Rico established in part to test polio vaccines. The federal government wanted new breeding colonies in the United States. And Morgan Island was one of the new sites.

The first plane touched down on a moonless night at Beauforts Marine Corps Air Station.

Former Beaufort Mayor David Taub helped start the colony and described its history in a column for The Island News:

Marines came out to witness this spectacle as we unloaded monkey crates onto a trailer, he wrote.  Early the next morning, we loaded crates onto our boats for the seven-mile trip to Morgan Island.

Soon, he and other locals began calling it Monkey Island instead.

Morgan Island has about 400 acres of high ground but is surrounded by more than 4,500 acres of creeks and marsh. It takes between 30 minutes and an hour to reach the island from public boat landings in Beaufort or Edisto Island.

Despite its remote location, at least seven monkeys escaped between 1980 and 1996, DNR reported in 2002. All were recaptured, including one on Lady's Island more than 6 miles away.

***

In 2002, developers targeted the island, laying out plans for 64 homes. Officials at DNR wrestled with a decision to buy it. At the time, Boyles was DNR's policy director. He put together a report on the pros and cons.

On one hand, buying Morgan Island would be a big win for the ACE Basin's long-term future. This marshy confluence of the Ashepoo, Combahee and Edisto rivers was one of the least-developed estuaries on the East Coast. The agency was proud of this public and private campaign to preserve the area. Buying Morgan Island would cement that progress.

On the other hand, his report continued, what would they do about the monkeys? If taxpayers own the island, shouldn't they have access to it? Were the monkeys a health risk? A legal liability? They were known carriers of a herpes virus that, though rare, could be lethal to humans. If DNR bought the island, it would have to be off limits to the public.

Then again, there was the money.

At the time, an animal breeding company called LABS of Virginia managed the monkey colony. LABS leased the high ground from the island's owner, a corporation called Morgan Islanders Ltd., for $325,000 a year. If DNR bought the island, it would inherit that lease money.

After weighing the pros and cons, DNR decided to buy Morgan Island for $20.5 million with federal money.

Boyles recalled that board members thought they'd just let the lease expire.

"The thinking was that we'll have the feds take their monkeys, and we'll have a piece of protected land. But then there was an election."

In 2003, incoming Gov. Mark Sanford installed new board members, people with more business-minded goals.

"When Sanford's board came in, there was a thought that this lease can generate revenue," Boyles recalled.

This came as state lawmakers hammered away at DNR's budget. From 2000 to 2004, the state's allocation for DNR's marine division went from about $5 million to just over $1 million. Dozens of positions were eliminated.

"Then, one day in 2007, out of the blue, we got a phone call from Charles River saying 'We're the new monkey managers,' " Boyles said.

He was surprised. The federal government hadn't consulted with DNR. It was akin to a landlord learning a new tenant had moved in without notice.

In the wake of this confusion, DNR eventually renegotiated the lease and hiked the rent to about $900,000 a year, with 5 percent annual increases.

Now DNR was making real money.

***

By 2021, Charles River was wiring about $1.5 million into DNR's coffers each year, records obtained by The Post and Courier show.

And that Morgan Island money went directly to DNR's hard-hit Marine Resources Division  the department that also monitors horseshoe crabs.

Last year, Charles River's lease payments paid part or all of the salaries of at least 33 employees, DNR records show.

This includes a partial salary for Phil Maier, a DNR deputy director who died in December, and Blaik Keppler, who took over for Maier.

Charles River money covered partial salaries for Michael Denson, director of a division that does research, including work on horseshoe crabs.

It partially paid for two DNR turtle researchers, eight ACE Basin staffers and six employees who respond to sudden deaths of fish.

It provided a $275,000 injection into the agencys operating budget to cover office supplies and other needs.

Has the monkey money also bled into DNR's efforts to monitor horseshoe crabs?

4. Of conflicts

A look at internal DNR text messages and emails reveals numerous exchanges between DNR officials and Charles River executives and suppliers. They show DNR biologists asking for everything from advice on horseshoe crab traits to feedback on grant proposals.

Other documents show the agency soft-pedaled potentially negative information about horseshoe crab harvesting.

For instance, every spring, DNR staffers collect horseshoe crabs and measure them. In 2009, the agency reported that the crab population appears strong.

Then, in 2010, staffers collected fewer crabs during regular inshore surveys, and the crabs they caught were smaller and weighed less.

At the same time, offshore trawls suggested numbers were increasing.

Despite this conflicting data, the agency said the lower inshore counts didn't reflect the "lower abundance" of horseshoe crabs. Year after year, the agency repeated the same language in its reports.

Then, in 2016, a change: Charles River stopped collecting crabs as it built its $11 million lab expansion in Charleston. Crab numbers that year suddenly rebounded, a finding first reported by The State. When Charles River began collecting crabs again the next year, DNR saw its inshore and offshore crab numbers go back down.

In public, Charles River and DNR dismissed the notion that crabs here were in trouble. Inside the agency, there were concerns.

At about this time, a DNR researcher drafted a grant request to North Carolina Aquariums for a new study: This project is timely because the SC HSC (horseshoe crab) population could be declining below a sustainable level, but the status of the population is currently unknown.

Meantime, another scientist emailed Mike Denson, the research institute director, with an idea: Renovate greenhouses at the Waddell Mariculture Center near Bluffton to study effects of extracting blood from horseshoe crabs. Previous studies in other states showed the extraction process left crabs weaker and disoriented, possibly contributing to population declines.

Two hours later, Denson shot down the idea. Im not sure investing more funds into horseshoe crabs is a worthwhile endeavor," he wrote. "Its one of the least important resources we are working on  We do not work for (Charles River's) Endosafe  Part of Denson's salary was covered by money from Charles River's Morgan Island lease money.

Meantime, the S.C. Sea Grant Consortium and DNR began a new study, one that looked at the health of the crabs' gene pool. If researchers found signs of inbreeding, that might mean the overall crab population was in decline. Charles River chipped in about $53,144 toward its expenses. The study found the gene pool was healthy.

We had green check marks all the way down the list, Tanya Darden, the study's lead author, was quoted as saying in a 2016 press release by the Sea Grant Consortium. We found no conservation concerns based on genetic diversity.

A scientific journal later published the findings. The paper didn't cite the Charles River funding.

Charles River later crowed about the study on its website: So what can we infer from these findings by SCDNR? One conclusion might be that conservation practices are working here. Again, there was no mention that it had paid for part of the study.

In a recent interview, Darden characterized the study in less definitive terms. The sampling was a one-time effort  a snapshot of "what it was at this time and place." The agency needs more studies to pin down whether the population has increased or decreased, she said.

Another telling example: In 2017, a College of Charleston graduate student had finished a two-year project that found that crabs in holding ponds showed signs of stress and declining health.

It was another potential dent in Charles River's arguments that bleeding was harmless.

The grad student eventually went to work for DNR. Upon her arrival, Peter Kingsley-Smith, DNRs shellfish section manager, said DNR officials were concerned about some of the more negative findings.

The horseshoe crab fishery is a sensitive one, Kingsley-Smith noted in an email, and then demanded to see all future drafts of manuscripts based on her findings.

She eventually submitted a paper to a scientific journal, and DNR officials commented extensively on her drafts. In one, a biologist wrote that horseshoe crabs were vulnerable to extinction. Delete that language, the biologist wrote, saying it was alarmist, and that all animals are vulnerable to extinction.

Boyles said he doesn't believe that the Charles River money has compromised the agency's independence. He said he wasn't concerned that Charles River's $53,144 contribution to the gene study would skew the results. And it's common for staffers to comment on drafts of scientific papers.

"We are interested in long-term health of the (horseshoe crab) resource, and I think Charles River is as well," Boyles said.

5. Of secrecy

All this comes amid increasing legal, economic and political threats to Charles River's lucrative crab and monkey operations.

In December, South Carolina Congresswoman Nancy Mace chartered a boat to take reporters and animal rights activists to Morgan Island. It was a floating press conference to highlight her concerns about using monkeys to test medicines. As the boat approached the island, workers there appeared to shoo away any lingering monkeys.

Three conservation groups recently sued DNR and Charles River in federal court. The groups  Defenders of Wildlife, Coastal Conservation League and Southern Environmental Law Center  alleged that DNR failed to properly regulate horseshoe crabs. They argued this failure also threatened the red knot, the endangered bird that feeds on horseshoe crab eggs.

Previously, the groups sued the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, alleging Charles River illegally collected crabs in Cape Romain National Wildlife Refuge. State Attorney General Alan Wilson sided with Charles River in that court fight. A federal judge eventually ordered the practice stopped.

As pressure grows, Charles River has taken pains to guard and shape its public image.

Earlier this year, two Post and Courier reporters asked Charles River for tours of its Charleston bleeding operation. The company's marketing consultant said yes to one reporter and no to another  no to the reporter who had filed numerous records requests with DNR about the company. How did Charles River learn about these requests? By filing their own to find out who was asking questions about the company, DNR confirmed.

In interviews with The Post and Courier, Charles River officials declined to answer questions about how many monkeys had escaped since it took over the Morgan Island colony, whether it plans to continue its operation there in the long term and how much money it makes breeding the animals. A Charles River official issued a brief statement saying its horseshoe crab and monkey businesses were separate.

But the company has been more open about activities that cast it as a responsible steward of nature. It donated $75,000 to the S.C. Aquarium since 2019. It was a top sponsor of the Conservation Voters of South Carolina Green Tie Award.

Meantime, Charles River enlisted the help of McGuireWoods Consulting, a firm that includes heavy-hitter lobbyists such as former Gov. Jim Hodges and ex-state Rep. Billy Boan.

In October, Brian Flynn, another lobbyist with the firm, made an unusual proposal: Charles River would pay DNR $500,000 for a special "biomedical research license," according to an email obtained by The Post and Courier, which DNR heavily redacted.

It was a stunning move. A commercial fishing license typically costs $25, and a license to collect crabs for LAL is free. Why offer its regulator half a million dollars?

The company wanted to help DNR study whether horseshoe crab numbers were going up or down, said Foster Jordan, corporate senior vice president.

"If we could donate some money," he said, "or help you (DNR) with regulations, help you with research  to help keep us here and convince everybody that what we do is ethical, correct and right for the species  were willing to do that. They refused it. They didnt want it."

None of this information was made public until reporters began asking questions.

Such secrecy has long frustrated conservation groups.

"For a public resource, horseshoe crabs are managed in the most clandestine way possible," said Christian Hunt of Defenders of Wildlife. "Charles River has a vested interest in concealing where it's harvesting and how many crabs it's harvesting. I think that if the public were to see that information, they simply wouldn't stand for it."

And in this vacuum of information, some fear the agency has lost its way.

Sally Murphy, a former DNR scientist known for her turtle research, said she worries what might happen if monkeys escape and establish a wild colony, as has happened with wild boars.

The ecological integrity of the ACE Basin is more important than money. End of story.

6. Of more monkeys

In 2017, DNR signed a new five-year lease with Charles River. The lease gives Charles River options to renew for another five years in 2023 and in 2028. And the new lease had better terms  for Charles River: Instead of 5 percent increases every year, Charles River now would see no rental hikes for the first three years and then 2 percent a year.

Boyles said canceling the lease wouldn't be easy and likely would trigger complex negotiations with an alphabet soup of agencies. And DNR would have to find a way to make up for that loss of money or face Draconian staff cuts. He said he hasn't thought about what the agency will do when the Morgan Island lease finally expires in 10 years.

More clear: The agency needs to find ways to insulate itself from any conflicts of interest, he said.

"If people don't trust us, that's a concern, especially if there's sense that there's something nefarious happening or something doesn't look or smell right."

He said of the Uncovered investigation's findings: "You've given us a lot to think about."

***

Back in the waters off Morgan Island, the monkeys roamed along a sunny spot on the beach next to no trespassing signs that warned: "DO NOT FEED, APPROACH, DISTURB, MOLEST OR INJURE THE ANIMALS."

The sun's warmth apparently made this side of the island a popular place that day. From a boat you could see a baby clinging to an adult. A young monkey raced up a tree and jumped to another branch.

The other side was less popular, where caretakers unload barges packed with bags of monkey chow. On this morning, no monkeys could be seen here, and the docks were empty, save for a white pickup truck.

It parked at the edge of the dock, with two people inside wearing masks. They stared at a photographer from the newspaper. When he lifted his camera, the pickup driver quickly shifted into reverse, backing fast into the shadows, out of view.
A federal measure that would recognize Agent Orange exposure in Guam and other areas, as well as expand exposure coverage for veterans affected by the toxic herbicide, has passed the U.S. House of Representatives and is on its way to the U.S. Senate for deliberation and consideration, Guam Del. Michael San Nicolas stated in a press release.

H.R. 3967, the Honoring Our PACT Act, passed the House with 256 in favor and 174 against. Thirty-four Republicans joined 222 Democrats in voting for the bill, the release stated.

Incorporated into the Honoring Our PACT Act is language from San Nicolas' H.R. 3368, the Lonnie Kilpatrick Central Pacific Relief Act, named after a veteran who fought to recognize dioxin use on Guam, and who died from exposure to the chemicals, according to the release.

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"This huge first step in the Congress acknowledging compensable dioxin use on Guam, and in expanding Agent Orange coverage for those exposed during specific times, is a watershed moment in the history of Guam veteran advocacy," San Nicolas stated in the release.

The Honoring Our PACT Act provides a presumption of service connection for diseases associated with exposure to certain herbicides for veterans who served in:

Guam or American Samoa, or in the territorial waters thereof, between Jan. 9, 1962, and July 31, 1980.

Johnston Atoll or a ship that went to Johnston Atoll between Jan. 1, 1972, and Sept. 30, 1977.

"Under a presumption of service-connection, specific diseases diagnosed in certain veterans are presumed to have been caused by the circumstances of their military service. Health care benefits and disability compensation may then be awarded," San Nicolas stated in the release.

The federal bill also expands eligibility for hospital care, medical services and nursing home care to veterans with disabilities associated with herbicide exposure during the specified times and places in the bill.

Agent Orange is a Rainbow Herbicide, one of several chemicals developed to clear vegetation during the Vietnam War. Agent Orange is composed of equal parts 2, 4-D and 2, 4, 5-T  both common herbicides until the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency halted all use of 2, 4, 5-T in the 1980s due to toxicity concerns.

The manufacture of 2, 4, 5-T at high temperatures is associated with an extremely toxic byproduct known as 2, 3, 7, 8-TCDD, more commonly referred to as TCDD dioxin.

Whether Agent Orange, specifically, was utilized in Guam is subject to long-standing debate. But what's known now is that its toxic components were utilized on island.

Last year, the Guam Legislature unanimously adopted a resolution supporting the Honoring Our PACT Act and a similar measure in the Senate, the Comprehensive and Overdue Support for Troops of War Act.

Guam legislative Speaker Therese Terlaje lauded the House's passage of the Honoring Our PACT Act.

"I thank the many veterans across the nation and residents of Guam who have spent many years lending their voices in testimony to secure a presumption and corresponding health care coverage for those who suffer cancers, diabetes and other illnesses caused by exposure to Agent Orange," she told The Guam Daily Post.

The speaker added that officials recently learned the Guam Environmental Protection Agency found documents from the University of Guam Micronesian Area Research Center which include evidence of the use of chlorinated herbicides on Guam and that may require sampling for those components at all former military sites on island.

"The Department of Defense continues to deny the existence of Agent Orange on Guam, despite the overwhelming testimony from veterans and residents. I continue to call upon the DOD to initiate cleanup efforts and cooperate with local and U.S. EPA soil sampling efforts," the speaker stated.

Guam EPA had been investigating the use of Agent Orange on Guam, but efforts stalled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

While there is no firm timeline, the local agency plans to interface with federal counterparts to evaluate the next steps for the investigation.

"We will keep the community informed once we have evaluated the next steps in the investigation," said Guam EPA spokesperson Nicholas Lee.
The Russians reportedly have launched multiple assassination attempts against Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky. So far none has succeeded. This account is from the London Times:

President Zelensky has survived at least three assassination attempts in the past week, The Times has learnt. Two different outfits have been sent to kill the Ukrainian president  mercenaries of the Kremlin-backed Wagner group and Chechen special forces. Both have been thwarted by anti-war elements within Russias Federal Security Service (FSB).

Can this really be true? If the Times account is accurate, some elements of Russias government are actively trying to thwart Putins assassination plots.

Wagner mercenaries in Kyiv have sustained losses during their attempts and are said to have been alarmed by how accurately the Ukrainians had anticipated their moves. A source close to the group said it was eerie how well briefed Zelenskys security team appeared to be.

Either because of leaks from other Russian sources, as this article suggests, or perhaps because of penetration of Russian communications by Western intelligence services.

On Saturday an attempt on Zelenskys life was foiled on the outskirts of Kyiv. Ukrainian security officials said a cadre of Chechen assassins had been eliminated before they could reach the president. Oleksiy Danilov, the secretary of Ukraines National Security and Defence Council, told Ukrainian TV channels that Russian spies had tipped them off about the planned assassination. Ukrainian officials claim the information that led to the deaths of the Chechens came from disgruntled agents in the FSB who oppose the invasion.

Of course this could be disinformation intended to sow confusion on the Russian side.

The Wagner mercenaries were unaware of the Chechen assassins but have carried out their own attempts to decapitate the government, after being embedded in Kyiv for more than six weeks, tracking the activities of 24 high-profile Ukrainian targets. The group had been told to await the arrival of the Spetsnaz  Russian special forces  to provide them with a secure corridor out of Kyiv once the assassinations had been completed.

It sounds paranoid, but apparently there is good reason to think that Russia placed agents inside Kiev weeks ago with instructions to assassinate Zelensky and other Ukrainian leaders.

How any attempted assassination would be carried out remains to be seen:

The risk of such an operation would be very high and Wagner will be braced for casualties, they added. One theory is that once the group established Zelenskys location, they could put a laser target marker on him and the Russian air force could fly in and drop a bomb.

At this point, one wonders how much Russia would gain by killing Zelensky. Reportedly, the Russian strategy was to take Ukraine with a blitzkrieg offensive and quickly install a puppet government. If so, that plan has gone by the boards. At this point, killing President Zelensky wouldnt fool anyone, wouldnt facilitate installing a pro-Russian regime, and would fuel unending resistance that Russia could hardly overcome with any plausible level of violence and repression.

Which argues for a negotiated cease fire that would allow Putin to save face. Except that it wouldnt: he is all in on conquering Ukraine, but there is good reason to think that the oligarchs and some elements of Russias government, likely including the military, are appalled by Putins Ukraine adventure. For Mad Vlad, there may be no way out. Somewhere, people are betting on who will live longer, Zelensky or Putin.
Arise and take our stand for freedom as in the olden time. Winston Churchill

Proclaim Liberty throughout All the land unto All the Inhabitants Thereof. Inscription on the Liberty Bell
For Bay Area readers with time on their hands, Ive got two upcoming events that may be of interest.

First, next Wednesday evening down in Menlo Park, Ill be hosting Bjorn Lomborg at a Pacific Research Institute dinner at the Rosewood Sand Hill resort. Tickets start at $150. Details here. (The registration deadline is tomorrow I believe, so dont wait!)

Bjorn will talk about Climate Change and Effective Policy: Is Alarmism Wasting Trillions? (Answer: yes.)

Second, the next day, Ill be hosting Charles Kesler, editor of the Claremont Review of Books, at Berkeley Law, to talk about his book Crisis of the Two Constitutions. This event goes off from 12:50  2 pm, and is not only free, but next week the campus mask mandate ends, so you can leave your mask behind. Well be recording the event, so if you cant come, or arent in the area, Ill post a link to it later on after it is posted. Heres the event poster:

Finally, in two weeks I begin making appearances to promote my next book, M. Stanton Evans: Conservative Wit, Apostle of Freedom, starting with an online event at the American Enterprise Institute on March 15 at 2 pm eastern. This event you can watch online in real time, and send in questions and comments if you want.
Across America, jurisdictions are ending covid-related mandates and shutdowns. No more masks! No more vaccine certificates! Get the kids back in school! Of course I think these developments are all good; I have argued from near the beginning of the epidemic that shutdowns and mask mandates are useless and counterproductive. But why are liberals in government now throwing in the towel?

The standard explanation is that the extreme measures taken to combat covid have worked, along with vaccination. Thus, because of the great progress we have made, life can get back to normal. Joe Biden framed it in typical fashion in his State of the Union speech:

Because of the progress weve made, because of your resilience and the tools that we have been provided by this Congress, tonight I can say we are moving forward safely, back to more normal routines.

***

Just a few days ago, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued new mask guidelines. Under these new guidelines, most Americans in most of the country can now go mask free.

***

Thanks to the progress we have made in the past year, Covid-19 no longer need control our lives.

Really? What progress is that? Is there any reason to think that covid is receding into the past? No. This screen shot shows new covid cases reported to CDC on a rolling seven-day average basis:

In fact, we are just now coming out of the highest spike in covid cases in the history of the epidemic. With regard to cases, there has been no progress in the past year, and there is zero reason to assume there are no major spikes coming in the future. And the vaccines have been widely available for a year now, while the CDC reports that 81 percent of Americans have received at least one shot. Obviously the vaccines have done little or nothing to stop the spread of covid.

You might say, sure, but those recent cases are the harmless omicron variant. Cases are up, but deaths are not. But you would be wrong. Here are the CDCs numbers for covid deaths, again on a seven-day rolling average basis:

It looks to me as though the last seven months have seen at least as many covid deaths as any prior seven-month period. And, despite the fact that various government agencies have produced data purporting to show that vaccines dramatically reduce the incidence of hospitalization and deathdata that in some instances, at least, appears to be flawedthe overall numbers do not reflect any such dramatic impact.

In short, if you believe that covid deaths really are deaths caused by covid, and if you think covid is such a serious disease that unprecedented measures must be taken to combat it, and if you think that mask mandates, shutdowns, school closures and vaccine passports actually work to stop the spread of the disease, then there is no reason why those measures should stop now.

The reality is twofold. First, politicians are implicitly giving up on those anti-covid measures, even though they will never admit that they were wrong to impose them in the first place. Second, most people are fed up with covid restrictions and have more or less gotten over their fear of the disease. (Some, of course, never feared it in the first place.) With the midterm elections coming, politicians, including the politicians who run bureaucracies like the CDC, are giving in to the public will, while taking credit for giving us our freedom back. But none of this has anything to do with science.
The Abuja Electricity Distribution Company (AEDC) has attributed the poor supply of electricity to its franchise areas to low power generation from the national grid.

Donald Etim, the AEDC Chief Marketing Officer, said this in a statement issued on Friday.

The AEDC wishes to inform our customers in Kogi, Niger, Nasarawa and the FCT that the current low and unstable supply of electricity to homes and businesses is as a result of low power generated to the national grid, he said.

In recent weeks, the level of power generated and served to the national grid for onward delivery to customers has been abysmally low.

However, we will do our utmost at all times to ensure that we equitably distribute even that modest supply in such a way that a fair cross section of customers are served.

AEDC knows full well the place and role of electricity to life, economy, and security, he said.

According to Mr Etim, we are deeply committed to working collaboratively with other stakeholders within the Nigerian Electricity Supply Industry (NESI) to identify and resolve the challenges within the sector.

He said the cause of the latest low generation has been identified and was being addressed.

Mr Etim recalled that the Minister of Power, Abubakar Aliyu, had raised the issue of poor power generation at the weekly State House ministerial briefing on Thursday.

He quoted the minister as saying the erratic power supply currently being experienced in Abuja and other parts of the country is caused by low water level in the hydro power stations.

With the reduction in water levels at the hydro power stations during the dry season, there is the need for additional load to be taken up by gas plants, he said.

The challenges in repairs currently being done on generators are responsible for the load shedding and power outages.

The minister said that the Federal Government was carrying out maintenance in the eastern axis around Odukpani leading to reduced power supply from the usually reliable Niger Delta Power Holdings Company of Nigeria (NDPHC) Calabar Power Plant.

We are having challenges at Okoloma Gas Station linked to Afam VI power plant.

The minister had said that the federal government was working with the NNPC and other gas suppliers also to improve the pressure on the Western Axis, adding that this precludes units from reaching optimum supply.

Mr Etim said that AEDC as a company fully committed to enriching their customers experience regrets that the challenge of low generation was beyond AEDCs direct control.

We are aware of customers plight. We understand the pains of our customers who have suffered untold hardship as a result of this situation. Indeed, we empathise with them.

We appeal to all clients to bear with us as all industry stakeholders are working tirelessly to achieve system stability and ensure availability and steady supply of electricity across AEDC franchise areas, he said. (NAN)
Embattled Yoruba actor Olanrewaju Omiyinka, aka Baba Ijesha, was called to the witness box on Friday at the Special Offences Court, Ikeja, Lagos, where he testified as a witness in his case.

It was the first time the actor, who has been in the eye of the storm, would be the sole witness in an alleged rape case that has lingered since April 2021.

The comic actor revealed that actress and comedienne Damilola Adekoya, popularly known as Princess, was his lover during the hearing. Princess was absent from court. Her lawyer, O.B Akinde, was, however, present.

The 49-year-old actor has been embroiled in a messy alleged rape controversy with Princess foster daughter.

Baba Ijesha was arrested on April 22, 2021. He was later released on May 17, 2021, on health grounds.

The Genesis

Baba Ijesha told the court that he met Princess for the first time in 2014.

Baba Ijesha said their first encounter was via a telephone call while anchoring his LTV and Lagos Radio program, which streamed every Tuesday.

He said the actress called in during one of his shows and described herself as a die-hard fan.

He said: Princess called me and said, aba Ijesha, I am a dying fan, even my family, we love you so much.

The actor also stated that Princess would later call him after the show at about 8 pm.

want to join your caucus. Someone advised me to join the Yoruba comic movie caucus. Alibaba is bad, Buchi is bad, and Stand Up Nigeria comedy is not good for me, Baba Ijesha said while recounting his telephone conversation with Princess.

Baba Ijesha said Princess requested his producers number, and he obliged.

He claimed it marked the beginning of their friendship.

He also mentioned that the first movie he featured with the actress Princess spurred a relationship between both actors.

Romance

In February 2014, Baba Ijesha said that his friendship with Princess metamorphosed into a romantic one in October 2014.

While we were at any movie location, Princess would pass the night at my hotel room. I was having issues with my wife at the time. So Princess collected my wifes number to try to reconcile us.

I was expecting to hear from her, but all to no avail. Finally, after three weeks, she called me and said, Baba Ijesha, where are you? I said I was in Lagos. She told me to come to Aguda. When I arrived at Princess house, she asked me to greet her mother. I prostrated and greeted her mother.

Baba Ijesha further explained that he and Princess mum are namesakes even though she is fondly called Maa Larne.

The duo became closer, and their bond grew tighter.

Baba Ijesha said Princess encouraged him to take care of her daughter.

She said, take care of Princess. I know she is a stubborn girl.

I responded by saying that we were only friends, and she asked if I wanted to marry my enemy?

after her Mother endorsed their friendship, Baba Ijesha said he and Princess became intimate.

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Princess always sleeps in my room, and I touch her, she touches me, she kisses me, I kiss her, by that time we were dating. Baba Ijesha said.

I promised to promote her. I cant do anything to affect her career, and I cannot hurt a woman.

Baba Ijesha was overwhelmed with emotions and broke down in tears at this point in court.

He continued, I travelled to check on my wife who went for her masters in London, when I came back Princess called me.

She said she was sick and asked me to buy her fruit. So I drove to her house. I saw her half-naked. I told her the fruit was in the car, so she sent the child Bukumi to collect it.

Baba Ijesha also narrated the countless times Princess called him her husbands in public and lavished care and attention on him.

Movie skit or reality?

Baba Ijesha said before April 19 to 2021 that Princess sent him several WhatsApp messages inviting him to partake in his movie production.

He said: She has been sending me messages on WhatsApp since April 17, 2021. First, she sent a message on Whatsapp. She said, Hello, have a production, and I want you to play a sub lead.

The actor said that he was in Ogun state when he got the message but rushed down to Lagos on April 19 for the production.

Baba Ijesha claimed Princess told him that the production was a Lagos State Project against Rape, and another actress, Iyabo Ojo, was involved in the production.

The defendant (Baba Ijesha) printed his Whatsapp messages exchanges with the complainant (Princess) with his Samsung cell phone, which he gave the court as exhibits.

Baba Ijesha asked Princess what role he would be playing in the project, and she told him he would be playing the role of a lover boy, unlike his previous roles in movies in which he acted like an older man.

Baba Ijesha said that he felt uneasy about the project because there was no script, and it was to be shot at Princess house, but she asked him to do a short skit that didnt require scripts so that she could present it to the producers.

He said he was asked to improvise.

Baba Ijesha was still skeptical about the movie, but Princess insisted that they had already rehearsed.

He said: I asked her what are we going to do, she said we were going to rehearse. So she brought the young girl, Bukumi, and said that I could kiss her, suck her, and pretend to be acting in a child molestation scene.

When I got to the house that day, I met 12 people, whom I thought were members of the crew, but when we wanted to start our rehearsal, Princess told them to go.

My lord, all the scenes you saw in that video were acting, and it was a skit, He said

The skit which Baba Ijesha was referring to was CCTV footage, which Princess had presented.

During his hearing on February 17, one of the witnesses in the case claimed Baba Ijesha and the minor were merely acting out a script.

He said they started acting the rape scene in a dark room that Princess recorded with a phone.

To make the young lady comfortable, Baba Ijesha said that he asked the young lady how old she was and if she had a boyfriend, her response was,  I am an adult.

Meanwhile, according to Baba Ijeshas testimony, Princess, before leaving the room, told the girl,  remember all that I told you, do it well.

Revelation

Surprisingly for Baba Ijesha, while he was in the acting, Princess stormed into the room with some boys.

Suddenly, because the door was open, I saw like eight people enter the room. I thought it was still part of the acting. She started beating the girl, and all of a sudden, the boys bounced on me and started beating, he said.

 At first, I thought they were amateur actors, but I knew we were no longer acting when the beating got severe.

Blackmail

Baba Ijesha said that he realised that it was a set-up when Princess brought out her phone and told him to confess that he had disvirgined Bukumi seven years ago with his car keys.

He said he became scared as the boys would not stop beating him.

Baba Ijesha said as an actor, he was used to standing for more than two hours, but after the trauma from the beating, he could barely stand in court while he testified, he was given a seat.

Baba Ijesha said: Princess brought a phone and said, you know I lo you, agree that seven years ago, you disvirgin this girl. 

Baba Ijesha aid that Princess orchestrated the entire scene and arranged with the police, which landed him in jail.

He emphasised that the entire video was mere acting.

He told the court that his relationship with Princess turned sour because he refused to marry her.

Response to charges

Baba Ijesha was charged on six counts of sexual assault by penetration, indecent treatment of a child, and sexual assault, which contravene sections 259, 135, and 261 of the Criminal Law of Lagos State 2011, as well as 135, 263, and 262 Criminal Law of Lagos State 2015.

Reacting to the charges leveled against him, Baba Ijesha said that he did not molest a minor, nor did he sexually assault her.

He noted that he was only acting according to the directive from Princess.

The case was adjourned to March 11, 2022.
The All Progressives Congress (APC) national leader, Bola Tinubu, said on Thursday that he is in the race for the 2023 Presidency to bring hope and effect the changes the country desires.

The former governor of Lagos State said this in Ado-Ekiti during a consultation with members of Ekiti Traditional Council.

The APC national leader said the country was in dire need of a leader who could unite the people, tackle insecurity and bring about the desired socio-economic development.

He said the consultation with the traditional rulers was in furtherance of his 2023 presidential aspiration and to get the prayers and support of the royal fathers.

Mr Tinubu said he decided to meet with the traditional rulers because of the respect he placed on culture and tradition.

We have struggled for democracy and today we have democracy but we are not stable yet. By now we should have a good farming system and opportunities to produce for other nations to buy.

We chose democracy and we must not fail in this task. Im in this race to renew the hope and make the future great for our children .

For Nigeria to stand united and develop, we require patience and wisdom. We have to be united, that is the only way we can be great. That was why we formed APC based on principles.

I want to tell you that Nigeria needs serious change. I knew how Lagos was when I took over and we had never failed any election, he said.

He said there must be continuity in governance for progress to be attained.

I was the first governor in Nigeria to start paying the WAEC fee of secondary school students. I shall do it again as a President, he said.

Mr Tinubu said he was not new to contesting for the seat of the nations topmost position, saying he has been on the Nigeria project since the 70s.

I was with MKO Abiola in SDP. I was a senator before he came out. I was the youngest senator of that era.

We believed that there must be democracy in Nigeria, there must be freedom and there must be opportunities.

We have to collaborate, unite and promote ourselves instead of fighting. We all see what is happening in Ukraine today, we dont need such experience here, he said.

Dayo Adeyeye, the National Chairman of South-West Agenda 2023 for Tinubu Presidential Ambition, (SWAGA), said Mr Tinubu has made great investment toward promoting the development of Ekiti state.

That APC is in Ekiti today is traceable to God and Tinubu. He struggled for it and restored progressive politics here. He has made many Ekiti people commissioners, Special Advisers and local government chairmen in Lagos.

Tinubu honoured our own hero in Ekiti, Adekunle Fajuyi by building a house for him. He has helped so many people, including myself.

Tinubu brought a paradigm shift to governance in Lagos. In fact, he is a miracle worker.

As a governor of Lagos State, he was ranked first and no wonder he remained the last man standing when the then AD lost grip of the Southwest, Mr Adeyeye said.

Responding, Gabriel Adejumo, the Onisan of Isan-Ekiti and Chairman of the Ekiti Traditional Council, said the constitution permits every qualified Nigerian to aspire for any position.

He prayed for Gods guidance and protection to help Mr Tinubu realise his ambition.

The News Agency of Nigeria reports that Mr Tinubu was accompanied to the meeting by Ekiti State Deputy Governor, Bisi Egbeyemi, and members of SWAGA from the 16 Local Government Areas of the state. (NAN)

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After a poacher died following a clash with rangers at Nigerias Yankari Game Reserve, officials went with police to the nearby communities in Bauchi State, in the countrys restive northeast, to calm tensions. The relatives of the deceased had vowed retaliation.

In May 2013, about a month after the encounter, poachers ambushed a patrol team and shot a ranger dead. Weeks later, another ranger, left by colleagues to watch their motorbikes, was brutally hacked to death. Officials managed to arrest one of the killers, but they had a different concern: Even if all the assailants were caught, they were unlikely to face justice.

There were telling examples. Poachers arrested in the past returned to hunt in the reserve after being allowed to escape from custody or (are) released after paying a very small fine only, according to official records. One elephant poacher arrested three times returned after his court cases were abandoned each time.

Then in 2016, a man described as Yankaris most wanted elephant hunter, who had killed a ranger before, was arrested after being on the run for years. But as the officials feared, the man, identified as Ilu Bello, regained his freedom just months after being handed to police. No explanation was given for his release.

Prosecution of suspects arrested in the reserve is still very poor and the penalties imposed do not discourage offenders to stop or reduce poaching and illegal activities in the reserve, the U.S.-headquartered Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), which handles patrols at the reserve in partnership with the Bauchi government, wrote in its report in 2013.

In Cross River State, hundreds of kilometres south, poachers frequently raided animal sanctuaries too. And like in Bauchi, many of those caught were freed. All 15 hunters arrested in 2020 at the Afi Wildlife Sanctuary were reported to the Cross River State Forestry Commission for prosecution. None was charged.

The lack of prosecutions is negatively affecting (the) morale of rangers who take great risks making arrests, the WCS said of Afi.

At sea and air ports in Lagos and Port Harcourt, and at land borders in Adamawa and Katsina, traffickers of wildlife also escaped justice.

Nigeria has for years failed to hold wildlife traffickers and poachers accountable for their crimes despite federal and state laws that criminalise the killing and trading of protected species, an investigation by PREMIUM TIMES and Mongabay has found.

Our reporting revealed a trend: In many cases, wildlife poachers and traffickers were not arrested or traced; most of those caught were not prosecuted; and the few charged to court were asked to pay small fines or serve short terms. Many returned to their businesses after.

Suspects paid as low as N20,000 ($47) instead of a three-year jail term for killing an endangered animal such as chimpanzee or pangolin. Poachers were not arrested in multiple cases because there were no vehicles to convey them, and those arrested were later released because officials said there were no funds to keep them in pre-trial detention or pay lawyers for their trial.

At the ports, traffickers who ferried tens of thousands of tonnes of elephant tusks, rhino ivory and pangolin scales worth several millions of dollars were mostly never traced. Of 63 total interceptions collated between 2010 and 2021, suspects in 52 of the cases were either not arrested or charged to court. Many cases were listed to be under investigation for years.

No suspect, amongst them Nigerians, Chinese, Malians, Guineans, and Ivorians, served a jail term over the last decade for illicit trafficking of animals. The government said it obtained four convictions in the last 11 years  three were awarded small fines.

It (convictions) is very low because we have to improve the capacity of our judiciary and our enforcement in understanding what wildlife crime is, Nigerias Minister of State for Environment, Sharon Ikeazor, told us. What are the endangered species? And what are the threatened species that should not be traded? Its a lot of work we have to do.

The findings are based on government and court records on seizures since 2010, publicly available data, and our analysis of hundreds of pages of reports of law enforcement at five wildlife reserves between 2012 and 2021.

After federal agencies initially refused to provide data, we obtained Nigerias submission to the Swiss-based Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES). The Nigeria Customs Service later released its record under the freedom of information law, and the National Environmental and Standards Agency (NESREA) provided additional information. The Federal Ministry of Environments Department of Forestry did not respond to our requests for data.

We also interviewed officials, including prosecutors, environmental campaigners and traders at wildlife markets in Lagos, Cross River, Ogun and Bauchi States as well as the Federal Capital Territory. Together, they shine a light on how Nigerias law enforcement and justice systems have done little over the years to deter perpetrators of wildlife crimes.

HUNTING GAME

The law enforcement records cover four protected areas in Cross River, namely, Mbe (community-owned), Afi (state-owned), Oban and Okwangwo (federal government-owned); and one in Bauchi, namely, Yankari (state-owned).

Created in 1956, Yankari became Nigerias biggest national park in 1991. It was handed back to the Bauchi government in 2006. A top destination for tourists, the 2,244 square-kilometre sprawling reserve is home to the critically endangered West African lion, buffalo, hippopotamus, roan and hartebeest and the Nigerian savannah elephants.

It suffered major losses between 2006 and 2014 when neglect by the authorities allowed poachers, herders and farmers a free reign. During this period, many elephants were killed to supply the illegal ivory market. Government records say the population of the savannah elephants fell from 350 at the time to about 100 now.

Protection levels rose after the Bauchi government signed a co-management agreement with the Wildlife Conservation Society in 2014, and arrests spiked with rangers offered $15 (N6,200) for each poacher arrested and $80 for the arrest of an elephant poacher.

But weak prosecution and penalties ensured poaching remained a threat. Elephant killings were recorded in 2020 and 2021, the first time since 2015.

Between 2013 and 2021, Yankari recorded 418 arrests of poachers but only 272 were prosecuted, according to our analysis of the annual records filed by WCS.

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The penalties were even weaker. In 2013 after several animals were found dead, including seven elephants with their tusks missing, hunters arrested that year received sentences of between six months to 18 months in jail.

They were, however, given the option of paying between just 10,000 ($63) and 160,000 naira as fines. A kilogramme of elephant tusk cost up to $2500 (410,000 naira at the time) in the black market in 2014, according to the Geneva-headquartered Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime. An elephants two tusks can weigh up to 110 kilogrammes.

In 2017, hunters found to have killed hartebeest, hippos, baboon and patas monkeys were jailed between two and 18 months. They got fine alternatives as low as N30,000 ($189). Only repeat offenders had no option of fine.

Hunters arrested in 2020 for killing waterbucks, bushbucks and hartebeest, and suspected of killing an elephant and removing its tusks, got between six and 18 months in jail.

In a few cases, the reports say rangers took bribes from poachers and released them, afraid prosecutors and court officials would compromise the cases and release the suspects after all.

Some of the most tragic events at the reserve occurred in 2013. Rangers in April that year clashed with three poachers, and when one of them died in police custody, his family threatened retaliation.

Officials met with community leaders and received assurances there would be no reprisal. But on May 8, at about 11:30 p.m., poachers ambushed a patrol team and killed a ranger identified as Danazumi Baba. In June, another ranger, Babawuro Husseni, was attacked with machetes while his three colleagues left to survey their patrol area. They found his body some 100 meters away.

Rangers hunted for the assailants for months, while also trying to track the reserves most wanted elephant poacher, Mr Bello, who himself had also killed a ranger a year earlier. Mr Bello was finally arrested in 2016 by rangers and soldiers in the neighbouring Plateau State, but police released him just months later.

We have not been told what happened, but we know he has been free, said Nachamada Geoffrey, WCS landscape director for Yankari.

He said while security improved at the reserve over years, offenders still get away with weak penalties. The Yankari protection law is outdated, and the penalties need strengthening to act as a deterrent, he said. If there are tough enough jail sentences to offenders as a deterrent, hunting and livestock pressure would be mitigated.

Under the Yankari protection law, killing protected animals attract between three to 18 months in jail, with the option of fines. After years of failed promises, the government is now working to amend the laws, we learned. The state commissioner for environment, Ahmed Asmau, did not respond to requests for comments.

COMPOUNDING THE ISSUE

The four reserves in Cross River reported the arrest of 401 poachers, a collection of 59,091 wire snares and 16,879 spent cartridges used by hunters between 2012 and 2020, but they recorded only 19 prosecutions, seven convictions, and 70 out-of-court fine settlements.

The poorest instance of law enforcement involved the Afi Wildlife Sanctuary, where 80 arrests were made in nine years, and only three were prosecuted while one was convicted.

Two of those charged were caught with the bones of two gorillas. Afi, established in 2000, is home to an estimated 25 to 30 of the rare Cross River gorillas.

In many cases, suspects caught hunting were merely warned and released. Others could not be arrested because of logistical reasons as rangers had no vehicle to transport them.

At Mbe, of 160 arrests made in nine years, there were only two prosecutions and convictions. One offender was sentenced to one year in jail or N110,000 fine for killing a female chimpanzee, and another to three years or N20,000 fine for killing an unnamed endangered specie.

Fifty of those arrested were asked to pay fines between N2,000 and N20,000 to the host community, an out-of-court settlement called compounding, which allows officials to collect fines in place of prosecution. Experts say it breeds corruption and the fines are too small to deter offenders.

Compoundment seems to be a preferred option for settling these cases, but it does not provide enough deterrence, said Inaoyom Imong, WCSs Cross River director. Cases that get to court hardly get to the end due to compoundment, lack of political will, and lack of evidence.

At Okwangwo, where at least three elephants were killed, 50 arrests were reported, and only five were prosecuted in nine years. Nineteen people were compounded. Hunting pressure in the area was shown by the number of wire snares and cartridges: 10,858 and 3,428. Many poachers were also not arrested because of lack of vehicles.

At Oban, between 2015 and 2019, there were 13 prosecutions out of 111 arrests of hunters. Five convictions were recorded, each jailed one year for killing pangolins, duikers, and monkeys.

Officials in Calabar, the Cross River capital, described how the CRSFC repeatedly cited lack of funds for releasing suspects. The commission says it does not have funds to keep detainees and pay for legal fees of prosecuting them, one official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the issue freely.

The head of the commission, Anthony Undiendeye, said poor funding made law enforcement difficult. He also blamed manpower, high unemployment that makes locals fall back on the forest for livelihood.

Poor law enforcement may make it seem as if the government technically supports it. We dont, Mr Undiandeye said. My governor is a professor of environment and fully understands the implication of depleting our forest reserves. He decries it every day.

He said things were better when the state operated a partial ban on the use of forest resources, which allowed communities to benefit in some ways. Poverty has made people despondent, and livelihood is an aspect we need to address, he said.

At the Aningeje Market, 51 kilometres from the Okwangwo reserves, where bush meat is sold, Mkpe Otu, a hunter who had arrived for the days sales, narrated how he sources animals from protected areas.

He said in the past, when authorities were more stringent going after poachers and loggers, hunters used more snares and wire traps. He said these days they hunt at night with dane guns when the rangers rarely show up.

The WCS admitted its patrols were mostly in the day due to logistics problems, and that the number of arrests did not give a true picture of the hunting and logging pressure on the reserves as most poachers operate at night.

A trader who buys dried pangolins, monkeys, and other species from Aningeje market and resells at the Big Quo area of Calabar, said traders were sometimes questioned by the states wildlife officials who visit markets to ask about their sources of pangolins.

The trade has continued nonetheless. Late January, she spread out a dried pangolin, monkey, and grass cutter at her stall and offered the pangolin for 4,000 naira and the monkey for 7,000 naira.

Conservationists say such sales, although mainly on a subsistence scale amidst high poverty levels, have taken a toll on Nigerias wildlife stock over the years. They have also fed a more extensive web of illicit wildlife trade, for which Nigeria has become a major global hub.

When we go out we see pangolins, we see them at the roadside, and we are worried, said Olajumoke Morenikeji, professor at the University of Ibadan, who leads the Pangolin Conservation Guild Nigeria.

BOOMING TRADE

Global illicit wildlife trade has grown rapidly in the last decade, pushing some species close to extinction. The World Bank estimates the trade at $7.8 billion to $10 billion a year, making wildlife crime the fourth most lucrative illegal business after narcotics, human trafficking, and weapons.

The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), hosted by the United Nations Environment Programme, brings together 179 nations to combat illegal wildlife trade through uniform regulation. As a CITES signatory, Nigeria outlaws the killing of endangered species or animals in protected areas and illicit trafficking of animals.

Yet, Nigeria has emerged as a top source and transit country for illicit trade in ivory and pangolin scales, with smugglers attracted by its porous borders, corruption level, transport links to Asia, and poor law enforcement.

Between 2009 and 2017, Nigeria was linked to 29.6 tonnes of seized ivory globally, and in 2019 at least 51 tonnes of pangolin scales seized anywhere originated from the country, according to the United Nations Office on Drug and Crime, UNODC.

Nigeria made its single largest seizure of pangolin scales on its soil in January 2020 when officials seized 9.5 tonnes of the anteaters scales worth an estimated N10.6 billion ($25.9 million).

In 2021 alone, the Nigeria Customs Service intercepted 18.69 tonnes of elephant tusks, rhino horns, pangolin scales, and claws at various exit points across the country, according to our compilation. Just this month, it seized 145 kilograms of elephant tusks and 839.4 kilograms of pangolin scales at the upmarket Lekki district of Lagos.

Such seizures, typically displayed before journalists, are usually seen as a measure of success against traffickers, and not much is heard about the cases afterward.

Our review of government records and interviews with officials showed that despite the huge seizures over the last decade, no one served a jail term. Of 63 interceptions we collated between 2010 to 2021, only 11 cases went to court; many never concluded. No arrests were made in most cases.

The three convictions the government said it got, all between 2012 and 2013, involved Chinese nationals caught with 5.4 kilogrammes of processed ivory. They were asked to pay just N100,000 ($629) as fine in place of a three-year jail term. Under Nigerias Endangered Species Act, fines could reach N5 million.

Interestingly, another Chinese arrested the same period with a smaller quantity of processed ivory was made to pay N5 million in an out-of-court settlement.  the highest fine by any offender.

We found that authorities in most cases do not go after the actual owners of seized shipments even when there are clues. Also, three years after the government promised to investigate how over 34 shipments intercepted outside the country left its shores, we found no evidence that has been done.

In acknowledging that most cases were not taken to court, the National Environment Standards and Regulations Enforcement Agency (NESREA), the lead law enforcement agency on wildlife offences, said some cases were settled out of court through the payment of administrative fines while others involved items abandoned at ports with no owner in sight.

Most of the suspects you see on those cases are usually abandoned consignments, the director-general of NESREA, Aliyu Jauro, told us. When they are about to be caught, they leave it and run away, so at the end of the day, the Nigeria Customs Service will just come to NESREA and say we have this specimen with us, or they will just hand it over to us. So when you dont have any person to prosecute, what do you do?

A spokesperson for the Customs Service, which also has the powers to prosecute wildlife smugglers, said after cases go to court, the agency has little control over the outcome or pace of the judicial process.

The issue of justice is not entirely in the hands of customs, said Joseph Attah. At the time cases are handled by the courts, there is just little we can tell because we do not have the inner workings of the court, apart from the fact that ours is to ensure that we continue to make appearances whenever we are supposed to. The duration is not in our place to decide.

However, a recent case shows that while judicial delays might contribute to poor justice delivery, government agencies like Customs do not do enough to investigate, arrest, and prosecute offenders.

LEADS UNFOLLOWED

The January 21, 2021 haul of pangolin parts, the second-largest seized by Nigerian authorities ever, arrived at the Apapa port in Lagos deceptively packaged.

On paper, the 20-feet container prepared for export to Haiphong, Vietnam, contained furniture but inside officials found woodwork used to conceal 162 sacks of pangolin scales and claws weighing 8.8 tonnes. They also found 57 bags of elephant ivory and lion bones.

At an event announcing the seizure, Mohammed Abba-Kura, a Customs comptroller, told journalists of the agencys resolve to combat wildlife smuggling and assured the organisation would act after its investigations.

More than a year after the announcement and several months after Customs completed its investigations, the case has not moved forward in court  evidently due to the handling of the case.

Court records show that Customs filed its affidavit of completion of investigation at the federal high court in Lagos on June 28, 2021, but as of the publication of this story, it has not arraigned any suspect on the matter.

We found that operatives arrested only the forwarding agent who processed the shipment as they did not go after the real owners of the cargo. Felix Olame, shown to the media in January 2021, was later released on administrative bail.

His arraignment was initially delayed due to the investigation by the agency and also by a strike by judicial workers in April 2021. After court activities resumed in June, Customs lawyers filed the case in court, but did not arraign Mr Olame as he had not been re-arrested.

Records show the matter was adjourned to December to give time for the accused to be brought for arraignment, and the court issued a bench warrant for the suspect to be brought from detention for arraignment. That did not happen as the accused was not re-arrested.

The case was again adjourned to January 27, 2022. Again, the matter was suspended as the accused was still not in court, prompting another adjournment.

We also found that investigators did not act on tips to go after the actual cargo owners by examining their phone numbers and company details, available on the export forms, with phone companies and the Corporate Affairs Commission. Court filings make no reference to the owners of the shipment.

This shouldnt be a difficult thing. Their phone numbers are there, and their company registration can be found, one government official said on the condition of anonymity to discuss the matter.

Officials interviewed alluded to big money in the business that sometimes makes it difficult for law enforcement officials to follow through the process.

These types of cases require those involved to be able to resist a lot of temptation. Because we know a lot of money is involved, another official said.

Another official said the likely outcome of repeated adjournments of the case is for the court to dismiss the case for lack of diligent prosecution.

Within Customs bureaucracy, the responsibility to arrest and present the suspect in court lies with the agencys enforcement unit, which we confirmed received notification to act. Reached by phone, the head of the department at Apapa, Haruna Nasir, said he could not comment on the matter.

NOT TOGETHER

Under the governments procedure, suspects arrested for violating federal wildlife laws are to be handed over to NESREA for prosecution. However, other law enforcement agencies can prosecute offenders.

The Customs Service can charge wildlife trade suspects under its law prohibiting export of banned items, and the anti-graft body Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) can prosecute traffickers for possessing or exporting proceeds of crime under its money-laundering laws.

In all, more than 20 agencies are involved in the effort to combat illicit trafficking of wildlife products, but the burden of seizing wildlife shipments and those behind them in reality falls more on Customs as the primary agency at land, sea and air ports.

Given the number of agencies involved, the UNODC says cooperation is key to achieving success.

Bringing everyone together in this business is really absolutely critical, said Olive Stolpe, UNODC representative to Nigeria.

That cooperation is currently lacking between NESREA and Customs. It is first seen in the figures released by the two bodies. While NESREA reports three cases of interceptions between 2019 and 2021, Customs reports 24.

Customs stopped reporting its seizures to NESREA in 2018, according to records, and since then collaboration between both agencies on wildlife cases has not improved. NESREA said it has repeatedly been left in the dark about issues.

What is happening (in NESREA) is that we are not at the borders, rather (it is) the Nigerian Customs. The arrangement is whenever there are such cases, they will call us, they will hand over the wildlife specimen and suspects to us to prosecute. For a very long time, they have not been calling us, NESREA director-general, Mr Jauro, said.

Sometimes, over the news, we get the information that they have made arrests, seizures and they just go there and announce it. Thats it; we dont have any information. We are trying to see how we can sit down with them to collaborate just like we were doing before.

Customs started directly prosecuting cases of wildlife interceptions in 2019, but like NESREA, its record of prosecution is abysmal.

The agency has only three cases in court out of 24 total seizures between 2019 and 2021. It said one case was completed but did not give details of the sentence.

All Customs 14 seizures recorded in 2019, except one, remain under investigation more than three years after, with none progressing to the court.

LITTLE CHANGE AT WILDLIFE MARKETS

The tepid wildlife law enforcement and justice has meant that the more things appear to change, the more they remain the same.

Kingsley Peter (not his real name), an art trader at the Lekki craft market in Lagos, remembers the day an Asian-looking man showed up at his shop.

Foreign nationals regularly visited the popular market, a mishmash of complex wooden stalls at the backwaters of Lekki, where arrays of art items made from every imaginable material, from wood to ivory to crocodile skin, were sold.

The site was also a meeting point of sorts for operators in the illegal wildlife sector, who occasionally called in to forage for raw animal parts.

Mr Peter, a middle-aged man, said the customer asked if he had a tusk. The artist said he showed a tiny bull horn he had reworked to appear more like a piece of a tusk, although he said a careful examination would still reveal the difference.

He quickly snatched it and hid it so others wont see. He didnt even look at it carefully, he offered to pay, said Mr Peter.

That was before 2018 when the market boomed and foreign clients openly patronised wildlife dealers. Things changed after Customs and other operatives raided the market in 2018. But not much has changed.

The market continues to operate, although most of its foreign clients  Chinese, Malians, Guineans, etc.  have stayed away. Raw animal parts, shipped in from outside the country, are no longer traded openly as before, but the processed ones remain on the shelves of shops there. Deals are still cut behind the scenes, traders said.

During a visit in December 2021, the market was expectedly not as busy. With few customers around, some sellers of carvings, some made from banned wood, reclined into an early afternoon nap.

We saw carved elephant ivory on display for sale  an illegal trade the government acknowledges exists but has failed to stop.

Those behind the sales, some who shipped them in from Cameroon and other countries that time, are still around, Mr Peter said. They were never arrested.

Mr Peter and other traders said with a serious offer, dealers can bring in ivory or pangolins. Officials have not conducted a raid there for years, the traders said.

A similar market continues to operate in Abuja, the capital. We saw processed elephant ivory products sold openly at the Abuja craft market.

Asked about the Lekki market, which the government has repeatedly pledged to close or at least regulate its activities, the head of NESREA, Mr Jauro, said the agency was not aware the market was still operating. He promised action.

At the Epe bush-meat market, a seaside square set on aging wooden frames some 74 kilometres from the Lagos mainland, a man who gave his name as Kunle, who has been involved in wildlife sales, also offered to source pangolins.

He displayed a live pangolin and alligator during a recent visit and showed several of the animals on his phone sold in the past days. He offered the live pangolin for 20,000 naira.

This is what Ive been doing for years, and they know me, he said.

Kunle said he travels to other parts of the country to bring in supplies.

He said authorities have shown more interest in stopping the business lately but said that did not stop them. The open display of live pangolin at the time of visiting in the afternoon confirmed that. More supplies had come in the morning, traders there said.

If you are serious, its just to deposit money, and we will get up to 20 pangolins in weeks, Kunle said.

CORRUPTION, WEAK LAWS

Experts point to several reasons Nigeria is unable to combat wildlife crimes. First, officials do not see it as a major problem. A 2019 assessment by the Federal Ministry of Environment said wildlife trafficking was not a priority for Customs officers at the seaport and that their focus is mainly on revenue, narcotics, and weapons trafficking.

With that, there is an evident lack of interest in prosecuting cases.

Yes, the laws are weak  but the level of awareness amongst law enforcement officials is embarrassingly low, said Adedayo Memudu of the Nigerian Conservation Foundation, the countrys oldest conservation-focused non-governmental organisation.

Corruption also ensures banned animal parts are still easily moved through the country, and suspects are either not tried or are given a slap on the wrist.

At the Epe and Lekki Arts markets, traders brushed off concerns about how mock orders for pangolins we placed would be ferried to Lagos through security checkpoints across the country. That is not a problem. We can take care of that, one said.

The 2019 assessment by the environment ministry concluded that As at (with) the Murtala Muhammed International Airport, the level of corruption appears to be very high at the seaport and is an obstacle to wildlife law enforcement, referring to the Lagos airport and seaport.

There is also the problem of weak laws. The main law operated by NESREA against wildlife crimes, the Protection of Endangered Species in International Trade Regulation 2011, can punish illicit trafficking up to N5 million fine and/or three years in prison. No one has served any such sentence.

To compare, a Malawian court in 2021 punished a Chinese trafficker with a 14-year jail term. A Cameroonian court in 2017 imposed a half a million dollar fine on two convicts found guilty of trafficking 159 elephant tusks.

They are not sufficiently deterrent and allow for compounding probably because wildlife crime until possibly the last couple of years was not perceived as a serious criminal offense, said Foluso Adelekan, National Programme Officer, UNODCs Wildlife & Forestry Crime Project.

The National Park Services Act 1999 punishes hunting an endangered, protected, or prohibited species or hunting a mother of a young animal or large mammal species in a national park with three months to five years, with no option of fine.

The use of a snare is punished with between 10,000 and N50,000 fine, attracts one to five years in jail, while using a firearm, spear, bow, poison, explosive receives between 5,000 and 25,000 and/or six months to five years.

The penalties are worse at the state level. Killing an elephant in Ogun State, for instance, attracts 500 naira (about $1.2) in the states outdated law.

The laws are very weak and very old. There have been efforts to bring them up to international standards, said Mr Memuda. Attempts to review the states wildlife law has been unsuccessful for years as state lawmakers have yet to pass proposed amendments.

We have to declare a statement of emergency not just on our reserves but our entire wildlife resources, otherwise we will not have anything left for the future generation, he said.

For trafficking, the Customs law and the EFCC law present a relatively stronger provision than NESREAs. While exporting or importing banned items attracts five years in jail without fine under Customs statutes, it draws seven to 14 years in jail under the EFCCs anti-money laundering law.

The UNODC in 2020 began training Nigerian prosecutors and judges, and helping to coordinate efforts by Nigerias federal and state agencies to check wildlife crimes. Funded by the German government, the project has also supported the development of Nigerias first national strategy to combat wildlife and forest Crime, expected to be launched in the first quarter of 2022.

At an event in November 2021 to discuss the 45-page draft of the strategy paper, attended by the environment minister and heads of agencies, officials contested a touchy subject as stated in the document.

Drafters of the document, which when completed will be unveiled by President Muhammadu Buhari, said corruption has allowed illicit wildlife trade thrive in the country, but some officials disagreed.

The director-general of Forestry Research Institute of Nigeria, Adesola Adepoju, argued it made no sense for the country to give itself a bad review in a document international partners will review. He said the claim about corruption was not a reality.

He cited an example of how foreign partners had once claimed that confiscated animal parts in the custody of the Nigeria Customs had been stolen. When we got to Customs warehouse, everything was intact, he said. So we need to be careful.

But other officials insisted corruption remained a problem and should be highlighted in the document.

Mrs Morenikeji at the University of Ibadan said Nigeria must do more to tackle wildlife crimes and ensure the real culprits are caught and punished.

There are real men, real dealers at the top of the chain; nothing is being done to those people. They have not been found out or brought to book, she said.

Oge Udegbunam contributed research to this investigation.

This report is part of a series on environmental crime in Africa, supported by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, the Henry Nxumalo Foundation, and Oxpeckers Investigative Environmental Journalism.

Page planned and produced by: Ezekiel Oyero
Two petitioners have appealed to the #EndSARS panel sitting in Abuja over cases of police brutality to help secure the release of their family members from illegal police detention.

Ismail Mairungo and Blessing Choji-Dung jointly petitioned the panel over the alleged detention of their family members by the Inspector General of Police Intelligence Response Team (IGP-IRT) since December 2019.

According to the petitioners, the police unit arrested Mr Mairungos two brothers, Danjuma Yakubu and Ibrahim Daniel, in Jada, Adamawa State, and Todi, Gombe State, respectively, on December 13, 2019.

They said Mrs Choji-Dungs husband, Choji Dung, who was said to be Mr Yakubus friend, was arrested on December 17, 2019 in Buruku in Plateau State.

The IGP-IRT was then under the leadership of Abba Kyari, a deputy commissioner of police, who was suspended last year following his indictment by United States authorities for an international fraudulent scheme.

Mr Kyari, who has a series of petitions of rights violations pending against him before the #EndSARS panel, was also recently charged with cocaine trafficking-related offences, while the Nigerian government pursues a suit for his extradition to the U.S. in court.

Mr Mairungo and Mrs Choji-Dung, on Thursday, called on the #EndSARS to order an unconditional release of their family members and award N10 million compensation for each of them allegedly detained by the IRT.

Petitioners testimonies

Testifying before the panel, Mr Mairungo said his brothers  Messrs Yakubu and Daniel  were arrested on December 13, 2019. He did not elaborate on Mr Daniels arrest.

But he said Mr Yakubu whom he added was a police officer serving in the police anti-riot unit in Jada, Adamawa State, was arrested after obtaining his commandants permission to visit his family.

The witness said Mr Yakubu called to inform his wife that he was on his way, but never got home.

We didnt hear from him again for three days. I went to Jada to find out his whereabouts from his commandant and he confirmed that he took a leave and has been unreachable since then, Mr Mairungo narrated.

He said he later found out from the Assistant Inspector General of Police headquarters in Yola that his brother had been arrested.

They refused to mention who arrested him, but I was told by someone at the headquarters in secret that he had been arrested by the IGP-IRT, Mr Mairungo added.

He told the panel that he visited the IGP-IRTs office sometimes in January 2020 where he met with Mr Kyari, whom he said only took down the details of the detainee.

He said despite all efforts, his brother had not been released, adding that his mother had died as a result of the matter.

One of Yakubus daughter also died, he said, adding I want the panel to help me look for them and let me go home with them, and compensate them with N10 million each.

How my husband was arrested

Meanwhile, Mrs Choji-Dung also described to the #EndSARS panel how her husband, who was said to be a friend to Mr Yakubu, was arrested by the IGP-IRT on December 17, 2019.

I was at home with my husband when he received a call from from Mr Yakubu to come to the Primary school nearby the house. I followed him carefully and saw two vehicles, black and white hummer buses with tinted glass, Mrs Choji-Dung narrated.

According to her, there was bold IGP-IRT inscription on the buses the men drove to their house.

They hijacked him and started shooting that nobody should come closer. They handcuffed him and dragged him into one of the buses, Mrs Choji-Dung said.

She added that she immediately went to a nearby police station to report the incident and she was told that the team was from Abuja.

We went to Abuja, but the police didnt grant him bail. He was later charged to court but the police refused to bring him to court.

We havent heard anything since then. I want the police to release my husband and also compensate him with N10 million to re-start his life, she pleaded.

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The panel after listening to both petitioners adjourned the case until March 8 for cross- examination by the police legal team.

The police legal team members were absent from the proceedings.
The second batch of Nigerian evacuees from Ukraine arrived, on Friday evening, at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja.

They arrived on a plane owned by Air Peace, one of the airlines billed to airlift Nigerians returning from Ukraine. The plane took off from Poland, where the Nigerians had fled to following the war in Ukraine.

The journey was very stressful but we take joy because we are saving lives, rescuing our compatriots, our future because these are our children. We all did it with excitement, Akinremi Bolaji, the director of consular and legal services, ministry of foreign affairs, told journalists at the Abuja airport.

According to Mr Bolaji, there were 180 adults and three infants aboard the aircraft.

He said there are Nigerians who were left behind because they failed to show up.

They thought the flight would not come and so by the time their colleagues were telling them they were already on their way, reality dawned on them.

We also appeal through the media, parents should ask their children to show up. Poland gave them 15 days grace, they did not have a visa to Poland but they allowed them and at the same time, we must not abuse that. The 15 days will elapse soon and they will not know what the next step will be, he added.

Mr Bolaji said the plan for the Nigerians who did not show up early is to airlift them from their different locations in Poland. We will just go round, hop and pick them, he said.

We were asking after some who we know are in Ukraine and they are still insisting they are not leaving. There are a lot of Nigerians who have not decided to leave Ukraine, we also still have 350 in Sumy college which has been cut off as soon as we are through with the safe corridor, we will go for those ones.

He noted that in another one or two hours, another flight would arrive, from Hungary, making it three (from Romania, Poland and Hungary).

Some of the evacuees spoke to PREMIUM TIMES about their experience.

I have mixed feelings. I am supposed to graduate in three months and now I am still trying to figure out what to do, a sixth-year medical student who identified herself as Blessing said.
The Court of Appeal in Abuja on Friday affirmed the permanent forfeiture of properties seized from Kola Aluko, an ally of Diezani Alison-Madueke, a former petroleum minister.

The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) valued one of the forfeited properties in Abuja at $18 million.

A federal judge, Okon Abang, had in January 2020, granted a request by the EFCC for final forfeiture of the assets traced to Mr Aluko.

The anti-graft agency, had in the forfeiture request said the $18 million edifice located in Abuja which is very close to the seat of power at the Presidential Villa, is made up of a Guest House, Boys Quarters, Security Outpost, Swimming Pool and Underground Control Room for the remote control of electrical appliances in the property.

The property is furnished with luxury and very expensive items, EFCC added.

The other five properties include Plot 1390 Tiamiyu Savage, Victoria Island, Lagos and Plot 1391, Tiamiyu Savage, Victoria Island, popularly called Avenue Towers.

The order for final forfeiture of the assets was preceded by earlier interim order issued by Mr Abang in 2016.

Appeal Court judgement

Delivering its verdict, on Friday, a three-man panel of the Court of Appeal headed by Elfrieda Williams-Dawodu held that Mr Alukos appeal against the confiscation of his properties lacked merit.

Mrs Williams-Dawodu, who delivered the lead judgment, agreed with the argument by lawyer to the EFCC, Victor Ukagwu that the Mr Abang of the Federal High Court in Abuja was right to have ordered the forfeiture of Mr Alukos assets to the federal government.

Mr Aluko in his appeal marked: CA/A/617/2020, challenged the decision of the trial court in January 2020.

While Mrs Alison-Madueke fled Nigeria to the United Kingdom in 2015, shortly after leaving government, the EFCC has continued to confiscate several assets of her associates that were proceeds of the former ministers alleged theft of public funds.
The Oyo State Government says four deaths, including three healtcare workers, were recorded out of the 19 confirmed cases of Lassa fever outbreak in the state.

The state Commissioner for Health, Bode Ladipo, made this known in a statement on Thursday in Ibadan.

Mr Ladipo said that of the 19 confirmed cases were two medical doctors and one other health worker, who succumbed to the deadly virus.

The Oyo State branch of the Nigerian Medical Association had earlier said that it had lost two of its members to the outbreak within 72 hours.

I am here today to address the unfortunate incidence of the death of health workers of a private health facility in the state from Lassa fever.

Four health workers were admitted into the treatment centre in the early days of the week.

Upon diagnostic investigations, all four were confirmed positive for Lassa fever.

Unfortunately, three of them consisting of two doctors and another hospital staff died in spite of all efforts at caring for them by experts, he said.

Mr Ladipo said that resources had been deployed to designated health facilities to forestall the spread of the deadly disease across the state.

Surveillance activities have been heightened at the grassroots across the state, while access to care has been provided to all individuals at risk of this disease, he said.

The commissioner urged residents of the state to remain calm and not panic while ensuring strict adherence to preventive measures.

Mr Ladipo also advised individuals having symptoms such as fever, sore throat, vomiting, generalised body weakness, chest pain, back pain, cough, diarrhea, swollen face, eyes or neck, stomach pain or bleeding from ear, eyes, nose, mouth, or any other body openings to report promptly to the nearest health facility.

He said that people showing the above symptoms could also call the State Emergency Operations Center (EOC) on 08095394000 or 08095863000.

Mr Ladipo advised all residents to avoid contact with rats, contaminated food items by rat faeces, urine and other body fluid.

The virus causing this disease is transmitted from infected rats to humans or an infected human to other humans, the commissioner said.

Mr Ladipo also advised all healthcare facilities across the state to maintain a high index of suspicion and report all suspected cases to the Local Government Area or State Health Authorities.

He said the provision of qualitative healthcare was a joint responsibility of all.

(NAN)
A former Nigerian Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Mohammed Adoke, has denied any complicity in a case filed by the Nigerian government against an American Bank, JP Morgan Chase.

Mr Adoke raised these concerns in a letter written to the Attorney General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami, by his counsel, Paul Erekoro.

The former minister argued that the Nigerian governments argument that he contacted JP Morgan and sent an email using the mail of Aliyu Abubakars shell company was baseless and false.

PREMIUM TIMES reported how a London high court last week began hearing of a lawsuit filed by the Nigerian government against JP Morgan Chase in the controversial Malabu scandal.

In the suit, Nigeria is claiming more than $1.7 billion for the banks role in the controversial deal.

The nation alleges JP Morgan was grossly negligent in its decision to transfer funds paid by oil giants Shell and Eni into an escrow account controlled by a former Nigerian oil minister, Dan Etete. Nigerias lawyer, Roger Masefield, argued that the nations case rested on proving that there was fraud and JP Morgan was aware of the risk of fraud.

Sahara Reporters reported that the Nigerian Government equally informed the court that Mr Adoke contacted JP Morgan through phone call and email. The report claimed that the Nigerian Government also stated that Mr Adoke acted while he was no longer in the ministerial position, an act linked to impersonation and fraud.

The news platform said that in a court document it exclusively obtained, the government reaffirmed that (Mr) Adoke telephoned the bank JP Morgan and even sent emails severally using the agroupproperties@yahoo.com email address.

In a related development, the email address has been a subject of controversies in Nigeria. The Nigerian government is prosecuting the chairman of Human and Environmental Development Agenda (HEDA) Resource Centre, Olanrewaju Suraju, over alleged forgery of emails said to be linked to Mr Adoke.

The government in its suit against Mr Suraju claimed he forged an email to implicate Mr Adoke in the OPL 245 saga while also claiming that Mr Suraju also forged and circulated the audio of a phone interview said to have been between Mr Adoke and JP Morgan.

But in a letter Thursday, Mr Adoke argued that allowing unverified information to be presented before the court, to the effect that he and a former Minister of Petroleum, Mr Etete, committed the offence of money laundering by facilitating the payment of the funds to Etete and Malabu Oil & Gas Limited through the Deposit Account, was baseless.

He argued that Mr Malami allowed those instructions to be given, or allowed those facts to be presented in a court of law, when he was fully aware that they were not true. He also made reference to how Mr Malami had written to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) in 2017, informing the anti-graft agency that evidence does not appear to have clearly revealed the case of fraud against the parties in view of their claim, acting in their official capacities.

He argued further that Ibe Kachikwu, the then Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, had also appraised the agreements and in his letter to the Chief of Staff, raised the alarm about the potential negative effect of any international arbitration over the matter.

The former minister made reference to a judgement of the Federal High Court delivered by Justice Binta Nyako, which said that his involvement in the negotiations leading to the implementation of the controversial settlement agreement was in furtherance of the directives of the president.

By its failure to appeal that judgement, he argued, the government agreed that the judgment represents the truth of the matters that it decided.

Unfortunately and contrary to your own legal advice and in defiance of the un-appealed and binding declarations made by the Federal High Court, your office filed charges in another court of coordinate jurisdiction against the parties to the settlement agreements, with our client as one of the defendants, Mr Adoke wrote in his letter to Mr Malami.

You are also aware that even though at the High Court of the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, you had charged our client with receiving gratification in the sum of N300 million from Mr. Aliyu Abubakar on account of OPL 245, your witnesses, including the EFCC investigator, later admitted in sister proceedings at the Federal High Court that the said N300 million was not gratification from the Malabu transactions, but a refund of a loan taken by our client from Unity Bank to purchase a house from Mr. Abubakar, with the title documents to the property deposited as an equitable mortgage for the loan.

He argued further that he had reasonable grounds to believe that Mr Malamis office deliberately amended the charge of forgery against Mr. Suraju to sustain the fiction being passed off as truth to the English court.

Mr Adoke said that those who signed the instructions that enabled the payment to Malabu Oil and Gas Limited pursuant to the OPL 245 Resolution Agreement of 2011 are walking freely without any insinuation that they were involved in any fraud or scam.

Our client is addressing this protest letter to you because it is not possible for you to be unaware that lies are being told about him in court proceedings filed by the Federal Government in a Commercial Court in the United Kingdom and the fact that grave injustice will be done to him if urgent steps are not taken by your office to properly inform and guide the English Court on the facts needed to assist the court to arrive at a just determination of the suit, the letter reads in part.

The Attorney General is further reminded that as an officer in the temple of Justice, he is required to, at all times, place the true facts before the court. This is irrespective of the interest at play. The Attorney General, therefore, has a duty in the present case to bring to the attention of the court, all exculpating circumstances.

READ FULL LETTER HERE.
The police in Lagos and the Lagos Bus Rapid Transit are searching for a BRT driver in whose bus a 22-year-old lady was allegedly kidnapped.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) gathered that the alleged victim, Oluwabamise Ayanwola, works as a Fashion Designer at Chevron Estate, Ajah, and spends weekends at Ota, Ogun State, with her sister.

She was returning to Ota from Ajah last Saturday when she boarded a BRT bus with number 240257 going to Oshodi at about 7 p.m. at Chevron Bus-Stop.

Sensing danger as the bus did not pick any other passenger at subsequent bus stops, Miss Ayanwola engaged a friend using voice notes on her phone

The voice notes showed that the bus driver said he liked Miss Ayanwola and asked for her name and other details.

She told her friend to pray for her as she became suspicious of the bus driver and in response, the friend told her to alight at Oworonsoki bus stop, way before the Oshodi bus stop.

Miss Ayanwola also sent a video to her friend showing how dark it was in the bus and reportedly said: there are three men and one woman in the bus. The woman is sitting at the back. Thats the number of the bus in case. Please pray for me.

That was the last that was heard from her.

NAN gathered that Miss Ayanwolas family held a meeting with the Lagos Bus Service Ltd. (LBSL), operators of BRT on Wednesday, March 2, and the latter assured that efforts were being made to track down the driver.

It was learnt that the driver of the bus had not been seen and also the guarantor was nowhere to be found.

Johnson Omilana, a family member who reported at Akinpelu Police Station, said Miss Ayanwola had not been seen since she left Ajah on Saturday.

We met with the BRT general manager and about three other management staff who told us that the matter was being shared on social media and that might jeopardise police investigation.

The BRT management told us that they were working with the police to make sure the missing girl is rescued.

The management also told us that they do not employ drivers directly and that the consultants involved are being sanctioned because of the incident, Mr Omilana said.

The Managing Director LBSL, Idowu Oguntona, did not respond to calls and messages on updates on the incident.

The police spokesman in Lagos State, Adekunle Ajisebutu, however, confirmed that the incident was under investigation.

The Commissioner of Police, Abiodun Alabi, has directed that no stone should be left unturned to locate her whereabouts. Search parties have also been organised, Mr Ajisebutu told NAN.

(NAN)
A High Court in Osogbo on Friday ordered that a hotel staff member, Adedeji Adesola, charged with alleged murder of an OAU student, be remanded in a correctional centre, pending bail application.

Mr Adesola is charged alongside the owner of Hilton Hotel and Resort Centre, Ile-Ife, Rahmon Adedoyin, Magdalene Chiefuna, Adeniyi Aderogba, Oluwale Lawrence, Oyetunde Kazeem and Adebayo Kunle.

They were charged in connection with the mysterious death of Timothy Adegoke, a Masters degree student of the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife.

They pleaded not gulty.

Justice Adepele Ojo gave the order that Mr Adesola be remanded in Ilesa Correctional Centre.

The judge adjourned the matter until Monday for ruling in the bail application filed by the defence counsel.

Earlier, Counsel to Mr Adesola, Okon Edet-Ita, prayed the court to grant his client bail in the most liberal terms, citing Sections 34, 35 and 36 of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

But the prosecution counsel, M.O. Omosun, presenting a 10 paragraph counter- affidavit with a written address filed on March 3, and sworn to by Idoku John, as a legal evidence, prayed the court to refuse the defendant bail.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), reports that Justice Ojo, had on March 3, ordered the remand of all the defendants, while the seventh defendants bail application was left out.

The defendants were charged with 11 counts of murder, attempted felony; conspiracy and unlawful interference with a corpse and intent to destroy evidence as well as conspiracy in administering extrajudicial oath.

The defendants were previously arraigned before a Federal High Court in Abuja, before they were transferred to Osun for the trial.

(NAN)
The House of Representatives has said the lobbying for the gender bills proposed during the constitution amendment was belated.

Spokesperson of the House, Ben Kalu (APC, Abia), stated this while briefing journalists in Abuja on Thursday.

Both the Senate and the House had rejected five gender bills while voting on 68 constitution amendment bills on Tuesday.

The bills on the creation of extra-legislative-seats for women, 20% quota for women, 35% affirmative action in political parties administration, transfer of womens citizenship and expansion of indigeneship law were rejected by the lawmakers.

The bills were rejected by the lawmakers even in the presence of Mrs Osinbajo, who was in the House during the consideration of the bills.

Mrs Buhari was also in the two chambers during the laying of the reports of the Constitution Review Committees on February 24.

The rejection prompted protests by women groups on Wednesday.

The groups had shut down the main entrance to the National Assembly, demanding rescission of the decision of the two chambers. For the past two days, the women have refused to allow entrance to the complex, demanding a meeting with the Senate President, Ahmad Lawan, and the Speaker, Femi Gbajabiamila.

The briefing

Mr Kalu, who faulted the timing of the lobbying, said the rejection of the bills despite the visits by Mrs Buhari and Mrs Osinbajo, was an indication that the National Assembly was not a rubber stamp of the Executive as claimed in some quarters.

He stated that Nigerians errorneously expected the husbands of the two ladies to issue directives to the lawmakers, and they (lawmakers) would do their bidding without any protest.

He said instead the lawmakers listened to their constituents on the bills.

Mr Kalu said the lawmakers should not be faulted for any decision on the bills because they voted along the recommendations of the constituents.

He said the constituents are still influenced by religious and cultural inclinations.

He stated that it will take a while for Nigerians to embrace some of the changes being propagated by the rejected legislation.

I have commended all these people, who even visited the National Assembly. That is the beauty of democracy. Because if it were not, the wives of the president and the vice president would have no business coming here. They knew that it was only through lobby, not as you have described us as a rubber stamp where they will just give us instructionsmaybe the husband will give us instructions and we will get it done.

It will be through lobbying and they participated in that lobbying with all humility. Let us not forget the Minister of Women Affairs (Pauline Tallen), who was also very dogged, and all the CSOs.

But I must say this, the lobbying was done a bit late. Yes, I want to say that, but this lobby and advocacy ought to have started longer than now. I say that without missing words.

 You dont lobby two days to the voting on a very important issue like this. It goes beyond lobbying at the last minute. It takes a lot of orientation. It takes a lot of advocacy. It takes a lot of sensitisation to enable people to buy into these important agendas. Do you know why? Because you cannot play down on our current issues with regards to emerging democracies, one of which is our religious disposition, our cultural dispositions. These things play a role. We are part of society. Our religion and culture is part of society. It needs a lot of advocacy by civil society organisations, women groups to push this agenda forward, it is a wonderful agenda.

Nigerians are shifting their focus to the representatives only, it was not the senators and the representatives that did the job, and it was the instruction from their various constituents. This is the truth that must be told. If the House as an institution is not interested in the bill, it would not have passed the first reading, second reading and be allowed to go to the committee stage, he said.

Releasing record of voting

While responding to a question by PREMIUM TIMES reporter, on when the House will release the voting records of the lawmakers, Mr Kalu said journalists should write Freedom of Information request.

The response by Mr Kalu is contrary to the statements by the Speaker, Femi Gbajabiamila, who had said the record would be released to the public

The institutions had given it all the things it needed to succeed. But the job of canvassing supports to change our long-standing disposition culturallywhich we cannot wave away, it takes time. It has started well, we will keep pushing, the House spokesperson said.

When pushed on the matter, Mr Kalu said: The Speaker is a man who keeps his words, if he has promised that he would publish the pattern of voting, he is going to do it. As you know, we regulate ourselves, once he wants to make it public, you will know.

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More facts have emerged on how a military operation led to the death of over 200 bandits in Niger State.

According to PR Nigeria, the bandits were eliminated by air strikes of the Nigerian Armed Forces.

PREMIUM TIMES had reported that at least 200 bandits were killed in Niger State in the past three days in security operations.

The states Commissioner for Local Government, Community Development, Chieftaincy Affairs and Internal Security, Emmanuel Umar, revealed this on Wednesday.

Mary Noel-Berje, the media aide to Governor Abubakar Bello, in a statement, said Mr Umar spoke at a press briefing at the Government House, Minna on the directive of the governor.

According to the statement, Mr Umar said many commanders of the terrorist groups were killed in the operations, pointing out that the eliminated terrorists belonged to the camps of Ali Kawajo, Yello Janbros, Kachalla Halilu and Bello Turji.

Niger State has been the hot bed of banditry activities in the North-central zone of the country.

Bandits have killed hundreds of persons while many other have been either kidnapped in schools or in other places such as places of worship and homes.

Joint operation

According to the report, the aerial operation by the Nigerian Air Force (NAF), Air Component of Operation Thunder Strike and Operation Gama Aiki took place on Wednesday between 4.45 pm and 6.34 pm in some bandit camps within Ghana.

The report also said the terrorists had been under surveillance for some time and were observed to be in three different groups of approximately 40 terrorists, with at least 25 motorcycles per group.

However, rather than strike individual group separately, the surveillance team patiently waited until the three groups gathered at a crossroad location near Ghana Village. It was at this point that the Air strikes were authorised.

NAF spokesperson, Edward Gabkwet, did not respond to phone calls and SMS from PREMIUM TIMES for more enquiries on the operation.

However, a military source who spoke to PR Nigeria revealed that precision strikes of troops had a 100 percent accuracy, going by the intensity and spread of the fireball which entirely engulfed the terrorists.

At least nothing less than 150 terrorists perished in that strike, according to the source.

He however said a few of the terrorists who survived the strike were seen crawling or barely limping off from the location, which the ground troops immediately mobbed up.
The #EndSARS panel investigating cases of police brutality in Abuja, on Thursday, summoned some police officers to answer to allegations of extra-judicial killings levelled against them.

The panel, chaired in an acting capacity by a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Garba Tetengi, ordered the police officers to appear on dates fixed for the respective cases against them.

Mr Tetengi stood in for the panel chairman, Suleiman Galadima, a retired Justice of the Supreme Court, who was absent from Thursdays sitting.

Those summoned include three operatives of the defunct Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS), Awkuzu, Anambra State. The panel also summoned the Divisional Police Officer (DPO) of the New Nyanyan police division in Nasarrawa State accused of complicity in the alleged extra-judicial killing of one Donald Agbenge.

The three Awkuzu SARS officers, identified as Inspector Emmanuel, James Nwafor, a chief superintendent of police, and one Officer John, have allegations of unlawful arrest, detention and death of one Christian Ugwunze, pending against them.

Womans testimony on killing of her husband

The panel heard the petitioners testimony in the case of the alleged extra-judicial killing of Christian Ugwunze on Thursday.

Testifying, the deceased persons widow, Ngozi Arinze, told the panel how some of Awkuzu SARS officers allegedly kidnapped him and demanded N1 million to release him in 2013.

Mrs Arinze, a native of Agboana Village, Ukpor, in the Nnewi South Local Government Area of Anambra State, told the panel that the Awkuzu SARS operatives later killed her husband.

Tracing how the incident started, the witness recalled that her husband, on March 14, 2013, left their base in Lagos for his brothers place in Asaba, Delta State, from where he planned to travel to Anambra State for a retreat. She said she was to join him in the course of his trip to attend the Anambra State retreat with him.

She recalled that her husband spent a night in Asaba before he left for one Ifeanyis house in Benin, Edo State.

She told the panel that her husband called her the following day and asked her to come to Benin with the clothes he planned to wear for the Anambra State retreat. It was the last time she heard from him, she told the panel.

My husband called me in the morning and told me to come along with the clothes he intended to wear throughout the retreat. After this communication on the same day, his line became unreachable and all efforts to reach him proved abortive, Ms Arinze said.

Alleged complicity of brothers-in-law

She testified further that she got information from Mr Ifeanyi that some armed men in a black sport-utility vehicle seized her husband while standing by the roadside in Benin.

The woman, who accused her brothers-in-law of complicity in the alleged kidnap of her husband, said she was later informed by one of them, Emeka Ugwunze, that a phone number had called, claiming to know his whereabouts.

I called the number and was told to bring N200,000 for bail and wait at the former Mobil Filling Station, Unizik Junction, Awka (Anambra State) and warned seriously to not inform anybody, Ms Arinze said.

She said she was at the spot with the money when three men, whom she said her findings later showed to be SARS officers, drove a black Camry car to the place. They collected the money and asked that I enter the black Camry they came with, but I refused, stating that I did not know them or where they planned to take me.

She recalled going to report the incident at the police station. But to her surprise, she said she found the car driven by the men to take the money from her at the police station.

She added that the police officers refused to grant her access to her husband, but kept asking her to pay N1million to release him.

As she could not pay the money, Ms Arinze said the police officers continued to deny her access to her husband on the excuse that he had been transferred to other places for further investigations.

She said she continued the search for her husband only to find out from one of her husbands brothers that he had been killed and his body deposited at the mortuary of the University of Nigeria Teaching Hospital in Enugu State.

She alleged that her brothers-in-law, Edozie and Ikechukwu Ugwunze, were even going around telling his customers that he had died long before she confirmed his death.

She insisted that her brothers-in-law connived with police officers to kidnap and extort money from him as ransom, before he was eventually killed.

She told the panel that her husband died in the custody of the police in Enugu where she claimed he was last illegally detained by SARS operatives.

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I visited the mortuary and identified my husbands body. I was also told that the body was deposited by the police, Ms Arinze said.

She urged the panel to order the release of Mr Ugwunzes body and award N20 million to her as compensation. She also pleaded with the panel to order a refund of the N200,000 to the police officers.

Panels ruling

The panel, after listening to Ms Arinzes testimony, summoned the officers fingered in the petition.

John Aikpokpo-Martins, a member of the panel, urged the lawyer representing the police to obtain the list of the names of all SARS personnel at the Awkuzu SARS from March to April 2013, as the petitioner was unable to provide the names of all the officers that were involved in the case.

Kennett Egbochua, the police counsel, assured that police could make the records available to the panel.

The panel then ordered the Inspector General of Police to provide the personnel records of officers attached to the Awkuzu police division from March to April 2013, when the incident occurred.

The panel adjourned the case until April 21 for defence.

It also adjourned the case of the alleged extra-judicial killing of Mr Agbenge involving the DPO New Nyanyan police division until March 8, for defence by the police. The case could not go on on Thursday because the petitioner was absent.

SARS, a police unit notorious for the inhuman activities of its men, was proscribed in the wake of the October 2020 #EndSARS anti-police brutality protest.

The #EndSARS protest also birthed the various panels of enquiry set up in Abuja and about 28 other states to probe cases of police brutality with a view to compensating victims or their families and holding erring police officers accountable.
A former governor of Kano State, Rabiu Kwankwaso, has said he will dump the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) this month.

Mr Kwankwaso stated this to BBC Hausa Service. He, however, did not give details of the movement. He is reportedly decamping to New Nigeria People Party (NNPP).

BBC Hausa Service reported an unnamed associate of the former governor saying that he is leaving the PDP due to a lingering leadership crisis in the Kano chapter of the party.

The party had, in April, suspended its North-west zonal congress in Kaduna after supporters of the Governor of Sokoto State, Aminu Tambuwal, clashed with those of Mr Kwankwaso, at the event.

The warring groups destroyed ballot boxes before voting could start, forcing observers and other officials to flee the scene.

The main subject of the dispute was the position of zonal National Vice Chairman.

Also, Mr Kwankwaso is at odds with former Minister of Foreign Affairs, Aminu Wali, who leads a rival faction of the PDP in Kano. Both men presented candidates for the position of zonal vice-chairman.

Romance with NNPP

Meanwhile, the New Nigeria Peoples Party ( NNPP) has said it is ready to welcome new entrants in Kano State and the country at large.

The Kano chairperson of the party, Hisham Habib, in a statement issued on Wednesday, said the party will work with incoming partners in achieving the objectives of the party, though he insisted that there will be no automatic ticket for any member.

Mr Habib said the Kano State leadership expects the national headquarters, under the leadership of Boniface Aniebonam, to formalise all mergers and or alliances with groups coming into the party.

We express our optimism and vision for a better Kano and Nigeria where citizens will be given equal opportunities, he said.

The chairman also explained that it will not give an automatic ticket for election to incoming members but that card-carrying members can contest for positions as stipulated in the partys constitution.
Eight months after the renegotiation of the 2009 FGN-ASUU Agreement had reportedly been concluded by the Munzali Jubril-led renegotiation committee, the Nigerian government on Thursday constituted another team of scholars to renegotiate the same agreement with the nations universities workers unions.

Mr Jibril, an emeritus professor of English and immediate past governing council chairman of the Federal University, Lafia, Nasarawa State, had taken over the leadership of the negotiation following the resignation of the erstwhile leader of the government team and Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Wale Babalakin.

But the leadership of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has described the new development as a confirmation of the unseriousness of the Nigerian government and poor commitment to resolving the lingering crisis in the university system.

ASUU accused the government of waiting for the renegotiation of the agreement to have been concluded by one team before appointing another one to lead another fresh negotiation.

The 2009 FG-ASUU agreement has been a source of the protracted industrial dispute between the government and the lecturers union.

New team

The newly constituted seven-man team is to be chaired by an emeritus professor of obstetrics and gynaecology, and pro-chancellor of Alex Ekueme Federal University, Ndufu Alike Ikwo, Ebonyi State, Nimi Briggs.

A statement issued by the director of press, federal ministry of education, Ben Goong, noted that the team will be inaugurated by the education minister, Adamu Adamu, on Monday, March 7, 2022.

The statement quoted Mr Adamu to have said; There is need to speedily bring to a conclusion, all outstanding issues in the 2009 agreement in order to achieve the desired industrial peace on our campuses.

ASUU has consistently insisted that the implementation of the renegotiated 2009 agreement and the deployment of the University Transparency and Accountability Solution (UTAS) for the payment of its members salaries, are key conditions to be met before the ongoing three-week-old strike by the union could be suspended.

Other members of the new team are Lawrence Ngbale, pro-chancellor, Federal University. Wukari; Funmi Togunu-Bickersteth, a professor and pro-chancellor, Federal University, Birnin Kebbi, and Chris Adighije, pro-chancellor, Federal University, Lokoja.

Others are Olu Obafemi, a professor and pro-chancellor, Federal University of Technology, Minna; Zubairu Iliyasu, a professor and pro-chancellor, Kano State University of Science and Technology; and Matthew Seiyefa, pro-chancellor, Niger Delta University, Wilberforce Island.

ASUU kicks

Speaking on the phone with our reporter on Thursday, the president of ASUU, Emmanuel Osodeke, said the union was surprised that after eight months that it had concluded an agreement with a properly constituted committee and was awaiting the review of its report and signature, the government announced the constitution of another panel.

Mr Osodeke, who described the whole process as a joke, said the government could do that because none of their children is here studying.

He said ASUU would be awaiting what the new committee would be bringing to the table, and promised the resoluteness of the union to pursue its matter with the government to a logical conclusion.

Mr Osodeke said; This country is just drifting on an autopilot. An agreement that we have concluded since May 2021, and you waited until the expiration of the tenure of the former council members to constitute another team. This is what could have been addressed in two days or in one week.

The unionist called on Nigerians to defend what he described as the sanctity and integrity of the nations university system.

Backstory

ASUU had embarked on a four-week warning strike to press home its demands including the renegotiation of the ASUU/FG 2009 agreement and the deployment of the University Transparency and Accountability Solution (UTAS) to replace the Integrated Personnel Payroll Information System (IPPIS).

Other demands of the union include the release of the reports of visitation panels to federal universities and distortions in salary payment challenges, funding for revitalisation of public universities, earned academic allowance, poor funding of state universities and promotion arrears.

While the Minister of Education Adamu Adamu had days after the commencement of the strike constituted the white paper panel of the visitation panels, he is yet to inaugurate them.

At the last meeting with ASUU, the federal governments team, led by the minister of labour and employment, Chris Nigige, presented a proposal, which ASUU agreed to present to its members and decide whether to call off the strike or not.

Qosim Suleiman is a reporter at Premium Times in partnership with Report for the World, which matches local newsrooms with talented emerging journalists to report on under-covered issues around the globe.
Nigerian Nobel Laureate, Wole Soyinka, and 164 others have in an open letter called on Russia to stop its invasion of Ukraine and withdraw its military forces.

We gather in this appeal to call upon the Russian government to stop its invasion of Ukraine and withdraw its military forces from Ukraine, the laureates said in the letter published in The Economist magazine Thursday,

Condemning the invasion of Ukraine by Russian troops, the group noted there are peaceful ways to resolve disputes.

We join in condemning these military actions and President Putins essential denial of the legitimacy of Ukraines existence.

There is always a peaceful way to resolve dispute, the laureates said, adding that the Russian invasion blatantly violates the United Nations Charter, which says All members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state. It ignores the Budapest Memorandum of 1994, which obligated Russia and others to respect the sovereignty, independence, and existing borders of Ukraine.

The Nobel Laureates noted that the death of soldiers and civilians, including children, is so sad, so unnecessary.

They said Mr Putins unprovoked military aggression against Ukraine recalls the infamous attack of Nazi Germany on Poland in 1939 (using similar tricks of feigned provocation) and on the Soviet Union in 1941, the government of the Russian Federation.

We choose our words carefully here, for we do not believe the Russian people have a role in this aggression, the authors said, noting that the Russian invasion will stain the international reputation of the Russian state for decades to come.

It will pose barriers to its economy and inflict hardships on its population. The sanctions imposed will restrict the ease of movement of its talented and hardworking people in the world, they said.

Why raise this fence between Russia and the world now? they asked.

Acknowledging Russias security concerns, the laureates said it can be addressed within the framework of the UN Charter, the 1975 Helsinki Final Act, and the 1990 Paris Charter.

However, to make war, as President Putin and his collaborators have done, is an unwarranted, bloody, and unproductive way to a future.

We respect the calm and the strength of the Ukrainian people. We are with you. Our hearts go out to the families and friends of all, Ukrainians and Russians, who have died and been injured already. May peace come to this piece of our beautiful world, they oncluded.

Russia-Ukraine Invasion

On the ninth day of consistent attacks on Ukraine, Russian shelling allegedly set the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant ablaze.

According to local officials and the Ukrainian nuclear inspectorate, Russian troops have also seized control of the plant.

Russia attacked Ukraine last week Thursday in what President Vladimir Putin said was a special military operation. At least one million people have fled Ukraine since Russias invasion, the United Nations said, warning that at this rate the exodus could become the biggest refugee crisis this century.
The federal government says it does not have money to meet the demands of the striking members of Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU).

The Minister of Labour and Employment, Chris Ngige, disclosed this on Channels Television programme, Politics Today, on Thursday.

Before embarking on strike action about two weeks ago, ASUU said the government had failed to implement the agreements in the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) and Memorandum of Action (MoA) signed with it in 2009.

The ASUU accused the government of poor commitment to the payment of academic earned allowance (EAA); the continued use of the Integrated Personnel Payroll Information System and refusal to adopt the Universities Transparency and Accountability Solution (UTAS), among others.

While the union has vowed not to return to work unless its demands are met, Mr Ngige, on the programme, said the government was renegotiating the terms of the agreement so as to end the strike.

Mind you, it was promised by that administration and they promised to kickstart the payment and they paid N200 billion which they borrowed from TETFund. They did not take it from the federation account. That payment spiralled even into 2016, to our regime.

Government now said we dont have the money to pay for it. This was the agreement in 2016 to 2017 but we will find a way by which we can fund the universities and revitalise infrastructure

I am hoping that ASUU should do the right thing and contact their members on the renegotiations that we have had in the last two weeks.

First, the issue of earned academic allowances, we have agreed, given a timeline to the NUC to go back to the old template used in working out the 2021 earned academic allowance  10.8 per cent of personnel cost.

We want them to go back very quickly and use that same formula and get us what we are supposed to pay in 2022. That is agreed by everybody, he said.

The minister also said that the education system is not the only sector in the country with a shortage of the percentage of funds as stipulated by the United Nation.

This, he said, was as a result of shortage of funds despite the priority given to them by the current administration.

On the revitalisation of the universitiy system, earned academic allowances, Mr Ngige said the government has shown enough commitment to the system as over N92 billion was paid in 2021.

Revitalisation, the amount that has been paid is not very clear. The Accountant Generals office came with a printout. So we now want to know what the actual payment done is. And then weve told them, when this is ascertained, we will now agree again on how to pay something on the outstanding N170 billion from the N220 billion. They say government should try and pay even if we dont have the ability to pay which is okay is magnanimous. And it was stretched, so something will be paid there again.

On promotional arrears, the Budget Office of the Federation and Accountant General tender documents to show that they have been paid promotion arrears, and that 22 universities have been paid. I said that I will take the document back to verify the truthfulness of the document, the minister explained.

Although the labour minister did not declare that he will be running for president, he however, noted that he is as qualified to run for the seat as anyone else.

Mr Ngige told Nigerians to wait till April, after consulting with leaders of the party and his primary constituency before officially saying whether he would run or not.
President Muhammadu Buhari made a surprise return to the country on Friday after attending the Special Session of the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP@50) in Kenya.

Mr Buhari was billed to travel from Kenya to London for a routine medical check-up, a statement by the Presidency had said on Monday.

He was billed to spend a maximum of two weeks in London.

But one of Mr Buharis aides, Bashir Ahmad, tweeted on Friday morning that the president had returned to the country.

President Muhammadu Buhari has returned to Abuja, after his participation in the 50th Anniversary of the UN Environmental Programme (UNEP) in Nairobi, Kenya, Mr Ahmad said on his Twitter handle @BashirAhmaad.

Daily Trust newspaper also quoted a presidential spokesperson, Garba Shehu, as saying Mr Buhari returned to Abuja after an early completion of his task in Nairobi, the Kenyan capital.

On whether the President had shelved his trip to London, Mr Shehu said, No, he hasnt shelved his trip to London. The plan is still there. He finished his business in Kenya and made an early return. The trip to London is Sunday.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports while in Kenya, Mr Buhari held a Town Hall Meeting with a group of Nigerian residents in the country where he reassured them of their safety.

According to him, his administration will continue to defend the interest of Nigerians wherever they may be as the nation begins the evacuation of citizens stranded following the Russia/Ukraine war.

Femi Adesina, the Presidents spokesperson said in a statement on Friday that the president, who was represented by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Geoffery Onyeama, said:

On our part as a government, we shall continue to defend the interests of all Nigerians wherever they may be.

We have demonstrated this over time, as we have had cause to evacuate our citizens in harms way abroad.

We did it in Libya, South Africa and we have just commenced doing the same in Ukraine, where thousands of our citizens, especially students, are trapped by the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine.

Upon his return, Mr Buhari joined hundreds of Muslim faithful to perform Jumaat prayers at the Aso Villa Mosque in Abuja.

After the prayer the president continued with his official engagements in the villa.

(NAN)
Nigeria Friday morning received the first batch of its citizens fleeing war-torn Ukraine. The returnees arrived from Romania where they had fled to following the war in Ukraine.

They arrived on a plane owned by Mar Air, one of the airlines billed to airlift Nigerians returning from Ukraine.

According to the Nigerian government, 415 evacuees arrived at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport Abuja, from where they will depart to their various homes.

Nigerias foreign affairs ministry had announced that it expects to receive the first batch of evacuees from Ukraine on Thursday.

The federal government on Wednesday, approved $8.5 million for the evacuation of 5,000 stranded Nigerians.

Presidency Speaks on Return of Evacuees

President Muhammadu Buhari, on Friday, said his administration will continue to defend the interest of Nigerians wherever they may be, even as the nation begins the evacuation of its citizens stranded in Ukraine.

On our part as a government, we shall continue to defend the interests of all Nigerians wherever they may be. We have demonstrated this over time, as we have had cause to evacuate our citizens in harms way abroad. We did it in Libya, South Africa and we have just commenced doing the same in Ukraine, where thousands of our citizens, especially students, are trapped by the on-going war between Russia and Ukraine, President Buhari said at a Nigerian town hall meeting in Nairobi, according to a statement by his office.

Represented by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Geoffery Onyeama, he said it was the determination of the current administration to forge a partnership with the Ambassadors-at large, towards building the country together, that led to the establishment of the Nigerians in Diaspora Commission (NiDCOM).

He commended the diasporans in Kenya for the unity that exists among them, and peace with their host communities, urging them to respect the laws and be good ambassadors of Nigeria.

He expressed delight that the commission had been engaging the diasporans and had also come up with laudable programmes that would appeal to them.

We expect your willingness to give back to Nigeria, some of your resources, talents, skills and global exposure in the development of our great country, Nigeria, he said.

He also encouraged Nigerians in Kenya to key into the programmes of NiDCOM especially the Nigerian Diaspora Investment Trust Fund whose mandate is holistic for all Nigerians abroad adding that the platform would assist them to expeditiously contribute to the development of their fatherland.

He assured them that the administration is forging ahead with the provision of critical infrastructure for the collective prosperity of all despite the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic and activities of terrorists.

Nicholas Ozor, the president of Nigerians in Diaspora (Kenya), while thanking the president, requested him to intervene in some of the challenges confronting Nigerians in Kenya. He listed the challenges to include the stoppage of visa on arrival for Nigerians in Kenya, delay in getting student permits; obstacles to ease of doing business, and undue negative profiling of Nigerians.

Also present at the occasion were the Minister of State for the Environment, Sharon Ikeazor, National Security Adviser, Babagana Monguno, and Director General, National Intelligence Agency, Ahmed Rufai.
The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) says the lack of punishment for corruption, terrorism and other forms of crime undermine public trust.

Oliver Stolpe, UNODC Country Representative in Nigeria, spoke on Friday at the launch of the UN agencys Strategic Vision for Nigeria 2030 in Abuja.

In his remarks, Mr Stolpe said, corruption and illicit financial flows enable crime and terrorism, adding that impunity perpetuates these challenges and undermines public trust.

The UNODC said it will support Nigeria in implementing its laws on drug control, transnational organised crime, corruption and terrorism.

Referencing the agencys launch of the Strategic Vision for Africa 2030, last year, Mr Stolpe said the project is aimed placing Africans and their needs at the heart of UNODCs responses to drugs and crime on the continent.

He lamented that drug use prevalence in Nigeria stands at almost 15 per cent  almost three times higher than global average.

Mr Stolpe added that Nigeria faces serious multi-dimensional challenges to security and rule of law, a point that buttresses the Federal governments lethargy in prosecuting Bureau De Change operators it arrested last year over alleged links to Boko Haram financing.

The Attorney-General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami, had promised several times to arraign the suspects whom the government tagged terrorism financiers but failed to do so.

In a goodwill message, Bolaji Owasanoye, Chairman of the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC), while acknowledging the problems of organised crimes, noted that corruption and illicit financial flows threaten Africas and Nigerias ability to realise the SDGs because of the illicit and sometimes criminal consignment of resources to foreign jurisdictions thereby undermining domestic resource mobilization.

Mr Owasanoye, a professor of law and Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), further explained that the mission of the UNODCs Strategic Vision for Africa 2030 is to provide more safety to Africas people, government and institutions from drugs, crime, corruption, terrorism and illicit financial flows, aligns with ICPCs mandate.

AGF pledges commitment

Responding, the Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice Abubakar Malami, who was represented by the Acting Permanent Secretary in the ministry, Benjamin Okolo, said the federal government was in full commitment to the Vision 2030 for Nigeria in achieving the sustainable development goals, while also welcoming the thematic 5 Priority Areas of the Strategic Vision.

Similarly, the chairmen of Nigerian Drug Law Enforcement and the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Buba Marwa, and Abdulrasheed Bawa, respectively, explained in their separate goodwill messages that corruption and illicit financial flows threaten Africas and Nigerias ability in realising the Sustainable Development Goals.

They pledged to their support in achieving set goals.

The Strategic Vision 2030 which has 5 major priority areas include  upholding the rule of law, ensuring access to justice and protecting victims of crime.

The project also talks about safeguarding people, institutions and economies from corruption, illicit financial flows and money laundering.
back home, governments have abdicated their responsibilities in the provision of basic amenities like electricity, water, health care, basic infrastructure and have failed woefully in securing lives and property For the Nigerian students in Ukraine and those at home who are out of school due to ASUU strike action, for thousands on fuel queues, there is no fitting definition of a country failing its citizens than this.

You are on your own is a popular Nigerian street lingo for individuals taking responsibility for the consequences of their unpalatable actions. It is however deeper than the literary meaning. It can be an expression of abandonment, a tragedy of failure; failure of parents to take responsibility for those under their care, failure of citizens to perform their civic roles, and failure of government to perform its constitutional roles of providing security and welfare; in fact, you are on your own in this context is a tragedy of the failure of leadership. For thousands of Nigerians, especially those living in Ukraine, theyd probably wish they did not carry the Nigerian passport, because when it mattered most, and their host country was under attack, their country of origin could not rescue them.

No one, including those in charge of our foreign affairs, could say they didnt see the unfolding tragedy in Ukraine coming. While other countries were making frantic efforts to evacuate their nationals, the Nigeria government waited till the situation got out of hand, as Nigerians were left in the cold in Ukraine

Reports of dehumanising treatment, even racial discrimination and xenophobia meted out to blacks and Nigerians who are being denied access to trains and cross border entry into Poland and Hungary, the nearest safe havens, has been rife. Well, after the initial suffering, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Geoffrey Onyeama, appeared to have woken from slumber, as the Nigeria government now coordinates with our ambassadors in Ukraine, Romania, Poland, and Hungary. Already preparations are on to evacuate willing Nigerians back home. But do you really blame those who dont treat us well, when we dont treat ourselves right? Compared with the number of Nigerians in Ukraine, especially for studies, have you ever seen one Ukrainian in any Nigerian university?

In a country where complaints are perceived as criticisms of the government or from the opposition  as if criticism is an offence  outside the country, a slack on the part of the Nigeria government can determine how the country is perceived by the international community. With reference to Nigerian students in Ukraine, questions have also arisen about the sheer number of Nigerians studying medicine there.

Ukraine, with a population of 44.13 million, as at 2020 according to the World Bank, is just about a fifth of Nigerias population of over 200 million people. How is it that our people are even scattered all over the world seeking greener pastures? The answer lies in the near unworkability of Nigeria and its almost irredeemable status. The exodus to Ukraine to study Medicine is a validation of the countrys seriousness with the human sciences. It is also relatively cheap, in comparison to other Western European countries like the United Kingdom or North American countries like the U.S. or Canada.

Once you feel abandoned by your country, the question of patriotism will not even arise. Chances are that those who school abroad might not even come back home to practice. Why should they, when those back home are moving abroad daily, because of the harsh labour and economic realities there. Youth unemployment in Nigeria is put at over 53 per cent and every year new graduates join the unemployment market

Nigeria is a country where dreams die at infancy. Many of us ended up in the wrong professions and have been unable to give the ones we are in our best because of the lack of interest and passion for the jobs we are doing. The local environment simply makes it impossible for people to fulfil their dreams. Many who wanted to study medicine ended up with single honour degrees because of admission problems.

Stories abound of how people sit for JAMB over and over, and even among those who have graduated, just for them to study Medicine. Universities are not admitting students for Medicine because they cannot go beyond their carrying capacities and do not have the required human resources and medical equipment for practical training, yet our hospitals are in crying need of medical doctors. The story is told of a Nigerian student who was studying medicine in Sudan until that countys civil unrest and coup sent him packing, only to get another admission in Ukraine for the same course. And now this.

Once you feel abandoned by your country, the question of patriotism will not even arise. Chances are that those who school abroad might not even come back home to practice. Why should they, when those back home are moving abroad daily, because of the harsh labour and economic realities there. Youth unemployment in Nigeria is put at over 53 per cent and every year new graduates join the unemployment market, yet there are no concerted efforts by government to create the enabling environment for industry to thrive.

Sending ones wards/children abroad is beyond being rich. For the Nigerian government, education is not a priority. We give more priority to politics rather than social services like education, health care and infrastructure. For conducting election that will ultimately usher in corrupt politicians into office, government provides money to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). The lawmakers do not have to engage in any strike action before they get what is due to them; they appropriate the funds and ensure theirs gets to them, yet teachers who must have taught them at different levels of their education are neglected.

To think that those who escaped abroad are now caught in the middle of the Ukraine-Russia war without early help, is to wish you were never born a Nigerian. However, before we even have the effrontery to complain about ill-treatment abroad, do our lives matter at home? A tweet by @miss-debeham told the story of how they were denied entry at the Polish border, even though her friend had hypothermia

The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) is right now on strike as it has been at different times in the last 22 years or so. It is said that ASUU has had 17 strike actions between 1999 and 2022. Therefore, when parents struggle to send their children abroad, especially for courses that are reserved for the rich and not the indigent here, parents seek for convenient opportunities abroad to help guide their children in realising their aspirations, without breaking the bank.

To think that those who escaped abroad are now caught in the middle of the Ukraine-Russia war without early help, is to wish you were never born a Nigerian. However, before we even have the effrontery to complain about ill-treatment abroad, do our lives matter at home? A tweet by @miss-debeham told the story of how they were denied entry at the Polish border, even though her friend had hypothermia: The racism today! My friend fainted from too much cold today and we had to wake her up with water while I kept her warm. I went to tell one of the officials at the gate and they said I should call an ambulance (knowing it meant us going back into Ukraine). We couldnt risk that as we wanted to enter quick and leave Ukraineshe was weakI was pissed off because she was showing signs of hypothermia, while another tweeted @Damilare_arah thus: they are not allowing any black people in; only Ukrainians.

Being on your own in Nigeria and let down abroad is a bad advertisement for the Nigerian government, and not what journalists write about Nigeria, as they always claim. Already, back home, governments have abdicated their responsibilities in the provision of basic amenities like electricity, water, health care, basic infrastructure and have failed woefully in securing lives and property.

For the Nigerian students in Ukraine and those at home who are out of school due to ASUU strike action, for thousands on fuel queues, there is no fitting definition of a country failing its citizens than this.
The cavalier and arrogant manner in which the National Assembly threw out these Bills very clearly says that they do not want progress for Nigeria, and that their sole interest is in enhancing the power of Nigerian men. This is unacceptable and Nigerian men must come out and demand that all the five gender Bills be reconsidered by the federal parliament. We must not allow the men of the Ninth National Assembly to get away with reinforcingdiscrimination and political bias against women

Women have been protesting at the National Assembly since Wednesday, against the rejection of several bills seeking gender equality in the country. They have very clear demands, that Nigeria belongs to all its citizens, half of who are women. The systematic discrimination against women and their marginalisation in national and state affairs must stop if Nigeria is to develop into an inclusive and functional democracy. I believe that this struggle requires that progressive and democratically-minded Nigerian men must come into the ring and make it clear that they stand for inclusiveness, so that our mothers, wives, sisters and daughters would also be part of what we enjoy and take for granted.

The National Assembly had on Tuesday voted on the 68 bills that sought to alter or amend the Constitution. Five of the bills endeavoured to promote more opportunities for women in political parties, governance and the society at large. All the five bills were rejected by the Distinguished Senators and Honourable Members of the National Assembly, demonstrating their contempt and lack of regard for Nigerian women.

One of the bills sought to grant citizenship to foreign-born husbands of Nigerian women. Currently, all Nigerian men married to foreign born wives have the right to automatically confer citizenship on their wives. The National Assembly has taken the position that this right should not be enjoyed by Nigerian women.

Another Bill sought to allocate 35 per cent of appointed political positions, such as ministers, commissioners and board memberships to women. This would have given meaning to the 20-year old Nigerian Gender Policy that first enunciated this 35 per cent allocation. Nigerian men were ready to accept the policy as a theoretical right, which would never be implemented. Precisely for this reason, the Bill sought to give teeth to this government policy, so that it can be implemented, but they threw it out.

One of the most important Bills sought to create special seats for women in National and State Assemblies. This was proposed because the men who are gatekeepers in political parties have almost always blocked women seeking nomination to contest for executive and parliamentary seats. The reserved seats would have gone around this problem and it is now crystal clear that these men simply do not want women to have access to decision-making meeting rooms and chambers in the country.

Today, I feel terrible for all the great advocacy work done by womens groups. The Minister of Womens Affairs has worked tirelessly to ensure the success of these Bills. The First Lady and the wife of the Vice President had both gone to the National Assembly in person to lends their support to the passing of the Bills.

Given the history of male gatekeepers within political parties regularly blocking female aspirants, another Bill had proposed the application of the 35 per cent gender policy in the appointment of women into party administrations and leadership. This too was thrown out.

Yet, another Bill rejected by the National Assembly had sought to address the problems of marginalisation that women face when they are married to men from states they are not indigenes of. The proposal was that such women should automatically enjoy the indigeneity rights of their husbands states. This too was thrown out.

Today, I feel terrible for all the great advocacy work done by womens groups. The Minister of Womens Affairs has worked tirelessly to ensure the success of these Bills. The First Lady and the wife of the Vice President had both gone to the National Assembly in person to lends their support to the passing of the Bills.

The cavalier and arrogant manner in which the National Assembly threw out these Bills very clearly says that they do not want progress for Nigeria, and that their sole interest is in enhancing the power of Nigerian men. This is unacceptable and Nigerian men must come out and demand that all the five gender Bills be reconsidered by the federal parliament. We must not allow the men of the Ninth National Assembly to get away with reinforcing the discrimination and political bias against women that is enshrined in the 1999 Constitution.

Inclusiveness for women will benefit not just women but Nigeria as a whole. More women in governance will only bring progress and respect for Nigeria in the comity of nations. Even more important, by ensuring that Nigerian women fully enjoy the rights that the Constitution says are for all citizens, we deepen our democracy and enhance the respect and consideration of the other half of our citizens. It would simply make all of us better human beings.

Inclusiveness for women will benefit not just women but Nigeria as a whole. More women in governance will only bring progress and respect for Nigeria in the comity of nations. Even more important, by ensuring that Nigerian women fully enjoy the rights that the Constitution says are for all citizens, we deepen our democracy and enhance the respect and consideration of the other half of our citizens. It would simply make all of us better human beings. What the disrespect to women by the National Assembly shows is that most of the members have very little respect for democracy and we as a nation have to use the coming elections to ensure such people do not return to power.

My concern is that the Ninth Assembly has grown very distant from the core values of democracy and accountability. One of the greatest weaknesses of the Forth Republic is the immunity clause that protects the President, Vice President, Governors and Deputy Governors from prosecution while in office. While the original intention of the Constitution was to protect such officers from frivolous suits, in practice many such office holders have abused the immunity they enjoy by recklessly engaging in criminal activities, including corrupt acts and abuse of office. It is for this reason that there have been persistent calls by proponents of good governance to eliminate the clause altogether.

One of the Bills considered, but correctly thrown out in the constitutional amendment process, was a surreptitious attempt to expand the immunity clause to cover the legislative and judicial arms of government. The proposed constitutional amendment would have broadened the non-accountability circle to more public officers and create conditions for the escalation of criminal acts of corruption, abuse of office and breaches of the of rule of law. The implications of extending immunity to top legislative and judicial officers could cripple the rule of law in the country, as holders of such offices are likely to be emboldened by the clause and they would begin to think they are above the law. Given the massive growth of corruption in the legislative and judicial branches of government, it was an amendment that was proposed consciously to make the leadership of these branches above the law. The anger generated by the proposal was so high that they had to drop it during the Tuesday session. For the rest of their tenure, we need to keep eagle eyes on the National Assembly to ensure they prioritise amendments that are beneficial to citizens, rather than seek self-serving amendments that would place our democracy in jeopardy.

A professor of Political Science and development consultant/expert, Jibrin Ibrahim is a Senior Fellow of the Centre for Democracy and Development, and Chair of the Editorial Board of PREMIUM TIMES.
War is hell. It is death, extreme suffering, devastation, sorrow, hunger and families torn apart. Sometimes in war, the victim wails for death and is ignored. It is not like the heroes you watch in blockbuster films. The famous Nigerian poet, John Pepper Clark, in his 1966-68 anti-war poem: The Casualties wrote that: The casualties are not only those who are dead/Though they await burial by installment./ The casualties are not only those who started/A fire and now cannot put it out.

The domineering media is presenting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as a war hero who has confidently stood up to Russian forces and is recording stunning victories. Yes, Russian troops are dying, but so are Ukrainian troops. Worst still, Ukrainian civilians are dying, not necessarily because they are targeted or bombed, but that is the logic of war, as there would be shortages of basic needs, from food to medicines, while some will be too weak to flee.

The most tragic thing is that the war is being fought on Ukrainian soil; in their towns and cities, alleys and highways, with infrastructure being destroyed and economic activities and education grounded. The motivational speakers giving Zelensky the impression that he is a super hero who can, in fact, win the war, would not, themselves, agree to be used as cannon fodders like the Ukrainians have been used so far.

They concentrate their efforts and energies on debates and propaganda and how to supply more weapons, when what the Ukrainians need is a ceasefire, a negotiated settlement, food and medicines, drink and safe shelter. Already, as at yesterday, the United Nations reports that 870,000 Ukrainians have fled the borders to become refugees. The European Union says the figure can rise to as high as four million!

War is hell. It is death, extreme suffering, devastation, sorrow, hunger and families torn apart. Sometimes in war, the victim wails for death and is ignored. It is not like the heroes you watch in blockbuster films. The famous Nigerian poet, John Pepper Clark, in his 1966-68 anti-war poem: The Casualties wrote that: The casualties are not only those who are dead/Though they await burial by installment./ The casualties are not only those who started/A fire and now cannot put it out. Thousands/Are burning that have no say in the matter/Because whether we know or/Do not know the extent of wrongs on all sides,/We are characters now other than before/The war began/We are all casualties.

Wars also have their own logic, which is paralogical. Would Ukrainians have ever thought that the United Kingdom, which shouts on the rooftops and is offering lethal weapons to them, would deny them entry into that country unless they have valid visas?

In what embassy would Ukrainians who are fleeing for their lives obtain British visas? Would they have thought that reliable Israel would reject their entry as refugees?

In all the confusion and race for their lives, would Africans fleeing Ukraine have imagined that they would have guns trained at them at the Polish border, as if they are enemy Russian troops? Would Middle Easterners have imagined that they would be discriminated against in evacuations, when no life is more precious than the other?

Europeans have a tendency for making their differences the problem of the entire humanity. For instance, their different alliances, imperialist goals and self-interests ignited a single spark; the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinard of Austria on June 28, 1914 by a Serbian led to the 1914-18 All-European War, christened the First World War. That war claimed 9.7 million soldiers, 10 million civilians, while 21 million were wounded.

I think countries which prefer a negotiated resolution of the crises, rather than be part of the Western chorus against the Devil Putin, do humanity more good. That is the common sense exhibited by other trusted allies of the United States like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

European countries, like other peoples in history, have been involved in various wars, like the English-French One Hundred Years War from 1337-1453. When they seized colonies and exploited the colonised, there were near-war situations which they handled with their American allies by holding a conference in Berlin in 1884/85, at which they agreed on peaceful means of chopping up Africa and dividing it among themselves like spoils of war.

However, Europeans have a tendency for making their differences the problem of the entire humanity. For instance, their different alliances, imperialist goals and self-interests ignited a single spark; the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinard of Austria on June 28, 1914 by a Serbian led to the 1914-18 All-European War, christened the First World War. That war claimed 9.7 million soldiers, 10 million civilians, while 21 million were wounded.

When, as a result of the mishandling of the post-war victory, especially with punitive sanctions levelled against Germany, alongside the theft of its colonies, the Europeans resumed their war, it claimed 70-85 million lives or about three per cent of the world population in 1940. That European War was called the Second World War.

Apart from the Europeans pillaging our resources in Africa, turning schools like the Kings College into war camps, many youths in the continent were seized and conscripted into colonial armies. Many of these our fathers and grandfathers never returned home.

They were killed in faraway lands and buried in unmarked graves. So many Nigerian youths were thrown into the battle fields of Burma that some Nigerians called it the Burma War. Those who returned were called Burma Boys, a name subsequently adopted by street toughies.

The implication is that for the Europeans, nuclear war is not off the table. NATO, a racist club, is falsely being presented as an effective multilateral institution and a democratic bulwark. In truth, it is a mere military alliance by Europe and North America to perpetuate their interests. It is an unconscionable, militarist institution. Yes, many Europeans can feel safe under NATO, but it will be foolish for Africans, Asians, Latinos and Arabs to feel the same

Today, the same European countries and their American allies are stacked on either side of the war in Ukraine; once again threatening to transform an European war into a world war.

Yet, Europe that so troubles the world is quite small; it has a population of 748,390,705 or 9.78 per cent of the world population and inhabits two per cent of the earths surface, spread over 44 countries.

When Russian President Vladimir Putin told the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) members that if they militarily intervene in the Ukrainian war against his country, they would face such consequences that you have never encountered in your history, French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian retorted that: Yes, I think that Vladimir Putin must also understand that the Atlantic alliance is a nuclear alliance.

The implication is that for the Europeans, nuclear war is not off the table. NATO, a racist club, is falsely being presented as an effective multilateral institution and a democratic bulwark. In truth, it is a mere military alliance by Europe and North America to perpetuate their interests. It is an unconscionable, militarist institution. Yes, many Europeans can feel safe under NATO, but it will be foolish for Africans, Asians, Latinos and Arabs to feel the same; the sheep may want peace but that cannot be guaranteed by a pack of wolves.

NATO was established in Washington on April 4, 1949 by 12 Western countries primarily to check the spread of communism. To counter it, six years later, seven socialist countries established the Warsaw Pact. With the collapse of the Socialist Bloc, the Warsaw alliance collapsed, but rather than NATO folding up since the reason for its establishment was no longer there, it decided to expand Eastward by absorbing 13 former Warsaw Pact countries. It is its attempt to further expand by bringing in Ukraine, which has partly led to the on-going war.

When NATO turned 70 in 2019, I wrote a column titled: Setting the world free by resting NATO in which I argued that its continued existence is inimical to global peace.

Owei Lakemfa, a former secretary general of African workers, is a human rights activist, journalist and author.
3rd March, 2022

Mr. Abubakar Malami, SAN

Attorney-General of the Federation,

and Minister for Justice

Federal Ministry of Justice

Plot 71B, Shehu Shagari Way,

Maitama,

Abuja.

Sir,

UNTRUE AND UNFAIR ACCUSATION OF FRAUD/CORRUPTION AGAINST MOHAMMED BELLO ADOKE IN THE CASE OF FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF NIGERIA v. JP MORGAN CHASE N. A.

We represent Mr. Mohammed Bello Adoke, SAN, who has instructed us to once again, draw your attention to news reports, particularly the Sahara Reporters publication of 26th February 2022, which claimed to report the proceedings of 24th February 2022 at the Commercial Court in the United Kingdom in Claim No. CL-2017- 000730, Between FRN and JPMC under the caption Despite Prosecuting HEDA Chairman For Forgery, Nigerian Government Tells London Court Adoke Sent Email, Called JP Morgan  Sahara Reporters.

Our client has instructed us to bring to your attention, excerpts from the publication under reference:

The Nigerian Government has informed a court in London, United Kingdom, that a former Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Mohammed Adoke, contacted JP Morgan through phone call and email. The government said this while briefing the High Court of Justice Business and Property Courts of England and Wales Admiralty and Commercial Court in a suit it instituted against JP Morgan Chase Bank, N.A. explaining how Adoke benefitted from the OPL 245 deal.

However, the government while briefing the court said Adoke contacted JP Morgan repeatedly and sent an email using the mail of Aliyu Abubakars shell company A Group. In a court document exclusively obtained by Sahara Reporters, the Nigerian Government reaffirmed that Adoke telephoned the bank JP Morgan and even sent emails severally using the agroupproperties@yahoo.com email address.

The Nigerian Government also stated that Adoke acted while he was no longer in the ministerial position, an act linked to impersonation and fraud.

Our client has instructed us to also refer you to some of the false depositions made before the High Court of Justice in London in the above-referenced suit:

Steel J later received a letter addressed to him from the then Attorney-General of Nigeria. This letter was summarised in the judgment and thereby entered the public domain. The Attorney-General explained that the Resolution Agreements had been concluded with the full knowledge of the FGN which believed that they were in the public interest of the Nigeria people for reasons which he set out. They were patently not in the public interest of the Nigerian people, and those individuals in the FGN who were seeking to effect the transfer to Malabu were acting in clear breach of their fiduciary duties to the FRN.

On 16th December 2016, the criminal charges of money laundering were brought against Etete and the former Attorney-General, Adoke by the Claimant (FRN), in Nigeria, in connection with the funds. The charges are that the former Attorney-General and Etete committed the offence of money laundering by facilitating the payment of the funds to Etete and Malabu Oil & Gas Limited through the Deposit Account. The case against Adoke and Etete, who are at large, is still pending.

Our client is concerned that you, the Attorney-General of Nigeria, have instructed Counsel in England to the above effect or have allowed those instructions to be given, or allowed those facts to be presented in a court of law, when you are fully aware that they are not true. Our client has therefore instructed us to remind you of the true facts, most, if not all of which are already in the public domain:

You had in your letter of 20th September 2017, to the Acting Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission titled Re: Forwarding of Case File in Respect of Charge No. FHC/ABJ/CR/268: Malabu Oil and Gas Ltd, written thus: The EFCC investigation and attached proof of evidence does not appear to have clearly revealed the case of fraud against the parties in view of their claimed acting in their official capacities with purported approval of the President of the FGN at the time and with claimed intentions that the matter be resolved in the national interest to save the nation from acrimonious litigations resulting in high legal fees and the none (sic) production of the oil field while litigation lasted.

In your letter to the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria dated 15th September 2017, you had also advised the President that:

EFCC investigation and attached proof of evidence do not appear to have clearly revealed the case of fraud against the parties who claimed to have acted in their official capacities with the approval of 3 consecutive Presidents of the Government of Nigeria at the time with further claim that the matter was intended to be resolved in the national interest thereby saving the nation from acrimonious litigations resulting into high legal fees and the dormancy of the oil field while litigation lasted.

Recall too that Dr. Emmanuel Ibe Kachikwu, the Hon. Minister of State for Petroleum Resources had also appraised the Resolution Agreements and in his letter (Ref. no. MPR/STAHMS/S.26/11) dated 11 December 2017 to the Chief of Staff to the President, while aligning himself with your advice to the President under reference, stated as follows:

 following the advice of the Attorney General, that the Federal Government is obliged to respect the resolution of the Settlement Agreement entered by the Federal Government with respect to OPL 245 given:

(a) the consistent role of three (3) predecessor Presidents in this matter, and

(b) The potential negative view of Nigeria that may follow should international arbitration ensue from this matter.

My Experience is that the potency of bilateral investment treaties upon which a claim could be made on Nigeria is such that, any attempt to abrogate the Settlement Agreement or take any steps that will undermine its integrity, could prove costly to Nigeria.

In essence, your colleague in the cabinet of the Federal Government of Nigeria in the person of the Honourable Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, relying on your legal advice to the Government, came to the reasoned conclusion that it was in the national interest to allow all the contending issues to be laid to rest so that Block 245 could be operated for the benefit of the Government.

Relying largely on the Attorney-Generals letter to the Acting Chairman of the EFCC, the Federal High Court of Nigeria in its judgment dated 07/04/2018, delivered by Hon. Justice B.F.M Nyako in suit No FHC/ABJ/CS/446/2017, MOHAMMED BELLO ADOKE v. ATTORNEY-GENERAL OF THE FEDERATION, made the following declarations in favour of our client:

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The involvement of the plaintiff in the negotiations leading to the implementation of a Settlement Agreement dated 30th November 2006 between Malabu Oil & Gas Limited and the Federal Government of Nigeria and the eventual execution of Bloc 245 Malabu Resolution Agreement dated 29th April 2011 between the Federal Government of Nigeria and Malabu Oil and Gas Limited was in furtherance of the lawful directives/approval of the President in the exercise of his executive powers.

Any correspondence/instruction to JP Morgan or any other entity and ancillary actions and processes taken by the Plaintiff in furtherance of the implementation of the Settlement Agreement dated 30th November 2006; Block 245 Malabu Agreement dated 29th April 2011; Block 245 SNUD Resolution Agreement date 29th April 2011and Block 245 resolution dated 29th April 2011 were in furtherance of the lawful directives/approvals of the President in the exercise of his executive powers, and

The Plaintiff cannot be held personally liable for carrying out the lawful /approvals of the President while he served as a Minister of the Government of the Federation.

As you are well aware, the FGN did not appeal that judgement, the legal implication being that the judgment represents the truth of the matters that it decided, for all time. Unfortunately, and contrary to your own legal advice and in defiance of the un-appealed, binding declarations made by the Federal High Court (that our client had no criminal culpability in the OPL 245/Malabu agreements), your office filed charges in another court of coordinate jurisdiction against the parties to the Settlement agreements, with our client as one of the defendants.

You are also aware that even though at the High Court of the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, you had charged our client with receiving gratification in the sum of N300m from Mr. Aliyu Abubakar on account of OPL 245, your witnesses, including the EFCC investigator, later admitted in sister proceedings at the Federal High Court that the said N300m was not gratification from the Malabu transactions, but the refund of a loan taken by our client from Unity Bank to purchase a house from Mr. Abubakar, with the title documents to the property deposited as an equitable mortgage for the loan. The evidence before the court is that Mr. Abubakar later sold the same property to the Central Bank of Nigeria when our client could not pay the balance of N200m. Your witnesses even produced documents to prove the loan/mortgage transaction and further testified that the N300m refunded by Mr. Abubakar had been used to repay the Bank loan and extinguish the mortgage.

As you know, the Italian Court has discharged and acquitted all defendants, including Mr. Abubakar Aliyu, of the criminal charges that had been filed in that country on account of the OPL 245 Resolution Agreement of 2011, and the prosecutors in that case are being investigated for withholding from the Court, evidence that would have further exonerated the defendants.

You are similarly aware that in February 2021, our client had petitioned the Nigerian Police to investigate the forgery of the email of 21/06/2011 and the fake telephone interview said to have been given by him and to identify the persons that had been responsible for the petition to the Italian authorities that had led to the disastrous prosecution in Milan. Our client had complained that he believed the concoction of evidence against him to have been an unlawful criminal design to unlawfully interfere with the administration of justice in the civil proceedings pending in the Commercial Court in United Kingdom under Claim No. CL-2017-000730 Between FRN v JP Morgan Chase Bank, as well as the criminal trials in Milan/ Nigeria, connected to the OPL 245 Resolution Agreements of 29/04/2011.

At the conclusion of the investigation, the Police in their report dated the 2nd of September 2021, indicted one Olanrewaju Suraju. Your office then filed charges against that person for forgery of the email that had been falsely sent in the name of our client in order to implicate our client in alleged fraud in the payment to Malabu. In spite of the clear findings by the Police, your office later amended the charges in respect of the forged email. From what is now reported of the proceedings in England, it is reasonable to conclude that your office deliberately amended the charge of forgery against Mr. Suraju in order to keep alive the fiction being passed off as truth to the High Court of England  that our client had sent the forged email. It is disheartening that the good name of our country is being associated with such unethical methods in a misguided view of national interest. It appears that the office of the Attorney General has embraced the discredited doctrines of the end justifies the means and all is fair in war. To say the least, this is most regrettable.

Furthermore, you are aware that all the authorised signatories to the escrow account with JP Morgan, who signed the instructions that enabled the payment to Malabu Oil and Gas Limited pursuant to the OPL 245 Resolution Agreement of 2011, are walking freely without any insinuation that they were involved in any fraud or scam. Surely they would all have been facing trial, had there really been fraud in the transaction, not to mention the fact that all the payments to Malabu Oil and Gas Limited were duly approved by the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, who has never been accused of wrong-doing in the matter.

More recently (on the 24th of August, 2021), you had in your letter to the present Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, correctly advised the Federal Government that:

 it is very disheartening that the Field has remained dormant for decades while all issues and litigations connected therewith lasted, with negative economic consequences for the country. Thus, the conversion of OPL 245 to an OML as being sought by ENI/Shell is reasonable, timely and justifiable at this time. The opportunity of the proposed conversion should, as much as possible, be seized to resolve all issues connected to the Field, including the associated prosecution which I had, at some point opined, were, as constituted, not sustainable. This position is in consonance with my previous correspondence to Mr. President on the subject via the letter dated 27th September 2017 ref: DPPA/FMPR/198/17 (herewith attached for ease of reference) wherein I advised in paragraphs 9 and 10 inter alia that:

(i) 9. the above commitments are binding on the FGN. ENI/Shell legitimately expects that the FGN would respect the commitments. Failure by the FGN to respect them would cast Nigeria in a very bad light internationally and negatively impact the FGNs quest for international investments. Clearly, potential investors will not have the confidence to invest in Nigeria if the government of the country is perceived as one which does not honour its commitments (as captured in an agreement signed by three of its Ministers).

(ii) 10. ENI/Shell claims to have invested in excess of $USD 2.5 billion on OPL 245 from 2011 to date and as such would seek the protection of International Law, including applicable investment treaties which prohibit the unreasonable, unfair, and inequitable treatment of their investment and could expose the FGN to international arbitration involving multi-billion dollars claim.

In sum, in the premise of the foregoing, I am of the firm view that, it is in the best interest of the Federal Government and Peoples of Nigeria, to resolve all issues connected with OPL 245, especially the commercial issues, and to expedite the process of converting the OPL to an OML for ENI/SNEPCO thereby taking advantage of the fast-disappearing opportunities in the Oil exploration industry, and attracting other high-net-worth investors that will provide the resources much needed in the Oil industry and by extension our economy at this time.

While the high quality of the above legal advice to the government is noted, our client finds it remarkable that you are portraying him as corrupt for giving the same advice that you have so wisely given the government. Surely you would not expect a future Attorney-General to say that you too were corrupted by Malabu since you gave the same legal advice that had earlier been given by our client. There can be no doubt that you did the right thing in advising the government to bring the Shell/Malabu dispute to a tidy close so that Nigeria can earn the huge revenue promised by the OPL 245 Oil Field. There is no fraud whatsoever in your legal advice on this point, just as there was none in our clients.

In view of the foregoing, our client wishes to draw your esteemed attention to the grave implications of the Attorney Generals authorisation of the unlawful disobedience of the judgment of the Federal High Court delivered by Hon. Justice B.F.M Nyako dated 07 April 2018 in Suit No. FHC/ABJ/CS/446/2017 between Mohammed Bello Adoke vs Attorney General of the Federation by the allegation of corruption made against our client, contrary to the declaratory orders made therein. The sad reality is that this willful disobedience of the judgment of a Nigerian Court by the exalted office of the Attorney General of the Federation charged with the responsibility of protecting the sanctity of the courts and their judgments, has the potential of engendering loss of public confidence in our judiciary and encouraging disrespect for the judgments of Nigerian courts by foreign jurisdictions.

Our client is dismayed that the pursuit of National interest has now changed from the reasons aptly captured by him in his Comprehensive Position Paper to you on the assumption of the OPL 245 Settlement Agreement and the learned Attorney Generals position as conveyed in his letter to the Hon. Minister of Petroleum Resources under reference. This is more so as the Attorney-General is prepared to allow the name of his predecessor in office to be unjustifiably dragged in the mud, in an effort to deceive a foreign court into believing that our client had acted corruptly. Our client does not believe that it is in the National interest to mindlessly damage the reputation of any citizen, on the expectation that the Federal Government will reap a windfall from J.P. Morgan.

Our client is addressing this protest to you because it is not possible for you to be unaware that lies are being told about him in court proceedings filed by the Federal Government of Nigeria in the Commercial Court in the United Kingdom and the fact that grave injustice will be done to him if urgent steps are not taken by your office to properly inform and guide the English Court on the facts needed to assist the court to arrive at a just determination of the suit.

The Attorney General is further reminded that as an Officer in the Temple of Justice he is required to, at all times, place the true facts before the court. This is irrespective of the interest at play. The Attorney General therefore has a duty in the present case to bring to the attention of the court, all exculpating circumstances which in this case, include, inter alia:

(i) The judgment of the Federal High Court in Suit No. FHC/ABJ/CS/446/2017: The Attorney Generals legal advice of 20th September 2017 which exonerated our client of any wrongdoing in respect of the implementation of the OPL 245 resolution Agreement of 2011;

(ii) The outcome of the Police investigation which had indicted Olanrewaju Suraju of forging and the email.

(iii) The fact that your office had filed charges against Olanrewaju Suraju for forgery of the email that had been falsely sent in the name of our client in order to implicate our client in alleged fraud in the OPL 245 Resolution Agreement;

(iv) The fact that evidence given by prosecution witnesses to a Nigerian court shows clearly that our client did not corruptly enrich himself in the implementation of the OPL 245 Resolution Agreement and that the N300m that was in issue before the court has been conclusively proven to have been a mortgage transaction between our client and Unity Bank of Nigeria;

(iv) The fact that as Attorney General of the Federation, you have appraised the OPL 245 resolution of 2011 and have come to the reasoned conclusion that I am of the firm view that, it is in the best interest of the Federal Government and Peoples of Nigeria, to resolve all issues connected with OPL 245, especially the commercial issues, and to expedite the process of converting the OPL to an OML for ENI/SNEPCO thereby taking advantage of the fast-disappearing opportunities in the Oil exploration industry, and attracting other high-net-worth investors that will provide the resources much needed in the Oil industry and by extension our economy at this time;

(v) That our client had in his Comprehensive Report on the implementation of the OPL 245 Resolution 2011, similarly anchored the decision of the Government to mid-wife the settlement on national interest-the need to resolve the lingering dispute between Shell Ultra Deep Limited and Malabu Oil and Gas Limited which had prevented the Block 245 from being exploited for the benefit of Nigeria and avoid likely contingent liabilities in the sum of over $2billion in the ICSID arbitral proceedings brought against the Federal Government of Nigeria by SNUD.

Finally, we are to convey our clients respect for the Office of the Attorney General of the Federation and his abiding faith in your ability to discharge the constitutional duty required of the office as well as your sense of justice, which should propel you to take immediate steps to correct the false depositions made against him in the on-going proceedings before the Commercial Court in the United Kingdom, and indeed, all other proceedings involving him.

PAUL EROKORO, SAN

CC

1. The Court Manager

Business and Property Court

Commercial List

Rolls Building

Fetter Lane

London EC4A 1NL

United Kingdom

2. Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer LLP

100 Bishopsgate

London EC2P 2SR

United Kingdom

3. Andrew Mitchell, QC

Reynolds Porter Chamderlain LLP

London

United Kingdom
A mild drama ensued at the Osun State High Court in Osogbo Thursday during the araignment of the suspects involved in the alleged murder of Timothy Adegoke, a Masters student of the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile Ife.

The family of the deceased, who had earlier protested the police decision to try the suspects in Abuja, rained curses at police officers accusing them of attempting to compromise the case.

After initially filing the charges before an FCT High Court in Abuja, last month, the police withdrew the charges and refiled them before the Osun State High Court in Osogbo.

After the arraignment of the suspects on Thursday, the police prevented journalists from filming the accused by rushing them into a waiting police van, parked close to the court room

This angered both the family of the deceased and on-lookers in the court premises who angrily rained curses on the police.

Background

Mr Adegoke was reportedly killed after lodging at the Hilton Hotels and Resorts, Ile Ife, in November last year.

The police arrested Ramon Adedoyin, the hotel owner, and six other members of his staff and transfered them to Abuja for prosecution.

But the deceaseds family lawyer, however, insisted that that the case be transfered to Osun State, where the crime was committed.

Court proceedings

Arraigned before the court on Thursday were Mr Adedoyin, Adedeji Adesola, Magdalene Chiefuna, Adeniyi Aderogba, Oluwale Lawrence, Oyetunde Kazeem, and Adebayo Kunle.

The suspects were charged with an 11 count bordering on murder, indecent interference with a dead body, administration of extrajudicial oath, and alteration to conceal evidence

They all pleaded not guilty.

Represented by Kunle Adegoke, SAN, and K. Eleja, SAN, the defendants application for bail was unsuccessful because the seventh accused person was added to the case less than 24 hours to the court hearing.

In her ruling, Justice Adepele Ojo adjourned the case till March 4 for the defence to file and move formal bail application for the seventh defendant.

The defendants were remanded in the Ilesha Correctional Facility in the state.
The Ondo State Government has expressed its readiness to return both missionary primary and secondary schools to their original owners.

Governor Oluwarotimi Akeredolu said this on Thursday while receiving the new Chairman of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), Anselm Ologunwa in his office at Alagbaka, Akure.

Mr Akeredolu said that so far, only the Catholic Church has signified interest to take over their schools in the state.

We have promised that we will return schools to the missionaries and we are keeping to our promise. It is only the Catholic Church that has shown interest.

Our position is that if you are not interested in taking ownership of your school, dont discourage others.

The Catholic Church has requested for two secondary and two primary schools. If you can run your school, come and take it.

I know about Aquinas College. The progress made there is as a result of the efforts of the old boys association and the Catholic.

Any of the missionaries that are ready to run their schools should come. Most of us are products of missionary schools, he said.

The governor noted that the most important thing to his administration is spiritual guidance and prayers.

The immediate past Chairman of CAN, John Oladapo, thanked Mr Akeredolu for his support and love to the association.

It is my joy to be here today to thank God for your life and the support that I received as CAN chairman, Ondo state.

You are indeed a father. We appreciate the love and the support that we have enjoyed, Oladapo said.

In his response, Mr Ologunwa, a reverend father, assured the governor of the support and cooperation of CAN in the state.

We will continue to the governor in his efforts to make the state beautiful and habitable for all through prayers.

We are here to encourage and pray for you and to entrust you and your team of executives to God Almighty that God may guide your affairs to the greater glory of His Holy name and for the good of humanity.

We urge you to be spiritually fortified in Christ, find strength and grace through prayer for good stewardship from God whom it has pleased to choose you to serve as Governor of our dear State.

Your election as the Chairman of the South West Governors Forum is a wonderful testimony to your political progress and an opportunity for you to contribute to tackling all worrisome issues.

These include poverty, violence, illiteracy, youth idleness and their Involvement in crime and violence factors which have greatly retarded our progress especially in Nigeria.he said.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) recalls that in November 2021, Mr Akeredolu expressed the readiness of the state to return both primary and secondary missionary schools to their original owners.

Part of the conditions to be met by the interested missionaries is an assurance that the released institutions will not discriminate against any admission seekers.

He, however, directed the religious organisations interested in taking over their schools to approach the state Ministry Justice for necessary briefs.

(NAN)
CARA CHAPMAN/STAFF PHOTO

City of Plattsburgh Mayor Chris Rosenquest (from left), Town of Plattsburgh Supervisor Michael Cashman and Clinton County Legislature Chair Mark Henry take questions from attendees of the North Country Chamber of Commerces annual State of the County, City and Town breakfast at the Butcher Block Thursday morning. The Q&A period was moderated by Chamber President Garry Douglas (right).
Southbury, CT (06488)

Today

Sunny along with a few clouds. High 71F. Winds NNW at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

Partly cloudy skies early will become overcast later during the night. Low 48F. Winds light and variable.
NEW DELHI, March 4, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Breakthrough India's Pan-Asian Summit "Reframe" brought an important conversation on the need for collaborating and co-creating collective actions to support women suffering gender-based violence and discrimination. Eminent speakers and experts in intersectional feminism highlighted the best practices from regional, national and local collaborations for interventions and advocacy efforts to shape the way forward for addressing GBV and upholding sexual and reproductive health and rights through inter-country and sub-regional partnerships and foreign alliances.

Talking about the plight of Dalit women in India, Abirami Jotheeswaran, General Secretary, All India Dalit Mahila Adhikar Manch, said, "Every day, as per official reports, 9 Dalit women across India are raped. To create advocacy spaces for Dalit women, we should extensively monitor the incidents of caste and gender violence and intervene in the cases. In heinous cases of human rights violation, a nation-wide fact finding mission should be launched. Despite several efforts from organisations across India, we still witness a lack of empathy among stakeholders regarding Dalit women. Unfortunately, many Dalit women are still unaware of their rights and entitlements. To tackle the same, it is important to identify and work with different human rights groups and allies at the grassroots level to promote community led advocacy."

Despite national laws and international human rights standards prohibiting any physical, sexual or psychological violence against women, varying forms of violent acts specifically targeting Dalit women are occurring on a large scale across India today. Dalit women constitute 9.79 crore, i.e. 8% of the total Indian population. Dalit women face more violence and oppression, and exclusion based on their caste identity.

Biplabi Shrestra, Programme Director, ARROW, said, "There was an assessment done in Asia-Pacific regions in the spectrum of civic space that shows that 94% of people live in countries with closed, repressed or obstructed civic spaces and even in some developed countries, civic spaces are being narrowed. We have experienced this even more in COVID where the pandemic has been used as an excuse for the shrinkage of civic spaces and to repress our voices at all levels. This has led to suffering of human rights of marginalized people leading to gender based violence, and violation of their sexual reproductive health and rights."

The transgender community, on the other hand, suffer from a lack of legal recognition, equality and protection, and fundamental citizenship rights. These include the right to a legal identity based on the gender of their choosing, and the right to gender equality and equity, that is, non-discrimination in all spheres of life based on their gender identity or gender expression. In many contexts trans women are legally identified as male and are unable to change their gender on identification cards and passports. The violation of the fundamental right to personhood perpetuates serious disadvantages in everyday life.

As challenges vary in marginalized sub-sections, indigenous people suffer differently. There are 54 million indigenous people across the globe, including 28 million women with disabilities, out of which 80% live in Asia Pacific. Violence related to indigenous women especially women with disabilities is complex and intense because of the multiple identities that they hold, but their stories are undocumented.

Pratima Gurung, Academic Activist, Nepal, talked about coming together for indigenous women, "Most of the narratives about crimes against indigenous people are descriptive and presented in a linear pattern of gender-based violence. Global data suggests that 33% of indigenous women are raped in their lifetime, and 80% of disabled women have faced violence. There is a huge gap between the disabled and the non-disabled counterparts and there are differences in the lived experiences of these women. When it comes to indigenous women, their collective rights are very important. The debate around SRHR is yet to reach disabled indigenous women. There is a need to hear the marginalized voices and civic spaces' frames should be broadened."

Adding to the discussion, Sai Jyothirmai Rarcherla, Deputy Executive Director, ARROW, said, "Young people face intersecting challenges such as lack of access to quality medicines, displacement and forced migration, unsafe abortions, high prevalence of HIV and AIDS and lack of youth led policies at the national level. Young people have voiced their recommendations to end gender based violence, which includes having more agency, a comprehensive sexuality education, and creation of community networks and programmes that address gender based violence. The best practice that we have adopted at ARROW is to provide an allowance to young marginalized people."

About Breakthrough:

Breakthrough works towards making violence and discrimination against women and girls unacceptable. We change gender norms by working with adolescents and youth, their families, and their communities, as well as by using media campaigns, the arts and popular culture to build a more equal world around us and create a more enabling environment.

SOURCE Breakthrough India
Collaboration Aims to Drive City-wide Blockchain Adoption and Allow Citizens to Pay Annual Taxes and City Services in Bitcoin, Tether and Selected CHF-Based stablecoins

LUGANO, Switzerland, March 3, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Tether Operations Limited ( Tether ), the technology company supporting the blockchain-enabled platform that powers the largest stablecoin by market capitalisation (USD), in collaboration with the vibrant Swiss city of Lugano today announced the establishment of a center of excellence for blockchain adoption in Europe.

Together, Tether and the City of Lugano will work toward the shared goal of scaling the city's blockchain capabilities and promote Lugano as a major hub for European blockchain adoption.

Tether and Lugano

The goal of this collaboration is to demonstrate real-world use of blockchain technologies by applying it practically to local communities in Lugano. To date, most blockchain projects have focused on foundational efforts that give little attention to local communities and deliver practical applications.

The city is home to several innovative initiatives, including the Lugano Living Lab , which implement projects in the innovation and digital fields through experimentation and prototyping on an urban scale. Lugano's ecosystem allows Tether to stretch beyond most current blockchain implementations and work hand-in-hand with Lugano for the first full-scale urban practical use case. The application in Lugano will be exhibited through localized services with tailored use cases that can reduce infrastructure costs and expand accessibility to global markets.

Future Scalability

In the near future, the city aims to scale its efforts to enable citizens and companies to fully pay their annual taxes and all goods and services in cryptocurrency. Formal approvals were obtained for only Bitcoin, Tether, and select CHF-based stablecoins to be accepted for such payments, whereby funds will be converted in local FIAT currency via different service providers. This move makes Lugano one of the first in the world to implement a full cryptocurrency payment economy.

The City of Lugano will begin working with Tether and other service providers to help local businesses integrate their existing payment services with the permitted stablecoins to ensure the technological infrastructure is in place to support this.

Lightning Network will be one of the solutions that the City, with the support of Tether, will integrate into the services. Lightning Network has grown to become a prominent, highly scalable and robust payment system overcoming scalability obstacles associated with the blockchain without surrendering security, trustlessness, or privacy.

Lugano and Tether's Memorandum of Understanding

Lugano and Tether signed a memorandum of understanding which launches a strategic collaboration through several initiatives, including a centrally located specialized hub hosting companies and startups and acting as catalyst for everything related to blockchain to facilitate their establishment and daily operations. Lugano aims to become a home for the crypto community where it can grow and prosper.

A group of prominent companies in the crypto industry led by Tether, will create a multi-million dollar fund to help finance blockchain based startup companies focused on building blockchain services in the region. Additionally, Tether will contribute its expertise, knowledge and support to the City focusing on the education of the new generations through collaborations with local universities and research institutes (500 scholarships will be made available in the immediate future).

The initiative will also serve as a beacon of green financing. The joint effort will focus on using natural resources and environmentally friendly alternatives to power bitcoin mining, allowing for bitcoin to act as a strong accelerator for renewable energy development. This will be another example of how a city, investing in Bitcoin, can use the proceeds of mining to re-invest in the growth of local infrastructure.

"Lugano is investing in its future," said Michele Foletti, Mayor of Lugano. "In recent years, the city has already implemented blockchain-based solutions including the MyLugano app and its LVGA Points payment token, the Lugano digital franc and the 3Achain blockchain infrastructure. We strongly believe in this technology, the potential to scale the technology,  and our integrated collaboration with Tether  will build a better and more open, transparent and smart city."

"Lugano is a vibrant city, filled with innovators and future-forward thinkers," said Paolo Ardoino, CTO at Tether. "As the world's largest stablecoin, we envision a future where businesses of all sizes and scale are able to leverage blockchain platforms to improve the quality of life of local citizens providing more sustainable, transparent, and reliable financial and day-to-day services. We look forward to Lugano becoming a model for global adoption."

This is the latest development of a process started by Lugano over one year ago with concrete actions aimed at positioning itself as the destination of choice in a rapidly growing sector. In addition to the already mentioned LVGA Points local payment system, Lugano developed a city blockchain, 3Achain, EVM compatible, which already counts about thirty partners across the most important public and private companies in Switzerland, as well as a number of blockchain related events open to the public in the fall of 2021.

Upcoming Events

The City also announced an October 2022 event, titled Bitcoin World Forum, which will promote deep conversation around freedom of communication and finance. This event will delve into topics such as disintermediation of finance, accessibility of financial services, unbanked persons, and regulation. Tether will support the conference by bringing the industry's foremost thought leaders and creators from the world of digital finance together for collaboration and networking.

Additional details about the event and attendance will be available in the coming weeks.

About Tether

Created in October 2014, Tether was the first stablecoin in existence, and remained the sole stablecoin in the market until March 2018. Tether is disrupting the legacy financial system by offering a more modern approach to money. By adding fiat currency-digital cash to the bitcoin and Ethereum blockchains, Tether makes a significant contribution to a more connected ecosystem by introducing digital currency benefits, such as instant global transactions, to traditional currency and incorporating traditional currency benefits like price stability to digital currency. With a commitment to full transparency and compliance, Tether is the most secure, fastest, and cheapest way to transact with money.

About the City of Lugano

Lugano is the economic capital of Southern Switzerland, strategically located between the metropolitan areas of Milan and Zurich. Set in an exceptional natural context and landscape, Lugano is the ideal place for living and working.

The city hosts an important financial center and vibrant pharmaceutical, commodity trading and fashion hubs and remains a sought-after tourist destination.

A university town since 1996, Lugano is home to world class research institutes and infrastructure, including the Dalle Molle Institute for Artificial Intelligence (IDSIA) and the Swiss National Supercomputing Center (CSCS).

Among the safest cities in the Country, Lugano offers business friendly legislation, great infrastructure and political stability typical of Switzerland, combined with a Mediterranean flair.

SOURCE Tether Operations Limited
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The bakery market is driven by rising urbanization and changing consumer lifestyles. A considerable shift in lifestyles and eating habits has been noticed globally over the past two decades. Emerging economies across the Central and South America and APAC are proving to be attractive markets for baked goods. The expanding urban population, rising demand for on-the-go snacks, and improvements in the purchasing power of consumers in these regions have increased the consumption of bread significantly. Many such factors are expected to have a positive impact on the growth of the global bakery market during the forecast period.

The market growth will also be influenced by the rising prominence of in-store bakeries in supermarkets. However, the fluctuation of raw material prices will have a negative impact on the growth of the market.

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Some of key Bakery Players:

Associated British Foods Plc: The company offers its bakery products through a variety of brands under the grocery segment.

The company offers its bakery products through a variety of brands under the grocery segment. Britannia Industries Ltd.: The company is one of the leading producers of bakery products such as biscuits, bread, and cakes.

The company is one of the leading producers of bakery products such as biscuits, bread, and cakes. Campbell Soup Co.: The company offers bakery products such as cookies, bread, baked chips, pretzel and many more.

The company offers bakery products such as cookies, bread, baked chips, pretzel and many more. Flowers Foods Inc.: The company offers bread, buns, rolls, snack cakes, and tortillas across the world.

The company offers bread, buns, rolls, snack cakes, and tortillas across the world. Grupo Bimbo SAB de CV: The company offers fresh and frozen sliced bread, buns, cookies, snack cakes, English muffins, bagels, pre-packaged foods, tortillas, salted snacks, and confectionery products, among others.

Bakery Market Product Outlook (Revenue, USD bn, 2020-2025)

Bread and rolls - size and forecast 2020-2025

Cakes and pastries - size and forecast 2020-2025

Cookies - size and forecast 2020-2025

Others - size and forecast 2020-2025

Bakery Market Geographic Outlook (Revenue, USD bn, 2020-2025)

APAC - size and forecast 2020-2025

Europe - size and forecast 2020-2025

- size and forecast 2020-2025 North America - size and forecast 2020-2025

- size and forecast 2020-2025 South America - size and forecast 2020-2025

- size and forecast 2020-2025 MEA - size and forecast 2020-2025

By product, the market growth was significant in the bread and rolls segment in 2021. The segments includes products such as whole wheat bread, sourdough, rye bread, pita bread, focaccia bread, multigrain bread, white rolls, hot dog rolls, and sub rolls. The segment is driven by the increasing demand for gluten-free bread and rolls. The market growth in the segment will be significant during the forecast period.

APAC will provide maximum growth opportunities for market players during the forecast period. The region holds 34% of the global market share and will continue its dominance through 2025. Many global players operating in the region are expanding their presence through organic and inorganic organizational developments. In addition, increasing consumer demand for clean-label baked goods will be fostering the growth of the baked goods market in APAC. China and Japan are the key markets for baked goods in APAC.

Download a Free Sample to identify other dominant players and major segments in the market.

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Artisan Bakery Market by Product and Geography - Forecast and Analysis 2022-2026

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Bakery Market Scope Report Coverage Details Page number 120 Base year 2020 Forecast period 2021-2025 Growth momentum & CAGR Accelerate at a CAGR of 6.12% Market growth 2021-2025 USD 165.49 billion Market structure Fragmented YoY growth (%) 5.43 Regional analysis APAC, Europe, North America, South America, and MEA Performing market contribution APAC at 34% Key consumer countries US, China, Japan, Brazil, and Germany Competitive landscape Leading companies, competitive strategies, consumer engagement scope Companies profiled Associated British Foods Plc, Britannia Industries Ltd., Campbell Soup Co., Flowers Foods Inc., Grupo Bimbo SAB de CV, JAB Holding Co. Sarl, Kellogg Co., Mondelez International Inc., Warburtons Ltd., and Yamazaki Baking Co. Ltd. Market Dynamics Parent market analysis, Market growth inducers and obstacles, Fast-growing and slow-growing segment analysis, COVID-19 impact and future consumer dynamics, market condition analysis for the forecast period, Customization purview If our report has not included the data that you are looking for, you can reach out to our analysts and get segments customized.

Table of Contents:

1. Executive Summary

2. Market Landscape

2.1 Market ecosystem

Exhibit 01: Parent market

Exhibit 02: Market Characteristics

2.2 Value chain analysis

Exhibit 03: Value chain analysis: Packaged foods and meats

2.2.1 Inputs

2.2.2 Inbound logistics

2.2.3 Primary processing

2.2.4 Secondary and tertiary processing

2.2.5 Outbound logistics

2.2.6 End-customers

2.2.7 Marketing and sales

2.2.8 Services

3. Market Sizing

3.1 Market definition

Exhibit 04: Offerings of vendors included in the market definition

3.2 Market segment analysis

Exhibit 05: Market segments

3.3 Market size 2020

3.4 Market outlook: Forecast for 2020 - 2025

3.4.1 Estimating growth rates for emerging and high-growth markets

3.4.2 Estimating growth rates for mature markets

Exhibit 06: Global - Market size and forecast 2020 - 2025 ($ billion)

3.4.3 Impact of COVID-19 pandemic on consumer staples market

3.4.3.1 Short-term impact

3.4.3.2 Long-term impact

3.4.3.3 Recovery phase

Exhibit 07: Global market: Year-over-year growth 2020 - 2025 (%)

4. Five Forces Analysis

4.1 Five Forces Summary

Exhibit 08: Five forces analysis 2020 & 2025

4.2 Bargaining power of buyers

Exhibit 09: Bargaining power of buyers

4.3 Bargaining power of suppliers

Exhibit 10: Bargaining power of suppliers

4.4 Threat of new entrants

Exhibit 11: Threat of new entrants

4.5 Threat of substitutes

Exhibit 12: Threat of substitutes

4.6 Threat of rivalry

Exhibit 13: Threat of rivalry

4.7 Market condition

Exhibit 14: Market condition - Five forces 2020

5. Market Segmentation by Product

5.1 Market segments

Exhibit 15: Product - Market share 2020-2025 (%)

5.2 Comparison by Product

Exhibit 16: Comparison by Product

5.3 Bread and rolls - Market size and forecast 2020-2025

Exhibit 17: Bread and rolls - Market size and forecast 2020-2025 ($ billion)

Exhibit 18: Bread and rolls - Year-over-year growth 2020-2025 (%)

5.4 Cakes and pastries - Market size and forecast 2020-2025

Exhibit 19: Cakes and pastries - Market size and forecast 2020-2025 ($ billion)

Exhibit 20: Cakes and pastries - Year-over-year growth 2020-2025 (%)

5.5 Cookies - Market size and forecast 2020-2025

Exhibit 21: Cookies - Market size and forecast 2020-2025 ($ billion)

Exhibit 22: Cookies - Year-over-year growth 2020-2025 (%)

5.6 Others - Market size and forecast 2020-2025

Exhibit 23: Others - Market size and forecast 2020-2025 ($ billion)

Exhibit 24: Others - Year-over-year growth 2020-2025 (%)

5.6.1 Impact of COVID-19 pandemic on product segment

5.7 Market opportunity by Product

Exhibit 25: Market opportunity by Product

6. Customer landscape

6.1 Customer landscape

Exhibit 26: Customer landscape

7. Geographic Landscape

7.1 Geographic segmentation

Exhibit 27: Market share by geography 2020-2025 (%)

7.2 Geographic comparison

Exhibit 28: Geographic comparison

7.3 APAC - Market size and forecast 2020-2025

Exhibit 29: APAC - Market size and forecast 2020-2025 ($ billion)

Exhibit 30: APAC - Year-over-year growth 2020-2025 (%)

7.4 Europe - Market size and forecast 2020-2025

Exhibit 31: Europe - Market size and forecast 2020-2025 ($ billion)

Exhibit 32: Europe - Year-over-year growth 2020-2025 (%)

7.5 North America - Market size and forecast 2020-2025

Exhibit 33: North America - Market size and forecast 2020-2025 ($ billion)

Exhibit 34: North America - Year-over-year growth 2020-2025 (%)

7.6 South America - Market size and forecast 2020-2025

Exhibit 35: South America - Market size and forecast 2020-2025 ($ billion)

Exhibit 36: South America - Year-over-year growth 2020-2025 (%)

7.7 MEA - Market size and forecast 2020-2025

Exhibit 37: MEA - Market size and forecast 2020-2025 ($ billion)

Exhibit 38: MEA - Year-over-year growth 2020-2025 (%)

7.8 Key leading countries

Exhibit 39: Key leading countries

7.9 Market opportunity by geography

Exhibit 40: Market opportunity by geography ($ billion)

8. Drivers, Challenges, and Trends

8.1 Market drivers

8.1.1 Rising urbanization and changing consumer lifestyles

8.1.2 Increased snacking and indulgence consumption

8.1.3 Rising prominence of in-store bakeries in supermarkets

8.2 Market challenges

8.2.1 Fluctuating raw material prices

8.2.2 Growing health concerns about diabetes and obesity

8.2.3 Stringent government regulations

Exhibit 41: Impact of drivers and challenges

8.3 Market trends

8.3.1 Increasing demand for organic and gluten-free baked goods

8.3.2 Innovations in baked goods

8.3.3 Increasing online presence of baked goods vendors

9. Vendor Landscape

9.1 Overview

Exhibit 42: Vendor landscape

9.2 Landscape disruption

Exhibit 43: Landscape disruption

Exhibit 44: Industry risks

10. Vendor Analysis

10.1 Vendors covered

Exhibit 45: Vendors covered

10.2 Market positioning of vendors

Exhibit 46: Market positioning of vendors

10.3 Associated British Foods Plc

Overview

Business segments

Key offerings

Segment focus

10.4 Britannia Industries Ltd.

Overview

Product and service

Key offerings

10.5 Campbell Soup Co.

Overview

Business segments

Key news

Key offerings

Segment focus

10.6 Flowers Foods Inc.

Overview

Business segments

Key news

Key offerings

10.7 Grupo Bimbo SAB de CV

Overview

Business segments

Key news

Key offerings

Segment focus

10.8 JAB Holding Co. Sarl

Overview

Product and service

Key news

Key offerings

10.9 Kellogg Co.

Overview

Business segments

Key news

Key offerings

Segment focus

10.10 Mondelez International Inc.

Overview

Business segments

Key news

Key offerings

Segment focus

10.11 Warburtons Ltd.

Overview

Product and service

Key news

Key offerings

10.12 Yamazaki Baking Co. Ltd.

Overview

Business segments

Key offerings

Segment focus

11. Appendix

11.1 Scope of the report

11.1.1 Market Definition

11.1.2 Objectives

11.1.3 Notes and caveats

11.2 Currency conversion rates for US$

Exhibit 90: Currency conversion rates for US$

11.3 Research Methodology

Exhibit 91: Research Methodology

Exhibit 92: Validation techniques employed for market sizing

Exhibit 93: Information sources

11.4 List of abbreviations

Exhibit 94: List of abbreviations

About Technavio

Technavio is a leading global technology research and advisory company. Their research and analysis focuses on emerging market trends and provides actionable insights to help businesses identify market opportunities and develop effective strategies to optimize their market positions.

With over 500 specialized analysts, Technavio's report library consists of more than 17,000 reports and counting, covering 800 technologies, spanning across 50 countries. Their client base consists of enterprises of all sizes, including more than 100 Fortune 500 companies. This growing client base relies on Technavio's comprehensive coverage, extensive research, and actionable market insights to identify opportunities in existing and potential markets and assess their competitive positions within changing market scenarios.

Contacts

Technavio Research

Jesse Maida

Media & Marketing Executive

US: +1 844 364 1100

UK: +44 203 893 3200

Email: [email protected]

Website: www.technavio.com/

SOURCE Technavio
CLEVELAND, March 4, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- A new Freedonia Group analysis projects that the expanding impact of solar-friendly policies in a growing number of states and localities across the US will drive rapid growth in the solar roofing market through 2025, especially in California:

California further advanced its lead in the national solar roofing market with the passage of two mandates in 2020 and 2021 requiring nearly all new residential and commercial buildings in the state to include solar products starting in 2023.

further advanced its lead in the national solar roofing market with the passage of two mandates in 2020 and 2021 requiring nearly all new residential and commercial buildings in the state to include solar products starting in 2023. While such mandates have been passed before in cities such as San Francisco and South Miami, Florida , this marks the first such mandate in the country to be adopted at the state level.

In addition to significantly increasing solar roofing sales in the state, the California mandates are expected to influence other states to pass legislation promoting solar installations. Environment America, the organization that helped drive the California mandates, plans to launch similar campaigns in 10 additional states in 2022.

US Solar Roofing Market to Grow from <$50 Million in 2020 to Nearly $1 Billion in 2025

The market for solar roofing products in the US is forecast to increase rapidly to 716,000 squares, valued at $965 million in 2025. In addition to the expanding impact of solar-friendly policies nationwide, factors supporting long-term growth for solar roofing products include:

rising awareness of the energy-efficiency benefits of solar roofing systems

the attractive appearance of solar roofing compared to traditional solar arrays (e.g., solar roofing resembles traditional roofing materials)

the growing availability, affordability, and accessibility of solar roofing products (e.g., Tesla expanded solar roof installations nationwide in 2021)

expansion of local, state, and federal incentives (e.g., tax credits, net metering benefits, rebates) to install solar roofing products

Want to Learn More?

Solar Roofing, now available from The Freedonia Group, presents historical data for 2020 and forecasts for 2025 and 2030 for US solar roofing demand in value, area, and roof-mount electricity generation (which includes both solar panels and solar roofing), and for regional demand in squares.

Solar roofing is defined as those products that serve as a structure's primary roofing material while also producing solar-generated electricity. Demand for solar roofing is presented at the end user level in value terms (US dollars) and in area terms (squares) by applications (new and reroofing), market (residential and commercial). Additionally, solar roofing demand is broken out for the following US geographic regions and subregions.

About the Freedonia Group - The Freedonia Group, a division of MarketResearch.com, is the premier international industrial research company, providing our clients with product analyses, market forecasts, industry trends, and market share information. From one-person consulting firms to global conglomerates, our analysts provide companies with unbiased, reliable industry market research and analysis to help them make important business decisions. With over 100 studies published annually, we support over 90% of the industrial Fortune 500 companies. Find off-the-shelf studies at https://www.freedoniagroup.com/ or contact us for custom research: +1 440.842.2400.

Press Contact:

Corinne Gangloff

+1 440.842.2400

[email protected]

SOURCE The Freedonia Group
CLEVELAND, March 4, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Thursday evening The Last Page restaurant held a fundraiser for The Cleveland Maidan, an association that is currently helping Ukrainian refugees fleeing the country.

The idea came from one of the business's partners, Jon Gross, who has family ties to Ukraine. "My wife grew up in Kiev and she's in contact with people trying to get out. Even though it's on the other side of the world, our house is affected by the gravity of the situation. Knowing how close knit Cleveland's Ukrainian community is, and having our own ties to the country, The Last Page and it's staff wanted to do whatever we could to help. And for us the fastest thing we could do is donate all proceeds from the evening to an organization already doing great work."

"The support last night was incredible," Gross continued. "We put the event together quickly with an email to loyal guests and by sharing on our social media. It was one of our busiest nights since we opened. I can't express how much it meant to me to see these two communities I spend so much time with, our TLP family and Ukrainian expats, coming together in a time of need."

Anyone who was unable to attend in person and would like to make a donation to Cleveland Maidan Association can do so at https://www.paypal.com/fundraiser/charity/75762

The Last Page, a Kind of One Concepts restaurant, is located in Pinecrest (100 Park Ave, Cleveland OH 44122)

CONTACT: [email protected]

SOURCE Kind of One Concepts
To understand more about Market Dynamics. Download our FREE sample report

According to the recent market study by Technavio, the " Concentrating Solar Collectors Market by End-user and Geography - Forecast and Analysis 2022-2026 " is expected to increase by USD 3.88 billion from 2021 to 2026, at an accelerated CAGR of 12.1%. The report provides a detailed analysis of drivers & opportunities, top winning strategies, competitive scenario, future market trends, market size & estimations, and major investment pockets.

Vendor Insights-

The global concentrating solar collectors market is characterized by the presence of numerous large, medium, and small-scale manufacturers. Most large and established players in the market have extensive sales and distribution networks across the world, while small players are concentrated in regional markets.

View Market Report Outlook for More Insights on CAGR and YOY growth rate

Top Concentrating Solar Collectors Market Players

Ariston Holding NV

Canadian Solar Inc.

CENTROTEC SE

Conserval Engineering Inc.

DIMAS SA

First Solar Inc.

Grammer Solar

GREENoneTEC Solarindustrie GmbH

Himin Solar Co. Ltd.

JinkoSolar Holding Co. Ltd.

juwi AG

Kingspan Group Plc

Linuo Paradigma Co. Ltd.

Nobel International EAD

Ritter Energiem

Solar Module SA de CV Av

SUNRAIN

Sunshore Solar Energy Co.Ltd.

Trina Solar Co. Ltd.

Viessmann Werke GmbH and Co. KG

Wuxi Suntech Power Co. Ltd.

Yingli Green Energy Holding Co. Ltd.

Sharp Corp.

Find additional highlights on the vendors and their product offerings. Download Free Sample Report

Regional Market Outlook

53% of the market's growth will originate from APAC during the forecast period. Growing energy demand and increase in pollution from greenhouse gases (GHG) in developing nations such as China and India have resulted in a shift in focus toward renewables, such as wind and solar, for power generation. The tremendous growth of the solar power industry in APAC is expected to boost the concentrating solar collectors market in the region. China, India, Thailand, and Australia will be the major markets for concentrating solar collectors in APAC during the forecast period. The regional market is anticipated to grow during the forecast period, primarily due to large-scale vaccination drives, the gradual decline in COVID-19 cases, and the resumption of the construction industry.

Download FREE Sample: for more additional information about the key countries in APAC

Latest Drivers & Trends Driving the Market-

Concentrating Solar Collectors Market Driver:

Advanced route optimization strengthening shippers, LSPs, and carriers:

There has been a gradual change in the energy mix in the past decade. The competitive cost of generating electricity and low carbon emissions from renewable sources has increased investments in renewable energy across the world. The shift in focus toward renewable sources of energy is increasing investments in the energy industry. This will drive the growth of the global solar energy sector, which, in turn, will propel the growth of the global concentrating solar collectors market during the forecast period.

Concentrating Solar Collectors Market Trend:

Development of Smart Cities:

Most of the advanced and emerging economies are paving way for smart cities equipped with solar solutions. Governments of these economies have been backing smart city construction projects with intensive funding. For instance, Horizon 2020 was the largest European Union Research and Innovation program with nearly USD 89.12 billion of funding available for over seven years (2014- 2020) in addition to private investments. Horizon 2020 also funded several concentrated solar power projects such as competitive solar power towers (CAPTure) that produce heat by concentrating solar radiation. Thus the emergence of smart cities will influence the market positively.

Find additional information about various other market Drivers & Trends mentioned in our FREE sample report .

Didn't Find What You Were Looking For? Customize Report-

Don't miss out on the opportunity to speak to our analyst and know more insights about this market report. Our analysts can also help you customize this report according to your needs. Our analysts and industry experts will work directly with you to understand your requirements and provide you with customized data in a short amount of time.

We offer USD 1,000 worth of FREE customization at the time of purchase. Speak to our Analyst now!

Here are Some Similar Topics-

Solar PV Market by End-user and Geography - Forecast and Analysis 2021-2025

Solar Power Market by Technology and Application - Forecast and Analysis 2022-2026

Concentrating Solar Collectors Market Scope Report Coverage Details Page number 120 Base year 2021 Forecast period 2022-2026 Growth momentum & CAGR Accelerate at a CAGR of 12.1% Market growth 2022-2026 $ 3.88 billion Market structure Fragmented YoY growth (%) 10.34 Regional analysis APAC, North America, Europe, South America, and Middle East and Africa Performing market contribution APAC at 53% Key consumer countries US, China, Japan, India, and Germany Competitive landscape Leading companies, Competitive strategies, Consumer engagement scope Key companies profiled Ariston Holding NV, Canadian Solar Inc., CENTROTEC SE, Conserval Engineering Inc., DIMAS SA, First Solar Inc., Grammer Solar, GREENoneTEC Solarindustrie GmbH, Himin Solar Co. Ltd., JinkoSolar Holding Co. Ltd., juwi AG, Kingspan Group Plc, Linuo Paradigma Co. Ltd., Nobel International EAD, Ritter Energiem, Solar Module SA de CV Av, SUNRAIN, Sunshore Solar Energy Co.Ltd., Trina Solar Co. Ltd., Viessmann Werke GmbH and Co. KG, Wuxi Suntech Power Co. Ltd., Yingli Green Energy Holding Co. Ltd., and Sharp Corp. Market dynamics Parent market analysis, Market growth inducers and obstacles, Fast-growing and slow-growing segment analysis, COVID-19 impact and recovery analysis and future consumer dynamics, Market condition analysis for the forecast period Customization purview If our report has not included the data that you are looking for, you can reach out to our analysts and get segments customized.

1 Executive Summary

1.1 Market overview

Exhibit 01: Executive Summary  Chart on Market Overview



Exhibit 02: Executive Summary  Data Table on Market Overview



Exhibit 03: Executive Summary  Chart on Global Market Characteristics



Exhibit 04: Executive Summary  Chart on Market by Geography



Exhibit 05: Executive Summary  Chart on Market Segmentation by End-user



Exhibit 06: Executive Summary  Chart on Incremental Growth



Exhibit 07: Executive Summary  Data Table on Incremental Growth



Exhibit 08: Executive Summary  Chart on Vendor Market Positioning

2 Market Landscape

2.1 Market ecosystem

Exhibit 09: Parent market



Exhibit 10: Market Characteristics

3 Market Sizing

3.1 Market definition

Exhibit 11: Offerings of vendors included in the market definition

3.2 Market segment analysis

Exhibit 12: Market segments

3.3 Market size 2021

3.4 Market outlook: Forecast for 2021-2026

Exhibit 13: Chart on Global - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)



Exhibit 14: Data Table on Global - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)



Exhibit 15: Chart on Global Market: Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)



Exhibit 16: Data Table on Global Market: Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

4 Five Forces Analysis

4.1 Five forces summary

Exhibit 17: Five forces analysis - Comparison between 2021 and 2026

4.2 Bargaining power of buyers

Exhibit 18: Bargaining power of buyers  Impact of key factors in 2021 and 2026

4.3 Bargaining power of suppliers

Exhibit 19: Bargaining power of suppliers  Impact of key factors in 2021 and 2026

4.4 Threat of new entrants

Exhibit 20: Threat of new entrants  Impact of key factors in 2021 and 2026

4.5 Threat of substitutes

Exhibit 21: Threat of substitutes  Impact of key factors in 2021 and 2026

4.6 Threat of rivalry

Exhibit 22: Threat of rivalry  Impact of key factors in 2021 and 2026

4.7 Market condition

Exhibit 23: Chart on Market condition - Five forces 2021 and 2026

5 Market Segmentation by End-user

5.1 Market segments

Exhibit 24: Chart on End-user - Market share 2021-2026 (%)



Exhibit 25: Data Table on End-user - Market share 2021-2026 (%)

5.2 Comparison by End-user

Exhibit 26: Chart on Comparison by End-user



Exhibit 27: Data Table on Comparison by End-user

5.3 Industrial - Market size and forecast 2021-2026

Exhibit 28: Chart on Industrial - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)



Exhibit 29: Data Table on Industrial - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)



Exhibit 30: Chart on Industrial - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)



Exhibit 31: Data Table on Industrial - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

5.4 Commercial - Market size and forecast 2021-2026

Exhibit 32: Chart on Commercial - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)



Exhibit 33: Data Table on Commercial - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)



Exhibit 34: Chart on Commercial - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)



Exhibit 35: Data Table on Commercial - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

5.5 Residential - Market size and forecast 2021-2026

Exhibit 36: Chart on Residential - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)



Exhibit 37: Data Table on Residential - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)



Exhibit 38: Chart on Residential - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)



Exhibit 39: Data Table on Residential - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

5.6 Market opportunity by End-user

Exhibit 40: Market opportunity by End-user ($ million)

6 Customer Landscape

6.1 Customer landscape overview

Exhibit 41: Analysis of price sensitivity, lifecycle, customer purchase basket, adoption rates, and purchase criteria

7 Geographic Landscape

7.1 Geographic segmentation

Exhibit 42: Chart on Market share by geography 2021-2026 (%)



Exhibit 43: Data Table on Market share by geography 2021-2026 (%)

7.2 Geographic comparison

Exhibit 44: Chart on Geographic comparison



Exhibit 45: Data Table on Geographic comparison

7.3 APAC - Market size and forecast 2021-2026

Exhibit 46: Chart on APAC - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)



Exhibit 47: Data Table on APAC - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)



Exhibit 48: Chart on APAC - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)



Exhibit 49: Data Table on APAC - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

7.4 North America - Market size and forecast 2021-2026

- Market size and forecast 2021-2026 Exhibit 50: Chart on North America - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)

- Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)

Exhibit 51: Data Table on North America - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)

- Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)

Exhibit 52: Chart on North America - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

- Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

Exhibit 53: Data Table on North America - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

7.5 Europe - Market size and forecast 2021-2026

- Market size and forecast 2021-2026 Exhibit 54: Chart on Europe - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)

- Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)

Exhibit 55: Data Table on Europe - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)

- Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)

Exhibit 56: Chart on Europe - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

- Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

Exhibit 57: Data Table on Europe - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

7.6 South America - Market size and forecast 2021-2026

- Market size and forecast 2021-2026 Exhibit 58: Chart on South America - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)

- Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)

Exhibit 59: Data Table on South America - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)

- Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)

Exhibit 60: Chart on South America - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

- Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

Exhibit 61: Data Table on South America - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

7.7 Middle East and Africa - Market size and forecast 2021-2026

and - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 Exhibit 62: Chart on Middle East and Africa - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)

and - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)

Exhibit 63: Data Table on Middle East and Africa - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)

and - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)

Exhibit 64: Chart on Middle East and Africa - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

and - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

Exhibit 65: Data Table on Middle East and Africa - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

7.8 China - Market size and forecast 2021-2026

- Market size and forecast 2021-2026 Exhibit 66: Chart on China - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)

- Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)

Exhibit 67: Data Table on China - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)

- Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)

Exhibit 68: Chart on China - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

- Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

Exhibit 69: Data Table on China - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

7.9 US - Market size and forecast 2021-2026

Exhibit 70: Chart on US - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)



Exhibit 71: Data Table on US - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)



Exhibit 72: Chart on US - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)



Exhibit 73: Data Table on US - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

7.10 Germany - Market size and forecast 2021-2026

- Market size and forecast 2021-2026 Exhibit 74: Chart on Germany - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)

- Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)

Exhibit 75: Data Table on Germany - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)

- Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)

Exhibit 76: Chart on Germany - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

- Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

Exhibit 77: Data Table on Germany - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

7.11 Japan - Market size and forecast 2021-2026

- Market size and forecast 2021-2026 Exhibit 78: Chart on Japan - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)

- Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)

Exhibit 79: Data Table on Japan - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)

- Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)

Exhibit 80: Chart on Japan - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

- Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

Exhibit 81: Data Table on Japan - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

7.12 India - Market size and forecast 2021-2026

- Market size and forecast 2021-2026 Exhibit 82: Chart on India - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)

- Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)

Exhibit 83: Data Table on India - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)

- Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)

Exhibit 84: Chart on India - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

- Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

Exhibit 85: Data Table on India - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

7.13 Market opportunity by geography

Exhibit 86: Market opportunity by geography ($ million)

8 Drivers, Challenges, and Trends

8.1 Market drivers

8.2 Market challenges

8.3 Impact of drivers and challenges

Exhibit 87: Impact of drivers and challenges in 2021 and 2026

8.4 Market trends

9 Vendor Landscape

9.1 Overview

9.2 Vendor landscape

Exhibit 88: Overview on Criticality of inputs and Factors of differentiation

9.3 Landscape disruption

Exhibit 89: Overview on factors of disruption

9.4 Industry risks

Exhibit 90: Impact of key risks on business

10 Vendor Analysis

10.1 Vendors covered

Exhibit 91: Vendors covered

10.2 Market positioning of vendors

Exhibit 92: Matrix on vendor position and classification

10.3 Canadian Solar Inc.

Exhibit 93: Canadian Solar Inc. - Overview



Exhibit 94: Canadian Solar Inc. - Business segments



Exhibit 95: Canadian Solar Inc. - Key news



Exhibit 96: Canadian Solar Inc. - Key offerings



Exhibit 97: Canadian Solar Inc. - Segment focus

10.4 First Solar Inc.

Exhibit 98: First Solar Inc. - Overview



Exhibit 99: First Solar Inc. - Business segments



Exhibit 100: First Solar Inc. - Key news



Exhibit 101: First Solar Inc. - Key offerings



Exhibit 102: First Solar Inc. - Segment focus

10.5 GREENoneTEC Solarindustrie GmbH

Exhibit 103: GREENoneTEC Solarindustrie GmbH - Overview



Exhibit 104: GREENoneTEC Solarindustrie GmbH - Product / Service



Exhibit 105: GREENoneTEC Solarindustrie GmbH - Key offerings

10.6 JinkoSolar Holding Co. Ltd.

Exhibit 106: JinkoSolar Holding Co. Ltd. - Overview



Exhibit 107: JinkoSolar Holding Co. Ltd. - Product / Service



Exhibit 108: JinkoSolar Holding Co. Ltd. - Key news



Exhibit 109: JinkoSolar Holding Co. Ltd. - Key offerings

10.7 juwi AG

Exhibit 110: juwi AG - Overview



Exhibit 111: juwi AG - Product / Service



Exhibit 112: juwi AG - Key news



Exhibit 113: juwi AG - Key offerings

10.8 Nobel International EAD

Exhibit 114: Nobel International EAD - Overview



Exhibit 115: Nobel International EAD - Product / Service



Exhibit 116: Nobel International EAD - Key offerings

10.9 Sharp Corp.

Exhibit 117: Sharp Corp. - Overview



Exhibit 118: Sharp Corp. - Business segments



Exhibit 119: Sharp Corp. - Key news



Exhibit 120: Sharp Corp. - Key offerings



Exhibit 121: Sharp Corp. - Segment focus

10.10 Solar Module SA de CV Av

Exhibit 122: Solar Module SA de CV Av - Overview



Exhibit 123: Solar Module SA de CV Av - Product / Service



Exhibit 124: Solar Module SA de CV Av - Key offerings

10.11 Viessmann Werke GmbH and Co. KG

Exhibit 125: Viessmann Werke GmbH and Co. KG - Overview



Exhibit 126: Viessmann Werke GmbH and Co. KG - Product / Service



Exhibit 127: Viessmann Werke GmbH and Co. KG - Key offerings

10.12 Wuxi Suntech Power Co. Ltd.

Exhibit 128: Wuxi Suntech Power Co. Ltd. - Overview



Exhibit 129: Wuxi Suntech Power Co. Ltd. - Product / Service



Exhibit 130: Wuxi Suntech Power Co. Ltd. - Key offerings

11 Appendix

11.1 Scope of the report

11.2 Inclusions and exclusions checklist

Exhibit 131: Inclusions checklist



Exhibit 132: Exclusions checklist

11.3 Currency conversion rates for US$

Exhibit 133: Currency conversion rates for US$

11.4 Research methodology

Exhibit 134: Research methodology



Exhibit 135: Validation techniques employed for market sizing



Exhibit 136: Information sources

11.5 List of abbreviations

Exhibit 137: List of abbreviations

About Us

Technavio is a leading global technology research and advisory company. Their research and analysis focuses on emerging market trends and provides actionable insights to help businesses identify market opportunities and develop effective strategies to optimize their market positions. With over 500 specialized analysts, Technavio's report library Their client base consists of enterprises of all sizes, including more than 100 Fortune 500 companies. This growing client base relies on Technavio's comprehensive coverage, extensive research, and actionable market insights to identify opportunities in existing and potential markets and assess their competitive positions within changing market scenarios.



Contact

Technavio Research

Jesse Maida

Media & Marketing Executive

US: +1 844 364 1100

UK: +44 203 893 3200

Email: [email protected]

Website: www.technavio.com/

SOURCE Technavio
NEW YORK, March 4, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The Corporate Counsel Women of Color (CCWC) proudly endorses the historic nomination of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the United States Supreme Court. "Judge Jackson is eminently qualified and prepared for this monumental opportunity. Her voice and presence on the U.S. Supreme Court signal that the democratic promise of our country remains intact and will continue the enduring legacy of excellence associated with the Court" said CCWC CEO Laurie Robinson Haden.

Robinson Haden added, "As a leader in the movement for diversity, equity, and inclusion in the legal profession, we agree with President Biden's statement that 'For too long, our government, our courts haven't looked like America.' Judge Jackson's selection as the first African-American woman Supreme Court nominee in the Court's 233-year history marks a critical milestone for the country and its system of jurisprudence."

Judge Jackson currently serves on the U.S. Federal Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. She presided over a high-profile dispute between the House Judiciary Committee and Don McGahn, a former counsel to President Donald Trump. In the course of the proceeding, Judge Jackson famously stated, "Presidents are not kings." Prior to her tenure on the U.S. Federal Court of Appeals, Judge Jackson served as a trial court judge in the U.S. District Court in D.C. Her legal background also includes roles in the private law firm sector. She served as a public defender and vice-chair of the U.S. Sentencing Commission. A cum laude graduate of Harvard Law School, Judge Jackson served as a supervising editor on the Harvard Law Review. After law school, Judge Jackson clerked for three judges, including Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer.

"For the members of our organization, Judge Jackson is a beacon of justice in a system where Black and Brown people are usually judged rather than serving as the courtroom judges that can impact their future and experience with the legal system," stated CCWC CEO Robinson Haden. She added, "Her nomination certainly presents a long overdue step forward in a nation that has become increasingly multicultural. It is wonderful to see that Judge Jackson brings increasing diversity to the nation's highest court. During this Women's History Month, Judge Jackson represents hope and reminds us of what is possible."

Corporate Counsel Women of Color (CCWC) is the premier organization of women attorneys of color who serve as general counsel, associate general counsel, corporate counsel, in-house legal counsel, and in other executive and senior-level capacities for Fortune 1000 and Forbes 2000 companies, not-for-profit corporations, and other entities. CCWC is the only organization exclusively for in-house women of color, consisting of more than 4,700 members in over 900 companies. It should come as no surprise that this trailblazing corporation fully supports Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson in assuming a position on the nation's highest judicial seat.

CCWC Founder and CEO Laurie Robinson Haden stated, "CCWC celebrates Judge Jackson's nomination because it represents what is possible for the next generation and reflects the greatness of our nation."

Contact:

Cheryl McDuffie

410-366-9994

[email protected]

SOURCE Corporate Counsel Women of Color
TORONTO, March 3, 2022 /PRNewswire/ - Denison Mines Corp. ('Denison' or the 'Company') (TSX: DML) (NYSE American: DNN) today filed its Audited Consolidated Financial Statements and Management's Discussion & Analysis ('MD&A') for the year ended December 31, 2021. Both documents will be available on the Company's website at www.denisonmines.com or on SEDAR (at www.sedar.com) and EDGAR (at www.sec.gov/edgar.shtml). The highlights provided below are derived from these documents and should be read in conjunction with them. The Company's results are highlighted by earnings attributable to Denison shareholders of $0.02 per share for the year ended December 31, 2021. All amounts in this release are in Canadian dollars unless otherwise stated. View PDF Version.

David Cates, President and CEO of Denison commented, "Our results from 2021 reflect a significant improvement in the uranium market, as well as continued operational progress advancing Wheeler River's Phoenix uranium deposit ('Phoenix') towards a development decision.

Less than twelve months ago, Denison completed a novel project financing initiative in support of the future development of the Wheeler River project, involving the purchase of 2.5 million pounds U 3 O 8 in physical uranium holdings at an average cost of US$29.66/lb U 3 O 8 . The financing was designed to position our shareholders to benefit from the additional financial stability of our uranium holdings, while remaining fully leveraged to any future appreciation of uranium prices that might occur prior to the completion of a project financing for Wheeler River. Since then, the uranium spot market has improved considerably, with continued support from financial investors, leading to a significant increase in the spot price in 2021 and a $41.4 million gain on Denison's physical uranium holdings.

The improvement in the spot price was not only positive for Denison's balance sheet, but it also appears to have catalyzed further fundamental developments in the long-term supply market. We have seen nuclear utilities seek to address significant future uncovered requirements in an environment with reduced visibility to available sources of supply  leading to increased long-term contracting activity and prices. Combined with positive demand signals coming from a growing chorus of support for the critical role nuclear must play in the clean energy transition, the narrative for the development of new top tier new uranium mining projects has become quite positive.

Now several years into Denison's long-term plan for the advancement of Wheeler River, our Company is uniquely aligned with the improving uranium market, as we continue to successfully demonstrate the potential for the Phoenix deposit to emerge as the first In-Situ Recovery ('ISR') uranium mine in the Athabasca Basin region. Our de-risking efforts at Phoenix have involved extensive field and laboratory testing since completion of the Pre-Feasibility Study in 2018, which to date culminated in the completion of the installation and field testing of a 5-spot commercial-scale ISR test pattern in 2021. The field test was highly successful and confirmed key technical assumptions made in the PFS. Taken together with our positive metallurgical results, our work in 2021 has demonstrated tangible support for our selection of the ISR mining method for Phoenix and our decision to initiate a formal Feasibility Study.

Our plans for 2022 are ambitious  with a primary focus on driving towards the completion of key technical and regulatory milestones for Wheeler River, while also supporting a secondary focus of unlocking value from Denison's vast project portfolio, including continued exploration amongst our many highly-prospective property interests, and the initial evaluation of potential development plans for both the Midwest and McClean Lake projects."

Highlights

Completed highly successful ISR Field Tests at Phoenix , resulting in significant de-risking and supporting the decision to advance to a formal Feasibility Study ('FS')



The Company continued its systematic approach to de-risking the technical risks identified for the ISR mining operation for Phoenix at the Wheeler River Uranium Project ('Wheeler River'), following completion of the 2018 Pre-Feasibility Study ('PFS'). Notably, in 2021 the Company completed a highly successful ISR field test program including the installation and testing of a pattern of five commercial scale wells ('CSWs'). The results from the field test were highlighted by the following:





The Company continued its systematic approach to de-risking the technical risks identified for the ISR mining operation for at the Wheeler River Uranium Project ('Wheeler River'), following completion of the 2018 Pre-Feasibility Study ('PFS'). Notably, in 2021 the Company completed a highly successful ISR field test program including the installation and testing of a pattern of five commercial scale wells ('CSWs'). The results from the field test were highlighted by the following: Achieved commercial-scale production flow rates consistent with those assumed in the PFS;



Demonstrated hydraulic control of injected solution during an ion tracer test;



Established breakthrough times between injection and recovery wells consistent with previously prepared estimates; and



Demonstrated the ability to remediate the five-spot CSW test pattern ('Test Pattern').

Additionally, positive results from ongoing metallurgical test work supported the decision to increase the anticipated ISR mining head-grade for Phoenix by 50%.

Given consistently positive results from field testing and laboratory testing, Denison and the Wheeler River Joint Venture approved the initiation of the formal FS report process for the Phoenix ISR project, and appointed Wood PLC as independent lead author of the FS.

Secured funding to complete the Environmental Assessment ('EA') and FS process for Wheeler River



Denison completed a series of equity financings during 2021 intending to fund the EA and FS processes for Wheeler River. These financings raised gross proceeds of $48.2 million (including $11.9 million from At-the-Market offerings) from the issuance of 39.7 million common shares and 15.8 million common share purchase warrants. Based on current estimates, the net proceeds from these financings are expected to be sufficient to fund the completion of the FS and EA processes for Wheeler River.





Denison completed a series of equity financings during 2021 intending to fund the EA and FS processes for Wheeler River. These financings raised gross proceeds of (including from At-the-Market offerings) from the issuance of 39.7 million common shares and 15.8 million common share purchase warrants. Based on current estimates, the net proceeds from these financings are expected to be sufficient to fund the completion of the FS and EA processes for Wheeler River. Executed a Wheeler River project financing initiative involving the strategic acquisition of physical uranium and recorded significant uranium investment gains



In March 2021 , Denison successfully completed a public offering of units for gross proceeds of $107.9 million . The majority of the net proceeds of the offering were used to fund the strategic purchase of 2.5 million pounds of uranium concentrates ('U 3 O 8 ') at a weighted average price of US$29.66 per pound U 3 O 8 . The uranium is being held by Denison as a long-term investment, which is intended to support the potential future financing of the advancement and/or construction of Wheeler River.



The uranium spot price appreciated to US$42.00 per pound U 3 O 8 by December 31, 2021 , resulting in a fair value gain on the Company's physical uranium holdings of $41,440,000 for the year ended December 31, 2021 .





In , Denison successfully completed a public offering of units for gross proceeds of . The majority of the net proceeds of the offering were used to fund the strategic purchase of 2.5 million pounds of uranium concentrates ('U O ') at a weighted average price of per pound U O . The uranium is being held by Denison as a long-term investment, which is intended to support the potential future financing of the advancement and/or construction of Wheeler River. The uranium spot price appreciated to per pound U O by , resulting in a fair value gain on the Company's physical uranium holdings of for the year ended . Obtained funding for high-potential exploration programs in 2021 and 2022



The Company raised gross proceeds of $8.0 million in March 2021 , from the issuance of common shares on a flow-through basis, to fund eligible Canadian exploration activities in 2021 and 2022.





The Company raised gross proceeds of in , from the issuance of common shares on a flow-through basis, to fund eligible Canadian exploration activities in 2021 and 2022. Acquired 50% of JCU ( Canada ) Exploration Company, Limited ('JCU') for $20.5 million



In August 2021 , Denison completed the acquisition of 50% of JCU from UEX Corporation ('UEX') for cash consideration of $20.5 million following UEX's acquisition of 100% of JCU from Overseas Uranium Resources Development Co., Ltd. for $41 million . JCU holds a portfolio of 12 uranium project joint venture interests in Canada , including a 10% interest in Wheeler River, a 30.099% interest in the Millennium project (Cameco Corporation, 69.901%), a 33.8123% interest in the Kiggavik project (Orano Canada Inc., 66.1877%), and a 34.4508% interest in the Christie Lake project (UEX, 65.5492%).





In , Denison completed the acquisition of 50% of JCU from UEX Corporation ('UEX') for cash consideration of following UEX's acquisition of 100% of JCU from Overseas Uranium Resources Development Co., Ltd. for . JCU holds a portfolio of 12 uranium project joint venture interests in , including a 10% interest in Wheeler River, a 30.099% interest in the Millennium project (Cameco Corporation, 69.901%), a 33.8123% interest in the Kiggavik project (Orano Canada Inc., 66.1877%), and a 34.4508% interest in the Christie Lake project (UEX, 65.5492%). Advanced actions to support reconciliation with Indigenous peoples



Denison formally adopted an Indigenous People's Policy ('IPP') in 2021, which reflects the Company's recognition of the important role of Canadian business in the process of reconciliation with Indigenous peoples in Canada and outlines the Company's commitment to take action towards advancing reconciliation.



Also in 2021, the Company entered into a Participation and Funding Agreement and Letter of Intent with the English River First Nation ('ERFN') in connection with the advancement of the proposed ISR operation at Wheeler River, as well as an Exploration Agreement in respect of Denison's exploration and evaluation activities within the ERFN traditional territories. These agreements reflect Denison's desire to operate its business in a progressive and sustainable manner that respects ERFN rights and advances reconciliation with Indigenous peoples. The agreements provide ERFN with economic opportunities and other benefits, and establish a foundation for future collaboration in an authentic, cooperative, and respectful way.





Denison formally adopted an Indigenous People's Policy ('IPP') in 2021, which reflects the Company's recognition of the important role of Canadian business in the process of reconciliation with Indigenous peoples in and outlines the Company's commitment to take action towards advancing reconciliation. Also in 2021, the Company entered into a Participation and Funding Agreement and Letter of Intent with the English River First Nation ('ERFN') in connection with the advancement of the proposed ISR operation at Wheeler River, as well as an Exploration Agreement in respect of Denison's exploration and evaluation activities within the ERFN traditional territories. These agreements reflect Denison's desire to operate its business in a progressive and sustainable manner that respects ERFN rights and advances reconciliation with Indigenous peoples. The agreements provide ERFN with economic opportunities and other benefits, and establish a foundation for future collaboration in an authentic, cooperative, and respectful way. Discovery of high-grade uranium outside of the Phoenix Zone A high-grade domain



Drill hole GWR-045, completed as part of the ISR field test program as a monitoring well to the northwest of the CSW Test Pattern, was, based on the mineral resources currently estimated for Phoenix , expected to intersect low grade uranium mineralization on the northwest margin of the deposit. The drill hole, however, intersected a thick interval of high-grade unconformity-associated uranium mineralization grading 22.0% eU 3 O 8 over 8.6 metres. Follow up drilling returned multiple additional intersections of high-grade uranium mineralization, including 24.9% eU 3 O 8 over 4.2 metres in drill hole GWR-049. Taken together, these results are expected to expand the volume of the high-grade domain to the northwest in the Phase 1 area of Phoenix Zone A.





Drill hole GWR-045, completed as part of the ISR field test program as a monitoring well to the northwest of the CSW Test Pattern, was, based on the mineral resources currently estimated for , expected to intersect low grade uranium mineralization on the northwest margin of the deposit. The drill hole, however, intersected a thick interval of high-grade unconformity-associated uranium mineralization grading 22.0% eU O over 8.6 metres. Follow up drilling returned multiple additional intersections of high-grade uranium mineralization, including 24.9% eU O over 4.2 metres in drill hole GWR-049. Taken together, these results are expected to expand the volume of the high-grade domain to the northwest in the Phase 1 area of Phoenix Zone A. Sold shares and warrants in GoviEx Uranium Limited ('GoviEx') for proceeds of up to $41.6 million



In October 2021 , the Company sold 32,500,000 common shares of GoviEx, previously held by Denison for investment purposes, and 32,500,000 common share purchase warrants, entitling the holder to acquire one additional common share of GoviEx owned by Denison at an exercise price of $0.80 for a term of up to 18 months (the 'GoviEx Warrants'). Denison received gross proceeds of $15,600,000 on the sale of the shares and warrants and continues to hold 32,644,000 common shares of GoviEx. If the GoviEx Warrants are exercised in full, Denison will receive further gross proceeds of $26,000,000 and will transfer a further 32,500,000 GoviEx common shares to the warrant holders.





In , the Company sold 32,500,000 common shares of GoviEx, previously held by Denison for investment purposes, and 32,500,000 common share purchase warrants, entitling the holder to acquire one additional common share of GoviEx owned by Denison at an exercise price of for a term of up to 18 months (the 'GoviEx Warrants'). Denison received gross proceeds of on the sale of the shares and warrants and continues to hold 32,644,000 common shares of GoviEx. If the GoviEx Warrants are exercised in full, Denison will receive further gross proceeds of and will transfer a further 32,500,000 GoviEx common shares to the warrant holders. Received $5.8 million in connection with the conversion of Uranium Participation Corporation ('UPC') into the Sprott Physical Uranium Trust



In April 2021 , UPC announced that it had reached an agreement with Sprott Asset Management LP ('Sprott') for the Sprott Physical Uranium Trust to acquire UPC (the 'UPC Transaction'). Upon completion of the UPC Transaction on July 19, 2021 , Sprott became the manager of the Sprott Physical Uranium Trust, and the management services agreement ('MSA') between Denison and UPC was terminated. In accordance with the terms of the MSA, Denison received a cash payment of approximately $5.8 million in connection with the termination.

About Denison

Denison Mines Corp. was formed under the laws of Ontario and is a reporting issuer in all Canadian provinces and territories. Denison's common shares are listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange (the 'TSX') under the symbol 'DML' and on the NYSE American exchange under the symbol 'DNN'.

Denison is a uranium exploration and development company with interests focused in the Athabasca Basin region of northern Saskatchewan, Canada. The Company has an effective 95% interest in its flagship Wheeler River Uranium Project, which is the largest undeveloped uranium project in the infrastructure rich eastern portion of the Athabasca Basin region of northern Saskatchewan. A PFS was completed for Wheeler River in late 2018, considering the potential economic merit of developing Phoenix as an ISR operation and the Gryphon deposit as a conventional underground mining operation. Denison's interests in Saskatchewan also include a 22.5% ownership interest in the McClean Lake Joint Venture, which includes several uranium deposits and the McClean Lake uranium mill, which is contracted to process the ore from the Cigar Lake mine under a toll milling agreement (see RESULTS OF OPERATIONS below for more details), plus a 25.17% interest in the Midwest Main and Midwest A deposits and a 66.90% interest in the Tthe Heldeth Tue ('THT,' formerly J Zone) and Huskie deposits on the Waterbury Lake property. The Midwest Main, Midwest A, THT and Huskie deposits are located within 20 kilometres of the McClean Lake mill.

Through its 50% ownership of JCU, Denison holds additional interests in various uranium project joint ventures in Canada, including the Millennium project (JCU, 30.099%), the Kiggavik project (JCU, 33.8123%) and Christie Lake (JCU, 34.4508%).

Denison's exploration portfolio includes further interests in properties covering approximately 297,000 hectares in the Athabasca Basin region.

Denison is also engaged in mine decommissioning and environmental services through its Closed Mines group, which manages Denison's Elliot Lake reclamation projects and provides third-party post-closure mine care and maintenance services.

Prior to July 19, 2021, Denison also served as the manager of UPC, a publicly traded company listed on the TSX that invested in U 3 O 8 and uranium hexafluoride ('UF 6 '). In April 2021, UPC announced that it had entered into an agreement with Sprott to convert UPC into the Sprott Physical Uranium Trust. This transaction closed on July 19, 2021, and the MSA between Denison and UPC was terminated.

Technical Disclosure and Qualified Person

The technical information contained in this press release has been reviewed and approved by David Bronkhorst, P.Eng, Denison's Vice President, Operations and/or Andrew Yackulic, P. Geo, Denison's Director, Exploration, each of whom is a Qualified Person in accordance with the requirements of NI 43-101.

Follow Denison on Twitter @DenisonMinesCo

CAUTIONARY STATEMENT REGARDING FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS

Certain information contained in this press release constitutes 'forward-looking information', within the meaning of the applicable United States and Canadian legislation concerning the business, operations and financial performance and condition of Denison.

Generally, these forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as 'plans', 'expects', 'budget', 'scheduled', 'estimates', 'forecasts', 'intends', 'anticipates', or 'believes', or the negatives and/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'.

In particular, this press release contains forward-looking information pertaining to the following: projections with respect to exploration, development and expansion plans and objectives, including the plans and objectives for Wheeler River and the related evaluation field program activities and exploration objectives; the interpretation of the results of the ISR field test, metallurgical and other assessment and de-risking activities at Wheeler River; the interpretation of the results of its exploration drilling programs; plans and objectives for the feasibility study and agreements with third parties related thereto; its use of proceeds of recent financings; its investments in uranium; the estimates of Denison's mineral reserves and mineral resources or results of exploration; expectations regarding Denison's joint venture ownership interests; expectations regarding the continuity of its agreements with third parties; and its interpretations of, and expectations for, nuclear energy and uranium demand. Statements relating to 'mineral reserves' or 'mineral resources' are deemed to be forward-looking information, as they involve the implied assessment, based on certain estimates and assumptions that the mineral reserves and mineral resources described can be profitably produced in the future.

Forward looking statements are based on the opinions and estimates of management as of the date such statements are made, and they are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the actual results, level of activity, performance or achievements of Denison to be materially different from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. For example, the results and underlying assumptions and interpretations of the PFS as well as de-risking efforts such as the ISR field programs discussed herein may not be maintained after further testing or be representative of actual conditions within the applicable deposits. In addition, Denison may decide or otherwise be required to extend the EA and/or the FS and/or otherwise discontinue testing, evaluation and development work if it is unable to maintain or otherwise secure the necessary approvals or resources (such as testing facilities, capital funding, etc.). Denison believes that the expectations reflected in this forward-looking information are reasonable, but no assurance can be given that these expectations will prove to be accurate and results may differ materially from those anticipated in this forward-looking information. For a discussion in respect of risks and other factors that could influence forward-looking events, please refer to the factors discussed in Denison's Management's Discussion & Analysis for the year ended December 31, 2021 under the heading 'Risk Factors'. These factors are not, and should not be, construed as being exhaustive.

Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. The forward-looking information contained in this press release is expressly qualified by this cautionary statement. Any forward-looking information and the assumptions made with respect thereto speaks only as of the date of this press release. Denison does not undertake any obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking information after the date of this press release to conform such information to actual results or to changes in Denison's expectations except as otherwise required by applicable legislation.

Cautionary Note to United States Investors Concerning Estimates of Mineral Resources and Mineral Reserves: This press release may use terms such as "measured", "indicated" and/or "inferred" mineral resources and "proven" or "probable" mineral reserves, which are terms defined with reference to the guidelines set out in the Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy and Petroleum ("CIM") CIM Definition Standards on Mineral Resources and Mineral Reserves ("CIM Standards"). The Company's descriptions of its projects using CIM Standards may not be comparable to similar information made public by U.S. companies subject to the reporting and disclosure requirements under the United States federal securities laws and the rules and regulations thereunder. United States investors are cautioned not to assume that all or any part of measured or indicated mineral resources will ever be converted into mineral reserves. United States investors are also cautioned not to assume that all or any part of an inferred mineral resource exists, or is economically or legally mineable.

SOURCE Denison Mines Corp.
TORRANCE, Calif., March 4, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Emmaus Life Sciences, Inc. (OTCQX: EMMA), a commercial-stage biopharmaceutical company and leader in the treatment of sickle cell disease, today announced that real world data on Endari, the company's prescription-grade L-glutamine oral powder for the treatment of sickle cell disease, has been accepted for an e-poster at the 62nd Annual Meeting of the British Society for Haematology (BSH) to be held April 3-5, 2022 at the Manchester Central in Manchester, England and virtually.

Title: Real World Data on Efficacy of Pharmaceutical-Grade L-Glutamine in Preventing Sickle Cell Disease-Related Acute Complications and Hemolysis in Pediatric and Adult Patients

E-Poster Number: BSH22- EP78

Presenter: Mohamed Yassin* 5

Authors: Narcisse Elenga1, Maryse Etienne-Julan2, Gylna Loko3, Randa AlOkka4, Ahmad Adel4, Mohamed Yassin* 5

1pediatric, CHU Cayenne, Cayenne, French Guiana, 2CHU Guadeloupe, Point a pitre, 3CHU de Fort de France, Fort de France, France, 4pharmacy, 5Hematology, National Centre for Cancer Care and Research - Hamad Medical Corporation, Doha, Qatar

Date: April 3-5, 2022

Location: In-person Manchester Central, Manchester, England and virtually

E-posters will be accessible for both the face-to-face and virtual audiences and will be hosted in the event platform until July 2022. Delegates will have an opportunity to fully engage with the data included within each abstract using large plasma touch screens within the poster area and using the online portal to view them. Delegates also have the option to save the posters and email the submitting author to ask questions.

When presented, the e-poster will also be accessible on the "Research Publications" page of the Emmaus website at: https://www.emmausmedical.com/content/pipeline/researchpub/research-publications-210

About Emmaus Life Sciences

Emmaus Life Sciences, Inc. is a commercial-stage biopharmaceutical company and leader in the treatment of sickle cell disease. The company currently markets U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved Endari (L-glutamine oral powder) indicated to reduce the acute complications of sickle cell disease in adults and children 5 years and older. The company is also engaged in the discovery and development of innovative treatments and therapies for certain rare and orphan diseases as well as those affecting larger populations, such as diverticulosis. For more information, please visit www.emmausmedical.com.

About Endari (prescription grade L-glutamine oral powder)

Endari, Emmaus' prescription grade L-glutamine oral powder, was approved by the FDA in July 2017 for treating sickle cell disease in adult and pediatric patients five years of age and older. Sales of Endari began in the United States in 2018.

Indication

Endari is indicated to reduce the acute complications of sickle cell disease in adult and pediatric patients five years of age and older.

Important Safety Information

The most common adverse reactions (incidence >10 percent) in clinical studies were constipation, nausea, headache, abdominal pain, cough, pain in extremities, back pain, and chest pain.

Adverse reactions leading to treatment discontinuation included one case each of hypersplenism, abdominal pain, dyspepsia, burning sensation, and hot flash.

The safety and efficacy of Endari in pediatric patients with sickle cell disease younger than five years of age has not been established.

For more information, please see full Prescribing Information of Endari at: www.ENDARIrx.com/PI.

About Sickle Cell Disease

There are approximately 100,000 people living with sickle cell disease (SCD) in the United States and millions more globally. The sickle gene is found in every ethnic group, not just among those of African descent; and in the United States an estimated 1-in-365 African Americans and 1-in-16,300 Hispanic Americans are born with SCD.1 The genetic mutation responsible for SCD causes an individual's red blood cells to distort into a "C" or a sickle shape, reducing their ability to transport oxygen throughout the body. These sickled red blood cells break down rapidly, become very sticky, and develop a propensity to clump together, which causes them to become stuck and cause damage within blood vessels. The result is reduced blood flow to distal organs, which leads to physical symptoms of incapacitating pain, tissue and organ damage, and early death.2

1Source: Data & Statistics on Sickle Cell Disease  National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, December 2020.

2Source: Committee on Addressing Sickle Cell Disease  A Strategic Plan and Blueprint for Action -- National Academy of Sciences Press, 2020.

Throughout the Middle East North Africa region, Emmaus estimates that there are approximately 225,000 sickle cell disease patients that could potentially be treated with Endari.

SOURCE Emmaus Life Sciences, Inc.
Enlightened's Sundae Cones have everything that makes a traditional sundae cone so joyful -- a crispy cone full of creamy ice cream topped with nuts and chocolate, and the iconic chocolate-filled tip making for a perfect last bite. The best part? Enlightened's Sundae Cones have a fraction of the sugar and half the calories of their sugary counterpart.

Enlightened created the first lower sugar Sundae Cones to take your at-home dessert to the next level.

While a traditional sundae cone can have up to 23 grams of sugar, Enlightened's versions have as few as 6 grams of sugar and 140 calories per cone. Instead of using an excessive amount of sugar or artificial sweeteners, Enlightened sweetens its sundae cones with monk fruit to provide a delicious dessert with a nutritional profile you can feel good about. They will be available in five decadent flavors:

Light Ice Cream

Vanilla Fudge

Caramel Fudge

Peanut Butter Fudge

Frozen Greek Yogurt

Vanilla Honey featuring a honey core

Caramel Dark Chocolate Almond Butter featuring an almond butter core

"In creating these Sundae Cones, we wanted to offer a range of flavor profiles, so there is something for everyone," Enlightened CEO and founder Michael Shoretz said. "That's why we created three classic flavor profiles with our best-selling light ice cream and two yogurt-inspired flavors made with frozen greek yogurt, which include a flavor core for extra indulgence."

Enlightened Sundae Cones are packaged with three 4-ounce cones in a box (MSRP $5.99). Shoppers can find Sundae Cones on EatEnlightened.com and in grocery stores nationwide, including Sprouts Farmers Market, Shoprite, Walmart, H.E.B., Stop & Shop and more.

Learn more about Enlightened Sundae Cones here .

About Enlightened

Enlightened is the first and largest brand within Beyond Better Foods, a New York City-based company founded by Forbes Under 30 alum Michael Shoretz in 2012. A pioneer in the low-sugar dessert category, Enlightened was one of the first light ice creams on the market. The brand is widely distributed in US retailers, such as Sprouts Farmers Market, Whole Foods Market, Shoprite, Publix and Walmart. Enlightened is recognized for producing innovative feel-good desserts, including the Keto Collection in 2019; Fruit Infusions, low-carb Cheesecakes, keto-friendly Dough Bites in 2020; and Ready-to-Bake Cookies in 2021. Shoretz founded Beyond Better Foods from inspiration from his personal training clients' desire for healthy alternatives to their favorite sweet, salty, spicy and savory treats. Beyond Better Foods now includes Enlightened and Bada Bean Bada Boom.

For more information on Enlightened, visit eatenlightened.com .

SOURCE Enlightened Ice Cream
AMSTERDAM, March 4, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The Praemium Erasmianum Foundation has awarded the Erasmus Prize for 2022 to the Israeli writer David Grossman. The theme of this year's prize is 'mending a torn world'. No one embodies this theme better than Grossman. In his work he seeks to understand people from within, and to regard the other with love, across borders of war and history. The Praemium Erasmianum Foundation wants to honour his craft and offer readers an opportunity to discover his work (once again): "as consolation, and as a guide to how to be human."

Born in Jerusalem in 1954, David Grossman has some twenty publications to his name, ranging from novels and children's books to collections of essays and travel books. He has demonstrated extraordinary courage in tackling uncomfortable political subjects, among them daily life in occupied territories and the Palestinian minority in Israel, as well as themes such as friendship, living with the past, and the bonds that link generations. In his writing Grossman connects the personal and the universal. He shows mourning, violence and the loss of humanity, not as specifically geographical problems, but as universal human struggles. That makes him, like Erasmus, a true humanist: Grossman reveals the nakedness and fallibility of humankind, noble and monstrous in equal measure. His forgiving way of capturing characters changes readers.

David Grossman started out as a radio presenter before rising to international prominence in 1989 with his novel See Under: Love, about the Shoah as seen through the eyes of a child. He has frequently voiced his support for peace in the Middle East. In 2006 he joined with Amos Oz in calling for an end to attacks on Lebanon, soon after which his own son was killed in action in the same war. That event became the subject of his 2011 book Falling Out of Time, which was adapted for the stage on numerous occasions. Grossman has been the recipient of various literary awards, including the Prix Medicis Etranger, the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade and the Geschwister-Scholl-Preis. His 2015 novel A Horse Walks Into a Bar won the prestigious Man Booker International Prize and received rave reviews around the world.

To mark the awarding of the Erasmus Prize in 2022, the Praemium Erasmianum Foundation will organize a varied programme devoted to David Grossman and the theme of 'mending a torn world'.

The Erasmus Prize is awarded annually to a person or institution that has made an exceptional contribution to the humanities or the arts. His Majesty the King of the Netherlands is Patron of the Foundation. The Erasmus Prize consists of  150,000. The prize will be presented in autumn 2022.

Note to editors:

EMBARGO UNTIL 3 MARCH 2022 at 24:00 hours.

SOURCE The Praemium Erasmianum Foundation
Global competitiveness and key competitor percentage market shares

Market presence across multiple geographies - Strong/Active/Niche/Trivial

Online interactive peer-to-peer collaborative bespoke updates

Access to our digital archives and MarketGlass Research Platform

Complimentary updates for one year

Edition: 19; Released: February 2022

Executive Pool: 6899

Companies: 110 - Players covered include Allegheny Technologies Incorporated; AMG Advanced Metallurgical Group N.V.; Aperam S.A.; Carpenter Technology Corporation; Constellium SE; Doncasters Group Limited; ERAMET S.A.; Fort Wayne Metals Research Products Corp.; Glencore Plc; H.C. Starck GmbH; Haynes International, Inc.; High Performance Alloys, Inc.; Hitachi Metals, Ltd.; Howmet International Inc.; Metallurgical Plant Electrostal, JSC; Nippon Yakin Kogyo Co., Ltd.; Precision Castparts Corp.; Sandvik AB; Special Metals Corporation; TimkenSteel Corporation; Titanium Metals Corporation (TIMET); Universal Stainless & Alloys Inc.; VDM Metals GmbH; VSMPO-AVISMA Corporation and Others.

Coverage: All major geographies and key segments

Segments: Product Type (Non-Ferrous Metal, Super Alloys, Refractory, Platinum Group); Alloy Type (Wrought Alloy, Cast Alloy); Application (Aerospace, Industrial Gas Turbine, Automotive, Oil & Gas, Other Applications)

Geographies: World; USA; Canada; Japan; China; Europe; France; Germany; Italy; UK; Spain; Russia; Rest of Europe; Asia-Pacific; Latin America; Rest of World.

Complimentary Project Preview - This is an ongoing global program. Preview our research program before you make a purchase decision. We are offering a complimentary access to qualified executives driving strategy, business development, sales & marketing, and product management roles at featured companies. Previews provide deep insider access to business trends; competitive brands; domain expert profiles; and market data templates and much more. You may also build your own bespoke report using our MarketGlass Platform which offers thousands of data bytes without an obligation to purchase our report. Preview Registry

ABSTRACT-

Global High Performance Alloys Market to Reach $9.8 Billion by 2026

Superalloys, or high performance alloys (HPAs), typically refer to a complex metallurgical blend of usually three or more VIIA elements developed for performing at elevated temperatures and in harsh operating conditions where high surface stability and mechanical strength are required. Non-ferrous alloys comprising titanium and aluminum are used in a broad range of applications including gas turbines and aerospace due to their superior mechanical properties. The market has and will continue to be characterized by demand for more value-added products, continuous product innovation, and growing competition. Post pandemic growth in the market will be driven by demand momentum for lightweight, high performance materials in various applications in the aerospace, automotive, oil & gas, construction, energy generation, among others. Another important growth driver will be the substitution of metals including steel by aluminum- and titanium-based high-performance alloys supported by their increasing use in the manufacture of rocket and aircraft engines; in the automotive sector due to their contribution towards significant weight reduction; and in oil & gas exploration applications due to their capabilities to withstand high-pressure and high-temperature conditions. The market will also witness growth due to increasing activities of titanium extraction and magnesium mining leading to high availability of these elements, which are used as raw materials for the manufacture of high performance alloys. Increasing demand for chemically inert and corrosion-resistant products in chemical processing would drive growth during the post pandemic period.

Amid the COVID-19 crisis, the global market for High Performance Alloys estimated at US$7.9 Billion in the year 2022, is projected to reach a revised size of US$9.8 Billion by 2026, growing at a CAGR of 4.9% over the analysis period. Non-Ferrous Metal, one of the segments analyzed in the report, is projected to grow at a 5.6% CAGR to reach US$5.4 Billion by the end of the analysis period. After a thorough analysis of the business implications of the pandemic and its induced economic crisis, growth in the Super Alloys segment is readjusted to a revised 4.3% CAGR for the next 7-year period. This segment currently accounts for a 30.9% share of the global High Performance Alloys market. Demand will be driven by industrial and aerospace applications due to the ability of non-ferrous alloys to withstand high pressure and temperature. The demand for super alloys is expected to be driven by their attractive properties such as strength at high temperature, toughness, and resistance to oxidizing and corrosive environments. Market demand for super alloys will be fueled by their increasing use in oil & gas industries, chemical/petrochemical processing, and power plants.

The U.S. Market is Estimated at $2 Billion in 2022, While China is Forecast to Reach $1.6 Billion by 2026

The High Performance Alloys market in the U.S. is estimated at US$2 Billion in the year 2022. The country currently accounts for a 25.35% share in the global market. China, the world's second largest economy, is forecast to reach an estimated market size of US$1.6 Billion in the year 2026 trailing a CAGR of 6.5% through the analysis period. Among the other noteworthy geographic markets are Japan and Canada, each forecast to grow at 3.6% and 3.9% respectively over the analysis period. Within Europe, Germany is forecast to grow at approximately 4.1% CAGR while Rest of European market (as defined in the study) will reach US$1.8 Billion by the end of the analysis period. In the post-COVID-19 scenario, anticipated resurgence in core end-use sectors especially in the developing Asia-Pacific and Latin America nations, would renew the demand for machine tools in various end-use sectors, thus creating growth opportunities for high performance alloys. Europe is also anticipated to post steady growth in the post pandemic period due to the expected increase in the use of high performance materials in the automotive industry.

Refractory Segment to Reach $1.3 Billion by 2026

In the global Refractory segment, USA, Canada, Japan, China and Europe will drive the 3.6% CAGR estimated for this segment. These regional markets accounting for a combined market size of US$805.8 Million will reach a projected size of US$1 Billion by the close of the analysis period. China will remain among the fastest growing in this cluster of regional markets. Led by countries such as Australia, India, and South Korea, the market in Asia-Pacific is forecast to reach US$124.7 Million by the year 2026. More

MarketGlass Platform

Our MarketGlass Platform is a free full-stack knowledge center that is custom configurable to today`s busy business executive`s intelligence needs! This influencer driven interactive research platform is at the core of our primary research engagements and draws from unique perspectives of participating executives worldwide. Features include - enterprise-wide peer-to-peer collaborations; research program previews relevant to your company; 3.4 million domain expert profiles; competitive company profiles; interactive research modules; bespoke report generation; monitor market trends; competitive brands; create & publish blogs & podcasts using our primary and secondary content; track domain events worldwide; and much more. Client companies will have complete insider access to the project data stacks. Currently in use by 67,000+ domain experts worldwide.

Our platform is free for qualified executives and is accessible from our website www.StrategyR.com or via our just released mobile application on iOS or Android

About Global Industry Analysts, Inc. & StrategyR

Global Industry Analysts, Inc., (www.strategyr.com) is a renowned market research publisher the world`s only influencer driven market research company. Proudly serving more than 42,000 clients from 36 countries, GIA is recognized for accurate forecasting of markets and industries for over 33 years.

CONTACTS:

Zak Ali

Director, Corporate Communications

Global Industry Analysts, Inc.

Phone: 1-408-528-9966

www.StrategyR.com

Email: [email protected]

LINKS

Join Our Expert Panel

https://www.strategyr.com/Panelist.asp

Connect With Us on LinkedIn

https://www.linkedin.com/company/global-industry-analysts-inc./

Follow Us on Twitter

https://twitter.com/marketbytes

Journalists & Media

[email protected]

SOURCE Global Industry Analysts, Inc.
Global competitiveness and key competitor percentage market shares

Market presence across multiple geographies - Strong/Active/Niche/Trivial

Online interactive peer-to-peer collaborative bespoke updates

Access to our digital archives and MarketGlass Research Platform

Complimentary updates for one year

Edition: 19; Released: February 2022

Executive Pool: 4122

Companies: 178 - Players covered include ActivX Biosciences, Inc.; Agilent Technologies, Inc.; Bio-Rad Laboratories, Inc.; Bruker Corporation; Cytiva; Geneva Bioinformatics S.A.; Merck KGaA; PerkinElmer, Inc.; Shimadzu Corporation; Millipore Sigma; Thermo Fisher Scientific, Inc.; Waters Corp.; Xencor, Inc. and Others.

Coverage: All major geographies and key segments

Segments: Component (Reagents, Instruments, Services); Application (Drug Discovery, Disease Diagnosis, Other Applications)

Geographies: World; USA; Canada; Japan; China; Europe; France; Germany; Italy; UK; Spain; Russia; Rest of Europe; Asia-Pacific; Australia; India; South Korea; Rest of Asia-Pacific; Latin America; Middle East; Africa.

Complimentary Project Preview - This is an ongoing global program. Preview our research program before you make a purchase decision. We are offering a complimentary access to qualified executives driving strategy, business development, sales & marketing, and product management roles at featured companies. Previews provide deep insider access to business trends; competitive brands; domain expert profiles; and market data templates and much more. You may also build your own bespoke report using our MarketGlass Platform which offers thousands of data bytes without an obligation to purchase our report. Preview Registry

ABSTRACT-

Global Proteomics Market to Reach $43.5 Billion by 2026

The proteomics market is anticipated to gain from the pressing need to develop advanced therapeutic and diagnostic options in the wake of COVID-19. The ability of proteomics to help researchers in detecting several proteins in a single analysis is anticipated to make it a suitable weapon in the fight against the COVID-19 virus.

Proteomics represents a highly relevant technique in the battle against COVID-19 owing to the significance to understand the role played by proteins in the infection process as well as disease progression. These insights are critical to support preventative strategies and development of novel therapeutics. The use of mass spectrometry to detect COVID-19 virus' proteins and proteolytic peptides enables a rapid, simple virus detection assay. On the other hand, targeted proteomics allows detection of peptides of the virus' spike proteins and nucleocapsid with high specificity and sensitivity in clinical and research samples. The approach holds potential to make proteomics an effective option for diagnostic laboratories along with point-of-care testing as a cost-effective alternative to techniques based on nucleic acid. Proteomics can be potentially used to develop techniques to predict COVID-19 patients who may experience severe symptoms later. Various studies have revealed potential protein-based biomarkers expressed differently among certain COVID-19 patients, which can be used for predicting viral infection during earlier stages. The use of proteomics to understand humoral antibody response against virus' proteins has facilitated the development of specific antibody-based assays intended to support diagnostic or therapeutic objectives.

Amid the COVID-19 crisis, the global market for Proteomics estimated at US$30.2 Billion in the year 2022, is projected to reach a revised size of US$43.5 Billion by 2026, growing at a CAGR of 10.8% over the analysis period. Reagents, one of the segments analyzed in the report, is projected to grow at a 10.6% CAGR to reach US$34.8 Billion by the end of the analysis period. After a thorough analysis of the business implications of the pandemic and its induced economic crisis, growth in the Instruments segment is readjusted to a revised 11.8% CAGR for the next 7-year period. This segment currently accounts for a 17.2% share of the global Proteomics market.

The U.S. Market is Estimated at $11.5 Billion in 2022, While China is Forecast to Reach $3.9 Billion by 2026

The Proteomics market in the U.S. is estimated at US$11.5 Billion in the year 2022. The country currently accounts for a 37.7% share in the global market. China, the world's second largest economy, is forecast to reach an estimated market size of US$3.9 Billion in the year 2026 trailing a CAGR of 13.6% through the analysis period. Among the other noteworthy geographic markets are Japan and Canada, each forecast to grow at 9.2% and 10.1% respectively over the analysis period. Within Europe, Germany is forecast to grow at approximately 10.3% CAGR while Rest of European market (as defined in the study) will reach US$4.3 Billion by the close of the analysis period.

Major driving factors of growth in the market include growing demand for personalized medicine, growing applications of proteomics in drug discovery, rise in demand for early diagnosis and treatment of diseases, technical advancements, rise in birth disorders and genetic disorders and the rapidly growing pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical markets. Other factors supporting growth include development of protein targeted treatments and precision molecular medicines for many autoimmune diseases, development of mass spectrometry-based proteomics, and development of molecular targets in malignancies. Increasing focus of biotechnological and pharmaceutical companies in research and development for identifying new proteomics applications, development of new drugs, and proteomics biomarker discovery in different types of diseases such as cardiovascular diseases and cancer is the major trend in the global proteomics landscape. Proteomics is extensively used in protein expression profiling, targeted protein quantitation, analysis of interactions between proteins, and post-translational modification in different segments of the pharmaceutical industry. Advanced proteomics solutions are finding extensive application in diagnostic services, drug discovery and other research fields. Proteomics is a promising approach towards personalized medicine to treat several diseases, such as diabetes, obesity, fatty liver, neurological diseases, and cancer.

In addition to the rising incidence of cancer, diabetes, and other potentially fatal diseases, there is a rise in disorders, such as autism and Alzheimer's, which are highly wanting in terms of research and cure. Use of plasma proteomics method for proteomic biomarker identification is associated with challenges of patients' variation and high dynamic range of plasma proteins. However, increasing focus on specialty medicines due to technological advancements, sophisticated software, and tools such as IoT, data analytics, big data, and artificial intelligence in the clinical research related to proteomics could create new opportunities for the proteomics market. The sustained increase in the popularity of personalized medicine and protein therapeutics, together with the availability of newly developed proteins, is projected to increase the demand for proteomic technologies in drug development processes and as diagnostic tools, driving growth of the market.

Services Segment to Reach $3.3 Billion by 2026

In the global Services segment, USA, Canada, Japan, China and Europe will drive the 9.9% CAGR estimated for this segment. These regional markets accounting for a combined market size of US$1.5 Billion will reach a projected size of US$2.9 Billion by the close of the analysis period. China will remain among the fastest growing in this cluster of regional markets. Led by countries such as Australia, India, and South Korea, the market in Asia-Pacific is forecast to reach US$314.8 Million by the year 2026. More

MarketGlass Platform

Our MarketGlass Platform is a free full-stack knowledge center that is custom configurable to today`s busy business executive`s intelligence needs! This influencer driven interactive research platform is at the core of our primary research engagements and draws from unique perspectives of participating executives worldwide. Features include - enterprise-wide peer-to-peer collaborations; research program previews relevant to your company; 3.4 million domain expert profiles; competitive company profiles; interactive research modules; bespoke report generation; monitor market trends; competitive brands; create & publish blogs & podcasts using our primary and secondary content; track domain events worldwide; and much more. Client companies will have complete insider access to the project data stacks. Currently in use by 67,000+ domain experts worldwide.

Our platform is free for qualified executives and is accessible from our website www.StrategyR.com or via our just released mobile application on iOS or Android

About Global Industry Analysts, Inc. & StrategyR

Global Industry Analysts, Inc., (www.strategyr.com) is a renowned market research publisher the world`s only influencer driven market research company. Proudly serving more than 42,000 clients from 36 countries, GIA is recognized for accurate forecasting of markets and industries for over 33 years.

CONTACTS:

Zak Ali

Director, Corporate Communications

Global Industry Analysts, Inc.

Phone: 1-408-528-9966

www.StrategyR.com

Email: [email protected]

LINKS

Join Our Expert Panel

https://www.strategyr.com/Panelist.asp

Connect With Us on LinkedIn

https://www.linkedin.com/company/global-industry-analysts-inc./

Follow Us on Twitter

https://twitter.com/marketbytes

Journalists & Media

[email protected]





SOURCE Global Industry Analysts, Inc.
The Manifest , a business news and how-to website, looks into countless Los Angeles-based firms and ranks the most reviewed and recommended players. Results are a snapshot of The Manifest's most recommended companies on February 23, 2022. The honorees were B2B service providers that earned phenomenal client recommendations, which were collated from top review platform Clutch.co .

"This recognition is a huge accomplishment to GR0. We have been working hard to help our clients succeed, and to earn the #1 honor amongst so many other reputable agencies is a feat that we are incredibly proud of," said Kevin Miller , CEO & Co-Founder of GR0. "We pride ourselves on building long-lasting relationships with our clients and it's a testament to our GR0 team that they prioritize each client as if the campaign was their own."

GR0 currently holds a 4.9/5 star ranking based on 44 client reviews and has previously received the Top B2B Agency in California award. Among other highly-rated marketing agencies, GR0 ranked in the Top 3 on all of the following global lists:

Top SEO Agency (#1)

Top Advertising Agency (#1)

Top Digital Marketing Agency (#2)

"GR0's work has driven a 28% increase in the client's organic traffic, a 131% increase in their conversions, and a 39% increase in their CTR," stated one client's feedback summary on Clutch in reference to GR0's performance. "The team boasts impressive SEO and PPC expertise, providing valuable recommendations and educating the client along the way."

Another client review summary commended GR0's work ethic and transparency: "Due to their marketing acumen, GR0 consistently produces efforts that improve the client's domain authority and SEO. Furthermore, the team's dedicated and attentive, choosing only methods that guarantee results. Their transparency allows them to set reasonable expectations that they meet every time."

The leading LA-based agency helps brands rank #1 on Google by leveraging search engine optimization and search engine marketing. For more information about GR0 and to read reviews related to client and employee feedback, please visit Comparably , Glassdoor , Clutch or Crunchbase .

For the complete list of 2022 winners, please visit:

https://themanifest.com/press-releases/awards-manifest-los-angeles-2022

About GR0

GR0's co-founders, Jon Zacharias and Kevin Miller, sought to create a digital marketing agency powered by their wealth of SEO, online marketing, and strategic advisory experience with top D2C and B2B brands. At GR0, our mission is to help brands rank #1 on Google. We accomplish this by empowering clients to build powerful online brands with audiences they fully own through relentlessly innovating and igniting organic growth. While SEO remains the top service for most customers, GR0 offers additional solutions that can be tailored to the individual needs of each client.

GR0's mission is to demystify online marketing for brands, allowing them to realize their full potential and deliver unmatched value to every customer.

For business or media inquiries, please reach out to [email protected]

About The Manifest:

The Manifest is a business news and how-to site that compiles and analyzes practical business wisdom for innovators, entrepreneurs, and small and mid-market businesses. Use The Manifest as an approachable tour guide through every stage of the buyer journey. With three main offerings  data-driven benchmarks, step-by-step guides, and agency shortlists  The Manifest strives to make your business goals a reality.

SOURCE GR0.com LLC
NANJING, China, March 3, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- InxMed Co., Ltd, a clinical-stage biotechnology company dedicated to developing innovative therapies targeting stroma microenvironment and drug resistance for hard-to-treat solid tumors, today announced that it had completed $50 million in Series B Financing. The Series B was led by CS Capital, with the participation of AIHC Fund, Growth Fund and Hosencare Fund. Ennovation Venture as the existing investor continued to support the company with additional funding.

InxMed will use the funds to accelerate ongoing clinical trials of IN10018 for multiple cancer types in both US and China, including the initiation of pivotal trials, and advance more stroma targeting pipelines into clinics in both US and China this year, and strengthen the R&D capabilities in Nanjing.

IN10018 is a potent and selective ATP-competitive focal adhesion kinase (FAK) small molecule inhibitor, with multiple indications in ongoing clinical trials including NRAS mutant Metastatic Melanoma, Platinum-resistant Ovarian Cancer and Triple Negative Breast Cancer, etc. U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted Fast Track designation to IN10018 for the treatment of platinum-resistant ovarian cancer patients in August 2021 based on the promising preliminary efficacy data.

"InxMed is focused on the development of innovative treatments to address the true global unmet medical needs. Our strategy is targeting the ecosystem fostered by tumor cells including tumor microenvironment to develop effective therapeutic regimens to combat or even cure cancer. We have built robust pipelines with different, yet complementary Mechanism of Actions. Building partnership is also our important strategy to maximize the value of our assets, and we are actively exploring global partnership opportunities to accelerate more value inflections of IN10018 and other programs," said Dr. Zaiqi Wang, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of InxMed.

Dr. Hua Yi, Managing Director of CS Capital, added, "It is a great honor to lead InxMed's series B financing. We have great confidence in company's truly differentiated innovation strategies, high-caliber management team, and superior translational capabilities. In past three years, the company has manifested its strong execution through its rapid R&D progress across different development stages and generated highly encouraging clinical results. We think InxMed is well positioned to becoming the first-tier China-based global biotechnology innovator, and we are pleased to partner with the team and provide the company with our unyielding support in the long run."

For more information, visit http://en.inxmed.com/

About InxMed

InxMed is a clinical-stage biotech company established in the end of 2018. The company dedicates on developing innovative therapies targeting stroma microenvironment and solid tumor resistance and metastasis, especially new drug development on anti PD-1/PD-L1 treatment drug resistance. InxMed committees to building an efficient engine for clinical translational science and proof of concept platform driven by in-depth understanding of disease biology and being a China based biotech company with global impact. We have built translational medicine and clinical development team across Shanghai, Beijing, Nanjing, United States, Canada and Australia. We have built a highly differentiated pipeline and established partnership with various multinational pharmaceutical companies including Merck, Roche and Boehringer Ingelheim.

About CS Capital

CS Capital is one of the largest professional private equity investment firms in China with over US$16 billion (RMB100 billion) of AUM from a diversified LP base. Our core strategy is to invest in companies with attractive prospects for growth and outstanding management teams in smart EV, life science and digitalization sectors.

SOURCE InxMed Co., Ltd
Under the agreement, the EMPOWER and Magellan teams are designing more than 30 construction zones across the counties. Once complete, a Request for Proposal process will solicit bids from construction companies to build each zone, which will be managed by Magellan, including end-to-end fiber plant construction, splicing, termination and testing. Work is expected to take place in all four counties concurrently, beginning in areas closest to where EMPOWER has existing fiber infrastructure.

"Magellan is highly experienced in every aspect of designing, building and managing fiber broadband networks," says EMPOWER CEO and President John C. Lee Jr. "That depth of knowledge will ensure this project is completed efficiently and provides the highest quality fiber broadband network for our residents, businesses and communities."

"We are honored to have been selected for this project and congratulate EMPOWER on its foresight to improve the lives of its members by recognizing reliable, affordable broadband must be a required utility," says Magellan President and Chief Executive Officer John Honker. "It is the bridge to a better future and is the foundational building block for economic development, education, healthcare and a better future for all with access. Having connected more than one million homes and thousands of businesses and institutions across the United States with broadband infrastructure, Magellan remains committed to working with our partners and clients on achieving access for everyone."

EMPOWER plans to lay out a construction schedule and timeline so residents are aware as early as possible to impacts in their areas. The timetable is expected in May with construction beginning in June.

About EMPOWER Broadband

EMPOWER Broadband, Inc., a subsidiary of Mecklenburg Electric Cooperative, provides middle-mile capacity, retail high-speed internet service, as well as voice over IP telephony, and high-speed data services to over 4,000 accounts in the cooperative's service territory in Southside Virginia and northern North Carolina. For more information, please visit www.empowermec.net.

About Mecklenburg Electric Cooperative

Mecklenburg Electric Cooperative (MEC) proudly powers over 31,000 homes, farms and businesses in the counties of Brunswick, Charlotte, Greensville, Halifax, Lunenburg, Mecklenburg, Pittsylvania, Southampton, and Sussex in Virginia and portions of Granville, Northampton, Person, Vance, and Warren counties in North Carolina. It is headquartered in Chase City and has district offices in Chase City, Va.; Emporia, Va.; Gretna, Va. For more information, please visit www.meckelec.org.

About Magellan Advisors

Magellan Advisors provides planning, engineering, grant development, implementation and management of the fastest, most technologically advanced fiber and broadband networks.

Our mission is to connect every community, one at a time, to the digital economy so that no one is left behind. Our goal is to find practical broadband and technology solutions that our clients can implement in their communities. Through Magellan's services, more than $1 billion in new broadband investments has connected more than 1,000 schools, hospitals, libraries and governments and passed nearly 1 million homes with fiber-optic broadband. Learn more at www.magellan-advisors.com.

SOURCE Magellan Advisors
FAIRFAX, Va., March 4, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The National Association of Landscape Professionals' annual collegiate career event and competition, the National Collegiate Landscape Competition, will be held March 16-19, at North Carolina State University, in Raleigh, North Carolina.

This year, more than 500 horticulture and landscape students from more than 40 universities and colleges will test their skills in 31real-world, competitive events like Exterior Landscape Design, Plant Identification, Robotics and Technology in Landscape Design and Maintenance, Irrigation Design, and more.

"The National Collegiate Landscape Competition highlights the many wonderful career paths and skills needed for a career in the landscape industry," said Britt Wood, NALP CEO. "The event brings together the top horticulture and landscape students, companies, and manufacturers, exposing students to the breadth and scope of the $115 billion industry that they will enter into after college."

The landscape industry faces the same critical workforce shortages as many industries, so in addition to skills competitions, on March 17, approximately 100 of the nation's top landscape and lawn care companies are participating in the Career Fair to connect with and interview students for internships and jobs after college.

"STIHL has been proud to be the lead sponsor of this event for over 20 years. Nowhere else is the future of the green industry better represented than at NCLC," said Roger Phelps, STIHL's Corporate Communications Manager. "This competition brings the best of the landscape industry's future leaders together to demonstrate their skills, make connections, and most importantly, learn how they can grow their careers."

The event is produced in partnership with NC State University. In addition, the National Collegiate Landscape Competition is supported by partners including STIHL, Inc. (Platinum); JOHN DEERE (Gold); Caterpillar, Davey, Ferris, Gravely, Husqvarna, (Silver) and Anchor, Aspire, Bartlett Tree Experts, Belgard, Corona Tools, Ewing, Hunter, Kawasaki, Kubota, LandCare, Permaloc, Proven Winners, Rainbird, SiteOne, Timberline Landscaping, Toro, and Yellowstone Landscape (Bronze).

For more information, visit www.landscapecompetition.org.

About NALP

The National Association of Landscape Professionals represents an industry of approximately 1 million landscape, lawn care, irrigation and tree care experts who create and maintain green spaces for the benefit of society and the environment. The association works with lawmakers and the public to protect and grow the industry and offers education, networking, training and certification programs that increase professionalism in the industry and inspire its members to excellence. For more information, visit www.landscapeprofessionals.org.

SOURCE National Association of Landscape Professionals
To participate, interested parties only need to go to parkwestgallery.com/online to sign up to attend the online auctions.

The live-streaming auctions will take place from Friday, March 11 through Sunday, March 13.

Two of the featured artists originally come from Romaniathe former child prodigy Alexandra Nechita with a collection of paintings on canvas, paintings on paper, sculptures, and graphic works, and celebrated abstract artist Andras Markos with a collection of paintings and ceramics.100% of all proceeds from all of the art sold by Nechita and Markos during the fundraising weekend will go to the Ukrainian Red Cross.

The auctions will also feature art by two American artists with Ukrainian rootsAnatole Krasnyansky was born in Kiev and the late Igor Medvedev came from Kharkov. An original painting along with an edition of graphic works will be made available from each of the artists, and 100% of the proceeds will go to the relief efforts.

Three other acclaimed American artistsAutumn de Forest, James Coleman, and Mark Kostabi (who comes from an Estonian family)will also be donating an original painting along with an edition of graphic works to the charity auction. 100% of the proceeds will be donated to the Ukrainian Red Cross.

Finally, Park West will be donating two works from their museum collection to the fundraisera Millennium Edition etching from the Dutch master Rembrandt van Rijn and an original creation by famed Israeli legend Yaacov Agam. 100% of the proceeds will also go to the Ukrainian Red Cross.

"What's happening in Ukraine right now is a tragedy," said Park West Founder and CEO Albert Scaglione. "Ukraine has a wonderful cultural and artistic history, and we believe this fundraiser is very important to the Ukrainian people and will provide significant assistance."

Anyone can attend next weekend's live-streaming auctionsjust fill out Park West's online reservation form and information to register for the event will be provided: https://www.parkwestgallery.com/online/

You can find more information about the Ukrainian Red Cross and their mission along with links to donate directly to their efforts here: https://www.icrc.org/en/donate/ukraine

About Park West Gallery

Park West Gallery is the world's largest art dealer, bringing the experience of collecting fine art to more than 3 million customers since 1969. Whether it's masterpieces from history's greatest artists or the latest artwork from leading contemporary icons, Park West offers something for everyone through its accessible art exhibitions and auctions all over the world. You can learn more about Park West Gallery and its over 50-year history at http://www.parkwestgallery.com.

Park West also hosts live-streaming online art auctions every weekend. To learn more about Park West's online collecting events, visit https://www.parkwestgallery.com/online/.

CONTACT: Tom Burns

[email protected]

SOURCE Park West Gallery
ROCHESTER, N.Y., March 4, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Serendipity Labs Inc. will open a 25,000 sf coworking and flexible office facility on the 23rd and 24th floors of 100 S. Clinton Avenue this spring, part of Gallina Development's reanimation of the former Xerox Tower, now called Innovation Square. It is the fifth New York location for the Rye, New York company.

Our mission is to offer trusted knowledge workers inspiring workplaces that align their work life with their lifestyle. Tweet this Innovation Square joins the network of more than 30 locations throughout the U.S. and U.K. managed by the Serendipity Labs brand for landlords and developers. Memberships for private offices, team rooms, meeting space and drop-in coworking plans are available. Companies of all sizes enjoy the benefits of membership, from multinationals that rely on Serendipity Labs for outsourced offices to solopreneurs who need to work close to home but not at home.

"We wanted to raise the bar for coworking in Rochester," says Evan Gallina, manager at Gallina Development. "Serendipity Labs offers a move-in ready, Class A flexible workplace, with a level of service that rivals five-star hotels. Rochester has a highly educated, world-class workforce that can benefit from shared offices of this caliber. I am thrilled Serendipity Labs is coming to Innovation Square."

Material ConneXion Inc. joined the New York City Serendipity Labs location after leaving a larger leased space during the pandemic. Jennifer Gumpert, vice president of Business Operations, says that the Serendipity Labs staff, environment, and flexible outsourced office are an enhancement for the international R&D and consulting company. "How our offices present is incredibly important in our line of business. Serendipity Labs is our New York corporate office, and salespeople routinely bring in clients to explore our library of materials and have confidential conversations."

Gumpert goes on to say, "We are a hybrid team of eight people. I'm not in every day, but I completely trust Serendipity Labs with every aspect of our business. I have confidence that our staff and visitors will always have professional, first-rate service. I also look forward to seeing them in-person when I commute in."

Serendipity Labs offers an elevated workplace experience with high-end finishes and state-of-the-art AV for hybrid meetings. Innovation Square joins the Serendipity Labs network of more than 30 locations throughout the U.S. and U.K. Ample parking in the attached Innovation Square garage and easy access to major freeways make it an excellent office option for Rochester professionals.

Memberships for private offices, team rooms, meeting space and drop-in plans are available. Every Serendipity Labs meets CDC health and safety requirements, including touchless check-in and front desk registration.

Companies of all sizes enjoy the benefits of membership, from multinationals that rely on Serendipity Labs for outsourced offices to solopreneurs who need to work close to home but not at home. Past and present members include Ernst & Young, Compass (NYSE: Comp), and American Express (NYSE: AXP). The Serendipity Labs IT platform is HIPAA and Sarbanes-Oxley audit trail compliant and PCI-DSS and GLBA certified for e-commerce.

"Rochester is ranked as one of the Twenty Best Places to Live for Quality of Life. Our mission is to offer trusted knowledge workers inspiring workplaces that align their work life with their lifestyle  Rochester is an ideal city for us," says John Arenas, chairman and CEO of Serendipity Labs. "We are delighted that our fifth New York location is part of the reanimation of Xerox Tower and we look forward to serving the growing business community of Rochester."

For information about Serendipity Labs Rochester  Innovation Square visit serendipitylabs.com/us/ny/rochester-innovation-square/

SOURCE Serendipity Labs, Inc.
SAN DIEGO, March 4, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Stella , a San Diego-based organization that equips, champions and funds women-led startups, has reached a momentous milestone by helping to connect women-led startups with $71 million in funding in 2021. Building on this momentum, the organization is broadening its investor network by launching a five-city Oxytocin Tour which kicks off on March 10, 2022 in Austin, Texas.

Maria Gonzalez-Blanch, Allison Long Pettine, Silvia Mah, Vidya Dinamani, Raven O'Neal, Courtney Burnett and Lauren Rowley are a part of the Stella network, a San Diego-based organization that equips, champions and funds women-led startups.

The organization's exclusive network of accredited investors, called Stella Angels, invested $1.3 million via direct investments and indirectly via syndications and crowdfunding. Through its annual events Women's Fast Pitch and Women's Venture Summit, and its advisory services and accelerator program, it facilitated another $69.7 million in funding for women-led companies nationwide, for a collective total of $71 million. The organization also celebrated a successful exit for one of the startups it supported.

"Stella is building a powerful network of sophisticated women who support and invest in female-led ventures because they have a proven track record of performance, ROI and improving communities," said Lauren Rowley, chief investment officer for Stella. "We are creating connections and bridging funding opportunities between diverse investors and brilliant female founders, and are continuing this work through our inaugural Oxytocin Tour."

One of the woman-led companies that received investment is San Diego-based Hydrostasis , which is developing personalized and actionable hydration monitoring solutions that can detect both fluid intake and loss prior to the onset of thirst. The company's founder, Dr. Debbie Chen, holds a hydration monitor patent for the business, placing her among the 4 percent of women-only-inventor patent holders.

Also based in San Diego, Sekr led by Breanne Acio and Jessica Shisler, received funding via Stella Angels which helped the mobile-app company create 10 new jobs. The app makes the outdoor travel experience easier, safer and more social, connecting travelers to over 50,000 locations, including the nation's largest database of free campsites.

"Watching a community-based tech company like Sekr since its launch, it was an honor to invest in a BIPOC & LGBTQ+ leadership team as my first investment," said Stella Angels member, and investor, Renie Leakakos. "We are building a legacy for women and girls."

The banner year for Stella signifies an increasing awareness of the importance of writing more checks to women-led companies. Over the past three years, approximately 2 percent of VC funding has gone to women-led startups. Stella's leaders hope its five-city tour will lead to deals that grow this percentage.

"Stella's social and economic impact swelled last year, and our upcoming Oxytocin Tour will build on this momentum by delivering new opportunities to founders and investors nationwide," says Stella founder, Dr. Silvia Mah. "Through our angel syndication network, Oxytocin Tour, educational programming and events, and upcoming fund, we are cultivating female-led communities rooted in innovation and advanced by investments. Let's go!"

Aptly named after a hormone that triggers feelings of love, protection, empathy and trust, the five-city Oxytocin Tour includes stops in the following cities:

Austin, Texas March 10-14, 2022

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania April 26-27, 2022

Atlantic City, New Jersey May 17-19, 2022

San Diego, California September 16-17, 2022

San Francisco, California October 17-20, 2022

To learn more about the tour, visit @wearestellaco on social media. To learn more about joining the Stella Angels network, email [email protected].

About Stella:

Founded in 2012, Stella connects women founders and investors to the right resourceat the right timein their journeys. From ideation to funding to exit, women founders and investors look to Stella for its powerful constellation of support made up of an inclusive community, curriculum, access to capital events and an annual Summit, advisory services and funding opportunities. Let's connect the stars, together. To learn more, visit stella.co.

Contact:

April Enriquez

8058164833

[email protected]

SOURCE Stella
SAN FRANCISCO, March 4, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- In a complaint filed late last week challenging the B Corp certification of Amy's Kitchen on behalf of long-time employee Cecilia Luna Ojeda, Teamsters Local 665 Principal Officer Tony Delorio stated:

"Amy's Kitchen has demonstrated a callous disregard for workers' health, safety, and human rights in violation of the B Corp Declaration of Interdependence."

The complaint calls for B Lab, the organization that grants B Corp certifications, to reconsider Amy's certification status.

According to B Lab's Declaration of Interdependence, B Corp Certified companies believe that "business ought to be conducted as if people and place mattered" and that "the business should aspire to do no harm and benefit all." Unfortunately, this does not match the experience of many workers at the Amy's Kitchen production facility in Santa Rosa, Calif. Despite the company's wholesome origin story and commitment to provide families organic food, frontline workers report dangerous and degrading conditions.

The complaint notes the self-assessment questionnaire Amy's Kitchen filed for its certification failed to disclose relevant information.

Over the past decade, Amy's Kitchen has paid more than $100,000 to settle serious federal health and safety violations from the Department of Labor's Office of Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) including $95,750 in penalties paid within five years of Amy's certification questionnaire, which the company failed to disclose.

Ojeda is one of several workers profiled in a January NBC News report on workplace injuries at Amy's Kitchen. She sustained injuries from repetitive work on the line, resulting in casts on both of her arms, making it impossible to work or carry her baby for months. Other workers have sought medical care for similar injuries.

Workers have reported they are not always able to access the restroom or clean drinking water during shifts due to pressure to maintain line speeds; however, the company did not disclose this in its B Corp filing.

The company also stated it does not prohibit "freedom of association." However, according to the complaint, Amy's Kitchen "has waged an aggressive campaign of intimidation to undermine workers' efforts to organize a union and have a voice on the job. The company has retained outside 'union avoidance consultants' to persuade workers not to join a union."

Delorio further stated, "Amy's Kitchen should not benefit from the B Corp certification unless or until all frontline workers enjoy true freedom of association, are treated with dignity and respect, and have safe working conditions. It is impossible for B Lab to know from a checklist and a company's own self-assessment what conditions are really like for workers. I hope your investigation will consider the experiences of Cecilia and her co-workers and not just rely on the company's account."

The vegan, vegetarian, and immigrant rights community have spoken in support of Amy's Kitchen workers, most of whom are Latina women workers. Most recently, at a Feb. 26 rally in Petaluma, Calif., Veggie Mijas and Food Empowerment Project joined Amy's Kitchen workers and their Teamsters advocates as they amplified the call for the boycott of Amy's products.

In December, a Cal/OSHA complaint by Ojeda was filed on behalf of her coworkers, along with testimony provided by her coworkers at the Santa Rosa facility.

The workers in Santa Rosa have repeatedly and publicly demanded a meeting with Amy's Kitchen CEO Andy Berliner, along with their Teamster advocates, to find a permanent solution to the workplace injuries, high health care costs and conditions at the facility. They've stated they want the company to succeed, but not at the expense of workers, and that they're eager for a safer work environment.

Contact:

Kara Deniz, (202) 497-6610

[email protected]

SOURCE Teamsters Local 665
AUSTIN, Texas, March 3, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Smart Cities Connect Media and Research, a division of TechConnect, today announced winners of the fifth annual Smart 50 Awards, which annually celebrate the most innovative and influential municipal-scale projects in the world. To date, awardees have represented projects from more than 15 countries.

TechConnect, a division of ATI

"Exploring the smartest activations in our local communities each year cements my belief that the overall greatest impact on quality of life happens at the city level," said Laura Benold, Smart Cities Connect Media & Research Managing Editor. "Not all projects are flashy or even visible to residents, so it's even more important that we raise up truly outstanding, replicable work."

Awardees reflect the changing priorities among municipalities. This year, 30% of all projects assist with urban operations, 26% support improved mobility, and another 26% feature digital transformation.

"San Antonio is proud to be among the awardees for this year's Smart 50 Awards. Our Smart Cities team is committed to both learning and establishing best practices that center people in the process of using data and technology in new ways to improve public services," said Emily Royall, Smart City Administrator, City of San Antonio, Texas. "We're excited to be part of a cohort of change-agent cities across the globe doing this work."

TechConnect and a robust community of municipal leadership, solution providers, technology scouts, and media will celebrate awardees in-person at the awards Gala on April 4 in Columbus, Ohio, co-located with Smart Cities Connect Conference and Expo. Gala attendees enjoy exclusive networking, as well as a preview of the winning projects.

For more information about this Challenge and to view a list of winners, visit https://spring.smartcitiesconnect.org/Smart50Awards/ . To attend the Smart 50 Awards Gala and meet the winners in April, visit https://spring.smartcitiesconnect.org/register.html .

About TechConnect

With 25+ years of experience connecting emerging technologies with unique funding and partnership opportunities, TechConnect boasts the most robust research and innovation network in the world. It employs a broad scope of tools to deliver top technologies, including open innovation programs, conferences, and open-access publications. Each year, TechConnect prospects, vets, and connects thousands of emerging technologies with corporate, investment, municipal, and national defense clients. TechConnect is a division of Advanced Technology International (ATI). https://techconnect.org

About Advanced Technology International

ATI, a public-service nonprofit based in Summerville, S.C., builds and manages collaborations that conduct research and development of new technologies to solve our nation's most pressing challenges. On behalf of the federal government, ATI, the largest awarder of nontraditional tech innovators, brings together experts from industry, academia, and government to solve complex national security challenges. ATI is a subsidiary of Analytic Services, Inc. (ANSER), a public-service research institute organized as a nonprofit corporation, which is dedicated to informing decisions that shape the nation's future. ATI.org

SOURCE ATI (Advanced Technology International)
The exhibition, named "Progenie," displayed the paintings of Chinese-Panamanian artists of three different ages, highlighting the contribution of Chinese painters to the multicultural tapestry of Latin America and notably Panama today.

The concept of Chinese craftsmanship has been a key pillar of GAC MOTOR's overseas brand identity for some time now, with the GAC development strategy focusing on bringing outstanding Chinese designs and technology onto the world stage.

Cross-cultural art exhibitions like this one are important in communicating the amazing creativity that Chinese brands and individuals have to offer the world.

Ms. Mai Yap, one of the exhibiting artists based out of Florida, USA, said that "China lives in us, and although we came from and were born in different countries, we carry all that culture within us."

Mai Yap's colorful works were displayed alongside another young visual artist, Nicole Rumaldo Choy, who represents merging these two cultures' creative prowess.

The Spirit of Craftsmanship: Continued Efforts in the Americas

GAC MOTOR has become the top-performing Chinese brand in local sales since entering the Panama market in 2019. The nation is now home to more than 400 new GAC MOTOR owners.

Ever since the launch of the All New GS4 and extensive engagement in car rental projects last year, GAC MOTOR has attracted more attention. It has become a representative of Chinese car brands in Panama.

In the new year, GAC MOTOR will continue to provide Panamanian users with a high standard of travel experience. The brand looks forward to a future of further healthy development in the Americas.

SOURCE GAC MOTOR
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla., March 4, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The Shade Store, the leader in custom window treatments, has returned to the Kips Bay Decorator Show House in Palm Beach, Florida for the fourth year as the exclusive window treatment partner. Collaborating with 21 leading designers, The Shade Store is once again showcasing the transformational impact of handcrafted window treatments in creating inimitable environments.

"It has been an honor to partner with The Kips Bay Decorator Show House Palm Beach for the fourth year in a row," says Ian Gibbs, Co-Founder and Chief Creative Officer of The Shade Store. "Since inception, it has provided some of the most talented designers with a platform to showcase their ingenuity and creativity, all to benefit an excellent cause. We celebrate their inspiring work and are thrilled to have helped to bring their visions to life through the wide range of capabilities The Shade Store has to offer."

The Kips Bay Decorator Show House includes a wide array of window treatment styles from The Shade Store  from elevated versions of standard custom Roman Shades, Drapery and Woven Wood Shades to elaborate creations like intricate Cornices, Valances and classical elements like tapes and trim. The house features custom window treatments in materials from The Shade Store's in-stock selection of 1,300+ materials  including several installations of its new Artisan Weaves collection- as well as designer-supplied C.O.M. fabrics that push the boundaries of creativity and The Shade Store's custom capabilities.

"Over the last almost five decades, The Kips Bay Decorator Show House has continued to raise critical programming funds for youth who need it most. This is thanks to generous returning sponsors like The Shade Store," said James Druckman, President and CEO of the New York Design Center, and President of the Board of the Kips Bay Boys & Girls Club. "As we return to Palm Beach, we're thrilled that they have partnered with us again to introduce the brand's beautiful custom designs and artisanal craftmanship to this year's group of talented designers."

The Kips Bay Decorator Show House has become a must-see event, attracting over 15,000 visitors each year with all proceeds benefitting the Kips Bay Boys & Girls Club and Boys & Girls Clubs of Palm Beach. These organizations offer innovative after-school enrichment programs for more than 21,000 youth, ages six through 18 in ten locations throughout the Bronx and 17 across Palm Beach County. The Fifth Annual Kips Bay Decorator Show House Palm Beach will be open to the public from March 5th through April 3rd at 3001 Spruce Avenue in West Palm Beach.

About The Shade Store

The Shade Store is a premium custom window treatment company with a rich heritage in luxury textiles and interior design. Its exclusive collection of more than 1,300 in-stock fabrics and materials provides customers with an unparalleled amount of style and customization options. Every window treatment is proudly handcrafted in the USA, hung and tested for quality assurance and ships free in 10 days or less. With 110+ showrooms nationwide, The Shade Store offers a complete range of in-person and virtual design services for consumers and design-trade clientele, including swatches, complimentary professional window measurements and photo rendering. Additionally, the company is an advocate for environmental sustainability: For every purchase made, the company provides the 'Gift of Shade' by planting a tree in partnership with the Arbor Day Foundation. For more information about The Shade Store, please visit http://www.theshadestore.com.

SOURCE The Shade Store
DUBLIN, March 4, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Wood-Fiber Gypsum Board Market Research Report by Product, by Material, by Application, by Region - Global Forecast to 2027 - Cumulative Impact of COVID-19" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

The Global Wood-Fiber Gypsum Board Market size was estimated at USD 10.75 billion in 2020, is expected to reach USD 11.86 billion in 2021, and is projected to grow at a CAGR of 10.69% to reach USD 21.89 billion by 2027.



Market Statistics:

The report provides market sizing and forecast across five major currencies - USD, EUR GBP, JPY, and AUD. It helps organization leaders make better decisions when currency exchange data is readily available. In this report, the years 2018 and 2019 are considered historical years, 2020 as the base year, 2021 as the estimated year, and years from 2022 to 2027 are considered the forecast period.



Market Segmentation & Coverage:

This research report categorizes the Wood-Fiber Gypsum Board to forecast the revenues and analyze the trends in each of the following sub-markets:

Based on Product, the market was studied across 12-16 mm, 6-10 mm, Above 16 mm, and Below 6 mm.

Based on Material, the market was studied across Hardwood and Softwood.

Based on Application, the market was studied across Roofing, Walls, Furniture, Soundproofing and Sound Deadening, and Vapor Barrier and Insulation.

Based on Region, the market was studied across the Americas, Asia-Pacific , and Europe , Middle East & Africa . The Americas is further studied across Argentina , Brazil , Canada , Mexico , and United States . The United States is further studied across California , Florida , Illinois , New York , Ohio , Pennsylvania , and Texas . The Asia-Pacific is further studied across Australia , China , India , Indonesia , Japan , Malaysia , Philippines , Singapore , South Korea , Taiwan , and Thailand . Europe , Middle East & Africa is further studied across France , Germany , Italy , Netherlands , Qatar , Russia , Saudi Arabia , South Africa , Spain , United Arab Emirates , and United Kingdom .

Competitive Strategic Window:

The Competitive Strategic Window analyses the competitive landscape in terms of markets, applications, and geographies to help the vendor define an alignment or fit between their capabilities and opportunities for future growth prospects. It describes the optimal or favorable fit for the vendors to adopt successive merger and acquisition strategies, geography expansion, research & development, and new product introduction strategies to execute further business expansion and growth during a forecast period.



FPNV Positioning Matrix:

The FPNV Positioning Matrix evaluates and categorizes the vendors in the Wood-Fiber Gypsum Board Market based on Business Strategy (Business Growth, Industry Coverage, Financial Viability, and Channel Support) and Product Satisfaction (Value for Money, Ease of Use, Product Features, and Customer Support) that aids businesses in better decision making and understanding the competitive landscape.



Market Share Analysis:

The Market Share Analysis offers the analysis of vendors considering their contribution to the overall market. It provides the idea of its revenue generation into the overall market compared to other vendors in the space. It provides insights into how vendors are performing in terms of revenue generation and customer base compared to others. Knowing market share offers an idea of the size and competitiveness of the vendors for the base year. It reveals the market characteristics in terms of accumulation, fragmentation, dominance, and amalgamation traits.



Company Usability Profiles:

The report profoundly explores the recent significant developments by the leading vendors and innovation profiles in the Global Wood-Fiber Gypsum Board Market, including Aytas Gypsum A.S., Beijing New Building Material (Group) Co., Ltd., BGC (Australia) PTY Ltd, BP Ceiling Products, China National Building Material Company Limited (CNBM), CHIYODA UTE CO.,LTD., Everest Industries Limited, Georgia-Pacific LLC, Gypsemna Company LLC, IB Roof Systems, Inc., Jason Plasterboard (Jiaxing) Co. Ltd, KCC CORPORATION, Knauf Gips KG, Maimoon Traders, MMM ERBA Makina A.S., National Gypsum Company, Nichiha USA, Inc., Saint-Gobain Gyproc, shandong Heng Shenglong Building Material Co,.Ltd., TechnoSonus, USG Corporation, VANS Gypsum, and Yoshino Gypsum Co.,Ltd.



The report provides insights on the following pointers:

1. Market Penetration: Provides comprehensive information on the market offered by the key players

2. Market Development: Provides in-depth information about lucrative emerging markets and analyze penetration across mature segments of the markets

3. Market Diversification: Provides detailed information about new product launches, untapped geographies, recent developments, and investments

4. Competitive Assessment & Intelligence: Provides an exhaustive assessment of market shares, strategies, products, certification, regulatory approvals, patent landscape, and manufacturing capabilities of the leading players

5. Product Development & Innovation: Provides intelligent insights on future technologies, R&D activities, and breakthrough product developments



The report answers questions such as:

1. What is the market size and forecast of the Global Wood-Fiber Gypsum Board Market?

2. What are the inhibiting factors and impact of COVID-19 shaping the Global Wood-Fiber Gypsum Board Market during the forecast period?

3. Which are the products/segments/applications/areas to invest in over the forecast period in the Global Wood-Fiber Gypsum Board Market?

4. What is the competitive strategic window for opportunities in the Global Wood-Fiber Gypsum Board Market?

5. What are the technology trends and regulatory frameworks in the Global Wood-Fiber Gypsum Board Market?

6. What is the market share of the leading vendors in the Global Wood-Fiber Gypsum Board Market?

7. What modes and strategic moves are considered suitable for entering the Global Wood-Fiber Gypsum Board Market?

Key Topics Covered:



1. Preface



2. Research Methodology



3. Executive Summary



4. Market Overview



5. Market Insights

5.1. Market Dynamics

5.1.1. Drivers

5.1.1.1. Rising use of wood fiber gypsum for construction sector

5.1.1.2. Easy to install, fire resistance, along with high durability, economy and versatility

5.1.1.3. Useful in protection of steel structures and raised floor constructions

5.1.2. Restraints

5.1.2.1. Difficulty in curved surface applications

5.1.3. Opportunities

5.1.3.1. Continuous developments in constructions sectors

5.1.3.2. Increasing reinforcements of wood fiber gypsum in the form glass or sisal

5.1.4. Challenges

5.1.4.1. Low durability when subject to damage from impact or abrasion

5.2. Cumulative Impact of COVID-19



6. Wood-Fiber Gypsum Board Market, by Product

6.1. Introduction

6.2. 12-16 mm

6.3. 6-10 mm

6.4. Above 16 mm

6.5. Below 6 mm



7. Wood-Fiber Gypsum Board Market, by Material

7.1. Introduction

7.2. Hardwood

7.3. Softwood



8. Wood-Fiber Gypsum Board Market, by Application

8.1. Introduction

8.2. Roofing

8.3. Walls

8.4. Furniture

8.5. Soundproofing and Sound Deadening

8.6. Vapor Barrier and Insulation



9. Americas Wood-Fiber Gypsum Board Market

9.1. Introduction

9.2. Argentina

9.3. Brazil

9.4. Canada

9.5. Mexico

9.6. United States



10. Asia-Pacific Wood-Fiber Gypsum Board Market

10.1. Introduction

10.2. Australia

10.3. China

10.4. India

10.5. Indonesia

10.6. Japan

10.7. Malaysia

10.8. Philippines

10.9. Singapore

10.10. South Korea

10.11. Taiwan

10.12. Thailand



11. Europe, Middle East & Africa Wood-Fiber Gypsum Board Market

11.1. Introduction

11.2. France

11.3. Germany

11.4. Italy

11.5. Netherlands

11.6. Qatar

11.7. Russia

11.8. Saudi Arabia

11.9. South Africa

11.10. Spain

11.11. United Arab Emirates

11.12. United Kingdom



12. Competitive Landscape

12.1. FPNV Positioning Matrix

12.1.1. Quadrants

12.1.2. Business Strategy

12.1.3. Product Satisfaction

12.2. Market Ranking Analysis

12.3. Market Share Analysis, By Key Player

12.4. Competitive Scenario

12.4.1. Merger & Acquisition

12.4.2. Agreement, Collaboration, & Partnership

12.4.3. New Product Launch & Enhancement

12.4.4. Investment & Funding

12.4.5. Award, Recognition, & Expansion



13. Company Usability Profiles

13.1. Aytas Gypsum A.S.

13.2. Beijing New Building Material (Group) Co., Ltd.

13.3. BGC (Australia) PTY Ltd

13.4. BP Ceiling Products

13.5. China National Building Material Company Limited (CNBM)

13.6. CHIYODA UTE CO.,LTD.

13.7. Everest Industries Limited

13.8. Georgia-Pacific LLC

13.9. Gypsemna Company LLC

13.10. IB Roof Systems, Inc.

13.11. Jason Plasterboard (Jiaxing) Co. Ltd

13.12. KCC CORPORATION

13.13. Knauf Gips KG

13.14. Maimoon Traders

13.15. MMM ERBA Makina A.S.

13.16. National Gypsum Company

13.17. Nichiha USA, Inc.

13.18. Saint-Gobain Gyproc

13.19. shandong Heng Shenglong Building Material Co,.Ltd.

13.20. TechnoSonus

13.21. USG Corporation

13.22. VANS Gypsum

13.23. Yoshino Gypsum Co.,Ltd



14. Appendix



For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/3fxngg

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[email protected]



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NEW YORK and WILMINGTON, Del, March 3, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- TransPerfect, the world's largest provider of language and technology solutions for global business, today announced that the Supreme Court of Delaware issued an order moving the matter TransPerfect Global Inc. v. Pincus from a three-justice appellate panel to the full Court to be considered en banc.

The order confirms that at least one of the Justices of the Delaware Supreme Court has recognized the merit of TransPerfect's argument that the former custodian Robert Pincus and his law firm Skadden Arps took advantage of the Chancery Court's lack of oversight and overbilled the company many millions of dollars.

TransPerfect argued, among other things, that retired Chancellor Bouchard erred by awarding vast fees to his former employer Skadden for work performed in making many unnecessary and losing motions (including three unsuccessful contempt motions against the company). It also objected to Bouchard's award of what amounted to "fees on fees" being charged by Pincus and Skadden despite his fiduciary duty to the company.

Unrelated to alleged billing fraud, TransPerfect also argues that Skadden alum Chancellor Bouchard issued an overly broad Discharge Order that unconstitutionally expanded the Securities Purchase Agreement drafted by Pincus and Skadden to create far more benefits for them than they negotiated. Bouchard's overreaching (which was encouraged and drafted by his former employer, Skadden) even went so far as to impose obligations and restrictions on non-parties for the benefit of Pincus and Skadden.

"TransPerfect has done nothing but succeed for our clients, and create thousands of jobsand for this, we've endured nearly 10 years and $50 million of pillaging at the hands of the Delaware Chancery Court and its appointees. It's time for the Delaware Supreme Court to step in, stop what we consider to be fraudulent billing practices by Robert Pincus and Skadden Arps, limit the Chancery's power to unconstitutionally rewrite contracts, and put this matter to rest," stated Phil Shawe, TransPerfect President and CEO.

Under the rules of the Delaware Supreme Court, the case will be presented to the full five-member panel en banc because the original three-member panel could not reach a unanimous decision. While the split decision itself was a significant victory for TransPerfect, concerns exist about whether a fair appeal can be heard in front of the five-panel bench because Chief Justice CJ Seitz has twice disqualified himself on appeals involving the company. His conflict of interest now seems more acute because this appeal will likely affect the viability of a pending case between TransPerfect and Chief Justice Seitz's former law firm Ross, Aronstam & Moritz. Ross Aronstam was sued for malpractice based on a claim that the firm failed to adequately represent TransPerfect (as its appointed attorney) and instead took instruction from Pincus to assert in Chancery Court that it was NOT in TransPerfect's best interest to see the bills it was being court ordered to pay to Skadden Arps.

Equally concerning is the fact that the Delaware Supreme Court has indicated it will consider and decide the appeal without the benefit of oral argument notwithstanding the clear dissension among the three justices of the original appellate panela part of the decision TransPerfect opposes.

TransPerfect attorney Martin Russo stated, "I am pleased to know that at least one Justice of the Delaware Supreme Court is giving serious scrutiny to this case of judicial overreach and outrageous billing, but I am also very surprised that after a split decision the Court will not allow oral argument from the parties."

About TransPerfect

TransPerfect is the world's largest provider of language and technology solutions for global business. From offices in over 100 cities on six continents, TransPerfect offers a full range of services in 170+ languages to clients worldwide. More than 6,000 global organizations employ TransPerfect's GlobalLink technology to simplify management of multilingual content. With an unparalleled commitment to quality and client service, TransPerfect is fully ISO 9001 and ISO 17100 certified. TransPerfect has global headquarters in New York, with regional headquarters in London and Hong Kong. For more information, please visit our website at www.transperfect.com.

SOURCE TransPerfect
German exports to China rise 13.7 pct in January: Destatis

Xinhua) 20:24, March 04, 2022

BERLIN, March 4 (Xinhua) -- Germany's exports to China rose by 13.7 percent month-on-month to 8.8 billion euros (9.7 billion U.S. dollars) in January, according to provisional data published by the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) on Friday.

Including imported goods worth 13.1 billion euros in January, China remained Germany's biggest foreign trade partner, according to Destatis.

Germany's total exports declined by 2.8 percent to 116.9 billion euros in January, while imports fell by 4.2 percent month-on-month to 107.5 billion euros, according to Destatis.

Compared to February 2020, the month before Germany entered its first COVID-19 lockdown, imports and exports recovered and were up 17.8 percent and 4.0 percent, respectively.

The United States remained the largest customer market for German exports, as goods worth 10.9 billion euros were exported to the country in January, an increase of 3 percent compared to the previous month.

German exports to Russia, which had not yet been constrained by the Ukraine conflict in January, rose 14.4 percent from December 2021 and reached 2.6 billion euros.

Other countries from the European Union (EU) imported German goods worth 61.4 billion euros in January, 9.6 percent more than in the previous month. (1 euro = 1.10 U.S. dollars)

(Web editor: Hongyu, Bianji)
MOST REJECT NATO MEMBERSHIP BAN AS PRICE OF ENDING THE WAR

LONDON, March 4, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Three quarters of Ukrainians are willing to take up arms against Russian troops and only just over one in ten would leave the country if they could, according to a survey conducted in the country for Lord Ashcroft Polls. However, two thirds say that Ukrainians and ethnic Russians have more that unites than divides them.

The poll of 1,040 Ukrainians, conducted by telephone between 1 and 3 March, also finds big majorities against accepting a ban on NATO membership, NATO troop reductions in countries bordering Russia, and official recognition of Crimea as part of Russia as the price for ending the war. The findings include:

68% said they thought the sanctions imposed on Russia would be effective in bringing an end to the war. However, only 23% said NATO was doing enough to help Ukraine , while 46% said the same for the EU, 44% for the US, and 8% for China . A majority (53%) said the UK was doing enough.

in bringing an end to the war. However, only 23% said NATO was doing enough to help , while 46% said the same for the EU, 44% for the US, and 8% for . A majority (53%) said the UK was doing enough. 86% said they wanted Ukraine to join NATO , and 6 in 10 said they would feel safer if they knew Ukraine had nuclear weapons.

, and 6 in 10 said they would feel safer if they knew had nuclear weapons. 67% said they would be willing to take up arms to fight against Russian troops, and a further 7% said they were already doing so. Only 11% (and only 5% of those aged 65 or over) said they would leave Ukraine tomorrow if they could safely do so.

to fight against Russian troops, and a further 7% said they were already doing so. Only 11% (and only 5% of those aged 65 or over) said they would leave tomorrow if they could safely do so. Most Ukrainians (56%) said they expected the conflict to be over by the end of March . Fewer than one in ten (9%) said they thought it would last longer than six months.

. Fewer than one in ten (9%) said they thought it would last longer than six months. 69% said a ban on Ukrainian membership of NATO would be an unacceptable condition for ending the war; 61% said NATO scaling back troops and weapons in countries bordering Russia would be unacceptable. Even more  78%  said official recognition of Crimea as part of Russia would be unacceptable even if it guaranteed an end to the war.

for ending the war; 61% said NATO scaling back troops and weapons in countries bordering would be unacceptable. Even more  78%  said official recognition of Crimea as part of would be unacceptable even if it guaranteed an end to the war. 65% agreed that "despite our differences, there is more that unites ethnic Russians living in Ukraine and Ukrainians than divides us."

and Ukrainians than divides us." 93% said they considered Ukraine's future to be closer to Europe than to Russia , including 78% of those of Russian ethnicity, and 84% of those in the east of the country closest to the Russian border.

In his commentary on the poll results, Lord Ashcroft writes:

"We have all seen the extraordinary bravery and spirit with which the people of Ukraine have responded to Putin's brutal invasion. The results of a survey which, somewhat to my astonishment, a research firm in Kyiv was able to conduct for Lord Ashcroft Polls in the past few days only add to my admiration. If you think an opinion survey is a rather trivial distraction given the magnitude of events that are unfolding, let me say that our partners in Kyiv were pleased to have the chance to show the world something of what Ukrainians are thinking and feeling as they defend their country."

The full poll results are available at LordAshcroftPolls.com.

LORD ASHCROFT KCMG PC is an international businessman, philanthropist, author and pollster. He is a former treasurer and deputy chairman of the UK Conservative Party, and honorary chairman and a former treasurer of the International Democratic Union. Lord Ashcroft has been polling since 2005, both in the UK and internationally, winning a reputation for objective and impartial research and analysis.

LordAshcroftPolls.com

LordAshcroft.com

Twitter/Facebook: @LordAshcroft

SOURCE Lord Ashcroft Polls
Global competitiveness and key competitor percentage market shares

Market presence across multiple geographies - Strong/Active/Niche/Trivial

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Edition: 18; Released: February 2022

Executive Pool: 9106

Companies: 85 - Players covered include AdvanSource Biomaterials Corp.; Allvivo Vascular, Inc.; Armoloy of Connecticut, Inc.; AST Products, Inc.; Biocoat, Inc.; Carmeda AB; Covalon Technologies Ltd.; Hemoteq AG; Hydromer, Inc.; Materion Corporation; N2 Biomedical; N8 Medical, Inc.; Precision Coating Co., Inc.; Royal DSM; Specialty Coating Systems, Inc.; SurModics, Inc. and Others.

Coverage: All major geographies and key segments

Segments: Type (Anti-Microbial, Drug-Eluting, Hydrophilic, Other Types); Application (Cardiovascular, General Surgery, Orthopedic, Neurology, Dentistry, Gynecology, Other Applications)

Geographies: World; USA; Canada; Japan; China; Europe; France; Germany; Italy; UK; Spain; Russia; Rest of Europe; Asia-Pacific; Australia; India; South Korea; Rest of Asia-Pacific; Latin America; Argentina; Brazil; Mexico; Rest of Latin America; Middle East; Iran; Israel; Saudi Arabia; UAE; Rest of Middle East; Africa.

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ABSTRACT-

Global Coatings for Medical Devices Market to Reach US$15.6 Billion by the Year 2026

Medical device coatings are intended to protect medical devices as well as improve device maneuverability and performance. Coatings play an important role in protecting devices from pathogens and microbial factors. Advanced medical device coatings offer enhanced dielectric properties, dry-film lubricity and high thermal stability. Medical devices used in clinical settings are required to work efficiently and safely. Factors like bodily fluids, moisture and water content contaminate life-saving devices, leaving them useless. In addition to supporting various substrates like plastics, metals, glass, silicon, ceramics and rubber, coatings allow medical devices to withstand cleaning and sterilization. These advantages establish medical coatings a perfect solution for a diverse range of devices like syringes, guide wires, hypo tubes, catheters, mandrels, sutures and stents. Growth in the market is being driven by robust demand, technological advances, rising geriatric population and growing prevalence of cardiovascular conditions. The global market is also buoyed by rising focus on quality healthcare services, increasing demand for minimally-invasive surgeries and need for timely diagnosis of medical conditions. While rising disposable incomes across emerging economies and popularity of home healthcare are pushing demand, increasing adoption of reliable life-saving devices in developing economies like Brazil, India and China is likely to fuel uptake of medical coatings.

Amid the COVID-19 crisis, the global market for Coatings for Medical Devices estimated at US$11.3 Billion in the year 2022, is projected to reach a revised size of US$15.6 Billion by 2026, growing at a CAGR of 8% over the analysis period. Anti-Microbial, one of the segments analyzed in the report, is projected to grow at a 8.5% CAGR to reach US$5.9 Billion by the end of the analysis period. After a thorough analysis of the business implications of the pandemic and its induced economic crisis, growth in the Drug-Eluting segment is readjusted to a revised 7% CAGR for the next 7-year period. This segment currently accounts for a 28.3% share of the global Coatings for Medical Devices market. The introduction of drug-eluting stents (DES) contributed to transforming the medical field of interventional cardiology over the past decade. The DESs coated with a thin layer of the drug eluting material significantly decrease stent restenosis, and this prevents vessel revascularization in most cases.

The U.S. Market is Estimated at $4.5 Billion in 2022, While China is Forecast to Reach $1.6 Billion by 2026

The Coatings for Medical Devices market in the U.S. is estimated at US$4.5 Billion in the year 2022. The country currently accounts for a 39.96% share in the global market. China, the world's second largest economy, is forecast to reach an estimated market size of US$1.6 Billion in the year 2026 trailing a CAGR of 10.1% through the analysis period. Among the other noteworthy geographic markets are Japan and Canada, each forecast to grow at 7.3% and 6.8% respectively over the analysis period. Within Europe, Germany is forecast to grow at approximately 7.9% CAGR while Rest of European market (as defined in the study) will reach US$1.2 Billion by the close of the analysis period. The US remains at the forefront of adoption of medical device coatings. The regional market is bolstered by advanced healthcare infrastructure and high spending on medical devices. The medical device coatings market in Asia-Pacific is projected to register the fastest CAGR over the analysis period due to increasing demand for advanced healthcare services and increasing number of hospitals.

Hydrophilic Segment to Reach $2.6 Billion by 2026

Hydrophilic coatings are widely used for medical devices like cardiac pacemakers, introducer sheaths, guide wires and catheters for reducing friction. The segment is slated to gain from numerous benefits of these coatings like low coefficient of friction, enhanced durability, high lubricity, optical clarity as well as ability to survive maintenance procedures including cleaning, sterilization and storage. Devices with hydrophilic surface coatings need to meet FDA biocompatibility standards prior to their use on patients. In the global Hydrophilic segment, USA, Canada, Japan, China and Europe will drive the 8.8% CAGR estimated for this segment. These regional markets accounting for a combined market size of US$1.4 Billion will reach a projected size of US$2.5 Billion by the close of the analysis period. China will remain among the fastest growing in this cluster of regional markets. Led by countries such as Australia, India, and South Korea, the market in Asia-Pacific is forecast to reach US$158 Million by the year 2026, while Latin America will expand at a 10.4% CAGR through the analysis period. More

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Deliveries from the Indiegogo campaign are already underway in the US, and backers will start to receive their orders soon.

SuperBase Pro 2000 is the US-based company's latest power station, which features IoT and GPS hardware, offline UPS functionality, and an intelligent companion app with remote control and green energy tracking features. The power station has built-in industrial grade wheels and an extending handle for maximum portability, and can deliver up to 4,000W of surge power. SuperBase Pro can be recharged to 80% in just one hour, and fully charged in two hours. The power station was demoed at CES 2022 in Las Vegas at Zendure's camping-themed booth.

As part of the company's Spring Sale, SuperBase Pro is currently available on Indiegogo InDemand with limited-time promotional pricing. The sale ends on March 10th, when the price will increase.

Hot on the heels of the SuperBase Pro campaign, Zendure also launched Passport III, a new travel adapter, on Kickstarter. Passport III has proven to be very popular, having surpassed its fundraising goal in the first minute of the campaign. The campaign has raised $350,000 USD so far from over 5,000 backers. There are two weeks left in the campaign.

In addition, Zendure has released teasers hinting at other products coming out this year, including another power station. Very little specific information has been released about the product.

"All I can say is, when it comes to the new power station, we're being very quiet about it right now," said Zendure founder and CEO Bryan Liu.

Zendure is a portable power company with a focus on sustainable energy located in Silicon Valley in the United States and the Guangdong - Hong Kong - Macao Greater Bay Area in China. Since its establishment, Zendure has continuously launched innovative products, made rapid breakthroughs in the core technologies of energy storage and power supplies, and continues to bring pleasant surprises to the user experience. The company recently received a multi-million dollar series-A round of funding from a joint investment from Shanghai GP Capital and YOTRIO group.

Contacts:

Company name: Zendure

Media: Tom Haflinger

[email protected]

Phone: +1 800 219 0960

SOURCE Zendure
The event has become an annual showcase for the future of life science technologies as well as the latest in market intelligence. Over 150 presenting medtech startup companies and over 100 investors will convene at the Monarch Beach Resort in Dana Point, CA. Having reached capacity the event is extending virtual badges for attendance.

Altoida's validated AI-driven platform accelerates and improves drug development, research, and care for neurological diseases and brain health using multi-modal data captured with a standard smartphone or tablet.

By completing a 10-minute series of augmented reality (AR) and digital motor activities that simulate complex activities of daily living, Altoida's platform develops sensitive digital biomarkers to measure neurocognitive function and aid in the early and accurate diagnosis of neurological diseases, like Alzheimer's. The company received FDA Breakthrough Device Designation in July 2021.

"The mission of our summit is to connect the hottest innovators with funding sources and strategic partners, so we can get life-changing technologies to market faster" shared Scott Pantel, CEO and Founder of LSI. " Allowing clinicians to predict neurodegenerative disorders before onset through precision neurology is what makes Altoida a category leader. This is one of the few companies that can bring predictive health through artificial intelligence to the bedside, something that investors and strategics have become more interested in."

In February 2022, Altoida announced a multi-year strategic partnership with GN Group, a global leader in intelligent audio solutions and manufacturer of ReSound hearing aids. Together, Altoida and GN will research and develop new digital biomarkers for identifying Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) and for providing timely and accurate health insights to at-risk individuals.

Altoida also announced a partnership with Click Therapeutics, through which Altoida's AI-driven platform and validated digital biomarkers for measuring neurocognitive function will be applied to Click's digital therapeutics research to collect more sensitive measures of cognition and to accelerate insights into patterns of disease.

"As Altoida entered its commercial phase in 2021, the Emerging MedTech Summit was a catalyst to engage with industry-defining startups, investors, and thought leaders," said Travis Bond, CEO of Altoida. "The event is unrivaled in bringing together key stakeholders from every segment in our industry. We are thrilled to be selected as a presenting company and to share our mission, vision, and progress at what has rapidly become one of the most important forums for MedTech innovation globally."

About Altoida, Inc.

Altoida, Inc is creating a new gold standard in brain health with Precision Neurology. Our innovative approach combines novel digital biomarkers (dBM) with immersive augmented reality (AR) and powerful artificial intelligence (AI). The result is our validated device and platform built on more than twenty years of cutting-edge scientific research. Our products are backed by peer-reviewed publications and multinational clinical trials, and are built by our expert team of scientists, clinicians and engineers. Altoida, Inc. is funded by M-Ventures, Eisai Innovation, Hikma Ventures, GreySky Venture Partners, FYRFLY, Alpana Ventures and VI Partners. For more on Altoida, please visit www.altoida.com and connect with us on LinkedIn and Twitter.

About LSI USA '22 Emerging Medtech Summit

Held annually in Southern California, the Emerging Medtech Summit brings together the industry's most innovative startups, active investors, and strategic buyers so they can connect, collaborate and build the future of healthcare. Learn more at https://www.lifesciencemarketresearch.com/medtech-summit-2022 .

About Life Science Intelligence (LSI)

LSI is a market intelligence & consulting company focused on covering the global medtech and healthtech markets. We help healthcare executives make more informed strategic decisions by better understanding market dynamics, trends, opportunities, and the competitive landscape. https://www.lifesciencemarketresearch.com

SOURCE Life Science Intelligence
Phase 2 study of PVX108 to commence in United States and Australia

and Dr Robert A. Wood , professor of pediatrics at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine , joins Scientific Advisory Board

MELBOURNE, Australia, March 4, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Aravax, a clinical stage biotechnology company focused on developing the first therapy for peanut allergy which is designed to be safe, effective and convenient, today announces that it has received a green light for its Investigational New Drug (IND) application from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

PVX108 is a next-generation, allergen-specific immunotherapy using peptides that represent critical fragments of peanut proteins to precisely target the T cells driving peanut allergy. Administered once per month, therapy is designed to precisely induce tolerance to peanut protein without the safety concerns constraining the use of the only registered therapy which uses natural extracts from peanuts. The presence of whole peanut allergens in those extracts exposes patients to significant risks of anaphylaxis (Chu et al. The Lancet 2019).

The IND will allow Aravax to progress the Phase 2 clinical trial program into the U.S. and expand its global operations.

"We are excited to share that FDA has allowed Aravax to commence a Phase 2 efficacy study to identify the optimal dose of PVX108 in children with peanut allergy in the United States. This is a therapeutic area greatly underserved, and we believe our approach has significant advantages over available treatments with its precise mechanism of action and safety profile already proven in Phase 1 clinical trials." said Aravax CEO, Dr Pascal Hickey.

Previously, a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled Phase 1 trial in 66 peanut-allergic adults (AVX-001) showed no evidence of adverse events of clinical concern. Additionally, ex vivo studies providing a surrogate measure of safety (basophil activation) in 185 peanut-allergic blood donors confirmed a lack of basophil reactivity to PVX108 in contrast to peanut extract. These data demonstrate that PVX108 has a highly favourable safety profile for treatment of peanut allergic patients, including those with severe allergy.

Aravax's first patent covering the lead composition PVX108 has also been granted in the U.S., EU and other jurisdictions. Additional patent families are also progressing well in these jurisdictions.

Dr Robert A. Wood appointed to Scientific Advisory Board

Internationally recognized expert in food allergy, Dr Robert A Wood, has joined Aravax's Scientific Advisory Board (SAB). Dr. Wood is a professor of pediatrics at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and a professor of international health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. An internationally recognized expert in food allergy and childhood asthma, Dr. Wood is chief of the Eudowood Division of Allergy and Immunology in the Johns Hopkins Children's Center.

He has published more than 300 manuscripts in scientific journals, including The New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, Pediatrics, and the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, as well as three books and numerous book chapters.

"The exciting thing about PVX108 is that it has the potential to introduce a step-change in the treatment of peanut allergy by overcoming many of the problems with first-generation therapies which require long term treatment and carry significant risks," said Dr Wood.

Dr Wood also serves as director and attending physician of the Pediatric Allergy Clinics at The Johns Hopkins Hospital and as director of the Pediatric Allergy Consultation Service. He has served as associate editor of the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, deputy editor of the journal Pediatric Allergy and Immunology, and associate editor of the Annals of Allergy, Asthma, and Immunology. He has served on the board of directors of the American Board of Allergy and Immunology and the American Academy of Allergy Asthma and Immunology and is a past president of the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology.

About Aravax

Aravax is a clinical stage biotechnology company focused on revolutionising the treatment of food allergies with next-generation specific immunotherapies which are safe, effective and convenient. Aravax applies proprietary technology and know-how to design highly targeted pharmacotherapies which reset the immune system to tolerate a specific allergen without evoking allergic reactions during treatment. The lead product, PVX108, is being developed for the treatment of peanut allergy. Aravax is headquartered in Melbourne, Australia.

For more information visit: www.aravax.com.au

SOURCE Aravax Pty Ltd
EXTON, Pa., March 4, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- AXA XL's Design Professional insurance business has promoted three to newly created Zonal Manager roles, aligning its underwriting teams more closely AXA XL's US regional operating model. The promotions include the appointments of Bob McLucas to East Zone Manager, Keilan King to West Zone Manager, and Jeff Statham as Central Zone Manager.

According to Nicole Mangino, Head of Underwriting for Design Professional: "Our Design Professional team has a long history of working closely with brokers and design service clients to provide insurance and loss prevention education that helps clients manage their professional risks. Now, in closely aligning with our Zonal teams, we're getting even closer to our broker partners and insureds, while at the same time, giving them more convenient access to AXA XL's whole team of multi-line insurance and risk management resources in the region."

Ms. Mangino added, "From work shortages to supply chain disruptions to cyber risks concerns, design firms face increasing operational challenges and risks. With the support of our zonal underwriting, claims and risk management teams within Design Professional, as well as their experience in the insurance industry and underwriting experience, Bob, Keilan and Jeff are well equipped, and eager, to help our brokers and design firms address them. "

Bob McLucas brings more than 25 years of underwriting experience to his role, starting with his first position with AXA XL in business development with AXA XL's Environmental business. In 2008, Mr. McLucas joined the Design Professional underwriting team and has held various positions of increasing responsibility within the team during his tenure. As East Zone Manager, Mr. McLucas assumes underwriting management responsibility for design firms up and down the East coast.

Keilan King started her underwriting career with AXA XL in 2014 with the E&S Casualty underwriting team. In 2021, Ms. King joined Design Professional bringing with her strong established broker relationships that will support expanding the A/E book of business. Based in Denver, and in her new role as West Zone Manager, Ms. King will work with the zonal underwriting team to address the insurance needs of our brokers and design firms throughout the Western US.

Jeff Statham has over 25 years in the insurance industry, joining AXA XL as a senior claims consultant in the Marine claims team in 2012. He previously held various positions at CHUBB/ACE and AIG within claims and finance teams. Mr. Statham transitioned to design professional as an underwriting manager in 2014, supporting key brokers and clients. Mr. Statham will manage the underwriting team in the Mid-West as well as working with our broker partners and large clients in his role as the Central Zone Manager.

With more than 50 years of experience, the AXA XL Design Professional team serves architects, engineers, and other design service professionals by providing flexible, tailored insurance coverage solutions that protect design firms.

Follow AXA XL on Twitter and on LinkedIn.

ABOUT AXA XL

AXA XL, the property & casualty and specialty risk division of AXA, provides insurance and risk management products and services for mid-sized companies through to large multinationals, and reinsurance solutions to insurance companies globally. We partner with those who move the world forward. To learn more, visit www.axaxl.com

ABOUT AXA XL INSURANCE

AXA XL Insurance offers property, casualty, professional, financial lines and specialty insurance solutions to mid-sized companies through to large multinationals globally. We partner with those who move the world forward. To learn more, visit www.axaxl.com

SOURCE AXA XL
"The pandemic impacted nearly every aspect of our lives, including how we search for our next hotel stay," said Mel Dohmen, senior brand manager at Hotels.com. "The amenities we love and are looking for in 2022 reflect everything we've felt and experienced over the past few years. From hotels that helped us relax and take the edge off to those that complemented new hobbies like cooking and skiing, there's a lot to learn about where travelers are going this year based on how they search for the perfect hotel stay."

Key findings from the 2022 Hotels.com Amenity Report include:

WHAT'S NEW

Stressed much? Searches for bathtubs surge

Call it a cry for help or just good old-fashioned self-care, but bathtubs were the most-searched hotel amenity during the peak of the pandemic. Searches so far this year are up 25% compared with 2019 and interest in spas have grown, too (+35%).

Sit back and soak at these top-rated hotels:

New hobby alert: We ski now

The pandemic forced everyone to get in touch with their outdoorsy side, so it's not all that surprising that searches for ski-in/ski-out hotels are at peak levels, up 50% since 2019. Interest in properties with ski shuttles and storage are also up 20%.

Apres ski all day at these top properties:

Cooking at home and the hotel

From baking bread to trying out that crazy TikTok pasta, kitchens were all the craze as the second most sought-after amenity in 2021. The trend is continuing with kitchen searches increasing 15% year-over-year.

Get cooking on that next trip at these hotels:

WHAT'S OUT

No Wi-Fi, no problem

Zoom meetings and doom scrolling aren't on the itinerary this year as searches for properties with free Wi-Fi are plummeting, down 50% since pre-pandemic.

Keep it IRL at these off-the-grid hotels:

We have no business here

Travelers are tired of work from home and turns out they really don't want to work from anywhere else, either. Searches for properties with business facilities are down 40% compared with 2019.

Properties with amenities that prioritize time off the clock:

WHAT'S TRENDING NOW

Dude, where's my car

Don't retire that road trip playlist just yet. Searches for properties with free parking are up 70% this year as travelers continue to favor destinations within driving distance.

Properties where the parking spot is guaranteed (and free):

For those who can't stand another 10-hour drive, you aren't alone. Searches for properties with free airport transfers are up a whopping 105% so far this year.

We're **finally** taking a family vacation

Families have desperately missed out on quality vacation time together and it shows. Searches for properties with cribs (+65%), childcare (+45%) and connecting rooms (+20%) have increased double digits.

Parents love these kid-friendly properties:

And let's not forget the fur children, too. Interest in pet-friendly stays is up 35% in 2022.

Working out while on vacation

Working out really wasn't a top priority during the pandemic. Searches for gyms were down 30% or more last year compared with 2019. However, in 2022 travelers are getting back into their wellness routine and year-over-year searches for gyms have increased 65%.

Hotels with top-notch gyms and wellness offerings:

Breakfast is back

Free breakfast has been the top amenity since pretty much the beginning of time. But the pandemic knocked this fan favorite down a few pegs as hotels traded hot buffets for pre-packaged grab-and-go items. This year, breakfast is back and searches are up 75%.

Wake up to waffle makers and breakfast buffets at these hotels:

HOW YOUR STATE STAYS: SPRING BREAK EDITION

Ahead of spring break, Hotels.com also explored top-searched travel destinations and amenities to see how each of the 50 states and D.C. find the perfect stay. Top regional trends include:

Star Ratings: Northeasterners prefer 4-star properties with free parking. While Southerners are okay with 2.5-star stays, so long as they come with free breakfast.

Northeasterners prefer 4-star properties with free parking. While Southerners are okay with 2.5-star stays, so long as they come with free breakfast. Amenities: Arizonans and Californians look for pet-friendly properties, while travelers in Maryland , Louisiana and Ohio just want to soak in a bathtub.

Arizonans and Californians look for pet-friendly properties, while travelers in , and just want to soak in a bathtub. Destinations: Midwesterners prefer midsize cities like Omaha and Oklahoma City to metropolitan areas. And residents in Southwest states ( Arizona , Nevada ) are most likely to choose California .

Notes to Editors

*Hotels.com amenity report compared internal search data on US sites and mobile app from January 1  February 7, 2022 with the same time period in 2019, 2020 and 2021.

About Hotels.com  (or Hotels.com  )

Hotels.com is the most rewarding way to book a place to stay. We really love travel, and we know you do too. That's why we make it really easy to book with us. With hundreds of thousands of places to stay around the world and 90 local websites in 41 languages, Hotels.com has it all. So, whether you're looking for value in Vegas, treehouses in Thailand or villas with views, it's all just a click away. And with our "Reward-winning" loyalty program you earn free*** nights while you sleepwhat could be better? Booking just got smarter too. With over 25 million real guest reviews and an app so easy to use that it's been downloaded 70 million times, you can be sure to find the perfect place for you.

 2022 Hotels.com, LP. All rights reserved. Hotels.com and the Hotels.com logo are trademarks of Hotels.com, LP. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners. CST #2083949-50

***Exclusions apply. Reward night worth the average price of the previous 10. Taxes/fees payable on each Reward Night redeemed. See T&Cs https://www.hotels.com/customer_care/terms_conditions.html

CONTACT: Mel Dohmen, [email protected]

SOURCE Hotels.com
TUCSON, Ariz., March 4, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- BeachFleischman PLLC, Arizona's largest locally owned public accounting firm, and Teran Rojas & Associates, a Mexico-based business services & advisory firm, announce the formation of a joint venture to provide comprehensive inbound and outbound Mexico/U.S. cross-border business services. The joint venture is part of the strategic plans of both firms to expand internationally.

The joint venture deepens the existing collaboration between the two firms and combines the strengths of both to help clients minimize global taxes, maximize income tax treaty benefits, achieve compliance, preserve wealth, mitigate risk, scale growth, and enhance profitability. The collaboration provides integrated service options for international businesses that intend to, or currently:

Export

Manufacture or distribute products (or services) cross-border

Have employees or representatives conducting business cross-border

Own real estate in the U.S. and/or Mexico

Have an investment in the U.S. and/or Mexico

Gabriela Rojas, CEO of Teran Rojas & Associates shared "Expressing our collaboration with BeachFleischman is not just a phrase; it is the result of a strategic vision with the common objective of providing our clients with a competitive advantage. We offer integrated solutions based on knowledge and experience with cross-border operations. This union of talents that make up our firms gives our clients the reliability and confidence that their businesses are served by certified accountants, advisors, and specialists in both countries."

"We're excited to be joining forces with Teran Rojas & Associates. Our firms share a similar philosophy, values, and vision. We also recognize that combining our market reach and professional business services provides a one-stop solution critical to the success and longevity of large, mid-market, and emerging organizations. This joint venture will strengthen our firm's capabilities to be fully immersed in our communities and in the industry sectors we serve." said Fernando Barraza, CPA, principal, and international tax practice leader for BeachFleischman.

Eric Majchrzak, BeachFleischman's CEO, said, "We understand the speed of change in our world and profession, and the joint venture with Teran Rojas is the next step in our business evolution. Anticipating and meeting the changing needs of our clients, employees and community remain our primary objective. We honored to collaborate with Teran Rojas & Associates."

BeachFleischman serves clients doing business domestically and internationally, with an emphasis on Mexico and other Latin American countries. The firm specializes in various industry-related practice areas, including cannabis, construction, financial & professional, healthcare, hospitality, real estate, manufacturing, nonprofit, and technology companies.

About BeachFleischman PLLC: BeachFleischman PLLC is Arizona's largest locally owned CPA firm and a Top 200 largest CPA firm in the United States. The firm has over 180 client service and administrative professionals and provides advisory, accounting, assurance, and tax services to businesses (U.S. and foreign-based), organizations, and individuals. Offices are in Phoenix and Tucson, AZ. Visit www.beachfleischman.com for more information.

About Teran Rojas & Associates: Teran Rojas & Associates is an interdisciplinary team of accounting advisors and legal professionals in Mexico. From advisory services, solving operational needs, and management consulting, the firm assists in helping business owners find the right solutions tailored to their needs. Offices are in Puerto Vallarta, Jal., Hermosillo, Son., Ciudad de Mexico, Zihuatanejo, Gro., and Bahia de Banderas Nayarit. Visit www.teranrojas.com to learn more.

Media Contact:

Heather Murray, Director of Marketing

BeachFleischman PLLC

[email protected]

SOURCE BeachFleischman PLLC
DENVER, March 4, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Bear Peak Power ("Bear Peak"), a developer of distributed generation and utility-scale and storage projects, announced today that it has acquired Grid Projects Co. ("Grid Projects"). The acquisition provides Bear Peak with a more diverse development portfolio, including access to one of the most attractive solar markets in the country. Bear Peak Power will leverage Grid Projects' pipeline of C&I projects in the Massachusetts SMART program and 18 Megawatts of existing projects under development.

In addition to expanding its reach, the acquisition also adds Grid Projects' owner Michael Marcotte to the Bear Peak Power executive team as Managing Partner. A native of Colorado, Michael graduated from the University of Colorado where he established his passion for the environment. He began his career with Fortune 500 companies, Oracle and GlaxoSmithKline, before turning his focus to solar energy with NextGrid and Grid Projects Co., which he founded.

"Michael brings a specialized focus that truly complements Bear Peak's strategy and existing pipeline," says Ryan Scott, Bear Peak's Co-Founder. "We're pleased to join forces with Grid Projects Co. and look forward to growing Bear Peak's business together."

"The Bear Peak Power team has a unique outlook and powerful pipeline of projects that differentiates them from other industry players," says Marcotte. "I'm excited to be joining a company that has such an exciting perspective in the renewable energy industry."

Bear Peak Power specializes in all aspects of the solar and energy development process, including asset valuation, title research, land acquisition, engineering, environmental studies, permitting, operations, project management, financial analysis, tax treatment and divestiture strategies. The partners have over 40 years of combined energy industry experience and have successfully developed over 85 Megawatts in five different states and have 500+ Megawatts under development.

SOURCE Bear Peak Power
"Consistent with our history of aviation technology leadership in Africa, we are pleased to sign this MoU with our longstanding partner Boeing, which will make us join select group of launch customer airlines for the fleet. In our vision 2035, we are planning to expand our Cargo and Logistics business to be one of the largest global multimodal logistics provider in all continents. To this effect we are increasing our dedicated freighter fleet with the latest technology, fuel efficient and environment-friendly airplanes of the 21st century. We have also started the construction of the largest E-commerce Hub Terminal in Africa," said Ethiopian Airlines' Group CEO Tewolde Gebremariam. "The new 777-8 Freighters will be instrumental in this long journey of growth agenda. Today, our air cargo services cover more than 120 international destinations around the world with both belly-hold capacity and dedicated freighter services."

Boeing launched the new 777-8 Freighter in January and has already booked 34 firm orders for the model, which features the advanced technology from the new 777X family and proven performance of the market-leading 777 Freighter. With payload capacity nearly identical to the 747-400 Freighter and a 30% improvement in fuel efficiency, emissions and operating costs, the 777-8 Freighter will enable a more sustainable and profitable business for operators.

"Ethiopian Airlines has been at the forefront of Africa's cargo market for decades, growing its fleet of Boeing freighters and connecting the continent to the flow of global commerce," said Ihssane Mounir, senior vice president of Commercial Sales and Marketing. "The intent to purchase the new 777-8 Freighter further underscores the value of our latest airplane and ensures Ethiopian will remain a key player in global cargo, providing it with increased capacity, flexibility and efficiency for the future."

Ethiopian Airlines currently operates nine 777 Freighters, connecting Africa with more than 40 cargo centers throughout Asia, Europe, the Middle East and Americas. The carrier's fleet also includes three 737-800 Boeing Converted Freighters and a combined commercial fleet of more than 80 Boeing jets including 737s, 767s, 787s and 777s.

As a leading global aerospace company, Boeing develops, manufactures and services commercial airplanes, defense products and space systems for customers in more than 150 countries. As a top U.S. exporter, the company leverages the talents of a global supplier base to advance economic opportunity, sustainability and community impact. Boeing's diverse team is committed to innovating for the future and living the company's core values of safety, quality and integrity. Learn more at www.boeing.com.

Contact

Nadine Fanous

Boeing Commercial Airplanes

[email protected]

+971 4-213-4700 (Dubai)

Jessica Kowal

Boeing Media Relations

[email protected]

+1 206-660-6849 (Seattle)

SOURCE Boeing
PHOENIX, March 4, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Catholic Education Arizona is a leading School Tuition Organization (STO) in Arizona. Arizona is one of 27 states that offer taxpayers the opportunity to help change lives through Arizona Tax Credits. Arizona legislation allows individuals and corporations to direct their tax dollars as tuition scholarships to schools and families with demonstrated need.

Nancy Padberg, MBA President and CEO shared, "I am delighted to announce Deb Preach, our Chief Development Officer will become our Chief Operating Officer. Deb manages our 37 Catholic school relationships, ensures parish engagement, manages our Individual Tax Contributor communications, STO relationships, and Day to day operations. We are fortunate to have one of the most knowledgeable and talented STO executives as our colleague and friend."

"It is an honor and a privilege to help families realize their ability to provide the best educational option for their child, regardless of their income! The knowledge of the operational aspects of our organization furthers my ability to lead in additional areas which will contribute to our growth, while maintaining the relationships with our schools and parishes that I have been blessed to build over the past 30 years. I am grateful to Nancy and our Board of Directors for their confidence and trust as I assume this role," shared Deb Preach.

Nancy added, "Please join me in welcoming Jim Pogge, Development Director to our team. Jim's experience, knowledge and commitment to Catholic education and development is exemplary and exactly what we were looking for to grow our Corporate Tax Contributors in the state of Arizona. I am confident that Jim will fill the role with excellence and accomplishment."

"I look forward to sharing Catholic Education Arizona's benefits to business leaders across the Diocese so that any child who desires a Catholic education can truly have access to it. Arizona's tuition tax credits are truly a blessingthis year there is $142 million available to claim," added Jim Pogge.

Individuals who pay Arizona state taxes for 2021 are allowed $1,219 as a Single filer and $2,435 for married filers. The deadline is April 18, 2022. Corporations filing as S or C Corp, LLCs and PLLCs filing as an S Corp, and insurance companies collecting premiums can direct up to 100% of their state tax liability as Low Income and Disabled/Displaced corporate tax credits through Catholic Education Arizona. They partner with companies such as APS, Lumen, Shea Homes, Cigna, Grand Canyon University, Earnhardt Auto Centers and 130 small and medium businesses. Commitment forms due June 30, 2022.

Catholic Education Arizona is one of the largest providers of scholarships to underserved families attending private schools. Last year $18.3 million in tax credit donations were made to assist 45% of Catholic school students in Diocese of Phoenix. Since 1998, over $288 million has been raised and 143,000 scholarships have been awarded. www.ceaz.org

Contact: Debra Preach, Chief Operating Officer

Catholic Education Arizona

[email protected]

(602) 218-6542

SOURCE Catholic Education Arizona
Hong Kong has been taken aback by the 5th onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, and it's spreading fast. Hong Kong is a metropolis that runs under the "one country, two systems" principle, serving as a bridge that connects China with other parts of the world. Hong Kong is special in its own culture and its choice of pandemic prevention protocols, which set complex roadblocks to achieving a "dynamic zero-COVID" outcome. Meanwhile, as proved repeatedly in the Chinese Mainland, eliminating new COVID-19 cases dynamically has been an effective scheme, and a scientific and systematic method for guaranteeing life and health to the greatest extent.

The spread of and response to the outbreak in Hong Kong demonstrate objective differences from that in the Chinese mainland. First, Hong Kong is a densely populated city with relatively small dwelling space. The city thrives on mobility, especially people-to-people exchanges with other parts of the world, making it prone to imported cases and difficult to prevent transmissions. Secondly, debates over Hong Kong's decision between "dynamic zero-COVID" and "co-existence with the virus" have caused a sway in the city's response measures. All these factors led to loopholes and risks in Hong Kong's overall pandemic prevention and control system. These factors, both internal and external, have compromised Hong Kong's ability to implement comprehensive and effective measures.

Hong Kong's fight against the pandemic is special indeed, given the "two systems" context. But the pandemic is threatening the lives and health of every Hong Kong resident, and the Chinese government will not let that continue. In the previous four waves, the Chinese government has answered to Hong Kong's needs and aided it in proper ways. This time, however, the outbreak has been so fierce that Hong Kong has fallen short in medical capacity. People in Hong Kong are faced with severe threats, leading to decisive responses from the Chinese government: experts, medical teams and equipment have been dispatched to support Hong Kong; with resources mobilized from the Chinese mainland, several Fangcang hospitals are also being built. Hong Kong has also cooperated: Under the Basic Law of Hong Kong Administrative Region (HKSAR), the upcoming election for Hong Kong's chief executive was postponed, staff from the Chinese mainland are exempted from licensing requirements, and collaborative mechanisms for joint responses have also been instituted among the HKSAR government, the Chinese central government and other relevant local governments. Such mutual trust, unwavering assistance and concerted efforts under the "one country, two systems" principle represent a swift combat against the new surge.

Whenever Hong Kong is in need, its motherland is there to respond. This is the essence of the "one country, two systems" principle, which has been repeatedly proven since Hong Kong's return to China. Seeing into the past, when the 1997 Asian Financial crisis, the 2008 global financial crisis and the 2019 riots hit, the Chinese government took positive actions in back Hong Kong based on the Constitution and the Basic Law of HKSAR. Such efforts were made out of obligation, good faith and bonds among compatriots, which stand for the very rationale behind the insistence on the "one country, two systems" principle and ensuring Hong Kong's prosperity. Lives matter above all else, and that makes standing up to the pandemic all the more paramount. Hong Kong's battle against COVID-19 will once more become a test for the "one country, two systems" principle, and critical juncture for "patriots governing Hong Kong".

China Mosaic

http://www.china.org.cn/video/node_7230027.htm

Hong Kong's fight against COVID-19: a test for "one country, two systems"

http://www.china.org.cn/video/2022-03/03/content_78084164.htm

SOURCE China.org.cn
LOS ANGELES, March 4, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- El Blunto, California's top blunt producer, and Claybourne Co., a staple in California cannabis cultivation, announced the release of four special edition El Blunto products that will employ Claybourne's top-shelf, indoor flower. The run will include two El Blunto singles, one with the strain The Judge and the other with Strawberry C.R.E.A.M., and two El Bluntito 4-Packs, one with the strain Black Triangle OG and the other with Durban Poison.

El Blunto x Claybourne

"These strains are the most popular and sought after in our line-up. They're heavy hitting and packed with flavorful terpenes, and perfect for connoisseur consumers who enjoy high quality product" Says Nick Ortega, CEO of Claybourne Co. "To be able to launch our first collaboration ever, especially with El Blunto, is a milestone for us. We are extremely excited to partner with the best blunt producer in California and look forward to seeing how these perform in the market."

El Blunto manufactures the highest quality pre-rolls in cannabis. Their products are distributed by Kiva Sales and Services and are available in 400+ dispensaries across California. Their signature product, The World's Finest Cannabis Cigar, is a tobacco free blunt that features 1.75 grams of top-shelf high-testing cannabis. Full flower is hand-broken, never ground, hand-rolled in an all-natural fiber wrap, cured for 72-hours in a temperature and humidity controlled environment, and finished with a glass filter.

"We're humbled that Claybourne recognized the quality that we're putting out into the world and wanted to partner" says Q. Ladraa, CEO of Albert Einstone's. "They have a fantastic brand and their use of science-based breeding and cultivation makes them the perfect partner for us to work with."

Claybourne Co. is a premium indoor brand and cultivator with one of the most robust flower product portfolios in California. Their breeding process centers around developing innovative cultivars that offer disease tolerance, heartiness, improved yields, and unique cannabinoid and terpene profiles. Their award-winning cannabis products range from "The Original Small Bud Ounce" to their top 1% selection, the Gold Cuts. Claybourne curates a portfolio of feelings, attainable by all consumer demographics, backed by science, and communicated clearly to consumers through transparency.

The El Blunto x Claybourne collab will be available in dispensaries beginning today.

About El Blunto

El Blunto is a California-based cannabis brand that offers 'The World's Finest Cannabis Experience'. Born from a passion for craftsmanship and quality, El Blunto is an evolution of historic cigar-making tradition. Borrowing age-old techniques from master cigar-rollers, we create products of the highest caliber with the highest level of finishing. Product design and development is approached like a true science, ensuring customers get the same, phenomenal experience every single time. The El Blunto line up includes El Blunto (cannabis cigar), El Bluntito (mini-blunts and mini-blunt packs), El Jointo and El Jointito (joints and mini-joint packs), as well as Roll Your Own Blunt Flower Pouches. El Blunto products are available in 400+ dispensaries across California. El Blunto is a subsidiary of Albert Einstone's LLC.

For more information, visit www.alberteinstones.com

Follow us on instagram @Elblunto.ca @Alberteinstones

About Claybourne

Founded in 2017, Claybourne is a market leading cannabis breeder, cultivator, and retail brand that is known for its broad line of flower, pre-roll and concentrate products. Claybourne's mission is to produce the highest quality, flower-based cannabis products that are accessible to a wide range of consumers. Claybourne sells through independent retailers, and operates no company-owned stores.

For more information, visit www.claybourneco.com

Follow us on instagram @claybourne_co

SOURCE Albert Einstone's LLC
CALGARY, AB, March 4, 2022 /PRNewswire/ - Crescent Point Energy Corp. ("Crescent Point" or the "Company") (TSX: CPG) (NYSE: CPG) is pleased to announce the Toronto Stock Exchange ("TSX") has accepted its notice to implement a normal course issuer bid ("NCIB") to purchase, for cancellation, up to 57,309,975 common shares, or 10 percent of the Company's public float, as of February 28, 2022. The NCIB is scheduled to commence on March 9, 2022,and is due to expire on March 8, 2023.

Purchases of Crescent Point's common shares under the NCIB may be made through the facilities of the TSX, the New York Stock Exchange (the "NYSE") and alternative trading systems by means of open market transactions or by such other means as may be permitted by the Canadian Securities Administrators (the "CSA") and under applicable securities laws, including by private agreement pursuant to issuer bid exemption orders issued by applicable securities regulatory authorities. The price the Company will pay for any common shares will be the market price at the time of purchase or such other price as may be permitted by the CSA. Any private purchase made under an exemption order issued by a securities regulatory authority will generally be at a discount to the prevailing market price.

In connection with the NCIB, Crescent Point will enter into an automatic purchase plan ("Plan") with its designated broker to allow for purchases of its common shares during internal blackout periods. Such purchases would be at the discretion of the broker based on parameters established by the Company prior to any blackout period or any period when it is in possession of material undisclosed information. Outside of these periods, common shares will be repurchased in accordance with management's discretion, subject to applicable law. The Plan has been reviewed by the TSX and may be terminated by Crescent Point or its broker in accordance with its terms or will terminate on the expiry of the NCIB.

As of February 28, 2022, the Company had a public float of 573,099,751 common shares and 574,601,885 common shares issued and outstanding. Crescent Point will not acquire, through the facilities of the TSX, more than 1,351,208 common shares during a trading day, being 25 percent of the average daily trading volume of the Company's common shares on the TSX for the six calendar months prior to the date of approval of the NCIB by the TSX (being 5,404,833 common shares), and, in addition, will not acquire per day on the NYSE more than 25 percent of the average daily trading volume for the four calendar weeks preceding the date of purchase, subject to, in both cases, certain exceptions for block purchases.

The actual number of common shares that will be repurchased under the NCIB, and the timing of any such purchases, will be determined by Crescent Point on management's discretion, subject to applicable securities laws. There cannot be any assurances as to how many common shares, if any, will ultimately be acquired by the Company.

As previously announced, the Company recently increased its planned share repurchases to up to $150 million to be executed by mid-2022. These planned repurchases were initiated in December 2021 under the existing NCIB that expires March 8, 2022. As at February 28, 2022, 8,076,800 common shares had been repurchased under the existing NCIB at a volume weighted average price of $7.43 per common share. These repurchases were all made in open market transactions. Under the existing NCIB, the Company sought and obtained approval from the TSX to purchase up to 26,462,509 common shares. The Company evaluates share repurchases as a means of enhancing shareholder value in the context of Crescent Point's capital allocation framework, leverage targets and market conditions.

Forward-Looking Statements and Other Matters

Certain statements contained in this press release constitute "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and "forward-looking information" for the purposes of Canadian securities regulation (collectively, "forward-looking statements"). The Company has tried to identify such forward-looking statements by use of such words as "could", "should", "can", "anticipate", "expect", "believe", "will", "may", "intend", "projected", "sustain", "continues", "strategy", "potential", "projects", "grow", "take advantage", "estimate", "well-positioned" and other similar expressions, but these words are not the exclusive means of identifying such statements.

In particular, this press release contains forward-looking statements pertaining, among other things, to the Company's normal course issuer bid, planned share repurchases to up to $150 million in the first half of 2022, the process the Company plans to follow to evaluate purchases under the NCIB, and the expected benefits to shareholders associated with the NCIB and the Plan and its operation.

All forward-looking statements are based on Crescent Point's beliefs and assumptions based on information available at the time the assumption was made. The Company believes that the expectations reflected in these forward-looking statements are reasonable but no assurance can be given that these expectations will prove to be correct and such forward-looking statements included in this report should not be unduly relied upon. By their nature, such forward-looking statements are subject to a number of risks, uncertainties and assumptions, which could cause actual results or other expectations to differ materially from those anticipated, expressed or implied by such statements, including those material risks discussed in the Company's Annual Information Form for the year ended December 31, 2021 under "Risk Factors," and in our Management's Discussion and Analysis for the year ended December 31, 2021, under the headings "Risk Factors" and "Forward-Looking Information".

The number of shares repurchased under the NCIB set forth in this press release as of February 28, 2022, includes unsettled trades.

Additional information on these and other factors that could affect Crescent Point's operations or financial results are included in Crescent Point's reports on file with Canadian and U.S. securities regulatory authorities. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on this forward-looking information, which is given as of the date it is expressed herein or otherwise. Crescent Point undertakes no obligation to update publicly or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, unless required to do so pursuant to applicable law. All subsequent forward-looking statements, whether written or oral, attributable to Crescent Point or persons acting on the Company's behalf are expressly qualified in their entirety by these cautionary statements.

FOR MORE INFORMATION ON CRESCENT POINT ENERGY, PLEASE CONTACT:

Shant Madian, Vice President, Capital Markets, or

Sarfraz Somani, Manager, Investor Relations

Telephone: (403) 693-0020 Toll-free (US and Canada): 888-693-0020 Fax: (403) 693-0070

Address: Crescent Point Energy Corp. Suite 2000, 585 - 8th Avenue S.W. Calgary AB T2P 1G1

www.crescentpointenergy.com

Crescent Point shares are traded on the Toronto Stock Exchange and New York Stock Exchange under the symbol CPG.

SOURCE Crescent Point Energy Corp.
With cutting-edge approaches to delivering managed services, MSPs have become an integral part of the success of businesses worldwide. They help empower organizations to leverage complex technologies, keeping a strict focus on their core business without straining their budgets. CRN's 2022 MSP 500 list identifies the market's key managed services players who are setting themselves apart with best-of-breed solutions that provide the business outcomes customers need.

The annual MSP 500 list is divided into three sections: the MSP Pioneer 250, recognizing companies with business models weighted toward managed services and largely focused on the SMB market; the MSP Elite 150, recognizing large, data center-focused MSPs with a strong mix of on-premises and off-premises services; and the Managed Security 100.

"In addition to having to adjust their own business operations to account for the changed conditions during the pandemic, MSPs have also seen increased demand for their managed communications, collaboration and security services," said Blaine Raddon, CEO of The Channel Company. "The solution providers on our 2022 MSP 500 list deserve credit for their innovative and game-changing approaches to managed services in these unpredictable times, as well as their ability to optimize operational efficiencies and systems without straining IT budgets."

"This recognition reinforces our short- and long-term vision, which is to give customers the freedom to pursue work that matters, that they do best, and that helps them grow, says Terry Swanson, president and CEO of OneNeck IT Solutions. "Our inclusion in the Elite 150 category also drives us to continue our mission to help leaders create a strong and secure IT foundation while supplementing their teams when and where they need us."

Read more about the CRN MSP 500 here , and learn about emerging technologies that this year's MSPs see as providing big opportunities in 2022.

OneNeck operates top-tier data centers around the U.S. and provides a range of hybrid IT, colocation, enterprise application management, managed and cloud services. Visit oneneck.com for more information.

About OneNeck IT Solutions



OneNeck IT Solutions LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Telephone and Data Systems, Inc., employs nearly 450 people throughout the U.S. The company offers multi-cloud solutions, combined with managed services, professional IT services, hardware and local connectivity via top-tier data centers in Arizona, Colorado, Iowa, Minnesota, New Jersey, Oregon and Wisconsin. OneNeck's team of technology professionals deliver secure, modern platforms and applications for organizations embracing data-driven transformation and secure end-to-end solutions. Visit oneneck.com.

Telephone and Data Systems, Inc. [NYSE: TDS], a Fortune 1000 company, provides wireless; cable and wireline broadband, TV and voice; and hosted and managed services. TDS has approximately six million connections nationwide through its businesses U.S. Cellular, TDS Telecom, OneNeck IT Solutions LLC and TDS Broadband Service. Recently, TDS has been named to three Forbes lists: America's Best Employers for Diversity, Best Large Employers, and Best Employers for Women. Founded in 1969 and headquartered in Chicago, TDS employs 9,400 people. Visit tdsinc.com.

About The Channel Company



The Channel Company enables breakthrough IT channel performance with our dominant media, engaging events, expert consulting and education, and innovative marketing services and platforms. As the channel catalyst, we connect and empower technology suppliers, solution providers and end users. Backed by more than 30 years of unequalled channel experience, we draw from our deep knowledge to envision innovative new solutions for ever-evolving challenges in the technology marketplace. www.thechannelcompany.com

Follow The Channel Company: Twitter , LinkedIn , and Facebook .

 2022 The Channel Company LLC. CRN is a registered trademark of The Channel Company, LLC. All rights reserved.

SOURCE OneNeck IT Solutions
JACKSON, Miss., March 4, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- EastGroup Properties (NYSE: EGP) (the "Company", "EastGroup") announced today that its Board of Directors declared a quarterly cash dividend of $1.10 per share payable on April 14, 2022 to shareholders of record of Common Stock on March 31, 2022. This dividend is the 169th consecutive quarterly distribution to EastGroup's shareholders and represents an annualized dividend rate of $4.40 per share. EastGroup has increased or maintained its dividend for 29 consecutive years and has increased it 26 years over that period, including increases in each of the last 10 years.

EastGroup Properties, Inc. (NYSE: EGP), a S&P Mid-Cap 400 company, is a self-administered equity real estate investment trust focused on the development, acquisition and operation of industrial properties in major Sunbelt markets throughout the United States with an emphasis in the states of Florida, Texas, Arizona, California and North Carolina. The Company's goal is to maximize shareholder value by being a leading provider in its markets of functional, flexible and quality business distribution space for location sensitive customers (primarily in the 15,000 to 70,000 square foot range). The Company's strategy for growth is based on ownership of premier distribution facilities generally clustered near major transportation features in supply-constrained submarkets. The Company's portfolio, including development projects and value-add acquisitions in lease-up and under construction, currently includes approximately 52 million square feet.

EastGroup Properties, Inc. press releases are available at www.eastgroup.net.

SOURCE EastGroup Properties
MINNEAPOLIS, March 4, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Students who filed their Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) and other state-specific financial aid forms are beginning to receive offer letters, which outline financial aid packages from prospective colleges. Given the complexity of the information and the fact that colleges report the offerings in a variety of ways, Educational Credit Management Corporation (ECMC) is dispelling myths for students and families who may need assistance.

"Understanding financial aid offers is an extremely important step to enable students to make smart decisions about their education pathway," said Angela Greenlay, director of student success for ECMC. "We want to give students and families the tools, resources and information they need to confidently navigate the path to and through postsecondary education."

ECMC, which provides free training and resources focused on financial literacy and college preparedness, is providing insight for students and families to ensure they understand the various types of financial aid available.

Myth #1: My financial aid offer letter will show me a clear picture of college costs.

Fact: The total costs of college aren't always clear from the outset. In financial aid offer letters, not all colleges include both direct and indirect expenses in the total "Cost of Attendance" (COA). While most schools outline baseline tuition and fees, some might not include "indirect expenses" like room and board, textbooks, meals and transportation. Not knowing how much a full year of college will cost you makes it difficult to compare offer letters from different colleges.

Myth #2: It's easy to understand the difference between loans and grants.

Fact: In most offer letters, schools outline financial aid options such as grants, scholarships, work-study opportunities and student loans. If student loans are listed, they will appear to reduce the total cost of attendance. But the reality is that loans need to be repaidwith interest. If you're having trouble determining the difference between gift aid and loans that will need to be repaid, look for terms like "grant," "scholarship" and "fellowship." Anything else is most likely a loan.

Myth #3: The only scholarships I get will be included in my offer letter.

Fact: While offer letters may include some grants and scholarships, there are many other scholarships available to students. Spring is historically the time when many applications are due. From needs-based and program-specific to unique and unusual scholarships, there's free money out there if you're willing to look for it. Here's a great resource to find private scholarship programs and information about scams: www.finaid.org.

Myth #4: I need to take out the full amount of money offered in my financial aid letter.

Fact: Only accept the amount of financial aid necessary to get through college. Many people make the mistake of borrowing too much and using student loans to pay for all their expenses, and then they struggle to repay what they owe.

Myth #5: It's too late for me to apply for college financial aid.

Fact: Anyone considering postsecondary education, including individuals who are older or who have already completed some education, can apply for financial aid. For those planning to attend in the 2022-2023 school year, the FAFSA is due by June 30, 2023. Each college may also have its own deadline, so check with the institution you're interested in attending.

In addition to these tips, ECMC offers a free downloadable workbook that features a variety of worksheets and information to help students throughout the college planning process. Opportunities books are available in English and Spanish.

For more information, visit www.ecmc.org/students.

About ECMC

Educational Credit Management Corporation (ECMC) is a nonprofit corporation with a mission to help students succeed. Headquartered in Minneapolis, ECMC works to lower student loan default rates; sponsors college access and success initiatives, and financial education programs; and provides resources to support student loan borrowers to successfully repay their loans. To learn more about ECMC's initiatives, visit www.ecmc.org/students.

SOURCE ECMC
"We are pleased to welcome Data Center Frontier to Endeavor and that we have been entrusted to grow this important brand," said Chris Ferrell, CEO of Endeavor Business Media. "We think this team and the brand will enhance our ability to serve the readers and advertisers in the data center and cloud computing industries, aligning well with our other titles in our Advanced Technology Group."

Data Center Frontier is at the intersection of new technology trends fueling massive market opportunity for the infrastructure to drive the digital economy. With a community of more than 450,000 data center and enterprise IT professionals, Data Center Frontier is one of the most recognized and trusted brands in the data center industry.

"Endeavor Business Media shares our vision of serving the data center market with deep insights on the latest trends and innovations," said Rich Miller, Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Data Center Frontier. "Endeavor's vast resources and expertise will allow DCF to expand our audience of data center professionals and deliver market-leading information for decision makers at the forefront of the IT and cloud computing sectors. Importantly, Endeavor is uniquely positioned for the convergence of digital infrastructure, with publications in the Advanced Technology Group targeting telecom, broadband, cabling, photonics and smart buildings.DCF publisher Kevin Normandeau and I will continue in our roles, providing the content and solutions our audience has come to expect."

Headquartered in Nashville, Tennessee, Endeavor Business Media, LLC was formed in late 2017 to acquire and operate trade publications, websites, events and marketing solutions. Today the company is one of the largest B2B Media companies in the US with more than 550 employees, 6,000 customers and a monthly audience of nearly 9 million readers. The company targets U.S. B2B audiences in the technology, energy, facilities maintenance, photonics, design engineering, buildings and construction, fire & public safety, manufacturing, industrial, medical, securities, lighting, oil & gas, public services, security, aviation, dental, vehicle repair, vending, and water & wastewater markets.The company has offices in Nashville, TN; Tulsa, OK; Nashua, NH; Birmingham, AL; Sarasota, FL; Skokie, IL; Fort Atkinson, WI; Houston, TX; Cleveland, OH; Fort Collins, CO, and Overland Park, KS. To learn more, visit www.endeavorbusinessmedia.com .

Media Contact:

Anna Wackenhuth

[email protected]

SOURCE Endeavor Business Media
CHICAGO, March 4, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Envista Forensics, a global forensic consulting firm, has expanded its Digital Forensics practice and is opening a lab in Richmond, Virginia to better serve clients on the east coast.

Today, Envista's Digital Forensics practice serves legal and insurance professionals, providing end-to-end consulting and a full spectrum of services including cell phone forensics, computer forensics, location forensics, analyses of IoT devices, wearables, vehicles, and more. Envista's Digital Forensics team performs examinations and consults on thousands of civil and criminal cases every year, from trucking and employee wrongdoing to white-collar crime and murder.

"Launching a lab in Virginia has always been part of our long-term plan, as we work with so many clients on the east coast, from Richmond to Washington D.C. and the New York City metro," shared Lars Daniel, Practice Leader of Digital Forensics, Envista Forensics.

With Envista's expanded lab capabilities, they have hired Kyle Richards, based out of Virginia, as a Digital Forensics Analyst to assist with business development and litigation support for clients. Richards has an extensive background in the legal space including working for the Department of Juvenile Justice, the Capital Defender's office of Virginia, and the Attorney General's office of Virginia as an investigator. He is well versed in investigations and analyzing evidence.

"Kyle has worked in the public sector for decades, consulting on litigated matters and has extensive case experience as an investigator. We couldn't have asked for a better addition to complement our existing digital forensics team than Kyle," said Terence Kadlec, Director of Specialty Practices, Envista Forensics.

Envista is known for their thought leadership and educational programs and Richards is planned to quickly become a part of those efforts, training clients through continuing legal education programs.

"We are thrilled to be able to launch both our new lab, as well as the addition of Kyle, all in the same month. There's a lot of great momentum in our Digital Forensics practice and it's exciting to see this type of energy so early in the year," expressed Daniel.

Kyle Richards can be reached at [email protected] or 804.221.4072. To contact Envista Forensics, call 888.782.3473 or visit their website at www.envistaforensics.com.

ABOUT ENVISTA FORENSICS

Envista Forensics is a global leader in forensic consulting services. We provide failure analysis, fire and explosion investigations, digital forensics, accident reconstruction, building and construction consulting, geotechnical engineering, damage evaluations, and equipment restoration services following disasters of all kinds.

Envista has served the insurance, legal, and risk management industries for more than 30 years. Our experts travel globally to more than 30 offices located across North America, LATAM, Europe, Singapore, and Australia. Visit our website at www.envistaforensics.com for more information.

Media Contact

Jennifer Gaster, CMO

Envista Forensics

[email protected]

224 406 9809

SOURCE Envista Forensics
MIAMI, March 4, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Fermented Food Holdings, Inc. ("FFH"), established in late 2021, recently acquired two major brands  wildbrine and Bubbies  in the fermented foods category. FFH is committed to building a category leader by delighting its consumers with unwavering product quality, innovation, and brands. The company will also deliver executional excellence for distributors and retailers who are expanding in this rapidly growing area (expected ~10% CAGR from 2020 to 2025).

wildbrine & Bubbies

FFH's founders, Oliver Joost and Marcelo Marim, bring a deep understanding of the food and beverage industry and a true commitment to supporting the growth of healthy food products.

"We see a huge opportunity to bring together the operating disciplines of traditional CPG businesses with the passion and innovation of entrepreneurial teams, and a fresh approach to connecting with our consumers," said co-founder Oliver Joost, formerly Head of Kraft Heinz Ingredients. "We learned from experience the absolute priority of establishing deep trust with retailers," he added.

Co-founder and former CFO of PepsiCo Brazil, Marcelo Marim, said, "Ultimately, franchises are built by a capable and cohesive team that is backed by long-term patient capital to keep investing in growing a category leader and a strong, modern business franchise. We are owner-operators who build for the very long term."

FFH will continue to build on the success of both the wildbrine and Bubbies brands through its partnership with Taylor Farms, the largest fresh vegetable grower and processor in the United States. Taylor Farms is a strategic minority equity investor in FFH and will help optimize FFH's supply chain to deliver the best possible service and value to FFH's retail customers.

"We're very excited to partner with the FFH team to support these great brands and help drive growth in the functional food category. We're passionate about delivering great tasting and healthy foods to consumers across North America and we look forward to our work together," says T. Bruce Taylor, Vice President of Organic for Taylor Farms.

FHH's recently acquired brands - wildbrine and Bubbies - have their origins in a passion for making great-tasting, high quality, naturally fermented foods.

wildbrine, located in Santa Rosa, California, is a producer of:

 Sauerkrauts  Kimchi  Srirachas  Salsas

In 2021, the company launched wildCREAMERY, a dairy alternative brand that uses wildbrine's fermentation expertise to develop the cultures that flavor the wildCREAMERY plant-based alternatives, which include:

 Sour Cream  Cream Cheese  Dips  Butters

"wildbrine has had many suitors over the years," said wildbrine co-founder, Chris Glab. "FFH is the first that shares our values, our customer-oriented approach, and a commitment to our employees and culture. They share our focus on deliciously nutritious food for our consumers, and our belief in strong relationships with distributors and retailers."

Bubbies Fine Foods, located in Ventura, California, is known for its flagship product: naturally fermented dill pickles. Over the years, the company has expanded its product offering to other fermented and pickled products, such as

 Bread & Butter Pickles  Sauerkraut  Relish  Horseradish

All are made with time-tested old-world methods, using only natural ingredients, and emphasizing a distinctive zesty taste.

John Gray, former CEO of Bubbies, said: "I am absolutely thrilled with this transaction. After spending 32 years building one of the premier brands in fermented foods, it is time to take the next step. The energy, smarts, and resources that FFH brings to Bubbies is very exciting for me and without question will take the company to new heights. I know that our fans, customers, retailers, and distributors will be eagerly anticipating great things to come from Bubbies' kitchen!"

FFH is looking to grow through internal product innovation and expanded distribution, as well as actively seeking acquisitions of fermented food brands and other healthy food products.

ABOUT FERMENTED FOOD HOLDINGS, INC.

Fermented Food Holdings, Inc. is a Miami-based food and beverage company dedicated to bringing together high-quality fermented food brands to reach a broader group of consumers and introduce them to the benefits of fermented foods. Founded in 2021 by food industry veterans Oliver Joost and Marcelo Marim, Fermented Food Holdings, Inc. seeks to leverage its partners' deep industry expertise to accelerate the growth of its brand portfolio, as well as the fermented foods category. For more information, please visit www.fermentedfoodholdings.com.

ABOUT WILDBRINE

wildbrine is passionate about the impact of fermentation on food, experimenting with all the ways the natural transformation process of fermentation works and discovering new ways to deliver deliciously nutritious fermented products to consumers. The company is intensely committed to every step of the creation and production process, from fermenting vegetables, to using organic ingredients, to answering every customer's questions. Founded by Chris Glab and Rick Goldberg in 2011, wildbrine is widely recognized as an innovator in the fermented foods and plant-based marketplace. For more information, please visit www.wildbrine.com and follow @wildbrine on Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn and Twitter.

ABOUT BUBBIES

For over 30 years, Bubbies has been crafting high-quality, fermented and pickled products and remains a category leader in fermented foods. Now a household name, the Bubbies brand has a devoted and growing fanbase that shares its vision of preserving the past through products and methods that are natural and authentic. As consumer interest in fermented foods continues to grow, expect new (and delicious) things from Bubbie's kitchen. All are welcome at her table. For more information, please visit www.bubbies.com and follow @bubbiespickles on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

CONTACT

MYSTY STEWART

707-235-7314

[email protected]

SOURCE Fermented Food Holdings, Inc.
CUXHAVEN, Germany, March 4, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The joint venture "Plambeck Emirates Global Renewable Energies LLC," founded in 2011 with headquarters in Abu Dhabi, with the participation of the Abu Dhabi royal family and the holding company of the Cuxhaven-based entrepreneur Norbert Plambeck, has received a strong capital boost with the arrival of Sheikh Falah bin Zayed Al Nahyan as a co-partner.

- Picture is available at AP Images (http://www.apimages.com) -

As a successful project developer, the Cuxhaven-based entrepreneur Norbert Plambeck stands for sustainable projects with a total investment volume of more than EUR 10 billion. With the foundation of Plambeck Emirates Global Renewable Energies LLC in Abu Dhabi in 2011, he brought together German know-how and Arab financial strength. The company's goal is to invest in sustainable projects in Arab and African countries as well as other regions of the world, thus creating infrastructure and jobs locally, and providing the countries with the conditions for a better future. Now, Norbert Plambeck and his son Norman Plambeck, who heads the Abu Dhabi office, are pleased to announce the arrival of Sheikh Falah bin Zayed Al Nahyan as a co-partner in Plambeck Emirates Global Renewable Energies LLC.

Plambeck  Pioneer in Sustainability

Norbert Plambeck is considered one of the pioneers of Germany's wind energy industry. With Plambeck Neue Energien (PNE AG), he brought the world's first company specialising in the expansion of wind energy to the German stock exchange as early as 1998, followed by the IPO of a Plambeck subsidiary in the solar sector in 2006. In 2016, the entrepreneur acquired a derelict port site in his hometown of Cuxhaven, the Altes Fischereihafen (Old Fishing Port), which was built 100 years ago. This site, which is in the heart of Cuxhaven and is one of the major tourist locations on the German coast, is to be turned into a highlight and unique showcase for sustainable tourism with planned investments worth EUR 300 million. Renewable energy, modern mobility concepts and a "Future Academy for Tourism Studies" are just a few keywords from the overall concept. The knowledge gained from this district development will be used in further tourism projects.

Numerous Projects  One Common Goal

"All of our various projects and activities have always pursued one common goal  to make the world a little better. We are therefore all the more pleased that Sheikh Falah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, represented by H.E. Louai Mohamed Ali, has made the commitment to become a co-partner in Plambeck Emirates Global Renewable Energies LLC. With a combination of German know-how and Arab capital power, we are in a position to give new clout to sustainable investments all over the world," comments Norbert Plambeck with satisfaction.

Contact:

media consulta International Holding AG

Audrey Mieser

[email protected]

+49-30/ 65 000 384

SOURCE Plambeck Emirates Global Renewable Energy LLC
NEW YORK, March 4, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Societe Generale was active bookrunner and joint sustainability structuring advisor of first-ever sustainability linked sovereign bond

Societe Generale acted as an Active Bookrunner and Joint Sustainability Structuring advisor for a new USD 2bn 20-year sustainability-linked bond transaction for the Republic of Chile. The transaction references the Republic of Chile Sustainability-Linked Bond Framework published on February 23rd, 2022.

This transaction marks the first sustainability-linked offering by the Republic of Chile, as well as the first sustainability-linked bond ever issued by a sovereign globally.

The transaction was very well received by the investor community, garnering a ~$6bn final orderbook (3x oversubscription) at a final landing level of T+200bps.

The new bonds are the first debt offering under the Republic of Chile's new SLB Framework and follows Chile's issuance of green bonds in 2019 and sustainable bonds in 2020, both firsts for Latin American sovereign issuers, and its issuance of landmark social bonds in 2021. Having issued in sustainable format in EUR, USD and CLP over the past three years, Chile is already a reference signature in this market.

Through the new SLB Framework, Chile's Ministry of Finance is further expanding its commitment to sustainable development and, through the issuance of SLBs, Chile intends to leverage ambitious timelines to achieve strong sustainable outcomes that are relevant, core and material to Chile and its people, as well as to create a benchmark for other sovereigns.

The Republic of Chile's sustainability-linked bonds were issued with a coupon rate tied to the achievement of Sustainability Performance Targets, measured through two KPIs: (i) Absolute Greenhouse Gas Emissions (MtCO2e), and (ii) Share of Non-Conventional Renewable Energy Generation in the National Electric System. Chile's SLB Framework and bond issuance are grounded in Chile's commitment to the Paris Agreement. The SLB Framework received a favorable Second Party Opinion.

Societe Generale has acted as the structuring advisor for highly visible inaugural green, social and sustainability transactions for key clients in all asset classes, across the globe, highlighting the bank's strong advisory capabilities in the Sustainable and Positive Impact finance field.

Societe Generale

Societe Generale is one of the leading European financial services groups. Based on a diversified and integrated banking model, the Group combines financial strength and proven expertise in innovation with a strategy of sustainable growth. Committed to the positive transformations of the world's societies and economies, Societe Generale and its teams seek to build, day after day, together with its clients, a better and sustainable future through responsible and innovative financial solutions.

Active in the real economy for over 150 years, with a solid position in Europe and connected to the rest of the world, Societe Generale has over 133,000 members of staff in 61 countries and supports on a daily basis 30 million individual clients, businesses and institutional investors around the world by offering a wide range of advisory services and tailored financial solutions. The Group is built on three complementary core businesses:

French Retail Banking which encompasses the Societe Generale, Credit du Nord and Boursorama brands. Each offers a full range of financial services with omnichannel products at the cutting edge of digital innovation;

which encompasses the Societe Generale, Credit du Nord and Boursorama brands. Each offers a full range of financial services with omnichannel products at the cutting edge of digital innovation; International Retail Banking, Insurance and Financial Services to Corporates , with networks in Africa , Russia , Central and Eastern Europe and specialized businesses that are leaders in their markets;

, with networks in , , Central and and specialized businesses that are leaders in their markets; Global Banking and Investor Solutions, which offers recognized expertise, key international locations and integrated solutions.

Societe Generale is included in the principal socially responsible investment indices: DJSI (Europe), FTSE4Good (Global and Europe), Bloomberg Gender-Equality Index, Refinitiv Diversity and Inclusion Index, Euronext Vigeo (Europe and Eurozone), STOXX Global ESG Leaders indexes, and the MSCI Low Carbon Leaders Index (World and Europe).

For more information, you can follow us on Twitter @societegenerale or visit our website www.societegenerale.com

SOURCE Societe Generale
DUBLIN, March 4, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Flow Cytometry Global Market Report 2022" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

This report provides strategists, marketers and senior management with the critical information they need to assess the global flow cytometry market.



The report gives a guide to the flow cytometry market which will be shaping and changing our lives over the next ten years and beyond, including the market's response to the challenge of the global pandemic

Reasons to Purchase

Gain a truly global perspective with the most comprehensive report available on this market covering 12+ geographies.

Understand how the market is being affected by the coronavirus and how it is likely to emerge and grow as the impact of the virus abates.

Create regional and country strategies on the basis of local data and analysis.

Identify growth segments for investment.

Outperform competitors using forecast data and the drivers and trends shaping the market.

Understand customers based on the latest market research findings.

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Suitable for supporting your internal and external presentations with reliable high quality data and analysis

Major players in the flow cytometry market are Beckman Coulter, Agilent Technologies, Bio-Rad Laboratories, Thermo Fisher, Luminex, Miltenyi Biotec, Becton Dickinson and Company, Sysmex, Merck KGAA, Danaher Corporation, Apogee, Stratedigm, General Electric Company, EMD Millipore, Affymetrix, Biomerieux S.A., Cytonome St, Enzo Life Sciences, Enzo Biochem, Sony Biotechnology, Sysmex Partec, Life Technologies, BD, ACEA BIO and TAKARA BIO.

The global flow cytometry market is expected to grow from $4.11 billion in 2020 to $4.52 billion in 2021 at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 10%. The growth is mainly due to the companies resuming their operations and adapting to the new normal while recovering from the COVID-19 impact, which had earlier led to restrictive containment measures involving social distancing, remote working, and the closure of commercial activities that resulted in operational challenges. The market is expected to reach $6.07 billion in 2025 at a CAGR of 7.6%.



The flow cytometry market consists of sales of flow cytometry instruments, software and chemicals and related services. Flow cytometry is used to analyze characteristics of a biological cell such as cell size, cell count and cell complexity using laser optics. In the flow cytometry technique, cells are added to a fluid medium which is then passed through a pulsating laser beam. The cell then scatters the beam in different directions towards receptors that capture the light and translate it to data displayed on a monitor.



The main types of flow cytometry are instruments, reagents and consumables, software, accessories, and services. Flow cytometry services include experimental design, specimen processing, acquisition and data analysis to support researchers, biotech and pharmaceutical companies in the process of drug development. The various technologies involved are cell-based, bead-based that are used in oncology, drug discovery, disease diagnosis, stem cell therapy, organ transplantation, and hematology. The different end-users include hospitals and clinics, academia and research institutes, pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, and other end users.



The increasing number of HIV cases globally is an important driver for the flow cytometry market. This is because the flow cytometry technique has its direct application in HIV diagnosis. Flow cytometry uses light scattering to determine the identity of cells. These cells are given certain markers called CDs (clusters of differentiation), based on the type of scattering. For the HIV virus cell, the clusters of differentiation is called CD4, and based on the number of CD4s in a medium, flow cytometry can be used to diagnose HIV. As the global HIV population continues to grow, the demand for diagnosis techniques such as flow cytometry is also increasing.



The availability of cheaper and better substitutes for flow cytometry is a major restrain on the flow cytometry market. These substitutes include ELISA (enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay) and radioimmunoassay. While flow cytometry, ELISA and radioimmunoassay are all methods that help in HIV diagnosis by detecting "problem cells" in a group of cells, ELISA and radioimmunoassay are cheaper and easier methods than flow cytometry. In ELISA, colour changes in reagents are used to detect problematic cells. While in radioimmunoassay, cells are given certain radioactive markers which are used to detect problematic cells. Both ELISA and radioimmunoassay can be implemented using cheap, traditional laboratory equipment and reagents with a higher throughput rate. However, flow cytometry involves high setup costs and costs of interpreting data along with a very low throughput.



High-throughput flow cytometry is an emerging trend in the flow cytometry market. This is due to high speed of cell parameter processing and capability to analyze several heterogeneous cell groups at once, using this technique. Traditional cytometry methods are very slow, especially when several cells need to be tested within a day. Using high-throughput flow cytometry methods such as fluorescence-activated cell-sorting (FACS), multiple cells can be allotted fluorescent markers which can be used to analyze their parameters in quick time. Examples of companies that offer high-throughput flow cytometry solutions include AstraZeneca and Novartis.



The US FDA's code of federal regulations (CFR) includes regulations related to a flow cytometry device called the automated differential cell counter (ADCC). An ADCC is a device used in the study of blood cells, mainly for the detection of faulty blood cells and low blood cell counts. This device comes under the purview of the class 2 special controls guidance document which outlines requirements such as the methods for accurate and precise reporting of results, the statistical linearity conditions of graph-based cytometry results and the types of specimens to be used. Flow cytometry device manufacturers must conform to these guidelines, which address the specific health risks associated with ADCC devices. Hence, this is expected to maintain a vigil on flow cytometry companies involved in manufacturing ADCC.



Key Topics Covered:



1. Executive Summary



2. Flow Cytometry Market Characteristics



3. Flow Cytometry Market Trends And Strategies



4. Impact Of COVID-19 On Flow Cytometry



5. Flow Cytometry Market Size And Growth

5.1. Global Flow Cytometry Historic Market, 2016-2021, $ Billion

5.1.1. Drivers Of The Market

5.1.2. Restraints On The Market

5.2. Global Flow Cytometry Forecast Market, 2021-2026F, 2031F, $ Billion

5.2.1. Drivers Of The Market

5.2.2. Restraints On the Market



6. Flow Cytometry Market Segmentation

6.1. Global Flow Cytometry Market, Segmentation By Type, Historic and Forecast, 2016-2021, 2021-2026F, 2031F, $ Billion

6.2. Global Flow Cytometry Market, Segmentation By Technology, Historic and Forecast, 2016-2021, 2021-2026F, 2031F, $ Billion

6.3. Global Flow Cytometry Market, Segmentation By End User, Historic and Forecast, 2016-2021, 2021-2026F, 2031F, $ Billion

6.4. Global Flow Cytometry Market, Segmentation By Application, Historic and Forecast, 2016-2021, 2021-2026F, 2031F, $ Billion



7. Flow Cytometry Market Regional And Country Analysis

7.1. Global Flow Cytometry Market, Split By Region, Historic and Forecast, 2016-2021, 2021-2026F, 2031F, $ Billion

7.2. Global Flow Cytometry Market, Split By Country, Historic and Forecast, 2016-2021, 2021-2026F, 2031F, $ Billion



For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/4apu3q

Media Contact:

Research and Markets

Laura Wood, Senior Manager

[email protected]



For E.S.T Office Hours Call +1-917-300-0470

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U.S. Fax: 646-607-1904

Fax (outside U.S.): +353-1-481-1716

SOURCE Research and Markets
The report also covers the following areas:

Vendor Insights

The food sweetener market is fragmented, and the vendors are deploying growth strategies such as pricing strategies to compete in the market. The report analyzes the market's competitive landscape and offers information on several market vendors, including:

Ajinomoto Co. Inc.

Archer Daniels Midland Co.

Cargill Inc.

Celanese Corp.

DuPont de Nemours Inc.

Ecogreen Oleochemicals PTE Ltd.

FoodChem International Corp.

Fooditive B.V.

GLG Life Tech Corp.

Ingredion Inc.

Kerry Group Plc

NutraSweet Co.

PureCircle Ltd.

Pyure Brands LLC

Roquette Freres SA

Sagana Association

Stevia Hub India

Suddeutsche Zuckerrubenverwertungs Co.

Suminter India Organics

Tate and Lyle Plc

Tereos Group

WB Sweetners LLC.

XiliNat

Find additional highlights on the growth strategies adopted by vendors and their product offerings, Read Free Sample Report .

Geographical Market Analysis

North America will provide maximum growth opportunities in the food sweetener market during the forecast period. According to our research, the region will contribute to 39% of the global market growth. The US and Canada are the two major markets for food sweeteners in North America. Economic development and favorable consumption patterns in the region will drive the food sweetener market growth in North America during the forecast period.

Know more about this market's geographical distribution along with the detailed analysis of the top regions. View Our Report Snapshot

Key Segment Analysis

The food sweetener market share growth by the high-intensity sweeteners segment will be significant during the forecast period. The demand for high-intensity food sweeteners is gradually declining due to health problems associated with their continuous consumption. The excessive use of high-intensity food sweeteners leads to metabolic syndrome and hypertension, which may negatively impact the market in focus during the forecast period.

View FREE Sample: to know additional highlights and key points on various market

segments and their impact in coming years.

Key Market Drivers & Challenges:

The multiple applications of sugar substitutes is one of the key factors driving the growth of the food sweetener market. Food sweeteners have multiple applications in various industries such as food and beverage, personal care products, healthcare, and pharmaceutical.

The stringent food safety regulations will challenge the food sweetener market during the forecast period. Vendors need to receive approvals from various authorities such as the Foods Standards Agency and the European Food Safety Authority. The existing government regulations continue to pose challenges to vendors in this market.

Download free sample for highlights on market Drivers & Challenges affecting the food sweetener market.

Customize Your Report

Don't miss out on the opportunity to speak to our analyst and know more insights about this market report. Our analysts can also help you customize this report according to your needs. Our analysts and industry experts will work directly with you to understand your requirements and provide you with customized data in a short amount of time.

We offer USD 1,000 worth of FREE customization at the time of purchase. Speak to our Analyst now!

Key Highlights

CAGR of the market during the forecast period 2022-2026

Detailed information on factors that will assist food sweetener market growth during the next five years

Estimation of the food sweetener market size and its contribution to the parent market

Predictions on upcoming trends and changes in consumer behavior

The growth of the food sweetener market

Analysis of the market's competitive landscape and detailed information on vendors

Comprehensive details of factors that will challenge the growth of food sweetener market vendors

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Food Sweetener Market Scope Report Coverage Details Page number 120 Base year 2021 Forecast period 2022-2026 Growth momentum & CAGR Accelerate at a CAGR of 3.65% Market growth 2022-2026 USD 1.79 billion Market structure Fragmented YoY growth (%) 2.77 Regional analysis North America, Europe, APAC, South America, and Middle East and Africa Performing market contribution North America at 39% Key consumer countries US, Canada, China, Germany, and UK Competitive landscape Leading companies, Competitive strategies, Consumer engagement scope Key companies profiled Ajinomoto Co. Inc., Archer Daniels Midland Co., Cargill Inc., Celanese Corp., DuPont de Nemours Inc., Ecogreen Oleochemicals PTE Ltd., FoodChem International Corp., Fooditive B.V., GLG Life Tech Corp., Ingredion Inc., Kerry Group Plc, NutraSweet Co., PureCircle Ltd., Pyure Brands LLC, Roquette Freres SA, Sagana Association, Stevia Hub India, Suddeutsche Zuckerrubenverwertungs Co., Suminter India Organics , Tate and Lyle Plc, Tereos Group, WB Sweetners LLC., and XiliNat Market dynamics Parent market analysis, Market growth inducers and obstacles, Fast-growing and slow-growing segment analysis, COVID-19 impact and recovery analysis and future consumer dynamics, Market condition analysis for the forecast period Customization purview If our report has not included the data that you are looking for, you can reach out to our analysts and get segments customized.

Table of Contents

1 Executive Summary

1.1 Market overview

Exhibit 01: Executive Summary  Chart on Market Overview



Exhibit 02: Executive Summary  Data Table on Market Overview



Exhibit 03: Executive Summary  Chart on Global Market Characteristics



Exhibit 04: Executive Summary  Chart on Market by Geography



Exhibit 05: Executive Summary  Chart on Market Segmentation by Type



Exhibit 06: Executive Summary  Chart on Incremental Growth



Exhibit 07: Executive Summary  Data Table on Incremental Growth



Exhibit 08: Executive Summary  Chart on Vendor Market Positioning

2 Market Landscape

2.1 Market ecosystem

Exhibit 09: Parent market



Exhibit 10: Market Characteristics

3 Market Sizing

3.1 Market definition

Exhibit 11: Offerings of vendors included in the market definition

3.2 Market segment analysis

Exhibit 12: Market segments

3.3 Market size 2021

3.4 Market outlook: Forecast for 2021-2026

Exhibit 13: Chart on Global - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)



Exhibit 14: Data Table on Global - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)



Exhibit 15: Chart on Global Market: Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)



Exhibit 16: Data Table on Global Market: Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

4 Five Forces Analysis

4.1 Five forces summary

Exhibit 17: Five forces analysis - Comparison between 2021 and 2026

4.2 Bargaining power of buyers

Exhibit 18: Bargaining power of buyers  Impact of key factors in 2021 and 2026

4.3 Bargaining power of suppliers

Exhibit 19: Bargaining power of suppliers  Impact of key factors in 2021 and 2026

4.4 Threat of new entrants

Exhibit 20: Threat of new entrants  Impact of key factors in 2021 and 2026

4.5 Threat of substitutes

Exhibit 21: Threat of substitutes  Impact of key factors in 2021 and 2026

4.6 Threat of rivalry

Exhibit 22: Threat of rivalry  Impact of key factors in 2021 and 2026

4.7 Market condition

Exhibit 23: Chart on Market condition - Five forces 2021 and 2026

5 Market Segmentation by Type

5.1 Market segments

Exhibit 24: Chart on Type - Market share 2021-2026 (%)



Exhibit 25: Data Table on Type - Market share 2021-2026 (%)

5.2 Comparison by Type

Exhibit 26: Chart on Comparison by Type



Exhibit 27: Data Table on Comparison by Type

5.3 High-intensity sweeteners - Market size and forecast 2021-2026

Exhibit 28: Chart on High-intensity sweeteners - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)



Exhibit 29: Data Table on High-intensity sweeteners - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)



Exhibit 30: Chart on High-intensity sweeteners - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)



Exhibit 31: Data Table on High-intensity sweeteners - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

5.4 Low-intensity sweeteners - Market size and forecast 2021-2026

Exhibit 32: Chart on Low-intensity sweeteners - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)



Exhibit 33: Data Table on Low-intensity sweeteners - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)



Exhibit 34: Chart on Low-intensity sweeteners - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)



Exhibit 35: Data Table on Low-intensity sweeteners - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

5.5 Market opportunity by Type

Exhibit 36: Market opportunity by Type ($ million)

6 Customer Landscape

6.1 Customer landscape overview

Exhibit 37: Analysis of price sensitivity, lifecycle, customer purchase basket, adoption rates, and purchase criteria

7 Geographic Landscape

7.1 Geographic segmentation

Exhibit 38: Chart on Market share by geography 2021-2026 (%)



Exhibit 39: Data Table on Market share by geography 2021-2026 (%)

7.2 Geographic comparison

Exhibit 40: Chart on Geographic comparison



Exhibit 41: Data Table on Geographic comparison

7.3 North America - Market size and forecast 2021-2026

- Market size and forecast 2021-2026 Exhibit 42: Chart on North America - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)

- Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)

Exhibit 43: Data Table on North America - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)

- Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)

Exhibit 44: Chart on North America - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

- Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

Exhibit 45: Data Table on North America - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

7.4 Europe - Market size and forecast 2021-2026

- Market size and forecast 2021-2026 Exhibit 46: Chart on Europe - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)

- Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)

Exhibit 47: Data Table on Europe - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)

- Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)

Exhibit 48: Chart on Europe - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

- Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

Exhibit 49: Data Table on Europe - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

7.5 APAC - Market size and forecast 2021-2026

Exhibit 50: Chart on APAC - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)



Exhibit 51: Data Table on APAC - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)



Exhibit 52: Chart on APAC - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)



Exhibit 53: Data Table on APAC - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

7.6 South America - Market size and forecast 2021-2026

- Market size and forecast 2021-2026 Exhibit 54: Chart on South America - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)

- Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)

Exhibit 55: Data Table on South America - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)

- Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)

Exhibit 56: Chart on South America - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

- Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

Exhibit 57: Data Table on South America - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

7.7 Middle East and Africa - Market size and forecast 2021-2026

and - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 Exhibit 58: Chart on Middle East and Africa - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)

and - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)

Exhibit 59: Data Table on Middle East and Africa - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)

and - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)

Exhibit 60: Chart on Middle East and Africa - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

and - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

Exhibit 61: Data Table on Middle East and Africa - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

7.8 US - Market size and forecast 2021-2026

Exhibit 62: Chart on US - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)



Exhibit 63: Data Table on US - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)



Exhibit 64: Chart on US - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)



Exhibit 65: Data Table on US - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

7.9 China - Market size and forecast 2021-2026

- Market size and forecast 2021-2026 Exhibit 66: Chart on China - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)

- Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)

Exhibit 67: Data Table on China - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)

- Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)

Exhibit 68: Chart on China - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

- Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

Exhibit 69: Data Table on China - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

7.10 Germany - Market size and forecast 2021-2026

- Market size and forecast 2021-2026 Exhibit 70: Chart on Germany - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)

- Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)

Exhibit 71: Data Table on Germany - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)

- Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)

Exhibit 72: Chart on Germany - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

- Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

Exhibit 73: Data Table on Germany - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

7.11 Canada - Market size and forecast 2021-2026

- Market size and forecast 2021-2026 Exhibit 74: Chart on Canada - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)

- Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)

Exhibit 75: Data Table on Canada - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)

- Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)

Exhibit 76: Chart on Canada - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

- Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

Exhibit 77: Data Table on Canada - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

7.12 UK - Market size and forecast 2021-2026

Exhibit 78: Chart on UK - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)



Exhibit 79: Data Table on UK - Market size and forecast 2021-2026 ($ million)



Exhibit 80: Chart on UK - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)



Exhibit 81: Data Table on UK - Year-over-year growth 2021-2026 (%)

7.13 Market opportunity by geography

Exhibit 82: Market opportunity by geography ($ million)

8 Drivers, Challenges, and Trends

8.1 Market drivers

8.2 Market challenges

8.3 Impact of drivers and challenges

Exhibit 83: Impact of drivers and challenges in 2021 and 2026

8.4 Market trends

9 Vendor Landscape

9.1 Overview

9.2 Vendor landscape

Exhibit 84: Overview on Criticality of inputs and Factors of differentiation

9.3 Landscape disruption

Exhibit 85: Overview on factors of disruption

9.4 Industry risks

Exhibit 86: Impact of key risks on business

10 Vendor Analysis

10.1 Vendors covered

Exhibit 87: Vendors covered

10.2 Market positioning of vendors

Exhibit 88: Matrix on vendor position and classification

10.3 Ajinomoto Co. Inc.

Exhibit 89: Ajinomoto Co. Inc. - Overview



Exhibit 90: Ajinomoto Co. Inc. - Business segments



Exhibit 91: Ajinomoto Co. Inc. - Key news



Exhibit 92: Ajinomoto Co. Inc. - Key offerings



Exhibit 93: Ajinomoto Co. Inc. - Segment focus

10.4 Archer Daniels Midland Co.

Exhibit 94: Archer Daniels Midland Co. - Overview



Exhibit 95: Archer Daniels Midland Co. - Business segments



Exhibit 96: Archer Daniels Midland Co. - Key offerings



Exhibit 97: Archer Daniels Midland Co. - Segment focus

10.5 Cargill Inc.

Exhibit 98: Cargill Inc. - Overview



Exhibit 99: Cargill Inc. - Product / Service



Exhibit 100: Cargill Inc. - Key news



Exhibit 101: Cargill Inc. - Key offerings

10.6 DuPont de Nemours Inc.

Exhibit 102: DuPont de Nemours Inc. - Overview



Exhibit 103: DuPont de Nemours Inc. - Business segments



Exhibit 104: DuPont de Nemours Inc. - Key news



Exhibit 105: DuPont de Nemours Inc. - Key offerings



Exhibit 106: DuPont de Nemours Inc. - Segment focus

10.7 GLG Life Tech Corp.

Exhibit 107: GLG Life Tech Corp. - Overview



Exhibit 108: GLG Life Tech Corp. - Product / Service



Exhibit 109: GLG Life Tech Corp. - Key offerings

10.8 Ingredion Inc.

Exhibit 110: Ingredion Inc. - Overview



Exhibit 111: Ingredion Inc. - Business segments



Exhibit 112: Ingredion Inc. - Key offerings



Exhibit 113: Ingredion Inc. - Segment focus

10.9 NutraSweet Co.

Exhibit 114: NutraSweet Co. - Overview



Exhibit 115: NutraSweet Co. - Product / Service



Exhibit 116: NutraSweet Co. - Key offerings

10.10 PureCircle Ltd.

Exhibit 117: PureCircle Ltd. - Overview



Exhibit 118: PureCircle Ltd. - Product / Service



Exhibit 119: PureCircle Ltd. - Key offerings

10.11 Tate and Lyle Plc

Exhibit 120: Tate and Lyle Plc - Overview



Exhibit 121: Tate and Lyle Plc - Business segments



Exhibit 122: Tate and Lyle Plc - Key news



Exhibit 123: Tate and Lyle Plc - Key offerings



Exhibit 124: Tate and Lyle Plc - Segment focus

10.12 Tereos Group

Exhibit 125: Tereos Group - Overview



Exhibit 126: Tereos Group - Business segments



Exhibit 127: Tereos Group - Key offerings



Exhibit 128: Tereos Group - Segment focus

11 Appendix

11.1 Scope of the report

11.2 Inclusions and exclusions checklist

Exhibit 129: Inclusions checklist

11.3 Currency conversion rates for US$

Exhibit 130: Currency conversion rates for US$

11.4 Research methodology

Exhibit 131: Research methodology



Exhibit 132: Validation techniques employed for market sizing



Exhibit 133: Information sources

11.5 List of abbreviations

Exhibit 134: List of abbreviations

About Us:

Technavio is a leading global technology research and advisory company. Their research and analysis focus on emerging market trends and provides actionable insights to help businesses identify market opportunities and develop effective strategies to optimize their market positions. With over 500 specialized analysts, Technavio's report library consists of more than 17,000 reports and counting, covering 800 technologies, spanning across 50 countries. Their client base consists of enterprises of all sizes, including more than 100 Fortune 500 companies. This growing client base relies on Technavio's comprehensive coverage, extensive research, and actionable market insights to identify opportunities in existing and potential markets and assess their competitive positions within changing market scenarios.

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PHILADELPHIA, Pa. and NEW YORK, March 4, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- FS KKR Capital Corp. (NYSE: FSK), announced today that Daniel Pietrzak, FSK's Co-President and Chief Investment Officer, is scheduled to participate on a BDC panel at the 2022 RBC Capital Markets Global Financial Institutions Conference on Tuesday, March 8, 2022 at 2:00 PM Eastern Time.

A live audio webcast of the presentation will be available by visiting the Investor Relations section of FSK's website, under Events.

About FS KKR Capital Corp.

FSK is a leading publicly traded business development company (BDC) focused on providing customized credit solutions to private middle market U.S. companies. FSK seeks to invest primarily in the senior secured debt and, to a lesser extent, the subordinated debt of private middle market companies. FSK is advised by FS/KKR Advisor, LLC. For more information, please visit www.fskkradvisor.com.

About FS/KKR Advisor, LLC

FS/KKR Advisor, LLC (FS/KKR) is a partnership between FS Investments and KKR Credit that serves as the investment adviser to FSK.

FS Investments is a leading asset manager dedicated to helping individuals, financial professionals and institutions design better portfolios. The firm provides access to alternative sources of income and growth, and focuses on setting industry standards for investor protection, education and transparency. FS Investments is headquartered in Philadelphia, PA with offices in New York, NY, Orlando, FL and Leawood, KS. Visit www.fsinvestments.com to learn more.

KKR Credit is a subsidiary of KKR & Co. Inc., a leading global investment firm that manages multiple alternative asset classes, including private equity, credit and real assets, with strategic manager partnerships that manage hedge funds. KKR aims to generate attractive investment returns for its fund investors by following a patient and disciplined investment approach, employing world-class people, and driving growth and value creation with KKR portfolio companies. KKR invests its own capital alongside the capital it manages for fund investors and provides financing solutions and investment opportunities through its capital markets business. References to KKR's investments may include the activities of its sponsored funds. For additional information about KKR & Co. Inc. (NYSE: KKR), please visit KKR's website at www.kkr.com and on Twitter @KKR_Co.

Contact Information:

Investor Relations Contact

Robert Paun

[email protected]

FS Investments Media Team

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[email protected]

SOURCE FS KKR Capital Corp.
SEOUL, South Korea, March 3, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Genome and Company (KOSDAQ: 314130, CEOCTO: Jisoo PaeHansoo Park), a leading global microbiome anti-cancer drug development company, announced it has entered into a first Clinical Trial Collaboration and Supply Agreement (CTCSA) with MSD (a tradename of Merck & Co., Inc., Kenilworth, N.J., USA).

Upon the execution of the agreement, Genome and Company will conduct a phase 2 clinical trial to evaluate the safety and efficacy of its immuno-oncology microbiome therapeutic, 'GEN-001', in combination with MSD's anti-PD-1 therapy, KEYTRUDA (pembrolizumab), in patients with biliary tract cancer. Genome and Company will be the sponsor of the clinical trial and MSD will supply KEYTRUDA.

'GEN-001' is an orally administered immuno-oncology microbiome therapeutic candidate consisting of Lactococcus lactis (L. lactis), a single live bacterial strain isolated from a healthy human.

Biliary tract cancer is one of the carcinomas associated with a poor prognosis after diagnosis, limited treatment options and five-year survival rate of only 5 to 15%. According to the findings in the MDPI Cancers 2021, an SCI academic journal, the infiltrations of immune cells around cancer cells were observed in 70% of biliary tract cancer patients, also confirming the relationship between the immune cells and biliary tract cancer cells.

Dr. Jisoo Pae, CEO of Genome and Company, said, "Genome and Company has established clinical trial collaborations to evaluate 'GEN-001' with both anti-PD-L1 and anti-PD-1 therapies through agreements with MSD, Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany and Pfizer, which shows that the company is being recognized for its innovative technology by global immuno-oncology companies." He added, "Through this clinical trial collaboration, we look forward to evaluating the potential additive benefit of 'GEN-001' in combination with KEYTRUDA as treatment for patients with biliary tract cancer."

KEYTRUDA is a registered trademark of Merck Sharp & Dohme Corp., a subsidiary of Merck & Co., Inc., Kenilworth, NJ, USA.

Introducing Genome and Company

Since its establishment in 2015, Genome and Company develops next waves of innovative drugs including anti-cancer microbiome therapeutics and novel target immune checkpoint inhibitors. Through continuing open innovations with global external collaborations and strategic investments, the company has expanded its microbiome pipeline into brain diseases and continues to pioneer the market in becoming a fully integrated global healthcare group capable of research, development and manufacturing of first-in-class pharmaceutical modalities including microbiome. For more information, please refer to our website http://www.genomecom.co.kr.

About GEN-001

'GEN-001' is an oral microbiome therapeutic candidate developed to have immune modulating activities, resulting in potential partnership with immune checkpoint inhibitors. 'GEN-001' consists of a single-strain bacteria (Lactococcus lactis, L.lactis) isolated from gut of healthy human volunteers that has been shown to activate dendritic cells, macrophages and T cell response. In preclinical studies, 'GEN-001' has shown optimal safety margin and synergistic effects in combination with immune checkpoint inhibitors by enhancing the effect of suppressing the growth of both immune checkpoint inhibitor sensitive and resistant tumor models. The clinical study (Phase I/Ib) of GEN-001 is currently in progress in the US and Korea, and additionally, the IND of phase II study was approved by MFDS (Korean Ministry of Food and Drug Safety) in October 2021.

SOURCE GenomeCompany
DUBLIN, March 4, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Connected Device Market for Consumer, Enterprise, and Industrial IoT Devices by Use Case, Device Type, Applications, and Industry Verticals 2022 - 2027" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

This report assesses the connected device market segment including consumer, enterprise, and industrial devices with associated connected device market sizing from 2022 to 2027.

It evaluates applications and solutions in each market segment for major industry verticals including agriculture, advertising and media, automobiles, energy management, healthcare, manufacturing, oil & gas, public safety, and telecommunications.

The number, type, and purpose of connected devices is rapidly expanding as the IoT evolves beyond the current state of limited applications, many of which remain isolated and purpose-built for a given use case, industry verticals, and companies.

Some of these applications will be enhanced through communication with a smart device, which is a connected device that benefits embedded intelligence. In contrast, an IoT Device need not be smart, and in fact, many are relatively unintelligent devices that are typically single-purpose and rely upon intelligence to be provided elsewhere for data processing, analytics, analysis, and dispersal of actionable information, typically via a cloud services model.

It is important to note that cloud services may be either centralized or distributed via Multi-access Edge Computing (MEC)infrastructure. MEC will also facilitate an entirely new class of low-power devices that rely upon MEC equipment for processing. Stated differently, some IoT devices will be very light-weight computationally speaking, relying upon edge computing nodes for most of their computation needs. However, AIoT is a dominant trend that the publisher of this report sees supporting connected devices via both distributed and centralized AI support for devices.

As AIoT causes networks and systems to become increasingly more cognitive in nature, connected devices that previously acted in a purely deterministic manner will leverage AI for decision-making, which may occur locally via edge computing and/or centrally via core cloud computing.

As part of this evolution, devices will also increasingly engage in peer-to-peer communications including signaling and data exchange. This will create both an opportunity and a challenge connected device management as they will need to rely upon the AI-based cybersecurity solutions involving trust management.

Continued 5G standardization is anticipated to provide marked improvements for the connected device market. For example, there are provisions for hybrid devices that have 5G IoT market needs that range between mMTC and eMBB and URLLC. For example, some devices will require relatively high availability and latency, but not to the degree of some critical applications that require full URLLC.

Some of these same hybrid capability devices will also require some eMBB type functionality, such as relatively high reliability and latency for video. for example, the wearable technology market will have some devices in this category as some wearables will require relatively high bandwidth and battery life. In general, hybrid connected devices will be characterized as being more complex than mMTC devices, but less complex than eMBB or URLLC devices.

Introduction of these reduced-capability devices into the connected device market will have an impact on network operations including device identification, authentication and authorization as networks must ensure that these devices are only used for the intended use cases. This is because these hybrid-connected devices will have reduced capabilities such as fewer antennas, reduced control-channel monitoring, and other factors that may affect the QoS/QoE for various use cases.

Accordingly, IoT authorization and authentication procedures will adjust to these changing requirements as some use cases will be prohibitive for reduced-capability devices, but on the other hand, these same hybrid devices will be able to perform any function a typical mMTC device can do and more.

Select Report Findings:

The global market for IoT connected devices in the government sector will reach $47.8 billion by 2027

by 2027 The global market for devices in support of Energy Management (Air conditioners, Temperature controllers, Smart lighting, Smart windows, etc.) will reach $8.2 billion 2027

2027 The global market for Consumer Appliances (TV, Refrigerators, Washing Machines, Dishwashers, Microwaves, Cooking Appliances, Coffee machine, etc.) will reach $3.4 billion by 2027

by 2027 The global market for devices in support of Government Security and Monitoring Equipment (CCTV, Cameras, etc.) and Structural Health Monitoring Devices will reach $7.3 billion by 2027

by 2027 The global market for devices in support of Hospital Equipment (Mobile furniture, Monitoring and Diagnostic Equipment, Surgical tools, Pathology and Laboratory Equipment, Ambulance, etc.) will reach $4.8 billion by 2027

Key Topics Covered:

1.0 Executive Summary

2.0 Introduction

2.1 Smart and IoT Connected Devices

2.2 Smart Connected Devices

2.2.1 Connected IoT Devices

2.2.2 Smart Devices vs. Non-Smart IoT Connected Devices

2.3 Connected Device Market Impact

2.4 Growth Factors

2.5 Market Challenges

3.0 Smart and Connected IoT Device Ecosystem

3.1 Connected IoT Device Systems

3.2 Consumer IoT Connected Devices

3.2.1 Enterprise IoT Connected Devices

3.2.2 Industrial IoT Connected Devices

3.2.3 IoT Software and Connected Applications

3.3 IoT Device Management Technology and Solutions

3.4 IoT Interoperability and Enabling Technology

3.5 Cloud Deployment and Open Architecture Model

3.6 Connected IoT Device Supply Chain

3.7 Business Models and Strategies

3.8 Machine Learning and other AI Solutions

3.9 Smart Workplace and Automation Systems

3.10 5G, MEC, and Connected IoT Applications

4.0 Smart and Connected Device Technology Enablers

4.1 Artificial Intelligence

4.2 Broadband Wireless

4.3 Computing (Centralized and Edge)

4.4 Data Analytics

4.5 IoT Convergence

5.0 Smart and Connected IoT Device Market Drivers

5.1 Consumer

5.1.1 Localized Intelligence

5.1.2 Autonomous Operation

5.2 Enterprise

5.2.1 Smart Workplace

5.2.2 Smart Products

5.2.3 Business Automation

5.3 Industrial

5.3.1 Industrial Evolution

5.3.2 Industrial Convergence

6.0 Global Markets for Connected Devices 2022 - 2027

6.1 Connected Devices by IoT in Consumer, Enterprise, Industrial and Government Segments

6.2 Connected Devices by Region 2022 - 2027

7.0 Market for Connected Devices in Consumer IoT 2022 - 2027

7.1 Global Market for Connected Devices in Consumer IoT 2022 - 2027

7.2 Regional Markets for Connected Devices in Consumer IoT 2022 - 2027

8.0 Market for Connected Devices in Enterprise IoT 2022 - 2027

8.1 Global Market for Connected Devices in Enterprise IoT 2022 - 2027

8.2 Regional Markets for Connected Devices in Enterprise IoT 2022 - 2027

9.0 Market for Connected Devices in Industrial IoT 2022 - 2027

9.1 Global Market for Connected Devices in Industrial IoT 2022 - 2027

9.2 Regional Markets for Connected Devices in Industrial IoT 2022 - 2027

10.0 Market for Connected Devices in Government IoT 2022 - 2027

10.1 Global Market for Connected Devices in Government IoT 2022 - 2027

10.2 Regional Markets for Connected Devices in Government IoT 2022 - 2027

11.0 Company Analysis

11.1 Select Strategies Initiatives

11.2 IBM Corporation

11.3 Google Inc.

11.4 Apple Inc.

11.5 Microsoft Corporation

11.6 General Electric

11.7 ABB Ltd.

11.8 LG Electronics

11.9 Koninklijke Philips N.V

11.10 Hewlett Packard Enterprise

11.11 Samsung Electronics Co Ltd.

11.12 Honeywell International Inc.

11.13 Sony Corporation

11.14 HTC Corporation

11.15 Vuzix Corporation

11.16 Schneider Electric

11.17 Siemens AG

11.18 Whirlpool Corporation

11.19 AB Electrolux

11.20 Oracle Corporation

11.21 Advantech Co. Ltd

11.22 PTC Corporation

11.23 Telit Communications PLC

11.24 Wind River Systems Inc.

11.25 Cumulocity GmBH (Software AG)

11.26 Amplia Soluciones SL

11.27 Nokia Corporation

11.28 Dell Technologies Inc.

11.29 ARM Limited (NVidia)

11.30 Aeris Communication Inc.

11.31 Smith Micro Software Inc.

11.32 Xively (Google)

11.33 Motorola Inc.

11.34 Lenovo Group Ltd.

11.35 Technicolor

12.0 Future of Smart and Connected Devices

12.1 Ubiquitous Distribution and Presence

12.2 Localized Intelligence and Computing

12.3 Autonomous Decision-Making and Actions

12.3.1 Consumer Market

12.3.2 Enterprise Market

12.3.3 Industrial Market

13.0 Conclusions and Recommendations

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/3tqash

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Research and Markets

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DUBLIN, March 4, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Language Services Market: Global Industry Trends, Share, Size, Growth, Opportunity and Forecast 2022-2027" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

The global language services market reached a value of US$ 62.6 Billion in 2021. Looking forward, the publisher expects the market to reach US$ 96.1 Billion by 2027, exhibiting a CAGR of 7.5% during 2022-2027. Keeping in mind the uncertainties of COVID-19, they are continuously tracking and evaluating the direct as well as the indirect influence of the pandemic on different end use industries. These insights are included in the report as a major market contributor

Language services stand for the set of language assistance solutions that offer varying degrees of interpretation, translation, comprehension, localization, and other training services. They include a wide range of electronic, written, and multimedia materials for transcription, dubbing, narration, voice-over, etc. Language services provide several benefits, such as effective communication, wide geographical outreach, high accuracy rate, skill development, along with offering a highly interactive learning platform to the users. Further, the adoption of these services promotes the integration of technology with human communication. Owing to this, language services are widely employed across diverse sectors, including legal, medical, IT and telecommunication, education, automotive, and BFSI

The rising demand for language services can be attributed to the rapid advancements in the IT and telecommunication industry leading to software development for accurate translation and interpretation results. In addition to this, rapid globalization coupled with improving internet connectivity has further augmented the growing need for language services. With increasing geographical outreach, various companies are opting for translation services. This provides convenience to their international clients and allows companies to efficiently express their services. Furthermore, the growing consumer inclination towards language services for multilingual and cross-cultural communication to create an efficient and quicker learning platform has also led to its increasing global adoption.

Additionally, the rising influence of social media platforms resulting in the popularity of visual translations and content localization, is also driving the demand. Apart from this, the increasing investments in the field of language services coupled with the rapid influx of translation and interpretation outsourcing have also contributed to the strong market growth.

Moreover, the increasing need for language services pertaining to international business tourism, medical tourism, leisure tourism, on-site work stays, etc., is also catalyzing the market. In the educational sector, customized foreign language training courses are being offered at on-site and off-site locations in classroom, private, semi-private, tutorial, and in-country immersion forums, thereby driving the demand for language services. In the coming years, several technological upgradations along with the emergence of artificial intelligence in the sector are expected to fuel the growth of the global language service market

Competitive Landscape:

The competitive landscape of the industry has also been examined with some of the key players being Global Linguist Solutions, LLC, Hogarth Worldwide, Keywords Studios Plc, LanguageLine Solutions (Teleperformance), Lionbridge Technologies, Inc., Mission Essential Personnel, RWS Holdings plc, SDI Media, SDL plc, and TransPerfect Translations



Key Questions Answered in This Report:

How has the global language services market performed so far and how will it perform in the coming years?

What are the key regional markets?

What has been the impact of COVID-19 on the global language services market?

What is the breakup of the market based on the service?

What is the breakup of the market based on the component?

What is the breakup of the market based on the application?

What are the various stages in the value chain of the industry?

What are the key driving factors and challenges in the market?

What is the structure of the global language services market and who are the key players?

What is the degree of competition in the market?

Key Topics Covered:



1 Preface



2 Scope and Methodology



3 Executive Summary



4 Introduction

4.1 Overview

4.2 Key Industry Trends



5 Global Language Services Market

5.1 Market Overview

5.2 Market Performance

5.3 Impact of COVID-19

5.4 Market Forecast



6 Market Breakup by Service

6.1 Translation Services

6.1.1 Market Trends

6.1.2 Market Forecast

6.2 Interpretation Services

6.2.1 Market Trends

6.2.2 Market Forecast

6.3 Others

6.3.1 Market Trends

6.3.2 Market Forecast



7 Market Breakup by Component

7.1 Software

7.1.1 Market Trends

7.1.2 Market Forecast

7.2 Hardware

7.2.1 Market Trends

7.2.2 Market Forecast



8 Market Breakup by Application

8.1 IT and Telecommunications

8.1.1 Market Trends

8.1.2 Market Forecast

8.2 Commercial

8.2.1 Market Trends

8.2.2 Market Forecast

8.3 Government

8.3.1 Market Trends

8.3.2 Market Forecast

8.4 Automotive

8.4.1 Market Trends

8.4.2 Market Forecast

8.5 Healthcare

8.5.1 Market Trends

8.5.2 Market Forecast

8.6 Others

8.6.1 Market Trends

8.6.2 Market Forecast



9 Market Breakup by Region



10 SWOT Analysis

11 Value Chain Analysis



12 Porters Five Forces Analysis



13 Competitive Landscape

13.1 Market Structure

13.2 Key Players

13.3 Profiles of Key Players

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/d7eu77

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



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SOURCE Research and Markets
DUBLIN, March 4, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Global LED Packaging Market (2021-2026) by Application Type, LED Packaging Type, Power Range Type, Wavelength Type, Packaging Type, Geography, Competitive Analysis and the Impact of Covid-19 with Ansoff Analysis" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

The Global LED Packaging Market is estimated to be USD 17.8 Bn in 2021 and is expected to reach USD 23.6 Bn by 2026, growing at a CAGR of 5.8%.



The Global LED Packaging Market growing demand and adoption of LED packaging by various industries, mainly automotive, includes surged demand for CSP LEDs, display panel market, healthcare and medical, and others are driving the market's growth. Additionally, increasing initiatives and regulations to promote LEDs for environmental benefits and energy-efficient solutions fuels the market's growth. Apart from this, a high amount of perfect competition with many manufacturers restricts the market's growth.



Furthermore, developing horticulture lights, human-centric lighting solutions, and growing preferences towards UV LED-based curing systems for printing labels and packing solutions will create opportunities for the market to grow. Moreover, the lack of common standards for LED packaging is a challenge for the market.



Market Segmentation

The Global LED Packaging Market is segmented further based on Application Type, LED Packaging Type, Power Range Type, Wavelength Type, Packaging Type, and Geography.

By Application Type, the market is classified into Automotive Lighting, Backlighting, Flash Lighting, General Lighting, Industrial, and Others.

By LED Packaging Type, the LED Packaging market is classified into COB, CSP, SMD, and Others.

By Power Range Type, the LED Packaging market is classified into Low-& Mid-Power LED Packages and High-Power LED Packages.

By Wavelength Type, the LED Packaging market is classified into Deep UV, Visible & Infrared.

By Packaging Type, the LED Packaging market is classified into Epoxy Molding Compound, Ceramics, Glass Composites, Metal Alloys, Nanoceramic, Plastic, Polymers, Silicone Materials, and Others.

By Geography, Asia Pacific is projected to lead the market.

Company Profiles

Some of the companies covered in this report are Everlight Electronics Co Ltd, LITE-ON Technology Corporation, Lumileds Holding B.V, MLS Co Ltd, NationStar Optoelectronics Co Ltd, Nichia Corporation, OSRAM Licht AG, Samsung Electronics Co Ltd, Seoul Semiconductor Co Ltd, and Wolfspeed, Inc, etc.



Countries Studied

America ( Argentina , Brazil , Canada , Chile , Colombia , Mexico , Peru , United States , Rest of Americas)

, , , , , , , , Rest of Americas) Europe ( Austria , Belgium , Denmark , Finland , France , Germany , Italy , Netherlands , Norway , Poland , Russia , Spain , Sweden , Switzerland , United Kingdom , Rest of Europe )

( , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Rest of ) Middle-East and Africa ( Egypt , Israel , Qatar , Saudi Arabia , South Africa , United Arab Emirates , Rest of MEA)

and ( , , , , , , Rest of MEA) Asia-Pacific ( Australia , Bangladesh , China , India , Indonesia , Japan , Malaysia , Philippines , Singapore , South Korea , Sri Lanka , Thailand , Taiwan , Rest of Asia-Pacific )

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 LED Packaging 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 competitive positioning tool.

Key Topics Covered:



1 Report Description



2 Research Methodology



3 Executive Summary



4 Market Influencers

4.1 Drivers

4.1.1 Growing Demand and Adoption of LED Packaging by Various Industries

4.1.2 Increasing Initiatives and Regulation in Adoption of Energy-Efficient Solutions

4.2 Restraints

4.2.1 High Amount of Perfect Competition

4.3 Opportunities

4.3.1 Developing Horticulture Lights and Human-Centric Lighting Solutions

4.3.2 Growing Preference Towards UV LED-based Curing Systems

4.4 Challenges

4.4.1 Lack of Common Open Standards for LED Packaging



5 Market Analysis

5.1 Porter's Five Forces Analysis

5.2 Impact of COVID-19

5.3 Ansoff Matrix Analysis

6 Global LED Packaging Market, By Application Type

6.1 Introduction

6.2 Automotive Lighting

6.3 Backlighting

6.4 Flash Lighting

6.5 General Lighting

6.6 Industrial

6.7 Others



7 Global LED Packaging Market, By Package Type

7.1 Introduction

7.2 COB

7.3 CSP

7.4 SMD

7.5 Others



8 Global LED Packaging Market, By Power Range Type

8.1 Introduction

8.2 Low-& Mid-Power LED Packages

8.3 High-Power LED Packages



9 Global LED Packaging Market, By Wavelength Type

9.1 Introduction

9.2 Deep UV

9.3 Visible & Infrared



10 Global LED Packaging Market, By Packaging Type

10.1 Introduction

10.2 Epoxy Molding Compound

10.3 Ceramics

10.4 Glass Composites

10.5 Metal Alloys

10.6 Nanoceramic

10.7 Plastic

10.8 Polymers

10.9 Silicone Materials

10.10 Others



11 Global LED Packaging Market, By Geography



12 Competitive Landscape

12.1 Competitive Quadrant

12.2 Market Share Analysis

12.3 Strategic Initiatives

12.3.1 M&A and Investments

12.3.2 Partnerships and Collaborations

12.3.3 Product Developments and Improvements



13 Company Profiles

13.1 CITIZEN ELECTRONICS CO LTD

13.2 Dow, Inc

13.3 Edison Opto Corp

13.4 Epistar Corporation

13.5 Everlight Electronics Co Ltd

13.6 Flory Optoelectronics Materials Co Ltd

13.7 Hongli Zhihui Group Co LTD

13.8 Jiangsu Bree Optronics Co Ltd

13.9 Lextar Electronics Corporation

13.10 LG Innotek

13.11 LITE-ON Technology Corporation

13.12 Lumileds Holding B.V

13.13 Luminus, Inc

13.14 MLS Co Ltd

13.15 NationStar Optoelectronics Co Ltd

13.16 Nichia Corporation

13.17 OSRAM Licht AG

13.18 ProLight Opto Technology Corp

13.19 Plessey Semiconductors Ltd

13.20 Projection Lighting (alphaLED)

13.21 Samsung Electronics Co Ltd

13.22 SCHOTT

13.23 Seoul Semiconductor Co Ltd

13.24 Shenzhen Crescent Optoelectronic Co Ltd

13.25 Signify Holding

13.26 Stanley Electric Co Ltd

13.27 TDK Corporation

13.28 TOYODA GOSEI Co Ltd

13.29 TSLC Corporation

13.30 Violumas

13.31 Wolfspeed, Inc



14 Appendix



For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/nvu05b

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
TORONTO, March 4, 2022 /PRNewswire/ - Info-Tech Research Group, a global IT research and advisory firm, has published a new research blueprint to help IT leaders manage, understand, and set the direction of their application portfolios. The research is intended to support the reduction of redundancy and vulnerability in ever-changing markets.

Application Portfolio Management (APM) is the practice of providing visibility into applications across an organization. APM also requires teams to recommend corrections or enhancements to decision makers, align delivery teams with priorities, and showcase the direction of applications to stakeholders.

"Many enterprises place little to no emphasis on managing their application portfolio, often due to a perceived need to focus solely on operations and at the cost of strategic efforts," explains Senior Research Analyst Ben Mackle. "Inevitably, application sprawl puts any organization in a position where they have more applications than they need, can afford, or can adequately support. Abandoning strategic competencies only adds to the high demand of keeping the lights on."

Return on investment (ROI) is experienced when the number of applications and their operational costs are reduced. This new research blueprint discusses other benefits too, including:

Reduction of redundancy, risk, and complexity

Improved processes

Enabled flexibility and scalability

Increased productivity

"You can outsource development, you can even outsource maintenance, but you cannot outsource accountability for the portfolio," adds Mackle. "Someone needs to capture the holistic picture to determine if an application's value is worth its cost and to ensure the application does not have overt risk."

Managing your application portfolio is essential regardless of its size or whether the software is purchased or developed in-house. The research blueprint includes Info-Tech's methodology for building the foundation of application portfolio management. The firm recommends organizations:

Assess current state and define goals for application management.





Improve inventory by discovering applications and capture key information about their current portfolio.





Rationalize applications and evaluate them across value, total cost of ownership, end user perspective, and IT health criteria to help determine application disposition.





Create a roadmap for application modernization initiatives to align stakeholders and applications teams.

To learn more about Info-Tech Research Group and to download all our latest research, visit www.infotech.com and connect via LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook.

Media professionals are encouraged to register for Info-Tech's Media Insiders program for more research and insights. This complimentary program provides unrestricted, on-demand access to IT, HR, and software industry content and the ability to speak with subject-matter experts from a group of over 200 research analysts. To register for access, contact [email protected].

Supporting Resources

Download the Application Portfolio Management Foundations blueprint.

About Info-Tech Research Group

Info-Tech Research Group is the world's fastest-growing information technology research and advisory firm, proudly serving over 30,000 IT professionals. The company produces unbiased and highly relevant research to help CIOs and IT leaders make strategic, timely, and well-informed decisions. Info-Tech partners closely with IT teams to provide everything they need, from actionable tools to analyst guidance, ensuring they deliver measurable results for their organizations.

SOURCE Info-Tech Research Group
DUBLIN, March 4, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Synthetic Aperture Radar Market: Global Industry Trends, Share, Size, Growth, Opportunity and Forecast 2022-2027" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

The global synthetic aperture radar market reached a value of US$ 3.42 Billion in 2021. Looking forward, the publisher expects the market to reach a value of US$ 6.64 Billion by 2027 exhibiting a CAGR of 11.20% during 2022-2027. Keeping in mind the uncertainties of COVID-19, we are continuously tracking and evaluating the direct as well as the indirect influence of the pandemic. These insights are included in the report as a major market contributor.



Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) is an imaging technique used to collect data and produce fine resolution images actively from a radar system. It transmits and receives back microwave signals from the surface of the Earth using active sensors. At present, it is utilized in various applications, ranging from studying icebergs and tracking the paths of oil spills into sensitive marshes to mapping the wetlands. It can also be used in unfavorable environmental conditions to detect changes in habitat, water levels and moisture, and analyze the effects of natural or human disturbances after earthquakes or sinkhole openings.



SAR is extensively utilized by scientists, geologists, and researchers to remotely map and study the reflectivity of different objects or environments with high spatial resolution through the emission and reception of electromagnetic (EM) signals. This, coupled with rising concerns about climatic changes, environmental degradation, and disaster monitoring, represents one of the key factors driving the use of SAR to assess changing ecological impacts. Apart from this, SAR technology is employed in the agriculture sector to identify differences in surface roughness and improve field plowing, soil tillage, and crop harvesting. Moreover, governing agencies of several countries are encouraging the adoption of modern agricultural practices, which is contributing to the market growth.

Furthermore, SAR instruments are gaining traction over conventional optical imaging technology and observation satellites as they can provide detailed information about the surfaces of the Earth. Besides this, due to rising geopolitical tensions and increasing security concerns, defense organizations across the globe are relying on SAR satellites for surveillance, reconnaissance, and precision targeting, which is impelling the market growth.

Competitive Landscape:

The competitive landscape of the industry has also been examined along with the profiles of the key players being Airbus SE, Aselsan, BAE Systems plc, Cobham Limited, General Atomics, Israel Aerospace Industries, L3Harris Technologies Inc., Leonardo S.p.A., Lockheed Martin Corporation, Northrop Grumman Corporation, Raytheon Technologies Corporation, Saab AB and Thales Group.



Key Questions Answered in this Report:

How has the global synthetic aperture radar market performed so far and how will it perform in the coming years?

What has been the impact of COVID-19 on the global synthetic aperture radar market?

What are the key regional markets?

What is the breakup of the market based on the component?

What is the breakup of the market based on the mode?

What is the breakup of the market based on the frequency band?

What is the breakup of the market based on the platform?

What is the breakup of the market based on the application?

What are the various stages in the value chain of the industry?

What are the key driving factors and challenges in the industry?

What is the structure of the global synthetic aperture radar market and who are the key players?

What is the degree of competition in the industry?

Key Topics Covered:



1 Preface



2 Scope and Methodology



3 Executive Summary



4 Introduction

4.1 Overview

4.2 Key Industry Trends



5 Global Synthetic Aperture Radar Market

5.1 Market Overview

5.2 Market Performance

5.3 Impact of COVID-19

5.4 Market Forecast



6 Market Breakup by Component

6.1 Antenna

6.1.1 Market Trends

6.1.2 Market Forecast

6.2 Receiver

6.2.1 Market Trends

6.2.2 Market Forecast

6.3 Transmitter

6.3.1 Market Trends

6.3.2 Market Forecast



7 Market Breakup by Mode

7.1 Single Mode

7.1.1 Market Trends

7.1.2 Market Forecast

7.2 Multi-Mode

7.2.1 Market Trends

7.2.2 Market Forecast



8 Market Breakup by Frequency Band

8.1 X Band

8.1.1 Market Trends

8.1.2 Market Forecast

8.2 L Band

8.2.1 Market Trends

8.2.2 Market Forecast

8.3 C Band

8.3.1 Market Trends

8.3.2 Market Forecast

8.4 S Band

8.4.1 Market Trends

8.4.2 Market Forecast

8.5 K, Ku, Ka Band

8.5.1 Market Trends

8.5.2 Market Forecast

8.6 VHF/UHF Band

8.6.1 Market Trends

8.6.2 Market Forecast

8.7 Others

8.7.1 Market Trends

8.7.2 Market Forecast



9 Market Breakup by Platform

9.1 Airborne

9.1.1 Market Trends

9.1.2 Market Forecast

9.2 Ground

9.2.1 Market Trends

9.2.2 Market Forecast



10 Market Breakup by Application

10.1 Defense

10.1.1 Market Trends

10.1.2 Market Forecast

10.2 Commercial

10.2.1 Market Trends

10.2.2 Market Forecast



11 Market Breakup by Region



12 SWOT Analysis



13 Value Chain Analysis



14 Porters Five Forces Analysis



15 Price Analysis



16 Competitive Landscape

16.1 Market Structure

16.2 Key Players

16.3 Profiles of Key Players

16.3.1 Airbus SE

16.3.1.1 Company Overview

16.3.1.2 Product Portfolio

16.3.1.3 Financials

16.3.1.4 SWOT Analysis

16.3.2 Aselsan A.?.

16.3.2.1 Company Overview

16.3.2.2 Product Portfolio

16.3.2.3 Financials

16.3.3 BAE Systems plc

16.3.3.1 Company Overview

16.3.3.2 Product Portfolio

16.3.3.3 Financials

16.3.3.4 SWOT Analysis

16.3.4 Cobham Limited

16.3.4.1 Company Overview

16.3.4.2 Product Portfolio

16.3.4.3 SWOT Analysis

16.3.5 General Atomics

16.3.5.1 Company Overview

16.3.5.2 Product Portfolio

16.3.6 Israel Aerospace Industries

16.3.6.1 Company Overview

16.3.6.2 Product Portfolio

16.3.7 L3Harris Technologies Inc.

16.3.7.1 Company Overview

16.3.7.2 Product Portfolio

16.3.7.3 Financials

16.3.8 Leonardo S.p.A.

16.3.8.1 Company Overview

16.3.8.2 Product Portfolio

16.3.8.3 Financials

16.3.8.4 SWOT Analysis

16.3.9 Lockheed Martin Corporation

16.3.9.1 Company Overview

16.3.9.2 Product Portfolio

16.3.9.3 Financials

16.3.9.4 SWOT Analysis

16.3.10 Northrop Grumman Corporation

16.3.10.1 Company Overview

16.3.10.2 Product Portfolio

16.3.10.3 Financials

16.3.10.4 SWOT Analysis

16.3.11 Raytheon Technologies Corporation

16.3.11.1 Company Overview

16.3.11.2 Product Portfolio

16.3.11.3 Financials

16.3.11.4 SWOT Analysis

16.3.12 Saab AB

16.3.12.1 Company Overview

16.3.12.2 Product Portfolio

16.3.12.3 Financials

16.3.12.4 SWOT Analysis

16.3.13 Thales Group

16.3.13.1 Company Overview

16.3.13.2 Product Portfolio

16.3.13.3 Financials

16.3.13.4 SWOT Analysis



For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/8fdoim

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
Dr. Suzanne Yu has always been passionate about the arts, such as painting, singing, and dancing. Through her art connections, a documentary on PTSD Americans, "Unsung Hero," became her first investment. The creative process attracted her to invest in other film projects such as "Above Suspicion'', an Emilia Clark film, the star of the "Game of Thrones" series, and "The Comeback Trail," starring Academy Award winners Morgan Freeman, Robert De Niro, and Tommy Lee Jones. She also is an Executive Producer of "The Mick and the Trick," directed by Tom DeNucci. She has even acted in a project, "Three's Company Too" and will be the lead in a film "The Company" that starts filming this summer. In May 2021, she became the first Asian woman to grace the cover of ShowBiz Magazine. Tiffany & Co styled Dr. Yu for the cover of Luxury Trending magazine for their emerald necklace, ring, and bracelet collection. Dr. Yu, an inspirational role model, has graced fashion and beauty magazine covers worldwide.

Suzanne grew up in Shenyang, a large city in northeast China with a long and important history. Her family is a descendant of the Manchurian imperial dynasty of China. It was the capital city of the Qing dynasty before the Manchu people conquered China and became a capital city again of the puppet empire, Manchuria, created by Imperial Japan during World War Two. When Suzanne was a young girl, her family was exiled due to political reasons. After some time, they were to return to their hometown in China.

Suzanne began studying medicine at the China Medical University when 16 years old. She later decided to pursue a graduate degree in the United States and was admitted to the University of Wisconsin-Madison's PhD program in Clinical Nutrition and Oncology. Three and a half years later, she earned a PhD and has had 11 research papers published in various science journals around the world. She received medical training in anesthesiology at State University of New York, Downstate Medical Center. Upon completion of her residency, she became an assistant professor in anesthesiology at New York Medical College, Metropolitan Hospital. Dr. Yu now owns a private practice partnership serving all five boroughs of New York City. She loves her work and is a self-made multimillionaire.

Contact: Vicky Press PR [email protected] for publicity and bookings www.vickypresspr.com https://www.instagram.com/vickypresspr/?hl=en

Links:

www.suzanneyu.com

https://www.instagram.com/suzanneyu_/?utm_medium=copy_link

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXcQ61KZS2s https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5420210/reference/

SOURCE Vicky Press PR
DENVER , March 4, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Item 9 Labs Corp. (OTCQX: INLB) (the "Company")  a vertically integrated cannabis dispensary franchisor and operator that produces premium, award-winning products  announced today that it has closed its acquisition of an existing dispensary license and storefront in Adams County, Colorado.

Located at 6101 N. Washington St. in Denver, this will be the first corporate-owned shop under the Unity Rd. brand. The Company expects the shop to be operational in the first half of 2022.

Acquisition Marks First in Company's National Growth Accelerator

This acquisition is part of an overarching strategy to accelerate national development by creating turnkey investment opportunities for Unity Rd. franchise partners. Item 9 Labs Corp. plans to aggressively expand its dispensary franchise by acquiring and converting cannabis retail stores, training the local team and selling the business to new and existing franchise partners.

"Entrepreneurs are flocking to cannabis, eager to grab a piece of the $25 billion a year market, but soon find that opening a cannabis business is most often a lengthy, complex process," said Item 9 Labs Corp.'s Chief Executive Officer, Andrew Bowden. "This development strategy offers one of the most turn-key entrances into cannabis. With our team handling the acquisition, conversion and training internally, we expect our national Unity Rd. footprint to expand much more quickly."

As part of these development efforts, the Company is seeking acquisitions of cannabis dispensaries in Denver, front range and compelling mountain towns throughout Colorado, and key markets in Arizona, Michigan and Oklahoma.

"Unity Rd. is the growth vehicle that will bring our award-winning, premium Item 9 Labs products to new states," added the Company's Chief Strategy Officer, Jeffrey Rassas. "We are also seeking opportunities to acquire, develop or partner with cultivation and production facilities in markets where we have two to three Unity Rd. shops to ease new market product entry and focus our operations."

Bringing Item 9 Labs products to markets where Unity Rd. shops are located gives franchise partners front-of-the-line access to a reliable, award-winning product supply chain. The cannabis retail shop also benefits from the national product consistency that consumers have come to expect from franchise brands.

More Information on Item 9 Labs Corp. and Unity Rd.:

Visit https://investors.item9labscorp.com/

Cannabis Operators Interested in Selling Their Dispensary License:

Contact Mark Busch at [email protected]

Turnkey Business Opportunity Keeps Dispensary Ownership Local

Through its Unity Rd. dispensary franchise, the Company is focused on building a national community of local dispensary owners who operate compliantly and confidently because of the tools, products, systems and training their team provides.

"With Unity Rd., we are keeping dispensary ownership local and thriving with the backing of a franchise system," Rassas added. "This growth plan ultimately keeps dispensary ownership in the hands of the local entrepreneur. They hire local talent and keep the wealth cannabis offers within their community."

Unity Rd. offers a guided route for cannabis entrepreneurs interested in staking their claim in an industry that is bursting with potential. The dispensary franchisor's time-tested Standard Operating Procedures ("SOPs") and veteran team with a combined 120-plus years of cannabis experience, direct franchise partners through every operational function of the business  from securing a license to assisting with cash flow, product selection or changing regulations.

The marijuana franchise is actively seeking qualified franchise partners throughout Colorado and the U.S. who would benefit from the systems, processes and ongoing support the franchise offers. Currently, Unity Rd. has multiple agreements signed with nearly 20 entrepreneurial groups who are in various stages of development nationwide.

More Information About the Unity Rd. Franchise Opportunity:

Contact [email protected], Call 720-923-5262 or Visit unityrd.com

About Item 9 Labs Corp.

Item 9 Labs Corp. (OTCQX: INLB) is a vertically integrated cannabis operator and dispensary franchisor delivering premium products from its large-scale cultivation and production facilities in the United States. The award-winning Item 9 Labs brand specializes in best-in-class products and user experience across several cannabis categories. The company also offers a unique dispensary franchise model through the national Unity Rd. retail brand. Easing barriers to entry, the franchise provides an opportunity for both new and existing dispensary owners to leverage the knowledge, resources, and ongoing support needed to thrive in their state compliantly and successfully. Item 9 Labs brings the best industry practices to markets nationwide through distinctive retail experience, cultivation capabilities, and product innovation. The veteran management team combines a diverse skill set with deep experience in the cannabis sector, franchising, and the capital markets to lead a new generation of public cannabis companies that provide transparency, consistency, and well-being. Headquartered in Arizona, the company is currently expanding its operations space by 640,000+ square feet on its 50-acre site, one of the largest properties in Arizona zoned to grow and cultivate flower. For additional information, visit https://investors.item9labscorp.com/.

About Unity Rd.

Unity Rd. is bridging the two previously disconnected worlds of cannabis and franchising. The industry trailblazer is the first to bring the cannabis dispensary franchise model to the United Stateswith duality of prowess in both industries to back it up. Built up from a collective 200 years in the legal cannabis industry and franchising, the company helps eager operators enter the complex industry with ease. The marijuana franchise pioneer offers its partners the knowledge, resources, and ongoing support needed to compliantly and successfully operate a dispensary. Launched in 2018, Unity Rd. has signed multiple agreements with nearly 20 entrepreneurial groups across the country. Recently, it was named one of the top cannabis retail leaders in the nation by MJBizDaily magazine and one of the "Best Cannabis Companies to Work For" in both the dispensary and cultivation categories in Cannabis Business Times' elite 2020 list. The company is also the first cannabis business to earn a Franchise Times Dealmakers award. For more information, visit unityrd.com.

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such statements involve risks and uncertainties, including, but not limited to, risks and effects of legal and administrative proceedings and governmental regulation, especially in a foreign country, future financial and operational results, competition, general economic conditions, proposed transactions that are not legally binding obligations of the company and the ability to manage and continue growth. Should one or more of these risks or uncertainties materialize, or should underlying assumptions prove incorrect, actual outcomes may vary materially from those indicated. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from the forward-looking statements we make in this news release include the introduction of new technology, market conditions and those set forth in reports or documents we file from time to time with the SEC. We undertake no obligation to revise or update such statements to reflect current events or circumstances after the date hereof or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events.

Media Contact:

Item 9 Labs Corp.

Jayne Levy, VP of Communications

[email protected]

Investor Contact:

Item 9 Labs Corp.

800-403-1140

[email protected]

SOURCE Item 9 Labs Corp.
JAMESON IRISH WHISKEY HEREBY ANNOUNCES:

This year, St Patrick's Day will take place concurrently on Thursday, March 17 and Friday, March 18, 2022, and the holiday will therefore be referred to as "St. Patrick's DAY S ," plural, with an "S."



Because two days of coming together with Friends & Family is better than one.



We, Jameson, invite America to join us. By signing up, you agree to celebrate St. Patrick's Day (Responsibly) on Thursday, March 17 and Friday, March 18, however you choose, and are entered for a chance to win* the two prizes below:

 $20.22 sent via carrier pigeon on Thursday, March 17 to be used solely on St. Patrick's Day S

 Full breakfast (Irish or not!) to fill you up on Friday, March 18 via a food delivery service

MAY THE LUCK OF THE IRISH BE ON YOUR SIDE.

And to honor those who have steadfastly supported our beloved industry, and who have so resolutely waited for St. Patrick's Day to return, we pledge $75,000 to the Restaurant Workers' Community Foundation. In addition, for everyone that signs up, Jameson will donate an additional $1 in their name up to $25,000.

Happy St. Patrick's DAY S , America.

#Jameson #StPatricksDayS

SLAINTE!

Experience the interactive Multichannel News Release here: https://www.multivu.com/players/English/9019951-jameson-irish-whiskey-st-patricks-day-announcement/

*NO PURCHASE NECESSARY. A purchase will not increase your chances of winning. Sweepstakes begins at 12:00 AM ET on 3/2/22 and ends at 11:59:59 PM ET on 3/16/22. Open only to legal residents of 50 US/DC (excluding MD) who are 21 years or older. Click Here for Official Rules, including how to enter, odds, prize details and restrictions. Void in MD & where prohibited. Msg&data rates may apply. Sponsor: Pernod Ricard USA LLC, 250 Park Ave. 17th Floor, New York, NY 10177.

To create free Venmo account, go to www.venmo.com or download free app to mobile device w/ SMS texting capability, provide phone and e-mail address as prompted. U.S.-based bank account required to use Venmo. Msg & Data rates (& other charges) may apply. Venmo is a service of PayPal, Inc. which is NOT responsible for this program. This Sweepstakes is in no way sponsored, endorsed, or administered by, or associated with Venmo or PayPal, Inc.

Signatures by legal residents of Alabama, Hawaii, Illinois, Mississippi, Massachusetts, and South Carolina shall not be counted or considered in relation to any marketing activities or donations made by Jameson and Pernod Ricard in relation to announcement. This restriction shall not apply to legal residents of Alabama, Hawaii, Illinois, Mississippi, Massachusetts, and South Carolina that enter and agree to the Official Rules of the Jameson Double Days Sweepstakes.

About Jameson  Irish Whiskey Underpinning the "Legendary Tales" campaign is the continued strength of the Jameson brand, which dominates the Irish Whiskey category with a 73% share and an average growth rate in Nielsen of +35%. The core offering of Jameson original continues to be the main driver of this growth, with added topspin from the introduction of Jameson Cold Brew, Jameson Orange and the continued acceleration of Jameson Black Barrel, the #1 selling super premium Irish whiskey in the US.

Follow along at @Jameson_US and JamesonWhiskey.com for the latest from John Jameson and the "Legendary Tales" campaign.

TASTE RESPONSIBLY. JAMESON  Irish Whiskey. 40% Alc./Vol. (80 Proof). Product of Ireland. 2020 Imported by John Jameson Import Company, New York, NY

About Pernod Ricard USA  Pernod Ricard USA is the premium spirits and wine company in the U.S., and the largest subsidiary of Paris, France-based Pernod Ricard SA., the world's second-largest spirits and wine company. Pernod Ricard employs approximately 19,000 people worldwide, is listed on Euronext (Ticker: RI) and is part of the CAC 40 index. The company's leading spirits include such prestigious brands as Absolut  Vodka, Avion  Tequila, Chivas Regal  Scotch Whisky, The Glenlivet  Single Malt Scotch Whisky, Jameson  Irish Whiskey, Kahlua  Liqueur, Malibu , Martell  Cognac, Olmeca Altos  Tequila , Beefeater  Gin, Del Maguey  Single Village Mezcal, Monkey 47  Gin, Plymouth  Gin, Seagram's  Extra Dry Gin, Malfy  Gin, Hiram Walker  Liqueurs, Midleton  Irish Whiskey, Powers  Irish Whiskey, Redbreast  Irish Whiskey, Aberlour  Single Malt Scotch Whisky; Lillet ; Smithworks  Vodka, Jefferson's  Bourbon, Smooth Ambler  Whiskey, Rabbit Hole  Whiskey, Pernod  and Ricard ; such superior wines as Jacob's Creek , Kenwood  Vineyards, Campo Viejo  and Brancott Estate ; and such exquisite champagnes and sparkling wines as Perrier-Jouet  Champagne, G.H. Mumm Champagne and Mumm Napa  sparkling wines.

Pernod Ricard USA is headquartered in New York, New York, and has more than 700 employees across the country. As "creators of conviviality," we are committed to sustainable and responsible business practices in service of our customers, consumers, employees and the planet. Pernod Ricard USA urges all adults to consume its products responsibly and has an active program to promote responsible drinking. For more information on this, please visit: www.responsibility.org.

Media contact: Danielle Krachie, [email protected]

SOURCE Pernod Ricard USA
"As a member of JELD-WEN's senior leadership team for nearly three years, David brings deep knowledge of our business combined with an extensive financial background, making him well-positioned to serve as acting CFO. I have full confidence in our world-class finance team and expect the transition to be seamless," said Gary S. Michel, chair, president and CEO. "I appreciate John's many contributions to JELD-WEN over the past 10 years and wish him well in the next stage of his career."

Christensen most recently served as CEO and group executive board chair of REHAU AG, a privately held Swiss-based global manufacturer with more than 3.0 billion in sales and approximately 20,000 employees. He has more than 25 years' experience in senior management roles comprising general management, finance, sales and marketing in both public and private companies.

"Bill's proven track record in building high-performing teams to drive profitable growth for global companies makes him an excellent choice to lead our European business," said Michel. "We look forward to Bill joining JELD-WEN and continuing to accelerate our customer-focused strategies to grow the business in Europe."

"I'm thrilled to be joining JELD-WEN at an exciting time to further build on the company's growth trajectory," said Christensen. "The breadth and scale of the company's products, commitment to sustainability and its premier performing culture are key differentiators and represent the type of organization I want to be a part of."

About William (Bill) Christensen

Christensen joins JELD-WEN after six years at REHAU AG, where he led transformation efforts to drive profitable growth.

Prior to joining REHAU AG, Christensen was CEO of AFG Holding, a Swiss-based global building products manufacturer. In addition, he spent 10 years at Geberit International AG, a Swiss-based global plumbing manufacturer, in several executive roles including group executive board member and head of international sales, as well as president and CEO of The Chicago Faucets Company.

He also served in various finance and business development roles at J.P. Morgan Securities and Rieter Automotive Systems.

Christensen has a bachelor's degree in economics from Rollins College and an MBA from the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business. He is on the board of directors at VELUX A/S.

About David Guernsey

Guernsey joined JELD-WEN in 2019 as senior vice president and president, Europe and was promoted to executive vice president in 2020.

Prior to joining the company, he held various positions of increasing responsibility at Trane Technologies (formerly Ingersoll Rand) including vice president and CFO for both the Residential Business and the Commercial Business in North America, Europe and the Middle East.

Previously, Guernsey served in various finance, business development and strategy roles at Pepsi Bottling Group, Sea-Land Service, United Technologies and Unisys.

Guernsey holds a bachelor's degree in finance and business administration from Ball State University and an MBA from Butler University.

About JELD-WEN

Headquartered in Charlotte, N.C., JELD-WEN is a leading global manufacturer of high-performance interior and exterior building products, offering one of the broadest selections of windows, interior and exterior doors, and wall systems. JELD-WEN delivers a differentiated customer experience, providing construction professionals with durable, energy-efficient products and labor-saving services that help them maximize productivity and create beautiful, secure spaces for all to enjoy. The JELD-WEN team is driven by innovation and committed to creating safe, sustainable environments for customers, associates, and local communities. The JELD-WEN family of brands includes JELD-WEN worldwide; LaCantina and VPI in North America; Swedoor and DANA in Europe; and Corinthian, Stegbar, and Breezway in Australia. Visit JELD-WEN.com for more information.

Forward-Looking Statements

This release contains certain "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including statements by our CEO and statements regarding our business strategies and future financial performance. Forward-looking statements are generally identified by our use of forward-looking terminology such as "anticipate", "believe", "continue", "could", "estimate", "expect", or "intend" or comparable terminology. Although we believe these statements are based on reasonable expectations, assumptions, estimates and projections, they are only predictions and involve known and unknown risks, many of which are beyond our control that could cause actual outcomes and results to be materially different from those indicated in such statements. Risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from such statements include but are not limited to the factors discussed in our Annual Report on Form 10-K and our other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The forward-looking statements included in this release are made as of the date hereof, and except as required by law, we undertake no obligation to update after the date of this release.

SOURCE JELD-WEN Holding, Inc.
PHILADELPHIA, March 4, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Lannett Company, Inc. (NYSE: LCI) today announced that it has entered into material definitive agreements to sell its liquid drug manufacturing facility in Carmel, NY, as well as equipment located at the Carmel facility, certain Abbreviated New Drug Applications (ANDAs) and other assets to a private company for $10.5 million in cash, of which $9.0 million is due at closing. The transaction is anticipated to close within the next several weeks.

"With this transaction, we are streamlining our manufacturing operations and substantially reducing overhead expenses, important elements of our previously announced restructuring plan," said Tim Crew, chief executive officer of Lannett. "Moreover, we are strengthening our cash position and capturing value from non-core assets. I am also pleased that the buyer has agreed to retain nearly all of the existing employees currently working at the Carmel plant."

The companies also entered into a supply agreement, effective after the closing of the above mentioned transactions. Under the agreement, the buyer will manufacture on behalf of Lannett certain products at the Carmel facility for a period of up to 18 months, until such time as Lannett can transfer the manufacturing of such products to its other facility.

About Lannett Company, Inc.:

Lannett Company, founded in 1942, develops, manufactures, packages, markets and distributes generic pharmaceutical products for a wide range of medical indications. For more information, visit the company's website at www.lannett.com.

This news release contains certain statements of a forward-looking nature relating to future events or future business performance. Any such statement, including, but not limited to, successfully completing the transaction to sell the Carmel plant, equipment, ANDAs and other assets, successfully transferring manufacturing of certain products from the Carmel plant to other facilities and achieving cost savings, whether expressed or implied, is subject to market and other conditions, and subject to risks and uncertainties which can cause actual results to differ materially from those currently anticipated due to a number of factors which include, but are not limited to, the risk factors discussed in the Company's Form 10-K and other documents filed with the SEC from time to time, including the prospectus supplement related to the proposed offering to be filed with the SEC. These forward-looking statements represent the Company's judgment as of the date of this news release. The Company disclaims any intent or obligation to update these forward-looking statements.

Contact: Robert Jaffe

Robert Jaffe Co., LLC

(424) 288-4098

SOURCE Lannett Company, Inc.
Lifeway will feature its new, nationally distributed probiotic oat milk, Lifeway Organic Oat , which was recently recognized as a 2022 NEXTY Award finalist in the Best New Meat Alternative or Dairy Alternative category. Samples will be available in all six flavors. Attendees will also get a sneak peek of Lifeway MSHRM Oat , the company's new line of adaptogenic functional mushroom beverages. Additionally, Lifeway will have samples and materials on-hand for the recently acquired GlenOaks Farms brand.

Lifeway Organic Oat and Lifeway MSHRM Oat meet the needs of those seeking great-tasting, plant-based beverages while offering probiotic benefits to help support a healthy gut and immunity. Research has also shown that probiotic-rich foods may help boost the mood and decrease anxiety. Plant-based products and functional ingredients continue to be some of the biggest trends in the industry and will take center stage at the Natural Products Expo West 2022.

"We are so excited to be headed back to Natural Products Expo West after a two-year hiatus," said Julie Smolyanksy, CEO of Lifeway Foods. "This show gives us the opportunity to reconnect with our partners and share some of the amazing products we've developed over the past year. Natural Products Expo West is always one of our highlight events, but I know this year's Expo will be especially meaningful to attendees on both a professional and personal level. It's a special honor for us to be present to provide microbiome-supporting probiotic products to help nourish our community when mental health and immunity are top-of-mind."

Attendees are encouraged to stop by booth #1431 to sample Lifeway's latest products and discover the many health benefits of probiotics. Lifeway CEO Julie Smolyansky will also be signing copies of her book, The Kefir Cookbook: An Ancient Healing Superfood for Modern Life, Recipes from My Family Table and Around the World on Thursday, March 10 from 2-4pm at the Lifeway booth.

Lifeway invites attendees to stop by the following activations:

Lifeway Foods Main Booth

Booth #1431 on Thursday, Friday and Saturday





Booth #1431 on Thursday, Friday and Saturday Morning Yoga

Grand Plaza Main Stage on Wednesday, 7am





Grand Plaza Main Stage on Wednesday, 7am Fresh Ideas Organic Marketplace

Booth #F82 on Wednesday, 11am - 4pm





Booth #F82 on Wednesday, 11am - 4pm The Kefir Cookbook signing with Lifeway Foods CEO Julie Smolyansky

Booth #1431 on Thursday 2pm - 4pm

signing with Lifeway Foods CEO Booth #1431 on Thursday 2pm - 4pm Connect to Press

Marriott ( Orange County 1-4) on Wednesday, 5pm - 6:30pm & Thursday, 5pm - 6:30pm





Marriott ( 1-4) on Wednesday, & Thursday, Outside Sampling Station

#S17 on Wednesday  Friday, 8am - 6pm & Saturday, 8am - 4pm

For more information about Lifeway and its products, visit lifewaykefir.com.

About Lifeway Foods, Inc.

Lifeway Foods, Inc., which has been recognized as one of Forbes' Best Small Companies, is America's leading supplier of the probiotic, fermented beverage known as kefir. In addition to its line of drinkable kefir, the company also produces cheese, probiotic oat milk, and a ProBugs line for kids. Lifeway's tart and tangy fermented dairy products are now sold across the United States, Mexico, Ireland, France and the United Kingdom. Learn how Lifeway is good for more than just you at lifewayfoods.com.

Forward-Looking Statements

This release (and oral statements made regarding the subjects of this release) contains "forward-looking statements" as defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 regarding, among other things, future operating and financial performance, product development, market position, business strategy and objectives. These statements use words, and variations of words, such as "continue," "build," "future," "increase," "drive," "believe," "look," "ahead," "confident," "deliver," "outlook," "expect," and "predict." Other examples of forward looking statements may include, but are not limited to, (i) statements of Company plans and objectives, including the introduction of new products, or estimates or predictions of actions by customers or suppliers, (ii) statements of future economic performance, and (III) statements of assumptions underlying other statements and statements about Lifeway or its business. You are cautioned not to rely on these forward-looking statements. These statements are based on current expectations of future events and thus are inherently subject to uncertainty. If underlying assumptions prove inaccurate or known or unknown risks or uncertainties materialize, actual results could vary materially from Lifeway's expectations and projections. These risks, uncertainties, and other factors include: price competition; the decisions of customers or consumers; the actions of competitors; changes in the pricing of commodities; the effects of government regulation; possible delays in the introduction of new products; and customer acceptance of products and services. A further list and description of these risks, uncertainties, and other factors can be found in Lifeway's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2020, and the Company's subsequent filings with the SEC. Copies of these filings are available online at https://www.sec.gov, http://lifewaykefir.com/investor-relations/, or on request from Lifeway. Information in this release is as of the dates and time periods indicated herein, and Lifeway does not undertake to update any of the information contained in these materials, except as required by law. Accordingly, YOU SHOULD NOT RELY ON THE ACCURACY OF ANY OF THE STATEMENTS OR OTHER INFORMATION CONTAINED IN ANY ARCHIVED PRESS RELEASE.

For media inquiries:

Derek Miller

Vice President of Communications, Lifeway Foods

Email: [email protected]

For general Lifeway Foods inquiries:

[email protected]

Phone: 847-967-1010

SOURCE Lifeway Foods, Inc.
BALTIMORE, Md., March 4, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The Maryland State Bar Association (MSBA) hosted non-partisan Maryland Attorney General Interviews, delivering all voters, including the tens of thousands of attorneys the MSBA advocates for, an opportunity to learn candidate positions on the most critical issues facing the state and legal profession. Interviews with U.S. Representative Anthony G. Brown and James F. Shalleck were held at MSBA Headquarters on Tuesday, February 28, and interviews with Hon. Catherine "Katie" Curran O'Malley and Councilman Michael Peroutka were on Thursday, March 3. The in-depth discussions followed a similar format to the recently conducted interviews with all announced candidates for Governor.

The MSBA will be hosting in-person Gubernatorial Debates for Republican and Democratic candidates for Maryand Governor. The events will take center stage at the annual MSBA Legal Summit in Ocean City, MD, on May 31 (Republican candidates) and June 1 (Democratic candidates). Featured keynote speakers include Dan Abrams, Chief Legal Analyst, ABC News, Ari Melber, Anchor, The Beat with Ari Melber, Brandon Etheridge, General Counsel, Baltimore Ravens, and many more business and legal profession luminaries.

"The MSBA is proud to bring to our members and the public these in-depth interviews with the candidates for the Office of Attorney General of Maryland," said M. Natalie McSherry, President of the Maryland State Bar Association. "As the lawyer for the State of Maryland, the Attorney General is in a unique position to ensure the legal operation of the State and its many agencies, as well as be a spokesperson for the rule of law. We appreciate the ability to speak at length with the candidates and provide a forum for them to discuss their perspectives on the office and its relationship to both the legal profession and the people of Maryland generally."

President McSherry and former State Senator Robert (Bobby) Zirkin moderated the interviews, encouraging thoughtfully reflective, fact-based dialogue focused on critical issues impacting Marylanders.

"The MSBA remains focused on engaging in strategic relationships across the state, sharing the voices and concerns of 40,000+ attorneys in order to protect the profession," said Victor Velazquez, Executive Director of the MSBA. "The interviews with candidates for Attorney General are just one example of the many ways that the MSBA remains connected to the community and continually works to raise awareness of issues that affect the legal profession and our community."

SOURCE Maryland State Bar Association
CHARLOTTE, N.C., March 4, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Allspring Global InvestmentsTM, a leading independent global asset management firm with $575 billion1 in assets under management, today announced that Matt Wren has joined the organization as Chief Technology Officer. Mr. Wren joins Allspring from BlackRock, where he most recently served as global head of investment technology. Matt will report to Joe Sullivan, Allspring's Chair and Chief Executive Officer.

Mr. Sullivan said, "Technology and innovation is central to everything we do at Allspring. Matt's unique combination of technical and financial expertise will be critical as we build an industry-leading, next generation technology platform. Technology plays a material role in elevating the outcomes for our clients, and we're thrilled to welcome Matt to the executive team."

Mr. Wren joins from BlackRock, where he was global head of investment technology, and regional head of technology. Prior to that, Matt had various leadership positions across BlackRock, Barclays Global Investors, and Barclays Capital, spanning research, alpha generation, trading, investment operations, and risk management. Matt has over 24 years in the industry and has been based at different times in San Francisco, London, New York, Singapore, Hong Kong and Auckland. Matt earned a bachelor's degree with honors from The University of Auckland and a master's degree in business administration from the Bayes Business School.

Mr. Wren said, "I am very excited about joining Allspring as we evolve as an agile, independent global asset manager with scale. State-of-the-art technology, systems, and tools are critical to the success of an asset manager today, and I look forward to working closely with Joe and the team as we build for the future."

To learn more about Allspring, please visit our website www.allspringglobal.com.

About Allspring Global Investments

Allspring Global Investments is a leading independent asset management firm that offers a broad range of investment products and solutions designed to help meet clients' goals. At Allspring, our vision is to inspire a new era of investing that pursues both financial returns and positive outcomes. With decades of trusted experience propelling us forward, we strive to build portfolios aimed at generating successful outcomes for our clients. We do this through the independence of thought that powers our investment strategies and by bringing a renewed approach to look around the corner to unlock what's possible. With more than $575 billion in assets under management1, offices around the world, and investment teams supported by 450 investment professionals, Allspring is a company committed to thoughtful investing, purposeful planning, and the desire to deliver outcomes that expand above and beyond financial gains.

As of December 31, 2021 . AUM includes $91 billion from Galliard Capital Management, an investment advisor that is not part of the Allspring trade name/GIPS firm.

Allspring Global Investments is the trade name for the asset management firms of Allspring Global Investments Holdings, LLC, a holding company indirectly owned by certain private funds of GTCR LLC and Reverence Capital Partners, L.P. These firms include but are not limited to Allspring Global Investments, LLC, and Allspring Funds Management, LLC. Certain products managed by Allspring entities are distributed by Allspring Funds Distributor, LLC (a broker-dealer and Member FINRA/SIPC). Associated with Allspring is Galliard Capital Management, LLC (an investment advisor that is not part of the Allspring trade name/GIPS firm).

Media inquiries

Nathan Riggs, Kekst CNC

[email protected]

212-521-4804

Jeffrey Taufield, Kekst CNC

[email protected]

212-521-4815

Katie Coleman

[email protected]

212-521-4884

PAR-0322-00079

 2022 Allspring Global Investments Holdings, LLC. All rights reserved.

SOURCE Allspring Global Investments
The McCourt Institute Inaugural Event: The Future of Tech Governance will take place on Thursday, March 10, 2022 from 2:30 until 6:30 pm CET at Sciences Po, 13, rue de l'Universite in Paris.

Additionally, at the opening session of this event will be announced the McCourt Institute's 2022 grants. Through the McCourt Institute, Sciences Po and Georgetown University will each receive grants of $25 million over 10 years to support the development of new scientific work and to advance research on technology for the common good, conducted by their community of researchers. Funded projects are selected and administered directly by Georgetown University and Sciences Po Steering Committees, and retain full academic freedom.

Frank McCourt, founder of the McCourt Institute, founder of Project Liberty, and chairman and CEO of McCourt Global stated:

"It's time to reset how technology is designed, developed, and leveraged  not as a vehicle to benefit a select few, but as a tool for the common good. Through this Institute, we have a critical opportunity to research and redefine the standards for creating technology that better serves society."

The event will include an impressive line-up of experts on the topic of tech governance, ranging from government leaders, academics, CEOs, journalists, and others, including:

Marie-Laure Denis , President of the French data protection authority (CNIL)

, President of the French data protection authority (CNIL) Manuel Heitor , Minister of Science, Technology and Higher Education of the Government of Portugal

, Minister of Science, Technology and Higher Education of the Government of Frank McCourt , Chairman & CEO, McCourt Global and Founder of the Institute

, Chairman & CEO, McCourt Global and Founder of the Institute Bertrand Perez , Chief Operations Officer of the Web3 Foundation

, Chief Operations Officer of the Web3 Foundation Marietje Schaake , International Policy Director at the Cyber Policy Center and International and Policy Fellow at the Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence of Stanford University

, International Policy Director at the Cyber Policy Center and International and Policy Fellow at the Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence of Andreas Schwab , Member of the European Parliament (EPP, German), DMA Rapporteur

, Member of the European Parliament (EPP, German), DMA Rapporteur And others  full list here

This inaugural half-day event promises to be full of insightful presentations and thought-provoking debates exploring the development of Web3 technologies and their related governance structures. This event will convene technologists, social scientists, ethicists, public policy and governance experts, and leaders from the public and private sectors to advance discussion on a new decentralized web paradigm and explore what's at stake for society.

Mathias Vicherat, president of Sciences Po noted:

"I am convinced that the study of the impacts of the use of digital technologies and the issues related to digital sovereignty will provide a lasting structure to the work of our academic researchers. Beyond understanding the mechanisms, our academic communities are also committed to producing solutions for the common good. This is a fundamental challenge for our democracies in the years to come.

The partnership with the McCourt Institute is therefore directly in line with our institutional strategy and I am delighted that it will enable us to accelerate our developments. In this context, I welcome the prospects of collaboration with Georgetown University with great impatience and I am very proud that Sciences Po is one of the pillars of this ambitious initiative."

The McCourt Institute's inaugural Executive Director Sheherazade Semsar-de Boisseson affirmed:

"The McCourt Institute aims to be a transatlantic convening power when it comes to the future of tech governance and developing solutions for a better digital future. This inaugural event will contribute important ideas and diverse voices to this debate, and importantly, it will be forward-looking and solutions oriented."

The full agenda and list of speakers, along with details including time and location, may be found on the event page here. The event will be on the record and open to the public. Anyone may register here.

ABOUT

The McCourt Institute

Established in 2021 with founding partners Sciences Po in Paris and Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., the McCourt Institute aims to ensure that digital governance is prioritized in the development of new technology and embedded in the next generation of the web. It supports the goals of Project Liberty, a visionary initiative launched by civic entrepreneur, business leader, and philanthropist Frank McCourt in 2021 to transform how the internet works, create a more equitable digital economy, and develop a new civic architecture for the digital world.

Frank McCourt

Frank McCourt is a civic entrepreneur, founder of Project Liberty, founder of the McCourt Institute, and chairman and CEO of McCourt Global.

MORE ABOUT

SOURCE McCourt Institute
TORONTO, March 4, 2022 /PRNewswire/ - McLean & Company, the trusted partner of HR and leadership professionals globally, has published a training guide to help managers understand key tactics in adopting inclusive leadership behaviors. This guide, driven by new industry research by HR experts and analysts, will help managers understand their role in creating an inclusive team environment.

People managers play a critical role in the development of an inclusive culture. To successfully nurture an inclusive environment, McLean & Company experts recommend that managers should reflect on their own biases to increase awareness and understand key leadership behaviors.

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusivity have effects that can be felt across the organization. This training guide explores some of the positive impacts inclusivity can have, including:

Talent attraction and retention

Brand reputation

Customer satisfaction

Business performance

Increased collaboration and innovation

Creating an inclusive team environment requires time, intention, focus, and a willingness to learn continuously. This new training guide will allow people managers to:

Understand what it means to be inclusive, and the positive impact inclusivity can have Examine different biases and recognize the impact these biases can unintentionally have on a team Learn how to apply four leadership behaviors designed to create an inclusive environment.

To learn more about McLean & Company and to download all the latest research, visit www.mcleanco.com and connect via LinkedIn and Twitter.

Media professionals are encouraged to register for McLean & Company's Media Insiders program for more research and insights. This complimentary program provides unrestricted, on-demand access to HR, IT, and software industry content and the ability to speak with subject-matter experts from a group of more than 200 research analysts and thought leaders. To register for access, contact [email protected]

Supporting Resources

Download the full Equip Managers to Adopt Inclusive Leadership Behaviors training guide

About McLean & Company

Through data-driven insights and proven best-practice methodologies, McLean & Company offers comprehensive resources and full-service assessments, action plans, and training to position organizations to meet today's needs and prepare for the future.

McLean & Company is a division of Info-Tech Research Group.

SOURCE Mclean
SAN FRANCISCO, March 3, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Media Matters Worldwide, a 100% women-owned media strategy, planning, buying & analytics agency, announced today that the 2022 Female Frontier Awards, hosted by Campaign US, has included Josy Amann, Co-Founder and Managing Director, as one of its honorees.

Amann is named a top executive who is Leading the Charge in Media. She was recognized for her hard work and ability to make positive change within the industry. Also included in the list are female executives from Horizon Media, Initiative, UM and Goodby, Silverstein & Partners.

The coveted annual Campaign US Female Frontier Awards  now in its fourth year  recognizes the most progressive and boundary-pushing women in the industry. The award includes categories across creativity, leadership, positive change, media, technology and rising stars.

"I am incredibly proud to be recognized by this award and judges who are my fellow peers," said Amann. "Our founding goal was to build a challenger agency model. One that serves our client's needs best, as extensions of their teams, to bring strategic thinking and future-proof transparent measurement solutions that drive actionable insights and business growth. We will continue to lead the charge in this space and are thrilled that Campaign US recognizes those efforts."

A panel of expert industry judges who are empowering other women and working to make gender equality a reality in advertising and marketing selected the honorees.

See the complete list of 2022 winners here: https://www.femalefrontiers.com/

This honor comes on the heels of MMWW being recognized by Campaign Magazine as a Media Agency of the Year Award Finalist. The agency also received a silver award for Media Agency of the Year in Ad Age's 2021 Small Agency of the Year Awards following a year of accelerated growth.

About Media Matters Worldwide

Media Matters Worldwide empowers B2C and B2B businesses to make smarter marketing decisions. We partner with clients to bring creative to life, with comprehensive analytics to prove the success and drive business growth. Our highly talented and experienced media and analytics strategists have a passion for cutting-edge media innovation and a focus on uncovering the "why" behind analytics. MMWW continuously invests in the latest media technologies to develop strategic, efficient, transparent, and measurable solutions. Learn more at www.MediaMattersWW.com

SOURCE Media Matters Worldwide
JACKSONVILLE, Fla., March 4, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- MedMal Direct Insurance Company ("MDIC") , the direct-to- physician medical professional liability insurance carrier, announces Marc D. Hammett as its new President and Chief Executive Officer effective March 2, 2022. Hammett will follow Melodee S. Dixon, who led the company for three years and made the decision to spend more time with family. Hammett's unanimous appointment by the Board of Directors comes at a time that the organization is experiencing significant opportunities for growth in the nine states in which it serves physicians: Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, and Texas.

Hammett will assume the CEO role at a critical time, following the firm's 14% year-over-year revenue growth, a changing reinsurance landscape and a litigation environment that has become increasingly challenging across the United States.

P. Butler Ball, CEO and Director of Physicians Trust, Inc., MedMal Direct's parent company, applauded the choice, "Our Board is excited to have Marc expand his responsibilities at MedMal Direct. He has played a major role in the company's success; he knows the firm, our team members and the business inside and out. His tenure in the industry, his financial background and his relationships within the market makes Marc ideally suited to strategically grow the organization in a disciplined manner. The Board has seen him demonstrate his experience, wisdom and depth since 2016. We have every confidence that Marc will be a great team leader and take the firm to the next level."

Hammett has served as the Chief Financial Officer of MDIC and President and Chief Strategy Officer for Physicians Trust, Inc. since joining the firm after more than 25 years in the industry.

Reflecting on his new role, Hammett said, "I'm honored to follow Melodee and look forward to working closely with our Board of Directors, all of our team members and partners to achieve our strategic goals. Since joining the company in 2016, I have been involved in all facets of the business and am more confident than ever in MedMal Direct's strategic growth opportunities and potential."

Outgoing CEO Melodee S. Dixon continued the conversation. "I believe that stepping down and concentrating on my family is the right decision at this time. This was a difficult decision for me given the many opportunities I see and my confidence in the company. However, it was the right one for me personally. I'll work through a time of transition to ensure excellent service to our policyholders and wish Butler, Marc and the entire team success as they continue to grow the business. My work here over the last five years has reinforced my believe that the talented team will position the company to grow and thrive."

About MedMal Direct: Since 2010, MedMal Direct Insurance Company (MedMal Direct) has served doctors through a cost- saving, service-first business model that provides medical professional liability insurance directly to physicians and surgeons. The company operates in nine states: Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, and Texas supplying significant savings to physicians on medical professional liability insurance premiums. MedMal Direct has earned and maintains a Financial Stability Rating of A, Exceptional, from Demotech, Inc. The company is backed by a panel of A.M. Best A (Excellent) and A+ (Superior) rated international reinsurers.

SOURCE MedMal Direct Insurance Company
"The opportunity to launch Mill Creek, as one of the founding partners, and to help it grow into the enduring enterprise it is today has been the honor of my long career," Brindell said. "Nothing spurred the decision to retire other than the inherent feeling that it is the right time. Bill and his team have been laying the foundation for a new generation of exciting growth, expansion and profitability for Mill Creek, and I am looking forward to watching it all unfold, albeit from a different vantage point. There is no more able, competent and focused leader across the real estate universe than Bill, in my opinion."

Brindell is quick to remind anyone that Mill Creek's success and industry leadership is the result of a team effort. In Mill Creek's 11 years under Brindell's leadership, the company has grown from a de novo start-up of 70 founding partners and associates to more than 1,000 today. Additionally, the company has developed or acquired more than 43,000 apartment homes across more than 160 communities and deployed in excess of $12.7 billion in new investment. Today, the company has more than $9 billion in assets under management. Mill Creek regularly receives accolades as a top developer, builder and manager by various industry groups.

"I often pinch myself when reflecting on all that our team has accomplished over such a relatively short period of time," Brindell said.

A Wilmington, N.C., native who graduated from the University of North Carolina in 1971, Brindell was associated with the Trammell Crow family and its affiliates for 28 years prior to the founding of Mill Creek. He served as president and CEO at Trammell Crow Residential prior to the formation of Mill Creek, which he and a group of TCR senior partners initiated with a founding investment from the Trammell Crow family and a large state public pension.

"Charlie had the vision to launch Mill Creek when most people in the industry were hunkering down," MacDonald said. "Charlie's positive attitude and leadership helped drive Mill Creek into one of the most respected and prolific rental housing companies in the country. He will certainly be missed."

Brindell's long real estate career also included three years in commercial mortgage banking at Cameron Brown Company (Raleigh, N.C.) and more than seven years at Southwide Development Company, a Memphis-based industrial real estate management and development firm where he served as vice president of finance and president and chief operating officer.

Brindell has long been active in many professional industry associations. Most recently, he has been active with The Real Estate Roundtable, The Urban Land Institute and the National Multifamily Housing Council (Executive Committee). He also served two terms as chairman of the Multifamily Leadership Board of the National Association of Home Builders. He served on several additional boards and advisory committees, as well.

Outside of real estate, Brindell serves on the boards of Independent Bank and Independent Holdings. He is a member of the advisory board and executive committee of the Wood Center for Real Estate Studies at the Kenan Flagler Business School at UNC and the advisory board of the Baylor, Scott and White Healthcare Foundation in Dallas. He is also a board member of Phoenix House Texas and an advisory director of Rentable Technologies.

About Mill Creek Residential

Mill Creek Residential Trust LLC is a national rental housing company focused on the development, acquisition and operation of rental housing communities in targeted markets nationwide. The national company, headquartered in Boca Raton, Florida proactively develops, acquires, constructs and operates communities through its seasoned team of real estate professionals in offices across the United States. Mill Creek is building its portfolio in many of the nation's most desirable markets in Seattle, Portland, the San Francisco Bay area, Southern California, Phoenix, Denver, Dallas, Austin, Houston, South Florida, Tampa, Orlando, Atlanta, Nashville, Charlotte, Raleigh, Washington, D.C., New Jersey, New York, and Boston. As of December 31, 2021, the company's portfolio is comprised of 119 communities representing over 32,500 rental homes that are operating and/or under construction. For more information, please visit www.MillCreekPlaces.com .

Media Contact

Stephen Ursery

LinnellTaylor Marketing

[email protected]

303.682.3945

SOURCE Mill Creek Residential
DALLAS, March 4, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- MindHandle, an Employment Branding Agency that focuses on recruiting, retention and engagement, is partnering with Texas-based Frost as its employment branding agency of record. MindHandle will work hand-in-hand with Frost to develop, refine and promote the Frost culture with its 4,700 employees across more than 150 financial centers.

"Frost has always put long-term customer relationships at the forefront of its business, and we will amplify their culture of integrity, caring and excellence with its employees across the state of Texas," said Eric Harris, CEO of MindHandle. "Our leadership team will build an employee-first approach so Frost can focus on recruiting the right people, retaining top performers and engaging employees to do their best."

Given the rapid pace the workforce is changing, at its core, MindHandle creates advertising-quality campaigns that target employees, increasing engagement and aligning internal communication. This results in a reduction in employee turnover costs, faster onboarding for new employees and an elevation in brand advocacy, in turn, creating brand champions. And in conjunction with National Employee Appreciation Day, Frost and MindHandle will celebrate this partnership as they prioritize Frost employees.

"MindHandle is a trailblazer in employee branding, and we are thrilled to partner with a team that has the same vision and passion to ensure our employees are brand champions," said Ericka Pullin, Executive Vice President, Research and Strategy at Frost. "We look forward to building an even stronger employee foundation with the support of MindHandle."

MindHandle will orchestrate a multi-layered employee branding approach with Frost that will include: articulating a brand storyline and creative campaigns, streamlining and implementing recruiting communications, providing retention strategies, employee journey maps and general enhancements to employee communications programs.

"The best cultures are products of persistent and consistent messages over time. When internal communications are deliberately planned and patiently maintained, the results can be magical," said Maria Colaluca, Head of Digital Marketing at MindHandle. "We are honored to work directly with Frost to bring that magic to life inside the company."

ABOUT MINDHANDLE

MindHandle is a Dallas-based employment branding agency that helps companies with large, distributed workforces attract, engage, and retain top performing employees. The company crafts compelling brand stories that employees connect with, resulting in better vision, corporate alignment, brand value, and business growth. The company was created by senior leaders with experience spanning creative, technology, corporate marketing, employee engagement and training.

SOURCE MindHandle
"We're excited to host the New Orleans Community Health & Wellness Festival, and we hope members of the community join us for this occasion," said Dr. Gary Puckrein, President and CEO of the National Minority Quality Forum. "The festival will be a fun and inclusive way to reduce health risks and advocate optimal care."

"The Health & Wellness Festival delivers on our belief that everyone deserves access to quality, accessible health care," said Dr. Dana Lawson, Vice President of Population Health and Clinical Operations at Louisiana Healthcare Connections. "We're looking forward to spending the day with our friends and neighbors to promote healthy living."

"Our health centers are committed to the well-being of Greater New Orleans," said Michael Griffin, President and CEO at DePaul Community Health Centers. "We hope our fellow neighbors will join us at the Health & Wellness Festival to engage with the community, reinforce healthy habits, and join in the fun."

"The last few years have been a reminder of how vital health equity is for the community," said Dr. Reynold Verret, President of Xavier University of Louisiana. "At Xavier, we are known for producing more Black doctors than any other university in the nation, and so we are honored to be involved as a partner in making the Health & Wellness Festival a reality and improving equitable access to health screenings and COVID-19 protections.

The New Orleans Community Health and Wellness Festival is made possible with the generous support of our partners  Louisiana Healthcare Connections, DePaul Community Health Centers, Xavier University of Louisiana, Watson Memorial Teaching Ministries, Philips, and Amazon.

Family Center of Hope is located at 4137 Washington Ave., New Orleans, LA. Free health services that will be offered include COVID-19 vaccinations, men's health, behavioral health, oral health, and vision screenings. Free $50 gift cards compliments of Bring Back Louisiana are available for receiving a COVID vaccine.

SOURCE Louisiana Healthcare Connections
Global competitiveness and key competitor percentage market shares

Market presence across multiple geographies - Strong/Active/Niche/Trivial

Online interactive peer-to-peer collaborative bespoke updates

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Edition: 21; Released: February 2022

Executive Pool: 29767

Companies: 151 - Players covered include AFC Energy Plc; Air Liquide S.A.; Ballard Power Systems, Inc.; Bloom Energy Corporation; Ceres Power Holdings plc; Doosan Fuel Cell America, Inc.; FuelCell Energy, Inc.; Horizon Fuel Cell Technologies Pte Ltd.; Hydrogenics Corporation; ITM Power Plc; Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd.; Mitsubishi Hitachi Power Systems, Ltd.; Nuvera Fuel Cells, LLC; Plug Power Inc.; Proton OnSite; SFC Energy AG; Siemens Industry, Inc.; Teledyne Energy Systems, Inc.; UltraCell LLC and Others.

Coverage: All major geographies and key segments

Segments: Type (Proton Exchange Membrane, Phosphoric Acid, Molten Carbonate, Solid Oxide, Other Types); Application (Stationary, Transportation, Portable)

Geographies: World; USA; Canada; Japan; China; Europe; France; Germany; Italy; UK; Spain; Russia; Rest of Europe; Asia-Pacific; South Korea; Rest of Asia-Pacific; Latin America; Rest of World.

Complimentary Project Preview - This is an ongoing global program. Preview our research program before you make a purchase decision. We are offering a complimentary access to qualified executives driving strategy, business development, sales & marketing, and product management roles at featured companies. Previews provide deep insider access to business trends; competitive brands; domain expert profiles; and market data templates and much more. You may also build your own bespoke report using our MarketGlass Platform which offers thousands of data bytes without an obligation to purchase our report. Preview Registry

ABSTRACT-

Global Fuel Cells Market to Reach US$20.2 Billion by the Year 2026

Fuel cells are designed to generate electricity through eco-friendly methods without releasing harmful greenhouse gases. Growth in the global market is set to be driven by rising focus on alternative energy sources, efforts to de-carbonize energy usage, adoption of hydrogen in transportation and government regulations. Strong support extended by governments the world over, increased R&D funding for fuel cell research projects, reformation in emission legislations, and ensuing boost given to high profile fuel cell projects, are all factors driving growth in the industry. The technology is garnering attention owing to rising awareness regarding various advantages of these cells, private/public partnerships, and low environmental impact. Various governments are developing policies and frameworks and offering funding to support R&D in this direction. Fuel cells have enormous potential for power generation purposes, in large-scale power projects, combined heat and generation (CHP) programs and in distributed power systems, since several developing countries face energy shortages and deficient grid-based systems. Unlike conventional batteries, fuel cells can continuously generate power provided the source fuel supply is available, thus making them suitable for varied applications. Rising demand for portable devices constitutes another major driver of growth in the fuel calls market. Given the higher energy density of fuel cells compared to batteries, these are emerging as ideal alternatives for use in portable electronic devices. In the long-term, market penetration is forecast to gain momentum as incremental technology improvements iron out current glitches, and rise in production volumes result in economies of scale and cost benefits.

Amid the COVID-19 crisis, the global market for Fuel Cells estimated at US$9.7 Billion in the year 2022, is projected to reach a revised size of US$20.2 Billion by 2026, growing at a CAGR of 17.9% over the analysis period. Proton Exchange Membrane, one of the segments analyzed in the report, is projected to grow at a 17.9% CAGR to reach US$15.8 Billion by the end of the analysis period. After a thorough analysis of the business implications of the pandemic and its induced economic crisis, growth in the Phosphoric Acid segment is readjusted to a revised 18.2% CAGR for the next 7-year period. This segment currently accounts for a 12.3% share of the global Fuel Cells market. Based on their lightweight nature and ability to curb greenhouse gas emissions, proton exchange membrane fuel cells are commonly used in transportation applications. Some of the other major applications of these cells include portable and stationary or distributed electricity generation. The segment growth is anticipated to be bolstered by increasing requirement of large-scale multi-megawatt power generation units to serve off-grid and remote areas.

The U.S. Market is Estimated at $2.3 Billion in 2022, While China is Forecast to Reach $2.7 Billion by 2026

The Fuel Cells market in the U.S. is estimated at US$2.3 Billion in the year 2022. The country currently accounts for a 24.31% share in the global market. China, the world's second largest economy, is forecast to reach an estimated market size of US$2.7 Billion in the year 2026 trailing a CAGR of 25.3% through the analysis period. Among the other noteworthy geographic markets are Japan and Canada, each forecast to grow at 15% and 17.7% respectively over the analysis period. Within Europe, Germany is forecast to grow at approximately 17% CAGR while Rest of European market (as defined in the study) will reach US$3.5 Billion by the end of the analysis period. In North America, market growth benefits from the rising acceptance of EVs, technological advances, favorable regulations, federal government investments, presence of major players and public/private partnerships. Growth in Asia-Pacific is supported by the escalating need to reduce energy consumption in various end-use sectors, rising demand for clean energy solutions, and persistent increase in investments and technology advancements associated with fuel cell technology. In Japan, growing concerns over supply security associated with petroleum fuels is driving a shift towards clean energy technologies, thus fueling growth in the fuel cells market. The market is also being bolstered by the availability of capital subsidies for local manufacturers of fuel cells.

Molten Carbonate Segment to Reach $1.9 Billion by 2026

In the global Molten Carbonate segment, USA, Canada, Japan, China and Europe will drive the 16% CAGR estimated for this segment. These regional markets accounting for a combined market size of US$642.6 Million will reach a projected size of US$1.8 Billion by the close of the analysis period. China will remain among the fastest growing in this cluster of regional markets. Led by countries such as Australia, India, and South Korea, the market in Asia-Pacific is forecast to reach US$300.9 Million by the year 2026. More

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SOURCE Global Industry Analysts, Inc.
LONDON, March 4, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Woodfell Estates have chosen to implement MRI Sales and Lettings to support their new agency offering with a single web-based integrated platform.

Woodfell Estates is a new entity, set to rapidly scale over the coming months. Their management team wanted to ensure they had the right systems in place to facilitate growth while providing their clients with the best possible service.

MRI Sales & Lettings will allow Woodfell Estates to do exactly this. MRI Sales and Lettings is a powerful platform catering for all areas of agency, with numerous integrations to other PropTech solutions, allowing users to build a tech stack based on industry standard technology.

David H, Director of Woodfell Estates, said: "Out of all the different software providers we explored in the market, MRI Sales & Lettings definitely stood above the rest. Through streamlined processes and their multiple integrations, we are confident that this is the supplier that will provide the greatest level of support to our new project."

Michael Connolly, Account Executive at MRI Software, said: "It has been great working with David, understanding his business needs and exploring how MRI Sales & Lettings can get the best out of his new venture. It is particularly exciting to work with a new business that has ambitions to grow, and we look forward to helping them achieve exactly that."

About MRI Software

MRI Software is a leading provider of real estate software solutions that transform the way communities live, work and play. MRI's open and connected, AI-first platform empowers owners, operators and occupiers in commercial and residential property organizations to innovate in rapidly changing markets. MRI has been a trailblazer in the PropTech industry for over five decades, serving more than two million users worldwide. Through innovative solutions and a rich partner ecosystem, MRI gives real estate companies the freedom to realize their vision of building thriving communities and stronger businesses. For more information, please visit mrisoftware.com/uk

For further information, please contact:

Karen Waite

MRI Software

Email: [email protected]

SOURCE MRI Software
WASHINGTON, March 4, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The All of Us Research Program's Journey mobile exhibit is traveling across the country to engage communities that have been historically underrepresented in medical research. All of Us is inviting one million or more people to help build one of the most diverse health databases of its kind and advance precision medicine.

Since the program launched in 2018, the mobile exhibit has visited more than 100 cities in over 40 states. In the DMV area, the Journey will be available to educate and register new participants for the program. With more enrollment and representation from area residents, researchers can help better address health issues that are prevalent in the community.

EVENT DETAILS:

All of Us tour managers will be available for interviews at the event or before the event via Zoom or phone.

tour managers will be available for interviews at the event or before the event via Zoom or phone. Journalists are welcome to shoot B-roll and take photos at the event.

The mobile exhibit features hands-on activities to learn more about the program, including a digital gaming hub, an augmented reality experience, and more.

Only adults aged 18+ are able to register for the program at this time.

COVID-19 safety guidelines:

All staff are vaccinated against COVID-19.



Staff and attendees are required to wear masks, social distance, sanitize hands, and complete temperature screenings and digital tracing forms.

to wear masks, social distance, sanitize hands, and complete temperature screenings and digital tracing forms.

All surfaces are cleaned pre-, during, and post-event to reduce any possible contamination.

ABOUT ALL OF US:

More than 320,000 people nationwide have enrolled and completed the initial steps, and over 80% of these participants belong to communities that have been historically underrepresented in biomedical research, including 50% from racial and ethnic minority groups. Researchers will use the data participants contribute to learn how biology, lifestyle, and environment affect health. This may one day help them find more tailored ways to treat and prevent disease.

For more information, visit allofus.nih.gov . | To sign up, visit joinallofus.org .

SOURCE Montage Marketing Group
The OFCnet gateway, with up to 34Tb/s of bandwidth, will enable academia and industry to join forces to push the boundaries as they design, build and utilize this platform for cutting-edge networking technologies. The vision of OFCnet is being facilitated through the collaboration of CENIC, Ciena, EXFO, Lumen, Smart City Networks, the University of California San Diego's Qualcomm Institute and Supercomputer Center and Viavi. This team of visionaries aims to bring together bright minds from academia, industry and government to make this innovative networking infrastructure flourish in the future. The network will be available for the next five years.

"CENIC is thrilled to be able to help facilitate this dedicated high-capacity infrastructure to drive adoption and innovation in optical networking technology," said CENIC's Vice President of Engineering and Security Tony Nguyen. "It is through private and public collaborative projects like this that our research and education communities are empowered to accelerate discovery in solving our toughest challenges."

"OFCnet presents a game-changing opportunity for the research and education (R&E) community to participate in OFC," said OFC General Chairs Shinji Matsuo, David Plant and Jun Shan Wey. "This is just the beginning of an incredible collaboration with industry, government and academia to provide a platform for data sharing and discoveries that are driving innovation around the world."

"Pushing boundaries is what the OFC community does so well, and we're proud to provide the fiber backbone that will connect CENIC's facility and the San Diego Convention Center, making OFCnet at OFC a reality," said Ed Morche, president of Lumen's North American Enterprise and Public Sector. "CENIC's high speed network is built on the Lumen optical fiber and colocation infrastructure to quickly and securely connect academia, government and industry to drive innovation. These ultra-fast connections are designed to increase scientific collaboration among diverse organizations across the U.S."

Health and Safety:

OFC Management is committed to the health and safety of conference participants and is following global, federal, state, and local health guidelines in preparation for OFC 2022. All conference attendees, exhibitors, vendors and staff must be fully vaccinated and show proof of vaccination with photo ID, and wear a mask in the San Diego Convention Center at all times except when actively eating and drinking. Please visit the health and safety page for additional information on requirements and procedures for entering the conference, including vaccine and mask guidelines.

Registration Information:

Credentialed media and analysts who wish to cover OFC can find registration and other essential information in the OFC media room .

About OFC

The 2022 Optical Fiber Communication Conference and Exhibition (OFC) is the premier conference and exhibition for optical communications and networking professionals. For more than 45 years, OFC has drawn attendees from all corners of the globe to meet and greet, teach and learn, make connections, and move businesses forward.

OFC includes dynamic business programming, an exhibition of global companies and high impact peer-reviewed research that, combined, showcase the trends that are shaping the entire optical networking and communications industry. OFC is co-sponsored by the IEEE Communications Society (IEEE/ComSoc) and the IEEE Photonics Society and co-sponsored and managed by Optica (formerly OSA). OFC in 2022 will be presented in a hybrid format with in-person and virtual components and will take place 06-10 March 2022 at the San Diego Convention Center in San Diego, California, USA. Follow OFC on Twitter @OFCConference , learn more at OFC Community LinkedIn , and watch highlights on OFC YouTube .

Media Contact:

[email protected]

SOURCE The Optical Fiber Communication Conference and Exhibition (OFC)
MIRAMAR BEACH, Fla., March 4, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- OMNICOMMANDER , a Website Design, Marketing, and Cybersecurity firm that focuses on the credit union industry, announces they have signed their 500th client. In addition, they are launching the 7th version of their own website www.OMNICOMMANDER.com .

OMNICOMMANDER has grown from a single owner-operator shop to employing nearly 100 COMMANDOs. Their headquarters is located in Miramar Beach, FL, and they have recently opened a flagship office in Brentwood, TN, and a cybersecurity office in Salt Lake City, UT.

Founder and CEO Eric Isham states, "I'm thrilled to announce that we have signed our 500th website client. To be completely honest, I was hoping that we could reach that milestone in conjunction with our 5-year anniversary back in January, but 500 clients in just over five years isn't all that bad. The fact we have averaged 100 new clients per year since starting the business is a testament to our dedication to the credit union industry."

OMNICOMMANDER's new website, internally referred to as "Ohhseeseven," is an ADA compliant, mobile-first design with intuitive navigation. As the World Wide Web embraces Web 3.0 concepts, it is imperative for OMNICOMMANDER to use its own website as the flagship for cutting-edge design features. The new website boasts the latest in high-resolution imagery, interactive 3D content, and advanced animations, just to name a few. The project is a true testament to the technical prowess of OMNICOMMANDER's design team, attention to detail, and forward-thinking design mindset.

Isham states, "There is no doubt that our latest version of the website is by far some of our best work yet. As usual, this was a team effort. My original guidance was that this version should be evolutionary as opposed to revolutionary so that we could build on the already incredible existing website. The team accomplished exactly that and brought to life what I had envisioned as our digital office and a reflection of our physical offices."

About OMNICOMMANDER

OMNICOMMANDER is a veteran-owned and operated website design, marketing, and cybersecurity firm that focuses on the credit union industry. With a dedication to member experience, the company ensures every touchpoint has a remarkable interface. Alongside the incredible design, OMNICOMMANDER creates websites with built-in mobile responsiveness, SSL encryption, and observance of ADA guidelines. OMNICOMMANDER provides marketing services, including targeted marketing, branding, SEO, video creation, and social media, to enhance every aspect of a brand's digital presence. OMNICOMMANDER's cybersecurity division CYBERCOMMANDER is the industry's first cybersecurity provider focused on providing a holistic yet affordable cybersecurity solution for credit unions, offering customized compliance solutions that help our partners stay two steps ahead of cybercriminals.

For more information, visit OMNICOMMANDER on LinkedIn , Twitter , Facebook , and Instagram .

CONTACT: John Pennycuff, 800.807.3109, [email protected]

SOURCE OMNICOMMANDER
HELSINKI, March 4, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Notice is given to the shareholders of Outokumpu Oyj ("Outokumpu" or "Company") to the Annual General Meeting to be held on Thursday, March 31, 2022 at 1.00 pm EEST at the Company's head office at Salmisaarenranta 11, Helsinki, Finland. In order to prevent the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Annual General Meeting will be held without shareholders' and their proxy representatives' presence at the meeting venue.

The Board of Directors of the Company has resolved to arrange the Annual General Meeting in accordance with the provisions of the temporary legislation approved by the Finnish Parliament on April 27, 2021 (375/2021, Act on temporary deviation from the Limited Liability Companies Act) without the physical presence of shareholders and their proxy representatives. This is to secure the health and safety of shareholders, employees and other stakeholders of the Company. Shareholders of the Company and their proxy representatives can participate in the meeting and use shareholder rights only by voting in advance and by making counterproposals and presenting questions in advance in accordance with instructions in this notice and otherwise by the Company. Further instructions can be found in this notice to the Annual General Meeting in section "C. Instructions for the participants of the Annual General Meeting".

There will be no presentations by the Board or the management at the meeting, nor will there be video streaming from the meeting. Before the Annual General Meeting, on the same day at 10 am EEST, the Company will however arrange a live webcast with a review presentation by the CEO. The webcast is not part of the Annual General Meeting, and it will be held only in Finnish. This webcast will require a registration, but it is not limited to Outokumpu shareholders. Further details of the webcast are available on the Annual General Meeting website. In connection with the review, participants can present questions to the CEO, but the webcast will not be a decision-making forum. Questions asked during the webcast are thus not questions referred to in Chapter 5, Section 25 of the Limited Liability Companies Act. Questions referred to in Chapter 5, Section 25 of the Limited Liability Companies Act shall be asked separately in advance in accordance with instructions described in section "C. Instructions for the participants of the Annual General Meeting".

A. Agenda of the Annual General Meeting

At the Annual General Meeting, the following matters will be considered:

1. Opening of the meeting

2. Calling the meeting to order

The Chairman of the Meeting will be Manne Airaksinen, attorney-at-law. In case Manne Airaksinen would not be available to act as the Chairman of the Meeting for a weighty reason, the Board of Directors will name another person it deems most suitable to act as the Chairman.

3. Election of person to scrutinize the minutes and to supervise the counting of votes

The person to scrutinize the minutes and to supervise the counting of votes will be Matti Louhija, Senior Vice President  Corporate General Counsel of the Company. In case Matti Louhija would not be able to act as the person to scrutinize the minutes and to supervise the counting of votes for a weighty reason, the Board of Directors will name another person it deems most suitable to act in that role.

4. Recording the legality of the meeting

5. Recording the attendance at the meeting and adoption of the list of votes

Shareholders who have voted in advance and who have the right to participate in the meeting pursuant to Chapter 5 Sections 6 and 6a of the Finnish Limited Liability Companies Act will be deemed shareholders represented at the meeting. The list of votes will be adopted according to the information provided by Euroclear Finland Oy and Innovatics Oy.

6. Presentation of the annual accounts, the review of the Board of Directors and the auditor's report for the year 2021

As participation in the Annual General Meeting is possible only in advance, the annual report which has been published on the date of this notice March 4, 2022 and which includes the Company's Annual Accounts, the review by the Board of Directors and the auditor's report is deemed to have been presented to the Annual General Meeting. The document is available on the Company's website. The recording of the CEO's webcast review will be published on the same website.

7. Adoption of the annual accounts

The Board of Directors proposes to the Annual General Meeting that the Annual General Meeting adopts the annual accounts.

8. Resolution on the use of the profit shown on the balance sheet and the payment of dividend

The Board of Directors proposes to the Annual General Meeting a dividend of EUR 0.15 for the account period that ended December 31, 2021. The dividend will be paid to shareholders registered in the shareholders' register of the Company held by Euroclear Finland Oy on the dividend record date April 4, 2022. The Board proposes that the dividend be paid on April 11, 2022.

9. Resolution on the discharge of the members of the Board of Directors and the CEO from liability for the financial year 2021

10. Presentation of the remuneration report and the Annual General Meeting's advisory resolution on the approval of the remuneration report

As participation in the Annual General Meeting is possible only in advance, the remuneration report of the Company, which describes the implementation of the Company's Remuneration Policy and provides information on the remuneration of the Company's governing bodies during the financial year 2021, and which has been published on the date of this notice to the Annual General Meeting March 4, 2022, is deemed to have been presented to the Annual General Meeting. The resolution by the Annual General Meeting on the approval of the remuneration report is advisory. The report is available on the Company's website.

11. Resolution on the remuneration of the members of the Board of Directors

The Shareholders' Nomination Board proposes to the Annual General Meeting that the annual remuneration of the Board of Directors would be increased as follows: EUR 169,000 (2021: EUR 163,000) for the Chairman, EUR 93,500 (2021: EUR 91,600) for the Vice Chairman and the Chairman of the Board Audit Committee, and EUR 72,500 (2021: EUR 71,100) for the other members of the Board of Directors. 40% of the annual remuneration would be paid in the Company's own shares using treasury shares or shares to be purchased from the market at a price formed in public trading and in accordance with the applicable insider regulations. If a Board member, on the date of the Annual General Meeting, owns shares of the Company, which based on the closing price of that day represent a value exceeding the annual remuneration, he or she can opt to receive the remuneration in cash.

The Shareholders' Nomination Board proposes that the meeting fees, which would be paid also for the Board Committee meetings, would be kept at the same level as during the previous term: EUR 600 per meeting for each member of the Board of Directors and EUR 1,200 when travelling to a meeting held outside the Board member's country of residence. The meeting fees are paid in cash.

The Shareholders' Nomination Board comprised Antti Makinen, Managing Director at Solidium Oy; Jouko Polonen, President and CEO at Ilmarinen Mutual Pension Insurance Company; Pekka Pajamo, CFO at Varma Mutual Pension Insurance Company; Outi Antila, Director General at The Social Insurance Institution of Finland and Chairman of the Board of Directors Kari Jordan.

12. Resolution on the number of the members of the Board of Directors

The Shareholders' Nomination Board proposes that the Board of Directors would consist of eight (8) members.

13. Election of the members of the Board of Directors

The Shareholders' Nomination Board proposes that of the current members of the Board of Directors Kari Jordan, Heinz Jorg Fuhrmann, Kati ter Horst, Paivi Luostarinen, Vesa-Pekka Takala, Pierre Vareille and Julia Woodhouse would be re-elected and that Petter Soderstrom would be elected as new member, all for the term of office ending at the end of the next Annual General Meeting. The Nomination Board also proposes that Kari Jordan would be re-elected as the Chairman and Kati ter Horst would be elected as the Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors.

Eeva Sipila has informed the Shareholders' Nomination Board that she is no longer available for re-election to the Board of Directors.

All the proposed Board members have given their consents to their appointments and the members of the Board of Directors proposed to be re-elected have confirmed that they are independent of the Company and its major shareholders. The new proposed Board member, Petter Soderstrom, is independent of the Company but not of one of its major shareholders, Solidium Oy. Further information on the proposed Board members is available at Outokumpu's website.

14. Resolution on the remuneration of the auditor

The Board proposes on the recommendation of the Audit Committee that the elected auditor be reimbursed in accordance with the auditor's invoice approved by the Board of Directors.

15. Election of auditor

The Board proposes on the recommendation of the Audit Committee that accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers Oy be elected as the auditor for the term of office ending at the end of the next Annual General meeting. The auditor's assignment also includes giving the auditor's statement on the discharge of the members of the Board of Directors and the CEO from liability and on the proposal of the Board of Directors for distribution of profit.

16. Authorizing the Board of Directors to decide on the repurchase of the Company's own shares

The Board of Directors proposes that the Board of Directors be authorized to resolve to repurchase a maximum of 45,000,000 of Outokumpu's own shares, currently representing approximately 9.85% of Outokumpu's total number of registered shares. The own shares may be repurchased pursuant to the authorization only by using unrestricted equity. The price payable for the shares shall be based on the price of the Company's shares on the day of repurchase in public trading or otherwise at the price prevailing on the market.

The Board of Directors is authorized to decide how the own shares will be repurchased. The own shares may be repurchased in deviation from the proportional shareholdings of the shareholders (directed repurchase). Shares may also be acquired outside public trading. In connection with the acquisition of the Company's shares, derivative, share lending, or other agreements that are normal within the framework of capital markets may take place in accordance with legislative and regulatory requirements. The repurchased own shares may be held by the Company, cancelled or transferred further. The aggregate number of Outokumpu's own shares held by the Company and its subsidiaries may not, however, exceed 10% of the total number of registered shares. The authorization will be in force until the end of the next Annual General Meeting, however expiring at the latest on May 31, 2023. On the date of this notice March 4, 2022, Outokumpu holds 4,164,711 own shares.

17. Authorizing the Board of Directors to decide on the issuance of shares as well as other special rights entitling to shares

The Board of Directors proposes that the Board of Directors be authorized to resolve to issue a maximum of 45,000,000 shares through one or several share issues and/or by granting special rights entitling to shares, as specified in Chapter 10, Section 1, of the Finnish Companies Act, excluding option rights to Outokumpu's management and personnel under an incentive plan. 45,000,000 shares currently represent approximately 9.85% of Outokumpu's total number of registered shares.

The Board of Directors resolves upon all other terms and conditions of the share issue and of the issue of special rights entitling to shares. The Board of Directors has the authority to resolve upon the issue of shares and special rights in deviation of the pre-emptive subscription right of the shareholders (directed issue). The authorization covers both the issuance of new shares and the transfer of own shares. The authorization is valid until the end of the next Annual General Meeting, however expiring at the latest on May 31, 2023.

18. Closing of the meeting

B. Documents of the Annual General Meeting

This notice, which includes the proposals of the Board of Directors and the Shareholders' Nomination Board is available at Outokumpu's Annual General Meeting website at www.outokumpu.com/agm2022. Also, the annual accounts, the review by the Board of Directors and the auditor's report as well as the remuneration report of the Company which have been published on the date of this notice March 4, 2022 to the Annual General Meeting are available on the above-mentioned website. Copies of these documents and this notice will be sent to a shareholder upon request. The minutes of the meeting will be available on the website as from April 14, 2022 at the latest.

C. Instructions for the participants of the Annual General Meeting

In order to prevent the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Annual General Meeting will be held without shareholders' and their proxy representatives' presence at the meeting venue. This is to secure the health and safety of the shareholders, employees and other stakeholders of the Company. Shareholders and their proxies cannot participate in the meeting through real-time telecommunications or technical means either. Shareholders and their proxies can participate in the meeting and use their shareholder rights only by voting in advance and by making counterproposals and presenting questions in advance.

1. Shareholders registered in the shareholders' register

Each shareholder, who is registered on the record date March 21, 2022 in Outokumpu's shareholder register held by Euroclear Finland Oy, has the right to participate in the Annual General Meeting. A shareholder, whose shares are registered on his/her personal Finnish book-entry account, is automatically shown in the shareholder register. For those shareholders who do not have a Finnish book-entry account, guidelines are given in section "4. Holders of nominee registered shares". Shareholders can participate in the meeting only by voting in advance in a manner instructed below as well as by making counterproposals and presenting questions in advance.

2. Registration and advance voting

Registration for the meeting and advance voting will begin on March 11, 2022 at 12.00 pm, following the deadline for submitting counterproposals to be placed for a vote. A shareholder, who is registered in the shareholders' register of the Company and who wants to participate in the Annual General Meeting, must register for the Meeting and vote in advance no later than March 25, 2022 by 4.00 pm EET by which time the registration and votes need to be received.

In connection with the registration, a shareholder is requested to give his/her name, personal identification number, email address, telephone number and the name and identification number of possible proxy representative. The personal data given to Outokumpu or Innovatics Oy is used only in connection with the Annual General Meeting and with the processing of the registrations.

A shareholder, who has a personal Finnish book-entry account, may register and vote in advance on certain items on the agenda of the Annual General Meeting from March 11, 2022 at 12.00 until 4.00 pm EET on March 25, 2022 by the following means:

a. at Outokumpu's Annual General Meeting website

The Finnish personal identity code or business ID of the shareholder is needed for voting in advance and strong electronic identification with Finnish online banking credentials or mobile certificate of the shareholder or his/her representative.

b. by mail or email

A shareholder may send the advance voting form available on the Outokumpu's Annual General Meeting website on March 11, 2022 at 12.00 pm or corresponding information to Innovatics Oy by mail to Innovatics Oy, AGM/Outokumpu Oyj, Ratamestarinkatu 13 A, 00520 Helsinki or by email to [email protected]. If the shareholder participates in the meeting by sending the votes in advance by mail or email to Innovatics Oy before the end of the registration and advance voting period, this constitutes registration for the Annual General Meeting, provided that the shareholder information required for registration is provided.

Instructions relating to the advance voting may also be found on the Outokumpu's Annual General Meeting website before advance voting starts. Information is also available during the registration period by phone +358 50 532 5582 from Monday to Friday at 9.0012.00 am and 1.004.00 pm EET.

3. Proxy representatives and powers of attorney

A shareholder may participate in the Annual General Meeting by proxy. The proxy representative of a shareholder is also required to vote in advance in the manner instructed in this notice.

A proxy representative is requested to produce a dated proxy document or otherwise in a reliable manner demonstrate his/her right to represent the shareholder. Should a shareholder participate in the Annual General Meeting by means of several proxy representatives representing the shareholder with shares at different securities accounts, the shares by which each proxy representative represents the shareholder shall be identified in connection with the registration for the Annual General Meeting.

Powers of Attorney for authorizing should be delivered primarily in connection with the electronic registration or alternatively by email to [email protected] or as originals by regular mail to Innovatics Oy, AGM/Outokumpu Oyj, Ratamestarinkatu 13 A, 00520 Helsinki, Finland before the last date for advance voting, by which time the Powers of Attorney must be received.

4. Holders of nominee registered shares

A holder of nominee registered shares has the right to participate in the Annual General Meeting by virtue of such shares, based on which he/she on the record date of the Annual General Meeting, March 21, 2022, would be entitled to be registered in the shareholders' register of the Company held by Euroclear Finland Oy.

Participation in the meeting also requires that the shareholder has been registered into the temporary shareholders' register held by Euroclear Finland Oy at the latest by March 28, 2022 by 10.00 am EEST. This constitutes due registration for the Annual General Meeting.

A holder of nominee registered shares is advised to early enough request the necessary instructions regarding the registration in the temporary shareholders' register, the issuing of proxy documents and registration for the Annual General Meeting from his/her custodian bank. A holder of nominee registered shares who wants to participate in the Annual General Meeting has to be registered into the temporary shareholders' register by the account management organization of the custodian bank latest by the time stated above. In addition, the account management organization of the custodian bank shall arrange advance voting on behalf of the holders of nominee registered shares by the end of the above registration period, i.e. by March 28, 2022 by 10.00 am EEST.

Further information on these matters can also be found on Outokumpu's Annual General Meeting website.

5. Other instructions and information

Shareholders who hold at least one hundredth of all the shares in the Company have a right to make a counterproposal on the agenda items, to be placed for a vote. Such counterproposals are required to be sent to the Company by email to [email protected] no later than March 10, 2022 at 10.00 am EET. In connection with making a counterproposal, shareholders are required to provide adequate evidence of shareholding. The counterproposal will be placed for a vote subject to the shareholder having the right to participate in the Annual General Meeting and that the shareholder holds at least one hundredth of all shares in the Company on the record date of the Annual General Meeting. Should the counterproposal not be placed for a vote at the meeting, advance votes in favor of the proposal will not be taken into account. The Company will on March 11, 2022 publish on its website the counterproposals, if any, that may be voted on.

A shareholder has the right to ask questions referred to in Chapter 5, Section 25 of the Finnish Limited Liability Companies Act with respect to matters to be considered at the Meeting. Such questions must be sent by email to [email protected] no later than March 17, 2022 at 4.00 pm EET. Such questions from shareholders, the Company's Management's answers to them, and any counterproposals that have not been placed for a vote are available on the Company's website on March 22, 2022. In connection with asking questions and making counterproposals, shareholders are required to provide adequate evidence of shareholding.

Information on the General Meeting required by the Finnish Limited Liability Companies Act is available on the Company's website.

Changes in the ownership of shares after the record date of the Annual General Meeting do not affect the right to participate in the Annual General Meeting nor the number of votes of the shareholder.

On the date of this notice, March 4, 2022, the total number of shares in the Company is 456 874 448 shares, which represent the same number of votes.

Link to Outokumpu's Annual General Meeting website: www.outokumpu.com/agm2022.

Helsinki, March 4, 2022

Outokumpu Oyj

Board of Directors

For more information:

Investors: Linda Hakkila, Head of Investor Relations, tel. +358 40 071 9669

Media: Paivi Allenius, VP  Communications, tel. +358 40 753 7374



This information was brought to you by Cision http://news.cision.com

https://news.cision.com/outokumpu-oyj/r/outokumpu---notice-to-the-annual-general-meeting-2022,c3518865

SOURCE Outokumpu Oyj
NEW ORLEANS, March 4, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Although many Louisiana residents have decided to roll up their sleeves for a COVID vaccine, enthusiasm seems to have waned when it comes to signing up for booster shots. To make booster shots more accessible to Black New Orleanians, a "Bring Back Louisiana Booster Event" will be held Saturday, March 5 from 10 a.m.  2 p.m. at L.B. Landry High School, located at 1200 LB Landry Avenue in New Orleans.

NOLA Booster FLyer

The event is inspired by the national Stay Well Community Health Fairs, which have been commended by The White House. These health fairs are a series of vaccination pop-ups, spearheaded by W. Montague Cobb/NMA Health Institute in partnership with nationwide organizations, to bring free health resources to Black communities amid the crush of COVID-19.

The W. Montague Cobb/NMA Health Institute functions as a national consortium of scholars who engage in innovative research and knowledge dissemination to reduce and eliminate racism as well as racial and ethnic health disparities in medicine.

The Stay Well Community Health Fairs are important because only 56 percent of New Orleans area residents are fully vaccinated against the virus. The pop-up events have been attended by more than 3,000 people, 1,000 of whom decided to get their vaccines. More than 200 New Orleans area residents were vaccinated during the January event.

"Health disparities are a contributing factor in risk differences among the New Orleans' Black community. We must fight forward to ensure no more lives are lost, families affected and overall lack of life quality. Events like this create a safe space for accessibility and questions to be answered," said Rahn Kennedy Bailey, MD and NMA-Cobb Research Institute Chairman.

The New Orleans Stay Well Health Fairs are open to the public and will offer:

Free boosters and vaccinations Health resources Direct access to Black physicians Giveaway

Bring Back Louisiana is serving as the local event organizer.

"Availability of vaccine resources and credibility of education sources are the unique forces behind events such as this. These pop-up events give families comfort as well as access not yet seen in many of our neighborhoods," said Tracey Flemings-Davillier, who served as the coordinator for the successful Stay Well event held at L.B. Landry High School in New Orleans in January.

For more information, visit staywellcommunityhealthfairs.org, Facebook and Instagram .

About Stay Well Community Health Fairs

Stay Well Community Health Fairs are designed to bring health-related resources to Black communities across the country. The W. Montague Cobb/NMA Health Institute has partnered with local health agencies and community-based organizations in select cities to continue educating Black communities while working to make vaccine resources more accessible. These fairs feature local and trusted Black health-care professionals in panel discussions on the continued impact of COVID-19, vaccines, and emerging variants. For more information, visit staywellcommunityhealthfairs.org.

Media Contact

Josephine Reid

[email protected]

414-260-8745

SOURCE W. Montague Cobb/NMA Health Institute
BOSTON and NEW YORK, March 4, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Provident Healthcare Partners (Provident), a leading healthcare investment banking firm, announced it has advised Advanced Urology Institute (AUI) in its affiliation with Solaris Health (Solaris), a portfolio company of Lee Equity. AUI provides exceptional and innovative urologic care to patients throughout Florida, with specialists located in Ocala, Panama City, Tallahassee, Daytona Beach, Pinellas, and Southwest Florida markets. AUI brings to Solaris the skills and talents of 105 providers who care for over 150,000 unique patients each year.

Provident's deal team was led by Managing Directors Kevin Palamara and Eric Major. McDermott Will & Emery LLP served as legal counsel to Solaris, and Katten Muchin Rosenman LLP served as legal counsel to AUI. The terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

"We are honored to have represented the physicians at AUI in executing on their partnership with Solaris. As one of the largest urology groups in the U.S., AUI had a wealth of options for prospective partners, and ultimately the physician leaders determined that joining likeminded physicians at Solaris was the best option for their future," commented Palamara.

"Solaris is building a best-in-class group of urology practices, and AUI is a natural fit as its Southeastern hub through its combination of strong executive leadership and outstanding reputation for clinical care," noted Major.

"From the day we selected Provident to represent us in a private equity deal, we knew we made the right decision. Every step of the process was carefully orchestrated with clear and concise messaging from a team of highly skilled, knowledgeable, and accomplished individuals. It never mattered what time of day or day of the week it was, the Provident team was always available to meet our needs by phone or by virtual web meeting. Most importantly, we felt represented by Provident, knowing that they were always looking out for our best interest. In the end, we felt we selected the right buyer and eventually negotiated the best deal, much to the credit of the Provident team," stated Scott B. Sellinger, MD, President, AUI and Richard Wooten, CEO of AUI.

About Advanced Urology Institute

Headquartered in Oxford, FL, Advanced Urology Institute is a professional corporation of medical doctors (M.D.'s) who are board certified and qualified in the surgical sub-specialty of urology. AUI specialists are located throughout Florida in Ocala, Panama City, Tallahassee, Daytona Beach, St. Petersburg, Clearwater, Fort Meyers, and Naples. AUI was founded in 2014 as a single-specialty, physician led organization to respond more efficiently and effectively to the ever-mounting changes in healthcare and government regulations. This allows AUI to provide and dedicate the highest level in patient-centered care with over 600 combined providers, clinical and front office staff. Visit www.advancedurologyinstitute.com for more information.

About Solaris Health

Solaris Health is a leading national healthcare platform committed to enhancing access to specialty healthcare and continually improving patient outcomes. Empowering community providers allows the company to make sure that every decision made puts patient care at the forefront. Solaris is growing to meet the changing needs of the healthcare providers, and to develop innovative ways to better deliver value and state-of-the-art care to its patients. Solaris Health is proud to be among the most innovative medical organizations in the United States. Visit www.solarishealthpartners.com for more information.

About Provident Healthcare Partners

Provident is a leading healthcare investment banking firm specializing in merger and acquisition advisory, strategic planning, and capital formation for healthcare companies. The firm has a comprehensive knowledge of market sectors and specialties, including urology services. Provident also has unsurpassed experience and insight into the M&A process, which includes working with a number of buyers such as private equity firms and strategic consolidators. For additional information, visit www.providenthp.com or follow on LinkedIn.

Contact:

Provident Healthcare Partners

Gina Casiello

877-742-9800

SOURCE Provident Healthcare Partners LLC
HOUSTON, March 4, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Quanta Services, Inc. (NYSE: PWR) announced today that it will host and webcast its 2022 Investor Day from New York City on Tues., Apr. 5, 2022. Management intends to provide presentations and engage in a question-and-answer discussion focused on the company's strategic initiatives and new long-term financial targets. The management presentations are scheduled to begin at approximately 9:00 a.m. Eastern time and including the question-and-answer discussion, to conclude at approximately 11:30 a.m. Eastern time.

A webcast of the event will be available for live viewing and will also be available for replay following the event on the Company's website under the "News & Events" area of the Investor Relations section (https://investors.quantaservices.com/news-events). Please note that the webcast for the event will be available to the public, but attendance at the event is limited to invited guests. For more information, please contact Kip Rupp at 713-341-7260 or [email protected].

About Quanta Services

Quanta is a leading specialized contracting services company, delivering comprehensive infrastructure solutions for the utility, renewable energy, communications, pipeline and energy industries. Quanta's comprehensive services include designing, installing, repairing and maintaining energy and communications infrastructure. With operations throughout the United States, Canada, Australia and select other international markets, Quanta has the manpower, resources and expertise to safely complete projects that are local, regional, national or international in scope. For more information, visit www.quantaservices.com.

Contact: Kip Rupp, CFA, IRC

Quanta Services, Inc.

(713) 341-7260

SOURCE Quanta Services, Inc.
NEW YORK, March 4, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The Second Circuit Court of Appeals, in JLM Couture Inc. vs. Hayley Paige Gutman, denied appellant Ms. Gutman's petition to rehear her argument and her petition for a hearing en banc. The Appeals Court Order supports its earlier decision, as well as multiple federal District Court findings, that Ms. Gutman is not entitled to use the Designer Name in trade or commerce and that she breached her clear and unambiguous employment contract and is not entitled to any additional compensation.

ABOUT JLM COUTURE, INC.

JLM Couture, Inc. (OTC: JLMC) is a multi-label bridal house engaged in the design, manufacture, and distribution of bridal gowns and bridesmaids dresses. The company's bridal gown collections are Allison Webb, Francesca Avila, Hayley Paige, Lazaro, Blush by Francesca Avila, Tara Keely by Lazaro, and Ti Adora by Allison Webb. The bridesmaid collection is Hayley Paige Occasions.

SOURCE JLM Couture
ROCKVILLE, Md., March 4, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- SolaREIT, a leading solar real estate investment fund, has closed on a $100 million securitization of solar leases with Nuveen. The expansion will significantly increase access to low-cost capital in the commercial and mid-sized solar development sector, including community solar. SolaREIT's land financing options, including the "Pre-Paid Solar Land Lease", allow landowners to receive solar lease payments immediatelyexpanding financial flexibility and access to capital for both solar developers and landowners.

"We're thrilled to work with and complete this securitization led by Nuveen, a clear leader in clean energy investment, to expand solar land financing optionsand help speed the clean energy transition. This investment confirms the strong interest from the largest and most progressive institutional investors in this sector. Community and commercial solar is in real need of increased financial options and access to more capital. No two projects are exactly the same, and for too long developers and landowners had very limited options in structuring effective solutions," said Gautam Chandra, Managing Director of SolaREIT. "SolaREIT's solutions supported by Nuveen's financing reduce the cost of solar and free-up developer capital to do more solar projects, accelerating overall solar adoption."

"We are excited to create this investment program with the SolaREIT team. This deal is an important step in creating the financial flexibility that allows solar to be a smart investment decision for real estate owners," said Chris Miller, Managing Director at Nuveen. "The mid-sized and commercial solar sector has been underserved for years but holds tremendous promise. Increasing capital flexibility into this segment can have a significant impact on the market growth of solar, and ESG focused investments such as SolaREIT can help create value for our clients today and preserve value for tomorrow's world."

According to the IEA, net-zero emissions by 2050the target set in the Paris Agreement requires solar and other clean energy transition-related investments to reach $4 trillion annually by 2030. Solar is a land-intensive technology; the National Renewable Energy Laboratory estimates that solar panels will cover 3 million acres by 2030. SolaREIT offers opportunities for landowners to monetize their land holdings at better terms than traditional financing. Landowners typically use that capital for expanding their business or purchasing additional farmland. Increased financial flexibility for solar landowners and developers reduces costs, increases investment, and expands the number of landowners open to hosting solar projects.

About SolaREIT: SolaREIT, based in Rockville, Maryland, focuses on making investments in acquiring, developing, and managing climate-friendly solar assets that support the transformation to a low-carbon economy. We aim to provide unique products to clients while generating attractive returns for our investors. Since its founding, SolaREIT has closed deals in eleven states across the United States. For more information, please visit www.solareit.com .

SOURCE SolaREIT
PHOENIX, March 4, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Nationwide, nearly 20 million college students are preparing to take their midterm exams before heading off to enjoy spring break. With dropping COVID-19 case numbers and an overall better outlook on the pandemic, many students are extra eager to escape from hectic college life.

Before students leave campus, GradGuard, the nation's leading authority on helping protect college students and their families from the risks of college life, recommends students consider the following tips so they are prepared if something goes wrong.

3 Steps to a Safer Break

Protect your health - Be sure you have your health insurance card, and if applicable, your COVID-19 vaccination card, with you and confirm your student health insurance will work while traveling. Protect personal belongings - Be sure to consider purchasing GradGuard's renters' insurance, which is specifically designed for college students. It provides coverage for student's belongings not only while on campus, but also while they are traveling worldwide. Protect your identity - Be prepared with backup identification cards by taking photos of all your personal IDs and payment cards. If your wallet is stolen, you can quickly restore your life and return home easily. Protect your trip - If you are leaving the United States , travel insurance can be a smart purchase and can include valuable services to help you overcome a financial loss and also help you return home in case something goes wrong on your trip. Protect your dorm or apartment - Remember you are likely responsible for damages that may occur at your campus residence while you are away. Be sure to turn off all electronics and appliances before leaving. But if something happens, GradGuard's renters' insurance can provide coverage for damages that occur while you are away from school.

"Understanding the risks of college life is always important and it is useful to consider these tips before spring break," said John Fees, co-founder of GradGuard and college parent."Students may be surprised that they will likely lose hundreds, if not thousands of dollars if their student's semester is disrupted by a theft, unintentional damage to their student housing or a medical condition forces them to withdraw."

GradGuard's renters' insurance enables students and families to easily replace a bike, laptop, cell phone, or other items that are stolen or damaged, not only while the student is on campus, but also while they are traveling to and from school or away on vacation. In addition, GradGuard's industry-leading tuition insurance program allows families to get a refund if they are forced to withdraw from school for covered medical conditions including COVID-19.

"While students have diverse goals for spring break, students are smart to be prepared and to protect themselves from a financial loss that could disrupt their semester or create greater financial stress," said Fees. "Many colleges and universities agree, with more than 450 institutions partnering with GradGuard to help families protect against the risks of college life."

About GradGuard: GradGuard is the nation's leading provider of college renters and tuition insurance. GradGuard is trusted by more than 450 colleges and universities to educate and protect nearly one million students and families from the risks of college life. Visit GradGuard.com to use its college insurance search tool to find the insurance programs that are right for your college student or recommended by their college or university.

Contact:

Natalie Tarangioli

480-485-6138

[email protected]

SOURCE GradGuard
MIAMI, March 4, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Today at the U.S. Conference of Mayors (USCM) Winter Leadership Meeting, American mayors adopted an emergency resolution in support of the Ukrainian people and democratic values under assault by the Russian government. Under the leadership of USCM President Miami Mayor Francis X. Suarez, mayors made clear they stand with their Ukrainian counterparts and will take whatever action is possible in their cities to sanction Russia. On Thursday, mayors spoke with Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko about the unfolding situation in Ukraine and pledged their support for the brave Ukrainians fighting for their lives. And today, the Ukrainian Ambassador to the United States Oksana Markarova is set to join mayors virtually to discuss how mayors can support Ukraine at this critical moment.

The text of the emergency resolution, adopted unanimously, is below:

Adopted March 4, 2022

RESOLUTION IN SUPPORT OF THE LEADERS AND PEOPLE OF UKRAINE AS THEY DEFEND AGAINST RUSSIA'S MASSIVE MILITARY ATTACK ON THEIR SOVEREIGN NATION

WHEREAS, on February 24, 2022, a massive military assault was launched by the Russian government on the sovereign democratic nation of Ukraine; and

WHEREAS, the continuing assault has been met by the strong resistance of the Ukrainian military joined by armed civilians; and

WHEREAS, Russian attacks on nonmilitary, residential areas of Ukraine's cities have forced the evacuation of millions of civilians to neighboring countries; and

WHEREAS, the United States and other nations around the globe have issued strong condemnations of the Russian government's hostile action and have responded to Ukraine's appeal for both military and humanitarian aid; and

WHEREAS, with the attention of the world riveted on the tragic events currently unfolding in his city and across his nation, Vitali Klitschko, the Mayor of Ukraine's capital city of Kyiv, engaged in a virtual discussion with leaders of The United States Conference of Mayors in the March 3 opening session of their 2022 Winter Leadership Meeting being held in Miami; and

WHEREAS, in this discussion, Mayor Klitschko stressed that unity of Ukraine's allies is the key to ending the crisis facing his country, called for both political pressure and economic sanctions on Russia, along with additional defensive weapons; and

WHEREAS, the Kyiv Mayor also called on America's mayors to work in their cities to establish, where possible, economic sanctions needed against Russia and the nations supporting her in the attack on his country; and

WHEREAS, America's cities have long-established sister city relationships with cities in Russia that should be maintained and strengthened to empower Russia's citizens to speak out in the cause of democracy and peace; and

WHEREAS, America's mayors will take every action necessary to ensure that people of Russian origin in our cities will not be ostracized or discriminated against in any way as a result of the violent assault on Ukraine by the Russian government; and

WHEREAS, the President of The United States Conference of Mayors, Miami Mayor Francis Suarez, conveyed to Mayor Klitchko that America's mayors continue to be inspired by the resolve demonstrated by Ukrainian citizens and their leaders and recognize that they also have a stake in the outcome of the crisis that the Russian government has created,

NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that The United States Conference of Mayors stands with the Ukrainian people and with the mayors of Ukraine in the defense of their sovereign nation, its democratic values, and their very lives; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that America's mayors will heed Mayor Klitchko's call and take all possible actions in their cities to support the nation's leadership in bringing an end to the Russian government's violent assault on the people and the leadership of Ukraine.

About the United States Conference of Mayors -- The U.S. Conference of Mayors is the official nonpartisan organization of cities with populations of 30,000 or more. There are more than 1,400 such cities in the country today, and each city is represented in the Conference by its chief elected official, the mayor. Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter.

SOURCE U.S. Conference of Mayors
NEW YORK, March 4, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Stoli Group today announced a major rebrand and the end of the use of the Stolichnaya name. In direct response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the vodka will exclusively be sold and marketed as Stoli. The three driving factors behind the decision are the founder's vehement position on the Putin regime; the Stoli employees determination to take action; and the desire to accurately represent Stoli's roots in Latvia.

"While I have been exiled from Russia since 2002 due to my opposition to Putin, I have remained proud of the Stolichnaya brand," commented Yuri Shefler, Founder, Stoli Group. "Today, we have made the decision to rebrand entirely as the name no longer represents our organization. More than anything, I wish for 'Stoli' to represent peace in Europe and solidarity with Ukraine."

Stoli Vodka's production facilities have been located in Latvia since 2000 where blending, charcoal column filtration, bottling, packaging and distribution are handled. Earlier this week it was announced that after Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Stoli would engage exclusively with Slovakian sources to further ensure 100% non-Russian alpha grade spirit.

"This is very personal to us. As a former Royal Marine Commando, I know all too well the horrors of war," commented Damian McKinney, Global CEO, Stoli Group. "We have employees, partners and distributors in the region directly impacted. They are asking that we take a bold stand. This is one actionable, meaningful thing we can do to make it clear that we support Ukraine."

To further support Ukraine, Stoli has made a financial commitment to World Central Kitchen (WCK), a non-profit organization that is first to the frontlines, providing meals in response to climate, humanitarian, and community crises. The support will go directly to relief in Ukraine. As the company continues to work with partners in the region, further initiatives to address the humanitarian crisis will be announced.

About Stoli Group

Stoli Group was established in 2013 and is responsible for the production, management, and distribution of a global spirits and wines portfolio. Mainly known for the Stoli Vodka brand, Stoli Group has expanded to appeal to luxury on-premise and more sophisticated global consumers. Signature brands are: Stoli Vodka, elitVodka, Bayou Rum, Kentucky Owl, Villa One, Gator Bite Rum Liquers, Cenote Tequila, Tulchan Gin, Se Busca Mezcal and Stoli Group's wine division, Tenute del Mondo. With a presence across a network of more than 176 markets, Stoli Group works with a passionate team of 200 distributors around the world. Headquartered in Luxembourg, Stoli has production facilities in Spain, Italy, Argentina, and the United States, some of which are steeped in history dating back to the early part of the last century. For more information, visit stoli-group.com.

Contact: Maureen Landers

[email protected]

917-886-4901

SOURCE Stoli Group
LOS ANGELES, March 4, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Sunday Capital today announced it has secured financing for a $31 million, three parcel, 297-acres development. The new Santa Fe Valley community will include 37 two to ten acres lots in one of the last undeveloped parcels in this coveted residential area adjacent to Rancho Santa Fe, which is often dubbed the "Beverly Hills" of San Diego County. As a part of the financing, Sunday Capital has secured the first $19 million loan that will allow for the development of Phase One of the community, which has already been presold.

The property currently exists as pristine vacant land, and the developer will create finished pads and the community infrastructure necessary for the development of high-end, luxury estate style, single family homes over the next two years. Due to high demand seen from the Los Angeles and San Francisco markets, sixteen of these lots have already been presold to a homebuilder, with whom the Owner will partner for the vertical development phase of the project.

When complete, the project will be one of the only new luxury estates and secure gated communities in the area. Its location in the foothills of Santa Fe Valley offer exceptional views to the west to Del Mar and beyond. The zoning for each lot will have been meticulously approved in a multi-year entitlement and mapping process. Each lot will have the option for attached and detached accessory dwelling units (ADUs) to accommodate multigenerational families as well as room for a detached barn for additional cars or workspace.

"This project is one of the last opportunities of its kind in this coveted part of San Diego County. The multi-parcel development will offer future residents access to the outdoors surrounded by natural parks and trails, while also providing access to three key highways, a technology and science employment hub, and two major shopping districts," said a representative of Sunday Capital. "We believe in the vision of this project, and we're thrilled to be able to support it moving forward."

Sunday Capital is a brand-new, Los Angeles-based transitional lending specialist, focused on multi-family, horizontal land, and other transitional assets in Southern California and other select regions nationwide. Sunday was founded by a team of multi-family owners who wish to expand limited financing options available in Southern California. The firm is has originated nearly $100mm of debt since its founding last summer and is currently working on financing for $50mm of other projects in the region. Visit sundaycap.com for more information.

SOURCE Sunday Capital
CHICAGO, March 4, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Teamsters Joint Council 25 applauded the Illinois House of Representatives for passing House Bill 1167 on Tuesday, bringing the state one step closer to ensuring thousands of education workers in Illinois receive the wages, benefits and respect they deserve.

The bill provides a safe, in-person learning environment for students and teachers, while addressing the critical shortage of bus drivers facing the state. House Bill 1167 provides paid time off due to COVID-19 related issues on behalf of teachers and other employees of school districts, public universities and community colleges. It also provides paycheck protection for school bus drivers, ensuring they are paid even if a school moves to remote learning.

Joint Council 25 President Terrence J. Hancock applauded the determination of Rep. Janet Yang Rohr (D-Naperville) and her Illinois State House colleagues for addressing the concerns of educators and staff. In January, a similar bill passed both houses of the Illinois General Assembly but was vetoed by Governor Pritzker.

"On behalf of the 100,000 members we represent throughout the State of Illinois, including more than 6,000 school bus drivers, I want to thank Illinois lawmakers for passing this critically important bill," Hancock said. "This legislation is incredibly significant for school bus drivers. As they stood by the ready all throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, school districts have consistently refused to compensate their vendors on remote learning days. This has exacerbated what is an already critical shortage of school bus drivers in Illinois. This legislation will not reverse the shortage of bus drivers but does provide some certainty that our members will be paid, which goes a long way toward improving recruitment and retention rates among school bus drivers."

Teamsters Joint Council 25 and its affiliates represent thousands of dedicated school bus drivers and transportation workers across the state. Joint Council 25 represents over 100,000 hardworking members in Illinois and Northwest Indiana.

Contact:

Jake Berent, (847) 440-6183

[email protected]

SOURCE Teamsters Joint Council 25
Persons travelling to The Bahamas are no longer required to take a COVID-19 Rapid Antigen test on day 5 of travel.

"It is important to remain fluid and adapt our protocols to reflect a changing environment," said Acting Prime Minister the Honourable I. Chester Cooper, Bahamas Minister of Tourism, Investments & Aviation, "and we are pleased to be able to eliminate The Bahamas' testing requirements."

Our visitors are required to follow prescribed entry protocols including, applying for a Bahamas Travel Health Visa at travel.gov.bs and uploading their pre-departure test results, taken no more than three days (72 hours) prior to the date of arrival. Visitors should visit Bahamas.com/travelupdates to review accepted forms of testing for entry based on vaccination status. An island-by-island list of approved testing sites is available at Bahamas.com/travelupdates.

"Despite the challenges of Covid-19, the strong desire for travel to The Bahamas has not diminished," said Latia Duncombe, Acting Director General, Bahamas Ministry of Tourism, Investments & Aviation. "We remain positioned for a steady tourism recovery, and we will continue to assist efficiencies of travel-related requirements for our beloved visitors, while protecting the health and safety of everyone."

For full details on current COVID-19 protocols for all travellers, please visit Bahamas.com/travelupdates.

PRESS INQUIRIES

Anita Johnson-Patty

Bahamas Ministry of Tourism, Investments & Aviation

[email protected]

Weber Shandwick

Public Relations

[email protected]

SOURCE The Bahamas Ministry of Tourism, Investments & Aviation
DUBLIN, March 4, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Embedded Non-Volatile Memory Market Forecast to 2028 - COVID-19 Impact and Global Analysis By Type (eFlash, eOTP, eE2PROM, eMTP, eMRAM, and Others) and Industry (Consumer Products, Automotive, IT and Communications, and Others)" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

The global embedded non-volatile memory market is expected to grow from US$ 82.94 million in 2021 to US$ 2,406.26 million by 2028; it is estimated to grow at a CAGR of 61.8% from 2021 to 2028.



Embedded non-volatile memory is compact chip integrated in microcontrollers and hardware used for data storage. The stored data is used for programming, encryption, coding, identification, trimming, and redundancy purposes. The non-volatile memory systems comprise transistors that have the pieces of conductive material surrounded by a layer of insulator. When a microcontroller is powered, small amount of electricity is trapped by surrounding insulation, thus allowing non-volatile memory to retain its data.

The growth of the embedded non-volatile memory market is attributed to the increasing rate of adoption of advanced consumer electronics among masses due to the rising GDP per capita, escalating adoption of advance electronics in automobiles, and surging penetration of connected devices. Moreover, the growing deployment of smart city projects and the increasing adoption of IoT solutions are projected to boost the market growth during the forecast period. However, high design costs and scalability issues hamper the growth of the market.



Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic on Embedded Non-Volatile Memory Market

The COVID-19 outbreak adversely affected several Asia Pacific countries such as China, India, South Korea, and Japan. China and India are the most prominent manufacturing hub in the region and have an enhanced focus on industrialization. The growth of the manufacturing industry has been hampered due to lockdown. However, it is expected to recover in the second half of 2021 by enhancing the production capabilities. The imposition of a ban on commercial activities has disrupted the industrial supply chains in Asia Pacific, leading to raw material shortages.

Further, the demand for advanced electronics such as a smartwatches, smart wearables, and healthcare machines has risen significantly. Also, the development of new airports is raising defense expenditure of countries such as China and India. This would propel the use of IC chips, which is likely to provide growth opportunities to the embedded non-volatile memory market during the forecast period. Moreover, companies in Asia Pacific have restructured their capabilities by adopting various strategies, such as product enhancements, partnerships, and acquisitions.



Reasons to Buy

Save and reduce time carrying out entry-level research by identifying the growth, size, leading players and segments in the global Embedded Non-Volatile Memory 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 Embedded Non-Volatile Memory 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. Embedded Non-Volatile Memory Market Landscape

4.1 Market Overview

4.2 PEST Analysis

4.2.1 North America

4.2.2 Europe

4.2.3 APAC

4.2.4 MEA

4.2.5 SAM

4.3 Ecosystem Analysis

4.4 Expert Opinion



5. Embedded Non-Volatile Memory Market - Key Market Dynamics

5.1 Market Drivers

5.1.1 Growth of Consumer Electronics Market

5.1.2 Wide Range of Applications of NVM

5.2 Market Restraints

5.2.1 High Design Cost and Scalability issues

5.3 Market Opportunities

5.3.1 Increasing penetration of IoT-based devices and services in the developing countries

5.4 Future Trends

5.4.1 Recent Advances in Memory Technology

5.5 Impact Analysis of Drivers and Restraints



6. Embedded Non-Volatile Memory Market - Global Analysis

6.1 Global Embedded Non-Volatile Memory Market Overview

6.2 Embedded Non-Volatile Memory Market - Revenue and Forecast to 2028 (US$ Million)

6.3 Market Positioning - Five Key Players



7. Embedded Non-Volatile Memory Market Analysis - By Type

7.1 Overview

7.2 Embedded Non-Volatile Memory Market, By Type (2020 and 2028)

7.3 eFlash

7.3.1 Overview

7.3.2 eFlash: Embedded Non-Volatile Memory Market - Revenue and Forecast to 2028 (US$ Million)

7.4 eOTP

7.4.1 Overview

7.4.2 eOTP: Embedded Non-Volatile Memory Market - Revenue and Forecast to 2028 (US$ Million)

7.5 eE2PROM

7.5.1 Overview

7.5.2 eE2PROM: Embedded Non-Volatile Memory Market - Revenue and Forecast to 2028 (US$ Million)

7.6 eMTP

7.6.1 Overview

7.6.2 eMTP: Embedded Non-Volatile Memory Market - Revenue and Forecast to 2028 (US$ Million)

7.7 eMRAM

7.7.1 Overview

7.7.2 eMRAM: Embedded Non-Volatile Memory Market - Revenue and Forecast to 2028 (US$ Million)

7.8 Others

7.8.1 Overview

7.8.2 Others: Embedded Non-Volatile Memory Market - Revenue and Forecast to 2028 (US$ Million)



8. Embedded Non-Volatile Memory Market Analysis - By Industry

8.1 Overview

8.2 Embedded Non-Volatile Memory Market, By Industry (2020 and 2028)

8.3 Consumer Products

8.3.1 Overview

8.3.2 Consumer Products: Embedded Non-Volatile Memory Market - Revenue and Forecast to 2028 (US$ Million)

8.4 Automotive

8.4.1 Overview

8.4.2 Automotive: Embedded Non-Volatile Memory Market - Revenue and Forecast to 2028 (US$ Million)

8.5 IT and Communications

8.5.1 Overview

8.5.2 IT and Communications: Embedded Non-Volatile Memory Market - Revenue and Forecast to 2028 (US$ Million)

8.6 Others

8.6.1 Overview

8.6.2 Others: Embedded Non-Volatile Memory Market - Revenue and Forecast to 2028 (US$ Million)



9. Embedded Non-Volatile Memory Market - Geographic Analysis



10. Embedded Non-Volatile Memory Market- COVID-19 Impact Analysis

10.1 Overview

10.2 North America: Impact Assessment of COVID-19 Pandemic

10.3 Europe: Impact Assessment of COVID-19 Pandemic

10.4 Asia Pacific: Impact Assessment of COVID-19 Pandemic

10.5 Middle East and Africa: Impact Assessment of COVID-19 Pandemic

10.6 South America: Impact Assessment of COVID-19 Pandemic



11. Industry Landscape

11.1 Overview

11.2 Market Initiative

11.3 New Product Development



12. Company Profiles

12.1 Microchip Technology Inc.

12.1.1 Key Facts

12.1.2 Business Description

12.1.3 Products and Services

12.1.4 Financial Overview

12.1.5 SWOT Analysis

12.1.6 Key Developments

12.2 Tower Semiconductor

12.2.1 Key Facts

12.2.2 Business Description

12.2.3 Products and Services

12.2.4 Financial Overview

12.2.5 SWOT Analysis

12.2.6 Key Developments

12.3 GlobalFoundries

12.3.1 Key Facts

12.3.2 Business Description

12.3.3 Products and Services

12.3.4 Financial Overview

12.3.5 SWOT Analysis

12.3.6 Key Developments

12.4 eMemory Technology Inc.

12.4.1 Key Facts

12.4.2 Business Description

12.4.3 Products and Services

12.4.4 Financial Overview

12.4.5 SWOT Analysis

12.4.6 Key Developments

12.5 Texas Instruments Incorporated

12.5.1 Key Facts

12.5.2 Business Description

12.5.3 Products and Services

12.5.4 Financial Overview

12.5.5 SWOT Analysis

12.5.6 Key Developments

12.6 Hua Hong Semiconductor Limited

12.6.1 Key Facts

12.6.2 Business Description

12.6.3 Products and Services

12.6.4 Financial Overview

12.6.5 SWOT Analysis

12.6.6 Key Developments

12.7 Everspin Technologies Inc.

12.7.1 Key Facts

12.7.2 Business Description

12.7.3 Products and Services

12.7.4 Financial Overview

12.7.5 SWOT Analysis

12.7.6 Key Developments

12.8 Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.

12.8.1 Key Facts

12.8.2 Business Description

12.8.3 Products and Services

12.8.4 Financial Overview

12.8.5 SWOT Analysis

12.8.6 Key Developments

12.9 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, Limited

12.9.1 Key Facts

12.9.2 Business Description

12.9.3 Products and Services

12.9.4 Financial Overview

12.9.5 SWOT Analysis

12.9.6 Key Developments

12.10 United Microelectronics Corporation

12.10.1 Key Facts

12.10.2 Business Description

12.10.3 Products and Services

12.10.4 Financial Overview

12.10.5 SWOT Analysis

12.10.6 Key Developments



13. Appendix



For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/ts80eu

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
GAINESVILLE, Ga., March 4, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- When war breaks out, financial commentators often ask, "What does the war mean for the trend of the stock market?" But no one asks ahead of time, "What does the trend of the stock market mean for the prospects of war?" No one, that is, aside from the analysts at Elliott Wave International, who have used trends in Russia's stock market to predict the country's invasions of Georgia in 2008, Crimea in 2014 and now Ukraine in 2022.

Excerpts of the firm's analysis leading up to Russia's most recent invasion can be found on the company's website.

Russia's three invasions over the past 15 years occurred during significant declines in the country's primary stock market index.

Analysts at EWI use Robert Prechter's socionomic theory, which proposes that stock market indexes are excellent indicators of society's mood. A rising stock market reflects a more positive mood, and a falling stock market reflects a more negative social mood.

"When society is in a positive mood, people send stock prices higher and prefer peace over war. When society is in a negative mood, people send stock prices lower and prefer war over peace," explained Murray Gunn, the firm's head of global research.

Unlike stock markets in the U.S., which have mostly gone higher over the past 15 years, Russia's primary stock index, the RTSI, has gone mostly lower over that time and still trades below its 2008 high. That long-term bear market in Russian stocks has coincided with a resurgence in the country's military aggression.

In late 2007, with Russia's stock market up 5,000% from its 1998 low, Elliott Wave International issued a report that forecasted a major top in the RTSI and an end to Russia's amiable international relations. It pinpointed the countries Georgia and Ukraine among the most likely locales for conflict.

Six months later, the RTSI started a plunge that erased more than 50% of its value. About a third of the way into that steep drop, Russia invaded Georgia.

Fast-forward to December 2013. The RTSI was headed sharply lower again as unrest rocked Ukraine. An Elliott Wave International analyst wrote that Russia was "particularly unlikely to tolerate much more instability before intervening." Russia intervened just two months later, invading Ukraine and annexing Crimea.

Fast-forward once more to February 4, 2022. The RTSI had plummeted from its October 2021 high, and Russia had gathered troops on its border with Ukraine. Vladimir Putin claimed he had no plan to invade. But Gunn told EWI's subscribers that with the decisive move down in the RTSI, "we take those statements with a bucket-full of salt," concluding "another incursion appears likely."

And invade Russia did.

Regarding the prospects for future conflict, Gunn explained, "No matter what Russia does over the near-term, the RTSI's long-term pattern suggests that Russian aggression is extreme. Until we see a change in the bear market pattern, conflict risk will persist."

More of EWI's latest commentary on Russia is in the monthly publication, Global Market Perspective.

Media Contact:

Matt Lampert

678-897-4313

[email protected]

SOURCE Elliott Wave International
GOTHENBURG, Sweden, March 4, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Vicore Pharma Holding AB (publ) ("Vicore"), a clinical-stage pharmaceutical company developing medicines targeting the angiotensin II type 2 receptor (AT2R), will host a virtual R&D Day with a focus on its primary drug development programs and this new class of medicine, AT2R agonists (ATRAGS), on Thursday, March 10, 2022, from 15:00-17:00 CET/9-11 AM EST.

The R&D Day will feature presentations from Key Opinion Leaders (KOL's) Toby Maher, M.D. Ph.D., from the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California, Gerry Coghlan, M.D., from the University College Dublin, and Maureen Horton, M.D. Ph.D., from Johns Hopkins University, who will discuss Vicore Pharma's drug development programs for the treatment of severe lung disorders.

Program:

ATRAG - angiotensin II type 2 receptor agonists - a new class of medicine.

C21, the first in class oral ATRAG in clinical development for the treatment of COVID-19 and idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF).

Pulmonary artery hypertension (PAH) will be explored as a new indication for C21.

In IPF there is also a program on digital cognitive therapy to treat anxiety and depression and a program addressing IPF cough.

The first new follow-up ATRAG, C106, is entering the clinic and 4 more compounds are in late-stage preclinical development.

Tentative new indications for the new ATRAGS will be explored.

A live question and answer session will follow. To register for the event, please click here.

Toby Maher, M.D. is Professor of Medicine and Director of Interstitial Lung Disease at Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California, Los Angeles (USC). Dr Maher has spent the last 18 years specializing in the management of all forms of pulmonary fibrosis and orphan interstitial lung diseases (ILD). He previously ran the ILD unit at Royal Brompton Hospital. Since June 2020 he has been Director of ILD at Keck Medicine of USC. He remains Professor of Interstitial Lung Disease at Imperial College London and is British Lung Foundation Professor of Respiratory Medicine. His research interests include: biomarker discovery, the lung microbiome and host immune response in the pathogenesis of IPF and clinical trials in interstitial lung disease. He has been involved in >50 trials in fibrotic lung disease from phase 1b through to phase 4, including those assessing IPF, scleroderma, rheumatoid arthritis and inflammatory myositis. He is an associate editor for American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine and is on the Editorial Board of Lancet Respiratory Medicine. He has authored over 270 papers and book chapters on pulmonary fibrosis.

Gerry Coghlan, M.D. qualified from University College Dublin in 1983. He trained in cardiology at the National Cardiac Centre (Baggot Street) Dublin, Harefield Hospital and The Royal Free Hospital. He was appointed consultant cardiologist at the Royal Free Hospital in 1997. He is a founding member and ex-chair of the National Pulmonary Hypertension Physicians Association and has developed the Royal Free National Pulmonary Hypertension Service, with a particular interest in connective tissue disease associated Pulmonary Hypertension. He has developed an `outreach' model for pulmonary hypertension care attending clinics at Guys & St Thomas' Hospital, Kings College Hospital, Royal United Hospital Bath, Derriford Hospital Plymouth, Queen Alexandra Hospital Portsmouth, Royal Sussex County Hospital, QEQM Hospital, and Ulster Hospital Dundonald. From 1999, he was clinical lead in cardiology with the Regional Health Authority, lead for the North Central Sector collaborative program from 2002 - 2004 and from August 2004 - 2013 medical chair of the North Central Sector Cardiac Network. Furthermore, he was the Head of Service for medical specialties in the Royal Free Hospital from 2001, clinical director of acute medical specialties from July 2004 and Deputy director for medical specialties 2005 - 2009. With the advent of UCL partners he is now leading a group to co-ordinate pulmonary hypertension services & research across 4 hospitals linked to University College London (UCL).

Maureen Horton, M.D. is Professor of Medicine at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, MD, Co-Director of the Interstitial Lung Disease Program in the department of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, and an attending physician at the Johns Hopkins Hospital Medical Intensive Care Unit. Professor Horton's research aims to understand the immunological dysregulation that promote lung injury and fibrosis. Her initial focus on the expression of chemokines, cytokines, and growth factors in immune cells in lung injury led her to propose and develop a novel vaccine-induced immunotherapy treatment for lung fibrosis. Her research continues to discover novel metabolic treatments for both lung fibrosis and acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). She has been the principal investigator or site PI in approximately 10 clinical trials of treatments for lung disease and has over 80 publications pulmonary conditions including IPF, IPF cough, and lung fibrosis as well as respiratory infections such as influenza and COVID-19. Since 2020, Professor Horton has been involved in several studies looking at immune dysregulation in COVID patients. Recently she co-authored a publication identifying distinct T cell and myeloid cells associated with acutely ill COVID-19 patients, providing an important mechanistic insight into the mechanism of pathogenesis of COVID-19. Professor Horton received her MD from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine as well as her internship, residency and fellowship training in Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at the Johns Hopkins Hospital. She is triple board certified in Internal Medicine, Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine.

C21 - a first-in-class AT2R agonist

C21 is a first-in-class, orally available, low molecular weight, angiotensin II type 2 receptor (AT2R) agonist that activates the "protective arm" of the renin-angiotensin system (RAS) leading to resolution and regeneration following tissue damage. The compound is currently in a phase 2 proof-of-concept trial in IPF and in a pivotal phase 3 trial in COVID-19.

For further information, please contact:

Carl-Johan Dalsgaard, CEO

Phone: +46 70 975 98 63

E-mail: [email protected]

This information was submitted for publication on March 4, 2022, at 10:00 CET.

This information was brought to you by Cision http://news.cision.com

https://news.cision.com/vicore-pharma-holding-ab/r/vicore-to-host-r-d-day,c3518785

The following files are available for download:

https://mb.cision.com/Main/15668/3518785/1544259.pdf Vicore to host R&D Day

SOURCE Vicore Pharma Holding AB
Volocopter is developing new and sustainable mobility options for cities around the world. With its family of aircraft (the VoloCity, VoloConnect, and VoloDrone), the company takes a unique approach by developing urban air mobility (UAM) as a holistic ecosystem. Having ten years of development experience, Volocopter is the clear leader in the urban air mobility space. As the first and only electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) company to receive Design Organisation Approval (DOA) from the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA), Volocopter has committed to launching commercial air taxi services in cities like Singapore, Rome, and Paris.

"This funding round is a testament to Volocopter's leading position in what is a highly attractive emerging market. We continue to make significant technical and commercial progress as we work toward bringing urban air mobility to life at scale in cities worldwide," said Florian Reuter, CEO of Volocopter.

Christian Bauer, CCO of Volocopter, said: "Volocopter has spectacular investors from around the globe, which puts us in an excellent position to focus on our first-to-certification and first-to-market strategies before we embark on the path to public listing. I'm excited to accelerate our path to commercial launch together with investors, partners, and the phenomenal Volocopter team!"

WP Investment based in Seoul, Republic of Korea, is a leading and new investor for Volocopter in this funding round. Following this announcement, Volocopter and WP Investment will enter into a strategic partnership by creating a joint venture that will soon bring urban air mobility to South Korea's cities.

"We are confident that Volocopter will be among the first to bring UAM to cities globally, since seeing its aircraft fly in Seoul last year. As a leader in ESG investment, we are excited to empower city sustainability through Volocopter," says Dr. Lei Wang, Chairman of WP Investment. Co-Chairman Tiffany Park said: "We are excited to kick off our joint venture and be the first to establish sustainable eVTOL logistics and air taxi services with Volocopter in Korea."

New investors in Volocopter include WP Investment and Honeywell, amongst others. Many existing investors including Atlantia, Whysol, and btov Partners, have also reinvested in this round.

"We decided to strengthen our investment in Volocopter because we strongly believe in its ability to rapidly bring to life this innovative and sustainable mobility," said Elisabetta De Bernardi, Investment Director Europe for Atlantia. "We will continue to promote urban air mobility, a fast-growing business that can help reduce emissions and traffic in large cities."

"Our successful first signing of Series E brings phenomenal new investors on board, with further in the due diligence stage. This private funding round allows us to stay focused on our mission to bring sustainable urban air mobility to life," said Stefan Klocke, Chairman of Volocopter's Advisory Board. "We have never been in a stronger position: we are financially diversified, certification of the aircraft is within reach, and we are demonstrating our advanced capabilities by public flights and strong joint-ventures across the world."

The company recently announced that it has entered a financing agreement in principle with Aviation Capital Group (ACG) to shape the sale and leasing of Volocopter aircraft for up to USD 1 billion. Once aircraft certification has been achieved, this agreement will allow Volocopter to offer its operating entities and customers worldwide attractive leasing options, a key to rapidly scaling the business in the future.

About Volocopter

Volocopter brings urban air mobility (UAM) to megacities worldwide by creating sustainable and scalable UAM ecosystems with partners in infrastructure and operations. Volocopter's family of eVTOL aircraft will offer passengers (VoloCity and VoloConnect) and goods (VoloDrone) swift, secure, and emission-free connections to their destinations, supported by VoloIQ, the UAM ecosystem's software platform. As a pioneer in the UAM industry, Volocopter will launch commercial services within the next few years. The company employs 500 people in Germany and Singapore and raised $579 million from investors, including Geely, WP Investment, Mercedes-Benz Group, Intel Capital, and BlackRock. www.volocopter.com

Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1759121/Volocopter_VoloCity_Aircraft.jpg

Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1626551/Volocopter_Logo.jpg

SOURCE Volocopter GmbH
DUBLIN, March 4, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Global Automotive Technical Inspection & Certification Services Market (2021-2026) by service Type, Application, Sourcing Type, Use, Geography, Competitive Analysis and the Impact of Covid-19 with Ansoff Analysis" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

The Global Automotive Technical Inspection & Certification Services Market is estimated to be USD 16.8 Bn in 2021 and is expected to reach USD 22.3 Bn by 2026, growing at a CAGR of 5.8%.



Key factors such as increasing automobile production, rising adoption of automotive electronics, and growing inclination towards outsourcing are boosting the market growth. Increasing awareness related to product quality and safety and government norms mandating Periodic Technical Inspection (PTI) of vehicles across developed economies is further escalating the market growth. In addition, rising instances of vehicle recall and increasing industrialization are providing growth opportunities to the market.



However, factors such as time-consuming and limited availability of skilled workforce are likely to restrain the market growth. Moreover, decreasing global vehicle sales is a major challenge for the market.



Market Segmentation

The Global Automotive Technical Inspection & Certification Services Market is segmented further based on service Type, Application, Sourcing Type, Use, and Geography.

By Service Type, the market is classified as Certification Services, Inspection Services, and Testing Services.

By Application, the market is classified as ADAS & Safety Controller, Chassis & Body Controller, Cockpit Controller, and Functional Safety.

By Sourcing Type, the market is classified as In-House and Outsourced.

By Use, the market is classified as Electric Vehicles, Hybrid Electric Vehicles, and Battery Systems, Electrical Systems and Components, Fuels, Fluids, and Lubricants, Interior and Exterior Materials and Components, Telematics, Homologation Testing, and Vehicle Inspection Services (VIS).

By Geography, America is projected to lead the market.

Countries Studied

America ( Argentina , Brazil , Canada , Chile , Colombia , Mexico , Peru , United States , Rest of Americas)

, , , , , , , , Rest of Americas) Europe ( Austria , Belgium , Denmark , Finland , France , Germany , Italy , Netherlands , Norway , Poland , Russia , Spain , Sweden , Switzerland , United Kingdom , Rest of Europe )

( , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Rest of ) Middle-East and Africa ( Egypt , Israel , Qatar , Saudi Arabia , South Africa , United Arab Emirates , Rest of MEA)

and ( , , , , , , Rest of MEA) Asia-Pacific ( Australia , Bangladesh , China , India , Indonesia , Japan , Malaysia , Philippines , Singapore , South Korea , Sri Lanka , Thailand , Taiwan , Rest of Asia-Pacific )

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 Automotive Technical Inspection & Certification Services 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 competitive positioning tool.

Key Topics Covered:



1 Report Description



2 Research Methodology



3 Executive Summary



4 Market Influencers

4.1 Drivers

4.1.1 Increasing Automobile Production in Emerging Countries

4.1.2 Increasing Awareness of Vehicle Quality and Safety Features

4.1.3 Rising Adoption of Automotive Electronics

4.1.4 Growing Inclination Towards Outsourcing

4.2 Restraints

4.2.1 Changing Environment Regulations Across Regions

4.2.2 Time-Consuming Process

4.3 Opportunities

4.3.1 Increasing Electric and Hybrid Vehicles

4.3.2 Mandating Government Regulations for Vehicle Inspections

4.4 Challenges

4.4.1 Limited Availability of Skilled Workforce

4.4.2 Decreasing Global Vehicle Sales



5 Market Analysis

5.1 Porter's Five Forces Analysis

5.2 Impact of COVID-19

5.3 Ansoff Matrix Analysis



6 Global Automotive Technical Inspection & Certification Services Market, By Service Type

6.1 Introduction

6.2 Certification Services

6.3 Inspection Services

6.4 Testing Services



7 Global Automotive Technical Inspection & Certification Services Market, By Sourcing Type

7.1 Introduction

7.2 In-House

7.3 Outsourced



8 Global Automotive Technical Inspection & Certification Services Market, By Application

8.1 Introduction

8.2 ADAS & Safety Controller

8.2.1 Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC)

8.2.2 Auto Emergency Braking (AEB)

8.2.3 Lane Departure Warning System (LDWS)

8.2.4 Tire Pressure Monitoring System (TPMS)

8.2.5 Pedestrian Warning/Protection System

8.2.6 Traffic Sign Recognition

8.2.7 Automotive Night Vision

8.2.8 Blind Spot Detection

8.2.9 Driver Drowsiness Detection

8.2.10 Automatic Parking

8.2.11 Other ADAS and Safety Controllers

8.3 Chassis & Body Controller

8.4 Cockpit Controller

8.4.1 Heads-Up Display (HUD)

8.4.2 Human-Machine Interface (HMI)

8.4.3 Other Cockpit Controllers

8.5 Functional Safety



9 Global Automotive Technical Inspection & Certification Services Market, By Use

9.1 Introduction

9.2 Electric Vehicles, Hybrid Electric Vehicles, and Battery Systems

9.3 Electrical Systems and Components

9.4 Fuels, Fluids, and Lubricants

9.5 Interior and Exterior Materials and Components

9.6 Telematics

9.7 Homologation Testing

9.8 Vehicle Inspection Services (VIS)



10 Global Automotive Technical Inspection & Certification Services 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 Applus+

12.2 British Standards Institutions

12.3 Bureau Veritas

12.4 CETECOM

12.5 CSA

12.6 DEKRA

12.7 DNV

12.8 Element Materials Technology

12.9 Eurofins Scientific

12.10 Intertek

12.11 LRQA

12.12 MISTRAS

12.13 Norges Elektriske Materiellkontroll

12.14 NSF International

12.15 RINA

12.16 SGS

12.17 Spirent Communications

12.18 TUV Nord

12.19 TUV Rheinland

12.20 TUV SUD



13 Appendix



For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/octjgk

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
DUBLIN, March 4, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Fraud Detection and Prevention Market: Global Industry Trends, Share, Size, Growth, Opportunity and Forecast 2021-2026" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

The global fraud detection and prevention market exhibited strong growth during 2015-2020. Fraud detection and prevention refers to an automated solution used for identifying and preventing fraudulent activities. It relies on statistical data analysis techniques and artificial intelligence (AI) to reduce the economic and reputational repercussions of scams. It is nowadays being integrated with state-of-the-art technology to minimize detection time and process transactions faster. As a result, organizations worldwide are adopting fraud detection and prevention solutions to process massive amounts of data and increase operational efficiency.



With the global expansion of business activities, a significant increase in the use of digital data and the rising risk of cybersecurity threats, organizations are facing numerous challenges to monitoring fraudulent activities in real-time manually. This represents one of the key factors positively influencing the utilization of fraud detection and prevention solutions across the globe. These solutions enable organizations to predict conventional fraud tactics, cross-reference data through automation, continually monitor transactions and decipher sophisticated schemes.

Apart from this, the rising use of online banking services is promoting the adoption of fraud detection and prevention solutions in the banking, financial services, and insurance (BFSI) sector. These solutions help banks combat fraudulent activities, including money laundering, forging bank checks, and financing terrorist activities. Moreover, governing agencies worldwide are combining siloed data to catch tax fraud, predict intrusions, identify abnormal behavior, gather intelligence for law enforcement, and enhance border security. Furthermore, the growing popularity of e-commerce websites is increasing the risk of identity scams, which is anticipated to drive the market. Looking forward, the publisher expects the global fraud detection and prevention market to grow at a CAGR of around 18% during the forecast period (2021-2026).

Competitive Landscape:

The competitive landscape of the industry has also been examined along with the profiles of the key players being ACI Worldwide Inc., BAE Systems, Cybersource Corporation (Visa Inc.), DXC Technology Company, Experian plc, Fiserv Inc., Global Payments Inc., International Business Machines Corporation, Oracle Corporation, SAP SE, SAS Institute Inc., Software AG and Total System Services Inc.



Key Questions Answered in This Report:

How has the global fraud detection and prevention market performed so far and how will it perform in the coming years?

What has been the impact of COVID-19 on the global fraud detection and prevention market?

What are the key regional markets?

What is the breakup of the market based on the component?

What is the breakup of the market based on the application?

What is the breakup of the market based on the organization size?

What is the breakup of the market based on the vertical?

What are the various stages in the value chain of the industry?

What are the key driving factors and challenges in the industry?

What is the structure of the global fraud detection and prevention market and who are the key players?

What is the degree of competition in the industry?

Key Topics Covered:



1 Preface



2 Scope and Methodology

3 Executive Summary



4 Introduction

4.1 Overview

4.2 Key Industry Trends



5 Global Fraud Detection and Prevention Market

5.1 Market Overview

5.2 Market Performance

5.3 Impact of COVID-19

5.4 Market Forecast



6 Market Breakup by Component

6.1 Solutions

6.1.1 Market Trends

6.1.2 Market Forecast

6.2 Services

6.2.1 Market Trends

6.2.2 Market Forecast



7 Market Breakup by Application

7.1 Identity Theft

7.1.1 Market Trends

7.1.2 Market Forecast

7.2 Money Laundering

7.2.1 Market Trends

7.2.2 Market Forecast

7.3 Payment Fraud

7.3.1 Market Trends

7.3.2 Market Forecast

7.4 Others

7.4.1 Market Trends

7.4.2 Market Forecast



8 Market Breakup by Organization Size

8.1 Small and Medium Enterprises

8.1.1 Market Trends

8.1.2 Market Forecast

8.2 Large Enterprises

8.2.1 Market Trends

8.2.2 Market Forecast



9 Market Breakup by Vertical

9.1 BFSI

9.1.1 Market Trends

9.1.2 Market Forecast

9.2 Government and Defense

9.2.1 Market Trends

9.2.2 Market Forecast

9.3 Healthcare

9.3.1 Market Trends

9.3.2 Market Forecast

9.4 IT and Telecom

9.4.1 Market Trends

9.4.2 Market Forecast

9.5 Manufacturing

9.5.1 Market Trends

9.5.2 Market Forecast

9.6 Retail and E-Commerce

9.6.1 Market Trends

9.6.2 Market Forecast

9.7 Others

9.7.1 Market Trends

9.7.2 Market Forecast



10 Market Breakup by Region



11 SWOT Analysis



12 Value Chain Analysis



13 Porters Five Forces Analysis



14 Price Analysis



15 Competitive Landscape

15.1 Market Structure

15.2 Key Players

15.3 Profiles of Key Players

15.3.1 ACI Worldwide Inc.

15.3.1.1 Company Overview

15.3.1.2 Product Portfolio

15.3.1.3 Financials

15.3.1.4 SWOT Analysis

15.3.2 BAE Systems

15.3.2.1 Company Overview

15.3.2.2 Product Portfolio

15.3.2.3 Financials

15.3.2.4 SWOT Analysis

15.3.3 Cybersource Corporation (Visa Inc.)

15.3.3.1 Company Overview

15.3.3.2 Product Portfolio

15.3.3.3 SWOT Analysis

15.3.4 DXC Technology Company

15.3.4.1 Company Overview

15.3.4.2 Product Portfolio

15.3.4.3 Financials

15.3.4.4 SWOT Analysis

15.3.5 Experian plc

15.3.5.1 Company Overview

15.3.5.2 Product Portfolio

15.3.5.3 Financials

15.3.6 Fiserv Inc.

15.3.6.1 Company Overview

15.3.6.2 Product Portfolio

15.3.6.3 Financials

15.3.6.4 SWOT Analysis

15.3.7 Global Payments Inc.

15.3.7.1 Company Overview

15.3.7.2 Product Portfolio

15.3.7.3 Financials

15.3.7.4 SWOT Analysis

15.3.8 International Business Machines Corporation

15.3.8.1 Company Overview

15.3.8.2 Product Portfolio

15.3.8.3 Financials

15.3.8.4 SWOT Analysis

15.3.9 Oracle Corporation

15.3.9.1 Company Overview

15.3.9.2 Product Portfolio

15.3.9.3 Financials

15.3.9.4 SWOT Analysis

15.3.10 SAP SE

15.3.10.1 Company Overview

15.3.10.2 Product Portfolio

15.3.10.3 Financials

15.3.10.4 SWOT Analysis

15.3.11 SAS Institute Inc.

15.3.11.1 Company Overview

15.3.11.2 Product Portfolio

15.3.11.3 Financials

15.3.11.4 SWOT Analysis

15.3.12 Software AG

15.3.12.1 Company Overview

15.3.12.2 Product Portfolio

15.3.12.3 SWOT Analysis

15.3.13 Total System Services Inc.

15.3.13.1 Company Overview

15.3.13.2 Product Portfolio

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/tlu8ge

Media Contact:

Research and Markets

Laura Wood, Senior Manager

[email protected]



For E.S.T Office Hours Call +1-917-300-0470

For U.S./CAN Toll Free Call +1-800-526-8630

For GMT Office Hours Call +353-1-416-8900



U.S. Fax: 646-607-1907

Fax (outside U.S.): +353-1-481-1716

SOURCE Research and Markets
In the power grid field, greenhouse gas emissions are huge, and efficient use of clean new energy such as wind and solar energy is an effective means to achieve "Emission peak and carbon neutrality". However, wind power and solar energy are easily affected by the weather and regions, bringing challenges to new energy integration into the grid. Consequently, accurate measurement, control, and real-time interaction are required when conventional mobile network mechanism cannot meet the strict network requirements of the power industry.

To solve this problem, ZTE has released the Time Promised Communication (TPC) solution, which integrates 5G TSN/5G LAN/URLLC/SLA accurate control related to time-sensitive networks as defined by 3GPP Release 16. The TPC solution combines software and hardware to effectively solve the network latency and jitter caused by traffic conflicts. It is combined with the slicing technology to reduce 5G end-to-end latency, guarantees the determinacy of the communication network, and satisfies the super-high reliability requirements of the power grid.

Instead of optical cables, the TPC solution enables flexible access to the last mile, greatly reducing communication network construction costs. The solution can be widely used in power grid scenarios, such as power differential protection, power distribution automation, phasor measurement technology (PMU), and accurate grid load scheduling. It accelerates the deployment of new energy such as solar energy and wind energy, achieves efficient coordination of power storage, and helps the power industry achieve strategic objectives of "emission peak and carbon neutrality."

GTI is dedicated to building a global platform of communication technology and promoting a prosperous ecosystem. GTI summit 2022, with the theme of "5G & Decarbonization" has focused on the current situation and strategy of 5G development, as well as how technology innovation will play a role in reaching the goal of carbon neutral and Net Zero. This award is highly recognized in the fields of 5G technology innovation, end-to-end product capability and network architecture verification.

This award further verifies the high application values and the broad prospects of 5G TSN technology. ZTE and China Mobile will promote TPC solution maturity together with R17 technology evolution.The TPC solution can be widely used in the industrial Internet field, including applications in key industries such as power, industry, logistics and healthcare, to significantly improve industrial productivity, operational efficiency and accelerate 5G business innovations.

ZTE has carried out deep cooperation with industry partners to achieve in-depth integration of IT and OT, help enterprises achieve flexible production, improve resources usage efficiency, and build a green and low-carbon industrial ecosystem.

Media Contacts:

Margaret Ma

ZTE Corporation

Tel: +86 755 26775189

Email: [email protected]

SOURCE ZTE Corporation
The company was established to take advantage of the demand for a wide range of commodities, which will benefit from the drive toward electrification

Electric Royalties Ltd (TSX-V:ELEC, OTC:ELECF) has updated on half of its royalty portfolio, which includes a graphite mine project in Madagascar, which is advancing towards a resumption of output, amid the backdrop of rising clean energy metal prices.

The company has a growing portfolio of 18 royalties, including one that currently generates revenue. The firm was established to take advantage of the demand for a wide range of commodities, which will benefit from the drive toward electrification.

The company has a royalty on the Graphmada mine in Madagascar, which was in continuous production for 20 months before being placed on care and maintenance during the outbreak of the pandemic.

"Exploration work completed during the past year indicates a renewed focus and intention to bring the mine back into production. Moreover, clean energy metal prices have jumped significantly over the past year and we expect that trend to continue as additional countries commit to net zero policies. With all of the capital being invested in our assets this year and metal prices as they are, we believe that it should be an eventful year in terms of progress," Electric Royalties CEO Brendan Yurik said in a statement.

Elsewhere, at the Authier lithium project in Quebec, where it has a royalty, owner Sayona Mining recently completed the acquisition of North American Lithium (NAL) and plans to release a study on restarting this historical producer with the Authier asset forming an integral part of production, the company also noted.

"Drilling is underway on our Cancet, Seymour Lake and Chubb lithium assets," added Yurik.

"Excellent final metallurgical results have been received for the Battery Hill manganese royalty, and we are very keen to see the results of the upcoming PEA, as we believe this may be a very significant royalty for Electric Royalties," he said.

Electric Royalties is a royalty company established to take advantage of the demand for a wide range of commodities, namely lithium, vanadium, manganese, tin, graphite, cobalt, nickel, zinc and copper, which will benefit from the drive toward electrification of a variety of consumer products such as cars, rechargeable batteries, large scale energy storage, renewable energy generation and other applications.

Contact the writer at giles@proactiveinvestors.com
Russian cryptocurrency trading volume sank 50%, debunking suggestions of an upturn in digital asset buying to evade sanctions issued by much of the West.

Rouble-dominated crypto trading was US$34.1mln on Thursday, compared with US$70.7mln on 24 February, according to Chainalysis.

Despite Bitcoins 15% hike last week, Russian volumes have been relatively weak so far, "suggesting price action is more due to investor positioning for an expected increase in demand from Russia, rather than Russian demand itself", said Citigroup analyst Alexander Saunders.

In fact, several crypto exchanges blacklisted sanctioned individuals and organisations to prevent them from crypto trading.

Binance refused to ban accounts of "innocent" Russian people, though.

New York State ramped up blockchain surveillance to further halt cryptos in aiding Russian interests.

Despite experts insisting digital assets would not help Russia circumvent international sanctions, the US and EU were continuously tightening crypto regulation.
Gore Street Energy Storage Fund PLC (LSE:GSF) told investors it has successfully completed the acquisition of a 90% stake in a 28 MWh operational energy storage asset based in Cremzow, Germany.

The company, in a statement, highlighted that the acquisition of an asset in mainland Europe signifies an exciting opportunity. It said the asset diversifies its exposure to new revenue streams across the inter-connected European grid network.

Cremzow has been operating since 2019, providing balancing and frequency services across eight countries and eleven networks in the European grid system. The company noted that Cremzow can participate in wholesale and intra-day arbitrage, presenting additional revenue stacking opportunities.

The intent by the EU to diminish co-dependency on gas and other fossil fuels, reinforced by the current Ukraine crisis, will likely further enhance the already pressing need for energy storage infrastructure in the region, Gore Street noted.

Alex O'Cinneide, Gore Street Capital chief executive, said: "The company has, as part of its growth plans, achieved international expansion firstly in 2019 with our move into the Irish energy system, and now in 2022 into mainland Europe.

This is a landmark acquisition with compelling fundamentals which not only demonstrates our entry into new markets but also increases our operational cash generating assets, and further diversifies Gore Street's portfolio.

He added: Energy storage is an ever-increasing infrastructure requirement, and we will continue to seek out the best opportunities from our considerable pipeline across our key markets."
Fresnillo PLC (LSE:FRES) was one of the rare FTSE 100 risers on a day of selling, with the world's biggest silver miner in demand ahead of its results next week.

With some investors seeking out haven assets in the wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the silver price has climbed sharply over the past month, putting some extra juice into the results and lifting the shares 16% since the start of February.

The Mexico-based miner's shares are still down by around 19% over the past year after disappointing updates that included missing production targets and a lowering of output targets.

For Tuesday's numbers, analysts are looking for EBITDA to be up 11% to US$1.3bn, implying a sharp drop in the second half, to be followed by guidance for even weaker earnings in 2022.

12.15: Morgan advances

Morgan Advanced Materials plc (LSE:MGAM) shares were among the biggest FTSE 350 risers as the maker of ceramic and carbon products reported faster than expected full-year sales growth and a solid outlook.

Supplying industries including healthcare, transportation, clean energy and semiconductors, the group posted results showing organic revenue growth of 10.3%, above its guided 7-9% range after a long restructuring and repositioning process over the past five years.

The new year has started with a 4-7% organic revenue growth range and further improvement in margin, with management reassuring that Russia accounts for around 4mln of sales.

While "there is clearly a 'but' there about broader ramifications" around Russia, analysts at Peel Hunt said it was "a terrific set of numbers supported by a realistic outlook" and that the shares are "very cheap" at nine times full year forecast earnings and a 4% dividend yield.

10.50am: Ten hit for six by profit warning

Concierge group Ten Lifestyle Group (AIM:TENG) slipped 18% to 87p after warning that underlying profits (EBITDA) would be below expectations for the year.

It said the effects of Russia's invasion of Ukraine on its business was "currently expected to be limited" as around 1-2% of annual net revenue relates "to Russia and the directly affected region" - though not many oligarchs still seem to live there any more.

The AIM-listed outfit said it will keep on the additional staff hired during a strong autumn period, despite the Omicron variant leading to reduced demand since December, as it reported the beginnings of increased activity in February in Europe, Middle East and Africa, along with a "healthy pipeline of new business and high conversion rates".

9.35am: Russian stocks rebound

Russian commodity stocks Polymetal International PLC (LSE:POLY) and Evraz PLC (LSE:EVR) led the risers on Friday, up 27% to 225.4p and 17% to 62.36p respectively in early deals.

For the former, a precious metals miner with assets across Russia, its shares were bouncing back from a 64% plunge earlier in the week.

Polymetal was also in the news as BlackRock, the world's largest asset manager, backtracked on its purchase of shares in the London-listed miner, adding that it had suspended the purchase of all Russian securities in both its active and index tracker funds.

BlackRock, which said the new policy had come in on Monday, days after it had spent millions topping up its stake in Polymetal to 10.1%.

The asset management colossus said it was putting pressure on index providers to remove Russian securities from wider benchmarks and that, moving as quickly as possible, it had cut Russian securities to less than 0.01% of client assets.
Avation PLC (LSE:AVAP) told investors that it is set to have only three un-utilised aircraft following its efforts to reorganise its fleet in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The company, in a stock market statement, said it had entered into a number of agreements which remain subject to definitive documentation and typical closing mechanics, but would see four aircraft off the un-utilised list.

Having had 20 aircraft returned or repossessed during the Covid-19 pandemic it is pleasing to have only three remaining aircraft to market and transition," said executive chairman Jeff Chatfield.

In the statement, which was a response to analyst questions, Avation said it had entered into a letter of intent to transition one ATR 72-600 from Golden Myanmar Airlines to a new customer, and, entered into a letter of intent for the lease of one ATR 72-500 to an Asian airline.

A further letter of intent sees a potential sale of two ATR 72-600 aircraft that were formerly on lease to Loganair.
Caracal Gold PLC (LSE:GCAT) announced the appointment of Franck Bizouerne who joins the company as group mineral resource manager, effective from 1 April.

Bizouerne is described as a an expert in greenfield exploration, in particular gold but also lithium and base metals across the African continent. The company said the appointment brings a huge wealth of experience.

In his prior role Bizouerne was exploration manager and principal geologist at Rio Tinto's CBG aluminium mine, and, before that he was exploration manager and senior chief geologist for Etruscan Resources Burkina Faso (Endeavor Mining), where he was responsible for developing the Youga gold mine.

"Franck's appointment as head of exploration comes at a crucial time for Caracal, as we ramp up exploration at our flagship gold mine at Kilimapesa, where we are investing significantly on our exploration activities, aimed at boosting JORC resources to over 1.5mln ounces this year, said Caracal chief executive Robbie McCrae.

"He will play a key role in implementing the final phase of our initial three-phase operational plan at Kilimapesa and boosting gold production to 24ktpa by the end of the year.

McCrae added: "We welcome Franck and his in-depth knowledge of Africa to the team and look forward to reporting on our progress as we bring Kilimapesa to the next phase of its exciting growth trajectory."
Europeans should turn their thermostats down by a degree to drop their dependence on Russian energy imports, the worlds largest energy advisor has said.

The International Energy Agency told Europeans that the region had to urgently cut its dependence on Russian energy in expectation of dwindling supplies as the West ramps ups sanctions on the Russian economy.

The group said turning down buildings heating by 1C would reduce gas demand by 10bn cubic metres a year.

Nobody is under any illusions anymore. Russias use of its natural gas resources as an economic and political weapon show Europe needs to act quickly to be ready to face considerable uncertainty over Russian gas supplies next winter, said IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol.

Mainland Europe is heavily reliant on Russia for its energy requirements, with the 155bn cubic metres of natural gas imported from Russia in 2021 accounting for 45% of EU gas imports and nearly 40% of its total gas consumption.

The suggestion was part of a 10-Point plan released by the IEA to reduce Russian gas dependence by over a third within a year while supporting a shift to clean energy.

Other suggestions included the accelerated deployment of new wind and solar projects and the replacement of Russian gas supplies with alternative markets.

The IEA, led by the US, recently released 60mln barrels of oil reserves, equivalent to less than two weeks of Russian imports, in an attempt to soften spiraling oil prices which sit at a seven-year high.
Kavango Resources PLC (LSE:KAV, OTC:KVGOF) chief executive Ben Turney joined Proactive's Stephen Gunnion with details of a preliminary independent Petrology Report for two holes drilled at the Kalahari Suture Zone (KSZ) project in Botswana.

Turney saying the report is "very positive" and follows news earlier this week that it has identified two further targets at KSZ.

Turney also touched on Kavango extending its option to acquire up to 51.15% of the Molopo Farms complex, a nickel/copper/platinum group elements exploration project in southern Botswana to March 18.
Westbound natural gas flows through Russias Yamal-Europe pipeline stopped on Friday, pushing gas prices higher.

Flows of gas to Germany through the Mallnow metering point were around 101,119 kilowatt hours per hour (kWh/h) on Friday morning compared to 13.5mln kWh/h overnight, according to Gascade.

The Yamal-Europe pipeline, which runs between Germany and Poland, usually accounts for 15% of Russias westbound supply to Europe and Turkey.

Since December, the pipeline has been operating in reverse eastwards as Poland draws down stored supplies to avoid paying high spot prices for Russian gas.

Yesterday, Russian gas giant Gazprom said it was shipping gas to Ukraine follow customers requests, with supply from the company intermittent in recent weeks.

Sanctions continue to pile on the Russian economy, though neither side has yet acted to disrupt the supply of Russian gas, which accounts for more than 40% of the EUs total consumption.
Aldoro Resources Ltd (ASX:ARN) has received assay results from four drill holes at the VC1 target of the Narndee Igneous Complex (NIC) Project in Western Australia, while also advancing geophysical surveying across the project tenure.

Notable wet chemistry intercepts from the drillholes included:

 7.86 metres at 0.53% nickel, 0.51% copper and 0.03% cobalt from 269.5 metres; and

 4.26 metres at 1.22% nickel, 0.53% copper and 0.08% cobalt from 277.14 metres

These results represent a step-up in width and grade compared to previous results from VC1.

The company has planned a further eight drill holes to target VC1 but has not yet announced when the drilling will take place.

Geophysical surveying

Aldoro has now completed its priority 1 versatile time domain electromagnetic (VTEM) survey over the Kiabye Greenstone Belt (KGB) along the western margin of the NIC project.

The KGB is thought to be a possible feeder or basal unit of the NIC and represents a high priority exploration target for Aldoro in the hunt for nickel-copper sulphide deposits.

Results will be released once the analysis of final data sets can be completed.

Aldoro is now advancing a large loop, high power fix loop electromagnetic (HPFLTEM) survey over the VC1, VC3 and VC11 target areas.

The survey is designed to detect large, highly conductive, and possibly deeper metallic bodies that would have been difficult for VTEM to detect. Results will be reported as they become available.

Following the Priority 1 VTEM survey and HPFLEM results, any conductors generated will be ground-truthed, mapped, and sampled by surface geochemistry.

Aldoro will then follow up with surface electromagnetic work and drilling.

About Aldoro Resources

Aldoro Resources is a mineral exploration and development company with a collection of nickel/copper/platinum group metal (PGM) focused exploration projects and advanced rubidium exploration projects all located in Western Australia.

The companys flagship nickel/copper/PGM project is the Narndee Project, where initial drilling of the first of over a dozen targets has successfully intersected nickel sulphides.

Aldoro is also currently exploring the Niobe rubidium/lithium/tantalum project, the company is encouraged by the very high grades of rubidium and the at surface deposit, which extends over multiple kilometres.

The companys other projects include the Cathedrals Belt Nickel Project (nickel-copper-PGM), with a significant tenement holding surrounding St George Minings Mt Alexander Project, the Leinster Nickel Project, and Windimurra Igneous Complex (nickel-copper-PGM, lithium).
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Cyber-attacks are nothing new. The first Denial of Service (DoS) attack dates back to 1988; a computer worm created by Robert Morris to highlight security flaws such as weak passwords.

But technology has rapidly evolved since then, with cyber-attacks having the potential to be hostile and becoming a primary weapon in modern warfare.

Since Russias invasion of Ukraine officially began in February, Russian sourced cyber-attacks increased over 800% in just 48 hours.

Effectiveness of attacks

Russia has often proved its capability in the online battlefield. In 2015, Russian hackers breached Ukraines electrical power grid causing massive widespread outages across the country.

In 2017, they unleashed the NotPeya Malware virus, which cost billions in damages and disruption to Ukraines virtual space.

Interestingly enough, cyberattacks directed at Ukraine have been relatively basic since the Russian invasion began. Most have been DoS attacks in which hackers bombarded Ukrainian government websites and servers with heavy traffic, making the servers unable to recognise legitimate users.

Meanwhile, Russian allies are also seizing the opportunity to launch global cyber-attacks: Iran launched a global cyber-espionage attack earlier this week targeting Europe, North America and Australia.

US and UK governments issued a warning in late February that a group known as MuddyWatter is targeting industries and private businesses in western countries. This group is part of Iran's Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) and targets a wide range of government and private-sector organisations.

Some of these industries include transportation, health care and critical infrastructure.

"MuddyWater actors are positioned both to provide stolen data and accesses to the Iranian government and to share these with other malicious cyber actors," US and UK agencies said.

The hacking collective, a group of hackers that has openly supported MOIS has been reported to employ open-source tools to gain access to sensitive information and deploy ransomware.

Attacks by these actors continue to ramp up and it seems no one is safe.

Australia is a target

As Australia is an ally of NATO, it makes us a target.

Last year, the Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC) warned the Iranian government-sponsored hackers were trying to gain access to Australian systems by exploiting vulnerabilities in Microsoft exchange.

A spokesperson for the ACSC said they encourage Australian organisations to adopt an enhanced cyber security protocols.

The pushback

Last week Ukraine called on its citizens to take to their keyboards and defend the country against the growing cyber threat.

Anonymous, the global hacktivist community made moves against the Kremlin, officially declaring cyber war against the Russian government through twitter.

Source: Twitter

The global collective has previously claimed responsibility for attacks against a range of targets. Their attacks are often aligned with major events  such as the murder of George Floyd in 2020  rolling with the theme of their anti-oppression agenda.

On February 16, Anonymous TV released a video detailing a series of threats against the Russian government.

In typical Anonymous fashion, a figure dawned in a Guy Fawkes mask and distorted voice said:

If tensions continue to worsen in Ukraine, then we can take hostage industrial control systems. Sole party to be blamed if we escalate on that will be the same one who started it in the very first place with troop buildups, childish threats and waves of unreasonable ultimatums.

Several Russian government websites and media outlets have since been hit, as well as publishing Russian Department of Defence data.

As Russian media is heavily regulated, Anonymous went a step further to attack Russian TV channels to play uncensored news of the war to combat Russian propaganda.

While these attacks are unlikely to have a significant impact on Russia in the long run, it plays a significant role in exposing the citizens of Russia to whats really happening. The Kremlins invasion of Ukraine has been filtered through a controlled media, with the government going to extreme lengths to censor Facebook and even shut down major independent media outlets.

And its working. Thousands of Russian citizens have taken to the streets to protest the invasion of Ukraine, defying police threats of arrest, fines and even imprisonment.

What does this mean for Australia?

Australian businesses are at serious risk of cyber-attacks due for voicing their support of Ukraine.

The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) says 55% of the 256 data breaches from July to December last year was the result of malicious attacks. 68% of these were identified as cyber-attacks.

The ACSC is also encouraging Australian businesses to prepare now and ensure their security is up to scratch to repel any potential attacks.

The organisation says Its not a matter of if, but when.

Australian cybersecurity firm CyberCX says there are two primary risks involving cyberattacks from Russia:

Russian attacks would spill over and affect Australian firms (particularly those with ties to Ukraine or NATO countries)

Russian-linked gangs may target Australian firms as part of a broader hit on Western assets.

CyberCX says they have already seen a rise in cyber extortion attacks on Australian targets in recent weeks.

How do businesses prepare?

Cyber security expert Ajay Unni suggests the following steps to be better prepared for an attack:

Incident detection and mitigation- the first step is being able to detect and respond to security breaches. You need the right tools to identify any form of suspicious activity, such as cyber security consultants who can watch your computers and networks 24/7. If any suspicious activity is identified, a response is launched to mitigate the attack.

Educate your employees- Cyber-talk can be confusing to the layman so its important to teach your employees about the likelihood of attacks, misinformation campaigns and attempts by malicious hackers to comprise systems. Unni says its also wise to ensure they receive regular security training.

Re-evaluate privileged access- All new software and accounts should be monitored. Stronger authentication and overall identity and privileges can keep your company safe.

Strengthen cyber security hygiene- Installing antivirus and malware software, keeping up to date with patches, and ensuring employees use strong passwords are all effective methods to make sure data is encrypted.

We have yet to face a war where attacks can be executed from behind a keyboard, and these are still very early days for the war in Ukraine. Cyber-attacks have the power to take down electrical grids and decimate economic infrastructure.

It is an understatement in saying cybersecurity has never been more important in the face of escalating modern war.

Written by Duncan Bailey
Calima Energy Ltd (ASX:CE1) has delivered encouraging production and operational progress within the Bantry Field in the core Brooks area in Alberta,Canada.

The companys three-well horizontal Glauconitic (GLCC) drilling campaign at Brooks has successfully finished its fracture stimulation program at the Pisces #3 well, which will be flowing back post the next seven-day shut-in period.

During February, well maintenance activities and pipeline construction resulted in average production above 4,200 barrels of oil equivalent per day (boe/d).

Looking ahead, Calima is targeting production of Gemini #5, #6, #7, and Pisces #3 wells by the month end  positively contributing to current cash flow and a half-yearly production average of 4,000-5,000 boe/d.

Ahead of our goal

Calima CEO and president Jordan Kevol said: We are very pleased with progress in the field at Brooks.

Kudos to the related staff and contractors who have worked very diligently to achieve such progress, and to the team who have put the planning together over the past 12 months.

Before the winter frost melts, the team is focused on the Bantry Field at Brooks to equip and tie-in the four wells currently behind pipe (Gemini and Pisces).

We are ahead of our goal of having Gemini #5, #6, #7, and Pisces #3 on production by the end of March which will positively contribute to current cash flow and our H1 2022 average production of 4,000-5,000 boe/d

Pipeline infrastructure at Brooks

The pipeline at Brooks connects the companys 02-29 oil battery in the northern portion of the field, to the recently drilled wells (Gemini #5, #6, #7 and Pisces #3) in the southern portion of the field and most importantly, will provide egress for planned production growth in the pipeline corridor located in the heart of the Brooks properties.

Notably, Gemini #5 and #6 have been completed and both wells are now tied into the pipeline.

Further, the Gemini #7 will be tied-in within seven days and Pisces #3 will be tied in and brought on production by mid-March.

Pisces #3 has been fracture stimulated and will be flowing back post the next seven-day shut-in period.

The final section of the pipeline which connects existing producing wells in an area that currently has fluid volumes trucked to the 02-29 battery, will be connected, and flowing into the battery by the end of March.

View of the pipeline coming into the Calima 02-29 oil battery.

Fracture simulation at Pisces #3

The Pisces #3 well has been shut in following the recent successful fracture stimulation program as per standard reservoir management for fracture stimulated wells.

Following this seven-day shut in period, downhole and surface pumping equipment will be installed, the well will be tied in and initial flowback operations will commence into temporary facilities while the pipeline is completed.

Looking ahead, the well is expected to be on stream and producing initial flow-back fluid by mid-March, and subsequently tied into the 2-29 battery by March 31, 2022.

Kevol adds: The fracture stimulation has been successfully pumped on the Pisces #3 well.

We are happy to report that the frac went very well, and all 33 stages were successful in placing sand.

The well is anticipated to be on production to temporary facilities in two weeks, following which it will be tied into the 02-29 battery via the new pipeline by the end of the month.

We are pleased to be bringing on new oil wells in this robust oil price environment.
Jindalee Resources Ltd (ASX:JRL) has executed a sale and purchase agreement (SPA) with GWR Group (ASX:GWR) Ltd for the acquisition of a 70% interest in its advanced Prospect Ridge Magnesite project in northwest Tasmania.

The acquisition initiates GWR's move into the 'green' sector, with magnesite the principal ore for magnesium, the lightest structural metal known to man, being two thirds lighter than aluminium.

Moving forward, the GWR geological team will conduct a site visit in mid-March and will look to engage with local geological and exploration teams, drilling contractors, metallurgists and the Port of Burnie, as well as state and federal governments.

Into the green sector

GWR chairman Gary Lyons said: We are pleased to have finalised the SPA for the advanced Prospect Ridge Magnesite project which will propel GWR into the 'green sector'.

With the opening of the Western Australian borders, the GWR team is excited to conduct a site visit in the coming weeks and begin to engage with a host of services as well as the Port of Bernie and state and federal governments.

In September 2021, the Australian Federal Government announced that it will establish a $2 billion fund to finance critical minerals production in Australia. It was stated that critical minerals include resources that are used in technologies such as mobile phones, computer monitors, electric cars and solar panels, such as lithium, magnesium and nickel. Magnesium has also been identified as a Top 50 Critical Mineral by the United States.

Forward plan

Desktop and transport studies will begin following the site visit and an initial engagement with potential offtake partners for a DSO product has already been initiated.

GWR will also focus its studies towards a low-cost, zero waste, high-quality and eco-friendly downstream process that will enable GWR to benefit from a value-add processed product, and has commenced identifying the required technology.

Lyons adds: I firmly believe that this project provides an excellent opportunity to enter the 'green' global magnesium market - we have initiated discussions for European offtake of a DSO product that will enable GWR to apply our experience in bulk commodity mining and in addition, we have begun to identify technology partners to provide us with the opportunity of benefiting from downstream processing.

I very much look forward to updating shareholders regarding advancements in the Prospect Ridge project.

About the project

The Prospect Ridge Magnesite project area sits on a granted exploration licence, (EL5/2016), it is 11 kilometres long and 51 square kilometres encompassing two deposits, the Arthur River and Lyons River deposits containing the third largest magnesite inventory in Australia.

The project is situated just 55 kilometres west south-west from the Port of Burnie, which is one of the state's key deep-water ports and the largest general cargo port in Tasmania. This enables GWR to use its bulk commodity production expertise to explore a low capex opportunity for DSO magnesite production and export.

Jindalees inferred mineral resource estimate at the Arthur River Deposit delivered 25 million tonnes of magnesite grading 42.4% MgO, 4.8% SiO2, 1.4% Fe2O3 and 2.6% CaO to an average depth of 100 metres below surface at a cut-off of 40% MgO.
Pantheon Resources PLC (AIM:PANR, OTC:PTHRF) is now ready to begin testing the Theta West after progress on Alaskas North Slope slowed due to weather challenges.

The company, in a statement, meanwhile gave upbeat but incomplete results from the previously drilled Talitha well  which saw its latest test suspended in a blizzard and subsequently found results hampered due to a blockage in the well.

Pantheon nonetheless told investors that based on the available it believes that the zone under testing, the Shelf Margin Deltaic (SMD), should produce better than the two lower zones already tested. Those previously tested zones, the Basin Floor Fan (BFF) and Slope Fan System (SFS), were themselves described as having excellent results.

Now, the company said that the main priority for the remainder of the winter season is to allow sufficient time to satisfactorily test the BFF at Theta West. Operations are due to begin next week.

Operating in Arctic conditions can be challenging and have caused operational issues which have impacted the testing of the SMD, said chief executive Jay Cheatham.

"In this strong oil price environment, many upstream companies operating in the oil and gas sector are facing equipment and logistics challenges with high equipment utilization rates.

As we are well into the drilling season, we made an easy decision to suspend activity at Talitha to afford sufficient time to undertake thorough testing at the significant Theta West project.

He added: Over the coming weeks, we will test what the company believes is a significant oil accumulation after encountering over 950 feet of oil-bearing sections in a large Basin Floor Fan system. Our team have prepared an extensive testing operation."

Cheatham noted that the companys next Alaska well, the Alkaid appraisal and production well, is scheduled for the summer season.
The Ukrainian government announced it will issue non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to fund its armed forces.

Vice-prime minister Mykhailo Fedorov confirmed in a tweet on Thursday that the government would soon be using NFTs to help pay for its military.

After careful consideration we decided to cancel airdrop. Every day there are more and more people willing to help Ukraine to fight back the agression. Instead, we will announce NFTs to support Ukrainian Armed Forces soon. We DO NOT HAVE any plans to issue any fungible tokens  Mykhailo Fedorov (@FedorovMykhailo) March 3, 2022

Fedorov did not provide further details on the NFTs but did add the government had cancelled plans to reward crypto donors with an airdrop.

An airdrop is a free digital token that is used by the crypto community to encourage participation in a project.

The Ukrainian government has raised over US$50mln in cryptocurrency following an appeal made last week by Fedorov.

According to Elliptic, a blockchain and data analytics firm, US$54.7mln has been raised for the government and a Ukrainian non-growth organisation.

Most of the funds have gone to the government, with a smaller portion being sent to an organisation that funds the defence of Ukraine called Come Back Alive.

Elliptic research suggests there have been over 100,000 cryptoasset donations since the beginning of the invasion, highlighting a US$5.8mln donation from the co-founder of Polkadot, Gavin Wood.

The data also found a donation worth US$1.86mln generated from the sale of NFTs, with that money originally raised to assist WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, as well as a CryptoPunk NFT worth US$200,000 also being sent to the Ukrainian government.
Following completion of the Sun Dog program, drills will start turning at Standard Uranium's flagship Davidson River project nearby

Standard Uranium Ltd (TSX-V:STND, OTCQB:STTDF) announced that it has kicked off its winter drill program at its Sun Dog project in Saskatchewan.

The program follows a high-resolution ground gravity survey over the Skye, Haven and Java targets which helped to refine the drill targets on the property, the company noted.

Another high-resolution UAV magnetic survey will be conducted over the next few days to help contextualize the geology at the drill targets, it added.

This will be the first time that the perched uranium mineralization at the Athabasca sandstone crop are drill-tested at depth, the company told investors. Standard Uranium is hoping to discover the high-grade origins of the mineralized system in the basement rocks underneath the sandstones.

The Sun Dog drill program is Standard Uranium's largest exploration program to date, CEO Jon Bey said.

Our projects are permitted for the 2022 season, we have agreements with First Nations in place, and we have all our vendors contracted. We are seeing a sharpening of investor sentiment and focus upon issues such as the stability of nuclear energy supply and the impact of political instability upon uranium exploration and mining operations, Bey said in a statement.

Busy exploration season

Following completion of the Sun Dog program, drills will start turning at its flagship Davidson River project nearby, the company said. Drilling is expected to begin in May 2022.

Standard Uranium is also advancing three properties known collectively as the East Side Projects, which include the Atlantic, Canary and Ascent projects. The firm is planning to do a high-resolution ground gravity survey at Atlantic, an induced polarization/resistivity program on the Canary project, and an airborne time-domain electromagnetic survey over Ascent.

We believe that Standard Uranium's excellent exploration prospects and operating environment leave us well-positioned to be able to create value for our shareholders, Bey concluded.

Vancouver-based Standard Uranium focuses on the identification and development of prospective exploration stage uranium projects in the Athabasca Basin in Saskatchewan, Canada.

Contact Angela at angela@proactiveinvestors.com

Follow her on Twitter @AHarmantas
Belmont said the offering will consist of 7,685,000 company units at a price of $0.07 each

Belmont Resources Inc (TSX-V:BEA) has announced that it will raise C$537,950 in a private placement financing by issuing 7,685,000 company units at a price of $0.07 each.

The company said it intends to use the proceeds of the financing for a drill program on the CBC project, along with exploration on its Greenwood gold camp projects and for working capital.

Each unit of the financing will consist of one company common share plus one warrant, which is exercisable at $0.10 in the first year and $0.15 in the second year.

The warrants will be subject to an accelerated expiry date, which comes into effect at such time as the trading price of the companys shares closes at or above $0.25 for 10 consecutive trading days. In such event, the company may accelerate the expiry date of the warrants by disseminating a press release and providing the warrant holders with notice that such warrants will expire on the 30th day thereafter.

Belmont also noted that a company insider will subscribe for 170,000 units of the private placement.

All securities issued will be subject to a four-month and one day hold period from closing.

As well, the company reported that it has granted 1,025,000 incentive stock options to certain Belmont Resources directors and officers in accordance with its current stock option plan. Each option is exercisable into one company common share at a price of $0.10 per share for a period of five years from the date of grant.

Belmont Resources is engaged in the business of acquiring and re-developing past-producing copper-gold-silver mines in southern British Columbia and northern Washington State. This region is considered to have the highest concentration of mineralization and past-producing mines in western North America.

Contact Sean at sean@proactiveinvestors.com
Chennai, March 4 : A couple travelling in a goods autorickshaw along with their daughter died when the vehicle plunged into a roadside well, the police said.

Their daughter, however, managed to get out of the vehicle and escape to safety.

The incident occurred on Thursday in Tiruppur district of Tamil Nadu.

The deceased have been identified as N. Vadivel (55) and his wife Banumathi (50).

Police said that Vadivel was engaged in installing marquees and stages for temple festivals and other functions and a few days ago he had installed a stage for a temple festival at Tiruppur.

He along with his wife Banumathi and daughter Agaya who is a class VII student was returning back home on Thursday early morning after the temple festival got over.

The auto rickshaw was loaded with generator sets and other materials of the stage and during his way back home, Vadivel who was driving the auto fell asleep. This led to the autorickshaw plunging into the well. The daughter opened the side door of the vehicle and escaped and called up the locals to help rescue her parents.

J. Ramadevi, Inspector of Police, Vellakovil Police station told IANS: "Agaya told us that her father lost control of the auto and it went out of the road and plunged into the well. She opened the door of the auto and came out of it and called help.

"However, the well was 70 feet deep and it had water at 45 feet. The villagers were not able to rescue the couple and they called the fire and rescue personnel who later pulled out the bodies of Vadivel and Bhanumathi."
Panaji, March 4 : There has been no dip in air-traffic at Goa's Dabolim International Airport in wake of the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine, airport director Gagan Malik said.

Malik told reporters late Thursday night that Air India had sought one more additional slot for a London-Goa flight.

"I do not see a difference in the air traffic, nor have my number of incoming passengers come down. If my incoming passengers have not dropped, then the outgoing passenger numbers will also not drop." The Airport Authority of India official also said that flights operated by Russian charter group Rossiya Airlines, continued to fly to and from the Goa airport.

"Rossiya is operating on approved slots. Today (Thursday) there was a charter from Russia in which more than 506 passengers had arrived and 489 passengers had departed. No slot has been cancelled by Rossiya. Domestic flights have peaked very well and it shows that we are heading for normalcy.

"Air India's frequency of its London flight is twice a week. They have requested an increaseAofAanother flight (slot) in one week. There will be three flights a week from Goa," Malik added.

Goa is one of the more popular inbound tourism destinations for Europe.

Russians top the number of foreign tourists contingents to the coastal state.

Latest updates on Russia-Ukraine War
Kiev, March 4 : Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba on Friday warned against Russian troops firing at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which is the largest in Europe, saying that if it blows up then the disaster would be "10 times larger" than Chernobyl.

In a tweet early Friday morning, the Minister said: "Russian army is firing from all sides upon Zaporizhzhia NPP, the largest nuclear power plant in Europe. Fire has already broke out.

"If it blows up, it will be 10 times larger than Chernobyl! Russians must immediately cease fire, allow firefighters, establish a security zone." Citing Ukrainian officials, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said that there has not been any change in the radiation levels at plant site in the wake of the fire.

The IAEA also said that the fire has not affected "essential" equipment and personnel at the nuclear power plane were "taking mitigatory actions".

The global nuclear organisation further said that it is consulting with Ukraine "and others with a view to provide maximum possible assistance to the country as it seeks to maintain nuclear safety and security in the current difficult circumstances".

But in the wake of the "serious situation" at the plant, IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi has warned Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmygal and the country's nuclear regulator and operator of the severe danger if the reactors were hit by the ongoing Russian firing.

Ukraine currently has four active nuclear plants, including Zaporizhzhia which reportedly accounts for some 25 per cent of the country's power, the BC reported.

It also deals with nuclear waste at sites like Chernobyl, which is now under Russian control.

The latest developments come on the ninth day of Russia's continuous military assault on Ukraine.

Since the Russian invasion began on February 24, intense shelling and bombing has continued across Ukraine, including capital Kiev and the second largest city of Kharkiv.

On Wednesday, Russian troops seized the port town of Kherson, a provincial capital home to about 250,000 people, making it the first major Ukrainian city to fall.

Ukraine has so far reported over 2,000 civilian casualties and UN estimates have revealed that over one million people have fled to neighbouring countries such as Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Hungary and Moldova.

At least 160,000 others are currently displaced within Ukraine.

Meanwhile, the European Union believes that figure could climb to seven million, and that 18 million Ukrainians will be affected by the war.

Latest updates on Russia-Ukraine War
Farrukhabad : , March 4 (IANS) Three people have died allegedly after consuming adulterated liquor purchased from a government outlet in Uttar Pradesh's Bharatpur.

Jitendra Singh, 50, his friend Omkar, 45, and Monu ,26, had purchased the Indian Made Foreign Liquor (IMFL) from the outlet in Ahlapur village under Mohammadabad Kotwali and were partying when they suddenly fell from their chairs after consuming the liquor.

They were rushed to a private hospital nearby where the doctors declared them dead, the police said.

All three men had consumed liquor from the same bottle and soon their condition deteriorated, leading to their death, their family members said.

Superintendent of Police Ashok Kumar Meena said that "the bodies have been sent for post-mortem examination and the actual cause of death will be ascertained soon".

On receiving the information, Circle Officer Rajveer Singh Gaur, along with the team of the excise department, also reached the spot and launched an investigation.

A senior official said that adulteration of methyl alcohol has been found in the liquor and the concerned contract has been sealed.

Along with this, the sale of liquor of the liquor brand has been stopped after checking the contracts across the district.

The salesman at the outlet Yogendra Pal has been taken into custody.
Prayagraj : , March 4 (IANS) Students of the Allahabad University (AU) created a ruckus over their demand for online examinations.

As the protests intensified on Thursday evening, the police were called in and the entire Arts campus and the surrounding areas turned into a fortress with the police force being deployed in and around the university.

Police also used mild force to disperse the agitating students, who were demanding holding of annual exams in an online mode since the past fortnight.

Trouble began when student leaders tried to disrupt the interviews being conducted by the selection committee at the AU guest house.

When the police were called in, the agitated student leaders arrived at the Arts campus and blocked the road in front of the library gate of AU.

Another group of student leaders along with their supporting students moved from one department to another, asking the staff to close the department.

The officials first tried to convince the student leaders to call off their agitation, but when the same failed to make any impact, the police used mild force and chased away the protesting students. Some of the students allegedly got injured in the chaos.

Police have detained some of the student leaders from the protesting site.

"We have detained three student leaders who were protesting at the Arts campus of AU," said Circle Officer (CO) Colonelganj, Ajeet Kumar Chauhan.

AU chief proctor, Prof Harsh Kumar said that the AU administration has suspended four students on the charge of disrupting the selection committee and the peace of the campus.

"These students have been suspended with immediate effect and have been asked to report to the chief proctors' office on March 10 along with their parents, explaining why they should not be expelled from AU," he said.
Lucknow, March 4 : A 30-year-old man allegedly ended his life by suicide at his residence in Aliganj, leaving behind an emotional four-page note.

The deceased, identified as Ratnesh Valmiki, in his note, blamed his wife and mother-in-law for his taking the extreme step.

Ratnesh lived with his parents, wife, a three-year-old daughter, and two brothers, at Mehendi Tola locality.

Syed Abbas Ali, additional commissioner of police (ACP), Aliganj, said, "He was found hanging from the window grill of his house with a saree tied around his neck. The incident had come to light when the mother of deceased Manju knocked on his door but got no response. Later, she asked her eldest son Mukesh who broke open the door." Thereafter, the police were informed and Ratnesh was taken to the nearest hospital where he was declared brought dead.

The suicide note read, "Papa I love you, in the next birth will do something fruitful, please forgive me. My wife and her mother are responsible for my taking this extreme step." Abbas said that handwriting experts will examine the note and then only it would be ascertained whether it is a suicide note or not.

"We have recorded the statements of family members to ascertain the reason behind the extreme step taken by the victim. If we receive any complaint about this incident, further legal action will be taken," the ACP added.
Prayagraj, March 4 : On a petition challenging the prohibition on the sale of meat and other non-vegetarian items by the Uttar Pradesh government in 22 municipal wards of Mathura that have been declared as "sacred pilgrimage place", the Allahabad High Court has directed the state counsel to submit information in this regard within a week, failing which the request for interim relief will be considered on the next date of hearing on March 9.

On September 10 last year, the Additional Chief Secretary (Religious Endowment), had passed an order to designate the 22 municipal wards.

The following day, the District Food Security Officer (DFSO), Mathura, passed an order suspending the registration license of the meat shops and restaurants in the aforesaid areas.

Hearing the writ petition filed by Mujahid and eight others, a division bench comprising Justices Saumitra Dayal Singh and Shekhar Kumar Yadav directed to put up this case on March 9 for the next hearing.

The petitioners have requested the court to direct the state government authorities not to interfere in doing their business from their non-vegetarian shops in sale of mutton/chicken and other items in pursuance of the notification dated September 10, 2021.

The petitioners have further requested the court to quash the order dated September 11, 2021 passed by the DFSO, Mathura.

They also requested the court to direct the state government authorities to allow the petitioners to run their respective restaurants/hotels for the sale of non-vegetarian food items and meat products.

However, as an interim relief, the petitioner has requested the court to stay the operation of the notification issued by the district food security officer, Mathura, otherwise the petitioners shall suffer irreparable loss and injury.

In the writ petition, the petitioners have challenged the aforesaid orders compelling the petitioners to close their non-vegetarian hotels, on the ground that this has deprived the petitioners of the right to livelihood and therefore are violative of Article 14 (right to equality), Article 19 (1) (g) (right to carry on trade and profession) and Article 21 (right to life and personal liberty) of the Constitution of India.

Further, the petitioners have challenged the orders banning sale of meat and other non-vegetarian items.
Kiev, March 4 : Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday urged European leaders to "wake up" as the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, the largest in the continent, is on fire, while also appealing for "immediate action" against Russia.

In a video posted on Twitter, the President said that "the biggest nuclear power plant in Europe is on fire right now" and accused Russian troops of deliberately shooting at the plant's six reactors using tanks equipped with thermal imaging, reports the BBC.

Invoking the "global catastrophe" at Chernobyl in 1986, he warned the consequences of a meltdown at Zaporizhzhia would be far worse.

"Europeans, wake up please. Tell your politicians that Russian forces are shooting at the nuclear plant in Ukraine," he said.

Zelensky further said he had been in touch with leaders from the US, UK, European Union, Germany and Poland, as well as the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), but called on ordinary citizens to raise alarms with their own politicians too.

"Russian propaganda has warned in the past that it would cover the world in nuclear ash. Now this isn't just a warning, this is real." Earlier on Friday, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba warned that if the nuclear plant blew up as a result of the fire then the catastrophe would be "10 times larger" than the Chernobyl disaster.

Citing Ukrainian officials, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said that there has not been any change in the radiation levels at plant site in the wake of the fire.

The IAEA also said that the fire has not affected "essential" equipment and personnel at the nuclear power plane were "taking mitigatory actions".

The global nuclear organisation further said that it is consulting with Ukraine "and others with a view to provide maximum possible assistance to the country as it seeks to maintain nuclear safety and security in the current difficult circumstances".

But in the wake of the "serious situation" at the plant, IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi has warned Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmygal and the country's nuclear regulator and operator of the severe danger if the reactors were hit by the ongoing Russian firing.

Ukraine currently has four active nuclear plants, including Zaporizhzhia which reportedly accounts for some 25 per cent of the country's power, the BC reported.

It also deals with nuclear waste at sites like Chernobyl, which is now under Russian control.

The latest developments come on the ninth day of Russia's continuous military assault on Ukraine.
Patna, March 4 : At least seven persons were killed and seven others injured following a powerful explosion in a house in Bihar's Bhagalpur district, police said on Friday.

The explosion took place at around 11.30 p.m. on Thursday night in the house in Kajwali Chak village under Tatarpur police station. The explosion was so intense that four houses collapsed and the sound was heard around 15 kms away from the site.

Following the explosion, Bhagalpur range DIG Sujit Kumar, District Magistrate Subrat Kumar Sen, Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Babu Ram and other senior officials reached the spot.

"The explosion may have taken place during the illegal manufacturing of country-made crude bombs. There is also a possibility that the alleged persons could be making crackers. As the nature of the blast was so intense, we believe that the quantity of the explosives was very high," Sujit Kumar said.

Of the seven victims, two were identified as Ganesh Prasad Singh (60), Urmila Devi (65), while the identities of the five remaining were not known yet.

The injured persons have been identified as Soni Kumari (30), Navin Mandal (32), Rahul Kumar (20) Aayesha Kumari (25), Rinku Kumar Shah (30), Vaishnavi (30) and Jaya (35).

The injured persons were admitted to the Mayaganj hospital in Bhagalpur. Four of them are in critical condition.

Local police believe that there could be more persons trapped under the debris. The rescue operation started soon after the incident.

"We are in the process of recording the statement of the injured to find out the nature of explosives. We have also called the FSL team to collect the samples as well," Kumar said.

The areas around Bhagalpur and Munger are hubs for illegal manufacturing of firearms and bombs.
Lucknow, March 4 : Nearly 20 per cent students of government schools in Uttar Pradesh, who had passed Class 8, have not taken admission to Class 9 in 2021.

Nearly 36.8 lakh students -- 18.9 lakh boys and 17.9 lakh girls -- had passed Class 8 in the academic session 2019-20.

Only 29.6 lakh -- 16.2 lakh boys and 13.3 lakh girls -- have taken admission to the next class.

According to a report from the basic education department, the transition rate of boys stood at 85.7 per cent while that of girls stood at 74.6 per cent.

Among 75 districts in Uttar Pradesh, Sitapur with 48.6 per cent and Chikrakoot with 47.6 per cent saw the maximum number of students holding back or having dropped out of school after Class 8. Only 1.9 per cent and 3.9 per cent Class 8 pass students in Mainpuri and Firozabad, respectively, did not enrol in Class 9.

To improve the transition rate, the education department has asked its officers to step up and take special measures for the academic session 2022-23 which begins from April 1.

Basic education director, S.V.B. Singh has asked officers to ensure enrolment of all Class 8 pass students in Class 9. Teachers have been asked to visit homes of students who remain absent for 10 days in a month. Officers will also ensure that there is no school without a teacher or with just one teacher in any district.

In addition, officers have been asked to pay effective visits in schools and ensure regularity of students and teachers. Schools will have to ensure proper toilets and drinking water facilities. Block education officers, too, have been asked to pay regular visits to school to supervise teaching level.
New Delhi, March 4 : SpaceX CEO Elon Musk on Friday warned Ukrainians to use the Starlink satellite system with caution as his commercial Internet network can be targeted by Russians and hamper the entire system at work.

As a non-Russian communications system, the Starlink satellite internet service has a "high" probability of being targeted, Musk said.

"Important warning: Starlink is the only non-Russian communications system still working in some parts of Ukraine, so the probability of being targeted is high. Please use with caution," Musk posted in a tweet.

He advised users to only turn on Starlink when needed.

"Turn on Starlink only when needed and place the antenna as far away from people as possible," Musk added.

He also suggested visibly camouflaging antennas.

"Place light camouflage over the antenna to avoid visual detection," the SpaceX CEO tweeted.

As promised, Elon Musk-run SpaceX sent a truck full of Starlink user terminals to Ukraine amid the Russian invasion.

Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukrainian Vice Prime Minister tweeted an image showing Starlink terminals in the country.

SpaceX has thousands of Starlink satellites in orbit, which allow the company to beam broadband services around Earth, without the need for fiber-optic cables.

The satellites could keep Ukraine online if its Internet infrastructure is damaged by Russia's attack.

SpaceX has thus far put more than 1,747 Starlink satellites into orbit, and the company plans on launching more than 40,000 in total.
Death toll from Pakistan's mosque blast rises to 50: officials

Xinhua) 20:32, March 04, 2022

ISLAMABAD, March 4 (Xinhua) -- The death toll from a powerful blast in a mosque in Pakistan's northwest Peshawar city of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province has risen to 50 on Friday, according to hospital and police officials.

Muhammad Asim, a spokesperson for the Lady Reading Hospital in Peshawar where all the injured have been shifted, told Xinhua that the death toll rose after 20 injured people succumbed to their injuries, and 50 to 60 injured people are being treated at the hospital.

Ten to 15 people are in critical condition, he said, adding that a state of emergency has been declared and more medical personnel have been called to the hospital for the treatment of the injured.

Haroon Rasheed, senior superintendent of police operations of Peshawar, told Xinhua that two terrorists tried to enter the mosque and engaged in an exchange of fire with the police personnel on duty there, resulting in the death of one policeman. Another police officer was seriously injured before the huge explosion occurred.

Following a preliminary investigation, the official said it was a suicide bombing targeting civilians.

Eyewitness Mushtaq Khan told Xinhua that a large number of worshippers were present in a two-floor building of the mosque when the blast happened during prayers.

"Following the blast, there were bodies strewn all over the place and people were crying for help ... It was the most massive explosion that I have ever seen in my life," Khan said.

(Web editor: Hongyu, Bianji)
Los Angeles, March 4 : Ukrainian director Oleg Sentsov (aRhino') has issued a powerful statement from the frontlines of the Russia-Ukraine war.

According to Variety, the statement read: "In 2014, I was unlawfully imprisoned in Russia and sentenced to 20 years of imprisonment for fighting against Putin regime and annexation of Crimea. Back then, the whole film industry stood up to support me. And I am immensely grateful for it. Now I'm asking you to support my country," Sentsov said.

"Exactly two weeks ago, my movie, which I shot after I was out, was released in Ukraine. For a week now, I have been standing in the trenches as a participant of the territorial defence of Kiev, which is a part of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Life has changed in an instant with the fall of the first bomb on the territory of Ukraine. Everything we knew about Hitler's invasion has now become real again." "My motherland is mercilessly shelled from the land, sea and air. Russian bombs are falling on Ukrainian children. Millions are sitting in bomb shelters. Millions are suffering from cold and lacking food. My country is being ruined, but our spirit is strong. We are going to fight until our victory." "For this, we need your support. The support of intellectuals and artists who oppose Putin's bloody regime. People who value human life more than anything. I request your support for the boycott of Russian cinematography in all dimensions, including film cooperation: co-production, distribution and festivals, as requested by the Ukrainian Film Academy. Please sign the petition!" "Stand with Ukraine! We will stop Putin together!," the statement said.

Sentsov has also shared a video shot earlier this week, the location of which cannot be revealed for security reasons.

Latest updates on Russia-Ukraine War
Series: 'undekhi Season 2' : Duration: Approx. 38 minutes per episode (Total 10 Episodes) Director: Ashish R. Shukla Cast: Harsh Chhaya, Dibyendu Bhattacharya, Surya Sharma, Anchal Singh, Ankur Rathee, Apeksha Porwal, Nandish Sandhu, Meiyang Chang, Ajay Bhardwaj and Diwakar Kumar Jha.

IANS Rating: ***'Undekhi' is a crime drama that revolves around the influential and criminally inclined Atwals of Manali, and though the series does not start as a wry and moving family drama, it gets evolved into one, with a crime-ridden, morally-depraved world of the drug cartel and all the characters that come with it.

'Undekhi Season 2' takes off from the cliff-hanger of its previous season where DSP Ghosh (Dibyendu Bhattacharya) and Teji (Anchal Singh)- the daughter-in-law of the Atwal family try to save a very critical Koyal (Apeksha Porwal), the younger sister of the slain dancer from the clutches of Rajinder aka Rinku (Surya Sharma), the Atwal family's principal trouble-shooter.

This season begins with Teji trying to smuggle Koyal out of Manali in an ambulance. En route, she takes the help of a lackey - Timma (Diwakar Kumar Jha). But when the local policemen intercept Timma, the ambulance they are travelling in rolls off the road and falls into a stream, and its occupants go missing.

Now with Teji under the scanner at the Atwal home and Koyal absconding at large, the series takes us through a roller-coaster journey where the family's ambitious plans of expanding the narcotic business with an Israeli company is under constant threat.

The plot navigates us through a complex and convoluted path, which at times throws you off gear. While Teji and her husband Daman (Ankur Rathee) try to salvage their family reputation, Rinku has to deal with cheating and betrayal within his coterie of trustworthy employees.

The series unravels a series of blackmails, loyalties and betrayals, escapes and captures, failures and triumphs, all of which appear lacklustre and steeped in mediocrity. But what keeps you glued to the screen is the sincerity of the cast - each one of them delivers honest performances.

Of all the characters in the series, it is Dibyendu Bhattacharya as the DSP Ghosh, who often hums Bengali songs, stands out for his nuanced performance.

Unfortunately, he does not have much in the series except for trying to trail Koyal in vain.

Apeksha Porwal is intriguing as Koyal- the lite and agile distressed sister out to seek revenge. She is striking in her demeanour but does not make an impact as her character is poorly written.

Similar is the case with Meiyang Chang, who essays the role of the mysterious Abhaya- who rescues Koyal and is an accomplice in her mission.

Harsh Chhaya is trite and over-the-top as Papaji, the loathsome, ruthless, abusive, and crass patriarch of the family who enjoys his drinks and relies on a single scowling facial expression mouthing cuss words throughout the series.

His character is side-lined by Rinku, essayed by Surya Sharma, whose every action propels the narrative forward.

Surya Sharma, despite having a towering personality, is not intimidating and thus makes for a weak villain.

Similarly, his "yes-men" appear as mere pawns in the plot.

The action drama in the last episode, with most of the characters on a shooting spree, is poorly choreographed and a big laugh.

Overall, the series boasts decent production values and is engaging but unilluminating in terms of dramas of this genre.
Hyderabad, March 4 : Tamil star Suriya Sivakumar, who arrived at Hyderabad to promote his upcoming movie 'ET', spoke highly of Telugu megastar Chiranjeevi, at the pre-release event.

Suriya stated that he had taken inspiration to start an NGO, as he got motivated by Chiranjeevi's blood bank.

The 'Ghajini' actor is one of the finest actors in the country and has earned a massive following among the South folks.

He has been a part of philanthropic activities across Tamil Nadu, through his 'Agaram Foundation'.

At his movie event in Hyderabad, Suriya asserted, "If Chiranjeevi Sir, can make a difference, I can contribute at least 1-2 per cent of what he has been doing." Talking about his philanthropy, Suriya said: "I am glad to mention that we have collectively managed to educate 5,000 students via our foundation." On the work front, Suriya is gearing up for the big release of his upcoming film 'Etharkkum Thuninthavan', which is dubbed as 'ET' in Telugu.

Helmed by Pandiraj, 'Etharkkum Thuninthavan' will be released on March 11.
Kiev, March 4 : A Ukrainian official on Friday said that following the fire at the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant, which has now been extinguished after it erupted earlier in the day due to Russian firing, has caused heavy injuries.

Speaking to a local broadcaster, Dmytro Orlov, the Mayor of Energodar city which is about 120 km from Zaporizhzhya, confirmed that there were people with "heavy injuries", adding that "we can't take them to the hospital", Ukrayinska Pravda reported.

The Mayor did not give out the exact number of the injured persons.

Elaborating on the incident, Orlov said: "Yesterday (Thursday) at around 4.30 p.m, an enemy convoy of armoured vehicles broke into the town, went directly to the nuclear power plant and began to shell from a close distance buildings and structures of the nuclear power plant... The fire caught up." Head of Regional State Administration Oleksandr Starukh also told the broadcaster that "the evacuation of Energodar residents will not happen immediately." "However, the evacuation plan is already being prepared, despite the fact that the infrastructure has been destroyed and Russian troops are still present around," he added.

According to the country's State Emergency Services, the fire broke out on the third, fourth and fifth floor of the training building at the nuclear plant, which is the largest in Europe.

The Services said the fire was extinguished at about 6.20 a.m. after the responders entered the site at 5.20 a.m, adding that "there are no victims".

Shortly after the fire broke out, President Volodymyr Zelensky urged leaders across the continent to "wake up" and take "immediate action" against Russia.

In a video posted on Twitter, the President said that "the biggest nuclear power plant in Europe is on fire right now" and accused Russian troops of deliberately shooting at the plant's six reactors using tanks equipped with thermal imaging, reports the BBC.

Invoking the "global catastrophe" at Chernobyl in 1986, he warned the consequences of a meltdown at Zaporizhzhia would be far worse.

Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba had warned that if the nuclear plant blew up as a result of the fire then the catastrophe would be "10 times larger" than the Chernobyl disaster.

Acting Minister of Ecology and Natural Resources Ruslan Strilets had said that the repercussions of the incident could lead to a global disaster.

Ukraine currently has four active nuclear plants, including Zaporizhzhia which reportedly accounts for some 25 per cent of the country's power, the BBC reported.

It also deals with nuclear waste at sites like Chernobyl, which is now under Russian control.

Friday's development came on the ninth day of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
New Delhi, March 4 : Chinas Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin has condemned the "fake" and "very despicable" suggestion that Beijing asked Russia to delay its invasion of Ukraine until after the 2022 Winter Olympics had finished.

Speaking at a daily briefing on Thursday, Wang told reporters that the allegation in a US newspaper "is purely fake news, and such behaviours of diverting attention and shifting blame are very despicable".

He reiterated the country's claim that the US provoked Russia by not ruling out NATO membership for Ukraine.

The report in The New York Times quoted a Western intelligence report as saying senior Chinese officials told senior Russian officials to not invade Ukraine until the international sporting event in Beijing had concluded, RT reported.

The article claims the "report indicates that senior Chinese officials had some level of direct knowledge about Russia's war plans or intentions before the invasion started".

China was one of 35 nations that abstained from a vote of the UN General Assembly on Wednesday, which saw 141 nations condemn Russia's invasion of Ukraine, while only five members, including Moscow, rejected the resolution.

"Regrettably, the draft resolution submitted to the General Assembly emergency special session for vote had not undergone full consultations with the whole membership, nor does it take into consideration the history and the complexity of the current crisis," Wang told reporters, explaining China's decision to abstain.

Latest updates on Russia-Ukraine War

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
New Delhi, March 4 : Taking on the world one expansion at a time is luxury rental brand and property management agency Hireavilla. The homestay brand handpicks some of the most exclusive villas and curates interiors and services that leave guests returning to their specially designed abodes for vacationing, staycationing, or even business conferencing. Till now, they have vowed over 50,000 vacationers and crafted over 100 luxurious retreats.

The hospitality entrepreneurs have established a strong presence across various metropolitan hotspots in India -- including Mumbai, Pune, Goa, and Kerala, among other national treasures. Internationally, their reach extends to the stunning destinations of Bali, Indonesia and Srilanka. Now, they have spread their wings even further and recently stepped into Dubai's sandy terrains by launching an all new product-cum-service.

Saagar Panchal, CEO and Founder of Hireavilla, said, "The product called 'Home 360' will serve as an umbrella term for various services Hireavilla will offer to its target clientele. That said, the main target market for Home 360 are Dubai home or business owners owing a fleet of villas or apartments but not having the bandwidth, time or assistance to monetise their resources. It is for those property owners whose spaces are sitting idle but know they want to tap into their property's potential. Because Dubai is a country with an oversupply of property and high ownership and rent costs, a lot of buildings, office spaces, and villas lie around empty. The chronic oversupply of properties has already lowered the property prices in the last five years. But as Dubai is a multi-cultural country, it is home to almost 90 per cent of expats. There is a great opportunity here to make use of the properties and make it rent-worthy for them and other tourists." All property owners need is the right guidance and end-to-end portfolio management. Under Home 360's initiative, Hireavilla will take complete responsibility for transforming these properties, even if it is from scratch. Right from designing the interiors to scouring reliable room service and prompt help personnel -- the brand will take care of it all. All room services like in-room dining, timely cleaning, regular maintenance, provision of toiletries and disposables, and seamless Wi-Fi connectivity, among others will be looked into at ground level. Once a property is taken care of, property owners and guests alike will get to see fully furnished, rental ready, and ready-to-stay rooms, villas, and service apartments.

Hireavilla is aiming to cater to the renter's and property owner's demands for the short-term, mid-term, and long-term and all-year-round with Home 360. It will personally ensure that the properties are given on rent and that owners receive returns between 8 to 10 per cent each year. It will also create customised content for each villa or apartment, taking care of social media, influential posting, web design, marketing and other aspects. The brand's plan to launch an app alongside the product -- also called Home 360 is also a revolutionary reveal. The app aims to change the face of property management and make every little detail available and task doable at the touch of a button. The app will be like a digital diary and account for homeowners where they can review all types of data and carry transactions regarding their home transparently without falling into the trap of hidden or complicated terms and conditions.

(IANSlife can be contacted at ianslife@ians.in)
New Delhi, March 4 : The Supreme Court on Friday agreed to hear on March 11 a plea filed by the family members of the farmers, mowed by a car belonging to Ashish Misra, in Lakhimpur Kheri challenging bail granted to him by the Allahabad High Court. Misra is the son of Union Minister and BJP MP Ajay Kumar Misra.

Advocate Prashant Bhushan, representing the family members, mentioned the plea before a bench headed by Chief Justice N.V. Ramana and comprising Justices A.S. Bopanna and Hima Kohli. Bhushan said the other accused in the matter are also moving the high court seeking bail, citing the order granting bail to Misra.

The Chief Justice said: "I can list on the 11th only...." Bhushan urged the top court to pass an order against the bail order of the high court. The bench said the court will take up the matter on March 11.

The plea contended that the family members were forced to move the apex court since Uttar Pradesh has failed to file an appeal challenging bail granted to Misra. The plea argued that the high court granted bail without considering the heinous nature of the crime and also in the backdrop of overwhelming evidence against the accused in the charge sheet. The plea further argued that there is likelihood of the accused tampering with the witnesses and causing obstruction in justice.

In November last year, the Supreme Court appointed justice Rakesh Kumar Jain, a former judge of Punjab and Haryana High Court, to monitor the Lakhimpur Kheri violence probe. The top court also reconstituted the SIT investigating the incident and appointed IPS officer S.B. Shiradkar, as its head.

Another plea has been filed by advocates C.S. Panda and Shiv Kumar Tripathi, challenging the bail granted to Misra.

Misra was released from jail after he was granted bail by the Lucknow bench of the Allahabad High Court. His lawyers submitted two bail bonds of Rs 3 lakh each in regards to his bail orders.

The plea filed by advocates said: "The net effect of the getting a bail to the accused Ashish Misra @ Monu and non-interrogation of the Union Minister of State (Home) Ajay Misra by the retd. Justice Rakesh Jain... results in greater prejudice affecting the morale of the law-abiding peaceful protesters hailing from Lakhimpur local area and other parts of UP." Misra was arrested on October 9 last year in the case.

On October 3, 2021, eight people, including four farmers, were killed in Lakhimpurn Kheri in clashes during a farmers' protest.
Los Angeles, March 4 : Rapper The Weeknd has announced dates for his 'After Hours Til Dawn' stadium tour, which launches in his hometown of Toronto on July 8 and heads across North America before wrapping in Los Angeles on September 2 and then moving overseas.

Dates for Mexico, South America, Asia, Australia, New Zealand, Europe, Africa and the Middle East will be announced in the coming weeks. Full dates for the North American leg of the tour, which is produced by Live Nation, appear below; Doja Cat supports on all dates, reports variety.com.

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), the world's largest humanitarian organisation fighting global hunger, has partnered with the Weeknd, its Goodwill Ambassador, to launch the XO Humanitarian Fund, to which he is contributing $1 from each ticket sold in North America from the tour. The Weeknd will also make a donation of $500,000 and $1 million will be contributed by World Food Program USA to the fund.

According to the announcement, the Weeknd established this fund to support the UN World Food Programme's critical food assistance to communities on the brink of starvation, in countries like Ukraine, Ethiopia, Madagascar and Yemen.

The Fund is administered by World Food Program USA.

"The goal with this fund is to provide immediate life-saving support to people who are on the brink of starvation. I'm so thankful to have WFP as a partner and to further expand our reach to those who need it most," the Weeknd (real name: Abel Tesfaye) said.

In 2020 and 2021, the Weeknd donated more than $2.5 million to Covid-19 relief and relief efforts to the famine in Ethiopia and the August 2020 explosion in Lebanon, which killed more than 200 people.

"As he launches his global tour, the Weeknd is not just lighting up the lives of his millions of fans - he is also shining a spotlight on the suffering of the millions threatened by famine. The XO Humanitarian Fund, Powered by World Food Programme is a new dawn in the struggle to end global hunger and WFP is proud to partner with Abel to save lives.

He is truly an inspiration to the next generation of humanitarians," WFP Executive Director David Beasley said in a statement.

Fans who previously had tickets for the "After Hours" arena tour in North America -- which was scheduled for 2020 and then cancelled due to the pandemic -- will have access to a special presale starting March 4, and will receive an email prior to that date directly with more information.

Verizon will offer an exclusive presale for The Weeknd's 'After Hours Til Dawn Tour' in the US through the customer loyalty program Verizon Up.

There will also be a Spotify Fans First presale for the top streamers of the Weeknd starting March 8.

The tour marks the first concerts the Weeknd will play in support of his 2020 album "After Hours" and his recently released 'Dawn FM'.

According to the announcement, "the tour will see his most ambitious production to date reflecting the creative journey that continues to unfold for both these albums, creating worlds within worlds as we have all been watching unfold in various television performances, music videos and short films bringing these first two pieces of his trilogy to life".

Earlier this week, Prime Video debuted 'The Weeknd x The Dawn FM Experience', an immersive music special.
New Delhi, March 4 : In response to the fire at Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, US Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm said on Friday that the Department of Energy has "activated its Nuclear Incident Response Team" and is monitoring the situation.

In a series of tweets, Granholm said: "I just spoke with Ukraine's energy minister about the situation at the Zaphorizhizia nuclear plant. Russian military operations near the plant are reckless and must cease." She added that the Department of Energy "has activated its Nuclear Incident Response Team and is monitoring events in consultation with Department of Defense, Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the White House. We have seen no elevated radiation readings near the facility".

Granholm added that the Zaphorizhizia plant's reactors are "protected by robust containment structures and reactors are being safely shut down".

The fire erupted earlier in the day on the third, fourth and fifth floor of the plant's training building after Russian troops shelled the complex.

The blaze was brought under control at about 6.20 a.m.

In the wake of the incident, share prices tumbled in Asia, the BBC reported.

Tokyo and Hong Kong faced the steepest falls, with Japan's benchmark Nikkei index 2.5 per cent lower and the Hang Seng in Hong Kong down by 2.6 per cent.

Oil prices rose in Asia during morning trade, with Brent crude above $112 a barrel.

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
New Delhi, March 4 : Pakistan is likely to remain on the grey list of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) for another four months until June for a couple of unmet targets under the additional criteria, a Dawn news report said.

The concluding session of the plenary meeting of the FATF, a Paris-based global money laundering and terrorist financing watchdog, is due on Friday and includes Pakistan's review on the agenda.

Pakistan is now targeting the full completion of the 2021 action plan on anti-money laundering and combating terror financing (AML/CFT) by the end of January 2023, the report said.

Pakistan has been on the grey list for deficiencies in its counter-terror financing and anti-money laundering regimes since June 2018.

In October 2021, the FATF acknowledged Pakistan's progress on a 27-point action plan on completion of 26 items but retained the country on its "increased monitoring list" to exhibit terror financing investigations against and prosecutions of top cadres of UN-designated terror groups.

At the time, FATF President Marcus Pleyer said Pakistan had to complete two concurrent action plans with a total of 34 items.

"It has now addressed or largely addressed 30 of the items," he said.

The most recent action plan of 2021 on money laundering from FATF's regional affiliate - the Asia Pacific Group (APG) - largely focused on money laundering and had found serious deficiencies.

In this new action plan, four out of the seven items now stood addressed or largely addressed, the report said.

In October last year, FATF encouraged Pakistan to continue to make progress in addressing the one remaining CFT-related item as soon as possible by continuing to demonstrate that terror financing investigations and prosecutions target senior leaders and commanders of UN-designated terrorist groups.

In response to additional deficiencies later identified in Pakistan's 2019 APG Mutual Evaluation Report in June 2021, Pakistan provided further high-level commitment to address these strategic deficiencies pursuant to a new action plan that primarily focuses on combating money laundering.
New Delhi, March 4: Pakistan has become the first country to officially sign a huge trade deal with Russia at a time when Moscow has come under severe criticism for invading Ukraine. As part of the agreement, Pakistan will import two million tonnes of wheat and natural gas from Russia.

Will this impact Pakistan's assistance from the International Monetary Fund (IMF)? Not only have the US and European Union thrashed out stringent sanctions against Russia, the World Bank and the IMF, too, have issued a joint statement condemning Moscow while promising to provide assistance to Ukraine and other countries that have opened their doors to Ukrainian refugees.

Notably, Pakistan is now seeking a bailout package from the IMF, which approved disbursement of $1 billion under its $6 billion loan programme. However, the Imran Khan government is desperately seeking a larger portion of loan from the IMF to support its sagging economy.

Pakistan's dependence on IMF assistance has risen in the last few years with the growing external debt. This year, Islamabad's gross external financing requirement is estimated at around $30 billion.

In a joint statement, the IMF and World Bank called for coordinated international action to mitigate risks and navigate the treacherous period ahead as the Russia-Ukraine crisis intensified.

Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan's visit to Russia on the eve of the Ukraine attack has already come under scrutiny. Khan met Russian President Vladimir Putin on February 24 to discuss ways to expand bilateral relations.

"This visit could not possibly have created a good image of Pakistan in the international community. Pakistan is, after all, heavily dependent on the financial aid of Western countries and their monetary institutions like the IMF and the World Bank," the News International said in a report.

While Russia has 2.59 per cent of the total votes at the IMF, the US has 16.40 per cent. The UK has 4.03 per cent and Germany 5.31 per cent. China has 6.08 per cent.

Notably, China, an ally of Russia has also opted to remain cautious while maintaining neutrality.

Khan has justified his meeting with Putin, saying that the agreements will support import of natural gas, which is the need of the hour amid Pakistan's depleting reserves.

Immediately after the Khan-Putin meeting, a Rs 9.69 billion fine was slapped on National Bank of Pakistan's New York branch by the US regulatory authorities for charges relating to non-compliance and anti-money laundering.

"One hopes that Pakistan's people do not pay too heavy a price for the indiscretion of its leaders," the Pakistan-based news organisation said.

(The content is being carried under an arrangement with indianarrative.com) --indianarrative

Latest updates on Russia-Ukraine War

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
New Delhi, March 4 : Meta has pledged $15 million to support humanitarian efforts in Ukraine and neighbouring countries amid the Russian invasion.

This includes $5 million in direct donations to United Nations agencies and more than a dozen nonprofits, including International Medical Corps that will be using these funds to deploy mobile medical units to Ukraine and Internews to support at-risk journalists and human rights defenders in the region.

"We're also donating to UNICEF to scale up lifesaving support for children and families in Ukraine and the region. The remaining $10 million will be provided as ad credits, helping nonprofit organisations raise the funds they need to respond and deliver essential information to people impacted by the violence," Meta said in a statement late on Thursday.

The social network has established a special operations centre staffed by experts from across the company, including native Russian and Ukrainian speakers, who are monitoring the platform around the clock.

"We've added several safety features in Ukraine and Russia, including the ability for people to lock their Facebook profile, removing the ability to view and search friends lists, and additional tools on Messenger," said Meta.

Meta has also expanded a ban on Russian state media outlets RT and Sputnik on Facebook and Instagram globally to stop the flow of misinformation as Russian forces make deeper inroads into Ukraine.

In addition to restricting access to RT and Sputnik across the European Union, the company announced to "globally demote content from Facebook Pages and Instagram accounts from Russian state-controlled media outlets and make them harder to find across our platforms".
It was a cold night with subzero temperature on March 2 when a police convoy arrived outside the office of Rawalakot Commissioner in Pakistan occupied Jammu Kashmir (PoJK). More than two dozen political activists and members of Jammu Kashmir National Students Federation (JKNSF) had been observing a protest sit-in outside the gates of the Rawalakot Commission office building.

Hoping that the administration had come to begin negotiations the protesters took a sigh of relief. Little did they know that they were in for a shock. No sooner had the police arrived at the protest camp that they began lathi charge and started to arrest the protesters.

Liaquat Hayat, leader of Jammu Kashmir National Awami Party (JKNAP) a left wing political organisation of Stalinist tendency and Samad Shakeel leader of JKNAP's student wing of JKNSF were the first to get handcuffed and thrown into the police vehicles. In total six protesters are said to have been apprehended at the spot.

Earlier on the same day, a long march from Muzaffarabad to Islamabad by adhoc employees was postponed after Prime minister Abdul Qayyum Niazi invited their leadership for negotiations. Similarly, a protest scheduled for March 3 by thousands of pensioners, most of whom are ex-army servicemen, and who were to gather in the capital city of Muzaffarabad was cancelled due to severe rain and bad weather conditions.

Hardly a day passes by without a protest in PoJK against pressing social and economic issues. The situation in Pakistani occupied Gilgit Baltistan (PoGB) is no different. Since Pakistan Prime minister Imran Khan announced that PoGB will be incorporated as Pakistan's 5th provisional province on March 23 this year public unrest has become the norm.

It has been 4 days since the PoGB Awami Action Committee has conducted a sit-in in Kharmang blocking the vital Karakoram Highway since March 1. Protests against cuts in subsidies and lack of clean drinking water plus extreme load shedding has been the cause for spontaneous public unrest in all major cities and towns of PoGB.

On March 3 several protests were held simultaneously in Titrinote, Dadyal, Rawalakot and Kotli city against the March 2 arrests of protesters in Rawalakot and a press conference was held in Muzaffarabad to warn the state to be ready to face grave consequences if political prisoners were not released within 24 hours.

In the present day, public opinion in both occupied territories of PoJK and PoGB is decisively against Pakistan. Yet, lack of a comprehensive political programme and a visionary leadership has become a main obstacle in transforming the ongoing economic strife and the political discontent into a meaningful and collective social and political movement that could lead to social transformation and bring about fundamental political change in obtaining freedom from the clutches for Pakistani occupation.

The majority of the youth in PoJK and PoGB are of secular mind and do not support Pakistan's interference in the Valley of Kashmir. They despise radical jihad and Pakistan's proxy Jihadi organisations. However, lack of able political leadership is hampering their strive for emancipation.

There are three points that I would like to make and suggest a possible solution to the ongoing deadlock created due to the current dispersed form that the protests have manifested.

Firstly, the adhoc employees, non-gazette employees, pensioners and civil society organisations, which are protesting against redundancies, delays in promotions, low pensions, load shedding and lack of clean drinking water, should form a united front and a collective charter of demands. This will bring all scattered social movements together and strengthen their crusade.

Secondly, a political programme, based on historical facts such as the instrument of accession to the Indian Republic, signed by Maharaja Hari Singh and Lord Mountbatten on October 26, 1947, and international obligations based on the United Nations Resolutions that Pakistan must withdraw its troops from PoJK and PoGB, should be formulated and linked to the social and economic struggles currently going on in PoJK and PoGB.

Finally, a consensus among all social, economic and political groups regarding direction of the way forward, should be established and followed through. This direction can only be quitting Pakistan and reunifying with Jammu and with Ladakh which in practical terms means joining the Union of the Indian Republic.

There is no doubt in my mind that the people of PoJK and PoGB are in a fighting mood. Nevertheless, this fighting mood could end up in frustration and defeat if it fails to rise to the event and produce visionary leadership.

(Dr Amjad Ayub Mirza is an author and a human rights activist from Mirpur in PoJK. He currently lives in exile in the UK. The views expressed are personal)
Seoul, March 4 : South Korean President Moon Jae-in on Friday cast his ballot as the country began the two-day early voting for the March 9 presidential election.

Wearing a face mask and disposable gloves, Moon and First Lady Kim Jung-sook voted at a polling booth inside the Samcheong-dong community service centre near Cheong Wa Dae in Seoul, Yonhap News Agency reported.

Earlier in the day, Moon encouraged people to cast their ballots, saying that "as the sovereign of a democratic republic, I hope all people will participate in exercising sacred voting rights".

Ruling Democratic Party candidate Lee Jae-myung and main opposition People Power Party's Yoon Suk-yeol have also cast their ballots.

The presidential election comes as the nation is grappling with the worst wave of Covid-19 pandemic, driven by the highly transmissible Omicron variant.

Early voting is open to anyone who wishes to cast their ballot before Election Day.

Moon said those infected with the virus can also cast their ballots.

Polling stations open from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Friday and Saturday.

Covid-19 patients and those in quarantine will be able to vote if they arrive at a polling station between 5 p.m. and 6 p.m. on Saturday.

More than 44 million people are eligible to vote in this year's election.

This year's presidential election is being held concurrently with by-elections for five parliamentary seats.
Hyderabad, March 4 : Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) working president K. T. Rama Rao has slammed the Narendra Modi government for what he called its "PR exercise" during evacuation of Indians from war-torn Ukraine.

Rama Rao on Friday took to Twitter to hit out at the Centre over the PR exercise. He posted a video in which minister of state for defence Ajay Bhatt is heard telling students evacuated from Ukraine that their lives were saved due to the grace of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

KTR, as Rama Rao is popularly known, called this 'height of nonsense'.

"Jeevan Bach Gaya Hai Modi Ji ki Krupa Se!!! Seriously, what a terrible way of doing PR with distressed & tired students. Heights of nonsense," wrote KTR, who is state minister for industries, information technology, municipal administration and urban development.

The video clip was from Ajay Bhatt's interaction with evacuees on Indian Air Force (IAF) aircraft after it landed at Hindan airbase near Delhi on Thursday. He is also seen prodding evacuees to raise slogans of 'Modi ji zindabad'.

"By the way who is this Jeevan" jo Bach Gaya," the TRS leader added on a lighter note.
Mumbai, March 4 : Bollywood superstar Salman Khan's much-awaited spy thriller 'Tiger 3' has been locked for an Eid release. It is scheduled to hit the big screens on April 21, 2023.

The film will be released in three languages -- Hindi, Tamil and Telugu.

A tweet from the official Twitter handle of Yash Raj Films read: "Tiger. Ready. To. Roar. Again. In cinemas on Eid 2023. Releasing in Hindi, Tamil and Telugu. Celebrate #Tiger3 with #YRF50 only at a big screen near you on 21st April 2023." 'Tiger 3' is the third instalment in the 'Tiger' franchise directed by Maneesh Sharma. It also stars Katrina Kaif.

The first instalment 'Ek Tha Tiger' directed by Kabir Khan released in 2012. The second 'Tiger Zinda Hai' released in 2017 and was directed by Ali Abbas Zafar.

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
Mumbai, March 4 : Actor Pracheen Chauhan, who is currently seen playing the role of Abhimanyu in the YouTube series 'Pyar Ka Punch', feels digital shows are new opportunities for actors.

He says: "After being part of television shows, I'm enjoying exploring and acting for digital shows. I feel that the digital screen has brought new opportunities for every artist. The web series are also dissolving boundaries between TV and Bollywood." "As actors from both the screens are working under one roof in digital series and making their own ways. And most importantly such series have varieties of roles in each genre. So that brings open choices for artists to select the role they want to," adds Pracheen.

The actor who is known for featuring in popular shows 'Kyun Hota Hai Pyarrr', 'Kasautii Zindagii Kay', 'Kutumb' among others, says he doesn't want to limit himself and keep growing and exploring.

"As an actor, I'm more concerned about what will be my screentime, how influential and significant my character will be. How it will help me grow and explore my skills. I'm more bothered about playing promising and challenging roles. I don't think of limiting myself to OTT or TV," he wraps up.
Mumbai, March 4 : As the daily show 'Dhadkan Zindaggi Kii' is all set to go off air, the entire cast talks about their journey on the show and shares their gratitude to the audience.

Actor Additi Gupta, who essays the role of Dr Deepika Sinha shares: "I am tremendously emotional as the show comes to a close. For the first time after so long, I got to live with such a strong character that has touched my heart deeply.

Having witnessed Deepika's struggles that she fearlessly overcomes has helped me grow emotionally and I can proudly say I have come out stronger.

"She goes on sharing about her character and how it connects with every woman in the society." Deepika's story mirrors the life of every working woman out there who finds herself caught between the patriarchal norms and her dreams. I am going to embrace the Deepika in me for life. Grateful to the makers of the show for believing in me and giving me the chance to bring such an impactful story that sparked conversations on a topic that is not widely spoken about," she adds.

Actor Rohit Purohit feels blessed to be part of 'Dhadkan Zindaggi Kii'.

He says: "This is a one-of-a-kind show. It's an honour to have been a part of this, to have made friends here, and to have learned many life lessons. This is an experience I will never forget." Vidyut Xavier, who plays Dr Abhay Sathe spoke about his journey: "Essaying Dr. Abhay's character has helped me learn and unlearn so much as an actor. Grateful to be working with such a wonderful team." Actress Alma Hussein, who made her debut in the television industry with Dr Sia's character calls this show a big opportunity for her acting career.

"The show has changed my life and will always be special to me as the show marked my debut on Indian television; couldn't have asked for something better than this. I am grateful to the makers of the show for trusting me and letting me live the beautiful character of Dr. Sia Advani. This show has been a stepping stone for me in the acting world and I hope to use whatever I have learnt over here in my future," she concludes.
Paris, March 4 : French Prime Minister Jean Castex announced that the government will ease Covid-19 restrictions effective from March 14, lifting the mandatory wearing of masks in indoor areas and the vaccine pass.

"The situation is improving," Xinhua news agency quoted Castex as saying to the French daily news TF1.

According to the Prime Minister, the wearing of masks in indoor areas will not be mandatory with the exception in public transports, and the health pass will still be required in hospitals and nursing homes.

However, the mandatory vaccination for the hospital staff stays in effect, he said.

Since the onset of the pandemic in early 2020, France has so far reported 23,541,275 Covid-19 cases and 141,758 deaths.
New Delhi, March 4 : Police in Islamabad have registered a sedition case against Member of National Assembly (MNA) Mohsin Dawar and human rights activist Imaan Mazari as well as several students who participated in a protest against racial profiling and surveilling of Baloch students at a university in the Pakistani capital, Friday Times reported.

Earlier this week, several Baloch students gathered outside the National Press Club in Islamabad to protest the harassment and profiling of Baloch students and the "prevalent culture of fear" at the Quaid-e-Azam University (QAU) in Islamabad.

The students reported multiple instances of harassment and interrogation by an individual who they identified as 'Major Murtaza'.

During the peaceful demonstration, police attacked the students and snatched away several students' phones.

In response, students moved to block the road next to the press club.

MNA Dawar was also present at the protest.

Activist and lawyer Imaan Mazari, who is the daughter of Human Rights Minister Shireen Mazari, was also manhandled by the police when she urged them to return the students' phones.

(Sanjeev Sharma can be reached at Sanjeev.s@ians.in)
Mumbai, March 4 : Bollywood actress Kriti Sanon, who will be seen essaying the role of a filmmaker Myra Devekar in the upcoming masala entertainer, 'Bachchhan Paandey', recently opened up about her approach to her character in the film.

Sharing her thoughts on her understanding of a filmmaker's character, Kriti said, "As an actor, once you have gone through a certain number of films, you soak in more than you think, just by observing and looking around, you start understanding how the directors make their vision come alive, their process and mannerisms." The 'Mimi' star added that the sense of control was her anchor point for her character, "And I have seen so many talented directors at work, it feels like it was sort of easier for me to pick from them. A director's in control of everything on the set as he/she is the captain of the ship." "So my main pick point on Myra was that this girl is very much in control and she is stuck in a place where situations get out of control", she concluded as she drew the contrast between her character's key trait and the situations that get better out of her.

Meanwhile, Kriti has multiple big releases lined up including 'Shehzada', 'Adipurush', 'Bhediya' and 'Ganapath'.
San Francisco, March 4 : Tech giant Google is testing a darker dark mode for its Android search app, media reports say.

The new shade still is not the same as the one presented in Google's test of a pitch-black dark mode on desktops last month, reports The Verge.

Rather, the one spotted in the mobile app is darker than the usual dark gray but still lighter than pitch black.

The new dark mode in Google's mobile app could be more attractive for devices with OLED displays looking to save battery life, or who just prefer to use dark mode more, the report said.

Android Police said that the new shade is available Google's latest 13.8 beta in the Google Play Store which you can get via APKMirror, an archive that allows Android users to download items not readily available on their device, or go the official route by joining the beta test group.

After Google confirmed that it was testing dark mode on desktops last year, the company confirmed a wide rollout of dark mode for Google Search in February for its desktop users, the report said.

Though users can access the app's new colour shade on their own, a wider release could take months to get to more people officially.
Raigad : A row of saffron hijabs herald Shiv Sena's 'maiden' Muslim Sarpanch of Apta village, in coastal Raigad, unanimously elected with collaboration of the Maha Vikas Aghadi partners NCP-Congress. Image Source: IANS News

Raigad : A row of saffron hijabs herald Shiv Sena's 'maiden' Muslim Sarpanch of Apta village, in coastal Raigad, unanimously elected with collaboration of the Maha Vikas Aghadi partners NCP-Congress. Image Source: IANS News

Raigad : A row of saffron hijabs herald Shiv Sena's 'maiden' Muslim Sarpanch of Apta village, in coastal Raigad, unanimously elected with collaboration of the Maha Vikas Aghadi partners NCP-Congress. Image Source: IANS News

Raigad, March 4 : The sleepy Apta village erupted into celebrations when a demure, house-wife-turned politician Nazneen K. Patel, was unanimously elected the Sarpanch on Thursday.

She has created history of sorts -- becoming the first ever Muslim woman Sarpanch of Shiv Sena in the state, and a first for the party in the past six decades since the Apta Village Panchayat came into being where the Peasants & Workers Party enjoyed unbroken control of its bastion.

The village had elected 11 members, including two from the Opposition Bharatiya Janata Party, in the 2021 Panchayat polls, swept by the Maha Vikas Aghadi, with Patel now getting the top post -- reserved for women -- in rotation from the PWP's outgoing Sarpanch, Nikita D. Bhoir.

Scores of Muslim women Sainiks, sporting dazzling saffron-black 'hijabs' turned out to celebrate Patel's election, who accepted and acknowledged their greetings and wishes, distributed sweets and goodness all around.

Taking charge on Friday, Patel said that her entire focus would be on developmental issues for which the entire village -- with a population of around 10,000 comprising a mix of tribals, Marathas, Kolis, Brahmins, Muslims, etc., -- has wholeheartedly supported the MVA.

"There are 14 tribal hamlets (wadis) which require several amenities, aanganwadis to be improved, maternity hospital where services have to be strengthened, and improving the conditions of several roads in and around Apta," Patel told IANS.

Apta is a coastal village nestling on the banks of the Patalganga River where the PWP has held sway for past six decades, but now it has come under Shiv Sena's control, said her husband, Khalil Patel.

Nazneen Patel's elevation has charged the MVA allies -- Sena-Nationalist Congress Party-Congress -- symbolising a whiff of fresh air in the toxicity of the so-called 'hijab row' affecting different parts of India.

Sena's farmer face and MoS Kishore Tiwari said Patel's election shows the "benign face of Shiv Sena under the leadership of Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray" despite attempts by the Opposition to portray it otherwise.

"No matter how vitiated the religious scenario in the country, in Apta there is complete communal camaraderie, and it is with the full support of the three allies this 'change' was possible," Panvel Congress Working President Abhijit Patil said.

Eminent lawyer and NCP former MP Majeed Memon said while the BJP is busy in toppling the MVA, the three parties are making "perceptible changes" at all levels in the polity with long-term implications.

"The BJP is unable to digest all the good work done by MVA and is hounding us with misuse of Central probe agencies, the Governor's post and other forms of harassment... But developments like Apta village prove that the MVA is on the right track," Memon asserted.

The Patel couple said with pride that Apta is an example of "how India lives harmoniously in the villages," untouched by the communal monsters unleashed in many areas.

"We all celebrate Ganeshotsav, Eid, Diwali and other festivals of all religions joyfully together... Nobody talks of religious politics... The masses are only concerned with developmental issues," smiled Nazneen Patel, with her 19-year old daughter Rukhsar and 16-year-old son Saad standing beside.

(Quaid Najmi can be contacted at: q.najmi@ians.in)
Washington, March 4 : US police said that they were preparing for potential vehicle convoys "affecting traffic in and around the National Capital Region", which includes all of Washington, D.C. and parts of Maryland, Virginia, and West Virginia states.

Virginia State Police posted on social media that they continue to monitor and prepare for potential convoys consisting of commercial and passenger vehicles, reports Xinhua news agency.

The police described the situation as "still-fluid", adding that motorists can expect to see an increased patrol presence.

"These efforts are to mitigate the impact of additional traffic volume on already congested roadways and Northern Virginia communities." A convoy of truckers is reportedly heading to the region in protest of Covid-19 restrictions and will arrive this weekend.

Fencing was recently reinstalled around the Capitol in light of "the possibility of demonstrations in the next couple of weeks", according to the Capitol Police.

The Pentagon last week authorised hundreds of unarmed National Guard members to be deployed in the US capital to help police with traffic control.

Truckers held weeks-long protests in Canada against the nation's Covid-19 restrictions earlier this year by blocking city traffic and border crossings with the US, prompting some Americans to organise similar demonstrations.
New Delhi, March 4 : India has so far administered over 2 crore precaution doses or the third vaccine shots among the eligible beneficiaries, Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya said on Friday.

Additionally, over 97 per cent of the country's adult population have also received their first dose of vaccine against Covid-19.

"Over two crore healthcare & frontline workers and citizens aged 60 years or above have received precaution doses", the minister tweeted.

He also requested the eligible beneficiaries to get their third shot at the earliest.

So far, the country has administered 2,03,69,898 precaution doses as on this morning. With the administration of over 24.84 lakh doses in the last 24 hours, the Covid-19 inoculation coverage has reached 178.29 crore. This has been achieved through 2,06,05,684 sessions, as per the Union Health Ministry data.

As many as 6,396 fresh Covid-19 cases were reported in the last 24 hours. In the same period, 201 Covid-related fatalities took the death toll to 5,14,589. The active Covid cases have further reduced to 69,897 which constitute 0.16 per cent of the country's total positive cases, as per the ministry report.

Meanwhile, the Health Minister welcomed the Indian students on their arrival from the war-torn Ukraine at Delhi airport in the morning.

He said that the students have shown amazing courage even in difficult situations. Every effort is being made by the PM Modi government for the safe evacuation of everyone.

Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19)

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
Hyderabad, March 4 : 'Baahubali' fame Prabhas, who has been busily promoting his upcoming visual grandeur- 'Radhe Shyam', reveals details about his first-time conversation with Deepika Padukone on the sets of 'Project-K'.

"We met on the sets of 'Project-K'. Deepika asked me if I am shy. I said, initially I am", the 'Mirchi' actor shared, as he interacted with the media during the promotions of 'Radhe Shyam'.

"Only after getting comfortable with people, I start talking to them continuously. Sometimes, I irritate them cracking jokes as long as they enjoy my company", Prabhas said.

'Piku' actress Deepika Padukone, who recently appeared in 'Gehraiyaan', will appear next to 'Darling' actor Prabhas. The two, who met on the sets of Nag Aswin's much-anticipated directorial venture 'Project-K', had a great time working together on the sets.

Prabhas had also amused Deepika with scrumptious South Indian meals, which were talked about, everywhere.

On the other hand, Prabhas and Pooja Hegde- starrer 'Radhe Shyam' will soon hit the screens globally.

Helmed by Radha Krishna Kumar, the movie is being promoted at a grand scale, and the team were present at an interactive media session, where Prabhas had shared his experience working for the movie.

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
Mumbai, March 4 : Television show 'Ek Mahanayak Dr B.R. Ambedkar' has completed 500 episodes. The entire cast and crew have all the reasons to cheer up and have few moments to talk about while being part of the show.

It is based on the life of Dr B.R. Ambedkar , who is also called the architect of Indian constitution, a well-known politician, philosopher, eminent jurist, historian and writer too.

Actor Atharva Karve, essaying Bhimrao's character, said: "It is said every milestone should be celebrated as it is an affirmation of an accomplishment. Essaying Dr. Ambedkar's role is a big landmark in my career and has given me immense love, respect, and recognition. It has been a great experience personally as well as professionally." On the other hand, actress Narayani Mahesh Varne is seen in a prominent role of Ramabai Bhimrao Ambedkar, wife of B. R. Ambedkar considers her journey to be fulfilling. She feels proud to play such an important role.

Narayani added: "The journey with 'Ek Mahanayak-Dr B.R. Ambedkar' has been wonderful, and with the show achieving another milestone of 500 episodes completion, it makes me feel happy and proud. I had never imagined it would receive such a great response." Adding to the conversation, director S B Filmz congratulated the entire team of his show for their hard work and all the efforts put by them to make it successful.

"A show that we had envisioned not only has carved a niche for itself but also continues to be the audience's favourite. The completion of 500 episodes is a big milestone. I want to congratulate our creative team, our entire cast and crew for their hard work and efforts. And not to forget our audience, who have showered us with their immense love and appreciation." "When we launched the show, our vision was to present Babasaheb's life journey through engaging storytelling. And today, we are proud of what the show has achieved," he concluded.

'Ek Mahanayak Dr B.R. Ambedkar' airs on &TV.
Hyderabad, March 4 : Director Trivikram Srinivas revealed how he introspects some of his writings, which had incorporated patriarchy in a subtle way.

Wanting to change the scenario, the director expressed that some of his previous writings, now, feel so illogical from the general point of view.

"Returning to my initial essay, I wrote that a man's only option is to get a job, just as a woman's is to get married. This is so wrong to define someone's life based on gender. I introspect", the 'Ala Vaikunthapuramu Loo' director said.

Trivikram further explained, "We have created this ideology of patriarchy, with a musical grammar in the movies, and hence is difficult to change. But, it needs to change".

Trivikram Srinivas, tagged as the 'Guru Ji' among the Telugu folks, is famous for his heart-touching quotes in his movies. His dialogues not only rhyme, but also convey life lessons.

Nevertheless, the director is also known for the poor portrayal of heroines in most of his movies.

Trivikram Srinivas' recent work for 'Bheemla Nayak' brought much attention to him, while he gears up for a big-ticket movie with Mahesh Babu.
Hyderabad, March 4 : Director Nag Ashwin, who is currently handling the pan-India venture titled 'Project-K' with Prabhas, Deepika Padukone, and Amitabh Bachchan as the lead actors, has requested business tycoon Anand Mahindra, for his help.

The visionary director, who created the world of the late legendary actress Savitri for her biopic 'Mahanati', sought help from Anand Mahindra the chairman of the Mahindra Group.

Nag Ashwin's tweet requesting Anand Mahindra to bail him out with some engineering works related to his movie, wrote a lengthy note.

"Dear Anand Mahindra sir...we are making an Indian sci-fi film with Mr.Bachchan, Prabhas and Deepika called Project K A few vehicles we are building for this world are unique and beyond the tech of today." "If this film does what it is supposed to, it will be the pride of our nation", Nag Ashwin conveyed.

"I admire you a lot sir. We have a talented, fully Indian team of engineers and designers. But the scale of the project is such that we could use a hand. Such a film has never been attempted before." "It would be an honor if you can help us engineer the future. Project K", he concluded.

Nag Ashwin's request appears to be sincere, as he requested the noted tycoon to assist him with the big-ticket movie. Well, Anand Mahindra has not reacted to it yet.
Kiev, March 4 : Ukrainian officials said on Friday that Russian forces have seized the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant, where a fire had erupted earlier in the day due to shelling.

In a Facebook post, the State Inspectorate for Nuclear Regulation of Ukraine said "the administrative building of the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant and the entrance to the plant are controlled by the occupiers. The staff are continuing to work on the power units, ensuring the stable operation of nuclear facilities. Radiation levels are normal.

"Unfortunately, there are dead and wounded among the Ukrainian defenders of the station." It said that the plant's power unit 4 is the only one working currently, while planned preventive maintenance is underway at unit 1 and units 2 and 3 have been disconnected from the grid.

Cooling of nuclear reactors is presently underway in units 5 and 6, as well as 2 and 3, the Inspectorate added.

"Currently, the cooling of nuclear fuel at the Zaporizhzhya NPP energy units is provided by projection systems in accordance with the requirements of technological regulations for safe operation.

"The loss of cooling nuclear fuel will lead to significant radioactive emissions into the environment. Following the consequences, such an event may outgrow all previous NPP accidents, including Chernobyl and Fukusima-Daichi.

"It should be reminded that in addition to six energy blocks on the Zaporizhzhya NPP site there is a reservoir of processed nuclear fuel, which damage as a result of the shelling will also lead to radioactive discharge," it said in the post.

The fire erupted earlier in the day on the third, fourth and fifth floor of a training building after Russian troops shelled the nuclear power plant which is the largest in Europe.

The blaze was brought under control at around 6.20 a.m. after responders entered the site about an hour earlier.

The attack, which came on the ninth day of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, has been condemned by world leaders.

While UK Prime Minister Boris Jonson said Russia's "reckless" attack could "directly threaten the safety of all of Europe", US President Joe Biden urged Moscow to stop its military activities around the site, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said the "horrific attacks" from Russia "must cease immediately".

Ukraine currently has four active nuclear plants, including Zaporizhzhia which reportedly accounts for some 25 per cent of the country's power.
Beijing, March 4 : China's national observatory on Friday renewed an alert for heavy fog in some regions of the country.

From Friday evening to Saturday morning, thick fog is expected to blanket waters of the northern part of the Beibu Gulf, the Qiongzhou Strait, the coastal waters of Guangxi, Leizhou Peninsula, western Guangdong and northern Hainan Island, Xinhua news agency quoted the National Meteorological Centre (NMC) as saying.

Visibility in some affected areas will be reduced to less than 1,000 metres, said the NMC.

It said drivers should slow down to safe speeds, and airports, freeways and ports should take appropriate safety measures.
Mumbai, March 4 : Bollywood actors Manoj Bajpayee and Konkona Sensharma will be seen in the upcoming Netflix's dark-comedy crime drama 'Soup' by filmmaker Abhishek Chaubey.

Chaubey, who returns to Netflix after Raat Akeli Hai and Ray said, "Working with Netflix for Soup has been really exciting and I'm thrilled to share our story with audiences all across the world." Loosely based on a true-life incident, Soup is the story of Swathi Shetty (Konkona Sensharma), an incompetent cook who dreams of having a restaurant of her own someday and her suspicious husband, Prabhakar (Manoj Bajpayee) who won't help with her aspirations and has doubts of his own. Soon fate gives her an opportunity and she starts to cook up a master plan. But things don't go as intended, as whimsical characters and amateur villains ruin the broth.

The director added: "We've had a wonderful experience shooting Manoj, Konkona and the entire cast and crew of Soup, can't wait to showcase this motley bunch of idiosyncratic characters." The dark-comedy crime series is produced by Macguffin Pictures.

'Soup' to be served on Netflix.
Jaipur, March 4 : Launching a scathing attack on the Congress-led Rajasthan government during a discussion on the budget in the Assembly, state BJP President Satish Poonia said Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot, also referred to as a "magician" in informal discussions, had made "Deputy Chief Minister Sachin Pilot disappear with his magical tricks" by announcing all state schemes without the latter's presence.

Poonia also spoke on the Rajasthan Eligibility Examination for Teachers (REET) issue and demanded a CBI probe into it.

Speaking on the high crime rate and the deteriorating law and order situation in the state on Friday, Poonia said besides having the highest number of crimes against women, the state recorded the highest number of self immolation cases as well.

Commenting on the Jal Jeevan Mission initiative, he said, "Water had to reach 86 lakh households till 2024, however, due to the slow pace, this number is now restricted to 60 lakh. With the slow pace of development, only these houses will benefit with this ambitious central scheme against the set target of 86 lakh houses." Poonia alleged that the state government is presenting the state budget by incurring a huge debt. In the last three years, it has piled up a debt of Rs 1.5 lakh crore which now stands at more than Rs two lakh crore.

He added that Rajasthan has 60 lakh farmers who have taken total loans of Rs 1.2 lakh crore. This amount will be waived off as per the promises made by the state government, he said.

The BJP leader alleged that the budget did not allocate any funds to his Assembly constituency of Amber. He has returned the iPhone 13 gift announced by the state government.

Speaking on the REET issue, Poonia said "If the Chief Minister is confident and not scared of anything, he should constitute a CBI probe into REET."
Gandhinagar, March 4 : The opposition Congress on Friday staged a walkout in the Gujarat Assembly, protesting against the suspension of their senior party legislator from Una constituency.

Speaker Nimaben Acharya suspended the Congress legislator Punja Vansh for seven days for using unparliamentary language in the House.

The Congress created an uproar when the Bharatiya Janata Party failed to respond to a query of Congress legislator Harshad Ribadiya on the third day of the budget session of the 14th Gujarat Assembly.

Congress' Punja Vansh responded to the Minister of State (Home), Harsh Sangvi, when the latter tried to stop the Congress and said, "This is not your party office and stop behaving like a 'tapori'." This statement by the Congress legislator angered the BJP MLAs.

However, on the Speaker's request Vansh later expressed regret over his words.

After the Question Hour ended, BJP Chief Whip Pankaj Desai moved a proposal to have Punja Vansh suspended for seven days.

This was supported by Education Minister Jitu Vaghani, former Legislative Affairs Minister Pradeepsinh Jadeja as well as former Deputy Chief Minister Nitin Patel.

Responding to this proposal, the Deputy Leader of the Opposition Shailesh Parmar said, "When the Assembly member has expressed regret over his words, such proposals should be withdrawn and the BJP government must take a broader approach towards it. We all have to participate in the proceedings of the House till March-end and still if you want to go ahead on the basis of majority, please also ensure the live telecast of the Assembly proceedings for transparency." Congress Chief Whip C.J. Chavda supported Shailesh Parmar's request.

"Inspite of being a senior member of the House, Punja Vansh has repeatedly and right from the start of the House, uttered such words and violated the decorum of the House. I too support this proposal," said Nitin Patel.

Speaker Acharya said, "It's true and even when I asked him if he had any remorse for his words, even while expressing regret, Vansh uttered inappropriate words. So I put this proposal to vote." The Speaker then ordered the suspension of Punja Vansh for seven days from the House proceedings based on the majority voting in the Assembly.
New Delhi, March 4 : At least two robbers, including a civil defence volunteer, have been arrested for robbing a cab driver using a toy gun, an official said on Friday.

The accused have been identified as Sachin (29), a civil defence volunteer, and Mausam alias Manoj (27), both residents of Delhi's Rangpuri. They would often hire cabs as passengers and then stop at a deserted place to rob the driver.

DCP Gaurav Sharma said, a cab driver had lodged a complaint stating that his car was booked for Munirka from Rangpuri Vasant Kunj on February 27.

Posing as passengers, the two robbers looted him at gunpoint and fled. The firearm used in the crime was later found to be a toy gun.

The police registered a case under section 394 of the Indian Penal Code and initiated an investigation.

On Wednesday, a tip-off was received about the presence of both the accused after which the police swung into action and nabbed the offenders.

A Wagon R car, a motorcycle and a mobile phone was recovered from their possession by the police.
Canberra, March 4 : A South Australian researcher has developed a coronavirus vaccine for animals that will soon be trialed on pets.

Nikolai Petrovsky, a professor at Flinders University, and veterinarian Sam Kovac joined forces to adapt COVAX-19 for animals, reports Xinhua news agency.

Developed by Petrovsky, COVAX-19 has been administered to millions of people in Iran and is awaiting human approval in Australia.

Kovac's three dogs will be among 25 pets that participate in trials of the vaccine.

"The great thing is that being based on a human vaccine technology where more than 6 million doses have been safely administered, we can be confident it is also very safe for pets," he told News Corp Australia on Friday.

"Unlike other respiratory viruses, it is now proven that many domestic pets including cats, dogs and pocket pets like ferrets can catch Covid-19 from human close contacts. Just like us, they can catch it via direct contact and handling by an infected human.

"They are at risk of myocarditis, pericarditis, respiratory failure, but may also just have a mild or asymptomatic infection," he said.

Australia on Friday reported more than 25,000 new human coronavirus infections and 37 deaths -- 26 in Victoria, seven in Queensland, two in New South Wales (NSW) and two in South Australia.

Medical regulator the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) on Friday warned Australians against using rapid antigen tests (RATs) that it has not approved for use.

"(Unapproved RATs) have not been assessed by the TGA, meaning they do not come with the same assurances of safety, effectiveness and quality as those that have met Australian regulatory requirements.

"Unapproved versions may not work as expected, or work at all," the TGA said.

Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19)
Patna, March 4 : Bihar Congress Legislature Party leader Ajit Sharma on Friday charged the district police with negligence over the Bhagalpur explosion.

He alleged that two explosions took place in the same building in 2018 and 2020 but the district police did not take action against the owner of the house.

"The explosions had taken place in 2018 and 2020 in the same house. Hence it is a matter of serious negligence on the part of the police administration. It is a failure of the local police and intelligence officials who failed to monitor the activities of the people living in the house," said Sharma, who is also the Bhagalpur Congress MLA.

"Nitish Kumar talks about 'Sushashan' (good governance) while some people living in the state are making bombs and putting the lives of common people in danger," he added.

Ten people have died so far while 11 have been injured in the massive explosion that took place on Thursday night at 11.30 p.m. at Kajwali Chak village under Tatarpur police station.

The intensity of the explosion was such that four adjacent buildings were completely destroyed. Besides, more than a dozen buildings were partially damaged. The sound of the explosion was heard 15 km away from the village.

The victims are admitted in Bhagalpur's Mayaganj medical college and some of them are reportedly in critical condition.

Earlier, the district administration had retrieved seven bodies from the debris on Friday morning.
Kiev, March 4 : The Ukrainian Defence Ministry on Friday said that at least 9,166 Russian personnel have been killed since Moscow began its military assault on Kiev nine days ago.

In a tweet, the Ministry said that from February 24 until Friday, Russia has also lost 939 armoured combat vehicles, 404 units of automobile equipment, 251 tanks, 105 artillery systems, 60 fuel tanks, 50 multiple rocket launchers, 37 helicopters, 33 aircraft, 18 air defence units, three unmanned aerial vehicles and two speed boats.

The Ministry also said that these numbers were being further clarified as the "exact count is difficult due to the high intensity of the military operations".

In a Facebook post also on Friday, the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine revealed that as Russia is still trying to capture Kiev, it has "exhausted most of the operational reserves and began preparations for the transfer of additional forces and resources from the southern and eastern military districts".

It added that a group of Russian soldiers have withdrawn from the naval bases in the Black Sea, although they continue "to prepare for the landing of marines in Zatoka".

The post further said that Russian troops have managed to surround the port city of Mariupol, a day after it captured Kherson, another strategic city.

Kherson became the first major city to fall since the assault began nine days ago.

Also on Friday, Russian troops captured the the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant, where a fire had erupted earlier in the day due to shelling.
New Delhi, March 4 : Rural distress as well as high acquisition cost subdued India's February automobile retail sales on a year-on-year (YoY) basis, FADA said.

Accordingly, data released by the Federation of Automobile Dealers Associations (FADA) showed a YoY fall of 9.21 per cent in overall automobile retail sales during the month under review.

The overall retail sales fell to 13,74,516 units last month from 15,13,894 units sold during the corresponding month of 2021.

Also, last month's overall retail sales figure, when compared to the February 2020 period, showed a decline of 20.65 per cent.

In February 2020, the overall vehicle retail sales stood at 17,32,161 units.

On a YoY basis, passenger vehicle (PV) retail sales last month fell by 7.84 per cent to 2,38,096 units last month from 2,58,337 units sold during the corresponding month of last year.

Similarly, two-wheeler retail sales declined last month YoY, by 10.67 per cent to 9,83,358 units.

Besides, tractor retail sales fell by 18.87 per cent to 50,304 units.

However, the commercial vehicle (CV) retail sales rose by 7.41 per cent to 63,797 units last month from 59,395 units sold during the corresponding month of last year.

"The two-wheeler segment is showing no signs of recovery as Bharat continues to play spoil-sport. With cost of acquisition continuously going north, inquiry level remained weak. As corporates and educational institutions continued operating from home, urban demand also took a hit," said FADA President Vinkesh Gulati.

"Even though the PV segment saw some launches and slight respite in supply due to better production, it was not enough to meet the customer demand. Vehicle waiting period thus remains similar to what it was in the last few months." According to FADA, with Omicron passing away without much impact and supplies showing signs of recovery, "it looked as if the Indian Auto Industry was at the cusp of recovery until Russia invaded Ukraine".

"Due the ongoing war, we once again fear the shortage in semiconductors which will create additional supply side issues for PVs," the federation said.

"With crude breaching the $110-mark, the government will not be able to hold prices of petroleum products for long. Post state election results, oil marketing companies will increase fuel prices by at least Rs 10-15."
New Delhi, March 4 : The Jalan Kalrock Consortium, the Successful Resolution Applicant and the new proposed promoters of grounded airline Jet Airways, on Friday announced the appointment of Sanjiv Kapoor as the airline's Chief Executive Officer.

Jet Airways underwent the corporate insolvency resolution process under the Indian Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code and as per orders of the NCLT, Mumbai Bench, the resolution plan for Jet Airways submitted by the Jalan Kalrock Consortium was approved.

Kapoor, who is currently President of Oberoi Hotels and Resorts, will join the airline on April 4, 2022, the consortium said in a statement.

Prior to joining the Oberoi Group, he was the Chief Strategy and Commercial Officer at Vistara, a TATA - Singapore Airline Joint Venture, from 2016 until 2019.

"During Sanjiv's tenure, the airline grew from 9 aircraft and 40 flights a day to 38 aircraft and over 200 flights a day. All of Vistara's revenue generating and customer facing functions, as well as strategy, network planning, marketing, loyalty, inflight services, ground services, and product development reported up to him," the statement said.

Kapoor was earlier also a part of SpiceJet.

"I am certain he will be able to lead Jet Airways and make it become the most preferred full-service carrier of India. Sanjiv is a seasoned aviation professional who has the right blend and demeanour to stitch a team together," said Murari Lal Jalan, Lead Partner of the Jalan-Kalrock Consortium and proposed Non Executive Chairman of Jet Airways.

"I always believe in investing in human capital and by having Sanjiv as the CEO and Vipula as the CFO, I am certain Jet Airways will reclaim its lost glory and surpass everyone's expectation." Kalrock Capital is backed by Fritsch, an investment group founded by serial entrepreneur Florian Fritsch.

"Working together with a very strong team of experienced aviation professionals that is being put together by the Jalan-Kalrock Consortium, I look forward to leading the charge in rebuilding Jet Airways into the most preferred customer-oriented airline once again, a people-focused airline for the digital age," said Sanjiv Kapoor on his appointment.
Lucknow, March 4 : Party hopping before or during elections is a common feature in Uttar Pradesh, but not all leaders are fortunate enough to get a bigger and more visible role in the new party.

Majority of these leaders are now left with no option but to campaign for other candidates.

The luckiest defector in this scenario has been former Union Minister Jitin Prasada, who joined the BJP, months before the polls, got a seat in the Vidhan parishad and was then inducted into the Yogi Adityanath ministry.

Initially, touted as the new Brahmin face of the BJP in the state, Prasada is now restricted to campaigning for the party in and around his home district Shahjahanpur.

Former Union Minister R.P.N. Singh, who joined the BJP in the midst of elections, is another defector who is not contesting the elections.

Singh is also not seen campaigning for the BJP outside his home district Kushinagar.

The biggest example of a defector being left out in the cold is Aparna Yadav, the younger daughter-in-law of Mulayam Singh Yadav, who left her Samajwadi Party to join the BJP in January.

A claimant for the Lucknow Cantt Assembly seat, Aparna was not given the ticket. Though she put up a brave front saying that the party's decision was best, sources said that she was sorely disappointed at being denied a ticket.

Aparna is now campaigning for the BJP and has ruffled a number of feathers in her family with statements against the Samajwadi Party.

A senior BJP functionary, meanwhile, said, "In most cases, those who come in from other parties are given a cooling period before being given opportunity to contest elections. It is only in some exceptional cases that tickets are given to those who join the party. Besides, for those who join the BJP, contesting elections is not necessarily a priority." In the Samajwadi Party too, a similar situation is seen.

BJP MLA Rakesh Rathore, who joined the SP just before elections, was not given a ticket to contest his Sitapur seat.

Imran Masood, a senior Congress leader, was also left out in the cold after he joined the SP.

Masood was later pacified and asked to campaign for the party.
Kabul, March 4 : The Taliban government on Friday said that First Deputy Prime Minister Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar has urged Afghan investors to return to the country.

He made the remarks at the Afghan National Private Sector Conference held in Kabul, the government said in a statement.

"Baradar called on Afghan investors living abroad to return to the country and invest here, as security of investors and their assets will be guaranteed," Xinhua news agency quoted the statement as saying.

"International sanctions are being eased day by day and we are trying to provide more facilities in industry, trade and investment, and efforts are being made to improve the economic situation," Baradar was quoted as saying.

On Tuesday, the World Bank board of directors decided to unfreeze $1 billion of the Afghanistan Reconstruction Trust Fund which was frozen after the Taliban's takeover on August 15, 2021, according to Da Afghanistan Bank (DAB), the country's central bank.

The DAB welcomed the move by the World Bank as a goodwill gesture, calling for further cooperation with the global financial institution in the Afghan banking and financial sectors.
Mumbai, March 4 : Actor Sikandar Kher, who was last seen in 'Sooryavanshi' and 'Aarya 2', is juggling between the shooting of two projects scheduled in Kolkata and Mumbai.

The actor is busy shooting for the thriller web-series, 'Chidiya Udd' opposite his co-star, Jackie Shroff and another untitled project for a huge OTT platform based out of Kolkata being directed by Kolkata based director.

On trying to manage such demanding shoot schedules, Sikandar had this to say, "I feel fortunate to be working on such a tight shoot schedule. Being busy is the greatest blessing for any actor and it reminds me of my father as well." The actor recalled "how he used to be occupied with work all day and keep himself busy - glad to be following his footsteps." Sikander added: "As for getting breaks on this, yes - rejuvenation is equally important. Whenever I get the time to catch a break in between my busy schedule, I make sure that I do it in a healthy manner. Look forward to being even busier in the coming years!"
New Delhi, March 4 : A PIL has been moved in the Delhi High Court seeking directions to prohibit or control intoxicating drinks and drugs in the national capital and also to publish health warnings on liquor bottles similar to cigarette packets.

Hearing the plea by BJP leader and Advocate Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay, the division bench presided over by Chief Justice D.N. Patel and Justice Neena Bansal Krishna on Friday orally observed that given the medicinal usage of alcohol, it may not be appropriate to publish health warnings.

The bench also refused to issue a notice in the plea which sought direction to the Delhi Government to prohibit or regulate the production, distribution, and consumption of intoxicating drinks and drugs, which are injurious to health, in order to secure the right to health, guaranteed under Article 21 of the Constitution. However, the bench said it will see what is to be done on the next date while posting the matter for July 4.

According to the plea, Delhi has a total of 280 municipal wards and until 2015, there were only 250 liquor shops, that is, on average, one liquor shop in every ward and 30 wards without liquor shops. But now the state is planning to open three liquor shops in every ward, which is not only arbitrary and irrational but also offends rule of law and right to health guaranteed under Article 14 and 21 of the Constitution.

The plea said to advertise 'Health and Environment Hazard' of intoxicating drinks through electronic, print and social media in order to secure citizen's right to know, right to information and right to health.

It further alleged that rather than taking steps to prohibit/ control production, distribution, and consumption of intoxicating drinks and drugs, the State government has made Delhi as 'Liquor Capital of India'.

"The Delhi government has been granting licenses to open liquor shops not only in residential areas and main markets but also near hospitals, schools, and temples under the garb of providing easy access to liquor shops," it read.
Peshawar, March 4 : At least 30 people were killed and some 50 others injured after a blast went off inside a mosque in Pakistan's Peshawar city, police said.

Police sources told Xinhua news agency that the blast occurred inside the mosque located in the city's Kocha Risaldar area during Friday prayers.

Rescue teams, police and security forces have reached the site and shifted the injured to a nearby hospital.

No group or individual has claimed the attack so far.

Prime Minister Imran Khan has strongly condemned the attack and directed provision of immediate medical treatment to the injured, his office said in a statement.

Interior Minister Sheikh Rashid also condemned the attack, saying he had directed the provincial chief secretary and inspector general of police to submit a report.
New Delhi, March 4 : Senior Advocate Aman Lekhi has resigned as the Additional Solicitor General (ASG).

In a letter written on March 4 to Union Law Minister Kiren Rijiju, he said, "I am tendering my resignation as the Additional Solicitor General at the Supreme Court with immediate effect." Aman Lekhi is the husband of Minister of State for External Affairs, Meenakshi Lekhi. He has not given any reason for his resignation in the letter.

In March 2018, Lekhi was appointed as the Additional Solicitor General and was re-appointed from July 1, 2020, for a period of three years till June 30, 2023. As the ASG, Lekhi had appeared in many important matters before the Supreme Court and various high courts and tribunals.

Speaking to IANS, Lekhi said there is no specific reason to quit and the government already has a battery of efficient lawyers, and one less will not make a difference.

As a senior advocate, Lekhi had appeared in many major cases -- 2G spectrum and the Commonwealth Games scam.
New Delhi, March 4 : Samsung Electronics said on Friday it is going to soon issue a software update to fix 'app throlttling' issue that is affecting the performance of Galaxy S22 series smartphones.

At the core of the issue is a software called Game Optimizing Service (GOS), which is reportedly throttling the performance of 10,000 apps.

This list includes popular apps like Instagram, Netflix, TikTok, and even Samsung's own apps like Secure Folder and Samsung Pay.

The company said that it plans to add an option in its game launcher app to allow users to prioritise performance through the software update, reports ZDNet.

"More details on how this option will work are expected to be announced later," the report said, quoting the company.

Android Authority earlier reported that according to information circulation on Naver, Samsung is conducting an internal investigation.

The GOS app itself is not a new feature to the Galaxy S22 series and has also been on previous Galaxy smartphones.

Twitter user GaryeonHan and Korean netizens had posted a list of 10,000 apps that were apparently subjected to "performance limits" as part of Samsung's Game Optimizing Service (GOS).

The company's Korean Community forum is also informed about this issue, after widespread complaints emerged regarding the performance of Samsung Galaxy S22 devices being limited by a preinstalled app.

Last year, OnePlus was caught in a similar situation, where it was found diverting popular apps like Chrome and Twitter away from its phone processor's high performance CPU cores.

OnePlus justified the decision by saying it was optimising for battery life and heat.
New Delhi, March 4 : A day-long conference will be held in Bengaluru on Saturday for discussing specific issues and challenges in the states/union territories, regarding the implementation of the Jal Jeevan Mission and the Swachh Bharat Mission-Grameen with ministers from six states and two UTs.

Union Minister of Jal Shakti, Gajendra Singh Shekhawat will chair this regional conference of ministers to review the progress made under both the schemes. The conference will be held at the Vidhana Soudha at Bengaluru, a release from the Ministry of Jal Shakti said.

The meeting will be attended by the state ministers along with senior officers from the rural water supply and sanitation departments. During the conference, the states/UTs will be given an opportunity to put forward their expectations from the ministry, so that timely support is provided in expediting programme implementation.

Shekhawat said: "Prime Minister accords highest priority to women empowerment and healthcare as he has launched two flagship programmes which focus on water and sanitation thereby ensuring 'ease of living' especially for women and young girls.

"Since the last seven years, the government has been 'working with speed and scale,' to ensure provision of 100 per cent tap water connectivity and safe sanitation facilities in every rural household making sure 'no one is left out' no matter which socio-economic strata they come from." 'Har Ghar Jal' is a flagship programme of the government, being implemented by the Jal Jeevan Mission (JJM) under the Ministry of Jal Shakti. The JJM aims to provide tap water connection to every rural household in the country by 2024.

Telangana and Puducherry achieved 100 per cent coverage in 2021. Madhya Pradesh plans to provide tap water connection to all rural households by 2023 followed by Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, and Tamil Nadu in 2024.

The Swachh Bharat Mission-Grameen (SBM(G)) is another flagship programme being implemented by the Ministry of Jal Shakti. All the Gram Panchayats declared themselves Open Defecation Free on October 2, 2019. Under SBM(G) Phase II, the focus is on maintaining ODF status and working towards solid and liquid waste management so that the villages move from ODF to ODF Plus, the release added.

The regional conference will see discussions on ODF sustainability, biodegradable and plastic waste management, greywater management, faecal sludge management apart from strengthening modalities for convergence and stepping up the implementation of ODF plus elements of SBM(G) Phase II.

Subject matter experts and senior government officials will be making presentations on various practices that have effectively helped manage SLWM in rural areas. Participating states have done noticeable work in delivering sanitation services in villages. The states plan to make their villages ODF plus by 2024.

"Reaffirming its commitment towards public health and well-being of the people living in rural areas, in the Union Budget 2022, fund allocation for JJM has been increased from Rs 45,000 crore in 2021-22 to Rs 60,000 crore in 2022-23. For SBM(G), Rs 7,192 crore have been allocated in the budget for the year 2022-23," the release added.
Bhubaneswar, March 4 : The Odisha government has asked its employees to maintain strict neutrality during the upcoming urban elections in the state.

Chief secretary Suresh Chandra Mahapatra has written to all secretaries in the government, DGP, revenue divisional commissioners, heads of department and collectors on this.

The State Election Commission (SEC) of Odisha had notified the elections to 109 urban local bodies (ULBs).

"It is of utmost importance that government officials, including police, at all levels should maintain strict neutrality in the discharge of their duties and do not act in any manner in the furtherance of the prospects of election of any particular candidate/party," Mahapatra said in the letter.

The government servants should remain absolutely impartial during the ULB elections and he/she shall not indulge in any campaigning activities for or against any contesting candidate or any political party, he said.

The chief secretary said official vehicles, machinery and personnel belonging to the government, PSUs, cooperatives, local bodies and panchayati raj institutions (PRIs) should not be used in electioneering work in any manner in the ULBs.

He also directed the officials not to allow publication of any advertisement at the cost of the public exchequer portraying the achievements of the government until completion of elections.

Stating the Model Code of Conduct is also applicable for the government servants, Mahapatra warned, "Violation of the code of conduct by any public servant will make him/her liable for disciplinary proceedings as per rules." Issuing another order, the chief secretary banned the transfer of government employees connected with the urban election work. The ban will remain in force till March 26.

Grant of leave of the officers connected with the conduct of elections will not be allowed without reference to the SEC, he said.

As per schedule, elections to 47 municipalities, 59 Notified Area Councils (NACs) and three municipal corporations of Bhubaneswar, Cuttack and Berhampur will be held on March 24. The election results will be declared on March 26.
New Delhi, March 4 : A day ahead of the second phase of Assembly polls in Manipur, Congress' senior observer for the state Jairam Ramesh has alleged that the BJP is using "Fear, Deceit & Intimidation" in the polls while they (Congress) is fighting with "dignity".

Ramesh on Friday tweeted, "Congress is fighting Manipur elections with dignity and faith in the people. On the other hand, BJP is fighting Moneypour elections making a mockery of democracy and the Constitution with the help of FDI - "Fear, Deceit & Intimidation." The Congress is trying to regain power which it lost in 2017, when despite being the single largest party the BJP managed to form the government. Later the Congress also witnessed an exodus of its MLAs.

Saturday's balloting would settle the electoral fortunes of three-time (2002-2017) Chief Minister Okram Ibobi Singh of the Congress, as well as several BJP ministers and sitting MLAs.

The 74-year-old veteran leader, Singh is contesting from the Thoubal Assembly seat in Thoubal district and is locked in a four-corner contest against BJP's Leitanthem Basanta Singh, Janata Dal(United)'s Irom Chaoba Singh and Shiv Sena's Konsam Michael Singh.

The BJP had bagged 21 seats in 2017 and came to power in the state for the first time, after stitching together a coalition government, with various parties, including the NPP and the Naga People's Front (NPF). However, this time, all three are contesting separately and have put up candidates against each other.

The Congress, which governed the state for 15 consecutive years till 2017, had formed a Manipur Progressive Secular Alliance after forging a pre-poll alliance with four Left parties and Janata Dal-Secular.

The first phase of polling was held in 38 seats on February 28, when 88.63 per cent of 12,09,439 voters exercised their franchise.
Hyderabad, March 4 : The Hindi dubbed trailer of Pawan Kalyan and Rana Daggubati- starrer is out now. Introducing the ego clash between a dynamic cop and a hot-headed wanna-be politician, the trailer is pretty impressive.

Rana Daggubati, who is seen in an ego race with a cop, appears in a terrific avatar. "Who the hell is he? Is he a demi-God fallen from the sky?", Rana yells, establishing their clash.

On the other hand, Pawan Kalyan plays 'Bheemla Nayak', an extremist turned into a cool, duty-minded Inspector, who doesn't back off to punish the wrongdoings of Daniel Shekhar.

Nithya Menen, who plays another powerful role in 'Bheemla Nayak' comes in the middle of the fight.

As the Hindi trailer of 'Bheemla Nayak' gives a glance at the war between 'Pride & Self-esteem', its trailer gives a good impression for the Hindi audience, who have been receiving the South Indian movies well, of late.

Directed by Sagar K Chandra, the movie also stars Murali Sharma, Samuthirakani, and Samyuktha Menon in lead roles.

The screenplay is penned by Trivikram Srinivas, while S Thaman has composed the music. The Hindi release date for 'Bheemla Nayak' is not yet revealed by the makers.

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
Hyderabad, March 4 : Two years ago when her son was in distress, she rode 1,400 km on her scooter to bring him home but today she feels helpless as he is stranded in another country.

Razia Begum, a teacher at a government-run school in Telangana's Nizamabad district, is worried about the safety of 19-year-old son, this time stranded in war-hit Ukraine.

Though 260 students from Ukraine have returned to Telangana, Razia is still waiting for her son - Nizamuddin Aman, who is pursuing MBBS first year at Sumy in the north-eastern part of Ukraine.

Aman is among several Indian students at Sumy State Medical University located in Sumy city close to the Russian border.

Reports from Sumy suggest that more than 500 Indian students are waiting to be evacuated. Most of the students are reported to be in bunkers due to continuous Russian shelling. The electricity and water supply systems in the city are said to have suffered in the war.

Sumy is also reported to be cut off from other cities in Ukraine making it very difficult for Indians and other nationals stranded there to move out.

Razia Begum is praying for the safe return of her son. The 50-year-old teacher said she received a call from him two days ago to convey that he is safe. "He told me not to worry as he is safe but I am worried as he is stuck amid war in a foreign land," she said.

Razia Begum has appealed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao to take all necessary steps to ensure safe evacuation of her son and other Indian students stranded there.

She admits that this time she is feeling helpless as her son is stranded thousands of kilometres away and that too in another country.

Razia Begum had displayed exemplary courage and determination to undertake a 1,400 km-long arduous journey on her scooter to bring home her son from Nellore district in neighbouring Andhra Pradesh where he was stuck due to the nationwide lockdown. She rode on highways even at night to reach her son.

This was in April 2020. Nizamuddin had gone to Rahmatabad in Nellore district to a friend's place but was stuck due to the sudden imposition of the lockdown following the Covid-19 breakout.

Armed with permission from the police, she overcame all odds to reach Rahmatabad riding solo on her two-wheeler and brought her son back home.

Teacher at a school in Bodhan town in Nizamabad district, Razia lost her husband due to kidney failure a few years ago and has two sons with Nizamuddin being the younger one. She said her younger son opted for the medical profession so that he could serve patients suffering from kidney related ailments.
New Delhi, March 4 : The Supreme Court on Friday appreciated the government's efforts in evacuating students from the war-torn Ukraine and also thanked the Attorney General for taking interest in the matter. The top court also suggested the Centre explore the possibility of setting up an online helpline for students stuck in Ukraine.

A bench headed by Chief Justice N.V. Ramana and comprising Justices A.S. Bopanna and Hima Kohli said, "It's unfortunate, we haven't learnt from our history...human race fighting wars and killing people".

The Chief Justice added, "And I know that conflict can be resolved by negotiation. Unfortunately, we have no say in these issues. The anxiety right now of course is to save students." The Attorney General K.K. Venugopal informed the bench that the students from National Medical University in Odessa, Ukraine, who were stranded near the Ukraine-Romania border, have crossed over to Romania. He added that these students would be brought back Friday night by a special flight.

The AG said he had shared the details of the petitioner and others with P.K. Mishra IAS, Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister, who conveyed it to Union Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia, who is stationed in Romania to oversee the evacuation of Indian students.

Venugopal added that he has been assured that the petitioner and other students from Odessa have crossed over to Romania and they will reach India Friday night. He said that so far 17,000 Indians have been evacuated from Ukraine.

The bench said: "We sincerely thank you AG, for taking interest in the matter." Senior advocate A.M. Dhar, representing the petitioner Fathima Ahana, thanked the top court for its timely intervention in the matter and also the AG for airlifting the petitioner.

The AG also informed the top court that the Prime Minister had a high-level meeting with ministers this morning to expedite the evacuation of remaining Indians from Ukraine.

The top court appreciated the government's efforts in the matter, but also pointed out the concerns of parents in connection with the safe return of their children from Ukraine. "You can set up an online helpline for parents to know (the whereabouts of their children)...you can work out something," said the Chief Justice.

During the hearing, the AG also expressed concerns about petitions in this matter filed in various high courts. "Please leave it to the government," said the AG, pointing at a petition filed in a high court.

The bench told the AG to inform his counsel appearing in various high courts that it has already taken up the matter and the Centre is also taking steps for evacuation of students.

"Bring it to HCs notice that we're seized of matter", the Chief Justice told the AG.

The top court also pulled up advocate Vishal Tiwari for filing a PIL in the matter with newspaper clippings. The Chief Justice told Tiwari, "You know it is a sensitive issue. We can't say anything. Don't try to take advantage." The top court has scheduled the matter for further hearing next Friday.

The Supreme Court on Thursday asked the AG to look into a petition seeking evacuation of the Indian students stranded in the war-torn Ukraine.

The petitioner's counsel submitted that his client with 250 other students from National Medical University in Odessa, Ukraine, are stranded near the Ukraine-Romania border and they are facing issues crossing over to Romania. The counsel submitted that students are stranded amid freezing temperatures, and struggling to access food and water.

Latest updates on Russia-Ukraine War

-- Except for the title, this story has not been edited by Prokerala team and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed
Seoul/Washington, March 4 : South Korea won an exemption from the United States' expanded export restrictions on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine, industry ministry said on Friday.

The move came as South Korea's Trade Minister Yeo Han-koo met with senior US officials in Washington on Thursday and the two sides agreed to include South Korea in the US' list of exempt countries.

Last week, the U.S. government announced the Foreign Direct Product Rule (FDPR) for "all of Russia" as part of its export controls to block Russia's access to global high-tech products and other foreign-produced major items, such as semiconductors, over the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

The measure calls on companies to receive a license from the U.S. for tech-related items using U.S. technology before they can be shipped to Russia, which is feared to affect major South Korean exporters, as they use U.S. technology and software, reports Yonhap news agency.

Yeo welcomed the U.S.' decision to exempt South Korea from the FDPR, saying the countries "have once again reaffirmed their strong cooperation." The trade minister added the U.S. has agreed to publish Seoul's exemption from the FDPR in its government notice on Friday (Washington time) at the earliest.

South Korea is now included on the list of 33 nations, which includes the European Union, Britain and Japan.

"The U.S. assessed that South Korea's sanctions against Russia are well-aligned with the international standard and announced its decision to put South Korea on the list of FDPR exempt nations," the industry ministry said in a release.

Earlier this week, South Korea announced its decision to halt financial transactions with seven major Russian banks and their affiliates slapped with U.S. sanctions, joining the global move to remove Russia from the SWIFT global payment network.

Latest updates on Russia-Ukraine War
New Delhi, March 4 : The Ukrainian sabotage group attempted a provocation at the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant, which had previously been taken under the control of the Russian military, Russia's Defence Ministry said.

It said that saboteurs fired on a patrol of the Russian guard on the territory of a nuclear facility, but were suppressed by return fire. Leaving the vicinity of the nuclear power plant, the Ukrainian group set fire to it.

Russia said the purpose of the Ukrainian provocation at the nuclear facility was an attempt to accuse Russia of creating a source of radioactive contamination, RT reported.

The official representative of the Russian Ministry of Defence, Igor Konashenkov, did not rule out that Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky had lost control over Ukrainian sabotage and reconnaissance groups (DRGs) with the participation of foreign mercenaries.

Konashenkov's statement came on the "provocation" in the area of the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant.

"All this testifies to the criminal intent of the Kiev regime or to the complete loss of control by Zelensky over the actions of Ukrainian sabotage groups with the participation of foreign mercenaries," he said, RT reported.

Konashenkov also said that 1,812 military facilities were destroyed during the operation in Ukraine.

In total, 1,812 targets were hit during the operation, including 65 command posts and communication centres of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, 56 S-300 anti-aircraft missile systems, he said.

Also, according to him, 635 tanks and other armored combat vehicles, as well as 54 unmanned aerial vehicles were destroyed.

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
New Delhi, March 4 : Russia is abusing its position on the UN Security Council, but removing the country as a permanent member is not on the cards, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky suggested that Moscow should be stripped of its position on the key UN body in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine last week.

"We don't see that happening," Psaki said when asked about Zelensky's idea during a briefing at the White House. "We certainly understand - you know, (Russia) has a permanent seat on the Security Council," she said, RT reported.

"Of course, that is why it is so particularly disturbing that Russia, given its particular responsibility for upholding the UN Charter, is actively subverting the Charter and abusing its position," she said.

Together with China, France, the UK and the US, Russia is a permanent member of the UN Security Council with a right to veto the body's resolutions. Moscow last used this right a week ago to block an American-sponsored draft, condemning its incursion into Ukraine.

Psaki again rejected Zelensky's call for a no-fly zone to be established over Ukraine. She explained that President Joe Biden has been reluctant to make such a move because "it would require, essentially, the US military shooting down Russian planes and causing a - prompting a potential direct war with Russia, something - the exact step that we want to avoid".

Latest updates on Russia-Ukraine War

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
New Delhi, March 4 : Russian forces are transporting prisoners from Crimea to destabilise the situation in southern mainland Ukraine, the Armed Forces of Ukraine said.

"The movement of a large number of vehicles from the temporarily occupied territory of Crimea, where the occupiers are transporting criminals from places of execution of punishments to organize riots in the Nikolaev region," the statement said.

In the Black Sea, a naval group of Russian occupiers was withdrawn from bases, tasked with striking the surface forces of a group of heterogeneous forces of the Ukrainian Navy, UNIAN reported.

The main efforts of the Russians are focused on the encirclement of Kyiv and the weakening of resistance in the blocked settlements.

The ninth era of heroic opposition of the Ukrainian people to the Russian military invasion began, the statement said.

Russia has exhausted most of its operational reserves and has begun preparations for the transfer of additional forces and assets from the Southern and Eastern military districts of the Russian Federation. The second echelons and most of the operational reserves of the occupying groups were put into operation, Ukraine said.

At the same time, the enemy continues to prepare for the landing of marines in the Gulf, Black Sea. The groups are covered by a detachment of fire support ships and a missile boat strike group, UNIAN reported.

To suppress Ukraine's anti-aircraft defence system on the Black Sea coast, Su-24M bombers were involved and RBC-500 cluster bombs were dropped. The cover was provided by Su-30CM fighters.

The General Staff said that the day before the enemy tried to carry out offensive operations, but did not achieve significant success.

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
Srinagar, March 4 : A large number of devotees offered Friday's congregational prayers at the historic Jamia Masjid in Jammu and Kashmir's Srinagar city after 30 weeks.

Authorities allowed Friday prayers at the mosque in Nowhatta area of old city Srinagar due to the dipping Covid cases and improvement in the law and order situation.

The Jamia Masjid management said all arrangements for Friday's congregational prayers had been made in advance since the authorities had intimated the management about the decision to allow the prayers.

The traditional sermon at the mosque was, however, not delivered by Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, senior separatist leader, as he continues to remain under house arrest.

The Friday sermon was given by Imam Hai Syed Ahmed Naqashbandi.

Devotees offered Friday prayers and greeted each other at the reopening of Jamia Masjid, the biggest mosque in Srinagar city.
New Delhi, March 4 : The Ukrainian city of Energodar has been blocked by Russian forces from all sides, while the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) is operating stably, the head of the Zaporizhzhya Regional Military Administration, Oleksandr Starukh, stated.

According to Starukh, the Russian forces fired blank bullets to intimidate people, and now ZNPP is under the control of the Russian military.

"The city is blocked on all sides. There is a lot of enemy equipment. The station is working stably. Our experts say that such actions of the Russian forces are aimed at destroying the country's energy system and causing power outages," he said.

The head of OVA stressed that it is necessary to be ready for this, in particular, to prepare products that do not need to be stored in refrigerators, UNIAN reported.

About 90 units of enemy equipment and units of "Kadyrovites" are concentrated near the town of Energodar.

Ukraine's Ministry of Internal Affairs said that on Thursday, the Russian forces actively continued attempts to reach the facilities of the Zaporozhye NPP.

After midnight, active shelling of positions guarded and defended by the National Guard began. The enemy used fire from tanks, small arms, and sniper fire.

As a result of the shelling, the administrative building and the training building caught fire. SES units were allowed to put out the fire only in the morning.

The Ministry of Internal Affairs also reported that about 90 units of enemy equipment, Kadyrov units, which had thermal imagers and weapons for effective combat at night, were concentrated near Energodar, UNIAN reported.

Representatives of the station say that currently the largest nuclear power plant in Europe is a real threat of nuclear danger. One unit was disabled, the report said.
Chennai, March 4 : The board of the Indo-UK satellite joint venture OneWeb has voted to suspend satellite launches from Baikonur rocket port in Russia.

"The Board of OneWeb has voted to suspend all launches from Baikonur," the company jointly owned by India's Bharti Global and the UK government said.

The suspension of launches is one of the after effects of Russia's military operation in Ukraine.

Headquartered in London, OneWeb plans to have a constellation of 650 satellites in low earth orbit to offer communication services.

Till date, the company has launched 428 satellites. The last bunch, 34 satellites, was launched in February 2022 by Arianespace from the Guiana Space Centre in Kourou, French Guiana.

The next lot of 36 satellites was to be launched from Baikonur using Russia's Soyuz rocket.

Earlier, the Russian space agency had said that it is withdrawing its personnel from Kourou space station.

With the European Union (EU) imposing sanctions on Russia a question mark hung over OneWeb's satellite launch slated for this month.

OneWeb has not responded to IANS questions on the launch and the alternate plans like looking at the Indian Space Research Organisation's (ISRO) rockets.

In a tweet Kwasi Kwarteng, UK's Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy said: "The UK Government supports OneWeb's decision. In light of Russia's illegal and unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, we are reviewing our participation in all further projects involving Russian collaboration." He had also tweeted: "There's no negotiation on OneWeb: the UK Government is not selling its share. We are in touch with other shareholders to discuss next steps." Earlier the Russian Space Agency had demanded a guarantee from OneWeb that the satellites will not be used for military purposes and also that the UK government divest its holding in the company.

Latest updates on Russia-Ukraine War
New Delhi, March 4 : On the territory of the Chernihiv region, the armed forces of Ukraine killed Russian Major General Andrei Sukhovetsky, the Deputy Commander of the 41st Army.

This was announced by Anton Gerashchenko, the Advisor to Ukraine's Minister of Internal Affairs, UNIAN reported.

"The first has left! The first Russian general has been destroyed in Ukraine. Prepare for others! Or, gentlemen generals, report to the mountain that the invasion of Ukraine is a bloody adventure that will destroy Russia if not stopped immediately!" he wrote.

"Ukraine is your Afghanistan. We will not have to wait only 10 years for the collapse of Russia. We will invest in a month," Gerashchenko added.

Ukraine's Defence Minister, Oleksiy Reznikov, claimed that Ukrainian defenders stopped the enemy in most areas, the main thing now is to resist.

He stated this in his address to Ukrainians, claiming that for more than 196 hours, Ukraine has been repelling the Russian occupiers.

According to him, the situation in the south remains difficult, where the enemy fired on the Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plant in recent hours, but "the fighting spirit of the people in the Cossack region is such that the Russian forces are doomed to defeat".

"Kharkiv is an invincible fortress. All of Ukraine is watching the Russian shelling with pain. But now the whole of Europe knows that Kharkiv is not only an intellectual and industrial center, but also a proud city of brave citizens," Reznikov said, UNIAN reported.

He added that fighting continues in Sumy and Chernihiv regions, which are saving Kiev from the siege.

Latest updates on Russia-Ukraine War

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
Mumbai, March 4 : Two more batches of 369 Indians, mostly students, from Ukraine, arrived at Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport (CSMIA) by Air India Express flights from Romania and Hungary early on Friday, officials said.

The first flight, IX-1204 landed around 2.10 a.m. and the evacuees were accorded a warm welcome by Minister of State for Railways, Raosaheb Danve in the special enclosure at the CSMIA, where he chatted with them.

Among its 185 passengers, the largest number of evacuees are from Kerala (31), followed by 19 from Andhra Pradesh, 18 from Telangana, 16 from Maharashtra, 14 from Bihar and remaining 87 from other states in the country.

Later, another flight IX-1602 landed here around 8.30 a.m. carrying 184 passengers, largely students, were welcomed by Union Minister for Minority Affairs Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, who interacted with them, enquired after their wellbeing and offered them all help required.

Permitted priority exit and luggage clearance, all the evacuees were checked for their vaccination compliance or sent for RTPCR tests as mandated by the BrihanMumbai Municipal Corporation.

Served with packed meals and beverages, all the passengers were segregated state-wise to facilities officials from various states take their charge for onward travel by road, trains or flights, said CSMIA officials.

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
Mumbai, March 4 : Actor Varunn Jain, who is currently seen as one of the leads playing the role of Chirag in 'Tera Mera Saath Rahe', is satisfied as his show in the latest track is influencing viewers about the importance of education.

The show is focusing on how Gopika (Giaa Manek) is preparing to appear for her matriculation examination after crossing a valid age bar with support of her family.

He says: "Education and age have their correlation with each other. The relation between education and age has been followed since ancient times. There is a fixed pattern in which the education system runs like kids will go to smaller classes while teenagers will be in higher grades and adults will go to college." "This is the hierarchy everyone is following and they have to follow. But if a person wants to study knowing that he is over age will be called courageous." The actor who rose to popularity after playing the role of Mohit in the show 'Diya Aur Baati Hum', feels we should encourage individuals who wish to get educated even after crossing the right age.

"Society stops the one who wants to study after being over aged by taunting and making fun of them. Education has its own parameters or boundaries and they only allow those people who are in the age limit. But according to me we should encourage adults who want to get education as there is no age to learn or gain knowledge." "A person can make his life beautiful and overcome any of his weaknesses at any age," he adds.
Mumbai, March 4 : Actress-Filmmaker Ryusuke Hamaguchis critically-acclaimed Japanese film 'Drive My Car, which had its world premiere in Palme d'Or at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival where it bagged Best Screenplay, is heading for an OTT release on April 1, 2022.

The film, co-written and directed by Ryusuke Hamaguchi, has also been selected as Japan's official entry for Best International Feature Film category at the 94th Academy Awards, and has been nominated for four Academy Awards across categories of Best Picture, Director, International Feature Film and Adapted Screenplay.

The film narrates the story of a stage actor and director, Yusuke Kafuku played by Hidetoshi Nishijima, who is happily married to a screenwriter, Oto essayed by Reika Kirishima. However, Oto suddenly dies after leaving behind a secret.

After two years, Kafuku, who is still unable to fully cope with the loss of his wife, receives an offer to direct a play at a theater festival which requires him to drive to Hiroshima with his car with a young female chauffeur, Misaki Watari played by Toko Miur. Initially reluctant, Kafuku eventually caves in and as the two spend time together, Kafuku confronts the mystery of his wife.

The film, adapted from Haruki Murakami's short story, additionally has bagged three BAFTA Film Awards. 'Drive My Car' will be available to stream on MUBI in India from April 1, 2022.

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
Mohali, March 4 : A rollicking 96 from Rishabh Pant powered India to 357/6 at stumps on day one of the opening Test against Sri Lanka at the IS Bindra PCA Stadium here on Friday. Pant's explosive knock, feasting on a tired Sri Lanka bowling attack, tightened India's tight grip on the first day's proceedings.

Resuming from 199/4 after the tea break, Pant and Shreyas Iyer took four boundaries in the first six overs of the final session. With the duo looking increasingly comfortable at the crease and taking the attack to the Sri Lanka bowling attack, the 50-run partnership for the fifth wicket came up in 82 balls.

Sri Lanka's troubles increased when Lahiru Kumara walked off the field and didn't complete his over. But part-time off-spinner Dhananjaya de Silva broke the 53-run stand between Pant and Iyer with the first ball of his second spell. De Silva got one to spin back in from round the wicket and beat Iyer's inside edge to trap him plumb lbw in front of stumps.

Pant then got support from Ravindra Jadeja, who stole boundaries off de Silva and Embuldeniya. Pant was unafraid to play the waiting game while showing signs of aggression to get boundaries to reach his fifty in 73 balls.

From there, Pant shifted gears blazingly, dancing down the pitch and lofting twice over long-on and deep mid-wicket for back-to-back sixes. Pant then cut Embuldeniya twice through cover and point to take 22 runs off the over.

De Silva also suffered some punishment with Pant heaving a delivery over 'he bowler's head for four followed by a loft down the ground for six. Pant further took de Silva to the cleaners, hitting successive fours through deep mid-wicket and down the ground.

Sri Lanka got a much-needed breakthrough after taking the second new ball as Pant fell short of his century by just four runs. The wicketkeeper-batter, who made 46 in his last 22 balls, tried to defend on the backfoot with no footwork off Suranga Lakmal but the ball went through the gate to clip the off-stump bail.

Jadeja and Ravichandran Ashwin slammed five fours to maintain India's comfortable hold on day one. At stumps, Jadeja was batting on 45 and Ashwin on 10.

Brief scores: India 357/6 in 85 overs (Rishabh Pant 96, Hanuma Vihari 58; Lasith Embuldeniya 2/107, Dhananjaya de Silva 1/47) against Sri Lanka
Chittoor : Even as Telugu film star Pawan Kalyan's latest cinematic outing 'Bheemla Nayak' is setting the box-office on fire, some of his diehard fans are facing the heat from animal rights group People for Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) India.

After learning that a group of young men allegedly sacrificed a goat to celebrate the release of 'Bheemla Nayak', PETA India worked with senior police officials in Chittoor district to register a first information report (FIR).

The goat was sacrificed at CSN movie theatre, Pileru, Bodumalluvaripalle in Chittoor. The cruel incident caught on video, shows people posing for photos and videos while standing in front of the frightened goat. The video then shows the goat, fully conscious, being beheaded with a sword and the slaughter taking place in full public view. The video also shows a man collecting the blood of the sacrificed goat with his bare hands and smearing it on the movie poster.

The FIR has been registered under Section 6 of the Andhra Pradesh Animals and Birds Sacrifice Prohibition Act, 1950, Sections 34 and 429 of the Indian Penal Code, 1860, Section 25(1)(A) of the Arms Act, 1959, and Section 11(1)(a) of The Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (PCA) Act, 1960.

"PETA India commends the Chittoor police for taking steps to send the message that cruelty to animals will not be tolerated," said PETA India emergency response team associate manager, Meet Ashar. "Just as human sacrifice is now treated as murder, at a time when India is embarking on space missions, the archaic practice of animal sacrifice must end. PETA India also recommends that these men undergo psychiatric evaluation and receive counselling, as abusing animals indicates deep mental disturbance." In its complaint, PETA India pointed out that Section 5(b) of the Andhra Pradesh Animals and Birds Sacrifices Prohibition Act, 1950, clearly states that no person shall knowingly allow any sacrifice to be performed at any place that is in their possession or under their control. Section 4 prohibits anyone from officiating, performing, serving, assisting, or participating in sacrificing an animal in any congregation. Section 6 prescribes the penalties, and Section 8 makes all offences under the Act cognisable.

The Supreme Court has ruled that animals can be slaughtered only in officially licensed slaughterhouses and that municipal authorities must ensure compliance with this ruling. The Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (Slaughter House) Rules, 2001, and the Food Safety and Standards (Licensing and Registration of Food Businesses) Regulations, 2011, permit the slaughter of animals for food only in licensed slaughterhouses equipped with species-specific stunning equipment.

Gujarat, Kerala, Puducherry and Rajasthan already have laws in place prohibiting the religious sacrifice of any animal in any temple or its precinct. Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Telangana prohibit it in any place of public religious worship or adoration or its precinct or in any congregation or procession connected with religious worship on a public street.

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
Chamarajanagar, : March 4 (IANS) Several labourers were feared to be trapped inside the White Stone Hill caves of Madahalli village in the Bilikallu quarry area near Chamarajanagar district's Gundlupet here on Friday.

The hill suddenly collapsed while the mine workers were inside the cave. As a result, big boulders of white stone, rolled down the hill and collided with the tipper trucks, vehicles, causing them to overturn.

The police and the fire department personnel rushed to the spot and carried out operations along with the local villagers, to rescue trapped workers from inside the mine. According to the officials, six labourers, who were trapped inside, have been been rescued so far.
New Delhi, March 4 : The Centre is in discussion with the National Medical Commission for accommodating the Indian medical students, evacuated from war-torn Ukraine, in Indian colleges as they left their studies in midway amidst the ongoing crisis in the eastern European nation.

Students pursuing medicine from foreign universities need to clear the 'Foreign Medical Graduate Examination' (FMGE) in India to start practice in the country. According to a source, the government is considering the provisions on 'humanitarian ground' to make some changes in FMGE to adjust these students in medical colleges in the country.

The source said that the concerned departments are looking into the matter "seriously" and "will do whatever possible" to ensure that the evacuated students can continue their studies.

In this regard, the Union Health Ministry will soon consult with the NITI Ayog and other Medical Commissions to take a decision in this regard, the source added.

Meanwhile, the Indian Medical Association has also written a letter to the Prime Minister Narendra Modi over the uncertainty looming on the fate and future of these medical students.

The IMA has recommended "all the evacuated medical education learners who are Indian Citizens and have procured admissions there upon seeking eligibility certificate from the statutory authorities in India and at various stages of progression there be adjusted as a onetime measure in existing medical schools in the country through an appropriate disbursed distribution...".

"Resultantly, on passing out they will be as good as Indian Medical Graduates and not Foreign Medical Graduates. This will not only be a great sucker to saving all of them from their uncertain fate and future but would also go a long way in catering to a larger human cause in a most befitting manner," the IMA said in the letter.

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
New Delhi, March 4 : The Ministry of Home Affairs on Friday said that it has extended the modernisation programme of the Central Armed Police Forces (CAPFs) till March 31, 2026, with an allocation of Rs 1,523 crore.

The scheme envisages equipping the CAPFs with modern state-of-the-art weapons and equipment, as per their operational requirement, keeping in view their deployment pattern in different theatres.

Besides, upgraded IT solutions will also be provided to CAPFs, Ministry officials said.

The officials also said that with extension of this scheme for the next five financial years, the paramilitary forces will improve their overall operational efficiency and preparedness, which will positively impact the internal security scenario.

"This would bolster the government's ability to address the challenges being faced on the International Border/LoC/LAC as well as in the different theatres, such as areas affected by Left-Wing Extremism, Union Territories of Jammu and Kashmir, Ladakh and insurgency-affected northeastern states," a Ministry official said.

Recently, the Home Ministry extended the Central government-sponsored Border Infrastructure and Management (BIM) till 2026 at a cost of Rs 13,020 crore.

According to officials, this decision will strengthen the border infrastructure for improving border management, policing, and guarding the borders.

"The BIM scheme will help in the creation of infrastructure such as construction of border fence, border flood lights, technological solutions, border roads and Border Outposts, Company Operating Bases to secure the India-Pakistan, India-Bangladesh, India-China, India-Nepal, India-Bhutan, and the India-Myanmar borders," a ministry official said.

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
Amaravati, March 4 : Union Jal Shakti minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat on Friday inspected Polavaram project works and assured Andhra Pradesh that the Centre is firm in its commitment to complete the scheme by bearing its entire cost.

He, along with Chief Minister Y. S. Jagan Mohan Reddy, visited Polavaram site and inspected the works on various components of the project, which has been declared as a national project by the Centre.

Addressing meetings in resettlement colonies in East Godavari and West Godavari districts, he said they were taking all steps to ensure that the first phase of the project is completed in a span of one year.

Shekhawat assured people that the Narendra Modi government will complete the project by bearing the entire cost as promised in Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Act.

He assured the state government that the Centre would provide whatever assistance the state required will stand by the government unless the project completed in all manners.

He also assured displaced people that their rehabilitation and resettlement is the responsibility of both the central and state governments.

He recalled that the project was first proposed in the 1970s, and the work progressed when Y. S. Rajasekhara Reddy was the chief minister of combined Andhra Pradesh but unfortunately even after 40-50 years the project could not be completed.

The central minister said the chief minister during his recent meeting with the Prime Minister discussed everything about Polavaram for its early completion.

He said that justice will be done to the families displaced by the project by accommodating them in resettlement colonies.

Shekhawat, along with the chief minister, visited Polavaram resettlement colonies including Indukuru in East Godavari district and Taduvai in West Godavari district.

They interacted with the relocated families and directed the R&R officials to pay more attention to rehabilitation works. Addressing the gathering, the chief minister said that Polavaram is a lifeline for Andhra Pradesh. He said with the completion of the project the state would become more fertile and prosperous.

Jagan Mohan Reddy said that the state government is committed to the promise made to the displaced families. The state government will provide Rs 3 lakh to each family in addition to Rs 6.8 lakh being provided by the Centre. He assured people that this promise will be fulfilled at the earliest.

He also promised to provide Rs 3.5 lakh to those families who initially gave their lands for Rs 1.5 lakh in 2006 during Y S Rajashekar Reddy regime. Besides these, he stated that livelihood training and employment programmes will also be taken up in the R&R colonies to improve employment opportunities.

Shekhawat expressed satisfaction over development of resettlement colonies and advised officials to focus more on quality. He called for providing livelihood opportunities and training in R&R colonies.

He said that the authorities have to be considerate in providing facilities to the displaced families until they get settled in the new place.

Speaking at Taduvai R&R colony in West Godavari district, Jagan Mohan Reddy said that the construction of 3,905 houses in the colony is going on full swing and soon every displaced family that contributed towards Polavaram project will receive a house with all basic infrastructure facilities. He said that livelihood training programmes will also be conducted in the R&R colonies taking support from the Centre.

The central minister and the chief minister visited the spillway, cofferdam, powerhouse and Earth-cum-Rock Fill (ECRF) dam.

Shekhawat took stock of the progress of the project and funds released with the Polavaram Project Authority (PPA) comprising officials from the Jal Shakti ministry and state irrigation department.

The state government reportedly urged the union minister to give final clearance for the Revised Cost Estimates (RCE) to the tune of Rs 47,725 crore. The Centre kept the RCE in pending for three years resulting in delay in completion of the works.

The state government is keen to complete the project by June 2023 and has been urging the Centre to keep releasing the required funds.
New Delhi, March 4 : Prices of wheat in India hit a fresh lifetime high on Friday due to a strong export demand for the foodgrain.

The ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine is expected to reduce supply as both the countries are major producers of wheat.

In the key market of Indore in Madhya Pradesh, the foodgrain was sold at Rs 2,400-Rs 2,500 per quintal (100 kg) on Friday as against Rs 2,400 the previous day.

Until recently, it traded at around Rs 2,000-2,100.

"The current rise in prices of wheat will reduce the inflow of the foodgrain into the mandis as the buyers will purchase it from the farm gate itself," an Indore-based trader said.

"Wheat trading above MSP is also an indication that the Centre will have relatively lower quantity to procure directly from the farmers," the trader told IANS.

The Minimum Support Price for wheat for 2022-23 marketing season is fixed at Rs 2,015 per 100 kg.

Farmers usually show interest in the central procurement programme when the commodity's market price typically falls below the Centre's assured support price.
Agartala/Guwahati, March 4 : Tripura Chief Minister Biplab Kumar Deb on Friday announced that he will personally bear the flight expenses (Delhi-Agartala flight) of the students of the state returning from war-torn Ukraine.

Announcing the decision, Deb tweeted, "I am always indebted to the people of Tripura for their unconditional blessings and affection. As a humble token of gratitude, I have decided to contribute from my salary for airfare of Delhi-Agartala flights for the students of Tripura who are returning from Ukraine. Two female students of Tripura, who were pursuing higher studies in Ukraine, after returning to the state on Thursday met me and shared their experience in the war ravaged country." Earlier, Tripura Chief Secretary Kumar Alok said District Magistrates and Sub-Divisional Magistrates in all the districts have physically contacted family members of 33 students who are studying in Ukraine.

Several students have reached India and many have crossed the Ukraine border and are on their way to India while four are still in Ukraine but remained safe. The Centre is making all arrangements for them, he added.

Meanwhile, nearly 75 students of the 240 students from the north-eastern states who were stranded in Ukraine have returned to India so far, officials said on Friday.

Latest updates on Russia-Ukraine War
London/New Delhi, March 4 : Russia on Friday blocked access to BBC website and the media outlet resorted to broadcasting news bulletins over shortwave radio in the country.

According to a report in The Guardian, the BBC said it was bringing back the WWII-era broadcasting technology in the region, just hours before its sites were banned.

"It's often said truth is the first casualty of war. In a conflict where disinformation and propaganda is rife, there is a clear need for factual and independent news people can trust - and in a significant development, millions more Russians are turning to the BBC," said Tim Davie, BBC Director-General.

"We will continue giving the Russian people access to the truth, however we can." As part of its resilience operation to ensure news is available in Ukraine and Russia, the BBC has also stepped up services on other platforms.

It launched two new shortwave frequencies in the region for four hours of World Service English news a day. These frequencies can be received clearly in Kyiv and parts of Russia.

Shortwave radio uses frequencies that carry over long-distances and are accessible on portable sets.

The BBC said its shortwave broadcasts will be available on frequencies of 15735 kHz from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. and 5875 kHz from midnight to 2 a.m., Ukraine time.

News will be read in English, which the BBC says will be available in Kyiv as well as "parts of Russia".

Shortwave radio has a long history of wartime broadcasts.

The Guardian reports that its usage peaked during the Cold War, but that it was also used throughout WWII to broadcast propaganda.

The BBC World Service ended its use of the technology in Europe in 2008 after 76 years.

The Russian communications watchdog Roskomnadzor has also restricted access to the US government-funded Radio Liberty, Voice of America, Meduza (a Russian and English-language news site based in Latvia), and German state-owned broadcaster Deutsche Welle.

The audience for the BBC's Russian language news website more than tripled its year-to-date weekly average, with a record reach of 10.7 million people in the last week (compared to 3.1 million).

In English, bbc.com visitors in Russia were up 252 per cent to 423,000 last week, the media outlet announced in a statement.

The live page in Russian covering the invasion was the most visited site across the whole of the BBC World Service's non-English language services, with 5.3 million views.

Audiences for the Ukrainian language site more than doubled year-to-date, with a reach of 3.9 million in the past week (compared to 1.7 million) and the audience for bbc.com increased 154 per cent in Ukraine.

--IANS na/vd

A

Latest updates on Russia-Ukraine War
Bengaluru, March 4 : The Karnataka police have arrested a man who blackmailed women with their nude selfies, photos and extorted money in Bengaluru on Friday. The arrested person has been identified as Prashanth (31), a resident of Vijayapura district.

According to the police, the accused used to give a missed call and send a message to women randomly. When the women called back he would sweet talk with them and apologize for giving a missed call or sending a message. Whoever continued chatting with him, he trapped those women into relationships and had an affair with them. Later, he would capture the intimate moments on his mobile and blackmail them for money.

The Cyber Economics and Narcotics Crimes (CEN) sleuths who received a complaint from a 30-year-old woman from Bengaluru, have arrested the accused and seized his mobile.

The police said that Prashanth is a school dropout and was involved in agriculture in Vijayapura. He had made it a habit to trap women and blackmail them for money. He had given a missed call to the complainant five months ago.

When the victim called him back, he sweet talked her and started sending messages to her. They started exchanging messages on Whatsapp. He promised to marry her.

The victim was ensnared by his words. Prashanth coaxed her to send her nude selfie videos and photos to his mobile and assured her there would be no problem as he was going to marry her.

Believing him, the victim sent her nude videos and photos to him. As soon as he got her videos, he started threatening her. He told the woman that she should give him money whenever he wanted and if she refused, her photos would go viral on social media.

Meanwhile, to scare her further he forcibly took her password for Facebook and uploaded her indecent picture and got Rs 7,000 from her. Later, he deleted the picture. On different occasions he extorted Rs 50,000 from the victim.

The woman finally approached the police and they arrested Prashanth in Vijayapura. The accused was arrested earlier also on the same charges.
New Delhi, March 4 : A schoolgirl was allegedly thrashed by a female outside a school in north Delhi, a police official said on Friday.

According to the official, the incident took place on March 2, Wednesday, at the Sant Nagar area of the city.

"Two girls, who were studying in the same school, had minor altercation over some issue after which one among them informed her brother about it," the official posted at the Burari police station told IANS.

The official said that the alleged brother on March 2 came outside the school along with his friends that also included females and in a bid to "teach a lesson" to the victim girl, he directed one of his female friends to bully her.

"It was at that time when the aggressor girl was slapping the victim outside the school, someone made a video that later went viral on several WhatsApp groups," the official added.

The police, on a complaint lodged by the father of the victim girl, registered a case under sections 323 (Punishment for voluntarily causing hurt), 341 (Punishment for wrongful restraint), 356 (Assault or criminal force in attempt to commit theft), 379 (Punishment for theft) and 34 (Acts done by several persons in furtherance of common intention).

According to some reports, another similar incident was reported outside the same school on the next day after the first incident. However, the police official denied all such reports.

It was officially learnt that barring two men, all the accused involved in the incident were minors. So far the police have not detained any accused person in the case. "Further investigation is in progress," the official added.
Chamarajanagar, March 4 : Several labourers from West Bengal were feared to be trapped inside the White Stone Hill caves of Madahalli village in Bilikallu quarry area near Chamarajanagar district's Gundlupet here on Friday.

The hill collapsed while miners were working inside the cave. As a result, big boulders of white stone rolled down the hill and collided with the tipper trucks and vehicles, causing them to overturn.

Several workers present there are feared to have been crushed under these boulders.

The police and the fire department personnel rushed to the spot to carry out operations along with the local villagers, to rescue trapped workers from inside the mine.

The incident took place on land belonging to Mahendrappa, a resident of Bommalapura in Karnataka. One Hakeem had taken the land on lease for mining. However, Superintendent of Police (SP) Shivakumar said illegal mining was being carried out in the area.

As per preliminary information, five labourers were inside the mine when the incident took place. While three of them have been rescued, two are missing.

However, according to the local people, many more workers were present at the site.

The rescue operation is still on,
New Delhi, March 4 : After winning the first match against Denmark's lowly-ranked Christian Sigsgaard in the Davis Cup World Group Playoff 1 tie, Ramkumar Ramanathan dedicated his win to the teams senior-most player Rohan Bopanna who turned 42 on Friday.

World No. 170 Ramkumar gave India a perfect start after defeating Sigsgaard in the first singles 6-3, 6-2 in just 59 minutes. After winning the match an elated Ramkumar said, "Today is Bops' (Rohan Bopanna) birthday so this win is for him. And hopefully, he will win the doubles match tomorrow." India got off to a strong start against Denmark in the Davis Cup World Group Playoff 1 tie with Ramkumar and Yuki Bhambri setting contrasting wins against Christian Sigsgaard and Mikael Torpegaard respectively to give India a 2-0 lead at the Delhi Gymkhana Club here on Friday.

"Over the years, playing all around the world has made me more competent. Being on the tour for the last 10 years makes me grow as a player. So I am really happy to give my country the first point," he said.

India's non-playing captain Rohit Rajpal praised Ramkumar, saying it was good to see the way The 27-year-old notched up the win in quick time.

"We were looking for the first break and Ram gave us. It was quite a satisfactory display from him. I am happy that the team took the lead in the first match. The whole idea was to stick to the strategies. And the win in the first match takes a lot of pressure off from the team. It's always important to win the first match. Ram did it in a wonderful way," he said.
Imphal, March 4 : With the deployment of around 20,000 Central paramilitary forces, tight security is in place across six districts in Manipur for the second and final phase of Assembly elections on Saturday when balloting would take place in the remaining 22 of the 60 constituencies.

Manipur Chief Electoral Officer Rajesh Agrawal on Friday said that 4,988 polling personnel, accompanied by security forces, have reached the 1,247 polling stations in Thoubal, Jiribam, Chandel, Ukhrul, Senapati and Tamenglong districts.

He said that in all 8,38,730 electors, including 4,28,679 females and 31 transgenders, are eligible to exercise their franchise in the second phase to decide the electoral fate of 92 candidates including 2 female.

Out of 92 candidates, 17 candidates have criminal antecedents, the election official said.

The CEO said that like the first phase of elections on February 28, adequate arrangements have been made in all polling stations to ensure Covid safe election. All polling stations have been sanitised, while Asha and Anganwadi workers have been engaged. Marking of circles with minimum distance has been done to avoid crowding.

Besides, masks, gloves, face shield, thermal scanners, PPE kits have been provided to polling parties. Voters who are Covid positive or are under quarantine will be allowed to vote at the last hour between 3 p.m. to 4 p.m.

To enable the women to participate in the election process vigorously, 223 of the polling stations would be completely manned by all women polling personnel, Agrawal said.

Meanwhile, re-polling would be held in 12 polling stations under five assembly constituencies in two districts -- Imphal East and Churachandpur -- on Saturday.

The CEO said that the re-polling would be held as the miscreants have damaged Electronic Voting Machines during and after the first phase of polling on February 28.

Of the six districts, where the elections would be held on Saturday, Thoubal falls in the valley area while the other five districts are in the mountainous areas bordering Assam and Nagaland, as well as Myanmar, making security forces maintain high vigil along both the international and the inter-state borders.

Saturday's elections would settle the electoral fortunes of three time (2002-2017) Chief Minister and 74-year-old veteran Congress leader Okram Ibobi Singh as well as several BJP ministers and sitting MLAs.

Singh is contesting from the Thoubal Assembly seat and is locked in a four-corner contest against BJP's Leitanthem Basanta Singh, Janata Dal-United's Irom Chaoba Singh and Shiv Sena's Konsam Michael Singh.

The main opposition Congress did not field candidates in four of the 22 Assembly seats -- Chandel, Mao, Tadubi, Tamenglong -- and political pundits opined that Congress in the four seats is tacitly supporting the candidates of National People's Party (NPP), headed by Meghalaya Chief Minister Conrad K. Sangma, which is an ally of the BJP in both Meghalaya and Manipur since 2017, but contesting separately in Manipur this time.

The BJP had bagged 21 seats in 2017 and came to power in the state for the first time, after stitching together a coalition government, with various parties including the NPP and the Naga People's Front (NPF). However, this time, all three are contesting separately and put up candidates against each other.

The Congress, which governed the state for 15 consecutive years till 2017, had formed a Manipur Progressive Secular Alliance after forging a pre-poll alliance with four Left parties and Janata Dal-Secular.

The first phase of polling was held in 38 seats on February 28, when 88.63 per cent of 12,09,439 voters exercised their franchise.Votes will be counted on March 10.
Chennai, March 4 : The election for the newly set-up Cuddalore corporation's Mayor witnessed some tense moments for the DMK with the party's official candidate R. Sundari challenged by a rebel candidate.

However, the party's writ prevailed and Sundari was elected.

The fight was so intense that on Thursday evening, 11 newly-elected councillors, including one each from the AIADMK and the BJP, were whisked away to a resort in Puducherry by a rebel group of DMK owing allegiance to party's district Treasurer, Gunashekaran. His wife G. Geetha was an aspirant for the Mayor post but the party leadership decided to field R. Sundari, the wife of city unit Secretary A. Raja.

Of the 45 councillors, 19 cast their votes in favour of Sundari while 12 voted for the rebel candidate Geetha. One vote was declared invalid.

Six AIADMK councillors abstained from voting. Of the 11 councillors who were kept in the resort, four managed to break free and vote but 7 were not able to participate.

Raja is reportedly close to state Minister, M.R.K. Panneerselvam who extended his full support to Sundari. DMK, being a cadre-based party, announced a whip for its councillors to vote for the party's official candidate but the rebel candidate did not withdraw and fought the elections much to the dismay of the party leadership.

"This is an unprecedented development in our party. The rebellion will be strictly put down and this has reduced the glow of our victory across the state. Strict action will be taken against those who acted against the party's dictum," a senior DMK leader told IANS.

Of the 45 wards in the newly formed Cuddalore corporation, the DMK-led front won in 34 wards. While the DMK alone won in 27 seats, its allies, VCK and TVK, won in three seats each, and Congress in one.

Sundari was sworn in as Mayor on Friday with the Cuddalore corporation Secretary, N. Viswanathan administering the oath of office to her, while Panneerselvam handed over the ceremonial dress and mace to her.
New Delhi, March 4 : The war in Ukraine has reached the nuclear sites with Russian troops making attempts to take over these plants. The attacks to take control of these nuclear sites have raised worldwide concern.

Ukraine has 15 nuclear power units (13.8 GW) at four nuclear power plants: Rivne, Khmelnitskiy, South Ukraine and Zaporizhzhia, the largest one in Europe.

So far the Russian troops have taken over the closed nuclear power plant at Chernobyl and the active nuclear power plant Zaporizhzhia, situated on the banks of the Dnieper River, in the city of Enerhodar.

On Friday after intense fighting at Zaporizhzhia, Russia claimed that its troops have taken control of the nuclear power plant. The fighting caused a fire at the nuclear site which was eventually doused by the Ukrainian authorities.

The fire which began after Russian shelling was extinguished and the radiation levels remain unchanged, though several units of the facility have been damaged.

Ukraine's nuclear regulator said that Russian military forces seized the plant on Friday morning but the plant's staff is continuing to ensure its operations.

Enerhodar Mayor Dmytro Orlov announced on his Telegram channel Friday morning: "The fire at the (nuclear plant) has indeed been extinguished." The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said the fire had not affected essential equipment and that Ukraine's nuclear regulator reported no change in radiation levels.

In a tweet, the IAEA said, "Ukraine informed IAEA that Russian forces took control of the site of Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant; says safety systems of the plant's six reactors had not been affected and there has been no release of radioactive material. Two people reported injured." Ukraine's nuclear power plants are operated by NNEGC Energoatom, the country's nuclear power utility.

It was the second time since the war began and there are concerns about a nuclear accident or release of radioactive material.

The first time there were concerns on February 24 when Russian troops took control of closed nuclear power site Chernobyl.

Ukraine had then informed the IAEA that Russian forces had taken control of all facilities of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Also on the same day control levels of gamma radiation dose rates in Chernobyl were exceeded.

On February 25 Ukraine's State Nuclear Regulatory Inspectorate said that the rise in radiation levels was likely due to the "disturbance of the top layer of soil from the movement of a large number of heavy military machinery through the exclusion zone and increase of air pollution." It added: "The condition of Chernobyl nuclear facilities and other facilities is unchanged." The Chernobyl nuclear power plant in northern Ukraine has been surrounded for more than three decades by a 2,600-square kilometre exclusion zone that keeps people out.

Chernobyl's exclusion zone remains largely devoid of human life, 36 years after a flawed reactor design and a series of errors by its operators caused a major explosion at the plant.

On April 26, 1986, Chernobyl's reactor number four melted down as a result of human error, releasing vast quantities of radioactive particles and gases into the surrounding landscape -- 400 times more radioactivity into the environment than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

The facility's three other reactors were all shut down by 2000 and it has since been decommissioned. It is located about 130 km north of Kyiv.

Ukraine is dependent on nuclear energy and it has 15 reactors generating about half of its electricity.

In Ukraine, nuclear energy development started in 1970 with the construction of the Chernobyl power plant, the first unit being commissioned in 1977. Unit 4 came online in 1983 and was destroyed in 1986.

Though the Ukrainian nuclear industry was closely involved with Russia for many years, it remained relatively stable during the changes that occurred when the country became independent from the former Soviet Union.

Ukraine receives most of its nuclear services and nuclear fuel from Russia, but is reducing this dependence by buying fuel from Westinghouse.

Latest updates on Russia-Ukraine War
Mumbai, March 4 : As thousands of evacuees, mostly students, from war-torn Ukraine land in Mumbai, Delhi and other cities, it does not spell the end of the long ordeal for many.

Some have many more hurdles to cross and hundreds or thousands of kms to travel - before they reach the warmth of their homes to hug their near and dear ones - as was evident in their brief interactions with the media.

One such student is Siya Das, 19, coming from the war-ravaged Chernivtsi in western Ukraine, who landed at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport (CSMIA) here by a flight from Bucharest, Romania.

"I feel greatly relieved coming to Mumbai. But I still have another 2,700 km to travel before I reach my hometown Guwahati in Assam," Das said.

During the flight, she was worried about her onward journey plans, how to book a hotel till her flight from Mumbai to Guwahati takes off etc.

"But a pleasant surprise awaited me as the CSMIA had made all the arrangements and even put me on a flight to Guwahati, all complimentary. I saw the real heroes working silently behind-the-scenes, and despite the long journey, the pride of being an Indian was at its peak," Das said.

Among the youngest evacuees till date from the Ukraine war-zone is a 25-day-old infant boy, who somehow managed to board a flight with his young parents from Ahmedabad.

However, his return home was far from smooth as the infant did not have the most essential international travel document - a passport - which his parents could not manage, what with deadly bombs, bullets or missiles zipping all around, as his father Kuntart Makwana recalled.

Here again, CSMIA took charge and took all care, ensuring that the little boy's first trip home was a smooth affair, and arranged the necessary formalities with the immigration department and finally, the child and his parents reached home safely.

A medical student, Supriya Kumar (23) from Delhi, was all smiles as she arrived here accompanied by her best friend -- Coco -- her one-year-old pet dog.

"I am indebted to the CSMIA authorities who ensured Coco could return with me, extended all support for immigration, Covid tests, baggage collection and even an overnight hotel stay as I flew to New Delhi the next morning," said Kumar.

A medical student, Anushka Choudhary, who arrived from Bucharest, recounted her harrowing experience, the sheer uncertainty on crossing the Ukraine-Romania border, rushing to the airport and remaining in a state of panic till the flight actually took off.

Landing on home turf, they were welcomed by Union ministers, and Maharashtra government and airport officials who ensured that after their nightmarish exodus from Ukraine via neighbouring countries, their arrival in India was as smooth and hassle-free as possible, said a CSMIA spokesperson.

A total of five flights have landed in Mumbai in the past one week as part of 'Operation Ganga', and some more are expected to land over the next few days, bringing back Indians stranded in different parts of Ukraine.

(Quaid Najmi can be contacted at: q.najmi@ians.in)
New Delhi, March 4 : Indian national Harjot Singh received bullet injuries while he was attempting to escape from the Ukrainian capital, and is currently in a Kiev hospital, where he is said to be "out of danger".

Harjot's brother Prabhjot Singh, who resides in Delhi's Chhattarpur, told IANS: "The last conversation I had with Harjot was on February 26 at 9 p.m. I haven't spoken to him since then. On March 2, at night, he contacted the family and informed them about his injuries.

"He informed that he was hit by three to four bullets while he was trying to leave Kiev. Local people took him to the hospital via ambulance and after four days, when he regained consciousness, he contacted the family with a doctor's cellphone," Prabhjot narrated.

"We also went to the embassy, gave them all the documents as Harjot has lost them when he was shot." Harjot's family urged the government to evacuate him to Delhi as fast as possible for further treatment.

According to information, Harjot was trying to reach the border with his friends and was expected to catch a train from Kiev and reach Lviv somehow. However, he and his companions were not "allowed" to sit in the train.

He was shot at when he and his friends were coming out of the station. Harjot could not identify who fired the shots.
Shimla, March 4 : In an election year, the BJP government in Himachal Pradesh led by Chief Minister Jai Ram Thakur on Friday presented a budget of Rs 51,365 crore for 2022-23 with the focus on the agriculture, horticulture and animal husbandry sectors, the state's mainstay, with a promise to create 30,000 jobs and no new taxes.

In the populist but deficit budget, Thakur, who holds the finance portfolio, announced a reduction in the eligibility for old age pension from 65 to 60 years, irrespective of income criteria.

He announced that social security pension was being given to 6.35 lakh people and 40,000 new pensioners would be added to the list.

He announced to increase the monthly old age pension from Rs 1,001 to Rs 1,500 and to increase the Member of Legislative Assembly Local Area Development Scheme (MLALAD) fund from Rs 1.80 crore to Rs 2 crore.

The honorarium of urban and rural local bodies, anganwari workers and Asha workers has been increased.

"According to the revised estimates for 2021-22, the total revenue receipts are Rs 37,312 crore and the total revenue expenditure is estimated to be Rs 37,034 crore. Thus there is a revenue surplus estimated at Rs 278 crore.

"According to the budget estimates for 2022-23, the total revenue receipts are expected to Rs 36,375 crore and the revenue expenditure is estimated as Rs 40,278 crore. The revenue deficit is estimated to be Rs 3,903 crore.

"The fiscal deficit is expected to be Rs 9,602 crore which is 4.98 per cent of the state's Gross Domestic Product. The budget does not propose new taxes. We will ensure that adequate resources are arranged with effective tax compliance, cooperation of the government of India and better financial management," said Thakur.

According to the budget, out of every Rs 100, Rs 26 will be spent on salaries, Rs 15 on pension, Rs 10 on interest payment, Rs 11 on loan repayment, Rs 9 for grants for autonomous bodies, while the remaining Rs 29 will be spent on other activities, including capital works.

He said the state's economy is expected to grow at 8.3 per cent during 2021-22. Despite the Covid-19 pandemic, this increase is a big achievement of the government. The excise and tax collections had risen by 15 per cent to Rs 9,282 crore.

According to the Advance Estimates for 2021-22, Gross State Domestic Product (GSDP) is expected to be Rs 175,173 crore. The estimates also indicate that the per capita income in the state will be Rs 201,854 crore, which is Rs 51,528 crore higher than the estimated per capita income at the national level.

An outlay of Rs 12,921 crore is proposed for development expenditure in 2022-23, the Chief Minister said. "Out of this, Rs 9,524 crore is proposed for the state development budget. An outlay of Rs 2,400 crore is proposed for Scheduled Caste Development Programme and Rs 856 crore is proposed for Tribal Area Development Programme." Expressing his gratitude to the House, the first-time Chief Minister said it was a matter of pride and joy that he had learned many new things during this period.

"The last two years have been unexpectedly challenging for us because before this no government had to face the pandemic and the global recession together.

"This pandemic affected all aspects of our lives. We had to fight on all fronts together. In this tenure, while patiently facing the financial constraints, we have tried to serve all the sections of society, especially those who need more assistance from the government.

"Generally, the former governments started worrying about the needy sections of society near the elections, but our government has taken necessary and effective steps for the welfare of the people from the very first budget.

"This budget presented by me is exhaustive and more inclusive than the budgets presented earlier in this House," the Chief Minister said.

In this budget, he said, special care has been taken of all employees and para workers. "This budget focuses on women empowerment and welfare of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. Along with the welfare of the people, this budget is also development-oriented. In this budget, emphasis has been laid on the construction of large infrastructure projects through capital expenditure." "I dedicate this budget for the prosperous future of every Himachali," he added.
Bhubaneswar, March 4 : The Odisha government on Friday said that it was able to evacuate 65 Odia students from the war-torn Kharkiv region in Ukraine to a safer place in the country's west.

In a statement, the Odisha Chief Minister's Officer (CMO) said many students were stuck in the Kharkiv and Pisochyn area of Ukraine during the past three days and were suffering a lot of problems. The state government was able to evacuate 65 Odisha students by making a special arrangement of two buses to Ukraine's western border regions.

It has also expedited the work to evacuate all other students stuck in the area and bring them back to India though flights, it said.

The Resident Commissioner's office at New Delhi is working as a nodal office for the purpose. So far, 199 students from Odisha have landed safely in India, the CMO said.

On Thursday, the state government had nominated four special representatives for Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia, who will coordinate with the Resident Commissioner, and the respective countries, for smooth evacuation of students and other Odia people stranded in Ukraine.
New Delhi, March 4 : The Supreme Court on Friday said the authorities cannot confiscate a vehicle, allegedly used in transportation of cows for slaughter, after the owner was acquitted in the criminal case.

It held that this would amount to arbitrary deprivation of property and violate the right guaranteed to each person under Article 300A of the Constitution.

A bench of Justices K.M. Joseph and Hrishikesh Roy said: "In the present case, the appellant's truck was confiscated on account of the criminal proceedings alone and therefore, under the applicable law, the vehicle cannot be withheld and then confiscated by the State, when the original proceedings have culminated into acquittal." Justice Roy, who authored the judgment on behalf of the bench, noted that it is also not the projected case that there is a likelihood that the appellant's truck will be used for committing a similar offence.

The top court made these observations while setting aside Madhya Pradesh High Court order, which rejected a plea by Abdul Vahab challenging confiscation of his truck under the MP Prohibition of Cow Slaughter Act, 2004 and the Rule 5 of the MP Govansh Vadh Pratishedh Rules, 2012.

Justice Roy said: "The confiscation of the appellant's truck when he is acquitted in the criminal prosecution, amounts to arbitrary deprivation of his property and violates the right guaranteed to each person under Article 300A." The bench said by reason of an order of confiscation, a person is deprived of the enjoyment of his property and added that Article 300A provides that no person shall be deprived of his property save by authority of law. "Therefore, to deprive any person of their property, it is necessary for the State, inter alia, to establish that the property was illegally obtained or is part of the proceeds of crime or the deprivation is warranted for public purpose or public interest," it said.

Justice Roy said the circumstances in the present case are compelling to conclude that the District Magistrate's order of confiscation (ignoring the trial court's judgment of acquittal), is not only arbitrary but also inconsistent with the legal requirements.

Vahab's truck, loaded with 17 cow progeny, was intercepted and the driver of the vehicle and one other person were arrested. The truck owner along with the accused faced trial for offences under the 2004 Act and under the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, 1960.

The accused were acquitted by the trial court on the ground that the prosecution failed to prove that cows were being transported for slaughtering. However, the DM ordered confiscation of the truck, disregarding the acquittal. The vehicle owner moved the high court, which rejected the plea against the DM's order.

Justice Roy said: "The District Magistrate has the power to independently adjudicate cases of violations under Sections 4, 5, 6, 6A and 6B of the 2004 Act and pass order of confiscation in case of violation. But in a case where the offender/accused are acquitted in the criminal prosecution, the judgment given in the criminal trial should be factored in by the District Magistrate while deciding the confiscation proceeding." "Consequently, the High Court's decision to the contrary is set aside. The appeal stands allowed with this order without any order on cost."
Varanasi, March 4 : Union Minister of Information and Broadcasting, Anurag Thakur, believes that the clean image of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath will help the BJP against the 'corrupt' and 'goon' image of Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav and others in the ongoing Assembly elections.

In an exclusive interview with IANS, Thakur, who is also BJP's election co-incharge for Uttar Pradesh, said that the BJP's fight against 'goons' and 'mafias' will continue on a stronger note in the next five years in Uttar Pradesh.

Expressing confidence of improving BJP's 2017 Assembly poll performance in UP, he said that the saffron party will again win with more than 300 seats in the 403-member state Assembly.

"If you look at the work done in the last five years, we have provided clean governance and at the same time goons and mafias have been weeded out," Thakur said.

Excerpts from the interview: Q: As the Assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh enter the last phase, how do you see BJP's chances?

A: As per my assessment after seeing people's overwhelming support, I can say that the BJP will retain power in Uttar Pradesh with a thumping majority. 'Abki baar phir se 300 paar' (over 300 seats this time too)... We will perform better than the previous Assembly polls and once again win more than 300 seats.

Q: Being the party's election co-incharge for UP, you are actively involved with the polls. What are the key issues? A: Welfare of the poor, law and order, safety and security of the people are the key issues in these polls. We have done very well in these core issues concerning the people. If you look at the work done in the last five years, we have provided clean governance and at the same time goons and mafias have been weeded out from Uttar Pradesh. This is what we promised five years back to the people, and we worked on them to make the people of Uttar Pradesh safe and secure.

Q: Om Prakash Rajbhar's Suheldev Bhartiya Samaj Party (SBSP) and Swami Prasad Maurya left the BJP to join hands with the Samajwadi Party, and they can influence the last phase of polling. Are they going to affect BJP's chances? A: This time, Anupriya Patel's Apna Dal and Sanjay Nishad's Nishad Party are in alliance with us. If you look at the past, many became MLAs after joining hands with the BJP. There are people who search for a new 'swami' every five years. People have seen how for five years they hailed Prime Minister Modi and Chief Minister Adityanath and didn't get tired listing the achievements of the state government. People are asking as to what happened that they have now started criticising the BJP.

If Maurya is in a strong position, why did he run away from his constituency Padrauna? The ground has become slippery. I can give in writing, both Rajbhar and Maurya are losing.

Q: The Opposition alleges that BJP has shifted from its development agenda to nationalism and religion. What would you say? A: Nationalism is part of the BJP's ideology, as safety and security of the nation is paramount to us. Good governance and development are the poll planks of BJP and we have been contesting elections on them for the last so many years.

The clean image of Modi ji and Yogi ji will help us against the corrupt and goon image of Akhilesh ji and others. As far as the UP elections are concerned, we are very clear that our fight against these goons and mafias will go on more strongly in the next five years and the development agenda will progress further with more vigour.

Q: The Opposition is also talking about unemployment in the state...

A: The clean governance provided by the BJP has opened the gate for investment in Uttar Pradesh. Rs 4 lakh crore has been invested in Uttar Pradesh and three crore people got self-employment or employment opportunity so far.

In the coming years, we are going to see investments worth Rs 10 lakh crore coming into Uttar Pradesh. We are trying to provide employment or self-employment to at least one member in each household.

Q: There is buzz that the BJP is not in a strong position in some seats in Varanasi district, which is the reason Prime Minister Modi is giving special attention to Varanasi in the last two days of campaigning. Your comment...

A: Unlike Akhilesh Yadav and Swami Prasad Maurya, who have been changing their seats fearing defeat, Prime Minister Modi has been regularly coming to Varanasi since 2014 after being elected from here. The Prime Minister is committed to the development of Varanasi as well as the state. Right from ensuring development of Kashi, Prime Minister Modi has worked tirelessly for the development of Uttar Pradesh.

Naturally, he (Modi) is loved by everyone in Varanasi and Uttar Pradesh. He keeps coming back to the state and his constituency. Not only Kashi, we are going to sweep across the state and everyone will see this on March 10.

Q: In an election rally, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said that BJP has lost the polls. How would you react to her comment? A: It is very clear from what we have seen in West Bengal. We have seen how she remained silent when they (Trinamool Congress) were killing BJP 'karyakartas' (workers). Mamata Banerjee lost Nandigram while the BJP improved its tally from three to 77.

She has no right to come here and seek votes. During the West Bengal Assembly elections, she had called people of Uttar Pradesh 'goons'... So what made her come here and seek votes from the people of Uttar Pradesh? People will give a befitting reply to her by voting for the BJP.

Q: Punjab Chief Minister Charanjit Singh Channi had also commented against the people of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar...

A: Congress leaders Priyanka Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi have also insulted the people of Uttar Pradesh and they will also get a befitting reply.

When the Punjab CM was insulting the people of Uttar Pradesh, Priyanka Gandhi was laughing and clapping. Four generations of Gandhi family sought votes from the people of Uttar Pradesh to win the elections. But Rahul Gandhi went to contest from Wayanad in Kerala. People will give befitting replies to Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi, and to the Congress party as a whole.
New Delhi, March 4 : Two criminals, who have several times attacked the personnel of the Delhi Police, were arrested after a brief exchange of fire in the outer north area of the national capital on Friday.

The accused were identified as Sonu alias Veeru (24) and Sunil (33).

Furnishing details, DCP Brijendra Kumar Yadav said that on March 2, Wednesday, when a mobile patrol vehicle (MPV) was on patrolling duty in Sector 5, Bawana Industrial Area, a snatching incident was reported by a man.

The police vehicle immediately started chasing the two accused, who were on a scooty, and asked them to stop with the help of a loudspeaker.

"Even as police personnel asked them to stop, the accused persons fired one bullet towards the MPV. The police also retaliated and fired three shots aiming at the rear wheel of the scooty, however, the suspects managed to flee away," the DCP said.

Accordingly, the police registered a case under sections 186 (Obstructing public servant in discharge of public functions), 353 (Assault or criminal force to deter public servant from discharge of his duty), 336 (Act endangering life or personal safety of others), 356 (Assault or criminal force in attempt to commit theft of property carried by a person), 379 (Punishment for theft), 34 (Acts done by several persons in furtherance of common intention) of the Indian Penal Code at the Narela Industrial Area Police Station.

The police constituted several teams to nab the accused and two days later, on March 4, Friday, an information was received about the presence of the accused.

A trap was laid at a specified location and as the accused duo were seen coming towards the police party on a motorcycle, the police team tried to stop them but they tried to escape due to which their motorcycle slipped and both of them fell, the senior police official said.

"Even after falling, the accused duo yet again tried to escape and fired three shots at the police party. The cops also retaliated and fired five shots towards them, of which one person received a bullet injury on his leg," the official added.

So far, the police have found that one of the accused had earlier also in 2020 attacked a police party. He is previously involved in 24 criminal cases.

The DCP said that the injured accused was admitted to a hospital where his condition is said to be stable.

Further interrogation is under progress, the official added.
Mumbai, March 4 : Well-known television actress Sara Khan says that she did not take a minute to decide on joining the reality show, 'Lock Upp', when it was offered to her.

She says: "When this show was offered to me, I didn't think about anything but just took it up." The actress has been in limelight post her stint in 'Bigg Boss 4' in 2010 as during the show she got married to Ali Merchant. The couple, however, seperated after the show ended. She asserts that her main motive is to bring the truth to the show and wants people to know her for her work.

"I have been defined by some controversies that happened a long time ago. It's said that I create my own controversies to get famous. I just wanted to let them know that's not true, My work in the last 16 years defines me, and that is what I am," she added.

Talking about how she prepared herself for joining the show and staying without the basic amenities.

She replies: "It's a different experience and I am very sure that I will learn something that will last with me forever, so I am very excited. There is no such strategy because we have never seen this kind of a show. We should know what basic amenities are. There is nothing we can do. We can do anything if we want to." Talking about how the media is keen on making her life controversial, she said: "Even if I am not comfortable discussing my personal life, the media gets into it and makes it worse, so it's best that I only talk about it." The actress hopes to learn many things on the show.

"Usually, in daily soaps and web series, you don't get to have such experiences which I am sure this show will have. But of course I will miss my parents and my dog Chikoo," she concluded.
New Delhi, March 4 : The Economic Offences Wing of the Delhi Police arrested a 45-year-old man who inveigled people into pledging their properties to a bank by painting a rosy picture of the gold and diamond business before them. He then enjoyed the banking facilities and obtained cash credit from the bank to the tune of Rs 18.75 crores.

The accused, Sanjay Tulsyan, a resident of Ramesh Nagar in Delhi, duped gullible people by convincing them that if they pledge their property to a bank, then his company, SSP Diamond, can avail cash credit which can be used to run the said business.

Furnishing details, Joint Commissioner of Police (Economic Offences Wing) Chhaya Sharma said that the present case was registered based on the complaint of five victims.

"Based on the inducement and representation, the complainant pledged their properties with Indian Overseas Bank and the company, SSP Diamond, had obtained cash credit facilities from the bank to the tune of Rs 18.75 crores," the Jt CP said.

It was agreed between the parties that the properties would be pledged for a period of only one year and after the expiry, the properties would be released from the bank and the title would be handed over to the complainants along with the proportionate profit obtained through business.

"However, after availing the CC limit from the bank, the accused Sanjay Tulsyan with other co-accused enjoyed the banking facilities and after expiry of the agreed time, released neither the properties nor shared the profits," the senior official said, adding that in order to defraud the complainant, the accused had diverted the stocks of the company and declared his bank account as Non Performing Asset (NPA).

After this, the bank initiated SARFAESI proceedings and the properties of the complainants were auctioned. The official said, in September 2019, the wife of the accused was arrested and after that Tulsyan absconded and was subsequently declared a proclaimed person.

The police kept technical surveillance on the accused and finally with local enquiry on the ground, nabbed him from his rented accommodation in Ramesh Nagar.

The accused has been taken into police custody in order to unearth the entire conspiracy, the official said, adding, that further investigation is in progress.
New Delhi, March 4 : Scientists have unravelled the science behind the jets of plasma, the fourth state of matter consisting of electrically-charged particles that occur just everywhere in the sun's chromosphere, which is the atmospheric layer just above the Sun's visible surface, latest research said.

These jets, or spicules, appear as thin grass-like plasma structures that constantly shoot up from the surface and are then brought down by gravity. The amount of energy and momentum that these spicules can carry is of fundamental interest in solar and plasma astrophysics. The processes, by which plasma is supplied to the solar wind, and the solar atmosphere is heated to a million degrees Celsius, still remain a puzzle.

Led by astronomers at the Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA), an autonomous institute of the Department of Science and Technology, a team of interdisciplinary researchers from India and the UK have explained the origin of spicules on the Sun, using laboratory experiments as an analogy. They found that the physics underlying paint jets when excited on a speaker is analogous to the solar plasma jets, a Science and Technology Ministry statement said.

In trying to explore the underlying physics of spicule dynamics, the team turned to an an audio speaker. A bass speaker responds to excitation at low frequencies like the rumbling sounds heard in movies. When a liquid is placed above such a speaker and the music is turned on, the free surface of the liquid becomes unstable beyond a particular frequency and starts vibrating. An example of "Faraday excitation" observed in nature is when droplets of water splashes on the back of a partially submerged male alligator during mating display. However, a fluid-like paint or shampoo will result in unbroken jets when excited on a speaker since its long polymer chains give it directionality.

The authors of the article realised that the physics underlying these paint jets must be analogous to the solar plasma jets, and then, asked what it would take to generate such jets in plasma? Sahel Dey, from the Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA), and the first author of the study, said: "The solar plasma can be imagined as threaded by magnetic field lines, much like the long chains in polymer solutions. This makes both the systems anisotropic, with properties varying with the direction in space." "Mathematically too, there exists an analogy in the treatment of stresses involved, though there are obvious differences as well," he added, as per the statement.

"Spurred by the visual similarity between the solar spicules and the jets of paint on the speaker, we investigated the roles of magnetic field on the Sun using state-of-the-art numerical simulations of the solar plasma. In parallel, we explored the role of polymer chains by using slow motion videography on Faraday waves in polymeric solutions," said Murthy O.V.S.N., co-author from the Azim Premji University, where the laboratory experiments were conducted.

The scientists found that the jets are kept intact against instabilities by the magnetic field in the Sun, and by the polymer chains in the polymeric solution respectively. The research has been published on Thursday in the journal Nature Physics.

The scientists elaborated that the plasma right below the visible solar surface (photosphere) is perpetually in a state of convection, much like boiling water in a vessel heated at the bottom. This is ultimately powered by the nuclear energy released in the hot-dense core. The convection serves almost periodic but strong kicks to the plasma in the solar chromosphere, the shallow semi-transparent layer right above the visible solar disk. The chromosphere is 500 times lighter than the plasma in the photosphere. Therefore, these strong kicks from the bottom, not unlike alligator bellowing, shoot the chromospheric plasma outward at ultrasonic speeds in the form of thin columns or spicules.

Spicules come in all sizes and speeds. The existing consensus in the solar community has been that the physics behind the short spicules is different from that of taller and faster spicules.

The study challenges this widespread belief to show that solar convection can by itself form all kinds of jets - short as well as tall. "The simulations were able to reproduce a forest of jets because they explored a more realistic range of parameters than earlier studies," said Piyali Chatterjee, the corresponding author and lead investigator from IIA. The team members used three different supercomputers, all from India, including a National Supercomputing Mission facility at JNCASR (Bengaluru) to run their massively parallel scientific code.

IIA Director, Professor Annapurni Subramaniam, said: "This novel coming together of solar astronomers and condensed matter experimentalists was able to reveal the underlying cause of the poorly understood solar spicules. The power of unifying physics that connects physically disparate phenomena will prove to be the driving force of much more interdisciplinary collaboration."
Mumbai, March 4 : The CGST Thane Commissionerate, Mumbai Zone, have arrested a footwear exporter for fraudulently claiming GST input tax credits (ITC) of Rs 15.26 crore, a top official said here on Friday.

The ITC was claimed on the basis of bogus invoices of Rs 85 crore issued by the fake entities to the company, said CGST Commissioner Rajan Chaudhary.

Based on inputs received from Delhi Customs and further tracking by Thane CGST Commissionerate sleuths, a detailed investigation was launched against Corvette Tradelink Pvt Ltd, Borivali.

Investigation revealed that this firm was engaged in export of footwear and had availed GST Input Tax Credit fraudulently on the basis of bogus invoices issued by non-existent entities from Delhi.

The Mumbai-based company used the fake ITC for payment of IGST for exports through ICD Tughlakabad, Delhi and subsequently claimed IGST refund from the Customs.

One director of the company has been arrested Thursday under various sections of the CGST Act, 2017 and remanded to 14 days judicial custody on Friday by the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Court, for the offences which can attract a five-year jail term plus fine.

Chaudhary said the case is part of an ongoing "Anti-Evasion" drive launched by CGST, Mumbai Zone against the tax evaders and fraudsters, using data-mining, data-analysis and network analysis tools to identify potential tax evaders and fraudsters.

The CGST is going "hammer-and-tongs" on all sectors of the economy, including services, exports, imports and digital to identify tax evaders who are causing unfair competition for honest and compliant tax payers, and the campaign will be intensified in the coming weeks, Chaudhary added.
New Delhi, March 4 : Opposing the plea by Delhi Waqf Board for reopening of Nizamuddin Markaz, which has remained shut since March 3, 2020, the Centre on Friday submitted before the Delhi High Court that it is a 'case property' and cannot be fully reopened.

A bench of Justice Manoj Kumar Ohri was dealing with the Waqf Noard's plea for reopening of the religious place considering recent guidelines issued by the Delhi Disaster Management Authority (DDMA).

During the course of the hearing, advocate Wajeeh Shafiq, representing the board, argued for the reopening of the premises in view of the festival of Shab e-Barat and the coming month of Ramzaan for religious purposes.

Advocate Rajat Nair, appearing on behalf of the Centre, said that the offering of 'namaz' by five people was allowed earlier, and can be done this year also in the religious festival.

While asking the Markaz's counsel to place on record the order concerned of the DDMA, the court slated the hearing for March 11.

The Nizamuddin Markaz was shut following the incident of a spurt of Covid positive cases in the premises in 2020.
Bengaluru, March 4 : The Chairman of Karnataka Digital Economy Mission, B.V. Naidu, said on Friday that it is heartening to see the state governments support and emphasis on the 'Beyond Bengaluru Cluster Seed Fund for Startups'.

The clusters will be established in Mysuru, Mangaluru and Hubballi at a cost of Rs 20 crore each. A grant of Rs 12 crore has been provided for this project this year in the state Budget for 2022-23 presented in the Assembly on Friday.

"We are thrilled with the government's focus on digital economy and on strengthening the clusters of the state," Naidu said.

The emphasis was on startups, MSMEs, fintech and digital infrastructure. A new Nagarothana scheme has been announced at a cost of Rs 10,000 crore for giving importance to infrastructure development in urban areas in view of rapid urbanisation.

New integrated townships, mega textile parks, and food parks are going to be established, which strikes a balance between social sector priorities and industrial and infrastructure growth, he said.

At the Karnataka Digital Economy Mission, our 'Beyond Bengaluru' initiative focuses on boosting the clusters, complementing the state government's efforts to overall enhance and enrich these cluster economies, Naidu added.

Also, the Karnataka Acceleration network is being introduced at a cost of Rs 50 crore in collaboration with the Central government and entrepreneurs, for which Rs 20 crore will be provided by the state government to give boost to the project, he said.
New Delhi, March 4 : Over 2,000 Indian nationals are expected to be evacuated under the 'Operation Ganga' on Saturday.

The Centre has initiated an airlift operation to evacuate Indians, who have found their way to neighbouring countries of war-torn Ukraine. It has deployed a number of special charter as well as Indian Air Force flights to ferry back the citizens.

"Tomorrow, 11 special civilian flights are expected to bring back more than 2,200 Indians, with 10 landing in New Delhi and one in Mumbai," a statement by the Ministry of Civil Aviation said.

"Five flights will originate from Budapest, 2 from Rzeszow and 4 from Suceava. Four C-17 aircraft are airborne for Romania, Poland and Slovakia, which are expected to reach late at night and early morning tomorrow." On Friday, 17 special flights arrived back to India from Ukraine's neighbouring countries, including 14 civilian flights and three C-17 IAF flights.

"One more civilian flight is expected to arrive later in the day. While civilian flights carried 3,142 persons, C-17 flights evacuated 630 passengers." As per the statement, so far, over 9,364 Indians have been evacuated by 43 special civilian flights.

"Seven flights of C-17 have so far evacuated 1,428 passengers and taken 9.7 tonnes of relief material. Today's civilian flights included 4 from Bucharest, 2 from Kosice, 4 from Budapest, 3 from Rzeszow and 2 from Suceava, while IAF flew 2 flights from Bucharest and 1 from Budapest." The Centre has also sent four Union Ministers -- Hardeep Singh Puri, Kiren Rijiju, Jyotiraditya Scindia and Gen V.K. Singh (retd) -- to countries adjoining Ukraine to support and supervise the ongoing evacuation operations.
New Delhi, March 4 : A Kanpur court will on Saturday pronounce its order on the bail plea of perfume businessman Peeyush Jain who was arrested by The Directorate General of GST Intelligence (DGGI) in November last year.

Sixty six days after his arrest, Jain through his counsel Chinmay Pathak, has moved the bail plea of 182 pages including 53 pages of his medical report, before the court of the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate (CMM). His counsel said that he is not a flight risk as he does not have a passport.

"The chargesheet in the matter has been filed but also DGGI has failed to claim GST against my client. Now he deserves bail," said Jain's counsel.

Ambrish Jain who was appearing for the DGGI opposed the move of the defence and said that the accused has not disclosed the source of the cash seized from his house and hence his plea should be dismissed.

The CMM after hearing the four-hour-long arguments noted all the points. The court heard the contention of the defence and the prosecution and reserved it's order.

The Directorate General of GST Intelligence had in December last year conducted raids at Odochem Industries, being run by Peeyush Jain, a manufacturer of perfumery compounds.

The DGGI had recovered Rs 197.49 crore, 23 kg of gold and offending goods of high value from two premises belonging to Peeyush Jain.

Earlier it was said that the DGGI has decided to treat the cash recovered from the premises of Peeyush Jain as the turnover of his company.

It was also stated that after admitting his liability Peeyush Jain, with the approval of the DGGI, will deposit Rs 52 crore as tax dues and will be freed from all allegations.

It was also learnt that the DGGI has agreed with the deposition of Peeyush Jain and finalised the tax liability accordingly.

However, the DGGI made it clear that there was nothing like that. The DGGI had refuted all the claims.

"Based on his voluntary admission of guilt and the evidence available on record, Peeyush Jain was arrested on December 26 under section 132 of the CGST Act," the DGGI had said.
New Delhi, March 4 : The Indian Embassy in Slovakia on Friday said that Indian nationals from western and north-western Ukraine are now coming to the newly-identified border checkpoint at Vysne Nemecke to ramp up the evacuation.

According to the officials in the Indian mission, Vysne Nemecke is a small village on the Slovakia- Ukraine border and opposite Ukraine's Uzhhorod city. From here, the evacuated Indians are transported to the regional capital, Kosice, from where the Indian flights under 'Operation Ganga' are being operated.

The officials in the Indian mission in Slovakia have made arrangements for Indian nationals entering Slovakia from Vysne Nemecke.

Union Minister Kiren Rijiju has personally visited the site to see the arrangement made there for Indian students who have been advised to get to Slovakia's Kosice, instead of going to Budapest in Hungary.

Rijiju also received the first group of Indian nationals, mostly students, on Thursday evening at Vysne Nemecke, before they were transported to Kosice, from where they were flown out to India on an Indian Air Force transport aircraft.

The first SpiceJet flight with evacuated Indian nationals took off from Kosice in Slovakia on March 1.

Government sources said that since the Russian has started military actions in other cities too, the government wants to scale up the evacuation mission to airlift Indians. Similar attempts have been made in other countries too in coordination with local governments, the sources further said.

Meanwhile, another Special Envoy, Union Minister Hardeep Singh Puri, stationed in Budapest, on Friday afternoon said that a group of 1,000 Indian nationals who came into Hungary via Zahony, are being sent to Budapest by train.

"Over 90 youngsters boarded the 12 p.m. train to Budapest while the rest of them will be sent by another at 2 p.m.," Puri tweeted this evening.

He also said that all of them will be sent back to India in five flights scheduled for Friday. Earlier the day, Puri himself visited Zohony to assess the situation at the checkpoint at the Hungary-Ukraine border. He also said that already over 3,000 Indians including students have been sent back to India and a total of seven flights are scheduled for Saturday to take the rest of the Indians assembled in Budapest, who arrived from different places in Ukraine.
Chennai, March 4 : With the Meteorological department reporting the possibility of heavy rains in northern Tamil Nadu in the next few days following a depression in the southwest Bay of Bengal, farmers have geared up to save the harvest by shifting it to Direct Procurement Centres (DPCs) of the Civil Supplies department.

Yellow and Orange alert has been issued on Thursday in delta and coastal districts of the state for the next 48 hours.

The state agriculture department has also directed the farmers to plan the harvest, if any, before the rains using more manpower and to take steps to save the harvest-ready crops.

The Met department has stated that the depression in the Bay of Bengal is likely to intensify into a deep depression and to move northwestwards and off the east coast of Sri Lanka towards the North Tamil Nadu coast in the next 48 hours.

According to the state agriculture department, most of the paddy has been harvested but still 30 per cent of Samba and Thalady season paddy has to be harvested. In addition to this, several tonnes of harvested paddy is kept outside DPCs for sale.

K. Subramanian, Secretary of Cauvery Delta farmers association told IANS, "Even after completing the harvest, we have kept our paddy outside the local DPCs but with the rains being announced by Met department, we have to erect tarpaulins covers and to guard our paddy from being destroyed. If the paddy gets wet, we will have to spend heavily to dry it and repack it which is a big loss for us. We want the Tamil Nadu Civil Supplies department to quickly procure the paddy." Chief Minister has already directed the Civil Supplies department to immediately take steps to procure the paddy from the DPCs and to open more DPCs in coastal and delta districts. The agriculture department has also directed farmers who have not harvested their paddy to immediately do so.

A senior officer of the state civil supplies department told IANS, "We are on a war footing at around 15 districts of the state for procuring paddy and we have more or less 50 DPCs in each district. Each DPC is procuring around 1000 bags per day and each DPC has about 4500 bags which they have procured earlier. Around 18 DPCs will be opened in each district to increase the procurement of Paddy and for this, the respective district collectors have already issued orders." The official said that special guidelines have been given to DPC workers to immediately move the procured paddy into government warehouses and tarpaulins in large quantities have been provided to each DPC for preventing the loss of harvested paddy from sudden rains.

P.R. Rajamuthu, a farmer from Tiruchi district told IANS, "We were slowly recovering after the Covid pandemic and the previous year's rains that destroyed our crops. We urge the civil supplies and agricultural departments to jointly work in an emergency manner and to help us procure the harvested paddy and store it in warehouses so that the paddy farmers of the state are not devastated if sudden unseasonal rains come as predicted by the IMD."
New Delhi, March 4 : The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Friday told the Delhi High Court that it has completed probe into the murder angle of Tihar inmate Ankit Gujjar, who was found dead in the jail premises, but sought more time to complete the investigation and for the final status report.

Special Public Prosecutor Rajesh Kumar, appearing on behalf of CBI, told the bench of Justice Manoj Kumar Ohri that though they have completed the investigation for murder, the extortion probe is still going on.

The court then allowed the probe agency and more time and slated the matter for further hearing on May 6. It also stressed at continuing adequate security to the co-accused in the case. Earlier, the prison authorities have been asked by the court to provide adequate security to the co-accused in judicial custody.

On August 4 last year, Gujjar was found dead with multiple injuries on his body inside the premises of Central Jail No. A3.

As per the court's directions, the investigation of the case is being conducted by the CBI.

The court was dealing with the plea filed by Ankit's family, who had alleged pre-planned conspiracy behind the incident and he was being harassed by jail officials.

During the course of the hearing, advocate Mehmood Pracha, appearing for the petitioners, argued that the status report filed by CBI contained some incorrect facts and that he wished to file a reply in the same.
Bhopal, March 4 : The Madhya Pradesh Police have done a remarkable job and have improved the system to ensure better services to the people of the state in the last few years, but growing crimes against women is still a big concern, said retiring Madhya Pradesh Director General of Police (DGP) Vivek Johri at a farewell ceremony in Bhopal on Friday.

Recounting his two-year tenure as the head (DGP) of the Madhya Pradesh Police, Johri said several initiatives have been introduced, such as behavioural change of police personnel, modernization of policing system in the state and these steps will be fruitful in the future. He said making the police personnel familiar with new technology at the grassroot level was the need of the hour and a lot of work has been done in the last two years.

"Making an effective policing system is not possible without modern technology and its proper knowledge utilisation in this era. I am happy that in the last two years, a lot of work has been done in this sector and for that I would like to thank the state government for considering our request and providing all possible help during this period," Johri added.

In the speech at the farewell function organised at the Moti Lal Nehru stadium in Bhopal, which is also the training ground of the Madhya Pradesh Police - Lal Parade Ground, the 1984 batch IPS (MP cadre), Johri said, "I am proud to be a part of Madhya Pradesh Police and serving the people of the state. We have succeeded in several challenging tasks that came before us, especially fighting against naxalism and many more and it could not have been possible without you (referring to police personnel), but growing crimes against women in the state is still a concern for the state police." He also thanked Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan and Home Minister Narottam Mishra for considering the requirements of the police in various ways. "We received encouragement from the state government time and again, be it facilities for police personnel, their families, promotion and many more. The Chief Minister took several initiatives to encourage the police by bringing various welfare schemes and felicitating the personnel for their remarkable job," Johri said.

He pointed out that the Covid-19 pandemic was another big challenge for the state police, but they did a commendable job without fearing for their own lives and more importantly without having proper training prior to fighting against the pandemic. He said that 162 police personnel lost lives while serving the people during the pandemic.

Born in Bhopal, Johri was appointed the DGP during the then Kamal Nath government in March, 2020 for a two-year term. He assumed office on March 12, 2020.

Meanwhile, 1987 batch IPS officer Sudhir Kumar Saxena on Friday took over charge as the new Director General of Police. Before taking over charge as chief of the MP police, Saxena joined the farewell function for Vivek Johri.
Srinagar, March 4 : Three terrorist associates of proscribed terror outfit LeT were arrested in Jammu and Kashmir's Shopian district on Friday and incriminating materials, including arms and ammunition, recovered from their possession, officials said.

Police said that a joint 'naka' (checkpost) party of police and Army's 44 RR was placed at Khudpora orchards.

"During Naka checking, movement of three suspects was noticed. They were challenged to stop. Instead of stopping, they started fleeing away from the spot but were chased and arrested by the alert joint party," police said.

They have been identified as Ishfaq Ahmad Dar, resident of Gadapora Shopian, Nadeem Rafiq Rather, resident of Killbal Shopian and Rouf Mushtaq Najar, resident of Wangam.

Police said a pistol, a pistol magazine, eight pistol rounds, a hand grenade, an AK magazine, and 20 live AK rounds were recovered from their possession.

Police have registered an FIR and further investigation is in progress.
NPC deputy in space speaks for space industry

Xinhua) 20:40, March 04, 2022

BEIJING, March 4 (Xinhua) -- When the deputies to the 13th National People's Congress (NPC), China's national legislature, gathered in Beijing for the NPC annual session scheduled to open on Saturday, one deputy couldn't be there.

"As I am carrying out a Shenzhou-13 mission in China's space station, I can't attend this year's NPC annual session," astronaut Wang Yaping recently told a Xinhua reporter from the space station 400 km above Earth.

Wang and two other astronauts went into space onboard the Shenzhou-13 spaceship and entered the space station on Oct. 16, 2021, embarking on the six-month space mission.

The trio has been in orbit for more than 130 days, with Wang setting a record for the most days in space by a Chinese astronaut.

As a deputy to the 13th NPC, she often took part in research tours organized by the NPC. She also engaged in social activities such as open classes and space science popularization activities to fulfill her duty.

In her first space mission, Wang delivered a 40-minute open class, China's first live space lecture, in the Shenzhou-10 spaceship on June 20, 2013, to over 60 million schoolchildren nationwide.

Eight years later, she delivered another live space lecture in China's space station on Dec. 9, 2021.

"No matter when and where I am, I will do my best to speak for the space industry, speak for scientists, and attract more people to take part in the space endeavor of the country," said the deputy.

(Web editor: Hongyu, Bianji)
Chennai, March 4 : The American Centre on the premises of US Consulate General's office in Chennai which holds the highest collection of materials on American studies in South Asia will be reopened for public from March 7, after being closed since March 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

However, visitors will be allowed only on an appointment basis and will have to book their slots in advance.

The Centre will be open Monday to Friday between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m.

Visitors above 15 years of age and who are fully vaccinated are allowed entry to American Centre from March 7 onwards. All visitors are requested to follow security regulations and produce a valid photo identification at the consulate's Cathedral Road entrance.

Masks are compulsory during the visit and only cell phones can be deposited at the security counter.

US Consul General in Chennai, Judith Ravin said: "We are happy to welcome the patrons and public back to the American Centre. We've missed you! The American Centre is a landmark in the city and has welcomed visitors for more than 74 years. Whether you come to check out one of our nearly 16000 books, watch a DVD, attend a programme, or inquire about US higher education, we look forward to seeing you again."
New Delhi, March 4 : Russian State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin said that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is in Poland.

"Zelensky left Ukraine. The deputies of the Verkhovna Rada said that they could not get to him in Lvov. Now he is in Poland," he wrote, RT reported.

Mikhail Podolyak, adviser to the head of the office of the President of Ukraine, declined to comment on information about the whereabouts of Zelensky.

"For the safety of the President, we will not distribute information about where he is now. I will also neither refute nor confirm information about his whereabouts," he was quoted as saying at a press conference in Lvov.

Earlier, Colonel-General Mikhail Mizintsev, head of the Russian National Defence Control Centre, said that the Kiev regime had almost completely lost the ability to manage the administrations of the regions and regions of the country.

"Firstly, the Kiev regime has almost completely lost the ability to manage the administrations of the regions and districts of the country. Secondly, civil law administrations in cities and towns of Ukraine are deprived of the right to deal with the civilian population, they are unable to solve elementary issues of a social and domestic nature," he said, RT reported.

According to him, in most Ukrainian cities and towns, national battalions of the so-called territorial defence are rampaging, which, in fact, are "Nazis and mercenaries who joined them, terrorists and bandits, including those of foreign origin".
New Delhi, March 4 : A suicide blast inside a Shia mosque shook Peshawar's Kocha Risaldar area on Friday, with officials saying that at least 56 people were killed and 194 were injured, Dawn reported.

Mohammad Asim, a spokesperson for Lady Reading Hospital (LRH), confirmed the casualties, adding that some of the injured were in critical condition.

Officials, who termed the incident a suicide attack, initially said that two attackers were involved. However, CCTV footage released later in the day showed a lone attacker clad in a black shalwar kameez reaching the mosque in the city's Qissa Khwani Bazaar on foot and brandishing a pistol.

He opened fired on police personnel deployed outside the main entrance for security before running inside. The attacker also opened fire on a man who tried to stop him and managed to enter the mosque, where worshippers had gathered for Friday prayers, after which an explosion took place.

Talking to the media, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Inspector General of Police Moazzam Jah Ansari said two police officials were deputed at the mosque for security.

He said that one constable was killed while another police official was in critical condition. The senior police officer said that around five to six kilogrammes of explosive material was used, adding that there were no prior reports about the attack.

Capital City Police Officer (CCPO) Peshawar Mohammad Ijaz Khan confirmed the chain of events, adding that one police official was killed in the gunfight outside the mosque.
New Delhi, March 4 : The National Investigation Agency has filed a charge sheet against five alleged Khalistani terrorists in a case of smuggling of narcotics, weapons and explosives across the India-Pakistan border via drones.

The accused were identified as Harmesh Singh alias Harmesh alias Kali, Darvesh Singh alias Shinda (both residents of Punjab's Ferozpur), Gurmukh Singh, a resident of Jalandhar, Gagandeep Singh, a resident of Kapurthala, and Lakhbir Singh Rode alias Baba, a resident of Moga.

The case was initially registered at Mamdot police station, in Ferozepur in August 2021 and the NIA had re-registered it in November 2021 under various sections of the Arms Act, the NDPS Act, the Explosive Substance Act and the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act.

The terror probe agency said that investigation revealed that the charge sheeted accused persons had smuggled illegal consignments of arms, ammunitions, explosives and narcotics from across the India-Pakistan border to carry out terror activities in India.

"These illegal consignments were sent by accused Lakhbir Singh Rode (chief of ISYF, a banned terrorist organisation) and his associates from Pakistan via drones," the NIA said.

According to the agency, the consignments were received by co-accused and further discreetly passed on to other accused persons involved in the conspiracy to carry out subversive activities in India.

"Incriminating evidence has been found against all the chargesheeted accused persons," it said.

Till now, five accused have been arrested in the case while Rode is absconding.
New Delhi, March 4 : Centre on Friday said that more than 20,000 Indians have left the Ukraine so far. However, as many as 300 citizens are still stranded in Kharkiv, 700 in Sumy and 900 in Pesochin.

Ministry of External Affairs' spokesperson Arindam Bagchi said that 18 more flights have landed in last 24 hours, taking the total number of evacuation flights to 48 and number of evacuees to 10,348 Indians.

"In next 24 hours, 16 planes scheduled, including 4 military aircraft," said Bagchi, adding that flight operations will continue to bring back everyone.

He also said that the Indian embassy have managed to get five buses at Pesochin, of them, two buses left for Lviv on yesterday (Thursday) and three buses left for Moldova on today (Friday). "We are looking at more buses. We are monitoring the situation," he added.

India have requested the Ukrainian authorities for trains to ferry stranded Indian nationals. "We are in touch with the authorities, colleges, universities and student contractors. We are concerned about it," he asserted.

India has sent six tranches of humanitarian aid to Ukraine via neighbouring countries like Poland, Slovak, Romania on Indian Air force planes.

Of the six, two were sent on Friday. One Indian Air Force flight carried six tonne of aid to Romania and second carried nine tonne of aid to Slovakia.

The war between Russia and Ukraine has entered ninth day with Russian troops taking over cities after cities.
Mumbai, March 4 : Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) on Thursday inaugurated India's largest and multi-faceted destination, the 'Jio World Centre', spread over 18.5 acres at the prime Bandra Kurla Complex.

Envisioned by RIL Director Nita Ambani, the complex was launched by dedicating the 'Dhirubhai Ambani Square' and a musical 'Fountain of Joy', besides the country's biggest Jio World Convention Centre.

Set to become an iconic business, commercial and cultural destination with upscale retail experiences and a curated selection of cafes and fine-dine restaurants, service apartments, offices, and state-of-the art-convention facilities, the JWC will open in phases till 2023.

"JWC is a tribute to our nation and a reflection of the aspirations of a New India. It is envisioned as Mumbai's new landmark, a point where we come together to script the next chapter of the country's growth story," Nita Ambani said at the launch.

The Dhirubhai Ambani Square -- dedicated to the legendary industrialist and Reliance founder -- is centred around the Fountain of Joy, with a free entry, open public space, which is set to become a 'must-see' destination for Mumbaikars and international tourists.

There will be spectacular fountain shows of water, light and music, with eight fire-shooters, 392 water-jets and over 600 LED lights that create a display of an evolving lotus bloom with petals dancing the tune of music.

On the opening night, Nita Ambani paid a special tribute to teachers -- having been one herself -- and expressed her gratitude to them for keeping the flame of knowledge alive in these challenging times, applauding them as real heroes.

To mark the inaugural event, more than 250 teachers from BrihanMumbai Municipal Corporation and other schools attended the show.

The Dhirubhai Ambani Square will open daily in the evening.

The multi-dimensional JWC will host major business and social events, consumer shows, conferences, expos, mega-concerts, gala banquets and weddings, among other facilities, setting global benchmarks backed by technology.

Among the features here are: Three exhibition halls spanning 161,460 sq ft to accommodate 16,500 guests, two convention halls spread over 107,640 sq ft for 10.640 people, a 32,290 sq ft ballroom for 3,200 invitees, 25 meeting rooms, 139,930 sq ft for pre-function concourse at all levels, a huge kitchen to whip up over 18,000 meals daily, hybrid and digital experiences enabled by 5G network, and India's biggest parking lot in a convention centre to accommodate 5,000 cars.
Thiruvananthapuram, March 4 : Eyebrows were raised on Friday when the CPI-M's Kerala state Secretary Kodiyeri Balakrishnan announced the name of controversial senior party leader P. Sasi in the 88-member state committee.

The 23rd State Party Conference of the CPI-M ended at Kochi on Friday and the new team was selected to run the party's state unit for the next three years.

Sasi, who hails from Kannur, was dropped following a scandal where he misbehaved with the daughter of a CPI-M leader a decade back.

Powerful when E.K. Nayanar was the Chief Minister during 1996-2001 and later he became the Kannur district party Secretary.

Later following the complaint, a party committee probed it and concluded it was true, leading to his ouster.

But Balakrishnan said that he was not dropped on the reason for what the media now says.

"He was not dropped for the reason as you are saying now (misbehaviour), instead it was for defying the party organisational policies. There is nothing wrong in he being taken back as those who correct themselves will be always welcome," he said.

Pouncing on the induction of Sasi into the State Committee was top Congress leader Bindu Krishna who said it is the most intriguing decision, as in the four day CPI-M party meeting, all heard the report of what state Higher Education Minister R.Bindhu highlighted about it being a tough time for women in the party.

"This can only be done by the CPI-M, who speaks from the rooftop on women empowerment and what not. Now see, a leader like Sasi who was kept out for misbehaviour is brought back to the party state unit's crucial decision making body. The CPI-M speaks one thing and does the opposite and there is no better party than the CPI-M who deceives," he said.

On Wednesday, Minister Bindhu is reported to have expressed her displeasure at the attitude of the male leaders towards the women members, while speaking at the internal meeting of the party members.

Sources said that she minced no words as she said the attitude of male leaders towards the women members in the party is "bad" and things go from bad to worse, if a complaint is raised.
Gandhinagar, March 4 : The Gujarat Assembly on Friday passed two bills pertaining to amendments in the Gujarat Land Grabbing (Prohibition) Act of 2020 and the Gujarat Organic Agricultural University Act of 2017.

The bills were passed in absence of the Opposition as the Congress MLAs staged a walkout immediately after Question Hour to protest against the suspension of senior legislator Punja Vansh for seven days.

The Gujarat Land Grabbing (Prohibition)(Amendment) Bill-2022, tabled by the state Revenue Minister Rajendra Trivedi, proposed that the word 'land' in the original act "shall not include the land in respect of which applications for grants are pending on the date of commencement of this Act under the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights), Act, 2006".

The amendment would to protect tribals from any penal action under the Land Grabbing Act if they have already applied for allocation of land under Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, the minister said.

Another amendment proposed was about the provision of appeals against orders issued by special courts constituted under the Land Grabbing Act. The minister said that now aggrieved persons can file an appeal in the High Court against the special court orders within 30 days, something which was not there in the present Act.

"Under the Land Grabbing Act, a total of 12,342 applications have been received, of them 818 requests relating to 1014.61 hectare land have been approved by the committee. Meanwhile, a total of 586 FIRs have been filed against 2,256 people," said Trivedi.

The Assembly also passed the Gujarat Organic Agricultural University (Amendment) Bill on Friday, which proposed to rename Gujarat Organic Agricultural University as Gujarat Natural Farming and Organic Agricultural University.

The Gujarat Organic Agricultural University came into existence after the Assembly passed a bill in 2017, and is currently functioning from the Anand Agricultural University campus in Anand town.
New Delhi, March 4 : The Centre has approved the appointment of Delhi High Court's Chief Justice D.N. Patel to the post of Chairperson of the Telecom Disputes Settlement and Appellate Tribunal (TDSAT).

"As approved by the Appointments Committee of the Cabinet, the Central Government here appoints Justice D.N. Patel, Chief Justice of Delhi High Court to the post of Chairperson, Telecom Disputes Settlement and Appellate Tribunal in the salary of Rs 2,50,000 (fixed) p.m., for a period of four years, or until further orders, whichever is the earliest," read an official order.

As per the order, the posting will be for a period of four years from the date of assumption of charge or till attaining 70 years age, whichever is the earliest.

The conditions of service will be governed by the provisions of the Tribunals Reforms Act, 2021 and the Tribunal (Conditions of Service) Rules, 2021, the order said.

Born on March 13, 1960, Justice Patel was elevated as Chief Justice of Delhi High Court on June 7, 2019.

Previously, he has served as Acting Chief Justice of Jharkhand High Court and also served as Judge of Jharkhand High Court and Gujarat High Court The current Chairperson's term ended last year, but the Supreme Court extended it until June 2021 because the post had not been filled.
New Delhi, March 4 : Russian President Vladimir Putin told German Chancellor Olaf Scholz that Ukrainian nationalists are using people, including foreigners, as human shields.

The press service of the Kremlin, in a statement, said: "It is emphasised that the main danger comes from neo-Nazi military formations that commit numerous war crimes using terrorist methods, placing strike weapons in residential areas, cynically hiding behind the civilian population." Separately, Putin stressed in a conversation that nationalists use foreign citizens as human shields, RT reported.

"In addition, in fact, more than 6,000 foreign citizens, mostly students, were taken hostage, who are used by the radicals as human shields. Attempts to leave the areas controlled by the Ukrainian security forces are suppressed with the help of weapons," the statement said.

"Vladimir Putin outlined the Russian principled approaches in the context of conducting a special military operation to protect the population of Donbass, explained in detail its goals and objectives, which will certainly be implemented," the statement added.

The President of Russia confirmed that Moscow is open to dialogue with all parties who want peace in Ukraine, but subject to the fulfilment of all Russian requirements.
New Delhi, March 4 : The Congress on Friday lodged a complaint with the Election Commission over the alleged misuse of power and intimidation of voters by the BJP in poll-bound Manipur.

Led by Jairam Ramesh and Salman Khurshid, the Congress delegation submitted a memorandum to the EC officials.

The Congress alleged that the BJP-led Manipur government released funds -- Rs 15.70 crore on February 1 and Rs 92.65 lakh on March 1 -- to banned militant groups under 'Suspension of Operation' when the Model Code of Conduct was in place in the state.

The party said that a statement issued by the President of banned Kuki National Organisation intimidated the electorate to vote for the BJP or face dire consequences if the instructions are not followed.

"Poll violence and criminal intimidation was witnessed by Congress leaders and workers during their campaign for the Manipur Assembly elections," Ramesh said.

The second and final phase of Assembly elections in Manipur will be held on Saturday. The votes will be counted on March 10.
Kohima, March 4 : NSCN-IM's octogenarian General Secretary Thuingaleng Muivah was hospitalised in Nagaland on Friday due to sudden illness, a top official here said.

A top Nagaland government official told IANS on condition of anonymity that Isak-Muivah faction of the National Socialist Council of Nagalim (NSCN-IM) leader Muivah, 88, was airlifted from NSCN-IM's headquarters' in Hebron in Nagaland to a hospital in Dimapur. His condition is stable now, the official said, adding that he had some stomach upset due to indigestion.

Last year in July, Muivah was admitted to the Dimapur hospital after he tested positive for Covid-19.

The dominant Naga outfit headed by Muviah and the Indian government have been engaged in peace negotiations for over two decades. The NSCN-IM, the leading group among the several Naga outfits, and the Centre had inked a Framework Agreement in August 2015.

The Central government has been separately holding peace talks with the NSCN-IM and eight other Naga outfits, which came together a few years ago under the banner of 'Naga National Political Groups' (NNPGs).

The NSCN-IM and other outfits entered into a ceasefire agreement with the Centre in 1997 and in the subsequent years, held more than 85 rounds of political negotiations with the government since then.
Chandigarh, March 4 : Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar said on Friday that the Haryana Prevention of Unlawful Conversion of Religion Bill, 2022, has been introduced on the third day of the Assembly session with an aim to maintain communal harmony and brotherhood and not divide the society.

He said that in the past, many incidents have been reported from Yamunanagar, Panipat, Faridabad, Gurugram and Nuh wherein forced conversions were done by allurement, fake promises of taking abroad, expanding business and running away from home.

Such incidents have become a matter of great concern, said the Chief Minister.

FIRs have also been registered in many cases. Such incidents are happening all over the country and different states have made their own laws to stop such incidents, said Khattar.

The Chief Minister said this while addressing the media after the debate on Governor's address during the ongoing session of Vidhan Sabha here.

He said the Bill does not bar a person from willful conversion, provided that such person submits an application before the District Magistrate one month in advance.

Although the provisions in the Indian Penal Code too call for action against those involved in forced conversion, this does not provide complete solution to this problem, hence enactment of this law is the need of the hour, the Chief Minister clarified.

While responding to another question, Khattar said that after this Bill is passed, it will surely be brought into force.

But if any complaint is received in older cases, action will be taken as per the law.
New Delhi, March 4 : With Russia state media reporting Russian authorities have arranged 130 buses for evacuation of Indian students from war-battered Sumy and Kharkiv in Ukraine, India on Friday said that pulling them out was not possible without a ceasefire as the gunfights and bombing are continuing in these areas.

Russian news agency TASS said that the Russia is ready to send 130 buses to evacuate stranded Indian students and other foreigners from war-torn Ukraine's Kharkiv and Sumy cities to its Belgorod Region, quoting top Russian military official Colonel-General Mikhail Mizintsev.

TASS had also said that this came a day after Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke to Russian President Vladimir Putin and discussed the safe evacuation of Indians from the war-torn Ukraine.

Over 700 Indian students are stuck in Sumy and they are running out of basic necessities like food and water and they have been urging the Indian government to get them evacuated from there.

Meanwhile, the government sources said that the Indian officials have been deputed in Belgorod to make the necessary arrangements for the Indian nationals including students stuck in Sumy and Kharkiv and once the safe passage is provided or in case of ceasefire, they will be evacuated from these places.

India's prime concern is to evacuate its nationals from the conflict zones of Kharkiv and Sumy in eastern Ukraine, Ministry of External Affairs spokesman Arindam Bagchi said.

Latest updates on Russia-Ukraine War
Varanasi/Chandauli, March 4 : Defence Minister Rajnath Singh on Friday said that the entire world will have to pay heavy price if war between Ukraine and Russia continues.

Addressing an election rally in Chandauli, ahead of the last phase of the Assembly elections on Monday, he said that if war between Russia and Ukraine continues, it will cause more trouble.

"Whole world has to bear the brunt of the war and India will not remain untouched by this," he said.

Singh said that most nations of the world import oil, and gas from Russia and the US has imposed sanctions on Russia. "If their economies are affected, the entire world will have to pay the price and India will not remain untouched," he said, but assured the people that the Modi government would overcome these challenges.

A day before end of campaigning in the Assembly polls, Rajnath Singh addressed rallies at Sakaldia, Malhani, and Chakia. He talked about 'Operation Ganga' started by the Indian government to evacuate Indian nationals including students from Ukraine and said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi's efforts have enhanced India's reputation globally. He also spoke about free grain schemes of both the Union and state governments during Covid.

Latest updates on Russia-Ukraine War
New Delhi, March 4 : Russian President Vladimir Putin told German Chancellor Olaf Scholz that in Ukraine, the appearance of mercenaries from third countries and even jihadists is increasingly being recorded.

The press service of the Kremlin said in a statement quoting Putin, "We fix the appearance of mercenaries from third countries, including from Albania and Croatia, Kosovo militants and even jihadists with experience of military operations in Syria," RT reported.

Putin told German Chancellor Scholz that Ukrainian nationalists are using people, including foreigners, as human shields.

The special services of Great Britain and the United States using Polish territory are sending militants to Ukraine, as per the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service.

"Information coming to the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service indicates that the US and British intelligence services in recent weeks have de facto turned the territory of Poland into a 'logistics hub' used to supply weapons and transport militants to Ukraine, including from the Middle East," the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) press bureau said.

SVR stated that the intelligence of the NATO countries supplies the Security Service of Ukraine or SBU with information about the Russian Armed Forces, RT reported.

"Together with the Americans, the functioning of the Polish logistics hub is also provided by representatives of the intelligence agencies of Great Britain, Canada and a number of other NATO countries. They maintain direct contacts with representatives of the SBU and the main intelligence directorate of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, supplying them, among other things, with intelligence information about the plans and movements of the Russian armed forces," a statement from the Russian intelligence said.
New Delhi, March 5 : As the Ukraine-Russia war has led to talks of energy issues for that part of the world and a possible threat of another Chernobyl=like situation, experts have pointed out the need to pay attention to the potential water security that the war-torn country may face sooner rather than later.

Himanshu Kulkarni, executive director of the Advanced Center for Water Resources Development and Management (ACWADAM) has steered the concept of hydrogeology-based spring-shed management that has been practiced from local to national level, especially after he authored the NITI Aayog publication on Himalayan Springs' Revival and Rejuvenation programme.

Kulkarni admitted that the impact of war on water resources, sub-surface water and groundwater/aquifers has not been documented in depth as much as it should have been. "But there is no denying that air, water and soil, all are polluted in a given war situation and especially in modern times when armed conflict means use of chemicals on a large scale," Kulkarni said.

Geologist S.P. Sati, a Professor with Uttarakhand State University of Horticulture and Forestry, and having a number of research papers in peer reviewed publications, said that whenever missiles fired in war burst, they create cracks, the subsurface fractures are widened because of it.

The hilly areas, the undulating land may witness large scale damage to underground aquifers and also to subsurface water sources.

"Not just this, the massive scale of chemicals used in weaponry is also liable to contaminate the groundwater," Sati told IANS.

Ukrainian citizens have already had complaints about the quality of water provided to its large population. Over and above it, in case of further chemical contamination, it is the survivors that would bear the brunt. A 2019 report by the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) pointed out that children in prolonged conflicts are more likely to die from diseases linked to the lack of clean water than from violence directly related to the conflict itself.

Ukraine's major watershed comprises Danube (795,656 sq km), Don (458,694 sq km), Dnieper (533,966 sq km), and the Don and partly the Dnieper being part of the theatre of ongoing war. Ukraine occupies the southwestern portion of the Russian Plain (East European Plain) and comprises almost entirely of level plains. The Ukrainian landscape, however, has some diversity: its plains are broken by highlands as well as by lowlands, deep gorges and valleys and Uplands too, up to 1000 feet deep or high.

The southern area of Ukraine has not yet witnessed a war situation but with Russia approaching from Crimea, may soon be there. Mountainous areas such as the Ukrainian Carpathians and Crimean Mountains are found on that country's borders and account for barely 5 per cent of its area.

Waterman and Stockholm Water Award winner Rajendra Singh said, forget humanity, this is a clear case of violence on nature. "Whenever there is a war, the greatest damage is caused to nature. It is a violence against nature. It leads to troubled humans. If not today, tomorrow that country shall face water security issues." (Nivedita Khandekar can be reached at nivedita.k@ians.in)
New Delhi, March 5 : The Russian military is using the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone to deploy their weapons so that Ukraine could not strike back. It is likely that such a scenario will be repeated at the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant, said Yaroslav Demchenkov, Ukraine Deputy Minister for Energy.

"We are very worried about active hostilities in Voznesensk, near the Yuzhnoukrainsk nuclear power plant," he said in an article in Ukrayinska Pravda.

He said for the first time in world history, a large-scale war is being waged in a country with more than a dozen nuclear reactors and thousands of tons of highly radioactive spent nuclear fuel.

Ukraine has 15 nuclear power units, including six at Europe's largest nuclear power plant, Zaporizhzhya (6,000 MW), which also has a spent nuclear fuel storage facility.

On March 4, the Russian army captured the territory of the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant. The occupiers control the administrative buildings and the passage to the station, he said.

"It is known that the occupying forces captured the Chernobyl and Zaporozhye nuclear power plants. These are acts of nuclear terrorism," Demchenkov said.

The Ukraine Minister said it is clear that the enemy wants to capture all major energy facilities. And to unbalance the energy system, which now, despite active hostilities and significant damage, operates and provides Ukrainians with electricity.

None of Ukraine's nuclear power plants (like any other nuclear power plant in the world) is designed to be at the epicenter of hostilities, and radioactive releases from missiles into existing nuclear power plants may exceed emissions from Chernobyl and Fukushima.

In the worst case, the reactor and cooling system may be destroyed. Under such a scenario, radioactive releases could render much of the European continent uninhabitable for at least many decades and hundreds and hundreds of kilometers away, Demchenkov said.

The accident at the Zaporizhzhya NPP will be 6-10 times stronger in consequences than the Chernobyl NPP. This is a threat not only to Ukraine, Russia and Belarus, but also to European countries, he said.

Latest updates on Russia-Ukraine War
Gandhinagar, March 5 : The Gujarat government on Friday put on record the details of the Ahmedabad-Gandhinagar Metro Rail project, where it was found by the internal auditor that land admeasuring around 20 hectares for the project was "questionable" in nature.

During the ongoing Budget session of the Gujarat Assembly, the Urban Development Department tabled the Gujarat Metro Rail Corporation (GMRC) Limited's annual report for the year 2020-21.

According to the independent auditor's report, "It was observed that the GMRC did not have valid documents of the title deeds of a freehold land situated at Survey No. 525 at Kathwada, Vastral in Ahmedabad, admeasuring 18,000 sq mt that is around two hectares, whose market value as on March 2021 was over Rs 16.82 crore." Other than that, the auditor also noted that land situated at final plot No. 56 and 285 at Ahmedabad Apperal Park (SEZ), admeasuring 17.62 hectares, was allotted by the Gujarat Industrial Development Corporation (GIDC) to the Metro company for the construction of a depot, "however the mode of transfer of this land from GIDC to the company has not been decided by the Gujarat government and according to the auditor, the land transfer is questionable".

The Ahmedabad-Gandhinagar Metro was a dream project of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the then Gujarat Chief Minister. The project was conceptualised initially in 2003 and it was put on a paper in 2005. After 16 years and umpteen number of route changes, the Corporation has been able to run it on only a 6 km stretch.

The 39.26 km stretch of Ahmedabad Metro Phase-1 project comprises two lines and 32 stations. It is being constructed at an estimated cost of Rs 10,773 crore.

GMRC is reportedly planning to commence trial lines in all sections of Line-2 by August, coinciding with 75 years of India's Independence, and just ahead of the state elections scheduled to be held in December.
New Delhi, March 5 : Jitendra Singh, Minister of State for Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions, said on Friday that Prime Minister Narendra Modi is committed to strengthen the local bodies in Jammu and Kashmir.

Addressing the valedictory function of a three-day orientation programme on urban governance for Mayors, Chairpersons and Municipal Commissioners, Chief Executive Officers from urban local bodies from Jammu and Kashmir at the Indian Institute of Public Administration (IIPA) here, Singh said that the smooth elections to the village councils and the first-ever elections to district councils after seven decades conducted in J&K were a symbol of commitment of the Union government to strengthen the local bodies.

Singh further said that the local bodies' representatives should be in better coordination with the officials to be able to remove several obstacles easily, and urged them to inculcate vision, imagination and innovation.

He also said that efforts are on to conduct a number of programmes in Jammu and Kashmir such as startup-based workshops which can open a new horizon for the people, especially the youth of the Valley while the discussions are on with the Skill Development and Entrepreneurship Ministry to organise a Rozgar Mela.

Referring to the multiple roles of elected representatives like developing bottom-up connectivity in city governance, he said that they should take leadership roles in community participation and mobilisation of local resources.

They also need to operate as an intermediary link between city government and community, and state leadership and city.
New Delhi, March 5 : The Information and Broadcasting (I&B) Ministry has assured the film fraternity that 'suitable' amendments would be proposed to the 'Cinematograph Act 1952' to combat film piracy.

Addressing a consultation meeting of film associations through video conferencing, I&B Secretary Apurva Chandra said that the issues with respect to proposed 'Cinematograph Amendment Bill' and anti-piracy issues will be addressed after consultation with the stakeholders of the industry.

The meeting in Mumbai, followed a similar consultation with the film fraternity from South India, held in Chennai on Thursday.

An 'Expert Committee' under the chairmanship of Justice Mukul Mudgal was constituted in 2013 to examine the issues of certification under the 'Cinematograph Act, 1952'. Another committee was set up under the Chairmanship of Shyam Benegal in 2016 to evolve broad guidelines for certification within the ambit of the Cinematograph Act and Rules.

Among the recommendations is the age based certification of films. Chandra also talked about the merger of four film media units, namely Films Division, Directorate of Film Festivals, National Film Archives of India, and Children's Film Society, India with the National Film Development Corporation (NFDC) Limited.

Chandra expressed that the basic objective is NFDC should become the entity through which the revenues from the film industry can be utilised for development of the industry.

"None of the existing schemes is being discontinued. We will strengthen NFDC so that they can rotate staff and deliver on the responsibilities assigned to them," he said.

Speaking about the Finance Minister's announcement of setting up an Animation, Visual Effects, Gaming, and Comic (AVGC) Promotion Task Force, Chandra said that the ministry is working on its 'terms of reference'.

"We hope to set up this Task Force in this month itself, so that work can begin and we are able to utilise the potential of the sunrise sector," he said.

Chairperson, CBFC Prasoon Joshi said that the change in design of the film certificate is symbolic of what the Board seeks to achieve, in terms of making processes seamless, digital and more stakeholder-friendly.

"The process of certification has been smoothened as much as possible; while we continue to need human intervention for watching the films and certifying it, we have streamlined the system so as to speed up other parts of the process," Joshi added.
United Nations, March 5 : After a Russian attack on a nuclear facility in Ukraine, India said on Friday that it attaches "highest importance" to ensuring the safety of the atomic plants while regretting that the situation there has "worsened further".

Speaking at an emergency meeting of the Security Council on the danger from attacks on the nuclear facilities in the country under Russian invasion, India's Permanent Representative TS Tirumurti said: "India attaches the highest importance to ensuring safety and security of nuclear facilities as any accident involving the nuclear facilities may have severe consequences for public health and the environment." "We continue to carefully follow the developments regarding the safety and security of Ukraine's nuclear power reactors and facilities," he said.

Earlier, in a dramatic video call to the Council while a plane, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director-General Rafael Mariano Grossi gave an assurance that there had been no leak from the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant where a building in the complex went up in flames, but the six reactors there were not damaged.

Grossi, who was on his way to Iran for negotiations on resuming its participation in the international agreement on preventing it from acquiring nuclear weapons, said that he was ready to go to Ukraine to ensure the safety of the atomic facilities there.

Titumurti said: "We have also noted the latest information available with regard to the nuclear power plants and facilities in Ukraine, including today's updates provided by the DG (director-general of) IAEA on the current situation." "India accords the highest priority to the discharge by the IAEA of its safeguards and monitoring activities, in accordance with its statute in an effective, non-discriminatory and efficient manner," he added.

United Arab Emirates Permanent Representative Lana Zaki Nusseibeh, who presided over the session recalled the nuclear disasters at Fukushima and Chernobyl and warned that an attack on a nuclear facility has the potential to lead to catastrophic and unimaginable consequences.

She said that the nuclear threat would be devastating to humanity.

Ukraine's Permanent Representative Sergiy Kyslytsya said: "We have survived the night that could have stopped the history of Ukraine and Europe." Not just Ukraine that is at risk, but "it is the world, it is humanity", he said.

"We all waited to exhale as we watched the horrific situation unfold in real-time," US Permanent Representative Linda Thomas-Greenfield said.

She asked Russia to stop the advance on another nuclear plant from which its troops were 20 miles away.

Several countries including Kenya and Brazil pointed out that attacks on nuclear power plants are prohibited under an annexe to the Geneva Conventions that lay down the international legal standards for humanitarian treatment in war.

Tirumurti turned his attention to the Indians stuck in Ukraine.

"While we are discussing the nuclear dimension of an unfolding conflict, this Council must acknowledge that there is a pressing humanitarian crisis confronting us in Ukraine, where safety and security of innocent civilians including several thousand Indian nationals, in particular, students are at stake," he said.

He said that he hoped that the second round of talks between Russia and Ukraine would lead to the establishment of a safe corridor for their evacuation.

Kyslytsya asked Russia's Permanent Representative Vasily Nebenzia to appeal to Moscow to create a safe corridor for foreign students to leave Ukraine.

Nebenzia denied that Russian troops had attacked the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant and the fire was the result of actions by Ukrainians.

Russian troops had earlier taken control of Chernobyl, the site of the 1986 disaster that continues to take a toll in lives.

Tirumurti said that Prime Minister had reiterated in his conversations with global leaders including the Russian Federation and Ukraine that "differences must be resolved through sustained dialogue and diplomacy".

(Arul Louis can be reached at arul.l@ians.in and followed @arulouis)

Latest updates on Russia-Ukraine War

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
United Nations, March 5 : UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Friday condemned the suicide bomb attack inside a Shiite mosque at Peshawar in Pakistan.

"Houses of worship should be havens, not targets. I condemn today's horrific attack on a mosque in Peshawar, Pakistan, during Friday prayers," he tweeted, Xinhua news agency reported.

"My condolences to those who have lost loved ones, and my solidarity with the people of Pakistan." The suicide bomb attack left at least 56 people dead and nearly 200 others injured, according to hospital and police officials.
GAO confirms the FCCs decision of selecting CostQuest Associates (CQA) as the provider of the National Location Fabric Data Set. CQA will deliver the first version of the Broadband Serviceable Location Fabric (BSLF) to the FCC later this year.

CostQuest Associates (CQA), awardee of the U.S. Federal Communication Commissions (FCC) Broadband Serviceable Location Fabric (BSLF) project, has officially been contracted to deliver the broadband location data to support the Commissions Broadband Data Collection (BDC) program. On February 24, 2022, The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) denied a protest challenging the FCCs award to CQA filed by another bidder.

Jim Stegeman, CQAs President and CEO, said that while the delay brought on by the protest was not optimal, CQA is nonetheless on-track to deliver the BSLF quickly. Congress made a historic commitment to funding the closing of the Digital Divide, and part of that commitment included providing accurate data to support the efficient spending of public funds. The unfortunate delay in the start of this project will not keep us from delivering the quality data that supports giving Americans access to advanced broadband service.

Stegeman went on to say that the data will be made available to not only broadband service providers, but state governments as well. States will have direct access to the location data in the BSLF to support the collective effort of building a better national map. The Commissions Broadband Data Task Force (Task Force) and the Office of Economics and Analytics (OEA) will provide further guidance on allowing access to the location data.

Though the protest delayed commencement of contract performance by more than three months, CQA will deliver the first version of the BSLF to the FCC later this year. The BLSF will be used to match broadband provider submissions of service availability, and other information, to build more granular broadband location maps. The FCC recently announced that service provider data submissions utilizing BSLF data must be submitted to the Commission by September 1st of this year.

More information about CQAs BSLF and BroadbandFabric data sets can be found at https://www.costquest.com/products/broadbandfabric/

About CQA

CostQuest Associates (CQA) has long led the communications industry in knowledge of costs, network modeling, telecommunications economics, and regulation. CQA applied its communications knowledge, and its data science chops to developing the most accurate data to support business and policy decisions related to broadband deployment. CQA has offices in Cincinnati, Ohio and Seattle, Washington.

Disclaimer: This disclaimer is required by CostQuests Contract No. 273FCC22C0001. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has not reviewed or approved any statement in this document for accuracy or validity. The FCC and its employees do not endorse goods or services provided by the Contractor or any other contractor.
We are committed to helping our customers in leveraging Microsoft Azure for building highly scalable data pipelines from data integration, data storage, data governance, data analytics to business intelligence. Microsoft's GOLD partner status will help us build trust with our customers.

Anblicks, a US-based Cloud Data Analytics Company, has achieved Microsoft Gold-Certified competency for data analytics in the areas of Business Intelligence, Advanced Analytics, and Big Data. Data Analytics competency, given to the organizations that can demonstrate technical capabilities in creating business intelligence solutions and show proficiency in connecting data sources, performing data transformations, and modeling and visualizing data.

As a Microsoft Certified Gold Partner, Anblicks provides Azure-based Data Analytics services that cover the entire data lifecycle, from data discovery, aggregation, storage, and ETL to data warehouse modeling, business intelligence reporting, and advanced analytics. The gold competency in data analytics is a continuation of Anblicks path of demonstrating certifications in the data domains that assist customers in generating powerful data insights. Helping them make data-driven decisions to create tailored experiences, reduce unnecessary costs, and generate revenue.

We are committed to helping our customers in leveraging Microsoft Azure for building highly scalable data pipelines from data integration, data storage, data governance, data analytics to business intelligence. Microsoft's GOLD partner status will help us build trust with our customers quoted Munwar Shariff, Chief Technology Officer at Anblicks.

About Anblicks (http://www.anblicks.com)

Anblicks is a Cloud Data Analytics company enabling customers to make data-driven decisions since 2004. Headquartered in Addison, Texas, Anblicks helps businesses accelerate their digital transformation journey, paving the road for new and streamlined business across the globe. The company commits to delivering excellence to the customers in Data Analytics, CloudOps, and Modern Apps using state-of-the-art services, solutions, and accelerators.

Media Contact:

Anblicks Marketing

marketing(at)anblicks(dot)com
Ukrainian Vektor Vodka Pledges portion of sales to Ukraine Relief Efforts!

Vektor Vodka, a Ukrainian Ultra Lux Premium Winter Wheat Brand, pledges a portion of revenue to Ukrainian relief efforts to help support Ukraine's economy and defense.

Vektor admonishes all aggression in the region, and hopes the Food and Beverage industry will join it in helping to support the Ukrainian economy and its citizens. As a start, by pulling all the Russian vodka products, and replacing them with Ukrainian Vektor Vodka, and others like it.

Join the movement! Many establishments are doing it already. See PAUL WISEMAN, AP BUSINESS WRITER's article:

https://www.marketbeat.com/articles/potent-protest-bars-drop-russian-vodka-promote-ukraines-2022-02-26/

The Vektor distillery is located in Zolotonosha, Ukraine, which is one of the birthplaces of Vodka. It is distilled in the oldest distillery in the region.

Original Vodka has always been made from rye, so Vektor keeps its formula authentic. Vektor Vodka is distilled 7 times from Winter Wheat, using artesian spring water from local aquifers.

Help TODAY, contact Vektor Vodka, visit http://www.vektorvodka.com for a Contact Form, or call 480-737-3268.

Arizona establishments and retail stores may also contact Blazer Beverage, 480-646-3535, or email Tom@blazerbev.com
Arts Ed NJ is supporting a series of initiatives in support of Arts in Our Schools Month We are excited to see our schools rekindle their energy and build back to pre-pandemic levels, for all subjects, including the visual and performing arts. - Robert Morrison, director of Arts Ed NJ

March is widely known as Arts in the Schools Month, an annual celebration originally proclaimed by the U.S. Department of Education that showcases the accomplishments of students in dance, music, theatre and the visual arts nationwide.

In support of this, Arts Ed NJ, the New Jersey performing arts affiliate for the National Association of State High School Associations (NFHS) has launched a series of initiatives and events to highlight arts education across the state.

Arts Ed Now, the statewide campaign to increase participation in arts education in all schools in New Jersey, has updated its Action Hub (https://artsednow.org/) along with its "Arts Ed Now 2.0" app for iOS and Android devices to connect arts education champions with one another, and to provide the latest tools and resources. The app is available for download at the Apple App and Google Play stores.

Arts Ed NJ is also actively lending its support to campaigns showcasing accomplishments within key arts disciplines, including Theatre in Our Schools Month, Music in Our Schools Month, Youth Art Month and Dance in Our Schools Month, which is celebrated by the New Jersey High School Dance Festival on March 12.

Starting Saturday, April 16, the Arts Ed Now campaign will launch a four-part Action Lab Zoom workshop series to help local champions build skills and practices, develop their ideas, and turn them into reality.

Many of these resources are available in Spanish, which can be accessed from the Artsednow.com homepage.

Finally, a living feed of the thousands of people rallying around the #ArtsEdNow hashtag on social media demonstrates the collective impact and exciting ways in which people are celebrating Arts in Our Schools Month and all year long.

This celebration comes at an opportune time. With its suspension of mitigation guidance for schools designated as mask optional effective March 7, 2022, Arts Ed NJ has just released March Forward Spring 2022 Guidance for Arts Education (http://marchforwardnj.org/), which provides the most up-to-date policy guide for administrators, K-12 arts educators, and the community at large to ensure that students can take part in arts education programs safely and effectively as schools return to pre-pandemic norms.

While the arts were particularly hit hard during the COVID-19 pandemic, this months celebration demonstrates the sheer resilience of the arts community, marking the first time in three years that schools across New Jersey are back to hosting spring musicals, state and county exhibitions are displaying exceptional student work, and concerts and dance recitals are being performed.

This is a perfect time to put the spotlight on and celebrate arts education in New Jersey school and districts, said Robert Morrison, director of Arts Ed NJ. We are excited to see our schools rekindle their energy and build back to pre-pandemic levels, for all subjects, including the visual and performing arts.

To learn more about these arts education initiatives and events, please visit Supporting Theatre in Our Schools Month (https://schooltheatre.org/programs/tios/), Music in Our Schools Month (https://nafme.org/programs/miosm/), Youth Art Month (https://aenj.org/yam-youth-art-month/), and Dance in Our Schools Month (https://sites.google.com/view/njhsdancefest/home)

For more information about Arts in Our Schools Month activities go to: https://www.artsednj.org/march-is-arts-in-our-schools-month-2022/. For more information about Arts Ed NJ, please visit https://www.artsednj.org. For more information about Arts Ed Now campaign, please visit. https://artsednow.org/.

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About Arts Ed NJ

Arts Ed NJ is the unified voice for arts education in New Jersey. The mission of Arts Ed NJ is to create the proper conditions for arts learning to take place in New Jersey. Formerly the New Jersey Arts Education Partnership, Arts Ed NJ was founded in 2007 by the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, New Jersey Department of Education and Music for All Foundation. Additional support has been provided by the Grunin Foundation, ArtPride New Jersey Foundation and an award from the National Endowment for the Arts. Additional information is available at http://www.artsednj.org.

About Arts Ed Now

Arts Ed Now is a statewide campaign to increase active participation in arts education in all schools in New Jersey. Studies show that students who participate in arts education do better in school and in life. Unfortunately, not all NJ students have the access or information to increase their participation in arts education. The Arts Ed Now campaign identifies ways to increase participation in arts education and garner public support to put a spotlight on the issue - and is designed to be customized at a local grassroots level for more impact. The Campaign Central website https://artsednow.org features stories, tools and ways for citizens to become better ambassadors - together. This project is supported in part by funds from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, Geraldine R Dodge Foundation, Jay and Linda Grunin Foundation and an award from the National Endowment for the Arts. To find out more about how National Endowment for the Arts grants impact individuals and communities, visit http://www.arts.gov
2 Minute Medicines physician-authored and -reviewed content aligns perfectly with our mission to succinctly provide actionable, evidence-based editorial that will impact physicians quality of care

2 Minute Medicine, Inc, a global award-winning medical news publisher and content licensing group, is pleased to announce an expansive new content licensing partnership with Physicians Weekly, LLC, a trusted source of medical news and information for healthcare professionals. 2 Minute Medicine will provide their cornerstone physician-written medical reports and industry-leading visual abstracts for use by Physicians Weekly via their proprietary publication syndication engine.

Licensing our curated and peer-reviewed medical news, written by practicing physicians and health professionals, to Physicians Weekly and their leading healthcare platform will provide additional authoritative and reliable medical news while accelerating 2 Minute Medicines mission of objectively and responsibly informing health practitioners and the public of the latest high-impact medical research, said 2 Minute Medicine Founder and CEO, Marc D. Succi, MD, a physician at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital. We are pleased to share our mission of providing accessible and evidence-based medical news to clinicians and the public to the betterment of patient care. This partnership is a seamless cultural and business fit. 2 Minute Medicine syndicates its content through its proprietary 2 Minute Medicine Syndication Engine.

2 Minute Medicines physician-authored and -reviewed content aligns perfectly with our mission to succinctly provide actionable, evidence-based editorial that will impact physicians quality of care, said Christy Tetterton, Physicians Weekly Chief Strategy and Marketing Officer. As we continue to expand the breadth of healthcare perspectives through print, digital, and podcast formats, we look forward to our readers reception of this graphically compelling content.

About 2 Minute Medicine, Inc.

2 Minute Medicine is a global award-winning and physician-led medical media and syndication company, owned and led by physicians. 2 Minute Medicines content is carefully curated, written, and peer-reviewed by practicing physicians and health professionals from top hospitals and medical universities with clinical and scientific expertise in their field of reporting. The 2 Minute Medicine Syndication Engine leverages technology to license 2 Minute Medicines medical content to publishers, brands, hospitals, libraries, universities, pharma, biotech, and many more companies around the world. The 2 Minute Medicine Physician Press publishes staple textbooks for medical professionals, including their popular series, The Classics in Medicine. While the publishing group and content syndication network is broad, the mission is simple  to provide objective medical news, written by practicing physicians and health professionals, to inform and improve patient care.

About Physicians Weekly

For nearly 40 years, Physicians Weekly LLC, has been a trusted source of medical news and education for healthcare professionals. The companys unique wallboard publicationthe cornerstone of its successis located in more than 30,000 top medical institutions and group practices across the US. Physicians Weekly offers in-depth interviews with respected experts in the industry who weigh in on landmark research and trending topics affecting the medical community, medical conference and meeting coverage, and accredited continuing education activities.

Media Contact

Michelle Flynn

2 Minute Medicine, Inc.

info@2minutemedicine.com
AHN Wexford Hospital We congratulate Gilbane/Massaro, HKS and IKM on this well-deserved recognition and thank them for delivering a world-class facility from which we now have the privilege of providing world-class care to our patients.

Since opening last fall, Allegheny Health Network (AHN) Wexford Hospital has been lauded for its high quality, close-to-home care for patients north of Pittsburgh. Now, the state-of-the-art, 345,000-square-foot facility and those who helped bring it to life are being recognized with a 2021 Building Excellence Award from the Master Builders Association of Western Pennsylvania (MBA). Gilbane/Massaro served as the projects contractor, and HKS Architects & IKM Incorporated as the architects.

The MBA Building Excellence Awards are the highest and most sought after annual commercial construction industry awards in Western Pennsylvania. AHN Wexford was recognized in the category for new construction projects over $25 million. The hospitals president, Allan Klapper, MD, and representatives from the partnering construction organizations were recently presented with the award at a ceremony held in Pittsburgh.

It was a great honor to work alongside so many talented and dedicated individuals over the last several years to help design and build Wexford Hospital, including the projects contractors, engineers, architects and laborers, as well as AHN health care professionals at every level, said Dr. Klapper. On behalf of all of our caregivers and staff, we congratulate Gilbane/Massaro, HKS and IKM on this well-deserved recognition and thank them for delivering a world-class facility from which we now have the privilege of providing world-class care to our patients.

Located along U.S. Route 19 in Pine Township and connected to the AHN Wexford Health + Wellness Pavilion, AHN Wexford includes a 24-bed emergency department with pediatric-capable rooms and dedicated pediatric hospitalists; state-of-the-art operating rooms with minimally invasive robotic surgery capabilities; cardiac catheterization lab and hybrid OR for advanced surgical procedures; short-stay observation unit; adult intensive care unit; advanced diagnostic imaging; and more.

The all-private, 160-bed hospital brings a full range of high-quality, innovative health care services to residents of communities north of Pittsburgh, including comprehensive womens and infants care and the only labor & delivery unit based in northern Allegheny County. AHN Wexford has proudly welcomed more than 400 babies since opening. The hospital also offers specialty care in cancer, neurology, bariatrics, breast surgery, plastic surgery, general and colorectal surgery, cardiology, radiology, gastroenterology, interventional radiology, urology, rheumatology, endocrinology and orthopaedics, among other disciplines. To learn more, visit http://www.ahn.org/wexford.

###

About Allegheny Health Network

Allegheny Health Network (AHN.org) is an integrated healthcare delivery system serving the greater Western Pennsylvania region. The Network is composed of 14 hospitals, ambulatory surgery centers, Health + Wellness Pavilions, an employed physician organization, home and community-based health services, a research institute and a group purchasing organization. The Network provides patients with access to a complete spectrum of advanced medical services, including nationally recognized programs for primary and emergency care, cardiovascular disease, cancer care, orthopedic surgery, neurology and neurosurgery, womens health, diabetes and more. AHN employs approximately 21,000 people, has more than 2,600 physicians on its medical staff and serves as a clinical campus for Drexel University College of Medicine and the Lake Erie College of Osteopathic Medicine.
Instead of replacing the entire existing infrastructure, Altaworx helps businesses convert their existing POTS lines over to LTE.

In response to the rising costs of, soon-to-be obsolete, POTS Lines (Plain Old Telephone Service), Altaworx is excited to introduce their solution to convert lines to LTE.

Not only are POTS lines outdated, the FCC Order 10-72A1 mandates that all POTS Lines in the US be replaced with an alternative service by August 2, 2022. Telecom companies are now directing investments towards 5G wireless services and maintaining POTS are no longer a focus for carriers.

Instead of replacing the entire existing infrastructure, Altaworx helps businesses convert their existing POTS lines over to LTE. This is an effective solution for any businesses that want to future-proof their technology, reduce their monthly telecommunication costs and continue to use existing equipment. This requires no major investment and no costly offline time.

More Benefits include:



Lower monthly cost

Low maintenance

No major investment

Complies with local 911 codes and life safety applications

More reliability during inclement weather

Availability and Pricing

POTS Lines Replacement is available now in the US and Canada. Pricing quotations are available upon request. Contact our team to learn how Altaworx can help your organization stay compliant by converting your POTS lines to LTE.

About Altaworx

Altaworx, LLC located in Fairhope, AL, was founded in 2003 by Rickie Richey, with hopes of addressing the emerging demand for Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP) business telephone systems. His vision was to build a company that not only provided leading-edge technology, but truly focused on helping customers drive revenue, control expenses, increase their productivity, and operate more efficiently. In 2011, Altaworx continued to focus on customer impact through emerging technologies becoming an internet telephony service provider (ITSP). The company began selling Altaworx branded SIP trunks and Hosted PBX to business customers in the 22 state AT&T footprint. Today, the company operates its cloud-based solutions from two AT&T data centers located in Dallas, TX, Atlanta, GA, and Los Angeles, CA. With a focus on empowering resellers to build equity value in their business, Altaworx continues to grow and now has a presence in 46 states.

Contact Information:

Forrest Derr

President, Altaworx

altaworx.com

404-902-5657

Meagan Jones

VP of Marketing, Altaworx

altaworx.com

470-763-5458
O. O. Kandison, a Nigerian native who started anew in Las Vegas, has completed her new book Efemona: an intriguing tale of cultural differences.

Kandison shares, This book is about an African woman coming to America and soon becoming Americanized, only to go back to Africa, her own country of Nigeria, and teach by example what shed learned in America. By teaching with examples, shed had all other African countries also in her heart. Then she quickly grasps the idea that in the turn of the twenty-first century of civilization, all African countries should, by now, be striving and buoyant since they gain their independence from the Europeans. The leaders of Nigeriaif they were not morons, dunces, pigs, and imbecilesshould be leading the way to take Nkrumah and Patrice Emery Lumumbas message to new heights to unite African countries.

Published by Page Publishing, O. O. Kandisons poignant tale follows one woman who transitioned between cultures as she returns home to teach her fellow natives by example.

Readers who wish to experience this captivating work can purchase Efemona 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.
Danielle Bell, a native of Guam who had the opportunity to travel the world and experience different cultures, an adventurer who currently resides in the US; has completed her new book Learning to Live Again: a gripping read that portrays the sorrow and pain of Danielle Bell after the untimely death of her husband, Eric. Here, she narrated the dreadful effect of the loss that her family had incurred. She also shared the lessons that she learned as she moved forward with her life.

Bell shares, When you experience the sudden death of a loved one and never saying goodbye, it is a tragedy beyond belief. I knew at 6:08 a.m. that something very bad had happened. I could feel my heart stop along with the clocks as my universe crumbled. After the death of my husband, I thought my world had come to an end. At first, I could not imagine living life without my partner and father to our children. I was faced with the daunting concept that I was now a widow on my own and no one to love me. I remembered thinking, how do I face getting up every morning? But the sun still rises and sets. It doesnt stop for your personal tragedy.

The reality that my life had completely changed, that I am suddenly no longer Danielle Bell, the wife of Eric Bell, was overwhelming. This inspired me to start to journaling. I knew I had to fill the void with mental, physical, and emotional activities to keep my sanity. I had the choice to reinvent myself or succumb to grief and depression. I chose to learn to live again on my own.

Published by Page Publishing, Danielle Bells excruciating life experience reminds everyone that some people will come into your life for a reason. The letting go process might be painful and devastating; but once that phase is over, the world will once again be a brighter place to live with.

Danielle Bells story aims to bring solace to those who are experiencing such tragedy and grief.

Readers who wish to experience this awe-inspiring work can purchase Learning to Live Again 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.
After the pandemic hit, the percentage of workforce working remotely or in a hybrid fashion skyrocketed from about 8 to 10% to a whopping 88%. You must have a team surrounding you that is as enthusiastic and motivated as you by your plans. An excellent team will assist you in creating a better product.

According to the Pew Research Center, just before the pandemic, only about 8 to 10% of the workforce worked remotely or in a hybrid fashion. After the pandemic hit, that percentage skyrocketed to a whopping 88%. Suddenly, there was a huge gap of people who had never worked remotely before. With that sudden dramatic shift, research showed that while individual productivity did go up, there were several challenges: feelings of isolation and loneliness, decreased team innovation and creativity, and large numbers of business leaders and managers who didnt know how to lead teams remotely.

But enter disruptor Dano Ybarra CEO at MyHive global, who explains to KJ Helms, host of the Disruption / Interruption podcast, even while studies suggest that remote work can enhance productivity and performance while also saving money in the long run, this abrupt move to remote work will disrupt innovation before it delivers returns. Ybarra is expediting the transition back to team creativity by recreating the office environment within a 2D/3D virtual space. Users can create their ideal office layouts to inspire water cooler conversations and freedom movement, just like it happens in a physical office, allowing teams to experience real human interaction and collaborationno matter where they are physically located.

Fascinating Remote Work Stats



55% of businesses globally offer some capacity for remote work.

18% of the workforce telecommute on a full-time basis.

30% of telecommuters save upward of $5,000 a year.

$11,000 is how much companies can save annually for each employee that works remotely half-time.

99% of remote workers want to continue telecommuting in the future.

90% of remote workers would recommend working remotely to a friend.

Dano Ybarra explains:

1. The key ingredient for disruption in your market is the combination of ideas. At times the best plans and ideas come from a group of peoples thoughts.

2. You must have a team surrounding you that is as enthusiastic and motivated as you by your plans. An excellent team will assist you in creating a better product.

3. Working from home boosted individual productivity but also has had its share of challenges.

4. Human interaction is an integral part of the work environment. You must be able to see and converse with people to feel a connection and positive emotion.

5. Permitting employees to work remotely increases your hiring option to a wider audience. You can procure the highest quality talent from anywhere on the globe.

6. Whenever you present a novel method of accomplishing something, there is sure to be pushback or individuals who dont grasp it.

7. If you fail to reach out to others and work together, you squander on spontaneity and that could mean losing out on a great deal.

Disruption Interruption is the podcast where youll hear from todays biggest Industry Disruptors. Learn what motivated them to bring about change and how they overcome opposition to adoption.

Disruption Interruption can be listened to via the Podbean app and is available on Apple's App Store and Google Play.

About Disruption Interruption:

Disruption is happening on an unprecedented scale, impacting all manner of industries MedTech, Finance, IT, eCommerce, shipping and logistics, and moreand COVID has moved their timelines up a full decade or more. But WHO are these disruptors and when did they say, THATS IT! IVE HAD IT!? Time to Disrupt and Interrupt with host Karla Jo KJ Helms, veteran communications disruptor. KJ interviews bad a**es who are disrupting their industries and altering economic networks that have become antiquated with an establishment resistant to progress. She delves into uncovering secrets from industry rebels and quiet revolutionaries that uncover common traitsand not-so-commonthat are changing our economic markets and lives. Visit the worlds key pioneers that persist to success, despite arrows in their backs at http://www.disruptioninterruption.com.

About Karla Jo Helms:

Karla Jo Helms is the Chief Evangelist and Anti-PR(TM) Strategist for JOTO PR Disruptors(TM).

Karla Jo learned firsthand how unforgiving business can be when millions of dollars are on the lineand how the control of public opinion often determines whether one company is happily chosen, or another is brutally rejected. Being an alumnus of crisis management, Karla Jo has worked with litigation attorneys, private investigators, and the media to help restore companies of goodwill into the good graces of public opinionKarla Jo operates on the ethic of getting it right the first time, not relying on second chances and doing what it takes to excel. Helms speaks globally on public relations, how the PR industry itself has lost its way and how, in the right hands, corporations can harness the power of Anti-PR to drive markets and impact market perception.

About MyHive.global:

MyHive.globals vision is to Humanize the digital office, bring remote, hybrid, and in-office employees together to create a culture of extreme collaboration, creativity, and innovation. Their mission is to digitally transform the way companies work remotely, allowing geographically dispersed employees to interact and collaborate with their colleagues in a virtual office environment, much as they would in a physical office space. They humanize the digital workplace. MyHive.global can be found online at myhive.global/en.

About Dano Ybarra:

Dano Ybarra is an international speaker, author, executive, and start-up co-founder with Unicorn exit. He was the inspiration for Steve Jobs' Apple Stores and is a world-class international speaker and author on leadership and global expansion. Dano is a visionary leader capable of assessing complex situations to develop practical yet creative solutions. Experience spans general management, P&L oversight, strategic business development, operations, sales, and marketing resulting in top-line growth with responsible OPEX. Ybarra can be contacted at: http://www.dano@danoybarra.com
CARFAX has named Downeast Toyota in its annual Top-Rated Dealer Program

Downeast Toyota, a dealership located in Brewer, Maine, has been named a CARFAX Top-Rated Dealer in 2021. This annual honor recognizes dealerships that receive high CARFAX ratings from drivers. The title reflects the customer service of a dealership along with the quality of the vehicles being sold. For the previous year, top-rated dealerships had an average rating of 4.6 stars out of five.

Each year, CARFAX receives thousands of ratings from customers, and over time, those ratings have added up to over two million verified customer ratings and reviews. Dealerships across the country are on CARFAX, so the competition is high. Winners of the CARFAX Top-Rated Dealer in 2021 title will receive custom CARFAX Top-Rated Dealer digital assets for their websites and social media accounts. Furthermore, a badge will be visible to customers on each winners CARFAX Vehicle History Reports.

CARFAX is considered an authoritative source on vehicle history. It has served drivers since 1984, providing exclusive services that help drivers find quality cars. Downeast Toyota has served the Bangor, Maine area since 1966, becoming one of the largest dealerships in the state.

Drivers who would like to learn more about Downeast Toyota can do so on the dealerships website, downeasttoyota.com. Its online pre-owned inventory provides customers with a link to each vehicles CARFAX Vehicle History Report.
Law Office of Blumenthal Nordrehaug Bhowmik De Blouw LLP For more information about the class action lawsuit against St. Jude Medical Center, call (800) 568-8020 to speak to an experienced California employment attorney today.

The Los Angeles employment law attorneys, at Blumenthal Nordrehaug Bhowmik De Blouw LLP, filed a class action complaint alleging that St. Jude Medical Center violated the California Labor Code. The St. Jude Medical Center class action lawsuit, Case No. 30-2022-01244478-CU-OE-CXC, is currently pending in the Orange County Superior Court of the State of California. A copy of the Complaint can be read here.

According to the lawsuit filed, St. Jude Medical Center allegedly (a) failed to pay minimum wages, (b) failed to pay overtime wages, (c) failed to provide legally required meal and rest periods, (d) failed to provide accurate itemized wage statements, and (e) failed to reimburse employees for required expenses, all in violation of the applicable Labor Code sections listed in California Labor Code Sections  226, 226.7, 510, 512, 1194, 1197, 1197.1, and the applicable Wage Order(s), and thereby gives rise to civil penalties as a result of such alleged conduct.

California Labor Code  226 states that employers shall provide employees with accurate itemized wage statements showing, among other things "gross wages earned and all applicable hourly rates in effect during the pay period..." Additionally, Defendant failed to list the correct name of the legal entity that employs Plaintiff. The lawsuit alleges that Defendant allegedly violated this California Labor Code by allegedly failing to provide accurate itemized wage statements.

For more information about the class action lawsuit against St. Jude Medical Center, call (800) 568-8020 to speak to an experienced California employment attorney today.

Blumenthal Nordrehaug Bhowmik De Blouw LLP is an employment law firm with offices located in San Diego, San Francisco, Sacramento, Los Angeles, Riverside and Chicago that dedicates its practice to helping employees, investors and consumers fight back against unfair business practices, including violations of the California Labor Code and Fair Labor Standards Act. If you need help in collecting unpaid overtime wages, unpaid commissions, being wrongfully terminated from work, and other employment law claims, contact one of their attorneys today.

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Were very excited about the partnership with ASI, said Gerry Galloway, co-founder of FoodReady. ASI is a world-class food safety auditing body and consulting firm, and this partnership is incredibly synergistic, giving clients the best solutions currently in the market for food safety.

ASI, LLC (ASI), a provider of independent third-party certification, inspection, consulting and training services, announced today that they have entered into a strategic, international partnership with food safety quality management system software company FoodReady.AI.

The FoodReady.AI software solution makes food safety effortless for large, medium and small food and beverage manufacturers around the world through automation and simplification of Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP), food safety plans, safe quality food (SQF), food safety requirements, daily logs, checklists, standard operating procedures (SOP), corrective actions and the ability produce reports.

We know this partnership with FoodReady will only strengthen our food safety offerings to our customers, said Tyler Williams, chief technical officer of ASI Global Standards, LLC. We look forward to using the platform to automate documentation and so much more.

Capabilities of FoodReady include traceability management, food safety/HACCP plan creation, SOP creation and management, SQF/British Retail Consortium (BRC) compliance, time/temperature logs, Bluetooth integration with smart devices, smart checklists, supplier documentation management, receiving, ingredient management and batch management.

Were extremely excited about this partnership with ASI, said Gerry Galloway, co-founder of FoodReady. ASI is a world-class food safety auditing body and consulting firm, and this partnership is incredibly synergistic. It will help both companies better serve our clients and give them the best solutions currently in the market for food safety.

ASI will not only use FoodReadys software as part of its consulting services but will also resell and recommend FoodReady software to its clients that are looking to close critical gaps and automate their food safety documentation. FoodReady will recommend ASI auditors to its software clients that require third party audits.

For more information on ASI, please visit https://asifood.com/. For more information on FoodReady, please visit https://foodready.ai/.

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ASI Food Safety, LLC

ASI Food Safety is a provider of independent third-party certification, inspection and training services. Based in Missouri and serving clients nationally, ASI has been providing farm-to-fork safety solutions, such as third-party safety & quality certifications and inspections, consulting and training to the food industry since the 1940s. ASIs innovative, reliable and trusted food safety and quality solutions assist customers in minimizing risk, reducing recalls, eliminating foodborne illness, and protecting their brand and the health and well-being of their customers. For more information about ASI, visit http://www.asifood.com

About FoodReady

FoodReady (https://foodready.ai/) makes food safety effortless with its mobile and desktop software platform. FoodReady software automates and enables compliance, traceability and daily record management of expensive and complex retail food safety compliance requirements, government regulations (USDA, FDA, state and local) and global safety standards (GFSI, SQF, BRC). The FoodReady.AI software platform offers an automated compliance documentation generator where user data is transformed to regulatory formats; a mobile app for daily food safety compliance logs, checklists and batch management; machine learning and artificial intelligence algorithms learn from thousands of plans generated; inventory, supplier, batch and records management; product recall management and supplier traceability; laboratory testing ordering and results automation and tech-enabled virtual food safety managed service.
GeoComm, the Public Safety Location Intelligence leader and a Esri Partner Network Platinum partner, now has GeoComm Indoor Maps, a GIS location intelligence service, available on the Esri ArcGIS Marketplace.

The ArcGIS Marketplace is a curated digital geospatial channel of system ready apps, content, solutions, and professional services from Esris ecosystem of partners for ArcGIS users to identify and discover additional resources for ArcGIS software.

GeoComm Indoor Maps empower public safety agencies with a visual representation of indoor spaces for key buildings in their response areas which aids in improved situational awareness and reduces response times. An address point on a map with no additional structure information provides little indoor location context to call takers and first responders. Indoor maps are the next level of precise location information.

GeoComm was designated an ArcGIS Marketplace provider by earning the ArcGIS System Ready Specialty, as well as services and solutions that utilize ArcGIS software. This designation is for partners that are keeping pace with Esri technology; have industry expertise; offer solutions, services, or content based on the latest Esri software releases; and help users make smart decisions using ArcGIS.

Mike King, director of emergency communications solutions at Esri said, We welcome GeoComm to the ArcGIS Marketplace. GeoComm has a long-standing history of providing public safety with innovative GIS solutions and services. Those emergency service providers now have direct access to a simple method to submit source data from building owners/operator which can be converted into geo-referenced indoor maps.

To view GeoComm Indoor Maps in the Esri ArcGIS Marketplace visit https://www.esri.com/en-us/arcgis-marketplace/listing/services/3068a563136745d491c1b4c966e2da61 To learn more about GeoComms partnership with Esri visit https://geocomm.com/esripartnership/

About Esri: Esri, the global market leader in geographic information system (GIS) software, location intelligence, and mapping, helps customers unlock the full potential of data to improve operational and business results. Founded in 1969 in Redlands, California, USA, Esri software is deployed in more than 350,000 organizations globally and in over 200,000 institutions in the Americas, Asia and the Pacific, Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, including Fortune 500 companies, government agencies, nonprofits, and universities. Esri has regional offices, international distributors, and partners providing local support in over 100 countries on six continents. With its pioneering commitment to geospatial information technology, Esri engineers the most innovative solutions for digital transformation, the Internet of Things (IoT), and advanced analytics. Visit us at esri.com.

About GeoComm: GeoComm, provider of Public Safety Location Intelligence, has a national reputation as a leading provider of public safety GIS systems. These systems route emergency calls to the appropriate 9-1-1 call center, map the callers location on a call taker or dispatcher map, and guide emergency responders to the scene of the accident on mobile displays within police, fire, and ambulance vehicles. Over the last 26 years, GeoComm has grown to serve local, regional, statewide, and military agencies in forty-nine states, helping keep more than 100 million people safe. In addition, in 2021 our statewide NG9-1-1 GIS project footprint has expanded to include seventeen statewide projects across the country. To learn more about GeoComm and our Public Safety Location Intelligence platform visit http://www.geocomm.com.
Online car insurance quotes are extremely useful for customers. They can easily save time and money, said Russell Rabichev, Marketing Director of Internet Marketing Company.

Car insurance quotes can provide multiple benefits to drivers who know how to use them. In order to ensure that they still pay competitive car insurance rates, drivers are advised to check the insurance market every 6 months and to compare multiple quotes from different insurance providers.

The most common reasons why drivers should use car insurance quotes are the following:



Save money. This is the main reason why anyone should get quotes. Comparing car insurance quotes can help drivers save money. After obtaining several quotes from different insurance providers, policyholders can compare them and then decide between remaining with their current insurers or going to other providers who have better insurance deals.

Drivers can get quotes online. Before the internet, obtaining quotes took time. Drivers had to travel from one insurance agency to another in order to obtain several quotes. With the help of the internet, policyholders can get quotes in several minutes. Brokerage websites, in particular, will help drivers get multiple quotes from multiple insurance companies. In some cases, drivers can find out that the best insurance offers are made by local or regional insurers that they never heard of.

Online quotes are for free. Policyholders who use the internet to get quotes will have the benefit of obtaining them for free from both insurers websites and brokerage websites. Removing the middleman can help drivers save money.

Quotes are customizable. The online questionnaire can be easily customized in order to simulate various insurance plans. Also, if the data inserted by the policyholder is wrong, then he can hit the back button and insert the correct info.

Compare-autoinsurance.org is an online provider of life, home, health, and auto insurance quotes. This website is unique because it does not simply stick to one kind of insurance provider, but brings the clients the best deals from many different online insurance carriers. In this way, clients have access to offers from multiple carriers all in one place: this website. On this site, customers have access to quotes for insurance plans from various agencies, such as local or nationwide agencies, brand name insurance companies, etc.

For more information, please visit http://compare-autoinsurance.org/
Customers near the Lubbock area in Texas can now get pre-approval for auto loans through Matador Motors.

There is a piece of exciting news for customers who are planning to purchase a pre-owned vehicle near the Lubbock area in Texas. Matador Motors, a used car dealership in Lubbock, Texas, is offering pre-approval for auto loans to interested parties. Regardless of the credit rating, customers can fill out an online form and submit it on the dealerships official website.

Submitting this application at Matador Motors will not impact the customers credit score. Prospective buyers need to enter some basic information in the online form like name, address, phone number, zip code, email id and mobile number. After the application is submitted, a member of the finance team at Matador Motors will get in touch with the customer to assist with the processing of their application. All the personal data collected will be stored securely and will be shared only with affiliated third parties for possible financing options.

Drivers are encouraged to visit Matador Motors official website or drop by in person at 214 E Hwy 62/82, Wolfforth, Texas, 79382. Customers can also reach out to the dealership staff on 806-833-7300 for any further details about the financing options.
Mysteries Revealed: a potently encouraging call to spiritual arms. Mysteries Revealed is the creation of published author Migs, a loving son and friend who served in the US Army from 1986-1994 before being honorably discharged. Migs later turned down a scholarship to Princeton to attend Dispensational Bible Institute and became ordained in 2005.

Migs shares, This book is going to inspire generations to come. It will wake us all up from all the deceit and lies colleges, seminaries, and churches have been teaching and give you sound doctrine in the times of the worst in history since the days of Noah and Lot. Migs drains the swamp by showing us all how to rely on Gods Words, not the messengers and pastors who have taught doctrines of devils for centuries; 80 percent truth with 20 percent imagination, lies, and allegories just wont cut it in these times of tribulation the church is going through now.

Its time to wake up, ride out the storm, and rise up mighty warriors. Those who have ears let them hear and those have eyes let them see. In Daniel, it is said there is a great awakening and a gathering and todays times in this book will set us straight. This book is an in-depth look at the Bible like you have never seen before. It will show you how to read a Bible in context and illuminate the conjecture and controversy because the Bible never contradicts itself in the correct version. There is coming a day in Amos 8:1112 that says you will seek the Word but not find it. With AI and quantum computers and all these Bible versions, you are just about at that point.

Mysteries Revealed is something every Christian should embrace, and with all readiness of mind, search the Scriptures daily. Read Acts 17:11 while you still have a chance. Last call for alcohol BECAUSE the bar is closing. LOL, no, last call for you to edify saints and see souls saved with TRUTH and be ye not ignorant, my brethren!

Published by Christian Faith Publishing, Migss new book will challenge and encourage believers, new and established.

Migs shares in hopes of drawing believers back to the core of Gods teachings before it is too late.

Consumers can purchase Mysteries Revealed at traditional brick & mortar bookstores, or online at Amazon.com, Apple iTunes store, or Barnes and Noble.

For additional information or inquiries about Mysteries Revealed, contact the Christian Faith Publishing media department at 866-554-0919.
Joseph Chiavatti, Founder of Palm & Ridge Real Estate Palm & Ridge will be able to stay ahead of the market and have additional resources and tools to help our clients achieve their goals in real estate

Palm & Ridge Real Estate today announced its partnership with Side, the only real estate technology company that exclusively partners with high-performing agents, teams, and independent brokerages to transform them into market-leading boutique brands and businesses. The alliance will ensure that Palm & Ridge Real Estate, a firm already known for its client-personalized approach to real estate, is powered by the industrys most advanced platform.

Leading Palm & Ridge Real Estate is industry veteran Joseph Chiavatti, who has been helping Orange County clients achieve their real estate goals since earning his brokers license in 2015. A North Tustin native and current resident, Chiavatti has successfully navigated the competitive local market through its ups and downs. His tenacity, keen eye for detail, and early uptake of the latest industry technology make him an exceptional partner for any real estate transaction.

Palm & Ridge Real Estate centers a people-first mindset and walks alongside its clients every step of the way to ensure a positive real estate experience that yields outstanding results. Specializing in Orange County  namely North Tustin, Tustin, Orange, Villa Park, Anaheim Hills, Rancho Santa Margarita, Mission Viejo, and beyond  the team works with buyers, sellers, and investors at all stages of their real estate journeys.

The firm supports its agents with a proprietary service called Agent Concierge. The Agent Concierge team handles administrative tasks on behalf of Palm & Ridge agents, allowing them to focus more on the client experience. Chiavattis aim is to create an environment where Palm & Ridge agents are empowered to increase their productivity so they can engage meaningfully in their personal lives  all while providing each client with an optimal buying or selling experience.

Palm and Ridge was designed to be a place where people can buy or sell real estate confidently knowing they have a partner in their corner dedicated to helping them achieve their goals, said Chiavatti. I am honored and blessed to have served my clients with their real estate needs thus far, and I am very much looking forward to what the future holds.

Joining forces with Side will ensure Palm & Ridge Real Estate remains on the cutting edge of the evolving real estate market while continuing to deliver premium services to its clients. Side works behind the scenes, supporting Palm & Ridge Real Estate with a one-of-a-kind brokerage platform that includes proprietary technology, transaction management, branding and marketing services, public relations, legal support, lead generation, vendor management, infrastructure solutions, and more. Additionally, Palm & Ridge Real Estate will join an exclusive group of Side partners, tapping into an expansive network from coast to coast.

Orange County real estate is moving faster than ever, continued Chiavatti. With Sides state-of-the-art technology, marketing, legal, and administrative services to bolster our client experience, Palm & Ridge will be able to stay ahead of the market and have additional resources and tools to help our clients achieve their goals in real estate.

About Palm & Ridge Real Estate

Palm & Ridge Real Estate is a widely respected firm packed with veteran talent. The dedicated team of experts combines the latest industry tech with a creative approach to maximize clients returns on investment in the highly competitive Orange County market, including North Tustin, Villa Park, Rancho Santa Margarita, and Anaheim Hills. To find out how Palm & Ridge Real Estate walks alongside buyers and sellers every step of the way, visit http://www.palmandridge.com.

About Side

Side is a behind-the-scenes brokerage platform that exclusively partners with top-performing agents, teams, and independent brokerages to create and grow their own boutique brands without the cost, time, or risk of operating a brokerage. Sides proprietary technology platform and premier support solutions empower its agent partners to be more productive, grow their business, and focus on serving their clients. Side is headquartered in San Francisco. For more information, visit http://www.sideinc.com.
2022 Hyundai Venue To qualify for the loan, customers are required to fill out a form.

Customers at Cocoa Hyundai in Cocoa, Florida, can apply for an auto loan to buy a new car from Cocoa Hyundai dealership.

To qualify for the loan, customers are required to fill out a form. They have to mention relevant details about their personal information, such as name, phone number, email address, etc. Next, they will need to provide their employment information like employers name, gross yearly income, date of employment and so on. Furthermore, the customers have to provide their co-applicant's relevant details as well. After that, they are required to mention the type of vehicle that they wish to buy and their preferred mode of communication. Once all this information is in the form, buyers can just hit send. One of the members of the dealerships finance team will reach out to them to confirm their application status.

The dealership works with different banks and lending institutions to tailor a loan package that is just right for prospective buyers. They are also free to trade in their vehicle and use that cash to offset the loan amount. Customers can choose any vehicle that is available in the dealerships inventory.

Therefore, all parties are encouraged to visit https://www.cocoahyundai.com/ or call 321-631-2444 for more information. They can also visit the dealership at 1825 West King St, Cocoa, Florida.
The 2022 Rx Summit will be held April 18-21 in Atlanta "More than a million too many lives have been lost since the start, and it is urgent that we work together to find solutions," Nancy Hale, President and CEO, Operation UNITE, educational advisor for Rx Summit.

As part of ongoing efforts to address the opioid and addiction crises  a national issue that impacts every community in every state - the 11th annual Rx Summit will be held in person April 18-21 in Atlanta.

The Rx Summit is a global community of stakeholders who come together annually to share best practices and strategies for prevention, treatment, and recovery. The in-person format this year will allow professionals of multidisciplinary backgrounds to collaborate, cultivate change and create solutions.

Deaths due to drug overdose have topped 1 million for the first time since the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention began collecting data on the problem more than two decades ago. More than 101,000 drug overdose deaths occurred in the United States in the 12 months ending in June 2021, the largest number of drug overdoses for a 12-month period ever recorded.

Reading the headlines about the current state of the opioid epidemic is sobering, said Nancy Hale, President and CEO, Operation UNITE (Unlawful Narcotics Investigations, Treatment and Education, Inc.), the educational advisor for Rx Summit. More than a million too many lives have been lost since the start, and it is urgent that we work together to find solutions. These statistics are not just numbers, they reflect mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, and friends and neighbors. Every number has a name.

Educational Tracks

At the Rx Summit, audiences can engage in discussions on best strategies and tactics backed by data from proven programs across the country. Attendees can gain the practical knowledge in their fields to help combat this epidemic.

Highlights from the nine educational tracks offered include:



Advocacy  A Movement to End Addiction Stigma: Background, Implementation, and 1-Year Outcomes of the Collaborative Life Unites Us Stigma Reduction Campaign Utilizing the Shatterproof Strategy

Clinical - Findings From Respond to Prevent: A Four-State Study to Improve Provision of Naloxone, Buprenorphine, and Nonprescription Syringes in Community Pharmacies

Illicit Drugs - CReDO: Community Response to Drug Overdoses

Prevention  Overdose - HEALing Communities Study: Deploying Evidence-Based Practices to Reduce Opioid Overdose Deaths Through Community Engagement and Partnerships

Prevention  Primary - Breaking the Generational Cycle of Drug Use: Substance Use Prevention for School-Aged Children

Public Safety - Integrative Justice: A Healthcare Approach to Treatment Courts

Technology - Expanding During Shutdown: Virtually Delivering Substance Use Disorder Services to Rural Communities

Treatment & Recovery  Stronger Together: Combining Medication for Opioid Use Disorders With 12-Step Recovery Support to Achieve 5-Year Recovery

Trending Topics  Opioid Settlement: Guidance to Community Policymakers

In addition, the Rx Summit features a dynamic lineup of keynote speakers, faculty, and other ground-breaking leaders in their fields, including:



Miriam Delphin-Rittmon

Assistant Secretary, Substance Abuse & Mental Health Services Administration



Dr. Rahul Gupta, MD, MPH, MBA, FACP

Director, White House Office of National Drug Control Policy



Dr. Nora Volkow, MD

Director, National Institute on Drug Abuse



Patrick M. Shannon, JD, MPH

Tribal Court Chief Judge, Saginaw Chippewa Tribal Court of Michigan



Kathryn Burgum

First Lady of North Dakota



Traci C. Green, PhD, MSc

Professor and Director, Brandeis Opioid Policy Research Collaborative



Dr. Robert L. Dupont, MD

President, Institute for Behavior and Health, Inc.



Gary Mendell, MBA

Founder & CEO, Shatterproof



Monty Burks, PhD, MCJ, CPRS

Director of Faith-Based Initiatives, Tennessee Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services



Jennifer S. Smith

Secretary, Pennsylvania Department of Drug and Alcohol Programs

Notable speakers in past years have included President Joe Biden in 2021, President Donald J. Trump and First Lady Melania Trump in 2019, President Bill Clinton in 2018, and President Barack Obama in 2016.

The work done at the Rx Summit since it began in 2012 has never been as important as it is this year, when overdoses are occurring at record rates, said Doug Edwards, Senior Vice President at HMP Global and Director of the Psychiatry & Behavioral Health Learning Network. Our nation needs healing and the Rx Summit is where it all begins. It is the annual opportunity for strategic partnerships to come to fruition so that we can promote education, improve treatment, and support law enforcement. It is where solutions are formulated and change begins.

The Rx Summit is the largest annual gathering of professionals combatting the opioid and addiction crises. Participants and attendees include counselors, social workers, therapists, psychologists, and interventionists; physicians, psychiatrists, nurses, pharmacists, and dentists; advocates, families and people in recovery; law enforcement and other first responders; and public health and prevention professionals.

To ensure that attendees can access all sessions, the Rx Summit is offering the Maximum Access Package which includes on-demand access to session recordings for three months. With this package, attendees can virtually attend every session taking place at the Rx Summit and replay the recordings as many times as they like.

Registration is now open. For agendas, sponsorship information or to register, visit the event website. Rates (including the Maximum Access Package) are available here.

About HMP Global

HMP Global is the force behind Healthcare Made Practical  and is an omnichannel leader in healthcare content, events, and education, with a mission to improve patient care. The company produces accredited medical education events  in person and online via its proprietary VRTX virtual platform  and clinically relevant, evidence-based content for the global healthcare community across a range of therapeutic areas. Its brands include the HMP Global Learning Network, healthcares most comprehensive source for news and information; Psych Congress, the largest independent mental health meeting in the U.S.; the Evolution of Psychotherapy, the worlds largest independent educational event for mental health professionals; the Leipzig Interventional Course (LINC), the leading, global gathering for interdisciplinary cardiovascular specialists; EMS World Expo, North Americas largest EMT and paramedic event; and the Symposium on Advanced Wound Care (SAWC), the largest wound care meeting in the world. For more information, visit hmpglobal.com.
smarTours

Today, smarTours, a leading provider of affordable trips to bucket list destinations, confirmed the cancelation of its Russia tours. smarTours hopes other travel companies, both small and large, will follow the same path of canceling travel and halting business with Russia. Together as a whole, the travel industry can make a meaningful impact.

We didnt make this decision lightly, says Christine Petersen, CEO of smarTours. The travel industry is starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel after the pandemic but when we bring a tour to a country, we are supporting and investing in that destination. In support of the Ukrainian people, we could not support Russia after its invasion of Ukraine. While we understand that the Russian people may not support the invasion, we know that our dollars spent in the country ultimately go to the most powerful.

All customers who were signed up to participate in the Russia tours have been notified of the cancelation. smarTours will continue to operate other European tours planned for this year. We hope that travelers continue to experience the joy of travel as travel resumes and also understand the geographic realities of the invasion, says Petersen. Travelers can safely visit and support many European countries that are eager to welcome them, particularly after the hardships of the pandemic.

To find out more about upcoming smarTours tours that are available to U.S. travelers please visit: https://smartours.com/covid-19-travel-regulations-tour-by-tour-guide/

About smarTours:

smarTours is a leading provider of affordable trips to bucket list destinations worldwide. The company currently offers more than 75 guided tours to more than 70 countries across all continents. All smarTours trips include international airfare, hotels in convenient locations, knowledgeable English-speaking local guides, in-depth excursions and sightseeing, and many meals. More than 250,000 bucket list trips have been taken since the founding of the company in 1996.
Store image Takashimaya, a brand known for its detailed customer services; transcosmos, a company that excels in digital and system development services; and TTIC, a company that has built strong relationships with various D2C brands; have together built a framework for a new showrooming store business.

TAKASHIMAYA TRANSCOSMOS INTERNATIONAL COMMERCE PTE. LTD., a joint venture of Takashimaya Company, Limited. (Headquarters: Osaka, Japan; President: Yoshio Murata; Takashimaya) and transcosmos inc., hereby announces that the company will launch a showrooming store business, opening stores specifically designed for showrooming.

Takashimaya, a powerful brand known for its meticulous customer services; transcosmos, a company that excels in digital and system development services with an extensive know-how of digital transformation; and TTIC, a company that has built strong relationships with various D2C (direct-to-consumer) brands by assisting them in wholesaling and retail selling in Japan and overseas; have together built a framework for a new showrooming store business. The three companies work as one, not only to create a touchpoint with customers who don't regularly visit department stores, but also to bring new value to both new and existing customers with superior customer services that only department stores can offer, a special online store with a range of gift service features, and a product lineup only available in showrooming stores.

The first store is scheduled to open on the second floor of Takashimaya Shinjuku store in late April. The three companies aim to open showrooming stores in locations other than Takashimaya stores with a focus on the ASEAN region, in addition to Takashimaya stores in Japan and overseas in the future. In addition, by making the most of the D2C brand network to be built on this business for TTIC's cross-border e-commerce business, we will capture inbound demand while offering a global sales channel for the brands, thereby further growing our businesses.

 Extensive gift service features for a variety of gift occasions

Customers can select, shop and send the perfect gift on our special online store, with an optional gift wrapping service. Also, with our social media gift services, customers can readily send gifts via social networking services (SNS), e-mails, and other channels to their friends without a postal address.

 Discover unexpected items from trend-conscious product lineup, hand-picked by our curators

Our product offerings include items chosen by our five expert curators with a savvy in themes ranging from gourmet, lifestyle, beauty, Japanese arts & crafts, to ethical. Communicating the value and appeal of each item from their unique perspectives, curators will make customers discover unexpected, wonderful items.

 Dedicated store assistant offers hospitality services for each customer, online services also available.

Our dedicated showrooming store assistants explain about products displayed in the store and give advice on how to use the special online store, offering services tailored to each customer need to make them enjoy their shopping experience. The store is equipped with booths specifically for online customer services, offering the same level of services to customers who cannot visit the store in person (advance booking required).

 Thorough support services for brands including quantitative/qualitative reports and store management

In addition to conducting quantitative analysis using various data, including data captured by in-store AI cameras and browsing data gained on the special online store and SNS, we will provide qualitative information gained through conversation between our showrooming store assistants and customers, such as customer buying appetites and their shopping motivation. Brands can leverage the information for future product development and more.

TTIC will manage the special online store, enabling brands to have touchpoints with diverse customers  and with the bare minimum preparation - such as product samples for store displays and for selling.

About TAKASHIMAYA TRANSCOSMOS INTERNATIONAL COMMERCE PTE. LTD.

Company Name: TAKASHIMAYA TRANSCOSMOS INTERNATIONAL COMMERCE PTE. LTD.

Representative: Managing Director, CEO: Takahiro Kawaguchi

Location: 63 Chulia Street #15-01, OCBC Centre East, Singapore 049514

Established: March 3, 2015

Paid in capital: 17,300,000 SGD (Investment ratio: Takashimaya 51%, transcosmos 49%)

Business: Wholesaling for distributors, retailers and e-commerce businesses primarily in the ASEAN region, store management in both offline and online spaces, and sales and marketing support services for companies entering the global market.
We are proud to announce that our commercial disinfecting and sanitizing solutions are safe and now a viable option for all poultry processing and other meat packing facilities. Our HOCL-based solution provides poultry processors an answer to solve many of their day-to-day concerns.

Today Contagion Control Solutions announced that it has received testing for its non-toxic cleaning and sanitizing programs by FSNS lab. The results show 99.84% kill rates on salmonella, campylobacter and other pathogens. CCS manufactures and distributes a large variety of EPA-n list disinfectant and commercial sanitizing solution which makes it a viable alternative for poultry and other meat production plants. Poised as an alternative to the commonly-used peracetic acid (PAA), Contagion Control Solutions 100% natural and safe solution prevents many of the problems facing poultry producers who currently use PAA for its sanitization and disinfectant needs.

CCS also announced that it will be attending the Poultry Federations upcoming 10th Annual Food Safety Conference. The event will start on March 8, 2022 in Branson, Missouri; and the event is of interest to those who are food safety professionals, industry representatives and members of the academic community. Contagion Control Solutions representatives will be in attendance to meet with the food safety professionals to discuss the benefits of non-toxic cleaning and sanitizing disinfectants such as the HOCL-based solution used by CCS.

According to the companys website many poultry producers face several problems when using PAA or other disinfecting solutions which are not tested to be 100% natural, safe and EPA-approved. Such problems facing producers include the wing tips turning brown, explosion hazards, skin/respiratory/eye damage to employees, increased production costs due to employees who are sick or otherwise are not able to work at high capacity, and possible damage to production facility equipment.

Karen Lucchesi, an owner of Contagion Control Solutions, said, We are proud to announce that our commercial disinfecting and sanitizing solutions are safe and now a viable option for all poultry processing and other meat packing facilities. Our HOCL-based solution provides poultry processors an answer to solve many of their day-to-day concerns. For example, our solutions are highly effective against salmonella, blood-borne pathogens, enveloped and non-enveloped viruses, and other stages of any facilities processes where cross-contamination is a high risk. The solution also prevents damage to equipment and floors; and  most importantly  it reduces the risk of harm to employees due to its being a natural and safe solution.

Other areas of concern to poultry producers, regarding their risks of contamination, are addressed by the companys website page. These can range from disinfecting meat whether it is raw or cooked, preventing bacteria on pre-cooked packaged as well as frozen poultry, and the fact that Contagion Control Solutions plant is ISO-certified and OMRI-certified.

Parties interested in learning more about the products may visit the companys website or email Lucchesi through the information contained in this release. Media interested in learning more about all-natural sanitizing and disinfecting methods against bacteria and viruses and pathogens are welcome to contact Lucchesi through in the same manner.
All Animals Go to Heaven: an engaging and thoughtful narrative with important messages of hope and healing. All Animals Go to Heaven is the creation of published author Todd "Lou" Brady, a native of Brooklyn, New York, who has had a lifelong love for creative writing.

Brady shares, All Animals Go to Heaven is a book of true life and the passing of ones beloved pet or, in some cases, a part of the family. It is written to help one deal with and understand why and how to deal with such a tragedy.

Published by Christian Faith Publishing, Todd "Lou" Bradys new book will tug at the heartstrings and offer a welcome opening for young readers and those who love them to discuss a significant loss.

Brady offers a respectful tale of loss and love that will help readers process the big emotions that surround death.

Consumers can purchase All Animals Go to Heaven at traditional brick & mortar bookstores, or online at Amazon.com, Apple iTunes store, or Barnes and Noble.

For additional information or inquiries about All Animals Go to Heaven, contact the Christian Faith Publishing media department at 866-554-0919.
The crisis in Ukraine is deeply personal to our organization. Fifteen of our team members currently reside in the Ukraine and their extraordinary will has been inspiring to us. They're an important part of the TrueLearn family and we are committed to supporting them in every way possible.

TrueLearn and Picmonic share their ongoing support and deepest sympathy for the millions impacted by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

The crisis in Ukraine is deeply personal to our organization. Fifteen of our team members currently reside in the Ukraine and their extraordinary will and commitment has been inspiring to us. They are an important part of the TrueLearn family and we are committed to supporting them through this in every way possible, said Joshua Courtney, DO, Chief Executive Officer of TrueLearn. Our thoughts are with the people of Ukraine, our employees in the region, and all of the families impacted by this conflict.

In response to the ongoing crisis in Ukraine, TrueLearn and Picmonic are providing funds to aid their employees in the region. In addition, Ukrainian students and medical residents will have access to free TrueLearn and Picmonic products to continue their studies during these challenging times. All current Ukrainian customers can extend their subscriptions at no cost.

Ukrainian residents can send an email to relief@truelearn.com to request a complimentary extension. They can also reach out to relief@truelearn.com for free access to TrueLearn and Picmonic products.

About TrueLearn

TrueLearn is the leading provider of online learning and exam preparation tools for the next generation of doctors and healthcare professionals. Since 2007, TrueLearns SmartBanks have helped over half a million students and resident physicians to perform at their absolute highest levels on their high-stakes licensure and standardized exams. The companys SmartBank portfolio spans undergraduate, graduate and post-graduate licensure and standardized examinations in the healthcare space.

About Picmonic

Picmonic covers thousands of hard-to-learn topics through unforgettable mnemonic video-quiz lessons, to help master the material that healthcare students often struggle to learn. Reduce stress in school while boosting performance on exams and pave your way to professional success by leveraging a research-proven learning system filled with memorable characters, unforgettable stories, and built-in quizzing. Increase retention and master even the hardest to learn facts with a trusted resource tailored to fit your learning needs.
It has been shown that guests prefer to stay in hotels that provide end-to-end services, including arranging transportation for them. Were so happy that Chicago is now part of the building blocks to make this happen, especially with spring approaching, Chicago hotels will hopefully see an increase.

Venue Butler today launched their one-click taxi booking device for hotels across Chicago. The device empowers hotels across Chicago to simply, seamlessly and safely book taxis for their guests through a simple click of the device. Hotels can use this purpose-built device 100% free with unlimited usage, zero catches or hidden fees. Instead of spending time on the phone or hailing a taxi on the street, it makes it simpler for front desk staff to book taxis for their guests and ultimately supports providing an excellent guest experience.

Talking about the launch, Managing Director of Venue Butler, Thomas Kruyne explains:

Imagine this: a receptionist or concierge is running around checking in a newly arriving guest, picking up the phone to make a new reservation, and making a room key for an existing guest. The last thing they want to be doing is picking up the phone to the taxi company or going outside to hail a cab for their guests. Thats where our free taxi booking device comes in. One-click of a button and the taxi is already on its way to their hotel. A minute later the concierge can see the driver's name and arrival on-screen and tell the guest that their taxi will be there in precisely 5 minutes.

The simplest way to book taxis for hotel guests

Featuring a compact design and a 2.8 display, concierges can book, track, and cancel taxis for their guests in just one click. The device frees up time for hotels to fully focus on their guests, enables excellent customer service, and enhances the overall guest experience. With Venue Butler, front desk staff can stay on top of their ongoing requests for taxis by having an on-screen overview of all requested, confirmed, on-route and cancelled taxis. As well as providing up-to-date information on the booking status, the device also shows the cab driver medallion number, the estimated time of arrival and the drivers name. The concierges can write this information down on the provided taxi information cards and give it to their guests to ensure that they are getting into a safe, reliable and trustworthy cab.

The devices built-in sim card provides a 99.9% uptime so that hotels can book taxis around the clock. It comes with the hotel address pre-configured in the device, allowing concierges to book a taxi with one click, without any other input required. Whats more, its connected directly with one of Chicagos largest yellow cab services, providing access to thousands of taxi drivers ready to pick up hotel guests.

A dedicated team across the East Coast

Talking about the business model and team, Thomas further explains that Venue Butler is a team that places taxi booking devices in hotels around the world. Our vision is to be connected to ourselves and others and to be as ONE. Its the foundation of everything we do. By placing these devices in hotels for free, we are enabling the connection between millions of people, all through a simple taxi booking device. One of the biggest challenges, when people are travelling, is having a comfortable ride all along, it has been shown that guests prefer to stay in hotels that provide end-to-end services, including arranging transportation for them. Were so happy that Chicago is now part of the building blocks to make this happen, especially with spring approaching, Chicago hotels will hopefully see an increase in occupancy too.

As part of their launch across the East Coast, including cities like New York and Philadelphia, Venue Butler is rolling out their team in Chicago to connect with venues, equip them with the device and provide ongoing support. The taxi booking device is available by contacting their team. The device is 100% free  unlimited usage, zero catches or hidden fees.

About Venue Butler

Headquartered in Amsterdam, with a remote team spread across the globe, Venue Butler distributes simple taxi booking tools to venues like hotels, bars and restaurants to create a seamless and safe taxi experience. The simple one-click device has already supported thousands of venues to book close to 40 million taxi rides across the globe. Ultimately, Venue Butlers vision is to connect with themselves and others and to be as ONE. Its the foundation of everything they do.

Media contact

Mahima Tamang Shrestha

pr@venuebutler.com
When the library community last met for the biennial Public Library Association Conference, in February 2020 in Nashville, Tennessee, an uncertain future was very much on the minds of its members. The year ahead would include a high-stakes national election. The library e-book market had grown contentious again. And the American Library Association was in the midst of an ambitious reorganization with a new executive director, Tracie D. Hall, at the helm. But no one could have anticipated what was to come just weeks later.

On February 29, the final day of the PLA conference, King County, Wash., reported what was then believed to be the nations first death from Covid-19. Just days later, on March 17, the ALA for the first time in its history recommended that all libraries across the nation close their doors to the public. It happened that fast. The PLA 2020 conference would turn out to the last major in-person library conference for almost two years, with two ALA annual conferences, one Midwinter Meeting, and the January 2022 debut of the ALAs LibLearnX all forced to go virtual only.

In what feels like a pandemic milestone, the 2022 PLA Conference, set for WednesdayFriday, March 2325, in Portland, Ore., will be the first major library conference since Covid-19 forced much of the world into a historic shutdown. PLA is one of the largest ALA divisions (second only to the Association of College and Research Libraries), and its conference is one of the most vibrant, popular, and well-attended ALA events, frequently drawing around 8,000 attendees or more.

I think we all need this conference badly right now, says PLA president Melanie Huggins, director of the Richland County (S.C.) Public Library. Registrations are really strong. We miss each other as colleagues. We need this to inspire us, to keep going and to keep doing the difficult work ahead. We are very optimistic about having a really great showing in Portland. And perhaps most importantly, Huggins says she is confident the 2022 PLA conference will be safe. The PLA board has looked hard at what we need to do to move forward with the in-person meeting, and we feel very good about where we are, she says. Its also really heartening to see the numbers of Covid cases going down.

Indeed, in Oregon, the declining case numbers look promising. Covid-19 infections and hospitalization rates have been rapidly dropping as the omicron variant spike recedesso much so that Gov. Kate Brown announced on February 28 that Oregon has accelerated plans to lift its indoor mask mandate. As of March 11, masks will no longer be required indoors, although they will continue to be strongly recommended for anyone who is unvaccinated or at elevated risk.

While PLA 2022 will be the first large-scale library conference since the pandemic, its not the first. In October 2021, some 1,500 school librarians and administrators gathered in Salt Lake City for the American Association of School Librarians (AASL) biennial national conference. And the Association of Rural and Small Libraries (ARSL) held an in-person 2021 national conference in Sparks, Nev. While smaller in scale, the impact of these events for attendees was massive.

Arriving to the banquet hall for our kickoff keynote and meal, my emotions got the best of me, wrote ARSL president Kathy Zappitello, executive director of the Conneaut (Ohio) Public Library, in a post-ARSL conference message to members that she shared with PW. Watching her colleagues reconnect in person, Zappitello noted, was a magic that I felt deep in my heart and soul and one that I will never forget.

 We will use this time at the conference to support each other, to talk about whats going on in our communities, and to share resources and strategies to uphold the intellectual freedom values we depend on. 

What will the moment be like at PLA, with thousands of librarians once again gathered together for a major national conference? Special, Huggins says.

I cannot wait to thank the thousands of public library workers who will be in Portland with me for the service they deliver, she adds. They deserve so much gratitude. And my hope is that the people who attend, whether in person or virtually, will be inspired to keep moving forward.

Feel-good moments aside, there is, as Huggins suggests, difficult work ahead for the library community.

A glance at the 100-plus sessions included in the PLA educational program reflect some of the steepest challenges the library profession has ever faced.

Among them, the pandemic has exposed long-running issues around library worker stress and safety, which remains a critical concern given the unpredictable way Covid-19 variants tend to emerge without warning.

Increased demand for library e-books and digital content in the wake of the pandemic has added pressure to an already complex and contentious relationship between publishers and libraries.

Diversity, equity, and inclusion remains a top priority following a social and racial justice awakening, within the profession, in our communities, and in terms of library collections.

Meanwhile, a chilling, politically-motivated rise in book banning in schools and libraries nationwide, targeted primarily at works that deal with racial and LGBTQ issues, looms as a fundamental threat.

The book banning and censorship issues actually go hand-in-hand with diversity, equity, and inclusion, Huggins points out. When you look at the content that is being targeted by these organized efforts to remove items from schools and libraries, it is for and about BIPOC students and families, and members of the LGBTQ community. So the timing is great for this conference, for us to come together and talk about how we stand for intellectual freedom and how we stand for every member of our communities. We will use this time at the conference to support each other, to talk about whats going on in our communities, and to share resources and strategies to uphold the intellectual freedom values we depend on.

And while the pandemic may not be over, Huggins says that librarians at now least have some ideas of what they are up against, and some strategies to share.

Weve gotten used to things changing on a dime, she adds. Weve seen this virus bubble back up after a period of thinking we might be coming out the other side, but now its like, okay, we know what to do here. Like the rest of the world were ready for this to be over. But in the meantime, we have gotten better and stronger in our decision making.

Keynotes and Big Ideas

As in previous years, the 2022 PLA conference will feature two excellent keynote speakers bookending a packed professional program.

The opening keynote will be delivered by bestselling author and podcast host Luvvie Ajayi Jones (Wednesday, 8:3010 a.m.). On her podcast, Professional Troublemaker, Ajayi Jones engages her guests in conversations about living life with courage and conviction. Ajayi Jones also hosts her own social platform called LuvvNation and is cocreator of the #SharetheMicNow2020 global movement, which amplified the voices of Black women by swapping social media platforms with white women with large followings. Her 2016 bestselling debut book, Im Judging You: The Do-Better Manual, received critical acclaim, and her latest, 2021s Professional Troublemaker: The Fear-Fighter Manual, debuted on the New York Times list with strong reviews.

The 2022 PLA closing keynote will be delivered by writer, actor, and former White House staffer Kal Penn (Friday, 56 p.m.). Perhaps best known for his starring roles in Designated Survivor, House, Mira Nairs The Namesake, and the Harold and Kumar franchise, Penn took a break from his acting and writing from 2009 to 2011 to work in the Obama administration. His first book, a memoir, You Cant Be Serious, was released in 2021.

The Big Ideas speaker seriesbilled as PLAs version of TED Talksreturns to kick off each days conference program with a thought-provoking, inspirational talk. The PLA 2022 series begins with bestselling author, attorney, and entrepreneur Brittany K. Barnett (Thursday, 89 a.m.). With a focus on transforming the criminal justice system, Barnett founded two nonprofits to carry out her lifes work: Girls Embracing Mothers, dedicated to empowering girls with mothers in prison, and the Buried Alive Project, which fights for people serving severe sentences because of outdated federal drug laws. Barnetts dedication has resulted in freedom for numerous people serving extreme sentences for federal drug offensesincluding seven clients who received executive clemency from President Obama. Her 2020 book, A Knock at Midnight: A Story of Hope, Justice, and Freedom, was selected as an NAACP Image Award nominee, a Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist, and was chosen by Amazon editors as the #1 book of 2020.

Record-setting Jeopardy! champion Amy Schneider will kick off PLAs last full day of programming (Friday, 89 a.m.). With an impressive 40-game winning streak, Schneider became the most successful woman ever to compete on the show, and the second most successful overall, trailing only Ken Jennings. Schneider is also the first openly transgender contestant to qualify for the Tournament of Champions. Raised in a Catholic family, Schneider suppressed her gender identity well into adulthood, but now uses her celebrity to stress the importance of trans representation, shifting the focus from trans oppression to trans accomplishments.

Exhibits and more

Just as in pre-Covid days, the PLA 2022 conference will feature a bustling exhibits hall, with hundreds of publishers and vendors registered to exhibit at the Oregon Convention Center. The show floor will feature vendor booths, as well as event spaces, including the popular Book Buzz stage, the career center, and the How-To Stage, which will feature a lineup of 20-minute hands-on sessions provided by and for conference attendees.

The exhibits hall will open with a reception (Wednesday, 36 p.m.); the floor will then be open 9 a.m.5 p.m. on Thursday and will close the following afternoon with another brief reception (Friday, 1:302 p.m.). For a full list of participating vendors, visit the PLA website.

In addition to speakers, education programs, and exhibits, PLA will once again offer a range of ticketed events for attendees. The always popular Childrens Author Breakfast (Thursday, 78 a.m.) will feature Dhonielle Clayton, Alex Gino, Rex Ogle, and Traci Sorell.

Also popular are the PLA author lunches, which offer attendees a chance to hear fascinating talks and to socialize and network with their colleagues from around the country. The first lunch will feature Clothilde Ewing (Thursday, 12:301:45 p.m.). A journalist by training and a former member of the press team for Obamas 2012 reelection campaign, Ewings debut picture book, Stella Keeps the Sun Up (Simon & Schuster, Mar.), is the first book in a series featuring a young girl who schemes to keep the sun up in the sky so she wont have to go to bed.

Fridays author lunch will feature Linda Holmes (Friday, 12:301:45 p.m.). A novelist, pop culture correspondent for NPR, and one of the hosts of the Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast, her bestselling 2019 debut, Evvie Drake Starts Over, follows the unlikely relationship between a young woman whos lost her husband and a major league pitcher. PWs review called the book a satisfying crowd-pleaser. Tickets are $60 and are still available for both events. Visit the PLA website for more information, and to reserve seats.

In what figures to be one of the most fun events of the show, this years Audio Publishers Association Press Play (Thursday, 5:306:30 p.m.) will celebrate all things audiobook, and its free and open to all attendees. The eventwhich has become a favorite among past PLA Conference attendeeswill feature a panel discussion and q&a with popular authors and audiobook narratorsand will be immediately followed by the PLA 2022 All-Conference Reception (Thursday, 67:30 p.m.).

Set to appear at APA Press Play: Jordan Ifueko, author of the bestselling Raybearer series and other stories, including short fiction in Strange Horizons; popular British actor Gildart Jackson, who has narrated more than 300 audiobooks and is the winner of an Audie and multiple Earphones Awardsalthough you may also know him as Giles the Butler from Buffy the Vampire Slayer; Emmy winner Sonia Manzano, the actor who defined the role of Maria on Sesame Street; and bestselling author Brian Selznick.

And for those not traveling to Portland, the 2022 PLA conference will feature an expanded virtual conference, with live programming across all three days, including livestreams of the opening session with Ajayi Jones, the Big Ideas series, and the closing session with Penn. There will also be at least 11 time slots of educational programming, each featuring two live sessions to choose from. The virtual program will also feature a host of author interviews, a virtual conference happy hour, and more.

For virtual attendees, on-demand access to recorded programs will be available for one year, except for the opening session, the Big Ideas series, and the closing session, which will be livestreamed only.

Most PLA 2022 conference eventsincluding all preconferences and concurrent program sessionswill take place in the Oregon Convention Center, with some events at the Hyatt Regency Portland at the center. Check the PLA conference website for last-minute changes or additions.

Below, more on PLA & Pacific Northwest Spotlight

PLA & Pacific Northwest Spotlight: How the Multnomah County Library Ensures a Welcoming, Safe Space for All

How did ibrary leaders learn how to make their neighborhood library branches more welcoming to BIPOC and culturally marginalized people? They listened.

PLA & Pacific Northwest Spotlight: From Book Desert to Oasis

How One Oregon Community Reopened Its Library After the County Voted to Shut It Down

PLA & Pacific Northwest Spotlight: Publishing in the Pacific Northwest

From Amazon to indies, the region is home to some of the nations most innovative publishing companies.

PLA & Pacific Northwest Spotlight: Can Amazon's Kindle Vella Break Through with Younger Readers?

For Kindle Vella, Amazons reading app for serial fiction, Gen Z readers, who are consuming webtoons and web novels in large numbers, could hold the key to success.
In her mesmerizing new book, Scoundrel: How a Convicted Murderer Persuaded the Women Who Loved Him, the Conservative Establishment, and the Courts to Set Him Free, Sarah Weinman does a masterly job resurrecting a stranger-than-fiction chapter in American criminal justice. In 1957, unemployed veteran Edgar Smith was convicted of killing 15-year-old Victoria Zielinski in New Jersey and sentenced to death. After conservative intellectual William F. Buckley learned Smith was an admirer of Buckleys magazine, National Review, Buckley began corresponding with Smith, leading to an unlikely friendship and financial support for legal efforts to spare Smiths life. Smith, who published both a book about his case and a mystery novel from behind bars, was released in 1971 for time served. Five years later, he stabbed a woman nearly to death in California. Weinmans dogged research, which included correspondence with Smith, who died in prison in 2017, enables her to craft a deeply unsettling narrative about how a clever killer manipulated the justice system and the conservative media to his benefit.

How long do moments last? For the genre of true crime, this current moment is roughly seven and a half years old, dating to the immense popularity of the podcast Serial's first season since it dropped in the fall of 2014. But crime and murder is a perennial fascination, dating back centuries. Think of the preacher Cotton Mather's pamphlets in the late 17th century, or Benjamin Franklin's early yellow journalism. Or, well, the Bible. We love to consume stories about the worst humanity can do and seek to understand how and why it happened.

Murder is, of course, an awful, ugly business, and Americans in particular continue to crane their necks to get a peek at the worst of the wrecks. We want answers, we want justice, we want heroes, we want villains, and real-life crime offers so many of these and then some. Crime fiction may desire order out of chaos, but true crime grapples with the chaos while hoping for catharsis in the meantime.

These larger issues, and the connections between crime and society and human behavior, have preoccupied me for much of my life. Peering into the abyssand hoping that same abyss doesn't swallow me up if I take the wrong step, or cross a gossamer-thin line. These 10 books helped me make sense of the world's darkest corners.

1. Classic Crimes by William Roughead (1951) Modern-day true crime could not exist without the writings of Roughead (18701952), a Scottish lawyer with an avid interest in criminal trials. His write-ups of the legal proceedings he attended and cases he researched, collected in this single volume, are infused with delight and brio, as well as bursts of outrage at obvious wrongs (including that of Oscar Slater, subject of Margalit Fox's outstanding Conan Doyle for the Defense.)

2. Crime and Science by Jurgen Thorwald (1966) My freshman college roommate gave me a copy of this book for my birthday, and I know it played a huge role in why I pursued a masters degree in forensic science (even if its one I never used, except as fodder for writing about crimes of all kinds.) Thorwald writes with exceptional clarity about cases obscure and famous solved with forensic techniques like blood typing and elemental analysis of gunshot residue. DNA and CSI-style glamorization make those older techniques seem quaint, but current criminalists owe a lot to their chemically minded pioneers. It still amazes me that this book and its earlier companion volume, The Century of Detectivewhich lost the Edgar Award for Best Fact Crime to In Cold Bloodhave yet to be rescued from out-of-print oblivion.

3. A Death in Canaan by Joan Barthel (1977) This infuriating story of a son wrongfully convicted for the murder of his mother, and the campaign by the likes of William Styron, Renata Adler, Philip Roth, and Arthur Miller to free him, was on my mind a great deal as I wrote Scoundrel. Barthels book, first published in 1977 and reissued in digital format in 2016, focuses on the 1973 murder of Barbara Gibbons in Connecticut, and how her 18-year-old son, Peter Reilly, ended up in the crosshairs of local police and prosecutors. Their continuous bungling means that it's unlikely, if impossible, that we'll ever know (with proof) who killed Gibbons.

4. The Journalist and the Murderer by Janet Malcolm (1989) That searing opening paragraph. That excoriating criticism of Joe McGinnisss methods where he gained access to Jeffrey MacDonald, presumed killer of his wife and children, by professing belief in his innocence only to turn on him in print. But Ive always thought Malcolm's brilliant, merciless book didnt really care much about the MacDonald caseit was just a perfect, legally fraught example of the failures of the journalist-subject relationship. And its why I returned to it while working on Scoundrelmy own account of the porous bonds between a journalist and a murderer.

5. Redrum the Innocent by Kirk Makin (1992) I wish this watershed true crime account from Canada, admittedly an 800-page doorstopper, was more widely available, or that it would be reissued with updates. It deals, exhaustively and comprehensively, with one of the most troubling criminal chapters in that countrys history. Nine-year-old Christine Jessop was raped and strangled to death in 1984, and law enforcement convinced themselves that neighbor Guy Paul Morin killed her. He was acquitted, then convicted (Canada doesnt have double jeopardy), and then DNA testing freed him for good in 1995. Jessop's real killer was finally discovered via genetic genealogy, and knowing this makes the systemic failure to capture a suspect living in plain sight all the more infuriating.

6. Under the Bridge by Rebecca Godfrey (2005) Here is another standout true crime work by a fellow Canadian. Godfrey, whose novel The Torn Skirt is an underground classic, essentially taught herself journalism in order to report this harrowing account of the 1997 murder of Reena Virk, an Indigenous teenager living in Victoria, B.C., and the subsequent arrests and trials of several classmates. Godfrey renders the victim and the perpetrators in stunning, three-dimensional detail, an acuity made more sensitive as befitting a novelist.

7. True Crime edited by Harold Schechter (2008) When a genre finally makes it into the hallowed halls of the Library of America, that is a sign of its growing respectability. (Psychological suspense did with my own two-volume set, Women Crime Writers, in 2015.) As a writer, Schechter has done more work and research on historical serial murderers than anyone else (and become, alas, ripe for pilfering by true crime podcasters.) Editing this volume demonstrates the breadth of his knowledge and his astute choices of other nonfiction crime writers and their pet cases. Someday, I hope, there will be a follow-up anthology.

8. The Five by Hallie Rubenhold (2019) The more time passes, the more in awe I am of this book. Rubenhold flips the usual script and elevates the stories of the five women known to have been murdered by a man roaming the streets of East London's Whitechapel neighborhood in 1888. In doing so, she restores themPolly, Annie, Elizabeth, Catherine, and Mary-Janeas complex, flawed, human figures struggling to live in a world rife with poverty, homelessness, and cruelty towards women, while shattering a great many myths about who and what they were not.

9. We Keep the Dead Close by Becky Cooper (2020) I thought of this book often in the wake of the recently-launched sexual misconduct lawsuit from three Harvard anthropology graduate students, an eerie reminder that this same departmentand the schoolhave been rife with gross power imbalances, sexism, and criminal misdeeds for decades, if not longer. Cooper delves into the life of Jane Britton, abruptly cut short by her murder, at age 21, in 1969, and unsolved for decades. There is resolution, but what matters more is the unsettled aftermath, lingering suspicion, and permanent culpability.
New York City, NY (11385)

Today

Sunny along with a few clouds. High 72F. Winds NNE at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

Partly cloudy skies early will become overcast later during the night. Low 54F. Winds S at 5 to 10 mph.
Published on:

3 March 2022



Credit: Istock.com/LauraDin Credit: Istock.com/LauraDin

People have been trying to understand how predators and prey are able to stay balanced within our planets ecosystems for at least 2,400 years. The Greek author Herodotus even raised the question in his historical treatise Histories, written around 430 BC.

And when Charles Darwin published in 1859 his revolutionary theory of evolution in On the Origin of Species, this raised an even more difficult question: why do predators not evolve to become so aggressive that they eat all their prey and then go extinct themselves?

Scientists have since doubted whether its possible for the process of evolution to create prudent predators able to avoid extinguishing their own prey. The American ecologist Lawrence Slobodkin proposed the idea of prudent predation in 1960, but was strongly criticised by evolutionary biologists.

Perhaps under the influence of anti-communist sentiment linked to the cold war between the Soviet Union and the US, biologists argued that prudent predation would require evolution to act on groups rather than single individuals of a species  and that such group selection was unlikely to occur.

Although modern evolutionary theory has moved beyond this dichotomy between individual and group selection, scepticism about the latter  and about prudent predation  lingers among many scientists.

However, in a recent study published in Ecology Letters, my colleagues and I show  using complex predator-prey models  how this delicate equilibrium between predator and prey could have evolved.

Prudent predation means that a predator species has evolved to avoid consuming as much and as aggressively as its own physical limits permit. Effectively  though not knowingly  prudent predators are restraining themselves for the benefit of other members of their species, as well as for future generations.

Even when predators are prudent in their natural habitat, they may overexploit the prey around them if they are moved to places where they dont belong. An example is the Indo-Pacific lionfish, whose populations have rapidly expanded in and around the Gulf of Mexico and the eastern Mediterranean Sea.

Lionfish feed on smaller fish and shellfish that live in reefs. They are such ferocious predators that ecologists became concerned that, especially in the Gulf of Mexico, few other fish species would survive their presence. Instead, something else happened.

Lionfish populations suddenly began falling in Gulf of Mexico reefs, while their native competitors remained. It appears that, because lionfish overexploit their prey, they are not such strong competitors after all.

These dwindling lionfish populations are therefore experiencing evolutionary pressure to feed less ferociously, so they can occupy reefs longer and have more opportunities to spread to other reefs. Eventually, we expect them to adapt to their new habitat by becoming prudent predators.

Implications

Theres more to be learned from this than just ecology. In modern, westernised societies, theres a deep-seated idea that everybodys pursuit of personal benefit will ultimately benefit society as a whole. For example, CEOs of public corporations are expected to act for the benefit of their shareholders alone. They will not support a market competitor, even if loss of the competitor would mean less consumer choice.

This thinking hinges on an analogy between market economics and evolution, which both rely on the survival of the fittest. Survival of the fittest refers to the principle that those variants of a gene, species, business model or technology that are best adapted to current circumstances will prevail, while others will die out.

Prudent predation also follows the survival of the fittest principle. However, the fittest organism here isnt the one able to produce the greatest number of surviving offspring. Rather, its the one that succeeds in generating the greatest number of new colonies.

Colonies of species that overexploit their resources are not fit in this sense, because they collapse before getting the chance to spread to other places. In the past, when societies werent globally connected, similar principles applied to human choices. Societies that overexploited their resources would eventually collapse, making room for more prudent societies to expand.

However, in todays globalised world, the imprudent actions of people in one place can harm people at entirely different places. For example, the oil heating my poorly insulated home might be coming from tar sand fields polluting the environment in Canada.

The mechanism by which survival-of-the-fittest brings about prudence therefore cannot work any more. The analogy with nature has broken down. It can no longer support the belief that the pursuit of individual benefits will ultimately lead to balance in society and economics.

This article was first published in The Conversation on March 3rd.
With countries ranging from Norway and Brazil to Philippines and New Zealand, the premium documentary series include Freddie Mercury: The Final Act, Reclaiming Amy and the biographical series A Life In Ten Pictures featuring artists such as John Lennon and Tupac.Produced by the BBC Studios Documentary Unit, A Life In Ten Pictures re-examines the lives of six famous faces from the recent past through the photographs that have come to define them. Sales of the series include Brazil (Globo), Spain (Movistar Plus+), Australia (ABC), New Zealand (Sky TV), Canada (CBC Documentary Channel and GEM), Germany (Sky Deutschland), Italy (Sky Italia), MNET and ShowMax across Sub  Saharan Africa and Denmark (DR).Rogan productions special feature-length documentary for BBC TWO, Freddie Mercury: The Final Act, charts the final chapter of Freddie Mercurys life story. International sales include US (The CW Network), Australia (ABC), Greece (COSMOTE TV), France (Arte), MNET and ShowMax across Sub  Saharan Africa, Sweden (TV4), Norway (TV2), Denmark (DR), Finland (YLE), Netherlands (NTR), Belgium (VRT), Czech Republic (Czech TV) and Spain (Movistar Plus+).Marking the ten year anniversary of the death of Amy Winehouse last year, Curious Films Reclaiming Amy, has sold to US and Canada (BBC Select), Brazil (Globo), Australia (SBS), New Zealand (TVNZ), France (CANAL+), Germany (ZDF), MNET and ShowMax across Sub  Saharan Africa, Sweden (TV4), Denmark (TV2), Finland (YLE), Netherlands (RTL) and Belgium (VRT).Character-driven documentary, House of Maxwell, an Expectation production, which charts the story of one of the most extraordinary family sagas the world has ever seen, from Robert Maxwells beginnings as an impoverished survivor of the Holocaust through to the recent prosecution of his daughter Ghislaine Maxwell thirty years later.Louise McNab Director of Content sales at BBC Studios said: Appetite for authentic and engaging factual content is growing year on year, were seeing in particular a trend for premium documentaries which are reassessing modern history through well-known figures. Weve got an internationally renowned Documentary unit as well as partnerships with award-winning independent production houses, both of which provide exclusive access to people and places and in turn create premium accessible content with global relevance. With upcoming titles including Frida and House of Maxwell, BBC Studios is unrivalled in its ambition to be at the forefront of buyers minds for premium documentary content.
Lady Gaga will take part in the 2022 EE British Academy Film Awards.

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The British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) said in a press release Friday that Gaga, 35, will introduce the EE Rising Star segment March 13 at the BAFTA Film Awards.

The EE Rising Star award is the only BAFTA award voted for by the British public. The award recognizes new and "exceptional talent in film over the past year."

After Gaga's introduction, last year's EE Rising Star winner, Rocks actress Bukky Bakray, will announce the 2022 winner and present the award.

This year's EE Rising Star award nominees are Ariana DeBose (West Side Story), Harris Dickinson (The King's Man), Lashana Lynch (No Time to Die), Millicent Simmonds (A Quiet Place Part II) and Kodi Smit-McPhee (The Power of the Dog).

"We're thrilled to be able to create such a memorable moment that celebrates the exciting new talent within our industry. The EE Rising Star Award is a huge moment in someone's early career, and our multiple new talent initiatives are a key part of BAFTA's year-round work," BAFTA executive director of awards and content Emma Baehr said. "We're delighted that Lady Gaga has agreed to be part of the ceremony, and pleased that Bukky will finally get to enjoy her moment on the Royal Albert Hall stage."

Gaga is nominated for Best Actress in a Leading Role at the BAFTAs for her role in House of Gucci.

The BAFTA Film Awards will take place March 13 in London. Dune and The Power of the Dog lead the field of nominees.

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Gaga will also co-host the Elton John AIDS Foundation Academy Awards viewing party March 27.
Ukrainian pop music could be heard across the University of Georgias North Campus Wednesday afternoon as UGA community members gathered for a rally in support of Ukraine. Decked in yellow and blue and carrying signs in both English and Ukrainian, the demonstrators voiced opposition to Russian President Vladimir Putins Feb. 24 invasion and expressed support for those affected by it.
Ukrainian pop music could be heard across the University of Georgias North Campus Wednesday afternoon as UGA community members gathered for a rally in support of Ukraine. Decked in yellow and blue and carrying signs in both English and Ukrainian, the demonstrators voiced opposition to Russian President Vladimir Putins Feb. 24 invasion and expressed support for those affected by it.

Adriana Dale, the rallys organizer whose mother is from Ukraine, said she felt the event was important to highlight Ukrainian culture, which has been under threat in the past, and stand up for Ukrainian sovereignty.

As a kid, I never understood why my mom would drag me to Ukrainian school on Saturday, but this why. Theyre constantly trying to be, you know, extinct, like their culture is trying to constantly be wiped away, Dale said. So, its important to show solidarity during times like this.

This is not the first demonstration in Athens supporting Ukraine. On Monday, Athenians gathered at the Arch for a Stand with Ukraine rally.

Other attendees said they chose to attend the rally because they felt the Russian invasion presented a threat to democracy around the world.

I think democracy and freedom is important, and we have to stand up for that around the world, and of course we, the United States, we support that around the world, said Stewart Ulrich, a political science and international affairs PhD student. If we dont stand up for democracy everywhere then its not going to stand, you know what I mean?

As the rally went on, several attendees began passing out flyers with lists of organizations supporting Ukrainians to passersby. The flyers also included a list of politicians to contact, including Sen. Raphael Warnock, Sen. Jon Ossoff and President Joe Biden.

Meanwhile, other attendees pulled American flags from their backpacks and carried them through the rally, stars and stripes fluttering against a collection of blue and yellow.

Jacob Anderson, an international policy masters student and one of the attendees carrying an American flag said he did so to appreciate what the U.S. has done to support Ukraine while also pushing Americans and the American political system to continue to become more aware of the situation and pursue further action.

Yuliia Kabina, an attendee and Fulbright researcher with the National University of Cherkasy in Ukraine, said she feels Ukrainians need support from people across the globe. She said everyone who stands in solidarity with Ukraine is playing a vital role in protecting peace.

Everyone can do their share is what we prove here right now,  Kabina said in a text message to The Red & Black. Like millions of people around the globe we care and wont silently observe the atrocities against Ukrainian people.

Julia Walkup contributed to this reporting.
Olivia is a junior journalism major at the University of Georgia. Her love for writing and sharing stories from the community led her to The Red & Black. She loves being able to highlight the people who make up the Athens community.

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Athens, GA (30605)

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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 
Brattleboro, VT (05301)

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Mostly sunny skies. High 69F. Winds NNW at 5 to 10 mph..

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Partly cloudy skies during the evening will give way to cloudy skies overnight. Low 43F. Winds light and variable.
Some of the 180 soldiers with the U.S. Army 3rd Infantry Division, 1st Armored Brigade Combat Team march to a charter airplane at Hunter Army Airfield during their deployment to Germany, Wednesday, March 2, 2022, in Savannah, Ga. The division is sending 3,800 troops as reinforcements for various NATO allies in Eastern Europe. (Stephen B. Morton /Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP)
Wheeling Hospital, called the mother hospital of West Virginia because of its early founding, was chartered March 12, 1850. It was the only such medical facility between Pittsburgh and Cincinnati, and growth was swift. Its founders were the Catholic Bishop Richard Whelan and Dr. Simon Hullihen, supported by Drs. John Frissell and Matthew Houston. In 1853, the bishop brought in six Sisters of Saint Joseph from Missouri and purchased the Metcalf property, a house still standing at 110 15th Street. In 1856, the hospital outgrew this building and moved to the Michael Sweeney mansion in North Wheeling, its site for the next 119 years. www.wvencyclopedia.org
Viktoria Sundqvist / Hearst Connecticut Media

THOMPSON  A local man was sentenced to time already served Thursday for downloading child sexual abuse material from the dark web, according to federal prosecutors.

Shayne Shayer, 40, of Thompson, was sentenced by Judge Robert N. Chatigny in Hartford to one day in prison, time already served, and 10 years of supervised release.
Erik Trautmann/Hearst Connecticut Media

On Nov. 13, the Connecticut Department of Transportation announced a new contest that allowed state residents to name four of its snowplows. The results are in.

Gov. Ned Lamont announced the results on Twitter Friday. Coming in at No. 4, is Plowzilla as in Godzilla, he said; No. 3 is Buzz Iceclear like Buzz Lightyear; at No. 2, Husky McSalty, referencing the UConn Huskies. And the No. 1 winner is Scoop Dogg as in rapper Snoop Dogg.
BRIDGEPORT - A Superior Court judge Thursday refused to order the city to pay the attorney fees of three police captains who successfully challenged the appointment of Rebeca Garcia to assistant chief.

Garcia has since been appointed acting chief.

In November Judge Barry Stevens ruled that the citys selection of Garcia as assistant police chief was in violation of civil service rules and the city charter.

The best characterization of the citys compliance with the civil service rules is that it was either perfunctory or pretextual rather than substantial and actual, Judge Barry Stevens stated in a 10-page decision. The citys overarching intent and goal in the selection of the assistant chief of police was not so much to comply with the civil service rules but rather to allow (former Police Chief Armando) Perez to choose from the ranks whomever he wanted in whatever manner he desired.

The city has appealed the decision to the state Appellate Court.

But while they wait for the results of the appeal, Thomas Bucci, the lawyer for the three captains, asked the judge to order the city to pay his attorney fees contending that he is entitled to have the city pay him because the city acted in bad faith when it defended the lawsuit.

This request is denied as the court is unable to find that the defense of this action amounted to bad faith litigation, the judge ruled Thursday.

Bucci declined comment.

City officials did not return calls and emails for comment.

Judge Stevens also denied a motion by the city to articulate or further explain his initial ruling. He stated his decision had been pretty clear.

In December 2019, Garcia, then a captain in charge of the police academy, was appointed assistant chief by Perez.

Garcia was made acting police chief following the arrest of Perez by the FBI for conspiring with former City Personnel Director David Dunn to rig the examination process that made Perez chief and lying to the FBI about it. Perez was later sentenced to a year and a day in prison and Dunn was sentenced to four months in prison after they pleaded guilty in federal court.

Three police captains, Brian Fitzgerald, Steven Lougal and Roderick Porter claimed in a lawsuit against the city that the appointment of Garcia to assistant chief was unlawful and invalid and in violation of the citys charter.

During the trial before Judge Stevens on the validity of Garcias selection as assistant chief, Perez testified he considered Fitzgerald, Lougal, and Porter for the position of assistant chief and submitted their resumes to a consultant hired by the city. However, the following day of the trial Perez admitted he had been confused during his first day of testimony and in fact had done none of that. He said he had only considered Garcia for the position and had submitted her name to the mayor.
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TORRINGTON  Linh Duong wanted to open a different kind of restaurant in Torrington, offering a variety of seafood and a fun family atmosphere.

The Cajun Boil opened Feb. 25 on Winsted Road, in a retail plaza next door to City Smoke. Duong leased spaces vacated by a liquor store and a Dominos Pizza, knocked the walls down, and created a large dining room and bar, with decor that might remind visitors of a roadside stand, only bigger.

I wanted to have something unique for Torrington, said Duong, a Naugatuck resident. During COVID-19, I had to close but still pay the rent, so I started out with a food truck with seafood. I was trying to pay my bills. I had this idea for crawfish, but it grew.

When the Cajun Boil opened, the dining room filled up. Its been the same nearly every night, Duong said. This week, Duong added a lunch menu and opened the restaurant at noon.

Thursday, Bladimil Delacruz and Katherine Cavras ordered a seafood boil and fried calamari, and sat in a sunny window enjoying their feast. The boil, nestled in a plastic bag in the center of the table, featured crayfish, shrimp and corn on the cob with a distinct Cajun aroma.

The fried calamari is awesome, Delacruz said, as he tasted a fat shrimp from the bag. Everythings just delicious.

Customers can choose from a variety of seafood for their boil. Clams, fish, snow or king crab legs, blue crabs, mussels, crayfish and head-on or head-off shrimp are accompanied by corn, potatoes, chorizo sausage or kielbasa, seasoned with Old Bay or garlic butter, or without, all sold by the pound.

The menu also offers baskets of fried clams, shrimp, lobster tails or chicken tenders, along with fish and chips, lobster rolls, tempura shrimp or southern-style chicken wings.

Appetizers include roasted clams, skewered jumbo shrimp, garlic bread and nachos, and plenty of sides  coleslaw, potato or sweet potato fries, macaroni and cheese and clam chowder.

Duong sources his seafood from Gulf Shrimp with daily deliveries, guaranteeing its freshness, he said.

A lot of what we have is seasonal, so well feature specials as that changes, he said. Were doing a special boil with whole belly clams right now.

The most popular items on the menu right now are crab legs.

Everyone loves them, Duong said. I think people like us because were different; its a different ambiance, a different menu.

The decor is nautical, with fishnets and buoys, wood-covered walls, fish, hand-painted signs and brown paper on the tables for splatters of butter and clam juice.

We made everything disposable, so its easier to clean up, Duong said. With COVID-19, its just easier to do it that way. It also keeps the kitchen clean.

Free-standing tables for four or six people can easily be joined together for a gang of 20; couples can sit in a booth away from the crowd. Large-screen televisions are set up on the walls above the dining room for game nights.

So if a family comes in, or a big group of friends, they have plenty of space, Duong said. Weve made it easy for large or small groups to have a good time.

The Cajun Boil is located at 349 Winsted Road. Hours are from noon to 11 p.m. To reach the restaurant, call 860-618-2899 or visit their Facebook page at www.facebook.com/thecajunboil.
NEW BRITAIN  Police cleared the New Britain courthouse due to a non-credible threat Thursday afternoon, state police said.

State police were told of a non-credible threat at the courthouse on Franklin Square just after 2 p.m. Thursday. Trooper First Class Sarah Salerno said people were evacuated out of an abundance of caution.

State police sent in troopers and police dogs as a precautionary measure to assist with the investigation, Salerno added.

Salerno said no further information was available as of 4:30 p.m.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
China urges suspension of unqualified off-campus tutors

Xinhua) 21:13, March 04, 2022

BEIJING, March 4 (Xinhua) -- China's Ministry of Education has urged off-campus tutoring institutions to suspend or dismiss unqualified practitioners or transfer them to other positions based on the result of a recent survey.

An official off-campus tutoring institution survey for high and primary school students and kindergarten children nationwide found that 2.91 percent of the practitioners were unqualified for the work, the ministry said Friday.

Launched in November 2021, the three-month survey covered nearly 770,000 practitioners at tutoring institutions for both curricular and extra-curricular courses.

Some practitioners had faked or exaggerated their education and working backgrounds, and some were not certified to teach the subjects they were tutoring on, said the ministry.

The survey also found a few practitioners with law violating or criminal records.

Relevant localities should blacklist the 64 practitioners with severe violations from off-campus tutoring institutions, according to the ministry.

(Web editor: Hongyu, Bianji)
WEST HARTFORD  Superintendent Tom Moore has proposed a budget to the Board of Education thats $5 million more than this years allocations.

The development of the budget is about the future, Moore told Board members. Its about what we plan for our children. Not just for next year, but investments in new programs and sometimes investments in new ideas.

The largest increase in the proposed $181,328,975 budget can be found in salaries, which increased by $4.2 million. The rise, the school district said, includes adjustments required by collective bargaining agreements, as well as staff added in the current year to handle the return to an in-person school model.

In all, 83 percent of the budget goes to salaries and benefits.

If you want to save money in a budget, its people, Moore said. 83 percent of this is people. Thats going to be a dominant number thats going to color all that we do. We do have more staffing this year to meet student needs, and then we had a new collective bargaining agreement.

West Hartford ranks 100th in the state in per-pupil expenditure. The town spends $19,155 per student.

Moore said hes proud of how efficient the town is in educating its students.

Im very proud of how we spend our money, Moore said. I think we are one of the more efficient districts when you look at what we put into it and the excellent education that our children receive.

The towns per-pupil spending has gradually dropped since 1970, but in recent years the town has begun to spend more on students.

This is something that Im happy with, Moore said. Im proud of the efficiency over the years of how well weve been educating our children with declining resources. Im thankful to the board that  we are not declining in our spending anymore, but actually increasing in comparison to other districts because we have unique needs and are different than other communities.

The school district said the proposed budget will maintains small class size guidelines and a team structure at the middle schools. The district also said the budget keeps full-day kindergarten in tact and shows a commitment to arts and physical education.

This is intended to clear the paths of our students that deserve bright futures, Moore said. One of the things we dont do is put limits on them. Finances can sometimes put a limit on opportunities for our kids. Im very thankful that the board here, year in and year out, has stood up for our kids and our families. And our community has too.

The board will have its first budget workshop on March 9, followed by a budget public hearing and another budget workshop on March 23. The Board will adopt a budget on April 5, sending it to the town council, who will adopt it on April 25.
Lebanon, IN (46052)

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An analyst says the comments are part of a bid by the former CNRP leader to return to politics.

Cambodias opposition chief Kem Sokha on Thursday appeared to offer his support for Prime Minister Hun Sens son Hun Manet as the ruling partys candidate for his fathers role, in what a political analyst said is likely part of a bid to reenter politics despite his ongoing trial on charges of treason.

Speaking to reporters ahead of a hearing in his case at the Phnom Penh Municipal Court, the 68-year-old former head of the dissolved Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) said he support[s] the idea of preparing successors because no one lives forever and expressed hope that the next generation of politicians can resolve the stalemate left by their predecessors.

While Kem Sokha did not mention Hun Manet by name, his comments follow Hun Sens recent announcement that he had selected his son to run atop the ticket for the ruling Cambodian Peoples Party (CPP) in Cambodias upcoming local elections, scheduled for June 5.

When asked about Kem Sokhas apparent backing of Hun Manet, CPP spokesman Sok Ey San told RFA that political appointments are an internal party matter and that his message is being viewed as one of external support. He said the CPPs new generation of leaders will continue to implement existing party policy.

If [Kem Sokha] thinks the CPPs prime minister candidate is capable, that is his opinion, he said.

Political researcher Em Sovannara told RFA he believes that Kem Sokhas comments were meant to show that he is not Hun Sens enemy in the hopes of convincing the government to allow him to reenter politics.

But he said that Kem Sokhas comments are unlikely to be welcomed by CNRP supporters or acted on by the CPP without additional pressure from the U.S. and other Western nations, which have called for a resolution to Cambodias political stalemate.

I think the CNRPs supporters dont support Kem Sokhas stance on Hun Manet as the CPPs candidate for prime minister, he said. But Kem Sokha is willing to ignore that if it means he will be given a chance to enter politics.

Lengthy court case

Kem Sokha was arrested in September 2017 over an alleged plot backed by the United States to overthrow the government of Hun Sen, who has ruled Cambodia for more than 35 years. Kem Sokha spent a year in jail before being released under court supervision.

After his arrest, Cambodias Supreme Court dissolved the CNRP in a move that allowed the CPP to win all 125 seats in Parliament in a July 2018 election and drew U.S. sanctions and the suspension of trade privileges with the European Union.

When his trial resumed on Jan. 19 after a two-year hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Kem Sokha called for the treason charges against him to be dropped. He and his supporters say the charges are politically motivated.

On Wednesday, the former CNRP chief told reporters his fate in court would be decided by the political atmosphere of the nation, while continuing to defend his innocence.

He urged the court to drop the charges against him so that he can return to politics and take part in local elections.

If [the political situation] is improved, the court will also make good decision, he said. I hope that the court will stand on the principle of justice.

During his trial, Kem Sokha asked representatives of NGOs who were monitoring the hearing whether they want to see the CPP engage in political talks with the opposition, adding that the ruling party has yet to contact him.

Seong Senkaruna, spokesman for Cambodian rights group ADHOC, told RFA he responded that the countrys NGOs want peaceful talks, as well to end the political crisis.

When asked about Kem Sokhas call for an end to the charges against him, government spokesman Phay Siphan said his case is being dealt with by the court and that Hun Sen could not intervene.

Hearings in Kem Sokhas trial will resume on March 9.

Reported by RFAs Khmer Service. Translated by Samean Yun. Written in English by Joshua Lipes.
At least four Chinese students have been killed in Kharkiv following a Russian attack on their dormitory building, Ukrainian media reported on Friday.



"On the night of March 3, Russian invaders hit the dormitory of the Kharkiv State Academy of Culture, which is in the Moskovsky district of the city on Gvardeytsev-Shironintsev Street, with targeted fire," the Obozrevatel news website reported.



It cited preliminary estimates as saying that 13 students, including four from China and one from India, had died, naming two of the Chinese students as Jin Tianhao and Li Zhi. RFA was unable to confirm the report independently.



Meanwhile, social media posts have been circulating showing large numbers of Chinese students still stranded in Ukraine, packed into rooms in a bid to stay safe amid the fighting and shelling, with some of them running out of food.



One student posted: "There are still 138 people here in the Sumy region of Ukraine who haven't been evacuated yet. Please can the relevant departments coordinate and let us go home."



Chinese national Fang Lei, who is trapped in the southeastern city of Melitopol, said he had tried to post similar appeals on Chinese social media, but the posts were blocked.



"There are a lot of people trapped in Kharkiv, and this piece of information will be covered up immediately," Fang said.



"Comments and likes are not allowed. Those of us who cannot evacuate from the war zone don't get a mention."



"I can't leave, so I want to speak out and try to help the 138 students, because they are in a terrible situation with not enough food to survive," Fang said.



"If I get blown up, then at least I have left a note ... I want the world to know what it feels like to be left behind to die," he said.



Embassy expectations



Meanwhile, a Chinese student from the eastern province of Shandong posted a video saying he had lost his passport, and couldn't cross the border into Romania.



"Please can the media contact the [Chinese] embassy in Romania and have them pick me up at the border," the student said in a video appeal.



Chinese national Wang Longde, who currently lives in Laos, said he had seen a number of messages from Chinese nationals in Ukraine calling for help from the embassy.



"Chinese students are getting bombed in Ukraine, and the embassy hasn't been very pro-active [in protecting them], nor offered any aftercare service," Wang told RFA.



"The embassy should be bringing all of the students in Ukraine to the embassy, so they can be protected," he said.



An employee who answered the phone at the Chinese embassy in Romania said the cost of flights out of the country has skyrocketed, but said it couldn't change a price set by the airlines.



"The airlines set the price, so we're looking at 16,000-17,000 yuan at the personal expense [of evacuees]," the embassy said. "There are two flights today, but the follow-up arrangements aren't going very well because there are too many people right now."



"There's a limit to how many people we can have in the embassy, and we don't know about the rest."



Repeated calls to the Chinese embassy in Ukraine rang unanswered on Friday.



Beijing slow to act



A former international news editor in the northern Chinese province of Hebei surnamed Gao said Beijing had been slow to move to protect its own since the invasion.



"So many expats have been evacuated already, and only the Chinese are left," Gao said. "But to get out of Kharkiv to Poland, you would have to cross the entire war-zone, so it's not too hard to understand."



"[Also], China has a good relationship with Russia ... and it probably expected [Russia] to take the whole of Ukraine in about 48 hours," he said.



There was no visible coverage of the reported attack on the English and the Chinese versions of Xinhua news agency or the People's Daily by around 1300 GMT on Friday, with both outlets focusing on Thursday's negotiations between Russia and Ukraine, and China's remarks at the United Nations Security Council.



Neither had the Chinese embassy in Ukraine made a public statement by that time.



However, Russia's official Sputnik News Agency and China's international state broadcaster CGTN reported that two Chinese students had been shot and wounded as they tried to leave Kharkiv.



Most official media coverage led with ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping's appearance at the opening of the 2022 Paralympic Winter Games, which Beijing is hosting, and the opening of the country's rubber-stamp parliament, the National People's Congress (NPC).



Anger over deaths



Beijing-based independent journalist Gao Yu said she was saddened by the report.



"I am very sad and angry that four Chinese students were killed in the bombing," Gao said. "It just goes to show that Putin's barbaric war of aggression should be sanctioned by international law."



"The Chinese government has all along taken a position consistent with that of the aggressor; it hasn't viewed Putin's actions as aggression against Ukraine," she said.



She said the embassy and consular authorities in Ukraine also bear some responsibility for the reported deaths.



On the Sina Weibo social media platform, a post from user @Homer_takes_a_nap posted about the deaths of international students in Kharkiv, repeating a claim in Russian state media that the attack was the work of "Ukrainian Nazis."



Russian president Vladimir Putin has claimed he launched the war to "denazify" Ukraine, and Chinese media have largely repeated Russian propaganda about the war uncritically, while government censors have banned comments and reporting that is critical of Russia.



Another Weibo post from @idlers_gossip linked to the Obozrevatel report, saying the attack was by the Russian army. The post had been forwarded more than 1,000 times by 1400 GMT, but comments were unavailable, likely due to heavy-handed moderation on all topics linked to Ukraine.



Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.
Chinese rights lawyer Yu Wensheng is incommunicado after his release from prison, while veteran rights attorney Jiang Tianyong has been under house arrest since his release three years ago.



Yu was released from Nanjing Prison on , after which he had a brief phone call with his wife Xu Yan, who was in a Beijing hotel, according to a post on Xu's Twitter account.



During the call, Yu told Xu he would meet her at the Beijing hotel.



However, it was unclear whether the couple have returned to their Beijing home. Repeated calls to Xu's mobile number rang unanswered in recent days.



Fellow rights attorney Lin Qilei, who defended Yu, said the couple haven't been in contact with friends or colleagues since.



"There has been no news at all," Lin said. "We would at least have expected [Xu] to say that it was inconvenient for them to speak to people, and that Yu was with her, but there has been no statement, nothing."



"This is very unusual, and it may be that they have been told not to say anything because the parliamentary sessions have just opened in Beijing," Lin said, in a reference to the opening of China's rubber-stamp parliament, the National People's Congress (NPC), during which stringent "stability maintenance" protocols are in place to prevent comment or protest from dissenting voices.



"They're not allowing her to say anything ... did they confiscate her mobile phone? We have know way of knowing," he said.



Lawyer Huang Hanzhong said Yu is likely still under a huge amount of pressure from state security police, despite having been released at the end of his sentence.



"I [messaged to ask] Xu about Yu Wensheng, but she didn't answer me," Huang said. "I tried calling her and the day before, but couldn't get through on the phone."



"I guess she is being held under [stability maintenance] controls," he said. "I'm guessing that Yu Wensheng probably went home."



Fellow rights lawyer Wang Yu said she had messaged Xu on Telegram, and the message was marked as read, but no reply came.



"It doesn't make sense," Wang said. "Because even if the state security police are putting her under a lot of pressure, she can still say she is under a lot of pressure, or that it's inconvenient to speak or give interviews, or to be in touch."



Veteran rights attorney Jiang Tianyong has remained under house arrest since his release from prison in 2019, and Wang and Huang both said they worry that the same thing will happen to Yu.



"Lawyer Wang Quanzhang was held under house arrest for a period of time in Jinan, while Jiang Tianyong still isn't truly free," Huang said. "But Yu's household registration is in Beijing, not elsewhere in China, so maybe it'll be different."



"The reason Xu Yan didn't go to Nanjing to meet him is that her hometown is in Jiangsu, so everyone thought if she did that, they wouldn't be allowed to go back to Beijing," he said.



Meanwhile, Lin said Xu's attempt to set up a legal consulting firm after Yu's license to practice law was revoked by the authorities may do little to help the couple, who may face financial hardship.



"It may not be much use for lawyers whose licenses have been canceled or revoked to start a legal services company, because they can still stop you getting involved in cases," Lin said.



"I don't think it will make a lot of difference [to their situation]."



In , Jiangsu's Xuzhou Intermediate People's Court handed a four-year jail term to Yu on subversion charges, after finding him guilty of "incitement to subvert state power" in a secret trial.



The sentence, which came after Yu was held for nearly three years in pretrial detention, was widely seen by fellow lawyers as a form of political retaliation for Yu's outspokenness following a nationwide operation targeting rights lawyers and law firms that began on , 2015.



The overseas-based rights network Chinese Human Rights Defenders (CHRD) said Yu's role as former defense attorney for fellow attorney Wang Quanzhang was also behind his persecution at the hands of the authorities.



Yu was indicted on Feb. 1, 2019 and his case handed over to the municipal prosecutor in Jiangsu's Xuzhou city. His lawyers made dozens of attempts to visit him, but all requests were denied.



He was held under "residential surveillance at a designated location" (RSDL), a form of detention used in cases allegedly involving matters of state security.



The measure, which enables the authorities to deny access to lawyers or family visits, has been repeatedly used to target human rights lawyers, and is associated with a higher risk of torture and other mistreatment, rights groups said.



Shortly before his detention, Yu's application to start a new law firm was rejected over comments he made "opposing Communist Party rule and attacking the countrys socialist legal system," Amnesty International said.



Yu had earlier described being beaten up and tortured in handcuffs by police in Daxing after he voiced support for the 2014 pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong.



Yu was also detained in after he wrote an open letter criticizing President Xi Jinping as ill-suited to lead China due to his strengthening totalitarian rule over the country.



Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.
Despite fears China would retrieve the jet, Beijing had always denied having any interest in recovering it.

U.S. 7th Fleets Task Force (CTF) 75 and Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) retrieved the F-35C Lightning II aircraft which crashed earlier this year in the South China Sea, March 2, 2022.

A U.S. Navy salvage team has recovered the F-35C Lightning II aircraft which crashed last month in the South China Sea, the U.S. 7th Fleet said.

The wreckage was recovered on Wednesday from a depth of approximately 12,400 feet (3,779 meters), the Fleets spokesperson, Cdr. Amanda S. Kitchner, said in a statement.

Last week, another spokesperson told RFA that a team including personnel from Task Force 75 (CTF 75), the Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA), and NAVSEAs Supervisor of Salvage and Diving, was sent to verify the site and recover the aircraft.

That spokesperson, Cdr. Hayley Sims, said the team aboard the diving support construction vessel Picasso left Naha in Okinawa, Japan, to the site in the northern part of the South China Sea on Feb. 23.

The recovery operations have been completed within 37 days of the incident, CTF 75 Commodore, Capt. Gareth Healy, was quoted as saying. He added that this was an aggressive and achievable timeline.

The F-35C crashed into the deck of the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson and then fell into the water on Jan. 24. A leaked video showed the plane hit the deck then rotated and skidded in flames before sliding off the flight deck and into the sea.

Five Navy personnel were facing charges for leaking the video, deemed official as it was taken from the pilots landing aid television on the aircraft carrier. Its unclear whether theyve been formally charged.

The crash is listed as Class A mishap - an incident either involving loss of life or permanent disability, or the complete loss of an aircraft or property damage of $2.5 million or more, according to the U.S. Navy.

A photo widely circulated on social media shows the F-35C jet in the sea after its crash while attempting to land on the USS Carl Vinson on Jan. 24, 2022. The U.S. 7th Fleet verified the photo. Credit: Tweet by @OedoSoldier Recovery operation

The aircraft was recovered using a CURV-21, a remotely operated vehicle, which attached specialized rigging and lift lines to the aircraft. The ship's crane lifting hook was then lowered to the seafloor and connected to the rigging, and then lifted the aircraft to the surface and hoisted it onboard Picasso, the 7th Fleets statement reads.

The aircraft will be delivered to a nearby military installation to aid in the ongoing investigation and evaluated for potential transport to the United States, it added.

Prior to this, experts suggested that it would take weeks if not months, and millions of dollars to recover the state-of-the-art stealth fighter jet. The recovery process turned out to be speedier than expected.

There were fears that China, which maintains a large presence in the South China Sea, could get hold of the wreckage that may contain sensitive technological information before the U.S.

Beijing however has always denied that it has any interest in recovering it.
More open countries have balance and criticism of Russia, while China and Myanmars junta echo Moscows stance.

People walk past signage in the design of Ukraine's national flag with the message "We Support Ukraine" outside the Canadian embassy in Beijing, March 3, 2022.

Russias invasion of Ukraine is being portrayed in varying ways by news outlets serving nearly two billion readers in East and Southeast Asia. Chinese media are offering Moscow-friendly coverage and censoring the rest, while some of its more democratic neighbors are delivering balanced and occasionally pro-Ukraine reporting.

Over the past week, RFA and affiliated BenarNews surveyed news media coverage of the crisis in the countries we cover that run the gamut from Marxist-Leninist governments in China, Vietnam, North Korea and Laos, to more liberal countries in Southeast Asia, where audiences often sample news media that would be familiar to people in the West. Those countries are carrying international wire reports and hosting lively debate. They also focus on the plight of their expatriates living and working in Ukraine.

Predictably, the regions more authoritarian nations have much more controlled messaging, reflecting historic ties between Moscow and its Communist friends in Asia - apparent at this weeks UN General Assembly 141-5 vote in favor of condemning the invasion of Ukraine, where China, Laos and Vietnam all abstained. North Korea, which has the most closed media of any nation in the world, voted against the U.N. measure and has been mostly silent on Ukraine.

Here is a quick look at the regions media coverage of the war. Countries are listed along with their ranking in the annual World Press Freedom Index by the France-based watchdog Reporters Without Borders. (For reference, the index ranks Ukraine at 97 out of 180 countries, while Russia is at 150).

This handout photo taken and released on by the Ukraine delegation shows delegation members holding banners to call for peace prior to the opening ceremony of the Beijing 2022 Winter Paralympic Games at the National Stadium in Beijing, March 4, 2022. Credit: AFP China 177/180

Chinese state media have struggled like the government that controls and directs them to reconcile widening gaps between the official line that stops short of calling the Russian campaign an invasion and the fast unfolding horrors being inflicted on the people in Ukraine by Russian forces.

State media have been using a lot of content from Russian media reports, to the point that "official media have pretty much become the mouthpiece of the Russian media, said Renmin University journalism graduate Lu Nan.



He told RFA the CCP's shadowy "public opinion management" operations were encouraging pro-Russian comments on social media, while comments critical of Moscow get censored swiftly.

"They only allow one voice to exist, so all of the comments are supportive of Putin," Lu said. "No dissenting voices are allowed to appear."

State media propaganda sits uneasily with a tide of social media reports from Chinese on the ground in Ukraine including students begging to be evacuated amid shelling by Russian forces.

Vietnam (175/180)

Vietnamese media are covering the conflict in great detail. While much of the coverage is pro-Moscow, there is less pro-Russia bias than when Russia annexed Crimea in 2014.

Nhan Dan daily, the mouthpiece of Vietnams ruling Communist Party, reported both sides arguments at Tuesdays United Nations Security Councils emergency meeting on Ukraine. It carried quotes by not only the Russian and Chinese representatives but also by the U.S. ambassador to the U.N. and a statement from the Ukrainian president.

The official Vietnam News Agencys online newspaper, Bao Tin Tuc, while dedicating most space to the Russian accounts of the crisis, also reported on the Wests condemnation of Russian President Vladimir Putins recognition of the two breakaway regions in eastern Ukraine, as well as the European sanctions against Moscow.

Laos (172/180)

Mainstream media in Laos is state-run, and the sparse coverage it has of the Ukraine conflict leans heavily on the Chinese state news agency, Xinhua, which in turns leans heavily on Russias view of events.

A March 3 headline in the Vientiane Times reads: Fighting continues as Russias special military operation in Ukraine has entered the seventh day, while a new round of peace talks is reportedly to take place. The same report gives most prominence to a quote from the Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu who vows to continue the military operation in Ukraine until achieving the main goal of defending Russia from Western threats.

This handout picture taken on June 22, 2021 and released by the Russian Defence Ministry on June 23, 2021, shows Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu (L) and Commander-in-Chief of Myanmar's armed forces, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing as they walk past the honor guard prior to their talks in Moscow. Credit: AFP Myanmar (140/180 before the Feb. 1, 2021 military coup)

Military junta-controlled state media favor Russia. It is one of the few countries to support the military regime that ousted an elected government a year ago. Moscow has continued to sell arms to the junta despite widespread atrocities.

The Myanmar state newspapers cover the Ukraine crisis by printing translated stories directly from Russias TASS news agencies and Chinas CGTN news, while pro-military nationalists accounts on Telegram clearly side with Russia.

The Burmese language Kye Mon newspaper reminded readers that Ukraine was part of Soviet Union and appeared to draw a link with the situation at home, warning against allowing disintegration of multi-ethnic Myanmar and to prevent outside interference. An editorial last week in the Burmese-language Myanmar Alin also called for building a strong military in order to be respected by neighbors.

But private media have carried international wire services and presented the conflict as the result of a Russian invasion. Anti-junta outlets operating in exile took a largely pro-Ukraine stance.

Cambodia (144/180)

The state news agency Agence Kampuchea Presse, or AKP, has carried brief news about Russian leaders and the sanctions they now face, based on translations from Xinhua and TASS. AKP reports do not portray Russia as the aggressor and do not provide details of death and destruction in Ukraine.

Pro-government Fresh News has focused on sanctions against Russia from the West and Russian reactions.

The pro-government outlet DAP has published articles and news supporting the Russian invasion as an act of self-defense, and blaming the West for provoking the war to enlarge its influence.

Some private outlets are carrying international media reports of the conflict.

Indonesia (113/180)

Most media in Indonesia have relied on international wire services including Agence France-Presse, the Associated Press and Reuters for reporting on the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

One news website RMOL.id posted an interview with the Ukrainian ambassador to Indonesia, Vasyl Hamianin, where he began by saying: Its extremely worrying. Russian President Vladimir Putins ambition and obsession with invading Ukraine has brought Muslim societies in both countries into conflict.

During the interview, Hamianin accused Russia of pitting Muslims against each other by sending Chechen fighters to Ukraine.

While Muslims total only about 1 percent of Ukraines population, Crimea, which is internationally recognized as part of Ukraine, account for 15 percent of the population.

Indonesia is the worlds most populous Muslim-majority nation.

Malaysia (119/180)

The Malaysian government has refrained from using the word invasion, referring to the current situation as intensifying conflict in Ukraine while urging the two nations to find peace without specifically naming Russia.

But upcoming local elections in one of Malaysias largest states is drawing more attention from local media than what is being called the Russia-Ukraine crisis  where reporting leans pro-Ukraine.

Much of the reporting is focusing on how the crisis has impacted on the Malaysian economy in the form of price hikes for gasoline and other goods.

Bangladesh (152/180)

Ukraine reporting tops the front pages of Bangladesh newspapers while private TV channels host analysts to discuss the Russian invasion and air reports released by global media including BBC, CNN, and Al Jazeera. Overall, the media coverage is balanced while the analysts offer varied opinions, mostly critical of the invasion.

Bangladesh media is mainly presenting the war facts and casualties, which is not sufficient in wartime reporting, I think. The media should be more reflective of anti-war sentiments and presenting human angle stories, media analyst Faruq Faisel, regional director for South Asia and Bangladesh of the rights group Article 19, told BenarNews.

Bangladesh media has reported on efforts to return Bangladeshi expatriates who were stuck inside Ukraine or fled into its neighboring countries. Other reporting focused on analysts expressing fear that potential sanctions against Russia could negatively affect construction of the Russian-built Rooppur nuclear power plant, one of the nations largest development projects.

The Philippines (138/180)

Philippine media coverage of the conflict in Ukraine has been muted and has dealt with efforts to bring home about 350 Filipino migrant workers.

Stories are playing on foreign news pages as Page One reporting has focused on the May 9 presidential election even as candidates have spoken about Russia and Ukraine.

Of particular concern is how the ongoing invasion would affect the economy because pump prices have gone up.

Thailand 137/180

Thai medias foreign news sections have been flooded with coverage of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, largely based on reports or analysis from foreign news agencies. Global English news channels, like BBC, CNN, Al Jazeera, Russias RT, and Chinas CCTV can be watched only on pay TV. Many people get access via YouTube.

Official information is coming out of the Thai Embassy in Warsaw, Poland, which also is responsible for the evacuation of some 255 Thais working in the service sector in Ukraine. Thirty-eight arrived back home on Wednesday.

The Thai government, known for bending with the wind on foreign policy, failed to condemn Russia for the invasion. It has been noted and criticized by some in the local media for taking a neutral stance, as government officials have avoided the word invasion, and largely confined their remarks to the economic fallout, including on gas prices and tourism.

Reporting by RFAs Khmer, Lao, Mandarin, Myanmar, and Vietnamese Services, and Pimuk Rakkanam, Subel Rai Bhandari, Richel V. Umel, Froilan Gallardo, and Muzliza Mustafa for BenarNews. Written by Paul Eckert.
The U.S., Australia, India and Japan met virtually to discuss the Russia-Ukraine war.

U.S. President Joe Biden listens as India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi speaks during a Quad summit in September 2021 at the White House. This weeks gathering of quad leaders was a virtual one.

Leaders of the four member states of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, or Quad, said after a snap meeting that a major conflict like in Ukraine should not be allowed to happen in the Indo-Pacific.

The leaders of the United States, Australia, India and Japan met virtually late on Thursday to discuss the Russia-Ukraine war and its possible impact.

The Japanese Prime Minister, Fumio Kishida, said after the meeting that unilateral changes to the status quo by force or coercion like the recent Russian aggression against Ukraine are also unacceptable in the Indo-Pacific region.

In his statement, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said: We cannot allow what is happening in Ukraine now to ever happen in the Indo-Pacific.

We are resolute in our commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific region where smaller states do not need to live in fear of more powerful ones.

A joint readout of the Quad leaders call said the meeting was to reaffirm their commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific, in which the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all states is respected and countries are free from military, economic, and political coercion.

It also said the leaders agreed to stand up a new humanitarian assistance and disaster relief mechanism which will enable the Quad to meet future humanitarian challenges in the Indo-Pacific, as well as to respond to the crisis in Ukraine.

The four leaders will meet in person in Tokyo in the coming months, the readout said. Japanese sources say it may be in May.

Former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, left, and Taiwan's President Tsai Ing-wen, center, walk together during a meeting at the Presidential Office in Taipei, Taiwan, March 3, 2022. Credit: Taiwan Presidential Office via AP Persuading India

The summit was convened at U.S. President Joe Bidens request, reportedly after India abstained on a U.N. resolution condemning Russias aggression in Ukraine.

The resolution was adopted on Wednesday at a rare emergency session of the U.N. General Assembly with 141 of the U.N.s 193 members voting in its favor. India was among 35 countries that abstained, together with China and South Africa. India has a strong, long-standing relationship with Russia, especially in the defense sector.

Washington had been making efforts to persuade Delhi to take a clear stance in opposing Russias aggression in Ukraine, Donald Lu, U.S. assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asia, told a Senate subcommittee hearing on Wednesday.

In response, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said after the Quad summit that the leaders reaffirmed our shared commitment to ensuring security, safety and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific.

Modi "underlined that the Quad must remain focused on its core objective of promoting peace, stability and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific region," according to his office.

The Indian prime minister also emphasized the "need to return to a path of dialogue and diplomacy" in relation to developments in Ukraine.

Taiwan issue

As the war is ravaging Eastern Europe, there are concerns that China would feel emboldened to make a move on Taiwan which it considers a breakaway province and repeatedly vows to reunite with the mainland.

Experts say Beijing is watching the Ukrainian developments closely before making any decision in regards to Taiwan.

On Friday, when asked about a possibility that China would use force against the self-governing island amid the Ukrainian war, former U.S. secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, said: I dont think we know how [Chinese leader] Xi jinping will interpret whats taking place in Ukraine today.

Pompeo, on his first ever visit to Taiwan, warned that "losing Taiwan would directly imperil our vital national interest in the United States.

The former top U.S. diplomat said that the U.S. should change its 50-year strategic ambiguity on Taiwan and immediately take necessary and long overdue steps to do the right and obvious thing which is to offer the Republic of China (Taiwan) America's diplomatic recognition as a free and sovereign country."

The call was met with angry response from Beijing. China Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin on Friday said: "Mike Pompeo is a former politician with bankrupt credibility, and his nonsense is doomed to failure.

On Thursday, Wang called Pompeos meeting with the Taiwanese leader Tsai Ing-wen a simply shameless and futile act.

Pompeo served as secretary of state during the Trump administration.
Farmers are taking up arms against the military, saying they have nothing left to lose.

Farmers in Myanmars Magway and Sagaing regions have emerged as the fiercest fighters to military rule, after years of drought, a global pandemic, and the devastation wrought by pro-junta forces have left them, they say, with little left to lose.

Farmers account for around 70 percent of Myanmars population of 54 million people and are most heavily concentrated in Magway and Sagaing, which has seen some of the heaviest fighting between the military and prodemocracy Peoples Defense Force (PDF) paramilitaries since the junta seized power in a Feb. 1, 2021, coup. Amid the clashes, civilians in the two regions have suffered the highest death tolls and reported the most catastrophic destruction of property in the country.

Speaking to RFAs Myanmar Service on condition of anonymity, a resident of Sagaings Pale township said that prior to the coup, poor weather conditions and the pandemic had already caused a collapse in the crop market, causing farmers throughout the region to lose all their investments.

But since February last year, the military launched offensives in the countrys remote border regions and now regularly raids villages it accuses of providing a haven to the PDF, looting and torching homes, and arresting their inhabitants, the Pale resident said. In addition to reports of arson and arrests, RFA has documented reports of soldiers torturing, raping and killing villagers.

In our village, the army has set many houses on fire. As a result, we dont have any plows or farm implements to work in the fields, the resident said. Some people have been persecuted by the army and others killed. Meanwhile there is no land to work on.

Nway Oo, a 20-year-old woman from Sagaings Myaung township, told RFA that residents of the region are desperate because the military is destroying their homes and farmland and regularly conducts air strikes on villages.

Usually this is the time for us to work in the fields as farmers, but we can no longer do so. All our goals and aspirations have been lost, she said. If I have only a minute left to live, Ill use that sole minute to fight against the military dictators.

Many farmers in Sagaing say they have taken up arms to fight the military because they have no other option.

Boh Naga, the leader of an armed insurgency group in the Pale township area, told RFA that people in the region are increasingly willing to sell their land and homes to buy food and weapons for the resistance.

The majority of farmers in the Central Plains are looked upon as uneducated, ignorant and having low living standards, but the children of these farmers and peasants are involved in the liberation of this country, he said.

Everyone knows how wicked and brutal the junta is, and everyone knows they need to fight. And yet, while the rich send donations and applaud from the sidelines, these farmers are sacrificing their lives and whatever they own to fight the military. I dont know if this is a sad thing or something to be proud of.

Prior to the coup, Boh Naga was self-employed in the agriculture sector. He told RFA that he felt it was his duty to take up arms because of the countrys political situation, but said he hopes to return to his earlier work when the junta has been removed from power.

Farmers hold an anti-junta protest in Sagaing region's Yinmarbin township while harvesting sesame in their fields, July 9, 2021. Citizen journalist The situation is getting worse

In the 13 months since the coup, junta security forces have arrested nearly 9,500 people and killed 1,597, according to the Bangkok-based Assistance Association for Political Prisoners  mostly during peaceful anti-junta protests. The junta has justified its seizure of power by saying that the deposed National League for Democracy (NLD) used voter fraud to sweep the countrys November 2020 election but has yet to provide evidence of its claims.

Political analyst Than Soe Naing told RFA that the lives of farmers in Myanmar have never been so difficult.

Throughout history, our farmers have never been as insecure as they are today. Some of them have been brutally killed, while others have had their houses burned. They are not even allowed to farm their own land, he said.

But the situation is getting worse, with more airstrikes and killings and arson. Since they dont have the ability to work in the fields, I expect that half the population in the country will be facing a food shortage or starvation in the coming year.

Farmers in Myanmar are no stranger to popular revolt. On Dec. 22, 1930, a physician named Saya San led a group of landless and destitute farmers against British rule in one of Southeast Asias most defining anti-colonial movements.

Two years after orchestrating a military coup and establishing Myanmar as a one-party socialist state in 1962, General Ne Win designated March 2 as Farmers Day to acknowledge their contributions to the development of the nation.

Residents of Sagaing region told RFA that decades later, the spirit of Myanmars farmers remains just as strong and said their sense of duty in protecting the nation is unchanged.

Reported by RFAs Myanmar Service. Translated by Khin Maung Nyane. Written in English by Joshua Lipes.
Authorities say the restrictions on traditional observances are needed to control COVID-19.

Chinese authorities have banned major religious activities in monasteries in and near Tibets regional capital Lhasa during the Lunar New Year, citing COVID-19 concerns. But critics call the move a further encroachment by China on Tibetan religion and national culture.

The ban announced in a Feb. 22 notice by Lhasas Ethnic and Religious Affairs Bureau comes ahead of a period of politically sensitive Tibetan anniversaries falling in March, when Chinese authorities regularly tighten security in Lhasa and other Tibetan areas of China, fearing protests against Beijings rule.

The order, a copy of which was seen by RFA, affects the Drepung, Sera, Ratreng, Sharbumpa, Sengling, Dakpo and the Tsuglakhang monasteries, sources in Tibet and in exile say. It also orders Tibetans to remain in their homes and avoid travel and gatherings during the Lunar New Year, called Losar, which began this year on March 3.

The notice bars Tibetans from performing all the major religious activities that are usually observed ahead of and during the New Year, said Ngawang Woebar, a former political prisoner now living in Dharamsala, India, the home of Tibets exile government the Central Tibetan Administration.

The Chinese government used the need to control the spread of COVID-19 as an excuse during Losar last year, too, Woebar said. But in reality they are just making these moves as a precaution during the run-up to the March 10 anniversary of a national uprising against Chinese rule, he added.

Speaking to RFA on Feb. 27, a Tibetan living in Lhasa said that Chinese security forces had already been deployed around the city.

The Chinese government has sent large numbers of police to watch the movements of Tibetans in and around Lhasa city, and no one is allowed to visit the Dalai Lamas Potala Palace or the Tsuglakhang for religious activities, RFAs source said, speaking on condition of anonymity for security reasons.

A month of anniversaries

On March 10, 1959, Tibetans in Lhasa rose up in protest of Beijings tightening political and military control of the formerly independent Tibet, sparking a rebellion in which thousands were killed and Tibets spiritual leader the Dalai Lama fled into exile in India.

And on March 14, 2008, a riot in Lhasa followed the suppression by Chinese police of four days of peaceful Tibetan protests and led to the destruction of Han Chinese shops in the city and deadly attacks on Han Chinese residents.

The riot sparked a wave of Tibetan demonstrations against Chinese rule that spread into Tibetan-populated regions of western Chinese provinces, and hundreds of Tibetans were detained, beaten or shot as Chinese security forces quelled the protests.

China maintains tight control over Tibet, and Tibetans living in Tibet frequently complain of discrimination and human rights abuses by Chinese authorities and policies they say are aimed at eradicating their national and cultural identity.

Translated by Tenzin Dickyi for RFAs Tibetan Service. Written in English by Richard Finney.
Most were incarcerated for serious crimes like praying, an official who worked there says.

A security guard keeps watch over a detention facility from a tower in Yarkent county in northwestern China's Xinjiang region, March 21, 2021.

Nearly 800 Uyghurs are being held in a detention camp in Manas county in northwestern Chinas Xinjiang, said an official from the area who previously worked at the facility.

Manas county (in Chinese, Manasi) is part of the Changji Hui (Changji Huizu) Autonomous Prefecture and covers an area of nearly 9,200 square kilometers (3,550 square miles).

The camp is divided into two adjacent sections, with one housing about 500 male detainees and the other holding about 270 women  all of whom are ethnic minority Uyghurs, said the official, who did not give his name but said he worked at the detention center for four months.

The official also said that the Uyghur inmates had been arrested for committing serious crimes, such as praying, and that inside the facility they learned the national language of Mandarin Chinese.

They were divided by an iron fence  males about 500 and females about 270, he said. There was no torture of women. They were taught Chinese. These ones [committed] serious crimes  people who prayed five times a day.

Chinese authorities have targeted and arrested Muslim Uyghur businessmen, intellectuals, and cultural and religious figures in Xinjiang for years as part of a campaign to monitor, control and assimilate members of the minority group.

At least 1.8 million Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities are believed to have been held in a network of detention camps in Xinjiang since 2017, purportedly to prevent religious extremism and terrorist activities.

Beijing has said that the camps are vocational training centers. The government has denied widespread allegations that it has tortured people in the camps or mistreated other Muslims living in Xinjiang.

Changji Hui Autonomous Prefecture has a population of more than 1.6 million people, according to Chinas latest census data on Xinjiang issued in June 2021.

Among the residents of prefecture are members of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, a state-owned economic and paramilitary organization based in Manas. The corps, which also is known as the Bingtuan, has been sanctioned by the U.S. for its involvement in human rights violations against Uyghurs.

Relatively few Uyghurs live in the county. Census figures put Manas population at 247,000 people, of whom only 6,200 are Uyghurs, or about 2.5 percent of the total. The 19,513 ethnic Kazakhs who also live there account for 7.9 percent of its population.

Earlier RFA reports found that many Kazakhs had been detained in internment camps in Manas and Kuytun (Kuitun), a county-level city in Ili Kazakh (Yili Hasake) Autonomous Prefecture, which is also in the northern part of Xinjiang.

In other earlier reports, sources said a large number of detainees in the Ghulja (Yining) area had been transferred to Manas county and to the cities of Shiho (Wusu) and Urumqi (Wulumuqi), which is Xinjiangs capital.

In early January, RFA reported on the disappearance and imprisonment of Hasiyet Ehmet, a 57-year-old resident of Manas who is serving a 14-year prison sentence for teaching children the Quran and hiding two copies of the sacred text during a time when police began confiscating religious books from residents.

RFA reported that additional internment camps may be operating in Manas, despite the relatively low number of Uyghurs who live there.

RFA contacted police stations, prisons and judiciary offices in Manas county in an effort to find out the number of detention camps operating there, but most officials who were reached said they were not authorized to provide any information.

One said there was only one internment camp in the county, although he did not state its location. Another official said the camp was located inside the county center but could not comment on the number of detainees.

Theres only one in Manas. It is in the county center, he said.

When RFA asked one of the officials how many Kazakhs were in the camp in Manas county, he initially said there are none before declining to comment.

There are no Kazakhs. Dont ask this. We are not allowed to speak about this, he said.

Global attention continues to focus on Xinjiang and the well-documented allegations of abuse.

On Thursday, the House of Lords in the United Kingdom passed an amendment to ensure the countrys National Health Service, the publicly funded health care system in England, cannot purchase goods or services from a region where there is a serious risk of genocide.

Last year, the British Parliament designated that abuses against Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims in Xinjiang constituted a genocide.

The NHS measure, which still must be approved by the House of Commons, drew praise from Uyghur rights groups.

In response to the amendments passage, Rahima Mahmut, U.K. director of the World Uyghur Congress, tweeted: I'm deeply grateful to everyone who has worked so tirelessly on this amendment so far  I know how much this win means for our community.

Translated by RFAs Uyghur Service. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.
The European Union has unveiled a proposal to ban Russian oil imports by the end of the year, impose more banking sanctions against Moscow, and cut off some Russian broadcasters in Europe saying that the Kremlin has to pay dearly for its aggression Ukraine.

With Russia intensifying its attacks on eastern Ukraine on May 4, the EU said that its sixth round of sanctions against Moscow will comprise phasing out the importation of Russian crude and refined oil products by the end of the year despite pushback from some of the bloc's members, including Slovakia and Hungary.

"We will phase out Russian supply of crude oil within six months and refined products by the end of the year," the head of the bloc's executive European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, told the European Parliament in Strasbourg.

Live Briefing: Russia's Invasion Of Ukraine RFE/RL's Live Briefing gives you all of the major developments on Russia's invasion, how Kyiv is fighting back, the plight of civilians, and Western reaction. For all of RFE/RL's coverage of the war, click here.

"This will be a complete import ban on all Russian oil, seaborne and pipeline, crude and refined," she said, adding that "[Russian President Vladimir] Putin must pay a high price for his brutal aggression."

Von der Leyen, however, conceded that getting unanimity on oil sanctions will not be easy.

The commission chief, however, conceded that getting unanimity on oil sanctions will not be easy.

The measures require approval from all 27 EU countries to take effect and soon after von der Leyen's announcement, Hungary, Slovakia, and Bulgaria announced that they would seek exemptions from the embargo voicing concerns about energy security. Hungary and Slovakia are heavily dependent on Russian energy imports.

The Czech Republic, meanwhile, said it would seek a temporary exemption period of two or three years in order for pipeline capacities to be increased.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said EU countries blocking an oil embargo would be "complicit" in Russia's crimes in Ukraine.

Whatever their arguments are, if they oppose (the) oil embargo, it means one thing: they play on the Russian side. They share responsibility for everything Russia does in Ukraine, full stop, Kuleba said in a video posted on Twitter.

Von der Leyen also proposed that Sberbank, Russias largest bank, and two other major banks be disconnected from the SWIFT international banking payment system.



The EU will also ban three Russian state-owned broadcasters, she said, without naming the channels directly.



"They will not be allowed to distribute their content anymore in the European Union, in whatever shape or form, be it on cable, via satellite, on the Internet or via smartphone apps," von der Leyen told EU lawmakers.

According to a document seen by RFE/RL, the package also contains a list of 58 individuals sanctioned over Russia's military action in Ukraine that includes the Patriarch of Russia's Orthodox Church, a close ally of Putin's.



Von der Leyen also proposed launching a recovery package for Ukraine to help it rebuild after the war.



"This package should bring massive investment to meet the needs and the necessary reforms," von der Leyen said. "Eventually, it will pave the way for Ukraine's future inside the European Union."

The European Union accounts for nearly a half of Russia's crude and refined oil products. But the Kremlin, in a first reaction to Brussels' announcement, put on a brave face, warning that the embargo is a "double-edged sword" and that EU consumers will pay the price.

"The cost of these sanctions to the citizens of Europe will grow by the day," spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on May 4.

Peskov said the Kremlin was looking at "various options" for its response to the new sanctions.

In Washington, U.S. President Joe Biden said he was "open" to imposing more sanctions on Russia and would be discussing measures with allies from the Group of Seven (G7) leading industrialized nations in the coming days.

On the battlefront, Moscow deployed 22 battalions near Izyum, an eastern city, in a bid to push into the Donbas region, the British Defense Ministry said in its daily bulletin on May 4, adding that Russia's apparent goal is capturing the cities of Kramatorsk and Severodonetsk in the east, "despite struggling to break through Ukrainian defenses." A Russian battalion usually consists of 700-800 soldiers.



According to the British intelligence bulletin, capturing the two cities "would consolidate Russian military control" of northeastern Ukraine.

In neighboring Belarus, the armed forces began "surprise" large-scale drills on May 4 to test their combat readiness, the Ukrainian Defense Ministry said.

Mariupol Mayor Vadym Boychenko said there was "heavy fighting" at the Azovstal plant on May 4 and said city officials had lost contact with Ukrainian forces inside.

Boychenko told Ukrainian television that Russian forces were attacking with heavy artillery, tanks, and warplanes, and said warships off the coast were also involved.

Russian troops are on the territory of the plant, according to David Arakhamia, a member of the Ukrainian delegation that has held now-stalled peace talks with Russia.

"Attempts to storm the plant continue for the second day. Russian troops are already on the territory of Azovstal," Arakhamia said, citing the commander of the Azov Regiment, which is defending the plant with other Ukrainian troops. He contradicted Boychenko, saying Ukrainian authorities have contact with the defenders at the plant.

The commander announced the storming of the plant by Russian troops the day before and called again for the evacuation of civilians.

Boychenko said on May 3 that more than 200 civilians were still holed up with fighters in the sprawling plant.

In his video address, Kuleba denied that Azovstal was under Russian control.

On May 4, Peskov denied Ukrainian reports that Russian troops had stormed the Avozstal steel plant soon after the latest group of civilians made it out of the sprawling complex.

"There is no storming," Peskov told reporters, contradicting claims by Ukrainian soldiers inside the steelworks.

"The order was publicly given by the supreme commander-in-chief to cancel the assault," Peskov said, referring to a statement Putin made on April 21 that called off a direct assault on Azovstal because it would result in too many Russian casualties. Instead, forces should seal off Azovstal so tightly that "even a fly can't get out," Putin said.

With reporting by RFE/RL's Rikard Jozwiak, Reuters, AP, and AFP
Patients and medical staff at Ukraine's largest children's hospital have been forced to shelter in the building's basement as Russian forces continue to shell and advance on Kyiv. Among those being treated in the makeshift medical bunker at Okhmatdyt Hospital are children recovering from operations, young cancer patients, and newborn babies. The footage was filmed on March 1 by an acclaimed Ukrainian documentary maker who wishes to remain anonymous.
LVIV, Ukraine -- On the top floor of a sleek business center in the western city of Lviv, a spacious fitness gym that opened 10 months ago has been converted into a shelter for families fleeing Russia's war against Ukraine, where most of the death and devastation lies further east.

Most of those on the run westward -- mainly from the capital, Kyiv, and from hard-hit Kharkiv, the second largest city -- stay for a day or two before moving onward to neighboring European Union countries, said Lilia Yunko, the gym's owner.

"But I have some who've been here since I converted the place into a shelter on the second day of the invasion," she said, referring to February 25.

On March 3, about 60 displaced people were sheltering at the gym, where they get three meals a day and have access to personal hygiene products and WiFi. There are activities and toys for children and teens.

It's one of the ways that the government and private citizens in Lviv, a city of nearly 1 million that lies 70 kilometers from the border of NATO-member Poland and has so far has been largely unscathed amid Russia's multipronged attack, have been contributing to the war effort.

It's not that the war seems far away: On the first day of the invasion, Russia struck military installations near the city's airport with long-range missiles. A curfew is in place, as is a ban on the sale of alcoholic beverages, and air-raid sirens blare daily, prompting people to take refuge in bomb shelters.

And Lviv is clearly a potential target. On March 3, after French President Emmanuel Macron spoke to Russian President Vladimir Putin, an aide to Macron said that Putin appeared intent on seizing "the whole" of Ukraine, which is roughly the size of France.

But given the city's relative safety so far from the intense Russian bombardments and fighting further east, it has seen an influx of "thousands of residents from other parts of the country," the mayor's office said on Telegram on February 28.

On March 3, UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi said that 1 million people had fled Ukraine in seven days, "uprooted by this senseless war." Lviv has set up several coordination centers to help displaced people find shelter, food, and educational activities for their children -- school has been suspended since late February, including remote learning.

In a post on Telegram, Mayor Andriy Sadoviy said the city was doing everything it could to accommodate the "forced internally displaced people," and he specified that "we accept women, children, and people of a frail age."

"We urge conscripted men accompanying their families to return to your settlement of origin and protect your own land," he added. Shortly after the invasion began, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy ordered a general mobilization of men up to age 60.

Across town from the gym, there's been a different kind of repurposing at Pravda Beer Theater, a craft brewery that has devoted its production capacity to making Molotov cocktails -- handheld incendiary devices often made with glass bottles.

The brewery and pub, a popular tourist destination, stopped selling anything with alcohol content on February 28, a day before the citywide prohibition. "We did it because we need people with clear, sober minds right now and drinking alcohol doesn't help with that," said Taras Maselko, public relations manager at Pravda Beer Theater.

Some of the more than 2,000 Molotov cocktails the brewery made as of March 1 were shipped to areas where there is fighting, Maselko said, and the rest were distributed to territorial defense units -- regional forces recruited as the Russian threat mounted before the invasion -- in the Lviv region.

Other businesses in Lviv have also turned their attention to the war effort.

Maria Bardyn's company, Honey House, normally makes chocolates and candy from honey but is now making energy bars for soldiers, with help from volunteers. "God, you people are incredible!" she wrote on Twitter, thanking volunteers and donors who have contributed equipment and ingredients.

Some in Lviv are using their job skills to target Russia. Mykola, who described himself as an IT specialist, says he is part of an "informal tech community" that is directing distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks at the websites of Russian government agencies and state-owned companies like Sberbank. Mykola did not want his last name published due to the nature of his activities.

Fearing that Russia's war could move westward, he said he had sent his pregnant wife and their two sons to live with relatives in Slovakia, which borders Ukraine south of Lviv. "Nothing is off the table," he said of what Russia's next moves might be.

Mykola is also involved in support for displaced people: He is part of a network focused on finding living space for fleeing Ukrainians, and takes in refugees who to stay with him for one or two nights before heading further westward.

Back at the business center, the lobby is now being used to store cases of bottled water, diapers, dry goods, baby carriages, strollers, and other items being donated by nearby residents. Some of it gets distributed to internally displaced people in the city, gym owner Yunko said, while some is shipped to besieged cities like Odesa, a port city on the Black Sea more than 600 kilometers southeast of Lviv.

"Yesterday, we loaded a 20-ton truck headed for Odesa," she said.
OZYORNOYE, Russia -- The cemetery here is shrouded in snowdrifts and silence. Near the end of the central alley, a freshly dug grave draped in plastic sheeting opens out under a birch tree.

It is the grave of Maksim Khanygin, born and raised in this village west of the Volga River city of Saratov. But his body is not here -- and may not be laid to rest before Russia's war in Ukraine is over.

A conscript, Khanygin died in the early hours of Russia's invasion of Ukraine on February 24 -- the day before his 22nd birthday.

"Everyone is asking, 'When? When? When?,'" Khanygin's grandmother Natalya told RFE/RL, referring to the funeral plans.

"But we don't know when. A military representative came and said they will not bring my grandson home until after the 'special operation' is finished," she said, the wording the Russian authorities use -- and are pressuring all Russians to use -- to refer to the unprovoked war that has killed thousands of soldiers and Ukrainian civilians. "They don't want to cause panic."

Over the past eight years or so, funerals of soldiers and mercenaries have drawn what for President Vladimir Putin's government is unwelcome attention to deaths in the wars in Syria and in eastern Ukraine, where Moscow claimed to have had no troops before the new invasion, despite copious evidence to the contrary.

Following the massive new escalation, with Russian forces targeting cities across much of Ukraine, the government said nothing about Russian casualties for days and then announced on March 2 that 498 Russian soldiers had been killed and 1,597 injured.

Ukrainian officials have said more than 9,000 Russian servicemen have been killed or wounded in the fighting. It is not possible to confirm these figures independently. The Conflict Intelligence Team (CIT), a Russian-based open-source-monitoring group, has estimated Russia's war dead at about 700.

"But that doesn't mean the number isn't larger," CIT analyst Ruslan Leviyev told RFE/RL's North Caucasus Service. "It might be 1,000 or even 2,000."

Ukraine has not given casualty figures for its own military, but its emergency service said on March 2 that more than 2,000 civilians had been killed since the invasion began.

Reports Of Deaths Arriving

Word of Khanygin's death came to his family in Ozyornoye on February 25, when the head of the regional military office called his mother, Lyudmila Khanygina, with the news.

"During the day on Friday, my youngest grandson, Fyodor, came running to me and shouted: 'Grandma, come quickly. Mama has fainted. Maksim is dead!,'" Natalya said.

Written notification came shortly afterward.

By the next day, the whole village had heard the news. They brought money and flowers, and hung wreathes around town. The director of the collective farm where Lyudmila works helped secure a burial plot and paid to erect a cross.

Reports of soldiers being killed have begun slowly accumulating in Russia.

Ilynur Sibratullin, a soldier from the city of Nizhnekamsk in Tatarstan, north of Saratov on the Volga, was killed in Ukraine on February 26. A plane carrying his body arrived in Tatarstan on March 2, and he was, in keeping with Muslim custom, buried the same day.

On March 3, a veterans' group reported the death in combat near the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol of Major General Andrei Sukhovetsky, one of Russia's most decorated and experienced combat officers.

The same day, the governor of the Novosibirsk region, Andrei Travnikov, confirmed the deaths of two unidentified soldiers from his region.

On March 2, local authorities said on Instagram that 31-year-old Ali Batyrov, a native of the settlement of Batazhnoye in the southwestern region of Astrakhan, was killed in Ukraine on February 28. He held the rank of major, had been wounded and decorated in Syria, was a battalion commander, and left behind a widow and children.

The same day, officials in the Selenginsky district of Buryatia reported the death in Ukraine of Lieutenant Ilya Semyonov, who was also a veteran of the war in Syria, where Russia has given government forces crucial military support since 2015.

The day before, Astrakhan region Governor Igor Babushkin confirmed the death in Ukraine of a local soldier named Arman Narynbayev.

Officials in the North Caucasus republics have also confirmed the deaths of about a dozen servicemen.

Galina Zinoviyeva lives in the village of Nizhny Ures, in Tatarstan. She hasn't heard from her serviceman son, 21-year-old Maksim, since January 28, when he reported that he had arrived in Belarus for exercises. He was due to return to his home base on February 20 -- the last scheduled day of the drills in Belarus, which lies north of Ukraine and has been a staging ground for the Russian invasion.

"We are in a state of uncertainty," she told RFE/RL's Idel.Realities. "Where is Maksim now? Why doesn't he call?"

RFE/RL senior correspondent Robert Coalson, Idel.Realities, Siberia.Realities, and RFE/RL's North Caucasus Service contributed to this report.
Thousands of people from across Ukraine continued to flood into the main railway station in the western city of Lviv on March 4 with the hope of traveling to neighboring Poland. Current Time spoke to some of those who had fled from the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, which has been repeatedly attacked by invading Russian forces.
After a meeting of NATO foreign ministers in Brussels on March 4, alliance chief Jens Stoltenberg said that its planes should not fly in Ukraine's airspace during the conflict with Russia, despite pleas from Kyiv to enforce a no-fly zone over the country.

Western leaders have -- so far -- dismissed the idea of a no-fly zone, fearing that it would lead to a greater escalation of the war. Speaking to two military experts, RFE/RL takes a closer look at what a no-fly zone would mean, why it could prove so difficult to impose over Ukraine, and if there are other, similar options that could be considered.

What Is A No-Fly Zone?

A no-fly zone is an area of airspace -- either an entire country or parts of it -- where no airplanes or any other airborne objects other than those policing the airspace are allowed to fly. They are usually put in place to protect civilians on the ground during a war and to allow the safe delivery of humanitarian aid.

This type of air policing has in the past been endorsed by the United Nations, for example in Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1992 or the Libyan conflict in 2011, and in both instances NATO was tasked with the enforcement. UN backing, however, is not always necessary. During the 1991 Gulf War, it was the United States and its allies that set up two no-fly zones in the northern and southern parts of Iraq to protect minorities there.

What Is Needed To Enforce A No-Fly Zone?

One crucial component to control the airspace 24/7 is an airborne warning and control system (AWACS) -- essentially an "eye in the sky." AWACS aircraft function as airborne radar systems that detect everything from other aircraft to missiles, even those fired from considerable distances away.

In addition to monitoring, fighter aircraft are needed to enforce a no-fly zone. Ben Hodges, who was the commander of the U.S. Army Europe and now works for the U.S.-based Center for European Policy Analysis, said: "You'd have aircraft that are prepared for air-to-air [combat], to shoot down other aircraft. You'd have aircraft that are prepared to shoot down drones and you would want to be prepared to have other aircraft that are prepared to hit ground targets, air defense, for example. So, there's a mix of capabilities that you would need, including the AWACS and including the helicopters that would be used to go in and rescue [potentially downed pilots]."

Can A No-Fly Zone Be Imposed Over Ukraine Now?

It's unlikely. The reason? Russian and Western fears of engaging each other's military in the skies -- a situation that could significantly escalate the war. Petr Pavel, a retired Czech Army general who has served as the chairman of the NATO Military Committee, points out that a no-fly zone could not be "imposed because it will be immediately explained as a war between NATO and Russia. It will have the same impact as if NATO troops would join Ukrainian troops in fighting Russian troops on the ground."

Live Briefing: Russia Invades Ukraine RFE/RL's Live Briefing gives you all of the major developments on Russia's invasion, how Kyiv is fighting back, the plight of civilians, and Western reaction. For all of RFE/RL's coverage of the war, click here.

The same is true if a single NATO member, such as the United States, tried to set up a no-fly zone on its own. "Once any individual country of NATO or NATO as an organization joins Ukraine in fighting the Russians, it's in fact a declaration of war between Russia and NATO," Pavel said. "We would find ourselves in a situation of much greater conflict with many more weapons, up to the possibility of the use of nuclear weapons from Russia."

According to Hodges, there are other reasons to be cautious. "We would never put pilots up in the air if we were not prepared to destroy enemy air defenses on the ground. So now you're talking about shooting, attacking Russian ground targets inside Ukraine and probably even inside Russia," Hodges said.

"And then another consideration is that we would never put pilots in the air if we were not prepared to go in and pick them up if they were shot down and had to parachute. So, you've got to have the possibility of picking up a naval pilot on the ground in Ukraine or even in Russia."

But Could A Partial No-Fly Zone Be Imposed To Allow In Humanitarian Aid?

That would probably depend on Russia. "If it is to be a humanitarian operation, it would have to be agreed by the Russians because if it is not agreed, the Russians might shoot down a humanitarian flight," Pavel said. "So once we have an agreement on a no-fly zone for humanitarian purposes from both sides, then it's OK."

How Is This Different To No-Fly Zones Set Up In Libya And Iraq?

Crucially in Libya and Iraq, Russia was not opposed to no-fly zones -- agreeing with the international community at the time that they were necessary to protect the civilian population on the ground. Former U.S. commander Hodges does not rule out that NATO could intervene at a later date. "There may come a point where the alliance says we can't just stand by like Srebrenica and allow Ukrainians to be murdered like this," Hodges said.

"But again, you know, what makes the [NATO] alliance great is you got the diplomatic, economic, and military power of 30 nations. But that means you've got to keep all 30 together. And so it would take that kind of consultation before we get to that decision."
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has defended the West's focus on sanctions and providing weapons to Ukraine as effective ways to stop Russia's invasion of the country.

Blinken was speaking in Brussels after NATO rejected Ukraine's calls to implement a no-fly zone over the country aimed at shutting the airspace to Russian jets, bombers, and helicopters and stopping their attacks.

Live Briefing: Russia Invades Ukraine RFE/RL's Live Briefing gives you all of the major developments on Russia's invasion, how Kyiv is fighting back, the plight of civilians, and Western reaction. For all of RFE/RL's coverage of the war, click here.

The United States and NATO have said implementing a no-fly zone could put the alliance into a direct confrontation with Russia and that could lead to a full-fledged war.

Blinken said more military support and more sanctions, as well as increased humanitarian aid for Ukrainians, were the focus of his talks at the NATO and European Union headquarters.

"We are going to tremendous lengths with allies and partners to provide Ukrainians with the means to effectively defend themselves," he said.

The supply of weaponry that the United States and European countries have sent has helped the Ukrainian military stall some of the Russian advance, he said.

Economic sanctions implemented thus far are only beginning to have a punishing impact, but have already hurt the Russian economy, causing the ruble to drop to unprecedented lows and forcing Russia to close its stock exchange over fears of a vast sell-off.

But he admitted that the impact of the sanctions can't provide immediate relief to millions of Ukrainians. "Unfortunately, this is not like flipping a light switch," Blinken said.

Earlier on March 4, NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg said the alliance's members agreed that its planes should not fly in Ukraine's airspace and that its troops should not be present on the ground in Ukraine during its conflict with Russia.

After meeting with foreign ministers from NATO members, Stoltenberg again called on Russian President Vladimir Putin to stop his unprovoked war against Ukraine "immediately, and without conditions."

Stoltenberg admitted that Russia was likely to intensify its attack on Ukraine, which began on February 24, with the coming days "likely to be worse."

Blinken later echoed that comment, saying, "The terrible expectation is that the suffering we've already seen is likely to get worse before it gets better."

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy strongly criticized NATO's decision, saying the alliance had given Russia the green light to continue its bombing campaign.

"Today there was a NATO summit, a weak summit, a confused summit, a summit where it was clear that not everyone considers the battle for Europe's freedom to be the No. 1 goal," Zelenskiy said in a televised address.

Ukraine's stated goal to join NATO and the European Union is strongly opposed by Moscow, which says Ukraine's membership in the organizations would threaten its security.

Diplomatic language and financial and other sanctions have hardened amid mounting civilian and other casualties and huge refugee flows from Putin's invasion.



Multiple NATO members have said they are united against Russian aggression but expressed unwillingness to impose a no-fly zone over Ukraine, whose officials have pleaded for the move to allow them to counter more numerous Russian forces.

Ukraine neighbors NATO members Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, and Poland.



Zelenskiy adviser Mykhaylo Podolyak told reporters in Kyiv that Russia was "fighting with a deliberate violation of all conventions, laws, and rules of war" and clearly "could not help knowing what threatens Ukraine and, frankly, the whole of Europe, with a large-scale tank attack directed against the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant."

On March 4, Lithuanian Prime Minister Ingrida Simonyte repeated that a no-fly zone could put NATO forces in direct conflict with Russia's military.



"I believe that all encouragements for NATO to get involved into the military conflict now are irresponsible," said Simonyte, whose country shares a nearly 300-kilometer border with Russia and has consistently warned of Moscow's increasingly bold challenges toward the international community.



Canadian Foreign Minister Melanie Joly said on March 4 that NATO would discuss "all scenarios" to stop the war. But she added that the alliance wants to "avoid triggering an international conflict."



Romanian Foreign Minister Bogdan Aurescu said that "we need to rethink everything" in light of the current conflict. He said NATO should reconsider its posture on its eastern flank, where Romania has a 600-kilometer-plus border with Russia.

WATCH: Fires could still be seen smoldering in what used to be a row of high-rise apartment buildings in Borodyanka on March 3. The small town northwest of Kyiv came under Russian air strikes and artillery shelling the previous day.

Aurescu said countries need to adapt to Belarus "becoming a military district of Russia."



Thousands of Russian troops staged offensives from southern Belarus, which is only about 150 kilometers from the Ukrainian capital.



Alyaksandr Lukashenka, who has kept a tight lid on Belarus for nearly three decades and relies more heavily on Moscow's support since a flawed election two years ago, repeated his claims on March 4 that Belarus's military was not participating in Russia's military operations in Ukraine.



Lukashenka said he had spoken with Putin earlier in the day.



German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock declared solidarity with the Ukrainian people and said Putin's war "is also bringing ruin upon his own country."



Baerbock vowed at the NATO meeting that Europe would "take further measures that specifically target Putin's center of power."

With reporting by Reuters, FT, Mike Eckel, and RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service
Staff at Ukrainian nuclear sites, Zaporizhzhya and Chernobyl, are being held by Russian forces and working under the barrel of a gun, according to the former head of Ukraine's nuclear inspectorate. Speaking to Current Time on March 4, Hrihory Plachkov said it was an extremely dangerous situation.
President Vladimir Putin pushed ahead with a deadly, devastating offensive against Ukraine. His unprovoked war on the neighboring country and unprecedented crackdown on his own compatriots has put Russia in uncharted waters -- and clouded his own future like never before.

Here are some of the key developments in Russia over the past week and some of the takeaways going forward.

Putin's Wars

As fears of a Russian invasion of Ukraine mounted over December, January, and February, one major question was this: If Putin were to launch a new assault on the neighboring nation, how far would he go and with what result for the target country? In short, what would happen to Ukraine?

On Day 9 of an already devastating war unleashed without provocation -- with towns torn apart by rockets, hundreds or thousands of soldiers and civilians dead, and more than 1 million people fleeing for safety -- the answer is far from clear. And a pair of related questions has emerged with increasing insistence: Whats in store for Russia? And for Putin?

Live Briefing: Russia Invades Ukraine RFE/RL's Live Briefing gives you all of the major developments on Russia's invasion, how Kyiv is fighting back, the plight of civilians, and Western reaction. For all of RFE/RL's coverage of the war, click here.

It has been obvious all winter that an invasion would have major repercussions for Russia. As U.S. officials warned the world for weeks that an onslaught could begin at any moment, they also warned the Kremlin that the West would respond with tough and unprecedented sanctions. It was also clear that a new Russian escalation in Ukraine would come with yet another escalation at home -- a further intensification of an already intense clampdown on independent media, civil society, and dissenting voices across the board.

But the scope of the effects on Russia of Putins war on Ukraine, while also still unknown, has already pushed past the bounds of what was widely expected, casting the country into the deepest uncertainly since the Chechen wars and the debt-default crisis of the 1990s, for sure, and probably since the Soviet Union fell apart in 1991.

The greatest uncertainty of the Putin era, in other words -- and the greatest uncertainty over when that era might end.

Perhaps more than at any other time in the 22 years since his first election, the question of whether he can withstand the effects of the catastrophe he created is being asked -- if not answered with much confidence at this point.

There are at least two reasons for the surge of uncertainly about the future of Russia and its longtime leader, who in 2020 choreographed constitutional changes allowing him to seek another term in 2024 and yet another in 2030, potentially prolonging his stay in the Kremlin until 2036.

Both of them involve what appear to have been at least two major miscalculations on Putins part: One about the international response to the invasion -- including unprecedented sanctions that threaten to isolate Russia from the global economy and create problems for the elites as well as the broader population -- and the other about Ukraines response.

Or more precisely, about the widely held attitudes toward Russia in a country that, in 2014, saw Moscow seize control of the Crimean Peninsula and back separatists in the eastern Donbas region, helping ignite a war that had killed more than 13,200 people the before the new invasion began last week.

Many pieces of evidence suggest that Putin expected almost immediate success -- that Russian forces would move in, welcomed by many Ukrainians, and quickly subjugate the country, probably by pushing President Volodymyr Zelenskiy from power and installing a Moscow-friendly regime.

That evidence includes Putins own startlingly overambitious call for the Ukrainian military to seize power, the publication and subsequent withdrawal of a state news agency commentary that was essentially a celebration of triumph, and footage of burned-out Russian military vehicles, captured Russian soldiers lamenting that they were sent to Ukraine, and other images from a campaign that almost certainly has not gone the way Putin had hoped.

What appears to have been a plan for the rapid and relatively bloodless decapitation of the Ukrainian state has turned already into a long and deadly slog, Sam Greene, director of the Russia Institute at Kings College London, wrote in a blog post on March 2.

After initially saying nothing at all about its own casualties and then acknowledging that some had been suffered but giving no numbers, the Russian military said on March 2 that 498 of its soldiers had been killed. There was no way to verify the figure.

Going in, Putin may have been counting on a quick and easy victory not just because of what it would mean for Ukraine, but because it would make the war -- which the Kremlin may soon make it a crime to call a war -- more palatable to the Russian public.

The recognition that this war would be unpopular was the key factor determining Russias opening gambit. The only way to mitigate that risk was to win the war as cleanly and quickly as possible, Greene wrote. That is now no longer an option.

So, what are the options?

So far, Putin does not seem to see any, aside from pushing ahead with war in Ukraine and repression in Russia.

At home, startling developments suggest he has decided -- maybe in the past few days, maybe weeks or months ago -- to crack down even harder than he has since his prominent political foe, Aleksei Navalny, returned to Russia in January 2021 and was immediately arrested.

The ensuing clampdown, which was already building on an existing clampdown, gathered force over the past year. It has gone into overdrive in the past week, with some of the last remaining independent media outlets forced to shut and any opposition to the war in Ukraine stifled, if possible -- developments that one observer called the collapse of the last shreds of democracy inside Russia.

'There Was Nothing That Should Reassure Us'

As for the war itself, there is no sign that Putin plans to let up unless Kyiv delivers swiftly on massive demands that Zelenskiy and Western governments have said are unacceptable, including abandoning Crimea, the Donbas, NATO aspirations, and any weapons that Russia claims to believe threaten its security.

And there are plenty of signs that he will continue to wage war -- including his own vows to do so, in a March 3 address in which he said the campaign was going according to plan and in a 90-minute phone call with French President Emmanuel Macron the same day.

Putin told Macron that "Russia intends to continue the uncompromising fight against militants of nationalist armed groups," the Kremlin said, echoing Moscows false and baseless claims that Zelenskiys government is fascist.

The report from Macron, who seems to have been trying to talk some sense into Putin in a series of exchanges in recent weeks, was chilling.

"There was nothing in what President Putin told us that should reassure us. He showed great determination to continue the operation," an aide to Macron said, according to the French news agency AFP.

Macron fears "the worst is to come" in Ukraine following his conversation with Putin, who appears intent on seizing "the whole" of the country, the aide said.

But if that happens, the result may be something close to the opposite of what Putin has made clear he wants: A friendly, compliant Ukraine that is under his control to the greatest degree possible -- or, in any case, gives Moscow no trouble and serves, like Belarus, as a buffer between Russia and the West.

WATCH: Fires could still be seen smoldering in what used to be a row of high-rise apartment buildings on the main street of Borodyanka on March 3. The small town northwest of Kyiv came under Russian air strikes and artillery shelling the previous day.

Putins main argument aimed at justifying the invasion -- and the sweeping demands that Moscow made of Kyiv, NATO, and the United States as it built up troops near Ukraines borders in recent months -- has been that the neighboring country poses a threat to Russias security.

But as a result, he may have on his hands a rebellious land in which millions of people who remain will chafe angrily under Moscows thumb.

He will also have earned the lasting opprobrium of the West, uniting many of its disparate and often feuding camps against him after years of efforts to sow divisions, and may make countries more well-disposed to Russia, including China, wary of getting too close.

'A Cornered Rat'

At home, meanwhile, the invasion of Ukraine has plunged Russia into what could be a prolonged new era of uncertainty, economic hardship, and isolation.

Whatever military victory Mr. Putin might find acceptable in his twisted mind, Russia has already suffered a crushing moral defeat, Aleksei Kovalyov, investigations editor at the Russia-focused media outlet Meduza, wrote in a March 3 opinion article in The New York Times.

Despite the ongoing clampdown, which has driven many Kremlin opponents out of the country and put others behind bars, demonstrations against the war have erupted across the country. As of March 3, more than 8,000 people had been detained for protesting against the governments war on Ukraine, according to OVD-Info, a nongovernmental organization that monitors political repression.

How big the protests will get, and how big an impact they will have, is unclear.

And the Kremlin will find some purchase among the populace by blaming the United States and the European Union both for the war and for the economic turmoil rocking the country, painting the West as an aggressor out to eliminate Russia -- or to cancel its government, as the director of the Foreign Intelligence Servce, Sergei Naryshkin, asserted without evidence on March 3.

Even if his hold on power is precarious, he can still convince Russians that the whole world is conspiring against them, Masha Gessen wrote of Putin in a March 1 article in The New Yorker.

But economic troubles and isolation could foment dissatisfaction and anger at many levels -- from the poor to the rich and those in-between -- potentially changing the political atmosphere gradually, or even in an instant.

In theory, the pressure on Putin from both inside Russia and outside could prompt him to halt the onslaught in Ukraine and take other steps to ease the tension with the West.

But he has said and done nothing to suggest he might choose that course. On the contrary, he has sent increasingly aggressive signals, reminding the world of Russias nuclear weapons and warning he could level even more sweeping demands at Kyiv.

In a Twitter thread on March 2, Berlin-based commentator Leonid Bershidsky asked himself what Putin could do if he were to realize the extent of economic damage, Ukrainian military resistance, and discontent in Russian society.

One thing he might be likely to do would be step up the military action in Ukraine by putting pressure on the military to be more ruthless and increasing payouts, Bershidsky wrote. He is a cornered rat now that must fight dirty and fast in the hope of ending the war in his favor fast.

He added: Putin needs to be stopped -- he won't stop on his own even if he suddenly becomes rational.

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Richmond, KY (40475)

Today

A mix of clouds and sun early, then becoming cloudy later in the day. High 77F. Winds light and variable..

Tonight

Rain showers in the evening will evolve into a more steady rain overnight. Thunder possible. Low 64F. Winds SE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 80%.
Go bags also have proven useful in the opposite circumstances as stay bags.
Written By

Joe Schulz served as the reporter of the Green Laker in 2019 and 2020, before being hired as a reporter for the Commonwealth in October 2020. He is from Oshkosh and graduated from UW-Oshkosh in December 2020 with a bachelor's degree in journalism.

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Roanoke Rapids, NC (27870)

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Partly cloudy skies during the morning hours will become overcast in the afternoon. High 72F. Winds NE at 5 to 10 mph..

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Considerable cloudiness. Slight chance of a rain shower. Low 56F. Winds light and variable.
Rutland, VT (05701)

Today

Except for a few afternoon clouds, mainly sunny. High 63F. Winds NNW at 10 to 15 mph..

Tonight

Partly cloudy skies during the evening will give way to cloudy skies overnight. Low 42F. Winds light and variable.
The process of economic globalization and the gradual removal of economic barriers between countries has promoted the formation or expansion of many financial and monetary unions with increasing larger transaction sizes. Therefore, many countries have prioritized the formation of highly competitive financial systems, which are also an opportunity to attract foreign investment capital as well as advanced technology. This is a decisive factor to ensure macro-economic stability as well as economic security. Hence, building International Financial Center (IFC) has become the main feature in the financial market development strategy in many countries.

For Vietnam to achieve specific goals by 2025 and to become a developing country with modern industries with a per capita income of about USD 5,000, with a high average income by 2030 and 2045, the formation of IFC Vietnam in Ho Chi Minh City is absolutely necessary. Ho Chi Minh City has an extremely important position within the country, as it is making great contributions towards the economy, and also has the unique ability to accept new things and self-innovate, through economic mechanisms and policies that have proven in their development process in the past. In its past history, Ho Chi Minh City was once the center of Southeast Asia, and known as the Pearl of the East during its colonial rule. The City also has an unparalleled geo-economic position with a higher level of development than other countries.

Even today, Ho Chi Minh City is the main national financial hub of the country, with many banks and financial credit institutions, and a robust stock exchange conducting both domestic and international monetary transactions. Finance, banking, and insurance activities account for a large proportion with the absolute value at about 10% of the GRDP of Ho Chi Minh City, and more than one-third of that of the whole country.

An IFC is an information analysis and management organization with financial potential. The IFC constituent parts are the stock market, international, national, and branch banks, multinational corporations, investment and pension funds, and other crucial financial institutions. It has enterprises providing legal, auditing, consulting, advertising, and accounting services, such as by McKinsey, Boston Consulting Group, CB Richard Ellis, Ernst & Young, and Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, information technology businesses, and the media.

IFC will also widely attract experts to analyse the situation and prospects for the world financial market, monitor macro-economic indicators of countries, conduct research, and propose mechanisms and policies to operate financial markets effectively. In addition, IFC analyses, performs multi-disciplinary research, calculates and publishes international ratings and indexes, same as World Federation of Exchanges, Moody's, Standard and Poor's. Many of these reputable companies already have a presence in Vietnam.

However, making an IFC Vietnam in Ho Chi Minh City will not be easy, and it may take many years to build. In addition to the issue of infrastructure, including information and telecommunications infrastructure, creating a foundation for national digital transformation with high-quality human resources, legal institutions, mechanisms and policies will all be important in building Ho Chi Minh City into an IFC of Vietnam. It is good that these are also the strategic breakthroughs that our Party has identified at the Resolution of the 13th National Party Congress on 1 February 2021.

It calls for synchronous development of the institution, creating a favorable, healthy, and fair business investment environment for all economic sectors, and promoting innovation, effectively mobilizing, managing and using all resources for development, especially finance. The most important of all features will be the development of software, i.e. mechanisms and policies, not hardware, such as infrastructure, which can be developed immediately if money is available. Only mechanisms and policies make a difference, but these come from awareness.

Within the current legal framework, this is certainly impossible, because the relationship between enterprises and public agencies is mainly done according to a mutually beneficial mechanism, and is not by its own right. If even domestic businesses find it difficult, what will international businesses and investors from all over the world think of such a system. Finance is always a sensitive field that directly affects macro stability, and which is always strictly regulated by specialize laws. Ho Chi Minh City has a particularly important role to play in our economy, politics, culture, and society that no other city in our country can.

I completely agree with Mr. Phan Van Mai, Chairman of the People's Committee of Ho Chi Minh City when he says that Ho Chi Minh City needs a separate law to regulate the position and role of the city as well as the mechanisms, policies, and responsibilities for building, developing and managing the city, especially when the city is implementing the current National Assembly Resolution No. 54/2017/QH14 about piloting specific mechanisms and policies for the development of Ho Chi Minh City. As a rule, regulations that have been piloted with good results can be put into law for stable and long-term application. This year, Ho Chi Minh City will summarize five years of implementing Resolution No. 54/2017/QH14 and report to the National Assembly at the year-end meeting.

Dr. Tran Van, Former Vice Chairman, National Assembly Finance Budget Committee
A high school student uses a vaping device near a school campus in Cambridge, Mass. Although the state banned the sale of flavored cigarettes and vaping products more than two years ago, those products are still getting into the state through the black market.
What We're Craving, Sipping, and Talking About in March
From Monet to Matisse, Impressionist Masterpieces Come to The San Diego Museum of Art
Are you expecting to receive an annual Costco Rewards check? If so, are you starting to wonder where it is? If you havent received it, yet, then you certainly should receive it soon. After all, these checks go out each February. You might receive it via mail or via email. Alternatively, you can locate it online or via an app. This article provides all of the information that you need to access and redeem this reward money.

What Is a Costco Rewards Check?

When you sign up for a Citi Costco card, cash back rewards are among the benefits. In fact, it might be one of the main reasons that you like the Costco membership level youve chosen. These cash back rewards are called Costco Cash Rewards. You accrue them throughout the year. You receive different percentages back for different types of purchases. You can use the Citi website to check the amount of your rewards at any time throughout the year.

Costco Rewards Check Sent Annually

Many credit card rewards programs allow you to cash in your rewards at any time. However, not all credit cards are like that. The Costco Citi card is an example of a different model. With this card, you receive a Costco Rewards check once per year. These are sent out each February along with your credit card billing statement for the month.

Therefore, if youve already received your February 2022 credit card statement, then you should also have received your Costco Rewards check at the same time. Its on the last page of your statement, so make sure that you dont throw it away!

What If You Use Paperless Statements?

Many of us opt out of snail mail billing for a variety of different reasons. Therefore, you might instead use paperless billing. If so, then you still get your Costco Rewards check at the same time as your February bill. However, instead of receiving it in the mail, you receive it via email.

Maybe you dont check this type of email frequently. After all, if youve got your account on autopay, you might not see a reason to review it regularly. (You should, however, in case there are any errors.) If youve failed to get your annual rewards check, then you should check your email, including your spam folder, to see if its in there.

Note, the bill and the rewards check information are both sent to your email account. However, they are two separate emails. The rewards email should come to you on or within a few days of the date you receive your February bill statement.

What If You Cant Find Your Costco Rewards Check?

Lets say that youve checked your mail and your email, and yet, you cant find the check. Its already March, so you should have received it by now. Dont fret. According to Costco customer service, you simply need to log on to your Citi account online. Then you can request a replacement check.

Access Your Rewards Via the App

CNBC reports that theres one more way that you can receive your rewards. Log into the Citi app. As long as your February statement is complete, you can click access certificate on the app to see your rewards. If you havent downloaded the Citi app, you might find it useful. Its a great way to access your account, check your rewards throughout the year, and redeem those rewards annually.

I Got My Check, How Do I Redeem It?

Once youve received your Costco rewards check, you are ready to use it. You can use it by shopping at Costco. Take the check to your local store to redeem it. If you dont use all of it during that shopping trip, CNBC reports that youll receive the rest as cash back at the time of check-out.

If you prefer shopping at Costco online, then first head to a local store and use the check to purchase a Costco Shop Card. Then you can use that card for your online shopping. You can also use Costco Shop Cards to purchase gas at Costco gas stations.

Make sure that you redeem your rewards before December 31st of the issuing year. Otherwise they expire and youll no longer have access to them.

I Canceled My Account; Where Are My Rewards?

Unfortunately, if you cancel your Costco Citi card or Costco membership then you lose that years rewards. Therefore, if you want to cancel your account for any reason, then you should wait until youve received and redeemed your annual rewards. Since they are issued each February, you might want to keep you membership through March for that reason. After all, youve earned those rewards, so it is a waste of money to just lose out on them.

Are My Costco Executive Rewards Also Issued in February?

There are different plans available for Costco membership. As a result, there are different rewards. For example, perhaps youve upgraded to Executive Membership. If so, then you earn 2% cash back on your purchases, up to $1000 per year. This is entirely separate from your Citi Costco card rewards. Since theyre unrelated, they arent issued at the same time.

Costco Executive Rewards are also issued annually. However, theyre issued in relation to your Costco membership renewal date. Whenever you signed up for your account determines your renewal date. Therefore, yours might renew in April and your neighbors might renew in June. Youll receive your reward approximately 2-3 months before its time to renew your membership.

Keep an eye out for your Costco Executive Membership Renewal Statement around that time. In that statement, youll see your reward, which you can redeem on your next Costco shopping trip.

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Come back to what you love! Dollardig.com is the most reliable cash-back site on the web. Just sign up, click, shop, and get full cashback!
SpaceX launched 47 satellites on Thursday morning (March 3) and landed the Falcon 9 rocket.

The Starlink 4-9 mission launched from pad 39A at Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 9:25 a.m. EST, the ninth of SpaceX's 52 planned launches this year and the

TechCrunch noted a solid one-per-week launch rate, which aligns with SpaceX CEO Elon Musk's commitment to quick reusability.

The Falcon 9 booster "B1060" launched today's mission and landed nine minutes later aboard the drone ship "Just Read the Instructions" in the Atlantic Ocean.

With this successful launch and landing, B1060 has completed 11 flights since its debut in June 2020, tying it for the most rocket reuses at SpaceX.

SpaceX Launches 47 Starlink Satellites in All Nines!

According to SpaceX, today's mission focused on a fresh set of 47 new Starlink satellites that will soon join other spacecraft orbiting the Earth.

It will introduce a new expansion to the popular service that connects the world to the internet.

Deployment of 47 Starlink satellites confirmed  SpaceX (@SpaceX) March 3, 2022

The firm releases a fresh batch that marks a milestone. It is one of the company's early for a single month and one of the fastest, as its last launch was only last weekend.

ALSO READ: Elon Musk Says SpaceX Starlink Has Already Reached More Than 250,000 User Terminals; What Does It Mean?

There is no stopping SpaceX today, as the firm is on a roll with its launches, demonstrating the company's ability to deliver a payload to low-Earth orbit for usage.

Not only has SpaceX hit a significant new milestone, according to its tweet, but it has also launched another set of 47 satellites into orbit.

SpaceX's ninth Falcon 9 launch is the milestone, which will place the Starlink satellites in orbit within the first nine weeks of 2022, making it a perfect nine.

This was our 9th Falcon 9 launch in the first 9 weeks of 2022 pic.twitter.com/yuxVN1rR8t  SpaceX (@SpaceX) March 3, 2022

The company's successes were commemorated online, and additional satellites for service were dispersed throughout different Starlink coverage areas.

About Starlink

SpaceX's satellite broadband service, Starlink, saw its first infrastructure launch in 2019. Elon Musk, the network's CEO, recently made news when he delivered 50 Starlink terminals to Ukraine, where a Russian incursion has disrupted internet access.

SpaceX's launch on Thursday marked the company's sixth Starlink mission of the year. The launches went off without a hitch, although the third mission, which launched on Feb. 3, was delayed by a solar storm.

According to SpaceX personnel, the sun outburst caused a geomagnetic storm on Earth, which increased the density of our atmosphere enough to bring down up to 40 of the 49 Starlink satellites that had not yet reached their operating height.

There will be many more Starlink debuts in the following weeks and months. The corporation has already launched over 2,000 Starlink satellites into low Earth orbit. Still, it has clearance to launch another 12,000 and has appealed to an international authority for permission to launch up to 30,000 more.

RELATED ARTICLE: SpaceX Starlink Prepares to Launch More Than 40 Satellites On Presidents' Day

Check out more news and information on SpaceX in Science Times.
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State lawmakers have revived an effort to allow San Francisco, San Jose and Oakland to use cameras to reduce excessive speeding amid the regions surge in traffic accidents during the pandemic.

The legislation, which is the third attempt since 2017 to allow some California cities to pilot speed cameras, comes at a time when the Bay Areas largest cities are struggling to rein in severe and fatal crashes.

Traffic deaths in San Francisco persisted during the pandemic and, two years out from its 2024 Vision Zero deadline, the citys goal of zero traffic deaths by then has become increasingly elusive. San Jose is on track to exceed last years total of 58 fatal crashes, and the city marked its 10th pedestrian fatality of the year this week.

Speed is the main factor in determining a victims survival in a crash, and supporters of the legislation say the regions rising traffic mayhem is preventable with measures such as speed cameras  which can force change in motorists behaviors.

But past attempts underscore the political difficulty. Last years legislation by now-City Attorney David Chiu had strong support from mayors in San Francisco, Oakland and San Jose, as well as several advocacy groups. It failed to advance beyond its first committee hearing.

Assembly Bill 2336 would allow the Bay Areas three largest cities and Los Angeles to pilot speed cameras for five years. Commonly referred to as automated speed enforcement, these cameras are used to monitor speeds of through traffic. Similar to red-light cameras, they capture images and video recordings of vehicles license plates. Tickets are mailed to the cars registered owner.

Heres how the legislation would work:

 Cities would be allowed to place speed cameras in 15% of their high-injury corridors, as well as school zones and roadways with high incidents of speed racing and sideshows. Theyd have to install signage alerting motorists of the speed cameras while also allowing a one-month grace period after theyre installed.

 Fines would be issued in tiers, starting at $50 for motorists going more than 10 mph over the speed limit; $100 for more than 15 mph; $200 for more than 25 mph; and $500 for driving more than 100 mph. Speeding fines could be lowered based on a persons income level.

 Law enforcement agencies would be prohibited from using the surveillance data and cities would be barred from using the cameras to generate revenue. Money from fines, instead, would pay for traffic-calming measures. Speed-camera fines wouldnt affect a motorists driving record.

Jorge Quiroz lobbied for a version of the bill in 2017, four years after a motorist speeding through a south San Jose school zone struck and killed his 5-year-old daughter as she walked a crosswalk.

A speed camera on that school zone could have helped prevent his daughters death, Quiroz said, by influencing drivers to avoid speeding the same way that the risk of incurring a fine discourages motorists in single-occupancy vehicles from entering HOV lanes.

I want (state lawmakers) to know that theyre the ones who are going to decide if they want to save lives, Quiroz said. Weve been pushing this for many years and, still, people are dying because of speeding. Its on them if they really want to save lives.

Assembly Member Phil Ting of San Francisco, a co-author of AB2336, said the moment calls for urgency and expressed hope that the bill would muster the necessary support from lawmakers this time around.

We continue to see traffic fatalities. We continue to see pedestrians and cyclists get run over by vehicles, Ting said. So anytime that we can actually do something to halt the deaths of pedestrians and bicyclists on our roads, we have to make every effort.

The opposition from last years bill stemmed from concerns about surveillance and its potential impact to low-income communities. Caro Jauregui, executive director of the California Walks advocacy group, told lawmakers last year that the legislation could end up harming low-income communities of color overrepresented in cities high-injury networks. She said the bill failed to address poor street designs that entice motorists to speed.

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.

We know we are all working to reduce traffic related deaths and injuries, Jauregui wrote to legislators, but we cant build safe streets through punitive measures like ticketing, nor through power and dominance like community surveillance.

Jauregui did not respond to requests for comment.

Supporters of the bill say speed cameras help remove bias in enforcing traffic violations because it adds a layer of separation from police officers while adding bandwidth for cities to enforce speed limits. The intent, supporters say, is to use the prospect of a fine to make speeding motorists more mindful of a streets limits.

AB2336 follows last years AB43 law that allowed San Francisco to incrementally reduce speed limits in busy commercial corridors. In January, San Francisco began reducing speed limits to 20 mph on seven roadways after lowering speed limits across the Tenderloin last spring. This summer, the Municipal Transportation Agency plans to begin speed reductions in 35 additional corridors.

But that law, alone, isnt enough to significantly change speeding behaviors en masse, and there is no single tool as effective at improving safety as speed safety cameras, SFMTA Director Jeffrey Tumlin said.

He pointed to New York as a model. Since New York began piloting automated speed enforcement in 2014, it saw a 72% drop in speeding on corridors with installed cameras, according to a city report.

It should be the tool of last resort, it should start with (street) design, Tumlin said. And yet we know from the data all over the world that enforcement approaches are a necessary part of the toolkit.

Ricardo Cano is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: ricardo.cano@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @ByRicardoCano
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On Thanksgiving in 2016, at 4:30 a.m., the California Highway Patrol received a 911 call from a desolate stretch of Interstate 5 in Yolo County. A trucker was on the line. Hed come upon a woman in the darkness near Woodland, in desperate need of help, or so it seemed.

She was gaunt, her face swollen. Under gray sweatpants and a gray sweatshirt, rashes and bruises covered her body. Her ankles and wrists were in cuffs, one arm fastened to a chain around her waist. Her blond hair had been cut short. Someone had crudely burned a brand into her right shoulder as if marking her as property.

It didnt take long to identify the woman in the roadway.

Sherri Papini had been missing for 22 days, long enough for the apparent kidnapping of the 34-year-old mother of two young children  a super mom, by her relatives description  to make global headlines.

Shed vanished while jogging near her home in the community of Mountain Gate outside Redding, 150 miles up I-5 from Woodland, and then failed to pick up her kids from day care. Her distraught husband, Keith Papini, had found her abandoned phone and neatly coiled earbuds by using the Find My iPhone app.

Sherri Papini gave a horrific and extraordinary account of her captivity.

She said, according to investigators, that two Hispanic women had abducted her as she jogged, pulling up in a dark sport utility vehicle with tinted windows and forcing her inside by showing her a revolver and saying something like, We dont want to kill you. Papini recalled the smell of sewage in the vehicle and the sensation of repeatedly falling asleep, possibly after being shocked with a Taser.

The women locked her in a room with boarded windows, she recalled, and chained her in a closet  providing a bucket of cat box litter as a toilet  when she refused to listen to them. The house was cold, and if she made noise, the women took away her blankets. They often spoke Spanish, blasted annoying Mexican music outside her door, and once a day fed her meager meals of rice, tortillas or grits. The brand on her shoulder was punishment for bad behavior.

By her telling, Papinis captors were careful, covering their faces with lace masks or bandannas at all times. They spoke of holding her for a buyer, who wanted her healthy. The leader of the pair was older, meaner, raspy-voiced and coffee-breathed, and would sometimes assault her younger and smaller partner, who seemed sheepish about the operation.

And then, one day, the scheme suddenly ended. The younger kidnapper  possibly after shooting the older one  put a pillowcase over Papinis head and dropped her along the freeway in Woodland in the middle of the night. Thats where the trucker found her.

It was an incredible story. But last week, the FBI said it was all a lie.

Reddings super mom, Special Agent Courtney Lantto said in a court affidavit, had spent three weeks not in chains but hanging out with an ex-boyfriend in Orange County.

Papini, now 39, was arrested last week on suspicion of making false statements to a federal officer and engaging in mail fraud. The second charge alleges she wrongfully pocketed tens of thousands of dollars from the California Victim Compensation Board, which picked up costs for therapy sessions, privacy blinds for her home and the ambulance ride to the hospital after she reappeared.

Authorities asserted that Papinis injuries were self-inflicted, her work with a sketch artist a time-wasting sham. She faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted.

Ultimately, the investigation revealed that there was no kidnapping and that time and resources that could have been used to investigate actual crime, protect the community and provide resources to victims were wasted based on the defendants conduct, said Phillip Talbert, the U.S. attorney for Californias Eastern District, which includes Redding.

Papini, who was released Tuesday on $120,000 bail, did not comment, but her family released a statement saying, in reference to her arrest, We love Sherri and are appalled by the way in which law enforcement ambushed her ... in a dramatic and unnecessary manner in front of her children.

The statement continued: Sherri and Keith have cooperated with law enforcements requests despite repeated attempts to unnecessarily pit them against each other, empty threats to publicly embarrass them and other conduct that was less than professional.

The seeming abduction had spread fear through the far reaches of Northern California.

But Special Agent Lanttos affidavit reveals that investigators became suspicious of Papini long ago, in the first days of the case.

Even as rescue teams searched wilderness areas, as cops visited local sex offenders, as a reward grew to $50,000, as her familys GoFundMe account surged to nearly $50,000 and as Papinis husband passed a polygraph test, investigators were learning that the missing woman had an alleged history of deceit.

On Papinis abandoned cell phone, the FBI said, two phone numbers stored under womens names actually belonged to men  one of whom had discussed meeting up with Papini in a text conversation the day before she vanished. Contacted by investigators, the man said he didnt ultimately connect with Papini that day.

The second man whose number was in the phone told investigators he was an ex-boyfriend and that Papini was an attention-hungry person who told stories to try to get peoples attention  including stories of being abused, Lantto wrote. The man said Papini was good at creating different realities.

When investigators tracked down a third man  Papinis ex-husband  he said they had tied the knot in 2006, prior to his military deployment overseas, because Papini needed health insurance due to complications related to regular egg donations. The man said that when he returned, she was with someone else. So they divorced.

Investigators, records show, also reviewed a blog post from 2007 titled Keep Walking that was attributed to Sherri Graeff  Papinis maiden name. The blogger said that after a group of Latinos picked on her at her Shasta County high school, she responded by fighting the girls and breaking one of their noses.

I used to come home in tears, because I was getting suspended from school all the time for defending myself against the Latinos, the blogger wrote. The chief problem was that I was drug-free, white and proud of my blood and heritage.  Being white is more than just being aware of my skin, but of standing behind Skinheads  who are always around, in spirit, as well  and having pride for my country.

Papini told investigators the post was awful and that she did not write it.

Many mysteries are solved with DNA evidence these days, and the Papini case was no different, the FBI said. But this was a slow burn.

Drought Map Track water shortages and restrictions across Bay Area Check the water shortage status of your area, plus see reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Areas largest water districts.

On that miracle Thanksgiving Day in 2016, as Papini was treated at Woodland Memorial Hospital, police collected her sweatshirt, sweatpants, socks and underwear. A lab soon detected an unknown mans DNA. But when the profile was checked against government databases, no hits emerged.

Over the next few years, investigators sought matches over and over again. Nothing.

Then, in 2020, Lantto wrote in her affidavit, the same DNA profile was checked for familial matches. Investigators got a hit. The profile matched a man whose son had once shared an AOL account with Papini. The son was an ex-boyfriend.

When FBI agents scoured social media accounts linked to this ex-boyfriend, they reported spotting a familiar piece of furniture; the table was similar, they said, to one that Papini said she was strapped to while being branded.

On Aug. 10, 2020, investigators said the ex-boyfriend  whose name they withheld  admitted that Papini had been at his Costa Mesa home during the time she said she was in the cold bedroom with the boarded-up windows. He said Papini, his ex-fiancee, had claimed she needed to escape her husbands abuse.

The whole affair, the man told investigators, began in 2015, when he was cleaning his house and came across old photos and other items that belonged to Papini. After he sent the mementos to her parents, she reached out and told him she was planning to run away with him.

The man said he and Papini soon agreed to communicate on burner phones  which they used to arrange the fateful pickup from Redding.

In Southern California, the man said, Papini retreated to a bedroom, where she often spent time alone, and asked him to board up the windows. The two did not have sex, he said. She ate little, he said, cut her hair short and  late in her stay  began to bruise and burn herself.

The man said he helped her create some of the injuries, although he never laid his hands directly on her, Lantto wrote. For example, she told him, Bank a puck off my leg, so (he) shot a puck off her leg, lightly.

Asked about the branding, the FBI said, the man responded that Papini asked him to buy a small wood-burning tool from Hobby Lobby, and then to burn a phrase that was important to her onto her skin. All these years later, he couldnt recall the words.

The man said he wasnt sure of Papinis intentions during her stay with him, but he believed they might end up in a romantic relationship again. Yet shortly before Thanksgiving, he said, she told him she missed her children.

Im ready to go, she said.

He rented a car through a friend, dropped her along I-5, and, by his account, never spoke to her again.

The FBI said it had a mountain of evidence corroborating the ex-boyfriends account  receipts, cell phone records, witness statements. Agents confronted her on Aug. 13, 2020, telling her they knew she had been with her ex-boyfriend.

Lantto said Papini insisted she was kidnapped.

The younger one is the one that let me go and was the nicer of the two, she told investigators. The older one was really abusive and really mean and is the one that did all the really terrible things.

Demian Bulwa (he/him) is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: demian.bulwa@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @demianbulwa
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An 18-year-old man from San Anselmo was killed in a shooting in Marin City Thursday afternoon, authorities said.

Sheriffs deputies responded to reports of a person being down and shots heard in the 400 block of Drake Avenue at 3:49 p.m. and found the man unresponsive.
Minority residents cannot use housing-discrimination laws to challenge development projects that may promote gentrification, attracting higher-income and more racially diverse residents and businesses to adjoining neighborhoods while also increasing rents and other living costs, a state appeals court said Thursday.

The case involved a Los Angeles developers long-standing proposal to demolish part of a shopping mall in the southern part of the city and build new stores and restaurants, a 400-unit hotel and housing  551 condominium units and 410 apartment units, with 10% of the housing priced as affordable for low and moderate incomes.

Approved by the City Council in 2018, the project was then challenged by the Crenshaw Subway Coalition, residents of the nearby Leimert Park and Crenshaw Corridor neighborhoods, where 80% to 90% of the population is Black or Latino. Their lawsuit said the development would lead to an influx of new, more affluent residents, raising local rents as well as property values, and eventually pushing lower-income minorities out of their neighborhoods, where they already spend half their income on rent.

But even if those allegations are true, they would not show violations of either the federal Fair Housing Act or the California Fair Employment and Housing Act, said the Second District Court of Appeal.

Applying the gentrification theory in the lawsuit would actually require Los Angeles to use and consider race in making local planning decisions, Justice Brian Hoffstadt said in the 3-0 ruling, which upheld a Superior Court judges dismissal of the suit.

The Fair Housing Act does not reach discrimination on the basis of socioeconomic status, Hoffstadt said. And he said the Supreme Court, in a 2015 ruling, had made it clear that the federal law could not justify racial considerations in housing, even when advocated by minority groups.

In this case, he said, the lawsuits gentrification theory would protect this concentration of minority community members and, in the words of the Supreme Courts 2015 ruling, would perpetuate the segregation. Hoffstadt said Californias housing law has a similar scope.

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.

Damien Goodmon, executive director of the neighborhood group, said it would appeal to the state Supreme Court.

If allowed to stand, the decision would cut off the right of the public and policymakers to enact statutory tools to combat racism and protect sensitive Black and Brown communities from displacement and erasure, Goodmon said in a statement.

Ed Casey, a lawyer for the developer, said the ruling should put an end to those disrupters who continually attempt to get in the way of the community's desire for progress.

Bob Egelko is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: begelko@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @BobEgelko
Two people were shot in San Franciscos Fillmore District on Thursday night, authorities said.

One man sustained life-threatening injuries and one woman had non-life-threatening injuries in the shooting at Eddy and Laguna streets, said San Francisco police investigations Commander Raj Vaswani on Twitter.

Police officers responded to a report of a shooting at 7:06 p.m. and found one person with a gunshot wound. Officers provided first-aid to the victim before medical personnel took the victim to a local hospital for treatment. The other victim was taken to the hospital before police officers arrived at the scene, police said.

Vaswani said that there was a Fairly large amount of gunfire with just under 30 rounds fired in the shooting.

Their conditions were not immediately released on Thursday night. No one was in custody in connection with the shooting as of shortly before 10:45 p.m., police said.

Anyone with information about this incident should call San Francisco police at 415-575-4444 or text a tip to TIP411 and start the message with SFPD.

Lauren Hernandez (she/her) is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: lauren.hernandez@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @ByLHernandez
San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin has sent a greater percentage of defendants in robbery, assault and drug cases to diversion programs than his predecessor, while obtaining convictions in a smaller share of those cases, according to data released by his office and analyzed by The Chronicle.

Boudins office has also more frequently charged defendants with crimes that are less serious than those sought by police officers after robbery and assault arrests. Prosecutors have the ultimate authority over charges filed in court.

The data, most of which was released this past week and posted to the district attorneys website, compares Boudins first two years in office with George Gascons tenure, which began in 2011 and ended in 2019.

The figures appear to align with Boudins stated goal of reducing jail and prison populations and focusing on services and rehabilitation. Pretrial diversion, which can include addiction treatment, is designed as an alternative to incarceration, allowing people accused of crimes to avoid convictions on their record and sometimes remain at jobs and with their families.

Voters views about how Boudins office handles cases are likely to play a central role in efforts to recall him from office. His opponents have accused him of being too permissive, while supporters say his philosophy of de-emphasizing incarceration is long overdue.

The Chronicle previously analyzed how often the District Attorneys Office files charges in cases brought by police, finding that Boudins charging rates were higher than Gascons in narcotics and homicide cases, but lower for lesser offenses such as petty theft. Overall, Boudins charging rate was 48%, lower than Gascons 54% in his last two years and on par with Gascons charging rates in 2016 and 2017.

Gabrielle Lurie/Special to The Chronicle 2016

In an interview, Boudin said most of the changes to charging and conviction rates during his tenure were related not to philosophy but the coronavirus pandemic, which prompted court closures and slowdowns, and to new state laws that made diversion more accessible in many cases.

But two prosecutors who quit Boudins office and are now working to recall him said the numbers were in line with what they would have expected given Boudins policies  with which they disagree. The San Francisco Police Department did not respond to a request for comment.

Most of the new data was made available this past week, several months after The Chronicle and others began requesting detailed information on the outcomes of criminal cases.

The data shows the percentage of cases charged under specific crime categories that end in a conviction, a diversion, a dismissal or an acquittal each year. It also features a more detailed breakdown of case outcomes, known as dispositions  whether a case ended in a jail sentence, a particular diversion program or a dismissal due to a specific statute.

The Chronicle also received detailed charging data, allowing for deeper analysis. Here are some of the main takeaways:

Overall conviction rates are down, while diversion rates are up: The data shows that conviction rates for all crimes have decreased, diversion rates have gone up and dismissals and acquittals have remained mostly flat.

Its important to note that looking at overall changes can be misleading because the types of crimes prosecutors charge can change substantially from year to year, especially during an event like a pandemic.

In addition to overall changes, The Chronicle analyzed outcome data for three of the most common serious crime types  felony assaults, robberies and narcotics cases  as well as petty theft, a crime that has come under intense scrutiny in San Francisco amid concern over shoplifting.

The data shows that Boudins office is sending a larger share of defendants in robberies, narcotics cases, assaults and petty thefts through diversion programs than Gascons did, and obtaining convictions in a smaller share of these cases. For narcotics cases and robberies, dismissals also rose slightly, but acquittals barely budged. For petty thefts, dismissals decreased.

For most of the crimes The Chronicle examined, the trend toward higher diversion rates and lower conviction rates began in the last several years of Gascons tenure, before Boudin took office. However, the largest increases still happened while Boudin was in office.

While Boudin mostly attributed the increased diversion rates to a combination of new statewide laws and court decisions, he took credit for increasing access to  and focusing on  diversion programs. He said diversion was critical in dealing with lower-level crimes such as petty theft, which has seen a sharp rise in diversion rates during his tenure, according to the newly released data.

What weve tried to do over the two years Ive been in office is the exact thing that I promised voters I would do, which is increase access to diversion drug treatment programs, mental health care programs for folks on the lower end of the spectrum, and increase resources and staffing and traditional prosecutorial focus on the most serious crimes, consistent with that promise to voters, he said.

One of the major outcomes of Boudins policies, along with his lower conviction rates and higher diversion rates, is obvious: a sharp decrease in the number of people who are in County Jail.

As of September 2021, the latest month with available data, the average daily population of the San Francisco County Jail was 814, a 35% decrease from September 2019. While this was in large part because of the pandemic, which spurred most California counties to lower their jail populations, San Franciscos jail population has stayed lower for longer than most other counties, according to a previous Chronicle analysis.

(Most people in San Francisco County Jail are being held there pretrial, but The Chronicle also found that of cases that were disposed or completed during Boudins tenure, a smaller share of people were sent to County Jail than in cases disposed under Gascon.)

Cases booked as assaults and robberies are more likely to get charged down: Currently, the district attorneys website displays charging rates by case category. According to this data, Boudin charged a smaller share of cases booked as robberies and assaults in 2020 than Gascon did in 2019.

But in both categories, his overall charging rates went back up in 2021. Meanwhile, his charging rates for narcotics cases and homicides have been higher than Gascons were in his last two years in office.

Seeking to understand not only the frequency of charges but also the severity, The Chronicle requested detailed data from the District Attorneys Office on every felony assault, robbery, narcotics and homicide case presented by police with an arrest date of Jan. 1, 2018, or later.

The office gave us two data sets. The first included all arrests in which the most serious alleged crime, as booked by the Police Department, was one of the four categories above. The second included all cases charged by Boudins office in which the most serious crime as charged was one of the four categories.

By cross-referencing these data sets, The Chronicle determined which cases originally brought to the district attorney as narcotics crimes, robberies, assaults and homicides were charged under the same categories, and what share of each case type was charged under different categories.

The Chronicle found that under Boudin in 2020 and 2021, nearly 40% of charged cases originally booked as felony assaults were prosecuted under a different charge  compared with roughly 33% under Gascon in 2018 and 2019. The difference in these rates in robbery prosecutions was smaller but still present.

It is likely most of the differently charged cases are getting prosecuted as lesser crimes, not more serious ones, though this precise information is missing from the data. Boudin confirmed that many defendants booked by police will get charged with other, often lesser, offenses as investigations progress.

Boudins homicide charging rates are comparable to Gascons overall, and his narcotics charging rates have increased. Both district attorneys rarely charged down narcotics and homicide cases; when they filed charges in those cases, they rarely changed the crime category.

In his interview with The Chronicle, Boudin said there are many reasons his office might file charges in a case different from the most serious category booked by the police. Prosecutors may conclude they cannot prove a booked offense beyond a reasonable doubt, or new information about a case may come to light after it is booked and police have investigated further  DNA test results, say, or a statement by a key witness.

These are very common parts of the investigative process and they almost always occur after the person is being booked on particular charges. That investigative part is a critical component of our charging determinations.

Boudin said his office has also tried to improve the feedback loop between more seasoned prosecutors who make charging decisions and more junior prosecutors who spend more time in the courts and interact directly with judges.

If a judge says theres not enough evidence for a charge in a preliminary hearing, we want that feedback to go upstream to the person making a charging decision, he said.

Boudin attributed the changes in charging and conviction rates primarily to external forces, particularly the pandemic. He emphasized the impact of state laws including AB3234, which took effect in 2021 and made it possible for judges to seek alternatives to jail or prison time for first-time offenders charged with most misdemeanors.

An additional recent statewide diversion law is AB991, which was enacted in 2018 and made people experiencing certain mental disorders eligible for diversion, even if they faced felony charges.

Overall, Boudin said conviction rates were a really poor metric for evaluating the success of a district attorneys office.

They create perverse incentives that lead to wrongful convictions, that lead to an us-against-them mentality, win at all costs, and that results in hiding evidence and losing sight of our constitutional obligation as prosecutors to do justice, he said. (In the same interview, though, Boudin spoke of his own offices increased conviction rates for homicides as a positive metric.)

Brooke Jenkins and Don Du Bain, both former prosecutors who left Boudins office during his administration and are now spokespeople for the Recall Boudin campaign, agreed that conviction rates shouldnt be the sole or primary measure of success for a district attorney. However, they disagreed that the figures were not useful in assessing performance.

If used as the only metric, it would of course incentivize district attorneys to pursue higher conviction rates at any cost, Jenkins said in an interview. But it becomes relevant in a landscape where we are hearing from the police that they are arresting repeat offenders over and over again, you know, within short periods of time  and in a landscape where the residents of this city are saying, We seem to be experiencing a spike in crime.

(Data from the San Francisco Police Department shows that overall reported crime has decreased during the pandemic, and police have presented fewer overall cases to the District Attorneys Office. However, some types of crime, including homicides and motor vehicle thefts, have increased.)

Du Bain said that diverting higher-level offenses is an unusual step for a district attorney, even in a politically progressive city like San Francisco.

Diversion has  historically, under both Kamala Harris and George Gascon, been reserved for lower-level type felonies. Property crimes, drug possession crimes, that sort of thing, Du Bain said. Robbery and felony assaults have not typically been diverted. (The increase in diversion rates for more serious offenses actually predates Boudin; diversions for felony assaults began rising in 2018 during Gascons tenure.)

Steven Raphael, an adjunct fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California and professor of public policy at UC Berkeley, told The Chronicle that theres a fair amount of evidence to suggest that diversion programs reduce recidivism, or the tendency of someone convicted of a crime to reoffend.

He pointed to a study he co-wrote that examined the impact of the Make It Right program, a restorative justice program for San Francisco teens accused of felony charges like burglary, on recidivism rates in that group. Compared with teenagers prosecuted through the traditional juvenile system, those who went through the Make It Right program were less likely to be rearrested.

However, he said theres relatively little research on the impact of diversion programs on higher-level felony offenses, like felony assault or robbery.

The evidence on whether jail time reduces recidivism is more robust, but inconclusive, Raphael said  as is the evidence that incarcerating more people reduces crime.

What the research seems to suggest, Raphael said, is we kinda hit diminishing returns on that pretty quick.

Susie Neilson is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: susie.neilson@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @susieneilson
China's space station to host 6 astronauts by end of 2022

Xinhua) 21:18, March 04, 2022

BEIJING, March 4 (Xinhua) -- China's space station is expected to host six astronauts from two spaceships by the end of 2022, according to the chief designer of the country's manned space program.

The Shenzhou-13 crew has been in orbit for 140 days. They are in good health, and have so far completed all planned or added tasks as needed. They are expected to return to Earth in mid-April, Zhou Jianping said.

This year, China will launch two lab modules for the space station, two manned spacecraft and two cargo spacecraft. The Shenzhou-14 crew will witness the arrival of two lab modules during their stay in orbit, said Zhou, who is also a member of the 13th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, the country's top political advisory body.

The Shenzhou-15 crew will fly to the space station before the end of this year and join the Shenzhou-14 crew in space. At that time, the space station will consist of three modules, two manned spacecraft and one cargo spacecraft, with a total mass of nearly 100 tonnes, Zhou said.

The space station will carry a large number of high-level space experiment devices covering fields such as the life sciences, biological science, material science, combustion science, microgravity fluid science and basic physics, he said.

(Web editor: Hongyu, Bianji)
February was a slower month for resturant openings across the Bay Area, likely due to ongoing omicron concerns, supply chain issues and labor shortages. But on the Peninsula and in the South Bay, several notable restaurants debuted, including an outpost of San Francisco brunch favorite Sweet Maple, a modern hotel restaurant in Sunnyvale and what appears to be the Bay Areas first dedicated nonalcoholic bottle shop in downtown Los Gatos.

Read on for more details on each opening.

S.F. brunch hit arrives in Palo Alto

San Franciscos Sweet Maple is now serving thick, caramelized Millionaires bacon and matcha mochi waffles in downtown Palo Alto. A darling of the Instagram brunch scene, its over-the-top breakfast dishes and Korean fusion food, like instant ramyun noodles topped with Millionaires bacon and a fried egg, and bright purple ube cold brew coffee draw long lines in San Francisco. The new restaurant is part of owner Hoyul Steven Chois ambitious plan to open six Bay Area restaurants this year and more nationwide.

150 University Ave., Palo Alto. sweetmaplesf.com

Silicon Valley gets a sleek hotel restaurant

Provided by Adrestia

Adrestia, tucked inside the modern Tetra hotel in Sunnyvale, is an all-day Japanese-inspired restaurant led by a Tokyo native. Chef Hideki Myo is putting Japanese spins on dishes like beef carpaccio dressed in a barrel-aged soy sauce or a Wagyu burger with miso aioli and spicy togarashi. The restaurants next-door cafe sells Japanese katsu, lobster and egg salad sandwiches on soft milk bread and soon, Tartine pastries. The hotel bar, Nokori, is focused on Japanese whiskey and the drinks are made using a highball machine from Japanese whiskey company Suntory Toki.

400 W. Java Drive, Sunnyvale. marriott.com/en-us/hotels/sjcva-tetra-hotel-autograph-collection/dining

The nonalcoholic booze trend spreads

At the tiny Faux Real Bottle Shop in Los Gatos, the shelves are stocked with attractive bottles of nonalcoholic spirits, from Tequila to wine. Booze-free drinks have become more common on Bay Area restaurant and bar menus in recent years, and some nonalcoholic bars are starting to open, but this appears to be the regions first dedicated zero-proof retail shop. Owner Yvonne Khananis is sourcing nonalcoholic spirits from all over, such as gin from Germanys Easip and Tequila from Ritual in Chicago, among other producers. Head there on Saturdays to try drinks during a weekly sober hour from 1-3 p.m.

300 N. Santa Cruz Ave. , Los Gatos. instagram.com/fauxrealbottleshop

A new Italian option for Campbell

Provided by Locanda Sorrento

Enzo Rosano, a prolific Bay Area restaurateur, has brought his latest Italian restaurant to downtown Campbell. Locanda Sorrento, named for the coastal town near Naples, serves mortadella-topped pizza, lobster ravioli and other Italian fare. Sorrento is also a major producer of Limoncello, so cocktails at the restaurant feature a house-made version of the popular lemon liqueur. Rosano runs several Italian restaurants in the East Bay and recently opened a wine bar in Livermore.

76 E. Campbell Ave., Campbell. locandasorrento.com

Pizza for the people in Palo Alto

Theres a new wood-fired pizza joint in town. Downtown Palo Altos Wood Oven Pizza is serving up white- and red-sauce pies with toppings like bechamel, turnip tops and grilled pineapple. Diners can also create their own pizzas. Vegans have options too, with a plant-based Daiya mozzarella and vegan pesto pie on the menu.

Food Guide Top 25 Restaurants Where to eat in the Bay Area. Find spots near you, create a dining wishlist, and more.

532 Ramona St., Palo Alto . 650-494-4241

San Bruno mall gets poke bowls

Uncle Sharkii, a popular Concord poke bar, opened a second location inside the Shops at Tanforan mall in San Bruno. The small, counter-service spot serves various poke bowl combinations, such as spicy scallop with corn and seaweed over rice. Boba tea and Dole soft serve are also on the menu. More locations are headed to San Francisco, San Jose and Walnut Creek, according to Uncle Sharkiis website.

1150 El Camino Real Suite 223, San Bruno. unclesharkii.com

More crispy Korean fried chicken

Vons Chicken, a Korean fried chicken chain, continues its Peninsula dominance with another outpost in Mountain View. The menu is the same, with the restaurants trademark super-crispy, double-fried chicken available in soy-garlic, honey butter and spicy yangnyum flavors. There are several Vons nearby, including in Sunnyvale and Redwood City, as well as locations of competing Korean fried chicken chain Bonchon.

137 E. El Camino Real, Mountain View. vonsmountainview.com

Elena Kadvany is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: elena.kadvany@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @ekadvany
San Franciscos public school district declined to provide details or dates for when its 49,000 students will be able to drop face coverings. Bay Area health experts said they were broadly supportive of President Bidens newest federal COVID strategies. New figures released by the CDC show 90% of Americans are now living in low risk counties where they can go mask-free indoors.

Latest updates:

Apple workers required to return to the office in April: Apple will require workers to return to the office part-time on April 11, the Verge reported, citing an internal memo. Employees will start with one day in the office, increasing to three days in May, according to the memo. Apple didnt immediately respond to a request for comment. The company joins Google in requiring workers to come back next month following a plunge in coronavirus cases. Two dozen San Francisco employers also committed to returning workers to offices this month, though unlike other tech giants, Apple doesnt have a major office in the city. Read the full story here.

National Park Service loosens mask rules for low-risk regions: The National Park Service updated its guidance on Friday to align with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, allowing mask requirements to be determined by local conditions. The federal agency said effective immediately rules for face coverings will be based on the CDCs COVID-19 community levels tracker and details will be available on individual park websites, as well as signs posted in each park. In areas identified as having a high community level of COVID, masks will be required for everyone in all buildings, regardless of vaccination status. But they will be optional for areas determined to have low or moderate risk. Masks are still required on all forms of enclosed public transportation inside the parks. Planning ahead has always been an important part of having a great park experience, said National Park Service Director Chuck Sams. As mask requirements evolve in parks, we want everyone to check the park website before heading out so that you know what to expect when you get there.

S.F. public schools reverse stance on mask mandate: In a sudden about face, San Francisco public school officials announced Friday they would move to a voluntary mask policy starting on March 12, aligning with the states decision to drop the mandate. The district, after discussions with several labor unions, will allow middle and high school students to ditch masks when the state mandate lifts, with elementary schools and all other sites following on April 2. The decision is a reversal of the districts stance last week that it would retain the mandate indefinitely. Read the full story here.

California is now reporting about 200 COVID deaths a day: Even as coronavirus case numbers and hospitalizations continue to decline in California, there are still an average of about 200 people dying every day due to COVID-19, according to state data analyzed by The Chronicle. The rate of virus-related fatalities has climbed across the state over the past week even as health leaders move forward with plans to pull back on safety measures and vaccination requirements. Around 30 people are dying each day in the Bay Area. New cases and hospitalizations are trending downward but they have not quite reached pre-omicron surge levels yet. Nearly 74% of all eligible state residents are fully vaccinated against the virus and 84% have had at least one dose.

A third of patients report symptoms 6 to 12 months after COVID infection: About one-third of people infected with the coronavirus report at least one lingering COVID-19 symptom between 6 and 12 months after infection, according to a new large-scale survey by researchers in Denmark. The study, which included 152,000 patients, was conducted from September 2020 to April 2021, before the omicron variant of the coronavirus became dominant. Of the total respondents, 29.6% who had tested positive reported at least one ongoing physical symptom of infection, with the most common complaints including mental or physical exhaustion, sleep issues, or cognitive problems. They also noted onset anxiety and depression. If omicron is causing long COVID at the same rate as these earlier variants, we could be looking at a major crisis over the next 12 months given the number of people who have been exposed to this virus, David Strain, a lecturer at the University of Exeter Medical School in the U.K. who was not involved in the study, told Reuters.

Twitter to reopen offices, restart business travel: The San Francisco-based social media company is fully reopening on March 15 in the wake of falling COVID cases, CEO Parag Agarwal said Thursday, reiterating that employees can stay remote forever if they prefer. The announcement came almost exactly two years after Twitter urged all workers to go remote as the pandemic exploded in the U.S. Unlike other tech firms such as Google, the company wont require employees to be in the office at all.

New York City ends proof-of-vaccination requirement for businesses: Mayor Eric Adams said that New York City will drop its proof-of-vaccination requirement for indoor businesses such as restaurants, grocery stores and gyms starting Monday  the same day it will lift the mask mandate at K-12 public schools. Its time to reopen our city, Adams said during an appearance in Times Square. Folks can come in and enjoy the restaurants, enjoy the businesses. Around 77% of New Yorkers are fully vaccinated against COVID-19, but rates lag among eligible children. About 35% have not yet received one dose. Masks will still be required in the citys subways. The vaccination requirement is also still effect for businesses in the private sector, per an order instituted by former Mayor Bill de Blasio.

Push for normalcy gives the economy a boost: Employers in the United States added 678,000 jobs in February, the largest monthly total since July, according to data released Friday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. As government leaders push for a return to normalcy, scaling back restrictions and lifting vaccination requirements, the number of unemployed people edged down to 6.3 million, dropping to 3.8%, from 4% in January. The rate is now at its lowest level since before the COVID-19 pandemic jolted the U.S. economy and caused a nationwide shutdown of businesses. By comparison, in February 2020, the unemployment rate was 3.5% and the number of unemployed was 5.7 million. All signs are that the pandemic is easing its hold on jobs and the economy, Jane Oates, president of WorkingNation and a former Labor Department official, told the Associated Press. Very strong numbers in very uncertain times.

U.S. waives negative test requirement for Americans evacuating Russia: The United States will allow Americans leaving Russia or Belarus to travel into the country without having to provide negative coronavirus tests, the State Department said Thursday. U.S. citizens, permanent residents and holders of valid immigrant visas who were in either country before Feb. 28 would be exempt from the test-to-travel rule, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. It instituted a similar waiver program for Americans exiting Ukraine who had been in the country by Feb. 10.

Los Angeles County ends indoor mask mandate: Public health officials in Los Angeles County lifted a universal indoor mask mandate on Friday, a day after the region was advanced into the low COVID-19 risk tier by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Californias most populous county was one of the few in the state to maintain stricter masking rules after the state lifted mask requirements for vaccinated people in most indoor public spaces on Feb. 16. The masking requirement will remain in place for high-risk settings, such as health care facilities and aboard public transit. Even though the county will align with the state and lift the mask mandate for schools on March 12, the Los Angeles Unified School District is expected to require face coverings school buildings until the end of the academic year.

Bay Area rents are approaching pre-COVID levels: As of February, San Mateo rents have shot up nearly 17% from the same time a year ago, to a median $2,370 for a one-bedroom apartment and $3,220 for a two-bedroom, according to new data from Apartment List. It was the biggest local annual leap in Bay Area rents, which analysts say are poised to keep climbing this spring and summer as white-collar workers are urged back to offices at least part-time. Read the full story here.

Drought Map Track water shortages and restrictions across Bay Area Check the water shortage status of your area, plus see reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Areas largest water districts.

What will it take for S.F. public schools to drop the mask mandate? Officials wont say: San Francisco private schools and many Bay Area districts expect to abandon mask mandates later this month, but the citys public school district has decided against the change and declined to provide details or dates for when their 49,000 students will be able to drop face coverings. Read the full story here.

CDC releases updated county COVID ratings as Bay Area improves: Less than a week after rolling out revised masking recommendations and a new system for assessing community COVID risk, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has released updated figures showing continued progress against the virus in the Bay Area. Of the nine counties bordering the bay, six are in the lowest risk tier, including San Francisco, San Mateo, Contra Costa, Marin and Sonoma. Santa Clara County, which was judged in the medium, or moderate tier last week, has now also joined the others in the safest category, but Alameda has slipped back from low to moderate. Napa and Solano, which were the only Bay Area counties at the highest risk level last week, are now rated in the middle as well. Outside the Bay Area, Santa Cruz County remains at medium, while Monterey Country improved two positions from high risk to low risk.

Berkeley, Alameda County will lift school mask mandate: Health officials from Alameda County and the City of Berkeley said Thursday they would align with guidance from the California Department of Public Health and remove the indoor mask mandate for K-12 schools and child care settings on March 12. Individual school districts will decide whether to follow suit. They acknowledged that the decision may cause worry for some families, especially in communities hardest hit by the pandemic. Our work advancing and protecting the health of the most impacted residents and supporting safe in-person education will not stop, and we will continue to partner with community representatives to push for better access to accurate COVID-19 information, vaccinations, testing, treatment and high-quality masks that offer more protection to those who want or need it, Dr. Nicholas Moss, Alameda County Health Officer, said in a statement. He added that coronavirus cases are declining following the winter omicron surge, but that new surges that threaten public health and the lives of vulnerable residents may call for quick and assertive action and a new requirement to mask.

Marin County to lift school mask mandate: Public health officials from Marin County said on Thursday that they will join the state in lifting the indoor mask mandate at K-12 schools and early child care settings on March 12. But the countys health department will continue to strongly recommend that masks are worn in those settings. Most importantly, parents and guardians should keep sick students home, said Dr. Lisa Santora, the Countys Deputy Public Health Officer. They should test for COVID, follow isolation guidance if they test positive, or if they test negative, stay home until symptoms are resolving. About 71% of children in Marin County between the ages 5 to 11 are fully vaccinated, but there are still wide racial and ethnic disparities: only 52% of Latino and 24% of Black and African American children have received at least one dose. Its now up to the countys schools to set their own rules about masks.

S.F. to remove indoor mask requirement for city buildings: Indoor masking will no longer be required in San Francisco city buildings and facilities, including City Hall, beginning on March 18. That includes libraries, recreation centers and offices. The mandate will remain in place for public hearing rooms while in session. The San Francisco Department of Public Health said it is following state guidance in strongly recommending but not requiring unvaccinated individuals to wear masks in most indoor public settings. Masks are still required in health care settings, congregate settings such as correctional facilities and homeless shelters, and long-term care facilities. Federal and state law continues to require masks to be worn on transit vehicles and at transit facilities through March 18, unless extended.

More than 90% of U.S. population can go mask free, CDC says: The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Thursday updated its COVID-19 community levels map, placing about 93% of the U.S. population in locations where COVID-19 risk levels are low enough that people do not need to wear masks indoors. The agency eased its metrics on Friday, allowing people who live in counties designated as having low to medium COVID-levels to remove their face coverings inside public spaces. The initial tally put 72% of the U.S. population in the lower transmission tiers.

Vaccine demand plummets in the U.S.: The number of Americans who received their first COVID-19 vaccine continues to fall sharply, with only 5,531 people in the United States getting their shots on Wednesday, according to the latest data from the U.S. Centers For Disease Control and Prevention. The average number of daily shots being administered across the country is now at about 41,000  a steep fall from an average of 400,000 daily shots given in December and the lowest point since the U.S. vaccination campaign began. The California Department of Public Health told the Associated Press it has disposed of around 1.4 million expired and unused vaccine doses to date. A study published Thursday by the CDC finds vaccination coverage is still lagging in most rural areas: only 58.5% of those eligible have had even a first dose of the primary vaccination series, compared to 75.4% in urban counties. The disparities have increased more than twofold since April 2021. Demand is likely to continue falling as many state and local leaders look to revive their economies by abandoning vaccination mandates and public programs meant to boost uptake.

S.F. mayor pushes for a return to in-person work: Mayor London Breed is doubling down on her commitment to bring employees back into offices in San Francisco. In a partnership with the Chamber of Commerce and business leaders, Breed on Thursday announced a Welcome Back to SF program, aimed at promoting the economic recovery of the Financial District, East Cut, Union Square, Yerba Buena, Civic Center, and Mission Bay neighborhoods after two years of remote work. We are excited to welcome people back to downtown to work, to dine, and to experience the arts and culture that make this city special, Breed said. This March is the start of a new beginning for this city, and I want to thank all the businesses and workers who are committed to supporting our city and our small businesses. At the urging of the mayors office, some companies that have agreed to require employees to return to in-person work beginning March 7 include Bank of America, Blackrock, Gap, the Golden State Warriors, Google, JP Morgan Chase, Mastercard, Meta, Microsoft, Orrick, Salesforce, Uber, United Airlines, Visa, and Wells Fargo.
Texas wasted no time in carrying out Gov. Greg Abbotts directive to state health agencies last week that medical treatments provided to adolescents with gender dysphoria  defined as marked distress at an incongruence between gender identity and biological sex  should be classified as child abuse under state law. According to a lawsuit filed Tuesday, investigators have already begun questioning parents of transgender adolescents.

The investigations and the governors instructions come in the wake of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxtons recommendation that the medical procedures of gender-affirming care  puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and sometimes surgeries like double mastectomies or penectomies  be counted as child abuse under section 261.001 of the Texas Family Code.

Paxton asserted that allowing kids to medically transition may cause mental or emotional injury that results in an observable and material impairment in the childs growth, development, or psychological functioning or physical injury that results in substantial harm.

Many people, especially on the left, believe the opposite: that withholding these procedures is child abuse, because the vast majority of medical and mental health organizations and advocacy groups in the United States avow that such interventions are medically necessary and lifesaving. After all, failing to seek, obtain, or follow through with medical care for a child, is also child abuse under that same Texas code. Supporters of gender-affirming care often assert that children know themselves and that desistence  ceasing to identify as transgender before medicalizing  and detransition  stopping medical gender change and returning to living as ones natal sex  are rare.

While Texas moves are cruel and condemnable, both ideological stances are oversimplified and wrong  the first morally and likely legally, and the second scientifically. The best way to understand why is to look at countries that have nixed the gender-affirmative model in favor of a more cautious approach.

Just two days after Paxtons guidance, Sweden announced new guidelines for gender dysphoric youth.

Uncertain science and new knowledge mean that the National Board of Health and Welfare now recommends restraint when it comes to hormone treatment, the board said, adding, There are no definite conclusions about the effect and safety of the treatments.

Contrary to what mainstream media, medical groups and advocacy organizations maintain, the gender-affirming approach is actually deeply controversial within medical and mental health communities. The new knowledge Swedens health board referred to includes kids who in fact have experienced observable and material impairment. A Swedish news program, Mission: Investigate, found increasing numbers of detransitioners as well as minors with health care-related injuries, such as constant pain from osteoporosis. Finland also altered its approach to gender dysphoric youth, asserting therapy as the best initial treatment, and created strict guidelines for medicalization. Health officials in France have also indicated a similar shift in their approach.

These countries are changing their model of care because science and evidence indicate that its warranted.

Many supporters of gender-affirmation point to the success of the Dutch Protocol, the foundational model for treating gender dysphoric kids. The Dutch Protocol considered children eligible for medical interventions only if they met established criteria: lifelong gender dysphoria, other mental issues had been properly assessed and they lived in a supportive environment. Although 10 prospective studies on gender dysphoria suggest that dysphoria lifts by the end of puberty for most children, for the small number who met Dutch Protocol standards after long-term, careful evaluation, medical interventions appeared to contribute to their well-being.

But in the U.S. and Canada, gender affirmative care for kids ranges from cautious iterations of the Dutch approach to clinics that do not require psychiatry or psychology assessments before administering hormone blockers or gender affirming hormones. One California doctor provided cross-sex hormones to kids as young as 12.

Meanwhile, the youth cohort being treated has radically shifted in the past 10 years, all over the Western world, from largely young boys with lifelong dysphoria to a growing number of adolescent girls with no history of dysphoria  a condition clinicians know little about and to whom very little research applies.

With no long-term studies and few clinics following up with clients years later, we dont know how many children who transitioned are happy and how many regret. Gender affirming care may be lifesaving for some young people, but others have detransitioned, saying the affirmative model failed them by not properly evaluating, exploring the source of their dysphoria or attending to other mental health struggles  and rushing to medicate.

Terrorizing those who choose the gender-affirmative model as child abusers is heinous and likely illegal. Parents and doctors are doing what theyve been told is best for children, and parents have the Constitutional right to decide their childrens medical path.

Texas actions do not foster an environment for rational, nonpartisan and evidence-based evaluation of the data, or an incentive to collect more, which is what we need. For parents to make good decisions, they need to have all the evidence. Texas is making that even harder.

Ideology has no place in medicine and neither refusing these medical interventions nor partaking of them is child abuse. We need to listen to those whove been helped and those whove been hurt and tailor our approach to this new generation of gender dysphoric youth.

Lisa Selin Davis is the author of Tomboy: The Surprising History and Future of Girls Who Dare to Be Different.
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San Francisco public school officials said Friday they would move to a voluntary mask policy starting on March 12, aligning with the states decision to drop the mandate. The decision is a reversal of the districts stance last week that it would retain the mandate indefinitely.

The district, after discussions with several labor unions, will allow middle and high school students to ditch masks when the state mandate lifts, with elementary schools and all other sites following on April 2.

We are committed to following public health guidance, and our health officials have stated that masks in schools are no longer required but still recommended, said Superintendent Vince Matthews.

Matthews said the pandemic has required the district to constantly change, but that he believes it is moving in the right direction when we follow the science.

San Francisco Unified joins Piedmont, Alameda, Mt. Diablo, Mill Valley, Dublin, San Ramon and many other districts across the Bay Area in aligning with the state. Oakland and Berkeley were among those that had not yet announced a decision by Friday afternoon, and Berkeley lifted outside mask mandates only last week.

Some families celebrated the move, saying its important for kids to return to normalcy, while others will surely worry about the change, citing the potential for the virus to make the unvaccinated and medically vulnerable quite ill.

Many SFUSD parents will be breathing a sigh of relief upon learning that their school district will continue to follow the guidance of their local health department rather than forging an independent path unmoored to local health policy, said Dr. Jeanne Noble, UCSF Emergency Department director of COVID response.

Parent Cindy Burg was among them.

We know the science has been clear, she said. I know there are kids that may be at higher risk and those kids should still be able to mask. It should be a choice at this point.

But she also noted that it will likely take time to get her son, whos in the second grade in the district, to get used to it.

Hes such a rule follower, she said, adding hes had a mask on his face for much of the past two years. Its going to take him a while to get comfortable with it.

And the decision is likely to cause concern among many communities disproportionately affected by the pandemic, or those with greater risk of severe illness because of health conditions.

I do worry my children could contract the disease or there might be another surge, said San Francisco parent Jianqiao Zhen, speaking through a Cantonese translator. Or there might be another surge and I believe (lifting the mandate) needs to be delayed.

Health experts have cautioned that if theres another surge or another concerning variant, masks might need to be reinstated.

In lifting the mandate, Gov. Gavin Newsom said school districts and individuals would be making their own decisions.

One size does not fit all in California, he told The Chronicle recently, adding masks are still strongly recommended, particularly in areas that continue to have higher case rate numbers.

Newsom added that its important to not blame anyone for wearing masks or not wearing masks as the mandates lift.

We want no scapegoating, he said. We dont want anyone to be stigmatized on that.

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San Francisco is joining many districts throughout the region, although a few havent yet decided or are waiting on county guidance.

On Feb. 28, state officials announced that California, along with Oregon and Washington, would lift the K-12 school mask mandate starting March 12. All states urged unvaccinated adults and students to continue wearing masks in schools. The mask mandate was also dropped for California child care facilities.

The San Francisco public health department agreed last week to align with the state and drop the mandate, but the same day, a San Francisco Unified deputy superintendent said, Universal indoor masking will continue to be in effect at SFUSD as part of our layered approach to reduce the spread of COVID-19 in our schools.

Some infectious disease experts said before Fridays announcement it was reasonable for the district to keep the mask mandate.

One question is whether the city can encourage more families to vaccinate younger children before the change takes effect. More than 87% of those 5 and older in San Francisco are fully vaccinated, according to city officials, although among those 5 to 11, an estimated 69% have had the complete series of shots.

Among children under 11, vaccination rates in the city vary widely by race and ethnicity, with just 29% of Black children and 48% of Hispanic children fully vaccinated compared to 81% of Asian and 64% of white children. Pacific Islander and American Indian students also have lower rates.

We recognize changes in masking ... will be a transition for our community, Matthews said in a statement. We are starting with middle and high schools, where there are higher vaccination rates, in order to give more time for families of younger students to get their children vaccinated.

Jill Tucker (she/her) is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jtucker@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @jilltucker
San Francisco police were investigating a fatal collision in the Mission District that killed a 24-year-old teacher riding a scooter.

The San Francisco Medical Examiners Office identified the victim as Abraham Joshua of San Francisco. Mission Preparatory School confirmed that Joshua was a teacher at the public college preparatory elementary and middle school at 1050 York Street.

According to police, the scooter rider was struck by a driver, at about 7:30 a.m. Wednesday and was found lying in the street.

He was taken to the hospital, where he died.

The driver of the vehicle remained on the scene and was cooperating with the investigation, police said, and there was no indication that drug or alcohol impairment was involved in the incident. No further information was available Friday morning, police said.

Michael Cabanatuan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: mcabanatuan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @ctuan
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When famous Beefeater doorman Tom Sweeney retired after 43 years as greeter at the Sir Francis Drake Hotel in January 2020, he couldnt have known the Ye Olde English theme of the old brick hotel off San Franciscos Union Square was about to retire with him.

But COVID-19 soon closed the Drake, and when it finally reopens this spring with a new name  the Beacon Grand  the 21-story hotel will also feature a host of renovations inspired by the urbane, Gilded Age grandeur that made it a destination when it first opened in 1928.

We decided to invest and bring the hotel back to its original splendor, said General Manager Sebastien Pfeiffer during an exclusive Chronicle walk through of the construction site at the corner of Powell and Sutter streets. We want to preserve the history and celebrate it.

The team tasked with redesigning the hotel drew inspiration in part from the 30 black-and-white photographs that accompanied a cover story on the hotels opening in the Western Hotel Journal. The first line of that story read, The City of Dreams comes True.

Renovations have been underway since last April, when the Northview Hotel Group of Wilton, Conn. paid $156.7 million to buy the Drake from the Pebblebrook Hotel Trust.

A name change was already in the works owing to the rising unpopularity of 16th century English explorer Francis Drakes history as a slave trader.

According to reports, the Drake Hotel cost $5 million to build in 1928, or about $72 million in todays dollars. Northview declined to state how much the renovation cost.

Some 10,000 people attended the grand opening and made their way to an elegant high-ceilinged bar on the mezzanine level with a fireplace at one end and a house band in one corner led by an in-house music conductor. The Drake bar was later moved to the lobby level, but it is returning as the Beacon Lounge, looking out on the the cable car line with the added attraction of the red neon sign for Sears Fine Food, a diner that opened in 1938.

A private event space that was hidden behind heavy drapes, leaving it dark and musty, the room has been brightened and the fireplace and hearth been restored. Sales and marketing director Jill Plemons promised the Beacon Lounge will become the living room of the hotel. Were trying to re-awaken the space and bring some life back into it, she said.

The lounge opens onto a wood-paneled space that was originally the womens powder room. That is being refashioned as a hotel library and whiskey bar. Anyone can come in, order a single malt and pull a book off the shelf. One floor below, what was previously Scalas Bistro was being refashioned into a Parisian-style brasserie operated by the owners of Left Bank in Larkspur.

Upstairs are 418 rooms on 17 floors renovated with oak floors and a custom retro wallpaper scheme featuring a repeating pattern of a cable car, the Golden Gate Bridge and a searchlight on the Bay. A total of 590 double-paned windows were installed in the room to seal off the clank of the cable cars and traffic below. But for guests seeking out that urban ambiance, the windows are operational.

Also operable is the hotels original mail chute. Rooms will be stocked with postcards that can be addressed and dropped down the chute, which has a glass front giving a view of the postcards as they come whistling by from the floors above.

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Hotel staff will collect the cards from a brass box on the ground floor, where they will then be stamped with postage and mailed out into the world, free of charge to the sender.

For maximum velocity, the chute to drop that postcard from is outside the bar on the 21st floor with its panoramic view atop Union Square. Once a regional draw known as Harry Dentons Starlight Room, it had just re-opened as Lizzies Starlight when COVID-19 protocols shut it down. Lizzies will not return and Denton died in his tuxedo last August.

It will reopen under its original spelling as the Starlite Room. The Egyptian drapes that Denton had shipped around the horn will not be returning, nor will the fresh, long-stemmed red roses on a table at the door.

You cannot recreate Harry. That is not the intent, said Pfeiffer. You cannot re-create Tom Sweeney either, though his flowery Beefeater hat is etched in brass on the sidewalk where he used to stand.

I retired and they closed the hotel and they changed the name, said Sweeney, not one for understatement, and the rest is history.

Sam Whiting is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: swhiting@sfchronicle.com.Twitter:@samwhitingsf
San Francisco private schools and many Bay Area districts expect to abandon mask mandates later this month, but the citys public school district has decided against the change and declined to provide details or dates for when their 49,000 students will be able to drop face coverings.

District officials say they will continue to require masks indoors, noting that county and state health officials strongly recommend students and staff continue to use them.

But require and recommend are not the same, and many families and health experts are asking for clarity on what criteria the district is using to decide when it will lift the mandate.

The district said masking is part of the current discussions with the union.

The San Francisco Unifieds stance will leave its public school students following a different set of rules than many if not most private school students in the city, as well thousands of other students across the Bay Area, where officials in most counties have already announced they will lift the mask requirement as of March 12.

While some families felt relief that masks would stay on in San Francisco public schools, others expressed frustration at the lack of clarity and metrics.

Districts in Contra Costa, San Mateo, Solano, Marin, Santa Clara counties as well as many others across the state announced this week they would follow the states lead and leave mask use up to individuals, including Santa Clara Unified, San Ramon Unified, Mill Valley Elementary and Mt. Diablo Unified.

Alameda County and Berkeley health officials announced Thursday they would also lift the mandate, which would likely mean some districts there would also make masks optional, although Oakland and other districts had not yet said what they will do.

In San Francisco, at least a handful of private schools have also said they will stop requiring masks, including Sacred Heart Cathedral, Adda Clevenger School and all of the citys Archdiocese schools, which serve 23,000 students.

In addition, city health officials announced public buildings will no longer require masks either, except during public meetings.

That means public school students can go into city libraries, City Hall, boba shops, malls, restaurants and virtually any other venue or retail establishment without a mask. Classrooms will be virtually the only place they will have to wear one.

Bay Area infectious disease experts say that while SFUSDs decision to maintain the mask mandate is not in lockstep with many other districts, it has both positives and negatives  and overall, is a complicated issue.

I see both sides, said UCSF infectious disease Peter Chin-Hong, saying the current gray zone of the pandemic has led to a lot of confusion and frustration, especially as it relates to schools.

Were in this period of transition, and were coming down the mountain, he said, so theres going to be a lot of disagreement in exactly when the right time (to lift the mask mandate) is.

That said, its reasonable for communities members to want data or metrics rather than politics to determine when the decision to wear masks will revert to families and staff, he added.

I think its not unfair to ask (the district) to at least help us figure out what that pathway (to lifting the mandate) might look like, Chin-Hong said.

United Educators of San Francisco officials said they looked forward to working with health and district officials to find a collaborative path to ease masking restrictions.

With low numbers of community transmission, continued access to masks and testing outlined by our health and safety agreement, and vaccinations, boosters, and proper ventilation, we support allowing educators, staff, and students to mask up based on what feels safest for them, said the unions President Cassondra Curiel in a statement. We remain committed to protecting the most vulnerable and support those who choose to continue wearing a mask once the mandate is lifted locally. We will also remain vigilant and continue to monitor spikes should we need to reimplement mandatory masking.

It was unclear this week whether students could be required to wear masks until the end of the school year.

San Francisco Unified has taken a more conservative approach to the pandemic than many other districts, delaying the authorized reopening of schools by months, for example, and exceeding public health requirements in testing, contact tracing and masking.

Other districts, including Oakland, have also exceeded state requirements, including requiring outdoor masking.

The result, when the state school mask mandate lifts, will be a hodgepodge of local policies, with some students masked, others not, even as cities increasingly ditch masks in movie theaters, bars, grocery stores, music venues and public buildings.

Adults, vaccinated or not, do not have to wear a mask unless they are in a health care setting, homeless shelter, public transit or similar high-risk environments, according to city and state guidance.

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The problem isnt asking students to wear masks when indoors in classrooms, but that different standards have been set, said UCSF emergency physician Dr. Taylor Nichols. So long as adults were mandated to wear masks in close indoor settings, then asking such of students is a reasonable position as well. If we are going to lift mandates on adults, then we have shifted the burden of decreasing transmission via mask wearing onto students, and thats an unfair standard to set.

Yet San Francisco Unifieds current stance might further fray the already damaged relationship with its families, one fueled by a school board recall, delayed reopening and a $125 million budget deficit.

I think (the decision) brings up echoes of the past, and we have a little bit of PTSD from that, Chin-Hong said.

Even so, experts largely agreed that the decision to suspend change to the current protocol was reasonable given that the number of infections could go up over the next few months.

I do respect this decision, UC Berkeley infectious disease expert John Swartzberg. The trajectory of the pandemic does suggest that within a week or two the numbers are going to be really low...and thats based on hope. But hope is not a science.

Infectious disease experts say that mask-wearing is still an easy intervention that is acceptable to kids, and that its wise to hold off for a few weeks  or at least until the impacts of other districts decision to unmask are seen.

State and county health officials urged individuals to keep masks on in schools and child care settings and acknowledged the lifting of the mandate will sit well with some, but not others.

While many communities and residents will welcome changes in mask policy, other residents and families have shared their fears, Alameda County health officials said in a statement. For some, these are not welcome changes, and many people who have experienced illness, death of loved ones, fear and trauma during the pandemic are understandably concerned.

Regardless of what individuals choose, masks remain an important tool, said Dr. Nicholas Moss, the countys health officer.

Cases are declining to near pre-surge levels everywhere, and this is the right time to move face masking guidance from requirement to recommendation in most settings, he said in the Thursday statement. COVID will be with us perhaps forever, and masks are tools we can depend on for protection.

Jill Tucker and Annie Vainshtein are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. Email: jtucker@sfchronicle.com annie.vainshtein@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @jilltucker @annievain
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Not far from where Frances Haugen is sitting on Stanfords White Memorial Plaza, a black sign taped to a lamppost asks passing students: If you could change Google and Facebook by not working for them, would you?

Haugen, the former Facebook, now called Meta, employee and whistle-blower who disclosed thousands of pages of internal company documents, doesnt think students at Stanford or elsewhere should go quite that far.

I never say, Dont work at these companies, Haugen said Thursday.

She said she didnt believe tech workers, including Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, were acting maliciously, but that the company needed to be held accountable for many decisions, Where they were unwilling to weigh off 10% more misinfo for 0.1% less profit.

Haugen speaks fluently in what feel like paragraphs of thought, her blue eyes both intense and friendly as she reels off data about Facebook users, markets and metrics. She gamely answers questions directly, but often bends her responses back to how she feels companies like Meta should be subjected to increased oversight.

Haugen shot to notoriety last year when she identified herself as the source of a massive tranche of internal documents and research from Facebook. Handed over to the Wall Street Journal and the federal government, the leaks covered everything from the companys own research on how its products impacted the body image of young women and girls, to how the site could be used to amplify toxic content which in turn drove engagement and profits.

The company has said much of the research was taken out of context and shown in a negative light by the media.

Our limbic systems get triggered by threats, Haugen said. What were seeing here is software companies that have figured out how to be more profitable, by amplifying certain emotionally activating posts. Theyll do whatever it takes to keep people on their services longer.

Haugen said ideas like limiting reshare chains for content could cut down on bad information entering the social media circulatory system.

Carlos Avila Gonzalez/The Chronicle

She said part of her reason for coming to the tech worker proving ground of Stanford Is to teach young people about how to (do) whistleblowing, instead of avoiding working for tech companies altogether.

She also wanted to talk with students about open source integrity, Which is building both tools for monitoring Facebook, but also for understanding Facebook.

She pointed to Facebook buying the social media tracking tool CrowdTangle in 2016 and said she hoped to develop an open-source version built on a similar idea from the days before it was bought.

Students also cant take a class yet on the dynamics of social networking for example, she said, but Haugen hopes that will change in the future, at Stanford and elsewhere in part due to her efforts.

Instead of warning young minds away, Haugen said she also wants to see real changes to how social media companies monitor how content is shared, and more transparency around how malicious content is flagged and potentially taken down.

Case in point is the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Asked what she thought of Metas restricting of Russian state media in Europe on its family of apps during the invasion of Ukraine, Haugen said she felt the move was theatrical and that it ignored the companys duty to more robustly take down fake accounts and groups that had been built up by Russia and Ukraine. Those networked groups and accounts can create manufactured virality to push out a message that contains false narratives that are beneficial to one government or another.

The company does take down accounts and information associated with vaccine misinformation for example, as well as militant groups and malicious state actors.

Haugen said her time at Facebook had shown that the company had many tools to detect and deal with networked disinformation, but The problem is the teams that are staffed to actually take down those networks are radically understaffed.

The company says it has more than 40,000 people working on safety and security.

Carlos Avila Gonzalez/The Chronicle

Haugen said that she also wants to see more transparency from the company around what they do and dont act on.

I think its really reasonable for the public to articulate things like Facebook should be able to detect if governmental officials are being sent targeted misinformation, she said.

While there has been much talk of federal regulation of Meta and other social media companies, state governments are beginning to probe them, particularly with regard to how they affect the health of children.

Earlier last week, the California Attorney Generals Office announced it was working with other states to investigate TikTok, owned by Chinese internet company ByteDance, and how it affects and targets children. That comes on the heels of an ongoing state investigation targeting Instagram, which Meta owns, over similar concerns.

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Haugens Thursday tour at Stanford ended with an off-campus dinner with students at a nearby hotel ballroom. The event was advertised with a billboard truck emblazoned with her face asking, Are you brave enough to blow a whistle?

Bright orange plastic whistles dotted the white tablecloths at the dinner. The group was later encouraged by an event organizer to blow them in unison.

Over a buffet dinner that included grilled salmon and a mound of prosciutto, students asked Haugen how they could be whistle-blowers in their future careers, and how good people can work at companies that dont always do good things.

Carlos Avila Gonzalez / The Chronicle

Haugen said people do speak up internally at companies like Meta when they see something they feel is wrong, but the organizational structure of the company that emphasizes independence over top-down leadership means it can be more difficult to affect institutional change.

Standing at a podium under a powerful light as a camera rolled, Haugen told the assembled audience members that they have a larger responsibility today than technologists did before, given the speed that the industry is moving and the sluggish pace of government in keeping up and protecting the public from its potential ill effects.

Chris Rilling, a senior studying economics and working on a masters in computer science at Stanford, said the idea that one of his fellow students could soon be in a position of influence in tech made him think about the outsize impact of the industry. Rilling is also part of Fossil Free Stanford, a group working to divest the university from fossil fuels that recently filed a legal complaint against the school over the issue.

Judging by their questions after Haugens talk, most students seemed to admire the steps she had taken. One student thanked her for her work before launching into his question, while another prefaced hers by stating that she was in favor of boycotting working for big tech companies .

Haugen said she doesnt judge people for taking jobs in big tech, We dont know their circumstances, she said, adding someone might need the paycheck to care for an ailing relative.

After Haugen made her exit to a round of applause, students were asked by an event organizer to raise their hands if they would consider boycotting working for Facebook or Google. About half of the remaining group raised their hands.

Chase DiFeliciantonio is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: chase.difeliciantonio@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @ChaseDiFelice
The Golden Gate Bridge is an engineering and architectural marvel. The American Society of Civil Engineers ranks it as one of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World, along with the Panama Canal, the Channel Tunnel and the Empire State Building. But it is more than a perfectly realized set of blueprints. It is an aesthetic masterpiece  one of the most beautiful man-made objects ever created.

The story of how the Golden Gate Bridge was conceived, planned and built is a tale worthy of the great span itself.

The first calls for a bridge across San Francisco Bay came as early as the Gold Rush. Perhaps not surprisingly, considering the impracticality of such a project at the time, three of the earliest calls came from a maverick, an eccentric and a madman. The first proposal was made by newspaper editor William Walker, who in 1851 suggested extending the 2,000-foot Clay Street Wharf to Oakland. Walker, known as the gray-eyed man of destiny, was a filibuster who led a small army to capture Nicaragua, where he was captured and executed by firing squad.

The second plan for a bridge was made by David G. Doc Robinson, who in 1853 built and exhibited a model of a bridge across the Bay. Robinson was an only-in-San-Francisco character who made a pile by being the first man to harvest eggs on the Farallon Islands, then became the towns first theater impresario and its first topical satirist.

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But the most famous of all proposals to bridge the Bay came from the citys beloved adopted lunatic, Joshua Norton, self-styled Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico. In 1872, Norton proposed building a bridge from Oakland to Goat Island (Yerba Buena Island), and then to Telegraph Hill.

None of these early proposals came to anything. But a city sitting on a narrow peninsula surrounded on three sides by water was inevitably going to need bridges, and as San Francisco grew, that need became more pressing. As Kevin Starr notes in Golden Gate: The Life and Times of Americas Greatest Bridge, by the 1890s San Francisco had begun to take itself seriously as the queen of the Golden West and the hub of trade with Asia. Architects and planners inspired by classical Beaux-Arts ideas began to re-create the city in that august image, a trend that culminated in 1905 when the city asked Daniel Burnham, the leading proponent of the Beaux-Arts-inspired City Beautiful movement, to redesign the entire city. The 1906 catastrophe led authorities to shelve most of Burnhams ambitious scheme, but the dream of remaking San Francisco into a grand City Beautiful remained.

That dream was embraced by progressive mayor James Sunny Jim Rolph. To implement it, in 1912 he hired as city engineer a man who was to become one of the most powerful figures in San Francisco history: Michael OShaughnessy. Rolph offered OShaughnessy a dream job  the opportunity to rebuild the city after the 1906 catastrophe, with complete freedom from political interference.

Bridging the Bay was not an explicit part of OShaughnessys mandate, but it was implicit. Bridges were needed not just to fulfill a gauzy City Beautiful dream, but for practical reasons. As John van der Zee points out in The Gate: The True Story of the Design and Construction of the Golden Gate Bridge, in 1920 San Francisco was the largest American metropolis still served primarily by ferryboats. That same year, the city suffered the indignity of being passed by Los Angeles as the largest city in California. Its constrained geography was strangling it: Both its population and its economic growth had fallen below the national average. To grow and prosper, it needed to connect with its hinterlands  both the populous and vibrant East Bay, and the beautiful, underdeveloped lands across the Golden Gate.

The immediate spur to the idea of spanning the Golden Gate was more mundane: traffic jams. Like increasing numbers of San Franciscans, OShaughnessy liked to spend weekends hiking and wandering around Mount Tamalpais. But like those other day-trippers, OShaughnessy often found himself stuck for hours in lines of cars that were backed up for miles waiting to drive onto the Sausalito ferry. As he waited, OShaughnessy began thinking more seriously about building a bridge across the Golden Gate.

He was possibly inspired by a series of articles by a Marin engineer named James Wilkins, who called for the construction of a $10 million suspension bridge between Lime Point in Marin and Fort Point in San Francisco. But much more consequential was OShaughnessys encounter with the man whose name, for better and worse, would forever be linked with the bridge: Joseph Strauss.

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Strauss, born in Ohio in 1870, was a complex and contradictory figure. In van der Zees words: An undersized man with a Napoleonic ego, yearning for a career in the arts, with only the most modest amount of formal engineering training, gifted with the ability to recognize in others the greater talent he longed for in himself, driven by a persistent energy that rivaled that of the lone, cold-call salesman, Strauss was a strange, at times almost self-canceling mixture of conflicting traits: promoter, mystic, tinkerer, dreamer, tenacious hustler, publicity seeker, recluse.

Strauss had grown up in Cincinnati, home of Americas first long-span suspension bridge, the Cincinnati-Covington Bridge across the Ohio River. It was built by John A. Roebling, who went on to design the Brooklyn Bridge, the most famous bridge in the world. This bridge provided the driven, ambitious, big-dreaming young Strauss with an example of the towering achievement he longed for himself. That insatiable drive to create a masterpiece was also reflected in the senior thesis he read at his college graduation, in which he proposed to build a bridge across the Bering Strait.

But well into his middle age, Strausss career had not lived up to his dreams. He had become an expert in designing and building the movable, counterweighted bridges known as bascule bridges; his company, the Strauss Bascule Bridge Co. of Chicago, had built bascule bridges all around the world. But although he was professionally and financially successful, he had not yet carved his name in the annals of history.

His chance would come when he designed an amusement park ride in San Francisco. The next Portals will tell that story.

Gary Kamiya is the author of the best-selling book Cool Gray City of Love: 49 Views of San Francisco. His most recent book is Spirits of San Francisco: Voyages Through the Unknown City. All the material in Portals of the Past is original for The San Francisco Chronicle. To read earlier Portals of the Past, go to sfchronicle.com/portals.
LATEST Mar. 6, 5:24 p.m. Christopher Liang was confirmed deceased on Saturday evening after the 2020 Tesla sedan he was driving was found overturned in a ravine near Panoche Road west of I-5 just outside of Los Banos, Tony Botti, a public information officer for the Fresno County Sheriff's Office, told SFGATE on Sunday evening.

Police arrived on the scene of the crash at approximately 6:40 p.m. after receiving a tip from a witness and discovered the vehicle on its roof. Firefighters subsequently searched the car and found Liang's body inside, according to a press release from the California Highway Patrol.

Liang was driving westbound at an undetermined speed when the vehicle "ran off the road for an unknown reason" and fell down a cliff, the press release said, adding that the license plate was matched with a missing person case that was being investigated by the Irvine Police Department. The crash occurred sometime between Feb. 28 and March 5.

Mar. 4, 3:11 p.m. A San Francisco college student has been reported missing for nearly a week after what his brother described as an erratic trip from the Bay Area to Southern California.

Christopher Liang was last heard from Feb. 28, hours after he rented a car and began his trip from San Francisco to Irvine, his brother Jerry wrote in an Instagram post Thursday. At around 5 p.m., Christopher said he was in the central California town of Firebaugh, Jerry said.

But since then, Christopher has not been in contact with anyone  and has missed classes and the return window for his rental car, a white Tesla Model 3 with the license plate number 8RNC906. Jerry Liang confirmed in an interview with SFGATE that Christopher is a student at the University of San Francisco; he is a senior majoring in business.

Since then, his phone has been inaccessible and social media inactive, Jerry wrote on Instagram in a post that has since received nearly 7,000 likes. He has broken plans hes made with friends in Irvine."

Jerry also said that the erratic nature of this trip, combined with his brothers mental health issues, has made our family extremely concerned for his safety.

A possible clue Jerry discovered was that the Tesla his brother was driving was malfunctioning.

"The Tesla malfunctioned for, what, 20 minutes," he told SFGATE. "That's something that one of Chris's friends was able to tell me because my brother was complaining to [him] about it."

The location of the Tesla is also unavailable, Jerry added. It is typically accessible via a mobile app.

Further compounding Jerrys concern, he writes in the Instagram post, is inconsistencies between San Francisco and Irvine police managing the case.

"Because Chris could be anywhere between Irvine and San Francisco, no local police department is really willing to take charge of this case, so then [it's] been really hot potato between different departments and different units."

A spokesperson for San Francisco police told SFGATE the department was unaware of the case, and a police report was filed with Irvine police.

I am at my wits end and am now reaching out to the public for help, Jerry concluded in his Instagram post.
Apple has set an April 11 deadline for corporate employees to return to in-person work, marking a key test of whether the tech giant can reestablish office life in the Zoom era.

Employees will be required to work from the office at least one day per week by that date, according to a memo sent by Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook on Friday. By three weeks after April 11, employees will be expected in the office twice per week. And on May 23, employees will need to be in the office at least three days a week -- on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays.

"For many of you, I know that returning to the office represents a long-awaited milestone and a positive sign that we can engage more fully with the colleagues who play such an important role in our lives," Cook said. "For others, it may also be an unsettling change."

The company has been trying to bring employees back to the office since last June, but had postponed the return deadline several times as Covid cases surged during fall and winter. Apple had previously postponed September, October, January and February deadlines before ultimately scrapping its return plans indefinitely in December.

"In the coming weeks and months, we have an opportunity to combine the best of what we have learned about working remotely with the irreplaceable benefits of in-person collaboration," Cook said in the memo. "It is as important as ever that we support each other through this transition, through the challenges we face as a team and around the world."

Apple has also told staff that they will get an additional month of work-from-home time for the year as part of a hybrid pilot program. Alphabet Inc.'s Google recently adopted a similar policy, requiring employees to work from the office three days per week. Other companies, such as Meta Platforms Inc. and Twitter Inc., have been less stringent, saying they'll let some employees work from home indefinitely despite having corporate offices.

Apple has gradually loosened Covid-19 protocols across the company. It recently began to phase out its mask mandate at retail stores for both shoppers and employees and no longer requires office workers in some regions to wear masks if they are vaccinated. The Cupertino, California-based company has also doubled its Covid-19 testing to twice per week for all employees.

Masks will become optional at most U.S. sites in the coming weeks, Cook said Friday. "As always, we will continue monitoring local conditions and are prepared to adjust our protocols as necessary for the health of our teams and communities."

Apple has corporate offices across the world, including in Silicon Valley, London and Japan. In the U.S., it has offices in Los Angeles, San Diego, Austin, Boulder, New York and Miami.

Read the full memo below:

- - -

Team,

As our response to Covid-19 continues to evolve, I'd like to share an update on our plans to return to our offices.

In many locations, officials have started lifting pandemic restrictions in accordance with the guidance of public health experts. And based on the latest data, we are optimistic that this progress will continue into the spring.

While many of you have been coming in regularly for quite some time, we are now looking forward to welcoming those of you who shifted to working remotely back to our corporate offices. In the United States, beginning on April 11, we'll begin the phased approach to the hybrid pilot, with teams returning to the office initially one day a week, and then, beginning in the third week, two days a week. This transitional period will now be extended from four to six weeks.

We will then begin the hybrid pilot in full on May 23, with people coming to the office three days a week -- on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday -- and working flexibly on Wednesday and Friday if you wish.

Though the timing may vary to some degree in different countries/sites based on local conditions, we will follow the same process wherever we are not yet back in the office. You'll hear more details from your local teams on specific timing as it applies to your location.

As a reminder, our offices and many services like Caffe Macs and our espresso bars are currently open and many people are already coming in each week. Between now and April 11, I encourage you to join them, whether it's to grab coffee with a colleague, check out your workspace or hold a team meeting.

Due to the decline in active cases, most, if not all of Apple's U.S. sites will revert to being mask-optional over the next few weeks. As always, we will continue monitoring local conditions and are prepared to adjust our protocols as necessary for the health of our teams and communities. I also want to make clear that you are always welcome to wear a mask and you should feel comfortable doing so. And I want to reiterate the vital importance of getting the vaccine and a booster if you are able to. You can always find the latest on our protocols on Welcome Forward.

For many of you, I know that returning to the office represents a long-awaited milestone and a positive sign that we can engage more fully with the colleagues who play such an important role in our lives. For others, it may also be an unsettling change. I want you to know that we are deeply committed to giving you the support and flexibility that you need in this next phase -- a commitment that begins with this gradual introduction of our hybrid pilot and includes the option to work remotely for up to four weeks a year. If you have any questions, you can find more details on the People site.

As we begin this pilot, we are looking forward to learning as we go and adjusting where we need to, all in service of fostering a really collaborative and flexible approach to our work together.

In the meantime, I can't tell you how much I am looking forward to being together again. And I want to thank each and every one of you. Whether you've been working from home or coming into our stores, labs or offices, you have been an essential part of this incredible team, and I am so grateful for all that you bring to Apple.

In the coming weeks and months, we have an opportunity to combine the best of what we have learned about working remotely with the irreplaceable benefits of in-person collaboration. It is as important as ever that we support each other through this transition, through the challenges we face as a team and around the world. I look forward to being together and to learning together during this pilot as we continue to build on the culture that makes Apple such an incredible place.

Tim
Allen J. Schaben | Getty Images

A 105,000-square-foot megamansion nestled in the hilly Bel Air neighborhood of Los Angeles that was listed for $295 million sold at a bankruptcy auction for $141 million, CNBC reports. The sale brings finality to an ambitious, onerous 10-year real-estate project.

Known as "The One," the home was built by former Hollywood producer Nile Niami, who built some of the most extravagant mansions in Bel Air and Beverly Hills to sell for profit. When he began The One a decade ago, he referred to the property as his "life mission" and the "biggest, most expensive home in the urban world." He planned to list it for $500 million, but mounting building costs and debt upwards of $190 million forced the property into receivership last year. As part of the bankruptcy agreement that followed, the home was listed at $295 million, but no buyers came forward, so it was put up for auction.
This article, Apple Event: Everything We Know About the March 8 'Peek Performance' Event, originally appeared on CNET.com.

We finally have a date for Apple's next event: Tuesday, March 8 at 10 a.m. PT. Rumors suggest that Apple could reveal a third iPhone SE at the presentation, along with a revamped iPad and at least one new Mac.

The company will show off the devices in an all-virtual event via a livestream on Apple's website. The company said it will be "broadcasting from Apple Park," its headquarters in Cupertino, California. The tech giant has hosted online-only events since the start of the pandemic two years ago. Apple is currently assessing when employees will return to the office, as the omicron variant wanes.

Apple's invitation to the media, sent in an email, shows a rainbow Apple logo that gives the impression of movement across a black background. Its tagline reads: "Peek performance." Apple didn't say which products it plans to announce -- it almost never does -- but did include an augmented reality effect in its marketing page for the event that could hint at an aspect of the event.

The event marks another milestone for Apple as it aims to stay on track with its product launch schedule, which typically includes events in the spring, summer and fall. In June 2020, as the pandemic took hold, Apple transformed its Worldwide Developers Conference into a virtual event, with slickly edited videos replacing live presentations. So far, the formula appears to be working. Apple has continued to rake in record sales and profits.

The company has said that customers have especially responded to 5G wireless internet upgrades in its iPhones over the past two years. And in his review of the iPhone 13 last year, CNET's Patrick Holland said that Apple had delivered a "delightful upgrade," praising the cameras and battery life in particular.

See also: Apple's Rumored March Event: When Is It and What to Expect

Apple has also said that demand for new chips it designed to act as the microprocessing brains for its iPads and Mac computers has consistently outstripped supply, with more than $12 billion in estimated pent-up demand in the past year. "Customer satisfaction is off the charts," Apple CEO Tim Cook said during a conference call with financial analysts in January. He said the technology is helping bring in new customers, in addition to upgraders.

At the upcoming event, Apple is also expected to discuss its upcoming iOS 15.4 software, a free upgrade for its most recent iPhones and iPads. The company has already announced that it's building in new Face ID unlock features to work with medical masks, as well as anti-stalking alerts related to its AirTag smart trackers.
Its the sort of sight youd only see in San Francisco. Youre chilling on the Marina Green with your friends, sipping a Philz Coffee and shivering in the fog, when all of a sudden, a robot with a smiling face rolls up to your group. 2 cookies for $7, reads the text on its side. And theyre not just any cookies: Theyre those really trendy ones from that new bakery you just heard about. You want to hate it, but you also really want to try those cookies.

This is the scene portrayed in a TikTok I came across recently, soundtracked to a jaunty indie rock song. And it wasnt just a one-off: These robots have also been spotted hawking cookies and other treats in Dolores Park, Golden Gate Park and the Embarcadero.

The company behind the enterprising robots is called Tortoise, a Mountain View-based robot delivery company that recently pivoted to Mobile Smart Stores, or the worlds first robotic remote-controlled store-on-wheels, as it claims.

We had a remote control grocery delivery robot, and we were deploying that in a bunch of different markets, said Tortoise co-founder Dmitry Shevelenko. We saw the same thing happening again and again  whenever the robot would be parked, people would walk up to it and talk to the robot and interact with it.

He said that when the company asked people what they were expecting from the robot, people thought they could buy something from it.

As is often the case, your customers are a lot wiser than you are, Shevelenko said. We kind of took the insight to heart.

Courtesy of Tortoise

It only took one modification to turn the grocery delivery robots into miniature mobile stores: installing a tap-to-pay card reader in the top of the container lid. People who want to buy something just tap their card, the lid unlocks and they grab their box of cookies from inside. All the while, the robots remote controller, who can be stationed halfway across the world, is watching the transaction and playing audio messages to guide the consumer.

For those wondering whats stopping people from robbing the robots, the fact that it requires your credit card information before the container unlocks discourages most people from taking more than their fair share. Plus, it has a camera prominently displayed (a not-so-subtle reminder that we are literally always being surveilled).

Weve done hundreds of transactions, and there hasnt been a single person whos taken more than one box, Shevelenko said.

While Tortoise is based in the Bay Area, its launch is worldwide: Robots will soon also be popping up in New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, London, Denver, Dallas, San Diego, Santa Cruz, South Carolina and Missouri, hawking everything from headphones to truffles.

Courtesy of Tortoise

Bake Sum, an Oakland bakery selling Asian American-inspired pastries, was one of Tortoises first customers. Owner Joyce Tang is a friend of Shevelenkos  they used to work at Facebook together  so she was happy to give Tortoise a try for its fee of 10% of gross sales.

Pastries dont require refrigeration or heating to transit, and that makes it a lot easier for the kind of logistics required in a mobile smart store, Tang said. So it was kind of an easy, natural fit.

Over the past few weeks, Bake Sum has sent its robot into San Francisco parks to sell cookies. Every time the bakery has used it, Tang said, its sold out.

Its actually a great way for us to widen the market a little bit and get a little bit more exposure in areas that we dont normally get to, Tang explained. So I think its fun, and it makes it a lot more convenient to get our pastries, given were only open so many hours a day and you have to come to Oakland most of the time.

Courtesy of Tortoise

Tang has also tried stationing the robot in front of Bake Sum after its normal business hours to sell pastry boxes. Since the bakery has quite limited hours  its only open Friday to Monday until 1 p.m.  it allows them to drum up more business after hours in a time of labor crisis.

I think while the business environment is still kind of weird and evolving, Tortoise definitely gives us a lot more flexibility to be able to pull off another sales channel without a crazy amount of overhead, Tang said.

These are certainly not the first robots to pop up in Bay Area businesses  over the past few years, weve seen robots waiting tables, robots giving manicures and robots delivering food. As robots have begun to infiltrate more and more of our everyday life, particularly during the pandemic, fear that they are taking jobs from humans grows more palpable.

Kiwibot, a robot food delivery startup based in Berkeley, responded to these fears in a 2020 SFGATE interview by arguing that it was actually creating jobs: Its bots, like Tortoise, are not autonomous, so an actual human must be employed to navigate them. But these companies tend to outsource that labor to countries with cheaper labor  Kiwibot employs remote workers in Colombia, and Tortoises are based in Mexico City.

Courtesy of Tortoise

San Francisco hasnt exactly been hospitable to delivery robots. In 2017, the city strictly limited the number of delivery robots allowed in the city and banned them from most sidewalks.

This is partially why Tortoise made the shift from delivery robots to Mobile Smart Stores: A business doesnt need a permit to park a robot in front of its own private property. As for the park sales, thats not strictly legal. But Shevelenko says that element is not their business model  the focus is more on stationing the robots in front of businesses  and putting the robots in parks was more just for testing purposes.

The thing that just obviously we want to be cognizant of is in some of those cases, youd need a mobile vending permit.  We dont want to run afoul of any of those, Shevelenko said. So I think its a question for merchants that are using us in the Bay Area. Wherever theyre getting permits, thats where theyll be deploying their robots.

Tang says shed love for her cookie-selling robot, which shes named Leonardo, to make more appearances in San Francisco parks or elsewhere. Shes even considering making an Instagram account for Leonardo so people know where to find it. The use of robots in restaurants has always been of interest to her, she said.

Thats always been in the back of my mind, but with the way that small businesses work, Ill never have enough time or resources or energy to dedicate to mechanize my workflow like this, Tang said. So its kind of the perfect partnership that Dmitry gets to focus on what hes good at, and I get to focus on making the pastries themselves. And it enables us to reach more people together than we could have otherwise done alone.
Like many college students who juggle both school and a job, Ethan Swope has been doing his best to make it all work.

Im taking classes online, he says, so its been a challenge.

By contrast, though, Swopes job isnt a barista gig or a few hours at the college bookstore. For the past two months, hes been on the ground in Ukraine photographing for a variety of international news agencies, covering the humanitarian crisis there as it has unfolded. He has seen and photographed tearful Ukrainians trying to flee, ordinary citizens making Molotov cocktails and grandmothers sewing camouflage netting. After he files all his images for the day, he then turns his attention to his schoolwork, some of which he has recently submitted from within bomb shelter scenarios with air raid sirens howling.

Ethan Swope/Bloomberg Ethan Swope/Bloomberg Ethan Swope/Bloomberg Ethan Swope/Bloomberg Clockwise from top left: A couple kiss while waiting at Lviv-Holovnyi railway station as displaced Ukrainians flee to Poland, in Lviv, Ukraine, on Feb. 27, 2022.; A member of hotel staff reacts while on the phone in Kyiv, Ukraine, on Feb. 24, 2022; Ukrainian soldiers patrol a street in Lviv, Ukraine, on Feb. 28, 2022. ; Passengers watch from the window of a train at Lviv-Holovnyi railway station as displaced Ukrainians flee to Poland, in Lviv, Ukraine, on Feb. 27, 2022. (Ethan Swope/Bloomberg) Clockwise from top left: A couple kiss while waiting at Lviv-Holovnyi railway station as displaced Ukrainians flee to Poland, in Lviv, Ukraine, on Feb. 27, 2022.; A member of hotel staff reacts while on the phone in Kyiv, Ukraine, on Feb. 24, 2022; Ukrainian soldiers patrol a street in Lviv, Ukraine, on Feb. 28, 2022. ; Passengers watch from the window of a train at Lviv-Holovnyi railway station as displaced Ukrainians flee to Poland, in Lviv, Ukraine, on Feb. 27, 2022. (Ethan Swope/Bloomberg)

Yet, Swope shrugs it off with little complaint: I get to do what I love.

At 19, the Sausalito native is a rapidly rising star in the field of photojournalism. This past year, he won the White House News Photographers Association award for Student Photographer of the Year, largely based on his in-depth work covering Californias wildfires. In addition to contributing to publications such as the New York Times and Washington Post, he has spent all of 2022 in Ukraine, covering a wide range of assignments along the lines of military training, the community war effort and the ever-increasing refugee situation within the country.

After following Swopes work for the past two months, we caught up to talk with him via Zoom just as he exited Ukraine to Poland, to discuss the war on the ground level, photojournalism and his career trajectory, which stems back to an interview with Pixar  when he was 12.

----

Ethan Swope/Bloomberg

SFGATE: First off, Im glad to hear youre safe. Can you walk me through where you are and what the last 24 hours have been like for you?

Swope: I am now currently in Warsaw. Ive been covering Ukraine for the last nine weeks. I got here on New Years Eve, and since then Ive seen the whole story unfold in front of me, from when we had an inkling that there might be an invasion to seeing troops actually on the ground.

In terms of the last 24 hours, last week we made a decision with our security chief that we should leave Kyiv, and along with other journalists, we made the decision that it was probably the right time to leave since we had been basically in a shelter  the basement of our hotel  for three days with limited access to being able to work because of the air raid sirens. It just made operating very challenging. So some colleagues and I made it to Lviv with the help of our amazing local producer, who was able to find a way to navigate through Kyiv and out to safety, since a lot of bridges have been blown up and there were troops on the outskirts. We made it out and have been working in Lviv for the past few days, and now Im taking a break.

Ethan Swope/Bloomberg

SFGATE: At what point did you initially decide to travel to Ukraine?

Swope: Im a freelance photojournalist, and Ive been covering stories related to climate change, immigration and humanitarian issues for the last couple of years. My focus is on the human condition. I was interested in the culture of Ukraine, and I began getting reports back in November and December of the Russian buildup with the potential for renewed aggression, so I made preparations to go.

Ive been here for a little while now, and Ive been working with the Associated Press, Telegraph and pretty extensively with Bloomberg News for the past few weeks. I worked on different stories, such as the territorial defense training, which are these civilian groups who basically come together on the weekend to train should they be called to action  and they have been now. With the AP, we covered a military field hospital, covering soldiers who had been wounded. This was right before the invasion when there had been indiscriminate shelling.

Ethan Swope/Bloomberg Ethan Swope/Bloomberg Ethan Swope/Associated Press Ethan Swope/Bloomberg Clockwise from top left: A customer looks at a sign showing conversion rates at a currency exchange kiosk in Kyiv, Ukraine, on Thursday, Feb. 24, 2022; Members of the Ukrainian forces participate in an urban combat training exercise, organised by the Ukraine Ministry of Internal Affairs, within the exclusion zone in the abandoned city of Pripyat, Ukraine, on Friday, Feb. 4, 2022; Passengers crowd the stairs at the Lviv-Holovnyi railway station after disembarking from a train in Lviv, Ukraine, on Monday, Feb. 28, 2022; A patient undergoes surgery at the Military Mobile Hospital 66 in Pokrovsk, eastern Ukraine, on Wednesday, Feb. 9, 2022. Clockwise from top left: A customer looks at a sign showing conversion rates at a currency exchange kiosk in Kyiv, Ukraine, on Thursday, Feb. 24, 2022; Members of the Ukrainian forces participate in an urban combat training exercise, organised by the Ukraine Ministry of Internal Affairs, within the exclusion zone in the abandoned city of Pripyat, Ukraine, on Friday, Feb. 4, 2022; Passengers crowd the stairs at the Lviv-Holovnyi railway station after disembarking from a train in Lviv, Ukraine, on Monday, Feb. 28, 2022; A patient undergoes surgery at the Military Mobile Hospital 66 in Pokrovsk, eastern Ukraine, on Wednesday, Feb. 9, 2022.

SFGATE: Can you tell me a bit about your interactions with the Ukrainian people?

Swope: The word that comes to mind is resilience. Theyve been facing conflict for the last eight years. And pretty much everyone that I talked to didnt believe an invasion was going to happen. They said it was impossible. Even when talking with them about 2014 when Russia originally invaded, they didnt think it was going to happen then either.

Everyone here has rallied together to support each other. And in a sense, it does give me faith in humanity. Everyone has been cordial. People have been queuing for gasoline and food. Everyone has been polite to each other even when there is fear.

But Ive also been covering stories outside of the conflict. In January, I covered Malanka. Its a pagan New Years celebration. It has a long history and people coming together from all these villages. Theres just a big sense of community here.

Ethan Swope/AP

SFGATE: Whats one of the more hopeful things that youve observed in your time there?

Swope: It doesnt pertain to the current aggressions, but I was covering an orphanage in Donbas like two weeks before the conflict started. And we got to hear a story from one of the children there about how he had cancer while living on the separatist side of Ukraine  and in order to get treatment, he had to cross to the Ukrainian side. And people were able to organize a cease-fire in order to have him cross over. And it was really impactful to hear about that.

Ethan Swope/Bloomberg

SFGATE: Not to put you on the spot with a difficult subject, but you took a photograph of an emotional Nigerian student at the train station. In your caption, you say that he had been turned away for six days. This is something we have been hearing about, and Im wondering if you could tell us about that photo and what youve seen firsthand with regard to that issue?

Swope: That was tough. It was tough personally  I mean  Im a photographer, and I take photos, but as a human, I felt for him as he was going through a lot of emotions and the situation he had been facing.

So the train stations have been packed with tens of thousands of people trying to flee to Poland and the rest of Europe. There were many Nigerians and people from Ghana who were trying to get on the trains. Allegedly, women and children got first priority,  which I do think is the case, but [that student] was crying over being unable to get access. He said, I have been turned away for six days; I havent eaten or had water. And I think this was a fairly common situation that is happening here. I cant say with 100% certainty that race has something to do with it, but it seems very likely that there is definitely an element of that.

SFGATE: What was the initial spark that caused you to pick up a camera and then eventually pursue photojournalism?

Swope: Ive always had a camera in my hands since I was very little. Part of it was [he laughs] I wanted to be a character designer at Pixar. And everything I do, I try to do it 110%, so I made a portfolio and went to interview with them when I was like 12. But then I had an existential crisis about art, and I decided to capture my reality and my surroundings with a camera. So thats where it started.

I really enjoyed documenting my community, but also, the camera was like my passport. It gave me access to different people, different circumstances, and gave me opportunities to be places I normally couldnt be.

Ethan Swope/AP Ethan Swope/AP Ethan Swope/AP Ethan Swope/AP Clockwise from top left: A home is engulfed in flames as the Dixie fire rages south of Janesville in Northern California, on Aug. 16, 2021; Private firefighter Bradcus Schrandt gives an injured kitten water at the Zogg Fire near Ono, Calif., on Sep. 27, 2020; Firefighter Ron Burias battles the Fawn Fire as it spreads north of Redding, Calif. in Shasta County, on Sept. 23, 2021; A helicopter drops water on the Fawn Fire burning north of Redding in Shasta County, Calif., on Sept. 23, 2021. (Ethan Swope/AP) Clockwise from top left: A home is engulfed in flames as the Dixie fire rages south of Janesville in Northern California, on Aug. 16, 2021; Private firefighter Bradcus Schrandt gives an injured kitten water at the Zogg Fire near Ono, Calif., on Sep. 27, 2020; Firefighter Ron Burias battles the Fawn Fire as it spreads north of Redding, Calif. in Shasta County, on Sept. 23, 2021; A helicopter drops water on the Fawn Fire burning north of Redding in Shasta County, Calif., on Sept. 23, 2021. (Ethan Swope/AP)

SFGATE: You have clocked a fair amount of time covering the California wildfires up close. Did it help prepare you for your experience now?

Swope: There are a lot of parallels between covering wildfires and something like the situation in Ukraine. Safety is paramount with both. And so, working with the team, communicating with other journalists, putting together risk assessments, having the right protective equipment, medical training  it all plays a part.

I think at least for me, the connections I made from covering fires with other photographers and editors has helped me be able to work in Ukraine.

SFGATE: How do you think this experience in Ukraine is impacting you as a photographer?

Swope: Ive learned a lot here. Ive been able to shadow photojournalists who have decades of experience of covering conflicts. So Ive been able to pick up how they operate in the field, and thats been invaluable.

Additionally, having empathy and being able to sympathize with the people here, seeing their plight. Its reaffirmed that this is the work that I find meaningful.

Image via Zoom

SFGATE: Just to wrap up, what is your level of optimism for Ukraine and its people based on what youve seen on the ground level over the past two months?

Swope: Sadly, I dont think this is going to end soon. Even if Kyiv gets taken over, there are hundreds of thousands of people willing to fight for their country. But Ive seen their people in the best and worst of times  and they give me hope.
The House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riots has subpoenaed former first lady of San Francisco Kimberly Guilfoyle, the panel announced in a press release Thursday.

The subpoena requires Guilfoyle to turn over requested documents by March 11 and appear for a deposition on March 15.

"Ms. Guilfoyle met with Donald Trump inside the White House, spoke at the rally that took place before the riot on January 6th, and apparently played a key role organizing and raising funds for that event," committee Chairman Bennie G. Thompson said in a statement. "The Select Committee is seeking information from her about these and other matters. Because Ms. Guilfoyle backed out of her original commitment to provide a voluntary interview, we are issuing today's subpoena that will compel her to testify. We expect her to comply with the law and cooperate."

Guilfoyle and her lawyers met with the committee Feb. 25, but reports indicated the virtual call went poorly after an "outraged" Guilfoyle objected to the rules for the meeting. "Four people familiar with the exchange" told ABC News that Guilfoyle objected to the fact that Democratic Reps. Adam Schiff and Jamie Raskin were on the call, as she had previously thought it would only be lawyers and staff. After Guilfoyle reportedly objected, the call ended abruptly. This report seems to be partially corroborated by Thompson's letter to Guilfoyle on Thursday.

"Though you professed to want to cooperate, you produced only 110 pages in response to 14 document requests, and you refused to proceed with your scheduled transcribed interview on February 25, 2022, claiming you had not been previously informed that Select Committee Members could observe and participate," Thompson wrote. "Staff had in fact communicated to your attorneys that Members could be present, but nevertheless offered to reschedule the interview. You declined."

Guilfoyle, a fundraiser for Trump's 2020 campaign, drew interest from the committee after reportedly bragging in text messages about raising $3 million for the "Save America" rally that immediately preceded the riots. According to the committee, Guifoyle also "apparently communicated with others about the decision by the then-President about who was and was not allowed to speak at the rally, including concerns raised about him sharing the stage with individuals including Ali Alexander, Alex Jones, and Roger Stone."

Alexander and Stone regularly appeared on Jones' far-right conspiracy network Infowars in the lead-up to the Capitol riots, pushing "Stop the Steal" lies about election fraud. Stone, who was convicted in 2019 of obstruction, making false statements and witness tampering related to Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election but received a pardon from President Donald Trump, is suing the Jan. 6 committee over his subpoenaed phone records. Alexander apparently cooperated, while Jones is also trying to sue the committee to prevent phone records from being turned over.

The full letter to Guilfoyle is available here.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., was sharply criticized by fellow lawmakers on both sides of the aisle Thursday after saying that the "only way" to end the crisis in Ukraine is for Russians to assassinate President Vladimir Putin.

"Is there a Brutus in Russia? Is there a more successful Colonel Stauffenberg in the Russian military?" Graham tweeted, referencing the Roman politician who participated in the assassination of Julius Caesar and the German military officer who attempted to kill Adolf Hitler.

"The only way this ends is for somebody in Russia to take this guy out," he said. "You would be doing your country - and the world - a great service."

Graham added that if Russians do not want to live in darkness and be isolated from the rest of the world, then "you need to step up to the plate."

Other members of Congress swiftly criticized Graham's tweets as reckless, including members of his own party.

Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas said, "This is an exceptionally bad idea." Sanctions and boycotts of Russian oil and gas are solutions, along with military aid for the Ukrainians, Cruz said.

"But we should not be calling for the assassination of heads of state," he added.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., called Graham's remarks "dangerous" and "unhinged."

"We need leaders with calm minds & steady wisdom," she wrote. "Not blood thirsty warmongering politicians trying to tweet tough by demanding assassinations."

Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., said calls for Putin's assassination from United States politicians "aren't helpful."

"I really wish our members of Congress would cool it and regulate their remarks as the administration works to avoid WWlll," Omar tweeted. "As the world pays attention to how the US and [its] leaders are responding."

Norman Eisen, who served as U.S. Ambassador to the Czech Republic during the Obama administration, said such comments would only raise tensions.

"Now Putin can say 'one of the most senior U.S. Senators has called for my assassination,'" Eisen, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said. "Why would you want to help him?

Graham spokesman Kevin Bishop said the senator "also expressed he was OK with a coup to remove Putin."

"Basic point, Putin has to go," Bishop said. "He also noted it will be - has to be - the Russian people who do it."

Some online critics questioned whether the senator's tweets violated Twitter's rules against violence. Twitter did not respond a request for comment from The Post late Thursday.

Graham, a retired Air Force officer, has long been critical of Putin. Once an influential member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Graham in 2016 accused Russia of hacking his campaign email account, CNN reported. He said Russia was "trying to destabilize democracy all over the world. Not just here," according to the outlet.

Graham also called for Russians to assassinate Putin during a Thursday appearance on "Hannity" on Fox News. Moreover, he introduced legislation this week calling for Putin to be investigated for war crimes.

On Wednesday, Sean Hannity suggested on his radio show that the United States carry out an assassination of Putin, saying, "You cut the head of the snake off, and you kill the snake." Experts told The Post that such a move would not help solve the crisis, and it would be illegal outside an armed conflict with Russia.
Two men arrested with firearms on Thursday near the Ukrainian Embassy in Georgetown told police they had driven from Indiana to volunteer to fight in the war in Ukraine, according two law enforcement officials familiar with the case.

One of the men was wearing military fatigues and police seized a long gun and two handguns during the arrest, said the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to detail an ongoing police investigation.

Uniformed members of the U.S. Secret Service arrested the men shortly after 9 a.m. at Wisconsin Avenue and M Street NW, according to a statement from the agency and D.C. police. That is a little more than two blocks from the embassy on M Street.

Photographs taken by a Reuters wire service reporter showed police around a dark-colored Ford sedan with Indiana license plates and a Marine Corps veteran designation. The identities of the men arrested were not immediately made public.

The Secret Service said in a statement that charges filed against the men will include possession of a prohibited weapon, unlawful transportation of a firearm and possession of an unregistered firearm. After prosecutors review the case, they could make an initial appearance in court on Friday.

The statement says the Secret Service officers noticed the individuals acting suspiciously. It did not elaborate. The Reuters account said police were seen removing weapons and bullet-resistant vests from the vehicle. Law enforcement is on heightened alert at the Ukrainian and Russian embassies.

The two law enforcement officials said the men told police they intended to fight for Ukraine days after it was invaded by Russia.

Ukrainian officials have pleaded for humanitarian and military help. The United States is supplying weapons, and on Thursday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said 16,000 foreigners had volunteered to fight on their side. Ukraine's defense minister made a similar plea on Facebook and Twitter and urged people wishing to join to come to the country's diplomatic missions.
MUKACHEVO, Ukraine - Ukraine entered a second week of war against Russian President Vladimir Putin's invading forces with parts of Europe's largest nuclear plant on fire and its southern cities encircled by the Kremlin's troops, as the humanitarian catastrophe wrought by Russia's assault deepened.

A Russian projectile hit the site of the Zaporizhzhia plant in southeastern Ukraine overnight, igniting a fire that troubled officials but triggered no release of radioactive material. Rafael Mariano Grossi, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, warned of the "risks that we may all incur" if fighting around nuclear sites rages on.

Ukraine's nuclear inspectorate and Russia's defense ministry said that Russian forces are now in control of the plant, which is a key supplier of the country's electricity. A regional military leader said nuclear safety at the site was "ensured as of now," while local authorities said firefighters extinguished the blaze in the early morning hours. Washington and Kyiv said there had been no increase in radiation levels, while President Volodymyr Zelensky accused Moscow of "nuclear terror." The White House demanded that the Kremlin halt military activities near the power plant.

Russia and Ukraine said they had agreed to limited local cease-fires to facilitate "humanitarian corridors," as several cities in Ukraine's south warned that they were running out of supplies. The U.N. refugee agency said more than 1 million people had fled Ukraine, and at least 249 civilians had been killed. It cautioned that the true toll was likely "considerably higher" because of the difficulty of conducting accurate counts in war zones.

World leaders expressed concern and condemnation over the attack on the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station, with calls for an end to military operations around the plant.

President Joe Biden expressed support for Zelensky's stance that Russia should let firefighters and emergency responders into the plant, according to a White House readout of their phone call Thursday. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said he would call an emergency U.N. Security Council meeting, while Canada's Justin Trudeau "called on Russia to immediately end all military activities in the area," according to a statement. Australian Foreign Minister Marise Payne tweeted that the attack demonstrated the "recklessness & dangers of Putin's war."

The International Atomic Energy Agency likewise criticized the attack but said radiation levels have not increased in the area.

"Europe must wake up," Zelensky said in a video message denouncing Russia's attack on the Zaporizhzhia plant. "If there is an explosion, it is the end of everything."

On Thursday, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Moscow was "taking every measure" to maintain the safety of the plant, as well as the abandoned site in Chernobyl, where a nuclear disaster in 1986 forced residents to evacuate and which fell under Russian control last week.

After Russian forces captured the Zaporizhzhia plant, the mayor of the nearby city issued an awkward video statement assuring that the situation was under control, an address Ukraine's national atomic energy company said may have been made under duress.

Even China, which has been at pains not to criticize Russia's actions in Ukraine, expressed concern over the fighting around the plant.

"China attaches great importance to the issue of nuclear security, and is therefore seriously concerned about the safety and security of nuclear facilities in Ukraine," Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said at a routine briefing Friday.

He added that China would keep a close watch on developments and called on all parties to exercise restraint.

Concerns about a potential nuclear disaster at the plant roiled Asian markets Friday, as Japan's Nikkei index hit its lowest level since late 2020. Japan's Topix fell by about 2%, while Hong Kong's Hang Seng dropped by 2.5% and China's CSI 300 by 1.2%.

Analysis of satellite imagery by U.S. firm Maxar Technologies shows the extent of the devastation wrought by Russia's invasion of Ukraine, with bridges and roads damaged and homes destroyed in towns and cities across the country.

In Chernihiv, a strategic northern city on a highway that links Ukraine's border to Kyiv where a fierce battle has been waged in recent days, the images showed damaged roads, bridges and homes. Some factories appear to have been leveled.

On Friday, Chernihiv's regional authority said in a Facebook post that strikes killed 47 people, including nine women.

Previous images showed that a massive convoy of Russian ground forces was heading toward Kyiv, drawing within 20 miles of the center of the capital. The convoy has made limited headway since Monday, Western defense officials said.

In Russia, the last independent news and radio stations folded this week as journalists and other newsroom staffers left their positions to flee their country as the war against Ukraine intensifies.

TV Rain suspended its coverage Thursday, its director general, Natalya Sindeeva, announced in a statement on the station's website and on the air.

"We need strength to exhale and understand how to work further," she said. "We really hope that we will return to the air and continue to work."

Russia blocked access to the station and declared it and fellow news station Radio Echo as foreign agents for using "war" and "invasion" - terms banned by the Kremlin - in their coverage of the attack on Ukraine, the New Yorker reported.

The blocking of TV Rain portended danger for its editor in chief, Tikhon Dzyadko, who left Russia with his family as some staffers received threats, according to Current Time TV.

Radio Echo, also known as Echo of Moscow, shut down Thursday based on the decision of its board of directors, a day after Russia pushed broadcasting barriers against TV Rain's website and social accounts, CNN reported.

The radio station found itself facing immense scrutiny from Russia's prosecutor general over its coverage of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, NBC News reported.The last seconds of TV Rain's broadcast, after one of its journalists walked off reportedly saying "No war," was of a black-and-white broadcast of "Swan Lake." The choice was a nod to state television playing the performance in 1991 when the Soviet Union was on the edge of collapsing, according to NBC News.

- - -

The Washington Post's Lyric Li and Lateshia Beachum contributed to this report.
By Katy St. Clair

Bay City News Foundation

The Vallejo City Council next week could move one step closer to curbing gun violence in its city by implementing the Advance Peace program, a model that has had success in cities like Richmond, Stockton and Sacramento.

Advance Peace is a non-profit organization that identifies members of a community that are most at risk for either perpetrating gun violence or being victimized by it. A team of mentors then interacts with them in an 18-month project that includes intensive case management, life skills training, trauma-informed therapy (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, or CBT), subsidized employment and street outreach.

Advance Peace has had a remarkable effect on Richmond. The organization's founder, DeVone Boggan, kicked off his endeavor in the Contra Costa County city in 2010 and it has been so successful that President Joe Biden gave it a shoutout during a crime prevention speech he gave in 2021.

Boggan spoke to the Vallejo City Council in April 2021 about his program and how it tackles cyclical and retaliatory violence.

"Most of these guys don't want to live the way they are living," he told the council.

A study done in the American Journal of Public Health in 2019 showed a 55 percent reduction in gun homicides and assaults after the program was implemented in Richmond. The study looked at quarterly counts of violent firearm incidents there from 2005 to 2016 and compared observed patterns in firearm violence after the program's implementation in 2010.

Another study done in 2021 by UC Berkeley also touted the success of the program, reporting that homicides and assaults in Stockton were reduced by almost a quarter, "saving taxpayers millions of dollars in city expenses."

According to statistics provided by the Vallejo Police Department, the city had 28 homicides in 2020 and 21 in 2021. Gangs continue to be an issue in the Solano County city and gunshots can frequently be heard by residents (the department does not publish total shootings data).

The project was first put forward in Vallejo by Councilmember Hakeem Brown, who spoke of Vallejo's "turf wars" and his suggestion was fully embraced by the council. The issue stalled, however, when COVID-19 reared its head; now it's back on the table and this time the city intends to use federal American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds to pay for it.

According to the City Council staff report, $700,000 would be earmarked for the endeavor. The cost for three years for the Peace Maker Fellowship would be $2,564,107. So far, the city projects contributing up to $1,354,050, leaving a funding gap of $1,210,057. According to city staff, both Advance Peace and the city of Vallejo would work to fill the gap by applying for state, federal and philanthropic funds. So far, Kaiser Permanente, Sutter Health and the Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation have pledged money for the cause.

Advance Peace, its funding, and its implementation will be discussed at the next Vallejo City Council meeting, which takes place on Tuesday at 7 p.m. in City Hall, 555 Santa Clara St. in Vallejo.

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.

Copyright  2022 by Bay City News, Inc. Republication, Rebroadcast or any other Reuse without the express written consent of Bay City News, Inc. is prohibited.
NEW ORLEANS (AP)  Stray bullets in separate shootings killed two people visiting New Orleans for the festivities leading up to Mardi Gras: a 15-year-old girl from Texas and a 33-year-old South Carolina man.

Heaven Nettles, of Houston, was standing in line at a food truck blocks from a parade route Saturday when gunfire killed her and two men also standing in the line, local news reports said.

The family comes down every year to visit family, friends and enjoy Carnival, her aunt Donna Nettles of New Orleans told WVUE-TV. Except (this time) Heaven is dead."

The coroners office identified the two men killed with Nettles as Donald Roberts Jr., 39, and Marvin Pepp. Coroners spokesman Jason Melancon said he could not verify hometowns for any of the three.

The coroners office has not released the name or home state of the man killed in a shooting Friday night. But relatives identified him as Brandon Bovain of Orangeburg, South Carolina, The Times-Picayune / The New Orleans Advocate reported.

Detectives told the family Bouvain was in his vehicle in a hotel parking lot when people in two other vehicles began shooting at each other, said Anthony Brown, one of Bovain's brothers, speaking with the newspaper.

Brandon was one of the happiest persons you could meet, and they took my heart away  man, they took my world away, he said.

All told, there were three shootings Friday in New Orleans, two on Saturday, and another on Monday and one early Wednesday, authorities said. None of the others was fatal.

Investigators do not believe the Texas teen or the South Carolina man were intended victims in the fatal shootings, police said in emails Wednesday to The Associated Press.

Bovain, a furniture deliverer, his girlfriend and one of his younger brothers had made a spur-of-the-moment decision to see Carnival, said another brother, James Bovain. He told the newspaper that the three apparently were checking in to their hotel at the time.
Nobody knows how Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine will end, but most scenarios range from bad to worse. To grasp them, start by considering what is indubitably the world's most notorious rat.

That's the one Russian President Vladimir Putin claims he once - as a boy in what was then Leningrad - chased down a hallway. Cornered, the rat turned and attacked him.

Why has Putin made sure that this anecdote keeps getting recycled among Russia watchers the world over? The conventional wisdom is that it's yet another of his veiled threats. I'm that rat, except that I have nuclear claws, he implies. So don't corner me.

This vantage point - let's call it the rat's-eye view - must factor in all possible scenarios. If the analysis were about what's good for Russia, the invasion would never have started at all, and could be ended at any time with a negotiated settlement. After all, the attack has only hurt national interests, by isolating the country internationally and impoverishing more of its population. But Russia isn't the relevant actor. The metaphorical rat in the Kremlin is.

By all appearances, Putin is nowadays isolated and in his own mental world. Unlike his Soviet predecessors, he has no politburo around him or other credible checks and balances; he decides alone. And like other current and former tyrants - Saddam Hussein springs to mind - he has reason to worry that his own political failure is less likely to end in a tedious but placid retirement than in something rather more violent and abrupt.

Viewed from the rat's perspective, therefore, there are lots of dead-end hallways around. With that in mind, the scenarios look as follows.

- The Ukrainians win: A heroic Ukrainian defense that actually repels Russian forces remains militarily unlikely, but is of course the preferred outcome for most of the world. A traumatized but triumphant Ukraine would link up with a newly coherent and determined European Union and accelerate its integration into the democratic West. NATO would have a new sense of purpose. China, with its eye on Taiwan, would think twice about causing its own trouble.

But Putin would be in that metaphorical corner. He's been posing as Russia's defender against an allegedly aggressive West and redeemer of ethnic Russians and brother Slavs everywhere. A Ukrainian victory would make all that propaganda untenable. He could not survive the defeat politically and knows it. Therefore he won't allow this scenario to happen. Instead of withdrawing, he'll follow one of three other paths.

- A Russian Reign of Terror: He could escalate the attack dramatically - but still with only conventional weapons. Basically, that means bombing Ukraine into submission. The loss of civilian and military lives would be horrendous, but Putin wouldn't care. He would incorporate a seething and resentful Ukraine - either as a nominally independent puppet state or a subdivision of Greater Russia - and maybe add Belarus for good measure.

To repress dissent at home and in Ukraine, Putin would have to complete his transformation of Russia into a police state, eliminating and persecuting the last remnants of free speech. His empire would become a permanent pariah in the international community. The world would have a new Iron Curtain.

- Another Afghanistan: Or he could escalate less dramatically, sending just enough Russian military might into Ukraine to avoid outright defeat. The country could then become what Afghanistan was to Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev after 1979, or to the U.S. and its allies after 2001: a quagmire.

The cost in human terms would still be shocking - above all to Ukrainians, but also to Russian soldiers and ordinary Russians suffering worse repression and hardship from sanctions. Putin wouldn't mind that, provided he thinks his place in the Kremlin stays secure. But from the rat's-eye view, a quagmire looks a lot like getting stuck in that hallway corner indefinitely.

- Escalate to de-escalate: If he is truly like the rat that attacked him, Putin will therefore at least consider another - literally nuclear - option. It's the one he's already hinted at. Claiming that NATO and the EU are cornering him by supporting Ukraine with weapons and other wherewithal, he could launch one or more "limited" nuclear strikes with so-called tactical (here meaning low-yield) warheads.

He'd wager that the West would not retaliate on behalf of Ukraine, because that would trigger a nuclear exchange with bigger "strategic" weapons, ending in Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD), as it was known during the Cold War. But like the rat, he'd take the risk.

Ukraine, like Japan in 1945, would have no choice but to surrender. That's why military wonks call this strategy "escalate to de-escalate." But the world would never be the same. The names Hiroshima and Nagasaki would be joined by others on humanity's list of doom. And yet Putin could say that he got himself out of one particular hallway's corner.

- Another Russian Revolution: There are also more optimistic scenarios. Despite Putin's curtain of propaganda and disinformation, enough Russians understand the circumstances of his unprovoked invasion, and the cataclysmic risks. They could revolt. This could take the form of a broad-based movement centered on an opposition leader like Alexey Navalny. Or it could be a coup or putsch from within the elite.

Neither kind of insurrection looks likely for now, unfortunately. Russians may have noticed that the Belarusians next door have been heroically resisting their dictator since August 2020, with no success but lots of brutal repression to show for it. And any member of what remains of Putin's inner circle who contemplates a putsch will remember the fate of the conspirators around Claus von Stauffenberg in 1944.

Nonetheless, a homegrown Russian revolution would be by far the best outcome. The new regime in Moscow could blame the attack on Putin alone, which happens to be true. It could therefore withdraw without looking weak. The international community could welcome Russia back with open arms. The world, including Russia, would become a better place.

- China intervenes: A second-best but more plausible scenario involves Beijing. Officially, China under President Xi Jinping is, if not Russia's ally, at least its partner in jointly staring down the American-led West. But China considers itself a rising power and Russia a falling one. As Xi sees it, Putin is sometimes useful but also a potential liability.

In particular, China is deeply conflicted about Putin's attack because it violates another country's national sovereignty, the principle Xi would invoke if he ever swallowed Taiwan (which he considers a Chinese province) and demanded that the U.S. stay out. And China, which has a small but fast-growing nuclear arsenal, certainly wouldn't countenance the use of tactical nukes and the resulting global chaos.

For now, Xi's ambivalence has condemned Beijing to an unsustainable doublespeak. At the United Nations this week, 141 countries voted to deplore Putin's aggression. China could have joined the four rogues (Belarus, North Korea, Eritrea and Syria) who voted with Russia against the resolution. Instead, along with 34 other countries, it merely abstained.

If China decided to restrain Putin, it would have the clout. It could withdraw the economic and diplomatic lifelines Moscow needs. At the same time it could discreetly find secret trap doors at the end of hallways. After all, the best way to deal with a cornered rat is usually to let it escape before it does more harm.

- - -

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Andreas Kluth is a columnist for Bloomberg Opinion. He was previously editor in chief of Handelsblatt Global and a writer for the Economist. He's the author of "Hannibal and Me."
A fully restored home built in 1892 in the heart of the Frog Capital of the World is bound to be full of juicy stories. This Louisiana bed-and-breakfastonce featured on HGTV's "If Walls Could Talk" doesn't disappoint.

But today, the most appealing aspect of the seven-bedroom inn known as Maison Daboval is that it's currently available for $299,000fully furnished!

The Maison is located in Rayne, LA, about 20 minutes from Lafayette. Rayne is known as the Frog Capital of the World, thanks to its history of exporting frog legs as a gourmet delicacy. The town is also in the heart of Acadiana, the region that has historically been home to many of the state's French descendants.

Maison Daboval received its name from original owner, Emile Daboval, a Frenchman from New Orleans who settled in the area and became a civic, business, and family leader. He and his wife had 13 children, and Daboval became the mayor of Rayne.

Over the decades, the home served an array of purposes. It was a hospital during the Spanish flu pandemic after World War I, and extra windows were added, to allow more natural light to flow into the second-floor operating room. That room now serves as a lovely guest suite.

Maison Daboval Realtor.com

Front porch Realtor.com

Upstairs guest suite Realtor.com

Located close to railroad tracks, the building also served as a convenient boarding house for over 40 years and accommodated a number of colorful residents.

The listing agent, Jammie Parbhoo of Latter & Blum, told us that the grandmother of one of her fellow agents was born in the house. When the current owners, Gene and Martha Royer, bought the place in 1992, it needed quite a bit of remodeling and restoration.

Using an old photo as a reference point, Gene recreated the lovely wood "lacework" on the second-floor balcony, which had been removed years before.

He also found the home's original cypress shutters in the attic. They were sanded and repainted, and now lend the home even more vintage charm.

Restored shutters and balcony Realtor.com

Gene Royer also found a long hallway inside the home that had been sealed up in a previous renovation. To provide the 4,183-square-foot residence with a more open flow, he opened it back up.

Under the surface, Gene also installed all-new mechanical systems throughout the home, bringing the home into the 21st century.

Much beloved in the community staple, the Maison impresses any guest who enters, with its 14-foot-tall foyer and ornate wooden staircase.

Ornate staircase Realtor.com

Guests can relax in one of several parlorssome with fireplacesor in the great room. Breakfast, and sometimes lunch and dinner, are served in the dining room.

Parlor Realtor.com

Additional parlor Realtor.com

Great room Realtor.com

Dining room Realtor.com

Kitchen Realtor.com

Most of the five guest suites are on the second floor. One of the suites is configured as a family suite, with two bedrooms. All feature bathrooms with clawfoot tubs.

Guest suite Realtor.com

Guest suite Realtor.com

Additional guest suite Realtor.com

Guest bathroom Realtor.com

According to the agent, Martha Royer is reluctant to leave the Maison behind.

"She's been doing this for 30 years now," Parbhoo adds, "and she thinks it's finally time to let it go."

Parbhoo believes that a buyer may be someone coming back home who would like to settle in their native Acadiana. It would also help if the new owners have a background in hospitality.

"That's what we're all about, here in Louisiana," says Parbhoo.

Even if a buyer didn't want to continue operating the Maison as an inn, it offers an opportunity to settle down into an easy way of life, living the Southern dream.

"We didn't want to overprice it," says Parhoo, noting that all the furnishings are included. At its affordable price and with plenty of square footage, this dream is within reach.

The post Featured on HGTV, an Affordable Maison in Louisiana Is a True Charmer appeared first on Real Estate News & Insights | realtor.com.
K&L Bistro, a French restaurant in the heart of downtown Sebastopol, will permanently shutter after a 21-year run, as first reported by the Press Democrat.

The restaurant, located at 119 S. Main St., is expected to close within the next couple of months after the property was sold to the operators of The Livery on Main, an upcoming food hall slated to open in late 2022.

Were ready for a new chapter in our lives, chef and owner Lucas Martin told SFGATE. Weve been here for 21 years, and weve done everything we wanted to do.

Lucas, who co-owns the business with his wife and chef Karen Martin, shared that the sale took place about eight months ago during a time when his familys quality of life hit critical mass amid the ongoing pandemic. At that point, Lucas reached out to The Beale Group (owners of Farm to Coast Collective, which will run The Livery on Main) and made the sale. K&L Bistros liquor license will also transfer over to the new owners.

Just before K&L Bistro opened in 2001, Lucas and Karen were working at Hayes Street Grill in San Francisco before the pair married and moved to Sebastopol. Lucas shared that in the early days of K&L Bistro, he and his wife kept a crib within the space so they could keep an eye on their newborn son while they worked.

I got married, got a house and opened a restaurant, Lucas said. My kids grew up in the restaurant business, and it worked out.

From L to R: Mary Ann M. and Lindsey G. on Yelp

As K&L Bistro gained traction, the business earned its first Michelin star in 2006 but then lost it three years later. Eventually, K&L Bistro was recognized among the Michelin Guides Bib Gourmand picks in 2012. But tough times were to follow as the pandemic uprooted the hospitality industry and forced many restaurant owners to adopt a takeout model.

K&L Bistro remained closed for some time at the beginning of the pandemic, which resulted in a massive loss in staff. Lucas shared that many of the original employees left to find work elsewhere or left the food industry altogether when he and his wife couldnt afford to pay them during the temporary closure.

Before the pandemic, K&L Bistro had about 35 employees, but now its down to two  not including Lucas, Karen and their two sons, who help run front- and back-of-house operations. A reduction of staffers began to put a strain on the Martins, among other operational factors.

We did a pretty big expansion about seven years ago, and its too big of a restaurant to manage, Lucas said.

As the restaurant approaches its final business day, the K&L Bistro namesakes, along with their two children, plan to move to Portland, where they hope to eventually open a smaller-scale restaurant. But walking away from the 21-year-old business wont be easy.

Google Maps

Every time I walk into the building, I feel gutted, Lucas said. I dont know how to process this. I feel like Im in a funnel being pushed out. I designed the whole thing twice, and theres a lot of emotions going on.

Lucas shared an immense sense of gratitude to the city of Sebastopol and to his patrons over the years  many of whom grew up eating at K&L Bistro. He describes the next chapter in his life as terrifying and exhilarating.

Its going to be very bittersweet to [end] a great thing we built.
Hawaa for the Indigenous Graduate Student Travel Award! This bursary supported my travel to Haida Gwaii to begin my dissertation research. After navigating and respecting local COVID-19 safety precautions, I isolated for 2 weeks once I landed on Haida Gwaii. I was set loose to begin my consultations in Old Massett and Skidegate. I was able to meet with members of the Haida Repatriation Committee, Old Massett Village Council and the Haida Gwaii Museum staff. I also had a chance to assess the Haida museology records in the community that could contribute to my research. I was also so grateful to be home on Haida Gwaii for the ceremony to commemorate the remains of the first 215 Indigenous children uncovered at the Kamloops Residential school. In my downtime, I was grateful to stroll the beautiful beaches and do some deep thinking about my Haida museology research and eat fresh salmon. Hawaa! Dalang ahl kil laagang!
Shelbyville, IN (46176)

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STAMFORD  Connecticut advocates for victims of domestic and sexual violence on Friday decried cuts to federal funding they said would prevent them from operating hotlines, or providing other essential services to survivors.

Gov. Ned Lamont has proposed $18 million in state funding to fill the gap in victim services and to fund housing assistance programs for those experiencing domestic violence.

The governors proposal followed a recent Hearst Connecticut Media Group investigative series that uncovered numerous ways key public systems in the state had failed to adequately address intimate partner violence, including stagnant funding to curb the problem.

Other advocates have also called for life sentences for those convicted of murder related to intimate partner violence.

The proposed influx of state money also comes as advocates said the pandemic, now in its third year, has seen a historic rise in calls from victims in need of help.

It was a couple years ago that we first got the call  first infection, Danbury Hospital, a nurse, Lamont recalled Friday afternoon during a press conference at the Domestic Violence Crisis Center in Stamford to highlight the proposed funding.

In the early days of the pandemic, the governor said the states 211 hotline soon began fielding hundreds of calls from people scared if they were going to live. Then the messages turned to people wondering when their unemployment checks would arrive, the governor said.

Living had a different meaning at that time, too, Lamont recalled. People didnt know how they were going to survive, physically, from one month to the next.

Along with an increase in sexual and domestic violence, the governor pointed to other societal ills that increased in the last two years, from an increase in shootings and crime to unruly behavior in schools.

These are symptoms of something a lot more serious. You see it in domestic abuse and sexual violence, you see it opioid abuse, you see it in just rank bad behavior in some of our high schools, Lamont said. And its going to be with us for a while.

Suzanne Adam, executive director of the Domestic Violence Crisis Center in Stamford, said bridging the gap left by cuts in federal funding will simply save lives.

Domestic violence thrives in isolation, the pandemic provided that evidence without a doubt, said Adam, whose organization serves Stamford, Norwalk, Darian, New Canaan, Westport, Wilton and Weston.

The organization saw a 25 percent increase in counseling services per client in fiscal year 2021, Adam said. Advocacy services increased 147 percent, while safe house stays nearly tripled from 19 days to 52.

The affordable housing shortage in Fairfield County has made it extremely challenging for domestic violence victims, most of whom have experienced some level of financial abuse, and are at a disadvantage in this highly competitive rental and housing market, she added.

For some who spoke on Friday, the question of providing services and funding for victims fell close to home. State Rep. Corey Paris, D-Stamford, recalled his youth growing up as a child of abuse.

I hid a lot of things, I hid bruises that I had, I hid feelings that I had, he said, describing how difficult it was to see families living normal lives, while he kept his experiences hidden.

So governor thank you for your lifeline to me as well, he told Lamont.

Meghan Scanlon, president and CEO of the Connecticut Coalition Against Domestic Violence, an organization that represents more than a dozen domestic violence service agencies, said the money would help organizations maintain the services theyve provided for more than 30 years.

You can get a sense of how devastating it would have been to lose this funding, she said. It would have meant we would lose our crisis response, we would lose our ability to advocate for basic needs, we would lose our court-based advocates, we would lose our law enforcement advocacy. So all of these essentials that survivors deserve when theyre seeking to get out of a violent situation would have all been eliminated.

She said if the funding does not go through, more than 100 jobs could be eliminated from the statewide domestic violence network. The money is also needed to run a statewide domestic violence hotline.

Just in 2021, we had over 28,000 contacts to that hotline via phone, text, email and chat, and we have seen that increase even throughout the couple months of 2022, she said.

Lamont has also unveiled a proposal that would prevent someone convicted of a crime involving family violence from being granted a gun permit in the state.

That proposal, and others the governor has unveiled that would tighten access to guns in the state, comes as the U.S. Supreme Court is expected to rule on a challenge to New Yorks law governing the carrying of guns outside of a persons home.

People who have been found guilty of domestic violence carrying pistols just seems nuts to me, Lamont said Friday, when asked about the possible implications of the pending Supreme Court case on his legislative gun proposals.

Yeah, Im worried theyre gonna take away states like ours ability to keep people safe  were gonna watch that carefully, he added.
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Back to tradition: Ludington's St. Patrick's Day activities coming March 19

Daily News File Photo Daily News File Photo Ludingtons annual St. Patricks Day celebration returns on Saturday, March 19.

With races, a scavenger hunt, a parade and more, Ludingtons St. Patricks Day activities will be back in the traditional sense on Saturday, March 19.

Thats according to Jen Tooman, marketing and communications manager for the Downtown Ludington Board, which organizes the celebration.

This years event will feature some elements that were missing in 2021 due to COVID-19 restrictions.

Tooman noted that virtual options will still be available, not only for those who might still be uncomfortable in crowds, but also to allow people who are out of town on March 19 to still participate.

WHATS HAPPENING

The day will start off with the Irish Jog 5k and 10k runs, which also have virtual options still available.

The in-person race starts at 9 a.m. at the intersection of Loomis Street and Rath Avenue, finishing in the same spot. Registration for the in-person race is $30 and takes place from 7:30 to 8:45 a.m. at Legacy Plaza or online at www.downtownludington.org/stpatricksday.

The cost for the virtual race is $35, and online registration closes at noon on March 18.

The Follow the Rainbow Scavenger Hunt, which Tooman said was a big hit last year, starts at 10 a.m. and lasts until 6 p.m.

It will be similar to last year. There will be clues to lead you to each spot along the way, she said, adding that prizes including certificates to downtown businesses will be available.

Then comes the parade at noon on James and Melendy streets.

The St. Patricks Day parade is back, Tooman said, adding that its one of the activities that wasnt quite the same in 2021. We did a self-guided thing last year, but we didnt really do a parade. Its the first time (weve had an in-person parade) since 2019.

Registration for the parade is free and can be done online at www.downtownludington.org/stpatricksday. Participants can be in the parade individually or with a group, business or other organization, with options to sign up a decorated float, a musical ensemble, green-garbed pets and more.

Anyone can participate, Tooman said. Theres a prize for best entry  and anybody can get a green car or dress up in fun costumes.

Registration should be completed by March 12.

The Pub Crawl will also be back in its traditional format after being take-out only in 2021. The crawl starts at the conclusion of the parade around 1 p.m. and continues until 9 p.m.

Were going to have a map of all the bars that are open on that day  with riddles at each bar, Tooman said.

Pub Crawl participants can enter to win prizes by sharing photos on social media from each spot along the way.

The Ludington Outdoor Social District will allow people to participate without overcrowding the downtown bars, Tooman said.

The cost to participate in the Pub Crawl is $10; ticket and cup pick-up will be from 1 to 3 p.m. at The Mitten, where attendees will also have a chance to see two performances by the Steel City Rovers, according to Tooman.

Theyre a Celtic band from Canada.  Theyre great, she said.

OTHER ACTIVITIES

Jamesport Brewing Company will host its second annual beer run, which involves drinking 5 ounces of beer, running the quarter-mile around the block, and repeating those steps three times. The fastest time wins a prize.

The Fraternal Order of Eagles building will be open to the public, offering live music by Red Eye from 8 p.m. to midnight.

Sportsmans will have corned beef and cabbage, as well as drink specials, throughout the day. Ludington Bay Brewing Co. will offer specials, too.

Its just a fun day in what we like to call the quiet season, Tooman said. It seems pretty low-key, though (in) 2019 it started to get pretty amped up. Its been a long tradition in Ludington to have St. Patricks Day activities, and it was a super bummer in 2020, because we had to cancel right (as COVID-19 hit).

It feels good to bring it back how it was. Hopefully we can build up some steam and people can come in green.

She said people are encouraged to come out, explore, shop and have fun.
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Hong Kong: Legal aid head named

The Government today announced that Deputy Director of Legal Aid Chris Chong will take up the post of Director of Legal Aid on March 15, succeeding Thomas Kwong who will start his pre-retirement leave.

Secretary for the Civil Service Patrick Nip said Mr Chong possesses profound professional knowledge and rich experience in legal aid work while displaying proven leadership and management skills.

I am confident that he will lead the Legal Aid Department to continue to deliver quality service to the community.

At the same time, Mr Nip lauded Mr Kwong who has rendered 34 years of service with zeal and commitment.

As the Director of Legal Aid, Mr Kwong has led the department in rising to various challenges and made exemplary contributions in enhancing the quality of legal aid services. I wish him a fulfilling and happy retirement.

Click here for their biographies.

This story has been published on: 2022-03-04. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
Wondrous Xinjiang: Chinese opportunity through eyes of Belgian entrepreneur

Xinhua) 21:51, March 04, 2022

URUMQI, March 4 (Xinhua) -- For Belgian entrepreneur Decombel Danny Camiel, 59, Xinjiang is not only a second home but also a treasured place where he can build a successful business career.

Having been bullish about Xinjiang's development prospects as early as the beginning of the 21st century, the Belgian built a chemical fertilizer company in the region's Shawan County in 2006.

"It turned out I was right to start the business in Xinjiang," he said. "I think there is no place other than Xinjiang that could have given me such an opportunity."

GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY

Growing up by the sea in Belgium, Camiel never thought he would build a career in China -- especially not in the inland region of Xinjiang -- until he graduated from a Belgian college where he majored in animal husbandry.

"I had dined at Chinese restaurants with my family several times in my country before I came to China, but I was not used to the spicy food there," he said.

In 1988, Camiel began working for a China-America joint venture in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen. "When I tried Cantonese food for the first time I was so happy to find it wasn't spicy, and that seafood was also available there," he said.

Camiel has since worked in several Chinese coastal provinces, including Guangdong and Fujian, where he was promoted from technician to senior executive. He also met and married his wife, who is from Fujian, and the couple now has a daughter and a son.

In 2005, the company that Camiel worked for was struggling and facing closure, which set him thinking about the future.

"The land area in Belgium, and even Europe, is quite limited and there are few opportunities there," said Camiel, who has long been engaged in the chemical fertilizer market. "But Chinese agriculture still has great potential."

The decision to go to Xinjiang was an easy one after a customer told him that the region is widely applying drip irrigation technologies, which means there is a huge demand for water-soluble fertilizer there.

SUCCESSFUL CAREER

"I have visited a lot of farmers in northern Xinjiang since 2005, speaking with them about the efficient usage of water-soluble fertilizer. I found they recognized many of my ideas," Camiel said. In 2006, he built a company that produces the specific fertilizer in Shawan County.

Although Camiel's chemical fertilizer business had achieved success in northern Xinjiang, he faced obstacles in expanding the market in the south of the region. "Many farmers in southern Xinjiang had not yet used drip irrigation technologies when I planned to expand my business there in 2011," he said.

He did not expect that the fertilizer, which was suitable for the land in northern Xinjiang, would fail to suit the land in the south due to the complicated soil types there.

"I spent a lot of time in the lab, looking for the best fertilizer formula," he said. His team finally found the best solution after intensive research. Camiel's company now sells 20,000 tonnes of chemical fertilizer each year, and it is used across approximately 10,000 hectares of farmland in the region.

"Camiel loves talking with farmers. He will not offer solutions until he has researched their problems thoroughly," said Li Yang, a sales manager in Camiel's company. "And he feels a sense of accomplishment when he is recognized."

"Big cities don't suit me. I'm comfortable in the countryside with farmers," he said.

Camiel has a new ambition: promoting the Belgian Blue cattle breed in China. "The Belgian Blue is a treasure of our country. I'm very confident since I have seen so much development in China over the years," he said. "I will work until I'm 70 to fulfill this goal."

(Web editor: Hongyu, Bianji)
RAKSUL, one of Japans most successful unicorns widely applauded for transforming conventional industry structures with digital technologies and the Internet, has successfully rolled out its fourth line of business, JOSYS, that redefines corporate IT with an integrated cloud solution that abstracts, simplifies and automates IT operations for employee lifecycle management. JOSYS provides a one-stop solution for businesses to accomplish increased productivity, cost optimization and boosted security. Conceptualized as a global SaaS product, JOSYS was set up from the ground up by RAKSULs India Center of Excellence in less than a year and JOSYS Inc. was subsequently spun off by RAKSUL.

RAKSUL India has been entrusted with the complete ownership of JOSYS product-line to reach its business expansion plans, and to that end, RAKSUL India targets to grow its headcount multifold over the next twelve months in the areas of SaaS platform development, data analytics and product management.

I saw a huge opportunity to streamline corporate IT by increasing efficiencies, reducing costs and enhancing security. A typical corporate employee uses a multitude of SaaS apps on their official IT devices which all need to be facilitated and this poses a significant overhead in terms of management, monitoring and security. Further the dependency on manual operations in corporate IT adds to the challenge. These pain-points are just the tip of the iceberg and our newest innovation, JOSYS, addresses them head-on. We are determined to fully leverage our India center for multidimensional growth of JOSYS business and to create additional business-lines that will not only revolutionize Japanese industries, but also drive transformations globally, states Yasukane Matsumoto, CEO & Founder, RAKSUL Inc.

Sanjay Rajasekhar, President, RAKSUL India, states, True to RAKSULs vision, BETTER SYSTEMS, BETTER WORLD, JOSYS is transforming the corporate IT function to render it a whole lot more effective, optimized and secure for businesses. RAKSUL India, a truly born-in-the-cloud entity has played a pivotal role in creating and launching JOSYS, and this is just the start of the journey in realizing its full potential as a global SaaS platform spanning the whole gamut of employee lifecycle management. We are proud of the cross-cultural integration and collaboration across our global team and we will rapidly scale the India center by owning the product innovation mission.
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From high-end luxury to humble country motels, hotel operators are in full preparation to get rooms, staff and booking lines up to speed as they welcome back travellers following international borders re-opening for fully vaccinated guests.

The sector is one of the countrys biggest employers but has been decimated by the pandemic, with city-based properties forced to close or operate at near empty levels. Operators say the only way is up and many are embarking on expansion plans to cater for a resurgence in demand.

Demand across Australia is strengthening, and we are starting, in some areas, to get close to 2019 levels, Accor chief executive Sarah Derry said.

Renders of the Marriott International-managed W Sydney hotel, due to open this year at Darling Harbour

Much of that rebound in hotel patronage is concentrated in leisure destinations such as Port Douglas, Sunshine Coast, Noosa and Byron Bay.
Legal aid aside, legal advice can be expensive. And as those going through a divorce well know, finding a low-cost family law firm is a bit like searching for a needle in a haystack.

Wallumatta Legal, created by Macquarie University and international law firm DLA Piper, may not see itself as a needle. But the academics and legal professionals behind this low fee, not-for-profit family law firm agree its creation heralds a new day for legal services in Australia.

Wallumatta Legals Daniel Ghezelbash with law student and intern Perri Hutchings. Credit:Rhett Wyman

Located within Macquarie Universitys new arts precinct, the firm will provide family law services to the missing middle  parents who arent eligible for legal aid or other free services but cannot readily afford the fees charged by most commercial lawyers.

The missing middle covers most essential workers in aged care, as well as nurses, teachers, cleaners and delivery drivers. They are very capable and are the people we relied on to get us through the COVID-19 pandemic, says Daniel Ghezelbash, an associate professor at Macquarie Law School and board member of Wallumatta Legal.
Its one of the most important and fast-growing movements in contemporary writing, but what exactly is creative non-fiction? The blanket term covers the work of many writers, including some who would be astonished to be listed under that label.

The simplest definition is true stories well told. Delve a little further and its writing that uses literary craft and techniques (narration, characters, dialogue, scenes) to tell stories about real people and events in a way that brings them to life. When she was prose editor of Westerly magazine, Rachel Robertson went further: its usually told in the first person and the narrators voice is a key part of the work. The best works  use their apparent topic to explore a deeper issue and are both timely and timeless, she said.

Susan Orleans work is an example of creative non-fiction. Credit:Christopher Pearce

Of course, this kind of writing has been around since St Augustine wrote his Confessions, but we can see it develop in the past decade or two through the boom in memoirs, travel and nature writing, personal essay collections and immersive journalism. Well-known examples include Annie Dillards An American Childhood, Barbara Ehrenreichs Nickel and Dimed and Susan Orleans The Orchid Thief. There are also anthologies and magazines devoted to the form and courses on offer for would-be writers.

Lee Kofman, herself a teacher and writer of creative non-fiction with her books The Dangerous Bride and Imperfect, has compiled a brief online history of Australian writers in the genre, from the pioneers (Clive James, Robyn Davidson, Thomas Keneally), to the veterans (Helen Garner, Raimond Gaita, Robert Drewe), through to the newcomers (Anna Funder, Kate Holden, Alice Pung, Chloe Hooper). Already there are new names to add to that list.
Waititi and Darby also acknowledge Disneys Pirates of the Caribbean, which you could class as comedic for sure, says Darby. But its a Disney thing. Its got a huge budget, its great. But I think what we wanted to do was turn it on its head. And dont do the cliche. Dont do the kind of argh and me hearties and all that kind of stuff because people are just going to go, yawn. Instead, Our Flag Means Death yearns to tap into the mundanity of the world of piracy. Its a tonal note, the pair say, that leans into their native New Zealand comedic sensibility. Taika Waititi plays Captain Blackbeard. Credit:HBO MAX/Binge New Zealand comedy is like that. What sets us apart? Its finding the most boring things and making that interesting in a funny way, Waititi says. Because were from small towns and theres nothing to do, youve just got to entertain yourself, Waititi adds. So, with the pirates, what do they do in their downtime? Because you wouldnt have been raiding a ship every day. A lot of the time youd be sitting around in the Caribbean in the boiling hot sun on a boat going, When is this going to end? Aiding them on the sailing ship Revenge is the most dysfunctional crew you could hope to find: Frenchie (Joel Fry), Wee John Feeney (Kristian Nairn), Oluwande (Samson Kayo), Jim (Vico Ortiz), Lucius (Nathan Foad) and, as something of a nemesis, Rory Kinnear as Captain Nigel Badminton.

In that sense, Our Flag Means Death is a workplace comedy, perhaps in the same way as The Office, Brooklyn Nine-Nine or Scrubs are workplace comedies. We also wanted to avoid super adventurous action sequences and glamorous, really big cinematic stuff, Waititi says. I point out to him that the show does indeed look cinematic. He deadpans back: Yeah, we f-cked that up. At first glance, there are obvious risks. Our Flag Means Death is a show whose punchlines will land close to sensitive topics like slavery and colonisation. I think any colonial country is ripe fodder for comedy, Waititi says. Someone mentioned, Oh you make fun of cultures, and I said, What cultures? And they went, The British. I was like, Oh, Im cool with that. I grew up watching all these BBC comedies, and I fell in love with everything I saw. Rhys Darby But, Waititi says, it is actually not that big an effort to try and be a little more sensitive. And it doesnt really affect my comedy. At first, I was like, theres so many labels, all these things get too much, but then you just make an effort and then you get over it. Then you discover youre just doing it and wasnt that big a deal. Its a bigger deal just to complain about it. Our Flag Means Death comes from a very specific New Zealand comedic culture. Emerging in the wake of Peter Jacksons Bad Taste, Meet the Feebles and Brain Dead, the partnership of Waititi, Darby, Jemaine Clement, Bret McKenzie and others was formed on the campus of Victoria University of Wellington. From it sprang a range of things, including the live touring act So Youre a Man, films like Tongan Ninja and What We Do In The Shadows and the TV series Flight of the Conchords.

The stuff I make is not usually broad, broad, straight-out comedy, says Waititi. I like having that balance where you have a little drama or that you pull the audience in with the laughs and then you sock it to them with the actual message. Thats what the power of comedy is. And I dont think dramas are as powerful in that sense. Darby concurs. Tragedy and comedy live side by side, youre on a tightrope, he says. Usually for me, thats the thing. Its comedic but the reason its so funny is you know that tragedy is just there holding it together. And those moments are way more pleasurable, and they stick with you because theyre powerful. Rhy Darby, second right, with his band of pirates in Our Flag Means Death. Credit:HBO MAX/Binge Taika and I have not done a lot of dramatic acting together because comedy is easy for us, and the whole time the only way you stay on that tightrope is by having heart, Darby adds. If you dont have the empathy and the heart to begin with, then you can do as much comedy as you like, [but] youre going to fall off the tightrope because people arent going to believe it. In one sense the moral of the story  if there is indeed a moral at the heart of wry, dry comedies like this  is that the die is cast young for both Bonnet and Blackbeard. As told through flashbacks, the lives of both were shaped by their childhoods: all at once both different, and the same.

Ask any expensive therapist, they always take it back, Waititi says. They go, what are you feeling today, and lets go back to the first time you felt that. When was that? Oh yeah, when I was eight. And everything stems from those experiences when you were a kid. Loading Darby credits those shared origins  that both he and Taika were raised in New Zealand in different but similar families  as one of the reasons their creative connection is so strong and their friendship (along with Clement, McKenzie and others) has endured. My parents split up when I was born, dad buggered off and my mum, she was a solo mum and shed had four kids, nine years earlier, Darby says. I was a mistake and I felt like I shouldnt be here. [So] I grew up watching all these BBC comedies, and I fell in love with everything I saw. The Pythons became my dads for a long time. And then anything else I could get my hands on. Waititi concurs. Me and Rhys often talk about how we have got very similar backgrounds, that we were both raised by a single mother and our dads cleared out when we were young, he says. Theres a drive when stuff like that happens, theres a feeling like, I want to be seen. And I think theres a lot of that in what this show is about. Its about wanting to be seen for who you are and what you can do.
Thought it was difficult to get your child into daycare?

Then try landing a spot in Australias most popular doggy daycare centres, where some pooches are reluctantly being turned away due to surging demand.

South Yarra-based Zac Gross and wife Monique spend one or two days at home with their staffy terrier cross Poppy. Credit:Darrian Traynor

With workers heading back to the office more frequently, owners are trying everything to keep their furry offsiders happy  and mitigate any potential separation anxiety. That includes paying up to about $80 for daycare, installing video cameras at home, and stocking up on calming treats and toys.

At Sydneys Dogs in Town, business has gone barking mad, with the onslaught of rain adding to the mix. Co-owner Jakub Illes says theyre busier than ever. Some days when we are full capacity, unfortunately we have to say no for comfort of other pups.
MICHAEL THORNHILL: 1941-2022

Michael Thornhill was, and is, an important Australian filmmaker, film critic, film and TV producer as well as a rather contradictory character. To my eyes he was both a poet of the cinema, a political loudmouth sitting yelling at me in the corner of a pub and a loyal friend. He was talented, intelligent and verbose; a much loved personality.

Foreground: Producer/director, Michael Thornhill and Camera Operator, David Gribble on the set of Between the Wars, 1974. Credit:Edgecliff Films

As a director the ground he covered breathed working class underdog, intelligentsia rebel, sexual underworld observer and criminal underworld storyteller. His film tastes, as he said himself, were catholic. Though not always commercially successful his films were unreservedly down to earth Australian, something that other filmmakers didnt achieve because its either in your bones or its not.

His major features, Between Wars (1974) and FJ Holden (1977) were groundbreaking ventures in the early days of Australian cinema. His short film The American Poets Visit (1969) was the best short film ever made from a Frank Moorhouse story. His influence on the Australian film industry was huge, especially when he was a generous and astute executive at the New South Wales Film Corporation (later the NSWFTO) where he, David Roe and Jenny Woods were instrumental in funding films like My Brilliant Career, Bliss, Stir, Newsfront and many others.
Your editorial calls for climate change talks. Yet this federal government, regardless of any rhetoric, has proved time and time again that it has no desire for action. Unless, of course, the next clay shooting clubhouse is to be built on a flood plain. Michael Blissenden, Dural Creek by name ... What to do if our new Badgerys Creek airport is flooded? No worries. Use seaplanes or change it to an ocean terminal (Rain bomb gives the city a wide berth, March 4). Paul Lau, Dolls Point Against the tide The experts are in strong, unanimous agreement that Warragamba should not be raised. I guess that means that the state government will embrace the project (Letters, March 4). Trevor McCarroll, Shoalhaven Heads

Rivers of gold Illustration: John Shakespeare Credit: Of course, Clive Palmer can spend his money whatever way he likes, but I cant help thinking that the money spent in the past few days on full-page plus half-page ads for his party could have provided considerable relief to flood victims, some of the Australians he purports to care about (Help among heartbreak after the storm, March 4). Joan Brown, Orange Bailing them out The resilience and resourcefulness of communities must not absolve government of its role in creating and maintaining safe infrastructure everywhere (Tales of hope as waters rise, March 4) Cecile Yazbek, Asquith

Im thinking of getting an outboard motor for my lawn mower. Michael Deeth, Como West Grant, ABC should allow unpopular viewpoints to air In Russia, Vladimir Putins police quickly shut down protesters who oppose the invasion of Ukraine. In Australia, we have Stan Grant to silence anyone who wishes to voice an opinion that disagrees with the majority view, however misguided that opinion might seem to most of us (Please leave: Stan Grant ejects pro-Putin audience member from Q&A set, smh.com.au, March 4). I hope Grant appreciates the irony implicit in his actions. Brad Smith, Greenwich While I deplore Russian actions in Ukraine, find support for dictator Putin in the West repugnant, and remain a dedicated supporter of the ABC, I believe that Grants action in removing an audience member with unpopular views from Q&A was a mistake. If the ABC is a defender of free speech, then it must also be prepared to allow the expression of views which might be highly unpopular. Perhaps the audience member in question had his facts wrong, but that shouldnt bar him from the program, as we continually see politicians doing the very same thing without attracting any censure, except from their opponents. As a confirmed believer in Australias liberal democratic society I believe that the Putin supporter in the Q&A audience was denied the kind of fairness to which everyone in our civilised society is entitled. Derrick Mason, Boorowa

Silence is complicity Message to the West: Remember what Pastor Martin Niemoller said,First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out  because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out  because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak outbecause I was not a Jew. Then they came for me  and there was no one left to speak for me. Message to the Russians: Time for a new revolution. Message to Donald Trump: Now look what your little mates gone and done (Nuclear power plant in Zaporizhzhia on fire after attack by Russian forces; one million refugees flee Ukraine, smh.com.au, March 4). Stephen Jacobs, Castlecrag Vape shifting The incidence of vaping in high schools does not surprise me (Schools lock toilets to battle surge in vaping, March 4). I tutor students attending both public and private schools. While not vaping themselves they seem to accept the normalisation of this practice. Any teachers supervising toilets? No. Students accompanied by a trustworthy student when leaving class to go to the toilet? No. Other students too scared to dob them in? Yes. And parents checking and advising their children? Obviously not. And the government cracking down on retailers and  enough said. Richard Fry, Marrickville

Taxing questions Economists may agree that Australias deficits will never be extinguished (Budget red ink here to stay, economists say , March 4). However, do we not need to ask whether it is fair to leave a mountain of debt for future generations to service? Our economy has performed well through COVID-19 thanks to the largesse of JobSeeker and JobKeeper but the ageing of the population will continue to increase the demands on our healthcare and aged care sectors. Add to these the costs associated with net zero carbon, the now widely-accepted need to bolster our defence capabilities and likely increased frequency of natural disasters, the government will need to find ways to finance ballooning liabilities, especially as current low-interest rates are not guaranteed to continue. It is time for a thorough overhaul of our tax system. Rather than increase personal and company taxes or indeed the relatively low GST rate, it is now more appropriate to apply levies to the bad things. We should tax carbon, sugar, beef and traffic. Such imposts are not regressive and are no different to taxing smokers, consumers of alcohol and fuel users. John Kempler, Rose Bay

Transport off track The revelations the Transport Ministers office was fully informed of Transport for NSW plan to shut down the Sydney train system before morning on Monday February 21 inform us of two things (Transport briefed Elliotts office the night before railway shutdown, March 3). Firstly, the Ministers denial of any pre-knowledge of the plan is untenable. Secondly, the very hatching of such a plan of devastating disruption to train travellers within Transport for NSW exposes hothead decision-makers who think that creating public transport turmoil is a reasonable thing to do, instead of progressing negotiations. It is not just common-sense that is absent, but the values of honesty and integrity. Alan Carruthers, Artarmon Vale Rod Marsh

The person who called Rod Marsh Iron Gloves during Marshs first Test match in 1970 must have had nowhere to hide during subsequent years when caught Marsh, bowled Lillee became an unbeaten record (Rodney Marsh: A great gloveman who became part of nations folklore, Rod Marsh displays the impact of keeping to Jeff Thomson and Dennis Lillee in January 1975. Credit:Gregory Lee smh.com.au, March 4). Of all his deeds on the cricket field, perhaps his visible and emphatic shaking of his head toward Greg Chappell as Trevor Chappell was about to bowl the infamous underarm most captured the spirit with which he played the game. Vale Bacchus. Bernie Bourke, Ourimbah Rod Marsh, Australias inspirational wicketkeeper/batsman dead at the youngish age of 74. Marsh was the nuggety, dogged, dauntless, blustering example of the way Australias cricketers used to be, before they were herded into a kind of beige unit of identical thinking. Rod Marsh was always an individual, and will be remembered as one of Australias greatest, unforgettable sporting characters. Thanks for the indelible memories, Rod. Rosemary OBrien, Ashfield

Chelsea going cheap Opportunity knocks at a never-to-be-repeated price of $3.4 billion (Abramovichs incredibly tough call to sell Chelsea, March 4). Mustafa Erem, Terrigal Operas more my aria I like a good pub too, but I havent found one yet that comes within a bulls roar of the majesty, emotion and spine-tingling excitement of a good operatic aria (Letters, March 4). Ill save the membership fees of the Philistine Club and put it towards my next opera subscription. Robert Hickey, Green Point

The cupboard was baaa Hot water cupboards have even more uses than drying nappies and growing mushrooms (Letters, March 4). We used to save the new-born motherless lambs by keeping them in a box in the cupboard. Bottled milk and warmth was all they needed. Patricia Spooner, North Turramurra Susan West, I think it used to be called the airing cupboard and it was installed in thousands of New Zealand homes. A very useful space for drying and airing clothes, among other things, in the long, cold and wet NZ winters. Jane Jilek, Castlecrag Nay. Bores Neighbours axed. There is a God (Neighbours to end as broadcast friends bail, March 4). Ryszard Linkiewicz, Caringbah South

Postscript Global warning  two words emailed by Scott Poynting of Newtown which summarised, succinctly, most correspondents response to the floods which gripped the east coast of the country this week. Early in the week our sympathy was clearly directed towards the people of the Ukraine, who letter writers believed could not possibly hold out against a foe the size of Russia. And yet, all we offer are sanctions, wrote Ann Bolton of Seaforth. Sanctions are great, but Ukraine will cease to exist long before they will be felt by the Russians. As the devastating rain battered the coast, correspondents wrote of concerns for those affected, what they saw as a recurring threat to our way of life because of climate change and lack of action from the government. Graham Cochrane of Balmain wrote: Drought, fires, floods: unprecedented. One in a 100 years. One in 500 years. One in a 1000 years. We seem to hear this more and more regularly. In the passage of time it will become precedented, just like last year and here we go again. And if our PM had been hoping that climate change would not be a major issue for the coming election, wrote Meredith Williams of Northmead, surely these floods will have swept his hopes away, along with the lives, livelihoods, hopes and securities of so many Australians. All parties must take note, for the sake of all on this sacred earth.
Nineteen-thousand flood victims have pleaded for financial help, as more Defence troops and two navy vessels will be brought into Queensland to help with the clean-up and damage assessment.

Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk announced on Friday that $2.2 million had been paid out to about 5400 people, from about 19,000 applications seeking financial assistance.

More ADF troops will be brought in help the clean-up in Brisbane. Credit:Adrian Schrinner Twitter.

While Brisbanes volunteer mud army was reactivated for Saturday morning after being stood down, the clean-up was expected to be lengthy, and the flood damage was easily into the billions, Ms Palaszczuk said.

More than 67,000 insurance claims have already been made across flood-ravaged parts of Queensland and NSW.
I want to take a walk, Mehdi Ali said. By myself. Go as far as I can. Thats the first thing Im going to do.

Such were the simple hopes of the 24-year-old, who has lost more than a third of his young life to Australias punitive detention system.

Mehdi Ali, in a photo posted to Facebook last year. Credit:Facebook/Mehdi Ali

When he spoke to The Age and the Herald in January, freedom for Mr Ali and his cousin, 25-year-old Adnan Choopani, seemed unimaginable. Now, after walking out of the Park Hotel in Melbournes inner-north, which served as their prison, they are free  in name at least.

The men, both Iranian nationals, were just 15 and 16 when, in July 2013, they sought safety and protection in Australia. Their boat arrived just three days after former prime minister Kevin Rudd signed a deal with Papua New Guinea to resettle refugees in that country, declaring: as of today, asylum seekers who come here by boat without a visa will never be settled in Australia.
Multiple cases of Japanese encephalitis have been detected across Australias east coast, with one woman now in hospital on life support, prompting the federal health department to declare an incident of national significance.

On Friday afternoon, Victorian health authorities said the number of suspected cases had doubled to eight from Wednesday, including two children, and that six people were in hospital with the virus.

The cases come after authorities discovered a massive outbreak at pig farms in NSW, Queensland and Victoria that had gone undetected for weeks.

Queensland authorities on Friday confirmed a woman in her 60s was in Prince Charles Hospital in a critical condition after contracting the disease while on a campervan trip. Federal authorities are investigating several other cases of encephalitis of unknown origin.
Eleven months after hearings began the Perth Casino Royal Commission will hand down its findings on Friday, but the report will not be made public until the McGowan government considers it.

The commission was the third and final major state inquiry into the operations of Crown casinos and resorts, triggered by reporting in The Age, Sydney Morning Herald and WAtoday that found its casinos were being used by Chinese crime syndicates to launder money.

The Crown Resorts Perth casino and entertainment complex. Credit:David Dare Parker/Bloomberg

WA Racing and Gaming Minister Tony Buti said the government would consider the findings before tabling the report in Parliament.

Western Australians can be assured that the state government will be seriously considering all the recommendations put forward in the final report, he said.
On returning home, its crucial to collect evidence before cleaning up The gut-wrenching return home might tempt many people to restore some kind of order to their space. Professor Jarzabkowski says its important to hold off until images of the damage have been collected from multiple angles. This is a really emotional time for people when theyve been flooded. Personal items and things that are irreplaceable will have been damaged or lost, so it can be very tempting to want to just get in there, clean everything and get the mess out. But hold that emotion for a moment, explains Professor Jarzabkowski. Loading Take photos and videos of the damage from a few angles first. This means that when someone comes out to assess your insurance claim, it will be very apparent to them why this damage was caused by the flood.

Professor Jarzabkowski explains that insurance companies are not working against impacted residents, but will need to do their due diligence as part of their job. By providing as much evidence as possible, it makes this process much smoother. When someone comes around to assess the damage, theyre not coming around to doubt you, but I know it can feel like that when youve lost something that you value, she says. Theyre only coming over to check there isnt fraud or moral hazard because, if a few people do that, that increases the cost for everyone. By you documenting the damage, youre doing your best to help that assessor give you a fair deal. Keep samples of items that will need to be discarded Professor Jarzabkowski also recommends keeping samples of heavily damaged items that need replacing and will be thrown out before an assessor can make it to the property, such as materials and fabric from things like carpets and couches.

Keep a sample in addition to a photograph, so its really clear as to why that item wasnt kept, she says. To get replacements for something thats no longer there is much more difficult if you cant substantiate the claim. Making a list of damaged items and taking photographs can help with insurance claims. Credit:Matt Dennien Make a list of damaged items Professor Jarzabkowski suggests people make a list of each item they are getting rid of and include a detailed description, such as brand, model and serial number where possible. She also suggests taking photos as each item is discarded. This puts you in a better position to have the insurer work as sympathetically as possible with you while they do their due diligence, which they will need to do.

Understand your policy and what you can claim Depending on insurance, loss or damage to building and contents caused by flood is usually covered. In some instances, residents may also be able to claim towards the cleanup of the damage. Those affected are encouraged to check their policy, or request a copy from their insurer, as they could save thousands in additional benefits if they have comprehensive home and contents insurance. According to the Financial Rights Legal Centre, there can be additional benefits under insurance policies that cover:

Emergency or alternative accommodation

Removal of debris and demolition

Professional fees such as architects, surveyor and legal fees

The costs of complying with new regulations Additional benefits can be on top of the insured amount, and therefore its important to check eligibility for benefits before agreeing to any settlement of a claim. Those who need urgent financial assistance should let their insurer know, as they may be able to fast track their claim and make an advance payment within five business days of proof of urgent financial need, according to the Insurance Council of Australia. Any advance payment may be deducted from the total value of a claim. Will insurance premiums go up? Insurance does typically go up after a flood because the more of a risk you are the more the regulator requires the insurance company to hold capital in reserve to cover the potential for your disaster, says Professor Jarzabkowski.

While this can cause financial strain for many people, it does mean that when there is a disaster, there wont be any issues in the insurer being able to cover the costs. Each time that properties are known to be higher risk, their insurance price goes up because that shows that the risk is being taken prudently and that the insurer will actually have capital reserve to pay, explains Professor Jarzabkowski. Loading So thats a really good protection for us as citizens. If you insure prudently, theyll have the money because thats how its regulated. However, Professor Jarzabkowski notes that insurance costs always need to be balanced with what you can afford.

Will the Federal Government Reinsurance Pool help bring down insurance premiums? The governments reinsurance pool for cyclone and related flood damage is in its final design and slated to be administered from July 1, 2022. However, this wont apply to the current south-east Queensland and northern NSW floods. The reinsurance pool is still going through legislation and the type of flooding were having right now actually wouldnt be covered by the pool as it currently stands, explains Professor Jarzabkowski. Its for cyclones and floods in northern Australia and, as we know, a lot of this has started to move into what wouldnt be defined as that area, and its not cyclone induced anyway. Professor Jarzabkowski believes there may be a chance that the legislation will change once the pool is in effect, but at the moment, it wont help those currently affected.

Australia is one of the most exposed countries in the world to natural disasters and yet also one of the most under-insured of advanced economies, professor Jarzabkowski says. Credit:Getty Australias rebuild efforts need shared information and resilience planning for the future Professor Jarzabkowski studies disaster response systems around the world. The systems where the information from insurers is 100 per cent plugged into the planning and recovery are best, she explains. This allows crucial information and loss data collected from insurers during a disaster to be utilised by local authorities, the public and private sectors and local government to then restore and rebuild these communities in a more resilient way, preventing future damage and lowering insurance premiums. Loading
Brussels: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has strongly criticised NATOs refusal to create a no-fly zone over Ukraine, saying the alliance had given Russia the green light to continue its bombing campaign.

Today there was a NATO summit, a weak summit, a confused summit, a summit where it was clear that not everyone considers the battle for Europes freedom to be the number one goal, Zelensky said a televised address late on Saturday morning, AEDT.

Today, the leadership of the alliance gave the green light for further bombing of Ukrainian cities and villages, having refused to set up a no-fly zone.

Overnight he released another video as evidence he had not fled the country.

Every two days information comes out that I have fled somewhere  fled from Ukraine, from Kyiv, from my office. As you can see, I am here in my place, Andriy Borisovich (Yermak) is here. Nobody has fled anywhere. Here, we are working, Zelensky said. We like jogging, but now we dont have time for that, for various cardio exercises. Working. Glory to Ukraine.
In a sign of the pressure on the countrys electricity supply, local officials said only one of the six power units was operating after the attack. The International Atomic Energy Agency  the UNs nuclear watchdog  said no damage had been done to the reactors and Ukrainian staff were continuing to operate the facilities despite the Russian takeover. The radiation monitoring system at the site was functioning normally and there had been no release of radioactive material, said the agencys director Rafael Grossi. Zelensky reiterated calls for a no-fly zone, a move the international community has so far resisted in an effort to contain the conflict with nuclear-armed Russia.

At an emergency meeting of NATO foreign ministers in Brussels, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the alliance would defend every inch of its territory. The stance offers little comfort to Zelensky, whose country is not a NATO member. The leaders of the Quad - Scott Morrison, Joe Biden, Narendra Modi and Fumio Kishida. Credit:Kate Geraghty, AP, Bloomberg Elsewhere, attempts at a united front faltered when an emergency meeting of the Quad alliance could not persuade India to join the condemnation of Russia by the United States, Australia and Japan. Prime Minister Scott Morrison emerged from the online meeting of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue with US President Joe Biden, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to warn that Russia was intent on continuing the invasion. Morrison spoke in the meeting about the importance of sending a message from the West to China about the heavy cost to Russian President Vladimir Putin, but he acknowledged later that India would take a more neutral stance compared to others.

Loading Im not one of those who thinks that President Putin is one who is dissuaded from his murderous acts here, Morrison said. He will continue to press and do what hes going to do, but that should not stop the rest of the world from further pressing in and tightening the vice. Morrison warned against equating Ukraine with Taiwan and stoking fears of a similar invasion by China but said leaders had to send a message to avoid a similar conflict in the Indo-Pacific. Labor leader Anthony Albanese said all countries needed to stand against the war, but he made no criticism of India, which has called for an end to the conflict.

Its important that the globe speak out against this Russian aggression. I note, in particular, that China, because of its close relationship with Russia, has a particular responsibility, he said. Monitoring by US defence officials found Russian forces fired at least 480 missiles during the first week of the invasion including 230 from within Ukraine using mobile systems, another 160 from Russia, 70 from Belarus and a small number from the Black Sea. The Pentagons surveillance suggested that Russian tanks and troop carriers were stalled to the north of Kyiv, possibly due to fuel shortages, but that the invading army was on the outskirts of Kharkiv and intent on bombarding major cities. One of the things that we certainly have seen them do in places like Kyiv and Kharkiv is hitting government infrastructure with increasing bombardments, a senior defence official told reporters. As theyve gotten somewhat geographically closer to some of these large population centres, the bombardments have increased. And its clear they are trying to weaken the governing structures that are resident in these population centres.

In the south of the country, Russian forces landed west of Mariupol on the Sea of Azov before moving on the city, while also spreading west of Crimea towards Odesa, a key port on the Black Sea for the export of Ukrainian grain, metals and other products. The British Ministry of Defence said Kharkiv and Chernihiv remained under Ukrainian control, but it issued a warning late on Friday (AEDT) about the threat to Mariupol, saying the city was now surrounded by Russian troops. The citys civilian infrastructure has been subjected to intense Russian strikes, the ministry said in an intelligence update. Human Rights Watch said Russian forces fired cluster munitions into at least three residential areas in Kharkiv on February 28, based on interviews with two witnesses and an analysis of 40 videos and photographs.

The United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights estimated 802 civilian casualties in Ukraine in the first seven days of the invasion, comprising 249 killed and 553 injured. This included 17 children who were killed and 30 who were injured. A resident looks at his apartment block destroyed in a Russian air raid in Kharkiv, Ukraine. Credit:AP The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant is a pressurised water reactor surrounded by a large concrete shell in a different design to the Chernobyl facility, said Tony Irwin, honorary associate professor at the Australian National University department of nuclear physics. Reckless attacks Ukraine relies heavily on nuclear-powered energy and has 15 reactors across the country.

The Zaporizhzhia reactor has multiple cooling systems and uses ponds built into the ground to store spent fuel. Loading The reactor itself is actually quite protected against events, said Professor Irwin, who worked at British nuclear reactors for many years and alongside Russian scientists after the Chernobyl disaster in 1986. The concrete container is so thick that it is proof against most bombs. If you have a heavy missile you would do damage, but you would have to aim it directly at the reactor. Professor Irwin said Russia was more likely to want to control the facility rather than destroy it and send radiation over their own people.

US Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm described the attacks as reckless and called for a halt to the military operations but said her department had not seen signs of elevated radiation readings near the facility. Russia steps up info wars Russias parliament on Friday passed a law imposing a jail term of up to 15 years for spreading fake information about the armed forces as Moscow fought back in the information war. Russian officials have repeatedly and without evidence said that false information has been intentionally spread by Russias Western enemies in an attempt to sow discord among the Russian people.
Washington: Bill Gates relationship with evil and abhorrent Jeffrey Epstein was a factor in Melinda French Gatess decision to divorce the Microsoft founder, she revealed yesterday.

Speaking publicly for the first time since the couple announced their split in May last year, French Gates, 57, said she made it very clear how uncomfortable she felt with her then-husbands interactions with the convicted paedophile, but that the warning appeared to fall on deaf ears.

It was not one thing, it was many things. I did not like that he had meetings with Jeffrey Epstein, she said, when asked why they broke up.

Philanthropist and co-founder of Microsoft, Bill Gates, left, and his wife Melinda in 2017. Credit:AP

Speaking on CBS Mornings, French Gates said she went to meet Epstein because she wanted to see who this man was.
New York: Members of the American billionaire Sackler family and their company, Purdue Pharma, have reached a deal with a group of US states that had long resisted the companys bankruptcy plan  a crucial step towards funnelling billions of dollars from the familys fortune to opioid addiction treatment programs, according to a new court filing.

If Judge Robert Drain, who has presided over Purdues bankruptcy proceedings in White Plains, New York, approves the agreement, the Sacklers would pay as much as $US6 billion ($8.2 billion) to help communities address the damage from the opioid crisis. In return, Sackler family members would get the prize they insisted upon for nearly three years: an end to all current and future civil claims against them over the companys prescription opioid business.

Pill Man made by Frank Huntley from his opioid prescription pill bottles, joins a protest by advocates for opioid victims outside the US Department of Justice in December. Credit:AP

The Sacklers liability protection would not extend to criminal prosecutions.

The deal still faces potential hurdles in the courts, but it is the first time in three years of negotiations that all states have accepted a settlement agreement with Purdue Pharma and the Sacklers. The new agreement includes an increase of at least $US1 billion in the amount the Sacklers would pay. In addition to the familys money, Purdue itself is contributing, through cash and revenue from future sales, payments expected to amount to $US1.5 billion by 2024, with far more to come.
PHILIPSBURG:--- On Wednesday, March 2nd, the Minister of Justice, Ms. Anna E. Richardson held an introductory meeting with trainers of the prison training institute of the Dutch Custodial Institutions Agency (Dienst Justitiele Inrichtingen, hereafter DJI).

Upon the request of Minister Richardson, the DJI trainers were invited to Sint Maarten, to familiarize themselves with the Pointe Blanche prison and to assess what training curriculum needs to be established for the prison personnel. Also, in attendance at the meeting was the prisons HR advisor, Mr. Richard Zijlstra who has been posted at the prison since December 2021 upon the request of the Minister of Justice from the Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations, to assist in HR matters at the prison.

Prior to 10-10-10, training for all justice executive workers was administered in Curacao until the dissolution of the Netherlands Antilles in 2010. After 2010, training for the prison guards was provided by the prison and the Justice Academy. After the Justice Academy was severely damaged by hurricane Irma and the building could no longer be used to give classes, no further structural training courses were put in place for current and new prison officers.

In 2018 the Minister of Justice in office at the time, enlisted the help of the Dutch government to improve Sint Maartens detention system. A team of professionals from the Dutch Custodial Institutions Agency traveled to Sint Maarten to offer their expertise and carried out an in-depth study on the countrys detention system. This team produced a Detention Plan of Action on how to address the many challenges of the countrys prison system. The DJI team consisted of six persons with many years of experience in prison and forensic care. They delivered the following report: A Safe Society: building a responsible and sustainable detention system on Sint Maarten (2018-2023),

One of the recommendations in the detention plan focuses on training programs for prison personnel. This item has also been taken up in the country package under measure H.20 as an urgent point of improvement.

Discussions with the DJI prison training institute on training programs for Sint Maarten prison personnel were started last year and have yielded positive results. The DJI prison training institute has proposed to provide similar training opportunities for prison personnel in Sint Maarten as is provided in the Netherlands. The DJI prison training institute would design a tailor-made training for the prison personnel on Sint Maarten, which, once completed, will certify the guards.

Minister Richardson recognizes that prison work is complex and requires a variety of skills. Well-trained prison personnel is important so that prison staff is equipped with the knowledge, skills, and attitude to perform their duties well and with respect for the rights and dignity of inmates. For this reason, it is of great importance that prison officers, current and new, are up to date with their knowledge and skills and should be provided the opportunity to continuously develop and enhance through further training.

The training provided by the DJI prison training institute covers topics such as self-defense, integrity, safety and security of staff and inmates, physical training, relevant legal regulations, positive communication, and more. The training usually consists of a minimum of 8 and a maximum of 12 persons per group and takes about 6 weeks to complete.

Once the training course is finalized and approved, the Minister of Justice, the prison director, and his team look forward to kicking off the first training course within the coming few months.
Somerset, KY (42501)

Today

Partly cloudy skies during the morning hours will become overcast in the afternoon. A stray afternoon thunderstorm is possible. High around 80F. Winds light and variable..

Tonight

Showers and thunderstorms likely. Low 63F. Winds SE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 80%.
Enterprise, AL (36331)

Today

Areas of dense morning fog. Sunshine along with some cloudy intervals. High 89F. Winds SW at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

Partly cloudy skies during the evening will give way to cloudy skies overnight. Low 68F. Winds SSW at 5 to 10 mph.
OWEN RACES TO THE RESCUE WHEN A BIO-HAZARD SCARE THREATENS A LOVED ONE ON THE ALL-NEW TIME PERIOD PREMIERE OF "9-1-1: LONE STAR" MONDAY, MARCH 21, ON FOXOwen and the 126 race to the rescue when Catherine (guest star Amy Acker) receives a package at the governor's office that may contain a bio-hazard. Meanwhile Grace and Carlos team up to investigate a prank 9-1-1 call that turns deadly in the all-new "Prince Albert in a Can" time period premiere episode of 9-1-1: LONE STAR airing Monday, March 21 (9:00-10:00 PM ET/PT) on FOX. (NLS-311) (TV-14 D, L, V)Cast: Rob Lowe as Owen Strand; Gina Torres as Tommy Vega; Ronen Rubinstein as T.K. Strand; Sierra McClain as Grace Ryder; Jim Parrack as Judd Ryder; Natacha Karam as Marjan Marwani; Brian Michael Smith as Paul Strickland; Rafael Silva as Carlos Reyes; Julian Works as Mateo Chavez; Brianna Baker as Nancy GillianGuest Cast: Amy Acker as Catherine
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BRIDGEPORT  A local man, who police said beat a woman with a stick and then set her hair on fire, was sentenced Thursday to five years in prison.

Superior Court Judge Kevin Russo said he was agreeing to the plea bargain for 20-year-old Reinaldo Ayala, only to relieve the victim from having to come to court and testify in front of a jury.

She does not want to testify about what happened in front of strangers and I will begrudgingly honor that request, the judge said.

But the judge also issued Ayala a protective order barring him from having further contact with the victim for 40 years.

Ayala had been charged with first-degree sexual assault, second-degree assault, third-degree strangulation and unlawful restraint but under the plea bargain he agreed to plead guilty to one count of first-degree assault.

The judge sentenced him to 10 years, suspended after he serves five years in prison and followed by five years of probation.

Ayala will receive credit for the time he has already served since his arrest in February 2019.

According to police, in the early morning of Feb. 26, 2019, officers were dispatched to Bridgeport Hospital, where Ayala had just dropped off an unconscious woman. Police said Ayala told them the woman had been attacked by two Black women who were with two Black men who had threatened to beat him up too if he interfered.

But police said that officers were suspicious because Ayala kept changing his story and could not give them a description of the assailants other than identifying their race.

Police said they questioned the victim when she became conscious, and she told them she and Ayala were driving from her mothers house when he became angry at something she said.

Ayala pulled the car over and then began punching the young woman numerous times, police said she told them. Police said Ayala ripped the womans clothes off, choked her, sexually assaulted her and then pulled out a lighter, grabbed the womans hair and set her hair on fire.

Police said Ayala drove into a vacant parking lot and ordered the woman, who was naked, out of the car, then he grabbed a stick and began beating her.

The woman passed out from the beating and woke up in the hospital, police said. She was treated at the hospital for extensive bruising on her arms and legs and bruises and bite marks on her face and body, police said.

When they checked Ayalas car, police said they found a stick and some of the victims burned hair.

This was a terrible assault, Senior Assistant States Attorney Tiffany Lockshier told the judge. The victim continues to suffer trauma.

Ayalas lawyer, James Ruane, told the judge that his client has a very low I.Q. and little control of his actions.

He is almost like a small child mentally, Ruane said.
In an indication that a federal grand jury is focusing its attention on specific school building projects, the town of Tolland on Thursday received a subpoena for records and correspondence with state officials surrounding the new Birch Grove Primary School project.

The 14-page subpoena seeks records from 2015 to the present identifying all Office of School Construction Grants & Review (OSCG&R) projects in Tolland; all communications with or related to Konstantinos Diamantis or any other employee of OSCG&R; all documents related to any OSCG&R project at Birch Grove Primary School.

The elementary school was built after the state Department of Administrative Services granted it emergency status, on Jan. 18, 2018, because of a report that its foundation was crumbling. The school was eventually built by DAmato Construction of Bristol.

The construction manager on the project was Construction Advocacy Professionals (CAP), which hired Anastasia Diamantis, Kosta Diamantis daughter, while receiving two contracts worth a combined $530,000 to oversee the Birch Grove project.

The grand jury issued a subpoena to the state in October seeking emails and texts by Diamantis from January 2018 until he left state service last October. Among the search words that they asked state officials to find were Construction Advocacy Services, DAmato Construction and Birch Grove.

Six days later, Tolland school officials attended the first meeting about the project at DAS offices. Among those in attendance were Edward DAmato and Tony DAmato, who oversaw the construction of the Tolland school. Diamantis and another member of his team, Robert Celmer, were at the meeting, as were several Tolland officials.

The existence of the Jan. 24, 2018, meeting was first reported by columnist Kevin Rennie.

The Connecticut Mirror has obtained portions of that meeting agenda, which was called to discuss the scope of the project and how much of the cost the state would cover. At that meeting, Diamantis indicated the state would cover 54% of the project.

The state ended up paying 89% of the $46 million to build the new school and 100% of the $9 million to install portable classrooms on the site so classes could be conducted while the old building was demolished and a new one built in its place.

Among those present at the meeting was Tolland Superintendent Walter Willett, who has not returned calls from the CT Mirror.

In a statement to The Courant, Willett alleged that local officials in Tolland were pressured by Diamantis to choose DAmato Construction and CAP for the school construction project.

Representatives of the town and the board felt they had no real choice as to CAP and DAmato because Mr. Diamantis routinely emphasized there would be detrimental effects to the project if Tolland chose contractors or consultants other than CAP or DAmato, he said, according to the statement provided to The Courant.

Because the project was granted emergency status, the town did not have to go out to bid for a general contractor or a construction manager.

The state eventually approved a $46 million project that increased by $2 million when an issue arose with the soil under where the new school was to be built. Diamantis eventually told town officials the state would cover the costs of the soil removal.

Tolland officials hired CAP, based in Plainfield, to first oversee installation of portable classrooms at the Birch Grove Primary School on June 20, 2019, according to contracts obtained by the CT Mirror. They were paid $70,000 for the work.

Then, in July 2019, CAP hired Diamantis daughter Anastasia, documents state.

Weeks later, a contract amendment, giving CAP another $460,000 worth of work, was signed on Sept. 18, 2019, for the construction of a new Birch Grove school.

According to statements included in a recent report compiled by former U.S. Attorney Stanley Twardy Jr., Anastasia Diamantis told investigators that the owner of CAP called her out of the blue and offered her the job.

She described CAP as a Rhode Island-based company. But she also acknowledged that she did work on school projects in Connecticut for CAP. Anastasia said she worked on spreadsheets and did filings for CAP, according to the investigation report.

Twardy was hired by the state to probe how Anastasia Diamantis came to get a job as an executive assistant to Chief States Attorney Richard Colangelo at the same time Colangelo was lobbying her father for pay raises for himself and other states attorneys.

Twardy was hired after Kosta Diamantis was fired as Deputy Secretary of the Office of Policy and Management by Gov. Ned Lamont.

Diamantis retired as head of the OSCG&R team rather than be placed on administrative leave. He has since filed a secret grievance trying to get his job back.

Colangelo resigned his position last month and Anastasia Diamantis was placed on administrative leave pending the outcome of the federal grand jury probe.
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GREENWICH  The three longtime elemtanry school principals who will retire at the end of the school year boast a combined 133 years of expertise, knowledge and wisdom, the Greenwich school district announced Thursday.

The principals who will say goodbye at the end of the school year in June are International School at Dundees Teresa Ricci, North Mianus Schools Angela Schmidt and Cos Cob Schools Gene Schmidt.

Ricci has been part of the staff at the Greenwich Public Schools since 1979, serving first as a teacher before becoming an administrator. She was ISDs first assistant principal and was part of the planning and opening team at the magnet school. Ricci has been the principal at ISD since 2003. Her career has spanned 43 years as a K-5, preschool, special education and summer school programs teacher.

Gene and Angela Schmidt, who are married, have been GPS fixtures for over two decades of their over 45-year careers. They have taught students worldwide, serving in schools in Arkansas, Florida, England and Italy before reaching Greenwich, the district said.

Angela Schmidt first served as a teacher and trainer of the International Baccalaureate program at ISD before transitioning to the role of assistant principal at Hamilton Avenue School. She later moved to New Lebanon School and returned to ISD as assistant principal.

Schmidt has been the principal at North Mianus since 2009 after originally joining GPS in 2000. During her tenure there, the school was chosen as a pilot for Personalized Learning and she led the efforts that resulted in the school receiving honors as a National Blue Ribbon School in 2019, the distrit said.

Gene Schmidt has been Cos Cobs principal since 2013. Like his wife, his GPS career began as a teacher at ISD, where he later presided as assistant principal. He was also assitant principal at Julian Curtiss School. He has been the principal at Cos Cob since 2013 after originally joining GPS in 2000.

During his tenure in education, he was also named Teacher of the Year in his district in Florida and earned a Fulbright exchange to teach in England.

Please join me in congratulating all three exceptional and inspiring leaders of our school community and extend a great deal of gratitude for their outstanding service through the years, Superintendent Toni Jones said in the districts newsletter. Although Terry, Angela, and Gene are looking forward to the next chapters of their lives, they will be greatly missed at GPS.

The three announced their retirements last week. We are incredibly grateful for their service and all that they have done during their long tenures at Greenwich Public Schools, the district said in its newsletter.

annelise.hanshaw@hearstmediact.com
Chelsea Ellingson hopes that her children keep masks in their backpacks.

She hopes that, once the eighth- and ninth-graders step inside their school buildings in Colorado's Weld RE-4 school district, where masking is optional, they pull their masks from their backpacks and slide them over their noses and mouths.

But she doubts it. "Both of them have said none of their friends are wearing them," said Ellingson, 36.

And, beyond gently reminding her children that she'd prefer they mask as they spill from the car, Ellingson is unwilling to press the issue. She said her children are maskless when they leave for school and maskless when they come home - and she has stopped asking questions about it. "They just don't want to be the ones singled out for wearing it."

Children across America are facing a similar dilemma. After more than a year of required masking in many districts, school officials are rapidly rolling back rules to make face coverings optional, sometimes because their hands have been forced by politicians at the state level.

And in many places, according to interviews with students, parents and teachers, going mask-optional really means going maskless.

"It was pretty immediate," said Elizabeth Miller, another mother in the Weld RE-4 district, which enrolls about 800 students and stopped requiring face coverings in mid-January. "It was 'masks optional' and masks were basically off."

The debate over masking has raged throughout this school year, with proponents insisting that masks are key to keeping coronavirus cases down and classrooms open for in-person learning - while detractors say the pandemic is in its late stages, meaning it's high time that parents get to decide what health policies are best for their children. Some also argue that face coverings interfere with children's ability to learn and engage with peers.

In a reflection of the politicization of public health measures that America has seen throughout the pandemic, right-leaning districts and states were swifter than their left-leaning counterparts to roll back school mask mandates. But blue states are now joining suit, with the Democratic governors of New Jersey, Delaware, Oregon and Connecticut announcing this month that they will end their states' school mask mandates. On Sunday, New York Governor Kathy Hochul joined the chorus, declaring that her state's school mask madate will end Wednesday.

Republican politicians, pundits and school leaders have touted mask-free schooling as vital to children's social and academic development. They have argued that children must appear maskless in class. But parents on all sides of the political spectrum are leaving the decision up to their students, which in many cases leads to children repudiating face coverings both for convenience and to fit in with their peers.

Even in households where parents - typically more liberal ones - are requesting that children keep wearing masks, mothers and fathers acknowledge they have little power to ensure obedience in the classroom. Most teachers, meanwhile, say they are prohibited from even talking with students about the touchy topic of masking, much less checking whether their parents want them to remain masked. According to communications from school officials reviewed by The Washington Post, districts in many states are adopting similar policies in a bid to avoid in-classroom conflict and potential legal action.

In Georgia, Lauren Ivey, who teaches AP Government and debate, said her district, Fulton County Schools, went mask-optional a few weeks ago. The first days after the policy change, only "a slow trickle" of students showed up maskless, she said.

But that soon turned into a flood, said Ivey, 32, and nowadays most students she passes in the hallways are maskless. In her classes, the split appears to be narrower: about 60% are wearing masks and 40% are maskless, she said.

An analysis from Education Week found that, as of mid-February, 10 states have either banned school districts from issuing mask mandates or are attempting to do so, but are temporarily caught in legal challenges. Just 11 states and the District of Columbia still require masks in schools, Ed Week reported - and of those, seven states plan to end their mask mandates by March 31. That marks a significant decrease from the high of 18 states that maintained masking mandates earlier this year, per Education Week.

Tracking by the data firm Burbio shows that the percentage of the country's 500 largest school districts requiring masks has dropped steadily every month since November, falling from about 70% on Nov. 5 to just slightly more than 50% as of Feb. 18.

Dan Domenech, executive director of the American Association of School Administrators, said states are dropping mask mandates because they are feeling political pressure to do so. He warned that the rollbacks are a step in the wrong direction, because they will lead to a spike in infections.

"If you're going to make it optional and a lot of kids aren't wearing it, then a lot of the kids aren't going to want to wear it," he said. "And that's fine if you're in an environment where 80 to 90% of kids are vaccinated and infection rates are low - but it's not if that is not the case."

Ivey says she has not noticed any bullying between students over the issue, and she's seen just one awkward interaction. A masked student commented on a classmate's bare face, leading to the reply - delivered "with attitude," Ivey said - that it's now okay to go without a mask at school.

Nonetheless, a persistent social pressure to unmask has built up, Ivey said, even in liberal leaning Fulton County, where 73% of whose residents voted for Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election. She feels it herself and these days often remains unmasked at school - even though she has an unvaccinated 18-month-old child, is scared of bringing the virus home, and continues to mask in public places, restaurants and grocery stores.

"I went from religiously wearing one, to wearing one most of the time, to wearing one if I'm within six feet of students but pretty much not wearing one when I'm not," Ivey said.

In Kentucky, Steve Clem said the decision of his kids' school district to go mask-optional on Feb. 14 led within days to 90% of students showing up to class maskless, according to his children and pictures he has seen on social media. Clem has a first- and a third-grader enrolled in Oldham County Public Schools, a red district whose student body numbers more than 12,000.

Clem, 39, who identifies as conservative, said he believes masks impair children's ability to learn. The face coverings also place a burden on parents, Clem said, forcing them to constantly run dirty masks through the laundry - a problem in particular for parents of young children, because little kids' face coverings are "really, really gross" by the time they come home from school.

For all these reasons, Clem was overjoyed to hear the Oldham school system would no longer require masks. But, determined not to pressure his children, he told the two boys they could choose whether to wear masks at school.

His older son at first kept wearing a mask occasionally, Clem said, mostly because he was used to it: "When you're young," he said, "you can build habits pretty easily." Both children have since dropped their masks, and the whole household feels happier, Clem said.

"They talk about just being able to sit with their friends and laugh," Clem said of his children. "My kids are much happier without masks. They are able to socialize, they are able to learn."

In other places, students have been slower to abandon masks.

In Virginia, where the new Republican governor has pushed schools to unmask children, all districts went mask-optional starting this week, the result of state legislation. Some districts had already enforced such a rule in compliance with a controversial executive order issued by Gov. Glenn Youngkin on his first day in office - including Clarke County Public Schools, a district of 1,800.

In the three weeks since mask-optionality went into effect, said Katie Kerr-Hobert, who sits on the board for Clarke County Public Schools and has two children in the system, a majority of students have continued to mask.

"I've been really surprised," she said. "I think a large part of that is because they know it's the right thing to do to protect themselves but also to protect our community."

And in Virginia's Chesapeake City Public Schools, teacher Amanda Lambert said the vast majority of children at her high school - somewhere between 85% and 90% - are continuing to mask even though the district of 40,000 gave families the choice to unmask starting Jan. 25.

She noted that her school enrolls many low-income children and is predominantly Black and Hispanic. She said she has heard from other teachers in more affluent, Whiter schools that most children there are going maskless, Lambert said.

"It's a very interesting disparity," she said, "especially that the schools where you have lower incomes tend to be more masked than the schools where maybe mom is a stay-at-home mom or they don't face economic issues."

Tiffany Shawl, a mother in Ohio, said she has noticed a divide over masking emerge among students along different demographic lines: political ones.

Shawl sends three children, a high school senior, a seventh-grader and a sixth-grader, to Xenia Community Schools, which enrolls 4,600 students in an area that leans conservative. She said the majority of children in the school system stopped wearing masks "pretty quick" after the district made masks optional on Feb. 9.

That was especially true in an electrical wiring class her eldest son takes, she said. The class is dominated by more right-wing boys: "the masculine, macho boys, they're all more Trump-supporting," she said, while her son is "a little more left, personality wise." Her son told her the other electrical-wiring students often make fun of mask-wearing.

"So the minute it went mask-optional, he chose not to wear it even though he would have preferred to," said Shawl, who spoke on condition that The Post use her maiden name, not her married name, to protect her son from backlash at school. "Because he didn't want to get picked on for it."

In Colorado's Weld RE-4 district, mother Jana Wygal said she, too, has noticed disturbing political overtones to the masking landscape. Her elementary-schooler, middle-schooler and high-schooler are some of the only students still wearing masks, she said, and peer and political pressure is mounting to shed them. Her oldest child has been called a "sheep," she said, and other students have said his carbon dioxide levels will increase until they cause him to "pass out and die."

Last fall, before the district lifted its mask mandate, some students in the district staged a walkout in protest of masking while anti-mask parents massed in a parking lot outside her children's middle and high schools.

"There were adults in the parking lot, screaming, yelling, there were 'don't tread on me' flags," said Wygal, 45. "That was a little bit of a scary day for my kids."

Elsewhere in the Weld RE-4 district, 9-year-old Evan Miller, 7-year-old Ryan Miller and 4-year-old Calvin Miller said they are some of the only students wearing masks, but that they have no plans to stop wearing them.

"Our great-grandma died of covid," Evan said, "and we don't want anybody else going through that."

The great-grandmother, Ann Miller, died in July 2020 after a long stint in a hospital that was overcrowded with coronavirus patients, the boys' mother, Elizabeth Miller, said. It devastated their family. She does not want her children to unmask at school until next academic year at earliest, she said. Miller spoke on the condition that The Washington Post use her maiden name in lieu of her married name, for fear of harassment.

"I mean honestly, I'm kind of proud of my kids at this point, because they have been the only ones in masks all year long," she said. "And it takes a lot of courage to be the only one in a group doing something like that, where it's so obvious that you're different."
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STAMFORD  A city woman tried to secure housing at two separate locations in Norwalk using forged bank documents, according to police.

Beverly Asher, 62, turned herself in to Stamford police Thursday afternoon on an outstanding arrest warrant charging her with two counts of criminal attempt at first-degree larceny and a single count of second-degree forgery.
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WEST HARTFORD  Mayor Shari Cantor gave the West Hartford Chamber of Commerce a glimpse into the rest of 2022 during her annual state of the town address on Friday.

Speaking at the chambers luncheon at the Pond House Cafe at Elizabeth Park, Cantor first looked back at 2021, including the way the town responded to the continuing COVID-19 pandemic with high vaccination rates, an abundance of outdoor dining and the development of a plan to spend its American Rescue Plan Act funding.

The pandemic has reshaped the world, Cantor said. Our heads are still spinning, although I think we are seeing things with more clarity. It hasnt changed everything, but its accelerating things. Over these past two years, weve all overcome so many challenges and weve learned so much. 2021 was a bit more volatile than we all expected. 2022 is going to have a lot of uncertainty along with it.

Cantor started her look forward at 2022 by championing the towns community and economic development by focusing on New Park Avenue, the Elmwood neighborhood and transit-oriented development.

New Park Avenue, it has seen so much growth and interest, Cantor said. There are so many people looking to come to town who cant find space. We want to make sure those redevelopment opportunities are done in a way that support that transit system and the type of development that supports higher density.

Cantor mentioned plans by the new owner of the former Puritan Furniture store at 1051 and 1061 New Britain Ave., NASRA WH LLC, to redevelop the 2.97-acre site into a $34 million 131-unit mixed-income, mixed-used transit-oriented development.

You will be seeing a transformation on New Park Avenue, Cantor said.

Cantor said the town was awarded a $3.7 million state grant that will help fund wayfinding signage, bike lanes and create more of a boulevard feel along New Park Avenue.

We do believe infrastructure improvements and help in this way will help to promote further development on New Park, Cantor said. The streetscape will ... improve pedestrian experiences ... and hopefully pave the way for a train station on the Flatbush corridor as well. This could be a real center for transportation.

Shifting focus, Cantor mentioned planned improvements to stormwater and flood water drainage issues, which were exacerbated last year during the heavy rainfall months late in the summer.

She also mentioned that the town council will soon be discussing a new outdoor dining ordinance, which she said will continue to support local restaurants in West Hartford.

We are the envy of places around the state, Cantor said. We have 1,500 outdoor dining seats in the town of West Hartford and 1,000 just in our center of town. Its really remarkable and it was really a lifeline to restaurants and something I think our residents have grown to love.

Cantor said the town is also conducting a feasibility study on the former St. Brigid School property at 100 Mayflower St., which it purchased for $3 million last summer and plans to turn into a new community and culture center.

The Elmwood Community Center is an aging building, Cantor said, and the town identified a need to replace it.

It doesnt serve the towns needs, Cantor said. 100 Mayorflower St. ... is a really unique and strategic property. We know were going to have work to do. Were doing a feasibility study and figuring out if we turn down the building and totally rebuild it, or do we do a really massive renovation.

Cantor said the town is also responding to what she said is an increase in car burglaries by spending $500,000 of its American Rescue Plan Act funds on town surveillance cameras.

We are committed to preventing and obviously catching perpetrators. This is something that happened nationally and in the state of Connecticut also, Cantor said. Weve been on top of a lot of PSAs. Lock your cars, what to do, telling people how to be careful. In the meantime, our police have been out in force. They have recovered 103 stolen vehicles and made 38 arrests. These are hard crimes to solve and our police department has done an extraordinary job with this particular rash of car burglaries.

When it comes to the economy, Cantor said West Hartford is in good shape and is seeing low vacancy rates across all categories.

Office vacancy rates are at 6.4 percent, multi-family housing at 3 percent, industrial at 3.1 percent and retail at 9.1 percent, Cantor said.

We have very high occupancy and low vacancy rates, Cantor said. Were expecting that this will continue for a long time.

Cantor ended her speech by touting the towns low COVID-19 positivity rate, which came in at 1.6 percent this week.

Hopefully the worst is over and we can get back to some form of normal, Cantor said. Im so proud of how resilient this community has been and how supportive our community has been for each other.
Milton, PA (17847)

Today

Intervals of clouds and sunshine. High 72F. Winds NNE at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

Cloudy with occasional showers late at night. Low 51F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 60%.
More than 12,000 Romanian citizens have donated blood in the past five days, with an important part of the collected amount being offered for the rescue of Ukraine's citizens, shows a government Facebook post.

"Romanians donate blood for Ukrainian soldiers and civilians wounded in the military aggression! More than 12,000 Romanian citizens have donated blood in the last five days, and an important amount was made available to save Ukraine's citizens. The campaign was launched on February 27 by Prime Minister Nicolae Ciuca and several Cabinet members who donated blood for the wounded Ukrainians," the post reads, Agerpres.ro informs.

Prime Minister Ciuca calls for the continuation of badly needed humanitarian actions for the Ukrainian people.

"Thank you to the Romanians who have opened their hearts and participate in this humanitarian campaign! The power of solidarity is an essential line of defense against any aggression. I am proud of the generosity and mobilization of Romanians who have come to the aid of suffering Ukrainians. Let us continue our humanitarian actions the Ukrainian people so badly need at this time," Premier Ciuca is cited as saying.
Ballerina Lara Paraschiv, one of the artists that were integrated in an aid program offered by the Bucharest National Opera, expressed her disappointment on Friday, that Ukraine, headed by president Volodymyr Zelensky, is "alone" in its fight against Russian aggression.

"I've been to Dnipro, where I have been working for the past two years already. On the morning of February 24 I woke to the sound of a war alert. I gathered all my things and along with my parents and six artists, we went towards the border. I called them and told them: "Come on, take all you can get and we will go to Moldova (Republic of Moldova, ed. n) I had been reading every day and I knew what was going on and that it will not be Ok. I told myself that we must go now, because it would be worse later," the ballerina declared for AGERPRES.

"I know what their mindset it (Russians, ed. n.) It is no surprise that the war began. Ukraine does not attack, it only protects. Though it is weird that nobody is helping. They help here, if they are here I see that even Europe and America and Canada are helping the refugees. But they do nothing to help there, in Ukraine. NATO?! They should send someone to help. They are all alone there. Even president Zelensky is there. He stays there and fights, but they are alone, that is the problem! And I know that if Putin stepped into Ukraine, he will not go out. He will advance as much as possible. He will not back down," Lara Paraschiv said, with tears in her eyes, Agerpres.ro informs.

Lara Paraschiv has double citizenship, Canadian and Romanian, studied at the Bolshoi Academy and evolved in the Astrakhan State Opera and Ballet Theater in Russia, the Gelsey Kirkland Academy of Classical Ballet in New York, Russian Ballet in Orlando, and for the past two years she was an employee of the State Ballet Theater in Dnipro, Ukraine.
As many as 61,977 travelers of whom 20,074 Ukrainian nationals have entered Romania between Friday midnight and 18:00 hrs (by 1.9 pct less compared to the previous day), the General Border Police Inspectorate (IGPF) reports.

As many as 6,542 Ukrainian nationals crossed into Romania at the border with Ukraine (down 13.8 pct), and 12,207 Ukrainian nationals entered the country at the border with Moldova (up 7.3 pct). Exiting Romania were 66,512 persons, including 16,815 Ukrainian nationals (up 5.5 pct), the IGPF said, Agerpres.ro informs.

As of March 4 at 18:00 hrs, 187,687 Ukrainian nationals had entered Romania since the start of Russia's onslaught on Ukraine, and 126,502 Ukrainian nationals had exited the country.
Passenger traffic at the 'Henri Coanda' Bucharest Airport has increased in recent days by more than 40-50 percent from scheduled levels due to the Ukraine crisis, so that congestions on arrival and departure flows may occur at certain times of the day, the Bucharest Airports National Corporation (CNAB) informs.

Under these circumstances, the CNAB representatives point out that for all the passengers to board their flight on time and safely, they must arrive at the airport 2.5 - 3 hours before takeoff, Agerpres.ro informs.

"It should be noted that measures have been taken to streamline the activity on passenger flows. However, in the face of an ever increasing number of refugees and returnees transiting the airport, which requires dedicated flows in order to ensure the safety and security of all passengers, temporary congestions will remain an issue. We are therefore calling on the passengers and their companions to show calm and understanding in this special situation generated by the armed conflict in the neighboring country," the release reads.
Two units of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant have been restarted, so that three of its 6 reactor units are operating now, according to the latest information we have from our colleagues in Ukraine, Energy Minister Virgil Popescu announced on Facebook.

"Romania's National Commission for the Control of Nuclear Activities (CNCAN), which is in constant contact with the International Atomic Energy Agency, has already announced that radiation levels are normal. I would like to let the Romanians know that there are no reasons for concern," the Minister said Friday night.

Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, the biggest in Europe, was hit by Russian shelling Thursday night through Friday.

Ukrainian incident response teams said on Friday that a fire that broke out in a building of the facility had been put out, Agerpres.ro informs.

The International Atomic Energy Agency later reported that the nuclear power plant's essential equipment was not affected by the Russian bombing.

The U.S. Department of Energy also said that the nuclear power plant's reactors are protected by a robust containment structure, the reactors have been shut down safely and there have been no radiation leaks.

In this context, Environment Minister Taczos Barna said on Friday morning that the Romanian authorities have not detected higher radioactivity levels after the Russian forces fired at the nuclear power plant in the south-east of Ukraine.
Minister of Foreign Affairs Bogdan Aurescu reaffirmed today "Romania's strong support for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Republic of Moldova within its internationally recognized borders".

"Today Transnistria requested recognition of its independence. I am in direct contact with my colleagues in Chisinau. I discussed with my Moldovan counterpart Nicu Popescu, and our colleagues are preparing their stance on this issue. I would like to talk about this during today's meeting of the Foreign Affairs Council. I take this opportunity to reiterate Romania's strong support for the Republic of Moldova's sovereignty and territorial integrity within its internationally recognized borders," the Romanian Foreign Minister said in Brussels before attending the extraordinary meeting of the Foreign Affairs Council, Agerpres.ro informs.

Aurescu said the meeting will focus on the situation in Ukraine and the response of the international community to the Russian Federation's aggressive actions. "Transatlantic coordination is essential today," he said.

The Romanian top diplomat also said that he will approach the subject of the aid offered to the Republic of Moldova "for dealing with the crisis, because strengthened EU support" for Chisinau is necessary.

"The Republic of Moldova is dealing with a large number of refugees, it could also face an energy crisis. It is therefore very important to strengthen the resilience of the Republic of Moldova," said the Romanian Foreign Minister, who announced having sent together with his Austrian counterpart a joint letter asking for additional humanitarian assistance to help the Republic of Moldova meet these challenges.

"I want to welcome the application signed yesterday by the Republic of Moldova President, Parliament Speaker and Prime Minister, requesting the status of EU candidate for Moldova. Moldova is a well-prepared partner state and I am glad that Romania can extend support for the Republic of Moldova to acquire the status of EU member state," Minister Aurescu also said.
The headquarters of the Braila County Russian Lipovan Community (CRL) is prepared to receive refugees from Ukraine, and the teachers that know Ukrainian and Russian among the community are ready to mediate discussions with refugees, translate documents and advise families with children, shows a public announcement made by the CRL.

"We are with our souls together with those in suffering at this time, those who've lost loved ones, those who ran from the war and are searching for shelter far away from their homes. We are calling on all good fellows, our hearty brothers, to support local authorities in the demarche to help the Ukrainian citizens in difficulty. The headquarters of CRL Braila is set up to receive refugees. Tonight in Isaccea ships with refugees from the area of Odessa are expected. Already in our community there are families that received refugees. President Milea Maria is permanently available for the authorities and together with the teachers that know Russian is mediating the discussions with the refugees, they're translating documents, advising families with children," according to a post made by CRL Braila on their Facebook account, Agerpres.ro informs.

"If there are families that can offer shelter, accommodation, we're waiting for them to contact us. By tradition, Old Believers have always been there for people in suffering and offered the help they could without asking for anything in return. Let us unite forces this time to do the Christian good! God bless those that are suffering now and let Him bring peace on earth and goodwill among persons," the CRL Braila post also shows.

The Braila County Russian Lipovan Community counts 2,000 persons, most living in the Pisc neighborhood of Braila City.
President Klaus Iohannis announced on Friday that the state of alert in Romania will not be extended after March 8.

"The COVID-19 epidemic is on an accelerated downward trend, and the 5th wave is about to end. It is time, therefore, to make new decisions about managing these situations, decisions with a major impact for the future. Today, I convened an assessment meeting with all those responsible in the field, as a result of which we decided not to extend beyond March 8 the state of alert established in Romania," the president declared at the Cotroceni presidential Palace.

He said that with the lifting of the state of alert, a number of measures that have been in place so far will be eliminated, noting that the Ministry of Health will continue to manage the evolution of the epidemic.

The head of state stressed that two "very difficult" years have passed since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, during which existence was changed "radically", Agerpres.ro informs.

"More than 63,000 Romanians have lost the battle with the disease, leaving behind a huge gap and countless grieving families. These figures express a lot of suffering, they are the reflection of tragedies that have left deep traces. The last two years have brought many challenges, which have influenced us in many different ways: the rapid spread of the virus, isolation, pressure on the health system, the closure of schools, the disruption of many sectors of the economy, the reduction of social interactions - all these have had a negative impact and has raised countless barriers for us," said Klaus Iohannis.

The president mentioned that it was "a period of great sacrifices for Romanians", but that, at the same time, "new values of solidarity, of civic spirit, of dedication and involvement" were discovered.

"We could not have waded through, though, without the concerted and sustained intervention of the authorities, who had to deal with a historic health crisis, despite acute shortcomings caused by the lack of systemic reforms in the areas we needed most. The fact that today we can talk today about a new stage, which means at least the end of this pandemic wave, is largely due to the effective preventive measures taken by the authorities. Obviously, we could not have succeeded without the responsibility of the citizens, without the solidarity of the Romanians, who, for the most part, understood and respected the rules. I thank them specifically for that! I would like to thank once again the doctors, nurses, orderlies, pharmacists and all those who have always been at the forefront of the fight against the virus and have shown their dedication and professionalism," said Klaus Iohannis.

"The pandemic has also taught us lessons that we need to build on, and perhaps the most important one is solidarity: we have provided help to those in need and received support from European partners when facing major problems. European and international scientific collaboration has led to a deeper understanding of this new virus and has enabled, in record time, the discovery of vaccines and medicines that can prevent and treat this severe disease. Last but not least, we have learned to value our health, but also that of our loved ones, we have learned to protect ourselves, to prevent, to make responsible decisions and to respect them," the head of state also mentioned.

"The last two years have shown us that we need to learn to live in this epidemiological context, to adapt and to take advantage of existing opportunities, to be able to provide the care and protection that the community needs. What I want to emphasize is that we continue to remain vigilant. The good habits of prevention, which we have acquired over the last two years, need to be maintained. Even though there are good signs that we have entered a downward phase, it is just as important that we continue to get vaccinated and protect ourselves, because we will most likely have to live with this virus. The pandemic has shown us that health should always be treated as a priority, both in terms of increasing investment and rethinking certain mechanisms so that the health care system is fair and able to respond effectively to extreme situations," the president went on to say.

A meeting was held on Friday at the Cotroceni Palace on the management of the COVID-19 epidemic, which was attended by Prime Minister Nicolae Ciuca and members of the Cabinet.
The Minister of Health, Alexandru Rafila, paid an official visit to Israel on Thursday, at the invitation of his counterpart, Nitzan Horowitz, on the occasion of which visit steps were established for the conclusion, in the next period, of a bilateral agreement on cooperation in the medical field and granting mutual support in humanitarian and public health crises, including in the case of the crisis triggered by the war in Ukraine.

They also discussed the topic of increasing access of Israeli students to medical universities in Romania, Agerpres.ro informs.

At the end of the meeting, the Romanian Minister of Health, Alexandru Rafila, invited his counterpart to pay an official visit to Romania, and he accepted the invitation.
Traffic at the entrance to the country through the Siret border checkpoint remains high, registering in the last 24 hours about 8,400 people, most of them Ukrainian citizens.

The spokesperson for the Suceava Territorial Service of the Border Police (STPF), Ilie Poroch Seritan, informed on Friday that on March 3, between 00.00-24.00, 8,393 people entered the country through Siret border checkpoint, of whom 6,720 were Ukrainian citizens, but also 1,522 vehicles.

A day ago, 9,888 people entered the country through Siret border checkpoint, compared to 8,285 in the previous report, of whom 7,041 were Ukrainian citizens, compared to 5,840 the day before.

The spokesperson for Suceava Border Police stated that since the beginning of the armed conflict in Ukraine and until now, 62,799 people and 7,364 means of transport have entered Romania through Siret border checkpoint. Of the people who entered the country, 42,498 are Ukrainian citizens, Agerpres informs.
89 Turkmeni citizens, including three children under three and a pregnant woman, were placed in rooms within the City Stadium and the boarding school of the King Ferdinand Pedagogical College in Sighet, then sent to Bucharest, informed, on Friday, the deputy mayor of Sighetu Marmatiei, Daniela Onita Ivascu.

"Besides accommodation and psychological support, they benefited from warm meals and products that they needed. Their stay was temporary as today [Friday, ed.n.], at 16:00, they will travel to Bucharest by train, CFR Calatori offering free travel through special tickets for refugees. Once in Bucharest, they will be taken over by representatives of the embassy to reach home. The 89 Turkmeni citizens have packages of cold food ensured for the road as well," said Daniela Onita Ivascu, Agerpres.ro informs.

The deputy mayor of Sighetu Marmatiei also mentioned that the local administration, NGOs, associations and representatives of religious organizations, but also the citizens of the city will continue helping refugees.
David Nicklaus David Nicklaus is a business columnist for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Follow David Nicklaus 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

Missouri was once a leader in using taxpayer dollars to stimulate investment in innovative companies. Thanks to $94.9 million in federal money, it has a chance to make up for five years of lost momentum.

The state-funded Missouri Technology Corp. has invested $45 million in 140 companies over the past decade, but has been operating at a reduced level since former Gov. Eric Greitens slashed its budget almost 90% in 2017.

The new federal grant, from last years American Recovery Program Act, offers hope that MTC can once again be a catalyst for dozens of promising startups each year.

Gov. Mike Parson, in his budget, proposes directing the $94.9 million to the Department of Economic Development, and business groups say most or all of that should flow to MTC. In addition, the governor recommends $4 million in state funds for MTC, up from $3 million last year.

If the Legislature goes along, the money would beef up the agencys signature venture capital program, while also providing assistance to very small businesses and firms considered socially or economically disadvantaged.

The grant restarts a federal program called the State Small Business Credit Initiative, which began in 2011. Jason Hall, chief executive of Greater St. Louis Inc. and a former MTC chairman, said Missouri was the first state to match private venture-capital investments with the federal dollars.

When the Treasury reviewed SSBCI in 2017, Missouri was among the top five states in using the money to close venture capital deals. It was in the top 10 for leveraging private capital  which says a lot, given that venture capital activity is concentrated on the coasts.

Missouri is sort of the reason venture capital approaches became popular with these dollars, Hall said. We showed how it could be done in a thoughtful way, and obviously we did something right.

States are often criticized for using investment incentives to pick winners and losers, but Hall said thats not true of MTC. The public dollars merely match, and amplify, private investment decisions.

The opportunity for a new cash infusion comes as some of Missouris early investments are paying off. Benson Hill, an agricultural technology firm, was lured here from North Carolina in 2013 by MTC and other investors. It went public last year and employs more than 350 people.

A 2011 MTC investment helped keep Confluence Life Sciences, founded by former Pfizer researchers, in town. Its now part of a billion-dollar company called Aclaris Therapeutics.

The impact isnt confined to St. Louis. MTCs investments include Payit, a payment company in Kansas City, and Compatio, a Springfield e-commerce firm.

A recent MTC strategy report, though, mentions concern that Missouri is beginning to lose the deal flow and investment momentum it has built. TechStars, an international accelerator fund, pulled out of Kansas City in December after an eight-year run.

Ben Johnson, vice president for programs at industry group BioSTL, agrees that the infusion of new money is timely. Missouri has lagged behind other states in business formation, particularly in underserved rural and urban counties, he said.

MTC calculates that its $45 million of past investments were matched by $1.1 billion of private capital. If it achieves the same kind of success with the new federal money, $2 billion more would flow to Missouri businesses.

Such an infusion should help launch, at a minimum, several more companies the size of Benson Hill or Confluence. Missouri created a formula for success, and now it has an opportunity to fund it properly.

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MOSCOW  Companies and investors across the world faced Russian dilemmas on Friday as they weighed up an offer from Moscow to fast-track their exits from the country and allow them to hand over holdings to local managers until they return.

The options offered by First Deputy Prime Minister Andrei Belousov came one week since Russias invasion of Ukraine and a day after French bank Societe Generale warned that it could be stripped of its Russian operations, which sent a chill through companies seeking to stay put in the country.

Belousov outlined three alternatives for foreign firms.

The company continues to work fully in Russia, he said in a statement. Foreign shareholders transfer their share to be managed by Russian partners and can return to the market later, he added, and: The company permanently terminates operations in Russia, closes production and dismisses employees.

No route comes without risks. Those staying on could face a backlash in Western markets where the public have rallied to Ukraines cause, those transferring shares could be handing over the keys with few guarantees, while those quitting may face a big loss at best, or might have to sell for a nominal sum.

Russias invasion has prompted the United States and Europe to impose sweeping sanctions, affecting everything from global payments systems to a range of hi-tech products, which make doing business in Russia increasingly complex and precarious.

For ordinary Russians, it means deep economic pain.

Some multinationals such as energy majors BP and Shell have already said they are quitting, while others have held off signing off from Russia for now. TotalEnergies has said it would stay but would not invest more.

IKEA announced plans to close stores on Thursday but said it would pay its 15,000 Russian staff for at least three months.

No easy fixes

Italian tire maker Pirelli said on Friday it was constantly monitoring developments through a specially constituted crisis committee, adding it did not expect to halt either of its two Russian plants.

Its rival, Finlands Nokian Tyres, said last week it was shifting production of some product lines out of Russia.

But there are no easy fixes even for those looking for the exit, when there are limited trading counterparties.

British insurer and asset manager Royal London said it planned to sell its Russian assets, which it said only accounted for about 0.1% of its portfolio.

We cant trade these things anyway, but as soon as we can, we obviously intend to divest, Chief Executive Barry ODwyer said.

For those seeking the door, the Russian first deputy prime minister said a fast-track bankruptcy plan will support the employment and social well-being of citizens so that bona fide entrepreneurs can ensure the effective functioning of business.

Many companies are still trying to count the cost of their exposure to Russia, a figure that for many keeps changing with each new round of sanctions announced by the United States, the European Union and Britain.

So far global companies, banks and investors have announced that they have exposure in some form to Russia of more than $110 billion. That number could rise. Data from research firm Morningstar, meanwhile, shows exposure from international funds to the tune of $60 billion in stocks and bonds.

Norways sovereign wealth fund, the worlds largest, said on Thursday it has written off the value off the roughly $3 billion in assets it held in Russia.

Extreme scenario

Meanwhile SocGen, which has a $20 billion exposure to Russia, said on Thursday it had an adequate buffer for an extreme scenario, in which the group would be stripped of property rights to its banking assets in Russia.

Dutch bank provided an update on Friday on its exposure to Russia and Ukraine, saying about 700 million euros ($770 million) in outstanding loans were affected by new sanctions on (Russian) specific entities and individuals.

BASF, the worlds largest chemicals group, said it was halting new business in Russia and Belarus, except for those related to food production as part of humanitarian measures.

But BASF also pointed to challenges companies now face in navigating a way through a minefield of sanctions.

Effective immediately, BASF will only conduct business in Russia and Belarus that fulfills existing obligations in accordance with applicable laws, regulations and international rules, the German chemical maker said.

Swiss watchmaker Swatch Group said it would continue its operations in Russia but was putting exports on hold because of the overall difficult situation.

Deutsche Bank said it had been stress-testing its operations given it has a big technology center in Russia, but said it was assured of its ability to run its everyday business globally.

The German lender had opened a new office in Moscow in December, a move it said at the time represented a significant investment and commitment to the Russian market.

Reporting by Reuters correspondents in Moscow, Giulio Piovaccari in Milan, Toby Sterling in Amsterdam, Silke Koltrowitz in Zurich, Tom Sims and Frank Siebelt in Frankfurt.
Sherrie Stafford was named administrator of the Maryland Heights Center for Behavioral Health, a 16-bed hospital that will provide psychiatric care to geriatric patients.

The hospital, set to open in March, is the second such facility in Missouri for National HealthCare Corp. It will provide psychiatric care to geriatric patients who require inpatient hospitalization due to mental disorders, including cognitive illnesses. It is adjacent to NHC HealthCare Maryland Heights, a 220-bed skilled nursing and rehabilitation center.

Stafford brings more than 28 years of experience in criminal justice and counseling to the new role. She earned a masters degree in counseling from Missouri State University and a bachelors in criminal justice from Columbia College in Columbia, Missouri.
HAZELWOOD  The union representing hundreds of workers at the GKN Aerospace plant facing shutdown here is asking Missouris congressional delegation for help saving jobs.

Robert Martinez Jr., leader of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, wrote letters to both Missouri senators and five representatives this week requesting a meeting.

British-owned GKN said last month it would shutter the plant, which makes parts for commercial and military aircraft like Super Hornet fighter jets, by the end of next year. It said the place had struggled be profitable in recent years amid declining orders.

Martinez said that if GKN follows through, 1,000 people will lose their jobs, the local economy will suffer and the country will lose critical defense manufacturing capacity.

The IAM is ready and willing to work with all parties to keep this facility running and maintain this essential workforce in Missouri, he wrote.

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Distinctive settings  a 12th-century abbey, a drought-hardened farming community in Australia and a village where men hunt sharks on the shores of Baja California  offered needed escapes for a cold, wintery February.

Matrix

{h4}By Lauren Groff{/h4}

What I thought  Matrix checked some boxes for me: historical fiction and a formidable female protagonist  its based on Marie de France, a French poet from the 12th century, though little is actually known about her, so its mostly constructed on legend.

I especially loved the first couple of chapters of this book, so much so that I recommended it for the February selection for book club. Marie, orphaned after her mother dies and a bastard child of the king, is headstrong and, as a tall giantess of a maiden and with a face that holds no beauty, not suitable for marriage. The solution: She will be sent to a royal, but rundown, abbey to become a nun. The book begins with a 17-year-old Marie, astride a horse and almost knight-like, on her way to the abbey, a place where, over time (the book spans more than 50 years), the warrior-like Marie creates an island of women and an abbey that wields power like no other.

Groff employs her own power in skillfully crafting this unique novel that was set in medieval times but has modern implications.

At book club  Setting a feminist story in the 12th century is no easy feat, said one member, and this novel demonstrates the power women could wield regardless of the era. It has sisterhood, love, war and sex all entangled in the English countryside.

Groff also illustrates how many things have changed for women but how many things remain the same. Sometimes the people hardest on women with ambition are women themselves, one reader observed. The ending also demonstrates how life is inherently meaningless  and everything was for naught, said another member, who moved to the front of the class with that statement and showed this is definitely a novel you can imagine discussing in a college literature course.

Even readers who didnt like the book enjoyed our lively and sometimes uninhibited conversation about the power and challenges of womanhood. Top-notch snacks, including a delicious blueberry crumble, and wine didnt hurt either.

The Dry

{h4}By Jane Harper{/h4}

What I thought  It wasnt as though the farm hadnt seen death before, and the blowflies didnt discriminate. To them there was little difference between a carcass and a corpse. Jane Harper grabs your attention from the opening lines of The Dry, setting the desolate scene  the sun beating down on this rural Australian community, in the midst of a drought, and wilting in desperation under the suffocating lack of rain.

Aaron Falk returns to his hometown after 20 years for the funeral of his former best friend, Luke, and his entire family. The police say Luke cracked under the stress of farming and financial difficulties and killed his wife and son before turning the gun on himself.

Drawn into the case by Lukes parents, who dont believe their son is a killer, Falk finds that secrets surface, marrying the past with the present.

This is not a fast-paced thriller, and the plot and outcome arent particularly astonishing, but the atmosphere and mood Harper creates in her writing are what make this story excel.

At book club  Some readers figured out the ending, but everyone agreed: Harper knows how to set a scene. The author really grabs you and drags you along in this dark tale. She did a great job of setting the atmosphere of an isolated town suffering through drought, said one member. I would say the setting was almost a character in itself. She also depicted male characters particularly well.

That this was Harpers debut novel surprised us  the book was published in the U.S. in 2017 and is part of a three-book series following investigator Aaron Falk. Force of Nature came out in 2018, and the third book is expected to be published next year. (Harper also has published two other novels.) This club plans on reading the second in the series.

A Day Like This

{h4}By Kelley McNeil{/h4}

What I thought  Science fiction? Mystery? Lifetime movie-in-the-making? Im not sure how to classify A Day Like This by Kelley McNeil. The premise is intriguing. Annie Beyers is living an ideal life in the country with her husband and daughter when she is involved in a car crash on her way to the pediatricians office. She wakes up a few hours later, confusing the doctors when she starts asking about her daughter.

They tell her the daughter, Hannah, doesnt exist. And the last five happy years she remembers vividly? They didnt happen. Shes divorced, living back in Manhattan and is now best friends with her estranged sister. This book reminded me a bit of The Midnight Library  imagining what life would be like what if?  but with less charm. It also wrapped up too neatly for me  perfect for that Lifetime movie.

At book club  Some readers enjoyed this novel (even the neat-and-tidy ending), saying it was an example of how your past shapes who you are. It led to an interesting discussion on forks in the road in life and how decisions could change your life, your career, who you marry and where you live. Usually when we think about different paths in life, we assume our lives will be better, but thats not always the case.

Bonus books

 After reading Mexican Gothic, I was intrigued to read more by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. Set in 1979 Baja California, Untamed Shore  categorized as a noir thriller  is a dark coming-of-age story. Its the summer of 1979 when three wealthy tourists arrive in Desengano, an out-of-the-way town most tourists skip over and where men hunt sharks but not a lot else happens. Viridiana, an 18-year-old too smart to be stuck in a small town, but whose head is filled with romantic notions, is immediately dazzled by the foreigners, who hire her as a notetaker and personal assistant.

In Mexican Gothic, mushrooms featured heavily both metaphorically and literally. In this novel, its sharks. The author called this a little book that I love but that few people read and the only one she is tempted to write a sequel to  a book I would eagerly read to find out where Viridianas journey takes her next.

 I am not the target audience for the middle-grade reader The Last Cuentista, but I still appreciated the story of Petra Pena, a young girl who embarks on an interstellar journey in 2061 because Earth is about to be destroyed by a comet. Her family and others are put into a suspended state to travel hundreds of years in space to another planet where they will build a new life, but when Petra awakes, she discovers she is the only person left who remembers life on Earth. A book that emphasizes the importance of storytelling  it blends Mexican folklore and science fiction  Donna Barba Higuera won the 2022 Newbery Medal for childrens literature for this novel. It is the third book by Higuera, who is an optometrist by day.

Norma Klingsick is a former designer and editor at the Post-Dispatch. She can be reached at mythreebookclubs@gmail.com.
St. Louis-area residents have been hearing Pamela Hupps name for more than a decade, ever since her friend Elizabeth Betsy Faria was fatally stabbed in Farias home outside Troy, Missouri, in 2011.

The Faria case, and the 2016 fatal shooting of Louis Gumpenberger in Hupps home in OFallon, Missouri, have sparked tons of local media coverage, as well as true-crime television shows, including Snapped and multiple episodes of NBCs Dateline.

Now, two books tackle the case, coming just before the March 8 premiere of a TV series starring Renee Zellweger as Hupp.

Bone Deep: Untangling the Betsy Faria Murder Case has the advantage of being co-authored by well-known criminal defense lawyer Joel Schwartz, who represented Farias husband, Russell Faria.

The other is the first in a planned Countdown to Murder series of true-crime books, Pam Hupp: Death Insured, by Rebecca F. Pittman.

Both books contain nuggets that even I, who covered the Faria murder since 2012, didnt know.

The basics shouldnt be much of a spoiler to St. Louis-area readers.

After Farias murder, investigators almost immediately focused on Russell Faria. Their skepticism started when he speculated that his wife, stabbed 55 times, committed suicide. In police interviews, Hupp portrayed Faria as a verbally abusive man in a troubled marriage, eager to cash in when his wife died of terminal cancer.

Both books detail the missteps by investigators and Hupps evolving story about that night.

One line struck me in the early part of Bone Deep, when Schwartz is watching a recorded police interview with Hupp: Schwartz was learning that Pam Hupp was an unfiltered font of inappropriate, off-the-wall, inexplicable comments  shockingly ill-conceived utterances that often were self-incriminating.

She repeatedly changed her story throughout the investigation, so much so that prosecutors never had her testify at the second trial.

Schwartz has long pointed to Hupp as the true culprit, as she was the last person known to have seen Faria alive and received $150,000 of Farias life insurance thanks to a beneficiary change inked just days before the murder.

The books recount the conviction of Russell Faria and Schwartzs battle to appeal the case and win a retrial. They cover Hupps shooting of Gumpenberger, a mentally and physically disabled man, in what prosecutors said was an amateurish plot to divert attention from herself in an reinvestigation of Farias murder.

They look into the death of Hupps mother in 2013.

And they cover the murder charge filed last summer against Hupp by the new Lincoln County prosecutor, Mike Wood.

Schwartz and Charles Bosworth Jr., a former Post-Dispatch reporter and author of other true-crime books, have written a comprehensive insider view that benefits from Schwartzs knowledge of the case and his access to many of the main players.

But I wish the reader were given a better picture into the mind of Schwartz, who saw a client he believed to be innocent sent to prison for life without parole, then released, retried and acquitted.

After that acquittal, I followed Schwartz out of the courthouse and could see tears in the eyes of the emotionally overwhelmed lawyer.

The authors write: Schwartz couldnt begin to express what he was feeling. It had taken almost four years, but he had kept his promise to an innocent man. This was the kind of case, and Russ Faria was the kind of person, Schwartz had gone into the law to defend.

For the other book, Countdown to Murder, Pittman conducted multiple interviews with police, prosecutors, friends and relatives of the Farias and Hupp and reporters. (Pittman interviewed me as well.)

Her interview with OFallon police Capt. (now Chief) John Neske, who was the first officer to arrive on the scene of Gumpenbergers death, is one of the highlights for me. It captures the moments after Hupp shot Gumpenberger, when police discover Hupps identity and her history with the Faria case, prompting groans from several officers who were familiar with the story.

We had to reset the clock and start looking at this thing from a whole new perspective, Neske told Pittman.

Pittman has clearly done extensive research on the case, with an exhaustive, and sometimes exhausting, cataloging of evidence and verbatim reproduction of trial testimony.

Pittmans book may also appeal more to armchair investigators. She reenacts Betsy Farias stabbing to conclude exactly how Faria was attacked. She says she is currently investigating a death in Florida while Hupp lived there. (Hupp has not been charged with any crimes in Florida.)

And she details a call from Hupps phone number to KTVI reporter Chris Hayes before Gumpenbergers shooting, in what she calls a possible plot to lure him somewhere.

Pittmans book does suffer from some typos and factual errors, including misidentifying the courthouse where a civil trial happened and some time sequences pertaining to evidence in the case, but those dont significantly affect the narrative.

For those interested in the case or simply a just almost-unbelievable tale, either book would be a good choice. They both are comprehensive accounts of the saga, which has grown too convoluted to adequately capture in a single news story or true-crime television show.

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ST. LOUIS  An advocacy group on Thursday said they filed a complaint against St. Louis Archbishop Mitchell Rozanski over his handling of a priest accused in lawsuits of sexual abuse.

David Clohessy of Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, or SNAP, said the group filed a "lengthy, detailed" complaint with the Vatican office, commonly known as "Vos Estis," that investigates abuse or cover-ups by bishops.

Clohessy said Rozanski should have suspended a De Soto priest, the Rev. Alexander Anderson, who was facing one lawsuit when he was sued again last month.

Clohessy said that Anderson has been accused five times. The archdiocese, in a statement in response to the most recent lawsuit, said other allegations were either retracted or shown to be false.

Clohessy said church officials can encourage or discourage victims from coming forward, and were discouraging them by failing to act against Anderson.

Last month's lawsuit, filed by Christian Hornbeck, said Anderson fondled Hornbeck in the late 1990s or early 2000s at St. Josephs Home for Boys in south St. Louis. The archdiocese said Anderson was not assigned there at the time.

Anderson, is now at St. Rose of Lima parish in De Soto.

Hornbeck, who now is married and works and lives in Georgia, in a Zoom call Thursday said he would like to discuss the allegations in an open forum with Rozanski.

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Iran not to concede red lines despite West's rush for deal in Vienna nuke talks: FM

Xinhua) 22:19, March 04, 2022

TEHRAN, March 4 (Xinhua) -- The Iranian foreign minister said on Friday that Iran will not concede its red lines despite the West's rush to reach a deal in the Vienna nuclear talks.

Hossein Amir Abdollahian made the remarks in a phone conversation with European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, according to the Foreign Ministry website.

Observing Iran's red lines, including providing a guarantee that would secure Tehran's economic benefits within the nuclear deal's framework, is the prerequisite for continued nuclear talks and a final agreement, Abdollahian noted.

Appreciating the EU's efforts to coordinate the negotiations, he pointed to Iran's constant and active consultations with all delegations in the Austrian capital.

"Our country's delegation will continue its efforts with seriousness to reach a final and good agreement," Abdollahian said, adding he is ready to travel to Vienna whenever the Western sides accept Iran's remaining red lines.

Iran and the remaining parties to the 2015 nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), are currently negotiating in Vienna to settle disputes on the revival of the deal. Iran said on Thursday that the talks are in the "final critical steps."

Iran signed the JCPOA with world powers in July 2015. However, former U.S. President Donald Trump pulled Washington out of the accord in May 2018 and reimposed unilateral sanctions on Iran, which prompted the latter to drop some of its nuclear commitments one year later and advance its halted nuclear program.

(Web editor: Hongyu, Bianji)
ST. LOUIS  St. Louis, the last jurisdiction with an indoor mask requirement in the metropolitan area, will be ending its mandate at 11:59 p.m. Saturday, the citys health director announced Thursday.

Dr. Mati Hlatshwayo Davis, in an online news briefing, said her department is following new recommendations issued last week by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The new guidance that the CDC provided last week has helped us to understand what the landscape is to come, she said.

Based on those metrics, the mandate will expire, she said.

The city follows St. Louis County and the state of Illinois, where such rules ended on Monday.

Davis said while wearing a mask in indoor public places no longer will be required, she strongly recommends that people do so, especially those at high risk of getting COVID-19. By doing so, she said, they can protect themselves but also the community.

We want to support the most vulnerable, she said, citing elderly people, people in congregate living facilities and those who are immunocompromised.

She also said its possible that the mandate could be reinstated if the data requires it.

Davis announcement came as no surprise. On Monday, she had told an aldermanic committee that the mandate might be allowed to expire given the decreasing level of community risk.

While COVID continues to take a toll on the region, the number of cases and hospitalizations continues to wane.

St. Louis-area hospitals on Thursday reported a seven-day average of 36 new COVID-19 admissions, down from 38 the day before.

The total number of patients with COVID-19 remained unchanged at 203 hospitals that are part of the St. Louis Metropolitan Pandemic Task Force.

The indoor mandate, which was dropped last May in the city and county, was restarted in July in both jurisdictions amid a surge in cases related to the virus delta variant.

Under state law, the citys Board of Aldermen has had to periodically vote to extend the July mandate. The most recent extension runs through Saturday.

Asked why the city doesnt end the mandate before then, Davis said city attorneys had told her there isnt a clear legal authority for us to immediately stop it.

But if legal is able to come up with a legal precedent, were happy to explore that before Sunday, she said.

Some business owners in the city reacted positively to the news.

Ben Poremba, chef and founder of Bengelina Hospitality Group, which runs Elaia, Olio and Nixta restaurants, said he had supported the citys mask mandate when it was put in place.

I was very much in favor of it, Poremba said. I thought it was the safest, smartest, most responsible thing to do.

But now, given the latest CDC guidance and the trajectory of the pandemic, he said, lifting it seems smart. Still, he thinks the restaurant groups vaccine requirement for indoor reservations, announced in July, will stay in place for the time being.

Debra Hunter, co-owner of Provisions St. Louis, a shop in the Central West End, said she expects some customers will probably still choose to wear masks.

Everybody will be working at their comfort level, Hunter said.

The mask mandate has never been a problem for the store, she said. They offer masks to anyone who comes in without one, and customers have been very understanding.

Things could change in the fall and winter, she added. And well be prepared for that.

At St. Louis Public Schools, masks will become optional for students and staff beginning on Monday, according to the districts website. The district said it will monitor virus rates closely and remain ready to shift protocols if needed. It urged parents to report all virus exposures to school principals, and to keep students home and seek testing if they have any symptoms.

Under the new CDC recommendations, the federal agency classifies counties as low, medium or high COVID-19 risk, based on the rates of new hospital admissions, the portion of hospital beds occupied by COVID-19 patients and the rate of new cases.

As of Tuesday, the city department said, St. Louis was in the low-risk category.

The mandate set to expire was included in an order issued by Dr. Fredrick Echols, who as health commissioner is the second-ranking person in the department. Echols is currently on leave from his position, a source familiar with the situation has said.

Davis declined to comment on Echols job status.

Thats not related, she said. We do not discuss personnel issues here.

She said the question should be directed to the city personnel department. That agencys interim director has declined to comment on Echols.

Posted at 11:15 a.m. Thursday, March 3. Updated at 6:30 p.m.

Annika Merrilees of the Post-Dispatch contributed to this report.

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ST. LOUIS  The director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention got her fill of St. Louis Thursday in a uniquely extensive visit to a city that included speaking to medical students, meeting with the citys health director, hearing from clinic leaders and touring one of those clinics in one of the citys most impoverished areas.

We in the CDC are only as good as our public health partners are in the community, and so as I travel, I really want to see whats working in public health in the community and whats not working, and I want to hear and learn, said Dr. Rochelle Walensky, who became director just as COVID-19 vaccines were rolled out over a year ago.

When Walensky was asked to speak on the medical campus of her alma mater Washington University as part of an annual lecture by a visiting professor, she also sought a meeting with Dr. Mati Hlatshwayo Davis, director of the St. Louis Department of Health.

Davis said she saw an opportunity to not just meet with Walensky but also use her visit to inspire an overworked and burned-out staff, showcase the citys success in fighting COVID-19 and highlight the critical work of federally qualified health centers  community clinics that care for those on Medicaid or without insurance.

What was originally planned to be an hour meeting with Davis turned into a day of touring the citys no-cost testing center for sexually transmitted diseases, new COVID-19 testing locations and the CareSTL Health center on Dr. Martin Luther King Drive in north St. Louis. Walensky also met with all four leaders of the citys community clinic systems.

Davis said they discussed ways to bolster the public health workforce and improve the large racial disparities in the citys vaccination rates among children  less than 20% of vaccinated children between the ages of 5 and 11 are Black.

Davis said Walensky was extremely gracious.

We need days like this, Davis said. We need help, but we also need hope.

Walensky said the 1,400 federally qualified health centers across the country deliver care to one in three people living in poverty. Over the past year, these clinics have vaccinated about 20 million people.

I wanted to hear how theyve been able to do it, some of the challenges that theyve had, they are going to be so key to the next chapter of COVID-19 but also the next chapter of equity and health around the country.

Angela Clabon, the chief executive of CareSTL Health, said she was thankful to have Walensky acknowledge the struggles the clinics face in caring for the citys most vulnerable residents through the pandemic.

Its an honor to know our voice will be heard in making decisions, Clabon said. We feel appreciated.

Lesson learned

Walensky began her visit to St. Louis Thursday morning speaking with medical students and faculty at Washington University about the challenges facing public health officials as the U.S. enters a new phase of the COVID-19 pandemic. She fielded questions posed by Dr. William Powderly, co-director of the infectious diseases division at the Washington University School of Medicine.

Walensky received a bachelors degree in chemistry with a concentration in biochemistry from Washington University in 1991 before earning a medical degree at Johns Hopkins University. She was invited to speak as this years Medoff Visiting Professor in the Department of Medicine.

Walensky, 52, said her experience as a medical provider and researcher has made her keenly aware of the challenges in a much broader role as CDC director, a job shes held since January 2021.

We provide guidance that has to be implementable in New York City, and the Navajo Nation and rural Montana and Guam  thats the spectrum of our public health recommendations, and increasingly through this pandemic people have wanted our public health guidance to say to them, Can I visit Grandma this weekend? Walensky said. Nobody goes to the CDC guidance to say, Can I have the fries at Shake Shack today? but thats what they really want from us in this moment.

She has experience advising patients as a physician, but balancing the need for individualized information with the need for sweeping public health guidance has been a really interesting line to walk, she said.

The CDC has to base its COVID-19 guidance on competing risks and benefits, constantly weighing the impact on things like mental illness, addiction and delays in medical care, Walensky said. In rolling out guidelines, the agency seeks feedback from local government and school officials and balances that with the latest science from its experts.

Sometimes the CDC decisions are criticized as caving to economic interests, such as when the CDC shortened the quarantine length just as the omicron variant was causing a surge.

Walensky said the country was about to see a million new cases a day and hospitals were in danger of not being able to get the supplies they needed, and something had to be done.

We might be faulted for not making exactly the right decision in the moment, but I dont want to be faulted for not making a decision, because that in and of itself is a decision, she said.

Looking back over the pandemic Walensky praised the extraordinary effort to deliver 550 million vaccines in one year and the CDCs increased ability to gather and quickly release large amounts of data. The CDC now has the ability to look at how vaccines impact cases and deaths, broken down by types of vaccine and age, within four weeks, she said.

What the CDC did not do well at was communicating what was not known yet about vaccines, she said. Experts did not talk enough about how immunity can wane, or how another variant could diminish effectiveness.

When the vaccine came out, it was 95% effective. So many of us wanted to say, OK, this is our ticket out. Yeah, were done. So, I think we had perhaps too little caution and too much optimism for some good things that came our way, she said. I think all of us wanted this to be done.

Going forward, she said the CDC can do better at explaining how science is nuanced and can change when more is learned. Health guidance is based on what is known at the time.

Weve always said, We are going to lead with science. That is entirely true, but I think the public heard that as science is foolproof, science is black and white. ... Truth is, science is gray  and science is not always immediate. And sometimes it takes months or years to actually find out the answer, but you have to make decisions in a pandemic before you have that answer, she said.

When asked how the universitys medical school and its students can help the CDC, Walensky said they can help ensure the next generation of providers is as diverse as the population, which helps improve health outcomes for everyone.

She also urged them to use their voices to promote trust in public health and listen to the needs of the individuals they care for.

Walensky told the students and staff that this was their Super Bowl moment.

We are all tired, she said, but this is what we were called to do. This is what we were trained to do.

Walensky said her visit to St. Louis was nostalgic and encouraging.

We were talking today about equity in action, she said, and I absolutely saw that, and it was really inspiring.

Originally posted at 12:45 p.m. Thursday, March 3. Updated at 7:50 p.m.(tncms-asset)461c5180-9a89-11ec-bcd1-00163ec2aa77[4](/tncms-asset)(tncms-asset)e984d4c2-95ee-11ec-a679-00163ec2aa77[5](/tncms-asset)(tncms-asset)c6fd4e18-9033-11ec-acb9-00163ec2aa77[6](/tncms-asset)(tncms-asset)d7b91e24-9053-11ec-9c17-00163ec2aa77[7](/tncms-asset)(tncms-asset)6c58a058-8f88-11ec-948e-00163ec2aa77[8](/tncms-asset)

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Gwen Thompson was ready for sleepaway camp last summer.

But she was 9 years old and the COVID-19 vaccine wasnt approved for her age group yet. Her mother, Dr. Laura Thompson, is an emergency room physician and erred on the side of caution.

It felt like a risk we werent comfortable with because what if she got sick and we werent with her, Thompson said.

This summer, however, Gwen is headed to Minnesota for Camp Thunderbird.

Shes vaccinated now, cases are declining, testing is easier and the camp has established safety protocols.

Everything just feels more settled than it did a year ago, her mom said.

Their family is part of a national surge in parents seeking out sleepaway and day camps for their children after two years of pandemic uncertainty.

Demand is soaring, said Tom Rosenberg, president and CEO of the American Camp Association. In 2020, after the pandemic shut down schools, about 82% of overnight camps canceled their summer sessions, he said. About 40% of day camps did not operate that summer either. Once research became available on how to safely operate camps, most of them reopened in 2021, albeit with reduced capacity in many cases. They discovered that a multilayered mitigation strategy worked  including masking, social distancing, cohorting into smaller groups and implementing behavior changes such as proper hand washing and coughing and sneezing etiquette.

Some of the lessons we are learning are going to stick with us, Rosenberg said.

Ricky Langton, executive director for YMCA Trout Lodge and Camp Lakewood, said the pandemic created an opportunity to focus on campers building relationships within their cabins. Last year, Camp Lakewood increased mental health training for staff for their own well-being and to help campers readjust to increased social interactions and greater independence.

Its a reintroduction of what it is to be a child again, he said. Some of the campers were getting used to seeing other kids entire faces again. Parent interest and registration is already 30% higher this year than where it was last year, he said. The camp expects to be back at full capacity this summer.

Part of the increased demand is because parents are looking for ways to help their children make up for delays in social and emotional growth given the time lost to isolation and social disruption. Others are keen to help their children regain some of the academic ground theyve lost over the past two years.

For the next several years, the summer months will be crucial to helping children catch up. Research shows positive and engaging summer experiences help children overcome learning deficits.

Zasmine Johnson, program manager for Blueprint4Summer, a site that helps parents search online for camp opportunities, said a lot of camps are incorporating academic learning elements into their programming.

Care providers are very aware of the learning loss and know parents are going to be interested in that, she said.

Schools that also offer classes during the summer ought to campify those offerings, Rosenberg said. The learning that happens in camp is experiential and kinetic, he explained. Basically, its the kind of learning that happens through hands-on activities and movement. Thats what makes it feel like fun rather than a chore.

In the immersive environment of an overnight camp, the child is in an undistracted, natural environment away from phones and able to have a completely human experience, reconnecting with peers every day, all day and encouraged by counselors to try hard things, Rosenberg said.

Schools can learn something from the camp approach. But many of the most enriching camp experiences are too expensive for the poor and working-class families whose students have lost the most ground. Blueprint4Summer offers tips on finding free and low-cost camp options on its site.

Before the pandemic, about 26 million children attended some type of summer camp program. There are more than 76 million school-aged children in America.

Thompson wants her daughter to learn new life skills and develop her independence at camp. She said her daughter was so excited about her upcoming camp experience that she asked if she could go for the entire summer.

Its your first time, why dont we try for half the summer? her mom said.

Theyve signed up for three and half weeks where Gwen will spend most of her days outside, making new friends and lifelong memories.

We really need every young person to have these experiences, Rosenberg said.

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ST. LOUIS  Two large American flags flanked the image of an eagle, its fiery eyes fixed on the assembly floor below. From its bill flowed a banner with the words, "Union Forever."

But sentiment was anything but unanimous among the men gathered for the special State Convention at the St. Louis Mercantile Library on March 4, 1861. Gov. Claiborne Fox Jackson and fellow secessionists in the Legislature hoped the convention would push Missouri into the budding Confederate States of America.

The 99 delegates had been chosen in a hastily called statewide election. After one day in Jefferson City, they moved to the spacious private library, at 510 Locust Street, because of the better taverns and hotels nearby. Unionists hoped some of the city's anti-secession feelings, symbolized by the eagle, might sway the delegates.

Jackson, a slaveholding planter from central Missouri, made his view plain by urging Missouri to "stand by the South." Opposing him was U.S. Rep. Francis Blair Jr., President Abraham Lincoln's point man in St. Louis. Blair's newspaper, the Missouri Democrat, warned delegates: "The slave interest claims to dominate the state. Shall it do so?"

Across Missouri, only the city went for Lincoln in the November election. But Jackson's scheming was complicated by widespread sympathy for saving the Union, even among slaveholders. Most of the convention delegates owned slaves, but only a few favored secession.

Delegates chose Sterling Price, a former governor and future Confederate general, as their chairman. They picked Hamilton Gamble, a St. Louis lawyer and future Union provisional governor, to lead its key Committee on Federal Relations. The choices portrayed Border State ambivalence.

The majority sought a hopeless middle ground. With Missouri flanked on three sides by free states, many considered secession suicidal. John Henderson of Pike County warned of mass flight by slaves that "will prove to be our destruction." But John Redd of Marion County, arguing that the Union "cannot be pinned together by bayonets," urged secession if bullets were to fly.

On March 9, Gamble's committee declared "no adequate cause" for secession - but also opposed using federal troops to "coerce" seceding states. Ten days of debate were followed by overwhelming votes in favor of the creaky compromise. A much narrower 54-39 vote added an amendment urging Lincoln to abandon Fort Sumter at Charleston, S.C.

Jackson was thwarted, but events quickly overwhelmed the convention's yearning for compromise. Sumter was bombarded on April 12. Jackson mustered the state militia to keep an eye on St. Louis, but Union Capt. Nathaniel Lyon captured its camp on May 10. Later that day, 28 civilians and seven soldiers died in gunfire on Olive Street between Lyon's troops and Southern sympathizers.

Read more stories from Tim O'Neil's Look Back series.
HIGHLAND  A man who assaulted a Highland resident before forcing him to withdraw money from an ATM was sentenced to 12 years in federal prison.

Zachary T. Watson and Alize K. Mayes entered the Highland man's home on Aug. 19, 2020, tied him up at gunpoint and forced him into his pickup truck, their plea agreements say.

The pair then forced the man to try and withdraw money from several ATMs, successfully getting $800 from one.

When they brought the victim home, he escaped and called police. Madison County Sheriff's deputies spotted them and chased them to the Poplar Street Bridge, where Watson, 24, Mayes, 22, and a juvenile were arrested.

Watson and Mayes pleaded guilty to bank robbery, carjacking and a gun charge. Watson was sentenced Thursday.

Mayes was sentenced in federal court Nov. 23 to 10 years in prison.

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ST. LOUIS  A drug dealer from California who went on the run for three years after nearly being caught in Florissant with 59 pounds of fentanyl was sentenced Friday to life in prison.

Lawyers for 56-year-old Gerald Fitzgerald Hunter wanted 20 years in prison. Beau Brindley argued that Hunter would be in his 70s when released and said his organization was nonviolent, more like an illegal business operation than a street-level drug gang.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Erin Granger pointed out Hunters prior drug convictions stretching back to 1987 and said he began selling cocaine again in 2011, while barely out of prison.

In 2016, he switched to fentanyl because he could make more money and began selling 10 to 15 kilograms per month, she said.

She called the drug quantities and the cash generated by the organization Hunter led staggering and said he continued selling even after his escape and indictment in 2017.

It was still early in the investigation in 2017 when DEA agents learned that Hunter was coming to town, officials of the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Marshals told the Post-Dispatch in December.

They scrambled a team to follow him and Andon Demarcus Templer, who supplied others with fentanyl or fentanyl mixed with heroin that he got from Hunter, including Bryan Keith Warren.

Nine DEA agents and police task force officers swooped in at the Life Storage facility in Florissant, seizing two duffel bags containing 27 heat-sealed packages that totaled about 26.5 kilos of fentanyl. The drugs had been shipped to the St. Louis area from California in hidden compartments built into furniture.

The seizure remains the largest fentanyl bust in the St. Louis area and came at a time when fentanyl was surging onto the drug scene and being substituted for heroin or other opiates.

The drug is now being made into pills resembling prescription medication. Its potency, and the lack of quality control in Mexican labs, means overdoses, including fatal ones, have spiked, officials have said.

Hunter, however, escaped by climbing a fence and running away barefoot.

Early the next morning, agents and police raided a series of locations in the St. Louis area, seizing $35,000, drug sales records, guns, drug paraphernalia, 10 pounds of marijuana and two presses used to make bricks of heroin or fentanyl.

Hunter was on the major case fugitive list until the U.S. Marshals tracked him to Los Angeles in 2020.

After his arrest, agents found guns, $220,000 in cash and G-Code, a screenplay about criminal life.

Hunter was convicted at trial in U.S. District Court in St. Louis in October of conspiracy to distribute fentanyl, possession with intent to distribute fentanyl, conspiracy to distribute cocaine and two counts of money laundering.

In court Friday, Hunter denied dealing drugs in 2011 and said, I know Im not the monster that theyre trying to create.

U.S. District Judge John Ross said he would almost never consider sentencing a drug dealer to life in prison but said the case was extraordinary ... for anywhere in the country due to the quantities of dangerous fentanyl.

Assistant Special Agent in Charge Colin Dickey, supervisor of DEA operations in Eastern Missouri, said in a statement that Hunter and his associates are no longer a threat to St. Louis.

This sentencing today is good news for anyone who seeks justice for the many overdose deaths fentanyl is causing in St. Louis, Dickey said.

Hunter is the last to be sentenced. All 10 co-defendants pleaded guilty. Templer got 15 years. Warren, below him in the organization, received 10 years, and the others received lesser amounts.

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Updated Thursday night with the name of the man who was shot.

COLLINSVILLE  Illinois State Police are investigating after Collinsville officers fatally shot an East Carondelet man who reportedly fired at them first on Wednesday night.

The shooting happened just after 8:30 p.m. Wednesday in the 100 block of Arnold Street in Collinsville when officers responded to a report of a home invasion, according to an Illinois State Police statement.

Officers said they saw a man inside the residence with a firearm, and police then repeatedly ordered him to drop the weapon, the state police said.

Instead, the state police said, the man opened the door and fired at officers, who then shot back. The man died at the scene. Police identified the man on Thursday as Kevin C. Steinhauer, 45.

No officers were injured in the incident, which is being investigated by the Illinois State Police. No additional details about the shooting have been released.

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CLAYTON The wife of a Chesterfield companys former chief financial officer who embezzled millions from the business over a decade must pay the firm $177,000, a St. Louis County jury said.

The jury on Thursday said Susan Luina of Chesterfield must pay CMS Communications Inc., finding that she benefited from her husband Ramon Trey R. Luina IIIs decadelong $2.8 million embezzlement scheme.

Trey Luina, 47, served 27 months of a 41-month federal prison sentence after pleading guilty to mail fraud in 2017 in U.S. District Court in St. Louis. He was released from federal prison in November 2020.

Trey Luina admitted stealing an average of $280,000 per year from the telephone equipment company during which time more than two dozen of the companys roster of 97 employees suffered lost jobs and experienced pay cuts.

CMS sued Trey and Susan Luina and their parents in St. Louis County Circuit Court in 2017, claiming the couple and their parents benefited from his scheme and the sale of a lake house the couple built with embezzled money.

Robert Schultz, a lawyer for CMS, said Trey Luina spent about $350,000 of stolen money on the mortgage and improvements for the couples Chesterfield home and another $450,000 toward building and furnishing a six-bedroom lake house in Perryville, Missouri.

Luina took $1.3 million in cash, spent $40,000 on vacations in Florida, Colorado and Italy, $82,000 for vehicles, $93,000 on other business ventures and nearly $1 million on credit cards, according to company records.

Schultz said that after CMS fired Trey Luina, he and his wife sold the Perryville house to their parents for about $400,000 and used proceeds  about $180,000  to repay CMS.

They were living like the Kardashians, Schultz said of the couple. The saddest part is, approximately $2 million of what he stole was frittered away on dinners, travel, a little jewelry. Imagine spending a thousand dollars a day on experiences. Every day was like Disneyland with these people.

The jury found that the couples parents, Thelma and Ramon R. Luina Jr. of Virginia and James and Bernadette Winkler of Fenton, were not liable.

Schultz said hes somewhat disappointed in the verdict but respects the jurys decision.

While Trey Luina was ordered as part of his criminal case to repay $2.2 million to CMS, Schultz said CMS still plans to pursue civil penalties against him for counts including fraud, unjust enrichment and breach of financial duty.

So far, Trey Luina has repaid CMS about $550,000 which includes monthly restitution payments of $500, said Dan Emerson, who represented the couple and their parents in the civil suit.

Emerson said he was glad the jury did not find the parents responsible but that holding Susan Luina pay is unfortunate because he believes it was clear nobody knew that Trey Luina was embezzling from CMS for years.

I understand where the jury was coming from, Emerson said. He led an opulent life.

Trey Luina did a terrible thing and he knows that, and hes going to live with that for the rest of his life, Emerson said.

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BERKELEY  A St. Louis County man was charged Thursday in the fatal shooting of a 21-year-old man last week outside a North County liquor store.

Devon Gibson, 28, of Berkeley, was charged with first-degree murder, first-degree assault and multiple weapons offenses in the Feb. 25th death of 21-year-old Cincere Ford, of St. Louis.

Ford was killed about 10 p.m. outside the Liquor Doctor store in the 8300 block of Airport Road, according to police.

Gibson is accused of pulling up alongside Ford's vehicle in a 2019 Nissan Altima before shooting both Ford and another occupant in the car, according to charging documents.

The charges allege that Gibson then fled in the Nissan, striking another car in the process.

Court documents say the incident was captured on surveillance video.

Detectives from the St. Louis County Police Departments Bureau of Crimes Against Persons are leading the investigation.

Ford was one of two people found in a vehicle. Both men were shot multiple times. The other was listed in critical condition, but was expected to survive, police said.

Gibson, of the 6800 block of Georgeland in Berkeley, was given a bond of $750,000, cash only.

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A man from southern Illinois was sentenced Thursday to 14 years in federal prison for using child rape threats to extort nude pictures and videos from other children online.

Using fake Facebook profiles, Bryan Patrick Flanagan contacted girls at random in Missouri, Tennessee, California, Texas and Pennsylvania.

Flanagan's communication began normally, but would then turn sexual. He threatened to rape a child unless the children he'd contacted sent nude pictures or videos, his plea says.

In court documents, prosecutors said Flanagan targeted 51 victims in February and March of 2020 and has admitted making harassing phone calls to women and girls for 19 years.

At the time of his arrest on the federal charges, Flanagan was on probation for a 2018 conviction in Marion County, Illinois, for making harassing and obscene communications.

Flanagan, 34, of Centralia, pleaded guilty in September to two counts of distributing child porn and five counts of interstate communications with intent to extort.

He is scheduled to be sentenced Dec. 16 and could face roughly 15 to 20 years under federal sentencing guidelines.

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ST. LOUIS  A St. Louis man found guilty in December of killing his half-brother in 2020 was sentenced Wednesday to 16 years in prison.

Circuit Judge John Bird sentenced Keenen Chambers-King, 28, in the June 21, 2020, fatal shooting of Lorenzo Chambers-Harris.

Prosecutors said Chambers-King fired at least 11 shots at his 32-year-old half-brother during a fistfight outside a home in the 5200 block of Vernon Avenue.

Chambers-King stood trial in December on charges of second-degree murder and testified that he killed Chambers-Harris in self-defense.

The shooting stemmed from a fight over Chambers-King's gun that his half-brother and others took while Chambers-King was passed out from drinking at a house party, a prosecutor said in court.

A jury in December found Chambers-King guilty of armed criminal action and a lesser count of voluntary manslaughter.

The jury recommended 10 years for voluntary manslaughter and six years for armed criminal action.

The judge ran those sentences consecutively, noting that Chambers-King shot Chambers-Harris about a dozen times.

"Your brother started out that night trying to protect you," Bird told him.

Editor's note: An earlier version of this story had an incorrect last name of the victim and misidentified his relationship to the defendant. It also incorrectly reported the location of the party. The story has been updated.

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ST. LOUIS  Prosecutors this week charged a third man with murder in last month's shooting death of Lekeshia Stokes of Florissant.

Corey Nicholas Evans, 18, was charged Thursday in at-large warrants with first-degree murder and armed criminal action.

Police said Friday they had no mugshot of Evans and that he was not in custody. A judge has ordered that Evans be held without bail, once he's arrested.

Evans lives in the 4700 block of Leduc Street in St. Louis.

On Feb. 25, the St. Louis Circuit Attorney's Office charged two men with the same crimes: Thomas Shelton and Douglas Shelton-Herron. Shelton, 22, lives in the 12000 block of James Patrick Lane, and Shelton-Herron, 24, lives in the 5500 block of Page Avenue.

The victim, Lekeshia Stokes, was discovered shot in a vehicle Feb. 11, in the 8500 block of Church Drive in north St. Louis' Baden neighborhood. Stokes died at a hospital.

Stokes, 39, lived in the 2000 block of Carefree Lane in Florissant,

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ST. LOUIS

ST. LOUIS  Mike Welch grew up in the Forest Park Southeast neighborhood. Eight years ago, he left St. Louis, and he doesnt ever plan to move back.

The city, its just so stagnant, said Welch, 36, who now works in safety training for United Airlines in Houston. Theres no diversity.

When he comes back to visit family, he sees that his old neighborhood has indeed changed with the development of the Grove commercial district along Manchester Avenue. But, he says, much of St. Louis still hasnt evolved.

One of about 27,000 Black residents who left St. Louis over the last decade, Welch said he often felt unwelcome in his own city. He doesnt want to criticize the police  he has family who are in law enforcement in the region  but says getting hassled by suspicious officers when he was growing up didnt help.

Even if you wasnt doing nothing, they was messing with us, and I knew when I got older, I wanted to get away from that, Welch said. I wasnt the type of guy who was running the streets or nothing like that.

Welchs departure is like thousands of others in the city. Growth in St. Louis central corridor has failed to offset the exodus elsewhere in the urban core. Black St. Louisans, especially, have left in droves, most quitting north St. Louis, which over the last decade continued to slide as investment waned and people moved to the suburbs or other cities.

The regions namesake city, with a population of just 301,578 in the 2020 census, is dragging down overall growth. Its loss of nearly 18,000 people over the last decade was the most among the metro areas 15 counties, offsetting a chunk of the nearly 45,000 new residents in suburban St. Charles County. The Metro East  the eight Illinois counties that are part of the metro area  also lost about 21,000 people, while St. Louis County, the regions largest county, was mostly flat, remaining just above 1 million residents.

The bottom line is that while the St. Louis region did add people over the last decade, the growth was anemic: 1.2% overall, or just 32,500 people, to 2.8 million. St. Louis, which dropped out of the top 20 metro areas for the first time, saw slower growth, on a percentage basis, than all but three of the nations 50 largest metro areas: Pittsburgh, Cleveland and Hartford, Connecticut.

Thats a red flag for leaders of a region that was once one of the countrys major cities. Jason Hall, CEO of Greater St. Louis Inc., goes as far as to call it an existential threat to the city, one that will decrease the regions ability to attract talent and capital or reinvest in infrastructure and cultural amenities.

We have to recognize growth has to be a top civic priority, Hall said. Those census data should be the wake-up call because it is clear, we know, if nothing changes, we will fall from 21 closer to 30. This is a decade where our accumulated size advantages from the turn of the last century start to collapse relative to the high-growth peers underneath us. This is a critical, critical decade.

In the last decade, St. Louis has already fallen behind fast-growing metro areas such as Denver and Tampa Bay. In the most recent census, Baltimore surpassed the St. Louis areas population. And at current rates of growth, the metro areas anchored by Orlando, Charlotte and San Antonio are poised to soon surpass it.

They have the one thing St. Louis doesnt have, and thats a growing Latino population, said St. Louis University sociologist Ness Sandoval.

Much of the growth in fast-growing regions is driven by the Latino population there, which also tends to be younger, lifting birth rates.

By contrast, St. Louis birth rate is declining, Sandoval noted, and its very small Latino community makes it an outlier among major metropolitan regions. It will take an intentional marketing and attraction effort to lure more Latino immigrants and second- or third-generation Latinos to the region, Sandoval said. But Missouri politics make the state seem like a place where Latinos arent welcome, he said.

St. Louis needs to change its image, he said, as other cities in conservative states have done.

Im still positive on St. Louis, Sandoval said. Its got great bones. Its got good housing. But it has to become younger and it has to become more diverse. And its got about 20 years to do it. Everybodys fighting for population right now.

Midwestern peers

While demographic trends in recent decades have favored the South and West, often at the expense of the Midwest, the slow growth here cant just be chalked up to immutable migratory and birth rate patterns.

Kansas City, on the other side of Missouri, grew by 9% over the last decade, above the national growth rate of 7.4%. Indianapolis and Columbus, Ohio, grew by around 12% and Cincinnati by 5.6%. Even Detroit, long cast as a hollowed-out, pitiable Rust Belt metropolis, grew by 2.2% over the last decade.

Thats all the more evidence, Hall said, that St. Louis needs to stop with the excuses and figure out what those other Midwestern cities are doing to grow.

Theyre growing because theyre figuring out how to compete as one metro, he said.

Greater St. Louis Inc., in its second year, was formed in part from a recognition by the business community that St. Louis old civic infrastructure wasnt working.

It has already launched a number of new initiatives in recent years.

The STLMade campaign, a regional marketing initiative, is aimed not just at those looking at moving to St. Louis but convincing its own residents, many of whom have a negative perception of the city and its prospects, to stay. It is putting resources into growing other strategic industry clusters, such as advanced manufacturing and geospatial technology. Its helping build support for projects like the Brickline pedestrian and bicycle thoroughfare that other cities have already built.

And it preaches equity and inclusivity, as do new economic plans in the city of St. Louis. The citys racial segregation is a liability; accepting that fact and working to repair it is essential.

To compete for that talent you have to be seen as a place that is abundant with opportunity and no matter who you are you have access to that opportunity, Hall said.

Getting the message out that St. Louis is working to become more inclusive and tamp down perceptions about its crime problem is important, said Jerry Schlichter, a prominent attorney and civic leader who founded and chairs Arch Grants, a startup fund that draws entrepreneurs to St. Louis.

We need a very robust story to be told about St. Louis in the national media, he said. Our narrative has been written for us often by crime statistics.

Schlichter was among a group of business leaders who recently announced a donation  reportedly more than $1 million  to support efforts by the International Institute of St. Louis to resettle Afghan refugees.

Its an example of the urgency regional leaders are placing on population growth, without which they say St. Louis will continue to struggle both competitively for jobs and capital but also with social issues such as crime and vacancy.

The money is earmarked to help the institute co-sign on leases in order to open up more rental stock, particularly for large refugee families. It will also fund a digital Afghan newspaper, establish an Afghan Chamber of Commerce and purchase iPads for new arrivals. The extra services are aimed at boosting the regions image as a good place for Afghans settled elsewhere in the country to come and start a new life, similar to what happened with the Bosnian refugees drawn here in the 1990s.

Theres nothing remotely like this anywhere in the United States, Schlichter said. And thats the goal to stand out as the city thats the most welcoming and supportive.

Theres a good chance the effort could resonate among Afghan refugees, said Arrey Obenson, CEO of the International Institute, which has already helped welcome about 650 Afghans here, about 100 of whom still need permanent housing. He said the organization has the capacity to settle as many as 800 more in the coming months.

The Afghan refugee crisis has helped galvanize the regions resettlement infrastructure, bringing nonprofits together and reinvigorating them following the Trump administrations policy of slashing the number of refugees the U.S. accepted. But Obenson said the momentum should not stop with Afghan refugees.

We can grow the population of St. Louis, he said. The way were going to do it is, Im appealing to the community to not just see this as a resettlement effort, but to work with us in building capacity to attract immigrants from all over the United States to come to St. Louis. Help us build a workforce pipeline. Help us build a multicultural center here.

Hall sees some evidence that regional collaboration is improving. He said most other regional leaders recognize the need to reinvigorate the urban core, even if they lead suburban counties.

And he pointed to the application for a new federal Build Back Better grant worth up to $100 million for an advanced manufacturing center in north St. Louis near Ranken Technical College, for which St. Louis is one of 60 finalists for 20 to 30 such grants. When theres that much money on the line, the daggers can come out, he said, but regional leaders largely rallied behind the application to put it in the citys struggling north side.

Still, it will take big wins, like attracting an international flight to Germany last year, and little ones, consistently over time to change the narrative and draw new people.

This is long-term work, Hall said. If anybody tells you theres a silver bullet, theyre lying.

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ST. LOUIS  Serge Zevlever was often known as a protector.

He took on the role when he fled with his family to the St. Louis area from the Soviet Union some 30 years ago to become a U.S. citizen. He did it again when he worked long hours as a taxi driver and pizza delivery man here to bring even more relatives to the U.S.

Zevlever would protect even more in his decadeslong work as a central figure in adoptions of the neediest Ukrainian children to U.S. families. He would split his time between the St. Louis area and Ukraine, helping hundreds of children with medical needs out of orphanages and into welcoming homes.

And on Feb. 26, two days after Russian forces launched an invasion of Ukraine, Zevlever, 62, was again a protector when he volunteered to check on commotion outside of a Kyiv bomb shelter during the assault.

He was shot in the chest and killed by a sniper fighting for Russia as family members looked on, his daughters, who both remain in the St. Louis area, told the Post-Dispatch this week.

He was not in a scuffle, he was not on the front lines, his eldest daughter Alisa Sander said. He went outside to see if it was safe for everyone else, but they were aiming their guns right at the place where these people were sheltering.

A U.S. State Department spokesman confirmed the death of a U.S. citizen in the conflict that day, without naming Zevlever, and offered condolences to his family.

To many, Zevlever appeared gruff with his Ukrainian accent, shaved head, stocky build and in-charge persona, but that covered an often playful and compassionate man with a soft spot for those in need, his younger daughter Nicole Zevlever said.

People were drawn to my dad, she said. But they thought: You dont want to mess with that man, until theyd see he was the biggest teddy bear in the world who loved children and animals. He was a hero to us.

A free life

Serge Zevlever fled Ukraine in the years before the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.

It was a wish of his mother that he get out and find a better, free life for his family, Nicole Zevlever said.

Zevlever fled as a refugee to Italy with his first daughter, Alisa, and her mother. Initially, the family was not allowed into the U.S., so Zevlever organized a hunger strike of refugees in Italy to push authorities to granting them visas, his family said.

They were eventually approved and Zevlever arrived in St. Louis.

Once in the country, he had a second daughter, Nicole, and worked a series of jobs as he learned English and adapted to the country, including a short time as a co-owner of an eastern European restaurant in St. Louis County.

He was the best cook, Nicole Zevlever said. Hed say: Nika, its time for breakfast and Id come down and hed have a whole steak for me.

Serge Zevlever soon earned enough to fund his sister, her husband and their children to join his family in the U.S.

He would discover his lifes work in the late 1990s, when his friends Viacheslav Platonov and Yelena Kogan founded the Small World agency focused on international adoptions from eastern Europe.

My job is to take care of the parents while theyre overseas, Zevlever told the Post-Dispatch in a 1999 story on the company.

Parents adopting from Ukraine would often have to spend weeks to months in the country navigating a complicated patchwork of requirements from orphanages and local governments.

Zevlever soon became an expert on the system, rattling off regulations and knowing who to call and push to get things done, said Nancy Thornell, who worked with Zevlever for more than 10 years on the U.S. side of his business.

The two met when Zevlever facilitated Thornells adoption of her first child at age 6 from Ukraine in 2010. Before they met, Zevlever voluntarily paid for the little girl to get hip surgery.

He didnt have to do that, Thornell said. But I think he thought there was a better chance she would get out and find a family with the surgery.

Thornell said she and Zevlever worked with a variety of adoption organizations, sometimes using the name Hand of Help in Adoption. His team oversaw adoptions for 40 to 50 families from Ukraine per year, with many parents adopting multiple children at once, she said.

The need for international adoptions in Ukraine centers on children with medical needs and older children and teens.

The adoption business kept Zevlever constantly busy and traveling often. He eventually remarried and his wife, Marina Zevlever, and their son Valentin soon helped run the business in Ukraine.

His wife had to put his phone away on Saturday and Sunday just so he would stop work, his daughter, Sander, said. But he loved what he did.

Kelly Dirkes and her husband met Zevlever in 2012 when they met Louisa, the first of three children with Down syndrome they would adopt with help from Zevlever from Ukraine.

He is the man who gave so many people their families and, for this group of children, the chance to pass on being loved and mattering to someone, she said. I cant thank him enough.

Carla Dobrovits, an attorney from northwest Indiana, and her husband adopted four children from Ukraine with Zevlevers help in 2011 and 2013.

The couple first adopted a baby boy with a rare genetic condition, Larsens syndrome, which can cause cardiovascular problems and abnormalities in joints, Dobrovits said.

They agreed to adopt him, despite significant medical needs that eventually led to the boys death in November 2012. Before then, the family was dedicated to getting him the best medical care available.

It broke my heart to think we might not be able to adopt from Ukraine again, but Serge fought for us, Dobrovits said. He said: You did everything you could for that boy, you should not be penalized for what happened to him.

With Zevlevers help, the couple eventually adopted three siblings, ages 1, 3 and 11, from Ukraine in 2013.

Dobrovits said in her time with him, she learned that he would deliver food to the orphanages, throw the kids parties, pay for utilities and often visit the children.

He would pick up the kids and tote them around like a big bear, she said. You could tell it was more than business for him and they loved him.

Today, Dobrovits serves on the board of Reeces Rainbow, an organization supporting international adoptions of children with disabilities that often collaborated with Zevlever.

Everybody knew Serge in the Ukrainian adoption world, she said. So today Im just heartbroken about the personal loss, but also what it means for all the children who he might have helped.

Too old to be scared

When news of Russian troops lining the borders of Ukraine began to spread in February, Zevlever tried not to worry his daughter and friends.

He was not without any fear or blind to what was going on in the world, Sander said. But nobody thought this would happen and he said: Im not leaving until Im made to leave.

His co-worker, Thornell, said he was joking even at the beginning of the invasion.

The last time I talked to him, he said he was too old to be scared, being scared was something for the young, she said.

Nicole Zevlever remembers speaking to her dad over the phone after Russians began their assault and he encouraged her to work hard on her studies to finish paramedic school.

He was trying not to show any panic, she said. He said: Do not worry. I love you, sunshine, everything is OK. Ill let you know if anything bad happens. Go to work, go to work.

A few hours later, Nicole sent her dad a text joking about a Cat Cafe that stayed open in Kyiv during the invasion.

I knew he would think it was funny, but he never replied, she said. I thought right away that was weird.

Soon Nicole got a text from her cousin: I need to see you right now.

He told her that her dad had been killed.

The family would later learn, they say, that a group of Chechen snipers rented an apartment in her fathers building and one shot Zevlever. Ukrainian friends and family told them the snipers were later caught by local fighters.

At the time, they thought no one was attacking civilians, Sander said. But this is not true. It was just the most incredible injustice. My dad was such a beautiful human, so the injustice is magnified by a million.

His wife and son remain in Ukraine, according to the family.

A family friend started a GofundMe page under the title The Memorial of our Dear Friend, Serge Zevlever to raise funds to eventually return Zevlevers remains to the U.S.

He wanted to return and retire to the U.S. one day, Nicole Zevlever said. We would like to bury him here.

Outside Sanders St. Charles County home, a Ukrainian flag now sits in the front lawn of the house in the country her father fought to get them to years ago.

Neighbors this week piled flowers there under the blue and yellow banner to honor his memory.

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The Supreme Court on Thursday cleared the way for Kentucky's Republican attorney general to step in to defend a controversial abortion law, after the Democratic governor declined to continue doing so.

The law restricts a standard second-trimester abortion method known as "dilation and evacuation" that is used after 15 weeks of pregnancy. It was signed into law in 2018 but has so far been blocked by the courts.

The Supreme Court's ruling doesn't address the constitutionality of the law. Instead, the dispute involved a procedural issue: whether the attorney general could step in to defend the law after other state officials said they would no longer pursue an appeal.

The court's 8-1 decision revives the case at hand and will make it easier for states that elect their attorneys general to defend laws when a state official from an opposing party has a different viewpoint.

Justice Samuel Alito, writing for the majority, said that the federal appeals court should not have ruled that the attorney general was unable to intervene to defend the law. He said "a State's opportunity to defend its laws in federal court should not be lightly cut off."

Thursday's opinion comes as the justices allowed Texas' strict six-week abortion ban to remain in effect and as they are considering the future of Roe v. Wade in a case concerning a restrictive abortion law in Mississippi.

The decision wasn't a complete surprise because during oral arguments last month in a case that raised some similar legal issues, Justice Stephen Breyer accidentally gave away the result of the Kentucky case even before the opinion had been released.

Kentucky is one of several states where attorneys general are elected -- giving rise to potential conflicts if the governor of a state is of a different party. Abortion providers expressed concern that it the state's attorney general in the case at hand prevailed, the legal dispute would continue.

Complicated procedural background

The Kentucky abortion law was signed in 2018 by Gov. Matt Bevin, a Republican, and immediately challenged by EMW Women's Surgical Center and two of its doctors. They argued the law imposed an undue burden on the right to pre-viability abortion.

Then-Attorney General Andy Beshear, a Democrat, said his office did not have the authority to defend the law and he agreed to be bound by the decision of the state's secretary of health.

After a five-day bench trial, a district court blocked the law, and the case went to the federal appeals court. At the same time, however, an election occurred and Beshear became governor. In the same election, Republican Daniel Cameron was elected attorney general.

After an appeals court affirmed the district court's decision, the divide between the parties opened: Beshear's administration said it would not appeal the decision.

That prompted Cameron to intervene in the case, attempting to revive the dispute, only to lose when the federal appeals court said his request came too late. The lower court emphasized that the office of the attorney general had already agreed to step out of the case, and now it was too late to try to step back in.

Cameron appealed to the Supreme Court. Kentucky's Principal Deputy Solicitor General Matthew Kuhn told the justices that as a matter of Kentucky law, Cameron has the final say on whether to accept a decision that enjoined a state law, and that even under the previous attorney general, the office had preserved the ability of the attorney general to "participate in any appeal."

He said Cameron "had the ability to protect Kentucky's interests when it became unrepresented" and that the decision to defend the law represented a "hand off" from one state official to another.

Writing in dissent on Thursday, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, one of the court's liberal members, said the appeals court had come to the right conclusion.

"In every case, there must be a point of time when litigation shall be at an end," she wrote. She said she feared her colleagues' decision would "open the floodgates for government officials to evade the consequences of litigation decisions made by their predecessors of different political parties undermining finality and upsetting the settled expectations of courts, litigants, and the public alike."

In court, Alexa Kolbi-Molinas, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, stressed that the office of attorney general had already spoken on the law during an earlier phase of the proceedings and that Cameron stands in the "shoes of his predecessor."

"Intervention is not a revolving door," she said, and added that the lower court did not abuse its discretion by holding that Cameron's attempt to get into the case came too late.

This story has been updated with additional details Thursday.

The-CNN-Wire

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CNN's Devan Cole contributed to this report.
TOKYO  Russias seizure of a Ukrainian nuclear power plant has raised fears about access to radiation data, atomic experts said, although they stressed they did not see immediate radiological risks and a U.N. watchdog said its reactors were undamaged.

Russian forces captured the Zaporizhzhia plant  Europes largest  after attacking it in the early hours of Friday, setting an adjacent five-story training facility on fire, Ukrainian authorities said.

Russia has blamed the attack on the plant on Ukrainian saboteurs.

In a press conference on Friday, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Rafael Grossi said no damage had been done to the Zaporozhzhia reactors and Ukrainian staff continued to operate the nuclear facilities while Russian forces controlled the area.

The radiation monitoring system at the site was functioning normally and there had been no release of radioactive material, Grossi said.

Park Jong-woon, a professor at the energy and electric engineering department of Dongguk University, said he did not think there was an immediate radiological threat posed by the plants seizure, but added Russia could disrupt public access to radiation data to sow confusion.

They can make people wonder, freak them out and spread fear, said Park, who worked at state-run power operators between 1996 and 2009, helping build nuclear reactors.

The fire at the Zaporizhzhia facility has since been extinguished but it had raised a very real concern about the potential for disaster, Edwin Lyman, director of nuclear power safety at the Union of Concerned Scientists in Washington D.C., said.

For example, the prospect of a widespread fire, although that appears not to be the case, could disable the plants electrical systems and lead to an event very much like Fukushima if cooling is not restored in time, he said.

More broadly, experts expressed worries about access to real time data necessary for gauging the radiation situation on the ground.

The official website for radiation readings at the Zaporizhzhia site was not immediately accessible as of Friday afternoon, Lyman said.

Since last weeks takeover by Russian forces of Chernobyl  the site of the worlds worst nuclear disaster and now a defunct power plant  monitoring of radiation levels there has been more difficult, according to Kenji Nanba, who heads Fukushima Universitys Institute of Environmental Radioactivity and has been involved in a joint research project with Ukrainian scientists.

He said an official Ukrainian website with hourly radiation measurements from Chernobyls exclusion zone had been down for days and that another site had gradually lost most of its real-time readings.

Although the damaged Chernobyl reactor is stable and is covered under a large new containment structure, Nanba said it was still crucial for researchers like himself to track radiation data at the site to make sure there were no sudden changes.

Elevated radiation readings were recorded near Chernobyl after it was taken over by Russian forces last week, but experts say those were most likely caused by military activity that kicked up irradiated dirt and earth into the air.

The fourth reactor at Chernobyl exploded in April 1986 during a botched safety test, sending clouds of radiation billowing across much of Europe. Estimates for the numbers of direct and indirect deaths from the disaster vary from the low thousands to as many as 93,000 extra cancer deaths worldwide.

Ju-min Park reported from Seoul. Additional reporting by Kirsty Needham in Sydney.

Updated at 5:30 a.m. Friday, March 4.
Its safe to say that no major decision at City Hall is undertaken without Mayor Tishaura Jones personal approval, including the city counselors decision to appeal a ruling that onlookers were unconstitutionally swept up in the September 2017 protests during a police kettling operation in downtown St. Louis. A Missouri appeals panel ruled against the city in January, making clear that indiscriminate police mass arrests and brutality violated the rights of non-protesters.

Jones administration seems determined to fight the ruling, even if it means spending taxpayer money to appeal it all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, as the Post-Dispatchs Tony Messenger reported. This is one issue where Jones has made such a bad call that she risks losing the support of even her most ardent liberal defenders. The bystanders caught up in that mass arrest did not deserve the abusive treatment they received, and the city has never held the cops and commanders fully accountable for the collective punishment they imposed.

Jones campaigned specifically on a platform of redressing abusive police activities and led defund-the-police progressives to believe she was on their side. But even ardent police defenders take issue with what happened on Sept. 17, 2017. Protesters and mere observers were beaten. An undercover cop suffered permanent injuries from the battering administered by his fellow officers. A Post-Dispatch reporter and an Air Force lieutenant colonel were among the bystanders corralled, roughed up and arrested after police gave them no way to leave when ordered to.

The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals was absolutely correct to rule against the city and its assertion that qualified immunity somehow grants officers carte blanche to do as they please without fear of prosecution.

Police may be entitled to qualified immunity protections if they arrest individual offenders with at least arguable probable cause, but officers cannot enjoy such protections by alleging that the unlawful acts of a small group justify the arrest of the mass, the three-judge panel ruled.

City Counselor Sheena Hamilton, a Jones appointee, argued that this case is one of national importance in the context of policing mass civil disorder. If context refers to mass arrests during the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection, shes way off. Those rioters had illegally entered and occupied a closed government building. If context refers to the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, shes still way off. Police dispersed thousands of protesters across the country, but reports of mass, indiscriminate arrests were rare.

The city has tried low-ball settlements to get the plaintiffs to back down. Now it proposes a series of expensive court battles to argue an already-losing case. The police broke the very law they were supposed to be enforcing. They behaved like thugs. The plaintiffs deserve financial compensation, and St. Louis taxpayers still deserve to see full accountability for the law enforcers involved.
At last, Congress appears poised to designate lynching as a federal hate crime punishable with enhanced penalties. The House last month passed the Emmett Till Antilynching Act with just three no votes. Thats three too many, but the potential for unanimous passage in the Senate could still send a strong message of zero tolerance for this form of domestic terrorism.

During the hundred years from the end of the Civil War to the peak of the civil rights movement, thousands of Americans, most of them Black, were lynched by groups or mobs of fellow Americans driven primarily by racial hatred. Among the victims was Till, 14, of Chicago, who was abducted, beaten and shot to death while visiting relatives in Mississippi in 1955 after false allegations he had accosted a white woman. Tills mother insisted that his mutilated body be displayed in an open casket to show the world the brutality hed suffered, which helped spur the civil rights movement.

The legislation in Tills name, now on the cusp of passage, would define lynching, in the words of lead sponsor Rep. Bobby Rush, D-Ill., as a conspiracy to commit a hate crime [that] results in death or serious bodily injury. It would be punishable by up to 30 years in prison, in addition to any sentencing for other federal crimes.

To say this has been too long in coming doesnt begin to describe the distressing reality of it. The Post-Dispatch Editorial Board almost a century ago decried what it called our annual lynching bee; by the early 1940s, the newspaper was calling for confronting it with federal intervention in the state legal systems of the South (not exactly a popular idea at the time). Since 1900, there have been roughly 200 attempts in Congress to pass a comprehensive federal anti-lynching law. Yet all until now have failed.

The most recent attempt, an earlier version of the current bill, failed in 2020 after Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., held it up, saying he wanted more specific language. Paul has signed on as a cosponsor of the current measure, making it likely the Senate will be able to pass it by unanimous consent.

While its true that lynching is far less common today than it was in the past, it still happens. The 2020 murder of Ahmaud Arbery by three men as he jogged in Georgia might well have fit the legal definition had this law been on the books already. In addition to providing a powerful new tool for prosecutors in such cases, passage of this bill (especially if its passed unanimously in a deeply divided Senate) could provide some degree of healing for a nation that still hasnt fully come to terms with the violent racism of its past  and its present.
Great food, but about that invasion ...

Russian President Vladimir Putin is so desperate to wipe out any critical domestic commentary about his leadership and his invasion of Ukraine that he has ordered police to arrest thousands of protesters while his censors regularly comb print, television and internet postings to ensure only items praising Putin appear. That helps explain why Russian soldiers are reportedly being surprised when theyve come under attack in Ukraine, because state-controlled media in Moscow portrays the Ukrainian people as welcoming Russian troops with rose petals and cookies.

To get around Russian censors in hopes of communicating the truth to the Russian public, crafty internet users have begun embedding critical commentary in what otherwise might seem as innocuous postings such as restaurant reviews, according to Reuters.

One Moscow seafood-restaurant review said: The deployment of troops in Ukraine is a war, not a special operation. Russian military kill children and civilians!!!!

Another said: The place was nice! However, Putin spoiled our mood by invading Ukraine. Rise up against your dictator, stop killing innocent people! Your government is lying to you.

Some dissenters have even urged people to post text comments on Google Maps, which appear in the notes whenever users click on an item of interest. The idea is to create so many such postings that the censors cant keep up. Or, better still, that theyll give up and allow Russians to read about whats really happening for a change.

Its all the Wests fault, socialists say

The Democratic Socialists of America last week blamed actions by the United States and NATO for having helped to spark the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The socialists condemned Russian actions while calling for the United States to withdraw from NATO and end the imperialist expansionism that set the stage for this conflict. Right.

The group describes itself as the largest socialist organization in America with 92,000 members  including Rep. Cori Bush of St. Louis. Members currently in office have been silent on the statement, although Bush has been critical of the Biden administrations sanctions on Russia.

Other Democrats condemned the statement. The White House Rapid Response Director, Mike Gwin, described the groups remark as shameful and urged the socialists to reevaluate why they referred to the deaths of dozens of Ukrainians seeking democracy and basic freedoms in 2014 as a coup.

Sleep tight

Talk about hospitality. Airbnb says it will temporarily house up to 100,000 Ukrainian refugees at no charge. The company announced Monday it is ramping up an effort similar to the one it has undertaken since providing relief lodging after Hurricane Sandy in 2012. The program is run through an affiliated nonprofit, Airbnb.org. The residential offering, of up to 14 days, will be funded by Airbnb and by contributions to the organizations refugee fund, as well as by hosts themselves.

As reported by The Washington Post, the company is working with governments in countries near Ukraine to determine the best places for the free-stay services. Although the specific countries and cities havent been announced, the company has already been talking with Hungary, Poland, Romania and Germany.

Since the massive Russian assault (which Fox News pundits and others on the right said wouldnt happen) began last week, more than a million Ukrainians have fled. Anyone interested in donating to the Airbnb lodging effort can go to www.airbnb.org/get-involved.

Take off that dumb mask, kid

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis spoke at an event at the University of South Florida to highlight smart things, only to come off looking dumb as ever. The event was to note a $20 million investment in new cybersecurity and IT training programs for middle school, high school and college students. Once on the stage, DeSantis told the group of high school students standing behind him, You do not have to wear those masks. Please take them off. Honestly, its not doing anything. Weve gotta stop with this Covid theater. So if you wanna wear it, fine, but this is ridiculous.

After the event, Hillsborough School District Superintendent Addison Davis released a statement saying that it is a student and parents choice to protect their health in the way they feel most appropriate. We are proud of the manner in which our students represented themselves and our school district.

The day following DeSantis berating of high school students, his campaign sent a letter fundraising off of it.

Youre welcome, governor

More than 18,000 Missouri businesses were recently impacted by a computer glitch at the states tax-processing agency. Perhaps Gov. Mike Parson should accuse those who discovered the glitch of hacking. For those who missed the story of Parsons bizarre attacks on Post-Dispatch reporter Josh Renaud, it goes like this: While reviewing publicly available state personnel records online, Renaud discovered that Social Security numbers of teachers were accessible in website source code  a serious lapse. Renaud alerted the state and refrained from publishing a story until the problem could be corrected.

Yet instead of thanking Renaud, Parson publicly and repeatedly accused him of criminally hacking the data. Even after the Missouri Highway Patrol confirmed this was the states fault, and even after Parson couldnt get a prosecutor to prosecute it, he has yet to offer an apology.

The episode exposed the weaknesses of Missouris antiquated data systems  including the one that has now prompted the state Department of Revenue to tell thousands of businesses they will have to re-submit their tax payments due to a technical error.

Perhaps the governor thinks thats Renauds fault, too.
In February an Australian P-8A maritime patrol aircraft observed Chinese warships moving along the north Australian coast. When the P-8A went closer the Chinese destroyer aimed its laser at the aircraft, endangering any of the crew observing the ship and not wearing laser safety glasses. These laser safety glasses or goggles protect eyes from laser damage that will result in permanent blindness. Aircrew do not wear these laser safety goggles full time because they are rarely needed. Air forces dealing with Chinese warships often recommend or mandate that pilots put on the laser safety glasses or goggles when near Chinese warships. Fighter pilots can have laser safety added to flight helmet that features visors. The risk of temporary or permanent blindness from widely available laser technology has been around for two decades now but only China has enthusiastically, and illegally weaponized these lasers.

The Australian incident was not the first for P-8A pilots. In early 2020 China was accused of trying to disable an American P-8A by aiming a high-powered laser at the pilots getting a better look of a Chinese destroyer. The P-8 crew was alerted when one of its sensors detected the aircraft being hit with a laser. China denied any involvement but Chinese government- controlled mass media in 2019 and 2020 published articles promoting the use of laser devices against American aircraft that overfly parts of the South China Sea that China claims are now Chinese. International treaties and court rulings say otherwise but the Chinese openly ignore these treaties and court rulings. China increasingly talks of confronting trespassers with force.

Lasers have become common on military vehicles, aircraft and ships. Most military aircraft and armored vehicles have laser detection sensors as standard equipment. For armored vehicles, the laser detector alerts the crew that a range-finding or targeting laser has hit the vehicle, indicating that someone is about to fire on the tank either with laser-guided missiles or a tank main gun. Aircraft, ground units or ships can all use high-powered lasers to blind or disable some enemy sensors. This works both ways as some aircraft carry a laser-based missile protection system that uses high powered lasers to blind the heat-seeking sensor on some missiles that home in on the heat an aircraft gives off.

Since 2018 the U.S. military has been buying special laser eye protection visors (for helmets) or spectacles/goggles. These protect the pilot and other aircrew from eye injury and well as minimize the distracting effect of lasers. This was prompted by China aiming its military-grade lasers at American military aircraft flying over Chinese South China Sea bases as well as near a Chinese base in Djibouti (northeast Africa). There is also an older Franco-American base near the new Chinese base.

A more widespread threat is people using laser pointers aimed at aircraft landing. This sort of thing was first reported in the early 1990s when more powerful and longer-range laser pointers became available. There were only a few incidents a year of these lasers being pointed at landing aircraft. That changed in 2000 when the green light laser pointer became available. This was a new, more complex design capable of longer range. Because of the wide availability and low price (under $100) of these longer range (two kilometers) green light lasers, there were more incidents of people aiming the laser beam at aircraft landing, mainly at major airports. By 2009 there were 1,500 reported incidents a year. That grew to 2,800 in 2010 and 3,600 in 2011. Laws were passed with high fines and prison time for those caught doing this. The detection system made it easier to locate where the laser user was but these never became numerous or accurate enough to catch a lot of the offenders. News of the punishments and detectors scared off a lot of potential offenders but there are still several thousand incidents a year.

A common sight on American warships is a green-light laser that can be used to communicate between ships or discourage, or even temporarily blind, operators of small boats that get too close to the ship. The British were the first to equip their warships with these lasers and they were used during the 1982 Falkland Islands war against Argentine fighter pilots. Those British lasers were capable of blinding people at close range and that was one of the situations that led to a 1995 international treaty banning military use of lasers that permanently blinded people. Most nations have observed that treaty but a notable exception is China, which equips its warships with a more powerful laser that can cause permanent blindness under some conditions. These lasers are regularly used against foreign patrol aircraft.

Laser pointers were initially developed as pointing devices and became popular with teachers and anyone giving a presentation. These were eye safe green lasers and by 2005 U.S. troops in Iraq discovered that the green laser pointer could be used to force oncoming drivers to halt. These were the same commercial pointers that were causing problems near airports. In warzones it was different and an inexpensive eye-safe laser with a range of about two kilometers saved lives. Eventually, the U.S. Army bought them in bulk and distributed them to troops manning checkpoints or base entrances. By 2006 green lasers were mounted on M-4 assault rifles in place of the grenade launcher under the barrel, to make it easier to aim at the driver of an oncoming vehicle.

The U.S. Department of Defense also began developing more capable laser devices and encouraged commercial firms to manufacture them for the military. This led to such popular devices as the LA-9/P in 2010. This device can be mounted on a rifle, or simply a rifle stock, and used by individuals. The LA-9/P weighs less than a kilogram (1.6 pounds) and is powered by three AA batteries. This device is visible up to 1,500 meters in daylight and 4,000 meters at night. At 500 meters the LA-9/P can dazzle or blind, which is especially effective against operators of small boats. The LA-9/P can be set to disable the dazzle/blinding option if it is not needed.

Another 2010 laser tech development was a U.S. Army green laser dazzler device. This was used in Afghanistan, mounted in the CROWS RWS (remotely controlled gun turret) found in many hummers and most armored vehicles. The main function of the dazzler was to get vehicles approaching checkpoints at high speed to stop. Troops dont know if an approaching vehicle, especially at night, was a suicide bomber or a driver simply seeking to buzz past the check point. Without the dazzler, the only option is to open fire. This often gets civilians killed. Most Afghans dont appreciate the security aspect, and believe a driver has the right to try and speed past a checkpoint. The dazzler can also be used on hostile gunmen to ruin their aim.

These new American lasers were called GLEF (Green Laser Escalation of Force). Unlike the earlier handheld green lasers, GLEF, when mounted in CROWS, were easier to aim and use, including the ability to have the machine-gun (mounted next to the laser) fire if the dazzled target turns out to be hostile.

Similar green lasers have been around for a while. In 2009 Canada bought 750 similar VWT (Visual Warning Technology) systems, for about $7,500 each. These are eye safe (they won't blind you permanently) green laser pointers mounted in a weather proof, articulated enclosure, that enables the troops to operate the laser remotely, to flash the laser light at oncoming drivers, to get them to stop at checkpoints or other locations.

Unlike urban Iraq, where information gets around quickly, the Canadians in Afghanistan also launched a publicity campaign there to get people, especially those in rural areas where the troops operate, informed about the green lasers. Even if people don't get the message, they will know enough to hit the brakes if they get an eye full of green laser.

Warships most often use the LA-9/P just to warn small boats away to avoid collision or to keep them outside of a security zone. On land the special laser dazzlers are used to blind the fire control systems of hostile armored vehicles. Yet the most common use of the eye-safe lasers is still as an alternative to opening fire with bullets from checkpoints or aboard ships.

Using lasers that temporarily disorient a pilot or cause permanent blindness is another matter, especially if the aircraft is landing or operating in a non-threatening fashion. This is less of a problem for pilots who must wear flight helmets. But pilots of large, multi-engine aircraft do not wear flight helmets and find wearing laser safety goggles all the time a nuisance that protects pilots on very rare occasions. The Chinese exploit that, violating the 1995 treaty by insisting that each incident where a ship laser was aimed at large aircraft pilots was an accident while demanding punishment if any other nation does the same to Chinese pilots.
F-15 crew chiefs from the 173rd Fighter Wing run through the preflight procedures for the F-15C Eagle in preperation for a routine training mission at Kingsley Field in Klamath Falls, Oregon March 1, 2022. The 173rd Fighter Wing is home to the premier F-15C training base for the United States Air Force. (U.S. Air National Guard photo by Senior Master Sgt. Jennifer Shirar)

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March 4, 2022: The Yemen government and the Arab Coalition, especially Saudi Arabia, have convinced the UN that peace talks with the Shia rebels are futile because the Shia have violated three ceasefire agreements and show no interest in changing their attitudes, especially since Iran support became more crucial to the maintenance of the Shia military efforts.

The turning point for the UN was the 2018 agreement to halt the successful government campaign to take control of the Red Sea port of Hodeida. This is the second largest port in Yemen and the main entry point of foreign aid for Yemenis in Shia controlled territory. Despite UN monitoring, Hodeida was also where a lot of Iranian military aid was smuggled in. In 2018, as government forces were about to drive rebel forces from the Hodeida city and port.

The rebels appealed to the UN to hold peace talks and persuade the government to halt its offensive. The UN persuaded the Yemen government and its Arab Coalition allies to halt operations and the rebels signed an agreement whereby they would withdraw their forces from the port area so that government troops could replace them. The rebels withdrew some of their forces then moved them back in and attacked the government forces, The rebels accused the government forces of violating the agreement. By 2020 it was clear that the rebels had never intended to withdraw and the ceasefire deal was revealed as yet another ploy to enlist the UN to assist the rebels in avoiding a defeat. Not only did the rebels maintain their control of areas near the port, but increased their attacks on shipping in the Red Sea while denying that they were responsible. More key UN members came to conclude that the Shia rebels and their Iranian backer were intent on maintaining control of northwest Yemen so the rebels could use Iranian cruise and ballistic missiles, as well as armed UAVs, for attacks on Saudi Arabia. Evidence, often authenticated by UN inspection teams, showed that Iranian-made weapons were being used for more and more attacks against Saudi Arabia, as well as inside Yemen. The Iranian weapons were assembled and launched from rebel held areas in northwest Yemen.

Religious Politics

Then there was the religious justification angle. Religion played a major role for both the Iranians and Shia rebels. T he Iranian religious dictatorship was obsessed with replacing Saudi Arabia as the guardian of Mecca and Medina, the most important religious shrines for all Moslems. Arabs have always controlled these two cities near the Red Sea coast, 780 kilometers north of Yemen Shia territory. Even when the Ottoman Empire (Turkey) controlled the area, they put a proper (descendants of Mohammed) Arab family in charge of the religious facilities. The Turks profited from what the many annual pilgrims spent when they arrived. Iran wants to change all that and the Saudis, with the support of most Moslems, oppose that.

The main battlefield for control of Mecca is in Yemen, where Iran-backed Yemen Shia rebels began a civil war in 2014 and with Iranian support have defeated Saudi efforts to prevent the Shia provinces in northwest Yemen from becoming an Iranian military base area. The Yemen Shia rebels are led by members of the Houthi tribe, which Iran supports because ultimately Shia controlled northwestern Yemen would be ruled by a religious dictatorship with the Houthi tribe providing the hereditary leaders of the Yemeni Shia state.

There are about nine million Shia in Yemen (40 percent of the population) and most belong, like the rebels, to the Zaidi sect that the Houthis dominate. In 2009 only a few hundred thousand Zaidi were up in arms against the government, and not all of them were actively resisting the advancing troops. The Houthi religious leaders, despite their disagreements with Iran over what form of Shia beliefs was superior, accepted Iranian offers of support in regaining self-rule for the Zaidi Shia in Yemen as well as the million Zaidi across the border in Saudi Arabia.

The Saudis established this division of Zaidi Shia in the early 1930s as they were establishing the borders for the new kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Before that the Zaidi in the mountains of northwest Yemen had maintained their independence for centuries. The Ottomans left the Zaidi alone as long as there was no interference with Turkish administration of Mecca, Medina and the Red Sea port that brought in pilgrims and cargo.

When the Ottoman Empire collapsed in 1918, the Zaidi created a Shia kingdom led by the Houthi religious and tribal leaders. That ended when the Saudi clan moved south in 1930 to establish the borders of their new kingdom. The Saudis recognized the hill country of what is now northwest Yemen as a good place to put the border. The Sunni majority in Saudi Arabia made any Shia uprising, or cooperation with their Zaidi brethren on the other side of the new border highly unlikely. The Yemen Zaidi lost their autonomy in 1962 as the rest of Yemen finally united as one country. Zaidi resistance to this local domination began small and grew to the point where the goal of full autonomy seemed much closer. What made it even more real were Iranian pledges to support that effort and reunite with the Zaidi trapped in Saudi Arabia since the 1930s.

The Iranians convinced many of the Shia Yemenis that getting their autonomy back should be non-negotiable because without that autonomy the Yemeni Shia will be vulnerable to retaliation from all the other Yemeni groups the Shia rebels have harmed during the years of civil war. Its an impossible situation for the Saudis because the Iranians want to use Shia controlled areas in northern Yemen as a perpetual base for attacks on Saudi control of Mecca and Medina. The Iranians have also displayed a preference for violating any treaty they enter into.

February 28, 2022: The UN, including Russia, voted to classify all the Yemen Shia rebels as terrorists. Before this only a few Yemen Shia rebel leaders were classified as terrorists. This new designation means weapons exports to the Shia rebels are illegal. Russia had a choice; to support its Iranian ally in Syria and other questionable endeavors, or support Russias legitimate economic links with Saudi Arabia and the UAE. This was demonstrated as the UAE, with a temporary seat on the UN Security Council, abstained in a vote condemning the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Russia, one of the five (along with China, France, Britain and the U.S.) permanent members, was able to veto the measure, which had the support of 11 Security Council members and 76 other countries and openly condemned the Russian action. Thats 45 percent of the membership, while only a handful of nations, most notably (Iran, North Korea and Cuba) openly support the Russian actions.

February 27, 2022: In the northwest, Arab Coalition airstrikes hit 25 rebel targets in the last 24 hours. This was retaliation for continued rebels use of cruise missiles against targets in Saudi Arabia and government-controlled areas of Yemen. Earlier today Saudi air defenses detected and shot down an Iranian cruise missile that crossed the border into Jizan province.

February 24, 2022: In the northwest, Arab Coalition airstrikes hit 28 rebel targets in the last 24 hours.

February 23, 2022: The United States sanctioned a Yemeni businessman living in Sweden and a Greek businessman operating out of the UAE for operating a smuggling and trading operation consisting of five front companies created by Iran to generate over ten million dollars for the Shia rebels in Yemen. This network concealed that it was created and controlled by Iran to get money to the Shia rebels that Iran has openly supported since 2015 and covertly for over a decade before that. This network was designated a terrorism support operation. Despite this the United States has still not reimposed the terrorist designation the Shia rebels had until a new American government lifted that in 2021. This was supposed to make the Shia rebels more willing to negotiate a peace deal. Instead. it revealed the extent to which the Shia rebels were controlled by Iran. This was something else that many Western governments have been slow in recognizing.

February 22, 2022: In the northwest, rebel attacks using Iranian UAVs equipped with explosives have twice in the last two weeks been intercepted while trying to attack Saudi airports outside cities near the Yemen border. These airports are less than a hundred kilometers from missile and UAV launching sites in northern Yemen controlled by Shia rebels. For years the Shia rebels used long range rockets and short-range ballistic missiles against these targets with little success. The cheaper Iranian UAVs proved more effective because that are more difficult to detect and intercept. In the two recent cases the UAVs were intercepted so close to the target that their explosives blew in the large airport terminal glass windows and injured over two dozen passengers and staff. The attack today wounded sixteen, with three victims in critical condition.

February 21, 2022: In the northwest (across the border in the Saudi province of Jizan) Saudi air defenses detected and intercepted an Iranian cruise missile headed for the airport outside the city of Jizan. The Red Sea port of Jizan is 80 kilometers north of Yemen and frequent target for Shia attacks using Iranian cruise missiles, UAVs and ballistic missiles.

A Saudi airstrike against a prison in rebel territory killed or wounded over a hundred prisoners.

February 18, 2022: In the northwest (near the port of Hodeida) the Arab Coalition forces detected and destroyed another Shia remotely controlled boat full of explosives. These are used to attack Red Sea shipping at night.

Across the border in the Saudi province of Jizan, security forces spotted and destroyed two remotely controlled Shia rebel bomb boats headed towards a floating platform that was a key component of the oil unloading operation at the Red Sea port of Jizan (80 kilometers north of Yemen).

February 16, 2022: For the first time Iran openly admitted that a satisfactory peace in Yemen is only possible if Iran gets a new treaty lifting economic sanctions and not imposing any restrictions on Iranian nuclear research or ballistic missile development.
FILE PHOTO: Oil barrels are pictured at the site of Canadian group Vermilion Energy in Parentis-en-Born, France, October 13, 2017. REUTERS/Regis Duvignau

By Marcy de Luna

HOUSTON (Reuters) - Oil slid 2% on Thursday, after hitting prices not seen in a decade, as sellers jumped on hopes the United States and Iran will agree soon on a nuclear deal that could add barrels to a tight global market.

Trade was volatile, with crude prices jumping early to multi-year highs on worries about disruption to Russia's exports, which at 4 to 5 million barrels per day (bpd) are more than any other nation other than Saudi Arabia. Following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, companies are shunning Russian supply and scrambling for barrels elsewhere.

Oil markets are in an "explosive mood over increasing outrage against Russia, said Phil Flynn, an analyst at Price Futures Group. People in the world don't want to deal with a country that is committing these atrocities in Ukraine.

Brent futures were down $2.47, or 2.2%, to $110.46 a barrel, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude fell $2.93, or 2.6%, to $107.67.

Both benchmarks rose to multi-year highs during the session, with Brent soaring to $119.84, its highest since May 2012 and WTI hitting its highest since September 2008 at $116.57.

Washington and its Western allies have imposed sanctions on Russia, but the measures have so far stopped short of targeting Russian oil and gas exports. A new round of sanctions announced by the White House on Wednesday banned export of specific refining technologies, making it harder for Russia to modernize oil refineries.

Traders remain wary of Russian oil. At least 10 tankers failed to find buyers on Wednesday, market sources said.

Canada said it will remove Russia and Belarus's most favored nation status as trading partners, and will provide additional military aid to Ukraine.

Global benchmark Brent has jumped nearly 25% since the Russian invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24. Brent's six-month spread hit a record high of over $21 a barrel, indicating very tight supplies.

The United States and Iran have nearly completed negotiations on reviving a nuclear accord that could bring more than a million bpd of oil, or about 1% of global supply, back to the market. "We are close to a possible deal," Jalina Porter, the U.S. State Department's principal deputy spokesperson, told reporters.

Negotiations to revive the pact have been going on for 10 months in Vienna.

On Thursday a report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog, showed the stock of enriched uranium amassed by Iran was in breach of its 2015 nuclear deal, with the country nearing the ability to make a nuclear bomb.

The chief of the IAEA, Rafael Grossi, will visit Tehran on Saturday in an effort to resolve outstanding issues.

"Grossi's trip increases the odds of the revival of the (nuclear deal) to 70% from 60%," consultancy Eurasia Group said, noting "a deal is likely this month and as soon as the next several days."

That supply relief may only end up filling part of a gap left by buyers curtailing purchases of Russian oil, which accounts for about 8% of global oil exports.

"We expect that Russian oil exports will plunge by 1 million bpd from the indirect impact of sanctions and voluntary actions by companies," said Rystad Energy Chief Executive Jarand Rystad. "Oil prices are likely to continue to climb  potentially beyond $130 per barrel."

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, Russia and their allies, a group known as OPEC+, on Wednesday stuck to an existing plan for a gradual output rise of 400,000 bpd a month, snubbing consumer calls for more.

(Additional reporting by Scott DiSavino in New York, Shadia Nasralla in London and Florence Tan and Sonali Paul in Singapore; Editing by Marguerita Choy, Kirsten Donovan and David Gregorio)
OTTAWA, March 02, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- New research by the Canadian Wildlife Federation (CWF), relying on documents obtained through a freedom of information request, reveals that Ontario and hydropower producers in the province have failed to meet legal responsibilities for conserving the American Eel.

Despite decades-long declines at provincial, national and international scales, little progress is being made in Canada to protect the species and reduce threats to it, said Nicolas Lapointe, CWF senior conservation biologist, freshwater ecosystems.

CWF led development of a newly accepted peer-reviewed paper on American Eel protection under Ontarios Endangered Species Act (ESA). Regulations under the ESA require hydropower facilities that harm the American Eel to register, which then allows them to self-manage their mitigation and reporting.

CWF and Carleton University obtained information on facilities registration, mitigation plans and monitoring reports via freedom of information and data-sharing agreements with certain hydropower producers were also obtained. Documents were analyzed and compared with American Eel distribution data and best practices for monitoring and mitigation.

CWFs analysis has revealed that:

Less than half of the facilities that kill or harm the American Eel were registered as required, and of these, only half had mitigation plans that included actions to reduce harm

Monitoring designs were of low quality and produced information of limited usefulness to inform American Eel conservation efforts

Only two individual American Eels were demonstrated to have benefited from mitigation actions since the proponent-led management system was implemented in 2013

American Eels are experiencing drastic population declines, including a decrease of more than 99 per cent in Ontario, said Lapointe. Without more targeted attention and efforts to stem their decline, the species could soon be extirpated from the province.

To address these failings, Ontario must begin to fully enforce the ESA and establish best practices and objectives for hydropower facilities to ensure American Eels have access to former habitat. Ontario must also reduce deaths from hydro turbines. The effectiveness of these protection measures must also be properly monitored.

CWF encourages Ontarians concerned about the health of fish in the province to contact their MPP directly to express their concerns about the state of American Eel conservation. With concerted efforts from citizens, governments and various industries CWF is hopeful that the American Eel can recover.

For more information, read the full paper in FACETS.

About the Canadian Wildlife FederationThe Canadian Wildlife Federation is a national, not-for-profit charitable organization dedicated to fostering awareness and appreciation of our natural world. By spreading knowledge of human impacts on the environment, carrying out research, developing and delivering education programs, promoting the sustainable use of natural resources, recommending changes to policy and co-operating with like-minded partners, CWF encourages a future in which Canadians can live in harmony with nature. For more information visit CanadianWildlifeFederation.ca.

For more information:

Heather RobisonMedia and Community Relations OfficerCanadian Wildlife Federation[email protected]613-599-9594 x 212

Pamela LoganDirector of CommunicationsCanadian Wildlife Federation[email protected]613-599-9594 x 250

BACKGROUND:The American Eel is a fascinating fish that is born in an area of the Atlantic Ocean known as the Sargasso Sea, and then migrates thousands of kilometres to freshwater rivers and lakes from Greenland to Venezuela to feed and grow before returning to the Sargasso Sea to spawn.

The American Eel was common in rivers and lakes of Canadas East coast, Quebec, and Ontario. Many Indigenous groups value eels for medicinal, instrumental, nutritional and ceremonial purposes. Until 2004, American Eels were also the subject of a considerable commercial fishing industry in Ontario. Although significantly reduced, commercial fisheries in Quebec and the Atlantic provinces are ongoing. Today, the American Eels complex life cycle is threatened by overfishing, loss of access to habitat, mortality due to hydro-electric turbines, and other factors.

The American Eel is listed as Endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), as well as by Ontarios Endangered Species Act. The species was listed as Threatened by the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada (COSEWIC) in 2012 but has not yet been listed federally. CWF has conducted field research on the American Eel using radio and acoustic telemetry. We studied the effects of catch and release angling on American Eel and developed best practices for handling and releasing hooked eel.

Did You Know?

Ontarios eels are all female and are among the largest in the world.

A single female eel can produce up to 20 million eggs.

It is estimated that Ontario eels once produced 25 per cent of the eggs of the global population.

One-forth of all adult eels that leave Lake Ontario to migrate to breeding grounds in the Sargasso Sea are killed by the Saunders Dam in Cornwall. A further 17 per cent are killed at the Beauharnois Dam 80 kilometres downstream before they reach free passage to the ocean.

Ontarios recovery strategy for American Eel, published in 2013, included the objective to restore access to habitat by 10 per cent every five years. Nearly 10 years later, only one eel ladder has been installed. Portage Power installed an eel ladder at the Chaudiere dam, and also installed a bypass system to reduce turbine mortality. Similar actions are needed elsewhere.

Here are a few options for hydro electric companies to consider:

Install eel ladders so that juvenile eels can make it upstream

Spill water over the spillway at night so that adult eels can make it past the dam without going through the turbines

Or, for adult eels, install screens in front of turbines and bypass channels

Or, for adult eels, capture them upstream and transport them downstream of the turbines

Learn more: CanadianWildlifeFederation.ca/eels

A PDF accompanying this announcement is available at http://ml.globenewswire.com/Resource/Download/343d23a9-333a-43ca-9027-3ce3125197fe

Source: Canadian Wildlife Federation
DUBAI, UAE, March 4, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Breakthrough India's three-day Pan-Asia summit "Reframe" started a dialogue on raising awareness on concerns around accountability in the sphere of transforming masculinities and engaging men and boys to achieve gender equality.

As India struggles to keep pace with its gender equality targets, national reports of progress against Sustainable Development Goal 5 on Gender Equality evidence the need for an increased understanding and awareness of the unequal power relations between men and women in society.

Anthony Keedi, Program Manager, Masculinities and engaging men in Gender Equality, Lebanon, said "Accountability is about acknowledging and understanding the part one plays in the harm done against women and other groups in patriarchy, through our hidden powers and privileges. On the other hand, the work on engaging men and masculinities should be in conversation with women. Women, and other marginalised groups need to be at the forefront of this process to ensure that we recognize who we are doing this for."

Currently, involving men and boys to achieve social equality varies by country and context. But one needs to consider the various factors that influence men and boys, and thus, the work on men and masculinities.

Madhumita Das, Feminist Researcher, Faculty, The George Washington University, India, noted, "If you look at growing evidence about involving men and boys in transforming injustices, most initiatives have a very narrow focus and have been adapted as an instrumental approach rather than strategy. It has been observed that these initiatives tend to over justify the reason for integrating the component rather than deeply understanding how this move will help achieve the overall goal of gender equality. Accountability to women's rights activists, SRHR, and LGBTQIA+ movement will ensure that our efforts are more effective and impactful and it must be central to all our work with men and boys."

The majority of the work with men and boys focuses on individual behavior change. While this is important, it is equally vital to ensure that work on men and masculinities centers the systems change agenda in order for this field to meaningfully add value to advance the broader feminist agenda of equality and justice.

View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/breakthrough-indias-reframe-summit-calls-for-engagement-with-men-and-boys-to-achieve-gender-equality-301495725.html

SOURCE Breakthrough India
COLUMBUS, Ohio, March 4, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Big Lots announced today that the Company will participate in the Bank of America 2022 Consumer & Retail Technology Conference, being held in New York City, New York. Bruce Thorn, President and CEO of Big Lots, Jonathan Ramsden, Executive Vice President, Chief Financial & Administrative Officer, and Jack Pestello, Executive Vice President, Chief Merchandising Officer, are scheduled to participate in a fireside chat on Wednesday, March 9, which will be broadcast live beginning at approximately 10:30AM Eastern Time.

An audio only live webcast of the fireside chat will be available through the Investor Relations section of the company's website at https://www.biglots.com/corporate/investors/.

If you are unable to join the live webcast, an archive will be available at https://www.biglots.com/corporate/investors/ on March 9 and will remain available through midnight, Friday, March 25.

About Big Lots, Inc.Headquartered in Columbus, Ohio, Big Lots, Inc. (NYSE: BIG) is a leading home discount retailer and a Fortune 500 company, operating 1,431 stores in 47 states, as well as a best-in-class ecommerce platform with expanded capabilities via BOPIS, curbside pickup, Instacart and same day delivery across thousands of items. The company's product assortment is focused on home essentials: Furniture, Seasonal, Soft Home, Food, Consumables and Hard Home. Ranked one of the fastest-growing eCommerce businesses by Digital Commerce 360 and the recipient of Home Textiles Today's 2021 Retail Titan Award, Big Lots' mission is to help people Live BIG and Save Lots. The company strives to be the BIG difference for a better life by delivering exceptional value to customers through the ultimate treasure hunt shopping experience, building a "best places to grow" culture, rewarding shareholders with consistent growth and top-tier returns and doing good in local communities. For more information about the company, visit biglots.com.

Cautionary Statement Concerning Forward-Looking Statements

Certain statements in this release are forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, and such statements are intended to qualify for the protection of the safe harbor provided by the Act. The words "anticipate," "estimate," "expect," "objective," "goal," "project," "intend," "plan," "believe," "will," "should," "may," "target," "forecast," "guidance," "outlook" and similar expressions generally identify forward-looking statements. Similarly, descriptions of objectives, strategies, plans, goals or targets are also forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements relate to the expectations of management as to future occurrences and trends, including statements expressing optimism or pessimism about future operating results or events and projected sales, earnings, capital expenditures and business strategy. Forward-looking statements are based upon a number of assumptions concerning future conditions that may ultimately prove to be inaccurate. Forward-looking statements are and will be based upon management's then-current views and assumptions regarding future events and operating performance and are applicable only as of the dates of such statements. Although the company believes the expectations expressed in forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions within the bounds of knowledge, forward-looking statements, by their nature, involve risks, uncertainties and other factors, any one or a combination of which could materially affect business, financial condition, results of operations or liquidity.

Forward-looking statements that the company makes herein and in other reports and releases are not guarantees of future performance and actual results may differ materially from those discussed in such forward-looking statements as a result of various factors, including, but not limited to, developments related to the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic, current economic and credit conditions, the cost of goods, the inability to successfully execute strategic initiatives, competitive pressures, economic pressures on customers and the company, the availability of brand name closeout merchandise, trade restrictions, freight costs, the risks discussed in the Risk Factors section of the company's most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K, and other factors discussed from time to time in other filings with the SEC, including Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q and Current Reports on Form 8-K. This release should be read in conjunction with such filings, and you should consider all of these risks, uncertainties and other factors carefully in evaluating forward-looking statements.

You are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date thereof. The company undertakes no obligation to publicly update forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. You are advised, however, to consult any further disclosures the company makes on related subjects in public announcements and SEC filings.

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/company-to-participate-in-bank-of-america-2022-consumer-and-retail-technology-conference-on-wednesday-march-9th-301495591.html

SOURCE Big Lots, Inc.
The U.S. Air Force showcased the strength of its fighter and bomber fleets in Japan the past two weeks as tensions increased around the globe.

A pair of F-35A Lightning IIs from Alaska and two B-52 Stratofortresses from Louisiana joined Japanese F-15 fighters in the skies near Japan on Feb. 24 to practice critical warfighting capabilities, according to an email to Stars and Stripes from Pacific Air Forces and a statement from the Japan Air Self-Defense Force.

The 18th Wing at Kadena Air Base on Okinawa followed those drills with a show of force Wednesday by nearly 30 fighter jets, tankers and helicopters.

The unrelated exercises are routine, according to PACAF and 18th Wing statements, but one expert on Pacific military affairs believes the uptick in activity is a message to China as the worlds attention is fixed on Russias invasion of Ukraine.

The U.S. is sending a message to China that the security of the Asia-Pacific is not forgotten, Toshiyuki Shikata, a former lieutenant general in the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force, told Stars and Stripes by phone Wednesday.

Chinese President Xi Jinping is looking toward this falls Communist Party National Congress, where he wants to cement his place as Chinas leader, Shikata said.

He wants to be Mao Zedong, Shikata said. The first thing he wants to do after the National Congress is to make some move on Taiwan. The U.S. is aware of that.

Nothing about the exercises and the February deployments of Air Force and Japanese stealth fighters to Okinawa are routine, Shikata said.

F-35s from Eielson Air Force Base, Alaska, deployed to Kadena on Feb. 20 for integrated air operations with the Japanese F-35s, PACAF said at the time.

Earlier in February, four B-52s and more than 220 airmen arrived on Guam from Barksdale Air Force Base, La., PACAF said Feb. 15.

The bomber task force focused on refining joint command-and-control abilities, global reach and working together, PACAF said Thursday. The exercise was not in direct response to another countrys actions.

On Wednesday at Kadena, two dozen F-15C/D Eagles from the 44th and 67th Fighter squadrons, a KC-135 Stratotanker from the 909th Air Refueling Squadron, an E-3 Sentry from the 961st Airborne Air Control Squadron and an HH-60 Pavehawk from the 33rd Rescue Squadron moved in formation down the runway.

Several aircraft took off for an air superiority training mission, while the rest taxied back to the flightline, according to a wing statement Friday.

The large formation movement was part of a routine exercise scenario that tested the 18th Wings ability to generate airpower in support of the defense of Japan and other partner nations, ensuring the stability and security of a free and open Indo-Pacific, the wing said in a Facebook post.

The conflict in Ukraine raised concerns in the Pacific, where China and Taiwan remain at odds. If the West fails to defend Ukraines sovereignty, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said in Munich on Feb. 19, it sends a dangerous message about Taiwan, Reuters reported that day.
MIELEC, Poland  Curious Poles continue to stop for a peek at the sprawling airfield here that serves as the main staging area for the 82nd Airbornes new mission in Poland. But for the most part, soldiers remain out of sight.

And one month into the campaign, thats just the way the U.S. Army appears to like it.

Chinook helicopters, Black Hawks and rows of tents occupy the ground at the small cargo airport in Mielec. Beyond that, however, theres virtually nothing else to see.

Likewise at an arena in nearby Rzeszow that has been transformed into a base of operations for the 18th Airborne Corps out of Fort Bragg, N.C. At the entrance, U.S. soldiers shoo away anyone hoping for a look inside the perimeter.

The U.S. military also has declined to provide reporters access to U.S. soldiers carrying out the mission in Poland.

U.S. reinforcements continue to land here and in other parts of Europe as NATO allies beef up their forces in the wake of Russias latest unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.

The circumstances that brought the soldiers to Poland are extraordinary: a war on NATOs border on a scale not seen in Europe since World War II. In a worst-case scenario, their task would be to help mount an allied defense against Russia.

We seek no conflict. But if conflict comes to us, we are ready for it and we will defend every inch of NATO territory, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Friday at NATO headquarters in Brussels, where allies were meeting for emergency talks.

The 5,000 U.S. soldiers in southeast Poland, most of whom come from the 82nd Airborne Division, are one part of the effort to enhance allied defenses should Russias war spread beyond Ukraines borders.

They join 4,000 U.S. service members already based in Poland. How long the paratroopers will remain in the country and what comes next for the broader U.S. military mission in Europe arent yet clear.

Blinken said Russias attack in Ukraine will have implications for a new NATO strategy, which is now being developed and will be finalized at a summit in June.

We are preparing for NATOs future, and the events of the last few weeks will further inform that future, Blinken said.

But for the average U.S. soldier, the mission on the ground in Poland so far seems centered on matters more mundane: train, train, train.

Much of the work by the 82nd Airborne is taking place at a Polish army base in Nowa Deba that is home to Polands 18th Mechanized Division. U.S. and Polish forces have been practicing tactics needed in a crisis, such as medical evacuations and helicopter landings.

Joint Task Force Dragon is now focused primarily on its mission of assuring NATO, Col. Joe Buccino, spokesman for the 18th Airborne Corps, said Thursday. The task force is headed up by the elements of the 18th Airborne Corps, which oversees the 82nd and 101st Airbornes mission in Poland.

The paratroopers also are prepared to assist with any evacuation of Americans coming across the Polish-Ukrainian border if the State Department calls on them to do so. But so far, there has been no need for such support, Buccino said.
CAMP HUMPHREYS, South Korea  A small South Korean military drone crashed into and left minor fire damage atop a water tower at a U.S. military outpost in Busan, according to a South Korean military spokesman.

The collision occurred around 9:14 a.m. Thursday at the Busan Storage Center, small installation in the southern coastal city, a spokesman said under the customary condition of anonymity.

Sgt. 1st Class Adam Ross, spokesman for the 19th Expeditionary Sustainment Command, confirmed the incident to Stars and Stripes by phone Friday and said no injuries were reported. Damage to the water tower is cosmetic, he added.

Local fire crews extinguished the flames in 20 minutes, a Busan Fire Department official told Stars and Stripes by phone Friday. He said sparks were flying up when first responders arrived.

U.S. and South Korean military personnel work together at the storage center.

The South Korean military spokesman said the drone was operated using a hydrogen fuel cell. It appeared to be a small, multirotor variant, based on images taken at the scene Thursday by a soldier with the sustainment command that were shared with Stars and Stripes.

The South Korean military is conducting an investigation into the collision, the spokesman said.

The 19th Expeditionary Sustainment Command is headquartered in Daegu and includes around 5,600 personnel. Its duties are to provide support for 8th Army on the Korean Peninsula.
The fast-attack submarine USS Connecticut, which struck an underwater mountain in October, sustained damage to its ballast tanks and sonar sphere, according to a Navy evaluation of the vessel in drydock.

The service is conducting a thorough assessment of damage to the Connecticut at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in Bremerton, Wash., where it arrived on Feb. 8., Submarine Force U.S. Pacific spokeswoman Cmdr. Cindy Fields told Stars and Stripes in an email Friday.

The initial assessment shows damage to forward main ballast tanks, the sonar sphere, and the need to replace the sonar dome, she said. Neither the pressure hull nor the nuclear propulsion plant suffered damage.

Despite the damage, the Connecticut made it to Guam from somewhere in the Indo-Pacific region under its own power, but on the surface. From Guam, it traveled to San Diego in December entirely on the surface across the Pacific.

Submarine ballast tanks provide stability and buoyancy control, allowing the vessels to surface and submerge. Sonar domes are positioned on the hulls of submarines or surface ships and house electronic navigational equipment such as a sonar sphere, which is used in sonar navigation.

Fields said that based on the damage, there was no risk to the submarine's buoyancy or stability.

The anticipated length and cost to make repairs wont be available until the Navy completes a detailed assessment of the submarine, Fields wrote in her email.

The damage occurred when the Connecticut struck an unidentified object on Oct. 2, the Navy said.

U.S. 7th Fleet on Nov. 1 clarified that the submarine had grounded on an uncharted seamount, or underwater mountain, in international waters somewhere in the Indo-Pacific region.

The incidents exact location was never disclosed, but an unnamed defense official said it occurred in the South China Sea, according to an Oct. 8 report from USNI News.

The incident left a dozen sailors with minor injuries and resulted in the removal of the Connecticuts commander, executive officer and enlisted chief. The 7th Fleets commander, Vice Adm. Karl Thomas, relieved the three on Nov. 4, citing a loss of confidence in their leadership.
MARINE CORPS BASE HAWAII  The Marine Corps on Thursday cased the colors of a regiment that traces its lineage to World War I, then redesignated it as a unit specializing in expeditionary warfare with an eye on China.

In a ceremony abounding with pomp and parading at Marine Corps Base Hawaii, 3rd Marine Regiment was redesignated 3rd Marine Littoral Regiment, an evolution at the heart of the Marine Corps Force Design 2030 modernization effort.

Force Design is bringing many changes to our formations, regimental commander Col. Timothy Brady Jr. told the audience.

We have to modernize and adapt to be successful in the operating environment of the future where adversaries technologies and capabilities will certainly continue to advance, he said.

But there are some things that will not change. The Marine Corps will continue to be our nation's premier expeditionary force, and readiness and the individual Marines and sailors will continue to be the most important elements of our Corps.

Brady and fellow keynote speaker Gen. Eric Smith, the assistant commandant of the Marine Corps, touted the capabilities that the littoral regiment is expected to attain in full as it continues to evolve over the next couple years.

The [littoral regiment] will be optimized for conducting expeditionary advanced base operations in support of the joint force and with our allies and partners in contested, austere and distributed maritime environments, Brady said.

It will support our ability to seize and defend key maritime terrain, he said. It will integrate with and expand joint networks and sensors in command-and-control capabilities. It will support maritime domain awareness and provide long-range precision fires in support of naval operations.

The concept behind the littoral regiment brings with it a purpose-built formation ready to deploy and fight tonight, Smith said.

The Marines you see standing before you form the 3rd Marine Littoral Regiment, Smith said, motioning to the hundreds of troops standing in formation on Dewey Field as part of the ceremony. They're willing to put down their lives for you.

The 3rd Littoral Regiment is the first of three regiments the Marine Corps plans to form in the Pacific and are specialized to deal with the rising threat of China, Smith told reporters during a conference call Monday.

While they extolled the future of the redesignated regiment, both speakers lauded the history upon which the littoral regiment builds.

Please don't ever mistake change for walking away from our roots, Smith said. That's not happening. Everything transfers from the 3rd Marines.

The regiment was activated in 1916 and participated in the occupation of the Dominican Republic during World War I.

During World War II, the regiment fought in campaigns in Bougainville, the Solomon Islands, Guam and Iwo Jima.

Its Marines were deployed for the Vietnam War and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The new regiment will carry forward its predecessors call sign, Bougainville, and its Latin slogan Fortes fortuna juvat, which the previous regiment translated as Fortune favors the brave.

The littoral regiment uses an alternative English translation of the phrase: Fortune favors the bold.

[T]his new formation will require a boldness to adapt, a boldness to lead from the front and a boldness to face an uncertain and complex security environment, Brady said.
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TOKYO  Japans capital city ended the working week with another 10,517 people testing positive for COVID-19 on Friday, according to public broadcaster NHK.

Fridays count was the lowest daily tally since 9,632 cases on Monday and 608 less than one week prior, according to metropolitan government data.

Japan on Thursday confirmed another 70,268 new infections and 258 deaths related to COVID-19, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center.

Japan averaged nearly 65,000 new cases per day between Sunday and Thursday, according to the center. Over the previous five days, new cases averaged nearly 70,000 per day.

U.S. Forces Japan on Thursday evening reported another 99 people tested positive at 13 U.S. installations in the previous 24 hours. USFJ last reported 88 new cases Wednesday.

Kadena Air Base on Okinawa topped the Thursday update with 46 new infections. The base website reported 98 active cases as of Friday.

Yokota Air Base in western Tokyo, where USFJ is headquartered, accounted for four new cases.

Separately, Yokota reported 18 people tested positive for COVID-19 between Tuesday and Thursday, according to an update on the base website Friday.

Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni, near Hiroshima, reported 11 new cases. The remaining 10 installations accounted for 38 new cases, according to USFJ.

Okinawa prefecture reported 849 people tested positive for COVID-19 on Friday, 147 fewer than the previous day, according to the prefectural Department of Public Health and Medical Care. Another 20 people in the U.S. military community also tested positive Friday, according to the department.

Stars and Stripes reporter Mari Higa contributed to this report.
CAMP FOSTER, Okinawa  The Defense Departments largest retailers have removed Russian vodka from their shelves due to the backlash associated with Moscows bloody campaign against neighboring Ukraine.

The Army and Air Force Exchange Service declined to identify the brands taken from its shelves and where, but they had to be produced in Russia to be removed, AAFES vice president of marketing and customer engagement Julie Mitchell wrote in an email Thursday to Stars and Stripes.

The Exchange has removed all vodka produced in Russia as a result of current events and diminished demand, she said.

The Navy Exchange has also stopped selling Russian vodka at its stores worldwide, spokeswoman Kristine Sturkie told Stars and Stripes in an email Friday.

Two brands  Platinum and Russian Standard Vodka  had been in limited supply at NEX shops in Italy, Spain, Guam, Hawaii and the continental United States.

"We had very little product and removed what did exist," Sturkie said.

Last year, only 1.2% of the vodka imported into the U.S. originated in Russia, according to the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States. The Netherlands accounted for nearly 21%.

Russian vodka has historically represented only about 0.5% of AAFES total vodka sales, Mitchell said.

Signage specific to location and assortment was added at some exchange shops around the world this week to educate and inform after AAFES received an influx of questions regarding country of origin from customers, Mitchell said.

NEX has no plans to add signage detailing its decision and does not carry other Russian-made products, Sturkie said.

On Thursday, Jeff Nighswander, 40, a civilian employee from Jacksonville, Fla., perused the liquor selection at an AAFES shoppette at Camp Foster on Okinawa.

I agree with [removing Russian vodka], he said. I dont think we should support any country thats doing anything that goes against American values and way of life.

Five miles away at Kadena Air Base, Senior Airman Caleb Collum, 22, of Alabama, agreed.

We dont want them to profit, he said.

Signs declaring The Exchange does not carry vodka procured from Russia were seen Thursday on liquor shelves at exchanges in Japan at Yokota Air Base in western Tokyo, Camp Foster and Kadena Air Base on Okinawa, and in South Korea at Osan Air Base and Camp Humphreys.

A sign reading None of this assortment is from Russia was posted at Ramstein Air Base in Germany, according to a Wednesday post on the Air Force amn/nco/snco Facebook page.

Two brands typically confused for being Russian, Stolichnaya and Smirnoff, are actually produced in Latvia and the U.S., according to their websites.

Stoli is made by a Russian exile, Yuri Shefler, and the company website voices support for Russian anti-war protesters and the people of Ukraine.

Vladimir Smirnoff fled Russia and established the brand bearing his name in Europe more than a century ago, its website said. Smirnoff relocated to America in 1934 and in 1985 the label was sold to a firm that 12 years later became the beverage giant Diageo, a British company.

Thirteen Russian-made products were available at AAFES exchanges, historically about 0.005% of annual sales, when war broke out in Ukraine on Feb. 24, Mitchell said. She did not say whether all these products were discontinued.

Stars and Stripes reporters David Choi, Erica Earl, Wyatt Olson, Jonathan Snyder and Jazzmin Spain contributed to this report.
WASHINGTON  U.S. European Command is at the center of ongoing international efforts to provide Ukraine with the weapons and other security assistance that the country needs to fight Russia, a senior U.S. defense official said Friday.

The combatant command is building on the foundation of the liaison officer network that they have built up over time with allies and partners to enable nations to coordinate to better determine what capabilities Ukraine still needs, the official said.

They are leveraging that to build this coordination cell to be able to have real-time understanding of what allies are prepared to provide and how they might be able to get it to Ukraine, the official said.

EUCOM is also involved in determining how to best deliver the security assistance package to Ukrainian forces with international partners. Since the start of the war, 14 countries have sent equipment to Ukraine, the official said without naming the nations.

At the tactical level, EUCOM is coordinating alongside the [United Kingdom] in particular, in terms of the specific delivery process to ensure that we are using our resources to maximum efficiency to support the Ukrainians in an organized way, the official said.

That organization and coordination helps ensure Ukraine gets what it needs without overlap from multiple countries, but its not a new concept, the official said.

For the past several years, we've been working closely with the United Kingdom, Canada, Lithuania and Poland to collaborate on security assistance and to work together with the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense to identify what their priority capability needs are, the official said.

That practice has enabled the partners to better keep up with the requests for capabilities that are coming faster than ever before, the official said. We've been working with Ukrainians for years now to understand what their military needs in the event of defending Ukraine against a Russian invasion, so we've been able to build on that understanding and then dramatically speed up our processes to feel the capabilities.

It's the first time that the U.S. has spoken openly about its role in facilitating international security assistance packages to Ukraine since Russia invaded last week. Roughly 92% of the forces that Russia had tapped for the assault are now inside Ukraine, the Pentagon said Friday.

President Joe Bidens administration last week approved a $350 million security assistance package for Ukraine, which pushed the total amount of U.S. security assistance to Ukraine to $1 billion in the past year alone.

The assistance given in that package comes from equipment that the U.S. already has available in its militarys stocks, the official said. Bidens package approved last week was the largest single package given in U.S. history.

About $240 million of the $350 million package has arrived in Ukraine during the past several days, so you can see how fast we are moving to get those capabilities to the field, the official said. The remaining capabilities will be delivered next week.

In contrast, it took about a month to deliver much of a similar $200 million drawdown package that Biden approved for Ukraine in late December, and the U.S. is still delivering some ammunition from that package now.

I just have to say how tremendously proud the entire team here at the Pentagon is of our ability to provide security assistance to the Ukrainian armed forces, and how impressed we are with how they are fielding these capabilities right now as we speak, the official said.

To help the State Department determine what to send, the Pentagon conducts a careful analysis of what capabilities we should specifically include in the package [and] what capabilities we have available because drawdown is taken from the stocks of the services, the official said.

The supplies and weapons take a shorter amount of time to deliver to foreign countries because were not going out on the market and purchasing new items  we have to actually have it in hand to be able to deliver it, the official said.

However, these efforts inherently deplete the U.S. militarys weapons reserves, so the Biden administration has recently requested additional funding to restock the weaponry, according to the official, who did not say how much pertinent equipment remains in the reserve.

We do plan on continuing to provide presidential drawdown assistance to the Ukrainians, and we are seeking the assistance from the U.S. Congress to replenish the stocks that we have been providing to date from the military departments, the official said.

The assistance packages have made an impact on Ukraines ability to thwart Russias advance, which has been stalled in northern and eastern Ukraine for days.

I think all of us have been tremendously impressed by how effectively the Ukrainian armed forces have been using the equipment that we've provided them, the official said. Kremlin watchers have also been surprised by this  at how they have slowed the Russian advance and performed extremely well on the battlefield.

Defense officials have declined to publicly list all the types of weaponry that have been included in the assistance package for operational security reasons but have said many included Javelin anti-tank missiles and other ammunition.

A separate senior defense official on Thursday declined to confirm recent reports the U.S. has sent FIM-92 Stinger missiles in those packages.

"I can only say that we continue to provide Ukraine systems that they need to defend themselves, and that includes systems and weapons that they can use to deal with the threats on the ground as well as airborne threats," the official said. Thats as far as Ill go on that.
Russian armored personnel carriers are stalled by the roadside for lack of fuel. Soldiers forage for food in grocery stores. Trucks are backed up from Kyiv like a Friday night traffic jam.

Images of Russias travails in the first week of its invasion of Ukraine have transfixed the world, raising questions over the assumed invincibility of President Vladimir Putins modernized military. Yet one cause of its stumbles is very simple: the humble railway junction.

The Russian armed forces, like the Soviets before them, move almost everything by rail. They also build temporary pipelines to deliver oil and water to the front. Yet in Ukraine, all of that is now having to be moved by road and the Russian army is chronically short of the trucks to do it, simply because it doesnt normally need them.

While Ukraines armed forces have done a lot to foil the Kremlins plan for a lightning strike invasion that would swiftly remove the government in Kyiv, so too have logistics, and in particular a lack of access to rail transport.

Those logistical issues can be fixed and the stalling of a massive convoy north of Kyiv in recent days may even be partly a matter of choice, as commanders regroup, learn lessons and develop a new strategy for securing the capital, according to Alex Vershinin, recently retired as a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army. He spoke in a private capacity.

On Thursday, Putin gave every indication he will give his forces the time they need. Speaking to the national security council, Russias leader said in televised remarks that the special military operation in Ukraine was going strictly according to schedule, according to plan.

But many of the problems facing Russian forces can be traced directly to the ways in which they are constructed and resupply units in the field, Vershinin said. They were also foreseeable.

Ukraine  unlike Western Europe  uses the same gauge of railroad as Russia. That infrastructure, though, cant be used to bring supplies until troops control the towns that sit on them, in particular key junctions such as Kharkiv, Sumy and Chernihiv in the north, or Kherson, Mykolaiv and Zaporizhzhia in the south.

The problem for Russia is that its military needs to take major cities to access the rail network, Vershinin said by telephone from Virginia. The other problem is that the Russians have not brought enough manpower, he said. This is a huge country, and every time they need to take a city they also have to leave force behind to hold it.

That means the military also cant yet run out temporary pipelines to deliver fuel, because they dont control the territory and cant rely on locals not to destroy them. Instead, oil tankers have to be sent by road, putting further stress on a limited resource.

The Ukrainian Defense Ministry urged citizens to destroy or detain rear convoys carrying fuel, fuel and ammunition with Molotov cocktails, hunting rifles or whatever they could get their hands on.

Other issues are common to any military operation on the scale of the one underway in Ukraine, a nation of 41 million with a land area larger than France. Big campaigns are notorious for the kind of traffic backup seen north of Kyiv, Vershinin said.

One Russian brigade  typically 3,000 to 5,000 men  would have about 400 vehicles, he said. Each vehicle has to stay 50 meters from the next, so as not to offer too rich a target for attack. Thats a 12-mile convoy right there. According to U.S. officials, Russia has moved 80% of the force it assembled into Ukraine, in the region of 150,000 troops. Whole divisions comprising three-to-four brigades apiece have entered from the north.

Once a road is jammed up, it becomes a juggling act to thread fuel supply vehicles through the congestion, or the equipment to span a blown up bridge at the front of a column.

Thats a particular problem in muddy conditions, because trucks cant move off road to make way for fear of getting stuck. The roads south to Kyiv pass through not just muddy fields, but the Pripyat marshes.

Because of its reliance on rail and pipelines, Russia maintains fewer logistical battalions per combat unit to move material by road than NATO counterparts. As a result, it only has enough trucks to efficiently resupply units up to 90 miles from depots, Vershinin wrote in a November article that in many ways foresaw the delays. To go 180 miles, it needs twice as many.

In Ukraine, Russian units have had to travel long distances from supply depots. That isnt necessarily a failure, but it means there have to be pauses in an advance to allow supplies to catch up.

That creates a special problem for Russia because its military carries three times as many artillery pieces and multiple launch rocket systems as the U.S. military does. Reloading just the rocket launchers of a Russian army  units of which there are several in Ukraine  takes as many as 90 trucks per volley, based on Vershinins math.

Once Russian forces control the railroads, theyll be able to move fuel, ammunition, and equipment to the front much more efficiently, according to Roger McDermott, a Russian military specialist at the Jamestown Foundation, a U.S. think tank. That suggests even darker times ahead for the Ukrainian armed forces and civilians on the receiving end.

Despite the mystifying lack of planning, the Russian military historically has tended to make early errors and then learn quickly from them, according to McDermott, who also works at the Foreign Military Studies Office at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.

If you get hold of one of the old Soviet maps of the rail structure, you can start to make sense of why they are putting so much importance on a place like Kharkiv, McDermott said. Once they have the rail hubs and can control the rail roads, they can start to fix a lot of the problems theyve had.

Bloombergs Daryna Krasnolutska contributed to this report.
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KAISERSLAUTERN, Germany  For the first time in nearly two years, students at U.S. military bases in Europe soon may have the option of attending school without wearing a face mask.

On installations where the command has deemed it appropriate and safe  mask use in DODEA schools will be optional until further notice, Michelle Howard-Brahaney, Department of Defense Education Activity-Europe director, said in a letter Friday to school families.

On Friday, Ramstein Air Base announced it would make masks optional for most people at its DODEA schools beginning March 21, in line with policies made by the German state of Rheinland-Pfalz. Anyone older than age 6 who is showing symptoms or whose close contacts have COVID-19 must continue to wear masks, base officials said.

Staff members and students should find out by Monday what the policy will be at their schools, DODEA-Europe spokesman Stephen Smith said.

Base commanders will make the final determination in consultation with public health agencies, he said.

DODEA-Europe is asking staff and students to report to school on Monday wearing masks until instructed otherwise by their school administrative teams, Howard-Brahaney said.

If a school adopts an optional face mask policy indoors, it will apply to all students and staff, regardless of vaccination status, Smith said.

Commanders and public health experts are reviewing COVID-19 transmission rates in their communities, Howard-Brahaney said in her letter. Host nation guidance also will be taken into consideration, particularly when it comes to the need for mask use during travel to and from school and events, she said.

Smith said schools will continue to maintain social distancing, where possible, and follow Centers for Disease Control and Prevention health protocols.

Some 25,000 military kids in DODEA-Europe have been wearing masks at school since the start of the 2020-2021 school year, when most schools reopened their doors following a switch to remote learning in the previous spring.

But the CDC last month revised its public indoor mask guidelines, relaxing mandatory mask wear in communities where hospitalizations remain low.

Some bases in Germany recently adjusted their indoor mask policies after the Pentagon ordered commanders to adopt the new CDC guidance, while considering host nation rules.

Ramstein and Spangdahlem air bases announced changes to their rules on Friday.

At Ramstein, fully vaccinated personnel no longer have to wear a face mask at work. The exception is personnel who work in customer service areas or who are in contact with visitors, according to rules announced Friday.

Medical-style surgical or higher-protection masks will continue to be required in shopping and high-traffic indoor areas, including the base mall, commissaries and medical facilities.

People who arent fully vaccinated are required to continue to wear face masks on the installation.

At Spangdahlem, masks are generally no longer required for DOD personnel and visitors on base, a 52nd Fighter Wing memo released Friday said.

Those showing symptoms or who have been identified as a close contact of someone testing positive for the coronavirus must continue to wear masks. Children ages 6 and younger are exempt from having to wear a mask, according to the 52nd Wing memo.
NAPLES, Italy  A wide assortment of donated items collected by volunteers from the local military community will shortly be on their way to U.S. service members in central and Eastern Europe.

Thousands of U.S. service members have been deployed to Romania, Bulgaria, Poland and other countries on NATOs eastern flank as fears that Russia was preparing a full-scale invasion of Ukraine proved true. In roughly a week, the war has produced 1 million refugees, according to United Nations figures.

The donation drive, which started last week and ended Friday, netted more than 31 boxes of items including cereal bars, candy and other snacks as well as shower shoes, towels, hats, scarves, socks, coloring books and games, said Mitzy DeAguilera, the interim regional program manager for the American Red Cross in Naples. The items could be kept or given out to children and others.

The response has been overwhelming in a good way, DeAguilera said. Its a unified sentiment of support towards Ukraine, the mission and our NATO allies.

Over the past week, five or six volunteers worked four hours daily at La Mimosa thrift shop at Allied Joint Force Command Naples to accept contributions and pack them, DeAguilera said.

The donations will be distributed through the Red Cross Service to the Armed Forces program, which supports American military members and their missions. The idea is to provide sources of comfort and well-being to service members and people in need, she said.

Donations will be shipped out next week to Red Cross stations. Depending on need and events in Ukraine, the Red Cross may reopen the donation drive later, she said.

We just have to wait and see how things are evolving, DeAguilera said.
RZESZOW, Poland  NATO on Friday ruled out setting up a no-fly zone in Ukraine amid concerns of sparking a wider war with Russia, but will consider sharply increasing the number of allied troops deployed to central and Eastern Europe, the alliances top official said.

As Russias war on Ukraine enters its second week, calls from Ukraine for more alliance support have been building. Among the requests: a NATO-enforced no-fly zone.

But imposing one in Ukraine, which might have to be enforced by shooting down Russian warplanes, is a step too far for NATO, Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said after an emergency meeting at allied headquarters in Brussels.

We understand the desperation, but also believe if we did that, wed end up in something that could end up in a full-fledged war in Europe, involving many more countries, Stoltenberg said.

Ukraine Foreign Minister Kuleba Dmytro participated virtually in Fridays talks, including the debate over a no-fly zone.

We are not going to move into Ukraine, either on the ground or in the airspace, Stoltenberg added.

However, allies are seriously considering a significant increase in troops and air defenses, Stoltenberg said. The final decision on a long-term force posture change could come at a heads of state summit in June.

Meanwhile, weaponry from NATO states continues to flow into Ukraine in the form of anti-tank Javelins, Stinger missiles, small arms and ammunition, government officials from across the alliance have said.

As talks got underway in Brussels, Stoltenberg and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken condemned Russias push into Ukraine, where attacks have intensified and civilians are among the targets.

Blinken also said allies are ready to defend NATO turf if challenged.

"Ours is a defensive alliance. We seek no conflict. But if conflict comes to us, we are ready for it and we will defend every inch of NATO territory, Blinken said.

So far, the Russian military has faced stiff resistance from the Ukrainian military, a force that Russian President Vladimir Putin has underestimated, Stoltenberg said.

Still, the attacks by Russia are expected to get worse in the days ahead with cities under siege and civilian infrastructure, such as schools and hospitals, being among the targets, he said.

The days to come are likely to be worse. With more death, more suffering, and more destruction, as the Russian armed forces bring in heavier weaponry and continue their attacks across the country, Stoltenberg said.

For allies, the situation in Ukraine amounts to a security sea change in Europe, the effects of which are expected to last for years to come, allies said.

Russia has shattered peace on the European continent. It has engaged in a war of a scale, of a type not seen in Europe since the Second World War the threat of pervasive conflict is real, Stoltenberg said.
Ukrainians are fighting back against invading Russian forces with everything they have: Guns, homemade molotov cocktails, technological know-how  and words.

Russian warship, go f--- yourself, Ukrainian border guards reportedly told a Russian vessel approaching a Ukrainian island off the countrys southern coast last week. In a video clip viewed millions of times, a Ukrainian member of Parliament answered a question about Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov with F--- you, Lavrov. There have also been reports of Ukrainians telling Russian soldiers, I will tear you apart with my teeth and that theyll become impotent if their tanks roll any farther.

This war of words isnt all crude. Its clever, too. Ukrainian officials encouraged residents to remove or change road signs to confuse and taunt Russian troops.

The first thing Ukrainians and historians of the Slavic world point out about this battle of Babel is that most of the fiery insults being heaved  and captured on social media for the world to see  are in Russian.

The anti-Russian profanity has made its way to the United States. Milwaukees Lakefront Brewery is selling 32-ounce crowlers with a label featuring a drawing of the Russian president with a label calling Putin a male body part.

When CNNs Anderson Cooper asked a Ukrainian man in a makeshift factory assembling camouflage materials and homemade weapons whether he had a message for Russias president, a voice-over from Cooper interpreted the mans response as I would tell him: He can go f--- himself.

But some of the nuance of what Ukrainians are saying isnt being fully captured by the foreign media. For example, Emily Channell-Justice, director of a Ukrainian research institute at Harvard University, says a more accurate translation of the retort hurled at the Russian vessel by Ukrainian soldiers would be: Russian warship, go sit on a d---.

The phrase has become a rallying cry. A journalist for the Guardian in the region said on Twitter that the slogan can be seen emblazoned on highway signs, painted on checkpoints and written in dust on trucks. At a pro-Ukraine gathering in San Francisco last weekend, according to Zina Pozen, a 49-year-old woman in Oakland, Calif., who left her native Ukraine 30 years ago, says she heard the taunt leap out of a toddlers mouth (with their parents full approval) in Russian.

Its not that Ukrainians are a particularly foul-mouthed people. Theyre just incredibly outraged at the Russian invasion of their country.

When Arthur Lavrinovich, a 29-year-old from southern Ukraine, woke at 4 a.m. last Thursday to the sound of explosions and people screaming, he quickly grabbed his mother and started driving toward Romania. With bombs going off in all directions, the words they uttered in the car were prayers for peace and safety, not expletives. Our people are above and beyond stressed, Lavrinovich said over the phone, now safely in Greece. But when someone comes and destroys your home, kills children, makes your life a living nightmare, you have no other words left to describe your feelings. ... How shall we describe this?

In other words: If your nation were suddenly attacked, unprovoked, you would be swearing, too.

Pozen says she was struck by a YouTube video showing the bombed-out center of Izyum, a city about two hours drive south of Kharkiv. The man opened the recording by declaring: Here is the f---ing Russian peace, according to Pozen, who used to work on language technologies at Apple. Showing the detritus of a school and a park, the man punctuates his description with profane interjections. This week, Pozens hometown of Zhytomyr was bombed.

Ironically, a Russian phrase pops into Pozens head to describe the chaos of this moment. Nyet slov, odni emotsii, which she translates as no words, only emotions.

And what words are more spirited than crude ones?

The swearing might seem shocking if youre looking at this conflict from the outside, says Ian Garner, a historian of Russian war and culture. No one wants to say that they swear, but everybody uses these words and everybody knows them, Garner says. Ukrainians, as a people, arent more prone to swear than anyone else, but theyre under the most extreme kind of pressure now.

Garner, whos the author of the forthcoming book Stalingrad Lives: Stories of Combat and Survival, notes that Ukrainians swearing in Russian are poking holes in one of Putins justifications for this conflict  that Ukrainians arent allowed to speak Russian. They are simply pushing out Russians and the Russian-speaking population from their historical territories, Putin said at his annual news conference in December.

Although there is a law aiming to cement Ukrainian as the countrys dominant tongue, Garner says that the reality is more linguistically fluid, with people commonly switching between Russian and Ukrainian similar to how Canadians might toggle between English and French in Montreal.

These are Russian speakers, Garner says.

Channell-Justice, the Harvard research director, sees similarities between the obscenities being hurled today and the protest signs Ukrainians hoisted in 2013 and 2014 when then-president Viktor Yanukovych was trying to reintegrate Ukraines economy into Russias. One sign sticks in Channell-Justices brain years later: An image of Yanukovychs face with a condom over it. Shocking images and words, Channell-Justice notes, make an impact when polite language doesnt suffice. It can be a coping mechanism to use slang and slurs to comment on a situation that many people dont have any control over, Channell-Justice says.

Swearing at an enemy as theyre invading is an act of performative resistance, says Paul Musgrave, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. These are words that could get you killed, but youre not going to bend down.

Strong language has always been a feature of wartime, Musgrave says. We just havent always had the technology to capture and disseminate the drama so quickly and widely. Sharing these atrocities on social media is part of how Ukraine is fighting this war for the hearts and soul of the world, Musgrave says. And sometimes the profanity is slipping through.

After this conflict, Musgrave predicts Ukrainians will add a new swear word to their vocabulary: Putin.
WASHINGTON  About 92% of the armed forces that Russia assembled for its invasion of Ukraine are now in the country as Russian troops have overtaken the largest nuclear power plant in Europe, a senior U.S. defense official said Friday.

With most of the more than 170,000 troops and weapons that Russian President Vladimir Putin had arrayed now inside the country, the official said Ukrainian civilian infrastructure remains under attack as the U.S. has counted more than 500 Russian missile attacks since the start of the war last week.

We continue to believe Mr. Putin does not believe Ukraine has the right to exist as a sovereign state, the official said. Mr. Putin has made it clear that he wants to take that sovereignty away and  occupy and control Ukraine to supplant its democratically elected government with one appointed by him.

On Thursday night, Russian forces began firing on a nuclear power plant in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine, causing a fire to break out in the facility. Tens of thousands of people watched a livestream of the attack on YouTube overnight as Ukraine Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba urged Russia to let firefighters through to extinguish the flames.

Fire has already broke[n] out, he said on Twitter. If it blows up, it will be 10 times larger than Chernobyl! Russians must IMMEDIATELY cease the fire, allow firefighters, establish a security zone!

The fires, which affected buildings at the plant but not the nuclear reactors, were extinguished, the U.S. official said, but Russian forces took possession of the power plant, which is one of the 10 largest in the world.

"We have no reason to doubt Russian claims that they are now in possession of that nuclear power plant, and we do not see any radioactive leakage, the official said. There's no excuse to be made for this invasion and the recklessness  the Russians are conducting, to include kinetic attacks and fighting in and around a nuclear power plant.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Facebook said it was the first time in history a nation had fired upon an atomic power plants reactors.

The U.S. official said the attack on the power plant just underscores the recklessness of this Russian invasion.

Nuclear power plants are, by design, not built to withstand armed conflict, the official said. And so while we are not seeing radioactive leakage here and we assess that the Russians are in control of it, that doesn't excuse the move [of] using combat power to try to take a nuclear power plant over.

While no radioactive leaks were detected, chief Pentagon spokesman John Kirby on Friday said the U.S. does not know whether the power plant is still operable.

The attack was the latest attempt that Russia has made to control key infrastructure and population centers in the week-old war. The U.S. continues to believe Putin aims to overthrow the Ukrainian government and replace it with his own, the official said.

"If your goal is to supplant the government of Ukraine and replace it ... one can surmise that you would want to control the infrastructure and make sure that you can meet your needs  and a nuclear power plant would certainly be on that list, the official said.

Thats because taking over a nuclear power plant would allow Russia to assert some control over electrical power for Ukraines civilian population, thus providing Putin more options, the official said.

As youre trying to become an occupying power to be able to control the infrastructure, you could use that to preserve the electrical power going forward and to be able to deliver goods and services to a population, the official said. You could also use [the power plant] before you've reached occupation status [by] leverag[ing] in that regard to punish a population to make it harder for that population to resist you.

Russia on Wednesday for the first time claimed control of a Ukrainian city -- Kherson in southern Ukraine -- with the towns mayor Igor Kolykhayev saying Russian troops entered city hall that day in a Facebook post.

The U.S. on Friday is not disputing the reports that Russia has overtaken Kherson, the defense official said, but Ukrainians have not stopped fighting the Russian troops in the city.

Kherson is really the last major population center on the Dnieper River, which cuts through central Ukraine from the Black Sea in the south and extends through Belarus and into Russia in the north, making it a key port, in that regard, the official said.

[Controlling Kherson] certainly allows the Russian military to have a measure of control over at least that part of the river and the entrance into the Black Sea, the official said.

The official said Russia also might have taken on Kherson to better enable its now ongoing attack on nearby Mykolaiv, which is home to three shipyards and considered among the main shipbuilding centers of the Black Sea.

One of the reasons they want Mykolaiv [could be] because that puts them just to the northwest of Odessa, the official said.

Odessa, in southwestern Ukraine, is the countrys third most populous city and the largest in southern Ukraine, where the official said the Russians have the most advantage.

They could move on Odessa from the northeast on the ground out of Mykolaiv, but also could potentially reinforce [it with] whatever maritime power they might want to apply against Odessa from the Black Sea, the official said.

That move would mirror the strategy that the U.S. assesses Russia is using in attempt to take the southeastern Ukraine city of Mariupol, where the Russians did not make a direct amphibious assault the despite its location on the Sea of Azov coastline.

It [is similar to what] we're kind of seeing around Mariupol, where they made an amphibious assault to the southwest of Mariupol, moved up the coastline, and are now on the outskirts of Mariupol using that naval infantry. But they're also coming down from the north with land forces out of Donetsk, the official said.

So far, the U.S. has not seen any significant naval activity in the Black Sea that would lead us to believe an assault on Odessa is imminent, Kirby said. That doesnt mean that that wont change over the coming hours.

While Russia has made advances in the south, its troops continue to make no appreciable movement in northern and eastern Ukraine, the official said, and the 40-mile Russian convoy traffic jam continues to keep Russian troops about 15 miles outside the capital city of Kyiv.

Basically, theyre there where they were yesterday, [but] obviously shelling and strikes continue to occur, there's no doubt about that, the official said.

Fuel and food issues have contributed to the traffic jam as has Ukrainian resistance, the official said. For example, Ukrainians last week blew up a bridge near Kyiv to thwart Russias advance toward the city.

We certainly believe that the Ukrainians blowing up that bridge absolutely had an effect on stopping and curtailing the movement of that convoy, but we also believe that they have hit the convoy at other places as well, the official said.

Russian troops also remain about six miles outside of the city centers of Chernihiv and Kharkiv in northern Ukraine, the official said.

Russia has still not taken control of Ukraines airspace despite NATO denying Ukraines requests that they enforce a no-fly zone over the country, the official said.

The Ukrainians still have a significant majority of their air combat power available to them, both fixed wing and rotary wing, as well as unmanned systems and surface-to-air systems, the official said. Of course, they have suffered some losses in all those categories  some of those losses are due to just inoperability, some of it is from Russian actions  but we assess that they have a strong majority of that air combat power available to them.
RZESZOW, Poland  The U.S. Armys V Corps will deploy the bulk of its headquarters to Europe to enhance command and control of ground forces as troops continue to deploy to the Continent in the wake of Russias war on Ukraine.

About 300 additional soldiers out of Fort Knox, Ky., are headed to Germany and Poland, where they will help coordinate operations up and down NATOs eastern flank, the Army said in a statement Thursday.

The V Corps troops are among the several thousand that have been ordered by President Joe Biden to take up positions stretching from the Baltics to Poland, Germany and Romania.

As Americas forward deployed corps, we were built for this mission, Lt. Gen. John S. Kolasheski, V Corps commander, said in the statement.

The V Corps main headquarters will complement a forward headquarters based in Poznan, Poland, where the unit already has around 200 soldiers based.

In November, V Corps was declared fully operationally capable by the Army, which reconstituted the unit to support a growing U.S. Army Europe and Africa mission.

Among the headquarters tasks are managing the day-to-day operations of soldiers involved in missions along NATOs eastern flank. Those missions kicked off in 2014, in the aftermath of Russias first invasion of Ukraine.

But the effort to reinforce NATOs position in central and Eastern Europe is likely to grow in the months ahead.

With the recent arrival in Germany of the 1st Armored Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division from Fort Stewart, Ga., the Army now has three tank brigades in Europe simultaneously.

One of those units, the 1st Armored Brigade out of Fort Riley, Kan., has had its Europe rotation extended because of Russias war on Ukraine.

V Corps will be tasked with managing the influx of forces as they carry out training missions with allies.

V Corps history in Europe dates to World War I. It was a fixture in Germany throughout the Cold War but was deactivated in 2013 as part of the Armys gradual drawdown in Europe.

About the time of V Corps deactivation, the Army was reducing the number of ground units in Europe. The last of its main battle tanks were sent back to the U.S. in 2013.
As Russias military buildup pressed against Ukraines border in late January and early February, Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov celebrated the arrival of weapons from the West, illustrating his near-daily tweets with photographs of smiling men in uniform unloading heavy pallets from cargo aircraft.

The 8th [American] bird has arrived in Kyiv! Reznikov exulted on Feb. 5. Our partners from #USA have sent more than 650 tons of defense ammunition to Ukraine! To be continued.

The 8th bird has arrived in Kyiv! The weight of today's cargo with ammunition for our @ArmedForcesUkr is 86 tons! Since January 22, our partners from #USA have sent more than 650 tons of defense ammunition to Ukraine! To be continued  @SecDef @DeptofDefense @WhiteHouse pic.twitter.com/BvVOzQTdrx  Oleksii Reznikov (@oleksiireznikov) February 5, 2022

The last such message came on Feb. 23, the day before Russia invaded.

The birds from #Latvia landed!Def ammunition & other important things . And the most weighty gift is Stingers!Thank You, our close friends & partners! And of course thanks to @Pabriks!

The whole world understands that the security of Europe depends on strengthening  defence! pic.twitter.com/zWUaPP0WiC  Oleksii Reznikov (@oleksiireznikov) February 23, 2022

There have been no known air deliveries since then. Ukraines airspace is now part of a war zone that no Western nation wants to enter, even as the United States and its allies and partners pledge to deliver more weaponry for the fight.

NATO territory to the west  where Ukraine borders Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and Romania  provides the only still-uncontested ground access. But east-west roads that can handle truck transport into Ukraine are few, and most are clogged with refugees fleeing the country.

There are stockpiles in Poland, where much of the weaponry coming from outside is being gathered, said Ed Arnold, a research fellow of European security at Britains Royal United Services Institute. From there, there are only two main supply routes to Kyiv, one near the Belarus border, and a second farther south.

Internal Ukrainian logistics have been OK thus far, but need to improve rapidly, Arnold said. They might have three days of ammunition left in some areas.

No one wants to say exactly how the military assistance is moving. It kind of needs to be something that we say that we are doing, British Armed Forces Minister James Heappey said in a Monday interview with British Forces radio. We dont necessarily tell you exactly what, where, when and how.

Before the invasion began, Britain air-delivered 2,000 NLAW antitank missiles, which combat photographs indicate are now in use by Ukrainian forces. Weve actually been flowing more stuff forward, uniforms, protective equipment, some munitions and weaponry, Heappey said. We reach a stage now, though, where because combat operations are ongoing, routes for the Ukrainians to get the stuff into the country are much more challenging.

At least 22 NATO nations and a handful of others have said they will send military assistance to Ukraine, from antitank missiles to artillery ammunition to Stinger surface-to-air missiles. Last week the United States announced $350 million in new shipments that it says are already arriving.

Germany, reversing its longtime hesitation to send arms into conflicts, said Saturday that it would send 1,000 antitank weapons and 500 Stingers. They went over the border Wednesday. The European Union agreed this week to reimburse its member states up to $555 million for military and humanitarian aid, a decision that leaders said they hoped would speed the flow of assistance.

The United States is handling much of its own distribution through the U.S. European Command, which is coordinating with NATO, a State Department official said. The European Union has set up a coordination center to try to match what Ukraine says it needs to what member nations can offer. Poland has established a logistics center to collect much of the assistance and spirit it over the border, two E.U. policymakers said.

The State Department official, one of several U.S. and foreign officials who spoke about the sensitive internal allied discussions on the condition of anonymity, said there was helpful muscle memory for assistance from the United States, developed in the eight years since the end of Ukraines pro-Russian government.

Right now, were in a place where there have been a number of requests flying in from various channels, the official said, including the Ukrainian Defense Ministry, the presidency, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington.

In addition to drawing on its own weapons stocks, the United States has to approve the transfer of any U.S.-origin equipment from third countries.

When we get that list of current needs, were going through and figuring out: what partners do we know that have U.S. origin equipment to meet the requirement, then reaching out to individual countries and saying Ukrainians are in need of, say, antitank missiles. We know youve got 300 of them, do you have any excess. ... would you consider transferring them?  the State Department official said.

Its a fluid situation, but were getting it into a good groove right now, the official said. But it would be misleading if I left you with the impression this is a perfectly well-organized operation ... Weve been at this for a week, with things coming constantly. Were just working as fast as we can.

A senior U.S. defense official said Friday that the United States was accelerating ammunition deliveries and has facilitated the transfer of Mi-17 helicopters, but no fixed-wing aircraft. Since the attack started last week, 14 countries have sent supplies, the official said. On the U.S. side, a handover process that typically takes weeks or months has been compressed to hours and days.

I think all of us have been tremendously impressed with how effectively the Ukrainian armed forces have been using the equipment that weve provided them, the official said.

Poland declined to elaborate on its role as a principal conduit of weapons aid. For security reasons, which are obvious at the moment, we cannot inform you about the details, the Defense Ministry said in a statement.

Poland, NATO and EU allies are increasing their political and practical support for Ukraine, which is defending itself against a full-scale invasion by Russia. Our support is an expression of Polish solidarity with Ukraine, the statement said. We are providing massive humanitarian aid, hosting refugees and supplying equipment. In this situation, we must also remember responsibility and information restraint in all defense matters. Polands security is paramount.

Britain hosted a 25-nation conference this week to discuss and coordinate meeting Ukraines needs, Arnold said, but so far, its not a question of overlap. It is a question of volume. At the moment, he said, the need is for food, water, ammunition, and then what we refer to as small arms  rifles, ammunition, grenades, especially shoulder antitank and anti-helicopter aircraft missiles. Theyre the things that are most effective ... theyre quite light and anyone can use them.

Some of Ukraines asks are more difficult to provide. Despite reports that the United States, or NATO, is considering sending Patriot surface-to-air missile batteries, a U.S. official said that was not likely. They dont come flat-packed with an Allen wrench. You need years of training, and a whole infrastructure for sustainment, the State Department official said. Right now, thats not an option.

While the need to aid Ukraine has found rare bipartisan support in Congress, some lawmakers have said the help is too little, too late. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif.  a fierce opponent of impeaching President Donald Trump in 2020 for using withheld military aid as leverage to force Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to dig up dirt on Joe Biden during the presidential campaign  blamed Ukraines current needs on the Biden administration.

The challenge that we have is, its the actions that we could have done before from this administration to make sure today wasnt happening, McCarthy said Tuesday on Fox News. We could have supplied the weapons to Ukraine. Theyre not asking for American troops, theyre just asking for the ability to fight.

The aid, and how to get it to where it is needed, have become sensitive subjects for a NATO alliance that is fearful of getting drawn into a direct confrontation with Russia. Those worries helped convince Hungary not to allow its border to be used to ship military support to Ukraine.

Such deliveries might become targets of hostile military action, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said Monday, adding that Hungary is not sending weapons to Ukraine.

NATOs leadership has repeatedly emphasized that, despite the shipment of weapons, it is not a party to the conflict. NATO is not going to send the troops into Ukraine or move planes into Ukrainian airspace, alliance Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told reporters in Poland.

A senior NATO diplomat said that Stoltenberg was emphasizing NATOs lack of belligerence under hot, clear instructions from the U.S. to do so.

While thousands of U.S. troops have been sent to bolster front-line NATO states, President Joe Biden said in his Tuesday State of the Union address that our forces are not engaged and will not engage in conflict with Russian forces in Ukraine.

Inside Ukraine, right now, theyre getting infiltration routes set up to transmit weapons, said Arnold of RUSI. He said there are probably some organized crime elements to support it ... this is weapons smuggling, essentially. It happens the world over by people who either support the cause or think they can make a lot of money out of it. Conflicts like this suck in all types of people.

Some policymakers in NATO countries fear that if Russia becomes desperate  whether because of a stalled advance inside Ukraine or from painful Western sanctions  it could lash out at Ukraines backers by attacking military aid convoys before they reach the Ukrainian border.

This is something that one should take into account, a senior European diplomat said.

Latvian Defense Minister Artis Pabriks said in an interview that if Russian President Vladimir Putin wants a pretext to attack NATO, he will find one regardless of what the alliance does.

I dont think Russia can accuse us simply about deliveries  simply because it cannot be interpreted as a war between NATO and Russia, Pabriks said. But, of course, if they would like to interpret something in a negative way, Putin can always imagine something.

The Washington Posts Karoun Demirjian in Washington and Max Bearak in Brzegi Dolne, Poland, contributed to this report.
A Russian projectile sparked a fire early Friday at the Zaporizhzhia site, Europes largest nuclear plant, that triggered alarm across the world. Authorities have not recorded a release of radioactive material.

Nuclear safety at the site is ensured as of now, a Ukrainian regional military leader said after Ukrainian firefighters put out the blaze.

Russian forces took have taken control of the site, among other advances as Moscows invasion of Ukraine stretches into its second week.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Moscow of nuclear terror. The United States activated its nuclear incident response team, and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said early Friday he would seek an emergency session of the United Nations Security Council to discuss the fire at Zaporizhzhia.

Russia denied responsibility for the blaze and accused a Ukrainian sabotage group of committing arson.

Ukraine relies heavily on nuclear energy  its 15 functional reactors, situated in four power stations, provide about half of the countrys electricity. It was also the site of a 1986 nuclear meltdown that sent a radioactive cloud over Europe. The specter of the Chernobyl disaster has loomed large amid fighting near nuclear reactors in recent days.

During a news briefing Thursday, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said the country was taking every measure to maintain the safety of the Zaporizhzhia plant as well as the abandoned Chernobyl plant.

Heres what to know about Ukraines nuclear sites and what risks fighting around them could pose.

How many nuclear sites does Ukraine have, and where are they?

Ukraine has 15 operational nuclear reactors, spread throughout the country. Six of them are at Zaporizhzhia. Others are located in the south, between Kyiv and Odessa, and in the northwest of the country.

Ukraines reactors supplied 51% of the countrys electricity in 2020, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

Nuclear power has formed a pillar of Ukraines strategy to wean the country off its energy dependence on Russia. Two new nuclear reactors are under construction in Khmelnytskyi in western Ukraine, at a plant that already has two functioning reactors.

A plan to link Ukraine to Europes power grid was expected to go into effect next year. The European Union said Monday that it would expedite that move, possibly within weeks.

Zaporizhzhia is the largest nuclear power plant in Europe, built to produce 5,700 megawatts of electricity at full capacity. It sits at the edge of the city of Enerhodar in southeastern Ukraine, about 200 miles from the border with Russia.

The six reactors at the plant were put into operation between 1984 and 1995. Before the conflict erupted, it produced a fifth of Ukraines electricity and almost half the energy generated by the countrys nuclear power facilities.

Which ones has Russia taken over?

Russia took control of the Chernobyl zone last week after what Ukrainian authorities described as a fierce battle with Ukrainian forces. The fighting triggered global alarm about disturbance to the site, where the 1986 meltdown left a no mans land of contaminated soil and other fallout, which remains dangerous.

The four reactors at Chernobyl have been permanently shut down for decades. A new concrete shelter was built over the site in recent years to prevent the release of about 220 tons of highly radioactive material.

Ukrainian authorities told the IAEA this week that they had lost regulatory control over the facilities there, and that Ukrainian staff continuing to work at the site there were facing psychological pressure and moral exhaustion.

Russian forces steadily advanced on Zaporizhzhia this week. Ukrainian authorities reported on Thursday that Russian tanks and infantry were battling Ukrainian forces at a town close to the plant. The IAEA said Friday that a projectile had hit a building on the site.

After the Russian attack on Zaporizhzhia, one of the nuclear reactors was shut down for maintenance, two others were disconnected and one was operating at 60 percent power, while two others were being cooled down and held in reserve in low power mode, according to the IAEA.

What risks could fighting around nuclear sites pose?

The big one is radiation  an invisible threat that can poison people exposed to high doses or cause diseases including cancer later on.

Its impossible to smell or see without a special measuring device, and its adverse health effects may become apparent only decades after exposure. A dangerous isotope of cesium present around Chernobyl after the 1986 accident was linked to a higher risk of developing leukemia later in life, for example.

The U.N. nuclear watchdog said two people at the Zaporizhzhia facility were injured, but the fire had not released radiation or damaged reactors there, authorities say. Ukrainian workers are still running operations at the plant, under Russian control, said Rafael Grossi, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

All the safety systems of the six reactors at the plant were not affected at all, and there has been no release of radioactive material, Grossi told a news conference Friday.

The reactors at the Zaporizhzhia site are safer than many older Soviet-era ones like Chernobyl, Jon Wolfsthal, a former adviser to President Joe Biden under the Obama administration, told The Post.

Its not as dangerous as Chernobyl, but tank fire and nuclear reactors are never a good combination, he said. The key questions were whether there was any damage to the water pumps used to cool the reactors, whether the connection to the grid had been cut and whether transmission lines were intact.

Cooling systems were working on Friday after the fire, Ukraines nuclear regulatory inspectorate said. But the inspectorate and international experts said losing that cool-down capability could lead to the release of significant amounts of radiation into the environment. Thats what happened in the accident at a power plant in Fukushima, Japan, in 2011, when an earthquake and tsunami damaged the reactors cooling systems and caused meltdowns that released radiation and prompted the evacuation of more than 100,000 residents from the area.

Theres another risk at plants like Zaporizhzhia: spent fuel, which is kept on site in what looks like a swimming pool. The fuel stores could be vulnerable to overheating and releasing their radioactive contents.

Zelensky warned in a speech overnight that an explosion at a nuclear facility could be the end for Europe. After Russian forces captured Chernobyl, Ukraine raised the alarm about the potential for another deadly accident there.

Some experts emphasized that acute risks appear to be in check. Nuclear facilities, including those under Russian control, are safe at the moment. And Russia, which could see radiation spread into its territory in the event of a major accident, has an interest in avoiding any mishaps, Graham Allison, a nuclear policy expert at Harvard, told CNNs Anderson Cooper.

The real threat to Ukrainian lives continues to be the violent invasion and bombing of their country, the American Nuclear Society said in a statement.

But Grossi delivered a dire warning of risks that we may all incur if fighting around nuclear sites continues. He said he was willing to go to Chernobyl to negotiate a framework that would ensure the security of nuclear plants in Ukraine, their employees, reactors and radiation-monitoring systems.

Nuclear monitoring and safety bodies around the world  including in the United States  have kicked into high gear, and Zelensky fielded a flurry of concerned calls from Western leaders on Wednesday.

Greenpeace, an environmental advocacy group that opposes nuclear energy, conducted a risk analysis that found that in a worst-case scenario  in which fighting damages a container protecting a reactor and a plants cooling system fails  radioactive material could spread across Europe and render vast areas of the European continent, including Russia, uninhabitable for decades.

For the first time in history a major war is being waged in a country with multiple nuclear reactors and thousands of tons of highly radioactive spent fuel, Shaun Burnie, a senior nuclear specialist at Greenpeace, said in a news release. The war in southern Ukraine around Zaporizhzhia puts them all at heightened risk of a severe accident. So long as this war continues, the military threat to Ukraines nuclear plants will remain.

The Washington Posts Steven Mufson contributed to this report.
World powers are close to an agreement with Iran on a sequenced return to the 2015 nuclear accord to be implemented over a period of months, with relief for reeling global oil markets unlikely to come overnight.

Negotiators are finalizing a timeline for reactivating the agreement, which will begin with minimal measures by both sides while the Biden administration puts the plan before Congress, which will eventually need to approve relief on oil sanctions, two people familiar with the talks said, declining to be named as the details have yet to be made public. A deal could be announced within days.

A European official with knowledge of the negotiations said it would take a couple of months from agreement for Iranian oil exports to resume.

Negotiators have blown through previous time limits during more than 10 months of talks in Vienna. But officials speaking both on and off the record in recent days have said an agreement could be reached after the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Mariano Grossi, returns from a visit to Tehran scheduled for Saturday.

The IAEA, the worlds nuclear watchdog, convenes its next board meeting on March 7, when any solution proposed by Grossi could be finalized.

Iran has demanded the International Atomic Energy Agency conclude its stalled investigation of past nuclear work as part of any deal to reactivate the agreement, which imposed curbs on Irans nuclear work in return for sanctions relief. The pact was championed by U.S. President Barack Obama and unilaterally abandoned by his successor, Donald Trump, in 2018.

With U.S. sanctions tightening around its economy, Iran wound down its own compliance over the past four years and has since enriched uranium close to the levels needed for a bomb. The agency has been probing the source of uranium particles detected at several undeclared locations in Iran.

Western negotiators have said they cant agree to close the probe because the IAEA works independently. But Grossi signaled Thursday in an interview with Bloomberg Television that while a number of issues need to be clarified before he can end the inquiry, a deal might be achieved.

Mikhail Ulyanov, Russias envoy, said the sides were on the finish line with a deal now possible within 48 hours. The U.K. also said Thursday that a final agreement was very close. Other diplomats with knowledge of the Vienna talks said privately they expected a breakthrough early next week.

Iran sounded a more cautious note late Thursday, however, with foreign ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh warning on Twitter that premature good news was no substitute for a good agreement.

Irans Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian said in a statement earlier on Friday that he would travel to Vienna to mark the deals finalization once the West agrees to our red lines suggesting that much still hinges on Grossis visit.

Iran insists its nuclear program is entirely peaceful but Western concerns it might try to develop warheads drove diplomacy that culminated in the 2015 deal.

Reviving the 7-year-old landmark nuclear agreement with Iran, often referred to as the JCPOA, would mean relief for global energy markets and could help lower tensions around the Persian Gulf where Irans standoff with the U.S. helped fuel conflict.

This week oil surged as high as $119 a barrel after Russian invaded Ukraine and other oil-producing nations, including members of the OPEC+ group, are reluctant to significantly increase production.

Traders have been expecting a return of Iranian barrels to global markets this year. The Persian Gulf nation, which holds the worlds No. 2 natural gas and No. 4 crude reserves, could probably raise exports by around 1 million barrels a day within months of any deal coming into full effect, according to traders.

Bloombergs Lin Noueihed contributed to this report.
MIAMI (Tribune News Service)  Holding posters that said free them all and defund hate, about two dozen Floridians on Thursday called on the Biden administration to shut down Glades County Detention Center, which has been the target of complaints from immigration advocates and watchdog organizations.

The rally near the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in Plantation was part of a multicity protest, Communities, Not Cages national day of action, asking the Biden administration to close federal detention centers for immigrants, cease deportations and free detainees in custody.

The county jail, which is run by the county sheriffs office, is near Lake Okeechobee and has a contract with ICE to hold immigrants in federal custody.

Now is the time for ICE and Glades County to end their contract and close this immigrant prison forever, said Rebecca Talbot, member of anti-detention group Immigrant Action Alliance.

There have been over 35 complaints made about Glades County Detention Center since the pandemic, according to a letter last month signed by various members of the Florida congressional delegation that asked the Department of Homeland Security to close down the facility.

Glades County Chief Deputy Duane Pottorff, who has previously declined to speak about recent complaints and whose office runs the center, did not respond to a Miami Herald inquiry about the protest.

The rally came after President Joe Biden this week said during the State of the Union address that his administration needs to secure borders and fix the nations immigration system. He also spoke of offering a pathway to citizenship for farm workers, those who came to the United States as children and others.

Participants at the Plantation rally expressed discontent with the administrations immigration policies.

This new presidency has been marked by cruelty towards immigrants, it is marked by the cruelty of broken promises, Talbot said.

ICE said the protesters had the right to express their views.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) fully respects the Constitutional rights of all persons to peacefully express their opinions, an ICE spokesperson said in an email. That said, ICE remains committed to performing its immigration enforcement mission consistent with federal law and agency policy.

Demonstrations took place in several states, including California, Ohio, New York and Pennsylvania, organizers said.

Two hundred organizations signed a Detention Watch Network letter to ICE Acting Director Tae D. Johnson demanding the release of migrants in custody and ceasing enforcement operations.

ICE detention is cruel, inhumane and unnecessary under any circumstance, but especially so during a deadly pandemic, the letter said.

At the Plantation rally, protesters gathered in a field under the shadow of a large tree and chanted no hate, no fear, immigrants are welcome here.

The speakers, who belong to a coalition that seeks to shut down Glades County Detention Center, focused on complaints at the facility, which include allegations of racist violence, medical negligence and sexual misconduct. In late January, the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington accused the facility of illegally deleting video records.

Earlier this week, community groups sent a letter to the Environmental Protection Agency alleging harmful misuse of chemical disinfectants at close quarters within the facility and called on the agency to look into the matter. Speakers also cited a November incident of accidental carbon monoxide inhalation at the facility which led to the hospitalization of detainees.

No person seeking a better life in this country deserves to be incarcerated and then poisoned and made sick, said Dominique Burkhardt, a senior attorney from Earthjustice, at the rally.

Protesters criticized that a Biden mandate directing the Department of Justice to not renew contracts with private prison operators did not apply to immigrant detention centers. They also blasted Biden for maintaining Trump-era policies that affect immigrants at the southwest border such as Title 42, a public health measure that allows authorities to turn away migrants since the coronavirus pandemic began and the Migrant Protection Protocols, which requires asylum seekers to stay in Mexico while they are processed.

Biden had rescinded the Migrant Protection Protocols, colloquially known as Remain in Mexico, but a federal court decision forced the policy to stay in place. The Department of Homeland Security has previously said that the continuance of Title 42 is up to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

This administration bears full responsibility for suffering inflicted on thousands of people subjected to detention, said Guadalupe de la Cruz, Florida director of the American Friends Service Committee.



2022 Miami Herald. Visit miamiherald.com.

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
COLUMBIA, S.C. (Tribune News Service)  South Carolina's senior U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham took his calls for regime change in Russia one step further Thursday night, when he tweeted that someone needs to take Russian President Vladimir Putin out over the invasion of Ukraine.

Anyone willing to kill Putin over his recent invasion of neighboring Ukraine would be doing a "great service" for Russia and the rest of the world, Graham tweeted.

Graham first made the assassination call during a Thursday night appearance on Fox News' Sean Hannity.

"Is there a Brutus in Russia? Is there a more successful Colonel Stauffenberg in the Russian military?" the Seneca Republican tweeted, referring to the men who orchestrated the assassination of Julius Caesar and attempted to assassinate Adolf Hitler, respectively. "The only way this ends is for somebody in Russia to take this guy out."

Graham continued that the only people who can stop the ongoing invasion of Ukraine are the Russian people.

"Easy to say, hard to do," Graham tweeted. "Unless you want to live in darkness for the rest of your life, be isolated from the rest of the world in abject poverty, and live in darkness you need to step up to the plate."

Graham's communications director, Kevin Bishop, later tweeted that Graham also told Newsmax that he was OK "with a coup to remove Putin as well."

"Basic point, Putin has to go. He also noted it will be  has to be  the Russian people who do it. They control the "off ramp" to this ordeal," Bishop tweeted.

In a post to the Russian Embassy in the U.S. Facebook page, Ambassador Anatoly Antonov called Graham's statement "unacceptable and outrageous."

"The degree of Russophobia and hatred in the USA towards Russia is off the charts," Antonov said. "It's unbelievable that a country's senator preaching his moral values as a "guiding star" to all mankind could afford a call on terrorism as a way to achieve Washington's goals on the international arena."

Graham's been an outspoken opponent of Putin and his war, going so far to define Putin's actions as "war crimes." He also voiced support for a case to be brought in international criminal court, and he wants the United States to back it.

President Joe Biden, meanwhile, has not taken his rhetoric that far. On Wednesday, he told reporters that it was "early to say that" when asked whether he believed Russia is committing war crimes in Ukraine.

When asked, however, whether he believed Russia was intentionally targeting civilian areas, Biden said, "It's clear they are."

___

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(Tribune News Service) The U.S. Space Commands commanding general told Congress this week he needs to know sooner rather than later if his command headquarters will be moving to Alabama.

Ive got to have a decision, Space Command leader Gen. James Dickinson told a congressional military readiness hearing Tuesday.

The Air Force decided in 2021 to move the permanent headquarters of the new command and its 1,800-member headquarters staff from their current base in Colorado Springs, Colo., to a permanent base at Redstone Arsenal.

That decision came after an established, by-the-book comparison of Alabama and bases in multiple states on such matters as cost of living, room to expand on the base, security and ability to support the command staffs needs.

The Pentagon designed the review procedure to prevent interstate fights like the current one between Colorado and Alabama over location of the headquarters. And Air Force documents leaked to AL.com showed Alabama ranked higher than Colorado in 11 of 21 comparisons including available and qualified workforce, nearness to supporting space organizations, room for the giant 464,000 Space Command headquarters building and one-time infrastructure and construction costs.

But former President Trump gave Colorado ammunition for its base decision challenge in 2021 when he told the syndicated Alabama radio show Rick & Bubba that he single-handedly made the call to move the headquarters to Redstone. Dickinson told Congress this week he just needs a final decision.

Where I see it right now is Im looking forward to the results and conclusion of both the (Department of Defense) and the (Inspector General) evaluations, Dickinson said. Those two assessments, Im confident theyll be done soon. Dickinson said hell be ready whenever that might come. He added for emphasis, So for me, its all about the decision. Ive got to have a decision.

Once I have a decision, Dickinson said, I can do the appropriate planning and make sure Ive got the right types of people in the organization.

Dickinson explained his got to have a decision comment by referring to earlier remarks by U.S. Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Huntsville).

Brooks is a member of the House committee and was at the hearing.

Speaking of overall military readiness and the threats America faces, Brooks cited an American admirals estimate that Chinas nuclear stockpile could double if not triple or quadruple over the next decade.

2022 Advance Local Media LLC.

Visit al.com.

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
Changes to the SunCommercial's back end processing means the e-edition is getting a facelift. The biggest change is the e-edition, by default, is now presented in Text view.
With 40 years experience in the kiwifruit industry, Sean Carnachan has some clear ideas about what it takes to last the distance.

Sean Carnachan wears multiple hats in the kiwifruit industry. He is a grower based in Katikati, growing all three varieties of kiwifruit  red, green and gold. He is also a contractor, managing orchards for growers, and runs a small post-harvest operation.

He holds several directorships in the industry and is very involved in KGI, New Zealand Kiwifruit Growers.

In the 40 years he has been in the industry, Sean has seen plenty of ups and downs. Its a great industry to be in, he says, but there are always challenges.

When you think things are going swimmingly well, theres always something around the corner to challenge you. And generally, the things that challenge us in this industry are not of our own making. They are normally outside influences.

The big outside influence for growers currently is labour shortages, says Sean, who currently employs around 35 staff.

Weve got 95 per cent current employment in this country which is what I deem to be full employment. And every industry is competing for the small number of workers who are available.

In the horticulture sector, 25 per cent of our labour has been backpackers in the past and now with Covid they are not there. Weve got RSE staff as well, but we dont have a full complement of those people in New Zealand at the moment either, so the market is extremely tight.

Labour shortages mean theres a lot of work thats not getting done and its costing more and more to get it done. It definitely is a worry for growers.

Dealing with stress

When it comes to dealing with stress, Sean has developed a clear philosophy for handling the uncertainty which is part and parcel of the industry.

I always talk about two things: the controllables and the uncontrollables. All the things you can control, you need to have a plan in place to deal with them, but dont sweat the things you cant control.

The classic example is when it rains, and you cant work and you think Im going to get further and further behind. Yes you are, but it doesnt matter how much worrying you do, it wont improve the situation.

What you can do is discuss the work programme, prioritise what needs to be done and have a good plan in place so when the weather comes right, you have retained everybody, and you can get on with it. Thats critical.

When it comes to the labour shortage, Sean has identified some controllables that he hopes will alleviate the situation. His key strategy is to maximise staff retention.

You have to look after the staff you have got so you can retain them throughout the year. We employ a lot of staff for 12 months of the year, so they have a permanent job, rather than a seasonal job. We house some of them on our property and we try and be a good employer. Not everybody is focused on the money, there are other things that make people get up in the morning to go to work. You have to identify those needs.

Look after your wellbeing

Sean is a strong believer in looking after his own wellbeing as well as contributing positively to the wellbeing of others. Taking time out for regular exercise and socialising with others to achieve balance in his life are priorities. If you dont have that kind of support in place, you have to go looking for it, says Sean.

It really helps if you can socialise with like-minded people so you dont have to discuss your issues at work. If you can get exercise along with socialising happening on a regular basis, it gives you that balance. Socialising with good company is so critical. You want to surround yourself with positive people, so you get good vibes off that.

Seans outside interests include a bit of mountain biking and fishing. They are my two things, but it can be as simple as walking your dog around the orchard or going to the beach.

I also have a group of guys I get together with for a beer once a week and most of them dont grow kiwifruit. Its something different. We have quite a bit of accommodation here on the farm, people from different backgrounds. We manage to catch up and have a friendly natter once or twice a week over a couple of cold beers we brew ourselves. Its always at the end of the day and a good unwind. Its not a drinking culture, its a catch-up.

Typically, there is not much downtime in the kiwifruit industry so finding ways to share the load and take breaks is important, says Sean.

There are not many months when we are not working seven days a week to manage the orchards. If we waited til there was a lull in our work programme we would have very little time off. This year we managed to run a six-day-a-week business right through the winter which was good because it meant everybody knew they could have a Sunday off.

Challenges within the industry

Over the years Sean has seen the kiwifruit industry face major threats. When PSA disease attacked kiwifruit vines in 2010 and crippled the industry, Sean got involved personally in supporting growers who were at the end of their tether and ready to walk away from their orchards. Once again it was a case of controlling what you could control.

It was very serious. What I did was sit down with them and show them there was a pathway through this. I dont know how its going to end up but there is a pathway. Just talking to them about their personal situation, their cashflow, and encouraging them to have a conversation with the bank who were supportive of us through that period.

I did the same thing in 2020 when it looked like we might not be able to get our entire crop harvested because of Covid. Encouraging growers to sit down early with the bank manager and understand their financial position so they had some clarity about what they can and cannot do. Once you have clarity, it improves your mental wellbeing about how you can stay in business.

Sean is a supporter of Farmstrongs focus on proactively looking after your own wellbeing, and the wellbeing of your family and community.

I like what Farmstrong is on about. Now is the time to discuss these ideas and act before things get potentially even tougher. Have the conversations now. Its well worth it. People have different levels of anxiety and stress in all jobs so its good to reach out. It takes an ongoing commitment to look after yourself, its not a short fix.

Farmstrong is a nationwide, rural wellbeing programme that helps farmers and their families cope with the ups and downs of farming. To find out what works for you, check out farmstrong.co.nz
After a robust and lengthy debate, Whakatane district council has voted to join Communities 4 Local Democracy, an action group formed by councils in response to the Government legislating to mandate three waters reforms.

At an extraordinary meeting on Wednesday morning, Mayor Judy Turner and four councillors voted against a notice of motion tabled by councillor John Pullar on January 28 to join the grouping of 29 councils putting forward an alternative model for Three Waters management. However, they were outvoted by the six remaining councillors.

The vote came after a discussion via Zoom that lasted over 80 minutes.

Mr Pullar urged councillors to vote for the motion, saying it was about showing solidarity with neighbouring councils in support of an alternative solution to managing drinking water, stormwater and wastewater than has been proposed by the Government.

Its about us wanting our council to do a little bit extra for our communities, he said.

Mrs Turner was among those who argued against the motion, saying that joining Communities 4 Local Government would weaken the councils voice in Wellington.

Three waters is just the first cab off the rank in terms of reform. We have a long journey ahead of us, she said.

She was also concerned that if they committed to the group, it wouldnt just be about the three waters and would add to the workload for staff.

If were going to do it, were going to have to do it properly. Our staff are going to be put under incredible pressure. If were not going to run some workshops and respond to their ideas, and actually do something then thats a waste of money.

She also voiced her concern about Whakatanes ability to pay for the three waters upgrades needed to meet new standards.

If the Government was to walk away from this, because of our pushback, the problem hasnt gone away. We have hundreds of millions of dollars, in Whakatane, of upgrades that will be required over the next few years and I am not convinced that we can afford that without some support, she said.

Were in a difficult situation. We dont like the design of the support being offered, or aspects of the design, but to pretend that we dont need support of any kind, I think, is very poorly considered. Remember that our resource consents expire in 2026. We are not too far away from the problem hitting us hard.

She reminded councillors that the Local Government Three Waters Working Group that was currently advocating for all councils had been making progress with the Government.

The Government are making some changes to their reform package, so they are listening. And theyve definitely slowed down the reform timeline to allow for input. We need to reconsider where we expend our effort to get the best outcome for our community in the long term.

Mr Pullars proposal included a financial commitment of $15,000 along with moral support for the group.

I do not believe that us joining Communities 4 Local Democracy will create extra work for our staff, nor do I believe that it will cause a backlash from Central Government regarding our funding already committed. Some may feel that could be the case, but we live in a democratic country, surely. Or am I being naive, he said.

There is no reason we cannot still be a part of our member organisation LGNZ, but I dont think that they are being strong enough in their voice to central Government. This is not about rocking the LGNZ boat. It is about our views being heard and our opinions shared.

Councillor Nandor Tanczos agreed with Mrs Turner, saying Communities 4 Local Democracy had only one option now on the table and that it was completely inadequate.

That is to put a charge per connection on water connections and then spread that around the country in the hope that thats going to make it easier for poor communities. They were not very transparent about what those costs per connection were going to look like. Weve heard about figures of $20 raising $100 million per year [nationwide]. We know thats a magnitude out from whats needed. Were talking about needing billions of dollars.

So, the cost per connection to realistically fund the upgrades that will be needed is going to be huge. And thats a flat rate across every community, regardless of how much water you use, so its retrogressive for poor people. For me thats just not any kind of alternative to the Governments proposal.

Deputy Mayor Andrew Iles and councillor Julie Jukes and Gerard van Beek were also against the motion.

Mr van Beek said the council needed to take the political out of supplying three waters, and the three waters entities.

While there are some fishhooks in it, I am more supportive of that than leaving three waters with council, because we just do not do a good job.

He said councillors were reluctant to increase rates to pay for the work needing to be done. He gave as an example the smell of the Whakatane oxidation ponds, saying staff had been pushing to have the ponds desludged since he joined the council.

Were 12 years down the track and Whakatane oxidation ponds still havent been desludged. We are continually driving past the ponds and suffering foul odour. Yesterday, in my trip into town I would have scored it about three out of 10. Sometimes its about 9 out of 10. Clearly, we havent been doing the things that we need to do for the oxidation ponds.

He gave as other examples the lack of progress on Matata waste water system, poor decision making around spending on Whakatane water supply and lack of chlorination of Murupara water supply.

He said our council very seldom reached 100 percent compliance with Ministry of Health guidelines for drinking water.

Those who voted for the motion to join with the group were councillors Lesley Immink, Wilson James, Alison Silcock, Gavin Dennis, Victor Luca and Mr Pullar.

Mrs Immink said she wanted the council to take a stronger stance against the reforms from the start.

When we put our submission in [to central Government] many councillors wanted us to have a stronger position and, in fact, align with Opotiki and Kawerau but that didnt seem to go very far and it ended up having a perception across the community that we were soft - that we should have rejected it outright.

She felt that when Communities 4 Local Democracy was formed in December there were a number of councillors interested in joining the group.

We pretty much got softly pushed aside. My feeling was that there were more of us that wanted to investigate further what had happened. Now we are in March, and it is not until John [Pullar] raised this notice of motion that we have actually now had a much more balanced view of what they are proposing and what the Local Government Steering Group are working through versus the Department of Internal Affairs model.

Mrs Immink was critical of central Government for not engaging more with iwi over the reforms.

We still have not had the right level of engagement, considering the level of governance that the DIA are saying that they are going to be working toward with iwi. Iwi are absolutely swamped already with the level of Maori representation that is expected. We cant even get, in our local community, some of our iwi engagement partners to be working with us because they are already short on capacity. Now, with three waters coming on board, the worry Is that that layer of capacity will go up the line and we will have even less down in our local community.

Mr Luca said if it had been up to him, he would have jumped into Communities 4 Local Democracy, virtually immediately.

I dont remember us getting a choice, I dont remember us voting on it. I dont even remember much discussion about it. I think the voice of the community has been very strong. Its seldom that you get so many people coming out in that way.

Mrs Silcock agreed, adding that she had no faith in Local Government New Zealand to advocate on behalf of local councils.

Local Government New Zealand is listening to the Government, not to councils.

Although there was no public consultation for the Three Waters Reform, this council received 220 submissions with an overwhelming majority against the proposal. New Zealanders want open discussion, real data and choices. Community consultation is paramount.

Letters will be sent to Communities 4 Local Democracy and Local Government New Zealand informing them of the decision.

Chief executive Steph OSullivan said she would do some work on defining the scope of what joining the group would look like to manage effectively and ensuring councillors received the information they were seeking.

She would look at whether staff could manage this within the current budget or whether they would need to come back to the council for more budget to be able to source that work.

-Local Democracy Reporting is Public Interest Journalism funded through NZ On Air.
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The cruise ship industry is urging the government to pick up the pace and provide more certainty around reopening the maritime border.

While a phased reopening was announced last month, it has focused on air, not sea travel.

Cruise companies say they don't know when they will be able to return to New Zealand and their preparation deadline is rapidly approaching.

After two grim years, the cruise ship industry remains hopeful their luck might soon change.

Government officials and the industry, including the New Zealand Cruise Association, have been meeting for months to discuss reopening the maritime border.

New Zealand Cruise Association chief executive Kevin O'Sullivan says the clock is ticking down as cruise lines need three to four months preparation so they could deploy in time.

But they need to make decisions before then, he says.

"Realistically speaking, March is the month when decisions needs to be made that the cruise lines can look at the maritime border opening and begin to make preparations."

Bookings are already strong and it's shaping up to be a successful season if it went ahead, O'Sullivan says.

"Of course without the maritime border, without ships, there will be no season. But I'm forever optimistic and we've done a lot of work along these lines with the various government agencies, and they've been as helpful in progressing it as far as they can.

"But it is a slow process and it needs to speed up."

The industry can't afford to lose another summer season, he says.

He doesn't rule out the prolonged border closures and uncertainty having an impact on cruise line company's decisions in the future.

"They need reassurance that New Zealand - which as a cruise economy and cruise industry has been built up over many, many years - is a country that they wish to do business with.

"This level of uncertainty will also lead to uncertainty for the future."

Auckland Unlimited's head of visitor economy Annie Dundas says the loss of cruise ships have been a blow for the city.

"It's been pretty harsh. I mean we've lost $200 million of revenue in that sector per annum, and that's pretty hard to come back from.

"We as a city are looking to welcome those cruise passengers back because they do provide vibrancy and they do also get out and about across the regions."

P&O Cruises Australia recently cancelled 21 cruises scheduled to leave from Auckland between July and November due to the uncertainty.

It would have been a great economic and morale boost for the city and surrounding regions, she says.

"That cancellation represented 42,000 Australians that would have been happily spending time and money in our retail stores, in our cafes and restaurants and one tourism experiences, and at a time in winter which is pretty slow and light for many tourism businesses. It's a massive economic hit," Dundas says.

Cruise Lines International Association Australasia managing director Joel Katz says companies needed answers.

"It's not only the cruise lines, but the travel agents, the tour operators, the food and beverage suppliers across New Zealand. Of course the hotels and cafes and restaurants and transport providers who provide for those passengers before and after their cruises.

"They're all saying that they need certainty."

Cruise ships have safety protocols including social distancing, masks and vaccine passes that are designed to keep guests and staff safe, and adapt to any Covid-19 changes, he says.

"So one of the things that we've been making clear in our discussion with government agencies is that we can't have a situation where if there's another variant or if there's a wave of Covid that the ships are prevented from returning to the region."

The Ministry of Health says government officials are engaging with stakeholders about how and when the maritime border might be opened up, and to whom.

"The maritime border has a number of points of entry into New Zealand that accommodate a greater range of vessels arriving than the air border does; so it has a number of unique complexities," the spokesperson says.

"When considering the opening of our borders internationally, the government decided to focus on the air border initially given the majority of people who travel to New Zealand arrive by air."

The ministry will not say when a decision will be made, but the local cruise industry hopes the 2022-23 season does not set sail without them.

-RNZ/Tess Brunton.
Are you a home baker? Rise up Tauranga is calling on the Bay of Plenty community to provide fresh home baking as a way to show support for the front line staff at Tauranga and Whakatane Hospitals during the next seven weeks.

We need our awesome community to please provide fresh home baking for hospital staff until Easter, says Rise Up Taurangas Rosalie Liddle Crawford.

During this Omicron outbreak, the Tauranga and Whakatane Hospital staff from the Path Lab, Emergency Department and general hospital ward staff will be going over and beyond to process thousands of Covid tests and care for many people coming into hospital," says Rosalie. "The hours are expected to be even longer, more intense and stressful than theyve already experienced over the last two years.

Some fresh home baking from the community is a great way to show support.

Cupcakes made by Paula Bilbe. Photo: Supplied.

On finishing college, Rosalie worked as a medical laboratory technologist at Tauranga Hospital before continuing on with further study at Wellington Hospital.

So I know first-hand how intense the work can be. Some delicious baking made with love tends to lift peoples morale and it will be nice to give all the frontline staff a boost.

Bakers sign up via a Google Doc form.

After signing up and choosing their day, we will provide bakers with the details of each location and a map showing them where to go. There will be contactless delivery of the fresh home baking on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays between 9am and 11am at a drop-off bay at both hospitals.

Please do not go to the hospital main entrance with your baking, says Rosalie.

Eleanor and Mason Ashby made weetbix slice in the first week of baking for Tauranga Hospital. Photo: Supplied.

The BOPDHB Emergency Planning Team will distribute the baking to staff.

Baking can include biscuits, cakes, fruit loaf, muffins, scones, tarts, flans or slices, and gluten and dairy free options. Bakers are encouraged to share photos of themselves with their baking on the Rise Up Tauranga Facebook page.

New World Mount Maunganui has cardboard cake boxes available for purchase, which enables home bakers to place their baking in a container which wont need returning.

We are contacting other supermarkets to see if they can also make their boxes available for purchase, says Rosalie.

Jo Taylor's chocolate banana cake. Photo: Supplied.

A chocolate banana cake made by Jo Taylor includes a card.

"Thank you for giving me the opportunity to pay it back to the amazing staff at Tauranga Hospital. Definitely baked this one with a lot of extra love. Just a small token of my appreciation of all the hard work they do," says Jo.

Amanda Little with two layers of her dairy free chocolate slice for Tauranga Hospital staff. Photo: Supplied.

"Thank you for giving me the opportunity to thank the staff who looked after my father for two months in aged care last year, for my hip replacement two years ago and the numerous broken limbs my daughter has done (we now bubble wrap her). Such wonderful staff," says Amanda Little, who baked a dairy free chocolate slice for Friday's delivery.

"I appreciate our medical staff so much," says Ruth Sweatman who baked scones this week for Tauranga Hospital.

"It is so nice after this very difficult week to do something that is positive and perhaps helpful. Congrats to the team who organised this for our Tauranga Hospital meds."

During the first week of the baking project, Vicky McGreal, on realising that many of the bakers signing up lived near her in Arataki, started a Facebook group to help coordinate deliveries across to Tauranga Hospital. The Arataki Bakers now has over 20 members, with one member providing a contactless table for bakers to drop off their baking to her before she delivers it all to the hospital.

Fresh home baking for Tauranga Hospital staff by Vicky McGreal, who started The Arataki Bakers group. Photo: Supplied.

The community project has been endorsed by the Bay of Plenty District Health Board CEO Pete Chandler.

"Were thrilled with this wonderful offer of community support for our teams and the demonstration of appreciation at a time when all of our staff are going above and beyond," says Pete. "Huge thanks to Rosalie and the Rise Up Tauranga network of bakers for giving your time and effort. Whilst we provide a range of things to keep our teams as supported as we can, a community effort is very special and is a tremendous message of kindness to our frontline staff  thank you all!

The fresh home baking for hospital staff is a project run by Rise Up Tauranga in liaison with the BOPDHBs Emergency Planning Team. Updates will be posted to the www.facebook.com/riseuptauranga page.

The fresh home baking project for Tauranga and Whakatane Hospital staff is running for seven weeks until Wednesday, April 13.

For more information, contact Rosalie on rosalie@topshelfdesign.com

Ruth Sweatman with her freshly baked scones for Tauranga Hospital staff. Photo: Supplied.
One moment life can be full of sun, surf, paddle boarding, family, friends and work, and the next moment everything can change.

This has happened for Mount Maunganuis Chris Wilton-Jones who received the rocking news on February 15 that he has a very aggressive form of acute myeloid leukaemia.

One day you are paddle boarding around and climbing the Mount and nek minuteBOOM. Theres no rhyme or reason to why these things happen, says Chris.

I hadnt been feeling too well since about December 20. I went to the doctor, we did blood tests, and he sent me to Waikato.

Due to the aggressive nature of the leukaemia and on advice from a Waikato Hospital oncology specialist, Chris will not be undergoing chemotherapy treatment and has returned to the Mount to be surrounded by family and friends at this time.

Unfortunately, when we sent for further testing, the testing came back with poor risk genetics which means it is a highly aggressive leukaemia with very low chance of cure, says the specialist.

If we pursue treatment with significant chemotherapy and get you into remission and if by good chance we are able to source allogeneic stem cell transplant for you, your overall survival is 20 per cent.

But that is provided that everything goes to plan with no complications or anything else that might compromise your life. All in all, it is a very aggressive disease you have and the decision [to go home] you made now is not entirely a bad one if you wish to remain comfortable.

Chris Wilton-Jones. Photo: Supplied.

Waipuna Hospice, which provides a home service from Waihi Beach to Pukehina Beach for those with a life-limiting illness, assigns a nurse to visit people in their homes to provide clinical support and help manage symptoms and provide support to families to enjoy the best possible quality of life. They also refer people to other service providers for support with personal care and home help. Hospice at home surrounded by family can be immensely comforting.

Chris is well-known around the Mount as Doc, and for his inspirational and encouraging social media updates, and for promoting good health, fitness and wellbeing. Its fair to say his super power is encouragement.

His huge heart and generosity, and his determination to give and pay it forward has been leaving an imprint on many lives over the last decade at least, as hes spent time helping the rich and the homeless, no matter what background people spring from.

Many have also been recipients of texts and letters that hes taken time to post to people across the city and further afield.

Members of Chriss closeknit family have arrived in Tauranga from Australia and the South Island to wrap strength, love and care around Chris as he journeys through this valley.

Please pray for a miracle healing, says Chris. I love the Lord, thats where the saving grace is. My chin is high, my spirit is very strong, because I have a caring God that loves us all.

A Givealittle page has been set up to help cover Chris costs, and family costs as they travel to and stay nearby while wrapping strength, love and care around Chris. Additional funds left over will be donated to Waipuna Hospice to help support other families.

See Chris Givealittle page at: https://givealittle.co.nz/cause/long-live-chris

During the Alert Level 4 national lockdown period, Chris Wilton-Jones made more than 1200 origami 'Covid' cranes to give away, representing every Kiwi who up to that point had caught Covid-19.
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The Temple Police Department on Friday released a photograph of a sports utility vehicle believed to have been used in the shooting of a 16-ye
Omkar BHPian



Join Date: Apr 2016 Location: Mumbai Posts: 572 Thanked: 8,873 Times

Driving the Slavia 1.5L DSG Automatic

1.5L, 4 cylinder turbo-petrol engine makes 148 BHP @ 5,000 - 6,000 rpm and 250 Nm @ 1,600 - 3,500 rpm:





The 1.5L engine is shared with the Kushaq and we were mighty impressed when we drove it the last time around. This engine gets 4-stroke positive ignition direct injection with active cylinder technology. It's offered only in the top-end Style variant with a either a 6-speed MT or a 7-speed DSG AT. During our media test drive in Goa, we got to sample the DSG AT variant. On paper, the engine produces 148 BHP & 250 Nm which is much more than Honda City 1.5's 119 BHP and Hyundai Verna 1.0's 118 BHP. These figures put it in a different league altogether.



Fast and effortless at any legal speed, this powertrain compliments the ride and handling characteristics of the car beautifully. The combo makes the Slavia an effortless mile-muncher if fuel prices arent a concern .



Slot into D mode, take your foot off the brake pedal and the Slavia DSG slowly creeps forward. This will be highly appreciated in heavy traffic conditions where you can drive with just the brake pedal. With a light foot, the gearbox moves up the ratios pretty quickly. Impressively, you won't feel these shifts as the transition is butter smooth. While the automatic transmission makes the Slavia very easy to drive in the city, when crawling in slow traffic (1st - 3rd gears), you will experience a little jerkiness, which is a typical DSG trait. In the city, the 1.5 motor's healthy bottom end helps you get around effortlessly. The throttle response is good and the Slavia rolls smoothly. Add to that, the direct-injection and turbocharger ensure that the engine isn't lethargic at any speed. There's always enough power on tap to accelerate or overtake quickly.



Out on the highway is when things go from good to great! This is easily among the most fun-to-drive sedans for 2 million bucks. You'll find yourself addicted to flooring the throttle whenever there's an empty stretch of road. Outright performance is excellent and the strong mid-range takes care of all the overtaking you need to do. Downshifts are quick (not as fast as upshifts though) and the gearbox responds well to throttle inputs. The 7th ratio gives the Slavia DSG long legs on the highway. And touring you must do - this car is built for long road-trips. In terms of cruisability, the 1.5 TSI can run at triple-digit speeds all day long without breaking into a sweat. The engine spins at a relaxed ~1,900 rpm at 100 km/h. In summary, the 1.5 TSI DSG is a jewel of a combination that will keep you happy at low revs & high, and in the city as well as on the highway. Other than its reliability woes, this is one of the best AT gearboxes sold in India.



IMO the 1.5L TSI sounds great even at high revs. It has a very sporty tone to it which is addictive too. If you are continuously driving hard and / or in S mode, your passengers might complain about the sound though.



Tap the left paddle for a downshift and manual mode is engaged. The ECU blips the throttle to match the revs, and holds the gear till near the redline. This gets addictive, especially during overtakes! However, even in manual mode, the DSG will upshift above ~6,250 rpm and also downshift below ~1,000 rpm. We feel this is on the conservative side. Manual mode will also ignore wrong gear selections which put the engine out of the above rpm ranges. Long hold the paddles to revert back to auto mode.



Cruising around in D mode, one won't even notice the gears being shifted. They are damn smooth. The kickdown response time is quick enough and you will never feel that the gearbox is hunting for gears either. It's in the right ratio almost all the time. When you are in the mood to drive the car aggressively, engage Sport mode by pushing the gear lever down once. In S, the gearbox downshifts to keep the car in the power band, holds the ratios longer and lets the punchy midrange do all the heavy lifting required. Out on the open road, you will find it hard to resist the urge to go hard on the throttle. The Slavia is simply brilliant to drive!



On the flip side, we have scarily serious concerns over the DSG's long-term reliability. Just search on Team-BHP and you will see story after story of DQ200 failures & breakdowns. Skoda insists they have fixed the problem, but we aren't convinced at all. This gearbox has inherent design defects IMHO. Some BHPians who can't resist the DSG have mentally relegated themselves to 2 breakdowns over 8 - 10 years of ownership. If reliability is your topmost criteria, you should pick the 1.0 with a torque-converter AT, or consider another car model altogether.



Noise, Vibration & Harshness (NVH)



The 1.5L TSI is overall refined. It's a lot smoother than the 1.0 TSI which has some 3-cylinder vibrations. All the vibrations are well controlled and so is the engine noise inside the cabin. At high revs, the engine note sounds sporty.



Mileage & Fuel Economy



Skoda has given the 1.5L Slavia Active Cylinder Technology. When cruising calmly on the open road, the ECU shuts off cylinders 2 and 3 to reduce fuel consumption. This 2-cylinder mode will lead to good long distance FE, that is if you drive calmly (which is tough in the TSI). While we never felt the cylinder activation / deactivation happening, we did see an "ECO" sign on the MID which might be signaling its action.



ARAI numbers:



1.5 TSI MT - 18.47 km/l

1.5 TSI AT - 18.41 km/l



'ECO' indicator comes up on the MID when you are cruising at easy revs. The Slavia 1.5L has Active Cylinder Technology, which shuts down cylinders 2 and 3 in the interest of fuel efficiency:

1.5L, 4 cylinder turbo-petrol engine makes 148 BHP @ 5,000 - 6,000 rpm and 250 Nm @ 1,600 - 3,500 rpm:The 1.5L engine is shared with the Kushaq and we were mighty impressed when we drove it the last time around. This engine gets 4-stroke positive ignition direct injection with active cylinder technology. It's offered only in the top-end Style variant with a either a 6-speed MT or a 7-speed DSG AT. During our media test drive in Goa, we got to sample the DSG AT variant. On paper, the engine produces 148 BHP & 250 Nm which is much more than Honda City 1.5's 119 BHP and Hyundai Verna 1.0's 118 BHP. These figures put it in a different league altogether.Fast and effortless at any legal speed, this powertrain compliments the ride and handling characteristics of the car beautifully. The combo makes the Slavia an effortless mile-muncher if fuel prices arent a concernSlot into D mode, take your foot off the brake pedal and the Slavia DSG slowly creeps forward. This will be highly appreciated in heavy traffic conditions where you can drive with just the brake pedal. With a light foot, the gearbox moves up the ratios pretty quickly. Impressively, you won't feel these shifts as the transition is butter smooth. While the automatic transmission makes the Slavia very easy to drive in the city, when crawling in slow traffic (1st - 3rd gears), you will experience a little jerkiness, which is a typical DSG trait. In the city, the 1.5 motor's healthy bottom end helps you get around effortlessly. The throttle response is good and the Slavia rolls smoothly. Add to that, the direct-injection and turbocharger ensure that the engine isn't lethargic at any speed. There's always enough power on tap to accelerate or overtake quickly.Out on the highway is when things go from good to great! This is easily among the most fun-to-drive sedans for 2 million bucks. You'll find yourself addicted to flooring the throttle whenever there's an empty stretch of road. Outright performance is excellent and the strong mid-range takes care of all the overtaking you need to do. Downshifts are quick () and the gearbox responds well to throttle inputs. The 7th ratio gives the Slavia DSG long legs on the highway. And touring you must do - this car is built for long road-trips. In terms of cruisability, the 1.5 TSI can run at triple-digit speeds all day long without breaking into a sweat. The engine spins at a relaxed ~1,900 rpm at 100 km/h. In summary, the 1.5 TSI DSG is a jewel of a combination that will keep you happy at low revs & high, and in the city as well as on the highway. Other than its reliability woes, this is one of the best AT gearboxes sold in India.IMO the 1.5L TSI sounds great even at high revs. It has a very sporty tone to it which is addictive too. If you are continuously driving hard and / or in S mode, your passengers might complain about the sound though.Tap the left paddle for a downshift and manual mode is engaged. The ECU blips the throttle to match the revs, and holds the gear till near the redline. This gets addictive, especially during overtakes! However, even in manual mode, the DSG will upshift above ~6,250 rpm and also downshift below ~1,000 rpm. We feel this is on the conservative side. Manual mode will also ignore wrong gear selections which put the engine out of the above rpm ranges. Long hold the paddles to revert back to auto mode.Cruising around in D mode, one won't even notice the gears being shifted. They are damn smooth. The kickdown response time is quick enough and you will never feel that the gearbox is hunting for gears either. It's in the right ratio almost all the time. When you are in the mood to drive the car aggressively, engage Sport mode by pushing the gear lever down once. In S, the gearbox downshifts to keep the car in the power band, holds the ratios longer and lets the punchy midrange do all the heavy lifting required. Out on the open road, you will find it hard to resist the urge to go hard on the throttle. The Slavia is simply brilliant to drive!On the flip side, we have scarily serious concerns over the DSG's long-term reliability. Just search on Team-BHP and you will see story after story of DQ200 failures & breakdowns. Skoda insists they have fixed the problem, but we aren't convinced at all. This gearbox has inherent design defects IMHO. Some BHPians who can't resist the DSG have mentally relegated themselves to 2 breakdowns over 8 - 10 years of ownership. If reliability is your topmost criteria, you should pick the 1.0 with a torque-converter AT, or consider another car model altogether.The 1.5L TSI is overall refined. It's a lot smoother than the 1.0 TSI which has some 3-cylinder vibrations. All the vibrations are well controlled and so is the engine noise inside the cabin. At high revs, the engine note sounds sporty.Skoda has given the 1.5L Slavia Active Cylinder Technology. When cruising calmly on the open road, the ECU shuts off cylinders 2 and 3 to reduce fuel consumption. This 2-cylinder mode will lead to good long distance FE, that is if you drive calmly (which is tough in the TSI). While we never felt the cylinder activation / deactivation happening, we did see an "ECO" sign on the MID which might be signaling its action.ARAI numbers:1.5 TSI MT - 18.47 km/l1.5 TSI AT - 18.41 km/l'ECO' indicator comes up on the MID when you are cruising at easy revs. The Slavia 1.5L has Active Cylinder Technology, which shuts down cylinders 2 and 3 in the interest of fuel efficiency: Last edited by Aditya : 3rd March 2022 at 09:01 .
thanixravindran BHPian

Join Date: Feb 2022 Location: Chennai Posts: 147 Thanked: 963 Times

Re: Impact of the Russia-Ukraine war Quote: ABHI_1512 Originally Posted by This thread has now turned into how USA is responsible for what Russia is doing to Ukraine and how Russia is so right while it invades a sovereign country. Its appalling that the current invasion is being justified in the name of what US did in the past.



Quote: ABHI_1512 Originally Posted by So much so, that even human lives lost are a matter of debate and speculation !! All this while, I thought innocent human lives have values. Now I realise they dont.



Quote: ABHI_1512 Originally Posted by Also, the basic notion that I understood from the thread- no matter what you do, its the one who provokes is the culprit and thats why Putin is a hero who is out to protect his country from enemies.





Quote: ABHI_1512 Originally Posted by Just that I thought this forum to be little different from the other online forums, my bad !!



PS: If I did not become a member, I would have still enjoyed reading all the posts. So my request is to please contribute without the need to judge others. Rather, I found this thread has all types of posts - Supporting Ukraine, Supporting USA, Supporting Russia, Analyzing the reasons, Tracing the historical imbalances and fault lines, Geo politics, India's stance - Support and oppose, excellent historical references as well real time information of the news as it happens in the ground. May be, I see what I wanted to See.If I have to think philosophically, humans 'value' lives only till the need or greed takes over. This is not new but happening since time immemorial. If not, we would not have 'moved up the primitive ladder' from stone ages.I will take help from an old Tamil adage -    ? (Meaning - Why to blame the arrow when the one who pulled the shot is available).At the end of the day, we are not decision makers and have just an interest in geopolitics, war and history. So it is just an expression of thoughts nothing more. I still feel this is very different for an automotive forum (that has united all of us) having diverse views in a very different topic. There is absolutely nothing right or wrong in having views and expressing it. Just expecting everyone to align to only one view is...PS: If I did not become a member, I would have still enjoyed reading all the posts. So my request is to please contribute without the need to judge others.
In brief: The world's largest contract manufacturer of consumer electronics wants to be a key player on the EV market by 2025. Foxconn's latest move in that direction is to set up several facilities in Taiwan where it will produce battery cells and build electric buses.

Foxconn today announced plans to manufacture batteries in the near future as part of its strategy to become the Android of the EV industry. Apple's largest supplier says it wants to build new facilities in Taiwan where it will make battery cells, battery packs, and grid energy storage systems.

As governments around the world push for the electrification of everything, the company seems determined to diversify its business and become a major supplier of key components for the auto industry as it transitions away from internal combustion engines.

Its ambitions don't stop at making batteries, however, as the new facilities may also be used to design and assemble electric vehicles. During a press conference in Kaoshiung, Taiwan, Foxconn chairman and CEO Young Liu explained that "our goal is to formulate a complete ecosystem for electric buses in the city and then we can export the solutions outside of Taiwan."

Liu says Foxconn has plans to build several EV factories in Europe, India, Mexico, and South America in the coming years, depending on where it will be easier to set up close partnerships with local governments and companies. Last month, Foxconn set up a joint venture with Vedanta in India for a chip manufacturing plant. The new facility could be used to manufacture microcontrollers needed by car manufacturers, as demand far outstrips supply.

Last year, the Taiwanese manufacturing giant acquired Lordstown Motors Corp.'s electric truck factory in Ohio for $280 million, but its main focus in this area remains on further developing cheap barebones EV platforms that big brands and startups can customize and sell as their own.

Foxconn isn't the only company that wants a share of the growing EV pie. Luxshare is also looking to tap into the EV industry by partnering with Chinese automaker Cherry Group, Ford and Panasonic are both building massive EV and battery cell factories in the US, and Arm is working on the software smarts of next-generation electric vehicles.

Liu isn't concerned about the growing competition and consolidation going on in the EV space. He has promised investors that he will ensure Foxconn's EV designs and components will be in five percent of the global EV market by 2025, and generate over $35 billion in revenue by 2026.
Editor's take: Disney is planning to expand access to its direct-to-consumer streaming service later this year with the addition of an ad-supported tier. The company was light on details regarding its new plan but if we had to guess, the ad-supported tier probably won't be free outright. Instead, it will likely be more affordable than the standard ad-free offering - perhaps in the $3.99 to $4.99 per month range.

As it stands today, access to Disney+ commands $7.99 per month, or $79.99 per year when paid up front which works out to roughly $6.67 per month. There's also the Disney Bundle, which consists of Disney+, ESPN+ and Hulu (the ad-supported tier) for $13.99 a month or $19.99 a month if you want Hulu without ads.

Rita Ferro, president of advertising at Disney, said advertisers have been clamoring for the opportunity to be part of Disney+. "Disney+ with advertising will offer marketers the most premium environment in streaming with our most beloved brands, Disney, Pixar, Star Wars, Marvel and National Geographic," the executive added.

Disney said it viewed the ad-supported offering as a building block on its path to achieving 230 million to 260 million Disney+ subscribers by FY24. If you recall, the company finished 2021 with 129.8 million Disney+ subscribers. To put that into perspective, industry leader Netflix ended last year with 222 million paying subscribers while Paramount+ went into 2022 with 32.8 million subscribers.

Speaking of Paramount+, there's still time for new and returning subscribers to grab three months of Paramount+ at an 80 percent discount. That offer is set to expire on March 7, however, so you'll want to act fast if you want it.

Image credit Marques Kaspbrak
NASA awards three more SpaceX contracts to fly additional Commercial Crew missions to the International Space Station or the ISS.

NASA Awards 3 Contracts to SpaceX

As per a news story by TechCrunch, NASA or the National Aeronautics and Space Administration has added three more space missions under its Commercial Crew Transportation Capability contract with billionaire Elon Musk's firm, SpaceX.

The three additional SpaceX missions, namely the Crew-7, Crew-8, and Crew-9, cost a whopping $900 million in total, raising the overall commercial crew contract of NASA to a staggering $3.49 billion.

Previously, NASA's contract with SpaceX only accounts for 6 crewed flights, which will be flying up until 2023, including commercial flights for 2022, such as Crew-4 and Crew-5.

This time around, the three new contracts of SpaceX now increased its commercial crewed flights with NASA to nine flights in total.

That said, from its previous crewed flights spanning up to 2023, the space company of Musk is now launching commercial flights for the US space agency up until March 31, 2028.

The associate administrator of NASA for its Space Operations Mission Directorate, Kathy Lueders, said that the additional crewed flights to the International Space Station are "critical."

It comes as Lueders said that it is necessary to maintain the presence of the United States in the orbiting space station.

Lueders said in the notice of intent of NASA that "our US human launch capability is essential to our continued safe operations in orbit and to building our low-Earth orbit economy."

Read Also: NASA To Fund Futuristic Space Technologies! Concepts Receiving NIAC's Phase I, Phase II Grants

SpaceX: NASA's Only Choice

According to a recent report by Teslarati, NASA technically has two choices for its Commercial Crew Program, which includes SpaceX and Boeing, which develops the Starliner spacecraft.

However, it is worth noting that the latter has yet to perform its successful uncrewed flights to orbit. In turn, it has also failed to test out a crewed mission to space.

That said, although technically Boeing is part of the Commercial Crew Program of NASA, it has been removed from the contract add-on, leaving SpaceX as the lone choice for the space agency.

It is worth noting that the three additional flights worth more than $900 million have raised the total contract of NASA with SpaceX to a whopping $3.49 billion.

With the latest figures, Teslarati estimated that the average price per seat on the SpaceX mission is to the tune of $74 million, assuming that all four seats of the spacecraft are occupied.

Related Article: NASA's Ingenuity Mars Helicopter Concludes 20 Flights in Red Planet, But Its Not Stopping There

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Written by Teejay Boris

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Starting and establishing your business online without a hitch is possible. How? By simply using the best website builder you can find in the market.

A website builder software only needs a few clicks. You will never need to learn how coding works. With its benefits coupled with free website templates, you have endless choices on how your website would turn out.

How To Build a Website

There are two but entirely different ways to build a website. First, you can create a website from scratch with codes. This method was customary before website builder software came into view, and some business owners would hire a professional to do the job for them.

But if you want to do it yourself, you need to learn the basics of HTML and CSS. It's not that we're discouraging you from using this approach but compared to the second option, this is a tad bit tricky.

The second option that most modern businesses take is to look for the best website builder. We highly recommend that you take this route because using a website builder software is less intimidating than coding.

You only need to search the web to find the best website builder. Some of the good ones only need you to provide what your preferences are, such as niche and theme that works for you.

Then, load it in a few seconds, and there you have it -- a simple website built according to your taste! You can also configure everything if you want to add something. While you have complete control over your website, the builder also takes the burden of the job off your shoulders.

Which Website Builder Is Best for Blogs and Businesses?

Remember when we said you only need to search the web to look for the best website builder? Well, it appears you won't have to. We curated the top 5 best website builder software based on their features to make website creation seamless. We also added a few advantages and disadvantages you may encounter along the way.

#1 Wix

When you do a quick search on the internet, Wix will top the list. What classifies Wix as one of the best website builder software is its user-friendly platform. The website builder software features a drag-and-drop tool to simplify the process.

You have total control over your site's appearance with preconfigured templates and color palettes to match it up. These color palettes let you incorporate your brand colors into your website's overall view. So, if you're completely clueless even on how websites should look like, Wix got you covered.

To top it all, Wix is a free website builder. You can get started immediately without looking at its premium pricing. However, since it's free, you won't be able to customize your domain and monetize your website. You can probably just use Wix for personal blogs.

Regardless, if you're going to kickstart your business, Wix is the best website builder for small businesses. You can get it for as low as $14 a month and three website builder pricing for eCommerce sites.

Features & Benefits

Is easy to use with a simple and intuitive platform

Is suitable for small businesses or blogs

Is a free website builder but with limited features

Has free templates and automated color palette suggestion

#2 WordPress

When you've visited blogs before, there's about a 90% probability that WordPress built it. But what makes WordPress' inclusion in the list of the best website builders is the two options it can offer.

WordPress offers the most basic website builder software while at the same time provides another website builder meant for anyone who has technical expertise.

Meanwhile, it's worth mentioning that WordPress isn't exactly the website builder you can use if you want to run an eCommerce store. Like the rest, this best website builder has a freemium plan should you wish to rank your articles on search engines. The unavailability to join affiliate marketing is also one drawback.

But the other side of WordPress is another whole story. Unlike the basic website builder, using the other one isn't as easy as it sounds. You need to learn coding to get the most out of the website builder and expand more features.

Nonetheless, equipped with a great blogging platform with a ton of features, a well-designed dashboard, and sensible prices, WordPress.com is a great choice if you want a basic website builder or if you want to show off your technical skills.

Features & Benefits

Offers more blogging tools with social bookmarking, archives, comments, and more

Provides over 300 themes

Uses drag-and-drop

Is available for both novices and experts

#3 Squarespace

There is a lot to love about Squarespace. It's not only one of the best website builders but also the most sophisticated. It offers helpful features for creative professionals or everyone who wishes to run their digital businesses successfully.

But if you're going to compare Squarespace to the rest of the website builder software, it might not be the easiest to use. However, it is quite intuitive to use once you get the hang of it.

On the other hand, this website builder software got the upper hand when it comes to the design department. So, if you got an eye for details when building a website, Squarespace would meet your needs.

Squarespace isn't all style. It's also packed with substance and wonderful features that give your site the power and makeover it needs. This website builder lets you know how to get started with an intuitive onboarding process and clear navigational instructions, as well as a range of video, image, and text content guides.

Features & Benefits

Has free impressive website templates

Provides clear guidance on managing text, images, videos, and other facets of your website.

Allows you to add customized codes

Offers multiple integrations and extensions

Uploads socials, music, videos, and other media of your choice

#4 Weebly

Simple? Straightforward? Weebly fits that description. Even if it offers a simple website builder software, Weebly provides many powerful features, particularly when running an e-commerce and blogging site. Using it is smooth, but it has a few limitations, especially in design and customization.

Weebly combines plenty of built-in features, which come together with an app store that has a wide range of unique applications to add to your website. This makes it a great website builder for small businesses because everything you need is already there.

But besides being the best website builder for small or large businesses, Weebly provides a rich set of blogging tools and some excellent built-in SEO guides to optimize your website. Though they're not completely an SEO tool, it is still a guide to walk you through.

You can make a website with Weebly's drag-and-drop function, but it does offer fewer themes and templates than its competitors. Still, Weebly's templates and options are flexible, giving you complete creative control over your website.

Features & Benefits

Has 50+ themes to choose from

Provides SEO guides

Is suitable for eCommerce stores and blogs

Has a simple interface and user-friendly functionalities

Offers premade templates and flexible options for complete user control

#5 Simbla

Simbla is another best website builder that continues to develop over time to make website building more efficient and accessible for everyone.

With a no-code website builder software like Simbla, you can reduce the time and resources you'd probably spend on hiring a professional. Only a few website builders have this advantage.

Based on their extensive experience in creating cloud-based systems, the people behind Simbla established an online platform that not only serves you but the larger community as well.

So far, Simbla has created a solution that makes it easy to build and maintain cloud-based websites.

You're not the only one going to benefit from creating websites with Simbla through its user-friendly features like drag-and-drop. Simbla is also a solution for software developers and SaaS software suppliers with its advanced tools to make efficient development processes and to simplify maintenance processes.

Features

Free Drag and Drop Website Builder. With Simbla's drag and drop website builder software, you can easily create responsive websites that work well on all browsers and devices. There is no need to write any code to make these websites. There are also several templates available tailored specifically to every kind of business.

Online Database Websites. Simbla's online database lets you manage a variety of data, and you can also add custom web forms to collect information from your website visitors. You can create your custom forms using drag and drop functionality.

Creating Web Applications. In addition to developing responsive websites, you can create web applications with Simbla's website maker. Using a flexible and modern user interface, you can create web applications from your responsive websites.

Building and Managing SaaS Products. Simbla provides tools for managing servers, resources, and system availability, so SaaS suppliers can direct their attention to developing and selling their products. In other words, Simbla is not just a website builder software but also a better solution for SaaS suppliers.

Server-side Code. Many complex projects call for more sophisticated solutions. For these reasons, Simbla developers allow you to write server-side code using NodeJS to solve complex problems.

App Market. Instead of dealing with many separate, third-party apps, you can upgrade your website with Simbla's original apps in the app market. Simbla offers original business applications, including eCommerce, Lead Manager, Blog, etc., to help you run your business.

In summary, Simbla is more than just a website builder software. It also makes it possible to build web applications, customer portals, forms, and other capabilities.

You don't need a technical background to create a site, and you can save a lot of money even if you're doing it all by yourself. In just a few hours and clicks, your site would be up and running.

Pros

Is easy to use with user and mobile-friendly platform

Has drag-and-drop website builder software

Offers the best website builder for beginners

Provides rich features to build and maintain your website

Allows you to add a ton of add-ons to your website

Is a great solution for SaaS suppliers

Doesn't need coding or other technical expertise

Cuts down your time, effort, and money

Can also be recommended for blogging websites

Cons

Not many eCommerce tools for your online stores

All in all, Simbla hits a lot of birds with one stone. If you're barely starting in the field of website creation, Simbla got your back. But if you're already an expert, you can also access more complex features from Simbla. Plus, it's not just for you but also for everyone.

Are you thinking about creating a website of your own now? Get started with Simbla today and see your website immediately operating tomorrow!

Website Builder for Small Businesses

Creating a website is interesting. You can write down personal experience, informational background, and most importantly, run a business. If you're looking for the best website builder to set up your very first and small business, we recommend our top 5 best website builder software.

There may be a few setbacks with these builders, but it is guaranteed that you can get all the help you need to begin and reap rewards right after. Create a plan and bring your branding into life with the best website builder software right away!

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
SpaceX successfully launched a new fleet of Starlink satellites that adds 47 new signal sources from the orbit, right on the first week of March. The recent launch is different from the last week of February, as this is a new milestone for the company as it managed to achieve the flight on all "nines," being the 9th launch of the Falcon 9 in the first nine weeks of the year.

SpaceX Successfully Launches 47 Satellites from Starlink

SpaceX said that its mission today focuses on a new batch of 47 new Starlink satellites that will soon join other fellow spacecraft to orbit the planet. It will focus on bringing another extension to the popular service that brings an internet connection to the world, which also extends itself to Ukraine, as it now needs it most.

The company brings a new batch that signifies a milestone, and it is one of its earliest for a single month, also the fastest as its last launch was only last weekend. There is no stopping SpaceX now as it is on a roll for its launches, only showing the company's capabilities to bring payload to the low-Earth orbit for its use.

Read Also: NASA Awards 3 MORE Contracts to SpaceX to Fly Astronauts to ISS

SpaceX Did it on All Nines-A New Milestone

According to SpaceX's tweet, the company achieved a massive new milestone, not just because it launched another batch of 47 satellites to orbit now. The milestone is the ninth launch of SpaceX for the Falcon 9 that brings the Starlink satellites to orbit within the first 9 weeks of 2022, doing it on all nines.

The company's achievements were celebrated online, and it commemorates new satellites for service, spread for different coverages of Starlink.

This was our 9th Falcon 9 launch in the first 9 weeks of 2022 pic.twitter.com/yuxVN1rR8t  SpaceX (@SpaceX) March 3, 2022

SpaceX and Starlink's Achievements Now

Last week, a different launch from SpaceX took place from its facility that holds the Falcon 9 for its launches, carrying another batch of 50 Starlink satellites to bring to orbit. Fast forward to less than a week later, the company does it again, and this time it brings 47 new spacecraft that carry a total of 97 for only one week.

The Falcon 9 may be an actual spacecraft now, but it will soon see a replacement from the company with its Stainless Steel spacecraft, the Starship, for the regular flights. The reason for this would be Starship is the company's top bet for the future, being the spacecraft with the most capabilities to bring massive loads to space destinations.

The only dilemma now is that the different space companies complain that SpaceX is polluting the orbit with its many fleets.

Starlink has a goal of 42,000 satellites that will orbit the world in the coming years, and it will focus on bringing ultra-fast internet for the world as a whole. Soon, it will achieve this feat and bring service to everyone, and its current milestone will be replaced with a new one that services the entire world with satellite internet.

Related Article: Tesla Solar on Ukraine: Might Not Work Due to Weather Clouds, Need to Have Higher Locations to Answer Blackouts

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Written by Isaiah Richard

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
The new Google Drive update will allow users to identify unauthorized activities or suspicious actions in their accounts.

This will serve as an additional security feature, especially as many malicious campaigns are now appearing.

Google said that the new feature already rolled out in March 2. However, it seems like the security function is not yet available to all consumers.

"Gradual rollout (up to 15 days for feature visibility) starting on March 2, 2022," said Google via its official Workspace Updates report.

Google Drive Update Identifies Unauthorized Activities

According to Tech Radar's latest report, the update will allow Google consumers to check their unauthorized Drive activities through their audit logs.

Also Read: Google Temporarily Deactivates the Editing Option on Maps of Ukraine, Russia and Belarus

They can check many activities that are suspicious. These include unapproved file move, copying, ACL change, and other actions that affect your Drive documents.

The tech giant firm explained that the new Drive update will greatly benefit companies and organizations since many employees use their Google Drive accounts at once.

Companies can use Google Drive's enhancements for their Google Docs, Slides, Sheets, as well as Word files and PDFs.

You can visit this link if you want to see further details about the new Drive security update.

How To Access Drive Audit Log?

Google's Support page provided a guide you can follow to access your Drive's audit log. This is important to check if you already received the latest update of the document app.

First, you need to open your Google Admin console. After that, you must use your administrator account. Once you are on the Admin console page, you need to choose the Reports option. Look for the Audit button and choose Drive. Once you are there, click the settings (machine icon) and check if the update is already working on your end. If ever it is still not available, the you need to wait until March 17 since Google said it will take 15 days for the roll out to be completed.

In other news, around three billion Google Chrome users are currently at risk of high-level security attacks, which target Windows, Mac, and Linux.

Meanwhile, Google office works are now returning.

For more news updates about Google and other related tech topics, always keep your tabs open here at TechTimes.

Related Article: Google Chrome Dinosaur: How to Play the Dnosaur Game With or Without an Internet Connection

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Written by: Griffin Davis

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Deputies to the 13th National Peoples Congress (NPC) from Anhui province arrive in Beijing on March 3, 2022. The fifth session of the 13th NPC is scheduled to open on Saturday. (Photo/Anhui Daily)



Members of the 13th National Committee of the Chinese Peoples Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) from Anhui province arrive in Beijing on March 3, 2022. The fifth session of the 13th National Committee of the CPPCC is scheduled to open on Friday. (Photo/Anhui Daily)






TikTok is now facing a new investigation from US Attorney Generals in a bipartisan nationwide probe on its effect on teenagers and children.

It will be like the investigation that the lawmakers and attorneys are imposing against Instagram and Meta, which have been a massive case in the past year. Social media platforms have a significant effect on young minds that bring different factors into their development into the real world. This is something that the investigation will focus on.

TikTok Investigation: AGs to Look Into Its Effect on Teens, Kids

The Office of Attorney General Maura Healey announced that it is starting a probe along with the country's bipartisan attorneys that will look into TikTok and its content.

Its focus would be on its effect on teenagers and kids that highly consumes content from social media and may impose several guidelines for social media.

The Massachusetts Attorney General will lead the probe and invite other lawmakers to join in its investigation, giving TikTok new research into its operations and distribution. Like any other social media, TikTok has a significant effect on children and how it would affect their formative years; thus, this probe to look into it.

Read Also: Steam Free Games: TikTok Fans Welcome to 'Next Fest' to Get a Whole Lot of Free Games

TikTok Investigation Like Instagram; Nationwide Probe

The investigation is similar to last year's federal probe of AGs that looked into Instagram and its effect on teenagers and kids that focused on how its content influences young minds. However, Instagram's probe is different from its parent company, Meta, which faced a separate lawsuit involving whistleblowers like Frances Haugen in testifying against them.

TikTok's Content Online

TikTok is like any other social media platform, and it poses content from users and their choice of videos attracting different audiences and viewers. Sometimes, there are abusive content creators that post other videos for the likes and attention, something like harmful content to animals and even people that the company actively removes.

The social media company from ByteDance has already looked into the different content that may pose something harmful for users and even endanger themselves online. One example would be explicit content posted by users below 16 years old that TikTok updated in their Community Guidelines to flag and remove it from their accounts.

Despite the many actions of TikTok that answer this kind of content online, it will still face an investigation on how it would affect teenagers and kids on the platform. The probe would then look into the different happenings on TikTok and its many contents that may be harmful to teenagers and decide what to do with the social media from there.

Related Article: TikTok 10-Minute Video Enhancement Vs. YouTube: Experts Share How the Upgrade Can Help the App

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Written by Isaiah Richard

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
NASA Artemis I mission will soon send people's names to the moon using a flash drive. As of the moment, the actual launch of the international space union's upcoming mission is not yet confirmed.

"Artemis I will be the first uncrewed flight test of the Space Launch System rocket and the Orion spacecraft," said NASA.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration said that the new Artemis I mission is a big deal since it will send the first woman, as well as the first person-of-color, to Earth's natural satellite.

NASA Artemis I Mission To Send Your Name To Moon

According to NASA Gov's latest report, people can actually include their names in a flash drive of NASA that will be sent to the moon by Artemis I mission.

Also Read: NASA's Ingenuity Mars Helicopter Concludes 20 Flights in Red Planet, But Its Not Stopping There

To do this, all you need to do is follow the simple guide below:

The first thing you need to do is visit NASA's official Artemis I mission website or just click this link. After that, scroll down until you reach the sign-up section. Once you are there, just provide your first and last name, as well as your area code. Click submit to move forward. After that, you will be directed to your official NASA Artemis I Mission ticket.

Once you have the ticket, you will see many details, such as the spacecraft and launch vehicle that will be used.

Artemis I Mission's Other Details

Space.Com reported that NASA's Artemis I mission will debut the space agency's new SLS (Space Launch System) mega-rocket.

This new spacecraft is specifically developed to bring astronauts to the moon and other space destinations. On the other hand, SLS is expected to be tested in Mar. 17 in NASA's Kennedy Space Center.

The upcoming test will put the spacecraft through different scenarios that it will likely experience once it's launched.

In other news, the NASA Artemis moon landing is now expected to happen in 2026. Meanwhile, NASA's futuristic space tech fund is now helping various universities.

For more news updates about NASA and its upcoming space activities, always keep your tabs open here at TechTimes.

Related Article: NASA Approves Early-Stage Funding For Portable Tech that Can Generate Oxygen on Mars

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Written by: Griffin Davis

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Sony and Honda now have a new partnership that will soon produce new electric vehicles. The upcoming EVs designed and manufactured by the two companies are expected to have advanced camera sensors, thanks to Sony's years of expertise in the camera industry.

Honda confirmed this detail on March 4, saying that both manufacturers decided to have a new strategic alliance that will lead to a "new era of mobility and mobility services."

Sony and Honda signed a memorandum of understanding. This document outlines their interest in establishing a new collaboration that will lead to next-generation EV models.

Sony and Honda Partnership To Produce New EVs!

According to The Verge's latest report, the new partnership of Honda and Sony will lead to a new company. However, the exact name of the manufacturing firm of the two tech giants is not yet confirmed.

Also Read: Volvo EV Wireless Charging to Go on a Three Year Pilot on Sweden for Taxis-When is it Available?

Meanwhile, their first EV model is expected to be unveiled this coming 2025. Sony is expected to use its telecommunications, as well as camera sensor technologies to make the new zero-emission vehicle more efficient.

"The New Company will aim to stand at the forefront of innovation, evolution, and expansion of mobility around the world," said Toshihiro Mibe, the current Honda CEO, via their official press release.

He added that they will use a more ambitious EV approach that will exceed the expectations of car consumers across the globe.

The New Company

Honda explained that its new partnership with Sony will create the so-called "New Company," which will be responsible for designing, developing, and selling their new EV models.

However, the automaker said that the New Company will not have its own manufacturing facilities. This means that Honda's plants will still be the ones that will produce the new electric vehicles.

On the other hand, the New Company's mobility service platform is expected to be designed and created by Sony. If you want to see more details about this new collaboration, you can visit this link.

In other news, the Ford Model E division has been launched. Meanwhile, Tesla Oklahoma service centers and stores might close soon if direct car selling is banned in the state.

For more news updates about the partnership between Honda and Sony, always keep your tabs open here at TechTimes.

Related Article: Honda Announces That They've Test-Fired Their Reusable Rocket Prototype

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Written by: Griffin Davis

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Sanctions against Russia: "We say that it will put one knee on the ground but we do not see the consequences"
UPCOMING

 Hopkins County Retired Teachers Association will meet at Brothers BBQ on Thursday, March 10, 2022. Meeting begins at 10:30 am.

 The Bible Baptist Church Bible Conference will be held Friday, March 18 at 7:00 p.m., Saturday, March 19 at 6:00 p.m. and Sunday, March 20 at 10:00 a.m. Speakers will be pastors Don Bell and John Chapman. Bible Baptist Church is located in Madisonville at 2015 Beulah Road.

 The next meeting of the Pennyrile Chapter of Kentucky Public Retirees (KPR) will be the 4th Thursday in March 24th, 2022 at 11:30 am to 1 pm at Country Cupboard.

 Madisonville Community College will be hosting a Vendor Showcase at the Madisonville City Park on Sat. April 23 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. featuring retail vendors, crafts and food trucks.

ONGOING

 Hopkins County Local History Classes will be held the first Monday of each month at the Hopkins County Regional Senior Activity Center located at 200 N. Main St. Classes will last from 10:00 to 11 a.m. with Spencer and Linda Brewer.

 The Madisonville City Council meets on the first and third Monday night of each month, at 4:30 p.m. at the City Council Chambers. If the regular meeting falls on a legal holiday, the meeting will take place on the next day at the same time.

To submit items to The Messenger for publication, email us a mhughes @the-messenger.com. Town Crier notices are for non-profit and community oriented events only. Due to spacing, items submitted may be edited as needed.
Madisonville, KY (42431)

Today

Scattered showers and thunderstorms. A few storms may be severe. High 78F. Winds ESE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 70%..

Tonight

Scattered thunderstorms in the evening, then mainly cloudy overnight with thunderstorms likely. Low 64F. Winds S at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 60%.
The Rev. Ryan P. Hallford, pastor of Holy Family Church, Port Allen, will present the Lenten reflection at St. Agnes Catholic Church next week.
The pandemic has caused much pain  physical, financial and psychological  to many people. But what it hasnt done is any lasting damage to the economy and its ability to support people wanting to earn a living.

Thats clear from this weeks national accounts for the three months to the end of December, with the Australian Bureau of Statistics revealing the economys production of goods and services  real gross domestic product  rebounding by 3.4 per cent, following the previous quarters contraction of 1.9 per cent, caused by the lockdowns in NSW, Victoria and the ACT.

Over the two years of the pandemic, the economys ended up 3.4 per cent bigger than it was before the trouble started. Credit:Jozsef Benke

Despite those downs and ups, the economy ended up growing by 4.2 per cent over the course of last year. It was a similar story the previous year, 2020, when despite the nationwide lockdown causing the economy to contract by a massive 6.8 per cent in the June quarter, it began bouncing back the following quarter.

Over the two years of the pandemic, the economys ended up 3.4 per cent bigger than it was before the trouble started.
Alongside Christmas Day and Sunday mornings, there are few experiences that are so dramatically altered after becoming a parent as flying. Getting on a plane was once a unique opportunity for self-care and reflection, one of the few moments of life when I found myself blissfully untethered from obligation of any kind.

Truth be told, travelling with small children belies the cliche about the journey being as important as the destination. Credit:Getty Images

Some of my fondest memories are of gazing down at clouds while listening to whatever sad-happy song by Adele or Taylor Swift summed up the moment. I would set myself challenges on the long journey from New York to Sydney, a trip I made semi-annually, to see how many movies could be consumed in a 24-hour period. Somehow there was always a new Kate Hudson romcom in the mix. And the books! On one especially thrilling cross-country flight, I greedily gobbled up Jennifer Egans A Visit from the Goon Squad, crying into my Kindle at its masterful denouement. Im convinced that I could never have had such an immersive experience had I read it in stolen snatches of everyday life.

Amid all this culture there was time for elaborate skin rituals, too. Yes, I was that annoying passenger spritzing a face mist every few hours. My travel kit was better equipped than any youd find in first class, with carefully tested and approved lip balms and moisturisers  even hand sanitisers, back when they were a fun novelty for hypochondriacs. Feeling particularly shameless after a plastic glass of shiraz, Id think nothing of popping on a Hannibal Lecter-like sheet mask. High maintenance doesnt begin to describe this behaviour.

Flash forward a few years and Im packing for my first holiday with two children. Somehow Ive decided its a good idea to put each childs daily outfit in a separate ziplock bag (dont worry about the waste, there is always a way to re-use a plastic bag with toddlers around). Consumed with my own brilliance in forward planning, I almost forget about the essentials. Like nappies. And undies. Including my own.
Kenneth Grant has been jailed for at least one year and 11 months after a fatal hit-and-run in the NSW Hunter region that killed a respected scientist and loved family man.

The 72-year-old, who spent 31 years in the NSW Police Force and is the father of former state police minister Troy Grant, drank beer and red wine at a Christmas party at Bolwarra on the evening of November 30, 2019, before he got in his Mazda BT-50 ute to drive home.

Kenneth Grant (right) fatally ran over scientist Tony Greenfield and did not stop. He is the father of former NSW police minister Troy Grant (left). Credit:James Alcock

But about 800 metres from the party, he ran over Tony Greenfield, 62, who had also been at the event and was walking to nearby accommodation with his wife.

Police who noticed Grants erratic driving tried to smash his window with a torch when he stopped at a red light, to no avail. When the light turned green, Grant kept driving. He eventually stopped and was pulled from the vehicle.
Sydney music venue the Enmore Theatre says its floor has been repaired after collapsing under the crowds feet during a sold-out performance by Australian rapper Genesis Owusu on Thursday night, leading thousands to be evacuated after the artists second song.

A statement from the theatre on Friday said the impact of the relentless rain and excessive water that inundated the inner-west suburb during heavy downpours this week had caused three piers at the point at which the theatre inclines to shift under the carpet and create an uneven floor.

Australian singer Genesis Owusu was performing when the floor at the Enmore Theatre caved in. Credit:Wolter Peeters

The floor of the theatre has been assessed and remediation works have commenced. We have isolated the section that was affected by water and are further reinforcing the surrounding areas as a further precaution, the statement said.
Sarah Hanson-Young, 40, is a Greens senator for South Australia. Ben Oquist, 53, is executive director of Canberra think tank The Australia Institute. They are engaged to be married next month.

Sarah Hanson-Young and Ben Oquist: Its when everyone is talking about you that you can feel the most alone  Now, being with Ben, I know I will never, ever feel that way again. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

Ben: Sarah and I have been together about two years, but weve known each other for a long time. She entered politics in her 20s and was the youngest woman ever elected to Federal Parliament. I was working for Bob Brown, the Greens leader, as his chief of staff, and part of my job was supporting new senators. Sarah was feisty, forthright, opinionated. She was also very keen to learn. In those early days I was giving her frank and fearless advice, and she liked that strong feedback. We always got along well.

Although Sarah is a prodigiously hard worker, she knows how to have fun. In January, she had her 40th birthday party on Kangaroo Island. She gave a speech about friends who were at the party, saying, Everybody here has a sense of humanity and wants to make the world a better place, but also is a little bit naughty. And I thought, Thats not them, Sarah. Its you!

She has a fantastic laugh. We ran into a former Liberal cabinet minister when we were out at dinner the other night. They went straight into hail-fellow-well-met mode and I could see how much he must have enjoyed her company. Her sense of fun transcends political differences.
Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian President, is surely the most popular elected leader in the world right now. Hes less drab than Joe Biden, and less likely to party mid-crisis than Boris Johnson. His 90 per cent personal approval rating is more than double Anthony Albaneses, and unlike Scott Morrison, he doesnt head overseas when things get hot. Unlike the rumour denied by another leader this week, Zelensky would not want to buy Hitlers car.

Zelenskys bravery and resolve, communicated in plucky tweets and inspiring video clips, has inspired his citizens to take up semi-automatic weapons and Molotov cocktails with courage I doubt many could muster in the face of an invading superpower  personally, Id have crumbled like the Enmore Theatre floor.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukraines Volodymyr Zelensky. Credit:AP, Bloomberg

His rise to power as a rank outsider on the back of a comedy series where Zelensky portrayed a rank outsider who rises to power has been discussed extensively, as has his phlegmatic portrayal of Paddington Bear in the Ukrainian adaptation of the recent cartoon. Putin may be an ex-KGB agent, but hes currently struggling against a teddy.
A man who sexually assaulted a woman at knifepoint and poured a liquid she suspected was flammable onto her during the attack has been jailed for eight years and five months, after a judge labelled his crime protracted and degrading.

Takavaha Leveni, 37, will spend a minimum of five years and three months in prison after County Court judge Scott Johns sentenced him for crimes that caused his victim to feel terror and prompted a manhunt throughout Melbournes inner-west for a week after the attack.

The nature of your assaults in those circumstances, in particular the use of a liquid by you, caused terror for your victim, Judge Johns said. Credit:Wayne Taylor

Leveni attacked the woman about 6am on February 28, 2020, having spent the previous hour inside her Footscray home while she was asleep. That break-in came hours after Leveni entered the home and left with her mobile phone and charger, laptop bag, passport and identity cards.

He was last year found guilty by a jury of sexual assault charges against the victim  referred to only as KA  after he also pleaded guilty to two counts of aggravated burglary.
Despite Dr Thoms findings, given the impact of the allegations on my family and myself, I have requested not to be returned to the frontbench before the election. In the meantime, I will focus on my health, my kids and my electorate. I will not be making further comment. Mr Tudge told Dr Thom the pair had been intimate on four occasions in June, August and October 2017 but the pair had not had sex. I did not consider this to be a relationship in the usual sense of the word. There were almost none of the typical characteristics of what would ordinarily be considered a relationship, he told Dr Thom. For example, during 2017 we did not speak to each other on the phone or communicate over text messages about our daily events or about personal matters. Nearly all of our interactions were work related. In the early 2018 messages seen by The Herald and The Age, Mr Tudge expressed a desire to be supportive of Ms Miller.

On March 8, 2018, Ms Miller said: I am super careful with everyone else!!!! Absolutely been working so hard to kill any speculation!!! Youre the only one I have to talk to. No one else. And I want honesty. And Im the only one giving that. So I feel very, very alone. Mr Tudge replied: I know and I am sorry. I am here to talk. And want to be supportive. I know what it is like to feel very alone. The series of messages seen by The Herald and The Age did not appear to be canvassed in the report. Ms Miller wrote to Mr Tudge on March 5, 2018, and said: Im sorry, I need to talk to you about something urgent regarding an update to my NV2 [Negative Vetting 2, the second highest level] security clearance which I have to do. Can you pls call?

Loading She later wrote: I have to send through via email marked sensitive personal to a secure inbox a form which discloses a change in personal relationships. I am stating Personal intimate relationship with Alan Tudge MP commenced 7 June 2017. Mr Tudge then wrote back in a series of messages sent within 18 minutes: Why? And it is not accurate. Ms Miller wrote back: Ok, you tell me what is accurate? You are so good at denying this to yourself youve convinced yourself it didnt happen! and I am sending this email.

Mr Tudge replied: Why? You should at least put it in the past tense and You are opening a large can of worms. Ms Miller replied that she could not get a protected email account until her security clearance information was updated and that she needed it to access information during the preparation of the federal budget. Ms Miller was working for minister Michaelia Cash at the time. Four hours later, Ms Miller wrote that she had sent the form and declared extra-marital affair last half of 2017 with unidentified male who did not deserve me. Mr Tudge also urged Ms Miller not to disclose the relationship during a phone conversation around the same time. Negative Vetting 2 allows political staff and public servants access to classified resources up to and including the Top Secret rating. It is the second-highest security clearance rating and to obtain this clearance, candidates have to provide a wealth of personal information about their family and financial circumstances, overseas travel history, criminal history and more.

Having an extramarital affair would not preclude someone from receiving security clearance but the withholding of information  which could be grounds for someone to be blackmailed  is problematic. There is a long list of changes in personal circumstances that require the holder of a security clearance to disclose, including entering into or ceasing a marriage or domestic partnership. But in a series of messages over March 7 and March 8, Ms Miller and Mr Tudge tried to organise a time to speak because she had been asked by the Australian Government Security Vetting Agency for more information. Its not my fault Alan! AGSVA have come back to me for more details. I now know better than to ask you to see me just because we might want to, she wrote.

Mr Tudge replied: You know I cant, Rachelle. Cant see anyone anymore. #hermit #monk #boringasbatshit. At 9.44am on March 8, Ms Miller said she was handing over the details. Im also giving AGSVA your name, DOB and place of birth. I have been specifically asked for this information. I cannot do anything else. I am sorry, she said. At 10.26 am on March 8, Mr Tudge said: I am free in about five mins. Loading

Ms Miller sent through a document and the minister replied: Ok. Pls qualify it. In the past. Etc. V dangerous for both of us. This leaks and labor will pursue relentlessly your new role with MC [Michaelia Cash]. All over. Ms Miller responded: Why do I always feel like you are threatening me? I dont mean to. Just being brutally frank about the risks. I am sorry, Mr Tudge responded. Ms Miller replied: Everything is always on your terms. You have been particularly careful to ensure you are protected, its very noticeable in our text exchanges. Yet Ive just been honest. You dont trust me. Ms Miller, who initially said she would co-operate with the Thom inquiry before flagging concerns in December, did not participate and has slammed the investigation as a rushed political fix designed to resolve a political problem.
Peshawar: A suicide bomber struck inside a Shiite Muslim mosque in Pakistans northwestern city of Peshawar during Friday prayers, killing at least 56 worshippers and wounding 194 people, hospital officials said.

The Islamic States regional affiliate, Islamic State Khorasan, or ISIS-K, claimed responsibility, according to a translation of an ISIS statement by the SITE Intelligence Group.

Both the Islamic State group and the Pakistani Taliban  a militant group separate from the Taliban in Afghanistan  have carried out similar attacks in the past in the area, located near the border with Afghanistan.

Rescue workers remove a victim from the site of a bomb explosion in a mosque in Peshawar. Credit:AP

According to the spokesman at Peshawars Lady Reading Hospital, Asim Khan, many of the wounded were in critical condition. Scores of victims were peppered with shrapnel, several had limbs amputated and others were injured by flying debris.
(Of course Massaros question was bonkers. There are plenty of other examples, including the fight of Indigenous people across the globe, those in Hong Kong and the many others pointed out by the good people of Twitter.) Illustration: Simon Letch Credit:SMH Its true the spirit of the Ukrainian people, their resolve in the face of Russian invasion, has been stunning. The President, Zelensky, has become a viral stoic hero, with images of him in camouflage gear swarming social media (including taken two years ago but touted as current). He quickly became an icon of the kind of leadership many yearn for: bold, fearless, strong. A leader who would not leave his country when it was on fire as our Prime Minister did when he went to Hawaii, or Ted Cruz when he flew to Mexico as a severe cold front froze his state of Texas. When the Americans offered Zelensky safe passage out of the country and he responded: I need ammunition, not a ride, his standing soared, and it was again clear that the former comedian had been underestimated by allies and enemies alike. He has displayed the kind of machismo presence that throws a shirtless, horse-riding Putin into the shade. His grit has bolstered morale and fostered community in a country where octogenarian grandmothers have taken up arms, grandfather volunteered to fight and schoolkids learned how to make Molotov cocktails. Civilians have swarmed and stared down invading tanks, pushing them out of towns. One video seemed to show an older man asking soldiers who had invaded Melitopol: What the f--k are you doing here?  Dont you have problems in your own country to solve?

Which is a very good question. I mean, frankly, in an era where public figures so rarely air their true thoughts all the plain talk has been refreshing  the politician who, when asked how he responded to the Russian Foreign Minister saying peace negotiations could begin once Russia had restored democratic order, said: F--k you Lavrov. The Snake Island troops who told Russians on a warship to go f--k themselves  and survived despite reports they had been killed. Loading The Ukrainian national emblem, the sunflower, has become a symbol of hope and resistance, with a woman  who after asking Russian soldiers  what the f--k are you doing here?, offered them seeds to put in their pockets, so at least sunflower seeds will grow when you all lie down here. But in admiring Ukrainian courage, we run a significant risk of lionising the besieged, glorifying those subjected to a campaign of terror and absolving ourselves from responsibility of giving more support. Do we want to believe they can and will survive by sheer guts? Because the Ukrainians are fighting bravely, but they fight alone. We cannot draw comfort from the fact that people in serious danger are heroically fighting for their lives while dallying about sanctions or which Russian banks to shut out of SWIFT, or deify Zelensky without listening to his claims that our support came too late.

No one wants escalation, no one wants a world war, especially with the threat of nukes. But we should be almost as wary of the feel-good narrative of the first weeks of the war as of the persistent Russian propaganda (its claim NATO is aggressive and responsible, that Russia is only defending itself, that the Ukrainian government is riddled with Nazi ideology and is committing genocide against Russians within their borders, that Ukraine has been part of Russia since time immemorial.) Loading Photos have been posted without context, video games woven into footage, and old videos used. Like the Ghost of Kyiv, a fighter pilot who the Ukrainian government claimed had shot down 10 Russian fighter jets. He may exist, but many of the videos claiming to show him are fake. Or the shared images claiming to depict Ukraine which have included a photo taken at an English air show three decades ago, one from Iraq in 2003 and a 2010 video from Afghanistan. Snaps of Ukrainians praying in snow were several years old, and a photo of an injured girl who was assumed to be Ukrainian is from last year in Gaza. American estimates of deaths of Russian soldiers are significantly lower than the figures cited by the Ukrainians. The onus is on all of us to verify facts before we share  and if you are uncertain, and there has been no word from fact checking groups like First Draft, Snopes, Reuters, Bellingcat, ukrainefacts.org, dont share it. There are other sites run by Ukrainian International Fact Checking Network signatories which are helpful, too, called Stop Fake and VoxUkraine.
Much of its ineffectiveness can be traced back to its origins. The power to establish peacekeeping operations, impose international sanctions and authorise military action lies with the 15-member Security Council. That body includes five permanent members that were victorious in World War II  Britain, China, France, Russia and America. To prevent the tyranny of the majority, each was given veto power over any matter that comes before the council.

When the United Nations was established in 1945 after two calamitous world wars, its most pressing mission was to prevent a third. While it can tick that box and has, at times, played a constructive part in mediating conflicts ( UN peacekeepers are operating in 12 countries), it has struggled to play an effective role in many wars, including those now taking place in Syria, Yemen and Libya.

As a symbolic gesture, it was an impressive display of collective outrage over Russian President Vladimir Putins brutal assault on a sovereign nation. As an effective means of pressuring Russia to bring a halt to its invasion, it is almost certainly of no consequence whatsoever.

After the United Nations adopted a resolution this week condemning Russias invasion of Ukraine, with the support of 141 countries out of 193 and a standing ovation in the chamber, the Secretary-General of the international body, Antonio Guterres, boldly proclaimed: The message of the General Assembly is loud and clear. End hostilities in Ukraine, now. Silence the guns, now. The ticking clock is a time bomb.

And with that comes gridlock. That was never more obvious than during the Russian build-up and eventual invasion of Ukraine. Each month a member of the Security Council takes on the role of president, which is authorised to co-ordinate the councils actions, decide the outcome of policy disputes and occasionally play a diplomatic role in a conflict. Last month, it was Russias turn to fill that role.

The symbolism could not have been worse. Here was the president of the Security Council, Russian ambassador Vassily Nebenzia, overseeing the most powerful body at the United Nations as his nation was blatantly violating most of the principles laid out in the UNs charter. It made a mockery of such ideals as: All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.

A structure that was supposed to facilitate global unity and decisiveness has instead left the UN impotent, incapable of doing anything more during this crisis than offer a platform for speeches and declarations. It has stood by as the European Union, NATO and nations such as Australia and Japan have led the way in enforcing sanctions on Russia and offering Ukraine assistance. Even the business community, sporting bodies and cultural institutions have shown a greater capacity to voice their dismay at the Ukraine invasion not just in words, but in actions.

Two years ago, the United Nations celebrated its 75th anniversary. It was a muted affair. With the pandemic raging across the globe, the UN was struggling to orchestrate a global response to the virus. At no stage since has it managed to live up to its ambition as a global leader.

Its inability to take concrete and effective action, while Russia the aggressor holds one of its most powerful posts, will be another black mark against the UNs reputation. The war in Ukraine is a moment in history that will have long-lasting consequences. The unprecedented global campaign to pressure Mr Putin to withdraw is a reflection of that reality. The UNs bit part reveals again how far short it has fallen of its own lofty goals.
Opinion writer @CalebElizondo7 sheds light on recent attempts to strip the library system of its autonomy as well as faculty issues
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Opinion columnist Kaelin Connor says to research before you cast a vote for the future of Texas
Conway, AR (72032)

Today

Showers and thunderstorms likely. Thunderstorms could be strong and possibly severe in the afternoon. Damaging winds and large hail with some storms. High 68F. Winds SSE at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 100%..

Tonight

Scattered thunderstorms during the evening, then partly cloudy overnight. Low around 55F. Winds SW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 60%.
Quiet streets in the RiNo District of Denver surrounded by modern apartments and condominiums.
A statue of children playing outside the state Capitol during the annual legislative session on Thursday, Feb. 17, 2022, in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Thursday marked the final day of the 30 day legislative session.
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Donation by Director Larry Salone helps make Beaver Commons Cafe a reality at DAHS

Elaine Haskins / Elaine Haskins DuBois Area High School students Ethan Mooney, Ari Mitchell and Jeffrey Mohney are shown in the Beaver Commons Cafe. DuBois Area High School Beavers Commons

DuBOIS  The Beaver Commons Cafe, an entire stand-alone coffee roaster business donated by DuBois Area School Board President Larry Salone to the special needs program at the DuBois Area High School, now has a home in the school library.

Principal Brian Weible and Assistant Principal Chuck Pasternak, at a recent board meeting, said the launching of the cafe is something they are very proud of this school year.

The administrators thanked Salone for the kiosk, as well as Atlas Pressed Metals for its donation of furniture and flooring.

We really love what this is doing for our culture at the high school, said Pasternak. It gives places for students to gather, collaborate, work on assignments. Our staff meets in there; interdepartmental collaboration is occurring during our 24-minute second chance breakfast, common time in the morning, kids can come down and get a cup of coffee, hot coffee or iced coffee. Its just a really neat place, and its something that were really proud of, and it continues to be refined. And just were really happy about the direction that thats heading.

Pasternak said special education students are involved with delivering coffee and working in the coffee shop.

He also said Rod Thompsons business classes are handling the business end of things and ordering the supplies.

Its just really involving a lot of people, said Pasternak. Its a great success. So thank you to everybody whos been a part of that.

Salone explained that around 2014, he was approached about opening a stand-alone coffee kiosk in a medical center.

I decided it was going to be fresh roasted coffee beans right on the spot, and also offer cold drinks and breakfast snacks, said Salone. I had one of the premier coffee kiosk companies design a unit which included fully contained refrigeration, grab-and-gos and a gas fired coffee roaster compact enough to fit in the kiosk itself, so the aroma of fresh coffee roasting would fill the room.

Unfortunately, in the time it took for them to fabricate it, the medical center expanded and the space simply could no longer be used for the kiosk, said Salone.

I put it into storage and kind of forgot about it, recalled Salone. It was brand new, never used and was built back then for over $60,000.

Salone said when he became a school board member eight years ago, he was immediately exposed and taught as to the needs of the students with special needs.

I admit I had no idea, and I quickly became a fan of championing anything we needed to do to help these kids and also their parents, said Salone. I continued to learn more and more, and had board members teach me, especially (fellow board member) Gil Barker who really opened my eyes. I saw how dedicated he and (board member) Sam Armagost were to the kids with special needs while we were designing the two renovated and expanded elementary schools. The kids with special needs were the top priority every step of the way in the design of those two schools.

As the third member with Barker and Armagost on the construction committee, Salone said it was his pleasure to assist in making sure they were putting everything they could into these two facilities for the students.

During this time, I was also educated as to the fact that not all kids with special needs pick up skills that make them ready to go to work once they leave high school, said Salone. I thought that was an area that we could evolve and that we really need to teach work related skills to them to enable them to join the workplace.

Well, the perfect storm happened when the district had the opportunity to hire Rodney Thompson as the new business teacher to revive the high school business program.

I was impressed and Rodney was the guy, said Salone. I immediately went to our superintendent, Ms. Benton and said, Wendy, I have this fully operating coffee kiosk and I will donate it to the life skills program, for their use, to teach them how to run a small business, IF we have a place and people to integrate it in the high school.

Salone said Benton agreed way before he could finish, and she contacted Weible, who had wanted a coffee business in the school for years.

The newly remodeled library was going to be the place.

Brian and Wendy contacted Rod to see if he wanted to teach and run this adventure, once again, a yes was the response immediately, and as they say the rest is history, said Salone. It took an amazing team of Wendy, Brian and Rod to implement this and make it happen, and when it opened on the first day, I went to have my first cup of coffee ever from my old business. Watching the kids come and go and seeing what this was bringing to those kids with experience and the smiles all around, well it was the best cup of coffee I have ever had.

Salone said it was his true pleasure to donate this equipment to help the students futures.

We have a great team. Period, said Salone. Thanks to Sam and Gil for my education, thanks to Wendy and Brian for making it happen, and thanks to Rod for taking on the operation and teaching these skills. Bravo many times over, I am thrilled to have been able to do this for the kids.

Salone noted that the The Happy Valley Roast is outstanding.

Pasternak estimated that there are approximately 90 students involved in the operation of the cafe.

That is exceptional to have that much student interest, said Superintendent Wendy Benton.

You go in there in the morning, and its just, I know Mr. Weible and I on our morning walks, and were monitoring things in the building, and you go in there, and its a really nice atmosphere, a good place, said Pasternak. Theres a lot of smiles on kids faces and staff faces.

Its a great way to start your day, said Benton.

It really is  its really cool stuff, said Weible. It has a huge impact for us, feels like Barnes and Noble.
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On February 26, Hefei Municipal Government and Jilin Agricultural University signed a framework agreement on fungus research cooperation, actively promoting the development of modern seed industry chain, building the first fungus seed industry innovation Valley taking aim at fungus seed industry at home and abroad, and building a high-quality seed industry of Hefei.





The fungus research project is located at Changfeng county, mainly targeted at the leading role of fungus international forefront of industrial development of medicinal food industry. Through this project,Hefei is heading to become a leading role in medicinal food fungus industry. And Hefei will drive the development of medicinal food fungus industry in the Yangtze River Delta and the whole country after establishing the first fungus industry innovation cluster in China,breaking through a series of core common key technologies.





The municipal Bureau of Agriculture and Rural Affairs introduced that the cooperation includes the innovation of Hefei fungus science and technology,the construction of fungus innovation industrial park, the joint research and construction of fungus resource conservation system, etc.In the future, China Fungus Valley will have "one institute, one park and one base",namely China Fungus Innovation Research Institute, China Fungus Science and Technology Innovation Industrial Park, and China Fungus test and demonstration Base.





After the establishment of 'China Fungus Valley', Hefei will become the original place of fungus seed industry in China, the leading place of fungus industrialization,and the beautiful name card of Hefei, Anhui seed industry and even the national seed industry.






Mike Forster Rothbart | The Daily Star Kari Rivera, a second-grade teacher at Greater Plains Elementary in Oneonta, reads to her class on Wednesday, March 2, the first day a New York state mask mandate ended, making facemasks optional in schools. Only two of Riveras students chose to keep their masks on.
Associated PressA vew of the decommissioned Moorburg coal-fueled power plant, in Hamburg, Germany, on Feb. 28. The operator Vattenfall is now halting preparations for dismantling the power plant in view of the energy crisis caused by the war in Ukraine.
Melanie joined The Daily Times in the early 90s and has served as the Life section editor since 1993. A William Blount and UT alum, Melanie is generally the early arriver who turns on the lights in the newsroom.

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Passengers rush to board a train leaving to Slovakia from the Lviv railway station, in Lviv, Ukraine, on March 2, 2022. (Felipe Dana/AP Photo)

1.2 Million People Have Now Fled Ukraine as Civilian Deaths Mount

Around 1.2 million people have now fled the war in Ukraine, a United Nations official said, as Russian forces have ramped up their strikes against civilian infrastructure in key cities and civilian casualties mount.

U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi confirmed the staggering figure in a tweet on March 4, which came as the war in Ukraine entered its ninth day on Friday.

A day prior that figure stood at 1 million, with around half of the people fleeing the violence in Ukraine heading to neighboring Poland, followed by around 140,000 taken in by Hungary, and around 100,000 going to Moldova.

Grandi said on Thursday that in his four decades of work in refugee emergencies, he had rarely seen an exodus as rapid as the one in Ukraine.

Hour by hour, minute by minute, more people are fleeing the terrifying reality of violence. Countless have been displaced inside the country, he said in a statement.

Unless there is an immediate end to the conflict, millions more are likely to be forced to flee Ukraine, he added.

Ukrainian soldiers check peoples identity cards as they flee their neighbourhoods, on the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine, on March 2. 2022. (Emilio Morenatti/AP Photo)

Friday marked the ninth day of the war in Ukraine, with its forces continuing to mount staunch resistance while Russian forces intensified their attacks.

British intelligence said in a Friday brief that the southeastern port city of Mariupol remains in Ukrainian control but is surrounded by Russian forces and its civilian infrastructure was being subjected to intense strikes.

Heavy fighting also continued to the northwest of Kyiv, likely including renewed fighting around the Hostomel airport, according to UK intelligence.

The illegal and unprovoked invasion of Ukraine is continuing, the UK Ministry of Defense said in a statement. [remove]

The illegal and unprovoked invasion of Ukraine is continuing. The map below is the latest Defence Intelligence update on the situation in Ukraine  04 March 2022 Find out more about the UK governments response: https://t.co/94E5eEDqiw  #StandWithUkraine  pic.twitter.com/plOXiWOWvA  Ministry of Defence  (@DefenceHQ) March 4, 2022

A senior Pentagon official told reporters at a briefing Thursday that Russian forces have increasingly been hitting civilian infrastructure, though the degree to which the targeting was deliberate was unclear.

Clearly, theyve shown a willingness to hit civilian infrastructure on purpose, the official said.

Obviously, they are hitting residential areas. Theres no doubt about that. The degree to which that is intentional, and intentionally precise in that regard, is difficult for us to assess. But clearly its happening. Theres no doubt about that, the official added.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said on Friday that Russia was using cluster bombs in Ukraine.

We have seen the use of cluster bombs and we have seen reports of use of other types of weapons which would be in violation of international law, he told reporters in Brussels. remove

The use of imprecise munitions like cluster bombs threatens to drive up the number of war casualties, including civilians.

The square outside the damaged local city hall of Kharkiv on March 1, 2022. (Sergey Bobok/AFP via Getty Images)

The U.N. said that, as of March 3, they had recorded 1,006 civilian casualties in context of Russias military action against Ukraine, mostly caused by shelling and airstrikes.

The agency said that 331 civilians have been killed, including 19 children, while 675 have been injured, including 31 children. The U.N. says, however, that the real toll is much higher.

The human cost of ongoing clashes is likely much higher as access & security challenges make it difficult to verify the actual number of deaths and injuries, Kenneth Roth, Executive Director of Human Rights Watch, said in a tweet.

While Moscow claims its forces are not targeting civilians, videos posted on social media show shattered residential buildings and rocket attacks on civilian infrastructure.

Around 44 million people lived in Ukraine prior to Russias invasion, which Russian President Vladimir Putin has called a special military operation to topple the government in Kyiv and demilitarize the country.

Josep Borrell Fontelles, High Representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, said in a statement that the world is witnessing the ugly face of war and a gross violation of international law and fundamental principles in the Russian assault.

The U.S. and the EU will continue working hand-in-hand for President Putin to end this war, stop human suffering and defend rules-based order, he added.
A piece of police tape is seen in a photo. (Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images)

4 Family Members Killed in Central California Highway Crash

FRESNO, Calif.Four members of a family from Washington state were killed and three were injured in a crash on Interstate 5 in central California, authorities said Thursday.

All seven victims were in a Chrysler minivan when it struck a big rig parked on the shoulder Wednesday morning near Fresno, according to California Highway Patrol Officer Rory Marks.

Much of the right side of the van was sheered off and four of the passengers were ejected, Marks said.

The highway patrol said those killed were 43-year-old Lute Katalina Fekitoa, 25-year-old Naomi Cook, and two children  a 13-year-old boy and 9-year-old girl. The minivans driver, 52-year-old Maikolo Fekitoa, was injured along with 37-year-old Henry Cook and an 11-year-old girl, officials said. The childrens names have not been made public.

The three survivors suffered major injuries, the highway patrol said.

The Fresno Bee reported that the Fekitoas are from Auburn and the rest are from Edmonds, both cities in Washington.

Investigators will try to determine why the big rig was parked on the shoulder and why the minivan veered out of lanes.

The southbound side of the highway was shut for about six hours after the collision.
There are many ways people become indoctrinated into wokism, but academia is one of the biggest ones. Here are five of the worst examples of recent woke behavior, including a professor being disciplined for speaking out against discrimination, an academic pointing out the white racial frame of music theory, and a student being kicked off the school newspaper after challenging another student to a debate.



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7 People Shot, 1 Fatally, at Las Vegas Apartment Complex

LAS VEGASSeven people were shot, one fatally, at a Las Vegas apartment complex, and two of the people who were wounded suffered injuries described as critical, police said Friday.

The events leading up to the shooting started with a neighbor dispute at about 11:30 p.m. Thursday, said police Lt. Jason Johansson, KVVU-TV reported.

Police investigators at the scene near the University of Nevada, Las Vegas campus were looking for surveillance video as they tried to determine more about the circumstances of the shooting.

Authorities did not immediately disclose details about a suspect or suspects or identities of the victims.

The shooting came less than a week after a shooting at a Las Vegas hookah bar killed one person and wounded 13.

That shooting last Saturday was described as an exchange of gunfire involving people at a private party. Police have arrested one suspect.
Acquitted Cop Charged in Wake of 2020 Protests Fights to Get Job Back

A San Diego-area police officer acquitted on charges of falsifying a police report in La Mesa, California, in May of 2020 is now fighting to get his job back. The case is expected to go before a California Superior Court judge on April 1.

Matthew Dages, 31, was fired from the La Mesa Police Department after confronting 23-year-old Amaurie Johnson at the Metropolitan Transit System trolley station on May 27, 2020 in La Mesa in the wake of George Floyd and Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests.

That day, police were patrolling the area and checking for trolley passes, and Johnson was reportedly detained for not having a transit pass. Johnson then allegedly became combative and pushed Dages, who arrested him and charged him with assaulting a police officer. The charges against Johnson were later dropped.

A video of the incident went viral, with local activists focused on the fact that Johnson was black and Dages was white.

(Screenshot via Instagram/daygotv)

The clip shows Dages pushing Johnson onto a bench. Johnson then stands up again, and Dages shoves him back down and cuffs him. Two other police officers help with the arrest.

In the days that followed, protesters shut down Interstate 8, rioters burned down two banks, and looters robbed a grocery store in La Mesa. When the police were called to the scene, they used tear gas and fired bean bag rounds to disperse the mob, injuring some in the crowd.

The city council later called an emergency meeting and ordered a citywide curfew. Tensions remained high at a press conference a week later, as local officials announced that the body cam footage was being released.

La Mesa became ground zero for the regions outpouring of anger and demands for change in law enforcement practices, said Mayor Mark Arapostathis at the press conference.

The body cam footage begins before the viral video and appears to possibly show Johnson swatting Dages hand away to the left of the camera frame before Dages shoves him. Johnson later states on camera that he pushed Dages hand away because the officer grabbed him.

Meanwhile, Dages was accused of falsifying his police report and faced up to three years in prison. He was officially terminated from his job on Dec. 9, 2020.

One year later, after a two-week trial, Dages was acquitted on Dec. 10, 2021.

The experience has been both terrifying and exhausting, Dages said. We had protesters at our doorstep and [harassing us] on our phones that evening.

(Courtesy of Christina Dages)

Fortunately, Dages had been forewarned that a mob of protesters was headed to his home, so he and his wife Christina didnt stay there that night.

The protesters stayed outside his home for the next few days and at one point there were several hundred of them, he said.

It was definitely one of the most terrifying times of our livesjust to know that our privacy, our family safety had been compromised at our house, he said.

Dages said he and some of his family members were doxxed and received death threats online and over the phone.

Christina Dages told the Epoch Times that local media coverage of her husbands case has been biased.

The court of public opinion is in session against cops, she said. Its been horrific. Were a good, hardworking family with law enforcement and military in our lineage. Were all about serving the community and serving our country. Its been heartbreaking. Theyre trying to drag my husbands name through the mud for just doing his job.

Before the protests, La Mesa police had routinely patrolled the trolley stationa known hangout for organized shoplifters and drug addictsto detain people who dont have transit fares. But just two days after George Floyds untimely and controversial death, emotions were running high in the community, and activists blamed systemic racism and white supremacy for the incident.

Black Lives Matter demonstrators gather to protest in La Mesa, Calif., on Aug. 1, 2020. (Bing Guan/AFP via Getty Images)

Though Dages had been cleared on his use of force in Johnsons arrest, protesters still called him racist, demanding he be fired and criminally prosecuted. Instead of standing behind him, city leaders bowed down to the mob, Christina said.

The public outcry of the social justice activist groups was so loudand the city was so scared after their buildings were burned down and their city was destroyed  that city leaders made the cowardly move to make Matthew their sacrificial lamb, if you will, to try and please the mob and prevent more destruction, she said.

California Assemblywoman Akilah Weber (D-San Diego), who was a La Mesa city councilwoman at the time of the incident, called for bias training and more diversity on the police force at a press conference on June 3 and posted on social media about the case.

Weber wrote on Twitter on Jan. 24, 2021: As in any Industry, it is important to hold those who do wrong accountable. Matter [Matthew] Dages broke the trust that we, the residents of La Mesa, gave him in his role as a police officer. The La Mesa residents have been asking for transparency and accountability in this situation.

Weber was elected to the state Assembly in April 2021. She won the 79th District seat, previously held for a decade by her mother, Shirley Weber, who was appointed California Secretary of State in January 2021.

Before leaving La Mesa Council, Akilah Weber said her most important vote was when the City Council approved a police oversight board in 2020.

Police officers and unidentified observers watch a Black Lives Matter protest in La Mesa, Calif., on Aug. 1, 2020. (Bing Guan/AFP via Getty Images)

Dages has not received an apology from Weber nor any members of the City Council since his acquittal, he said. The Dageses also accused other local officials of taking advantage of the situation for political gain.

Its obviously a very political case. It was very politically driven, Dages said. Weve been kind of fighting for our lives, and my wife has been walking through fire for the last year and a half.

Dages is now hoping to be reinstated to his former position on the La Mesa police force. The ordeal has been a hefty financial burden with his out-of-pocket legal bills exceeding $100,000 so far, he said.

Dages thanked supporters of the Pipe Hitter Foundation, which has helped raise funds to cover legal expenses.

Its been tremendously difficult on my family financially. I was obviously forced to sell my house due to the fact it was no longer safe after we had so many protesters there. It was no longer a safe place for my family to live, he said.
A woman browses the site of US home sharing giant Airbnb on a tablet in Berlin on April 28, 2016. (JOHN MACDOUGALL/AFP/Getty Images)

Airbnb CEO Announces Company Suspending All Operations in Russia, Belarus

Airbnb is suspending its operations in Russia and Belarus, Chief Executive Officer Brian Chesky announced on Thursday.

Chesky made the announcement on Twitter shortly after the company said it would offer free, short-term housing to up to 100,000 refugees fleeing Ukraine due to the invasion by Russian forces.

The home rental companys CEO did not provide further details as to why it was suspending its operations in Russia and Belarus, which has been an ally of Moscow in its military invasion against Ukraine.

An Airbnb spokesperson told The Epoch Times: Airbnb has made the decision to suspend our operations in Russia and Belarus. This means that we will block calendars from accepting new bookings in both countries until further notice. We will also restrict users in Belarus and Russia from making new reservations as guests. Airbnb an independent 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, and our community of Hosts are focused on providing free, short-term housing to up to 100,000 refugees fleeing Ukraine. We certainly hope that as we look to the future, a path to peace is forged.

On Wednesday, the Biden administration unveiled economic restrictions on Russia and Belarus in response to Putins brutal invasion of Ukraine.

The United States will take actions to hold Belarus accountable for enabling Putins invasion of Ukraine, weaken the Russian defense sector and its military power for years to come, target Russias most important sources of wealth, and ban Russian airlines from U.S. airspace, The White House said.

Among the measures are restrictions extending export control policies to Belarus, and preventing the country from diverting items such as technology and software in the defense, aerospace, and maritime sectors to Russia.

The sweeping restrictions are designed to choke off its import of technological goods in response to its support of Putins war of choice, the White House said. They also target entities that are supporting, have supported, contributed, or been involved in the Russian and Belarusian military.

These actions will ensure that the military as well as the aerospace, maritime, and high-technology sectors do not obtain U.S. technology goods and technology that can be used to support Russian technical maintenance and innovation, officials said.

Airbnb CEO Cheskys verified Twitter account currently displays an icon of the blue-and-yellow Ukrainian flag.

Chesky on Monday announced that Airbnb and Airbnb.org were working with its hosts to accommodate up to 100,000 refugees fleeing from Ukraine, free of charge.

He encouraged homeowners to help the cause by offering temporary free stays or discounted stays to refugees, for which Airbnbs host and guest fees are also being waived.

More than one million people have fled Ukraine to seek refuge in neighboring countries since Russia invaded last week, according to U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi.

San Francisco-headquartered Airbnbs latest announcement comes after it revealed on Feb. 22 that it will accommodate another 20,000 refugees from Afghanistan and other countries after meeting its previous goal of housing 20,000.

In a statement, the company said it was proud to have met its prior goal, which it said was achieved in part by working closely with the Biden administration as well as the International Rescue Committee (IRC), Church World Service (CWS), and the Jewish American nonprofit organization HIAS and other organizations.

To mark the important milestone Airbnb said it is continuing to support refugees and other displaced people around the world and hopes to provide another 20,000 refugees, including those from Central America, with free housing in the future.

It will also be investing more to understand and track the impact its program has on peoples lives, in line with its Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion commitments.
Aluminium blocks are seen in Wagner Automotiv industry in Gradacac, Bosnia and Herzegovina on Feb. 8, 2022. (Dado Ruvic/Illustration/Reuters)

Aluminium Hits Record Top; Oil, Wheat at Multi-Year Highs on Supply Woes

SINGAPORECommodity markets extended their bull runs on Thursday, with aluminium, coal and palm oil all hitting new records while crude oil and wheat scaled multi-year highs as Russias invasion of Ukraine disrupted global raw material flows.

Russias stature as a top supplier in oil, gas, metals, grain and shipping markets has meant that the harsh sanctions applied to several Russian entities following Moscows invasion of Ukraine has upended several critical resource supply chains.

Aluminium prices on the London Metal Exchange have gained 30 percent this year, while U.S. wheat futures have surged 25 percent this week alone as markets attempt to price in the impact of a potential loss of Russian supplies if the international community rolls out additional punitive measures against Moscow.

The United States is preparing a sanctions package targeting more Russian oligarchs as well as their companies and assets, two sources familiar with the matter said on Wednesday, as Washington steps up pressure on Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Brent crude oil rose above $118 a barrel for the first time since February 2013 as buyers grappled with financing and shipping issues that have paralysed purchases from the third-largest oil producer this week.

Brent crude futures were trading up 3.4 percent at $116.79 a barrel, as of 0631 GMT.

Russias invasion of Ukraine spells further turmoil for global energy markets already reeling from extreme price volatility over the past two years, said Sam Reynolds, an energy finance analyst with the Institute for Energy economics and Financial Analysis, (IEEFA).

Australias ANZ raised its short-term target for oil to $125 a barrel, adding that supply shortages could see further upside.

In industrial metals, LME aluminium rose 2.3 percent to an all-time high of $3,650 a tonne, while nickel climbed over 4 percent to $26,935 a tonne as traders tried to factor in the loss of supply from the third-largest producer of both metals.

For grains, Russia and Ukraine were projected to account for 28.5 percent of global wheat exports in 2021, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, so global wheat prices have jolted higher to try to accommodate a big drop in supplies from both counties.

Chicago wheat futures are up nearly 40 percent in the past month, and have climbed to 14-year highs of $11.34 a bushel.

Russia and Ukraine also account for 19 percent of corn exports and 80 percent of exports of sunflower oil, which competes with soyoil and palm oil.

Malaysian palm oil prices hit record highs of 6,950 ringgit a tonne on Thursday, while U.S. soyoil hit its highest since 2008.

Newcastle coal futures have also been on a blistering run since sanctions were slapped on the third-largest exporter, surging to a record $440 a tonne this week, up 100 from a month ago.

By Naveen Thukral and Gavin Maguire
Australia Initiates National Response to Outbreak of Japanese Encephalitis

Australias acting chief medical officer has declared that a national response is needed to clamp down on an outbreak of Japanese encephalitis virus (JEV).

Dr. Sonya Bennett declared the virus a Communicable Disease Incident of National Significance on March 4, as health officials deal with the emergence of 16 cases of the disease, according to figures obtained by AAP.

A national working group of communicable disease, vaccine, and arbovirus experts has been established to support the response, including mosquito surveillance and control measures and identification of those at direct risk, and for the rollout of vaccines, she said in a statement. Public health communications regarding mosquito protection will target affected communities.

The Australian governments health and agriculture departments are working very closely with their state government counterparts to ensure a swift and coordinated response.

JEV is transmitted through mosquito bites and mostly occurs in pigs or horses. Pigs, however, carry the strain that can be transmitted to humans. While most cases are commonly asymptomatic, those with severe infection may experience neck stiffness, coma, and, more rarely, permanent neurological complications or death.

The virus usually presents with a sudden onset of fever, headache and vomiting. Australian authorities note it cannot be transmitted from human to human or by eating meat from an infected animal.

On March 3, health officials from the state of Queensland confirmed one case of JEV, while Victorian authorities confirmed four suspected cases connected to a piggery near Echuca in the states north.

Currently, four people have been admitted to hospital in Australia. One has since been discharged.

The Australian federal government is working with its state counterparts on distributing vaccines to at-risk population groupsmainly those in regional areas.

In fact, Australias Chief Veterinary Officer Dr. Mark Schipp has confirmed that JEV was found in 14 pig farms across New South Wales, South Australia, Queensland, and Victoria.

The key signs to look out for in pigs are stillborn or weak piglets, some with an impaired nervous system. Piglets can develop encephalitis or wasting, depression or hindlimb paralysis. Adult sows do not typically show signs of disease, he said.

Pig producers are asked to be highly vigilant for signs of this disease and report unexplained pig abortions or stillbirths, he added, calling on farmers to practice good biosecurity and control mosquitoes.

Horse owners can also put measures in place to help their horses avoid mosquito bites, including using hooded rugs, fly masks, and applying a safe insect repellent.

People living in areas with high mosquito populations are encouraged to use repellent containing picaridin or DEET and cover up with loose-fitting clothing.

If you suspect an animal is showing signs of the disease, report it to your local veterinarian or the national Emergency Animal Disease Watch Hotline on 1800 675 888
Awake and Bold Seeks to Open Eyes to the Invisible Epidemic of Child Trafficking

Child trafficking prospers in the shadows of incognizance. This is why organizations such as Awake and Bold in North Carolina are striving to bring awareness to the invisible crime through education, training, and networking efforts.

Awake and Bold have initiated a video and billboard campaign through its Open Your Eyes organization that teaches a series of hand signals that can empower victims to alert someone to a trafficking situation.

Its one of the largest growing industries, Awake and Bold Director Hara Taicher told The Epoch Times. For traffickers, its more lucrative than drugs because once you sell drugs, theyre gone, but a trafficker can sell a child over and over.

Awake and Bold have four billboards in North Carolina and two in Georgia that illustrate the hand signal initiative Taicher and co-founder Elena Huggins are promoting.

Huggins demonstrates the hand signals in a video in which she explains that the gestures say, I need help; I need to be rescued.

If we as civilians know what these symbols mean and we see it, we can call law enforcement and help get a child rescued, Huggins said. And the more of us that know about this symbol, the more kids we can rescue.

Training and education help people wake up to what is happening in their community, Taicher said.

People can have circumstances to look for and actions to take to put in their repertoire so that they are paying attention, Taicher said.

Kathy Yurista, an assistant ambassador with Awake and Bold, told The Epoch Times that awareness begins at a local level and then broadening the landscape of reach by meeting frequently with other organizations, such as the Human Trafficking Commission in Raleigh, North Carolina, where multiple agencies gathered to discuss strategies to combat human trafficking.

Getting flyers into storefronts, restaurants, grocery stores, and gas stations awaken people living out their daily routines to the hidden-in-plain-sight crime of trafficking, Yurista explained.

We are also working on a curriculum to bring awareness into the schools so that the teachers and parents can become aware and learn the hand signals, Yurista said.

Overall, Taicher said, its about showing people that child trafficking isnt happening in some far away, remote place, but right here in our communities.

State Funding to Combat Child Trafficking

In November 2021, North Carolina state Sen. Ted Alexander, a Republican, helped put together what he called one of the most comprehensive approaches to combat human trafficking through the state budget, which had several components, he told The Epoch Times.

An amount of over $32 million was earmarked for expanding resources targeting child trafficking, such as adding State Bureau of Investigation officers investigating human trafficking and providing grant money to boots-on-the-ground organizations that are actively involved in assisting trafficked victims.

The budget also funds state law enforcement departments that specifically investigate online sex trafficking.

This is an enormous problem in our society, Alexander told The Epoch Times. Its invisible to the average person, but its real and its insidious. The more I hear and learn about itI find it sickeningbut it strengthens my resolve to do something about it.

In 2018, former President Donald Trump signed the Frederick Douglass Trafficking Victims Prevention and Protection Reauthorization Act that made available $430 million in federal aid for human trafficking prevention, education, victim assistance, and tougher prosecution.

In addition to networking, education, and training, Awake and Bold raises funds for organizations that engage in rescue operations such as Veterans For Child Rescue (V4CR) in Arizona and SERT (Search, Evangelize, Rescue, and Train) Ministries.

Veterans For Child Rescue

V4CR founder Craig Sawyers military career began in the U.S. Marines, from where he transitioned into the U.S. Navy to pursue special operations as a Navy SEAL where he served in the Naval Special Warfare Development Group.

As a Navy SEAL in special operations, he gained combat experience in Operation Desert Shield and Desert Storm during the Gulf War resulting in his decoration for heroic service in combat.

He then worked as an agent and supervisor in the Federal Air Marshal service before expanding his range into high-threat mobile security contracting, film and television technical advising, and personal security training for the public.

Using this experience, he now takes on child trafficking through V4CR from multiple angles.

Its estimated to generate $38 to $50 billion dollars inside the United States annually, Sawyer told The Epoch Times. Thats a giant industry. So why arent we hearing about it?

Another reason child trafficking is pervasive is its use for blackmail in the political sphere through an unofficial intelligence scheme such as one he called Operation Brownstone.

A lot of intelligence agencies like to get dirt on people, so people like Jefferey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell have these parties inviting public figures and elected officials in a house wired with cameras, Sawyer said. If they arent good people, they end up on video in compromising situations having sex with underage boys or girls.

To bring awareness, Sawyer made the documentary ContraLand, which takes a deep dive into sex trafficking and its impact on victims, the perpetrators, and how it has infiltrated society through academic theories and pornography.

If the public understood how pervasive this crime actually is, they would rise up and revolt against it, Sawyer said.

Craig Sawyer. (Courtesy of Craig Sawyer).

SERT (Search, Evangelize, Rescue, and Train) Ministries

In addition to his comedy podcast The Bald Avenger and talking at conventions to bring awareness to child trafficking, Jason Sisneros works in field operations rescuing children in coordination with law enforcement for the California-based SERT Ministries founded by former Marine and police officernow pastorRudy Gonzalez.

Sisneros began his journey eight years ago in an undercover child-rescue operation in Haiti.

We rescued 36 little girls and boys on that trip and put away 11 traffickers, and Ive been doing that ever since, Sisneros told The Epoch Times.

His most recent operation was during the Super Bowl, during which he said there is a higher demand for prostitutes, including underage girls, because of a higher concentration of men away from their families and seeking sex.

SERT Ministries partners with The Slave Free Project tolike Awake and Boldinform the public about child trafficking.

Its estimated that 800,000 children are abducted annually in the United States, according to Sisneros.

How SERT Ministries operates is based on parent referral or at the request of law enforcement that needs assistance in a rescue.

In one operation in a city during Black Lives Matter riots, Sisneros remembered what he described as the predominately white rescue team surrounding a car to rescue a young black girl inside.

She rolled down her window and said, I cant believe all of this is for me, he said. She was surrounded by 30 men who loved her and had been looking for her for months.

It was significant to Sisneros, he said, because it shattered the narrative that was being pushed alleging white and black people were in social conflict amid the height of racial tension.

It was life-changing to see that, Sisneros said. She got pulled out of that environment and is now thriving.

As both Sawyer and Sisneros have stated, a successful rescue is just the beginning of a rocky path toward rehabilitation because trafficked children have been controlled through psychological manipulation and drug addiction.

Love and Awareness

The epidemic of child trafficking has many faces and exists in every social class, Sisneros said.

But there is so much more love on this planet than there is hatred, he said. Love and awareness are all that needs to happen to bring people together to protect our most vulnerable.

Jason Sisneros. (Courtesy of Jason Sisneros)
President Joe Biden delivers remarks about Russia's unprovoked and unjustified" military invasion of neighboring Ukraine in the East Room of the White House on Feb. 24, 2022. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

Biden Administration Grants Ukrainians in US Temporary Protected Status, ICE Pauses Deportation Flights

President Joe Bidens administration will grant Ukrainians already in the United States a Temporary Protected Status (TPS) designation, allowing them to stay in the country without the risk of deportation for 18 months, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced on Thursday.

Russias premeditated and unprovoked attack on Ukraine has resulted in an ongoing war, senseless violence, and Ukrainians forced to seek refuge in other countries, said DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. In these extraordinary times, we will continue to offer our support and protection to Ukrainian nationals in the United States.

Countries are designated for TPS when they are the victim of ongoing armed conflict, environmental disasters, or extraordinary and temporary conditions. Currently, there are 12 countries with TPS designations, including Haiti, Myanmar, Syria, and Sudan.

Ukraines designation will benefit an estimated 30,000 Ukrainians currently in the United States on temporary visas or who do not have legal status, according to calculations by the Migration Policy Institute.

Ensuring approximately 30,000 Ukrainians in the United States can receive the protection they deserve and have the opportunity to work and live in the United States without fear of returning to a country under siege, is absolutely the right and moral thing to do, Menendez said in a separate statement.

Temporary Protected Status was created by Congress for exactly this purposeto protect people whose home countries have experienced armed conflict, an environmental disaster, or extraordinary conditions that prevent people from safely returning home.

While the TPS will be granted to Ukrainians who were already continuously residing in the United States since March 1, according to DHS, it will not apply to those who try to travel to the United States after March 1.

More than one million people have fled Ukraine to seek refuge in neighboring countries since Russia invaded last week, according to U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi.

Additionally, TPS will also offer eligible Ukrainians work permits.

The Federal Register notice will provide instructions for applying for TPS and an Employment Authorization Document (EAD). TPS applicants must meet all eligibility requirements and undergo security and background checks, DHS said.

A woman comforts her baby at a temporary shelter set up in a market hall for displaced persons fleeing Ukraine, in Przemysl, Poland, March 3, 2022. (The Canadian Press/Czarek Sokolowski)

A family fleeing the conflict in Ukraine walks after crossing the Moldova-Ukraine border checkpoint near the town of Palanca, Moldova on March 2, 2022. (Nikolay Doychinov/AFP via Getty Images)

Chairman Menendez was joined by Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) earlier this week in sending a letter (pdf) to Biden urging the administration to grant TPS to Ukrainians in the United States in the wake of Moscows military invasion.

The letter was signed by 39 senators. who wrote that Ukraine clearly meets the standard for TPS as it is obviously too dangerous for Ukrainian nationals to return to Ukraine due to the ongoing armed conflict.

Advocates have hailed the move for creating a safe haven for Ukrainians who are at risk of facing oppression while urging the Biden administration to do even more to help refugees of the former Soviet nation.

As Russias invasion of Ukraine intensifies, the world has watched in horror as cities are attacked and civilians are forced to leave everything behind and seek safety elsewhere. President Bidens decision to grant TPS to Ukrainians currently in the U.S. is an important move that speaks to our history as a safe haven for those facing oppression, said Ali Noorani, the head of the National Immigration Forum, in a statement.

Our governments policies and actions must reflect a commitment to protecting the most vulnerable, regardless of nationality. In addition to granting TPS for Ukrainians, the Biden administration should prioritize rebuilding our refugee resettlement infrastructure and capacity to continue our legacy as a welcoming beacon of democracy.

However, critics fear that the program could lead to thousands of people staying in the United States permanently at a time when the country is already facing an illegal immigration crisis.

Elsewhere on Thursday, Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced it has paused deportation flights to Ukraine, citing the ongoing humanitarian crisis.

Amid the ongoing humanitarian crisis occurring in Ukraine, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has paused repatriation flights to Ukraine, an agency spokesperson told CBS News. ICE will continue to monitor the ongoing situation and make operational changes as necessary.

Roughly 44 million people lived in Ukraine prior to Russias invasion and the vast majority of nationals who have fled are women and children because men aged 18 to 60 are restricted from leaving the country until further notice.

The Epoch Times has contacted ICE for comment.
Rescue workers and volunteers remove a dead body from the site of bomb explosion inside a Shiite mosque in Peshawar, Pakistan, on March 4, 2022. (Muhammad Sajjad/AP Photo)

Bombing at Shiite Mosque in Pakistan Kills at Least 56 Worshippers

A powerful bomb was detonated inside a Shiite mosque in Pakistan during Friday prayers, killing at least 56 worshippers and wounding nearly 200 others, many of them critically, hospital officials said.

The deadly explosion, reportedly carried out by a suicide bomber, occurred as worshippers had gathered at the mosque in the countrys northwestern city of Peshawar. No terrorist group has immediately claimed responsibility for the attack.

First I heard five to six gunshots and then I saw the suicide bomber enter the mosque and a huge explosion occurred, a witness who identified himself as Naeem told Al Jazeera. The doors of my house opened with a bang and I fell down on the ground. When I entered the mosque, there was smoke and dust and people were lying in blood.

Peshawar Police Chief Muhammed Ejaz Khan said the violence started when an armed attacker opened fire on police outside the mosque. One police officer was killed in the gunfight, and another officer was wounded, the chief said. Authorities said they fear the death toll may rise.

Rescue workers and volunteers gather at the site of a bomb explosion in Peshawar, Pakistan, on March 4, 2022. (Muhammad Sajjad/AP Photo)

Volunteers transport an injured victim of a bomb explosion at a hospital in Peshawar, Pakistan, on March 4, 2022. (Muhammad Sajjad/AP Photo)

Both the ISIS terrorist group and the Pakistani Talibana terrorist group separate from the Taliban in Afghanistanhave carried out similar attacks in the past in the same area, which is located near the border with Afghanistan.

Hospital officials rushed to the scene and took the wounded to Lady Reading Hospital, a spokesman for the hospital said, adding that many of the wounded are in critical condition and several victims had limbs amputated.

We are in a state of emergency and the injured are being shifted to the hospital. We are investigating the nature of the blast but it seemed to be a suicide attack, said Mohammad Sajjad Khan, a local police officer.

U.S. Embassy in Pakistan charge daffaires a.i. Angela Aggeler. (Courtesy of U.S. Embassy & Consulates in Pakistan)

The bomb attack was condemned by a U.S. Embassy official in Islamabad and Prime Minister Imran Khan, who urged authorities to assist everyone affected.

The United States condemns the heinous and cowardly attack targeting a mosque in [Peshawar], U.S. embassy charge daffaires Angela Aggeler, said in a statement. We offer our deepest condolences to the victims and their families.

In recent years, bomb attacks targeting Shiite mosques in Pakistan have claimed thousands of lives as the country experiences a broad increase of violence. Dozens of military personnel have also been killed in scores of attacks on army outposts along the border with Afghanistan.

Many attacks have been claimed by the Pakistani Taliban, which analysts say has been emboldened by the Afghan Taliban seizing power last August in Afghanistan.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

From NTD News
California Seeks More Measures to Condemn Russia Invasion of Ukraine

SACRAMENTOMore legislation is coming out of California to condemn Russias declaration of war against Ukraine, just days after Gov. Gavin Newsom asked the states leaders of the three top pension funds to halt money flowing into Russia. Now, legislators in the Assembly are following suit with House Resolution 94 to counter unprovoked attacks on Ukraine.

More than 60 lawmakers voted to join the resolution as co-authors during March 3s assembly meeting. Assemblymember Ken Cooley (D-Rancho Cordova)who introduced the resolutionsaid during the meeting that he represents the largest diaspora of Ukrainian immigrants in the world in Sacramento County.

As a freely elected democracy, Ukraine and President Volodimir Zelensky share many of the same democratic principles we do in California and are fighting to defend and preserve these ideals, Cooley said.

Assemblymember Kevin Kiley (R-Rocklin) co-sponsored Cooleys resolution and said Russias attack on Ukraine is an act of sheer barbarism.

He added there are absolutely heartbreaking images surfacing out of Ukraine but that he is also seeing incredible displays of courage.

And here in California we are seeing people from every walk of life rally in support of our Ukrainian friends and neighbors, he said.

Now, HR 94 will officially be written into a bill and presented to the Senate for another hearing.

On Feb. 28, Newsom asked the chairmen of the three largest pension funds in the state to halt money going into Russia. That same day, Senate Majority Leader Mike McGuire (D-Healdsburg) said he would introduce bipartisan legislation to force the states pension funds to divest from Russia.

The world is watching the atrocities taking place in Ukraine. Its sickening, McGuire said in a statement. We must stand strong for the people of Ukraine. Thats why we all must mobilize to stop Russia in its tracks. California has unique and remarkable economic power in this circumstance. As the fifth-largest economy in the world, we must use this power for good. We can help stop this autocratic thug, Putin, by advancing this critical legislation and enacting our own financial divestments.

A handful of protests in support of Ukrainian citizens have popped up across the state within the last week, with many people rallying in support of the nation as Russian troops continue to vie for control of the region.

Russian troops began their invasion on Feb. 24 and were met with a slew of sanctions from allying countries in the west, targeting Russias economy. The United Nations reported more than 1 million refugees have fled the country in the past week.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau looks on as Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly responds to a question during a news conference, Feb. 24, 2022 in Ottawa. (The Canadian Press/Adrian Wyld)

Canadas Foreign Minister Meets Counterparts at NATO to Ramp Up Pressure on Moscow

Canadas foreign affairs minister met counterparts at NATO headquarters in Brussels on Friday to co-ordinate continuing efforts to sanction Russia for its invasion of Ukraine.

Before the meeting, Melanie Joly said ministers planned to discuss a Russian attack on a major nuclear power plant in the eastern Ukraine city of Enerhodar.

Russian troops seized the plant, the largest in Europe, after a middle-of-the-night attack that set it on fire and briefly raised worldwide fears of a catastrophe.

Firefighters put out the blaze, and no radiation was released, United Nations and Ukrainian officials said, as Russian forces pressed on with their week-old offensive on multiple fronts and the number of refugees fleeing the country topped 1.2 million.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said late Thursday he had spoken with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky about the assault on the power plant.

Following the attack, Zelensky appealed again to the West to enforce a no-fly zone over his country. But NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg ruled out that possibility, citing the risk of a much wider war in Europe.

He said the only way to implement a no-fly zone would be to send NATO planes to enforce it by shooting down Russian planes.

We understand the desperation, but we also believe that if we did that, we would end up with something that could end in a full-fledged war in Europe, Stoltenberg said.
Hundreds of people gather by TransCanada Highway 20 to show their support to truckers heading to Ottawa to protest against COVID-19 restrictions, in Levis, Quebec, on Jan. 28, 2022. (Jacques Boissinot/The Canadian Press)

Coast-to-Coast Human Freedom Chain in Canada Planned for Saturday

Various groups across the country are organizing the formation of a human Freedom Chain stretching from coast to coast beginning March 5 to urge for the upholding of charter rights and freedoms in Canada.

The plan is for the Freedom Chain to reach across the entirety of the country along the Trans-Canada Highway, which spans 7,476 km, beginning in Victoria, British Columbia, and extending to St. Johns, Newfoundland and Labrador.

Dozens of private and public Facebook groups as well as several event notices have been created for local coordination.

The chain is intended to promote and highlight Canadian unity and love during these turbulent times by calling for a hand-to-hand human chain from British Columbia to Newfoundland, said a Freedom Chain group for southern Ontario.

According to a photo shared on Twitter, the Ontario Freedom Chain will kick off in at 1 p.m. EST on Saturday.

The event comes after authorities most recently dispersed protesters participating in the Freedom Convoy 2022 that first began to oppose the vaccine mandate imposed on Jan. 15, requiring truck drivers crossing back into Canada to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 if they want to avoid a 14-day quarantine upon re-entry. With large convoys of trucks arriving in Ottawa to stage a peaceful protest, the movement expanded to a national scale, with many joining to oppose other COVID-19 restrictions.

Following weeks of protest, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau declared a state of emergency on Feb. 14, invoking the Emergencies Act to give the police additional powers to remove the protesters in downtown Ottawa, as well as those who blockaded several Canada-U.S. border crossings in solidarity. The protest in the national capital ended after the police enforced the emergency orders, while the blockades at the border crossings had already ended by then.

The federal vaccine mandate imposed on truck drivers remains in place.

The Freedom Chain in Canada is not the worlds first attempt at this method of protest.

On Aug. 23, 1989, roughly 2 million protesters in the Baltic nations of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia joined hands from Tallinn through Riga to Vilniusspanning 675 kilometresforming a human chain that became known as The Baltic Way to protest against communism and to push for independence from Soviet rule.

Commemorating the 30th anniversary of the event, the people of Hong Kong held a similar demonstration on Aug. 23, 2019, in protest against the Chinese Communist Partys tightening control over the former British colony.

Editors note: This article was updated on March 4 to clarify the purpose of the event.
Capitol Report (March 3): Senator Suffers From COVID Two Years Later

Russia and Ukraine had their second round of talks Thursday, while the two countries are now battling over a city that houses the largest nuclear power plant in all of Europe.

And Congress now is preparing to approve billions in emergency spendingsome to support Ukraine and even more for pandemic relief.

Members of Congress say American energy independence is a fundamental issue at stake as Russia marches forward in Ukraine. Congressman Ralph Norman says we had it not long ago, and with the correct policy, it wont take much to get it back. But what direction will the country head in?

An unexpected meeting among the Quad Leaders Thursday comes amid increasing concerns over a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. What did the leaders say?

Multiple state attorneys general launch an investigation into TikTok. They allege the video platform is harmful to children.

Many parents are concerned about the state of U.S. education, and that un-American principles are being taught in schools. We speak to North Carolina Congresswoman Virginia Foxx, who is on the front lines in the battle for education reform in the United States.

Another Democrat announced his plans to retire from Congress. That makes 31 House Democrats that are not seeking reelection.

Follow CapitolReport on social media:

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Gettr https://gettr.com/user/capitolreport
Children Allege North Carolina Bus Driver Offered Them $5 to Swab Their Cheeks With Q-tip

A North Carolina news outlet has reported an incident on Tuesday in which children alleged that a middle school bus driver has been offering them $5 to swab their cheeks with a Q-Tip.

The director of communications for the Charlotte-Mecklenburg School (CMS) system told The Epoch Times that CMS cant provide details while the incident is being investigated.

The driver involved in the incident was suspended pending the results of an ongoing investigation, the director said. The alleged incident appears to be an individual acting outside of assigned duties and done without the knowledge of the district or school administrator.

John Paul with WSOC-TV reported that several parents told him that a CMS bus driver for the Ridge Road Middle School in Charlotte offered their children $5 to swab their cheeks.

Paul said that parent Mone Davis reported to the news outlet that her daughter said, She gave me the Q-Tip thing and made me swab my mouth, and when I was done, I put it in the cylinder and gave it to her. Then she gave me $5.

The allegations date back to Feb. 15, Paul said, with one report alleging that the bus driver took samples from 10 kids on the bus as well as personal information.

Paul said one child reported to the parent that the bus driver said it was a COVID-19 test, while another child reported to the parent that there were two other adults on the bus who werent identified.

Paul said Ridge Road Middle School sent out a statement to parents in connection with the allegations in which the school principal said he reported the incident to the appropriate parties for investigation, but that he could not provide further information because its under investigation.

Ridge Road Middle School didnt immediately respond to The Epoch Times for comment.

Why would someone take a mouth swab from a kid and their personal informationand maybe more importantlywhat could they do with that information, Paul asked in his report.

Jason Stoogenke, also with WSOC-TV, pointed to a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services fraud alert that involves a similar procedure in which someone offers free cheek swabs for the purpose of obtaining that persons personal information for identify theft or fraudulent billing in Medicare scams on senior citizens.

However, because this case involves children, it makes this case even more mysterious, Stoogenke said.

Paul later reported that the children who had made the allegations had been pulled out of class and interviewed by CMS police.

The CMS police department didnt immediately respond to The Epoch Times request for a police report.

The Mecklenburg County Health Director Dr. Raynard Washington told Joe Bruno with WSOC-TV that not only has the county not authorized any cheek-swab COVID test providers but also, its not an effective way to test for COVID, Washington said.

In addition, Washington told the news outlet that theres no reason to pay someone to do a COVID test.

Paul said the investigation brought him to a person who alleged that the National Institute of Molecular Diagnostics in Greensboro, North Carolina, paid him $5 to perform a cheek-swab COVID test, then recruited him to put on a similar event the next day.

When WSOC-TV tried to contact the institute, it didnt respond.

The Institute also didnt immediately respond to The Epoch Times request for comment.

At the time of the report, Paul said it was unclear if the two incidents are connected.
General view of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) building in Beijing, China, on Jan. 13, 2016. (VCG via Getty Images)

China-Backed Infrastructure Banks Halt Lending to Russia, Belarus Over War in Ukraine

The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank has decided to put all activities relating to Russia and Belarus on hold due to the war in Ukraine, the China-backed institution said on March 3.

The announcement comes a day after Chinas top banking regulator said the country would keep up normal trade with Russia and Ukraine amid Western sanctions.

In a statement published on its website, the Beijing-headquartered bank said its management would do utmost to safeguard the financial integrity, against the backdrop of the evolving economic and financial situation.

China is the largest shareholder of the multilateral lender, with a stake of over 30 percent, according to the official website.

Given that it holds 26.5 percent of voting rights, China has veto power over major decisions, which requires a 75 percent majority.

Under these circumstances, and in the best interests of the Bank, Management has decided that all activities relating to Russia and Belarus are on hold and under review, read the statement.

Russia is a founding member of the AIIB, and the third-largest shareholder after China and India. Belarus and Ukraine are not members of the bank.

AIIB was proposed by the leader of the Chinese Communist Party Xi Jinping in 2013, the year that he launched the Belt and Road Initiative, a multi-continent infrastructure project which has been labeled as a vehicle used for building up the regimes economic and political influence worldwide.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping applauds after unveiling a sculpture during the opening ceremony of the AIIB in Beijing on Jan. 16, 2016. (Mark Schiefelbein/Pool/AP Photo)

Meanwhile, the Shanghai-headquartered New Development Bank (NDB) also announced on Thursday that it has put new transactions in Russia on hold, citing unfolding uncertainties and restrictions.

NDB was established by China, Russia, India, Brazil, and South Africa in 2014 to fund infrastructure projects, a similar purpose to the AIIB.

The move by the two banks follows a spate of Western sanctions on Russia in response to the invasion. The United States, European Union, and other Western allies have cut key Russian banks out of an international payments system known as SWIFT and limited Russias central banks ability to draw over $600 billion in foreign currency reserves.

The response from the communist regime in Beijing has come under growing scrutiny, given its deepening ties with Moscow. Bilateral trade surged nearly 36 percent in 2021 to record $146.9 billion, according to Chinas official customs data. The two neighboring countries aim to boost it to $240 billion in 2024, Xi said during the summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Beijing earlier this month.

Guo Shuqing, the head of China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission, said on Wednesday that the country opposed unilateral sanctions and wouldnt join Western nations restrictions.

The Chinese regime hasnt condemned Russias attack and declined to call it an invasion.

Disclosures on AIIBs website shows the institution in 2019 and 2020 approved two projects in Russia worth $800 million. The bank announced last October it was due to hold its annual meeting in Russia this year, though no specific date provided.
China Changed Supply Chain Strategy With Russia 3 Months Ahead of Ukraine Invasion, Suggesting Foreknowledge: Analyst

About three months ago, China changed how it ordered goods from Russia in a way that would insulate Beijing in the event of Western sanctions on Moscow, according to a supply chain analyst who cited insider information.

This move suggests that China had foreknowledge of Russias plan to invade Ukraine, and had made contingencies to ensure it could still import Russian commodities if sanctions were put in place, according to Ross Kennedy, founder of Fortis Analysis.

In about November or December, China began buying all of its Russia-origin cargoesgrains, crude oil, and petrochemical productson a free on board origin basis, meaning that China would hold claim to the goods as soon as they were loaded onto the ship in Russia, he said.

Thats an unusual choice in international trade, Kennedy told NTD, sister media outlet of The Epoch Times, on March 3.

In large shipments by sea, sellersrather than buyerscommonly retain responsibility for the goods until theyre delivered to the purchaser, he said. They also typically cover the cost of shipping and insurance, and warrant that the goods will safely reach the destination.

Now what youre seeing is the buyer stepping up and saying Were going to take the risk, he said in the interview.

The reason you would see that happening is because there is a fear that sanctions on products coming from a certain country, in this case, Russia, would impact those countries ability to buy those products.

The construction site of Russias petrochemical holding Siburs ZapSibNefteKhim plant on the outskirts of Tobolsk on Oct. 4, 2018. (Andrey Borodulin/AFP via Getty Images)

The switch indicates to Kennedy that Chinas authorities have, at least for some amount of time, been certainly aware of Russias plans with regard to Ukraineif not outright complicit in it.

The growing friendship between Russia and China has fueled questions about what role Beijing could have played leading up to the invasion of Ukraine.

Because of concern about Russian President Vladimir Putin mounting a reckless invasion, White House officials had engaged China in advance in the hopes it could help avert a war, but China declined, a top U.S. policy adviser recently said in a panel event.

Instead, senior Chinese officials reportedly asked Russia to postpone making a military move until the end of the Beijing Winter Olympics.

On Feb. 21, one day after the Olympics concluded, Putin deployed troops to two breakaway regions in the eastern part of Ukraine. The Russian military officially launched its attack three days later.

About 2 million people have fled the war in Ukraine, the United Nations refugee office has said. Meanwhile, the U.N.s rights office has recorded 1,335 civilian casualties as of March 8, including 474 killed and 861 injured, since Russias invasion began, but believes that the real toll may be considerably higher.

Most of the victims were killed by explosive weapons such as shelling from heavy artillery, multi-launch rocket systems, and missile and airstrikes, according to the office, which has monitors in Ukraine.
Chinas Imperiled Local Government Sector

Commentary

Many of Chinas local authorities are staring down a severe fiscal challenge this year.

The typically robust real estate sector has instead been a big disappointment. The countrys ongoing property market slump has hit local government revenues. Weve previously pointed out land sale revenues as being a major component of local budgets, and Chinas contemplated rollout of personal real estate taxes is unlikely to give municipalities a major windfall.

Chinas macroeconomic environment has become a huge drag. The central government in Beijing is looking to implement more tax cuts to offset slowing economic growth and promote small business growth. This is another drain on local government resources, but its necessary, given that Chinas COVID-19 restrictions continue to hold back economic activity across the nation. On top of that, the already high debt burden of many municipalities will prevent them from accessing debt financing.

The country will intensify tax-deduction efforts and launch targeted support measures, a February report by state-run media outlet Xinhua reads.

The report claims that the measure will increase innovation and spur growth in private enterprises. On the other hand, more than a third of Chinese provinces are forecasting that the increase in expenditures will exceed the rise in revenues this year.

All of this means that the fiscal health of Chinas local governments will pose a significant risk to the Chinese Communist Partys (CCP) desire for stability heading into this falls key National Congress.

Beijing will need to step up its support to regional governments in 2022. Liu Kun, Chinas finance minister, said in early February that transfer payments to regional governments will increase by a large margin in 2022. For context, in 2021, Beijing gave out more than 8 trillion yuan ($1.2 trillion) in transfers to regional governments.

Beijing has also been stepping up support for municipalities having trouble paying their retirees. Its a big obligation that will deepen, given Chinas rapidly aging population and relatively low birth rates.

Funding pensions isnt a new problem for Chinese municipalities, but its getting worse. Beijing has been working to funnel several provincial pension plans into a national one, so that funds from wealthier regions can be routed to subsidize poorer regions.

In 2018, an adjustment fund for pension funds was created by Beijing to redistribute funding to cover such shortfalls, and the CCP is looking to expand this program further.

Which areas are scheduled to take in transfer payments? The northeastern industrial provinces such as Heilongjiang, and poorer, more rural northwestern provinces such as Gansu are prime candidates.

The indebtedness of local governments has also been a major risk.

In January, Beijing allowed Guizhou, a relatively poor and mountainous province in Chinas southwest, to delay interest repayments and enter into restructuring for existing debts.

The CCP is stepping up regulatory oversight into so-called local government funding vehicles (LGFV), which are off-balance-sheet entities used to raise financing for local governments, often for infrastructure projects.

These vehicles were often used to fund projects for political achievements rather than on their economic merits. In 2017, Beijings national auditors found that some municipalities and officials went ahead with LGFV-funded projects without the means or intention to repay the debt.

Who are the lenders to such vehicles? Chinas commercial banks are the biggest cohort, which means municipalities financial difficulties are also threatening the health of the Chinese banking sector.

Being off-balance-sheet, the true magnitude of LGFV financing is often unknown. South China Morning Post estimates that, as of Dec. 31, 2021, more than 3,000 LGFV entities are outstanding. In terms of outstanding balances owed, estimates range from 20 percent to up to 44 percent of Chinas gross domestic productthe equivalent of 45 trillion yuan, or more than $7 trillion.

Those are truly shocking figures, suggesting that Chinas local government debt woes are just the beginning.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
How the whimsical, hand-painted wallcoverings have captured the imagination of artists and homeowners for centuries

How the whimsical, hand-painted wallcoverings have captured the imagination of artists and homeowners for centuries

Precious exotic items from China, such as fine porcelain, silks, and lacquer panels started to trickle into Europe beginning in the early 16th century. These decorative items quickly gained popularity with Europes aristocracy. By the late 18th century, nearly all of Europes great houses had at least one room with Chinese wallpapertypically womens bedroomsas did many more modest homes.

English and French manufacturers sought to capitalize on this demand for Chinese wallpaper and began producing imitations. The word Chinoiserie derives from chinoisFrench for Chineseand is used today for the style of decorative art that was inspired by these Chinese designs and the exotic notions that Europeans held about China. Despite the name Chinoiserie, European artists didnt differentiate between different designs and often mixed motifs from China, Japan, and other East Asian cultures to create whimsical motifs and vignettes in damasks, toiles, and other materials.

Contemporary Chinoiserie

Today, a select few artists in the Western world are continuing the tradition of this decorative art form. Peter Gorman of Gorman Studios in Vancouver, Canada, is one of them. He creates beautiful hand-painted Chinoiserie wallcoverings that bring exceptional elements to contemporary homes.

It is a theme and a subject within the decorative arts and peoples homes that is cross-cultural and cross-century, which is what makes Chinoiserie such an example of continuity and constant rebirth, like a phoenix, he said. A phoenix comes into its full blossom and then disappears and then comes back again.

One thing to remember about Chinoiserie is there is a persuasive association.

The motif of a plum, for instance, has a whole history of poetry and painting.  Every sort of flower, from various regionsit all has heavy symbolism, every branch, every tree, according to Gorman.

The opulence and delicacy of Chinoiserie, with its fine detail and fine line work, historically featured gold, gold powders, and semi-precious metals. Today, it still springs from a mainly artisan-based industry.

A lot of the interest comes from the novelty of the challenge and from artists wanting to learn Chinoiserie because its the gold standard, according to Gorman.

Hand-painted Chinoiserie wallcoverings are labor-intensive to create, from design to execution. For example, after obtaining client approval for a particular design, a series of four wall panels, each one three feet by three feet, could require two artists painting full time for up to 3 1/2 weeks.

Training an artist in Chinoiserie is also a time-intensive process, which can take anywhere from 2 to 4 years in Gorman Studios.

Artists come in with their own innate talent; the studio enhances those natural talents they bring in, Gorman said.

Historically, Chinoiserie wallcoverings were favored in womens bedrooms, but it has become popular to incorporate the style in dining rooms, sitting rooms, living rooms, and even kitchens. Luxurious powder rooms bedecked with Chinoiserie are also trending.

Its popularity today also includes more and more ready to apply offerings at lower prices.

Hand-Painted Luxury

Gracie Studio, which is headquartered in the United States, has been producing hand-painted wallpapers since 1898. The studio uses mainly water-based paints, which is the historical medium, with various hand-painted, metal leaf, silk, and other finishes.

Most of Gracie Studios orders are produced to the architectural specifications of a room, and they first produce a design sketch for approval. For custom designs, Gracie Studio will sometimes produce a hand-painted design sample for a client. Upon approval, production starts with sketching the entire panels design before the hand-painting begins. On average, each panel then requires 75 to 100 hours of artwork.

Gracie Studio wallpaper has been in the White House for three presidencies. Its a go-to brand for sought-after interior designers and their high-end clients.

Mike Gracie, president and fourth-generation co-leader of his family business, said people often comment that Gracie Studio wallpapers are having their moment.

We feel that the moment has been happening for our 123-year history, Gracie said.

Exuberant and expressive, Chinoiserie wallcoverings are still a status symbol for any home and the dream of many homeowners who have an eye for traditional beauty. Its also one of the finest examples of an East-meets-West hybrid in the decorative arts world. The art form itself is a testament to the power that Eastern beauty possesses, and to the Wests appreciation of it.

Tips for Homeowners

Incorporating Chinoiserie in any living space can make a room pop.

Hire an excellent installer to ensure your Chinoiserie wallcoverings are hung to perfection. After investing in a high-quality product, it will be worth it to make sure the job is done right.

People should also consider working with a professional designer. Vancouver-based architectural designer Bianca Fusco Zanatta has achieved beautiful results using Chinoiserie in her clients homes. Principal for M. Zanatta Homes and Design, Zanatta is known worldwide for creating gorgeous traditional and transitional-style estates.

Harmony is the base of it all, she said regarding the creation of a balanced room. It [takes] a really good eye, in the sense of color, in the sense of proportion, and a sense of balance, definitely balance.

Zannatta likes the blend of tradition that comes with the use of Chinoiserie in design.

Dont limit yourself. Be exploratory. Open your heart, she said. It welcomes you. Dont restrain yourself from design because its an art form.

This article was first published in ELITE Lifestyle Magazine.
Australian Treasurer Josh Frydenberg speaks to the media during a press conference at Parliament House in Canberra, Australia, on July 7, 2021. (AAP Image/Lukas Coch)

Divest Russian Assets: Australian Treasurer Tells Superannuation Funds

Australian superannuation funds are divesting away from Russian assets with support from the federal government.

The Morrison Government is today confirming its strong expectation that Australian superannuation funds will review their investment portfolios and take steps to divest any holdings in Russian assets, Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said in a statement.

By doing so, the $3.5 trillion industry would complement the sanctions imposed by the government and exert further pressure on Russia despite the low exposure to Russian investments, Frydenberg said.

In support of the announcement, the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority will not take any action against trustees who look to divest their Russian assets.

The APRA noted that superannuation fund holdings of Russian assets are a very small proportion of the entire asset pool.

The Financial Services Council also supported the announcement and will develop guidance for trustees and managers on the process.

Major super funds have also proceeded to drop their small proportions of Russian holdings.

The Australian Retirement Trust (ART) instructed its investment managers to sell any remaining debt and equity investments and to not make any new investments in Russia or Belarus.

ARTs chief investment officer, Ian Patrick, noted that it would be challenging in some cases, given that some key markets remained closed or difficult to access.

Trading in the Moscow stock exchange has been halted since Feb. 25, preventing foreign investors from selling off their stocks.

We cannot rule out having some minimal exposure despite the best endeavours of our managers; nor can we rule out the likelihood that some of the companies Australian Retirement Trust invests in may have some exposure to assets in the affected countries, Patrick said.

Russian shares accounted for less than 0.2 percent of the ART Trust Super Savings account, while its debt exposure to Russia was less than 0.1 percent.

Retail Employees Superannuation Trust (REST) said they were actively engaged with their investment managers in assessing the political situation and evolving sanctions. Rests Core Strategy exposure to Russian assets was less than 0.1 percent.

Rest intends to divest any direct portfolio holdings of Russian securities in accordance with our members best financial interests and regulatory sanctions, the super fund said in a statement.

Existing sanctions by the federal government include restrictions on trade and commercial activities, targeted financial sanctions and travel bans on eight top Russian officials.
Fire Put Out at Europes Largest Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine After Shelling Sparked Flames: Officials

Update: Russian forces on Friday have taken control of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant site, the regional military administration announced. Russian ambassador Vasily Nebenzya said on March 4 that the power plant had already been seized by Russian forces on Feb. 28, and that the fire was due to Ukrainian saboteurs. He said Moscow has no interest in seeking a nuclear provocation of any kind.

Original story below:

A fire at the site of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukrainethe largest nuclear power station in Europewas extinguished after it experienced what Ukrainian authorities said was shelling from Russian forces early on Friday.

Ukraines state emergency service, in announcing that the fire had been put out, said in a statement on Facebook there were no victims in the incident.

The nuclear safety of the plant is now ensured, Eastern European news source Nexta reported, citing the head of the Zaporozhye Regional State Administration.

The mayor of Enerhodar said in the early hours of Friday that Russian forces had attacked the plant. The plant, located in Enerhodar, a city on the Dnieper River, accounts for one-quarter of the countrys power generation.

Mayor Dmytro Orlov said on Telegram, according to a Reuters translation: As a result of continuous enemy shelling of buildings and units of the largest nuclear power plant in Europe, the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant is on fire. He said the attack is a threat to world security.

Ukrainian forces have been fighting Russian troops, he said, adding there had been casualties, without elaborating. Earlier, Ukrainian authorities reported that Russian troops were stepping up efforts to seize the plant and had entered the town with tanks.

A spokesman for the power plant, Andriy Tuz, also announced the fire in the early hours of Friday.

As a result of strikes, there is a fire at the nuclear power plant. I repeat: as a result of strikes by Russian Federation forces on the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, a fire has erupted, he said, according to a translation by The Associated Press.

He warned of a real threat of a nuclear danger at the power plant. We demand that they stop the heavy weapons fire at the energy blocks of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, the spokesperson added.

Tuz told Ukrainian television that one of the facilitys six reactors caught fire, adding that it has nuclear fuel inside but is under renovation and is not in operation. An adjacent five-story training facility also caught fire.

Energy Minister Herman Halushchenko told Bloomberg Television early Friday a missile hit the plants No. 1 unit.

The incident sparked emotional reactions from Ukrainian officials. In a video statement, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that Russian tanks shelled the nuclear station and that it could lead to evacuation for all of Europe.

For the first time in the history of humanity! No country ever fired on nuclear energy blocks, he said. Russian tanks are shooting at the nuclear energy blocks at the atomic electro station. They have heat vision technology. They know exactly what they are targeting.

Ukraine is 15 atomic blocks, if there is an explosionit will be the end of everyone! Its the end of Europe, its the evacuation of Europe. Only urgent action by Europe can stop the Russian military.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, in a statement on Twitter, wrote, Russian army is firing from all sides upon Zaporizhzhia NPP, the largest nuclear power plant in Europe. Fire has already broke out. If it blows up, it will be 10 times larger than Chornobyl! Russians must IMMEDIATELY cease the fire, allow firefighters, establish a security zone!

Meanwhile, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the United Nations atomic watchdog, said in a statement on Twitter it was informed by the Ukrainian nuclear regulator that there has been no change reported in #radiation levels at the #Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant site.

#Ukraine tells IAEA that fire at site of #Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant has not affected essential equipment, plant personnel taking mitigatory actions, the IAEA said in another post.

The White House in a statement late Thursday local time announced that President Joe Biden spoke with Zelensky about the fire and joined President Zelenskyy in urging Russia to cease its military activities in the area and allow firefighters and emergency responders to access the site.

The statement said Biden also spoke with Jill Hruby, who is the under secretary for nuclear security of the U.S. Department of Energy and the administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration, to get an update on the situation. Biden will continue to be briefed regularly, according to the statement.

The escalation of conflict between Ukraine and Russia has entered its ninth day after Russian President Vladimir Putin on Feb. 24 declared a special military operation against Ukraine and said the operation is a response to threats from Ukraine and is aimed at demilitarizing the country. He said at the time Russia has no plan to occupy Ukraine and does not intend to target civilians. He also said the Ukrainian military should immediately lay down its arms. Putin didnt specify how long the operation would be expected to take.

The United Nations said on Wednesday that more than 1 million people have fled Ukraine since the incursion.

Russia has already captured the defunct Chernobyl plant, some 100 kilometres (62 miles) north of Ukraines capital, Kyiv.

The United States and Britain on Thursday announced further sanctions on more Russian oligarchs.

Ivan Pentchoukov, Reuters, and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Facebook Chairman and CEO Mark Zuckerberg testifies at a House Financial Services Committee hearing in Washington on Oct. 23, 2019. (Erin Scott/Reuters)

Russia Bans Access to Facebook and Twitter: Government

Russias communications agency Roskomnadzor said Friday that it will block access to Facebook inside Russia, claiming discrimination against Russian media outlets since October 2020. Later on Friday, the agency told Russias Interfax news agency that it would block access to Twitter.

A statement from the agency posted online said Facebook has engaged in 26 cases of discrimination against Russian media and information resources.

In recent days, the Meta-owned platform restricted access to Russian outlets including Russia Today (RT), Sputnik News, Lenta, Gazeta, RIA Novosti, and the Zvezda TV channel, according to Roskomnadzor. It doesnt appear that TASS, a Russian state-run news agency, has been banned from the platform.

Roskomnadzor further added that Facebooks ban is against Russian federal law on measures to influence persons involved in violations of fundamental human rights and freedoms, the rights and freedoms of citizens of the Russian Federation.

Roskomnadzor told Interfax on Friday that Twitter is now restricted across Russia. Other details were not provided.

Other Big Tech platforms such as Google-owned YouTube have also banned Russian outlets such as RT and Sputnik in Europe following Russias invasion of Ukraine starting on Feb. 24.

Inside Russia, meanwhile, the Russian government has opted to ban foreign media outlets including Radio Free Europe, the BBC, Deutsche Welle, and more this week. It appears that Facebooks, Twitters, Apples, and Googles respective app stores were all blocked overnight in Russia on March 3 and March 4, according to reports.

Voice of America (VOA), a state-run U.S. news outlet, on Wednesday said it wont comply with Russian officials after they allegedly tried to block its Russian-language website unless it removes coverage of the Ukraine conflict.

Several Russian TV and radio stations, including TV Rain and Echo of Moscow, were also shuttered by Russian authorities on Thursday. Russian officials said the outlets violated a law that bans describing the Ukraine conflict as a war or an invasion.

The deputy editor-in-chief of RT America, the state-run channel, confirmed that the companys U.S. operations shut down this week. However, its not clear why the channel shut down, although a host of an RT show said that it was because DIRECTV and Roku canceled their distribution platforms following the invasion.

We are sad and disappointed that our groundbreaking channel RT America had to go off the air after more than 10 years, and that the company that supplied much of its content, T&R Productions, had to cease most of its operations, due to challenging external circumstances, Anna Belkina told The Epoch Times in a statement.

However, we are working hard to find ways that its staff, which has for many years produced award-winning news and programming content, can remain within RTs international family, she added.
For a six-year stretch (20072012), Leighton Meester played a principal character on Gossip Girl, a purposefully camp teen drama which was both revered and reviled by critics and became one of the most influential shows of its era. Fizzling out in its final season, the show nonetheless provided ideal springboards to bigger and better things for Meester and co-lead Blake Lively.

While Livelys film career prospered, Meesters hit the skids. Since the show ended, shes appeared in a half-dozen critically-panned, colossal theatrical flops, took a stab at Broadway (Of Mice and Men), and released a well-received pop-folk album (Heartstrings).

The Weekend Away is the kind of movie actresses make when they wish to prove theyre more than just a pretty faceor are desperate to be taken seriously. Following in the footsteps of Farrah Fawcett (Extremities), Charlize Theron (Monster), Brie Larson (Room), and Kate Winslet (The Reader), Meester wears no make-up, dresses in frumpy, unflattering costumes, appears to have put on a few pounds (ostensibly to simulate postpartum weight gain), and goes method.

(LR) Christina Wolf and Leighton Meester in The Weekend Away. (Netflix)

Shot in Zagreb and Split, Croatia, the movie opens with Beth (Meester) arriving at a swanky hotel on the shores of the Adriatic Sea at the request of her old friend Kate (Christina Wolfe), who is as glamorous as Beth is unadorned. Kate wishes to celebrate a recent break-up with an unnamed boyfriend by downing copious amounts of booze and drugs and possibly finding some temporary romance. Not quite a teetotaler, Beth is polite and has a drink or two but is also quick to let any men interested in her know that she has a husband (Luke Norris as Rob) and an infant daughter back home in London.

Too Many Red Herrings

Beth wakes the next morning, recalling next to nothing of the night before, and Kate is nowhere to be found. Their suite is a mess and something looking like blood is seen near broken glass. Confused, hung-over, and at a loss as to what to do next, Beth calls Zain (Ziad Bakri), a cab driver who brought her to the hotel. Hes willing to help with the Kate situation but only up to a point as hes in the country illegally. A subsequent plea to local detective Pavic (Amar Bukvic) meets with indifference as Kate is not officially missing yet, and hes grown weary of multiple foreigners getting blotto and disappearing in his town.

Leighton Meester and Ziad Bakri in The Weekend Away. (Netflix)

Written by TV scribe Sarah Alderson (based on her debut novel of the same name), The Weekend Away, with just a tweak here and there, could have been a parody of blow-outs gone wrong along the lines of The Hangover. Instead, it is simultaneously a half-baked and overcooked genre cliche festival. Virtually everyone with a speaking role becomes a suspect at some point (including Beth) and the screenplay far exceeds the acceptable level of mystery/thriller red herrings.

For her third feature, director Kim Farrant (Strangerland, Angel of Mine) shows some degree of flair with some of the on-foot chase scenes and cinematographer Noah Greenberg gets high marks for framing the ancient landmarks alongside modern architecture with seamless ease. The movie doesnt deserve to look this good.

Not So Thrilling Thriller

In following the tattered whodunit road map, the filmmakers toss up a false ending or two prior to their final reveal and, while it doesnt make a bit of sense, there were no previous clues pointing to this persononly explanations afterwards. Thats no way to present a respectable mystery/thriller. Its no wonder the embargo for press reviews didnt expire until opening day.

Luke Norris and Leighton Meester in The Weekend Away. (Netflix)

It wont take most attentive viewers long to notice the similarities between whats going down here to events which took place in Italy in 2007 to exchange student Amanda Knox. Being an American accused of a capital crime with damning but questionable evidence in a foreign country is beyond nerve-wracking. Tack on multiple years in prison prior to three prolonged trials would decimate the psyche of even the strongest-willed among us.

Beth doesnt go through nearly this same level of effrontery and oppression and, maybe if something like what happened to Knox been worked into the script, the movie would have turned out better. It certainly couldnt have made it any worse. For a more detailed accounting of what took place with Knox, it would be well worth your time to check out the ear-pinning 2016 documentary Amanda Knox, also on Netflix.

At 35-years-old, Meester still has more than a few years left as a leading lady, but if it is indeed her desire to be taken seriously as an actress, she should seek out deeper, further-reaching supporting/character roles in projects with far more meat on the bone. Either that or make another album.

Presented on Netflix in English with infrequently subtitled Croatian.

The Weekend Away

Director: Kim Farrant

Stars: Leighton Meester, Christina Wolfe, Luke Norris, Ziad Bakri, Amar Bukvic

Running Time: 1 hour, 29 minutes

MPAA Rating: TV-14

Release Date: March 3, 2022

Rating: 2 out of 5
A pro-life campaigner displays a plastic doll representing a 12-week-old fetus as she stands outside the Marie Stopes Clinic in Belfast, Northern Ireland on April 7, 2016. (Charles McQuillan/Getty Images)

Florida Legislature Passes 15-week Abortion Ban, DeSantis Expected to Sign Into Law

The Florida legislature has passed a bill to prohibit abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, with no exception for rape or incest, sending the bill to Gov. Ron DeSantiss desk.

The states Senate passed the measure 2315 late on Thursday, after the House had passed it on Feb. 16 with a vote of 7839. Both chambers hold a Republican majority.

DeSantis, a Republican, is expected to sign the measure into law. His spokesperson, Christina Pushaw, said earlier in the day that the governor is pro-life and has voiced support for the concepts in this bill.

If signed, the measure would take effect on July 1.

The exception to the 15-week ban would be only in cases when the mother is at risk of death or irreversible physical impairment, or if the fetus has what is deemed a fatal abnormality.

In a session on Wednesday, Republicans defeated an amendment that would have made exceptions for rape, incest, and human trafficking.

State Senator Kelli Stargel, a sponsor of the bill, said she rejected the notion that a child should be killed because of the circumstances in which it was conceived.

Florida currently permits abortions up to 24 weeks without a mandatory waiting period, meaning a woman can terminate her pregnancy the day she arrives at a clinic.

Arizonas Senate and West Virginias House passed similar 15-week abortion bans in mid-February.

The bans are modeled after a Mississippi law, which also bans abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy. The U.S. Supreme Court is due to rule by the end of June on the laws constitutionality. The case is Dobbs v. Jackson Womens Health Organization 19-1392.

The Mississippi law was signed in 2018, but was challenged less than an hour after its signing by the Jackson Womens Health Organization, the only abortion provider in the state, and was blocked from taking effect by a federal judge the following day. Two lower courts ruled against the law. Mississippi asked the U.S. Supreme Court to take up the case, which it agreed to in May.

Besides calling on the high court to reinstate the abortion law, the state of Mississippi has asked it to overturn Roe v. Wade altogether.

Roe v. Wade, a Supreme Court decision in 1973, prohibited states from banning abortions prior to when the fetus is deemed viablethat is, potentially able to live outside its mothers wombdeemed at the time usually around the second trimester of pregnancy at 24 weeks.

In 1992, the Supreme Court via Planned Parenthood v. Casey reaffirmed the Roe ruling and prohibited laws that place an undue burden on a womans ability to obtain an abortion.

Reuters contributed to this report.
Markeith Loyd, convicted of killing Orlando police Lt. Debra Clayton in 2017, shouts at the gallery as deputies remove him from the courtroom after he was sentenced to death in Orange County circuit court in Orlando, on March 3, 2021. (Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel via AP)

Florida Man Sentenced to Death for Killing Police Officer

ORLANDO, Fla.A judge on Thursday sentenced a Florida man to death for fatally shooting an Orlando police officer while he was on the run for killing his pregnant ex-girlfriend.

Jurors in November found Markeith Loyd, 46, guilty in the January 2017 death of Lt. Debra Clayton, and unanimously recommended a death sentence during a hearing in December. Circuit Judge Leticia Marques announced her decision during a brief hearing Thursday morning.

Loyd is already serving a life sentence for killing Sade Dixon, his former girlfriend, a month before Clayton was killed.

Loyd was on the run for killing Dixon when a shopper at a Walmart spotted him Jan. 9, 2017. Prosecutors said the shopper notified Clayton, who was also at the store, and she attempted to stop him. Clayton, 42, was killed during a shootout with Loyd outside the store.

Although nothing can undo the heartache created by the defendants heinous actions, we hope that this brings solace to our community, knowing a dangerous murderer will face the highest penalty provided by the law, Orlando police Chief Orlando Rolon said in a statement.

During the trial, prosecutors said the fatal shot was fired as Loyd stood over Clayton in the parking lot. She was shot four times.

She was a sergeant at the time of the shooting, but was promoted posthumously.

During multiple hearings since the shooting, Loyd claimed he fired at Clayton in self-defense. His attorneys said he was insane at the time after becoming convinced the police were trying to kill him.

His mental health has been a key issue since his arrest, with the judge finally ruling last week that he was competent to continue with the sentencing hearing.

Clinical psychologist Xavier Amador testified that Loyd suffers from the delusional belief he is a slave whom his slave masters  the judge and prosecutors  are intent on killing, the Orlando Sentinel reported. Another psychiatrist, Jeffrey Danziger, testified that Loyd cant effectively work with his defense team.

Loyd also claimed he was acting in self-defense when he shot Dixon and her brother, who was injured, a month before Clayton was killed.

The defense team also said Loyd suffered brain damage when officers beat and kicked him in the face as he crawled from under a home where hed been hiding during a massive weeklong manhunt after Clayton was killed. Loyd lost his eye in the beating and the officers were later cleared of any wrongdoing.

Another wrinkle in the case came in 2019 when then- Florida Gov. Rick Scott reassigned the case from then-State Attorney Aramis Ayala after she sparked outrage in the law enforcement community by saying she would not seek the death penalty against Loyd.

Ayala said at the time that capital punishment had been unevenly applied, was not a deterrent for serious crimes and that she would not seek it in any case  a stance she had not publicly expressed during her campaign for the position.

Ayala announced Wednesday that she is running for Florida attorney general as a Democrat.

The Loyd case has been winding its way through the court system for years, with Loyd sometimes representing himself and lashing out in the courtroom.

All these families have suffered. Debra Claytons family has suffered. Sade Dixons family has suffered. All because of the evil actions of Markeith Loyd, Orange County Sheriff Mina told reporters outside the courthouse.  And now its time for Markeith Loyd to suffer.

Quincy Morris, a cousin of Clayton, told WKMG the outcome is what God wanted it to be.

Now she can rest in peace, Morris added.
Greg Kelly, former executive of Nissan Motor Co., walks in to the Tokyo District Court, on March 3, 2022. (Zhang Xiaoyu/Pool via Reuters)

Former Ghosn Deputy Set for US Return After Suspended Sentence

TOKYOA Tokyo court on Thursday handed former Nissan Motor executive Greg Kelly a six-month suspended sentence for helping Carlos Ghosn hide pay from regulators, paving the way for the American lawyer to return home after more than three years in Japan.

The verdict draws a line under a case that threatened to strain relations between Japan and the United States, its closest ally, over the Japanese justice systems treatment of Kelly who was arrested alongside the former Nissan boss.

The court finds the existence of unpaid remuneration and the failure to disclose amounted to false reporting, the chief judge Kenji Shimotsu said, telling Kelly he was responsible for one of the eight years included in the charges.

I was shocked by the judgment, Kelly said in a statement after the ruling. The court found me mostly innocent, but I do not understand why it said I was guilty for one of the years, he added.

His lawyers said they will appeal the conviction, which Kelly should be able to do from the United States.

Both Kelly and Ghosnwho fled to Lebanon in 2019 hidden in a box on a private jetallege they are victims of a boardroom coup by former colleagues worried that Ghosn wanted to merge Nissan with alliance partner and largest shareholder Renault SA.

In pointed criticism of the prosecutors, the ruling also pinned blame for Ghosns alleged failure to disclose $80 million of income over eight years on Toshiaki Ohnuma, a Nissan official overseeing compensation, who was given legal immunity in return for testimony implicating Kelly.

Ohnumas statement is fraught with danger that he was making statements that conformed to the prosecutors wishes, Shimotsu said. There was a danger as an accomplice that he would seek to shift responsibility to Ghosn, he added.

The court also fined Nissan, which pleaded guilty at the start of the trial 18 months ago, 200 million yen ($1.73 million) for its part in the financial wrongdoing and took aim at corporate governance failings.

The dysfunctional governance of the company allowed Ghosn to act in his own self interest. The severe damage to the companys social reputation can only be described as it suffering the consequences, Shimotsu said, describing Ghosns tenure there as a dictatorship.

In Beirut, Ghosn described Nissans fine as laughable and said of Shimotsus comment: Its like a cartoon comment. I am trying to understand what makes him make this kind of comment when I am not there.

He added that Renault was struggling because of Nissans lack of vision.

Long Three Years

Some Western observers criticized the Japanese justice systems treatment of Kelly.

Suspects in Japan are not allowed to have a lawyer present during interrogations and can be detained for up to three weeks without charge and often in solitary confinement. And 99 percent of cases that go to trial end with a conviction.

While this has been a long three years for the Kelly family, this chapter has come to an end. He and Dee [his wife] can begin their next chapter in Tennessee, U.S. ambassador in Japan Rahm Emanuel said in a statement.

Kelly testified that his only intent was to give Ghosn, who was also the chief executive at Renault, a compensation package that would dissuade him from defecting to a rival automaker.

Bill Hagerty, a U.S. Senator from Kellys home state Tennessee, said he planned to welcome his constituent at the airport.

Greg has been subjected to circumstances corporate America could never contemplate, Hagerty said. Greg is innocent of the charges levied against him, he added.

The court ruling, however, does not mean an end to legal troubles faced by the former head of Nissan and alliance partner Renault, but it may be the closest the Tokyo court gets to ruling on Ghosns culpability.

Ghosn is beyond the reach of Japanese prosecutors while in Lebanon. He is unable to leave without risking arrest.

In addition to the charge of hiding his earnings, Ghosn is also accused of enriching himself at his employers expense through $5 million of payments to a Middle East car dealership, and for temporarily transferring personal investment losses to his former employers books.

Ghosn has denied all the accusations against him.

By Tim Kelly and Satoshi Sugiyama
Containers are seen at the loading terminal Altenwerder in the harbour of Hamburg, Germany on Feb. 3, 2016. (Fabian Bimmer/Reuters)

German Imports Exceeded Exports in 2021 Trade With Russia: Stats Office

BERLIN German imports from Russia exceeded exports last year because prices for imported crude oil and natural gas had risen sharply, Germanys Federal Statistics Office reported on Thursday.

In the prior year, Germany had attained its first export surplus with Russia since 1993, the office added.

The trade data highlight Germanys reliance for energy on Russia, which supplies more than a third of Europes gas.

The chief executive of German utility Uniper earlier this year pegged Russias share of Germanys gas supply at the half, although this can fluctuate from month to month.

Economy Minister Robert Habeck said on Wednesday that Germany is prepared should Russia stop exporting gas to the country, Europes largest economy.

Germanys overall export surplus dropped by 4.2 percent to 172.9 billion euros in 2021 on a year earlier, the fifth consecutive year the surplus was down, the office said.
Delays in the transfer of cargo continue in Southern California as vessels line the horizon waiting offload containers into the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, Calif., on Oct. 27, 2021. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times)

Global Shipping Company to Bring Business, Revenue to Florida Port

PUNTA GORDA, FloridaDuring the height of the supply chain crisis, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis invited global shipping companies to utilize Floridas ports to ease the burden on backlogged California ports and expedite deliveries.

DeSantis announced on March 4 that Sea Lead, a major container service, will be docking at JAXPORT as the last port of call on the Asian East Coast (AEC) rotation, thus connecting Jacksonville to four Asian locations. According to Sea Leads website, the new weekly service will commence March 7, 2022.

The governors office said in a written statement that Sea Leads move to JAXPORT is due to berth availability, the strong labor force available in the area, and infrastructure that connects the freight to consumers.

In addition, JAXPORT has same-day truck access to 98 million U.S. consumers and the new service is expected to bring 400-500 loaded containers into JAXPORT that is estimated to bring in $400,000 in new revenue, the statement said.

The governor had visited JAXPORT in October specifically to invite companies that were experiencing supply chain issues at other ports to bring their business to Florida. 

In the midst of severe supply chain disruptions, we made a public effort to get companies to bring more cargo to Florida ports, and we have seen great results, DeSantis told reporters. Floridas continued investment in our seaports and transportation infrastructure make this exciting announcement possible.

Cargo containers are stacked at the Port of Long Beach, Calif., on Oct. 27, 2021. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times)

Commenting on the new service, Cho Kit Wei, Managing Director, Sea Lead, said: Port congestion has been a challenge for everyone recently and the AEC will allow us to service ports that are more efficient for our customers.

He said he was confident that the markets would respond well to the service.

Privately owned Sea Lead Shipping Pte Ltd is a global shipping line that was founded in 2017 and headquartered in Singapore. Sea Lead services 18 countries. Wei said he is focused on simplifying international trade among major economies and between emerging markets.

DeSantis said he would continue to invest in Floridas infrastructure in order to keep the supply chain moving.

One billion has been invested in Floridas seaports since 2019 so that they can handle a great amount of cargo. Investments have also been made in roadways to ensure freight could be moved into the ports. The governor has proposed $10.4 billion in the Freedom First budget dedicated to the states transportation infrastructure.

Wei said that Sea Lead has been looking at South Atlantic ports to avoid congestion at the Port of Long Beach.
A person searches on Google at night in Saint Petersburg, Russia, on Nov. 8, 2017. (Aleksei/Adobe Stock)

Google Suspends Ad Sales in Russia, Including on YouTube, State-Funded Publisher Sites

Google has suspended selling of all online advertising in Russia, including on its YouTube platform, the company said on Thursday.

In light of the extraordinary circumstances, were pausing Google ads in Russia, Google said in a statement to The Wrap. The situation is evolving quickly, and we will continue to share updates when appropriate.

The spokesperson said the suspension applies to Russian state-funded publisher sites, apps, YouTube channels, and advertisers.

The Epoch Times has contacted a Google spokesperson for comment.

Earlier this week, Google moved to block content from Russian state-funded media outlets RT and Sputnik across Europe.

The company said in a statement that it was blocking YouTube channels connected to the two media outlets in the EU, effective immediately, due to the ongoing situation in Ukraine.

This builds on our indefinite pause of monetization of Russian state-funded media across our platforms, meaning media outlets such as RT are not allowed to monetize their content or advertise on our platforms, the company said in a blog post.

Prior to that, Google barred both RT and Sputnik, as well as several other Russian channels from earning money for ads on their websites, apps, and YouTube videos, in line with recent EU sanctions.

It also added a Sensitive Event update that blocks ads related to the conflict. The update aims to provide a safe advertising ecosystem during events with significant social, cultural, or political impact, such as civil emergencies, natural disasters, public health emergencies, terrorism and related activities, conflict, or mass acts of violence.

Effective immediately, due to an ongoing sensitive event (the war in Ukraine), we are pausing ads from and for Russian Federation state-funded media, the company said in the update.

Googles other services, such as maps and YouTube remain available in Russia and continue to provide access to global information and perspectives, the company said.

The Wall Street Journal reported earlier on Thursday that the Russian communications watchdog Roskomnadzor had demanded that Google stop showing online-video ads it described as false political information about Ukraine that aimed to misinform the Russian audience about the events taking place in the country.

The watchdog reportedly claimed that Googles YouTube video service was running large advertising campaigns to misinform the Russian audience which it said were aimed at creating a distorted perception of current events and fueling protests, according to the publication.

Thousands of people have been arrested in Russia in recent days for protesting against President Vladimir Putins invasion of neighboring Ukraine.

On Wednesday, the deputy head of Roskomnadzor, Vadim Subbotin, said that Russia is considering amending its legislation to allow it the watchdog to block Google if it fails to comply with domestic internet law.

The current law does not stipulate blocking [Google], it stipulates handing out an administrative fine Zharov was cited as saying by Russian news agency Interfax.

But you understand that if we reach a dead end, then at the legislative level we have every opportunity to resolve this issue. If the state sees that some foreign company is not complying with Russian legislation consistently and systematically, then the state amends the law, and for non-compliance with Russian laws, a more severe punishment is possiblesuch as blocking, Subbotin said.

The Russian regulators alleged demand is part of the Kremlins wider crackdown on what it deems as unofficial reporting of the invasion of Ukraine.

On Friday, the countrys parliament will meet in a special session to consider legalizing a bill that would make such reporting a crime that is punishable by up to 15 years in prison.
A Ukrainian military serviceman aims with a next generation light anti-tank weapon (NLAW), a Swedish-British anti-tank missile launcher, during a drill at the firing ground of the International Center for Peacekeeping and Security, near Lviv, Ukraine on Jan. 28, 2022. (AFP via Getty Images)

Countries Flood Ukraine With Military Support After Zelenskys Appeal

Two days after Russia fired the first shots on Ukraine on Feb. 24, President Volodymyr Zelensky shared a video saying he needs ammunition, not a ride, referring to the U.S. offer of asylum to the besieged head of state.

Since then, 15 countries have sent military hardware to Ukraine amid Russias continued invasion.

The majority of arms and supplies from ally nations are being sent via Ukraines 310-mile border with Poland, which has become an important lifeline for both supplies and equipment and for refugees looking to flee the conflict.

Some border nations have chosen to not allow military equipment bound for Ukraine to pass through their territory out of fear of Russian retaliation.

On Feb 28, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said his country wouldnt allow deadly weapons to be transported through Hungarys territory while reiterating that the government doesnt want to be involved in the RussiaUkraine war. Szijjarto cited security concerns for Hungarian citizens as one of the primary factors in the decision.

Despite supply chain and shipping challenges, millions of dollars of ordnance continue to flow into Ukraine from two continents.

Airmen and civilians from the 436th Aerial Port Squadron palletize ammunition, weapons, and other equipment bound for Ukraine at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, on Jan. 21, 2022. (U.S. Air Force/Mauricio Campino/Handout via Reuters)

United States

On Feb. 26, U.S. President Joe Biden authorized the State Department to send $350 million in weapons to Ukraine. Among the hardware on the list are Javelin anti-tank weapons, anti-aircraft systems, ammunition, and body armor.

The United States reaffirms its unwavering support for Ukraines sovereignty and territorial integrity within its internationally recognized borders, extending to its territorial waters, U.S. Acting Permanent Representative Aud-Frances McKernan said regarding the RussiaUkraine war.

McKernan then stated, per Biden, that neither the United States nor NATO had any desire or intention to engage in a conflict with Russia, clarifying that theres no threat to Moscow from either.

This is the third time Biden has used his presidential drawdown authority to send emergency security assistance, now totaling $1 billion, from U.S. reserves to Ukraine.

It is another clear signal that the United States stands with the people of Ukraine as they defend their sovereign, courageous, and proud nation, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said.

Canada

The Canadian government approved an additional $25 million in military aid to Ukraine on Feb. 27.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that the country would send $7.8 million worth of lethal equipment to the European nation during a Feb. 14 press conference, in anticipation of a Russian attack.

The intent of this support from Canada and other partners is to deter further Russian aggression, Trudeau said regarding the initial shipment.

Germany

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz speaks during a news conference in Berlin on Jan. 18, 2022. (Hannibal Hanschke/POOL/Reuters)

German Chancellor Olaf Sholz announced on Feb. 26 that Germany would deliver 1,000 anti-tank weapons and 500 Stinger missiles to our friends in Ukraine.

Scholz said that Feb. 24 marked a watershed in the history of our continent, asserting that Russian President Vladimir Putin is jeopardizing the long-term security of Europe, which he said cant be achieved in opposition to Russia.

Sweden

In a departure from its decades-long neutrality, the Swedish government approved the shipment of 5,000 anti-tank weapons, 135,000 field rations, 5,000 helmets, and 5,000 pieces of body armor.

My conclusion is now that our security is best served by us supporting Ukraines ability to defend itself against Russia, Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson said on Feb. 28.

She said this was the first time Sweden had sent weapons to a country at war since the Soviet Union attacked Finland in 1939.

France

On Feb. 26, an army spokesperson said France would send defensive military equipment to Ukraine to aid in the resistance effort against Russia.

Its not only the Ukrainian people who are bereaved by the war  its all the peoples of Europe, French President Emmanuel Macron said.

United Kingdom

On Jan. 17, UK Secretary of Defense Ben Wallace said the UK would provide self-defense weapons and training to Ukraine amid the build-up of Russian troops near the border separating the latter two countries.

In light of the increasingly threatening behavior from Russia and in line with our previous support, the UK will shortly be providing a further package of military support to Ukraine, Prime Minister Boris Johnson told Parliament on Feb. 23.

Johnson elaborated that the second military support package included both lethal and nonlethal aid.

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson speaks during a joint press conference with the prime minister of Estonia and the secretary-general of NATO at the Tapa Army Base in Tallinn, Estonia, on March 1, 2022. (Leon Neal/Pool/AFP via Getty Images)

Belgium

Responding to a direct request from Kyiv, the nation opted to send 2,000 machine guns to the Ukrainian army and 3,800 tons of fuel on Feb. 26.

Netherlands

As of Feb. 26, the Dutch government has said its delivering 50 Panzerfaust 3 anti-tank weapons with 400 missiles to Ukraine to help with the resistance effort against Russia. Additionally, 200 Stinger anti-aircraft missiles were promised, along with helmets, shard vests, and sniper rifles.

Czech Republic

Formerly occupied by Russian troops during the Soviet era, the Czech government sent 4,000 artillery shells worth $1.7 million to Ukraine in January. The Czech Ministry of Defense released a statement on Feb. 26 saying it would also ship machine guns, submachine guns, assault rifles, and pistols together with ammunition at an estimated value of $8.6 million.

Italy

Joining the growing list of countries providing military aid to Ukraine, on Feb. 28, the Italian cabinet pledged to dispatch Stinger missiles, mortars, and MILAN or Panzerfaust anti-tank weapons. Among the items included in the defense package are Browning heavy machine guns, MG-type light machine guns, and counter-IED systems.

Portugal

Upon request from Ukrainian officials, the Portuguese Ministry of Defense announced on Feb. 26 that it would deliver military equipment, including vests, night vision goggles, grenades, ammunition, complete portable radios, analog repeaters, and automatic G3 rifles.

A German soldier holds a Heckler & Koch G36 assault rifle at a military training ground on Feb. 13, 2014, near Weisskeissel, Germany. (AP Photo/Arno Burgi)

Greece

The Balkan nation sent defense equipment and medical supplies on two C-130 aircraft from Athens on Feb. 27 at the request of Ukrainian authorities.

Romania

Another former satellite state of the Soviet Union, Romanian government spokesman Dan Carbunaru said the country would ship ammunition and military equipment on Feb 27.

Spain

On March 2, Spanish Minister of Defense Margarita Robles announced that the nation would send defensive equipment to Ukraine.

In this first shipment that will go aboard two planes, we expect to send 1,370 anti-tank grenade launchers, 700,000 rifles, and machine-gun rounds and light machine guns, Robles said.

Finland

Finnish President Sauli Vainamo Niinisto announced on Feb. 28 that Finland would send an arms support package to Ukraine. The delivery would include 2,500 assault rifles, 150,000 cartridges, 1,500 single-shot anti-tank weapons, and 70,000 combat ration packages.
Highest Risk Is Behind Us: Ontario on Course to Lift Mask Mandate by End of March, Says Moore

Ontarios chief medical officer of health says the province can anticipate the lifting of mandatory masking requirements by the end of March if the key public health indicators for COVID-19 continue to improve.

Dr. Kieran Moore said while Ontario lifted the capacity limits for all indoor public settings and ended proof of vaccination requirements on March 1, masking requirements remain in place for now.

Well be monitoring the data in the coming weeks. I do agree with the premier and the [health] minister that because the trends look so good that we can anticipateif the trends continueremoving mandatory masking by the end of March, he told reporters on March 3.

Moore said the percentage of people who tested positive for COVID-19 is stable and new admissions to hospitals and intensive care units have been declining in Ontario. The number of outbreaks in high-risk settings, such as in hospitals and long-term care homes, are also dropping.

We are removing measures over time, and that is because we have hospital capacity, we have capacity to care for Ontarians if necessary, we have ICU capacity, he said, adding that the highest risk is behind us.

We saw the risk of hospitalization peak around the third week of January. And weve had declining rates from 4,000 down to around 800 Ontarians in hospital now, testing positive with COVID-19. But it does not mean the risk is gone and hence the reason were keeping masking, and delaying removing that at a population level for the next couple of weeks as we follow the data.

No Increased Risk From Omicron Sub-variant

Moore said the government is paying close attention to wastewater surveillance, which is now a key indicator to track the transmission of COVID-19 in communities. He said that although a rise in the Omicron sub-variant BA.2 has been found in the province, most sampling sites show a downward or stable trend in COVID detections.

While BA.2 is very similar to BA.1 Omicron sub-variant that is currently dominant in Ontario, we know that it is 30 percent more transmissible and will likely become the sub-variant in the coming weeks, he said.

He noted that there hasnt been any increased risk of hospitalization due to BA.2, which is taking over as the dominant strain among the Omicron sub-variants.

The only concern is the transmissibility factor, so it can spread quite quickly, and there are some studies that show a very small risk of reinfection. If youve had BA.1, you can get a risk of reinfection with a BA.2 variant but that seems to be a very small proportion of all the cases, Moore said.

He also said that 30 to 40 percent of Ontarians likely have enhanced immunity due to recent natural exposure to COVID-19 infection, which should be strong enough to prevent a rebound in case numbers even in the face of BA.2.

Thirty to 40 percent of Ontarians have had exposure to COVID, and that combination of natural immunity plus vaccine immunity is building a strong wall of defence for Ontario against BA.2 and potentially a recurrence of Delta. So thats good news from our vantage point that, again, is enabling us to safely open in a staged, phased manner in Ontario.
The companys logo is seen outside of an IKEA Group store in Saint-Herblain near Nantes, France, on March 22, 2021. (Stephane Mahe/Reuters)

IKEA Suspends Operations in Russia, Affecting 17 Stores

The parent company of IKEA announced on March 3 that it will close all of its stores in Russia, stopping production in the country and halting all exports and imports to and from Russia and Belarus, as Western companies begin to curb business with Russia since its invasion of Ukraine.

Ingka operates seventeen stores and one distribution center in Russia.

The two companies said in a joint statement that the war in Ukraine has already had a huge human impact and is also resulting in serious disruptions to supply-chain and trading conditions.

The devastating war in Ukraine is a human tragedy, and our deepest empathy and concerns are with the millions of people impacted, they said.

For all of these reasons, the company groups have decided to temporarily pause IKEA operations in Russia.

Ingka, one of the worlds biggest shopping center owners, said its other 14 locations across Russia operating under its Mega brand will remain open to ensure that the many people in Russia have access to their daily needs and essentials such as food, groceries, and pharmacies.

The worlds biggest furniture brand, Inter IKEA Group and Ingka Holding BV, the largest owner of IKEA stores worldwide, will also likely raise its prices by an average of 12 percent this fiscal year, up from the 9 percent flagged in December, amid rising prices for raw material costs and supply chain disruptions.

Inter IKEA is in charge of supply and the manufacturing of products, while Ingka is the main global retailer, owning 392 of its stores around the world.

Inter IKEA Core Business Supply Manager Henrik Elm said in a joint interview with Ingka Group Retail Operations Manager Tolga Oncu, that the decision was made before the European Union approved new sanctions against Belarus on March 3 for supporting Russias invasion of Ukraine.

Inter IKEA has not yet decided whether to raise prices at its stores as a result of the Ukraine crisis, according to Elm.

IKEA is one of the first major Western firms to halt business with Belarus.

We couldnt offer safety and security of people working in our supply chainpassing the border et cetera was simply too risky. Then, on top of that, the consequences of different sanctions altogether made it simply not possible to operate any longer, said Elm regarding Belarus.

IKEA produces chipboards and wood-based products at three sites in Russia, with around 50 direct suppliers in the country that produce a wide range of goods, the bulk of which are sold in Russia.

Russian-produced products that are exported to other markets make up less than 0.5 percent of IKEAs inventory.

Belarus is primarily a sourcing market for IKEA and most of the goods manufactured there, primarily of wood-based products, mattresses, and sofas, are sold in Russia.

Top brands from M&S to Apple, Jaguar Land Rover, Expedia, and Coca-Cola have already suspended operations in Russia, as a wave of international companies are leaving due to the war and the consequent sanctions against the country.

The decision to mothball operations will affect 15,000 workers in Russia, after a similar situation with 416 workers in Ukraine, where its one store and online operations have been suspended since the start of the invasion on Feb. 24.

Through last August last year, Russia was IKEAs 10th-biggest market with retail sales of 1.6 billion euros ($1.8 billion), or 4 percent of total retail sales.

Oncu, in a joint interview with Elm, promised that all staff in Russia would get paid, in rubles, for at least three months.

The company groups will secure employment and income stability and provide support to them and their families in the region, said IKEA.
Eduardo Nicolas Alvear Gonzalez smokes marijuana in the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. (U.S. Department of Justice/Screenshot via The Epoch Times)

Jan. 6 Doobie Smoker Sentenced to 2 Years Probation, $1,000 Fine

A Los Angeles man infamously dubbed the Capitol Rotunda Doobie Smoker for appearing in a cloud of marijuana smoke and handing out joints to protesters on Jan. 6, 2021, was sentenced in federal court Thursday to 24 months probation and a $1,000 fine.

Eduardo Nicolas Alvear Gonzalez, 33, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Christopher R. Cooper to probation on one count of parading, demonstrating or picketing in a Capitol building, a misdemeanor. As part of a plea agreement, three other charges were dismissed.

Alvear will not be subjected to the 90 days jail time sought by federal prosecutors. In addition to the $1,000 fine, Alvear was ordered to pay $500 restitution to the Architect of the Capitol to defray the cost of damage done on Jan. 6. Judge Cooper also ordered Alvear to perform 200 hours of community service.

Alvears nickname on social media, the Capitol Rotunda Doobie Smoker, references one of the slang terms for a marijuana cigarette.

Alvear, a self-employed filmmaker and social media personality, drew fire from Judge Cooper and prosecutor Anne Veldhuis for appearances on social media since pleading guilty.

Appeared in HBO Jan. 6 Documentary

I believe deterrence is especially important to this defendant, because he has not made any sincere expressions of remorse, Veldhuis said. To the contrary, he has constantly mis-characterized and glorified the events of January 6th.

He appeared in an HBO documentary, Veldhuis said. He made recent media appearances in November. Those statements all promote misinformation and they call into question his likelihood of recidivating.

Alvear entered the Capitol from the Upper West Terrace at 2:36 p.m. after shouting, Were charging the Capitol! prosecutors alleged.

After walking through Statuary Hall, Alvear went into the Rotunda, where he proceeded to smoke a pipe filled with marijuana before later smoking a joint.

He then took out multiple marijuana joints he was carrying in his fanny pack and distributed them to other rioters in the Rotunda, prosecutors wrote in their sentencing memorandum.

Eduardo Nicolas Alvear Gonzalez, 33, shows himself lighting up at the Capitol during a broadcast on Jan. 7, 2021. (U.S. Department of Justice/Screenshot via The Epoch Times.

Asked by a protester why he was smoking pot in the Capitol, he replied, freedom, court records said. Alvear had a medical marijuana card from California, but it was expired, according to his sentencing memorandum.

Alvear did a livestream broadcast on Jan. 7, 2021, and gave running commentary, prosecutors said. During the broadcast, he remarked, Here it is, me blazing up at the Capitol. Mary jane.

A 45-day jail sentencein addition to 45 days time already servedsends a stronger message, Veldhuis told the judge.

After Jan. 6, Alvear publicized the attack and promoted the idea that the rioters were patriots,' Veldhuis said. And he did so using his own photographs and videos he recorded while committing the crime to which he has pled guilty.

Alvear told Judge Cooper he has remorse for going into the Capitol. The jail time he served before being released was a great teacher, he said. He also disavowed the nickname.

I dont want to associate as a doobie smoker; that was never my term. Im moving away from doobie smoker. Im a filmmaker, not someone who smokes weed like that.

No Political Prisoners

Judge Cooper, however, wasnt buying it. He chided Alvear for using social media to profit from his Jan. 6 experience. He also criticized him for spreading the idea that defendants held at the Central Detention Facility in Washington are political prisoners.

These folks are getting their due process, Cooper said. You got all the due process that you were entitled to, and thats why you are free today.

So dont tell me that you were some sort of political prisoner. And if somebody on one of these shows you go on suggests that, maybe you should correct the record.

Judge Cooper asked Alvear if he knows how many people died on Jan. 6. Alvear cited Ashli Babbitt, who was shot to death by Capitol Police Lt. Michael Byrd; and Capitol Police officer Michael Sicknick, who died of a stroke on Jan. 7.

Five people lost their lives that day, including Ashli Babbitt, Judge Cooper said. And four other members of law enforcement took their own lives afterward as a result of the trauma that they experienced that day.

So I want you to think about that, in terms of how dangerous it was, when you go on some of these shows and post your podcasts. Maybe some acknowledgment of the victims and all of the law enforcement officers who were hurt but did not lose their lives.

Prosecutors accused Eduardo Nicolas Alvear Gonzalez of profiting from being at the U.S. Capitol Jan. 6, 2021. (U.S. Department of Justice/Screenshot via The Epoch Times)

Four supporters of President Donald J. Trump lost their lives on Jan. 6, including Babbitt. A police officer died on Jan. 7 of a stroke.

Rosanne Boyland, 34, was crushed by a stampede after police deployed some type of gas in the Lower West Terrace tunnel and pushed rioters out.

Video shows an unconscious Boyland on the ground, being beaten in the head and body by Metropolitan Police Department officer Lila Morris. Boylands family believes Rosanne was still alive when she was struck repeatedly with a wooden walking stick.

The medical examiner ruled her death a result of an accidental overdose of her medication for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. The Boyland family has hired its own forensic pathologist to examine the autopsy records.

Kevin Greeson, 55, died of a heart attack, according to the DC medical examiner. One witness said that just before he collapsed, Greeson was struck by a projectile from munitions police fired into the tightly packed crowd of protesters. Benjamin Phillips, 50, died from hypertensive cardiovascular disease, according to the medical examiner. Witnesses said Phillips was also struck by debris from a flashbang before he collapsed.

Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick died the night of Jan. 7 from a stroke. Two witnesses recently told independent journalist Tayler Hansen they twice tried to warn police that Sicknick might be having a stroke: once around 3 p.m. and again just before 8 p.m. They said they were ignored. One of the men said he had been an emergency medical technician in the military and offered his help.

One hundred and forty police officers were injured on Jan. 6.

Judge Cooper discounted Alvears statements that he was at the Capitol that day to document the event.

I dont care what your political views are. Youre not here because of your political views. Dont even get started with that, okay? You know why youre here, Cooper said.

And frankly, you say you were there as a videographer to film what was going on, but thats inconsistent with your lighting up and giving joints to everybody. I think you were there to draw attention to yourself in some way, and I think youre still doing that, alright?
Japan's Prime Minister and ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) leader Fumio Kishida speaks during a news conference at the party headquarters in Tokyo, on Nov. 1, 2021. (Rodrigo Reyes Marin/Pool Photo via AP)

Japan Imposes More Sanctions on Russia as Kishida Pledges to Accept Ukrainian Refugees

Japans government on Thursday imposed sanctions on four additional major Russian banks and froze the assets of Russian oligarchs in a bid to ramp up pressure on Russia after its invasion of Ukraine.

The Finance Ministry said that the assets of VTB Bank, Sovcombank, Novikombank, and Otkritie bank will be blocked starting from April 2 as a result of the sanctions. Japan has previously sanctioned three Russian banks, namely VEB, Promsvyazbank, and Bank Rossiya.

The assets of Russian oligarchs would also be blocked in Japan. The Japanese government also imposed sanctions on 18 more Russian officials and seven Belarusian leaders, including Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko.

The ministry added that Japan will tighten controls on exports of controlled items to Belarus.

The new sanctions come on the heels of Prime Minister Fumio Kishidas recent announcement that Japan will sanction Belarus for allowing Russian forces to use its territory to launch their invasion of Ukraine.

As the only nation to have suffered atomic bombings in war, and as a prime minister elected from the atomic-bombed Hiroshima, I have insisted in summit diplomacy and international meetings that intimidation by, or let alone a use of nuclear weapons will never be tolerated, Kishida was quoted saying on Thursday by Kyodo News.

Prior to the new sanctions, Kishida said that he had conveyed to Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki over the phone that Japan would be willing to open doors for Ukrainian refugees.

The United Nations has estimated that close to 700,000 people have fled Ukraine to neighboring countries since the invasion began nearly a week ago, in what the U.N. Refugee Agency says looks set to become Europes largest refugee crisis this century. Around half of the refugees are currently in Poland.

To demonstrate solidarity with the Ukrainian people, we will proceed to accept those who are seeking refuge in a third country, Kishida said, adding that the initial focus would be on people with relatives or friends in Japan.

Kishida also asked Morawiecki to assist any Japanese citizens caught in Ukraine to enter Poland via land routes, a request to which the Polish premier had assured him of full assistance.

The Japanese prime minister also held talks with German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier on Wednesday, and said that the two countries will work closely on the Russia-Ukraine crisis.

Japan has joined the United States and other Western countries in banning Russian banks from the SWIFT global interbank network. It also blocked the assets of several Russian leaders, including President Vladimir Putin, and prohibited exports to 49 Russian entities.

Japan will firmly implement [the sanctions] together with other members of G-7, finance minister Shunichi Suzuki told reporters on Thursday, while referring to the Group of Seven advanced nations.

Japans government has also pledged to extend $100 million in emergency humanitarian assistance to Ukraine and to allow visa extensions to any Ukrainians in Japan.

Reuters contributed to this report.
Japan to Freeze Assets of Four More Russian Banks From April 2

TOKYOJapan will freeze the assets of four additional Russian banks from April 2, Finance Minister Shunichi Suzuki said on Thursday, taking to seven the total number Tokyo has slapped with such sanctions.

Prime Minister Fumio Kishidas cabinet approved the decision to freeze the assets of VTB Bank, Sovcombank, Novikombank and Otkritie, the Ministry of Finance said in a document.

The move will take effect on April 2, a ministry official said. The banks are all closely related to the Russian government.

The size of their assets was not immediately known but VTB Bank is the second-largest Russian bank in terms of assets, the official said.

Targets of asset freezes also include dozens of individuals including Aleksandr Lukashenko, president of Belarus, which has provided footholds for Russias invasion of Ukraine. Tokyo has also decided to ban Belarus-bound exports.

Japan will firmly implement (the sanctions) together with other members of G7, the Group of Seven advanced nations, Suzuki told reporters.

Washington has imposed several rounds of sanctions so far, including against Russian President Vladimir Putin and the central bank. The EU on Monday imposed sanctions on 26 prominent people over Russias invasion of Ukraine, including oligarchs and businesspeople active in the oil, banking, and finance sectors.

Tokyos latest decision came on top of the governments announcement on Tuesday that it will freeze assets of Russia state-owned Promsvyazbank and Vnesheconombank, as well as the countrys central bank.

Tokyos banking sector sanctions have followed in the footsteps of the West with the addition of the four banks, which the European Union has decided to exclude from the SWIFT international payments network.

The official said there may be more to come: We cannot tell whether this is it or not.

By Tetsushi Kajimoto
LA City Council Missed 95 Meetings Due to COVID

The Los Angeles City Council resumed its regular schedule on March 4including regular Friday meetingsfor the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns began in March 2020.

During that time, the city council held only eight Friday meetings, while opting out of 95 Friday meetingsnot including recessed Fridays.

For 15 monthsfrom March 27, 2020, until June 18, 2021the city council didnt hold a single Friday meeting.

While council meetings were mostly held online during the pandemic, and council members met remotely, staff members from the citys administrative office were required to be present in council chambers for each meeting.

The meetings were skipped in order to give those staff members enough time to see if they developed COVID-19 symptoms before the next council meeting, a spokesperson for Council President Nury Martinez told the Epoch Times.

We have a responsibility to the people of Los Angeles to keep our government operating while protecting the safety and welfare of city employees, the spokesperson said. To hold Friday council meetings, in-person or virtually, support staff are needed on-site to assist with programming and technology. As cases continued to rise, the council president wanted to limit in-person interactions and protect her colleagues and their families from potential exposure.

The city councils regular meetings are scheduled for every Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday at 10 a.m.

The council has been meeting remotely since Jan. 4, due to a rise in COVID-19 Omicron cases.

Prior to that, meetings went virtual at the onset of the pandemic from March 2020 until June 15, 2021, when the council returned to in-person meetings.

The council renewed a motion to meet remotely for one more month on March 1, though City Manager Cynthia Kurtz informed the city council that next month the council would then have a discussion on another extension or opening the meetings once again.
A general view of the U.N. Security Council meeting at U.N. headquarters in New York on Feb. 28, 2022. (Angela Weiss/AFP via Getty Images)

Russia-Ukraine (March 4): US, Allies Condemn Russia at UN Over Its Seizure of Ukraine Nuclear Plant

The latest on the RussiaUkraine crisis, March 4. Click here for updates from March 3.

US, Allies Condemn Russia at UN Over Its Seizure of Ukraine Nuclear Plant

The United States and its allies heavily criticized Russia on Friday at the United Nations over its shelling and seizure overnight in Ukraine of Europes biggest nuclear power plant, and some demanded that Moscow not let such an attack happen again.

Many of the Security Councils 15 envoys expressed grave concern and shock, warning against the possibility of a repeat of the 1986 Chernobyl disastera nuclear accident in Ukraine when it was part of the then-Soviet Union considered to be the worst in history.

They said the attack was against international humanitarian law and urged Moscow to refrain from any military operations targeting the nuclear facilities and allow Ukrainian personnel to be allowed onto the plant to carry out their work.

The world narrowly averted a nuclear catastrophe last night, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, told an emergency meeting of the Security Council, convened following the seizure of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southeastern Ukraine by Russian troops.

Russias attack last night put Europes largest nuclear power plant at grave risk. It was incredibly reckless and dangerous. And it threatened the safety of civilians across Russia, Ukraine, and Europe, Thomas-Greenfield said.

___

CNN to Stop Broadcasting in Russia

CNN announced on Friday it will stop broadcasting in Russia after the country introduced a new misinformation law that will criminalize anyone sharing deliberately false information about the actions of Russian military personnel in Ukraine.

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday signed into law the measure that will penalize those who spread such information with fines or prison sentences. The law would impose up to three years prison time or fines, but the maximum punishment rises to 15 years for cases considered to have led to severe consequences.

Lawmakers also passed amendments to the criminal code that would impose fines for people calling for sanctions against Russia.

CNN will stop broadcasting in Russia while we continue to evaluate the situation and our next steps moving forward, a spokesperson for the media said on Friday.

Other news outlets have announced they will suspend reporting from Russia. Bloomberg, the BBC, and the CBC were among the outlets that will temporarily suspend the work of their journalists there.

Read the full article here.

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Ukraine Security Council Urges Escapeways

The head of Ukraines security council called on Russia to create humanitarian corridors to allow children, women, and the elderly to escape the fighting.

Oleksiy Danilov said Friday more than 840 children have been wounded in the war. A day earlier, the Ukrainian government put the death toll among children at 28.

He spoke ahead of the latest talks between Ukrainian and Russian delegations, planned for this weekend.

The question of humanitarian corridors is question No. 1., Danilov said on Ukrainian television. Children, women, elderly peoplewhat are they doing here?

Russian troops have encircled and blockaded several large cities in the south of the country, including Mariupol, trying to cut Ukraine off from the Black and Azov seas.

Ukrainian officials have asked for help from the Red Cross in organizing corridors, describing the situation in the blockaded cities as close to a catastrophe.

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Facebook Access Blocked in Russia

Russias communications agency Roskomnadzor said Friday that it will block access to Facebook inside Russia, claiming discrimination against Russian media outlets since October 2020.

A statement from the agency posted online said Facebook has engaged in 26 cases of discrimination against Russian media and information resources.

In recent days, the Meta-owned platform restricted access to Russian outlets including Russia Today (RT), Sputnik News, Lenta, Gazeta, RIA Novosti, and the Zvezda TV channel, according to Roskomnadzor. It doesnt appear that TASS, a Russian state-run news agency, has been banned from the platform.

The agency said that Facebooks ban is against Russian federal law on measures to influence persons involved in violations of fundamental human rights and freedoms, the rights and freedoms of citizens of the Russian Federation.

Read the full article here

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Zelenskyy Accuses NATO of Allowing Bombings

In a bitter and emotional speech, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy criticized NATO for refusing to impose a no-fly zone over Ukraine, saying it will fully untie Russias hands as it escalates its attack from the air.

The alliance has given the green light to the bombing of Ukrainian cities and villages by refusing to create a no-fly zone, Zelenskyy said in a nighttime address.

All that the alliance was able to do today was to pass through its procurement system 50 tons of diesel fuel for Ukraine. Perhaps so we could burn the Budapest Memorandum, Zelenskyy said, referring to the 1994 security guarantees given to Ukraine in exchange for the withdrawal of its Soviet-era nuclear weapons.

On Friday, NATO refused to impose a no-fly zone, warning that to do so could provoke widespread war in Europe with nuclear-armed Russia.

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Pentagon: Ukrainians Have Stalled Large Russian Military Convoy Near Kyiv

The 40-mile-long Russian military convoy heading toward Kyiv was stalled by Ukraines military this week, said Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby on Friday.

Kirby told reporters that U.S. officials have obtained reports that a bridge was blown up that we believe was in the path there, adding, We also have indications that the Ukrainians have struck the convoy elsewhere and on vehicles.

Read the full article here

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G-7 Nations Condemn Attack on Ukraine Civilians

The Group of Seven (G-7) foreign ministers on Friday said they were deeply concerned with the humanitarian toll from Russias continuing strikes against Ukraines civilian population and added they will hold accountable those responsible for war crimes.

We reemphasize that indiscriminate attacks are prohibited by international humanitarian law. We will hold accountable those responsible for war crimes, including indiscriminate use of weapons against civilians, G-7 foreign ministers said in a joint statement released by the U.S. State Department.

The foreign ministers of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK, and the United States also urged Russia to stop attacks in the vicinity of Ukraines nuclear power plants.

Russian forces in Ukraine seized Europes biggest nuclear power plant on Friday in an assault that caused alarm around the world and that Washington said had risked catastrophe, although officials said later that the facility was now safe.

The G-7 foreign ministers also added their countries will continue to impose further sanctions in response to Russian aggression, which they said has been enabled by Belarus.

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US Remains Resistant to Banning Russian Oil

White House press secretary Jen Psaki on Friday reiterated that the Biden administration remains resistant for now on banning Russian oil imports, raising concerns that such a ban could have a negative impact for U.S. and European economies. She added, however, that the administration was looking at options we could take right now to cut U.S. consumption of Russian energy,

Psaki also called on Russian forces to withdraw Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in southeastern Ukraine. Russian troops seized the plant earlier Friday.

The best step for nuclear safety would be for Russia to immediately withdraw, Psaki said.

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Chinese Communist Party Wants Isolated Russia to Become Dependent on Beijing: Expert

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) hopes to capitalize on Russias current isolation by rendering it more dependent on Beijing, according to one expert.

To achieve that goal, however, Beijing will need to provide Russia with assistance that flies under the radar of Western nations, which has leveled a slew of sanctions on Moscow over its invasion of Ukraine.

Its not that China isnt willing to help Russia, said David Goldman, deputy editor of the Asia Times during a recent interview with China in Focus, a program of The Epoch Times affiliate NTD. China doesnt want to help Russia in a way that attracts the anger of the West at this point and makes its own situation more difficult.

Read the full article here

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We Want Ukraine Inside EU As Soon as Possible: EUs Sefcovic

The European Union wants Ukraine to become a member state as soon as possible, Commissioner Maros Sefcovic told journalists on Friday after a ministers meeting.

Its time for signaling that the Ukrainian people is one of the European peoples and we want them in as soon as possible, he said, but added that at the moment, the bloc needed to focus on short-term measures linked to the war.

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Putin Says Russia Is Ready for Talks With Ukraine

President Vladimir Putin says Russia is ready for talks with Ukraine but insisted that it must meet Moscows demands.

Putin told German Chancellor Olaf Scholz that Ukraine must agree to demilitarize, accept Moscows sovereignty over Crimea and surrender territory to Russia-backed rebels in the east, the Kremlin said in its readout of Fridays call.

Russian and Ukrainian negotiators on Thursday held the second of two rounds of talks, reaching a tentative agreement on setting up safe corridors to allow civilians to leave besieged Ukrainian cities and the delivery of humanitarian supplies. They also agreed to keep talking on ways to negotiate a settlement, but Putins tough demands make prospects for a compromise look dim.

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No Radiation After Fire at Nuclear Plant: UN Atomic Agency

The head of the UN atomic agency says Ukraines Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant was hit by a Russian projectile but that the building it struck was a training center and there has been no release of radiation.

Initial reports were unclear about what part of the plant was affected by a fire that broke out after the shelling late Thursday, amid Russias invasion of Ukraine.

International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director-General Rafael Mariano Grossi said Friday that the building was not part of the reactor.

Ukraine informed the IAEA on Friday that Russian forces had taken control of the plant, but the plant continued to be operated by its regular staff, Grossi said.

The fire has been extinguished.

The Ukrainian state nuclear company said three Ukrainian troops were killed and two wounded in the Russian attack.

The UN says only one reactor at the plant is operating, at about 60 percent of capacity.

Read the full article here

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NATO Rejects No-fly Zone Over Ukraine

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg says the military organization will not police a no-fly zone over Ukraine and is warning that such a move could end in a widespread war in Europe.

Speaking Friday after chairing a meeting of NATO foreign ministers, Stoltenberg said we are not going to move into Ukraine, neither on the ground, nor in the Ukrainian airspace.

Russian President Vladimir Putins forces have ramped up their attacks in Ukraine, launching hundreds of missiles and artillery strikes on cities and making significant gains in the south.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has appealed to the West to enforce a no-fly zone over his country, most recently after a fire overnight at one of Ukraines nuclear plants, the largest in Europe.

The only way to implement a no-fly zone is to send NATO fighter planes into Ukrainian airspace, and then impose that no-fly zone by shooting down Russian planes, Stoltenberg said. We understand the desperation, but we also believe that if we did that, we would end up with something that could end in a full-fledged war in Europe.

We have a responsibility as NATO allies to prevent this war from escalating beyond Ukraine, he said.

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Turkey Renews Effort to Mediate in Ukraine War

Turkeys foreign minister says Ankara wants to bring Russia and Ukraines top diplomats together for talks during an international diplomacy forum in the country next week.

Speaking Friday to reporters in Brussels where he attended a NATO meeting, Mevlut Cavusoglu said Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has confirmed his attendance at the Antalya Diplomacy Forum to be held in the Mediterranean coastal city between March 11-13.

Cavusoglu said a meeting between Lavrov and Ukraines Dmytro Kuleba could be possible, but added that he was not certain Ukrainian officials would be able to attend.

Turkey, which has close ties to both Ukraine and Russia, has been trying to balance its relations with both. It has repeatedly offered to mediate between the two.

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Russian Forces Seize Europes Largest Nuclear Plant

Russian forces on Friday seized the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plantEuropes and Ukraines largest nuclear power stationin southeastern Ukraine, the regional state administration said, following what officials said was shelling that caused a temporary fire at the site earlier in the day.

The plant is located in Enerhodar, a city on the Dnieper River. It accounts for one-quarter of Ukraines power generation.

A statement posted Friday on the website of the State Nuclear Regulatory Inspectorate of Ukraine reads: The Zaporizhzhia NPP site has been seized by the military forces of the Russian Federation.

It said that Russian forces committed shelling the Zaporizhzhia NPP site on Friday, which caused a fire at the site. The fire was extinguished by the Ukrainian State Emergency Service units. Information on the dead and injured is absent, the statement said.

Read the full article here

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Ukraine Says Fire at Biggest Nuclear Plant Extinguished

Ukrainian authorities said Friday that a fire at Europes biggest nuclear plant ignited by Russian shelling has been extinguished, and that Russian forces have taken control of the site.

The regional military administration said in a statement that the fire at the Zaporizhzhia plant in Enerhodar was extinguished, and that there is damage to the compartment of reactor No. 1 but it does not affect the safety of the power unit.

No information was immediately available about casualties.

The military administration said Russian forces took control of the site and that operational personnel are ensuring its safe operation.

Earlier plant officials had said that shelling hit an administrative building and reactor No. 1.

The town mayor and state emergency service also said the fire was extinguished.

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NATO Secretary-general Reacts to Russias Attack on Ukraines Nuclear Power Plant

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg has condemned Russias attack on a nuclear power plant in southeast Ukraine and is urging Russian President Vladimir Putin to pull his invading troops out of the country.

Stoltenberg says the shelling of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant just demonstrates the recklessness of this war, the importance of ending it, and the importance of Russia withdrawing all its troops and engaging in good faith in diplomatic efforts.

Russian forces have seized control of the nuclear site, the largest of its kind in Europe.

Stoltenbergs remarks came before he chaired a meeting Friday of U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and his NATO counterparts to take stock of the Wests response to Russias invasion of Ukraine.

Blinken is set to meet later Friday with foreign ministers from the European Union.

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Zelensky Calls for Urgent Action After Russias Attack on Ukraines Nuclear Power Plant

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky says he has informed the leaders of the United States, Britain, the European Union, and the International Atomic Energy Agency about the dire threat of nuclear disaster after Russian troops shelled a nuclear power plant.

If there is an explosionthats the end for everyone. The end for Europe. The evacuation of Europe, he said in an emotional speech in the middle of the night.

Only urgent action by Europe can stop the Russian troops. Do not allow the death of Europe from a catastrophe at a nuclear power station, he said

Hes calling on politicians and citizens to pressure Russian leadership to stop Russian troops.

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Russian Official Responds to US Senators Call to Assassinate Putin

Russia on March 4 described a U.S. senators call to assassinate Russian President Vladimir Putin as irresponsible.

Anatoly Antonov, the Russian ambassador to the United States, said the remarks were irresponsible and dangerous.

The degree of Russophobia and hatred in the USA towards Russia is off the charts. Its unbelievable that a countrys senator preaching his moral values as a guiding star to all mankind could afford a call on terrorism as a way to achieve Washingtons goals on the international arena, Antonov said in a statement released by the Russian embassy.

He also said that Its getting scary for the fate of the United States, which has such irresponsible and unprofessional politicians at the helm, and demanded an official explanation and a decisive condemnation of U.S. Sen. Lindsey Grahams (R-S.C.) comments.

Read the full article here

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Russia Retaliates Western Sanctions on Its Media Outlets by Baning Foreign News Websites

Russias state media regulator Roskomnadzor is blocking access to the websites of five international media organizations.

State news agency RIA Novosti reported Friday that the blocked websites include those of the BBC, Voice of America, and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

The sites were blocked for hosting what Roskomnadzor told RIA was false information about Russian military actions in Ukraine, including reports of attacks on civilians and the Russian militarys losses.

The five named organizations, also including Latvia-based Russian-language website Meduza and German broadcaster Deutsche Welle, are among the largest foreign news outlets with Russian-language news operations.

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Google Suspends All Ads Sales in Russia

Google is suspending sales of online ads in Russia after the countrys communications regulator demanded the tech giant stop spreading through its advertising what Moscow called false information about the Russian military in Ukraine.

The company said late Thursday that the suspension covers YouTube, search and display ads.

Google is one of the worlds biggest sellers of online ads.

The Russian regulator, Roskomnadzor, issued several notices to Google this week warning the company about spreading false information or demanding it ease restrictions on YouTube channels operated by Russian media.

Separately, Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky tweeted that the short-stay booking site is suspending all operations in Russia and its neighboring ally Belarus. Chesky did not elaborate.

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China Asked Russia to Postpone Ukraine Invasion Until After Olympics: Report

Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials allegedly knew of Russias plans to invade Ukraine in advance, and requested that the war be postponed until after the Beijing Olympics had concluded, according to Western intelligence obtained by the New York Times (NYT).

The NYT report said that the information, which was collected by Western intelligence agencies, was classified but that senior Biden administration officials and one European official confirmed their authenticity on the condition of anonymity.

The information was allegedly collected and studied in the lead up to Russias invasion of Ukraine, but those involved did not agree on how far up knowledge of the impending invasion spread among CCP officials.

If the report is credible, it could vindicate earlier warnings that China and Russia are working closely with one another to undermine the rules-based international order and to facilitate one anothers plans for Taiwan and Ukraine, respectively, behind the scenes.

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Macron Says Putin Refuses to Halt Attacks

French President Emmanuel Macron said Thursday that he has again asked his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin to halt attacks on Ukraine, but that Putin wont do it.

At this point, he refuses, Macron wrote in a Twitter post.

He confirmed that he had spoken to Putin on the phone earlier on Thursday and said he will continue the dialogue to prevent more human tragedy.

We must prevent the worst from happening, Macron also said in his post. Dialogue has to continue to protect the (civilian) population, to obtain good will gestures  to put an end to this war, Macron said.

Jack Phillips, Mimi Nguyen Ly, Zachary Stieber, Allen Zhong, Reuters, and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Lorraine and Gavin Hope at the Shen Yun Performing Arts performance at the Eventim Apollo, in London, on March 3, 2022. (Mary Mann/The Epoch Times)

LONDON, U.K.Shen Yuns performances in London have attracted many members of the British business community, who have been impressed not just by its dance and music but also by its deeper messages.

Gavin Hope, a director of a privately-owned construction company, called the performance absolutely brilliant and said he was lost for words for it.

New York-based Shen Yun is reviving traditional Chinese culture using classical Chinese dance and music. Its many short dances depict ancient legends as well as modern-day stories from inside China.

Mr. Hope said he loved the story behind it all, especially the story about the ongoing persecution of Falun Dafa, an ancient spiritual practice based on the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance.

One of the dances in Shen Yun, titled Insanity During the End of Days, recounts the events surrounding forced organ harvesting in China, which has been documented since 2006.

Mr. Hopes wife Lorraine said the dance made her emotional because we understand what goes on in China with the selling of the organs.

She said: The dancers are so passionate about the stories and telling the story through dance, and they give that back to the audience.

Shen Yun Displays a Spiritual Culture

Richard Sones and Suzanne Williams at the Shen Yun Performing Arts performance at the Eventim Apollo, in London, on March 3, 2022. (Mary Mann/The Epoch Times)

Richard Sones, a bank manager with more than 20 years of experience in fraud investigation and financial risks, also said he was particularly touched by the Shen Yun dance about organ harvesting.

Chinas rich history has been under attack by the communist regime, which has systematically destroyed, distorted, and supplanted the traditional culture with its owna reality that many in the West are not aware of.

His partner Suzanne Williams said it brings it home.

She described herself as a spiritualist and said, anything to do with the higher realms and divine is always good.

Mr. Sones said it is disappointing that while people in the West can see the traditional Chinese culture presented by Shen Yun, it is nevertheless disappearing inside China itself because it is not tolerated by the regime.

Shen Yun Is Mesmerising

Darren Wren and Justine Webb at the Shen Yun Performing Arts performance at the Eventim Apollo, in London, on March 3, 2022. (Mary Mann/The Epoch Times)

Darren Wren, owner and director of an electrical engineering company, said the Shen Yun performance was very good and the performers must have had a lot of training for a lot of time.

His partner Justine Webb said they came with their parents, who were also watching the performance

She called the whole performance absolutely incredible and mesmerising.

Its just you are fascinated by every movement on stage, she said. Its the first time that weve ever seen Chinese dancing, but were fixated on just what theyre doing.

Reporting by Mary Mann and Alexander Zhang.

The Epoch Times is a proud sponsor of Shen Yun Performing Arts. We have covered audience reactions since Shen Yuns inception in 2006.
French President Emmanuel Macron speaks during a media conference after an extraordinary EU summit on Ukraine in Brussels, on Feb. 25, 2022. (Olivier Hoslet, Pool Photo via AP)

Macron to Seek 2nd Term in Frances April Presidential Vote

PARISFrench President Emmanuel Macron formally announced Thursday that he will run for a second term in Aprils presidential election, ahead of which he is already leading in the polls.

In a letter to the French published on domestic media websites, Macron said: I am seeking your trust again. I am a candidate to invent with you, faced with the centurys challenges, a French and European singular response.

Macron, 44, had long indicated that he wanted to run in the election, scheduled to be held in two rounds on April 10 and April 24, without formally announcing it until now. But his initial campaign plans have changed since Russias invasion of Ukraine.

In the past weeks, Macron has dedicated most of his time to diplomatic talks with world leaders and coordination with European and other Western allies.

Conservative candidate Valerie Pecresse and two right-wing figures, Marine le Pen and Eric Zemmour, are expected to be Macrons main challengers.

Left-wing candidates run divided in the race, none of them appearing in a position to qualify for the run-off. Christiane Taubira dropped out of the race this week because she had not managed to get enough support.

Macrons popularity in recent months has remained relatively stable, with an approval rating hovering around 40 percent depending on polling instituteshigher than his predecessors Francois Hollande and Nicolas Sarkozy had after nearly five years in office.

Even without a formal candidacy announcement, Macron was the first candidate to receive the legally required 500 endorsements from elected officials. The rule is intended to limit the number of people running for president.

Macron said in his letter Thursday that the war in Ukraine would prevent him from campaigning as I would have liked.

Campaign events will be limited to the minimum for now, several French presidency officials said. Macron wants his duties as president at a key time for the European continent not to be disrupted by his candidacy, they stressed. France currently holds the rotating presidency of the European Union Council, giving Macron a key role in organizing the 27-nation blocs response to Russias actions.

When Macron was first elected in May 2017, he had little political experience. A former investment banker, he had been economy minister from 2014 to 2016 under Socialist President Francois Hollande.

Almost five year later, Macron noted that rarely has France faced such an accumulation of crises, listing extremist attacks, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the war in Ukraine.

Macron made changes to the economy to boost job creation and cut taxes on businesses. He notably eased rules to hire and fire workers and to make it harder to get unemployment benefits. Critics say his policies threaten the French welfare state.

He faced the first major crisis of his term when the yellow vest protest movement broke out at the end of 2018.

Named after the vests French drivers must keep in their cars for emergencies, it started with demonstrations against a planned fuel tax hike and quickly spread into a broader movement against economic injustice.

In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic led Macron to declare the country at war against the virus.

After a lockdown-fueled historic recession, his government focused on supporting the economy with a 100 billion-euro recovery plan.

The pandemic forced Macron to delay some economic reforms, including a difficult overhauling of Frances pension system that he had previously promised to push through.
Gary White after seeing his wife, Jane, before her brain operation at Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital in Perth, Australia on Feb. 1, 2022. (Scorpion Media Group)

Man Denied Entry For Second Time To See Wife Before Brain Surgery Due to COVID-19 Measures

A man is being refused entry into a Western Australian (WA) hospital to visit his wife before and after her brain surgery due to WAs new strict COVID guidelines.

For Gary White, this is the second near-identical incident after previously being turned away by hospital security for failing to show proof of vaccinationonly to be allowed in later after an outraged crowd gathered in support.

This is because prior to Mar. 3, unvaccinated visitors were not allowed to enter hospitals unless they were deemed essential visitors, and though this does not include spouses, Gary was granted an exemption.

Now, after Mar. 3the day WA reopened its interstate bordersthe rules have expanded, with the WA government ordering hospitals to enter red alert phase and denying all non-essential visitors, regardless of vaccination status.

And with the changing rules, and despite visiting regularly up until the day before on Mar. 2, Gary has been re-evaluated to no longer be eligible to see his wife.

I cant think of any words to describe it, to be honest. Every time I think about it I just want to burst into tears, Gary told The Epoch Times.

Gary White and his wife, Jane. (Gary White)

Gary explained that her initial admission into surgery was to remove a tumour in the brain. However, the discovery of an MRSA infection following the procedure meant his wife has now had to return to have part of her skull removed.

Gary said that despite the extremely stressful situation, that he was unable to stay by his wifes side before the operation, and now fears he wont be able to see his wife for up to six weeks while she recovers in hospital.

My poor wifes gone through a brain surgery and now MRSA  and to have to go through all this again, and more, and just not being able to see her to give her support so she can know that her loved ones are there. Its just wrong, Gary said.

A spokeswoman of Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital in Perth said they had been abiding by rules outlined by WA Health in order to reduce the risk of COVID entering hospitals.

While Mr Whites wife has undergone surgery, she is not in a critical condition, the spokeswoman told The Epoch Times in an email.

The visiting restrictions help us to limit our patients exposure to COVID-19 while in our care.

However, the fact that the rules prohibit individuals from visiting their husbands or wives at hospitals while still allowing for gatherings at nightclubs has baffled medical professionals.

Australian Medical Association WA President Dr Mark Duncan-Smith labelled the rules bureaucratic absurdity under the leadership of WA Premier and Labor Leader Mark McGowan.

I call on the McGowan government to immediately include spouses and partners as essential visitors, so that these people can be with their loved ones when theyre sick and unwell, Duncan-Smith said in a media conference.

Under the current arrangements, a grandmother of 80 years of age cannot visit her husband whos having a heart attack, but she can go to a nightclub on the way home. This is bordering on bureaucratic absurdity, and we call on the Government to correct this immediately.

The Epoch Times reached out to the WA government but did not receive a reply in time for publication.

As of Mar. 4, the state recorded 2,137 new cases, bringing the total to 9,660, with 21 remaining in hospital.
Man Sentenced to Death for Killing San Diego Police Officer

SAN DIEGOA man who shot two San Diego police officers, one of whom died, was sentenced to death on March 4.

Jesse Michael Gomez, 58, was convicted last year of murder and a special circumstance allegation of killing a police officer for the July 28, 2016, shooting of San Diego Police Department Officer Jonathan J.D. De Guzman, 43. The jury recommended Gomez be sentenced to death for De Guzmans slaying and also convicted him of the attempted murder of De Guzmans partner, Wade Irwin, as well as a count of being a felon in possession of a firearm.

De Guzman, a 16-year veteran of the San Diego Police Department, died at a hospital, while Irwin was hospitalized for nearly a month for a gunshot to the throat.

Gomez, who testified on his own behalf, said he did not realize the men who approached him on Acacia Grove Way that night were law enforcement and instead thought they were gang members poised to kill him.

At Gomezs sentencing hearing, San Diego Superior Court Judge Frederick Link adopted the jurys recommendation of death and rejected the contention that Gomez did not realize he was shooting at officers.

For anyone to say Mr. Gomez didnt know what was going on is ridiculous, said the judge.

In a statement to the court and De Guzmans family, Gomez said he was truly sorry for what happened, but stood by his account of how the shooting occurred.

I told the truth on what happened that night, Gomez said.

Irwin and De Guzmans wife, Jane, both spoke of the ongoing impact the murder had on them, as well as De Guzmans two children.

I dont understand how you can just take someones life without thinking of their family, especially when you are a father too, Jane De Guzman told Gomez.

She said she has tried to forgive Gomez, but was struck by what she called a lack of remorse he displayed while on the witness stand, and said she hoped he received the punishment you deserve.

Irwin said, Theres not a day that goes by when I dont think about J.D. and I miss him terribly.

The officer promised Gomez that he would be present on the date of his execution, and that he would watch just as I had to watch when you executed my partner.

Prosecutors said the two officers were patrolling Acacia Grove Way just before 11 p.m. when they spotted Gomez and another man split up and start walking along the north and south sidewalks of the street. Irwin testified that after they followed Gomez at slow speeds in their patrol car, he got out of the vehicle and asked Gomez something to the effect of Do you live around here?

Gomez testified that he only recognized that a car with its fog lights on was following him, but said he found the manner in which it was traveling pretty suspicious.

Gomez testified that after the car stopped, the headlights turned on, obscuring his vision, and a man got out and asked him, Where are you from? According to Gomez, that question is a common gang challenge, which in his experience growing up in Shelltown means a violent encounter is soon to follow.

He testified that, fearing for his life, he opened fire on the silhouette of the man who posed the question, as well as the car. When asked to describe what was running through his mind at the time, he said, I thought gang members were going to shoot and kill me.

Irwin testified that Gomez faced him with an angry, hateful look on his face, then immediately raised his hand and shot him in the throat, before walking toward the police car and firing multiple times on De Guzman.

Prosecutors argued that Gomez, who had prior run-ins with the law and was illegally carrying a firearm when he was contacted, shot the officers because he was not going to risk going to jail again.

After De Guzman was shot, Irwin drew his gun and fired on the shooter, who was running eastbound, according to the prosecution.

A blood trail from the shooting scene led police to an unconscious Gomez, who was taken into custody in a ravine off South 38th Street, a short distance from the scene, and hospitalized with a gunshot wound to his upper body.
Healthcare workers protest for the rights of staff and patients at West Anaheim Medical Center in Anaheim, Calif., on Feb. 14, 2022. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times)

Medical Lysenkoism in California

Commentary

It seems the bad medical politics wont end with the apparent waning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Last month Assemblyman Evan Low (D-Campbell) introduced Assembly Bill 2098, Physicians and surgeons: unprofessional conduct, which is scheduled to be heard March 17 before the Committee on Business and Professions.

It reads, It shall constitute unprofessional conduct for a physician and surgeon to disseminate or promote misinformation or disinformation related to COVID-19, including false or misleading information regarding the nature and risks of the virus, its prevention and treatment; and the development, safety, and effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines.

It sets up four criteriaall vagueto determine an offense:

(1) Whether the licensee deviated from the applicable standard of care. (2) Whether the licensee intended to mislead or acted with malicious intent. (3) Whether the misinformation or disinformation was demonstrated to have resulted in an individual declining opportunities for COVID-19 prevention or treatment that was not justified by the individuals medical history or condition. (4) Whether the misinformation or disinformation was contradicted by contemporary scientific consensus to an extent where its dissemination constitutes gross negligence by the licensee.

But just a couple decades ago scientific consensus held Freudianism was a sensible psychological method, instead of the quackery it is. And millions of Americans are fat because the food pyramid foisted on us in the 1970s by the Department of Agriculture pushed carbohydrates over protein and fatsugar instead of steak. As Gary Taubes research has shown, much of that scientific consensus, including at elite Harvard, was funded by the sugar lobby.

Moreover, since COVID-19 struck two years ago, a lot of contradictory information has been handed down, even by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This is not surprising, as the pandemic was a highly volatile disease that struck quickly, and led to many differing opinions. Remember two weeks to slow the spread?

Bret Stephens headlined in the New York Times last July, Covid Misinformation Comes from the Top, Too. He wrote, [T]he U.S. governments scientific establishment did support gain-of-function research that deserved far more public debate than it got. Also incontrovertibly true is that beneficiaries of that funding engaged in deceptive tactics and outright mendacity to shield their research from public scrutiny while denouncing their critics as conspiracy mongers.

In one State Department meeting, officials seeking to demand transparency from the Chinese government say they were explicitly told by colleagues not to explore the Wuhan Institute of Virologys gain-of-function research, because it would bring unwelcome attention to U.S. government funding of it, Vanity Fairs Katherine Eban reported last month in an expose of the governments internal debates over the source of the pandemic.

If millions feel that some public-health experts are not as heroic or as honest as their media stenographers make them out to be, theres a good reason for it.

Weirdly, just on Feb. 27, the Times ran this headline, New Research Points to Wuhan Market as Pandemic Origin. That would put us back to the Wuhan bat markets as the alleged origin of COVID-19, not the labs linked to the Chinese Communist Party that Fauci used for gain of function research because it was banned in the United States.

The point for this article is such a discussion should not be shut downwhich is what AB 2098 could do.

Trofim Lysenko

Whats being proposed in AB 2098 is what can be called Medical Lysenkoism. The name comes from Trofim Lysenko, whom Stalin put in charge of Soviet biological science. Lysenko applied Marxist economic theory to genetics, a major reason the communist land was hit with periodic famines.

This was in contrast to Soviet excellence in mathematics, physics, chemistry and engineering. Stalin made sure he had the scientists to produce tanks, planes and rockets. Soviet rocket engine designs from the 1950s form the basis of engines still used today, and even used on a U.S. rocket today, for the first stage of the Atlas V.

Writing in Foreign Affairs on Soviet science, John Turkevich provided this description, In the period between the two world wars genetics was developing rapidly and the Soviet geneticists attracted scholars from all over the world to come to work with them. However, just before World War II, N. I. Vavilov, their distinguished leader, incurred the displeasure of the Kremlin leaders and disappeared to an unknown death. In 1948, Lysenko baited the followers of Vavilov into public identification with Western genetics. They were then summarily crushed by an ex cathedra pronouncement by the Central Committee declaring Marxist genetics to be the truth of the land.

Genetics as we know it in the West disappeared from the research laboratories and textbooks of the Soviet Union. Lysenko dominated the biological sciences and agricultural research in Russia, and his influence extended well beyond the life sciences. Marxist philosophy battled relativity, cosmology, quantum mechanics, basic concepts of physics, cybernetics and the theory of chemical bonding. This Marxist inquisition continued through the period of Stalin terror, then abated in the Khrushchev period beginning in the late 1950s.

This is relevant because real science is not about some politicians, whether in the Central Committee of the Soviet Union in 1948 or the California Legislature of 2022, telling real scientists what to do.

Scientific Method

In fact, modern science is what the philosopher of science Karl Popper called in the title his book, Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge. A scientist makes a conjecture; the scientist himself, as well as other scientists, then tries to shoot holes into it, finding a refutation.

Moreover, the scientist has to set up refutability parameters (sometimes called falsifiability). He has to show how his conjecturehis hypothesiscan be proved wrong. This again comes from Popper, in his The Logic of Scientific Discovery. Also see this.

The classic example is Einsteins Theory of Relativity, developed by him between 1905 and 1915. It could not be tested immediately, but he set up refutability parameters, based on an eclipse bending light. In 1919, an eclipse allowed a test that proved his theory. It has been proved many times since.

But some day it could be disproved and superseded, much as his theory pushed aside Newtons 200-year-old Theory of Gravity.

Theres no neo-platonic form up in the sky somewhere to be handed down to us mortals. Rather, science is somewhat of an art, as seen in the great scientists, who spin theories like symphonies, then test which sound the best, and move on, ever theorizing and testing.

Heres a classic progression from astronomy: Ptolemy (earth the center of the universe)  Copernicus (the sun is the center)  Galileo (solar system; planets move in circles)  Kepler (planets move in ellipses)  Newtons mechanics  Einstein  etc.

The scientists were not wrong, as Newtons mechanics still is useful, for example, in building a bridge.

We now see this in front of us in the coronavirus crisis. Two years ago there was this conjecture: scientists said we needed many more ventilators. Refutability parameter: some new evidence showing the ventilators were not as efficacious as originally thought. Change: ventilators were used less often, only for the most extreme cases. Other treatments were developed.

And so it goes, in all fields of human scientific endeavor.

Scientists, including medical doctors, should not be oppressed with this new Medical Lysenkoism. They should be free to make their own conjectures about science.

I suggest every member of the Legislature read Poppers books, as well Thomas Kuhns The Structure of Scientific Revolution.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
US soldiers walk in Poland near the border with Ukraine, on March 3, 2022. (Wojtek Radwanski/AFP via Getty Images)

Most Americans Oppose Sending US Troops to Ukraine to Fight Russia: Polls

Most Americans dont support the idea of sending U.S. troops to Ukraine to help Ukrainian forces fight against Russian personnel, according to surveys.

Just 19 percent of respondents to an Economist/YouGov poll said sending U.S. soldiers to Ukraine is a good idea, compared to 54 percent who thought it was a bad idea. The rest werent sure.

More respondents, 33 percent, said it was a good idea to send soldiers to Ukraine to provide help, but not to fight Russian soldiers.

Sixty-three percent of respondents to a Reuters/Ipsos poll (pdf) said the United States should not send troops to Ukraine to help defend Ukraine from the Russians. The rest said troops should be sent.

The same division was seen when asked if the United States should conduct airstrikes against Russian forces, and a plurality of respondents to the YouGov survey opposed the United States conducting drone strikes against the Russians.

A majority of respondents to a poll (pdf) from SSRS for CNN also opposed the United States taking military action to stop Russia.

President Joe Biden has vowed not to send U.S. troops to Ukraine in the wake of the Feb. 24 Russian invasion.

Let me be clear: Our forces are not engaged and will not engage in the conflict with Russian forces in Ukraine, the Democrat said during his State of the Union speech.

Bidens administration has sent troops to Europe and the president has committed to joining the fight if Russia attacks any North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies.

The administration has also shipped weapons and other military aid to Ukraine to help Ukrainian troops fight back against the invasion.

According to the surveys, most Americans support helping Ukraine.

A plurality of respondents told YouGov that it would be a good idea to impose a no-fly zone over Ukraine, even though many experts have warned that would mean the United States had joined the war on the Ukrainian side.

Many respondents to the polls support providing weapons to Ukraine and imposing additional sanctions against Russia. Nearly half of respondents to YouGov said Ukraine should be allowed to join NATO; about a third were unsure.

A minority of U.S. lawmakers say the United States should impose a no-fly zone or otherwise get more directly involved in the war, but most have said the current level of involvement is appropriate.

The YouGov poll was conducted from Feb. 26 to March 1 and had 1,500 respondents and a margin of error of about 3 percent. The Ipsos survey was conducted from Feb. 28 through March 1, had a sample of 1,005 adults, and had a margin of sampling error of 3.8 percent. The SSRS survey was conducted on Feb. 25 and Feb. 26, with a sample of 1,001 respondents. It had a margin of sampling error of about 4 percent.

Other countries have also opposed so far sending their troops to Ukraine, including 40 percent of British respondents to a poll by Redfield and Winton.
Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk talks at the Automotive World News Congress at the Renaissance Center in Detroit, on Jan. 13, 2015. (Rebecca Cook/Reuters)

Musk Invites UAW Union to Hold Vote at Tesla California Factory

Tesla Inc Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk said on Thursday he was inviting labor union United Auto Workers (UAW) to hold a vote at the electric carmakers California factory.

The announcement comes three months after the billionaire entrepreneur criticized the Biden administration and Democrats for a proposal to give union-made, U.S.-built electric vehicles an additional $4,500 tax incentive. Tesla and foreign automakers do not have unions at their U.S. factories.

Organizing a Tesla plant would be a major victory for the UAW, which has largely failed to win the backing of workers at foreign-owned automakers or EV startups assembly plants, many of which are in the U.S. South. Tesla also has a plant in Austin, Texas.

In his tweet on Thursday, Musk said the real challenge was the negative unemployment in Bay Area, and not compensating people well would make them leave as they have many offers.

Id like hereby to invite UAW to hold a union vote at their convenience. Tesla will do nothing to stop them, he said.

UAW did not have an immediate comment about Musks tweet, but analysts said his actions over the past year do not match the rhetoric.

U.S. President Joe Biden has often praised the electric-vehicle (EV) efforts made by Detroit automakers General Motors Co and Ford Motor Co, even though they sell fewer EVs than Tesla.

Last month, Biden, whom Musk earlier this year compared to a damp sock puppet, acknowledged Teslas leadership role in making EVs after Musk repeatedly complained about being ignored. Last fall, Musk said Bidens EV policy appeared to be controlled by labor unions.

Musk has also faced the ire of U.S. National Labor Relations Board, which last year ruled the company violated U.S. labor law and ordered Tesla to direct him to delete a 2018 tweet saying employees would lose their stock options if they formed a union.

Tesla subsequently appealed the NLRB ruling with the New Orleans-based U.S. Court of Appeals and that case is still pending.

In the 2018 tweet, Musk wrote: Nothing stopping Tesla team at our car plant from voting union. Could do so tmrw if they wanted. But why pay union dues & give up stock options for nothing? Our safety record is 2X better than when plant was UAW & everybody already gets healthcare.

The NLRB also directed Tesla to offer one former employee reinstatement as well as to rescind 2017 rules that prohibited distributing union literature in its parking lot on non-work time and rules that barred distributing union stickers, leaflets, and pamphlets without first obtaining permission.

Last November, 10 environmental and advocacy groups, including Sierra Club, Greenpeace, and League of Conservation Voters, called on EV startup Rivian Automotive to work with labor groups to ensure a clean future and high-paying jobs, and to allow a union voting process in its plants.

Workers at Rivians plant in Normal, Illinois, are not unionized. Rivian previously declined to comment on the subject and could not immediately be reached on Thursday following Musks tweet.
A damaged administrative building of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine, in Enerhodar, the Zaporizhzhia region, Ukraine, on March 4, 2022. (Press service of National Nuclear Energy Generating Company Energoatom/Handout via Reuters)

NATO Rejects No-fly Zone Over Ukraine Amid Damage to Nuclear Plant

NATO allies rejected Ukraines request to set up and enforce a no-fly zone over Ukraine, saying that it would lead to a larger, more devastating conflict across Europe.

We are not part of this conflict, and we have a responsibility to ensure it does not escalate and spread beyond Ukraine, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg told a news conference on Friday in Brussels, echoing statements made by White House officials several days ago about whether a no-fly zone.

For more than a week, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has called for a no-fly zone over his country, which would mean that U.S. and NATO assets would be used to potentially shoot down Russian planes and missiles, which could escalate the conflict. Inside the United States, at least one member of Congress, Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.), proposed a no-fly zonedrawing significant condemnation.

We understand the desperation but we also believe that if we did that (a no-fly zone) we would end up with something that could lead to a full-fledged war in Europe involving much more countries and much more suffering, Stoltenberg said.

Stoltenberg said that the only way a no-fly zone could be enforced would entail NATO planes shooting down Russian ones.

Allies agree we should not have NATO planes operating over Ukrainian airspace or NATO troops operating in Ukrainian territory, the NATO chief said.

Meanwhile, Zelensky and others have called on NATO to send warplanes to Ukraine, which is not a member of NATO or the European Union. About a week ago, reports indicated that some NATO members would send fighter jets to Ukraine but it never materialized. Some NATO members and partners have sent weapons, including anti-tank missiles to Ukraine since the conflict erupted on Feb. 24.

Every ally in one way or another is coming to Ukraines assistance, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Friday. Every ally in one way or another is helping to strengthen NATO itself.

Overnight, Russian and Ukrainian forces battled near the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine, damaging several buildings, which sparked fears of a Chernobyl-like nuclear meltdown. But U.N. atomic officials said Friday that no reactors were damaged in the fighting.

Zelensky on Thursday again called for a no-fly zone, according to a video posted on social media. The no-fly zone, he added, would ensure that no nuclear plants would be damaged.

People walk past a destroyed Russian military vehicle at a frontline position in Irpin, Ukraine, on March 3, 2022. (Chris McGrath/Getty Images)

A Ukrainian soldier keeps position sitting on a ZU-23-2 anti-aircraft gun at a frontline, northeast of Kyiv, Ukraine, on March 3, 2022. (Aris Messinis/AFP via Getty Images)

It is a war crime to attack a nuclear power plant. Putins shelling of Europes largest nuclear plant takes his reign of terror one step further, the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv also said in a Twitter post.

If the nuclear plant is further damaged or intentionally attacked, its not clear what NATO members would do. Stoltenberg did not address such concerns during Fridays news conference but merely said his alliance wouldnt enforce a no-fly zone.

The reckless actions around the nuclear power plant last night just highlights the dangers of this war, he said. War is dangerous and to have military operations conflict fighting going around the nuclear power plant adds to the danger.

Russian officials in the Ministry of Defense said that damage to the Zaporizhzhia was a horrible provocation on behalf of the Ukrainian military, according to state media.

Last night, an attempt to carry out a horrible provocation was made by Kyivs nationalist regime on the area surrounding the station, spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov said on Friday.

He said that Ukrainian forces attacked Russian troops at around 2 a.m. local time and opened fire on a facility near the plant to provoke a retaliatory strike on the building. Zelensky denied that his forces provoked the attack.

Meanwhile, the days to come, Stoltenberg added, are likely to be worse because Russian forces are expected to bring in heavier weaponry after being stymied by Ukraines military on several fronts.

With cities under siege, schools, hospitals, and residential buildings shelled. Reckless actions around a nuclear power plant last night and many civilians killed or wounded. The days to come are likely to be worse, with more death, more sufferings, and more destruction, he said.
U.S. Navy personnel on March 2 retrieved the wreckage of a stealth fighter jet that sunk to the bottom of the South China Sea after a crash in January 2020. (U.S. Navy)

US Navy Recovers Fighter Jet That Crashed in South China Sea

The U.S. Navy recovered the wreckage of an F-35 Lightning II jet fighter that crashed into the South China Sea in January. U.S. 7th Fleets Task Force 75 and Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) recovered the aircraft from a depth of about 12,400 feet on March 2, according to a Wednesday announcement by the Navy.

The aircraft was recovered using a remotely operated vehicle that attached specialized rigging and lift lines to the aircraft. Another vessel then used a crane to lower a hook to the seafloor and connect it to that rigging, ultimately lifting the aircraft to the surface and hoisting it onboard.

Ultimately, this deliberate approach resulted in the correct capabilities conducting recovery operations within 37 days of the incident, said Captain Gareth Healy, Commodore of Task Force 75.

Given the unique challenges of this problem and the unique technical capabilities that NAVSEA delivered, this was an aggressive and achievable timeline.

The jet had a rough landing on the USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier during routine flight operations on Jan. 24, after which it slid and crashed into the sea.

Its pilot ejected from the aircraft during the incident, and three sailors were hospitalized.

The loss of the stealth fighter, one of the most advanced in the United States forces, triggered fears that the Chinese Communist Party would attempt to salvage the wreckage first, and thereby be able to reverse engineer the aircrafts technology.

After the landing mishap, the Navy thus began preparations for its immediate recovery.

Carl Schuster, former director of operations at the U.S. Pacific Commands Joint Intelligence Center in Hawaii, said at the time that the salvage operation would be completed around the end of February. He estimated it would cost $10-20 million to recover the aircraft and $20-30 million to restore it to operational capacity.

The aircraft will be delivered to a local military installation as part of an ongoing investigation and evaluated for transport back to the United States, the Navy said.

The saga of the downed F-35 comes amid heightened tensions in the region between American and Chinese forces. The recent invasion of Ukraine by Russia triggered fears that China could potentially invade the island of Taiwan.

Chinese military aircraft continue to regularly make incursions into Taiwans air defense identification zone, and the United States recently led a warship through the Taiwan Strait to maintain freedom of navigation.
New Jersey City Suspends Licenses of Gas Stations to Protest Russia Conflict

Lawmakers in Newark, New Jersey, voted to suspend licenses of Lukoil gas stations after Russian forces invaded Ukraine.

The Newark City Council, in an 8-0 vote on Wednesday approved suspending licenses of two Lukoil gas stations. Lukoil is one of the largest oil producers in Russia and reportedly has ties to Russian oligarchs.

This is a step on the city side to do what the rest of the world is doing to impose some pressure on Russia, Anibal Ramos, a member of the city council, said during the hearing, according to the Reuters news agency.

However, the Lukoil stations are franchises owned by locals, not Russians, and they employ mostly New Jersey residents, according to The Associated Press. And the gasoline sold at the stations comes from a local Phillips 66 refinery.

Roger Verma, a New Jersey resident, told AP that hes owned the franchise of one of the Newark stations since 2005, adding that the city council decision might put him out of business.

Let me be clear that I stand with Ukraine and Im fully in support of Russian sanctions, Verma told AP Wednesday in front of Newarks City Hall. But Im baffled and confused how people sitting in these positions without having any of their facts together and without having full knowledge of how things are done can introduce and change laws and change peoples lives just like that.

Malamine Sylla, who works at the Lukoil franchise on McCarter Highway in Newark, told NJ Advance Media that she is now likely out of a job.

Of course, if it gets suspended, well be out of work, said Sylla, 47. Ive got four kids.

Sal Resalvato, the head of the New Jersey Gasoline and Convenience Store Association, told the outlet the move is possibly illegal. These guys are not Russia, he said, referring to the two stations.

Lukoil, meanwhile, issued a statement on its website about the Russia-Ukraine conflict, calling for a ceasefire.

The Board of Directors of LUKOIL expresses herewith its deepest concerns about the tragic events in Ukraine. Calling for the soonest termination of the armed conflict, we express our sincere empathy for all victims, who are affected by this tragedy, the firm said. We strongly support a lasting ceasefire and a settlement of problems through serious negotiations and diplomacy.

Ramos told AP that the license suspension in Newark is meant to be temporary, adding that hes received calls from employers offering to provide jobs to gas station workers who might be laid off.
Astronomers are now equipped with a new pair of eyes in the sky.

As of mid-February, the new Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) observation platform, orbiting Earth since late 2021, sent back its first exploration images to scientists on the groundrevealing new scenes of the cosmos with its X-ray eyes.

On Dec. 9, 2021, NASA, in conjunction with the Italian Space Agency (ISA), launched IXPE into orbit to examine space like never before. Aboard the Space X Falcon 9 rocket in Cape Canaveral, IXPE was sent into orbit 370 miles (600 km) over the earths equator. On Dec. 15, the imaging platforms boom was successfully deployed, providing the distance needed to focus X-rays onto its detectors. The IXPE team then spent the next three weeks adjusting the telescopes alignment, maneuvering, and pointing capabilities.

These system tests involved the use of two stellar calibrating targets: a black hole-powered galaxy core with jets shooting into space (known as 1ES 1959+650) and a pulsar (called SMC X-1), whose brightness allowed the team to observe where light fell on the IXPEs polarization-sensitive detectors and make small adjustments.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launches with NASAs IXPE spacecraft on Dec. 9, 2021, at NASAs Kennedy Space Center in Florida. (NASA/Joel Kowsky)

Then, the IXPE trained its newly minted X-ray eyes on its first ever scientific imaging target: Cassiopeia A, the nebulous remains of a star that went supernova during the 17th century. This cosmic graveyard consists of a nebula some 10 light-years in diameter with a compact center believed to be a neutron star or black hole, which was first discovered by an older X-ray telescope, Chandra X-Ray Observatory, which was launched in 1999. The two observatories, IXPE and Chandra, feature different kinds of detectors that capture differing levels of angular resolution, or sharpness.

On Feb. 14, NASA released a brand-new image of the supernova remnant Cassiopeia A, revealing X-ray illumination shown in saturated magenta color, taken by IXPE, overlaying an earlier image of the nebula captured by Chandra.

A newly released image of supernova remnant Cassiopeia A combines some of the first X-ray data collected by NASAs IXPE, shown in magenta, with high-energy X-ray data from NASAs Chandra X-Ray Observatory, in blue. (NASA/CXC/SAO/IXPE)

An image from IXPE maps the intensity of X-rays coming from the observatorys first target, the supernova remnant Cassiopeia A. (NASA)

The IXPE image of Cassiopeia A is as historic as the Chandra image of the same supernova remnant, said IXPE Principal Investigator Martin Weisskopf, based at NASAs Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, according to a NASA press release. It demonstrates IXPEs potential to gain new, never-before-seen information about Cassiopeia A, which is under analysis right now.

IXPEs X-ray sensors are expected to uncover new insights about light polarizationmeasuring how X-ray light is oriented as it travels through spaceand clues as to the environment where this light originates from. Researchers are currently working with the data produced to create a first ever X-ray polarization map of Cassiopeia A, which will offer insights as to how X-rays are produced within the object.

IXPEs future polarization images should unveil the mechanisms at the heart of this famous cosmic accelerator, said Roger Romani, an IXPE co-investigator at Stanford University. To fill in some of those details, weve developed a way to make IXPEs measurements even more precise using machine learning techniques. Were looking forward to what well find as we analyze all the data.

The NASA-ISA collaboration is in partnership with 12 other countries, while Ball Aerospace, headquartered in Broomfield, Colorado, manages the spacecrafts operations.

Share your stories with us at emg.inspired@epochtimes.com, and continue to get your daily dose of inspiration by signing up for the Bright newsletter at TheEpochTimes.com/newsletter
A schoolteacher collects library books from students who just graduated and but borrowed them before schools were shut down at a school in New York City on June 29, 2020. (Michael Loccisano/Getty Images)

New York Education Department Promotes Sexually Explicit Book for National Reading Event

The New York State Education Department (NYSED) promoted on social media a graphic novel that contains illustrations of teenage boys performing oral sex, only to remove the post and claim to be unaware of the books explicit sexual contents.

In a series of posts on Tuesday, the NYSED celebrated this years Read Across America, a reading event championed by National Education Association, the largest teachers union in the United States. One of the posts featured New York State Librarian Lauren Moore, who recommended to young readers the 2019 book Gender Queer: A Memoir.

In a post on March 2, 2022, the New York State Department of Education recommended Maia Kobabes Gender Queer. (Facebook)

I chose Gender Queer: A Memoir by Maia Kobabe. Im grateful for books that let my kid know theyre not alone, read the now-deleted post, quoting the Albany librarian.

Created by Maia Kobabe, a California-based cartoonist who uses e/em/eir pronouns, Gender Queer has sparked widespread controversy over the past months in several states such as Florida, Texas, and Virginia, where parents expressed concerns over the the books graphic depictions of adolescent sex activities and demanded its removal from school libraries.

In October 2021, Virginia-based conservative advocacy group Independent Womens Voice produced a TV advertisement containing oral sex scenes from Gender Queer in an effort to raise awareness among parents. The ad had been rejected as too explicit to run during late-night hours, with some Virginia stations unwilling to broadcast even with the images blurred. Those who tried to share images from the book to Facebook or Instagram also found their posts flagged for violating policies against pornography.

Instagram agrees that the groomer book in our kids schools is pornographic. pic.twitter.com/33Oi3aquxd  James Lindsay, wants to liberate New Zealand (@ConceptualJames) October 30, 2021

Shortly after that, NYSED deleted the Gender Queer posts from its Facebook and other social media accounts. The department now says that it wasnt aware of the explicit materials after apparently judging the book by its cover.

SED was not aware of the graphic nature of the contents of the book, which is not apparent from its title, the department said in a statement. Once we became aware, we immediately removed the post. SED is investigating the circumstances under which this title was selected and posted.

However, this is not the first time New York librarians promoted Gender Queer. In a 2020 article, the New York Public Library praised the book as an intensely cathartic autobiography that charts the non-binary authors journey of self-identity, which includes the mortification and confusion of adolescent crushes, grappling with how to come out to family and society, bonding with friends over erotic gay fanfiction, and facing the trauma and fundamental violation of pap smears.

Started as a way to explain to their family what it means to be nonbinary and asexual, Gender Queer is more than a personal story: it is a useful and touching guide on gender identitywhat it means and how to think about itfor advocates, friends, and humans everywhere, the article read.
The Nike swoosh logo is seen outside the store on 5th Avenue in New York, on March 19, 2019. (Carlo Allegri/Reuters)

Nike to Temporarily Close All Stores in Russia

Nike Inc said on Thursday it would temporarily close all its stores in Russia, joining a slew of Western brands that have suspended their businesses in the country following Moscows invasion of Ukraine.

The U.S. sportswear maker had made merchandise purchases on its website and app unavailable in Russia earlier this week and directed its customers in the country to brick-and-mortar stores instead.

The latest decision covers both Nike-owned andoperated stores.

The company also said its foundation would be donating $1 million to the United Nations Childrens Fund and the International Rescue Committee to support relief efforts.

Earlier in the day, U.S. off-price chain TJX Cos Inc said it would sell its 25 percent stake in Russian low-cost apparel retailer Familia, with two of its executives also resigning from their director and observer positions.

By Praveen Paramasivam
A photograph comparing the relative potency of heroin and fentanyl during a news conference at the U.S. Capitol on March 22, 2018 in Washington. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Orange County Fentanyl Deaths Spike 1,100 Percent in 5 Years: Officials

Orange Countys number of fentanyl-related deaths has increased 1,100 percent in 5 years, to the point where over 1,400 lives were lost in 2020, according to county officials.

Orange County, like the rest of the nation, faces this crisis. No community, no city, no supervisorial district is unaffected, Orange County Supervisor Katrina Foley said at a March 3 public safety panel on the fentanyl crisis. It seems like every single day we hear in the news about another fatality.

Fentanyl100 times more potent than morphinehas been ravaging communities in Orange County and across the country, many times killing people who are not aware theyre ingesting it. Just two milligrams can be a lethal dose, experts say.

The fentanyl epidemic has been on the rise since 2013 yet has become far worse during the pandemic.

In Orange County, fentanyl-related deaths increased 1,100 percent over five years, from 37 deaths in 2016 to 1,432 in 2020, according to Orange County Sheriff Don Barnes, one of the panels speakers. The number of deaths is expected to double again in 2021.

In California, over the same five-year period, fentanyl-related deaths have increased by 1,600 percent. Across the country, drug-related deaths exceeded 100,000 in a 12-month period for the first time in history between April 2020 and April 2021, and the biggest culprit was fentanyl, according to Barnes.

To put that [national] number in perspective, a few years ago in 2018, and again in 2019  what were dealing with today, with our fentanyl crisis and the lives lost, if you could picture 10 Boeing 737s crashing each week consistently for a year. That is the equivalent of the lives lost during that period, Barnes said.

Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer announced that his office will now be charging convicted drug dealers with murder if they manufacture or sell drugs that result in someone dying in Santa Ana, Calif, on Nov. 9, 2021. (Drew Van Voorhis/The Epoch Times)

Law enforcement is actively working against cartels who manufacture and traffic the drug through the southern border, up the Interstate 5 freeway to Orange County, and from the county to the rest of the country.

Given its intense potency, fentanyl is often mixed with drugs like heroin to achieve the same high per dollar of product, ultimately helping drug dealers maximize profit despite its extreme toxicity. The pure powder is also pushed together to make counterfeit pills that look identical to common prescription pills.

Barnes said the business of drug trade has been putting profits above the lives of people.

Many people have asked me why cartels would sell a product that kills so many customers, Barnes said. [Cartels] have done the math and determined that creating new addicts is more important and those who lose their lives are just a loss leader in the business of narconomics that exists.

To deter fentanyl trafficking, one of the most important actions to take is to both secure the southern border and classify fentanyl as a Schedule 1 drug, which will increase consequences for trafficking, Barnes said.

The lack of enforcement at our border is a gift to drug cartels, and they are taking full advantage of it, he said.

One of fentanyls most addictive aspects is its withdrawal symptoms, consisting of muscle and bone pain, sleep problems, diarrhea, vomiting, severe cravings, and more.

Just like heroin and morphine and other opiate drugs, fentanyl works by biting a part of the brain that actually controls pain and emotions, and so when you take fentanyl, the effects include extreme happiness, which is why people get hooked, county Health Care Agency Director Clayton Chau said.

Photos of drug overdose victims line a chain-link fence at the Laguna Niguel Skate Park on International Overdose Awareness Day in Laguna Niguel, Calif., on Aug. 31, 2020. (Chris Karr/The Epoch Times)

Fentanyl-laced drugs are often present in some form at parties, Chau said, with young adults not always knowing the signs of overdose, and theyre often afraid to call 911 due to fear of being arrested.

They are afraid to call for help, and they dont know what to do. Please call 911, Chau said. You cannot be worried about Will I be arrested? That persons life is most important at that point.

As far as the legal consequences emerging from the crisis, the Orange County District Attorneys office announced a new advisement in November in hopes that it will save lives and hold drug dealers accountable.

When a defendant pleads guilty to a drug-related offense, the district attorney will seek to read the advisement in the courtroom, informing the defendant that if the illegal manufacturing and trafficking of any controlled substance result in any individuals death due to ingesting or being exposed to the substance, then the defendant may be charged with murder, OC Deputy DA Mina Said said during the panel.

Advising defendants on the seriousness of drug crimes not only educates them but also serves as a piece of evidence in a situation where the person ends up on trial again for another drug-related crime that caused a victims death. The next time around, the DAs Office would be able to show the court that the defendant was warned in the past.

Other district attorneys offices have also been reading advisement in court for fentanyl-related crimes, whereas in Orange County, the advisement has been expanded to cover all controlled substances, not just fentanyl.

However, for the counties that do use the advisement, each judge has the authority to allow it to be read aloud or not for a certain case.

The purpose of the advisement [is] to prevent unnecessary deaths, to save lives, to educate, but also to communicate that if the defendant continues to sell or distribute or manufacture drugs, and someone dies, then he may be held accountable for that death, Said said.
As Russia continues its assault on Ukraine's major cities, including the capital Kyiv, a man rides his bike past destroyed buildings in Irpin, Ukraine, on March 3, 2022. (Chris McGrath/Getty Images)

Pentagon: Ukrainians Have Stalled Large Russian Military Convoy Near Kyiv

The 40-mile-long Russian military convoy heading toward Kyiv was stalled by Ukraines military this week, said Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby on Friday.

Kirby told reporters that U.S. officials have obtained reports that a bridge was blown up that we believe was in the path there, adding, We also have indications that the Ukrainians have struck the convoy elsewhere and on vehicles.

For about five days, the convoy, which satellite firm Maxar has said to be about 40 miles in length, has barely moved. Its located some 15 miles from Kyiv, the capital city.

Russian military forces have also had problems with logistics, including food and fuel supplies, Kirby said.

We do believe that the actions of the Ukrainians have stalled that convoy, certainly slowed it down, stopped it in some places, he added.

Despite those claims, Kyiv came under heavy fire on Friday. Numerous reports came in about explosions being reported around the citys center.

But fighting also raged elsewhere in Ukraine as troops besieged and bombarded several cities in the second week of an invasion launched by Russian President Vladimir Putin on Feb. 24.

The southeastern port city of Mariupola key prize for the Russian forceshas been encircled and shelled. Its mayor said on Friday it had no water, heat, or electricity and is running out of food after five days under attack, Reuters reported.

Russian troops enter the Kyiv region, Ukraine, in a still from footage released by the Russian defense ministry on March 3, 2022. (Russian defense ministry via Reuters/Screenshot via The Epoch Times)

A humanitarian disaster is also unfolding, with more than one million people seeking refuge in western Ukraine and in neighboring countries. Thousands of people are believed to have been killed or wounded since the conflict started.

Russian forces have made their biggest advances in the south, where they captured their first sizeable Ukrainian city, Kherson, this week. Bombing has escalated in recent days in the northeast cities of Kharkiv and Chernihiv, according to reports.

Meanwhile, during overnight fighting, Russian forces seized the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant amid heavy fighting. Local Ukrainian officials said that a building located on the premises of the plant was hit and caught on fire, while U.N. officials later said that no damage was done to the plants reactors.

The U.N.s International Atomic Energy Agency chief, Raphael Grossi, described the situation as normal operations  but in fact, there is nothing normal about this.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky made a statement on social media that NATO countries, including the United States, should implement a no-fly zone following the nuclear plant incident. There were conflicting and now-erroneous reports early Friday that one of the power plants reactors was damaged.

However, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg told reporters Friday that the alliance will not put a no-fly zone in effect over Ukraine because it would mean that NATO planes would have to shoot down Russian ones.

Russias Ministry of Defense responded to the incident by saying that Ukrainian troops attempted to provoke Russian forces into attacking the plant. Zelensky on Friday denied those claims.

Russias envoy to the U.N., Vassily Nebenzia, dismissed the uproar over the nuclear power plant and said its an attempt by Ukraine to promote an artificial hysteria.

At present, the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant and adjacent territory are being guarded by Russian troops, he said.

Reuters contributed to this report.
Conservative MP Jeremy Patzer rises in the House of Commons in Ottawa on April 27, 2021. (Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press)

Petition Calls on Feds to Reinstate Public Servants Terminated For Vaccine Choice

A petition calling for the reinstatement of public servants who lost their jobs due to their personal choice regarding COVID-19 vaccination was initiated on the House of Commons website on March 3, sponsored by Conservative MP Jeremy Patzer.



The petition states that the vaccine mandate imposed on the public service and federally regulated workplaces has resulted in public servants being coerced to choose between providing private medical information to their employer and accept two doses of an emergency use authorized COVID-19 injection, or losing their pay, benefits, earned leave credits, etc.

This policy violates public servants right to bodily autonomy, medical choice, medical privacy, informed consent and reasonable occupational health and safety measures.

The petition further states that employees should have been offered alternatives such as remote work or rapid testing instead. It calls upon the federal government to reinstate public servants, some of whom are experts in their respective fields, who were removed from their positions without justification, and to ensure that federal employment is not contingent on being vaccinated.

The petition has so far collected over 4,000 signatures and will be open for signing until April 2.

The petition was initiated by a constituent from Patzers riding of Cypress Hills-Grasslands in Swift Current, Saskatchewan.

Patzer is not compelled to read the petition in the House but as he has been vocal in calling for the lifting of federal mandates, it is likely he will do so.

During question period on March 1, the MP asked Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos when he will follow the lead of the science-backed provincial health authority and lift all federal mandates?

Patzer led up to the question by saying his province lifted all COVID-19 restrictions on Feb. 28. Businesses can fully open and smiles can be shared between the people of Saskatchewan once again, he said. Duclos answered that he is grateful to the millions of people in Saskatchewan who made the right choice and got vaccinated, without addressing Patzers question.

The government says 99 percent of public servants are vaccinated. Also during question period on March 1, Conservative MP Stephanie Kusie asked Treasury Board President Mona Fortier: How many unvaccinated federal employees did [you] have to fire to get to 99 percent?

Those who need accommodation are being treated, and we will continue to make sure that these public servants are respected, Fortier replied.



Some public servants who have refused or are unable to get vaccinated against the SARS-CoV-2 virus formed the advocacy group Feds For Freedom to legally organize against their employer.

On Jan. 26, the group issued a cease-and-desist letter to core federal departments regarding the vaccine mandate.

Feds For Freedom also appears to be behind the petition sponsored by Patzer. After some amazing work from Lindsay at Feds For Freedom we have been successful with getting our Petition into the house of commons, an unidentified individual posted on the groups Telegram channel.
Soldiers stand beside some of the 45 pieces of firearms seized by army troops from Muslim insurgents aligned with the ISIS terrorist group in Marawi City, southern Philippines, on March 3, 2022. (Froilan Gallardo/AP Photo)

Philippines: 7 Terrorists Killed, Bombs Seized in Recent Raid

MARAWI, PhilippinesPhilippine troops killed at least seven Muslim insurgents aligned with the ISIS terrorist group in a recent offensive in the south and recovered 45 heavy firearms and several bombs and land mines that were to be used in future attacks, military officials said Thursday.

About 60 Muslim extremists were in the remote camp near Maguing in Lanao del Sur province when it was attacked Tuesday by fighter jets and army forces, military officials said. It was not immediately clear whether their leader, Abu Zacariah, was among those killed or managed to escape. One soldier was killed and five others were wounded in the fighting, the officials said.

Zacariah has been implicated in past attacks and bombings and is suspected of being the newly designated leader of the ISIS in Southeast Asia, said army infantry brigade commander Brig. Gen. Jose Maria Cuerpo II, who oversaw Tuesdays offensive.

Two factions of the terrorists group Daulah Islamiyah, linked to the ISIS, appear to have merged and camped near Maguing in January. At the time, some power transmission towers in the region were bombed in attacks claimed by the ISIS, prompting the military to intensify its surveillance and prepare for an offensive, Cuerpo said.

The troops were ready to attack but they assessed it would be difficult to storm the encampment, which was protected by heavy weapons, Cuerpo told reporters. He said that prompted him to first launch airstrikes against the insurgents.

Air force fighter jets dropped a dozen bombs, then army troops launched a ground attack, and overran the camp. The insurgents fled in different directions and were pursued by troops, military officials said.

The military denied reports that the troops encountered guerrillas belonging to the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, the largest Muslim rebel group which signed a peace pact with the government in 2014 and is now helping govern a Muslim autonomous region in the south.

Wed like to assure our partners in the MILF that we respect the peace accord, military spokesman Col. Ramon Zagala said. We are on track and were only targeting the peace spoilers.

Daulah Islamiyah members were involved in the 2017 siege of Marawi, a southern Islamic city where hundreds of extremists waving ISIS-style black flags occupied commercial buildings and villages, and took hostages. Filipino troops, backed by United States, and Australian surveillance aircraft, quelled the five-month siege, which left about 1,200 people deadmostly militantsand destroyed the mosque-studded citys commercial center, and outlying residential communities.

The military has been launching offensives against small armed groups allied with the extremists who laid siege on Marawi, including the Abu Sayyaf, which has been blacklisted by the United States and the Philippines for past bombings, ransom kidnappings and beheadings in the south of the largely Roman Catholic country.
Plane Carrying Russian Nationals Grounded in Canada

The Northwest Territories infrastructure minister says a plane carrying Russian nationals on its way to the High Arctic was grounded Tuesday in Yellowknife.

Diane Archie told the legislature Wednesday that the plane appeared to be on its way to Resolute, Nunavut, with people who were planning to take an overland expedition in a large all-terrain utility vehicle.

Canada closed its airspace to Russian-owned or operated aircraft on Sunday following President Vladimir Putins attack on Ukraine.

Archie says federal authorities were informed of the landing and it was being investigated by Transport Canada and the Canada Border Services Agency.

Transport Canada said in a statement late Wednesday that the charter aircraft that landed in Yellowknife was carrying two Russian foreign nationals.

Transport Canada says it will review whether there has been any violation of the recently announced notice prohibiting Russian aircraft that are owned, charted, or certified from operating in Canadian airspace.

Potential consequences and enforcement actions will be determined based on the facts, Transport Canada said in an email.

We can tell you that all travellers arriving in Canada are subject to strict screening measures and must demonstrate they meet the requirements to enter the country.
Fake pill bottles with messages about OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma are displayed during a protest outside the courthouse where the bankruptcy of the company is taking place in White Plains, N.Y., on Aug. 9, 2021. (Seth Wenig/AP Photo)

Purdue Pharma, US States Agree to New Opioid Settlement

Purdue Pharma reached a nationwide settlement Thursday over its role in the opioid crisis, with the Sackler family members who own the company boosting their cash contribution to as much as $6 billion in a deal intended to staunch a flood of lawsuits facing the maker of OxyContin.

The deal follows an earlier settlement that had been appealed by eight states and the District of Columbia. They agreed to sign on after the Sacklers kicked in more cash and accepted other terms. In exchange, the family would be protected from civil lawsuits.

In all, the plan could be worth more than $10 billion over time. It calls for members of the Sackler family to give up control of the Stamford, Connecticut-based company so it can be turned into a new entity with profits used to fight the crisis. The deal would not shield members of the family from criminal charges, although theres no indication any are forthcoming.

Sackler family members have not unequivocally offered an apology but issued a statement of regret about the toll of OxyContin, its signature painkiller, which users learned could be manipulated to produce quick highs. Purdue Pharma had promoted its use for a broad range of pain issues for which doctors previously had shied away from prescribing opioids.

While the families have acted lawfully in all respects, they sincerely regret that OxyContin, a prescription medicine that continues to help people suffering from chronic pain, unexpectedly became part of an opioid crisis that has brought grief and loss to far too many families and communities, said the statement from the Sackler family.

Under the settlement, victims also are to have a forum in court, by videoconference scheduled for March 9, to address some of the Sacklers. Thats something they have not been able to do previously in a public setting.

The settlement is outlined in a report filed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in White Plains, New York, and must be approved by the judge. It was hammered out with attorneys general from the eight statesCalifornia, Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washingtonand D.C. who had opposed the earlier one, arguing that it did not properly hold Sackler family members accountable.

Several parents whose children became addicted to opioids said they were ambivalentglad that more money will be available for addiction treatment, but upset that the Sacklers will remain wealthy and escape more accountability.

Connecticuts Paige Niver, whose daughter became addicted following a bicycle accident when she was 14 and remains in recovery about 13 years later, said she didnt want other families to endure what hers did.

As a mother, I did what the doctor told me to do and I just kept giving them to her. And when they were starting to have kind of a lesser effect, they say, Oh, then you need to give her more. And thats exactly what I did, she said at a news conference Thursday with her states attorney general.

I never thought Id see any justice for it, so the money will do so much goodfund as much treatment and prevention as possible, Niver said.

Ed Bisch, whose 18-year-old son died of an overdose 20 years ago, is glad states pushed Sackler family members to pay more. Still, he called the settlement a horrible deal because so many parents who buried loved ones wont see money, while the Sacklers retain their wealth.

Guess what? They still made billions and billions of dollars, said Bisch, of Westampton, New Jersey. Without any jail time, where is the deterrent? Weve lost two generations to their greed.

Individual victims and their survivors are to share a $750 million fund, a key provision not found in other opioid settlements. About 149,000 people made claims in advance and could qualify for shares from the fund.

That amount is unchanged in the new plan, but states will be able to create funds they can use to compensate victims beyond that, if they choose.

Other new provisions include an agreement from Sackler family members that they wont fight when institutions attempt to take their names off buildings funded by the familys support. And additional company documents are to be made public.

Most of the the money is to flow to state and local governments, Native American tribes, and some hospitals, with the requirement that it be used to battle an opioid crisis that has been linked to more than 500,000 deaths in the United States over the past two decades.

Were pleased with the settlement achieved in mediation, under which all of the additional settlement funds will be used for opioid abatement programs, overdose rescue medicines, and victims, Purdue Pharma said in a statement issued separately from the familys. With this mediation result, we continue on track to proceed through the appeals process on an expedited schedule, and we hope to swiftly deliver these resources.

Kentucky and Oklahoma are not part of the deal because they both reached previous settlements with Purdue.

Purdue, the originator of time-release versions of powerful prescription painkillers, is the highest-profile company out of many that have faced lawsuits over the crisis. It has twice pleaded guilty to criminal charges related to its business practices around OxyContin.

The latest announcement follows another landmark settlement late last week, when drugmaker Johnson & Johnson and three distributors finalized a settlement that will send $26 billion over time to virtually every state and local governments throughout the United States.

There are two key differences between the the latest Purdue settlement and the previous one struck last year. The Sacklers cash contribution has gone up by at least $1.2 billion, and state attorneys general and the District of Columbia have now agreed.

The money is to begin flowing after Purdue, which is to be renamed Knoa Pharma, emerges from bankruptcy. Its not clear when that will be. The last payment under the settlement is not scheduled to be made until 2039.

Last year, the eight states and D.C. refused to sign on, and then most of them appealed after the deal was approved by the bankruptcy judge.

In December, a U.S. district judge sided with the nine holdouts. The judge, Colleen McMahon, rejected the settlement with a finding that bankruptcy judges lack the authority to grant legal protection to people who dont themselves file for bankruptcy when some parties disagree.

Purdue appealed that decision, which, if left standing, could have scuttled a common method of reaching settlements in sweeping, complicated lawsuits.

The attorneys general who have signed on are dropping from the main legal battle but are still free to write briefs to tell courts not to allow the protections for people who do not file for bankruptcy themselves.

Connecticut Attorney General William Tong has repeatedly said he has felt a special obligation to be aggressive in the case because Purdue is headquartered in the state. He expressed some disappointment Thursday with the final settlement, even though he said it was 40 percent more than the previous one.

I wanted more. I still want more. But I took it as far as I could take it, he said during a news conference. If we were to continue, we would do it alone and that is untenable.

The new settlement requires approval from U.S Bankruptcy Judge Robert Drain. Appeals related to the previous version of the plan could continue moving through the court system.

By Geoff Mulvihill and John Seewer
Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a meeting with his Azerbaijani counterpart at the Kremlin in Moscow on February 22, 2022. (Mikhail Klimentyev/Sputnik/AFP via Getty Images)

Putin Calls on Countries to Normalize Relations With Russia

Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Western and other countries should normalize relations with his country following punishing sanctions over the invasion of Ukraine.

We have no bad intentions, there is no need to escalate the situation, impose restrictions, we fulfill all obligations, Putin said during an event on Friday, according to state media. If someone does not want to cooperate with us within the framework of single cooperation, and by doing so harms themselves, they will, of course, harm us too, Putin said.

Following the start of conflict in Ukraine on Feb. 24, the United States, European Union, Japan, and several other countries issued hefty sanctions against Putin, Russian oligarchs, the Russian Central Bank, other Russian banks, and other assets. A number of international corporations, including Maersk, Boeing, Microsoft, Apple, and others, have also said they wont do business in the country.

Responding to the sanctions, Putin said the countrys economy would have to adapt.

We will just have to move some projects a little to the right, to acquire additional competencies. But we will still solve the problems that we face he said. In the end, we will even benefit from this because we will acquire additional competencies.

President Joe Biden on Thursday announced new sanctions against members of Russias political elite, along with members of their families. Biden announced sanctions against Putin last week.

The United States, United Kingdom, and the European Union also announced they would expel certain Russian banks from SWIFT, the high-security banking network for thousands of financial institutions, prompting speculation that Russia would turn to China and the yuan in a bid to evade sanctions. The Chinese Communist Party has not hit Russia or any of its assets with sanctions.

In recent days, meanwhile, some European and American companies signaled they are pulling out of Russia and wont be making any investments in the near future. That includes oil giants ExxonMobil, Shell, and BP.

Russian First Deputy Prime Minister Andrei Belousov elaborated on the governments position on Western companies that do business in Russia. On Thursday, French bank Societe Generale said that Russian authorities could seize its assets in the country.

The company continues to work fully in Russia, Belousov said in a statement, according to Reuters. Foreign shareholders transfer their share to be managed by Russian partners and can return to the market later, he added, saying: The company permanently terminates operations in Russia, closes production, and dismisses employees.

Earlier this week, Putin told state media that the invasion in Ukraine is going as planned amid speculation that Russian troops are bogged down and unable to make advances on certain fronts.

Putin also said that he will never give up on [the] conviction that Russians and Ukrainians are one people.
Quad Vows to Stop Ukraine Style Conflict in Indo-Pacific

Stop short of condemning Russia's invasion of Ukraine

The leaders of Australia, the United States, Japan, and India, have vowed to work against any escalation or flow-on effect from the Russian invasion of Ukraine into the Indo-Pacific region.

The brief statements were released following a snap virtual meeting held on the early morning of March 4 Australian EST, which was attended by U.S. President Joe Biden, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Japans Fumio Kishida, and Australias Scott Morrison.

While the leaders pledged to establish a new humanitarian assistance and disaster relief mechanism for the Indo-Pacific, Indias close relationship with Russia likely contributed to the lack of a joint position on the events in Ukraine.

Australias Morrison released a statement outlining his governments position on Russias actions.

Russias actions are a gross violation of international law and the United Nations Charter. There is no justification for Russias aggression, which is illegal, unjustified, and unprovoked, he said.

We cannot allow what is happening in Ukraine now to ever happen in the Indo-Pacific.

We are resolute in our commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific region where smaller states do not need to live in fear of more powerful ones, he added.

Concerns have been raised that Beijing could take advantage of the situation and launch an invasion into Taiwana course of action it has advocated for more prominently in recent years with state media repeatedly claiming the island should be controlled by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

Taiwan is currently a self-governing democratic society that was formalised in 1949 by the Nationalist Party who fled from China after losing control of the mainland to the CCP.

Meanwhile, democratic nations have been in lockstep in their support for Ukraine and condemnation of Russias Vladimir Putin.

Governments have sent aid (lethal and non-lethal) to Ukraine forces, rolled out tough sanctions against Putins inner circle, and taken countermeasures to soften the shock the Ukraine conflict is having on the world economy.

At the same time, companies, retirement funds, and non-profit organisations have been boycotting the Russian market in one form or another.

While Quad member India, has been reticent to criticise Russia, even abstaining from a vote at the UN General Assembly condemning the invasion.

India is a major customer for military equipment from Russia, a legacy relationship from the era of the Soviet Union.

On March 3, Putin and Modi even discussed the evacuation of Indian students from the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, while other nations leaders continue freezing out diplomatic contact with the Russian president.
Russian forces seize a major nuclear power plant in Ukraine. A fire there has been put out, but questions and concerns remain. We hear from both sides.

Experts warn about the danger of warfare around a nuclear reactor in Ukraine. Some say if the plants cooling function is lost, the world could see a repeat of the Fukushima disaster.

More Russians are speaking out against President Vladimir Putins invasion of Ukraine. NTD hears from a famous actress, a former world chess champion, and a theater director in Moscow.
Vehicles of Russian state-controlled broadcaster Russia Today (RT) are seen near the Red Square in central Moscow on June 15, 2018. (Gleb Garanich/Reuters)

RT Shuts Down US Media Operations Amid Ukraine War

State-run Russia Today (RT) has shut down its operations in America amid the war in Ukraine.

Anna Belkina, the deputy editor-in-chief for the outlet, confirmed the development.

We are sad and disappointed that our groundbreaking channel RT America had to go off the air after more than 10 years, and that the company that supplied much of its content, T&R Productions, had to cease most of its operations, due to challenging external circumstances, Belkina told The Epoch Times in an emailed statement.

However, we are working hard to find ways that its staff, which has for many years produced award-winning news and programming content, can remain within RTs international family, she added.

Misha Solodovnikov, the general manager of T&R Productions, said in a memorandum that the company was ceasing production as a result of unforeseen business interruption events and would be laying off most of its staff.

RT America had offices in Washington, Los Angeles, New York, and Miami.

Holland Cooke, host of a show on RT, said in a blog post that the company informed staff members of the abrupt shutdown during an all-hands meeting on Thursday.

Weve been canceled, by cable/satellite/online distribution platforms, he wrote, referring to the cancellation by DIRECTV and Roku in the wake of Russias invasion of Ukraine.

In line with our previous agreement with RT America, we are accelerating this years contract expiration timeline and will no longer offer their programming effective immediately, DIRECTV said in a statement to news outlets.

Other platforms had been under pressure to stop carrying RT America.

The National Association of Broadcasters recently said it supported freedom of speech but that broadcasters should exercise sound, moral judgment and cease carrying any state-sponsored programming with ties to the Russian government or its agents.

Cooke said he planned to air a program that would be a snapshot of desperate Ukraine pilgrims plight while Scottie Nell Hughes, another host, said she had been advocating for peace between Russia and Ukraine and freedom of speech and press.

Its great to know how big of an impact we were making on the world by showing all sides of a story, no single political ideology. Their obsession to take down shows the greatness of the network in reach & their fear of people being exposed to something other than their narrative, Hughes wrote on Twitter after DIRECTV stopped carrying RT America.

Russia Today is still operating elsewhere.

A Russian television station called TV Rain, meanwhile, was shut down by Russian authorities on Thursday, as was a radio station called Echo of Moscow.

Russian officials reportedly said the outlets were in violation of a ban on calling the conflict in Ukraine a war and the start of the war an invasion.
A bright flaring object above the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant before it lands on the grounds of the plant, in Enerhodar, Ukraine, on March 4, 2022. (Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant via AP/Screenshot via The Epoch Times)

Russian Forces Take Control of Europes Largest Nuclear Plant, Located in Ukraine: Regional Admin

Russian forces on Friday seized the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plantEuropes and Ukraines largest nuclear power stationin southeastern Ukraine, the regional state administration said, following what officials said was shelling that caused a temporary fire at the site earlier in the day.

The plant is located in Enerhodar, a city on the Dnieper River. It houses six nuclear reactors and accounts for one-quarter of Ukraines power generation. Ukraine has four nuclear plants with a total of 15 reactors.

A statement posted Friday on the website of the State Nuclear Regulatory Inspectorate of Ukraine reads: The Zaporizhzhia NPP site has been seized by the military forces of the Russian Federation.

It said that Russian forces committed shelling the Zaporizhzhia NPP site on Friday, which caused a fire at the site. The fire was extinguished by the Ukrainian State Emergency Service units. Information on the dead and injured is absent, the statement said.

In an announcement Friday, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said that Ukraine had informed the agency about Russian forces having taken over, but that the nuclear power plant continued to be operated by its regular staff and there had been no release of radioactive material.

The safety systems of the plants six reactors had not been affected and there has been no release of radioactive material. Radiation monitoring systems at the site are fully functional, according to the announcement. However, the operator has reported that the situation remains very challenging and therefore it has not yet been possible to access the whole site to assess that all safety systems are fully functional.

The statement continued, Of the plants reactor units, Unit 1 is shut down for maintenance, Units 2 and 3 have undergone a controlled shut down, Unit 4 is operating at 60 percent power and Units 5 and 6 are being held in reserve in low power mode.

Two people were reported injured.

IAEA Director General Rafael Mario Grossi said at a press conference later in Vienna, Austria, that two security people at the plant were injured due to the attack.

At an emergency U.N. Security Council meeting on Friday, Russian ambassador Vasily Nebenzya said that the power plant had already been seized by Russian forces on Feb. 28 and placed under guard of the Russian military to prevent other forces from creating a nuclear provocation or interrupting the power supply to civilians.

But Ukrainian saboteurs fired upon Russian forces patrolling the area on March 4 and set a fire, which was quickly extinguished, he said. He said no one was injured, the power units were not damaged and the facility continues to operate normally.

A massive anti-Russia information campaign is unfolding, he said, adding that Moscow has no interest in seeking a nuclear provocation of any kind, having also lived through the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, according to the U.N. report of the meeting. He said the security council meeting is another attempt by Ukrainian authorities to create artificial hysteria about the events in Ukraine.

U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm had said on Twitter late Thursday local time that the reactors at the power station are protected by robust containment structures and reactors are being safely shut down, and that no elevated radiation readings near the facility were observed.

According to the Ukrainian nuclear inspectorate, if the nuclear fuel cannot cool down, it could have led to significant radioactive releases into the environment.

[S]uch an event may exceed all previous accidents at nuclear power plants, including the Chornobyl [sic] accident and the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, the nuclear inspectorate speculated. It shall be reminded that in addition to six power units at the Zaporizhzhya NPP site, there is a spent nuclear fuel storage facility, damage of which due to shelling will also lead to radioactive releases.

Russian troops had on Feb. 24 captured the now-defunct Chernobyl nuclear plant, located some 100 kilometers (62 miles) north of Ukraines capital, Kyiv. The following day, Ukrainian officials reported higher levels of radiation around the area.

Update: This article was updated to include the version of events from Russias representative at the U.N. Security Council meeting on March 4.
Russian lawmakers attend a session of the State Duma, the lower house of parliament, in Moscow, Russia on March 4, 2022. (Russian State Duma via Reuters)

Russia Passes Law Imposing 15-year Jail Term for Spreading Lies About Military

Russian lawmakers on March 4 passed a law that includes a jail term of up to 15 years for anyone convicted of spreading false information about the countrys military.

No lawmakers in either parliamentary chamber opposed the bill.

Vyacheslav Volodin, speaker of the Russian Duma, the countrys lower house of parliament, said it was necessary to protect the armed forces as companies, including U.S.-based ones, are used as a weapon by those in the media space.

The law amends Russias criminal code to make the spread of allegedly false information an offense punishable with fines or jail terms.

Lawmakers also imposed fines of up to $5,000 and a prison sentence of up to three years for public calls for sanctions against Russia.

The law was later approved by the parliaments upper house.

Huge propagandist-technological forces are against us. Therefore, we need laws. They are severe, but the time requires it. Security of our country, lives of our people, lives of or fraternal people are at stake, Valentina Matvienko, speaker of the Russian Federation Council, said after the vote.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is expected to sign it soon.

This means that by tomorrow, its rules will force those who lied and made statements discrediting our armed forces will bear very grave punishment. I want everyone to understand, Volodin said.

Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24 after Putin authorized a special military operation to demilitarize and denazify the neighboring nation, with one goal being protecting people in Donbas, which he declared independent from Ukraine. Conflict in Donbas between Ukrainian forces and separatist groups has been ongoing since 2014.

Russian officials dont use certain words while talking about the war, including the word invasion, and assert that Western media have failed to report on what they cast as a genocide of Russian-speaking people in Ukraine.

Russia has recently taken action against some Russian outlets, including broadcaster TV Rain and radio station Echo of Moscow, forcing them to shut down over their reporting on the war.

The country also blocked access to the websites of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and Voice of America, a U.S. government-backed outlet.

After Russian lawmakers passed the new law, BBC Director-General Tim Davie said the outlet was suspending all coverage within Russia.

The safety of our staff is paramount and we are not prepared to expose them to the risk of criminal prosecution simply for doing their jobs, Davie said in a statement.

The legislation, he said, appears to criminalize the process of independent journalism.

The actions came after Russia Today, a state-backed outlet, shut down its operations in America after several platforms, including DIRECTV, stopped carrying it.

Reuters contributed to this report.
A worker tightens the bolts of a pipe on the Russian LUKoil ice-resistant fixed platform LSP-1, built at the Astrakhansky Korabel shipyard and intended to drill and operate wells and collect and pre-treat reservoir content at Korchagins oilfield in the Russian sector of the Caspian Sea some 180 kilometers (112 miles) outside Astrakhan. (Mikhail Mordasov/AFP/Getty Images)

Russias Lukoil Calls For End To The Ukraine War, As The Oil Company Suffers Losses

The head of Russias second-largest oil company, Lukoil on March 3 has called for an immediate halt to fighting in Ukraine, in a sign of weakening support for the conflict among some of the countrys influential oligarchs.

The oil giant is the first major Russian firm to speak out against Putins decision to invade its neighbor.

Vagit Alekperov, the billionaire founder and chairman of the Russian oil company, released a press statement, pleading for an immediate cessation to hostilities and expressed concern over the expanding conflict, as pressure mounts due to sanctions.

The Russian energy firm expresses its concern over the ongoing tragic events in Ukraine and its deepest sympathy to all those affected by this tragedy, said Alekperov. We stand for the immediate cessation of the armed conflict and fully support its resolution through the negotiation process and through diplomatic means.

President Vladimir Putin is pressing ahead with his assault in Ukraine, which began last week, despite warnings of possible sanctions from the West and its allies that would impact the Russian economy.

The wide-ranging sanctions have caused a massive drop in the ruble, causing the Moscow stock exchange to close for several days, putting Russia in its worst economic crisis in 20 years.

The crisis has wiped out billions from the fortune of Alekperov, adding to a growing number of concerned oligarchs over the economic impact of the invasion, including some inside Putins inner circle.

Many of the Russian oligarchs are upset after several of them have had their assets seized or frozen by Western nations under the new sanctions.

Alekperovs statement about the Ukraine conflict follows comments from two of Russias powerful oligarchs, Mikhail Fridman and Oleg Deripaska.

Fridman, the co-founder of Alfa-Bank, a confidant of Putin and one of the countrys largest private bankers, said the invasion was a tragedy for both Ukrainians and Russians, saying that war can never be the answer.

Deripaska, the founder of aluminum giant Rusal, said that negotiations must start as soon as possible, adding that peace is the priority.

Whitehall is considering grabbing properties owned by oligarchs in the UK with ties to the Kremlin to put pressure on the Russian government.

The French government on March 3, said that it had seized a superyacht owned by a company linked to Igor Sechin, chief executive of Russian energy giant Rosneft and a close ally of Putin.

Meanwhile, Lukoil has thousands of gas stations in operation worldwide, including some in the United States.

In Newark, New Jersey, the city passed a resolution on March 2 suspending the business operating licenses for Lukoil stations in solidarity with Ukraine.

The head of Naftogaz, Yuriy Vitrenko, who runs Ukraines largest energy firm said that anti-Russian sanctions should be ramped up and targeted directly at its energy exports.

Vitrenko said that Germanys suspension of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline was not enough.

Western countries should make this very clear choice to get rid of this dependency on Russian gas and oil and that you have to believe as if you were at war with Russia, to stop the war from spreading, said Vitrenko to the BBC.

In Washington, Congress is deliberating on which steps to take if energy sanctions are imposed, with both parties expressing wide support on restrictions of Russian energy.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) presented a plan on March 3 for the European Union to cut Russian imports by a third within a year and urged the European Union to sign no new supply contracts with Russias largest gas company Gazprom.

Nobody is under any illusions anymore. Russias use of its natural gas resources as an economic and political weapon show Europe needs to act quickly to be ready to face considerable uncertainty over Russian gas supplies next winter, said IEA Executive Director, Fatih Birol.

The S&P has estimated that international sanctions have halved the Kremlins available foreign exchange reserves, leaving its banking system with extremely limited access to global financial structures.

On March 2, the rating agency lowered Russias sovereign debt deep into junk status, with a CCC- rating and warned that the country may not be able to pay its debts.

Lukoil maintains that it would continue in its efforts to provide reliable energy supplies to consumers around the world and that it was committed to strengthening peace, international relations, and humanitarian ties.
Bottles of prescription painkiller OxyContin, 40mg pills, made by Purdue Pharma L.D. sit on a shelf at a local pharmacy, in Provo, Utah on April 25, 2017. (George Frey/Reuters)

Sacklers to Pay $6 Billion to Settle Purdue Opioid Lawsuits

The Sackler family owners of Purdue Pharma LP reached a deal with a group of attorneys general to pay up to $6 billion in cash to resolve widespread litigation alleging that they fueled the U.S. opioid epidemic, bringing the OxyContin maker closer to exiting bankruptcy.

The attorneys general for eight states and the District of Columbia, who had blocked a previous settlement that included a $4.3 billion cash payment, announced the deal after weeks of mediation with the Sacklers.

The family agreed to pay at least $5.5 billion in cash, which will be used for abating a crisis that has led to nearly 500,000 U.S. opioid overdose deaths over two decades.

The value of the deal could grow as the family members sell additional assets.

The Sackler family owners said in a statement that they sincerely regret that OxyContin unexpectedly became part of an opioid crisis.

The family members said they acted lawfully but a settlement was by far the best way to help resolve a serious and complex public health crisis.

U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Robert Drain must approve the deal, which protects the Sacklers from civil lawsuits. Purdue requested a March 9 hearing for Drain to review the agreement.

Purdue said on Thursday that the new settlement would provide additional funding for opioid abatement programs, overdose rescue medicines, and victims, while putting the company on track to resolve its bankruptcy case on an expedited schedule.

When the bankruptcy plan takes effect, Purdue Pharma will cease to exist. It will emerge as a new company, Knoa Pharma LLC, owned by the National Opioid Abatement Trust, an entity controlled by creditors of Purdue.

Opioid overdose deaths soared to a record during the COVID-19 pandemic, including from the powerful synthetic painkiller fentanyl, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said.

The Sacklers agreement follows an announcement on Friday by the three largest U.S. drug distributors and Johnson & Johnson that they would finalize a $26 billion plan to settle allegations over their role in the opioid crisis.

Purdue filed for bankruptcy in 2019 in the face of thousands of lawsuits accusing it and members of the Sackler family of fueling the opioid epidemic through deceptive marketing of its highly addictive pain medicine.

The company pleaded guilty to misbranding and fraud charges related to its marketing of OxyContin in 2007 and 2020. Members of the Sackler family have denied wrongdoing.

The new deal was announced over two months after U.S. District Judge Colleen McMahon overturned the earlier settlement, which contained sweeping legal protections for the Sacklers from future opioid-related litigation.

Eight states, Washington D.C. and the U.S. Department of Justices bankruptcy watchdog said at the time that the Sacklers should not be afforded such protections since they did not file for bankruptcy themselves.

While bankruptcy judges have increasingly granted such releases over the years when approving a reorganization plan, McMahon ruled that the bankruptcy court did not have that legal authority.

As part of the new deal, the holdout states and D.C. agreed to drop their opposition to the protections.

Serving Justice

Connecticuts William Tong, one of the attorneys general who agreed to the settlement, said he recognized its limits.

No one is under any illusion this solves all the problems were facing, Tong said at a news conference.

Tong and the mediator urged Drain to allow victims of the opioid epidemic to address the court when the judge considers approving the settlement and to order the Sackler family members to attend.

The mediator, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Shelley Chapman, said in a court filing it was her heartfelt belief that doing so would serve the ends of justice.

Under Thursdays settlement, $276 million of the increased Sackler contribution will be dedicated to the eight states that had opposed the prior deal and the District of Columbia.

By Dietrich Knauth, Jonathan Stempel and Tom Hals
San Diego Officer Stabbed, Police Open Fire in Little Italy

SAN DIEGOA San Diego police officer was stabbed in Little Italy on March 3 during a confrontation that led to a law enforcement shooting.

At least one officer opened fire on a suspect in the area of Beech and State streets shortly before 1:30 p.m., according to San Diego Police Department (SDPD) officials.

Department officials declined to disclose the nature or severity of the injuries suffered by the lawman, a canine-unit officer, and would not say if anyone was wounded by the gunfire.

Witnesses told 10News, however, that a suspect was dead inside a condominium in the tourist-friendly urban enclave just east of San Diego Bay.

In an online statement, the San Diego Police Officers Association disclosed that the wounded officer had been stabbed, wishing him a speedy recovery.

The SDPD did not immediately disclose information about the events that led to the shooting.

The shooting forced closures of traffic lanes in the immediate area into the late afternoon.
An Ukrainian soldier keeps position sitting on a ZU-23-2 anti-aircraft gun at a frontline, northeast of Kyiv, Ukraine, on March 3, 2022. (Aris Messinis/AFP via Getty Images)

Sanctions Unlikely to Force Russias Hand: Foreign Policy Experts

Beijing "nervous" about invasion

Two foreign policy experts from Curtin University, Australia, believe coordinated sanctions and boycotts on Russia will do little to quell the current invasion of Ukraine or push Vladimir Putins inner circle to remove him.

Democratic nations have been in lockstep in the past week, rolling out a wave of sanctions to increase pressure on the Russian elite to cease the invasion of its neighbour.

Some measures include kicking Russian financial institutions off the SWIFT global payments systemintegral for inter-country money transfers; freezing the assets of oligarchs; restricting Russian planes from accessing European, American, and Canadian airspace; and stopping Moscows Central Bank from accessing currency reserves overseas.

Companies, retirement funds, and non-profit organisations have also contributed via boycotts of the Russian market in one form or another.

While the means have been unprecedented, actual results may be slow-coming, according to Joseph Siracusa, adjunct professor of international diplomacy.

Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a meeting in Moscow on March 2, 2022. (Mikhail Klimentyev/Sputnik/AFP via Getty Images)

They have a one in three success rate, he told The Epoch Times. Theyre not going to work in the short term, sanctions only tend to work in the long term.

The professor believed the methods were designed to compel Putins resignation or regime change but said this was also an unlikely scenario.

He pointed to the situation in apartheid-era South Africa, which was subject to international sanctions for years.

It was the common man who suffered, he said. People were still driving their Mercedes and going into their beautiful homes, factories, and all the rest. Sanctions often hit the wrong part of society.

I think sanctions in many cases is a very poor substitute for directly supporting the people you want to support.

Alexey Muraviev, head of Curtins Department of Social Sciences and Security Studies, warned sanctions could further entrench the Russian presidents position.

Shortly after Putin recognised the (two) separatist regions in Ukraine. His popularity jumped by 10 percent from about 60 to 71 percent, he told The Epoch Times. Its a bit hard to say how the Russians feel now given the war and devastation.

The Russian state is tightening its grip on freedom of speech and two major opposition media outlets have been shut down, he said.

The narrative present in the Russian media space is Blame the West, blame Americans, he added.

Muraviev was also concerned cutting off Moscow from the developed world could drive it closer towards Beijing.

The Chinese leaderships reaction to Putins invasion of Ukraine has been muted and shifted between tacit approval or disapproval of Russias actions.

Siracusa said Beijing was nervous about the developments, noting that Russo-China relations have always been driven by pragmatism and not loyalty.

The Chinese want to take on the Americans in the Super Bowl of economics, AI, and the future, and Putin wants to burn the stadium down and everybody in itit doesnt suit the Chinese at all, he said. This is not how the Chinese rule; they would not be into this naked aggression business.

Trade relations between China and Ukraine totalled US$19 billion last year, and it is also a critical partner for Beijings expansionist infrastructure policy, the Belt and Road Initiative.

Ukraine is the steppingstone for the Belt and Road in that neck of the woods, and the Chinese are not going to cut their throats because Putin decided to go on the warpath.
Show Me the Zuckerbucks: How Outside Money Infiltrated Missouris 2020 Election

Commentary

In 2020, government election offices across Missouri received millions of dollars from a billionaire who resides far from the rolling hills of Mark Twain National Forest, the iconic St. Louis Arch, and the bustling suburbs of Kansas City.

Mark Zuckerberg, the California Facebook billionaire, funneled millions into our state with grant dollars disproportionately favoring Democrat-held districts.

This was one of the largest contributions any private individual has ever made to finance local elections both in Missouri and across the country on such a massive scale. New research by the Foundation for Government Accountability (FGA) on the impact of what has become known as Zuckerbucks makes it clear that the Missouri legislature should make safeguarding elections against outside influences a top priority this coming session.

The big-tech billionaire and his wife, through the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL), funneled $9 million into the state of Missouri and more than $400 million into 2,500 other local election offices nationally, calling them COVID-19 response grants. The money was advertised as a resource to buy personal protective equipment (PPE) and support voting procedures adapted to the pandemicbut COVID-19 response was a fraction of the total expenditures.

FGAs latest research, utilizing extensive records requests and Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, reveals three disturbing trends about the grants and how the money was ultimately used.

Zuckerbucks landed most prevalently in Democrat-held counties.

Every Missouri county carried by Joe Biden received Zuckerbucksbut fewer than half of the counties that broke for Donald Trump received anything. Biden-held counties received average grants of $1.3 million, whereas the average award for Trump-carried jurisdictions was more than 98 percent lessa pittancecoming in at $107,000.

And the total amount of the grants was not determined based on population. Rather, amounts tracked with blue votes. The average grant amount per registered voter for a Biden-carried jurisdiction was more than 50 percent larger than the average for those that Trump carried.

Localities that received Zuckerbucks saw abnormally high increases in voter turnout. Missouris 2nd Congressional District consists of St. Louis and St. Charles Counties, both of which received two of the largest grants. The incumbent for that district, Republican Congresswoman Ann Wagner, received fewer votes in 2020 in both counties than in 2018meanwhile votes for her Democratic opponent increased by a staggering 32 percent.

Meanwhile, Jefferson County, which completes the district, did not receive Zuckerbucks, and vote margins between parties followed past trends.

Less than five percent of expenditures went to PPE.

Instead, counties spent a quarter of a million dollars on new, non-pandemic-related voting equipment, paying poll workers, and voter education. In some cases, the money was more blatantly misused as it was in Boone County. Officials there spent the funds on producing a music video and radio spot with local rap artists.

Legislators attempted to ban private funding of local election offices last year but ran out of time at the end of session. Now is the time to prioritize this reform, however, with the 2022 midterms on the horizon.

Continuing to allow billionaires to interfere with voting operations sets a dangerous precedent for the security and integrity of future elections. Elections arent a commodity to be bought and soldMissourians deserve better. Voters should go to the polls confident their vote will be cast and counted without interference from out-of-state groups or the partisan agendas of big corporations and special interest groups.

If local election offices need additional resources to operate, they should come from the taxpayer-funded budget and be equally distributed by the Secretary of States office, not a third partyand Missouri voters agree.

A recent survey from the Center for Excellence in Polling shows solid support (72 percent) for ending private funding of election offices with some of the strongest support coming from the Democrats who benefitted the most from it.

Last election, it was Mark Zuckerberg. In the next election, it could be a whole host of other wealthy tech tycoons or special interest groups with Missouri elections in their sights.

Missouri legislators have a chance to stop out-of-state, big-tech billionaires and corporations from interfering in our elections by completely banning third-party funding of election officesthey should take that chance before its too late.

From RealClearWire

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
South Australia Police Removes Vaccine Mandates

South Australia Police (SAPOL) have announced they will lift vaccine mandates on March 4, allowing police officers in the Australian state who had refused to get the COVID-19 vaccine to return to work.

At 7.00 a.m. on March 7, the Police Workers Vaccination Direction, which requires all police employees to be vaccinated, will be withdrawn and replaced with a Managerial Direction.

This will enable unvaccinated staff to return to the workplace. Nevertheless, they will be required to take a rapid antigen test as soon as they are present at a South Australia Police setting and wear a mask during their shift every day.

Police Commissioner Grant Stevens said he had the confidence that the South Australian police force could manage the risks to officers and community members from the ongoing pandemic without having to put unvaccinated staff on leave.

At this time, I am happy to report that over 98.5 per cent of the South Australia police workforce have been vaccinated, which is above the over 92 per cent of the South Australian population, he said.

South Australian Police Commissioner Grant Stevens at the press conference at the Stag Hotel in Adelaide, Australia, on Dec. 1, 2020. (Kelly Barnes/Getty Images)

However, the commissioner said that despite being able to return to their substantive duties, unvaccinated staff would encounter some limitations.

For instance, those officers may be restricted from attending high-risk settings such as residential aged care and disability facilities and the forensic science building.

Also, Stevens said that he was engaging with and seeking advice from agencies and sectors that still had a mandatory vaccination policy in place, with consideration to the ongoing application of the Emergency Management Act Directions.

Meanwhile, the state recorded 106 cases of COVID-19, including nine in intensive care on March 4.

Premier Steven Marshall said that although the daily COVID-19 case numbers in South Australia would continue to fluctuate, the governments priority was keeping the number of hospitalised people low.

Thats the number were really focused on at the moment, he said.

Prior to the removal of vaccine mandates for police members, the premier had extended the existing Declaration of a Major Emergency, which was supposed to end on March 5, to another 28 days.

This allows the South Australian government to continue with all the pandemic measures it has been implementing.
The skyscrapers of the Moscow International Business Centre, also known as "Moskva-City," are seen just after sunset in Moscow, Russia, July 12, 2018. (Christian Hartmann/Files)

Speedy Bankruptcy Offered By Russia As One of Three Choices For Foreign Firms

Russia is offering foreign companies, seeking to exit the country, fast-tracked bankruptcy options as businesses face increasing challenges from western sanctions imposed as a result of Moscows initiation of war against Ukraine.

The fast bankruptcy plan will support the employment and social well-being of citizens so that bona fide entrepreneurs can ensure the effective functioning of business, said the government.

First Deputy Prime Minister Andrei Belousov outlined three options for foreign firms with operations in Russia. One, the company continues to work fully in Russia. Two, foreign shareholders transfer their share to be managed by Russian partners and can return to the market later. Or three, the company permanently terminates operations in Russia, closes production, and dismisses employees.

All three choices come with risks. Foreign companies that do decide to continue operating in Russia might have to face severe backlash in the West as the general public increasingly rallies behind Ukraine.

If firms decide to transfer shares, they will be handing over business assets with little to no guarantee that these resources will be returned back intact in the future. Finally, companies that decide to quit might be forced to sell their business for cheap and suffer a loss.

Many foreign firms in Russia are still trying to assess the cost of their exposure in the country, a number that keeps changing as new sanctions are imposed or removed. It is estimated that global investors, companies, and banks have over $110 billion worth of exposure in Russia. Research firm Morningstar puts the exposure of international funds to Russia in the form of bonds and stocks at around $60 billion.

Several businesses have announced their decision to pause or exit from their Russian operations. Oil and gas giant Shell plans to withdraw from its projects in Russia as well as end its involvement in the Nord Stream 2 pipeline project.

BP plans to get rid of its 19.75 percent stake in Russian integrated energy firm Rosneft. Norways Equinor ASA has announced withdrawal from Russian projects worth around $1.2 billion.

Japanese carmaker Toyota will suspend operations at its sole plant in Russia. French multinational integrated oil and gas company TotalEnergies has decided not to invest any more in the country. IKEA declared store closures across Russia.

Nokian Tyres from Finland plans to shift part of its production to other nations. The worlds largest chemicals group BASF is pausing new businesses in Russia and Belarus. Swiss watchmaker Swatch Group has halted exports to Russia due to the overall difficult situation.

Meanwhile, there have been speculations of the Russian government nationalizing the properties of foreign companies. However, Presidential Spokesman Dmitry Peskov recently dismissed such a possibility.

I am not aware of this, and the Kremlin is not considering it, he said. All issues related to sanctions, to minimization of the damage of those sanctions are considered and decisions are taken by the governments crisis center headed by [Russian Prime Minister Mikhail] Mishustin.
Supporters await the arrival of Taiwan Vice President Lai Ching-te at the Hilton Universal Hotel, in Universal City, Calif. on Jan. 25, 2022. (Robyn Beck/AFP via Getty Images)

Amid Ukraine War, US Rushes to Show Support of Taiwan to Counter CCP Aggression: Scholars

News Analysis

Russias invasion of Ukraine has brought fresh attention to Chinas threat to annex Taiwan by force. Taiwanese scholars told The Epoch Times that the U.S. delegation who visited Taiwan this week protected the self-governing democratic island.

Beijings recent launch of two military exercises made the atmosphere across the Taiwan Straita 100-mile wide body of water that separates China and Taiwanmore intense.

One military drill occurred from Feb. 27 to March 1 in the South China Sea, and the other from Feb. 27 thru March 13 in the Yellow Sea between East China and the Korean Peninsula.

Under such intensity, the U.S delegations visit to Taiwan, had a significant impact, the scholars commented.

Two Delegations

The first delegation was led by former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mike Mullen. The group arrived at Taipei on March 1, and stayed in Taiwan until March 2.

Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen met with the delegation. Tsais office said the group was dispatched by U.S. President Joe Biden, and their visit would permit an in-depth exchange of views on Taiwan-U.S. cooperation issues in various fields.

The other members of the delegation were former Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Michele Flournoy, former White House Deputy National Security Adviser Meghan OSullivan, former Senior Director for Asia at the White House National Security Council Michael Green, and former senior director of Asian affairs at the White House National Security Council Evan Medeiros.

Taiwans Foreign Minister Joseph Wu (4th R) stands with a U.S. delegation including retired Admiral Mike Mullen (3rd R), former chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as they arrive at Taipei Songshan Airport in Taiwan on March 1, 2022. (Taiwan Ministry of Foreign Affairs via AP)

On the day the Mullen-led delegation left, former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and his wife started their visit that ends on March 5, according to Taiwans Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Pompeos visit displays fully U.S. bipartisan backing for its rock solid support for Taiwan and the close friendship between Taiwan and the U.S., the foreign ministry said.

Pompeo led the Central Intelligence Agency from 2017 to 2018, before he was promoted to be secretary of state. On this Taiwan trip, he met with President Tsai.

Some Taiwanese scholars believe that the U.S. delegations visit brings peace to the Taiwan Strait, although Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin claimed on March 1 that it is futile for the U.S. to send anyone to demonstrate its so-called support for Taiwan.

Taiwanese Scholars

[Sending delegations to Taiwan] is the quickest way to show the interaction between the U.S. and Taiwan. It shows that the United States is taking care of the safety of Taiwan. Taiwan is in a key strategic position in the Indo-Pacific region, Doong Sy-chi, Taiwan Thinktank deputy executive-general, told the Chinese-language Epoch Times on March 1.

Doong said that all members of the Mullen-led delegation are former senior security or national defense-related officials, in which [the Biden administration] emphasizes to maintain the stability and peace [in the Taiwan strait].

Yen Chien-Fa, a professor and director of the international cooperation department at Chien Hsin University of Science and Technology, said in a phone interview on Tuesday: [The U.S. delegations visit] shows that Taiwan is the core of Americas Indo-Pacific strategy.

Taiwans Foreign Minister Joseph Wu (R) greets former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Admiral Mike Mullen at Taipei Songshan Airport in Taiwan on March 1, 2022. (Taiwan Ministry of Foreign Affairs via AP)

Su Tzu-yun, Director of the Institute for National Defense and Security Research Military Strategy and Industry in Taiwan, told the Chinese-language Epoch Times that the Taiwan Strait is an important water for global freight shipping. To protect the independence of Taiwan or to keep the strait as an international water, the United States is defending the world.

The strongest opponent that the Chinese regime faces [in the Taiwan Strait] is the United States. Chinas military exercises in the Yellow Sea and the South China Sea are training the militarys response when confronted by the U.S. and Japanese troops, Lee Cheng-hsiu, a senior assistant research fellow at Taiwans National Policy Foundation, told The Epoch Times in a phone interview.

Both Su and Lee said they didnt think the Chinese regime would annex Taiwan at this time.

Taiwan isnt Ukraine. Russias invasion of Ukraine is a ground war. Any war in the Taiwan Strait will be naval and air battles. The Chinese regime has to assemble its troops to cross the sea, which will easily be defeated, Su said.

Luo Ya contributed to this report.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen delivers a speech during National Day celebrations in front of the Presidential Building in Taipei, Taiwan, on Oct. 10, 2020. (Chiang Ying-ying/AP Photo)

Taiwans President Apologizes for Mass Power Outage, Pledges to Scrutinize Infrastructure

Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen offered a public apology on Friday for the widespread outage that left more than five million people without electricity, vowing to scrutinize infrastructure and improve grid reliability.

The blackouts began at about 9 a.m. on Thursday, affecting the areas of Taipei, New Taipei, Hsinchu, Taichung, Tainan, Kaohsiung, Changhua, Keelung, Taoyuan, Hualien, and Miaoli, according to local reports.

Tsai said that the mass power outage was the result of human negligence and expressed her apologies for the inconvenience caused to the public.

She made the statement after visiting the main switch station of the Xingda (Hsinta) power plant in Kaohsiung City on Friday.

The Taiwanese president further stated that Premier Su Tseng-chang has directed the Ministry of Economic Affairs to conduct an investigation and submit a full report on the incident within three days.

We must improve the goal of grid decentralization and resilience, conduct a thorough review of the existing grid design, and speed up the necessary re-planning and adjustment, she said, urging the Economic Affairs Ministry to review personnel training and safe operation of power plants.

Following the mass power outage, state-run utility Taiwan Power Company announced on Friday that its chairman Yang Wei-fuu and general manager Chung Bin-li have tendered resignations over the incident, local media Taiwan News reported.

Those who have suffered losses as a result of the outages will receive a 5 percent to 10 percent discount on their energy bills as compensation, and industrial customers will also receive compensation based on the degree of the damage, the report stated.

The power outages came as former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo arrived in Taipei on Wednesday evening for a four-day visit to the country where he was set to meet with Tsai. The live-streaming of their meeting was temporarily canceled an hour before the meeting began due to the power outage.

Taiwans President Tsai Ing-wen and former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo walk together at the Presidential Building in Taipei on March 3, 2022. (Taiwan Presidential Office/Reuters)

Tsai praised Pompeos support for Taiwan during his stint as secretary of State and awarded him the Order of the Brilliant Star with Special Grand Cordon for his contributions to advancing Taiwan-U.S. bilateral ties.

Secretary Pompeo is not only a long-term supporter of Taiwans international participation; he has also facilitated multiple breakthroughs in TaiwanU.S. relations, Tsai remarked.

Taiwan experienced two major power outages in May 2021, during which the self-governed island was afflicted by drought, resulting in an increase in electrical use.

Katabella Roberts contributed to this report.
Ted Cruz, Matt Gaetz, Marjorie Taylor Greene Among Lawmakers Condemning Grahams Call for Russian to Take Out Putin

U.S. lawmakers from both sides of the aisle in Congress are criticizing Sen. Lindsey Grahams (R-S.C.) tweet suggesting that someone in Russia should assassinate the countrys president, Vladimir Putin.

Is there a Brutus in Russia? Is there a more successful Colonel Stauffenberg in the Russian military? Graham said in a March 3 tweet. The only way this ends is for somebody in Russia to take this guy out. You would be doing your countryand the worlda great service.

Marcus Junius Brutus was one of the conspirators who assassinated Julius Caesar on the Ides of March (March 15) in 44 B.C., while Claus von Stauffenberg led an unsuccessful secret plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler on July 20, 1944.

This is an exceptionally bad idea. Use massive economic sanctions; BOYCOTT Russian oil & gas; and provide military aid so the Ukrainians can defend themselves. But we should not be calling for the assassination of heads of state, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) wrote on Twitter in response to Graham. When asked for additional comments about what Graham said, a spokesperson for Cruz directed The Epoch Times to Cruzs original tweet.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) wrote on Twitter: While we are all praying for peace & for the people of Ukraine, this is irresponsible, dangerous & unhinged. We need leaders with calm minds & steady wisdom. Not bloodthirsty warmongering politicians trying to tweet tough by demanding assassinations. Americans dont want war.

Greenes fellow House Freedom Caucus member, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), also responded via Twitter: When has Sen. Graham encouraging regime change ever ended badly?

Graham was a leading advocate of the war in Iraq.

In a March 4 tweet, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) wrote, Senator Grahams assassination tweet is insane.

Spokespersons for Greene and Massie told The Epoch Times that neither representative had additional comments. The Epoch Times has reached out to Gaetz for comment.

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) wrote two tweets on March 4 rejecting Grahams rhetoric: Seriously  ? I really wish our members of Congress would cool it and regulate their remarks as the administration works to avoid WWIII.

Omars office didnt respond by press time to a request by The Epoch Times for further comment.

They are entitled to their opinion, Graham said in a message to The Epoch Times.

Sens. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), Rand Paul (R-Ky.), Ed Markey (D-Mass.), and Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), who all serve on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, didnt respond by press time to a request for comment.

Meanwhile, Russias ambassador to the United States, Anatoly Antonov, described Grahams suggestion as irresponsible and dangerous.

Graham posted the comment after The Washington Post reported that the Chechens and the Kremlin-backed Wagner Group have tried to assassinate Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in recent days. Ukrainian officials said Russian spies alerted them to the plots.

Clint Ehrlich, a lawyer and foreign policy analyst, also reacted to Grahams remarks.

Whether it would be moral for someone to kill Vladimir Putin is irrelevant, because having a sitting U.S. senator publicly call for his death endangers global stability. If, God forbid, there is an attempted coup inside Russia, the Russians will now be able to credibly point the finger at the United States. We could be looking at a world war, Ehrlich said in a message to The Epoch Times.

People in the West think Vladimir Putin is a terrifying leader, especially after his decision to invade Ukraine. But if hes killed in office, whoever replaces him would be a hundred times more dangerous. The Russian people would want revenge, and their new leadera new Stalin figurewould have to give it to them merely to stay in power.

If America were involved in the operation to take Putins life, its conceivable that the Russian state would retaliate by killing the President of the United States.

Other expert commentators on foreign affairs, including University of Chicago professor John Mearsheimer, Stanford professor and former Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul, Brookings Institute senior fellow Robert Kagan, and Air War College ethics professor Daniel Strand didnt respond by press time to a request by The Epoch Times for comment.

As of press time, Grahams tweet is still visible.
Ukrainian servicemen are seen next to a destroyed armoured vehicle, which they said belongs to the Russian army, outside Kharkiv, Ukraine, on Feb. 24, 2022. (Maksim Levin / Reuters)

Top Russian General Killed in Ukraine War, Russia Reports Around 500 Casualties

A top Russian military officer, Maj. Gen. Andrei Sukhovetsky, was killed in combat earlier in the week, according to multiple media outlets. A sniper shot is said to be the reason behind the death although details remain unclear.

Sukhovetsky, Deputy Commander of the 41st Combined Arms Army of the Russian Ground Forces, was killed during a special operation in Ukraine, Russian outlet Pravda reported citing a social media post by Sukhovetskys comrade-in-arms Sergey Chipilev.

With great pain, we learned the tragic news of the death of our friend, Major General Andrey Sukhovetsky, on the territory of Ukraine during the special operation. We express our deepest condolences to his family, Chipilev wrote on the Russian social media network VKontakte.

Volodymyr Omelyan, Ukraines former minister of infrastructure, confirmed the 47-year-olds demise to Fox News Digital, while the U.S. government is yet to confirm it. Dan Hoffman, a former CIA officer, said to the media outlet that if news of Sukhovetskys death is true, it will be big news.

The Russian Military Defense had reported about a special operation conducted on March 2 to demilitarize Ukraine. Over 1,500 Russian servicemen were injured in this operation and 498 ended up dead.

Sukhovetsky, who graduated from the Ryazan Higher Airborne Command School in 1995, kicked off his career as a platoon commander and eventually became the chief of staff of the Guards airborne assault unit.

Last year, he was appointed deputy commander of the 41st Combined Arms Army of the Central Military District by Russian President Vladimir Putin. Sukhovetsky has received two commendations of bravery from Moscow.

Russia has reported 498 troop casualties as of Wednesday morning. Officials from Ukraine claim Russian casualties to be around 9,000. Kyiv is yet to report on its own military casualties.

At least 331 Ukrainian civilians have died since the war began and 675 have been injured, according to the UN human rights office, which also admitted that the real number could turn out higher.

Russian military troops have seized the port city of Kherson and shelled Ukraines second-largest city Kharkiv. It is bombarding the defenses of Mariupol. The citys water supply and electricity have been cut off due to shelling.

Russian forces have also taken control of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in southeastern Ukraine, the biggest nuclear power plant in Europe. A huge fire had erupted at the site but was put out. Ukrainians in the port city of Mykolayiv are claiming to have driven off Russian troops, with fighting continuing on the outskirts.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg accused Russia of using the banned cluster bombs in its war against Ukraine, thereby violating international law. NATO and allies were collecting information and monitoring what is happening in Ukraine very closely, he added.

I also welcome the decision by the International Criminal Court to open the investigation to this because we have to make sure that President Putin, the president of Belarus are held accountable for what they do, the NATO Secretary-General said.
Tory MP Tables Bill to Protect Political Beliefs From Discrimination

Conservative MP Garnett Genuis tabled a private members bill on Mar. 3 that seeks to amend Canadas human rights code to prohibit discrimination on the basis of peoples political beliefs and activities.

This bill is about protecting the rights of individuals, their freedom of speech, and their freedom to be involved in the democratic process without facing reprisals, Genuis said at a press conference in Ottawa on March 4.



Genuis said private companies should not be allowed to require workers to be involved in political activities or be disciplined for any political activity that conflicts with the political values of employers who are attempting to use their corporate power to shape democratic decision-making. The Alberta MP also wants to prevent governments from leveraging private corporations as a way to exercise political discrimination.

It would be sad and inconsistent if, after banning corporate and union donations to political parties, we allow the same entities to control politics through the coercion of their employees, he said. Private corporate actors could seek to influence politics in other discriminatory ways, such as through discriminatory advertising or content policies.

He cited the recent example of the federal government using the Emergencies Act to freeze bank accounts of supporters and protesters in the Freedom Convoy without a court order.

The Justice Minister explicitly demonstrated that political views were a factor in considering whose bank accounts should be frozen.

Genuis said while the Conservative party opposes the breaking of laws, inconsistent legal applications to different kinds of protests and banking sanctions against law abiding people raises serious concerns about the kind of political discrimination that we are allowing to take place.

Aside from private companies or the government using companies to discriminate on political grounds, Genuis said some federal policies such as the Canada Summer Jobs program values test also raises the issue of political interference.

In 2018, the program prevented the participation of pro-life groups by requiring that their core mandate and jobs being funded did not undermine existing constitutional, human, or reproductive rights.

Genuis acknowledged that some provinces and territories already have provisions against political discrimination, but noted theres a need to introduce prohibitions at the federal level.

He argued that since religion is already protected against discrimination in federal law, people holding political beliefs as a defining identity trait should be equally protected.

I think a strong argument can be made that political beliefs are held and felt with a comparable level of personal attachment and intensity for at least some individuals, he said.



Genuiss Bill C-257 was seconded by Conservative MP Leslyn Lewis. We must remain a country where everyone is free to speak their mind, especially about their own government, without fear of repercussions, Lewis wrote on Twitter.
Trade Is Surging Between China and Russia

News Analysis

China and Russia are drawing closer and rapidly. That was happening even before the West imposed sanctions on Russia over the invasion of Ukraine.

But now that China seems willing to take at least some of what Russia may no longer be able to sell in Europe and elsewhere, bilateral trade between the two nations should accelerate, though it is doubtful that China will make all the purchases that Russia needs.

On one side, Beijing should be pleased with the situation, painful as it is for its northern neighbor. For one, the Chinese economy can use the Russian energy that once went elsewhere, at least some of it, as well as Russias agricultural products and other raw materials.

For another, giving Russia a trade outlet thwarts the United States, at least to a degree, and Beijing always enjoys that sort of thing. Most important to Beijing, the pattern could over the long run turn Russia into a kind of tributary state to Beijing.

Trade between Russia and China has indeed shown an impressive growth to date. It has expanded by 50 percent since 2014, and grew 36 percent in 2021 alone. Bilateral trade between the two countries has reached the equivalent of $146.9 billion.

Russia mostly sells China coal, oil, natural gas, and agricultural products. China sells Russia machinery, transportation equipment, mobile phones, cars, and other consumer products. China buys more from Russia than it sells to Russia.

When Chinese leader Xi Jinping met with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the recent Winter Olympics, they laid out a plan to increase their bilateral trade to the equivalent of $250 billion by 2024, a growth rate of about 20 percent a year from todays levels.

To serve existing trade and the planned growth, Russia, with $50 billion in Chinese loan financing, built the 2,540-mile East Siberia Pacific Ocean (ESPO) pipeline. For future energy sales in China, Russia will add to the existing the Power of Siberia pipeline a Power of Siberia 2 pipeline, also with Chinese loan financing. With these decisionsboth the construction and the financingRussia has clearly tied itself closely to Beijings Belt and Road Initiative (BRI, also known as One Belt, One Road).

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping arrive for the welcome banquet for leaders attending the Belt and Road Forum at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China, on April 26, 2019. (Nicolas Asfouri/Pool/Getty Images)

There is much that China could do to substitute for Russias potential loss of energy sales in Europe. The International Energy Agency (IEA) reports that Russia produces some 10.5 million barrels of oil a day but consumes only some 3.5 million barrels a day. Accordingly, it needs to export some 7 million barrels of oil a day.

Similar relative proportions apply to natural gas. Since China imports some 11 million barrels of oil a day, and considerable natural gas as well, it could theoretically absorb any amount that Russia fails to sell under the new sanctions regime.

But it is not that simple. Because China now imports only about 2 million barrels of Russian oil a day, fully accommodating Russia would involve more than a three-fold increase in purchases of Russian oil. Instead of the 15.5 percent of energy imports China presently gets from Russia, the proportion would have to rise to almost 55 percent. Not only would that impose on Chinas already strained supply chains, at least for a while, but Beijing might be reluctant to alienate existing supply relationships.

On top of this are considerations of Chinas position in the world. The U.S. State Department has warned China not to help Russia avoid sanctions. That might give pause, but so also does the fact that half the worlds economies, most of the buyers of Chinas exports, have joined the sanctions regime, and Beijing has no desire to get on the wrong side of such an important, and dominant, group.

However much this relationship develops, it would seem to be more beneficial to China than to Russia. Provided that China can avoid alienating existing energy and raw material suppliers and its other trade partners generally, its economy, after a period of adjustment, would give up nothing to enlarge the relationship.

What is no doubt more appealing to Beijing is that Russia, to build the necessary infrastructure would become even more deeply obligated to Chinese finance, as is true of most nations that have opened themselves to Chinas BRI.

In time, the relationship could progress to a point where a deeply indebted and dependent Russia would effectively become part of Chinas sphere of influence, a mere tributary state to Beijinga bitter irony for Putin who initiated his relationship with China (and his land grab in Europe) to secure for Russia the status of a great power.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Twitters Lawsuit Against Texas AG Over Trump Ban Gets Rejected Again by Court

A federal appeals court has dismissed microblogging site Twitters lawsuit against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, which accused him of retaliating against the platform for the ban on former President Donald Trump.

Twitter had instituted a lifetime ban on Trump due to his alleged role in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol breach. Subsequently, the Texas Office of the Attorney General (OAG) launched an investigation and served a Civil Investigative Demand (CID), demanding Twitter to submit documents related to its content moderation policies.

The platform sued Paxton in a district court, alleging government retaliation for speech protected by the First Amendment. But the district court tossed aside the lawsuit. The case then went to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals which has now upheld the district courts judgment.

The three-judge panel of the appeals court argued that the case was not prudentially ripe in its 20-page ruling (pdf), and that the issues were not fit for judicial decision as the OAG is yet to make an allegation against Twitter. The facts of the case are not yet developed. Twitter has the freedom to not comply with the CID and challenge it in Texas state court, in case of enforcement.

The court agreed that determining whether content moderation is political censorship or protected speech forms the crux of the case. Even if content moderation is deemed to be protected speech, making misrepresentations about content moderation policies cannot be construed within protected speech.

If Twitters statements are protected commercial speech, then OAGs investigation would be unlawful if it would chill a person of ordinary firmness from speaking, and if it was caused in substantial or motivating part by Twitters content moderation decisions, the court ruling said.

But if Twitters statements are misleading commercial speech, and thus unprotected, then Twitters content moderation decisions would be a proper cause for the investigation because they would be the very acts that make its speech misleading.

Though the court admitted that Twitter could suffer hardship from withholding court consideration, adjudicating the lawsuit at present will require determining whether the platform violated Texass unfair trade practices law even before the OAG has completed its investigation.

The court determined that any hardship faced by Twitter for the alleged chill of its First Amendment rights was insufficient to overcome the uncertainty of the legal issue under consideration.

Paxton welcomed the court decision as a win against big tech platforms. Last year, I launched an investigation into Twitters coordinated cancellation of Trump & conservative voices/platforms. Twitter sued me to get me to stop. I punched back & won at the district court &, just today, won at the appeals court. Big Tech is not above the law! Paxton said in a March 3 tweet.

The Texas AG can now continue with his investigation against Twitter for its ban on Trump. After the court verdict, Twitter said that it still believes Paxton is misusing his official powers to infringe on the companys fundamental rights with the aim of silencing free speech.
One of several homeless encampments in Tyler, Texas, visited by the "Point In Time" survey on Feb. 24, 2022. (Photo Patrick Butler/The Epoch Times)

Tyler Texas Establishes Precedent Setting Program in Approach to the Homeless

Homeless issues in Tyler, Texas, are not expected to be eradicated, said the citys mayor and a police sergeant on Feb. 24, to The Epoch Times.

But there is the expectation that Tylers homeless problem can be mitigated, managed, and controlled, given the right focus and proper distribution of available resources.

Civic leaders and police dealing with a transient population have instituted new measures to address the issue in this community of 105,000, about 100 miles east of Dallas, since September and October 2021.

In its annual Point in Time survey of the homeless, the number of those affected has remained fairly consistent for the past three years, Tyler Mayor Don Warren said.

Tylers Mayor Don Warren stands at a homeless encampment in the city limits on Feb. 24, 2022, while the Point in Time survey is conducted behind him. Warren oversaw the creation of Tylers Homeless Response Unit in October. (Patrick Butler/The Epoch Times)

In 2020, we saw a small dip in the homeless numbers due to Covid, but other than that, weve remained at about 330 to 335 people the year before that and afterward, he said.

In September, Tylers city council enacted a camping ban to remove all homeless and transients from public places.

In October, the city council also approved and established a new section within the Tyler Police Department, the Homeless Community Response Unit.

A Community Issue

The units overseer, Sgt. Kevin Mobley said the primary purpose of the unit is to build relationships and trust with the citys homeless.

Homelessness is not a law enforcement issue. Its a community issue, Mobley said.

It will take people in the community who have the capacity to pass along the genuine concern of the homeless population, to those who are looking for a way out, those who havent been able to find a way out, and those facing the challenges of mental illness or drug addiction.

Mayor Don Warren said despite the public camping ban, which has been effective in dispersing homeless encampments under public bridges and wooded lots, sleeping in tents or sleeping bags on private property is not illegal.

And thats where the homeless in our city is gathering now, he said. If they are on private property and the landowner is okay with that, all we can do at this point is talk to them and try to get them into a program.

Officer Johnny Green, a 35-year veteran of the Tyler police force, spearheaded the idea of a homeless response unit. Green said the units primary purpose is not to make arrests.

While some officers working in other units may make arrests on a daily basis, I probably will make one or two occasionally, he said. Green said he keeps his eyes on the behavior of the homeless and potential crimes they may commit while building relationships with them.

Overall property crimes in Tyler for December of 2021 saw a decrease of 11 percent compared to December of 2020. In the same period, there was a 40 percent decrease in burglary and an 11 percent decrease in theft offenses according to crime statistics posted at the Tyler Police Department website.

We havent seen a spike in crime due to homelessness, said Warren, and maybe thats because of all the good citizens in our city reaching out to the homeless with various resources.

Tent Encampments of Tyler

Warren spoke to The Epoch Times in the frosty early morning hours at one of several homeless encampments in Tyler.

He stood in a trashy, muddy, and wooded lot, located in a remote part of the city, looking on as volunteers conducted the survey.

Community response officers, stood by, talking amiably with the homeless tent-dwellers after the survey was completed, probing for problems people were facing.

Its dangerous out here, officer Bianca Smedley said. Some people in these camps are suffering from mental illness or drug addiction. Some are abandoned by, or feel abandoned by, their family and think they cant go anywhere else but here.

We try to get them to move forward and tell them, even if you fall back you can still move forward. Tyler is a great city to be in if you want to get some help.

Homeless person Teresa Larson, 34, speaks with Tyler community response officer Bianca Smedley about her health needs, Feb. 24, 2002, (Patrick Butler/The Epoch Times)

Tents in the encampment were scattered in an estimated two-acre area surrounded by trash, old clothes, plastic bottles, broken food coolers, and the occasional bicycle.

There were no sanitary facilities or running water of any kind.

Living conditions were worsened by below-freezing temperature the previous night, turning the ground into a sea of mud as it thawed.

Numbers gathered in the survey will be processed and submitted to the Texas Homeless Network for distribution to grant and funding agencies throughout the state said Andrea Wilson, executive director of People Attempting to Help, or PATH, the organizing agency of the survey in Tyler.

While the city does not fund efforts to reach the homeless, Warren said, it provides spaces for nonprofit agencies to work from, as long as they serve the homeless.

The Tyler survey was conducted by 35 volunteers working from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. both indoors at shelters and at homeless eating locations, and outdoors at homeless encampments.

Volunteer Errin Dixon surveys a homeless encampment in Tyler, Texas, Feb. 24, 2022. There are homeless all over East Texas, he said. We dont give up on them. (Patrick Butler/The Epoch Times)

Survey questions included aspects of race and gender, length of homelessness, the cause of their homelessness, physical and mental health conditions, and if they were veterans of the U.S. armed forces, said Wilson.

Mobley agrees with Warren that crime in Tyler has not increased specifically because of homeless issues, and doesnt expect homelessness in Tyler to be eradicated, but mitigated by their efforts.

I think Tyler is beginning to set the precedentand Im sure its happening all over the nationwith the realization that its going to take more than paid professionals and law enforcement to mitigate homelessness, and to help people with the mental and physical challenges they face.

Green agreed. I love what Im doing, but if I had to do it without the resources of community volunteers and agencies, there is no way I could do this job.

Cold Will Kill

One of those facing daunting challenges is Donald Myrick, 59, a Texas native from nearby Longview. Myricks feet and lower legs were amputated because of frostbite while sleeping outside, homeless, in sub-zero temperatures in Michigan.

He spoke to The Epoch Times in the early morning while drinking hot coffee at the Gateway to Hope Rescue Mission, the staging area for some of the survey volunteers.

Gateway is housed in a building supplied free by the city, where meals are served daily.

I dont care about anything anymore, except to stay warm, Myrick said, wrapping his hands around a steaming Styrofoam cup. He explained he was layered up against the rainy, 25 degree-wind-chill cold in Tyler.

He sleeps outside in a sleeping bag and has no tent.

Homeless double amputee Donald Merrick lost his feet and lower legs to frostbite. He said staying warm was all he cared about in Tyler on Feb. 24, 2022. (Patrick Butler/The Epoch Times)

Yes, it was nasty last night. When I woke up, my wheelchair had icicles on it. The cold will kill you, much faster than hot weather will.

You gotta stay layered up, or your gonna die. When I lost my feet it was because I was asleep and didnt know my shoes were sticking out uncovered.

When I woke up, it felt like ants were crawling all over my feet. Thats what frostbite feels like, he said, twisting his face, ants crawling up your legs.

At the encampment, Warren said, Our ultimate goal is to see people like those here living in homes with heat, running water, a bathroom, food, and so on.

We are trying to inform the churches and concerned citizens that giving tents, sleeping bags, and things that make it possible to live outdoors, is not the direction we want you to go.

We want them [the homeless] to be loved, secure, and have a family. But you cant make them do it. They have to want to do it.

Survey volunteer Callynth Finney, 47, is a mother of two children and regularly checks in on unsheltered neighbors as she calls them.

While she agreed with the mayors comments, she added that there is no one-size-fits-all, blanket solution to the problems the homeless face.

Andrea Wilson (L) and volunteer Callynth Finney coordinate homeless survey targets for Tyler, Texas, on Feb. 24, 2022. (Patrick Butler/The Epoch Times)

The mayor has a valid point about the distribution of resources and the ultimate goal, she said, but theres always someone who has been so beaten up by life, so abused or defeated, they lose hope.

They dont have the will to go on. They dont neatly fit into the get-a-job, get-a-house scenario, and their mental condition works against them.

Then when its cold outside like it has been, or was two years ago during the severe snowstorm here, what are you going to do with our unsheltered neighbors? If we do nothing, people will die.

Officer Johnny Green (L) and volunteer Errin Dixon with Gateway to Hope, and community response officers Bianca Smedley and Braden Banes (R) work together to help the homeless in Tyler, Texas, on Feb. 24, 2022. (Patrick Butler/The Epoch Times)
China's top political advisory body starts annual session

EditorChen Zhuo Time2022-03-05 01:02:18

The fifth session of the 13th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) opens at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, March 4, 2022. Xi Jinping, Li Keqiang, Li Zhanshu, Wang Huning, Zhao Leji, Han Zheng and Wang Qishan attended the opening meeting of the fifth session of the 13th National Committee of the CPPCC. Wang Yang, chairman of the CPPCC National Committee, delivered a work report of the Standing Committee of the CPPCC National Committee to the session. (Xinhua/Huang Jingwen)

BEIJING, March 4 (Xinhua) -- China's top political advisory body started its annual session Friday afternoon in Beijing.

Party and state leaders Xi Jinping, Li Keqiang, Li Zhanshu, Wang Huning, Zhao Leji, Han Zheng and Wang Qishan attended the opening meeting of the fifth session of the 13th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), held at the Great Hall of the People.

At the meeting, the agenda for the session was reviewed and approved.

Wang Yang, chairman of the CPPCC National Committee, delivered a work report of the Standing Committee of the CPPCC National Committee to the session.

Over the past year, the CPPCC National Committee and its standing committee performed their duties with a focus on getting the 14th Five-Year Plan off to a good start, further built the CPPCC as a special consultative body to improve the performance of the CPPCC system, and made new contributions to the cause of the Party and the country, Wang said.

In 2022, the CPPCC committees will see their work revolving around the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC), said Wang. He urged contributions to maintaining a stable and sound economic environment, a social climate enabling prosperity for the people and the country, and a healthy political atmosphere of integrity.

Wang called on political advisors to rally more people around the CPC and channel more strength into national rejuvenation.

The CPPCC should better play its role in conducting consultation, which will help build consensus and in turn cement solidarity, Wang said, urging efforts to consolidate and develop the patriotic united front and pool wisdom and strength of all Chinese at home and abroad.

Attendees were also briefed on the handling of proposals submitted by political advisors.

A total of 6,117 proposals have been submitted since the previous annual session of the top political advisory body. Of the 5,039 proposals filed, 99.8 percent have been handled, said Liu Xincheng, vice chairman of the CPPCC National Committee, when delivering a report on the proposals.

The fifth session of the 13th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) opens at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, March 4, 2022. (Xinhua/Yin Bogu)

Wang Yang, chairman of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) National Committee, delivers a work report of the Standing Committee of the CPPCC National Committee at the opening meeting of the fifth session of the 13th CPPCC National Committee at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, March 4, 2022. (Xinhua/Rao Aimin)

Zhang Qingli presides over the opening meeting of the fifth session of the 13th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, March 4, 2022. (Xinhua/Huang Jingwen)

Liu Xincheng delivers a report on how the proposals from political advisors have been handled at the opening meeting of the fifth session of the 13th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, March 4, 2022. (Xinhua/Ding Lin)

The fifth session of the 13th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) opens at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, March 4, 2022. (Xinhua/Lu Ye)

The fifth session of the 13th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) opens at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, March 4, 2022. (Xinhua/Jin Liangkuai)

The fifth session of the 13th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) opens at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, March 4, 2022. (Xinhua/Ding Lin)

The fifth session of the 13th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) opens at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, March 4, 2022. (Xinhua/Jin Liwang)

The fifth session of the 13th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) opens at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, March 4, 2022. (Xinhua/Rao Aimin)

The fifth session of the 13th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) opens at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, March 4, 2022. (Xinhua/Zhai Jianlan)

The fifth session of the 13th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) opens at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, March 4, 2022. (Xinhua/Ju Peng)

Members of the 13th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) attend the opening meeting of the fifth session of the 13th CPPCC National Committee at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, March 4, 2022. (Xinhua/Yin Gang)

.The military band of the Chinese People's Liberation Army performs during the opening meeting of the fifth session of the 13th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, March 4, 2022. (Xinhua/Ding Haitao)

The fifth session of the 13th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) opens at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, March 4, 2022. (Xinhua/Jin Liwang)

The fifth session of the 13th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) opens at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, March 4, 2022. (Xinhua/Ding Lin)

The fifth session of the 13th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) opens at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, March 4, 2022. (Xinhua/Ding Lin)

Members of the 13th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) attend the opening meeting of the fifth session of the 13th CPPCC National Committee at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, March 4, 2022. (Xinhua/Yin Gang)

The fifth session of the 13th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) opens at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, March 4, 2022. (Xinhua/Zhang Ling)

The fifth session of the 13th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) opens at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, March 4, 2022. (Xinhua/Rao Aimin)

The fifth session of the 13th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) opens at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, March 4, 2022. (Xinhua/Ding Lin)

The fifth session of the 13th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) opens at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, March 4, 2022. (Xinhua/Rao Aimin)

The fifth session of the 13th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) opens at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, March 4, 2022. (Xinhua/Ding Haitao)

The fifth session of the 13th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) opens at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, March 4, 2022. (Xinhua/Rao Aimin)

Members of the 13th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) attend the opening meeting of the fifth session of the 13th CPPCC National Committee at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, March 4, 2022. (Xinhua/Huang Jingwen)

The fifth session of the 13th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) opens at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, March 4, 2022. (Xinhua/Jin Liwang)

SourceXinhuanet
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson speaks during a joint press conference with Prime Minister of Estonia and Secretary General of NATO at the Tapa Army Base in Tallinn, Estonia, on March 1, 2022. (Leon Neal / Pool/AFP via Getty Images)

UK Bolstering Russia Sanctions With New Powers to Move Further and Faster: Johnson

The UK is bolstering its package of sanctions against the Kremlin with new powers in our arsenal to go further and faster, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has said.

Johnson said the changes will ramp up the pressure on those criminal elites trying to launder money on UK soil, ensuring they have nowhere to hide.

It comes as the government has been under pressure to speed up punitive action against people linked to Russian President Vladimir Putins regime.

The amendments to the Economic Crime (Transparency and Enforcement) Bill being put forward by the government will help streamline the current legislation so we can respond even more swiftly and effectively to the current crisis in the way we sanction individuals, the Foreign Office said.

The FCDO said the provisions will allow the UK to align more rapidly with the individual designations imposed by allies such as the U.S., Canada, and the EU.

This will be achieved via an urgent designation procedure.

The changes also include shortening the length of time foreign owners of UK property will be given to declare their true identity as part of a new register of overseas entities, from 18 months to six months.

A further amendment will increase criminal penalties for non-compliance from fines of up to 500 ($661) per day to up to 2,500 ($3,306) per day.

As set out in the existing legislation, other sanctions will include prison sentences of up to five years.

Another change will commit the government to publishing an annual report on the use of Unexplained Wealth Orders (UWOs).

Data on the use of UWOs is already published in the annual Asset Recovery Statistical Bulletin, but the additional report will be laid before Parliament and provide further information beyond how many UWOs have been obtained and their estimated value, the FCDO said.

Johnson said the UK has led the way with its package of sanctions against Putins regime, and is now bolstering this with new powers in our arsenal to go further and faster.

We will ramp up the pressure on those criminal elites trying to launder money on UK soil and close the net on corruption, he said, adding: They will have nowhere to hide.

Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said the changes will allow us to go faster and harder on those closest to Putin, including oligarchs.

Our message to Putin and his cronies has been clear from day oneinvading Ukraine would have serious and crippling consequences, she said.

We have been true to our word, introducing the largest and strongest sanctions package in our history, but we are not stopping here.

The changes we are making will allow us to go faster and harder on those closest to Putin, including oligarchs, as we continue to ratchet pressure in the face of illegal and unprovoked Russian aggression.

The amendments follow calls from Labour to massively cut the length of time foreign owners of property in the UK will be given to declare their true identity, in an effort to tighten the net on dirty Russian money as soon as possible.

Labour said on Wednesday it wanted to speed up the process of bringing the new register of overseas entities into force, with applications required within 28 days of the legislation passing.

Shadow foreign secretary David Lammy said: We welcome the governments U-turn under pressure from Labour to tighten the law so we can move on more oligarchs tied to Putins regime, but we must also move faster, acting against these individuals in days not months.

Amendments to the Economic Crime Bill will be expedited through all its Commons stages on Monday, the FCDO said.

It added that the government is looking for swift passage in the Lords in order to get royal assent as soon as possible.

On Friday morning, Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer called for the Government to go further and faster with sanctions.

Speaking during a visit to Birmingham following Labours by-election win, he said: Where the government is taking action on sanctions, we support them. But they have got to go further and faster.

Labour Party chairwoman Anneliese Dodds also told Sky News the UK has got to stop dragging its feet in clamping down on funds that have come from figures linked to Putin.

But Justice Secretary Dominic Raab told BBC Breakfast weve not been slow on sanctions.

Weve been at the vanguard of taking action and, of course, what is really important is we act in concert with our allies, European, American, and other NATO allies, he said.

By Amy Gibbons
Ukrainian servicemen are seen next to a destroyed armored vehicle, which they said belongs to the Russian army, outside Kharkiv, Ukraine, on Feb. 24, 2022. (Maksim Levin/Reuters)

Ukraine Announces NFTs to Support Military, Continues Seeking Cryptocurrency Donations

Ukraines vice-prime minister Mykhailo Fedorov announced on Thursday that the country will begin minting non-fungible tokens (NFTs) in order to fundraise their resistance against the Russian invasion, in what constitutes their latest effort to use cryptocurrency.

As the Ukrainian government continues its fight against the recent invasion, they have been soliciting cryptocurrency donations as a convenient and effective way to raise money internationally for military and humanitarian operations. Cryptocurrency has a number of advantages that make it uniquely attractive for such international fundraising operations. Because cryptocurrency payments can be transferred anonymously, they can serve to anonymize donors, who may prefer to avoid scrutiny for their investments in Eastern European wars. Additionally, the nature of cryptocurrency technology makes it uniquely convenient for international money transfers, avoiding the intermediaries necessary for such transfers in traditional finance.

A Feb. 8 report (over two weeks before the Russian invasion of Ukraine) by the blockchain researcher Elliptic revealed that Ukrainian defense and hacking groups had received $550,000 in 2021, compared to a scant $6,000 the year prior. More recent analysis from Elliptic claims that Ukraine has fundraised $54.7 million through cryptocurrency since the beginning of the Russian invasion, dwarfing previous donation rates as Ukrainian defense has become a cause celebre in the West.

Prior to Thursday, Ukraine had planned a crypto airdrop, a project which would offer cryptocurrency donors free tokens as an incentive to donate to the war effort.

However, on Thursday, vice-prime minister Fedorov announced via a tweet that the crypto airdrop project would be dropped in favor of a line of NFTs to raise money for the Ukrainian states defense efforts.

After careful consideration we decided to cancel airdrop, said Fedorov. Every day there are more and more people willing to help Ukraine to fight back the agression. Instead, we will announce NFTs to support Ukrainian Armed Forces soon. We DO NOT HAVE any plans to issue any fungible tokens.

Fedorov did not specify any further details for the upcoming NFTs.

While Fedorov did not specify why the airdrop project was canceled, it may have something to do with a parody of the promised cryptocurrency called the Peaceful World token, originating from an unknown entity marked by Etherscan as coming from a problematic address, suggesting a possibility of fraud.

The withdrawal from the cryptocurrency airdrop project has provoked discontent among some donors, 95 percent of whom offered donations in denominations of 0.001 or 0.01 Ether, likely expecting a free token in response.

Last week, Fedorov urged major cryptocurrency exchanges to block transactions from Russian users, in part of an effort to isolate Moscow from international finance. However, numerous platforms have declined to implement such a ban, allowing cryptocurrency to continue to flow into Russia.
A worker attaches a wiring harness to the chassis of a car at the BMW manufacturing facility in Greer, S.C., on Nov. 4, 2019. (Charles Mostoller/Reuters)

Ukraine Invasion Hampers Wire Harness Supplies for Carmakers

Carmakers including Germanys Volkswagen, BMW and Porsche are struggling to obtain crucial wire harnesses as suppliers in western Ukraine have been shuttered by the Russian invasion, forcing them to curtail production.

Production of the part, needed for organizing miles of vehicle cables, has affected suppliers like Leoni, Fujikura and Nexans, and rippled through to major carmakers.

Delivery bottlenecks have already hit some assembly plants of world No. 2 automaker Volkwagen, while Porsches luxury unit has suspended production at its Leipzig plant.

Rival BMW has also been affected.

Due to supply bottlenecks, interruptions to our production will occur, BMW said in a statement. We are in intensive discussions with our suppliers.

A wire harness is a vital set of parts which neatly bundle up to 5 kilometres (3.1 miles) of cables in the average car. Unique to each car model, vehicles cannot be built without them.

Suppliers like Leoni, which has two wire harness factories in western Ukraine, are scrambling to compensate for production losses and interruptions in our two plants in Stryi and Kolomyja, triggered by the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine, Leoni said in a statement.

Leoni said it had formed a task force to evaluate developments.

Suppliers including Germanys Forschner, Kromberg & Schubert, Prettl, SEBN and Japans Yazaki have built up a hefty wire harness production sector in Ukraine, which has a lower-cost, skilled work force.

According to an analysis of 2020 Comtrade data by consultancy AlixPartners, wire harnesses were Ukraines most critical automotive component exported to the European Union, accounting for nearly 7 percent of all imports of this product.

Ukrainian government figures show 22 automotive companies have invested more than $600 million in 38 plantsmany, though not all producing wire harnessesemploying over 60,000 Ukrainians.

Those plants are close to car factories in Germany and the low-cost manufacturing hubs that German carmakers in particular have built in central Europe.

Swedens Volco Cars and Britains Aston Martin said they do not have harness suppliers in Ukraine.

In cases like this where the issue is not likely to go away quickly, automakers will need to seek out alternative solutions for the short- and mid-terms, said Sam Fiorani, vice president of global vehicle forecasting at AutoForecast Solutions.

It could take months for suppliers to increase capacity at other locationsrequiring factory space, machinery and tools, workers and financing.

Prior to the invasion, auto parts maker Aptiv Plc. spent months doing just thatshifting high-volume production of parts for vehicles out of its two plants in Ukraine ahead of possible hostilities, the companys chief executive said last week.

By Christina Amann and Nick Carey
Ukraine Invasion Illustrates That US Must Stay One Step Ahead of Putin: US Congressman

Congressman Chuck Fleischmann (R-Tenn.) said the United States must take up a more aggressive military posture toward Russia in response to the invasion of Ukraine and the Kremlins threats of using nuclear weapons against NATO countries.

Were going to have to be very, very aggressive  We can never take that rhetoric when it comes to nuclear benignly, Fleischmann told the host of NTD Capitol Report, Steve Lance in a March 1 interview.

Its a dangerous world but a nuclear power such as Russia can and will avail itself of its resources in that regard. Weve got to be a step ahead, Fleishmann said.

They are now saber-rattling in terms of their rhetoric on nuclear policy, which I think is very detrimental and clearly wrong. We havent seen that type of bad language from Russia since the waning days of the Cold War.

On Feb. 24, Russias President Vladimir Putin made a veiled nuclear threat to the West, that if NATO countries attempt to stop the invasion of Ukraine, they will face consequences you have never seen.

Well, obviously, I condemn Putin and Russias invasion of the sovereign nation of Ukraine. I never could imagine that the attack would be engulfing the entire nation as it had, I would have thought perhaps Putin and the Russians would have tried to go into those two Northeastern provinces where they claimed some sympathizers, said Fleischmann.

Fleishmann, the ranking member on the Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee, said the United States will have to likely scale up its defense in response to the threat by Moscow.

What will Russia be like under Putin? Its aggressive, its wrong. Its invading countries, theyve taken over 20 percent of the country of Georgia in 2008, they never left. So, were going to have to be more diligent and vigilant, probably going to have to appropriate more money for defense. Ive been a strong advocate of that and for that for quite some time.

Fleischmann expects that the invasion of Ukraine will lead to higher food and energy prices around the world and that the United States in particular should also be concerned about cyber threats by Russia.

What does that mean for the United States of America? It means that we know now that Russia in the modern era is going to be a dangerous threat. That could be cybersecurity attacks.

Ukraine produces a tremendous amount of agricultural products: wheat, corn, we have precious metals there. Russia also now is going to be sanctioned severely. [Russia is] a large producer of oil. Even though the United States only gets about 4 percent of its oil from Russia, the fact that it is a commodity and the rest of the world is going to be doing that, were going see higher oil prices in the short term, higher energy prices, higher commodity prices for food, its not good, Fleischmann added.

According to logistics expert Nathan Carson, the war in Ukraine, rising global fertilizer costs, and lower than expected grain yields in South America will likely cause grain prices to rise by about 10 percent in the next year due to international market pressures.

Whether this war is a swift decapitation strike that Russias hoping for, or if its a prolonged fight, it is definitely going to impact spring planting, Carson said.

The damage caused by Putins invasion comes at a time when markets already face shortages and supply chain disruptions, Carson added.

Ukraine makes up 9 percent of global wheat exports, 15 percent of global corn exports, and 50 percent of sunflower oil exports, he said. Russia is also a major food exporter. Together, the two countries make up about one-fourth of the worlds food exports.

Jackson Elliott contributed to this report.

Masooma Haq Follow Masooma Haq began reporting for The Epoch Times from Pakistan in 2008. She currently covers a variety of topics including U.S. government, culture, and entertainment.
Ukraine and Russia have agreed to set up humanitarian corridors for civilians. Both forces are battling over an energy hub in the southern part of the country. Its home to Europes biggest nuclear plant.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz (L) and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky arrive to hold a joint press conference in Kyiv, on Feb. 14, 2022. (Sergei Supinsky/AFP via Getty Images)

Ukraines NATO Membership Will Not Take Place: German Chancellor

Ukraines membership is not on The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)s agenda, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said Friday.

I also made it clear in Moscow and in my visit that this option [Ukraines membership of NATO] is not on the table and will not take place, he said during an interview with German public broadcaster ZDF.

I said publicly that we all know that Ukraines NATO membership is not on the alliances agenda today, he added. That was understood by the American president, that [was] also understood by the French president.

Scholz said he shares Russian President Vladimir Putins security concern and clarified to Putin that Ukraine will not be allowed to join NATO.

The Russians were worried about the control issue of their security. [Putin was worried] that NATO has a military setup and rockets in Ukraine targeting Russian territory. That is why we tried to make it clear that this will not occur, he elaborated.

The Epoch Times has reached out to NATOs press office for comment.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg speaks during a press conference ahead of a two-day meeting of the alliances Defence Ministers at the NATO Headquarter in Brussels on Feb. 15, 2022. (Kenzo Tribouillard/AFP via Getty Images)

Ukraines pursuit of NATO membership appeared to be one of the core disputes that caused the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war.

In February 2019, then-Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko signed a constitutional amendment committing the country to becoming a member of NATO and the European Union after the parliament passed the bill.

Poroshenko told the leadership of the Armed Forces of Ukraine days after he signed the amendment that joining NATO was a guarantee of security for Ukraine.

On the Russian side, Putin says Russia needs to lay down red lines to prevent Ukraine from joining NATO saying that Ukraines growing ties with the alliance could make it a launchpad for NATO missiles targeted at Russia.

The United States and other Ukraine alliances have tried to avoid war by deescalating tensions between Russia and Ukraine.

However, the Kremlin criticized the United States and NATO for failing to address the fundamental security concerns of Moscow, demanding that NATO stop its eastward expansion and that strike weapons not be deployed near Russias borders.

Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24 after the efforts to deter war failed.

Russian armed forces made rapid progress and had reportedly encircled several Ukrainian cities or facilities in the first week.

They also reportedly gained control of Kherson, a port city in Ukraines south.

However, the Russian forces were met with strong resistance from the Ukrainian military, especially on the outskirts of the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv.

The resistance from Ukrainian forces and Russias own logistical difficulties have slowed down the Russian militarys speed of the advance, the UKs Ministry of Defense said.

People walk past a destroyed Russian military vehicle at a frontline position in Irpin, Ukraine, on March 3, 2022. (Chris McGrath/Getty Images)

A United Nations official said around 1.2 million people have fled Ukraine as the war entered its ninth day.

U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi confirmed the staggering figure in a tweet on March 4.

Grandi said on Thursday that in his four decades of work in refugee emergencies, he had rarely seen an exodus as rapid as the one in Ukraine.

Hour by hour, minute by minute, more people are fleeing the terrifying reality of violence. Countless have been displaced inside the country, he said in a statement.

This image made from a video released by Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant shows bright flaring objects landing on the grounds of the nuclear plant in Enerhodar, Ukraine Friday, March 4, 2022. (Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant via AP)

The U.N. also said that, as of March 3, they had recorded 1,006 civilian casualties in the context of Russias military action against Ukraine, mostly caused by shelling and airstrikes.

The agency said that 331 civilian deaths have been recorded, including 19 children, while 675 have been injured, including 31 children. The U.N. says, however, that the real toll is much higher.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Friday that, to date, 9,200 Russian soldiers have been killed in the war. Russian authorities have reported that 498 of its service members have been killed.

Julia Mira and Tom Ozimek contributed to the report.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky attends a joint press conference with his counterparts from Lithuania and Poland following their talks in Kyiv on Feb. 23, 2022. (Sergei Supinsky/AFP via Getty Images)

Ukraines Request for EU Membership: A Bridge Too Far?

Commentary

As hostilities continue unabated in Ukraine, its President, Volodymyr Zelensky, on Feb 28, implored the European Union to give his country immediate membership of the trading bloc.

We ask the European Union for Ukraines immediate accession via a new special procedure, he said, speaking while ferocious fighting with Russian troops continued across the country. He added that, Our goal is to be together with all Europeans and, most importantly, to be on an equal footing. Im sure its fair. Im sure its possible.

From an emotional point of view, it is difficult not to sympathise with the presidents request. Indeed, the horrors of war necessitate a compassionate and expedited European response to a challenging and apocalyptic situation.

Ursula von der Leyen, the President of the European Commission, previously expressed her desire to welcome Ukraine into the European family. On Feb. 27, she called Ukraine as one of us and that over time, they belong to us. They are one of us and we want them in.

Overall, Zelenskys plea was well received. For example, the Prime Minister of Slovenia Janez Jansa and the Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, among others, have expressed their support for a speedy process to accelerate Ukraines admission.

However, a few countries, including Germany and France, sounded a word of caution, pointing out that the process of aligning the legal system and laws of an applicant state with the EU, can take many years.

Ukraines request certainly involves a powerful plea to be admitted as a full member of the European Union, the worlds largest trading bloc, representing over 500 million consumers.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen (C) applauds Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky (L) who appears on a screen as he speaks in a video conference during a special plenary session of the European Parliament focused on the Russian invasion of Ukraine at the EU headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, on March 1, 2022. (John Thys/AFP via Getty Images)

Nevertheless, cynics would argue that making the request in the middle of a vicious war is motivated by Zelenskys desire to punish Russia for its invasion and to ensure the territorial integrity of Ukraine.

While this motivation may well reflect a principled and moral approach and an understandable aspiration to extract tangible benefits for Ukraine, a likely desire to punish Russia is but a poor motivation for joining the EU.

In any event, Zelenskys reference to a new procedure that could (or should) be used to enable Ukraine to immediately join the Union is as vague as it is unrealistic.

As acknowledged by the EU on its official website, Becoming a member of the EU is a complex procedure which does not happen overnight. An applicant state must satisfy what is known as the Copenhagen criteria which include a free-market economy, a stable democracy and the rule of law, and the acceptance of all EU legislation, including of the euro.

The path to membership is thus long and arduous, and an expedited procedure does not exist. Nevertheless, Zelenskys request should be seriously considered because the invasion of Ukraine presents the EU with truly unusual challenges and unpredictable circumstances.

Nevertheless, it is impossible to disregard the specific requirements which must be met to become a full member of the union. Its enlargement is dealt with in Article 2 and 49 of the Treaty on European Union.

In accordance with Article 2, membership requires respect for human dignity, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights, including the rights of persons belonging to minorities. Provided an applicant state respects these rights, any European state is entitled to apply for membership.

This application is addressed to the European Council, which consists of the heads of state and governments and the decision to admit a new member must be ratified by all 27 member states in accordance with their own constitutional requirements.

People are taking shelter for bombings in an underground station in Kyiv, Ukraine, on Feb. 25, 2022. (Pierre Crom/Getty Images)

While it is easy to establish that Ukraine is a European state, its laws are clearly not yet aligned with the legal system of the EU. Worryingly, Transparency International, which manages the Corruption Perceptions Index, ranks Ukraine near the bottom of its list at 122, with a low score of 32. This, by itself, precludes an immediate admission.

In the unlikely event that Zelenskys request for immediate membership were to be granted, the EU would become engulfed in a protracted conflict with Russia.

A closer relationship between Ukraine and the EU is precisely what the Kremlin complains about and may well have precipitated the invasion. It is a sure way to inflame tensions and ensure regional instability.

Russia has already expressed its displeasure with the EU sending weapons to Ukraine.

The supply of weapons to Ukraine is described on the EUs website as an unprecedented act, involving the purchase and delivery of weapons and other equipment to a country that is under attack. The weaponry is estimated to cost 450 million euros.

Russia would certainly be enraged if membership were to be given to Ukraine. Undoubtedly, Russia would regard a decision to welcome Ukraine as a member state as a major provocation, which has the capacity to enlarge the conflict, making it into a European war, which would devastate the continent,

If Ukraines request were granted, the countries that are next in line for full membership of the EUand have waited many years to progress their applicationwould also be seriously dismayed. These countries include Albania, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia, and Turkey.

Stability in Europe would thus not be helped by Ukraine joining the European Union at this stage.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Rafael Grossi, Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), points on a map of the Ukrainian Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Vienna, Austria on March 4, 2022. (Joe Klamar/AFP via Getty Images)

UN Official Reveals Extent of Damage at Ukraines Nuclear Power Plant

No damage was done to nuclear reactors at Ukraines Zaporizhzhia nuclear plants amid fighting between Russian and Ukrainian forces, said the U.N. atomic chief Rafael Grossi.

Two members of security staff were injured when a projectile hit overnight after officials reported fighting between Russian and Ukrainian forces at the plant, Europes largest nuclear facility, early on Friday morning.

What we understand is that this projectile is a projectile that is coming from the Russian forces. We do not have details about the kind of projectile, Grossi told news outlets later Friday. The plants radiation monitoring system is still functional.

A statement posted on Friday at the State Nuclear Regulatory Inspectorate, run by Ukraines government, said that the plant has been seized by the military forces of Russia.

Russian officials, through state-run outlet RT, alleged that Ukrainian forces early Friday attempted to provoke Russian troops by firing at them and forcing them to retaliate.

Last night, an attempt to carry out a horrible provocation was made by Kyivs nationalist regime on the area surrounding the station, Ministry of Defense spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov announced Friday, while claiming that alleged Ukrainian saboteurs attacked Russian troops patrolling the area around the plant.

That claim was disputed by Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky, who alleged that it was Russian troops who were responsible for terror of an unprecedented level at the plant. The Russian tanks knew that they were firing with a direct fire at the station, Zelensky alleged.

Neither claim could be independently verified.

People walk past a destroyed Russian military vehicle at a frontline position in Irpin, Ukraine, on March 3, 2022. (Chris McGrath/Getty Images)

Should the nuclear plant go into meltdown mode, it could potentially release radiation across Ukraine and Eastern Europe, including Russia. Some analysts noted that in that region, the winds generally blow to the south and eastmeaning that Russian cities and towns would be greatly impacted by the radiation.

On Friday, Zelensky again said that because of the nuclear plant fire, NATO should establish a no-fly zone over Ukraine. Later, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg rejected Zelenskys demand and said enforcing such a rule would lead to an escalation between NATO allies and Russia.

The U.S. Embassy in Ukraine called the Russian assault on the Zaporizhzhia plant a war crime. Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby said it showed how reckless the Russian invasion has been.

It just raises the level of potential catastrophe to a level that nobody wants to see, he told CNN on Friday morning.

Video footage uploaded online showed one building aflame and a volley of incoming shells before a large incandescent ball lit up the sky, exploding beside a car park and sending smoke billowing across the compound. Its not clear who fired the shells.

The mayor of Energodar, located near the plant, previously told news outlets that the fire was caused by Russian shelling of the plant, adding that the fire engulfed the power plant itself. Emergency services later dismissed the allegation in local reports.

Reuters contributed to this report.
Understanding the Constitution: Why Joe Biden Is Wrong to Think the 9th Amendment Protects Abortion

Commentary

President Joe Biden recently reaffirmed his long-standing position that the Constitutions Ninth Amendment protects abortion, and he wants the courts to start enforcing that provision.

While abortion isnt mentioned in the Constitution, Biden is one of many who claim the Ninth Amendment protects unmentioned rights. In the Supreme Courts notorious 1965 emanations and penumbras case, a liberal activist majority suggestedalthough didnt actually rulethat the Ninth Amendment protects an unmentioned right to privacy (pdf). Elsewhere on the political spectrum, some conservative and libertarian writers contend that the Ninth Amendment protects economic rights.

Theyre all wrong. Their errors derive from not understanding the Ninth Amendments background and unfamiliarity with an intervening change in the English language.

The Ninth Amendment reads as follows:

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

Translated from formal 18th century English into colloquial 21st century English, that means:

Yo! Readers! This Constitution gives the feds some specific powers. To see how far each power goes, check out the wording. This Constitution also has general exceptions that limit all or some powers. Dont get so fixated on the exceptions that you forget the limits in the original wording!

Before I explain how we get to that colloquial version, observe three things:

Federal powers are limited both by the wording of the original grants and by broad exceptions that apply to all or many of those grants.

The amendment tells the reader to take into account both kinds of limitsnot just the exceptions.

The Ninth Amendment is a reader guide, not a substantive change in the Constitution. In this respect, its like the Tenth and Eleventh Amendments. Lawyers call such a guide a rule of construction. (Note the amendments phrase shall not be construed.)

The Original Limits

The Constitution grants many powers to the federal government and to its officials and agencies. The best-known list of powers is in Article I, Section 8, but there are many more scattered throughout the document.

Generally, when you give someone power to do something, you limit his authority. Suppose you tell a real estate agent, Find a buyer for my house. You have just granted the agent power to find a buyer for the house. But you havent given the agent authority to find a buyer for your car. The words of the grant define its limits.

Heres an illustration from the Constitution: Congress is entrusted with power to regulate Commerce  among the several States. Founding-era records tell us that Commerce doesnt refer to the entire economy, but only to mercantile trade and a few associated activities. Manufacturing, real estate, and agriculture are all excluded (pdf). Also, the phrase among the several States tells us that the grant excludes commerce wholly within a single state. Again, the words define the limits.

Most of the Constitutions framers viewed these limits as the documents primary protection for liberty. But they also added a few broad exceptions. For example, they punched a hole in Congresss authority to regulate commerce and impose taxes by stating that Congress couldnt favor some naval ports over others (Article I, Section 9, Clause 6).

Thats Still Too Much Power! Critics Say

On Sept. 17, 1787, the framers revealed their proposed Constitution to the general public. Objections came in from far and wide. A common theme was that the Constitution would give too much authority to the central government.

CriticsPatrick Henry among themdemanded additional exceptions to federal authority. They wanted exceptions to protect natural rights, such as freedom of speech and freedom of religion. They also wanted protections for long-treasured privileges (benefits created by government), such as trial by jury and the privilege against self-incrimination.

These critics pointed out that several state constitutions contained similar lists of exceptions. Those lists were called bills of rights and privilegesor (for short) bills of rights.

The Constitutions Supporters: A Bill of Rights Could Be Dangerous!

Most of the Constitutions supporters didnt think a bill of rights was necessary. They thought the limits in the enumerated powers provided enough protection. They also argued that adding a list of exceptions could be dangerous. Their reason derived from two standard guidelines that courts and lawyers use for interpreting legal documents.

The first of these guidelines is that if an item is omitted from a list, normally you can assume the omission is intentional and the item, therefore, is excluded. By way of illustration, imagine your spouse sends you to the store with a shopping list. It reads:

Bread

Nuts

Fruit

Lettuce

The words suggest a limit: Barring a family custom to the contrary, you dont have to buy meat.

The second guideline is a variation on the first. It, too, applies to listsspecifically lists of exceptions. It says that exceptions increase your confidence in the general rule. Suppose the list reads:

Bread

Nuts

Fruit

Lettuce, but not romaine or leaf lettuce

The exceptions for romaine and leaf lettuce increase your confidence that you may buy any other type of lettuce. In common language, The exception proves the rule.

The Constitutions supportersJames Madison among thempointed out that a long list of exceptions to the authority of the federal government (i.e., a bill of rights) might promote the idea that the federal government could regulate everything not on that list. For example, a specific ban on controlling the press might encourage courts to expand Congresss powers to encompass control over businesses other than the press. A government lawyer could argue that the addition of the bill of rights actually expanded Congresss authority elsewhere.

In this way, the Constitutions supporters argued, a bill of rights could endanger the Constitutions other limits on the federal government.

Working to Avert the Danger

To get the Constitution ratified, however, its sponsors had to promise a bill of rights. They then faced the question of how to add a bill of rights while still emphasizing the importance of the documents other limits on power?

A suggestion came from the Virginia ratifying convention, which had witnessed the debate between critics such as Henry and supporters like Madison.

The convention formally resolved that those clauses which declare that Congress shall not exercise certain powers, be not interpreted, in any manner whatsoever, to extend the powers of Congress; but that they be construed either as making exceptions to the specified powers where this shall be the case, or otherwise, as inserted merely for greater caution.

Observe that word, construed: The purpose of this suggestion was not to change the Constitutions meaning, but how it should be construed.

After Virginia, four more state conventions ratified the Constitution: New York, North Carolina, Rhode Island, and Vermont. All four recommended similar phrasing.

On June 8, 1789, Madison introduced his proposed bill of rights in the new federal Congress. It featured this passage:

The exceptions here or elsewhere in the constitution, made in favor of particular rights, shall not be so construed as to diminish the just importance of other rights retained by the people; or as to enlarge the powers delegated by the constitution; but either as actual limitations of such powers, or as inserted merely for greater caution.

The Change in the English Language

Notice that unlike the five state resolutions, Madisons draft mentioned rights as well as powers. Was that significant? Not really. Madison, like the rest of us, sometimes repeated himself, and thats what he did here.

Today, we usually distinguish between rights (held by people) and powers (held by agents and governments). But in the 18th century, the two words commonly were interchangeable. Thus, the definition of right in Thomas Sheridans 1789 dictionary included interest; power, prerogative; immunity, privilege. People often spoke of giving rights to government. Our own language retains traces of this usage, as when we say, The president has the right to veto a lawthat is, the power to veto a law.

Congress condensed and cleaned up Madisons draft. It cured the redundancy by keeping rights and striking powers. It could have struck rights and kept powers with the same effect.

Besides 18th-century English usage, theres further evidence that the final language referring to rights meant the same thing as the state convention resolutions referring to powers.

First, Madison himself said so. When Edmund Randolph opposed the Ninth Amendment because it referred to rights instead of powers, Madison wrote that he could see not the force of this distinction, and that restricting powers and protecting rights amounted to the same thing. Second, none of the states that had proposed the powers resolutions objected to the wording of the Ninth Amendment; on the contrary, all of them ratified it.

Disregard of the Ninth Amendment

Historically, constitutional amendments have been powerful tools of reform. Other than the 18th (formally repealed), every amendment ever adopted retains at least some effect today. Except for the Ninth.

The fears of those opposing a bill of rights came true. Beginning in the 1930s and 1940s, the Supreme Court disregarded the Ninth Amendment and expanded the federal governments enumerated powers to cover almost all activity not specifically protected in the first eight amendments. (See my Epoch Times series, How the Supreme Court Rewrote the Constitution.)

Biden is correct that the court should restore the Ninth Amendment. Enforcing it wouldnt protect abortion, as he claims; rather, it would reduce the federal government to its constitutional limits. I dont think the president would much care for that.

Robert G. Natelson, a former constitutional law professor who is senior fellow in constitutional jurisprudence at the Independence Institute in Denver, authored The Original Constitution: What It Actually Said and Meant (3rd ed., 2015). That book contains a wider discussion of the Ninth Amendment.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Portrait of the writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky, by Vasily Perov, oil on canvas, 1872, the Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, Russia. (Public Domain)

University Walks Back Decision to Postpone Teaching Dostoevsky Over Russian Invasion

An Italian university reversed course on a decision to postpone a course on 19-century Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky over Russias invasion of Ukraine last week.

Paoli Nori, a writer who had been asked by the University of Milano-Bicocca to voluntarily teach a four-session course on the author, took to Instagram in an emotional video after he was told in an email that his classes had been postponed.

Dear Professor, the Vice Rector for Didactics has informed me of a decision taken with the rector to postpone the course on Dostoevsky, the email from university officials read, according to the Italian writers Instagram video, according to a translation by Newsweek.

The university allegedly told Nori on March 2 that they chose to postpone his course to avoid any controversy, especially internally, during a time of strong tensions, referring to Russian President Vladimir Putins full-scale invasion against Ukraine, which began on Feb. 24.

Nori said the classes were set to start on March 9.

They invited me. Each lesson was 90-minutes long. They were free and open to everyone, he said.

He branded the decision as ridiculous and unbelievable.

I realize what is happening in Ukraine is horrible, and I feel like crying just thinking about it, Nori continued.

Not only is being a living Russian wrong in Italy today, but also being a dead Russian, who was sentenced to death in 1849 because he read a forbidden thing. That an Italian university would ban a course on an author like Dostoevsky is unbelievable, he said.

The universitys decision quickly prompted backlash, including from Italys former prime minister Matteo Renzi, who called the move insane in a Twitter post.

He suggested that those who made the call to postpone Noris class were incapable bureaucrats.

The university in Milan swiftly backtracked on the decision, and issued a statement saying that university officials will meet with Nori next week for a moment of reflection.

The University of Milano-Bicocca is a university open to dialogue and listening even in this very difficult period that sees us dismayed at the escalation of the conflict, it said.

The course of the writer Paolo Nori is part of the writing course aimed at students and citizens who aim to develop transversal skills through forms of writing. The university confirms that this course will take place in the established groups and will deal with the contents already agreed with the writer, the statement said.

The Epoch Times has contacted the University of Milano-Bicocca for comment.
Fred Wagenhals, owner of the Arizona-based Ammo company, has sent 1 million bullets to help Ukrainians fight the Russian forces invading their country. (Courtesy of Ammo Inc)

US Ammo Makers Take Aim at Russia Invasion With Millions of Bullets for Ukraine

Millions of U.S.-made bullets will soon be in the hands of Ukrainian soldiers, in part because of an Arizona company and a legendary NASCAR team owner.

Fred Wagenhals, the owner of the Scottsdale-based Ammo Inc., told The Epoch Times that hes honored to donate the ammunitionenough, he said, to arm 34,000 AK-47s with a clip of 30 rounds in each gun.

With some irony, the AK-47 assault rifleknown in Russia and Ukraine as the Kalashnikovwas developed in the Soviet Union by a Russian small arms designer.

As a company, we like freedom. We believe in democracy, Wagenhals said. Because of the Second Amendment, you cant land on one of our shores and try to take over this country because there are too many guns and too much ammunition.

The company Ammo Inc. has sent 1 million bullets to Ukraine and expects them to arrive in that country over the next few days. (Courtesy of Ammo Inc.)

Ammo Inc., the fifth-largest U.S. maker of ammunition, is also the parent company of GunBroker.com, the largest online marketplace for firearms.

Meanwhile, Vista Outdoor Inc., the Minnesota-based company that owns the Remington, CCI, Speer, and Federal Ammunition brands, is donating 1 million rounds of small-caliber ammo to Ukraines armed forces, a longtime customer of CCI, Speer, and Federal, the company said; Federal and Remington also are selling T-shirts on their websites to raise money for refugees.

The war in Ukraine has displaced millions of citizens and exposed average people to the horrors of war, Jason Vanderbrink, president of Remington, CCI, Speer, and Federal, said in a statement. Supporting the relief effort is a crucial element of the global response and we are proud to do our part. It underscores how critical the Second Amendment is in America and highlights the importance of the ability of American Manufacturers to supply our allies with ammunition.

We have long supported Ukrainian armed forces and we will continue to do so in this global cause to unite for democracy.

Ammos Wagenhals told The Epoch Times his shipment is already in Europe and expects the bullets to be distributed to Ukraines ground forces by this weekend.

He said he got the idea from his good friend, Richard Childress, who serves on Ammos board of directors and whose name is immediately recognizable to car racing fans. His team, Richard Childress Racing (RCR), is a six-time winner of the Nascar Cup Series, all with fabled driver Dale Earnhardt, and a three-time winner of the Daytona 500.

Childress said he was inspired by Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskys response to President Joe Bidens offer to fly him out of his war-torn country during the ongoing Russian attack there.

I need ammunition, not a ride, Zelensky said in a heroic stance that was broadcast around the world.

Putin a Schoolyard Bully

Its an inhumane thing thats going on right now from Russia, Childress told The Epoch Times. We got to help them and they need help bad right now.

He likened Putin to a schoolyard bully who is serving his own self-interests.

Last week, the Biden administration reported that it had sent anti-aircraft missiles as well as firearms and ammunition to Ukraine, and Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced the United States was providing $54 million in what he called humanitarian assistance to those affected by Russias further invasion.

On March 2, the House overwhelmingly passed a bill calling for additional and immediate defensive security by the United States to Ukraine. It also called for a ceasefire and full withdrawal of Russian forces.

The bill, titled HR 956, was approved on a 426-3 vote, with only three Republicans dissenting, one of them being Wagenhals congressman, Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.). Gosar tweeted that while he supported the Ukrainians, he found the resolution to be potentially dangerous to Americans.

I will not send constituents to die in another unconstitutional war with no U.S. national security interest, Gosar wrote on Twitter.

Former US Paratrooper Joins Fight

In addition to the proposed resolution and existing funding, the Biden administration has also asked Congress to approve $6.4 billion to support a U.S. response to Russias attack on Ukraine.

Wagenhals told The Epoch Times that he feels the United States and other countries havent done enough to help Ukraine and strongly believes NATO forces should deploy its forces.

On March 8, a former U.S. paratrooper from the 101st Airborne Division who has been living in Ukraine, told Fox News in a live TV interview, that he has decided to fight along with the Ukrainian soldiers out of a moral obligation.

The U.S. combat veteran, who said he has helped train Ukrainian civilians in combat, called Ukraine some of the best people in the world as good as any of our friends and allies of America.

He also called upon help from the United States noting that historically American presidents have always been an arsenal of democracy to their European allies.

This is another epic time in history and Americans need to show military leadership and courage and stand with their European allies and brothers.

Wagenhals, a dyed-in-the-wool Republican, believes Putin is striking now because he recognizes he has a rare window to escape punishment from the largest military force in the worldthe United Statesbecause he knows the current administration wont use it to stop him.

Its one of a myriad of opinions among conservatives camps about the Russian attacks on Ukraine with others blaming Ukraine for defying Putins historic opposition to bringing NATO closer to western borders.

Many fear that any aggressive allying by world forces will bring on a war that could lead to a nuclear holocaust.

Flood of Support

Wagenhals and Childress both said they have received support from several U.S. lawmakers, including Reps. Mary Miller (R-Ill) and Victoria Spartz (R-Ind.), who has been especially outspoken against Russias attack on Ukraine.

According to Childress, when they ran into some obstacles in transporting the donated ammunition to Ukraine, Spartz commented she would carry it to Ukraine herself if need be.

Miller, in a series of recent tweets on Russias invasion, has been especially critical of the Biden administration, stating none of this would be happening if President [Donald] Trump was still in the White House.

Wagenhals told The Epoch Times that since announcing the ammunition donation on the companys website, he has received a flood of support and offers of financial support from shareholders, customers, and complete strangers from around the world who support the sending of ammunition to Ukraine.

One businessman, he said, called to send him a check for $25,000 to help pay for the ammo hes sending to Ukraines armed forces.
This file photo taken on Sept. 21, 2020 shows pedestrians walking past the logo for HSBC in Hong Kong. (Isaac Lawrence/AFP via Getty Images)

US Demands Immediate Rectification From HSBC Over Frozen Accounts of Hong Kong Activists

A bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers has demanded clarification from HSBC Holdings Plc over the freezing of accounts of Hong Kong activists and restrictions on the accounts of American citizens, urging the bank to make immediate rectification of such acts.

The group of six U.S. senators and members of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China issued a letter to HSBC group chief executive Noel Quinn, requesting transparent answers for the banks actions.

They accused the bank of having frozen the accounts of Hong Kong activists, independent media, and civic groups, many of which were forced to close or end operations.

Among the individuals whose accounts were frozen were Ted Hui, a former Hong Kong pro-democracy legislator, and Jimmy Lai, the chief executive of the now-defunct Apple Daily pro-democracy newspaper.

Holders of British national overseas passports have also been denied access to HSBC pension funds when they leave Hong Kong for the United Kingdom, raising questions as to whether HSBC is aiding and abetting the governments policy to restrain exit, they noted.

The group further said they had been informed that the accounts of American citizens were being restricted, including at HSBC branches in the United States, and demanded immediate rectification if this is true.

We ask HSBC to address the concerns stated above and to justify why these actions were taken, including whether these actions were requested by Hong Kong authorities or officials from the Peoples Republic of China and whether these actions are consistent with HSBCs stated policies and the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, they said.

Matt Ward, the head of communications at HSBC Bank USA, said that the bank is in receipt of the Commissions request and will work to address their questions.

Like every bank, we are required to operate within the law and legal frameworks of all the countries in which we operate, Ward said.

HSBCs Asia-Pacific chief executive Peter Wong had previously signed a petition backing Chinas imposition of a National Security Law on Hong Kong. The law, enacted in June 2020, criminalizes secession of Hong Kong, subversion, terrorism, and colluding with foreign forces.

Hong Kong and Chinese authorities claimed that the law had brought stability to the city after mass anti-government protests.

Protesters chant slogans during a rally against a new national security law in Hong Kong on July 1, 2020. (Dale de la Rey/AFP via Getty Images)

The bipartisan group said in the letter that the Hong Kong authorities have placed almost the entirety of the citys opposition figures behind bars and denied bail to most as a result of the national security law.

The government further disqualified and arrested previously elected legislators and district councilors, and went on to rewrite electoral rules to allow only patriots fully vetted by the national security police to run in future elections, they added.

Samuel Chu, the president of the Campaign for Hong Kong, backed the bipartisan groups statement for exposing a key tactic of the Beijing government in its use of private corporations and financial institutions to do its dirty work of suppressing citizens and civil society groups.

HSBC is not a first-time offender, and I am glad this bipartisan group of Congressional leaders is calling them out, Chu said in a statement, adding that HSBCs actions to freeze accounts of activists and restricting American citizens accounts fall squarely within the jurisdiction.

Reuters contributed to this report.
Former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo answers questions from an audience after delivering a speech during his four-day trip to Taiwan, in Taipei, on March 4, 2022. (Chiang Ying-ying/AP Photo)

US Should Formally Recognize Taiwan as a Free Country: Pompeo

Washington should formally recognize Taiwan as a sovereign country, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on March 4 during a speech in Taipei. He said it is an imperative move that can no longer be ignored, avoided, or treated as secondary.

The United States government should immediately take necessary and long overdue steps to do the right and obvious thingthat is to offer the Republic of China [Taiwan]Americas diplomatic recognition as a free and sovereign country, he said in a 20-minute speech.

Pompeo, who was the top U.S. diplomat under former President Donald Trump, was invited by Taiwan think tank Prospect Foundation to give a speech at the Grand Hyatt on Friday.

He arrived in Taiwan on March 2 for a four-day visit, as another five-member delegation sent by President Joe Biden wrapped up a two-day visit after meeting with President Tsai Ing-wen.

Pompeo called on Washington to change its policy of strategic ambiguity, wherein the United States neither openly confirms nor denies it will militarily safeguard Taiwan.

While the United States should continue to engage with the Peoples Republic of China as a sovereign government, said Pompeo, Americas diplomatic recognition of the 23 million freedom-loving Taiwanese people and its legal, democratically-elected government can no longer be ignored, avoided, or treated as secondary.

This isnt about Taiwans future independence. Its about recognition of an unmistakable, already existing reality.  Theres no need for Taiwan to declare independence because its already an independent country.

Former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo delivers a speech during his four-day trip to Taiwan, in Taipei, on March 4, 2022. (Chiang Ying-ying/AP Photo)

The same opinion was expressed by Tsai in a previous interview with BBC. We are an independent country already and we call ourselves the Republic of China, she said.

Pompeos call does not align with the current official U.S. policy. The United States ended formal ties with Taiwan in 1979 and gave diplomatic recognition to the Peoples Republic of China (PRC).

Yet Biden said last October that the United States was committed to defending Taiwan if the self-ruled island was attacked by the Chinese regime. Such remarks were seen as a departure from a long-held U.S. position of strategic ambiguity.

Pompeos comments angered Beijing.

Pompeo is a former politician whose credibility has long gone bankrupt. Such a persons babbling nonsense will have no success, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said on Friday at a press briefing in Beijing.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) claims Taiwan as its own territory and considers the island as the most sensitive issue in its ties with the United States. Beijing has routinely harassed Taiwan and threatened to unite it with the mainland by force if necessary.

Chinas saber-rattling against Taiwan comes from fear and paranoia, said Pompeo, calling the democratic island a living example of the success of freedom and democracy that is dismissed in China, including Hong Kong.

So long as this exists, he said, it severely undermines the credibility and authority of the CCP, especially with the Chinese people who are under their thumb.

It is my view that the U.S. government should immediately take necessary, and long-overdue, steps to do the right and obvious thing, that is to offer the Republic of China (Taiwan) Americas diplomatic recognition as a free and sovereign country.  Mike Pompeo (@mikepompeo) March 4, 2022

Future of Taiwan and US Intertwined

If the Chinese regime successfully seizes Taiwan, it would change the global balance of power in the most fundamental ways, decidedly in the CCPs favor, Pompeo said during his Friday speech, given Beijing has been touting its rise over American decline.

The PRC [Peoples Republic of China] believes that it is stronger than the West and that America is in decline. We saw this when Yang Jiechi gave an arrogant tirade against the United States and anchorage during their very first meeting with the Biden administration.

Pompeo was referring to the first high-level, in-person bilateral meeting in Alaska last March when Secretary of State Antony Blinken met Yang, Chinas senior foreign policy diplomat. The latter criticized Washingtons foreign and trade policies, and claimed that democracy is failing and minorities are treated poorly in America.

This arrogance, this belief that the West is weak makes Xi [Jinping] dangerous, said Pompeo. The very belief that the PRC could prevail in a diplomatic, economic, military confrontation puts our friends at risk and makes the conflicts much greater.

As America is the most decisive backer of Taiwans freedom against Chinas aggression, said Pompeo, the future of the two nations are closely intertwined.

The Chinese delegation led by Yang Jiechi (C), director of the Central Foreign Affairs Commission Office, and Wang Yi (2nd L), Chinas Foreign Minister, speak with their U.S. counterparts at the opening session of U.S.-China talks at the Captain Cook Hotel in Anchorage, Alaska, on March 18, 2021. (Frederic J. Brown/Pool/AFP via Getty Images)

He said Beijing also considers seizing Taiwan as the ultimate goal of its decades-long communist ideological commitment, and failure to do so is a major stain of the CCPs reputation at home.

Under Xi, the CCPs ideological hubris has reached new heights. Thus, taking over Taiwan [as] a necessary mission is not only to boost Xis egomania claim of greatness, but indeed to solidify it.

The Trump administration had pushed for arms sales and laws to help Taiwan deal with pressure from China, and support for its participation in major international organizations.

On March 3, Tsai presented Pompeo with the Order of Brilliant Star with Special Grand Cordon in recognition of his contributions to promoting Taiwan-U.S. relations.

Ukraine

Addressing reporters following his speech, Pompeo said that Taiwan and Ukraine face similar risks, each having to deal with an authoritarian regime that wants to use aggressive military force to bully around smaller nations.

Prior to Russias invasion of Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin met with Xi on Feb. 4 before the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics in Beijing. Following their meeting, the two leaders declared a no limits partnership, according to a 5,000-word joint statement.

The statement also reveals that the two nations support each others geopolitical stance: Moscow supports Beijings claim that Taiwan is part of China, while Beijing denounces the enlargement of NATOa political justification for Putin to invade Ukraine.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping arrive to pose for a photograph during their meeting in Beijing, on Feb. 4, 2022. (Alexei Druzhinin/Sputnik/AFP via Getty Images)

Russias invasion of Ukraine has fueled speculation that the Chinese regime could be emboldened to invade Taiwan.

Events unfolding in Ukraine since the start of the invasion might have now given Xi great pause about launching military action against Taiwan, Pompeo said, but he warned that the CCP poses more than just military threats.

Much of what Xi does to the world isnt military. Much of what he does is diplomatic. It is information warfare. It is economic warfare, he explained.

We have to confront the Chinese Communist Party in every dimension.

He criticized Xi for Beijings failure to use its role as a member of the United Nations Security Council to condemn Russia for attacking a sovereign state.

I dont think we should give any quarter to Xi Jinping, in terms of him having tried to play this both ways. Xi Jinping has not done the things that nations must do when other nations are attacked, and are victims of aggression, he said.

Beijing has said it respects Ukraines sovereignty, but has refused to denounce Russia for its aggression against its neighbor or calling Russias attack an invasion. On Feb. 25, the communist regime abstained from voting on a U.S. National Security resolution demanding Moscow to stop its attack on Ukraine and withdraw its troops immediately.

Pompeo warned that if Xi provided Putin an economic lifeline, then Chinas financial sector would face consequences.

I hope that the world will make very clear to Xi Jinping that if he runs afoul of one of these sanctions regimes, that it could be Chinese banks that are next, it could be Chinese financial institutions more broadly that are next, he said.

He added: And this will convince China to deny that oxygen, deny that fuel for Vladimir Putin to have the resources to continue his campaign that has deep ramifications for how Russia might participate, [if it] were the case that Xi Jinping ever decided to make an aggressive military action in Asia.

An island that lies inside Taiwans territory is seen with the Chinese city of Xiamen in the background on Feb. 4, 2021. (An Rong Xu/Getty Images)

Pompeo was asked to assess the possibility that Beijing could invade Taiwan in the next six years, a timeline suggested by Adm. Philip Davidson, who was then-head of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, during a congressional hearing in March 2021.

He responded, You cant answer how likely it is in a static way because it [depends] on the willingness of the Western world to demonstrate that the cost for Xi Jinping engaging in that kind of activity is just too high.

Frank Fang journalist Follow Frank Fang is a Taiwan-based journalist. He covers news in China and Taiwan. He holds a master's degree in materials science from Tsinghua University in Taiwan.
In this video still, Wildfire burning in Southern California forest, in Calif., on Mar 3, 2022. (KABC via AP/Screenshot via The Epoch Times)

Wildfire Burning in Southern California Forest

Firefighters on the ground and in the air battled a smoky wildfire on Wednesday in Southern Californias Cleveland National Forest.

The fire was reported around 11:20 a.m. Pacific Time (19:20GMT) in the Holy Jim Trail area and nightfall it had consumed about 500 acres (202 hectares) of brush along steep slopes.

Forward progress had slowed by Wednesday afternoon, national forest officials said.

About 100 firefighters were dispatched, with air tankers and helicopters dropping water and retardant on the blaze, dubbed the Jim Fire.

No structures were threatened.

The fire sent up a huge plume of smoke visible across Orange County, southeast of Los Angeles, and beyond. It erupted on the last day of a winter heat wave, with temperatures in the 80s (about 29 Celsius) and very dry humidity levels.

Rain and cooler temperatures were expected on Thursday.

The fires cause was under investigation.
Wisconsin Supreme Court Approves Congressional, Legislative Maps Proposed by States Democratic Governor

The Wisconsin Supreme Court on Thursday approved congressional and legislative maps proposed by the states Democrat Gov. Tony Evers after ruling in November (pdf) that it would take a least changes approach to the maps.

In a 43 decision, the court ruled that Evers maps, out of all the plans submitted, were the ones that kept in place the current district lines that give Republican majorities and make the least amount of changes to current political districts.

The court said in a majority opinion (pdf) that it chose Everss maps because they produce less overall change than other submissions and satisfy the requirements of the state and federal constitutions.

Additionally, the court said the maps also satisfied the federal Constitutions population equality requirement.

Under the Wisconsin Constitution, all districts are contiguous, sufficiently equal in population, sufficiently compact, appropriately nested, and pay due respect to local boundaries. Governor Evers proposed maps also comply with the federal constitutions population equality requirement, the court said.

According to an analysis by Marquette University research fellow John Johnson, Evers map would allow Republicans to keep strong majorities in the state legislature. Even in a statewide tie election, Democrats would still only be likely to win 38 out of 99 seats in the Assembly and 11 out of 33 seats in the Senate.

Meanwhile, 60 of the 99 Assembly seats will lean Republican and 22 of the 33 state Senate seats will lean Republican, according to a December analysis of the maps by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Republicans hold five of the states seats in the U.S. House of Representatives while Democrats hold three.

Evers celebrated the courts decision in a statement on Thursday evening in which he triumphantly said, Hell yes.

The maps I submitted to the Court that were selected today are a vast improvement from the gerrymandered maps Wisconsin has had for the last decade and the even more gerrymandered Republicans maps that I vetoed last year, Evers said. We still have a long way to go, and I will never stop fighting for nonpartisan redistricting as long as Im the governor of this great state.

Todays ruling isnt a victory for me or any political party, but for the people of our state who for too long have demanded better, fairer maps and for too long went ignoredtodays victory is for them, the Democratic governor added.

Political maps in the state are redrawn every 10 years based on the results of the U.S. Census.

Wisconsins Supreme Court voted 43 in September to take up a lawsuit from Wisconsin voters over the states redistricting process amid fears that the Wisconsin state legislature, which is controlled by Republicans, would fail to agree on a new one, given that the governor is a Democrat.

In November, the Supreme Court agreed to limit the changes that could be made to the maps, which favored the GOP and did not move far from those that have been in place since 2011.

However, Justice Annette Ziegler, in a minority dissent, disagreed with the courts decision on Thursday and argued that the maps submitted by the Governor are unconstitutional and fatally flawed.

Whats next? Perhaps a federal court challenge before the United States Supreme Court. Although braving a face of finality, the majority opinion practically begs that the adopted maps be subject to further litigation, Ziegler wrote in her opinion, which was joined by the two other dissenting justices, Rebecca Bradley and Patience Roggensack.
Governor Tom Wolf speaks in Pittsburgh, Penn. to announce the federal Bipartisan Infrastructure Law will allow for improved freight and passenger-rail service between Harrisburg and Pittsburgh. February 18, 2022 (Commonwealth Media Services)

Wolf Berates Pennsylvania Republicans for Exploiting Ukraine Crises to Enrich Gas Industry

'I find your politicization of this tragedy deplorable'

Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf has written a terse response to a letter from House Republicans of the Energy Committee that urged him to loosen regulations on Pennsylvanias gas reserves and ease market instability caused by the conflict in Ukraine.

The largest natural gas reserve in the United States is underground, in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia. Pennsylvania also has more than 100,000 active oil wells.

The March 1 letter was written by Rep. Daryl Metcalfe, chairman of the Environmental Resources and Energy Committee, and signed by 14 other representatives.

It asks Wolf to encourage surrounding states to drop bans on pipeline construction so liquefied natural gas (LNG) can be transported to New England states, which currently import from foreign nations, including, the letter said, from Russia. The letter also asks Wolf to end the natural gas development moratorium within the Delaware River Basin, but Wolf has supported the moratorium in the past. The letter also encourages Wolf to support Pennsylvanias plentiful oil, gas, and coal industries that have the potential to fuel the worlds energy needs.

You must encourage the extraction and refinement of our resources for the betterment of the free world. End your crusade against fossil fuels and recognize the gift of energy and production that exists beneath our feet, the committee wrote.

Wolf sent a response letter on March 3, saying the Republicans are exploiting the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the resulting humanitarian crisis to increase the profits of the natural gas industry and stand in the way of action to address climate change.

I find your politicization of this tragedy deplorable, Wolf wrote. He failed to respond to some of the specifics in the letter, such as the Delaware River Basin issue. But he did list some data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Wolf said:

 The United States is a net exporter of natural gas and has increased exports of Liquified Natural Gas to Europe to record levels over the past several years.

 The United States is currently the largest source of European LNG imports, providing more than half of the LNG imported to the continent in January.

 Net natural gas exports from Pennsylvania have roughly doubled since 2015, when Wolf took office, due to increased pipeline construction.

Despite your hand wringing about Russian LNG tankers entering American ports, you should be aware that the United States imports virtually no natural gas in any form from Russia. I encourage you to review actual data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration if you are confused about any of these points, Wolf said.

The Energy Information Administration confirmed the United States does not directly import LNG from Russia.

There were a couple of LNG cargoes imported to the United States from France and the United Kingdom in 2018-19 that may have originally come from Russia, an administration spokesperson told The Epoch Times. These were officially recorded as imports from France and the U.K. We dont track the original source of LNG import volumes, so the source information on these imports is anecdotal.

But Wolf never mentions oil in his letter. In 2021, the United States imported an average of 209,000 barrels of Russian oil per day, according to the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers website. Oil imports continue today.

Wolf is correct that the United States is a net exporter of natural gas, and currently a large source of European LNG imports. In 2021, the United States, Qatar, and Russia combined, provided 70 percent of Europes total LNG imports.

But Wolf cant take credit for that. Exports of LNG to Europe ramped up in 2017, the year Donald Trump took office. Before then, Europe was using little, if any U.S.-produced LNG. Trump worked to expand U.S. LNG exports abroad.

The U.S. no longer needs to import energy. With an abundance of American natural gas now available, our European allies no longer have to be vulnerable to unfriendly energy suppliers either, Trump said in a January 2020 speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos. We urge our friends in Europe to use Americas vast supply and achieve true energy security. With U.S. companies and researchers leading the way we are on the threshold of virtually unlimited reserves of energy, including from traditional fuels, LNG, clean coal, next-generation nuclear power, and gas hydrate technologies.

Wolfs letter defends his record on the environment and hints that he is not budging on his energy policies.

I have moved forward with measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and diversify and strengthen our grid. This newest effort to halt progress in addressing climate change by linking action on climate to events in Ukraine is simply a continuation of the conspiracy theories you are well known for, Wolf said, directing his comments at Metcalfe. We are in a moment of significant import for the world. This is no time for small-minded ideologues or armchair energy experts to attempt to capitalize on tragedy to benefit their benefactors.

Metcalfe said he was surprised Wolf responded to the letter so quickly because often it takes a month or more for a letter from his committee to hear back from the governor.

His administration has been working time and time again to bring in the heavy regulatory hand on our oil and gas companies to discourage investment, to discourage production, to discourage development. And he could step up and work with the General Assembly to encourage more production of our oil and gas, which the world needs right now. I mean theres no excuse for any state in the nation to have to be using any Russian gas or oil, Metcalfe told The Epoch Times.

We have the resources here in the United States, as long as we can get Wolf, Biden, John Kerry and the ones that are fighting to advance their sci-fi perspective of whats happening in the world. If theyd get with reality, look at the news, and see all these people dying in the Ukraineif Russia didnt have their war machine greased by their sales of energy, they wouldnt have the ability to fund that operation.
A new way to satisfy your caffeine craving is coming to the Nutmeg State.

Aroma Joe's, a coffee chain with locations throughout New England, is preparing to open its first Connecticut location in Bristol on April 4.

The store, located at 1235 Farmington Ave., will have both drive-thru and walk-up windows for quick and convenient ordering.

"Bristol is a great city," owner Mark MacGregor said. "There's great people involved and there's a lot of people here who seem to be excited about the brand. I've been really fortunate to work with the actual city of Bristol, they've been nothing but supportive."

Bringing Aroma Joe's to his now-hometown of Bristol is even more special for MacGregor, having grown up in the same town in New Hampshire that Aroma Joe's was founded.

Aroma Joe's started in 2000 in Rochester by four cousins with a passion for coffee and bringing positivity to each customer, according to the company's website.

"Right when I was going into high school was when it started to get popular within the area and really gain some traction, so ever since then I've always wanted to be involved in it," he said.

MacGregor, along with his partners Henry Laughlin and Clayton Prugh, chose Bristol as Connecticut's flagship location not only because of the proximity, but also for the sense of community and enthusiasm Bristol residents share.

"When I had the opportunity to bring it to Connecticut, it's something that always excited me and something that I was passionate about," MacGregor said. "It's really exciting for me to actually make that same community impact in Connecticut, within Bristol and throughout various other locations coming up that I experienced growing up with the brand."

The menu features classic cups of coffee, hot or iced, customizable with 14 different specialty flavor infusions. Aroma Joe's also has its own signature 'Rush' energy drink to pair with any combination of flavors, including cherry, green apple, blue raspberry and more.

But the franchise doesn't stop at just coffee and energy drinks.

Aroma Joe's prides itself on community involvement and positively impacting the people it serves.

"Everyone in Aroma Joe's believes in giving back to the actual community," MacGregor said. "Working with the Rotary Club, trying to get involved in as many community events as possible; that's something that's a high priority for us as well."

While Bristol will be the first location in the Nutmeg State, MacGregor says it won't be the last.

"It's going to be really exciting to go from a place where Aroma Joe's isn't really well known to, hopefully in 10 years, we become a household name and a brand just like a Dunkin' Donuts and a Starbucks."
Connecticut officials have notified at least two municipalities that the state will not honor financial promises made by Konstantinos Diamantis, who is now at the center of a federal criminal investigation.

Over the past three months, local officials in Farmington and Hartford received letters from the states Office of School Construction Grants and Review informing them that the anticipated reimbursement rates for planned school projects were out of line with state rules.

The decisions have created turmoil in the towns and forced them to reassess how they will pay for millions of dollars in building costs they had expected the state to cover, and legislators are looking for a political fix.

Diamantis, who ran the school grants program for more than six years and served as deputy secretary of the Office of Policy and Management, was removed from his government positions on Oct. 29, 2021  around the same time that the state was subpoenaed by a federal grand jury.

Since then, Gov. Ned Lamont has appointed new people to oversee the states school building program and instructed them to review dozens of school construction projects, toward which the state has contributed hundreds of millions of dollars.

As part of that ongoing review, the state sent letters to local officials in Farmington and Hartford, informing the municipalities that the state will not follow through on financial commitments made by Diamantis.

In both cases, the state told local officials that Diamantis had incorrectly calculated how much money the state would cover for the construction of school administrative offices.

Noel Petra, who was placed in charge of the school grant program following Diamantis exit, also explained that state law prohibited the office from setting a higher reimbursement rate for those projects.

The Office of School Construction Grants and Review recognizes that the district was previously given different information regarding a higher reimbursement rate for the Board of Education offices, Petra wrote to town officials in Farmington. Unfortunately, that information was contrary to statute, and therefore we are not able to justify using it.

The states decision to backtrack on past funding pledges could be extremely costly for the local governments that are affected.

The states decision to cut the reimbursement rate for part of the Farmington High School project could cost that town $915,000 that it didnt budget.

And in Hartford, city officials may need to come up with an additional $16 million the state promised to cover as part of the Bulkeley High School project.

Lora Rae Anderson, a spokeswoman for the Department of Administrative Services, which oversees the school grant program, said Farmington and Hartford are the only municipalities to receive formal letters adjusting the reimbursement rates.

But she said the state also clarified the reimbursement rules for other municipalities that were just getting started with their procurement process for school projects.

Local backlash

Lamont and a group of high-ranking state officials held a press conference last week to emphasize the reforms they are making to the school construction grants and to highlight their attempts to instill public confidence in a program that remains the focus of an ongoing investigation.

We have rebuilt the program already into a much more transparent and trustworthy program, Petra told the crowd of reporters who gathered in the Capitol.

Weve met with dozens of the school districts. Weve met with dozens of legislators. Weve met with all of the industry stakeholders, he added. We have worked hand in hand with everyone to identify problems.

The decision to reduce the state grant funding in Farmington has already set off a political backlash in that town.

Farmingtons board of education, the town council and the local school building committee all responded to the letter from the state by voicing shock and outrage.

Many of those officials said Diamantis made repeated promises in meetings that the state would cover more than 28 percent of Farmingtons new school administrative offices.

Yet town officials were informed in December that the state was only willing to pay for 14 percent of those costs.

Its not only disappointing. In some respects, its unacceptable, based on the conversations we had and the work weve done, Meg Guerrera, the chairwoman of the Farmington High School Building Committee, said during a public meeting in December. I dont think Im out of line in saying that. Im sure we all probably feel that way at this moment.

Farmingtons elected leaders said they relied on the reimbursement rates that Diamantis offered as part of their pitch to residents, who voted in a referendum to fund the new high school and related office space.

We went out with numbers that were given to us by a representative of the state, and now we dont have those numbers, said Christine Arnold, a member of Farmingtons Board of Education. And its not a little bit. Its a significant amount.

A written promise

A similar situation has also played out in recent weeks in Hartford, where city officials could face an even larger funding shortfall.

In that case, Diamantis vowed that the state would cover 95 percent of the $29.5 million for the administrative offices that are part of Hartfords Bulkeley High School renovation.

Yet the new leaders at the Office of School Construction Grants and Review said in a Feb. 22 letter that the state can only cover 40 percent, or about $11.8 million, of the overall cost.

Howard Rifkin, Hartfords Corporation Counsel, sent a letter back to the state at the beginning of March pushing back against the states decision to slash the reimbursement rate.

In that letter, Rifkin pointed out that Hartford received written confirmation from Diamantis about the promised reimbursement rate and approval for the overall cost of the new administrative offices.

As you know, the city acted in reliance on the representation of the state official then-in-charge of school construction reimbursement, as memorialized in the attached commitment letter, that the project would be eligible for Hartfords full rate of reimbursement, Rifkin wrote.

The written representation made in this regard by the state official responsible for overseeing the school construction program was incredibly significant, he added.

Thats not the way the state views the situation, however.

In his letters, Petra emphasized that state law prohibits the Office of School Construction Grants and Review from unilaterally adjusting reimbursement rates, which are determined through a set funding formula that is developed by the Connecticut Legislature.

The only way around that, Petra noted, is for the legislature to pass a bill that adjusts the reimbursement rates for the projects that are now in question.

A political fixThere is already mounting pressure on Farmingtons legislative delegation to fix the financial problems.

The state senators and representatives for Farmington were recently questioned by the town council and the local board of education members about the states decision to slash the reimbursement rate for part of the school project.

They promised to do what they could to make sure the town received the money it was promised.

We hear you loud and clear. We are aware of it. Rep. Mike Demicco, D-Farmington, told the town council. What you were promised is what we will try to get for you.

Sen. Derek Slap, D-Farmington, said he was confident he could get it done.

We will go to the mat for Farmington, Slap told the board of education. We have a lot of different pressure points we can apply, and we will use them all.

Farmingtons lawmakers are also likely to have a powerful ally on their side as they seek the legislatures help.

House Speaker Matt Ritter, D-Hartford, said he is aware of the cut to the school reimbursement rates and that Hartfords six representatives and two senators are interested in remedying the problem.

Were going to look into it, Ritter said. The Hartford delegation will work hard at it.
Dont panic. The Code 3 rubs and sauces you use to enhance your steaks and hot dogs aren't going anywhere.

Whats changing is the name of the barbecue supply store Code 3 owners operate along Main Street in Collinsville. In fact, its their hometown thats going to get some love in the rebranding because Code 3 Barbecue Supply has officially become Collinsville Barbecue Supply.

Co-owner Mike Radosevich said the change comes from efforts to keep the Code 3 name associated with the rubs, spices and barbecue sauce portion of the business, but also pride for the Collinsville community.

Our motto, our mission, what we do with the community we wanted to be more personal and let people know how much we truly do love the support from our community, the award winning barbecuer said. Were trying to be leaders in this industry. And in order to be a leader in our industry, we need to bring people with us through our success. What youre going to find with Collinsville Barbecue Supply is that we are for everybody in our industry to do big things and be very successful.

The supply store rebrand, both in Collinsville and online, is just the beginning of many things to come from the owners this year. In April they will debut Crank It Up Grills which will offer patrons custom fabrication and a variety of grilling options.

The majority of barbecue supply stores dont have world-class pit masters running them, or premium chefs. Thats what separates us from a majority of all the barbecue supply stores from the United States, Radosevich said. We are so fully involved within the industry and the professional cooking arena  thats why people travel so many miles to come see us.

Chef and barbecue expert Josh Milson will run the operation as the store manager.

Its kind of a dream in itself. I come from a long history of many hours and late, late nights working in the food industry, he said. Ive been working in kitchens since I was about 16, so being able to switch gears, but yet still find just a different outlet in the culinary world through barbecue has just been amazing.

Josh is a one-of-a-kind human being. If anybody is lucky enough to meet a Josh Milson in their life, theyre going to connect themselves to them, Radosevich said. The energy he brings to the table is very infectious and very genuine, and thats really tough to find in the world right now.

The team and products have won several awards with top customer go-getters Patriot Sauce, both in an original and spicy recipe, and the Grunt Rub, a combination of sea salt, garlic, pepper and other spices.

Yet, Collinsville Barbecue Supply under Milsons watch is going to be more than a place to get everything one needs to cook out in the backyard. He plans on it being an educational experience too, both in-store and online, through videos and podcasts.

Im all about education. Its something I loved back in culinary school, its something I brought with me through the years working in restaurants, bringing on new employees, teaching them the ropes, Milson said. And here in the barbecue world, its another great outlet and opportunity to continue that great education.

One thing I love about the experience coming here is its not just about the sale. We work hard to make sure everyone has the best possible experience, he added. Whether somebody is brand new, its their first grill, first time lighting up charcoal, we want everyone to go home feeling like theyre going to rock out any cook they want to take on. Thats what I love.

Its that approach that has Radosevich making sure the business is a pillar in the Collinsville community.

Our whole mantra as a business is to do as much as we can for the community," Radosevich said. "Whether it is a clothing drive for Unit 10, whether it is assisting local charities or the food pantry behind our building, we want to inspire businesses of all sizes in our communities to follow suit and help give back."

And as for the direction business is going?

The name change is just ground level of a very, very tall ladder, Milson said.

Code 3 rubs can be found nationwide and internationally in Australia.
A federal lawsuit over a 2020 prisoner's death in the Madison County Jail was filed last week in East St. Louis.

Elissa A. Lindhorst, 28, of Glen Carbon, died Feb. 24, 2020 while in custody at the Madison County Jail. She had been arrested on an outstanding warrant for unlawful possession of controlled substance. The original warrant had been issued through the Hartford Police Department.

A lawsuit was filed Feb. 24 in U.S. District Court in East St. Louis by Rana Schmidt, Lindhorst's mother and administrator of her estate, through the Chicago-based law firm Meyer & Kiss. It was noted the initial complaint was filed last year, then Meyer & Kiss took over the case and filed an amended complaint that included additional defendants.

Defendants include the county, Madison County Sheriff John D. Lakin, 17 named sheriffs department personnel and Advanced Correctional Healthcare Inc. which provides medical service for the jail.

To lose her is the deepest pain Ive ever felt, Schmidt said Tuesday morning in a video press conference.

They need to treat people like people, and not belittle them, Schmidt said. She should have got medical care.

Attorney Lewis Meyer, who participated in the press conference with Schmidt, said Lindhorst got zero assistance other than inmates who tried to help her, and proper protocols were not followed.

The five-count suit seeks unspecified damages and legal fees, and a jury trial is requested.

In an emailed response, Madison County Chief Deputy Maj. Jeff Connor said the department was unable to comment on any ongoing litigation.

The suit claims that, from Feb. 20, 2020 until Lindhorst's death, numerous sheriff's department employees observed her health decline yet failed to take any steps to get her medical attention.

Elissa was in obvious need of emergency medical care resulting from opioid dependency and withdrawal, the suit states. It claims jail personnel heard her begging for help and that she felt like she was dying. The suit states other prisoners sought aid for Lindhorst but received no help from staff.

According to the suit, Lindhorst was in court in Granite City on Feb. 20, 2020, when the judge realized she had an outstanding warrant. Two deputies placed her in custody and took her to the jail for processing. While being processed Lindhorst became ill. Deputies claim a sick slip form seeking medical assistance was filled out, but no slip was found in her file and she was not medically evaluated.

Over the next few days numerous jail staff did not seek medical help for her, according to the suit. The suit states that on Feb. 23 other inmates completed a sick slip for Lindhorst, but a jailer threw it in the garbage. The suit claims that, at several times on Feb. 24, corrections officers making their rounds saw Lindhorst lying by the toilet with vomit on her and made no effort to check on her condition.

The suit states that, while breakfast was being passed out, two inmates began yelling that Lindhorst had stopped breathing and carried her from the cell into the main detainee walkway. Jail staff began CPR, but Lindhorst aspirated, the suit states. She was declared dead at 8:30 a.m. on Feb.24 by Dr. Grant Gerdelman.
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St. Elizabeth Healthcare Foundation has recently announced its annual scholarship awards for 2021 totaled $68,966.

$60,000 went directly to 13 students pursuing a medical career, while $8,000 went to Southwestern Illinois College.

With the 2021 scholarships, the SEHF has given over $500,000 in the past seven years.

To apply, scholarship applications go through an impartial third-party management service, which is a division of Scholarship America. This program uses standard Scholarship American recipient selection procedures, including the consideration of academic performance, leadership demonstration and participation in school and community activities, work experience, a statement of career and educational goals and objectives, unusual personal or family circumstances, and an outside appraisal.

The statement of goals includes a question asking how the student plans to give back to the community following the completion of a degree.

As many as 30 of the top candidates are sent to the foundation after Scholarship America checks the applications received.

The names of the recipients are hidden, so they are only selected by the criteria mentioned above.

The winners include:

Anna Conner of Granite City received the Jerry Costello Award, named for Congressman Jerry Costello, who allowed the SEHF to expand beyond Madison County. Conner attends the University of Tennessee College of Medicine.

Samuel Shelton of Granite City received the Ted Eilerman Award, named after founding member Ted Eilerman. Shelton attends Southern Illinois University Edwardsville School of Nursing.

Sarah Mullens of Granite City received the Leo Konzen Award, named after founding member Leo Konzen. Mullens attends Southern Illinois University and this is the second award shes received from SEHF.

Kaitlyn Frick of Glen Carbon attends Southern Illinois School of Medicine in Springfield. It is her second year receiving a scholarship from SEHF.

Kathleen Botterbush of Godfrey attends St. Louis University and is interested in orthopedic neck and spinal surgeries, as well as oncology surgeries. It is her second year receiving a scholarship from SEHF.

Loren Roustio of Granite City attends Loyola University Medical Center and plans to apply for a residency in the field of urology. It is her second year receiving a scholarship from SEHF.

Sarah Schriewer of Highland attends the St. Louis School of Pharmacy. It is her second year receiving a scholarship from SEHF.

Brook Renspurger of Troy attends Southern Illinois University and majors in speech and language pathology. It is her second year receiving a scholarship from SEHF.

Jacob Wilmsmeyer of Granite City attends Lindenwood University and majors in the field of psychiatry. It is his second year receiving a scholarship from SEHF.

Haley Crider of Granite City attends Bradley University and majors in physical therapy.

Aaron Peach of Granite City attends Southern Illinois University and is in the field of medicine.

Riley Hatfield of Granite City attends Southern Illinois University in the nursing field.

Megan Lalich of Granite City attends Southwestern Illinois College in the field of radiology technology.

The SEHF accepts a variety of Gifts of Honor, which recognizes a friends birthday, memorials to a loved one, a celebration, or a special occasion with a gift to the foundation.

The honored individual will receive a personal note acknowledging the gift. Support can be directed to a specific area.

The foundation is a tax-exempt organization under Section 501-3 of the Internal Revenue Code, making the gifts tax deductible to the full extent of the law.

For questions, contact the Chamber of Commerce at 618-876-6400.
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Elizabethtown, KY (42701)

Today

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That release could not be found.
When the story is finally told, it would be remembered that Governor Willie Obiano is probably the first governor in Nigeria who spent eight years in office and never took a salary. Obiano signed away his salary to charity from his first month in office. And with a handful of days left, it is not out of place to finally acknowledge the symbolism of that act.

As it turned out though, giving away his salary was the least of Obianos humane act as a governor. His philosophy of ana alu olu ana alu mmadu (fix lives before you fix things) was to gradually evolve into a subtle theme that ran through much of his stay in office. It was the silent force behind Obianos decision to increase the salary of workers at a time when Nigeria was in the throes of recession. It was the energy behind his decision to clear the areas of pensions owed the old employees of the Anambra Broadcasting Service (ABS) and National Light that was outstanding for 25 years. It was the motivation behind his choice to clear the areas of salaries owed both local government employees and the staff of Anambra State Water Corporation by previous administrations within his first term in office. It was also the main reason in his eight years in office, civil servants were given bags of rice at Christmas to ensure that no one was left out of the circle of happiness.

But perhaps we would appreciate Obianos remarkable humanity better if we realized that his government was the first in Nigeria to set up a proper office on Disability Matters and the first to aggressively pursue the passing of the Disability Rights Bill into law to ensure that our brothers and sisters who live with all forms of physical disability are treated as decent human beings who deserve dignity. The Anambra State Disability Law prohibits any form of discrimination against people living with disability in the state. Obiano was also the first to set up a Disability Rights Commission and charge it with the mandate to formulate and implement policies and programmes it considers appropriate for the education and well-being of people living with disability. To give fillip to his decision, he offered scholarship to students living with disability in Anambra State from primary to tertiary levels. He also appointed a brilliant but blind lawyer as his Special Adviser on Disability Matters and made a member of the disability community a Permanent Secretary in one of the ministries.

History will also record the fact that Obiano and his wife mustered enough kindness in their time in office to provide a home for the societys cast-away and adopted many abandoned babies. In fact, they built a special home in Nteje where the mentally deranged people, the homeless, waifs, tramps and vagrants are rehabilitated and reunited with their families. The bulk of Obianos forfeited salaries went into the running of the Nteje home. It is also on record that in October 2015, Obiano granted amnesty to 25 prisoners serving jail terms in prisons in the state and gave each of them N1 million to ease themselves back into the society. It had not been done before. Again, he offered scholarships to orphans. A case in point is the scholarship he gave to the children of the victims of the Mubi 12 massacre which took place in Mubi, Adamawa State in 2012.

Driven by his keen sense of justice, Obiano always stayed above the fray. He never threw any punches back at people who hounded him and was quick to forgive those who offended him and ask for forgiveness from those who felt offended by him. Two years ago when some traditional rulers staged a royal coup against him with an unauthorized trip to the Presidency to stir malcontent against him, Obiano showed anger by placing a suspension on them. But he rescinded the order shortly after in a rare show of mercy when the popular clamour was for outright dethronement. In much the same way, Obiano is the only governor in Nigerian history to have tendered an unreserved public apology to his predecessor and pleaded for forgiveness even when the offence remains unknown.

And wellthe Obiano administration will forever be remembered as the time when the Anambra youth had his day in the sun. The governor offered employment to hundreds of youths and ensured that wealth trickled down to people to whom government had formerly been as distant as the moon.

In simpler terms, Obianos government belonged to the people. He placed the people first in all he did. He lifted the weak and stabilized the strong. He will be remembered for a long time to come.
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The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, UNODC, on Friday, lamented that illicit drug use in Nigeria is almost three times higher than the global average.

Mr. Oliver Stolpe, the country representative of the organization, made the disclosure at the official launch of the UNODC strategic vision for Nigeria 2030 at the Federal Ministry of Justice in Abuja

He pointed out that the bewildering insecurity and crime rate in Nigeria could be traced to incessant misuse of drug prevalence especially among young individuals.

He said: Nigeria faces serious multi-dimensional challenges to security and the rule of law.

Boko Haram and other terrorist groups target innocent people in the North-East and across the Sahel, while piracy  despite progress in 2021  continues to plague the Gulf of Guinea.

Organized crime groups take advantage of security gaps to exploit people and smuggle illicit goods, including firearms and drugs, threatening lives, communities, and the environment.

Corruption and illicit financial flows enable crime and terrorism, and deprive people of opportunities, while impunity perpetuates these challenges and undermine public trust.

Meanwhile, drug use prevalence in Nigeria stands at almost 15 percent  almost three times higher than the global average.

The COVID-19 pandemic has only further complicated the situation

He added:In Nigeria it is estimated to have driven more than 10 million people into poverty this year, increasing their vulnerability to crime, drugs and violent extremism.

The UNODC country representative further pinpointed that in order to essentially address the situation in a sustainable way, it is critical to strengthen the broad framework of responses, including laws, institutions, capacities, and awareness.

Stolpe assured that the organizations strategic vision for Nigeria was structured to achieve the purpose.

After extensive consultations with government partners, donors, civil society, and other stakeholders, I am confident that we have identified what Nigeria needs from us, and how we can get it done,  he stated.

While speaking, the Director-General of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency, NDLEA, Brigadier General Mohammed Buba Marwa (Rtd) affirmed that the Nigerian Federal Government would not relent in tackling transnational crimes, of which drug trafficking he said was among.

Similarly, Mr. Abubakar Malami SAN, the Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, made a call to relevant stakeholders to support the UNODC in actualising its strategic vision for the country.
Prof Chukwuma Charles Soludo, Anambra State Governor-elect has left no one in doubt that the in-coming government under his watch will be radically different

Soludo, a former Central Bank of Nigeria, (CBN) Governor is coming into office as the next Governor of Anambra State after Governor Willie Obiano. He is coming into this office with a sound pedigree and unassailable intergrity having distinguished himself in his previous performances in public service.

This include being the Chief Economic Adviser to President Olusegun Obasanjo, becoming afterwards, Deputy Chairman/ Chief Executive of National Planning Commission (a position equal to a ministerial appointment) and eventually topping it up as the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria.

In all these sensitive public offices, Soludo showed an uncommon brilliance and indepth understanding of the roles the offices were required to play in driving the growth and development of the nation

As he sets forth at dawn on March 17, 2022 to be sworn in as the Governor of Anambra, Soludo, obviously will be setting out to replicate those stellar attributes that have genuinely distinguished him as a high performer.

His style of governance judging from what he has shown already, will surely be simple, trendy and nimble.

By being simple, it means things will be done in an uncomplicated and straight forward way. It is not going to be business as usual

By being trendy, it means the government will be focused in delivering the best and latest world class infrastructural development as obtained across the globe especially in the developed world

And by being nimble, it simply means things will be done quickly and swiftly without the usual "officialdom" that slows down growth and development.

[PHOTO]https://cdn.thenigerianvoice.com/images/content/34202280242_826ea0c677fa4d9096b4cac5955a3e04.jpeg[/PHOTO

These processes will drive Soludo's government with a viewing to fast-tracking unprecedented development in Anambra State

Undoubtedly, Charlie Mwa-mgbafor is in a hurry to bring development to the good people of Anambra. He is gifted with the uncanny ability to see ahead of time. He is an incurable optimist and he knows how to achieve success.

From his childhood to this very day, he has been an enigma, a phenomenal, a dreamer, a thinker, an idealist, a reformer, an uncommon achiever and a performer

All these positive attributes will come to play in full circle when Cee Cee Soludo takes over the mantle of leadership come March 17, 2022 as the People's Governor. Be part of it!!!
Youths from the southern and northern parts of the country are pleading with the former President Good luck Ebele Jonathan to run for the 2023 Presidency in the general interest of Nigeria.

The youths groups; patriotic Youths For Good Governance , led by Adamu Adamu Matazu, Initiative For Northern Youth For Good Governance led Rabui Abubakar Baba, and the Niger Delta Youth Coalition ( NDYC) led by Prince Emmanuel Ogba who are championing the course, noted that among those so far indicating interest 2023 Presidency, Jonathan is more acceptable to Nigerians irrespective of tribal equation.

NDYC National Coordinator, Prince Emmanuel Ogba said his group and other youth groups across the nation are mobilising for ex- President Jonathan because of several important reasons, above all is the issue of one United Nigeria.

According to the NDYC boss, " we are begging Jonathan to run and we assure him of our maximum support.

L-R:Prince Emmanuel Ogba ( Niger Delta Youth Coalition ( NDYC), Adamu Adamu Matazu (patriotic Youths For Good Governance)

" It will be fair to allow Jonathan complete a second term of eight years like others , after which the power can conveniently go back to the north in 2027.

" Jonathan has proved beyond reasonable doubt that he can not sacrifice the unity of the country on the altar of sentiment as he demonstrated during the election that brought in President Muhammadu Buhari in 2015.

" While he was the sitting President, records shows that he was fair in his appointments, contracts, and distribution of projects . It was even seen that he concentrated in the development of the north and other parts of the country at the detriment of his area, which is a rare attribute among past leaders.

" He has the confidence of different parts of the country that he will give the country a better leadership following his experience and other antecedents.

" We therefore began to consult youths from across the nation to plead with Former President Jonathan to run for the 2023 Presidency and reactions we are getting from both Nigerians and non Nigerians is encouraging", he stated.

Ogba appealed to other Nigerians to join forces with youths to prevail on Jonathan to run.

" He may on his own wish to stay away from active politice but we beg him to run ", he said , stressing that Nigeria youths will back any political party that gives him its Presidential ticket.

Ogba urged political parties to zone 2023 Presidency to the South South geopolitical zone to enable the zone complete it's eight years second term like other zones.
Eight more grilled over actresss death

BANGKOK: Police said yesterday (Mar 3) they had questioned eight more witnesses in the investigation into the death of TV actress Nida Tangmo Patcharaveerapong, who is believed to have drowned in the Chao Phraya River last Thursday after falling overboard.

deathmarine

By Bangkok Post

Friday 4 March 2022, 08:05AM

Police conduct reenactment in the Chao Phraya River in Nonthaburi on Wednesday, on the speedboat that carried TV actress Nida Tangmo Patcharaveerapong on the night of Feb 24. Photo: Arnun Chonmahatrakool

But police have yet to pinpoint whose negligence caused the actress to fall to her death, said Pol Lt Gen Jirapat Phumjit, commissioner of Provincial Police Region 1.

No theories have been ruled out so far, whether it was an accident or if there was something else behind the incident we aim to make [the investigation] as thorough as possible with the help of forensic evidence, he said.

Among the witnesses grilled yesterday was Surattanavee Bow TK Suviporn, a friend of both Tangmo and her manager, Pol Lt Gen Jirapat said.

In total 29 witnesses including four of the five people who accompanied Tangmo on the boat have now been questioned, reports the Bangkok Post.

Only two of the people on the speedboat have been charged so far, he added.

Tangmos five companions were Idsarin Gatick Juthasuksawat, her manager; Wisapat Sand Manomairat; Nitas Job Kiratisoothisathorn; Tanupat Por Lerttaweewit, the boat owner; and Phaiboon Robert Trikanjananun.

Mr Tanupat and Mr Phaiboon have been charged with operating an unlicensed vessel and negligence leading to death. According to a preliminary investigation, Mr Phaiboon was operating the speedboat when Tangmo fell overboard, Pol Lt Gen Jirapat said.

An analysis of the GPS records is leading investigators to believe the actress fell overboard between 10:29pm and 10:34pm, he said, adding they are now looking into forensic evidence collected from the boat.

The boat was not at the scene when police arrived last Thursday night but Pol Lt Gen Jirapat said no evidence is believed to be missing.

The vessel was seized from NBC Boat Club in Muang district of Nonthaburi the following morning.

Pol Col Chaturon Anurakbandit, superintendent of Nonthaburis Muang district police station, dismissed rumours that Mr Tanupat recently donated B3 million to the station.

We havent received the amount claimed and in any case, I insist that everything is being done by the book here.

Investigators yesterday requested as part of the probe information about the calls made by the five people on the boat from the Technology Crime Suppression Division, who had already collected it, said a source.

Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha has urged police to speed up the investigation.
Southern Pines, NC (28387)

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Partly cloudy. High 81F. Winds NE at 5 to 10 mph..

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Empty and abandoned for decades, the former Hilltop Service Station on Wilton Road West remains a source of curiosity and concern in the community.

Would someone please buy this?  showing a photo of the unoccupied building  said a July 12 post on the Ridgefield Facebook page. It had generated 290 comments as of Tuesday evening.

... its an eyesore on one of the most scenic roads and not a very nice welcome sign for our town, wrote one person about the station, which is located along Route 33, shortly before the Wilton border.

... would ride my bike there and return empty Coke bottles for 2 cents and buy Bazooka bubble gum with the money, added a longtime Ridgefielder.

The building, at 60 Wilton Road West, is owned by Contes Country Farm Store LLC.

Im going to sell if theres somebody to buy, said Mario Conte, the Norwalk businessman who is the principal in the LLC.

Indeed, a sign out front says: For sale by owner.

There are a couple of people that are interested, Conte told The Press in a phone conversation Tuesday night, July 21.

Conte had appeared before Ridgefields Zoning Board of Appeals in 2005, showing plans for a country store. He got what he needed from the town, but his plans for a family-run store there didnt work out.

My dream flew away, he said.

The store concept for the site  which had been a gas station for many years before closing, but was a sotre before that  had been introduced about a year before Conte came to the appeals board, by the local contracting firm Sturges Brothers.

We got the Sturges Brothers a variance for the country store, but it was discovered that the well was contaminated with gasoline before they took on the project, attorney Bob Jewell said, when asked about the about the site.

First Selectman Rudy Marconi, too, remembered well contamination as the problem.

To my knowledge it is a contamination issue from the old gas tanks when it was a gas station, Marconi said in an email Tuesday. There have been past issues with an adjacent propertys water quality, but I have not heard anything lately.

Jewel said hed heard, back at that time, that the amount of gasoline the water supply suggested that the problem might not have been a leaky tank, but deliberate contamination.

Long history

The Hilltop Service Station has a history that goes back to the 1920s before Ridgefield had zoning regulations  when it was a small store with a couple of gas pumps.

The owners sold gas and oil and had an outdoor rack for repairs of vehicles, said Charles Creamer, former chairman of the towns Zoning Board of Appeals, in a 2006 interview with News Times reporter Susan Tuz. Then in 1947, zoning came in and the store was grandfathered in, in the residentially zoned area.

Owned by the Jensen family, the business operated until the late 1960s, when Shell Oil bought the property and knocked down the structure, replacing it with the current building. Shell discontinued retail sales and began doing minor automotive repair.

In the 1970s, Creamer recalled, Shell returned to the board with a proposal to expand the building to allow more ambitious repair work.

But there was an outcry from neighbors and the request was denied.

The owner of the franchise for the site appealed the denial all the way to the state Supreme Court, which upheld the zoning boards decision.

The case set a precedent for zoning, Creamer told Tuz in 2006. Zoning could be used to deny expansion from limited repairs to general repairs.

The business remained in operation for another seven years, and then the property was sold. The buyer was Walter Gengarelly  an anti-tax activist in Ridgefield and a former Libertarian candidate for governor of Connecticut. He pumped gas from the site until the business went into foreclosure.

The Sturges Brothers revived the retail-store concept that had been at the site before zoning. And eventually the property was sold to Conte, who came before the appeals board with his own vision for a country store on the property  and got approval.

The neighbors supported it, Creamer told Tuz. But nothing happened.

And still, in 2020, people drive by the property and wonder why its empty, and whats in the run down gas statians future.
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RIDGEFIELD  Selectman Bob Hebert is making another run at representing the town in Hartford.

Hebert announced this week his candidacy for the 111th House district, a seat he unsuccessfully ran for in 2020. He is running against incumbent state Rep. Aimee Berger-Girvalo, D-Ridgefield.

Hebert has served on the Board of Selectmen for more than six years. In addition to municipal experience, he has a professional background in business and finance. He also has a history of community service, having formerly chaired the Ridgefield Housing Authority.

Hebert discussed his platform before a crowd of supporters and fellow Republican candidates at the Lounsbury House on Thursday night. He is advocating for good-faith government, public safety, affordability, local control and the needs of Connecticuts businesses.

He cited the fund he started during the pandemic to support struggling businesses, recognizing that Ridgefield would be less vibrant if dotted by empty storefronts. And although he believes in smart development, he wants to protect local zoning laws.

We do have issues impacting all the towns (with the) mandates coming out of Hartford, and while some of them are important, others  we need to have a strong voice and opposition, a voice of reason, Hebert told Hearst Connecticut Media. I look forward to doing the work.

Berger-Girvalo is in her first term and spearheaded legislation to require health clubs and gyms to have an automatic external defibrillator, or AED, on-site, among other work.

I will continue to work hard and advocate for the residents of Ridgefield while campaigning, she said in a statement. I am proud of the work I did last year, helping make Ridgefield a brighter community, and with re-election I pledge to do even more.

Republican John Frey, who represented the 111th House district for more than 20 years, endorsed Hebert for his former seat.

Bobs a thinker.  Hes a humble man, he listens, hes available (and) he follows through, he said. Theres several roles to being a legislator: theres the legislation (and) constituent service, and I know Bob has the empathy thats required to do it right.

Hebert said he plans to maintain his seat on the Board of Selectmen if elected. And while Democrat First Selectman Rudy Marconi was surprised by Heberts decision to run, he wished him luck for the campaign ahead.

Bob has been a fair and reliable member of the board, Marconi said. Hes proactive, he attends meetings, he participates and he does his homework.

alyssa.seidman@hearstmediact.com
From an office in the Press Corps of the Indiana Statehouse, the journalism majors of Franklin College's Pulliam School of Journalism work alongside the best reporters in the state, digging into the behind-the-scenes stories of Indiana politics. We're a student newsroom, but our work doesn't sit on a professor's desk. We create daily content for this website and 35 professional media partners around the state.
On Tuesday, before President Joe Biden announced a plan to address the country's mental health needs in his State of the Union address, the White House released a fact sheet detailing the plan. The plan seeks to address a mental health crisis worsened by the COVID-19 pandemic but that was increasing in the years prior.

"Let's get all Americans the mental health services they need," Biden said Wednesday during his speech. "More people they can turn to for help and full parity between physical and mental health care if we treat it that way in our insurance."

White House plan

The White House's plan seeks to strengthen system capacity and connect people who need help to a continuum of care, includes measures to expand the mental health care workforce, aims to establish a crisis-care response system to support the launch of the 988 crisis line in July, focuses on children's mental health and creates proposals to push insurance companies to improve their coverage of behavioral health care.

According to Deborah Humphrey, the executive director of the Madison County Mental Health Board, there has been advocacy and support for the "988" crisis response line in Illinois. Additionally, strengthening community-based crisis response was a work set in action in the state with the start-up scheduled in June 2022, and Illinois is preparing to implement a statewide call center with potential regional centers, Humphrey wrote in an email.

"There is some local concern as June approaches how the system will operate," Humphrey wrote. "Meetings, planning and preparations are underway by some Madison County communities, however, there are various unknown aspects still to be determined that will impact how the 988 line will work locally."

Dr. Thomas Insel, a psychiatrist and former director of the National Institute of Mental Health, told NPR that this is the first time since the Carter administration that the federal government has taken leadership in addressing mental health.

"I think this is an important moment," Insel said to NPR. "For the most part, the federal government has ceded mental health policy [and] services to the states. Essentially, the federal government has been missing in action for 41 years, and Biden's comments and this fact sheet bring it back into the center of the action for mental health."

NPR reported that the success of the White House's plan depends on congressional support for the regulations and funding proposals outlined by the administration, especially with regard to long-term funding.

Two out of five adults report symptoms of anxiety or depression, the White House wrote, as the country faces an unprecedented mental health crisis among people of all ages. Black and Brown communities have been disproportionately undertreated as their burden of mental illness has continued to rise.

The White House stated that youth in the United States have been particularly impacted due to COVID-19 and disruptions in routines and relationships that have led to social isolation, anxiety and learning loss. More than half of parents express concern over their children's mental well-being, the White House wrote. In 2019, one in three high school students and half of female students reported persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness, an increase of 40% from 2009. Emergency department visits have risen 51% among adolescent girls, the White House found.

"Advertising targeting children has been an area of concern that mental health and substance use prevention programs have been working on diligently," Humphrey wrote. "The president also addressed the prevention of advertising aimed at children, strengthening privacy protections, and outlawing targeted advertising to children as part of an effort to improve their mental health."

Madison County has a robust prevention program aimed at children, as in 2021, 8,008 children received prevention services through that Madison County Mental Health Board funding.

The White House also wrote that while technology platforms have improved lives in some ways, there is mounting evidence that "social media is harmful to many kids' and teens' mental health, well-being and development."

The United States Surgeon General has stated "when not deployed responsibly and safely, these tools can pit us against each other, reinforce negative behaviors like bullying and exclusion, and undermine the safe and supportive environments young people need and deserve."

"President Biden's State of the Union address presented relevant issues facing the mental health field that mental health leaders and professionals have identified as problems impacting mental health for some time," Humphrey wrote. "The budget is essential to addressing mental health issues nationally, in Illinois and Madison County."

Local impact

Humphrey wrote that Madison County community mental health centers Centerstone of Illinois and Chestnut Health Systems reported having a 29% and 24% increase in calls by individuals needing help "while facing the challenge of delivering quality services with a diminished workforce."

"The behavioral health workforce shortage has been an issue for years before COVID-19," Humphrey wrote. "The pandemic has further diminished the behavioral health workforce. Madison County agencies are struggling. As the workforce crisis deepens, professionals are leaving for better-paying positions and this is creating a surge in provider waitlists for services, particularly in underserved communities."

Agencies have offered sign-on bonuses and increased salaries, although neither is helping with the recruitment of employees, Humphrey wrote. Madison County providers are utilizing Peer Recovery Support Specialists, individuals with lived-mental health experience that have first-hand knowledge of mental illness or substance use. Those in PRSS positions are also knowledgeable about local resources and know how to engage, support and navigate those seeking mental health or substance use treatment.

Humphrey wrote that Biden's fiscal year 2023 budget shows funding to ensure the use of evidence-based practices, practices proven to improve health outcomes while lowering costs. Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinics have been a proven model of care that have demonstrated positive health outcomes in addition to lower costs through delivering 24/7 mental health and substance use care to millions, Humphrey said.

Local CCBHCs include Centerstone of Illinois in Alton and Chestnut Health Systems in Granite City. The investment of millions of dollars through the American Rescue Plan, passed in 2021, in order to expand CCBHCs was a start to building Centers, Humphrey wrote, and the additional funding will make this program permanent, granting Illinois funding to expand CCBHCs for the communities most in need.

Southern Illinois University Edwardsville and the University of Illinois have received Health Resources and Services Administration and grants, Humphrey wrote, to launch a Behavioral Health Workforce Education Center. SIUE received an award of $1.8 million to develop behavioral health workers through the School of Nursing and Master of Social Work education program. This includes new approaches to train a diverse group of qualified professionals and paraprofessionals.

"A cultural, linguistic and geographically diverse workforce must be addressed for Illinois to meet the mental health and substance use needs of rural communities as well as communities of color and those in urban and suburban regions," Humphrey wrote.

The expansion of access to telehealth virtual medicine care options has addressed a significant gap in access to treatment, Humphrey wrote. Rural communities that had been underresourced now have increased access to mental health treatment. Access to a vehicle or local transportation resources to get to appointments have been an issue for individuals. Funding provided for the purchase of tablets and the internet during the pandemic increased access for individuals who lack transportation to appointments.

"Telehealth is here to stay," Humphrey wrote, "so funding support is necessary."

Serious care

However, one of the mental health issues not addressed that is problematic locally and in Illinois is a higher level of care for individuals with serious mental illness, Humphrey wrote. There is a seriously reduced capacity of inpatient and residential care for children in the state and local inpatient beds closed and residential substance use beds for adolescents have recently announced they are closing with the possibility of moving to a facility with fewer beds.

"Children who experience a mental health crisis receive transportation to the closest treatment center in Springfield or often Chicago. A child placed in residential care upstate creates a host of difficulties for parents and families in participating in treatment for the child and visitation," Humphrey wrote. "Not to mention, crisis workers experience difficulties arranging the placement and waiting in an emergency department for days until a bed is available and transportation 4-8 hours to a facility. Behavioral health agencies are not funded adequately to continue to operate, forcing closure."

A significant number of mentally ill people are in the criminal justice system, Humphrey wrote. Jails and prisons, the largest mental health centers in the U.S., are not mental health facilities and yet are faced with operating facilities with a workforce without mental health training and are not equipped to provide treatment and manage behaviors of mentally ill individuals.

In Madison County, criminal justice and mental health representatives are involved in a 5-Session Community Mapping project with the Mental Health Task Force of the Illinois Supreme Court.

"Sessions are structured to look at how mental illness and treatment are available along the criminal justice continuum. Stakeholders are looking at the point an individual in the community experiences a crisis, arrest, jail or incarcerated in prison," Humphrey wrote. "The Mental Health Task Force is providing insights to other resources for consideration. The issues shared with the Task Force will hopefully assist in making system changes."
Once in a very great while, something you read just becomes embedded in your brain. This can occur for two reasons, the best-case scenario being because the words are especially profound and insightful. However, it can also occur when what you read seems particularly outlandish. I had that very experience back in 2018 upon reading a column published in The Telegraph.

John Schlafly and Andy Schlafly, who are sons of the late Phyllis Schlafly as well as distinguished conservatives in their own right, wrote a column titled Trumps remarkable press conference. This columns second paragraph read: Many on the Left dislike Russia now because because it is an increasingly Christian country that changed the name of Leningrad to Saint Petersburg and even enacts pro-life laws," the Schlafly brothers wrote. "Communism was overthrown in Russia more than a quarter-century ago, and its trend toward conservative values today angers Leftists immensely."

Communism was overthrown in Russia more than a quarter-century ago is indeed factually correct. However, I must challenge the other assertions.

As any regular reader of my columns knows, I am indeed on the Left but my dislike and distrust of Putins Russia has nothing to do with it allegedly becoming an increasingly Christian country. I am a critic of Putins Russia because its a nation where democracy is a mere rumor. Putin, who served the old USSR as a KGB agent, rules his nation with an iron hand.

In his 2004 paper Russia After the Presidential Election, Dr. Mark A. Smith noted that Boris Nemtsoz and Vladimir Kara-Murza characterize Russia under Putin as a personalist authoritarian regime. They define Putinism as: A one party system, censorship, a puppet parliament, ending of an independent judiciary, firm centralisation (sic) of power and finances, hypertrophied role of special services and bureaucracy, in particular in relation to business. 

Amnesty International doesnt mince words when it comes to the state of human rights in Russia. The authorities used the pandemic as a pretext to continue the crackdown on all dissent, including through amendments to a vaguely worded law on fake news and tightening restrictions on public gatherings, the organization states. Peaceful protesters, human rights defenders and civic and political activists faced arrest and prosecution. Torture remained endemic, as did near total impunity for perpetrators. The right to a fair trial was routinely violated while legal amendments resulted in a further reduction in judicial independence.

One neednt be on the Left to regard such a regime as morally repugnant. I would also question the Schlaflys contention that Putins Russia is exhibiting anything remotely approaching a trend toward conservative values  unless one considers human rights abuses and the destruction of democratic government as conservative values.

Is Russia an increasingly Christian country? The name of Leningrad indeed was changed back to St. Petersburg  its original name  in 1991. As for the claim that Russia now even enacts pro-life laws, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported in 2021 that Russia enacted legislation to cut the number of abortions performed within its borders in half by 2025 in order to combat its population decline.

American pro-lifers oppose abortion on moral grounds, not because it will result in population decline. Pew Research Center reported in 2014 that while a majority of Russians now profess belief in God, no more than one-in-ten Russians said they attend religious services at least once a month.

Does Russias invasion of Ukraine disprove the Schlaflys claim that Russia is now a Christian nation? Of course not. Christian nations have invaded other Christian nations  as well as non-Christian nations  since the Middle Ages. In my day, even schoolchildren knew that an army comprised of Christians from Normandy invaded and conquered Christian Anglo-Saxon England in the eleventh century.

Putin claims to be a Russian Orthodox Christian, but its difficult to see much of the Christianity of Jesus in his actions. However, the Russian people who risk arrest and imprisonment by taking to the streets to protest Putins invasion of Ukraine are mirroring the behavior of Christians such as Oscar Romero, Desmond Tutu and Martin Luther King, Jr. They are putting their lives on the line to fight injustice.
COLLINSVILLE  Illinois State Police are investigating an officer involved shooting Wednesday night in Collinsville.

At about 8:36 p.m. Wednesday, Collinsville Police responded to the 100 block of Arnold Street in Collinsville for a reported home invasion, according to state police. When officers arrived, they observed Kevin C. Steinhauer, 45, East Carondelet, inside the residence with a firearm.

After repeated orders from the officers to drop the weapon, Steinhauer reportedly opened the door and fired at the officers who returned fire and struck Steinhauer. Officers attempted to render aid, however Steinhauer succumbed to his injuries at the scene.

No officers were injured in the incident.

Collinsville Police requested the Illinois State Police Division of Criminal Investigation Zone 6 investigate the shooting. The investigation continues.
ALTON  Seeking the weird and historical?

The Soul Asylum in the Mineral Springs Hotel at 301 E. Broadway in Alton will have its grand opening noon to 6 p.m. Saturday, March 5, and noon to 4 p.m. Sunday, March 6.

David Nunnally, owner of the Mineral Springs Hotel business Its Raining Zen, held a soft opening on Feb. 13 that he said was received well. The space was previously occupied by the Historic Museum of Torture Devices.

"We had about 80 people come through that day," he said. "It terrified me because we were far busier than I thought we'd ever be. I had some people stay for four hours."

Growing up in Oklahoma, Nunnally studied anthropology and history in college.

"I've always been attracted to things that give human beings an alternative perspective," he said. "Things that people claim are odd or esotaric or paranormal to me is an alternative way of understanding our own reality."

According to Nunnally, he purchased the assets from his friend Janet Kolar who owned the old torture devices museum. Return visitors will recognize the guillotine, stocks, rack and other reconstructed torture devices. But most of the new museum space is filled with exhibit cases and cabinets containing artifacts and images pertaining to medical oddities, serial killers, hauntings and the history of the Mineral Springs Hotel.

For this weekend's grand opening, Nunnally also will have many historical items on display including items related to The Telegraph and the Western Military Academy.

The first 10 people through the door both days will receive a free Soul Asylum T-shirt. Every $8 admission ticket purchased this weekend also is an entry for door prizes that will be drawn on Sunday afternoon, including two tickets to any American Hauntings Dinner & Spirits event at Mineral Springs; a private Soul Asylum Tour for six people; a private guided tour of the Mineral Springs Hotel for six people; a vintage horror movie night; and paranormal investigation in The Soul Asylum for six people.

Troy Taylor, author of Haunted Alton and a leader in the paranormal community for more than 25 years, will also host a book signing at Soul Asylum noon to 1 p.m. on Saturday.
SPRINGFIELD  The Diocese of Springfield in Illinois on Thursday announced plans to establish The Evermode Institute.

The new center for Catholic spiritual and intellectual formation will include priests from the Norbertine Fathers of St. Michaels Abbey who will establish a new community at the site of the former Chiara Center on the grounds of the Hospital Sisters of St. Francis in Springfield.

The Evermode Institute will offer programming for both ordained and lay teachers of the faith such as catechists, Parish School of Religion teachers (PSR), Catholic school teachers and other groups who teach the faith.

Several priests from the Norbertine Fathers of St. Michaels Abbey, based in Orange, Calif., will move to the property this summer. A date for when The Evermode Institute will open has not been finalized.

We have developed a strong relationship with the Norbertine Fathers of St. Michaels Abbey over the past several years, and we are thrilled to welcome them to our diocese, said Bishop Thomas John Paprocki of the Diocese of Springfield in Illinois. The Norbertine Fathers of St. Michaels Abbey are a vibrant and growing community of holy men, and their presence and apostolic work will be a great blessing to the people of our diocese and to this region.

The Norbertine Fathers of St. Michaels Abbey recently completed construction of a new abbey in Orange County, Calif. The monastery currently is at full capacity with nearly 50 priests and 40 seminarians.

In light of the growth in our community, we had already been discerning the possibility of establishing a new community when Bishop Paprocki approached us, said Abbot Eugene Hayes, O. Praem. After prayerful discernment as a community, we have joyfully accepted Bishop Paprockis invitation, and we are grateful for the opportunity to establish a presence in the Springfield diocese.

The Evermode Institute is being established under the patronage of St. Evermode, a Norbertine prelate who died in 1178 and was a close collaborator of St. Norbert. St. Evermode is credited with great and effective works of evangelization and formation in the Catholic faith.

The announcements follow news last year when the diocese and the Hospital Sisters reached an agreement for the diocese to establish a trust that has assumed ownership of the sisters buildings and grounds. The Hospital Sisters will continue to live in the convent indefinitely as part of that agreement.

We welcome the Norbertine Fathers to Springfield and to the holy ground that has been our home since 1917, said Sister Maureen OConnor, OSF, Provincial Superior of the Hospital Sisters of St. Francis. This new chapter in the history of the Hospital Sisters and the diocese marks the beginning of what we pray will be a mutually beneficial relationship.

"Throughout our nearly 150 years in America, the Hospital Sisters have collaborated with others in the work of the Church, and so we view this agreement between the diocese and the Norbertine Fathers as a continuation of that tradition, she said.

Immersed in a 900-year tradition, the Norbertine Fathers live a common life of liturgical prayer and care for souls. Their life at St. Michaels Abbey is organized according to prayer of the Church: the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and the Liturgy of the Hours. Seven times a day I praise You, says the Psalmist, and by chanting together the prayers of the Divine Office, Norbertine canons continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God.

For more than 60 years, the Norbertine Fathers have served in Southern California, in the words of St. Pope John Paul II: lifting high the Holy Eucharist over the miseries and errors of this world. The communitys apostolic ministries are many and various, but they all find their source in a common life of prayer and fraternal charity. To learn more, visit stmichaelsabbey.com.

Paprocki leads the Roman Catholic Diocese of Springfield in Illinois which includes 124,000 Catholics in 129 parishes and 43 Catholic schools across 28 counties. For more details, visit www.dio.org.
ALTON  Each week award-winning photographer John Badman of The Telegraph captures images of the Riverbend.

Here is a sampling of his photographs from this week. They also appear in the weekend issue of The Telegraph.
Illinois State Police

WHITE HALL  Illinois State Police are investigating an accident involving a state trooper in which one person was injured.

According to a preliminary report, the trooper was going south on U.S. 67/County Road North East 800 about 2:44 p.m. Wednesday when his police vehicle hit the rear of one being driven by Jeremy A. Arnold, 35, of Roodhouse.
The Times-Tribune announces the winners of its 2022 "Art for All Seasons" competition, spotlighting 12 of the region's most outstanding student artists with a virtual exhibit.

Times-Shamrock Communications and Northeastern Educational Intermediate Unit present the 15th annual Student Artist of the Month exhibit on thetimes-tribune.com and facebook.com/thetimestribune, where it will stay up for the remainder of the year.

Weather permitting, the artwork also will be on display outside in The Times-Tribune Newseum, adjacent to the Scranton Times Building, 149 Penn Ave.

Art for All Seasons is an art competition for area high school students sponsored by The Sunday Times and NEIU. Each year, students in grades nine through 12 are encouraged to submit a piece of artwork that captures the spirit of either winter, spring, summer or fall. Each art teacher can submit one students artwork per season, and a team of judges then selects the 12 best pieces to feature on the monthly calendar page in The Sunday Times Life&Times section on the last week of each month. They also are displayed on thetimes-tribune.com.

In past years, the newspaper has hosted an exhibit of all submitted pieces to coincides with Marchs First Friday Art Walk in downtown Scranton as part of Arts in Education month. For the second year in a row we have had to adapt the contest to a virtual format out of COVID-19 concerns. Nevertheless, we are happy we are able to continue the tradition of recognizing young regional artists work.

This year, students from 15 area schools across Lackawanna, Susquehanna, Wayne and Wyoming counties submitted work. Take a look at the photo gallery to see the winning pieces and watch the video to hear from the winning students and the program's sponsors.

Close
London, KY (40741)

Today

Partly cloudy skies during the morning hours will become overcast in the afternoon. A stray afternoon thunderstorm is possible. High near 80F. Winds light and variable..

Tonight

Scattered thunderstorms during the evening becoming more widespread overnight. Low 63F. Winds SE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 70%.
Russian planes and rockets could be grounded after Britain banned them from the UK insurance market  the largest in the world.

As Marks & Spencer and Diageo joined the list of companies severing ties with Moscow, the UK government said Russian firms in the aviation or space industry will be blocked from accessing British-based insurance services.

The UK Government will bring in legislation to prohibit UK-based insurance and reinsurance providers from undertaking financial transactions connected with a Russian entity or for use in Russia, the Treasury said.

No cover: Russian airline Aeroflot is reportedly insured in the London market by a consortium led by underwriter Global Aerospace

The ban could lead to a sharp rise in aviation premiums because of the loss to the insurance sector, an aviation industry executive said.

Russian airline Aeroflot is insured in the London market by a consortium led by underwriter Global Aerospace, according to Reuters.

Companies around the world use Lloyds of London and other businesses operating in London for aviation insurance and reinsurance services.

We are in regular communications with the UK government and international regulators, and are working closely with the Lloyds market to uphold the implementation, at pace, of sanctions applied by governments around the world, said Patrick Tiernan, chief of markets at Lloyds.

The move came as companies from Diageo and VW to Ikea and Lego cut ties with Russia.

M&S also suspended shipments to its Turkish franchisees Russian arm, Fiba Group.
Ministers are in talks with City bosses as they attempt to bring British technology giant Arm back to the stock market in London.

Senior figures at the Treasury, business department and department for digital, culture, media and sport have held conversations with top brass from the London Stock Exchange about securing the prestigious float, the Daily Mail understands.

Arm, which is headquartered in Cambridge, is one of the UKs most successful tech companies. It designs microchips used in devices from Apple iPhones to cars.

Call to Arm: Three government departments have held conversations with top brass at the LSE to bring British technology giant Arm back to the stock market in London

It was listed in London before being bought by Japanese conglomerate Softbank for 23billion in 2016.

But Softbank is now seeking to offload it and a stock market listing is being explored following the collapse of the planned sale to US giant Nvidia for 50billion.

In a blow to the LSE, which has been trying to attract more tech companies to its market to compete with the US, Softbank boss Masayoshi Son said last month he would prefer to float Arm in the US.

His snub has led David Schwimmer, the LSEs chief executive, to seek help from ministers across Government to draw Arm back home.

Schwimmer declined to comment on the talks as the LSE unveiled its results for 2021 yesterday.

The Mails Back British Tech campaign is pushing government and regulators to nurture the UKs innovative businesses so they will be less likely to cave in to US listings and takeovers from foreign predators.

If Arm wanted to attract more investors from the US market, experts say it could pursue a secondary listing in New York.

The takeover of Arm by Softbank and planned sale to Nvidia angered Arms customers, founders and British MPs, who argued the crown jewel of the UKs tech sector should not be flogged off and subsumed into an American giant.

Eventually the Nvidia deal collapsed under scrutiny from regulators, who feared that it would ruin Arms neutrality towards its customers.

It comes as the LSE reported a 44.6 per cent rise in profits to 1.8billion for 2021. It was its first set of annual results since buying data firm Refinitiv for 20billion, in a deal which some analysts had worried was too big for the LSE to handle.

But Schwimmer said the merging of the two companies, and the associated savings, was already ahead of target.

The LSE had hoped to save 88million last year, but hit 151million.
Melrose Industries is looking at floating two GKN businesses on the stock market following a huge restructuring since it bought the company four years ago.

Melrose took over engineering giant GKN in a controversial 8billion deal in 2018 and vowed to overhaul the firm, which made cannonballs for the Napoleonic wars and RAF Spitfires during World War Two.

FTSE 100-listed Melrose has now said the restructuring has been so successful that it is plotting to list drivetrain maker GKN Automotive and GKN Aerospace on the stock market. Selling the units is another option.

Precision: Melrose took over engineering giant GKN in a controversial 8bn deal in 2018. The firm made cannonballs for the Napoleonic wars and RAF Spitfires during World War Two

Boss Simon Peckham said the company was not close to firing the starting gun on the spin-outs, but that it was beginning to load the gun.

It is thought GKN Aerospace would be well-suited to the LSE.

But GKN Automotive could be better placed to float in the US, where there are more listed car makers.

Melrose yesterday reported profits at GKN Automotive more than doubled to 172million and for GKN Aerospace were up eightfold at 112million.
A City veteran has stepped down from the board of Roman Abramovich-backed Russian steelmaker Evraz, which has been at the centre of the fallout on the London market since the Ukraine invasion.

James Rutherford, who was previously senior vice president with Capital Group, told the board today he would be stepping down with immediate effect, but no reason for his departure was given.

The news comes a day after the Institute of Directors urged British directors to stand down from the boards of Russian companies to 'show their commitment to the principles of democracy and national self-determination'.

James Rutherford has stepped down from the board of Roman Abramovich-backed Evraz (Pictured: Abramovich, who has a 29% stake in Evraz).

Rutherford, who was appointed as a non-executive director of Evraz in June last year, was also on the board of FTSE 100 miner Anglo American between 2013 and 2020.

He still sits on the board of gold miner Centamin and is a senior independent director of natural resources royalties investor Anglo Pacific.

As an executive, Rutherford was senior vice president of Capital Group between 1997 and 2013, responsible for investments in metals and mining.

His resignation is another blow to Evraz, which has seen wild swings in its share price in recent weeks as Vladimir Putin wages war on Ukraine, with the stock down 90 per cent since the start of the year.

Despite the news, Evraz shares rose 13 per cent to 60.06 in late trading on Friday.

The FTSE 100 company, in which Russian oligarch Abramovich holds a 29 per cent stake, continues to trade on the London stock market despite mounting criticism.

Today, the London Stock Exchange suspended the trading of more companies with Russian links, including Sistema and Magnit, having suspended 27 yesterday, as exchanges scale back their exposure to Russia.

'The London Stock Exchange notes the ongoing deterioration of market conditions since March 2 2022, and in order to maintain orderly markets, the exchange has suspended the admission to trading of the instruments,' the LSE said in a statement.

Rutherford's move follows calls from director general of the IoD Jonathan Geldart, who said yesterday that British directors 'should feel a stronger moral duty to uphold the fundamental values of freedom and democracy'.

'The Institute of Directors expresses its solidarity with Ukraine and its people, who are facing intolerable suffering,' he said.

And added: 'We believe that it is no longer tenable for British directors to be involved in governance roles in the Russian economy.

'Therefore, we hope that they will now question the viability of their mandates in Russian and Belarusian companies.'
SPARKS [mdash] Mrs. Mattie L. Clements Martin, 93, of Sparks, Georgia, passed away at her granddaughter's home on April 25, 2022. Mrs. Martin was born on January 17, 1929 in Colquitt County to the late Ivey Lane Hart and Ola Gay Hart. She lived most of her life in Cook County and was of the 
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Fire investigators are unable to determine the cause of a Feb. 26, 2022, fire that destroyed the administration building at the West Virginia Schools for the Deaf and Blind in Romney, W.Va.
Local

Paine Mountain School District

Paine Mountain goes optional on masks

NORTHFIELD  Mounting pressure to end a mask mandate in the Paine Mountain School District hit pay dirt Wednesday night when a School Board still celebrating Tuesdays approval of its $19.1 million budget request literally went masks optional.

Though it bucked state guidance, overrode the recommendation of Superintendent Matthew Fedders, and is at odds with recently tweaked memorandum of understanding with the local teachers union, the boards unanimous decision was clearly a crowd-pleaser and the fact that it was effective immediately had an immediate effect.

When Wednesday nights meeting began, the board, Fedders, and those who attended the session in the library at Northfield Elementary School were all wearing masks in accordance with the districts policy. That changed as soon as the policy did.

After applause  some in-person and some virtual  quieted, three board members and its student representative stripped off their face coverings. By the time the session ended another  Horace Duke  had joined them. Two  one a doctor  didnt although both Sarah Launderville and Mathew Sullivan supported the masks optional policy, and both acknowledged it reflected the growing sentiment in Northfield and Williamstown.

Sullivan, who was elected as one of Northfields representatives on Tuesday, said he was comfortable making what he believed should be a student-centered decision given his medical analysis of available studies that have been done.

Sullivan said requiring masks in schools was absolutely necessary earlier on in the pandemic, but with vaccines now widely available he believed the benefit of the practice was arguably outweighed by the risks.

Were at a point where were seeing all this collateral damage from masks, he said echoing concerns raised by parents and some staff members earlier in the meeting.

Josh Dobrovich was one of them.

Dobrovich, whose bid to secure a school board seat came up short just 24 hours earlier, renewed the pitch he made on the floor of Tuesdays town meeting in Williamstown and had made to the board before.

Dobrovich, who lives in Williamstown, said the fact New York City is days away from lifting its mask mandate while it remained in place at both of Paine Mountains elementary schools and one of its middle-high schools, was mind-blowing.

If tonight you vote to keep masks because thats what state says  are we really following science, following the CDC, following this, following that? he asked. Lets just take care of our kids and take off the masks, end this and get back to normal.

It was a sentiment echoed by others who spoke, including the secretary at Williamstown Elementary School and a kindergarten teacher there and a couple of other parents, including one  Northfield resident Sarah Estes  who embraced the opportunity to send her older child to school without a mask earlier in the day, but lamented the fact her younger child didnt have that option.

By the districts math, Northfield Middle & High School is the only one of its four campuses where the vaccination rate is above the 80% threshold the state has recommended be achieved before easing mask requirements. Williamstown Middle & High School is close, but not there yet, and both elementary schools  one in Northfield the other in Williamstown  havent hit 50%, according to the districts calculations.

Speaking as a parent, Jennifer Bisson, who teaches kindergarten at Williamstown Elementary School, said she would like to see the requirement lifted and was troubled that the districts employees and members of the community werent surveyed in some way.

I would love to see a choice for our schools, Bisson said. If people want to stay masked thats great, thats their choice, and if people dont that should be their choice as well.

The schools secretary, Diane Collier, urged the board to put science and politics aside and consider how difficult it is to read a young face you cant see.

The masks are really taking away from us looking at a child that may be having a rough day, she said, adding: If that mask was gone it would help us see the whole face  the whole child.

Joe Flammia, who moved from Massachusetts to Williamstown with his family over the summer, said he and his wife also supported a change that would allow their daughters to really meet their classmates.

The last thing that needs to happen in our opinion is to  get on board with lifting these masks, he said. It would be so important to these girls to really meet these kids theyre in school with.

That was the act Fedders followed and while the superintendent acknowledged mounting pressure to abandon the mask mandate, he stood by his recommendation to follow the states guidance and defended his decision not to poll the public or survey staff on the subject.

Part of my duty is not to be swayed by public opinion, he said.

Fedders noted he met with representatives of the teachers union in February and entered a memorandum of understanding that, among other things, included a requirement for district-wide masking. That requirement was the subject of recently concluded renegotiation after the state signaled it would be modifying its pandemic-long masking recommendation effective Feb. 28.

According to Fedders, the union was willing to soften the requirement provided the district follows the state guidance.

Based on the current vaccination rates at three of its schools, Fedders said thats a problem that could open the door to a grievance or a possible unfair labor practices charge.

Taking all that into consideration, Fedders recommended the board make no change to masking requirements unless state guidance changes again or one or more of the remaining three schools achieves an 80% vaccination rate.

The board viewed it differently.

After listening to the public comment and student representative William Kolb describe his mask-less return to Northfield Middle & High School earlier in the day, School Director Dan Morris kicked off the boards discussion with the motion that was unanimously approved after members weighed in.

I move we replace the mandatory mask policy with a mask-optional policy effective immediately, Morris said.

Though some spoke more forcefully than others, all ultimately agreed making the change was worth any push-back there might be from the union and could be implemented in a way where individual choices are respected and vulnerable students and staff are protected.

That was the view of Jessica Vanderen, who was reelected as board chair at the start of the meeting.

Vanderen said the board has been incredibly flexible and incredibly supportive of staff and that fact is reflected in the memorandum of understanding that guarantees the availability of high quality masks, rapid antigen test kits, and an additional 15 days of paid administrative leave. Further editing the masking requirement wasnt too much to ask given what she characterized as the pandemics changing landscape.

All agreed, stressing their decision should not be interpreted as a lack of confidence in Fedders, or a lack of appreciation for the districts faculty and staff. Both were praised for the work they have done thus far in the pandemic. With respect to masks, they said, it was time for a change and choice.

david.delcore @timesargus.com
A Yemeni soldier holds a bag of seized hashish in Hajjah Province, northern Yemen, on March 3, 2022. Yemen's government forces have burned 1,100 kg of hashish and 8,000 narcotic pills seized from smugglers in the past four months in the northwestern province of Hajjah, a security official said Friday. (Photo by Mohammed Al-Wafi/Xinhua)

HAJJAH, Yemen, March 4 (Xinhua) -- Yemen's government forces have burned 1,100 kg of hashish and 8,000 narcotic pills seized from smugglers in the past four months in the northwestern province of Hajjah, a security official said Friday.

The destruction was carried out on Thursday in the government-controlled Red Sea city of Midi, in the presence of representatives of the court, public prosecution and the security services.

"We have burned 1,100 kg of hashish and 8,000 Captagon and amphetamine pills seized by the security services after foiling seven attempts of smuggling since November last year in the border area near Saudi Arabia," the official told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

This is the fifth time the government forces to burn drugs seized in the border area in three years.

In October 2021, the government services burned 1,167 kg of hashish and 48,000 narcotic pills seized by the security services in the same area.

Yemen has been mired in a civil war since 2014 when the Iran-backed Houthi militia took control of several northern provinces and forced the Saudi-backed government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi out of the capital Sanaa. 

A Yemeni soldier stands before the fire for destroying seized hashish and other drugs in Hajjah Province, northern Yemen, on March 3, 2022. Yemen's government forces have burned 1,100 kg of hashish and 8,000 narcotic pills seized from smugglers in the past four months in the northwestern province of Hajjah, a security official said Friday. (Photo by Mohammed Al-Wafi/Xinhua)

Yemeni soldiers prepare seized hashish and other drugs for destruction in Hajjah Province, northern Yemen, on March 3, 2022. Yemen's government forces have burned 1,100 kg of hashish and 8,000 narcotic pills seized from smugglers in the past four months in the northwestern province of Hajjah, a security official said Friday. (Photo by Mohammed Al-Wafi/Xinhua)
Kingsport, TN (37660)

Today

Partly cloudy. High 83F. Winds light and variable..

Tonight

Cloudy skies early. Scattered thunderstorms developing later at night. Low near 65F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 40%.
Benjamin Carter Hett is a professor of history at Hunter College and the Graduate Center, CUNY, and the author of The Death of Democracy and The Nazi Menace: Hitler, Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin, and the Road to War.
SARATOGA SPRINGS  Benson's Pet Center has opened a new location at 175 Ballston Avenue.

The pet retail chain opened the doors of its eighth store quietly in December before fully welcoming customers in January.

The only two differences between the Ballston Avenue location and other Benson's shops is this one doesn't have a fish room or livestock. It does, however, have a dog-washing room available to customers with bath supplies for $15.

Moira Nowc, the chain's general manager, said the company has sought out an expansion for a while. When the opportunity presented itself to serve the west side of Saratoga and potentially gain back customers it lost to online stores, such as Chewy and Amazon, they jumped at it.

Nowc wasn't able to say how many customers the business had lost to e-commerce providers but said she could see customers changing their minds now that another Benson's location has opened locally.

"Since opening this new store, it is very frequent, multiple customers will come in and say 'you're just so you're conveniently located.' Now, I'm going to stop buying on Chewy, I'm going to stop buying on Amazon," she said.

The new store's location has been helpful to bring back lost customers as well. Being situated in a plaza with a Price Chopper, people who shop for groceries have found their way into Benson's.

Benson's locations also offer curbside pick-up and same-day delivery, which Nowc said customers don't often realize.

Still, Nowc explained that some customers have said Benson's prices are too expensive compared to big box stores like Target.

Nowc said she feels as though Benson's is absolutely in the shadows of larger pet retailers and their buying power, but it's more concerned with being a household name, becoming the Stewart's Shops of pet retail.

Benson's also operates pet centers in Colonie, Clifton Park, Wilton, Queensbury, Johnstown and Pittsfield, Massachusetts, plus a fish room in Ballston Spa.

Nowc emphasized that Target can't provide the experience and knowledge that her fellow workers at Benson's can nor the personal touch that comes with employees knowing your pet's name and what they need. For Benson's, it's all about the local and personal impact, which is why it works to give back to community organizations.

"The money that you spend in a local independent store stays in your community," she said. "From the owners down, everyone lives here (and) participates in this community."
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ALBANY - A California startup making metal and glass electronic switches that operate 1,000 times faster than a traditional switch is looking at upstate New York for manufacturing space.

The company, Menlo Micro, uses technology spun out of GE Research in Niskayuna and is led by several executives with GE ties.

The switch, known as the Ideal Switch, uses computer chip manufacturing techniques to dramatically shrink the size of the switch and make it extremely durable and fast.

Although Menlo Micro is headquartered in Irvine, Calif., it has a research and development lab at Albany Nanotech where it has eight employees and is looking to add seven more.

That's why the company is looking at upstate New York to operate a fab, or fabrication facility, although company officials admit they are also looking at other states.

The fab would employ 160 people.

Menlo Micro currently outsources its manufacturing to a chip foundry. But it wants to create its own fab that would make its switches on 8-inch wafers, with a clean room of between 30,000 and 50,000 square feet. The facility would cost between $150 million to $200 million to outfit with manufacturing equipment.

The fab doesn't have to be built from scratch, and so Menlo Micro could lease space in an empty or existing building.

Menlo Micro's CEO Russ Garcia recently got a call from U.S. Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer of New York, who urged the company to pick New York state for the new fab.

"I made it clear to Menlos CEO that I strongly support locating their new cutting-edge microelectronics fab in New York," Schumer said.

Company officials said they are in touch with Empire State Development, the state's economic development agency, and local industrial development boards, presumably in the municipalities where it is considering locating. Both ESD and local IDAs would be in a position to provide financial incentives to the company.

Schumer also authored a bill called the CHIPS Act being considered by Congress that would provide billions of dollars in incentives to companies that build new domestic chip manufacturing sites as a way to counterbalance China. The company could also apply for incentives through that program if it is passed.

As we continue to evaluate the best location to build a next-generation manufacturing base for Menlo Micros Ideal Switch, it was a pleasure to speak with (Schumer) about the opportunity and potential New York state holds, said Garcia, Menlo Micro's CEO.
Douglas Sacha/Getty Images

A former nurse at the Sullivan County Correctional Facility has been accused of having a sexual relationship with an inmate at the maximum-security prison in Fallsburg, and for allegedly providing him with drugs used to treat opioid addiction.

Kristie Miller, 51, of Fallsburg, was arrested on Thursday, March 3 following an 11-month investigation by the New York State Police and the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision Office (DOCCS) of Special Investigations. Miller was charged with four felonies: third-degree rape, third-degree criminal sex act, third-degree criminal possession of a controlled substance with intent to sell, and first-degree contraband.
After many years and few nibbles, Joe Massaro has taken his $10 million private island real estate listing off the market  and the Frank Lloyd Wright home and standalone 1950s cottage that come with it.

Even after a roughly $10 million price drop from the original $19.9 million asking price five years ago, there was not one offer  and I know why, too, said Massaro, 75, from his primary winter home in Florida. For a family to live in this house, its not the easiest thing in the world.

Related: Private island with two Frank Lloyd Wright homes for sale in Putnam County

The design is not the issue, at least for Massaro. He built the unique home on Petre Island in Lake Mahopac according to Frank Lloyd Wrights 1949 working plans and has not had an urge to revisit or renovate even one inch of the four-bedroom home since.

But living in a home with architectural significance means it cannot be changed  even as living habits and design preferences have evolved over the past 70 years.

Part of Massaros Wright-inspired home juts out an impressive 27 feet over the water, making it one of, if not the, largest cantilever the famous architect designed. Its 10 feet longer than the one at Wrights famous Fallingwater in Pennsylvania  itself the inspiration for the name Massaro has bestowed upon his home: Wright Over Water.

Courtesy Douglas Elliman Real Estate Provided by Joe Massaro Being inside Joe Massaros Frank Lloyd Wright-designed home on Lake Mahopac  which Massaro has dubbed Wright Over Water  is like being in a ship, he says. Hes especially fond of the sunsets. (Photos: Douglas Elliman Real Estate/Joe Massaro) Being inside Joe Massaros Frank Lloyd Wright-designed home on Lake Mahopac  which Massaro has dubbed Wright Over Water  is like being in a ship, he says. Hes especially fond of the sunsets. (Photos: Douglas Elliman Real Estate/Joe Massaro)

The pictures do not do it justice. When you go in the living room, youre like on a ship  you see no land around you. Youre over the water. Every room has a view, said Massaro.

But the four bedrooms are small by todays standards  an intentional design choice of Wrights, to encourage gathering in a homes communal spaces. And there are only two and a half baths  which is kind of unheard of for modern houses, you know?

Still, he is happy he stayed true to Wrights vision, albeit with a few modifications. (More on those later.)

Its a piece of art more than a functional house to me, said Massaro, who adds that if Frank Lloyd Wright walked in, he wouldnt yell at me, referring to the architects persnickety habit of rearranging the furniture in homes he designed if he disagreed with the owners placement.

He was crazy. I would have gotten along so well with him.

The home took four years to build and since it was completed in 2008, Massaro has summered in the home each year since, so he knows its quirks.

You know, you wanna loaf of bread, you gotta get on your boat. If the weathers bad, youre stuck. Theres no fire protection, no police protection, no garbage collection, no mail.

These inconveniences can be a deterrent for families  including Massaros own wife, Barbara. Although for Joe, the drawbacks are a plus: Its a different place. Youre remote. And youre only a half a mile from town.

A summer home just a boat ride from home

Donna Massaro

This April, Massaro and his wife will fly up from Florida to spend their annual six months, give or take, on Lake Mahopac  he on Petre Island, and she on the mainland in the first home he built on the lake in the 1980s when their two daughters were young.

Barbara prefers to sleep in her own bed, while Joe enjoys his time at the Frank Lloyd Wright house hosting friends and family gatherings. His eldest, Donna, who lives across the street from her parents original, mainland home and has her own boat, goes the most often. Shell sit and look at the lake for a little bit, go up on the roof and have a sunset cocktail, or sometimes just pop in.

Me and my friends will stop by often to use the bathroom, to make something to eat. And then every year my sister and I have a couple of our girlfriends go out for a girls weekend. As the resident chef  she runs and owns the Freight House Cafe in Mahopac  shes the one cooking all the meals for the group.

Courtesy Douglas Elliman Real Estate

And what does she think of the homes eclectic kitchen, featuring an enormous rock counter? Its such a pleasure to work in that kitchen. Its kind of an honor to cook in there. Its set up nicely. And she likes the rock ledge personally. Its fun to work with that.

She says her mom prefers to stay on the mainland in the Massaros first Mahopac home because she is madly in love with her house.

And Joe is equally smitten with Petre Island. I just love staying out there in the summer, he said. Its like youre in a different world. I mean the island itself is nearly 11 acres and the trees are 250 years old, a lot of them, and its just me out there, you know?

He has everything he needs on the island  satellite TV, internet. And the views  I take pictures all the time of the sunsets and the sun coming up in the morning  Its hard to explain how different it is to live it two miles from the other house.

Though a lake separates Mr. and Mrs. Massaro for roughly half the year, they share meals together a few times a month. We have a little running joke with the family that hes out there, shes over here and theyll meet in the middle for dinner, said Donna. What a life!

Downtime is the best time Make the most of your Hudson Valley weekend, every week with our newsletter.

In truth, though, its Joe who usually makes the trip to dine with his wife. I get on the boat and she picks me up at the dock.

Is it or isnt it a Frank Lloyd Wright?

Courtesy Douglas Elliman Real Estate Courtesy Douglas Elliman Real Estate Massaro made some modifications, like making Wright's flat skylights domed to stand up to snow. (Photos by Douglass Elliman Real Estate) Massaro made some modifications, like making Wright's flat skylights domed to stand up to snow. (Photos by Douglass Elliman Real Estate)

Donna still remembers the day her father unwittingly embarked on the Frank Lloyd Wright chapter of their lives. I remember him coming down the stairs one day and saying, I'll be back, I'm going to buy an island. Hes a piece of work, really.

At first Massaro wasnt aware of the larger Frank Lloyd Wright home design. We just hung out in the cottage for a couple of years  and that was good enough for us, said Donna, referring to the two-bedroom, one-bath cottage that the islands original owner, A.K. Chahroudi, commissioned Wright to design in the 1950s after deciding not to build the more expensive four-bedroom home the famous architect conceived for him.

Upon learning there were plans for a main Frank Lloyd Wright house on the island, Massaro decided in 2001 to bring the late architects vision to life. He purchased a set of three small photographs of the working plans from the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, and later, Chahroudis son gave him copies of Wrights original plans. Massaros architect, Thomas A. Heinz used both to create the construction drawings.

Critics have been casting judgment since. Not all architectural scholars believe Wrights roughly 500 remaining designs should be built posthumously, and the Foundation itself doesnt recognize the Massaro home as an official work of Wrights.

But Massaro contends this is largely because he refused to pay the organization what he felt was an outsize sum for their stamp of approval. And though he didnt follow Wrights designs to the letter, doing so would have been an impossible feat given modern building codes and the realities of building a 1950s design in the 21st century  and the Northeast.

For instance, instead of 26 flat, triangular skylights that flood the kitchen and entrance with light, Massaro and Heinz made them domed to stand up to New York snow. He took some creative license, too, adding a helipad, for instance  I just knew the house needed it  to make it easier to get on and off the island. (Hes never used it himself, though some fashion shoot crews have.)

Provided by Joe Massaro

Massaro believes Wright would have approved of his additions and attention to detail, which he followed down to the unusual angle Wright used in his tongue and groove ceilings. Given his career first as a sheet metal apprentice and ultimately owner of the multi-million-dollar sheet metal company Elmsford Sheet Metal Works (along with another firm), Massaro himself did all the metal work, from the ducts to the railings. I was on the job every day, he said.

As much work as it took to build the house, Massaro is mindful of how much work it would be to look after the home once he is gone. I dont want my family to be forced to sell it. They cant run that place  its a lot. He especially doesnt want a repeat of what happened to A.K. Chahroudi, whose family was forced to sell the island and the cottage at auction when he left the U.S.

It will be bittersweet when the right buyer comes along. I mean, it's such a special place. I would hate to not have it with us anymore, said Donna.

It's going to be a special person that comes along to buy that place, she continued. So I am excited for whoever does that eventually  with a little clause in there that we can still have girls weekend every year.
MECHANICVILLE  City school Superintendent Bruce Potter said on Friday that he was put on paid administrative leave as the district investigates a complaint filed against him.

He would not discuss the nature of the complaint, but said that the Mechanicville school district is conducting "an internal, independent investigation." He said he could not say more because he didn't want to "violate" the investigation.

However, he released a statement on his personal Facebook page saying he supports "the BOE as they conduct their due diligence."

"A complaint has been lodged and the district has an obligation to conduct an impartial investigation. As such I can not go into any further detail," he wrote. "Im sharing this information because this is the process for any school employee, and I should not be treated any different. I believe in transparent accountability."

On Sunday, Board of Education President Marlene Tierney released a short statement noting that Potter was on "vacation leave" effective Monday, Feb. 28. On Thursday night, the board voted unanimously to put him on paid administrative leave. Tierney did not return a Times Union phone call on Friday to discuss the matter.

The Times Union also reached out to the state Education Department to inquire about any complaints filed against Potter.

An Education Department spokesman said that "allegations of misconduct against educators (are taken) extremely seriously. In order to protect the fairness and integrity of our processes, the Department does not confirm or deny the existence of investigations."

The results are in See the winners of each category of the 2022 Best of the Capital Region contest, as determined by popular vote.

Assistant Superintendent Kevin Kolakowski is acting as superintendent in Potter's absence. Potter said he plans to return to the district.

"I welcome a thorough review of my work," his Facebook post continued. "I hope this concludes in the shortest time possible because I cant wait to get back to work, leading my team."


BALLSTON SPA  The Saratoga County Prosperity Partnership, thought of by some county leaders as an ineffective government boondoggle, has been disbanded.

On Monday, the Prosperity Partnership voted unanimously to transfer all of its duties to the countys Planning and Economic Development Department. The move came after six county supervisors, five of whom sit on the Prosperity Partnership board, signed a Feb. 28 letter to all of the partnership's board members saying it is time to suspend the operations of SCPP.

In the letter, the supervisors, including Halfmoon Supervisor Kevin Tollisen who heads up the countys economic development committee, noted that at the start of 2022, the county had thus far poured $4 million into the government-funded entity, established in 2015, and it never really found its footing.

Unfortunately, the history of the SCPP is marked by millions spent, dubious results and unnecessary competition with fellow organizations serving Saratoga County, the letter concluded. The SCPP has also been a frequent source of division on the Board of Supervisors and other segments of County operations. Its time to suspend the operations of the SCPP, cease expending additional taxpayer monies and take the necessary steps to establish a sound economic development plan for the future.

The dissolution becomes official on March 31, which is also the end date for a $7,000-a-month, no-bid contract awarded to former Prosperity Partnership board member and Malta Town Councilman Tim Dunn to head the organization.

Saratoga County is fortunate to enjoy economic success due to smart policy-making and effective private economic development leadership at the County level - that was the case long before the Partnership came along" Dunn said in a statement. "Having served in a number of different roles with similar organizations all over the state, I was pleased to help ramp down operations when asked by the Board in October. Im excited about the future for the County as I have the utmost confidence in the teams assembled both at the County and SEDC. The future is bright in Saratoga County.

Prosperity board Chair Maria Moran said Thursday that the transfer of economic development to the county itself establishes a unified approach to economic development throughout the County.

It will allow for more resources to directly support economic development activities, which will prove beneficial for the SCPP Board, Saratoga County, and businesses alike, she said in a statement.

The results are in See the winners of each category of the 2022 Best of the Capital Region contest, as determined by popular vote.

The supervisors' letter also acknowledged that Prosperity Partnership has had a fairly short and tumultuous existence.

It was created to crush the long-standing Saratoga Economic Development Corp. after its president, Dennis Brobston, refused to allow supervisors to sit on its board of directors. At the time, Brobston said, he feared that economic development would be politicized and that politicians would not be able to keep pending economic deals a secret.

Waterford Supervisor John Lawler, unhappy with Brobstons action regarding the supervisors, spearheaded the effort to strip SEDC of county funding and create a new government entity, the Prosperity Partnership. Once established, the county spent more than double on the Partnership than it did on SEDC. In 2015, the Prosperity Partnership got $800,000, in 2016 it got $778,000 and $775,000 in 2017, 2018 and 2019. During that same time, its president, Marty Vanags, the Times Union reported, spent heavily on cross-country trips with no resulting economic development projects.

After the county reduced the Partnership's funding to $543,000 in 2020, Vanags resigned. Then the COVID-19 pandemic hit, and bed tax revenue, which the Partnership was entitled to half of, plummeted. For the first time, the Partnership was struggling financially. In mid-2021, Vanags' successor, Shelby Schneider, resigned. The Partnership continued with no staff until Dunn was awarded the contract, seconds after he resigned from the Partnership board.

On Thursday, Lawler, who defended the Partnerships existence for years, still sounded angry about SEDC, which survived, saying that the county shouldn't fund the nonprofit because it doesn't comply with state Authorities Budget Office rules. As for the dissolution of the Partnership, he said it was a well-orchestrated move by some supervisors. Still, he said, shifting the Partnership's projects into the county planning department is a good idea. And, he said, he's not upset with the change.

We created an organization in an effort to have transparency with taxpayers' money. That's the long and short of it," he said. "I have no regrets on trying to create transparency on how taxpayer dollars are spent."
SCHENECTADY  A controversial proposal to expand a pilot program to put more community engagement officers in city schools was fiercely criticized by former and current students, parents and community activists who decried the move during a board meeting this week.

Do I feel that Schenectady could be doing a better job when it comes to safety? Yes. said Raechel Mullin, who has one child in Schenectady's high school and three in middle school. Policing in my opinion is a slippery slope," Mullin said. We could use more counselors and paraprofessionals  the truth of the matter is that these children dont need more policing, they need love and compassion.

Student Takai Gibson told school leaders Wednesday night that the idea was "excessive and very unnecessary."

"I'm not arguing that all cops are bad but because of those who are corrupt, Black children are taught to be afraid in order to survive," she added.

Their remarks and that of several others  most of whom argued strenuously at the microphone and via emails read out loud by the board clerk, that police officers don't belong in schools  came during the public portion of Wednesday nights gathering and were in direct response to the unveiling of the idea last month by Superintendent Anibal Soler Jr.

He's advocating, at a $300,000 cost to the district, to add four more officers to the two currently at the high school.

A few people supported the idea, insisting it will make the urban school district more safe for students and staff.

Victoria Nieves Rodriguez, who has two teens at the high school, wrote in an email that her daughter is delighted that Patrolman Albert Rivera speaks Spanish.

"My daughter told me that since the officers are present, the corridors are more controlled and there is not so much chaos," she said, adding that her other son said that students smoking in the bathroom is no longer a problem.

Danny Dyal, a member of the community, wrote that "these officers will be and are positive role models to our students, giving them an opportunity to see a different side of the duties of a police officer."

Soler during his presentation at Februarys board meeting highlighted some of the high profile violent incidents at schools in the state, including the Heatly School in Green Island switching to remote learning after a series of physical altercations at the high school and a stabbing and shooting in the Buffalo school system.

He also mentioned that in October, Schenectady had some upticks and challenges at the high school.

Soler noted the proposal is consistent with one of the districts major pillars of building relationships with families as well as police and fire departments, community groups and Schenectady County.

The superintendent showed a short video of Rivera and Sgt. Adriel Linyear in action at the high school before the two building principals gave their testimonials about how well the pilot program has done. He lauded their work.

The lawmen, along with Police Chief Eric Clifford, attended the meeting at the high school.

The pilot program, which the police department is paying for, is an outgrowth of state-mandated police reforms.

The chief has previously said the role of the community engagement officers, who will have body cameras, will "only be to deal with police matters that are criminal in nature" and not to police students and only intercede if a student becomes violent. They will also be patrolling the high school perimeter to ensure students authorized to leave campus are not being disruptive in the neighborhood around the school.

The results are in See the winners of each category of the 2022 Best of the Capital Region contest, as determined by popular vote.

Schenectady hasn't had school resource officers in the high school for at least a decade, according to a school board member. The district, however, has safety officers  one at the high school and one at each of the three middle schools  who patrol the hallways.

Soler has sought to make the distinction between traditional school resource officers (SRO) and the community engagement officers of SRO 2.0 as he likes to call them, who will primarily serve as a resource for students, staff, parents and the community.

He also rejected the notion that police in schools is part of a school-to-prison pipeline that puts kids through processes that lead to prison.

Community activist-turned-school board member Jamaica Miles questioned why the district was now looking to embrace policing in schools when for at least a decade it was moving away from that model.

She like many speakers Wednesday night suggested school funds would be better spent on bolstering the ranks of school and guidance counselors and psychiatrists to better help struggling youngsters combat mental health and social issues resulting from the pandemic.

I find it interesting that we spent close to a decade removing positions around policing whether they were safety resource officers or those individuals that were in a more controlling environment and supervising our hallways and that were now adding it back in when we found success in focusing more time and energy on prevention, said Miles.

Board Vice President Bernice Rivera said she was confident the officers, one Black and other Hispanic, could build authentic relations with students and serve as role models.

Soler is expected to make a formal presentation later this month to the board before they take action on what would be a multiyear agreement at a reduced rate of $300,000 yearly for a total of six officers - one at each of the districts three middle schools and a floating supervisor plus the two already at the high school -- with an opt-out clause if the partnership doesnt work out.

I think its the right thing to do, and if not then we walk away, said Soler, adding that the deal, if approved, would take effect in July.

Miles is hopeful that the school district can in the future get to a place where it can police itself.

I do have a hope that we get to a place where we dont need police in our schools or we are able to change what it looks like as long as we are always able to reimagine our future, said Miles.
Erica Davis, a Democrat running for Harris County judge and current department of education trustee, was called out for anti-Semitic remarks she made in a tweet  which she later deleted.

Davis took to Twitter over the last week to express her disappointment with the Houston Chronicle's editorial board, accusing the members of bias after they endorsed incumbent county judge Lina Hidalgo in the Democratic primary this March. Chron and the Houston Chronicle are both owned by Hearst but operate independently of one another.

Davis, also chief of staff for Harris County Precinct 1 Constable Alan Rosen, is running as a liberal with a pro-police, tough-on-crime platform. She's gained endorsements from the Houston Police Officers Association, Harris County Deputy Constables Association and other law enforcement unions in and around Houston. A Twitter user on Friday, who also later deleted their tweet, backed Davis' accusations against the editorial board. That's when Daniel Cohen, progressive activist and co-founder of Indivisible Houston, responded.

"I called her a police union stooge," Cohen said in a phone call Friday. "I don't really care about her take on whether the Chronicle does biased reporting. She's fending for her own interests. I was criticizing her on Twitter. I'm not afraid of that."

Davis responded, turning the squabble over media and politics into something completely different. In a reply, Davis tweeted: "You must be related to the Cohen who use to work at the Chronicle. You contributed to the bias reporting, thanks." Davis was ostensibly referring to Jeff Cohen, the award-winning former editor of the Houston Chronicle who's now executive vice president of communications for Arnold Ventures.

Davis deleted her tweet, but several Twitter users posted screenshots and condemned her words  including Houston city council member Abbie Kamin.

"Anti-Semitism, or any type of hate for that matter, has no place in campaigns," Kamin later said in a text message. "Unfortunately, we are seeing it far too often at every level. We all make mistakes but its important to learn from those missteps and do better."

Davis did not respond to a request for comment from Chron. Friday afternoon, she doubled down on Twitter and chalked up the outrage over her words to "politics."

The results are in See the winners of each category of the 2022 Best of the Capital Region contest, as determined by popular vote.

"It's hard to understand what other rationale there would be to make the claim publicly that there's some connection between the 'Cohens' and media bias because of this ongoing horrible accusation against Jews that stems from thousands of years ago," said Rabbi Scott Hausman-Weiss of Houston-based Congregation Shma Koleinu.

Hausman-Weiss pointed to the recent hostage incident at a synagogue in Colleyville as an example of why spreading such rhetoric, whether intentionally or not, can be dangerous. At the time, Davis tweeted "thoughts and prayers" for those involved.

"I do not want to suggest that Erica Davis is anything like that guy," Hausman-Weiss said. "I'm not trying to draw similarity, but I am trying to highlight that that's why these comments made in a nuanced way or in a soft way cause Jewish people's heads to rear up."

Hidalgo faces three challengers in the race for the Democratic nomination for county judge, including Davis, real estate broker AR Hassan and photographer Georgia Provost. There are nine others seeking the Republican nomination. The winners of the two primaries will be pitted against each other in November.
Ireland will continue imposing sanctions on Russia over the invasion of Ukraine.

Taoiseach Micheal Martin chaired a ministerial meeting on Thursday afternoon to discuss the latest situation.

All ministers present reiterated their full solidarity with the people of Ukraine.

They also reportedly condemned the brutal invasion and called on Russia to withdraw immediately without further needless loss of life and devastation.

In view of the situation being very volatile with outcomes hard to predict, ministers agreed to develop a range of possible scenarios to inform policy consideration.

Ministers also agreed that Ireland will continue to work as part of the international community, particularly through the European Union and United Nations, to bring maximum pressure to bear on Russia and to support the Ukrainian people.

They also pledged to continue to impose economic sanctions on Moscow as part of the most severe set of sanctions imposed by the EU and other international partners.

Departments and agencies are to work together to prepare for the possibility of significant numbers of Ukrainian refugees being offered protection in Ireland.

Arrangements are also to be made to co-ordinate offers of practical assistance across the country.
Baristas take a great deal of abuse and that's why most of them seem pretty mad about their profession, even if making coffee all day seems better than most gigs.

Apparently the job doesn't have enough perks . . . Pardon my stupid pun.



Anyhoo . . .

Check the testimony from a local organizer who offers insight on her union struggle . . .

Kansas Citys plaza Starbucks is no stranger to the concept of unionization. When I worked there, from summer 2019 to spring 2021, employees would speak in the back openly about how things needed to change, eyes darting around before daring to speak the word union.



There were many problems that the pandemic only exacerbated. Poor pay, high volumes of customers, frequent safety-threatening incidents, andworst of alla culture of sexual harassment that young women employees faced from customers.



As just one location of a worldwide corporation, it felt impossible to even consider leveraging our power to create a union.

Read more via www.TonysKansasCity.com link . . .

Why Starbucks is unionizing in KC and the conditions that make it necessary Members of the Plaza Starbucks union organizing team. From L-R: Chris Fielder, Addy Wright, Cali Sacramento. // Photo by Allison Harris Kansas City's plaza Starbucks is no stranger to the concept of unionization. When I worked there, from summer 2019 to spring 2021, employees would speak in the back openly about how things needed to change, eyes darting around before...

Further reading from today's news . . .

Dozens rally as 2 Kansas City-area Starbucks locations push to unionize KANSAS CITY, Mo. - What started as a union effort last summer for Starbucks workers in New York state has arrived in the Kansas City metro. Dozens of Starbucks employees crowded in front of a location on the Country Club Plaza to protest Thursday.

Kansas City Starbucks employees hold protest over alleged anti-union tactics KANSAS CITY, Mo. - Some Kansas City Starbucks workers are holding a protest Thursday at 3 p.m. over alleged anti-union tactics from the company. The protest will begin with a press conference followed by demonstrations at the Country Club Plaza and Overland Park Convention Center Starbucks locations.

Dozens gather outside Plaza Starbucks to support unionization efforts Posters read "Union busting is disgusting" and "Coffee's the game, union strong's the name." // Photo by Savannah Hawley Dozens of people, including Starbucks workers, workers with Stand Up KC, faith and civil rights leaders, and community allies gathered Thursday outside the Country Club Plaza Starbucks to support workers at the Plaza and Overland Park Convention Center storefronts who have...

Starbucks workers rally on Plaza, say it's time to unionize For several months workers at Kansas City-area Starbucks have been exploring the idea of unionizing. On Thursday, employees rallied on the Country Club Plaza.Hanna McCown has worked as a Starbucks barista for more than three years.

Developing . . .
It's important not to get too upset about the antics coming out of the courthouse because it's one of the sketchiest places in Kansas City, the feds are ALWAYS watching and the stone viper pit was literally built upon corruption.

As with all things . . . It's important to look at the big picture . . .

And here's what we notice . . .

In 2022, one of the most progressive and diverse coalitions ever assembled by local government came up with a map that uses Troost as a major political dividing line.



What does this accomplish???

For one thing . . .

Decades of complaining about redlining and the predatory tactics of dead real estate moguls were just REAFFIRMED by local political power players.

We could write volumes about this and still never scratch the surface . . .

Instead, we'll let the new in-district map speak for itself . . .



This drawing is ridiculous but effective.

Supporters note that it keeps 2 Republican districts intact. And the 1st District has a sizable Latino population . . . Which might be nice if any of those people actually bothered to vote.



Supporters will also note that old school councilman Bobby Hernandez signed on to this monstrosity.

As we reported earlier this week, there are legal threats going back & forth.

Thanks to KICK-ASS INSIDERS we're sharing some background info on the process.

Check the memo from the Redistricting committee that started a great deal of local political chatter . . . Here's the money line about these lines being used for the 2022 election cycle:



"The reason for redistricting every ten years is that populations change over the years and government learns of those changes after a census. According to those changes, accurate representation in each district must be updated for fairness. To not apply these maps according to 2020 numbers now but wait until legislators take office in 2027, is not only wrong but also unmistakably unconstitutional. This Committee has no authority in enforcing the applicability of these maps if someone decides to not follow the clear law, but it is important for you and the public to understand this Committees position and our opinion of the applicability of the new maps in following with our duty. It is plainly in contradiction of the Charter and undoubtedly against the publics interest of open and fair elections for these new maps not to be applied to the current races for November 8, 2022. Thank you."

That's great . . .

Whatever helps people sleep at night is fine with this blog.

However . . .

Aside from the debate over "communities of interest" there's something even more interesting at play.

For many this redistricting process awards more representation the people of color - The backbone of Jackson County's Democratic Party.

That's a worthwhile goal.

However . . .

Ironically, whilst so many progressive lament "the Troost dividing line" they will ignore this map ordered by the first African-American County Executive & drawn by a "diverse" coalition which REINFORCES that very same racial partition.

Whatever this is . . .

It's not progress.

On the bright side . . . Because the map represents a unique opportunity for the competitors in this contest and EVERYBODY in local politics thinks they're smarter than their competition . . . We don't expect complaints to go very far.

Meanwhile, for better or worse . . . This secretive and, again, very sketchy redistricting process which impacts more than 700K voters has been largely overlooked my mainstream progressive media because it's too embarrassing.

Developing . . .


Tonight, just for close readers, we share a lengthy roundup of local news, pop culture and top headlines inspired by hottie Kourt admitting that a great deal of her persona is just an act.



Check TKC news gathering . . .

Cowtown Gunfire Erupts

1 wounded in shooting Thursday evening in Kansas City SOURCE: KMBC Kansas City police are investigating a shooting Thursday evening in the 3900 block of Roanoke Road.Police were called about 7:25 p.m. to the area and found a man who had been ot toward n the back of a parking garage near an apartment building.Authorities said the victim was taken to a hospital in stable condition.

Politicos Share High-Flying Dreams

Kansas City mayors reflect on KCI's journey to new terminal KANSAS CITY, Mo. - It's been a decades-long journey for the Kansas City International Airport to arrive where it is now, one year out from the completion of a new terminal .

Traffic Tragedy Today

Police say motorcyclist, 18, dies after collision with RideKC bus Police say E 75th Street in Kansas City, Missouri is closed after a fatal accident Thursday morning. Initial reports indicate a motorcycle was involved in a crash with a RideKC bus shortly after 11 a.m. The Kansas City, Missouri police department says the motorcycle's driver was killed in the wreck.

Working

For South Side Access

New Health Department director concerned with lack of vaccination clinics in south KC Marvia Jones, PhD, who has been serving as the violence prevention and policy manager for the KCMO Health Department has been appointed as the department's director, officially beginning her new duties February 14. Jones has worked in the public health field for 15 years, previously working at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention where she helped develop recommendations for public health best practices.

Show-Me Road Work

MoDOT meets with residents about improving stretch of Interstate 70 KANSAS CITY, Mo. - The Missouri Department of Transportation is getting feedback from residents on possible changes to a portion of Interstate 70, designed to improve safety and reduce congestion. MoDOT's I-70 corridor includes an area between the Paseo and U.S. 40.

Hottie

Plays Character

Kourtney Kardashian says KUWTK had a 'toxic environment' Keeping Up with the Kardashians alum Kourtney Kardashian is coming clean about what a 'toxic environment' the set of her E! reality show was, which led to her playing a character towards the end. 'Shooting our show, it became a really toxic environment at the end for me,' the 42-year-old reality star told Bustle on Thursday.

MAGA STARTED WAR?!?

Biden blames Jan. 6 for Putin's invasion and other whoppers of the Ukraine war "Vladimir Putin was counting on being able to split up the United States. Look, how would you feel if you saw crowds storm and break down the doors of the British Parliament and kill five cops, injure 145 - or the German Bundestag or the Italian Parliament?"

Republicans Politely Ignore Political Talking Points

Senate GOP shrugs off latest Trump revelation The Jan. 6 select committee filing that set off a siren in the political world landed with a thud among Senate Republicans on Thursday. The House panel said it had "a good-faith basis for concluding" former and members of his campaign "engaged in a criminal conspiracy to defraud the United States," and that Trump tried to obstruct Congress's formal counting of the Electoral College vote.

NUKE POWER PLAY!!!

Europe's largest nuclear power plant on fire after shelling KYIV, Ukraine (AP) - A spokesman for Europe's largest nuclear plant says the facility is on fire after Russia attacked the power station in the southern Ukrainian city of Enerhodar. A government official tells The Associated Press elevated levels of radiation are being detected near the site of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, which provides about 25% of the country's power generation.

Veep Eye-roll At MAGA Exposed

Court documents reveal Pence team's exasperation with Trump Hundreds of pages of court documents filed by the House Jan. 6 committee offer new details about the extent of the Trump team's pressure campaign on former Vice President Pence as they unsuccessfully pushed numerous tactics to convince him to buck his ceremonial duty to certify the 2020 election results.

Bienvenidos Ukraine!!!

Biden administration will extend immigration relief to Ukrainians in the US The Department of Homeland Security will allow Ukrainians who are in the United States to remain in the country under a form of humanitarian relief.

War Time

End Game Considered

Zelensky: 'The end of the world has arrived' Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Thursday issued a dire appeal for help as Russia's attacks across the country intensified. "The end of the world has arrived," Zelensky said during a televised news conference in Kyiv. He appealed to Western leaders who have resisted calls to set up a no-fly zone over Ukraine.

Making Time For Fun & Games

China says report alleging it asked Russia to delay Ukraine invasion until after Olympics is 'fake news' Senior Chinese officials had some knowledge of Russia's plan to invade Ukraine prior to the Beijing Winter Olympics, a new intelligence report shows. The information, compiled by a Western intelligence service, was deemed credible by officials and has been shared amongst the U.S. and allied governments, according to The New York Times.

RETRO HERO REIGNS SUPREME!!!

The Batman brings the caped crusader back to his detective roots Maybe Batman doesn't need to save the world. Hear me out: Yes, merely cleaning up the streets of Gotham instead of defeating all-powerful bad guys and preventing the apocalypse sounds like a demotion. Yes, Batman has recently been teaming upwith heavy hitters like Superman, Wonder Woman, and The Flash to save the entire world.

Problematic Prostitution Charge???

Khloe slammed as 'cruel' for calling nanny a 'HOOKER' in old KUWTK clip KHLOE Kardashian was slammed for being "cruel" as she had previously called the nanny a "hooker" in a resurfaced clip from Keeping Up With The Kardashians clip. Redditors compiled a list of plotlines from previous KUWTK episodes that were deemed "problematic."

Midtown Kansas City Taco Redux

Under new owners, a refreshed Tiki Taco is offering Cali-inspired Mexican fast food on 39th Street in Kansas City For taco-lovers, Kansas City has a number of delicious options, no matter what neighborhood you're in when you catch your craving. Tiki Taco, which has long called 39th Street home, has gone through a major glow-up over the past few years, with new ownership, a revamped look and menu - and some flavors you might not usually see on a menu in the area.

Local Art Therapy For The Troops

Veterans Community Project puts final touches on entry for Parade of Hearts We are just days away from the Parade of Hearts kicking off in Kansas City. The massive public art project features more than 150 original pieces of art. The Veterans Community Project is putting the finishing touches on its heart.

Dream Bridge Deets Debated

City takes steps to determine the future of iconic Buck O'Neil Bridge Feasibility study will examine how to repurpose as a community amenity Kansas City is seeking innovative solutions and feedback from residents to preserve and repurpose the original Buck O'Neil Bridge once the new bridge, now under construction, opens to traffic.

Tech Sound Reconsidered

Steve Jobs opera opens in KC; How the Lyric Opera set the stage for tech icon's musical arrival A touring production that sings the virtues and vices of tech icon Steve Jobs not only arrives to the Kansas City stage this month - it was literally built here. "There are a lot of hands to make this happen ..." said technical director Brad Kanouse.

Friday Forecast . . .

Clear skies and near 40 overnight in KC Hide Transcript Show Transcript NINE-DAY FORECAST SO YOU WLIL KNOW FIRST. THIS IS FIRST ALERT WEATHER. KEY:LL NOT YESTERDAY'S TEMPERATURES BUT STILL VERY SPRINGLIKE. LARA: WE ARE TALKING ABOUT WIND TODAY.

And this is the OPEN THREAD for tonight . . .


Here's what's important about his report . . .

Notice the tone of this South Side Kansas City community newspaper . . . It's seems rightfully skeptical of the current 12th & Oak effort to create a slush fund with po-po money.

More to the point . . .

DOES ANYBODY IN KANSAS CITY WANT TO GIVE MONEY FOR POLICE TO MAYOR Q, THE CITY MANAGER & COUNCIL?!?!

To quote the Prez . . .

C'mon, man.

We've seen what a bang up job they've done with potholes, snow removal, the water department, the homeless and everything else . . . Handing over the security of KCMO to this crew pretty much invites even more local crime.

Accordingly . . .



Here's a peek at push back from Jeff City . . .

"The bills intent is to clarify existing statute to ensure the Kansas City Police Department receives 20 percent of the citys general revenue as intended. Previously, the mayor and some members of the city council had reallocated funds out of the citys general revenue, which effectively cut the departments budget by more than $42 million. A Jackson County judge eventually ruled that the citys efforts to defund the department violated state law."

Read more via www.TonysKansasCity.com link . . .
Brevard, NC (28712)

Today

Mostly sunny skies. High 82F. Winds S at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

Partly to mostly cloudy with scattered showers and thunderstorms developing late at night. Low 61F. Winds S at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 40%.
Terre Haute, IN (47803)

Today

Cloudy with occasional rain in the afternoon. High 62F. Winds E at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 80%. Rainfall near a quarter of an inch..

Tonight

Rain. Thunder possible. Low 58F. Winds ESE at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 70%.
Tullahoma, TN (37388)

Today

Partial cloudiness early, with scattered showers and thunderstorms in the afternoon. High 83F. Winds S at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 40%..

Tonight

Scattered thunderstorms in the evening, then mainly cloudy overnight with thunderstorms likely. Low around 65F. Winds SSW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 70%.
Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine Dmytro Kuleba discussed global efforts aimed at increasing political and economic pressure on Russia with Minister of Foreign Affairs of Qatar Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani.

Call with Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister of Qatar Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani. Grateful to Qatar for cosponsoring UNGA resolution Russian aggression against Ukraine and providing Ukraine with humanitarian assistance. We discussed global efforts to elevate political and economic pressure on Russia, Kuleba posted on Twitter.

Call with DPM and FM of Qatar @MBA_AlThani_. Grateful to Qatar for cosponsoring UNGA resolution Russian aggression against Ukraine and providing Ukraine with humanitarian assistance. We discussed global efforts to elevate political and economic pressure on Russia.  Dmytro Kuleba (@DmytroKuleba) March 3, 2022

As reported, on February 24, Russian president Vladimir Putin declared war on Ukraine and launched a large-scale invasion.

Russian troops are killing civilians, shelling and destroying key infrastructure facilities, and missiles hit Ukrainians' homes.

Martial law was imposed in Ukraine and general mobilization was announced. The Armed Forces of Ukraine, with the support of the entire nation, courageously resist Russian aggression.

The European Union imposed a powerful package of sanctions against Russia as the aggressor state.

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Ukraines Minister of Energy German Galushchenko, together with the heads of the State Nuclear Regulatory Inspectorate of Ukraine (SNRIU) and Energoatom, had previously asked the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to seek NATO help with closing the airspace over Ukraine to prevent a nuclear disaster.

The press service of Energoatom wrote this on Telegram, Ukrinform reports.

"On March 2, 2022, Energy Minister of Energy German Galushchenko, together with the heads of the SNRIU and Energoatom, appealed to the IAEA Director General Mr. Grossi to request that NATO enforce the A2/AD zone over Ukraine (no-fly zone)," the report says.

It is noted that the appeal was made in order to prevent and not to admit a global nuclear catastrophe in connection with the military actions of the Russian Federation near and on the territory of Ukraines nuclear facilities.

As reported, on the first day of a large-scale invasion of Ukraine, February 24, Russian troops seized the Chornobyl nuclear power plant.

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U.S. President Joe Biden and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in a phone call discussed the situation related to the shelling and seizure of Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (NPP).

The relevant report was posted on the official White House account on Twitter, Ukrinform reports.

U.S. President Joe Biden spoke with President Zelenskyy this evening to receive an update on the fire at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, the report says.

Another report notes that Joe Biden joined President Zelensky in urging Russia to cease its military activities in the area and allow firefighters and emergency responders to access the site.

It was also noted that the U.S. President spoke with Under Secretary for Nuclear Security of the U.S. Department of Energy and Administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration to receive an update on the situation at the plant.

The President [Biden] will continue to be briefed regularly, the report says.

As Ukrinform reported, overnight into Friday, a fire broke out at Zaporizhzhia NPP after it was shelled by Russias heavy weapons. There was a hit on the first power unit. A nuclear threat was declared.

On March 2, 2022, Energy Minister of Energy German Galushchenko, together with the heads of the SNRIU and Energoatom, appealed to the IAEA Director General Mr. Grossi to request that NATO enforce the A2/AD zone over Ukraine (no-fly zone).

On the first day of a large-scale invasion of Ukraine, February 24, Russian troops seized the Chornobyl nuclear power plant.

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Apart from reactors, there are about 150 nuclear fuel containers in the territory of Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (NPP).

Energy Minister of Ukraine German Galushchenko said this on the air of Rada TV Channel, according to an Ukrinform correspondent.

"Apart from six units, the station has a spent nuclear fuel storage facility. It includes about 150 nuclear fuel containers. If these barbarians continue to fire upon the station and hit those containers, we will actually have a nuclear disaster," the minister said.

According to him, this could happen at any moment: "Now this relates to the security of the world, not only Europe  this relates to the security of the whole world. Because it is a real nuclear terrorism."

Galushchenko also noted that Ukraine had repeatedly called on closing the sky to prevent such a situation. "Taking into account the geography of Ukrainian nuclear power plants, which are located in the east, south and west of the country, the airspace of Ukraine should be closed, the minister stressed.

As Ukrinform reported, overnight into Friday, a fire broke out at Zaporizhzhia NPP after it was shelled by Russias heavy weapons. There was a hit on the first power unit. A nuclear threat was declared.

On March 2, 2022, Energy Minister of Energy German Galushchenko, together with the heads of the SNRIU and Energoatom, appealed to the IAEA Director General Mr. Grossi to request that NATO enforce the A2/AD zone over Ukraine (no-fly zone).

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Enerhodar Mayor Dmytro Orlov has said that people were wounded at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, but it is not possible to take them to the hospital.

Energoatom said this on Twitter, Ukrinform reports.

"Last night, at around 16:30, an enemy convoy of armored vehicles broke into the city, went straight to the nuclear power plant and started firing at the buildings and structures of the nuclear power plant. It caught fire. There are those wounded ... I have no information about the number of those wounded. About their condition: there are also seriously injured. It is not possible to take them to the hospital," Orlov said.

On the night of Friday, a fire broke out at the Zaporizhzhia NPP as a result of shelling by military hardware of the Russian army.

One shell hit the first power unit, Zaporizhzhia NPP spokesman Andriy Tuz said.

Energoatom issued an appeal to the world community warning that the shelling was "a violation of the nuclear and radiation safety of Europe's largest nuclear facility, which could have serious and tragic consequences for the world."

Zaporizhzhia NPP said that Chechen fighters broke into the territory of the plant and want to lay mines at the plant.

Firefighters are not allowed to get to the territory of the plant.
The foreign ministers of the Group of Seven (G7) countries will meet on Friday to discuss the situation in Ukraine and coordinate steps in response to Russian aggression.

According to the U.S. State Department, the meeting will take place at 14:00 Kyiv time, Ukrinform reports.

According to the work schedule of the State Department, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken will be in Brussels on Friday, where he will take part in the G7 summit after NATO ministerial discussions.

The G7 leaders will communicate in part in a virtual format. In particular, according to Reuters, Japanese Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi will join the discussion via video link.

"We will exchange views on how to handle (the current situation in Ukraine) and plan to strengthen the G7's coordination over the matter," the Japanese Foreign Ministry said.

The Group of Seven (G7) includes the United Kingdom, Italy, Canada, Germany, the United States, France and Japan.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland have discussed with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky the fire at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant caused by Russian shelling.

That's according to the office of the Prime Minister of Canada, an Ukrinform correspondent reports.

According to the statement, President Zelensky expressed deep concern over the potentially devastating consequences for the health and safety of Ukrainians and Europeans without an immediate ceasefire near the nuclear power plant. Prime Minister Trudeau called on Russia to immediately cease all hostilities in the region and to commit itself to continuing to communicate with partners and allies.

According to the statement, the two leaders discussed ways in which Canada can continue to support Ukraine in the near future. Prime Minister Trudeau praised the Ukrainian people for their determination against the current illegal and unjustified invasion.

In the early hours of Friday, a fire broke out at the Zaporizhzhia NPP as a result of heavy weapons shelling by the Russian army. One shell hit the first power unit. Zaporizhzhia NPP said that Chechen fighters broke into the territory of the plant and wanted to lay mines at the plant.
World leaders are shocked by Russia's attack on the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant. Britain convenes UN Security Council meeting, and the IAEA launches its 24-hour Centre for Incidents and Emergencies.

"I talked to the leaders of other countries last night. To make the world react. I felt that the world leaders were shocked. The United Kingdom convenes the UN Security Council because of this attack. The IAEA is launching its 24-hour Centre for Incidents and Emergencies," President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky said in his video address, an Ukrinform correspondent reports.

He called on the leaders of the anti-Putin coalition to immediately step up sanctions "against the state of nuclear terrorism" and close the skies over Ukraine. "Because only this can guarantee that Russia will not fire at least missiles and air bombs on nuclear facilities," Zelensky stressed.

As reported, on the night of March 4, Russian invaders fired on the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant. Power Unit 1 was hit, a fire broke out in the administrative building.

As of the morning of March 4, the ZNPP site was seized by Russian troops. There is currently no direct contact with the power plant's management. The radiation background is within natural values.

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Russian invaders are resorting to outwardly terrorist warfare tools.

According to Ukrinform, this was reported by the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in their latest update on the Russian invasion.

"The ninth day of the Ukrainian people's heroic resistance against the Russian military invasion continues (...) There have been changes in the tactics employed by the Russian criminals: after failing to fulfill the task of a military blitzkrieg, the Russian Federation is turning to openly terrorist methods of warfare in Ukraine," the statement said.

It is also noted that the increased share of tasks is now being performed by the enemy specops units as assault forces in the suburbs of settlements, as well as by airborne troops  to ensure construction of pontoon bridges over water obstacles. Also, Russian invaders put a major focus on intensifying measures of psychological influence on the local population and Ukrainian troops.

In addition, they note that the main goal of the enemy remains to take Kyiv under siege and weaken resistance in the blocked settlements. In the course of implementing this task, Russian army groups exhausted most of their operational reserves and began to transfer additional forces and resources from the Southern and Eastern military districts.

The second echelons and most of the operational reserves of the Russian armed forces have been put into operation.

In the Donetsk operational direction, the enemy is trying to keep Mariupol encircled with the help of six BTGs. To make up for the losses in the Donetsk region, Russian supervisors are bringing in Russian army servicemen to the Ilovaisk railway station.

The Black Sea Fleet was deployed from naval bases, tasked with striking the surface forces of the Navy's combined units, but more often its civilian ships and their crews that are targeted in the strikes of the Russian pirates.

Without abandoning their intentions to seize control of the Ukrainian Black Sea coast, the enemy forces continue to prepare for marines landing in the area of Zatoka  Chornomorsk. Within the specified plan, two of the enemys large landing ships are on standby off the coast 40 km east of Chornomorsk.

Up to 80 Russian journalists and a large group of "civilian activists" were brought to the temporarily occupied territories of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea to further organize rallies of "local residents" in the newly occupied cities.

It is likely that in the near future, they will be brought to Kherson to stage rallies covered by propaganda media, to show "support" on the ground for the new government and legalize the occupation.

It is also reported that in the near future, Ukrainians should brace for a comprehensive, large-scale spread of fake news by enemy propaganda, which will involve a full range of modern media outlets.

Ukrainians are urged to remain vigilant, believe in the Armed Forces of Ukraine, and consume information only from official and verified sources.

As reported, on February 24, Russian President Vladimir Putin declared war on Ukraine and launched a large-scale invasion. Russian troops are shelling and destroying infrastructure, massively shelling residential areas across Ukrainian cities and towns, using artillery, MLR systems, and ballistic missiles.

Martial law was imposed in the country and general mobilization was announced.

Ukraine has filed a lawsuit against the Russian Federation with the UN Criminal Court in The Hague.
The situation on the territory of Ukraine remains under the control of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and the leadership of the Ukrainian state.

Oleksiy Arestovych, an adviser to the head of the Presidents Office, stated this at a briefing, an Ukrinform correspondent reports.

"The situation in general is under control. The command of the Armed Forces, the leadership of the state is taking immediate measures to stop the enemy in the areas where they are trying to develop an offensive. There are few such areas, and we have crossed them out," he said.

Thus, Arestovych said that Russian troops, after replenishing reserves, began to advance in certain directions. According to him, "the invaders were most successful" in the city of Enerhodar, where they partially established control over the Zaporizhia Nuclear Power Plant. Also, the Russian troops managed to advance near the city of Voznesensk, Mykolaiv district, approximately in the direction from Mykolaiv to Kryvyi Rih. "Our troops stopped them. All attempts on the part of the enemy to advance directly towards Mykolaiv have been repulsed," Arestovych assured.

He added that another hot spot is northwest of Kyiv, where fierce fighting is currently underway.

In addition, according to Arestovych, the cities of Kharkiv and Okhtyrka are subject to devastating blows on the part of the enemy, but he stressed that the defense forces are holding their ground. "The situation there is known at the international level. The attention of the international community is focused on Kharkiv and Okhtyrka. There was an attempt to destroy the local CHPP near Okhtyrka. However, the defense is holding on. The enemy is suffering huge losses and bringing in reserves, which otherwise could be used in more dangerous areas, for example, in Kyiv region or other cities," said the adviser to the head of the Presidents Office.

He stressed that the heroic defense of Okhtyrka and Kharkiv forced the enemy, firstly, to stop, secondly, to change the direction of the main strike, and thirdly, to deploy additional reserves there.

"This is what skillful resistance on the ground brings. I urge everyone to hold their ground, because this will gain the necessary time for Western aid to arrive and international sanctions to work, as well as our leaderships actions," Arestovych added.

As for Chernihiv, the official said that, despite a powerful airstrike on the city, the leadership of Ukraines defense forces retains control of the city, holding back the enemy.

Arestovych also said that Mariupol is partially under siege, but the situation is under control. The Ukrainian military is repelling attempts by Russian troops to encircle the city in full. At the same time, he added that the humanitarian situation in Mariupol remains tense, but this is the subject of negotiations between the Ukrainian delegation and the Russian one, as well as the talks between the Ukrainian leadership and international partners.

Read also: Army urges Ukrainians to put up total resistance in territories occupied by invaders

According to the spokesman, there is no immediate threat to Odesa  the Armed Forces and the city's defense leadership are monitoring the situation in the area. "Few attempts by enemy warships to fire have been suppressed by our artillery in response," Arestovych said.

As Ukrinform reported, on February 24, Russian President Vladimir Putin declared war on Ukraine and launched a large-scale invasion.

Russian troops have been killing civilians, shelling and destroying key infrastructure, and their missiles have been hitting Ukrainian households.

Martial law was imposed in Ukraine and general mobilization was announced. The Armed Forces of Ukraine, with the support of the entire nation, are courageously resisting aggression.

Ukraine has officially filed a lawsuit against the Russian Federation with the UN International Criminal Court in The Hague. International Criminal Court Prosecutor Karim Khan has already launched an investigation into the situation in Ukraine.

Thirty-eight countries have jointly appealed to the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate Russia's war crimes in Ukraine.

Photo: Armed Forces of Ukraine
The head of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, Metropolitan Epifaniy, visited the checkpoints where Ukrainian defenders are on duty.

Thats according to Archbishop Yevstratiy (Zorya) of Chernihiv and Nizhyn, Ukrinform reports.

Today, Metropolitan Epifaniy of Kyiv and All Ukraine met with Kyiv Mayor Vitaliy Klitschko and Commander of the Land Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine - Commander of the Kyiv Defense, Colonel-General Oleksandr Syrsky.

In addition, the head of the OCU visited the locations and checkpoints where the defenders of Ukraine are on duty, talked to soldiers, wished them resilience and inspiration in protecting the people of Ukraine, and called God's blessing upon them.

Read also: Metropolitan Epifaniy thanks soldiers defending native Ukraine from aggressor

"May God protect each of you  courageous Ukrainian soldiers who are fearlessly resisting the criminal invasion by the Russian aggressor. Our prayer and our support are always with you. The enemy has come to our land, ruthlessly destroying homes, schools, hospitals, killing civilians. Therefore, your mission is selfless and noble, because we stand for the truth, for our people, and for our God-given state  Ukraine. Evil will certainly be defeated and punished," said Metropolitan Epifaniy.

As Ukrinform reported earlier, saboteurs, whose target could be the head of the OCU, were neutralized in the Mykhailivsky Golden-Domed Monastery in Kyiv.
These words are addressed to the citizens of Western nations, to explain the critical circumstances threatening each of them personally, no matter what continent they live on.

From the moment of the seizure by Russian troops of the Chernobyl radioactive nuclear waste storage site, from the moment of tank shelling, arson, and seizure of the Zaporizhia Nuclear Power Plant, the whole world is the war zone was the whole world.

So far, the status of the Western world is that of hostage and victim. For the past 20 years, Putin has been taming your politicians through nuclear blackmail, as well as cheap oil and gas. And these people have convinced you that Georgia and Ukraine are second-tier nations. That their fate wont affect you personally, no matter how tragic it may be.

And now it does, it affects you in person.

Since the capture of nuclear facilities by those deprived of self-conscience, intellect, and critical thinking since childhood, the war in Ukraine has, in fact, already turned into World War 3, the Sixth Generation War, the New Generation War.

We had been warning the world it was a possibility, we had been warning the world about modern Russias Hitler mentality. But you decried our pleas as hate speech spread by "radicals," subjecting us to discrimination for expressing our own feelings driven by national interests.

Now this war is coming to your home. It is coming to you with its language and thoughts of hatred, on which all modern Russia has been brought up. Several generations of Russian people have hated you just because you exist. So now youre starting to wake up and realize what is going on.

But also, because of the high culture of your nations and your humanistic upbringing, you simply cannot fathom who you are dealing with in the person of Vladimir Putin.

The Western world, which has been fighting for decades to ensure safety of nuclear energy, rooting for the clean environment, has every chance to become the object of radioactive destruction on a global scale.

Putin is mentally ill, and this is no denigration, but a fact that is obvious to experts in the field. In the language of psychiatry, this is called "paranoid psychosis" as every psychiatrist can easily notice all the clinical signs. In this condition, the patients dominant behavior is pure aggression towards the outside world as he believes that the world is a threat to him. So he thinks he has to strike first.

This is the man who openly declared he was continuing Stalin's policies, while following in Hitlers footsteps. This man hasnt stopped and wont stop until he annihilates everything that doesnt fit into his own picture of the world.

Ukraine will not submit to Putin under any circumstances. So, if the Russian troops are forced to retreat, their crazy commander-in-chief will blow up our nuclear power plants.

So if you don't close the sky for us now, it will fall upon your heads. Then don't say we didn't warn you.

Oleh Pokalchuk, Facebook
According to the Ukrainian authorities, there is currently no threat of Belarus direct invasion of Ukraine.

"Currently, there is no threat of direct invasion from the Belarusian side," Mykhailo Podolyak, adviser to the Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, said at a briefing, an Ukrinform correspondent reports.

He urges not to exaggerate the risk from the Belarusian side.

"Some information periodically appears on some mobilization, intensification, and so on. But when we check the information, we know that there is no sufficient mobilization to allow Belarus to take part in hostilities as of now. That is, Belarus will not participate, at least not today," he said.

According to him, Ukraine has no information about Belarusians being prepared for hostilities with Ukrainians.

"I emphasize that this is official information. Yes, Belarus has provided its territory for military operations of the Russian army in the framework of allied relations between them, but no more," said the adviser to the Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine.

As for the Russian "liberators", Podolyak added, they also start to realize what flowers they are greeted with.

As reported, on February 24, Russian president Vladimir Putin declared war on Ukraine and launched a large-scale invasion.

Russian troops are killing civilians, shelling and destroying key infrastructure facilities, and missiles hit Ukrainians' homes.

Martial law was imposed in Ukraine and general mobilization was announced. The Armed Forces of Ukraine, with the support of the entire nation, courageously resist Russian aggression.

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Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda has discussed with Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez the coordination of actions in response to Russia's aggression in Ukraine and called on Spain to support Ukraine's integration into the European Union.

Nauseda wrote about this on Twitter, Ukrinform reports.

"Prompt coordination call with Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez. Lithuania actively consults response actions to Russias aggression against  with its allies: isolating Russia diplomatically & economically, strengthening eastern NATO flank. I called on Spain to support Ukraine's EU integration," Nauseda said.

He also stressed that he called on Spain to support Ukraine's integration into the EU.

As was reported earlier, on February 24, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the beginning of the invasion of Ukraine. Russian troops are shelling and destroying infrastructure, massively shelling residential areas of Ukrainian cities and towns using artillery, multiple launch rocket systems and ballistic missiles.

Martial law was imposed in Ukraine and general mobilization was announced.

Ukraine officially filed a lawsuit against Russia to the International Court of Justice in The Hague.
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Published March 3, 2022

The University of Louisiana Monroe is hosting free drone workshops for middle and high school students on Saturdays, March 5, 12, and 26. ULMs Unmanned Aircraft Systems Management professors will teach the students UAS technology, regulations and provide hands-on flying experience.

ULM Photo Services

The University of Louisiana Monroe is hosting three drone workshops for middle and high school students on Saturdays, March 5, 12, and 26.

From 12:15-1 p.m., the students will practice flying the crafts in Bayou Park, across Northeast Drive from the ULM Library.

The workshops will be conducted by ULMs Unmanned Aircraft Systems Management professors David King and Darrion Flunder-Jenkins.

In the mornings, the students will be in The Hangar on the second floor of the Student Union Building, learning about UAS technology and regulations. They will then head to Bayou Park for hands-on experience.

The workshops are free, and the students will be served breakfast and lunch. Sponsors include Johnnys Pizza House, Raising Canes, and ULM alumnus Markus Bosley.

ULM is the only university in Louisiana offering a degree in Unmanned Aircraft Systems Management, and one of less than 100 institutions in the nation in the FFAs Unmanned Aircraft Systems Collegiate Training Initiative.

The initiative is designed to ensure that new technology is safely incorporated into the National Airspace System and that qualified professionals are in the pipeline to satisfy the demand of the rapidly growing industry.

ULM created the Precision Ag and UAS Center to further research using drones in environmental, agricultural, and commercial endeavors.

For more information about registering for a workshop, contact David King, dking@ulm.edu, or Darrion Flunder-Jenkins, djenkins@ulm.edu, or call the School of Management, College of Business and Social Sciences, 318-342-1154.
| By Becky Ceraul

The University of Maryland School of Pharmacy (UMSOP) has welcomed the University of Maryland, Baltimore/Anne Arundel Community College (UMB/AACC) Physician Assistant (PA) Program to Pharmacy Hall as part of the programs transition to the University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB.)

Students in the Physician Assistant Program have transitioned to Pharmacy Hall, where they use classrooms, study and lounge space, lockers, and a clinical examination suite.

The PA Program is a 27-year legacy program, first accredited with Anne Arundel Community College (AACC) in 1996 and graduating its first cohort in 1998. PA accreditation standards now require the sponsoring institution to award a masters degree as the terminal degree of the profession. As a community college, AACC does not grant masters degrees, so it partnered with the University of Maryland Graduate School to transition and ultimately shift the PA Program sponsorship to UMB.

The Graduate School assumed sponsorship of the program Jan. 1, 2020, while providing a teach-out of the last UMB/AACC dually enrolled PA students under a collaborative agreement. When this agreement ends June 30, 2022, the name of the program will change to the University of Maryland Graduate School Physician Assistant Program.

In the fall of 2021, the PA Program began its transition to UMB and reached out to the School of Pharmacy leadership with space needs, said UMSOP Dean Natalie D. Eddington, PhD, FAAPS, FCP. In Pharmacy Hall, the program is making use of classrooms, study and lounge space, lockers, and our Objective Structured Clinical Examination Suite. In addition, we will be sharing a director of simulation position, which will provide interprofessional education opportunities between PA and pharmacy students.

The PA Program needed space to house its rigorous two-year professional program that would provide ample room for its current annual cohort size of 40, with room to grow to 60 students.

We spent close to three years cultivating an interested partner who shared our vision for the physical space, said Cherilyn Hendrix, DHEd, MSBME, PA-C, DFAAPA, assistant dean for physician assistant education, associate professor, and program director for the UMB/AACC Physician Assistant Program.

The PA Program and Graduate School are immensely grateful for such a generous offering in Pharmacy Hall, one of the most beautiful, state-of-the-art facilities on campus, Hendrix said. The School of Pharmacy leadership, faculty, and staff have been so warm and inviting and have moved mountains to make this plan a reality.

The PA Program is a 25-month, 116-credit masters degree program. Students are eligible to sit for the Physician Assistant National Certifying Exam upon completion of all required coursework. The program supports students in becoming competent, ethical, and compassionate health care providers who are ready to fulfill the roles and duties of primary care physician assistants.
Abraht, 23, fled her home in Ethiopia's Tigray region eight months ago when she was already two months pregnant with her first child.  UNHCR/Olga Sarrado Mur

UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, is appealing for US$205 million to deliver life-saving assistance and protection to over 1.6 million people displaced due to the conflict in northern Ethiopia.

Sixteen months of conflict in northern Ethiopia has created a humanitarian crisis. Civilians, including refugees and internally displaced people (IDPs) have been displaced, amid widespread reports of gender-based violence, human rights abuses, loss of shelter and access to basic services, and critical levels of food insecurity.

More than 2 million Ethiopians have fled in search of safety within the country, and almost 60,000 across the border into Sudan. Several camps and settlements hosting Eritrean refugees have been attacked or destroyed, further displacing tens of thousands within Ethiopia.

Funds raised will help us to provide essential protection and humanitarian assistance to those impacted by the violence. At least 60,000 IDP households will be assisted with shelter and emergency relief items. We will establish additional protection desks adding to the more than 60 already set up  to identify people with specific needs and to refer survivors of gender-based violence to services, and we will support the reintegration of 75,000 IDP families, who wish to return to their homes.

We welcome the quick response of the Ethiopian government to identify new sites to settle the displaced refugees, which requires resources. UNHCR will work with the governments Refugees and Returnees Service (RRS) and partners to complete the Alemwach site, in the Amhara region, so that Eritrean refugees can be relocated as soon as it is possible to do so, and to ensure essential services. A new temporary site for Eritrean refugees caught up in the fighting in Afar region is similarly in need of urgent investment. Together with RRS and partners, we are aiming to get 20,000 refugee children back into school.

In eastern Sudan, UNHCR will provide critical protection and assistance to Ethiopian refugees, including by building shelters that are more durable, and strengthening health care and education. Activities to prevent and respond to gender-based violence and to provide psychosocial and mental health support will be scaled up.

UNHCR will also boost preparedness for flooding and extreme weather ahead of the upcoming rainy season. Opportunities to earn an income will be enhanced both for refugees and the communities that host them.

Of the US$205 million, US$117 million will support the needs of Ethiopian IDPs and Eritrean refugees in the Afar, Amhara, and Tigray regions of Ethiopia, while US$72 million will help us support Ethiopian refugees in Sudan. Some US$16 million will be used for preparedness as part of contingency measures for any potential influx into neighbouring countries (Djibouti, Kenya, Somalia and South Sudan).

While UNHCR continues to reinforce its protection and humanitarian assistance, we reiterate our call to all parties of the conflict to protect civilians in line with their obligations under international humanitarian law and to provide safe and unhindered access to all those in need.

Video: https://media.unhcr.org/Share/e02nehod032xvnh1w8sb6832sl333yg1

https://media.unhcr.org/Share/e02nehod032xvnh1w8sb6832sl333yg1 Link to Ethiopia Regional Appeal https://reporting.unhcr.org/ethiopia-regional-appeal-2022

For more information on this topic, please contact:
Chisinau, Moldova  Yesterdays unprecedented decision by the European Union (EU) to offer Temporary Protection to Refugees fleeing Ukraine will provide immediate protection in the EU for Ukrainians and third country nationals with refugee or permanent residence status in Ukraine.

The decision also means that EU Member States may offer Temporary Protection to third country nationals with legal residence in Ukraine who are unable to return home, and to stateless people.

We encourage all EU Member States to take an inclusive approach and grant these groups Temporary Protection. The decision allows for responsibility-sharing among EU States for those with Temporary Protection Status. This will include cooperation on reception among EU Member States.

UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, urges EU States to swiftly implement the Directive to continue to provide those fleeing the violence with much needed safety and protection - as the situation in the country continues to deteriorate and numbers of people fleeing continue to rise. This is fast becoming Europes largest refugee crisis this century.

Many EU States have already shown great support, and yesterdays decision reinforces this solidarity, which we hope will continue. UNHCR also welcomes the recent guidance issued by the Commission to EU States encouraging them to be flexible with border controls and suggesting measures to decongest borders.

UNHCR stands ready to support governments and other stakeholders to provide protection and humanitarian assistance to those forced to flee in this refugee crisis of unprecedented proportions.

Background

EU Justice and Home Affairs Ministers met on 03 March to discuss the European Commissions proposal to activate the EU Temporary Protection Directive (TPD) given the situation in Ukraine and arrivals to the EU of people seeking safety. Ministers agreed to the proposal and this is the first time the TPD has been activated. The decision to trigger the TPD will enter into force on the day it is published in the Official Journal of the EU.

Set up in the aftermath of the Yugoslav war, the TPD was designed to be used in the event of a "mass influx or imminent mass influx" of people coming into an EU State. It is a form of temporary protection aimed at offering immediate help by granting large groups of people collective protection status. These people would have protection status for up to a year (with a possibility of extension of up to three years), without going through individual asylum claims, and allowing access to housing and other benefits (e.g. education, health, social welfare, residency permits). The Directive also lays down criteria for the reunification of separated families in the case that one or several relatives enjoy temporary protection but others do not. Once reunited, all members have to be granted residence permits to stay in the host country. To implement the TPD, at least 15 out of 27 EU States must agree to it.

For further information:
The question of leaving behind the Minsk site for the Trilateral Contact Group negotiations was once again raised after a joint effort by Belarusian and Russian security agencies to nab a dissident blogger Roman Protasevich right from a plane carrying him from Athens to Vilnius.

In this regard, we need to start off with separating unrealistic expectations from actual opportunities and benefits emerging in the view of such a shift.

By raising the issue of quitting Minsk as a site for Donbas settlement talks, we can show our attitude to the further integration of Belarus into the "big union state" project

The most obvious advantage of moving negotiations to another country is about being able to testify our stance on what's happening in the Republic of Belarus. As a state, Ukraine cannot and must not silently observe how, in the name of their "eternal president", peaceful protesters have been tortured in a temporary detention center on Okrestsin Street, how government cracked down on opposition leaders, and now engaged in an outrageous act of air piracy to kidnap a blogger who they see as a liability  while jeopardizing lives of other passengers on board the ill-fated plane who in fact have nothing to do with the Belarus events.

A bit less apparent but no less important to us as a party to the TCG talks is ensuring safety of our negotiators. It's no secret that in Belarus, intelligence agents of a neighboring Russia feel at home. The case of Pavlo Hryb, a Ukrainian teen who had been lured to Belarus before being taken by force to Russia where he was illegally detained and deprived of much required medical assistance proved that not a single Ukrainian can feel safe on the Belarusian territory. This doesn't mean, of course, that the Russian intelligence are plotting to kidnap Ukrainian negotiators, but it's a sure fact that all their movements and communications have been and would remain closely monitored. This, too, is additional leverage over the Ukrainian delegation.

In addition, by raising the issue of quitting Minsk as a site for Donbas settlement talks, we can show our attitude to the further integration of Belarus into the "big union state" project  something Russia is obviously firmly intended to implement. This Russian concept is Ukraine's problem, too. After all, it also affects the occupied territories in eastern Ukraine, to which eloquently testifies Russia's move to allow Donbas residents with newly obtained Russian passports voting at the upcoming election to the State Duma of the Russian Federation, as well as the recent "integration fora" held in the occupied areas earlier this year.

Speaking of expectations, it should be noted straight away: moving the talks to another country will in no way change the meaning of the Minsk Agreements, much disadvantageous to Ukraine in many respects. Ukraine's Armed Forces and the illegal armed groups operating in the occupied areas of Donbas will still be mentioned as parties to military confrontation, and it's to this text that the Russian delegates will constantly appeal.

The coronavirus pandemic hasn't gone anywhere and many delegates represent vulnerable groups. So at the current stage, discussions about moving the talks to another city will in no way help Ukraine get rid of representatives of illegal armed groups

Optimists will say that if the negotiations are postponed, Ukraine will try to prevent militants from participating in the process, thereby once and for all returning to the TCG its true meaning, and bringing the format in accordance with its name  the Trilateral Contact Group, with the three participants  Ukraine, Russia, and the OSCE as a mediator  working to discuss pressing issues of Donbas settlement. This attempt though will most likely fail: the option of sanctions-related argument against certain individuals is not valid pending talks. For example, Vladislav Surkov, known in Europe and the United States as one of the main ideologists and masterminds of the Russian occupation of eastern Ukraine, who was among the first ones among Russian officials to be sanctioned, nevertheless attended the talks of advisers to Normandy Four leaders in Paris in 2019. Indeed, he was asked to leave Paris immediately after the talks were completed, but this is rather a tiny oral compensation rather than a pattern that should guide Ukraine in shaping up its line in relation to Russian proxies and their participation in the TCG.

Of course, Ukraine could claim that militants can in no way represent certain areas of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Ukraine if they try to cross into other countries holding Russian passports issued in Donbas (the ones the EU doesn't recognize), but this argument has already been used by our negotiators, and to little avail.

Besides, the TCG isn't going back offline any time soon as the coronavirus pandemic hasn't gone anywhere and many delegates represent vulnerable groups. So at the current stage, discussions about moving the talks to another city will in no way help Ukraine get rid of representatives of illegal armed groups. Speaking of a wider perspective, such a possibility seems questionable as such. That's at least as long as the political subgroup is moderated by Pierre Morel, known for his lack of attention to discrepancies between the number of negotiators declared by the format and the actual number of those present at the table, while Ukraine is trying to play the meaning of words "Representatives of the occupied areas of Donetsk and Luhansk regions (ORDLO)" instead of demanding a revision of existing agreements to make sure the current situation is reflected in the deal correctly. After all, it was no "ORDLO representatives" who have unleashed war against Ukraine  it was Russia, which annexed Crimea and launched hostilities in eastern Ukraine. And it's precisely this issue, not a hypothetical new site for talks, that should be discussed with partners in the Normandy format.

In the medium term, it does make sense to talk about moving the talks to another country, and this should be done, first of all, jointly with the OSCE. Although we should also be prepared to face the fact that this could be a PR stunt that in no way affects the content of agreements and negotiations. However, taking care of the country's image isn't bad at all. Especially for those who have consistently ignored the issue for several years.

Maria Kucherenko is a Ukrainian analyst, ex-project manager with Center for Civil Society Research
The detention of a former editor of the NEXTA Telegram channel, Roman Protasevich, following a move by Belarus authorities to force-land Ryanair's passenger jet in Minsk, was a tactical win for Lukashenko, but also a loss at a strategic level.

Lukashenko did win some points because he managed to practically snatch from the sky one of the key figures who authorities claim had been "sowing chaos" in Belarus. Frightened by protests, the Belarusian regime perceives Protasevich as one of the main instigators and masterminds of the mass rallies. Fear has big eyes, so Lukashenko's entourage is convinced that Protasevich is a valuable asset and source as he could allegedly tell them, who financed the protests, how much the West helped, which special services were involved, who were the coordinators and informants.

Also, Lukashenko in this case was personally guided by the revenge motive: after all, some rookie youngster somehow managed to set up a powerful platform that promoted the protest action, incited crowds, and informed the world about the developments Belarus. So the Belarus leader might have sought to nab the guy just to tell him "Look at you now!"

From the dictator's point of view, indeed, it was a victory  the one on a tactical level. Moreover, this story could be highlighted to show other Belarusian opposition figures that Lukashenko's regime has long arms, so anyone could be located found and apprehended. So this is an element of intimidation.

By his actions, Lukashenko worsened his own situation and pushed himself further into the arms of the Russian bear

Strategically though, Lukashenko has lost. After all, the issue of the disputed presidential election and protests in Belarus has recently receded into the background, while global agenda has changed. No one even recalls opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya anymore. Lukashenko is just as toxic, but many seem to have accepted the status quo: the crook is still there but at least there's no more violence in Belarus, which is good.

But by his actions, Lukashenko worsened his own situation and pushed himself further into the arms of the Russian bear. He has yet again angered everyone and destroyed the calm that had been established around him. Had he refrained from such a move, Belarus would have seen economic normalization one way or another because "time heals everything." But Lukashenko ruined everything: he enraged the entire Western world  both Europe and the United States. After that, even tougher sanctions could be imposed against him and his entourage. That is, he burned all bridges, it seems.

This last straw has convinced the world that Lukashenko is an inadequate ruler, ready to give any outrageous orders. However, on the other hand, this gives the West additional leverage over the Belarus leader. But at the same time, Lukashenko had driven himself firmly under Putin's heel.

I don't rule out the possibility that this whole operation had been planned with Russia's support. On his own, Lukashenko couldn't have done such an elaborate job: to make sure that Protasevich bought specific tickets, boarded a certain a flight, and so on The Belarusian KGB would have lacked resources to achieve success in this endeavor.

There is a death penalty in Belarus, but I don't think Protasevich will be executed

As for the further fate of Mr Protasevich, there are three options for developments:

1 Protasevich will be intimidated by the KGB into testifying; 2 He will be imprisoned, and the Belarusian authorities will make a whole show out of it. I don't even rule out the option where he will be killed; 3 Putin will play his own game: Lukashenko will pursue the investigation, get the required incriminating testimony, and convict Protasevich to life, while Putin will come forward as a mediator to ensure that Protasevich be released, which in the end would be a PR bonus for the Russian president.

It should be recalled that Belarus has death penalty in place, but I don't think Protasevich will be executed. After all, in this case, firstly, Belarus would go total North Korea, which would imply a corresponding stance of the international community towards Lukashenko. Although, of course, even now Lukashenkos actions suggest he has gone totally rogue.

Secondly, the capital punishment for Protasevich would cause public outrage, which is something Lukashenko wouldn't want to face. Indeed, from a political perspective, Protasevich is a new iconic figure, the new face of protest. That is, the execution would be too costly a move for the regime, so there's simply no sense in executing Protasevich.

Belarus may well be disconnected from SWIFT

Thirdly, the international implications for Belarus and the Lukashenko regime would be rather severe. If the "nation's father" decides to execute the ex-editor, Belarus will find itself "besieged" and turn into a "black hole" on the European map: the world will minimize contacts with Belarus, foreign embassies will cease operations, while foreign trade will be put to a full halt. Also, Belarus may well be disconnected from SWIFT (this is not Russia, after all).

Europe might not confine itself to "deep concern" statements because it was too impudent a step that outraged many. Eastern Europe, in particular, Lithuania, Poland, and others, will vehemently push Brussels to act. This is not so much an issue of Protasevich's fate, this is more about a threat to the European Union, because the lives of European citizens are in jeopardy, too. At the very least, Eastern European countries will work toward banning flights over Belarus and impose economic sanctions.

Anatoly Oktysiuk is a political expert with the DemocracyHouse think tank
Mike Kreidler, Washington state insurance commissioner, has adopted a rule prohibiting insurers from using credit scoring to set rates for auto, homeowner and renter insurance for three years after the end of pandemic-related federal and state emergency financial protections.
JERUSALEM, March 4 (Xinhua) -- Israel and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have agreed to restore Israeli flights from Tel Aviv to Dubai to the previous levels, after nearly a month of cutback because of a dispute over airport security in Dubai.

The move was made possible since the Israeli Security Agency (ISA) and the Dubai authorities concerned have settled the security arrangements, the ISA said in a statement on Friday.

Without the latest settlement, all flights operated by Israeli airlines El Al, Israir and Arkia on the route would stop from March 8 according to a previous ISA order.

"We welcome the resolution of the aviation crisis and will return immediately to operate on a regular basis of three to four daily flights to Dubai," Israeli flagship carrier El Al said.

In early February, the three airlines were required to reduce their flight frequency on the route from multiple flights per day to three flights per week because of the security dispute between ISA and the Dubai authorities.

Since Israel and the UAE signed the groundbreaking normalization deal in September 2020, the Gulf Arab state has become a favored destination for Israeli tourists, especially with the opening of a nonstop route. 
Jennifer Ann Hancock was born Nov. 20, 1956, in Atlanta, to William Roy and Martha Jones Hancock. She went home to be with the Lord on Tuesday, April 26, 2022, in Gray. She was preceded in death by her father, William Roy Hancock, and her brother, Timothy Roy Hancock, as well as grandparents
Wayne Farms would like to purchase the Recreation Center building from the City of Union Springs to create more jobs for Bullock County.


(Photo : Sincerely Media via Unsplash)

Healthcare is an incredibly complex industry. From the needs of patients to the competing priorities of many healthcare organizations, there are many opportunities to learn.

Unfortunately, there are serious gaps in what healthcare administration and medical students are being taught to help them succeed in the workforce. Helen Mohsenzadeh, an administrator in the healthcare field from Topanga, California, explains where these gaps lie for administrators and physicians and how they could be remedied.

Gaps in Healthcare Administrators' Education

According to Helen Mohsenzadeh, there are several points where healthcare administrators could receive a better grounding in their field during college and postgraduate studies.

1. Focusing on Policy Over Innovation

Rather than teaching healthcare administrators to embrace new medical breakthroughs, training programs often spend too much time on healthcare policy and other issues that do not directly affect patient care. The medical industry wants to see more innovation at the organizational level and more respect for the constant march forward of technology.

2. Too Much Emphasis on Organizational Issues

It seems that healthcare administrators spend much of their time dealing with organizational issues like chains of command and delegating responsibilities. They cannot create positive and productive workplaces due to their myopic focus on organizational matters.

3. New Policies and Systems Need to Be Created

Healthcare administrators have a unique task when it comes to determining how medical care is accessed in today's society. Too often, these organizations are stuck in the past and are not ready to face today's challenges. Challenges related to access to healthcare are one of today's primary considerations.

4. Increasing Satisfaction With the Healthcare System

Many patients have serious grievances against the healthcare system. These patients should not be ignored. One of the reasons patients are disgruntled is the high cost of care. Administrators need to be taught how to control costs without sacrificing quality. By working more closely with physicians, they may reach this goal.

Medical School Issues

In addition to administrators, medical students are not being taught skills that could help them become more effective physicians in their own right:

1. Medical School Fails to Teach Professional Skills

While medical school generally gives doctors an excellent background in dealing with patient care, one gap exists in learning how to start and manage a practice and dealing with healthcare administration.

Medical students need to be taught how to handle insurance companies as well. There are limited sources of this type of information available in medical school, but doctors need a better grounding in this topic to run their practice successfully.

2. Medical Students Need to Know About Health Policy

While healthcare administration students may be spending too much time on policy issues, medical students do not cover it at all. Medical schools need to give their students and residents a way to understand healthcare policy since they will be dealing with the system's bureaucracy every day in their careers.

Healthcare economics and issues surrounding access to care should be emphasized in medical students' courses of study. In addition, government policies like the Affordable Care Act, Medicare, and Medicaid need to be studied to make informed decisions.

3. Too Much Emphasis on Rare Conditions Versus Common Problems

Medical conferences and innovation tend to cover rare conditions rather than spending time on problems like diabetes that affect growing population segments.

4. Physicians Poorly understand public Health

There is a large existing gap between public health and the practice of medicine. Public health professionals study apart from medical practitioners, leading to misunderstandings on both sides. Doctors are trained to see situations with patients one at a time, while public health professionals can take a population-level view.

There has been some progress in this area due to the prevalence of COVID-19 and the involvement of doctors in developing public health policies that benefit everyone.

Solutions for Medical and Professional Education

The healthcare system is often referred to as," and the disconnect between healthcare administrators and medical practitioners has become severe. Healthcare administrators and doctors need to be taught differently at the postgraduate level, helping the cause of bringing the entire industry together.

A deeper understanding of both sides will lead healthcare administrators and doctors to make better decisions and improve patient care while lowering costs for everyone. Working knowledge of administrative policies and procedures helps doctors deal with bureaucracy. Understanding how doctors make decisions about patient care will help administrators run their facilities with tremendous respect.

Helen Mohsenzadeh promotes the cause of bringing administrators and doctors together, letting each profession learn more about the other side of the healthcare system. This practice could bear fruit in greater cooperation among disparate parts of the healthcare system and improve public health.
(@FahadShabbir)

London, March 4 (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 4th Mar, 2022 ) :Paul McCartney and US rapper Kendrick Lamar will join Billie Eilish to headline the UK's Glastonbury festival when it returns in June after a two-year Covid-induced hiatus, organisers said on Friday.

The Beatles icon will have just turned 80 when he takes to the festival's Pyramid Stage, while Eilish will be the festival's youngest ever solo headliner at 20.

More than 80 other artists have been added to the line-up at the June 22-26 blockbuster, including US pop star Olivia Rodrigo, Lorde and Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds.

The festival confirmed Foals, British rockers Wolf Alice and Years & Years will also perform at Worthy Farm in Somerset, southwest England, while Motown icon Diana Ross will play the legends slot.

Some of the proceeds from the event will go to the Red Cross Ukraine appeal, organisers said.

The line-up includes new acts such as Arlo Parks, Doja Cat, Easy Life, Fontaines DC and Griff alongside more established bands Crowded House, Primal Scream and Supergrass.

Experimental pop acts Charli XCX and Caroline Polachek will also perform.

Taylor Swift had been announced as a headliner at the cancelled 2020 event but her name is not yet on the new lineup.

Held amid the green fields of a dairy farm, Glastonbury was forced to cancel in 2020 -- the event's 50th anniversary -- because of coronavirus restrictions after some 135,000 people had already bought tickets.

Last year the festival held a five-hour livestream concert from the farm, including performances by Wolf Alice, Idles and Glastonbury veterans Coldplay.

The full 2022 lineup is expected to be announced in May, with tickets already sold out.
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New York, March 3 (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 4th Mar, 2022 ) :The Sackler family will pay up to $6 billion to address damages linked to the US opioid crisis under an amended Purdue Pharma bankruptcy plan following an agreement with holdout states, according to a court filing Thursday.

The deal raises the amount that the Sacklers, who own Purdue, must pay, but grants family members immunity from future claims in civil court.

A US bankruptcy judge still must approve the amended version after a US District judge in December struck down the first bankruptcy plan.
MOSCOW, Mar 4 (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 4th Mar, 2022 ) :Russian President Vladimir Putin called on neighboring countries to cooperate, as well as to normalize and develop relations.

Speaking at the opening ceremony of the first Russian ferryboat line to connect the exclave of Kaliningrad with the rest of the country, Putin said Moscow harbors no ill will towards its neighbors and that its actions are taken solely "in response" to external "unfriendly" behavior.

"We've always said that we don't have any -- I'd like to stress -- any bad intentions towards our neighbors. And, I would also advise them (neighbors) not to aggravate the situation. Do not impose any restrictions.

"We fulfill all our obligations and will fulfill further.

There is no need to aggravate situation or worsen our relations. All our actions, if they take place, our actions are taken exclusively in response to some kind of unfriendly actions toward the Russian Federation," he said.

Putin added that all sides must "think about normalizing relations and cooperate and to develop relations normally" with Russia. Without passing through neighboring nations, Russia's Kaliningrad exclave is only accessible to the rest of the country via the Baltic Sea, to which it has a coast.

Kaliningrad is situated between Poland and Lithuania, separated from Russia by the Baltic States on land, while a ban on Russian aviation through Europe's airspace limits air transportation to the region.
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Washington, March 4 (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 4th Mar, 2022 ) :Senior US senator Lindsey Graham called for "somebody in Russia" to assassinate President Vladimir Putin after Moscow's invasion of Ukraine in a televised interview Thursday evening.

"How does this end? Somebody in Russia has to step up to the plate... and take this guy out," the senator told conservative Fox news tv host Sean Hannity.

He repeated the call later in a series of tweets, saying "the only people who can fix this are the Russian people." "Is there a Brutus in Russia?" asked the senator, referring to one of Roman ruler Julius Caesar's assassins.

The former presidential candidate also wondered if "a more successful Colonel Stauffenberg" existed in the Russian military, alluding to the German officer whose bomb failed to kill Adolf Hitler in 1944.

"You would be doing your country -- and the world -- a great service," he added.

The senator, who has served in congress for over twenty years and has at times been a close ally to former president Donald Trump, had earlier in the day introduced a resolution condemning the Russian president and his military commanders for committing "war crimes" and "crimes against humanity."Ukraine says at least 350 civilians have been killed since Putin launched the invasion last week, and over 1 million have fled the country.

Moscow claims it does not target civilian areas, despite widespread evidence to the contrary.
Tarabo, Bangladesh, March 4 (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 4th Mar, 2022 ) :With wooden spinning wheels and hand-drawn looms, Bangladesh is painstakingly resurrecting a fabric once worn by Marie Antoinette and Jane Austen but long thought forever lost to history.

Dhaka muslin was stitched from threads so fine that popular folklore in European parlours held that a change in the light or a sudden rain shower would render its wearer apparently naked.

The textile once brought magnificent riches to the lands where it was spun.

But to revive it, botanists had to hunt halfway across the world and back for a plant believed gone from the face of the earth.

"Nobody knew how it was made," said Ayub Ali, a senior government official helping shepherd the revival project.

"We lost the famous cotton plant, which provided the special fine yarn for Dhaka muslin," he told AFP.

The muslin trade at one time helped turn the Ganges delta and what is now Bangladesh into one of the most prosperous parts of the world, historians say.

Flowing dress garments weaved from the cloth were worn by generations of the Mughal dynasty then ruling India before the fabric enchanted European aristocrats and other notables at the end of the 18th century.

A muslin shawl belonging to Austen -- supposedly hand-embroidered by the "Pride and Prejudice" author herself -- is on display at her former home in Hampshire, while a 1783 portrait of Marie Antoinette depicts the French queen in a muslin dress.

But the industry collapsed in the years after the 18th century conquest of the Bengal delta by the East India Company, paving the way for British colonial rule.

The mills and factories that sprung up in England after the industrial revolution produced much cheaper textiles, while European tariffs killed the foreign market for the delicate fabric.

The quest to bring back Bangladeshi muslin began with a painstaking five-year search for the specific flower used to weave the fabric, which only grows near the capital Dhaka.

"Muslin can't be woven without Phuti Carpus cotton. So to revive Dhaka Muslin, we needed to find this rare and possibly extinct cotton plant," said Monzur Hossain, the botanist who led the effort.

His team consulted a seminal book on plants by the 18th century Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus along with a later historical tome on Dhaka muslin to narrow down a candidate among 39 different wild species collected from around Bangladesh.

With local museums lacking any specimen of Dhaka muslin clothing, Hossain and his colleagues went to India, Egypt and Britain for samples.

At the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, curators showed them hundreds of pieces imported from Mughal-era Dhaka by East India Company merchants.

Genetic samples revealed that the missing plant was already in their hands, found by the botanists in the riverside town of Kapasia north of the capital.

"It was a 100 percent match, and some history books say Kapasia was one of the places where Phuti Carpus was grown," Hossain told AFP.

The plant is now being grown in experimental farms in an effort to raise yields and scale up production.

But the revival project immediately ran into another roadblock -- finding weavers nimble enough to weave the plant's ultra-fine threads.

In the two centuries since the muslin trade collapsed, Bangladesh has again become a world textile hub, albeit with an industry no longer catering to royalty or other international elites.

Instead Dhaka is now home to countless bustling factories of the global fast fashion trade, supplying huge brands such as H&M and Walmart, with its $35 billion in yearly apparel exports second only to China.

The country has no shortage of garment workers, but the muslin project needed to source artisans from the small cottage industry of spinners and weavers working with fragile threads.

They found candidates from villages around Dhaka where small workshops make intricate saris from jamdari, a fine cotton produced in a similar way to muslin.

"I don't how I did it. But it needs supreme concentration," said Mohsina Akhter, one of the spinners brought into the project.

"To do it you have to be in perfect mind. If you are angry or worried, you can't hand spin such a fine yarn." It took months for the team to master the craft, working with threads four or more times finer than jamdari, with two people taking eight hours of non-stop labour to weave an inch or less of cloth.

"It is like doing prayers. You need to have full concentration. Any lapse will tear up the yarn and set your work backwards," said Abu Taher, a weaver.

"The more I work, the more I wonder how our ancestors wove such a fine clothing. It is almost impossible," he told AFP.

The intense labour needed means that any garments stitched from Dhaka muslin will always remain a boutique product, but the government has found some tentative interest from established industry players.

"We want to make it a top global fashion item. It has a great history," said Parvez Ibrahim, whose family owns a factory supplying global fashion retailers.

"But to bring down cost, we have to speed up the production process. Otherwise, reviving Dhaka muslin won't mean anything," he told AFP.
(@FahadShabbir)

ISLAMABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 3rd Mar, 2022 ) :The 117th meeting of the India-Pakistan Permanent Indus Commission (PIC) was held in Islamabad from 1-3 March, 2022.

Under the relevant provisions of the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) 1960, the meeting takes place alternatively in Pakistan and India annually.

The Indian delegation comprising ten members was headed by the Indian Commissioner for Indus Waters Mr. P. K. Saxena, while Pakistan's delegation was led by Pakistan Commissioner for Indus Waters, Syed Muhammad Mehar Ali Shah' said a press release here.

The entire gamut of water-related issues between Pakistan and India were discussed in the meeting.

Pakistan reiterated its observations on the Kiru Hydroelectric project (HEP) located upstream river Chenab and India's new run-of-the-river small HEPs on Western rivers. Response to Pakistan's objections to Indian projects including Pakal Dul and Lower Kalnai was also sought.

The Indian side was also urged to communicate advance flood-flow information as per the provisions of the Treaty and the practice in vogue since 1989 until 2018.

Both sides reiterated their commitment to implement the Indus Waters Treaty in its true spirit and expressed the hope that the next meeting of the Commission would be held at an early date in India.
Prime Minister Imran Khan on Friday said the government was fulfilling the poor segment's dream of purchasing their own house

ISLAMABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 4th Mar, 2022 ) :Prime Minister Imran Khan on Friday said the government was fulfilling the poor segment's dream of purchasing their own house.

The prime minister, who performed the balloting of low-cost apartments of Farash Town, Islamabad, here in a simple ceremony, directed to ensure transparency in the allotment of houses.

He said in view of the growing population and to tackle the haphazard expansion of cities, the model of high-rise buildings should be adopted.

The Farash Town project of 2000 low-cost apartments was being completed through a joint venture between the Naya Pakistan Housing and Development Authority, and the Capital Development Authority (CDA).

With the price of apartment fixed at Rs 3.

2 million each, the government will provide a subsidy of Rs 300,000 on every apartment to reduce the per unit cost at Rs 2.9 million for the benefit of allottees.

The project was being competed on the special interest of Prime Minister Imran Khan to help the poor and middle classes to realize the dream of buying their own house in the Federal Capital.

Since the private banks were providing the facility of loans on easy installments for the purchase of apartments, the monthly installment of these apartments had come at Rs 13,000 as against the market rate of Rs 38,000.

Punjab Chief Minister Sardar Usman Buzdar, and Minister of State for Information and Broadcasting Farrukh Habib were also present in the ceremony.
WASHINGTON (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 04th March, 2022) Jurors in Kentucky acquitted the former police officer who was charged for firing ten bullets during a botched police raid that left Breonna Taylor dead, The New York Times reported.

Detective Brett Hankison, found not guilty on three counts of "wanton endangerment," told the jury on Thursday he fired into Taylor's apartment when he thought other officers were in danger after her boyfriend Kenneth Walker fired at what he thought were intruders.

Two police officers returned fire, hitting Taylor, a 26-year-old Black emergency room technician. Her death, along with the murder of Ahmaud Arbery by vigilantes and the killing of George Floyd by former Minnesota Police Officer Derek Chauvin, triggered nationwide protests in 2020.

Hankison ran from the doorway to the side of the building and fired 10 shots into Taylor's apartment through a window and sliding-glass door.

Three of the bullets entered Taylor's apartment and a neighboring unit where Chelsey Napper, then pregnant, her boyfriend and her 5-year-old son were sleeping.

Napper testified that it felt as if bullets were "flying everywhere" as she checked on her son and took refuge on the floor. The bullets struck Napper's kitchen table, a wall and a glass patio door.

None of the officers believed to be responsible for shooting and killing Taylor while she slept have been charged or held in any way responsible and accountable.
VIENNA (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 04th March, 2022) The safety systems of the six reactors at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant (NPP) were not affected by the fire, Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Rafael Grossi said on Friday, adding there was no radiation release.

"It is important to say that all the safety systems of the six reactors at the plant were not affected at all and that there has been no release of radioactive material ... importantly, in this regard, is the radiation monitoring systems ..

. are fully functional as well," Grossi told reporters.

Grossi added that he is in contact with both Russia and Ukraine at the diplomatic and technical levels on the incident at the nuclear power plant.

Following the incident, it is time for the IAEA to act, the head said, noting that Kiev has requested immediate assistance from the global watchdog.

"I have indicated to both  the Russian Federation and Ukraine  my availability and disposition to travel to Chernobyl as soon as possible (to ensure nuclear safety)," he added.
Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings (TEPCO), the operator of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, has been ordered by the Japanese Supreme Court to pay 1.39 billion yen ($12 million) in damages to about 3,600 people affected by the 2011 nuclear accident, the Kyodo news agency reported on Friday

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 04th March, 2022) Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings (TEPCO), the operator of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, has been ordered by the Japanese Supreme Court to pay 1.39 billion Yen ($12 million) in damages to about 3,600 people affected by the 2011 nuclear accident, the Kyodo news agency reported on Friday.

According to the news agency, four justices of the court's Second Petty Bench on Wednesday unanimously turned down an appeal made by the operator. The decision covers three-class action lawsuits.

The ruling marks the first time that TEPCO has been ordered to pay damages.

Meanwhile, another ruling on the state's responsibility with regards to the accident is still pending in the court.

On March 11, 2011, Japan was hit by a 9.0 magnitude offshore earthquake that triggered a 46-foot tsunami and a subsequent meltdown of three nuclear reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant in the Fukushima prefecture.

The disaster resulted in 22,200 people dead or missing.
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WASHINGTON (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 04th March, 2022) Leaders of the Indo-Pacific Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) agreed during a call on Thursday to form a new humanitarian assistance and disaster relief mechanism amid the ongoing situation in Ukraine, a joint readout of the call said.

"They agreed to stand up a new humanitarian assistance and disaster relief mechanism which will enable the Quad to meet future humanitarian challenges in the Indo-Pacific and provide a channel for communication as they each address and respond to the crisis in Ukraine," the joint readout said.

The leaders of the Quad, which consists of the United States, India, Japan and Australia, also addressed the crisis in Ukraine and its humanitarian repercussions, the Indian Foreign Ministry said.

"Developments in Ukraine were discussed in the meeting, including its humanitarian implications. The Prime Minister (Narendra Modi) emphasized the need to return to a path of dialogue and diplomacy," the ministry said in a statement.

Modi further encouraged "concrete and practical forms of cooperation within the Quad," in various domains, including humanitarian aid and disaster relief, debt sustainability, energy, connectivity, and capacity-building, the statement said.

The Quad was instigated in 2007 by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe as an informal consultation mechanism of four countries sharing the values of "a free and open Indo-Pacific region." The dialogue was paralleled by an annual joint military exercise, Exercise Malabar, with the diplomatic and military arrangement widely seen as a response to China's surging economic and military influence in the region. The Chinese government denounced the dialogue, lodging a formal diplomatic protest to its participants, regarding Quad as "Asian NATO."
(@FahadShabbir)

Forty-seven people have been killed following a Russian air strike in the northern Ukrainian city of Chernihiv, regional authorities said Friday

Kyiv, March 4 (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 4th Mar, 2022 ) :Forty-seven people have been killed following a Russian air strike in the northern Ukrainian city of Chernihiv, regional authorities said Friday.

"On March 3, 47 people (38 men and 9 women) were killed by a Russian air strike on a residential area in Chernihiv," local authorities said on Facebook.

Since it invaded Ukraine over a week ago, Russia has said that it does not target civilian areas, despite widespread evidence to the contrary.
Two candidates seeking to become the eighth president in University of South Florida history are moving forward in the search process. The USF Presidential Search Committee interviewed Interim President Rhea Law and Jeffrey Talley and voted to advance both candidates to the next round, which includes visits on each of USFs three campuses, followed by interviews with the USF Board of Trustees (BOT).

The campus visits will give the USF community an opportunity to interact with each candidate, share ideas and ask questions. The visits will take place on Monday, March 21, at the following times and locations:

9-10 a.m.

Sarasota-Manatee campus, Selby Auditorium: Rhea Law

Tampa campus, Traditions Hall, at the Gibbons Alumni Center: Jeffrey Talley

11:30 a.m. - 12:30 p.m.

St. Petersburg campus, University Student Center Ballroom: Rhea Law

Sarasota-Manatee campus, Selby Auditorium: Jeffrey Talley

2-3 p.m.

Tampa campus, Traditions Hall, at the Gibbons Alumni Center: Rhea Law

St. Petersburg campus, University Student Center Ballroom: Jeffrey Talley

Participants are invited to submit questions online ahead of the sessions through the USF Presidential Search website. Questions will also be solicited during the sessions from in-person participants.

Following each campus visit, participants will have the opportunity to share feedback online through the USF Presidential Search website. This feedback will be reviewed by the USF Board of Trustees prior to interviewing the candidates at 9 a.m. on Tuesday, March 22, in Traditions Hall, at the Gibbons Alumni Center on the Tampa campus. The Board will evaluate the candidates and may then name the next president, subject to confirmation by the Florida Board of Governors.

The campus visits and the candidate interviews will also be livestreamed on the USF Presidential Search website.

Below are bios for each candidate:

Rhea Law

Rhea Laws leadership experiences and qualifications are numerous and diverse. A USF alumna, she is the former chief executive officer and chair of the board of Fowler White Boggs, a Florida law firm. She led the merger of Fowler with a national firm, Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney, in 2014. She is one of the founding members of the USF Board of Trustees, where she spent five years as vice chair and four years as the first and only female chair.

She is also a founding member of the Board of Directors of the USF Law Alumni Society, served as a member of the USF Research Foundation Board and was named a 2018 Distinguished Alumna by the USF Alumni Association. She chaired the Board of Directors for the Health Professions Conferencing Corporation with the USF Center for Advanced Medical Learning and Simulation (CAMLS). In 2018 she was inducted as an honorary member of the USF Chapter of the National Academy of Inventors in recognition of her support of research and innovation at USF. In 2013, she was granted an Honorary Doctor of Medicine Degree from the USF Morsani College of Medicine. She formerly served on the Board of Directors for the Tampa Bay Technology Forum and the H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center and Research Institute Board of Directors and currently serves on Moffitts National Advisory Board.

Law earned her undergraduate degree in management from USF, putting herself through school while working as the university research project administrator for the Office of Sponsored Research. She then earned her terminal degree in law at Stetson University College of Law, where she later served as chair of their Board of Overseers, helping to select both a dean of the College of Law and president of the university.

Jeffrey Talley

Jeffrey Talley is a senior executive with experience in military, academic, corporate and government positions. He has experience in large-scale organizations, public-private partnerships, national and cybersecurity, environmental and energy sustainability, disaster emergency management, infrastructure resilience, data analytics and technology, R&D and higher education.

He currently serves as a member of the U.S. Global Leadership Coalition based in Washington D.C., an organization that works to strengthen tools of national security. He also serves as president and CEO of The Public Private Partnership Initiatives (P3i) Group, a management consulting firm for government, business, not-for-profit and academia. His military career included duty in the United States, Korea, Kuwait and Iraq. His service culminated in 2012 when he was appointed to the rank of lieutenant general and to a four-year term as the 32nd chief of Army Reserve and seventh commanding general of the U.S. Army Reserve Command  an organization of over 215,000 soldiers and civilians and 134 general officers and executives, with an annual operating budget of $9 billion, and activities in over 30 countries, including all states and territories. He has received numerous medals and awards, including two Army Distinguished Medals and three Bronze Star Medals. He retired from the military in 2016 and was recognized by the U.S. Senate on June 28, 2016, with "Tribute to Lieutenant General Jeffrey W. Talley", as reflected in the congressional record.

Talley holds a Ph.D. (Civil and Environmental Engineering) from Carnegie Mellon University, an Executive M.B.A. from the University of Oxford, an M.S.E. (Environmental Engineering and Science) from The Johns Hopkins University, an M.L.A. (Liberal Arts  History/Philosophy) from Washington University in St. Louis, an M.S.S. (Strategic Studies) from the U.S. Army War College, an M.A. (Religious Studies) from Assumption College, and a B.S. (Forestry - Natural Resource Management) from Louisiana State University. He is a registered Professional Engineer (P.E.), a Board-Certified Environmental Engineer (BCEE) in Sustainability, and a Diplomate, Water Resources Engineer (D.WRE).
USM Celebrating Womens History Month in March

Thu, 03/03/2022 - 11:32am | By: Ivonne Kawas

In celebration of Women's History Month, the Committee on Services and Resources for Women (CSRW) at The University of Southern Mississippi (USM) is sponsoring and co-sponsoring events and activities that commemorate the role of women in history, culture and society on the Hattiesburg campus, including a hybrid format.

As designated by the National Womens History Alliance, the yearly theme for Women's History Month is "Providing Healing, Promoting Hope. The announcement states that, it is both a tribute to the ceaseless work of caregivers and frontline workers during this ongoing pandemic and also a recognition of the thousands of ways that women of all cultures have provided both healing and hope throughout history, in our community.

Dr. Candice Salyers, chair of CSRW and professor of dance, says USM's programming honors the contributions of women artists, healers, historians, activists, and entrepreneurs to the health and wellbeing of society. This month offers us an opportunity to come together across disciplines to acknowledge and reflect upon issues of importance in the lives of women.

Women's History Month events will happen throughout March, kicking off on Thursday, March 3 from 12:151:00 p.m. at the Liberal Arts Building, Room 101 with a panel discussion titled, Women Healers Through the Ages: Medieval Midwives to Mississippi Nurses by Dr. Courtney Luckhardt, Associate Professor of Medieval History, Dr. Deanne Stephens, Professor of History and Mrs. Jamie Stanfield, Health Librarian, who will be exploring women's health and healing through the ages. This event is co-sponsored by the History Womens Caucus and the Center for the Study of the Gulf South.

On Friday, March 4 from 1011:00 a.m. in a virtual presentation via Zoom, Dr. Aisha Johnson, Assistant Professor and Program Director of Archives and Records Management at North Carolina Central University, will give a lecture titled, "Relentless Advocacy as Purpose." An in-person viewing of the presentation is scheduled in Cook Librarys Meeting Room, LIB 209A.

Dr. Johnson is the author of "The African American Struggle for Library Equality: The Untold Story of the Julius Rosenwald Fund Library Program," which unveils the almost forgotten philanthropic efforts of Julius Rosenwald, former president of Sears, Roebuck, Co. and an elite business man. Rosenwald simply desired to improve, the well-being of mankind through access to education.

On Tuesday, March 8 from 5:306:30 p.m. at Gonzales Auditorium, Liberal Arts Building 108, a Louisiana native currently living in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Southwest Virginia, E. Gabrielle Walker, will give her 2021-22 Baird Fellowship Lecture titled, When We Were Freshmen: Judson College and the Rise of the New Baptist Woman.

Walker, who is studying post-Reconstruction Southern women, is working on a dissertation titled, 'If These Walls Could Speak': Judson College and the New Baptist Woman, 1890-1930." It explores the ways in which Progressive Era ideology made a lasting impact on Southern Baptist white women attending a Southern Baptist college. Collegiate experiences led to their questioning traditional Southern Baptist thought patterns and expansively interpreting religion to fit a modern, scientific worldview.

Women's History Month programming events continue as follows:

March 21: Peggy Jean Connor Grant Presentations featuring the research of Nicole Caulfield, Ava Ferguson, and Dr. Hsiaopei Lee, from 121 p.m., Center for Faculty Development, International Building, Room 319.

March 29: Historian and Author Carol Lipscomb presents, "The Lady Makes Boots: Enid Justin and the Nocona Boot Company," from 12 p.m., Liberal Arts Building, Room 204

March 30: Womens History Month Dance Concert, from 12:301:00 p.m., Theatre and Dance Building, outdoor stage.

Established in 1984, the CSRW, an interdisciplinary group of USM-affiliated individuals interested in women's issues on campus and in the local and global community, has coordinated Womens History Month activities at the University through the presentation of public cultural events and conferences with renowned guest speakers; creating a womens and gender studies library; and providing funding for research by faculty and students related to gender and women.

Visit the USM Calendar to see this years Womens History Month scheduled events.
This week on our last episode of Celebrate Today we wish all students well on their finals and end-of-semester struggles. It's a crazy time of year so good luck and may the force be with you!
Bishops from Malaysia, Singapore, and Brunei - who form a single episcopal body - have called on Russia, Ukraine, and all interested parties to end the madness of violence and war and come to the table of peace and justice.

By Robin Gomes



The Catholic Bishops' Conference of Malaysia, Singapore, and Brunei (CBCMSB) has expressed deep concern over the war in Ukraine and its impact on global peace and justice, affecting the lives of people everywhere.

Lenten fast, prayer

We join the call of Pope Francis to all Catholics and people of faith and goodwill, to dedicate this first day of Lent, Ash Wednesday and beyond, as days of fasting and prayer for peace and justice in Ukraine and in the world, wrote CBCMSB president, Bishop Sebastian Francis of Penang (Malaysia) in an appeal posted on the webpage of the bishops on March 2.

The bishops body, which brings together the nine dioceses of Malaysia and the single dioceses of both Singapore and Brunei, said they were joining the chorus of Christian churches and leaders across Asia, together with all people of faith and goodwill, in humbly appealing for peace and justice. They said, We call upon Russia, Ukraine, and all interested parties to put a stop to the madness of violence and war and come to the table of peace and justice.

War benefits no one

They argued that in the long term, wars do not benefit anyone. On the contrary, it only brings destruction and leaves a trail of immense suffering and displacements.

The Church leaders pointed out that mutual respect, acceptance of differences among all sides, and integrity of nations, are crucial to lasting peace and justice for mutual co-existence. Wherever there is conflict," the bishops said, the world urgently needs to put in place a recovery plan including now for the peoples of Ukraine; and strengthening every effort at peace and reconciliation.

The Churches of Malaysia, Singapore, and Brunei prayed that the Lord touch the hearts of all leaders, decision-makers, and the people of God, to stop this war and establish peace and justice.

Popes peace efforts

Pope Francis has been closely following the developments in Ukraine even before Russias large-scale military invasion of its neighbour on February 24. He has made several appeals for peace through dialogue and negotiation.

Sensing the winds of war with Russias buildup at Ukraines border, he used his weekly General Audience of February 23 to appeal to those with political responsibility to examine their consciences seriously before God, who is the God of peace and not of war, who wants us to be brothers and not enemies.

He thus invited all to observe March 2, Ash Wednesday, as a day of fasting and prayer for peace in the region, saying Jesus taught us that the diabolical senselessness of violence is answered with God's weapons, with prayer and fasting. He added, May the Queen of Peace preserve the world from the madness of war.

The day after the invasion, the Holy Father chose to visit the Russian Embassy to the Holy See in Rome, where he spoke for over half an hour with Ambassador Alexander Avdeev, expressing his concerns about the war.

Malaysia, Singapore, and Brunei were among the 141 countries who voted overwhelmingly at the UN General Assembly on Wednesday demanding an immediate halt to Moscows aggression against Ukraine and the withdrawal of all Russian troops.
Ukraine says Russian forces have seized the largest nuclear plant in Europe amid mounting concern about the ongoing Russian invasion. The use of cluster bombs in the offensive has added to concerns, with many refugees fleeing, including the Hungarian Ukrainian border

By Stefan J. Bos  Zahony, Hungary

Women and children are among the many desperate refugees arriving here at the Hungarian-Ukrainian border. More are expected as Ukrainian authorities say several people have been killed and injured when the fire broke out at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant following a Russian attack.

The fire has since been extinguished, and officials say the site is safe. Yet, the West has condemned Russia for what it views as a horrific and reckless act. And Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky says the attack could have caused the equivalent of six Chernobyls, referencing the worlds worst nuclear disaster, which occurred in Soviet Ukraine in 1986.

Inhumane attacks

Additionally, the NATO military alliance secretary-general, Jens Stoltenberg, has accused Russia of violating the convention banning cluster bombs, which came into force in 2010. We have seen the use of cluster bombs, and we have seen reports of the use of other types of weapons which would be in violation of international law, he told reporters in Brussels. And of course, NATO and NATO allies and partners are collecting information and monitoring very closely what is going in Ukraine. So I welcome the decision by the International Criminal Court to open an investigation into this. Because we have to make sure that [Russian President Vladimir] Putin and the president of Belarus [Alexander Lukashenko] are held accountable for what they do.

Stoltenberg continued, This is brutality, this is inhumane, and this is violating international law. And we also have to make sure that the International Criminal Court really looks into this.

Praying for Ukraine and refugees

The attacks underscore concerns among refugees about the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Many people have come to Zahony at the Hungarian, Ukrainian border. Church volunteers, including Peter Kiss, are trying to provide spiritual and practical support. We provide food and drinks such as water to the people. There is so much uncertainty among those who flee. You can see it in their eyes. I hope this war will be over soon, said Peter Kiss of the Budapest-based Faith Church, a Pentecostal congregation. We pray every day for Ukraine and the refugees, he stressed.

His words come as scores of people have been killed since Thursday by Russian airstrikes in Ukraines northern city of Chernihiv.

Listen to Stefan Bos' report

Despite the heavy fighting, authorities say Russias estimated 200,000 troops involved in the offensive only managed to seize one city so far, Kherson in southern Ukraine.

Moscow invaded Ukraine on three fronts, the north, east, and south. The fighting continues as Europes worst conflict since World War Two rapidly escalates. That has added to international concerns that many more people will flee the troubled nation. The United Nations says more than a million people have fled Ukraine so far, and many more refugees and displaced persons are expected.
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Vietnam Briefing follows the progress of Vietnams commitment of net-zero at COP26, including eight areas that the government is required to focus on. The government is likely to release further decrees on implementation including investment incentives for foreign businesses.

Following Vietnams commitment to net-zero at the Conference of the Parties (COP26), the government released Notice No 30/TB-VPCP on guidance on implementation.

Vietnams Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh held a meeting with the National Streeting Committee and urged ministries to develop programs and plans to implement Vietnams commitments at COP 26.

Particularly, the Notice highlights eight areas that government agencies will be required to focus on:

Transitioning from fossil fuel to green/clean renewable energy sources;

Reduction of greenhouse gas emissions;

Reduction of methane, particularly in agriculture and waste management;

Use of electric vehicles (EVs);

Sustainable management including using forests and increasing trees to offset carbon emissions;

R&D for construction material usage and urban development for sustainable development;

PR campaigns for public and businesses to increased awareness and support for the governments COP26 commitments; and

Step up adoption of digital economy to address climate change.

With this, the Ministry of Industry and Trade (MoIT), the Ministry of National Resources and Environment (MONRE), and relevant government agencies are expected to release further guidance on implementation.

While the revised Law on Environment will go to some degree to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions and is consistent with COP26, implementation will be key. Low or minimal emissions will play a major role if Vietnam wants to change from fossil fuels to low emissions.

To this effect, the government is likely to issue a new Decree on mitigating greenhouse gases while protecting the ozone layer, as well as setting up committees to promote laws and policies, admin reforms, and so on for climate-proof infrastructure and renewable energy.

The government also plans to complete and upgrade the National Strategy on Climate Change including net-zero emissions and reducing emissions of methane gas.

Vietnam has asked for international assistance in meeting its climate change commitment. To this effect, the US is funding US$36 million in Vietnams Low Emission Energy Program. Under this project, USAID will help Vietnam transform towards clean energy using advanced technologies while improving energy performance and increasing competition in the energy sector.

To achieve net-zero Vietnam will need to reduce carbon emissions, reduce pollution, and implement higher energy optimization in practical terms. For example, a factory in Ho Chi Minh Citys District 9, has already started implementing these measures even before Vietnam signed a commitment. It installed a solar power system on the roof, rearranged factory corridors to allow for light, as well as used lights with higher luminescence efficiency.

Power Development Plan 8

Vietnams Power Development Plan 8 (PDP8) for 2021 with a vision to 2045 was supposed to be released in 2020. Initial drafts included a plan to incorporate renewable energy, however, another draft raised the countrys coal capacity to 40GW by 2030.

After PM Chinhs commitment at COP26, sources indicate that the current PDP8 draft is further being revised to reflect Vietnams commitment. In addition, to deal with overcapacity, Deputy Prime Minister Le Van Thanh has asked relevant government agencies to reduce solar energy capacity and increase off-shore wind capacity to increase efficiency.

An approval of the draft is likely sometime in the first quarter of 2022.

Key drivers

Vietnams commitment to climate change has been spurred by the governments commitment to energy availability as well public demand for clean air. Vietnam has been facing air pollution issues with Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City prone to pollution due to rapid growth. The solar and wind industry have prompted policymakers to make aggressive policies on climate change.

While Vietnam is one of the leading countries in solar at wind capacity among ASEAN countries, overcapacity and lack of infrastructure and regulations have hindered some of this growth.

Challenges

There will be challenges, as Vietnam is a rapidly growing economy. Electricity demand is projected to increase by 9 percent annually to 2025. Vietnam currently has diverse energy sources such as coal, oil, natural gas, hydropower, and renewable energy. Experts have pointed out that renewable energy will play an important role to meet these commitments, while funding required for the renewable energy sector is estimated at around US$23.7 billion by 2030. This represents opportunities for foreign investors, however, the government will have to ease obstacles related to capital, complex regulations, supporting industries, grid capacity, and qualified human resources among others.

Nevertheless, Vietnams commitment at COP26 sets the right tone and shows that the government is serious about climate change and energy resources. Foreign investment is likely to be welcomed, though reforms on regulations and incentives will be necessary. The finalized PDP8 will be a starting point for this.
Hong Kong hit a record 56,000 COVID-19 cases on Thursday, but the citys leader denied a wholesale lockdown was looming.

Earlier this week, domestic media reported that such a lockdown was imminent in efforts to enforce the Hong Kong government's recent decision to conduct compulsory mass testing for each resident this month.

The Sing Tao Daily, Hong Kongs oldest Chinese language newspaper, reported that the testing would start March 17, followed by a lockdown, citing unidentified sources.

But for the second time in recent weeks, Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam reiterated there would not be a "wholesale" lockdown, despite soaring cases of the omicron variant of the coronavirus that continues to overwhelm the citys health system, local media reported.

The mixed messaging comes after Health Secretary Sophia Chan told reporters on Monday that authorities were still considering a lockdown plan.

Dr. David Owens, an honorary assistant clinical professor at Hong Kong University, said having a lockdown in mid-March would make no sense.

The timing of lockdown in this context depends on the strategy and reasons. If the goal is to drastically cut transmission to bring the epidemic under control, then the optimal time was two months ago. If we were to do it now, there may be a small benefit, but even then delaying two weeks would reduce that small benefit further, so it makes no sense, Owens told VOA.

Several health experts have agreed that the peak of Hong Kongs fifth wave, caused by the highly transmissible omicron variant, is due to be reached in the first weeks of March.

My point to this is that we are already living with COVID-19. By then and to pursue zero-COVID when you already effectively have population immunity makes no sense, Owens added.

Since the pandemic began two years ago, Hong Kong has adopted a zero-COVID strategy, aligned with Beijing's effort to control infections across China. The strategy has had some success, with authorities quickly clamping down on rare outbreaks by contact tracing, social restrictions, mass testing and quarantine.

But this year alone, Hong Kong has seen more cases than 2020 and 2021 combined, leaving authorities in an unprecedented health crisis.

On Thursday, Hong Kong recorded a daily high of 56,827 new infections, with 144 deaths. Three-hundred-and-50-thousand-557 positive cases have been recorded, with 1,312 deaths at last report.

Concerned residents say they believe a mainland-style lockdown could be announced soon. China enforced harsh lockdowns at the beginning of the pandemic in efforts to contain cases, with streets empty and citizens prohibited from leaving home.

Many Hong Kong residents have been shopping frantically in supermarkets in recent weeks, stocking up on food and resources, leaving shelves empty.

On Thursday, Dr. Chui Tak-yi, Hong Kongs food and health secretary, played down fears of a supply shortage in the city, telling reporters there was no need for residents to resort panic buying.

According to a survey, however, 90% of the responses would welcome a citywide lockdown, coupled with the universal testing plan. The pro-Beijing political party, the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong, conducted the survey and received responses from more than 13,000 citizens, The Standard newspaper reported.

Ben Cowling, chair professor of epidemiology at the University of Hong Kongs School of Public Health, tweeted that if health authorities immediately imposed a lockdown, it would save more lives than doing so during the mass testing dates.

A lockdown now for 2 weeks would save many more lives than a lockdown in late March that is implemented to facilitate contact tracing during mass testing cycles. More stringent social distancing now, for two weeks, would slow down transmission as we approach the peak, Cowling tweeted on Monday.

Late last month, Lam announced a universal testing program for the entire 7.4 million population for March, with each resident undergoing three tests.

Local media have reported the universal testing plan will begin on March 26 and last nine days. City health experts have said March is too early because the infection numbers are still high.

Professor Gabriel Leung is the dean of medicine at the University of Hong Kong, HKU. Citing data in an updated study from the school, he said that if the government wants to achieve a zero-COVID policy, it would be better for mass testing to begin next month instead.

If compulsory universal PCR testing were to be implemented under dynamic zero-covid policy, it should be deployed mid-to late-April when case numbers will already be at very low levels in order to truly achieve elimination or zero covid, Leung tweeted.

Already overworked and short-staffed, one health worker at Hong Kongs United Christian Hospital told VOA she was afraid of the mass testing plan.

I am so afraid of the universal testing program. We dont have enough manpower for that. The government is so keen on a zero-COVID strategy. To me, it is a zero-medical staff strategy. The morale is worsened every day in the front line.

February saw shocking scenes outside several Hong Kong hospitals, as dozens of sick patients lay in beds in cold weather waiting to be admitted. According to recent data from the Hong Kong Hospital Authority, public hospitals in the city were close to full capacity.

The study by medical researchers at the University of Hong Kong suggests the city could face nearly 7,000 deaths in the next three months if hospitals were to be overburdened.

The overflow of Hong Kongs medical facilities has led to the city contracting construction firms from China to build isolation and treatment facilities in Hong Kong, with space for a reported 50,000 beds.
Ukraine says Russian military forces have seized the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Europes largest. Plus the United Nations Security Council meets again to discuss the latest developments as the U.N. Human Rights Council wraps up its debate on the war.
Argentina has signed a $45 billion agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to help restructure and delay its debt payments.

Negotiations about revamping the countrys debt payments have taken almost two years. Thats leaving Argentina now racing to finalize the deal with the IMF ahead of an essential cliff payment deadline this month, which could amount to about $2.8 billion.

Argentinas finance minister and chief negotiator for the IMF, Martin Guzman, says the bill may be sent to the lower house of congress next week.

If the bill is approved in congress, President Alberto Fernandez says payments would start being made in 2026 and would be completed by 2034. While the government said it will replace a $57-billion loan from the IMF 2018 bailout in January 2023, IMF head Kristalina Georgieva says there is still much more work to be done, referring to potential political opposition in congress.

The IMF says the executive board will meet once the Argentine National Congress signs off on a bill to assent to the economic and financial program embodied in the Memorandum of Economic and Financial Policies.

"The law that enables the treatment of the Memorandum of Understanding with the IMF for its approval or rejection will formally enter into this chamber," the head of Argentinas lower house said in a statement on Wednesday.

The agreement contains measures to promote growth and protect social programs as part of a 30-month Extended Fund Facility to confront the countrys most pressing economic challenges, according to a statement from the IMF on Thursday.

Some information in this report came from the Associated Press and Reuters.
Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, long friendly with Moscow, took pains Thursday to explain to his ruling party and government why his administration joined dozens of other countries in co-sponsoring this week's U.N. resolution condemning Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

"We do not support the use of force and readiness to use force or the threatened use of force," he said in an audio message that also expressed the hope that Russia would "understand" his decision.

He said that Cambodia could not remain silent as Russia countered the Southeast Asian nation's own policies and "the situation in Ukraine worsens," according to a transcript of the message released to the public by the office of the spokesperson of the Royal Government of Cambodia on Thursday night.

Hun Sen also said his government was working to address the crisis within the framework of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, of which Cambodia is chair this year.

"We are in discussions with other ASEAN members to issue a statement calling for a cease-fire, because without a cease-fire, human life and property will continue to die and be destroyed, making negotiations impossible," he said. "We must, therefore, decide to call for a cease-fire, which is desirable for negotiations to find a solution. This is on behalf of ASEAN."

Hun Sen said that Cambodia needed to act within the framework of Cambodia's own policies, as well as those of ASEAN.

Nearly 100 countries co-sponsored the resolution, which was introduced in the General Assembly after Russia vetoed a similar motion at the U.N. Security Council last week.

Of the 193 U.N. member states, 181 countries voted on the resolution Wednesday. Among them, 141 countries supported the resolution condemning Moscow. Five countries  Russia and its allies Belarus, Syria, North Korea and Eritrea  opposed it. Thirty-five countries abstained, including China, a close ally of Cambodia's; India; and ASEAN members Vietnam and Laos.

Russian troops invaded Ukraine on February 24, bringing the capital, Kyiv, and other cities under siege. More than 1 million Ukrainians have fled to neighboring countries, and if the conflict does not end soon, millions more will be forced to flee Ukraine, according to Filippo Grandi, the U.N. high commissioner for refugees.

Hun Sen, who has been prime minister since 1985, said that many countries were condemning the war in Ukraine, and Cambodia needed to take a clear position. He added that at the request of Japan, France, Germany and the United States, Cambodia decided to co-sponsor the resolution with other countries as a matter of necessity.

Hun Sen added that while he understood the move would anger Russia, Cambodia, as a sovereign state, has the right to act and must "protect the truth." It also has a responsibility as a U.N. member.

"Hopefully, our Russian friend will understand, because what has been done in the past is contrary to our Cambodian policy on foreign policy, in which we do not support the separation of a state. This is the first point," Hun Sen said. "Second, we do not support the use of force and readiness to use force or the threatened use of force."

The U.S. Embassy in Phnom Penh welcomed the statement. "The United States is pleased to see Cambodia and Singapore join us and other nations in co-sponsoring a resolution deploring Russian aggression and demanding an end to its unprovoked war against Ukraine," it said.

"The resolution was supported by most ASEAN nations. The world is taking action to hold Russia accountable."

Singaporean Foreign Minister Vivian Balakrishnan on Monday imposed rare unilateral sanctions on Russia, describing the attack on Ukraine as "an unprovoked military invasion of a sovereign state." Singapore is also an ASEAN member.

The Cambodia National Rescue Party, the exiled opposition party, also condemned the Russian aggression.

"I believe that whenever we see one country invading another, we cannot take a middle position," CNRP acting President Sam Rainsy told VOA Khmer late Wednesday. "We must condemn the country that invaded" and "help protect" the affected country if possible.

Sam Rainsy also called on democratic countries to stand up for the protection of democracy. He praised the spirit of the Ukrainian people fighting to protect the freedom and sovereignty of the country.
China has issued a call urging "all sides" to ensure the safety of nuclear facilities in Ukraine, reflecting the nation's unease over Russia's shelling of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, Europe's largest.

"We will monitor the situation and call on all sides to exercise restraint, avoid escalation and ensure the safety of relevant nuclear facilities," the Chinese Foreign Ministry said following the overnight attack, which sparked a fire at the Ukrainian compound.

The foreign ministry spokesman, Wang Wenbin, refused to condemn the Russian attack or call it an invasion. That is consistent with the neutral stance that China has adopted on the issue at the recent meetings at the United Nations.

China does not want to be seen as a country condoning any military act that would endanger safety at a nuclear power plant, said a Chinese scholar who did not wish to be identified.

"We have our own technology for nuclear plants, the Hualong One technology, which we have begun to export," he said.

China signed an agreement with Argentina in January to build the Atucha III nuclear power plant at a cost of $8 billion. It will be the second major export of Hualong One technology, a rival to the U.S. Westinghouse technology, after Beijing built a nuclear power plant in Pakistan under the Belt and Road Initiative.

China was among the first to ask the International Atomic Energy Agency to take immediate steps to ensure the safety of nuclear facilities in Ukraine amid the Russian invasion. Ukraine has 15 nuclear reactors at four sites.

"China is concerned about the safety, security and safeguards of nuclear facilities in Ukraine," China's envoy at the IAEA, Wang Qun Wang, was quoted as saying by the Chinese mission in Vienna.

Speaking at the IAEA meeting on Wednesday, the envoy said, "The responsibility for nuclear safety and security rests with sovereign states, and related issues should be handled through established procedures.

"We hope the relevant parties will act cautiously to avoid causing man-made nuclear safety and security incidents," he said. "The IAEA should also take full consideration of the security situation in Ukraine in accordance with its mandate and properly address the issue of security protection in Ukraine."

Russian soldiers earlier took over Ukraine's decommissioned Chernobyl power plant, site of a nuclear accident in 1986, raising fears about the safety of other nuclear facilities in Ukraine.

In another significant move, the China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank has put a hold on its financial plans in Russia and Belarus, a close ally of Moscow. Those plans are now under review.

In a statement, the Beijing-headquartered AIIB said bank management was taking steps to safeguard its financial position in light of the evolving economic and financial situation.

"Under these circumstances, and in the best interests of the bank, management has decided that all activities relating to Russia and Belarus are on hold and under review."


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On Healthy Living this week, doping and the impact of performance-enhancing substances. And Dr. Mohamed Diop of Africa's Regional Antidoping Organization discusses doping on the continent and what is being done to tackle the illegal practice. Plus, the consumption of processed food is increasing in Mozambique's rural areas despite access to fresh produce. These stories and more in this week's program. S2, E139
Some 2,000 Nigerians who fled Ukraine after the Russian invasion last week are on their way back to Nigeria. Nigerian authorities say 8,000 Nigerians were in Ukraine when Russia attacked, most of them students.

A flight from Romania carrying the first batch of 415 evacuees arrived at the private wing of the Abuja International Airport around 7 am Friday.

The evacuees filed out of the aircraft into a waiting room, where they met with officials of the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), foreign affairs ministry and the health ministry.

Orunor Otobrise, a final-year student of medicine who was studying in Ukraine, was just three months short of graduation.

"We didn't expect the situation to escalate, it was a surprise, we went to sleep and we woke up with the sound of bombs and realized that certain cities had been missiled (hit with missiles)," Otobrise said.

At the airport, the evacuees were tested for COVID-19 and given $100 cash to pay for transportation to their homes.

Nigerian authorities say hundreds more were expected to arrive later in the day.

They say they are looking to evacuate around 8,000 Nigerians many of whom fled Ukraine for Hungary, Poland, Romania, and Slovakia. The majority are young people who were studying at Ukrainian universities.

Gabriel Tanimu Aduda, a permanent secretary at the ministry of foreign affairs, is optimistic about bringing them home.

"Everything is in place and we're trusting God that this evacuation will continue safely. So we're expecting that at the end of today, we'll have brought in close to a thousand again," Aduda said.

Olu Dominic, also a final year student who was in the group that arrived Friday morning, says he hopes to be able to continue his education.

"We're hoping that things are a little bit settled in Ukraine so we can maybe complete our studies online."

Aduda said he was worried about some 300 students trapped in Sumy, a city in northeastern Ukraine that was hit by severe Russian bombing.

"So many [foreign] nationals are help up in Sumy. Nigeria alone, we have 366 students in Sumy so the moment that [a] safe corridor is created, our mission will be to receive them and being them back home," Aduda said.

The United Nations says more than a million people have fled Ukraine since the Russian invasion began.

For now, many of the evacuees are happy to be back home but worry about the friends and lives they left behind.
The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency said Friday that the reactors at Ukraine's largest nuclear plant had not been affected during a Russian attack on the site in the early hours Friday that shocked the globe and raised fears of a possible nuclear accident.

"We confirm through our contacts at the regulator, but also directly from plant  we were able to confirm that no security or safety systems have been compromised, neither of the reactors themselves have been hit by this projectile," IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi told an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council.

Unusually, the nuclear watchdog chief spoke by video connection from an airplane. He said he was on a flight to Iran to deal with outstanding nuclear issues there.

Grossi told council members that Ukraine has four large nuclear sites, 15 reactors and associated facilities, as well as the defunct Chernobyl site, which experienced a catastrophic meltdown in 1986.

He did not name Russia when describing the attack, saying only that "a projectile" hit a building adjacent to the block of reactors at Zaporizhzhia and sparked the fire, which was later extinguished.

"After this, the operation of and at the plant continued," he said. "We consider from a technical point of view that operation continues normally, although as I have stressed to the board of governors of the IAEA, there is no, of course, 'normalcy' about this situation when there are military forces, of course, in charge of the site."

Grossi said his agency was in contact with the Ukrainian government, its nuclear regulators, and the company and operators at the Zaporizhzhia site.

"At the same time, today, I indicated in the morning my readiness to travel, as soon as practicable, to Chernobyl in order to consult, of course, with our Ukrainian counterparts, but also if necessary and when necessary to the forces in charge, in order to establish a stable framework so the observance of the basic principles of safety and security, starting with the physical integrity of the facilities, can be observed," Grossi said.

He emphasized that any such mission would be strictly to deal with the safety and security of the facilities, not the political or diplomatic dimensions.

Violation of international law

"Attacks on nuclear power facilities are contrary to international humanitarian law," U.N. Undersecretary for Political and Peacebuilding Affairs Rosemary DiCarlo told the council. "Specifically, Article 56 of Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions states that: 'Works or installations containing dangerous forces, namely dams, dikes and nuclear electrical generating stations, shall not be made the object of attack, even where these objects are military objectives, if such attack may cause the release of dangerous forces and consequent severe losses among the civilian population.'"

DiCarlo said it is critical that all parties work with the IAEA to establish a proper framework to ensure the safe, secure and reliable operation of the country's nuclear power plants, as well as to grant swift and safe passage to IAEA personnel if they need to enter Ukraine.

Council members expressed concern that nuclear sites must not become part of the conflict.

"Russia's attack last night put Europe's largest nuclear power plant at grave risk," U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield said. "It was incredibly reckless and dangerous, and it threatened the safety of civilians across Russia, Ukraine and Europe."

Russian Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia denied that his country's military had shelled Zaporizhzhia, saying such accusations were part of a "massive anti-Russian propaganda campaign." He said, without offering evidence, that Ukrainian nationalist saboteurs orchestrated the attack and wanted Moscow to be blamed for it.

"The danger to the civilian population of Ukraine is not emanating from Russian troops. It is coming from Ukrainian nationalists who are holding the civilian populations of a number of large cities hostage and carrying out acts of sabotage and provocation, one of which is what we are now discussing," Nebenzia said. "After that, they try to blame Russia for all of it."

Possible war crimes

Ukraine's envoy said Russia has retaliated against the people of Ukraine with war crimes and crimes against humanity that it no longer tries to hide.

"Indeed, every day provides us with newer and newer evidence that it is not only Ukraine under Russian attack, it is Europe. It is the entire world. It is humanity," Sergiy Kyslytsya said. "And finally, it is the future of the next generations."

Kyslytsya renewed his government's appeal for a no-fly zone over Ukraine, saying he had sent a letter to the U.N. Security Council president regarding it.

"In this regard, we request you to consider the issue of protection of nuclear power plants and other critical infrastructure in Ukraine," the envoy added. "Urgent discussion on establishing a ban on all flights in the airspace of Ukraine should be a top priority for the Security Council."

Asked by reporters after the meeting if a no-fly zone was possibile, British Ambassador Barbara Woodward said that such zones require guarantees.

"And in order to guarantee it, NATO would have to put troops in the air, and that would or could bring them into direct conflict with Russian troops," she said. "So, it would be a very high risk of escalating the conflict, and what we want to see is the de-escalation of the conflict and for Russian troops to go home and for Putin to end the war."

There have been "thousands of casualties," the U.N. said Friday, and more than 1.2 million people have fled Ukraine for safety as the Russian military continues to intensify its offensive.

Earlier Friday, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres spoke by phone with Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu. They discussed liaison mechanisms for the safe evacuation of civilians and coordination to deliver humanitarian aid to all those who need it through out Ukraine, Guterres' spokesperson said.
Even before Russian forces shelled the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, sparking a fire in a nearby building early Friday, Ukraines main nuclear regulatory agency had sought immediate assistance from the international nuclear agency.

International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi said Wednesday he had received a letter from the State Nuclear Regulatory Inspectorate of Ukraine (SNRIU) asking for "immediate assistance to ensure the safety of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant and other nuclear facilities in the country."

Grossi said the IAEA had begun consultations on the request.

The letter submitted to IAEA by the Ukraine agency said the staff at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant had been kept at the site since Russian military forces took control of it a week ago. The agency said the staff members were facing psychological pressure and moral exhaustion, Grossi said.

He cautioned that the staff must be allowed to rest and rotate schedules so that their crucial work can be carried out safely and securely.

Early Friday, Russian forces shelled Europes largest nuclear plant, Zaporizhzhia, sparking a fire in a building outside the plant, Ukraines state emergency service said on Friday. The plant produces about 25% of Ukraines power.

Initially, the mayor of the nearby town of Enerhodar said the plant was on fire. But a short time later, the plant director told Ukraine 24 television that the fire had started outside the building perimeter and that security seemed to be restored to the facility, according to Reuters.

IAEA Director General Grossi said the event highlights once again why he has repeatedly stressed that any military or other action that could threaten the safety or security of Ukraines nuclear power plants must be avoided.

I remain gravely concerned about the deteriorating situation in Ukraine, especially about the countrys nuclear power plants, which must be able to continue operating without any safety or security threats, he said. Any accident caused as a result of the military conflict could have extremely serious consequences for people and the environment, in Ukraine and beyond.

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Russia of nuclear terror after the Zaporizhzhia plant shelling, Agence France-Presse reported.

The Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant has been undergoing decommissioning since an accident in 1986 caused a meltdown of one of its nuclear reactors. Significant amounts of nuclear material remain in various facilities at the site in the form of spent fuel and other radioactive waste.

Ukraine also has 15 other operational nuclear reactors at four sites in the country, providing roughly half of its electricity, which SNRIU reported Thursday continue to operate normally.

The IAEA, in a statement, said it is monitoring developments in Ukraine, with a special focus on the safety and security of its nuclear power reactors. The IAEA remains in constant contact with its counterpart and will continue to provide regular updates on the situation in Ukraine.

War-related dangers

Richard Weitz, director of the Center for Political-Military Analysis at the Hudson Institute in Washington, told VOA the most significant danger at the Chernobyl plant comes from possible damage to the confinement structure due to hostilities.

He said the reactors elsewhere in Ukraine, which do not have confinement structures, are vulnerable to being hit by missiles.

"This is the first time we've had a war between two countries that have large civilian nuclear power complexes. And that, I think, is even a greater risk than Chernobyl that something's going to happen to disrupt the shielding and safety of one of those reactors," Weitz said.

Chary Rangacharyulu, a physics and engineering professor at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada, said the Russians may try to use the nuclear plants for political leverage, but he doubts they are "so foolish to destroy those facilities and let out radioactivities into the atmosphere."

"However, if they make mistakes and blow up a facility or two, the harm will not be limited to Ukraine. It will go beyond. Russia and Belarus are the neighboring countries that will be very much affected. Let us hope and pray that the Russian government is not that insane to cause harm to its own people," he said in a written response to questions from VOA.

Wade Allison, a professor of physics and a fellow at Keble College at Oxford University in England, said he saw no threat posed by the Chernobyl situation because "there have been no active nuclear reactors at Chernobyl since 2000. Spent fuel is not a problem."

VOAs Tatiana Vorozhko contributed to this report.
For full coverage of the crisis in Ukraine, visit Flashpoint Ukraine.

For the latest developments of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, all times EST:

11:43 p.m.: The New York Times obtained and verified video from inside the nuclear power plant that Russian forces attacked on Friday morning.

11:02 p.m.: Among African students evacuated from Ukraine when Russia attacked were hundreds of Ghanaians, some of them arriving back home this week. But just an hour from the border with Russia, a number of Ghanaian and other African students are sheltering underground while waiting for a safe escape. VOA's Senanu Tord reports from Accra, Ghana.

10:35 p.m.: The BBC reports that social media app Telegram will block Russian state media from using its services in Europe.

9 p.m.: Vice President Kamala Harris will travel to Poland and Romania next week, her office said Friday.

She will meet with the two countries leaders to discuss the continued support for Ukraine through security, economic, and humanitarian assistance and our determination to impose severe economic consequences on Russia and those complicit in Russias invasion, the announcement from her office said.

7:49 p.m.: U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Friday that Russian forces "are increasingly using brutal methods in Ukraine, including going at civilian populations."

His comments followed a Russian attack on a Ukrainian nuclear plant  the largest facility of its kind in Europe  that had sparked a fire in a building at the plant compound.

"We are faced together with what is [Russian] President [Vladimir] Putin's war of choice: unprovoked, unjustified, and a war that is having horrific, horrific consequences."

7:22 p.m.: President Joe Biden met the president of Finland, Sauli Niinisto. They discussed strengthening bilateral relations and ensuring strong defense and deterrence in northern Europe.

The leaders also discussed ongoing transatlantic coordination to impose costs on Russia for its unprovoked and unjustified military invasion of Ukraine, and their respective efforts to provide security and humanitarian assistance to Ukraine.

The presidents committed to start a process that would strengthen U.S.-Finnish security cooperation, which would be conducted in close consultation with other Nordic countries. And they discussed the importance of NATOs Open Door policy. Finland is not currently a NATO member.

6:45 p.m.: From Current Time Documentaries:

Patients and medical staff at Ukraine's largest children's hospital have been forced to shelter in the building's basement as Russian forces continue to shell and advance on Kyiv. Among those being treated in the makeshift medical bunker at Okhmatdyt Hospital are children recovering from operations, young cancer patients, and newborn babies. The footage was filmed on March 1 by a Ukrainian documentary maker who wishes to remain anonymous.

4:53 p.m.: The reactors at Ukraine's largest nuclear plant were not affected during a Russian attack on the site in the early hours Friday.

"We confirm through our contacts at the regulator, but also directly from plant  we were able to confirm that no security or safety systems have been compromised, neither of the reactors themselves have been hit by this projectile," IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi told an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council.

IAEA Chief: Ukraines Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Plant Safe After Russian Strike

Unusually, the nuclear watchdog chief spoke by video connection from an airplane. He said he was on a flight to Iran to deal with outstanding nuclear issues there.

4:17 p.m.: U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken met Friday with leaders of the European Union, pledging with them to keep up the pressure on Russia with sanctions in response to its invasion of Ukraine.

Speaking to reporters ahead of the meeting, the top U.S. diplomat said what is at risk with Russia's invasion  along with the lives of Ukrainians  are fundamental principles of peace and security that the world established during two world wars, which Russian President Vladimir Putin "is egregiously violating every single day."

Top US Diplomat, EU Leaders Agree to Continue Pressure on Moscow

3:11 p.m.: The head of Russias space agency has threatened to end service to the International Space Station and may curtail cooperation on the station because of Western sanctions against Russia over the invasion of Ukraine.

We can't supply the United States with our world's best rocket engines. Let them fly on something else, their broomsticks, I don't know what, Roscosmos chief Dmitry Rogozin said.

3:05 p.m.: Russia blocks access to Facebook and Twitter. It said it took the action following 26 cases of discrimination against Russian media and information resources by Facebook.

Since Russias invasion of Ukraine last week, social media companies have taken measures to restrict access to Russian state media.

2:40 p.m.: White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki distances Biden administration from Senator Lindsey Grahams comment calling for Vladimir Putins assassination, reports VOA White House bureau chief Patsy Widakuswara.

2:20 p.m.: White House says President Joe Biden spoke Friday with Polands Andrezej Duda, thanked Duda and Polish people for hosting nearly 700,000 refugees from Ukraine. Says Biden also reiterated U.S. commitment to security of Poland and all NATO allies. U.S. currently has about 9,000 military personnel in Poland to assure eastern NATO members.

2:05 p.m.: Pentagon spokesman says Russian forces attacking area near Ukraines Odessa, reports VOAs Jeff Seldin:

12:35 p.m.: Besheer reports: Russian ambassador to U.N. rejects accusations that Russia created dangerous situation during seizure of Zaporizhzhya nuclear facility.

12:30 p.m.: U.N. Human Rights Council to create commission of inquiry on Russia invasion of Ukraine. Only Russia and Eritrea vote against.

12:13 p.m.: Besheer reports: US ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield calls on Russia to avoid repeat of attack on nuclear plant.

12:06 p.m.: Head of International Atomic Energy Agency confirms Zaporizhzhya nuclear facility unaffected after Russian attack and takeover, per VOAs United Nations correspondent Margaret Besheer.

11:52 a.m.: The BBC suspends the work of its journalists in Russia, citing new law that makes it illegal to spread fake news about armed forces.

11:45 a.m.: U.N. Security Council holding emergency meeting on Russias takeover of Zaporizhzhya nuclear facility in Ukraine. U.N. Under Secretary-General for Political and Peacebuilding Affairs Rosemary DiCarlo says, Military operations around nuclear sites and other critical infrastructure are not only unacceptable but highly irresponsible.

11:11 a.m.: VOA responded Friday after the Russian government blocked access inside the country to VOA's Russian-language news site, www.golosameriki.com.

In a statement, VOA Acting director Yolanda Lopez said audiences in Russia deserve access to factual news content and said VOA supports ways of bypassing the Russian blocking efforts.

Russia had warned it would cut off access to the site unless VOA removed news content that reported on the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

10:57 a.m.: Some Russians and Ukrainians seeking asylum are trying to enter the United States through its southern neighbor, according to Reuters.

10:40 a.m.: The International Organization for Migration said Friday the number of refugees fleeing Ukraine has now topped 1.25 million. About half of the refugees have gone to Poland.

10:25 a.m.: Senior US defense official says Russians have not advanced closer to Kyiv, reports VOAs national security correspondent Jeff Seldin. Official also says Ukrainians still control port city of Mariupol.

10:03 a.m.: VOAs national security correspondent Jeff Seldin reports a growing number of countries are giving security support to Ukraine:

9:31 a.m.: The president of Belarus says his countrys troops are not involved in Russias invasion of Ukraine.



Ukraine said Tuesday that Belarus had joined the invasion, but a U.S. defense official later told reporters that weve seen no indication of that.

8:45 a.m.: VOAs Margareet Besheer reports the U.N. Security Council will hold an emergency meeting late Friday morning in New York, following a request from Britain, the United States and four other countries to discuss the Russian attack on the Zaporizhzhya nuclear facility in Ukraine.



U.N. nuclear chief Rafael Grossi says no damage was done to the nuclear reactors at Zaporizhzhya when a projectile hit a building, according to Reuters. Grossi said he thought the projectile was Russian. Russias defense minister has blamed the attack on Ukrainian saboteurs.

U.N. and Ukrainian officials say a huge fire that burned at the site has been extinguished and no radiation was released. Russian troops have taken control of the site but the plants staff continue to ensure normal operations.

7:15 a.m. A British newspaper says Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy survived at least three assassination attempts this week:

7:o3 a.m.: The U.S. Embassy in Ukraine tweeted its condemnation of Russia's shelling of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant:

5:53 a.m.: Protest in Indonesia.

5:42 a.m.: The Associated Press reports three Ukrainian troops were killed when Russia attacked the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant.

5:25 a.m.: Countries across Asia are condemning Russias invasion of Ukraine. Some key Asian countries are even joining international sanctions against Moscow. As VOAs Bill Gallo reports, it is not just U.S. allies that are concerned.

4:55 a.m.: Ukraine tells its people to be on guard against fake news, warning the Russians will likely begin such a campaign soon.

Russia, meanwhile, will introduce prison terms for spreading fake news about the army, Al Jazeera reports.

4:30 a.m.: Rafael Mariano Grossi, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, holds a press conference on the situation at Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant.

3:56 a.m.: NBC News reports that Russian troops have surrounded the city of Mariupol.

3:25 a.m.: China has rejected a report that said its officials told their Russian counterparts to delay an invasion of Ukraine until after the Beijing Winter Olympics. Experts say the flap indicates Chinese leaders could have known an attack was coming and that such a discovery would taint Chinas reputation in the West. VOA's Ralph Jennings has the story.

3 a.m.: A show of support at the Western Wall:

2:30 a.m.: Ukraine says the Russians now have control of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant. Reuters has the story.

The international community has concerns about nuclear power plants in war zones. VOA explains why.

1:58 a.m.: The BBC reports that Airbnb is suspending operations in Russia and Belarus. The American company lets property owners rent their homes to travelers.

12:46 a.m.: Ukraine's State Emergency Service says the nuclear power plant fire is out, and there were no victims.

12:31 a.m.: The fire at Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant is out, Reuters reports.

12:26 a.m.: More than 1 million Ukrainians have fled the country in the first week of Russia's invasion, according to the United Nations, with over 500,000 crossing into Poland. A further million are internally displaced within Ukraine. The EU predicts that up to 7 million Ukrainians could leave in the coming weeks. VOA's Henry Ridgwell has the story.

12:13 a.m.: NBC News reports that volunteers are crossing the Polish border into Ukraine to fight the Russians.

Some information in this report came from The Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse.
French President Emmanuel Macron announced Thursday that he will run for a second term, one day ahead Fridays deadline.

Macron is already leading in national opinion polls, and if he wins the two-round election on April 10 and 24, he will be the first French president to win a second term in office in 20 years.

"We have not achieved everything we set out to do. There are choices that, with the experience I have gained from you, I would probably make differently," Macron said.

Polls show Macron as the front runner, supported by a 40% approval rating, The Associated Press reported. His approval rating is higher than those of his predecessors Francois Hollande and Nicolas Sarkozy at the end of their five-year terms.

The French electoral system requires candidates to receive 500 endorsements from elected officials. Macron was the first of the candidates to achieve this benchmark, even without a formal candidacy announcement.

The rule was put in place to limit the number of people running for president.

Macron made his announcement in a Letter to the French,'' published online by several websites. In it, he said, I am seeking your trust again. I am a candidate to invent with you, faced with the centurys challenges, a French and European singular response.

Macron, 44, acknowledged that his campaign plans have inevitably shifted as a result of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and his prominent role in diplomatic discussions.

France holds the rotating presidency of the European Union Council.

"Of course, I will not be able to campaign as I would have liked because of the context," he said.

With Macron at the head of European efforts to establish a resolution to the conflict in Ukraine, his campaign will rely heavily on foreign policy. His opponents agendas address domestic policies.

"In a crisis, citizens always get behind the flag and line up behind the head of state," said Antoine Bristielle, a public opinion expert at the Jean-Jaures Foundation, a Paris think tank, Agence France-Presse reported.

"The other candidates are inaudible. In every media, all anyone is talking about is the invasion," Bristielle said.

Macrons challengers include two far-right figures, Marine le Pen and Eric Zemmour, and conservative candidate Valerie Pecresse.

Macron has a huge advantage as the incumbent, said Henri Wallard, chairman of the French polling firm Ipsos. Macrons address to France about the war in Ukraine and its consequences on the nation garnered 21 million viewers.

Thats after he spoke nine times to the French during the COVID crisis. So he doesnt play on the same team as the other candidates, because he is already in charge and dealing with a crisis, Wallard told The Associated Press.

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
Software giant Microsoft announced Friday that it is suspending all new sales of Microsoft products and services in Russia over that countrys invasion of Ukraine.

Like the rest of the world, we are horrified, angered and saddened by the images and news coming from the war in Ukraine and condemn this unjustified, unprovoked and unlawful invasion by Russia, the company said in a statement.

The company added that it was stopping many aspects of our business in Russia in compliance with governmental sanctions decisions.

Many companies have announced they are ending or limiting their activity in Russia. Some companies include Apple, Nike and Dell Technologies.

Microsoft added that it will continue to work with Ukraine to protect the country from Russian cyberattacks, noting it already had during an attack on a major Ukrainian broadcaster.

Since the war began, we have acted against Russian positioning, destructive or disruptive measures against more than 20 Ukrainian government, IT and financial sector organizations, Microsoft said. We have also acted against cyberattacks targeting several additional civilian sites. We have publicly raised our concerns that these attacks against civilians violate the Geneva Convention.

Some information in this report comes from Reuters.
The U.N. children's agency says it is procuring nearly seven million doses of polio vaccine to inoculate children in Malawi. The action follows a confirmed polio case last month in Malawi's capital, the first reported in Africa in five years and the first in Malawi in decades.

Malawi had last reported a polio case in 1992. The country was declared polio-free in 2005  15 years before the African continent as a whole was declared polio-free.

But health experts said the polio strain which paralyzed a three-year-old child last month is similar to one in Pakistan, and noted that the child was not fully vaccinated against polio.

UNICEF said the planned mass immunization will target the unvaccinated as well as children previously vaccinated, so all can have full protection from the polio virus.

Rudolf Schwenk, UNICEF's representative in Malawi, said preparations are under way for the first round of vaccinations, expected to start March 21.

"We are installing new vaccine refrigerators, repairing vaccine refrigerators already in use or available at district level, and distributing vaccine carriers and cold boxes," he said.

George Jobe, executive director for the Malawi Heath Equity Network, said the emphasis should be on convincing mothers to have trust in vaccines, which has eroded because of misconceptions associated with COVID-19 vaccines.

"There is need for more awareness raising by government of Malawi, different partners including UNICEF itself, and when doing that awareness raising, it should be made clear that vaccines for children have been there, earlier that the COVID-19 vaccine, and these are routine in Malawi," Jobe said.

Schwenk said the training of health workers and community leaders is already under way.

Malawi provides a polio vaccine that targets polio virus type 1 and type 3, following the eradication of polio virus type 2 many years back.

UNICEF said the oral polio vaccine to be administered is for wild poliovirus type 1.

The U.N. agency said the 6.9 million doses will cover the first two rounds of the mass immunization campaign in March and April. It says more vaccine is expected to cover all four rounds of the polio immunization campaign, expected to end in June.

In the meantime, experts from the World Health Organization, UNICEF, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and the Global Polio Eradication Initiative are working to detect any other potential cases in Malawi and neighboring countries.


Beheadings, abductions, and entire villages razed - these are the stories told by Mozambicans displaced by attacks from Islamic State-linked militants in northern Cabo Delgado province. The four-year conflict has left nearly 4,000 people dead and displaced 800,000, half the province's population. Rwandan and Southern African troops have raised hopes for an end to the conflict.

Nine-year-old Rehema Mussa is quiet and withdrawn amid the other boisterous children at a rural school in Montepuez in northern Mozambiques Cabo Delgado province.

Mussa and her mother fled here last year after masked gunmen came to their town of Mocimboa da Praia and began killing people, including her brother.

They are some of the more than 4,000 people living in Nikuapa camp after fleeing Islamist insurgents.

We are faced by hundreds of thousands of IDPs, internally displaced persons, who are victims of conflict around the Cabo Delgado province, especially from the areas of Mocimboa da Praia and Mueda where insurgents have actually attacked and driven out thousands of people, most of them being children," said Killen Otieno, chief operating officer with Joint Aid Management (JAM), an African aid and development group that is helping the displaced.

The displaced in Nikuapa camp tell brutal stories of how the Islamic State-linked militants attacked their villages and murdered their relatives.

Sixty-two-year-old Zara Alifa Assumane says two years ago in Mocimboa da Praia the militants killed her sister, cut off her tongue and placed her decapitated head at the familys front door.

Assumanes young nephew witnessed his mothers killing from where he was hiding under the bed. But the militants discovered him and took him. Hes never been found.

Issa Pedros 16-year-old daughter was also abducted as they fled an attack on the town and was never seen again.

Aid group JAMs Otieno said their stories are all too common.

The amount of abuse, the amount of suffering, human suffering, is devastating. We are hearing stories of women who have been abducted, raped, were hearing stories of children whove been forced into the war, and girls who are missing.

Like many in Nikuapa camp, 32-year-old Issa Amir said he doesnt understand why self-declared Muslims are killing other Muslims in the north of this mainly Christian country.

Amir said even some of his friends and family joined the militants.

He said when the militants in 2019 came to Mocimboa da Praia they said wed better leave because when they would come back, they would kill everyone. When they did attack, says Amir, many people were killed.

Their motives may have more to do with greed than God, says Amir, as some young men become insurgents thinking theyll get rich.

Most people live in poverty in Cabo Delgado, despite it having Africas most valuable known gas fields, worth an estimated $60 billion.

Security analysts say the militants are recruiting the disaffected youth who have seen no benefit from the oil.

Jasmine Opperman is a Johannesburg-based security and terrorism consultant with the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED).



She said the deployment six months ago of Rwandan and Southern African Development Community (SADC) troops has helped Mozambique fight the militants.

Has Rwanda succeeded in pushing back the insurgents?" she asked. "That they had some degree of success cannot be negated. But to argue theyve successfully pushed them back is a complete oversimplification. This is what the insurgents have done  splitting up into small cells, spreading the battlefield and moving -- retreat, regroup and then move back onto the battlefield area and attack.

Mozambique, Rwanda, and Southern African nations have vowed to stop the insurgents. SADC and Rwanda have so far sent more than 3,000 troops to Mozambique.

South Africas military in late February said it was sending fresh troops and armored vehicles and insisted the insurgents were withdrawing.

Mozambiques displaced, in camps like Nikuapa, can only hope the insurgents are soon defeated so they can one day return home without fear of more brutal attacks.
Few countries are more conflicted by the latest war in Europe than Pakistan, which purchases military tanks from Ukraine and has just agreed to import 2 million tons of wheat from Russia.



A key non-NATO ally of the United States, Pakistan abstained from voting Wednesday on the U.N. General Assembly's resolution condemning Russia's invasion of its neighbor. So did 34 other countries, including three in South Asia: India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.



Pakistani U.N. representative Munir Akram said Pakistan abstained because the resolution did not address some of Russia's security concerns.



Pakistan's abstention was all but assured when Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan visited the Kremlin last week to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin on the day Russia invaded Ukraine.

Khan avoided condemning Russia in a televised address on Monday, instead defending the highly criticized trip to Moscow and promising the nation that Pakistan would acquire 2 million tons of wheat from Russia. Khan avoided discussing his country's defense and commercial agreements with Ukraine.



In a news conference the next day, Ukraine's ambassador in Islamabad, Markian Chchuk, reminded Pakistan it had imported 1.3 million tons of wheat from Ukraine the previous year. He noted the Ukrainian wheat helped Pakistan's food security.



"We hope that our Pakistani partners will take a proactive stance in condemning the war and make decisive steps urging Russians to de-escalate tension and stop its aggression," the Ukrainian ambassador said.

Beyond grain, Pakistan has a great deal of trade with Ukraine, a defense partner since the late 1990s. Neither Khan nor Chchuk mentioned that in his remarks.

Since late 1997, Pakistan has been a major recipient of Ukraine's advanced T-80UD tanks. According to Jane's, a leading publication on global defense matters, some 320 Ukrainian tanks have been deployed in Pakistan's tank force since then.

In an interview with Voice of America's Deewa Service, retired Pakistani Air Marshal Shahid Latif said, "Before the Soviet Union's collapse, Ukraine's technology was the best in the bloc. Pakistan had gotten tanks from China, but Ukraine-made tanks are best in its capabilities."



Last year, Jane's reported that Pakistan had agreed to pay Ukraine $85.6 million for the repair and maintenance of 320 Ukrainian T-80US tanks in 2021. The tanks make up a significant portion of the Pakistan armored corps' non-Chinese tank fleet.



Amjad Shoaib, a retired lieutenant general in the Pakistan army, told VOA, "We have Al-Zarrar and T-80UD tanks. We also have modern Chinese tanks, but you can say the T-80UD tanks are our main battle tanks."



While Pakistan's government and military do not disclose the exact number or cost of weapons imported, a report by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, a watchdog for arms control, armaments and disarmament, put the value of the Ukraine-Pakistan defense contracts at $1.6 billion from 1991 to 2020.



The bilateral defense agreements between the two countries are not one-sided. In May 2021, Pakistan's army chief, General Qamar Javed Bajwa, was greeted with an honor guard by a Ukrainian military force in Kyiv.

The two countries had agreed to improve military-to-military ties, particularly in defense production, according to a statement issued later by the Pakistan army. Later, Bajwa toured military sites in Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city, which currently is under Russian siege and is the country's tank-manufacturing heartland.

Pakistan signed a deal with Ukraine in September 2021 for the maintenance of its Ilyushin IL-78 refueling tankers, according to the Ukrainian newspaper Kyiv Post. The value of the deal had not been disclosed by Kyiv authorities, according to the newspaper, although the Ukrainian foreign arms trade agency had mentioned the two countries signed 12 working contracts for a total of $150 million.



Without praising Russia, which was once an opponent for Pakistan in the 1980s, Khan has expressed remorse for Pakistan's support for the U.S. in the "war on terror" in Afghanistan during the first two decades of the 21st century.



"The most embarrassing part was that a country was fighting in support of a country that was bombing it," Khan said in his address to the nation, referring to the hundreds of drone attacks in Pakistan against militants in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border regions.



The drone campaign and targeted operations killed a number of top terrorists in Pakistan, including al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden.



This story originated in VOA's Deewa Service, with contributions by Malik Waqar Ahmad from Islamabad, Pakistan.
More than 1 million Ukrainians have fled the country in the first week of Russias invasion, according to the United Nations. Henry Ridgwell reports from the border between Ukraine and Poland, where most of the refugees are fleeing.
As the train from Lviv limps across the Polish border, children peer from the windows, their curiosity undimmed by the horrors they have left behind. Beside them, crammed tightly into the carriages, their mothers and grandparents sit bewildered, terrified and exhausted.

As the trains pulls into Przemysl, teams of Polish guards and volunteers help them onto the platform. They are Europe's newest refugees.

There are only women and children. They leave behind their husbands, their fathers, their sons. The men must stay to fight. The agony of parting is etched in every face.

Their shattered lives have been reduced to a suitcase full of clothes and a few cherished mementos, thrown together in the panicked final hours of escape. Family pets have joined the exodus  cats in plastic cages, dogs straining at the leash.

From Przemysl, the refugees can change trains to travel across Poland and beyond, free of charge. Dozens of countries have offered free rail travel for Ukrainians fleeing the war. The European Union has given Ukrainians the right to live and work in the bloc for three years.

Anastasia, who did not want to give her family name, fled her home in Kyiv along with her son and daughter. The family is hoping to reach Lithuania.

"We will go on. We will get through it," she said, fighting back tears. "I hope that everything will end well and that our Ukraine will win. I want to return. I want to go home."

Every family has a similar story of loss and fear.

More than 1 million Ukrainians have fled the country in the first week of Russia's invasion, according to the United Nations, with over 500,000 crossing into Poland. A further million are internally displaced within Ukraine. The EU predicts that up to 7 million Ukrainians could leave in the coming weeks.

There is already a large Ukrainian migrant population in Poland, and many refugees can stay with friends or family, which has helped ease the pressure on authorities. Others are housed in shelters set up in schools, hotels and warehouses.

Thousands of foreign nationals are also trying to escape the war. Kaleb Poitier, originally from Brazzaville in the Republic of Congo, was studying electrical engineering in the southern Ukrainian city of Odesa. He fled with his Ukrainian girlfriend as the Russian attacks began.

"Every time there was a bombardment, we had to go down to the basement to take refuge. The transport no longer works. The internet is almost cut off. It was very difficult," Poitier told VOA.

"For one week we slept at the border on the way to get here. Now we're fine, I can say that in Poland, we've been well received so far. We are here to wait to take the bus to go to the other side (of Europe), to other countries, maybe to get to France," Poitier said.

Volunteers from dozens of countries have come to the Polish border to help, offering food, clothing and shelter. Many hold up cardboard signs offering free car rides to destinations across Europe.

Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians are also fleeing by car or on foot, dragging their few belongings across the border crossing at the Polish village of Medyka.

But it's not one-way traffic. Many Ukrainians are heading back home to fight. VOA spoke to three former soldiers as they prepared to cross back to their home country from Poland to fight the Russian army.

"It's a normal reaction," said Viktor, who did not want to give his full name. "We will beat (Russian President Vladimir) Putin and everything will be fine. We will send Russian tanks and armored vehicles straight to hell."
Leaders of the Quad grouping of countries  the United States, India, Australia and Japan  agreed on Thursday that what is happening to Ukraine should not be allowed to happen in the Indo-Pacific, the prime ministers of Japan and Australia said.

A virtual meeting of the four-country grouping was held as concerns are increasing about Taiwan, a self-ruled island claimed by China that has stepped up its alert level since Russia's invasion of Ukraine, wary that Beijing might take advantage of a distracted West to move against it.

"We've agreed that unilateral changes to the status quo with force like this should not be allowed in the Indo-Pacific region," Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said, referring to Russia's invasion.

"We've also agreed this development makes it even more important to work toward realizing a free and open Indo-Pacific," Kishida told reporters after the meeting with U.S. President Joe Biden, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

"We cannot allow what is happening in Ukraine now to ever happen in the Indo-Pacific," Morrison said in a statement after the meeting.

"We are resolute in our commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific region where smaller states do not need to live in fear of more powerful ones," he added.

Reaffirming their 'dedication'

A joint Quad statement said the leaders met to "reaffirm their commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific, in which the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all states is respected and countries are free from military, economic and political coercion."

The leaders, whose call followed a meeting of their foreign ministers in Australia last month, also "reaffirmed their dedication to the Quad as a mechanism to promote regional stability and prosperity."

The statement, which added that the leaders had agreed to meet in person in Tokyo "in the coming months," didn't mention Taiwan but did say the leaders discussed the conflict and humanitarian crisis in Ukraine.

"They agreed to stand up a new humanitarian assistance and disaster relief mechanism which will enable the Quad to meet future humanitarian challenges in the Indo-Pacific and provide a channel for communication as they each address and respond to the crisis in Ukraine," it said.

Biden tweeted that the meeting with the Quad leaders covered "our commitment to sovereignty and territorial integrity around the world, including in the Indo-Pacific."

Taiwan responds

Taiwan's representative office in Washington said it welcomed the Quads commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific. "Taiwan will continue to work with all peace-loving partners in the region for prosperity and stability," it said.

Modi "underlined that the Quad must remain focused on its core objective of promoting peace, stability and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific region," his office said.

It said developments in Ukraine were discussed, including the conflict's humanitarian implications, and Modi "emphasized the need to return to a path of dialogue and diplomacy."

Washington sees the Quad and its growing relations with India as essential to its efforts to push back against China, but it is in a delicate balancing act with New Delhi, given the latters long-standing ties with Russia.

Of the Quad countries, only India has not condemned Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Russia is the main supplier of arms to the Indian military, and India faces the possibility of U.S. sanctions for its purchase of Russia's S-400 air defense system.

Analysts say any moves by the U.S to impose sanctions on India for working with Moscow could set back Quad cooperation.

Donald Lu, U.S. assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asia, told a Senate subcommittee hearing on Wednesday that Washington had been fighting a "pitched battle" with India in diplomatic channels to urge it to take a clear position opposed to Russian actions in Ukraine.

He also said it was looking "very closely" at whether to the apply sanctions on India over its Russian arms deals.
The U.S. government says more African voices are needed to challenge Russias aggression against Ukraine. This week, most African countries voted in favor of a U.N. resolution condemning the conflict in Ukraine waged by Russia. But experts say African nations will likely say little about the war and protecting Ukraines territorial integrity and sovereignty.

Speaking to an African journalist online Thursday, Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Molly Phee said Ukrainians need African support.

The United States believes strongly that African voices matter in the international community, that your voices matter in the global conversation. We believe that it is critical at this moment in time that the entire international community demonstrates unity and speaks with one voice against this aggression and in support of principles, timeless principles. These include sovereignty, territorial integrity, peaceful resolution of disputes, and protection of civilians, Rhee said.

On Tuesday in the United Nations General Assembly, 141 countries condemned Russias war on Ukraine. Eritrea was the only African country that voted against the resolution and 16 countries from the continent abstained.

Kasaija Apuuli, a political science professor at Makerere University, says Africa has many internal problems and cannot engage itself in a foreign issue.

We always have our internal problems in Africa. I dont think it will be advisable for us to engage in matters of course, it concerns us in the sense that these are matters that affect international peace and security, but I dont think Africa can craft a role in for itself in this kind of arrangement, and moreover we do have [the] European Union which is a premier regional organization in Europe which is engaged in the matter. I dont think [an] African Union intervention will be welcomed, Apuuli said.

Russia launched an offensive against Ukraine last week, a decision that has the world condemning Russia and calling on it to withdraw its forces. The United States, European countries and others have hit Russia with economic sanctions.

Wale Olosola, an expert in international politics, says Africa wont take sides in the conflict, but it needs to stand for respect of international law protecting the rights of the states.

It makes more important sense to continue to shape the discourse and narratives in terms of helping to preserve, helping to promote the framework of the current global order that stresses the need for countries to respect their equal status under international law. The need for, regardless of size, history, political structure or resources, it needs to protect the interests of all states, she said.

Phee said her government would help manage the war's economic impact in countries.

We see the rise of fuel prices, commodity prices, and we know that this disruption is doubly hard given the earlier impact of the COVID pandemic. But we are already engaged in efforts to promote stable energy and commodity prices, working on supply chains, and you saw this week that President Biden joined other international leaders in releasing strategic oil reserves in an effort to manage fuel prices, Phee said.

The U.S. government has assured the African governments the conflict in Europe will not affect its engagement with the continent.
Despite its growing strategic ties with the United States, India is resisting pressure from Washington to join the West and other countries in condemning Russia for its invasion of Ukraine for fear of alienating Moscow at a time when New Delhi views Beijing as its main threat, according to some analysts.

India stayed firm in its position at the United Nations over the past week, abstaining from both a Security Council resolution "deploring" Russian aggression and a General Assembly vote condemning the invasion.

Analysts say India does not want events in Europe to distract it from its own challenging security environment, where it faces archrivals China and Pakistan on its northern borders, and where Beijing has been pressuring India along the non-demarcated Himalayan heights, resulting in a huge troop build-up.

Deterring China

Alienating Russia would drive Moscow even closer to China and Pakistan, say some experts, leaving New Delhi increasingly isolated in a hostile region. Faced with China's expanding military capabilities, India cannot afford any break in the supply of military goods that flow from Moscow, which constitute more than two-thirds of the Indian military's weapons systems.

"India does not want to see an even tighter China-Pakistan-Russia axis. Were that to happen, Russia could, for example, come under pressure from Beijing not to give India arms, which it needs critically to meet the Chinese threat," said Manoj Joshi, distinguished fellow at the New Delhi-based Observer Research Foundation. "So, India finds it convenient to look the other way when Russia's interests are involved."

Even before the crisis over Ukraine erupted, India went ahead with the purchase of Russia's sophisticated S-400 anti-aircraft missile system despite the threat of U.S. sanctions because New Delhi considers it a crucial deterrence against China.

Indo-Russian ties

Just two months ago, Russian President Vladimir Putin paid a high-profile visit to India, where the two countries signed a 10-year defense cooperation agreement and firmed up a proposal to manufacture rifles in India.

Analysts also cite India's "historical experience" with Moscow dating back to the 1960s, pointing out that Russia repeatedly backed India in international forums. That included supporting it during the 1971 war that led to the creation of Bangladesh, using its veto when resolutions on Kashmir were introduced at the U.N., and supporting the controversial removal of Kashmir's special status in 2019.

In Washington, where strategic ties with New Delhi have grown over the last two decades, frustration over India's refusal to publicly condemn Russia are apparent. The U.S. State Department on Wednesday recalled a cable to American diplomats instructing them to inform Indian counterparts that their position on Ukraine put them in "Russia's camp." A State Department spokesperson later said the language in question was never intended for clearance and the cable was released in error.

US position

American officials say they are conducting a high-level dialogue with their Indian counterparts over Ukraine to "underscore the importance of a collective response condemning Russia's invasion."

"Let me say that all of us have been working to urge India to take a clear position, a position opposed to Russia's actions. But what have we seen so far? We have seen a number of abstentions," U.S. Assistant Secretary for State for South and Central Asia Donald Lu told members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Wednesday.

"We work every day to make sure that we are trying to close the gap between where we are and where our Indian partners are," Lu said, adding that he hopes "India will find it is now time to further distance itself from Russia."

Analysts say that New Delhi, while staying neutral, has not been completely uncritical of Russia.

"India has said at the U.N. that international law and territorial integrity and sovereignty of countries has to be respected. That is indirectly sending a message to Russia that what it is doing is not acceptable without [naming] names," said Chintamani Mahapatra, professor of international relations at New Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University.

"India has taken a judicious position from its own standpoint and the U.S. knows India has its limitations," he said.

Quad

Amid U.S.-India differences over Russia, President Joe Biden on Thursday hosted a virtual meeting of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue with India, Japan and Australia, a grouping that focuses on countering China's ambitions in the Indo-Pacific.

"I met with my fellow Quad leaders Prime Minister Scott Morrison, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and Prime Minister Kishida Fumio about Russia's ongoing attack on Ukraine and our commitment to sovereignty and territorial integrity around the world, including in the Indo-Pacific," Biden tweeted after the meeting.

In its readout, however, New Delhi said Modi "underlined that the Quad must remain focused on its core objectives of promoting peace, stability and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific region."

Analysts say the hastily convened meeting was meant to put to rest speculation that India's insistence on maintaining a neutral stand on Russia would hurt the Quad.

"The government thinks that for any viable Indo-Pacific policy, the U.S. needs India and that will keep relations on a steady keel," said Joshi.

But India's struggle to balance ties with the U.S. and Russia could prove increasingly difficult as the crisis in eastern Europe worsens.

"So far, India is playing it by the ear, it is basically trying to duck and weave," Joshi said. "But pressure on India is mounting, and in the circumstances where a new kind of Cold War has come, the logic often becomes 'you're either with us or against us.'"
As Russia continues to wage war on neighboring Ukraine, a former commander of the International Space Station is in disbelief over Russian threats to destroy the decades-long partnership aboard the ISS. Plus, Elon Musk sends a communications lifeline to Ukrainians, and a joint mission to Mars is now in doubt. VOAs Arash Arabasadi brings us a special edition of The Week in Space.
Ukrainian officials say Russian forces have taken control of Europes largest nuclear plant, Zaporizhzhia, near the Ukrainian city of Enerhodar, after shelling it and sparking a fire in a building at the plant compound.

Ukraine's nuclear inspectorate said that no radiation had leaked at the plant and that personnel were continuing to operate the facility safely. Firefighters were able to get the blaze under control, Ukrainian officials said.

The United Nations Security Council held an emergency meeting Friday to discuss the attack at the request of the United Kingdom, France, Ireland, Norway and Albania.

"The world narrowly averted a nuclear catastrophe last night," U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Linda Thomas-Greenfield said during the meeting.

"We've just witnessed a dangerous new escalation that represents a dire threat to all of Europe and the world," she added.

The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency said a Russian "projectile" hit a training center at the plant.

This just demonstrates the recklessness of this war, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said of the power plant attack before Fridays meeting in Brussels with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and other Western foreign ministers.

British Deputy Foreign Minister Dominic Raab described it as a reckless bombardment, while Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Stre denounced it as being in line with madness.

Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov blamed the attack on a Ukranian "sabotage group" that he said had occupied the plant's training building, attacked a Russian patrol and set the building on fire as it left. He offered no evidence, and no other country appeared to take the claim seriously.

Enerhodar is a crucial power-generating city on the Dnieper River, nearly 700 kilometers southeast of Kyiv. The Zaporizhzhia facility produces about 25% of Ukraine's power.

Nuclear safety experts have expressed concern that fighting so close to the power station could cut off the plant's power supply, which would adversely affect its ability to keep nuclear fuel cool and would increase the possibility of a nuclear meltdown.

U.S. President Joe Biden spoke with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and received an update on the nuclear power plant fire, according to a White House statement released late Thursday. U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm said in a tweet late Thursday that the Energy Department has activated its Nuclear Incident Response Team and was monitoring events.

Meanwhile, NATO countries on Friday rejected Ukraines request that it impose a no-fly zone over Ukraine, warning that to do so could spark a wider war with nuclear-armed Russia.

"The only way to implement a no-fly zone is to send NATO fighter planes into Ukrainian airspace and then impose that no-fly zone by shooting down Russian planes," Stoltenberg said. "If we did that, we would end up with something that could end in a full-fledged war in Europe."

More sanctions on oligarchs

Also Thursday, Washington heaped another round of sanctions on Russian President Vladimir Putin's inner circle.

"Today I'm announcing that we're adding dozens of names to the list, including one of Russia's wealthiest billionaires, and I'm banning travel to America by more than 50 Russian oligarchs, their families and their close associates," Biden said Thursday before a Cabinet meeting. "And we're going to continue to support the Ukrainian people with direct assistance."

Among the newly sanctioned Putin allies is billionaire Alisher Usmanov, one of Russia's wealthiest individuals. German authorities have seized his 512-foot yacht, estimated to be worth nearly $600 million. Under the directive, his private jet is also open to seizure.

The sanctions list also includes some of Putin's oldest friends, and his press secretary, Dmitry Peskov.

"One of the big factors is, of course, the proximity to President Putin," said White House press secretary Jen Psaki. "We want him to feel the squeeze. We want the people around him to feel the squeeze. I don't believe this is going to be the last set of oligarchs."

She also again ruled out Zelenskyy's request for a no-fly zone over Ukraine.

"A no-fly zone requires implementation," she said. "It would require, essentially, the U.S. military shooting down Russian planes and causing  prompting  a potential direct war with Russia: the exact step that we want to avoid."

On the ground

Moscow's attempt to quickly take over the Ukrainian capital has apparently stalled, but the military has made significant gains in the south in an effort to sever the country's connection to the Black Sea and Sea of Azov.

On Thursday, local government officials and the Russian military confirmed the seizure of the strategic port of Kherson, the first city to fall in the invasion, following days of disputed claims over who was in control. A U.S. defense official said Washington was unable to confirm the development.

Despite Russian assaults on Kharkiv, Chernihiv and Mariupol, they all remained in Ukrainian hands, Britain's Defense Ministry said Thursday.

"We are a people who in a week have destroyed the plans of the enemy," Zelenskyy said in a video address early Thursday. "They will have no peace here. They will have no food. They will have here not one quiet moment."

Russian troops were besieging the port city of Mariupol, east of Kherson, an attempt Mayor Vadym Boichenko said was aimed at isolating Ukraine.

"They are trying to create a blockade here," Boichenko said Thursday in a broadcast video. He said that the Russians were attacking rail stations to prevent civilian evacuations and that the attacks have cut off water and power.

Giving peace a (second) chance

Also Thursday, the two sides held a second round of peace talks in Belarus and agreed to set up humanitarian corridors with cease-fire zones so that civilians could safely flee. Ukraine had pushed for a general cease-fire.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov  who is also under direct U.S. sanctions  told reporters Thursday that Russian forces would continue their effort to destroy Ukraine's military infrastructure and would not allow its neighbor to represent a military threat to Russia.

In a 90-minute telephone conversation Thursday with French President Emmanuel Macron, Putin told Macron that Russia would achieve its goals, including the demilitarization and neutrality of Ukraine, by any means necessary, the Kremlin said in a statement.

Macron told his Russian counterpart that the war he started against Ukraine was a "major mistake," according to a French official. "You are lying to yourself," Macron told Putin regarding the feasibility of his goals, the official said.

Poland has taken in half of the more than 1 million refugees who have fled Ukraine in the past week, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. The U.N. body says it expects 4 million people could leave Ukraine because of the conflict.

Ukraine's emergency agency said Wednesday that Russia's attacks have killed more than 2,000 people across the country.

Russia's Defense Ministry put out its first casualty report earlier this week, saying 498 of its troops were killed in Ukraine, with more than 1,500 wounded.

Russians 'stalled' outside Kyiv

A senior U.S. defense official said Thursday the Russian forces in northern Ukraine and outside Kyiv remained "largely stalled," despite U.S. assessments that 90% of the combat power that Russia prepared for the invasion had entered Ukraine.

The official said that the cities in northern and eastern Ukraine, including Kyiv, Chernihiv and Kharkiv, were subjected Thursday to "heavy bombardment," but that Russian forces in the north were still facing stiff resistance.

"We continue to see them resist and fight and defend their territory and their resources quite effectively," said the official, who added that Russia has launched more than 480 missiles since the invasion began.

Putin offered a more optimistic assessment Thursday, telling members of his security council on a video call that Moscow's invasion of Ukraine is progressing "according to plan."

"All tasks are being successfully carried out," he said.

The Biden administration has requested $10 billion in supplemental funding from Congress "to deliver additional humanitarian, security, and economic assistance in Ukraine and the neighboring region in the coming days and weeks," said a statement from Shalanda Young, acting director of the Office of Management and Budget. That money, she said, will cover defense equipment, emergency food aid, U.S. troop deployments to neighboring countries and stronger sanctions enforcement.

VOA State Department Bureau Chief Nike Ching, national security correspondent Jeff Seldin, Pentagon correspondent Carla Babb, Istanbul foreign correspondent Heather Murdock and White House correspondent Anita Powell contributed to this report.

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
The head of Russias space agency, Roscosmos, is again threatening to end service to the International Space Station, saying Russia will stop supplying rocket engines to the United States and may curtail cooperation on the station in retaliation for Western sanctions against Russia for the invasion of Ukraine. NASA says operations on the orbiting observatory are normal.

In an interview with Russian state television Thursday, Roscosmos chief Dmitry Rogozin said, considering the situation, We can't supply the United States with our world's best rocket engines. Let them fly on something else, their broomsticks, I don't know what.

Rogozin said Russia has delivered 122 RD-180 engines to the U.S. since the 1990s, of which 98 have been used to power Atlas launch vehicles. The Washington Post said the engines are also used by United Launch Alliance, the joint venture of Lockheed Martin and Boeing to launch national security missions for the Pentagon.

Russia said it would cut off the supply of the RD-181 engines used in Northrop Grummans Antares rocket, which is used to fly cargo and supplies to the International Space Station.

Projects with Germans scrapped

Rogozin tweeted Thursday that Russian cosmonauts would not cooperate with Germany on joint experiments on the Russian segment of the ISS. Roscosmos will conduct them independently. He went on to say the Russian space program will be adjusted against the backdrop of sanctions; the priority will be the creation of satellites in the interests of defense.

Earlier in the week, in another interview with state television, Rogozin noted Russia is responsible for space station navigation, as well as fuel deliveries to the orbiting lab. He said Roscosmos will closely monitor the actions of our American partners and, if they continue to be hostile, we will return to the question of the existence of the International Space Station."

Russia had announced earlier that it was suspending cooperation with Europe on space launches from the Kourou spaceport in French Guiana in response to Western sanctions.

Cooperation in space has traditionally avoided politics, and when asked about the situation Tuesday during a meeting of the NASA Advisory Council, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said, "Despite the challenges here on Earth, and they are substantial . NASA continues the working relationship with all our international partners to ensure their safety and the ongoing safe operations of the ISS."

Some information for this report came from Reuters.
Larysa left Kharkiv three days ago with her 9-year-old daughter, and trauma is etched across her face. Her jitteriness suggests she is suffering shellshock, and she is already missing her husband who decided to stay and fight.

Her name means citadel but her high-rise apartment in Ukraine's second largest city  the scene of some of the most brutal fighting since Russia's invasion  did not feel like a fortress.

Shelling nearby and the impact of rockets and missiles rocked the building and shattered windows.

"The Russians don't care what they hit. We sheltered in the basement," the 34-year-old teacher says, as she waited Thursday to cross into Slovakia, from where she will join a grandmother living in Lithuania.

Her story is echoed by many others who have escaped the worst of the fighting, either to reach the relative safety of western Ukraine, which is still bracing for war to arrive, or overseas for an exile of unknowable duration.

Those under shelling now  in Kyiv, Kharkiv and Mariupol, the seaport in the south of the country on the Sea of Azov that the Russians have surrounded  say the tempo and intensity of the bombardments have increased in the past day or so, causing massive damage to residential districts.

French President Emmanuel Macron warned Thursday "the worst is yet to come," a judgment he made after a long phone conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin. And Macron's grim prediction sends a chill of fear down the spine of Ihor, who exchanged text messages with VOA from his home in encircled Mariupol.

"The shelling never stops," he said. "We are running low on food, and it is very dangerous to go out to try to find supplies."

Contact with people in Mariupol is difficult and intermittent, with the internet and phone service going on and off. "Grozny" is on the lips of many Ukrainians in the port city, a reference to the near destruction of the Chechen capital in late 1999 to early 2000, when Putin was prime minister and in the process of succeeding Boris Yeltsin as president.

They say that vicious and intensifying shelling shows that despite what Putin reportedly told Macron  the invasion is going "according to the plan"  Russian efforts to subdue Ukraine are not working out.

That view is shared by independent military analysts, including Nigel Gould-Davies of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a defense think tank based in London. "As the situation becomes more volatile and less predictable, escalation may be the only way forward for Putin," he said in a commentary.

"Putin drastically underestimated Ukraine's cohesion and will to resist," he said, adding that the Russian president "has every incentive to end the war as quickly as possible."

"There are two ways he could do this. The first, which he has now begun to try, is to win the war through drastic escalation. But the meaning of victory is now less clear than ever. While Russia can occupy Ukraine at great human cost, no Russian puppet regime it installs will be legitimate or stable. Russia's international isolation and domestic crisis will intensify.

"The second is for Putin to scale back his goals and negotiate a peace short of regime change in Kyiv," said Gould-Davies. "But given Putin's obsession with Ukraine and the stakes he has raised; this would be a humiliating setback that he would consider only if his own regime's survival were in doubt."

The military analyst is not alone in thinking that a war of choice by Putin has potentially morphed into a war of necessity, and for his own political survival.

In the nine days of the invasion, Russian forces have managed only to seize one city so far. That's the strategically important Black Sea port of Kherson, home to 300,000 people, where Moscow claims Russian forces control government buildings as part of their effort to cut Ukraine off from the sea via its key southern ports. Russia's claims have not been confirmed.

Seizing Kherson gives Russian forces access to the mainland from Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014, and to establish a land corridor linking Moscow's two breakaway regions in the Donbas with Crimea. It also allows Russian troops to tighten their siege of Mariupol.

Midweek, Kherson's Mayor Igor Kolykhayev confirmed Russian troops had forced their way into the city. But there are still local reports of sporadic fighting, although the local TV tower has been seized and the Russians already are broadcasting from it, say locals who have been cut off from Ukrainian channels.

Ukrainian intelligence officials say Russian troops are preparing to stage scenes of their forces being greeted as heroes, with people being moved in from Crimea as "extras."

"When Russians can't achieve real goals, they focus on fake TV coverage," tweeted Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba.

"Having seized a TV tower in Kherson, they plan a show: Russian troops provide humanitarian aid, while fake 'locals' brought in from Crimea stage a fake 'demo' in favor of Kherson region 'uniting' with Crimea," he said.

With Kherson fallen, military strategists expect Russian forces now will turn their attention to the major port of Odesa, Ukraine's third-largest city, 100 kilometers to the west of Kherson. If they can manage to capture Odesa, Ukraine would be cut off from the Black Sea.

Up north, Russian forces are having an even tougher time and have not managed to capture a major city, but attention is focusing on what is happening with a huge armored column 30 kilometers or so north of Kyiv, which has not moved as fast as many expected.

U.S. defense officials and independent military analysts are split on why the column has moved so little for days, with some using the word "stalled" to describe its non-advance and hazarding that the Russians are running short of fuel and supplies. Others are suggesting Russian forces might be in the process of re-grouping in preparation for a major thrust on the Ukrainian capital.
Tanzanian prosecutors have dropped terrorism charges against opposition leader Freeman Mbowe and three others who were released Friday after being held for eight months. Tanzanian police arrested the four last year in the port city of Mwanza where Mbowe was to address a meeting to discuss constitutional reforms.

Supporters of Mbowes Chadema party and others who were following the case cheered and sang solidarity songs outside the High Courts Division of Corruption and Economic Sabotage.

Mbowe and his colleagues were set to appear in court Friday, after a court decision two weeks ago that the four defendants had to face terrorism charges.

Peter Kibatala, head of Mbowes defense team, said he was happy to see his client released.

We are very proud that we have not let them down. I believe even relatives, neighbors, and friends of the accused, including Freeman Mbowe, have seen that there is no one we have let down. We have left our strength and everything at the court, Kibatala said.

Rights activists welcomed Mbowes release but said more needs to be done to address human rights issues in the country, such as laws that allow suspects to be jailed before investigations into their alleged crimes are completed.

Anna Henga, executive director for the NGO Legal and Human Rights Center, said often people are being put behind bars with little to no evidence against them.

When I was given the reports, I was, like, there is no case here because there was no strong evidence to put him on trial with terrorism charges, Henga said.

U.S. Ambassador to Tanzania Donald Wright welcomed the news on Twitter, saying it is a welcome opportunity for Tanzania to turn the page and focus on the future.

Political analysts like Abdulkarim Atiki say the Mbowes release reflects positively on President Samia Suluhu Hassans government. But Atiki said it is time for Tanzania to avoid the improper jailing of people for months on end.

He said, if someone is to be charged, then the government and investigators should be satisfied there is truth in the accusations directed to someone. But, he added, if someone is kept behind bars, how can you revise the image? How are you going to return his rights which have been denied?

Party supporters like Deogratius Mahinyila say the decision to release Mbowe is the right one, but highlights the injustice Mbowe faced.

We see that this decision has been delayed but also in a legal sense, it makes us as a nation see that we need a new constitution," Mahinyila.

Chadema party officials werent immediately available for comment, and Mbowe did not speak to reporters after his release.
The 47-member U.N. Human Rights Council overwhelmingly condemned Russias invasion of Ukraine. It voted Friday to establish a Commission of Inquiry to investigate violations of human rights and international humanitarian law resulting from Russias aggression against Ukraine.

The U.N. Human Rights Council adopted the resolution by a vote of 32 in favor, 13 abstentions and two against. Only Russia and Eritrea voted no to condemning Russias invasion of Ukraine.

In an indication of how isolated Russia has become, even stalwart allies  China, Cuba, and Venezuela  chose to abstain rather than stand shoulder to shoulder with Moscow in rejecting the resolution.

While Belarus is not a member of the council, it took the floor in defense of its Russian ally. Belarus Counselor Andrei Taranda also took the occasion to deflect criticism against his countrys alliance with Moscow.

A number of Western countries condemned Belarus for, as they put it, supporting the aggression against Ukraine. But let us be honest with ourselves. Who is fueling the flames of conflict in Ukraine? Unlike the co-sponsors of the resolution, Belarus is not sending weapons or mercenaries to the conflict zone. And there are no Belarusian soldiers on Ukrainian soil, said Taranda, speaking through an interpreter.

The claim that no Belarusian soldiers are in Ukraine cannot be independently confirmed.

Conversely, Taranda said, Poland reportedly already has let 200 mercenaries into Ukraine, without citing evidence of this claim.

The Belarusian statement had little traction in the council. Country after country from all regions of the world  Europe, Africa, Asia, South America  rose to condemn Russias aggression in Ukraine.

Ambassador Sheba Crocker, U.S. representative to the U.N. and other international organizations in Geneva, said Russia must be held to account for its senseless, premeditated and unprovoked military attack on Ukraine.

With millions of civilian lives at stake, Ukrainian and non-Ukrainian alike  as Russian troops open fire on the streets of Kyiv, as they drop bombs on residential buildings in populated areas, as they shell kindergarten students in their schools  Russia must be held to account by this council, Crocker said.

The Human Rights Council resolution calls on the commission of inquiry to investigate all alleged violations and abuses of human rights stemming from Russias invasion of Ukraine. It charges the commission to collect, analyze, and safeguard all evidence to be used in any future legal proceedings that may result from its probe.
A report submitted to the U.N. Human Rights Council Friday finds a lack of progress in the human rights situation in Eritrea.

Investigators said that dissenting voices are being violently and systematically crushed by the government.

U.N. special rapporteur Mohamed Abdelsalam Babiker said those most at risk include political opponents, activists, journalists, religious leaders, and draft evaders. He said they are subjected to prolonged arbitrary detention in inhuman and degrading conditions, in some instances amounting to torture.

Babiker said thousands of Eritreans have been arbitrarily detained and held in prison since 1991, stripped of their legal rights.

Some have died over the years, Babiker said. The whereabouts of others remain unknown. I urge this Council to extend the maximum possible pressure on the Eritrean authorities to release all prisoners of conscience. A comprehensive reform of the justice sector is also urgently needed to re-establish the foundations of the rule of law.

The U.N. investigator says the ongoing conflict in Ethiopia is worsening the already dire situation of forced conscription in Eritrea. Babiker said the government justifies its indefinite extension of the national service as necessary to defend the country against the Tigray Peoples Liberation Front.

The rebel group from Ethiopias Tigray region, which borders Eritrea, has been at war with the Ethiopian government since November 2020.

Babiker said the national service program is akin to forced labor and is one of the key sources of human rights violations in the country.

Conditions for conscripts are extremely harsh, and sexual harassment, severe punishments and inhuman or degrading treatment are common, Babiker said. The program also has severe impacts on the rights to education and to the decent work of thousands of Eritreans, as well as on their families who cannot survive on the meager pay received by conscripts.

Babiker said the conditions continue to push thousands of young Eritreans to flee their country every year. He calls on the government to engage in a constructive dialogue to improve human rights in the country.

Ambassador Gerahtu Tesfamicael in Eritreas Ministry of Foreign Affairs said his country has been the target of politically motivated resolutions and mandates of the U.N. Human Rights Council for years.

He said this latest report presents unsubstantiated allegations of violations and ignores the positive developments made in areas of social justice and human rights. While his government faces human rights challenges, the ambassador said there is no systematic human rights crisis in the country.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who met with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg in Brussels, said NATO allies are not seeking conflict with Russia, but they are ready for it if it comes.

Speaking to reporters ahead of Fridays NATO foreign ministers meeting, Blinken added that the alliance will defend every inch of NATO territory, if it comes to that.

Stoltenberg condemned Russias overnight assault on civilians and Ukraine, particularly the shelling of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, near the Ukrainian city of Enerhodar.

He said the attack demonstrates the recklessness of this war and the importance of ending it, and the importance of Russia withdrawing all its troops and engaging in good faith in diplomatic efforts."

Stoltenberg emphasized NATO is a defensive alliance and is not seeking conflict with Russia. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy repeatedly has called for NATO to establish no-fly zone around Ukraine since the invasion began, but NATO allies have resisted a step that would draw them into a direct war with Russia.

The secretary general noted Friday there should be no misunderstanding about our commitment to defend and protect all allies. He said they have increased the presence of NATO forces in eastern Europe as a defensive presence.

NATOs chief added that U.S. and Canadian troops have joined their European allies in the region and are stepping up with more presence in the eastern part of the Alliance, on land, at sea and in the air.

The secretary general noted NATO foreign ministers are meeting to coordinate and consult the alliances response to Russian invasion of Ukraine and consider its long-term implications.

Some information for this report came from the Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse.
HARARE, ZIMBABWE 

Zimbabwe has launched an emergency road repair program after a public outcry over the high death toll on the countrys roads.

The nations roads are in bad shape after years of neglect by the government of the late president, Robert Mugabe.

Instead of driving on the left, motorists drive on what is left of the road in some cases.

Thats how 46-year-old Misheck Rujada was hit by a motorist trying to avoid potholes.

Rujada welcomes the effort to bring the roads up to par.

I think road repairs will drastically reduce road accidents, Rujada said As well as not speeding, and looking out for pedestrians because they are also human beings, only that they are poor. I think that is what is important."

Zimbabwes government says it is aware of the complaints and recently introduced what it calls Emergency Road Rehabilitation Programme 2  better known here as ERRP2  to ensure all roads are repaired. Officials say results should be visible by the end of the year.

Information Minister Monica Mutsvangwa said the program includes the upgrade of drainage systems to keep water off the roads.

The Cabinet wishes to inform the public significant progress was achieved in implementing the ERRP2 on the repair and construction of drainage structures as well as the reclamation of gullies and the repair of wash-aways, where the percentage completion of works exceeded 70%, she said.

Mutsvangwa added that the government has released about $20 million for the program, and more money will be allocated.

On average, five people die every day because of accidents on Zimbabwes roads, according to official statistics.

Jean Todt, the U.N. secretary-generals Special Envoy for Road Safety, recently met with Zimbabwe officials to discuss improving the safety record.

The U.N. secretary-generals special envoy for road safety alluded that Zimbabwe has the opportunity to achieve the goal of reducing by half road traffic crash fatalities and injuries by 2030, said Sirak Gebrehiwot the U.N. communications specialist in Zimbabwe. With increased political and financial commitments from all stakeholders, the country can turn this situation around.
Ukrainian officials say Russian forces have taken control of Europes largest nuclear plant, Zaporizhzhia, near the Ukrainian city of Enerhodar, after shelling it and sparking a fire in a building in the plant compound.

Ukraines nuclear inspectorate said here has been no radiation leak at the plant and added that plant personnel are continuing to operate the facility safely. Ukrainian officials said firefighters were able to get the blaze at the facility under control.

The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency said a Russian "projectile" hit a training center at the plant. Russia's Defense Ministry Friday, without citing evidence, accused Ukrainian saboteurs of the attack, calling it a "monstrous provocation."



Enerhodar is a crucial power-generating city on the Dnieper River nearly 700 kilometers southeast of Kyiv. The Zaporizhzhia facility produces about 25% of Ukraine's power.

Nuclear safety experts have expressed concern that fighting so close to the power station could cut off the plants power supply, which would adversely affect the ability to keep the nuclear fuel cool, and increase the possibility of a nuclear meltdown.

U.S. President Joe Biden spoke with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and received an update on the fire at the nuclear power plant, according to a White House statement released late Thursday.

The Biden administration has requested $10 billion in supplemental funding from Congress "to deliver additional humanitarian, security, and economic assistance in Ukraine and the neighboring region in the coming days and weeks," said a statement from Shalanda Young, acting director of the Office of Management and Budget. That money, she said, will cover defense equipment, emergency food aid, U.S. troop deployments to neighboring countries and stronger sanctions enforcement.

More sanctions on oligarchs

Also Thursday, Washington heaped another round of sanctions on Russian President Vladimir Putin's inner circle.

"Today I'm announcing that we're adding dozens of names to the list, including one of Russia's wealthiest billionaires, and I'm banning travel to America by more than 50 Russian oligarchs, their families and their close associates," Biden said Thursday before a Cabinet meeting. "And we're going to continue to support the Ukrainian people with direct assistance."

Among the newly sanctioned Putin allies is Alisher Usmanov, one of Russia's wealthiest individuals. German authorities have seized his 512-foot yacht, estimated to be worth nearly $600 million. Under the directive, his private jet is also open to seizure. The directive also bans more than 50 wealthy Russians from traveling to the United States.

The sanctions list also includes some of Putin's oldest friends, a former judo partner and others with connections to the mercenary Wagner Group, and Putin's press secretary, Dmitry Peskov.

"One of the big factors is, of course, the proximity to President Putin," said White House press secretary Jen Psaki. "We want him to feel the squeeze. We want the people around him to feel the squeeze. I don't believe this is going to be the last set of oligarchs."

She also, again, ruled out Zelenskyy's request for a no-fly zone over Ukraine.

"A no-fly zone requires implementation," she said. "It would require, essentially, the U.S. military shooting down Russian planes and causing  prompting  a potential direct war with Russia: the exact step that we want to avoid."

On the ground

Moscow's attempt to quickly take over the Ukrainian capital has apparently stalled, but the military has made significant gains in the south in an effort to sever the country's connection to the Black Sea and Sea of Azov.

Local government officials and the Russian military confirmed the seizure of the strategic port of Kherson, the first city to fall in the invasion, following days of disputed claims over who was in control. A U.S. defense official said Washington was unable to confirm the development.

Despite Russian assaults on Kharkiv, Chernihiv and Mariupol, they all remained in Ukrainian hands, Britain's Defense Ministry said Thursday.

"We are a people who in a week have destroyed the plans of the enemy," Zelenskyy said in a video address early Thursday. "They will have no peace here. They will have no food. They will have here not one quiet moment."

Russian troops were besieging the port city of Mariupol, east of Kherson, an attempt Mayor Vadym Boichenko said was aimed at isolating Ukraine.

"They are trying to create a blockade here," Boichenko said Thursday in a broadcast video. He said that the Russians were attacking rail stations to prevent civilian evacuations and that the attacks have cut off water and power.

Giving peace a (second) chance

Also Thursday, the two sides held a second round of peace talks in Belarus and agreed to set up humanitarian corridors with cease-fire zones so that civilians could safely flee. Ukraine had pushed for a general cease-fire.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov  who is also under direct U.S. sanctions  told reporters Thursday that Russian forces would continue their effort to destroy Ukraine's military infrastructure and would not allow its neighbor to represent a military threat to Russia.

In a 90-minute telephone conversation Thursday with French President Emmanuel Macron, Putin told Macron that Russia would achieve its goals, including the demilitarization and neutrality of Ukraine, by any means necessary, the Kremlin said in a statement.

Macron told his Russian counterpart that the war he started against Ukraine was a "major mistake," according to a French official. "You are lying to yourself," Macron told Putin regarding the feasibility of his goals, the official said.

Poland has taken in half of the more than 1 million refugees who have fled Ukraine in the past week, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. The U.N. body says it expects 4 million people could leave Ukraine because of the conflict.

Ukraine's emergency agency said Wednesday that Russia's attacks have killed more than 2,000 people across the country.

Russia's Defense Ministry put out its first casualty report, saying 498 of its troops were killed in Ukraine, with more than 1,500 wounded.

Russians 'stalled' outside Kyiv

A senior U.S. defense official said Thursday the Russian forces in northern Ukraine and outside Kyiv remained "largely stalled," despite U.S. assessments that 90% of the combat power that Russia prepared for the invasion had entered Ukraine.

The official said that the cities in northern and eastern Ukraine, including Kyiv, Chernihiv and Kharkiv, were subjected Thursday to "heavy bombardment" but that Russian forces in the north were still facing stiff resistance.

"We continue to see them resist and fight and defend their territory and their resources quite effectively," said the official, who added that Russia has launched more than 480 missiles since the invasion began.

Putin offered a more optimistic assessment Thursday, telling members of his security council on a video call that Moscow's invasion of Ukraine is progressing "according to plan."

"All tasks are being successfully carried out," he said.

VOA State Department Bureau Chief Nike Ching, national security correspondent Jeff Seldin, Pentagon correspondent Carla Babb, Istanbul foreign correspondent Heather Murdock and White House correspondent Anita Powell contributed to this report.

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
CAPE TOWN  South Africa chose to abstain Wednesday when the United Nations General Assembly voted on a resolution calling on its BRICS partner, Russia, to withdraw its military forces from Ukraine. South Africas U.N. ambassador defended the move, but some South Africans were unhappy with the decision.

South Africa was one of 17 African nations that abstained.

In a statement, South Africa's U.N. Ambassador Mathu Joyini objected to the phrasing of the resolution, saying it does not create an environment conducive for diplomacy, dialogue and mediation.

Political science professor Bheki Mngomezulu said South Africa is also influenced by its historical ties to the former Soviet Union.

"There are a number of South Africans, most of whom are now in government, who trained both in Russia and Ukraine. So, they do have relations with Ukraine. And the majority of the people are of the view that the liberation struggle was supported solely by Russia in terms of these two countries, but the reality of the matter is all the countries that were part of the USSR participated in terms of assisting the liberation struggle not only in South Africa but in Africa in general," Mngomezulu said.

The main opposition party in South Africa, the Democratic Alliance, released a statement condemning the countrys stance. The partys shadow minister for international relations Darren Bergman said the party is shocked that South Africa could abstain from such a vote.

"This was an opportune time for South Africa to take a stand and to assert itself on the international stage, Bergman said.

He said considering how hard South Africans fought to end the racially oppressive system of apartheid and get the right to vote, and how the international community helped them win their fight, they shouldve repaid the favor.

An abstention or voting for Russia is pretty much the same language. Its a vote against Ukraine. Its a vote against peace, and its a condonation of the violence thats currently taking place in Ukraine, Bergman said.

Other South Africans added their voices to the chorus of disappointment, including analyst Mngomezulu.

Of course, it doesnt paint the country in a positive light, more especially because part of South Africas foreign policy agenda is to respect human rights, and in this case its clear that the human rights of the Ukrainians [have] been affected, Mngomezulu.

Ronnie Gotkin, who was out for an afternoon stroll in the summer sunshine, said he was outraged.

I think its pretty appalling. Its not taking a moral stance. I understand that in the real world there are politics and allies, but sometimes morality should trump out, Gotkin said.

In all, 141 nations voted in favor of the resolution, five nations, including Russia, voted no, and 35 abstained.

Eritrea was the only African nation to vote with Russia.
VOAs Peter Clottey conducted a one-on-one interview with Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni. The discussion centered around topics of regional security, human rights abuses and confrontations with political opposition in the country.

Peter Clottey (VOA) Let's begin Mr. President with regional peace and stability as well as continental peace. What role is Uganda playing and is committed to playing, to ensuring peace and stability particularly in the East African corridor?

President Yoweri Museveni

Our role in Africa, It can only be two to two elements, element number one, to tell the Africans the medicine we used, because there is this medicine which seems to have helped us, so when I meet, whenever I meet, I say please, the antibiotic I used and the antibiotic has four elements, patriotism, pan Africanism, socioeconomic transformation and democracy. And secondly, where our help is required we help him and we're able to help. Our soldiers to where they will not say, why are we taking me to Somalia? Because he knows. He knows that for the future of Africa, Somalia is, needs Uganda and Uganda needs Somalia.

Peter Clottey Let's talk about democracy and the rule of law in Uganda. Recently you talked about elections that were held during the pandemic and all. I understand you called on some opposition leaders to meet and all that. My question is, is President Yoweri Museveni willing to meet your critics and opponents to hash out, because as you said it's patriotism and building the country together to talk.

President Yoweri Museveni

We are meetingwe have a group called ALPOT Interparty Advisory Committee is like, OK, we have a few who dont come, who dont want to come that dont attend otherwise, we have been having this for the last, actually ten years now, we discuss everything about the family. We said the government must fund them following a certain formula according to the numerical strength of the parties in parliament.

Peter Clottey

Some of these minor parties as you call them, are saying that the political space appears to be narrow and that when they go about meeting their constituents or meeting their supporters, security agencies including police, used to stop them, sometimes they are beating, sometimes they are dispersed, how do you respond to such criticism, Mr. President?

President Yoweri Museveni

The friction was over the corona time, actually, they are the ones who caused the second wave, the second wave of corona should be opposition worth. That's how we get into some friction. Otherwise, there are no radiosUganda has got one of the freest media in the world. Check how many radio stations are there. They say whatever they want to say. If they break the law they are accused in court and they fight it out.

Peter Clottey

One of your critics made waves with claims of torture by the military that he has the scars to prove it. They had known you to be against torture, that this is happening. So when you hear that Mr. President how do you respond to that?

President Yoweri Museveni

Well, it's true that some of the people were tortured. I have got somei have not confirmed about that one but I have confirmed some other cases, and I took it up with thebecause you see, thepart of the problem of Africa is capacity building. We are building armies and security forces. These come with sometimes they come with traditional ideas from the village, or, they get imported ideas from the former colonialists. Like for instance the police force which was here during colonial times, they were using those methods. The answer for those isapart from the documents are there, the laws are there. But the sensitization to tell them that first of all, torture is not necessary.

Peter Clottey

Your opponents say Mr. President has been in power since 1986. What at all does he want to achieve that he hasn't achieved? What does he want to do? Children born since 1986 have known only one leader and one leader only.President Yoweri Museveni. They said it is about time Mr. President goes to his farm, takes care of his grandchildren, and then leave it to the young generation to continue what he has build. How do you respond to them, Mr. President?

President Yoweri Museveni

So those people are Democrats? I thought they were Democrats because that's a decision that is taken by the electorate, the electorate. First of all the problem we have is that all those actors have no mission. They just want power. For us, it is not the question of who or who's to be in power. Our understanding is the what? What is to be done? If you have done something on patriotism, good. That's why we've got some good results. That's what you get is not a failed state. That's why we don't have the UN here to guard us to defend us, or France to bring troops here to defend us as if as if there are no people here.
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Stowe, VT (05672)

Today

A few clouds early, otherwise mostly sunny. High around 60F. Winds NNW at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

A few clouds. Low 38F. Winds WNW at 5 to 10 mph.
After the dregs of frigid February days, as the sugaring season hits its peak, comes one of Vermonts oldest civic traditions: Town Meeting Day. This year in South Burlington, voters will have two budgets to decide  the $52.5 million city budget and $58 million school budget  and five elections.

City council is the only contested race, with voters choosing between incumbent Meaghan Emery and challenger Chris Trombly for a two-year seat, and challenger Linda Bailey and incumbent Tim Barritt for a three-year seat.

With an uncontested school board race, candidates Kate Bailey (no relation to Linda), Michelle Boyer and Chelsea Tillinghast will likely slide into new seats.

When, where to vote?

Town Meeting Day is on March 1, the first Tuesday of the month.

For those voting in person, three polling locations will be set up in South Burlington on Town Meeting Day, open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.:

 Orchard School on Baldwin Avenue (District 7-1).

 F. H. Tuttle Middle School on Dorset Street (District 7-2 and 7-3).

 Chamberlin School on White Street (District 7-4).

If voting early, absentee ballots may be returned by snail mail to 180 Market St., by using the drop-box outside the main entrance of city hall, or by drop off inside. Early voting will end at noon Feb. 28, the day before Town Meeting Day, to give the clerks office time to process early ballots ahead of elections.

Remember to wear a face mask if you vote in person at the polls, as masks are required to be worn in all South Burlington schools, or if swinging by city hall, where masks are also required indoors.

Early, or absentee, ballots can be requested from the clerks office up until the day before Town Meeting Day. Residents can also register to vote up until the day of. For more information, call the clerks office at 802-846-4105, or visit the city website.

Whats on the ballot?

Out of the $52.5 million in the proposed city budget for next fiscal year, about $18 million would be raised by property taxes. A combination of taxpayer money, grants and fees will flow into the general fund, with about 37 percent of the revenue coming from sources other than taxpayers.

The tax rate would increase a little over 6 percent from last year, with most of the jump attributed to operational costs. About 1 percent of the increase is due to higher contributions for Penny for Paths and the open space fund.

The average South Burlington homeowner will pay about $118 more in taxes while the average condo-owners tax bill will rise about $79.

At $58 million, the proposed school budget is about $2.7 million higher than the current fiscal year, with overall education spending rising a little over 3 percent. Over $525,000 of proposed additions in the budget would be funded by local property taxes but the rest, more than $1.6 million, will flow from grants and federal aid.

For the average homeowner, annual education property taxes are expected to rise about $36, and for the average condo-owner about $24. This is based on district officials estimates but some factors in the education funding formula havent been set by the state yet, so taxpayers wont know for sure how their tax bill will shake out until this summer.

Last on the ballot is an article asking voters to allow the school district to use surplus funds from the current year for non-reimbursed expenses related to the COVID-19 pandemic, should they arise next year.
This article was featured in One Great Story, New Yorks reading recommendation newsletter. Sign up here to get it nightly. Writer and director Maggie Gyllenhaal, along with her stars Olivia Colman and Dakota Johnson, on the set of The Lost Daughter. Photo: YANNIS DRAKOULIDIS/NETFLIX

Maggie Gyllenhaals film of Elena Ferrantes The Lost Daughter is conversation-piece cinema  the kind of movie that audiences see and then argue about. Tenderhearted but also elliptical and mysterious, it gives viewers the mental space to form their own answers to questions it raises and then leaves hanging: Is our heroine, a Harvard professor named Leda (played in her 40s by Olivia Colman and as a young woman by Jessie Buckley), a bad mother or disturbed person for having left her children when she was younger and then returned to them? Why does Leda become fixated on another young mother (Dakota Johnsons Nina) during a beach vacation in Greece? And were the various outrages, accidents, and acts of emotional and physical violence depicted in the film avoidable or inevitable?

Gyllenhaals writing and directing are bold  particularly her decision to adapt a first-person novel as a third-person movie that grants us no access to Ledas mind. Her work is now Oscar-nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay. We talked to Gyllenhaal about what happens when a mothers sacred duties crash headlong into the reality of human frailty and how she went about translating that collision onscreen.

Can you tell me about how you decided not just to adapt Elena Ferrantes The Lost Daughter but to make it your feature directorial debut?

To be honest, originally it was a different book of hers that I wanted to adapt, Days of Abandonment. The rights were unavailable, so I was asked to consider The Lost Daughter instead. I read it in a weekend and said, The story is not the same, but the point of wanting to tell it, the unconscious conversation, is the same, so yeah, I can do it. Ferrante, in all of her work, is so uncompromisingly honest about things that we really dont talk about and have agreed not to talk about. She breaks the agreement, and it feels like the shattering of something.

My one reservation was the 20-year age gap between the two versions of the heroine and how to solve that cinematically. Obviously in a book, you can do whatever you like. Cinematically, it was a risk.

Which you solved by casting Olivia Colman and Jessie Buckley as the older and younger versions of the main character. But I wonder, since the novel is written in first-person, why did you decide not to go with any of the usual devices for adapting a first-person novel, specifically voice-over narration?

It never occurred to me to use a voice-over, actually. There are some movies where voice-over is fascinating and works really well, but there are so many others where it doesnt work well at all.

What would you say is the biggest challenge involved in adapting a first-person novel in a way that does not grant us direct access to the main characters thoughts through voice-over?

The challenge is having to ask myself, What is the event of this scene in the book? What is its purpose in the storytelling? And how do I express that purpose as non-literally as possible? How do I express it with as few words as possible? Certainly not with words that ever say what the event is.

Im compelled by the challenge of how can you use as few words as possible. Even in the scenes where theres tons of talking in my movie, like when Olivia talks and talks and talks to Will, the young student played by Paul Mescal  without the voice-over, shes not ever saying what the scene is about. Shes saying 40 other things that are up here [points to her forehead] in order to articulate one thing thats at the center of it all.

Olivia Colman and Paul Mescal in The Lost Daughter. Photo: Netflix

Its interesting that you mention all this because one of the moments I wanted to ask you about is when Will asks Leda, Do you watch films in languages you dont understand without the subtitles? At the moment he says it, I thought, I feel like Im watching a film in a language I dont understand without the subtitles. Which is a compliment to your movie. I do this same thing myself with international films sometimes because Im curious to see how much I can pick up from the acting and filmmaking if I dont know the language.

I just watched Krzysztof Kieslowskis The Decalogue. I had never seen it before. I didnt see all of them. I jumped around in the order. I watched parts one, two, six, and nine, and at one point, I think it was during part nine, I realized that it had been like 25 minutes that Id been watching this movie, and thered been maybe five lines of dialogue. And they were all like, Do I have any packages? No, sorry maam. Or, Id like to apply for the job of the milkman! All the storytelling was told inside of the filmmaking. I think thats what I aspire to.

In the opening of the film, you have six minutes and 55 seconds of almost total silence  until the point when Leda collapses on the beach and the main part of your story finally kicks in. Thats a long time to go at the very beginning of a movie without a main character declaring who they are.

Its a fine line to walk, right? In the movies I like, youre going, Okay, where am I? Who are you? How am I supposed to relate to you? How do you relate to these other people? Do I like you? Do I not?

The way youve chosen to do it here turns the viewing experience into something more like a detective story. What is her deal? is the question I kept asking during that opening section. You finally do get around to telling us what Ledas deal is, but nothing is handed to us.

Do you know Gomorrah, by Matteo Garrone?

I love that movie. I went to see it knowing almost nothing about it, and it turned out to be absolutely the right way to experience Gomorrah.

Youre like, Wait, who is that? Whats he doing? How is he related to  I dont understand! But youre so compelled to try and figure it out. But then again, sometimes you see movies like that and you think, I dont care. Im so lost that I dont care. How do you walk that line? How do you make people care and want to do the work to understand who the people in the film are?

It never occurred to me to use a voice-over, actually. Im compelled by the challenge of how can you use as few words as possible.

What sorts of filmmaking choices did you make in order to further your goal as a storyteller?

I did not have a dogma. There were some intellectual ideas that I was thinking about and working with, but I think most of the aesthetic work  in terms of how we lit it and how we moved the camera and where we put the camera and why  came from my director of photography Helene Louvart and I doing the same kind of work that I would do as an actress.

What kind of questions are you asking yourself when you direct that way?

What is this scene about, in the most spiritual way? And then, How do we express what its about? It can have an ease to it if we agree on what its about. For example, the incredible scene where Olivias in the flea market, where she actually does finally tell you, as you put it, whats her deal. That scene  I would call it the event of that scene  is revealing a secret. Its constructed in a way that it could be expressed 400 different ways and all of them would be okay. In fact, it was expressed many, many different ways. There were times when Olivia was totally impassive, there were times when she was full of rage. And all of them told the story.

Its funny, we did tons of shot listings with Helene. She asked me questions about light. It turns out I have very strong feelings about light! Id realize, Oh, I totally see the scene in my head. But then it changes when you get to the location. Instead of it being an imaginary place, youre in a real place. And it changes again of course when you have real human beings there. I had this folder of all these shot lists, and I never once cracked the folder while we were shooting. I said, Helene, Im an actress. I am never going to tell Ed Harris and Olivia Colman, Before you got here, alone in my room, I decided that youre gonna start at the bed and on this line youre gonna walk to the door.

Despite already having made lists of shots ahead of time?

We were playing jazz the whole time. We were moving and shifting, and we really came up with a visual language together. There were a couple days we budgeted for a Ronin operator, which is a camera thats like a Steadicam. But when the operator arrived, I was like, This is wrong. Wheres my movie? This does not feel like my movie anymore!

What was wrong with it? Was it too smooth?

It was not Helene! Shes another character in the film, to the point where its almost as if someone came in and played Olivias character Leda for a minute.

So youre thinking of these spectacular moments in your head, and then when it comes to shoot, you change direction and pare it back and make it simpler?

Let me give you some concrete examples. I got like a $50,000 price tag for staging the car accident Leda gets into at the beginning. I was like, Fuck it. I dont need to see the car accident. I thought that the audience imagining Ledas minor car accident was going to be much more interesting than anything we could create on a small budget. What I do care about, and what I want to budget for being able to shoot, is a five-page-long dialogue scene in a flea market and being able to film the scene from start to finish every time.

Why start to finish as opposed to breaking it into pieces?

Because I never want to ask Olivia Colman or Dakota Johnson to turn on their mark and say, I left my children for three years, you know? Thats shitty. Theyre both great actresses, and they both could have done it, but it limits expression. Filming it in a way where they could do the entire thing all the way through a few times was where I wanted to put my money.

So anyway, back to the Ronin. I was like, Helene, I just want you to shoot it. She doesnt want to. She says its going to look like an elephant is holding the camera. I said, I dont care. I want you to shoot it. So she shoots, and all of a sudden we have this beautiful image of Olivia weeping with Dakotas hat obscuring half of her face. Its almost like you want to turn your head to see more and you cant. And all of a sudden I was like, There. Thats my movie. Thats really how we worked.

Dakota Johnson as Nina. Photo: Netflix

When Ledas on the beach in the first section of the movie, all of the shots of her looking at other people reminded me a little bit of Rear Window, where hes looking out at the different apartments in the courtyard of his complex, and every vignette in each apartment represents some aspect of his own problems.

I was thinking about how so many compelling women have been adored and observed on film. Not the stupid version of that  Im not as interested in objectifying fantasies and sexuality. But I was drawn to Michelangelo Antonioni and Jean-Luc Godard, or Federico Fellini, and who their women were that were fundamentally interesting. So much of the beginning of the film, Dakotas being adored and observed. Theres a lot of people watching; Olivias Leda does a lot of watching in the film. Theres a tradition of films about people watching and being watched, and the film itself is about the act of watching.

But I also wanted to know what happened after we get comfortable in a language of how we look at her and are compelled by her. What if, after that, she bursts into the frame and has not just a voice, but a really strong need and a hunger thats bigger than what were expecting?

Objects and props are often important tools to help actors focus and clarify their performances. And wow, do we have a fantastic selection in this film: A hat. A hatpin. Dolls. Several oranges that peel like a snake. You keep coming back to these objects over and over, examining them from different angles. In many cases, there are different actors and sometimes different configurations of actors interacting with them. What can you tell me about the meaning and use of these objects?

I remember Jeff Bridges in a great scene in Crazy Heart where he was frying fish while hes on a call with my character. I watched him decide what to do ahead of the shoot. It was brilliant. Guys, I need fish, and I need bread crumbs, and I need this and this. All of a sudden, Jeff has an obstacle in a scene where there wasnt much of an obstacle. Its so much better as an actor to create for yourself, Fuck, okay, he called, but Ive got the stew on, and Im frying an egg. Shit, its burning. Yeah? Yeah? Hi?

Part of your job as an actor is to create the circumstances. Where are you coming from? Where have you just been? Where are you going? What do you need? Whats in your hands? When I write, I often try to create those kinds of circumstances to begin with. But having been an actress, and having spent so much of my energy keeping my ideas close to the vest because sometimes people feel challenged by them, I wanted to create a set where nobody had to keep their ideas to themselves  where there was space for them. And some of the most beautiful things in the movie came from my actors.

I didnt feel there was some sort of Chekhovian function to the hatpin. I didnt feel that the peeling of the orange meant one specific, reducible thing to any of the characters that do it. Forgive me if you intended for them to and I just missed it. But I didnt feel like I was watching that sort of a movie.

In your life, does one thing thats important to you explain everything about you? No! But maybe there is some reason youre drawn to something for a while and repelled by something else. It does have a meaning, it does have an importance, but its not analyzable in a rational way. Its much more a conversation of the unconscious.

Maybe this is the point where we dive into the unspeakable. Im a parent to five. I think it takes guts to do a movie like this because theres tremendous pressure on parents to reassure everybody they know that, at any given point during the day, being a parent is the single most important thing to them and they love every second of it. To put it mildly, your movie doesnt endorse that.

I think its an unreasonable expectation. In my experience, having children is the biggest thing that has ever happened to me. I would say the most challenging, but that implies only difficulty. Theres no way to come to parenting as anything other than a total beginner. I believe that parenting is designed to bring us to our knees and to grow us as much as its designed to grow them.

An unnatural mother implies that theres such a thing as a natural mother, and I think the whole film is calling that into question.

The film is trying to be friendly and say its okay! The despair, the anxiety, the terror, the feeling of real crushing responsibility along with a kind of heart-wrenching ecstasy, a joyfulness that we couldnt possibly have anticipated  all of it is within the spectrum of normal. And even though it will be painful to look at some of these things, were here for you. Were here with you.

Its funny, early on, I remember one of my producers showed the movie to a friend of hers who said, Does she have to take the doll?

Oh my god!

I recount that just to say, Look, were choosing a very challenging heroine! Were choosing someone who does the most aberrant, transgressive thing! Were choosing somebody who doesnt just throw a doll out the window, which is really hard to reconcile in itself, but who leaves. And yet, even if we ourselves would never leave, what an interesting proposition: to offer the opportunity to relate to her and see how you feel.

The scene where young Leda throws the defaced doll out the window feels more violent to me than most of the things I see in horror movies because it shows, basically, an everyday unspeakable impulse realized.

My husband said a really funny thing. He said, Did people ask about the likability of Robert De Niros character in Taxi Driver? But its different, I told him, because Travis Bickle is mentally ill. Were not him. Whereas what Im asking of people is to relate to somebody who has done things that cause her and, we assume, her children almost unbearable pain. Can you relate to this person? Can you be brave enough to consider that you might have some ways of relating to her? You know? Its dangerous!

And to further complicate that, she doesnt leave her children forever. She leaves her children and then comes back. And yet the damage inflicted by the leaving is still immense.

Its very complicated. I think in terms of film in particular, but also all sorts of other fictionalized depictions of mothers, we have mostly seen a monstrously bad mommy or an angelically good mommy.

Climbing on the cross and nailing herself to it mommy is a whole subgenre of motion pictures.

But to put them together and ask us to use our grown-up selves to say, Probably my parents felt somewhat like I did, which was challenged and ambivalent and full of love and all sorts of things.

From that standpoint, the climactic scene between Leda and Nina is fascinating in many ways, starting with how its staged. Leda is sitting in a high-backed chair that I would associate with a Freudian therapist, and yet she is confessing as well as asking questions. Two moments in the scene pierced me, and I want to ask you to talk about both of them. The first is when Nina asks Leda, referring to her unhappiness and turmoil, Is this gonna pass?

Thats not just about motherhood, its really about the experience of being a woman in the world in general. Is this gonna pass?

I also see Leda in that scene as a kind of therapist. Shes very removed. It was interesting because youve seen how deep Ledas need is. Shes sleeping with the doll right before that! Its massive  her need and her heat and her desire and her hunger. Its not cool. Its not cold. But then when we were reading the scene, Olivia just seemed a little cold. I thought that was really interesting, and I nudged her more and more that way. I added a line at a certain point, where Leda says, Okay. I didnt tell her how to say it. I just said, Lets add the line okay here, which means, Its time for you to go. Do you want the keys? If you want the keys, take the keys. If you dont want the keys.

And then we cut in close on Olivia. I play almost the whole scene in more of a medium shot and then just at the end, we cut in close, and she says to Nina, I have something else to give you. People have also said to me, Why doesnt she just lie and say I found the doll?

Olivia Colman as Leda. Photo: Netflix

Maybe because she has an overwhelming need to confess? She feels terrible, not only about stealing the doll but also about incidents in the past?

And also shes a hero! Shes really a hero. We meet her when she is basically in a life-or-death situation, metaphorically. Either shes going to spend the rest of her life so anxious she can barely walk down the street without passing out or shes going to get down into it and look at the darkest parts of herself. Always in those darkest hidden parts of ourselves, theres a little bit of life. And she does it. She goes down into it. So of course she has to tell the truth that she took the doll.

And in fact, ultimately, she does tell Nina, No, it doesnt pass. In some ways, I think  and Im not sure Dakota thinks this, I have no idea  thats why Nina stabs her with the hatpin. I think Nina stabs Leda because she wants it to pass, she wants it to get better. And the truth is, life is  that bit from The Princess Bride: Life is pain, highness! Anyone who tells you differently is selling something! Or at least, life includes pain. It doesnt pass. You get better at living with both pain and pleasure.

The other line I wanted to ask you about is Im an unnatural mother.

Thats a straight Ferrante lift.

Thats about as loaded as it gets, that line.

A couple of people who I really respect and who I took great notes from told me to cut that line. They said, Its too literary. But I didnt cut it because I dont think its literal. I think its the opposite of literal. I think its an impossible puzzle that reverberates on itself. An unnatural mother implies that theres such a thing as a natural mother, and I think the whole film is calling that into question. And at the same time, is every mother a natural mother, or is every mother an unnatural mother?

The line It felt amazing  when she says that she left her children  thats also not meant to be taken literally either.

Thats a heavy moment.

I really love that moment because the thing is, she says, It felt amazing, which is not untrue. And at the same time, were watching someone throughout the entire film who was destroyed by this decision that she made. So how do you reconcile those things? Well, thats the character. Thats a life. Thats an idea worth thinking about. Thats a person, I think, worth spending two hours with.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

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In an interview with the Official Gazette El Peruano, the Cabinet member highlighted the positive position that the country enjoys among international organizations, and reiterated the national stance of condemning the aggression against Ukraine.





Conflicts must be resolved through dialogue and diplomacy, he said.





-What results has your working visit to Geneva brought to Peru?









Peru defends peace and security as a foreign policy, and the solution to any conflict must be reached from the point of view of dialogue and diplomacy, which is why the immediate cessation of attacks has been ordered especially if there is an affected civilian population.









During another meeting with the president of the World Economic Forum , which organizes the Davos forum, the invitation for President Pedro Castillo to participate in the meeting this May was ratified. It unites government economic leaders so as to propose solutions to the problems of the world's economy with a vision of post-pandemic sustainability.





What is the perception that you have been able to gather about Peru in Geneva?









Concerning human rights or humanitarian organizations, they observe that Peru is complying with the standards for the protection of basic civil, political, humanitarian, and social freedoms, such as health, as well as respect for property and legal security.





-Peru recently received the invitation to start the process of accession to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) , what benefits could this bring if it materializes?





The OECD has pillars which promote the development of a country, a sustainable development that entails economic growth under quality standards, an improvement of the economic system from the legal point of view, the recognition of property, trade, collection of taxes, improvement of working conditions, of pacification so that investments are made without obstruction and that there is dialogue; governance is an important factor.





Countries with a roadmap for accession have taken between 5 and 7 years. In Geneva, we spoke with Rebeca Grynspan, Secretary-General of the United Nations for Trade and Development (UNCTAD), and other officials who have worked in their countries so as to join the OECD, and we agreed to have direct experience with them to find out what their strengths have been () and the weaknesses to overcome.





Joining the OECD is within the framework of our national objectives and the United Nations 2030 Development Goals . Aspiring to this integration will make it possible to seek consensus at the internal level with Parliament, the country's economic forces and society in general, a kind of harmonization for the sake of the country, of those most in need.





Depending on the projected work and how they see us from abroad, can we be optimistic about this accession process?
Italy to offer covid vaccines to refugees fleeing Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Ukrainian refugees arriving in Italy will not be subject to the Super Green Pass covid restrictions, the Italian deputy health minister Pierpaolo Sileri said on Thursday.

"The refugee status allows access to our healthcare", Sileri told Rai Radio 1, pledging that the health ministry will publish a circular on the matter imminently.

Sileri said that "all the procedures" will be carried out, including covid testing for those who arrive and the offer of vaccination, reports news agency ANSA.

He specified that refugee status "does not require the Super Green Pass" but that refugees will be subject to a covid test before getting on trains or buses.

"What the people coming to us now need is a hug", Sileri said.

"Sileri":

Perche ha confermato che ai rifugiati che arrivano in Italia in fuga dai bombardamenti in Ucraina non sara richiesto il Green pass rafforzato pic.twitter.com/HFdJ6CMnOH Perche e in tendenza? (@perchetendenza) March 3, 2022

In Italy a Super Green Pass is required for a host of activities, including public transport, meaning that those who are unvaccinated are not permitted to get on trains, buses, trams or subways.

The most contentious aspect of Italy's Super Green Pass is the suspension, without pay, of unvaccinated workers aged 50 or over.

Predictably, Sileri's comments have provoked a strong backlash from No Vax and No Green Pass circles in Italy.

The Gimbe Foundation, a public health think tank, on Thursday voiced its concern over the 63.8 per cent of Ukrainians who are unvaccinated, calling for the government to include vaccination as part of its plans to welcome refugees.

Gimbe president Nino Cartabellotta said the figure "should not be underestimated, given the dramatic situation that will bring thousands of refugees to our country in the coming weeks."

Under emergency plans approved by the European Union on Thursday, Ukrainian refugees are to be given the right to live and work in the EU for up to three years without a visa.
Gemelli climbs eight places to 37th in world rankings.

Rome's Policlinico Gemelli has been confirmed as the best hospital in Italy for the second consecutive year in the annual rankings compiled by American magazine Newsweek and Statista Inc.

The Gemelli is once again ranked among the top 50 hospitals internationally, this year climbing eight places from 45th last year to 37th position in the World's Best Hospitals list.

Welcoming the result, Gemelli general manager Marco Elefanti said it confirms the validity of the choices and governance system "aimed at combining teaching and research activities" at the university hospital.

The annual list assessed 2,200 hospitals in 27 countries, taking into account a variety of Key Performance Indicators, tens of thousands of interviews with doctors and health professionals, and patient satisfaction questionnaires.

Italy has 16 hospitals in the world's top 250, six of which are in the top 100. The US tops the list, with the Mayo Clinic in first place, followed by the Cleveland Clinic and Massachusetts General in third.

The Gemelli made international headlines last July when its doctors performed colon surgery on Pope Francis.

Sometimes referred to as "the pope's hospital", the Gemelli has a section on the 10th floor reserved exclusively for popes, where John Paul II was treated after being shot in 1981.

The Gemelli was also in the news this week after it welcomed a seven-year-old Ukrainian cancer patient after she and her mother fled the Russian invasion of their country.
Bernabei liquor stores show solidarity with people of Ukraine.

The historic Rome off-licence and online wine retailer Bernabei has taken vodka and other Russian drinks off its shelves in protest over the invasion of Ukraine.

In a statement the group said it "unequivocally condemns the military action in Ukraine" and has stopped the sale of "all Russian-made and branded spirits".

Bernabei store in Testaccio. Photo Wanted in Rome.

Despite the fact that Russian labels, mainly vodka, represent 25 per cent of its turnover, the group said ethics should come before commerce, adding: "There is no place for war."

The move comes amid the continuing fallout for Russian culture in Italy, from opera to literature, in response to Moscow's invasion of Ukraine.

Photo credit: monticello / Shutterstock.com.
All you need to know about 2022 tourism in Italy

Its no secret that the pandemic threw a massive wrench into the travel industry--for better and for worse. While limiting and restricting international travel has been a means of trying to control the spread of covid-19, the tourism industry, and the countless cities and countries it supports, have suffered.

Near the top of the list is Italy, a country whose economy relies heavily on tourism. Countless would-be travelers and tourists to Italy postponed their travels plans in 2020 and 2021. Now, as the world trudges into year three of the pandemic, many are wondering: What about now? Should I visit Italy in 2022? And given the current pandemic-related restrictions, is Italy worth visiting in 2022?

How did the pandemic impact tourism in Italy?

Since 1999, tourism and travel in Italy have accounted for between 10 to 15 percent of the national total gross domestic product (GDP)--a significant portion of the nations income. According to Statista, since 2010, that number had been rising steadily . But in 2020, it dropped to only 7 percent. Such a dramatic shift in tourism and travel-related activity has had a massive negative economic impact-- Italy brought in over 100 billion euros less in 2020 than in 2019. There had been hope for recovery in 2021, but new Covid-19 variants and subsequent restrictions caused a second year of severe economic losses.

The pandemic was devastating for our sector, says Antonio Barreca, the General Director of Federturismo, the Italian Association of Travel and Tourism Industry, but also for the transport sector and all of the chains that serve the tourism industry, such as food and beverage and fashion The impact was huge. We estimated 150 billion euros in damages between 2020 and 2021.

There was a partial rebound in tourism in 2021 from domestic tourism that wasnt able to travel abroad, but the year ended with an estimated 50 to 80 percent loss. For tourism operators, Barreca says, that number was up to 90 percent.

What are the Covid-19 mandates and travel restrictions for Italy in 2022?

Compared to the United States, whose state-by-state mask-mandates and gathering restrictions vary in severity but are more or less followed based on individual judgment, and the United Kingdom, where Covid-19 restrictions were recently lifted, Italys current mandates may sound strict. Surgical masks or FFP2 masks (the Italian equivalent of KN95 and N95) are required indoors and in congested outdoor public spaces.Many businesses have capacity limits, and a person must show proof of recent vaccination or a recent booster in the form of an official international vaccination card, an Italian Super Green Pass, or proof of a recent negative Covid test before entering most establishments and tourist sites. However, some of these restrictions are slowly on their way out.

On 23 February, the Italian government announced that Covid-19 mandates and travel restrictions will be eased beginning on March 1, creating a true sense of hope for the tourism industry. Most drastically, as of March 1, vaccinated non-European travelers will be able to enter Italy without providing a negative Covid test, as long as they are vaccinated with one of the EU-approved vaccines.

What will tourism look like in Italy in 2022?

Unvaccinated individuals or individuals vaccinated with non-EU approved vaccines must provide proof of a negative Covid-19 test or a certificate of recent recovery upon entry, but will no longer be required to quarantine. While indoor mask mandates will remain in place, the Super Green Pass system will slowly be phased out. So far, there are no concrete dates on the timeline of the phase-out. The official end of Italys state of emergency is 31 March.According to Antonio Barreca, the General Director of Federturismo, for those in the tourism sector, spring/summer 2022 is the light at the end of the pandemic tunnel. He describes that, according to new internal market studies from the United States, Italy is currently the top travel destination for people from the United States, Germany, and Australia.

Were hoping for a comeback in 2022--bigger than 2019, he says. People have been saving money for the past two years, so now theyre ready to come back and spend it.

Barreca calls this phenomenon Revenge tourism -- people resent the good times the pandemic prevented them from having, and now that things (finally) seem to be returning to normal, people are ready to go out and have the time of their lives. Young tourists are expected to be at the forefront of this movement, making up the first wave of tourists to reach Italy in 2022, while older people remain wary of Covid.

The tourism sector also expects a drastic shift in the culture of tourism. In 2022, people are more attentive to the quality and depth of their time and experiences, having spent so much time indoors and secluded during the pandemic. Instead of focusing on traditional sightseeing experiences, experts in the tourism industry anticipate that tourists in 2022 will also seek out rich, unique experiences. Small villages, Borghi, are going to be central to this shift.

This new type of tourist will be more attentive to the quality of the service and experience--more interested in visiting new experiences, lesser-known places, small villages--looking for an authentic tourism experience, says Barreca.

Despite the easing of Covid-19 restrictions, Covid-19 prevention will remain central to tourism companies and facilities. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) outlines specific protocols for different types of organizations, from businesses to transportation systems. Weve invested a lot of money into these protocols, says Barreca. It was very hard work. Each category needs specific protocols--what works for a hotel doesnt work for a train.

Barreca, like Italians across all economic sectors, is excited about the return of tourism in Italy. Not only will it bring economic rehabilitation, but it will also bring a renewed sense of excitement and energy to the country at large--something that many Italians have missed since pre-pandemic days.

After two years, Barreca says, we are very excited.

A pre-tourism season opportunity to see a surprising view of Italy

An American perspective

The lack of tourism in Italy from 2020 to 2021 transformed the landscapes of many traditionally tourism-driven cities. In a surreal twist surprising to anyone who visited a heavily-touristed Italian city pre-pandemic, Italy today seems, quite frankly, Italian. As of February 2022, there is still an overwhelming sense in restaurants, shops, and busy piazzas, that the majority of people are Italian.For example, at busy tourist sites in Rome, such as the Colosseum, the Roman Forum , and the Trevi Fountain , Romans and Italians from other cities and regions have returned to appreciate the stunning monuments previously crowded by international tourists. Before tourism season takes off in May 2022, travelers have the opportunity to experience Italy alongside the Italians--while helping contribute to economic rehabilitation.Before coming traveling to Rome for a quick vacation in January 2022, Joya Lawrence, a Seattle-based bartender and kitchen supervisor, was worried that Italys Covid-19 restrictions might negatively affect her trip. Instead, upon arriving in Italy, she was pleasantly surprised by how safe she felt.

I found it really responsible, she says. In a way, it was more lenient than I thought. Of course, you have to wear a mask and show your vaccination card, but since I had those things, I found it really responsible.

It was a stark contrast to her life back in Seattle, where she feels many people dont take Covid-19 seriously. After returning to the U.S., she was more concerned about catching Covid-19 from visiting one of her friends than she had been during her entire vacation in Rome.

Despite Italys mask mandate and the Super Green Pass system, Lawrence enjoyed her 2022 trip more than a previous pre-Covid visit to Rome.

I felt less like a tourist and more like an observer, she says. Like I was going not for a quick visit but that I could take my time with things.

She didnt feel the familiar touristic pressure to visit popular sites on off days to avoid crowds--there were no big crowds. She visited the Sistine Chapel on a Saturday, and was able to follow along with a Rick Steves Travel Guide that suggested she experience the Chapel from the center if possible. When she visited the Aventine Keyhole, a popular tourist site that normally amasses a lengthy line of tourists every day, she only had to wait behind two other people before taking her turn.

The only hiccup on Lawrences trip came as a result of her American vaccination card. She and her friend were turned away from a restaurant because they did not have digital proof of vaccination with a QR code. European vaccination passes, such as Italian Green and Super Passes, have a scannable QR code that contains a persons vaccine information. While most restaurants and establishments accept official CDC-verified American vaccination cards in lieu of a QR code, some (rare) establishments only accept digital proof. Just in case, American tourists may want to call establishments in advance or check their online Covid-19 regulations to be sure.

Lawrence recommends visiting Italy in 2022 to those who are respectful, responsible, and interested in getting an up-close taste of the art, culture, and history: You can do everything you want to do, she says, just be responsible.
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Even without the war in Ukraine, correspondent banking using the SWIFT messaging system was going downhill. By cutting off some Russian lenders access to the communication channel, politicians have put central banks on notice. They need to find a safer alternative for companies and individuals to send funds across borders. Wp Get the full experience. Choose your plan ArrowRight Monetary authorities know that the status quo is riddled with high fees and uneven speed, ranging from less than five minutes on the fastest routes to more than two days on several of the slowest, according to a recent study of SWIFTs new global payments standard. But the threat of being suddenly unplugged from the network poses a much bigger problem: Russian-style financial instability. To deal with it, central banks need to come together and forge an alternative digital-money expressway.

Correspondent banking, in which a lender provides a local account to banks based overseas, goes back to the late 1800s. In 1935, there were 4,000 banks offering the service, with 80% of them concentrated in the U.K. and the U.S.  which wasnt surprising, given the role of London and New York as money centers. Nowadays, approximately 11,000 institutions use SWIFT, which went live in 1977 and replaced the Telex. But active correspondent relationships have declined by roughly 25% over the last decade. Banks have exited unprofitable payment corridors.

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China can potentially move away from correspondent banking  and the SWIFT network  by letting its buyers and sellers pay and receive digital yuan, or the e-CNY. While such a unilateral approach might work for the worlds second-largest economy, the best bet for smaller nations may still be cooperation. Like-minded trading partners could form an international platform for cross-border payments and settlements.

Suppose a Malaysian bank on this platform needs to pay Australian dollars on behalf of a customer, but it doesnt have an account at the Reserve Bank of Australia to debit. This is a situation where a correspondent bank in Australia would typically step in. However, its entirely possible for Singapores DBS Group Holdings Ltd., which does have a branch in Sydney and is sharing the same common platform, to give the Malaysian lender a tokenized version of Australian dollars, in exchange for a digital representation of the ringgit.

Putting multiple central bank digital currencies, or CBDCs, on a single system can dispense with time-consuming messaging and complete cross-border payments in real time. This isnt just a theoretical construct. The monetary authorities of Singapore, Malaysia, Australia and South Africa have come together to successfully test prototypes of such a common platform under the Bank for International Settlements Project Dunbar.

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Most of the delays currently occur after the beneficiary bank has received the payment instruction and before it credits the end-users account, according to Thomas Nilsson at the secretariat for the BIS Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructures and other researchers. Sending money to lower- and middle-income economies is especially slow and expensive because of batch processing and extra compliance related to capital controls. But these are exactly the countries that export their surplus labor to the world and cant afford to lose 6.3% on a $200 inward remittance. (And thats just the average; fees can be much higher.)

The CBDCs that are issued on a cross-country platform need not be available to the general public for use in the domestic economy. These tokens could remain purely wholesale, existing in the wallets of financial institutions. The important thing is to think creatively and eliminate the prolonged processing times at the beneficiary banks  or make the delay irrelevant.

Richard G. Brown, the U.K.-based chief technology officer at R3, whose Corda blockchain sandbox is being used to test Project Dunbar, calls it the check is in the post problem. How does the buyer convince the seller in another country that it has actually paid? The latter cant see the money in its account, and may not believe the buyer if it produces a confirmation from its own bank: Its just a message. I could have faked it.

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But what if the message the buyer got from its bank was digitally signed by the sellers central bank  a trusted institution  to say that not only did the transfer happen but I promise that it happened? Brown asks. This message can then be relayed to the sellers back-office, so that it automatically updates its records, removing a source of perennial friction from global trade.

The common expressway on which many central banks will put their wholesale digital money in motion is not yet a reality. We dont know how many may eventually take shape; and wholl own them. But one thing is clear. The SWIFT-related sanctions against Russian banks could just be the trigger that finally retires correspondent banking and puts it in a money museum. Payments that take days to conclude have no place in 21st-century trade and finance.

More From This Writer and Others at Bloomberg Opinion:

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China Can Bypass SWIFT by Going Digital: Andy Mukherjee



West Uses Russias Central Bank Against Putin: Timothy OBrien

 Markets Plumbing Bends But Doesnt Break  Yet: Robert Burgess

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Andy Mukherjee is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering industrial companies and financial services. He previously was a columnist for Reuters Breakingviews. He has also worked for the Straits Times, ET NOW and Bloomberg News.

More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com/opinion

2022 Bloomberg L.P.

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Russias invasion of Ukraine has put Middle Eastern friends of Washington and Moscow in difficult positions. Russias allies, Syria and Iran, are backing it, but with trepidation. And U.S. allies in Israel and the Arab world havent been willing to clearly take Washingtons side. Wp Get the full experience. Choose your plan ArrowRight The unfortunate truth from the perspective of both global powers is that no Middle Eastern country stands to gain from the confrontation.

Israel and the Gulf countries are walking the same tightrope. Over the past decade theyve concluded that Washington was no longer fully reliable, and have sought to diversify their strategic options. All reached out to Russia, China and one another. Theyve all developed military relations with Russia and are counting on Moscow to be a repository for prohibited Iranian nuclear material if an agreement to halt Tehrans nuclear weapons development can be secured. Israel also relies on military coordination with Russia to contain chaos in Syria.

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The U.S. has the most leverage with Israel. Persistent Israeli attempts to avoid taking sides came under such heavy American pressure that the government changed positions several times to become more critical of Russia.

Israel, along with the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, supported a second United Nations resolution condemning the invasion on Wednesday after dodging one at the Security Council on Feb. 25. But the impulse to sidestep commitments to either Washington or Moscow is unmistakable and understandable.

Saudi Arabia has also come under heavy American pressure for trying to say nothing. Riyadh hopes to avoid being forced to increase oil production to stabilize the price of petroleum, now rising fast as a result of the war. Its trying to protect a hard-fought production agreement with Russia and its own development plans, all of which would be complicated by a production surge.

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The UAE has been most openly friendly to Russia despite the invasion. It has continued diplomatic outreach to Moscow, employing terms like friendship and partnership. It has expressed no unhappiness with Russia except in the UN vote. The government even canceled free visas for Ukrainians on Tuesday, despite the rising refugee flow.

In addition to trying to maintain links with Russia, the UAE has to worry about a global campaign to sanction the hidden offshore assets of Russian oligarchs, because Dubai is a major global stash house for pilfered Russian wealth. So is Israel (along with London and Florida).

Prominent Emiratis have been more forthright than their Israeli and Saudi colleagues in explaining the thinking they all effectively share: They have no stake in the fight, and since the U.S. is no longer the single global superpower, strategic diversification, even with Russia, is ultimately more important than the partnership with Washington.

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Its no coincidence that the two pro-American countries with the most developed ties to Russia are the same pair that went furthest in reaching out to each other in the 2020 Abraham Accords: the UAE and Israel.

Russias friends have their own doubts. The Bashar Assad regime in Syria effusively praised the invasion, but it had no choice. Moscow saved the Syrian dictatorship with a brutal military intervention in 2015. Russia remains Assads preferred patron because Moscow makes much less onerous demands on Syrian sovereign prerogatives than its other key ally, Iran.

Tehran is torn. The thought of Russian President Vladimir Putin striking a mortal blow against the U.S.-led international order appeals to a country that doesnt like Washington or the global system. But Iranian leaders are watching anxiously as most of the world rallies together, under American leadership, to support Ukraine and sanction Russia, and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization appears reunified and revitalized.

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That kind of reunification is a terrible development for Iran, especially since, like Syria, it gains nothing from Russian aggression in Europe.

Iran is further threatened by the prospect that the West could perfect a system of sanctions against Russia that could be turned against Iran as well. Syria, too, fears that sanctions against Russia will impoverish and weaken its main patron and damage its own economy.

But its not necessarily all losses in the Middle East. Irans oil could be part of a pricing stabilization, increasing the incentive to lift sanctions. And while Gulf Arab countries dont want to increase production, it would at least mean additional revenue if they do.

The Gulf states and Israel would be wise to remember that the international order they seem resigned to moving beyond was a big advantage for them. Such a rules-based system serves the interests of small and vulnerable states far better than a chaotic transition to a more predatory, might-makes-right order dominated by Beijing and Moscow.

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It was precisely their interest in preserving the international and regional status quo that aligned these countries with U.S. in the first place. The alliance of Western powers and Asian democracies, and the international order it has defended, was useful to them in the 20th century. Its revitalization ought to be just as attractive in the 21st.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Hussein Ibish is a senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington.

More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com/opinion

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There is nothing realistic about our global energy system apart from the fact that it exists. Modern society depends on long, complex systems that tap deposits of fuel, often located in unstable or inhospitable parts of the world, and carry it across deserts, mountains and high seas to eventually flow from spigots everywhere  even Antarctica. Power grids in much of the world reliably supply not only dense cities but also remote villages and homesteads that could never justify the cost of those long lines on their own. Increasingly, we use electricity sources that operate at the behest of the weather and time of day rather than our demands. We also  get this  split atoms in order to do stuff like charge up our phones.

Raise the idea of maybe doing all this differently, however, and an inevitable reply is that doing so would be unrealistic. As Russia visits an increasingly brutal war on Ukraine, the moment has come to finally scrutinize the actual meaning of that word.

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On Thursday, the International Energy Agency released a 10-point plan to reduce Europes imports of Russian gas by a third within a year. That amount is the equivalent of the entire annual consumption of France, the EUs second largest economy, and then some. This would involve a combination of things like bidding for every spare cargo of liquefied natural gas, delaying closures of nuclear power plants, a 200-billion-euro hardship fund for poorer households  funded by a tax on power generators profits  and encouraging everyone to turn down their thermostat by 1 degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit).

My first reaction was along the lines of yeah, right. Doing almost anything energy-related within a year is a tall order. Plus, I am perhaps scarred by the memory of American politicians who staked out vociferous pro-choice positions on  incandescent light bulbs. As a species, we like our energy cheap, instantaneous and out of sight and mind. There are multiple vectors of skepticism with which to attack the IEA proposal, including the cost of those LNG bids, the corporate backlash against a hardship tax, and the challenge of persuading several hundred million Europeans to put on sweaters indoors or get around to installing decent insulation.

Consider the alternative, however: Continue to tie the continents fate to the whims of a regime now trashing the security paradigm that has preserved peace for almost eight decades. Accept that the Kremlin can threaten economic ruin, invasion and even nuclear war if its demands arent met, while funded in part by its potential victims. This doesnt sound particularly realistic either; adjusting thermostats en masse sounds like a snip by comparison.

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But only by comparison. None of this is easy. All forms of energy come with trade-offs and questions about whats achievable under  and this is the vital part  our prevailing understanding of risks and rewards. For example, Europe relied on the USSR and its successor states for energy supplies for decades, even amid all the tensions of the Cold War, because the forces keeping the two sides connected were taken to be stronger than those dividing them. That was just reality, unlikely as it seemed.

These days, our conception of whats realistic is confronted by uncomfortably large doses of reality. A major war in Europe involving a nuclear power seems as if it belongs to another era. And it does; the old era is just making a comeback. For much of history, it was simply unrealistic for relatively weak states such as Ukraine to expect to do their own thing in the shadow of empires. In order for that ahistorical situation to actually become reality, it must be willed into being. The postwar, American-led order was one way of willing it, but that order began to lose its bearings once the USSR was defeated.(1)

The current resurgence of solidarity among Western democracies is, possibly, another. But that involves all sorts of things that would, until a week or so ago, have been deemed unrealistic: sudden German rearmament, Finland getting serious about joining NATO, the European Union openly supplying weapons to kill Russian soldiers. Taking the further step of drastically reducing the Wests dependence on Russian energy exports is risky, a sacrifice, complicated and prone to compromise and setbacks. But in this context can it be deemed unrealistic? As my Bloomberg colleague Nat Bullard notes here, the world eased its oil habit relatively quickly in the face of other crises in the 1970s.

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In addition to Europeans shivering with cold or dread, plenty of other actors are struggling with whats realistic. For starters, there is Russian President Vladimir Putin, who appears to have held deeply untethered ideas about Ukraines will to resist. Putin assumes its a weak political system to be had at a low price, is how Thane Gustafson, a Georgetown University professor and expert on Russian energy, put it to me this week.

There is a school of environmentalists, especially in Germany, who will no doubt decry the IEAs call to keep existing nuclear plants open, not recognizing the reality that the threat of recession or war will force governments to use every energy source at hand. That includes coal  as Berlin is contemplating already. At the other end of the spectrum, there is OPEC+. Amid triple-digit oil prices spurred by the actions of a leading member, the self-styled guardian of oil-market stability held a brief meeting this week where it essentially put its fingers in its ears and chanted la, la, la! I cant heeaaar youuuuuuu!

Looming over all of this is the slower moving but clear and present threat of climate change. Compared with the required retooling of our energy system to deal with that, reducing dependence on Russian energy exports seems eminently realistic. While the acute crisis in Ukraine must take precedence, both efforts are part of the same process. Both involve accepting costs or, rather, internalizing existing costs  in Russias case, the cost of insecurity, and in the case of climate change, the cost of catastrophic environmental degradation. What happens to your financial model when you factor in a Russian swipe at a NATO member or an Antarctic ice-shelf collapsing? Faced with implacable threats, the only unrealistic option is to say nothing can be done.

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More from other writers at Bloomberg Opinion:

 Ukraines Curses Are Verbal Molotov Cocktails: Leonid Bershidsky

 Heres Why We Need a Reality Check on No-Fly Zones: Ruth Pollard

 Two Nuclear Nightmares from Putin to Haunt Us: Andreas Kluth

(1) For a cogent overview of how the U.S. switched off geopolitics at the end of World War II with a mixture of free trade and security guarantees - and what comes after - I recommend Peter Zeihans The Accidental Superpower (Twelve, 2014) and, for an even more Hobbesian take, The End of the World Is Just the Beginning (Harper, 2022).

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Liam Denning is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering energy, mining and commodities. He previously was editor of the Wall Street Journals Heard on the Street column and wrote for the Financial Times Lex column. He was also an investment banker.

More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com/opinion

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Russian President Vladimir Putins motivations for invading Ukraine must have involved a mix of strategic considerations, domestic politics, historical resentments, paranoia and various other complicated matters. But theres a simple economic backdrop thats worth keeping in mind. Wp Get the full experience. Choose your plan ArrowRight Putin took charge in Russia at the end of the extended economic disaster that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union. He then presided over a strong recovery, which surely helps explain his long hold on power. Since the 2008 global financial crisis, though, Russias economy has stagnated.

Contrast Russsias economic trajectory with some of the Eastern European countries that used to belong to the Soviet-dominated Warsaw Pact:

Then theres Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, which border Russia and were once fellow members of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. All three were hit especially hard by the global financial crisis, but have rebounded strongly since.

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One thing that all these former vassals of Moscow have in common is that theyre now members of the European Union. Another is that they have joined the ranks of what the World Bank deems high-income countries (the current cutoff is $12,696 in Atlas-method gross national income per capita, a different metric than Ive used in the charts here). I left two other Warsaw-Pact-to-EU countries, Bulgaria and Romania, off the chart because they didnt make the high-income cutoff (and because the chart was getting too crowded to read), although Romania is now only about $100-per-person short.

Russia, on the other hand, has remained stuck at upper-middle-income status. Whys that? Bad Advice from American economists is often blamed for the countrys 1990s miseries, but other former Communist countries got similar advice and fared much better. A simpler explanation is that Russia is a big oil exporter, and the 1990s was a terrible time to be an oil exporter.

Oil remains central to Russias economic ups and downs. Its not the only thing going on  the countrys agricultural sector has also made big strides since the 1990s, with Russia now the worlds No. 1 exporter of wheat. But despite a highly educated population and some advanced technological capabilities, the country remains dependent on natural resources and unable or unwilling to take the steps needed to make the leap to high-income or, to use the International Monetary Funds terminology, advanced economy status. Russias population is about one-third that of the European Union, but its gross domestic product is only one-tenth as big.

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Thats one of the reasons Russia doesnt exert nearly the attractive force on neighboring countries that the European Union does. The EU has not had a great decade, weathering a long debt crisis, the departure of one of its largest members and political tensions between Western Europe and newer members Hungary and Poland. But it has delivered affluence and increased personal freedom to much of Eastern Europe, while Ukraine and its neighbors that have remain entangled with Russia have fared far less well.

Its no wonder that many in these countries  especially Ukraine, where real incomes are lower now than in 1990  long for closer ties to Europe. There was a time, in the early 2000s, when it seemed that even Russia was moving into the EUs orbit. Putin and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroder were close (Schroder, despite growing outcry in his own country, remains chairman of the board of directors of Russian oil giant Rosneft). The U.S. invasion of Iraq united Russia, France and Germany in opposition. According to then European Commission President Romano Prodi, Putin asked about the possibility of Russia becoming an EU member. I told him straight away clearly: no, you are too big, Prodi said in 2002.

Whether or not Putin really was interested in joining the EU then, its clear that he has since decided that its a rival and a threat, probably more of one than the U.S. and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Russia isnt competitive with the EU in terms of economic gravity or other forms of attractiveness (aka soft power), and Putin has increasingly used coercion and force to keep its near neighbors  and its own urban Europhiles  in line. Up to now the EU had chosen not to compete militarily, but the Ukraine invasion seems to have changed that. In strictly economic terms the rivalry is a huge mismatch, with Russias relative position likely to decline even further in the face of new sanctions. But mismatches can lead underdogs to take big risks.

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More From Other Writers at Bloomberg Opinion:

 The Quantifiable Economic Pain From Ukraine So Far: John Authers

 Ukraine Is Helping Europe Smash Some Taboos: Lionel Laurent

 Europes Elite Reckons With Its Russian Ties: Lionel Laurent

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Justin Fox is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering business. He was the editorial director of Harvard Business Review and wrote for Time, Fortune and American Banker. He is the author of The Myth of the Rational Market.

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KATHMANDU, March 4 (Xinhua) -- A national park in western Nepal has captured a Royal Bengal Tiger believed to have killed five persons in the past few months.

After a weeks-long hunt, the Banke National Park in Lumbini Province found and darted the tiger. "We finally captured the tiger after tranquilizing it and took it to the Chitwan National Park on Thursday," Kunnarayan Chaudhary, an information officer at the park, told Xinhua on Friday.

"We believe the deaths due to tiger attacks will come down now," he said, noting that since Sept. 13 last year and until last month, four Nepalis and one Indian national had been killed by the tiger.

At least 29 people have lost their lives under tiger attacks in the last three years in and near the Banke National Park and Bardiya National Park, according to Rabin Kadariya, chief of the National Trust for Nature Conservation in Bardiya.

"We have seen increasing cases of human-wildlife conflict leading to an increase in the deaths of people," he told Xinhua. "While it is a matter of pride that the tiger population has increased over Nepal's commitment, the loss of human lives is increasing too."

In January, the Bardiya National Park and India's Sathyamangalam Tiger Reserve won TX2 Award for doubling their tiger populations since 2010.

Kadariya said that in the last five years, they have captured seven man-eating tigers and the animals have not been released back to the national parks. 
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News of what Ukrainian officials said was an unprecedented attack by Russia on a nuclear power plant, the largest in Europe, sent shudders around the world. But a fire that broke out at the Zaporizhzhia site in the early hours of March 4 was eventually contained and the damage was unlikely to result in the kind of devastation seen in the last nuclear disaster on Ukrainian soil, the 1986 meltdown at Chernobyl.

1. How did the episode start?

Ukraines Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba wrote on Twitter early Friday that a fire had broken out at the plant in southeastern Ukraine after Russian shelling overnight. One shell hit the plants first production unit, which was under maintenance, according to the head of Ukraines Energoatom nuclear power utility, Petro Kotin. The facility, near the city of Enerhodar, has six reactors and a total capacity of 5.7 gigawatts, enough to power more than 4 million homes.

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2. What was the result?

Kuleba had initially warned that an explosion would be 10 times larger than Chernobyl. Emergency services said later they had extinguished the blaze and there were no casualties. No radiation escaped and the integrity of the reactors wasnt compromised, said Rafael Mariano Grossi, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the worlds nuclear watchdog. The plants second and third units were put into safe cold mode and the fourth remained in operation as it was the most distant from the shelling zone, said Kotin. The reactors are being protected by robust containment structures, U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said in a statement.

3. What was the response?

Grossi said he was gravely concerned by the situation in Ukraine and had offered to meet Russian and Ukrainian representatives to try to reduce nuclear safety risks. The incident drew condemnation from NATO foreign ministers. Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda said it was a crime, nuclear terrorism, and called for further European Union sanctions against Moscow. Russias Defense Ministry said its forces have held the nuclear plant since Feb. 28 and accused Ukraine of a provocation.

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4. How does the plant compare to Chernobyl?

Unlike Chernobyl, the six reactors at Zaporizhzhia are pressurized water reactors (950 MW VVER-320), built in the early 1980s. They have containment structures around the reactor to stop any release of radiation. Chernobyl did not have a containment, said Dale Klein, a former chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and a professor at the University of Texas at Austin. Unlike the damaged Fukushima plant in Japan, these VVER reactors have separate water circuits to cool the reactor and to produce steam, according to Tony Irwin, a nuclear power expert and honorary associate professor at Australian National University. They also have emergency core cooling systems and multiple injection systems to prevent a core melt, he said.

5. How strong are the containment structures?

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The reactors are protected with thick metal and cement shells -- the head of Ukraines nuclear operator has said they are designed to withstand an aircraft crash. Depending on what type of artillery shells they are firing, it is not likely they will break out the containment buildings, Klein said. Nuclear plants are equipped with emergency response systems that should shut the reactors once they sense the vibrations from the attack, according to Mark Nelson, managing director of Radiant Energy Fund, which advises non-profits and industry about nuclear energy. Even if those systems were damaged, the meltdown would likely be contained within the facility.

6. What about a meltdown?

If a nuclear fuel rod isnt properly cooled and is exposed to air, then it can quickly heat up, begin to melt and release radioactive gases, which is the phenomenon known as a meltdown. But as long as there is power -- and backup diesel generators -- to keep the fuel rods cool, then it wont spiral into a meltdown like the one that occurred in 2011 at Fukushima, which didnt have electricity for a prolonged period of time following an earthquake and tsunami. Multiple backup cooling systems are available and operators have been trained to be able to withstand plausible situations that could occur under any abnormal situation, said Lake Barrett, a former official at the U.S. NRC who was involved with the cleanup after a partial meltdown at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in the U.S. in 1979. If there is no significant military damage to their multiple redundant safety systems, the reactors should remain in a safe stable state.

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7. What are the risks?

If Russian forces knocked out power at any of Ukraines 15 active nuclear reactors, and destroyed backup diesel generators, the plant operator may struggle to keep the fuel rods cooled. My concern is that they hit the diesel storage for the diesel generators, and that will take out one of their backup power systems, said Klein. If spent nuclear fuel is stored in pools on site, an attack might drain the cooling fluid and cause the fuel to melt, releasing large amounts of radioactivity, James Acton, co-director of the nuclear policy program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, wrote in a note in February. And should fires breach containment structures surrounding pressurized water reactors, there could be a risk of radiation releasing out into the air, said Chris Gadomski, an analyst for BloombergNEF in New York. If you damage the reactors core, youll have something that would be very unpleasant and similar in scope to Fukushima.

8. Why such fear?

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Theres never been a military attack on an operating nuclear plant, according to analysts. Nuclear plants house incredibly dangerous radioactive material  even after 10 years of cooling, spent fuel can release 20 times the fatal dose of radiation in one hour. In the Chernobyl accident in Ukraine, then part of the former Soviet Union, 350,000 people had to be evacuated and dozens of workers died of radiation poisoning within weeks. Its the only accident in the history of commercial nuclear power to cause fatalities from direct radiation exposure, and was the product of a severely flawed Soviet-era reactor design, combined with human error, Gadomski said. More than 30 years later, there are still reports of dangerously high levels of radiation in locally produced milk, mushrooms and wild game.

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Hong Kong reported more than 52,000 confirmed virus cases Friday, as the financial hub grapples with its worst ever outbreak. The city also announced 136 new deaths, with total fatalities in public hospitals in the current wave now more than 1,300. Most have been elderly people and the virus has spread to more than 750 care homes. Health authorities renewed their plea for those living in facilities to get inoculated and announced measures to boost vaccination rates.

The interval between first and second doses of Chinas Sinovac Biotech Ltd.s shot has been shortened to 21 days from 28 days for those living in care homes. The interval for BioNTech SE remains at three weeks. Unvaccinated residents of care facilities who recover from a Covid infection can now get their first shot after four weeks.

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Hospitals have started giving patients Merck & Co.s antiviral pill molnupiravir, which cuts the risk of severe disease and death by about half, particularly when its given soon after infection. Theyre still waiting for Pfizer Inc.s more potent Paxlovid, which is about 90% effective.

Key Developments:

 Virus Tracker: Cases exceed 442 million; deaths top 5.9 million

 Vaccine Tracker: More than 10.8 billion doses administered

 Coronavirus Daily: Deteriorating conditions in Hong Kong

 Chinas Covid stance has created $280 billion tourism black hole

 Shows, fine dining ... sports? What its like to visit Las Vegas

Hong Kong to Close Courts: Sing Tao

Hong Kong will close all courts from Monday to April 11, Sing Tao reported, citing unidentified people. Only urgent cases, including bail applications, will be handled, the report said. Some judges have been infected with Covid, while dozens of lawyers have caught the virus during trials or visits to Hong Kong Correctional Services.

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Cost of Chinas Covid Zero Policy Worthwhile: Official

The impacts of Chinas dynamic Covid zero approach on peoples lives and production are short-term and limited, Zhang Yesui, a spokesman of the National Peoples Congress, said at a press conference. China aims to control outbreaks as soon as possible instead of having no cases, Zhang said.

Shionogi Says Vaccine Found Effective

Japanese drugmaker Shionogi & Co. said its experimental Covid-19 vaccine was found safe and effective in a study. The recombinant protein-based vaccine that was being tested as a booster shot met its primary endpoint in the Phase 2/3 trials, Osaka-based Shionogi said in a statement Friday announcing the interim reports findings. There were no serious treatment-related adverse events, deaths or adverse events of special interest, it said.

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Singapore Sets More Travel Lanes

Singapore will extend Vaccinated Travel Lanes to more cities in Malaysia, Indonesia and India. It will also launch VTLs from two new countries, Greece and Vietnam, according to an emailed statement from the Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore.

In Indonesia, the VTL will extend beyond Jakarta to include Bali-Denpasar beginning March 16. In Malaysia, it will extend beyond Kuala Lumpur to include Penang. And in India, it will extend beyond Chennai, Delhi, and Mumbai to include all cities.

JPMorgan Hands Out Cash to HK Staff

JPMorgan Chase & Co., the first Wall Street bank to offer a quarantine subsidy in Hong Kong, is now handing out HK$1,800 ($230) to each of its employees as the city grapples with its largest outbreak of infections during the pandemic. The cash payment will allow staff to treat themselves and their families to a meal once the current restrictions are lifted, a Hong Kong-based spokeswoman said.

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JPMorgan last year was also first to announce a reimbursement of $5,000 to employees to compensate for hotel quarantine stays.

Shanghai Sees 16 Infections

Chinas financial hub Shanghai reported 16 infections on Friday, prompting the citys health officials to conduct swift contact tracing and isolation to curb the virus spread. Wu Jinglei, the citys top health official, said vaccination has kept symptoms mild among those infected. All but two infections are asymptomatic, and many of them are elderly people. Overall, China reported 117 cases on Friday as infections spread out across the country.

Vietnam Mulls Shift to Covid Endemic Path

Vietnams Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh directed the health ministry to begin the process of moving the country to the course of living with Covid-19 and treating it as endemic even as cases surge.

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Chinh ordered officials during Thursdays cabinet meeting to study how other countries have made the move, according to a post on the governments website. The prime minister said March and coming months will continue to be difficult and unpredictable as the country battles the virus and the fallout from the conflict in Ukraine.

Vietnam reported 118,790 virus cases on Thursday, the health ministry said on its website.

South Korea Reports Record Cases, Deaths

South Koreas daily new infections reached a record of 266,853 while the number of deaths rose by a record 186, according to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency.

Despite the worsening numbers, the government said it would allow restaurants and cafes to open until 11 p.m., a one-hour extension, from Saturday through March 20. Authorities also halted the vaccine pass mandate in restaurants, cafes and other high-risk venues from earlier this week to ease economic pressure on mom-and-pop businesses.

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Southeast Asia Infections

Malaysias new cases also reached a record as the Southeast Asia nation grapples with the spread of the omicron variant. The nation added 32,467 cases on Thursday, surpassing the previous peak of 32,070 cases recorded on Feb. 24, data from the health ministry show.

The spread of the omicron strain has pushed up cases across Southeast Asia. Thailand recorded 23,618 new infections, while Vietnam added 176,150 cases.

Japan to Extend Loans for Businesses

Japan will support small and medium-sized businesses with a package of measures to alleviate the impact of the pandemic, including an extension of loans, Finance Minister Shunichi Suzuki said in a briefing in Tokyo.

The move comes as Japans unemployment rate edged up in January as a record wave of infections prompted renewed restrictions that are likely to continue slowing progress in the recovery of the labor market in February and March.

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HK Delivery Services Impacted by Outbreak

Hong Kong Technology Ventures shopping platform HKTVmall said its facing unprecedented operational pressure and warned that orders may be canceled. It cited a staffing shortage and supply issues as well as logistic partners suspending services.

Separately, SF Express will suspend to-door delivery services in Hong Kong from March 5, according to its website, citing the challenging environment, uncontrollable factors under the pandemic and a rapid rise in operating costs.

Covid Deaths Among HK Children Alarm Parents

Three children under the age of 5 have died in Hong Kongs spiraling Covid outbreak, a disproportionately large number that has local parents anxious, though pediatricians say it could just be a grim coincidence.

While the numbers are too low to draw any conclusions, according to experts, the kids -- aged 11 months, 3 and 4 years old -- make up nearly 0.3% of the 1,153 fatalities that have occurred in this wave of infections. None had known underlying health conditions. Their deaths are being investigated by the coroner, according to the Hospital Authority.

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The childhood deaths are higher than in countries such as Australia and Singapore.

Japan to Ease Border Restrictions

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida plans to further ease Japans border controls for the pandemic while extending virus restrictions for Tokyo and 17 other regions until March 21, as infections linger in the country.

He told a Thursday news conference his government would raise a cap on daily arrivals from overseas to 7,000 starting March 14 from the current 5,000, giving priority to students. Japan eased some of the developed worlds most stringent virus border measures Tuesday, but had set the cap on arrivals so low it would take months to clear the enormous backlog of people waiting for entry.

China Covid Stance Creates Tourism Black Hole

After two long years, piazzas and shopping boutiques across Europe are again welcoming tourists, with one big difference: Chinese travelers  some of the biggest spenders before the pandemic  are nowhere to be seen. Its the same in Southeast Asia, where tourism-dependent economies are throwing open their doors, but the white-sand beaches of the Philippines and night markets of northern Thailand are all but deserted.

Chinas borders remain effectively sealed as the country continues to pursue a zero-tolerance approach to a virus that other parts of the world have accepted as endemic. For the countrys 1.4 billion people, international travel is basically off the table with weeks-long hotel quarantines on return and flight options severely limited. Fear of Covid, which is stamped out aggressively when it flares in China, is also a factor.

Hong Kong Residents Escape to Singapore

Frustrated and anxious about the governments handling of Covid-19, some Hong Kongers are looking to flee, even if its just to wait out the worst of the outbreak. Rival financial hub Singapore is a popular escape.

A net 71,000 people left Hong Kong in February, the biggest outflow since the pandemic began, as the citys most rampant wave of Covid intensified. While Hong Kong is effectively shut off from a raft of countries it deems high risk, there are 137 scheduled flights to Singapore in March, more than anywhere else aside from Shanghai, which is off limits to most non-Chinese citizens.

Many of those leaving are doing so temporarily, hoping to avoid the mandatory mass Covid tests Hong Kong plans to start in mid-March. But others are eyeing longer shifts, and schools in Singapore are receiving a surge in interest from Hong Kong parents.

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Nobody knows how Russias war of aggression against Ukraine will end, but most scenarios range from bad to worse. To grasp them, start by considering what is indubitably the worlds most notorious rat. Wp Get the full experience. Choose your plan ArrowRight Thats the one Russian President Vladimir Putin claims he once  as a boy in what was then Leningrad  chased down a hallway. Cornered, the rat turned and attacked him.

Why has Putin made sure that this anecdote keeps getting recycled among Russia watchers the world over? The conventional wisdom is that its yet another of his veiled threats. Im that rat, except that I have nuclear claws, he implies. So dont corner me.

This vantage point  lets call it the rats-eye view  must factor in all possible scenarios. If the analysis were about whats good for Russia, the invasion would never have started at all, and could be ended at any time with a negotiated settlement. After all, the attack has only hurt national interests, by isolating the country internationally and impoverishing more of its population. But Russia isnt the relevant actor. The metaphorical rat in the Kremlin is.

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By all appearances, Putin is nowadays isolated and in his own mental world. Unlike his Soviet predecessors, he has no politburo around him or other credible checks and balances; he decides alone. And like other current and former tyrants  Saddam Hussein springs to mind  he has reason to worry that his own political failure is less likely to end in a tedious but placid retirement than in something rather more violent and abrupt.

Viewed from the rats perspective, therefore, there are lots of dead-end hallways around. With that in mind, the scenarios look as follows.

The Ukrainians winA heroic Ukrainian defense that actually repels Russian forces remains militarily unlikely, but is of course the preferred outcome for most of the world. A traumatized but triumphant Ukraine would link up with a newly coherent and determined European Union and accelerate its integration into the democratic West. NATO would have a new sense of purpose. China, with its eye on Taiwan, would think twice about causing its own trouble.

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But Putin would be in that metaphorical corner. Hes been posing as Russias defender against an allegedly aggressive West and redeemer of ethnic Russians and brother Slavs everywhere. A Ukrainian victory would make all that propaganda untenable. He could not survive the defeat politically and knows it. Therefore he wont allow this scenario to happen. Instead of withdrawing, hell follow one of three other paths.

A Russian Reign of TerrorHe could escalate the attack dramatically  but still with only conventional weapons. Basically, that means bombing Ukraine into submission. The loss of civilian and military lives would be horrendous, but Putin wouldnt care. He would incorporate a seething and resentful Ukraine  either as a nominally independent puppet state or a subdivision of Greater Russia  and maybe add Belarus for good measure.

To repress dissent at home and in Ukraine, Putin would have to complete his transformation of Russia into a police state, eliminating and persecuting the last remnants of free speech. His empire would become a permanent pariah in the international community. The world would have a new Iron Curtain.

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Another AfghanistanOr he could escalate less dramatically, sending just enough Russian military might into Ukraine to avoid outright defeat. The country could then become what Afghanistan was to Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev after 1979, or to the U.S. and its allies after 2001: a quagmire.

The cost in human terms would still be shocking  above all to Ukrainians, but also to Russian soldiers and ordinary Russians suffering worse repression and hardship from sanctions. Putin wouldnt mind that, provided he thinks his place in the Kremlin stays secure. But from the rats-eye view, a quagmire looks a lot like getting stuck in that hallway corner indefinitely.

Escalate to de-escalateIf he is truly like the rat that attacked him, Putin will therefore at least consider another  literally nuclear  option. Its the one hes already hinted at. Claiming that NATO and the EU are cornering him by supporting Ukraine with weapons and other wherewithal, he could launch one or more limited nuclear strikes with so-called tactical (here meaning low-yield) warheads.

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Hed wager that the West would not retaliate on behalf of Ukraine, because that would trigger a nuclear exchange with bigger strategic weapons, ending in Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD), as it was known during the Cold War. But like the rat, hed take the risk.

Ukraine, like Japan in 1945, would have no choice but to surrender. Thats why military wonks call this strategy escalate to de-escalate. But the world would never be the same. The names Hiroshima and Nagasaki would be joined by others on humanitys list of doom. And yet Putin could say that he got himself out of one particular hallways corner.

Another Russian RevolutionThere are also more optimistic scenarios. Despite Putins curtain of propaganda and disinformation, enough Russians understand the circumstances of his unprovoked invasion, and the cataclysmic risks. They could revolt. This could take the form of a broad-based movement centered around an opposition leader like Alexey Navalny. Or it could be a coup or putsch from within the elite.

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Neither kind of insurrection looks likely for now, unfortunately. Russians may have noticed that the Belarusians next door have been heroically resisting their dictator since August 2020, with no success but lots of brutal repression to show for it. And any member of what remains of Putins inner circle who contemplates a putsch will remember the fate of the conspirators around Claus von Stauffenberg in 1944.

Nonetheless, a homegrown Russian revolution would be by far the best outcome. The new regime in Moscow could blame the attack on Putin alone, which happens to be true. It could therefore withdraw without looking weak. The international community could welcome Russia back with open arms. The world, including Russia, would become a better place.

China intervenesA second-best but more plausible scenario involves Beijing. Officially, China under President Xi Jinping is, if not Russias ally, at least its partner in jointly staring down the American-led West. But China considers itself a rising power and Russia a falling one. As Xi sees it, Putin is sometimes useful but also a potential liability.

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In particular, China is deeply conflicted about Putins attack because it violates another countrys national sovereignty, the principle Xi would invoke if he ever swallowed Taiwan (which he considers a Chinese province) and demanded that the U.S. stay out. And China, which has a small but fast-growing nuclear arsenal, certainly wouldnt countenance the use of tactical nukes and the resulting global chaos.

For now, Xis ambivalence has condemned Beijing to an unsustainable doublespeak. At the United Nations this week, 141 countries voted to deplore Putins aggression. China could have joined the four rogues (Belarus, North Korea, Eritrea and Syria) who voted with Russia against the resolution. Instead, along with 34 other countries, it merely abstained.

If China decided to restrain Putin, it would have the clout. It could withdraw the economic and diplomatic lifelines Moscow needs. At the same time it could discreetly find secret trap doors at the end of hallways. After all, the best way to deal with a cornered rat is usually to let it escape before it does more harm.

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More From Bloomberg Opinion:



Chinas Ukraine Doublespeak Is Becoming Unsustainable: Clara Ferreira Marques



Putins War Shows West Must Clean Up Dirty Money: Paul J. Davies

 The Invasion of Ukraine Is a Tragic Sin: Leonid Bershidsky

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Andreas Kluth is a columnist for Bloomberg Opinion. He was previously editor in chief of Handelsblatt Global and a writer for the Economist. Hes the author of Hannibal and Me.

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Its not yet clear how President Joe Bidens response to Russian saber-rattling over the last months, and then to the invasion of Ukraine, will eventually be evaluated by experts and historians. Biden failed to prevent the invasion; he also helped keep the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and much of the world united, at least so far. Beyond that  as political scientist Dan Drezner wrote in the Washington Post on Wednesday, A week into the war in Ukraine, it is impossible to judge how this conflict will play out. Which means its also impossible to judge Bidens actions.

But whatever one thinks of the administrations efforts, the episode has established once again how far the Republican Party and most of its politicians are from being ready to govern.

One group of Republicans spent the buildup to the war mocking Bidens warnings about Russian President Vladimir Putins invasion plans; that includes the rump faction that had, until about a week ago, ranged from Putin-curious to full-on Putin fans. Perhaps former President Donald Trump will turn out to be correct that invading Ukraine was a genius move, but at this point that judgment seems, well, a classic Donald from Queens ignorant blowhard talk-show caller comment.

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(I should point out that a faction of liberals also mocked Bidens talk about the upcoming invasion, including some who blame the conflict on NATO expansion, not Putins aggression. Whatever one thinks of their views, its clear that they have zero influence within the Democratic Party when it comes to foreign policy. The same is not true of Republicans who have been sympathetic to Russia).

As for most other Republicans? They have demonstrated they have little or nothing to offer. Theyve been at their best  or I suppose their least-worst  when they bash Biden for vague, unspecified weakness without suggesting how hes been weak in Europe or what specifically they want him to do to be stronger. But it goes downhill when they do suggest specifics, whether its Mississippi Senator Roger Wicker advocating for a U.S.-imposed no-fly zone (which Florida Senator Marco Rubio, to his credit, knocked down as the beginning of World War III) or South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham calling for someone to assassinate Putin.

Republicans are so averse to agreeing with anything a Democratic president is doing that, when a Democratic president occupies the middle ground, they have little to say. That may be because they dont want Biden to thrive politically, but its likely that what really motivates Republican politicians is paranoia about angering the party and its voters and sparking a successful nomination challenge in the next election. So theyre left with either vague generalizations or reaching for policy options that have been rejected for good reasons.

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Theres more to it than that, however. Republicans are still suffering the after-effects of leading the nation into a major foreign policy disaster in Iraq two decades ago. The Democrats dealt with Vietnam by going to war with each other, eventually purging many of those involved from the party and struggling for over a decade to figure out a new party consensus on national security. Republicans after Iraq took a different course, essentially pretending for a decade that it hadnt been a disaster at all  a stance that was among the reasons they were vulnerable to Trump in 2016.

The result was (in national security matters) a split within the party, with foreign-policy professionals, many of whom continued to defend the Iraq invasion, making up the core of the policy-oriented anti-Trump faction. Trump, however, was even less equipped to build a new foreign policy consensus than Jimmy Carter had been for Democrats in the 1970s, even as he chased away more and more of the professionals who might contribute sensible policy ideas, with some leaving the party altogether and others, such as the families of former President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, partially or completely purged.

None of this will prevent Republicans from winning elections, even presidential elections. But it does leave them unprepared to govern. Or, for now, to be a constructive opposition.

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For weekend reading, here are some of the best items from political scientists this week:

The Washington Posts Monkey Cage continues to run all sorts of terrific commentary about Russia and Ukraine. Heres Sharon Werning Rivera on Putins hold on Russian elites.

Dave Hopkins on the State of the Union speech.

Dan Drezner has some skepticism about sanctions.

Robert Farley on the Russian military and political situation.

Matt Glassman on Twitter and thinking.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Jonathan Bernstein is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering politics and policy. He taught political science at the University of Texas at San Antonio and DePauw University and wrote A Plain Blog About Politics.

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Danny Hong shows where the water reached up to him during flooding in his basement apartment in the Queens borough of New York last September. (AP)

Researchers say individuals should respond to the hazard most pressing at the time and be prepared to move locations if necessary.
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Russias expulsion from much of the worlds financial system presents a vexing problem for the global index business -- and for the funds that track them. Providers of these closely watched collections of stocks or bonds -- followed on autopilot by trillions of dollars in passive investments, and used as a benchmark for trillions more in active strategies -- are grappling with whether and how to extract the countrys securities. As some begin stripping out these practically untradeable assets, its causing big problems.

1. Why does being in an index matter?

Indexes are replicated, tracked and competed against by investment vehicles ranging from U.S.-based exchange-traded funds (ETFs) to Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds to Asian pension funds. Even though Russian assets account for a small percentage of broad emerging-market indexes, its a huge amount of money. An estimated $842 billion in assets is tracking JPMorgan Chase & Co.s bond indexes, which have so far kept existing Russian bonds in their ranks as the managers review next steps. Index provider MSCI Inc. -- which is ditching Russian equities from its emerging-market gauge -- has more than $16 trillion in assets benchmarked to its products overall. Beyond dollars, the indexes are also an important symbol of acceptance in the mainstream global financial community.

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2. Why are Russian assets being removed?

The bottom line is that stocks and bonds need to be accessible and investable in order to be a part of big benchmarks. Sanctions designed to cut off Russia after its invasion of Ukraine have throttled the nations access to foreign financing and reserves; in response, the nation has imposed strict capital controls, bans on transfers to foreign investors and shuttered local stock trading. MSCIs decision to cut Russian equities from its widely-tracked index cited feedback from market participants who said Russias equity market was currently uninvestable.

3. How do they get removed?

In more normal times, index changes are announced well in advance, often on a regular schedule, and sometimes weightings are even adjusted gradually to minimize any wider market impact. This type of full-on cut is extremely rare, so there are few precedents. The dates and manner by which firms including MSCI, FTSE Russell, S&P Dow Jones Indices and Stoxx Ltd. plan to remove Russian assets from their indexes all vary slightly, but the steps are roughly the same: the value of the securities will be written down to zero and then they will be deleted.

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4. What would this mean for the securities given the boot?

Theyd effectively be cut off from large swaths of the investing world. Even after recent declines, Russian assets make up a little more than 1.5% of the MSCI emerging-market gauges weight. Russian government debt accounts for about 1.8% of JPMorgans flagship GBI-EM index, which is tracked by an estimated $245 billion in assets. In the EMBI gauge, tracked by $415 billion in assets, Russian bonds had a weighting of 0.89%, as of late February 2022. According to one estimate, the decision by MSCI alone to reclassify Russia could result in $32 billion exiting the countrys assets from active and passive funds. However, that assumes the funds could actually sell.

5. Will funds dump Russian assets en masse?

Unlikely. Remember, the assets have become uninvestable, so passive vehicles cant actually sell, whether to comply with the index changes or handle investors exiting. No one is quite sure what happens next. The theory is that Russian securities would still be held by these funds, even if valued at zero, possibly in a side pocket segregated from the rest of the assets. For broad ETFs in which Russian assets are just a small part -- they typically make up about 3% to 4% of an emerging-market ETF -- this could cause whats known as tracking error, when a funds actual performance diverges from that of the benchmark it follows. But it also has potential upside should the assets recover.

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6. What about Russia-only ETFs?

Its even more complicated. The structure of ETFs mean they are still trade even with their assets stuck, causing gaps to open between the price of the funds and value of its holdings. The ETFs can act as a vehicle to help value the underlying securities when they cant trade. Thats a scenario the ETF industry has faced before, in 2015 when the Greek stock exchange closed during the countrys debt crisis and during the so-called Arab Spring in the early 2010s, when the Egyptian stock market closed. For now, most Russia-focused funds have stopped creating new shares -- effectively halting inflows -- to try to prevent things getting worse. One has announced its shutting down, while another said Friday that all trading is halted.

7. Does this risk extend to ESG investors?

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Definitely. Fund managers who screen for environmental, social and governance factors are grappling with whether conscientious imperatives and human rights -- or politics -- should guide their investment decisions. Russia and Belarus were under review for removal from JPMorgans suite of ESG bond indexes. MSCI downgraded its ESG ratings of both countries on Feb. 28, citing assessments in categories such as stability and peace, political rights and civil liberties and governance effectiveness. Big investors are also responding, with Norways $1.3 trillion sovereign wealth fund dropping Russian assets in response to the invasion. It has asked the central bank to come up with a plan by March 15 on how to remove the assets.

8. Are there any winners in this mess?

Potentially, yes. Goldman Sachs estimated that Russias exclusion from the JPMorgan GBI-EM Global Diversified Index would lead to a re-distribution that favors Thailand and Malaysia, as well as South Africa and Mexico. Citigroup Global Markets Inc. said that the United Arab Emirates could be a beneficiary if Russia is removed from developing-nation gauges. Other countries that could benefit include China and India.

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9. Are there other precedents to learn from?

Every situation is unique, but there have been a series of similar episodes in the past with index adjustments. Liquidity evaporated as Venezuela was phased out of JPMorgans benchmarks in 2019 after sanctions followed a disputed presidential election. And Nigeria was removed in 2015 from the local-currency debt gauges after restrictions on foreign-exchange transactions prompted concerns about a shortage of liquidity. MSCI reclassified Argentinas equities last year due to severe capital controls that were meant to stop dollars from exiting the country. It also removed Malaysia during the height of the Asian financial crisis in the late 1990s and downgraded Pakistan from its emerging-market index in 2008.

More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com

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Obituaries of residents from the District, Maryland and Northern Virginia. James Davis, lawyer Wp Get the full experience. Choose your plan ArrowRight James Davis, 87, a lawyer who started the intellectual property practice at the old Howrey & Simon law firm in Washington before retiring in 2005, died Jan. 5 at a hospice center at Bonita Springs, Fla. The cause was a heart ailment, said a daughter, Jennifer Goodman.

Mr. Davis was born in Fort Wayne, Ind., and moved to the Washington area in 1964. Before joining Howrey & Simon in 1972, he clerked at the U.S. Court of Customs and Patent Appeals, served as a trial judge at the U.S. Court of Claims and taught chemistry at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis. In 2020 he moved to Bonita Springs from Bethesda, Md.

Raymond Jacobson, lawyer political activist

Raymond Jacobson, 93, a lawyer and political activist who had been an advance man for Democratic presidential candidates Lyndon B. Johnson, Hubert H. Humphrey, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, died Jan. 23 at his home in North Bethesda. The cause was congestive heart failure, said a son, Louis Jacobson.

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Mr. Jacobson was born in Orlando and had lived in the Washington area since 1955. Over the years, he was an official at Democratic Party political conventions and had worked at the Securities and Exchange Commission, the International Trade Commission and the International Trade Administration.

He had been an aide in congressional offices and from 1981 to 2010 was a court-appointed lawyer in D.C. Superior Court.

Martha Hartke, senator's widow

Martha Hartke, 101, the widow of Sen. Vance Hartke (D-Ind.), who served in the Senate from 1959 to 1977 and died in 2003, died Jan. 21 at an assisted-living facility in New Market, Va. The cause was congestive heart failure, said a son, Jan Hartke.

Mrs. Hartke was born Martha Tiernan in Richmond, Ind. She participated in activities for congressional spouses.

 From staff reports

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What changed? Two years after the Battle of Tizak, in September 2012, Person 4 was serving as second in command to Roberts-Smith, who was by then an SAS patrol commander. They were on a fateful mission to a village named Darwan, to hunt down a rogue Afghan soldier who had slaughtered three Australian soldiers on a coalition base the previous month. At Darwan, Person 4 claimed, he saw Roberts-Smith kick an unarmed and handcuffed prisoner down a cliff, the man falling so forcefully that his teeth were knocked out of his mouth on the way down. After hed followed Roberts-Smith and another soldier, Person 11, down a path to the river bed below, Roberts-Smith allegedly ordered him to help drag the stunned villager to a nearby tree. When he heard shots ring out from an M4 rifle (the type carried by the SAS), he says he turned to see the prisoner lying dead, and Roberts-Smith and Person 11 nearby, with Person 11 still holding his rifle in the firing position.

Person 4 added that he believed that the ICOM radio subsequently photographed next to the dead villager had been taken by Roberts-Smith from a different individual killed earlier in the day (though later he conceded he did not know this for a fact). Person 4s evidence has been a watershed moment in this most extraordinary of defamation suits. His description of the events at Darwan tallies, in a number of key respects, with evidence given by three Afghan villagers last year, whose accounts were beamed into the courtroom by audio-visual link. Person 4s Darwan evidence also tallies with original reports written by investigative reporters, Nick McKenzie and Chris Masters, in June 2018, concerning the death of a villager named Ali Jan, whod allegedly been kicked down a cliff then shot by the SAS. Roberts-Smith, suing the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age over these and other reports, has strenuously denied all wrong-doing. His version of events at Darwan is that the dead villager was a Taliban spotter - equipped with a radio - whom he and Person 11 surprised in a cornfield as the troop was evacuating.

But Person 4 told the court that Roberts-Smith instructed other members of the patrol that the spotter version was the story that they all had to stick to. A few years later Person 4 shared the Darwan story with another soldier, Person 7. This led to the following exchange with Roberts-Smiths barrister, Arthur Moses, SC: That story about Darwan you told him [Person 7] was basically saying that Mr Roberts-Smith is a war criminal, correct? Thats correct, Person 4 agreed. The former soldier however denied that he considered Roberts-Smith was undeserving of the VC for the earlier action at Tizak and that this had prompted him to tell others about the Darwan incident. Yet he felt his own actions at Tizak had been comparatively undervalued. I was upset that something as outstanding as what both Ben and myself did was politicised and they [the military authorities] could have accepted the fact that both of us did as much as the other that day, he said.

He added that he believed the government wanted a good news story out of Afghanistan, and that the Roberts-Smith VC was it. Yet he was also adamant that he was not now trying to bring his former comrade down. Under intense questioning from Moses, he described two camps among the elite SAS troop, one in support of Roberts-Smith, and another highly critical of the subsequently lionised VC war hero. Person 4 said he was in neither camp but that within the unit, sharks were circling. This part of Person 4s evidence will almost certainly be seized on by Roberts-Smiths lawyers who have contended that the war crimes allegations against their client have been fuelled by professional jealousy. Person 4, medically discharged from the SAS last year, never wanted to be part of this case. He was summoned under subpoena by Nines lawyers. His recent mental health struggles have been raked over in the courtroom by Roberts-Smiths lawyers all week. Compounding the stress he says hes been under is that another soldier, Person 41, testified several weeks ago that Person 4 himself had been ordered by Roberts-Smith to shoot an unarmed prisoner on another occasion in 2009, at a compound dubbed Whiskey 108 (again strongly denied by Roberts-Smith).

Person 4 has sought and been granted a degree of protection in the courtroom from answering questions about Whiskey 108, for complex legal reasons. SAS soldiers on duty in Afghanistan move towards a waiting UH-60 Blackhawk helicopter. By Friday lunchtime, hed been released from the court, but only after giving evidence for four-and-a-half gruelling days. Moses repeatedly put to Person 4 that his memory had failed, that his medications were interfering with his recall, that he was hallucinating, or that he was making things up. Person 4 remained adamant throughout: I know it [Darwan] happened. By Friday afternoon, the media outlets had called another critical SAS witness into the box, codenamed Person 18 (none of the SAS personnel can be identified by name).

Person 18 said Person 4 had told him during a drinking session in late 2012 about seeing Roberts-Smith kick a detainee off a cliff. Hed asked Person 4 not to tell him any more because he was sick of watching friends break down over things that had happened in Afghanistan. In two later meetings with senior officers, attended by Person 18, Person 4 had repeated the story about the detainee being kicked over the precipice, Person 18 told the court. Person 18 also gave evidence about receiving anonymous threatening letters in mid-2018, shortly after he had given evidence to a secret government inquiry into war crimes allegations. The court has previously heard that Roberts-Smith asked his then friend, John McLeod, to track down addresses and post envelopes for him at around this time. Roberts-Smith has denied sending the letters. Person 18 described his alarm at receiving the letters, which in at least one case have been handed to the Australian Federal Police after he reported them to superiors. On Monday, he will continue giving evidence on events at Whiskey 108, where it has been alleged that Roberts-Smith ordered Person 4 to blood the rookie by shooting a detainee who had allegedly been pulled from a tunnel. Roberts-Smith has denied giving any such order and has consistently maintained there were no Afghans in the tunnel. At least two SAS witnesses have now said there were.
Do you know that the weather on your phone is probably selling data about your location each time you check for rain?

This week I learned that my note-taking app scans my shopping list to identify things to sell me. And the app I use to track my kids chores and pocket money is selling my financial profile to advertisers. Also, my sons favourite online game is sending information to a mobile analytics company. My music streaming service is in on the act, too, targeting my friends by helping itself to my contacts list.

Every move you make, theyll be watching you. Credit:iStock

And the thing is, I consented to all of this. I ticked the box. I didnt read the fine print.

Like most people, I have become habituated to the daily tedium of clicking I agree to lengthy terms of service agreements for apps, cookies and websites. Australians receive up to seven of these privacy consent requests every day.
Presidente @PedroCastilloTe: "Somos un Gobierno que impulsa la verdadera descentralizacion. Por ello, tenemos que priorizar los trabajos inmediatos para que la poblacion tenga una mejor calidad de vida en sus localidades". pic.twitter.com/15onbYFafG
The pilot charged over the murder of two elderly campers who vanished from Victorias High Country in 2020 is suing his employer Jetstar for unfair dismissal.

Greg Lynn, a 55-year-old father of three, has lodged papers in the Fair Work Commission after the budget airline sacked him in January.

A four-wheel-drive impounded by police and (inset left) missing campers Russell Hill and Carol Clay, and (inset right) Greg Lynn, who has been charged with their murders.

Mr Lynn, from Caroline Springs, was charged in November with two counts of murder, after police alleged he killed Russell Hill and Carol Clay in the Wonnangatta Valley on March 20, 2020.

The Transport Workers Union is assisting with Lynns unfair dismissal claim. In a January 20 letter bearing the signature of Victorian branch secretary John Berger, the union appealed the decision, and told Jetstar the sacking should be rescinded.
This image made from a video released by Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant shows bright flaring object landing in grounds of the nuclear plant in Enerhodar, Ukraine Friday, March 4, 2022. Russian forces shelled Europes largest nuclear plant early Friday, sparking a fire as they pressed their attack on a crucial energy-producing Ukrainian city and gained ground in their bid to cut off the country from the sea.
In a show of solidarity with Ukraine as it faces an onslaught of devastation in the wake of a Russian invasion, Delaware officials came together in Wilmington Friday to raise the Ukrainian flag in Freedom Plaza.

"Thank you so much for so many of you for coming out this morning...to come together to support the Ukrainian members of our Delaware community, and also express solidarity for those struggling for their sovereignty, for their freedom, at this very moment in Eastern Europe," said County Executive Matt Meyer on March 4, 2022.

Local, county, state, and even federal officials joined community members and religious leaders to spread a message of unity and make a gesture of support. It was as much a statement to the members of the Ukrainian community within Delaware as it was a symbolic gesture to the country itself.

After opening with a prayer from Fr. Stephen Hutnick of St. Peter and Paul Ukrainian Orthodox Church, Wilmington Mayor Mike Purzycki addressed those gathered in his city, recounting the "bipolar world" in which he grew up just after World War II, and the eventual Cold War. It's a "deeply unsettling" feeling the world hasn't experienced since, until now, he said.

"When we watch television at the end of the night, and see these horrible images, I wonder if I would be as tough as these Ukrainians. I wonder if I would have the tenacity they have to face up to an army 10 times their size," Purzycki said. "The world rallied to the side of the United States after 9/11. And I remembered all the newspapers around the world, they all had the same headline: 'Today, we're all Americans.' Today, we're all Ukrainians."

Delaware knows better than most the importance of banding together in the face of adversity, being the small state that it is, Gov. John Carney said.

"I am so proud to be a Delawareans showing our support and solidarity for our Ukrainian brothers and sisters here in the First State. And across the country," the governor said. "This is our opportunity to stand up and show our solidarity. This is our opportunity to bring our state together...We're known as a state of neighbors...and so, today, I think we feel maybe more than others, how important it is to stand behind our brothers and sisters."

Some of those Ukrainian members of the Delaware community of whom state officials spoke joined the rally, Ukrainian flags of their own hoisted high or draped over their shoulders. A man who asked to be identified only as Alex, a Ukrainian immigrant now living in Claymont, said gestures like these, small as they are, speak volumes in the way of how supported his people feel here.

"It just means a lot. It means the whole world is standing by us, and sharing all the grief and suffering that our country and our homeland is going through right now," he said. "It truly means a lot. It means that the whole world is supporting us and is with us in these difficult times."

Wilmington's Mark Murowany said everything is so different now than even just a short time ago, that seeing his city come together to offer support is wonderful--but more is needed. He said resolutions and prayers are good things, but action is necessary.

"In a week, the world has changed. It's not just changed for Ukraine, or for Europe. It's changed for the United States. We'd have to look at this situation very differently, in terms of how greater powers can take a smaller nation by force. Treaties have been torn up. People are being carpet bombed. We have destruction on a wide scale," Murowany said. "In one week, the entire population of Delaware has moved into Poland and Hungary. Think about it. One million people. How many more millions of Ukrainians are going to go and be evacuated--God willing--and they're mostly women and children."

The event was also attended by U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, in town to join U.S. Sen. Tom Carper at a DelDOT depot for discussions about job creation and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.

"I was so moved when I learned that the people of Delaware were taking this step to honor the people of Ukraine, that I appreciate the ability to come a little earlier than planned and join you for a moment here," Buttigieg said. "Like everybody, I was shocked by what we saw last night--shocked by what we've seen over the course of the last week and counting--of this unprovoked, unjustified act of aggression against the people of Ukraine. People of Ukraine did not ask to be a battleground in the struggle between autocracy and democracy. Matter of fact, they wanted to avoid being in this position. And yet they are and they have risen to it in such a courageous and inspiring fashion that when this flag goes up here in their honor, it will not just be a flag representing Ukraine and its people, but I believe representing democracy itself."
An Amazon truck drives in in Philadelphia, Friday, April 30, 2021. Amazon is seeking to hire 75,000 people in a tight job market and is offering bonuses to attract workers, including $100 for new hires who are already vaccinated for COVID-19. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
Saludamos el voto del Peru a favor de la resolucion "Agresion contra Ucrania" de la ONU, la cual fue aprobada con 141 votos a favor. Reafirmamos nuestro compromiso con la soberania de #Ucrania y condenamos energicamente la agresion por parte de Rusia. #WeStandWithUkraine???? https://t.co/EWXj3exyDL
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LOUSIVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- The man charged with shooting and killing 32-year-old Jordan Morgan while she was asleep had written notes about finding the bunker inside the Morgan family's home, court document allege.

According to a report by LEX18, a search warrant provided more details into the deadly home invasion that happened Feb. 22 on Willis Branch Road in Richmond. Jordan is the daughter of former state Rep. C. Wesley Morgan.

Jordan Morgan Jordan Morgan (Source: LEX 18)

In the warrant, a friend of 23-year-old Shannon Gilday found notes that referenced the Morgan family's home as well as their sleep schedules. The search warrant said he wrote down details about the $6.5 million home, including where cameras and potential access points could be. He also previously attempted to gain access to the bunker but "has not been able to," according to the search warrant.

On the morning of Feb. 22, court documents said Gilday, armed with an "assault rifle," got into the home by climbing through an upstairs doorway, went into an upstairs bedroom, and fired multiple rounds at Jordan, who was asleep at the time.

The former state representative said Gilday was able to get into the home by climbing on top of scaffolding that had been outside for construction work on a porch.

The criminal complaint said Gilday then went downstairs and shot his way into the master bedroom where Morgan, his wife and young daughter were located. After an exchange of gunfire with Wesley Morgan, documents say Gilday fled into his vehicle and took off.

Morgan was taken to the hospital to be treated for non-life-threatening injuries.

According to the search warrant, one of Gilday's friends contacted Kentucky State Police the evening of the home invasion. The friend said he found documents in Gilday's apartment connecting him to the scene of the crime.

Gilday's mother reported her son missing on Feb. 23, the day after the deadly home invasion. She told officers she hadn't seen him since the night of Feb. 21, hours before the shooting took place.

The friend told police he was supposed to meet Gilday the morning of Feb. 23, according to the search warrant. When he entered the apartment, the friend found directions from Cincinnati to the Morgan family home in Richmond.

The friend told officers Gilday had a history of psychotic problems and that he had been looking at homes with bunkers in southern Kentucky, according to the search warrant. Gilday had recently been discharged from the United States Army, the friend told police.

The search warrant said the friend told state police that Gilday owned an AR-style rifle, consistent with shell casings that were found at the scene.

Police applied to obtain a search warrant for Gilday's apartment in Taylor Mill. Officer James Mills with the Taylor Mill Police Department swore out an affidavit seeking the search warrant shortly before 1 p.m. Feb. 23, the day after the shooting. It sought to find the following:

Evidence of a shooting, including firearms, ammunition, etc.

Evidence of a plan or conspiracy to commit a burglary, home invasion or shooting.

All electronics capable of accessing the internet, storing information, photos, social media, etc. including phones, smartphones, tablets, computers, memory devices.

Any journals, diaries, or notebooks.

Any documents or papers regarding real estate or properties.

Taylor Mill Police executed the warrant just before 3 p.m. the same day. The returned warrant states officers took several items from the apartment, including:

Documents

A shotgun and shells

Ammunition containers

Two laptops

A Kindle and six cell phones

Rifle cleaning kit

Photo identification badges

Goggles

Gilday was arrested Monday after deputies found him walking along the Exit 87 overpass on Interstate 75, less than 2 miles from the family's home. It took nearly a week for officials to located Gilday.

Gilday is charged with murder, burglary, criminal mischief, assault and two counts of attempted murder. He pleaded not guilty to all six felony charges.

During his arraignment Wednesday, Gilday was assigned a public defender with no bond. He will remain in the Madison County Detention Center until a preliminary hearing at 9:30 a.m. Wednesday, March 9.

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Copyright 2022 WDRB Media. All Rights Reserved.
YEREVAN, MARCH 4, ARMENPRESS. The new Deputy Minister of Education, Science, Culture and Sport Alfred Kocharyan says they have ambitious and promising projects aimed at preserving, restoring and promoting Armenian cultural values.

In an interview with ARMENPRESS, Kocharyan said the ministry will restore a number of monuments in 2022, and several events will be organized across the country. In addition, Armenia will participate in the Sharjah Heritage Days festival to be held March 10-28 in the United Arab Emirates.

Kocharyan said Armenia will be in the focus at the Sharjah exhibition.

We will present our entire culture and history in our pavilion, Kocharyan said. Orchestras will perform, now we are in the phase of discussions and I cant reveal more details. We have produced films and videos. We did everything possible to impress the visitors of our pavilion, Alfred Kocharyan said.

The Armenian delegation to the event will include the Director of the History Museum of Armenia Davit Poghosyan, who will sign a memorandum of cooperation with the Sharjah Institute for Heritage.

Speaking about other projects, the deputy minister noted that soon an exhibition will be organized in Gyumri  with support from the ministry and at the initiative of the Hovhannes Sharambeyan Museum of Folk Arts  aimed at promoting tourism and boosting cultural life in other cities in addition to Yerevan. The Gyumri: Master City has the potential to attract tourists, if the event is properly promoted and covered, Kocharyan said.

In turn, the building of the Dilijan branch of the Hovhannes Sharambeyan Museum of Folk Arts will undergo renovation in the coming years.

Kocharyan said the restoration of historical-cultural monuments is a top priority for the ministry. He reminded that 108 million drams will be provided from the state budget in 2022 for this purpose, and an additional 128 million drams could be allocated depending on the course of implementation of the programs.

The process of excavations will continue, and the government-private sector cooperation. A good example of such cooperation is the restoration of the Astvatsynkal Church in Aragatsotn Province, he said, adding that the restoration of the Mayravank monastery in Solak and Talin's Katoghike Church will also commence in 2022. Works will continue at the Sanahin monastic complex, the Goshavank and Kobayr monastery.

Alfred Kocharyan said he attaches importance to raising awareness on preservation of monuments, and increasing consciousness of the public on the matter. He highlighted family and school as having a major role for achieving this. We must remind people that monuments are also their homeland, monuments should be loved and preserved, not harmed or ruined. The governmental agencies and other structures under our ministry are carrying out educational projects for this, he said.

Interview by Angela Hambardzumyan

Photos by Hayk Manukyan
YEREVAN, MARCH 4, ARMENPRESS. Levon Sahakyan passed the confirmation vote in parliament to become Member of the Board of the Central Bank.

70 Members of Parliament participated in the vote. Sahakyan, who was nominated by the Civil Contract party, was elected with 69 votes in favor. 1 MP voted against his candidacy.
Today

Partly to mostly sunny, pleasant, and seasonable.

Tonight

Increasing clouds; rain possible around sunrise west of the Lehigh Valley.

Tomorrow

Cloudy, cool, and a bit breezy with periods of rain developing, steadier in the afternoon.
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YEREVAN, MARCH 4, ARMENPRESS. Polish Foreign Minister Zbigniew Rau, who chairs the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), welcomed the agreement reached by Russia and Ukraine on the creation of humanitarian corridors, he announced on Twitter on Friday, TASS reports.

I welcome an agreement to create humanitarian corridors for evacuation of civilians from besieged Ukrainian cities. With majority of OSCE countries, I have been calling for this since the conflict's outbreak. I asked Secretary-General Helga Schmid to take appropriate actions, the message says as quoted by TASS.

The second round of Russian-Ukrainian negotiations ended in Belarus on Thursday. Russian Presidential Aide and head of the Russian delegation Vladimir Medinsky called the agreements reached with the Ukrainian side a significant progress. In particular, Moscow and Kiev managed to agree on humanitarian corridors for citizens. The third round of the dialogue is expected to take place in the coming days.
YEREVAN, MARCH 4, ARMENPRESS. Armenian authorities provided nearly 250 identification data on foreign mercenaries whom Azerbaijan deployed in the 2020 Nagorno Karabakh war to the CIS Counter-Terrorism Center, the Deputy Director of the Armenian National Security Service (NSS) Samvel Hayrapetyan revealed.

Nearly 250 identification data were entered to their information resources in order to prevent [the mercenaries] access to various countries in the future, he said in parliament in response to a question from MP Armen Gevorgyan (Hayastan faction) during debates on the ratification of the Additional Protocol to the Council of Europe Convention on the Prevention of Terrorism.

Gevorgyan inquired from the deputy chief of the NSS whether or not the ratification would give new opportunities to condemn and raise in international bodies the issue of Azerbaijans deployment of mercenaries during the 2020 war.

In response, Hayrapetyan said the matter could be problematic from the point of view of the international community that Nagorno Karabakh could be recognized as a party participating in the ratification, but he said that the NSS used its international regulations to make the information accessible to different international bodies. The information on the foreign mercenaries was provided through the foreign ministry channels, while the NSS gave the information to the CIS Counter-Terrorism Center.

Turkey recruited and sent foreign mercenaries to fight for Azerbaijan against Armenia in the 2020 Nagorno Karabakh war.

Despite Ankara denying this, the Armenian authorities have presented numerous evidence proving the participation of the Syrian mercenaries from the Azeri side.

The Russian foreign intelligence service had also gathered information on Sultan Murad mercenaries participation in the Karabakh war.

The President of France Emmanuel Macron also said that his intelligence agencies have information that Turkey is sending mercenaries to Azerbaijan to fight against Armenians in Nagorno Karabakh.

Earlier in 2021, the Armenian authorities said that the investigation has revealed that Azerbaijan pre-planned the war back in June 2020 and recruited more than 2000 Syrian mercenaries and deployed them via Turkey. Azeri authorities transferred payments namely to the Suleyman Shah and Sultan Murad terror groups.

Audio recordings of the Sultan Murad fighters in Nagorno Karabakh were intercepted during the war.

Two Syrian mercenaries captured by the Armenian forces were subsequently sentenced to life in prison.
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Drone enthusiasts are risking their lives by forming a volunteer force to help their country repel the Russian invasion -- by spying on the enemy from the air. See a sample of what they've found so far.
The stage version of Andrea Levy's award-winning novel about the treatment of Britain's Black citizens in the wartime and post-war years was pretty fabulous when it first appeared in 2019. This revival with a new cast is utterly sensational  an engrossing, all-embracing piece of theatre.

The achievement of Helen Edmundson's adaptation and Rufus Norris's sensitive, fluent direction is that of all great art: it makes its points through its characters rather than by imposing arguments on top of them. An entire panorama of British post-colonial society is placed on the stage, in all its ugliness and prejudice.

But the people you spend three hours with, are fully-realised, with their faults, their humour, their resilience propelling the story as much as the great sweep of 1940s life. The big theme, still so pertinent today, is the distorting effects of Empire, of a belief in the right of Britain to rule, which meant that the Windrush generation were invited to come to this country from Jamaica and the West Indies and then saw their hopes of a better life cruelly dashed.

Yet there are smaller, gentler concerns that poke their way to the surface: the absolute unpredictability of love, the way that people long for others who can't make them happy, and the sense that generosity and kindness are the torches of the human spirit.

This is all embodied in the central quartet of characters: uptight Hortense, who loves her dashing cousin Michael, but who marries the irrepressible Gilbert in order to get to England. There, they all end up in the ambit of the landlady Queenie, warm and welcoming, and willing to rent her rooms to people of colour when her neighbours will not. She's married to the repressed Bernard, whose buttoned-up respectability conceals a welter of hatred.

Their stories unfold with gripping simplicity, as the scene moves from the golden light of Jamaica to the grey, grimy London streets. Katrina Lindsay's set, which uses window and door frames to suggest an entire life, is dominated by a curved panorama on which Jon Driscoll's projections paint the ever-changing scene, transforming swiftly from the moonlit skies of Hortense's childhood to cloudy Lincolnshire where Queenie grows up, to the bombed rubble of the capital.

This sense of movement, of a world being conjured in front of our eyes, is underlined by the grace of Coral Messam's movement direction, which keeps crowds with umbrellas or parasols constantly on the go, bustling round the edges of the central revolve. Sometimes a character appears  or case  disappears through a trap door. Sometimes bits of scenery revolve or  magically  the cast become part of the panorama, as when their silhouetted forms are shown climbing into the Windrush in 1948. Everything is beautifully underscored by Benjamin Kwasi Burrell's music and Ian Dickinson's sound design.

The examination of this society is subtle and fierce. There's a lot of humour  Gilbert's description of all British food as looking as if it has already been eaten once, Queenie's meeting with Bernard in her aunt's confectionery shop  and Jamaica, on the brink of independence, isn't painted as a paradise. But the racism when it arrives is sharp and shocking, with language so violent and unpleasant it chills and shames.

That it is Gilbert, who has fought for the motherland in the RAF, who bears the brunt of the attacks makes them even more unbearable. He glides through the story with such dignity and grace, lovable and funny when trying his moves on the girls, fierce and defiant when he is subjected to abuse. Leemore Marrett Jr makes him a man of substance but the way that you see his hopes of becoming a lawyer suddenly dying in his eyes is almost unbearable.

As the prissy Hortense, Leonie Elliott is equally heartbreaking. The fact that even Queenie can't understand the way she speaks English, when she is so proud of her elocution sums up the disillusion she feels as she watches the promise of a golden life seep away. As Queenie, Mirren Mack is a vivid, vibrant presence, eyes shining with tears as she too sees her dreams dashed, condemned to live with Martin Hutson's neurotic Bernard, a man she has nothing in common with.

Every member of the cast plays their part in this reminder that small islands can be in the mind, cutting us off from each other. It's a staggering achievement, a humane and pointed assertion that the story of Britain is the tale of its Black citizens as well as its white. As its emotional climax reminds us all, what is needed is pride, tolerance and love.
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YEREVAN, 4 MARCH, ARMENPRESS. Minister of Education, Science, Culture and Sport of Armenia Vahram Dumanyan on March 4 received the Resident Coordinator of the UN in Armenia Lila Pieters Yahia, ARMENPRESS reports the Ministry said, mentioning that Deputy Minister of ESCS Artur Martorosyan was present at the meeting.



Vahram Dumanyan congratulated Lila Pieters Yahia on the occasion of assuming the position of Resident Coordinator of the UN in Armenia and wished effective work. The Minister emphasized and highly appreciated the jointly carried out programs with the support of the UN in Armenia and in partnership with the Ministry of ESCS of Armenia.



Vahram Dumanyan specially highlighted the cooperation with the UN Childrens Fund with the aim of comprehensive reforms of early childhood development as well as with the UN World Food Programme in the framework of school food provision.

Vahram Dumanyan referred also to the issue of strengthening of Education  Job Market connection in the context of development of professional education.

The Resident Coordinator of the UN in Armenia Lila Pieters Yahia in her turn mentioned that the Ministry of ESCS currently stepped on a big phase of large-scale reforms, highlighting that without education development is not possible and education is the axis of development of any country. She specially highlighted the reforms of development of early childhood and Professional Education and Teaching field, as well as the necessity of cooperation with private sector, with the aim of making the Professional Education and Teaching more attractive. Lila Pieters Yahia emphasized that the UN Office in Armenia and structures are ready to support the process of effective implementation of reforms.



Referring to the issue of cultural development Vahram Dumanyan drawed the attention of the UN Resident Coordinator to the threats to Armenian cultural heritage in the territories taken under control of Azerbaijan. The Minister hoped that by the support of UNESCO it will be possible to ensure the immunity of that heritage, because these are values of universal significance.



At the end of the meeting Lila Pieters Yahia informed that this year by the initiative of the Secretary General of the UN Antonio Guterres a summit on education is planned for developing world strategy of education sphere as well as with that anticipation that the member states of the UN will increase the share of education of their GDPs.



Other issues of mutual interests were discussed.
Bill would protect addresses of those who speak at school board meetings
YEREVAN, MARCH 4, ARMENPRESS. NATO has rejected the Ukrainian side's request to establish no-fly zones in Ukraine's airspace, saying that they are increasing support, but direct participation will lead to a wider, even fiercer European war, ARMENPRESS reports, Reuters informed.

"We are not a party to this conflict. We, as NATO allies, must prevent the escalation of this war outside of Ukraine, as it will be even more dangerous, more destructive," NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said at a news conference.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has called on Western forces to establish a no-fly zone.
The Rev. Gary Heaton of Kernstown United Methodist Church and members of the congregation installed a banner Sunday in front of the church on Valley Avenue in Kernstown in observance of Lent.
In the documentary Horror Noire: A History of Black Horror, now playing on the genre specialty streaming service Shudder, director Xavier Burgin makes the provocative case that the horror genre, for good and ill, reflected the Black experience like no other in the past century.

In the documentary Horror Noire: A History of Black Horror, now playing on the genre specialty streaming service Shudder, director Xavier Burgin makes the provocative case that the horror genre, for good and ill, reflected the Black experience like no other in the past century.

MOVIE PREVIEW Click to Expand Black Horror: Perspectives and Interventions

Cinematheque

March 4-17

wfp.to/blackhorror

In the words of writer-educator Tananarive Due, an executive producer of the film, "Black history is Black horror." Another academic, Robin R. Means Coleman, nails down that case with footage from D.W. Griffiths racist epic Birth of a Nation, which celebrates a lynching of a Black man by the Ku Klux Klan. Long celebrated as the first American feature-length narrative, it can indeed only be viewed as a horror film today.

Even well into the '80s and '90s, the horror genre still found itself stuck in established racist tropes, in which Black characters were the first to die, or sacrificed themselves for the benefit of white characters.

"Weve always loved horror," Due observes at the beginning of the film. "Its just that horror, unfortunately, hasnt always loved us."

Night of the Living Dead

That case is clarified with Black Horror, Cinematheques March program of six feature films, co-curated by Winnipeg artist Mahlet Cuff and Cinematheques horror-friendly in-house programmer Olivia Norquay.

This festival kicks off today with a pair of films that nicely illustrate the evolution of Black horror over the past 50 years.

George Romeros landmark shocker Night of the Living Dead (1969) was revolutionary within the genre because it cast a Black actor (Duane Jones) as a hero who successfully staves off a horde of flesh-eating zombies from a desolate farmhouse, an unprecedented piece of casting at the time, especially for a horror film.

The fact that NOTLD is a prime entry in Black horror is, historically, almost accidental. Romero claimed he was colour-blind in casting Jones as the hero because he was simply the best actor to turn up to audition for the role.

Cynthia Bond as the Temptress in Def by Temptation. (Supplied)

Yet in the context of the civil rights conflicts of the 60s, we see how the character came loaded with historical significance, especially in the films shocking finale, when Jones falls victim to a posse of rednecks on a mission to destroy the zombies with the dead-eyed fervour of a lynch mob. (Romero was on his way to delivering his footage to New York City when he heard on the car radio that Martin Luther King had been assassinated.)

Fridays co-feature is Jordan Peeles Oscar-winning 2017 thriller Get Out, in which a Black hero (Daniel K finds himself the object of unsettling attention when he visits the posh home of his girlfriends parents, only to discover he is the designated victim of a horrifyingly invasive slavery racket. Given that Peele won an Oscar for his screenplay, we can assert nothing is accidental here. The script is an airtight Lament Configuration puzzle box of a thriller, but also a perfect snapshot of the retrograde American transition from the Obama years to the Trump years, in which white people presumed to be allies show their allegiances to be skin-deep.

Night of The Living Dead screens Friday, March 4 at 7 p.m., Wednesday, March 9 at 9 p.m. and Thursday, March 17 at 7:30 p.m.

Get Out screens Friday, March 4, at 9:15 p.m., Thursday, March 10, at 9:30 p.m., and Sunday, March 13 at 5:40 p.m.

Also on the program:

Def By Temptation

Saturday, March 5, at 4:45 p.m.; Sunday, March 6, at 8 p.m.; Friday, March 11, at 9:40 p.m.; and Sunday, March 13, at 8 p.m.

In this hip-hop-infused 1990 thriller by James Bond III, men fall victim to a succubus in New York City. Bond himself plays a divinity student who is starting to question his faith, the head of a cast that includes Samuel L. Jackson as a minister, Kadeem Hardison (of the TV series A Different World), Bill Nunn (of Do the Right Thing) and Cynthia Bond as the "Temptress." Cinematographer Ernest R. Dickerson would go on to be a notable horror director himself (Bones, Demon Night, The Walking Dead).

Candyman

Saturday, March 5, at 9 p.m.; Saturday, March 12, at 1 p.m.; Wednesday, March 16, at 9:40 p.m.

This is the 1992 version of the film, directed by Bernard Rose. It was deemed problematic in the Horror Noire doc for the fact that its central figure, a hook-wielding spectre stalking the denizens of the Chicago housing complex Cabrini-Green, is romantically obsessed with a white woman (Virginia Madsen). But its still something of a classic, thanks largely to Tony Todds grand performance in the title role, literally a tortured artist out for vengeance.

Ganja & Hess

Sunday, March 6, at 5:30 p.m.; Thursday, March 10, at 7p.m.; Saturday, March 12, at 3:20 p.m.

Director Bill Gunn was given money to make a vampire movie, but instead of something in the template of the 1972 exploitation hit Blacula, he made this comparatively restrained 1973 mood piece starring Duane Jones (from NOTLD) as a wealthy anthropologist who becomes a vampire after being stabbed by his deranged assistant (played by Gunn). He entices his assistants widow (Marlene Clark) into his vampire lifestyle, with bloody results.

The People Under the Stairs

Saturday, March 12, at 6 p.m.

This 1991 film by Wes Craven takes as its unlikely hero a Black child nicknamed Fool (Brandon Adams) who sneaks into the house of his deranged landlords (Everett McGill and Wendy Robie), only to discover the place houses a group of captive cannibal children. Its both a nasty thriller and a concise satire of race and class in America.

In Conversation with Tananarive Due

Thursday, March 17, at 6 p.m.

In this free evening, programmer Mahlet Cuff discusses Black horror with novelist and educator Tananarive Due, the executive producer of Horror Noire and teacher of a course at UCLA called The Sunken Place: Racism, Survival and the Black Horror Aesthetic, focusing on Jordan Peeles film Get Out.

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TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP)  Gov. Ron DeSantis on Friday said he would sign a 15-week abortion ban into law after Florida's legislature joined the trend of Republican-led states anticipating a U.S. Supreme Court decision that could sharply limit abortion rights in America.

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP)  Gov. Ron DeSantis on Friday said he would sign a 15-week abortion ban into law after Florida's legislature joined the trend of Republican-led states anticipating a U.S. Supreme Court decision that could sharply limit abortion rights in America.

DeSantis, a Republican, told reporters at a news conference in Jacksonville that I think that we'll be able to sign that in short order, a day after the GOP-controlled statehouse approved the bill following a series of emotional debates that often veered into painful, personal stories.

Republicans across the country are moving to replicate a 15-week abortion ban in Mississippi that the Supreme Court seems poised to uphold this summer. If the court weakens or overturns Roe v. Wade, Florida could be less of a destination for women throughout the South whose states have more restrictive abortion laws.

Access to care in the South is being decimated, said Laura Goodhue, executive director of the Florida Alliance of Planned Parenthood Affiliates, adding that the passage of the bill signals that your right to bodily autonomy depends on where you live."

The state currently allows abortions up to 24 weeks of pregnancy, with no exceptions thereafter for victims of rape or incest, according to the Guttmacher Institute.

The Florida bill contains exceptions if the abortion is necessary to save a mothers life or prevent serious injury to the mother, or if the fetus has a fatal abnormality confirmed by two doctors. It would go into effect July 1, 2022.

The passage of the legislation has drawn attention from the White House, with Democratic President Joe Biden responding in a tweet that said "My administration will not stand for the continued erosion of womens constitutional rights.

Republicans rejected several attempts by Democrats to add exceptions for rape, incest or human trafficking. Supporters said it's not a total ban and still gives women enough time to consider whether to get an abortion. They also called it reasonably limited, saying state statistics show only 6% of Floridas abortions last year occurred after the first trimester, or after the 11th week. Of these, 17 women and girls had been impregnated through rape or incest.

The only thing that were asking in this bill is that whatever decision you make, you do it before the 15 weeks, said Republican Sen. Ileana Garcia.

Some lawmakers revealed their own abortions and experiences with sexual assault as the measure moved through the GOP-controlled statehouse.

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Sen. Lauren Book, a Democrat who turned the pain of being sexually abused by her nanny into a career of helping other survivors, tearfully revealed she was also drugged and raped by multiple men when she was a young teenager. She implored senators to allow exemptions for rape, incest or human trafficking.

Its not OK to force someone whos been sexually assaulted and impregnated to carry that pregnancy to term if they dont want too, its just not, Book said. And if a woman or a girl needs more than 15 weeks to decide, we should be able to give that to her.

When the bill passed the GOP-controlled House last month, Republican Rep. Dana Trabulsy told lawmakers she previously had an abortion but has regretted it everyday since.

This is the right to life and to give up life is unconscionable to me, she said.

GOP lawmakers in West Virginia and Arizona have introduced 15-week abortion bans similar to the Mississippi law. Republicans in other states have modeled legislation after a Texas law, which the Supreme Court allowed to stand pending appeals, that effectively bans abortions after six weeks.

White House officials hosted a roundtable discussion with abortion rights advocates and Democratic state lawmakers on Thursday about the Florida bill as well as Republican restrictions in other states, expressing a commitment to exploring every option to protect reproductive health care.
OTTAWA - The Public Policy Forum says "urgent" action is needed from the Canadian government to level the playing field between news media and tech giants such as Meta and Google amid broad revenue declines in the media industry.

OTTAWA - The Public Policy Forum says "urgent" action is needed from the Canadian government to level the playing field between news media and tech giants such as Meta and Google amid broad revenue declines in the media industry.

In a new report titled "The Shattered Mirror: 5 Years On," the organization emphasizes the need to support public-interest, fact-based journalism, which it calls an essential part of democracy.

It cites News Media Canada data on the decline of advertising revenue for community newspapers, where almost 300 local Canadian papers either shuttered or merged with other publications in the decade from 2011 to 2020.

"We can no longer ignore how vulnerable our local and regional news outlets are to Google and Meta," Katie Davey, editor of PPF Media and policy lead at the Public Policy Forum said in a news release.

The report recommends implementing the model used in Australia, where the government passed laws that would make digital giants help cover the costs of journalism.

Other recommendations include enhancing the Local Journalism Initiative, Canada's $50 million program launched by the federal government in 2019 aimed at helping news outlets hire reporters to cover underserved communities.

This report comes five years after the Public Policy Forum's original "Shattered Mirror" report, which delved into the key issues facing Canada's journalism industry.

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That initial report had 12 recommendations.

There has been movement on at least six of those recommendations in some way, including the suggestion to establish a fund to support local journalism similar to what the BBC has been doing across the pond and the application of GST/HST to foreign digital services.

While the authors of the report are encouraged by greater innovation in policy solutions and are optimistic about a fresh generation of news entrepreneurs, they say support for Canadian news and media is ultimately still not where it needs to be.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 4, 2022.

---

The Canadian Press has a contract with News Media Canada to provide editorial oversight and distribution of the LJI content, but CP does not assign or edit the stories.
TORONTO - A global tech conference being held this summer in Toronto is barring businesses, government officials and media with ties to the Russian government from participating in this year's event.

TORONTO - A global tech conference being held this summer in Toronto is barring businesses, government officials and media with ties to the Russian government from participating in this year's event.

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Organizers behind Collision, dubbed "the Olympics of tech," say they are prohibiting all government members and agencies, state-controlled media, state-backed businesses and companies with ties to the Russian government from participating at the June event.

They will also ban all Russian businesses, including public and private companies, from exhibiting at Collision.

Organizers say the decision is their way of standing in solidarity with Ukraine, which Russia has been invading now for more than a week.

Collision says it is "deeply saddened" by the loss of life and the ongoing tragedy in Ukraine and wants to support restrictions and sanctions implemented by the European Union and the Canadian government against Russia and Belarus.

This year's Collision, whose participants include Jeffrey Katzenberg and the CEOs of Tinder and Hootsuite, will mark a return to the in-person event after being forced to move online when COVID-19 began spreading.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 4, 2022.
US-based Google has suspended search engine advertising sales on its platforms on the Russian territory, news.am informs, citing Reuters.

March 4, 2022, 12:30 Google suspends online advertising sales in Russia

STEPANAKERT, MARCH 4, ARTSAKHPRESS: "In light of the extraordinary circumstances, were pausing Google ads in Russia," the company said. "The situation is evolving quickly, and we will continue to share updates when appropriate," Google added.

The ban applies to search, YouTube and third party publishing partners, Reuters reported.
TORONTO - Magna International Inc. is joining other Canadian companies in standing up against aggression in Ukraine by idling its Russian operations.

TORONTO - Magna International Inc. is joining other Canadian companies in standing up against aggression in Ukraine by idling its Russian operations.

"Like most in the international community, we remain deeply concerned with the very unfortunate situation in Ukraine," spokeswoman Tracy Fuerst said Thursday in an email.

Magna has six plants in Russia and about 2,500 employees.

Although it doesn't have facilities in Ukraine, the company said thousands of Ukrainians work in its global operations, along with Russians it says share the same values of "human rights, diversity and inclusion."

Magna also says it is making a significant donation to the UN Refugee Agency and will match employee contributions.

The action comes a day after Kinross Gold Corp. said it was suspending all activities at its Udinsk development project in Far East Russia and is in the process of suspending operations at its Kupol mine.

Two other Canadian companies also took action in response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Purpose Investments Inc. said Thursday it has divested all direct holdings of Russian companies and pledged to cease new investments as long as Russias invasion of Ukraine persists.

Like so many Canadians, we have an undeniable urge to do all we can to support those who are suffering, Som Seif, CEO and founder of the Toronto-based company, said in a news release.

We took a stance many years ago to embed ESG factors into all our investments portfolios, and believe there is no better test on a firms ESG principles than this. We simply do not feel that its appropriate to have our clients capital supporting Russian companies or businesses that are engaged in direct business in Russia.

Purpose has also called for the investment industry to support the divesting of Russian assets in their portfolios.

It said asset managers and pension funds representing over $200 billion in assets have made this pledge.

By rallying the asset management and pension industries together, we can spread the message far and wide that we cannot and will not support tyranny and the suffering it causes," Seif added.

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The Public Sector Pension Investment Board (PSP Investments) also said it took steps last week to divest all its Russian investments.

"All residual positions will be written down to zero and PSP Investments is committed to exiting this market as soon as market conditions permit," it stated Thursday.

The Montreal-based company said it doesn't have material exposure to Russian investments and does not hold any private direct investments in Russia. Its exposure is mainly through passive index replication activities and external investment manager activities.

PSP is one of Canada's largest pension investment managers with $204.5 billion of net assets under management as of March 31, 2021.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 3, 2022.

Companies in this story: (TSX:MG, TSX:K)
For those who lost loved ones in the opioid crisis, making sure the family behind OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma paid a price was never just about money. What many wanted was a chance to confront the Sackler family face to face, to make them feel their pain.

For those who lost loved ones in the opioid crisis, making sure the family behind OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma paid a price was never just about money. What many wanted was a chance to confront the Sackler family face to face, to make them feel their pain.

While some may get that chance  at least by video  under a tentative settlement reached Thursday that also would force the Sacklers to pay out billions, the families still are coming away feeling empty, conflicted and angry yet again. There's a bit of hope mixed in, too.

Nothing, though, will bring back any of the lives lost or hold the Sacklers fully accountable, in their eyes.

Id like to see the Sacklers bleed all they can, but the bigger picture for me is what theyre doing to clean up the mess, said Vicki Meyer Bishop of Clarksburg, Maryland, who lost her 45-year-old son, Brian Meyer, in 2017. Were all so very worried about the next generation and the next child who will be lost.

The Sacklers, whose wealth has been estimated in court filings at over $10 billion, will get to hang on to a chunk of their vast fortune and be protected from current and future civil lawsuits over opioids.

The deal, which must be approved by a federal bankruptcy judge, requires the Sacklers to pay as much as $6 billion, with $750 million for victims and their survivors. Most of the rest will go to state and local governments to fight the crisis. They also must give up ownership of their company, with the new entity's profits going toward fighting opioid addiction through treatment and education programs.

Some of the survivors of the opioid crisis and relatives of those who died will receive payments. But most will get just a few thousand dollars  not even enough to reimburse the cost of a funeral  and many more who have not filed claims already will be shut out altogether.

These families do need to get something, said Beth Schmidt, who started a support group in Sykesville, Maryland, after her son Sean died in 2013, one of 13 lost in their town in little over a year. We have families that cant afford to bury their children. Theyre choosing cremation because its less expensive. They shouldnt have to do that.

The agreement also recommends that the victims be allowed to directly share their heartache with Sackler family members by videoconference at a hearing scheduled for Wednesday.

Meyer Bishop would love to face the Sacklers and show them a picture of her son that's so big they couldnt look away.

It's what I see before I fall asleep every night, she said. I dont even know if that would touch them. I dont think it would.

The Sacklers have been cast as the leading villains in the countrys opioid crisis by activists who point to their lack of remorse and long-running efforts to shield their wealth while maintaining a lavish lifestyle. Their role in the epidemic was spotlighted in Hulus miniseries Dopesick.

A half-million Americans have died from opioids over the past two decades, a toll that includes victims of prescription painkillers like OxyContin and Vicodin and illicit drugs such as heroin and fentanyl.

Everyday this goes on, we lose all of these people, said Lynn Wencus, of Wrentham, Massachusetts, whose son Jeff died of an overdose in 2017. If states use the money the way it's supposed to be, then we will be saving lives.

It bothers her that more money won't end up in the hands of the families, but she also knows nothing would make up for what she and so many others have lost.

Even if I got a billion dollars, it's not going to bring back my son, she said.

In one of the hardest-fought provisions in the settlement, the Sacklers will be protected from future opioid lawsuits. While they werent given immunity from criminal charges, there have been no indications they will face any.

Allowing the Sacklers to avoid any more lawsuits or jail time is a dangerous message to send to the pharmaceutical industry or any other business, said activists who have fought for Purdue owners and company officials to be charged with crimes.

What makes me most angry is they're getting away with it, said Tim Kramer, of Waterford Township, Michigan. Theyve got more money than God, so it's not going to hurt them. I'd like to see them go to prison, and a regular prison, not one of those resort prisons.

His common law wife, LeeRae Conn, was 46 when she overdosed in 2018. He found out she was addicted soon after they met a decade earlier.

No matter what she did, no matter what I did, she couldnt get off it," he said. She tried.

Sackler family members have never unequivocally offered an apology, but on Thursday issued a statement of regret about the toll of OxyContin.

The settlement comes more than two years after the Stamford, Connecticut-based company filed for bankruptcy while facing some 3,000 lawsuits that accused it of fueling the crisis by aggressively pushing sales of its signature painkiller.

An earlier settlement fell apart last year, but this time the Sacklers agreed to add another $1 billion and accepted other terms.

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Its money, but theres still no accountability, said Liz Fitzgerald, of Southington, Connecticut, who said she wanted to hear a public apology.

She lost two adult sons, who first used OxyContin in high school, to overdoses in 2013 and 2017.

My three children have lost two brothers, and I think that a lot more needs to be done to support families because of the traumatic PTSD. They just destroyed our lives, she said.

I have a granddaughter who lost her dad. No money in the world is going to bring back her dad, Fitzgerald said. "How do you tell a 10-year child that your dads gone and not even understanding addiction? Its just horrific.

___

Associated Press writers Geoff Mulvihill and Susan Haigh contributed to this report.
The resignation of Konstantin Babkin from the board of directors of Buhler Industries may have quelled some potential negative fallout for the company during the global outrage at the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

The resignation of Konstantin Babkin from the board of directors of Buhler Industries may have quelled some potential negative fallout for the company during the global outrage at the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

But there are calls from others for the Canadian government to sanction Babkin, who has close ties to Russian president Vladimir Putin, and two other remaining Russian directors of the Winnipeg agricultural equipment company  Dmitriy Udras and Yury Ryazanov  who are all senior officials with the Putin-friendly Action Party (or Party of Action).

Wikipedia Konstantin Babkin

Babkin has made recent public comments in support of the recognition of the Ukrainian districts of Donetsk and Luhansk as independent republics and another comment giving tacit endorsement of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Marcus Kolga, a senior fellow with the Macdonald-Laurier Institute who has worked with Russian dissidents for many years, believes Babkins resignation does not go far enough.

"You are seeing the same sort of activity happening around the world," he said. "Oligarchs who have foreign assets are either divesting themselves of them, or resigning from various positions to try to insulate themselves from this coming wave. They know sanctions are coming."

Some, including Henry Reid, the former Canadian ambassador to Kuwait tweeted Wednesday saying, "Time for Canada to issue sanctions on the Russian owners of Canadian companies (including Buhler). Profits from these companies support Russia."

Global Affairs Canada placed sanctions on a list of another 18 Russian individuals earlier this week. But that list did not include the Buhler directors.

Kolga said he was shocked that a business person like Babkin would be so public in his support of the Russian backed breakaway republic.

"The fact that Canada has sanctioned Russian parliamentarians who support that motion and a guy like this (Babkin) who runs a political party supports it and is quite frankly enabling Putins current behaviour makes this guy a pretty prime candidate for Canadian sanctions."

Kolga said also he believes the on-going Russian leadership will not be helpful for Buhler.

"I dont think any Canadian company will benefit from any association with any Russian entity at this point," he said.

Robert Mackidd, a retired export service provider who did export work for Buhler a decade ago, believes that Buhler is a well-run company but the Russian influence on its operations casts a negative pall over the company.

"The Russians have to go" he said.

But meanwhile, in the commercial marketplace, there are some who believe Buhler has taken the right steps.

Earlier this week the company came out with a strong statement of condemnation of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, saying, the company, "stands with Ukraine and condemns the actions of the Russian Federation. Our hearts are with those affected in Ukraine and around the world. This is an injustice that no person or people should have to endure."

John Schmeiser, the CEO of Western Equipment Dealers Association, said his organization has received calls from dealers concerned about the company which makes the Versatile brand tractor, the only Canadian-made tractor on the market today. The company has a wide dealership network across Canada and the U.S.

"I dont think this will have any long-term impact," Schmeiser said of the Russian directors connections to Putin. "Leadership at Versatile has come out against the Russian invasion of Ukraine and has removed the board member who was supportive of the Russian action."

He said for the most part Versatile dealers are content with the moves the companys leadership has made.

"Steps have been taken and I believe they should be commended for that," he said.

There are still three Russian nationals on the board of Buhler, two of whom are connected with the Action Party. All are senior executives with Combine Factory Rostselmash Ltd. which now owns 96.7 per cent of Buhler Industries.

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Although one of them, Dmitriy Udras, was replaced as chairman of the Buhler board by Grant Adolph, the companys long-time chief operating officer, he remains on the board.

The board shake-up did close the long chapter on the career of John Buhler, the companys namesake. After his sale of 80 per cent of the company to Rostselmash in 2007, Buhler has spent much of his time on philanthropic work, making several sizable donations to health care facilities in the province. Another 16.3 per cent of his stake in the company was sold to Rostselmash in late 2021 for estate planning purposes.

Buhler has not been well for a few years and a source close to Buhler, said "the family is very upset with what is going on."

Adam Reid, the companys head of sales and marketing was named to the board as well as Ossama AbouZeid, a former president of Buhler.

AbouZeid also has a history of doing work in Russia. He was formerly a senior official with the Winnipeg construction company, Central Canadian Structures, which was one of the most active Canadian companies in Russia in the early 1990s during the period of glasnost.

martin.cash@freepress.mb.ca
WestJets pending purchase of Sunwing could lead to more destination options from Winnipegs airport, according to an aviation expert.

WestJets pending purchase of Sunwing could lead to more destination options from Winnipegs airport, according to an aviation expert.

For Winnipeg, its a good thing, said John Gradek, whos a lecturer in aviation management at McGill University. I think what Winnipeg will probably see is a heck of a whole lot more destinations being offered.

MIKE DEAL / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Nick Hays, the new president and CEO of Winnipeg Airports Authority.

WestJet announced its deal to buy Sunwing Airlines and Sunwing Vacations on Wednesday. Sunwing CEO Stephen Hunter will head a new tour operating business  which will include Sunwing Vacations and WestJet Vacations  under the WestJet Group.

The Calgary-based company will likely cut flights going to the same destinations at similar times, should they run on both WestJets and Sunwings schedules, Gradek said.

But, more direct sun destinations might become available, he said.

Sunwing offers flights to warm weather locations like Mexico, the Caribbean and the United States.

(Ticket) price will probably not be changing that much, Gradek said.

Other airlines offering similar deals will keep prices competitive, he predicted. But, the surging cost of fuel will likely add to checkout totals, he said.

Why is WestJet interested in Sunwing? One, probably because the price is right, (and) two, because, I think, WestJet needs to be a major Canadian presence, Gradek said.

WestJet is a big player in the west of Canada but lacks heft in the east, he said. Sunwing already had roots in the region.

Rather than build their whole presence and invest a lot of money into building it this was a fast-tracked way for WestJet to get into the eastern Canadian holiday market, Gradek said.

Its too soon to tell how the acquisition will affect Winnipeg, according to Nick Hays, Winnipeg Airports Authoritys CEO.

However, these are exciting times for the industry, he said.

Our initial thoughts on it are (that) its very positive, Hays said. Were looking to rebuild and restore that connectivity in and out of Winnipeg, so I think this is exciting news, to see this kind of development.

WestJet is traditionally the largest carrier out of Winnipeg, he said. The deal comes as travel restrictions ease.

WestJet will add capacity to Sunwing Airlines by turning seasonally operated planes into year-round jets. Currently, Sunwing meets seasonal demand by leasing the bulk of its fleet through the winter.

Both WestJets and Sunwings CEOs said no layoffs would result from the takeover.

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WestJet employs 8,490 workers  down from roughly 14,000 in 2019  and 180 planes. Sunwing has fewer than 2,500 on staff and operates 40 aircraft in the winter and 10 in the summer. It owns 18 of those planes, which are included in the WestJet purchase.

We feel strong enough, even more so together, to recover well out of this pandemic and to be more competitive, specifically in the low-cost market, said Alexis von Hoensbroech, WestJets CEO.

The agreement is expected to close late this year. Transport Canada and the competition commissioner must both review the would-be takeover and report their findings to the transport minister, who has final say.

Sunwings current shareholders will become WestJet Group equity holders, according to a WestJet news release.

 with files from The Canadian Press

gabrielle.piche@freepress.mb.ca
OTTAWA - Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is heading to several European capitals to strategize with allies as fallout from Russias invasion of Ukraine intensifies.

OTTAWA - Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is heading to several European capitals to strategize with allies as fallout from Russias invasion of Ukraine intensifies.

Trudeau will spend next week in meetings in London and Berlin as well as Riga, Latvia, and Warsaw, Poland, saying he is joining partners to stand against Moscows aggression and strengthen democratic values.

Allies will also work on countering "the kind of disinformation and misinformation that we know is a facet of day-to-day life these days, but a particularly strong facet of this conflict, this war in Ukraine," Trudeau said during a news conference Friday.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has chosen to use military might and violence to achieve his ends, but he will fail, Trudeau said.

"The biggest and strongest response we've had is actually in crippling the Russian economy, demonstrating to all Russians that Vladimir Putin made a terrible mistake," he said.

"The co-ordinated economic sanctions are working. Russia is reeling from the strong and aligned measures that democracies around the world have engaged in."

Canadas foreign affairs minister met counterparts at NATO headquarters in Brussels on Friday to advance continuing efforts to sanction Russia for its invasion.

Before the meeting, Melanie Joly said ministers planned to discuss a Russian attack on a major nuclear power plant in the eastern Ukraine city of Enerhodar.

Russian troops seized the plant, the largest in Europe, after a middle-of-the-night attack that set it on fire and briefly raised worldwide fears of a catastrophe.

Firefighters put out the blaze, and no radiation was released, United Nations and Ukrainian officials said, as Russian forces pressed on with their week-old offensive on multiple fronts and the number of refugees fleeing the country topped 1.2 million.

Joly tweeted Friday that she spoke to the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency about the episode.

"We call on the Russian regime to stop threatening nuclear sources," she said. "A countless number of civilian lives are put at risk by these reckless acts."

Trudeau said late Thursday he had spoken with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy about the assault on the power plant.

Following the attack, Zelenskyy appealed again to the West to enforce a no-fly zone over his country. But NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg ruled out that possibility, citing the risk of a much wider war in Europe.

He said the only way to implement a no-fly zone would be to send NATO planes to enforce it by shooting down Russian aircraft.

We understand the desperation, but we also believe that if we did that, we would end up with something that could end in a full-fledged war in Europe, Stoltenberg said.

The refusal to enforce a no-fly zone over Ukrainian territory reveals a profound misunderstanding of the gravity of the situation in which the world finds itself, said Alexandra Chyczij, national president of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress.

"Russias war of genocide against the Ukrainian people is not only a war against Ukraine. If Putin wins in Ukraine, the rest of Europe and the world will be threatened and menaced by his regime," Chyczij said.

"Russia is indiscriminately bombing and shelling Ukrainian civilians, purposely murdering innocent people."

Trudeau echoed Stoltenberg in defending the decision not to implement a no-fly zone.

"The thing that we have so far avoided, and we'll continue to need to avoid, is putting a situation in which NATO forces are in direct conflict with Russian soldiers," he said.

"That would be a level of escalation that is unfortunate."

In London, Trudeau plans to meet with Prime Minister Boris Johnson, as well as Prime Minister of the Netherlands Mark Rutte, to co-ordinate additional responses to Russias invasion, the Canadian Prime Minister's Office said.

Trudeau will also have an audience with the Queen during his visit.

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On Tuesday, the prime minister heads to Riga, where he will meet several leaders from the region, before moving on to Germany and Poland. While in Latvia, Trudeau also plans to see Stoltenberg and Canadian Armed Forces members serving as part of Operation Reassurance.

CBC/Radio-Canada said Friday it was very concerned about new legislation passed in Russia, saying it appears to criminalize independent reporting on the current situation in Ukraine and Russia.

"In light of this situation and out of concern for the risk to our journalists and staff in Russia, we have temporarily suspended our reporting from the ground in Russia while we get clarity on this legislation," the public broadcaster said in a statement.

"We join other media in standing up for a free press and unimpeded access to accurate, independent journalism in Ukraine and Russia."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 4, 2022.

 With files from The Associated Press
OTTAWA  Most of Manitobas MPs looked past a slight from a Quebec separatist, and sided with a proposal this week to give la belle province more representation in the Commons than its owed under a longstanding formula.

OTTAWA  Most of Manitobas MPs looked past a slight from a Quebec separatist, and sided with a proposal this week to give la belle province more representation in the Commons than its owed under a longstanding formula.

"No matter what happens in the rest of Canada  which is of no consequence to me  the Quebec nation and its political weight must be protected. Because Quebec is not like Manitoba," Bloc Quebecois MP Alain Therrien told the House on Tuesday.

His party successfully tabled a motion calling for Quebec to maintain its 78 seats in the Commons, after the official formula called for that province to have one less MP.

Under the constitution, electoral districts are set every 10 years, based on demographics from census data.

Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia are all due for more seats, according to last springs population count. Quebec is growing slower than other provinces and would be the first to lost a seat since 1966.

The Bloc, which has helped prop up the minority Liberals, moved Tuesday to reject "any scenario for redrawing the federal electoral map that would result in Quebec losing one or more electoral districts, or that would reduce Quebecs political weight in the House of Commons."

That vote passed 262-66 Wednesday, with all but one Liberal MP supporting the motion, and split support among the Conservatives and New Democrats.

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"I have a great deal of passion for the province of Quebec. There are things that we (Manitobans) have in common, such as a strong, healthy aerospace industry," Winnipeg North MP Kevin Lamoureux told the Commons. He was among 10 of Manitobas 14 MPs who supported the motion.

The four dissenters from Manitoba were all Conservatives: James Bezan (SelkirkInterlakeEastman), Ted Falk (Provencher), Dan Mazier (DauphinSwan RiverNeepawa) and Marty Morantz (CharleswoodSt. JamesAssiniboiaHeadingley).

All other Manitoba MPs sided with the bloc, including Jim Carr, Candice Bergen and Leah Gazan.

The debate was generally supportive, but Calgary MP Tom Kmiec argued it was wrong for his peers to vote on rejigging a process MPs had spent years carefully refining.

In the ongoing redistricting process, Manitoba is set to maintain its current cadre of 14 seats, though the riding names and boundaries could change based on public feedback.

dylan.robertson@freepress.mb.ca
OTTAWA  A research team led by the National Microbiology Lab in Winnipeg is the first to have found evidence of a deer possibly infecting a human with COVID-19 last year.

OTTAWA  A research team led by the National Microbiology Lab in Winnipeg is the first to have found evidence of a deer possibly infecting a human with COVID-19 last year.

Its not like this is happening all the time, but it gives us information that this (research) is something we need to continue, said Bradley Pickering, head of special pathogens at the National Centre for Foreign Animal Diseases, located in the Arlington Street lab.

JOHN WOODS / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS FILES The Canadian Science Centre for Human and Animal Health in Winnipeg.

In a study published Feb. 22, which is still awaiting formal peer review, Pickerings team observed the genetic sequences of 300 samples taken from white-tailed deer last November and December 2021, from southwestern and eastern Ontario.

Of those deer, 17 from rural areas near London, Ont., had the virus that causes COVID-19, five of which had a new and highly divergent lineage of the coronavirus, with 76 mutations from the original strain first identified in Wuhan, China.

Some of those mutations may have resulted from the virus adapting as it spread among the deer, parallel to the strains circulating among humans. The genetic backbone was similar to the Beta variant, which gained prominence in South Africa but was far overshadowed in Canada by Delta by the time the samples were collected.

Other mutations date back to a year before the samples were collected, and had been documented in transmission from humans to minks in Michigan.

There (generally) hasnt been a virus thats gone into a population that has changed and evolved, thats been there for a year and then it comes back, Pickering said. It could be a parallel evolution of the virus in deer, or there could be an intermediate host; we dont know.

His team also analyzed samples of roughly seven million PCR tests taken from nearby testing centres, and found one local man had a similar form of the virus, after having known close contact with deer, which Pickering said strongly suggests the deer gave the man COVID-19.

Pickerings team specializes in studying zoonosis, which is when an infectious disease jumps from an animal to humans.

The novel coronavirus has been documented to have spread from humans to lions, tigers and deer.

Researchers are also finding evidence of so-called spillback events, when an animal infects a prior host species, such as human beings. Evidence of that spread has resulted in European mink farms culling millions of animals.

At the start of the pandemic, Pickerings team looked into whether farmed animals such as pigs, chickens and turkeys would be susceptible to catching COVID-19 from humans.

They have started looking into wild animals, which Pickering notes are much harder to track and take samples from. The Winnipeg lab is developing rapid tests that could work on animals.

SARS-CoV-2 is really good at infecting a lot of different things, he said, referring to the formal name of the virus.

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You sort of have a chance of it continuing in any of these animals.

But Pickering said he doesnt want people to panic.

Sometimes, the virus might go into wildlife and almost become more attenuated, because its adapting to wildlife as opposed to people. It could also go the other way; its this unknown.

The virus could mutate as it spreads in animals, and present a vaccine-resistant strain that goes on to infect people. Pickering argues its best not to worry about those situations, and instead encourage research that could help the world cope with such a scenario if it emerges.

The idea that theres a possibility (of transmission to humans) and its actually circulating in animals is important, for us to continue to understand whats going on, to be prepared and know what to expect.

dylan.robertson@freepress.mb.ca
OTTAWA  Manitoba is calling on Ottawa to resolve a festering dispute over RCMP compensation that could cost small municipalities millions.

OTTAWA  Manitoba is calling on Ottawa to resolve a festering dispute over RCMP compensation that could cost small municipalities millions.

Im not satisfied with how (RCMP compensation) is being addressed at this point, and its a particular concern to Manitoba municipalities, Justice Minister Kelvin Goertzen said this week.

Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino co-hosted a meeting with provincial and territorial justice ministers Feb. 24, in which Manitoba sought more cash for everything from legal aid to First Nations policing.

Both ministers told the Free Press a slew of new funding agreements could reshape criminal justice in Manitoba.

These funds that have been put into place by the federal government have worked, have had a positive impact, and our government is committed to continuing that partnership, Mendicino said.

The most antagonistic topic for Ottawa was a retroactive RCMP wage hike, which the federal government negotiated in August during labour bargaining. The Manitoba government estimates these pay increases, dating to 2017, could cost $45 million in taxes and municipal cuts.

Mendicino said Ottawa might shoulder some of those costs, but he offered no timeline for when details would be hammered out.

Well continue to make sure that we provide all of the police resources that every province and territory and community needs, he said.

Mendicino was also vague on the future of a five-year program that helps Winnipeg police track guns used in gang-related shootings.

Manitoba has received at least $7.6 million from the gun and gang fund, which has helped launch the Manitoba Criminal Intelligence Centre, an agency that co-ordinates investigations between police forces.

Manitoba would like the program extended beyond its March 2023 expiry date, noting Winnipeg has a high rate of gun crime that involves gangs. Yet, Mendicino said his government is reviewing both that program and a separate anti-gang fund that focuses on programs for at-risk youth.

The Manitoba PCs also want Ottawa to meet the demand from First Nations to extend a program in which they run policing instead of relying on RCMP.

Just 18 of the 63 reserves in Manitoba operate under the First Nations policing program, and Goertzen says he wants Ottawa to go beyond boosting funding to those reserves.

Its not just enhancing what we have, it has to be expanding into communities that dont have it, Goertzen said. To bolster the (existing) teams, that doesnt really move the dial for Manitoba.

Mendicino hinted it might be part of upcoming legislation promised by his government that would be drafted in partnership with First Nations, to give Indigenous people more of a leading role in the justice system.

This is a critically important step on the path to reconciliation, which is finding ways that Indigenous laws, cultures and traditions are respected in public safety, he said.

Next on Manitobas wish list is reforms to how Ottawa helps fund legal aid.

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The current five-year agreement, which is coming to an end, gives provinces funding on per capita basis. Goertzen said it was understood the formula would be changed to reflect demand for the program.

Weve waited; there was a clear understanding we would go to needs-based funding at this time, said Goertzen, who noted the Prairie provinces have a disproportionate number of people who need legal assistance.

If its not driven by need, then Im not sure how exactly it increases access to justice, which legal aid is supposed to do.

Justice Minister David Lamettis office said it has boosted funding in recent years but is still pondering how to redesign the program, particularly as it relates to immigration and refugee legal aid, wrote spokeswoman Chantalle Aubertin.

We recognize that many jurisdictions continue to face challenges and pressures in providing legal aid services.

dylan.robertson@freepress.mb.ca
Bickering over whether an anti-mandate candidate gets to take part has hijacked a proposed all-candidates forum for the Fort Whyte byelection.

Bickering over whether an anti-mandate candidate gets to take part has hijacked a proposed all-candidates forum for the Fort Whyte byelection.

Liberal Willard Reaves suggested all candidates in the March 22 byelection get together with voters to answer their questions.

"Its very important that people come out and ask questions of the candidates," Reaves said. That would include Patrick Allard, an outspoken opponent of public health restrictions and supporter of the far-right Peoples Party of Canada, who is running as an independent.

If Allard is in, then NDP candidate Trudy Schroeder is out, her campaign said.

"Trudy is happy to have a debate, but the Liberal proposal to give Patrick Allard a platform to spout his anti-vaccination and racist rhetoric is wrong. Our campaign is surprised and disappointed," a release states.

If Patrick Allard is in, then NDP candidate Trudy Schroeder is out, her campaign said. (Mike Sudoma / Free Press files)

Schroeder, a former executive director of the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra and the Winnipeg Folk Festival, was not made available for an interview Thursday. Neither was Progressive Conservative candidate Obby Khan.

Khans campaign spokesman said theyd consider taking part in a forum but needed to know the format. "The devils in the details," his spokesman said.

For the NDP, the "devil" is allowing Allard to participate.

Schroeders campaign accused the Liberals of "trying to give a platform to noted anti-vaxxer and convoy/blockade supporter Patrick Allard."

Reaves dismissed the accusation, saying the New Democrats are being undemocratic.

"If Patrick Allard meets the requirements to be on the ballot, then he should be part of an all-candidates forum," Reaves said.

"We live in a democracy," the Liberal candidate said. "The people of Fort Whyte can choose for themselves who to vote for and who to listen to. Its unfortunate that the NDP is trying to limit free speech and the democratic process."

Reaves said he wanted all the candidates at the forum to answer voters questions in an unscripted format.

"Lets not have prepared answers  that doesnt show the people who they really are," he said.

Patrick Allard, an outspoken opponent of public health restrictions and supporter of the far-right Peoples Party of Canada, is running as an independent. (Jesse Boily / Free Press files)

Allard said he would participate in a forum and is "happy to take part in a debate."

"The only way we grow as a society is communication and conversation," said the candidate who organized protests against public health orders, was cited several times for violating them and charged with failing to comply with conditions of his release for inciting protesters to block roads to the Bombers Aug. 5 home opener.

Allard has since disclosed a case of uttering threats in 2006 and assault in 2007. Under the Elections Act, candidates are required to disclose criminal offences to which they pleaded guilty or were found guilty. Allard noted on his form that he received probation.

Reaves and Schroeders disclosure forms list no criminal offences. Khan hadnt filed a disclosure statement as of Thursday. The deadline to register as a confirmed candidate in Fort Whyte is Monday. The byelection is being held to fill the seat vacated by Brian Pallister, who resigned as premier in August and gave up his Fort Whyte seat Oct. 4.

There were no details available late Thursday on whether or not a byelection candidates forum or debate would proceed.

Liberal Willard Reaves suggested all candidates in the March 22 byelection get together with voters to answer their questions. (Wayne Glowacki / Free Press files)

All-party debates are usually organized by community-based organizations in general elections and seldom in a byelection, said veteran political analyst Paul Thomas.

Byelections are usually "low-key" events because the fate of the governing party is not at stake, the University of Manitoba political studies professor emeritus said.

Identifying and mobilizing supporters becomes more difficult but it can be critical to achieving success  which can be defined differently by different parties, said Thomas.

"The PCs want a quiet campaign that allows them to capitalize on a larger constituency presence and a star candidate," he said, referring to Khan, a charismatic restaurateur and former Blue Bomber. "They will have a stronger get out the vote capacity," said Thomas.

"The NDP wants a strong enough performance that it appears to be the alternative government in waiting," he said. Schroeders campaign wants to show a high level of discontent with the PCs in one of their strongholds, said Thomas.

Obby Khans campaign spokesman said theyd consider taking part in a forum but needed to know the format. (Mikaela MacKenzie / Free Press files)

Refusing to take part in a forum with Allard wont hurt Schroeder, he said.

"She will get some credit for taking a principled stand, especially among NDP supporters," said Thomas.

"The Liberals have the most at stake in this contest," the political expert said.

"With the PCs low in the polls, the Liberals have fielded a high-profile candidate." Reaves is a former Blue Bomber and was the first to declare his candidacy in Fort Whyte and hit the campaign trail.

"For them, winning is the goal, not just have a good performance," said Thomas.

"A victory would give them official party status (in the legislature) and the procedural perks that come with that status," he said.

"They have been boasting on social media about their canvassing efforts. For this reason, it makes sense for them to propose a debate."

carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca
The Russian-born music director of the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra did not mince words in his condemnation of his native countrys invasion of Ukraine.

The Russian-born music director of the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra did not mince words in his condemnation of his native countrys invasion of Ukraine.

Daniel Raiskin called the Russian governments actions criminal and the war it is currently waging with its neighbour fratricidal.

I firmly believe that it is the duty of every artist to speak the truth, expressing himself through the art he makes. But today, this alone is not enough, the St. Petersburg-raised musician wrote Wednesday on his Facebook page.

Each rocket, each shell, each shot was made for one reason only: to kill to kill a person, a people, an infrastructure, a country, he continued. Murder is a crime and will be punished. In the country of Dostoevsky, this should be well remembered. War kills, there is no excuse for war. The war must be stopped immediately.

Raiskins post was spurred by the ongoing invasion efforts of the Russian government, led by President Vladimir Putin.

As of Thursday, the Russian army was bombarding several major cities, and had reportedly captured the city of Kherson, a key hub on the Black Sea. The BBC reported more than 2,000 Ukrainian civilians were killed in the week since the invasion began, with more than one million fleeing the country over that period.

The son of a prominent musicologist and a mathematician, Raiskin attended the famed conservatory in his native city, according to his personal website, where musicians including Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev and Shostakovich were trained.

Since 2018, Raiskin has been the music director of the WSO, while also serving as the chief conductor of the Slovak Philharmonic Orchestra in Bratislava and a principal guest conductor of the Belgrade Philharmonic Orchestra in Serbia.

In an interview with the Winnipeg Jewish Post & News, published earlier in the COVID-19 pandemic, Raiskin recounted his St. Petersburg upbringing, while also discussing the power of art in times of crisis and solitude.

I feel today, more than ever, people feel how important arts and culture are to them, he said from his home in Amsterdam. We suddenly realize that we use art to communicate with each other.

In the past, Raiskins regularly made guest appearances with the St. Petersburg-based Mariinsky Orchestra, the Moscow Philharmonic, and the St. Petersburg Philharmonic Symphony, and frequently worked with youth orchestras across the world, including in Russia.

However, those engagements are now on hold, according to a second post on Facebook made Wednesday, in which Raiskin expanded on his initial condemnation of the Russian governments acts of war against a country home to many people he knows and cares about.

In these extremely distressing times, while my family members are being bombed by the armed forces of the country I was born and grew up in, I am suspending all immediate and future work and concert appearances in Russia, Raiskin wrote.

Until the senselessly barbaric bestialities are halted, peace restored and justice served, I do not feel being on moral ground while collaborating with institutions subsidized by the murderous Russian regime.

ben.waldman@freepress.mb.ca
By Padraic Halpin

DUBLIN (Reuters) - Northern Ireland's First Minister Paul Givan resigned on Thursday in protest at post-Brexit trade rules, a day after an attempt by one of his colleagues to halt some checks on goods arriving from Britain drew anger from the EU and Ireland.

NO MORE CHECKS?

As part of its Brexit deal, Britain agreed a document known as the Northern Ireland protocol with the European Union that aims to avoid politically contentious border checks between British-ruled Northern Ireland and EU-member Ireland.

But the protocol has effectively created a border in the Irish Sea for goods moving to the province from Britain because it kept Northern Ireland in the EU's single market for goods.

This has angered pro-British unionists and prompted London to seek to rewrite the deal it signed up to before it left the EU in 2020.

Most of the checks on goods coming from Britain have not yet been implemented as London and Brussels seek to rework the deal that came into force last year.

The order by Northern Irish agriculture minister Edwin Poots - which he says will come into force on the ground in the coming days - applies only to agri-food inspections, while other checks by council and customs officials remain in place.

Trade groups have also told their members to continue to follow the current rules regardless of whether they are checked or not. Northern Ireland Retail Consortium Director Aodhan Connolly compared the situation to a motorist being advised to insure their car, even though the chances of being stopped by police were very small.

PROTOCOL TALKS

London and Brussels have been in talks for months to resolve the impasse over the protocol. The EU has proposed halving customs paperwork and cutting checks on food products by 80%, but Britain wants them to go further.

Foreign Secretary Liz Truss, Britain's latest Brexit negotiator, said last month "there is a deal to be done", while her counterpart, European Commission Vice-President Maros Sefcovic, wants to reach agreement by the end of February before campaigning begins for Northern Ireland elections due in May.

Story continues

EU officials said on Thursday the order to halt some checks was not helpful to that process, while London said it highlighted the "significant problems" with the protocol.

Brussels also said London had a responsibility to respect the international obligations it had entered into. The EU last year began a so-called 'infringement procedure' against Britain for making similar unilateral changes to the protocol, though it froze the legal action to aid the current negotiations.

Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney said on Thursday those talks would continue, regardless of the political turmoil in Belfast, though few analysts expect a breakthrough before negotiators take a step back for the Northern Irish elections.

WHY NOW?

The pro-British Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), currently the largest party in the regional assembly, has been threatening for months to frustrate the checks and collapse the power-sharing administration, which is a key part of the 1998 peace deal that ended three decades of sectarian violence in Northern Ireland.

The DUP has been struggling in opinion polls and has lost support to more moderate and hardline unionist groups, partly due to the protocol and its own internal woes, having got rid of two leaders in a matter of weeks last year. Rivals accused them on Thursday of conducting an electoral stunt.

Polls suggest that rivals Sinn Fein will become Northern Ireland's largest party for the first time in May. A LucidTalk poll conducted last month put the Irish nationalist, pro-EU Sinn Fein well ahead on 25%, with the DUP in second place on 17%.

(Reporting by Padraic Halpin; Editing by Gareth Jones)
Erin OTooles departure last month as leader of the Conservative Party of Canada paved the way for a leadership race in 2022. For political parties, every leadership contest is important, but for the CPC, this one is particularly crucial.

Opinion

Erin OTooles departure last month as leader of the Conservative Party of Canada paved the way for a leadership race in 2022. For political parties, every leadership contest is important, but for the CPC, this one is particularly crucial.

Justin Trudeaus Liberal government is showing its age. With each passing year, the likelihood increases that whoever the Tory leader is will become prime minister.

So its surprising that there seems to have been so little interest among potential leadership candidates. The only officially declared candidate thus far is Ontario MP Pierre Poilievre.

Poilievre hails from the right-wing, libertarian camp within the Conservative Party. He is a strong performer in question period and effectively holds Liberal ministers accountable. His ability to get under Trudeaus skin, combined with his rock-ribbed conservative views, has gained him the favour of much of the party base.

In addition to support among the partys activists, Poilievre commands at least partial loyalty from the CPC caucus, as his announcement was followed by an impressive display of support from members that seemed designed to intimidate other quality candidates and dissuade them from declaring.

But Poilievre lacks a common touch. While he may be the greatest thing since sliced bread to CPC members, its unclear whether he can appeal to Canadians in a general election. And his decision to enthusiastically align himself with the truckers and other convoy protesters who decamped and hot-tubbed on the streets of Ottawa last month betrays an eyebrow-raising degree of recklessness.

One reason for the lack of interest in the leadership race is Poilievres perceived strength. No one wants to run as a sacrificial lamb against a seemingly unbeatable candidate. Despite this, former Quebec premier and Progressive Conservative Party leader Jean Charest now seems poised to run.

Like Poilievre, Charest has both strengths and weaknesses. He is a successful, experienced and wily politician with enormous name recognition. As leader, he would make the CPC a serious competitor in vote-rich Quebec. But on the other hand, his progressive credentials and history will not enamor him to most CPC members.

There are two reasons in particular to pay attention to Charest. First, leadership contests are less about clashes of ideas than they are contests of organizational skill. There is no questioning Poilievres organizational bona fides. But Charest can organize, twist arms and call in old favours like no one else.

Second, news of his impending candidacy drew reports that former prime minister Stephen Harper "wouldnt sit idly by" while Charest took over his party. Harpers former staffer, Jenni Byrne, set about attacking Charest. While not exactly good news for Charest, these responses suggest his candidacy is being taken seriously and is rattling CPC cages.

Charest will find it very difficult to win if he is presented as the centrist alternative to Poilievres right-wing candidacy. The party is no longer your grandfathers Progressive Conservative Party, and members are unlikely to accept a moderate compromise candidate.

The CPCs base of power is both to the right of centre and the west of centre, and no leadership candidate can hope to win when running against those new realities.

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Charest may, however, be able to use his political talents to adapt. To do so, he must find a way to transcend simple left/right ideological differences and wrap himself in the culture of the party.

It might involve tapping into Poilievres base of freedom-loving libertarians  indeed, in recent media interviews, Charest has been surprisingly critical of provincial governments COVID-19 restrictions. Or Charest may appeal to social conservatives with a strongly pro-family platform that emphasizes his former governments achievements in this area.

This might also mean embracing issues beloved by the partys base in western Canada without chasing away too many potential supporters elsewhere. If he is to have the slightest hope of winning, Charest must convince CPC members that, like fellow Quebecer Brian Mulroney almost 40 years ago, he both understands and sympathizes with the concerns of western Canadians but, unlike Mulroney, he will not turn his back the instant those concerns come into conflict with the interests of Quebec.

No one doubts Poilievres conservative credentials, but they might have some legitimate concerns about his ability to win elections in Canada. Charest has the opposite problem: there is no doubt he can win elections, but there is a great deal of legitimate concern over whether he is a true conservative.

But if Charest can find a way to connect to the partys base, then those members might just be willing to take a chance for the sake of bringing Trudeaus time as prime minister to an abrupt end.

Royce Koop is a professor of political studies at the University of Manitoba and academic director of the Centre for Social Science Research and Policy.
LAST October, Winnipeg was named the 2021 Intelligent Community of the Year by the Intelligent Community Forum (ICF), a global think-tank. The accolade was officially bestowed months ago, but Winnipeg will retain the title for a year.

Opinion

LAST October, Winnipeg was named the 2021 Intelligent Community of the Year by the Intelligent Community Forum (ICF), a global think-tank. The accolade was officially bestowed months ago, but Winnipeg will retain the title for a year.

It is a big deal  something the team at Economic Development Winnipeg and staff at the City of Winnipeg worked hard on and evolved since our first submission in 2011. On Feb. 24, Winnipeg was once again on the world stage, co-hosting the ICFs virtual conference, titled How cities and regions can restore a culture of human connection and unveiling the announcement of the Smart21 Communities for 2022.

The ICF is backed by a roster of thought leaders that includes Michael Bloomberg, Canadas Jim Ballsillie, former Cisco and IBM exec Nicola Villa and a global network of cities and regions. Its mission is to recognize communities that find a new path to economic growth in a digital age  one that creates inclusivity and prosperity, tackles social challenges and enriches the quality of life for everyone in the community.

Its not just technology that makes a community intelligent; its how a community works collaboratively, to work smarter and move the needle forward on a number of things: connectivity, engagement, inclusive education and career opportunities, innovation and efforts to make that city more sustainable.

In 2021, Winnipeg checked every box.

While a considerable number of companies, economic and business organizations and educational institutions that took part in our submission were incredibly proud of this achievement, there were some in this city who scoffed at the recognition.

This is unfortunate, because in the few moments it took to be dismissive, they callously minimized all the years of hard work that earned us this title. We need to do a better job of helping Winnipeggers understand that world-renowned work is being done right now in the heart of the Prairies. This is not an award that a city can buy  you have to earn it by emulating the best of the above-stated criteria.

For those who would mock or question how Winnipeg could be named the worlds Most Intelligent Community, please consider some of the reasons why we were chosen:

Some of the companies we highlighted, including Bold Commerce, Cypher Environmental, SkipTheDishes, Farmers Edge, Ubisoft, RBC, Bell MTS and PayWorks, are attracted to this city and invest here because of the strong talent and ecosystem we offer in Winnipeg and Manitoba.

Our nimble post-secondary institutions (University of Manitoba, University of Winnipeg, Manitoba Institute of Trades and Technology, RRC Polytechnic, University of Brandon) and organizations such as North Forge Technology Exchange, Tech Manitoba and New Media Manitoba work tirelessly to make sure were highly educated, skilled and at the forefront in so many sectors.

Winnipeg has always had intelligent and collaborative ideas. Winnipeggers dont shy away from a problem, and from grassroots to boardrooms they come together and tackle root problems of disparity in order to create new opportunities for marginalized groups in our community.

The Sisler High Schools CREATE program in Winnipegs North End has been mentioned in several of our submissions, because it keeps adapting and getting more world-renowned every year. Students are exposed to everything from film and animation to game design and graphic design; some of its former students have worked on award-winning movies or secured work at film and animation studios such as Amblin or Atomic.

Last year, Winnipeggers and United Way Winnipeg gave $25.4 million in direct investments to 100 community organizations, including the Winnipeg Boldness Project. It uses social innovation tools to research and develop new ideas to improve outcomes for young children in the Point Douglas community. It was featured in our submission.

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When we hosted ICF judges virtually, we also highlighted the U of Ws Wii Chiiwaakanak Learning Centre, which connects youth and residents in the Spence neighborhood to technology, opportunities and a powerful sense of community.

The truth is we couldnt showcase every incredible project going on in our city; there are just too many. What a great problem to have. And thats my point  there are so many truly amazing things going on and equally impressive people behind them. Learn about them. Celebrate them.

In this era of high connectivity, an accolade such as this matters for attracting new businesses and opportunities.

This acknowledgement comes on the heels of Winnipeg grabbing international and national attention for being named one of The Worlds Greatest Places of 2021 by Time magazine and one of the Top 20 Best Locations to Invest by Site Selection magazine.

The world is taking notice. We need to start acknowledging that we worked hard to get this attention, and we deserve it.

Dayna Spiring is president and CEO of Economic Development Winnipeg.
Health Minister Audrey Gordon seems to be in over her head.

Health Minister Audrey Gordon seems to be in over her head.

Its not only that her department appears to be grossly mismanaged right now, she has trouble fielding even the most basic questions about her portfolio. On Wednesday, when journalists had a long list of queries, including about hospital capacity and pandemic restrictions, the minister could barely answer them.

Earlier that day, deputy chief provincial public health officer Dr. Jazz Atwal announced that as of March 15, Manitobans would no longer have to self-isolate after testing positive for COVID-19 (the same day the mask mandate is lifted). It was a major announcement. Atwal, whose office falls within Gordons portfolio, unveiled the change in a Zoom news conference where journalists have limited ability to ask follow-up questions and hold government officials accountable. Apparently its safe enough to eliminate vaccine mandates and lift capacity limits, but its not safe enough for senior public health officials to hold in-person news conferences.

MIKAELA MACKENZIE / FREE PRESS FILES Health Minister Audrey Gordon made herself available in person to answer those and other questions, but only for about seven minutes

Gordon made herself available in person to answer those and other questions, but only for about seven minutes before her assistant, Draper Houston, whisked her away. That may have had something to do with how she struggled in front of the microphone.

Gordons answers were clumsy and inarticulate. When asked why her governments surgery wait time task force hadnt provided an update since January (in December, Gordon promised monthly updates), she said its because they wanted to ensure they were providing Manitobans with "substantial" information and didnt want to give the public false hope.

If the government is making progress on reducing the surgical backlog, why would there be false hope? Is it because there was no substantial progress to report last month?

No, Gordon said, the task force makes progress every day. However, she couldnt say what that progress was. To date, the task force has yet to release any targets or dates on when backlogs will be eliminated.

If the government is making progress on reducing the surgical backlog, why would there be false hope? Is it because there was no substantial progress to report last month?

The minister said the province is still finalizing "agreements" related to reducing wait lists.

"Whether we are able to report the finalization of agreements depends on whether the ink has dried on those agreements," she said.

When will that ink be dry? Gordon wouldnt say.

She also wouldnt say, or didnt know, whether surgical backlogs and wait times for other hospital procedures such as diagnostic testing are still growing. Instead, she said shes eager to announce the awarding of a contract for a new centralized wait list management system. That system will allow the government to assess the "true" backlog, she said.

However, she didnt know whether the backlog was growing, had stabilized or was shrinking.

MIKAELA MACKENZIE / FREE PRESS FILES When asked whether she expects an increase in COVID-19 cases once the provinces mask mandate is lifted March 15, and self-isolation is no longer required for people infected with the disease, Gordon didnt answer.

"That information I will share with you at our next update," she said.

At the time, Gordon couldnt say when that update would be. It wasnt until late Thursday that she announced an update is scheduled for Friday.

Meanwhile, when asked whether she expects an increase in COVID-19 cases once the provinces mask mandate is lifted March 15, and self-isolation is no longer required for people infected with the disease, Gordon didnt answer. Instead, she explained  in a bizarre response  how positive thoughts fill her day.

"I tend to have a very positive outlook," she said. "I wake up every day that way and I walk through the day that way, and so Im going to continue with that optimism, not just for myself but for all Manitobans."

Thats wonderful, but the question was more from a scientific perspective: what do public health officials expect when the measures are lifted?

Thats the plan, to let people get sick enough that they require intensive care treatment?

"We are planning for a slight uptick in cases," she said when asked again, but lamented that "we dont have that modelling yet from the federal government or provincially."

So the government is making public health decisions without modelling.

And what is the plan should cases rise after March 15?

"Well, we are looking at our ability to increase our ICU beds because, as you know, that many individuals over the last two years have turned up in our ICUs so were planning an orderly process to increase our number of ICU beds if we need to," said Gordon.

Thats it? Thats the plan, to let people get sick enough that they require intensive care treatment?

What a train wreck.

tom.brodbeck@freepress.mb.ca
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP)  Last week, phones across Puerto Rico began to ring as members of a private WhatsApp group dedicated to helping others in the U.S. territory stared at their screens in disbelief.

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP)  Last week, phones across Puerto Rico began to ring as members of a private WhatsApp group dedicated to helping others in the U.S. territory stared at their screens in disbelief.

The businessman they knew as administrator of that chat  someone who organized philanthropic efforts such as a Christmas toy drive for needy children and renovations for an elementary school  had just been arrested.

In this undated photo released by Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), Conor Vincent D'Monte is shown in an unknown location. DMonte, known as Johnny Williams in Puerto Rico, who was allegedly a leader of a violent gang sought by Canadian authorities on charges including first-degree murder, and had been on the run for more than a decade, was arrested by authorities in Puerto Rico on Feb. 2022. (RCMP/The Canadian Press via AP)

Conor Vincent DMonte, who went by Johnny Williams in Puerto Rico, was allegedly a leader of a violent gang sought by Canadian authorities on charges including first-degree murder. He had been on the run for more than a decade.

Its like a Netflix story, said Antonio Torres, chief deputy U.S. marshal for the district of Puerto Rico.

Authorities dont know exactly when DMonte, 44, arrived in Puerto Rico, but they believe he had been using the alias Johnny Williams for a while. The 6-foot, 1-inch fugitive settled into a rural, eastern mountain community near El Yunque rainforest, living in a working-class neighborhood on a street with no name, Torres said.

Every month, DMonte would accompany employees of a nonprofit organization known as Karma Honey Project to a farmers market in the nearby city of Carolina, said a woman who lived in the same community and sold goods next to his stall. She declined to give her name out of fear.

No one knew anything, she said, adding that she remembers his quiet demeanor the most. We were surprised.

Others who met DMonte said they were struck by his charisma, good looks and biological knowledge about bees, adding that he was a frequent name-dropper who easily made connections with Puerto Rico's wealthiest residents. He didn't like having his picture taken but didn't make any effort to hide.

He even met with Puerto Ricos agriculture secretary and a local senator and was invited to the governors mansion last month for his role in trying to save honeybees after Hurricane Maria as part of his involvement with the Karma Honey Project, a nonprofit company created in February 2019. Its president, Candice Galek, is a Miami entrepreneur and former model. Neither Galek nor her company returned messages for comment.

In its 2020 annual report, the most recent one available, the company stated that its volume of business did not exceed $3 million. Its balance sheet reported no assets or liabilities, according to filings with Puerto Ricos Registry of Corporations and Entities.

The guy fooled us all, said a Puerto Rican businessman who asked that his name not be used out of fear.

He said he met DMonte in the early days of the pandemic after being added to his WhatsApp group, and that DMonte was known as Johnny Teeth, because his teeth were so white and straight. The businessman described DMonte as a tremendous sales guy who was very jovial.

It struck me that he didnt have Facebook or any of those things because he truly was a great networker, the businessman said, adding that DMonte once called him asking if he could borrow a hammer since he was helping repair a school.

When he was working on the Christmas toy drive, D'Monte messaged his WhatsApp group warning they were 500 presents short and that he was grinding to get donations as he noted that the prices went up 40% at the toy distributor warehouse: Caught us off guard. Will figure it out. Universe conspires, he wrote, adding three different star emojis.

DMonte remains in federal prison in Puerto Rico as he awaits an extradition process. His public defense attorney declined comment, but she noted in a court hearing on Thursday that DMonte, who has Canadian and Irish citizenship, requested that the consulates of those countries be notified.

Its unclear why DMonte chose Puerto Rico or if he knew anyone in the U.S. territory.

He is accused in the killing of a rival gang member at a Vancouver strip mall in February 2009, at a time when that part of British Columbia was experiencing one of the worst gang violence outbreaks in its history, according to a police statement.

DMonte also is accused of conspiring to murder two alleged rival gang members known as the Bacon Brothers, according to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

The United Nations gang that DMonte allegedly belongs to is considered one of the most powerful ones in British Columbia and is best known for exporting one of the most popular marijuana strains in the U.S. mainland: the B.C. bud. The gang also imported about 100 kilos of cocaine every three months and paid someone to create a personal encrypted phone system for them to prevent police from tapping their phones, said Doug Spencer, a retired detective with Vancouvers police gang unit who knew DMonte and described him as treacherous and a very smooth talker.

At its height, the gang had an estimated 200 members, and they often sport tattoos of tigers, dragons and Chinese characters. The gang also imports firearms and other drugs, making millions of dollars a year, said Keiron McConnell, a criminal justice expert and professor at Kwantlen Polytechnic University in Surrey, British Columbia.

Anyone thinking that Mr. DMonte was a street corner hustler, it couldnt be further than the truth, he said. Mr. DMonte was a fairly sophisticated individual.

McConnell said its highly unusual for fugitives to be on the run for as long as DMonte and to successfully assimilate themselves into a community.

DMonte, who police said has traveled to Asia and allegedly is associated with a drug network in Mexico, was last seen in the Vancouver area in January 2011. He then fled to Spain and traveled up to Ireland where he obtained a fake passport, said Spencer, the retired detective.

He noted that authorities tried to catch D'Monte by monitoring all calls to his daughters phone every year on her birthday, but that never worked out. That tells you how smart he is. He knows not to do that.

After stopping in Ireland, D'Monte vanished until he reappeared in Puerto Rico more than a decade later.

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Torres, with the U.S. Marshals Service, said high-profile fugitives often assume the profile of a very wealthy person because they have the means.

It doesnt raise any red flags, he said. It will draw attention, but not suspicion. They just act like a businessman.

Three weeks before federal agents arrested DMonte, Torres said his agency finally had collected enough information to identify the fugitive, noting they never received any tips.

As DMonte drove through the popular tourist district of Isla Verde on Feb. 25, the agents closed in.

He acted surprised, Torres said, adding that he didnt resist arrest.

DMonte was alone, except for a 9mm at his side.
PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AP)  The Islamic State says a lone Afghan suicide bomber struck inside a Shiite Muslim mosque in Pakistan's northwestern city of Peshawar during Friday prayers, killing at least 56 worshippers and wounding 194 people.

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AP)  The Islamic State says a lone Afghan suicide bomber struck inside a Shiite Muslim mosque in Pakistan's northwestern city of Peshawar during Friday prayers, killing at least 56 worshippers and wounding 194 people.

The Islamic State affiliate in the region known as Islamic State in Khorasan province and headquartered in Afghanistan claimed Friday's devastating attack in a statement translated by the SITE Intelligence group.

The statement was posted on the group's Amaq News Agency. The statement identified the attacker as Afghan, posted his picture and said Islamic State fighters are constantly targeting Shiites living in Pakistan and Afghanistan despite the intense security measures adopted by the Taliban militia and the Pakistani police to secure Shia temples and centers.

The carnage at the mosque buried deep inside the narrow streets of Peshawar's old city was horrific.

According to the spokesman at Peshawar's Lady Reading Hospital, Asim Khan, many of the wounded were in critical condition. Scores of victims were peppered with shrapnel, several had limbs amputated and others were injured by flying debris.

Peshawar Police Chief Muhammed Ejaz Khan said the violence started when an armed attacker opened fire on police outside the mosque in Peshawars old city. One policeman was killed in the gunfight, and another police officer was wounded. The attacker then ran inside the mosque and detonated his suicide vest.

The suicide bomber had strapped a powerful explosive device to his body, packed with 5 kilograms (12 pounds) of explosives, said Moazzam Jah Ansari, the top police official for Khyber Pukhtunkhwa province where Peshawar is the capital.

The device was hidden beneath a large black shawl that covered much of the attacker's body, according to CCTV footage seen by The Associated Press. The footage showed the bomber moving quickly up a narrow street toward the mosque entrance. He fired at the police protecting the mosque before entering inside.

Within seconds, a powerful explosion occurred and the camera lens was obscured with dust and debris. Ansari said the crudely made device was packed with ball bearings, a deadly method of constructing a bomb to inflict the most carnage spraying a larger area with deadly projectiles. The ball bearings caused the high death toll, Ansari said.

Local police official Waheed Khan said the explosion occurred as worshippers had gathered in the Kucha Risaldar Mosque for Friday prayers. There are fears the death toll could still rise further, he added.

Ambulances rushed through congested narrow streets carrying the wounded to Lady Reading Hospital, where doctors worked feverishly.

Shayan Haider, a witness, had been preparing to enter the mosque when a powerful explosion threw him to the ground. I opened my eyes and there was dust and bodies everywhere, he said.

At the Lady Reading Hospital Emergency department, there was chaos as doctors struggled to move the many wounded into operating theaters. Hundreds of relatives gathered outside the emergency department, many of them wailing and beating their chests, pleading for information about their loved ones.

Outside the mosque, Shiites pressed through the cordoned-off streets. Kucha Risaldar Mosque is one of the oldest in the area, predating the creation of Pakistan in 1947 as a separate homeland for the Muslims of the Indian subcontinent.

The prayer leader, Allama Irshad Hussein Khalil, a prominent up and coming young Shiite leader, was among the dead. Throughout the city, ambulance sirens could be heard.

Prime Minister Imran Khan condemned the bombing. His national security adviser, Moeed Yusuf, said the bombing was a heinous terrorist attack" and promised that those behind the carnage would be brought to justice.

We will not allow our gains against terrorism & our internal security to be compromised at any cost, Yusuf tweeted.

Retired army officer Sher Ali who had been inside the mosque at the time of the explosion was injured by flying shrapnel. He made a impassioned plea to the Pakistani government for better protection of the country's minority Shiites.

What is our sin? What have we done? Aren't we citizens of this country? he said from inside the emergency department, his white clothes splattered with blood.

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Iran's Foreign Ministry condemned the attack, saying the perpetrators were intent on sowing discord among Muslims. In a statement on the ministry's website, spokesman Saeed Khatizadeh expressed his hope that Pakistan's government would put an end to such attacks with firm actions, without elaborating.

In majority Sunni Pakistan, minority Shiites have come under repeated attacks. Also, in recent months, the country has experienced a significant increase of violence and dozens of military personnel have been killed in scores of attacks on army outposts along the border with Afghanistan.

Many attacks have been claimed by the Pakistani Taliban, who analysts say have been emboldened by the Afghan Taliban seizing power last August in Afghanistan.

Pakistan has urged Afghanistan's new rulers to handover Pakistani Taliban militants who have been staging their attacks from Afghanistan. The Afghan Taliban have said their territory will not be used to stage attacks against anyone, but until now have not handed over any wanted Pakistani militants.

___

Gannon reported from Islamabad. Associated Press writers Munir Ahmed in Islamabad and Amir Vahdat in Tehran, Iran, contributed to this report.
An Illinois man was released on a $2,500 signature bond after being arrested during a disagreement that escalated at Great Wolf Lodge in Wisconsin Dells.

Blake R. Stoffel, 23, of Wonder Lake, faces maximum imprisonment of more than seven years and fines up to $21,000 for a felony charge of threatening police and a misdemeanor count of disorderly conduct with a hate crime modifier in Sauk County Circuit Court.

According to the criminal complaint, Lake Delton police officers showed up to a call around 8 p.m., Feb. 21, at Great Wolf Lodge. A security officer told them that Stoffel and a woman were arguing loudly. When security went to the room, they told police that Stoffel became angry with staff and left.

Security then escorted the woman to her car when she couldnt find her keys and found Stoffel at the vehicle with the keys. Stoffel then began threatening a manager who had also come outside. Stoffel allegedly told the manager he was going to get a gun and shoot him, yelling at the manager to go back to your country and using derogatory language while referring to the manager as a Mexican.

After separating Stoffel and the woman, officers spoke to them both. They noted in reports that Stoffel continually used profane language despite being told to stop due to children being around at the time. He was told to go outside as a result and began recording the officers, asking for their names and badge numbers.

When police told Stoffel the pair were kicked out of the resort, the woman was already walking to their car, but Stoffel proceeded to walk up to a sergeant and allegedly used profanity, calling the officer names and threatening to kill him, which is when Stoffel was arrested.

During his initial appearance Feb. 22, Stoffel was granted his bond by Circuit Court Judge Michael Screnock with the condition that Stoffel have no contact with Great Wolf Lodge. Stoffel is scheduled to return to court April 29.

Follow Bridget on Twitter @cookebridget or contact her at 608-745-3513.

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HORICON  Is the Satterlee Clark House Museum in Horicon haunted?

Curator Lahnie Neu believes it is and invited a team of paranormal investigators to the site in January to check it out. The results of the investigation will be revealed Sunday as a fundraiser for the Horicon Historical Societys annual Haunted History Tours.

Neu said every time an event is held at the museum, the question of ghosts or spirits comes up. Many volunteers and visitors have mentioned strange occurrences they have encountered while spending time at the facility.

Not knowing if the encounters were a true experience or the power of suggestion, the Horicon Historical Society decided to bring in Western Wisconsin Paranormal Investigations to help sift through the stories. Three properties were investigated, including the Satterlee Clark House, Old Park School and the blacksmith shop.

The investigative team didnt charge for their services. Neu said she chose to have their findings revealed at a public event to satisfy the curiosity of those in the community and encourage others to learn about local history.

Theres video evidence, theres still picture evidence and voice recorded evidence. Theres a lot of evidence that I dont think people will be skeptics anymore after Sunday, she said.

Photos and videos will be displayed by projector on a large screen and electronic voice phenomenon will be played over the sound system at the Horicon American Legion. The historical society is holding the reveal off site in order to accommodate a large crowd.

Howard Hazen, the lead investigator from WWPI, will explain the equipment used, how the evidence was collected and what makes it paranormal in nature.

After the presentation, he and Neu will discuss any questions the audience may have.

Neu described the spirits at the HHS as friendly, and I think they rather enjoy the company of our guests.

If you go What: Paranormal reveal of the Satterlee Clark House Museum When: Sunday at 2 p.m. Where: Horicon American Legion Post 157, 735 S. Hubbard St., Horicon Cost: $5 each or $10 each with chili buffet Info: Advance meal tickets available at eventbrite.com; tickets at the door will be first come, first served

The team from Western Wisconsin Paranormal Investigations has recently explored the Dodge County Historical Society in Beaver Dam, as well. Curator Kurt Sampson said they have investigated twice and plan to come again because of all the paranormal activity they found there.

We have had activity here forever, and that has been witnessed by myself and other board members and previous curators, he said. For whatever reason, the demeanor of this building changes after about 7 p.m. The atmosphere gets very heavy in here and you can feel it shift.

Both Neu and Sampson suggested its possible artifacts carry a spirit with them.

Findings from investigations at the Dodge County Historical Society can be found on the website wwiscpi.com.

Follow Kelly Simon on Twitter @KSchmidSimon or contact her at 920-356-6757.

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I truly believe most people are good. No matter how many crimes against humanity we see on the nightly news, Im convinced that good, warm-hearted people are in the majority and those making the news do so only because theyre rare.

I see it in my own neighborhood every time one of my neighbors shovels my walks or cuts my grass. And, just the fact that so many charities exist is proof that millions of Americans willingly contribute to causes that help others less fortunate than they are.

But sadly, there are some who live only to benefit themselves and will harm or destroy others to further their own ambitions. Ruthless leaders have proven that from the beginning of the human race. One of the most notorious was Adolf Hitler who lied to his own people and blamed the cause of their economic hardships, not on the results of World War I, but on Jewish German citizens. We all know how that turned out for their country.

Today, we have Russian President Vladimir Putin who is lying to his own people to convince them his orders to attack the peaceful, democratic country of Ukraine are justified. He accuses the leadership of Ukraine of being neo-Nazis, which is absurd, of course, since the president of Ukraine is Jewish and its government, unlike Russias, is democratic.

But, instead of castigating Putin, our own wannabe dictator and former president Donald Trump praised him. In a Feb. 24 article in the very conservative Wall Street Journal, they quoted what he said in radio interviews about the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

I went in yesterday and there was a television screen, and I said, This is genius. Putin declares a big portion of Ukraine, Putin declares it as independent. Oh, thats wonderful. So, Putin is now saying, Its independent, a large section of Ukraine. I said, How smart is that?

The article continued with another Trump quote, I mean, hes taking over a country for $2 worth of sanctions. Id say thats pretty smart, Mr. Trump said during a fundraiser at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida on Wednesday night.

None of that is surprising considering that hes always praised Putin and bragged about getting love letters from North Koreas Supreme Leader and communist dictator, Kim Jong Un. Can you imagine how Republicans and Fox News hosts would react if President Barack Obama or President Joe Biden had said those things? Theyd have accused them of treason, of being communists, and more.

Its also been verified that Russian TV is using clips from Fox News and Tucker Carlsons show to bolster support for Putins aggressive actions against Ukraine. For example, on Feb. 24, The Intercept reported, On Sunday, Russian state TV translated this Tucker Carlson rant: Theyre promoting war, not to maintain the democracy that is Ukraine. Ukraine is not a democracy. It has never been a democracy in its history and its not now. It is a client state of the Biden administration.

Yet again, Carlson is lying and, yet again, his faithful viewers believe him. Ukraine has fair and free elections and has distanced itself from its former ties to Russia. The government is working hard to rid itself of its former reputation of corruption and does not need the assistance of Russia. But, Putin wants Ukraine to be Russias puppet and is now attempting to make sure they fall in line.

Unlike in Ukraine, the Russian people are not free to protest or even to be exposed to media from democracies like the United States. The Feb. 25 issue of Time Magazine has an in-depth article by Tara Law that describes how Russia controls what its people see and hear and how theyve lied about the invasion of Ukraine. In fact, Carlson and Trump are using the same arguments.

Maybe Carlson and Trump should move to Russia if theyre such big Putin supporters. The saddest and scariest thing is that they have a lot of American supporters who believe their lies and havent made any effort to discover the truth  the same thing that happened in Germany when Hitler was in charge.

Come to think of it, if they continued to support Trump during his first campaign, after he cruelly mimicked a disabled reporters spastic movements and speech defect, its not hard to believe theyd support anything he said or did.

But thankfully, the majority of Americans side with goodness. Thats why its so important for good people to run for office in their town, county and state governments, and for all eligible voters to make sure their voices are heard in every election.

Pat Nash has lived in the Baraboo area, off and on, for more than 35 years. Contact her at patnash5149@gmail.com.
Southern Wisconsin should see the warmest day of the year on Saturday, possibly accompanied by severe storms that will be most likely in southwestern Wisconsin, according to forecasters.

Snow and especially ice will stay to the north, with several inches of snow possible in far northwestern Wisconsin, and a wide area getting a tenth to slightly more than a quarter of an inch of ice, the National Weather Service said.

Much of northern Wisconsin is under a winter weather advisory, with the northwestern corner under a winter storm warning.

Two separate rounds of severe weather, including possible tornadoes, will put tens of millions at risk across the central U.S. this weekend, as cold air to the north and warm and humid air to the south clash, with a strong jet stream in play, AccuWeather said.

Wisconsin is only under threat from the first system on Saturday, with the second hitting much more to the south.

We have plenty of wind energy and we have the warmth for isolated severe thunderstorms to probably compensate for a lack of very moist air on Saturday afternoon and evening," AccuWeather chief on-air meteorologist Bernie Rayno said. "The greatest risk with the brief thunderstorms during the first round of severe weather this weekend will be from damaging wind gusts, but there is the potential for a few isolated tornadoes as well."

The risk of severe storms on Saturday afternoon will begin to ramp up from eastern Nebraska to northeastern Kansas, then likely peak across Iowa and northern and central Missouri early Saturday evening. Even if the storms weaken, south-central and southeastern Wisconsin still could see thunder, lightning and heavy rain.

In Madison on Friday, look for mostly cloudy skies, a high near 43 and light southeast winds increasing to 5 to 10 miles per hour in the morning, the Weather Service said.

After an overnight low around 34 with a 20% chance for showers near daybreak, Saturdays forecast features a 50% chance for showers, mostly cloudy skies, a high near 61 and south winds at 10 to 15 mph.

Theres a 90% chance for showers and storms overnight Saturday into Sunday, with possible rain totals of a quarter- to half-inch, a low around 35, south winds at 10 to 15 mph becoming southwest at 15 to 20 mph after midnight, and gusting to 40 mph.

The Weather Service said theres a 20% chance for showers Sunday before 7 a.m.; a 50% chance for snow before 2 a.m. overnight Sunday into Monday, then snow and freezing rain between 2 a.m. and 4 a.m., snow after 4 a.m. to 1 p.m., then rain and snow, ending with a 30% chance rain and snow Monday night before 7 p.m. There is a 20% chance for rain and snow Thursday.

Skies over Madison should be partly sunny Sunday, mostly cloudy Monday, sunny Tuesday, mostly sunny Wednesday, and partly sunny Thursday, with highs near 41, 37, 44 and 46, and lows Sunday night through Wednesday night around 30, 23, 25 and 29.

27 Storm Track meteorologist Blaise Keller said the Madison areas first severe weather event of the year will come as low pressure system moves through the center of the country over the weekend. The threat for showers and storms starts on Saturday, with some severe storms possible Saturday late afternoon and early evening.

Keller said its likely that storms will develop and be their strongest in Iowa, then die out as they enter into western Wisconsin overnight Saturday into Sunday.

After the storm system exits the region, Keller said flurries or sprinkles are possible Sunday, an isolated snow shower is possible Tuesday, and mixed precipitation is possible Thursday.

Keller said highs for Madison Friday through Thursday should be near 41, 60, 42, 39, 43, 44 and 43, and overnight lows around 33, 36, 28, 22, 26 and 29.

Thursdays high in Madison was 32 at 3:35 p.m., 6 degrees below normal and 38 degrees below the record high of 70 for March 3, set in 1983.

Thursdays low in Madison was 22 at 11:59 p.m., 1 degree above normal and 30 degrees above the record low of 8 below for March 3, set in 1884 and 2014.

No precipitation was recorded at the Dane County Regional Airport on Thursday, leaving Madisons March and meteorological spring (March through May) total at a trace, 0.19 inches below normal. Madisons 2021 precipitation total (rain plus snow converted to liquid) stayed at 0.88 inches, 2.3 inches below normal.

Madisons record precipitation for March 3 is 1.95 inches in 1881.

With no snow on Thursday, Madisons March and meteorological spring (March through May) total stayed at zero, 1 inch below normal. For the snow season (since July 1), Madison has received 21.6 inches, 21.5 inches below normal.

Madison's record snowfall for March 3 is 5 inches in 1953.

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This image made from a video released by Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant shows bright flaring object landing in grounds of the nuclear plant in Enerhodar, Ukraine Friday, March 4, 2022. Russian forces shelled Europes largest nuclear plant early Friday, sparking a fire as they pressed their attack on a crucial energy-producing Ukrainian city and gained ground in their bid to cut off the country from the sea. (Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant via AP)
Weather Alert

...The Flood Warning continues for the following rivers in Indiana... Wabash River from Lafayette to Montezuma. White River at Elliston and Edwardsport. .Multiple rounds of rain over the last few days is bringing minor flooding along lower portions of the White River and upper portions of the Wabash River. Additional rainfall Thursday evening through Friday evening should keep portions of the White and Wabash above flood stage through the weekend. PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS... Motorists should not attempt to drive around barricades or drive cars through flooded areas. Be especially cautious at night when it is harder to recognize the dangers of flooding. Additional information is available at www.weather.gov/ind. This statement will be updated within the next 12 to 24 hours. && ...FLOOD WARNING NOW IN EFFECT UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE... * WHAT...Minor flooding is occurring and minor flooding is forecast. * WHERE...Wabash River at Lafayette. * WHEN...Until further notice. * IMPACTS...At 14.0 feet, Lowland flooding is in progress. High water affects river cabins near North 9th Street. Low county roads are nearly impassable. Tapawingo Park in West Lafayette begins to flood. * ADDITIONAL DETAILS... - At 9:30 PM EDT Wednesday the stage was 11.3 feet. - Recent Activity...The maximum river stage in the 24 hours ending at 9:30 PM EDT Wednesday was 11.3 feet. - Forecast...The river will rise to 13.2 feet early Friday morning. It will then fall to 12.4 feet and begin rising again early Saturday morning. It will rise to 13.7 feet Sunday morning. It will then fall again but remain above flood stage. - Flood stage is 11.0 feet. - http://www.weather.gov/safety/flood &&
Every Friday, The Citizen features a pet available for adoption from the Finger Lakes SPCA of Central New York. This week, we spotlight Paula.

BREED: Domestic shorthair, tiger with white

AGE: 7 months

COMMENTS: "Hey Paula!" Remember that song? Well, if you don't, no worries. We sing that to our Paula. And the last few words are ... "when are you going home?" She wants to know too!

Paula arrived as a tiny kitten, was fostered to help give her a great start in life, then came back to the shelter. She is a very sweet little girl but does have her moments of "no thank you, I don't want to be picked up right now." That's OK, Paula  we give her space and she eventually reconsiders. Paula spends her time as an "out cat," and she gets along very well with the other gals in her room.

Paula has been tested for FIV/FeLV and is negative. She is completely up to date on vaccinations (rabies, distemper, feline kennel cough) and she was recently spayed.

Paula has been with us for several months. We all think it's time for her to leave. Please stop by to make her acquaintance.

Q. Do you have a best friend?

A. I do! We are BFFs from afar. Her name is Bella and she lives in the condo just outside of my room. She is a very, very sweet girl and so deserving of a home, but alas she has this little hiccup called FIV that, unfortunately, turns many potential adopters off. I wish that our good friends would do their research and talk to their friendly family veterinarians about this little issue. A little knowledge will go a long way and might help my BFF Bella find her new family. Thank you for listening.

Q. If you could visit any place in the world, where would that be?

A. So, I think I might like to visit the very fun and immensely interesting city of New Orleans, Louisiana! Yes, the Big Easy and the city of Mardi Gras and so many other interesting things and happenings. And, after a bit of research, I found that there are more than a dozen cat cafes and lounges in NOLA! There are even cat cafes that cater exclusively to "fat cats" and "black cats." My new family and I could keep busy for a long time visiting all of them. So yes, NOLA would be my destination of choice! You are welcome to join us!

Q. Do you have an interesting fact to share today?

A. Let's talk about my whiskers today! My whiskers aren't just cute, they serve a very important function in assisting me with getting around, especially at night. My whiskers are embedded deep in my body and are connected to my very sensitive muscular and nervous systems, and they act as "kitty radar." My whiskers allow me to respond to changes in my surroundings. Oh, I bet you didn't know that I also have a set of whiskers on the back of my front legs. This is true. One of my shelter peeps helped me with this answer.

Q. How would you describe yourself?

A. There are no words and enough superlatives to describe me. Just look at the picture. That should work.

Q. If you could have a job, what would that be?

A. I think I might like to try my paw at being a sleep study specialist. I have had lots of practice and I could use my picture as my job application. MOL!

Q. If you could meet someone famous, who would that be?

A. You all have probably heard of Karl Lagerfeld, right? If not, he is a famous clothing designer, among other things. Well, his kitty, Choupette, is a stylish and very spoiled cat who is living a lavish life. She is quite the fashionista, has inspired a handbag collection and has even been featured in photoshoots. I would love to meet her and if my sleep study jobs don't pan out, perhaps Choupette can hook me up with a modeling gig!

Q. Do you have any advice for our Citizen readers?

A. I do! My shelter people are working on another special adoption event for the upcoming St. Patrick's Day holiday. Check out our Facebook page and website for more information on that coming up soon. Oh, and just another little bit of advice. We are not out of the woods yet with respect to cold and snow. Please provide your canine friends with appropriate shelter, and keep your feline friends indoors! My BFF Bella and I thank you! Many purrs and licks, Paula and friends.

The Finger Lakes SPCA of Central New York is a New York state-registered shelter/rescue, registration No. RR-181. Pursuant to Article 26-A, Section 408 of the Agriculture and Markets Law, the registrant is authorized to operate as a registered pet rescue, in compliance with such law.

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Cayuga County and the city of Auburn are both flying Ukrainian flags in solidarity with the citizens of the eastern European nation that's been under attack by the Russian military since last week.

Cayuga County Legislature Chairman Gould issued a statement in conjunction with the flag being raised this week in front of the Cayuga County Office Building on Genesee Street in downtown Auburn.

"Cayuga County is showing its support for Ukraine by flying the Ukrainian flag with the American flag outside of the County Office Building.

"The County of Cayuga is home to a large number of Ukrainian Americans and the legislature wants to show its full support to them."

Gould said the Legislature plans to approve a resolution in support of Ukraine at its next full meeting March 22.

The city of Auburn is also expressing solidarity. The Ukrainian flag is among the international flags being flown on the south lawn of Memorial City Hall. On Thursday, the city posted a video of the flag with a message that included "#standwithukraine."

According to U.S. Census estimates, there are about 1,780 Cayuga County residents with Ukrainian ancestry, or 2.3% of the population  the highest percentage of any county in the state.

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BEIJING, March 3 (Xinhua)  The 13th National People's Congress, China's national legislature, is set to convene its fifth annual session on Saturday.

The following are some quotes from Chinese President Xi Jinping when he delivered a speech last October at a central conference on work related to people's congresses:

 The people's congress system, made by Chinese people under the leadership of the Communist Party of China, is a great creation in the history of political systems as well as a brand new system of great significance in the political history of both China and the world.

 The whole-process people's democracy in China not only has a complete set of institutions and procedures, but also full participation.

 The whole-process people's democracy in China is the broadest, most genuine and most effective socialist democracy.

 The system of people's congresses is an important institutional vehicle for realizing whole-process people's democracy in China.

 Under the leadership of the Party, the country will continue to expand the people's orderly political participation and strengthen legal protection for human rights to ensure that the people enjoy extensive rights and freedoms as prescribed by law.

 Democracy is not an ornament for decoration; it is to be used to solve the problems faced by the people.

(Source: Xinhua)
Tian Jing can't wait to share her ideas about protecting intangible culture heritage and inheritance during the upcoming two sessions, the annual gatherings of China's national legislative and top political advisory bodies.

The 45-year-old was born in Jianshui County, Southwest China's Yunnan Province, and is a member of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference.

Tian said she would suggest increasing joint efforts between governments, schools and companies linked to culture to strengthen intangible culture heritage training at vocational schools in areas inhabited by ethnic minority groups.

She called upon the parties concerned to take into account associated needs such as schools setting up relevant academic majors and offering employment support.

Theory and practice should also be organically integrated during teaching, she added. "Since the 18th CPC National Congress, China's intangible cultural heritage protection and inheritance work has achieved tangible results," Tian said.

"A large number of intangible cultural heritage projects have been protected, and conditions have been significantly improved for intangible cultural heritage inheritors to carry on their traditions."

At last year's two sessions, Tian proposed increasing the number of intangible cultural heritage teachers at medium-level vocational schools in areas inhabited by ethnic minority groups and building national intangible cultural heritage digital museums.

"Both proposals have advanced," she said.

Since a guideline was released in August by the general offices of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and the State Council, China's Cabinet, efforts have been stepped up to protect, promote and popularize intangible cultural heritage, including through government funds for preservation, reduced interest on loans and tax incentives.

"It was a substantial protective policy, and many vocational schools now offer classes in intangible cultural heritage skills," Tian said.

She was named a provincial inheritor of Jianshui's national intangible culture heritage of "purple pottery firing" in 2014. Jianshui's purple pottery, which flourished during the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), is made from the county's "five-color" clay, which consists of red, yellow, purple, white and green clays colored by various minerals. Finished pieces are hand-painted and coated in an unglazed polish.

Jianshui pottery is also often decorated with Chinese calligraphy and painting, adding to its cultural worth.

Tian's love of pottery was born of her love of tea, and when she was 17, she decided she wanted to make her own tea set. She first trained with local potters to learn basic skills, and each had their own area of expertise. She said that some were good at making clay, some at fashioning clay models, and others excelled at firing.

Tian realized that few potters at the time were experts in every skill, and that creating a fine piece of purple pottery required a lot of work and patience.

"The biggest difficulty for me was systematically acquiring the knowledge I needed to make traditional Jianshui purple pottery," Tian said.

Back then, purple pottery was mostly made in family workshops, and mainly in the form of cooking pots and vases. There were only a few types of teapot. Tian felt that it was a pity the workshops weren't making teapots of more artistic value.

With her family's support, Tian got a place at Jingdezhen Ceramic University in 2012, where she spent five years studying porcelain modeling, clay making, decorating, sculpting and firing.

She gradually developed her own style of making teapots. She went on to establish a purple pottery learning center in 2018.

Under her influence, many of Tian's apprentices have gone from merely knowing purple pottery to loving it, and their hometown.

Most of the apprentices she has recruited over the years have been young villagers for whom the direct benefit of learning the craft is the ability to make a living.

Lyu Baojing has been studying purple pottery for four years.

"I started by drawing patterns and then created designs on my own, and whenever I was confused, Tian always answered my questions with patience," said the 28-year-old, who used to take odd jobs outside Jianshui.

Lyu was finally able to produce marketable items after about 18 months of practice.

"Learning purple pottery has raised my monthly income from about 3,000 yuan ($475) to more than 10,000 yuan," Lyu said. "At the same time, I feel reborn and have found direction in life."

Tian said most of her apprentices have seen their annual incomes increase from 10,000 yuan to 60,000 yuan over the past decade.

To date, she has trained 500 young women, who are now able to work flexibly from home. Many apprentices have also gone on to set up their own workshops and have brought more people into the craft.

(Source: China Daily)
The January 6 committee subpoenas Kimberly Guilfoyle, Donald Trump Jr.'s fiancee who worked on his father's campaign. Guilfoyle is seen here in Washington, DC on August 24, 2020.
An Auburn Police Department officer is facing sexual abuse and official misconduct charges accusing him of having an inappropriate relationship with an Auburn High School student while serving as a school resource officer.

The Cayuga County Sheriff's Office on Friday reported the arrest of William Morrissey III, 32, of Whitehead Lane, Throop, on charges of first-degree sexual abuse, official misconduct and endangering the welfare of a child. Morrissey was arrested around 5 p.m. Thursday at his home and was arraigned later Thursday at Cayuga County Centralized Arraignment Part Court and sent to jail in lieu of $25,000 cash bail or $50,000 bond. Morrissey was released Friday morning after posting the cash bail.

The sheriff's office, which began its investigation on Wednesday, March 2, at the request of APD, said Morrissey engaged in "repeated inappropriate conduct with a student occurring in and around the City of Auburn including Auburn High School where he was serving as a School Resource Officer."

No further details on the alleged crimes have been released because the investigation is ongoing.

The city has placed Morrissey on unpaid leave pending the outcome of the criminal case as well as an internal city investigation.

The city issued a statement on the case Friday morning. City Manager Jeff Dygert and APD Chief James Slayton said they received identical anonymous complaints about Morrissey in the mail on Monday, Feb. 28. Morrissey was removed from his post as SRO on Tuesday, March 1, while APD started an internal investigation into the anonymous claim.

"As the investigation into the claims progressed it quickly became evident there were legitimate and serious concerns related to the officer's relationship with a student," the APD release said.

To avoid conflicts of interest in a criminal investigation of one of its own officers, the APD then sought the assistance of the sheriff's office. Working with the APD, Cayuga County 911, Auburn Enlarged City School District and the Cayuga County District Attorney's Office, the sheriff's office collected information that led to Morrissey's arrest.

The city said the school district "will be providing support for students as necessary. A replacement SRO has been assigned to the Auburn High School."

Under the most serious of the charges Morrissey faces, the class D felony of first-degree sexual abuse, the maximum sentence for a conviction would be seven years in prison with three to 10 years of post-release supervision.

Acting Cayuga County District Attorney Brittany Grome Antonacci said Morrissey was charged under a provision of that crime that involves sexual contact through "forcible compulsion."

The other two charges in the case, official misconduct and endangering the welfare of a child, are class A misdemeanors.

In a phone interview Friday morning, Auburn schools Superintendent Jeff Pirozzolo said he was limited in what he could say about the case because the investigation is ongoing, but he thanked law enforcement for acting quickly to investigate the anonymous tip.

Pirozzolo sent an email Friday to district families about the case.

"This investigation is ongoing, so if you have any information that could help, please reach out to the Sheriffs Department directly," he wrote.

The sheriff's office is asking anyone with information relevant to the investigation to call Detective Lt. Frederick Cornelius at (315) 253-6562. Tips also can be sent to tips@cayugacounty.us or be made anonymously at through the sheriff's website at www.cayugacounty.us/452/Send-a-Tip. Any member of the sheriffs office can also be reached at (315) 253-1179.

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Clwyd Pension Fund to divest from Russian oil holdings as soon as is practically possible

This article is old - Published: Friday, Mar 4th, 2022

A public sector pension scheme administered by Flintshire Council, and runs pensions for Wrexham Council, is to disinvest its holding in a Russian oil company following Vladimir Putins unprovoked attack on Ukraine.

Administrators of the Clywd Pension Fund have confirmed to sister site Deeside.com that its stake in Lukoil is to be offloaded due to the invasion.

The fund is part of the Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS) and provides death and retirement benefits for local government employees in North East Wales  Wrexham Council, Flintshire Council and Denbighshire Council. Recent data stated there are over 49,000 Clwyd Pension Fund scheme members, 17,000 contributors, 18,000 deferred contributors and 14,000 pensioners.

According to data published by UK Divest, Clywd Pension Fund investments include 1,852,505 in Lukoil, the second largest company in Russia after Gazprom.

Lukoil is a Moscow headquartered oil and gas company and is responsible for around 2% of the worlds oil production.

The company operates thousands of petrol stations including some in the United States.

Lukoil has been operating under US sanctions since 2014 due to continued Russian efforts to destabilise eastern Ukraine.

The company took the unprecedented step yesterday of urging Putin to end his invasion of Ukraine.

Lukoils billionaire founder Vagit Alekperov, called for an immediate cessation of the armed conflict and expressed concern over the tragic events.

Clywd Pension Fund also has a 20m stake in British energy giant BP which owns 20 per cent of Russian state-owned energy firm Rosneft.

BP announced last week it was selling its share in Rosneft worth US$14 billion following the start of the conflict in Ukraine.

In a statement to Deeside.com, on behalf of Wales Pension Partnership and the Local Government Pension Scheme in Wales, Cllr Clive Lloyd said: We are deeply saddened by the situation in Ukraine and our thoughts are with the Ukrainian people.

Our total exposure to Russian Investments is minimal at less than 1%.

Even so, in light of the terrible events we have witnessed and the economic sanctions imposed internationally, as a collective we have decided to divest from these holdings as soon as is practically possible.

Given the circumstances, we do not believe that engagement with these companies presents a viable option.

According to a report by the BBC, Welsh councils have up to 200m tied up in Russian funds and companies as part of their pension schemes.

The Welsh Local Government Association said councils are reviewing their position after the invasion of Ukraine.

The 200m represents less than one per cent of the 20bn Welsh councils have invested overall in their pension schemes beyond Russia, the BBC states.
Welsh Government give more detail on Ukraine support and future plans  unanimous determination to offer all support possible

This article is old - Published: Friday, Mar 4th, 2022

Welsh Government have detailed the 4m previously announced in humanitarian aid to Ukraine will be donated to Disaster Emergency Committee (DEC), along with further details on future support.

A statement from Minister for Social Justice, Jane Hutt, said, The unprovoked invasion of Ukraine continues to escalate  as does the dire humanitarian crisis, which has resulted in the displacement of almost a million people in just seven days.

We reiterate our unequivocal solidarity with the Ukrainian people in the face of Putins aggression.

Following our announcement at the start of the week that we would be providing 4m in humanitarian aid to Ukraine, I can confirm this will be donated to the Disaster Emergency Committee (DEC), which represents 15 major aid charities. Allocating the funding in this way will ensure it reaches those who need it as quickly and as efficiently as possible.

A meeting took place this week between Ministers and the leader of the Welsh Local Government Association, leaders of local authorities from across Wales and the third sector to discuss preparedness to accept people escaping the violence in Ukraine, the outcome was unanimous determination to offer all support possible.

The Minister added, There was praise for the generosity of the Welsh public, who have been eager to donate and support the people of Ukraine. However, donations of physical goods is presenting logistical difficulties both here and abroad. We urge people who want to donate  and are able to  to make a financial donation to the Disaster Emergency Committees appeal at www.dec.org.uk 

We are exploring options to ensure support can be provided here in Wales when Ukrainian citizens begin to arrive. We will provide further updates in due course. A dedicated page on our website has been set up setting out how people can help and sources of support for people directly affected by the war in Ukraine https://gov.wales/ukraine-support-people-affected 

Welsh Government say they are in close contact with the UK Government to understand how its proposed visa schemes will operate and how Wales can play a full part.

They also said they are working with other public bodies in Wales to identify and take action on any investments held associated with the Russian state.

The Minister aded, There is no question the responsibility for this unprovoked aggression in Ukraine lies squarely with Putin and not with the people of Russia.

In Wales, there are valued community members of Ukrainian, Russian, and Belarussian origin and we must ensure our words and actions protect their safety. I echo the words of Mick Antoniw MS who paid tribute to the brave Russian students and young people who have been protesting across the Russian Federation. They are the real future of Russia.
Wrexham MP and Polish community leader show their support for Ukraine

This article is old - Published: Friday, Mar 4th, 2022

Wrexhams Member of Parliament has declared her support for Ukraine and the Ukrainian people amidst the ongoing invasion of the country by Russian forces.

Sarah Atherton MP is also supporting the efforts of Wrexhams Polish Integration Support Centre, led by Anna Buckley, which has organised a collection to support Ukrainian refugees at the Polish border.

PISC is aiming to raise money to support the delivery of supplies for refugees arriving at the Polish-Ukrainian border, and items can also be donated directly. Items in need include thermal clothing, sleeping bags, crayons, toys, survival blankets, plasters, shampoos, first ad kids, clothing (new), sanitary towels, napkins and metal cups.

An ongoing effort is also taking place today with a request for anyone who can help feed 60 volunteers who are loading the gathered aid at F Lloyd Penley Limited on Bridge Road South, Wrexham Industrial Estate LL13 9UF between 10am  5pm.

Ms Atherton, who is also a member of the Defence Select Committee in Parliament, has also made clear that she supports the UK Governments military and humanitarian commitments to the crisis. So far, the UK Government have enacted sanctions to target Russias economy and the Russian President, Vladimir Putin.

The sanctions will ban Russias economically vital industries and companies from raising finance on the UKs money markets  arguably the most important financial centre in Europe and they say they are also stopping Russian banks, alongside state and privately-owned companies from borrowing from UK lenders.

The UK Government has also announced several changes to the immigration system, including the development of a bespoke humanitarian route to allow the UK to welcome up to 100,000 people from Ukraine.

Military assistance has also been provided to Ukraine, and other European and NATO allies such as Poland and Estonia.

Commenting on her initiative to support refugees, Anna Buckley from Wrexhams PISC said: The Polish people have a long history of welcoming those in need. I am pleased that the Polish Government have opened the border to support those from Ukraine that need it and Im grateful to the UKG for their commitments to aid the humanitarian and military crisis in Ukraine.

Adding, Wrexhams MP Sarah Atherton said: I know that many in Wrexham are worried about the unfolding scenes we have witnessed, but it is uplifting to see our community coming together in support of Ukraine. I would urge all to donate what they can to Annas initiative.

I am also proud that the UK Government has also provided wide-ranging support to Ukraine, and other European and NATO allies in the form of military equipment, technology and training, as well as economic and humanitarian assistance.

This nation will always stand up for the freedoms and the hard-earned democracy of our European allies and there will continue to be severe implications for Russia as a result of this unprecedented conflict.

More information can be found on the PISCs Facebook page: PISC CIC.
The mother of an Auburn teenager convicted of murder last year was sentenced Thursday for intimidating a witness in that case, as well as possessing child pornography.

Amanda H. Spagnola, 37, was before Cayuga County Court Judge Thomas Leone. Spagnola was charged in June with three counts of promoting a sexual performance by a child, a class D felony. She was later charged in July with two counts of third-degree intimidation, a class E felony.

Leone sentenced Spagnola to 364 days in the Cayuga County Jail on one promotion count and one intimidation count. Those sentences are running consecutively, so Spagnola is set to serve about two years in jail. As part of an agreement with the Cayuga County District Attorney's Office, the other counts were satisfied.

When Leone asked Spagnola if there was anything she wanted to say, she said no. Three people  two children in the promotion case and one person in the intimidation case  are getting orders of protection against Spagnola.

Cayuga County Chief Assistant District Attorney Christopher Valdina said after court that Spagnola threatened a witness related to the homicide case of 36-year-old Joshua Poole at 8 Delevan St. in November 2019. Spagnola is the mother of Lucciano Spagnola, one of the four people who were charged with murder in Poole's shooting death.

Days ahead of a trial, Lucciano Spagnola pleaded guilty and was later sentenced in November to 17 years to life in prison for two counts of second-degree murder, and was also sentenced for less serious charges. The Auburn Police Department previously identified him and co-defendant Gage Ashley as the shooters, but Lucciano couldn't be charged with first-degree murder due to being 17 at the time.

In the course of the murder investigation, authorities discovered that Amanda Spagnola possessed child pornography. The day after Spagnola was picked up for the promotion charges, Christian Rivera was arrested on the same charges. Rivera was one of the other defendants in Poole's death.

Rivera was indicted in 2020 on charges including second-degree murder, first-degree attempted robbery, fourth-degree conspiracy and fourth-degree criminal possession of a weapon. Authorities said Rivera wasn't at the actual shooting but planned the robbery that resulted in Poole's death, alleging he provided money for the masks and gloves to be used for the robbery and provided the 20-gauge shotgun and 9-millimeter handgun used at the scene.

Acting Cayuga County District Attorney Brittany Grome Antonacci said after court Thursday that Rivera reached a plea deal in court on Jan. 19. He pleaded to the attempted robbery charge and one of the promotion charges, in satisfaction of his other charges. He is currently expected to get 12 years in state prison with five years of post-release supervision for the attempted robbery count and one to three years in state prison for the pornography count. Rivera is currently due to be sentenced March 24.

Ashley was sentenced in December to 21 years to life in state prison for first-degree murder and second-degree murder, also receiving 15 years to life and five years of post-release supervision for first-degree attempted robbery and second-degree criminal possession of a weapon, along with sentences for less serious charges.

The fourth defendant in the homicide case, Tyree Anglin, pleaded guilty to first-degree manslaughter in June, with an agreed-upon sentence of 10 years in prison and five years of post-release supervision. He has not been sentenced yet.

Staff writer Kelly Rocheleau can be reached at (315) 282-2243 or kelly.rocheleau@lee.net. Follow him on Twitter @KellyRocheleau.

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Provincial governments across Canada are accelerating their drive to declare the COVID-19 pandemic over and dismantle all remaining public health measures. Governments of all political stripes, from John Horgans New Democrats in British Columbia to Jason Kenneys United Conservatives in Alberta and Doug Fords Tories in Ontario, are enforcing the homicidal policy of letting the virus run rampant that was demanded by the far-right Freedom Convoy occupiers in Ottawa.

Protest against the unsafe conditions in British Columbia's schools (source: BC Safe Schools)

A particular focus for all provincial governments is the elimination of measures to prevent the spread of the virus in schools. Throughout most of the pandemic, Canadas ruling elite has insisted on keeping schools open, confining students and teachers to cramped and poorly ventilated classrooms so that parents were freed from child care responsibilities and could go to work producing profits for big business. Now, with governments at all levels having embraced the homicidal live with the virus mantra, even the most limited protections, such as mask mandates, are being scrapped.

When Quebec schools return from March break next week, students and staff will no longer be required to wear masks in class. Teachers have pointed out to the media that the decision was taken unilaterally by the government without any consultation, and in spite of the fact that children will have had more contacts than usual after a holiday week.

During Quebecs devastating fifth Omicron-driven wave, close to 3 million people were infected by the virus. At its peak in late January, around 50,000 students were absent from school due to COVID-19, together with over 2,000 teachers. Studies suggest that 10 to 30 percent of COVID-19 infections result in Long COVID, which means hundreds of thousands of Quebecers, including thousands of school children, are likely to suffer debilitating symptoms for months and years to come.

In British Columbia, health authorities have severely curtailed testing, making it virtually impossible for all but the most vulnerable, elderly and unvaccinated to access a reliable PCR test. Despite this blatant attempt to suppress case counts, daily cases and positivity rates remain close to the peak of last summer and falls Delta wave.

With the provinces decision to limit testing, combined with its exposure policy, which only notifies immediate contacts of an infected person, it has become increasingly difficult to ascertain the true extent of infections among students and educational workers. School-wide notifications when multiple infections occur have also been scrapped.

Nonetheless, the limited information that remains publicly available, as well as the data collected by various citizen initiatives, reveals that the Omicron variant is still circulating at high levels in educational institutions.

BC Covid Tracker, a private initiative run by two parents, reports 20-50 daily exposures throughout the province. While cases reported to them in schools are now largely unconfirmed, they certainly still represent an undercount, as the group does not have contacts in every school throughout the province. Their findings closely mirror those of Exposure Watch, a site maintained by parent Gabriel Bauman, which reported 94 separate cases in BC schools in the seven days up to February 25.

Despite their best efforts to downplay and hide the impact on children and workers, the provinces own data continues to paint a bleak picture. In the first five weeks of this year, 98 children aged 0-10 were hospitalized, with 10 ending up in the ICU. Another 74 children aged 10-19 were hospitalized, with three needing ICU care. WorksafeBC reports accepting almost 500 educational workplace COVID-19 claims, the second most of any workplace sector.

BC continues to provide only the bare minimum of mitigation protections in schools, offering two rapid tests for every staff member. Many teachers have complained on Twitter that despite this pledge, they have yet to see any tests in their schools.

Meanwhile, BCs public health officer Bonnie Henry continues to refuse to issue standard N95 masks to education workers. Her stance is no doubt motivated by her staunch refusal to recognize the airborne nature of the virus, which has provoked international criticism. A private manufacturer, Burnaby-based Vitacore, responded to Henrys refusal by donating 100,000 N95s to be distributed to all schools throughout the province.

The BA.2 subvariant, which has been steadily increasing in terms of percentage of genomic sequences, currently accounts for around 10 percent of cases province-wide. However, this official figure is likely an undercount, as the Vancouver Coastal Health region, led by the notorious Great Barrington Declaration advocate Patricia Daly, has not reported any positive BA.2 samples. BA.2 may be up to 1.5 times more infectious than the original Omicron variant.

The situation is similar in most jurisdictions across the country, with varying degrees of data blackouts in effect, making it difficult for the public to see and comprehend the true toll the pandemic continues to take.

A campaign by right-wing politicians is under way in Ontario to do away with the mask mandate in schools, which is virtually the only mitigation measure still in place. Brampton Mayor and former Progressive Conservative leader Patrick Brown has demanded the scrapping of the mask mandate so children can get back to normal.

Ontarios chief medical officer of health Dr. Kieran Moore told reporters on Thursday that the provinces mask mandate could end in just over three weeks, even though the real number of daily infections is currently 10 times higher than the official figures. This means that there were 20,000 new infections on the day that he spoke, rather than the 2,200 reported due to restrictions on PCR testing. Abolition of masking requirements is likely to be announced in all indoor settings at the same time.

The mask mandate in Albertas schools was scrapped by Kenneys hard-right government as of February 14. The move was part of a comprehensive plan to end all public health measures that coincided with Kenneys vocal support for the far-right Freedom Convoy. Asked what scientific data supported removing the mask mandate, Health Minister Jason Copping trotted out a lie used by proponents of mass infection throughout the pandemic, commenting, We need to let kids be kids. We know that COVID impacts kids, that it tends to be less severe, they are less likely to get and transmit it, although with Omicron, it is a higher transmission rate.

The governments decision triggered widespread anger, especially after it emerged that Education Minister Adrienne LaGrange sent a letter to school boards to inform them that they have no legal power to impose mask mandates at the local level in class or on school buses. Student walkouts were held in Calgary and Edmonton February 14 in protest.

In New Brunswick, daily cases appeared to have plateaued, but school cases are rising significantly according to the independent citizens initiative, Protect Our Province (New Brunswick). The province will end its mask mandate in all indoor settings on March 14.

In Saskatchewan, as of February 1, all reporting of school COVID-19 exposures was halted. In addition, the province has ceased reporting daily case counts, while limiting testing to only the immune-compromised and health care workers. It lifted all COVID restrictions, including mask mandates and mandatory isolation requirements on February 28.

These homicidal policies, which are being pursued from coast to coast, are creating the conditions for yet another surge of infections and death. They must be opposed by educators, students, and all working people.

The Cross-Canada Educators Rank-and-File Safety Committee (CERSC) is an organization of teachers, education staff, students, and supporters fighting for a global strategy to eliminate COVID-19. We encourage everyone to contribute to our regular reports on the impact of COVID-19 in schools and other education institutions. You can follow the CERSC on Twitter or send an email to cersc.csppb@gmail.com.
In recent days, censorship measures have been taken by the European Union (EU), tech and social media platforms and streaming services internationally against media sources with connections to the Russian government.

Russian state-owned television station RT logo is seen at the window of the company's office in Moscow, Russia. (AP Photo/Pavel Golovkin, File)

On Wednesday, the EU put into effect a ban on the Russian state media outlets RT and Sputnik that had been announced on Sunday. The sanctions impact both the traditional broadcast signals and all affiliated online platforms and mobile apps.

EU media regulators will be monitoring compliance with the ban across all 28 countries with the risk of fines being imposed on any providers found to be continuing to distribute the media content.

RT is an international television network funded by the Russian government. It operates pay television or free-to-air channels directed to audiences outside of Russia, including content on the internet in English, Spanish, French, German, Arabic and Russian. Sputnik, formerly called Voice of Russia, is a state-run news agency and radio broadcast service.

On Sunday, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said, We will ban the Kremlins media machine in the EU. The state-owned Russia Today and Sputnik, and their subsidiaries, will no longer be able to spread their lies to justify Putins war.

On Tuesday, the satellite TV and streaming service DirecTV announced it was dropping RT from its roster of television programs effective immediately. The TV provider, which is owned by the media conglomerate AT&T, said that the decision was an acceleration of this years contract expiration timeline which was already under review and set to expire later this year.

On Thursday, a report on CNN Business said RT America was shutting down operations and laying off most of its staff. According to a memo obtained by the cable news network, the production company behind RT America was ceasing production at its locations in New York, Miami, Los Angeles and Washington D.C., as a result of unforeseen business interruption events.

Misha Solodovnikov, the general manager of T&R Productions, told staff members that the layoffs were permanent. CNN Business said that DirecTV dropping the channel, one of two major TV providers that carried RT, dealt a major financial blow to the network.

Additionally, the streaming video content hardware provider Roku announced on Wednesday that it banned RT and Sputnik from its channel store worldwide, after initially removing them in Europe only.

A report on RT included a statement from deputy editor-in-chief Anna Belkina who condemned the decision and said critics of the outlet had not pointed to a single example, a single grain of evidence that what RT has reported over these days, and continues to report, is not true.

The EU decision came after a statement issued by Mykhailo Fedorov, vice prime minister of Ukraine, who tweeted on February 26 that he had contacted YouTube to block the propagandist Russian channelssuch as Russia 24, TASS, RIA Novosti and claiming they were full of poisonous lies.

On Tuesday the most popular social media platforms YouTube, Facebook and TikTok also banned RT and Sputnik in Europe. A statement from Google Europe (owner of YouTube) on Twitter, said, Due to the ongoing war in Ukraine, were blocking YouTube channels connected to RT and Sputnik across Europe, effective immediately.

Facebooks Nick Clegg, president of global affairs, tweeted on Monday, We have received requests from a number of Governments and the EU to take further steps in relation to Russian state-controlled media. Given the exceptional nature of the current situation, we will be restricting access to RT and Sputnik across the EU at this time.

According to a report in the Washington Post, Facebook had reported late Sunday that it had disrupted a Russian disinformation operation targeting Ukraine, one of the first official confirmations of such a campaign since the invasion of Ukraine last week and that it blocked a hacking group that attempted to compromise the accounts of prominent Ukrainians.

On Tuesday, Apple announced that it was removing RT and Sputnik from its app store around the world except for Russia. The censorship measures were taken along with Apple stopping the sales of its products through the Apple Store in Russia, as well as limiting its Apple Pay and other services.

An Apple representative told CNBC, We have taken a number of actions in response to the invasion.  [we] have disabled both traffic and live incidents in Apple Maps in Ukraine as a safety and precautionary measure for Ukrainian citizens.

TikTok confirmed to the Post on Monday its decision to ban the Russian outlets in the EU. Twitter announced on Monday that it was adding labels and reducing visibility for tweets containing content from the RT and Sputnik sites.

A label on a link from RT posted on Twitter displayed a message that said, Stay Informed: This tweet links to a Russia state-affiliated media website and includes a link to Find out more. Clicking on the link goes to a Twitter Help Center page that explains its government and state-affiliated media account labels policy.

Twitter said the labels would be applied automatically to tweets with a URL from a designated state-affiliated media website and will reduce visibility of these tweets by not recommending them to users and taking them out of the Top Search function. Twitter also said it would be adding additional state-backed media outlets from other countries in the coming weeks.

On Tuesday the Russian government-backed documentary film company Redfish said its pages had been banned in Europe. In a tweet, the anti-capitalist media company posted, YouTube just banned our page within Europe. IG (Instagram) has also shadow-banned our account, and we expect a full ban on all platforms soon. But remember how it ended last time for totalitarianism in Europe. Shadow-banning is the practice of an online or social media platform of partially blocking user content from some areas of the community.

There have been other recent acts of online censorship of left-wing and anti-war views, such as Spotifys removal of a Moment of Clarity podcast by Lee Camp. Camp, who has noted the correspondence of the invasion of Ukraine by the Putin regime and the numerous aggressive wars by US imperialism over recent decades, tweeted, My podcast Moment of Clarity has been removed from @Spotify. Let it be knownyou can do anti-women, anti-trans or racist content on Spotify but you cant be anti-war. Thats not allowed.

Camp also tweeted, So once everything except US pro-war propaganda has been banned from TV & internet, will you feel safe then? Will everything be better then?

The banning of Russian media sources has also won the approval of Senator Mark R. Warner (Democrat, Virginia), who has long pressured the tech industry to restrict Russian government-backed publishers as a means of increasing censorship across the Internet.

During a Post Live event on Monday, Warner, who is the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, praised the steps taken to demonetize Russian state media but said the war in Ukraine underscored the need for more regulation of social media in the United States. We need some rules of the road going forward. Whether its in peace or war, these companies have unparalleled power, he said.
Do you work at Canadian Pacific or another railroad? Contact us and tell us about the issues you confront. All published comments will be kept anonymous.

More than 3,000 railroad workers at Canadian Pacific have voted to authorize strike action by 96.7 percent, the Teamsters union in Canada announced on February 28. The strike, which could begin as soon as March 16, would be the fourth at the railroad in a decade, following strikes in 2012, 2015 and 2018.

Canadian Pacific Railways locomotive number 2303, in Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada, this year (Credit: Wikimedia user J73364)

At issue for the workerswho include locomotive engineers, conductors, trainpersons and yardpersonsare wages, pensions and benefits. Canadian Pacific (CP), which operates mainly in Western Canada and the American Midwest, is one of the seven Class I railroads in the United States.

The strike vote is the latest indication of a growing mood of opposition and militancy among rail workers in North America. In January, 17,000 BNSF conductors and engineers voted to authorize strike action against managements unilateral imposition of a new Hi-Viz attendance policy, which threatens to eliminate whatever remaining personal time workers have and set up high-seniority workers for termination. However, the strike was blocked by a federal court injunction, which has been confirmed repeatedly in subsequent rulings.

The Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen (BLET) is a division within the Teamsters union. However, the BLET has not mentioned a word about the strike vote at CP on its website or social media pages, nor have the Teamsters in Canada mentioned the struggle of BNSF workers in the United States, demonstrating the manner in which the pro-corporate unions seek to isolate and sabotage the struggles of workers along sectional and national lines.

Instead, the BLET has focused all of its attention on enforcing the anti-strike injunction and threatening and intimidating workers for seeking to oppose it, or even for speaking to the press. While voting was still underway in Canada, the BLET was reacting furiously against the courageous decision by workers to found the BNSF Workers Rank-and-File Committee.

In its founding statement, the committee declared that its aim was to organize railway workers ourselves as an alternative source of power against management, well-heeled union bureaucrats and government by injunction. The committee said it would appeal to our most powerful allies, the international working class, for support, including workers in the other Class I carriers who are facing similar attendance policies.

In the United States, the anti-democratic Railway Labor Act, first enacted in 1926, is designed to all but illegalize strikes on the railroads. In the words of the judge who issued the injunction, the Act sets out a mandatory and virtually endless process of negotiation, mediation, voluntary arbitration, and conciliation. Indeed, BNSF workers have been kept on the job for two years without a contract.

Labor laws in Canada are not quite as onerous as in the Land of the Free, but the government still regularly intervenes against strikes, particularly in the railroad industry. It has long been common practice, for example, for Parliament to pass special legislation to outlaw a particular strike and order railroaders back to work.

Under the current Liberal Party government of Justin Trudeau, the preferred method has been to enlist the services of the unions in preventing or shutting down strikes. This is the Canadian equivalent of Bidens self-declared most pro-union administration in American history, in which the White House has employed the trade union bureaucracy to place workers under a de facto form of state guardianship. This strategy has been increasingly apparent at both BNSF and in the oil industry, where the United Steelworkers is rapidly moving to enforce a sellout contract on 30,000 refinery workers after several meetings with Biden and other officials.

Trudeau was able to rely on the Teamsters to sell out strikes at Canadian Pacific in 2018 and Canadian National in 2019 with contracts which abandoned all of workers key demands. These strikes were over cuts to health care, plans by the railroads to move to one-person crews for trains, and onerous work schedulesthe exact same issues which American railroad workers confront.

However, while the Teamsters effusively praised Trudeaus supposedly more moderate stance, Ottawa held in reserve preparations for direct government intervention to criminalize the strikes. At the same time, Teamsters Canada President Francois Laporte pledged his support for the profitability of CN, declaring, I understand we [the union] have to meet the [companys] bottom line but on our side, we have to protect our people.

The experience in Canada exposes the self-serving claims by the BLET that their hands are tied by the injunction. North of the border, where workers are fighting against the exact same issues, the same union sabotages their struggles without even the need for court injunctions. This shows that the unions are nothing but adjuncts of management and the government controlled by wealthy bureaucrats, for whom injunctions are only extra ammunition against rank-and-file opposition.

There can be no doubt that there will be heavy pressure from both Biden and Trudeau to prevent a strike from taking place at Canadian Pacific. Within financial and corporate circles there are concerns about not only the economic but also the geopolitical consequences upon supply chains which this strike could have. Indeed, this was also the dominant consideration behind the injunction at BNSF, as Judge Mark Pittman explicitly referred to supply chains in his original ruling and quoted Harry Truman, who used wartime measures against strikers during World War II and the Korean War.

A strike at CP could threaten fertilizer supplies to the United States on the eve of the planting season, Bloomberg News reported, under conditions where food prices are already on the rise due to the war between Ukraine and Russia, two of the worlds main grain exporters.

On Thursday, the worlds biggest crop-nutrient supplier, Nutrien Ltd., released a statement calling on the Trudeau government to intervene to block the strike, writing, We would be very disappointed to see a labor dispute have such a significant impact on global agricultural supply chains, and consequently, we would hope that the Canadian government will consider intervening to avert another transportation crisis.

While Nutrien cynically cites concern for global food supplies as its motivation, crasser material interests are at work. A strike could threaten the ability of North American agribusiness to capitalize on higher food prices and reap super-profits as a result of the conflict in Ukraine, which was stoked and encouraged by the United States and NATO.

In spite of official hand-wringing over the inviolability of supply chains, the small group of hedge funds and wealthy investors who control the railroad industry have driven both the workforce and infrastructure of the railroads into the ground in their drive to squeeze out every last cent of profit. BNSF is owned by Berkshire Hathaway, which is in turn owned by Warren Buffett, the eighth-richest person in the world, with a fortune over $110 billion. Bill Gates, the fourth-richest, is the largest shareholder in Canadian National (CN).

The grotesquely misnamed London hedge fund The Childrens Investment Fund Management (TCI) is the largest shareholder in CP, but also owns a significant stake in rival firm CN. At both companies, TCI is pushing for greater consolidation and massive cuts. Decades of consolidation in the industry have reduced the number of Class I railroads in the US from hundreds to seven, and this will soon be reduced to six due to the $31 billion merger between Canadian Pacific and Kansas City Southern struck late last year. The new company will be known as Canadian Pacific Kansas City.

KCS, while it is the smallest and weakest of the Class I railroads, nevertheless controls vital rail linkages between the American Southwest and Mexico. The merger would create the worlds first transnational railway, one industry commentator said, with a single network stretching from oil fields and crop producers in Canadas Prairie Provinces, to major port facilities in New Orleans and Houston, down into the Mexican state of Veracruz on the Gulf Coast.

In a demonstration of how the industry is controlled and manipulated by a tiny handful within the financial aristocracy, TCI moved aggressively against a CN bid for Kansas City Southern in order to prevent a bidding war and secure the success of the bid by CP. It is now campaigning for significant cost-savings at CN, citing impending competition due to the merger by rivals which it itself played a major role in brokering.

The trade unions, even those that operate in multiple countries, seek to divide workers by nationality and have no answer to the relentless assault on living standards and working conditions. The working class must oppose the capitalists global strategy of consolidation and cost-cutting with their own international strategy, based on the unity of railroad workers in the United States, Canada, Mexico and around the world. This means organizing a network of rank-and-file committees independent of the unions, in order to carry a united struggle against brutal scheduling, pay and benefit cuts and deteriorating infrastructure.
As residents of Lismore and surrounding parts of northern New South Wales (NSW) begin to clean up and recover belongings from their flood- and storm-damaged homes, anger and frustration is mounting over the pitiful official response to the disaster.

Flooded Newmarket Road, Wilston, Brisbane [WSWS Media]

While weather on Australias east coast today has not been as extreme as predicted, heavy rainfall is expected to continue over the weekend and into next week, including in areas already devastated by floods. With rivers and dams overflowing, the continued downpour means the danger is far from over.

More than four days after large parts of Lismore, including the entire CBD, were inundated by floodwaters, thousands of residents are still without power, phone and internet service, while food, drinking water and fuel are in desperately short supply. Evacuation centres are overcrowded, raising the possibility of a COVID-19 outbreak amid increasing infections across the state.

From the outset, almost every aspect of the emergency response has been left up to the working class local population. In Lismore, dozens of ordinary people turned up with their own boats, and many more joined the rescue operation, bravely going from house to house to evacuate trapped residents.

The sense of complete abandonment by the state and federal governments has built up throughout the ongoing crisis, as official aid has failed to materialise.

Brigitte Boll wrote on Facebook: Milk, water, groceries, basics, everything is needed right now. Where is the help from federal gov? No one to be seen.

Lyn Moore wrote: Where is the State & Federal government help with getting food etc to these areas. I know the highways are flooded but cant they bring in Army vehicles?

The first deployment of 70 Australian Defence Force (ADF) personnel to aid the rescue and recovery effort occurred only on Wednesday, and a further 170 were not sent until today.

The fact that the military was sent at all, as they now are in response to almost every disaster, is a result of decades of cuts to civilian emergency services, leaving the ADF, with its ever-increasing budget, as the only manpower available. This is also aimed at normalising the presence of soldiers on domestic soil, under conditions of widespread hostility to inequality and a social crisis that will be exacerbated by the floods.

Holly Lovegrove wrote on Facebook yesterday: There were some ADF men working on Terania St today but they said theyre only doing other ADF peoples houses which is really disappointing.

Lovegrove pointed out the stark contrast between the pitiful official response and the heroic and self-sacrificing actions of ordinary people. She wrote: The Fijian/Samoan men seem to be doing more heavy lifting than our paid government services. Are there any services that arent run by volunteers?

Lovegrove was referring to a group of abattoir workers who have played a major role in the rescue and recovery effort, including saving 60 residents from an aged care facility on Monday. They have only recently arrived from Fiji under the Pacific Labour Scheme, which provides cheap labour from impoverished countries to business, while denying workers basic citizenship rights.

Sally Purcell wrote on Twitter: So much has been left to private citizens when it was so clear that Lismore, this very flood prone town, was in grave danger. The federal and NSW governments have, once again, demonstrated their incompetence and have shown how little they care about people.

Lismore flood victims are struggling to register for the federal governments pitiful one-off $1,000 per adult and $400 per child disaster payment. Severely limited phone and internet access is preventing many flood victims from accessing online services, and, according to social media reports, yesterday a single Services Australia worker was sent to manually handle thousands of claims.

On Wednesday, in nearby Coraki, hundreds of people were marooned at an evacuation centre as the town ran short of food and bottled water. Some resorted to siphoning petrol from their cars to use in private boats to rescue survivors trapped on the roofs of their houses. A State Emergency Service (SES) boat with supplies did not arrive in the town until late afternoon.

The central business district of Casino was flooded for the first time in the citys history, with 330 homes reported as inundated.

In Brisbane, the state capital of Queensland, the situation is little better. Primary responsibility for the clean-up has been dumped on a mud army of more than 10,000 volunteers who responded to a call from the city council.

There too, residents have expressed anger at the woeful response and preparation by the state Labor government.

Brisbane Corso resident Nigel Bean told the Courier-Mail he was only notified of advancing floods late Saturday night. Somebody has to be put on the spot and asked, please explain, what has gone wrong? Bean said. How on Earth can we be in a mega-metropolitan city that just won the 2032 Olympics and yet cant even prevent, predict or communicate flooding in the CBD?

SEQWater was forced to defend its decision not to begin releasing water from Wivenhoe Dam last Tuesday when the Bureau of Meteorology initially forecast heavy rain. Flood mitigation releases did not begin for another three days. The state-owned water authority was found guilty of negligence by a court in 2019 for contributing to the flooding of at least 20,000 Brisbane homes in 2011.

According to a new report by Deloitte Access Economics, only 3 percent of public money allocated to disaster relief is invested in preparation and mitigation. As victims of previous floods, bushfires and other disasters attest, very little of this money ends up in the hands of those who lose their homes.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison declared Tuesday that the federal government had paid out $17 billion in disaster relief in the past three years. This included $13 billion for the COVID-19 disaster payment and pandemic leave.

Two thirds of the $1.5 billion spent following the 2019 floods in Queensland was to establish a new AgRebuild loan scheme. In fact, between July 2019 and June 2021, just 64 loans were approved nationwide for flood-affected farms and agribusinesses, totalling $185 million.

A federal Emergency Response Fund established in 2019 and financed through a $4 billion cut in research funding has committed just $150 million to disaster mitigation, while earning more than $800 million in interest.

Emergency Response Minister Bridget McKenzie yesterday dismissed any idea of federal responsibility for the disaster, proclaiming we dont own the bulldozers, and that they were relying on states and territories for flood mitigations, including levees, because they were too expensive.

National Recovery and Resilience Agency head Shane Stone hit back at critics of the official response, blaming flood victims for their plight. Stone told Nine newspapers: Youve got people who want to live among the gum trees, what do you think is going to happen? Their house falls in the river, and they say its the governments fault.

The reality is, over decades, successive governments have opened up large tracts of land on flood plains for residential development, in line with the demands of property developers. With housing prices rapidly increasing while wages have stagnated or fallen, more and more working-class families have been forced out to these low-lying areas.

The failure of state and federal governments, Labor and Liberal-National alike, to respond to this crisis, before, during or afterward, is not an aberration, but a direct product of the capitalist system, in which the health and lives of working people are entirely subordinated to the profit interests of big business.
The only officer to be charged with committing a crime during the brutal shooting death of Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old African American emergency room technician, on March 13, 2020, was found not guilty of wanton endangerment by a jury on Thursday.

Breonna Taylor, 26, was killed by police when she was shot at least eight times during a "no-knock" search warrant of her apartment on March 13, 2020.

Former Louisville police officer Brett Hankison was acquitted of the three counts against him for recklessly firing ten shots through the patio door of Taylors apartment that night, three of which went through a wall shared by another apartment where a man, a pregnant woman and a 5-year-old boy were home.

The Kentucky jury of eight men and four women deliberated for three hours following closing arguments on Thursday and after five days of the trial at Jefferson County Circuit Court that included testimony from some thirty witnesses.

The acquittal of Hankison is the latest chapter in the conspiracy by the Louisville Metro Police Department (LMPD) and the state of Kentucky to whitewash the raid and block the prosecution of the officers responsible for Taylors death.

The fact that the only minor charges were brought against Hankison while the other two officers, Jonathan Mattingly and Myles Cosgrove, were never charged at all by Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron was a travesty of justice to begin with. Cosgrove, who fired 16 shotssix of which struck Breonna Taylorand Mattingly, who fired six times, were found by Cameron to be justified in doing so.

The three officers, who are white, were serving a no knock warrant in connection with a drug investigation that night and used a battering ram to knock down the door of Taylors apartment while she and her boyfriend Kenneth Walker were sleeping. Walker, who is also black, was legally in possession of a handgun and fired a warning shot at what he thought were intruders. The bullet struck Mattingly in the leg.

In response, the officers returned a total of 32 shots, one of which struck Taylor in the head and killed her in the hallway of the apartment. Everything that happened from that point forward shows that the LMPD and local and state criminal justice officials did everything they could to sweep the murder of Taylor under the rug.

It began with Walker being arrested and charged with assault and attempted murder. While Walker said the police did not identify themselves before he fired his weapon, the officers claimed that they announced themselves before smashing down the door of the apartment. Numerous witnesses said they heard no door knocking or announcement that night. Twelve months later, the charges against Walker were dropped.

The four-page police incident report filed the night of the shooting was nearly blank. It said that the deceased had no injuries and that there was no forced entry. In the section of the form where the officers were to give a narrative of what happened, it said, PIU investigation, for Public Integrity Unit.

This report was released to the public on June 11, 2020, nearly three months after the shooting and amid the mass protests across the country that had erupted following the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin on May 25, 2020. These demonstrations increasingly raised the demand of Justice for Breonna Taylor.

While the officers had been placed on administrative leave, Hankison was fired on June 23, 2020, and the LMPD settled with Taylors family by agreeing to pay $12 million and reform police practices. Cosgrove was fired in January 2021 for violating standard operating procedures involved in using deadly force and for failing to use a body camera. Mattingly retired from the LMPD and has written a book defending his conduct in the shooting.

Unlike the murder convictions of former officers Derek Chauvin and Kim Potter, who shot and killed Daunte Wright on April 11, 2021, no one in law enforcement has yet been held accountable for Taylors death. In responding to the verdict on Thursday, Hankisons attorney said, I think its a good day, finally, for law enforcement, and Mattingly tweeted, Thank you, Jesus.

Meanwhile, the conspiracy against Walker and Taylors family continues. During closing arguments, Hankisons attorney Stewart Matthews blamed Walker for the violence that resulted in Taylors death. He perpetuated a claim that Walker actually fired an AR-15-style rifle at the officers when only a handgun was found at the apartment that night.

Matthews said that a .223 shell casing was found outside and another in a bedroom of the apartment and that Taylors family was given access the crime scene the day of the raid.

I have a problem with coincidences sometimes, Matthews said. It just is a bit curious.

The claim that Walker had a rifle comes from the assertion by Hankison that the muzzle flash he saw in the dark coming from Walkers weapon was too bright to be from a handgun. However, the prosecutor Barbara Maines Whaley said, The reason there were no AR bullets, and no AR bullet holes and nobody that got shot with an AR is because there was never one.
Tens of thousands of higher education (HE) workers completed a 10 day strike following action from Monday to Wednesday this week. The action began on February 14 with a five-day stoppage, followed by two days of action the following week.

Staff and students protest at a rally in Torrington Square, London (WSWS Media)

Staff are fighting attempts by university management to cut their already devalued pensions by another 35 percent, attacks on pay and working conditions, and an increase in casualisation. The cuts are on top of 240,000 already lost from the average lecturers retirement income over the past decade.

Last week, the Universities Superannuation Schemes (USS) joint negotiating committee (JNC) voted through massive attacks on pensions, meaning workers in the higher education sector losing tens of thousands of pounds. Many of those striking expressed their opposition on social media, demanding that the University and College Union (UCU) respond by escalating the action.

UCU leader Jo Grady responded by telling members, These cuts may take effect from April, but they are not irreversible and this dispute is far from over. Grady said next steps would be decided at the February 25 meeting of the unions higher education committee (HEC). No further action has been announced by the UCU since.

The UCU has enforced a divide and rule policy, splitting of the pensions dispute from what it terms the Four Fights over pay, casualisation, etc. As a result, the final three days of strikes this week were purely over the issues of pay and conditionsjust days after the employers imposed staggering pension cuts on hundreds of thousands of workers in the USS.

WSWS reporters spoke to strikers and students at universities nationwide this week, including in London.

Tom Pursell, a lecturer in the Department of European and International Studies at King's College London, said, Todays action is part of the ongoing strike against the pension cuts and against whats called the Four Fights, including casualisation, gender and ethnicity pay gaps. So, theres two fights, the pension and theres also a broader struggle against the conditions of university working life.

Tom (WSWS Media)

Its a broader struggle against the marketisation of higher education, so its not really something we can resolve on our own. Its about a broader kind of problem with the fees structure, the conditions of work, so I think its going to be an ongoing dispute for many years, with the nature of the market and education.

During COVID we were asked to completely switch our teaching strategies to online delivery, and we all did that with commitment to our students. It took a huge amount of work to deliver lectures online and to transfer all the material online. So we worked extremely hard and that is obviously is in the middle of a prior dispute and this dispute. It felt like it was a kind of intensification of the working process whereby we were working evenings and weekends as a norm. We worked well beyond contract. It was an intensification of ongoing processes where to do our job we need to work many more hours than our contracts actually employ us for.

I think the fights not over and I dont think Jo Grady speaks for all of the union branches. Our branch went to the High Court and lodged an appeal with the judge to sue the pension scheme regarding the management and the calculations. I feel pretty certain that whatever the central leadership is saying the fight isnt over.

That seems to be the general mood of all the members here, that there will be escalation. Because the kind of figures of what theyre taking in their pension cuts are so egregious and large its mobilising many more people who perhaps wouldn't normally be so enthusiastic about the strike.

Thats why were here today with Unison as well, with the people at work that clean our buildings. So theyre part of our struggle as well and we see them as allies. Institutions like universities have a bigger social responsibility than simply being run as market-led organisations.

Pirla told the WSWS, Im a student from the Dominican Republic. Im here on a scholarship and now our scholarship is having problems to pay so I have to look for a job. Finding a job is difficult because education is very expensive and so we have to take out a loan to pay for it and then try to get a job to pay the loans. So I think its a broken system.

Pirla (WSWS Media)

For one a year in my university is 17,000 for the Masters. And then as Im not from here, so I have to pay for accommodation, my food, transport, clothes and all that. Im supporting the strike to have free education and to have a better system that actually works for everyone.

Sarah Hammond is the president of the Keele postgraduate association. She explained, Theres only two dedicated postgraduate associations in the UK; Keele and York. We work quite closely together to ensure that the postgraduate researchers that I represent, both students and staff because I represent postgraduate researchers who are staff, have a decent deal when they come to workto make sure that theyre not threatened with casualisation of their contracts, to make sure that they are seen as being on a par with any of the other staff that work at the university.

Sarah Hammond (WSWS Media)

Were a very unusual cohort and people are like oh well, we dont know whether to treat you as staff or we dont know whether to treat you as students. Its about listening to postgraduate voices and making sure that the things that they want are the things that we see at the university.

I started as an undergraduate in 2010 so Ive seen the impact of marketisation over 12 years. I was on the student strikes in 2010 when tuition fees rose from 3,000 to 9,000 a year, so all Ive seen really is an increase in costs for students and students arent getting any more out of education. Theyre not getting what they want out of education. So students are being asked pay more money while lecturers pay and working conditions have gone down. Students are essentially paying more and receiving less, much like lecturers at the moment.

A security worker at Kings College London, said, The work environment is not inclusive. There's a lot of bullying from management, including racist bullying.

A lot of security and cleaning workers are taking management to court. People are scared to speak out, there's intimidation and it's been going on for some time. That's why we are out here today. We are showing solidarity with the lecturers also. We want fairness and equal opportunity. If you do a night shift they won't give you night allowance.

Picket line at Kings College London (WSWS Media)

The night shift is extremely difficult. Recently we were working for a company called CIS but now we are working for in house security. There were so many people who got COVID, but management did nothing. The lecturers were working from home but we had to come in.

For an international institution the university should be doing better to protect worker's safety. Me and my colleagues have fought a long time, but now I'm getting to the age when I don't want to do it any longer.

Unison [largest public sector union] has not been doing enough. They have lawyers, they need to represent us properly. Sometimes I call them, but they don't come. If they pulled their finger out they could solve this straight away. Five security workers here died of COVID. If you're sick you should isolate but they keep calling us into work. The union has to seriously do more. I only get help from them if I've been hassling them. This job is very stressful. If management acted properly then the stress levels would come down.

There's racist bullying directly from managers, managers of security and managers of cleaning. They should be either dismissed or trained. King's College didn't train them properly. The union isn't doing enough. There's even racism inside the union.

I've been trying to make a proposal that King's College should create a council composed of lecturers, teachers, cleaning and security staff so they can come to the table and discuss these issues properly. We know that the unions sometimes side with management, so the issue can't be solved by the unions.

Everyone who works here contributes no matter what field they work in, including students. We need to protect the legacy of the university because if we didn't then there'd be no students, and if there were no students then we'd be out of a job. They should respect all the workers in the college. We feel like we're selling our dignity. Management is just interested in profit. There's a common struggle by all the workers here. Margaret Thatcher dissolved the unions in the 80s because they were stronger back then, but now they do very little except take dues from members.

Another security guard said, During the pandemic managers didnt provide face masks. They were given out after a couple of months. We didnt get the opportunity to be furloughed. Others did. I drove to work so I wasnt on public transport. I lost my father last year and 4-5 members of staff died.

We do night shift, and our shift pattern is seven days on three off, seven on four off. We do 84 hours over seven days. We asked for night shift allowance, but they are not looking to help us. We should be doing days and then off, then we go to nights, or we go days nights together, all at once, which is no good for your health.

We have 9 teams that do seven on three off, thats a lot of teams. Our main demands today are London pay weighting, shift allowance, and because of our colour we dont get promoted. We have to wait longer for promotion.

Everything is going up now food, travel. Thats why we are demanding more now. Other workers can get shift and travel allowance. Security workers and cleaners dont get that opportunity. We are on permanent contracts. They use agency staff who are paid less, and they do more than 20 hours which they are not supposed to.

The workers are fed up. Some of them want overtime but they dont get it, because they use agency staff which is cheaper, but they are not fully trained. So we have to train them, and then they never come back, so its a waste of training.

Johannes works at Kings College in German language education. He said, Today is officially the 4 Fights dispute of the UCU about pay, casualisation, workload and the gender/ethnicity pay gap. We want to make sure we dont lose more of our pay which has gone down in real terms a lot over the last 10 or more years, and the workload has increased at the same time significantly. Theres still a lot of academic members of staff who are on short-term contracts, who never know how many hours of teaching they will have or how long they will be employed.

Johannes (right) and Angelique (WSWS Media)

These are things that have concerned us a long time, weve been fighting a long time, and its now terminating in this longer action of strikes.

There is also the pension issue which we are not on strike for at this time. That fight has been ongoing since 2018. We had a strike shortly before COVID hit. We put it on pause, but these issues havent gone away. If anything they have become worse during COVID with teaching online.

Its been a challenge. We had to get used to different ways of teaching, and because we had to do it overnight, we were not prepared and had to do it very quickly and adapt, which put extra stress on us. But we dont see this being rewarded by the employers.

Vee Samas, a student at Cardiff University, said, A lot of people are not happy with how they are being treated, and they are taking the opportunity in their own hands, making sure that their voices are heard.

Vee (WSWS Media)

I think its exploiting the students to the point where they are using them to get money to cover up their mistakes basically, not allowing students the same fair opportunities they did 30 years ago, which isnt a long time. Its affecting students mentally, and physically.
A political witch-hunt has been unleashed against striking railworkers on the London Underground, with Conservative and Labour MPs and media outlets denouncing the Rail Maritime and Transport union (RMT) as Putin apologists and the enemy underground.

Kings Cross-St Pancras Station shuttered (WSWS Media)

Their denunciations come as thousands of Tube workers launched strikes on Tuesday and Thursday, bringing much of London to a standstill.

Around 10,000 station staff, drivers, and track and signal crew are striking in defence of jobs, conditions and pensions. They are fighting 400 million in cuts dictated by the Johnson government and enforced by Labour Mayor of London Sadiq Khan.

The McCarthyite witch-hunt against the RMT was launched on Wednesday with an article in the Telegraph headlined, The enemy underground: how Putin apologists brought London to a standstill.

Telegraph article How close is the RMT union to Vladimir Putins Russia? (screenshot-telegraph.co.uk)

Written by Associate Editor Gordon Rayner, the article began, Workers trudging miles through the rain because of Tuesday's Tube strike in London would have felt that their troubles were as nothing compared with the horrors unfolding in Ukraine.

Nor would they have been searching for any connection between the industrial action called by the RMT union and Vladimir Putins blood-soaked invasion of a sovereign country.

Yet according to Rayner, such a connection exists: the RMT, and particularly its assistant general secretary Eddie Dempsey, have long-standing sympathies for the pro-Putin separatists who have been fighting government forces in the east of the country for almost a decade.

The Telegraphs lurid allegations, with their implication that tube workers are Putins useful idiots, are a vicious libel against the strikers. They are part of efforts to brand all industrial action as treason in time of war.

Londons already-stretched bus service was overwhelmed (WSWS Media)

The newspaper dredged up Dempseys meeting with Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine and his public support for the Solidarity with the Anti-fascist Resistance in Ukraine (SARU). But Dempseys real crime, the Telegraph makes clear, is his opposition to NATOs aggressive posturing and war-mongering.

Rayner writes, Dempsey is one of the most high-profile signatories to a Stop the War Coalition statement last week that criticised Nato. The February 18 letter, Rayner explains, caused a huge row within the Labour Party because 11 of its MPs had originally signed the statement, all of whom withdrew their support for it on the orders of Sir Keir Starmer.

Diane Abbott, John McDonnell and other MPs from the misnamed Socialist Campaign Group who withdrew their names from Stop the War Coalitions letter are not simply political cowards. Their support for Labours war-hawks is paving the way for state repression against all genuine opponents of war and austerity.

The Telegraphs diatribe against Dempsey and the RMT echoes word for word the accusations levelled by Starmer and other leading Blairites against the STWC. Rayner explains, A Labour frontbencher described the Stop the War Coalition as fifth columnists and Putin apologists.

Rayners attack in the Telegraph was evidently coordinated with the Labour Party. He quotes Labours Chris Bryant, a member of the Commons foreign affairs committee, who denounces Dempseys reckless naivety and warns that those with the best intentions and the warmest hearts can be the most dangerous people in the room.

Labours role as an attack dog against this weeks strike exposes the bankruptcy of the RMTs fawning appeals to Mayor Khan that he oppose the Johnson governments cuts. Labour and the Tories are working together as one.

The designation of the RMT and tube workers as the enemy undergroundthe Telegraphs URL includes this phraseis a direct reference to Thatchers description of the miners as the enemy within during the 1984-85 strike. It was used to justify mass arrests, jailings and state violence against pickets.

The Telegraphs McCarthyite attack on the RMT was joined by the Evening Standard and the Daily Mail, with the latter citing Tory MP Andrew Bridgen, At a time of national emergency as we emerge from Covid-19 and face worldwide security issues, the tube strike is extremely damaging and self-indulgent.

The strikers should remember how much taxpayers money has been pumped into keeping the underground running during the recent pandemic.

Transport Secretary Grant Shapps tweeted: For the 2nd time this week, tube strikes have brought London to a standstill. Given the government has provided almost 5bn to protect services & TfL jobs throughout the pandemic, this is no way to repay hard-pressed taxpayers who are simply trying to get to work & home.

Transport workers in London are facing an historic assault on their jobs, conditions and pensions, with services being gutted. The Johnson government declares there is no money for transport services on which millions of people depend but has handed billions of pounds in subsidies to the rail and bus companies throughout the pandemic. It is funneling billions more into a war against Russia that threatens to drag the international working class into World War III.

The denunciations of the RMT as Putins stooges and of strikers as a threat to the national interest reveals that imperialist war abroad is accompanied by stepped class war, austerity and the destruction of democratic rights at home.

The strike suspended services across the network

London transport workers speak out

World Socialist Web Site reporters spoke with London Underground workers and other Transport for London (TfL) workers during Tuesdays and Thursdays tube strikes.

Jane, a station supervisor who has worked on the London Underground for 22 years, spoke about the background to this weeks action. TFL has not received any central government funding since 2015, and this does not happen anywhere on any other major transport system [in the world].

London Bridge Underground Station picket, Tuesdays strike (WSWS Media)

Everybody else receives some form of state funding, so we have had to rely completely on fares, revenue from advertising and shops. Often cuts were made from the front line. Our ticket offices were closed to save money, replacing things with automation rather than with customer service.

Underground staff, like all TfL staff, became classified as essential workers during the COVID pandemic, which meant that all face-to-face jobs had to carry on working. Buses and the tube ran about 90 percent of services.

London transport workers were being repaid with massive cutbacks. The government gave really short-term funding deals [to TfL] with strings attached, which includes huge savings being made from staff cuts, not filling vacancies and an increase in lone working.

They have attacked our pensions by putting them under review. This was one of the conditions the government demanded as part of the [emergency] funding: that they review our pensions to reduce costs. Our pension is part of our working conditions. Our pensions are in a very healthy state, so I see this as an ideological attack.

Today is an all-grade strike from members across the RMT. We have all united in fighting back, because in solidarity with UCU [University and College Union] workers and all other workers taking strike action, none of us deserves to pay for a crisis we did not make.

Proposed job cuts of 500-600 would mainly affect station staff in the first instance, saving about 25 million, but then beyond that theres another 375 million to cut. But obviously if there is fewer staff since the last time jobs were cut on stations that means staff end up working more extreme shifts and working alone. Obviously staff get more and more tired.

Asked what she thought about the claim that there is no money to fund the Underground service when billions were handed out to the rich during the pandemic, she said the idea that there is no wealth or nobody made any money during the pandemic is just not true, the fact is public services are essential to all of us.

We lost a lot of bus drivers to COVID. That was a massive scandal. They were people just doing their ordinary jobs in order to survive. As with across society, people have suffered devastation from COVID.

Things need to be funded and anybody who is not getting the cost-of-living pay rise right now is falling backwards.

An Arriva London bus driver at the Stratford transport hub told our reporters, I fully support the Underground workers strike. They are striking for their pay, conditions and pension. All TfL workers should come out in solidarity with them.

A Tower bus driver, who had been a part of a struggle against similar attacks on him and his colleagues, said, Thanks for explaining the issues in the strike. I have read about it but did not know the details. I support the Underground strikes. They are within their rights to strike to protect jobs and their pensions. All TfL workers are affected by the cuts to the London Transport budget. I believe the only way forward is a TfL strike. That is what is needed.

Another bus driver commented, I am in full support of the London Underground strikes. They have to strike to defend their pensions. It is important we are in solidarity. When we had our dispute with our pensions, many drivers took the money and now they must work longer than their retirement age. So yes, we TfL workers should be in solidarity to fight these cuts.

At the Poplar Docklands Light Railway depot, a rail-worker said, I am fully supporting the strike. As far as I have read, they are striking over jobs, pensions and working hours and cutbacks, because there is not a lot of staff now. I think they should get more staff, more pay and pension.

We are not facing the same issue but who knows what is coming. They seem to be coming after everyone. Its happening to the Underground, but everyone is under attack, and we have to make a stand together or they will just play with us.

You will have a meeting then agree and management just go against it. That is what has been happening. What is coming up now is the age for a pension is going up. You will be dead before you can get it. We have to stand together, it is important.
The Action Committee for the Defence of Freedom of Art and Expression (ACDAE) in Sri Lanka held a powerful online public meeting on February 24 to demand the release of Julian Assange. The WikiLeaks founder, who remains in Britains notorious Belmarsh Prison, has been targeted by the US and other imperialist powers for his exposure of their war crimes, torture and other human rights abuses, mass surveillance, coup plots and state corruption.

Sri Lankan public meeting demands freedom for Julian Assange [WSWS Media]

Over 50 people, including workers, university students and youth from Sri Lanka and internationally, including India, attended. Several others watched the livestream on the ACDAEs Facebook page. The meeting video has now been watched by over 1,000 people and shared by hundreds of others. The ACDAE was established in August 2019, under the political initiative and guidance of the Socialist Equality Party (SEP) in Sri Lanka.

ACDAE member Parakrama Kuruppu who chaired the meeting, briefly described the struggle being waged by the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) for the freedom of Assange.

The opening report was given by ACDAE secretary and SEP Political Committee member Prageeth Aravinda. He emphasised that the fight for Assanges freedom was decisive amid the intensifying US and NATO military operations against Russia over Ukraine and the danger of a world war.

Aravinda said that Britains High Courts December 2021 ruling that Assange could be extradited to US was the outcome of a 10-year political conspiracy by the US and its allies to persecute a courageous journalist who has exposed the crimes of the imperialist governments.

Aravinda reviewed the significance and scope of Assanges exposures, citing in particular WikiLeaks publication of the Collateral Murder video which showed US soldiers in an Apache helicopter indiscriminately firing upon unarmed civilians and journalists in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad in 2007.

Assanges investigative journalism to bring the reality to the working class is incomparable, Aravinda said.

Next to address the meeting was British SEP assistant national secretary Thomas Scripps, who is playing a key role in the ICFIs struggle for the release of Assange. He quoted United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture Nils Melzer, who told a recent press conference that Assange had been subjected to inhuman treatment and to massive due process violations by the US, British and Swedish states.

The court, Scripps continued, was not concerned with Assanges clearly abused legal and democratic rights, but with furthering the interests and relationship of British and American imperialism.

The speaker explained that the years-long corporate media slander of Assange was an attempt to cover up and undermine the massive popular support for WikiLeaks. The same role, he said, had been played by the trade unions and the pseudo-left who used identity politics and a fraudulent sexual assault investigation as an excuse to abandon Assange.

Scripps said that Assange was being persecuted because he had carried out some of the most significant exposures of war crimes perpetrated by US imperialism and its allies, including British imperialism, in history and encouraging a global wave of anti-imperialist sentiment.

Referring to Assanges appeal against the High Court decision, Scripps warned that although the UK Supreme Court had agreed to hear the appeal no faith could be placed in this court or any other legal system. Assange is a hostage in the class war, he said, and will only be freed by workers taking up a struggle to defeat their class enemies.

Arun Kumar addressed the meeting on behalf of the ICFI supporters group in India. He said that the persecution of Assange aimed to intimidate all journalists and whistleblowers. The exposures of these war crimes and imperialist conspiracies by WikiLeaks have helped the working class understand the predatory geo-political aims of the imperialist powers and the real agenda behind their bogus claims of defending human rights, democracy and the sovereignty of small nations, he said.

The persecution of Assange is a part of an escalating attack on democratic rights by governments everywhere in the worldfrom the Biden administration in the US, to Modis BJP [Bharatiya Janata Party]-led regime in India, Kumar said.

The speaker said that all the parties of the Indian political establishmentthe ruling BJP, the opposition Congress and the Stalinistswere maintaining a complete silence about Assanges persecution, underscoring their contempt for basic democratic rights.

Commenting on the situation in India, Kumar said the country was witnessing a growing resurgence of class struggles against the Modi governments criminal corporate profits before lives policy on COVID-19, austerity measures and increasing attacks on democratic rights, including freedom of speech. He added: The fight against imperialist war, the defence of democratic rights and the defence of Julian Assange are integral parts of the struggle for world socialism.

The meetings concluding remarks were delivered by ACDAE member and SEP Political Committee member Pani Wijesiriwardene. This meeting for Assanges defence plays a vital role in building a global anti-war movement based on the international working class, he said.

Quoting from the June 2019 World Socialist Web Site statement for a Global Defense Committee to secure Assanges freedom, Wijesiriwardene said, The aim of this campaign must be to politically arouse and mobilise the international working classthe overwhelming majority of the population and the most powerful social force on the planetin defense of Julian Assange and, in fact, the democratic and social rights of all workers.

Wijesiriwardene said pseudo-left claims to be defending democratic rights were bogus and exposed by the fact that they either completely ignored the witch hunt against Assange, or openly supported it.

The speaker quoted from a September 2013 edition of the International Viewpoint published by the Pabloite United Secretariat, which insisted that the frameup claims of sexual assault against Assange and calls that he return to Sweden for questioning were legitimate. He also cited false claims by the Guardian newspaper in May 2018 that Assange had violated the communication system at Ecuadorian Embassy in London where he had political asylum.

Wijesiriwardene said Rajapakse government attacks on democratic rights and the militarisation of its administration were part of a global counter-attack of the bourgeoisie against a growing radicalisation of the working class. This was also indicated in its escalating witch hunts of artists and journalists and seen in the vicious persecutions of poet Ahnaf Jazeem and writer Shakthika Sathkumara.

Following the meeting reports Ahnaf Jazeem spoke in support of the fight to defend Julian Assange and called for his unconditional release. The poet was released on harsh bail conditions on December 15, after being detained for over 18 months on bogus allegations that his poetry incited Muslim extremism.

Telling the world the truth is not a crime, rather it is the principled act that protects mankind, he said. It is time to think again about the information exposed by Assange because the US is provoking a major war against Russia. Democratic rights must be protected. Capitalist oppression must be abolished.

Concluding the meeting, ACDAE secretary Aravinda thanked all those participating and urged them to join the action committee and the SEP to take up the fight to defend all democratic rights and for Julian Assanges freedom.
The deep-rooted and essential causes of a war are revealed not in how a war begins but in how it develops and to what it leads. The American Civil War was not caused by the firing on Fort Sumter. The assassination of the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand did not cause World War I.

That the Civil War was ultimately about the destruction of slavery (and the resulting unfettered growth of modern capitalism in the United States) would become clear in historical retrospect. That the assassination of Ferdinand in Sarajevo was little more than a trigger event for the eruption of long simmering interimperialist conflicts was apparent in 1914 only to the most farsighted Marxists, especially Lenin, Trotsky and Luxemburg.

It is now evident that the invasion of Ukraine has developed into a conflict between the US-NATO and Russia. However, in the mass of hysterical commentary on the Ukraine-Russian War, it is all but impossible to findoutside of the World Socialist Web Siteany attempt to place the outbreak of the conflict in a broader geopolitical and historical context.

Secretary General of NATO Jens Stoltenberg meets NATO troops at an airbase in Tallinn, Tuesday, March 1, 2022. (Leon Neal/Pool Photo via AP)

In reporting on the conflict, the distinction between journalism and propaganda has been obliterated. Everything is presented in black and white, and the media gives no space for the brain to work. According to the universal narrative, Russia invaded Ukraine because there is a monster called Putin, just as there were monsters named Saddam Hussein, Osama Bin Laden and Slobodan Milosevic.

Learned academicseven those who have grappled for decades with the complex problem of historical causationare in a state of intellectual collapse and are content to let CNN, MSNBC and, of course, the New York Times, think for them. No serious questions are posed, let alone answered.

Here are just a few questions that are not but should be asked:

1) What is the relation between the domestic crisis in every country (including Russia), exacerbated by the pandemic, and the eruption of war?

The media presents the war drive as if it had no connection to the dominant event of the past two years: the COVID-19 pandemic. According to an estimate by the Economist, the pandemic has killed 20 million people around the world. It has deeply destabilized political life in every country, nowhere more so than in the United States, leading to a desperate effort on the part of the ruling class to deflect internal tensions outward.

2) What is the relation between the wars that have been waged without stop by the United States over the last 30 years, often with NATO collaboration, and the rapidly escalating confrontation with Russia?

In 1992, the United States adopted a strategy document declaring its intention to block the emergence of any potential future global competitor. The Persian Gulf war of 1990-91 was followed by the war against Serbia in 1999, the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, the second war against Iraq in 2003, the war against Libya in 2011 and the CIA-backed civil war in Syria.

Nowhere in the media can one find any mention of the fact, spelled out in strategic documents, that the US has been planning for years for a direct confrontation with Russia and China. Beginning in 2016, the US initiated a massive, multitrillion-dollar expansion of its nuclear arsenal, involving the creation of more usable, smaller-yield battlefield nuclear weapons. In 2018, the US left the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty and began to develop and test missiles capable of hitting major Russian cities from countries in Eastern Europe.

3) Having vastly expanded NATO and moved its forces hundreds of miles eastward, does the United States view the war as an opportunity to inflict a massive defeat on Russia, leading to its eventual break-up? What is the relation of this confrontation to conflict with China?

Who would know, watching news broadcasts and reading the major newspapers, that American strategists have long dreamed of the breakup of Russia to allow direct access to the countrys natural resources? For years, major US think tanks have advocated destabilizing the Russian regime, and ultimately implementing a policy of regime change. Were these efforts to succeed, Russia could be transformed into a staging ground and resource hub for a world war targeting what the American ruling class considers to be its central strategic competitor: China.

4) Is Germanys decision to triple its military budget and effectively do away with all post-World War II restraints on its armed forces nothing more than a spontaneous response to the Ukraine war? Or has the war provided Germany with a pretext for long-planned rearmament?

In a historic shift, Germany this week violated its policy of not sending weapons into conflict zones by dispatching offensive weapons to Ukraine, alongside a massive expansion of Germanys military spending. This was the consummation of a policy initiated in 2014, when President Frank-Walter Steinmeier announced at the Munich Security Conference that Germany was too big to only comment on world politics from the sidelines. Since then, there has been a systematic effort to remilitarize Germany, involving the campaign to trivialize Nazi war crimes.

Germany is not alone. In a break with Japans entire post-World War II history, former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe proposed that the country station US nuclear weapons on its territory. Last week, Switzerland broke hundreds of years of neutrality and initiated sanctions against Russia, a move without precedent in half a millennium.

Can one believe that these massive changes in geopolitical relations, long in the planning, are simply a response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine?

5) What are the global corporate and financial interests that benefit from war and would profit from the breakup of Russia and unfettered access to its immense resources on the Eurasian landmass?

While denouncing the Russian oligarchs, the media does not speak of the interests that American oligarchs have in the breakup of Russia and direct access to the strategic corridor between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea. Russia is the worlds largest supplier of natural gas, the second-largest exporter of oil, the largest exporter of wheat, the third-largest exporter of coal, and a major provider of iron, gold, platinum, aluminum, copper and diamonds, all of which are essential in all types of modern production, including critical war production.

6) How does the eruption of a conflict between Russia and NATO square with the claims that were made about the end of history and the triumph of peace and democracy after the dissolution of the USSR?

The eruption of this conflict has shattered the false claims that the dissolution of the USSR and the capitalist development of China would lead to a new era of peace and global prosperity. Rather, the last three decades have been dominated by war and global conflict, in a prelude to what threatens to be a nuclear third world war.

7) But the most important question that is not being asked is: What will be the consequences if this confrontation escalates into a nuclear war? What will be left of the planet?

Amidst all the breathless coverage of the war in Ukraine, no one in the media cares to ask where this all leads. Do workers in the United States and Europe want to risk nuclear war and the destruction of humanity to defend the sacred principle that Ukraine should be allowed to join the NATO military alliance against Russia? Amidst all the social problems confronting the working class, is this where the line must be drawn?

None of these questions can be asked or answered because they point to the fact that the war arises out of an insoluble crisis of the world capitalist system. The Russian invasion of Ukraine, based on the reactionary nationalism of the Russian oligarchy, must be opposed by socialists and class-conscious workers. However, any analysis of the present crisis that does not place it in its broader historical and political context only serves to cover up its deeper roots.

The World Socialist Web Site calls on workers in Ukraine, Russia, the United States, Europe and all over the world to draw the lessons of the disaster unfolding before their eyes, and to join the struggle for the socialist transformation of society and the end of the capitalist nation-state system that is the fundamental cause of war.
State police have charged a Syracuse man with illegally possessing a loaded weapon  and may add charges related to a burglary  after they took him into custody on the state Thruway in Mentz.

Troopers responded to a call around 1 p.m. Wednesday for a suspicious person in the area. They located Hassan Glenn, 34, of Syracuse, but he ran away when they approached. A short time later, troopers apprehended him on the Thruway.

Troopers said Glenn was possessing a stolen handgun, a stolen crossbow and black snowpants. They believe Glenn burglarized a home in Mentz, but at this time they do not know specifically where the burglary took place or who is the owner of the recovered items. They believe the burglarized home is located near the Port Byron Service Area of the Thruway.

Glenn, who was released from parole in 2021 after serving part of a 1.5 to 3-year prison sentence for an assault conviction in New York City, has been charged with one count of second-degree criminal possession of a weapon, a class C felony. That charge is connected to the stolen handgun, which troopers said Glenn allegedly possessed prior to the alleged burglary.

Glenn was still in custody at Cayuga County Jail as of 4 p.m. Thursday. Information about whether he is eligible for bail was not immediately available.

Troopers ask anyone with information that could help them identify the owners of the stolen items to contact them at (315) 255-2767. Troopers also would like to hear from anyone who may have seen Glenn or who has information about him.

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During his State of the Union address, President Joe Biden made the preposterous claim, referring to the COVID-19 pandemic, Were leaving no one behind or ignoring anyones needs as we move forward!

President Biden at State of the Union (left) and Selfie of Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland without mask (right). (White House.Gov video / Deb Haaland twitter account)

Yet, the Centers for Disease Control and Preventions (CDC) own directives leave in the lurch millions of moderately-to-severely immunocompromised people who have been told to consult with their doctors or have a plan ready, whatever this means. A quarter of Americans dont have a primary-care provider, while nearly 30 million Americans are uninsured.

The new CDC directives are unscientific recommendations that endanger every adult and child in America. Its worst impact will be on the lives of the 10 million immunocompromised individuals that live in the US, as well as the 54 million people over 65, many with significant comorbidities. With only 29 percent of the population having received a booster, most American adults must be considered under-vaccinated against the immune evading variants that dominate.

Lastly, there are 75 million children for whom Omicron has been quite devastatingly severe. Since the end of October 2021 (four months), nearly 850 children died from COVID, accounting for 60 percent of all deaths in this age group during the entire pandemic.

What Biden forgot to mention while hailing his administrations record on the pandemic and promises that schools would never close again, was that vaccine effectiveness against hospitalizations for children 5 to 11 years of age declined dramatically from 100 percent to 48 percent. During the Omicron surge, the rate of infection for these children was no different than for the unvaccinated. Vaccines had no benefit in terms of protecting them against infection.

Meanwhile, with Bidens endorsement, state after state has repealed all the mask mandates in schools, even as Omicron continues at historically high levels, and as the frequency of the BA.2 sub-variant continues to climb. In tandem with the scrapping of masks, the CDC has also rescinded its mandate for universal contact tracing, meaning the tracking of casesa tenet of public health proven effective by centuries of experiencewill no longer be required at schools. These initiatives only attempt to head off any rebellion among teachers and parents by depriving them of information about the unsafe conditions that will exist in classrooms for teachers and students alike.

As Theresa Chapple-McGruder, the director of the Department of Public Health in Oak Park, Illinois, said to The Atlantic, It is public healths job to protect everybody, not just those people who are vaccinated, not just those people who are healthy. And as to the follow-up question, do the CDCs new guidelines meet the mark, she replied, Not at all!

Indeed, COVID is a community disease and a public health emergency that affects everyone. A libertarian and individualistic approach to prevention of disease will do nothing to deter new waves of infection and the spawning of new variants, and will actually facilitate further catastrophes. The foundation of public health is the ability of centralized authority to direct measures guided by science to attack the causes of infection and make public and private spaces safe for everyone.

This means a comprehensive infrastructure overhaul of all indoor heating and ventilation based on specifications set by aerosol physicists and HVAC experts. And this is just the first step. Masks and tests left in storage dont stop the spread of the virus. Tracking and tracing must be at the heart of any pandemic response with the stated goal of seeing the number of infections reduced to zero and kept there.

The deadly pandemic has devastated country after country principally due to the criminal policies that have placed the needs of financial institutions before the public health concerns of communities. For all Bidens rhetorical self-congratulation during his State of the Union address, his administrations deplorable track record on COVID-19 has built on the record of his unlamented predecessor, and made it even worse.

Scientists have taken the administration and the hypocrisy of the State of the Union address to task on these points.

Dr. Yaneer Bar-Yam, head of World Health Network, which is fighting for elimination of COVID, said of the State of the Union, Testing was required to attend. Five senators and congressmen tested positive and did not attend. They are telling children and workers to go to school and work without tests. So, they take precautions for themselves they dont give others. That is just not OK.

Julia Raifman, Doctor of Science at Boston University, who is currently focusing her work on health and social policies that can reduce the burden of COVID-19, responded to the following excerpt taken from the White Houses National COVID-19 Preparedness Plan: We know how to keep our businesses and our schools open with the tools that we have at our disposal. Weve shown we can do it, even during the Omicron surge.

She wrote, We cannot do better unless we face what happened and prepare for better. This is not what happened. There were widespread labor shortages and business closures. [More than] 150,000 people died of COVID since December 15, 2021. When will we face it and prevent more?

Researcher Joshua Salomon, Professor of Medicine and core faculty member for Health Policy at Stanford University and Alyssa Bilinski, assistant professor at the Department of Health Services, Policy & Practice (HSPP) at Brown School of Public Health, attempted to provide a concrete response to the question, How high will expected mortality reach before CDC recommends more prevention?

Using the performance indicators recently set by the CDC with emphasis on those that predict deaths three weeks later and then comparing it to historical high trends during the pandemic (200 weekly cases per 100,000), the result was death rates of 1,000 to 2,500 per day nationally, or 7,000 to 17,500 deaths per week.

Professor Salomon lamented, As a level of mortality the White House and CDC are willing to accept before calling for more public health protection, this is heartbreaking. For the next surge to be less lethal, we need earlier signals, not later onesand stronger prevention strategies, not weaker ones.

Putting this into perspective, the last time the daily COVID death toll was under 1,000 per day was in mid-August of 2021. In fact, the average daily death toll in America during the pandemic has been over 1,300 per day, or just over 9,000 per week, given 950,000 reported deaths.

In other words, the state of the pandemic as it is now is to become the measure of success. If 2022 ends up as deadly as 2021, when 475,000 people died, the Biden administration would construe that as a success. Two years ago, in March 2020, then President Donald Trump said that if the US could keep the death toll between 100,000 to 200,000, that would be a very good job.

Today, the death toll is approaching 1 million. At the rate deemed to be acceptable by the White House and the CDC, that horrific total could reach 1.3 million or even more by Christmas, and this would be presented to the American people as a cause for satisfaction, a return to normalcy. If, indeed, the US government even bothers to publish the numbers at all.
The government of Vanuatu, in the southwest Pacific, has launched an inquiry into the countrys seasonal worker program with Australia, citing concerns about rampant exploitation.

Vanuatu seasonal workers, December 2021 [Source: Vanuatu Seasonal Workers Facebook]

The Guardian reported on February 23 that the inquiry follows testimony from Vanuatuan workers to a parliamentary hearing in Australia, in which they recounted experiences of bullying, exploitative working conditions, poor accommodation and lack of support services.

One worker, Sergio, told the hearing that he had received just $100 a week, from which $30 a week was deducted with no explanation about what the deductions were for. Sergio had worked picking grapes in Mildura, Victoria, since 2019. He was paid by piece rate at $2.50 a box and could fill up to 110 boxes in a day. However, he received payments of just $70 into his bank account.

Sergio further testified that when workers were ill, medics would come and force them to go to work. I [did] not come here [to be] a slave. You should give me a better life, and thats why I fight for my peoples, he told the inquiry. At one point he had organised a week-long strike among his friends.

Last November, the Australian government launched an aggressive campaign to prevent Pacific workers from fleeing their jobs after more than 1,000 reportedly absconded. The campaign warned they would bring shame to their families and risked having their visa cancelled. Sydney lawyer Stewart Levitt has begun preparing a class action against the federal government, detailing substandard and inhumane conditions rife in the program.

Vanuatus opposition leader, Ralph Regenvanu, tweeted he had urged our government to seek to revise the agreements between the Vanuatu and Australian governments concerning the scheme. Vanuatu Government has its duty to safeguard its citizens, he declared. Regenvanu, however, was responsible for introducing the policy as foreign minister in 2011.

The Pacific Island governments, who are partners in the programs, will do nothing to materially improve the conditions of the workers. They have all signed up to the agreements and are closely involved in vetting applicants and even helping supervise their behaviour. The schemes have been lauded by all the participating authorities for the purported economic benefits to fragile island economies which depend heavily on remittances paid by expatriates and overseas workers.

Despite repeated complaints and media exposures over the years, nothing has changed. Researcher Tupai Fotuosamoa Jackson also told the Guardian that participants in the Vanuatu inquiry could be afraid to speak openly for fear of losing their job. For the worker, there is an obligation to remain on the program and there is a fear that your opportunity to continue will be impacted, he said.

Australias Seasonal Worker Program (SWP) and Pacific Labour Scheme (PLS) recruit workers into jobs in rural and regional Australia, particularly for the agricultural sector. More than 20,000 workers have entered the program since it was started by the Labor government of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, supported by the unions, in 2008. It was opened up to residents from the impoverished nations of Fiji, Kiribati, Nauru, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Timor-Leste, Tonga, Tuvalu and Vanuatu. Before COVID-19 hit, numbers were increasing every year.

New Zealand also operates a Recognised Seasonal Employer (RSE) scheme which began in 2007, preceding the Australian schemes. It allows the horticulture and viticulture industries to import workers on temporary work visas from Samoa, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and Fiji.

There are currently roughly 4,500 Vanuatuan workers in Australia, according to the Vanuatus government. Since it commenced the overall program has filled a total of more than 50,000 seasonal jobs. New Zealands RSE scheme has grown from 5,000 workers a year to more than 14,000. There are currently 7,300 RSE workers in New Zealand, but the supply of workers has been disrupted by COVID-19 border controls.

A Guardian investigation in October 2020 into the Australian scheme cited reports of alleged abuse and intimidation and workers surviving by eating the food they were picking. Others were charged more than $1,000 a week to sleep on a couch. Some workers have taken legal action over their treatment. Others have died, underscoring the deprivation of basic food, shelter and medical care.

A 2016 joint Australian parliamentary committee inquiry heard that exploitation was common. According to Union Aid Abroad, complaints included the provision of substandard accommodation, deductions of up to 60 percent of wages for lodging and board, long hours and excessive or unpaid overtime, and lack of access to health care. The NGO declared some conditions amounted to modern slavery.

There have been similar reports of employers abusing the scheme in New Zealand. A Newsroom investigation in 2020 alleged that in the Hawkes Bay, a horticulture region with the largest share of RSE workers, authorities were turning a blind eye to migrant exploitation to keep the quota of RSE workers flowing into their region.

The report identified an under-reporting of exploitation, the tolerance of prison-like accommodation, and an environment where workers earn barely above the minimum wage and are often treated like indentured labourers. There was no way for RSE workers to complain about their treatment to anyone independent of their employer. Workers who did complain were threatened with return plane trips and allowances withheld, or even blacklisting, which would see them permanently banned.

Australia and New Zealand occupy a position of neo-colonial domination over the region. The importation of Pacific people as a source of cheap labour, exploiting desperately impoverished and oppressed Pacific peoples for their own economic ends, is a practice with a long and brutal history.

Currently in both countries industry employers are among the loudest demanding the removal of all COVID-19 restrictions to prevent ongoing disruptions to their operations and flow of profits. This is despite the huge increase in infections as the Omicron variant continues to spread, including across the Pacific.

Last September Australian Foreign Minister Marise Payne announced an additional 12,500 workers would be brought in by March, with 27,000 already in the work-ready pool. Additional flexibilities, such as removing the upper age limit of 45 years, will also be enacted. In New Zealand, following strident calls by stakeholders that over 14,000 workers are required for the peak harvest season in March, temporary workers are among the first to be given entry under the Labour governments border re-opening program.

Australias scheme is a contemporary version of the system of blackbirding whereby nearly one million workers were used as cheap indentured labour in Australia and other Pacific countries from the 1860s to the 1940s. Many Pacific Islanders were kidnapped and sold to Australian landowners who treated them as virtual slaves with no security or citizenship rights.

New Zealand governments also have a long and tainted history of imposing discriminatory and draconian labour and immigration controls over Pacific Islanders. When severe labour shortages developed in the early 1960s, thousands of Pacific workers were recruited for menial and factory jobs, only to subsequently find themselves victimised by hostile and racist immigration laws.

During the 1970s, many Pacific immigrant families were torn apart when police and immigration officials forcibly seized workers and their dependents, classified as overstayers, in a series of dawn raids, and summarily expelled them from the country. Last June, Prime Minister Ardern made a hypocritical formal apology for the raids, even as her government implements ongoing attacks on the rights of immigrants who continue to be ruthlessly exploited.
Workers and youth in Britain who attended Saturdays World Socialist Web Site international online webinar, Fight Covid! Save lives! Stop the drive to World War III!, have spoken to the WSWS about their thoughts on the important event. We publish further responses below.

Dianne Kirby, a historian in Belfast, explained, I watched the WSWS 'Stop the War' meeting because I want to see a war that ought never to have started stopped. I was impressed by the levels of analysis provided by the speakers who addressed the historical, political and economic factors influencing all parties.

Dianne Kirby

The site has become a source of public education in a period of misinformation and disinformation and the sort of propaganda manipulation that occurs in all wars.

As the mainstream media were increasingly conveying a one sided and clearly controlled narrative that failed to consider either the politico-historical context or the contributions of the West to the crisis, I began looking for alternative sources that would help me better grasp what was happening and why.

I was all too conscious that designating Putin a madman was simply a strategy for shutting down debate and preventing people seeking the reasons for such drastic action. The articles published on the WSWS provided logical and persuasive explanations supported by compelling evidence. Above all, I was drawn to the WSWS stance of not taking one side or another but of taking the side of ordinary working people, those that will pay the true costs of the war rather than those driving it. Indeed, that those driving it stand to profit immensely from a war in terms of more accumulated wealth and preserving their power.

As a Cold War historian who also witnessed that conflict, I am all too well aware of how each side used the sins of the other to justify their own, whilst the global south was ravished by proxy wars that killed millions. Watching the same scenario unfold again today is tragic. It can only add to the 21st century's already appalling war related death toll, disrupted lives and displaced peoples. The WSWS reminds us of that terrible history. It also offers a way forward.

Belay Hagos, a retired teacher, said, I completely oppose the Russian attack on Ukraine. It's true they were provoked by NATO and the US in particular. There are NATO forces everywhere. But that doesn't justify the bombing of Ukraine.

Belay Hagos

I don't think there is a danger of Russia or the US using nuclear weapons because that would be the stupidest thing they could do. To embark on nuclear war would be sentencing themselves to death. But I don't deny the danger of accidents because it's like having a loaded gun in your hand. Anything could trigger it.

I think Biden's intention is to weaken Russia in every aspect so that they wipe out the competition. That is also their policy against China, Europe and Africa. In Africa they force governments to follow neo-liberal economic policies. Governments are not allowed to subsidise their own farmers or small industries. All government assets have to be privatised. If they refuse the policy of regime change is unleashed. The US finances the military of most African countries, so if the government refuses to play ball, the military takes over. We saw this in Egypt, for example.

The working class has to see their enemies clearly. The trade unions are working for the establishment. They are actively preventing their members from taking strike action against their employers. This applies everywhere, in Europe, the US, Latin America, Africa, everywhere.

I think that class consciousness is the most important question that faces the working class today. How clearly does the Chinese working class understand that they have the same interests as workers in Europe and the US? Something has to be done to close that gap. The webinar on Saturday, watched by workers in many countries in the world, made an important contribution to that.

Kate, a retired teacher, said, The webinar was a real eye opener. It clearly showed that today humanity faces the threat of nuclear war.

The expansion of American interests around the world, and especially in Eastern Europe post-1991 is incredible. When you look at the map of Europe you can see the deployment of NATO troops, aircraft, ships and ammunition from the Black Sea right up to the Baltic States. This clearly demonstrates NATO's war preparations. To use the Russia struck first mantra is totally misleading. Without a doubt America wants to get its hands on Ukraine. But to understand Putin's motivations is not to excuse them.

Kate

The world has seen enough human tragedy. There have been continuous wars for the past 30 years. Since the year 2000 the wars in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Libya and elsewhere, all of which have involved the USA, have killed at least three million people. Nine million people have been displaced from these conflicts. These wars have cost the American people $6.4 trillion in taxes. And millions of American workers and their families are living in poverty.

In 2014, the so-called democratic revolution in Ukraine which overthrew the pro-Russian president, was led by the fascist Azov Militia. And they are still a significant force, parading with their Nazi insignia and painted as the face of democracy by the whole of NATO.

I personally learned so much from the webinar this weekend. It was a brilliant piece of political and historical analysis. The very nature of the webinar itself, with people contributing from all over the world, was an inspiration to workers everywhere to unite in a common struggle to get rid of this rotten system.

Connell, a student, wrote, 'As the eyes of the world are drawn to Europe, maintaining knowledge and keeping up today on information is important. With the digital age comes the problems of censorship and misinformation. Thats what make websites like WSWS so important. Not only do they share the truth but they do so in an unbiased way. WSWS is run by the Socialist Equality Party, themselves helping to spread knowledge to the working class.

After watching the online meeting of the WSWS, I came away with some hard truths but also an understanding of events and a party directly opposed to this European war and its aim to brainwash the public and drive attention away from the COVID crisis.

Fascism and imperialism are major problems in Europe. Germany is still very much an imperialist nation, with sights set on inciting fascist uprisings in Ukraine. Happening simultaneously is the use of Ukraine as bait to goad Russia into open conflict, which is being used to further divide the working class in the affected counties. Those behind this are NATO and by extension the USA. NATO have spent years acting as a military force in Europe who have slowly spread East, despite the fact that they signed peace treaties with Russia, promising to halt their advance. The Russian buffer states are goneUkraine being the most recent application of pressure on Russia by NATO. Dont fall for the blatant propaganda, think and learn for yourselves.

The arrival of COVID has accelerated the already fast approaching economic collapse. The Western leaders decided rather than move to control the spread of the virus, to save lives, to prioritise Wall Street so they could continue to make money.

With the Omicron variant spreading like wildfire, governments needed a way to distract people, which is partly why the Ukrainian conflict is happening. Democratic government in the US is also in danger, with Trump inspiring fascist uprisings and Biden saying that democracy will not last 10 years.

I havent done those complex topics justice, but those at WSWS such as David North, are spreading the information the working class need to come together as a movement to oppose what our leaders are doing. The socialist movement is the only way forward but we have to act before its too late.

Calum, a postal packing worker from Inverness, said, 'On the verge of a possible nuclear war it becomes essential to fight for the peace process, to insist upon deescalation, and not to accept the jingoistic propaganda coming out of the West. Nor to give Putin a pass, but to genuinely understand the war and its risks, to understand the nature of the war, of the power conflicts and events that have led to this point.

We must fight not for NATO and American domination of the planet, which is the reality of this war, but for peace.

In this respect the International Committee of the Fourth International appears to me the one of the few sane voices in a sea of bloodthirsty commentators. Even liberal and socialist parties appear to have swallowed the bait and now regurgitate imperialist soundbites with no regard for a possible nuclear war.

Strangely more than even during the Cold War, the West seems united and ready to plunge the planet into Armageddon. The reality of a nuclear war needs to be in the forefront of our minds, the Nato drive to war needs to be exposed, for the Russian and Ukrainian people, and for all the people of the world.

The webinar gave an excellent wider perspective. It is always important when looking at the present to recognise its place in history. The webinar rightly places much of the violence in the modern world in the hands and the power of the United States. Over the past 70 years, has the USA worked for power or peace? Sadly, it has worked for power. Which has been the most bombed country in the world during that time? Laos, a country bombed by the US, a country it had never declared war on.
Weather Alert

...The Flood Warning continues for the following rivers in Indiana... Wabash River from Lafayette to Montezuma. White River at Elliston and Edwardsport. .Multiple rounds of rain over the last few days is bringing minor flooding along lower portions of the White River and upper portions of the Wabash River. Additional rainfall Thursday evening through Friday evening should keep portions of the White and Wabash above flood stage through the weekend. PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS... Motorists should not attempt to drive around barricades or drive cars through flooded areas. Be especially cautious at night when it is harder to recognize the dangers of flooding. Additional information is available at www.weather.gov/ind. This statement will be updated within the next 12 to 24 hours. && ...FLOOD WARNING NOW IN EFFECT UNTIL TUESDAY AFTERNOON... * WHAT...Minor flooding is forecast. * WHERE...Wabash River at Montezuma. * WHEN...Until Tuesday afternoon. * IMPACTS...At 18.0 feet, Montezuma agricultural levee is overtopped. Fourteen hundred acres of low bottomlands flood. * ADDITIONAL DETAILS... - At 9:45 PM EDT Wednesday the stage was 13.1 feet. - Forecast...The river is expected to rise above flood stage late tomorrow evening to a crest of 18.0 feet Saturday evening. It will then fall below flood stage early Tuesday morning. - Flood stage is 14.0 feet. - http://www.weather.gov/safety/flood &&
Following the recommendation from local Conservative Party leaders, the state Conservative Party has endorsed Brandon Williams, a Cayuga County Republican, in the 22nd Congressional District race.

Jerry Kassar, chairman of the state Conservative Party, highlighted Williams' background as a Navy veteran and co-founder of a software company. Williams moved to Cayuga County with his wife, Stephanie, in 2010. They started a farm in Sennett where they grow hazelnut trees to cultivate Burgundy truffles.

"Williams will deploy his experience and traditional values to the service of his constituents in the 22nd Congressional District," Kassar said. "The New York State Conservative Party stands ready to do whatever is necessary to ensure his victory."

Williams, who formally launched his campaign last week, quickly won over Conservative Party leaders in central New York. David Pappert, chairman of the Cayuga County Conservative Party, praised Williams' pro-life and pro-gun positions and his "traditional values." Christopher Kendall, chairman of the Madison County Conservative Party, said the last time he saw a candidate with Williams' potential was Elise Stefanik in 2014. Stefanik, who represents the North Country, is now the No. 3 House Republican leader.

The state party's endorsement is significant because it guarantees Williams will have at least one general election ballot line. He is also vying for the Republican nomination, but there will likely be a primary for that nomination. There are two other Republicans in the race  Tim Ko, of DeWitt, and Tompkins County Legislator Mike Sigler.

Sigler, who also serves as Tompkins County Republican chair, has been endorsed by some GOP committees in the district, which includes all of Onondaga and Tompkins counties, along with parts of Cayuga, Cortland, Madison, Ontario, Schuyler and Seneca counties. The Cayuga County Republican Committee backed Sigler for the open congressional district.

But with the Conservative Party's endorsement, Williams is in a strong position to convince Republicans that he should be their nominee. While it's possible for the parties to have different candidates on the ballot, the Republican nominee usually has the Conservative line in federal, state and local elections.

"The unanimous Conservative Party endorsement is a badge of honor," Williams said. "Conservatives know the importance of protecting our rights, fiscal responsibility, and honoring life. With this critical endorsement, I intend to unite the Republican and Conservative lines in the 22nd district and to win a decisive race against the Democrats in November."

The Republican primary election is June 28. The GOP nominee will face the winner of the seven-way Democratic primary in November.

The winner of the general election will succeed U.S. Rep. John Katko, who has represented the Syracuse-area congressional district since 2015. Katko announced in January that he will not seek reelection this year.

Online producer Robert Harding can be reached at (315) 282-2220 or robert.harding@lee.net. Follow him on Twitter @robertharding.

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March 4, 1997

KING FERRY  Two hundred years ago, John King shuttled travelers in his skiff across Cayuga Lake and gave this tiny hamlet its name.

Today, a group of local residents would like to return such a boating service to the central waters of Cayuga Lake and give this community a place on the map.

The Cayuga Lake Ferry Boat Entrepreneurs has been formed to explore the possibility of reinstating a ferry service from King Ferry to Seneca County. From 1816 to 1914, New York state franchised a ferry service across Cayuga Lake from King Ferry to Kidders Landing in Seneca County. People, animals, packages and commercial products all were shipped back and forth.

Proponents of bringing back a ferry boat argue a working car and passenger ferry could draw tourists and increase local business activity by providing a transportation route across the middle of Cayuga Lake, which with its 40-mile length, is the longest of the Finger Lakes.

"We're trying to improve the economics of small businesses around the lake," said Gordon Cummings, Genoa's town historian and a major supporter of the proposed ferry rebirth.

 Compiled by David Wilcox

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ALBANY  Democrats plan for redrawing New Yorks congressional and legislative districts cleared an initial hurdle Thursday when a judge said it was too close to the state's primary elections to throw the maps out, even if they are unconstitutional.

Judge Patrick McAllister said at a hearing in Steuben County that he isn't inclined to halt New York's election process by striking down those maps now because there isn't enough time for them to be redrawn in time for the June primary.

Republicans argued in a lawsuit that the maps were unconstitutionally gerrymandered to benefit Democrats and marginalize GOP voters.

Even If I find the maps violated the Constitution and must be redrawn, it is highly unlikely that a new viable map could be drawn and be in place within a few weeks or even a couple of months, McAllister said. Therefore, striking these maps would more likely than not leave New York state without any duly elected congressional delegates.

The judge said the lawsuit could continue, however, and suggested he could call for new elections next year if he ultimately decides the maps were improperly gerrymandered.

The judge said both sides will bring in expert witnesses March 14 to figure out where the truth lies.

Until I have heard this testimony, Im not in a position to know whether to strike down these maps or uphold these maps, he said.

The Democratic-controlled legislature redrew the boundaries of legislative and congressional territories this winter as part of the once-per-decade redistricting process kicked off by the 2020 Census.

The maps, if upheld, could expand Democrats power for years in a state where the party already dominates: Democrats would make up a strong majority of registered voters in 22 of the 26 congressional districts the state will have in 2023. Republicans, who now hold eight of New Yorks 27 seats in Congress, would only have an advantage in the remaining four districts.

New York voters in 2014 amended the states constitution to ban drawing maps for the purpose of favoring or disfavoring incumbents or other particular candidates or political parties.

The judge said, however, that the group of Republican voters challenging the maps in court have an extremely high bar to prove that the Legislature drew the maps in violation of the Constitution.

Lawyers for the Republicans are pointing to analyses by nonpartisan groups that have cited New Yorks new congressional maps as giving too much of an advantage to one political party, in this instance, Democrats.

But lawyers for Democratic legislative leaders have argued that the Legislatures maps are presumed to be in line with the Constitution, and that the maps reflect population loss in rural upstate communities.

Democrats have also argued the state Senates map undoes decades of gerrymandering by Senate Republicans.

Former U.S. Rep. John Faso, a Republican who has been helping muster support for the lawsuit, said in a statement that its backers were pleased the court didn't dismiss the case.

Our efforts to overturn this unconstitutional gerrymander of congressional and state senate districts will continue on an expedited basis, he said.

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Flush with stimulus money, states are ready to throw money at a group that suffered catastrophic at the hands of COVID-19  Hollywood movie studios.

New York and states around the country are seriously discussing increasing their film and tax incentive programs to entice the fledgling film and television industry to come to their states. New York is considering a three-year, $420 million film tax credit extension to its program, which includes a 25% credit for post production and qualified production costs within the state and an additional 10% offered for labor costs in the upstate region.

Not to be outdone, Utah, California and New Jersey are among the states also considering either extensions or additional film tax credits to lure an industry that is raking in money by the barrel or, in the case of NBC Universal or Disney, by the bucket. SEC filings and corporate earnings statements show huge profits for Netflix ($6.2 billion), Warner Bros. ($4.3 billion), Sony ($1.8 billion), NBC Universal ($884 million), Disney ($281 million) and Paramount ($368 million).

In July, California Gov. Gavin Newsome signed legislation approving an additional $330 million for the film and TV industry.

Georgia spent $2.1 billion in the fiscal year on tax breaks for film and television that ended in September; while Louisiana offers a tax credit of up to 40%. Utah is considering lifting its cap on productions filmed in rural areas and New Jersey is considering increasing its incentives as well.

There is an economic benefit to filming movies in New York state, but how much? Michael Thom, a University of Southern California professor, studied New Yorks film tax credit program and found it had no impact on employment. Its benefits come in the form of lodging and ancillary benefits, not in increased numbers of jobs.

Wouldnt it be nice if New York treated its existing businesses as well as it treats Hollywood movie studios?

 Dunkirk Evening Observer

The idea of forcibly removing and detaining someone who contracts a communicable disease gained no traction in the state Legislature for seven years.

That should give you an idea how odious the idea is. For seven years, Assemblyman Nick Perrys legislation  prompted by the threat of an Ebola outbreak in 2015  sat in the bowels of the state Legislature. No fellow Democrat wanted to attach their name to it as a co-sponsor. No state Senator wanted to introduce companion legislation in the state Senate. The Assembly Health Committee chairman wouldnt put the bill up for a committee vote. It was such a joke Republicans never had to prepare to oppose it the bill.

One would think that means there is no appetite in New York state government to give the government the ability to remove someone from their home and take them to a hospital or a quarantine facility or to levy civil penalties if they dont comply with state governments emergency declarations. But thats not the case in New York state, where the state Health Department wants to give itself such power through the byzantine, opaque and largely walled off process of rule making. No public hearings were held on Rule HLT-50-21-0002-EP nor were they required to be held. The rule was published in the state Register, a document whose volumes typically measure 85-90 pages of type that requires a magnifying glass and a lawyer to decipher.

The act of putting the document on the internet should not qualify as transparent. The state Health Department is more than happy to publicize vaccination sites or meetings of the state Drinking Water Quality Council prominently on its website, but rulemaking sure to upset millions of New Yorkers requires a tip from a sitting Congressman like Rep. Chris Jacobs, R-Orchard Park, or someone with the time to wade through the register every week.

At a time when the government is asking for people for their trust, this proposed power grab does nothing but make millions of New Yorkers distrust state government more than they already did.

 Jamestown Post-Journal

Gov. Kathy Hochul and Mayor Eric Adams have been pushing New York businesses to reopen and office workers to return to their workplaces since the start of the new year. But the NY HERO Act, a little-known law enacted quietly last year, is the proverbial fly in the ointment.

When Hochul declared COVID-19 an airborne infectious disease in September, as The Post reported at the time, she triggered a host of onerous new (workplace) demands on businesses statewide  while exempting government agencies. The law requires all employers to implement workplace safety plans.

Last month, her health commissioner continued that designation of COVID-19 as a highly contagious communicable disease presenting a serious risk to the public health.

Many companies are confused on what restrictions remain and what the state Department of Labor regulations mean. The state DOL confirmed to The Post that the law applies only to private business and that government agencies are exempt.

The act micromanages the smallest details of business hygiene, including sneezing etiquette and shaking out soiled laundry, and empowers workers to sue their employers for up to $20,000 for minor infractions.

The DOL rules are vague and seem to put the onus on guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

If Hochul is serious about New Yorks economic recovery, she should lift the COVID designation and the HERO Act restrictions.

If this isnt already in progress, it needs to be.

 New York Post
Westby, De Soto Schools go into brief lockdown after report of man with weapons
A swanky BMW Individual 740Li M Sport Edition became the 1,00,000th Made-in-India unit to roll out from the company's manufacturing facility in Chennai recently. Operations at the BMW Group Plant Chennai started operations on 29 March 2007 and the company is celebrating the facility's 15th anniversary this year. Over the years, the BMW has turned to locally-manufacturing a number of its popular models in the country.

At present, BMW manufactures 13 models at its Chennai facility and the list includes BMW 2 Series Gran Coupe, 3 Series, 3 Series Gran Limousine, M340i, 5 Series, 6 Series Gran Turismo, 7 Series, X1 to X7, among others. Additionally, the company especially highlights that the plant runs on 100% green electricity.

Home to around 650 employees, the BMW facility ensures timely delivery of products while also making the luxury vehicles more affordable than if these had to be imported. This accomplishment (one lakh locally-made units) is a result of the teams hard work, efficiency and consistency which ensures that every BMW or MINI car locally produced here in Chennai is of the same international quality standards as any other BMW plant across the world," says Thomas Dose, Managing Director, BMW Group Plant Chennai. Highly skilled employees, advanced manufacturing processes along with state-of-the-art technology and a strong focus on sustainability provided the necessary ingredients for this success. At the same time, increased localisation of up to 50 per cent and a robust collaboration with local supplier partners has created more value for everyone in the ecosystem."

Luxury car makers like BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Audi, among others, have increasingly turned to local manufacturing to make their respective products more attractive from a price point to potential customers.

First Published Date:
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.

HUAWEIs technology powered-NETA S to start presale in April



HOZON Autos HUAWEI technology-powered EV model, the NETA S, will start presale at the Auto China 2022 in Beijing in April.

Photo credit: HOZON Auto



CATL sodium ion battery industrial chain to take shape in 2023



CATL recently disclosed that the company has initiated its sodium-ion battery industrialization and will form a fundamental industrial chain in 2023.

GEELYs Geometry introduces new battery-electric SUV

Geelys EV brand, Geometry, officially debuted a new compact SUV model, dubbed Geometry E.



VOYAHs MPV to hit market in April

The high-end NEV brand of Dongfeng Motor, VOYAH, announced that its first MPV model, the Dreamer, will be available for sale in April. The luxury MPV offers both pure-electric and range extension power options.

Foton Motor sees Feb. sales notch down 6% YoY

In February, BAIC Groups commercial vehicle arm, Foton Motor, sold 37,617 vehicles, decreasing 6.09% year over year. In the first two months of 2022, the automaker sold a total of 79,062 vehicles, indicating a 21.83% decline from a year ago.



Acura said to retrieve from Chinese market in June

Hondas premium auto brand, Acura, is reportedly retrieving from the Chinese market in June 2022, a local media outlet reported on March 4th.

Bosch, Mitsubish, Blue Park Smart Energy ally on Battery-as-a-Service'

Bosch Intelligent & Connected Technology Co., Ltd. (Bosch), Mitsubishi Corporation (Mitsubish) and Blue Park Smart Energy (Beijing) Technology Co., Ltd. (Blue Park Smart Energy) recently inked a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to carry out cooperation on the Battery-as-a-Service business model, Bosch announced on March 4 via its WeChat account.

Xiaomis chairman Lei Jun makes proposals about NEV business for two sessions

On March 4, Lei Jun, deputy of the National People's Congress and chairman of Chinese tech giant Xiaomi, released four proposals via his personal WeChat account for this year's two sessions, two of which are related to the new energy vehicle (NEV) sector.

NIO, Aluminum Corporation of China to team up on automotive aluminum R&D, supply

Chinese EV startup NIO and state-owned aluminum producer Aluminum Corporation of China (CHINALCO) signed an agreement on March 3 to form a strategic partnership, according to a post on CHINALCO's WeChat account.
By Sarah Marsh

BERLIN (Reuters) - Ukrainian refugee Anastasia said she has barely slept in the 90 hours it has taken her to flee to Berlin after Russian missiles started raining down on her hometown of Kharkiv, blowing out the windows of her flat.

Now the 31-year-old artist, who did not give her last name for fear of repercussions for her relatives left behind, is one of more than a thousand mainly women and children arriving each day in Germany via Poland to seek refuge.

"We left our home the moment the planes shot at our community and the glass in our windows broke," Anastasia said at Berlin's main train station, before taking the last train of her odyssey to stay with relatives in Munich.

"We have no stuff, we have no money, we have no anything now," she said, adding through sobs that she was afraid for the men of conscription age who were obliged to stay and help in the defense.

A million refugees have already crossed from Ukraine into the European Union in eastern Poland, Slovakia, and Hungary and northern Romania since the start of the Russian invasion, according to the United Nations.

And what started as a trickle in Germany has already grown into a steady flow of more than a thousand as railway operator Deutsche Bahn offers refugees free travel.

At the main train station, volunteers saying which languages they speak seek to orientate refugees upon arrival, recalling scenes from 2015, when more than a million people from the Middle East fled to Europe and Germany took in the bulk of newcomers.

One floor has transformed itself into a makeshift welcome center, with volunteers serving up hot food, handing out warm clothes and shoes and providing toys for children to play with.

GERMANS RALLY SUPPORT

Donation collection points for Ukrainians have sprung up around town in recent days as Berlin residents use messaging applications like Telegram to organize aid efforts.

In one corner of the station, some hold up signs offering accommodation in their homes as an alternative to state shelters.

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"You feel sort of helpless, so I wanted to at least help someone to get a few nights good sleep," said Paulin Nusser, 26, a student living in a shared flat holding up a sign offering a couch for a few nights.

David Henning, 31, said he was giving over one floor of his hotel to refugees. So far, he had welcomed fleeing students who just needed one night's rest before continuing their trip as well as several mothers and children who needed a while to figure out their life.

Aid groups told Reuters the fact this war is within Europe means it has hit closer to home than those in the Middle East that sparked the 2015 crisis, fostering even greater willingness to help.

Meanwhile both they and the state are better organized to jump into action, thanks to that previous experience, while the bureaucracy is easier. EU interior ministers agreed on Thursday to grant temporary residency to Ukrainians sparing them from going through lengthy asylum procedures.

But that did not save them from trauma, said Ahmed Makhzomi, 31, who arrived from Iraq during the 2015 migrant wave and is now volunteering at Berlin's central station.

"I've lived through many wars, I know what it's like," he said. "So I wanted to help in what way I could."

(Reporting by Sarah Marsh, Martin Schlicht and Fanny Brodersen; Additional Reporting by Riham Alkousaa; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)
If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, Variety may receive an affiliate commission.

Hollywood stars are fundraising for Ukraine on Cameo.

More from Variety

As Russian troops continue to attack major Ukrainian cities, displacing more than a million refugees from their homes, actors such as Olivia Colman, Busy Philipps, Denise Richards and Maggie Wheeler have committed to donating a portion of their proceeds from the video-sharing platform to the organization Choose Love.

The nonprofit will use the funds to support projects providing vital aid and services to those still in and fleeing Ukraine, including emergency medical care, food, shelter, clothes, legal support, support for the LGBTQIA+ community and mental health resources.

More than 400 stars have joined the platforms fundraising efforts, such as John Bradley West, Jay Sean, Montell Jordan, Dule Hill and Carson Kressley. Starting at $100, fans can buy personalized messages from the sites long list of bold-faced names, a portion of which, for a limited time, will go to Choose Loves relief efforts.

Cameo has long integrated ground-up fundraising into its business model. The apps Donation Tool allows creators to select one or more non-profits to contribute to on a short or long-term basis. Since its debut in 2017, the company has facilitated fundraising campaigns for nearly 300 causes and nonprofits, such as Backline, Gotcha4Life Foundation and The Jed Foundation, among others.

Cameos talent joins a long-running list of groups using their fanbase to support Ukraine. Russian feminist punk group Pussy Riot helped raise $7.1 million for Ukrainian relief this week with an NFT, while Mila Kunis and Ashton Kutcher are aiming to raise $30 million on a GoFundMe page they started last week.

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Of course, in addition to fundraising efforts, larger corporations have condemned Russias actions by boycotting the country. International festivals such as the Czech Republics KVIFF and Cannes Lions advertising festival will ban submissions by anyone associated with the Russian state or government, while distribution companies such as Banijay have frozen new activity in Russia until further notice.

Check out the stars supporting Choose Love on Cameo here.

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Swiss 1876 has tapped Joyce Azria as president.

Its only when I began to use the products that I took a real interest, said Azria of her new role.

More from WWD

The CBD wellness and beauty company, based in the Swiss Alps, operates and formulates products in its own in-house laboratory  where organic hemp plants are grown to extract CBD crystals.

Our lab in Switzerland is really committed to the most pure CBD, she continued.

Focused on CBD-infused skin care, the line includes an eye cream  its hero product  face serum, balm and hand cream, as well as a supplement oil. Available direct-to-consumer and through professional channels, goods are priced between $68 and $150.

When I met this project and I met the CEO of our project, Joshua Meerapfel, I really felt like there was a global mission here, and I really search for things that have a global mind-set, said Azria, daughter of the late fashion designer Max Azria.

Azria  currently based in Florida  distinguishing the U.S. as a key market: Were looking to be involved in peoples lives on a global level. And I think that when you talk about the European market, its miniscule. The American consumer is open, theyre willing to try. Its a bigger market just in dollars. In terms of the sector, its much larger market.

They distribute through spas and naturopaths: We just feel that education is the best there.

A look at Swiss 1876s line of CBD-infused products. - Credit: Courtesy of Swiss 1876

Courtesy of Swiss 1876

Azrias career began at the BCBG Max Azria Group, where she held the title of creative director of swim and intimates at BCBG, before being appointed creative director of BCBGeneration and overseeing apparel lines in Europe. About six years ago, she unveiled fashion brands of her own, Avec Les Filles and Rohb, sold at Amazon. Swiss 1876 marks her first foray into wellness and beauty.

I would say that this evolution from BCBG, my world of fashion, to CBD has really been about, where can we serve humanity? said the executive, noting the supplement oil has been shown to offer pain relief, as well as help with anxiety and sleep.

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Our commitment is to safety, to purity and really understanding this active material and how it is helpful to eczema, to psoriasis, how it helps support somebody and may create confidence and giving the best quality we can at a price that people can give themselves the gift of experimenting with on their journey to healing, continued.

With COVID-19, theres a global awareness about how emotional, psychological, physical health plays into the world on a different level, Azria added. With the arrival of a pandemic, I think people realized their life became a lot more fragile. And I feel that there was a global awakening in health and self-love.

Sign up for WWD's Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

Click here to read the full article.
CHATSWORTH, Calif.The Free Speech Coalition announced today that it has successfully gotten a website that long displayed the legal names, addresses, birthdates and other private information of over 1,000 adult performers to remove all such information.

According to the announcement, the website in question first began posting performers' personal information in 2018, and one such performer alerted the FSC of being doxxed by the site in January 2022. "FSC determined the site was in violation of California lawCA Penal Code 653.2which makes it a crime to publish personal identifying information about someone without their consent for the purpose of harassment," the announcement stated. "A review of the hosting providers Terms of Service showed that, by violating the law, the site was also in violation of the terms."

FSC executive director Alison Boden subsequently contacted the site's hosting provider and alerted them to the law and the TOS violations, after which the site removed all information related to adult performers. FSC said it has petioned Google and other web services to delist the site entirely, and should it appear again, the organization will work once more to get the information removed.

With the legal and technical help of FSC members and staffers, we were able to get this long-standing site removed relatively quickly, Boden says. I want to thank Lotus Lain, Corey Silverstein and Jeffrey Douglas for working with me to find a solution to a problem that, unfortunately, keeps rearing its head for our industry. There are no permanent fixes, but that doesnt mean were powerless. As an industry, we should never doubt our ability or resolve in the face of threats like this.
Anna Moneymaker

A sitting United States senator thought it was a good idea on Thursday night to explicitly call for the assassination of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

During an appearance on Fox News host Sean Hannitys primetime program, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) declared that the only way to end the escalating crisis caused by Russias violent invasion of Ukraine is if Putin's political allies killed the Russian dictator.

What happens is that Putin looks at Biden, he sized him up, he thinks he can get away with it, and hes going to keep going and going and going, and nobody in the West is going to stop him, Graham exclaimed.

The South Carolina lawmaker then referenced both the betrayal of Julius Ceaser and the failed German attempt to kill Adolf Hitler in 1944.

How does this end? Somebody in Russia has to step up to the plate, Graham told Hannity, who had also pondered a Putin assassination plot night before. Is there a Brutus in Russia? Is there more successful Col. Stauffenberg in the Russian military? The only way this ends, my friend, is for somebody in Russia to take this guy out! You would be doing your country a great service and the world a great service.

Notably, Grahams eyebrow-raising remarks came as Fox News rolled footage of the fire set at a huge Ukrainian nuclear plant following shelling by an armored Russian column. The stations director, thankfully, later said that the facilitys radiation safety had been secured and there was currently no threat of nuclear disaster.

Moments after his appearance on Hannitys show, Graham decided to tweet out the same demands for someone in Russia to kill Putin, once again claiming this was the best way to stop the war.

Is there a Brutus in Russia? Is there a more successful Colonel Stauffenberg in the Russian military?



The only way this ends is for somebody in Russia to take this guy out.



You would be doing your country - and the world - a great service.  Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) March 4, 2022

The only people who can fix this are the Russian people, the pro-Trump senator added in a subsequent tweet. Easy to say, hard to do. Unless you want to live in darkness for the rest of your life, be isolated from the rest of the world in abject poverty, and live in darkness you need to step up to the plate.

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Grahams remarks were quickly met with criticism that spanned the political spectrum. For News host Laura Ingraham, while noting that she likes Lindsey Graham, said on Thursday night that it seems really dangerous and stupid for the senator to tweet out an assassination threat.

Ingraham: I dont know why a sitting US Senator would be tweeting that out. It seems really dangerous and stupid and we like Lindsey Graham but thats just a stupid comment pic.twitter.com/yp7ks3tYMC  Acyn (@Acyn) March 4, 2022

A Twitter spokesperson told The Daily Beast on Friday morning that Grahams posts did not violate the platforms rules against violent threats and incitement of physical harm. Therefore, no action will be taken against the tweets.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

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(Adds further detail from statement, background)

ZURICH, March 4 (Reuters) - Swiss financial market supervisor FINMA on Friday banned the Swiss arm of Russia's largest lender Sberbank from making payments and transactions and imposed other measures it said were designed to protect creditors.

"Due to the effects of Russia's military intervention in Ukraine and heightened international sanctions, Sberbank (Switzerland) AG is at risk of facing liquidity problems. To protect creditors, FINMA has ordered protective measures," the financial watchdog said in a statement.

Sberbank earlier this week said it would quit almost all European markets as the European Central Bank ordered the closure of Sberbank Europe, having warned it faced failure because of a run on deposits sparked by the invasion.

Sberbank (Switzerland) is a separate entity, which specialises in commodity trade finance and serves around seventy business clients, FINMA said.

It ordered a deferral of the bank's obligations from deposits to May 2 and imposed a wide-ranging ban on payments and transactions outside those "necessary for its operations as a bank" with immediate effect.

"The bank has decided not to engage in any new business until further notice and is largely restructuring and reducing its business activities," FINMA said. (Reporting by Brenna Hughes Neghaiwi, Editing by Rosalba O'Brien and Marguerita Choy)
(Adds letter from finance minister)

LVIV, Ukraine, March 4 (Reuters) - Ukraine's central bank governor, Kyrylo Shevchenko, called on the United States and the European Union on Friday to freeze the assets of all Russian banks within their jurisdiction and to suspend their access to their markets and banks.

"We urge you to take decisions that will help in the international fight against terrorist financing," Shevchenko said in a statement.

In a separate letter and a post on Facebook, Ukraine's finance minister Serhiy Marchenko urged major western banks and asset managers such as Morgan Stanley, BlackRock, HSBC, Deutsche Bank, JPMorgan and others to sever ties with Russia and Belarus.

"The fight for democracy and freedom is happening now. These are the very same values, which underpin your commitments to uphold standards of good Environmental, Social and Corporate Governance," Marchenko said in the letter dated Friday.

"I hereby appeal to you, on behalf of each Ukrainian, asking to isolate the Russian Federation and the Republic of Belarus from your operations and quit these markets." (Reporting by Natasha Zinets; additional reporting Writing by Alessandra Prentice; editing by Timothy Heritage and Jonathan Oatis)
The Wauwatosa Design Review Board voted to approve their prior approval of Drew Tower at Blue Mound and Mayfair roads in Wauwatosa. A neighbors group has vowed to appeal to the board of zoning appeals.

Developers for the hotly debated 28-story Drew Tower in Wauwatosa overcame another hurdle Thursday night.

After the Wauwatosa Design Review Board approved the plans for the tower Jan. 20, neighbors filed an appeal of that decision.

On Thursday, the board voted to reaffirm its earlier decision.

"The Drew Tower project team is pleased that the Wauwatosa Design Review Board affirmed the previous approval of the mixed-use development plans," said a statement from Brian Randall, an attorney who represents developer John "Johnny V" Vassallo.

The approval prompted Underwood Neighbors United, the neighbors who oppose the plans, to appeal to the board of zoning appeals.

Indy Stluka, a member of the neighbors group, is still hoping for a "positive outcome."

"The positive outcome is to have that corner developed; it's just that it needs to be at a reasonable height and complement the neighborhood," Stluka said.

"We're not against development. I can't stress that enough," he added.

The next board of zoning appeals meeting is scheduled for March 24.

The 28-story building planned for the southwest corner of West Bluemound and North Mayfair roads has space for 65 apartment units. The design also includes eight floors of office space totaling about 80,000 square feet.

Karl Schreiber, Wauwatosa's building and safety manager, said the board on Thursday only conducted a review of its Jan. 20 decision.

That motion passed, 4-1, with member Robert Kennedy voting no. Kennedy had previously raised concerns about how appropriate the building was for the location.

"This building is not going to make Wauwatosa a better place to live for those people in the neighborhood near this tower," Kennedy said.

It was ultimately up to the design review board to approve the building permit, as the project doesn't need approval by the plan commission or Common Council because it fits as a permitted use in the C2 zoning district.

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"The Drew Tower design complies with all of Wauwatosas zoning requirements and the $50+ million project will be constructed without any TIF money or other public financing," Randall's statement said.

Joseph Cincotta, an attorney for Underwood Neighbors United, argued in the appeal to the board that the tower will negatively affect neighbors who live near the site.

Cincotta said that city ordinances require the design review board to consider the effect on property values during its review of the plans.

"The DRB failed to consider the impact of the Tower as currently proposed on the property values of the immediate neighboring residential and other properties including but not limited to the likely depreciation in the value of many of these nearby properties," Cincotta wrote.

Cincotta pointed out that a Wauwatosa ordinance says the board shall consider whether the building "causes a substantial depreciation in the property value of the neighborhood within the applicable district."

Randall has also argued in the past that the project will not affect the values of neighboring properties. Randall submitted a letter to the board from the president of Moegenburg Research Inc., a Wisconsin certified general appraiser.

"No 'substantial depreciation in property value' of nearby residential properties has been caused by other multi-story or mixed-use developments and it is my professional opinion that no substantial depreciation will be caused by the vertical mixed-use building," wrote Peter Moegenburg in that letter.

Randall has also maintained that the project, which is aiming to start construction this fall, fits within the zoning for the site and is a permitted use.

Randall added in his statement that the building will be developed at a vacant lot at West Bluemound and North Mayfair roads that will connect it to the "Research Park, Milwaukee Regional Medical Center, Mayfair Mall, and many other neighboring destinations."

"The mixed-use building that will lease commercial space, office suites, and apartment residences will transform the commercial corridor and be an iconic landmark for years to come," Randall said.

Evan Casey can be reached at 414-403-4391 or evan.casey@jrn.com. Follow him on Twitter @ecaseymedia.

Our subscribers make this reporting possible. Please consider supporting local journalism by subscribing to the Journal Sentinel at jsonline.com/deal.

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This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Wauwatosa Design Review Board reaffirms 28-story Drew Tower plans
Anti-war FSB agents have helped stop three assassination attempts on Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine has claimed.

The attempts on the life of the countrys president were thwarted when the disaffected Russian agents gave intelligence to Ukraine that two mercenary groups were planning the attacks, The Times reports.

The Kremlin-backed Wagner mercenary group and Chechen special forces were reportedly behind the failed attempts.

I can say that we have received information from (Russias Federal Security Service), who do not want to take part in this bloody war, Ukraines secretary of national security and defence told local TV stations, according to The Times.

The head of the Chechen Republic, Ramzan Kadyrov, is a close ally of Vladimir Putin, while the Wagner group is a private army owned by Yevgeny Prigozhin, another Kremlin ally who was among a group of Russian figures close to the Russian president to face sanctions from the US this week.

There are reportedly more than 400 members of the Wagner group in Kyiv, with a kill list of 24 Ukrainian officials.

They would be going in there with a very high-profile mission, something that the Russians would want to be deniable  a decapitation of a head of state is a huge mission, a diplomatic source told the newspaper.

An apartment building damaged following a shelling on the town of Irpin, 26 kilometres west of Kyiv, Ukraine, Friday, March 4, 2022 (AP)

In terms of the impact on Russian sovereign policy, this would be perhaps their biggest mission so far. It would have a major impact on the war.

Mr Zelensky, 44, has previously warned of enemy sabotage groups in his countrys capital and said that he was their number one target followed by his family.

A source close to the Wagner group told the newspaper that it was eerie how much Ukrainian security forces knew about their assassination attempt.

Mr Zelensky has refused to leave Kyiv as the Russian forces advance through his country, reportedly telling US officials I need ammunition, not a ride.

Oleksiy Danilov, the secretary of Ukraines National Security and Defence Council, told Ukrainian media that Russian spies had tipped off the Kyiv government about the assassination plots.

Story continues

This infographic, created for The Independent by statistics agency Statista, shows the relative military strength of Ukraine and Russia (Statista/The Independent)

He said: I can say that we have received information from the FSB, who do not want to take part in this bloody war. And thanks to this, the Kadyrov elite group was destroyed, which came here to eliminate our president.

The paper says some 400 members of the Wagner group  which has been active in countries including Syria, the Central African Republic and Mali  is under pressure from Moscow to assassinate 24 senior Ukrainian figures on a kill list.
The 85th anniversary of the Black residents of Columbus' Bronzeville neighborhood electing their own mayor was celebrated Thursday with a special rededication ceremony at The Lincoln Theatre, 769 E. Long St.

On March 3, 1937, a mayor was elected in this town.

But this wasn't for mayor of Columbus. It was for the mayor of Bronzeville, the historic Near East Side neighborhood and the beating heart of Columbus' Black community.

That first mayor was the Rev. N.L. Scarborough, pastor of Trinity Baptist Church, and a resident of North Garfield Avenue.

A March 20, 1937, edition of The Ohio State News reported that 1,000 people attended Scarborough's inauguration at the church, including Columbus Mayor Myron B. Gessaman.

"As your representative, I want to here and now impress upon us all the fact that conditions are no respector of persons," Scarbrough was quoted as saying. "Hunger, disease, need and want are common to all mankind.

"As citizens of Columbus, if we would successfully meet these conditions, we must think, plan, act as one family," he said.

More Black history: The path to freedom: Four Underground Railroad stops to visit in Greater Columbus

Bronzeville Neighborhood Association president Willis Brown speaks Thursday during a celebration to mark the 85th anniversary of the Columbus Bronzeville neighborhood's election of its own mayor.

The Lincoln Theatre

On Thursday, to commemorate the 85th anniversary of that election, the Bronzeville Neighborhood Association held an event in the Lincoln Theatre ballroom, capped by proclamations from the Ohio House and Senate.

The Lincoln Theatre was known as the Ogden Theatre when Scarborough was elected mayor of Bronzeville. And the Ogden was where he was elected in a community meeting just like the one held Thursday.

Scarborough established an all-Black cabinet to address Bronzevilles social, political and economic needs.

"This neighborhood has a special place for so many people," Dana Moessner, vice-president of the Bronzeville Neighborhood Association and a long-time resident, said at the event Thursday.

Willis Brown, who is president of the neighborhood association, has long pushed for the Bronzeville neighborhood's recognition and place in Columbus.

"Now we're in the middle of an economic revival," he said.

State Rep. Dontavius Jarrells, a Columbus Democrat, mentioned Bronzeville's history as a center for the arts. Years ago, clubs drew in national jazz acts, and hotels such as the Macon Hotel and the Hotel St. Clair lodged Black travelers. Mount Vernon Avenue and East Long Street were bustling with businesses.

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"Bronzeville has thrived," Jarrells said.

More: King Arts Complex hosts first art exhibit in two years in time for MLK Day

The exterior of the Lincoln Theatre, 769 E. Long St., on Thursday, where a special celebration was held to commemorate the 85th anniversary of the residents of the Bronzeville neighborhood electing their own mayor. The Lincoln was known as the Ogden Theatre when the first mayor of the historic Black community, the Rev. N.L. Scarborough, was elected in that building on March 3, 1937.

Brown said the original Bronzeville boundaries were the Pennsylvania Railroad tracks to the north (now just north of Interstate 670), Woodland Avenue to the east, Broad Street to the south, and Cleveland Avenue to the west.

But in the early 1960s, crews dug a trench to make room for Interstate 71, separating the neighborhood from Downtown.

Years of disinvestment followed, and the population declined.

Now the Columbus neighborhood, known as King-Lincoln Bronzeville, is undergoing a transformation. Some residents welcome the burst of new investment, while others fear that development and higher home prices and rents could push some long-time residents out  and with it, part of the neighborhood's history.

According to the most-recent census numbers, the population of one census tract east of Interstate 71 and north of East Broad Street increased by almost 20%. The population of white residents there more than doubled, from 307 to 746, and those of two or more races doubled from 81 to 172, while the number of Black residents dropped from 1,307 to 1,035, a 21% decline.

But signs of redevelopment are everywhere, from new apartment buildings on East Long Street to renovated houses to new businesses.

And a Black-owned bank has been proposed for the area.

More: Black-owned bank proposed for King-Lincoln/Bronzeville

"It's hard to believe the area came back after the freeway tore it up," said Ann B. Walker, who now lives in Franklin Park but grew up nearby the Lincoln Theatre in Bronzeville. Walker, 98, a Black broadcasting pioneer and a longtime community leader, is the namesake of the Ann B. Walker Plaza, part of the new Adelphi Quarter apartment complex on East Long Street near the Lincoln Theatre.

Ohio State Senator Hearcel F. Craig, left, and State Rep. Dontavius L Jarrells, right, read proclamations during the the State of Ohio Rededication of The Columbus Bronzeville Neighborhood on Thursday at The Lincoln Theatre, 769 E. Long St.. The event marked the 85th anniversary of Black residents electing their own mayor for Bronzeville in 1937 at a similar community gathering at the theater, which was then known as the Ogden Theatre.

Local historian Reita Smith lived in the former Poindexter Village public housing complex, which was torn down save for two buildings, which Smith worked to preserve for a museum.

Smith said she remembers the clubs and restaurants that used to dot the neighborhood, including the Club Regal, which was in the Empress Theater on East Long Street, and the big bands.

"This is an important story," she said of Bronzeville's history. "It tells the story of the resilience of its people."

More: 'Unprecedented thirst' for Black history prompted by George Floyd protest

Former Mayor Michael B. Coleman lends his support

Former Columbus Mayor Michael B. Coleman was there Thursday. In years past, Brown and Moessner were critical of some Coleman administration decisions regarding development and other area issues.

But on Thursday, Coleman complimented them for their efforts in the neighborhood.

"If it weren't for these two, I don't know this generation would know of Bronzeville," Coleman said of Brown and Moessner.

"It's a good thing for the community."

Toward the end of the ceremony, Moessner pitched this idea to the Lincoln Theatre board: renaming the second-floor ballroom where they were to the Scarborough-Ogden ballroom.

"We are here to stay," Brown said. "We have a lot of building to do."

mferench@dispatch.com

@MarkFerenchik

This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Columbus' Bronzeville neighborhood honored for its history, legacy
NEW YORK  A Brooklyn judge rejected a bid for release Thursday by the man accused of shooting Run-DMC deejay Jam Master Jay to death in his Queens studio nearly 20 years ago.

Brooklyn Federal Court Judge LaShann DeArcy Hall denied Karl Jordans request for release on $1 million bond, saying that she believes the government has proven that he is a danger to the community if released.

Tellingly, the defense did not address the nature and circumstances of the charged homicide offense, Hall said. The court cannot find that the defendant has met his burden with respect to dangerousness.

Jordan is charged with shooting the rap pioneer, whose real name was Jason Mizell, in the head inside his Merrick Blvd. studio in Jamaica on Oct. 30, 2002.

Mizell was planning to sell cocaine in Maryland with Jordan, 38, and co-defendant Ronald Washington, but cut them from the deal at the last minute, prosecutors said. The pair allegedly decided to kill him over the snub.

Mizell, a Queens native, rose to fame in the early 80s in Run-DMC with Joseph Run Simmons and Daryl DMC McDaniels.

Despite ruling in the prosecutions favor, Hall rejected arguments that Jordans violent rap song lyrics should affect whether or nor he remains behind bars.

I will not consider the defendants rap lyrics or other artistic expression, she said. This court will not punish individuals for merely being participants in an industry that incentivizes the use of such language.

In one of Jordans songs, Aim for the Head, he bragged, I aim for the head, I aint a body shooter.

The songs and a video Jordan shot in front of a Hollis, Queens, mural dedicated to Mizell were cited in a prosecution court filing last month, pleading that Jordan remained locked until he goes to trial.

Hall took issue with the defense citing prosecutors not seeking the death penalty for Jordan as a way to spring their client.

The defendant suggested the governments decision not to pursue death penalty is evidence the defendant is not a danger to the community. I cannot reject this argument in stronger terms, she said. This logic is not only flawed, it is dangerous.

Jordan and Washington, 57, have been charged with murder.
Early voting for S.Korea president begins in shadow of COVID Lee Jae-myung, the presidential candidate of South Korea's ruling Democratic Party, casts his early vote for the upcoming March 9 presidential election at a polling station in Seoul

By Ju-min Park

SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea began early voting on Friday for a presidential election in the shadow of the pandemic, as up to a million people with COVID-19 are expected to cast ballots during a spike driving one of the world's highest caseloads.

Election workers have been deployed in protective equipment including full-body suits and safety glasses, and voters with COVID or exposed to the virus will spray hand sanitisers and wear gloves before casting ballots, according to the national election commission.

With more than 800,000 under home treatment for the coronavirus and nearly 800 in hospital intensive care, the government and health officials have sought to accommodate infected voters, including revising the election law last month.

People infected or in quarantine can walk in or take taxis or ambulances provided by local offices to the polling stations to vote in isolated booths. They are allocated an hour at the end of the second day of early voting and an hour and a half on the final day on Wednesday.

South Korea had early success in containing outbreaks and surges with aggressive testing and contact tracing. Although the government's pandemic management was not a major campaign focus, the omicron spike of the past week is affecting the voting as it drives cases to record highs. On Friday, it broke another record of daily cases and deaths.[nL3N2V704Y]

Voters are choosing a replacement for liberal President Moon Jae-in, who cannot run for reelection due to term limits.

Yoon Suk-yeol got a boost on Thursday when a fellow conservative dropped out and threw his support behind Yoon, in a move that could tip the balance of the closely fought election away from the ruling liberals. Moon's ruling party is represented by Lee Jae-myung.

The race has focussed on seeking a leader to clean up polarised politics and corruption, and tackle the runaway housing prices and deepening inequality that have dogged Asia's fourth-largest economy.

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Yoon has encouraged people with COVID or isolating to vote, saying they could amount to millions out of more than 40 million eligible voters.

Yoon and his rival Lee, as well as President Moon all cast their votes on Friday morning.

While the pandemic did not prevent big campaign rallies, leading presidential runners have run "contact-free" campaigns. Lee met supporters at a drive-in movie theatre.

Yoon's main opposition party launched a phone app that allows voters to watch campaign rallies where its candidate is a featured speaker.

South Korea held a national election in 2020 and regional polls last year, with infected people required to mail in their ballots or use special polling stations at hospitals. Daily COVID infections were in the hundreds at most at that time. This week they topped 200,000.

But while case numbers have surged, South Korea has rolled back some restrictions in recent days and suspended the use of a digital-tracking scheme credited with the early success in containing the virus.

"The situation has changed a lot since the last general election, with far more cases," said a disease control agency official. "And their political rights have to be protected."

(Reporting by Ju-min Park; Editing by Jack Kim, William Mallard)
MIAMI  OnlyDolls.com on Thursday announced they have launched their official Romi Chase Realistic Porn Star Sex Doll and that pre-orders are now available on their website. The genuine, first-produced Romi Chase sex doll includes an exact scanned 3D face and head with 1:1 detailed body features and three fuckable holes. With a price point of only $1,797 and payable in four installments, pre-orders are currently offering this additional discount.

More details can be found here



The company said it is "ecstatic" to be moving quickly on the deal, fueled largely by Romis excitement and commitment. Romis popularity, unique look and high engagement were all factors leading to the closing of the deal.

With over 2 million followers across her social media platforms combined, and her incredible understanding and ability of how to engage massive amounts of her fans every time she makes a posting, we have no doubt that Romi will move a lot of her dolls! says Brent Bardales, co-founder of Only Dolls. We see this as the beginning of an amazing trend as we are in talks with other models of her high caliber and have plans to roll out more celebrity sex dolls as this year progresses.

"The possibilities of further engaging your fans, giving them something unique and exciting and making a ton of extra income actively and passively in this manner will be a game changer.

Robert Hodges, co-founder of Only Dolls, concurs adding, When we met Romi Chase in person at the YNOT Cammunity trade show in Hollywood last fall, we knew quickly after a discussion with her that she would be perfect for her own sex doll. We were highly encouraged to exhibit at YNOT as well as Exxxotica Expos and are glad we did as it really opened the door for us in a short amount of time.
(Getty Images)

Formula One will not be returning to Sochi after terminating their contract for the Russian Grand Prix and stating Russia will not have a race in the future, while F1s only driver from that country, Nikita Mazepin, has been barred from the British Grand Prix this year. He has been allowed to remain involved with Haas by the FIA, but he will compete under a neutral flag.

Big news on Thursday came with reigning champion Max Verstappen signing a new contract with Red Bull, keeping him with the team until 2028. He still had two years to run on his existing deal, but the new paycheck bumps him up to around 40m a year - roughly on par with Lewis Hamilton of Mercedes. Team principal Christian Horner hailed the agreement as a statement of intent ahead of the 2022 season, which starts in Bahrain later this month.

Aiming to retain the drivers championship this year will be Hamilton and his new team-mate George Russell, with Mercedes chief Toto Wolff making clear he blames the FIA for the failings of former race director Michael Masi last season. Follow all the latest news and reaction below.

Formula One latest news

Red Bull tie down best driver on the grid Max Verstappen

Toto Wolff blames FIA for Michael Masi failings

Aston Martin admit they face fight to keep Sebastian Vettel beyond 2022

Red Bull delighted to tie down best driver on the grid Max Verstappen

09:53 , Karl Matchett

Max Verstappen has been hailed as the best driver in Formula One following the announcement of his extraordinary 200milllion deal with Red Bull.

The five-year contract extension, which could earn Verstappen as much as 40million-a-season, is arguably the most lucrative in F1 history, and will see the world champion remain at Red Bull until the end of 2028.

Verstappens current contract, worth around 20m-a-year, was due to expire at the end of next season. But the Dutchman, 24, has been rewarded for beating seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton to the title.

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Verstappens salary hike matches the 37-year-old Hamiltons 80m two-year Mercedes deal.

To have Max signed with Red Bull through to the end of 2028 is a real statement of intent, said team principal Christian Horner.

Max was the outstanding driver of last year. He was the world champion and mentally it takes that pressure off. He has that first tick in the box, but I dont think anything will change in the way he goes racing.

He will give 110 per cent, and with new engine regulations for 2026 we wanted to make sure we had the best driver on the grid secured for that car.

Full report here:

Red Bull delighted to tie down best driver on the grid Max Verstappen
Gas prices are advertised at over five dollars a gallon Monday, Feb. 28, 2022, in Los Angeles.

Gas prices were already high, but overnight they went up 11 cents, approaching the $4 per-gallon average nationwide.

The national average for a gallon of regular gasoline rose to $3.84 on Friday, up from $3.73 on Thursday, according to AAA. That comes after another 11-cent increase between Monday and Thursday.

Prices averaged $3.57 a week ago and $3.42 a month ago, the organization said.

Concerns over Russia's invasion Ukraine have put pressure on global oil markets and affected U.S. gas prices, even though the country buys very little oil from Russia.

Gas prices topping $4 per gallon by Memorial Day had been predicted prior to Russia's attack on Ukraine. Already, the average price per gallon in California has surpassed $5 at $5.01, the most expensive market in the U.S., AAA said.

The average price for a gallon of regular gasoline in San Francisco hit the $5 mark Thursday  the first time a U.S. city has hit an average that high, said Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at fuel-savings app GasBuddy.

Unemployment down, hiring up: Economy added 678,000 jobs in February as omicron faded, unemployment at 3.8%

Oil prices surge: Hikes continue as US stocks fall with Russian invasion deepening

Several other states have already surpassed the average $4 per gallon, according to AAA:

Hawaii ($4.66)

Oregon ($4.28)

Nevada ($4.29)

Washington ($4.22)

Alaska ($4.18)

Illinois ($4.10)

New York ($4.05)

Pennsylvania ($4)

What's everyone talking about? Sign up for our trending newsletter to get the latest news of the day

The last time average national gas prices were this high? July 2008 during the Great Recession when prices hit about $4.10 per gallon  both AAA and GasBuddy say  when economic growth briefly outpaced oil production, which drove oil prices to $145 a barrel in July 2008. Oil prices cratered to $40 a barrel in December 2008.

A national average of $4 per gallon could happen "in the next week or two," De Haan said, during a question-and-answer session on Facebook Live.

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GasBuddy, which through its app provides real-time gas price information for more than 150,000 stations nationwide, has the national average a bit lower than AAA, at $3.78 per gallon, De Haan said, but that's up 20 cents from a week ago.

The national average now stands at $3.781/gal, up an amazing 20c/gal from a week ago.  Patrick De Haan  (@GasBuddyGuy) March 4, 2022

Yesterday's rise in the national average, 6.9c/gal, ties for the 8th largest single day rise ever recorded. Diesel rose 7.4c/gal, tying for it's 6th largest single day rise and the largest since 2013.  Patrick De Haan  (@GasBuddyGuy) March 4, 2022

Russian oil and petroleum products accounted for 7% or less of all U.S. oil imports, but the Russia-Ukraine crisis has led to a global effect on oil that's also hitting Americans at the pump.

That's because oil importers and shippers have issued "a de facto ban" on Russian oil, decreasing the overall global supply, even though Russia's oil imports have not yet been sanctioned, Tom Kloza, chief global analyst for the Oil Price Information Service, told USA TODAY.

"Even though the U.S. and EU did not sanction Russia, the various elements of the supply chain are suppressing Russian departures," said Kloza, who expects gas prices to continue to rise. "I would have argued that this year would see high gasoline prices under any circumstances but the de facto ban is the accelerant at the moment."

Consumers may be able to withstand higher gas prices, for while at least, until the national average reaches $4.50 or $5, De Haansaid. "Because of us coming out of the pandemic, Americans still have pent-up demand for getting out," De Haan said. As mask mandates are lifted, "that may embolden more people to travel," he said.

Some good news: De Haan has seen no sign of price gouging on the part of station owners.

"I can see that wholesale gas prices are up 12 cents a gallon today," he said. "So that is how we can tell you that prices are going to continue to go up.  I would say that probably 99.999% of stations are simply passing along the price increase."

Contributing: Paul Davidson of USA TODAY and The Associated Press

Follow Mike Snider on Twitter: @mikesnider.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Average gas price up 11 cents per gallon, nears $4 amid Russian war
Inventing Anna creator Shonda Rhimes has explained why some moments featured in the show arent true.

Ever since the drama was released on Netflix last month, viewers have been wondering where exactly the fact stops and the fiction begins.

Rhimes, who developed the series about con artist Anna Delvey, has shed some light on why the series tweaked the truth in a new interview.

Julia Garner plays Delvey, real name Anna Sorokin, in the show. It tells the true story of the twenty-something socialite, who successfully posed as a rich German heiress under an alias in New York City.

Sorokin successfully scammed her friends and big banks out of hundreds of thousands of dollars before she was convicted of fraud and grand larceny.

Rhimes told Inventing Anna: The Official Podcast that the show features some things... that are true that we cant admit are true, but that there are some things in there that are made up, which she said encompasses the essence of who Anna is.

Everything is true until its not in Annas world, she said.

Rhimes added that having a researcher on the show was extraordinarily important so that the writers had a basis of knowledge to work from when fleshing out the storyline.

Julia Garner as Anna Delvey in Inventing Anna (Netflix)

We were telling a story that was based on fact, so needed a document to build an extensive timeline of events, to dig into little things that we werent even sure wee going to matter, Rhimes said.

For this particular show, having someone who has read every transcript of the trial, who was paying close attention to every detail in Annas life, was really, really important, because we wanted to know what we were thinking. We wanted to know what we were making up; we didnt want to be making things up just for the sake of it.

Rhimes added: We wanted to intentionally be fictionalising moments versus just accidentally be fictionalising them.

Inventing Anna is available to stream on Netflix now. Find out which parts are fact and faction here.
The aftermath of shelling in Kharkiv, Ukraine. Sergey Bobok/AFP via Getty Images

The mayor of Kharkiv, Ukraine's second largest city, believes that Russian forces are "intentionally trying to eliminate Ukrainian people" by targeting civilian areas, he told CNN on Friday.

Mayor Ihor Terekhov said that since Russian troops arrived in the city, "the situation has been extremely difficult." Kharkiv "has been hard impacted by continuous bombardment," he continued. "Planes are flying constantly, [rockets] are being launched, grenades are launched, and residential houses are being hit."

Ukrainian troops are not being housed or stationed in residential areas, Terekhov said, which means Russia is "purposefully hitting" civilian buildings. Since the siege began in Kharkiv this week, "a great number" of civilians have been killed, and many more wounded, Terekhov said. Ukraine's State Emergency Service released numbers on Thursday, saying in 24 hours, 34 civilians were killed and 285 injured.

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People take part in a military exercise for civilians conducted by members of the Georgian National Legion paramilitary volunteer unit amid threat of Russian invasion in Kyiv, Ukraine February 4, 2022. REUTERS/Serhii Nuzhnenko

People from around Europe and the US are planning to travel to Ukraine and fight Russian forces.

Two British veterans said they plan to join the Georgian National Legion, which has been fighting separatists in the Donbas.

"If I was to die, you can either die doing something like this, which is the right thing to be doing," one British veteran told Insider. "Or you can die potentially like an old man who can't even wipe their own ass and doesn't even know who they are."

Before Joseph Lister left his home in Sussex Thursday, he left letters for his family.

As with any war, there's a good chance you won't come back.

While the United Kingdom has backed Ukraine against Russia's invasion with sanctions and aid, it hasn't sent in troops. So Lister decided to go and defend Ukraine on his own. He couldn't just sit around and expect everyone else to do it, he reasoned.

"Well, everyone's afraid of dying aren't they?" Lister told Insider. "But, realistically, if I was to die, you can either die doing something like this, which is the right thing to be doing. Or you can die potentially like an old man who can't even wipe their own ass and doesn't even know who they are."

Lister is one of the thousands of people who have told authorities in Ukraine that they plan to help with humanitarian aid and take up arms against the Russian invasion. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced the formation of the Ukrainian foreign legion  officially called the International Legion of Territorial Defense of Ukraine  shortly after Russia's invasion of the country in February.

"Every friend of Ukraine who wants to join Ukraine in defending the country, please come over," Zelensky announced at a press conference. "We will give you weapons."

Conscripts, including Lister, are also looking to help refugees fleeing the country and get food and other supplies to people who need it. The European Union estimated this week that 4 million people are expected to leave the country. Millions more living in Ukraine face challenges getting medical support, food, and other crucial services.

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George, another British national, working in security risk operations and living in Gloucester, told Insider he's also planning to join the fight in Ukraine. A veteran of the UK army with 12 years of experience in armed forces "operating around the globe," he said he knows around 20 people personally who are planning to fight, and started an online group of internationals planning to ward off Russian forces.

His whole family has served in militaries, he said, so he thinks they'll understand when they see the letters he left.

"It's not a very nice conversation to have," said George, who asked Insider to withhold his real name because he hasn't yet told his family about his planned departure to Ukraine this weekend. "So most people are leaving letters for the families so that when you go, you can say 'I've left a letter here,' and then everything will be there for them."

Civilians in Ukraine have taken up arms and had some success pushing back against Moscow's forces. International support from experienced fighters, George told Insider, would help turn the tides.

"They're sending Russians in that are 18, 20 years old with not a lot of experience," he said. "Most of us going out there are harder veterans that know what they're doing, so we can make a real difference out there."

How to fight in another country's war

Joining the military of another country's army is not exactly easy. The last time a wave of fighters from around the world spilled into a conflict came during the Syrian Civil War. They included radical Islamists, like Jihadi John, believed to be Mohammed Emwazi, a Kurdish-British national famous for beheading American journalists and British aid workers in ISIS propaganda videos, who was killed in a US airstrike. And there were those who fought with forces aligned with the west, like Brace Belden, the leftist California native who fought with the Kurdish People's Defense Units and tweeted about it using the handle @PissPigGrandad, who now co-hosts a podcast about Jeffrey Epstein.

On February 27, Ukraine's foreign minister told foreigners to contact their local Ukrainian diplomatic missions for instructions on how to join. When UK foreign secretary Liz Truss announced that she'd support British nationals fighting in Ukraine, Lister, George, and other fighters took that as permission to take up arms.

"Since the UK parliament has said that we'll back anyone that goes, that's kind of like the UK government giving anyone a green light to go and help," George told Insider.

A protester holds a placard during the demonstration. Thousands of Ukrainians and their supporters gathered at Trafalgar Square to protest Russian invasion of Ukraine. They demanded the World to support and help Ukrainians to fight against the Russian troops. Hesther Ng/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

It's not clear if everyone will join Ukraine's new legion. Details about it remain scarce. Instructions given at the Ukrainian embassy in Britain, viewed by Insider, told potential conscripts to fill out a form online, book a flight to Poland, and then receive further instructions there. Ukrainian officials haven't said who will lead the group, what kind of training they will receive, and how many years fighters will be expected to serve.

But there is already another battalion fighting Russians in Ukraine that accepts foreign fighters. The Georgian National Legion, founded in 2014 by mostly Georgian nationals, has a contract with the Ukrainian government and has fought Russia-backed separatist forces in the Donbas region. For years, it has accepted international volunteers, and both George and Lister indicated they were likely to join the group rather than Ukraine's new legion until they get more information.

Mamuka Mamulashvili, the founder and leader of the Georgian Legion, told Insider that, before Putin's invasion, the group had around 250 fighters. In the past week, he said, thousands of more people have sent messages to him on WhatsApp and other channels in the past week telling him they planned to join the fight.

"We have a reputation of a good unit, a good battalion, professional. So they're trying to reach us," he said.

An instructor shows a young woman how to use a grenade during a training with members of the Georgian Legion, a paramilitary unit formed mainly by ethnic Georgian volunteers to fight against Russian forces in Ukraine in 2014, in Kyiv, Ukraine, Saturday, Feb. 19, 2022. AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky

He said around 1,000 more people planned to join from Georgia, 150 from the United Kingdom, and 50 from the United States. (This week, the government of Georgia blocked a group of 400 fighters from joining the legion, according to Vice.) The battalion, Mamulashvili said, could easily absorb new foreigners because it's composed of relatively small groups and already has a process in place for taking newcomers from different backgrounds. He said at the time of his interview with Insider Tuesday that he had not slept in four days, so busy was he drawing up defense plans and responding to people interested in joining.

Dibs on the CamelBak

In the group George formed, on the encrypted messaging app Signal, people have traded tips about how to join the fight. In messages viewed by Insider, they've debated whether to join the Georgian Legion, the new Ukrainian foreign legion, or to simply hang around in cities and work with underground fighters.

The group has more than 250 people so far, from everywhere between the Netherlands to Greece, per the users' phone number country codes, with a smattering of people from the United States. Most people who talked about their plans said they would fly or drive to Poland, and then cross the border into Ukraine from there. Body armor seems to be sold out everywhere in Poland, several people said, so the general advice was to bring some from home.

"Lol, imagine you have a pair of $40,000 Nods, and the TSA just confiscates it," joked one American, referring to night-vision goggles, who groaned that he couldn't fly over immediately because his passport had expired.

But would airlines allow body armor on board? What kind of guns would they be given in Ukraine? Could they get dibs on another person's Camelbak hydration pack if they died in combat? Would Verizon cell service still work? ("You can buy sim cards at some gas stations," one American veteran living in Ukraine advised.)

People in the Signal group also talked about their family members getting upset. One person, with an Australian country code, said his wife tried to persuade him she was pregnant so he wouldn't leave.

People take part in a military exercise for civilians conducted by members of the Georgian National Legion paramilitary volunteer unit amid threat of Russian invasion in Kyiv, Ukraine February 4, 2022. REUTERS/Serhii Nuzhnenko

For years, Mamulashvili has used his group to train civilians across Ukraine to learn how to handle arms and protect themselves from gunfire. Zelensky, according to Mamulashvili, should have simply designated his group as the international legion instead of creating a new one under a different commander. He believed that would happen eventually.

"All the foreigners anyways are coming to Georgia Legion and not to some other place," he said. "So whether the government wants it or not they have to say we are the international legion because we are the international legion."

Mamulashvili founded the Georgian Legion in 2014, and has been fighting against Moscow's expansion in wars since he was 14, beginning with the separatist war in Georgia's Abkhazia region. He said that witnessing the resolve of Ukrainian civilians has made him prouder to fight alongside them.

"I see now, the guy is really hard. They could not break him," he said, referring to Zelensky. "I'm very skeptical about politicians generally. And I did not expect that this guy has the iron, or nerves, let's say."

The fighters don't all have personal ties to Ukraine, but they see the resistance against Russian forces as a moral imperative. If Putin could invade a sovereign country and get away with it, they say, it's unlikely he'd stop there.

"If Russia takes over Ukraine, where's their next stop? What is their endpoint? Are they gonna move into Europe? Are they gonna come knocking on our doors next?" George asked. "It has to be stopped."

For veterans like himself, he said, he's not too worried about death.

"I've been to multiple war zones before," George said. "A lot of people think that they're on extra time anyway, from where they've been."

Lister told Insider he hopes his family looks at his decision and understands that going to Ukraine was the right thing to do.

"Maybe one day my son can look at this and know that I actually did something instead of doing nothing," he said.

Joshua Zitser contributed reporting.

Read the original article on Business Insider
Mar. 4It wasn't easy to hear the stories.

One involved a New Mexico mother who slowly came to the realization her 11-year-old daughter, abducted at the school bus stop, was not coming home.

One involved a Baltimore father working through layer after layer of frustration to get local police agencies to act on his pregnant daughter's disappearance.

And several expressed a sense of disappointment the media does not do more to spotlight these stories  stories of murdered and missing women, most of whom are women of color, including Native Americans.

"I have problems with what I don't see in the news," said Maryland Rep. Kweisi Mfume, a Democrat who serves on the House Subcommittee on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, after hearing victims and advocates testify Thursday in Washington, D.C.

He said news outlets often don't stay on top of these stories to provide a "scope" of continuity.

Two women from New Mexico were among those who testified: Pamela Foster, whose 11-year-old daughter Ashlynn Mike, was abducted, assaulted and murdered on the Navajo Nation in 2016, and Angel Charley, executive director for the Coalition to Stop Violence Against Native Women.

The issue has generated legislative initiatives in New Mexico with Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham recently signing two bills into law to address the problem.

Senate Bill 12 creates a position in the Attorney General's Office for a specialist who will work with law enforcement on cases involving missing Indigenous people. Senate Bill 13 will lead to the creation of a Missing in New Mexico event to help support residents with missing relatives by allowing them to file and update missing person reports, meet with investigators and submit DNA records.

Such measures are needed to give family members and friends a sense of hope and belief that someone is willing to help, advocates say.

Foster spoke of her frustration of trying to work through the sometimes-tangled layers of tribal and nontribal jurisdictional policies to get law enforcement agencies to do something quickly at a time when tribal entities did not issue Amber Alerts.

Story continues

"I was in a cry for help [mode] at that time when I needed help, and there was none," she told committee members.

Referring to statistics some committee members cited as evidence women of color are more likely to be disproportionally victims of abduction, assault and murder than white women, Charley asked: "Why are our lives not valued? Why are we invisible?"

Congressmen referred to the problem as a crisis happening right before our eyes, yet still invisible. Foster said it's an issue that lawmakers must get involved with in order to make a difference.

She and other advocates named a number of measures that can be taken to alleviate the problem, including offering more educational opportunities for the disadvantaged; providing more resources to women and children looking to flee violence at home; and putting more funding and resources into "multiyear investigations," as Charley put it.

Several urged media outlets to spotlight the cases of missing Indigenous women.

Charley said she knows of at least two cases in New Mexico where parents of children who went missing said law enforcement officials urged them not to talk to the media about the situation.

Sometimes, she said, only the media can help in providing a sense of closure and hope.

Natalie Wilson, founder of the nonprofit Black and Missing Foundation in Maryland, said usually it is law enforcement officials who first reach out to the media for aid in locating a missing person.

"We all have a responsibility [to do that]," Wilson said. "But if the community isn't aware that someone is missing, then they are not looking for them. They normally hear about these cases through the media."
More than 1 million Ukrainians have become refugees in a matter of a week, as Russian President Vladimir Putin continues his appalling attack on Ukraine. Meanwhile, a bevy of countries  including Poland, Slovakia, Croatia and Romania  have risen to the occasion, offering shelter, health care, employment and a helping hand for these innocent families forced to start life anew.

This warm welcome for Ukrainian refugees is a glimmer of light amid one of the most somber weeks in recent memory. We should all applaud the countries that have heeded the call to provide a haven, that have resurfaced humanitys better angels while the world seems embroiled in unimaginable evil and pain.

'Otherizing' refugees who don't look like you

At the same time that we honor the embrace of Ukrainian refugees, though, we shouldnt pass up the opportunity to reflect on a broader, more troubling narrative now permeating international discourse  a narrative about which refugee experiences ought to stir up our deepest sense of compassion.

Ukraine war diary: 'If we lose Kyiv, we lose everything. We will lose the nation.'

A few days ago, while viewing images of Ukrainians attempting to escape the country, a broadcast journalist proclaimed, Whats compelling is just looking at them, the way theyre dressed.  These are prosperous, middle-class people. These are not obviously refugees trying to get away from areas in the Middle East that are still in a big state of war. These are not people trying to get away from areas in North Africa. They look like any European family that you would live next door to.

This rhetoric  "otherizing" people whove similarly sought safety from war but just happen to bear different nominal descriptors  is a cautionary tale about using superficial likeness as a prerequisite for compassion. A refugee need not look the same, dress the same or live next door to evoke our same desire to help.

Afghan refugee Ajmal Rahmani and his children, now fleeing the conflict in Ukraine, arrive in eastern Poland on Feb. 27, 2022.

The dreams of an Afghan refugee parent are fundamentally reflected in the aspirations of each Ukrainian parent now searching for a sanctuary to rebuild their childrens lives. The Syrian refugee dentist forced to uproot their existence shares the loss felt by a Ukrainian refugee having to leave behind a beloved small business.

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Humans of all backgrounds seeking peace amidst turmoil should find, at the end of that long tunnel, our outstretched hand of support.

David Rothkopf: Thermobaric weapons. Targeting hospitals. Case against Putin as a war criminal is strong.

Many Afghans who fled the Talibans brutal takeover last year  though facing a conspicuously icy reception in their own search for refuge  have nonetheless joined in mourning for the Ukrainians being displaced from their homes.

In a recent interview in the Boston Globe about Ukraine, one Afghan refugee who moved to America months ago noted, Its the same situation we had in my country. I am very sad and very upset about it.

Rally behind all people fleeing violence and danger

This display of unity, which underscores the core commonalities that span the refugee experience, should awaken our resolve to rally behind all people fleeing violence and danger.

Refugees arriving from Ukraine at the Hungarian border town of Zahony on March 1, 2022.

The more we legitimize the plight of our in-group while neglecting others, the further we recede from recognizing just how intertwined our collective fates really are. Our linked fates, especially during crises where all humans are simply seeking safety, are even more critical to acknowledge as new allegations emerge about how foreign nationals in Ukraine are being denied access to border crossings.

An African woman studying at a Ukrainian medical school told CNN she was removed from a bus headed to Poland and instructed to walk instead, while she witnessed bus after bus transporting Ukrainians.

Other foreign nationals describe being continually demoted to the back of border crossing lines and threatened with physical violence from guards, prompting the African Union to raise concerns about the unacceptable dissimilar treatment of peoples escaping Ukraine.

Austin Bogues: Is there a chance Ukraine wins? Former NATO Supreme Allied Commander Wes Clark answers.

Its times like these when we must reassert that Putins invasion places both Ukrainians and foreign nationals living in Ukraine in the same life-or-death predicament, as missiles rain down indiscriminately.

So, too, its times like these when we must reaffirm that the decimation of homelands, livelihoods and dreams is unequivocally tragic and compelling, no matter which groups of refugees it happens to or where.

Henna Hundal (@hennahundal) is a public policy specialist and a researcher at the Stanford University School of Medicine. Simran Jeet Singh (@simran) is the executive director of the Aspen Institute's Religion & Society Program.

You can read diverse opinions from our Board of Contributors and other writers on the Opinion front page, on Twitter @usatodayopinion and in our daily Opinion newsletter. To respond to a column, submit a comment to letters@usatoday.com.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Ukraine refugees fleeing Russian invasion reflect all refugees
Luxembourg  4 March 2021 - Subsea 7 S.A. (Oslo Brs: SUBC, ADR: SUBCY) today announced the award of a contract by Equinor for the front-end engineering and design (FEED) study for the marine installations associated with the Krafla development project, offshore Norway.

The awarded work is required to finalise the technical definition of the proposed development prior to Equinor and its partners making the final investment decision (FID) planned late 2022. The FEED study will begin immediately.

Subsea 7 has recognised the FEED award in its order backlog in the first quarter of 2022. The value of a potential, subsequent EPCI contract would only be recognised by Subsea 7 in its backlog upon FID, and would represent a large1 project award.

Project management and engineering will take place in our offices in Stavanger and Aberdeen. Offshore installation activities would be scheduled for 2024, 2025 and 2026.

Monica Bjrkmann, Vice President for Subsea 7 Norway said: This award continues our long-standing collaboration with Equinor. The study enables Subsea 7 to engage early in the field development process, optimising design solutions and contributing to the final investment decision. We are delighted to be a trusted partner for Krafla field development, and we look forward to working closely with Equinor to successfully deliver our scope with safety and quality at the forefront throughout.

(1) Subsea 7 defines a large contract as being between USD 300 million and USD 500 million.





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Subsea 7 is a global leader in the delivery of offshore projects and services for the evolving energy industry, creating sustainable value by being the industrys partner and employer of choice in delivering the efficient offshore solutions the world needs.

Subsea 7 is listed on the Oslo Brs (SUBC), ISIN LU0075646355, LEI 222100AIF0CBCY80AH62.

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Story continues

Contact for investor enquiries:

Katherine Tonks

Investor Relations Director

Tel +44 (0)20 8210 5568

katherine.tonks@subsea7.com

Contact for media enquiries:

Jan Roger Moksnes

Communications Manager, Norway

Tel +47 415 15 777

janroger.moksnes@subsea7.com

www.subsea7.com

Forward-Looking Statements: This announcement may contain forward-looking statements (within the meaning of the safe harbour provisions of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995). These statements relate to our current expectations, beliefs, intentions, assumptions or strategies regarding the future and are subject to known and unknown risks that could cause actual results, performance or events to differ materially from those expressed or implied in these statements. Forward-looking statements may be identified by the use of words such as anticipate, believe, estimate, expect, future, goal, intend, likely may, plan, project, seek, should, strategy will, and similar expressions. The principal risks which could affect future operations of the Group are described in the Risk Management section of the Groups Annual Report and Consolidated Financial Statements for the year ended 31 December 2020. Factors that may cause actual and future results and trends to differ materially from our forward-looking statements include (but are not limited to): (i) our ability to deliver fixed price projects in accordance with client expectations and within the parameters of our bids, and to avoid cost overruns; (ii) our ability to collect receivables, negotiate variation orders and collect the related revenue; (iii) our ability to recover costs on significant projects; (iv) capital expenditure by oil and gas companies, which is affected by fluctuations in the price of, and demand for, crude oil and natural gas; (v) unanticipated delays or cancellation of projects included in our backlog; (vi) competition and price fluctuations in the markets and businesses in which we operate; (vii) the loss of, or deterioration in our relationship with, any significant clients; (viii) the outcome of legal proceedings or governmental inquiries; (ix) uncertainties inherent in operating internationally, including economic, political and social instability, boycotts or embargoes, labour unrest, changes in foreign governmental regulations, corruption and currency fluctuations; (x) the effects of a pandemic or epidemic or a natural disaster; (xi) liability to third parties for the failure of our joint venture partners to fulfil their obligations; (xii) changes in, or our failure to comply with, applicable laws and regulations (including regulatory measures addressing climate change); (xiii) operating hazards, including spills, environmental damage, personal or property damage and business interruptions caused by adverse weather; (xiv) equipment or mechanical failures, which could increase costs, impair revenue and result in penalties for failure to meet project completion requirements; (xv) the timely delivery of vessels on order and the timely completion of ship conversion programmes; (xvi) our ability to keep pace with technological changes and the impact of potential information technology, cyber security or data security breaches; and (xvii) the effectiveness of our disclosure controls and procedures and internal control over financial reporting;. Many of these factors are beyond our ability to control or predict. Given these uncertainties, you should not place undue reliance on the forward-looking statements. Each forward-looking statement speaks only as of the date of this announcement. We undertake no obligation to update publicly or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

Attachment




Venezuela said its minimum wage would now be 50% pegged to the national petro (PTR) cryptocurrency, according to a report from Bloomberg on Friday.

The president of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro, announced the new monthly minimum wage of 126 Venezuelan bolivars ($28). This represents a 18-fold increase to the national minimum wage, which would be 50% pegged to petro, the government cryptocurrency.

At the time of writing, the Venezuelan government did not immediately respond to request for further details.

Petro is built on top of the DASH blockchain and is centralized around government issuance, making it more like a central bank digital currency (CBDC) than a cryptocurrency.

Not much is known about the petro because its advertised block explorer is inaccessible. While the WayBack internet archive shows something that looked like a block explorer available in April 2020, the page has been blank ever since.

In theory, it is possible to purchase PTR with bitcoin (BTC) and litecoin (LTC) from either the Venezuelan central bank or local exchanges, however the prices vary wildly between the central bank rate and private exchange rate.

According to reports, most Venezuelans do not use PTR by choice rather out of necessity. For instance, pension payments are made in PTR.
(AFP via Getty Images)

The world is too much with us, Wordsworth wrote two centuries ago. He was lamenting the pace of commercial life and the loss of contact with nature. Today, history presses down with a relentless fury unimaginable in earlier times. The digital age, just a few decades old, gives us access to events around the world in real time.

It also allows those who wish to unleash evil to do so with greater speed and lethality. Smart weapons, including battlefield nuclear weapons, raise the prospect of focused destruction just short of the Mutually Assured Destruction that maintained a measure of stability from 1945 to today. Cyberattacks can shut down energy grids, financial markets and government networks in microseconds. Viruses spread and mutate from wet markets in China to every country in the world at the speed of jet travel.

In recent threats, we have moved from existential threats to democracy in the United States, from alpha to delta to omicron, to concentration camps incarcerating a million people Muslims in Xinjiang, to crackdowns in Kashmir locking down millions more, while humanitarian and human rights crises in Yemen and Egypt and Gaza and Libya and elsewhere continue unceasingly. And we can barely pay attention to less acute but no less pressing global crises like climate change.

And now Ukraine. A land war in Europe with one of the most powerful armies of the world invading a courageous citizen army outnumbered in men and material by major multiples. Putins blitzkrieg tactics have stalled  did he not learn the lessons of Napoleon and Hitler about the fearsome Eurasian winters?  but we should make no mistake. The early humiliation of the Russian Army will only lead to massive escalation.

Thankfully, there has been unity, consistency and energy in the worlds response. It is remarkable that Germany has come off the fence and pulled the plug on a crucial energy source in Nord Stream 2. It has not traded honor for gas. Qatar has stepped up to try to make up the shortfall in global energy markets. Saudi Arabia needs to do the same.

Story continues

Hungary and Poland have been no beacons of liberty and its leaders have followed a Putin-esque model of illiberal democracy presided over by a single leader extinguishing pluralism and dissent. But they know their own neighborhoods, and have made a clear commitment to the west and to Ukrainian refugees. Sweden and Switzerland understand that neutrality is no longer an option in an interconnected world. Even China has sounded an uncertain trumpet, abstaining on a resolution at the UN Security Council, while making unconvincing statements suggesting that this crisis is the fault of anyone but the author of unprovoked aggression.

The global community has been far greater and unified than at any moment since 9/11. But that unity was fleeting and was squandered by the disastrous moral and political failures of the Bush administration. It is essential that international organizations, national leaders and NGOs maintain their focus on Ukraine as well as on the surrounding countries of the old Soviet Empire and the Warsaw Pact, many of which have their security guaranteed by Article 5 of the NATO Treaty. Putin cannot call our bluff again as he did in 2013 in Syria and 2014 in Crimea.

But Putins Hitlerian incursion must prompt a wider strategic and moral accounting. Why Ukraine, but not Xinjiang or Rwanda or Syria or Myanmar? Ukraine is strategically crucial but we must think through whether we are valuing white European lives differently. Are we paying attention because there are large, politically important constituencies of Ukrainians and neighboring countries in the United States and elsewhere in Europe? What do we do when moral principles do not overlap with our geostrategic or political agenda?

The United States cannot be the worlds policeman, but we should still consider: What are the criteria for effective action in Ukraine and in other flashpoints around the world, today and in the months to come? Are sanctions enough to bring an autarkic country run by a leader seething with grievance to its knees? Will the provision of weapons come soon enough to make a difference or will they only increase the bloodshed? What can we do on a long-term basis to prevent the destruction wrought by leaders for life who often turn toward brutality and irrationality as their isolation grows and they confront their own mortality? Significantly, this final question is one that we as Americans now need to ask in our own country as well as in other places.

The Biden administration is negotiating the Ukrainian crisis skillfully, although at the moment it is not reflected in political support. Many Americans seem more interested in Critical Race Theory and gas prices than the fate of the post-war world  but its important we remain as globally engaged as never before.
Mar. 3WILLMAR

 Emilio Ozornia, 37, of Willmar was sentenced to 125 months in prison  more than 10 years  after he was found guilty of selling more than 17 grams of methamphetamine to a confidential reliable informant of the CEE-VI Drug and Gang Task Force back in March 2020.

Ozornia was convicted by a jury in January of one felony count of first-degree drug sale and sentenced on Thursday. He also had prior controlled substance convictions. He will serve his sentence at the Minnesota Correctional Facility in St. Cloud and has received credit for already having served 418 days.

According to court documents, an informant met with Ozornia in front of a residence on the 600 block of Johanna Avenue Southwest in Willmar on March 10, 2020. The informant and Ozornia walked for a bit before splitting up. Later the informant met a second individual at the house on Johanna Avenue and then walked together to a second residence, this one on the 600 block of Julii Street Southeast.

The informant said in a statement to the CEE-VI Drug Task Force that they met with Ozornia on the back porch of the house on Julii Street. There the informant handed funds provided by the task force to the second individual, who handed the money to Ozornia, who then handed a bag of methamphetamine to the second individual who then handed the bag over to the informant.

The court documents said the informant then left the house and met up with CEE-VI agents at a predetermined location and handed over the bag of methamphetamine. The informant also positively identified Ozornia from a photograph.

Ozornia is still facing three felony drug possession charges from another case. The next hearing for that is scheduled for May 24.
A federal judge may entertain a motion to dismiss murder charges against James Dean Cloud as early as Monday in the 2019 mass murder on the Yakima Reservation that left five dead.
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Russian President Vladimir Putins war of aggression against Ukraine is in full swing, with the final outcome unknown. Given Russias military dominance over the Ukrainian army, few seem to doubt that if the assault continues, the Russian army will defeat the Ukrainian military.

But does this mean Putin can achieve victory over a country larger than France with a population of some 44 million? In his obsession with Ukraine, Putin greatly misunderstands it. This misunderstanding contributed to his decision to invade, and it stands to foil his plans for restoration of Russian power over the country.

In his hourlong speech delivered days before he launched a full-scale military invasion, Putin aired a litany of grievances. He claimed the U.S.-led NATO bloc of Western democracies was set on destroying Russia by way of Ukraine. Enumerating fantastic scenarios that included the U.S. planning to put nuclear weapons on Ukraines territory and NATO assisting Ukraine to retake annexed Crimea and placing ballistic missiles aimed at Moscow in Ukraines provincial airports, Putin presented Ukraine as both a mortal threat to Russia and a victim in need of liberation.

In his delusion, he alleged that the West controls Ukraine, down to the level of municipalities and the lowest units in the military. And Ukrainians are victims of foreign powers and the ruling Nazi government (though President Volodymyr Zelenskiyy is Jewish and had family members who were murdered in the Holocaust), who have been deprived of their true identity  a common identity with Russians.

Putin argued in a lengthy essay last summer that Ukraine is merely a quasi-state, an artificial construct of Vladimir Lenin born after the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution and that Ukraine is not a real nation but a natural part of a greater Russia.

Historians and scholars of nationalism can take numerous issues with Putins reading of history, starting with the assumption that some of todays nations are real while others are artificial. Dominant theories of nationalism reject the premise that modern nations are millennia-old natural entities, and hold instead that all nations are socially and politically constructed over the course of relatively recent history.

Historical processes by which the modern Ukrainian nation emerged are complex. Ukrainian identity continued to evolve since the Soviet Unions collapse in 1991, oscillating between Russia and the West. In recent years, however, Ukrainian identity drew away from Russia.

Ironically, Putin himself contributed greatly to the solidification of a distinct Ukrainian national identity with popular views increasingly aligned against Russia. As Russia moved to annex Crimea and foment and support a separatist insurgency in the Donbas region in 2014, following the protests that drove the pro-Russian Ukrainian president out of power, civic Ukrainian identity strengthened while pro-Russian attitudes declined.

Putin, however, repeatedly either dismissed these Ukrainian identity changes altogether, or framed polling data as false preferences, because pro-Russian Ukrainians were afraid to answer polls because they were ruled by Nazis.

These delusions about Ukraine and Ukrainians almost certainly informed Putins military plans.

Putin called on Ukrainian soldiers to surrender and appears to be counting on a quick victory and outright welcome from liberated Ukrainians, now free to express their true pro-Russian preferences.

In this frame, there would be no need for an occupation, and Putin said he is not planning to occupy Ukraine permanently. Instead, the stated goal of the military action is to demilitarize and denazify Ukraine.

Western intelligence reports indicate that Putins game plan seems to involve installing a pro-Russian puppet government in Kyiv that will then rule Ukraine, guided by the Kremlins wishes. These plans extend far beyond military or foreign policy alliances, and a denazification campaign would likely target civil society activists, pro-democracy and anti-corruption campaigners, as well as intellectuals and academics.

According to a recent British report, Ukrainians targeted in this campaign would be eliminated or sent to concentration camps. The remaining good Ukrainians will presumably live happily under Russian rule.

But how does one rule over a country of tens of millions that rejects this rule? A puppet government, if installed, will lack any legitimacy and can only rule with the full force of Russian guns behind it, which would necessitate Russias sustained occupation of Ukraine.

As Western states contemplate further actions and weigh probabilities of Putins next moves, two things appear certain: Ukraines resolve to be free, and Putins denial of Ukraines right to exist as a free state. Standing up to Putin as he seeks to destroy freedom for Ukraine defends not only Ukraine and its people. It would defend a core value of Western democracies and thus their national interests as well.
Congress will try once again to save local journalism this year.

A key bill to stabilize the news industry, prevent further layoffs and position it for long-term survival is being revised and prepared for reintroduction by U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar and others.

The bipartisan Journalism Competition and Preservation Act (S 673) would "give these news outlets a fighting chance," Klobuchar said at a Feb. 2 hearing the Minnesota Democrat hosted on the journalism crisis.

The JCPA would allow publishers to jointly negotiate with Google and Facebook, to secure fair compensation for news content the tech giants are profiting from.

Expect a bruising fight. When a similar policy was debated last year in Australia, a much smaller market, the platforms went ballistic. Google threatened to cut services across the nation and Facebook temporarily blocked all news on its platform.

Their threats backfired. The policy was enacted and all but a few outlets have since negotiated content licensing deals. I wouldn't be surprised if platforms are stonewalling the last few outlets for political reasons, to cast doubt on the policy's efficacy as the U.S. and other countries consider similar legislation.

Overall, Australia's policy led to more journalists getting hired and a lot fewer layoffs, its outgoing competition chief, Rod Sims, told The Guardian last month. Sims estimates platforms are now paying more than $200 million yearly for news.

In preparation for debate when JCPA is reintroduced, here is a discussion of some common misconceptions about the policy.

Q: News outlets voluntarily put content on Google and Facebook. If they don't like the terms, why not stop?

A: Media companies have to be on the platforms as they become more dependent on digital revenue. But they can't get fair treatment if platforms abuse their monopolies, as federal investigations determined. There's a "significant and growing asymmetry of power" between platforms and news organizations, a 2020 House antitrust report found.

Q: Outlets don't need special treatment, they can negotiate on their own.

A: A few giant media companies have heft to negotiate with platforms. But the vast majority don't, including more than 6,000 local newspapers providing most of America's essential news coverage. Individually, they don't have resources or leverage to negotiate content licensing deals with Google and Facebook.

Q: This mostly helps big corporations.

A: Not really. Again, giant outlets don't need to band together. Smaller ones must work together to get properly paid by platforms. This proved true in Australia, where a coalition of small, rural newspapers secured compensation after the bargaining policy took effect.

Q: It's for Rupert Murdoch.

A: Thats incorrect. The Wall Street Journal, owned by Murdochs News Corp, already made a licensing deal with Google last year, paying the Journal tens of millions a year for its content. Its true that News Corp was an early advocate for Australias policy, which helped it secure licensing deals. Such policies are needed so other media companies receive similar support. If you hate Murdoch, opposing JCPA is shooting yourself in the foot, because the result would be that his outlets get sustainable revenue from content licensing and other news outlets do not.

Q: Making Google and Facebook pay for content just makes things more expensive for everyone.

A: Wrong. Facebook and Google pay billions for content that draws people to their platforms, just not for news they're accustomed to getting for almost nothing. Last year, Google created a $100 million fund to compensate people posting short videos (and started paying for news in Australia) and still grew net income 89% year over year, to $76 billion. Mark Zuckerberg announced that his company will spend more than $1 billion "to reward creators for great content they create on Facebook and Instagram through 2022." But not factual news.

Q: This will break the internet as we know it.

A: That was a bogus threat made by platforms and their allies in Australia. It proved false, as platforms are now paying for news there, and miraculously the internet still works. Variations of this propaganda continue, by mischaracterizing JCPA as seeking to implement a regime of charging for links. The goal is ensuring fair payment for content, similar to what's been done with recorded music.

Q: This authorizes cartels, which do bad things.

A: That's deeply misleading and insinuates that news outlets and their trade groups are akin to drug lords. A better comparison is to agricultural cooperatives that emerged in the early 1900s to help farmers survive amid monopolies and broken marketplaces. Congress in 1922 approved an antitrust exemption allowing farmers to market their products cooperatively. The JCPA is a much narrower exemption and temporary, but it would similarly allow publishers to collectively secure a fair price for their goods.

Q: Newspapers are dying, why bother?

A: There's bipartisan support for JCPA because saving local news and reining problematic monopolies will benefit the public. Abundant research shows that democracy depends on coverage provided by local papers, and it suffers when they fade away. It's also too soon to write off newspapers. Some are finding success with new business models emphasizing digital subscriptions and advertising. But progress is hamstrung by a distorted market, in which a few platforms dominate the marketplace and don't fairly compensate publishers for news content they profit from.
To the editor -- The unprovoked and brutal invasion of Ukraine by Russia, with the aid of Belarus, is a shocking affront to international law.

The result is both a humanitarian and geopolitical disaster in the making. It is apparent that Ukraine desperately needs material assistance from America and other democracies.

America has not only a national security imperative but a moral imperative to continue to assist the Ukrainian people and their government. Western governments have the capability to provide material assistance  both for defense and humanitarian aid.

Americans can amplify their voices by expressing their support for aid to Ukraine to their elected representatives and by providing direct aid to organizations like the Red Cross. Now more than ever it is vital for Americans to stand with the Ukrainian people in a meaningful manner by advocating forcefully for continued aid to Ukraine.

The Ukrainian people are fighting for freedom  we must stand beside them by being an arsenal for democracy and decency in face of brutal authoritarian aggression.

JEFFREY SCHAAP YOUNG

Yakima
Events in countries many of us have never even been to can seem worlds away, unconnected to our own lives.

But if you can ignore the cold cruelty of Russias unprovoked and unapologetic invasion of Ukraine, an independent democracy, somethings missing in your soul.

Clearly, the Yakama Nation feels the same.

Thats why we salute the example the Tribal Council is setting with this weeks formal condemnation of the onslaught, which has killed at least hundreds, if not thousands, of innocent civilians.

The invasion represents an unprecedented attack on Ukrainian sovereignty and the Ukrainian peoples human rights that all democratic nations, including the Yakama Nation, must jointly and resoundingly condemn, the council said in a resolution passed Tuesday.

If anybody understands unwanted intrusions, its the Yakama Nation. Tribal leaders compared the Russian offensive to attacks tribal people have suffered since the arrival of Europeans on the shores of North America more than 500 years ago.

And if anybody understands sacrifice, its the numerous Yakamas whove served in the United States armed forces over the years. A number of them have given up their lives for their patriotism.

Former Marine Shawn Marceaus son, Joe, was one of them.

Marceau, who runs the Yakama Nations veterans affairs office, pushed for Tuesdays resolution, reminding tribal leaders that Yakamas currently serving in the military are stationed near Ukraine.

Tribal Council Vice Chair Virgil Lewis, a veteran whos part of the councils Veterans Committee, supported the idea, too.

We have to be aware of whats going on in a country so far away, Lewis said, according to a Yakama Nation Review report by Carol Craig.

So the resolution passed  along with a promise from Tribal Council Chairman Delano J. Saluskin that the tribe will donate $5,000 to the American Red Cross to support service members in eastern Europe.

Few among us have direct memories of World War II, which  like the invasion of Ukraine  started with a madman deciding to ignore national borders, democratically elected governments and any semblance of basic human rights or dignity.

Our sincere hope is that the invasion that began a little over a week ago can somehow be resolved without further bloodshed. The worlds unified resolve in imposing drastic sanctions on Russia is inflicting significant economic pain on Russian President Vladimir Putin and the obscenely rich oligarchs whove bled untold billions from their own countrys economy.

But with a despot like Putin showing contempt for international laws and agreements, and threatening everything from public executions to full-on nuclear war, these are grim and worrisome days.

The stories from World War II never fail to mention the way Americans rallied together to work unselfishly for the common goal of defeating a merciless, bloodthirsty enemy. How patriotism helped the country set aside differences and unify under one flag.

The resolve and compassion of the Yakama Nation is in keeping with that tradition. The Tribal Councils resolution is a lesson for us all at a time like this.
Greensboro, NC (27407)

Today

Partly cloudy. High 77F. Winds ENE at 10 to 15 mph..

Tonight

Partly cloudy early followed by cloudy skies overnight. Slight chance of a rain shower. Low 62F. Winds SE at 5 to 10 mph.
Mothers are special. They give us life. They nurture us. And, they shape the way we think an
PHOENIX  While pregnant with her second child 12 years ago, Shawn Soumilas began having contractions and thought she was in labor. But the pain was excruciating, and she knew something wasnt right.

I called my doctor, and she said, Lets go ahead and head over to the OB-GYN triage unit.

It was the day before the Fourth of July, and the hospital in Scottsdale was busy. Then a shift change occurred. A new nurse was supposed to perform a biophysical profile on the baby, checking for heart rate, breathing and movement, but, Soumilas said, she neglected to do so.

I was a pebble under her shoe, Soumilas recalled. She just kept barking at me that I was dehydrated because its July in Scottsdale.

Things quickly went downhill. Hospital personnel sent Soumilas for an ultrasound, but then the tech told her they needed her back in triage  without saying why. While waiting to be transported, Soumilas was overcome with nausea.

My husband told me later, thats when he felt like I was starting to die.

Back in triage, Soumilas was met by a wall of doctors yelling, Is that her? Is that her?

They rushed her into an operating room and inserted an IV. Before she went completely dark, Soumilas remembers screaming, Please, take care of my baby.

When she awoke the next day, she asked her nurse, Wheres my baby? But she didnt need to wait for a response to realize the worst had happened.

I could tell by her eyes that he was gone.

Counting kicks, helping moms

Soumilas later learned she had experienced a rare complication called a placental abruption, in which the placenta separates from the uterine wall before birth  sometimes depriving oxygen to an unborn child and causing internal bleeding in the mother.

I lost three times my blood volume, she recalled, and I needed blood, plasma and platelet transfusions. They told my husband I had about a 30% chance of getting through the surgery.

By the time doctors got to the baby, he had been without oxygen for too long. Soumilas lost her son, Zachary, at 38 weeks.

As she recovered, Soumilas began researching everything she could about stillbirth, and one thing struck her. A symptom of placental abruption is decreased fetal movement, and two days before losing her baby, shed reported to doctors that she hadnt felt much movement.

I was told lay on my side, drink some juice, see if he perks up. So I did that, she said. I was told, His due dates almost here; hes probably settling down for birth. And that doesnt happen. They dont stop moving.

If I would have been  tracking his patterns, then I would have known something had changed. If I would have gone in two days before, he would have been alive.

Soumilas eventually discovered a campaign called Count the Kicks, dedicated to teaching expectant mothers about fetal movement and tracking the health of their unborn children. The effort grew out of the nonprofit Healthy Birth Day, started in 2008 in Iowa by five mothers who all lost daughters to stillbirth or infant death.

Working with state health agencies, the organization provides a free app or paper chart to help expectant mothers track their babies movements during the third trimester so that if they detect any unexpected changes, they can seek help immediately.

The campaign, already in 14 states, is expanding this month to Arizona. The Arizona Department of Health Services is partnering with Count the Kicks to get educational materials in multiple languages to health providers, birthing centers and others who are part of an expectant moms journey.

Too many people think that stillbirth cant be prevented. We strongly disagree, said Emily Price, executive director of Count the Kicks. In 2010, Price noticed her babys movements had slowed, but because she had been tracking them, she alerted her doctor and her son, Hayden, was born healthy.

Stillbirth is the death of a fetus at 20 or more weeks during pregnancy. Causes may include infections, birth defects, lifestyle, or problems with the umbilical cord or placenta, as Soumilas experienced.

Stillbirths have decreased in the U.S. over the past 15 years. Nevertheless, nearly 22,000 were recorded in 2019, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Mothers most at risk include Black women, those 35 and older, women who smoke during pregnancy and those with such medical conditions as diabetes and obesity. But they arent alone.

Hispanic women are at greater risk, Price said. Indigenous women are at greater risk. And it is completely unacceptable that in 2022, we are losing babies to stillbirth at the rate that we are.

New research also shows that women sick with COVID-19 at the time of delivery face greater risk of stillbirth. One CDC study found that among 1,249,634 deliveries in March 2020 through September 2021, stillbirths occurred in 0.65% of deliveries. But among those with COVID-19 at the time of delivery, the stillbirth rate was 1.26%.

Arizona recorded nearly 500 stillbirths in 2019, the latest data available, with clear disparities among women of color.

Its a much larger problem in American Indian communities, as well as African American communities, said Angie Lorenzo, who heads the office of womens health at the state Department of Health Services. Those are the two largest hit by this.

Experts examining such disparities note that in many cases, a cause of death isnt even documented, but they point to aggravating factors that include access to good health care, institutional bias and differences in health care before and during pregnancy.

Racial disparities definitely persist, said Stephaney Moody, health equity coordinator at Count the Kicks. Were not having the conversations. Its not an easy one to have, but its one that Im not afraid of doing.

Warning signs  and solutions

Although lack of fetal movement is one warning sign of potential problems, experts disagree on whether counting kicks directly correlates to any decrease in stillbirths.

A 2009 study in the journal BMC Pregnancy Childbirth that reviewed previous research on fetal movement monitoring found some evidence of impact on stillbirths in high-risk pregnancies, but it recommended more study be done to determine the effect of universal fetal movement monitoring.

Another review in 2021 agreed that more study is necessary to evaluate the effectiveness of various methods of monitoring fetal movement, but it noted that fetal movement count monitoring is a low-cost and low-tech method that has the potential to prevent worsening problems with unborn babies and merits the attention of providers and pregnant women.

Count the Kicks is undertaking its own research as well. Researchers at Des Moines University and the Harkin Institute for Public Policy & Citizen Engagement surveyed 809 women who used the Count the Kicks app and determined that users increased their knowledge of movement patterns and were more likely to be seen by a doctor for decreased fetal movement.

The app that Count the Kicks developed works with expectant moms to track how long it takes to feel 10 movements, including kicking and rolling. Count the Kicks has also developed a paper form to track movements and average them out.

Every baby and every pregnancy is different, Moody said. Maybe it would take my baby 10 minutes to get the 10 kicks  but it takes your baby 45 minutes. The key is knowing what is normal.

In Arizona, the health department and Count the Kicks are working to specifically target underserved communities and women of color. Materials are available in English and Spanish, and Moody and Lorenzo said the goal is to provide brochures, posters and app reminder cards in Navajo as well.

The Department of Health Services is partnering with Dine College on the Navajo Nation and South Phoenix Healthy Start, a provider to women of color, to help spread word of the effort.

Moody said she hopes to see a drop in stillbirths in the state by introducing the program to not only expecting parents, but also to the maternal health workers and providers that are in the state.

Honoring Zach

After volunteering with Count the Kicks, Soumilas now represents Arizona as an ambassador for the organization  to share her story and spread awareness of the campaign. She connects with groups and hospitals that treat pregnant women, and is heartened that the partnership with AZDHS will bring added attention.

Today, Soumilas, 48, lives in Prescott with her husband, Theo, and 13-year-old son, Ian. But Zach is always in her heart.

It will always be hard to know that Zach is supposed to be right by Ians side during all of our memorable family moments, she said. When I was pregnant with Zach, I felt a sense of peace that they would always have each other in life.

And every day, she works to honor her son through her work with Count the Kicks.

If you do see a change, youve got to speak up Dont wait until tomorrow, she said. Having that conversation is extremely important for women to know that youre the one thats empowered to do this for you.

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A centrist analyst finds the governments support for Ukraine at best lukewarm. A right-wing commentator accuses the opposition of spinning what he calls absurd conspiracy theories.

In Azonnali, Bence Pinter thinks that the Hungarian government has become increasingly isolated in the EU. The centrist pundit suspects the government is still trying to perform a balancing act, in its stance on the Ukraine-Russian war.



Pinter recalls that the EU and NATO stand united against Russia, and Hungarys closest allies, the Visegrad Group and Germany, actively support Ukraine with weapons, while Hungary is not allowing the transit of lethal weapons.



He likens the Russian attack on Ukraine to the 1956 Soviet invasion of Hungary and accuses the government of cowardly trying to remain neutral. In an aside, Pinter claims that PM Orban shares the same illiberal, nationalist, conservative ideology Russian President Putin believes in. He concludes by suggesting that if Putin fails, PM Orban will be seen as a traitor by his own allies.



In Vasarnap, Zoltan Kaszab dismisses left-wing accusation that Mr Orban has isolated himself within Hungarys circle of allies.



The right-wing columnist recalls that opposition frontrunner Peter Marki-Zay went so far as to claim that PM Orban visited President Putin in early February to prepare Russias war on Ukraine, which would imply that PM Orban is a key actor on the international scene and a warmonger at that.



Kaszab dismisses such speculations as ridiculous, and politically motivated. The Hungarian government has firmly supported all EU sanctions against Russia, he emphasises. In a passing remark, Kaszab criticizes opposition frontrunner Marki-Zay for suggesting that by offering Transcapathian refugees Hungarian citizenship, Fidesz hopes they will vote for him in the April election.



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Hungary wants peace, Prime Minister Viktor Orban said in an interview published in the weekly Mandiner. In the interview given earlier this week, he said Russia was rearranging the European security map.

Russia feels safe only with a buffer zone around the country, and is attempting to turn Ukraine into a neutral zone by military action, after diplomatic attempts have failed to do so, he said.



Hungary has made it clear that it does not accept war as a means to any end, and condemns all who choose that path, Orban said.



Russias demands have since remained unchanged, and since the military advantage is on their side, it was only a matter of time before the talks started, he said. Hungary has a vested interest in a speedy agreement and the restoration of peace to the region, Orban said.



We condemn Russia for launching a war on Ukraine. We think the parties should restart talks as soon as possible, and have offered to host the talks. But what really matters is that they start talking. All Europe should work on achieving peace, he said.



Until recent times, Hungary had balanced and fair relations with Russia, Orban said. Russian President Vladimir Putin always honoured our agreements, and Hungary did the same, he said. Hungary will have to redefine its goals and interests in view of the new state of affairs, he said.



The Hungarian government has not vetoed EU sanctions against Russia, and sees EU unity as of paramount importance in the present situation, he said. Regarding bilateral ties after the war, Russia will definitely still exist afterwards, he said.



There is no reason whatsoever for us to sever energy cooperation with Russia. EU leaders said themselves that the sanctions will not harm the delivery of energy resources from Russia because that would ruin the European economy, he said.



Should the upgrade of the Paks nuclear plant fall victim to the sanctions, Hungary would be forced to buy even more gas from Russia at higher prices, he said. I do not support that step, because Hungarians should not have to pay the price of war, he said. Orban said that in times of war, strategic calmness speaking less but succinctly, responsibly, was of the essence.



At times like these, we cannot allow for campaign interests to take over, he said. The opposition wants to send weapons and soldiers to shoot at and fight against the Russians. This proves they have no routine, no knowledge and no sense of responsibility. We need responsible politics, security and stability, rather than adventurers, he said.



Orban offered Hungarys help in the talks with Russia. Hungary is ready to host the talks, and continues to provide aid to Ukraine, fuel, food and other basic goods, he said. We also accept everyone coming from Ukraine, he said.



Regarding the world economy, Orban said China was likely to become the strongest economic and military power in the near future. Hungary, with its population of 10 million, must manoeuvre cleverly, he said, adding that we are in an alliance with the West but would also like to develop beneficial relations with the rising great power.



Commenting on the new German government, he said that after reading their programme, he found there were many question marks. He said the programme announced that Germany would become an immigrant country, denied that society is divided exclusively into men and women, they plan to legalise soft drugs, empty the notion of the nation and they want a federal Europe, he added.



We would like to sign a tolerance agreement with them in order to ensure that we could go our own way in these matters, he added.



All Ukraine Refugees Taken Care Of



All refugees from Ukraine in Hungary are being taken care of, the prime minister said in Beregsurany, at the Hungary-Ukraine border.



Viktor Orban told the press that in times of trouble, calmness, levelheadedness, experience and routine are of paramount importance.



[W]e have crisis-tolerant ministers, Orban said, adding that most had already handled some kind of crisis, so coordination was working well.



He said the work of volunteers was well-coordinated and no donation would go to waste, with handouts distributed and forwarded to the intended recipients.



Refugees without acquaintances in Hungary to accommodate them are being placed in temporary shelters, he said. Centres have been set up around Hungary where they will receive food and shelter, even if they must stay for a lengthy period, he added.



Orban said preparations have started to organise work for refugees.



We will try to offer an opportunity for everyone to create their own livelihood, he said, adding that this is a work-based country, and here we help everyone get work.





MTI / PM's Press Office Photo: Vivien Cher Benko
Hungarys security is of paramount importance in the current situation, the prime ministers chief of staff has said. It is in the countrys explicit interest that it should not get dragged into the war.

The Hungarian government has firmly decided not to send troops to Ukraine, neither will it allow weapons to be transported across the Hungary-Ukraine border, Gergely Gulyas told a regular government press briefing.



Referring to expert opinion and available information, Gulyas said there was a fair chance that such shipments could be destroyed, adding that the Hungarian decision served the security of Transcarpathia and its people.



The security of the local ethnic Hungarian minority is of prime importance, Gulyas said. Many have been forced to leave Ukraine, he said, but added that men between 18 and 60 were now forbidden to leave the country, therefore many families have decided to stay.



Gulyas also noted the governments position that refugees should be accommodated in the first safe country, which, for Ukrainian refugees, was Hungary. The minister noted the importance of providing humanitarian aid, adding that the government was working to coordinate and contribute to the aid campaign launched by civil groups.



Border crossing stations are open continuously, while the government has appointed facilities to provide accommodation and help centres in six towns near the border in an effort to help every refugee, Gulyas said.



According to Wednesdays figures, some 120,000 people have crossed from Ukraine into Hungary, Gulyas said. The government has allocated 1.3 billion forints to Hungarys charity organisations, he said, adding that the sum may be increased.



Hungary is a transit country for some of the refugees, especially for nationals of third countries that have so far been staying in Ukraine legally, but there are also ethnic Hungarians with family and friends in Hungary with a place to go to, at least provisionally, the minister said.



The government has sent aid to Transcarpathia worth 600 million forints, including 30 tonnes of food and 100 litres of fuel, Gulyas said. Another shipment of medical aid worth 140 million forints has just left Hungary, he added. Hungary will do everything to help not only those who have fled to Hungary but those also who have stayed, he said.



Hungary backs all sanctions against Russia that have the support of the rest of the EU, Gulyas said, adding that Hungary has not used its veto and will not do so. Hungary condemns Russias intervention in Ukraine, Gulyas said. War is an unacceptable way to resolve disputes, he said.



He warned, however, that one must be careful with sanctions because it is important that the price of war should not be paid by the peoples of Hungary and Europe. There are grave differences of opinion concerning sanctions, and measures should not be taken that impact Europes residents more than those that the sanctions are aimed against, Gulyas said.



He insisted that some are demanding sanctions in areas where it could hurt us, such as in the energy sector. He said that buying the electricity produced by the Paks nuclear plant on the market would cost the average Hungarian household an annual 260,000 forints extra.



Concerning businesses that have already been impacted by the sanctions, Gulyas said Sberbank Hungary had some 70,000 clients who would receive compensation of up to 100,000 euros each. Twelve Hungarian municipalities among depositors of larger amounts will receive assistance from central coffers, he added.



The minister called on all political forces to set aside their own political interests and contribute to creating national unity concerning issues of security and war. He said it was regrettable that the left wing seems to disregard the perils of the war situation for Europe and Hungary.



He slammed Peter Marki-Zay, prime ministerial candidate of the united opposition, for calling refugees from Transcarpathia pro-Russian. The countrys security is even more important than the upcoming elections, he said, adding that making irresponsible remarks in this situation is especially harmful.



Meanwhile, Gulyas said Hungary will scrap mask mandates from Monday, and phase out most coronavirus-related measures. The government will also lift regulations enabling companies to make vaccines mandatory for employees, and abolish those regulating the use of immunity certificates, he added.



The special legal order will remain in place to enable swift government action should a sixth wave of the pandemic hit the country, he said.



The regulations might have to be reintroduced in case of a sixth wave, although virologists are optimistic, Gulyas said. In that case, the symptoms of the illness are expected to be milder than previously, he said.





MTI Photo: Tibor Illyes
The fresh newsletter for the International Community in Hungary - described by readers as a "Great read each week" - is now available for your interest and use via the link below.
YORK  The Four Corners Health Departments COVID transmission rate risk dial has now been moved into the yellow zone  which is a welcome occurrence that hasnt happened in more than a year.

It has been consistently been in the red or high rate of transmission category for a very long time, due to the large number of new COVID cases being recorded in rolling 7-day periods.

The Four Corners Health Department is reporting only 15 new lab-confirmed COVID-19 cases in the entire health district in the last 7-day period.

That is an astounding improvement, considering that figure nearly reached 900 at one point, in a weeks time.

If the districts new case number can go below five, in a 7-day period, the districts transmission rate key could be moved down into the green zone  which indicates low transmission and risk  which has only been recorded here since the very early days of the pandemic back in 2020.

This local trend is also being seen across the state and the nation, as mask mandates and CDC guidelines are being loosened and/or eliminated.

Meanwhile, the Four Corners Department continues to offer free testing, take-home tests and vaccinations. For more information, go to their website at fourcorners.ne.gov.

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YORK  Alexander R. Garcia, 24, of Summerfield, Fla., has pleaded not guilty to four felonies in a case involving the discovery of 130 pounds of marijuana during a traffic stop in York County.

A trooper with the Nebraska State Patrol was on regular patrol on Interstate 80 when he saw Garcia quickly slow upon seeing the cruiser and then allegedly committing a traffic violation while exiting at the Waco interchange.

A traffic stop was initiated.

It was noted the vehicle Garcia was driving had been rented in Medford, Oregon, and was scheduled to be returned in Florida.

The trooper notes in his affidavit filed with the court that Garcias hands and body were rapidly shaking during his contact and he exhibited many signs of extreme nervousness.

The trooper said he saw numerous large duffel bags in the rear of the vehicle and what appeared to be a plastic heat sealed bag hanging out of one of the duffel bags.

Garcia insisted there was nothing illegal in the vehicle but court documents indicate his passenger, Ashley Gornto, also of Florida, said there was marijuana in the vehicle.

A probable cause search of the vehicle was conducted. According to court documents, located in six duffel bags and in the storage compartment in the rear of the vehicle were 106 heat-sealed bags containing approximately 129.7 pounds of marijuana. Located in a book bag in the rear cargo area, inside a coat pocket, was a 1 Glock model 23 handgun which was field stripped, meaning the slide and lower receiver were not connected. Also spread out in the vehicle were 12.5 ounces of dispensary marijuana.

Both were arrested.

Garcia has been charged with delivery of a controlled substance, a Class 2 felony; possession of a firearm while committing a felony, a Class 2 felony; possession of a controlled substance, a Class 4 felony; and having no drug tax stamp, a Class 4 felony.

During arraignment proceedings this past week in York County District Court, he pleaded not guilty to all the felonies and a jury trial has been scheduled for late June.
The Indian automotive market is a tough nut to crack! Although the sales numbers are rising and with growing disposable incomes, more and more four-wheelers are being sold, Indians are still very peculiar about buying a vehicle. And why shouldnt they be? After all, a car, for a middle-class Indian, is the second biggest investment after home. Hence, Indians are very particular about the vehicles they are buying.

As many top bosses from OEMs have said in the past, an Indian buyer needs everything in a vehicle without paying anything for it. This has proven to be a challenge for many globally renowned big auto brands. Case in point, companies like Chevrolet and Ford, both doing good otherwise, wrapped up their businesses in India. But that doesn't stop new players from entering a lucrative market like India!

Also read: Kia Carens MPV launched in India at Rs 8.99 lakh, total 15 variants on offer

As tough as it may be, India is a sitting goldmine for business houses thanks to a massive population base. Kia Motors (now Kia) saw this huge opportunity and entered the Indian market back in August 2019 with the launch of its first offering in the country, Kia Seltos. The South Korean automaker, a part of Hyundai Group, is known for making some of the most good looking and technologically loaded cars at affordable pricing, a reason why its so successful in S. Korea and America.

They replicated the same formula in India to offer tech-loaded, youthful products at an affordable pricing and captured a huge market in no time. Many trade pundits have attributed the Kias success to the brands product strategy apart from quality products and pricing. Heres a look at the reasons for the Kias success in India, sales numbers, and current portfolio -

Sales numbers

Kia India is the fastest automaker to reach sales milestone of one, two and three lakh domestic sales. The company recently registered a cumulative sales (domestic and export) figure of 5 lakh units. Kia has a market share of about 6 percent in just 2.5 years and is among the top 5 automakers of India sales wise.

Its in a constant tussle with Mahindra Auto for the 4th spot. In February, Kia India reported an increase in sales by 8.5 per cent year-on-year basis. Kia sold 18,121 units in February as compared to 16,702 units in February 2021. Although the sales dipped a bit as compared to January 2022.

Kia Seltos remained the top contributor to Kia's overall sales with 6,575 units, while Sonet and Carens contributed 6,154 and 5,109 units. The company says the semiconductor shortage remains a concern and is pulling back the sales. The automaker has recently started the third shift in India and is targeting to produce over 3 lakh units in the calendar year.

Reasons for success in India

Modern products

Kia India is offering some of the most feature loaded and well designed products for the Indian customers. Right from the entry level Sonet to flagship Carnival, all Kia cars have best-in-class features. The newly launched Carens gets many segment-first features as well.

Pricing

Modern and feature loaded vehicles doesnt mean Kia products are expensive. In fact, Kia India is offering the most competitive products to the Indian customers. Case in point, the newly launched Kia Carens is priced at just Rs 8.99 lakh (introductory, ex-showroom) for a 7-seater MPV with SUV styling. The similarly speced and rival Hyundai Alcazar is priced north of Rs 16 lakh.

Dealership network

Apart from products itself, Kia has one of the most modern and largest dealership networks in India. The company also went on to top at the Dealer Satisfaction Survey conducted by FADA, two years in a row in 2020 and 2021. The service quality and vehicle buying journey are all digitized and highly acclaimed from customers.

Safety

Kia products are among the safest in the market and that also pushes the sales of the Kia cars. Many young buyers weigh in safety as an important factor while buying cars. Recently, Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) recognized eight Kia vehicles on its 2022 TOP SAFETY PICK (TSP) and TOP SAFETY PICK+ (TSP+) awards lists including Seltos, Carnival among others.

Product mix

Another factor that played in favour of Kia India was its product mix for India. Kia started with mid-SUV segment thats heavy in demand, followed by Kia Carnival premium MPV, creating a new segment altogether, making it a hit among celebrities. Not only this, Kia concentrated on Indias SUV fetish by launching a compact SUV and later a MPV with SUV styling. Although Kia has some really good sedans, the company says they want encash SUV wave in India.

Portfolio

As mentioned above, Kia has launched four products in India with 2.5 years of its sales operations in the country and is planning to launch many more products in the coming months. Heres a look at the current Kia portfolio -

Kia Seltos

Kia Seltos was the first car launched by the South Korean car manufacturer in August 2019 and broke many shackles on how the Indian audience perceived cars. Kia Seltos offered a very European product with high quality fit and finish, feature loaded and it was the first Made in India for the World product. Kia has sold a total of 2,51,877 units of Seltos in the domestic market till January, 2022. The SUV alone contributed 65 percent of the total sales of Kia in India.

Kia Carnival

The Kia Carnival was the next product to enter the Indian market and was a surprise considering everyone was hoping another SUV from Kia. Launched during the Auto Expo 2020, it created a niche and separate segment on its own in the premium MPV category. The vehicle has registered total sales of 9,737 units in India, so far. Its a big hit among celebrities and businessman looking for a large MPV for easy travel.

Kia Sonet

Companys first sub-4m SUV was launched in September 2020 and was the third product for India and the second Made in India for the World product. The Kia Sonet, like Seltos, offered many segment-first features and in no time, gained a big space for itself. The total domestic sales of the car reached 1,24,504 units till January, 2022. The car contributed 32 percent share to Kia India.

Kia Carens

The most recent product launch for Kia is the Carens MPV which the company is marketing as a RV, a new segment with SUV like styling. The car is available as a 6/7 seater configuration and was launched on 15 February this year after a gap of almost 1.5 years due to multiple lockdowns. This is the third Made in India for the World product.

Sales analysis data source

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Go First, a private carrier announced it has operated the first evacuation flight from Budapest, Hungary, to New Delhi, bringing 177 Indians back from war-torn Ukraine. As part of the Operation Ganga mission, the city-based airline also announced that it would run two flights every day till March 10.

The first evacuation flight of Go First from Budapest departed at 5.58 pm (local time) on Thursday and arrived in New Delhi at 9.20 am (local time) on Friday with 177 passengers on board, the airline said in a statement.

"For the evacuation, the flight had departed from New Delhi at 10:30 am (local time) on Thursday and landed at Budapest via Kuwait at 4 am (local time)", it said.

Also read: FlyBig adds Hyderabad, Indore and Gondia to its network under UDAN scheme

"This is a massive humanitarian crisis. Go First will support Indians with many more evacuation flights that are required to help Indians return to their loved ones."

"The airline has always been at the forefront and stands committed to providing our services during a crisis for helping our fellow citizens when they need it the most," said Go First CEO Kaushik Khona.

The city-based airline said it would also endeavour to provide any additional flights as the Ministry of External Affairs may require.

Ukraine's airspace has been closed since February 24, and India is evacuating its citizens by special flights from the eastern European country's western neighbours like Romania, Hungary and Poland.

With inputs from PTI

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Sanjiv Kapoor has been named chief executive officer of Jet Airways, a grounded carrier. His appointment comes only days after the airline hired Vipula Gunatileka, the former CEO of Sri Lankan Airlines, as the airline's chief financial officer.

Kapoor, who is currently the president of Oberoi Hotels and Resorts, has been associated with budget carriers SpiceJet and GoAir as well as with full-service carrier Vistara in various capacities in the past.

He will join Jet Airways on April 4, the airline said. Jet Airways, which has not flown since April 17, 2019, is in the process of re-launching operations under its new promoters Jalan-Kalrock Consortium.

Also read: Good news for travellers, Singapore permits quarantine-free travelling from all Indian cities

"Sanjiv (Kapoor) is a seasoned aviation professional who has the right blend and demeanour to stitch a team together."

"I always believe in investing in human capital and by having Sanjiv as the CEO and Vipula as the CFO, I am certain Jet Airways will reclaim its lost glory and surpass everyone's expectation," said Murari Lal Jalan, lead partner of the Jalan-Kalrock Consortium and proposed non-executive chairman of Jet Airways.

Kapoor will be able to lead Jet Airways and make it become the most preferred full-service carrier of India, Jalan added.

Kapoor said, "I am looking forward to getting back to aviation. Even though Jet Airways has been out of operation for three years, it still has a large fan base of loyal customers who miss it every day and can't wait for it to take to the skies again."

He added he looks forward to leading the charge in rebuilding Jet Airways into the most preferred customer-oriented airline once again, a people-focused airline for the digital age.

With inputs from PTI

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Mumbai: The trailer of the John Abraham-starrer 'Attack - Part 1' will hit the airwaves on Monday with the film booking April 1 for worldwide theatrical release.

The film, directed by Lakshya Raj Anand, also stars Jacqueline Fernandez and Rakul Preet Singh in lead roles. The actor confirmed the theatrical release of the film with a brand new poster on Instagram.

The film poster shows John, dressed as a super soldier, riding a bike, with bruises on his face. He appears to be a long ranger and is pursued by a helicopter. The actor captioned it writing, "GET READY FOR #ATTACKin3 #Attack - Part 1 releasing in cinemas worldwide on 1st April 2022." It appears that the film is being made in three parts, however, there is no official confirmation on the same.

'Attack - Part 1' tells the story of a daring rescue mission led by India's first Super-Soldier played by John Abraham. John's character in the film undergoes radical cybernetic modifications to enhance his biomechanisms in order to ward off terrorist threats on Indian soil.

As it prepared to hit the screens on January 28, 2022, the omicron variant played spoilsport thereby pushing its release further. Meanwhile, John also has 'Ek Villain Returns' up his sleeve along with 'Pathaan' the first look video of which was released recently.

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New Delhi: The initial public offering of Indian state-run Life Insurance Corp (LIC) is set to be delayed into the next financial year due to the market volatility triggered by Russia`s invasion of Ukraine, Bloomberg News said in a report, citing sources.

In what will be the biggest stock offering in India, the government had plans to raise about $8 billion by selling 5% of LIC`s stake this month before the fiscal year ends on March 31.

LIC did not immediately respond to a Reuters` query seeking comments.

Earlier in the week, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman in an interview to Business Line newspaper had said that "If global considerations warrant that I need to look at it, I wouldn`t mind looking at it again."

Though the FM said the government ideally hoped to proceed with the listing as planned, however, it might have to take a review of the situation since Russia has invaded Ukraine. Also Read: Aadhaar Card Update: Modify address on Aadhaar online in simple steps, check how

"Now, there is a full-scale war. Therefore, I need to go back and review the situation," Sitharaman added. Also Read: Good news! Age limit for pension set to 60 years in Himachal, amount hiked

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New Delhi: Promoter Vodafone plans to infuse up to Rs 3,375 crore into debt-ridden Vodafone Idea Ltd as part of the company's proposed raising of funds worth Rs 14,200 crore.

Besides Vodafone, Aditya Birla Group plans to pump in up to Rs 1,125 crore, according to a regulatory filing on Friday.

The telecom operator will seek shareholders' approval for raising up to Rs 14,500 crore as well as increase its authorised share capital to Rs 75,000 crore at its the Extraordinary General Meeting (EGM) to be held on March 26.

The board of Vodafone Idea Ltd (VIL) has already approved the fund raising plan, which includes Rs 4,500 crore coming in from Aditya Birla Group and Vodafone, while the remaining amount of Rs 10,000 crore would be mopped up by way of equity or debt instruments.

As per the EGM notice, the company will seek the consent of the shareholders to offer, issue and allot up to 338.34 crore equity shares of face value of Rs 10 each for cash at a price of Rs 13.30 apiece, aggregating up to Rs 4,500 crore to the promoters.

Vodafone's group firm Euro Pacific Securities and Prime Metals will subscribe to 253.75 crore equity shares. This will be 75 per cent of the total equity shares to be issued by the company on preferential basis, indicating a contribution of around Rs 3,374.9 crore from the British telecom major.

Aditya Birla Group firm Oriana Investments Pte will subscribe to 84.58 crore equity shares which are about 25 per cent of the preferential shares of VIL as part of the fund raise, implying a contribution of Rs 1,125 crore.

Currently, Birlas own more than 27 per cent stake in VIL while Vodafone Plc holds over 44 per cent shareholding in VIL.

VIL will also seek shareholders' nod to increase the authorised share capital to Rs 75,000 crore, divided into 7,000 crore equity shares of Rs 10 each and 500 crore preference share of Rs 10 each.

Telecom service providers, VIL in particular, got a shot in the arm with the government last year approving a blockbuster relief package that included a four-year break for companies from paying statutory dues, permission to share scarce airwaves and 100 per cent foreign investment through the automatic route.

The government had also given telcos the option to convert the interest amount pertaining to the moratorium period into equity.

Subsequently, VIL opted to pay interest dues of around Rs 16,000 crore through preferential shares and the move will result in the government holding 35.8 per cent stake in the company.

The proposal is yet to be accepted by the government.

VIL will also seek shareholders approval to appoint Krishna Kishore Maheshwari as non-executive director of the company.

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New Delhi: Amid the escalating war in Ukraine, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Thursday she supports banning Russian oil imports to the U.S., a hefty nod that could strengthen President Joe Biden's hand as global allies seek to isolate Russian President Vladimir Putin's regime.

Biden has been reluctant to curb Russian oil shipments to the U.S. Or slap on energy sanctions in ways that would reduce supply as gas prices at the pump are already climbing for Americans. But Pelosi's support gives fresh currency for an idea in Congress already backed by wide swaths of Republicans and an increasing number of Democrats. The White House has said all tools remain on the table.

I'm all for that," Pelosi said about ending Russian oil in the U.S. Ban it. Finding common ground to counter Russian aggression toward Ukraine through energy policy would be a breakthrough for the divided Congress, which has shown remarkable resolve in unifying U.S. Support for Ukrainians but has struggled over concrete steps that would help the Western-style democracy battle the Russian invasion.

A Russian oil ban could draw momentary alliance of lawmakers on the left and right "Democrats fighting climate change who want to lessen the U.S. Reliance on fossil fuels; Republicans who want to boost U.S. Energy production at home; and the great majority of lawmakers of both parties who want to stop Putin's war.

Republicans have been pushing for the Russian oil ban, joined by some Democrats eager to punish Putin. What if we crush the oil and gas sector of the Russian economy, said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. That would be a lethal combination for the Russian economy.

Sen. Ed Markey, a liberal Democrat from Massachusetts and a leading advocate of climate change strategies, also backs an import ban. We cannot criticize Europe for its reliance on Russian energy as we pour dirty oil money into Russia, he said.

Still, Biden has resisted, fearing a ban could further disrupt global markets and raise already high prices at the pump. He also risks backlash from climate change activists who say US officials must not use the Ukraine war to expand oil or gas drilling in the US, a step Republicans have been urging. Gas prices in the US averaged nearly $3.73 a gallon Thursday, up almost $1 from a year ago, according to AAA motor club.

For now, the White House has said all options remain on the table. ?We don't have a strategic interest in reducing the global supply of energy,? said White House press secretary Jen Psaki.

The remarks from the White House were widely criticized as misguided by Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, at a press conference Thursday introducing a bipartisan bill to halt Russian oil imports to the US.

The legislation would halt Russian oil imports in the US by declaring a national emergency, something Biden could also do on his own. It gained bipartisan support, including from leadership of the House Problem Solvers Caucus.

There is a moral obligation here: I don't want us dollars to be funding this, this carnage in Ukraine led by Putin, Murkowski said.

Murkowski said she understood Biden won the White House in part on his promise to fight climate change, but she said after the Russian war in Ukraine, We are in a different place.

Russian oil and gas exports have loomed over national security policy in the U.S. And its Western allies. The energy sector is vital to the Russian economy and the industry is a political force that leaves countries reliant on Putin's regime. Oil prices globally spiked with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, shaking markets.

The U.S. Imported a small but notable amount of oil from Russia some 7 % of all imports of crude oil and petroleum products. Some US industry groups say it's even less. In 2021, the U.S. Brought in roughly 245 million barrels of crude oil and petroleum products from Russia a one-year increase of 24%, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Pelosi said she doesn't want to see rising gas prices at the pump for Americans, and outlined steps Congress and the administration are taking to avoid spikes.

Biden announced on Tuesday that he is releasing 30 million barrels of oil from U.S. Strategic reserves, part of a global effort to ease oil supplies amid the Ukraine war, and some Democrats have been pushing a temporary holiday from the federal gas tax to ease costs to consumers. Also Read: India can become global hub of green hydrogen, says PM Modi at Energy for Sustainable Growth webinar

The White House has not endorsed the gas tax holiday or ruled it out. Also Read: Sensex, Nifty tumble as Ukraine crisis intensifies

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New Delhi: Presenting the Budget 2022-23 in the state Assembly, Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Jai Ram Thakur on Friday announced to increase the Member of Legislative Assembly Local Area Development (MLALAD) fund from the existing Rs 1.80 crore to Rs 2 crore. The MLALAD fund has been increased by Rs 20 lakh.

Presenting his fifth and last budget for the fiscal 2021-22 of the current government, Thakur stated that a total increase of Rs 90 lakh had been made in the MLALAD fund during his government.

Thakur also announced to increase the discretionary grant for MLAs from Rs 10 lakh to Rs 12 lakh for the next fiscal. Also Read: 5 banks are offering up to 7% interest on savings accounts; time to switch your bank account?

A total of 789 plans from NABARD worth Rs 3,200 crore had been approved during the five-year tenure of the previous Congress government, whereas the current government got approval of 826 plans from NABARD worth Rs 3,452 crore, he added. Also Read: Russia-Ukraine War: Reddit blocks all links to Russian state media, bans ads

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Every year, during winters, the pollution levels in Delhi-NCR peaks to maximum levels pushing lawmakers to ban firecrackers, use of petrol/ diesel cars among other measures. However, the permanent solution is to find an alternative and green source of energy for vehicles. This has given an impetus to electric vehicles in the country and commercial vehicles are seen as the next big revolution for EVs.

Among CVs, last-mile delivery has grown in popularity, esp in metro cities and implementing EVs for last mile delivery is seen as an immediate solution to Indias pollution problem. We got in touch with Akash Gupta, Co-founder & CEO, Zypp Electric to understand last-mile delivery and electric vehicles in general.

Also Read: Gurugram gets Indias biggest charging station with 121 chargers

How do you see last-mile delivery boosting EV sales in India?

While Indias EV market has seen multi-fold growth and adoption, the boost in EVs sales will come through the last-mile delivery segment. The reason is simple; theres been an increase in the number of logistics and e-commerce companies committing to go electric, which has been an important driver for EV growth in India. With the new policy in place which mandates logistics and aggregators to go 100% electric by 2025, we expect more e-commerce platforms to pick up the EV momentum quite aggressively. With it, we are likely to see an uptick in EV sales in the coming years.

We feel that India isnt ready for B2C adoption due to range anxiety and charging infrastructure problems, and building an innovative EV ecosystem that is also solving charging infrastructure challenges, will not happen immediately.

We have also witnessed a huge demand from all our partners from the last couple of quarters. In fact, we havent witnessed a low demand in quite a few months now. Zypp has already completed more than 3 million deliveries on EVs for its partners in this financial year.

Does last-mile delivery on EV really help reduce pollution?

Absolutely, electric vehicles play a crucial role in leading the fight against climate change. Soaring use of e-commerce and grocery deliveries have indeed offered consumer convenience. However, it has also worsened the pollution levels. A recent report by RMI India estimates that registered delivery vehicles in Delhi emitted 700,000 tons of CO2 in 2019. This has not only worsened the pollution levels but has also severely impacted the health of the residents.

I believe electric vehicles can help us address the underlying issue and meet the targets set aside by the Paris Agreement. They emit 35% less emissions than any ICE vehicle and consume 80% less energy. If India starts doing delivery through EVs, we will be preventing 1.2 Gigatons of carbon emissions, 230-kilo tons of particulate matter, and INR 60 lakh crore of fuel over the lifetime of sold until 2035. Thats precisely why we support NITI Aayogs Shoonya campaign. I think we can create a sustainable place if we make small steps that create a big impact.

Also read: Hero Motocorp announces new EV brand 'VIDA'

Whats your take on Delhis aggregator policy?

Zypp Electric welcomes the Delhi government's new EV norms and is ready to be one of the enablers that help Indias capital city adopt clean mobility. Today logistics and last mile delivery contribute to the lion share of trips happening in our country and hence being on IC engine, these trips generate a lot of pollution too. With this EV move and also with a timeline to it, I believe most logistics companies or last-mile delivery services will look at partnering with EV rental platforms like Zypp to quickly go electric rather than buying a fleet of their own as it comes with its own challenges.

Were ramping up our supplies to cater to the rising demand. Until last year, we were onboarding 500 new EVs every month onto our fleet but now we have decided to scale the number of vehicles by 4X. Starting April, we will be adding 2,000 new EVs every month. Moreover, we can expect other state governments to follow suit. Hence, companies who werent aggressively looking at EVs would want to go electric quickly.

What products are you offering and why are they unique?

Zypp Electric is Indias Leading Tech-Enabled EV-as-a-Service platform, founded in 2017 with a Mission Zero-Emission and to make India carbon-free. At Zypp, we are building an ecosystem of Electric Vehicles, Charging infra and EV related maintenance and service infra backed with technology to make last-mile sustainable and emission-free.

We want to make carbon-free last-mile delivery for local merchants to e-commerce giants to delivery executives and thereby reduce delivery cost and pollution on an asset-light model. We currently deliver groceries, medicines, food, e-commerce packages from point A to point B through our fully automated IoT and AI-enabled scooters which are low on maintenance and high on performance. The technology tracks batteries that can be replaced at Zypp swapping stations which are installed at key touchpoints. Eco-friendly EV services also reduce the cost per delivery and help to make the city pollution-free. We have an ordered fleet of 5000+, and are growing 30% month over month.

We also have Zypp Rental app, where any executive or commuter can subscribe a Zypp EV on a monthly plan at a flat price of INR 149/day rental and get best in class EV for his or her needs which is shifting a lot of IC engine delivery executives to electric vehicles.

We have 100+ partners across logistics, grocery, food, and pharma sector, including Zomato, Swiggy, BigBasket, Blinkit, Flipkart, Amazon, Myntra, PharmEasy, Delhivery, Tata 1MG, Spencers, and the likes. Further, we already have a tie-up with most of the leading last-mile delivery service providers. We have also tied up with Rapido & Uber to offer shared mobility services in the country.

What is the growth perspective for Zypp beyond last-mile delivery?

India is a hot market for shared mobility, with a projected growth of 56.8% by 2025. More and more businesses, especially quick ecommerce and logistic companies, are setting up a network of EVs for seamless point-to-point mobility. With the Indian governments push for EV adoption, I believe most logistics companies or last-mile delivery services will look at partnering with EV platforms like Zypp to quickly go electric rather than buying a fleet of their own. We also expect individuals like delivery executives, who are gig workers to opt for shared mobility and easy EV rental options.

Were ramping up our supplies to cater to the rising demand. Until last year, we were onboarding 500 new EVs every month onto our fleet but now we have decided to scale the number of vehicles by 4X. Starting April, we will be adding 2,000 new EVs every month. Also, Zypp plans to grow pan India with its offerings. We see us hitting 100k EVs in a matter of 24-36 months across 50 cities in the country with our EV based last mile delivery and rental solutions.

Whats the next big innovation in the EV industry?

The last few years were all about making EVs drive better and the EV OEMs have successfully done that. This years budget has set the course for many more years to come in the EV industry. Zypp is a fully tech enabled EV fleet service provider which is backed with IOT, AI, ML technology for best utilisation of the EV fleet which Zypp manages.

In the next few years, we will have great innovation in the EV battery space with new technologies like Hydrogen, Sodium and the likes coming forward which will improve life of EV batteries. Also, battery swapping, fast charging are also slowly coming forward into the EV ecosystem. Further, EV OEMs, battery manufacturers and other stakeholders will look at discovering better technologies which are more focused for the Indian market, and may even experiment with new battery chemistries and types.

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Sony Corp and Honda Motor Co Ltd announced that they will collaborate to develop and sell battery-powered electric vehicles, advancing Sony's goal to become a major player in next-generation automobiles. The two companies said in a statement they would form a joint venture this year and aim to begin selling the first model in 2025. Honda will be responsible for manufacturing the first model, while Sony will develop the mobility service platform, they said.

The presidents of both companies will hold a news conference in Tokyo at 5 p.m. (0800 GMT) on Friday. Sony's Chief Executive Kenichiro Yoshida announced in January a plan to create a new company, Sony Mobility, saying it was exploring a commercial launch of electric vehicles.

Also read: Gurugram gets Indias biggest charging station with 121 chargers, capacity of 1000 cars per day

Although its once-dominant position in consumer electronics has been eroded by Asian rivals like South Korea`s Samsung Electronics Co, Sony still has an arsenal of sophisticated technology in areas such as sensors critical to autonomous driving.

The rapid shift to embrace electric vehicles around the world, stoked by a global push to slash carbon emissions, creates opportunities for tech companies to join the auto market since those vehicles are simpler to manufacture than cars carrying internal combustion engines.

At the same time, those tech companies face challenges of meeting rigorous safety regulations for vehicles and making cars capable of withstanding sometimes difficult driving conditions.

With inputs from Reuters

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Hong Kong: Govt receives 1.2k hospital beds

Secretary for Labour & Welfare Dr Law Chi-kwong today extended his gratitude to Chinese enterprises for donating 1,200 hospital beds to a community isolation facility (CIF) at the Kai Tak Cruise Terminal.

He conveyed such appreciation during a donation ceremony where he thanked China Overseas and its subsidiary China State Construction International for its contribution of hospital beds and assistance to the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government to swiftly set up the community isolation facility.

After converting the cruise terminal into a CIF, it will receive frail elderly COVID-19 patients referred by the Hospital Authority for isolation and temporary care, with a view to alleviating the pressure on public hospitals and providing care to the elderly.

Amid the unprecedented threats of the epidemic, the supply of various anti-epidemic equipment remains tight.

Dr Law said he is deeply grateful for the caring donations from Chinese enterprises, coupled with the elderly service sector working in concert and unity to bring timely relief to the Governments anti-epidemic work.

Managed by the Social Welfare Department, the isolation and holding centre with 1,200 hospital beds will be set up on the terminal's ground floor and the two check-in halls on the second floor.

Dedicated service organisations will provide medical support and care services without charge.

Dr Law said the hospital beds enable care staff to look after the elderly at the bedside, allowing them to take meals and medication safely and comfortably.

In addition, the Government thanked the terminal operator for its full co-operation on the conversion works and other on-site support services.

Upon completion of its ancillary facilities, the CIF will come into operation to receive elderly patients in phases.

This story has been published on: 2022-03-04. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.




(CGTN) The Two Sessions, a key event in the country's political calendar of 2022, will start on March 4 and 5.

The 13th National People's Congress (NPC), China's top legislature will open its fifth annual session in Beijing on Saturday, and the fifth annual session of the 13th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) is scheduled to open on Friday.

Every year, as a window to observe China's development and deemed as an embodiment of the vitality of socialist democracy with Chinese characteristics, the Two Sessions draw worldwide attention.

But what makes the Two Sessions particularly special this year?

First of all, the timing.

The sessions take place at the beginning of March, months before the Communist Party of China (CPC) convenes its 20th National Congress, a landmark event which takes place every five years and is expected to be held in the second half of 2022.

Last year, the CPC approved a resolution on the Party's history and achievements during the sixth Plenary Session of the 19th CPC Central Committee.

China has set two centenary goals  building a moderately prosperous society in all respects, and building itself into a great modern socialist country in all respects.

In 2021, the CPC marked its centenary and achieved the first centenary goal and the country began to implement the 14th Five-Year Plan, preparing to fully build a modern socialist country.

Second, the economy.

With the global economy still disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, how will the central government approach its growth target and ensure high-quality development?

China's southernmost province of Hainan has set its GDP growth target at around 9 percent this year while provincial-level regions average about 6 percent, generally lower than for 2021.

Reviewing the government work report delivered by the Chinese premier is an important part of the Two Sessions.

The report, described as both a report card and a road map, not only contains summary of the government's work in the past year, but also reveals the government's priorities and goals in terms of socioeconomic development.

Third, the bills.

Lawmakers are expected to deliberate several bills at the National People's Congress session, including a draft decision on the number of deputies to the next NPC and their election, and two separate draft methods for the Hong Kong and Macao special administrative regions to elect their deputies to the next NPC.

During the Two Sessions last year, the NPC adopted a decision on improving the electoral system of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR), another major step taken by the state to improve the HKSAR's legal and political systems since the Law on Safeguarding National Security in the HKSAR was adopted in June 2020.
New Delhi: Actress Lekha Prajapati, who was seen in the financial thriller 'The Big Bull' starring Abhishek Bachchan in the lead, was recently papped in the city. She attended the movie screening of Malayalam entertainer Naaradan and shared a byte with the press.

At the Naaradan Mumbai screening, Lekha Prajapati expressed her happiness at being able to watch movies once again in cinema halls. She said finally we are able to watch films on 70mm screens after the COVID-19 restrictions were lifted in the state on occupancy in theatres.

Popular celeb pap Viral Bhayani posted her video on Instagram and fans were quick to call her 'Bipasha Basu lookalike'. Check out the video and fan comments below:

Naaradan is a Malayalam-political thriller film directed by Aashiq Abu starring Tovino Thomas and Anna Ben.

Lekha started career with modeling and walked the ramp for many designers. She forayed into the Malayalam film industry with horror flick 'Kshanam', which released on December 10, 2021.

Kshanam is helmed by Suresh Unnithan and the film also stars Parvathi T, Ajmeel Ameer, Sneha Ajith, and Devan among others in the lead roles.

Lekha Prajapati also featured in 'iSmart Shankar' (2019), 'Class of `83' (2020), MX Player series 'The Right One', 'City of Dreams' directed by Nagesh Kukunoor and short film 'Gulabi Rewari' among others.

She was also a contestant in Indias Next Superstars reality show in 2018.
New Delhi: At least seven were killed, including a child, and several injured in an explosion in a house in Bihars Bhagalpur district on Thursday (March 3) night.

As per IANS, the explosion took place at around 11.30 PM on Thursday night in a house in Kajwali Chak village under Tatarpur police station.

"The explosion may have taken place during the illegal manufacturing of country-made crude bombs. There is also a possibility that the alleged persons could be making crackers. As the nature of the blast was so intense, we believe that the quantity of the explosives was very high," Bhagalpur range DIG Sujit Kumar said.

#WATCH | Bihar: 7 dead and several injured in an explosion in Tatarpur police jurisdiction in Bhagalpur district, as per District Administration pic.twitter.com/pdSI6iSJI3  ANI (@ANI) March 4, 2022

The deceased were identified as Ganesh Prasad Singh (60), Urmila Devi (65), while the identities of the five remaining were not known yet.

The seven injured were admitted to the Mayaganj hospital in Bhagalpur, out of which four of them are in critical condition. The wounded were identified as Soni Kumari (30), Navin Mandal (32), Rahul Kumar (20) Aayesha Kumari (25), Rinku Kumar Shah (30), Vaishnavi (30) and Jaya (35).

"We are in the process of recording the statement of the injured to find out the nature of explosives. We have also called the FSL team to collect the samples as well," Kumar said.

Local police fear that there could be more persons trapped under the debris. The rescue operation began soon after the blast. The debris of the collapsed building is being moved with the help of JCB.

The explosion was so strong that it injured people sleeping in the adjacent houses and was heard for several kilometres. Further investigation is underway, the DM said.

(With agency inputs)

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Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Rohtak and Tajik National University are jointly organising the International Conference on 'Framework of Engagement: Afghanistan in Focus of Central and South Asian Nations' on 4th and 5th March 2022. Speaking on 'De-radicalisation and peace', Rajya Sabha MP and Chairman of Essel Group, Dr Subhash Chandra shared his views on radicalisation of young minds on the first day of the conference.

Dr. Subhash Chandra talked about how radicalisation begins and how philosophical and psychological conditioning of the young mind takes place. The Chairman of the Essel Group also explained how radicalisation is a step towards converting youth to take up arms and engage in violence. Dr. Chandra said that on hearing the President of Tajikistan, he remembered Indian PM Narendra Modi.

Besides Dr. Subhash Chandra, MP and former External Affairs Minister MJ Akbar was also present in the conference. MJ Akbar also shared points of view.

1. I have seen women of Afghanistan coming from backward classes into the mainstream.

2. US and NATO forces left Afghanistan and now we need to differentiate between Ukraine and Kabul. President Rahman is known as the father of independence in Tajikistan, but he has also been the guardian of security in the state.

3. When we think of 9/11, it started with an attack on a tower, but it started when the Talibani armed forces took over Afghanistan. Menjasar Bhutto said Taliban is my child. World War I led to World War II. The Second World War emerged as the Cold War and the Cold War gave rise to terrorism. We are facing problems due to unresolved issues of past.

4. Freedom is a responsibility, not a luxury. After the US army left Afghanistan, a message went out to the world that the US was not ready to stand with anyone, and then the Ukraine crisis started. NATO and the US will not stand up for them. Now this is a concrete message.

5. Freedom is also important for Ukraine and Afghanistan. See, when I came here for the first time in 1985, Dushanbe was a village but now it is a developed city of a developed country, see the effect of independence. Japan and Germany will lead in the future. Germany was militarised in World War II, but today both Germany and Japan are liberal democracies.

6. The new world order is going to demand equality for all nations. India and Tajikistan can cooperate to make the world safe and peaceful.

7. Today there is a balance of power in India. We need balance, not just balance of power. Balance in all areas.

8. The sunset in Afghanistan has begun, but the story is not over. You will again see the bright future of Afghanistan.

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New Delhi: The Supreme Court will hear a plea challenging the bail granted by the Allahabad High Court to Ashish Mishra, son of Union minister Ajay Mishra Teni, in the Lakhimpur Kheri violence case.

As per PTI, lawyer Prashant Bhushan said that the Allahabad high court while granting the bail, did not follow the law laid down and failed to consider aspects like evidence tampering and fleeing from justice. Bhushan added, The problem is that other accused are also moving.

I can list on March 11 only. Other judges have to be available, a bench headed by Chief Justice N V Ramana said today. "File a memo before the high court that we are hearing on March 11," the bench added.

Three family members of farmers, who were killed in the violence on October 3 last year, have sought a stay on the high court's bail order, saying the verdict was "unsustainable in the eyes of law as there has been no meaningful and effective assistance by the state to the court in the matter".

Ashish Mishra is an accused in the Lakhimpur Kheri incident which had left eight people, including four farmers and one journalist, dead last year. The Allahabad High Court had granted Mishra bail on February 10. Eight people were killed in Lakhimpur Kheri in the violence that erupted when farmers were protesting against Uttar Pradesh Deputy Chief Minister Keshav Prasad Maurya's visit to the area.

After four farmers were mowed down by an SUV, a driver and two BJP workers were then allegedly lynched by angry farmers. A journalist also died in the incident that triggered an uproar among the opposition parties and farmers protesting against Centre's three farm laws.

(With agency inputs)

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New Delhi: A special flight from Romania carrying 219 Indian nationals stranded in conflict-torn Ukraine reached Delhi on Friday. The special IndiGo flight under Operation Ganga departed from the Romanian capital Bucharest on Thursday.

MoS Agriculture Kailash Choudhary receives 219 Indian nationals from #Ukraine after a special Indigo flight lands in Delhi from Bucharest in Romania#OperationGanga pic.twitter.com/9MjfIPFxEg  ANI (@ANI) March 3, 2022

Minister of State for Agriculture and Farmers` Welfare Kailash Choudhary received the Indian citizens on their arrival at Indira Gandhi International Airport. He also interacted with the students.

The Ministry of External Affairs, in close coordination with the Ministry of Civil Aviation, is making all efforts to bring the Indian students back to India at a fast pace.

Four Union Ministers - Hardeep Singh Puri, Jyotiraditya M Scindia, Kiren Rijiju and Gen (Retd) VK Singh - have gone to countries adjoining Ukraine to support and supervise evacuation operations.

Indian civilian planes as well as Indian Air Force planes are regularly bringing back stranded Indian students. The Ministry of External Affairs said more than 7,400 persons are expected to be brought through special flights in the next two days.

Further, 3,500 persons are expected to be brought back on Friday and over 3900 on March 5. Russian forces launched military operations in Ukraine on February 24, three days after Moscow recognized Ukraine`s breakaway regions - Donetsk and Luhansk - as independent entities.

Several countries including the UK, the US, Canada, and the European Union have condemned Russia`s military operations in Ukraine and imposed sanctions on Moscow.

These countries have also promised Ukraine to help with military aid to fight Russia. The US, Canada and European allies agreed to remove key Russian banks from the interbank messaging system, SWIFT which means Russian banks won`t be able to communicate securely with banks beyond Russia`s borders.

President Putin has also signed a decree on special economic measures against the US and its allies.

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New Delhi: The Odisha Staff Selection Commission (OSSC) on Thursday (March 3) has invited applications for recruitment for the 56 posts of Traffic Constable via an official notification.

The online registration process for these posts will begin on March 4 and candidates can apply by going to the official website ossc.gov.in.

Here is all you need to know about the OSSC Traffic Constable recruitment 2022

Important dates

Registration: The online registration process for these posts will take place from March 4 to April 3,

Application: Registered candidates will be able to apply for the posts from March 4 till April 12.

As per the notification, no physical copy/Hard copy of the online application form needs to be submitted by the applicants.

What is the Eligibility criteria?

Age limit: The minimum age of the applicant for the post is 21 years and must not exceed 38 years of age as of January 1, 2021.

Educational Qualification: The candidate to be eligible to apply for the post must have passed + 2 Examination or equivalent examination conducted by Recognised Board/University/Institution.

Examination Fee

Candidates other than SC/ST/PwD category have to pay a non-refundable examination fee of Rs 200.

Selection Process

The applicants will be shortlisted on the basis of the Written Exam (Objective Type/MCQ Type), Physical measure and Physical Test and Certificate Verification.

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New Delhi: The Indian Embassy in Romania on Friday (March 4) notified a hotline number for students, who left Ukraine and are in Bucharest, waiting to be evacuated to India.

Taking to Twitter, the embassy wrote, Indian students who are still in Bucharest may please get in touch with the Embassy on hotline number +40 725964976 for evacuation by flights leaving in the next two days.

Indian students who are still in Bucharest may please get in touch with the Embassy on hotline number +40 725964976 for evacuation by flights leaving in the next two days @opganga @MEAIndia @JM_Scindia  India in Romania (@eoiromania) March 4, 2022

The government said that a total of 5,245 Indians have been airlifted from Romania to India till March 3.

Meanwhile, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said that more than 20,000 Indians have left the Ukraine border since the advisories. There are more people, but it's reassuring to see that this many people have left Ukraine, MEA Spokesperson Arindam Bagchi said in a media brief.

Bagchi said that India is making efforts to provide bus to those stuck in eastern Ukraine, especially Kharkiv and Pisochyn.

Highest attention on the eastern Ukraine particularly Kharkiv and Pisochin. We have managed to get some buses there. 5 buses already operational, more buses later in the evening; 900-1000 Indians stranded in Pisochin and 700+ in Sumy. We are concerned about Sumy," ANI quoted him as saying.

The MEA informed that 16 flights are scheduled for the next 24 hours, including IAF's C-17 aircraft to bring back stranded nationals.

On Thursday, Ministry of Civil Aviation (MCA) had said that over 6,200 Indians have returned from Ukraine through special civilian flights and more than 7,400 Indians are expected to arrive in the next two days. India has deployed civilian planes as well as Indian Air Force planes to bring back students stranded in war-hit Ukraine.

ALSO READ: Russian attack at Europe's biggest nuclear power plant in Ukraine: No radiation released, say experts

(With agency inputs)

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Rzeszow: An Indian student has been hospitalised after he was shot with a bullet in the capital city of Ukraine, a few days after an Indian student lost his life in the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine.

Speaking exclusively to new agency ANI, Minister of State (MoS) for Ministry of Civil Aviation (MoCA) General VK Singh revealed the information at Poland`s Rzeszow airport on Thursday.

"A student from Kyiv was reported to have been shot and was immediately admitted to the hospital in Kyiv," General (retd) Singh said.

I received info today that a student coming from Kyiv got shot and was taken back midway. We're trying for maximum evacuation in minimum loss: MoS Civil Aviation Gen (Retd) VK Singh, in Poland#RussiaUkraine pic.twitter.com/cggVEsqfEj  ANI (@ANI) March 4, 2022

"The Indian embassy had earlier cleared on the priority that everyone should leave Kyiv. In the event of war, the gun bullet does not look at anyone`s religion and nationality," he added.

The students are currently fleeing the war-torn country Ukraine and trying to reach the border of Poland for their safe return to India.

Four Union Ministers, Hardeep Singh Puri, Jyotiraditya M Scindia, Kiren Rijiju and Gen (Retd) VK Singh -- are overseeing the evacuation efforts in the countries adjoining Ukraine.

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New Delhi: India on Friday (March 4) sought a localised ceasefire between Russian and Ukrainian troops in eastern Ukraine to facilitate the evacuation of Indian citizens trapped in conflict zones, and insisted it is yet to see the decision by the warring sides to create safe corridors for the exit of civilians materialise.

Around 20,000 Indian nationals have so far crossed the borders of war-torn Ukraine to safety, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said, as reports emerged about a Delhi student getting shot multiple times but miraculously surviving the assault.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, meanwhile, chaired yet another meeting to review the unfolding situation in Ukraine amid the ongoing exercise to evacuate Indian nationals, mostly students, from the country battling a Russian invasion.

External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, Union minister Piyush Goyal, and National Security Adviser Ajit Doval were among those who attended the meeting.

Arindam Bagchi, the spokesperson for the MEA, said around 300 Indians are stranded in Kharkiv and 700 in Sumy, where fierce fighting is on. Some Indian nationals out of the over 900 in Pisochyn, a Kharkiv suburb, were being taken out from there in five buses.

He told a media briefing that India is primarily focusing on evacuating its nationals from conflict zones in eastern Ukraine including Kharkiv and Sumy, and that the total number of Indians still stuck in the battle-scarred nation is roughly in the range of 2,000 to 3,000.

When asked about Russian President Vladimir Putin's comments on Thursday that some Indians are being held hostage by the Ukrainian forces, the MEA spokesperson once again rejected the claim, insisting India had no such information or report.

As India's efforts to rescue its citizens gathered further steam, it transpired that Harjot Singh, a student from Delhi's Chhatarpur took four bullets, including one on the chest, as he attempted to flee Ukrainian capital Kyiv.

Recounting the horror of February 27, Singh, who is currently undergoing treatment at a hospital in Kyiv, said, "We were in a cab to Lviv. We were stopped at a barricade and suddenly it was raining bullets. I thought this is the end. I am alive by God's grace."

"I don't know what happened to the people I was with. If they made it or not, I have no clue. I thought I will not make it," Singh, enrolled in a language course at International European University in Kyiv, told PTI over the phone.

Naveen S G, a fourth-year medical student in Kharkiv, was killed in shelling on Tuesday after he ventured out of a bomb shelter to buy food for himself and fellow students who were running out of supplies.

Bagchi said India has also evacuated a Bangladeshi national as part of its mission to bring back the stranded Indians.

He said India is in touch with all parties concerned on the evacuation exercise and sought a "local ceasefire" in the conflict zones to get them out.

The MEA spokesperson said India has not seen any forward movement after it transpired on Thursday that Russia and Ukraine are in agreement about the need to create humanitarian corridors to help civilians safely exit the conflict zones.

"We have not seen anything further to that in terms of implementation of the same on the ground. We are closely and eagerly monitoring that," Bagchi said.

"If that happens, it will certainly help our process. We have been asking for a cessation of hostilities by both sides....Local ceasefire or whatever works to get our people out of the conflict zones," he said.

Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky, said after talks between Russia and Ukraine that the two sides had reached an understanding to establish safe corridors for civilians.

Responding to Russian reports that Moscow has arranged for 130 buses for evacuating Indians from eastern Ukrainian cities, Bagchi said they were around 50-60 km away from where the stranded students are.

"They are frankly too far away. We do not see a safe and secure way to reach them. I would appeal and urge the parties concerned to have a local ceasefire at least so that the students can go to the buses," he said.

Bagchi said around 20,000 Indians have left Ukraine's borders since India issued its first travel advisories in mid-February.

He said 15 flights landed in India as part of the evacuation mission during the last 24 hours, bringing back more than 3,000 people, and added 16 more are scheduled over the next 24 hours.

The government has launched "Operation Ganga" to evacuate its citizens and sent four Union ministers as Prime Minister Narendra Modi's "Special Envoys" to countries neighbouring Ukraine to coordinate the exercise.

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New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Friday heaped praise on the government for its efforts in evacuating hundreds of Indians safely from war-hit Ukraine. While appreciating the Centres sincere efforts, the top court said that it was concerned about the anxiety of people.

The top court took note of the Centre's submission that it has evacuated 17,000 stranded Indians from the conflict zone in Ukraine and that the efforts are on to evacuate more in the days to come.

A bench headed by Chief Justice N V Ramana lauded the personal efforts undertaken by Attorney General K K Venugopal to ensure the evacuation of Bengaluru resident Fathima Ahana and several other medical students who were stranded near the Romania border in Ukraine.

A total of 17,000 stranded people has already been evacuated from the conflict zone in Ukraine, Venugopal told the bench, also comprising justices A S Bopanna and Hima Kolhi.

"We appreciate the efforts by the Centre. We are not saying anything on that. But we are also concerned," said the bench. The bench, however, said that "it's unfortunate that we have not learned from past mistakes and still resort to war. We don't have much say but there is anxiety about students."

#RussiaUkraineConflict | Supreme Court says that it's unfortunate that we have not learned from past mistakes and still resort to war. We don't have much say but there is anxiety about students. pic.twitter.com/bzRwAd8Hsf  ANI (@ANI) March 4, 2022

The bench, hearing two petitions related to the evacuation of students and others from Ukraine, asked the Centre to consider setting up a helpdesk for the families of the stranded people.

Attorney General KK Venugopal told the Supreme Court that Union Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia contacted the petitioner student who was stranded at the Ukraine border & now has crossed over to Romania & will be brought back by a special flight to India tonight along with other persons by tonight.

The Supreme Court also directed the Attorney General to get instructions from the Centre about all the steps being taken to evacuate Indians stranded in Ukraine, the possibility of a helpline for parents etc.

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(Global Times) For some Westerners, anything could be weaponized, including cats. Yes, CATS.

Amid the spiraling crisis in Ukraine, a ludicrous news story hit the headlines: Russian cats are sanctioned.

The Federation Internationale Feline, an NGO of cat registries founded in Belgium, announced on Tuesday a ban on Russian-bred cats from its shows, and cat owners who live in Russia are also banned from the organization.

This is the tip of the iceberg among a growing number of drama queens in Western countries who have jumped into a so-called anti-war campaign, with their moves going far beyond people's understanding, even imagination. Cats are only one target on the very long list.

FIFA and its European counterpart UEFA decided that all Russian teams shall be suspended from participating in both FIFA and UEFA competitions until further notice. Performances of Russian ballets have been canceled across the UK. University of Milan-Bicocca in Italy decided to remove courses on Fyodor Dostoevsky, a notable Russian author, from its program. Valery Gergiev, a star Russian maestro, was fired as chief conductor of the Munich Philharmonic.

Turns out sports, arts, and science aren't apolitical; they all have crystal clear borders in the eyes of some Western forces. Dostoevsky died over 140 years ago, but his legacy couldn't survive the wave of the West's anti-Russia sentiment. If the trend goes on, Tetris, a puzzle video game created by a Soviet software engineer, should shiver for possibly being aimed at next. And young Western generations may have to bid adieu to the periodic table, the tabular display of the chemical elements invented by Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev.

Gergiev was fired because he refused to denounce Russia's latest actions against Ukraine, even if the mayor of Munich demanded that he should. Yet, how should we define the behavior of asking someone to publicly condemn his own motherland and government? Perhaps the only description that can be tossed out is - brutal and barbaric. Public institutions can make rules for its employees on what not to talk about, but they have no right to require anyone to say anything against their home country. Artists are supposed to unite people from political disputes. But now they are being torn apart.

This is a crude invasion of politics into global exchanges in Western society. "It may even be a new type of 'color revolution,'" Lu Xiang, a research fellow at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times. Lu noted that to a large extent, the Russia-Ukraine conflict is a warfare of information.

Western media outlets and politicians have no interest in informing its audience of the cautiousness the Russian troops have tried to show and maintain. On the contrary, they desperately exaggerate the situation of the war and tried hard to paint a scene where Russian troops are "invading" intensively, the Ukraine people are resisting heroically, and the anti-war waves are boiling all over the world. Yet this whole set of stories is simply choreographed by the West, according to Lu.

In Joe Biden's first State of the Union speech, delivered on Wednesday, not a single word was uttered to encourage Russia and Ukraine to sit down at the negotiating table. Biden was busy blaming Russia, emphasizing Washington will step up sanctions against Moscow. Mainstream US and European media even use pictures and videos that have nothing to do with Ukraine to show the "war situation" in Ukraine. In this atmosphere filled with anti-Russia hysteria, people and organizations naturally follow suit, Lu said.

The more absurd their sanctions are, the more it proves how easily the West could lose its temper, as it becomes toothless. They can vent their anger against Russian cats effortlessly, but do they have the nerve to cut all oil and gas trade with Russia?

Why cats, arts and sports? What can they possibly do wrong: Attack a country or beat the drum of war? They are innocent. The problem lies in those incompetent Western politicians and elites. They do not dare to resolve the issue militarily, or be willing to fix the conundrum through talks. As a result, irrelevant elements are picked up, politicized and even weaponized. Worse, instead of anti-war, the moves are making the situation worse.
Kupwara: The Jammu and Kashmir Police said on Friday (March 4) that a newly recruited terrorist was arrested in an injured condition at Langate area of Kupwara district in north Kashmir.

The Police said, The injured terrorist is presently admitted to hospital where his condition is stated to be stable.

He has been identified as Abrar Hassan, a resident of Azad Gunj Baramulla, the officer said. The apprehended terrorist was associated with the TRF outfit.

The J&K police said Abrar was earlier a stone pelter and there are two FIRs against him. Later, he started working as a terrorist associate, the officer said.

On seeing suspicious movement in the area, the security forces challenged both and a brief shoot-out happened in which this terrorist got injured and another one is believed to be hiding in the same locality, the police informed.

Searches have been launched to trace the other terrorist who was accompanying the injured one. More details emerging.

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New Delhi: PM Narendra Modi on Friday (February 4) offered prayers at Kashi Vishwanath temple in his home constituency Varanasi. Earlier on the same day PM also held a road show to campaighn for his party for the last phase of Assembly elections.

After offering prayer PM was seen playing 'Damaru' at the Kashi Vishwanath while drumming up support for BJP candidates ahead of the last phase of the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections on March 7. Watch

#WATCH | PM Modi tries his hand at 'damru' at Kashi Vishwanath Temple in Varanasi, post his roadshow ahead of the last phase of #UttarPradeshElections2022 pic.twitter.com/N7HaEtlETx  ANI UP/Uttarakhand (@ANINewsUP) March 4, 2022

As the UP elections near their end, Varanasi is abuzz with the arrival of top leaders from all major parties. The holy city of Varanasi will see another roadshow by Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav from 8 pm to 10 pm. Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections will conclude on March 7 with the seventh phase of polling.

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Varanasi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi will hold a roadshow in Varanasi, his parliamentary constituency, on Friday in support of BJP candidates ahead of the last phase of the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections on March 7.

Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav is also slated to hold a roadshow in Varanasi in evening.

As the fiercely fought poll battle reaches the prime minister's constituency, competing parties have been putting in their best to win over the assembly seats here and a perception war before the 2024 general elections.

City BJP president Vidyasagar Rai told PTI that Modi's roadshow will start around 2 pm from the Maldahiya roundabout after garlanding a statue of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel.

It is the same spot from where Modi had held his first roadshow in Varanasi after filing his nomination for the 2014 Lok Sabha election. The roadshow will cover around three kilometres, Rai said.

It will pass through Lahurabir Kabirchara and culminate at the chowk, from where the prime minister will go to the Kashi Vishwanath temple to offer prayers, Rai said, adding that Modi will stay the night at the Diesel Locomotive Work (DLW) guest house.

Modi's roadshow will cover the three assembly segments of Cantonment, Varanasi North and Varanasi South.

The prime minister will wind up his Varanasi stay with a rally in Khajuria village under the Rohaniya assembly seat on Saturday where he would address the people of the other five assembly seats of the Varanasi Lok Sabha constituency, Rai said.

The DLW guest house has a nostalgic attachment for Modi, who had earlier written in the visitors' book there that it reminded him of his childhood days when he used to vend tea at the Vadnagar railway station in Gujarat, he said.

Rai said cutouts of the Ayodhya temple, Kashi Vishwanath dham and bill boards of important government welfare schemes would be put up at roundabouts enroute the roadshow in the city. Women in large numbers will attend the show, he added.

After Modi, Varanasi will see another roadshow by SP chief Akhilesh Yadav.

SP Varanasi district president Vishnu Sharma told PTI that earlier they had sought permission from district administration to hold the roadshow from 5 pm to 10 pm.

"The district administration, without citing valid reasons, curtailed our time to two hours from 8-10 pm," Sharma said, adding that permission for landing of Akhilesh Yadav's helicopter at the police lines ground, for which they had deposited money, has been declined and they have been told landing can be done at the BHU ground.

"BHU ground is far from the city and most probably, Akhilesh ji will reach here by road," Sharma said. A senior district official refused to comment on it and said everything was done according to rules.

Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadra held a roadshow in Varanasi on Thursday.

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New Delhi: Tamil Nadu Uniformed Services Recruitment Board (TNUSRB) will soon release the recruitment notification for the posts of Sub-Inspectors of Police (Taluk & AR Armed Reserve and Tamil Nadu Special Police). Candidates can apply on the official website at tnusrb.tn.gov.in once registration begins.

The official notification is expected to be released on March 8. For vacancies, registration dates, exam dates, candidates must wait for the TNUSRB SI Recruitment Notification 2022.

TNUSRB SI Recruitment 2022: Eligibility criteria

Candidates must have a Bachelor's Degree from any University recognised by UGC/Government on the date of Notifications.

TNUSRB SI Recruitment 2022: Age limit

The minimum age to apply for the posts is 20 years and the maximum is 30 years.

TNUSRB SI Recruitment 2022: Application fees

Candidates have to pay an examination fee of Rs 500. Candidates from the police department can apply under both open and departmental quotas. They will have to pay Rs 1,000 as examination fee.

TNUSRB SI Recruitment 2022: Selection criteria

Candidates will have to undertake Written Examination, Physical Efficiency Test, Viva Voce.

ALSO READ: NTPC recruitment 2022: Apply for executive trainee posts, earn up to Rs 1,40,000, details here

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New Delhi: Controversial celebrity Poonam Pandey, who is currently inside Kangana Ranaut hosted reality show Lock Upp recently made accusations about her husband abusing her and how she suffered a brain haemorrhage due to the beating. Now, her husband Sam Bombay has opened up on all the allegations against him.

Poonam Pandey's husband Sam Bombay in an interview with Times of India confessed to still being in love with his wife. He said, "Not worried at all. Our marriage has been beautiful and I remember only those things. Sometimes, it is just that 10 per cent is not good in a relationship. Unfortunately, everyone wants to focus on that imperfect 10 per cent. I took the saat pheras with her seriously. Whatever Poonam is saying, it's sad, unnecessary and useless. She makes news out of nothing because she loves to be in the news."

On being charged with domestic violence, he said, "Let me tell you that she charged me with molestation and sexual assault on our honeymoon. And, this happened within a week of our marriage. An FIR was lodged. A few days later, she called me back and said that molestation is a big word and she had no idea what molestation is. It is beyond my comprehension how one can be charged with molestation on his honeymoon. Later, she took back the charge. As I said, nobody will believe the man; whatever he says doesn't matter."

"I had never left her. This is a love story. Forgiveness is a part of it. So yeah, we got back together. Even she forgave me. Now, if she's gonna talk like whatever she's saying, I have to do that too. Else you would never get anything bad about my wife from me. I really don't want to play a petty game. If I play a petty game, I too have lots to say," he said.

He also mentioned about him dating other bigger names. "Loyalty is not a big word; it's the basis of any relationship. Without loyalty there is no trust and honesty, and then there's failure. Good guys don't make it. You have to be a bad boy. That's how you survive. Has she ever complained about me cheating with anybody? I have had multiple relationships with celebrities bigger than Poonam. Has anybody accused me of assault? Never. Has Poonam been accused by other men of assault? Yes. So there's a pattern here. And this is what the police told me; I had no idea about this.

I married Poonam because she told me that the avatar she has created for herself, nobody is going to marry her. But again, why is she talking about me in the show? It's because she wants me to know that she's thinking about me. We both bi**h about each other because we are still madly in love with each other."

Poonam Pandey got married to her boyfriend Sam Bombay in a private ceremony in 2020. The couple took to social media and announced their marriage news with pictures in a bridal look.

Soon after the wedding news, she filed a complaint against him saying that he has molested, threatened and assaulted her. The incident reportedly took place in Canacona village in south Goa where Pandey was shooting for a film and later Sam was arrested.

Sam who was born and brought up in United Arab Emirates Dubai is an ad filmmaker and a producer.
New Delhi: Presenting the Budget for 2022-23 in the state Assembly, Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Jai Ram Thakur on Friday announced to increase monthly old-age pension amount from Rs 1,001 to Rs 1,500.

Presenting his fifth and last budget of the current government, Thakur also announced to decrease the age limit from 70 years to 60 years for availing such pension, without any income limit.

Thakur, who also hold the state's finance portfolio, also announced to increase the Member of Legislative Assembly Local Area Development Scheme (MLALAD) fund from the existing Rs 1.80 crore to Rs 2 crore.

The MLALAD fund has been increased by Rs 20 lakh in the Budget, which is the last one before the next Assembly elections scheduled to be held in December.

Thakur stated that a total of Rs 90 lakh increase had been made in the MLALAD fund during his government.

The chief minister also announced to increase the discretionary grant for MLAs from Rs 10 lakh to Rs 12 lakh per annum for the next fiscal.

On the health sector, the chief minister declared to create 500 new posts for doctors in the state.

Thakur announced that a provision would be made whereby the Himcare Card for availing free health services for various ailments will be required to be renewed after three years instead of every year.

Honorarium for Mayor, Deputy Mayor and councillors in municipal corporations has been increased from Rs 12,000 to Rs 15,000, from Rs 8,500 to Rs 10,000 and from Rs 5,050 to Rs 6,050 per month, respectively, he added.

He announced that Sardar Patel University in the Mandi district would start functioning in April 2022. Also Read: Russia-Ukraine War: Google suspends all ad sales in Russia as censorship demands grow

Thakur also announced to construct 1000 new Anganwadi Bhawans in the state. A total of 789 plans from NABARD worth Rs 3,200 crore was approved during the five-year tenure of the previous Congress government, whereas that during the current government stood at Rs 3,452 crore for 826 plans, he added. Also Read: Aadhaar Card Update: Modify address on Aadhaar online in simple steps, check how

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New Delhi: Aadhaar has been made mandatory for various government initiatives by the government. According to the Revenue Department's announcement, linking your Aadhaar card with your bank is required. Both online and offline, you can link your bank to Aadhaar. If you want to link Aadhaar to your bank account online, you must have internet banking access through that bank.

Link Aadhaar with Bank Account through Mobile App:

Sign in to your bank's mobile app.

Navigate to the "Services" page of the "My Account" section and select "View/Update Aadhaar card details."

Enter your Aadhaar number twice and then press the submit button.

You will receive notification that your bank account has been successfully linked to your Aadhaar card.

You can link your bank account to Aadhaar offline by visiting your local bank branch or ATM.

By visiting a bank, you can link your Aadhaar card to your bank account.

It is required for the account holder to link his bank account with Aadhaar in order to avoid the account being deactivated.

You can easily do this by following the following procedure:

To link Aadhaar to a bank account, complete the form. The Aadhaar-Linking Form will be available on your bank's official website.

If the form is not available online, please visit your bank's local branch.

Enter your bank account information as well as your Aadhaar number.

Along with the form, submit a sell-attested copy of your Aadhaar card.

Submit the form and an Aadhaar photocopy to the counter, where you may be requested to show your genuine Aadhaar card for verification.

Your form will be accepted, but it may take a few days for your bank account to be linked to Aadhaar.

You will be notified of your registered mobile number once Aadhaar is linked.

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New Delhi: Do you have more than one Public Provident Fund (PPF) account in your name? If you opened two or more PPF accounts on or after December 12, 2019, you will be unable to merge them currently. Previously, the Department of Posts enabled investors to combine multiple PPF accounts into a single PPF account. However, the authorities set a deadline for the merger of PPF accounts on December 12, 2019.

PPF New Rule

According to the PPF guidelines for 2019, an individual cannot hold numerous PPF accounts in his or her name. Earlier this month, the ministry of finance's department of economic affairs (budget division) advised banks and post offices not to send any proposal for consideration of merger of PPF Accounts formed under the PPF Rules 2019, i.e. on or after December 19, 2019. The order was issued in response to a PPF account consolidation request made by Dr. Anupam Mishra at the Indian Bank, KGM College, Lucknow Branch.

On March 3, 2022, the Ministry of Finance's Department of Economic Affairs (Budget Division) issued a letter to all head post offices stating, "In case any one of the PPF accounts or all PPF accounts is/are proposed to be merged or amalgamated is/are opened on or after 12.12.2019, such account(s) shall be closed without any interest payment and no proposal should be sent to the Postal Directorate for amalgamation of such PPF Accounts."

Here's what it means for PPF Account holders

1) The deadline for merging PPF accounts is December 12, 2019, and any PPF account formed after that date is ineligible for regularisation.

2) If you open numerous PPF accounts in your name on or before December 12, 2019, they cannot be combined. To save tax, many people register multiple PPF accounts  one with the bank and one with the post office. Those accounts can no longer be combined into a single account.

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Delhi Tourism and Transportation Development Corporation (DTTDC) will soon launch a Delhi Tourism app to help tourists in enjoying Delhi and provide a hassle-free experience in recharging their metro cards. Officials said that tourists can now recharge their metro smart cards from Delhi Tourism App, which also contain fare and route details.

Delhi Tourism and Transportation Development Corporation (DTTDC) officials said that "the mobile application would also be useful for foreign tourists and those who are not well versed with the online modes of Delhi metro recharge options or fare and route details."

Also read: Indian Railways to get 200 new Vande Bharat trains with THESE new features

"We strive to give tourists from all over the world the best experience in Delhi. So with the help of the Delhi Tourism App's metro recharge feature, now tourists can plan their complete journey with one app."

"This feature enables users to enhance their tourism experience by providing a hassle-free facility of recharging their metro cards through the app while exploring Delhi's tourist hotspots," A senior DTTDC official told PTI, requesting anonymity.

To avail of the facility, the user will have to visit the Travel within Delhi' section of the app, select Metro', within Delhi' section of the app and then select Metro' and then click on the recharge tab. The app will then redirect the user to the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation website for smart card recharge.

Officials said that the new feature is a very useful as many foreign tourists who come to visit Delhi or even the Indian tourists from other cities are not aware of Delhi's public transport system and its ticketing and recharge facility.

"So if they download Delhi Tourism App, they will not have to stand in a queue or go through the hassle of searching other online recharge options," the official added. Delhi Tourism Department's mobile application was launched by Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on World Tourism Day on September 27 last year. 'Dekho Meri Dilli' is the tagline of the app.

"The app provides many user-friendly features to make the tourism and travel experience in Delhi a bliss as it allows for all the information ranging from tourist hotspots, popular local cuisines and market places to heritage walk through a single click", the officials said.

They said the app is unique in nature as small audio and video files of a particular tourist destination have also been embedded to give the traveller a sneak peek into the tourist spot. It allows tourists to see key highlights of any monument or other tourist location without even going there.

With inputs from PTI

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New Delhi: If you want to buy an Apple iPhone SE, now is a good moment because the smartphone costs only Rs15,499 on the Indian e-commerce site Flipkart.

The first-generation Apple iPhone SE (64GB) is available at a significant discount on the Walmart-owned e-commerce site.

Flipkart has advertised the first generation Apple smartphone with a discount and exchange incentives that will significantly reduce its price.

The Apple iPhone SE is currently available at a 24 percent discount on Flipkart. This reduces the price to Rs 30,299 from the original price of Rs 39,900.

In addition, the customer can take advantage of the exchange offer by selling his or her old smartphone. The resale value of your outdated smartphone can reach Rs 14,800.

The value, however, is determined by the condition and type of the previous smartphone. The exchange offer reduces the value of your Apple iPhone SE to Rs 15,499.

However, before exchanging your phone, be sure that the exchange offer is available in your area and that the value of your old phone is fair.

Meanwhile, Apple Inc announced on Wednesday that its annual spring product reveals event will take place on March 8.

The company is expected to release a low-cost 5G version of its popular iPhone, a new iPad Air, and a high-end Mac Mini.

The new phone would be the first update to the iPhone SE model in two years, and it is expected to include a better camera and a speedier processor.

iPhones with 5G capabilities have been a major priority for Apple's flagship product, with the current model iPhone 13 displaying bespoke 5G antennas and radio components for quicker speeds as buyers want powerful devices with improved connectivity.

Because of the popularity of its iPhones, Apple, the world's most valuable firm, was able to overcome supply chain challenges that hampered other industries and companies, resulting in product shortages during the holiday season.

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New Delhi: SpaceX chief Elon Musk warned there was a high chance the company`s Starlink satellite broadband service could be "targeted" in Ukraine, which has been hit by Russian invasion.

The warning came days after an internet security researcher warned that devices used for satellite communications could become "beacons" that Russia could target for airstrikes.

"Important warning: Starlink is the only non-Russian communications system still working in some parts of Ukraine, so probability of being targeted is high. Please use with caution," Musk tweeted.

This was our 9th Falcon 9 launch in the first 9 weeks of 2022 pic.twitter.com/yuxVN1rR8t  SpaceX (@SpaceX) March 3, 2022

He asked users to "turn on Starlink only when needed and place antenna away as far away from people as possible" and "place light camouflage over antenna to avoid visual detection."

On Saturday, Musk said Starlink was activated in Ukraine and SpaceX was sending more terminals to the country, responding to a tweet by a Ukraine government official who asked Musk to provide the embattled country with Starlink stations.

On Monday, Ukraine said it had received donated Starlink satellite internet terminals, but an internet security researcher warned these could become Russian targets.

"...if #Putin controls the air above #Ukraine, users` uplink transmissions become beacons ... for airstrikes," John Scott-Railton, a senior researcher at the University of Toronto`s Citizen Lab project, tweeted.

"#Russia has decades of experience hitting people by targeting their satellite communications," he added in a series of 15 tweets detailing the risks. (https://bit.ly/35BEFs2)

Ukraine Vice Prime Minister Mykhailo Fedorov thanked Starlink for "keeping our cities connected and emergency services saving lives!" But he said the country needs generators to keep Starlink service online due to Russian attacks on infrastructure.

In response, Musk said SpaceX was updating software to reduce peak power consumption, so Starlink can be powered from car cigarette lighters.

"Mobile roaming enabled, so phased array antenna can maintain signal while on moving vehicle," he said.

Tim Farrar, a consultant in satellite communications, said Starlink antennas, which look like home satellite television dishes, are not designed to be used while in motion, and it was not clear what Musk meant by the tweet. Also Read:

Russia and Ukraine have agreed on the need to set up humanitarian corridors and a possible ceasefire around them for fleeing civilians, both sides said after talks on Thursday, in their first sign of progress on any issue since the invasion, which Moscow calls a "special operation. Also Read:
New Delhi: Alphabet Inc's Google said on Thursday that it had stopped selling online advertising in Russia, a ban that covers search, YouTube and outside publishing partners.

The move by the world's top seller of online ads by revenue follows similar pauses in Russia by Twitter Inc and Snap Inc after Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

"In light of the extraordinary circumstances, we're pausing Google ads in Russia," the company said in a statement. "The situation is evolving quickly, and we will continue to share updates when appropriate."

Google earlier had banned Russian state-funded media from buying or selling ads through its technology. It also had invoked its sensitive events policy, which bars marketing that seeks to take advantage of the war, with an exception for protest or anti-war ads.

Russia's communications regulator Roskomnadzor on Monday ordered Google to stop showing ads that contained inaccurate information about casualties sustained by Russian forces and Ukrainian civilians. read more

On Thursday, the regulator told Google to stop showing YouTube ads with false political information about Ukraine that aimed "to misinform the Russian audience about current events, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Moscow in the past has fined or restricted access to services that ignore its demands.

Google last year paid more than 32 million roubles in fines over content violations. Also Read: Russia-Ukraine War: Reddit blocks all links to Russian state media, bans ads

The SPARK business database showed last year that Google's turnover in Russia in 2020 was 85.5 billion roubles ($790 million). Also Read: 5 banks are offering up to 7% interest on savings accounts; time to switch your bank account?

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New Delhi: Online discussion forum `Reddit` has categorically banned its users globally from posting links to Russian state-sponsored media outlets, including RT and Sputnik, as well as Russian advertisements on its platform.

Apple, Google, Meta, Microsoft, Twitter, YouTube and several other tech platforms have already banned RT and Sputnik in the wake of Russia`s invasion of Ukraine.

"While many communities on Reddit already prohibited links to Russian state media outlets like RT, Sputnik and their foreign language affiliates, we have made such restrictions universal across the site in all geographies," the company said in a statement late on Thursday.

Furthermore, "We will continue not to accept advertisements that target Russia or originate from any Russia-based entity, government or private."

Reddit said it is in active contact with its moderators and communities "particularly those most affected by the conflict" to provide support, resources and specialised tooling so they can continue to function without interference.

"We are also assisting affected Reddit colleagues in Ukraine, including providing advanced income payments and housing allowances, and supporting their relocation," said the company.

Meta has already expanded a ban on Russian state media outlets -- RT and Sputnik -- on Facebook and Instagram globally to stop the flow of misinformation as Russian forces make deeper inroads into Ukraine. Also Read: India can become global hub of green hydrogen, says PM Modi at Energy for Sustainable Growth webinar

Swedish music streaming giant Spotify has shut down its office in Russia and removed content from state-backed media outlets RT and Sputnik. Also Read: Ban it: US House speaker supports halting Russian oil imports

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New Delhi: As tension escalates between Russia and Ukraine, India along with the global community is seeking an end to the hostilities. While India has called for cessation of violence and an end to hostilities, a priest has gone viral for his unique way of ordering the European countries to stop the war.

The 38-second clip shows an Indian priest saying Russia ruk jaaye. Ukraine jhuk jaayeThis is my order, stop war!

Further, he can be heard saying in Hindi, Russ mahaan hai, isiliye yudh roke. Ukraine ne galti kiya hai, isiliye Ukraine shama maange. Issi mein sabki bhalayi hai. Tabhi mahavinaash hone se ruk sakta hai (Russia is great, so it should stop war. Ukraine has made a mistake, so it should apologise. This is beneficial for everyone and only then a catastrophe can be stopped.

Watch the video here:

The video shared by Twitter user Gaurav Singh Sengar has garnered over 1 lakh views, 5,200 likes and more than 1200 retweets.

Netizens reacted to the video with memes, some featuring Russian President Vladimir Putin who announced a military operation in Ukraine last week. Have a look at some reactions here:

Here's the International Court of Justice, @UN General Assembly, Security Council... All rolled into one pronouncing his verdict @ZelenskyyUa must comply and apologise. War will end now. On a serious note, this guy seems high on something solid #UkraineRussianWar #Ukraine  Sanjeev Gupta (@sanjg2k1) March 4, 2022

After watching this vide pic.twitter.com/fHmjQMYqQ8  Ashish singh (@Ashish26india) March 3, 2022

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Civil Aviation (MCA) said on Thursday that over 6,200 Indians have returned from Ukraine through special civilian flights and more than 7,400 Indians are expected to arrive in the next two days under Operation Ganga.

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At least 30 people were killed and more than 50 injured in a bomb explosion during Friday prayers at Jamia mosque in Qissa Khwani bazaar area in Pakistan's Peshawar on Friday. As per news reports, at least 50 others were injured when a bomb ripped through a crowded Shia mosque during the Friday congregation in this northwestern Pakistani city, officials said. No group immediately claimed responsibility for the blast.

Couple of days back, another blast was reported from Pakistan. At least three people were killed and 24 others injured in a blast near a police van at Quetta's Fatima Jinnah Road, local media reported citing officials as saying on Wednesday (March 2). According to DIG Operations Fida Hussain, the nature of the blast was being ascertained, but added that 2-2.5 kilograms of explosives were used. Hussain also identified one of the deceased as a deputy superintendent of police (DSP).

Heres a look at the other major terrorist attacks in Pakistan in the last six months:

On 5 September 2021, a terrorist on a bike attacked a check post on Mastung Road in Quetta, killing 4 Frontier Corps personnel and injuring 20 others. According to the police, the attack was carried out by a suicide bomber who drove his explosives-laden bike into a convoy of a law enforcement agency vehicle. TTP (Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan) claimed responsibility for the attack.

On 15 September 2021, seven soldiers of the Pakistan Army lost their lives during an intelligence-based operation in the Asman Manza area of South Waziristan.

On 25 September 2021, four security personnel were killed and two others were injured in a bomb attack on a vehicle of the Frontier Corps in the Khosat area of Harnai district. The Baloch Liberation Army, a banned organisation in Pakistan, claimed responsibility for the attack.

On 25 January 2022, terrorists attacked a check post of the Pakistani military in the Kech district in Balochistan in which at least 10 security personnel were killed. The terrorists also seized weapons kept at the check post. The gunbattle lasted for five hours in which several terrorists were also killed.

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Peshawar (Pakistan): In a tragic incident, at least 56 people died while 200 others were injured when a suicide bomber blew himself up inside a crowded Shia mosque during the Friday congregation in northwest Pakistan's Peshawar. This is one of the deadliest attacks in the restive province, bordering Afghanistan.

The blast took place at an Imambargah located near the Qissa Khwani Bazaar area of Peshawar when the worshippers were offering Friday prayers. No group immediately claimed responsibility for the blast in Peshawar, the provincial capital of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa which borders Afghanistan. However, the Islamic State and sectarian militant groups have claimed responsibility for the deadly attacks targeting Shias in the past.

Mohammad Asim, a spokesperson for Lady Reading Hospital (LRH), confirmed that at least 56 people were killed while 194 were injured in the blast. An eyewitness identified a person dressed in black as the suicide bomber, saying he entered the mosque, shot and killed the security guard first and then fired five to six bullets. "After that, he quickly entered the [mosque's] main hall and blew himself up in front of the pulpit. Following this, there were bodies and injured people lying everywhere," the eyewitness told Geo News.

Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa government spokesman Barrister Mohammad Ali Saif said that two terrorists were involved in the suicide bombing.

Talking to the media, Peshawar SSP Operations Haroon Rasheed Khan said the explosion was a suicide blast. There were two attackers but only one of them was a suicide bomber, he said. Inspector-General of Police Moazzam Jah Ansari the terrorist first opened fire at the worshippers after entering the mosque and then blew himself up, reported PTI.

Ansari said that about five to six kilogrammes of explosives were used in the blast, which took place in the third row of the mosque. An emergency has been declared in the hospital and doctors on leave were summoned. Officials said the condition of some of the injured is stated to be critical. Capital City Police Officer Peshawar Ijaz Ahsan said two attackers tried to enter the mosque and fired at the policemen standing guard. One policeman was killed while the other was critically injured, he said. The blast occurred following the firing incident, he added.

President Arif Alvi condemned the blast and expressed grief over the precious lives lost. Prime Minister Imran Khan strongly condemned the blast and directed authorities to provide medical treatment to the injured. He also sought an inquiry report from the authorities concerned. Interior Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed sought a report of the incident from the Chief Secretary and IG of the province.

"No threat alert was received, we had a meeting a couple of days ago but no threat was received; we had no information about it," the interior minister said. Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Chief Minister Mahmood Khan condemned the blast and vowed to bring the perpetrators of this heinous act to justice. He said targeting people in a place of worship is an inhuman and cruel act and directed authorities to ensure the best medical care to the injured. He has convened an emergency meeting at Chief Minister's House to review the overall security situation in the province, bordering Afghanistan.

"Heart-wrenching terrorist incident in Peshawar in which so many precious lives have been lost. Words can't adequately condemn the sheer brutality. Terrorism continues to remain our foremost national challenge. Prayers & condolences are with the bereaved families!" PML-N President and Leader of the Opposition in the National Assembly Shehbaz Sharif tweeted.

Also read: A look at major attacks in Pakistan in last 6 months

Former President Asif Ali Zardari said that the attack would not have happened if "nurseries of terrorism had been destroyed". Chairman Pakistan Peoples Party Bilawal Bhutto Zardari also condemned the terrorism incident in Peshawar in a separate statement, saying the terrorists attacked humanity by targeting innocent worshipers.

(With PTI inputs)

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New Delhi: Europes largest nuclear power station, Zaporizhzhia in Ukraine was on fire early on Friday after an attack by Russian troops as smoke coming out of the facility was observed by the officials, the mayor of the nearby town of Energodar said.

This comes as intense fighting between local forces and Russian troops were reported, Dmytro Orlov said.

Meanwhile, Ukraine Foreign Affairs Minister Dmytro Kuleba said that Russia has launched the attacks from all sides of the nuclear plant reminding us the potential of threat the facility holds if it blows up.

"Russian army is firing from all sides upon Zaporizhzhia NPP, the largest nuclear power plant in Europe. Fire has already broken out. If it blows up, it will be 10 times larger than Chernobyl!" said Kuleba

Earlier, Ukrainian authorities reported Russian troops were stepping up efforts to seize the plant and had entered the town with tanks.

"As a result of continuous enemy shelling of buildings and units of the largest nuclear power plant in Europe, the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant is on fire," Orlov said on his Telegram channel, citing what he called a threat to world security. He did not give details.

Thousands are thought to have died or been wounded as the biggest attack on a European state since World War Two unfolds, compelling over a million people in Ukraine to flee and pushing the world towards one of the biggest military conflicts of the 21st century in the west.

The so-called war between Russia and Ukraine, in an attempt to invade the latter by the former, has entered its ninth day on Friday (IST).

(With inputs from Reuters)

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Kyiv: The devastating fire at Europe's biggest nuclear plant ignited by Russian shelling has been extinguished, the Ukrainian authorities said on Friday even as the Russian forces took control of the site.

Ukraine's state nuclear regulator said that no changes in radiation levels have been recorded so far. It said staff are studying the site to check for other damage to the compartment of reactor No. 1 at the Zaporizhzhia plant in the city of Enerhodar.

The regulator noted in a statement on Facebook the importance of maintaining the ability to cool nuclear fuel, saying the loss of such ability could lead to an accident even worse than the 1986 Chernobyl accident, the world's worst nuclear disaster, or the 2011 Fukushima meltdowns in Japan.

It also noted that there is a storage facility for spent nuclear fuel at the site, though there was no sign that the facility was hit by shelling. The shelling of the plant came as the Russian military pressed their attack on a crucial energy-producing Ukrainian city and gained ground in their bid to cut off the country from the sea.

As the invasion entered its second week, another round of talks between Russia and Ukraine yielded a tentative agreement to set up safe corridors to evacuate citizens and deliver humanitarian aid.

Leading nuclear authorities were worried but not panicked about the damage to the power station. The assault, however, led to phone calls between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and US President Joe Biden and other world leaders. The US Department of Energy activated its nuclear incident response team as a precaution.

Earlier, nuclear plant spokesman Andriy Tuz told Ukrainian television that shells fell directly on the facility and set fire to one of its six reactors. That reactor is under renovation and not operating, he said.

The Zaporizhzhia regional military administration said that measurements taken at 7 AM on Friday (0500 GMT) showed radiation levels in the region remain unchanged and do not endanger the lives and health of the population. The mayor of Enerhodar, Dmytro Orlov, announced on his Telegram channel Friday morning that the fire at the (nuclear plant) has indeed been extinguished.

His office said that the information came from firefighters who were allowed onto the site overnight. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson called for an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council in coming hours to raise the issue of Russia's attack on the nuclear power plant, according to a statement from his office.

US Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm tweeted that the Zaporizhzhia plant's reactors were protected by robust containment structures and were being safely shut down. In an emotional speech in the middle of the night, Zelenskyy said he feared an explosion that would be the end for everyone. The end for Europe. The evacuation of Europe.

Only urgent action by Europe can stop the Russian troops, he said. Do not allow the death of Europe from a catastrophe at a nuclear power station. But most experts saw nothing to indicate an impending disaster.

The International Atomic Energy Agency said the fire had not affected essential equipment and that Ukraine's nuclear regulator reported no change in radiation levels. The American Nuclear Society concurred, saying that the latest radiation levels remained within natural background levels.

The real threat to Ukrainian lives continues to be the violent invasion and bombing of their country, the group said in a statement.

Orlov, the mayor of Enerhodar, said Russian shelling stopped a few hours before dawn, and residents of the city of more than 50,000 who had stayed in shelters overnight could return home.

The city awoke with no heat, however, because the shelling damaged the city's heating main, he said. Prior to the shelling, the Ukrainian state atomic energy company reported that a Russian military column was heading toward the nuclear plant. Loud shots and rocket fire were heard late Thursday.

Later, a live-streamed security camera linked from the homepage of the Zaporizhzhia plant showed what appeared to be armoured vehicles rolling into the facility's parking lot and shining spotlights on the building where the camera was mounted. Then there were what appeared to be muzzle flashes from vehicles, followed by nearly simultaneous explosions in surrounding buildings. Smoke rose into the frame and drifted away.

Vladimir Putin's forces have brought their superior firepower to bear over the past few days, launching hundreds of missiles and artillery attacks on cities and other sites around the country and making significant gains in the south.

The Russians announced the capture of the southern city of Kherson, a vital Black Sea port of 280,000, and local Ukrainian officials confirmed the takeover of the government headquarters there, making it the first major city to fall since the invasion began a week ago.

A Russian airstrike on Thursday destroyed the power plant in Okhtyrka, leaving the city without heat or electricity, the head of the region said on Telegram. In the first days of the war, Russian troops attacked a military base in the city, located between Kharkiv and Kyiv, and officials said more than 70 Ukrainian soldiers were killed.

Meanwhile, heavy fighting continued on the outskirts of another strategic port, Mariupol, on the Azov Sea. The battles have knocked out the city's electricity, heat and water systems, as well as most phone service, officials said.

Food deliveries to the city were also cut. Severing Ukraine's access to the Black and Azov seas would deal a crippling blow to its economy and allow Russia to build a land corridor to Crimea, seized by Moscow in 2014.

Overall, the outnumbered, outgunned Ukrainians have put up stiff resistance, staving off the swift victory that Russia appeared to have expected. But a senior US Defence official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Russia's seizure of Crimea gave it a logistical advantage in that part of the country, with shorter supply lines that smoothed the offensive there.

Ukrainian leaders called on the people to defend their homeland by cutting down trees, erecting barricades in the cities and attacking enemy columns from the rear. In recent days, authorities have issued weapons to civilians and taught them how to make Molotov cocktails.

Total resistance. ... This is our Ukrainian trump card, and this is what we can do best in the world, Oleksiy Arestovich, an aide to Zelenskyy, said in a video message, recalling guerrilla actions in Nazi-occupied Ukraine during World War II.

The second round of talks between Ukrainian and Russian delegations was held in neighbouring Belarus. But the two sides appeared far apart going into the meeting, and Putin warned Ukraine that it must quickly accept the Kremlin's demand for its demilitarization and declare itself neutral, renouncing its bid to join NATO.

Putin told French President Emmanuel Macron he was determined to press on with his attack until the end, according to Macron's office. The two sides said that they tentatively agreed to allow cease-fires in areas designated safe corridors and that they would seek to work out the necessary details quickly. A Zelenskyy adviser also said the third round of talks will be held early next week.

Putin claimed that the Russian military had already offered safe corridors for civilians to flee, but he asserted without evidence that Ukrainian neo-Nazis were preventing people from leaving and were using them as human shields.

The Pentagon set up a direct communication link to Russia's Ministry of Defence earlier this week to avoid the possibility of a miscalculation sparking conflict between Moscow and Washington, according to a US Defense official who spoke on condition of anonymity because the link had not been announced.

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The Ukraine crisis and the war with Russia are now on their ninth day. Here are the top 10 highlights from the day:

- Russian forces have shelled Europe's largest nuclear power plant, sparking a fire there. Firefighters could not immediately reach the site because of the Russian onslaught. The Zaporizhzhia plant provides about 25% of Ukraine's power generation.

- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy spoke with President Joe Biden and other world leaders after Russia's shelling of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant. Zelenskyy said in a late-night speech he feared an explosion that would be "the end for everyone."

- The Russians have also taken over the strategic port city of Kherson and Russian President Vladimir Putin has said the campaign will press on to "demilitarise" Ukraine even as the day before, Ukrainian and Russian delegates met in neighboring Belarus and agreed to provide safe corridors to evacuate citizens and deliver humanitarian aid.

- People across Ukraine have taken up arms and sought shelter. More than 1.2 million people have fled to neighboring countries, the UN Refugee agency said Friday.

- Russian forces have captured the southern city of Kherson, a vital Black Sea port of 280,000, the first major city to fall since the invasion began. Russian armored vehicles were seen in the otherwise empty streets of Kherson, in videos shared with the AP by a resident.

- Frequent shelling could be heard Friday from the center of the capital, Kyiv. Heavy fighting continued on the outskirts of another strategic port, Mariupol, knocking out the city's electricity, heat and water systems, as well as most phone service. Food deliveries to the city were also cut.

- In a call initiated by Putin, the Russian told French President Emmanuel Macron that negotiations must center on the "neutralization and disarmament of Ukraine." Macron "spoke the truth" to Putin, advising him of the long-term consequences and telling him he would end up isolated.

- India's Arindam Bagchi, spokesperson of the Ministry of External Affairs, admitted that evacuation looks difficult without a ceasefire. "We urge the parties concerned - Ukraine and Russia - to have a local ceasefire at least so that we can evacuate our people including the students."

Also read: Russia-Ukraine war: Has Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy fled to Poland?

- The UN Refugee Agency said Friday that more than 1.2 million people have left Ukraine since the invasion began. UNHCR's data portal on Ukraine showed that the vast majority of "about 650,000" had gone to neighboring Poland, and roughly 145,000 had fled to Hungary. Another 103,000 were in Moldova and more than 90,000 in Slovakia. Separately, UNICEF said that 500,000 of those who've left Ukraine are children.

- Russia has acknowledged that nearly 500 Russian troops have been killed and around 1,600 have been wounded. Among them was, Major General Andrei Sukhovetsky, the commanding general of the Russian 7th Airborne Division, who had previous experience in Syria.

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Kyiv: Has President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy fled the country for Poland? The speaker of the Russian parliament has claimed that he has fled to Poland. While Zee News could not verify the news immediately and the fact remains that Russia and Ukraine have been running their own propaganda, if this is true, it can be a huge development.

However, Ukraine has rejected the Russian media claims that Ukrainian President Zelensky has fled the country. Ukraine clarified that President Zelensky is currently in the capital Kyiv.

In the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine, the capital Kyiv has been facing a huge crisis for several days. In such a situation, if Zelensky had left the country, some experts feel that there would have probably been no attack on Kyiv. But Ukraine has rejected the reports of their President fleeing, that's coming from Russia.

Earlier Ukraine President Zelenskyy had said that he is enemy Russias No. 1 target and the Russian forces are seeking to eliminate his family too. "The enemy marked me as target number one, and my family as target number two," Zelenskyy said during a televised address. Zelenskyy's statement came a day after the US told the United Nations' human rights chief, Michelle Bachelet, that Russia has created a hit list of "identified Ukrainians to be killed or sent to camps."

On the top of that, Russia's seizure of a Ukrainian nuclear power plant has heightened fears about lack of access to radiation data and the potential for a nuclear accident, atomic experts said, although they stressed there did not appear to be any immediate radiological risks. Russian forces captured the Zaporizhzhia plant - Europe's largest - after attacking it in the early hours of Friday, setting an adjacent five-storey training facility on fire, Ukrainian authorities said.

Meanwhile, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg says the military organisation will not police a no-fly zone over Ukraine and is warning that such a move could end in a wide-spread war in Europe. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has appealed to the West to enforce a no-fly zone over his country, most recently after a fire overnight at one of Ukraine's nuclear plants, the largest in Europe. Russian President Vladimir Putin's forces have ramped up their attacks in Ukraine, launching hundreds of missiles and artillery strikes on cities and making significant gains in the south.



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When Eloise Kirk died on Feb. 18 at age 97, Montana lost a champion of the arts, a mentor for hundreds of young musicians for more than six decades.

Kirk inspired generations of violinists and was a founding member of the Billings Symphony Orchestra and co-founder of the Red Lodge Music Festival. Her gracious and positive personality complimented her organizational skills and strong work ethic. Even in her final years, she served on the board of directors for the Red Lodge Music Festival.

Ken Gilstrap, who plays viola with the Billings Symphony and is president of the board and artistic director for the Red Lodge Music Festival, said Kirk knew how to get things done. He remembered a time in the mid-1980s when Kirk returned to Montana from living overseas and was dismayed to see the enrollment at the music festival had dropped.

She met with music directors all over the state and within two years the festival went from 140 students to 250, Gilstrap said. She was just tireless in her work, especially when it came to string playing.

Her oldest son, John Kirk, said his mother had a lifelong love affair with the violin. Eloise also has a daughter, Barbara Kirk, of Billings, and another son, Roger Kirk, of Bozeman.

Eloise shared her love of music with her students over the years, inspiring them to be better players, and working hard to ensure they had opportunities to perfect their playing and perform in front of an audience.

She taught, she played, she organized  that was her life, John Kirk said.

At one point, Eloise was teaching 22 violin students every week from her home studio in Billings. John said when he was young, his family had a home on Foster Lane, where Eloises parents owned and operated Just Honest Milk Dairy Farm. When touring musicians would come to town to perform, they always had a place to stay at the Kirks. Eloise would even get them job interviews if they needed work and dress them up in her husband, Georges suits for job interviews, John recalled.

We used to hear string quartets at our house all the time, sometimes until 2 or 3 in the morning. There was a lot of music at our house, John said.

Eloise was so organized, she even wrote her own obituary.

Twenty-seven years ago she handed me an envelope, and it was her obituary, John said.

Eloise was tenacious when it came to supporting the arts. She was always happy to pick up the loose ends of any project, John said.

She knew how to beat the bushes as she called it. She was politically savvy. She knew who to call and what to say. She was the voice of the people.

Because Eloise served as the head of the scholarship committee at the Red Lodge Music Festival, she was able to recruit students based on their desire to play, not their ability to pay.

Julie Blakeslee, education manager of the Alberta Bair Theater, said that from the day she met Eloise, she had nothing but respect and appreciation for her.

My first memory of Eloise was when I played at the District Music Festival. She came up to me and said, Youre a wonderful violin player. Who is your teacher? Then she told me some things I could work on. I guess she was inspiring me right from the beginning.

At one memorable Symphony in the Park concert in Billings in the 1990s, Eloise performed on violin and her children all played in the orchestra as well. John plays cello and Barbara and Roger play violin.

Eloise began playing the violin early and by the time she got to Billings Senior High, she was the concert master of the school orchestra. She played second violin in the precursor to the Billings Symphony, the Midland Symphony Orchestra. She was also the concert master of the Montana State University Orchestra, and she played in orchestras all over the world from the Oakland Symphony in the 1940s when she studied music at the University of California at Berkley to the Kobe (Japan) Symphony. Later in life, she traveled to so many countries, a large world map in her Billings basement was filled with push pins showing the dozens of countries she visited.

Janny Kirk, her daughter-in-law, said the family gathered the weekend after Eloises death at her house and marveled at the map. A granddaughter decided she would take the map and hang it in her home.

She was all about travel, and she was incredibly generous to her family, Janny Kirk said. She was my second mother.

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KYIV: Ever since Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the military invasion of Ukraine, the Russian forces have launched a devastating attack on the eastern European country from all sides  air, land, and sea. The Russian forces have been bombing various city centres and closing in on the capital, Kyiv, triggering a mass exodus of refugees.

Interestingly, for months, Putin denied that he would invade Ukraine - a European democracy of 44 million people. But, he later tore up a peace deal and unleashed what Germany calls "Putin's war", pouring forces into Ukraine's north, east and south.

As the number of dead climbs, Russia's leader stands accused of shattering the peace in Europe. Russia-Ukraine war has entered its ninth day today and no one when knows when it will stop and what are Putins ultimate goals and how he plans to achieve them.

What's Putin's Plan?

The Russian President said on Thursday that Moscow's advance in Ukraine is going "according to plan" and ordered large compensations for Russian soldiers killed in the invasion. "I want to say that the special military operation is going strictly according to schedule, according to plan," he said, opening a meeting with his security council. "We are at war with neo-Nazis," the Russian leader said, adding, "I will never give up on my conviction that Russians and Ukrainians are one people."

According to experts, President Putin has outlined clear strategic and political objectives for his military leadership in Ukraine in a way that the then US president, George W Bush, never did in Iraq.

In his declaration of war speech to the nation on February 24, Putin set out the objectives of his special operation: his goals were to strive for the demilitarisation and denazification of Ukraine.

The Russian President spoke of creating the necessary conditions despite the presence of state borders, to strengthen us as a whole. In other words, Putin is deliberately blurring the distinction between Russia and Ukraine.

We have seen absolutely nothing in their campaign so far to indicate that the strategic objectives have changed, decapitation of the Ukrainian political leadership, defeat of the Ukrainian armed forces and the destruction of Ukraine as a functioning independent state. In the words of the Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, they want to break our nationhood.

So how then will the Russian high command achieve these goals? In the early 19th century, strategist Karl von Clausewitz advised that only by constantly seeking out the centre of his power, by daring all to win all, will one really defeat the enemy. Zelenskyy has defined himself, and by extension his government, as that centre with every stirring, epoch-making speech he makes.

Plan to eliminate Zelenskyy

The immense power of Russian electronic intelligence will therefore be directed at locating him. Undercover commando units have been directed to find and assassinate him. Spies have been working over the past months to acquire contacts within the president's circle and bribe, threaten or otherwise force betrayal.

This effort has palpably (so far) not succeeded, unlike US efforts to penetrate the group of advisers closest to Putin. If special forces, spies and electronic wizardry fail, Russian air power and artillery will try to succeed by obliterating every possible hiding place.

So on to the second of Putin's aims, demilitarisation, Clausewitz goes on to say, Still, no matter what the central feature of the enemy's power may be the point on which your efforts must converge, the defeat and destruction of his fighting force remain the best way to begin. It is indeed the best way to begin, but the Russians have failed to achieve this yet.

Were this a US or NATO campaign, no soldier would have crossed the border until every aircraft in the Ukrainian inventory, every radar, every element of the Ukrainian air defence system had been destroyed. After that, the air forces would get to work on destroying the deployed enemy army as far as possible. Only then would troops cross the border to complete the destruction of the enemy fighting force.

Russia did not do this sequentially. Instead, they tried and embarrassingly failed to achieve these elements concurrently. Whether this is due to overconfidence, incompetence, corruption or a combination of all three, military analysts are baffled by the planning failures of the, special operation, so far.

Russian air power has been conspicuously scarce and much touted Russian combined operations skills equally conspicuously absent. The Russian failure to properly plan logistics and supply systems is clear to even the most casual observer.

Battleground Kyiv

Once they sort out these problems the Russian campaign will be directed primarily, though not exclusively, towards Kyiv. Given the vast medieval-style siege train lumbering towards the city, it is no surprise that the Russian ministry of defence has warned that strikes are being prepared.

The aim is to remove the symbolic heart of the country. Russian commanders rightly sees the city as embodying the Ukrainian state as a functional political entity. They will begin by destroying Ukrainian military and intelligence hubs to disrupt Ukrainian military command and control. Russian failure to strike these targets early in the war means that these buildings will now be unoccupied.

Media targets will be struck, denying the ability of the government to lead and inspire and enabling the Russians to attempt to spread disinformation and confusion. This was clearly the reason for the attempted destruction of Kyiv's signature TV tower on March 1.

Since they have not managed to end Ukrainian armed resistance, Russian commanders will default to the approach (it cannot be called a strategy) we saw in Grozny in 1994 and 1999 as well as the Russian involvement in Aleppo in 2015-16, among many other places.

This means bringing Kyiv under siege, blockading and starving the population, and shelling and bombing indiscriminately. The criminal logic behind this relies on a complete elimination of any western notions of restraint or discrimination in targeting civilians. This will not merely last a week or two. If unchecked, we are looking at an operation of many months.

The idea is to break the will of the people to resist. There is no other possible purpose for the kind of weapons that are being brought up for deployment, notably the heavy artillery, thermobaric rocket launchers and attack helicopters.

All of these weapons systems may well be used against enemy armed forces on the battlefield, but in a city of 3 million people, there can be no legitimate military purpose, unless one considers that terrorising a civilian population into total submission is legitimate.

Unfortunately, recent Russian military history would tend to indicate that they believe legitimacy to be irrelevant. So much for Russian strategic goals. The Ukrainian armed forces backed by a united population and supported by a surprisingly strong international coalition will have something to say about whether they achieve them.

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Kyiv (Ukraine): No radiation was released from a Russian attack at Europe's biggest nuclear power plant in Ukraine and firefighters have extinguished a blaze at the facility, UN and Ukrainian officials said on Friday (March 4), as Russian forces pressed their campaign to cripple the country despite global condemnation. The International Atomic Energy Agency's director-general, Rafael Mariano Grossi, said on Friday that the building hit by a Russian "projectile" at the Zaporizhzhia plant was "not part of the reactor" but instead a training center at the plant.

Nuclear officials from Sweden to China said no radiation spikes had been reported, as did Grossi. Ukrainian officials have said Russian troops took control of the overall site, but the plant's staff were continuing to ensure its operations. Grossi said the Ukrainians were in control of the reactor. In the frenzied initial aftermath when the risk of a radiation release was not clear, the attack caused worldwide concern and evoked memories of the world's worst nuclear disaster, at Ukraine's Chernobyl.

Facing worldwide indignation over the attack, Russia sought to deflect blame. Without producing evidence, Defence Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov blamed arson rather than artillery fire. He claimed a Ukrainian "sabotage group" had occupied the training building at the plant, fired on a Russian patrol and set fire to the building as they left. There had been conflicting reports earlier over which part of the Zaporizhzhia facility had been affected in the attack, with an official saying at one point that shells fell directly on the facility and set fire to a reactor not in operation as well as a training building. Grossi later said that the fire was in the training center.

The confusion itself underscored the dangers of active fighting near a nuclear power plant. It was the second time since the invasion began just over a week ago that concerns about a nuclear accident or a release of radiation materialized, following a battle at Chernobyl. Grossi said only one reactor of six at Zaporizhzhia is currently operating, at about 60% capacity, and that two people at the site were injured in the fire. Ukraine's state nuclear plant operator Enerhoatom said three Ukrainian soldiers were killed and two wounded.

The plant fire came as the Russian military advanced on a strategic city on the Dnieper River near where the facility is located, and gained ground in their bid to cut the country off from the sea. That move would deal a severe blow to Ukraine's economy and could worsen an already dire humanitarian situation.

With the invasion in its second week, another round of talks between Russia and Ukraine yielded a tentative agreement to set up safe corridors to evacuate citizens and deliver humanitarian aid to the country, overturned by a war that has sent more than 1 million fleeing over the border and countless others sheltering underground. A handful of cities are without heat and at least one is struggling to get food and water. In the center of the capital, Kyiv, frequent shelling could still be heard Friday, although more distant than in recent days, with loud thudding every 10 minutes resonating over the rooftops.

The West has heaped sanctions on Russia, and most of the world lined up to demand Russia withdraw its troops in a vote in the UN General Assembly this week. In the latest show of international opposition to the invasion, the UN''s top human rights body voted 32-2 on a resolution that would among other things set up a panel of experts to monitor human rights in Ukraine. Only Russia and Eritrea opposed; there were 13 abstentions.

The attack on the nuclear facility led to phone calls between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and US President Joe Biden and other world leaders. The U.S. Department of Energy activated its nuclear incident response team as a precaution. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson called for an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council to raise the issue of Russia's attack on the plant.

In an emotional speech in the middle of the night, Zelenskyy said he feared an explosion that would be "the end for everyone. The end for Europe. The evacuation of Europe." But most experts saw nothing to indicate an impending disaster. "The real threat to Ukrainian lives continues to be the violent invasion and bombing of their country," the American Nuclear Society said in a statement.

Russian President Vladimir Putin's forces have brought their superior firepower to bear over the past few days, launching hundreds of missiles and artillery attacks on cities and other sites around the country and making significant gains in the south. The Russians announced the capture of the southern city of Kherson, a vital Black Sea port of 280,000, and local Ukrainian officials confirmed the takeover of the government headquarters there, making it the first major city to fall since the invasion began just over a week ago.

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New Delhi: In response to the fire at Ukraine`s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, US Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm said on Friday that the Department of Energy has "activated its Nuclear Incident Response Team" and is monitoring the situation.

In a series of tweets, Granholm said, "I just spoke with Ukraine`s energy minister about the situation at the Zaphorizhizia nuclear plant. Russian military operations near the plant are reckless and must cease."

She added that the Department of Energy "has activated its Nuclear Incident Response Team and is monitoring events in consultation with Department of Defense, Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the White House. We have seen no elevated radiation readings near the facility".

Granholm added that the Zaphorizhizia plant`s reactors are "protected by robust containment structures and reactors are being safely shut down". The fire erupted earlier in the day on the third, fourth and fifth floor of the plant`s training building after Russian troops shelled the complex.

The blaze was brought under control at about 6.20 AM. In the wake of the incident, share prices tumbled in Asia, the BBC reported.

Tokyo and Hong Kong faced the steepest falls, with Japan`s benchmark Nikkei index 2.5 per cent lower and the Hang Seng in Hong Kong down by 2.6 per cent. Oil prices rose in Asia during morning trade, with Brent crude above $112 a barrel.

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New Delhi: The Russian forces in the wee hours of Friday attacked Ukraines Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Europes largest, triggering alarm all across the Western region of an irreversible crisis.

Though the Ukraine emergency services said that there had been no changes in the radiation levels of the plant and no essential equipment were harmed, the mere attack on the facility will certainly have some implications.

Here is what the attack on Ukraines Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant means

Research by specialists for Greenpeace International concludes that the safety of Zaporizhzhia is severely compromised by the war.

A disaster worse than Fukushima Daiichi

In a worst-case scenario, where explosions destroy the reactor containment and cooling systems, the potential release of radioactivity from both the reactor core and the spent fuel pool into the atmosphere could create a disaster far worse even than the Fukushima Daiichi catastrophe of 2011.

After the 2011 incident, the areas of land within hundreds of kilometres from the reactor site potentially became inhospitable for decades.

Other scenarios

In fact, even if there is no direct damage to the plant, the reactors rely heavily on the electric grid for operating cooling systems.

In the absence of the availability of nuclear technicians and personnel and access to heavy equipment and logistics, the accident can lead to a nuclear power plant blast that can cause serious radiation sickness and contamination of forests and farmlands in addition to a long term impact on human health due to radiations and irreversible climate changes.

Meanwhile, the world is responding quickly to an attack that could result in a massive tragedy. UK PM Boris Johnson on Friday spoke to Ukrainian PM and said that he will seek an emergency session at UNSC to raise the issue.

US President Joe Biden is also monitoring the situation and maintaining a dialogue with Russia to let firefighters assess the nuclear plant site.

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New Delhi: The past nine days have been threatening, not just for Ukraine but the entire world. Russia launched a needless attack on its neighbour Ukraine, in a bid to invade its territory.

While the UN and other West powers have responded with stringent economic and trade sanctions on Russia that has crumbled its economy to a point, India, of which Russia is a diplomatic ally has sided with a neutral approach and abstained from voting for any side in the international forums.

As the Russian invasion of Ukraine reaches its day 9 and there is still uncertainty on the facts with fake news and propaganda mongering on the rise, here is what has happened between Russia and Ukraine so far:

What happened between Russia and Ukraine

Russia and Ukraine are currently in a state of war as the former, in a bid to invade the latter, launched a military attack on February 24.

The issue goes back to 1991 when Ukraine, earlier a part of the Soviet Union, got independence and declared itself a democratic and sovereign nation.

Russia and Ukraine have been hostile to each other since Ukraine's independence.

The situation got out of control in 2021 when the current President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky appealed to the US for NATO membership for his country, a move that has been long retaliated against by Russia.

To prevent Ukraine from joining NATO, as it could strengthen its defence mechanism against Russia, Putin began to exert pressure by sending troops near Ukraines border labelling it to be for "training exercises.

How Ukraine's NATO membership harms Russia

It is obvious that the Russian government doesn't see Ukraine's NATO membership as a good sign because it strengthens the nation's defence capabilities, which in turn hurts Russias influence in the West.

As per reports, President Putin has made clear that he sees the countrys desire to join the group as a threat to Russias borders as five NATO members already border Russia.

What all has happened so far in the Russia-Ukraine war

Over one million people in Ukraine were compelled to leave the country and seek refuge, announced the United Nations.

Several hard-hitting economic and trade sanctions have been issued against Russia by Western powers.

Ukraine has sued Russia in the International Court of Justice for genocide.

Two rounds of peace talk have already happened between Russia and Ukraine, however, no immediate ceasefire could be achieved.

UN had already called and voted on a motion against Russia in the Security Council, of which Russia is a permanent member and the General Assembly.

Ukrainian emergency services said that more than 2,000 Ukrainian civilians have died since the Russian invasion began on February 24.

Russian forces on Wednesday seized the first major Ukrainian city of Kherson. The Russian ministry earlier announced that it had taken over two small towns of Berdyansk and Enerhodar.

The Russian Defence Ministry, on the other hand, said 498 Russian troops were killed till March 3.

As per United Nations, as of March 1, it had recorded 752 civilian casualties in Ukraine.

On Friday (March 4), Russian troops attacked Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Europes largest. Ukraine reported no change in radiation levels so far.

Russia had already taken control of the Chernobyl power plant.

Indias stance

India has so far abstained from voting against Russia in UN Security Council and General Assembly.

However, PM Modi has maintained dialogue both with Russia and Ukraine to ensure the safe evacuation of Indians from the war-conflicted region and asserted that human rights must not be violated.

India has also provided humanitarian aid to Ukraine amid the crisis.

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Country music blaring from two large speakers propped on a flatbed trailer mingled with the rumble of diesel engines and excited chatter on Pryor Creek Road above I-90 Thursday morning. Locals waited eagerly for the arrival of the Northwest branch of the American Freedom Convoy scheduled to pass below them that morning on its way to Washington D.C.

Many of the more than 100 people waved red, white and blue flags  some with political commentary supporting or attacking past and present presidents, some with a field of 50 stars. Some waved Montana flags  one emblazoned with the words Dont California My Montana." Others waved yellow Gadsden flags with their signature Libertarian imagery of a rattlesnake and Dont Tread on Me stamped across them. The common theme was defending liberty from a perceived threat of the Biden Administration.

The crowd gathered to show solidarity with a convoy of truckers, RVs, pickups, cars and SUVs on their way to the nations capital to protest vaccine mandates for truck drivers crossing the border into Canada, other pandemic-fighting measures and other more general policies of President Joe Bidens administration they believe threaten their personal liberty.

The protests have become a symbol of political unrest in recent weeks following similar mass trucker blockades of Canadian ports of entry and even a significant siege of Canadas capital Ottawa that ended only after police intervention ordered by an emergency declaration from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

The issue at hand in those demonstrations was a mandate that all truck drivers coming into Canada would need to have a proof of vaccination in order to proceed with their business. Many of the blockades eventually ended on the protesters own terms, but the policy has remained intact despite significant impacts to trade, commerce and manufacturing from protesters.

The impacts were so disruptive that a Ford plant was forced to shut down as a result of supply shortages, the Associated Press reported in February.

The three Food and Drug Administration approved COVID-19 vaccines and their subsequent booster shots remain the safest and most effective way to prevent the spread of the coronavirus and subsequent COVID-caused medical emergencies and deaths. Despite the safety and accessibility of the vaccines, only 56% of Montanans are fully vaccinated. But almost 65% of Montanans have received a single dose of either vaccine. Side effects from the vaccines are rare.

In America, convoys have reportedly launched from all over the nation apparently with the intent to mirror the impacts seen in Canada. But some convoys have seen more support than others. Passing through Lockwood this week was more than a dozen semi-trucks accompanied by numerous smaller vehicles, but the New York Times reported a convoy leaving Southern California arrived in Las Vegas with only five trucks in its ranks. The convoy organizers encouraged those five to link up with other convoys heading east.

According to the Spokane-to-Washington D.C. convoys private Facebook page, the groups mission is more than just protesting the vaccine mandate for truckers. They described it as a protest to restore our freedoms, our civil liberties, and to bring an end to all unconstitutional mandates with legal provisions in place to ensure this never happens again.

The group had more than 7,100 members as of Thursday afternoon.

For Montana convoy organizer Jo Kinkade, Montanas support for the convoy went further than just lining the streets and honking horns. She helped coordinate the logistics of the convoy by collecting money and donations such as fuel and food cards from across the state to support the truckers and participants over the coming weeks, she said.

Weve gotten supplies from all over the state, Kinkade said. Anywhere from donations of food, water, drinks to all kinds of homemade, cooked food, gas cards, cash cards. Its been outstanding.

From Lockwood, the convoy will head along I-90 until it hits Wisconsin and links up with a separate convoy coming out of California, Kinkade said. Eventually convoys from across the country will converge on D.C. similar to the events in Ottawa.

On their Facebook description the convoy warned against violence amid its ranks saying, We are peaceful! No violent speech, no threats, no hate, NO EXCEPTIONS!!!

In preparation for the convoy, Gallatin County put out a Tweet telling residents the convoy would create traffic impacts when it came through the area Wednesday.

Yellowstone County Sheriff Mike Linder told the Gazette Wednesday that he and other local officials were aware of the convoy on its way into Billings, but were taking no special precautions. Law enforcement would respond if needed, he said.

Were just going to let them do their thing, and do whatevers needed to keep things peaceful, he said.

For beef rancher Landon Berglee and his toddler son Simian, coming out to show support was not just about solidarity with protests over the vaccine mandate, but to show unity as a nation against policies, he believes, are dividing the country and changing American values.

I grew up one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all, said Berglee. Thats what made our country great  the greatest country that has ever been on earth, really, for freedom  we started out from the Pilgrims and thats what weve stood for and in todays environment I see this much more about control and the freedom of it. [It] isnt for politics to tell us how to live. Its that we are a democracy and everyone votes and we stand for what we stand for and we support the people that are there [in the convoy].

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When Billings voters go to the polls in May, they will be asked whether or not to support a high school operational levy for $1.5 million.

That money would largely fund expansion and modernization of the career technical education space at Senior High School, among other career pathway costs.

For the taxpayer, the levy would equate to $1.16 per month for a house with a $200,000 taxable value, said Craig Van Nice, chief financial officer for the district.

Montana requires schools to hit a minimum budget using state, local and federal money. But local voters can choose to increase their property taxes to supplement that budget by up to 20%.

The money would be earmarked for pathway work but placed in a general fund, Billings School District 2 Superintendent Greg Upham said.

With as high of a need as our businesses have for employees its a golden opportunity for public schools and school districts to retool, and Im really pleased to say that SD2 had the foresight in this even before I got here Upham said during a public video stream.

Billings most recently passed such a levy in 2019, for the first time in 12 years. It opened positions for four career counselors, allowed for new textbooks, and a career outreach director position that is partially paid by the levy and partially by businesses in the community, said Bo Bruinsma, career outreach director for the district.

Upham mentioned a former public school student who is now in college. She had interned with a marketing company and participated in meetings where people pitched million dollar ideas. Thats the kind of experience that you just dont get, he said.

I keep saying this, but I know those of us that have enough gray hair [know] that when you start out in life, its not what you know but who you know, and what I found in my 35 years of education is theres a lot of families and students that have interest in specific areas but they just dont have the connections, Upham said.

Career counselors work with students to explore their interests early in high school, and Bruinsma communicates with local businesses to find school-to-work opportunities for students.

Facilitating those opportunities allows for the use of a wide range of machinery and knowledge that would be too specific and expensive for schools to maintain in-house, Upham said during a recent board meeting.

Whats very important for parents to understand is in the springtime of that eighth grade year when the students are signing up for their first set of high school courses; we have a lot of our courses mapped now to career pathways, Upham added in the video stream.

Plus, career counselors help to take a load off the schools counselors, who are increasingly focused on students' mental health issues.

Accreditation standards require only one counselor for every 400 students in middle and high schools, Upham said, meaning that is what the state budgets.

The counselor is trained in guidance, but especially because theres so much more needespecially with mental health and those types of situationsits very difficult for them to expand themselves past that, Bruinsma said.

The levy amount was approved at the latest school board meeting.

New math curriculum

Administrators there also proposed new curriculum material for elementary school math.

The current material in use is no longer available to purchase, and the district saw lower math scores during the pandemic, said Kim Anthony, executive director of curriculum and instruction.

The current curriculum was adopted in 2014.

At least one teacher from every school reviewed curriculum options in a committee, and all teachers were given the opportunity to pilot the final two choices for consideration, Anthony said.

Though we only had 36 teachers on the committee, we had approximately 64 teachers that actually tried one or two of the series within their classrooms, she said.

The district is opting for the Eureka Squared Curriculum, which the public can view at the Lincoln Center before the decision is final. Materials for different grade levels are presented outside of room 222 but cannot be taken from the site.

We brought the committee back, looked at what the top vote was, and Eureka Squared is definitely the resource our teachers want, Anthony said.

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Rimrock Mini Mall, the two-block strip of connected restaurants and shops across 24th Street West from its bigger cousin Rimrock Mall, is looking for a new owner.

The property is listed for sale at $10.3 million.

Sale of the Mini Mall comes a month after JLL, Inc., a Chicago-based commercial real estate services company, was announced as the new managers for Rimrock Mall.

The mall's previous owner, Starwood Capital gave up the property to its bank last fall to avoid declaring bankruptcy and foreclosure.

Starwood purchased the Rimrock Mall in 2013 for $112 million. By 2020, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, the mall had lost more than half its value, appraising for $50 million. At the time, Starwood still owed nearly $73 million on the property.

During Starwood's tenure, it worked creatively to fill vacancies at the mall, bringing in Magic City Gymnastics and contracting with Freefall Brewery to build a brew pub there.

However, in 2018 one of the mall's anchor tenets, Herbergers department store, declared bankruptcy and left, landing an economic blow from which the mall struggled to recover.

It's been different across the street. The Mini Mall has had a relatively steady 100% occupancy rate with its storefronts over the last decade, which includes national chains like Baskin-Robbins and SportsClips, and local shops like Tesla's Cellular Repair and the Taste of Asia restaurant.

The first section of Rimrock Mini Mall was built in 1979. As business grew, the owners added on new sections in 1982, 1983 and finally in 1989, with Rent-A-Center and Runway Fashion Exchange anchoring the south end and SportsClips and LensCrafters on the north.

The property is owned by Rimrock Mini-Mall, LLC, and is managed by NAI Business Properties, which is selling the property.

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North Dakotans will get a break on their 2021 state income taxes through a credit voted in by the Legislature last fall.

Claiming the credit of $350 for individuals or $700 for those filing jointly is very straightforward, state Tax Commissioner Brian Kroshus said. It appears as a line item on the form used by most North Dakotans.

Its going to significantly reduce the number of North Dakota taxpayers who are going to have to make a payment, Kroshus said.

The legislation will create an estimated $211 million in income tax relief over the next two years. Some 300,000 North Dakotans will have no state income tax bill, and another 200,000 will see a reduction. The income tax relief was pushed hard by Gov. Doug Burgum, who recommended using a portion of the states ending fund balance of $1.1 billion in the last two-year budget cycle to provide tax relief to residents.

The credit cant create a negative tax liability. For example, if a person owes $450, the credit will reduce that to $100. If he or she owes $250, it will take away their payment obligation but would not give them a $100 refund.

The states income tax rate is one of the lowest in the country, Kroshus said. While it can create a payment situation for some taxpayers, thats less likely with the credit passed during last November's special session.

Early electronic filing is the best way to speed up a refund and avoid fraud schemes, the commissioner said. Just more than 85,000 state income tax returns had been filed as of Feb. 18, putting the state just ahead of last years pace. Almost all were filed electronically. Last year, 90% of the 480,000 returns filed in the state were completed electronically. The filing deadline this year is April 18.

The most common mistakes made on state returns arent related to math or tax laws, Kroshus said. Typographical errors in an address, name, or Social Security number are more often the cause of delays.

Income tax in the states fiscal year 2021 generated more than $465 million, which is about 14.5% of the total general fund revenues of $3.2 billion. Kroshus expects the number of returns filed in 2022 could be close to 500,000, as the states population has increased.

Most people filing a federal income tax return are due a refund, according to IRS spokesman Anthony Burke.

Electronic filing enables the preparer -- whether its a professional doing it for a client or a person doing his or her own -- to concentrate on entering accurate information, as the tax software does all the math.

We find electronic filing inherently more accurate than trying to do it yourself, Burke said.

A taxpayer who cant file a return by the deadline should file for an extension, even if a refund is due. If the taxpayer has a balance due, its safest to submit an estimated payment with the extension.

An extension only extends the time to file, not the time to pay, Burke said.

The taxpayer would avoid paying a penalty on the full amount due by submitting an estimated amount. If the estimate is off, any penalty would apply only to the difference.

Separate applications must be made for state and federal extensions.

At the state level, Kroshus advises estimating on the high side to avoid any penalty. The taxpayer wont lose any money by doing so. Any difference would be refunded or could be applied as a prepayment for the next tax year.

Its not money that they wont see back. Its just how its applied going forward, he said.

The preparation of an accurate return starts with the collection of all documents, according to the IRS website. In addition to income-related documents such as W2s and Form 1099s, Child Tax Credit and Economic Impact Payment letters -- 6419 and 6475, respectively -- include important information for a 2021 tax return.

As of Feb. 11, the IRS had processed more than 23 million returns and issued more than $20 billion in refunds. The average refund is about $2,300, according to the services website.

Reach Travis Svihovec at 701-250-8260 or Travis.Svihovec@bismarcktribune.com

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Feb. 24 at 9:41 p.m. marked the end of an era for Heskett Station, as workers there described it. It was the last time North Dakotas oldest coal-fired power plant would ever burn lignite.

Operations Supervisor Lonnie Moody anticipated a somber mood inside the control room that evening. He started working at the plant 30 years ago unloading lignite coal that arrived by rail, and he planned to be there as it shut down, he told the Tribune in an interview on Feb. 23.

I want to see it go off, he said.

The retirement of Hesketts two coal-fired units did not come about suddenly. Montana-Dakota Utilities announced in 2019 that it planned to stop operating Units 1 and 2 north of Mandan, as well as another coal-fired power plant, Lewis & Clark Station near Sidney, Montana.

Moody knew Hesketts coal units were aging -- one is nearly 70 years old -- and that the economics no longer favored coal-fired power at the site. Still, the plant ran well. He was on vacation the day the news came down that the units would retire in a couple of years.

My phone was blowing up, he said.

Joe Geiger remembers that day, too. He also was a supervisor at the plant, and has since moved on to a new job within MDU that includes implementing the retirements.

I think everyone was understanding of the decision, he said. As an employee of the facility, it was still a difficult message to receive.

MDU had planned to stop running the coal units by the end of March, but recent developments sped the timeline up several weeks. A mechanical failure caused Unit 2 to come offline Jan. 30. That factored into the companys decision to shut down Unit 1 on Thursday to comply with federal air regulations, spokesperson Mark Hanson said.

History

Hesketts Unit 1 fired up for the first time in 1954 with a 25-megawatt capacity. It was the largest coal plant in the state in those days.

MDU took out a full-page ad in The Bismarck Tribune ahead of the facilitys dedication the following year, inviting the public to an open house for tours, doughnuts and coffee. Attendees could enter a drawing that promised a DeLuxe Hotpoint Electric Range for a grand prize. MDU named the $6.5 million power plant for company founder R.M. Heskett.

The plant was meant to complement electricity produced at hydropower dams going in up and down the Missouri River, the Tribune reported in articles about the plants construction during the 1950s. When water levels were low and the dams output lacking, Heskett was meant to fill the gap.

The Bismarck-Mandan area was growing for a number of reasons, including the discovery of oil in Tioga in 1951. The oil boom brought a number of energy-related businesses to the state, many of which chose the capital city and its neighbor for their headquarters.

The expansion of agriculture, industry, distribution services and small businesses of all kinds resulted in greatly accelerated demand for electric power in western North Dakota, the Tribune reported ahead of Hesketts dedication.

MDU installed a larger unit with a 75-megawatt capacity at the site in 1963. Heskett made up the oldest still-operating coal-fired power plant in North Dakota until this week. Basin Electric Power Cooperatives Leland Olds Station has that distinction now. It began operating in 1966.

Utilities built a number of larger coal plants in the decades after Heskett came online, primarily further north alongside the mines that feed them. Lignite coal has a high moisture content, making it inefficient to transport long distances by train.

Coal traveled only a short distance by rail to Heskett from the Beulah Mine, operated by Westmoreland Beulah Mining. Coal production is stopping at the mine while a multiyear reclamation process begins, Public Service Commissioner Randy Christmann said.

An executive of Westmoreland Mining Holdings told the Tribune that "while coal extraction may be winding down, our full-scale operation to restore the land to pristine condition will be ramping up significantly."

Chief Operating Officer Joe Micheletti added that the mine has employed 26 people who, in recent years, have supplied Heskett with about 400,000 tons of coal annually.

About 50 people worked at Heskett before its coal retirements were announced.

You spend so much time in there, Moody said. It gets to be like family.

Whats next

Heskett Station will no longer burn coal, but it will continue to send power into the grid via an existing gas-fired unit and another one planned for the site. Both are peaking units. They will sit at the ready much of the time, waiting for a spike in electricity demand before firing up.

Already, construction workers have begun moving dirt for the new unit west of the coal facilities, Hanson said. The unit is slated to come online by the end of the first quarter of 2023, doubling the gas plants 88-megawatt capacity.

MDU installed the first gas unit in 2014, with fuel transported by a pipeline that taps into a larger line at St. Anthony in southern Morton County. The gas comes from the Northern Border Pipeline, which starts in Canada and picks up a significant amount of gas produced in western North Dakotas Bakken oil fields.

MDU has cited low-cost natural gas, the low price of power on the market and rising coal costs as factors in retiring Hesketts coal units.

The decision to retire these units was made in the customers best interest, said Geiger, who now works as MDUs director of generation.

MDU recently entered into an agreement with Minnkota Power Cooperative to purchase power from the coal-fired Milton R. Young Station to help bridge the gap between Hesketts coal retirements and its new gas unit.

Hesketts retirements come as the coal industry has struggled amid an influx of natural gas and renewable energy across the United States. Heskett marks the second coal plant to shutter in recent memory in North Dakota. Great River Energys Stanton Station stopped operating in 2017.

Seven workers will stay on at Heskett to support its gas units. Five employees have accepted other positions within MDU, and seven have short-term assignments, Hanson said. Nearly 30 more will continue to work the next few months to prepare the site for dismantling.

Moody said a number of Heskett workers have left in the years since MDU announced the plants closure. Both he and Geiger said the company has tried hard to help employees find other jobs.

Ultimately, finding gainful employment was one of my higher priorities. Staying with MDU was also a very high priority, Geiger said. The fact that I was able to accomplish both of those goals by moving into that position was hugely beneficial to my family.

He said workers in the coming months will remove hazardous materials and any environmental contaminants, then dismantle just about everything at the site, including the two tall smokestacks. The process is known as decommissioning.

All the structures will come down with the end result being a newly graded site, Geiger said.

Moody expects he will retire around the time decommissioning starts. He said the closure of the coal units will be life-altering for a lot of people.

Its going to be weird to spend 30 years of your life at a place thats going to get erased, he said.

Reach Amy R. Sisk at 701-250-8252 or amy.sisk@bismarcktribune.com.

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A man who police said struck and killed a pedestrian in Mandan the morning after he was arrested for DUI in Bismarck will spend 10 years in prison.

TC Younger Carry Moccasin, 20, of Mandan, pleaded guilty in December to criminal vehicular homicide and reckless endangerment felonies, along with misdemeanor DUI and drug paraphernalia possession. Two drug infractions were dismissed under the terms of a plea agreement. South Central District Judge Pamela Nesvig in December ordered a presentence investigation, and on Monday she accepted the agreement.

Carry Moccasin was westbound on Mandan's Main Street on Nov. 17, 2020, when the car he was driving struck Mark Streeper, 42, of Bismarck, according to police. Streeper was standing next to his parked car in the 400 block of West Main Street when he was struck shortly before 5:30 a.m. A crash reconstruction report shows he was thrown more than 90 feet and that Carry Moccasin was traveling 42 mph and possibly faster, Assistant Morton County States Attorney Gabrielle Goter said at Carry Moccasins preliminary hearing. Streeper died at the scene.

A North Dakota Highway Patrol affidavit states Carry Moccasin had been arrested in Bismarck about 10:15 the night before, on Nov. 16, 2020, when his blood alcohol content was 0.19%, more than twice the legal limit of 0.08%. He was released at 11:40 p.m. into the custody of another adult who signed a custodial acceptance form and agreed not to let Carry Moccasin drive for eight hours, according to Bismarck police.

Carry Moccasin on Monday told Nesvig that he felt he could drive the morning of Nov. 17 because he had slept.

He also told the judge that he planned to use his story to warn people of the dangers of drinking and driving.

I want the court to know and Mark Streepers family to know I will not let this situation drag me down after I get out, Carry Moccasin said.

Kacey Streeper, Mark Streepers sister-in-law, told Carry Moccasin that she had once struggled with drugs and It could have been me in your shoes so many times.

Im desperately hoping you wont lose hope on the journey that is set before you, Kacey Streeper said. I pray that you will use your story, this tragedy, to help other people so they dont ever have to endure what you and our families have endured.

Marlene Streeper, Mark Streeper's mother, said she could recall the time of her husband's death and that of her son Michael because she was with each of them when they died. Her reminder of Mark's death is the damaged watch he was wearing when he died. The hands are stopped at 5:20.

"My son Mark did not deserve to die in the street. He just didn't. Your drugs did that," Marlene Streeper told Carry Moccasin.

Nesvig said its a difficult decision to accept or reject a plea agreement when a life has been lost.

Whatever punishment you receive is not going to be as impactful as the fact that you have to carry with you the rest of your life that you took someones life by your decisions, Nesvig said.

The judge suspended 10 years of a 20-year prison term. Carry Moccasin must also make $8,000 in restitution to Mark Streepers family and spend three years on probation upon his release.

Carry Moccasin in January pleaded guilty in Bismarck Municipal Court to a misdemeanor for being in actual physical control of a vehicle while intoxicated. He was fined $1,500, and sentenced to 15 days in jail and a year on probation.

Reach Travis Svihovec at 701-250-8260 or Travis.Svihovec@bismarcktribune.com

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Thomas Jefferson once observed that fearless, independent newspapers were indispensable to the American experiment and to the peoples right to know. Without an informed citizenry to scrutinize, question and challenge governmental acts, the great goal of holding government accountable to the citizenry and the rule of law would surely fail.

The U.S. Supreme Court embraced Jeffersons premises in its landmark ruling in The New York Times v. Sullivan (1964) by protecting the press from libel suits that would chill investigative journalism and bankrupt newspapers.

The constitutionally protected right of the press to report on the affairs of government, however indispensable it is to American democracy, is not without limits. Every constitutional right, like every governmental power, is subject to limitations and regulations.

As we have noted, the concept of absolute powers and rights is foreign to our constitutional arrangements. After the Sullivan ruling, questions arose about the imposition of legal limits on the crucial work of the press. After all, the central purpose of the First Amendments Free Press Clause was to prohibit prior restraint, that is, the exercise of governmental authority to prohibit the press from publishing without prior authorization. Would the prohibition on prior restraint apply to every conceivable publication, or could there be rare exceptions as, for example, in the area of reporting about national security and foreign relations? If so, what circumstances might justify prior restraint and thus lower the bar of protection afforded the press?

The Supreme Court, in Near v. Minnesota (1934), told us that there are but few exceptions to the prohibition on prior restraint, including, wartime obstruction of recruitment, obscenity, incitements to riot or forcible overthrow of government, and words that may have all the effect of force. Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes added another curious exemption: the press may not publish the sailing time of a troop vessel. Most readers understood this to mean that newspapers could not publish the time or location of a military attack which, obviously, would undermine the wartime interests of the United States. Later, President Richard M. Nixon, asserted that Hughes implied a broader meaning, that the press could not publish military secrets. Near thus became the starting point for most defenses of prior restraint.

In 1971, Chief Justice Hughess phrase, the sailing time of a troop vessel, lay at the center of the most famous prior restraint case in American history: The New York Times v. United States, more popularly known as The Pentagon Papers Case. One of the most troubling issues confronting press coverage was the question of what should and should not be published about national security matters, including those periods when the United States was at war, or facing the threat of war. The court, for the first time, confronted the question in the context of the Vietnam War, the most contentious war in our history.

The dramatic facts of the case focused the nations attention on the work of the judiciary in a way that seldom occurs. On June 12, 1971, the New York Times began publication of a 47-volume classified defense department study titled, History of the United States Decision Making Process on Vietnam Policy. The study, ordered by President Lyndon Johnson, was completed in 1968. This study became known as The Pentagon Papers, and was released to the Times and the Washington Post by Daniel Ellsberg, a former Defense Department official. President Nixon authorized Ellsberg to review sections of the papers as part of a national security project, but he did not authorize Ellsberg to release the study.

The Times was eager to share the study with the American people, whom it believed had a right to know about the decisions behind the conduct of the Vietnam War. The Times first installment enraged the Nixon Administration, which claimed publication of the papers would undermine conduct of the Vietnam War. Citing Chief Justice Hughes, the administration argued in federal court in New York that the Times publications represented a national security exception to the prohibition on prior restraint. Publication of the Pentagon Papers was equivalent to the publication of the sailing time of a troop vessel.

The federal court granted Nixons request for a temporary restraining order against the Times, which meant that the Times was prohibited from publishing its reports about the Pentagon Papers. Prior restraint had been imposed, despite constitutional protection furnished by the First Amendment. Americans wondered: Could the Free Press Clause be set aside by a presidential invocation of national security, a phrase vulnerable to abuse and exploitation by presidents eager to protect their own political and personal agendas?

The Nixon Administration also sought an injunction against the Washington Post, but a federal court in Washington, D.C., rejected Nixons plea for an injunction, which produced a paradox in the world of journalism. The Post was permitted to publish the Pentagon Papers, but the Times was not. Appeals were quickly filed and, in record time, the cases were consolidated and heard by the Supreme Court on June 26. The court delivered its ruling on June 30, only 17 days after the first publication of the papers in the New York Times.

We turn next week to the courts monumental decision in the Pentagon Papers Case.

David Adler is president of The Alturas Institute.

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A Washburn-area farmer on Thursday pleaded not guilty to crop insurance fraud.

Kent Pfaff, 58, was released on a personal recognizance bond. U.S. District Judge Daniel Hovland scheduled a three-day trial starting April 19, court documents show.

A Feb. 2 indictment alleges that between December 2019 and June 2020, Pfaff provided false crop insurance claim information to insurance companies and the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Risk Management Agency/Federal Crop Insurance Corp. to increase his payments.

Pfaff is accused in court documents filed by U.S. Attorney Nick Chase of a fraud scheme known as shifting production. Under the scheme, a person will overstate production in some fields and understate production in others to manufacture or inflate claims to which they are not entitled, the document states.

Prosecutors say harvest data provided to Pfaff by a custom harvester did not match the information Pfaff used for insurance purposes.

The indictment doesn't list a dollar amount involved in the alleged scheme.

The charge against Pfaff is a felony punishable by up to 30 years in prison, a $1 million fine, and five years on supervised release.

Defense attorney Gary Leistico, of St. Cloud, Minnesota, did not immediately respond to a Tribune request for comment.

Reach Travis Svihovec at 701-250-8260 or Travis.Svihovec@bismarcktribune.com

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A trial date is set for a former North Dakota Highway Patrol trooper accused of inappropriately touching a woman in a hot tub in 2020.

A one-day trial for Travis Skar, 40, is April 22, court records show. He is charged with misdemeanor sexual assault, which is punishable by up to a year in jail and a $3,000 fine. He has pleaded not guilty.

The alleged incident occurred between July 31 and Aug. 2, 2020. The woman Skar allegedly assaulted was interviewed by Bismarck police on Oct. 18, 2021, according to an affidavit that is dated Dec. 2, 2021. Formal charges appeared in court documents in early February. Why so much time elapsed between the alleged incident and the filing of charges is unclear.

The woman told police Skar was among a group of people who socialized on a pontoon earlier the day of the incident. He allegedly touched her under the water in the hot tub and she was continually pushing Skars hands away in an effort to get him to stop, the document states. The woman exchanged looks with another man in the hot tub, who then sat between her and Skar. Skar moved to the other side of her, and the woman left the tub, according to the affidavit.

The incident allegedly took place the weekend before the 2020 Sturgis Motorcycle Rally in South Dakota. Skar made vague apologetic comments to others in the group while they were at the rally, the affidavit states.

Skar was fired from the Patrol following an internal investigation related to employee misconduct that was not specific to the recent charge, according to a Patrol spokesman.

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A preservation group is claiming that the Bismarck-Mandan Rail Bridge is property of the state of North Dakota, not BNSF Railway, a move the railroad says comes in the 11th hour of a yearslong permitting process for a new bridge.

The Friends of the Rail Bridge nonprofit wants to stop the railway from demolishing the 139-year-old bridge spanning the Missouri River to make way for a new structure. The preservation group and the railroad signed an agreement with the U.S. Coast Guard in early 2021 outlining paths to either keeping or removing the bridge. The Coast Guard decides on projects proposed along that part of the Missouri River, and the permitting process has been ongoing for more than four years.

FORB's claim is based on the Equal Footing and Public Trust Doctrines, according to a memo it sent the Coast Guard. The Equal Trust Doctrine guarantees that all states that enter the union are on the same footing as the original 13. The Public Trust Doctrine is the principle that the government owns and protects certain natural resources for public use.

The nonprofit is arguing that based on those doctrines, Congress held in trust navigable rivers such as the Missouri and any structures in the riverbed, even after it granted Northern Pacific Railway permission to build a railroad in Dakota Territory in 1864. Northern Pacific Railway merged with other railways over the years and is now BNSF.

The preservation group is arguing that North Dakota took over ownership of navigable rivers from Congress when it became a state in 1889, and since Congress did not transfer ownership of the bridge to the railway before the state joined the union, the state retains property of the bridge.

"Determination of ownership will make a big difference in how this process moves forward," FORB Board President Mark Zimmerman said. "Significant properties" receive certain protections under North Dakota Century Code and cannot be destroyed without approval from the State Historical Board, according to the nonprofit.

The railway is working on a response to the claim, BNSF spokeswoman Amy McBeth said.

"It's interesting this comes up now, five years and 20 meetings into this process," she said.

McBeth added that she is not aware of this specific issue occurring with similar projects.

Zimmerman said the group had no knowledge of the issue until it had an attorney willing to do the research.

State Historic Preservation Office Director Bill Peterson said a request has been made for an attorney general's opinion on the matter. He was not aware of a timeline for the opinion.

The Coast Guard did not respond to Tribune questions about how the claim will affect the timeline of the permitting process. A final environmental impact statement was set to be released in April.

The preservation group also filed with the Coast Guard to remove itself from the programmatic agreement it signed in January 2021 that outlines the permitting process, citing in part undue burden. The agreement outlined the responsibilities of the Coast Guard, the railway and the nonprofit whether the bridge stays or is demolished.

Part of FORB's duties as a signatory on the agreement included finding a public partner to assist with preservation efforts. It failed to do so by its deadline but was given permission by the Coast Guard to move ahead with its efforts without a partner.

"This allows us to go public and say we're not going to agree with this agreement and the stipulations thereof," Zimmerman said.

The group lists three reasons for moving to terminate the agreement, one of which is the issue of ownership.

The "undue burden" is another. A 2019 feasibility study conducted by North Dakota State University estimated the cost to turn the rail bridge into a foot bridge at just under $7 million.

The nonprofit says the financial burden placed on the public-private partnership to pay for design and construction costs, permits and analysis is unprecedented.

"All deadlines assigned to FORB and the public private partnership in the (agreement) are unreasonable," the preservation group wrote in its termination notice.

FORB also said the tone of some meetings has not been collaborative.

A meeting likely will take place next week with the Coast Guard and BNSF to discuss next steps, according to Zimmerman.

The Coast Guard did not respond to questions about how the permitting process would work if FORB leaves the programmatic agreement.

The railway last April asked the Coast Guard to shift its efforts from preserving the bridge to removing it due to concerns about the nonprofit's progress with its tasks from the agreement.

McBeth said if the bridge remains, the additional cost of building the new bridge could be $50 million or more. The project would also be delayed several years to account for new design work and efforts to mitigate a rise in the Missouri River.

McBeth said this week that the state ownership claim and agreement withdrawal happened a year after the preservation group signed the agreement with actions it couldn't meet.

"At a certain point, one has to wonder if FORB has a specific plan beyond delaying," she said.

Reach Sam Nelson at 701-250-8264 or sam.nelson@bismarcktribune.com.

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North Dakota's State Investment Board on Thursday voted to divest public money from Russian entities amid the country's invasion of Ukraine.

The decision came after a public update on state funds with "Russian entity exposure" and a nearly 1 -hour closed session to discuss strategy. The 12-member board voted unanimously "to approve the divestment of Russian investment exposure as discussed in the executive session and direct staff to report at the next regularly scheduled State Investment Board meeting."

State Retirement and Investment Office Executive Director Jan Murtha said the board's guidance will be given to investment managers, with an update at the next board meeting on March 25.

Lt. Gov. Brent Sanford, who chairs the board, called Thursday's special meeting on Russian investments "in light of the countrys continuing attacks on Ukraine."

"I hope that people are seeing that the answer is here, no more new investments in Russia and an absolute plan for exiting the investments with Russian connection," he said.

Divesting

The board's $10 million total of investments with Russian ties includes $1.7 million from the state insurance pool, $3.7 million from the state pension pool and $4.6 million from the $8.7 billion, voter-approved Legacy Fund, which is invested around the world.

Just days earlier, that total had been nearly $16 million, less than one-tenth of 1% of the $19.3 billion in assets managed by the office.

Office Chief Investment Officer Scott Anderson said that reduction is due to a "very fluid" situation of managers leaving investment positions, prices changing, and brokers and traders halting transaction activity. The office is keeping track of U.S. Treasury guidance and economic sanctions on Russia.

Regarding removing the (Russian) exposures, the investors are following the sanctions diligently, and they are in some sense restricted in what they can sell because of the illiquid (difficult) market, Anderson said. But I know they are making political risk decisions regarding this event. Theyre following the sanctions diligently, theyve heard loud and clear from us our concerns regarding the risk of these securities, so my estimation is that the managers will follow an orderly wind-down of these securities."

But for the board to divest of $7.8 million in Russian-exposed commingled funds, or money pooled from different investors, it would have to divest of $950 million of commingled funds, according to a meeting report.

"This isn't just as easy as clicking 'sell,'" Chief Deputy Attorney General and board member Troy Seibel said of divesting.

Land Board

The state Board of University and School Lands has $9.7 million in Russia-based companies, or 0.16% of total investment assets, according to the governor's office.

That's a drop from nearly $29 million reported on Monday, due to reasons similar to those affecting the other board's investments.

State Treasurer Thomas Beadle, who serves on the land and investment boards, said the Land Board is "actively monitoring the situation and paying attention to how to deal with the situation accordingly."

'Minor hit'

David Flynn, research director at the Institute of Policy and Business Analytics at the University of North Dakota, said any move to unload Russian holdings is unlikely to impose a financial burden on Russia, which has already stopped paying interest on certain bonds.

But if enough investors pull their money, it would be another sign of dissatisfaction with the invasion, he told The Associated Press.

The political ramifications would probably be judged to be more important than whatever kinds of financial implications there are, Flynn said.

The state would likely lose money on the sale, but it would be a minor hit because the direct holdings with Russia represent a small part of the overall state investment portfolio, he told AP.

Meeting openness

The meeting was available only by phone to the public. The agenda provided call-in information and an address for the meeting venue, but it did not indicate in-person attendance wasn't available.

Murtha said nearly all board members were attending virtually, "so the experience for both the board members and anyone listening in is the same, is a virtual experience."

One board member was in person "for his convenience," she said. The board's special meetings are routinely held virtually, she said.

A Tribune photographer was denied access, along with a local TV crew. Veterinarian Shelley Lenz drove from Killdeer to attend the meeting, and said office staff turned her away from a small conference room. She afterward tuned in by phone.

"I think it's important to be in person, to show up as the public, that we want to be seen, and I also want to see the people discuss our public monies beyond just their words, but their expressions, who's saying it," said Lenz, who was the 2020 Democratic-NPL gubernatorial nominee.

The teleconference availability to the public was sufficient to meet state open meetings law, though the office could have been clearer on its agenda about no in-person attendance, according to North Dakota Newspaper Association Attorney Jack McDonald. Turning people away from a public meeting is "a bad image," he said.

"I think the general view of the attorney general's office has always been that you can always make steps to make the meetings as accessible as possible," McDonald said. A high-level state agency should make a greater effort, he said.

Reach Jack Dura at 701-250-8225 or jack.dura@bismarcktribune.com.

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There are 41,692 zip codes in America, and for the past five years 37208, north Nashville, Tennessee, was the one in which my six-year-younger brother Kirk, who died last week, and sister-in-law Deb chose to live.

A Google search of 37208 reveals:

It has the nations highest incarceration rate.

It's home to 18,000 people.

Of those people, 67% are black.

The median household income is $39,964, or 40% less than in Bismarck.

The median price for a home is about $450,000, or 50% more than in Bismarck.

So it is no surprise that real estate prices are pushing long-time residents of north Nashville -- 60% of whom are renters -- out of their homes. Developers will pay upwards of $300,000 for a small wooden frame home so they can clear the lot and build a few half million dollar townhomes.

It is in that neighborhood that Kirk and Deb not only lived, but started a church. As evangelicals, they focused on sharing the Gospel, meeting the physical needs of their neighbors, and leading social justice causes.

One local businessman told us how Kirk saved my business by utilizing him as a vendor. A young lady, a college student, told us how Kirk and Deb had helped her deal with depression and stress.

Kirk and Deb formed deep bonds of trust in the African American community, including with ministers of majority Black churches.

One of Nashvilles leading African American pastors, Enoch Fuzz, spoke at Kirks celebration of life service, saying he would go visit Kirk and Kirk would tell him about his visits in the community. Pastor Fuzz jokingly told us that he wondered if Kirk knew he was going to the homes of drug dealers.

He knew.

Another young Black man told us about an incident that occurred near where they were meeting for services. A confrontation arose between a few Black congregants and a Black neighbor, culminating in the neighbor pulling a gun. The storyteller said Kirk walked right into the middle of the situation and calmly talked the man down, first apologizing, promising him he would fix the matter, and then getting him to put the gun away.

One former pastor told me that when he returned to Nashville none of his old friends would have anything to do with him, following his fall from grace." But he said Kirk reached out to him even though they had not been close friends in college.

Kirk was described as loud, life of the party, bigger than life, and one who would listen to your story and offer no judgement. He was known for looking you in the eye and saying, I love you."

It is not my intention to brag about my brother, but rather to point out that it is amazing what God can accomplish through a person who is committed to the call.

Truth be told, my real purpose here is to challenge myself, and perhaps you, to look around the neighborhood or community we call home and see how we might make a difference.

My brothers ministry, and really, the role of everyone who calls themselves Christian must be to live out the very simple and direct message of the oft-quoted Micah 6:8, which says, And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.

Its like my seventh grade math teacher, Mrs. Mason, often said: Its so simple its hard.

37208 wont soon forget Kirk Adkisson, and neither will those of us who knew him and hope to live more like him.

Reflecting on my brothers life and ministry, and trying to determine how I respond to it, I am left with this: that all is required of me is to connect my faith with my actions. Thats what Micah was saying, and thats how Kirk lived.

The following link is to a message Kirk delivered at New Livingstone Church, an African American congregation, in Nashville where he explained the connection of his faith and social justice ministry. If you want to know more about social justice ministry, please watch. It begins at about the 20 minute mark. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIC98ApJQE4

Gary Adkisson is publisher of The Bismarck Tribune.

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'National Enquirer'

Occam's razor posits that the simplest explanation is often the best, but the way the tabloid editors employ this blade they should all have bushy beards of Biblical proportions.

"Who's Killing Epstein Witnesses?" demands the 'Enquirer' front cover.

Billionaire pedophile sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein was hanged in his jail cell, an apparent suicide. Now his pal Jean-Luc Brunel has been found hanged in a French jail cell, yet another suicide. And Steve Bing jumped to his death from his 27th floor condo in Los Angeles and left a suicide note, though the 'Enquirer' nonetheless claims he was "pushed off building!"

All were victims of murder, claims the 'Enquirer,' which now asks: "Ghislaine Maxwell  Is She Next?"

As if to answer the headline's question as to who is responsible for these clandestine killings, the 'Enquirer' displays headshots of Bill Gates, Bill Clinton and former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, claiming a "Chilling conspiracy to protect world's most powerful men."

Expect arrests soon.

Does nobody simply commit suicide any more? Must every Hollywood death be a murder that's been covered up? Apparently.

Private eye Paul Huber tells the 'Enquirer': "It was more than likely Brunel was murdered along with Epstein." More than likely? With all the complexity involved in conspiring to have prison guards in two countries murder inmates and cover it up, that's more likely than the possibility they committed suicide?

"Putin's Blood-Stained Secret Life Exposed! Executions! Cheating! Greed!"

Ignoring for a moment that one could safely substitute the name "Trump" for "Putin," the 'Enquirer' claims it has undertaken a "bombshell" investigation, exposing Putin's "$200 billion fortune, multiple mistresses, several love children and raging mental health problems that could doom the planet."

With expert medical guidance from doctors who have never even met Putin, the 'Enquirer' reaches a complex medical diagnosis and concludes that the Russian leader is "a bona fide nutcase." That's Latin terminology, so they must know what they're talking about.

"Money-Launder Scheme Sends Andrew Spinning!"

Prince Andrew's 2007 sale of his home in Sunningdale Park in Berkshire, England, for $20 million  more than $4 million over asking  to a Kazakh tycoon is reportedly under fresh scrutiny. The buyer, Timur Kulibayev, is allegedly under investigation for possibly embezzling millions in state-owned assets and laundering the stolen funds through deals such as buying the Prince's home. No suggestion that Andrew was in any way a party to wrong-doing, but the 'Enquirer' tars him with the same brush anyway.

"Teeth That Really Bite!"

The 'Enquirer' tells us that Steve Buscemi, 'Jackass' star Steve-O and Ricky Gervais have less-than-perfect smiles. Oh, the horror. The rag also disparages the dental deficiencies of Madonna, Eddie Murphy, Olivia Newton-John, Willem Dafoe and Jewel, because the 'Enquirer' really cares about celebrity health and wellness.

"Boobs Taunt Chest Champ!"

Plus-size model Annie Hawkins-Turner, who claims to hold the Guinness World Record for the largest breastseach mammary allegedly weighs more than 65 poundslaments that strangers "make fun of me for no reason." She earns a living by posting photos of herself under the pseudonym "Norma Stitz."

'Globe'

"Andrew Flees Britain!" screams the cover. "Sex creep hounded out of his homeland! Pariah prince going to ground in Dubai!"

And just to prove it, there's a photo of Andrew getting off his private jet, luggage in hand.

But Andrew hasn't left the UK, where at the time of writing he remains ensconced at his home on the grounds of Windsor Castle. He hasn't been in Dubai since 2017, though intriguingly Prince William was there just days ago.

"Everyone hates him" in Britain claims an unnamed source, speaking on behalf of the entire United Kingdom.

"Courtney Confesses Her Face Is A Wreck!"

Well, no, she hasn't. Former 'Friends' star Courteney Cox has said in an interview that she understands why friends thought she was over-doing cosmetic procedures a few years ago. That's very different from admitting that her face is ruined.

"Walking Dead Star Was Murdered! New evidence reveals suicide was staged."

Of course actor Moses J. Moseley was murdered  there is no such thing as suicide in Hollywood, a town where every suspicious death is a covered-up killing.

Bill Gates, Bill Clinton and Ehud Barak are really pushing their luck this time.

'People'

"Lizzo  I Had to Blaze a Trail."

The singer is the cover girl for an issue dedicated to "Women Changing the World" to mark Women's History Month.

The trail she's blazing appears to be for body-conscious pride in being who she is by unashamedly displaying her ample curves: "I'm doing this for other people  to help other people feel better about themselves". Right.

No shrinking violet, Lizzo says: "I deserve the spotlight. I deserve the attention. I'm talented. I'm young. I'm hot. You know?" No, I don't.

Other women changing the world apparently include Rita Moreno ("paving the way for inclusivity onscreen"), Keke Palmer ("guiding girls to find their voices"), Goldie Hawn ("teaching children the tools for mental wellness"), Billie Eilish ("taking a green approach to food insecurity"), and 'Jeopardy' transgender winner Amy Schneider ("meeting the moment with authenticity").

People' mag looks at the human impact of the Russian invasion with its four-page story: "War in Ukraine," and spotlights the "most unlikely war hero," Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky.

Actor Patrick Stewart, telling "What I Know Now," merits only three pages, confirming to readers that he's only 75 per cent as important as the war in Ukraine.

'Us Weekly'

"Britney's Explosive Tell-All" dominates this week's cover. "What she saw that will send shock waves through Hollywood."

But whatever Britney Spears saw, and whatever she plans to reveal in her coming memoir, 'Us Weekly' hasn't the faintest idea because Britney isn't exactly talking to them.

The rag includes one quote from Spears, lifted from an Instagram post in January in which she wrote: "Shall I start from THE BEGINNING?"

Yes, it's that revealing. Even the rag's alleged insiders and sources haven't the faintest idea, but speculate wildly. "Britney is planning to expose everything," says one. Another, promising the book will shock Hollywood, opines: "No one will be safe." Sure.

The story merely rehashes all of Britney's woes and torments through the years. Nothing even mildly "explosive" there.

Thankfully we have the crack investigative team at 'Us Weekly' to tell us that Bella Hadid wore it best, that actress Alex Borstein can unveil; "25 Things You Don't Know About Me" and still tell us nothing about herself  "My favourite food group is Nutella" is about the most revealing detail  and that the stars are just like us: they shop at flea markets, ride bikes and eat food. Revelatory, as always.

Elsewhere in the tabloids . . .

'OK!"

"Why Meghan Vanished. Harry Parties solo while Meghan stays home."

Are they talking about the same Duchess Meghan who appeared beside Prince Harry as they jointly accepted an NAACP award on February 26 in Los Angeles? She certainly didn't appear to be staying home, and Harry was hardly partying solo.

'Life & Style'

"Stars Without Makeup  The Good, the Bad, and the OMG!"

Public service journalism at its finest.

'In Touch'

"Hollywood Divorce Papers Unsealed!"

Sordid details of the marital dissolutions of the stars: Kim Kardashian ("Begging Kanye to let her remarry!"), Kelly Clarkson ("Paying ex $200,000 a month!"), Julianne Hough ("Spousal support shocker!"), and Sam Hunt ("Cheated on his pregnant wife!")

The real tragedy is that so many exclamation points gave their life for this story.

Onwards and downwards . . .
BY NATALIE BROPHY

March 3, 2022

Wilson Foundation sees benefit of investing in WNY startups

Since its creation in 2015, the Ralph C. Wilson Jr. Foundation has poured roughly $15 million into Buffalo Niagara's startup ecosystem.

It is just a small part of the foundation's funding plan, but with multi-million dollar investments in several Buffalo-based startup support organizations, the foundation is betting on the impact that high-growth businesses can have on a city like Buffalo.

The philanthropic foundation  which has pledged $1 billion from the late Buffalo Bills owner's estate to invest in Buffalo and his hometown of Detroit  has invested:

 $10 million in Launch NY, a nonprofit venture development organization that provides early-stage startup companies with capital and free mentoring.

 $3 million in 43North, an accelerator that hosts an annual $5 million startup competition.

 $2 million in Endeavor Western New York, which works with later-stage startup companies and helps connect them to a global network of markets, mentors, investors and talent.

Why invest philanthropic dollars in startups?

The foundation's investment is aimed at making Western New York a place where innovative startup founders can successfully start or grow a business.

If that's not possible in Buffalo, people will either "let their ideas die on the vine or leave the area and take those jobs elsewhere," said Launch NY President and CEO Marine LaVigne, pictured.

In 2020, there were around 18,330 jobs available in Western New York at startup companies funded by venture capital, according to a study from the National Venture Capital Association, Venture Forward, and the University of North Carolina Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise & Research. That's about 1 of every 28 jobs across the Buffalo Niagara region.

That same study found that employment at venture capital-backed companies grows eight times faster than employment at traditional, corporate companies.

That's why the Wilson Foundation is making it a priority to invest in organizations like Launch NY, 43North and Endeavor Western New York, foundation officials said.

"When you have growth of business, then you have employment," said Jim Boyle, who is the foundation's vice president of programs and communications.

But in the case of cities like Buffalo, there needs to be an initial injection of capital and resources to get the ball rolling.

"It's not necessarily something that we think can happen just organically if you're not intentional about it, particularly with some of the up-and-coming small and midsize cities like Detroit, like Buffalo, like Ann Arbor, like Rochester," said Paul Riser, a senior program officer with the foundation.

As a philanthropic organization, the Wilson Foundation is committed to facilitating the equitable distribution of resources and opportunity, Boyle said. Forty percent of the companies Launch NY works with are led by women or minorities, LaVigne said.

What's the benefit to the Buffalo Niagara community?

The $2 million from the Wilson Foundation allowed Endeavor to open its office in Buffalo.

43North used the foundation's grant to invest in storytelling to spread the word nationally about the annual contest and startup community in Buffalo.

And Launch NY has used the money to build its nonprofit Seed Fund, which makes investments in companies.

"The fact that Wilson has supported all these organizations show their commitment to helping the region build a more vibrant and successful startup community," said John Gavigan, managing director of Endeavor WNY.

Want to know more? Three stories to catch you up:

Welcome to Buffalo Next. This new newsletter from The Buffalo News will bring you the latest coverage on the changing Buffalo Niagara economy  from real estate to health care to startups. Read more at BuffaloNext.com.

THE LATEST, IN CONTEXT

What: Launch NY has invested $125,000 in a Black-owned aerospace company in Buffalo called AireXpert, marking the largest investment the organization has made in a single company to date.

Tell me more: AireXpert, founded by Andy Hakes, is a digital platform that facilitates workflow and communications for the aircraft maintenance industry.

The system enables airlines to control and manage unscheduled aircraft maintenance in a more efficient way, which significantly reduces potential for flight delays or cancellations.

Why it matters: Launch NY's Lavigne said she hopes the investment in AireXpert will show other innovators in underrepresented communities that it is possible to launch their own startup companies in Upstate New York.

ICYMI

Five reads from Buffalo Next:

1. Amazon and its new developer are proposing to construct a 3 million-square-foot facility on in the Town of Niagara, using 216 acres of land adjacent to the Niagara Falls International Airport and Niagara Falls Air Reserve Station. The proposed $300 million distribution center is nearly identical to the project it scrapped just off the Niagara Thruway on Grand Island.

2. ACV Auctions continues to expand with two new acquisitions: The Buffalo-grown tech company, which specializes in online vehicle auctions, purchased Monk and Drivably.

3. Sinatra plans conversion of former Hamburg convent into 260 apartments: Developer Nick Sinatra, in partnership with the Nanula family, is redeveloping the 20-acre former Immaculate Conception convent on South Park Avenue  formerly home to the Franciscan Sisters of St. Joseph  into a new residential campus with both senior and multi-family apartments.

4. Niagara Falls demolition firm to turn Buffalo's vacant Pierce & Stevens into warehouse: Apollo Dismantling Services will invest $10 million on Ohio Street to build out a new Buffalo hub, with 90,000 square feet of new space.

5. SUNY Erie president: Layoffs likely by fall semester: College President David Balkin's plan to fix its financial crisis will likely include layoffs to "right-size" the college after years of declining enrollment without reductions in staff.

The Buffalo Next team gives you the big picture on the regions economic revitalization. Email tips to buffalonext@buffnews.com or reach technology and startups reporter Natalie Brophy at nbrophy@buffnews.com.

Email tips to buffalonext@buffnews.com.

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One of the region's biggest hotels  and the biggest in Amherst  is going up for auction early next month after a state court ordered a foreclosure sale to settle a $22.2 million debt.

State Supreme Court Justice Emilio Colaiacovo issued a foreclosure judgment against the owner of the 356-room Buffalo Niagara Marriott on Millersport Highway, directing that the 10-story building be sold. The owner, Rhode Island developer James Procaccianti, consented to the decision rather than contest the foreclosure.

The court-appointed foreclosure referee  attorney Joseph T. Burns  set the public auction for noon April 1 at the Erie County Clerk's Office at Erie County Hall, at 92 Franklin St. The closing of any sale will take place within 45 days of the auction.

Sign up for the Buffalo Next free newsletter The News' Buffalo Next team covers the changing Buffalo Niagara economy. Get the news in your inbox 5 days a week.

The sale could mean the end of several years of financial limbo for the struggling hotel near University at Buffalo's North Campus, provided a new hotel owner has the wherewithal to revive it.

The full-service hotel has seen its revenues and income decline significantly over the past decade, even before the pandemic, and it took a major hit when Covid-19 took away most business and leisure travel.

But the auction could result in continued uncertainty, if the bids are too low or if the lender is the only bidder. That's what happened when Procaccianti's company tried its own online auction in August 2020, and came up well short of its target that would have allowed it to emerge from under its loan burden.

According to the foreclosure judgment, Procaccianti owes $21.7 million on the loan, plus interest, insurance and fees. But the appraised value of the hotel has fallen from $57.2 million when the loan was originated and sold to investors in 2011 to just $14 million now, according to data from Trepp LLC.

The hotel is still open, under the control of court-appointed receiver Edward Murphy III, of Buffalo law firm Magavern Magavern Grimm. It's being managed by BNNY Associates LLC, an affiliate of Philadelphia-based GF Hotels & Resorts.

"There havent been any hiccups that Ive had to be involved in," Murphy said. "They look like theyre trending in the right direction."

Built in 1981 on 10.6 acres, the Buffalo Niagara Marriott is the fifth-largest hotel in Western New York, after the Seneca Niagara Resort & Casino, the former Buffalo Grand Hotel, the Hyatt Regency Buffalo and the Sheraton Niagara Falls.

The Marriott is the only one of the five not located in an urban downtown. Located at 1340 Millersport, at Flint Road, it's across from the Flint entrance to UB's North Campus, and caters to a university, business and tourist population. It includes the Blue Fire Bar & Grill, an indoor and outdoor pool, a fitness center, a business center, 11,500 square feet of meeting and event space, and 650 surface parking spaces.

It was managed by TPG Hotels & Resorts, a division of Cranston, R.I.-based Procaccianti Cos., which acquired it in 2007 for $31 million. Procaccianti, a real estate developer and hotel operator, took out a 10-year loan for $25 million from UBS AG in September 2011, and had invested $4.9 million in capital improvements since 2012, according to a real estate listing from 2020.

At its peak in 2013, according to data from Trepp LLC, the hotel took in $17.5 million in revenues and had $5.9 million in net operating income, with occupancy of 75%. But five years later, that had fallen to $13.8 million in revenues and $3.4 million in profits, with 69% occupancy.

As of February 2020, just before the Covid-19 pandemic, the hotel's occupancy was 66.5%, with net operating income of $2.5 million, the real estate listing noted.

And business plummeted during Covid, with the hotel losing more than $1 million over almost 18 months, and the rooms less than 30% occupied.

Facing the loan maturity and imminent default, Procaccianti put the hotel up for sale in early 2020 and then tried to conduct a three-day internet auctionthrough Ten-X Commercial and Jones Lang LaSalle. Bidding opened at $6.5 million, but Proaccianti rejected the final online offer of $11 million as too low.

Meanwhile, the loan servicer, Wells Fargo & Co., had transferred the mortgage in April 2020 to special servicer Rialto Capital Advisors to work out a solution. Rialto filed for foreclosure in June 2021.

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Horizon Health Service has scrapped its plan to create an outpatient treatment facility on Delaware Avenue in Allentown, after neighborhood resistance to the clinic project led the Common Council to reject a needed permit last month.

Even a last-ditch administrative appeal, claiming that the agency shouldn't need a special use permit because it's a medical practice with licensed doctors, failed to sway city officials.

As a result, the organization has now dropped its planned purchase of the Alliance Advisory Group property at 600 Delaware.

"Its dead," said Horizon President Anne Constantino, who admitted she underestimated the opposition. "It's done."

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Now Horizon will have to look elsewhere. Constantino said there remains a growing need for help in the community amid a national crisis in mental health and substance abuse. Plus, the agency needs to reorganize its space around the region.

"This was an opportunity at a location that was going to work for us," she said. "Those don't come on the market very often."

Meanwhile, Alliance Advisory remains in its building, which is still on the market for sale. "We're hopeful that well get the proper buyer in, when the timing is right, but in the interim were here," said CEO James R. Fashano.

The nonprofit Horizon, one of the region's largest providers of outpatient mental health and substance abuse care, had planned to purchase and redevelop the two-story red-brick office building into a facility for children and adults to receive care. The goal was to bring some of Horizon's existing downtown services to a different part of town, while eventually consolidating some operations from its current site at 77 Broadway.

The 17,600-square-foot facility would have been staffed by 15 doctors, nurses, social workers and mental health counselors. Services would have included diagnostic assessment and treatment, counseling, psychiatric care and prescription medication, recovery support and referrals. Horizon especially wanted to expand its child psychiatry services, now offered in North Buffalo, East Amherst and Orchard Park.

But the prospect of the treatment facility near a residential neighborhood stirred up fervent criticism from residents, while the location adjacent to Benderson Development Co.'s local corporate offices and its Residence Inn by Marriott drew opposition from the Florida-based developer. Ellicott Development Co. was also against it.

Horizon, which serves 14,000 people annually, asserts that most patients it treats are facing anxiety, depression, trauma and alcoholism, and Constantino insisted that it has never offered methadone treatment.

But opponents still feared it would have brought drug addicts and other problems to their doorsteps, and they complained that Allentown had too many such facilities already.

"I do understand the issues of saturation, but we all do something different, and theres great need everywhere," Constantino said. "This is about need and access."

The special-use permit was backed by the Planning Board, but after months of sometimes heated debate and hearings, the Council rejected the permit in February by an 8-1 vote, with only Council Member Joel Feroleto in favor. Council Member Mitch Nowakowski, who represents the district that includes the Delaware site, was opposed.

"It didnt matter what the facts are or what the needs in our community are. It didn't matter what I said," Constantino said. "The residents of the community did not want us there. The Council member did not want us there."

Constantino, who has led Horizon for 28 years, said she has never experienced the level of hostility toward her agency's clientele as she did in Allentown.

"I cant understand the level of intensity and opposition to mental health. I cant," she said. "Never in my tenure have I ever experienced that. I was unprepared."

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Chautauqua County resident Lisa Saff remembers the pit in her stomach every time she went to the cancer clinic, the dread of how she was going to feel after another three- to five-hour round of chemotherapy.

Luckily, the drive home lasted only 10 minutes.

Saff, diagnosed with breast cancer in August 2019, received all 16 rounds of chemotherapy at Jamestown Medical Oncology & Hematology  part of a network that Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center is building to treat patients closer to where they live.

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"I can't imagine driving an hour and a half up to Roswell to do that each week," said Saff, who lives in Ellicott. "It's bad enough having to go do it as it is, but I can't imagine living somewhere where you don't have that convenience."

The growing statewide alliance, called the Roswell Park Care Network, is part of a significant change underway at Roswell  and an important one. It pushes Roswell into new, far-flung markets, helping it build a pipeline of patients  and revenue  that it otherwise might not reach.

For patients, it holds the promise of providing access to better care, through input from Roswell's specialists and inclusion in clinical trials.

And it puts Roswell at the center of a nationwide trend of major hospitals building networks to extend their reach at a time when pressure is mounting to grow. Competitors Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City and the Cleveland Clinic, for instance, are forming similar networks.

"They're a community jewel," said Larry Zielinski, an executive in residence for health care administration at the University at Buffalo School of Management.

"But in order to sustain themselves, especially how expensive those research arms are, they need a business strategy like this," Zielinski said. "The greater Western New York region with its 1 million or so population base is not large enough to support a cancer center like this, so they need to expand."

Going for growth

The expansion, combined with Roswell's construction of the $23 million Scott Bieler Amherst Center to bolster its presence in the suburbs, means the Buffalo institution is larger than ever. Consider:

 Roswell's revenue during the fiscal year that ended last March totaled $1.03 billion, up 89% from $542 million about a decade ago. Similarly, its expenses grew 86% in that same period to $1.04 billion, leading to a net deficit of $10.6 million during the pandemic's first year.

 Its employee base during that period jumped 16%, from nearly 3,200 to about 3,700 workers.

 Nearly 43,000 patients received active care at Roswell in its last fiscal year, up 46% from roughly 29,400 about 10 years earlier.

Recent growth within the Care Network extended its reach even more.

Last year, Roswell added a community practice in Depew, cut the ribbon on a new oncology center near Albany and announced an affiliation agreement with a Watertown hospital.

The network now has more than a dozen locations: six community practices, such as the one in Jamestown, as well as partnerships with seven affiliate organizations, from Bradford, Pa., to Long Island.

"The purpose of the network is that a large volume of patients can and should be cared for in the community setting," said Dr. Thomas Schwaab, Roswell's chief of strategy, business development and outreach who is tasked with traveling the state to build and maintain the network.

Amid financial challenges, Roswell Park seeks new business model Roswell Park Cancer Institute has reached a critical crossroads. While it has attracted more research grants and recruited top-flight scientists, all contributing to the growing medical Buffalo Niagara campus, financial uncertainty remains a

That was the case for Saff, a mother of four grown children and a small business owner. She said she's had two mammograms since completing her treatments  both were clear  and she returns to the Roswell practice in Jamestown every six months for follow-up appointments.

While the network is designed to treat a patient in their community, complicated cases also can be referred to the mothership on the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus.

There, Roswell this year will expand its bed count from 133 to 157, partly because of "expected continued growth in referrals" through the Care Network as well as a 30% increase in patients coming from medically underserved areas over the last five years, paperwork filed with the state shows.

The partnerships also help affiliate hospitals, which get to attach the Roswell name to their cancer centers. The rise of telemedicine has made it easier for doctors at affiliate sites to collaborate with peers in Buffalo.

It's an approach that could be even more crucial as providers encounter more advanced and aggressive cancers  the result of all those missed screenings during the pandemic.

How an affiliation works

Schwaab in mid-October headed to Watertown, more than 200 miles from his office, to unveil an affiliation with Samaritan Medical Center's Walker Center for Cancer Care  the most recent addition to the Care Network.

Four months later, the Walker Center is "extremely busy," with a 14% uptick in patients, said Eva Edwards, the facility's director of oncology services.

The $16 million center, which opened in 2018, sees the typical cancers but also some complex cases  which is when the Roswell affiliation pays off.

For example, the Walker Center has access to Tumor Boards, where their doctors can present a patient's case and receive feedback from Roswell experts to devise the right care plan. Overall, Edwards said she speaks to Roswell about three times a week.

While most care is provided at the affiliate site, a patient can be sent to Buffalo if their diagnosis needs a second look or if they need specialized treatment. When Edwards spoke to The Buffalo News in mid-February, she had five patients slated to go to Roswell before the end of the month.

Similarly, Edwards said Roswell has sent the Walker Center five of their patients who live in the Watertown area.

"It's a two-way street here for us," she said. "It's just not we feed Roswell; they feed us as well."

The Walker Center has a five-year affiliation agreement with Roswell, where it compensates the Buffalo institution for oncology consultative and professional services. Samaritan Medical Center continues to own and operate the Walker Center, though its two full-time medical oncologists became Roswell employees the day the affiliation started.

Across its affiliate sites, Schwaab said Roswell provides several services such as quality and strategic oversight, for which it gets reimbursed.

Roswell's revenue from network affiliations, agreements and partnerships is expected to grow from $6 million last year to $8 million by fiscal year 2025.

RPCI Oncology, the entity that owns the six Roswell community practices within the network, recorded nearly $47 million in revenue for the 2021 fiscal year, according to documents filed with the state.

Together, that's about 5% of Roswell's revenues.

A research boost

Networks, like the one Roswell is building, can provide patients at affiliate sites access to clinical trials, giving them the opportunity to receive drugs or therapies years before they're widely available.

Opening up clinical trials  the studies done to determine a new treatment's effectiveness  to a wider pool of candidates also benefits cancer researchers, especially when dealing with rare diseases. That, in turn, could help experimental treatments get approved faster and become available sooner to more people.

"It adds diversity to the population of patients in the study," said Dr. David Pfister, Memorial Sloan Kettering's associate deputy physician-in-chief for strategic partnerships. "So it ends up that the study results are, I think, increasingly representative of society at large."

Manhattan-based Memorial Sloan Kettering, which records annual revenue of about $5.5 billion, announced its own Cancer Alliance in 2013. The alliance has three members, with one hospital each in Pennsylvania, Connecticut and Florida, all of which have access to Memorial Sloan Kettering's clinical trials.

Within Roswell's Care Network, Schwaab said not all affiliate sites have the capabilities to offer clinical trials yet, and it depends on the particular partner  for example, Roswell has 21 active trials available to patients of its Long Island affiliate.

Roswell Park stretching cancer care network across New York Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center on Tuesday announced a new statewide alliance that will help standardize cancer care from Buffalo to Long Island, making it easier for patients in even remote places to plug into top specialists and clinical trials for the most advanced treatments. Roswell Park will provide treatment with partners across the state  at sites in

What's next?

Since May 2019 when the Care Network was announced, turnover has been minimal.

Cayuga Medical Center spokesperson John Turner confirmed the Ithaca facility's contract with Roswell was not renewed last year but he declined to say why. Roswell spokesperson Annie Deck-Miller said that while Cayuga Medical is not currently a Care Network member, Roswell continues to provide radiation oncology services to Cayuga patients, as it has for more than a decade.

Others are looking to re-up: Oneida Health President and CEO Gene Morreale said the organization's agreement with Roswell ends in August, with plans to work toward a five-year extension after seeing the affiliation help Oneida Health Cancer Center stick out among competitors in Syracuse and Utica.

The network's goal is to reach more patients every year  people like Saff, who started chemotherapy in late October 2019 and completed it right before Covid-19 hit.

The clinic's proximity meant her husband, Kevin, was able to take time off work and accompany her to all 16 treatments.

Being just minutes away, the clinic also was able to administer smaller doses during her second batch of chemotherapy, allowing Lisa Saff to continue working full time at MW Graphics, the printing business she owns that was passed down from her father.

"I felt work kind of kept me going through it, too," she said.

She goes to the practice for follow-ups now. She knows the nurses by name and credits them with helping her get through the trauma of a cancer diagnosis.

Kevin Saff said he felt the clinic was an extension of what Roswell offers in Buffalo.

"To us, it was just the convenience and the feeling that...," he said, pausing for a moment.

"You were home more," said Lisa Saff, finishing her husband's thought.

Jon Harris can be reached at 716-849-3482 or jharris@buffnews.com.

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Here is the 2022 edition of Gustos Community Fish Fry Guide. We have nearly 40 listings from local schools, churches, community centers and fire halls. Times and dates are listed; any fish fry listed as being offered Fridays during Lent, means each Friday including Good Friday on April 15.

If your community fish fry isn't listed, please email your information to gustocal@buffnews.com.

American Legion Post 264. 43 Main St., Tonawanda. 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. p.m. Fridays during Lent. Fish sandwich (battered or fried) served with tuna macaroni salad or fresh-cut fries. Fish fry dinner offered in Cajun pan-fried or Corona/lime battered skinless haddock with tuna macaroni salad, coleslaw and choice of homemade German potato salad, macaroni and cheese or fresh-cut fries. Also, two fish tacos. 424-5801. $9.95-$17.95.

American Legion Post 721. 136 Cazenovia St. 4 to 8 p.m. April 15. Battered or broiled haddock with fries, macaroni salad and coleslaw.

American Legion Post 735. 35 Legion Parkway, West Seneca. 4 to 8 p.m. Fridays.

AMVETS Buddy Knaus Post #14. 4721 Broadway, Depew. 4 to 8 p.m. Fridays during Lent. Meals provided by Butts and Links BBQ.

Buffalo Irish Center, 245 Abbott Road. 825-9535. Fridays during Lent. Bantry bay broiled, lemon pepper, Cajun or beer battered fish fry. Also fried shrimp and shamrock shrimp. Dine-in or takeout. 825-9535.

Eldredge Bicycle Club. 17 Broad St., Tonawanda. Fridays during Lent. Choice of battered, breaded or broiled with homemade macaroni salad, coleslaw, roll and choice of homemade German potato salad or American potato salad. Cash only. Call Friday after 3 p.m. to place order. 693-3589.

Gratwick Hose Fire Company No. 6. 110 Ward Road, North Tonawanda. 4 to 7:30 p.m. Fridays during Lent. Choice of beer battered, breaded, broiled or Cajun haddock. Also perch, shrimp, combo or chicken finger dinners. Dinners are served with coleslaw, macaroni salad, roll, butter and potato. $13.50-$16.25. Kids meals with macaroni and cheese or chicken fingers plus fries and drink; $7-$7.50. Call 692-9675 for takeout or to reserve table.

Hamburg United Methodist Church. 116 Union St., Hamburg. 4:30 to 7 p.m. Fridays during Lent. Choice of battered fish fry, battered shrimp or chicken finger dinner. Includes coleslaw, potato salad, bread, french fries and dessert. $16. Childrens chicken finger dinner, $8. Takeout only. (444-5537)

Holy Ghost Lutheran School. 6630 Luther St., Niagara Falls. 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. every Friday in March. Beer battered haddock, french fries, macaroni salad, coleslaw, tartar sauce, lemon slice. $13. Drive-thru only.

Holy Mother of the Rosary. 6298 Broadway, Lancaster. 4 to 7 p.m. Fridays to April 8. Fish (baked or fried) or shrimp dinner includes homemade potato, noodle and coleslaw salads, french fries, bread and butter, and dessert. 685-5766. $12-$13. Plus monthly fish fry dates available online.

Now serving: Fish fries with a side of history We can get fish fries all year round  and we should. But there is a particular kind of fish fry that appears specifically during Lent. That is the grassroots fish

Holland Middle School. 11720 Partridge Road, Holland. 4 to 6:30 p.m. April 1. Kiwanis Club of Holland Fish Fry. BWs BBQ fish dinner with coleslaw, potato salad, rye bread and butter. For tickets, call 867-4017. $14.

Kenilworth Volunteer Fire Department. 84 Hawthorne Ave. 4 to 7 p.m. Fridays through Lent. Beer battered or breaded fish with fries, coleslaw and potato salad. Shrimp or chicken finger dinner comes with fries and roll. $15. Drive-thru only.

Lancaster Elks Lodge #1478. 33 Legion Parkway. Lancaster. 4 to 8 p.m. Fridays during Lent. Beer battered, breaded and baked fish fry, seafood platter with fish, breaded shrimp or scallops. Dinners include macaroni salad, potato salad, coleslaw, choice of potato, bread and butter. $12-$16.

Lake Erie Beach Volunteer Fire Company. 9483 Lake Shore Road, Angola. 3 to 7 p.m. Fridays during Lent. Takeout only.

Our Lady Of The Blessed Sacrament Elementary School. 20 French Road, Depew. 4 to 7 p.m. Fridays during Lent. Beer battered haddock served with homemade macaroni salad, coleslaw, fries and rye bread; $14. Kids meal with homemade macaroni and cheese, fries and applesauce; $6. Clam chowder, $5.

Pendleton Center United Methodist Church. 6684 Campbell Blvd., North Tonawanda. 4 to 7 p.m. Fridays during Lent. Fish fry, baked or Cajun dinner; sampler platters, shrimp and chicken tender dinners. $14-$16.50 with half-portions and large size available. Dinners include fries or potato salad, applesauce or coleslaw, rolls and beverage. Childrens dinners (fish, shrimp or chicken), $5. Dine-in or takeout. For takeout, call 625-8306.

Polish Cadets of Buffalo. 927 Grant St. 875-3211. 4 to 8 p.m. Fridays during Lent. Beer battered or broiled fish with house-made macaroni salad, coleslaw and choice of fries or mashed potatoes and rye bread, Dine-in, takeout and delivery. Call or text order to 875-3211.

Polish Falcons of Depew. 445 Columbia Ave. 3 to 6 p.m. drive-thru; 4 to 8 p.m, dine-in. Fridays. Fish, shrimp or chicken tender dinners. Takeout available.

Sheridan Park Volunteer Fire Co. 738 Sheridan Drive, Tonawanda. 4 to 7 p.m. Fridays through Lent. Beer battered, breaded or baked fish dinner. Shrimp and chicken dinners also available. Call in orders starting at 3 p.m. at 873-1111 or (716) 275-7888. Takeout only.

Spring Brook Fire Company. 31 Pound Road, Elma. 3:30 to 7 p.m. Fridays during Lent. Fried fish, broiled fish, shrimp or chicken finger dinners with salads and fries. Dine-in or takeout. 652-1806 or 655-0831. $14.50.

SSJ Sister Karen Klimczak Center For Nonviolence. 80 Durham Ave. 4 to 6 p.m. April 1. Fish, fries, coleslaw, roll and dessert. $15

St. Andrews Episcopal Church. 2239 West Creek Road, Burt. 4 to 6:30 p.m. Every Friday through April 8. Fish or shrimp dinner with fries or potato salad, coleslaw, roll, homemade dessert. Place orders at 778-7633 starting at 2 p.m. each Friday. Curbside takeout only. $15 adults, $7 child.

St. Bernadettes Holy Name Society. 5930 South Abbott Road, Orchard Park. 4 to 6:30 p.m. or until sold out, March 25. Beer battered haddock, potato salad, macaroni salad, coleslaw, bread and butter. Takeout only. Presale tickets at church $13, day of event $14.

St. Bernards Parish. 1988 Clinton St. 4 to 7 p.m. April 8. Fried Breaded Haddock, homemade macaroni salad, roasted potatoes, coleslaw, bread and butter. Last day for pre-sale tickets April 4. 822-8856. $16 take-out and drive thru.

St. Christopher Roman Catholic Church. 2660 Niagara Falls Blvd., Tonawanda. 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. or until sold out, Fridays through April 8. Fish fry, shrimp dinner or combo dinner with french fries or potato salad, coleslaw, bread and butter. Drive-thru only.

St. Gabriels Holy Name Society. 5271 Clinton St. Elma. 4 to 7 p.m. Fridays through April 8. Icelandic Haddock (battered or broiled with macaroni salad, coleslaw, french fries, bread, coffee, tea or Loganberry. Appetizers and specials available. Eat-in and takeout. 668-5424.

St. Gregory the Great. 200 St. Gregory Court, Williamsville. 4 to 7 p.m. Fridays through April 8. The St. Gregs Knights of Columbus Fried fish, baked fish or breaded shrimp dinners with french fries, coleslaw and roll. $13 presale, $14 door. Pizza, $2. To order online: givebutter.com/stgregsfishfry2022.

St. Johns Community Church, 2871 E. Church St., Eden 4:30 to 7 p.m. or until sold out, Fridays during Lent. Fish fry, shrimp and combo dinners with hand-cut french fries or macaroni and cheese, coleslaw and dessert. Fish fry $14, shrimp $15, combo $16. Drive-thru. 992-9143.

St. Katharine Drexel Parish Community. 135 N. Ogden St. 5 to 7 p.m. Fridays during Lent. Fish or shrimp dinners with macaroni salad, coleslaw, fries and bread. Childrens meal of grilled cheese and fries, $5. Takeout only, with pickup at school hall next to church. Tickets sold Sundays after Mass and by calling 895-6813.

St. Leo the Great Parish. 885 Sweet Home Road, Amherst. 4 to 7 p.m. Fridays during Lent. Fish (fried or baked) or Shrimp Scampi served with fries, coleslaw, roll and dessert. Order 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. parish office or online at stleothegreatamherst.com. Dine-in or takeout. $16-$18.

The fish fry: A beer-battered bridge that connects all Western New York My wife and I met almost 40 years ago. She was from greater Rochester. I was living in Dunkirk, in a house my parents rented. We both attended SUNY Fredonia State, at a time when it was not so typical for students who lived on campus to date students who lived nearby, a nice way of describing a classic

St. Margaret Roman Catholic Church. 1395 Hertel Ave. 4 to 7 p.m. April 8. Catered by BWs Smokin Barrel BBQ. Haddock, potato salad, coleslaw, rye bread, butter, tartar sauce and dessert. Tickets available after Mass or 876-5318. Same-day drive-ups are welcome. $15

St. Marks Roman Catholic Church. Held at St. Marks School, 399 Woodward Ave. 4:30 to 7 p.m. March 4, April 8 and 15. Fish fry, clam, combo, shrimp dinners or Captain Bills Platter with potato salad, coleslaw, fries, rye bread. Dine-in or takeout. Questions: 998-0816. $15-$25.

St. Marthas Parish. 10 French Road, Depew. Drive-thru only. 4 tp 7 p.m. Fridays during Lent. Beer-battered haddock with fries, homemade macaroni salad, coleslaw, rye bread; $14. Kids' meal of homemade macaroni and cheese, $6. Clam chowder, $5.

St. Patricks Episcopal Church. 1395 George Urban Blvd. 4 to 7 p.m. Fridays during Lent. Fried or broiled fish, shrimp, seafood and chicken finger dinners served with green salad, bread and desserts and choice of two sides. with homemade salads, macaroni and cheese and french fries. Take-out only.

St. Stephen Serbian Orthodox Church. 177 Weber Road, Lackawanna. 4 to 7 p.m. Fridays during Lent. Fish dinners and shrimp baskets. Desserts and gifts available. Dine-in or takeout. 825-9364.

VFW Post 374 - Arcade. 550 Main St. Arcade. Noon to 8 p.m. Fridays during Lent. Fresh haddock fish fry includes two sides and roll. (585) 492-2668.

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ago

A former Wheatfield woman was arrested Wednesday night in Albuquerque, N.M., and charged with absconding with her two children three years ago, after a judge awarded custody of the children to their father.

Katie L. Riford, 37, was living in an Albuquerque apartment. She and the children  Olivia N. Riford-Diarbakerly, 11, and Mason Riford, 4  were using different last names, Niagara County Sheriff Michael J. Filicetti said at a news conference Thursday.

Riford is in jail in Albuquerque, awaiting extradition back to Niagara County to answer a felony charge of custodial interference and a misdemeanor count of violation of a Family Court order.

The sheriff said the children were taken by Child Protective Services in Albuquerque to await the arrival of their father, Peter Diarbakerly, now of Lincoln, Mass.

"When I did break the news to him, it was a very emotional phone call," said Capt. Tracy Steen, chief of the Sheriff's Office's Criminal Investigation Bureau. "He was very excited to hear the news."

The children's photos were deleted Thursday from the website of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

Riford and her children lived on Michael Drive in Wheatfield.

Diarbakerly, who never was married to Riford, filed a Niagara County Family Court petition Oct. 11, 2018, seeking custody of the two children he fathered with her. He never saw the children after Nov. 3, 2018, Filicetti said.

On Feb. 15, 2019, Family Court Judge Erin DiLabio awarded Diarbakerly full custody of the two children.

The sheriff said Riford didn't come to court, but submitted a statement saying, "I have been forced into hiding."

"When things weren't going her way in the Family Court, she decided to start making allegations," Filicetti said when asked why she left with the children.

Riford's family created an elaborate website that accused Diarbakerly of abusing Riford and the kids.

"We did investigations early on in this about that. They were all unfounded," Steen said. She added that she doesn't know why DiLabio awarded Diarbakerly custody of the children.

The day that happened, Diarbakerly asked the Sheriff's Office for assistance in finding the children, Filicetti said.

"Katie's family was uncooperative with the service of that order," Filicetti said. The next day, a missing persons case was opened for Riford and the children.

During the next three years, the Sheriff's Office was assisted by the FBI, which provided "very valuable" information in the probe, Filicetti said.

Tuesday, the FBI's information helped the investigation zero in on Albuquerque, the sheriff said. He said Riford was believed to have relatives there, and the local school district didn't require a lot of proof of identity before children are registered for classes.

Wednesday night, after a criminal arrest warrant was obtained in Wheatfield, the U.S. Marshal's Task Force arrested Riford and recovered the children, Filicetti said.

"She was able to stay off the radar in changing her name," Filicetti said. "The usual methods that we use to try to find people did not work. It's my firm belief that she was getting help from family. We do believe there's some family living in that area, and she was also getting help from family back here."

He said Riford wasn't working in New Mexico. The investigation on what support she received from local relatives continues, Filicetti said.

Riford's siblings, who had contacted local media hoping for stories about the case, did not respond to emails from The Buffalo News Thursday.

Niagara County District Attorney Brian D. Seaman said Riford has not been indicted, so her first appearance after she is returned to Niagara County will be in Wheatfield. He said the length of the extradition process depends on whether Riford fights the warrant.

Filicetti said that under New York's recent bail reform laws, Riford may be released on her own recognizance when she appears before a local judge.

"I think we acknowledge the fact that she's a considerable flight risk," Filicetti said. "She's already been to New Mexico, but we'll wait to see how that plays out."

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An Erie County judge on Friday rejected a request to move to Family Court the criminal case against the 17-year-old accused of attempted murder in the stabbing and beating of a 14-year-old outside McKinley High School last month.

And county prosecutors are no longer specifically alleging the other 17-year-old charged in the case, who also faces an attempted murder charge, intentionally shot the 27-year-old school security guard attempting to break up the group altercation outside the school that afternoon.

Judge Kenneth Case ruled the District Attorney's Office met its legal burden to keep the criminal cases against both Rismay Tee and Kushal Tamang in Youth Part, where they would face stiffer punishment if found guilty than they would in Family Court.

Police and prosecutors have not released the suspects' names, but they were identified by name in open court Friday and on the publicly available court docket.

"It seems to me the burden of proof has been exceeded," Case said prior to announcing his formal ruling, in describing the grand jury indictment of both teens.

The Feb. 9 violence, which happened after school about 3:45 p.m. in a parking lot at McKinley, triggered a school lockdown and a manhunt for suspects.

Tamang, known by the nickname "Kush" and accused in the beating and stabbing, has been charged with second-degree attempted murder and first-degree assault. Tee, known by the nickname "Riz" and charged with the shooting, has been charged with second-degree attempted murder, second-degree weapons possession and second-degree assault.

Both remain held without bail.

Prosecutors have not said what Tamang  accused in the attack on the 14-year-old, which left him with 10 stab wounds  is specifically alleged to have done. District Attorney John Flynn has said there were "others involved" in the beating and stabbing, but has declined to specify how many.

The judge rejected the argument of Louis C. Mussari, Tamang's defense attorney, who said under the state's Raise the Age law, prosecutors were required to show by a preponderance of the evidence that his client caused serious physical injury to the 14-year-old.

According to Mussari, prosecutors have thus far offered no proof that his client had a knife or caused the victim serious physical injury.

Tamang told police he was involved in a fight, but denied having a weapon or stabbing the victim, Mussari said.

"This individual is not the individual who stabbed somebody," Mussari told the judge.

The judge ruled prosecutors met a higher burden  the standard of "reasonable cause"  by having him indicted.

Under the legal theory being used by prosecutors, known as accomplice liability, they don't have to specifically allege Tamang was the one who stabbed the victim, Flynn has said.

That standard is appropriate when trying to get a grand jury to indict, argued Mussari, the teen's defense attorney, but not when trying to keep a case from moving to Family Court. Accessorial liability is not specifically addressed in the provisions of New York's Raise the Age law, he said.

New York State raised the age of criminal responsibility from 16 to 18 over the span of a year, starting in October 2018.

The family of Sirgio Jeter, who suffered multiple punctured organs in the stabbing, has notified Buffalo Public Schools of intent to sue the district. The security guard, who was shot in the leg, was released from the hospital.

Prosecutors allege Tee fired the gun into a crowd of people, Flynn said. When he was initially arrested, he was accused of intentionally shooting the guard.

"I don't have to prove that he intentionally shot at the security guard; all I need to prove is that he shot at a group of kids and the security guard got hit," Flynn said. "I'm not saying it was accidental. I'm not saying it was not intentional."

Tee has not been charged with injuring a 13-year-old, who authorities previously said was grazed by a bullet. Flynn said Friday investigators haven't found enough evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the wound was caused by a grazing bullet, but noted the investigation continues.

Flynn said Friday investigators still have not yet found the weapon used in the stabbing or the gun used in the shooting.

The speed with which these two teens were indicted was unusual for cases that don't involve a homicide, Flynn said.

The teens are due back in court March 23.

Reach Aaron at abesecker[at]buffnews.com or 716-849-4602.

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Tonja M. Williams had just been appointed interim superintendent of the state's second largest school district on Wednesday evening. As her first order of business, she gave a shout-out to the people who helped her along the way.

"Good evening to all the Buffalo Public School students, and families, the board members, my mom  who I know is watching on TV," she said.

With that out of the way, she assessed the moment and said: "This is huge."

Williams, 57, ascended to the top job in a district of 30,000 students the same day the School Board accepted the resignation of Kriner Cash, who had come under fire recently for his handling of the Covid-19 pandemic and for how he handled tensions at McKinley High School that escalated into a violent assault last month. School Board President Louis Petrucci said Cash was not asked to resign, and his departure from the district was by mutual agreement.

Kriner Cash is out as Buffalo school superintendent The School Board approved a termination agreement with Cash on Wednesday night after days of speculation about the future of the superintendent.

Cash will receive more than $316,000 as part of his agreement to leave the post he has held for the past seven years, according to a separation agreement released Thursday afternoon by the district.

Williams will be paid a rate of $423 per day, which corresponds to an annual salary of about $154,000.

While Cash worked in Memphis, Miami and Martha's Vineyard before coming to Buffalo, Williams followed a more local path. Born and raised in Buffalo, she attended Buffalo Public Schools, graduating from Riverside High School. Her parents met at East High School, she said.

Her teaching experience includes being a minority teaching fellow at Canisius College from 2008 to 2011, and a seven-month stint as an instructor at Bryant & Stratton Business Institute in 2017.

Board members said they see her hometown upbringing and knowledge of the district and community as a plus.

"I think this is a great day for the City of Buffalo. This board came together and made a decision based on Buffalo. Somebody who was from Buffalo who understands Buffalo, understands the families, understands the children," at-Large Board Member Terrance Heard said.

Ferry District Board Member Sharon Belton-Cottman said the fact that Williams is a Buffalo native and has spent her career with the district "was a fairy tale come true."

But she said the board would have appointed Williams if she was not a Buffalo native.

"We wanted to make sure we had someone who had a reputation of being fair and amicable and who could handle the challenge," Belton-Cottman said.

McKinley plan to resume in-person classes stresses security to 'create safe environment' Security guards and administrators will be strategically placed, and Peacemakers will be stationed at the front corners of the building, helping students with safe passage, said McKinley Principal Moustafa Khalil.

She said Williams is a hard worker and someone who does not mind being held responsible.

Williams said her two priorities are ensuring that all school campuses are safe and ensuring that all children are learning at high-quality levels. She plans to reach out to the community with a listening tour of coffee and conversation chats.

"She also wants to visit churches, she wants to visit community centers, she wants to come out into the community to see where the problem lies to see how she can adapt and help this district move forward," Heard said.

Williams was a school counselor for nine years, supervisor of Safe and Drug Free Schools in the district and director of Guidance and Counseling.

She served as principal of two struggling Buffalo elementary schools for five years. She was principal of Marva J. Daniel Futures Preparatory School No. 37 from 2011 to 2015, and as principal of the Arthur O. Eve School of Distinction No. 61 in 2015-16. Both high-poverty schools failed to meet annual proficiency targets for English and math during that time period and scored below district and state averages, according to annual New York State Education Department report cards.

She was named an assistant superintendent in 2016 and became associate superintendent for student support services in 2019.

As associate superintendent of student support services, Williams oversaw youth services, attendance, social and emotional health, social work, homelessness, guidance counseling, family and community relations and student placement, according to a description of the position. Her department was the liaison for parent groups.

"She knows us, that's the good thing. She knows the parent groups. She came up from guidance  she knows the students," said Wendy Mistretta, president of the Parent Coordinating Council. "Were here to collaborate with her. Well continue to work with her."

Parent advocate Samuel Radford III said he thinks after Cash's tenure, a leader from Buffalo is a good thing. He said the community is splintered and divided.

"I think that's what 's needed now. I think that's going to be helpful," Radford said. "He alienated people. That hurt our community."

Williams comes to oversee a district that, like others, has been grappling with the Covid-19 pandemic for nearly two years. It is struggling with problems with school violence, charges of grade tampering, transportation issues, after school programming and reopening schools from Covid restrictions.

The district was the last in the state to return to in-person learning, and it has come under fire from parents for poor communication, and decisions such as engaging in remote learning when it ran out of snow days.

The school mask mandate is ending everywhere, even Buffalo The announcement reverses a declaration by Buffalo school officials Monday night that masks must continue to be worn. New York City schools are requiring masks this week, but other large city school districts, including Albany, Rochester, Syracuse and Yonkers, had decided that masks will be optional.

The message on masking was mixed this week. The day after the governor announced the mask mandate for schools would be dropped Wednesday, the district told parents masks would still be required. After officials found out the district could not require masks, it notified parents late Tuesday that masks would be optional.

"Thankfully interim Superintendent Dr. Williams was a direct part of that decision-making regarding the change in mask policy," at-Large Board Member Lawrence Scott said. "We need to establish communication to all parties involved. For example, our bus drivers this morning were unaware of the change of policy or some of them werent aware of the change in policy and were insisting students get on the bus with masks on."

Williams also will preside over a poor school district, but with an abundance of federal funding. The district received $289 million in federal Covid stimulus.

"The money is there to really restructure the system and innovate to actually meet the needs of kids in an urban setting," Radford said. "This is a critical moment for not just Buffalo education but Buffalo."

Petrucci said Williams is expected to serve while the board conducts a search for a new superintendent. She said she might be interested in a permanent position.

A search typically takes six months to a year, depending on the time of year it starts, Petrucci said.

"There will be input from the community," he said.

News Staff Reporter Sandra Tan contributed to this article.

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A jury that has twice said it was deadlocked in the federal trial of pharmaceutical rep Michael Luehrsen has been told again to resume deliberations and to try to reach a verdict on the health care fraud, evidence tampering and money laundering counts against him.

Jurors, on their sixth day of deliberations Thursday, sent a note to the judge saying they had "vigorously established" that those among them with differing views were "locked into" their positions.

Earlier this week, the 12 jurors sent a note saying they had "intractable disagreements on one or more counts."

After the jury's first note about the deadlock, U.S. District Judge Lawrence J. Vilardo, with the agreement of the prosecution and defense, read the jury instructions known as an Allen charge  encouraging deadlocked jurors to make another effort to reach an unanimous decision in the month-long trial.

And then after Thursday's note, the judge did so again, with the consent of both sides.

Brazen fraud or playing by the rules? How a pharma rep made millions marketing medical cream for $27,000 a tube Federal prosecutors call it a conspiracy orchestrated by Michael W. Luehrsen, who they say generated more than $10 million in wrongful insurance reimbursements. Defendants argue Luehrsen didn't break any rules.

It's not known on which charges the jury is deadlocked.

Luehrsen, a 38-year-old former Clarence resident, faces one count of conspiracy to commit health care fraud. Federal prosecutors have accused him of generating more than $10 million in wrongful insurance reimbursements by orchestrating a pyramid operation in which he recruited others to look for patients with certain insurance coverages and doctors willing to sign prescriptions for the custom-made medications, even if the patients did not need them.

In one case cited by prosecutors, the non-narcotic creams for scars, wounds and pain sent to one woman's family cost her husband's insurance plan more than $2.8 million. Several others with similar prescriptions also racked up huge bills for their insurers, with a tube of medical cream billed at an average cost of $14,000, but some billed upward to $27,000.

He also faces 19 counts of money laundering, with the government alleging he tried to conceal his millions by moving around funds among some 30 bank accounts in his or his company's name. And the government also charged him with two counts of altering or destroying evidence, based on him deleting emails.

If convicted, prosecutors want Luehrsen to forfeit millions in cash, along with real estate in Buffalo and Miami and investment holdings.

Luehrsen's defense lawyers have maintained the health insurance companies decided what to reimburse for the compound medications and that they were free to discontinue coverage anytime. What's more, it was the other pharmacy reps that Luehrsen enlisted to work under him  and who later became government witnesses  who did the wrongdoing, his lawyers told jurors.

On the first day of the trial on Feb. 2, defense attorney A. Lee Bentley III challenged the prosecution to present "a single specific clear rule that Mike Luehrsen violated."

In his opening statement, Bentley told jurors, "Mike played by the rules as he understood them."

It's rare for a judge to read an Allen charge twice to a deadlocked jury.

Former Clarence resident accused of costly federal health care fraud Michael W. Luehrsen was indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of conspiracy to commit health care fraud, money laundering and corruptly destroying evidence.

"I've never had a case where a judge gave two Allen charges," said Buffalo attorney Paul J. Cambria. "I've had them with one, but never with two.

"I'm opposed to the Allen charge, period," said Cambria, who is not involved in the Luehrsen trial. "But giving it twice, I think, jeopardizes the function of the jury. It now puts them in an intimidation situation, and people who have legitimate reservations will compromise them because they feel pressured by the judge. I think it's a very bad practice and it shouldn't happen."

Vilardo told jurors not to feel pressured to return a verdict, but added it is desirable, if possible, for a verdict to be reached so long as they can do so without violating their own judgment and conscience.

There is no hurry, the judge told the jurors, telling them to talk to each other and re-examine their positions but not to change their honest beliefs solely because of the opinions of fellow jurors or for the mere purpose of returning a verdict.

But even couched in that language, Cambria said, the judge is "basically telling them twice to come to a decision, and you may have a juror who just isn't prepared to come to that decision. That's why you have a jury and reasonable doubt. The more you lean on the jurors, the more there is a possibility they're going to surrender a legitimate doubt."

In his second Allen charge, Vilardo told jurors that if they couldn't agree on all of the counts, they could return verdicts on the counts they do agree on, opening the possibility of a partial verdict being returned.

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Six years after an investigation opened into Michael W. Luehrsen's marketing of exorbitantly priced medical creams, a judge declared a mistrial Friday on the health care fraud charge Luehrsen faced because jurors could not reach a unanimous verdict.

Jurors, however, found Luehrsen not guilty of eight money laundering charges that dealt with concealing transactions, and they also acquitted him of two evidence tampering charges over deleted emails.

In addition to remaining deadlocked on the fraud charge, jurors could not reach a verdict on 11 other money laundering charges having to do with transactions involving money allegedly derived from unlawful activity. U.S. District Judge Lawrence J. Vilardo declared a mistrial on those counts as well.

Federal prosecutors alleged Luehrsen, a 38-year-old former Clarence resident, generated more than $10 million in wrongful insurance reimbursements by orchestrating a pyramid operation to get prescriptions for non-narcotic, custom-made creams for scars, wounds and pain that included highly priced ingredients without doctors even seeing the patients.

Jury told to keep trying after sixth day of deliberations in health care fraud trial "I've never had a case where a judge gave two Allen charges," said attorney Paul J. Cambria of the Luehrsen case. A U.S. District judge has again encouraged deadlocked jurors to make another effort to reach an unanimous decision.

The U.S. Attorney's Office now must decide its next steps and whether to retry Luehrsen on the deadlocked counts.

The money laundering and evidence tampering counts that Luehrsen no longer faces carried a prison term of up to 20 years and possible fines of between $250,000 and $500,000.

The conspiracy to commit health care fraud count carries up to a $250,000 fine and 10 years in prison.

When the trial began a month ago, defense attorney A. Lee Bentley III told jurors that the prosecution "invested millions of dollars in this case, and they mean to win."

For more than five years, "the government has continued to interview witnesses, over and over and over," he told jurors during the trial. "These government agents, they're trying to do their best. But what's happened here is the government came up with its theory, and now it's tried to mold the evidence to fit the theory."

At least for some in the jury, which deliberated for seven days, the evidence did not fit on the health care fraud charge.

The government said Luehrsen obtained a large number of high-reimbursement prescriptions for himself, including four custom medications from one doctor on one day in August 2014 and three more prescriptions from another doctor on the same day. In all, the insurance reimbursements for just Luehrsen's personal prescriptions totaled $326,639, according to the government.

An Amherst woman recounted to jurors that so many refills of the medical creams came to her home that she started throwing them in the trash. She didn't know it at the time, but her husband's insurance company was billed thousands of dollars for a single tube.

With the exorbitant reimbursement rates for all of the refills, her husband's insurance plan paid more than $2.8 million. Several others with similar prescriptions also racked up huge bills for their insurers, with a tube of medical cream billed at an average cost of $14,000, but some billed upward to $27,000.

Assistant U.S. Attorneys Charles M. Kruly and John D. Fabian charged Luehrsen and other participants in his operation arranged for custom-made medications "to contain ingredients that carried high reimbursement rates from health insurers." They targeted patients whose health insurance covered compounded medications, companies like National Grid and Verizon. They sought out patients and convinced them that they would benefit from the medication and then worked with the patients to obtain the prescriptions.

Luehrsen and his associates got prescriptions from doctors who had never examined the patients and who had no relationship with them. One doctor signed 147 prescriptions for 19 patients, and the prescriptions were filled 519 times, resulting in more than $8.75 million in insurance reimbursements. The doctor examined only two of those patients, prosecutors said.

The defense strategy relied on two main themes.

First, the health insurance companies decided what they were willing to pay for different compound medications, Bentley said. They were perfectly free at any time to stop covering the compound medications or paying the high reimbursements.

Brazen fraud or playing by the rules? How a pharma rep made millions marketing medical cream for $27,000 a tube Federal prosecutors call it a conspiracy orchestrated by Michael W. Luehrsen, who they say generated more than $10 million in wrongful insurance reimbursements. Defendants argue Luehrsen didn't break any rules.

Second, it was the other pharmacy reps that Luehrsen enlisted to work under him  and who later became government witnesses  who did the wrongdoing, according to Bentley and Luehrsen's other lawyer, Jason Mehta.

"Mr. Luehrsen did not forge any doctor's prescriptions. He didn't deceive any doctors," Bentley told jurors.

Luehrsen testified that when he learned the government was investigating him and his company, MedHype, he offered to repay the reimbursements for any of the inappropriate prescriptions that the others gained through misconduct.

"I had a great business, and I didn't need that kind of conduct to be successful," he told jurors.

Two other men have already pleaded guilty to charges: one who helped get prescriptions without the patient having had a medical visit and the other who substituted different patient names on signed 12-month prescriptions for the creams without a physician's knowledge. Both testified as cooperating government witnesses in Luehrsen's trial.

One has already been released from prison after being sentenced to three years, and the other awaits sentencing. But the prosecution has depicted Luehrsen as the one who devised "the scheme to make those quick millions, and he conspired with others to commit health care fraud," Kruly told jurors.

The government seized approximately $2.5 million in assets from Luehrsen, including three condos and $861,000 in investment funds. The government alleged that from 2014 to early 2017 he received $3.3 million in proceeds from health care fraud.

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WASHINGTON  A $1 billion veterans hospital could be added to the downtown Buffalo skyline thanks to a U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs proposal to replace the aging Buffalo VA Medical Center on Bailey Avenue.

VA officials outlined their preliminary proposal for a new hospital at or near the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus in internal documents obtained by The Buffalo News. They stressed that construction of a new hospital is likely years away, but that it's necessary due to the outdated design and structural deficiencies at the Bailey Avenue facility.

"The aging Buffalo VAMC will be replaced with a rightsized facility proximate to Buffalo's health care corridor in order to increase synergies with neighboring providers and resources," according to a working draft of the VA's recommendations to a commission that is planning the future of the mammoth veterans health care system.

The VA documents also call for construction of a new VA hospital in Batavia, although the one in Buffalo would be far bigger.

A new hospital could bring hundreds of additional employees, patients and visitors downtown every day, but the VA plan is expected to be controversial. Residents of the Fruit Belt, just east of the Medical Campus, have long complained of skyrocketing rents and parking problems that could get worse with another hospital in the neighborhood. And then there is the question of what will become of the current VA hospital in the University District  which, the VA noted, has 1.1 million square feet of space, more than New York City's iconic Chrysler Building.

While acknowledging those potential issues, Rep. Brian Higgins cheered the possibility of a new VA hospital.

"Here's the good thing: This recognizes that the veterans of Buffalo and Western New York are deserving of a new, modern health care facility to replace one that is 70 years old and thus is inferior or suboptimal," said Higgins, a Buffalo Democrat. "We want the best possible health care facility for our veterans. The question is how do we achieve that locationally, and in terms of inclusiveness of services."

Local veterans advocate Patrick Welch said the new hospital would be vastly better than the current, outdated one.

"I think it would be a very nice thing for us to have a newer facility," he said. "I've been to some of the newer VA hospitals, particularly in Florida, and you know, they're magnificent facilities. Everything's state of the art."

That's hardly the case with the VA hospital on Bailey Avenue. The VA said in those internal documents that the hospital, built in 1949, is in need of $260.9 million in repairs.

Moreover, the facility suffers from basic structural deficiencies. It's one of only two VA hospitals in the nation without central air conditioning, which "creates challenges in controlling humidity in sterile patient care areas," the VA said in its draft Asset and Infrastructure Review recommendations for Western New York.

The hospital's operating rooms are undersized, thereby limiting the equipment that can be installed in them. Worse yet, operating space is limited.

"Buffalo VAMC has the busiest VA surgical service in New York state and cannot accommodate future projected demand" within its current operating room space, the VA said.

In addition, the hospital corridors are only eight feet wide, narrower than the VA's current design standards. And the current Bailey Avenue site is landlocked, leaving no room for additional development despite a parking shortage.

Women vets benefit from coordinated care at Buffalo VA On average, only 49 percent of Veterans, regardless of gender, utilize even one aspect of th

Under the VA's plan, that outdated hospital would be replaced with a new facility with inpatient medical, surgical and psychiatric beds, as well as a short-stay nursing home. The hospital would also feature an emergency department, primary care offices and rehabilitation facilities, as well as mental and dental health clinics.

Two existing VA clinics at 1325 Main St. and 2963 Main St. would be closed, with their services transferred to the new downtown hospital. Other VA services currently scattered in rental properties  such as a program for homeless veterans and the VA Psychosocial Rehabilitation and Recovery Center  would also be consolidated in the new site.

In addition, the new hospital would include an expanded residential treatment program for veterans with substance abuse disorders.

While the VA documents broadly describe the services the new VA hospital would provide, they are much less specific about the amount of space that would be needed for the facility or what the new medical center would look like.

It's clear, though, that the VA has a general idea of where the hospital should be built.

"Relocating the Buffalo VAMC near or in the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus will enhance innovation, collaborative care, research and educational opportunities with local community institutions," such as the University at Buffalo, the VA documents said.

Matt Enstice, the president and CEO of the medical campus, said he was unaware that the VA was pondering locating there  but that the idea is "really phenomenal."

"Having a new VA hospital on the medical campus would be a great thing for our community," he said. "We look forward to working with everybody leading this project, to find a way to integrate them into the community."

Enstice said he believes parcels of land on the medical campus are large enough to accommodate a new VA hospital, including one at the corner of Main and Best streets that could incorporate the Summer-Best Metro Rail station. Any such proposal would have to include additional parking to handle the influx of traffic the new facility would produce, he added.

VA officials to visit cemetery amid growing safety concerns The VA announced it would perform a study three days after a Feb. 13 Buffalo News story reported that two VA officials pushed for safety changes at the intersection of Route 77 and Indian Falls Road, only to be reprimanded for it.

Staffers for local members of Congress attended a briefing on the project on Thursday.

Afterward, Higgins cautioned that local lawmakers need to be vigilant as the plan develops to make sure that important services for veterans don't get curtailed or transferred out of town as part of the effort.

"Yes we want a new, state-of-the-art VA hospital for Buffalo area veterans  a new state-of-the-art hospital that we will shape and not one thats imposed on us," Higgins said. "I love the local VA and the dedicated professionals that work there. I dont love the D.C.-based VA bureaucracy."

The Buffalo proposal stems from legislation passed by Congress in 2018 that set up a VA Asset and Infrastructure Review Commission to study the future of the VA's medical facilities. Higgins and many other Democrats opposed that bill, fearing it would lead to the privatization of veterans' health care.

On Veterans Day, fellow warriors aim to destigmatize mental wounds of combat Taking care of ourselves sometimes takes a little effort," said Dr. Paul J. Harrigan, a supervisory psychologist at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center.

But the VA documents indicate that the agency wants to modernize its health care system  and not just in Buffalo. Noting that the Batavia VA Medical Center was built in 1932 and is in need of $31.8 million in improvements, the VA suggested building a new facility on 12 acres of land the agency owns next to the hospital. VA documents said a new hospital there would cost $148.4 million.

Neither the new Buffalo hospital nor the one in Batavia would be built anytime soon, given that they both are large endeavors.

"Any potential changes to our infrastructure are years away  and in some cases, more than 10 years away," the VA documents said.

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Americans are used to seeing things on health care bills that we dont understand. When I decided to look into one of these inscrutable line items  an $11 charge tacked onto a $110 bill for routine lab work at Mercy Ambulatory Care Center  it led to me learning that people across New York State are overpaying millions of dollars in health care taxes every year.

The Health Care Reform Act (HCRA) is a very complex set of surcharges and fees paid by health plans, providers, self-insured employers and patients. These surcharges are levied on most services provided by hospitals, diagnostic and treatment centers and ambulatory surgery centers.

The $11 charge on my bill was there because of HCRA. But it shouldnt have been. Since the lab work was for a routine annual physical, it should have been exempt. If it were for an outpatient procedure, the surcharge would have applied.

This is just one example, but there are dozens of rules surrounding HCRA. Surcharges hinge not only on why a patient is receiving care, but also where as well as many other factors.

Covid-19 has put the problem in stark contrast. With thousands of people in Buffalo and around the state getting Covid tests every day, its nearly impossible to keep track of tests that are subject to the tax (because a doctor ordered them ahead of a procedure) and those that arent (because a patient thinks they might be sick).

As a result, revenues from HCRA have swelled, growing to nearly $4 billion in 2020 alone, an increase of almost 7% over 2019 levels. In reality, the total should have decreased in 2020 as patients switched to Medicaid (which is taxed at a lower rate) in large numbers and postponed elective surgeries and nonessential care due to the pandemic.

Even the state itself, in its 2021 budget, acknowledged that the pandemics effect on health care consumers should have led to a material and adverse impact on HCRA revenues. Clearly it didnt. Why arent lawmakers asking why?

These overpayments add to the rapidly growing health care costs for New York residents. An $11 charge may seem insignificant, but the Empire Center for Public Policy estimates these insurance taxes add approximately $440 per person each year to the cost of private health insurance.

Im an accredited health care fraud investigator. As I unraveled the web of HCRA, I was continually astounded by how difficult it would be for even large employers and insurance companies to pay these taxes accurately. The systems Ive built to parse this out are some of the most complex Ive ever designed.

In the U.S. health care system, the more complicated and opaque something is, the more expensive it ends up being for patients and employers. The health care industry does enough of this shell game on its own. New York State shouldnt add to the problem.

Jeff Snyder is vice president of operations at Penstock, a health care payment integrity and reimbursement consulting company based in Buffalo.
The giant internet retailer Amazon is back again, looking at Western New York after being chased out of Grand Island. As always, the project  now in Niagara County  needs to be carefully evaluated, but the goal should be to find a way to make this work, not to thwart it.

Two years after the Grand Island plan collapsed in the face of community opposition, Amazon is proposing a 3.08 million-square-foot warehouse in the Town of Niagara, just east of the City of Niagara Falls.

The companys proposal is to build a five-story distribution center at 8995 Lockport Road, adjacent to the Niagara Falls International Airport and Niagara Falls Air Reserve Station. The $300 million project would take in 216 acres of land and provide more than 1,000 permanent jobs and seasonal workers.

Those should be attractive possibilities to the town and county, though they need to be balanced against the complications that could accompany the project, including increased traffic and environmental concerns. They should be manageable; its the planners job to make them so.

The allure of this project goes beyond the jobs and tax revenue it could create, though they are surely attractive. In addition, though, Amazon is a world player. Its going to be part of the economic landscape over the long haul; the Town of Niagara and the rest of Western New York should want a piece of that.

More accurately, it should want another piece. Amazon likes something about this part of the country. It already has distribution centers in Lancaster and the Town of Tonawanda. Its been interested in other areas here, as well, but when the Grand Island warehouse fell through, many feared the company would turn away from Western New York. Indeed, it appeared last year that this project could be headed to a Rochester suburb.

It didnt go to Erie County, but its not far over the north Grand Island Bridge, where it could benefit workers around the region while benefiting a town that has worked to attract Amazons interest and which could use the economic infusion.

Amazon has been fighting back against its reputation  deserved or not  as a gigantic employer without much concern for its employees. It advertises that employees qualify for health insurance immediately upon hiring and that its starting pay is $18 per hour. Criticisms of its corporate policies helped to sink its plan to build a headquarters in New York City three years ago.

Since then, though, a pandemic has choked economies around the world, including in Western New York. Residents and economic developers, alike, have reason to offer a welcoming smile to projects that can offer a cushion against hard economic times.

There are surely issues to consider, including traffic in and out of the proposed warehouse and across the Grand Island bridges. But there are always issues to consider; that doesnt define them as insurmountable.

Western New York has earned a do-over on this project. It should work hard to find a path to construction.

  

Whats your opinion? Send it to us at lettertoeditor@buffnews.com. Letters should be a maximum of 300 words and must convey an opinion. The column does not print poetry, announcements of community events or thank you letters. A writer or household may appear only once every 30 days. All letters are subject to fact-checking and editing.
March 6  Winter Trap League continues at Alden Rod and Gun Club, 12 County Line Road, Alden. Scratch league, shooting every other Sunday. 250 birds shot by March 6; 300 bird league. For more information, call Tom Ess at 431-9292. Next shooting date is March 20.

March 6  Indoor 3-D archery league continues at Alden Rod and Gun Club, 12 County Line Road, Alden. Noon to 3 p.m. every other Sunday. A total of 24 arrows each week. For more info call Phil Williams at 553-7445. Next shooting date is March 20.

March 6  WNY Winter 3D Archery League continues at West Falls Conservation, 55 Bridge Street, West Falls from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. $10 per week for 13 weeks. Three to six person teams. There are classes for kids with a 20-yard maximum to open shooters with a 50-yard maximum. All targets are at known distances and range finders are allowed. The hosting clubs are Collins, West Falls, Evans, and Glen Coe. Contact Mike Cummings at 655-5030.

March 6  Niagara Region 3D Winter Archery League continues at Erie County Conservation, 13319 Miller Avenue, Chaffee. Sign in time from 7:30 a.m. to noon. Other participating clubs include Wood and Brook Sportsmens Club, Erie County Conservation, Alden Rod and Gun, Double T and Allied Sportsmen. Fourteen weeks long. Contact is Marty at 870-2653 or John at 725-5822. New shooters and walk on shooters welcome.

March 6  Application period opens for Summer Youth Environmental Education Camps starting at 1 p.m. There are four different camps. Cost is $350 per person. Visit www.dec.ny.gov for more information.

March 8  38th Annual indoor Precision Pistol league at Allied Sportsmen, 12846 Clinton Street, Alden. Held every second and fourth Tuesday through March. Cost to shoot is $10 per week. For more information, contact John Floriano at 725-5822. Next shoot is March 22.

March 8  Second Amendment for Ever (SAfE) monthly meeting at the Newfane Community Center, 2737 Main Street, Newfane starting at 7 p.m. Guest speaker is Todd Aldinger, candidate for Congress for NY 24.

March 10  Indoor 3D Archery League (14-week) continues at Allied Sportsmen, 12846 Clinton Street, Alden at 6:30 p.m. First line is 6:45 p.m. and second line is at 7:30 p.m. Shoot any night or all 14 weeks. Cost is $10 per night. Any questions call John Floriano at 725-5822 or Kevin Ulrich at 430-1059.

March 10-13  WNY Sport and Travel Expo, Erie County Fairgrounds, Hamburg. www.eriepromotions.com

March 11  SPOT Shoot/League continues at Allied Sportsmen, 12846 Clinton Street, Alden at 6:45 p.m. You can shoot a single spot, a three-spot or a five-spot target for whatever practice you are looking for on the 15-position range. Cost is $10 each night for 14 weeks. Any questions call John Floriano at 725-5822 or Kevin Ulrich at 430-1059.

March 12  Niagara County Federation of Conservation Clubs annual awards banquet at The Brookside, 2929 Lockport-Olcott Road, Newfane. Tickets are $35 and the deadline is Feb. 28 to purchase them through pre-sale only. Call Dave Whitt at 754-2133.

March 13  Niagara Region 3D Winter Archery League continues at Allied Sportsmen, 12846 Clinton Street, Alden. Sign in time from 7:30 a.m. to noon. Other participating clubs include Wood and Brook Sportsmens Club, Erie County Conservation, Alden Rod and Gun, Double T and Allied Sportsmen. Fourteen weeks long. Contact is Marty at 870-2653 or John at 725-5822. New shooters and walk on shooters welcome.

March 13  WNY Winter 3D Archery League continues at Evans Rod and Gun, 864 Cain Road, Angola from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. $10 per week for 13 weeks. Three to six person teams. There are classes for kids with a 20-yard maximum to open shooters with a 50-yard maximum. All targets are at known distances and range finders are allowed. The hosting clubs are Collins, West Falls, Evans, and Glen Coe. Contact Jerry Gorski at 698-3008.

March 13  Winter trap league continues at Allied Sportsmen, 12846 Clinton Street, Alden from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. It is a scratch league, 300 birds, every other Sunday. There will be open and league shooting every Tuesday, including non-members, from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. For more information, contact Jim at 683-2224. Next shoot is March 27.

March 14  1791 Society special meeting has been changed. Guest speaker will be Lee Zeldin, and it will be held at Weber VFW Post located at 2909 South Park Ave., Lackawanna at 7 p.m.

March 15  Double Tap Action Pistol Shoot at Allied Sportsmen, 12846 Clinton Street, Alden. First and third Tuesday each month through March at 6:15 p.m. For more information, contact Fred Weymer at 359-2475.

March 15  Final season closing date for walleye, northern pike, pickerel and tiger musky.

March 17  Indoor 3D Archery League (14-week) continues at Allied Sportsmen, 12846 Clinton Street, Alden at 6:30 p.m. First line is 6:45 p.m. and second line is at 7:30 p.m. Shoot any night or all 14 weeks. Cost is $10 per night. Any questions call John Floriano at 725-5822 or Kevin Ulrich at 430-1059.

March 18  SPOT Shoot/League continues at Allied Sportsmen, 12846 Clinton Street, Alden at 6:45 p.m. You can shoot a single spot, a three-spot or a five-spot target for whatever practice you are looking for on the 15-position range. Cost is $10 each night for 14 weeks. Any questions call John Floriano at 725-5822 or Kevin Ulrich at 430-1059.

March 18  Ten X Shooting Club Junior Shooting Program continues for ages 9 to 20. Club is located at 853 Ransom Road, Lancaster. First time shooters arrive at 6 p.m. for instruction. Shooting at 6:30 p.m. Air rifles for 9 and up; .22lr for ages 12-20. Everything is provided by the club. Cost is $5 per night, which includes ammo. Membership not required. For more information, visit www.tenxshootingclub.com. Next session is April 1.

March 19  Fishermans Flea Market at the Alexander Firemans Rec Hall, 10708 Route 98 in Alexander. Doors are open from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Admission is $2. Children under 12 are free. Call Joe Kugel at 440-0004 or Jim Thompson at 585-591-0168 for more information.

March 20  Winter Trap League continues at Alden Rod and Gun Club, 12 County Line Road, Alden. Scratch league, shooting every other Sunday. 250 birds shot by March 6; 300 bird league. For more information, call Tom Ess at 431-9292.

March 20  Indoor 3-D archery league continues at Alden Rod and Gun Club, 12 County Line Road, Alden. Noon to 3 p.m. every other Sunday. A total of 24 arrows each week. For more information, call Phil Williams at 553-7445.

March 20  Niagara Region 3D Winter Archery League continues at Erie County Conservation Club, 13319 Miller Road, Chaffee. Sign in time from 7:30 a.m. to noon. Other participating clubs include Wood and Brook Sportsmens Club, Erie County Conservation, Alden Rod and Gun, Double T and Allied Sportsmen. Fourteen weeks long. Contact is Marty at 870-2653 or John at 725-5822. New shooters and walk on shooters welcome.

March 20  WNY Winter 3D Archery League continues at Collins Conservation Club, 2636 Conger Road, Collins from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. $10 per week for 13 weeks. Three to six person teams. There are classes for kids with a 20-yard maximum to open shooters with a 50-yard maximum. All targets are at known distances and range finders are allowed. The hosting clubs are Collins, West Falls, Evans, and Glen Coe. Contact Jerry Gorski at 698-3008.

March 21  Niagara County Fisheries Development Board Meeting will be held at Maxwell Station, Olcott starting at 6 p.m. Call Chairman Mike Johannes at 523-1727 for more information.

March 22  Wood and Brook Sportsmans Club, 13712 Genesee Street, Crittenden start date for spring Trap/Skeet league. 12 rounds of trap or skeet (300 birds in any combination), five to seven persons on a team. Open for shooting on Tuesdays from 6 -10 p.m. and Sundays 10 a.m.-2 p.m. For more information, contact Ben Baker at 983-0026 or James Winship at 937-790-0654.

Submit calendar items to billhiltsjr@gmail.com at least three weeks in advance.
Traversing the multitude of potential career paths at the feet of high school students is intimidating for many, but a number of courses in a local school district are making that choice a bit easier to manage.

The Career and Technical Education department in the Chippewa Falls Area Unified School District is a collection of courses aimed at preparing students for specific careers after they graduate. The areas of study at the core of the CTE department include agriculture, business, marketing, family and consumer sciences, health sciences and technology education.

These courses are set up with the sole intention of preparing our students to succeed in post-secondary education, CFAUSD CTE Coordinator Laura Bushendorf said. Were really lucky as a district to have the robust offerings that we do. In an age where other districts are doing away with CTE programming due to budget cuts, our district has found the value in keeping and maintaining the programming we have.

Each Chippewa Falls High School student is required to take 12 elective course credits, which many CTE classes fulfill the requirement of. Bushendorf said students have a unique opportunity to take advantage of courses many other districts dont offer their students.

Being able to explore your passion, or find a new one, in the classroom is a tremendous opportunity for the students here, Bushendorf said. Being able to experiment helps them find what their career path is going to be, while also not having to lock it in right away.

Wisconsin State Superintendent Dr. Jill Underly visited the district last month to learn about its CTE programming.

The addition of Chi-His new STEAM lab has been a key asset to the CTE programming. Added thanks to funding through the districts most recent referendum, the STEAM lab offers courses such as welding to give students more firsthand up-to-date experience at what potential careers would look like in a real-world environment.

With many of the courses earning students both high school and Chippewa Valley Technical College credits, the CTE programming continues to set the district apart from others in terms of readying students for success after they walk out of Chi-His doors.

For more information on CTE courses in the CFAUSD visit cfsd.chipfalls.k12.wi.us.

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The Wisconsin Elections Commission  targeted for elimination by a Republican review of the 2020 election  struck back Friday against chief investigator Michael Gablemans recent report, saying it contains erroneous claims and lacks context.

The commission pushed back on several claims in the former Supreme Court justices sprawling 136-page report, including that the millions of dollars of private grants allocated to cities to help administer the election amid the pandemic constituted bribery.

The commission noted that courts have repeatedly rejected that claim, adding that a federal judge concluded theres no state prohibition on local governments accepting private money to run elections.

A ban on private grants would require a new law to be passed, the Elections Commission said.

In a sweeping critique of current election rules, Gableman on Tuesday called for the elimination and dismantling of the bipartisan Wisconsin Elections Commission after it instructed clerks in 2020 that they did not need to send election workers into nursing homes to assist with absentee voting after many were turned away due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The bipartisan group noted Gablemans report omitted evidence to support some of his conclusions, including his claim that some Wisconsin nursing homes had 100% voter participation.

The report does not provide a list of specific nursing homes, nor supporting evidence, nor a methodology, for how he calculated the turnout rates for particular nursing homes, the Elections Commission said.

The commission provided contrary Milwaukee data showing a smaller percentage of voters in nursing homes returned absentee ballots in November 2020 than in November 2016.

The Elections Commission also disputed Gablemans description of how the commission makes available for purchase voter registration data, sells that information for $12,500, but doesnt make the information available in real time and doesnt charge special interest groups.

Every claim above is false, the commission stated, adding that the median transaction cost for customers purchasing voting data sets was $55 and that no fees are waived for anyone.

The Elections Commission also rejected Gablemans claim that it issued guidance enabling clerks to open envelopes before the statutorily mandated deadline, stating it had actually never issued guidance, rules or other directives to that effect.

Also, the Elections Commission corrected Gablemans claim that the commission unlawfully encouraged voters to register as indefinitely confined, thus allowing them to avoid the photo ID requirement to vote. In fact, the commission advised the opposite, and noted the Wisconsin Supreme Court agreed with its guidance.

Gableman said Tuesday that his review was not complete and that his contract, which expired months ago, remains valid, though he has not provided more updated terms.

All reasonable people can now see this is a thinly veiled effort to undercut the publics confidence in our state electoral system, said Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway, whom Gableman had threatened to jail if she didnt comply with a list of demands.

For all of their bluster and allegations of wrongdoing by Wisconsins public servants and voters, Gableman and (Assembly Speaker Robin Vos) are the only actors in this saga who have been found in violation of Wisconsin law and fined by a court, Rhodes-Conway continued. On Wednesday, a Dane County judge ruled that Vos, R-Rochester, and Gableman arbitrarily and capriciously denied or delayed access to public records related to the GOP-ordered review of the states 2020 election.

Artifice fades

Gableman reviews partial focus on decertifying the 2020 election has been previously shot down by the Republican Partys leadership, and embraced especially by one fringe Republican lawmaker and recently announced gubernatorial candidate, Rep. Timothy Ramthun, R-Campbellsport.

The Marquette Law School Poll found Republicans are growing more confident in the accuracy of the election, with 38% saying they are confident compared with 29% who said the same in August 2021.

A recount and court decisions have affirmed that President Joe Biden defeated former President Donald Trump in Wisconsin by almost 21,000 votes. Reviews by the nonpartisan Legislative Audit Bureau and the conservative Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty found no evidence of widespread fraud. Multiple court rulings have also found no evidence of irregularities.

Gablemans office administrator, Zakory Niemierowicz, declined to comment on Gablemans behalf. Vos spokesperson Angela Joyce didnt respond to a message seeking comment.

Ad campaign

In another sign of pushback against Republican attempts to undermine the states election system, a coalition of groups representing local government officials is set to launch an ad campaign to reassure Wisconsin voters that they can trust election workers.

The League of Wisconsin Municipalities, the Wisconsin Counties Association and the Wisconsin Towns Association said the ads will appear on television and radio stations statewide as well as on multiple digital platforms beginning Monday and run through the April 5 election.

The spots feature town of Neenah Clerk Ellen Skerke, village of Kohler Deputy Clerk Cindi Gamb and village of Cobb Clerk Lisa Riley. The clerks tell viewers that election workers are Wisconsin residents neighbors and family members and can be trusted to run fair contests.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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When it comes to reading, the use of it is endless, Columbus Christian School (CCS) head teacher Daneill Beck said.

CCS staff said they hope a currently ongoing event this month targeting reading will help develop a fondness for reading in children that they will continue for the rest of their lives.

Columbus Christian School is holding its second annual Read-A-Thon, which began on Monday and ends March 31. This years theme is Dr. Seuss which is why the Read-A-Thon is also going by, Seuss-A-Thon.

CCS first Read-A-Ton was Camp-Read-A-Lot which happened toward the end of the school year in 2021.

They (students) will use reading all their life, Beck said. Theyll use reading for work, pleasure and information. It increases vocabulary. It increases the ability to think. Reading increases imagination. The list goes on and on and on.

There is a two-folded goal for the Read-A-Ton. The first is to raise funds for the students and their education and the second  and most important goal  is to encourage the love of reading, Beck said.

Funds are raised from businesses, families, friends and community members who sponsor a child to read. Sponsorship works in three different ways. It can be done at a flat rate for the whole fundraiser, a sponsor per minute or a combination of both, Beck said. The donation prices can vary but the school offers rates of $10, $20, $50 or $100.

The Seuss-themed festivities dont stop with the Read-A-Ton -- it is also Dr. Seuss Week this week. Students took part in the fun by dressing up as characters from the beloved childrens authors work earlier this week, CCS Office Administrator Liana Holt said.

This whole week has been themed around Dr. Seuss, she said.

Columbus Christian School started in the fall of 1994 after community members discussed the potential of starting a Christian school. The goal of the school was to be non-denominational but Bible-oriented and Christ-centered with a vision of educating children about the Gospel and teaching them for a lifetime of service, obedience and leadership to God, according to the schools website. CCS teaches students from kindergarten through sixth grade.

Holt said the school staff hopes the students will develop a habit of reading.

Theyll get into the habit of reading every day, she said. Theyll pick up a book for information or reading for pleasure.

The students get incentives and rewards as they complete their goals. Such goals include the younger kids being read to by a parent or teacher for 15 minutes a day. Beck said. She added one of the older students has a mission of reading for 5,000 minutes this month.

To sponsor a child or for more information, either visit columbuschristian.org or call 402-562-6470.

Andrew Kiser is a reporter for The Columbus Telegram. Reach him via email at andrew.kiser@lee.net.

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With a wrap-up event planned for Sunday, Buck-A-Book supporters can turn the page on their most successful campaign to date.

An estimated 938 students from across the Carlisle Area School District read about 5,100 books, raising around $48,000 in pledge money and donations that support adult literacy programs, said Mindy Tremblay, executive director of the Employment Skills Center in downtown Carlisle.

We had record-breaking participation and fundraising this year, she said. Were just thrilled by the number of kids being excited about reading  combining the importance of literacy with an understanding of what it means to also give back to the community.

Forty-six students from the districts seven elementary schools will read their original essays at the wrap-up event scheduled for 1 to 3:30 p.m. at Bosler Memorial Library, 158 W. High St., in Carlisle.

They were among the hundreds of students who submitted entries last fall to the essay contest portion of the annual Buck-A-Book campaign. The 46 winning essays have been selected for publication in the Wordy Worm book.

Each year the contest features a number of prompts based around a theme and tailored to the skills of different grade levels. The themes tend to revolve around Wordy Worm, the bespectacled mascot of Buck-A-Book.

Campaign organizers this Sunday will also unveil 21 posters that feature photos of the top three grade level readers from each school. The posters will be displayed at Bosler for the rest of the year.

The reading participation portion of the campaign ran from Jan. 11 through 27 and involved students in three age categories based on grade  K-1, 2-3 and 4-5, Trembley said. School district involvement is crucial for the success of this campaign. Were just so very fortunate and grateful for all the support.

Malinda Mikesell, district reading supervisor, judged the essay contest entries with help from a volunteer. The money raised this year is close to double the previous record of about $24,000, she said.

Its fantastic, Mikesell said. It shows our students understand the essence of the campaign. They were collecting pledges and money thats going to help adults in our community to become better readers to get better jobs.

She credits the success to the team of principals, librarians and teachers at each elementary school who shared the campaign goal with students.

Its not just a fundraising campaign, Mikesell said. Its about building literacy for the community. That spirit was captured this year. We saw more students step forward. They read a lot of books and we had very generous sponsors for some of our students.

Email Joseph Cress at jcress@cumberlink.com.

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PHILADELPHIA  A Philadelphia jury will soon weigh criminal charges against an Amtrak engineer over a deadly 2015 derailment  although the judge was skeptical Thursday that the evidence supports the prosecutions case.

The on-again, off-again case against engineer Brandon Bostian, 38, will go to jury deliberations Friday morning. The charges include causing a catastrophe, involuntary manslaughter and reckless endangerment.

Eight people died and more than 200 people were injured when the train rounded a curve at more than twice the speed limit and derailed in north Philadelphia. Amtrak soon agreed to pay $265 million in civil settlements to victims and their families, but the criminal case has been an uphill battle.

The jury must decide whether Bostian sped up intentionally, knowing the risks  the threshold required for criminal negligence.

Common Pleas Court Judge Barbara McDermott said she wasnt sure the evidence was sufficient to prove the crimes. The citys district attorney had declined to charge Bostian, but the state Attorney Generals Office stepped in after the victims families pressed for charges.

McDermott said she may review the sufficiency of the evidence again after the jury verdict.

In closing arguments Thursday, Bostians lawyer said his client, a lifelong train buff, had a perfect work record until a minute before the crash. Bostian had just left Philadelphias 30th Street Station when he heard emergency broadcasts that people were throwing rocks at a commuter train up ahead. He soon entered the first part of an S-curve  the trickiest part of the route from Washington to New York.

Yet instead of braking for the second curve, he kept accelerating, going from 65 miles per hour up to 70, 80, 90 and finally 106 miles per hour, when the train derailed into a tangle of cars. The speed limit there was 50 miles per hour.

If a doctor gets distracted, if theres a disturbance, if they make a mistake ... is that a crime? defense lawyer Brian McMonagle asked in closing arguments Thursday. In what world would that be a crime?

Senior Deputy Attorney General Christopher Phillips said, He knew precisely where he was. He did it anyway. Phillips never offered a motive, but said he did not need one.

Bostian later told federal investigators he was concerned for the other engineers safety because a friend had lost an eye from a similar rock-throwing episode that shattered a windshield.

He later recalled being only slightly concerned about his own safety that night. Investigators say theres no evidence he was impaired or using his cellphone at the time.

Federal safety investigators believe that Bostian lost what they call situational awareness on the track. Thinking he was past the S-curve and on the straightaway, Bostian accelerated, they concluded.

The attorney general, in his closing arguments, recalled the testimony of a woman who asked to borrow Bostians phone after the crash. She had no idea hed been driving. As she told her father what happened, she asked Bostian where they were. He said, accurately, they were at Franklin Junction, according to Phillips.

Soon afterward, Bostian texted his parents to say he was OK. An hour later, he got a text from his partner, who promised to rush down from Boston. At the hospital, where Bostian was diagnosed with a concussion and received 14 stitches, he asked if he was in New York. He later testified that he had only limited memory of the chain of events.

A defense expert on Thursday listed several other train crashes that investigators later blamed on a lack of situational awareness.

Since the derailment, Amtrak has installed speed controls on all its track from Boston to Washington.

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This months Womens Connection Brunch will take place from 9:15-11 a.m. Tuesday in the Farmington Presbyterian Church fellowship hall located at Columbia and Cayce streets.

Nicolle Hahn, community services director for East Missouri Action Agency (EMAA) since September 2020, is a Kansas native who has found her home and family here in southeastern Missouri. Prior to joining the world of Community Action, she worked for more than 15 years in many different capacities for the YMCA.

Hahn has a passion for serving those in the community, as well as the work that EMAA performs. In 2021, her department served more than 3,394 people, either through the programs it oversees or by referring them to other agency programs and community resources.

The Community Services staff serves eight counties in southern Missouri  Bollinger, Cape, Iron, Madison, Perry, St. Francois, Ste. Genevieve, and Washington.

In January 2022, the Community Services Department opened the Uplift Overnight Shelter in Farmington. The shelter houses 62 people in a congregate setting, provides case-working and helps clients through programs and services that meet their needs where they are. Hahn emphasizes that the shelter wouldnt be possible without the communitys support.

Keri McCrory, EMAAs executive director since 2016, and former Community Services director for 16 years, began her career with EMAA in 1990. She will accompany Hahn to the brunch and share other services that the organization provides.

The Womens Connection speaker for the month of March is Marcia Gillis from Bella Vista, Arkansas. Born and raised in northern California, she has lived in several other states around the country, as well as in Europe where she backpacked through more than 30 countries. She said she still loves spending time in the outdoors  especially hiking.

Gillis, who is married with two adult daughters and a grandson, has also been employed as a contract writer and sales professional for two major corporations. She has produced self-help products for TV and served on several church staff. She leads Bible studies, has ministered to people in jail and leads Celebrate Recovery groups. Gillis will address the topic Lifes Healing Choices.

To make your reservation or cancellation for the $10 event, call Barb at 573-747-3854 or Mary at 573-358-1274.

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As there were no items on the agenda, the St. Francois County Commission held a meeting to cover correspondence and reports from the various county offices Tuesday morning.

Presiding Commissioner Harold Gallaher opened the meeting by recognizing the death of Betty Medley, an employee of the county since 1985.

Highway Administrator John Gross reported on the bridge construction on Old Fredericktown Road over the Little St. Francis River.

Crews started back Monday, he said. We did not work on bridge last week due to the snow and ice. That bridge should be passable by Friday. It will not be finalized. There will be daily closures as we pour the cap on the bridge and the concrete approaches. Occasionally over the period of the following week, (we will) close it while we are putting in the big riprap along the side of the road.

County Clerk Kevin Engler updated the commission on various election issues.

March 9 is the last day to register to vote in the April Election, he said. Four weeks from today is the last day to file for the August Primary. There were no more filings for the county offices. There were two people filed to run against each other for the central committee for the Farmington Township.

Engler said that every open elected office has at least one person to file. He stated that the Circuit Clerk has two candidates and Judge Pat King has an opponent.

We need election judges, he said. We are going to have an election training class in March.

With more than 40,000 voters on the rolls, Engler said that almost 10% of the registered voters are inactive.

I cannot take them off the rolls until after this next federal election. You have to miss two federal elections and have so many things sent to you," he said.

The clerks office has sent letters to more than 600 permanent absentees. Engler said that these are typically people in nursing homes and are disabled.

We send them a letter asking if they want to vote in this election, he said. Weve gotten 300 back and were in the process of sending those ballots out this week to the ones that have responded.

According to Engler, there are also about a half dozen who have voted in the election as absentees.

Associate Commissioner David Kater gave a report on the County Seal Contest.

The contest is over. There were 264 entries from 187 people. When (Gallaher) says they are from all over, they are from all over. A lady called me from Maryland to make sure she got hers in.

Kater said that it is now all in the hands of the judges. For the contest, there are seven judges who are not county officials or employees.

They will receive their thumb drives and will have their meetings the way they want to have them. I have no idea when (they will finish). I would like to set a deadline to have it this month, but I wont say it wont be the first week of next month.

The next St. Francois County Commission meeting will be Tuesday morning at 10 a.m. at the courthouse annex in downtown Farmington.

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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Members of the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors have consensus around one proposed alternative magisterial district and voting precinct map.

On Wednesday, the Board of Supervisors all generally supported a map called option one, which will affect the fewest number of currently registered voters, at around 1,700.

The board is scheduled to formally adopt the new district boundaries March 23. They will become effective April 22, ahead of any June primaries.

Option one moves some voters from Brownsville precinct in the White Hall District to Yellow Mountain in the Samuel Miller District, and moves some voters from Country Green precinct in the Samuel Miller District to the Monticello precinct in the Scottsville district.

It also moves some voters from Agnor Hurt precinct in the Rio District to Georgetown precinct in the Jack Jouett District; and moves some voters from Jack Jouett precinct in the Jack Jouett District to East Ivy precinct in the Samuel Miller District.

To conform to the new House of Delegates district boundary lines, all three proposed maps have some commonalities  they extend the Free Bridge precinct north along the Rivanna River to conform to the boundary line, moving some voters from Pantops precinct into Free Bridge precinct. The new extension stays in the Rivanna District.

All three also extend the University precinct in the Jack Jouett District south, moving some voters from the East Ivy precinct and the Samuel Miller District into the University precinct and the Jack Jouett District. They would all also move some voters in the Scottsville District from the Stone-Robinson precinct into the Mountain View precinct for the same reason.

Limited public comments were submitted during the month-long comment period, and no one spoke during a Wednesday night public hearing on the redistricting plans.

I think the lack of significant community commentary is a very positive indication that they see the work that you've done is being very fair, Board Chair Donna Price said.

After the board formally adopts the redistricting map, the new map and ordinance will be published with a plain English description of the redistricting. After March 24, voters will be notified of changes that will be effective for the June primaries.

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On a sunny Thursday afternoon, descendants of people enslaved in Charlottesville sang, danced and celebrated the liberation of their ancestors at the Memorial to Enslaved Laborers on the University of Virginia Grounds.

The event was hosted by Descendants of Enslaved Communities at UVa, an organization of people who have ancestors who were enslaved at the university. The descendants were joined by friends and supporters eager to celebrate the day.

Today is March 3, the day of our emancipation, Charlottesvilles emancipation  Today we celebrate our own Juneteenth, said DeTeasa Gathers, co-chair of Descendants of Enslaved Communities at UVa.

On March 3, 1865, Union soldiers arrived in Charlottesville to share the news that the Civil War was over and that enslaved people were emancipated. The date wasnt officially recognized in the city until 2017, when City Council signed a proclamation officially recognizing the date as a citywide holiday. Every year since, March 3 has been celebrated as Liberation and Freedom Day in Charlottesville.

At Thursdays event, Charlottesville Vice Mayor Juandiego Wade read City Councils Liberation and Freedom Day resolution.

This is a holiday for the city of Charlottesville. If you go to City Hall, the doors will be closed. We want to honor this day, Wade said.

The celebration opened with an interactive drum call and West African dance performance by the Chihamba Dance Troupe. Audience members were invited to participate in group dances and call-and-response music, celebrating cultures that the enslaved were forced to hide for decades.

As church bells chimed at noon, descendants and guests observed a moment of silence for all those who were enslaved.

We acknowledge and pay respect to the enslaved and free Black laborers who built UVa, and their descendants. It is from the profits of their stolen labor, knowledge and lives and the dispossession of indigenous land upon which the university and this area have been developed, said Carolyn Mitchell Dillard, a member of Descendants of Enslaved Communities at UVa.

The keynote presentation was given by performer, activist and music historian Calvin Earl, who performed African American spirituals and shared their history. Earl was instrumental in a successful campaign to have Congress recognize African American spirituals as a National Treasure. He also was the recipient of a Presidential Proclamation from former President George W. Bush for his contributions to educating the public about African American spirituals.

Spirituals to me feel like theyre love songs. They really hit my soul. Spirituals dont care how old you are, what culture or race you are, or what gender you are, or where you came from, Earl said. As human beings we all know what pain is, what injustice is, what suffering is, and what cruelty is. The spirituals helped the slaves to find courage and strength to overcome obstacles with resilience and determination, and gave them comfort and peace.

Earl performed several well-known spirituals, such as Wade in the Water and Michael Row The Boat Ashore, and shared their lesser-known backgrounds. Earl said that many spirituals were purposely written to have a soothing and calming effect that would not agitate or draw the attention of slave owners. Others were written with riveting beats that would distract the average listener from the meaningful lyrics that expressed a yearning for liberation.

[The song] is saying Hold on. Keep your hands on the plow because the plow also means freedom. Keep the hope alive that we will get through this day. We will get through this, Earl said.

Earl said that everyone can feel connection to the same spirituals that comforted enslaved people, and that music is a common thread that brings all people together. He is a descendant of enslaved laborers himself.

Well be forever indebted to the enslaved African people in our country for creative and original music, Earl said.

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A Democrat-controlled Senate panel on Thursday advanced legislation banning discrimination in the admissions process at the states governors schools, weakening a more expansive proposal by the GOP that sought race-blind admissions but signaling dissatisfaction with new policies to bring more racial diversity to the schools.

Four Democrats joined the Republicans to back legislation that says simply that the schools admissions process cant discriminate on the basis of race and other criteria. Sen. Chap Petersen, D-Fairfax City, who authored the language, said it would be up to the courts to define exactly what constitutes discrimination, but added that it was an important statement for the Virginia legislature to make.

Del. Glenn Davis, R-Virginia Beach, introduced House Bill 127, which Gov. Glenn Youngkin backed. Davis bill took aim at efforts to boost the number of Black and Hispanic students at the states governors schools, where they are underrepresented. Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Fairfax County recently overhauled its admissions process to that end, prompting criticism that the policy discriminated against Asian American applicants, who at the time made up more than two-thirds of students at the school.

A federal judge ruled against the school district last week, calling the new admissions policy an unlawful attempt at racial balancing. The Fairfax school district said it will appeal the decision.

We're not going to discriminate based on race in governors school admissions. Period, full stop. And I'm going to let the courts kind of work out what that means. And they're doing that right now," Petersen said.

Richmonds Maggie L. Walker Governors School has struggled with a lack of racial diversity. The admissions rate for Black students at the school over the last two decades is about 5%, nearly four times lower than the rate for white students, a Times-Dispatch investigation found.

The bill the Senate panel approved Thursday also requires that middle schools eligible to send students to a governor's school offer coursework that is rigorous enough to prepare students to be admitted. Petersen said the bill would make the pipeline stronger, broader and more acceptable.

The bill Davis originally introduced would have banned seeking information about an applicant's race, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin, and called for acceptance decisions to be made blind as to an applicant's identity.

The bill as proposed drew opposition from the Virginia Education Association, the Virginia Schools Boards Association, and alumni from Thomas Jefferson and Maggie L. Walker governors schools.

On Thursday, Sen. Ghazala Hashmi, D-Henrico, who voted against the bill, said the new process at Thomas Jefferson in Fairfax was designed to ensure that all students who have an aptitude or a passion for STEM in particular  have the opportunity to come to the school and to succeed.

Sen. Mamie Locke, D-Hampton, who also opposed the measure, said simply off the microphone: If we want to go ahead and go back to 1950-something Im good. Im good.

Senate Majority Leader Dick Saslaw, D-Fairfax, Sen. George Barker, D-Fairfax and Sen. Lynwood Lewis, D-Accomack joined Petersen in backing the amended bill.

Lab schools, school police

Some of Youngkins other education priorities advanced through the Senate panel Thursday, albeit not as the administration had intended.

The panel advanced Davis' House Bill 346 to expand the number of public schools operated by higher education institutions, but the panel advanced a Senate version that would leave the schools to rely on private funding to operate.

The panel also advanced House Bill 873, sponsored by Del. Karen Greenhalgh, R-Virginia Beach, which originally called for school boards to hire at least one law enforcement officer per school. The panel amended the bill to simply require the local police chief to designate and train an officer to serve as the law-enforcement liaison for any schools without a stationed officer.

The panel rejected House Bill 787 from Del. Dave LaRock, R-Loudoun, that would have made it illegal for schools to teach, among other things, that an individual, by virtue of the individual's race or sex, is inherently racist. The bill is similar, but more expansive, to the divisive concepts bills the administration backed that failed earlier in the session.

The panel also rejected House Bill 1093 that would have weakened a requirement that public school teachers be evaluated on cultural competency.

On another topic of note, the education and health panel voted 10-5 to defeat Greenhalgh's House Bill 212 that would have required a woman to sign a form confirming informed consent before an abortion is performed. Sen. Siobhan Dunnavant, R-Henrico, voted with the panel's nine Democrats.
Massachusetts State Police, Tamar Bucci, 34, who was listed as being from Woburn but who also has family ties to the Reading area, was killed in a fatal accident late Thursday night as she was pulling over to assist a disabled motorist on I-93 in Stoneham.
Oregon lawmakers have passed a measure meant to ensure that future extreme heat waves, such as the one last summer that accounted for more than 100 deaths, will not have similar results.

Senate Bill 1536, which got final clearance on Friday, March 4, would allow tenants to use portable cooling devices  defined as air conditioners and evaporative coolers, either mounted in a window or sitting on a floor  with some conditions and exceptions.

It also sets aside millions for the Oregon Department of Energy, Oregon Health Authority and Oregon Department of Human Services to help pay for cooling systems, provide portable air conditioners and promote community shelters for cooling and heating.

The final votes were 22-3 in the Senate and 49-9 in the House.

The bill combines elements of a separate bill (HB 4058) that was considered Feb. 4 in the House Committee on Environment and Natural Resources. Chairwoman Pam Marsh, D-Ashland, said lawmakers decided to merge them into one bill.

"Oregon has been a place where we didn't think we needed cooling devices. But conditions are changing  and rapidly," Marsh said. "Protecting the health and safety of vulnerable residents now requires us to make sure they have access to both cooling and heating. We must do everything we can to make sure we never see the kind of suffering we saw in the summer of 2021."

The heat wave occurred June 26-29, 2021; the Legislature adjourned its regular session on June 26.

Tenants would still face some restrictions. Among them: compliance with building codes, state and federal laws; compliance with written standards for device safety; no damage to the premises, and no power usage beyond what a building's electrical system can handle.

Tenants, not landlords, would be liable for injuries or damages caused by devices they install.

Rental units with construction permits after April 1, 2024, would be subject to new requirements for cooling in at least one room.

This provision prompted Rep. Kim Wallan, R-Medford, to vote against the bill. She said it would add to the already high cost of housing construction.

Proposed spending

The bill also sets aside these amounts in the state budget:

 For the Department of Energy, $15 million plus $6.6 million in other funds for grants to the governor's regional solutions teams and Oregon's federally recognized tribes for heat pumps and other devices. Another $10 million, plus $5.6 million in other funds, would go toward rebates to contractors for installation of residential heat pumps. About 25% of that money is for housing built for people who earn less than the area median income, and 25% for loans to housing owners whose tenants earn 80% or less of the area's median income.

Cooling centers would get $2 million, and a study of cooling needs in public housing. manufactured home parks and recreational vehicle parks would get $500,000.

 For the Oregon Health Authority, $5 million for distribution of portable air conditioners and air filters, with priority going to people who rely on state and federal medical assistance.

 For the Department of Human Services, $2 million for grants to organizations that run community shelters for cooling and warming.

These programs are separate from a five-year, $11.5 million program that the Portland City Council approved Dec. 1 to upgrade 15,000 homes and apartments, drawing from the Portland Clean Energy Fund that city voters approved in 2018.

But the state bill drew praise from Candace Avalos, executive director at Verde, an environmental justice nonprofit based in the Cully neighborhood of Northeast Portland.

"I applaud communities and lawmakers who came together and passed emergency heat relief to protect the health of Oregon's communities of color, renters, low-income folks, children, our elders, and people with disabilities," she said.

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UNT police SUV strikes protester at evening event

Courtesy Twitter/@DentonPossom A video frame from footage shared on social media shows protesters surrounding a University of North Texas Police Department vehicle Wednesday night as it drives Jeff Younger, who was scheduled to speak at a Young Conservatives of Texas event, from campus. Denton police have confirmed that the UNT vehicle struck one of the protesters as it was driving away.

This story was updated at 5 p.m.

Denton police have confirmed that a person was struck by a University of North Texas police car as law enforcement drove Republican Jeff Younger from a speaking engagement on campus Wednesday night.

Younger was able to give part of his speech, which supports criminalization of gender-affirming health care for Texas transgender children and teens.

The event announcement sparked outrage last week among some UNT students, who said the event and its rhetoric diminishes the safety and dignity of transgender students. Protesters attended the event and chanted over Younger, taunted him and traded insults. The protest followed outside of Curry Hall. Video from the event went viral on social media on Thursday.

In a prepared statement, UNT President Neal Smatresk addressed the event, the protest and the collision.

A group of protestors surrounded the police vehicles containing both the student organizers and their guest and attempted to block their exit from the scene by banging on the vehicles and impeding their movement, Smatresk said. The officers engaged emergency lights and sounded warning sirens repeatedly while inching forward as other officers assisted in clearing a path for the vehicles to exit safely. We have heard accounts of a protester who was reportedly injured during that time. However, we do not have confirmed details of that report.

Smatresks statement said the event ended without any reported serious injuries. UNT Police Department requested assistance from the Denton Police Department and the Texas Department of Public Safety ahead of the event because conversation around the event and its host, the UNT Chapter of the Young Conservatives of Texas, have been contentious.

The university limited the crowd to 80 people to ensure the capacity and safety for those at the event, Smatresk said, and a few hundred protesters gathered outside of Curry Hall.

UNT Police and the other supporting agencies were able to get the student organizers and their guest to safety, while also dispersing the protestors without further incident, Smatresk said.

Additionally he said that law enforcement believes that a small group of protesters not affiliated with university sparked aggression.

These actions culminated in with a group of protesters swarming the police, who were working to safely escort both the guest speaker and student organizers off campus. DPS was called in to assist with maintaining safety, Smatresk said.

The conservative student group invited Younger to discuss his campaign stance regarding health care for transgender children. Younger faces fellow Republican Ben Bumgarner in a runoff for Texas House District 23. He trailed Bumgarner by about 200 votes in Tuesday nights primary election.

While Younger isnt a single-issue candidate, his website biography explains that the Flower Mound resident was motivated to run for office following a long court battle that ultimately granted custody of his two children  one of whom is transgender  to his ex-wife in August 2021. The custody battle and Youngers objection to his child transitioning vaulted him into the national spotlight.

Younger didnt respond to a request for comment.

Denton police were at the event where video was captured of a light-colored SUV, which appeared to be unmarked but had emergency lights activated, striking a protester, who can be seen limping away from the vehicle after it lurched forward and then stopped.

Denton's police apparently have no qualms about running over students. As soon as Kelly was settled in the car, the driver accelerated towards the crowd rapidly. A protestor was unable to back away fast enough, and was struck by the front of the vehicle. pic.twitter.com/DOvf7ob4c0  Denton Possum (@DentonPossum) March 3, 2022

The Denton Police Department confirmed UNT requested their presence at the event before it started.

They took a report from a protest attendee at a hospital who was reportedly hit by a UNT police car during the protest.

A report was taken by Denton PD, and the case will be forwarded to another agency for investigation, Denton police spokesperson Amy Cunningham said.

Asked why the report will be given to another agency, Cunningham said it would be for an unbiased investigation because Denton PD themselves were at the event.

Denton PD will not be involved in the investigation and direct you to UNT PD for further information, she said.

Kelly Neidert, a leader of the UNT Chapter of Young Conservatives of Texas, said on social media that she received death threats following her tweet of a confrontation in the campus library last week. Neidert was printing out a poster for the event  which was rescheduled due to severe weather  that read Criminalize Child Transitions. A popular TikTok user posted a video about Neidert and brought more attention to Neidert, the university and the event. Neidert alleged on Twitter that antifa, an anti-fascist movement that has sometimes engaged in physical conflict and violence during protests across the country in the past few years, was at the protest.

About a week ago, more than 17,000 people had signed an online petition pressuring UNT to expel Neidert from the university.

Footage of @kelly_neidert of our chapter being evacuated from our event. The evacuation didnt work and she was hidden in a janitors closet in a nearby building until it was safe to leave. More footage will be posted later. pic.twitter.com/lDv4GG1Vnr  YCT UNT (@YctUnt) March 3, 2022

Neidert, who also tweeted that she was forced to hide in a janitorial closet when exiting Curry Hall, didnt respond to requests for comment this morning.

Younger appeared to be unable to deliver his speech when protesters gathered in the venue and shouted him down. Protesters chanted [expletive] this fascist and deadbeat dad at Younger.

Jeff repeatedly misgendered the student, goading them until they stood up and spit towards the front of the room. Around 8pm, the police escorted him out of the building shortly after, and the crowd cheered. Protestors were held in the room until Jeff was outside. pic.twitter.com/d4IxL6Rrwd  Denton Possum (@DentonPossum) March 3, 2022

Smatresk sent an email to students last week reassuring them that the university values transgender students.

I know the last several days may have felt particularly difficult for the transgender members of our community, due to the intolerant views of a handful of campus members, Smatresk wrote. We have a variety of resources through our Division of Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Access to support you during your time at UNT, and we hope to offer you a safe place to heal and grow your support system.

But Smatresk also said the university honors First Amendment rights and encouraged free and open discourse. In his statement Thursday, he said the university has always touted the importance of the freedom of expression and been proud of our students ability to speak up for themselves and participate in nonviolent protest.

But Smatresk denounced the aggression reported in the Wednesday night protest.

We have always been a passionate community that stands up for our ideals, he said. But last nights behavior by some individuals is not reflective of the UNT I know and love.
Leading Asian regional integrated telecommunications infrastructure services company edotco Group has further boosted its aim to be a major global tower player with the acquisition, through its local subsidiary PT edotco Infrastruktur Indonesia, of approximately 1,000 towers from Indonesian operator XL Axiata.

The deal is valued at approximately IDR 750 billion (about US$52.1 million). With this strategic acquisition, edotco says it has confirmed its foray into the Indonesian market  one of Asias largest and most established independent towerco markets.

As part of the transaction, edotco will acquire 859 towers through a sale and leaseback and enter into a managed service agreement for an additional 162 sites, with a significant build-to-suit potential with XL Axiata.

Following the transaction, edotco says it will enjoy a truly pan-Indonesian platform with a presence across all the major islands of Java, Sumatra, Bali, Kalimantan, Sulawesi, and Eastern Indonesia.

Commenting on the achievement, Adlan Tajudin, CEO, edotco Group, said:  Our ambition is to grow aggressively, both organic and inorganic, to scale up our operations and become one of the market leaders in Indonesia."

And not just in Indonesia. Following this transaction, edotco will have a presence in nine markets across Asia, with a portfolio of over 50,000 owned and managed towers under its operations. The company says it also leverages its state-of-the-art real-time monitoring service echo, which helps to improve field operations while maximising operational efficiencies.

As we reported in November 2021, when it acquired Malaysia's Touch Mindscape, edotco is the largest independent tower company in Malaysia, where it is headquartered. However, its aspiration is to be a top five towerco in the world.
Australia is to fund new telecommunications towers in the Solomon Islands. The support for the towers was requested by the Solomon Islands government as part of its Covid-19 preparedness and response efforts.

Earlier this week, the Solomon Islands minister for communication and aviation, Peter Shanel Agovaka, and Australias head of the office of the Pacific, Ewen McDonal, exchanged signed copies of a funding arrangement worth SBD37.6 million (about US$4.7 million) for six new telecommunications towers to be built this year.

The SBM Online news service reports that the six new 3G/4G telecommunications towers will be rolled out across three provinces: four in the Shortland Islands in Western Province, one in Isabel Province, and one in Malaita Province.

As well as helping with the management of Covid, the increased 3G/4G internet coverage, particularly across the Shortland Islands, will also enable more efficient and effective management of the border with Papua New Guinea.

The towers will utilise Ericsson mobile communications equipment, NEC microwave links and Australian-supplied towers. The construction package will be fully funded by Australia. Local operator Our Telekom has committed to installing, owning, operating, and maintaining the infrastructure as part of its broader mobile network. All six towers are expected to be operational by the second half of 2022.

According to WHO figures there were, by 3 March, 7,258 confirmed cases of Covid-19 in the Solomon Islands with 106 deaths. As of 20 February 2022, a total of 301,294 vaccine doses have been administered. The population is estimated at 686,884.
Australias Telstra has been cleared to acquire Digicel Fiji by the Fijian Competition and Consumer Commission (FCCC).

In October 2021, Telstra announced that it would partner with the Australian government on an indirect acquisition of Digicel Pacific  covering the operators units in Fiji, Nauru, Papua New Guinea (PNG), Samoa, Tonga and Vanuatu  for AUD2.1 billion (US$1.6 billion).

At the time, the operator described the agreement as a unique and very attractive commercial opportunity for Telstra to boost [its] presence in the region, noting that it would liaise with the relevant governments to discuss approvals and regulatory requirements.

Following an investigation of the proposal, FCCC chief executive officer Joel Abraham told the Fiji Village newspaper that the regulator approved the transaction today (3 March), subject to certain conditions which will help FCCC monitor the market more effectively.

He noted: FCCC exists to promote effective competition and an informed market, encourage fair trade in markets and protect customers and businesses from restrictive practices  We assess every application with that in mind and only grant approvals when a proposed transaction is in line with those values.
Last year, China Mobile Research Institute, Huawei and industry partners released a White Paper exploring the development of 5G-Advanced technology. At Mobile World Congress 2022, we caught up with the institute's Vice President Duan Xiaodong to discuss the newest version detailing how the technology is evolving.

1) Whats new in Version 2.0 of the White Paper compared to Version 1.0, which was released last year?

In August 2021, we released the white paper 5G-Advanced Technology Evolution from a Network Perspective  Towards a New Era of Intelligent Connect X (1.0) with 21 industry partners. The paper describes the development concepts and key technologies of 5G-Advanced network technologies from three aspects: "convergence", "enablement", and "artificial intelligence". This is the first industrys white paper that analyzes and describes 5G-Advanced network architecture evolution and technology development. Written together by 26 partners from different industries, it reflects the technical viewpoints of all parties in the industry and provides a reference for 5G-Advanced network technology development, so it is of interest to a wide audience. As standards progress, 3GPP started research on the R18 system architecture and key technologies in December last year, and started discussion on R19 requirements in SA1 (requirement team). We can see that more and more new technologies are emerging in the 5G-Advanced phase. Therefore, we thought it was necessary to update the white paper version 1.0 to describe the new scenarios and technical requirements.

The white paper V2.0 provides enhancements in the following four aspects:

XR multimedia enhancement: implements finer-granularity QoS guarantee design based on media stream characteristics. Mobile computing network: enhance 5G network perception of computing power, implement collaboration between 5G core network and edge computing, provide optimal paths and experience for users and services, and form integrated computing and network services. Network support for AI/ML services: 5G-Advanced network enhancement provides good pipe capabilities, on-demand information openness, and high-quality information sharing capabilities for AI/ML services. Passive IoT: uses technologies such as simplified networks, simplified protocols, and lightweight security authentication to meet low-cost and ultra-large-scale access requirements for passive terminals.

2) In the 5G-A era, which technology directions are preferred by China Mobile, and how will the operator promote this technology?

R18 marks the beginning of 5G-Advanced (5G-A) and is the transition from 5G to 6G. At the 94th plenary meeting of 3GPP ended in December last year, China Mobile took the lead in seven projects at the R18 access network and system architecture level:

The 5G XR and enhanced multimedia projects attracted much attention and won the support of 82 companies, ranking first in the project initiation voting. Network big data analysis is enhanced to support large-scale distributed intelligent architecture. Next-generation real-time communication services, creating brand-new voice services; UPF openness and service-oriented, enabling flexible and open new capabilities for private networks. Duplex evolution, reducing air interface delay in uplink and downlink duplex transmission; The convergence of wireless and AI technologies enables wireless networks to enter the intelligent era. Automatic collection and application of wireless data accelerates L4 autonomous driving network.

When R18 starts to standardize, we will begin discussing the requirements of R19. In the R19 phase, China Mobile will focus on mobile computing networks, network greenness and energy saving, and network awareness.

In SA1, China Mobile put forward the concept and service requirements of mobile computing first networks for the first time. It will study the key technologies of computing first network, including computing capability concept, routing protocol, and measurement technology.

Computing-first networks are considered as a key technology for the deep integration of computing and network. The technology has good prospects within the industry, and will also bring innovative changes to next generation networks. We hope we can work with industry partners to promote the development of new 5G-Advanced technologies, including computing-first networks.

The 5G-Advanced era has arrived. China Mobile will work with the industry partners to carry out in-depth cooperation to promote 5G-Advanced network technology research and create a sustainable future. Here, I propose three suggestions: first, focus on key business scenarios, make joint efforts to make breakthroughs and innovations, jointly promote 5G-Advanced development, and maintain network advancement. Second, grasp the pace and guide 5G-Advanced standards in an orderly manner to promote the convergence and unification of standards. Third, we should accelerate the transformation of technologies and industries, jointly shorten the time window for technology-to-industry transformation, and jointly build a 5G-Advanced industry ecosystem.

3) Enterprises and organizations at home and abroad are deploying 6G research. How does China Mobile view the development of 6G technology and what is the relationship between 6G technology and 5G-Advanced technology?

5G-Advanced is the evolution of 5G. We observed that with the continuous development of 5G-Advanced, some technologies that are considered to be in the 6G era have emerged in 5G-Advanced, such as mobile computing-first network, space-air-ground integrated network, digital twin, and metaverse. The development of each generation of mobile communications technologies is an iterative process. 5G-Advanced will lay a technical foundation for the research and implementation of key 6G technologies.

China Mobile attaches great importance to the deployment of 6G technologies. China Mobile is actively carrying out research on 6G network technologies while carrying out research on 5G-Advanced. Up to now, we have released multiple white papers and articles:

In November 2020, we released three white papers: Vision 2030+ Network Architecture, Vision 2030+ Requirements, and Technology Trends 2030+ White Paper. In April 2021, China Mobile took the lead in releasing the 6G Drivers and Vision white paper in NGMN, which introduces the driving force, vision, and technical features of 6G network evolution. On June 6, 2021, in the IMT-2030 (6G) Promotion Team, China Mobile took the lead in releasing the White Paper "Overall Vision and Potential Key Technologies of 6G", in which we propose key technologies such as distributed architecture, endogenous intelligence, and computing power-aware networks as candidates for 6G networks, and launched the DOICT Converged 6G Network Architecture development initiative.

4) Many emerging markets have still not seen widespread 5G deployments - is it relevant to talk about 5G-Advanced in these regions if there is limited 5G availability?

With mobile telecommunications, its characteristic to build the next generation while using the current generation, and research the newer generation while building the next generation. Technology research is always about 5-10 years ahead of commercial deployment. As 5G has been put into commercial use, it has become a consensus in the industry to discuss new capabilities of 5G-Advanced networks.

With complete 5G basic capabilities, how to better serve the 2B industry has become a typical driving force for 5G-Advanced development. As 5G networks continue to proliferate within the industry, some new network requirements, such as deterministic communications, space-aviation-land integration, and multi-band coordination, are emerging. Operators can flexibly select these network capabilities and deploy them on demand, scenario-based, and selective basis. Therefore, the research and standardization of 5G-A can provide more and richer capabilities for 5G and further promote the development and deployment of 5G networks. Only with more advantageous network capabilities can the goal of 5G services be truly achieved.

5) The white paper outlines the use cases for 5G-Advanced  In your opinion, which technologies can create the highest value for the market?

5G-Advanced networks can simultaneously serve To B and To C subscribers. In terms of the To C industry, there is no doubt that the industry is developing best and can bring higher value. I think the most valuable technology is the XR and Multimedia Enhancement Project (XRM).

In recent years, long videos, short videos, and live broadcasts attract huge traffic and bring a new development opportunity, and although the value per bit of an operator decreases, the total ARPU increases. As a traditional mobile communication operator, China Mobile also actively participates in it. During 5G construction, we perform large-scale tests and determine appropriate QoS levels to ensure user experience.

For 5G-Advanced, China Mobile took the lead in initiating the XR and enhanced multimedia project in 3GPP R18. The objective is to provide finer-grained and more customized QoS guarantee for media data by analyzing media stream service characteristics, such as frame structure and endpoint codec characteristics, to continuously improve the bearer capability of media streaming services.

In terms of the To B industry, the development of 5G networks is highly expected. Due to extensive industry requirements and diverse service scenarios, the To B market is a gradual development market for 5G networks, which requires continuous improvement of industry requirements and network capabilities. In recent years, 5G networks have made new progress in serving industries such as industrial manufacturing, energy, ports, and coal. For example, in the coal industry, 5G networks bring technologies such as high bandwidth, low latency, positioning, unmanned remote control of mining, loading, transportation, and monitoring. This improves production safety and production efficiency. We believe that new network technologies in the 5G-Advanced phase will bring new and higher industry value to the To B industry.
The Competition and Consumer Authority of Botswana has announced its unconditional approval for the acquisition of 100% of Broadband Botswana Internet (BBi) by the Botswanan arm of South Africas Paratus Telecommunications Ltd.

Paratus Botswana is the leading supplier of connectivity, voice, internet, cloud and satellite services in the region. The merger makes Paratus Botswana the largest independent network services provider in Botswana.

Parent company Paratus operates a full-service network spanning the African continent and connecting customers internationally.

Both Paratus and BBi are licensed to provide a range of network and data management solutions and services to the business and residential sectors in Botswana. The merger will enable economies of scale, although, according to local news reports, all staff employed by both companies will be retained.

This is clearly an important deal for Paratus. Through BBis national presence and coverage, Paratus will now reach more businesses and enter the domestic market and, through the shared infrastructure, offer better quality connections and lower prices.

Shawn Bruwer, MD of Paratus Botswana, has been quoted in a number of news outlets explaining why this is a positive move for both Paratus and the Botswana market. He says: BBi provides Paratus with a direct entry to the consumer market and a national footprint through its branches. By combining the BBi coverage with the Paratus network, we will be able to offer extremely competitive solutions combined with quality and uptime.
Indian Telecom Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw and International Telecommunication Union (ITU) Secretary-General Houlin Zhao signed a pact virtually to establish an area office and Innovation Centre of the United Nations telecom body in New Delhi.

According to a government statement, the establishment of the area office will provide greater access and engagement to India and South Asian countries in global policy and standard formation in the field of telecommunication.

The Host Country Agreement provides the legal and financial framework for the establishment and operations of the Area Office. The Area Office shall also have an Innovation Centre, which is expected to give impetus to research and development in telecommunication technologies in South Asia.

The Innovation Centre will provide opportunities to academics, start-ups, and SMEs to showcase their innovation on a global stage. With the signing of the Host Country Agreement, the Area Office and the Innovation Centre are expected to be operational by mid-2022.

The agreement was signed in a virtual ceremony during the World Telecommunications Standardisation Assembly-20 (WTSA-20) being held in Geneva, Switzerland. WTSA is a four-yearly global conference of ITU dedicated to standardisation of the Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs). India has proposed to host the next WTSA to be held in 2024.

"India has been taking concrete steps towards the development of telecom standards. The 5Gi standards developed within India have now been recognised by ITU as one of the three technologies for 5G. With more than 1.2 Billion telecom subscribers, a robust ecosystem of start-ups and innovation hubs, India is poised to contribute meaningfully in developing telecom standards further," the statement said.

India was a founding member of ITU when it was formed more than one-and-a-half century ago in 1865 as the International Telegraph Union but this is the first time that ITU is opening in the South Asia region with India as the host country.
Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison (IOH) has signed up Nokia to be its main supplier for parts as the operator expands its 4G and 5G network across Indonesia.

The companies signed a three-year deal, in the comprehensive contract Nokia will provide solutions form its latest AirScale portfolio and cover an area of 1.4 million square kilometres including the Sumatra island, Kalimantan island, Central Java and Surabaya city.

The vendor will also provide equipment from its ReefShark-powered AirScale portfolio including base stations and 5G Single RAN for premium indoor and outdoor coverage. Its consolidation services will merge spectrum from IOH into a single network to minimise impact to end-users.

Nokia said it aims to support IOHs ambition to the preferred operator by meeting consumer demands through improving data throughput and customer experience while preparing for early 5G deployment which is expected to begin this month (March).

IOH president director and CEO Vikram Sinha said: "We are excited to collaborate with our long-standing partner Nokia on this crucial project to consolidate and expand our networks for optimal utilization of our resources while providing a world-class digital experience to our subscribers. Nokia's 5G-ready and industry-leading solution will help us maximize the asset utilization even as we future-proof our investments and enhance network performance."

Nokia mobile networks Tommi Uitto added: We are looking forward to supporting Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison in this crucial initiative to expand its coverage footprint and prepare the networks for more innovative 5G services in the near future. Nokia's 5G-ready AirScaleportfolio will help Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison to launch next-generation services while helping it to bring down its operational expense.
Press Release

March 4, 2022 Bong Go urges gov't to ensure no disruptions in OFW services amid transition period for establishment of Department of Migrant Workers Senator Christopher "Bong" Go urged the government to ensure that there will be no disruptions in the delivery of government services to overseas Filipino workers as the agencies currently in charge of OFW-related matters are gradually absorbed by the Department of Migrant Workers under a two-year transition period. During this period, the functions, assets, and funds, among others, of relevant agencies shall be transferred to the DMW. The seven affected agencies are the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA), Philippine Overseas Labor Offices (POLO), International Labor Affairs Bureau (ILAB), and National Maritime Polytechnic (NMP) under the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE); the Office of the Undersecretary for Migrant Workers' Affairs (OUMWA) under the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA); the National Reintegration Center for OFWs (NRCO) under the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration; and the Office of the Social Welfare Attache (OSWA) under the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD). The formulation of the internal organic structure, staffing pattern, operating system, and revised budget of the DMW will also be carried out during the transition period. "Tuluy-tuloy na po ang pagbuo ng bagong departamentong ito na siyang magbibigay ng agarang serbisyo sa ating OFWs na napakalaki ng ambag sa ating ekonomiya," said Go. "Habang nasa transition period tayo, hinihimok ko ang gobyerno na siguruhing hindi maaantala ang paghahatid natin ng serbisyo sa ating mga OFWs," he added. Pursuant to Section 23 of the DMW Act, which took effect recently, the Office of the President issued a memorandum constituting the Transition Committee to facilitate the complete and full operation of the DMW. The Transition Committee will be led by the DMW Secretary to be appointed by the President. However, should the President require more time to appoint one, the Undersecretary of OUMWA will be directed to immediately convene the Committee. The Administrator of POEA and Directors of ILAB, NRCO, NMP, and OSWA shall also form part of the Committee. On December 30, 2021, President Rodrigo Duterte signed Republic Act No. 11641, creating the DMW in a bid to improve coordination among agencies dealing with the concerns of Filipino migrant workers. The new department will operate as a one-stop shop for both documented and undocumented OFWs, rendering government services from pre-employment to employment and reintegration. The Senate version of the Act, Senate Bill No. 2234, was authored and co-sponsored by Go. It is a consolidated version of an earlier bill he introduced to establish the Department of Overseas Filipino Workers, which would ensure the efficient and effective delivery of critical public services. "It is one of the first bills I filed as a senator. Talagang ipinaglaban natin ito. Finally... mayroon na tayong isang departamento na tutugon sa mga pangangailangan ng ating migrant workers," Go shared in his previous interviews. "Regalo natin ito sa mga (migrant workers) na nagsasakripisyo. Malaki ang ambag sa ating bayan ng modern heroes natin. Para po ito sa inyo, itong Department of Migrant Workers," he continued. Noting the enormous hardships faced by migrant workers, many of whom have lost their employment and been repatriated as a result of the ongoing pandemic, Go said that the DMW will devote all of the government's resources to safeguarding and furthering the rights and interests of the country's modern-day heroes. "Nung nagsimula itong pandemya, mahigit isang milyong migrant workers ang nawalan ng trabaho at umuwi. Mas lalong kakailanganin natin itong departamentong 'to para mag-asikaso at magbigay importansya sa (kanila)... para hindi na sila nagmamakaawa humingi ng tulong," he explained. The DMW is also responsible for regulating private recruiting firms in order to safeguard the safety of migrant workers. It will also collaborate with the Department of Justice and the Inter-Agency Council Against Trafficking to investigate and assist in the prosecution of cases involving unlawful recruitment and human trafficking. Furthermore, the Act establishes a Management Information System that will serve as a registration for all migrant workers, a 24-hour Emergency Response and Action Center Unit, as well as a media and social media monitoring center to respond to their emergency needs. It also creates the Agarang Kalinga at Saklolo para sa mga OFW na Nangangailangan Fund, which will be utilized to give legal and other types of support to migrant workers. The AKSYON Fund will be separate from the DFA's Assistance to Nationals Fund and Legal Assistance Fund.
Ericsson has again breached its US deferred prosecution for withholding information about making payments to terrorist groups to conduct operations in Iraq, further engulfing the Swedish equipment maker in controversy.

The company said in a statement the US Department of Justice labelled its information into Iraqi operations as insufficient ahead of a 2019 $1bn settlement over corruption.

The DoJ decided Ericsson breached its deferred prosecution again after infringing in October for reasons not stated, by not making additional disclosures about Iraq after 2019.

At this stage it is premature to predict the outcome of this matter, said Ericsson.

Ericsson is the largest equipment vendor in the world and has won more key 5G contracts than rivals Huawei and Nokia.

Ericsson said last month it might have made payments to Isis and other terrorist groups in Iraq for access to transport routes in the country.

A leaked document revealed last month the company may have been involved in corruption in a number of other countries.
Moscow, ID (83843)

Today

Mostly clear skies this evening will become overcast overnight. Low 51F. Winds E at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

Mostly clear skies this evening will become overcast overnight. Low 51F. Winds E at 5 to 10 mph.
With spring Preview Day just a few days away at the Baptist College of Florida (BCF) in Graceville, faculty and staff are preparing for prospective students to come in for a glimpse of the college and a sample of college life.

On March 7, registration will begin at 8:30 a.m. in the BCF Wellness Center, located in the center of the campus. After registration, there will be a brief welcome where several scholarships will be presented. Prospective students and their families will have a chance to visit different booths and gather information on degree programs, meet some friendly faces around the campus, hear about the different financial aid available, meet the dorm Resident Assistants, and document the day at the photo booth.

Following the meet and greet, guests will go to the R.G. Lee Chapel where they will be led in worship highlighting the different musical groups on campus. The praise and worship will reflect a typical Monday and Tuesday chapel service. During the service, guests will also hear from BCF President Thomas A. Kinchen as he welcomes them and talks about BCF.

After chapel, prospective students will have an opportunity to visit the department that corresponds with their educational interests including dual enrolled options.

There will be a financial aid briefing covering practical topics such as, familiarization with the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA), tuition assistance, and scholarship programs that are available to eligible BCF students.

Afterwards, prospective students will have lunch in the college dinning facility, the Deese Center, where BCF students have their meals throughout the week. The BCF Jazz Band will perform during the meal.

Following lunch, the admissions team will provide a campus tour featuring the prayer chapel, library, writing center, and computer lab, while BCF Resident Assistants (RAs) provide tours of the various on-campus housing options.

Guests attending Preview Day will also observe a friendly game of basketball between the faculty/staff team and this semesters basketball champions.

There will be several $500 scholarship drawings during the day and the $25 application fee will be waived for any student that applies on Preview Day.
Zach Gilmore of the Jackson County Economic Development Committee talked about the groups mission and of general gains in that mission as guest speaker at Tuesdays meeting of the Republican Club of Northwest Florida in Marianna.

Making connections with state, local and federal governmental bodies, and keeping tabs on their initiatives, are key strategies of JCEDC, he said. Partnerships with organizations like the Floridas Great Northwest, Enterprise Florida, Opportunity Florida and others, he pointed out, are also key connections that help JCEDC find and pursue leads to not only bring new businesses here but to also retain and expand those that already call the local community home.

Retention and expansion of small but growing entities, Gilmore said, are goals at least as important as attracting big companies from somewhere else.

Showing up at key gatherings to give Jackson County a presence at places like a recent gathering of more than 30 international companies, he said, is another way the JCEDC tries to put Jackson County on the map and embed it in the consciousness of site-selectors looking for places to set up shop.

As of the day he spoke, Gilmore counted 19 leads and 46 potential projects in the mix for JCEDC as it works to grow the local economy. Some of those opportunities can be traced back to the connections that organization makes and strengthens, he said.

One of the committees next big trips is next week, when representatives will attend a Florida Power and Light symposium.

Gulf Power, now a part of FPL, has played a big role in the economic development efforts here and FPL continues to be a key partner in efforts like the shovel ready site certification process that helps draw businesses here.

Marketing this area, Gilmore said, is also a key job of the JCEDC and partner organizations that ensure theres information readily available online and in print.

Gilmore hinted of progress on several projects in the works, some of which could be coming to fruition in the next several weeks.
Alabamas surveillance dashboard paints an improving picture from the latest surge of COVID-19. Hospitalizations are down. The positivity rate in testing has dropped. The daily and seven-day averages of new cases have been on the decline.

As the pandemics two-year mark approaches, a new tool from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) shifts the CDCs focus to hospital capacity to help communities prepare for future waves of the virus.

The CDCs COVID-19 Community Level online tool uses the number of new COVID-19 cases, hospital admissions, and hospital beds being used by COVID patients to determine whether a community level is low, medium, or high.

Basically, when a community has a low level of risk, people can forego masks. When the level reaches high, however, masks are recommended in all indoor public settings, including schools.

Corey Kirkland, administrator for the Alabama Department of Public Healths Southeastern District, said he sees the community level tool as a way to protect people and a communitys healthcare system from becoming overwhelmed. Using data for the past seven days, Kirkland said the tool will give a better picture of a countys current situation.

I think thats what this is meant to do is help you understand whats going on right now in your community, he said.

The CDC emphasizes staying up to date with vaccinations and testing when symptoms are present  precautions recommended at all community risk levels.

Theyre making a point, of course, that we want more people immunized and to stay up to date on immunizations, but at the same time, if youre not immunized or up to date, heres some info you can use to make good decisions for your family, for yourself, Kirkland said.

You can check a countys community level at cdc.gov. The CDC will update community levels weekly.

Even with weekly updates by the CDC, there could still be a lag at times in the information used to determine the community levels. The CDC released its first community level data on Feb. 25 with most of the Wiregrass in the high level despite already dropping positivity rates and hospitalizations. A Thursday update, however, puts all Wiregrass counties at the medium level.

I think that metric is going to be a little bit higher from time to time, Kirkland said. At least if you see the positivity rates going down then I would expect over the next five to seven days if I go back and look at the metric with hospital data, youll probably start to see some change in the hospital data, too.

Alabamas hospitalizations due to COVID-19 were at 561 earlier this week, a dramatic shift compared to a month ago when hospitalizations were around 2,500.

Southeast Health in Dothan had 27 COVID patients and Flowers Hospital was down to 13 at point this week. Southeast Health recently announced it was lifting some of its COVID precautions for hospital visitations. Flowers Hospital allows one visitor for non-COVID patients, but is monitoring cases so it can evaluate its COVID visitation polices, according to hospital spokesperson.

The Alabama Department of Public Health plans incorporate the CDCs community level metric on its data and surveillance dashboard as soon as possible. The ADPH also plans to scale back updates to the dashboard to Monday through Friday rather than daily.

According to ADPH, the COVID-19 community levels do not change the guidance for healthcare settings, such as hospitals and nursing homes.

More than 200 million people in the U.S. are fully vaccinated now and millions more have received boosters or have had previous illness  there have been nearly 79 million cases of COVID-19 in the U.S. Those numbers mean there is more immunity among the population and the risk of severe illness is lower, CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said in a Feb. 25 telebriefing.

But there have more than 950,000 deaths in the U.S., a reminder that there are still people who are at risk and vulnerable to the virus.

Under the COVID community level tool, low level means the impact on local hospitals is considered limited and masking is not recommended. At the medium level  when more people are experiencing severe illness and hospital admissions are going up  those at high risk for severe illness are advised to talk to their doctor about whether they should wear a mask.

When communities enter the high level, however, the CDC recommends people wear masks indoors in public spaces, including in schools. This is the point, according to the CDC, when there are a high number of people with severe illness and there is a potential for the virus to strain local hospitals.

Kirkland said while people may be overwhelmed by information, its important to pay attention to the different sources. An increase in case numbers, higher positivity rates and climbing hospital admissions can signal the beginning of a new wave in a community.

The community levels, he said, allows local officials to decide what precautions may work best in their county. For example, Kirkland said, a county that moves from low to medium may want to take extra measures for places frequented by high risk populations, such as senior centers.

It just hopefully gives the community a little bit better tool to gauge what kind of mitigation they need to engage in, Kirkland said.

Peggy Ussery is a Dothan Eagle staff writer and can be reached at aussery@dothaneagle.com or 334-712-7963. Support her work and that of other Eagle journalists by purchasing a digital subscription today at dothaneagle.com.

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OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma reached a settlement Thursday over its role in the opioid crisis that includes virtually all U.S. states and thousands of local governments, with the Sackler family members who own the company boosting their cash contribution to as much as $6 billion.

The deal follows an earlier settlement that had been appealed by eight states and the District of Columbia. They agreed to sign on after the Sacklers kicked in more cash  including a portion that just those jurisdictions would control  and accepted other terms. In exchange, the family would be protected from civil lawsuits.

In all, the plan could be more than $10 billion over time. It calls for members of the Sackler family to give up control of the Stamford, Connecticut-based company so it can be turned into a new entity with profits used to fight the crisis. The deal would not shield members of the family from criminal charges, though there's no indication any are forthcoming.

Sackler family members have not unequivocally offered an apology, though they issued a new statement of regret about the toll of OxyContin. And victims are to have a forum, by videoconference, in court to address Sackler family members  something they have not been able to do in a public setting.

The settlement, outlined in a report filed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in White Plains, New York, still must be approved by a judge.

"The Sackler families are pleased to have reached a settlement with additional states that will allow very substantial additional resources to reach people and communities in need," the family statement reads. "The families have consistently affirmed that settlement is by far the best way to help solve a serious and complex public health crisis. While the families have acted lawfully in all respects, they sincerely regret that OxyContin, a prescription medicine that continues to help people suffering from chronic pain, unexpectedly became part of an opioid crisis that has brought grief and loss to far too many families and communities."

The new plan was hammered out with attorneys general from the eight states and D.C. who had opposed the earlier one, arguing that it did not properly hold Sackler family members accountable.

For Suzanne Domagala, of Millville, Delaware, even a modest payout to victims from the Sackler family is important, though she is still upset that the wealthy family is getting protection from lawsuits.

Domagala's son Zach, a Marine Corps reservist, became addicted after injuring his shoulder during boot camp. When he died in 2017, she said, she didn't have the money to bury him, and it took a few years before she could afford a headstone.

"That's why when you're looking at the costs of these things, money is such a trivial thing," she said, "but it's the only way to exact any justice."

Ed Bisch, whose 18-year-old son died of an overdose 20 years ago, is glad states pushed Sackler family members to pay more but still called the settlement "a horrible deal" because so many parents who buried loved ones won't see money  and the Sacklers will still be wealthy and free.

"Guess what? They still made billions and billions of dollars," he said. "Without any jail time, where is the deterrent? We've lost two generations to their greed."

Individual victims and their survivors are to share a $750 million fund, a key provision not found in other opioid settlements. About 149,000 people made claims in advance and could qualify for shares from the fund; others with opioid use disorder and the survivors of those who died are shut out.

That amount is unchanged in the new plan, but states will be able to create funds they can use to compensate victims beyond that, if they choose.

Other new provisions include an agreement from Sackler family members that they won't fight when institutions attempt to take the names off of buildings that were funded with the family's support. And additional company documents are to be made public.

Most of the the money is to flow to state and local governments, Native American tribes and some hospitals, with the requirement that it be used to battle an opioid crisis that has been linked to more than 500,000 deaths in the U.S. over the past two decades.

"We're pleased with the settlement achieved in mediation, under which all of the additional settlement funds will be used for opioid abatement programs, overdose rescue medicines, and victims," Purdue said in a statement issued separately from the family's. "With this mediation result, we continue on track to proceed through the appeals process on an expedited schedule, and we hope to swiftly deliver these resources."

Kentucky and Oklahoma are not part of the deal because they both reached previous settlements with Purdue.

Purdue, the originator of time-release versions of powerful prescription painkillers, is the highest-profile company out of many that have faced lawsuits over the crisis. It has twice pleaded guilty to criminal charges related to its business practices around OxyContin.

The latest announcement follows another landmark settlement late last week, when drugmaker Johnson & Johnson and three distributors finalized a settlement that will send $26 billion over time to virtually every state and local governments throughout the U.S.

If the latest Purdue deal wins approval, the two settlements will give local communities that have been devastated by opioid addiction a significant boost to help them combat the epidemic.

There are two key differences between the the latest Purdue settlement and the previous one struck last year. The Sacklers' cash contribution has gone up by at least $1.2 billion, and state attorneys general and the District of Columbia have now agreed.

As recently as Feb. 18, a mediator said a small but unspecified number of states were still holding out.

Last year, the eight states  California, Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington  and D.C. refused to sign on, and then most of them appealed after the deal was approved by the bankruptcy judge.

In December, a U.S. district judge sided with the nine holdouts. The judge, Colleen McMahon, rejected the settlement with a finding that bankruptcy judges lack the authority to grant legal protection to people who don't themselves file for bankruptcy when some parties disagree.

Purdue appealed that decision, which, if left standing, could have scuttled a common method of reaching settlements in sweeping, complicated lawsuits.

Meanwhile, U.S Bankruptcy Judge Robert Drain, who had approved the earlier plan, ordered the parties into mediation and on several occasions gave them more time to hammer out a deal.

The new plan still requires Drain's approval. Appeals related to the previous version of the plan could continue moving through the court system.

In a separate push to hold the Sacklers accountable for the opioid crisis, a group of seven U.S. senators, all Democrats, wrote the U.S. Department of Justice in February asking prosecutors to consider criminal charges against family members.
Press Release

March 4, 2022 DOJ, PAGCOR usurp Congress' authority over e-sabong - Tolentino MANILA - Senator Francis 'Tol' N. Tolentino took a swipe on the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corporation (PAGCOR) for supposedly usurping the authority of Congress over online sabong operations in the country. According to Tolentino, the current online sabong fiasco should be blamed on the DOJ's 'erroneous interpretation of the law' following a separate legal opinion issued by the agency on January 28, 2021, and became the basis of PAGCOR for issuing licenses to e-sabong operators. Tolentino stressed that not a single provision stated under Presidential Decree No. 1869 and as amended by Republic Act No. 9487 which empowered PAGCOR to unilaterally takeover the licensing authority over online cockfighting. "The law is what is written. Kung hindi 'yun nakasulat doon, hindi 'yun batas. Ang pwede lang po gumawa ng batas, Kongreso... hindi po DOJ," said Tolentino during Friday's inquiry of the Senate Committee on Public Order and Dangerous Drugs in connection with the mysterious disappearances of several cockfight afficionados involved in e-sabong. Tolentino further got irked when Chief State Counsel Usec. George Ortha insisted that the DOJ 'being the Attorney General' can have its own interpretation of the law, just like what they did after issuing a separate legal opinion and is now being used by PAGCOR in granting online sabong permits. Tolentino explained that the legal opinion issued by DOJ which became the ground of PAGCOR in issuing e-sabong licenses "is a direct usurpation of legislative powers" under Article 239 of the Revised Penal Code, noting that Congress has the sole authority over franchises. "Don't skew your interpretation that (will) make us believe that (what) you are saying is canonical now," he added. Aside from DOJ, the Office of the Solicitor General also issued a separate opinion in May 2018 that helped empowered PAGCOR and enable them solely to control the issuance of permits in the e-sabong industry. The senator reiterated his last week's statement, in which he explained that e-sabong is not included in the jurisdiction of PAGCOR under PD 1869 and RA 9487.
The global textile supply chain contributes to climate change through greenhouse gas emissions during garment production, but the industry itself is also impacted by climate change. Current impacts and future risks include disruption of supply chain production and transportation, as well as higher input costs from rising energy and water prices, while at the same time customer- and corporate demand for climate-friendly products is growing.

Moreover, global commitments and European legislation, among others the German Due Diligence Act that will enter into force in 2023 are increasing the pressure, as they require multinational companies to identify, prevent, mitigate, and account for environmental and social risks along supply chains. As a result, leading brands and manufacturers have set climate and environmental protection targets.

Vietnam is a leading supplier of high-quality textiles to global market leaders, but this will impose a heavy burden on the environment if the energy-intensive processes of textile manufacturing continue to be highly dependent on coal and oil.



Urged to find a renewable energy source to replace fossil fuels, Vietnam sees great potential in biomass. The country has abundant biomass resources including post-harvesting and post-processing waste from the agricultural and forestry industries.

Vietnam is available with biomass resources including post-harvesting and post-processing waste from the agricultural and forestry industries. Photo: GIZ

Within a memorandum of understanding recently signed, two GIZ projects including Climate protection through sustainable bioenergy markets in Vietnam (BEM) and Fostering and advancing sustainable business and responsible industrial practices in the clothing industry in Asia (FABRIC)  will partner with Decathlon Vietnam to strengthen the companys suppliers in terms of climate action, water use, energy efficiency and chemical management this year.



Specifically, the GIZ FABRIC project will offer free e-learning courses, such as Climate Action Training and Chemical Management Training (e-REMC), via the platform www.atingi.org. The FABRIC training tools are a combination of capacity-building measures and advisory services to train its brands and suppliers.

The Climate Action Training provides basic knowledge on climate change, greenhouse gas accounting, and reduction solutions in the area of energy efficiency and renewable energy, which has been developed in a collaboration with the UN Fashion Industry Charter for Climate Action and 13 brands, among others Decathlon. 

The Chemical Management Training will support factories to improve and implement sustainable chemical management systems. The distinctive e-learning courses tutored by experts fit well with the learning needs of the factory staff, especially in the time of Covid-19, and result in a cost-effective implementation.

Marc Beckmann, Program Director of GIZ FABRIC, underlined that tackling climate change requires collaboration with international brands to jointly improve the conditions on the suppliers side where most of the emissions and environmental impacts happen.

"These innovative approaches for training will support suppliers to advancing their environmental performance. Thereby, they can position themselves as competitive actors in international supply chains. The learnings from this collaboration will also benefit the sector regionally and globally", said Marc Beckmann.

A garment company in Thai Binh participates in GIZ FABRIC's program on environmental improvement.

Meanwhile, the GIZ BEM project will join forces with Decathlon to replace coal consumption with sustainable biomass at the latters suppliers in Vietnam. BEM will provide Decathlon with technical guidance towards improving factory boiler efficiency, identifying sustainable solutions for biomass supply, open access to biomass markets for factories, and mapping out a practical supply of biomass resources.



Nathan Moore, Director of GIZs BEM said that the project aims to improve the preconditions for sustainable use of biomass for electricity and heat generation in Vietnam. Since 2019, the BEM project has worked with Decathlon Vietnam to organise a series of activities raising awareness and supporting the green energy transition.

"Therefore, formalization of this joint initiative by BEM, FABRIC and Decathlon will serve as a springboard for increasing commitments to maximize biomass energy in Vietnam, contributing to the nations sustainable development and climate goals," said Nathan Moore.

GIZ BEM project aims to promote the sustainable use of biomass resources for electricity and heat generation in Vietnam.

Decathlon in return will provide its suppliers factories with the training to increase the use of bioenergy and other renewable energy sources and support studies on the biomass supply chain. With more than 100 suppliers factories covering garment, textile, footwear and accessories in Vietnam, Decathlon will later disseminate the lessons learned from this partnership with GIZ, especially the companys experience driving sustainability in its supply chain, to other national and global brands at related forums to multiply the impact.



Decathlon is among more than 120 fashion brands and retailers that have committed to the principles and targets in the UN Fashion Industry Charter for Climate Action, which provides a global vision for the industry to a target of 45 per cent reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 and net-zero emissions no later than 2050.

"Working with the BEM and FABRIC projects of GIZ, we hope that we can use 100 per cent biomass for our industrial heat or electricity supply by 2025 and become a trailblazer in sustainable use of biomass in the textile and garment sector," said Jeremie Piolet, Decathlon Vietnam Sustainability Leader.
Vietnamese people wait in line for the procedure of getting the Japanese visa in Hanoi, November 2020. Photo by VnExpress/Giang Huy

Some 87 percent of overseas Vietnamese professionals are open to relocating to Vietnam for jobs, a survey has found.

Fourteen percent said they are looking to move back immediately and another 40 percent want to return within the next three years, said the survey by career advisory firm Robert Walters released recently.

It polled 500 ethnic Vietnamese living abroad last August. Nearly two thirds of them are under 35, and a majority of them work in technology, finance, sales, or marketing.

A majority (63 percent) cited family reasons, like taking care of aging parents or getting married, as the main driving force.

An emotional connection with Vietnamese culture and a desire to contribute to the country were two other common reasons cited for the relocation.

But nearly half pointed to career-related issues as an obstacle.

Vicky Truong, international candidate manager at Robert Walters Vietnam, said this was possibly due to lack of information, such as whether their skills and knowledge could be transferred or would be appreciated in Vietnam and if appropriate salaries and jobs were available.

Fear of reverse culture shock, culture and management were the biggest factors in searching for jobs in Vietnam, followed by salary and overall package.

Vietnamese companies should invest in promoting their brand and culture to attract more overseas Vietnamese talent, Truong added.
On the afternoon of January 24, Former German Vice-Chancellor Dr. Philipp Rosler landed at Can Tho airport, a stop on his repatriation journey. For the first time, he felt the bustling atmosphere of the days leading up to the Lunar New Year. This was much different from his first visit to Vietnam 16 years ago. Turning 49 years old this year, and even with deep roots in Vietnam he has never had the chance to celebrate Vietnamese New Year in his homeland. This was a very special experience. From Can Tho, the Former Vice-Chancellor traveled to Soc Trang province to visit the Soc Trang Providence Convent where he was raised by the Sisters for his first nine months before being adopted by a German family.

Until now, he still hasn't known any information about his birth parents. Rosler, however, did not suffer from the absence of parental care. He once said that one of the greatest blessings in his life was growing up with the warm love of his adoptive parents.

Philipp grew up in a well-educated family, proned to become a soldier like his adoptive father and committed to excellence in all his endeavors. With great ability and determination, Rosler became a doctor and was the first Cabinet Minister and Vice-Chancellor of Asian descent in Germany.

Visiting the orphans in Soc Trang reminded Philipp of his humble orphan beginnings long ago. Seeing the children's eagerness, excitement, and smiles when they received colorful Tet gifts, Philipp knew he had to do more for those children. As a doctor, Philipp believes that, regardless of circumstances, children can develop and contribute to society. To do that requires the whole community, philanthropic organizations, businesses, and the government to join hands. This is why Dr. Philipp Rosler is proud of Vietnamese cultural values that have been preserved through generations, especially the tradition of helping the disadvantaged. Orphans, in particular, are always a top priority, as they need both material and psychological support.

Rosler has collaborated with VinaCapital Foundation and Ho Chi Minh City Youth Union to spread the message of the program "Care to Rise" widely to the world. Since November 2021, VinaCapital Foundation and Ho Chi Minh City Youth Union have implemented the Care to Rise program to provide for, protect and encourage more than 2,400 orphans until adulthood through scientific individual assessment, short-term and mid-term remedies, and long-term pathways for health and success to adulthood.

In the Care to Rise program, the children are individually assessed in person to understand what is essential for their development. Then, each child will be provided with a unique long-term plan of action, which prioritizes physical and emotional health issues with simultaneous assistance for nutrition and educational needs including tutoring and communications devices.

"It is an honor for VinaCapital Foundation to collaborate with Dr. Philipp Rosler in the Care to Rise program supporting our disadvantaged orphan children impacted as a result of Covid-19. Dr. Rosler's assistance will enable us to reach out to the global community in a more effective way to call for help and deliver the best support for each of these children," states Rad Kivette, CEO of VinaCapital Foundation.



As the program's International Chairman, since January 26, Rosler has fostered awareness and support from the international community for orphans and disadvantaged children affected by Covid-19 in Vietnam.

"This program aims to support unfortunate children who lost their parent/s because of the pandemic. I hope to use my image and voice to spread the message and meaning of this program, not only to the Vietnamese people but also to international friends. We will empower these children to succeed. And in the future, they can become doctors, engineers, entrepreneurs, journalists or even leaders of the country...", said Rosler.



Sharing about his upcoming plans, Rosler said he would return to Vietnam soon, supporting Covid orphans with assistance for comprehensive care. He also plans to further promote cooperation activities, connecting Vietnam with the international startup community.



"No one is left behind," the International Chairman states. Philipp is committed to using his voice through "Care to Rise" to spread the message to the world, seeking out more partners to join with VinaCapital Foundation to provide for these Vietnamese orphan children and to be sure not one is left behind.


Two tigers are sedated before being taken away from two basements in Nghe An Province in central Vietnam, August 4, 2021. Photo courtesy of Nghe An police

A man in the central Nghe An Province on Thursday got sentenced to seven years in jail for illegally raising 14 endangered tigers.

Nguyen Van Hien, 40, was jailed for "Offences against regulations on management and protection of endangered, rare animals," as determined by Nghe An People's Court.

Hien raised 14 Indochinese tigers in his family's basement. His act was discovered by Nghe An police in August last year. He said he had brought the tigers back from Laos and had kept them for months.

The same day, police raided another house in the province and discovered three other Indochinese tigers. This case will also go to trial in future.

All 17 tigers were later transferred to a wildlife facility after sedation. But nine of them later died, with their cause of death yet to be announced by authorities.

Once there's approval from Hanoi People's Committee, the rest of the tigers are expected to be handed over to Hanoi Zoo at the end of this month.

Indochinese tigers are listed as endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. Their population is threatened by poaching for illegal wildlife trade, as some people believe their bones could be used to make traditional medicine to treat certain ailments.
A section of the National Highway 91 next to the Hau River is eroded away, May 2020. Photo by VnExpress/Cuu Long

Around 500 hectares of riverbank are lost yearly across the Mekong Delta to excessive sand mining, according to World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and the agriculture ministry.

In a Thursday conference on maintaining the shape of the Mekong Delta region, organized by the WWF and Vietnam Disaster Management Authority under the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, organizers stressed that river sand is frequently mined across the delta.

While there are over 80 companies approved to mine 28 million tons of river sand every year, the actual amount of mined sand is hard to be verified and managed, they said.

In the delta, around 25 million tons of sediment (including sand, mud and clay) are lost every year due to sand mining, with most trapped by hydropower plants. More sediments are expected to be lost in future too.

Le Thanh Chuong, director of the research center for river management and disaster prevention under the Southern Institute of Water Resources Research, said there are over 620 erosion points in the delta, spanning around 610 kilometers in total.

"The main causes of river erosion are ascribed to flow, weak geological properties along the coast, upstream reservoirs, sand mining, infrastructure and construction along riverbanks and impacts from water traffic," said Chuong, adding that illegal sand mining continues unabated due to high construction demands.

Too much sand mining would severely impact people's lives across the delta, reducing biodiversity along riverbanks and increasing risks from salt intrusion, high tides and sea level rise. These environmental impacts could harm the delta's resilience and threaten its agriculture, economy and biodiversity, Chuong said.

Experts have proposed research into sand reservoirs in the Mekong Delta as a foundation for policies regarding sustainable sand mining.

The Mekong Delta, which spans over 3.9 million hectares, is Vietnam's rice basket that contributes over 17 percent of the GDP, 54 percent of rice, 70 percent of fishery products and 60 percent of fruits in the country.

It is also home to around 20 million people.
Nguyen Vu Trung, Director of the HCMC Pasteur Institute (R), speaks with U.S. Ambassdor to Vietnam Marc Knapper in front of a ultra-cool freezer gifted by the U.S. to the institute, March 4, 2022. Photo by VnExpress/Nguyen Phuong

The Ho Chi Minh City Pasteur Institute received 34 ultra-low temperature freezers from the U.S. Friday to store mRNA Covid-19 vaccines.

The machines are part of a U.S. Department of Defense pledge to give Vietnam 111 ultra-low temperature, medical-grade storage units worth approximately $1 million. Seventy-seven have already been delivered.

Of the newly-arrived freezers, the Pasteur Institute will keep six and the rest will go to Military Hospital 175, Cho Ray Hospital and the Centers for Diseases Control (CDC) in 20 southern Vietnam localities.

Each freezer can store up to 175,500 vaccine doses at minus 20-80 degrees Celsius.

U.S. Ambassador to Vietnam Marc Knapper said at the handover ceremony that Vietnam and the U.S. have supported each other throughout the pandemic.

He said Vietnam had handed over millions of personal protective equipment when the Covid-19 was at its worst in the U.S. In return, the U.S. has supported Vietnam with ventilators and medical equipment worth more than $31 million in total.

Nguyen Vu Trung, Director of the Pasteur Institute, said that the institute and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) were cooperating on global health security issues. In responding to the Covid-19 epidemic, the institute has received technical support from the U.S. CDC to deploy a key Covid-19 surveillance system and support pandemic investigation, he said.

The Southern Regional Emergency Response Center, established with funding from the U.S. CDC and the Department of Defense, has also played an active role in responding to the pandemic in the southern region, he added.

Since last July, the U.S. has given Vietnam over 26 million Covid-19 vaccine doses through the Covax facility.
Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky called on the West on Thursday to increase military aid to Ukraine, saying Russia would advance on the rest of Europe otherwise.

"If you do not have the power to close the skies, then give me planes!" Zelensky told a press conference. "If we are no more then, God forbid, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia will be next," he said, adding: "Believe me."

He called for direct talks with Russian leader Vladimir Putin, saying it was "the only way to stop this war."

"We are not attacking Russia and we do not plan to attack it. What do you want from us? Leave our land," he said, addressing Putin.

"Sit down with me. Just not 30 metres away like with (French President Emmanuel Macron)," the Ukrainian leader said, referring to Putin receiving world leaders at a now famous enormously long table.

Zelensky -- who just weeks ago sought to calm Ukrainians over US allegations that Russia was planning to invade his country -- said: "Nobody thought that in the modern world a man can behave like a beast."

Putin launched an attack on Ukraine last week.

Russia says it is not targeting civilian areas despite widespread evidence otherwise.

Ukraine on Wednesday said Russian planes hit a school, killing nine people, in the northern city of Chernihiv.

Kyiv says more than 350 civilians have been killed since Putin launched the attack.
In coordination with its allies and partners, the United States took additional measures against the Russian financial system in response to Russias war against Ukraine. Unwavering in our support for Ukraines sovereignty and territorial integrity, we will continue to act with our allies and partners in imposing costs on Russia if it continues its war of choice, declared Secretary of State Antony Blinken in a statement.

The U.S. Department of the Treasurys Office of Foreign Assets Control, or OFAC, prohibited any U.S. person from conducting any transaction involving the Central Bank of the Russian Federation, the National Wealth Fund of the Russian Federation, or the Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation. In addition, OFAC imposed blocking sanctions on the Russian Direct Investment Fund, a known slush fund for Russian President Vladimir Putin and his inner circle, two of its subsidiaries, and CEO Kirill Dmitriev.

Secretary Blinken said the United States took these actions to impair Russias ability to use its international reserves in ways that undermine the impact of our sanctions, as well as to prevent Russia from accessing its wealth fund for use in its ongoing war against Ukraine.

These latest sanctions come after the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, or SWIFT, agreed to remove key Russian banks from its system, a step that will sever the country from much of the global financial system. Moscows exclusion from SWIFT means Russian banks wont be able to communicate securely with banks beyond their border. The U.S. and its allies also announced they will impose restrictive measures aimed at preventing Russias central bank from deploying its international reserves in ways that may undermine sanctions.

The United States will continue to coordinate closely with its partners and allies to impose severe consequences on Russia for its war against Ukraine. We share with our partners and allies, said Secretary Blinken, unity of purpose, resolve, and determination to hold Russia to account for its aggression, particularly those responsible for this war of choice.
The United States partnership with the people of Ukraine is steadfast and enduring, declared Secretary of State Antony Blinken in a statement. We are focused on Ukraines urgent humanitarian needs as an important part of our response to Russias premeditated, unprovoked, and unjustified attack.

With the welfare of ordinary Ukrainians in mind, the United States announced nearly $54 million in humanitarian assistance to those affected by Russias invasion. This funding includes nearly $26 million from the Department of State and $28 million from the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID.

The United States is one of the largest humanitarian donors to Ukraine; its humanitarian assistance now amounts to nearly $405 million to vulnerable communities since Russia invaded Ukraine eight years ago. This latest tranche of humanitarian assistance will flow through independent humanitarian organizations that deliver needs-based assistance with impartiality, humanity, neutrality, and independence, said Secretary Blinken.

This assistance will enable international humanitarian organizations to support the people of Ukraine with food, safe drinking water, shelter, emergency health care, winterization, and protection. U.S. funding will also help humanitarian organizations maintain contact between family members who have been separated due to the conflict, hopefully leading to reunification.

The United States commends the hospitality of the neighboring countries in the region hosting fleeing Ukrainians and is engaging diplomatically to support efforts to keep their borders open and assist those seeking international protection. The UN reports that more than 600,000 people have left Ukraine thus far. The frontline states receiving refugees include Poland, Romania, Hungary, Moldova, and Slovakia. In a recent interview, USAID Administrator Samantha Power said, The Poles have opened up their hearts, their homes; there are warm meals and supplies, diapers and strollers for parents, and clothing. Administrator Power estimated that as many as three to five million people may flow into these neighboring countries in the near future.

Secretary Blinken called on the international community to respond to the needs of those seeking protection and to not return asylum-seekers to Ukraine where they would likely face grave danger. The United States welcomes the contributions of other donors toward this crisis response and urges still others to generously support the immediate humanitarian needs in Ukraine and the region.
The international education market was hit significantly as the borders remained closed in countries like the UK, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and the US over the past two years. While the announcement of reopening them started in November 2021, the Omicron wave of COVID-19 again disrupted international students' return to the universities in these countries. With the tide receding in many countries, travel restrictions have been eased, allowing the students to study in their desired destinations.While the US continues to welcome fully vaccinated travellers, including international students, the UK has extended its list of countries from which vaccinated travellers are now accepted, including China, Macau, and Iran. The list recognises most countries and territories for entry into the UK. The country has also lifted the requirement for a Day 2 COVID-19 test on arrival, making it easier to arrange travel and freely move around.Meanwhile, Australia has allowed the entry of international students, provided they are fully vaccinated and have tested negative for COVID-19. This means they can now study on-campus at universities in Australia. New Zealand also recently announced a gradual re-opening of international borders from next month.Since the opening, more than 56,000 international students have arrived in Australia since November 2021  and 7,000 of those arrived between 23 January and 30 January 2022 alone. The demand among international students to study in Australia appears to be strong as 50,000 student visa applications get filed since late 2021. In fact, the numbers of students from India and Nepal have increased the most. Together, they account for over 50% of the increase in the past six weeks.In the US, international students have been returning to colleges and universities with a 4% annual increase in the fall of 2021 and the UK aims to increase its global market share of international students by a third, from 450,000 to 600,000 by 2030.While these early signs of recovery look promising, the impact of the omicron wave on enrolments is somewhat unpredictable at this point. Sustaining the recovery of the international education market is a longer-term project, and for the countries to revive their global competitiveness, universities should focus on creating a world-class student experience.This comes as great news for the international students to make the most of the excellent higher education provision and cultural immersion opportunities to achieve their learning goals and career ambitions and make meaningful connections with people worldwide.
WASHINGTON  A federal district court judge issued an injunction to prevent a Missouri mine operator and its owner from stopping federal inspectors from completing workplace safety inspections now and in the future at the Partridge Sand & Gravel mine.

The court action follows an incident at the mine on Aug. 17, 2021, when inspectors with the U.S. Department of Labors Mine Safety and Health Administration tried to conduct a statutorily required inspection.

As they drove toward the mine, its owner  Westley Partridge  used loading equipment filled with rocks and dirt to force the MSHA inspectors vehicle off the road. Partridge then verbally harassed the inspectors and ordered them off the property.

In response, the departments Office of the Solicitor filed suit in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri on Sept. 28 to ensure MSHA inspectors had access to the mine. On Dec. 14, the U.S. Marshals Service served the complaint on Partridge. On Jan. 12, 2022, Partridge allowed MSHA inspectors to inspect the mine.

On Feb. 2, 2022, Partridge and his company agreed to a consent judgment barring them from interfering with, delaying or impeding a mine inspection. The judgment also bars them from threatening, harassing, or intimidating an MSHA inspector carrying out the provisions of the Federal Mine Safety and Health Act of 1977.

Congress mandated regular Mine Safety and Health Administration inspections to protect the health and safety of our nations miners. We will not allow mine operators to prevent the U.S. Department of Labor from doing its vital work, said Solicitor of Labor Seema Nanda. We appreciate the U.S. Marshals Service for their efforts in helping us enforce the Federal Mine Safety and Health Act.

To perform our agencys critical work and protect the nations miners, our inspectors need access to all mine operations, said Acting Assistant Secretary for Mine Safety and Health Jeanette Galanis. The actions of the U.S. Department of Labor make clear that the department will not tolerate mine operators who unlawfully prevent safety inspectors from doing their job.

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ELKO  Great Basin College professor and former Elko city councilman John Patrick Rice has announced he is running for the Nevada Board of Regents seat currently held by Cathy McAdoo.

Ive been thinking about this for some time, said Rice, who served on the city council from 2007 through 2018. After talking to voters across the Nevada System of Higher Educations District 8 he decided he would run for Regent.

Dist. 8 covers Elko, Eureka, Humboldt, Lincoln, Nye, White Pine and a portion of Clark counties.

I think Im a good candidate, Rice said Thursday. Certainly my years of experience in higher education  both as a faculty member and an administrator  are very valuable, as well as three terms on the city council.

His reasons for running include promoting access to higher education and capital investment in both brick and mortar and online learning infrastructure in rural Nevada; continuing to build NSHE online education programs using Great Basin Colleges world-class online learning faculty and infrastructure; and addressing the ongoing conversations about Question One regarding the Regents status under the state Constitution.

Rice said he would like to engage in a comprehensive transformation of the operations of NSHE.

We need to restore public trust in the Board of Regents, he said. It always seems that theres something distracting the board from their work, which is really to work on behalf of the students in Nevada.

This past year, conflicts between board members and Chancellor Melody Rose led to the temporary removal of McAdoo and Regent Patrick Carter from their leadership positions.

McAdoo, who currently chairs the board, has not said whether she intends to run again.

I think Im the kind of person who could stand toe to toe with Regents and advocate to keep Great Basin College as strong as it can be, and of course the whole system of higher ed, Rice said.

If elected, he said he would be the only NSHE employee on the board.

There is a precedent for a faculty member to sit on the Board of Regents from more than a decade ago that makes him eligible, he said.

Rice has lived and worked in Elko since 1996. As a faculty member he teaches fine arts, humanities and communications. He served multiple terms as GBCs Faculty Senate Chair. He also served as the Chair of the Nevada System of Higher Education Council of Senate Chairs, representing more than 5,000 members of the NSHE faculty.

He was also the Chief Development Officer and the Executive Director of Great Basin College Foundation, where he designed and executed capital campaigns that helped raise more than $20 million in alternative funding for higher education in rural Nevada.

As a city councilman and Mayor Pro Tempore he has also advised Nevadas federal delegation, speaking on higher education, workforce development and economic development at the U.S. Senate Rural Caucus. He was invited to participate in the White House Community College Conference hosted by President Barack Obama.

Rice was recently appointed by the U.S. Senate to serve as a trustee on the board of the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress.

The filing period for state and local offices opens Monday.

Im excited about this opportunity and look forward to serving the people of rural Nevada as their Regent, Rice concluded.

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Vladimir Putin is an Evil Man  thats the late Sen. John McCains conclusion in his memoir written just before his death in 2018.

Sen. McCain wrote: Ive gotten plenty of things wrong in a long political career. Putin isnt one of them.

McCain was a skeptic of four different administrations policies towards Russia. Events have proven him right with every recent U. S. President misjudging Putin.

After returning from a trip to Russia in 1996, McCain warned of Russians nostalgia for empire. He urged an early and rapid expansion of NATO to include the Baltic republics and Warsaw-bloc countries, who feared Russian imperial restoration.

He noted resentment and insecurity had been powerful drivers of Russian history for centuries, not limited to Russias 73 years of Communist Party rule.

In 2000, Putin was the newly installed Russian prime minister. The Republican presidential frontrunner, Texas Gov. George W. Bush noted, the verdict on Mr. Putin is out. ... we dont know enough about him.

Bushs main challenger, McCain, disagreed. We know he was a member of the KGB. We know he came to power because of the military brutality ... in Chechnya in 1999. Im very concerned about Putin.

Soon Putin seized control of the media, silenced political opponents, and turned the Parliament (Duma) into his rubber stamp.

After first meeting Putin in 2001, President Bush lauded the Russian leader. After looking him in the eye, Bush said, I was able to get a sense of Putins soul.

In 2008, Russia invaded neighboring Georgia and many acknowledged McCain as prescient.

In a five-day conflict, the Russian army routed the Georgians with Bush ruling out military options. Weak sanctions were imposed with little effect.

At his presidential debate with then-Sen. Barack Obama in October 2008, McCain again sounded a warning about Putin on his aggressive designs abroad.

I looked in his eyes and saw three letters, a K, a G and a B. I said before, watch Ukraine. Ukraine right now, is in the sights of Vladimir Putin McCain asserted.

With the inauguration of President Obama in 2009 came his vaunted reset of relations with Russia. The sanctions imposed by the Bush administration the year before were lifted.

Two missile defense sites under construction in Poland and the Czech Republic were cancelled to placate Putin and NATO enlargement was largely shelved. Still, Putin walked away from the Nunn-Lugar arms-control process.

After Mitt Romney labeled Russia Americas No.1 geopolitical foe during a 2012 presidential debate, he was mocked by Obama.

The 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back, because the Cold Wars been over for 20 years, Obama smugly retorted. Subsequent events proved Romney right.

Putin invaded Ukraine in 2014 and annexed Crimea with his proxies grabbing eastern Ukraine. The Obama administrations response was to deny Ukraines request for lethal assistance to defend its own territory and it remained opposed until the last day in office.

In 2015, Putin intervened in Syria to rescue dictator Bashar Assad. Russians bombed hospitals and chemical weapons were used on civilians. Obama failed to enforce his own red line on chemical weapons use.

McCain wrote: to Putin weakness is provocative and vacillation invites aggression.

Putins leading Russian opposition leader (Boris Nemtsov) was gunned down near the Kremlin in 2015. Other regime opponents were poisoned.

To his credit, President Trump overturned the Obama policy and supplied lethal assistance to Ukraine.

However, Trump consistently praised Putin during his term of office. Ive always felt fine about Putin. Hes a strong leader, Trump said in 2015. Their bromance continued throughout Trumps presidency.

In a particularly outrageous statement, Trump praised Putins genius in his unprovoked full-scale invasion of Ukraine. McCain more accurately identified Putin as a tyrant and thug.

Americans  and the inspiring, freedom-loving Ukrainians  miss John McCain now more than ever.

Email Jim Hartman at lawdocman1@aol.com.

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As NATO foreign ministers meet in Brussels for the latest discussions on Russia's unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, Kyiv once again called on Western allies to implement a no-fly zone or provide them with more planes to protect civilians and infrastructure including nuclear plants.

No-fly zone or planes requested by Ukraine

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy (learn more about that surname) has consistently called for a no-fly zone since Moscow's invasion more than a week ago, but NATO allies have resisted a step that could drag them into the war with nuclear-armed Russia. Speaking ahead of the meeting in NATO's Brussels headquarters, Lithuania said the alliance would be dragged into the war if it were to enforce a no-fly zone.

More on Russia-Ukraine conflict:

"All encouragements for NATO to get involved into the military conflict now are irresponsible," said Lithuanian Prime Minister Ingrida Simonyte.

Meanwhile, Canadian Foreign Minister Melanie Joly said that NATO's red line was to avoid triggering a wider international conflict, but said all scenarios should be discussed. France's presidential office described a no-fly zone as "a very legitimate request and very difficult to satisfy."

Breaking: Spains foreign minister says @NATO will discuss possible intervention and no-fly zone in Ukraine during a Friday summit of the US-led military alliance https://t.co/bUgFws3Ph1 via @financialtimes  Henry Foy (@HenryJFoy) March 4, 2022

With Russian forces seizing the largest nuclear power plant in Europe on Thursday and the Azov Sea port of Mariupol having been encircled and left without electricity or running water by heavy Russian bombing, Zelenskyy said that if allies wouldn't meet his request to protect Ukrainian air space, they should instead provide Kyiv with more war planes.

But what is a no-fly zone, and why is NATO so reluctant to provide it?

No-fly zone: its all or nothing

A no-fly zone, which you may have also heard being called an air-exclusion zone or a no-flight zone, is a fairly recent addition to international interventions, starting in the early 1990s, and aims to do exactly what it says. It creates an area over which certain aircraft are not allowed to fly, and the military power setting the zone would protect it, often by force. This enforcement of the territory can take different forms, from shooting down planes, helicopters or, these days, drones, breaking the order, as well as preventative measures such as taking out command and control centres or involving surveillance activity.

Biden has rightly said the U.S. will not implement a No Fly Zone in Ukraine. But Biden and others can do more in arming the Ukrainians to enforce a no-fly zone.  Michael McFaul (@McFaul) March 3, 2022

Previously we have seen official no-fly zones established in Iraq (1991-2003), Bosnia and Herzegovina (1993-1995), and Libya (2011, 2018, 2019). What differs them from the current situation is the potential repercussions of enforcement, given Russias nuclear arsenal.

The idea of implementing a no-fly zone over Ukraine seems simple enough, and has been pushed by several commentators over the past week. Effectively it would mean banning any aircraft from flying over the country, removing the potent aerial attack of the Russian bombing tactics. But it comes with some rather unpleasant side orders, hinted at earlier.

Why NATO is avoiding Ukraine no-fly zone

Firstly, it would also prevent the Ukrainian air force - albeit a much more limited one - from carrying out operations, for example, like that targeting the giant convoy of Russian military vehicles. More importantly, however, is that it would almost certainly escalate the war to a continental or global scale, potentially with truly devastating results.

There is little point in NATO and its allies applying the restrictions unless they are willing to fully enforce them. And given Vladimir Putins form, he is unlikely to pay much attention. That would see Russian attacks continue in the sky, and NATO would fire on the planes, and potentially the guidance units, which could be based in Putins homeland. For some military analysts, thats exactly what the dictator wants to support his propaganda that the West is a threat.

What comes next no one can predict. But with the nuclear option in play, its too big a risk for NATO to take. At least for the moment.
Russian invasion of Ukraine: headlines

- Evacuation of Mariupol postponed over accusations of Russia breaking a partial ceasefire that was meant to allow humanitarian corridors out of Mariupol and Volnovakha.

- Ukraine President Zelenskyy condemns decision not to implement no-fly zone

- Russia ready to "bomb cities into submission", intelligence official tells CNN

- Ukraine can "absolutely" prevail over Russia - US secretary of state

- Gas prices in US soar, however 80% of Americas says US should stop importing Russian oil even if that means higher prices at the pump

What you need to know about the conflict

- How can I support the refugees fleeing war in Ukraine?

- China and Russia said their relationship had "no limits." Is the statement still true?

- What would happen if Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant exploded?

- Prolonged attack threatens the global supply of crops

- Zelenskyy, Zelensky or Zelenskiy? Why spelling is important to Ukrainians

- How long can Russia fight in Ukraine?

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* Solidarity and cooperation are key to defeating the COVID-19 pandemic. China and its partners worldwide have supported and helped each other in the arduous fight against the deadly virus since it broke out.

* China's achievements have boosted global confidence in its economic outlook, and experts believe that the Chinese economy will maintain a sound momentum.

* China will remain committed to building a community with a shared future for mankind, where countries with different social systems, ideologies, histories, cultures, and levels of development will strive for common prosperity.

Struggling to handle the COVID-19 pandemic, uneven economic recovery and other challenges, the world is craving development initiatives and actions in a global approach.

With China's annual "two sessions" drawing near, the world is keeping a close eye on how the country will play its role in advancing global development and stability.

STABILIZER

Solidarity and cooperation are key to defeating the pandemic. Since the COVID-19 pandemic broke out, China and its partners worldwide have supported and helped each other in the arduous fight against the deadly virus.

In the year 2021 alone, China provided 2 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines to more than 120 countries and international organizations, honoring its commitment to making the vaccine a global public good. This is part of China's largest emergency humanitarian action since the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949.

Khaled Abdel Ghaffar, Egypt's higher education and scientific research minister and acting health minister, said China has always fulfilled its commitment to building a community of common health for mankind.

The vaccine assistance provided by China is the largest foreign aid Egypt has received so far in fighting the pandemic, Ghaffar noted, adding that China has made remarkable achievements in its own anti-pandemic response.

Pandemic is just one of the stiff global challenges facing the global community. In recent years, notably since the outbreak of COVID-19, the world has seen rising unilateralism and protectionism that have disrupted global industrial chains and posed a grave threat to global economic recovery. Upholding multilateralism, China is committed to promoting development through opening-up and global cooperation, bringing a sense of certainty so dear to the increasingly chaotic world.

In the eyes of Greek scholar Pelagia Karpathiotaki, China's economic stability and its initiatives to promote international economic cooperation would make significant contribution at this difficult moment.

The forthcoming "two sessions" will for sure "attract global interest more than ever as China's role and influence is now extremely important in addressing global challenges," she said.

DRIVING FORCE

In 2021, China's foreign trade exceeded 6 trillion U.S. dollars for the first time and its economy expanded 8.1 percent year on year. Contributing over 30 percent to global economic growth in recent years, China has become a key driving force for the world economy.

China's achievements have boosted global confidence in its economic outlook. Experts believe that despite a stiff headwind, the Chinese economy, with strong resilience and great potential, will maintain a sound momentum.

For decades, China has been the world's manufacturing hub and a crucial link in global supply chains. China's steady recovery from the pandemic, high-quality development and action to further opening up will add stronger impetus to global recovery in the post-COVID-19 era, said Selcuk Colakoglu, director of the Ankara-based Turkish Center for Asia-Pacific Studies.

In face of challenges, China has fulfilled its commitment to continuing opening up its market, demonstrating its determination to build a more prosperous future with the rest of the world.

China's opening-up is closely related to the development of the global economy, said Evandro Menezes de Carvalho, a Brazilian professor at the Getulio Vargas Foundation, a think tank based in Rio de Janeiro. He noted that given the size of China's economy, its policies drawn up during the "two sessions" will have an important impact on the world.

Cavince Adhere, a Kenya-based international relations scholar, said China has become a staunch supporter of multilateralism and globalization, and many countries are expecting to see it take further moves in opening up and reform via the annual gathering.

PIONEER

When meeting with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Feb. 5 in Beijing, Chinese President Xi Jinping stressed strengthening unity and cooperation to tackle various pressing global challenges, saying that humanity lives in a global village where the destinies of all are intertwined.

The message of Xi's remarks is clear: China will remain committed to building a community with a shared future for mankind, where countries with different social systems, ideologies, histories, cultures, and levels of development will strive for common prosperity. No one should be left behind in this drive.

To achieve a balanced, coordinated and inclusive growth worldwide, the Chinese president proposed the Global Development Initiative in steering global development in face of the pandemic.

Professor Paul Zilungisele Tembe, a senior fellow at South Africa's Thabo Mbeki African Leadership Institute, said China "has no history of seeking political or economic hegemony over its neighbours or forcing other countries to follow the Chinese model of development."

China always values the important role of international institutions such as the United Nations, the World Trade Organization and the Africa Union in global affairs, the sinologist added.

Alexey Avdonin, an analyst at the Belarusian Institute for Strategic Studies, said China's steadfast stance and practice give hope and boost confidence in building a community with a shared future for mankind.

China has explored and developed a development path suited to its own conditions, and it raises confidence of developing countries in pursuing their development, said Bambang Suryono, chairman of Indonesian think tank Asia Innovation Study Center.
At the talks

He made the statement on March 3 while having talks with Katrina Cooper, Deputy Secretary for Southeast Asia and Global Partners Group at the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, who paid a visit to Vietnam on March 2-4.

During the talks, Mr. Vu thanked Australia for its timely supply of 7.8 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines and other medical materials, making it Vietnams second biggest vaccine donor.

Expressing her pleasure to visit Vietnam, Ms Katrina Cooper emphasized that Australia always appreciates the role and position of Vietnam in the region; and pledged to continue to make efforts promoting the strategic partnership between the two countries on all cooperation pillars, especially in the context that the two countries will celebrate the 50th anniversary of diplomatic relations in 2023.

The two Deputy Ministers highly appreciated the fact that in the context of the pandemic, the two sides still made efforts to maintain contacts at all levels regularly and flexibly deployed bilateral cooperation mechanisms, most notably the fact that Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh had two phone conversations with Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison (January and May 2021) and the two Prime Ministers had bilateral contact on the occasion of the COP-26 Conference (UK, November 2021), approving many important documents to promote the strategic partnership between the two countries. Economic-trade cooperation continues to be a bright spot in the bilateral relationship with a turnover of USD12.4 billion in 2021, an increase of nearly 50% compared to 2020.

The two Deputy Ministers also discussed specific measures to further strengthen the two countries' relations in such fields as national defense and security, education and training, ODA support, green growth, and agricultural technology, climate change and Mekong cooperation, as well as new cooperation pillars to consider establishing the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership between the two countries at an appropriate time. The two sides also exchanged views on the East Sea issue, emphasizing that disputes should be resolved peacefully, on the basis of respect for international law, especially UNCLOS 1982 and a number of regional and international issues of mutual concern.

Within the framework of the visit, Ms. Katrina Cooper also paid a courtesy visit to Head of the Party Central Committee Commission of External Relations Le Hoai Trung; worked with Acting Head of ASEAN SOM Vu Ho; attended the Mekong Conference at the Diplomatic Academy; and met a number of Australian and Vietnamese businesses and partners./.
French President Emmanuel Macron attends a press conference after the EU summit in Brussels, Belgium, on Oct. 16, 2020. (European Union/Handout via Xinhua)

Speaking of his goals for a possible second term, Macron said that he would try to make France "become a great ecological nation that will be the first to exit its dependence on gas, petroleum and coal."

PARIS, March 3 (Xinhua) -- French President Emmanuel Macron officially announced on Thursday that he would run for a second term in office in the upcoming presidential elections scheduled for April.

In a letter addressed to the French people, Macron described the different reforms of the government and the challenges faced by the country. "All of this has allowed us to be credible and to convince our main neighbors to start building a powerful Europe."

"This is why I request your trust for a new term as President of the Republic. I am a candidate to invent with you, in the face of the challenges of the century, a singular French and European response," he wrote.

Speaking of his goals for a possible second term, Macron said that he would try to make France "become a great ecological nation that will be the first to exit its dependence on gas, petroleum and coal."

He also promised to continue to lower taxes.

Macron won France's presidential election runoff in 2017, beating his far-right rival Marine Le Pen.

The Elysee presidential palace is pictured in the morning before its opening to the public in Paris, France, Sept. 19, 2020. (Xinhua/Gao Jing)

Editor: WRX
A volunteer explains the structure and function of ears for children in Yangzhou, east China's Jiangsu Province, March 2, 2022. March 3 marks China's national Ear Care Day. Various activities were held to promote public awareness of hearing protection. (Photo by Meng Delong/Xinhua)

Children learn ear-protecting tips at a kindergarten in Handan, north China's Hebei Province, March 2, 2022. March 3 marks China's national Ear Care Day. Various activities were held to promote public awareness of hearing protection. (Photo by Li Hao/Xinhua)

A medical worker examines a child's ears in Yuqing County, Zunyi City, southwest China's Guizhou Province, March 2, 2022. March 3 marks China's national Ear Care Day. Various activities were held to promote public awareness of hearing protection. (Photo by Mu Mingfei/Xinhua)

A medical worker explains the structure of ears in Zhongguan Township, Deqing County, Huzhou City, east China's Zhejiang Province, March 2, 2022. March 3 marks China's national Ear Care Day. Various activities were held to promote public awareness of hearing protection. (Photo by Wang Zheng/Xinhua)

A medical worker shares knowledge of ear protection for children at a kindergarten in Jiangyong County, Yongzhou, central China's Hunan Province, March 2, 2022. March 3 marks China's national Ear Care Day. Various activities were held to promote public awareness of hearing protection. (Photo by Tian Rurui/Xinhua)

A medical worker shares knowledge of ear protection in Lianyungang, east China's Jiangsu Province, March 2, 2022. March 3 marks China's national Ear Care Day. Various activities were held to promote public awareness of hearing protection. (Photo by Wang Jianmin/Xinhua)

A resident tries an earphone in Lianyungang, east China's Jiangsu Province, March 2, 2022. March 3 marks China's national Ear Care Day. Various activities were held to promote public awareness of hearing protection. (Photo by Wang Jianmin/Xinhua)

A medical worker shares knowledge of ear protection for pupils at an elementary school in Qinhuangdao, north China's Hebei Province, March 2, 2022. March 3 marks China's national Ear Care Day. Various activities were held to promote public awareness of hearing protection. (Photo by Cao Jianxiong/Xinhua)

Children give performance themed on ear protection in Zhuji, east China's Zhejiang Province, March 2, 2022. March 3 marks China's national Ear Care Day. Various activities were held to promote public awareness of hearing protection. (Photo by Guo Bin/Xinhua)

A medical worker explains the structure of ears and relevant precaution knowledge in Xianju County, Taizhou, east China's Zhejiang Province, March 2, 2022. March 3 marks China's national Ear Care Day. Various activities were held to promote public awareness of hearing protection. (Photo by Wang Huabin/Xinhua)

A medical worker examines the ear canal for a resident in Zaozhuang, east China's Shandong Province, March 2, 2022. March 3 marks China's national Ear Care Day. Various activities were held to promote public awareness of hearing protection. (Photo by Sun Zhongzhe/Xinhua)

Pupils learn about the structure of ear through an ear model at an elementary school in Zigui County of Yichang, central China's Hubei Province, March 2, 2022. March 3 marks China's national Ear Care Day. Various activities were held to promote public awareness of hearing protection. (Photo by Wang Huifu/Xinhua)

A medical worker shares knowledge of ear protection for pupils at an elementary school in Nanjing, east China's Jiangsu Province, March 2, 2022. March 3 marks China's national Ear Care Day. Various activities were held to promote public awareness of hearing protection. (Photo by Fang Dongxu/Xinhua)

A medical worker examines the ear canal for a resident in Qinglong Village, Xiaxi Township, Tongren City, southwest China's Guizhou Province, March 2, 2022. March 3 marks China's national Ear Care Day. Various activities were held to promote public awareness of hearing protection. (Photo by Xiao Hao/Xinhua)

Children observe an ear model in Zhuji, east China's Zhejiang Province, March 2, 2022. March 3 marks China's national Ear Care Day. Various activities were held to promote public awareness of hearing protection. (Photo by Guo Bin/Xinhua)

A medical worker carries out an examination for a child who is hard of hearing in Neiqiu County, Xingtai, north China's Hebei Province, March 2, 2022. March 3 marks China's national Ear Care Day. Various activities were held to promote public awareness of hearing protection. (Photo by Liu Jidong/Xinhua)

A volunteer carries out an ear examination and hearing test for a resident in Fuyang, east China's Anhui Province, March 2, 2022. March 3 marks China's national Ear Care Day. Various activities were held to promote public awareness of hearing protection. (Photo by Wang Biao/Xinhua)

Editor: JYZ
WELLINGTON, March 4 (Xinhua) -- Three Paralympic alpine skiers will represent New Zealand at the Beijing 2022 Paralympic Winter Games.

Paralympian Corey Peters and Aaron Ewen will compete in the sitting category, and Adam Hall will take part in the standing category.

The team arrived in Beijing last Saturday, and the competition gets underway on March 5.

Hall and Peters are no strangers to the Paralympics, having achieved multiple medals for New Zealand in past Paralympic Winter Games.

Beijing 2022 will be Aaron Ewen's Paralympic debut after an injury forced him to withdraw just before the PyeongChang Paralympic Winter Games in 2018.

Five Para alpine ski events are contested at the Winter Paralympics, and the three New Zealand Para athletes are likely to compete across both speed and technical disciplines.

The Beijing 2022 Paralympic Winter Games have rigorous pandemic prevention measures in places such as daily testing, physical distancing, temperature checks, and a closed-loop system, said Jane Stevens, Chef de Mission of the New Zealand team.

Minister for Disability Issues Carmel Sepuloni spoke highly of the organizers of the Beijing 2022 Paralympic Winter Games, saying more than 289,000 facilities have been renovated barrier-free for the Paralympics.

Editor: WPY
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The fifth session of the 13th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) opens at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, March 4, 2022. (Xinhua/Yin Bogu)

BEIJING, March 4 (Xinhua) -- China's top political advisory body started its annual session Friday afternoon in Beijing.

Xi Jinping and other Chinese leaders attended the opening meeting of the fifth session of the 13th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), held at the Great Hall of the People.

At the meeting, the agenda for the session was reviewed and approved.

Wang Yang, chairman of the CPPCC National Committee, delivered a work report of the Standing Committee of the CPPCC National Committee to the session.

Wang Yang, chairman of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) National Committee, delivers a work report of the Standing Committee of the CPPCC National Committee at the opening meeting of the fifth session of the 13th CPPCC National Committee at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, March 4, 2022. (Xinhua/Rao Aimin)

Zhang Qingli presides over the opening meeting of the fifth session of the 13th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, March 4, 2022. (Xinhua/Huang Jingwen)

Liu Xincheng delivers a report on how the proposals from political advisors have been handled at the opening meeting of the fifth session of the 13th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, March 4, 2022. (Xinhua/Ding Lin)

The fifth session of the 13th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) opens at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, March 4, 2022. (Xinhua/Lu Ye)

The fifth session of the 13th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) opens at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, March 4, 2022. (Xinhua/Jin Liangkuai)

The fifth session of the 13th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) opens at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, March 4, 2022. (Xinhua/Ding Lin)

The fifth session of the 13th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) opens at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, March 4, 2022. (Xinhua/Jin Liwang)

The fifth session of the 13th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) opens at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, March 4, 2022. (Xinhua/Rao Aimin)

The fifth session of the 13th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) opens at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, March 4, 2022. (Xinhua/Zhai Jianlan)

The fifth session of the 13th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) opens at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, March 4, 2022. (Xinhua/Ju Peng)

(220304) -- BEIJING, March 4, 2022 (Xinhua) -- Members of the 13th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) attend the opening meeting of the fifth session of the 13th CPPCC National Committee at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, March 4, 2022. (Xinhua/Yin Gang)

The military band of the Chinese People's Liberation Army performs during the opening meeting of the fifth session of the 13th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, March 4, 2022. (Xinhua/Ding Haitao)

The fifth session of the 13th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) opens at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, March 4, 2022. (Xinhua/Jin Liwang)

The fifth session of the 13th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) opens at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, March 4, 2022. (Xinhua/Ding Lin)

The fifth session of the 13th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) opens at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, March 4, 2022. (Xinhua/Ding Lin)

Members of the 13th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) attend the opening meeting of the fifth session of the 13th CPPCC National Committee at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, March 4, 2022. (Xinhua/Yin Gang)

The fifth session of the 13th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) opens at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, March 4, 2022. (Xinhua/Zhang Ling)

The fifth session of the 13th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) opens at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, March 4, 2022. (Xinhua/Rao Aimin)

The fifth session of the 13th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) opens at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, March 4, 2022. (Xinhua/Ding Lin)

The fifth session of the 13th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) opens at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, March 4, 2022. (Xinhua/Rao Aimin)

The fifth session of the 13th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) opens at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, March 4, 2022. (Xinhua/Ding Haitao)

The fifth session of the 13th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) opens at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, March 4, 2022. (Xinhua/Rao Aimin)

Members of the 13th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) attend the opening meeting of the fifth session of the 13th CPPCC National Committee at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, March 4, 2022. (Xinhua/Huang Jingwen)

The fifth session of the 13th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) opens at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, March 4, 2022. (Xinhua/Jin Liwang)

Editor: WXY
Polish Nuclear Society refuses to cooperate with organizations linked with Russian authorities because of its aggression towards Ukraine

The Polish Nuclear Society (PTN, Polskie Towarzystwo Nukleoniczne) refused to cooperate and contact organizations associated with the authorities of the Russian Federation until the end of Russian aggression in Ukraine.

"Given the military aggression of the Russian Federation, PTN declares that it will neither cooperate, nor maintain official contacts with organizations associated with the Russian authorities until its aggression is stopped and those responsible for violations of international law are brought to justice. Such contacts would be incompatible with the society's charter, one of the goals of whose activity is the use of nuclear phenomena, processes and methods for the benefit of society," the message posted on its website says.

In it, PTN strongly condemned "Russia's unprovoked and unjustified aggression against independent and democratic Ukraine."

"The veiled threats of the use of weapons of mass destruction by the aggressor authorities also deserve resolute protest," PTN stressed, calling on all people of good will to provide Ukrainians with all the necessary assistance.
Ukraine has suspended the possibility of exporting natural gas from the country's territory, the press service of Ukrtransgaz, the operator of underground gas storage facilities, has reported.

"The Ministry of Energy of Ukraine has banned market participants from exporting natural gas from the customs territory of our state. This also applies to gas stored in Ukraine's underground gas storage facilities in the "customs warehouse" mode," the company said in a statement.

The restrictions were introduced by order No. 99 of the Ministry of Energy dated March 3, 2022 in connection with the conduct of hostilities on the territory of Ukraine.

In addition, the company suspended the publication of recent information on the operation of underground gas storage facilities on the company's official website. A full-fledged publication of all data on the work of the UGS operator will be restored after the end of hostilities on the territory of Ukraine.
The risks arising from the capture of Chornobyl nuclear power plant (NPP) by the Russian aggressor, the approach of its troops to the operating plants and the barbaric shelling of Kharkiv, although they do not have an insurance nature and coverage, cause serious concern for the world and the Ukrainian community, the Nuclear Insurance Pool of Ukraine association and its partners in the international pooling system, since they increase the likelihood of a nuclear incident.

In a special information report of the Nuclear Insurance Pool of Ukraine association, published on the website of the Insurance Business association, it is also noted that Ukrainian insurers-members of the organization continue to be fully liable under contracts concluded with Energoatom and other insurers, relying on reliable reinsurance of partner pools.

"At the same time, we inform you that the Nuclear Insurance Pool of Ukraine association has no relations with the Nuclear Insurance Pool of Russia, the killer country. The reinsurance contract with the Nuclear Insurance Pool of Belarus is subject to termination in accordance with moral considerations and sanction requirements," the report says.

The Nuclear Insurance Pool of Ukraine also referred to the data of Energoatom, according to which, as of March 2, 2022, all nuclear power plants in Ukraine produce electricity stably and safely for the needs of the population, industry and the army. Despite the martial law due to the full-scale aggression of Russia, there are no violations of the conditions for safe operation.

The Nuclear Insurance Pool association receives letters from foreign nuclear insurance pools-partners with words of sincere support for Ukraine and anger towards Putin's barbarians.
The National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) condemns the decisions of businesses and people in the current difficult situation to set prices for goods and services in foreign currencies, in particular in dollars or euros.

"Setting prices in Ukraine in foreign currency is illegal. Such actions are not only immoral in a war, but are also a direct violation of Ukrainian legislation," the National Bank said in a statement on Thursday.

The NBU recalled that the hryvnia as a national currency is the only legal tender on the territory of Ukraine and must be accepted by all individuals and legal entities without any restrictions throughout the country and for all types of payments in accordance with Article 35 of the Law "On the National Bank of Ukraine".

The regulator clarified that, in particular, he became aware of cases of setting prices for rental housing in euros in Ukraine, which violates the law.
Minister of Culture and Information Policy Oleksandr Tkachenko has said that Russian troops are deliberately destroying the historical centers of large cities.

"Most of Putin's war crimes in Ukraine are committed from the air. In Kyiv alone, the air raid siren worked 60 times. Russian missiles and planes deliberately destroy the historical centers of large cities. Putin wants to demolish European heritage and culture, to wipe them off the face of the earth," he wrote on the Telegram channel.

The minister said that in Kharkiv, the Russian invaders fired on the Uspensky Cathedral, where people were hiding, the educational buildings of the Kharkiv National University of Arts and the dormitories of the Kharkiv State Academy of Culture, and in Ivankiv near Kyiv, the museum of the world-famous artist Maria Pryimachenko, whose works Pablo Picasso himself was fond of.

In addition, the Kyiv State Academy of Decorative Arts and Design named after Mykhailo Boychuk also received damages from the invaders.

"A mad dictator threatens to destroy St. Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv, a UNESCO temple built in the 11th century! Hundreds of innocent victims, the total destruction of temples, cathedrals and museums - this is the price of the still uncovered sky over Ukraine," Tkachenko wrote.

The minister called on international partners to close the sky over Ukraine.
Kuleba: Many civilians killed amid two day bombing of Borodyanka by Russia, stop Russia immediately, close Ukrainian sky

Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine Dmytro Kuleba calls to immediately stop the barbaric actions of the Russian Federation and close the Ukrainian sky.

"Each time when Russian liars say they don't drop bombs on Ukrainian cities, show this photo of a residential apartment building in Borodyanka, Kyiv region. Russians bombed the town for two days, killing many civilians. Stop barbaric Russia now. Close Ukrainian sky. Act now!" he said on Twitter Thursday.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba has held a telephone conversation with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken to agree on further strengthening Ukraine's air defense capabilities and imposing new sanctions against Russia.

"Call with Secretary Blinken to coordinate further strengthening of Ukraine's air defense capabilities, imposing new sanctions on Russia. Grateful to the U.S. for working on additional financial aid for Ukraine. Russia must cease hostilities to allow opening of humanitarian corridors," he said on Twitter Thursday.
The European Union has approved the European Commission's proposal to activate the Temporary Protection Directive, which will allow for prompt and effective assistance to people fleeing the war in Ukraine.

The corresponding decision was made in Brussels on Thursday as part of a meeting of the European Council for Justice and Home Affairs.

"Historic decision in #JHA right now; the EU will give temporary protection to those fleeing the war in Ukraine. The EU stands united to save lives!" EU Commissioner for Home Affairs Ylva Johansson said on Twitter.

Under this directive, those fleeing the war will be granted temporary protection in the EU, meaning they will be granted a residence permit and will have access to education and the labor market for a period of one year with a further possibility of renewal.

"This directive offers immediate protection to all Ukrainians, as well as those who live in Ukraine for a long time. The document creates a wide range of rights: when they are in the EU, they will receive a residence permit, access to the labor market, education, health care and social insurance in the states," the European Commission said earlier.

Anyone fleeing the war will be able to enter the European Union, even without the necessary documents and with pets, however, a security check will be carried out.
It's not too late for Russia to stop the war in Ukraine, UK Defense Minister Ben Wallace believes.

He said to Russia to stop this. It is not too late to stop doing what they are doing, he noted. The steps they have taken are illegal and they risk being isolated for decades to come, the British minister was quoted as saying by Western media on Thursday.
South Africa: Employers urged to place TVET graduates

Higher Education and Training Minister, Dr Blade Nzimande, has called on all employers to open their workplaces for the placement of Technical Vocational Education and Training (TVET) college students.

In the same vein, the Minister urged employers to give workplace exposure to TVET college lecturers, so that they can train students in what is currently needed by industry.

The primary aim of these placements is to assist the transition of our young people from learning to working, Nzimande said on Friday at a briefing on learning and training opportunities provided through Sector Education and Training Authorities (SETAs).

He reaffirmed the departments commitment to ensure that the skills development system offers about 100 000 opportunities, including learnerships, apprenticeships and internships.

The briefing follows a two-day engagement held earlier this week by the department and SETAs on their role in fighting unemployment, inequality and poverty through skills development.

During a meeting with all 21 SETAs, Nzimande urged them to give priority to the work placement of TVET college graduates, who require workplace exposure, in order to complete their training, and to facilitate the transition from learning to working.

Government has already spent vast amounts of money to support our youth through the TVET system, and therefore, it is important that we assist them to transition to the workplace through appropriate placement, Nzimande said.

The parties looked at how SETAs have performed in the past five years (2016/17 to 2020/21), and collectively agreed on skills development interventions planned for the 2022/23 financial year, especially those aimed at supporting the Economic Reconstruction and Recovery Plan (ERRP).

The Minister said there is widespread agreement and commitment by the SETAs regarding a need to expand the participation of young people in skills development programmes, as well as workplace-based learning opportunities.

He said this has given practical effect in their 2022/23 annual performance plans.

Our skills training interventions will also seek to support and strengthen the District Development Model, which aims to improve provision of services and socio-economic development in each of our 44 districts and 8 metros.

107 000 workplace-based learning opportunities targeted

In response to the high numbers of unemployed young South Africans, Nzimande announced that the department has increased its target for workplace-based learning for the financial year, commencing on 1 April 2022, with annual target above 100 000 (107 000).

In addition to the 107 000 workplace-based learning opportunities, we are also targeting 20 500 opportunities for apprentices, 22 500 for artisanal trades; 31 300 for those completing learnerships and 148 000 for learners entering into various skills development programmes, such as digital skills, crop production and plant production, Nzimande said.

Additional funds will be re-allocated from the National Skills Fund (NSF), with immediate focus on work placement of graduates in TVET N6 Hospitality and Catering Services, N6 Tourism and NCV L4: Tourism learners.

The Bank SETA has also set aside R54 million for 2022/23 to reskill and upskill workers in the sector.

Nzimande announced that SETAs will support the Department of Science and Innovation (DSI) in the development of critical high-end skills in selected technology areas, including the bio economy, space science, technology energy, intellectual property management, among others.

Support will also be directed towards technical development and the artisan skills that would contribute to the commercial exploitation and social beneficiation of newly developed innovations, Nzimande said.

Over 44 000 unemployed youth placed in learnerships

Despite losing much revenue in 2020/21 due to the skills levy holiday and COVID-19 pandemic, Nzimande said SETAs registered some significant progress for the year ended 31 March 2021.

The SETAs, combined, placed 44 619 unemployed [people] into learnerships. Over 34 710 of them were young people below the ages of 35 years old and over 25 550 were female, at a cost of about R1 billion.

In the same period, we placed 9 901 interns. Of these, 9 096 were young people below the age of 35 and 6 455 were female. Our SETAs spent just over R883 million in this regard, Nzimande said.

For TVET placement, he said, SETAs placed about 8 539 learners, with 5 656 females, at a cost of R393 million.

For the university placement, SETAs placed 5 183 learners in workplaces, at a value of R300 million, said the Minister.  SAnews.gov.za

This story has been published on: 2022-03-04. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
Despite China's large land area, only one impact crater--the relatively small Xiuyan crater in Liaoning province--had been discovered there prior to 2020.

Then, last year, a team of geologists found another crater northwest of Yilan in Heilongjiang Province. The crater was discovered in the heavily forested Lesser Xing'an mountain range, where local residents knew it as "Quanshan," or "circular mountain ridge."

The Yilan crater, slightly larger than Xiuyan, spans about 1.85 kilometers (1.15 miles), making it the largest crater on Earth under 100,000 years old. Carbon-14 dating of charcoal and organic lake sediments suggests the crater formed between 46,000 and 53,000 years ago. Meteor (or Barringer) Crater in Arizona is also roughly 50,000 years old, but its diameter is 1.2 kilometers (0.75 miles).

In the image above, acquired by the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8 on October 8, 2021, the scalloped northern rim of Yilan crater is highlighted by fall foliage. The northern rim--which rises 150 meters (500 feet) above the crater floor--is well-preserved, but the southern third of the crater rim is missing.

Although the asteroid that created the crater struck relatively recently in geologic time, the granite rocks it impacted were much older, having formed about 200 million years ago in the Early Jurassic Period. To investigate the impact structure, the research team drilled down 438 meters (1,440 feet) into the center of the crater, where they found hundreds of meters of ancient lake sediments and shattered granite. The team also found unambiguous evidence that the structure was indeed an impact crater, they reported in Meteoritics & Planetary Science. The core revealed shocked quartz, melted granite, glass containing holes formed by gas bubbles, and tear-drop shaped glass fragments--all indications of a high-intensity impact event.

The researchers continue to investigate the cause of the missing southern rim. However, the presence of lakebed sediments inside the crater suggests the rim was intact long enough for significant deposits to build up on the lake bottom. Such deposits often produce rich, organic soil; some farm fields can be seen inside the southern part of the crater. The rest of the crater interior is covered with swamps and forest wetlands.

NASA Earth Observatory image by Lauren Dauphin, using Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey. Story by Sara E. Pratt.

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The Prosecutor General's Offices of Poland and Lithuania have already launched their criminal investigations into Russia's invasion of Ukraine, said Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova.

"We are assembling a coalition for the sake of justice against the aggression of the Russian Federation. The two countries have already begun their criminal proceedings on Russia's invasion of our state. The Lithuanian Prosecutor General's Office has launched a pretrial investigation into aggression, illegal treatment of people prohibited by international law and prohibited Russian military attacks in Ukraine," Venediktova said on the telegram channel of the Prosecutor General's Office.

The Prosecutor General said that the Prosecutor General's Office of Poland also launched an investigation into the case of the beginning and conduct of the war of conquest.

"Other states are also in the process of registering such proceedings and starting investigations," Venediktova stressed.

She explained that the coalition in the investigation is important to collect and document the testimony of people fleeing the war, the evidence to bring the aggressor to justice must be at all possible levels.

"I also spoke today with Attorney General of England and Wales Suella Braverman and Attorney General of Italy Giovanni Salvi. She thanked for the support of Ukraine through the presentation to the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, thanks to which the process of a full-fledged investigation of the situation in Ukraine was launched," the prosecutor general noted.

She also drew attention to the fact that for the Ukrainian prosecutor's office, partners' assistance is important in expanding the geography of national investigations into Russian aggression, creating international joint investigation teams on the bloody war in Ukraine, cooperation within the framework of the task force, which is being created in the Prosecutor General's Office for the search, arrest and confiscation of assets and property of war criminals from the Russian Federation abroad.

"We already have 13 suspected high-ranking officials of the Russian Federation, and there will be thousands. And we must do everything so that a 'red flag' of arrest awaits them on the border of every civilized country, and their villas and yachts are confiscated for the restoration of our country, which they are destroying with their deadly missiles," Venediktova summed up.
The Russian Federation will be held accountable for the war crimes committed, said Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba.

"We will hold Russia accountable for its war crimes and crimes against humanity. Together with 45 states, Ukraine has launched OSCE Moscow Mechanism on Russias invasion. Expert mission will submit findings to accountability mechanisms, including international courts & tribunals," Kuleba said on Twitter Thursday.

The OSCE Moscow Mechanism is the OSCE's operating method for monitoring the implementation of commitments made by participating States in the area of human rights and democracy. The Moscow Mechanism enables participating States to form ad hoc missions from among independent experts to assist in resolving specific problems related to the human dimension, whether on their own territory or on the territory of another OSCE participating State.
Energoatom called on the residents of Energodar, a satellite city of Europe's largest Zaporizhia nuclear power plant, not to believe in the fake appeals of the president of Ukraine about an alleged surrender, which are now being broadcast on certain local websites.

"Several websites of Energodar are broadcasting it as an appeal of the president of Ukraine on surrender. This is a daring fake. The occupiers are trying by all means to stop the heroic resistance of the city," Energoatom said on Telegram at 18:15. on Thursday.

The mayor of Energodar, Dmytro Orlov, also said that due to the shelling of the Russian invaders, there is no water supply in the city, and there is no electricity in some microdistricts.
Deputy Prime Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration of Ukraine Olha Stefanishyna calls on PACE President Tiny Kox and PACE Assembly Secretary General Despina Chatzivassiliou-Tsovilis to influence Russia to open humanitarian corridors.

"Olha Stefanishyna noted that Russia began the second phase of its military aggression, shelling and actually destroying Ukrainian settlements. She stressed that such actions should be qualified as acts of terrorism aimed at intimidating the population. Unarmed people who were under the gun of Russian tanks were left without water, food and medical assistance. It is critically important to open humanitarian corridors to settlements being under siege and shelling. The delivery of humanitarian aid is blocked, at the same time, Russia does not allow civilians to safely evacuate," the official said.

Stefanishyna said that Ukraine had already sent a request to the Red Cross asking to negotiate with the Russian side to open humanitarian corridors.

"Russia must fulfill its obligations under the Geneva Convention. The Council of Europe was the place where the international framework for the protection of human rights took shape. These rights must be protected now. I also urge to record all human rights violations committed by the Kremlin in Ukraine," she stressed.

The Deputy Prime Minister called on PACE to use all tools to protect the civilian population and to oblige Russia to ensure the safe passage of humanitarian aid.

She also noted that more than 9,000 Russian soldiers have already died in Ukraine and the Russian authorities refuse to take the bodies of the dead, and the whole world should know about this problem.
The American Nuclear Society (ANS) insists on the cessation of hostilities near nuclear power plants and other nuclear facilities in Ukraine.

"We echo the International Atomic Energy Agency and the World Association of Nuclear Operators in appealing to all armed combatants in Ukraine to refrain from military actions near nuclear facilities. The staff of Ukraine's nuclear power plants must be able to fulfill their duties without interruption, undue pressure, or the fear of being killed or injured," a statement by American Nuclear Society President Steven Nesbit and Executive Director and CEO Craig Piercy posted on the ANS website on Thursday says.

At the same time, the leaders of the society, referring to the opinion of 10,000 of its members, noted that the most reliable way to prevent further loss of life and any risk to Ukraine's nuclear facilities is an immediate cessation of hostilities in general.

"We also urge the securing of off-site power supplies for every nuclear facility, uninterrupted transportation to and from sites for plant workers and supply chains; and unfettered communications with regulators and inspectors," the statement says.

ANS also created a special Ukrainian Humanitarian Fund for workers in the nuclear industry and support for the nuclear community in Ukraine. Ukraine's courageous nuclear industry professionals and their families need the support of the international community as they continue to safely operate nuclear power units during the Russian invasion, the statement reads.
President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky, asked by an American correspondent whether the U.S. president was late in helping Ukraine against the backdrop of the Russian invasion, said that the whole world was late in helping Ukraine with this.

"The issue is not only President Biden, the issue is the indecision of the whole world. And I tell you frankly that all these steps, and the world is stronger than Putin's military I would really not like any decisions regarding diplomacy, Europe, NATO, Ukraine and our independence, nuclear weapons that we heard about, or the likelihood of a nuclear strike - I would not want it to depend only on this team that gave birth, lives and dies in military uniform. Because there are decisions that are made by diplomats," he said during a conversation with foreign journalists on Thursday.

"The military must defend and must not attack, therefore the whole world was late with Ukraine. And let them forgive me. And their people told them about it, not mine. You see what is happening in all the squares of the world. People come out and support. The whole world should know that it was late with this policy," he added.

Responding to a question regarding a recent conversation with U.S. President Joe Biden, Zelensky said that their contact was positive.

"We had a good contact. I can tell you the truth: it's a pity that such a conversation took place after the start of the war, and not before it. We can now often talk," the president summed up.
President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky sees the point in the Ukrainian-Russian talks that are taking place in Belarus.

"Any negotiation makes sense. Any word is more important than a shot. If you can first say and then shoot, do it. I live by such principles," Zelensky told foreign journalists on Thursday.

The President stressed that the Ukrainian delegation is ready to speak on all topics, but "the Russian side has long formulated answers to their own questions."

"What is the point of asking questions if you already have an answer? And this, it seems to me, is the difficulty of this dialogue," the head of state said.

Zelensky believes that in the Ukrainian-Russian dialogue "there are things on which some compromises must be found so that people do not die."

"But there are things on which there is no compromise. Just because you can't just leave and say - yes, this is your country, Ukraine is part of Russia. It's impossible! ... Why do they offer this to us?" Zelensky said.
Germany should be one of the guarantors of Ukraine's security, said President Volodymyr Zelensky.

"Germany, like other influential leaders, should be one of the guarantors of Ukraine's security, and he [Federal Chancellor of Germany Olaf Scholz] should be here and should definitely be on the side of not Russia, at least - on the side of justice," Zelensky told foreign journalists on Thursday.

According to the President, Ukraine deserved "to be at the level of such EU countries as Germany in every sense of the word." He stressed that the main priority now is security, but the issue of Ukraine's membership in the EU is also important, and "a lot of things will depend on Scholz, on Germany."

"I think it is impossible to raise the question today: what to give to Ukraine, what not to give. We cannot ask anyone for anything. We are protecting the interests of everyone today, so it seems to me that this is the case when it hurts and is difficult for someone, do not expect him to call you, do it yourself," Zelensky said.
Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Slovakia, Germany and Hungary have introduced permit-free travel for humanitarian cargo carriers to Ukraine, according to the Telegram channel of the Ministry of Infrastructure of Ukraine.

The matter concerns the release of carriers from any additional conditions, in particular the need to obtain permits for international freight traffic. This is necessary for the prompt delivery of humanitarian cargo during martial law.

To cross the border with Lithuania, Latvia and Slovakia, you do not need to submit information about the carrier and vehicle.

"We thank our European partners for their support. The Ministry of Infrastructure of Ukraine continues to work with foreign partners in order to speed up the process of transporting humanitarian cargo in an extremely difficult period for Ukraine," the ministry stressed.
Prime Minister of Ukraine Denys Shmyhal calls on the UN and the Red Cross to provide "green corridors" so that the authorities can provide assistance and evacuate everyone who needs it.

"After the attacks on the civilian population, the whole world saw that the Russian military are terrorists who kill civilians and do not allow assistance to the victims. In some cities, children, the elderly, pregnant women are trapped by the enemy and in some places have been surviving for several days without light, heat, water, food and medical care. The invader does not provide green corridors for evacuation," Shmyhal said in his address on Thursday evening.

The prime minister said that Ukraine requires the provision of "green corridors" so that the authorities can provide assistance and evacuate everyone who needs it.
The Expedition 66 crew is continuing its preparations for a pair of spacewalks at the International Space Station scheduled for later this month.

The seven orbital residents also pursued ongoing life science while maintaining operations at the orbital lab.

Three NASA astronauts and an ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut participated in a fit check for a pair of U.S. spacesuits on Friday. Flight Engineers Raja Chari of NASA and Matthias Maurer of ESA started the work by readying spacesuits and tools inside the U.S. Quest airlock. In the afternoon, NASA Flight Engineers Mark Vande Hei and Tom Marshburn assisted the two astronauts as they verified the correct sizing of the suits ahead of a pair of spacewalks planned for March 15 and 23.

Vande Hei and Marshburn started their day pairing up inside the Kibo laboratory module researching how microgravity affects eye structure and visual function. The experiment that takes place in Kibo's Life Science Glovebox and examines changes in the vascular system of the retina and tissue remodeling.

NASA Flight Engineer Kayla Barron took a break from today's spacewalk preparations and installed computer hardware on combustion research gear located in the Kibo module. She also helped Vande Hei and Marshburn stow science gear after they wrapped up a half-a-day of visual function research.

Commander Anton Shkaplerov of Roscosmos kept up this week's maintenance in the station's Russian segment as he replaced life support gear before checking on a space biology experiment. Flight Engineer Pyotr Dubrov focused on support work for a variety of electronics components and computer gear throughout the day.

On-Orbit Status Report

Payloads:

Glovebox Freezer: The Glovebox Freezer was set up in the LSG in preparation of upcoming Rodent Research operations. The Glovebox Freezer integrates into the Life Science Glovebox (LSG) and Microgravity Science Glovebox (MSG) to provide rapid freeze capability in support of biological sciences.

Solid Combustion Experiment Module (SCEM): The SCEM CPU board was installed onto the power and communications unit. This new CPU is expected to recover the activation capability for the SCEM hardware. The SCEM is designed to acquire data on the limiting oxygen concentration that flame spread over solid fuels sustains. It is also possible to obtain the limiting electric current caused by self-ignition of the insulated wires due to short-circuit. Combustion characteristics of solid materials in the microgravity environment where no buoyancy-induced convection occurs will be identified, as well as the effect of gravity on the combustion limit of solid materials, through studies by SCEM.

Universal Intelligent Glass Optics (UNIGLO): The UNIGLO hardware setup was completed in the MSG with the setup of the internal cameras. UNIGLO tests the effects of microgravity on a glass optics module capable of processing various types of complex glasses. The module uses artificial intelligence (AI) to help adapt materials processing techniques to the microgravity environment and a sensor based on laser-Doppler interferometry to measure the effects of microgravity on processing complex glasses for a variety of applications in space and on Earth.

Systems:

Extravehicular Activity (EVA) Mobility Unit (EMU) Preparation: In preparation for the iROSA Prep 3A EVA currently scheduled for March 15th, Equipment Lock (E-LK) Preparation activities were completed to prepare the equipment lock and EMUs for suit donning during On-orbit Fitcheck Verification (OFV). The crew then performed the OFV for the two suited crewmembers with the assistance of two intravehicular (IV) crewmembers. During the OFV, the crew donned their EMUs to ensure a proper fit before the upcoming EVA. Each EMU contains exchangeable components, allowing each astronaut to adjust EMU fit to their individual preference. It is important to ensure the EMU fits as expected before crew egress.

Completed Task List Activities:

EVA Tool Configuring

EasyMotion Imagery

Today's Ground Activities:

All activities are complete unless otherwise noted.

JEMRMS EFU Adapter Stow

JEMRMS SFA maneuver to Joint Zero Position.

VxWorks Update

JEM Airlock and ACDU-RC Deactivation

ITCS Airlock LTL Flow Initiation/Terminate

IAS EVA OFV Communication Configuration/Deconfig

UHF 2 Activation/Deactivation

JPM PROX Range and Range rate CHECKOUT (Transponder mode) for B-String

HTV PROX Switch Ops

Look Ahead Plan

Saturday, March 5 (GMT 64)

Payloads:

CCU Ops (NASA)

Square (NASA)

Systems:

PBA and CTB Relocate

IFM KU Comm Unit Cable Swap

Sunday, March 6 (GMT 65)

Payloads:

Square (NASA)

Systems:

Crew Off-Duty

Monday, March 7 (GMT 66)

Payloads:

CIR Bench Configuration for SoFIE (NASA)

EasyMotion Charge (ESA)

GloveBox Freezer ECU Deploy (NASA)

IGO Lab Camera Orient (NASA)

CAL MTL Leak Chk (NASA)

CIR SOFIE Reconfiguration (NASA)

Square (NASA)

RR-18 Ops (NASA)

Systems:

Regenerative ECLSS Recycle Tank Drain/Fill

EVA BATT Removal

EVA LREBA Ops

EHS TOCA WRS Sample Analysis

Urine Transfer System Offload EDV Swap

Photo TV Battery Charge

IFM OGA Pump ORU Sample

Columbus HD-VCA2 R&R

Lab CCAA configuration crew steps for single CCAA operations

Today's Planned Activities:

All activities are complete unless otherwise noted.

HRF Generic Saliva Collection

HRF Generic MELFI Sample Retrieval and Insertion Operations

Standard Measures Ops

LSG Work Volume Deploy/Stow

EML Experiment Module (EXM) Cable Installation and Clean-Up

LSG Primary Crew Restraint Unfold/Fold

Glovebox Freezer - Life Science Glovebox - Setup

Solid Combustion (SCEM) Item Gathering

Solid Combustion (SCEM) CPU Install

Glovebox Freezer Leak Check

Rodent Research LSG Setup

Cold Atom Lab MTL Jumper Leak Check

NG-17 CD Transfer

Health Maintenance System (HMS) ISS Food Intake Tracker (ISS FIT)

Extravehicular Activity (EVA) Equipment Lock Preparation Part 1

Rodent Research Cold Carrier Cold Stowage Insert

Extravehicular Activity (EVA) Extravehicular Mobility Unit (EMU) On-orbit Fitcheck Verification (OFV) Extravehicular (EV) (IV)

Intelligent Glass Optics Hardware Install

Glovebox Freezer ECU Temp Stow

IMS Update

Public Affairs Office (PAO) Event in JEM

DreamStar Hardware Operations

HTV PROX Switch OFF

Extravehicular Activity (EVA) Tool Configuring

SQuARES Flexible Daily Imagery

Micro SD Card Exchange

EasyMotion Data Downlink

[aborted] CB/ISS CREW CONFERENCE

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The Ukrainian delegation did not get the results it had hoped for in the negotiations with the Russian Federation, said Mykhailo Podoliak, adviser to the head of the President's Office.

"Regrettably, we did not get the results we expected. The only thing I can say is that we discussed the humanitarian aspect in detail, because quite a lot of cities are now surrounded. There is a dramatic situation with food, medicine, with the possibility of evacuation," Podoliak told reporters after the second round of negotiations with representatives of the Russian delegation in Belarus.
Prime Minister of Ukraine Denys Shmyhal says that the government is starting to work on the creation of four funds, the money of which will be used to restore Ukraine.

"The truth will out and we will never give up. Therefore, already now, on behalf of the president of Ukraine, the government is starting to work on the creation of four funds. The money from these funds will be used to restore Ukraine," Shmyhal said on Thursday evening.

According to him, the first is the Fund for the Restoration of Destroyed Property and Infrastructure.

"We will restore everything that the Russian invaders destroyed. Every house, every apartment, every school, every kindergarten and hospital! Every bridge and road!" the prime minister said.

The second is the Fund for Renewal and Transformation of the Economy.

"We will ask our partners to accept the so-called Ukrainian Marshall Plan for us. We need not just to restore the economy, we will build a new European country," he added.

The third is the Debt Service and Repayment Fund.

"Ukraine today, despite the war, fulfills all its obligations. On March 1, the Ministry of Finance of Ukraine made a coupon payment in the amount of $292 million on eurobonds. But we believe that the world should help and support Ukraine, realizing the burden that lies on us today," Shmyhal said.

"And the fourth is the fund to support the affected business. We all see how many entrepreneurs and companies help our military, doctors, and ordinary Ukrainians today. Everyone united for a common goal - to drive the enemy out of our land. And we understand that our task is to help businesses return to normal work, normal life, normal existence," the prime minister summed up.
The Verkhovna Rada has introduced criminal liability for collaborationism and increased liability for looting, said Ruslan Stefanchuk, Chairman of the Ukrainian Parliament.

"We have introduced criminal liability for collaborationism, strengthened opposition to the hybrid information war waged by the aggressor state," the chairman said in his video message following the plenary meeting of the Verkhovna Rada on Thursday.

In addition, deputies provided for the possibility of obtaining firearms for civilians and increased the responsibility for looting.
Ukrainians collect UAH 80 mln through Diia to help Ukrainian Armed Forces, assistance in cryptocurrency is $55 mln  Fedorov

Residents of Ukraine have collected UAH 80 million in aid to the Armed Forces of Ukraine through the Diia application, Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Digital Transformation Mykhailo Fedorov said.

"Ukrainians raised UAH 80 million for the Ukrainian army through Diia. People, you are incredible. The whole world sees how united we are and are uniting around us," Fedorov wrote on his Telegram channel.

In addition, he stated that crypto aid has increased too.

"The global crypto community has raised about $55 million for Ukraine," he wrote.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba has refuted the statement of the head of the Foreign Intelligence Service of the Russian Federation, Sergei Naryshkin, that Ukraine is allegedly working on the creation of nuclear weapons.

"Another Russian hallucination by SVR head Sergey Naryshkin. He claims that Ukraine has been working on creating nuclear weapons with U.S. knowing about it and being ready to assist. I once again refute this sick fake. Ukraine has always been and remains a responsible NPT member," Kuleba said on Twitter Thursday.
President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky has stressed that Ukraine does not seize foreign territories and called on Russian President Vladimir Putin to leave Ukrainian soil or sit down at the negotiating table.

Answering the question of foreign journalists whether Ukraine is ready to "provide any guarantees to the Russian Federation," Zelensky said that Ukraine does not threaten or attack anyone.

"Guarantees for what? We are not attacking Russia, we are not going to attack it. What guarantee? Are we in NATO? No, we are not. Do we have nuclear weapons? No, we don't. What should I say? Whom should I give something to? You see, the fact is that this is also an information bomb that everyone is talking about. What to give, Lord? What do you want from us? Get off our land. If you don't want to leave now, sit down at the negotiating table. I am free. Sit with me, but not at 30 meters, as with Macron, Scholz, etc. I'm your neighbor, I don't need to be kept at 30 meters, I don't bite, I'm a normal man. Sit with me, talk to me, what are you afraid of? We do not threaten anyone, we are not terrorists. We do not seize banks and we do not seize foreign lands," Zelensky said, speaking to Western media representatives on Thursday.
After the shelling and entry of Russian invaders into Energodar, at least two civilians were injured, city mayor Dmytro Orlov said.

"Currently, in Energodar, after the shelling of the city and the entry of the invaders into its streets, at least two wounded civilians are known for sure. Information about their condition is being specified," Orlov wrote on Telegram on Thursday.
As of 18:00 on March 3, the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) continue to defend and hold their positions in all directions, the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine reports on Facebook.

In the Volyn direction, the Armed Forces of Ukraine hold certain lines.

It is noted that on the territory of Belarus, in a wooded area on the other side of the Ukrainian-Belarusian border, the 38th separate air assault brigade of the Armed Forces of the Republic of Belarus is deployed. According to available information, the command of the military unit received an order to cross the border with Ukraine. Finishing the combat order will be carried out after crossing the border.

The moral and psychological state of the paratroopers is extremely low. Officers and soldiers do not want to play the role of Russian mercenaries. A significant number were in favor of terminating contracts, most of which expire in May.

In the Siverschyna area, mechanized and tank units are steadily retaining the defensive on the occupied territories around Chernihiv.

In Slobozhanschyna, the mechanized units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine are effectively conducting defensive battles with superior enemy forces, and in some areas they are successful. The enemy suffers heavy losses.

During heavy defensive battles, the AFU units frustrated the plans of the Russian invaders and prevented the enemy from reaching the administrative borders of Donetsk and Luhansk regions. The city of Mariupol continues to defend.

The General Staff also noted that in the occupied territories of Donbas, the formation of units from reservists called up in January-February 2022 continues. It is planned that these troops will be urgently transferred to Kharkiv. At the same time, the mobilized men express acute displeasure.

In the Prymorske direction, the Armed Forces units are conducting a defensive operation and covering part of the sea coast. Part of the forces suppresses the enemy's attempts to break through from the area of the cities of Kherson and Mykolaiv.

The Kyiv defense group continues to repel the offensive of Russian troops, inflicting fire damage on it and holding defense lines around the city and the main airfields. Having not achieved success, the enemy is shelling civilian houses from the southwestern outskirts of the city.

Along with this, the invaders are defiantly acting in the information space, spreading disinformation and Kremlin propaganda materials. The General Staff urges to trust only verified information resources.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said that if Zaporizhia Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) explodes, it will be 10 times larger than Chornobyl and indicated that Russia should immediately cease fire, allow firefighters, and establish a security zone.

"Russian army is firing from all sides upon Zaporizhia NPP, the largest nuclear power plant in Europe. Fire has already broken out. If it blows up, it will be 10 times larger than Chornobyl! Russians must immediately cease the fire, allow firefighters, establish a security zone!" Kuleba said on Twitter on Friday.
In the direction of Brovary (Kyiv region), Ukrainian fighters destroyed four infantry fighting vehicles, two tanks of Russian invaders, recaptured one infantry armored vehicle.

"In the direction of Brovary, the Russian invader has lost four infantry fighting vehicles, two tanks, and one armored infantry vehicle to the Ukrainian unit," the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said on Facebook on Friday.

It is noted that the enemy hides his equipment among the houses of civilians. "He robs shops. He rages. But he sees his cars that have become scrap metal, and he knows that the same fate awaits him!" the General Staff emphasized.
NEWS PROVIDED BY

Institute on Religion & Democracy

March 4, 2022



WASHINGTON, March 4, 2022 /Standard Newswire/ -- A divided Commission on General Conference has acceded to an intense institutionalist pressure campaign by preventing the already repeatedly rescheduled United Methodist Church's General Conference from meeting before 2024.



Comment from:



John Lomperis, UM Action Director, Indiana General Conference delegate



Mark Tooley, IRD President, UM Action founder, Virginia United Methodist



Rev. Martin Nicholas, UM Action Steering Committee Chair, Texas Annual Conference

"This decision was extremely unwise and potentially destructive.



"It is essentially an extraordinary filibuster of the entire General Conference even as United Methodists across the spectrum agree a negotiated denominational split is needed.



"This rushed decision ignores how many other major denominational assemblies and international conferences are meeting in person in America this year, how at least half of American annual conferences are back to meeting largely in person, and how even Africa is on track to get Covid-19 under control this year.



"The General Conference Commission and staff, as stewards of our apportionment dollars had one job: to make General Conference happen.



"The Commission's majority and those who pressured them into this destructive path will provoke confusion, more church division, and litigation in which there are no winners.



"Our Council of Bishops can avoid this tragedy by calling a special General Conference to help our church move forward, which a majority of them may do at any time.



"UMAction will work with any good-faith partners for the 'Protocol of Reconciliation and Grace through Separation' proposal. Without this compromise, traditionalists may have to 'go it alone' and push through a fairer settlement.



"The United Methodist Church remains our church, and we will continue to defend its doctrine and moral standards.



"We will have more to say and do in the coming days."
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has expressed serious concern about the overnight fire at Zaporizhia nuclear power plant.

"This threatens to be the second Chornobyl and an even larger one," Zelensky said in a video address.

"We don't know how the fire at the plant will end, when there will be an explosion or when it won't happen, God willing. No one will calculate that to the end," the president said.

"We have contacted the leaders, our partners. I spoke with [European Council President] Charles Michel, with [German Chancellor Olaf] Scholz, I spoke with [Polish President Andrzej] Duda, I spoke with [United States] President [Joe] Biden. We have contacted of IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency] head [Rafael] Grossi, as well as [British] Prime Minister [Boris] Johnson. We warn everybody," Zelensky said.

"Not a single state, except Russia, has ever fired at nuclear power units. For the first time in our history, in the history of mankind, the terrorist state has also resorted to nuclear terror," Zelensky said in a video message on Friday night.

"Russian propagandists threatened to cover the world with nuclear ashes. Now this is not a threat, but a reality, and we do not know how the fire at the station will end, when there will be an explosion or when it will not happen, God forbid. No one will ever figure this out. But our guys always kept the nuclear plant safe so that there were no provocations, so that no one could enter the plant, so that no one could seize this plant, mine it and then blackmail the whole world with a nuclear catastrophe," the president said.

"We must stop the Russian military immediately! Shout out to your politicians! Ukraine has 15 nuclear power units, if there is an explosion, it will be the end of everything, the end of Europe. This is the evacuation of Europe. Only immediate European action can stop Russian forces. Don't let Europe die from a disaster at a nuclear power plant," Zelensky called on Europeans and people around the world.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz believes that at the current stage, to resolve the situation in Ukraine, the most urgent task is a ceasefire.

"In order to help de-escalate the situation in Ukraine, a ceasefire is urgently needed," he said in an interview with ZDF television.

According to him, in order to achieve a cessation of hostilities, he is ready to continue contacts with the presidents of both Russia and Ukraine.

"I will not stop communicating not only with the Ukrainian president, but also with the Russian one. We must do everything to end the war," the chancellor said.

He once again stated that NATO would not take a direct part in the conflict, because "this would lead to a sharp escalation of this difficult situation."

"That's why now there will be no decisions that would lead NATO member states to become involved militarily in this confrontation," Scholz explained.

He said that NATO plans did not include the deployment of missiles in Ukraine, noting that Russian President Vladimir Putin "had concerns" about this.

"No one had such plans," the chancellor said.

At the same time, he called the supply of weapons to Ukraine "the right step" in connection with "Russia's actions against Ukraine."

According to the German media, Berlin is ready to send Soviet-made missiles to Ukraine, which were stored in the warehouses of the former East Germany. In particular, 2,700 Strela air defense systems, as well as 500 American Stingers and 1,000 units of anti-tank systems are ready for shipment.

However, according to media reports, the Federal Security Council has not yet approved this move.

Scholz said that Germany has already begun to replace some of the volumes of Russian gas with supplies from other sources.

"We have prepared to buy gas elsewhere, we have done so and continue to do so," he said, adding that gas, oil and coal purchases in Russia continue.

The chancellor stressed that the decision to suspend the certification of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline is "timely" as a response to Russia's actions in Ukraine.
Nauseda calls Russian attacks on nuclear facilities in Ukraine act of nuclear terrorism, calls on IAEA to immediately respond

Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda has called the Russian attacks on nuclear facilities in Ukraine an act of nuclear terrorism and called on the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to immediately respond.

"Russia's attacks on civil nuclear facilities in Ukraine is an act of nuclear terrorism& a crime against humanity. Ostrovets NPP in Belarus, on the border of Lithuania,can be turned into a weapon by Russia too. I call on immediate international response to Russia's nuclear crimes," Nauseda said on Twitter.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has called on the Russian and Ukrainian Armed Forces to refrain from engaging in hostilities near Zaporizhia Nuclear Power Plant.

"Director General Grossi appealed for an immediate halt to the use of force at Energodar and called on the military forces operating there to refrain from violence near the nuclear power plant," the IAEA said in a statement published on its website on Friday.

"He said the IAEA continues to consult with Ukraine and others with a view to provide maximum possible assistance to the country as it seeks to maintain nuclear safety and security in the current difficult circumstances," it said.
The Verkhovna Rada has ensured the uninterrupted operation of Ukrainian courts in wartime, Oleksandr Korniyenko, First Deputy Speaker of the Parliament, told Interfax-Ukraine.

"From now on, the uninterrupted operation of the courts in wartime will be ensured (Bill No. 7117). If the court is located in the territory where hostilities take place, then its powers are transferred to another nearest court," the first deputy speaker explained.

Thus, he noted, the judicial system of the state continues to work even in the current extreme conditions.
Citizens of Ukraine, who in USA, may stay in country  media

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security will allow Ukrainians in the United States to remain in the country as part of humanitarian aid, CNN reports.

"Russia's deliberate and unprovoked attack on Ukraine has led to an ongoing war, senseless violence" that has forced Ukrainians "to seek refuge in other countries. In these extraordinary times, we will continue to offer our support and protection to Ukrainian citizens in the United States," the TV channel quotes the statement of U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas.

Ukraine has been included in the list of countries whose citizens are granted temporary protected status (TPS). This status allows citizens of these countries to remain in the United States, as they would encounter difficulties when returning to their homeland.

Thus, extending TPS to Ukrainians who have been issued temporary visas will protect them from deportation when those visas expire.

It is noted that the provision of TPS to Ukraine will be valid for 18 months.

Earlier, a group of U.S. lawmakers called on the U.S. administration to grant temporary protected status (TPS) to Ukrainians in the United States.

"Forcing Ukrainian citizens to return to Ukraine [...] would be contrary to American values and our national security interests," the senators said in their letter.
Energy Minister of Ukraine Herman Halushchenko has appealed to U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm with a request to prevent a nuclear catastrophe and close the flight zone over Ukraine in connection with the shelling of the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant by the Russian army.

"I have just had an urgent telephone conversation with U.S. Secretary of Energy, Ms. Jennifer Granholm. I informed that Russian troops were shelling the Zaporizhia NPP from the air and tanks. There is a fire at the station and this could be the greatest disaster in the history of mankind! Invaders do not let firefighters into the station. I asked to prevent a nuclear catastrophe and close the flight zone over Ukraine," the minister wrote on his Facebook page on Friday night.
Musk warns about possible use of Starlink systems as targets in regions where it is only non-Russian communication system

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has warned about the possible use of Starlink systems as targets where it is the only non-Russian communication system.

"Important warning: Starlink is the only non-Russian communications system still working in some parts of Ukraine, so probability of being targeted is high. Please use with caution," he said on Twitter.

In response, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Digital Transformation Mykhailo Fedorov noted that after the victory over the Russians, Starlink systems are planned to be used also for ordinary Ukrainians.
Pentagon: 70 out of 480 missiles fired at Ukraine in first week of war are launched from Belarus

Since the start of hostilities, Russia has fired 480 missiles at Ukraine, 70 of them from Belarus, the U.S. Department of Defense reports.

A Pentagon spokesman said at a briefing in Washington that Russia has fired 480 missiles since the start of hostilities. At the same time, 230 missiles were launched from mobile launchers that Russia delivered to Ukraine, another 160 missiles were launched from Russian territory, 70 from Belarus and ten from ships of the Russian fleet in the Black Sea.
The Hungarian government will transfer five trucks of humanitarian aid to Ukraine through the Hungarian Ecumenical Service, head of Zakarpattia Regional Civil Administration Viktor Mykyta said.

"I have held a working meeting with Consul General of Hungary in Uzhgorod Jozsef Bacskai. The government of the neighboring country will transfer five trucks of humanitarian aid through the Hungarian ecumenical service. There will also be medicines and specialized equipment for emergency medical care among the essentials," he said on the Telegram, thanking the partners for the support.
By Azernews





By Ayya Lmahamad

Azerbaijan's State Oil Company (SOCAR) and Romanian Transgaz have signed a document to extend the memorandum of understanding of 2016 for another six years, SOCAR's Acting President Rovshan Najaf wrote on his official Twitter page.

A meeting of SOCAR's Supervisory Board Chairman and Economy Minister Mikayil Jabbarov, Romanian Energy Minister Virgil Daniel Popescu and Special Envoy for Strategic and International Affairs Ana Birchall was held on March 3.

During the meeting, the parties discussed future prospects of bilateral energy cooperation.

In July 2016, a memorandum of understanding was signed between SOCAR and Transgaz. The memorandum considers the strengthening of cooperation on gas transportation, as well as opportunities of using Romanias gas transit and distribution capacity in gas supply from Azerbaijan and Caspian region, cooperation on gas supply and trading in the Romanian market, including potential terminals for LNG intake within the framework of AGRI.

Azerbaijan and Romania are cooperating in various spheres of the economy. SOCAR operates in Romania through SOCAR Petroleum SA, established in 2011, and owns SOCAR- branded petrol stations in 26 regions of Romania.

The trade turnover between the two countries amounted to $215.5 million in 2021, with exports amounting to $120.5 million, and imports to $94.9 million.
An air defense unit near the resort of Zatoka (Odesa region) shot down a Russian aircraft that attacked one of the military infrastructure facilities, the Naval Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine reported.

"An air defense unit near the resort of Zatoka shot down a Russian aircraft that attacked one of the military infrastructure facilities," the Navy said in its Facebook post.

The pilot, who managed to eject, is reportedly being sought.
Uzbekistan has evacuated 2,374 of its citizens from Ukraine to the homeland via Poland by Uzbekistan Airways repatriation flights, the Uzbek Foreign Ministry said on Thursday.

"Since the beginning of the evacuation of our citizens from Ukraine via Poland to Uzbekistan, 10 special flights have carried 2,374 people," the statement said.

More than 500 Uzbek citizens who want to fly home are still in Poland's border area, the Foreign Ministry said.

"The diplomatic missions of our country in Poland and Ukraine work around the clock. Hot meals for our citizens are provided and, if necessary, medical services are provided," the statement said.

Uzbekistan has been performing repatriation flights to evacuate its citizens from Ukraine since February 28.

The Polish authorities have allowed the evacuation of foreign nationals from Ukraine through its territory until March 15, after which the visa regime at the border will be established again, the Uzbek Foreign Ministry spokesperson said.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg will hold a meeting of the NATO member states' foreign ministers with invited partners on the situation in Ukraine on Friday at NATO headquarters in Brussels.

"An extraordinary meeting of the North Atlantic Council at the level of foreign ministers will be held at NATO headquarters on Friday, March 4. The meeting will be held in person under the chairmanship of NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg," the alliance's press service said in a communique.

The meeting will be attended by the Foreign Ministers of Finland and Sweden and the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell.

The program of the meeting indicates that Stoltenberg and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken will make short statements before it begins.

The official notice does not indicate the subject of the upcoming debate between NATO foreign ministers, however, sources in Brussels and the media say the purpose of the ministerial meeting is to coordinate the actions of Western countries in connection with the Russian aggression against Ukraine, in particular, to support the Ukrainian authorities.

Stoltenberg at a press conference in Brussels on March 2 said: "We are not part of the conflict. We will not participate in the conflict. NATO will not be on the ground with forces, soldiers in Ukraine and will not be in the airspace over Ukraine. But we support the Ukrainian government."

The alliance continues to coordinate its plans with non-members Finland and Sweden and with the European Union.
ICRC President assures Shmyhal Red Cross to do everything possible to help evacuate Ukrainians

President of the International Committee of the Red Cross Peter Maurer assured the Prime Minister of Ukraine Denys Shmyhal that the Red Cross will do everything possible to help in the evacuation of Ukrainians.

"Just finished talking to Peter Maurer. The Red Cross will do everything possible to help evacuate Ukrainians, deliver food and medicine to places where fighting continues. Stressed that thousands of bodies of the dead occupiers should be returned to Russia," Shmyhal said on Twitter.
President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky called on the residents of Kherson "to let the occupiers know that they can only be in Kherson temporarily."

In a video message on Friday morning, he said that a performance with a rally "for Russia" could be played in Kherson in the near future. "For this they brought strangers to the city. Looking for local traitors. They want to make a TV picture  it seems that Kherson is no longer Ukrainian. From this they started the so-called 'DPR' and 'LPR.' You understand what happened to them afterwards. This needs to be stopped. Kherson residents, show that this is your city . You can stop any plan of the invaders," Zelensky said.

He also urged the people of Kherson to "get rid of any despair." "We are fighting against a powerful enemy that outnumbers us. Which dominates us by the amount of technology. But who is thousands of light-years away from normal people who have dignity," the President said.

"Show it. Our national flag. Our national anthem. Our national spirit. Be sure to let the invaders know that they can stay in Kherson only temporarily. And they will never be able to own Kherson. Like any other city in Ukraine," Zelensky is convinced.
U.S. investment banking firm Jefferies has raised $14.1 million in Ukrainian Doing Good Global Trading Day, which will be quickly distributed to 20 charitable organizations to provide humanitarian aid and support to Ukraine.

CEO Rich Handler and Jefferies President Brian Friedman praised those who donated in a letter.

"We all felt so helpless as we watched this tragedy unfold before our very eyes, and we are grateful for the opportunity to do our little bit to help families, children and communities in Ukraine," they said.

Jefferies customers contributed $12.4 million in net trading commissions, while Jefferies employees donated more than $0.7 million and the company contributed $1 million, the company said in a statement.

The firm said it will donate $1 million each to Americares, CARE, Medecins Sans Frontieres, GlobalGiving, Global Empowerment Mission, International Committee of the Red Cross, International Medical Corps, UNICEF and World Central Kitchen.

In addition, $750,000 each will be sent to the Catholic Relief Service (CRS), the CURE and HOPE projects, and the Joint Ukrainian-American Relief Committee.

Jefferies will allocate another $300,000 each to Come Back Alive, Direct Relief, the Global Surgical and Medical Support Group, the Kyiv School of Economics, the Humanitarian Aid Fund at the National Bank, St. Andrew's Charitable Foundation and SOS Children's Villages.

According to the American media and Interfax-Ukraine interlocutors, a significant number of U.S. investment banking companies, after the start of the war against Ukraine by Russia, introduced the practice of collecting donations for Ukrainians, in which companies double the contributions made by their employees.
Borrell calls on Russia to immediately stop hostilities: shelling of ZNPP could threaten entire Europe

Russia must immediately stop the fighting in the areas of nuclear power plants in Ukraine, head of European diplomacy, Josep Borrell, said on Friday.

"Russian attacks in the direct vicinity of Ukraine's nuclear power plants can have catastrophic consequences. They must stop immediately," Borrell said on Twitter.

He noted that the shelling and the resulting fire at Zaporizhia Nuclear Power Plant could endanger whole Europe.

Borrell also said that he asked the UN Security Council to support Ukraine.
Ukrainian refugees will have the right to live and work in the European Union for up to three years in accordance with the emergency plan, the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine reported.

"Since Russia launched a brutal attack a week ago, almost 875,000 people have been forced to leave their homes in Ukraine. The EU provides for granting Ukrainian citizens and residents of the country the right to live, work, receive medical care, housing and education immediately for up to one year without having to go through lengthy asylum procedures. If the conflict continues for a long time or the refugees cannot return safely, this status can be extended for another two years," the ministry said on its Facebook post on Thursday evening.

It is emphasized that more than half [454,000] went to Poland, 116,000 to Hungary, 67,000 to Slovakia, 45,000 to Romania and 79,000 to Moldova, which is not part of the EU. The information notes that refugees from Ukraine already have a 90-day visa-free access to the EU, but "this unprecedented change in EU law guarantees their status after this period."
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine has demanded partners to take urgent steps to force Russia to withdraw its armed units from Zaporizhia nuclear power plant (ZNPP) and create a security zone.

"We express disappointment with the reaction of the IAEA, which in its statement did not dare to name the one who shelled the station. We demand clear and decisive actions from the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency). The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry calls on the international community to strongly condemn the actions of the Russian occupiers, which could cause an unprecedented nuclear catastrophe for mankind. We appeal to our partners take urgent steps to force Russia to withdraw its armed units from the nuclear power plant and create a security zone," the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Friday.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba has already instructed Ukrainian diplomatic institutions to start urgent contacts with partners, in particular through the IAEA, to prepare an international response to Russia's aggression against nuclear facilities.

"The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine strongly condemns the shelling and seizure by the occupying armed forces of the Russian Federation of the site of Zaporizhia nuclear power plant in the city of Enerhodar. As a result of the shelling, a fire broke out on the territory of the nuclear power plant, people were killed and injured," the ministry said.

ZNPP managers have said power units at the plant are operating normally and that radiation levels are within the normal range.

Ukraine's Foreign Ministry drew attention to the fact that, in addition to six power units, there is a storage facility for spent nuclear fuel at ZNPP site that could be damaged.

"In terms of consequences, such a catastrophe may exceed all previous accidents at nuclear power plants, including the accident at Chornobyl nuclear power plant and the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. With its armed attack on a nuclear facility, Russia violated all international agreements within the framework of the IAEA, primarily the IAEA Charter, the Joint Safety Convention management of spent fuel and on the safety of radioactive waste management, the Convention on the Notification of a Nuclear Accident and the Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Installations and Nuclear Material," the ministry said.
The Ukrainian state asks the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to urgently take the necessary steps to organize humanitarian corridors and is ready, for its part, to do everything necessary to evacuate the civilian population and deliver humanitarian supplies.

"Due to constant shelling by Russian troops, a number of Ukrainian towns and villages are on the verge of a humanitarian catastrophe. Thousands of people are in urgent need of evacuation. These cities lack food, water, medicine, electricity and water," according to a message published on the website of the President of Ukraine.

Settlements in the areas of hostilities that require the creation of humanitarian corridors are located in Sumy region (Sumy, Shostka, Romny, Konotop, Okhtyrka), Chernihiv region (eastern and northern parts), Kharkiv region (all of the region except the south-eastern parts), Kyiv (Bucha, Irpin, Vyshgorod, Ivankiv, Vasylkiv, Borodianka), Mykolaiv region (Bashtansky, Snihuriv, Bereznehuvatsky directions), Zaporizhia region (Tokmatsky, Berdiansk, Velykobilozersky directions), Kherson (Chaplynka, Kalanchak, Henichesk and Nova Kakhovka directions), Luhansk and Donetsk regions (Volnovakha district, Mariupol district), etc.

"Ukraine has sent all the necessary requests to international organizations to create humanitarian corridors for the delivery of essentials and evacuation of civilians. Unfortunately, there has not been any consent of the Russian side so far. Today's agreements on the results of the second round of talks between Ukraine and Russia give us cautious hope that we will finally be able to help our citizens," said Olha Stefanishyna, Deputy Prime Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration of Ukraine, member of the Coordination Staff for Humanitarian Affairs and social issues.

The Ukrainian side is ready to ensure the transportation of people and the delivery of humanitarian goods. The Ukrainian Armed Forces guarantee safe passage of the corridor. Ukraine is expecting this from the Russian side.

"Civilians lack food and drinking water, many of them are people with disabilities and chronic illnesses. Bringing them to dehydration, exhaustion, and suffering from a lack of timely medical care in the 21st century is nothing but torture. We very much hope that the President of the International Committee of the Red Cross, Mr Peter Maurer will do everything to deploy work in the humanitarian corridors to save lives as soon as possible," says Tetiana Lomakina, coordinator of actions on Humanitarian corridors from the Office of the President.
By Azernews





By Ayya Lmahamad

The State Oil Fund of Azerbaijan (SOFAZ) sold funds in the amount of $371.2 million at foreign currency auctions in January, the funds press service has reported.

In total this year, SOFAZ sold funds in the amount of $1 billion at foreign currency auctions.

Fund's revenues from the major oil and gas fields amounted to $833 million in January 2022. Of these, revenues from the Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli block of fields, which are the largest oil fields in the Azerbaijani sector of the Caspian Sea, amounted to $683.1 million, while the fund's revenues from the Shah Deniz field, which is among the worlds largest gas-condensate fields, amounted to $884.7 million.

The fund's budget revenues amounted to AZN 15.9 billion ($9.4 billion), while the budget expenditures constituted AZN 11.3 billion ($6.6 billion) last year.

Established in 1999, SOFAZ is a sovereign wealth fund, which accumulates and preserves Azerbaijans oil and gas revenues for future generations.

The fund accumulates income from the sale of oil contracts, and in 2003 it started to make transfers to the state budget of Azerbaijan. As for now, SOFAZ's contribution to the countrys GDP is over 80 percent.




Chernihiv Regional Administration has said that Russian air strikes as of Thursday morning have killed 47 civilians.

"According to updated information from medical institutions, yesterday, March 3, as a result of a bombardment by Russian aircraft on the territory of Chernihiv, 47 people were killed: 38 men and 9 women," the Chernihiv Regional State Administration said on Facebook.

According to the report, 18 people were rescued. The same updated information is posted on the website of the Chernihiv Regional State Administration.
Ex-NATO Supreme Commander Breedlove, ex-Special U.S. rep to Ukraine Volker call on White House to provide more defense aid to Kyiv, partial 'no-fly' zone over Kyiv

Despite the first successes of Ukraine in repelling Russian military aggression, there are no guarantees that this situation will continue, the United States and NATO urgently need to provide assistance to Kyiv and its key elements should be intelligence, the supply of aviation and a partial "closed sky," ex NATO Supreme Commander and former U.S. Special Representative in Ukraine Kurt Volker have said.

"The U.S. military aid provided so far is insufficient for the scale of the problem Ukraine is facing. There needs to be more aid delivered much faster to help Ukraine get through next week," they wrote in "Six Ways to Help Ukraine Survive Right Now," published by the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA) think tank.

In their opinion, among these steps is ensuring the full flow of US intelligence information in real time to Ukraine about Russian military capabilities, positions and intentions. "

Legal arguments that such an exchange could point to the United States as a belligerent should be immediately refuted, for example, by fully including Ukrainian officers in intelligence processing so that they can report them directly," the authors said.

As a second step, they are offering to supply, in addition to Stinger surface-to-air missiles for low-altitude air defense, air defense systems that provide medium and high altitude capability.

"Ukrainian ground forces can hold their own against Russian ground forces, but we must not allow Russia to gain air superiority over Ukraine," Breedlove and Volker said.

The next two measures they cite are the transfer by NATO allies of Soviet-made MiG-29 aircraft to Ukraine, with the necessary funding from the European Union, and the provision of American A-10 attack aircraft, which are currently planned to be mothballed as redundant defense assets. According to the authors of the article, thanks to previous military exchange programs in Ukraine, there are already a small number of pilots trained to fly the A-10.

As a fifth step, Breedlove and Volker propose the creation of a joint security corridor with NATO partners for the safe and rapid delivery of military supplies from Poland to Ukraine.

Finally, as noted in the article, as a humanitarian action, a no-fly zone should be established to protect the civilian population from Russian aerial bombardment.

"The exclusion zone should cover Kyiv and western Ukraine, but not extend further east, so as not to get closer to the borders of Russia. The no-fly zone will require clear communication, so that it is clear that it serves only humanitarian purposes, and that no US or NATO aircraft or drones will not engage in any hostilities against Russian ground troops, except in self-defense in the event of shelling," Breedlove and Volker said.

The authors of the article note that, frustrated by his initial failures, Russian President Vladimir Putin is now about to unleash new, unspeakable atrocities on the people of Ukraine, however, the Ukrainian people are still determined and ready to fight for their country.

"We must not wait for horrific images of more civilian casualties to flood our television screens before we decide on further action. The people of Ukraine deserve our urgent support  we must act now. Helping Ukraine survive for the next week will give sanctions more time to take a toll on Russias military effort, and more time for patriotic and level-headed Russian military, intelligence, and business leaders to comprehend the damage Vladimir Putin is doing to their homeland," Breedlove and Volker said.
As of the ninth day of the war, the Russian invaders are suffering significant losses in all operational areas in Ukraine  Poliske, Siverske, Slobozhanske, Tavriiske and in the Joint Forces Operation zone, Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council Oleksiy Danilov said.

"Today, the Ukrainian military and the territorial defense forces have intercepted the tactical initiative, but the enemy does not leave the plans to encircle the cities of Kyiv, Kharkiv and enter the administrative borders of Luhansk and Donetsk regions ... The southern direction remains hot, where the occupier concentrates resources for active operations to try to cordon off Odesa," Danilov wrote on Facebook on Friday.

According to him, the Russian occupation command has already used at least 95% of the trained armored personnel and needs to urgently pull up the reserve.

"Realizing the weakness of their own positions and in order to gain time for redeployment and renewal, the enemy is inflicting intense air and rocket-artillery strikes on military and civilian targets. Tonight, the Putin regime has put the world under the threat of a global catastrophe. Russian terrorist troops shelled the territory of Zaporizhia nuclear power plant... All this is a consequence of the Kremlin's failure to achieve its goals in Ukraine by military means, which led to the sanctioning of Putin's overtly terrorist methods," the Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council emphasized.

He noted that the invaders use ambulances with the symbols of the Red Cross to transport weapons and ammunition; dress up in Ukrainian military uniforms, shelling peaceful towns and villages. "Therefore, for the entire Russian elite, The Hague is approaching faster and more inevitably. The Ukrainian army is ready to repulse the occupier and destroy it, wherever it is!" Danilov emphasized.
Three Ukrainian servicemen killed, two wounded in night attack on Zaporizhia NPP  Energoatom

Three Ukrainian servicemen were killed and two wounded during a night attack on Zaporizhia Nuclear Power Plant (NPP), according to National Nuclear Energy Generating Company Energoatom.

"Casualties among the servicemen after the night attack on Zaporizhia NPP are as follows: three KIA, two WIA, including one in critical condition," the company said on the Telegram channel on Friday.

Energoatom also underlined that the heroic defenders of the NPP defeated the enemy's tank along with its crew and none of the NPP employees were injured.
The IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) has planned physical inspections of nuclear facilities in Ukraine, but not at the moment, the head of the agency, Rafael Grossi, said at a press conference (its entry is published on the agency's website).

"We have remote monitoring equipment that functions normally," the head of the IAEA said. "We have also scheduled physical inspections," he added, explaining that an inspection of the agency's specialists is not scheduled at the moment.

Asked about an earlier request from the Ukrainian nuclear regulator for immediate support, Grossi said that in the current circumstances, providing assistance is "a non-linear and complex process." He recalled that active consultations on this issue are currently ongoing. Answering a clarifying question whether this assistance means sending specialists to Ukraine, Grossi said that this could be one of the measures.

Regarding engagement with Russia, Grossi noted that Russia does not explain its motives to the IAEA.

"They provide information about the location of theirforces when it comes to nuclear facilities," Grossi said.

According to him, the IAEA is now communicating with both parties with a request to provide rest to the station workers in order to avoid the human factor. The head of the agency stressed that this is not only of humanitarian but also of technical importance.

Grossi also told reporters that the IAEA is offering its personal mediation between Russia and Ukraine at the Chornobyl nuclear power plant site to ensure the safety of nuclear facilities in the country, Bloomberg reported.

"The best thing that can be done to ensure the safety and protection of Ukrainian nuclear power facilities and their workers is to end hostilities now," Grossi said earlier in a statement.
President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky announced the establishment by the UN Human Rights Council of an international commission to investigate the facts of war crimes of the Russian Federation in Ukraine.

"I welcome the establishment by the UN Human Rights Council of the International Commission of Inquiry to investigate facts of Russian war crimes against Ukraine. Evidence will be documented and used in international courts. Russian war criminals will be held accountable," Zelensky said on Twitter on Friday.
The European Commission (EC) announced on Friday its decision to suspend cooperation with Russian organizations in the field of research, science and innovation.

"We have decided not to engage in further research and innovation cooperation projects with Russian organisations. At the same time, we are strongly committed to ensuring Ukraine's continued successful participation in the Horizon Europe and Euratom Research and Training programs," EC member for innovation, research and education Maria Gabriel said.

She noted that the European Commission has taken administrative measures to ensure that Ukrainian scientists can receive funding from EU research and innovation programs.

The EC communique states that the European Commission will not conclude any new contracts or any new agreements with Russian organizations under the Horizon Europe program. In addition, the EC suspends payments to Russian organizations under existing agreements.

European Commission Executive Vice President Margrethe Vestager commented on the decision: "Research cooperation in the EU is based on respect for the freedoms and rights that underpin excellence and innovation."
The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) may enter the capital of a new fund managed by Horizon Capital  Horizon Capital Growth Fund IV with a contribution of $50 million.

According to the bank's information on its website, the Fund has a target size of $250 million.

The EBRD said that the Fund will seek to generate long-term capital appreciation through equity and quasi-equity investments in growth-oriented small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) and mid-cap companies primarily in Ukraine and Moldova.

The board of directors of the bank will consider this project, information about which was published after the start of Russia's military aggression against Ukraine, at a meeting on April 6.

Horizon Capital is a large investment company that manages five private equity funds (more than 40 institutional investors) with assets of $1.1 billion, including WNISEF (with a capital of $150 million), Emerging Europe Growth Fund (EEGF, $132 million), EEGF II ( $370 million) and EEGF III ($200 million). The resources of these funds are invested in projects in Ukraine, Moldova and Belarus.

The company currently has two founding partners, CEO Lenna Koszarny and investment committee head Jeffrey C. Neal. The company's offices are located in Kyiv and Chicago.
Stoltenberg: NATO again calls on Russia to withdraw its troops from Ukraine, choose path of diplomacy

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg on Friday again called on Russia to withdraw its forces from Ukraine and follow the path of diplomacy.

"We call on President Putin... to withdraw all forces from Ukraine without preconditions," Stoltenberg said at a press conference.

The NATO Secretary General also noted the importance of the Russian side participating in "real diplomacy" to resolve issues related to Ukraine.
The Integrated Power System of Ukraine (IPS) continues to operate stably at a frequency of 50 Hz despite the forced shutdown of two power units at Zaporizhia nuclear power plant due to the shelling and capture of the plant by Russian aggressors, Chairman of the board of NPC Ukrenergo Volodymyr Kudrytsky said on his Facebook page in Friday.

"Our dispatchers coped with the loss of two units in the system, the power system continues to operate stably. We keep the frequency at 50 Hz. This is a feat of our power engineers," Kudrytsky said.

According to him, Zaporizhia NPP specialists control the state of all nuclear facilities of the station, but they were forced to stop two power units.

In turn, as the head of Ukrenergo said, the events of the last night made significant changes in the work of the company.

"The occupier deliberately destroys critical infrastructure, trying to break the Ukrainians. As the head of the system operator, I want to assure that we are ready for different scenarios," he said.

In particular, in those regions where hostilities are taking place, Ukrenergo specialists instantly respond to all damage, switch lines, and Ukrenergo repair teams, together with teams from power distribution companies (transmission system operators (TSO), regional supply companies), promptly repair all damage as soon as the shelling subsides.

"The power system is stable, although it works in isolation. But our team is bringing the Ukrainian power system closer to the European one, work on this does not stop day or night," Kudrytsky said.
By Azernews





By Ayya Lmahamad

Azerbaijan and Romania have discussed the priority areas of energy cooperation between the two countries, the Energy Ministry has reported.

The discussion took place during the meeting of Azerbaijani Energy Minister Parviz Shahbazov with Romanian Energy Minister Virgil Daniel Popescu and Special Envoy for Strategic and International Affairs Ana Birchall, as well as the delegation, which included the senior officials of Transgaz and Romgaz.

During the meeting, it was noted that the Azerbaijani-Romanian strategic partnership plays an important role in the development of energy cooperation.

Romania's participation and interest in the project were highly appreciated at the VIII Ministerial Meeting of the Southern Gas Corridor Advisory Council. In addition, the parties discussed the prospects of Romania's participation in the project.

Moreover, the project of laying an underwater cable underneath the Black Sea through Azerbaijan and Georgia to Romania was discussed. Romania was invited to participate in the currently forming Working Group on the project.

Parviz Shahbazov emphasized the importance of the project in terms of expanding the export opportunities of electricity between the region and the European market and highlighted the potential and plans of Azerbaijan for the export of green energy.

The minister said that the ongoing renewable energy projects and plans related to the realization of offshore wind energy potential can make Azerbaijan an important partner also in the export of electricity and hydrogen, which will be produced from green energy sources, in the future in cooperation with Europe.

Azerbaijan and Romania are cooperating in various spheres of the economy. SOCAR operates in Romania through SOCAR Petroleum SA, established in 2011, and owns SOCAR- branded petrol stations in 26 regions of Romania.

The trade turnover between the two countries amounted to $215.5 million in 2021, with exports amounting to $120.5 million, and imports to $94.9 million.
The introduction of a "no-fly" zone over Ukraine could lead to a full-scale war in Europe, so NATO troops will not be directly involved in the conflict in Ukraine, either on the ground or in its airspace, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has said.

"Our assessment is that we understand the desperation, but we also believe that if we did this, we would end up in a full-scale war in Europe, one involving many more countries, which would lead to much more human suffering. This is the reason why we are making this painful decision to impose strong sanctions, to provide significant support, increase support, but at the same time not directly involve NATO troops in the conflict in Ukraine, either on the ground or in the air," Stoltenberg said at a press conference following the results of meeting of NATO foreign ministers in Brussels on Friday. He was responding to a question from Interfax-Ukraine.

The Secretary General pointed out that NATO allies are responsible for ensuring that this war does not go beyond Ukraine.

"Because it will be even more dangerous, more destructive and cause even more human suffering. Therefore, we have clearly stated that we are not going to enter Ukraine either on the ground or in Ukrainian airspace," Stoltenberg said.

He said that the only way to introduce a "no-fly" zone is to send NATO fighters into Ukrainian airspace, and then implement it by firing at Russian aircraft.
Russian invaders have been unable to achieve their military objectives in Ukraine using the tactics of a 'lightning offensive' (blitzkrieg) and therefore they are changing their tactics, emphasizing the activation of measures of psychological impact on the population and Ukrainian troops, the press service of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said on Friday.

"There have been changes in the tactics of the actions of the Russian side: having failed to fulfill the tasks of a military blitzkrieg, Russia is switching to openly terrorist methods of conducting hostilities in Ukraine," the press service said, noting that the share of tasks with using special forces in city suburbs as assault units has been increased. According to the General Staff, Russia's use of airborne assault forces to ensure the construction of bridge crossings over water obstacles have become more frequent.

"The Russian invasions are paying considerable attention to intensifying measures of psychological influence on the population and troops. In the near future, we should expect a massive disinformation campaign that uses the entire spectrum of modern information media," the press service said.

The General Staff said in order to organize "rallies of local residents" in captured cities, up to 80 representatives of Russian media and a large group of "demonstrators" were brought from the Russia-occupied Crimea.

"Probably, in the near future they will be delivered to Kherson to organize staged rallies with the participation of propaganda media, to support changing Ukraine's leaders and to legalize the occupation," the message said, urging Ukrainian citizens to be vigilant, to believe in the Armed Forces of Ukraine and to use information from official and trusted sources.

"The fight continues! Victory will be ours! Glory to Ukraine," the General Staff said.
The Foreign Intelligence Service of Ukraine has announced the creation of a charitable fund called "Foreign Intelligence Support Fund of Ukraine," according to the agency's website on Friday.

You can financially support intelligence work by transferring funds to accounts in Ukrainian hryvnia:

EDRPOU 44849736

IBAN:UA693052990000026006011021644

Multi-currency account will be announced later.
The Russian occupiers in Kherson region have not approved the creation of a "green corridor" for the supply of humanitarian aid to the region, Head of the Kherson regional military administration Hennadiy Lahuta has said.

"I was just informed that the occupiers did not give the go-ahead to the "green corridor" for the supply of humanitarian aid to Kherson region. The Ukrainian authorities formed 19 trucks to provide the needs of Kherson and the region with the most necessary. And now the Russians say that they themselves will provide humanitarian aid," Lahuta wrote in Telegram on Friday.

He promised to continue to demand from the occupiers the possibility of transporting Ukrainian humanitarian aid.

"I also thank Kherson Mayor Ihor Kolykhaev for the efforts he is making to meet the needs of the city's residents," Lahuta said.

At the same time, Kolykhaev himself said that the agreement on the "green corridor" at the highest level was reached yesterday.

"Right now, trucks with food and humanitarian aid from friends of our city could enter the city. But Kherson is in the ring and our trucks are not allowed through. Despite yesterday's agreements at the highest level, in practice, "below" all this is not working. But, apparently, the "good liberators" are preparing to bring their "salvation" to Kherson. First, they brought the situation to a critical point, and then they will heroically save us so that you all thank the "benefactors" on camera," Kolykhaev wrote on Facebook on Friday.

He also said that mobile communication in the city does not work, and the local television center has been seized.

"I give you my word: I do what I can. But I don't know how long it will take. Please: think, stay human, help each other. Kherson is Ukraine," the Kherson mayor said.
The Ukrainian military shot down another SU-25 enemy fighter together with the pilot, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Valeriy Zaluzhny has said.

"Our military hold the sky over Ukraine. Another enemy fighter SU-25 was destroyed along with the pilot. In total, 34 enemy aircraft and 37 helicopters were shot down during the open war," Zaluzny wrote on Facebook on Friday.
In two days, on March 2-3, Ukraine received about 1,000 tonnes of humanitarian aid from 12 countries, according to the Ministry of Social Policy.

In particular, these are 375 tonnes of food, 147 tonnes of clothing, 90 tonnes of personal hygiene products, 35 tonnes of medicines, 324 tonnes of other goods necessary to meet the vital needs of people who were forced to change their place of residence, affected by military operations, and also joined the territorial defense.

It is noted that the largest volumes of humanitarian aid are delivered to the territory of Ukraine through the Zakarpattia customs, as well as humanitarian aid comes through the Chernivtsi, Cherkasy, Volyn customs.

The department recalled that now when humanitarian aid is imported into Ukraine: there is no need to obtain a separate decision on recognizing the cargo as humanitarian aid; the recipient does not have to be included in the unified register of humanitarian aid recipients; the pass occurs without the application of measures of non-tariff regulation of foreign economic activity; customs and border services ensure the immediate passage of humanitarian aid across the state border of Ukraine.
Already 1 million Ukrainians have crossed the borders of the European Union, High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell stated.

He said they provided Ukraine with weapons so that they could defend their land, their nation. They provide assistance to refugees. Already 1 million people have crossed the EU borders, and, unfortunately, more will come. He said they are imposing sanctions that will really have an impact on the Russian economy, the value of its currency. These will have huge implications, as we said earlier, Borrell said ahead of an extraordinary meeting of the EU Foreign Affairs Council in Brussels on Friday.
Information about occupation of TV tower in Melitopol, broadcast of Russian TV from it not true Special Communications Service

The information that the occupiers in Melitopol took control of the television tower and broadcast Russian television from it is untrue, the State Service for Special Communications and Information Protection of Ukraine has said.

"The media are spreading information that the occupiers in Melitopol have taken control of the television tower and are broadcasting Russian television from it. This is fake news! Not a single digital television transmitter on the television tower in Melitopol is working yet," the State Special Communications Service said on its Telegram.

TV in Melitopol is broadcasted with the help of an analog transmitter located outside the TV tower, to which the Concern for Radio Broadcasting, Radio Communication and Television has nothing to do.
On Friday, March 4, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken held a meeting with foreign ministers of NATO countries.

"Today's meeting with my counterparts, NATO Foreign Ministers was essential, as we continue to consult with our Allies and European partners on Russia's war of choice against Ukraine. We are united in responding to Russia's aggression, and we remain," Blinken said on Twitter.
During the shelling of Chernihiv by the Russians, a new textile factory of the Textile-Contact group of companies, investments in which exceeded $3.5 million, almost burned down, the owner of the group, Oleksandr Sokolovsky, has said.

"Today, our new textile factory is on fire, which we launched a couple of years ago in Chernihiv from scratch. We looked for funds wherever possible, brought the production of fabrics to 400,000 linear meters per month. 70 people worked. And today it and the neighboring the area is being shelled by orcs, stupidly hitting with Grad missile launchers at the neighboring residential area and industrial zone," he wrote on Facebook on Friday.

Sokolovsky wrote that after the first night and morning hits by Grad missile launchers, the remaining employees, who had been waiting for the raids of those days in a bomb shelter, began to put out the fire and almost extinguished it.

"But a couple of hours ago, the shelling intensified, more shells flew in, all the people escaped and evacuated, and the factory seems to be going down," he wrote.

At the same time, the owner of the company recalled that in 2014 the group lost a large textile factory in Donetsk.

Textile-Contact, one of the largest trade and production groups in the light industry market of Ukraine, was founded in 1995.
By Trend

The cost of compulsory real estate insurance (residential and commercial) in Azerbaijan varies within 30-50 manat ($17-29), the Azerbaijan Insurers Association told Trend.

According to the message, the cost of real estate insurance for one year is 50 manat ($29) in Baku, 40 manat ($23) in Sumgayit, Ganja and Nakhchivan and 30 manat ($17) in other districts of the country.

In case of an insured event, the compensation up to 25,000 manat ($14,705) is expected to be paid to the owner of the real estate registered in Baku, up to 20,000 manat ($11,764) in Sumgayit, Ganja and Nakhchivan and up to 15,000 manat ($8,823) in other districts of Azerbaijan, the Association said.

Some 12 insurance companies have the licenses to render the compulsory real estate insurance services.
Cases of car thefts by Russian military from showrooms in the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine to enter Kyiv and Odesa have become more frequent, according to the Center for Countering Disinformation.

"The Center for Counteracting Disinformation under the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine reports on the use of new terrorist practices by Russian occupiers. Cases of hijacking by Russian military of vehicles from car dealer centers in the temporarily occupied cities of Ukraine have become more frequent," the report says.

It is noted that the license plates on such cars may be with the registration in different cities of Ukraine.

"In these cars, saboteurs dressed in civilian clothes are trying to get into Kyiv and Odesa," the center added.

In particular, citizens are asked to pay special attention to Toyota cars with the following license plates: KA3714EB - Rav4, KA7634HT - Rav4, KA1517AT - Rav4, AA2652X- Proace, KA0914CK - C-HR, KA0529AO - Prado, KA9341EK - Prado, KA7925BC - Hillux, KA9688AP - Lexus LX450d.
President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky and President of the European Council Charles Michel discussed the possibilities of how to jointly secure nuclear power plants over shelling by Russian troops, as well as tougher sanctions against Russia and Ukraine's membership in the EU.

"Continued dialogue with the European Council. Our common task is to secure NPPs, critical production and infrastructure. Discussed ways to implement it, as well as the increase of sanctions against Russia. Raised the issue of  membership in the EU," Zelensky said on Twitter.
During a phone conversation, President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky and President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen discussed Russian nuclear terrorism, tougher sanctions against Russia and the issue of Ukraine's membership in the EU.

"Talked to President of the European Commission von der Leyen. Informed about the aggressor's nuclear terrorism. Preventing it is our common task. Discussed strengthening sanctions against Russia. The issue of Ukraine's membership in the EU was also on the agenda," Zelensky said on Twitter.

In turn, the President of the European Commission on Twitter said the EU will continue to support Ukraine with all the means at its disposal in close cooperation with Member States and international partners.

"First priority are safe humanitarian corridors," she said.
Minister of Finance calls on global financial companies to stop any cooperation with terrorist countries Russia and Belarus

Minister of Finance of Ukraine Serhiy Marchenko has called on world financial companies to stop any cooperation with the terrorist countries of the Russian Federation and Belarus.

"Today I personally addressed the heads of companies in the financial sector: banks, investment funds... with a request to stop any cooperation with Russia and Belarus  the countries that started a war against the people of Ukraine and daily kill civilians, destroy civilian infrastructure and inflict terrible suffering on the largest country in Europe in the 21st century," Marchenko wrote on Facebook on Friday.

"Here and now, Ukraine and Ukrainians are fighting for democracy and freedom throughout the world. I believe that under your leadership, your organizations will play an important role in ending this war," he said.

With such an appeal, the Minister of Finance addressed, in particular, Allianz, Bank of America, Barclays, Blackrock, BNP Paribas, Citigroup, Credit Agricole, Credit Suisse Group AG, Danske Bank, Deutsche Bank, Fundsmith Equity Fund, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Lloyds Banking Group, Morgan Stanley, UBS Group AG, UniCredit Group, Wells Fargo and other banks and investment funds.
President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky discussed financial support to Ukraine with the Executive Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Kristalina Georgieva.

"I had talks with IMF Executive Director Kristalina Georgieva. We discussed financial support for Ukraine. Grateful for the urgent assistance the fund is already providing. The IMF should take the lead in financing the recovery of Ukraine after the end of Russian aggression," he said in Twitter on Friday.
The National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) has received SEK 500 million of military aid from Sweden, Prime Minister of Ukraine Denys Shmyhal has said.

"Sweden sent SEK 500 million to support the Armed Forces of Ukraine. The funds have just been transferred to the NBU accounts. Grateful to the Prime Minister and the government of Sweden for their financial contribution. Every step to support of the Armed Forces of Ukraine brings victory closer to Ukraine!" Shmyhal said on Twitter.
Chemical and consumer goods company Henkel is stopping new investments in Russia, all advertising on state-owned media outlets, and all sponsoring activities.

"We fully comply with all sanctions against Russia and its government and the financial sector. Beyond the sanctions, we will freeze all future investments in Russia," Henkel CEO Carsten Knobel was quoted as saying in a company statement.

"For now, Henkel will continue to supply essential goods in Russia, for example household and personal hygiene products. The company will closely monitor the dynamic situation and decide on further measures," the statement said.

"We share the shock about the war in Ukraine and stand behind the call of the global community on Russia to immediately withdraw its military forces from Ukraine. We hope that a diplomatic solution can still be found, and the fighting can be ended to avoid further suffering and a humanitarian crisis," Knobel said.
Cryptocurrency exchange Currency.com announced it is donating a total of $1million to support the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine.

According to the press service of the exchange on Friday, the funds will be distributed to four charities - The Red Cross Society of Ukraine, The Humanitarian Relief Fund under the Ministry of Social Policy for Ukraine, ASAP Rescue and Global Giving.

"Our hearts go out to the citizens of Ukraine who are engulfed by this war. Many have had to flee their homes amid freezing temperatures, power cuts and food shortages. Every day is a struggle to survive. We want to help where we can," US Chief Executive Officer Steve Gregory said.

Currency.com is contributing $500,000 to support the joint emergency relief efforts of the Ministry of Health in Ukraine and the Red Cross Society of Ukraine. The funds will be used to provide medical aid and basic amenities to displaced Ukrainians.

In addition, it is providing a further $200,000 to ASAP Rescue, a Ukrainian volunteer organisation that helps evacuate citizens during times of natural disaster and social turmoil, as well as donating $300,000 to The Ministry of Social Policy and Global Giving to help Ukrainians access food, shelter and medical care.

Each of them will receive $150,000 to support the people of Ukraine, including children, in obtaining shelter, food and permanent medical care.

"Like everyone in the world, we are extremely concerned about the shocking events taking place in Ukraine. As a global company with an international team, we feel it is our duty to help those impacted by this war. We will continue to monitor events closely and stand ready to provide additional support to the people of Ukraine," Gregory said.

Currency.com has offices in Cyprus, the United States, the UK, Gibraltar and Ukraine.
Philips Ukraine is transferring available products from a partially unblocked warehouse in Kyiv free of charge, primarily to hospitals, maternity hospitals at the request of volunteers and for the needs of defenders, the company said on Facebook.

Among the humanitarian aid are kettles, multicookers, as well as breast pumps, sterilizers, bottles, pacifiers, nipples, milk storage bags.

"Part of the products has already been transferred to perinatal centers, the Isida clinic, the Adonis maternity hospital, and household appliances  to the territorial defense forces," the company said.

In a comment under the post, the company also said that it had applied to the central office in the Netherlands with a demand to stop activities in the country of the aggressor and occupier.

The Dutch Royal Philips NV, which produces consumer goods and medical equipment, operates in more than 100 countries and has about 80,000 employees.
Ukrainians and foreigners transferred more than UAH 7.8 billion in equivalent to a special account opened by the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) to support the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU), including UAH 765 million in foreign currency from abroad equivalent, the regulator said on its website on Friday.

The National Bank said the money came from the United Stated, Great Britain, Poland, Germany, Sweden, Finland, Czech Republic, China, France and Canada.

According to the regulator, the balance on the special account amounted to UAH 2.4 billion.
By Azernews





By Ayya Lmahamad

Azerbaijan and Tajikistan have signed an agreement to establish twin-city relations between Baku and Dushanbe, Day.az reported on March 4.

The agreement was signed during a visit to Baku by a Tajik delegation led by Speaker of the Majlisi Milli, Supreme Assembly of Tajikistan's National Parliament Rustam Emomali.

Baku mayor Eldar Azizov briefed participants on Baku's history and current projects during a meeting with the Tajik delegation.

The meeting was also attended by Tajikistan's ambassador Rustam Soli and Azerbaijan's ambassador Alimirzamin Askerov.

On March 3, Rustam Emomali also met Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev. The head of state hailed the successful development of interparliamentary cooperation between the two countries, pointing out good prospects in the economic, transport and investment spheres.

It should be noted that the Azerbaijani-Tajik trade turnover amounted to $7.5 million in 2021. In addition, the trade turnover between the two countries amounted to $623,400.
UN concerned about situation near Zaporizhia NPP, calling for high level of safety for nuclear facility

UN Under-Secretary-General Rosemary DiCarlo on Friday expressed concern about the situation in the area of Zaporizhia nuclear power plant and called for efforts to prevent "nuclear incidents."

The Secretary General (of the UN) with great concern has followed reports of clashes near Zaporizhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine. Conducting hostilities near nuclear facilities and other important civilian infrastructure is not only unacceptable, but also extremely irresponsible, DiCarlo said.

According to her, the accident at Chornobyl nuclear power plant is a long-term example of why it is necessary to ensure high safety standards at all nuclear power plants.

Every effort must be made to avoid catastrophic nuclear incidents, she added.
DTEK Energy has agreed to supply an additional batch of imported coal from Poland to support the operation of the thermal power plant during the war with Russia, the company said in a press release on Friday.

According to it, DTEK Energy, under a contract with the Bogdanka coal mining company, agreed to supply 60,000 tonnes of thermal coal from Poland. Coal is expected to arrive at the company's TPPs during March.

"Today, the whole world is in solidarity with us. Both power engineers and coal enterprises from other countries are in solidarity. In the meantime, our power engineers continue to do their job: continuously supply electricity, miners extract coal to provide fuel for stations, and machine builders repair and produce equipment. We are bringing victory closer with daily calm work," CEO of DTEK Energy Ildar Saleev said.

According to the company, as of March 4, 23 power units of DTEK Energy's TPP are operating in the system. A total of 502,000 tonnes of coal are in the warehouses of power plants (excluding the reserves of Luhansk TPP), regular supply of coal in sufficient quantities is provided. The exception is Luhanska TPP, which was stopped due to hostilities, and Zaporizhia TPP, the replenishment of warehouses of which was suspended due to damage to the track and suspension of railway communication in the region.
Montenegro on Friday announced the closure of airspace for Russian aircraft, the Montenegrin television and radio company RTCG said, citing the country's Civil Aviation Authority.

The television and radio company said that in this way Montenegro joined other countries that on February 27 closed the skies for aircraft from Russia due to its invasion of Ukraine and the escalation of hostilities.

She said that Montenegro has joined all the restrictive measures that the EU has imposed against Russia.
Spanish Defense Minister Margarita Robles has announced that two aircraft of the Spanish Air Force will deliver "offensive material" to Ukraine.

"This is believed to consist of 1,370 anti-tank weapons and 700,000 assult rifle and machine gun cartridges. this initial supply is important because the items can be used by 'people with little experience in using weapons.' The planes will land in Poland, near the border, and the weapons will then be picked up by the Ukrainian authorities," the Military Leak article says.

According to a number of media reports, Instalaza C-90 and Alcotan-100 rocket launchers were sent to Ukraine.
The Health Care Committee of the European Business Association (EBA), including the Clinical Trials Subcommittee and the Medical Devices Subcommittee, called on all global manufacturers of medicines, medical devices, as well as sponsors and contract research organizations to stop investing in the Russian Federation because of its invasion of Ukraine and escalation of hostilities

"We appeal to all global pharmaceutical and medical devices manufacturers, sponsors and contract research organizations to join international industrial sanctions and stop investing into new technology and pharmaceutical R&D in Russia. We appeal to you to stop clinical trials of your innovative drugs in Russia," the EBA said on its website.

"Russian troops, sabotage groups, numerous tank battalions and heavy military equipment are invading Ukraine from several directions destroying the cities and villages of our country, killing Ukrainian citizens, including civilians, children, women, and elderly people. Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine has been going on evidently for nine days already," it said.

"All Ukrainian people, relatives and friends are now hiding in shelters and subway stations to stay alive. Our largest cities are under constant siege, bombardment and missile strikes. Our people leave their homes, patients cannot receive necessary treatment," the report says.

"Numerous cases of violation of the laws of war and international humanitarian law by the Russian aggressor have been recorded along the entire offensive line," it said.
President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky called on the European peoples to support Ukraine and said that if Ukraine falls, all of Europe will fall.

"Do not be silent, take to the streets, support Ukraine, our freedom, because this is not only a victory over the Russian military, this is a victory of light over darkness, good over evil. If Ukraine fails, the whole of Europe will fail, if Ukraine falls, the whole of Europe will fall," he said, speaking at a telethon in support of Ukraine on Friday evening.

His speech was broadcast on large screens installed in Vilnius, Frankfurt am Main, Tbilisi, Bratislava, Prague, Lyon, Paris. In total, about 2,000 people listened to him in these cities.

"If we win, and I am confident in our people, it will be a great victory for democracy, values, freedom. Then the moments of silence will turn into years of prosperity," he said.

He also offered to observe a minute of silence "in memory of the fallen military, intelligence officers, police officers, intelligence officers, firefighters, who gave their lives, who are among us, but we do not see them."

He also called for a minute of silence "in honor of our civilians, adults and children who gave their lives and found eternal rest."

"Today we are all military, everyone is defending the state, each in his own place  the military with machine guns on the front line, doctors with a scalpel, children who protect us with smiles and tears. And this is our motivation," Zelensky said.
High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell has called for the creation of humanitarian corridors in Ukraine for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).

He said they urged for a humanitarian corridor. The International Committee of the Red Cross cannot enter the country. We need green corridors so that the Red Cross could help the Ukrainian people, he said. Children, mothers, fathers need food, basic things, Borrell said at a press conference on the results of an extraordinary meeting of the EU Foreign Affairs Council in Brussels on Friday.

He indicated that he saw this during his visit to Moldova, where he visited the refugee reception center.

He said he had seen many of them around the world. But it is heartbreaking, we will never get used to this, he said. Putin should allow humanitarian aid to go to Ukraine, Borrell stressed.
EU may increase number of Russian banks to be cut off from SWIFT - Borrell

The EU may increase the number of Russian banks that will be disconnected from SWIFT, High Representative of the European Union for Foreign and Security Policy Josep Borrell has said.

At the press-conference following the extraordinary meeting of the EU Foreign Affairs Council in Brussels on Friday, Borrell said the European Union is also considered what new package of sanctions can be decided in the coming days. For example, they can increase the number of Russian banks that we will disconnect from SWIFT, but the have not made any specific decision on this or that bank.

According to him, the EU has approached technical bodies with a proposal to study more banks.

Borrell said the EU can increase the number of banks, it can go deeper in financial sanctions.

At the same time, he urged to think about the consequences of the sanctions that have already been imposed.

The High Representative said there will be more sanctions, they are being reviewed. Today the EU officials have not made any decision, but it is important to implement what they have decided.

In addition, the head of EU diplomacy drew attention to the need for Russian oligarchs to avoid the consequences of sanctions and the suppression of tax evasion.

Borrell said the EU must find them and freeze their assets because the Russian regime derives its wealth from corruption and tax evasion. The EU must fight this and turn off the cash flow faucet that finances this senseless war.
23:00 04.03.2022

France, along with its key partners, to propose measures for security of nuclear facilities in Ukraine  Elysee Palace
By Azernews





By Laman Ismayilova

Ten years have passed since the establishment of the International Watercolor Society.

Founded in 2012, the International Watercolor Society has successfully integrated over 100 branches worldwide.

Through its activities centered on watercolor promotion, the society aims to promote brotherhood and peace.

The organization focuses on helping IWS branches develop affordable strategies for promoting art and watercolor in their own countries.

More than 80 watercolor works by about 60 artists have been showcased at the Khatai Arts Center as part of the celebration.

The exhibition "Watercolor Impressions" was co-organized by the Culture Ministry, the Parliamentary Committee on Culture, the Azerbaijan Union of Artists, the State Art Gallery, IWS Azerbaijan and the Khatai Watercolor Gallery.

Director of the Azerbaijan State Gallery Galib Gasimov, Secretary of the Azerbaijan Artists' Union, People's Artist Aghaali Ibrahimov, People's Artist Arif Huseynov, Honored Art Worker Ziyadkhan Aliyev, IWS Azerbaijan chairwoman Sabina Iskandar, director of the Khatai Arts Center Zahid Avazov attended the exhibition.

An electronic catalog was prepared especially for the exhibition. All participants were awarded with memorable gifts and certificates.
By Azernews





By Laman Ismayilova

Uzeyir Hajibayli's musical comedy will be staged at the State Academic Musical Theater on March 19.

People's Artist Azer Zeynalov (Mashadi Ibad) and Honored Artist Ramil Gasimov (Sarvar) will perform the main parts in the musical comedy.

They will share the same stage with People's Artist Akram Poladov, Honored Artists Inara Babayeva, Jahangir Gurbanov, Gulustan Aliyeva, Alakbar Aliyev, Tural Aghasiyev as well as soloist Fahmin Ahmadli under the baton of the Honored Cultural Worker Sevil Hajiyeva.

Notably, the comedy's new version was premiered at the end of December 2021. The work was staged by Honored Cultural Worker Hafiz Guliyev.

If Not That One, Then This One

"If Not That One, Then This One" is a 1910 operetta in four acts that reflects social and everyday life relations in pre-revolutionary Azerbaijan. It is the composer's second work written in this genre.

The musical comedy has been shown for many years by various directors not only in Azerbaijan, but also in many theaters around the world.

In his work, Hajibeyli used the Azerbaijani mugham and included extracts from Fuzuli's ghazals in the libretto.

The premiere of "If Not This One, Then That One" was held in Baku on April 25, 1911, at the Mayilov brothers' theater (now State Opera and Ballet Theater).

The main roles were performed by Mirzaagha Aliyev as Mashadi Ibad, Huseyngulu Sarabski as Sarvar, Ahmed Agdamski as Gulnaz, and M. Teregulov as Hasan bey.

The musical was conducted by Uzeyir Hajibeyli. The libretto of the comedy was first published in Baku in 1912 by the Orujov brothers' printing house.

The musical comedy has been successfully staged in Turkey, Iran, Bulgaria and other countries.

In 1956, Huseyn Seyidzade shot the movie "If Not This One, Then That One". The film criticized backward traditions and celebrated emerging modern lifestyles. It was translated into many languages and within the next three years was shown in more than 40 countries.

"If Not This One, Then That One" film is considered one of the most famous and successful cinematographic pieces in the history of Azerbaijans movie industry.

Tickets can be purchased at all ticket offices in Baku and the iTicket website.

Media partners of the event are Azernews.az, Trend.az, Day.az, Milli.az.
Al-Azhar condemned Friday terrorist attack on a mosque in Afghanistans capital Kabul that left dozens of worshippers dead and injured.
Complaining that the West is ``stuffing Ukraine with weapons,'' Russia bombarded railroad stations and other supply-line targets across the country, as the European Union moved to further punish Moscow for the war Wednesday by proposing a ban on oil imports.
South Africa: R100m to benefit learners in digital learning space

The National Skills Fund (NSF), in partnership with the Presidency, has allocated R100 million towards the Presidential Youth Employment Initiative, which will benefit 4 500 learners in the digital learning space.

Briefing the media on learning and training opportunities provided through the Sector Education and Training Authorities (SETAs) on Friday, Higher Education, Science and Innovation Minister, Dr Blade Nzimande, said the NSF has committed R200 million to the employment creation initiative between the Department of Higher Education and Training and the Department of Employment and Labour, through the Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF).

Nzimande said the project will benefit more than 5 000 unemployed youth.

A significant number of request for proposals has been posted in the press inviting skills development providers to participate in projects, which are targeting worker education and empowerment, and assistance for the community of people with disabilities.

The total value of this project is in excess of R200 million and will assist more than 2 000 beneficiaries, Nzimande said.

He said the NSF has finalised an important policy, which will regulate unsolicited proposals, initiated by the skills development providers, through their skills development creativity and innovation.

The area of NSF unsolicited proposals traverses and will fund a broad range of skills development providers, including churches and other cultural and community development. We have received a lot of these proposals, and they are currently being considered for due diligence purposes.

The total amount allocated for the unsolicited proposals will exceed R1.5 billion in this current financial year. We estimate that this will benefit more than 20 000 beneficiaries in various skills development areas.

Nzimande said the department is also collaborating with the Catholic Church, through their Thabiso skills centres and the Methodist Church to provide much needed skills to communities.

We further intend to partner with other faith based organisations to further our skills development drive.

Community Education and Training Colleges Summit

Nzimande will host a national Summit on Community Education and Training Colleges (CET), set to take place on 8 - 9 March 2022.

The summit, which is the first of its kind, is aimed at engaging with strategic partners in order for them to use community education learning centres to roll out skills programmes on a mass basis.

Nzimande said he wants the summit to identify priorities for dedicated CET infrastructure, accreditation of programmes, lecturer capacity, partnerships and information management systems for proper monitoring and reporting.

I am highlighting this because all our SETAs will be playing a central role in supporting our CET sector in the massification of skills development in our country, especially aligned with the skills strategy.

In our recent meeting with SETAs, we concretised their support for CET colleges in the short, medium and long-term community projects.

For further training and skills development opportunities offered by SETAs, I invite all South Africans to interact with our SETAs through their websites and that of the Department of Higher Education and Training at www.dhet.gov.za,  SAnews.gov.za

This story has been published on: 2022-03-04. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
By Azernews





By Laman Ismayilova

Some of the brightest talents have gathered at the State Philharmonic Hall to delight the audience with sophisticated music.

The concert held as part of the "Youth support" project brought together the soloists of the Children's and Youth Orchestra of Folk Instruments, music schools and students from the country's regions.

Young musicians performed works by Uzeyir Hajibeyli, Fikret Amirov, Suleiman Aleskerov, Haji Khanmamadov, Said Rustamov, Elmira Nazarova, Hasan Rzayev and Vittorio Monti.

They were accompanied by the Azerbaijan State Orchestra of Folk Instruments under the baton of the artistic director and chief conductor, People's Artist Aghaverdi Pashayev.

The concert left an indelible impression on the audience.

Notably, "Youth Support" project has been held since 2016 to discover and support young talents in Azerbaijan.

The project is headed by the director of the State Philharmonic Hall, People's Artist of Azerbaijan Murad Adigozalzadeh, and the project coordinator is Ayla Karimova-Zekeriyye.

Within the project, concert programs are traditionally held several times a month at the State Philharmonic Hall.

The programs presented within the project are designed for a wide audience with different musical tastes, including connoisseurs of high academic performance, mugham, jazz, etc.

The project has celebrated its fifth anniversary this year.

A gala concert was held as part of the celebration. The concert was highly appreciated by the audience.
Egypt has launched an air bridge to repatriate expats who crossed borders from Ukraine to neighbouring European countries, Minister of Emigration and Expatriate Affairs Nabila Makram said on Thursday.

Our sons in the western cities in Ukraine are now moving along the borders with Poland, Romania, Slovakia, and Hungary to Egypt, God willing, Makram said in a post on her Facebook account.

Egypt launched the air bridge as a cooperative effort between the ministries of civil aviation and foreign affairs as per the directives of the leadership, the minister said.

Egyptian nationals in the eastern cities should be careful while heading from Kharkiv to Cossack Lopan village, and from Sumy city to Sutga city in the direction of Russia, stressing that all nationals heading to these areas should provide their info to the Egyptian Embassy in Moscow on the e-mail: [email protected].

Hundreds of Egyptians, including many students, have arrived in the European countries that lie west of Ukraine in an effort coordinated with the Egyptian foreign ministry, where they are set to be repatriated soon.

Since the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine eight days ago, the emigration and expatriate affairs ministry has been working round the clock to coordinate with the Ukrainian authorities to facilitate the exit of Egyptian nationals from the country.

In the past several days, Minister Makram held more than one meeting via video conference with Egyptian expat community in Ukraine to coordinate exit strategies.

The ministry has also coordinated with several of Ukraine's neighbours - Poland, Romania, Slovakia, and Hungary - to secure measures to facilitate the entry of Egyptian nationals exiting Ukraine into these countries and safe passage home.

In parallel, the Egyptian Embassy in Kyiv has also been working round the clock in issuing safety directives and planning exit routes for the more than 6,000 nationals who lived in Ukraine before the russian invasion.

On Tuesday evening, Air Cairo flew back from Bucharest 175 Egyptian students who had fled from Ukraine into Romania.

On Thursday, Russian and Ukrainian delegations held a second round of peace talks in Belarus, during which they agreed to organise safe corridors for civilians to evacuate and for humanitarian supplies to be delivered.

The details of safe corridors will be made clear shortly, Leonid Slutsky, a senior Russian lawmaker who took part in the talks said.

Neighbouring countries such as Romania and Hungary have received hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian refugees throughout the week, with many thousands more expected in the coming days.

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Russia's war on Ukraine is now in its ninth day. Russian forces have shelled Europe's largest nuclear power plant, sparking a fire there that was extinguished overnight. The U.N. nuclear watchdog says there was no sign Friday of radiation leaks.

The Russians have also taken over the strategic port city of Kherson and Russian President Vladimir Putin has said the campaign will press on to ``demilitarize'' Ukraine even as the day before, Ukrainian and Russian delegates met in neighboring Belarus and agreed to provide safe corridors to evacuate citizens and deliver humanitarian aid.

People across Ukraine have taken up arms and sought shelter. More than 1.2 million people have fled to neighboring countries, the U.N. refugee agency said Friday.

Associated Press journalists around Ukraine and beyond are documenting the military activity. Here's a look at the events unfolding Friday:

CONCERNS OVER NUCLEAR SAFETY

In the battle for control of the city of Enerhodar, Russian forces shelled Europe's largest nuclear plant, sparking a fire. Firefighters could not immediately reach the site because of the Russian onslaught. The Zaporizhzhia plant provides about 25% of Ukraine's power generation.

The mayor of Enerhodar said Friday morning that the fire had been extinguished. His office told The Associated Press that the information came from firefighters who were allowed onto the site overnight.

The International Atomic Energy Agency said the blaze had not affected essential equipment. Ukraine's nuclear regulator reported no change in radiation levels. It said staff are studying the site to check for other damage and noted the importance of maintaining the ability to cool nuclear fuel.

Finland called the incident ``very scary,'' while Norway's prime minister called it ``in line with madness.'' Britain's deputy prime minister described it as ''a reckless bombardment``. China expressed its serious concern.

The U.N. Security Council scheduled an emergency open meeting Friday on the attack on Zaporizhzhia at the request of the U.S., Britain, France, Ireland, Norway and Albania. The IAEA was to brief council members, diplomats said.

At another nuclear site, Ukraine informed the IAEA that staff at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant were facing ``psychological pressure and moral exhaustion.'' Russian military forces took control of the site a week ago. The plant has been leaking radioactivity since it caught fire in 1986 in the world's worst nuclear disaster.

DIRECTLY WITNESSED OR CONFIRMED BY AP:

Russian forces have captured the southern city of Kherson, a vital Black Sea port of 280,000 _the first major city to fall since the invasion began. Russian armored vehicles were seen in the otherwise empty streets of Kherson, in videos shared with the AP by a resident.

Frequent shelling could be heard Friday from the center of the capital, Kyiv.

Heavy fighting continued on the outskirts of another strategic port, Mariupol, knocking out the city's electricity, heat and water systems, as well as most phone service. Food deliveries to the city were also cut.

A livestreamed security camera linked from the homepage of the Zaporizhzhia plant showed what appeared to be armored vehicles rolling into the facility's parking lot and shining spotlights on the building late Thursday. The AP also verified video shot by a resident in the area that showed bright flaring objects landing in the grounds of the nuclear plant.

WHAT ELSE IS HAPPENING ON THE GROUND:

Battles involving airstrikes and artillery continued Friday northwest of Kyiv, and in the northeast, with the cities of Kharkiv and Okhtyrka coming under heavy strikes, Ukrainian presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovich said.

Ukrainian defense forces are still holding on to the northern city of Chernihiv, and have prevented Russian efforts to take the important southern city of Mykolaiv, he said.

Ukrainian artillery have been defending Odesa from repeated attempts by Russian ships to fire on the Black Sea port city, he said, insisting there's no immediate threat to the city.

A Russian air strike Thursday also destroyed the power plant in Okhtyrka, leaving the city without heat or electricity, the head of the region said.

DIPLOMATIC EFFORTS AND STATEMENTS

Delegates from Ukraine and Russia met in Belarus on Thursday and agreed on humanitarian corridors that would allow civilians to flee safely and allow for humanitarian supplies to be delivered _ but made little headway on ending the fighting.

A third round of direct talks are planned for early next week.

In a call initiated by Putin, the Russian told French President Emmanuel Macron that negotiations must center on the ``neutralization and disarmament of Ukraine.'' Macron ``spoke the truth'' to Putin, advising him of the long-term consequences and telling him he would end up isolated.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy spoke with President Joe Biden and other world leaders after Russia's shelling of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant. Zelenskyy said in a late night speech he feared an explosion that would be ``the end for everyone.``

The Biden administration is seeking $10 billion for Ukraine and the neighboring region for humanitarian, security and economic assistance, a rapid escalation of the $1.4 billion provided by the U.S. since 2021.

Japan said Friday it's sending bulletproof vests, helmets and other defense supplies to Ukraine to help the country fight Russia's invasion _ a rare move by a nation that has a principle of not shipping defense supplies to countries in conflict.

HOW MANY REFUGEES AND CASUALTIES?

The U.N. refugee agency said Friday that more than 1.2 million people have left Ukraine since the invasion began. UNHCR's data portal on Ukraine showed that the vast majority _ about 650,000 _ had gone to neighboring Poland, and roughly 145,000 had fled to Hungary. Another 103,000 were in Moldova and more than 90,000 in Slovakia.

Separately, UNICEF said that 500,000 of those who've left Ukraine are children.

Russia has acknowledged that nearly 500 Russian troops have been killed and around 1,600 have been wounded. Among them, Maj. Gen. Andrei Sukhovetsky, the commanding general of the Russian 7th Airborne Division, who had previous experience in Syria.

Ukraine has not released similar casualty figures for its armed forces.

The U.N. human rights office says at least 227 civilians have been killed and 525 wounded in Ukraine since the start of the invasion. Ukraine's State Emergency Service has said more than 2,000 civilians have died, though it's impossible to verify the claim.

SANCTIONS ON RUSSIA

More businesses are suspending operations in Russia due to sanctions, including Apple, Mercedes-Benz, BP, Volkswagen, clothing retailer H&M and furnishings store IKEA, affecting thousands of employees and millions of customers throughout the country.

Sanctions also threaten ultra-wealthy Russians who own properties across Europe. Britain slapped sanctions on two more Russians, who are worth a combined $19 billion, for their links to the Kremlin.

The U.S. State Department is also imposing visa bans on 19 Russian oligarchs and dozens of their family members and associates.

Austria's former chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel has quit his post on the supervisory board of Russian oil firm Lukoil.

The Austria Press Agency quoted Schuessel on Friday as saying that while he had always backed ``constructive relations'' between Russia and the European Union, the Russian invasion of neighbor Ukraine had ``crossed a red line.''

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The United Nations' top official in conflict-ravaged Libya offered Friday to mediate in a bitter dispute over a framework for postponed elections, warning against "escalation" after a parallel government took office.

Stephanie Williams' offer came a day after the country's eastern-based parliament swore in a prime minister in a challenge to interim premier Abdulhamid Dbeibah -- a move observers fear could tip Libya into a new schism.

Williams, UN chief Antonio Guterres' Special Advisor on Libya, warned Friday in a series of tweets that "the solution to Libya's crisis does not lie in forming rival administrations and perennial transitions."

She said she had written to the leaders of both the eastern-based House of Representatives and the High Council of State, an upper house based in Tripoli, "inviting them to nominate six delegates from each chamber to form a joint committee dedicated to developing a consensual constitutional basis."

Her proposal comes after presidential and parliamentary elections, set for December 24 as part of a UN-brokered peace process, were abandoned amid bitter disputes over their constitutional and legal footing as well as the candidacies of several highly contested figures.

Their indefinite postponement dashed hopes of drawing a line under a decade of conflict since the 2011 revolt that toppled dictator Moamer Kadhafi.

The country endured two rival governments from 2014 to early 2021, when Dbeibah's administration was approved by key factions after a ceasefire late the previous year.

On Thursday, despite months of UN-led efforts aimed at re-unifying its institutions, Libya found itself once again with two prime ministers -- Tripoli-based Dbeibah, who has refused to cede power except to an elected government, and former interior minister Fathi Bashagha, backed by the parliament hundreds of miles to the east.

In his inaugural speech, Bashagha accused Dbeibah and his allies of shutting the country's airspace and detaining three ministers to prevent them reaching the assembly to be sworn in.

Williams on Friday stressed "the fundamental importance of preserving security and stability, and refraining from all acts of escalation."

She also urged the country's politicians to "engage constructively together to move towards elections, for the sake of the 2.8 million Libyans who registered to vote" last year.

She proposed to convene the joint committee on March 15 and to produce a consitutional framework.

There was no immediate public response to her proposal from the upper or lower house.

Kadhafi scrapped Libya's constitution after seizing power in a 1969 coup and ruled for four decades through a mixture of a personality cult, tribal alliances, petrodollar patronage and manipulating the military to avoid further coup attempts.

After he was ousted and killed in the NATO-backed uprising, Libyan politicians agreed on a "constitutional declaration".

In 2017, a committee submitted a proposed constitution to parliament, which was meant to organise a referendum -- but never did.

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Egypt and Italys giant energy group Eni discussed on Friday preparations to pump new investments into Egypts Gulf of Suez and Nile Delta regions in accordance with an oil exploration deal signed between both sides in December.

This announcement came during a meeting between the Egyptian Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources Tarek El-Molla and a delegation from Eni, according to a statement released by the ministry.

In December, the Egyptian General Petroleum Corporation signed an agreement with the Italian company for oil exploration and exploitation in the Gulf of Suez and Nile Delta regions worth $1 billion.

Friday's meeting tackled the Italian companys activities in Egypt and its projects and investment programs as part of a plan outlined to boost the production levels of oil wells, added the statement.

El-Molla and Eni's delegation also addressed the development plans for a number of wells and the status of the companys new concession areas it won as per the first Egyptian digital oil auction.

The auction, held in January by the state-owned Egyptian Natural Gas Holding Company, resulted in awarding Eni and other companies eight oil exploration blocks to invest a minimum of $250 million and drill 33 wells in blocks within the Mediterranean, Western Desert, and the Gulf of Suez.

Today's meeting also touched upon the latest developments in global oil prices and their impacts on investment opportunities, according to the statement.

The Egyptian minister revealed that the countrys petroleum sector is currently working with its foreign partners, including Eni, to prepare initiatives aiming at reducing emission levels at the petroleum sites and cooperating in clean energy and hydrogen projects.

The meeting was attended by Eni's Chief Operating Officer of Natural Resources Guido Brusco, Regional Manager for North Africa Antonio Panza and Deputy Chief Operating Officer of Natural Resources Cristian Signoretto.

Eni's Brusco hailed cooperation and partnership between the company and the Egyptian petroleum sector as "fruitful," saying "Eni considers Egypt as a key destination for its investments in North Africa and the Mediterranean Sea.

"Both sides have a mutual desire to continue to promote cooperation and partnership in the coming years and to continue achieving new success stories," Brusco added.

In recent years, Eni has taken part in important oil discoveries in the country's the Western Desert as well as the operation of gas plants, as Egypt aims to become a regional energy hub.

Eni has been operating in Egypt through its subsidiary, the International Egyptian Oil Company (IEOC) Production BV, since 1954.

In 2015, the Italian energy giant discovered the giant Zohr gas field, the biggest-ever in the Mediterranean, off the Egyptian coast. Zohr is located within the Shorouk concession, nearly 190 km north of the city of Port Said.

The discovery, which holds an estimated reservoir of 30 trillion cubic feet of gas, has drawn the interest of investors to the countrys energy sector.

It has also helped Egypt reach self-sufficiency in gas and pursue being a regional hub for gas exports.

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Egypt is repatriating on Friday evening 30 Egyptian expats who were evacuated from Ukraine to Hungary on the heels of the Russian invasion, the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced.

The evacuees, most of them students, will fly home on board an EgyptAir flight from Budapest to Cairo International Airport.

The step is the result of efforts exerted by the Egyptian embassy in Hungary in coordination with the Egyptian Ministry of Civil Aviation and EgyptAir, the ministry added.

The Egyptian embassy in Budapest will continue to coordinate with the Hungarian authorities to ease the passage of Egyptian expats in Ukraine through the Hungarian borders, the ministry added.

Egypt has been pushing forward with efforts to bring home nationals from Ukraine. Prior to the Russian invasion, around 6,000 Egyptians lived in Ukraine, including 3,000 students studying at the country's universities, especially in medicine.

Egypt has urged expats in the western cities of Ukraine to move to neighbouring Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and Romania.

Over the past several days, scores of Egyptian expats have already entered the four European neighbouring nations and the Egyptian authorities are now coordinating their return.

On Tuesday evening, an Air Cairo flight evacuated 175 Egyptian students from Bucharest who had fled Ukraine into Romania.

On Thursday, Egypt said it had launched an air bridge to repatriate expats who crossed borders from Ukraine to neighbouring European countries, where the Egyptian embassies there are providing temporary residences for the evacuees until their return to Egypt.

Also on Thursday, Russian and Ukrainian delegations agreed to organise safe corridors for civilians to evacuate and for humanitarian supplies to be delivered.

Neighbouring countries such as Romania and Hungary have received hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian refugees throughout the week, with many thousands more expected in the coming days.

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Egypt has "strongly" condemned the terror attack that targeted a Shia Muslim mosque in the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar during Friday prayers that left scores of worshipers killed and injured.

In a statement released on Friday, the foreign ministry voiced condolences and expressed grief to the Pakistani people and government and wished the injured a speedy recovery.

The statement asserted that Egypt stands by the side of Pakistan in face of terrorism in all its forms.

Also, Egypt's Mufti and President of the General Secretariat for Fatwa Authorities Worldwide Shawki Allam said that terrorist groups do not respect sanctity of blood or mosques.

The mufti extended his deep condolences to the Pakistani government and people over the victims of the terrorist attack, wishing the injured a speedy recovery.

Two armed men on a motorcycle arrived near mosque and opened fire when they were stopped by police, before one of them forced his way into a crowded hall and detonated his suicide vest, reported Reuters citing a senior police official.

The attack has left at least 56 dead and 194 injured, it added.

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Iran's foreign minister said Friday he was ready to travel to Vienna if a deal is reached to revive the 2015 nuclear accord, as the US suggested an agreement is possible.

"I am ready to go to Vienna when the Western sides accept our remaining red lines," Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said in a phone call with EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, quoted in a foreign ministry statement.

"The presence of foreign ministers in Vienna and the announcement of a final deal depend on full respect for the red lines set out by Iran, including effective economic guarantees," the statement read.

The 2015 deal began unravelling when former US president Donald Trump withdrew from it in 2018 and re-imposed sanctions, prompting Iran to start disregarding the limits on its nuclear activity laid down in the agreement.

Talks to restore the agreement, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), underway in Vienna involve Iran as well as Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia directly, and the United States indirectly.

On Thursday, US State Department deputy spokeswoman Jalina Porter said negotiators were "close to a possible deal".

"But a number of difficult issues still remain unresolved," Porter said.

However, "if Iran shows seriousness, we can and should reach an understanding of mutual return to full implementation of the JCPOA within days", she added.

Enrique Mora, the European Union's coordinator for the talks, also said they were in the "final stages".

The Iranian foreign minister said Friday: "We are ready to finalise a good accord immediately."

But he warned that the West's "haste" could undermine "respect for Iran's red lines".

Amir-Abdollahian did not define the "red lines" but during negotiations in Vienna, Iran has repeatedly demanded the right to verify the removal of sanctions and for guarantees the US will not repeat its withdrawal from the agreement.

The latest developments come as the head of the Vienna-based UN atomic agency is due Saturday in Tehran to meet senior officials.

International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) director general Rafael Grossi is seeking to get Iran to clarify the presence of nuclear material at several undeclared sites.

Iran has said the closure of the probe is necessary in order to clinch a deal to revive the JCPOA.

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A suicide bomber struck inside a Shiite Muslim mosque in Pakistan's northwestern city of Peshawar during Friday prayers, killing at least 56 worshippers and wounding 194 people, hospital officials said.

No militant group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack. Both the Islamic State group and the Pakistani Taliban _ a militant group separate from the Taliban in Afghanistan _ have carried out similar attacks in the past in the area, located near the border with neighboring Afghanistan.

According to the spokesman at Peshawar's Lady Reading Hospital, Asim Khan, many of the wounded were in critical condition. Scores of victims were peppered with shrapnel, several had limbs amputated and others were injured by flying debris.

Peshawar Police Chief Muhammed Ejaz Khan said the violence started when an armed attacker opened fire on police outside the mosque in Peshawar's old city. One policeman was killed in the gunfight, and another police officer was wounded. The attacker then ran inside the mosque and detonated his suicide vest.

The suicide bomber had strapped a powerful explosive devic bye to his body, packed with 5 kilograms (12 pounds) of explosives, said Moazzam Jah Ansari, the top police official for Khyber Pukhtunkhwa Province where Peshawar is the capital.

The devise was hidden beneath a large black shawl that covered much of his body, according to CCTV footage seen by The Associated Press. The footage showed the bomber moving quickly up a narrow street toward the mosque entrance. He fired at the police protecting the mosque before entering inside.

Within seconds a powerful explosion occurred and the camera lens was obscured with dust and debris. Ansari said the crudely made device was packed with ball bearings, a deadly method of constructing a bomb to inflict the most carnage spraying a larger area with deadly projectiles. The ball bearings caused the high death toll, Ansari said.

Local police official Waheed Khan said the explosion occurred as worshippers had gathered in the Kucha Risaldar Mosque for Friday prayers. There are fears the death toll could still rise further, he added.

Ambulances rushed through congested narrow streets carrying the wounded to Lady Reading Hospital, where doctors worked feverishly.

Shayan Haider, a witness, had been preparing to enter the mosque when a powerful explosion threw him to the ground. ``I opened my eyes and there was dust and bodies everywhere,'' he said.

At the Lady Reading Hospital Emergency department, there was chaos as doctors struggled to move the many wounded into operating theaters. Hundreds of relatives gathered outside the emergency department, many of them wailing and beating their chests, pleading for information about their loved ones.

Outside the mosque, Shiites pressed through the cordoned-off streets. Kucha Risaldar Mosque is one of the oldest in the area, predating the creation of Pakistan in 1947 as a separate homeland for the Muslims of the Indian subcontinent.

The prayer leader, Allama Irshad Hussein Khalil, a prominent up and coming young Shiite leader, was among the dead. Throughout the city, ambulance sirens could be heard.

Prime Minister Imran Khan condemned the bombing.

Retired army officer Sher Ali who had been inside the mosque at the time of the explosion was injured by flying shrapnel. He made a impassioned plea to the Pakistani government for better protection of the country's minority Shiites.

``What is our sin? What have we done? Aren't we citizens of this country?'' he said from within the emergency department, his white clothes splattered with blood.

In majority Sunni Pakistan, minority Shiites have come under repeated attacks. Also, in recent months, the country has experienced a significant increase of violence and dozens of military personnel have been killed in scores of attacks on army outposts along the border with Afghanistan.

Many attacks have been claimed by the Pakistani Taliban, who analysts say have been emboldened by the Afghan Taliban seizing power last August in Afghanistan.

Pakistan has urged Afghanistan's new rulers to handover Pakistani Taliban militants who have been staging their attacks from Afghanistan. The Afghan Taliban have said their territory will not be used to stage attacks against anyone, but until now have not handed over any wanted Pakistani militants.

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On March 3, President of the Republic of Moldova Maia Sandu made a phone call to President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev, Azertag has reported.

During the phone conversation, the sides exchanged views on regional issues, as well as discussed the expansion of economic and trade relations and energy cooperation between Azerbaijan and Moldova.
Ukrainian firefighters on Friday extinguished a blaze at Europe's biggest nuclear plant that was ignited by a Russian attack and no radiation was released, U.N. and Ukrainian officials said, as Russian forces pressed their campaign to cripple the country despite global condemnation.

The head of the United Nations' atomic agency said that a Russian ``projectile'' hit a training center at the Zaporizhzhia plant. Ukrainian officials have said Russian troops took control of the overall site, but the plant's staff are continuing to ensure its operations. International Atomic Energy Agency Director-General Rafael Mariano Grossi sad that Russian forces were at the plant, but the Ukrainians were in control.

Ukraine's state nuclear plant operator Enerhoatom said that three Ukrainian soldiers were killed and two wounded in the attack. Grossi said two people were injured in the blaze that broke out.

Ukraine's state nuclear regulator earlier said that no changes in radiation levels have been recorded so far after the plant came under attack. Grossi later said no radioactive material was released.

The attack caused worldwide concern _ and evoked memories of the world's worst nuclear disaster, at Ukraine's Chernobyl.

The shelling of the plant came as the Russian military advanced on a strategic city on the Dnieper River near where the facility is located, and gained ground in their bid to cut the country off from the sea. That move would deal a severe blow to Ukraine's economy and could worsen an already dire humanitarian situation.

With the invasion in its second week, another round of talks between Russia and Ukraine yielded a tentative agreement to set up safe corridors to evacuate citizens and deliver humanitarian aid to the country, overturned by a war that has sent more than 1 million fleeing over the border and countless others sheltering underground night after night. A handful cities are without heat and at least one is struggling to get food and water.

Initial reports conflicted over whether one or two fires broke out at the plant in the city of Enerhodar. Nuclear plant spokesman Andriy Tuz told Ukrainian television overnight that shells fell directly on the facility, and set fire to reactor No. 1, which is under renovation and not operating, and to an administrative training building.

On Friday morning, officials only referenced a blaze at the training building when they said that all fires at the plant were out _ which Grossi also confirmed. The regional military administration reported unspecified damage to the compartment of reactor No. 1, but said it does not affect the safety of the power unit.

The nuclear regulator said staff are studying the site to check for other damage.

Grossi confirmed Friday that the building hit was a training center and ``not part of the reactor.'' He said he did not know what hit the plant but called a ``projectile'' from Russian forces.

He said that only one reactor at the plant is operating, at about 60% capacity.

The confusion itself underscored the dangers of active fighting near a nuclear power plant. It was the second time since the invasion began just over a week ago that concerns about a nuclear accident or a release of radiation materialized, following a battle at Chernobyl.

The regulator noted in a statement on Facebook the importance of maintaining the ability to cool nuclear fuel, saying the loss of such ability could lead to an accident even worse than 1986 Chernobyl disaster or the 2011 Fukushima meltdowns in Japan. It also noted that there is a storage facility for spent nuclear fuel at the site, though there was no sign that facility was hit by shelling.

Leading nuclear authorities were worried but not panicked. The assault led to phone calls between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and U.S. President Joe Biden and other world leaders. The U.S. Department of Energy activated its nuclear incident response team as a precaution.

The Zaporizhzhia regional military administration said that measurements taken at 7 a.m. Friday (0500 GMT) showed radiation levels in the region ``remain unchanged and do not endanger the lives and health of the population.'' Nuclear officials from Sweden to China also said no radiation spikes have been reported.

``The fire at the (nuclear plant) has indeed been extinguished,'' Enerhodar Mayor Dmytro Orlov announced on his Telegram channel Friday morning. His office told The Associated Press that the information came from firefighters who were allowed onto the site overnight.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson called for an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council in ``coming hours'' to raise the issue of Russia's attack on the plant, according to a statement from his office.

In an emotional speech in the middle of the night, Zelenskyy said he feared an explosion that would be ``the end for everyone. The end for Europe. The evacuation of Europe.''

But most experts saw nothing to indicate an impending disaster.

The International Atomic Energy Agency said the fire had not affected essential equipment and that Ukraine's nuclear regulator reported no change in radiation levels.

``The real threat to Ukrainian lives continues to be the violent invasion and bombing of their country,'' the American Nuclear Society said in a statement.

Orlov, the mayor of Enerhodar, said Russian shelling stopped a few hours before dawn, and residents of the city of more than 50,000 who had stayed in shelters overnight could return home. The city awoke with no heat, however, because the shelling damaged the city's heating supply, he said.

Loud shots and rocket fire were heard late Thursday around the plant. Later, a livestreamed security camera linked from the homepage of the plant showed what appeared to be armored vehicles rolling into the facility's parking lot and shining spotlights on the building where the camera was mounted.

Then there were what appeared to be muzzle flashes from vehicles, followed by nearly simultaneous explosions in surrounding buildings. Smoke rose into the frame and drifted away.

Russian President Vladimir Putin's forces have brought their superior firepower to bear over the past few days, launching hundreds of missiles and artillery attacks on cities and other sites around the country and making significant gains in the south.

The Russians announced the capture of the southern city of Kherson, a vital Black Sea port of 280,000, and local Ukrainian officials confirmed the takeover of the government headquarters there, making it the first major city to fall since the invasion began a week ago.

Troops, meanwhile, advanced on Zaporizhzhia, a strategic city near the plant of the same name. A Russian airstrike on Thursday destroyed the power plant in Okhtyrka, leaving the northeastern city without heat or electricity, the head of the region said on Telegram.

``We are trying to figure out how to get people out of the city urgently because in a day the apartment buildings will turn into a cold stone trap without water, light or electricity,'' Dmytro Zhyvytskyy said.

Heavy fighting continued on the outskirts of another strategic port, Mariupol, on the Azov Sea. The battles have knocked out the city's electricity, heat and water systems, as well as most phone service, officials said. Food deliveries to the city were also cut.

Associated Press video from the port city showed the assault lighting up the darkening sky above deserted streets and medical teams treating civilians, including a 16-year-old boy inside a clinic who could not be saved. The child was playing soccer when he was wounded in the shelling, according to his father, who cradled the boy's head on the gurney and cried.

Ukraine's defense minister said Friday that the flagship of its navy has been scuttled at the shipyard where it was undergoing repairs in order to keep it from being seized by Russian forces. Oleksii Reznikov said on Facebook that the commander of the frigate Hetman Sahaidachny decided to flood the ship.

``It is hard to imagine a more difficult decision for a courageous soldier and crew,'' Reznikov said.

Overall, the outnumbered, outgunned Ukrainians have put up stiff resistance, staving off the swift victory that Russia appeared to have expected. But Russia's seizure of the Crimean Peninsula in 2014 gives it a logistical advantage now in the country's south, with shorter supply lines that smoothed the offensive there, said a senior U.S. defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Ukrainian leaders called on the people to defend their homeland by cutting down trees, erecting barricades in the cities and attacking enemy columns from the rear. In recent days, authorities have issued weapons to civilians and taught them how to make Molotov cocktails.

``Total resistance. ... This is our Ukrainian trump card, and this is what we can do best in the world,'' Oleksiy Arestovich, an aide to Zelenskyy, said in a video message, recalling guerrilla actions in Nazi-occupied Ukraine during World War II.

At the second round of talks between Ukrainian and Russian delegations Thursday, Putin warned Ukraine that it must quickly accept the Kremlin's demand for its ``demilitarization'' and declare itself neutral, renouncing its bid to join NATO.

The two sides said that they tentatively agreed to allow cease-fires in areas designated safe corridors, and that they would seek to work out the necessary details quickly. A Zelenskyy adviser also said a third round of talks will be held early next week.

The Pentagon set up a direct communication link to Russia's Ministry of Defense earlier this week to avoid the possibility of a miscalculation sparking conflict between Moscow and Washington, according to a U.S. defense official who spoke on condition of anonymity because the link had not been announced.

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NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg on Friday said the alliance would not impose a no-fly zone over Ukraine after calls from Kiev to help stop Russia's bombardments.

"The only way to implement a no-fly zone is to send NATO fighter planes into Ukraine's airspace, and then impose that no fly zone by shooting down Russian planes," Stoltenberg said after an urgent meeting with NATO foreign ministers.

"If we did that, we'll end up with something that could end in a full-fledged war in Europe, involving many more countries and causing much more human suffering. So that's the reason why we make this painful decision."

The stance by the US-led bloc comes despite appeals from Ukraine's leadership to help halt indiscriminate bombing against cities around the country.

Stoltenberg warned that "the days to come are likely to be worse, with more death, more suffering, and more destruction as Russian armed forces bring in heavier weaponry and continue their attacks across the country".

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba addressed the alliance via videolink from Kyiv.

He tweeted afterwards: "My message: act now before it's too late. Don't let (Russian President Vladimir) Putin turn Ukraine into Syria. We are ready to fight. We will continue fighting. But we need partners to help us with concrete, resolute and swift actions, now."

NATO members have rushed thousands of troops to eastern Europe to bolster the alliance's flank closest to Russia and are sending weapons to help Ukraine defend itself.

"We will continue to do what it takes to protect and defend every inch of NATO territory. NATO is a defensive alliance. Our core task is to keep our 30 nations safe," Stoltenberg said.

"We are not part of this conflict and we have a responsibility to ensure it does not escalate and spread beyond Ukraine."

Kyiv has said that if NATO is not willing to shut Ukrainian airspace then the allies should supply warplanes and air defence systems to help stop Russian air attacks.

European nations have so far said they will not deliver planes and most arms deliveries have focused on light weapons, and anti-tank and shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles.

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As the West condemns Russia, President Vladimir Putin has vocal supporters in China, where the ruling Communist Party tells its people they are fellow targets of U.S.-led harassment.

``If Russia is destroyed, we will be next. This is for sure,'' said Wang Yongchun, a retiree in Beijing. ``The United States wants to dominate the world.''

Such comments reflect the stance of a ruling party that is the closest thing Putin has to a major ally: The war should stop but the United States is to blame.

President Xi Jinping's government has tried to distance itself from Russia's offensive but avoided criticizing Moscow. The government has offered to act as mediator and denounced trade and financial sanctions against Russia.

Ruling party control of all Chinese media and intensive internet censorship make it hard to gauge public opinion. But what the party allows online and requires media to publish make clear what it wants the public to think.

Media outlets were told last week to post only pro-Russian content and to censor anti-Russian or pro-Western views, according to a copy of instructions posted on the social media account of the newspaper Beijing News. The post was later deleted.

Online and in social media, expressions of sympathy for Ukraine and support for Russia appear but not criticism of Moscow.

``When a war begins, is it not the children of ordinary people who serve as cannon fodder?'' said a post signed Da Ke Ming Yi on the Weibo social media platform. ``Those who died were the children of ordinary people.''

A letter signed by five professors from prominent universities that criticized Russia for attacking a weaker neighbor appeared briefly on social media before being deleted.

``We stand against unjust wars,'' said the academics from schools including Tsinghua University in Beijing, alma mater of many ruling party leaders.

Comments posted by nationalists criticized the professors for failing to stick to the ruling party's official position of neutrality.

The ruling party has spent decades using school textbooks and the entirely state-controlled media to nurture a sense of nationalist grievance. It accuses the United States of trying to block China's rise to its rightful position of global leadership.

State media repeat Beijing's position that the United States and its European allies are to blame for the Ukraine war because they failed to respond to Russian concerns that its democratic neighbor should be barred from joining NATO, the Western military alliance.

That echoes Chinese complaints that Washington and its allies are interfering in its domestic affairs and issues of national sovereignty, including its claim over Taiwan, territorial disputes in the South China Sea, and in Xinjiang, the far-western region where China has been accused of detaining over a million Uyghurs.

Russia's attack, as a historical event, ``is not a good one,'' but ``people think the conflict between Russia and Ukraine is because the United States stirred up trouble,'' said Zheng Bowen, a 38-year-old engineer.

The state-run newspaper Capital News exhorted the public to line up with the ruling party: ``The nation's attitude is our attitude.''

``China has always upheld a fair and responsible attitude, calling on all parties to exercise restraint and ease the situation, and return to dialogue and negotiation,'' it said.

However, the newspaper appeared to support Putin's demand that Ukraine become a neutral buffer between Russia and Europe and give up the possibility of NATO membership.

``Ultimately, Ukraine should be a bridge between East and West, rather than a frontier of confrontation between major powers,'' the Capital News said.

Comments online have called for China to support Russia by purchasing its exports of oil, gas and other goods.

``Let the Russian Embassy sell their goods on livestream. Let's show them China's buying power,'' said a comment signed Bao Zou Guang Xiao Pang on Weibo. It received 42,000 likes.

A separate comment advocating that China maintain normal trade with Russia, an implicit rejection of sanctions, received nearly 80,000 likes.

Social media platforms have urged users to act responsibly and say they have removed thousands of postings about the attack on Ukraine.

Douyin, a short-video service operated by the Chinese owner of TikTok, said it deleted more than 3,500 videos and 12,100 comments due to ``vulgar, war belittling, sensationalist and unfriendly comments.''

The popular WeChat message service also complained about ``vulgar posts'' that it said have a ``negative impact on cyberspace.''

It said some users ``took the opportunity to publish bad information about international current affairs,`` including comments belittling the war such as crass jokes about ``gaining course credits by going to Ukraine and fighting in the war'' and asking ``Ukrainian beauties to come to China,'' the platform said.

WeChat's post was later shared by a unit of China's internet watchdog, the Cyberspace Administration of China.

Weibo said it removed more than 4,000 posts that were vulgar and ridiculed war. It said more than 10,000 accounts were closed.

``Peaceful environments do not come easily,'' the company said in a social media post. It called on users to ``maintain an objective and rational attitude'' and take part in discussion ``in a reasonable manner.''

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The Ukrainian government and a former British prime minister are pushing for a special criminal tribunal to prosecute Russian President Vladimir Putin and his allies over the invasion of Ukraine.

Former Prime Minister Gordon Brown said the call for a body to investigate the ``crime of aggression'' was based on the tribunals that prosecuted senior Nazis after World War II.

The Netherlands-based International Criminal Court is already investigating allegations that Russia has committed war crimes in Ukraine. But while it can investigate genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes, Russia has not signed up to a separate ICC statute under which nations pledge not to commit ``crimes of aggression.''

Brown said that ``this act of aggression by Russia cannot go uninvestigated, unprosecuted and unpunished.''

``Putin must not be able to escape justice,'' he said.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba welcomed the call for a tribunal, which is backed by legal experts and academics from around the world.

``We are fighting against an enemy who is much stronger than us. But international law is on our side,'' Kuleba told a meeting in London by video link from Ukraine.

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The UN Security Council will hold an emergency meeting requested by Britain Friday at 11:30 am (1630 GMT) after Russian forces attacked Europe's largest nuclear plant in Ukraine, diplomatic sources said.

The session was requested by British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, diplomats told AFP, with the United States, France, Norway, Ireland and Albania joining the call for an urgent meeting.

Western leaders had expressed horror Friday after the Zaporizhzhia plant in southern Ukraine was attacked with shell fire and taken over by invading Russian forces.

The six reactors at Zaporizhzhia, which can power enough energy for four million homes, were apparently undamaged and international monitors reported no spike in radiation.

British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss called for the Security Council session while in Brussels for a NATO foreign ministers' meeting.

The attack was "a threat to European security and stability and we need those responsible to be held to account," she told British television on the sidelines of the meeting.

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President Aleksandar Vucic attended a training exercise at a military base near Belgrade that included recently purchased anti-tank Kornet guided missiles.

``I am pleased that our soldiers are happy about the purchase of Kornets from Russia,'' Vucic said. ``It is one of probably the best anti-tank weapons in the world.''

``The Kornet is an important defensive tool to deter anyone from potential aggression against our country, '' Vucic said.

Serbia has frequently been accused of saber-rattling and working with Slavic ally Russia to destabilize neighboring Bosnia, Montenegro and Kosovo, a former Serbian province which declared independence in 2008.

Serbia is widely blamed for triggering a bloody breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s with its nationalist policies. The country lately has armed itself mostly with Russian and Chinese warplanes, drones and anti-aircraft systems.

In recent months, Russia has handed over to Serbia 30 battle tanks and 30 armored personnel carriers. Serbia has also recently purchased sophisticated Russian Pantsir air defense systems, as well as attack and transport helicopters and Chinese drones.

Although formally seeking European Union membership, Serbia has refused to align its foreign policies with the 27-nation bloc and has instead strengthened its alliance with Russia and China.

Vucic said on Monday that Serbia ``remains on the European path,'' but also added that it will continue to ``nourish'' its friendly ties with Russia and China.

To join the EU, Serbia needs the support of all EU member nations, but the government has maintained frosty relations with fellow Balkan country Croatia, the last new member admitted into the bloc.

Croatia, which is also a member of NATO, is in a mini arms race with Serbia, which has recently received six used MiG-29 fighter jets from Russia and four more of the type from Belarus. In November, the Croatian government announced the purchase of 12 Rafale fighter jets from France.
Russian forces took control Thursday of the strategic Ukranian port city of Kherson as they continued to shell major cities in an offensive that has forced more than 1 million people to flee the country.

Local government officials and the Russian military confirmed the seizure of Kherson, the first city to fall in Russia's week-old invasion of Ukraine, following days of disputed claims over who was in control. A U.S. defense official said Washington was unable to confirm the development.

Moscow's attempt to quickly take over the Ukrainian capital has apparently stalled, but the military has made significant gains in the south as part of efforts to sever the country's connection to Black and Azov seas.

Despite Russian assaults on Kharkiv, Chernihiv and Mariupol, Britain's Defense Ministry said Thursday they all remained in Ukrainian hands.

"We are a people who in a week have destroyed the plans of the enemy," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a video address early Thursday. "They will have no peace here. They will have no food. They will have here not one quiet moment."

Russian troops were also besieging the port city of Mariupol east of Kherson, an attempt Mayor Vadym Boichenko said was aimed at isolating Ukraine. "They are trying to create a blockade here," Boichenko said Thursday in a broadcast video. He said the Russians are attacking rail stations to prevent civilian evacuations and that the attacks have cut off water and power.

Ukraine's Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov cited expectations ahead of the invasion that Russia would quickly overtake Ukraine, writing on Facebook, "No one, neither in Russia nor in the West, believed that we would last a week." He added that while there are challenges ahead, Ukraine has "every reason to be confident."
After almost two years, Western Australia has lifted the nation's toughest COVID-19 border controls. Double-vaccinated international and domestic travelers are now allowed in, as the so-called hermit state reconnects with the rest of the world.

For almost 700 days Western Australia was cut off from the rest of the country and the world.

Most international visitors were banned, as Australia's largest state, which is 10 times the size of the United Kingdom, tried to isolate itself from the pandemic. The state premier, Mark McGowan, said the tough policy had "avoided needless deaths," but he acknowledged the pain felt by separated families and businesses.

The tough measures did keep infections low, but they were unable to stop a recent surge in Omicron cases. A total of 1,770 cases were reported Wednesday -- a new record for Western Australia -- but the number of hospitalizations remains relatively low.

With almost 99 percent of the eligible population double-vaccinated, authorities have insisted that the time is right to end border restrictions.




Genres : Drama



: Drama Running Time : 114 min.



: 114 min. Directed by : Lee Jae-han



: Lee Jae-han Starring : Kim Sae-byuk, Kwak Min-gyu

Synopsis : Sophie stays in Korea for a while on her way to meet her brother in Philippines. She stays four days in a house with a view of Inwang Mountain, where a couple live. Two years later, the couple comes across a picture of them on Sophie's blog and gets a chance to look back at her four-day stay.
By Azernews





By Orkhan Amashov

Politics, even when practiced in the British Parliament, an exalted forum for elated deliberations, is not always an arena for noble causes; on occasion, it could be a place for low skulduggery. When Margaret Hodge, a Labour MP for Barking, asked Foreign Secretary Liz Truss if the UK was considering to impose sanctions in relation to Azerbaijan, which she claimed to be complicit with and supportive of Putins latest misbegotten endeavours, we witnessed the latter.

There is no need to go on a diatribe against the Labour parliamentarian and that is definitely not the intention of this piece. The lady in question is not a friend of Azerbaijan, she is under no obligation to be one, and Azerbaijan does not need a friend like her. But when someone in a parliament of an important world capital suggests, at a time when the global political climate is cliche-electric and too much is at stake, that sanctions are to be imposed on a country which has nothing to do with the troublesome state of affairs, an answer must ensue and be propounded as forcefully as possible.

Her mentioning of Azerbaijan was not an act of doing politics, but a quintessential example of politicking. Baku, fully and unwaveringly supportive of Ukraines territorial integrity, has sent humanitarian aid, provided free petrol, offered to mediate the talks, and behaved as a decent friend in need. The Azerbaijani public has been supportive of Ukraine, by gathering in front of the Ukrainian embassy in Baku. President Zelensky and the Ukrainian Ambassador in Baku expressed their gratitude and acknowledged Azerbaijans moral backing. In the UK, the Azerbaijani community has been collecting funds for the Ukrainian Red Cross. These are all the cold facts, which evidently were not integral to the delusional thinking of the Labour MP.

It is not just that Lady Hodge has got her facts wrong. It was not the case of an honest mistake. By implicating Azerbaijan in supporting Russias invasion of Ukraine, she has snatched at a chance to cast aspersions on the legitimacy of Bakus international standing, thereby engaging in deliberate dishonesty. This was a calculated move, and from the very first second the word Azerbaijan came out of her mouth, her sinister intention was more than a foregone conclusion for those who had been privy to this womans view of Azerbaijan from 2017 onwards.

On a different note, if there is one country in the South Caucasus that could be considered to be in Putins camp over Ukraine, and that would be Armenia, in relation to which Mrs Hodge proposes no sanction. Within the current geopolitical situation, Armenia, in view of its membership in the Kremlin-dominated Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO) and Eurasian Economic Community (EEC), and its conspicuously deteriorated relations with Kyiv, is firmly in the Moscovite orbit.

Furthermore, there is mounting evidence that Yerevan is already taking some practical measures to help Moscow evade sanctions by hosting Russian companies, and, in some ways, becoming a loophole for them. The logic of the Western punitive measures lies in inflicting such a degree of pain on the Kremlin that will be economically debilitating and cause Russia to succumb to pressure. If the intention here is to find out, rightly or wrongly, the states whose steps could potentially be regarded as propping up the Kremlin, then Lady Hodge had better look at a different direction.

Having been engulfed by numerous letters and emails on the subject, the Labour MP was compelled to produce an answer, which was a typical example of political evasiveness, as she made a reference to the 2017 debate as to the alleged money-laundering allegations, which have nothing to do with the Ukrainian invasion and are indicative of her own bias.

The official British line, thankfully, is dismissive of Hodges insinuations. HE James Sharp, the British Ambassador to Azerbaijan, stated on Twitter that there is no reason to sanction Azerbaijan, and there no plans to do so, as Baku has not supported Russia. Foreign Secretary Liz Truss could have made the same fact abundantly clear whilst directly replying to the Labour MP. Her answer did not refer to Azerbaijan, and one may assume this was an indirect denunciation of Lady Hodges claim, yet there is no doubt it could have benefited from factual crispiness.

Lady Hodge probably will never be able to sweep away the skulduggery-induced detritus of her murky past. It is also highly improbable that she will openly acknowledge her mistake and issue an unreserved apology. From her initial Twitter reply, it is only too clear she has chosen the path of stonewalling. No sophistry or elegant equivocation will help her. She may not be important on her own, but the malaise, the symptoms of which she has displayed, is not to be taken lightly.
President Moon Jae-in on Thursday expressed solidarity with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in his country's fight against the Russian invasion.

In a telephone conversation, Moon also expressed deep condolences to the victims of the brutal invasion and respect for the courage and sacrifice Zelenskyy and the Ukrainian people are showing.

Moon said Koreans "know the tragedies of war better than anybody else because they experienced a war themselves and deeply sympathize with the Ukrainians in their sorrow and adversity."

"We pray that Ukraine will restore peace and stability as soon as possible and Korea will stand with Ukraine," Cheong Wa Dae spokeswoman Park Kyung-mee quoted him as saying.

Zelenskyy explained his country's situation and asked Moon for support. Moon said Seoul is participating in international sanctions and added, "Ukraine's sovereignty and territory should be protected and Korea supports Ukraine's peaceful efforts through dialogue."

Korea has decided to give US$10 million in emergency humanitarian assistance to the Ukrainian people and refugees and also send medical supplies.


Two days of early voting in the presidential election started Friday, and the National Election Commission has been encouraging the public to take part in order to maximize voter turnout and thin out crowds amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Ruling-party presidential candidate Lee Jae-myung and his opposition rival Yoon Seok-youl will both vote early. There are fears that more than a million voters may not be able to cast their ballots on March 9 if they test positive in the days beforehand, since over 200,000 new infections are being reported every day. People who test positive can vote on Saturday evening from 5 p.m. to 6 p.m. and on election day from 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m., but those are small windows of opportunity and many may not make it.

According to the latest polls, 25 percent of Koreans would give up their right to vote if one of their family members tests positive for coronavirus. When a pandemic obstructs the franchise, something is deeply wrong. Voting will be particularly difficult for senior citizens, who are more vulnerable to serious symptoms, and hundreds of thousands of votes that could potentially change the course of history may be lost. The best way to prevent that is for as many people as possible to cast their ballots during early voting.

There are concerns that proper monitoring of early voting could be difficult, but observers from the opposition camp and election monitoring groups will keep a beady eye on polling stations and the transport of ballot boxes, while surveillance cameras will run around the clock at storage facilities. That is why even opposition party candidates are urging the public to cast their votes early. There must be no factor barring voters from casting their ballots and the best way to ensure that is to vote early.


KYODO NEWS - Mar 4, 2022 - 12:31 | All, Japan

Japan will release 7.5 million barrels of oil from its emergency reserves as part of concerted action by International Energy Agency members to stabilize oil markets following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, industry minister Koichi Hagiuda said Friday.

With 60 million barrels in total to be released jointly by the 31 IEA members, Japan ranks second in share after the United States, which will release 30 million barrels, Hagiuda told a press conference.

The IEA accord reached Tuesday is meant to prevent the attack on Ukraine by Russia, one of the world's major oil producers and largest exporter, from causing further supply concerns.

The 7.5 million barrels to be released by Japan corresponds to about four days of domestic consumption, with the government set to reduce mandatory private-sector oil reserves to 66 days' worth from the current 70 days' worth for a month, according to the industry ministry.

"We will continue to encourage oil-producing nations to increase their output," Hagiuda said.

Global oil prices have been surging, also spurred by a rapid recovery of economic activities after the coronavirus pandemic downturn. So far, the Paris-based agency's announcement of an oil reserve release has had limited effect in curbing prices.

Related coverage:

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Ukraine, Russia agree on temporary cease-fire to evacuate civilians

Moscow's invasion of the former Soviet republic launched Feb. 24 has fueled fears that an unstable global energy supply could put the world economy at risk during a fragile stage in its recovery from the pandemic.

The IEA said its members hold emergency stockpiles totaling 1.5 billion barrels. The coordinated drawdown is the fourth in the history of the agency, which was created in 1974, with the last one taking place in 2011 amid a disruption to oil supplies from Libya.
KYODO NEWS - Mar 4, 2022 - 14:57 | All, Coronavirus, Japan

Japan reached the government's target of administering 1 million COVID-19 booster shots per day in mid-February as it accelerated the inoculation drive to stem infections driven by the highly transmissible Omicron variant of the coronavirus, the vaccine minister said Friday.

Noriko Horiuchi, minister in charge of vaccinations, said at a news conference that the number of daily shots surpassed 1 million on Feb. 18 and Feb. 26.

As the central government collects vaccination data from local governments, there are delays in finalizing daily counts.

In early February, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida pledged to expedite the country's inoculation drive to administer 1 million booster shots per day in the latter half of the month.

At the time, the government said only 5.9 percent of Japan's population of 125 million, or about 7.47 million people, had received third shots since the beginning of December. As of Thursday, the figure had increased to 22.9 percent, according to the government.

With Omicron infections straining Japan's medical system, 31 of the country's 47 prefectures remain under a quasi-state of emergency to rein in cases.

The government will extend the anti-virus measures, entailing requests by governors for restaurants and bars to close early and stop or limit the serving of alcohol, in Tokyo, Osaka and 16 other prefectures by two weeks from the original end date of March 6.

It will lift the curbs as scheduled in the remaining 13 prefectures including Fukuoka, Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Japan will also ease its COVID-19 border controls further from March 14, raising the daily cap on arrivals from overseas to 7,000 from the current 5,000, amid growing calls for the country to allow more people to enter, especially foreign students ahead of the April start of the country's school year.
By Maya Ishiguro, KYODO NEWS - Mar 4, 2022 - 10:48 | Feature, All, Japan

Efforts by veterinarians are under way in Japan to reduce the need to euthanize stray cats and dogs abandoned by people who purchased them during the country's pandemic-driven pet ownership boom.

The veterinarians are conducting inexpensive spaying and neutering programs to address the problem of an increasing number of stray animals in Japan's cities, with the pets abandoned by irresponsible owners now reproducing at alarming rates, including uncared for animals that die on their own right after they are born.

Veterinarians Miyuki Daimon, 42, and her husband Masaaki, 38, operate Mobile Vet Office, an animal hospital in Ebetsu, Hokkaido.

In mid-January, an animal protection group brought in a female cat of about 4 or 5 months old. After Miyuki injects the cat with anesthesia and places it on the operating table, she performs the procedure and sews up a small incision in about 40 minutes.

In addition to working at the hospital, the couple visits various regions to sterilize cats and dogs. They sometimes handle as many as 40 to 50 operations per visit.

The couple opened the hospital in 2017 and operated on some 1,600 cats and dogs in 2020 and more than 2,000 in 2021, including those outside Ebetsu. Stray cats and dogs are brought to them by animal protection groups and people who find them hanging around their homes. After the surgeries, the animal groups look for owners.

Each surgery costs 4,400 yen to 7,700 yen, roughly one-third the price charged by regular animal hospitals. Since there is no way to conduct post-op, follow-ups on strays, surgical incisions are kept at just 1-centimeter or less to reduce the animal's pain.

"With inexpensive operations, we hope to create an environment where people can help reduce the number of stray cats," Miyuki said.

A person involved in animal protection said, "We want to expand the humane treatment of animals to do away with such unfortunate cases."

According to the Environment Ministry, the killing of cats and dogs is used as a last resort to prevent issues in communities, such as the spread of infectious diseases or problems with their waste.

With improved measures by local communities, the number of cats being killed has been on a downward trajectory, with 27,107 in fiscal 2019 and 19,705 in fiscal 2020.

Many local governments have taken countermeasures, including offering partial financial aid for sterilizations.

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For example, the Kobe city office fully finances spaying and neutering procedures of stray cats. But there are cases where measures are halted when budgets dry up, or there is no system available to continue the operations.

According to the Japan Pet Food Association, the number of newly bred cats in one year from October 2019 rose 16 percent from the prior year, due in part to demand from people looking for companionship while stuck at home during the COVID-19 pandemic.

"I am afraid there are people who began to keep cats without giving it much thought and later abandoned them," Miyuki said.

Consequently, in June, the government will implement a legal revision to the cruelty to animals law to make it mandatory that cats and dogs are fitted with microchips containing their owner's details.

Inagaki Animal Hospital in Koshigaya, Saitama Prefecture, has sterilized some 40,000 stray cats at a low cost. Masaharu Inagaki, 37, head of the hospital, visits its branches in Fukushima, Ibaraki, Gunma, and Chiba prefectures, once a month for the surgeries. "The farther from cities, the fewer hospitals there are that offer sterilization procedures," he said.

Inagaki operated on more than 100 animals in one case involving a cat owner.

"Many cat owners don't know the potent fertility of cats. They should be prepared to take care of them all through their life after organizing their (spaying and neutering) surgeries," Inagaki said.
KYODO NEWS - Mar 4, 2022 - 22:44 | All, World, Japan

Japan will provide bullet-proof vests and other defense supplies to Ukraine following Russia's aggression in the Eastern European country, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said Friday, in a rare delivery of equipment by the Self-Defense Forces to a country under armed attack.

The goods to be delivered by the SDF and through other channels also include helmets, tents, winter clothing, food items, hygiene products, cameras and power generators, the Japanese government said, as Russia escalates its attack on Ukraine despite international condemnation.

The provision of such non-lethal items comes at the request of Ukraine and falls within the scope of Japan's war-renouncing Constitution, the country's top government spokesman Hirokazu Matsuno said.

The timing for delivery has not been worked out, and Japan does not plan to provide Ukraine with weapons, he said.

The United States and European nations are moving to provide weapons to Ukraine to help bolster its defenses against Russia's aggression.

Kishida conveyed his government's plan to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy over the phone on Friday.

During the call, Kishida told Zelenskyy that Japan strongly condemns Russia's attack on the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine, the largest in Europe.

"The attack is totally unacceptable and outrageous," Kishida told reporters. "As a nation that experienced the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident (in 2011), Japan condemns it in the strongest possible terms."

"We hope to deliver the goods to support the people of Ukraine who are facing difficulties as soon as possible," he said.

Japan has also pledged humanitarian assistance to Ukraine and plans to accept people fleeing the conflict-hit nation.

The latest decision underscores Japan's increased commitment to supporting Ukraine, whose sovereignty and territorial integrity have been undermined since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24.

Under Japan's Constitution, there are strict rules on the transfer of defense equipment, and shipping it to a country "party to a conflict" is not allowed.

Matsuno said the term refers to "a country against which the U.N. Security Council is taking steps to maintain or restore peace and security" and does not apply to Ukraine.

"The international community is united in providing unprecedented assistance to Ukraine as we are in a situation where (Russia's military attack) is undermining the peace and stability of the world," he told a press briefing.

Japan has decided on various sanctions against Russia, including freezing assets of Russian President Vladimir Putin and seven Russian banks.

The punitive steps followed European Union sanctions that exclude the Russian banks from a key international payment network known as SWIFT, which will disrupt the country's trade and ability to transfer money.

"This is an outstanding support from Japan. We will never forget this," Ukrainian Ambassador to Japan Sergiy Korsunsky told reporters after meeting with Japanese Finance Minister Shunichi Suzuki.

Suzuki said the government will continue to coordinate closely with the Group of Seven countries and take necessary measures firmly.

Related coverage:

Japan to freeze assets of 4 more Russian banks to align with EU

Japan to accept people displaced by Russian invasion of Ukraine

70 Japanese answer Ukraine's calls to arms against Russia
KYODO NEWS - Mar 5, 2022 - 04:54 | All, World, Japan

The foreign ministers from the Group of Seven industrialized nations on Friday agreed to impose tougher sanctions on Russia if it does not stop assaulting Ukraine, and demanded in particular that Moscow stop attacks in the vicinity of nuclear power plants.

The meeting in Brussels, which Japanese Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi joined online, took place as Russia's attacks on Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine, the largest in Europe, briefly fueled fears of a devastating nuclear catastrophe.

"Any armed attack on and threat against nuclear facilities devoted to peaceful purposes constitutes a violation of the principles of international law," the ministers from Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States, plus the European Union, said in a joint statement issued after the talks.

"This kind of attack is definitely unacceptable, and we condemn it in the strongest possible terms," Hayashi told reporters in Tokyo, suggesting that Japan, a country that suffered the 2011 Fukushima nuclear crisis triggered by a powerful earthquake and tsunami, knows how dreadful such a disaster can be.

The G-7 members support an initiative announced by the International Atomic Energy Agency for an agreement between Ukraine and Russia to ensure the safety and security of nuclear facilities in Ukraine, the joint statement said.

Russia has taken control of the six-reactor Zaporizhzhia complex following the attack. No radioactive leakage has been detected, according to a U.S. defense official.

The ministers also reiterated their "profound condemnation of Russia's unprovoked and unjustifiable war of choice against Ukraine," and said Russia "must immediately stop its ongoing assault against Ukraine, which has dramatically impacted the civilian population and destroyed civilian infrastructure."

Emphasizing that indiscriminate attacks are prohibited by international humanitarian law, the ministers vowed in the statement to "hold accountable those responsible for war crimes, including indiscriminate use of weapons against civilians."

They also pledged to beef up the G-7's humanitarian aid for Ukrainians while affirming their support and commitment to the East European nation's sovereignty and independence.

The G-7 and other countries have already imposed a series of economic sanctions on Russia and Belarus, which has been helping Moscow's military action in Ukraine. The measures have included asset freezes for Russian President Vladimir Putin and Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko.

All of the G-7 members have also agreed to exclude several Russian banks from a key international payment network known as SWIFT to disrupt Russian trade and money transfers.

"We have imposed several rounds of far-reaching economic and financial sanctions. We will continue to impose further severe sanctions in response to Russian aggression," the G-7 foreign ministers said in their statement.

The G-7 meeting was held on the sidelines of a foreign ministerial session of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization that took place in the Belgian capital earlier in the day.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said the Russian attack against the nuclear plant "just demonstrates the recklessness of this war and the importance of ending it" when he met U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken ahead of the gathering of the security alliance.

The G-7 foreign ministers have been stepping up diplomacy in response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, launched on Feb. 24.

The Brussels meeting marks the third time the ministers have held talks in two weeks, including an online session last weekend.

Related coverage:

Russia seizes Europe's largest nuclear plant in southern Ukraine

Japan to provide bullet-proof vests, other goods to Ukraine

EU bans 7 Russian banks from int'l payment network SWIFT
KYODO NEWS - Mar 4, 2022 - 17:14 | All, Japan

Relatives of a Sri Lankan woman who died while in custody at an immigration center in central Japan last year sued the government on Friday, demanding 156 million yen ($1.35 million) in damages.

The family of Ratnayake Liyanage Wishma Sandamali alleges she was illegally detained and died due to a lack of necessary medical care. The suit was filed with the Nagoya District Court two days before the first anniversary of her death.

Wishma died at the age of 33 on March 6 last year at the Nagoya Regional Immigration Services Bureau after a month of medical complaints, including vomiting and stomachaches.

The Sri Lankan arrived in Japan on a student visa in 2017 to study the Japanese language but overstayed her visa, with her asylum application denied by immigration authorities.

Her immigration status was discovered after seeking police protection in Shizuoka Prefecture for domestic abuse in August 2020 and she was sent to the Nagoya immigration facility to await deportation.

Her request for provisional release, which supporters say could have helped her, was denied.

Related coverage:

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Japan will not seek immigration law amendment before summer election

Almost three months after Wishma's younger sisters flew to Japan, the Immigration Services Agency of Japan said in an investigative report issued in August that the immigration center staff lacked awareness on handling crises, and that there were problems with the facility's medical and information sharing system.

The report also said Wishma died of illness, but that an investigation could not determine the precise medical cause because there were multiple elements that could have triggered her death.

"We still don't know why and how she died. I did not think it would take this long," her sister Poornima, 27, told journalists in front of the district court on Friday.

In November, the relatives filed a criminal complaint with the Nagoya District Public Prosecutors Office against the immigration center's senior officials, saying Wishma's death was caused by a lack of medical care. The prosecutors later accepted the complaint.

On Friday, Justice Minister Yoshihisa Furukawa told reporters, "Etching remorse deep in our hearts, we will make continuous efforts so that (a similar situation) will never happen again."

"This is something that must not happen at immigration centers, which are responsible for lives," he said.




TAKEO, Cambodia, March 3 (Xinhua) -- Cambodia on Wednesday inaugurated the China-funded expanded National Road No. 3 which links the capital Phnom Penh and the southwestern coastal province of Kampot.

The 134.8-km expanded road starting from Chom Chao roundabout in Phnom Penh's western suburb runs through Kandal, Kampong Speu and Takeo provinces.

Cambodian Prime Minister Samdech Techo Hun Sen and Chinese Ambassador to Cambodia Wang Wentian both addressed the inauguration ceremony, which was attended by nearly 1,000 people.

Hun Sen said the road is crucial to boosting economic and tourism development and that Kampot is the only province that produces salt for the kingdom.

The road was built by the China Road and Bridge Corporation (CRBC) at a cost of about 215 million U.S. dollars, and the project, which began in October 2018, was funded by the Chinese government.

Hun Sen praised the Chinese contractor for completing the project earlier than scheduled and thanked it for building the road in full compliance with technical standards.

Wang said National Road No. 3 is a key transportation artery for Cambodia, and expressed the belief that it will play a crucial role in boosting economy and tourism as well as improving the livelihoods of people along the route.

Its opening to traffic truly reflects the strong momentum and fruitful results of the China-Cambodia pragmatic cooperation, he said.





Produced by Xinhua Global Service
China Chat: Do the Chinese people have freedom of speech? How to protect these freedoms in this digital age of misinformation? And how should China fight back against the anti-China lobby? Our 3 American guests share their thoughts with host Miao Xiaojuan.

A Xinhua Global Service Production 
By Azernews





By Sabina Mammadli

Mortar units of the Azerbaijani army's Land Forces have conducted firing drills as part of the 2022 combat training plan, the Azerbaijani Defence Ministry has reported.

Subdivisions met the standards for deployment on the ground before firing, taking up firing positions, and bringing mortars into battle conditions.

Training firing from mortars at a single target with semi-direct fire was completed successfully.

The educational process of the units is carried out successfully based on combat experience gained during the Patriotic War.

Azerbaijan periodically holds drills to improve its military personnels combat readiness.

The drills also aim to improve interaction and combat coordination between the servicemen during operations, as well as to develop commanders' military decision-making and unit management skills.

Earlier, the Azerbaijani Defence Ministry reported that the servicemen will participate in over 30 international drills and competitions in the 2022 academic year.

The servicemen will join the Eternity - 2022, EFES - 2022, Indestructible Brotherhood - 2022, Winter Training  2022, International Army Games - 2022 and other international training and competitions, which will have a positive effect on the improvement of their professional skills, the ministry said.

Moreover, the servicemen are expected to participate in various international seminars and conferences in 2022 as well.












DAMASCUS, March 4 (Xinhua) -- Syrian Deputy Foreign Minister Bashar al-Jaafari said on Thursday that the U.S. arrogance is the driving force behind the tension between Russia and Ukraine, which has evolved into a military confrontation.

In his view, the U.S. has used Ukraine to provoke Russia.

Al-Jaafari called for a logical and rational solution that could take care of the interests of everyone, including Russians.

According to the deputy minister, Syria has been the victim of U.S. military intervention and U.S. sanctions, which have had a negative impact on the Syrian people.





Produced by Xinhua Global Service
Children play games to greet the Longtaitou Day in Jimo District, Qingdao, east China's Shandong Province, March 3, 2022. Literally meaning "dragon raises head", the day of Longtaitou, the second day of the second lunar month, falls on Friday this year. Various activities were held to greet the day. (Photo by Liang Xiaopeng/Xinhua)

Villagers perform dragon dance to greet the Longtaitou Day in Huizhou District of Huangshan, east China's Anhui Province, March 2, 2022. Literally meaning "dragon raises head", the day of Longtaitou, the second day of the second lunar month, falls on Friday this year. Various activities were held to greet the day. (Photo by Shi Yalei/Xinhua)

A craftsman makes a dough sculpture to greet the Longtaitou Day in Qinghe Township of Huimin County, Binzhou City, east China's Shandong Province, March 3, 2022. Literally meaning "dragon raises head", the day of Longtaitou, the second day of the second lunar month, falls on Friday this year. Various activities were held to greet the day. (Xinhua/Chu Baorui)

Fried beans are served to students at a primary school to greet the Longtaitou Day in Zaozhuang, east China's Shandong Province, March 3, 2022. Literally meaning "dragon raises head", the day of Longtaitou, the second day of the second lunar month, falls on Friday this year. Various activities were held to greet the day. (Photo by Sun Zhongzhe/Xinhua)

Children perform dragon dance to greet the Longtaitou Day at a kindergarten in Jimo District, Qingdao, east China's Shandong Province, March 3, 2022. Literally meaning "dragon raises head", the day of Longtaitou, the second day of the second lunar month, falls on Friday this year. Various activities were held to greet the day. (Photo by Liang Xiaopeng/Xinhua)

Children perform dragon dance to greet the Longtaitou Day at a kindergarten in Fushan District of Yantai, east China's Shandong Province, March 3, 2022. Literally meaning "dragon raises head", the day of Longtaitou, the second day of the second lunar month, falls on Friday this year. Various activities were held to greet the day. (Photo by Sun Wentan/Xinhua)

A villager checks the straw-woven dragon ahead of the Longtaitou Day in Shuyuan Village, Huizhou District of Huangshan, east China's Anhui Province, March 2, 2022. Straw-woven dragons with more than ten meters in length were handcrafted by local villagers for dragon-dance performance to greet the day of Longtaitou, which literally means "dragon raises head". Heralding the start of the spring plowing season, the Longtaitou Day, the second day of the second lunar month, falls on Friday this year. Villagers perform dragon dance to pray for harvest and auspiciousness. (Xinhua/Zhou Mu)

Villagers perform dragon dance with the straw-woven dragon to greet the Longtaitou Day in Shuyuan Village, Huizhou District of Huangshan, east China's Anhui Province, March 2, 2022. Straw-woven dragons with more than ten meters in length were handcrafted by local villagers for dragon-dance performance to greet the day of Longtaitou, which literally means "dragon raises head". Heralding the start of the spring plowing season, the Longtaitou Day, the second day of the second lunar month, falls on Friday this year. Villagers perform dragon dance to pray for harvest and auspiciousness. (Xinhua/Zhou Mu)

Villagers perform dragon dance with the straw-woven dragon to greet the Longtaitou Day in Shuyuan Village, Huizhou District of Huangshan, east China's Anhui Province, March 2, 2022. Straw-woven dragons with more than ten meters in length were handcrafted by local villagers for dragon-dance performance to greet the day of Longtaitou, which literally means "dragon raises head". Heralding the start of the spring plowing season, the Longtaitou Day, the second day of the second lunar month, falls on Friday this year. Villagers perform dragon dance to pray for harvest and auspiciousness. (Xinhua/Zhou Mu)

Villagers perform dragon dance with the straw-woven dragon to greet the Longtaitou Day in Shuyuan Village, Huizhou District of Huangshan, east China's Anhui Province, March 2, 2022. Straw-woven dragons with more than ten meters in length were handcrafted by local villagers for dragon-dance performance to greet the day of Longtaitou, which literally means "dragon raises head". Heralding the start of the spring plowing season, the Longtaitou Day, the second day of the second lunar month, falls on Friday this year. Villagers perform dragon dance to pray for harvest and auspiciousness. (Xinhua/Zhou Mu)

Villagers perform dragon dance with the straw-woven dragon to greet the Longtaitou Day in Shuyuan Village, Huizhou District of Huangshan, east China's Anhui Province, March 2, 2022. Straw-woven dragons with more than ten meters in length were handcrafted by local villagers for dragon-dance performance to greet the day of Longtaitou, which literally means "dragon raises head". Heralding the start of the spring plowing season, the Longtaitou Day, the second day of the second lunar month, falls on Friday this year. Villagers perform dragon dance to pray for harvest and auspiciousness. (Xinhua/Zhou Mu)

Villagers perform dragon dance with the straw-woven dragon to greet the Longtaitou Day in Shuyuan Village, Huizhou District of Huangshan, east China's Anhui Province, March 2, 2022. Straw-woven dragons with more than ten meters in length were handcrafted by local villagers for dragon-dance performance to greet the day of Longtaitou, which literally means "dragon raises head". Heralding the start of the spring plowing season, the Longtaitou Day, the second day of the second lunar month, falls on Friday this year. Villagers perform dragon dance to pray for harvest and auspiciousness. (Xinhua/Zhou Mu)

A villager checks the straw-woven dragon ahead of the Longtaitou Day in Shuyuan Village, Huizhou District of Huangshan, east China's Anhui Province, March 2, 2022. Straw-woven dragons with more than ten meters in length were handcrafted by local villagers for dragon-dance performance to greet the day of Longtaitou, which literally means "dragon raises head". Heralding the start of the spring plowing season, the Longtaitou Day, the second day of the second lunar month, falls on Friday this year. Villagers perform dragon dance to pray for harvest and auspiciousness. (Xinhua/Zhou Mu)
NAIROBI, March 4 (Xinhua) -- The unfolding climate crisis in sub-Saharan Africa is fueling inter-communal skirmishes, forced migration besides undermining the stability of the continent's political institutions, green lobbyists said on Friday.

The continent's ability to sustain peace, stability and cohesion is at stake amid recurrent climate emergencies, said Mithika Mwenda, executive director of Pan-African Climate Justice Alliance, based in the Kenyan capital of Nairobi.

"Climate change has escalated conflicts and forced migration in the continent, with women, children, the elderly and disabled bearing the brunt," Mwenda said in a statement issued in Nairobi.

He called on African governments and multilateral lenders to ramp up adaptation financing to enhance the resilience of local communities in the face of climatic shocks.

According to Mwenda, robust action on the climate crisis should be at the heart of efforts to secure a green, resilient, peaceful and prosperous future for a continent grappling with disrupted weather patterns, habitat loss, food and water insecurity.

He said that mass displacement in the wake of violent cyclones in the southern African region should be a wake-up call for governments to invest in solid buffers to minimize the impact of climate emergencies at the grassroots.

The sixth Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessment report, which was launched on Monday, sounds alarm over the likelihood of conflicts and mass displacement in the global South, including Africa, courtesy of extreme weather events.

Mamadou Oudrago, a green campaigner from Burkina Faso, noted that conflicts and forced migration of civilians have spiked in Africa's climate change hotspots, including the Sahel and the Horn of Africa region.

Climate change-induced conflicts over pasture and dwindling freshwater resources pose an existential threat to stability and peaceful co-existence in a huge swathe of sub-Saharan African region, he said.

Nomads and subsistence farmers in Nigeria, Togo, Mali and Burkina Faso have been involved in resource-based skirmishes and the situation has recurred in Gabon, Cameroon, the Central African Republic and Kenya, Oudrago said.

Nicholas Orago, a senior lecturer at the University of Nairobi's School of Law, said that African countries should enact legislation that would facilitate equitable sharing of dwindling resources to avert conflicts in the wake of climate change.

He called for compensation of climate disaster victims, adding that investment in adaptation and resilience programs is key to taming inter-communal tensions amid widespread hunger, water scarcity and livelihood disruptions. 
Journalists attend a press conference of the fifth session of the 13th National People's Congress (NPC) via video link in Beijing, capital of China, March 4, 2022. The press conference was held via video link due to COVID-19 prevention and control requirements. (Xinhua/Chen Zhonghao)

BEIJING, March 4 (Xinhua) -- China's national legislature will open its annual session on Saturday morning in Beijing, a spokesperson said Friday.

The fifth session of the 13th National People's Congress (NPC) is scheduled to conclude on March 11, with 10 items on the agenda, Zhang Yesui, spokesperson for the session, told a press conference.

Lawmakers will review documents including the government work report and deliberate the draft amendment to the Organic Law of the Local People's Congresses and Local People's Governments, Zhang said.

They will also deliberate the draft decision on the number of deputies to the 14th NPC and their election, and two draft methods for the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR) and the Macao SAR to elect their deputies to the 14th NPC, Zhang said. 

Zhang Yesui (C), spokesperson for the fifth session of the 13th National People's Congress (NPC), speaks during a press conference via video link in Beijing, capital of China, March 4, 2022. The press conference of the session was held via video link due to COVID-19 prevention and control requirements. Zhang took questions from media on the agenda of the session and the work of the people's congresses. (Xinhua/Chen Yehua)

A reporter asks a question during a press conference of the fifth session of the 13th National People's Congress (NPC) via video link in Beijing, capital of China, March 4, 2022. The press conference was held via video link due to COVID-19 prevention and control requirements. (Xinhua/Chen Zhonghao)

Zhang Yesui, spokesperson for the fifth session of the 13th National People's Congress (NPC), speaks during a press conference via video link in Beijing, capital of China, March 4, 2022. The press conference of the session was held via video link due to COVID-19 prevention and control requirements. Zhang took questions from media on the agenda of the session and the work of the people's congresses. (Xinhua/Chen Yehua)

Zhang Yesui, spokesperson for the fifth session of the 13th National People's Congress (NPC), speaks during a press conference via video link in Beijing, capital of China, March 4, 2022. The press conference of the session was held via video link due to COVID-19 prevention and control requirements. Zhang took questions from media on the agenda of the session and the work of the people's congresses. (Xinhua/Chen Yehua)

Journalists attend a press conference of the fifth session of the 13th National People's Congress (NPC) via video link in Beijing, capital of China, March 4, 2022. The press conference was held via video link due to COVID-19 prevention and control requirements. (Xinhua/Chen Zhonghao)

Journalists raise hands to ask questions during a press conference of the fifth session of the 13th National People's Congress (NPC) via video link in Beijing, capital of China, March 4, 2022. The press conference was held via video link due to COVID-19 prevention and control requirements. (Xinhua/Chen Zhonghao)

Journalists attend a press conference of the fifth session of the 13th National People's Congress (NPC) via video link in Beijing, capital of China, March 4, 2022. The press conference was held via video link due to COVID-19 prevention and control requirements. (Xinhua/Chen Zhonghao)

Journalists attend a press conference of the fifth session of the 13th National People's Congress (NPC) via video link in Beijing, capital of China, March 4, 2022. The press conference was held via video link due to COVID-19 prevention and control requirements. (Xinhua/Chen Zhonghao)

Journalists attend a press conference of the fifth session of the 13th National People's Congress (NPC) via video link in Beijing, capital of China, March 4, 2022. The press conference was held via video link due to COVID-19 prevention and control requirements. (Xinhua/Chen Zhonghao)
TEHRAN, March 4 (Xinhua) -- Iran strongly condemned a Friday attack on a mosque in Pakistan's northwestern city of Peshawar that killed dozens, according to the Foreign Ministry website.

Noting the attack was aimed at sowing discord, Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh expressed condolences to the families of the victims of the "inhuman and brutal" attack and wished the wounded quick recovery.

He also hoped that the Pakistani government would prevent such criminal acts by taking required measures and making decisive moves.

A powerful blast hit a mosque in Peshawar in Pakistan's Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province, killing at least 30 people and wounding over 50 others, according to the country's police and hospital officials.

No group or individual has yet claimed responsibility for the attack. 
BEIJING, March 4 (Xinhua) -- The one-China principle is the political foundation for China to develop bilateral relations with all countries, a Chinese spokesperson told a press conference Friday.

Zhang Yesui, spokesperson for the fifth session of the 13th National People's Congress, made the remarks in response to a question about relations between China and Lithuania. 
Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta speaks at the official opening of the two-day commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) at the United Nations Complex in Nairobi, Kenya, March 3, 2022. The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) on Thursday marked 50 years since its founding in the Kenyan capital of Nairobi where it is headquartered, with participants vowing to rally behind the vision for a green and inclusive future. (Photo by Fred Mutune/Xinhua)

NAIROBI, March 4 (Xinhua) -- Kenya's Ministry of Environment and Forestry has launched the national Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) strategy to boost restoration of degraded land and indigenous forests.

Chris Kiptoo, principal secretary in the Ministry of Environment and Forestry said during a side event at the Special Session to commemorate the 50th Anniversary of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) underway in Nairobi that the strategy, launched on Thursday evening, will help in the sustainable management of forests, and the conservation and enhancement of forest carbon stocks.

Kiptoo said that Kenya's diverse natural resource base, in which the well-being of its people is firmly anchored, is, however, increasingly under pressure from evolving human activities and the aggravated impacts of global climate change, resulting in environmental degradation.

He said that Kenya has brought the private sector on board and so far they have made a pledge of contributing one billion tree seedlings towards the initiative that targets to increase forest cover in the country from the current 8.8 percent to 10 percent by the end of this year. The government has also pledged to contribute an additional one billion tree seedlings that will be produced by the Kenya Forestry Research Institute (KEFRI).

Kenya's national strategy seeks to achieve 10 percent tree cover to help restore degraded public forests, wetlands, mangroves and other neglected green places.

Ahunna Eziakonwa, director of United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Regional Bureau for Sub-Saharan Africa called for a robust reforestation program in Africa to help the continent achieve environmental sustainability. Eziakonwa noted that the numerous environmental challenges on land, sea and air in Africa are a big threat to the future generation that required concerted efforts to tackle.

Tina Vahanen, deputy director of Forests at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) said that the strategy will help reverse the current state of forests from unproductive practices to a profitable enterprise. Vahanen urged Kenya to use FAO's online tools that were developed to support communities that grow trees.

The REDD+ strategy provides a framework for improved forestry governance, resource allocation, partnerships and collaboration with state and non-state actors. It also emphasizes monitoring to enable the sector to contribute to the achievement of the country's growth within a sustainable environment framework.

It is expected that the strategy will lead to scaled-up afforestation, reforestation, and landscape restoration programs, enhanced governance and policy implementation to reduce the depletion of forests. 

Delegates pose for a photo in front of an art installation depicting plastic bottles flowing from a tap at the UN Environment Program (UNEP) headquarters in Nairobi, Kenya, March 3, 2022. The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) on Thursday marked 50 years since its founding in the Kenyan capital of Nairobi where it is headquartered, with participants vowing to rally behind the vision for a green and inclusive future. (Photo by Fred Mutune/Xinhua)

Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta (3rd, R) unveils a commemorative plaque marking the official opening of two-day commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) at the UN Environment Program (UNEP) headquarters in Nairobi, Kenya, March 3, 2022. The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) on Thursday marked 50 years since its founding in the Kenyan capital of Nairobi where it is headquartered, with participants vowing to rally behind the vision for a green and inclusive future. (Photo by Fred Mutune/Xinhua)

Delegates attend the official opening of the two-day commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) at the United Nations Complex in Nairobi, Kenya, March 3, 2022. The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) on Thursday marked 50 years since its founding in the Kenyan capital of Nairobi where it is headquartered, with participants vowing to rally behind the vision for a green and inclusive future. (Photo by Fred Mutune/Xinhua)
CANBERRA, March 4 (Xinhua) -- A South Australian researcher has developed a coronavirus vaccine for animals that will soon be trialed on pets.

Nikolai Petrovsky, a professor at Flinders University, and veterinarian Sam Kovac joined forces to adapt COVAX-19 for animals.

Developed by Petrovsky, COVAX-19 has been administered to millions of people in Iran and is awaiting human approval in Australia.

Kovac's three dogs will be among 25 pets that participate in trials of the vaccine.

"The great thing is that being based on a human vaccine technology where more than 6 million doses have been safely administered, we can be confident it is also very safe for pets," he told News Corp Australia on Friday.

"Unlike other respiratory viruses, it is now proven that many domestic pets including cats, dogs and pocket pets like ferrets can catch COVID-19 from human close contacts. Just like us, they can catch it via direct contact and handling by an infected human.

"They are at risk of myocarditis, pericarditis, respiratory failure, but may also just have a mild or asymptomatic infection," he said.

Australia on Friday reported more than 25,000 new human coronavirus infections and 37 deaths -- 26 in Victoria, seven in Queensland, two in New South Wales (NSW) and two in South Australia.

Medical regulator the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) on Friday warned Australians against using rapid antigen tests (RATs) that it has not approved for use.

"(Unapproved RATs) have not been assessed by the TGA, meaning they do not come with the same assurances of safety, effectiveness and quality as those that have met Australian regulatory requirements," it said in a statement.

"Unapproved versions may not work as expected, or work at all," the TGA said. 
By Azernews





By Vugar Khalilov

UK Ambassador to Azerbaijan James Sharp has stated that Great Britain supports Azerbaijan in mine clearance activities.

Sharp made the statement on his Twitter account on March 3, while visiting the Azerbaijan National Agency for Mine Actions (ANAMA) training center in liberated Horadiz in Fuzuli region.

"We continue our cooperation with ANAMA in the field of mine clearance. Today in Horadiz, I met with British experts who provide both training and technical support for demining operations in the liberated lands," the ambassador stressed.

Sharp added that they are very pleased to support ANAMA in demining and awareness-raising activities.

The ambassador underlined that the British companies are ready to take part in Azerbaijans liberated lands.

Today, during my visit to Jabrayil, I got acquainted with the reconstruction work carried out in the returned areas. British companies, in turn, are ready to be involved in the construction of these areas, he said.

The UK contributed over AZN 1 million (500,000) to Azerbaijans recovery efforts and demining activities in its liberated lands, the UK embassy reported earlier.

Sharp said in a video address posted on the embassy's Twitter account on September 2 that landmines and unexploded ordnance in the liberated areas pose a threat to peoples lives and there have been over 150 victims of mine explosions following the 2020 war.

He described the former conflict zone as one of the worlds most mine-littered areas based on his own observations.

Therefore, the UK as a leading country in mine clearance, along with international organizations, takes active measures in the demining activities on Azerbaijans liberated territories, he said.

It should be noted that ANAMA, along with the partner countries, carries out demining activities on its liberated territories. Moreover, the State Border Service and the Defence Ministry also demine the liberated lands.

Armenia deliberately and constantly planted mines on Azerbaijani territories, in violation of the 1949 Geneva Convention, thereby being a major threat to regional peace, security and cooperation.

Previously, on June 12, Azerbaijan handed over 15 Armenian prisoners in exchange for a map detailing the location of 97,000 mines in formerly-occupied Aghdam.

On July 3, Armenia submitted to Azerbaijan maps of about 92,000 anti-tank and anti-personnel mines planted during the occupation of Fuzuli and Zangilan regions.

Azerbaijan and Armenia signed a Russia-brokered peace agreement on November 10, 2020, to end 44 days of fighting and work toward a comprehensive resolution.
YEREVAN, March 3 (Xinhua) -- Armenia's parliament on Thursday elected Vahagn Khachaturyan as the country's new president.

This came after 71 lawmakers participated in the second round of the vote and all voted in favor of Khachaturyan's candidacy, reported local Armenpress.

The 62-year-old politician, who served as high-tech industry minister, was nominated by the ruling My Step faction and the only presidential candidate.

According to Armenian law, he will be inaugurated at a special session in parliament in 10 days.

The Armenian parliament failed to elect the country's president in the first round due to a boycott by opposition parties.

Khachaturyan's predecessor, Armen Sarkissian, resigned in January, saying he did not have the necessary power to deal with the country's political problems. 
The entry and exit gates of the metro station have been closed due to security reasons. (Photo Credit: File)

New Delhi:

Panic gripped the residents of several parts of Delhi after rumours of violence led to the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) shutting down entry and exit gates of Nangloi, Surajmal Stadium, Badarpur, Tughlakabad, Uttam Nagar west and Nawada metro stations for a small duration. The Delhi Police and AAP leaders denied any incident and appealed people to remain calm. "A rumour has been noticed that there is some tension in Khyala-Raghubir Nagar area of West District. There is no truth behind it. All are requested to keep calm as the situation is absolutely normal & peaceful," Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP) West Deepak Purohit said.

"There are some rumours regarding some communal tension in Tilak Nagar and Khyala areas. It is intimated that there is no tension in Tilak Nagar and Khyala and the whole west district area. Nothing to worry about," he added.

Police said some "unsubstantiated reports" of tension in southeast and west districts were circulated on social media.

"It is to reiterate that these are all rumours. Don't pay attention to such rumours. Delhi Police is closely monitoring accounts spreading rumours and taking action," they said, adding that rumours about tension in Dwarka and Badarpur areas were also "unsubstantiated".

The DCPs of some police districts and station house officers (SHOs) of police stations took to Twitter to assure people that their areas were peaceful and normal.

However, shopkeepers downed shutters and vendors closed weekly markets as people rushed home early in several areas, including Subhash Nagar, Tilak Nagar, Janakpuri and Khyala areas in west Delhi.

The violence in Jaffrabad, Maujpur, Babarpur, Chand Bagh, Shiv Vihar, Bhajan Pura, Yamuna Vihar areas of northeast Delhi has claimed at least 45 lives and left over 200 injured. A large number of properties have been damaged. Frenzied mobs torched houses, shops, vehicles, a petrol pump and pelted stones at locals and police personnel.

Soon after taking charge on Saturday, acting Delhi Police chief SN Shrivastava said his priority is to restore peace and ensure communal harmony in the national capital, which earlier this week witnessed its worst riots in three decades. Shrivastava was given the additional charge of Delhi Police commissioner with effect from Sunday, following Amulya Patnaik's retirement.

Police have also started a massive outreach programme and senior officers have been meeting and speaking with people from every community in order to build confidence among them.

The political blame-game continues with both Congress and the BJp attacking each other over the riots. On Friday, senior Congress leader Kaoil Sibal said that, Prime Minister Narendra Modi woke up after 69 hours and appealed for peace and calm in Delhi. He should have done it earlier. But Home Minister Amit Shah made no such appeal. The Home Minister should have visited the affected areas.

With PTI Inputs
New Delhi :

Toyota Kirloskar Motor (TKM) has registed a decline in its sales figure by 9.1 per cent at 11,356 units in February as against 12,497 units in the same month last year. In the domestic market, the company posted sales of 10,352 units last month from 11,760 units in February 2019, TKM said in a statement.

We have smoothly transitioned to BS-VI manufacturing and started delivering BS-VI vehicles to our customers before the stipulated deadline of April 2020. A total of 31,853 BS-VI vehicles have been dispatched to our dealerships till date, TKM Senior Vice President (Sales and Service) Naveen Soni said.

Toyota has offered introductory pricing so as to not pass on the full increase of BS-VI product price at one go, he added.

We have chosen not to pass on the full impact of an increase in cost to the consumers at the launch. We had to take a difficult decision, that we will not transfer the price in one go, we will have a stage-wise implementation. Having said that, in the long run, we would be forced to increase our prices in the mid-term, he noted.

Apart from this, Toyota commenced bookings for its BS-Vi compliant version of Innova Crysta. The prices of the car has been fixed between Rs 15.36 lakh to Rs 24.06 lakh (ex-showroom, Delhi). The company has sold close to 2.7 lakh units of the Innova Crysta so far, registering about 40 per cent of share in its segment, TKM said.

Overall, the company has sold close to 9 lakh units of the Innova range till date since 2005. The company has opened bookings for the model at a celebratory price for a limited time period, he added. Vehicle stability control, hill assist control and emergency brake signal now come as standard feature across the Innova Crysta range.

(With inputs from PTI)
The Supreme Court had earlier dismissed separate pleas filed by Mukesh and Vinay challenging the rejection of their mercy petitions by the President. (Photo Credit: File Photo)

New Delhi :

Shortly after the Supreme Court dismissed the curative petition filed by convict Pawan Gupta seeking commutation of death penalty into life term, the rapist has filed a mercy petition before President Ram, Nath Kovind. His lawyer AP Singh informed the court about the development. Earlier in the day, a five-judge bench headed by Justice N V Ramana said that no case is made out for re-examining the conviction and the punishment of the convict. Other members of the bench were justices Arun Mishra, R F Nariman, R Banumathi and Ashok Bhushan.

The trial court on February 17 had issued fresh date for execution of death warrants for March 3 at 6 am for the four convicts - Mukesh Kumar Singh (32), Pawan Gupta (25), Vinay Kumar Sharma (26) and Akshay Kumar (31) - in the Nirbhaya case. The mercy petitions of three convicts -- Mukesh, Vinay and Akshay -- have already been dismissed by the President.

The Supreme Court had earlier dismissed separate pleas filed by Mukesh and Vinay challenging the rejection of their mercy petitions by the President. Akshay has not yet challenged the rejection of his mercy petition.

The Supreme would hear on March 5 the plea filed by the Centre challenging the Delhi High Court verdict which held that the four death row convicts in the Nirbhaya case have to be executed together and not separately. The high court on February 5 had dismissed the Centre's plea against the trial court's order staying the execution of death sentence of the four convicts.

It also faulted the authorities concerned for not taking steps for issuance of death warrant after the rejection of appeals of the accused by the Supreme Court in 2017. On December 16, 2012, a 23-year-old physiotherapy intern, who later came to be known as 'Nirbhaya' (fearless), was gang raped and savagely assaulted in a moving bus in South Delhi. She died after a fortnight. Six people, including the four convicts and a juvenile, were named as accused. Ram Singh, the sixth accused, allegedly committed suicide in Tihar jail days after the trial began in the case. The juvenile was released in 2015 after spending three years in a correctional home.

Nirbhaya Gangrape And Murder - A Case That Shook The World

The 23-year-old physiotherapy intern, who came to be known as 'Nirbhaya' (fearless), was gangraped and savagely assaulted on the night of December 16, 2012, in a moving bus in South Delhi. She died of her injuries a fortnight later in a Singapore hospital. The brutality of the crime shook the nation, leading to country-wide protests and a change in Indias rape laws.

Six peopleMukesh, Vinay, Akshay Kumar Singh, Pawan Gupta, Ram Singh and a juvenilewere named as accused. The trial of the five adult men began in a special fast-track court in March 2013. The prime accused, Ram Singh, allegedly committed suicide by hanging himself in Tihar jail days after the trial began. The juvenile, who was said to be the most brutal of the attackers, was put in a correctional home for three years.

He was released in 2015 and sent to an undisclosed location amid concerns over a threat to his life. The juvenile, when released, was 20 years old. Mukesh, Vinay, Akshay and Pawan were convicted and sentenced to death in September 2013.

(With PTI Inputs)
New Delhi:

Fuel Prices Today: Due to the fall in crude oil prices, the petrol and diesel rates witnessed a downward trend on the third consecutive day on Monday (March 2, 2020). According to the Indian Oil website, the petrol rates were lowered by up to 23 Paise while diesel prices were slashed by up to 21 paise across major metro cities of the country. After todays (Monday) rate revision, petrol rates are Rs 71.49 per litre in Delhi, Rs 77.18 per litre in Mumbai, Rs 74.16 per litre in Kolkata, and Rs 74.28 per litre in Chennai, respectively. On the other hand, the diesel prices in Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, and Chennai remained at Rs 64.10, Rs 67.31, Rs 66.43, and Rs 67.65 per litre, respectively.

In Noida, petrol is retailing at Rs 73.36 a litre, while diesel price is Rs 64.35 a litre. The price of petrol in Gurugram is Rs 71.70 a litre while diesel was selling at Rs 63.63 a litre.

India is 84 per cent dependant on imports to meet its oil needs and any spike in global prices has a direct bearing on its economy. Not just imports but even domestic crude oilwhich forms the raw material for making petrol, diesel and other petroleum productsis priced according to international benchmarks. Middle East accounts for more than two-thirds of the countrys oil imports, with Iraq and Saudi Arabia being the top suppliers.

Why Petrol, Diesel Prices Change Every Day?

The fuel prices are in India are revised daily. Petrol and diesel prices are revised every day at 06:00 am to sync it with the variation in global oil prices. Oil marketing companies (OMC) review the global fuel prices and decide petrol and diesel daily. Indian Oil, Bharat Petroleum and Hindustan Petroleum release the new rates at 6 am every morning. Generally, when international crude oil prices gain, prices in India move higher. Other factors also impact the price of fuel like rupee to US dollar exchange rate, cost of crude oil, global cues, demand for fuel, and so on.

Also Read: LPG Cylinder Prices Reduced By More Than Rs 50: Check Latest Rates HERE

Why Fuel Prices Differ In Every City?

The price of fuel includes excise duty, value-added tax (VAT), and dealer commission. As VAT varies from state to state, the price of fuel is different in every city.

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Opposing the plea, the Centre had said that abrogation of provisions of Article 370 has become a "fait accompli" leaving sole option to accept the change. (Photo Credit: File Photo)

New Delhi:

The Supreme Court on Monday ruled out referring to a larger seven-judge bench the batch of pleas, challenging the constitutional validity of the Centres decision of August 5 last year to abrogate provisions of Article 370. A five-judge constitution bench headed by Justice N V Ramana pronounced the order. The apex court had on January 23 reserved its order on the issue of whether the batch of pleas would be referred to a larger seven-judge bench.

The Supreme Court while rejecting the petitions said that there is no conflict between Prem Nath Kaul and Sampath Prakash decisions. They have sought reference to a larger bench on the ground that two judgements of apex courtPrem Nath Kaul versus Jammu and Kashmir in 1959 and Sampat Prakash versus Jammu and Kashmir in 1970 -- which dealt with the issue of Article 370 are in direct conflict each other and therefore the current bench of five judges could not hear the issue.

Opposing the plea, the Centre had said that abrogation of provisions of Article 370, which granted special status to erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir, has become a "fait accompli" leaving sole option to accept the change. NGO Peoples Union of Civil Liberties (PUCL), Jammu and Kashmir High Court Bar Association and an intervenor have sought referring the matter to a larger bench.

Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, appearing for Jammu and Kashmir administration, had said he adopts the arguments of the Attorney General and favours no reference to larger bench.

Senior advocate Rajeev Dhavan, appearing for Jammu and Kashmir Peoples Conference, had said that he is supporting Centre on the question that no reference is needed to a larger bench.

A number of petitions have been filed in the apex court including those of private individuals, lawyers, activists and political parties and they have also challenged the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Act, 2019, which splits J&K into two union territoriesJammu and Kashmir, and Ladakh.

(With Agency Inputs)

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There are reports that several bodies that have still not been recovered from the drains and torched houses. Hence, the total death count may go up significantly. (Photo Credit: Reuters Photo)

New Delhi :

The death count in the communal violence that flared up in Delhi on February 24 continues to rise. On Monday, the number of casualties rose to 47. According to news agency ANI, 38 deaths were confirmed at the Guru Teg Bahadur Hospital, three at the Lok Nayak Hospital, one at Jag Parvesh Chander Hospital and 4 at Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital. There are reports that several bodies that have still not been recovered from the drains and torched houses. Hence, the total death count may go up significantly. After 72 hours of utter mayhem and total collapse, there have been no incidents of fresh violence or arson from the area.

According to latest figures provided by the Delhi Police, 254 FIRs have been registered. Nearly 1,000 individuals have been either detained or arrested for the alleged involvement in the Delhi riots. A conservative estimate by a business body in the National Capital suggests that nearly properties worth Rs 25,000 crore were destroyed in the communal violence. There are several posts by volunteers on the internet about anti-social characters snatching the relief material. Meanwhile, Gopal Rai, senior AAP leader and minister in Delhi government is likely to visit the riot-affected areas on Monday.

There are several families in the violence-hit areas that have alleged brutality in police custody after their relatives succumbed to injuries post detention. An Indian Express report said that the families have been told to photograph their relatives and keep records of police detention. On Saturday, a 23-year-old, who was forced to sing National Anthem died at one of the city hospitals. His family had alleged that he was brutalised in the police custody.

According to an NDTV report, Faizans mother claimed the police had confirmed that he was in their custody. Some other men were also picked up by the cops. When Faizans family demanded his release, the cops reportedly said that they would put them behind the bars. Next day, Faizan was returned to the family in an extremely critical condition. The family first took him to a local hospital, where doctors said that Faizan needs urgent surgery. Later, he was admitted at the LNJP where doctors performed a brain surgery. On Saturday, Faizan was declared dead. The family claims that the police were responsible for his death.

Meanwhile, the Budget Session of Parliament is likely to witness uproar over Delhi riots. While the Narendra Modi government is looking at the passage of the Union Budget, several Opposition parties including the Aam Aadmi Party and the Congress have given notices demanding discussion over the communal violence in North-East Delhi. Going by the resolution passed by its highest decision-making body, the Congress will raise its demand for Union Home Minister Amit Shahs resignation. The Congress has also submitted a memorandum to President Ram Nath Kovind highlighting Shahs failure to contain the riots that flared up during US President Donald Trumps state visit to India.
New Delhi:

Bihar Chief Minister and Janata Dal-United (JDU) chief Nitish Kumar on Sunday asserted that his party will contest Bihar Assembly Elections 2020 with NDA (National Democratic Alliance) and win more than 200 seats. Kumar said this while addressing a Karykarta Sammelan at Gandhi Maidan in Patna on the occasion of his 69th birthday. Kumar exhorted JDU workers to strive towards ensuring the NDAs win in 243-member Bihar assembly. Disapproving of political controversies around the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), the chief minister called for patience as the matter was sub judice. Kumars JDU had supported the CAA in the Parliament.

Anxieties in some sections of society, particularly among the minorities, have been addressed with a resolution passed by the Bihar assembly against the National Register of Citizens (NRC) and insertion of contentious clauses in National Population Register (NPR) forms, he said.

Kumar also reiterated his commitment towards ensuring justice and welfare of all, including minorities, and slammed the opposition Congress-RJD combine, which keeps attacking him over his alliance with the BJP, by recalling the Bhagalpur riots of 1989 that had claimed over 1,000 lives.

It is well known who was in power when the riots took place and how justice eluded the victims for 15 years thereafter. We brought the guilty to book and justice was ensured to the victims. I am more concerned about working for the minorities than getting their votes, said Kumar as he highlighted the various schemes being run by his government for minority communities.

Reacting to allegations of deterioration in law and order leveled by opposition parties, the Bihar chief minister quoted National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) statistics to suggest that the crime rate in the state was among the lowest in the country.

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New Delhi:

A high-profile school located in Noidas Sector 135 was forced to cancel the annual exams on Tuesday due to threat of coronavirus outbreak. News Nation has learnt that the child of sole coronavirus positive patient from Delhi is a student at the Noida school. On Friday, the COVID-19 patients child attended a birthday party of one of his classmates. Several children and students came into the contact of the child of the coronavirus patient. Since the Government of India reported about the Delhi case on Monday, all students have been quarantined as a preventive measure. Exams for today are confirmed to have been postponed in the school, sources told News Nation. Noida CMO is reaching the school and the DM is also monitoring the situation. (LIVE UPDATES)

News Nation has also learnt that the school has announced 3-day holiday following the COVID-19 scare. The school officials have conveyed the same to the parents verbally. There are reports that some other Noida schools are also closing down after the reports. Health officials are screening the area. The once-in-a-century pathogen has killed more than 3,000 people around the globe. In India so far, three positive cases have been reported. One in Delhi, another in Telangana and an Italian tourist in Jaipur. Previously, there were several suspected cases of coronavirus in Delhi. However, it was only on Monday that a positive case came to light.

Meanwhile, Indian-American Seema Verma has been appointed as one of the key members of the White House Coronavirus Task Force constituted by US President Donald Trump to combat the deadly disease that has claimed six lives in the country and infected over 90 others. Trump on January 30 created the coronavirus task force to lead his administration's response to the deadly virus that emerged in China and has wrecked havoc across the globe. The task force is led by Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar, and is coordinated through the National Security Council.

In a tweet on Monday, US Vice President Mike Pence announced the appointment of Seema Verma, Administrator for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), and Robert Wilkie, Secretary for the Department of Veterans Affairs, to the task force. "The White House Coronavirus Task Force has been working every single day to ensure the health, safety & well-being of the American people," he tweeted.

"Today, we made good progress in combatting the spread of the Coronavirus and added key members, @SeemaCMS and @SecWilkie, to the Task Force," he said. All the six deaths in the US are from the Washington state with 43 domestic cases and 48 cases of the individuals who returned to the US, officials said on Monday.

(With agency inputs)
New Delhi:

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal met Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Parliament Complex on Tuesday. It was the first instance of Kejriwal meeting PM Modi after coming to power in Delhi for third time. The meeting came a week after the worst communal riots that the National Capital saw since 1984. After the meeting, Kejriwal told reporters that the two leaders did discuss the communal violence in North-East Delhi. Kejriwal said that he has sought the Centres help in rebuilding the riot-torn Delhi. I told him that whoever is found guilty for Delhi violence should be given strictest punishment, Kejriwal said. We also discussed that we have to work together against coronavirus outbreak, the Chief Minister added.

Prior to this meeting, Kejriwal had met Union Home Minister Amit Shah during a high-profile emergency meeting on February 26. This was also the first time that both leaders came face-to-face after pitched battle in the Delhi Assembly Elections. During the high-octane poll campaign, PM Modi had repeatedly attacked Kejriwal for supporting tukde tukde gang, anti-CAA protesters. PM Modi had also said that Kejriwal had failed to fulfil promises made to the Delhi voters.

"People of the country got a Lokpal, but the people of Delhi are still waiting for a Lokpal. There was such a big movement, such tall claims, what happened to them all," PM Modi had asked during a rally in Karkardooma on February 4 last month. It was in this rally that PM Modi had said that people must decide whether the anti-CAA protests are sanyog (coincidence) or prayog (experiment). "Be it Seelampur, Jamia or Shaheen Bagh, protests held over the past several days regarding the Citizenship Amendment Bill. Is this just a coincidence? No. This is an experiment. There is a political design behind this which has plans to destroy harmony in the country," he had said. On his part, Kejriwal had attacked the Centre and the BJP over Delhi statehood issue.

Last month, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) returned to power in Delhi with a thumping majority by winning 62 of the 70 Assembly seats that went to polls on February 8. The BJP had failed to touch double digit and won just eight seats. The Congress could not even open its account. According to the final Delhi Assembly election results released by the Election Commission, Arvind Kejriwal-led AAP bagged 62 seats with a voting percentage of 53.57, while the BJP got eight seats with a vote share of 38.51 per cent. The Congress drew a blank for the second successive Assembly elections in the national capital and its vote share shrunk to mere 4.26 per cent.

(With agency inputs)
By Azernews





By Vugar Khalilov

The State Border Service has seized over 14 kg of drugs and 2,190 psychotropic substances on Azerbaijan's southern border, the service reported on March 3.

The incident occurred in the service area of the State Border Service's Horadiz border detachment near Beylagan's Amirzeyidli village.

The border guard noticed a car approaching the area around 2105 on March 2. The border guard apprehended a passenger who attempted to flee the scene with a hidden bag and package.

Tahir Mammadov, a Fuzuli resident, was apprehended with 14.2 kg of drugs (5,800 grams of marijuana, 4,200 grams of heroin, 2,100 grams of opium), as well as 2,190 psychotropic pills (1,900 units of methadone-40, 290 units Gabaprel 300) as a result of the inspection (61).

During the course of the investigation, it was discovered that the individual had previously been convicted of the same crime. The investigation is currently underway.

The State Border Service maintains border protection and search operations to ensure reliable border protection and combat drug trafficking.
Guwahati:

As the world fumbles for a cure to the deadly novel coronavirus which has claimed thousands of lives across the world, a BJP legislator in Assam on Monday left the state assembly astounded by saying that the remedy may be 'gaumutra' (cow urine) and 'gobar' (cow dung). Suman Haripriya claimed that cow urine and cow dung are helpful in curing deadly diseases like cancer.

We all know that cow dung is very helpful. Likewise, when cow urine is sprayed, it purifies an area... I believe something similar could be done with gaumutra and gobar to cure coronavirus (disease), she said during a discussion on smuggling of cattle to Bangladesh during Special Mention on the first day of the budget session of the assembly.

Cow is considered a holy animal in India and the use of cow urine for therapeutic purposes has a long history in Indian culture. Cow dung has been traditionally used for various purposes, including in Hindu religious rituals, manure and even fuel.

Haripriya also claimed that the economy of Bangladesh has strengthened on the back of smuggled cows from India, primarily Assam.

Also Read | Worlds Richest 500 Lose $444 Billion Due To Coronavirus, Read More

Bangladesh is the second largest beef exporter in the world. All these cows are our cows. Earlier the Congress government did nothing to stop smuggling of cows, she said.

Nowadays, river route is mostly used to smuggle cows, the BJP MLA said and urged the BJP-led government in Assam to monitor the cattle markets in the state as she said "illegal trading is being carried out by them with most of their receipts being fake".

Meanwhile, the Union health ministry on Monday said two more positive cases of coronavirus-- one in Delhi and another in Telangana -- have been reported in the country. Five positive cases of coronavirus have been reported in India so far.

Also Read | Coronavirus: Government Issues Travel Advisory As Two Fresh Cases Reported In India

As many as 25,738 people are under community surveillance across the country while 37 people suspected to have COVID-19 symptoms are currently hospitalised. China has so far witnessed 2,912 deaths due to coronavirus.
New Delhi:

Bangladeshs foreign ministry on Sunday said Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is likely to make a one-day visit to Dhaka on March 17, coinciding with the beginning of the 'Mujib Year' to mark the birth centenary of the countrys founder Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. The main focus of Prime Minister Modis visit would be on Mujib Year's inauguration with grand celebration, but he is also scheduled to have bilateral talks with his Bangladesh counterpart Sheikh Hasina, the Bangabandhus daughter, Foreign Secretary Masud Bin Momen told a media briefing here.

"The date of his (Modi) arrival in Dhaka is yet to be finalised, but he is likely to be here on March 17," he said. The Bangladesh government will observe 'Mujib Borsho (year)' from March 2020 to March 2021 across the globe. Meanwhile, officials of the Indian High Commission here and the Bangladesh Foreign Ministry said Indias External Affairs Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla would arrive in Dhaka on Monday to finalise the programmes of Modis upcoming visit. During his visit, Shringla, who previously served as Indias high commissioner in Dhaka, would meet Prime Minister Hasina and Foreign Minister AK Abdul Momen, they said.

Shringla would also visit his Bangladeshi counterpart, they said, adding that he would deliver a keynote speech at a seminar jointly organised by the Bangladesh Institute of International and Strategic Studies (BIISS) and the Indian High Commission in Dhaka.

Gowher Rizvi, International Affairs adviser to the prime minister of Bangladesh, would also address the seminar titled Bangladesh and India: A Promising Future as the chief guest, the officials said.

According to the officials, Dhaka will also invite former Indian president Pranab Mukherjee and Nepalese President Bidhya Devi Bhandari to address a special Parliament session slated for March 22 and 23 to celebrate the Mujib Year.

A parliament secretariat spokesman earlier said it would be the third such instance when foreign dignitaries would address Bangladesh Parliament since 1972 and 1974 when the then Indian president VV Giri and erstwhile Yugoslavias president Josip Broz Tito spoke in the House.

Bangladesh has taken a series of initiatives to celebrate the Mujib Year, including to make a film on the Bangabandhu by noted Indian filmmaker Shyam Benegal.

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New Delhi:

With the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) virus spreading to more countries and two more confirmed cases reported in India, seaports and airports have been put under high alert. On Tuesday, two private schools in Noida were shut for next few days after father of one of their students tested positive for coronavirus, while several people, including his family members, were quarantined or kept in isolation as authorities stepped up prevention efforts including extending suspension of existing regular and e visas to nationals of four other affected countries.

Officials said the sample of an Italian tourist in Jaipur which was sent to National Institute of Virology, Pune was found to be positive after the first two tests gave contradictory results. With this, six cases of COVID-19 have been reported in the country so far. Three of the patients have recovered.

The 69-year-old Italian's wife also tested positive for the virus on Tuesday but her samples are being sent to Pune for another test. The couple has been kept in isolation at the Jaipur's Sawai Man Singh Hospital. Twenty-one Italian tourists and three Indian tour operators, who were in the same group as the couple, have been sent to an ITBP quarantine facility in Delhi on Tuesday for suspected coronavirus exposure, official sources said.

Also Read | Coronavirus: Now, Italian Tourist's Wife Tests Positive At Jaipur Hospital, Sample Sent To Pune For Confirmation

As concerns over the spread of the virus mounted after two more persons tested positive on Monday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi held an extensive review on the preparedness. He urged the people not to panic and instead take basic protective measures.

Sources said the patient from Mayur Vihar in Delhi, who had travelled to Italy recently and tested positive on Monday, was shifted to a quarantine ward at Safdarjung Hospital on Sunday night. One of the schools in Noida, on the outskirts of Delhi, where the Delhi man's son is a primary class student, said it will remain shut from March 4 to March 6, while the other said it will be closed till Saturday. The board exams are not affected, the messages sent by the schools to the parents made clear.

It came to light that the man had thrown a birthday party last week for the child, triggering fears that those who attended it including some students and his relatives might be at risk. Samples from six people from Noida, including three children, have been taken to check if anyone has been infected, Noida's Chief Medical Officer Anurag Bhargava said.

Fumigation was underway in both the schools and a Health Department team led by Noida's chief medical officer visited the site, an official said.

While some family members of the man, an accountant and others who came in contact with him were asked to remain quarantined at their homes in Delhi and Agra, six others from Agra with "high-viral load" have been kept in isolation at Safdarjung Hospital in Delhi and their samples sent to NIV, Pune, officials said.

Contact tracing of the people who came in contact with the six is simultaneously being done through the Integrated Disease Surveillance Program (IDSP) network, the Health Ministry said in a statement.

In a statement, the Uttar Pradesh government said that two Agra residents, who had come in contact with the Delhi man, were found to be having symptoms of Coronavirus.

Also Read | Indian Navy's Multilateral Naval Exercise MILAN Postponed Due To Coronavirus Outbreak

"As many as 23 contacts were identified, and report of 13 persons were obtained. Of these 6 persons are suspected to be infected by Corona, and the samples have been sent to National Institute of Virology, Pune. All the six suspected patients have been admitted to Delhi's Safdarjung Hospital. The result of 10 samples sent to NCDC, Delhi is awaited," it said.

Hotels and the authorities at tourist sites in Agra have been told to inform the office of the chief medical officer as soon as visitors from Italy, Iran or China arrive, so that they can be screened for coronavirus infection, Agra Chief Medical Officer Dr Mukesh Vats told PTI.

The other patient who tested positive for the COVID-19 infection on Monday, a 24-year-old techie, is admitted in Hyderabad and had recently travelled to Dubai and Bengaluru. Karnataka Health Minister B Sriramulu said that a medical team is monitoring the health condition of all those people who had come in contact with the software engineer.

The software engineer had worked with people from Hong Kong in Dubai last month where he is suspected to have contracted the virus, Telangana health minister E Rajender told reporters in Hyderabad.

The Union Health Ministry on Tuesday said all regular visas/e-visas granted on or before March 3 to nationals of Italy, Iran, South Korea and Japan, who have not yet entered India, stand suspended in view of the emerging global scenarios regarding COVID19 disease.

On February 4, India had cancelled the existing visas for Chinese nationals and foreigners who had visited the neighbouring country in the preceding two-week period, following the outbreak of Coronavirus which has now spread to over 60 countries and claimed over 3,100 lives. Over 90,000 have been infected. Visa on arrival (VoA) issued on or before March 3 to Japanese and South Korean nationals, who have not yet entered India, have also been suspended.

The Ministry also said diplomats, officials of UN and other International bodies, OCI cardholders and aircrew from above countries are exempted from such restriction on entry. However, their medical screening is compulsory.

"Passengers of all international flights entering into India from any port are required to furnish duly filled self-declaration form (including personal particulars i.e. phone no. and address in India) and travel history, to health officials and immigration officials at all ports.

"Passengers (foreign and Indian) other than those restricted, arriving directly or indirectly from China, South Korea, Japan, Iran, Italy, Hong Kong, Macau, Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, Nepal, Thailand, Singapore and Taiwan must undergo medical screening at port of entry," it said.

The ministry said that all previous advisories stand superseded in view of the fresh instructions. It asked all Indian citizens to refrain from travel to China, Iran, South Korea, Italy and asked them to avoid non-essential travel to other COVID-19 affected countries.

The Civil Aviation Ministry too conducted a meeting with all airports to review and update guidelines. The DGCA asked airlines and airports to take specific measures such as providing protective gears like surgical masks and gloves to crew members and passengers and having multiple hand sanitising points in terminals.

It also stated that airports and airlines must ensure that each aircraft arriving from South Korea, Japan and Italy is subjected to disinfection process before the boarding begins for the next flight on the plane.

The government has asked people to avoid non-essential travel to Iran, Italy, South Korea and Singapore and said India was in discussions with authorities in Iran and Italy, two countries badly affected by the infection, to evacuate Indians there.

India had earlier reported three cases from Kerala, including two medical students from Wuhan in China, the epicentre of the deadly novel coronavirus.

"Had an extensive review regarding preparedness on the COVID-19 Novel Coronavirus. Different ministries and states are working together, from screening people arriving in India to providing prompt medical attention," the prime minister said in a tweet.

"There is no need to panic. We need to work together, take small yet important measures to ensure self-protection," he said while sharing a health ministry post.

Meanwhile in Lucknow, samples of an Uttar Pradesh resident who had returned from Saudi Arabia on Tuesday morning have been sent for testing. He will be quarantined for 14 days in the hospital, according to Chief Medical Officer Dr Narendra Agarwal.

(With PTI inputs)

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New Delhi:

At least fifteen of 21 Italian tourists, who have been quarantined in Delhi, are suspected to have coronavirus, according to media reports. One of the tourists, currently in Jaipur, tested positive on Tuesday. Officials say the sample of the tourist was sent to National Institute of Virology, Pune where it was found to be positive after the first two tests gave contradictory results. With this, six cases of COVID-19 have been reported in the country so far. Three of the patients have recovered. The tourists reportedly landed in Delhi and travelled to Rajasthan last month.

With the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) virus spreading to more countries and two more confirmed cases reported in India, seaports and airports have been put under high alert. On Tuesday, two private schools in Noida were shut for next few days after father of one of their students tested positive for coronavirus, while several people, including his family members, were quarantined or kept in isolation as authorities stepped up prevention efforts including extending suspension of existing regular and e visas to nationals of four other affected countries.

As concerns over the spread of the virus mounted, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday held an extensive review on the preparedness. He urged the people not to panic and instead take basic protective measures.

The Union Health Ministry on Tuesday said all regular visas/e-visas granted on or before March 3 to nationals of Italy, Iran, South Korea and Japan, who have not yet entered India, stand suspended in view of the emerging global scenarios regarding COVID19 disease.

On February 4, India had cancelled the existing visas for Chinese nationals and foreigners who had visited the neighbouring country in the preceding two-week period, following the outbreak of Coronavirus which has now spread to over 60 countries and claimed over 3,100 lives. Over 90,000 have been infected. Visa on arrival (VoA) issued on or before March 3 to Japanese and South Korean nationals, who have not yet entered India, have also been suspended.

The Ministry also said diplomats, officials of UN and other International bodies, OCI cardholders and aircrew from above countries are exempted from such restriction on entry. However, their medical screening is compulsory.

(With PTI Inputs)

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Awan claimed that Sharif and his younger brother Shahbaz had gone to London to protect the businesses of their children. (Photo Credit: File photo)

Lahore:

Pakistan has announced that it will request the British government to deport former prime minister Nawaz Sharif as he is an "absconder". "The government has decided in principle to write a letter this week to the British government, seeking deportation of PML-N supreme leader Nawaz Sharif, as he is an absconder not fulfilling the terms and conditions of the bail granted to him on medical grounds," Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Information Firdous Ashiq Awan told a press conference here on Sunday evening.

She said Sharif had gone to London on November 19 last year for his treatment but was yet to be admitted to a hospital there, indicating that it was a fixed match played by him, his party and a section of the media on his health, paving the way for his departure to London. Awan claimed that Sharif and his younger brother Shahbaz had gone to London to protect the businesses of their children.

Nawaz faked his health condition, she alleged. Last week, the Punjab government had refused to extend Sharifs bail, declaring that it had found no legal, moral or medical ground necessitating an extension in his stay abroad. The Lahore High Court had, in October last year, granted bail to Sharif on medical grounds for four weeks, allowing the Punjab government to extend it further in the light of his medical reports.

Also Read: Pakistan: Cabinet Allows Nawaz Sharif To Travel Abroad For Treatment

The Islamabad High Court had also granted bail to Sharif in the Al Azizia Mills corruption case, in which the former prime minister was serving a seven-year jail term, clearing his way to travel abroad for medical treatment. PML-N secretary general Ahsan Iqbal said if Sharif decided to return to the country, the Imran Khan government will request him not to come.

He said the three-time premier will challenge the governments decision not to give him extension in his stay abroad in the court shortly. PML-N Punjab information secretary Azma Bokhari told PTI that if Pakistan wrote to the British government for Sharifs deportation, the PML-N would also write to the US government seeking opening of a case against Prime Minister Imran Khan regarding his (illegitimate) child.

Also Read: Nawaz Sharif's Picture In London Restaurant Goes Viral, Opposition Questions 'Serious Nature' Of Health

She said Sharif was seriously ill and had heart-related complications, adding that the former prime minister was going to have a heart procedure shortly. Imran Khan and his team should stop playing on the health of Sharif and concentrate on governance matters instead, Bokhari said.

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New Delhi :

Taking a dig at Prime Minister Narendra Modi for his tweet about quitting social media platforms, former Congress president Rahul Gandhi said, "Give up hatred, not social media accounts." Another Congress leader asked PM Modi to give this advice to the army of trolls. "Earnestly wish you would give this advise to the concerted army of trolls, who abuse-intimidate-badger-threaten others every second in you name!" Congress spokesperson Randeep Singh Surjewala tweeted.

Earlier, PM Modi said he is thinking about giving up his social media accounts on various platforms, including Twitter and Facebook. "This Sunday, thinking of giving up my social media accounts on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram & YouTube. Will keep you all posted," he tweeted. The prime minister is active on social media, especially on Twitter where he has 53.3 million followers.

PM Modi is known for his ability to connect with the masses through social media. According to The Economic Times, he had roughly 5.3 million followers in 2014 which rapidly grew over a period of five years. It was also around this time when Modi began using other social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram, where he has 43.7 million and 30 million followers respectively. Modi is now also the most followed leader on Instagram.

PM Modi is very active on social media, including Instagram and Twitter and regularly puts out texts on everything - from his speeches at various platforms to the places he went and the people he met. In 2018, an international survey ranked Modi among the top three leaders of the world. An annual survey by Gallup International put the Prime Minister at number three among the global leaders.

The respondents in the survey, which was conducted among the people across 50 countries, rated Modi ahead of China's Xi Jinping, Russian President Vladimir Putin, then British Prime Minister Theresa May, Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu amongst others.

Also Read | Prime Minister Narendra Modi Tweets On Delhi Violence, Says Important To Restore Calm And Normalcy



The top ranking in the survey went to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, followed by French President Emmanuel Macron.

With Agency Inputs

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New Delhi:

The candidates who are appearing for VIPS internal examination, the Vivekananda Institute of Professional Studies on Sunday postponed the its internal examinations scheduled to be held on March 2, i.e., tomorrow, following the rumours of violence and disturbance from parts of the west and north Delhi.

The college, affiliated to the Indraprastha University, is located in Pitampura. Delhi Police has denied rumours doing the rounds in the city, as it promised strong action against rumour-mongers.

A week after deadly communal violence erupted in northeast Delhi, the situation in affected areas was peaceful but tense on Sunday as four more bodies were fished out from drains in Gokalpuri and Shiv Vihar and heavy police deployment continued.

In parts of northeast Delhi, people complained of cash crunch as several bank branches and ATMs have remained closed in the aftermath of the riots.

The Delhi Police said it has registered 254 FIRs and arrested or detained 903 persons in connection with the violence so far. Forty-one of the cases were registered under the Arms Act.

No untoward incident has been reported from the northeast district over the past three days, an official said, adding police are urging residents to not pay attention to rumours and report them to authorities.

Three bodies were fished out from two drains in Gokalpuri on Sunday while one body was pulled out out from a drain in Shiv Vihar, police said. However, it is yet to be ascertained if they are linked to the riots and authorities have not updated the death toll figure.

Several bodies of riot victims have been found in drains since Wednesday including of IB staffer Ankit Sharma after violence ebbed.

Panic spread across several parts of west Delhi on Sunday evening following false rumours of violence. Delhi Metro also shut down entry and exits of seven stations without giving any reason. However, Delhi Police swiftly denied any incident and appealed to all to remain calm.

Art of Living founder Sri Sri Ravi Shankar visited some of the riot-hit areas, including Brahmapuri, and consoled the people affected by the worst violence in three decades in Delhi.

It is very disturbing to see that so many people are badly affected. We have to relieve them of trauma and bring their lives back on track. Everyone should come together to do this, he told reporters.

Schools are closed in Northeast district till March 7.

(With PTI Inputs)
New Delhi:

With the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) virus spreading to more countries and two more confirmed cases reported in India, seaports and airports have been put under high alert. On Tuesday, two private schools in Noida were shut for next few days after father of one of their students tested positive for coronavirus, while several people, including his family members, were quarantined or kept in isolation as authorities stepped up prevention efforts including extending suspension of existing regular and e visas to nationals of four other affected countries.

Officials said the sample of an Italian tourist in Jaipur which was sent to National Institute of Virology, Pune was found to be positive after the first two tests gave contradictory results. With this, six cases of COVID-19 have been reported in the country so far. Three of the patients have recovered.

The 69-year-old Italian's wife also tested positive for the virus on Tuesday but her samples are being sent to Pune for another test. The couple has been kept in isolation at the Jaipur's Sawai Man Singh Hospital. Twenty-one Italian tourists and three Indian tour operators, who were in the same group as the couple, have been sent to an ITBP quarantine facility in Delhi on Tuesday for suspected coronavirus exposure, official sources said.

Also Read | Coronavirus: Now, Italian Tourist's Wife Tests Positive At Jaipur Hospital, Sample Sent To Pune For Confirmation

The Information and Broadcasting Ministry has urged all private radio and TV channels to give "adequate publicity" to the travel advisory issued by the Health Ministry in the wake of coronavirus outbreak.

The Health Ministry issued the travel advisory on Tuesday -- a day after two fresh cases of coronavirus were reported in India -- suspending all regular visas/e-visas granted on or before March 3 to nationals of Italy, Iran, South Korea, Japan, who have not yet entered India.

The advisory also suspends visa on arrival (VoA) issued by March 3 to Japan and South Korea nationals who have not yet entered India. In its advisory, the I&B Ministry has asked all the private satellite news channels and private FM radio channels to publicise the travel advisory. The channels can also run tickers on coronavirus, it said.

Also Read | Indian Navy's Multilateral Naval Exercise MILAN Postponed Due To Coronavirus Outbreak



Coronavirus: Protection measures should be taken

Regularly and thoroughly clean your hands with an alcohol-based hand rub or wash them with soap and water.

Why? Washing your hands with soap and water or using alcohol-based hand rub kills viruses that may be on your hands.

Maintain at least 1 metre (3 feet) distance between yourself and anyone who is coughing or sneezing.

Why? When someone coughs or sneezes they spray small liquid droplets from their nose or mouth which may contain virus. If you are too close, you can breathe in the droplets, including the COVID-19 virus if the person coughing has the disease.

Avoid touching eyes, nose and mouth.

Why? Hands touch many surfaces and can pick up viruses. Once contaminated, hands can transfer the virus to your eyes, nose or mouth. From there, the virus can enter your body and can make you sick.

Make sure you, and the people around you, follow good respiratory hygiene. This means covering your mouth and nose with your bent elbow or tissue when you cough or sneeze. Then dispose of the used tissue immediately.

Why? Droplets spread virus. By following good respiratory hygiene you protect the people around you from viruses such as cold, flu and COVID-19.

Stay home if you feel unwell. If you have a fever, cough and difficulty breathing, seek medical attention and call in advance. Follow the directions of your local health authority.

Why? National and local authorities will have the most up to date information on the situation in your area. Calling in advance will allow your health care provider to quickly direct you to the right health facility. This will also protect you and help prevent spread of viruses and other infections.

Stay informed on the latest developments about COVID-19. Follow advice given by your healthcare provider, your national and local public health authority or your employer on how to protect yourself and others from COVID-19.

Why? National and local authorities will have the most up to date information on whether COVID-19 is spreading in your area. They are best placed to advise on what people in your area should be doing to protect themselves.

(Source: PTI and WHO inputs)

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New Delhi:

UPPCL JE Response Key 2020 has been released. Uttar Pradesh Power Corporation Limited has released the UPPCL JE Answer Key 2020 on its official website, i.e. upenergy.in. Candidates who appeared for the UPPCL JE Exam need to visit the official website to check the JE UPPCL 2020 Response Key and raise objections accordingly. Alternatively, candidates can click on the below mentioned direct link to check and download the UPPCL JE Answer Key 2020.

UPPCL JE Answer Key 2020

It is to note that candidates will be able to check and download the UPPCL JE Answer Key 2020 by login through their registered User ID and Password. Earlier, the UPPCL JE 2020 Exam was held on February 25, 2020 at respective exam centres.

Also Read: DRDO CVRDE Avadi Recruitment Notification 2020 Released, Apply For ITI Apprentice Trainee Posts

In order to check and download the UPPCL JE 2020 Answer Key, candidates need to follow the below mentioned steps:

First, candidates need to visit the official website of Uttar Pradesh Power Corporation Limited

Then, navigate and click on the Vacancy Tab that is available at the top of the homepage

A new page will open

Click on the UPPCL JE Response Key 2020 link

A new login page will open

Enter the required details and download the UPPCL JE Answer Key 2020

Candidates can check the UPPCL 2020 Answer Key and raise objections accordingly. Meanwhile, candidates will be selected for the JE Post on the basis of written exam and interview. Alternatively, candidates can click on the below mentioned direct link to check and download the UPPCL JE Answer Key 2020.

UPPCL JE Answer Key 2020 Direct Link
Riyadh :

Saudi Arabia on Monday confirmed its first case of coronavirus after one its citizens who had returned from COVID-19 hotspot Iran tested positive. The health ministry said the man, tested after entering the country through Bahrain, had been isolated in a hospital. Saudi Arabia is the last Arab state in the Gulf to report a confirmed case of COVID-19.

Elsewhere in the Arab world, Jordan and Tunisia also confirmed their first cases on Monday. Last week, Riyadh barred citizens from its Gulf neighbours from visiting Mecca and Medina.

It also suspended visas for the year-round mini-pilgrimage to Islams holiest places located in the west of the Sunni kingdom. The unprecedented moves have left thousands of Muslim pilgrims in limbo, raising uncertainty over the annual hajj to Mecca scheduled for end of July.

The holy sites, which draw millions of pilgrims every year, are a potential source of contagion but also a pillar of political legitimacy for Saudi rulers and a key revenue earner. Other Gulf countries have announced a raft of measures to cut links with Iran after infections among pilgrims returning from Shiite shrines in the Islamic republic.

Iran on Monday raised its coronavirus death toll to 66 -- the highest outside Chinawith 1,501 confirmed cases. The World Health Organization on Monday sent its first planeload of assistance to Iran aboard an Emirati military aircraft.

For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev has signed a Decree on additional measures in the area of social protection of labor pensioners, receiving bonuses to retirement pensions.
Washington:

Pete Buttigieg, the first openly gay US presidential candidate from a major party, on Sunday ended his campaign to be the Democratic nominee in the November election against Donald Trump, US media said. The 38-year-old had risen rapidly from being a virtual unknown to becoming a national political figure, but he scored poorly in the latest primary in South Carolina, coming fourth with just eight per cent. He was scheduled to address supporters later Sunday in South Bend, Indiana, where he was previously the mayor.

Buttigieg took centre stage when securing a narrow victory in the Iowa caucuses and earned national attention for his unflustered and professional approach in an often bitter Democratic nomination race. But his showing in South Carolina on Saturday confirmed polls suggesting he struggled to attract support among black voters - a key demographic.

Joe Biden's resounding victory in South Carolina has thrust him back into the race just days before voters go to the polls in 14 "Super Tuesday" states. With 48 per cent of the vote in South Carolina, the former vice president more than doubled the 20 per cent won by national frontrunner Bernie Sanders, reviving Biden's campaign and positioning him as the leftist senator's main rival.

Trump responded rapidly on Twitter, claiming that the Democratic party leadership would act to halt Sanders winning.

"Pete Buttigieg is OUT. All of his SuperTuesday votes will go to Sleepy Joe Biden. Great timing. This is the REAL beginning of the Dems taking Bernie out of play," Trump wrote.

For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
Kolkata/New Delhi :

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Monday alleged the communal violence in Delhi was "state-sponsored genocide" and the BJP was trying to replicate the "Gujarat model of riots" across the country. Addressing a TMC event, Banerjee also condemned those who raised the controversial "goli maro..." slogan while heading to Home Minister Amit Shah's rally in the city on Sunday. "I am deeply pained by the killing of innocent people in Delhi. I think it was genocide... the violence in Delhi was state-sponsored," she said. Banerjee claimed it was due to the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) that "so many people were killed" in the Delhi violence. "Amit Shah should keep this in mind". She said the BJP should apologise for the Delhi riots. "The BJP is trying to replicate the Gujarat model of riots across India, including in West Bengal," the chief minister added.

Meanwhile, Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) MPs on Monday staged a protest inside the Parliament complex over the issue of communal riots in Delhi and demanded a probe by a Supreme Court or high court judge into the last week violence. At least 42 people were killed and over 200 injured in violence in northeast Delhi. AAP MPs Sanjay Singh, Bhagwant Mann, N D Gupta and Sushil Gupta staged the protest in front of the Mahatma Gandhi statue in the Parliament complex. They raised slogans like "BJP Murdabad"."We want a probe by a sitting high court or Supreme Court judge. A joint parliamentary committee must be made to look into the violence," Singh said.

"Why is it not being discussed in Parliament who is responsible for the riots. Delhi was set on fire by BJP leaders like Kapil Mishra, Pravesh Verma and Anurag Thakur who gave inflammatory speeches. There is no law and order in Delhi," he said. Singh said the leaders who were involved in spreading hate must be subjected to a narco analysis test and the results should be publicised to the entire country. The AAP MP has also given a 'Suspension of Business Notice' in the Rajya Sabha over the violence.

The death count in the communal violence that flared up in Delhi on February 24 continues to rise. On Monday, the number of casualties rose to 47. According to news agency ANI, 38 deaths were confirmed at the Guru Teg Bahadur Hospital, three at the Lok Nayak Hospital, one at Jag Parvesh Chander Hospital and 4 at Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital. There are reports that several bodies that have still not been recovered from the drains and torched houses. Hence, the total death count may go up significantly. After 72 hours of utter mayhem and total collapse, there have been no incidents of fresh violence or arson from the area.

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New Delhi:

Two Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) militants were arrested in Srinagar and arms and ammunition seized from their possession, police said on Sunday. They have been identified as Vakeel Ahmed Bhat alias Abu Zarrar and Omar Ismail Das, both residents of Bijbehara, area of South Kashmirs Anantnag district.

On a credible input, security forces intercepted a car on Barzulla-Chanapora road on Saturday, a police spokesman said. He said while checking the vehicle, officers recovered arms and ammunition from the two persons.

According to police records, the two are active militants affiliated with proscribed outfit LeT, the spokesman said, adding, both have been arrested and shifted to police station where they remain in custody. Incriminating material has been seized from their possession and their complicity in other terror crimes will also be probed, he said.

However, police sources had on Saturday said Bhat was arrested along with three other persons, including two women, from a hospital.
New Delhi:

Panic gripped the residents of several parts of Delhi after rumours of violence led to the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) shutting down entry and exit gates of Nangloi, Surajmal Stadium, Badarpur, Tughlakabad, Uttam Nagar west and Nawada metro stations for a small duration. The Delhi Police and AAP leaders denied any incident and appealed people to remain calm.

"A rumour has been noticed that there is some tension in Khyala-Raghubir Nagar area of West District. There is no truth behind it. All are requested to keep calm as the situation is absolutely normal & peaceful," Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP) West Deepak Purohit said.

"There are some rumours regarding some communal tension in Tilak Nagar and Khyala areas. It is intimated that there is no tension in Tilak Nagar and Khyala and the whole west district area. Nothing to worry about," he added.

Police said some "unsubstantiated reports" of tension in southeast and west districts were circulated on social media.

"It is to reiterate that these are all rumours. Don't pay attention to such rumours. Delhi Police is closely monitoring accounts spreading rumours and taking action," they said, adding that rumours about tension in Dwarka and Badarpur areas were also "unsubstantiated".

The DCPs of some police districts and station house officers (SHOs) of police stations took to Twitter to assure people that their areas were peaceful and normal.

However, shopkeepers downed shutters and vendors closed weekly markets as people rushed home early in several areas, including Subhash Nagar, Tilak Nagar, Janakpuri and Khyala areas in west Delhi.

With PTI Inputs
New Delhi:

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday took a jibe at his predecessor Manmohan Singh after he last week alleged that Bharat Mata ki jai slogan is being misused. In a veiled attack at the former prime minister, at the BJP parliamentarians meet, PM Modi alleged that some Congress leaders are ashamed of the nationalistic slogan. 'Some people find foul smell in Bharat Mata Ki Jai,' PM Modi said in his address to MPs.

Tracing it back to Indias freedom movement, PM Modi said, "Even at the time of the freedom movement, some people felt the same way about the Bharat Mata slogan."

Last week, in an apparent attack on the Bharatiya Janata Party, former prime minister Manmohan Singh said that nationalism and slogans like 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai' are being misused to construct a militant and purely emotional idea of India that excludes millions of residents and citizens.

Addressing a gathering at the launch of a book on Jawaharlal Nehrus works and speeches, Singh praised Nehru saying he was not only statesman of high international standing but historian and literary figure too.

"Jawaharlal Nehru was not only statesman of high international standing but historian and literary figure too. But people who don't have patience to read history or would like to be deliberately guided by their prejudices are trying their best to picture him in false light," Singh had said.

Singh had said that if India is recognised in the comity of nations as a vibrant democracy and, if it is considered as one of the important world powers, it was the first prime minister, who should be recognised as its main architect.

BJP Parliamentary Meet

At the parliamentary meet, in his first speech at a party forum after Delhi riots, which have left more than 40 people dead, Modi said national interest is supreme for the BJP while for others party interest is of the most importance.

'Vikas' (development) is our mantra and peace, harmony and unity are prerequisites for the country's development, he told the MPs.

"We should not merely speak about it but take lead in ensuring peace, harmony and unity," the prime minister said.

Emphasising on his slogan of 'sabka saath, sabka vikas and sabka vishwash' (With all, development for all and trust of all), Modi invoked the Sanskrit words of "manasa, vaacha, karmana" to ask party leaders to work the country's development with their mind, words and action.

(With Agency Inputs)

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The Delhi Police received more than 3,000 distress calls on Sunday from people panicked over riot-related rumours like violence. (Photo Credit: Representative image)

New Delhi:

At least 24 people have been arrested so far in connection with rumour-mongering like violence on Sunday across Delhi, said the police on Monday. Two people were arrested from the Central district, 21 people from the Northwest district and one from Rohini district, the police added. Panic gripped residents across the national capital on Sunday evening following false rumours of violence but the police denied any incident and appealed for calm, days after riots in northeast Delhi claimed at least 42 lives.

The Delhi Police received more than 3,000 distress calls on Sunday from people panicked over riot-related rumours like violence, arson and stone pelting across the national capital, officials said. Around one-fifth of these calls on the emergency 100 and 112 numbers came from Shaheen Bagh in South East Delhi and nearby areas in South Delhi, they said on Monday.

Also Read | Delhi Riots: BSF Hands Over Rs 10 Lakh Cheque To Jawan Whose House Was Burnt

"More than 3,000 emergency calls were received at the police control room (PCR) after rumours related to violence started doing rounds in Delhi on Sunday evening. 413 calls were from South East Delhi and 157 from South Delhi," a senior police officer said.

Besides the PCR calls, several people from within Delhi as well as outside called up police officials, including officers, directly to verify information about violence breaking out, the officer added.

The rumours prompted senior police officers to come on ground and quell the hoax while also taking to social media to control panic. The Delhi Metro Rail Corporation also shut down the entry and exit gates of seven metro stations but did not give any reason. The stations were reopened later.

Also Read | Delhi Violence Is State-Sponsored Genocide: Mamata Banerjee's Scathing Attack Against BJP

"Some unsubstantiated reports of tense situation in SouthEast & West District are being circulated on social media. It is to reiterate that these are all rumours. Don't pay attention to such rumours," the Delhi police tweeted.

The police said it was closely monitoring the social media accounts spreading fake news or rumours and action will be taken against them.
New Delhi: Amid the Ukraine crisis, the Maharaja, the oldest Indian restaurant in Budapest, is providing free meals to Indian students being evacuated from war-torn Ukraine via the Hungarian capital. The restaurant's owner, Kulwinder Singh Jham, said that being a devout Sikh, he immediately started langar (community kitchen) to serve free food.

He further told that 'It was Monday, I did not know that their (students) number would increase so fast. 300 students arrived in Budapest on Tuesday. According to the report, he told that on Wednesday afternoon, we prepared 800 meals and in the night another 1,500 students reached. Jham, who has lived in Europe for 40 years and founded the Maharaja in 1994, said the students were expecting assistance from the Indian embassy. He said that the embassy initially provided easily available food like sandwiches, but the students needed hot cooked food.

Jham further said that many of the students were hungry and suffering. He said that the students had to go through terrible experiences. Some boys said they were offered money and rifles to fight for Ukraine. All were stopped by soldiers at the border because Ukraine does not allow men between the ages of 16 and 60 to leave the country. The students had to prove that they are not citizens of Ukraine. Most of them preferred to board trains to Hungary, thinking that the Russians could stop and seize buses to Romania and Poland.

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Pakistan has become the first country to formally sign a massive trade agreement with Russia, which comes at a time when Moscow is under fire for invading Ukraine. Pakistan would purchase two million tonnes of wheat and natural gas from Russia as part of the arrangement.

Will this have an influence on Pakistan's International Monetary Fund (IMF) assistance? Not only have the United States and the European Union imposed harsh penalties on Russia, but the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have also released a joint statement criticising Moscow and offering to assist Ukraine and other nations that have welcomed Ukrainian refugees.

Pakistan is now requesting a bailout package from the IMF, which has approved a $1 billion payout under its $6 billion credit programme. The Imran Khan government, on the other hand, is frantically seeking a larger loan from the IMF to help the country's ailing economy.

Pakistan's need on IMF assistance has increased in recent years as the country's external debt has grown. Islamabad's gross foreign funding needs are expected to be over $30 billion this year.

As the Russia-Ukraine situation worsened, the IMF and World Bank issued a joint statement calling for coordinated international action to limit risks and navigate the perilous period ahead.

The visit of Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan to Russia on the day of the Ukraine attack has already drawn criticism. On February 24, Khan met with Russian President Vladimir Putin to discuss measures to strengthen bilateral ties.

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Amritsar: A husband brutally murdered his wife in Fazilka in Punjab, adjoining the Indo-Pakistan border. The incident is being reported from Laddu village under the Fazilka district. It is being told that the wife used to stop the husband from drinking alcohol on the day he came and there was often a dispute between the two about this. Many times he even threw his wife out of the house.

Charanjit Singh, brother of the deceased woman, has lodged a complaint in the case and informed the police that along with her brother-in-law, her nephew and brother-in-law's brother are also involved in the case. At present, the police have registered a case against the woman's husband, son and husband's brother on the complaint of the deceased's brother and started an investigation.

The police have taken the woman's body into custody and sent it to the hospital for post-mortem. SHO of Vero police station Harpreet Singh said further action will be taken only after the post-mortem report comes and the real reasons for the murder will also be known. At present, the police are interrogating the accused and the locals in connection with the case.

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Sophie Turner and Joe Jonas will soon become parents for the second time. However, no official statement has come out on this yet and probably won't come yet because when the two had their first child, both of them kept that thing under wraps for a long time and once again both of them are going to do something similar. In the pictures, it has become clear that Sophie Turner is going to be a mother again. According to many reports, Sophie Turner and Joe Jonas are expecting their second child. The couple, who already have a 1-year-old daughter named Villa, pregnancy speculations in February when Sophie Turner was captured in pictures of her belly cradling while wearing a crop top in Los Angeles.

Amid constant speculation, 32-year-old Jonas and 26-year-old Turner both appeared in identical green outfits. However, it is hardly surprising that in May 2019, the couple was silent about the pregnancy rumour. Meanwhile, in February 2020, Turner announced her first pregnancy and has been seen going out on a walk with her baby bump. However, the pair did not make any public announcement until the representatives announced the birth of Villa in July 2020. Turner and Jonas kept their newborn daughter's existence under wraps, but the couple has made rare statements about her over the years.

According to media reports, the couple started dating in 2016 and announced their engagement in 2017, but they did not make their red carpet debut as a couple until 2018. The two got married in May 2019 at a stunning ceremony in Las Vegas. Later that summer, the Chateau De Tourreau in France had a more unusual and exclusive marriage.

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By Azernews





By Sabina Mammadli

Some 7,696 Azerbaijani citizens have left Ukraine since the start of hostilities there, the Foreign Ministry has reported.

Since the outbreak of hostilities in Ukraine, 6,500 Azerbaijanis have crossed into Moldova, 770 into Poland, 318 into Romania, 60 into Slovakia, and 48 into Hungary.

Over 1,000 Azerbaijanis arrived in Romania from Ukraine on the morning of March 4, Vagif Hasanov, the head of the Azerbaijani diaspora organization in Romania, reported.

He added that a flight from Bucharest to Istanbul and then to Baku will be organized as there are no direct flights from Romania to Azerbaijan.

"Our compatriots with personal vehicles can return to their homeland by land via Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey, and Georgia," he said.

Turkish Airlines evacuated more than 40 Azerbaijani citizens.

The Foreign Ministry earlier reported that 900 Azerbaijanis, mostly women, children, and the elderly, had been evacuated to Azerbaijan via five charter flights from Romania.

The ministry also stated that charter flights for Azerbaijani citizens from neighboring countries, as well as bus evacuation, will continue.

Due to the situation in Ukraine, Azerbaijani citizens continue to migrate from neighboring countries to Moldova, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, and Romania.

Visa requirements for Azerbaijani citizens transiting through these countries have been temporarily lifted as a result of an agreement reached with these countries; citizens must only submit travel documents; a COVID-19 passport and a negative PCR test are not required.

Due to the situation in Ukraine, we advise our citizens to stay away from military facilities, stay in a safe place and refrain from traveling, stated the ministry.

Rovshan Guliyev, chairman of the Birlik Odessa Diaspora of Azerbaijanis public organization, said that 170 Azerbaijanis had been sent from Ukraine's Odessa to Moldova through the support of the State Committee on Work with Diaspora and diaspora organizations.

The evacuation of citizens from Moldova to Azerbaijan is expected in the coming days.

The State Committee, acting on behalf of the Azerbaijani government and in collaboration with other government agencies, is doing everything possible to evacuate compatriots from Ukraine.

Another 201 Azerbaijani citizens, including 18 young children, returned to their homeland on another AZAL evacuation flight from the Romanian airport of Iasi on March 3.

As previously stated, AZAL operates daily evacuation flights under President Ilham Aliyev's order to evacuate compatriots.

Evacuation flights are free for Azerbaijani citizens. Citizens of our country who left Ukraine can apply to the diplomatic missions of Azerbaijan abroad to return to their homeland," the report added.

Meanwhile, the Foreign Ministry announced that 540 people would be transported by land from Russia to Azerbaijan.

For border crossing, a working group of employees from the Foreign Ministry, the Interior Ministry, and the Emergencies Ministry was dispatched to Russia's Dagestan.

Azerbaijani citizens and their family members were registered and provided with the necessary consular assistance by members of the working group.

It should be noted that, as a result of activities coordinated with Russian local agencies, 540 registered persons were able to cross the Russia-Azerbaijan state border via the Yarag-Kazmalyar (Russia) and Samur (Azerbaijan) checkpoints between February 23-28, in accordance with the daily quota established by the operational headquarters under the Azerbaijani Cabinet of Ministers.

It was noted that in connection with special cases, Azerbaijani citizens can contact the Azerbaijani Embassy in Kyiv by phone: (+380 73) 5050000 and by e-mail: [email protected], the Honorary Consulate in Kharkiv by phone: (+38057) 7000531 and by email: [email protected]

During the evacuation, priority is given to women, parents with children, the elderly, and students.

On March 2, 168 more Azerbaijani citizens evacuated from Ukraine arrived in Baku, Trend reported.

At 0920 on March 2, passengers on the third charter flight arrived at Heydar Aliyev International Airport. The majority of those evacuated were women and children.

On March 1, Azerbaijan Airlines (AZAL) evacuated 176 Azerbaijanis from neighboring countries to Baku on a charter plane due to the situation in Ukraine.

Moreover, Azerbaijans Honorary Consulate in Kharkiv evacuated 500 Azerbaijani citizens, supporting them to cross the Ukrainian-Polish border in Lviv.
HYDERABAD: Officials said that 260 Telangana students who were trapped in war-torn Ukraine have returned home so far. Of them 140 students landed in Delhi on Thursday after flying in on 13 different planes from Ukraine's neighbouring nations. Bucharest (Romania), Budapest (Hungary), Rzeszow (Poland), and Kocise (Poland) were among the destinations (Slovakia).

Since the evacuation began on February 26, this is the most number of Telangana residents who have returned home in a single day. They included 65 students who were flown to Delhi by four Indian Air Force aircraft (IAF).

In Telangana Bhavan, Gaurav Uppal, Resident Commissioner, and Additional DGP, Intelligence Anil Kumar spoke with Telangana students.

Telangana's administration has made plans to receive all returns at the Delhi and Mumbai airports. They were also flown from Delhi and Mumbai to Hyderabad by the state government.

Chaita Gadhe, a student at Ivano Frankivsk National Medical University, expressed gratitude to the state administration for all of its assistance. She arrived in Delhi after a flight from Poland. According to the student, getting to the border and passing into Poland was challenging. "We were perplexed, stressed, and our parents back home were concerned about our safety," she explained.

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TMC MP Sushmita Dev claimed that the only way to defeat the BJP was to form an alliance of like-minded parties that excluded Congress. Dev opened the All India Trinamool Congress's Cachar unit's office at Park Road in Silchar on Thursday. Dev told a workers' meeting that the TMC's state headquarters will invariably be created in Guwahati since the party would emerged as the main opposition in Assam.

Susmita, who left the Congress a few months ago, elaborated on her point, saying that the opposition leaders in Assam were actually fighting among themselves to keep Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma's good graces. Because there is no opposition in Assam, the misery, hardship, and dissatisfaction of the ordinary people cannot be properly and honestly addressed in an open forum, according to Sushmita, who said that only the TMC could fill this void. "Get ready for a bigger fight from now on," she spiritedly appealed to the workers.

"At least four more Arunachal Pradesh youths are still in Ukraine," stated the officer. So because Ukrainian airspace has been closed since February 24 due to the Russian military operation, India has begun evacuating its citizens through special aircraft from Ukraine's western neighbours such as Romania, Hungary, and Poland.

On Thursday, the IAF and Indian carriers would carry 3,726 people from Ukraine's neighbouring countries back to India, as according Aviation Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia.

Being questioned by the media after the workers' meet, Sushmita said, party here in Cachar was in the process of being organised. Till now the Cachar unit had received seven thousand applications for membership. On Thursday itself 1,028 persons had joined TMC. Sushmita said, the TMC did not participate in the current civic body poll as the party was organisationally not in a position to field candidates in numbers. Further contesting half-heartedly would invite blame for the party for dividing opposition votes.

Sushmita today made it clear that in Assam, NRC would be the main issue of the TMC against the BJP. She said, people went through a massive ordeal to prove their citizenship and finally the BJP sent the document to cold storage as it did not suit their agenda. Sushmita made oblique criticism against Dr Rajdeep Roy and Dipayan Chakraborty, MP and MLA of Silchar respectively as she said, the prestigious constituency had now practically no presence either in Lok Sabha or in the Assembly.

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New Delhi: The central government is constantly trying to rescue the Indian people trapped in the war-torn Ukraine and students are being airlifted to India under 'Operation Ganga'. Meanwhile, Rishab Kaushik, a resident of Dehradun, had refused to leave war-torn Ukraine without his pet dog Malibu.

Rishabh reached New Delhi on Friday morning via Budapest (Hungary). Kaushik is a software engineering graduate student at Kharkiv National University of Radio Electronics Engineering. He had uploaded a video on Instagram about the problems being faced in bringing his dog along to India, asking the government to allow NOC.

Through the video, he appealed to the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) and the Indian government to pressurize Indians to allow them to take their pets along on flights. Earlier on Tuesday, the Indian government had issued a memorandum to facilitate the repatriation of domesticated dogs and cats along with Indians being rescued from war-torn Ukraine.

Former Army Chief General SF Rodrigues, Army Chief MM Naravane express grief

Inflation bomb will explode in India! These things to be expensive

India is working day and night to bring back every citizen: PM Modi
Home  Just In  Benelli Panarea 125 EFI: The reputed brands only scooter is in Nepal to face a super tough market

Benelli Panarea 125 EFI is the latest release in Nepal from the reputed automobile company Benelli.

The brand has a wide range of premium two-wheelers mostly consisting of motorcycles in Nepal. But, currently, Benelli Panarea 125 EFI is the only scooter offered by the company in Nepal.

Benelli is a premium brand and with the release of Panarea 125 EFI, it competes with the likes of Aprilia, Vespa, Yamaha, TVS and Honda. However, the competition is highly likely to be super tough due to two reasons: brand recognition and cost.

Why are we so much pessimistic? Find our explanation below:

Specifications

Engine Single-cylinder, 2-valve, 4-stroke, FI Dimension Seat height: 780mm

Width: 685mm

Wheelbase: 1270mm

Ground clearance: 125mm Displacement 125 cc Starting mechanism Electric and kick Cooling system Air-cooled Maximum power 8.5 [email protected] 7500 rpm Maximum torque 9.2Nm @ 6000rpm Top speed 90kmph Fuel tank capacity 4.6L Expected mileage 50 kmpl Chassis Rocker frame Suspension Front: Telescopic fork

Rear: Rear swing arm Brake Front: Disc, 190mm

Rear: Drum, 130mm Tyre Front: 100/90-12 tubeless

Rear: 110/90-12 tubeless Dry weight 104kg Under-seat storage 12 litres Colours Yellow, black, blue and white Price Rs 334,900

Design

Photo: Benelli

Benelli Panarea 125 flaunts retro looks but also has its own unique modern features that may appeal to the general public as well as youngsters. At the front, it comes with unibody styling and LED headlamps. At the side, the scooter has a curvy body, but the curve has been toned down for sportier and modern looks. The rear of the scooter comes with a stylish taillamp as well.

Overall, the scooter provides a retro feeling for the riders and at the same time provides ease with modern features. The dry weight of the scooter is 104 kg.

Performance

Photo: Benelli

Benelli Panarea 125 is powered by a 125cc single-cylinder, two-valve, four-stroke FI engine. This is a Euro 4 certified engine. The engine can generate a maximum power of 8.5 [email protected] 7500 rpm and a maximum torque of 9.2Nm @ 6000 rpm. The scooter is mated to a CVT transmission with a 4.6-litre fuel tank capacity.

The scooter should provide a respectable mileage of up to 50 km per litre in the city and can achieve a top speed of up to 90kmph. The scooter should provide higher mileage on the highway.

Safety and other features

Photo: Benelli

Benelli Panarea 125 features a standard braking system with a 190mm disc brake at the front and 130mm drum brakes at the rear end. With a rocker frame chassis, the scooter has a telescopic fork suspension at the front and a swing arm at the rear. It has a 12-litre under-seat storage capacity.

Overall, some of the notable features of the scooter are:

Retro styling

Fuel-injected engine

Euro 4 certification

Hazard light switch

Engine kill switch

LED headlamp, LED taillamp with LED indicators

Two-Level seat

Dual front storage pockets

USB charging port

Under-seat storage

Alloy wheels

Front disc and rear drum braking

The price of Benelli Panarea 125 is Rs 334,900.

Verdict

Photo: Benelli

Benelli has always offered a premium product, in Nepal and Benelli Panarea 125 is no exception. But, the market now is completely packed with scooters of almost every big brand like Honda, Yamaha, Suzuki, TVS, Vespa, Aprilia and many more. The growing demand for power on scooters has made the 125cc category the most competitive. Almost every brand now has a 125cc scooter and TVS N Torque is definitely the most preferred one here as it not only provides power but also adequate modern features that scooters previously did not have.

The market can be extremely limited for Benelli Panarea 125 here in Nepal. The price range of Rs 334,900 for a 125cc scooter is extremely high considering that there are many scooters at the moment that offers better value for money. Also, Benelli does not have the brand power compared to Vespa and Aprilia here in Nepal.

With the increasing price of fuel and increasing market of electric two-wheelers, Benelli is sure to face a huge challenge ahead.
Kathmandu, February 21

The Language Commission has started the preservation of 37 languages in Nepal that have less than 1,000 native speakers and hence are on the brink of extinction.

At a seminar jointly organised by the commission, Nepal Academy and UNESCO here today on the occasion of International Mother Language Day, it was shared that among the 37 languages in Nepal, 23 were on the verge of extinction.

Presenting a working paper, the commissions Chairperson Lava Deo Awasthi said that the commission began the preservation of those languages in association with the University Grants Commission.

Inaugurating the event, the academys Chancellor Ganga Prasad Uprety said that the programme was organised to support preservation as well as conservation of all mother languages in a multilingual society like Nepals. Similarly, the secretary at the Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Civil Aviation, Maheshwar Neupane, viewed that the state should ensure that mechanism, infrastructures and human resources to provide education to students in their respective mother languages as mandated by the constitution.
Tanaiste and Minister Troy launch Enterprise Plan for Galway, Mayo and Roscommon

Government investing up to 180 million to boost regional development across the country

Local company MCC announces 4 million in Castlebar site, creating 30 new jobs

The Tanaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Leo Varadkar TD and Minister of State for Trade Promotion, Digital and Company Regulation, Robert Troy TD, today launched the West Regional Enterprise Plan for Galway, Mayo and Roscommon as part of a 180 million investment in regional development.

The Government has committed to nine enterprise plans, covering every part of the country. Up to 180 million in funding is being provided to invest in new projects which create new jobs and help companies grow in each region.

The Tanaiste also visited local printing company MCC who today announced a 4 million investment in the Castlebar site, creating 30 new jobs.

On the launch of the West Regional Enterprise Plan, the Tanaiste said:

The Government is committed to balanced regional development, meaning we are constantly looking at ways to bring jobs and prosperity to every part of the country. Weve developed nine, region-specific plans, which will each look at how best to drive investment and create long-term, sustainable jobs in each of the areas they cover. Its great to be in Mayo today to launch the plan for the West. Galway, Mayo and Roscommon have so much to offer. This Plan, which has been developed by the local community, will look at how we can strengthen and grow existing industries, such as Life Sciences, AgTech and Food and of course the Cultural and Creative sector and realise the potential of new, developing industries, such as Renewable Energy. I believe the West has the potential to become a renewable energy powerhouse, fulfilling Irelands electricity needs and also some of Europes too. This Plan is about realising that and other opportunities. One of my priorities as Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, is to have 2.5 million people employed in the country by 2024. Were investing up to 180m in these nine regional enterprise plans to help reach that target.

On the announcement from MCC, the Tanaiste said:

This is great news from MCC, investing 4 million in the Castlebar site, creating 30 new jobs for the local area. This money will go towards preparing for the future, investing in increasing capacity and new technology. I wish the team all the very best with this expansion  its exactly the kind of thing we are trying to bring about with our regional enterprise plans.

Welcoming the launch of the West Regional Plan, Minister of State for Trade Promotion, Digital and Company Regulation Robert Troy TD said,

Delighted to launch the new West Regional Enterprise Plan to 2024 here in GMIT Castlebar. This Plan is a direct result of the ambition and collaboration of industry leaders, enterprise agencies, local authorities, and more from across the region to address the unique challenges and opportunities for the West. I particularly want to congratulate Evelyn OToole, Chair of the West Steering Committee, Helena Deane, West Programme Manager and to the Committee members. You have delivered an exciting and ambitious Plan for the region. I had the pleasure of working with Evelyn and the Committee throughout 2021 as the new plan was developed and am delighted to see the final product. The plan hits on a number of key themes and sectors where the West has significant potential and opportunity, including the cultural and creative sector, Lifesciences, Agri-tech and Food, Renewable Energy, and tourism, in addition to focusing on digitalisation, green transformation and innovation in the region. I was determined to ensure that funding be made available to drive the Regional Enterprise Plans and I am very pleased that we have secured up to 180 million in funding over the coming years. This will allow the enterprise community in Galway, Mayo and Roscommon pursue this ambitious plan and I look forward to working with Evelyn and the Steering Committee as they begin implementation.

Each of the nine Regional Enterprise Plans has been developed throughout 2021 by Regional Steering Committees. Each Regional Committee is chaired by a senior figure from the private sector and includes the Enterprise Agencies, Enterprise Ireland and IDA Ireland, Local Enterprise Offices, Local Authorities, Regional Assemblies, higher and further education bodies and others. The plans also complement Our Rural Future, the whole-of-government framework to develop rural Ireland in the coming years.

Evelyn OToole, Chair of the West Regional Steering Committee said:

I am delighted that the Tanaiste and Minister Troy could be here with us today to launch the West Regional Enterprise Plan. This Plan is the result of deep and engaged consultation and cooperation across the region and I am very proud of the finished product which is ambitious and inclusive of the variety of strengthens of the West. Can I thank the Steering Committee members across counties Galway, Mayo and Roscommon for their time and commitment to developing this Plan and I look forward to that same commitment with you all as we move to implementation stage.

The West Regional Enterprise Plan to 2024 can be accessed on the Departments website - West Regional Enterprise Plan to 2024.

ENDS

NOTES TO EDITOR

Regional Enterprise Plans  County breakdown

Region County Midlands Offaly Laois Westmeath Longford North-East Louth Cavan Monaghan North-West Donegal Sligo Leitrim Mid-East Kildare Meath Wicklow West Galway Mayo Roscommon Mid-West Clare Limerick Tipperary South-East Carlow Kilkenny Waterford Wexford South-West Cork Kerry Dublin Dublin

The 180m in funding will support the development and implementation of collaborative and innovative projects that can enable and sustain enterprise and employment growth in the regions.

There have been three Calls to date under the previous Regional Enterprise Development Fund (REDF) and almost 100 million in funding has been approved for enterprise projects in all regions. Under the Regional Enterprise Transition Scheme (RETS), which was announced last year, 9.4 million in funding was announced for 24 existing projects which were impacted by Covid-19, Brexit and other market challenges.

The West Region has secured over 18.9m in approved funding for 9 projects (see appendix for list of projects) under the REDF and RETS.

All of the West projects funded under the REDF and RETS are progressing.

West Regional Enterprise Development Fund, Border Enterprise Development Fund and Regional Enterprise Transition Scheme funded projects

Project REDF funding RETS funding Project description BIA Innovator Campus CLG 2,466,148 n/a Workspace for a dynamic regional food and drink innovation center. Galway City Innovation District CLG 2,487,400 n/a Co-working and event space for technology and MedTech scale-up companies. Midc Pairc Na Mara 2,000,000 n/a Development of a Marine Innovation and Development Centre (MIDC). The Burren Lowlands CLG 182,786 n/a An enterprise platform to provide a focal point to create and attract additional jobs to this area. Comhoibriu CLG 2,694,833 n/a Centre of Excellence providing co-working space, incubation, accelerator programmes, training and outreach services to the creative sector Galway City Innovation District (GCID) 1,205,833 n/a New space to help export oriented fast-growth tech companies. Galway Technology Centre DAC 4,023,400 n/a Expansion of the Centre and to develop Academy West to assist scaling enterprise across the West. SCCUL Enterprises CLG 1,239,408 n/a Enterprise centre helping Start-ups, SMEs and Social Enterprise across the region including scaling and expanding their Bizmentors programme. Grow Remote CLG 449,442 n/a Fostering community chapters of remote workers using their ChangeX platform to provide education and assistance to hubs. Galway City Innovation District (Bowling Green) n/a 285,858 Enhancements to the proposed development at the Warehouse building to mitigate the issues that COVID-19 has caused for shared workspaces. Additions include higher specification ventilation system, improved furniture and shared spaces as well as 2 additional employees. Funding was sought for a Return to Work Manager and a Technical Manager, Consultancy, Promotional expenses, Structural changes to improve access to the facility with COVID in mind, including improved HVAC systems and ventilation, partitions and hot desk facilities. Galway Technology Centre n/a 238,584 This development of the Cube provides the appropriate space within a section of the GTC for remote, hybrid and blended workers as a result of the COVID 19 pandemic. These changes will assist existing and new tenants of the GTC. Funding is for Promotion, Consultancy to project manage the rapid build and for Renovation and fit out costs BIA Innovator Campus CLG n/a 1,645,552 Funding for this project is mainly sought for Building and Equipment fit out works to expand the originally approved 1,008 sq.m. centre by 242 sq.m. For the existing centre funding is also sought to improve COVID-19 ventilation systems, enhanced systems, showcasing manufacturing 4.0 practices and additional entrepreneurship programmes and assistance. This funding will help the centre in its requirement to provide not only a COVID safe environment and best practice for its clients and a safe place from where to host its training programs. Total 16,729,249 2,169,994 TOTAL FUNDING: 18,889,243

Back to Department News
(Adds Niinisto comments, background)

By Trevor Hunnicutt and Anne Kauranen

WASHINGTON/HELSINKI, March 4 (Reuters) - U.S. President Joe Biden agreed to deepen security ties with his Finnish counterpart Sauli Niinisto on Friday, but stopped short of making any formal guarantees to the country nervously watching Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Both men also stopped short of saying Finland would seek to join NATO or become a major non-NATO ally of the United States, a designation granting enhanced security cooperation.

Yet during an hour-and-a-half long White House meeting, Biden called Finland a "strong defense partner" helping a "united trans-Atlantic response to holding Russia accountable."

Russia does not want Finland or Sweden to join NATO and just a week ago Moscow made its latest warning to them of "serious military-political consequences" if they did. Niinisto has maintained that Finland, a European Union member, has a right to seek NATO membership but tamped down talk of doing so in the midst of a crisis.

Ukraine's government had said it wanted to seek membership in the U.S.-led military alliance and Moscow had wanted the West to guarantee Kyiv would never become a member.

"Finland has stirred clearly towards closer cooperation with the United States," Niinisto told reporters after thanking Biden for "leadership" in "very difficult times."

He said the United States and Nordic countries would "initiate a clear process to step up defense and security cooperation" after a meeting with Biden that included a call to Magdalena Andersson, the prime minister of Finland's western neighbor Sweden. Andersson and Niinisto plan to meet in Finland on Saturday.

The war in Ukraine has roused concerns among other European countries neighboring Russia. Finland shares a 833-mile (1,340-km) border with Russia and opinion polling shows support for full membership of NATO has grown since Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered his forces into Ukraine on Feb. 24.

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"This process of security cooperation is about concrete security and defense factors, not so much about memberships," Niinisto said after meeting Biden. But he added that Finland meets the criteria to join NATO.

"The Presidents committed to start a process that would strengthen U.S.-Finnish security cooperation, which would be conducted in close consultation with other Nordic countries," the White House said in a statement that alluded to NATO's policy of welcoming new members who meet its requirements. "The Presidents also discussed the importance of NATO's Open Door policy."

Deeper security ties will be on display when Finnish defense minister Antti Kaikkonen travels to the United States next week, where he will meet with his U.S. counterpart Lloyd Austin and visit Lockheed Martin facilities in Texas.

Last month, Finland sealed a $9.4 billion deal to buy dozens of F-35 stealth warplanes from the United States. Kaikkonen also plans to visit a U.S. air base in Florida to see the planes.

Finland, which was part of the Swedish kingdom until 1809 and then was under Russia's control until gaining independence in 1917, has historically sought to preserve cordial relations with Moscow.

During a small portion of the Oval Office meeting open to reporters, Biden said his predecessor Barack Obama believed the world would be fine if they left matters up to Nordic countries.

"Well, we usually don't start wars," Niinisto replied.

(Reporting by Trevor Hunnicutt in Washington and Anne Kauranen in Helsinki; Editing by Jonathan Oatis and Grant McCool)
Fortune Business Insights

Companies Profiled in the 5G IoT Market Report: Nokia, BT, Bell Canada, Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson, Juniper Networks, Inc, Qualcomm Technologies, AT&T, Intellectual Property, Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd, Others

Pune, India, March 04, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The global 5G IoT market size is anticipated to rise significantly in the forecast duration on account of the increasing demand for IoT connected devices worldwide. IoT services have been widely adopted by all residential, commercial, and industrial sectors in the past few years. An upcoming report by Fortune Business Insights titled, 5G IoT Market Size, Share & Industry Analysis, By Technology (5G New Radio Standalone Architecture, 5G New Radio Non-Standalone Architecture), By Type (Short-Range IoT devices, Wide-Range IoT devices), By Industry (Manufacturing, Government, Energy and Utilities, Transportation and Logistics, Aviation, Others (Mining)) and Regional Forecast, 2022-2029, analyses the market and its prime growth trajectories in detail.

Request Sample PDF Brochure: https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/enquiry/request-sample-pdf/5g-iot-market-102872

The whole world is fighting the novel coronavirus by staying indoors. Although this temporary measure has somehow slowed down the rapid spread of the virus, it has majorly impacted the world economy. Most of the regional and international businesses are at temporary halt while some others are struggling to make both ends meet by operating within the four walls of their homes.

Governments across several countries are investing heavily on the invention of an antidote to stop the COVID-19 pandemic. Meanwhile, special reports offered by Fortune Business Insights for helping investors study the pros and cons and accordingly prepare for the future.



What are the Highlights of the 5G IoT Market Report?

The5G IoT Market report offers insights into the market and focuses on drivers, restraints, challenges, and upcoming opportunities. It also highlights the key industry developments, current trends, and other interesting insights into the market. The report also provides details on the table of segmentation and the names of the leading segments with attributed factors. To purchase the report, log on to the company website.

Story continues

Click here to get the short-term and long-term impact of COVID-19 on this 5G IoT Market.



Please visit: https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/5g-iot-market-102872

Drivers & Restraints-

Increasing Adoption of Industry 4.0 to Augment Growth

Rising technological advancement and use of the internet of things across various sectors such as residential, commercial, and industrial sectors stands as the major factors driving the global 5G IoT market growth. Additionally, the rise in the number of connected IoT devices and increasing data traffic will boost the growth of the market. Besides this, the increasing demand for low latency connectivity is expected to bode well for the market in the forecast period.

On the negative side, the heavy expenditure required for building a reliable 5G network infrastructure may cause major hindrance to the market. Moreover, government regulations, and other issues related to network connectivity may pose major challenges to the market in the coming years.

Nevertheless, the increasing number of cloud services and rising adoption of Industry 4.0 is likely to create lucrative growth opportunities for the market in the forecast period.

Segmentation-

Detailed Classification of the 5G IoT Market include:

The market for 5G IoT is classified on the basis of technology, type, industry, and region. Based on technology, the market is categorized into 5G New Radio Standalone Architecture, and 5G New Radio Non-standalone Architecture. With respect to type, the market is bifurcated into wide-range IoT devices, and short-range IoT devices. Based on industry, the market is categorized into aviation, transportation and logistics, energy and utilities, government, manufacturing, and others (mining).

Ask For Customization: https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/enquiry/customization/5g-iot-market-102872

Regional Analysis-

North America Covers Major Share Owing to Rapid Adoption of 5G network

Geographically, North America accounted for the largest 5G in IoT market share. This region is expected to possess 24% of 5G connections by the end of 2022, which will eventually increase up to 46% by the end of 2025, thereby ensuring the regions dominance over the market.

On the other side, Asia Pacific is expected to showcase rapid growth in the coming years on account of major investment by developing nations such as China and Japan on 5G infrastructure and mobile operators and deployments. The rising demand for high-speed internet and the increasing adoption of Industry 4.0 will also help the regional market generate significant revenue in the coming years.

Competitive Landscape-

Advancements in IoT and Innovation in Cellular IoT  Key Focus of Players

Several companies in the market are investing heavily in on IoT technologies and advancement to gain competitive edge in the market competition. The other players are engaging in development of 5G infrastructure, and cellular IoT for deployment in transportation and utility industries to earn lions share in the market.

Have Any Query? Speak To Analyst: https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/enquiry/speak-to-analyst/5g-iot-market-102872

Industry Developments:

February 2020  Advancements in IoT and innovations in cellular technology was made by Cisco Systems Inc. with readiness and machine learning. This includes new wireless technologies such as Wi-Fi 6 and 5G ultimately promoting the adoption of latest utilities and advanced industrial IoT cases.

Key Questions Answered in the Report

What is the expected global 5G IoT Market size in terms of value during the period 2022-2029?

What is the expected future scenario and revenue to be generated by different types of solutions including software and platform, hardware, and support services?

What is the expected future scenario and revenue to be generated by the technology segment, including guidance technology, sensing technology, variable rate application technology, and data analytics and intelligence?

Which region is the largest market for the global 5G IoT Market?

What is the expected future scenario and revenue to be generated by different regions and countries in the global 5G IoT Market such as North America, South America, Europe, the U.K., China, Asia-Pacific and Japan, and Middle East and Africa?

What is the competitive strength of the key players in the global 5G IoT Market based on the analysis of their recent developments, product offerings, and regional presence?

Which are the different consortiums and associations present in the global 5G IoT Market, and what are their roles, focus areas, and key functions in this market?

Where do the key 5G IoT Market companies lie in their competitive benchmarking, compared on basis of market coverage and market potential?

What does the technology ecosystem of 5G IoT Market solutions constitute?

Companies Profiled in the 5G IoT Market Report:



Nokia

BT

Bell Canada

Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson

Juniper Networks, Inc.

Qualcomm Technologies Inc.

AT&T Intellectual Property

Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd

Others

Pre Book  5G IoT Market: https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/checkout-page/102872

Have a Look at Related Research Insights:

IoT Connected Machines Market Size, Share & Industry Analysis, By Component (Hardware (IoT Machine Kits,Gateways), Software, Services (Integration Services, Consulting Services, and Support Services)), By Industry Vertical (Automotive, Consumer Electronics, Heavy Manufacturing, Healthcare, Oil & Gas, Others) and Regional Forecast, 2022-2029

IoT in Aerospace & Defence Market Size , Share and Global Trend By Components (Software Platforms & Service), By End User (Space Systems, Ground Vehicles, and others) and Geography Forecast till 2022-2029

IoT in Elevator Market Size , Share and Global Trend By Components (Hardware, Software, Services), By Application (Predictive Maintenance & Remote Monitoring), By End User (Residential, Commercial, Industrial ) and Geography Forecast till 2022-2029

IoT in Smart Cities Market Size , Share & COVID-19 Impact Analysis, By Component (Solution and Services), By Application (Smart Building, Smart Healthcare, Smart Energy, Smart Transportation, Public Safety, Smart Infrastructure, and Others), and Regional Forecast, 2021-2028

IIoT (Industrial Internet of Things) Technology Market Size , Share and Global By Deployment Type (Hardware & Software), By Industry Vertical (Manufacturing, Oil &Gas, Metal & Mining), By Applications (Distribution Management System, Visualization Software, Transit Management System, and others) and Geography Forecast till 2022-2029

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By Gergely Szakacs and Alan Charlish

BUDAPEST/WARSAW (Reuters) -Russia's invasion of Ukraine is putting pressure on central banks along the European Union's eastern flank to prop up their weakening currencies, forcing Czech and Polish rate-setters into market interventions and Hungary into prolonged rate hikes.

The market sell-off in the wake of the Russian invasion on Feb. 24 and a looming energy price shock in Europe due to a surge in global oil and gas prices compound already strong underlying price pressures in the region, and the currencies' sharp weakening could fuel additional inflation.

Economists say against this backdrop, the region's central banks - which have been fighting inflation with rate hikes since June 2021 - have little choice now but to intervene as needed and tighten policy further even as the growth outlook is set to deteriorate as a result of the military conflict.

"The implications of the conflict for CEE-4 monetary policy are firmly hawkish, in our view," economists at Goldman Sachs said.

"While the crisis is likely to have a dampening effect on growth, the combination of higher commodity prices and FX depreciation is significantly inflationary."

"Moreover, this pro-inflationary shock is occurring at a time when CEE-4 central banks have been trying to tighten financial conditions to bring exceptionally high inflation rates under control. The recent depreciation of CEE-4 exchange rates is making this task more difficult."

Goldman Sachs has raised its forecast for peak official rates by 50 bps to 5.5% in Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Romania.

On Friday, the Czech National Bank (CNB) intervened in the market against excessive volatility and crown depreciation, its first such move since abandoning a cap on the Czech currency in 2017, lifting the unit from 10-month-lows.

The CNB, which said "it is active on the foreign exchange market and is conducting operations to mitigate excessive fluctuations and depreciation of the crown", followed the Polish central bank in intervening on Friday.

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The Czech central bank has already raised rates by 425 basis points since last June to bring its rate to a 20-year high of 4.5% and analysts see chances the bank will raise rates by up to 50 basis points at its next meeting in late March.

The National Bank of Poland also stepped in to prop up its currency by selling foreign currency for zlotys, while the National Bank of Hungary delivered its biggest rate increase since late-2008 to rein in the forint from successive all-time-lows.

Despite those moves, all three currencies, which started the year on a strong footing, have remained in the red for the year, with the zloty trading at 13-year-lows. The forint plumbed record lows this week, falling to 385.97 versus the euro by Friday afternoon from 372 on Monday.

DOUBLE-DIGIT INFLATION

Central banks cannot do anything other than remain hawkish in the near term, economists at Wood and Co. said in a note, projecting a 2 percentage point drop in 2022 economic growth compared to their previous baseline due to the inflation shock.

"There is a high risk of double-digit inflation this year, moderating, but staying two-to-three times the central banks' targets in 2023E," they said.

Economists say rising Romanian swap yields also signal central bank intervention to keep the leu stable.

The central bank has denied comment but it has a long track record of FX interventions to stem large currency volatility.

The National Bank of Poland meets next Tuesday when it is expected to raise its key rate by 50 bps to 3.25%.

The National Bank of Hungary holds a non-rate setting meeting on Tuesday, which some economists expect to turn into a rate-setting meeting after the bank exhausted its room for manoeuvre with Thursday's massive hike.

The bank raised its one-week deposit rate to 5.35%, just 5 bps shy of the top of its interest rate corridor.

Economists at UniCredit said the NBH could also end up having to intervene this year if government price caps to keep a lid on inflation, which rose to a near 15-year-high in January, are removed after an April general election.

"We believe that rate hikes cannot strengthen the currency on their own. If EUR/HUF remains close to 380 for longer, the FX pass-through could exceed 1pp," UniCredit said. The NBH has declined comment on direct market interventions.

(Additional reporting by Jason Hovet in PRAGUE and Luiza Ilie in BUCHARESTEditing by Elaine Hardcastle)
New York, New York--(Newsfile Corp. - March 3, 2022) - ApeX, a decentralized and non-custodial derivatives protocol incubated by Davion Labs, announces the close of its seed funding round led by global investors including Dragonfly Capital Partners, Jump Trading, Tiger Global, Mirana Ventures, CyberX, Kronos and M77 Ventures.

Davion Labs is a crypto and blockchain impact incubator that aims to address challenges and market opportunities in the Web3 revolution. Its first project, ApeX, is a permissionless and censorship-resistant protocol leveraging elastic automated market makers (eAMMs) to facilitate the creation of perpetual swap markets for any token pairs.

Dragonfly Capital Partners, a cross-border investment firm supporting the most promising opportunities in DeFi and DEX sectors, led the seed funding round. Other strategic investors, including Jump Trading, Tiger Global, Mirana Ventures, CyberX, Kronos and M77 Ventures, also joined the financing round and emphasized on the value propositions of ApeX to the current DeFi market.

"The story of DeFi is the story of global, permissionless financial primitives offering access to products and services people in centralized companies simply can't provide," said Tom Schmidt, General Partner at Dragonfly. "ApeX's approach to providing perps for long-tail markets as well as deep liquidity for main markets via their eAMM is the next chapter in this story and we're excited to be partnering with them."

The seed funding will enable ApeX to further drive its development and marketing efforts. ApeX has successfully launched its beta version on the Arbitrum mainnet on Feb. 28, 2022. It aims to utilize the scalability and compatibility of Arbitrum to minimize the per-transaction cost and optimize the execution speed on its protocol.

About ApeX

ApeX is a decentralized, permissionless, non-custodial, and censorship-resistant perpetual contract protocol that facilitates the creation of perpetual swap markets for any token pairs. It enables users to trade crypto derivatives directly on the Ethereum blockchain without any intermediaries, while maintaining full control over their private keys.

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Homepage: https://apex.exchange/home

Discord: https://discord.com/invite/366Puqavwx

Telegram: t.me/ApeXdex

Twitter: https://twitter.com/OfficialApeXdex

flamie.chen

marketing@apexdex.com

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/115630
By Trend





A delegation led by Executive Director of the United Nations Program for the Promotion of Sustainable Development of Human Settlements (UN-HABITAT) Maimunah Mohd Sharif has arrived in Aghdam district, Karabakh bureau of Trend reports.

The delegation was met by the representative of the President of Azerbaijan in the territories liberated from the occupation which are part of the Karabakh economic region (with the exception of the Shusha region) Emin Huseynov.

The delegation visited the Alley of Martyrs and the Drama Theater in Aghdam as part of the trip.

Executive Director of UN-HABITAT will hold a series of meetings with the country's officials during a three-day visit to Azerbaijan.
Bavarian Nordic A/S

COPENHAGEN, Denmark, March 4, 2022  Bavarian Nordic A/S (OMX: BAVA) today published its Annual Report for 2021. Below is a summary of the financial performance for the year and financial outlook for 2022. The financial performance was in line with, or better than, the latest guidance, issued on December 6, 2021. The full report is attached as a PDF file and can be found on the company's website, www.bavarian-nordic.com .

Strong progress on strategic objectives  and a year of significant investments ahead to secure future growth!

Paul Chaplin, President & Chief Executive Officer of Bavarian Nordic said: 2021 was another eventful year where COVID-19 continued to make its mark on societies and on our business. The markets for Rabipur/RabAvert and Encepur remained affected by the low level of international travel and reduced access to physicians in key markets, whereas our smallpox and Ebola business were robust to the challenges set by the pandemic and enabled us to meet our financial targets for the year. We have continued to expand our operations to support the transfer of Rabipur/RabAvert and Encepur to our own manufacturing line, while also enabling future production of more products that will help fulfil our vision to become one of the largest pure play vaccine companies. The strong progress made in both our RSV and COVID-19 programs during 2021 allows us to advance both programs into Phase 3 in 2022 with the potential to reach the market in a few years and make a significant positive impact on global health. Thus, 2022 will be a year of significant investments, but with the capital raised in 2021 and the support received from the Danish State, we have a strong foundation to execute on our growth strategy. With the anticipation that markets will begin to recover in 2022 and two large Phase 3 trials initiating, we are looking forward to another very exciting year at Bavarian Nordic.

Important events after the balance sheet date

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In January, Bavarian Nordic announced the appointment of Russell Thirsk as new EVP and Chief Operating Officer to replace Henrik Birk, who has chosen to seek challenges outside Bavarian Nordic. Mr. Thirsk will join Bavarian Nordic in April 2022 from GSK, where he has served as Head of Operations at GSK Vaccines in Belgium since 2016, a role he assumed after GSKs acquisition of Novartis vaccine business, where he served for more than two decades.

In February, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration granted a Breakthrough Therapy Designation for the Companys vaccine candidate, MVA-BN RSV, for the prevention of respiratory syncytial virus in older adults. A Breakthrough Therapy Designation is designed to expedite the development and regulatory review of medicines that are intended to treat a serious condition.

In February, Bavarian Nordic announced additional results from the Phase 2 trial of its COVID-19 vaccine candidate, ABNCoV2, which is being developed as a universal booster vaccine. The results confirmed the ability of ABNCoV2 to boost neutralizing antibodies to levels reported to be highly efficacious (>90%) against SARS-CoV-21 both when used for primary vaccination and when used as a booster in subjects previously vaccinated with mRNA- or Adeno-based vaccines. While both low (50 g) and high (100 g) doses yielded high antibody levels, it has been decided to use the 100 g to maximize the likelihood of success in the Phase 3 trial, planned to start in the first half of 2022.

Financial performance



Bavarian Nordics financial results for 2021 were in line with or better than the Companys most recent guidance, issued on December 6, 2021, which largely represents the lower end of the originally guided intervals.

DKK million USD million* 2021 guidance actual guidance actual Revenue 1,900 1,898 290 289 EBITDA 70 75 11 11 Securities, cash and cash equivalents 3,100 ** 3,217*** 213 490



* Danish kroner (DKK) is the Companys reporting currency. The USD figures provided above are based upon an assumed exchange rate of DKK 6.56 per 1.00 USD, which was the exchange rate as of December 31, 2021.

** Guided securities, cash and cash equivalents position includes gross proceeds from the capital raise in December 2021, thus increasing guidance from approximately DKK 1,400 million to approximately DKK 3,100 million.

*** Repo pledged securities deducted.

Revenue for the full year was 1,898 million, comprised of DKK 869 million from combined sale of Rabipur/RabAvert and Encepur, DKK 769 million from US Government sale, including JYNNEOS revenue and contract work, and finally DKK 260 million from sale of Mvabea (Ebola vaccine) to Janssen.

The operating result (EBITDA) was DKK 75 million, slightly above latest guidance.

Cash position at year-end was DKK 3,217 million, thus exceeding the guidance of DKK 3,100 million.

For a detailed financial review, see the annual report .

Outlook for 2022

2022E (all numbers are approximate) DKK million USD million Revenue 1,100  1,400 169 - 215 EBITDA (1,300)  (1,000) (200)  (154) Cash and cash equivalents, year-end 1,000  1,200 154  185

The guided intervals reflect the uncertain impact of COVID-19 on the TBE and rabies markets in 2022. The mid-point of the guidance assumes a partial return to normality for the TBE market and the US rabies market and a slower return to normality for the European rabies business.

The guidance includes the previously announced smallpox vaccine order of DKK 203 million to Public Health Agency of Canada and approximately DKK 100 million from smallpox vaccine orders with BARDA. Only confirmed orders are included in the guidance, i.e. no new US smallpox orders for 2022 are included in the guidance.

Due to close-down of the existing bulk plant until end of August 2022, only limited capacity will be available for bulk manufacturing of MVA-based products (smallpox and Ebola) and hence no revenue is expected from Ebola in 2022. The close-down is a planned step in the expansion of the bulk facility to enable future manufacturing of Rabipur/RabAvert and Encepur.

Limited revenue from partner agreements with Valneva and Dynavax is included. No potential income from RSV partnering is included in the guidance.

Total investments in research and development amount to approximately DKK 1,950 million, including ABNCoV2 capitalized costs of approximately DKK 700 million. Non-capitalized research and development costs amount to approximately DKK 1,250 million of which the RSV project accounts for approximately DKK 850 million.

The outlook is based on the following assumptions on currency exchange rates of DKK 6.50 per 1 USD and DKK 7.45 per 1 EUR.

See the annual report for a full description of assumptions for the 2022 outlook.

Conference call and webcast

The management of Bavarian Nordic will host a conference call today at 2 pm CET (8 am EST) to present the annual results followed by a Q&A session. A listen-only version of the call can be accessed via https://www.bavarian-nordic.com/investor/events.aspx?event=6387 . To join the Q&A session, use one of the following dial-in numbers: Denmark: +45 32 72 04 17, UK: +44 (0) 844 481 9752, USA: +1 646-741-3167. Participant code is 7599898.

About Bavarian Nordic

Bavarian Nordic is a fully integrated vaccines company focused on the development, manufacturing and commercialization of life-saving vaccines. We are a global leader in smallpox vaccines and have been a long-term supplier to the U.S. Government of a non-replicating smallpox vaccine, which has been approved by the FDA, also for the protection against monkeypox. The vaccine is approved as a smallpox vaccine in Europe and Canada. Our commercial product portfolio furthermore contains market-leading vaccines against rabies and tick-borne encephalitis. Using our live virus vaccine platform technology, MVA-BN, we have created a diverse portfolio of proprietary and partnered product candidates designed to save and improve lives by unlocking the power of the immune system, including an Ebola vaccine, which is licensed to the Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson. We are also committed to the development of a next generation COVID-19 vaccine. For more information visit www.bavarian-nordic.com .

Forward-looking statements

This announcement includes forward-looking statements that involve risks, uncertainties and other factors, many of which are outside of our control, that could cause actual results to differ materially from the results discussed in the forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements include statements concerning our plans, objectives, goals, future events, performance and/or other information that is not historical information. All such forward-looking statements are expressly qualified by these cautionary statements and any other cautionary statements which may accompany the forward-looking statements. We undertake no obligation to publicly update or revise forward-looking statements to reflect subsequent events or circumstances after the date made, except as required by law.

Contacts

Europe: Rolf Sass Srensen, Vice President Investor Relations, Tel: +45 61 77 47 43

US: Graham Morrell, Paddock Circle Advisors, graham@paddockcircle.com , Tel: +1 781 686 9600

Company Announcement no. 03 / 2022







1 P. B. Gilbert et al., Science 10.1126/science.abm3425 (2021)





Attachments




FILE PHOTO: Workers transport soil containing rare earth elements for export at a port in Lianyungang

BEIJING (Reuters) - China summoned some key rare earths companies amid continuously-rising product prices and urged them to ensure a steady supply chain to help cool prices, the regulator said on Friday.

The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said in a statement that it had instructed producers including China Rare Earth Group, China Northern Rare Earth Group and Shenghe Resources to regulate their operation and trading, and to prevent any market speculation or hoarding.

The authority also urged the companies to take a lead in promoting a pricing mechanism for rare earths products and jointly bring prices back to a reasonable range, it said.

Prices of rare earths, a group of 17 minerals used in electric vehicles (EVs) and military equipment, have surged since the second half of 2021 amid concerns of supply uncertainty from Myanmar and strong demand.

The Chinese price of praseodymium-neodymium alloy used to make super strong magnets for EV motors has powered 32% so far this year to 1.38 million yuan ($218,395.90)

per tonne.

A price index issued by the Association of China Rare Earth Industry stood at 429.4 on Friday, hovering around its record highs.

($1 = 6.3188 Chinese yuan renminbi)

(Reporting by Min Zhang, Beijing Newsroom and Dominique Patton; editing by John Stonestreet and Elaine Hardcastle)
Crypto observers cried foul Thursday when reports surfaced on Reddit that MetaMask, the gateway for many to the world of Ethereum, was made inaccessible to users in Venezuela.

The truth of the matter, however, was that Infura, the infrastructure service also owned by Ethereum conglomerate ConsenSys, had imposed new geoblocks Thursday but applied them too broadly, according to a series of tweets.

The mistake had been rectified, Infura said, but not before critics levied claims that the episode revealed a point of failure in what is widely billed as the uncensorable internet.

Infura closely monitors changes to U.S. sanctions programs announced by the Office of Foreign Assets Control and narrowly tailors its internal controls to comply with the law, a ConsenSys spokesperson told CoinDesk via email. Currently, those regions are Iran, North Korea, Cuba, Syria, and the Crimea, Donetsk, and Luhansk regions of Ukraine.

Infuras blockade of these regions comes as regulators ramp up intense scrutiny of the crypto industrys compliance with sanctions imposed by U.S. and other national authorities against Russian entities. Regulators and lawmakers like U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren and German Finance Minister Christian Lindner have said theyre concerned crypto could be a tool used to undermine sanctions. Industry participants such as exchanges have said they will block sanctioned individuals, but for the most part they have not blocked entire nations outright.

MetaMask accesses the Ethereum blockchain through Infura by design. Unless altered by users, MetaMasks default endpoints make it subject to Infuras geographic no-go zones.

Read more: MetaMask, Infura Block Certain Areas Amid Crypto Sanctions Fury

Crypto Twitter was reminded of that reality Thursday after Infura mistakenly threw too wide a dragnet. Rumors swirled over a complete blockade to Venezuela; commentators alleged, incorrectly, that MetaMask had been barred in a country where crypto booms and where the U.S. has imposed long-standing but not absolute sanctions.

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In changing some configurations as a result of the new sanctions directives from the United States and other jurisdictions, we mistakenly configured the settings more broadly than they needed to be, Infura said Thursday in a tweet.

Infra acknowledged the uproar, apologized for its oversight and said service had been restored to inadvertently impacted regions, though it did not name Venezuela. MetaMask parroted the apology in its own tweet explaining it relies on Infura for access to the blockchain.

MetaMask is still a decentralized tool, Kieran Daniels, CEO of crypto startup SmartDeFi told CoinDesk in a Twitter message. Its just their default connections arent.

Users are able to set their own endpoints by going into app settings, MetaMask said in a tweet. It shared a guide on how to do so.

Sanctions season

Coming amid a global debate on crypto and sanctions, the episode highlighted the seemingly conflicting realities of running uncensorable financial services through centralized rails.

Companies like Infura provide crucial developer and infrastructure services to an array of Ethereum-based projects. But its also a U.S. company subject to federal law. When Infura implements restrictions as it did on Thursday, the ripple effects are felt far and wide.

As a centralized entity, funded by investors like JPMorgan, infrastructure providers like Infura are subject to regulatory concerns, Josh Neuroth, CEO of decentralized cloud services company Ankr said in a statement. This over-reliance on centralized service providers goes against everything that Web 3 stands for and is meant to be  and represents a central point of failure that shouldn't exist in the first place.

Ankr, Inc. is itself a U.S. company. When asked if this meant Ankr must also follow sanctions directives from the U.S. Treasury Department, Neuroth said yes  but the team is working as quickly as possible toward transitioning to a protocol that exists in the network and isn't run by a company, but a DAO."

The confusing chain of events on Thursday was only made more so by a repeatedly updated troubleshooting page on MetaMasks website. When CoinDesk first reported on this story that page was headlined Why MetaMask and Infura cannot serve certain areas, fueling speculation that MetaMask was itself implementing blocks.

A later update narrowed the headline to Infura.

By default, MetaMask accesses the blockchain via Infura, which is unavailable in certain jurisdictions due to legal compliance, the page read late Thursday. When you attempt to use MetaMask in one of those regions, users will receive an error message.

A chorus of commentators on Twitter insisted that the whole ordeal was proof that MetaMask was not quite as decentralized as they thought.

MetaMask is no longer a permissionless wallet



MetaMask is no longer a permissionless wallet



MetaMask is no longer a permissionless wallet



MetaMask is no longer a permissionless wallet



MetaMask is no longer a permissionless wallet  loldefi  //  (@loldefi) March 3, 2022

Left unsaid was the fact that Infura  and therefore MetaMask  have long followed OFAC sanctions guidance.

Crypto users in Iran, North Korea, Cuba and Syria were excluded well before those in parts of Ukraine.
Acquisition pushes Aqua Pennsylvanias water and wastewater customer base above milestone of 500,000 customer connections

BRYN MAWR, Pa., March 04, 2022--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Essential Utilities Inc. (NYSE: WTRG) today announced that its Aqua Pennsylvania subsidiary has acquired the wastewater system of Lower Makefield Township, which serves approximately 11,000 customer connections in Lower Makefield, Falls and Middletown townships, and Yardley Borough, Bucks County Pa., for $53 million. The acquisition brings Aqua Pennsylvanias total number of customer connections to more than 500,000.

"We are proud to be part of the wastewater solution in the communities we serve and are pleased to welcome the customers of Lower Makefield wastewater system to those we serve," said Chairman and CEO Christopher Franklin. "We are proud that Lower Makefield leadership has put their trust in our company and has demonstrated confidence in our team to provide excellent service to their residents."

Lower Makefield is the first acquisition completed by Essentials regulated water segment in 2022. The company currently has seven additional signed purchase agreements for water and wastewater systems, which have a total purchase price of more than $418 million and represent approximately 224,000 equivalent retail customers or equivalent dwelling units.

Aqua Pennsylvania President Marc Lucca said, "The Aqua Pennsylvania team and I are committed to delivering excellent customer service to the residents of Lower Makefield Township and are already hard at work preparing to provide quality wastewater services to the community. Our plans include investing $10 million in infrastructure improvements to the wastewater system in the first 10 years, which will improve services and avoid the environment impact from sanitary sewer overflows."

Franklin followed saying, "In addition to the investment we will make to ensure the reliability of their wastewater system, through the Essential Foundation, we are also proud to make a meaningful donation to the Lower Makefield Township Community Foundation, which supports environmental sustainability through its contributions to stream cleanups and tree-planting as well as other community needs. We look forward to continuing our work in the Lower Makefield community and building strong relationships with our customers." Lower Makefield Township Manager Kurt Ferguson said, "Were excited and grateful to receive this donation that will help our community and its residents as we continue to participate in activities that will ensure the health of our residents and community."

Story continues

Aqua Pennsylvania serves approximately 1.5 million people in 32 counties throughout the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Visit AquaAmerica.com for more information or follow Aqua on Facebook at facebook.com/MyAquaAmerica and on Twitter at @MyAquaAmerica.

About Essential

Essential is one of the largest publicly traded water, wastewater and natural gas providers in the U.S., serving approximately 5 million people across 10 states under the Aqua and Peoples brands. Essential is committed to excellence in proactive infrastructure investment, regulatory expertise, operational efficiency and environmental stewardship. The company recognizes the importance water and natural gas play in everyday life and is proud to deliver safe, reliable services that contribute to the quality of life in the communities it serves. For more information, visit http://www.essential.co.

Forward-Looking Statements

This release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including. There are important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements including: general economic business conditions; the successful integration of the customers and the facility; and other factors discussed in our Annual Report on Form 10-K, which is on file with the Securities and Exchange Commission. For more information regarding risks and uncertainties associated with Essential Utilities business, please refer to Essential Utilities annual, quarterly and other SEC filings. Essential Utilities is not under any obligation  and expressly disclaims any such obligation  to update or alter its forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

WTRGF

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220304005467/en/

Contacts

Sarah Courtright

267.391.9302

Brian Dingerdissen

Investor Relations

610.645.1191

media@Essential.co
Fabletics, Inc.

Fabletics Retail Store

Fabletics Retail Store

Brand targeting to open 30 new locations in 2022



Grand Re-Opening events to be hosted across the country Saturday, March 5th

EL SEGUNDO, Calif., March 04, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Fabletics today announced it plans to open 30 new store locations in 2022, underscoring its commitment to omnichannel retail. Celebrating retail for the first time in-person since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the brand will host a series of belated Grand Re-Opening events on Saturday, March 5 at the 21 Fabletics locations that opened since early 2020.

The new locations planned for 2022 will bring Fableticss global brick-and-mortar presence to more than 100 storefronts by the end of the year. Since opening its first physical location in 2015, the brand has attracted in-store shoppers by providing a seamless experience from online to offline. Fableticss growing global footprint offers shopping experiences that are complementary to its digital presence for its members while providing the brand with valuable insights into consumer behavior.

Fabletics has proven that shoppers want the flexibility of both in-store and online shopping, commented Adam Goldenberg, CEO and Co-Founder, Fabletics. Despite the challenges we faced during COVID-19, we see a rebound on the horizon for retail and are doubling down on expansion efforts in response. Weve chosen new locations based on growing demand from our members in these areas and cant wait to bring the brand closer to our customers homes.

The first 18 new locations slated to open include: Chandler Fashion Center, Chandler, AZ; Santa Anita, Arcadia, CA; Village at Corte Madera, Corte Madera, CA; Glendale Galleria, Glendale, CA; Fashion Square, Sherman Oaks, CA; Valencia Town Center, Valencia, CA; Broadway Plaza, Walnut Creek, CA; Oxmoor Center, Louisville, KY; Country Club Plaza, Kansas City, MO; Crabtree Valley Mall, Raleigh, NC; Village Point, Omaha, NE; ABQ Uptown, Albuquerque, NM; Kenwood Towne Center, Cincinnati, OH; Crocker Park, Westlake, OH; Classen Curve, Oklahoma City, OK; Saddle Creek, Germantown, TN; Fashion Place, Murray, UT; and Mayfair Wauwatosa, WI. Additional markets and grand opening dates for each location will be announced at a later date.

Story continues

Fabletics opened 21 new locations during the COVID-19 pandemic, preventing the brand from properly marking the occasion. With restrictions lifted in these areas, Fabletics will toast each store with festive events during store hours featuring fitness demos, special promotions and music from local DJs. Shoppers visiting these locations can unlock 40% off everything in-store, all day. The first 100 customers to make a purchase will receive free womens or mens shorts.

The commitment of our associates and loyalty of our customers across the stores we opened during the past two years deserves to be celebrated, said Ron Harries, Senior Vice President, Head of Retail, Fabletics. Our associates are excited to bring members and new customers back in stores and show off the latest and greatest from Fabletics. We believe the future of retail is more exciting than ever and look forward to showing shoppers why.

The 21 stores that opened during 2020-2021 and will be celebrated over the weekend include: The Summit Birmingham, Birmingham, AL; Scottsdale Fashion Square, Scottsdale, AZ; Brea Mall, Brea, CA; Irvine Spectrum Center, Irvine, CA; Westfarms Mall, West Hartford, CT; Westfield Valley Fair, Santa Clara, CA; Dadeland Mall, Miami, FL; Perimeter Mall, Atlanta, GA; Town Center Crossing, Leawood, KS; Montgomery Mall, Bethesda, MD; Twelve Oaks Mall, Novi, MI; Somerset Collection, Troy, MI; Mall of America, Bloomington, MN; Streets at Southpoint, Durham, NC; American Dream, East Rutherford, NJ; Easton Town Center, Columbus, OH; Pinecrest, Orange Village, OH; South Hills Village, Bethel Park, PA; Ross Park Mall, Pittsburg, PA; Southlake Town Square, Southlake, TX and Market Street Woodlands, The Woodlands, TX.

Fabletics is a leader in technology-driven retail, delivering a true omnichannel experience, bridging the gap between online and in-store. All new locations will be equipped with the brands proprietary OmniShop technology, which seamlessly links online and offline activity for members and associates, creating a unique and frictionless shopping environment. The technology enables sales associates to deliver a personalized touch informed by member preferences, all at their fingertips through custom handheld POS systems.

About Fabletics

Founded in 2013 and headquartered in El Segundo, CA, Fabletics is the largest digitally native activewear brand in the world*. By fusing style-centric designs with high-performance technology, Fabletics is creating the worlds most fashionable, high-performance active lifestyle products at an accessible price. Driven by its innovative VIP membership program serving over 2 million loyal members and powered by analysis from its Fashion OS tech platform enabling deep customer understanding, Fabletics has evolved activewear beyond the gym into every walk of life, guided by its foundational belief that everyone and every body deserves to look and feel their best.

See and shop the collections in the US, Canada, Europe and in person at the brands state-of-the-art retail stores in over 75 locations.

*Source: Euromonitor International Limited; Based on total global retail sales in the calendar year 2020 from custom research conducted in October 2021.

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/755801a3-2d4e-4012-adf6-527f6149c69b

CONTACT: Media Contacts: Arielle Schechtman: aschechtman@fabletics.com Carli Bendetti: cbendetti@fabletics.com




Fairless Playhouse will present "Steel Magnolias" March 11 and 12 in the Fairless High School auditorium.

BREWSTER  Two days before opening night in 2020, Fairless High Schools spring play was canceled due to the COVID-19 shutdown.

Falcon Playhouse was heartbroken. To build up the theater program and celebrate being able to perform live on stage in 2022, Falcon Playhouse is performing two comedies in one weekend.

The thespians will present "Steel Magnolias" and "The Nerd" March 11, 12 and 13 in the Fairless High School auditorium, 11885 Navarre Road SW.

"Steel Magnolias" by Robert Harling takes place in Louisiana in 1985. Truvys Beauty Salon is a place where the Southern Magnolias enjoy playful conversations and a deep bond. Diabetic complications from a pregnancy bring heartache and demonstrate that these magnolias can be tough as steel.

The Falcon Playhouse will present the comedy "The Nerd" on March 12 and 13 in the auditorium of Fairless High School. Tickets are $7 and available at the door.

"The Nerd" by Larry Shue takes place in Indiana in 1979. A young architect is visited by a guest he has never met, the man who saved his life in Vietnam. This unexpected guest decides to move in and becomes increasingly more difficult to live with.

"Steel Magnolias" will be performed at 7 p.m. March 11 and 2 p.m. March 12. "The Nerd will be on stage at 7 p.m. March 12 and 2 p.m. March 13. Tickets are $7 per performance or $10 to watch one production of each show. Tickets can be purchased at the door.

This article originally appeared on The Independent: Fairless brings comedies 'Steel Magnolias,' 'The Nerd' to stage
NEW YORK, March 4, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Societe Generale was active bookrunner and joint sustainability structuring advisor of first-ever sustainability linked sovereign bond

Societe Generale acted as an Active Bookrunner and Joint Sustainability Structuring advisor for a new USD 2bn 20-year sustainability-linked bond transaction for the Republic of Chile. The transaction references the Republic of Chile Sustainability-Linked Bond Framework published on February 23rd, 2022.

This transaction marks the first sustainability-linked offering by the Republic of Chile, as well as the first sustainability-linked bond ever issued by a sovereign globally.

The transaction was very well received by the investor community, garnering a ~$6bn final orderbook (3x oversubscription) at a final landing level of T+200bps.

The new bonds are the first debt offering under the Republic of Chile's new SLB Framework and follows Chile's issuance of green bonds in 2019 and sustainable bonds in 2020, both firsts for Latin American sovereign issuers, and its issuance of landmark social bonds in 2021. Having issued in sustainable format in EUR, USD and CLP over the past three years, Chile is already a reference signature in this market.

Through the new SLB Framework, Chile's Ministry of Finance is further expanding its commitment to sustainable development and, through the issuance of SLBs, Chile intends to leverage ambitious timelines to achieve strong sustainable outcomes that are relevant, core and material to Chile and its people, as well as to create a benchmark for other sovereigns.

The Republic of Chile's sustainability-linked bonds were issued with a coupon rate tied to the achievement of Sustainability Performance Targets, measured through two KPIs: (i) Absolute Greenhouse Gas Emissions (MtCO2e), and (ii) Share of Non-Conventional Renewable Energy Generation in the National Electric System. Chile's SLB Framework and bond issuance are grounded in Chile's commitment to the Paris Agreement. The SLB Framework received a favorable Second Party Opinion.

Story continues

Societe Generale has acted as the structuring advisor for highly visible inaugural green, social and sustainability transactions for key clients in all asset classes, across the globe, highlighting the bank's strong advisory capabilities in the Sustainable and Positive Impact finance field.

Societe Generale

Societe Generale is one of the leading European financial services groups. Based on a diversified and integrated banking model, the Group combines financial strength and proven expertise in innovation with a strategy of sustainable growth. Committed to the positive transformations of the world's societies and economies, Societe Generale and its teams seek to build, day after day, together with its clients, a better and sustainable future through responsible and innovative financial solutions.

Active in the real economy for over 150 years, with a solid position in Europe and connected to the rest of the world, Societe Generale has over 133,000 members of staff in 61 countries and supports on a daily basis 30 million individual clients, businesses and institutional investors around the world by offering a wide range of advisory services and tailored financial solutions. The Group is built on three complementary core businesses:

French Retail Banking which encompasses the Societe Generale, Credit du Nord and Boursorama brands. Each offers a full range of financial services with omnichannel products at the cutting edge of digital innovation;

International Retail Banking, Insurance and Financial Services to Corporates , with networks in Africa, Russia, Central and Eastern Europe and specialized businesses that are leaders in their markets;

Global Banking and Investor Solutions, which offers recognized expertise, key international locations and integrated solutions.

Societe Generale is included in the principal socially responsible investment indices: DJSI (Europe), FTSE4Good (Global and Europe), Bloomberg Gender-Equality Index, Refinitiv Diversity and Inclusion Index, Euronext Vigeo (Europe and Eurozone), STOXX Global ESG Leaders indexes, and the MSCI Low Carbon Leaders Index (World and Europe).

For more information, you can follow us on Twitter @societegenerale or visit our website www.societegenerale.com

Cision

View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/first-ever-sustainability-linked-sovereign-bond-supports-the-republic-of-chiles-climate-ambitions-301495943.html

SOURCE Societe Generale
ReportLinker

Major companies in the genito-urinary drugs market include Sanofi S. A. , GlaxosmithKline, AstraZeneca, AbbVie, Reckitt , Benckiser Group plc. , Astellas Pharma Inc. , Otsuka Holdings Co. ltd. , Pfizer Inc.

New York, March 04, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Reportlinker.com announces the release of the report "Genito-Urinary Drugs Global Market Report 2022" - https://www.reportlinker.com/p06241973/?utm_source=GNW

, Merck KGaA and Daiichi Sankyo Company.



The global genito-urinary drugs market is expected to grow from $40.40 billion in 2021 to $42.75 billion in 2022 at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 5.8%. The growth is mainly due to the companies rearranging their operations and recovering from the COVID-19 impact, which had earlier led to restrictive containment measures involving social distancing, remote working, and the closure of commercial activities that resulted in operational challenges. The market is expected to reach $50.71 billion in 2026 at a CAGR of 4.4%.



The genito-urinary drugs market consists of sales of genito-urinary drugs and related services by entities (organizations, sole traders and partnerships) that produce genito-urinary drugs to treat genito- urinary diseases such as urinary tract infections, male reproductive diseases, voiding diseases, female reproductive diseases, glomerular disorders, urinary calculi, cystic kidney disease, Reno vascular diseases, benign prostate diseases, and other related diseases.This industry includes establishments that produce infertility drugs, hormonal contraceptives, erectile dysfunction drugs and hormonal replacement drugs to treat infertility, infections and prevent pregnancy.



It also consists of establishments which produce drugs for benign prostatic hypertrophy, drugs for urinary incontinence and overactive bladder, diuretics to treat urinary calculi, glomerular disorders and other urinary disorders.



The main drug types of genito-urinary drugs are hormonal contraceptives, drugs for benign prostatic hypertrophy, drugs for infertility, drugs for erectile dysfunction, drugs for urinary incontinence and overactive bladder, drugs for infections and others, drugs for hormonal replacement therapy and diuretics.Hormonal contraceptives are medications or devices that reduce the likelihood of becoming pregnant.



The drugs are administered through oral, parenteral, and others that are classified into branded and generic drugs.The drugs are available in the form of pharmaceutical drugs and biologics.



The various mode of purchase includes prescription-based drugs and over-the-counter drugs which are distributed by hospital pharmacies, retail pharmacies/ drug stores, and others.



North America was the largest region in the genito-urinary market in 2021.Middle East is expected to be the fastest growing region in the forecast period.



The regions covered in this report are Asia-Pacific, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, North America, South America, Middle East and Africa.



The aging population profile of most countries contributed to the growth of the gastrointestinal drugs market.The increase in patient pool due to rising geriatric population globally, contributed significantly to the growth of the market during the historic period.



According to the WHO, by 2030, one in every six people on the planet will be 60 or older. The proportion of the population aged 60 and up will rise from 1 billion in 2020 to 2.2 billion by 2050. This rise in the geriatric population increased the demand for medical care and drove the healthcare expenditure. This has led to increased demand for pharmaceuticals products, significantly impacting market growth during this period.



Regulatory agencies and federal governments adopted stringent regulations and took a tough stance on drug pricing by pharmaceutical companies during the historic period.Pharmaceutical companies faced criticism from politicians, patients and physicians over high pricing of some medicines and drugs.



Moreover, companies had to sell drugs and medicines at subsidized rates to government hospitals, doctors and clinics, further effecting companies revenues. This led to drug manufacturing companies operating on a reduced profit margin, which negatively impacted the attractiveness of the genito-urinary drugs industry in the historic period.



Pharmaceutical companies are investing in development of new class drugs for treating overactive bladders (OAB).Earlier anti-muscarinic agents have been used for the treatment of OAB.



Going forward, the market is expected to be driven by a new class of drug known as beta-3 adrenergic agonists that has been increasingly used to treat OAB.Beta-3 adrenergic agonists are drugs which cause the bladder muscles to relax without causing side effects such as dry mouth.



For instance, In December 2019, GEMTESAs new drug application (NDA) was submitted to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and it was accepted for review in March 2020. GEMTESA  is a beta-3 adrenergic agonist used to treat overactive bladder (OAB) in adults with symptoms of urge urinary incontinence, urgency, and urinary frequency.



The countries covered in the dermatology drugs market report are Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Egypt, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Norway, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, Turkey, UAE, UK, USA, Venezuela and Vietnam.





Read the full report: https://www.reportlinker.com/p06241973/?utm_source=GNW



About Reportlinker

ReportLinker is an award-winning market research solution. Reportlinker finds and organizes the latest industry data so you get all the market research you need - instantly, in one place.



__________________________

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CONTACT: Clare: clare@reportlinker.com US: (339)-368-6001 Intl: +1 339-368-6001




Gioffredi & Associates have outdone themselves by releasing a new video entitled, "John Gioffredi Explains the Need to Understand the Law" which sheds light on the benefits to be had when people fully comprehend the law and the importance of the attorney's role.

Texas, Dallas, United States , March 03, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) --

Gioffredi & Associates have outdone themselves by releasing a new video entitled, John Gioffredi Explains the Need to Understand the Law, which sheds light on the benefits to be had when people fully comprehend the law and the importance of the attorneys role. People interested in talking to a knowledgeable professional, serious about getting someone to fight aggressively on their behalf, and other interested individuals can view the full video at JohnGioffredi/Video.

The publication includes several exciting pieces of information; one, in particular, is the importance of working with highly knowledgeable lawyers committed to their clients. Moreover, the video states that the leading role of the attorney is to gather sufficient information and indicate the best course of action to follow. This information is essential for defendants trying to decide whether to accept or reject a plea bargain offer from the prosecutor. This information should be of particular interest to those who seek the best legal defense because it will help them understand why the need for information and assistance from criminal lawyers is crucial. Hence, John Gioffredi, a criminal lawyer and an industry leader among DWI attorneys, wants to emphasize working with top-notch, highly educated lawyers committed to their clients.

One of the most critical pieces of information the recently released material tries to convey and communicate is the advantages of relying on an experienced attorney. When facing the possibility of having criminal charges brought against people, the prospect of finding the right lawyer may become overwhelming. Yet, talking to a knowledgeable professional is the most critical and urgent priority. Having 30+ years of experience, John Gioffredi will also be better at investigating their case, pre-trial motion work, and obtaining an overall positive result for them. The best example of this is perhaps found in the following extract:

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John Gioffredi is a criminal lawyer and an industry leader among DWI attorneys. He has received numerous awards and teaches legal seminars regularly. He revolutionized jury punishment for Texas DWI cases and has led his jury punishment system to other defense attorneys throughout Texas.

In discussing the videos creation, John Gioffredi, President/CEO at https://gioffredi.com/ said:

In the United States, the average persons knowledge of the law is more than likely limited to what they see on television or read in newspapers and books. Therefore, when they get involved with the criminal law system, they do not know what to do or how to handle the situation. So, if they need an attorney, they need to find someone who will fight aggressively on their behalf. They cannot afford to lose their freedom because they hired an inexperienced lawyer.

The regular audience of Gioffredi & Associates will notice the article takes a familiar tone, which has been described as committed and professional.

John Gioffredi & Associates now welcomes comments and questions from readers concerning the article, as they are intent on helping the audience to be better informed on what steps to follow in regards to criminal offenses.

Anyone who has a specific question about a past, present, or future article can contact Gioffredi & Associates via their website at https://gioffredi.com/

The complete article is available to view in full at JohnGioffredi/Video.

Website: https://gioffredi.com/

CONTACT: Name: John Gioffredi Organization: Gioffredi & Associates Address: 4942 Gaston Avenue Dallas, Texas 75214-5207, Texas, Dallas 75214, United States Phone: +1-214-739-4515




DUBLIN, March 4, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Language Services Market: Global Industry Trends, Share, Size, Growth, Opportunity and Forecast 2022-2027" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

Research and Markets Logo

The global language services market reached a value of US$ 62.6 Billion in 2021. Looking forward, the publisher expects the market to reach US$ 96.1 Billion by 2027, exhibiting a CAGR of 7.5% during 2022-2027. Keeping in mind the uncertainties of COVID-19, they are continuously tracking and evaluating the direct as well as the indirect influence of the pandemic on different end use industries. These insights are included in the report as a major market contributor

Language services stand for the set of language assistance solutions that offer varying degrees of interpretation, translation, comprehension, localization, and other training services. They include a wide range of electronic, written, and multimedia materials for transcription, dubbing, narration, voice-over, etc. Language services provide several benefits, such as effective communication, wide geographical outreach, high accuracy rate, skill development, along with offering a highly interactive learning platform to the users. Further, the adoption of these services promotes the integration of technology with human communication. Owing to this, language services are widely employed across diverse sectors, including legal, medical, IT and telecommunication, education, automotive, and BFSI

The rising demand for language services can be attributed to the rapid advancements in the IT and telecommunication industry leading to software development for accurate translation and interpretation results. In addition to this, rapid globalization coupled with improving internet connectivity has further augmented the growing need for language services. With increasing geographical outreach, various companies are opting for translation services. This provides convenience to their international clients and allows companies to efficiently express their services. Furthermore, the growing consumer inclination towards language services for multilingual and cross-cultural communication to create an efficient and quicker learning platform has also led to its increasing global adoption.

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Additionally, the rising influence of social media platforms resulting in the popularity of visual translations and content localization, is also driving the demand. Apart from this, the increasing investments in the field of language services coupled with the rapid influx of translation and interpretation outsourcing have also contributed to the strong market growth.

Moreover, the increasing need for language services pertaining to international business tourism, medical tourism, leisure tourism, on-site work stays, etc., is also catalyzing the market. In the educational sector, customized foreign language training courses are being offered at on-site and off-site locations in classroom, private, semi-private, tutorial, and in-country immersion forums, thereby driving the demand for language services. In the coming years, several technological upgradations along with the emergence of artificial intelligence in the sector are expected to fuel the growth of the global language service market

Competitive Landscape:

The competitive landscape of the industry has also been examined with some of the key players being Global Linguist Solutions, LLC, Hogarth Worldwide, Keywords Studios Plc, LanguageLine Solutions (Teleperformance), Lionbridge Technologies, Inc., Mission Essential Personnel, RWS Holdings plc, SDI Media, SDL plc, and TransPerfect Translations



Key Questions Answered in This Report:

How has the global language services market performed so far and how will it perform in the coming years?

What are the key regional markets?

What has been the impact of COVID-19 on the global language services market?

What is the breakup of the market based on the service?

What is the breakup of the market based on the component?

What is the breakup of the market based on the application?

What are the various stages in the value chain of the industry?

What are the key driving factors and challenges in the market?

What is the structure of the global language services market and who are the key players?

What is the degree of competition in the market?

Key Topics Covered:



1 Preface



2 Scope and Methodology



3 Executive Summary



4 Introduction

4.1 Overview

4.2 Key Industry Trends



5 Global Language Services Market

5.1 Market Overview

5.2 Market Performance

5.3 Impact of COVID-19

5.4 Market Forecast



6 Market Breakup by Service

6.1 Translation Services

6.1.1 Market Trends

6.1.2 Market Forecast

6.2 Interpretation Services

6.2.1 Market Trends

6.2.2 Market Forecast

6.3 Others

6.3.1 Market Trends

6.3.2 Market Forecast



7 Market Breakup by Component

7.1 Software

7.1.1 Market Trends

7.1.2 Market Forecast

7.2 Hardware

7.2.1 Market Trends

7.2.2 Market Forecast



8 Market Breakup by Application

8.1 IT and Telecommunications

8.1.1 Market Trends

8.1.2 Market Forecast

8.2 Commercial

8.2.1 Market Trends

8.2.2 Market Forecast

8.3 Government

8.3.1 Market Trends

8.3.2 Market Forecast

8.4 Automotive

8.4.1 Market Trends

8.4.2 Market Forecast

8.5 Healthcare

8.5.1 Market Trends

8.5.2 Market Forecast

8.6 Others

8.6.1 Market Trends

8.6.2 Market Forecast



9 Market Breakup by Region



10 SWOT Analysis

11 Value Chain Analysis



12 Porters Five Forces Analysis



13 Competitive Landscape

13.1 Market Structure

13.2 Key Players

13.3 Profiles of Key Players

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/d7eu77

Media Contact:

Research and Markets

Laura Wood, Senior Manager

press@researchandmarkets.com



For E.S.T Office Hours Call +1-917-300-0470

For U.S./CAN Toll Free Call +1-800-526-8630

For GMT Office Hours Call +353-1-416-8900



U.S. Fax: 646-607-1907

Fax (outside U.S.): +353-1-481-1716

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SOURCE Research and Markets
By Trend

Turkey evacuated 404 more citizens from Ukraine, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavushoglu wrote on his Twitter page, Trend reports citing Turkish media.

According to him, the number of evacuated Turkish citizens has reached 8454 people.

The minister noted that Turkish citizens previously evacuated from Ukraine arrived in the country on a Turkish Airlines flight from Bucharest and Warsaw.
A worker cleans the doors of a branch of VTB bank in Moscow, Russia. On February 24 Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the start of the military operation in Ukraine, after which the Western countries toughened sanctions against Russia Credit - Alexey MaishevSputnik/AP

The U.S., Canada and Europe are tightening financial restrictions on Russia with a new ban that blocks seven Russian banks from using SWIFT, the global messaging system that enables bank transactions, the European Union (EU) said Wednesday. The move is aimed at disrupting Russias ability to do business across borders.

The new ban follows an agreement forged on Saturday between Canada, the European Union, the United Kingdom and the U.S. to disconnect selected Russian banks from SWIFT. The severe economic sanction drew hesitation from some European countries due to its potential to cause energy flow disruptions in Europe and because it would hinder Russias ability to pay its outstanding debts. Ultimately, as Russian forces waged attacks across Ukraine, the coalition decided to retaliate with a broader Russian ban on the SWIFT network.

We will hold Russia to account and collectively ensure that this war is a strategic failure for Putin, leaders of the EU, U.K., U.S. and Canada said in a joint statement announcing the initial SWIFT ban over the weekend.

At the time of that statement, the country leaders were not specific about how broad the ban would be and what types of financial institutions it would target. So on Wednesday, the EU released the list of seven financial institutions that wont be able to use SWIFT, including VTB, the countrys second-largest bank. Heres what those blocks mean for Russia and the rest of the world.

Read More: U.S. and E.U. Are Going After Putins Wealth. First They Need To Find It

Why SWIFT?

SWIFT, formally known as the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, is a messaging system for banks and other financial institutions around the world. It doesnt shuttle any money itself, but provides instruction messages for just how to give and receive specific funds.

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Since it began in 1973, SWIFT has become an integral part of the flow of global trade. When a bank is a member of SWIFT, their instruction messages are cleared as secure immediately, so the transactions happen quickly. More than 11,000 financial institutions worldwide use SWIFT and they send around 38 million SWIFT messages daily, according to 2020 data.

So access to the system is all but necessary for conducting business overseas, and the seven Russian banks banned from SWIFT will therefore not have access to international markets. That means individuals and companies using those banks will have a harder time borrowing or investing money across national borders, receiving cash for exports and paying for imports.

There are workaroundsthe banks could use other messaging systems, such as apps or email. But those transactions likely wont be as secure, and could end up being slower and costing more. China also has an alternative to SWIFT called the Cross-Border Interbank Payment System (CIPS). But CIPS is much smaller, with roughly 1,300 financial institutions participating, most of them indirectly.

Read More: The Vital Missing Link in the U.S. Sanctions Against Russia

Why these banks?

The seven banks the EU specified give insight into what the coalition of countries does, and does not, hope to affect with the sanctions.

In addition to VTB, the EU said the other affected banks are Bank Otkritie, Novikombank, Promsvyazbank, Bank Rossiya, Sovcombank and VEB. They have 10 days to cease sending SWIFT messages before they are fully blocked from the system.

Notably missing from that list are main banks that handle Russian oil and gas transactions, such as the countrys largest bank, Sberbank, or Gazprombank. President Joe Biden included Sberbank in the list of banks the U.S. sanctioned last week, but since EU countries are still buying Russian oil and gas, the current SWIFT ban does not specifically affect that.

EU officials chose the specific seven banks because of their Kremlin connections, Reuters reported. As a consequence, the SWIFT removal may frustrate state officials dealings with other countries.

The ban also extends to any entities for which the seven banks hold more than 50% ownership.

Read More: Why Sanctions on Russia Arent Targeting Oil and Gas

Why stop there?

This list of seven banks blocked from SWIFT may just be a starting point.

The countries instating the SWIFT ban are in discussions about expanding the sanctions to more financial institutions in Russia, Lithuanian Prime Minister Ingrida Simonyte said at a Wednesday news conference.

Immediately following the invasion, the Ukrainian Government requested that Russia be fully banned from SWIFT. That has been called the nuclear option, as it would essentially sever the countrys ties to the rest of the worldand leave the global markets reeling.

When asked about banning Russia from SWIFT last week, Biden had said it was always an option.
The USS Orleck passed a key test last month and is nearly ready to be towed from Texas to Jacksonville.

There's good news and bad news for those hoping to see the USS Orleck brought to Jacksonville as a museum ship.

The good news is that the Orleck floats. The 77-year-old retired U.S. Navy destroyer has been undergoing repairs in Texas, where it was removed from drydock late last month and put into the water. The ship floated with no leaks, as expected.

The bad news is that the price for restoring the Orleck has soared since the Jacksonville Historic Naval Ship Association first expressed interest in acquiring it. Before the COVID outbreak, the estimated cost to restore and preserve the ship was $1.3 million. That cost has increased to about $2 million.

Anchors aweigh: Retired U.S. Navy destroyer headed for Jacksonville

More on Orleck: Retired Navy ship USS Orleck could boost Jacksonville military tourism as part of riverfront park

'A huge green light for us': MOSH moving forward with plans for new museum at Jacksonville's Shipyards

The ship is undergoing repairs at Gulf Copper and Manufacturing in Port Arthur, Texas. There, crews have been painting the ship and welding "doubler plates" over all underwater openings in the hull in an effort to extend the ship's life expectancy to at least 15 years.

It was floated on Feb. 24 and no leaks were found, according to a release from the association. Once additional work above the waterline is completed, the ship will be ready to be towed across the Gulf of Mexico, around the tip of Florida and up the East Coast to a berth near the Shipyards property on the St. Johns River in downtown Jacksonville. The trip is expected to take 10 to 12 days and start sometime in mid-March.

Plans call for the ship to serve as a museum focused on the U.S. Navy's role in the Cold War. Dockside facilities, including restrooms, a ticket office and a gift shop, need to be built before the ship can be fully opened to visitors. The ship would also be available for military reunions, scout trips and other events.

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The 2,350-ton Gearing Class destroyer was launched in May 1945 and operated as part of the Seventh Fleet during the Korean War, then underwent extensive renovations under the Navy's Fleet Rehabilitation and Maintenance program in 1962. The Orleck earned the nickname "Gray Ghost of the Vietnam Coast" during the fighting in Vietnam and fired more rounds in support of ground troops than any ship in the Navy.

The cost of the renovation work increased during the pandemic. The ship, which has been berthed in Louisiana for several years, also suffered about $250,000 in damage during 2020's Hurricane Laura.

The association received two donations totaling $250,000 from Navy veterans over the past six months to help cover the costs. Anyone interested in donating can visit jaxnavalmuseum.org/donate.

This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: USS Orleck closer to making trip to new home in Jacksonville
LIDDS AB

UPPSALA, SWEDEN  LIDDS AB (publ) announced today the agenda for the Capital Markets Day to be held on March 9, 2022, for investors, analysts and media.

Agenda Capital Markets Day 2022

15.00-15.10 Welcome - Nina Herne, CEO

15.10-15.45 Presentation of LIDDS company strategy and drug delivery technology - Nina Herne, CEO

15.45-16.45 Update on LIDDS pipeline and clinical programs - Johan Harmenberg, CMO

16.45-16.55 Break

16.55-17.15 Financial update - Jenni Bjornulfson, CFO

17.15-18.00 Q&A session - Nina Herne, CEO, Johan Harmenberg, CMO, Jenni Bjornulfson, CFO, Mattew Lindon, CSO and Jan Tornell, Chairman of the Board.

The Capital Markets Day is a hybrid event. Participants are welcome to participate either physically, at the Redeye office, Master Samuelsgatan 42, 10th floor, Stockholm, Sweden, or digitally.

Registration for the Capital Markets Day is made by emailing info@liddspharma.com. The last day to register is 7 March 2022. No pre-registration is required to watch the webcast. The webcast will be available at: https://www.redeye.se/events/835119/capital-markets-day-lidds-pharma



LIDDS processes the personal data that you provide in your notification in accordance with our Privacy policy. Throughout the event, local Covid-19-related restrictions will be adhered to. For that reason, the event will turn wholly digital if necessary.

The presentation will be held in English and will also be available on the company website, www.liddspharma.com after the event.

For further information, please contact

Nina Herne, CEO

Phone: +46 (0)70 714 74 57,

E-mail: nina.herne@liddspharma.com

Jenni Bjornulfson, CFO

Phone: +46 (0)708 55 38 05

E-mail: jenni.bjornulfson@liddspharma.com

LIDDS Certified Adviser is Redeye AB.

Tel: [+46] 8 121 576 90

E-mail: certifiedadviser@redeye.se

The information was submitted for publication, through the agency of the aforementioned contact person, on March 4, 2022 at 17.30 CET.

LIDDS in brief:

LIDDS is a Swedish drug delivery company based on the proprietary technology NanoZolid. With NanoZolid, LIDDS can formulate drugs for local administration, with a maintained and controlled release for up to six months. The technology is versatile, can be used across different drug classes and solve problems within many indication areas. LIDDS offers the NanoZolid technology to partners and has developed its own pipeline focused on oncology, where the technology enables delivery of a local and high drug dose, administered over time with very limited side effects. LIDDS has a broad pipeline with several projects in clinical development, both in early and late-stage clinical phase, and projects about to enter clinical development. The company is listed on Nasdaq First North Growth market.

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More than 500 college students will connect with future employers and showcase their career skills in horticulture and landscape

FAIRFAX, Va., March 4, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The National Association of Landscape Professionals' annual collegiate career event and competition, the National Collegiate Landscape Competition, will be held March 16-19, at North Carolina State University, in Raleigh, North Carolina.

The National Association of Landscape Professionals is the national trade association representing more than 200,000 landscape, lawn care, irrigation, and tree care member professionals who create and maintain America's green spaces. (PRNewsfoto/National Association of Landscape Professionals)

This year, more than 500 horticulture and landscape students from more than 40 universities and colleges will test their skills in 31real-world, competitive events like Exterior Landscape Design, Plant Identification, Robotics and Technology in Landscape Design and Maintenance, Irrigation Design, and more.

"The National Collegiate Landscape Competition highlights the many wonderful career paths and skills needed for a career in the landscape industry," said Britt Wood, NALP CEO. "The event brings together the top horticulture and landscape students, companies, and manufacturers, exposing students to the breadth and scope of the $115 billion industry that they will enter into after college."

The landscape industry faces the same critical workforce shortages as many industries, so in addition to skills competitions, on March 17, approximately 100 of the nation's top landscape and lawn care companies are participating in the Career Fair to connect with and interview students for internships and jobs after college.

"STIHL has been proud to be the lead sponsor of this event for over 20 years. Nowhere else is the future of the green industry better represented than at NCLC," said Roger Phelps, STIHL's Corporate Communications Manager. "This competition brings the best of the landscape industry's future leaders together to demonstrate their skills, make connections, and most importantly, learn how they can grow their careers."

The event is produced in partnership with NC State University. In addition, the National Collegiate Landscape Competition is supported by partners including STIHL, Inc. (Platinum); JOHN DEERE (Gold); Caterpillar, Davey, Ferris, Gravely, Husqvarna, (Silver) and Anchor, Aspire, Bartlett Tree Experts, Belgard, Corona Tools, Ewing, Hunter, Kawasaki, Kubota, LandCare, Permaloc, Proven Winners, Rainbird, SiteOne, Timberline Landscaping, Toro, and Yellowstone Landscape (Bronze).

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For more information, visit www.landscapecompetition.org.

About NALP

The National Association of Landscape Professionals represents an industry of approximately 1 million landscape, lawn care, irrigation and tree care experts who create and maintain green spaces for the benefit of society and the environment. The association works with lawmakers and the public to protect and grow the industry and offers education, networking, training and certification programs that increase professionalism in the industry and inspire its members to excellence. For more information, visit www.landscapeprofessionals.org.

Cision

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SOURCE National Association of Landscape Professionals
NEW HYDE PARK, N.Y., March 04, 2022--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Standing before a large, hanging American flag, Northwell Health President and CEO Michael Dowling urged employees and friends of the health system to provide whatever assistance they could to ease the suffering of the people of Ukraine.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220304005545/en/

A warehouse worker prepares vital donations for immediate transport (Photo: Business Wire)

Flanked by several employees of Ukranian descent at the health systems Integrated Distribution Center in Bethpage, LI, Mr. Dowling noted that 28 pallets holding 18,000 pounds of supplies valued at $160,000 had already been packed up for immediate shipment to the war-torn region.

He explained that Northwell, at the direction of Ukraines government, is sending a shipment of humanitarian aid that will be used to care for those injured during combat.

"In coordination with the Ukranian consulate and a global shipping provider, these vital supplies will ship out tomorrow by air and will arrive in eastern Poland, where they will be met by Ukranian soldiers who will transport them to the front lines," he said.

Noting that March 4th is otherwise known as "Do Something Day," Mr. Dowling said, "Because of the immediate need in Ukraine, we have a moral obligation to do more than something. We must do everything that we can to help ease the suffering of these people."

Also on hand with impassioned appeals for help were Evelina Grayver, MD, director of Womens Heart Health; Oleysa Gavryluk, MSN, a nurse at Zucker Hillside Hospital in Queens; Eugene Holuka, MD, and Dasha Karelina, who both work at Staten Island University Hospital.

Each employee spoke of their familys historical roots in Ukraine; Ms. Karelina and Ms. Gavryluk still have family members there who refuse to leave their homeland. Each spoke movingly of their connection to their country and the courage of the Ukranian citizens who choose to live in freedom without submission to a foreign government.

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Representing Ukraines government, Colonel Volodymr Shcherban, deputy military adviser to the Permanent Mission of Ukraine at the United Nations, was on hand to thank Northwell for its commitment. "It is hard not to become emotional after witnessing my countrymens acts of bravery and defiance against all odds," Colonel Shcherban said. "You are helping to save thousands of lives and Ukraine will never forget your support."

Noting that the Ukranian army and civilians alike have risen to the challenge of war, he added, "Our people want a future where war is definitively a thing of the past and no one has to go through the horrors of night bombardments or losing their close ones on a governments order."

Northwell Health has established a Ukraine relief fund that will ultimately be directed to the health systems international relief partner Doctors Without Borders, and potentially others, as the specific needs of those affected become clearer. To contribute to the fund, go to: https://support.northwell.edu/center-for-global-health?dm_i=1Y9P,7RD9O,M4ICPE,VN5E8,1

MEDIA ASSETS:

To download photos from the event, go to (credit Northwell Health):

https://northwellstudios.smugmug.com/2022-EVENTS/March-2022-Events/Ukraine-Humanitarian-Aid-Presser-1177561/n-9cK4dv/

About Northwell Health

Northwell Health is New York States largest health care provider and private employer, with 22 hospitals, 830 outpatient facilities and more than 16,600 affiliated physicians. We care for over two million people annually in the New York metro area and beyond, thanks to philanthropic support from our communities. Our 78,000 employees  18,900 nurses and 4,800 employed doctors, including members of Northwell Health Physician Partners  are working to change health care for the better. Were making breakthroughs in medicine at the Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research. We're training the next generation of medical professionals at the visionary Donald and Barbara Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell and the Hofstra Northwell School of Nursing and Physician Assistant Studies. For information on our more than 100 medical specialties, visit Northwell.edu and follow us @NorthwellHealth on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220304005545/en/

Contacts

Michelle Pinto

516-321-6708

mpinto@northwell.edu
Novartis Pharma AG

Shareholders approve 25 th consecutive dividend increase to CHF 3.10 (+3.3%) per share for 2021; representing a 3.9% yield 1 and approximately 57% payout of free cash flow





Shareholders confirm Dr. Joerg Reinhardt as Chair of the Board of Directors as well as all other members who stood for re-election; Ms. Ana de Pro Gonzalo and Mr. Daniel Hochstrasser newly elected to the Board of Directors





Shareholders elect KPMG AG as statutory auditor and approve all other proposals of the Board of Directors, including the 2021 Compensation Report in an advisory vote, as well as the future Board and Executive Committee compensation in separate binding votes

Basel, March 4, 2022  Novartis shareholders today agreed to the Board of Directors recommendations for all proposed resolutions at the Groups Annual General Meeting (AGM). In accordance with the Swiss COVID-19 Ordinance 3, the 2022 AGM was held without shareholders being physically present. Accordingly, shareholders exercised their shareholder rights via the Independent Proxy and could follow the AGM via a live webcast. In addition, shareholders had the opportunity to send their questions to the Board of Directors electronically in advance, with all questions being answered by the Chair of the Board of Directors and the CEO during the AGM.

Shareholders approved the 25th consecutive dividend increase since the creation of Novartis in 1996, with an increase of 3.3% to CHF 3.10 per share. Payment for the 2021 dividend will be made as of March 10, 2022. The dividend for 2021 is an approximately 57% payout of free cash flow and results in a dividend yield of 3.9%1.

Annual re-election of Members of the Board

Shareholders re-elected Dr. Joerg Reinhardt as Chair of the Board of Directors, and all members of the Board who stood for re-election, for one year. In addition, Ms. Ana de Pro Gonzalo and Mr. Daniel Hochstrasser were newly elected to the Board of Directors.

Shareholders also re-elected the following members of the Board of Directors to the Compensation Committee for one year: Patrice Bula, Bridgette Heller, Simon Moroney and William T. Winters. The Board of Directors intends to redesignate Simon Moroney as Chair of the Compensation Committee.

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Reduction of Share Capital

In line with the Board of Directors recommendation, the shareholders also approved the cancellation of 30 699 668 shares repurchased under the authorizations of February 28, 2019 and March 2, 2021 and the reduction of the share capital accordingly by CHF 15.3 million, from CHF 1 217 210 460 to CHF 1 201 860 626.

Further share repurchases

On December 16, 2021 Novartis announced a share buyback of up to USD 15 billion to be executed by the end of 2023. The shareholders authorized the Board of Directors to repurchase shares up to an additional CHF 10 billion between the Annual General Meeting 2022 and the Annual General Meeting 2025 to cover the amount exceeding CHF 7.8 billion still available under the existing shareholder authorization granted in 2021.

Votes on Compensation for the members of the Board of Directors and the Executive Committee

In two separate binding votes, shareholders approved the total maximum aggregate amount of compensation for the Board of Directors, covering the period from the 2022 AGM to the 2023 AGM, and the total maximum aggregate amount of compensation for the Executive Committee for the financial year 2023. Shareholders also endorsed the 2021 Compensation Report in an advisory vote.

Election of KPMG AG as Statutory Auditor

In line with the Board of Directors proposal, the shareholders elected KPMG AG as statutory auditor for the financial year starting on January 1, 2022.

For a detailed listing of all resolutions at the 2022 Annual General Meeting, please visit: https://www.novartis.com/agm

Disclaimer

This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements can generally be identified by words such as will, could, authorized, to be, endorsed, advisory, future, proposed, intends, or similar terms, or by express or implied discussions regarding the potential future impact on Novartis of the matters described in this press release, including the future commercial performance of Novartis, further share repurchases, the annual re-election and election of members of the Board of Directors and the Compensation Committee, votes on compensation for the members of the Board of Directors and the Executive Committee, an advisory vote on the 2021 Compensation Report, and the election of the new statutory auditor. You should not place undue reliance on these statements. Such forward-looking statements are based on our current beliefs and expectations regarding future events, and are subject to significant known and unknown risks and uncertainties. Should one or more of these risks or uncertainties materialize, or should underlying assumptions prove incorrect, actual results may vary materially from those set forth in the forward-looking statements. There can be no guarantee as to the ultimate outcome of the matters described in this press release or their potential impact on Novartis. In particular, our expectations regarding these matters could be affected by, among other things, uncertainties regarding future demand for our products; general political, economic and business conditions, including the effects of and efforts to mitigate pandemic diseases such as COVID-19; potential or actual data security and data privacy breaches, or disruptions of our information technology systems; the potential impact of matters discussed in this press release on Novartis management, its financial results and its competitiveness, and other risks and factors referred to in Novartis AGs current Form 20-F on file with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Novartis is providing the information in this press release as of this date and does not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statements contained in this press release as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

About Novartis

Novartis is reimagining medicine to improve and extend peoples lives. As a leading global medicines company, we use innovative science and digital technologies to create transformative treatments in areas of great medical need. In our quest to find new medicines, we consistently rank among the worlds top companies investing in research and development. Novartis products reach nearly 800 million people globally and we are finding innovative ways to expand access to our latest treatments. About 108,000 people of more than 140 nationalities work at Novartis around the world. Find out more at https://www.novartis.com.

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By Hilary Russ

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The chief of New York state's pension fund said on Thursday that McDonald's Corp, PepsiCo and other companies with a large footprint in Russia "need to consider whether doing business in Russia is worth the risk during this extraordinarily volatile time."

Political pressure is building for companies to halt business in Russia because of its invasion of Ukraine. Some big companies have already said they will do so, including sneaker maker Nike and home furnishings firm IKEA.

"Russia's unprovoked invasion of Ukraine and its highly unpredictable foreign policy are a threat to the global economy," New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, who oversees the state's public pension fund, said in a statement.

"We're encouraging the companies we invest in to do a risk analysis and determine what is in the best interests of their company and their shareholders," he said.

McDonald's - one of the first western brands to open in Moscow in 1990 as the Soviet Union was crumbling - has 847 locations there, 84% of which are company owned.

Pepsi is also notable as one of the few Western products allowed in the Soviet Union. It has two production plants and sells snacks and beverages in the country, according to its most recent annual report for 2021.

The companies did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Both companies have about 4% revenue exposure to Russia, according to a J.P. Morgan Report.

(Reporting by Hilary Russ; Editing by Chris Reese)
Mary Dawood Catlin

As the world quickly shifts from the pandemic to Russias war in Ukraine, there are still images from the past two years that remain burned in my memory:

 A Costco customer in Edmonton, Alberta, being dragged out for not wearing a mask.

 A mother in Idaho being arrested in front of her child because they were in a park during lockdown.

 Children being viewed as little more than "disease vectors."

 Children wearing masks without end for two years while being taught germaphobia and hypochondria  and to fear others through isolation and extreme distancing.

 Cities using drones to issue ominous warnings to their citizens to practice social distancing.

 The Italian police swarming in to apprehend a lone sunbather on an empty beach.

 Australia, China and other countries imposing harsh and heavy-handed COVID quarantine policies.

These examples are just the tip of the iceberg in terms of what people have endured over the past two years in the name of an intransigent and unyielding public health regime. They paint a picture of what happens to the broken minds of people when they are subjected to endorsed systematic and continuous brainwashing  and to relentless propaganda that is reinforced through fear.

As governments around the world scramble to end COVID restrictions and win back the confidence of the millions of people who have suffered the devastating consequences of their draconian mandates and divisive rhetoric, one question remains to be answered: Will people forget the past two years?

For me the answer is clear: I will never forget it.

I will never forget the Canadian Public Health officer showing up at our door to ask for our papers and to question us while we were healthy, COVID-negative and in quarantine at my childhood home in Ottawa.

I will never forget the miscarriage of my first pregnancy after that public health officers surprise visit  and after the constant phone calls, emails, endless COVID tests, incessant badgering and threats of million-dollar fines and imprisonment if we failed to comply.

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I will never forget my octogenarian parents and me being kicked off the outdoor patio of a restaurant in Drummondville, Quebec, because two patrons demanded that we show our vaccine passports  in the form of vaccine QR codes  to the host and the manager.

I will never forget my parents and me being accosted by a maskless man who had lost his mind because we were in an empty hotel lobby unmasked. After returning to his hotel room to get his mask, he made it his mission to scream at me while standing a few inches from my face. (So much for social distancing.)

I will never forget how devastated and inconsolable my father was after we were forcibly separated from my mother at the hospitals where she was diagnosed with cancer and operated on.

I will never forget what it feels like to know that my parents  along with nearly 4 million other Canadians  are being held de facto hostage in Canada by a federal policy that restricts them from air, land and sea travel because they choose informed refusal of an injection.

I will never forget having to race against the clock to leave Canada before the walls closed in on the unvaccinated last November  so that I could come back to my husband, our home and our lives in the United States after being separated by callous international public health dictates.

I will never forget what it felt like to be segregated from every aspect of normal life.

As trauma as these experiences have been, millions have had it much worse: They have lost their jobs, their businesses, their savings, their homes, their health and even their will to live because of how governments have sought to control every aspect of their lives over the past two years.

These experiences have revealed the ugly underbelly of society when it allows a fear of death and disease to be the judge and arbiter of everything. But despite the trauma, the death and the destruction of the past two years, I believe that people are fundamentally good in nature, and that the good nature of humanity always prevails.

I have hope for the futures of Canada, the United States and the world.

In Canada, for example, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau may have invoked the Emergencies Act on peaceful demonstrations, forcibly arrested nonviolent protesters, frozen the bank accounts of people who supported the Freedom Convoy, seized the trucks of truckers who were simply defending the rights of Canadians and threatened and intimidated his political opposition.

But he will never destroy the hope that those heroes inspired in peoples hearts and minds all over the world.

In Europe, Russian President Vladimir Putin has seized this moment to take advantage of how Western freedoms have been battered and weakened by pandemic policies throughout the past two years. He has used this moment to invade Ukraine, and to sacrifice the lives of countless Russians and Ukrainians to fuel his megalomania, expand his oligarchy and satisfy his Napoleon complex.

But the world has seen through Putin's brutal deceptions  and it has united against him.

And in America, the land of the freest and the home of the bravest, we are now at last witnessing the final pangs of statesanctioned pandemic authoritarianism. America is and will continue to be a free republic, and the beacon of hope and liberty in the world.

The American Dream lives on in the American people who carry the flame of every persons inalienable right to unfettered life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And it lives on in the hearts and minds of every person across the world who dreams of seeing Americas boundless horizons of her teeming shores.

Mary Dawood Catlin is an author, historian and musician. She is a Canadian citizen who resides in St. Augustine.

This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: Don't forget the toll that COVID has taken on our freedoms
PANAMA CITY  Some local firefighters in training spent Tuesday learning the ropes.

Technical Rescue Team instructors hosted their rope rescue course Tuesday afternoon alongside the Panama City Fire Department at the department's Training Academy.

Officially called Florida Urban Search and Rescue Rope and Confined Space Operations, the course is meant to teach the trainees how to perform high-angle rope and confined space rescues. The firefighters who participated were with the Panama City Fire Department, as well as from departments in Escambia, Walton and Okaloosa counties.

By the way: Panama City's Lids 4 Kids honors 50th child with honorary firefighter for a day title

Firefighter training: Panama City state college offers firefighter training as more jobs become available

Paul Wojtowicz, left, from Crestview, helps Luke Lewis, from the South Walton Fire Department, work his way down the side of a building in training. Technical Rescue Team instructors hosted a rope rescue course in Panama City on Tuesday for firefighters from Panama City, as well as departments in Escambia, Walton and Okaloosa counties.

The trainees learned about multiple different methods and equipment, as well as how to handle different scenarios and hazards they would come across while on the job, said Capt. Roy Albright. He said this training is essential, especially as the firefighters learn how to repel up and down buildings.

"Any building that is over one story presents challenges to us, if we got somebody on the top that may be injured or unable to get down themselves," Albright said. "Any kind of underground work may contain hazardous atmospheres, to save somebody. This just allows all of these fire departments that have come out and participated in this to be able to better serve the citizens and the visitors of their cities."

Kyle Muldoon, from Escambia County, and Deborah Smith, from the Panama City Fire Department, work together on a dual rope rescue. Technical Rescue Team instructors hosted a rope rescue course in Panama City on Tuesday for firefighters from Panama City, as well as departments in Escambia, Walton and Okaloosa counties.

Oscar Vega, a firefighter with the Panama City Fire Department, enjoyed being out with the various firefighters from different departments. He said it meant a lot to work and train with them.

"Being out here, not only are we getting the training, but we get to work with the different departments," Vega said. "Some of these guys we're out here with, we might actually end up on a real incident, real emergency with these guys, so getting to work out here, getting to know some people's names and stuff and to train together, we get more comfortable."

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A lot of the rope equipment is made by those who perform mountain rescues, Albright said. He said it adds a safety factor and allows them to control their descent down, including giving them the ability to store backups in case of failure or emergency.

The course is one of five technical rescue disciplines firefighters need to become state-certified, with the rope portion taking 40 hours in total to complete before they move on to confined spaces. Albright said a lot of the departments offer these certifications and trainings.

"We do it here in the city of Panama City every two years," Albright said. "We offer all of the courses, not only rope and confined spaces but trench rescue, structural collapse, and VMR machine rescue."

Ryan Callahan, left, from Escambia County, and Kevin Barnard, from the Panama City Fire Department, work at scaling a building during training Tuesday. Technical Rescue Team instructors hosted a rope rescue course in Panama City on Tuesday for firefighters from Panama City, as well as departments in Escambia, Walton and Okaloosa counties.

Vega said he has been able to gain and strengthen a lot of skills while training so far.

"(I've gained) a lot of knowledge on ropes and knots, using some of the devices and mechanical devices," Vega said. "There's a little bit of math, which was the key to work on, but overall, just getting really comfortable with the systems and things from carrying the trucks and knowing how to use them in real life."

Vega added that the course was essential to his career and to prepare him for future emergencies going forward.

Albright said since there is a lot more to being a firefighter than simply putting out fires, it's important that firefighters learn and get comfortable with the equipment and these skills. He added that every situation is different, so it helps to open the trainees' eyes to every scenario they can encounter.

"Car wrecks, medical calls, hazardous materials, incidents, this just enables us to be able to add that cash of what we can provide," Albright said. "So, by them coming out and putting their hands on that equipment and training and containing that training, just hone their skills to where they will become better rescuers."

This article originally appeared on The News Herald: Panama City firefighters train for high-risk rescues
Hong Kong: Jab time interval to be shortened

(To watch the full press briefing with sign language interpretation, click here.)

Given the COVID-19 outbreak in residential care homes for the elderly (RCHEs), the Government will shorten the vaccination interval between the first two doses of the Sinovac vaccine for residents of RCHEs.

The Centre for Health Protection is investigating 52,523 additional COVID-19 cases, of which 11 are imported and the rest are locally infected.

Centre for Health Protection Principal Medical & Health Officer Dr Albert Au told reporters at a press briefing this afternoon that from the start of the fifth wave of the epidemic, so far 72% of the elderly homes in the city have detected positive COVID-19 cases.

After consulting the health experts and its scientific committees, the centre decided to shorten the vaccination interval between the first dose and second doses for residents of RCHEs.

Dr Au said: For the Sinovac vaccine, it will be shortened from 28 days to 21 days so as to allow the residents to complete the vaccination as soon as possible, and to boost the overall immunity for residents of RCHEs as soon as possible.

Secondly, for those who were unvaccinated, if the residents were infected with COVID-19, previously they needed to wait for three months to receive a (COVID-19) vaccination.

In view of the current situation, those recovered from COVID-19 - for the unvaccinated residents who have recovered from COVID-19 - they can receive the vaccination as soon as four weeks after recovery, for both the Sinovac vaccine and also the BioNTech vaccine."

Meanwhile, for people aged 60 or above who have received two doses of the Sinovac or the BioNTech vaccine, the time interval for receiving the third dose will be shortened from six months after the second dose to three months.

For children and teenagers aged 5 to 17, the time interval between the first two doses of the BioNTech vaccine will be shortened from 12 weeks to eight weeks.

Booking for receiving the third dose will be open for these groups from 8am on March 5.

To prioritise the vaccination need of the elderly and children, the Government will arrange people aged 18 to 59 who have already received two vaccine doses to make appointments for the third dose three months after their second dose via the online booking system at a later stage.

Separately, the Government made restriction-testing declarations to cover six buildings where sewage samples tested positive for the virus.

They include Tak Shan House, Tak Kei House, Tak Cheung House, Tak Long Estate in Kowloon City, Luk Chuen House, Lek Yuen Estate in Sha Tin and Tower 1 and Tower 2, Twin Peaks in Tseung Kwan O.

People in the restricted areas must undergo compulsory testing before the specified deadline.

As there were positive sewage test results in several areas of Central & Western, Tuen Mun, North, Sha Tin, Sai Kung and Southern districts, the Home Affairs Department will distribute COVID-19 rapid test kits to relevant residents as well as cleansing workers and property management staff working in those areas from tomorrow.

For information and health advice on COVID-19, visit the Government's dedicated webpage.

This story has been published on: 2022-03-04. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
By Trend

India on Tuesday sent the first tranche of humanitarian assistance to Ukraine through Poland, informed Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla, Trend reports citing Zee5.

The consignment comprised medicines, medical equipment and other relief material.

Mentioning humanitarian assistance to Ukraine at the request of the Ukrainian Government, Shringla said, A flight left this morning having the first tranche of humanitarian assistance to Ukraine through Poland. The consignment comprised of medicines, medical equipment and other relief materials.

Another flight tomorrow will carry the second consignment also through Poland and besides medicines, a number of other items are also there for humanitarian use in Ukraine, he said in a special briefing on Operation Ganga to bring back Indian citizens from the conflict zone of Ukraine by the Ministry of External Affairs.

As per MEA sources, two tonnes of humanitarian aid including tents, blankets, surgical gloves, protective eye gear, water storage tanks, sleeping mats, tarpaulin and medicines have been sent to Ukraine today.

The meeting began with an expression of deep regret and condolences on the tragic death of Naveen Shekharappa, an Indian student who was studying at Kharkiv National Medical University

Earlier this afternoon I separately called in the Ambassadors of Russia and Ukraine. I reiterated strongly our demand for urgent safe passage for all Indian nationals who are still in Kharkiv and other cities in the conflict area, said Shringla.

He also informed that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has yesterday spoken to his counterparts from the Slovak Republic and Romania to seek their assistance in continued support to our evacuation efforts.

Yesterday PM Modi talked to the Slovak Republic Prime Minister Eduard Heger and Romanian counterpart Nicolae Ciuca and also spoke to the President of Poland Andrzej Duda to seek their assistance in the evacuation of Indians from the conflict zones, said Shringla.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday chaired a high-level meeting to review the efforts to bring back stranded Indians in Ukraine.

The meeting is being attended by External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, Minister of Commerce & Industry Piyush Goyal, Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla, National Security Advisor (NSA) Ajit Doval and senior officials.

PM Modi has also received calls. This happened as we were at the meeting, from the President of France Emmanuel Macron and the President of the European Union Commission, Charles Michel. We are certainly reaching out diplomatically to all concerned to ensure the safety, security and protection of our citizens in Ukraine, said the Foreign Secretary.

Detailing about the evacuation process, Shringla said that the ministry has examined every possible option for safe passage, adding that he had emphasized to both Russian and Ukrainian officials the importance of providing a corridor to enable Indian citizens to get out of the conflict zone.

Earlier this afternoon I separately called in the Ambassadors of Russia and Ukraine. I reiterated strongly our demand for urgent safe passage for all Indian nationals who are still in Kharkiv and other cities in the conflict area, said Shringla.
OTTAWA, ON, March 4, 2022 /CNW/ - The Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, today announced he will travel to Europe from March 6 to 11, 2022, to further strengthen Canada's solidarity with our European partners and allies in the face of Russia's unwarranted invasion of Ukraine.

Canada stands united with our partners and allies in support of Ukraine. During the visit, the Prime Minister will engage with close allies to build on our coordinated response to Russia's unprovoked and unjustifiable military aggression against Ukraine. He will also express Canada's support to address the significant humanitarian challenges emerging in Ukraine and as refugees flee from Ukraine. The Prime Minister will also advance shared key priorities with international partners and allies, including trade, economic growth, climate action, and human rights.

The Prime Minister will travel to London, United Kingdom, on March 6 2022, where he will meet with Prime Minister Boris Johnson, and be joined by the Prime Minister of the Netherlands Mark Rutte, to coordinate additional responses to Russia's blatant violation of international law and the United Nations Charter. During his visit to the United Kingdom, the Prime Minister will also have an audience with Her Majesty The Queen.

The Prime Minister will then travel to Riga, Latvia, on March 8, 2022, to meet with Prime Minister Krisjanis Karins. The leaders will review current security challenges, NATO's assurance and deterrence measures, and discuss ways to further strengthen the bilateral relationship. Prime ministers Trudeau and Karins will be joined for a meeting by the Prime Minister of Estonia, Kaja Kallas, and the Prime Minister of Lithuania, Ingrida Simonyte, to work together on additional support for Ukraine and other shared priorities. The Prime Minister will also meet with Latvia's President, Egils Levits.

While in Latvia, the Prime Minister will also meet with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg to discuss the Alliance's response to Russia's ongoing attacks on Ukraine, Canada's unwavering support for NATO's eastern flank, and the importance of continued coordination and collaboration amongst allies and partners in their support of Ukraine's sovereignty, territorial integrity and independence. The Prime Minister will also meet with the Canadian Armed Forces members in Latvia as part of Operation REASSURANCE to thank them for their ongoing work to help make Europe stronger and more secure.

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The Prime Minister will then travel to Berlin, Germany, on March 9, 2022, where he will meet with Germany's Chancellor, Olaf Scholz. Together, the leaders will discuss peace and security in Europe, including through their shared dedication to democracy and multilateralism. Prime Minister Trudeau and Chancellor Scholz will also explore avenues to deepen bilateral cooperation to enhance trade, fight climate change and build the economy of the future, including through the transition to clean energy. The Prime Minister will also meet with German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier.

The Prime Minister will finally travel to Warsaw, Poland, on March 10, 2022, where he will meet with President Andrzej Duda, to further discuss security concerns in Eastern Europe and convey Canada's support to Poland as it grapples with hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians fleeing the Russian invasion.

During his trip, Prime Minister Trudeau will highlight successes of the Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) in creating jobs and growing the middle-class, and emphasize that Canada stands by its allies in these challenging times as stable and trusted partner.

Quote

"In light of Russia's unwarranted and unjustifiable aggression against Ukraine, Canada is working in close collaboration with our allies and partners in defending democracy against authoritarianism and standing with the Ukrainian people. We will continue to ensure that Russia's actions do not go unpunished."

 The Rt. Hon. Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada

Associated Links

This document is also available at https://pm.gc.ca

SOURCE Prime Minister's Office

Cision

View original content: http://www.newswire.ca/en/releases/archive/March2022/04/c1203.html
Russian authorities are reportedly blocking access to Twitter, Facebook, and other popular social media and news sites as part of a growing crackdown on independent sources of information as the invasion of Ukraine continues.

The Russia communications agency Roskomnadzor announced the restrictions via Facebook on Friday, citing what it said were 26 instances of discrimination against Russian media and information resources by Facebook in recent years, as well Facebooks fact-checking labels and other restrictions on Russian state media outlets.

Ukraine latest  live updates

The social network condemned the new policy, arguing it would cut off average people from important forms of social and political contact.

Soon millions of ordinary Russians will find themselves cut off from reliable information, deprived of their everyday ways of connecting with family and friends and silenced from speaking out, wrote Nick Clegg, president of global affairs at Facebooks parent company Meta in a statement on Friday. We will continue to do everything we can to restore our services so they remain available to people to safely and securely express themselves and organise for action.

Russia citizens will also see their access to Twitter blocked, Germanys Der Spiegel reported.

The shutdown apparently began as early as last week, according to a report from internet monitoring group NetBlocks, which noted failed and massively slowed connections between every major Russian internet provider and the social media site.

Twitter has called for Russia to maintain free and open access to social media sites.

We believe people should have free and open access to the Internet, which is particularly important during times of crisis, the company wrote in a statement on Twitter last week.

The new limits are the latest in a back-and-forth information war that has accompanied the ground war in Ukraine.

Earlier this week, Meta, Facebooks parent company, and YouTube both blocked access to Russia state-owned media outlets Russia Today (RT) and Sputnik in the European Union.

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On Tuesday, television distributor DirecTV dropped RTs programming.

Inside of Russia, its getting increasingly difficult to access independent information sources about the Ukrainian effort or voice critical opinions about the war.

On Friday, Russian lawmakers advanced a new law that would make sharing fake news about the countrys military punishable by up to 15 years in prison.

This week, it also blocked two outlets known for their solid journalism: TV Rain, Russias last independent news network, and Echo of Moscow, a long-running radio station.

Many reporters at TV Rain have fled the country.

Novaya Gazeta, a Russian paper helmed by Nobel Peace Prize-winning journalist Dmitry Muratov, announced on Friday it would remove stories about Russias invasion of Ukraine, out of safety concerns for its staff.

Military censorship in Russia has quickly moved into a new phase: from the threat of blocking and closing publications (almost fully implemented) it has moved to the threat of criminal prosecution of both journalists and citizens who spread information about military hostilities that is different from the press releases of the Ministry of Defense, the paper told readers, adding, There is no doubt that this threat will be realised.

The new climate has also challenged foreign outlets reporting in Russia.

Following the announcement of the fake news law, the BBC said it would suspend its operations in Russia.

On Wednesday, the Russian government warned Voice of America its Russian site would be blocked unless it stopped covering Ukraine, though the outlet has resisted threats so far.

Russia has also arrested thousands of people who have protested the war inside the country.
Russias national parliament, the Duma, passed a new law Friday that will make it a criminal act to call the war in Ukraine a war.

The move prompted the BBC to immediately suspend the work of its journalists in the country over fears for their safety.

More from The Hollywood Reporter

This legislation appears to criminalize the process of independent journalist, wrote BBC director-general Tim Davie. It leaves us no other option than to temporarily suspend the work of all BBC News journalists and their support staff within the Russian Federation while we assess the full implications of this unwelcome development.

Davie said the decision was taken so as not to expose its journalists to the risk of criminal prosecution simply for doing their jobs. He also confirmed that the BBC News service in Russian would continue to operate from outside Russia and that its journalists would continue to report from within Ukraine.

The new legislation envisions penalties of up to 15 years in prison for the distribution of false news about military operations in Ukraine, which the Russian military invaded Feb. 24. False news is described as anything not officially approved by Moscow.

Russias media regulator Roskomnadzor has issued strict guidelines over coverage of Ukraine and the Russian military, ordering media across the country to only publish information provided by official sources. It is forbidden, for example, to describe the attacks on Ukraine as an invasion or a war; instead, they must be called a special military operation.

The crackdown on independent media has already led to the shuttering of two of Russias last remaining popular independent news sources.

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On March 3, the Moscow-based Ekho Moskvy radio station, which first went on air in 1990, said it was closing down. Popular Russian television channel Dozhd on Thursday also suspended its operations amid pressure linked to its coverage.

Dozhd CEO Natalya Sindeyeva announced the decision live on air, saying she had taken the drastic step after a meeting of Dozhds staff members. The move came just a day after Dozhds chief editor, Tikhon Dzyadko, announced on Telegram that he and several other Dozhd journalists had left Russia out of fear for their safety.

The U.S. State Department this week accused Moscow of mounting a full assault on media freedom and the truth, saying officials there are seeking to mislead and suppress information about Russias ongoing invasion of Ukraine.

Russia has also reportedly blocked access to Twitter and Facebook, several big app stores, and Western news organizations including Germanys Deutsche Welle, according to Der Spiegel reporter Mathieu von Rohr.

Russia blocks Twitter, Facebook, BBC, Deutsche Welle, App Stores  Mathieu von Rohr (@mathieuvonrohr) March 3, 2022

8:52 a.m. Updated with news of the BBC suspending the work of its journalists in Russia.

Best of The Hollywood Reporter

Click here to read the full article.
If you've seen the trailer for The Thing About Pam  featuring a prosthetically tumid Renee Zellweger taking numerous noisy slurps from a mega-cup of convenience store soda  then you know that this six-part adaptation of the Dateline podcast is not playing it straight. And thank the TV gods for that. With its zippy tone of cocked-eyebrow camp, the limited NBC series about convicted murderer Pam Hupp is a welcome departure from the current avalanche of poker-faced true-crime efforts.

Pam Hupp's bizarre and circuitous route from Missouri house-flipper to infamous tabloid-TV killer has done big business for Dateline (five episodes, plus a hit podcast), and the team behind Pam doesn't try to fix what isn't broken. The first voice viewers hear in the premiere is that of longtime Dateline NBC host Keith Morrison, who narrates the scripted series with his deep, potboiler purr.

It's December 27, 2011, and a man named Russ Faria (Glenn Fleshler) has just found his wife, Betsy (Katy Mixon), dead on the floor of their Troy, Mo., home with a knife in her neck. Soon enough, Russ will be the prime suspect  thanks in part to Betsy's best friend, Pam (Zellweger), who regales the investigating officers with tales of Russ' "aggressive" temper. It's only after Russ takes the fall for his wife's murder that his tenacious lawyer, Joel Schwartz (Josh Duhamel), uncovers Pam's motives for wanting her best friend dead.

The Thing About Pam

Skip Bolen/NBC Renee Zellweger in 'The Thing About Pam'

At first, the show comes on a little strong with the whimsy. We're not even three minutes in when Pam, dressed in an all-white pantsuit, starts talking to the camera, introducing herself and her family  husband Mark (Sean Bridgers), son Travis (Drew Scheid), and daughter Sarah (Sarah Stipe)  via a corny, recruitment-style video. "I'm a pillar of the community!" she squawks in her Midwestern twang, giving us an exaggerated wink.

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But Pam settles into a spirit of wry satire as it chronicles the grimly comical law enforcement ineptitude and/or cavalier disregard for the truth that allowed Pam to elude capture for so long. Newly elected county prosecutor Leah Askey (Judy Greer, an expert at funny fussbudgetry) pushes the lead detective on the case (Mac Brandt) to find solid evidence linking Russ to the crime so she can win her first big case. Schwartz and his associate (Ben Chase), meanwhile, face the challenge of getting Russ a fair trial in small-town Troy, a place where the judge and the prosecutor are old friends from high school, and everybody (including prospective jurors) hangs out at the same watering hole. (As the dogged and quick-witted Schwartz, Duhamel exudes such leading-man magnetism it'll be a crime if he doesn't walk away from Pam with another series.)

And there in the middle of it all is Pam, the last woman to see Betsy alive, as the prosecution's star witness. It would take years  and another murder  for the truth to come out.

The Thing About Pam

Skip Bolen/NBC Renee Zellweger and Josh Duhamel in 'The Thing About Pam'

Too often, there's a queasy note of apology running through these true-life adaptations. (Sure, Elizabeth Holmes duped people with cancer, but do you know how hard it is to be a female CEO in Silicon Valley?) The Thing About Pam lives in Dateline's world, where there are only two types of people involved in heinous crimes: victims and killers. Zellweger, her A-list face and petite frame buried under layers of artificial bulk, attacks the role with a cheeky, steely-eyed bravado. Her Pam is a master manipulator disguised as a chatty busybody, and an attention-seeking martyr capable of casual cruelty. Pam depicts the character's childhood as generally miserable  her family was poor, her mother Shirley (Celia Weston, in an exquisitely shrewish turn) a drinker with a penchant for savage insults.

Still, based on the four episodes made available for review, the show has no interest in generating sympathy for anyone other than the people Pam hurt: Betsy, Russ, and their two daughters, Mariah (Gideon Adlon) and Lily (Olivia Luccardi), who were left temporarily orphaned by their mother's murder and their stepfather's wrongful conviction. The Thing About Pam knows that sometimes villains make for the best headliners. Grade: B+

The Thing About Pam premieres March 8 at 10 p.m. ET/PT on NBC.

Sign up for Entertainment Weekly's free daily newsletter to get breaking TV news, exclusive first looks, recaps, reviews, interviews with your favorite stars, and more.

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After approximately two years of requiring face masks inside Connecticut courthouses, the practice will be optional beginning on Monday, Judicial Branch officials announced.

In an email sent to judges and staff on Thursday, Chief Justice Richard Robinson said the branch will suspend its COVID-19-related policy of requiring individuals to wear masks inside court facilities. The notice is also on the Judicial Branch website.

Robinson said the change is in keeping with the branchs adherence to state Department of Health and Centers for Disease Control and Protection guidelines.

Robinson said the update dovetails with improving state public health metrics and said COVID-19 cases among branch employees and others are down significantly in recent weeks.

File photo

If or when COVID-19 activity increases in the state, mask use by individuals may again be strongly recommended or required when in common areas or other locations indoors where they may be in close contact with others, Robinson wrote.

In Eastern Connecticut courthouses, including New London, Norwich and Danielson, judicial marshals were tasked with enforcing the mask-wearing policies. On any given day, those marshals could be heard asking visitors several times over the course of a morning to either don a mask or to hook it on properly.

More: How do police keep prisoners safe? Inside local jails after man dies in Norwich custody.

The masks posed a challenge in some instances, especially during recent trials and other in-person proceedings, when witness testimony, lawyers voices  and even a judges intonations  were difficult to hear.

The new guidelines announcement came the same week a sentencing in a New London Superior Court triple-murder case was postponed due a COVID-19 issue.

More: COVID-19 prompts sentencing postponement of Griswold triple-murderer. Here's the new date.

Robinson said masks will still be required for all individuals in juvenile detention facilities. Jurors summoned for service will be asked - but not be required - to mask-up while in assembly and deliberation rooms.

Story continues

Robinson said the branch is still supporting the practice of social distancing while indoors, as well as the choice of any employee, visitor or other individual to mask up inside its facilities. Enhanced cleaning protocols, instituted when courts began re-opening in mid-2020, will continue and hand-sanitation stations will remain in place.

I am grateful for your dedication to the mission of the Judicial Branch throughout the course of the pandemic and as we emerge from the strict guidelines that have been in place, Robinson wrote.

John Penney can be reached at jpenney@norwichbulletin.com or at (860) 857-6965

This article originally appeared on The Bulletin: CT State Judicial Branch to no longer require face masks in courts
Branding is seen on a shopping trolley at a branch of the Sainsbury's supermarket in London

LONDON (Reuters) - British supermarket group Sainsbury's has removed from sale all products that are 100% sourced from Russia in response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, it said on Friday.

It said from Friday it will no longer sell two products  Russian Standard vodka and Karpayskiye black sunflower seeds. On Thursday, the Co-operative and Morrisons both de-listed Russian Standard vodka.

Sainsbury's also said it will re-name "Chicken Kiev" to "Chicken Kyiv".

(Reporting by James Davey; Editing by Alistair Smout)
Rating Action: Moody's upgrades and will withdraw United Coconut Planters Bank's ratingsGlobal Credit Research - 04 Mar 2022Singapore, March 04, 2022 -- Moody's Investors Service has upgraded United Coconut Planters Bank (UCPB)'s long-term deposit rating to Baa2 from Ba3, deposit note program rating to (P)Baa2 from (P)Ba3, and Adjusted Baseline Credit Assessment (BCA) to ba1 from b2, following the completion of the legal merger between Land Bank of the Philippines (LBP; Baa2 stable) and UCPB on 1 March 2021. LBP is the surviving entity absorbing all the assets and liabilities of UCPB, which has ceased to exist. The ratings were placed on review for possible upgrade on 6 August 2021.The outlook on UCPB's long-term deposit rating is stable.Subsequently, Moody's will withdraw all of UCPB's ratings.Please refer to the Moody's Investors Service's Policy for Withdrawal of Credit Ratings, available on its website, www.moodys.com.The list of affected ratings can be found at the end of this press release.RATINGS RATIONALEUCPB's long-term deposit ratings, program rating and Adjusted BCA were upgraded to align with those of LBP upon the completion of the merger with LBP, a much larger wholly government-owned bank with a stronger credit profile, on 1 March 2022. All of UCPB's liabilities have been assumed by LBP. Subsequently, Moody's will withdraw the BCA and the deposit ratings assigned to UCPB.Headquartered in Manila, United Coconut Planters Bank reported total assets of PHP347.4 billion as of 31 December 2020. Headquartered in Manila, Land Bank of the Philippines reported total assets of PHP2.4 trillion as of 31 December 2020. Moody's estimates the combined entity will be the second-largest bank in the Philippines, with a market share in assets of approximately 15% as of the end of 2020.RATING OUTLOOKThe stable outlook on UCPB's is aligned with that of LBP. For ratings and outlook of LBP, please refer to: https://www.moodys.com/credit-ratings/Land-Bank-of-the-Philippines-credit-rating-600017263/summary FACTORS THAT COULD LEAD TO AN UPGRADE OR DOWNGRADE OF THE RATINGSMoody's does not see either upward or downward pressure on the ratings at the time of withdrawal.The principal methodology used in these ratings was Banks Methodology published in July 2021 and available at https://www.moodys.com/researchdocumentcontentpage.aspx?docid=PBC_1269625. Alternatively, please see the Rating Methodologies page on www.moodys.com for a copy of this methodology.LIST OF AFFECTED RATINGSUpgrades and will be subsequently withdrawn:..Issuer: United Coconut Planters Bank.... Adjusted Baseline Credit Assessment, Upgraded to ba1 from b2.... Short-term Counterparty Risk Assessment, Upgraded to P-2(cr) from NP(cr).... Long-term Counterparty Risk Assessment, Upgraded to Baa2(cr) from Ba2(cr).... Short-term Foreign and Local Currency Counterparty Risk Ratings, Upgraded to P-2 from NP.... Long-term Foreign and Local Currency Counterparty Risk Ratings, Upgraded to Baa2 from Ba2.... Short-term Foreign Currency Deposit Note/CD Program, Upgraded to (P)P-2 from (P)NP.... Long-term Foreign Currency Deposit Note/CD Program, Upgraded to (P)Baa2 from (P)Ba3.... Long-term Foreign Currency Deposit Rating, Upgraded to Baa2 from Ba3, outlook changed to Stable from Rating Under Review and will be subsequently withdrawn.... Short-term Foreign Currency Deposit Rating, Upgraded to P-2 from NPConfirmation and will be subsequently withdrawn:..Issuer: United Coconut Planters Bank.... Baseline Credit Assessment, Confirmed at b2Outlook Action:..Issuer: United Coconut Planters Bank....Outlook, changed to Stable from Rating Under Review and will be subsequently withdrawnREGULATORY DISCLOSURESFor further specification of Moody's key rating assumptions and sensitivity analysis, see the sections Methodology Assumptions and Sensitivity to Assumptions in the disclosure form. Moody's Rating Symbols and Definitions can be found at: https://www.moodys.com/researchdocumentcontentpage.aspx?docid=PBC_79004.For ratings issued on a program, series, category/class of debt or security this announcement provides certain regulatory disclosures in relation to each rating of a subsequently issued bond or note of the same series, category/class of debt, security or pursuant to a program for which the ratings are derived exclusively from existing ratings in accordance with Moody's rating practices. For ratings issued on a support provider, this announcement provides certain regulatory disclosures in relation to the credit rating action on the support provider and in relation to each particular credit rating action for securities that derive their credit ratings from the support provider's credit rating. For provisional ratings, this announcement provides certain regulatory disclosures in relation to the provisional rating assigned, and in relation to a definitive rating that may be assigned subsequent to the final issuance of the debt, in each case where the transaction structure and terms have not changed prior to the assignment of the definitive rating in a manner that would have affected the rating. For further information please see the ratings tab on the issuer/entity page for the respective issuer on www.moodys.com.For any affected securities or rated entities receiving direct credit support from the primary entity(ies) of this credit rating action, and whose ratings may change as a result of this credit rating action, the associated regulatory disclosures will be those of the guarantor entity. Exceptions to this approach exist for the following disclosures, if applicable to jurisdiction: Ancillary Services, Disclosure to rated entity, Disclosure from rated entity.The ratings have been disclosed to the rated entity or its designated agent(s) and issued with no amendment resulting from that disclosure.These ratings are solicited. Please refer to Moody's Policy for Designating and Assigning Unsolicited Credit Ratings available on its website www.moodys.com.Regulatory disclosures contained in this press release apply to the credit rating and, if applicable, the related rating outlook or rating review.Moody's general principles for assessing environmental, social and governance (ESG) risks in our credit analysis can be found at http://www.moodys.com/researchdocumentcontentpage.aspx?docid=PBC_1288235.The Global Scale Credit Rating on this Credit Rating Announcement was issued by one of Moody's affiliates outside the EU and is endorsed by Moody's Deutschland GmbH, An der Welle 5, Frankfurt am Main 60322, Germany, in accordance with Art.4 paragraph 3 of the Regulation (EC) No 1060/2009 on Credit Rating Agencies. Further information on the EU endorsement status and on the Moody's office that issued the credit rating is available on www.moodys.com.The Global Scale Credit Rating on this Credit Rating Announcement was issued by one of Moody's affiliates outside the UK and is endorsed by Moody's Investors Service Limited, One Canada Square, Canary Wharf, London E14 5FA under the law applicable to credit rating agencies in the UK. Further information on the UK endorsement status and on the Moody's office that issued the credit rating is available on www.moodys.com.Please see www.moodys.com for any updates on changes to the lead rating analyst and to the Moody's legal entity that has issued the rating.Please see the ratings tab on the issuer/entity page on www.moodys.com for additional regulatory disclosures for each credit rating. Joyce Ong Analyst Financial Institutions Group Moody's Investors Service Singapore Pte. Ltd. 50 Raffles Place #23-06 Singapore Land Tower Singapore 48623 Singapore JOURNALISTS: 852 3758 1350 Client Service: 852 3551 3077 Graeme Knowd MD - Banking Financial Institutions Group JOURNALISTS: 852 3758 1350 Client Service: 852 3551 3077 Releasing Office: Moody's Investors Service Singapore Pte. Ltd. 50 Raffles Place #23-06 Singapore Land Tower Singapore 48623 Singapore JOURNALISTS: 852 3758 1350 Client Service: 852 3551 3077  2022 Moodys Corporation, Moodys Investors Service, Inc., Moodys Analytics, Inc. and/or their licensors and affiliates (collectively, MOODYS). All rights reserved.CREDIT RATINGS ISSUED BY MOODY'S CREDIT RATINGS AFFILIATES ARE THEIR CURRENT OPINIONS OF THE RELATIVE FUTURE CREDIT RISK OF ENTITIES, CREDIT COMMITMENTS, OR DEBT OR DEBT-LIKE SECURITIES, AND MATERIALS, PRODUCTS, SERVICES AND INFORMATION PUBLISHED BY MOODYS (COLLECTIVELY, PUBLICATIONS) MAY INCLUDE SUCH CURRENT OPINIONS. MOODYS DEFINES CREDIT RISK AS THE RISK THAT AN ENTITY MAY NOT MEET ITS CONTRACTUAL FINANCIAL OBLIGATIONS AS THEY COME DUE AND ANY ESTIMATED FINANCIAL LOSS IN THE EVENT OF DEFAULT OR IMPAIRMENT. SEE APPLICABLE MOODYS RATING SYMBOLS AND DEFINITIONS PUBLICATION FOR INFORMATION ON THE TYPES OF CONTRACTUAL FINANCIAL OBLIGATIONS ADDRESSED BY MOODYS CREDIT RATINGS. CREDIT RATINGS DO NOT ADDRESS ANY OTHER RISK, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO: LIQUIDITY RISK, MARKET VALUE RISK, OR PRICE VOLATILITY. CREDIT RATINGS, NON-CREDIT ASSESSMENTS (ASSESSMENTS), AND OTHER OPINIONS INCLUDED IN MOODYS PUBLICATIONS ARE NOT STATEMENTS OF CURRENT OR HISTORICAL FACT. MOODYS PUBLICATIONS MAY ALSO INCLUDE QUANTITATIVE MODEL-BASED ESTIMATES OF CREDIT RISK AND RELATED OPINIONS OR COMMENTARY PUBLISHED BY MOODYS ANALYTICS, INC. AND/OR ITS AFFILIATES. 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MOODYS ISSUES ITS CREDIT RATINGS, ASSESSMENTS AND OTHER OPINIONS AND PUBLISHES ITS PUBLICATIONS WITH THE EXPECTATION AND UNDERSTANDING THAT EACH INVESTOR WILL, WITH DUE CARE, MAKE ITS OWN STUDY AND EVALUATION OF EACH SECURITY THAT IS UNDER CONSIDERATION FOR PURCHASE, HOLDING, OR SALE.MOODYS CREDIT RATINGS, ASSESSMENTS, OTHER OPINIONS, AND PUBLICATIONS ARE NOT INTENDED FOR USE BY RETAIL INVESTORS AND IT WOULD BE RECKLESS AND INAPPROPRIATE FOR RETAIL INVESTORS TO USE MOODYS CREDIT RATINGS, ASSESSMENTS, OTHER OPINIONS OR PUBLICATIONS WHEN MAKING AN INVESTMENT DECISION. IF IN DOUBT YOU SHOULD CONTACT YOUR FINANCIAL OR OTHER PROFESSIONAL ADVISER.ALL INFORMATION CONTAINED HEREIN IS PROTECTED BY LAW, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO, COPYRIGHT LAW, AND NONE OF SUCH INFORMATION MAY BE COPIED OR OTHERWISE REPRODUCED, REPACKAGED, FURTHER TRANSMITTED, TRANSFERRED, DISSEMINATED, REDISTRIBUTED OR RESOLD, OR STORED FOR SUBSEQUENT USE FOR ANY SUCH PURPOSE, IN WHOLE OR IN PART, IN ANY FORM OR MANNER OR BY ANY MEANS WHATSOEVER, BY ANY PERSON WITHOUT MOODYS PRIOR WRITTEN CONSENT.MOODYS CREDIT RATINGS, ASSESSMENTS, OTHER OPINIONS AND PUBLICATIONS ARE NOT INTENDED FOR USE BY ANY PERSON AS A BENCHMARK AS THAT TERM IS DEFINED FOR REGULATORY PURPOSES AND MUST NOT BE USED IN ANY WAY THAT COULD RESULT IN THEM BEING CONSIDERED A BENCHMARK.All information contained herein is obtained by MOODYS from sources believed by it to be accurate and reliable. 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Global Design, Research, Promotional and Consulting Services Market

Global Design, Research, Promotional and Consulting Services Market

Dublin, March 04, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The "Design, Research, Promotional And Consulting Services Global Market Report 2022" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.



This report provides strategists, marketers and senior management with the critical information they need to assess the global design, research, promotional and consulting services market as it emerges from the COVID-19 shut down.



Reasons to Purchase

Gain a truly global perspective with the most comprehensive report available on this market covering 50+ geographies.

Understand how the market is being affected by the coronavirus and how it is likely to emerge and grow as the impact of the virus abates.

Create regional and country strategies on the basis of local data and analysis.

Identify growth segments for investment.

Outperform competitors using forecast data and the drivers and trends shaping the market.

Understand customers based on the latest market research findings.

Benchmark performance against key competitors.

Utilize the relationships between key data sets for superior strategizing.

Suitable for supporting your internal and external presentations with reliable high quality data and analysis

Description:

Where is the largest and fastest growing market for the design, research, promotional and consulting services? How does the market relate to the overall economy, demography and other similar markets? What forces will shape the market going forward? The Design, Research, Promotional and Consulting Services market global report answers all these questions and many more.



The report covers market characteristics, size and growth, segmentation, regional and country breakdowns, competitive landscape, market shares, trends and strategies for this market. It traces the market's historic and forecast market growth by geography. It places the market within the context of the wider design, research, promotional and consulting services market, and compares it with other markets.

Story continues

The market characteristics section of the report defines and explains the market.

The market size section gives the market size ($b) covering both the historic growth of the market, the impact of the COVID-19 virus and forecasting its recovery.

Market segmentations break down market into sub markets.

The regional and country breakdowns section gives an analysis of the market in each geography and the size of the market by geography and compares their historic and forecast growth. It covers the impact and recovery trajectory of COVID-19 for all regions, key developed countries and major emerging markets.

Competitive landscape gives a description of the competitive nature of the market, market shares, and a description of the leading companies. Key financial deals which have shaped the market in recent years are identified.

The trends and strategies section analyses the shape of the market as it emerges from the crisis and suggests how companies can grow as the market recovers.

The design, research, promotional and consulting services market section of the report gives context. It compares the design, research, promotional and consulting services market with other segments of the professional services market by size and growth, historic and forecast. It analyses GDP proportion, expenditure per capita, design, research, promotional and consulting services indicators comparison.

Major companies in the design, research, promotional and consulting services market include Accenture, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited, Total SA, PowerChina, WPP plc, PwC, Ernst & Young, Omnicom Group Inc., Jacobs Engineering Group Inc. and Fluor Corporation.



The global design, research, promotional and consulting services market is expected to grow from $3987.91 billion in 2021 to $4401.17 billion in 2022 at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 10.4%. The growth is mainly due to the companies rearranging their operations and recovering from the COVID-19 impact, which had earlier led to restrictive containment measures involving social distancing, remote working, and the closure of commercial activities that resulted in operational challenges. The market is expected to reach $6257.62 billion in 2026 at a CAGR of 9.2%.



The design, research, promotional and consulting services (also referred to as general professional services) market consists of the sales of design, research, promotional and consulting services and related goods by entities (organizations, sole traders and partnerships) that offer expertise and services to a wide range of industries, and in some cases to households and individuals. Activities include architectural services, engineering services, design services, research services, advertising services, photographic services, and other design, research, promotional and consulting services. Design, research, promotional and consulting establishments undertake processes where human capital is the major input. These establishments make available the knowledge and skills of their employees, often on an assignment basis, where an individual or team is responsible for the delivery of services to the client.



The main types of design, research, promotional and consulting services are photographic services, market research services, advertising, public relations, and related services, scientific research and development services, environmental consulting services, management consulting services, specialized design services, architectural and engineering consultants and related services. Photographic services is a department of Design and Publication Services which offers photographic services to University academics and employees, such as a photographer and a photo lab technician. The different modes include online and offline. The various service providers include large enterprise and small and medium enterprise.



North America was the largest region in the design, research, promotional and consulting services market in 2021. Western Europe was the second largest region in design, research, promotional and consulting services market. The regions covered in this report are Asia-Pacific, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, North America, South America, Middle East, Africa.



The outbreak of Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has acted as a restraint on the design, research, promotional and consulting services market in 2020 as governments globally imposed lockdowns and restricted trade, thereby limiting the need for professional services. COVID-19 is an infectious disease with flu-like symptoms including fever, cough, and difficulty in breathing. The virus was first identified in 2019 in Wuhan, Hubei province of the People's Republic of China and spread globally including Western Europe, North America and Asia. Steps by national governments to contain the transmission have resulted in a decline in economic activity with countries entering a state of 'lock down' and the outbreak had a negative impact on businesses throughout 2020 and into 2021. However, it is expected that the design, research, promotional and consulting services market will recover from the shock across the forecast period as it is a 'black swan' event and not related to ongoing or fundamental weaknesses in the market or the global economy.



Key Topics Covered:



1. Executive Summary



2. Report Structure



3. Design, Research, Promotional And Consulting Services Market Characteristics

3.1. Market Definition

3.2. Key Segmentations



4. Design, Research, Promotional And Consulting Services Market Product Analysis

4.1. Leading Products/ Services

4.2. Key Features and Differentiators

4.3. Development Products



5. Design, Research, Promotional And Consulting Services Market Supply Chain

5.1. Supply Chain

5.2. Distribution

5.3. End Customers



6. Design, Research, Promotional And Consulting Services Market Customer Information

6.1. Customer Preferences

6.2. End Use Market Size and Growth



7. Design, Research, Promotional And Consulting Services Market Trends And Strategies



8. Impact Of COVID-19 On Design, Research, Promotional And Consulting Services



9. Design, Research, Promotional And Consulting Services Market Size And Growth

9.1. Market Size

9.2. Historic Market Growth, Value ($ Billion)

9.2.1. Drivers Of The Market

9.2.2. Restraints On The Market

9.3. Forecast Market Growth, Value ($ Billion)

9.3.1. Drivers Of The Market

9.3.2. Restraints On The Market



10. Design, Research, Promotional And Consulting Services Market Regional Analysis

10.1. Global Design, Research, Promotional And Consulting Services Market, 2021, By Region, Value ($ Billion)

10.2. Global Design, Research, Promotional And Consulting Services Market, 2016-2021, 2021-2026F, 2031F, Historic And Forecast, By Region

10.3. Global Design, Research, Promotional And Consulting Services Market, Growth And Market Share Comparison, By Region



11. Design, Research, Promotional And Consulting Services Market Segmentation

11.1. Global Design, Research, Promotional And Consulting Services Market, Segmentation By Type, Historic and Forecast, 2016-2021, 2021-2026F, 2031F, $ Billion

11.2. Global Design, Research, Promotional And Consulting Services Market, Segmentation By Mode, Historic and Forecast, 2016-2021, 2021-2026F, 2031F, $ Billion

11.3. Global Design, Research, Promotional And Consulting Services Market, Segmentation By Service Provider, Historic and Forecast, 2016-2021, 2021-2026F, 2031F, $ Billion

12. Design, Research, Promotional And Consulting Services Market Segments

12.1. Global Photographic Services Market, Segmentation By Type, 2016-2021, 2021-2026F, 2031F, Value ($ Billion) - Portrait Studios Services; Commercial Studios

12.2. Global Market Research Services Market, Segmentation By Type, 2016-2021, 2021-2026F, 2031F, Value ($ Billion) - Marketing Research And Analysis Services; Public Opinion And Election Polling

12.3. Global Advertising, Public Relations, And Related Services Market, Segmentation By Type, 2016-2021, 2021-2026F, 2031F, Value ($ Billion) - Advertising Agencies; Other Advertising Services; Public Relations; Direct Mail Advertising; Billboard & Outdoor Advertising; Media Buying Agencies And Representative Firms; Print Advertising Distribution

12.4. Global Scientific Research And Development Services Market, Segmentation By Type, 2016-2021, 2021-2026F, 2031F, Value ($ Billion) - Social Sciences And Humanities Services; Physical, Engineering, And Life Sciences; Nanotechnology Services; Biotechnology Services

12.5. Global Environmental Consulting Services Market, Segmentation By Type, 2016-2021, 2021-2026F, 2031F, Value ($ Billion) - Site Remediation Consulting Services; Other Environmental Consulting Services; Water And Waste Management Consulting Services; Environment Management, Compliance And Due Diligence

12.6. Global Management Consulting Services Market, Segmentation By Type, 2016-2021, 2021-2026F, 2031F, Value ($ Billion) - Operations Advisory; Financial Advisory; Technology Advisory; Strategy Advisory; Other Consulting Services ; HR Advisory

12.7. Global Specialized Design Services Market, Segmentation By Type, 2016-2021, 2021-2026F, 2031F, Value ($ Billion) - Interior Design Services; Graphic Design Services; Industrial Design Services; Fashion And Other Design Services

12.8. Global Architectural, Engineering Consultants And Related Services Market, Segmentation By Type, 2016-2021, 2021-2026F, 2031F, Value ($ Billion) - Engineering Services; Architectural Services; Laboratory Testing Services; Surveying & Mapping Services; Building Inspection Services; Geophysical Services; Drafting Services



13. Design, Research, Promotional And Consulting Services Market Metrics

13.1. Design, Research, Promotional And Consulting Services Market Size, Percentage Of GDP, 2016-2026F, Global

13.2. Per Capita Average Design, Research, Promotional And Consulting Services Market Expenditure, 2016-2026F, Global

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/bp9ca8

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This spring, graduate students in the University of Mary Washingtons College of Education are gaining valuable teaching experience heading up their own classrooms, in addition to filling vacant teaching positions at area schools.

Twenty UMW students are receiving paychecks for taking full-time positions in Fredericksburg, Spotsylvania and Stafford public schools through a pilot apprenticeship program launched last year to assist schools dealing with teacher shortages.

We were able to fill four vacancies at Falmouth Elementary School with apprentice teachers, said Theresa Aberg, supervisor of human resources for Stafford County Public Schools.

Falmouth had an unfilled art teacher position at the beginning of this school year and two other teachers resigned mid-year, Aberg said.

Aberg said the partnership allows the schools to hire the next best thing to a licensed, qualified teacher.

Its as close as youre going to get to a highly qualified teacher without actually being a highly qualified teacher, she said. These students have had all the coursework and preparation and are just minus one semester. So its really beneficial for our students.

Participation in the program has also helped with recruitment, Aberg said.

Stafford hired five elementary apprentice teachers through the UMW program last year and all five retained their positions this year, she said.

Stafford filled a total of 10 vacant teaching positions with UMW apprentice teachers this spring.

Spotsylvania hired eight apprentice teacherssix at the elementary level and two at the secondary leveland Hugh Mercer Elementary School in Fredericksburg hired two, one first grade teacher and one fifth grade teacher.

We had a teacher come out of retirement to fill the fifth grade position for half the year, said Sue Keffer, director of human resources for Fredericksburg City Public Schools. There definitely is a teacher shortage.

Keffer said Fredericksburgs school system was looking for more ways to partner with UMW.

We know the College of Education is providing excellent teachers, so we wanted to see if would be a good fit, she said.

One of the teacher apprentices the division hired this spring went through Fredericksburg schools herself, Keffer said. The hope is that the apprenticeship program will help encourage graduating teachers to stay local to the area, she said.

All of the apprentice teachers have an assigned mentor teacher in their school, as well as a sponsor through the College of Education.

Tristin Fidler, supervisor of teacher quality for Fredericksburg schools, said that support from a mentor is crucial for teacher retentionwhich the city School Board has identified as its top goal for the new fiscal year that starts July 1.

It was a hard job before the pandemic, Fidler said. Teachers have had to fill lots of roles. I think people didnt quite realize how hard their job is. Feeling appreciated and supported and valued is key to keeping teachers in the job.

Chloe Wade was hired to fill the vacant art position at Falmouth Elementary in Stafford. She spent a week shadowing the long-term substitute who had been in the position and then took over, planning daily lessons for hundreds of students ages 511.

She said being in charge of her own classroom has been a challenge, but that she is getting more comfortable every day and that the joy she sees in her students when they learn something new is the best part of her day.

Today, I was showing them watercolor techniques and their minds were just blown, Wade said. It makes me happy when I see kids light up when they are doing or learning something new.

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Stafford County supervisors on Tuesday rezoned 44 acres of woods and fields off U.S. 17 to make way for apartments, townhomes and a small amount of retail space.

With Supervisor Darrell English abstaining, supervisors voted 42 to rezone the former residential property behind Paradise Diner to urban mixed-use to accommodate Mainline, a complex of 84 one-bedroom, 132 two-bedroom and 38 three-bedroom apartments in 11 separate three-story buildings. The site plan also calls for 114 town houses to be built on the property, along with nearly 4,800 square feet of commercial real estate.

Charlie Payne, a Fredericksburg attorney who represents the project, said apartment costs will average about $1,800 per month across the board, but Payne told supervisors the facility would also offer a 5 percent rent discount to all Stafford County employees and a $100,000 fund to help veterans, active duty military, first responders, teachers and county employees buy a new town house.

The new residential development will be accessible initially by Glen Alice Lane, a one-lane gravel drive that dead-ends at an open pasture surrounded by mature trees. The lane would eventually be improved, but the builder also plans to connect the new development to the northern terminus of RV Parkway to allow Mainline residents an easier left turn out of the new neighborhood onto U.S. 17.

George Washington District Supervisor Tom Coen said the project meets the goal of the countys strategic plan to place new growth into the countys targeted growth area, not in its rural areas.

If youre going to get people out of Hartwood, George Washington, [Griffis] Widewater and into where we want people to be, youve got to approve something, Coen said. If you dont, theyre just going to go back out and keep building McMansions and causing the exact sprawl that people say they dont like.

Supervisor Meg Bohmke said she would like to see the section of the county improve where the apartments are now planned, but opposed the rezoning along with Supervisor Crystal Vanuch. Bohmke said during a recent meeting with the countys School Board, a bleak picture was painted of the overcrowding problem at many of Staffords elementary schools.

Thats nine out of our 18 elementary schools, thats 50 percent of them that are overcrowded, Bohmke said. We are just busting at the seams.

The builder is offering $4.1 million to help offset the expected strain on county roads, schools and public safety services.

Adam Lynch, who serves as a river steward with the Friends of the Rappahannock, told supervisors the area planned for Mainline features 15 and 25 degree-plus grades which if disturbed, will have an adverse impact on the environment.

This project site is not a normal site, Lynch said. When you develop properties at those grades it creates opportunities for instability. It also requires a lot of regrading in order to flatten out areas that are currently hills and valleys and that permeates into areas of environmental sensitivity.

Others who spoke at the public hearing said the project will improve an isolated area of the county that desperately needs a facelift, but a traffic study provided by the developer claims Mainline will generate 143 vehicle trips during the morning peak hour and 178 trips during the evening peak hour and add about 2,300 additional vehicles on U.S. 17 each day.

I think the extension of RV Parkway will be helpful in managing traffic, said Alane Callander, a Falmouth resident.

Back in September, owners of the property told supervisors they believed the project would bring much-needed commercial business to a well-traveled area of Falmouth.

[This project] would be a drawing card for commercial, that they could see that this project is an upscale project and I think that this would be the dam-breaker, you might say, for the commercials to start coming in their office buildings, upscale restaurants, things like that, said Roger Embrey.

Stafford Economic Development Director John Holden told supervisors Mainline would also help the county maintain its federally designated HUBZone status. The program created by the U.S. Small Business Administration helps businesses that operate and employ people in historically underused business zones.

HubZones provide advantages for companies securing government contracts, Holden said. As one of our major employers in this county is indeed government contracting, HubZones are an important tool for us to encourage business expansion and investment.

James Scott Baron: 540/374-5438 jbaron@freelancestar.com

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By Trend

Kazakh FlyAristan airline company has launched flights to Uzbek Namangan city, Trend reports via Uzbekistan Airportss statement.

On March 1, the plane from Almaty (Kazakhstan) landed at Namangan International Airport. This was the first flight on Almaty-Namangan route.

According to the company, in the coming months, flights will be operated on a charter basis. In the future, with a constant full load, regular flights will be introduced in this direction.

An Airbus A-320 plane flew from Namangan to Almaty with 173 passengers on board.
FOR EACH of us, our orientation depends on mental maps of not just our immediate surroundings, but the world. When I recently read Estonia described as a small Baltic country, I checked: Estonia is actually larger than either Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands, or Switzerland.

My world map had reflected my sense of Estonias history and importance, abstractions unless its our own country were thinking about.

Our sense of who we are, our community and nation are basic elements of our world view and carry deep emotional attachments. They provide a sense of meaning and purpose that helps us navigate sometimes chaotic reality.

This may be a fundamental reason why people who see themselves as liberal or conservative, religious or secular, believers in vaccine science or doubters, are not readily persuaded by argument. It could undercut the narrative that helps us make sense of our lives.

Basic change is seldom a rational process. Some triggering event with profound emotional force has to dramatically alter the narrative that has shaped our lives.

Surviving a violent storm at sea with, he believed, Gods help, persuaded John Newton, an 18th-century slave ship captain, to transform himself into an Anglican priest and ardent abolitionist. He saw his efforts succeed in 1807 when the slave trade was abolished in the British Empire. Newton is most remembered not as an abolitionist, but for composing the hymn Amazing Grace that tells of his redemption.

In our time, The New Yorker published in 2013 a profile of Csanad Szegedi, a virulently anti-Semitic Hungarian politician so shocked to discover he was actually of Jewish descent that he became an Orthodox Jew.

Absent such emotional catharses, however, we shouldnt expect comparable dramatic change: a Trump supporter becoming a liberal Democrat, or vice versa.

But time can work profound alterations, even in nations narratives: formerly Nazi Germany is now allied with Israel; and rigidly Catholic France that slaughtered Huguenot Protestants is adamantly secular.

Our personal belief map that helps define us becomes more sharply etched as we age. But a bloody confrontation on a bridge in Selma, or a brutal police murder in Minneapolis, can radically change entrenched views.

For too many, the mob attack on our Capitol wasnt such a transformative event. Weve become inured to what would previously have been unthinkable, just as weve grown accustomed to coarsened public discourse and blatant lies from public figures.

Conflicting narratives increasingly roil our nation: on one side are those who denounce critical race theory, and on the other, those who argue that we must confront our nations centuries of systemic racism. Whether we are blindly destroying our proud national narrative, the historic conceptual map of the United States, or are in the throes of redrawing it to depict a more just America is one of the great debates of our time.

As our countrys population irreversibly changes over the next few decades from a white majority to a diverse racial one, similar conflicts over the national narrative promise to grow increasingly heated. This process may transform citizens mental map of the nation and what it means to be an American.

Paul Metzger is an attorney, Spotsylvania resident and retired clerk of the Spotsylvania Circuit Court.
WHEN PURCHASING an item or a servicea new appliance, a car repair, a meal and moreconsumers generally know how much it will cost beforehand. Customers visiting a home improvement store, an auto shop or a restaurant without any idea of the bill likely would walk out.

Why should health care be any different? In January 2021, a new federal rule took effect to help patients understand the cost of medical needs before receiving care. Per the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the price transparency policy requires each U.S. hospital to provide information in two ways online: via a comprehensive machine-readable file with all items and services; and in a display of shoppable services in a consumer-friendly format.

Virginians have every right to assess financial considerations in advance, not after the fact. Yet a study released in February by the nonpartisan, nonprofit PatientRightsAdvocate.org shows facilities across the commonwealth are failing to follow the new directive.

Virginia hospitals can do better on price transparency. Of 23 that were profiled in the report, only three were rated as compliant: Carilion Roanoke Memorial Hospital, Sentara Norfolk General Hospital and Winchester Medical Center.

Of the 20 commonwealth hospitals deemed noncompliant, seven were in the Greater Richmond region: Chippenham Medical Center, Henrico Doctors Hospital, Parham Doctors Hospital, Retreat Doctors Hospital, VCU Medical Center, JohnstonWillis Hospital and John Randolph Medical Center.

Centra Virginia Baptist Hospital in Lynchburg, Spotsylvania Regional Medical Center, UVA University Hospital in Charlottesville, and LewisGale hospitals in Low Moor, Blacksburg, Pulaski and Salem also did not meet the mark.

To make its recent assessments, PatientRightsAdvocate.org reviewed each hospitals website, looking for a machine-readable list of all items and services. It also checked if prices were present for the 300 most common services, either via a list of charges or an estimator tool.

The advocacy group then scrutinized the completeness of the required data. Were there clear codes and descriptions for services or charges? If a hospital used a price estimator tool, were consumers able to see clearly identifiable options, regardless of insurance status?

PatientRightsAdvocate.org also found consumers faced barriers to determining costsnotably requests to submit personal or plan information, which are not part of the federal price transparency rule. Hospitals were deemed noncompliant for reasons including blanks or zeros in key fields, a lack of descriptions for items and services, or the absence of both negotiated rates with insurers or discounted cash prices for patients going that route.

Virginia hospitals and their staff members have worked tirelessly and heroically over the past two-plus years to provide lifesaving care amid a historic pandemic. Perhaps there are legitimate variables that explain why the new transparency rule is not being followed. Perhaps area facilities are facing their own hurdles unrelated to a new federal regulation that largely was implemented amid a crisis.

But no matter what is causing the lack of compliance, America continues to spend much more than other developed countries on health care, with worse outcomes and life expectancy.

According to Health System Tracker, a partnership between the Peterson Center on Health Care and the Kaiser Family Foundation, the U.S. spent $11,945 per person in 2020. Thats roughly double the amount incurred by comparable countries. Health care as a share of U.S. gross domestic product also has ballooned from 6 percent in 1970 to 19 percent in 2020.

The lack of compliance by hospitals is about more than simply the failure to follow the legal requirements, PatientRightsAdvocate.org argued. It is also about the failure of hospitals to provide critically needed information to consumers so they can make better health decisions.

PatientRightsAdvocate.org suggested a few steps to improve the hospital price transparency rule going forward. The federal government could step up enforcement beyond issuing warning letters or publicly disclosing names of hospitals that fail to comply.

The rule could be revised to end nonbinding estimates and push hospitals to pivot toward fixed prices. CMS also could engage local patients and hospitals to gather feedback about first-year challenges, and work together to set data standards that promote efficiency and accountability for all parties.

If patients are not equipped with reliable cost choices, and providers are not able to supply them, how will our health care system ever improve its spending habits and achieve better outcomes? Virginia hospitals can do better on price transparency.

Richmond TimesDispatch

Richmond Times-Dispatch
What is a city without a library? To many residents of Fremont, its like a home without comfortable chairs or a TV. A public library is something many take for granted. Its a place to find books, magazines, newspapers, computers, and people on hand to answer questions.

Fremonts library has been for some a quiet and inviting place to relax and pass the time. For others its a friendly place to meet with friends or colleagues to chat about the news or cover important business issues.

For parents, Keene Memorial Library has been a great place to bring the kids so they can pick out books to read, perhaps listen to a librarian or a volunteer read to them, or maybe even take part in a fun activity like making crafts or learning about wildlife.

Sonia Vanderworth has been working at Keene Memorial Library for the past five years. As a mother, she appreciates the value of a public library as she strives to help her children learn and grow.

I was a stay-at-home mom, Vanderworth said, and I read to my kids all the time. It was important to me that there were always books around.

When asked what she was most excited about regarding the librarys expansion project, she naturally spoke about the childrens department.

It will be closed off so the kids can giggle and wiggle without disturbing the adult patrons who want quiet, she said.

Vanderworth feels it is important for the children who want to come to the library to own their library. As a mother, she understands that it takes times for kids to learn how to act in the library.

They get excited to be here. I get excited to be here, she said.

The new childrens department will provide more space for the ever-increasing volume of books as well as the growing number of children coming in to participate in various activities.

Parents will be glad to know that the new childrens librarian, Justine Ridder, has some exciting plans for the kids once construction of the new facility is completed.

The original public library was built in 1903 and was one of the first 68 Carnegie libraries built in Nebraska. It was located on the southwest corner of Military and Park Avenue, where the Runza restaurant is now.

Currently, the library occupies approximately 21,000 square feet, which is no longer adequate for its ever-growing collection of materials and requests for holding meetings. The expansion project proposes an additional 15,600 square feet. Roughly one-third of the space will be used for structural support, ventilation, and technology systems.

In addition to providing more space, the expansion project will also allow the library to meet ADA requirements.

Floor plans can be viewed by visiting Keene Memorial Library at 1030 N. Broad Street in Fremont.

The Rupert Dunklau Foundation has extended a generous matching-challenge grant to the Library Expansion Project. Pledges and gifts will be matched up to $100,000. The library has until Dec. 31, 2022, to meet the challenge.

Currently, the project is approximately one-quarter of the way to meeting its $100,000 goal.

Anyone interested in joining the fundraising effort can contact Keene Memorial Library at 402-727-2694 or email the director, Laura England-Biggs, at laura.biggs@fremontne.gov.

For more information on the Library Expansion Project, visit kmlexpansion.com.

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By Abubakar Siddique

Welcome to Gandhara's weekly newsletter. This briefing brings you the best of our reporting from Afghanistan and Pakistan.

If youre new to the newsletter or havent subscribed yet, you can do so here.

Afghans flee Russia's war in Ukraine

I recap Radio Azadi's reporting about desperate Afghans trying to escape the Russian invasion of Ukraine alongside the 1 million Ukrainians fleeing the country.

Over the past three decades, thousands of Afghans have fled to Ukraine to escape perpetual conflict in their country; now they find themselves trying to escape the ongoing Russian bombing of major Ukrainian cities.

"The situation here is horrible," said Abdul Rab Bayani, who arrived in Kyiv on a Ukrainian military plane to escape the Taliban seizure of power in August. "We are afraid that if the fighting intensifies we will not be able to contact anyone."

Naveen, an Afghan immigrant, has lived in the seaport city of Odesa for six years. He fled the outbreak of war in Ukraine to neighboring Romania, from where he moved further west into Hungary. But the police there forced him back into Romania, highlighting that much of Europe is unwilling to accept non-Ukrainian immigrants and refugees. "I don't know where to go from here," he said of his desperate situation.

Kabir Nazari, a former Afghan police officer, made it to Berlin this week after awaiting approval of his asylum application for six months. "We were all miserable, whether Afghan refugees or Ukrainians," he said of the dangerous two-day journey he made out of Kyiv by hitchhiking, train, and bus.

Attention shifting away from Afghan crisis

I write about how the mushrooming humanitarian crises in Ukraine is diverting international attention away from Afghanistan, where the majority of the population faces starvation following an economic and government collapse after the Taliban takeover.

Aid workers in the country warn that neglecting the realities in Afghanistan will exacerbate the crisis there, with Afghans already reeling from hunger, unemployment, and dire economic prospects in one of the poorest countries in the world.

"We also see urgent funding appeals for support to Ukraine, which absolutely needs that support, but Afghanistan's needs are no less," Sam Mort the UNICEF spokeswoman, told me.

Hameed Hakimi, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, says the Taliban is unable to respond quickly to the Afghan people's needs or to keep the world's focus on the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan. "The Taliban's regime remains unrecognized internationally and therefore there is an absence of official Afghan lobbying for aid to the Afghan people," he argued.

I hope you found this weeks newsletter useful, and I encourage you to forward it to your colleagues.

If you havent subscribed yet, you can do so here. I encourage you to visit our website and follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

Yours,

Abubakar Siddique

Twitter: @sid_abu

P.S.: You can always reach us at gandhara@rferl.org.
Afghanistan is rapidly descending into one of the worst humanitarian crises in living memory amid rampant starvation, a health-care crisis marked by child malnutrition, and the collapse of essential services since the Taliban took over the country six months ago.

The situation initially prompted generous donor pledges from the international community in an effort to fend off large-scale death and destruction. But the escalating war in Ukraine -- which has prompted the exodus of more than 1 million civilians into neighboring European countries -- is now diverting international attention from the equally dire situation in Afghanistan.



A week into Russia's invasion of Ukraine, international attention is shifting away from Afghans as they bear the brunt of decades of war, drought, and an economic collapse.

Afghans who spoke to RFE/RL's Radio Azadi have reported difficulties maintaining even a meager existence, with some resorting to sending their young children to work or beg on the street to help feed the household.

"There is no work. I wonder day and night, how can I feed my family?" Sharifa, a mother of three, told Radio Azadi. Her 11-year-old son and 13-year old daughter are pitching in by shining shoes in their home city of Kabul, but she says that even on the best of days they bring home no more than $2.

Nine-year-old Dadullah's family, too, is depending on him to help after his father lost his job as a builder after the Taliban takeover.



"I give everything I earn to my parents," the boy, who lives in the central province of Maidan Wardak told RFE/RL's Radio Azadi. He says that Fridays are often his lucky day, when he makes more than $1, but other days he barely makes 25 cents.

Aid workers warn that the world's attention is turning away from such grim realities in Afghanistan.

"What we see is a lot of media leaving Afghanistan. If you see the newspapers and TV, it's all about Ukraine. That is a very strong indication of where the global attention is," said Sam Mort, a spokeswoman for UNICEF, the UN's children's agency. "We also see urgent funding appeals for support to Ukraine, which absolutely needs that support, but Afghanistan's needs are no less."



Afghanistan, one of the most aid-dependent countries in the world, rapidly slid into a desperate humanitarian crisis after losing most international development funding and humanitarian assistance after the Taliban seized power in August. A marked decrease in trade and an enduring drought magnified the losses, even as countries have pledged renewed funding and aid and looked for ways to deliver it without propping up the Taliban.



But that aid has been slow to arrive, and U.S. and UN sanctions against senior Taliban leaders have complicated the country's economic situation. Individuals and organizations are encountering difficulties in wiring money into Afghanistan, where banks are teetering on the brink of collapse.

Aid workers say that combined with the Taliban oppression, these sanctions have forced businesses to shutter and deprived tens of thousands of Afghans of jobs in health care and education after Western development assistance ceased six months ago. Even UN agencies and international NGOs have struggled to fund their humanitarian projects.



The UN estimates more than 23 million Afghans -- more than 55 percent of the 39 million population -- face starvation. UNICEF says over 1 million Afghan children under the age of 5 are at risk of dying from malnutrition, and that more than 3 million children could ultimately be affected.

According to the UNDP, 97 percent of Afghans will see their incomes drop below the poverty line this year. Since the Taliban takeover, more than 1.5 million Afghans have fled to other countries, while another 3.5 million are displaced inside Afghanistan.



"Nothing has improved, and the predictions are really grim," Mort said of the current state of the crisis. "We are desperate for more funds to help those most in need."



Veteran aid worker Anders Fange ran the Swedish Committee for Afghanistan, one of the most significant humanitarian projects in the country, for decades. He says that given his experience during recent crises, the unfolding crisis in Ukraine will impact the willingness of Western donors to fund other humanitarian emergencies.



"Media is already influencing how the politicians see this," he said. "Available funds and money will be focused on Ukraine."



Looking For A Silver Lining



Two recent developments offer a possible silver lining for Afghanistan. First, the U.S. Treasury issued a waiver on February 25 that will "expand authorizations for commercial and financial transactions in Afghanistan, including with its governing institutions." The General License, as the waiver is officially called, will allow commercial activities previously forbidden under sanctions against the Taliban.

And on March 1, the World Bank announced the release of some $1 billion from the previously frozen Afghanistan Reconstruction Trust Fund. The money will be channeled to aid agencies "to support the delivery of essential basic services, protect vulnerable Afghans, help preserve human capital and key economic and social services, and reduce the need for humanitarian assistance in the future," the World Bank said in a statement.



But Deborah Lyons, UN special envoy for Afghanistan, warned that the country was moving toward "a point of irreversibility" because the international community has failed to revive the Afghan economy. "We are nearing a tipping point that will see more businesses close, more people unemployed and falling into poverty," she told the UN Security Council on March 2.



Fange agrees. "Even if these steps work, they will not solve all of Afghanistan's problems," he said, emphasizing the need to revive the economy, which remains in a downward spiral as the country's agricultural sector struggles due to drought.

He says that even during years with an average harvest, Afghanistan was forced to import up to 3 million tons of wheat, the staple food in the country, to meet demand. "Now there is no money for this kind of import, and together with a 40 percent drop in last year's harvest, it will get worse, much worse," he predicted.



While Afghanistan has received more than 100,000 tons of donated wheat from Kazakhstan, India, Pakistan, and other countries, it is not enough to plug the gap.



Hameed Hakimi, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council think tank in Washington, is not optimistic about the situation. He says there is little hope for increased international attention to Afghanistan's growing humanitarian woes and that Western economies, reeling from the shock of the coronavirus pandemic, are tightening spending abroad.



"This puts the Afghan context in direct competition for Western resources against the Ukrainian conflict, with the latter highly likely to be prioritized by donors," he said.



Hakimi argues the Taliban's hard-line rule in Afghanistan, which has made it an international pariah, doesn't help, either. "The Taliban's regime remains unrecognized internationally and therefore there is an absence of official Afghan lobbying for aid to the Afghan people," he noted.



Mort maintains hope that the international community has learned that it is more humane and cost-effective to prevent a crisis than to treat it. However, she warns: "Time is running out for that in Afghanistan because people are really suffering."

With reporting by RFE/RL's Radio Azadi
By Trend

Kazakhstan's first low-cost carrier FlyArystan will open flights from Aktau to Azerbaijan's Baku, Trend reports citing the company.

The flights are scheduled to begin on April 1, 2022, and will be operated twice a week, on Fridays and Sundays.

FlyArystan is the first and only low-cost carrier in Kazakhstan. The online sale of FlyArystan tickets was launched in March 2019 on the airline's website.
Prosecutors and defense attorneys delivered opening statements and showed evidence Thursday in the case of Cohen Vinn Heath, accused of demanding her transgender partner to murder his mother in April 2020.

After two days of jury selection, prosecutors with the Fourth Judicial District Attorneys Office and defense attorneys for Heath laid out in opening statements their accounts of what happened the night of April 28, 2020, when COVID-19 nurse Bridget Kenner was murdered by her transgender son Kenny Kenner, once Emma, before hearing testimony and presenting evidence in the case.

Kenner, 18, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in an agreement with prosecutors and was sentenced to 40 years in prison in January. As part of the agreement, Kenner gave a statement to investigators about what happened the night of the murder.

Heath, 21, is charged with first-degree murder under the complicity doctrine, which holds people who help to commit or encourage crimes accountable for them, along with several other crimes including felony murder, two tampering charges, and robbery. Heath, a transgender woman, also goes by Vinn.

Police found Bridget Kenner, 44, dead on April 28, 2020, in her home in the 8000 block of Fallgold Court, on a welfare check after she didnt show up for work at St. Francis Hospital. Heath and Kenny Kenner were detained hours later close to a 7-Eleven around Dublin Boulevard and Marksheffel Road. All three lived in the home at the time.

Heath is accused by the district attorney's office of demanding that Kenny Kenner kill his mother, in part to steal her possessions and possibly sell them, with prosecutor Ben Hostetter saying that Heath told Kenner the night of the murder she wanted to wake up to her screaming, referring to Bridget Kenner.

If you really want to prove youre a man, you will do this, Hostetter said Heath allegedly told Kenny Kenner.

Defense attorneys in their opening statements said that Kenny Kenner made the decision to stab his mother twice in the chest, instructed Heath to engage in acts after the fact, and admitted later on. They said that Heath was not involved in the planning or commission of the murder, adding she had nothing to gain from it.

This is an American tragedy, a horror story, a catastrophic failure on all levels, defense attorney Tracey Eubanks said, saying Bridget Kenner had "moved on" and referencing plans she had begun to make with her boyfriend to move to Florida without Kenny Kenner, which ultimately led to matricide.

Also included in the charges against Heath is tampering with a deceased human body, which Hostetter said stemmed from what happened after Bridget Kenner was killed  namely, that when Heath saw that Kenny Kenner had killed his mother, Heath allegedly proceeded to engage in necrophilia.

That was the plan, Hostetter said in explaining the charge during opening statements.

A video and photos depicting the acts were shown on Wednesday afternoon after opening statements by prosecutors to prove the tampering charge. Colorado Springs Det. Matthew Kerr, who investigated the case, identified the individual perpetrating those acts as Heath after it was shown.

Heath has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder, the felony murder charge, two tampering charges including another one involving destroying physical evidence, and robbery.
By Trend

The Pentagon has established a new hotline with Russia's ministry of defense to prevent "miscalculation, military incidents and escalation" in the region, a U.S. official told Reuters on Thursday, Trend reports.

The United States says it has no troops in Ukraine but it and NATO allies in Europe are worried about potential spillover, including accidents.

"The Department of the Defense recently established a de-confliction line with the Russian ministry of defense on March 1 for the purposes of preventing miscalculation, military incidents, and escalation," a senior U.S. defense official said, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirming a move first reported by NBC.
By Trend

A telephone conversation was held between the Foreign Ministers of Turkey and Ukraine Mevlut Cavushoglu and Dmytro Kuleba, Trend reports citing Turkish MFA.

The ministers discussed the situation in Ukraine.

Cavushoglu expressed satisfaction with the agreement between Russia and Ukraine on the joint provision of humanitarian corridors with a temporary ceasefire.

According to him, these corridors will also facilitate the delivery of humanitarian aid to the regions of the country.
Colorado Springs-area home prices rocketed to record highs again last month, as furious demand and a historically low supply of properties available for purchase continued to send housing costs soaring.

"It's still a crazy market," said Ann Kidd, a real estate agent with Truth North Realty in Colorado Springs and this year's Pikes Peak Association of Realtors board chairwoman.

The median price, or midpoint, of single-family and patio homes that were sold in February climbed to $465,000, a 15.4% year-over-year increase and $15,000 higher than the record of $450,000 set last year, according to a Pikes Peak Association of Realtors market trends report released Thursday.

The average price of homes also rose to a record high of $514,757 in February, the report showed. That's up 13.2% from the same month last year and almost $4,600 more than the record of $510,180 in October. The average price, however, is considered less reliable by some industry experts because it can fluctuate with just a few extreme sale prices.

Year-over-year median and average prices now have risen every month since December 2014, a more than seven-year stretch.

Other highlights of the Realtors Association report show:

 The inventory of homes for sale at the end of February stood at 487. That's the third lowest total for any month going back just over 25 years, according to historical data maintained by The Gazette. If no more properties came on the market, February's home inventory would last for only two weeks based on the recent pace of home sales, according to the Realtors report.

 Home sales in February totaled 1,015, up 3.5% over the same month in 2021.

 Houses averaged 13 days on the market before selling, down from 20 days in February 2021.

Colorado Springs' housing market, like many metro areas nationwide, has been plagued by a shortage of homes for sale.

That low inventory has come at a time when historically low mortgage rates, strong job growth and a reasonably healthy economy  despite the COVID-19 pandemic  have fueled interest in home buying. Those factors have combined to create a market in which sellers pick and choose from multiple offers that typically top their asking prices by thousands of dollars  even tens of thousands.

Buyers, meanwhile, are left scrambling, engaging in bidding wars and often walking away disappointed.

"It's 100% a seller's market," said Patrick Muldoon of Muldoon Associates in the Springs. "The buyers just simply do not have a chance."

Many times, buyers must make concessions to sellers if they want to close the deal, he said.

If the two sides reach an agreement, but a property appraisal comes in much lower than the agreed-upon sales price, the buyer typically must make up the difference with cash, Muldoon said. That appraisal gap, as it's called, has grown by thousands of dollars over the last few months, he said.

Buyers also include include escalation clauses in their offers, spelling out that they'll top the next highest bid by thousands of dollars  up to a certain ceiling  as a way of ensuring they'll win the home, Muldoon said.

Kidd, meanwhile, said buyers often have to lower their sights and look to buy in neighborhoods that aren't at the top of their list while they settle for properties without the number of bedrooms and bathrooms they wanted.

"Specific property parameters that they hoped and wished for, they're letting that go, honestly, just to get their foot in the door and get in the market," she said.

Homes just don't stay on the market long, Kidd said. Agents advise sellers to list their home on a Friday, take off for the weekend and then return Monday or Tuesday to sort through the flood of offers, she said.

"One of the things that we measure (is) days on market," Kidd said. "It should say hours on market or minutes on market."

Neither Kidd nor Muldoon see any changes in the market.

If mortgage rates rise, don't expect demand to slow to a point where the market cools, Muldoon said.

And even if some local buyers remain on the sidelines, large corporate investors who've snapped up homes in Colorado Springs and other markets with the intent of renting the properties seemingly have unlimited funds and will keep on buying, he said.

At the same time, the market no longer seems affected by national and international issues, he said.

The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic two years ago triggered a brief pause before the market then took off again, Muldoon said. The turmoil created by Russia's invasion of Ukraine also seems like it will have no effect, he said.

"The things that used to trigger people to get concerned don't really seem to be doing that," Muldoon said. "You go to war in Ukraine and Russia and people would pause. Now it's like that's not even happening."
In the 2011 play, "By the Way, Meet Vera Stark" by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Lynn Nottage, we meet Vera Stark, a Black woman trying to break into the movies while she works as a maid to Gloria Mitchell, a white Hollywood star trying to hang onto her career. The comedy opens Friday at Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center at Colorado College. A preview show is Thursday. It runs through March 20.
The Douglas County school board publicly interviewed two finalists to become its next superintendent Thursday, with both candidates pledging to work to heal a school district cleaved apart by the dismissal of their would-be predecessor.

Each of the board's seven members asked the two candidates, both school leaders in the county, one question during two roughly hourlong interviews. While topics ranged from school security to literacy, concerns about the division in the district repeatedly crept up, and unsurprisingly so: The board sat in those same seven seats 27 days ago, when its members narrowly voted to fire then-Superintendent Corey Wise after a caustic, openly combative meeting that has since spilled over into national media and a Douglas County courtroom.

As it stands now, the board seems set to hire either Erin Kane, who helped found and now runs a charter school, or Danny Winsor, the district's executive director of schools, to replace Wise. Following Thursday's meeting, which began with board President Mike Peterson asking sheriff's deputies to escort an audience member out of the room, the two candidates will face public forums and feedback this week. The board has said it may make a hire before the end of the month.

Of the two, Kane has already received significantly more attention. After Wise's firing, her name immediately began to circulate on social media and in subsequent public meetings as a pre-ordained finalist, and Peterson has acknowledged that he'd asked Kane if she would apply for the superintendent job before Wise had been fired.

Kane, a founder and the current executive director of schools for American Academy, also served as an interim superintendent for Douglas County from 2016 to 2018. In her interview Thursday, she touted the success of her charter school  which, she said, has grown from 300 students at its founding to 3,000 now  and of her two-year stint as the top school administrator in the county.

She noted academic gains made by the district then, as well as improved retention rates. In the wake of Wise's firing, some school board members have repeatedly said they fear a mass exodus of teachers and staff.

Against the backdrop of a highly politicized school board, board member David Ray asked Kane about polarization and politics.

Kane, who financially supported the campaigns of the board's four new members and leaders, said she was a registered Republican. But she said she didn't "see a role for (politics) in leading a school district" and that ideology had wormed its way too far into that job. She said she wanted to hear all good ideas, from all sides, and she advocated for the community coming together on the common ground it shared: helping Douglas County kids.

Kane said she viewed the role of the superintendent as executing the vision of the board while giving teachers room to do their jobs without micromanagement; she said she would "take a bullet" for a teacher who took risks and may draw the ire of parents. She spoke of the need to show parents of special education students that the district supports them, and she said the key to successful special education is meeting the individual needs of individual children.

Referencing apparent rumors about her supposed position circulating in the community, Kane came out firmly against arming teachers, saying law enforcement partnerships were sufficient. She also said she was flatly opposed to a voucher program or something similar, saying it wasn't the district's job "to pay money to people to go somewhere else." Instead, she said she wanted a bond measure that would raise employee salaries and build more neighborhood schools.

Ex-Douglas County superintendent hired for temporary job in Jefferson County

While Kane's approach to the interview seemed informed by the public divide that's already emerged about her candidacy, Winsor spoke more emotionally about his attachment to the district, for which he's worked for 13 years. He said parents need to feel they have a voice in the community and he, like Kane, urged a focus on the shared goal of a strong school district.

"The soul of this community wants to see our students be successful," he said. "I think we're getting stuck on how we all want it to look."

He stressed being accessible to parents, staff and students, and that students feel safest when they feel known. He, like Kane, stressed the need for staff to get more competitive salaries, a question the district will likely put before voters in November and one that will become a key part of the new superintendent's job for the next several months.

Winsor said he had a "huge concern" about having appropriate staffing levels for special education services, which he looped back to finding money to pay employees better.

"I love this district, period," he said. "I love our students, period. I love our staff, period. I love our families commitment to this district, period. Thats the commitment we need to have in this district."
Police may forcibly draw blood in certain circumstances over the objection of motorists, the state's second-highest court determined, expanding upon a prior decision of the Colorado Supreme Court that found there is no constitutional right to refuse a chemical test.
A security guard stands outside the U.S. Embassy in Havana in December 2017.
By Trend

Turkish Airlines has temporarily canceled flights to/from Ukraine and Moldova, Trend reports citing the Turkish air carrier's Twitter page.

"Our flights from/to Ukraine and Moldavia until March 18th, 2022 (included) have been cancelled.

For the ticket change and refund requests, you can apply the travel agency, visit our website or contact our call center at +90 850 333 0 849."
AWA Score: 5 out of 6



I have used a GMAT AWA auto-grader to evaluate your essay.



Coherence and connectivity: 3.5/5

This rating corresponds to the flow of ideas and expressions from one paragraph to another. The effective use of connectives and coherence of assertive language in arguing for/against the argument is analyzed. This is deemed as one of the most important parameters.



Paragraph structure and formation: 4/5

The structure and division of the attempt into appropriate paragraphs are evaluated. To score well on this parameter, it is important to organize the attempt into paragraphs. Preferable to follow the convention of leaving a line blank at the end of each paragraph, to make the software aware of the structure of the essay.



Vocabulary and word expression: 5/5

This parameter rates the submitted essay on the range of relevant vocabulary possessed by the candidate basis the word and expression usage. There are no extra- points for bombastic word usage. Simple is the best form of suave!

Good Luck

Mario79 wrote:
It looks like Stonewall Therapeutic Center will get a name change.

Danville City Council will consider renaming the facility just off North Main Street to Camp Grove Recreation Center, a name that would match the neighborhood where its located.

The facility is named after Thomas J. Stonewall Jackson, the Confederate general. The Confederacy fought to preserve slavery during the Civil War.

Jackson is buried in Lexington.

Black leaders have called for the facilitys name to be changed for years.

Tommy Bennett, president of the Danville chapter of the NAACP, and the Rev. William Avon Keen, leader of the Danville chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, have requested the change.

Its a good move, Bennett said Thursday. Its way, way overdue, and its a good step toward getting a lot of these Confederate names down in Danville.

The city formed a subcommittee in September 2020 to address concerns about Confederate monuments and buildings named after Confederate figures.

The removal of statues of Confederate figures and changing of school names increased in 2020 amid Black Lives Matter protests following the death of George Floyd while in police custody in Minneapolis on May 25, and other related incidents.

The city-owned Stonewall Therapeutic Center used to be Stonewall Jackson Elementary School, which opened in 1915 and closed in 1978. The facility is used by children and adults with impairments.

Danville City Council informally agreed during its work session Tuesday night to put the proposed name change on the agenda for a future meeting.

I dont see the point in it being named after a person who has no particular relationship to Danville, Vice Mayor Gary Miller, who chairs the mayors subcommittee, said of the facilitys current name.

The three-member subcommittee also includes Sam Kushner and Councilman Barry Mayo.

Historical advisors to the subcommittee include Elsabe Dixon, executive director of the Danville Museum of Fine Arts and History, and Preservation Virginia Field Services Manager Sonja Ingram.

They have done historical research on monuments and buildings in the city and provided information to the subcommittee about why they were erected.

Miller said the delay in action since late September was due to rancor over the murder of George Floyd and issues surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic.

Its much easier to rename the building after the community than a person, since that would involve a lengthy process, Miller said.

This was low-hanging fruit, Miller said. The community wanted to just name it for the community.

The facility is on Bradley Road just off North Main Street in the Camp Grove neighborhood.

Mayor Alonzo Jones said community members were strongly opposed to bringing any outside names to their community.

The subcommittee listened to the people in the community, Jones said. I applaud the subcommittee. They listened to so many different people.

Bennett came back before council last month about renaming the facility. He criticized the idea of putting a name like Stonewall Jackson in the heart of the Black community, but praised the action of council to put the matter on the agenda.

The city is progressing and moving along and we need more of this so more companies will come, Bennett said. When they see these names and [Confederate] flags, they dont want to come to our city.

City Council will likely consider the matter during its March 15 meeting.

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Nadia Kriger, a teacher at Danvilles Westover Christian Academy, thought she had become 100% American, leaving her Ukrainian heritage behind.

That was until Russias invasion flooded her with concern from the homeland she left over 25 years ago.

When she was just 14, in 1990, Krigers family moved from Ukraine to Virginia Beach after facing large amounts of religious persecution for most of her life, she said. That was because both her mother and she were devout Christians  publicly  in a Communist country.

At that time, Ukraine was part of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and religion was very much forbidden, she said.

Kriger, who now lives in Martinsville, said society was more accepting of Catholicism among the older people, but being Pentecostal, which her mother was  though in Ukraine Pentecostal was considered a form of the Baptist religion  was considered worse than being a devil worshipper.

Kriger said that while living in Lviv, Ukraine, she remembered refusing to say an oath in her third-grade classroom that was a pledge to live like Lenin lived, referring to Vladimir Lenin, the head of the former Communist Soviet Union. That refusal led to a visit to the principals office, where she continued to stand her ground and not say the pledge.

The principal then grabbed her by the ear and dragged her a mile and a half home, only next to yell at her mother for allowing such behavior. The family was even threatened with starvation because the government was a main source of food for people.

Her reasoning behind her childhood refusal, she said, was that after two years of watching her mother be a Christian, she also had accepted Christ at an early age.

The worst religious persecution, though, came from home, Kriger said: While her mother had developed a religious belief, her father had not, and greatly disapproved of it.

A large memory of her time in Ukraine, Kriger said, was of her mother crying over her religious beliefs not being accepted. Her extended family largely ostracized her immediate family, and even Krigers godmother refused to speak to her.

Her mothers older sister  though she eventually converted  even told Krigers father that all things were permissible to rehabilitate her mother, said Kriger.

Kriger also said that the atmosphere in Ukraine, because of Communism, wasnt exactly neighborly. People often reported others to the government and were very aware of when other people had more because they learned to live within that system created by Communism.

Making a home

Because of the way she experienced Ukraine when she lived there, Kriger said, she was surprised at how emotional the Russian invasion of Ukraine has made her feel and has been in shock at how it is affecting her.

In 1988, when Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev was in power, he met with American president Ronald Reagan and entered into talks about giving persecuted Ukrainian residents the chance to leave, she said. That allowed Kriger and her family to start the process of leaving for America, which required trips to the embassy in Moscow.

Because of difficulties in dealing with officials, it took Krigers family two years of the process to finally be able to leave Ukraine.

World Vision International, a Christian humanitarian aid organization, got them a home and family to stay with in the United States. However, the Kriger familys assigned host family fell through, leaving the Krigers stranded at LaGuardia Airport in New York for several days, she said.

However, little did they know it then, but God had a better plan, she said.

When they finally arrived in their new apartment in Virginia Beach on Dec. 31, 1990, and saw the space that was originally prepared for the other family, it was as if it was us that they were waiting for, she said.

Their new American home even was stocked with just the right toys and clothes.

Humble beginnings

Kriger and her husband, Mark Sells, have three children: Nikolas, 16; Katelyn, 9; and Viktoria, 7.

She has a bachelors degree in international studies from Old Dominion University and a masters degree in national security from the American Military University. She worked in an American embassy in Moscow for 18 months and was a linguist in military intelligence for the army for eight years.

She loved the work, she said, but left the military because its scheduling was not compatible with military life.

She had to rebrand herself after leaving the army, so she got a masters degree in education because her son liked the idea of her being a teacher, she said.

The Kriger-Sells family came to Martinsville in 2013 when he took a job with Sovah Health as a nurse practitioner. He now works at GoDocs in Danville. Having always been a city girl, she was weary of small-town life at first, but the area later grew on her, she said.

She taught English as a Second Language at Bassett High School before the pandemic, and is now an English teacher at Westover Christian Academy in Danville, which her children attend.

Kriger said that though she misses working in the army, she has no regrets about where she has ended up in life. She and her husband both came from equally humble beginnings she said, and this led to them working hard to give their own children things that they never had.

Kriger had not even a ping of some sort of regret about leaving Ukraine, she said: After so long in America and her proud service in the army, she identifies very strongly as an American and very little with the part of her life that took place in Ukraine.

Thus, she was surprised how hard the impact of hearing about the Russian invasion of Ukraine hit her, she said.

Im barely Ukrainian. That part of my life has been so suppressed and pushed back that I barely identify as one, she said. When I read the news and saw the pictures, it felt like death, it felt like 9/11 felt, and 9/11 felt like when my brother died.

She clearly remembers one day after the attack happened, she said, because she heard from her daughter, Katelyn, that they were praying for Ukraine over a map in her classroom. Kriger later saw a post on Facebook from her daughters teacher, Jenni Sunderland, with a picture of the children praying in class at Westover Christian Academy.

Kriger said that what hurts the most about this entire situation is the comparison between her past in Ukraine and the situation there now.

A different Ukraine

When her family was leaving, Kriger said that it felt like funeral with all her relatives watching them leave knowing that they would likely never see them again. Her family left in Ukraine saw them leaving right on the brink of freedom from Communism.

For her to now see that freedom threatened once again makes Kriger feel helpless all over again, she said.

Kriger still has friends and family back in Ukraine; one friend she met in America through working for the army, Lyuba Ovsienko; and many cousins as well. She said she has been fortunate enough to go back and visit since her move to America because of work and missions trips, while her immediate family have not.

Kriger said she knows that America has provided significant aid and humanitarian efforts as well, but that more needed to be done.

Its not just Ukraine. We will be next if we dont do something there and the power shifts in Europe. We will be next, she said.

Kriger also spoke about how many Americans take their freedom for granted.

We havent seen anything yet and we already complain, she said. She also added that the people who complain about losing freedom in America have no idea what losing freedom even means, and they wont until they are under the control of a tyrant.

Overall, Kriger said, she is proud of how the people of Ukraine are making a stand for their nation and being passionate about it, showing what a hardcore group of people she comes from.
As the parents of Madelyn Ann Hoad welcomed their baby homeafter she spent her first six weeks in the NICUthey came to realize a lot of people played a part in her safe arrival.

Jessica Witter and Tyler Hoad got help from first responders, friends and strangers they encountered as they made a perilous journey from King George County to Mary Washington Hospital during the early January blizzard.

A fire department brush truck with a snow plow attached literally paved the way for the ambulance carrying Witter, whose life was in jeopardy, along with that of her unborn baby. Once she arrived at the hospital, the pregnant woman said she felt like she was in a medical TV drama as emergency workers enveloped herand then little Maddie, who was born more than 2 months earlywith care and concern.

I just wanted to thank everybody because I am so grateful for being alive and for our baby being alive, the mom said. It was honestly the most terrifying thing Ive ever experienced, I was bleeding to death. Everybody did everything they could to get us to the hospital safely.

Witter said its taken a while to kind of get back to normal and to resume a new routine as little Maddie has taken her place in the family. Witter has four older children and Hoad, one.

Their story illustrates the way a community came together to help a woman whose already high-risk pregnancy developed an even more dangerous complication at the worst possible time.

I cant overstate how the whole team came together to help, said Chief David Moody with King Georges Department of Fire, Rescue and Emergency Services.

King George had triple the number of normal calls on that snowy day, Moody said, citing countless county workers and residents who stepped in to help.

HIGH RISK, TIMES THREE

Witter woke up on Jan. 3 to a raging snowstormand heavy bleeding. She wasnt due for another nine or 10 weeks and her labor hadnt started, but a serious complication was at work.

A few years earlier, Witter had an ablation, a procedure in which the uterus lining was removed to reduce menstrual bleeding. As she understood it, she couldnt get pregnant afterward, so when she and Hoad found out otherwise, that was a super surprise, she said.

But it also made her prone to miscarriage or problems with the pregnancy. Also, she would be age 35 by the time she delivered, which put her at higher risk. Her doctor also diagnosed a condition in which the placenta was too low in the cervix.

That made me high risk, times three, she said, noting shed seen a specialist who feared another problemthat the placenta would grow into the uterus. Pretty much, the scare was if I started bleeding, I would have uncontrollable bleeding and bleed out. I had a lot of stuff against me.

When the bleeding started, Hoad called 911 and learned the ambulance might not be able to get to their home in the Comorn area of King George. As much as 2 inches of snow was falling each hour and pine trees were snapping like twigs and covering roadways.

Hoad said hed try to get Witter to a nearby road to meet the ambulance, but couldnt get his car out of the driveway.

I was just chucking towels at her, trying to stop the bleeding, the father said. Ive never seen that amount of blood before.

WORST-CASE SCENARIO

As Witter started walking from the driveway, King George Sheriffs Deputy James Simmons pulled up in his Ford Explorer. His wife, Shawn, is the administrative health and safety chief with the countys fire and rescue department, and she knew Witter was facing a worst-case scenario.

She asked her husband if he could get to Witter. He loaded the couple into his Explorer and was trying to take them to meet the ambulance, but some areas looked like a bomb went off, Witter said.

People were cutting down trees to clear roadsand Hoad and Simmons joined in several times, trying to get the pregnant passenger through the snow. But when they reached one area where a massive tree was down, the deputy had to stop.

He saw a Jeep on the other side of the tree and asked the driver if hed take the emergency patient to meet the ambulance. Witter has no idea who the person wasand shed sure like to thank him. He lifted her into the Jeep, and off she and Hoad went. They waited at the top of a hill for the ambulance.

One rescue squad had been dispatched from Fairview Beach but couldnt get to the couple, and a second from company headquarters on State Route 3 was on another call. Shawn Simmons and Christina Degruy, whos pregnant with her third child, were able to take another ambulance and reach Witter.

Shawn Simmons also asked if the departments brush truck, with the plow in front, could come with the squad.

That really proved to be extremely vital, said Chief David Moody. Thats probably the only time in history that weve actually had to plow from King George County all the way to Mary Washington Hospital. It went the entire distance.

Even in Fredericksburg, roads were closed with jackknifed trucks and abandoned vehicles, and the squad had to detour through neighborhoods. Once Witter was dropped off at the hospital, the brush truck with the plowinitially manned by Rodney Ash and Kevin Cookprobably worked straight for the next 72 hours, assisting with calls, Moody said.

IN THE NICK OF TIME

Meanwhile, in the ambulance, Simmons and Degruy tried to keep the patient calm. Witters a dental assistant who regularly takes her patients blood pressure, so every time the machine checked her vitals, Witter got more and more anxious about her dropping pressure.

It took about 2 hours and 15 minutes for the entourage to reach the hospital.

They got me there and rushed me back to some room, she said. I felt like I was in a Greys Anatomy episode. There were like 10 to 15 people, all in masks and scrubs, asking questions and taking blood.

Hoad hadnt been able to ride with Witter in the ambulance, so the deputy took him to a nearby Sheetz where he put out his own call for help. A Facebook friend drove him to the hospital.

He got to her room in the nick of time, Witter said, right before she was taken into emergency surgery. The two were able to say goodbye, just in case, and she told him to tell all the kids she loved them. He later joked that it was part of her Im-gonna-die speech, but neither was laughing at that moment.

Surgeons delivered the baby through C-section and performed a hysterectomy to stop the mothers bleeding. She got two units of blood to make up for what shed lost.

Meanwhile, little Maddie was evaluated in the neonatal intensive care unit. She weighed 3 pounds. While her level of prematurity was one problem, an even bigger issue really was the circumstances of her birth, said Dr. Joshua Attridge, the neonatologist on duty. That kind of blood loss can be critical for both mother and baby, and Madelyn needed help breathing as well as a blood transfusion.

Newborns are tested after birth and given an Apgar score based on their heart rate, reflexes, muscle tone and breathing. Doctors like for babies to score between 6 and 8, Attridge said.

Madelyns score was 2. She really wasnt doing much on her own, not responding in the way we would have liked her to, he said.

The NICU put in place its golden hour process with a team that included a doctor, nurses and respiratory therapist along with the resuscitation equipment needed to help the baby breathe, said Nancy Young, the NICUs nurse manager. With the treatments, and over the course of several weeks, Madelyn eventually was able to breathe on her own. She also needed special IVs for feeding because she was unable to suck.

Most premature babies are able to leave the NICU when they reach what would have been their 36th to 38th week of gestation.

She was right at that point, Attridge said. Despite her rough start, she went home at 37 weeks, which was pretty impressive.

DESTINED FOR SOMETHING

Young spent at least 15 minutes every day with the parents when they visited Madelyn and she never heard the story about their perilous journey to the hospital until the day before the baby went home.

This mom and dad were so dedicated and devoted to being present and doing all the right things for Madelyn, Young said, adding how surprised she was when she heard about the trauma.

But now that little Maddies safe at home, Witter and Hoad have had time to reflect on what a tale theyll have to tell when shes older. Even with all that took place, Witter believes everything happened for a reason.

If it hadnt been snowing, her boyfriend wouldnt have been at home and she would have faced the emergency alone. Shes grateful the older children, who range in age from 4 to 11, were with other parents. It was traumatizing enough for her, she cant imagine how it would be for a child to see all that blood.

Witter and Hoad wonder what life has in store for little Maddie, given all she had to go through to get here. They laughed about comments the NICU nurses posted on Facebook, including one from Nurse Stephanie Crabil in which she described the babys mean mugs and the way she cuts her eyes. Fellow nurse Jessica Lee said Madelyn has the best expressions and her family will always know what shes thinking. No hiding that.

Witter believes her daughters little attitude illustrates her journey, so far.

She had to make her debut into this world extraordinary. Shes just defied all odds, the mother said, looking at her little one. Youre destined for something, baby girl, I just dont know what it is.
By Trend

Vusal Kazimov, a conscript soldier of the Azerbaijani army, who was injured in an accident involving a military truck, was hospitalized, the Ministry of Defense of Azerbaijan told Trend.

According to the ministry, despite the efforts of doctors, it wasn't possible to save his life.

The fact is under investigation.

The leadership of the ministry expressed deep condolences to the family and close relatives of the deceased soldier.
Gov. Roy Cooper and public safety officials conducted a briefing this week with five chancellors of historically black colleges and universities in North Carolina, including N.C. A&T, that recently received bomb threats.

Through a spokesperson, Chancellor Harold Martin declined to comment about the briefing or the A&T threat.

The FBI is investigating 58 threats at HBCUs across the country. In addition to A&T, North Carolina schools include N.C. Central, Winston-Salem State, Fayetteville State and, most recently, Elizabeth City State.

The FBI is investigating these cases as hate crimes. So far, though, no explosive devices have been found.

Winston-Salem State received a bomb scare in mid-February, but university officials determined that the threat wasnt credible enough to evacuate the campus.

Other schools have handled the threats differently.

Still, real or not, the bomb scares are having the intended effect.

College campuses should be safe places to learn without fear of violence, and it is particularly disturbing that these threats are happening predominantly to our HBCUs, Cooper said. Were fortunate to be home to many distinguished HBCUs in North Carolina and will use every tool to protect the safety of students and faculty on these campuses.

Secretary Eddie Buffaloe of the N.C. Department of Public Safety said that his agency is taking these threats seriously.

And (we) have zero tolerance for hate crimes that cause such fear and terror within our community, Buffaloe said. I can assure you that our law enforcement agencies ... are working with our federal partners and will utilize the resources we have to assist in the investigations.

The bomb threats have been made through phone calls, emails and anonymous online posts, according to the FBI, and agents are conducting hundreds of interviews and gathering a variety of electronic evidence for analysis.
Family and friends say I look exhausted all of the time.

Some days I absolutely dread going to work.

I started having to take an (antidepressant) in order to function without breaking down every day.

These were just some of the dozens of responses to an anonymous survey in which the North Carolina Nurses Association queried registered nurses across the state on how they were doing two years into the pandemic. The survey, conducted last month, found that nurses continue to be affected by the effects of the pandemic. Many of the 229 nurses who responded to the questionnaire described themselves as experiencing burnout.

Those results really trouble Erin Fraher, a researcher on North Carolinas health care workforce at the Sheps Center for Health Services Research at UNC-Chapel Hill. Fraher has been watching trends in the nursing workforce in the state for the better part of three decades and last month, she told lawmakers that shes never been so worried about a workforce in my life based on the data.

Fraher went on to tell lawmakers that before the COVID-19 pandemic, the data was telling her that the state faced a probable shortage of about 12,500 nurses in the coming decade. But since the pandemic has stretched nurses to their limit, leading many to consider and take early retirement, the state could have something closer to 21,00 too few nurses by 2033.

Even as nurses were willing to cut loose anonymously, many are still reticent about speaking ill of their institutions for fear of retaliation by employers, said nurses reached by NC Health News. But surveys and data show that the health care workforce is likely to lose some of the most experienced staffers.

The reasons are many. They include:

The stress that comes from working in a pandemic for two years with overextended personnel.

Financial woes besetting some health care systems and providers.

The ire at disparities in pay.

More recently, animosity from the public.

The level of exhaustion is so real, said Lisa Harrison, health director for Granville and Vance counties.

****

No more meditation or pizza parties... We need real concrete help.  anonymous response

****

At the beginning of the pandemic, restaurants provided free meals to nurses and other health care workers, hospitals put up billboards praising their staffers, and members of the public offered applause every night. But as COVID-19 cases rose and fell, and the public became tired of mask mandates and infection-control measures, health care personnel grew wearier while also taking more of the brunt of the publics frustration.

Some hospitals have done a better job than others at mitigating the burnout thats come with the two years of surging workloads. Those hospitals that have taken the time and expense to prevent burnout likely saved money, according to Jane Muir, a nurse researcher from the University of Virginia. For her doctoral research, she did an economic analysis of the costs of burnout to hospitals.

Hospitals looking to prevent such fatigue among their staff nurses spend on average $11,592 per nurse per year to prevent the exhaustion, Muir found. Those costs include measures such as spending more on full-time staff to share the load, creating programs to improve patient safety and the quality so nurses feel like theyre providing better care, providing opportunities for professional development for nurses and increased vacation time.

But doing nothing actually costs hospitals more, Muirs analysis found. She calculated that when hospitals simply stayed with the status quo, they ended up spending about $16,736 per nurse per year on their nurses. Thats because they had higher turnover rates and incurred costs to recruit new nurses, get them up to speed and hire expensive fill-in nurses to pick up the slack.

A lot of pretty raw feelings

People in all professions have left their jobs as the pandemic has spooled out, and nurses have been a part of the so-called great resignation.

Frustrated RNs may not have quit the profession completely, Fraher told lawmakers, but many have left their staff jobs for travel assignments that became more lucrative as the pandemic extended from weeks to months to years. Travelers have long provided temporary fill-in for busy hospital units. They work for temporary staffing agencies who recruit and place them. Often travelers make a lot more than the staff nurses they work alongside, something that was a frustration even before the pandemic.

It used to be when someone decided they wanted to do travel nursing, it was to take a job across the country somewhere, not across the street to the competitor, said Dennis Taylor, the immediate past president of the North Carolina Nurses Association.

As a traveling nurse, Taylor explained, you could go make sometimes triple or quadruple your hourly rate, and then turn around and either come back to your original organization because they need people, or decide to stay on at that new organization.

During the pandemic, those frustrations have at times boiled over, Taylor said.

I think that has led to a lot of pretty raw feelings among folks who had been working at institutions for 10, 12, 15, 20 years, he said.

Those kinds of rewards, Taylor said, pushed some nurses who were close to retirement to jump ship.

I think that, unfortunately, the signal that it sent to them was that we dont value your tenure, your experience or your loyalty to the organization, he said.

****

I gladly left my job due to dissatisfaction and frustration with a broken healthcare system  anonymous response

****

Those are the kinds of retirees that really have Fraher worried, she told lawmakers. They are the more experienced nurses bailing out of bedside care.

Four years ago, Frahers center published data showing that the average age of nurses in the state was 45 for metro-area nurses and 46 in rural parts of the state. Now, that average has crept upward as the entire workforce has aged. Many of those older nurses can find different jobs with less stress.

Before the pandemic, Fraher projected the state would need about 125,726 nurses by 2033, but would only have 113,277 available, leaving a deficit of 12,500. If nurses within five years of retirement age decide to jump ship early, that would almost double the deficit to 21,032.

Taylor was one of those people. After years of critical care nursing and leading the state nursing association during the pandemic, he also decided to leave his position, for now.

Hugh Tilson, head of the North Carolina Area Health Education Centers, recently told lawmakers that his organization had surveyed employers to find that they were already having trouble recruiting and retaining staff to fill vacancies, especially for nurses.

In November, AHEC found that many facilities reported exceptionally long vacancies for open positions. When it came to RN positions, responses from 19 types of facilities  from nursing homes to hospitals  reported long periods where they couldnt fill vacant jobs, including 31 of 35 hospitals surveyed. RN retention was also an issue.

The important thing about our study is that it confirmed that these problems existed in the past, and COVID made it worse, Tilson said. He said there needs to be coordination at the state level to consistently monitor, track and report to the legislature where the needs are in the health care workforce, otherwise, well be in the same place 10 years from now as we are now.

Tilson also noted that health care institutions cant solve the nursing problem in isolation, but only if they work with the larger health care ecosystem and with other professions within health care.

Public health workforce also stressed

In the public eye, the image of nurses in the pandemic has been that of someone covered head to toe in protective gear, hovering at the bedside of an ICU patient. But Lisa Harrison, the public health director in Vance and Granville counties, pointed out that her public health nurses have been just as much on the front lines, maybe more so, as theyve been outside the bubble of a hospital and confronting an often angry public.

Communicable disease nurses in local health departments, so many people forget the roles and responsibilities they bear in the case investigation and the contact tracing, Harrison said. The abuse theyve received in these last two years doing their jobs has been profound and their exhaustion is also profound.

Many public health nurses across the state have been holding the line because they feel this just overwhelming dedication to community and public, Harrison added. The public heart thing is Im not going to leave here in the middle of a crisis, but as soon as the crisis abates, phew, I need a vacation badly and it needs to be a two-year vacation.

Those public health nurses often are confronted with anger from people who were pro-mask, anti-mask, pro-vaccine, anti-social distancing, Harrison added, saying you name the position, theyve heard criticism about it.

Seeing the abuse theyve received in these last two years doing their jobs has been profound and their exhaustion is also profound, she said.

Harrison predicted that many public health nurses might look for an exit ramp soon, some temporarily, some permanently.

Were gonna lose a lot.

This article first appeared on North Carolina Health News and is republished here under a Creative Commons license. North Carolina Health News is an independent, nonpartisan, not-for-profit, statewide news organization dedicated to covering all things health care in North Carolina. Visit NCHN at northcarolinahealthnews.org .
This was going to be a song of praise. Instead, it will be a groan of frustration.

In other words, it was going to be a column heralding the titanic courage of Ukraine in the face of Russian attack, the acts of defiance that have endeared that nation to the world. Like the woman who gave a Russian soldier sunflower seeds so that Ukraines national flower might bloom from his corpse, or the comedian turned president who has rallied his people like some latter-day Churchill, or the outgunned Ukrainian defenders who invited their attackers to go perform an anatomically impossible act.

The column would have noted what a stirring example Ukraine provides America, where so many people confuse patriotism and guts with sedition and insurrection.

But that hymn of acclamation died amid reports of how dark-skinned people from Africa and India are being singled out for mistreatment  segregated from other refugees, beaten and left stranded by Ukrainian authorities  as they join half a million frightened souls fleeing the besieged country.

They stopped us at the border and told us that Blacks were not allowed, Moustapha Bagui Sylla, a student from Guinea, told France 24, a French television network. But we could see white people going through.

Saakshi Ijantkar, a medical student from India, told CNN how guards at a border checkpoint refused to let Indian men through. We had to literally cry and beg at their feet. After the Indian girls got in, the boys were beaten up. There was no reason for them to beat us with this cruelty. I saw an Egyptian man standing at the front with his hands on the rails, and because of that one guard pushed him with so much force and the man hit the fence, which is covered in spikes, and he lost consciousness.

Rachel Onyegbule, a medical student from Nigeria, told the network how she was kicked off a public bus at a checkpoint. More than 10 buses came, she said, and we were watching everyone leave. We thought after they took all the Ukrainians they would take us, but they told us we had to walk, that there were no more buses. My body was numb from the cold, and we havent slept in about four days now. Ukrainians have been prioritized over Africans  men and women  at every point.

Theres no need for us to ask why, she added. We know why.

A spokeswoman for Ukraines Border Guard Service denied these allegations and reminded CNN that guards are working under great pressure as they process the torrent of refugees. Duly noted. But you have to ask yourself: Why would the students make this up? What would be the point? No obvious answer presents itself.

And frankly, it is deeply disappointing, in the midst of crisis, that we even have to have this discussion.

In the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, the French newspaper Le Monde ran a headline that became iconic: Nous sommes tous Americains (We are all Americans). In that same sense, right now, we are all Ukrainians, a declaration that connects us, not simply to another nations geopolitical plight, but to the humanity we all have in common.

At an exigent moment, when they were given a chance to vindicate that humanity, guardians of Ukraines border stomped it instead. Make no mistake: The hearts of all good people are with the citizens of Ukraine. Theyve shown beyond doubt that they have courage enough to fight for their country.

But let them also have courage enough to be a country worth fighting for.

Leonard Pitts Jr. is a columnist for the Miami Herald, 3511 NW 91st Ave., Miami, FL 33172. Readers may contact him via email at lpitts@miamiherald.com.
Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia will be the keynote speaker Saturday at the 44th annual Mansfield Metcalf Celebration hosted by the Montana Democratic Party at the Lewis and Clark County Fairgrounds in Helena.

Doors open at 4:30 p.m. and the program begins at 5:30 p.m.

Tickets are available until 8 p.m. Friday, at www.montanademocrats.org/mm22.

Also speaking are Sen. Jon Tester; state Sen. Jill Cohenour of East Helena, who serves as state Senate minority leader; Rep. Kim Abbott of Helena, who serves as minority leader in the state House; and others.

Warner was elected to the U.S. Senate in November 2008 and reelected to a third term in November 2020, his official biography states. He serves on the Senate Finance, Banking, Budget and Rules committees and the Select Committee on Intelligence, where he serves as chairman.

He served as governor of Virginia from 2002-2006. His biography notes that when he left office, Virginia was ranked as the best state for business, the best-managed state, and the best state in which to receive a public education.

The Mansfield Metcalf Celebration is the Montana Democratic Partys biggest event of the year.

Past Metcalf speakers include Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey (2017), Joe Biden (2018), Arizona U.S. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (2019), Sen. Maggie Hassan from New Hampshire (2020) and Democratic National Committee Chair Jaime Harrison (2021).

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Montana State University Billings administrators will consider renaming McMullen Hall after a historian discovered quotes that the building's namesake, Lynn Banks McMullen, made in the 1930s sympathizing with Nazi Germany.

MSUB Chancellor Stefani Hicswa has formed a task force to review the statements from McMullen, and submit a recommendation to her office, according to the university.

A recommendation from the university to rename the building would ultimately need to be brought before the Board of Regents for consideration, wrote MSUB Director of Communications and Marketing Maureen Brakke.

Built in 1935, McMullen Hall was the first structure at what was then Eastern Montana Normal School. McMullen, born in Indiana in 1875, earned a doctorate from the Teachers College at Columbia University and was named the first president of Eastern Montana State Normal in 1927. He died in 1963, and is buried in Polson.

In contemporary newspaper clippings provided by the university, McMullen is quoted as lauding Hitlers campaign to sterilize those deemed by the dictator's regime as inferior. Articles that ran in the Billings Gazette and the Missoulian in 1935 summarized a speech that McMullen gave to a class graduating from a Colorado college. He told graduates the Nazi policy of sterilizing the unfit will do more to benefit Germany over the next 50 years than the past 85 years of public education has benefited the United States.

Sterilization, rendering a person incapable of having children, was a product of the eugenics movement that gained a foothold in the United States in the late 19th century and later in Germany as the Nazis came to power. Guided by a perversion of medicine and anthropology that denigrated ethnic minorities and those with physical or mental disabilities as a genetic threat, state legislatures implemented compulsory sterilization laws during the first half of the 1900s.

Those laws resulted in the state-sponsored sterilization of more than 60,000 people in the United States, according to information published by the University of Vermont. The university produced a database in 2011 tracking sterilizations across the nation. In Montana, 256 people were sterilized by the states eugenics program from 1923 to 1954. The university noted in its database that its still unclear how many Indigenous women were sterilized during this time period.

The eugenics programs in America preceded those of Nazi Germany, in which approximately 350,000 people were sterilized. Sterilization served as a precursor to euthanasia, the genocide of 11 million European Jews, Roma, communists, gays and lesbians and all others who didnt suit the warped ideal of a "master race."

America has been the melting pot, McMullen is quoted as saying in 1935, Undoubtedly she has received many fine citizens from the Old World. But she has also been the sewer for its dregs. The upper classes have always paid some attention to breedingOn the other hand the procreation of the unfit has been promiscuous and prolific.

McMullen did not specify who comprised those fine citizens, upper classes or dregs in any of the articles provided to the Gazette.

The articles were brought to the universitys attention by Casey Pallister, a researcher and historian at Montana State University. Pallister, a PhD candidate, is currently working on a dissertation regarding the eugenics program in Montana. He discovered the information about McMullen through his research, he told the Gazette, and contacted Hicswa, asking about her thoughts on renaming the building.

Chancellor Hicswa then sent the documents to the MSUB History Department, who both verified the documents and produced more evidence of McMullens speech. Hicswa then moved to form the task force to produce a recommendation for the Montana University Systems Board of Regents.

The task force will be made up of MSUB staff, faculty and students, Brakke said. Although the names of the task force members have yet to be released, she said they will include an MSUB historian, scientist, pre-med student and a medical ethicist. Brakke could not say when the task force would complete its recommendation, but she expected it to reach the chancellor in the near future.

Thank you for your patience and understanding as we want to be very intentional and deliberate about this process, Hicswa wrote in a message sent to the campus community.

The decision on the part of MSUBs chancellor to consider renaming the building is part of a nationwide reckoning of racism on college campuses. The spring, the University of Southern California will dedicate one of its buildings as the Dr. Joseph Medicine Crow Center for International and Public Affairs. The Apsaalooke historian and war heros name will replace that of a former USC presidents who was also a staunch supporter of eugenics throughout his career.

Editor's Note: This article has been updated to more clearly credit the MSU doctoral student that unearthed McMullen's quotes.

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By Trend

A criminal case on an accident with a military car has been initiated in Azerbaijan, the Azerbaijani Military Prosecutor's Office told Trend.

Proceeding from the information, the employees of the Aghdam Military Prosecutor's Office inspected the scene, took testimony and conducted other corresponding actions, the message said.

A criminal case has been initiated in the Aghdam Military Prosecutor's Office upon Article 351.2 (violation of the rules of driving and using military or special cars or military equipment, resulting in the fatal case by negligence) of the Azerbaijani Criminal Code, witnesses have been interrogated, corresponding expertise has been arranged and other necessary investigative actions have been carried out, the message said.

According to the message, the investigation is underway. All measures will be taken in accordance with the requirements of the law.
Todays Highlight in History:

On March 4, 1933, Franklin D. Roosevelt took office as Americas 32nd president.

On March 4:

In 1789, the Constitution of the United States went into effect as the first Federal Congress met in New York. (The lawmakers then adjourned for lack of a quorum.)

In 1863, the Idaho Territory was created.

In 1865, President Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated for a second term of office; with the end of the Civil War in sight, Lincoln declared: With malice toward none, with charity for all.

In 1917, Republican Jeannette Rankin of Montana took her seat as the first woman elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, the same day President Woodrow Wilson took his oath of office for a second term (it being a Sunday, a private ceremony was held inside the U.S. Capitol; a second, public swearing-in took place the next day).

In 1966, John Lennon of The Beatles was quoted in the London Evening Standard as saying, Were more popular than Jesus now, a comment that caused an angry backlash in the United States.

In 1981, a jury in Salt Lake City convicted Joseph Paul Franklin, an avowed racist and serial killer, of violating the civil rights of two Black men, Ted Fields and David Martin, whod been shot to death. (Franklin received two life sentences for this crime; he was executed in 2013 for the 1977 murder of a Jewish man, Gerald Gordon.)

In 1987, President Ronald Reagan addressed the nation on the Iran-Contra affair, acknowledging that his overtures to Iran had deteriorated into an arms-for-hostages deal.

In 1994, in New York, four extremists were convicted of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing that killed six people and injured more than a thousand. Actor-comedian John Candy died in Durango, Mexico, at age 43.

In 1998, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that sexual harassment at work can be illegal even when the offender and victim are of the same gender.

In 2012, President Barack Obama, in an address to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in Washington, said he didnt want war but that he would not hesitate to attack Iran if that were the only option left to stop it from getting a nuclear weapon. Vladimir Putin scored a decisive victory in Russias presidential election to return to the Kremlin and extend his hold on power. Nearly 300 people in the Republic of Congo were killed after a series of blasts at an arms depot in the capital Brazzaville.

In 2015, the Justice Department cleared Darren Wilson, a white former Ferguson, Missouri, police officer, in the fatal shooting of Michael Brown, a Black 18-year-old, but also issued a scathing report calling for sweeping changes in city law enforcement practices.

In 2017, President Donald Trump accused former President Barack Obama of tapping his telephones during the 2016 election; an Obama spokesman declared that the assertion was simply false. Tommy Page, a former pop star whose song Ill Be Your Everything went to No. 1 in 1990 and who later became a record company executive, died in New York at age 46.

In 2018, former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter were found unconscious on a bench in the southwestern English city of Salisbury; both survived what British authorities said was a murder attempt using a nerve agent.

In 2020, federal health officials investigated a suburban Seattle nursing home at the center of a coronavirus outbreak.

In 2021, breaking from other Southern GOP governors, Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey extended her states mask order for another month but said the requirement would end for good in April. Demonstrators in Myanmar protesting the previous months military coup returned to the streets, undaunted by the killing of at least 38 people a day earlier by security forces.

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DECATUR  Terentius M. Bookers fall from the straight and narrow path he had been on ended with a 3 year prison term on Thursday.

The Decatur man was sentenced in Macon County Circuit Court after pleading guilty to being a felon in possession of a weapon.

Booker, 39, had been arrested close to 2 a.m. Nov. 30, 2019, driving away from the parking lot of the downtown Masonic Temple with a loaded semi-automatic pistol in his car.

Booker has previous convictions for aggravated robbery and a federal weapons offense but his last brush with trouble before the latest charge was back in 2010. As a convicted felon, he is not allowed to own a gun.

Pleading for a minimum sentence, Bookers defense attorney Monroe McWard told Presiding Judge Thomas Griffith that his client had done his best to rebuild his life and go straight. He described him as a good father to his children and produced W2 statements showing Booker had been earning $60,000 a year with a job at the Decatur Caterpillar Inc. plant.

Several of Bookers family members, including his 60-year-old mother, gave testimony on his behalf.

I hate to see people fail, McWard told the judge. And my client failed to conform his behavior to the statutes of the state of Illinois. He took what I would call a good deal and he basically put that in jeopardy.

Booker told the judge he was being treated harshly because of mistakes he had made in the past and said he had not fired the gun or even pointed it at anyone. I am being judged and people dont even know me ... he added.

Prosecuting, Assistant States Attorney Christina Mullison said a plea deal had been worked out in Booker's case which set the sentencing range at three to seven years.

She said this kind of gun offense was serious and recommended to the judge that Booker "gets the full seven years.

Griffith, however, said he had taken careful note of the mitigation offered on Bookers behalf and acknowledged he had been doing well with his life until the gun offense.

I, too, hate to see people fail, the judge said as he passed the sentence.

Contact Tony Reid at (217) 421-7977. Follow him on Twitter: @TonyJReid

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New Braunfels, TX (78130)

Today

Scattered thunderstorms in the morning becoming more widespread in the afternoon. High 84F. Winds S at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 80%..

Tonight

A few clouds. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low 67F. Winds ENE at 5 to 10 mph.
Col. John Brad Bowlin, a native of Bristol, will be promoted to the rank of brigadier general during a Sunday, March 6, ceremony at the Mt. Carmel National Guard Armory.

Tennessees adjutant general, Maj. Gen. Jeff Holmes, will preside over the 1 p.m. promotion ceremony.

I cannot think of a better officer for this promotion than Brad, Holmes said. His numerous deployments, key assignments, and leadership ability have prepared him well for this new level of responsibility and I know he will excel at it.

On Oct. 21, 2021, Bowlin was appointed as the assistant division commander  operations, for the Texas National Guards 36th Infantry Division. As the first Tennessee National Guardsman to hold this position, he is now responsible for the training and operations of the 36th Infantry Division and its eight subordinate brigades from Texas, New Mexico, and Tennessee.

Over his career, Bowlin served in multiple command and staff positions to include armor platoon leader, scout platoon leader, cavalry troop commander, reconnaissance squadron operations officer, squadron executive officer, regimental chief of operations, regimental executive officer, and commander of Knoxvilles 278th Armored Cavalry Regiment.

Bowlin deployed twice to Iraq in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom and also served in Germany, Korea, Bulgaria and Central Africa.

Bowlin is from Bristol. He currently lives in Dandridge.
Food City has selected Karen Umberger of Marion, Virginia as this years Claude P. Varney Humanitarian Award recipient.

Umberger, a computer room operator at the Marion, Virginia Food City location, is a member of the American Red Cross Disaster team. She has worked for the group the past six years for more than 1,200 hours per year.

A press release announcing the award said Umberger has been deployed to numerous flood and natural disaster areas. Umberger also works fires and other disasters for the Red Cross locally serving on call for 12-hour shifts and typically covering up to three counties. She also helps those in need with temporary accommodations, financial assistance and property damage assessments.

I really appreciate Food City allowing their volunteers the opportunity to enter this contest in order to provide financial assistance to their charity, Umberger said in the press release. I feel so honored that I was chosen as the recipient of the Claude Varney Award. Red Cross is such a worthy cause and helps so many people. Thank you, Food City.

Umberger received an award and a $1,250 contribution to the charity of her choice.

We are extremely proud of the difference our associates make by devoting their time and talents to the service of other, Steve Smith, Food City president and chief executive officer, said in the release. Our company is committed to providing our associates the support they need to become the best corporate citizens possible.

The Claude P. Varney Humanitarian Award was named in memory of former Food City president and board vice-chairman Claude Varney, who served the company for 47 years.

A candidate for the award is chosen from each Food City location then narrowed down to 13 district winners followed by two divisional winners. Phillip Drinnon of Morristown, Tennessee and Olga McCoy of Calhoun, Georgia were the companys two divisional honorees.
BRISTOL, Tenn.  The Tennessee Criminal Justice Committee held discussions and voted to pass a bill Wednesday that would remove fentanyl drug test strips from the list of illegal drug paraphernalia.

Rep. Bob Ramsey, one of the six legislators sponsoring the bill, spoke about how the fentanyl epidemic has affected Tennessee, highlighting that the decriminalization of fentanyl testing strips would allow organizations across the state, as well as individuals, access to a tool that can save lives.

Last year, we had 3,032 total fatal overdoses in Tennessee, and 66% of those were (due to) contamination with fentanyl. Fentanyl has been found in counterfeit prescriptions, illicit opioids, stimulants. It is very cheap, and it extends the effect of many of the drugs that are taken, Ramsey said. The legislation would allow the Tennessee department of mental health services and other organizations to purchase and distribute these strips to people who are at risk for drug overdose with the aim of engaging individuals with the purposes of reducing the number of overdoses.

Alice McCaffrey, the executive director of the Sullivan County Anti-Drug Coalition, is pleased to finally see legislation that aligns with their mission that aims to provide an avenue for individuals dealing with drug addiction to inform themselves about the content of what they are ingesting.

The bill itself was exactly what we were hoping for, that the test strips would be decriminalized because were just trying to keep people alive so that we can help eventually people get into recovery, McCaffrey said. It will allow them to get some information before they use something, and hopefully, that information would help them to protect themselves and not die.

The bill stipulates that individuals found with fentanyl drug test strips would no longer be prosecuted with a paraphernalia charge, that is, unless they are found to also be in possession of drugs with the intention to manufacture, distribute and sell. McCaffrey does not have a problem with law enforcement holding individuals involved in the illicit drug industry accountable for having fentanyl testing strips and believes that would be the least of their problems.

If theyre prosecuting (individuals) for manufacturing, delivery or sale (of drugs), I dont imagine the test strip is going to make a big difference in there, McCaffrey said. We dont want people who are part of the problem that is allowing people access to drugs that could kill them to be using fentanyl test strips to sell their drugs.

McCaffrey is glad the bill has passed to the next phase. However, she is surprised fentanyl strips are illegal, to begin with. She pointed out that it will take a lot more than one piece of legislation for individuals dealing with addiction to get better.

We were surprised to find out that fentanyl test strips were even considered illegal, McCaffrey said. None of these things alone work. But if you have somebody whos had your experience, who you trust, who understands what youre going through, and then can help you find your own path, were all going to do better on a path that we have agreed to, not with somebody has told us needs to happen.

The Bill, HB2177, is being sponsored by Rep. William Lamberth, R-Sumner; Rep. London Lamar, D-Shelby; Rep. Bob Freeman, D-Davidson; as well as Rep. Ron Grant, R-Fayette; Rep. John Clemmons, D-Davidson; and Rep. Bob Ramsey, R-Blount.

Now that the bill has passed through the Tennessee Criminal Justice Committee, it will be presented before the Tennessee Calendar and Rules Committee.
The Centers for Disease Control said Friday more than 90% of the U.S. is at low or medium risk for COVID-19 spread while this region remains at high risk, despite declining cases.

The region appears in orange on the CDC map  the largest single spot on the online map  and includes all of Southwest Virginia, nearly all of Northeast Tennessee, parts of eastern Kentucky, nearly all of West Virginia and slivers of western North Carolina and eastern Ohio

The only regional exception was Hamblen County Tennessee, which was listed as medium risk, with a 12.4% seven day testing positivity rate.

The updated listings will help counties make informed decisions and take appropriate public health actions, according to a statement from the CDC, with data now being updated each Thursday.

The number of new cases of COVID-19 continues to plummet across Northeast Tennessee, which this week reported fewer new cases than much less populous Southwest Virginia. Ten Northeast Tennessee counties reported about 1,300 new cases during the final week of February  a 66.5% - decline compared to the prior week, according to the Tennessee Department of Health.

Sullivan had 337 new cases last week, which is about a third of the 990 new cases it reported the previous week. Washington County Tennessee reported 262 new cases last week  a precipitous decline from 1,321 the week before.

Northeast Tennessee reported nearly 2,800 active cases last week, led by Sullivan with 798 and Washington County with 577.

Some 700 new cases were diagnosed across the 10 counties and two cities of Southwest Virginia during the past week  a 52.5% decline compared to the prior week, according to the Virginia Department of Health.

The regions cumulative seven-day testing positivity rate finally dipped below 20% for the first time since early January, but at 19.6% remains very high compared to both Tennessee and Virginia.

Sullivan County fell to 16.8%, on an average of 263 tests per day while Washington County Tennessee was 18.8% on 200 tests per day, after weeks at or above 50%.

Only three localities were above 20% and all are sparsely populated.

Tennessees positivity rate was 13.3% while Virginias state wide rate was 7.5%.

On Friday Ballad Health reported 198 COVID positive inpatients in its hospitals, the first time since Nov. 29 the system reported less than 200.

The hospital systems weekly average COVID inpatient census has declined week over week for the past month, including this weeks 25% decline compared to last week.

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Bills for amendments to the laws "On state duty" and "On licenses and permits" at the Azerbaijani Parliament have been discussed.

The amendments to both laws were prepared in connection with the law "On media" and the classification of subjects of audiovisual media, determined by this law.

The MPs proposed to amend Article 22 of the law "On state duty". So, the words "republican television broadcasting" were proposed to be replaced by the words "republican terrestrial television broadcaster" and set the state fee is at 5,000 manat ($2,940), which is 10 times less than the previous amount. In other articles, the proposed amendments to both laws have mostly clarifying character.

Following discussions, the amendments were put to the vote and adopted in the first reading.
A Senate committee on Friday rejected a bill that would require physicians to provide medical care to infants born alive as a result of botched abortions, likely closing the abortion issue for the legislative session that ends March 12.

Eleven Democrats on the Rules Committee voted to defeat House Bill 304, sponsored by Del. Nick Freitas, R-Culpeper. Sen. Chap Petersen, D-Fairfax City, voted with the panel's three Republicans.

The panel also voted 12-4 along party lines to reject House Bill 156, sponsored by Del. Kathy Byron, R-Bedford. It would have barred any employee of a state or local health department from initiating communication with a minor about health care without a parent's consent.

Democrats, who hold a 21-19 edge in the Senate, defeated a number of GOP efforts to impose new abortion restrictions during the legislative session.

For example, on Thursday the Senate Education and Health Committee rejected an "informed consent" bill from Del. Karen Greenhalgh, R-Virginia Beach. Last month the panel defeated a GOP bill that would have mostly banned abortion after 20 weeks. A House committee did not take up its version of the bill.

Abortion will likely continue to be a key issue in the legislature, which is now under divided control, with Republicans holding a 52-48 edge in the House of Delegates.

This summer the U.S. Supreme Court - made up of six conservative justices and three liberal justices - is widely expected to uphold a Mississippi law that bars most abortions after 15 weeks.

While it is unclear whether the court will overturn Roe vs. Wade - which would send the abortion issue back to state legislatures - if it upholds the Mississippi law and throws out the viability standard it could open states to further restrictions. That likely would heighten abortion as an issue in Virginia's 2023 elections for the House and Senate.

A number of states continue to test the viability standard. This week Florida lawmakers passed a law based on the Mississippi statute that bars most abortions after 15 weeks and Idaho's state Senate backed a bill to bar most abortions after six weeks, a measure patterned after a similar Texas law.

In January Virginia's new Republican Attorney General Jason Miyares took steps to remove Virginia from a brief that terms the Mississippi abortion law unconstitutional.

Virginia Solicitor General Andrew N. Ferguson wrote to the clerk of the U.S. Supreme Court that Virginia "is now of the view" that Roe v. Wade was "wrongly decided," that "the Constitution is silent on the question of abortion, and that it is therefore up to the people in the several States to determine the legal status and regulatory treatment of abortion."

Gov. Glenn Youngkin did not stress abortion in his agenda for the session, which focused on issues such as tax cuts and school choice.

Youngkin said during his campaign that he would support banning abortion at the point when a fetus can feel pain  which states with similar bans have defined as 20 weeks. Youngkin supports exceptions in cases of rape, incest or when the womans life is in jeopardy.

Sen. Jennifer McClellan, D-Richmond, said in a statement on Friday: Over the past 2 years, Virginia has made huge strides to protect reproductive rights, and undo unnecessary barriers that stood between patients and their medical professionals.

This session, the Senate sent a clear message: we will not turn back the clock on access to abortion and reproductive rights in Virginia."

On Friday the Senate Rules Committee also rejected several education bills that had cleared the House. They included:

* House Bill 8, sponsored by Del. Tim Anderson, R-Virginia Beach, which outlined qualifications under which school resource officers could carry firearms in the performance of their duties

* House Bill 89, sponsored by Del. Wendell Walker, R-Lynchburg, which would have capped at 8th grade the student exemption from disorderly conduct charges for conduct that occurs on school grounds.

* House Bill 1057, sponsored by Del. A.C. Cordoza, R-Hampton, to establish a commission on Virginia's historically Black colleges and universities.
The original Axis Powers included Nazi Germany, the Kingdom of Italy, and the Empire of Japan. They merged their objectives and ambitions by dragging the world into WWII. We are witnessing the ascent of the New Axis powers of China, Russia, and Iran. I remember when President Reagan referred to Soviet Russia as the Evil Empire.

Putin and Xi met at the outset of the Olympics to discuss their approach on how to deal with the United States and the West. They had joint military exercises. In fact, today China announced the reason Russia invaded Ukraine is Americas fault. They recently signed an agreement to purchase 100,000,000 tons of coal from Russia. Why are they buying coal? The left wishes to make coal illegal in America.

Putin is devoted to restoring the Soviet Union. Stalin dealt with Ukraine back in 1932-33 during the Holodomor when millions of Ukrainians were starved to death. Xi is investing everything in establishing China as the dominant world influence. Xi has proclaimed Chinas preeminence in the East and has refused to condemn the actions of Russia. China controls NOKO and has completely eradicated freedom from Hong Kong. It has every intention of seizing Taiwan. Iran is The mother of all state terror sponsors. They are scrambling to produce a nuclear bomb to mount at the end of one of their ballistic missiles. Biden plans to remove some sanctions from Iran.

The New Axis perceives weakness in America. They studied our destructive exit from Afghanistan.

If Russia and China employ cyber warfare, the world will change instantly. That will lead down a very dark path, literally and figuratively. It will involve much more than Ukraine.

In June of 2021 Biden told Putin which 15 American assets he couldnt go after with cyber-attacks. This was disclosed after the Colonial Pipeline attack. What price did Russia pay for that? Mr. Biden has been president for 13 months and the world is changing by the hour.

Mike Zimmerman

Conover
" " The message flashing on Ken Webster's computer screen came from a resident of his house, Meadow Cottage. The problem? It came from another century. HowStuffWorks

Six-toed footprints, imprinted in the ordinary dust of Meadow Cottage, Ken Webster's 18th-century brick cottage in Dodleston, England, seemed to walk up the walls between the bathroom and kitchen. It was a prank to be sure Ken, his girlfriend Debbie and their visiting guest, Nic, decided. It was 1985 and Webster was slowly and unenthusiastically renovating the old cottage, which had kicked up some unusual activity. Nic took a paintbrush and a gallon of paint to the footprints, covering them for good ... or so he thought. Until the prints returned the next day. The prank was suddenly much less amusing.

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Towers of Cat Food

Over the new few days, cold gusts of wind, shadows and the eerie presence of an invisible entity haunted the residents of the Cheshire cottage. "They find strange footprints in the dust on the floor, and tins of cat food neatly stacked in a pyramid," says Nick Poyntz, who holds a master's degree in early modern history from Birkbeck, University of London, in an email interview. Poyntz is particularly passionate about the history of books and popular English politics during the 16th and 17th centuries. The series of events that popularly became known as the "Dodleston Messages" have always fascinated Poyntz and, in 2011, he decided to write a blog post about them. "As someone who grew up using the BBC Micro at school in the 1980s, I love the way the story brings together early computers with a period of history I know well," says Poyntz.

Between 2011 and 2016, Poyntz's blog became a lot more active after he wrote the post, which he titled, "The Ghost in the Machine," telling the story of Webster's deeply puzzling encounters with someone writing messages to him through a borrowed BBC computer in 1984.

The messages were cryptic, misspelled, grammatically odd and impossible to ignore. Most notably, however, the man writing the messages claimed to be from the year 1546.

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When History Comes to Life

When Webster moved into his 18th-century cottage, he knew that he was stepping into a piece of history. However, Debbie and Ken were shocked to find that history seemed to want to talk to them, too.

"Webster was teaching at a local school and brought home a computer borrowed from the school," explains Poyntz. "The messages start out by asking about who Ken and Debbie are  the writer appears to be able to see them  and accuses them of stealing his house," Poyntz adds.

Webster detailed the events in his book, "The Vertical Plane." He transcribed the first message ever received through the computer, a poem that was as beautiful as it was ominous:

True are the nightmares of a person that fears.

Safe are the bodies of the silent world.

Turn pretty flower, turn towards the sun for you shall grow and sow.

But the flower reaches too high and withers in the burning light.

Get out your bricks 

Pussy Cat, Pussy Cat went to London to seek fame and fortune.

Faith must not be lost for this shall be your redeemer.

A few days later, a second message came through, equally mysterious, but this time is written in some archaic version of British English.

I write on behalf of many  What strange words you speak  You are a worthy (good) man who has a fanciful woman, and you live in my house (who dwell in my home)  with lights which (the) devil makes  It was a great crime to have stolen (bribed) my house.  L.W.

An astute student of 16th- and 17th-century writing, Poyntz details the unique nature of L.W.'s (later revealed as "Lukas") messages. "Lukas's messages are written in archaic English, with old-fashioned spellings and vocabulary and dialect from the time and region," he says.

Over 18 months in 1985 and 1986, messages continued to appear on the computer and Webster commited himself to figuring out who  or what  was behind them. He asked the person, ghost or presence a series of questions about where, and when, he was from. He asked what college he went to and who was the reigning king of the time.

Poyntz describes an exchange that answered some questions, and yet left many more in the wake of Lukas' cryptic reply. "Lukas is suspicious about Ken and Debbie's motives. He deliberately lays traps for them to see if they are really from the future  in his time, there was no Jesus College in Oxford  it was founded in 1571  so he thinks that anyone from the future would know he has given, what from his perspective, is obviously false information ... his real name emerges later, as Thomas Harden or Hawarden. Someone of this name did exist and was vicar of a church in Gloucestershire in the 1550s."

The messages continued and it became clear that Thomas could see and hear some of the goings-on in Meadow Cottage, as he would comment on photos left around the computer by Webster, like a picture of a Jaguar car that Thomas mentioned later in a message:

I have found your picture of the cart, but it is a crude thing for without the horse it won't go far.

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The Year 2109 Further Muddies the Story

Things really got weird when Lukas, now known to be Thomas, writes that he is confused when Webster says he's living in the year 1985. He says:

... I thought you were also from 2109 like your friend who brought the box of lights, pray?

A friend from 2109? The box of lights  the computer? Webster writes in his book, "Even if Lukas was sometimes hard to follow, this section was impossible to misinterpret.... he must be hallucinating."

Still, Webster wrote to 2109 on the computer, curious to see what would happen. They  2109 referred to themselves in third-person singular pronoun  responded.

Try to understand that you three have a purpose that shall in your life time change the face of history, we, 2109, must not affect your thoughts directly but give you some sort of guidance that will allow room for your own destiny. All we can say is that we are all part of the same god, what ever, he is (?), is.

Unbelievably, the story now spans three seemingly active timelines.

"2109 then starts leaving messages for Ken and Debbie, claiming they are involved in an experiment or similar project with a higher purpose," says Poyntz. "2109 communicate in a very different tone and language, using scientific terms but also giving little detail away about their agenda other than annoyance at Ken and Debbie when, for example, they find out Lukas's real name and 2109 worry that this will disrupt their plans."

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A Paranormal Team Leaves Empty-handed

What experiment? What plans? The questions continued to mount until, finally, Webster invited a paranormal investigation team called the Society for Psychical Research to the cottage to investigate. Three times they came, and each time left with no answers, having experienced no activity at all.

Eventually, Thomas said that he was being forced from his land and was never heard from again, but said that he would leave something for his friends in the future.

"Thomas says that he is writing the story of events from his perspective, and that he will leave the book where it can be discovered in the future," Poyntz says. "2109 later says that the book will be found at some point. If such a book does exist and is ever found, it would obviously be a compelling piece of evidence."

No such book has ever been found.

"The blog post has become a bit of a discussion forum for "believers" in the story, with Gary Rowe (the UFO researcher who investigated the events and features heavily in the book) and Debbie herself both posting periodically," Poyntz says. "It's clear that many people, including Gary, believe that the story is true and that proving this is unfinished business for them."

Now That's Interesting English that was spoken in the 15th and 16th centuries is called Early Modern English or Early New English, not Old English (though it feels old to us in the 21st century).Old English was spoken from around 700 to 1150 B.C.E. Today, we speak Modern or New English.
Woburn, MA (01801)

Today

Partly cloudy. High 69F. Winds NNW at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

Partly cloudy skies early will become overcast later during the night. Low 46F. Winds NW at 5 to 10 mph.
Jazeera Paints, a leading Saudi company in the field of paints, colours and construction solutions, is taking part in the International Petroleum Technology Conference (IPTC), which opened today (February 21) at the Riyadh International Convention & Exhibition Center.

Founded in 2005, the IPTC is the leading multidisciplinary technical event in the Eastern Hemisphere. The scope of the conference program addresses technology and related industry issues that challenge industry and management professionals around the world.

This year's edition will run untill February 23, with Saudi Aramco serving as the Exclusive Host.

Jazeera Paints said during the three-day event Jazeera will be presenting its contributions related to the industrial and construction aspects to the visitors of the conference.

The company will be employing its expertise and research summary to develop this field in cooperation with other parties taking part in the conference.

Over the next three days, regional energy ministers, industry leaders, and governmental representatives will have an opportunity to discuss and share their views on timely industry topics and trends, exchange expertise and experience in addition to presenting the state-of-the-art technology and innovation and stimulating further research of technical and business activities.-TradeArabia News Service
Friday, March 4

The Concord Duplicate Bridge face-to-face games through Concord Parks and Recreation at Hartsell Recreation Center, 60 Hartsell School Road, at noon. Cost is $5 per player. You must have a partner and provide proof of vaccination.

Heavenly Hot Dogs at Mount Olivet United Methodist Church, 301 Mount Olivet Road, will be offered from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Free delivery for orders of more than $15, and takeout is available. Homemade desserts and chicken noodle soup are available. For more information, visit www.mtochurch.com or call 704-782-8846.

Hot dogs at McGill Baptist Church, 5300 Poplar Tent Road, will be sold along with fried bologna and barbecue sandwiches and desserts from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Saturday, March 5

The Eastern Cabarrus Historical Society will hold its Spring Yard Sale from 8 a.m. to noon at the museum, 1100 N. Main St., Mount Pleasant. Reserve a space by calling 704-436-6612. Spaces are $15 each and free for ECHS members.

The Piedmont Farmers Market is open from 9 a.m. to noon at 518 Winecoff School Road. It features lots of local produce, meat, flowers and other products.

Sunday, March 6

Auditions for The Addams Family: A New Musical will be held at Old Courthouse Theatre. Registration is from 7-8 p.m. Auditions are open to everyone interested in performing. You only have to attend one night. The Addams Family: A New Musical will be directed by Andy Rassler. Stephanie Campbell is the music director and Sharlie Duncan is the choreographer. Visit www.octconcord.com for more information.

Monday, March 7

The Concord Duplicate Bridge face-to-face games through Concord Parks and Recreation at Hartsell Recreation Center, 60 Hartsell School Road, at noon. Cost is $5 per player. You must have a partner and provide proof of vaccination.

Auditions for The Addams Family: A New Musical will be held at Old Courthouse Theatre. Registration is from 7-8 p.m. Auditions are open to everyone interested in performing. You only have to attend one night. The Addams Family: A New Musical will be directed by Andy Rassler. Stephanie Campbell is the music director and Sharlie Duncan is the choreographer. Visit www.octconcord.com for more information.

Friday, March 11

The Concord Duplicate Bridge face-to-face games through Concord Parks and Recreation at Hartsell Recreation Center, 60 Hartsell School Road, at noon. Cost is $5 per player. You must have a partner and provide proof of vaccination.

Heavenly Hot Dogs at Mount Olivet United Methodist Church, 301 Mount Olivet Road, will be offered from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Free delivery for orders of more than $15, and takeout is available. Homemade desserts and chicken noodle soup are available. For more information, visit www.mtochurch.com or call 704-782-8846.

Hot dogs at McGill Baptist Church, 5300 Poplar Tent Road, will be sold along with fried bologna and barbecue sandwiches and desserts from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Saturday, March 12

The Piedmont Farmers Market is open from 9 a.m. to noon at 518 Winecoff School Road. It features lots of local produce, meat, flowers and other products.

Sunday, March 13

The Piedmont Prime Time Community Band is presenting a spring concert titled American Cameos at 4 p.m. at Kannapolis Middle School, 1000 Virginia Dare St. The band consists of community members of all ages from the local area. This will be the first concert directed by Chris White, who is also the band director at Hickory Ridge High School. Admission is free, but donations are accepted.

Monday, March 14

The Concord Duplicate Bridge face-to-face games through Concord Parks and Recreation at Hartsell Recreation Center, 60 Hartsell School Road, at noon. Cost is $5 per player. You must have a partner and provide proof of vaccination.

Wednesday, March 16

The Cabarrus Senior Center Photo Club is alive and clicking away. If you like taking photos, come join the members on the first and third Wednesdays of the month from 1:30-3 p.m. at the Cabarrus Senior Center, 331 Corban Ave. SE, Concord, and share your photographic creativity. Whether you are a seasoned photographer or strictly amateur, all are welcome.

Friday, March 18

The Concord Duplicate Bridge face-to-face games through Concord Parks and Recreation at Hartsell Recreation Center, 60 Hartsell School Road, at noon. Cost is $5 per player. You must have a partner and provide proof of vaccination.

Heavenly Hot Dogs at Mount Olivet United Methodist Church, 301 Mount Olivet Road, will be offered from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Free delivery for orders of more than $15, and takeout is available. Homemade desserts and chicken noodle soup are available. For more information, visit www.mtochurch.com or call 704-782-8846.

Hot dogs at McGill Baptist Church, 5300 Poplar Tent Road, will be sold along with fried bologna and barbecue sandwiches and desserts from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Saturday, March 19

The Piedmont Farmers Market is open from 9 a.m. to noon at 518 Winecoff School Road. It features lots of local produce, meat, flowers and other products.

Old Courthouse Theatre is hosting an Antiques Appraisal Event from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. The cost is $10 for one item and $15 for two items. Bring your treasures in to find their monetary worth. No written appraisal given. Owner can write all information given down. Email info@octconcord.com with any questions.

Sunday, March 20

Old Courthouse Theatre is hosting an Antiques Appraisal Event from 2-5 p.m. The cost is $10 for one item and $15 for two items. Bring your treasures in to find their monetary worth. No written appraisal given. Owner can write all information given down. Email info@octconcord.com with any questions.

Monday, March 21

The Concord Duplicate Bridge face-to-face games through Concord Parks and Recreation at Hartsell Recreation Center, 60 Hartsell School Road, at noon. Cost is $5 per player. You must have a partner and provide proof of vaccination.

Friday, March 25

The Concord Duplicate Bridge face-to-face games through Concord Parks and Recreation at Hartsell Recreation Center, 60 Hartsell School Road, at noon. Cost is $5 per player. You must have a partner and provide proof of vaccination.

Heavenly Hot Dogs at Mount Olivet United Methodist Church, 301 Mount Olivet Road, will be offered from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Free delivery for orders of more than $15, and takeout is available. Homemade desserts and chicken noodle soup are available. For more information, visit www.mtochurch.com or call 704-782-8846.

Hot dogs at McGill Baptist Church, 5300 Poplar Tent Road, will be sold along with fried bologna and barbecue sandwiches and desserts from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Saturday, March 26

The Piedmont Farmers Market is open from 9 a.m. to noon at 518 Winecoff School Road. It features lots of local produce, meat, flowers and other products.

Hot Dogs at Center United Methodist Church at 1119 Union St. S., are offered on the second and fourth Saturday of each month from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Currently takeout only. Call-in orders are welcomed at 704-782-1785.

Monday, March 28

The Concord Duplicate Bridge face-to-face games through Concord Parks and Recreation at Hartsell Recreation Center, 60 Hartsell School Road, at noon. Cost is $5 per player. You must have a partner and provide proof of vaccination.

Tuesday, March 29

Vietnam War 50th Commemoration Ceremony Honoring Vietnam War Veterans will be held at American Legion Post 51 on 165 Wilshire Ave. SW in Concord. The program, which includes a social gathering and refreshments, will last from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. The program is sponsored by the Cabarrus Black Boys Chapter, Daughters of the American Revolution and The Cabarrus Veterans Coalition. To RSVP, call 703-371-6850 by March 15.

A Memorial Service at Vietnam Veterans Park will be open to the public at 2 p.m. The park is at 760 Orphanage Road in Concord. An RSVP is not required.

Friday, April 1

The Concord Duplicate Bridge face-to-face games through Concord Parks and Recreation at Hartsell Recreation Center, 60 Hartsell School Road, at noon. Cost is $5 per player. You must have a partner and provide proof of vaccination.

Heavenly Hot Dogs at Mount Olivet United Methodist Church, 301 Mount Olivet Road, will be offered from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Free delivery for orders of more than $15, and takeout is available. Homemade desserts and chicken noodle soup are available. For more information, visit www.mtochurch.com or call 704-782-8846.

Hot dogs at McGill Baptist Church, 5300 Poplar Tent Road, will be sold along with fried bologna and barbecue sandwiches and desserts from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Saturday, April 2

The Piedmont Farmers Market is open from 9 a.m. to noon at 518 Winecoff School Road. It features lots of local produce, meat, flowers and other products.

Hot Dogs at Center United Methodist Church at 1119 Union St. S., are offered on the second and fourth Saturday of each month from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Currently takeout only. Call-in orders are welcomed at 704-782-1785.

Monday, April 4

The Concord Duplicate Bridge face-to-face games through Concord Parks and Recreation at Hartsell Recreation Center, 60 Hartsell School Road, at noon. Cost is $5 per player. You must have a partner and provide proof of vaccination.

Wednesday, April 6

The Cabarrus Senior Center Photo Club is alive and clicking away. If you like taking photos, come join us on the first and third Wednesdays of the month from 1:30-3 p.m. at the Cabarrus Senior Center, 331 Corban Ave. SE, Concord, and share your photographic creativity. Whether you are a seasoned photographer or strictly amateur, all are welcome.

Friday, April 8

The Concord Duplicate Bridge face-to-face games through Concord Parks and Recreation at Hartsell Recreation Center, 60 Hartsell School Road, at noon. Cost is $5 per player. You must have a partner and provide proof of vaccination.

Heavenly Hot Dogs at Mount Olivet United Methodist Church, 301 Mount Olivet Road, will be offered from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Free delivery for orders of more than $15, and takeout is available. Homemade desserts and chicken noodle soup are available. For more information, visit www.mtochurch.com or call 704-782-8846.

Hot dogs at McGill Baptist Church, 5300 Poplar Tent Road, will be sold along with fried bologna and barbecue sandwiches and desserts from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Saturday, April 9

The Piedmont Farmers Market is open from 9 a.m. to noon at 518 Winecoff School Road. It features lots of local produce, meat, flowers and other products.

Hot Dogs at Center United Methodist Church at 1119 Union St. S., are offered on the second and fourth Saturday of each month from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Currently takeout only. Call-in orders are welcomed at 704-782-1785.

Monday, April 10

The Concord Duplicate Bridge face-to-face games through Concord Parks and Recreation at Hartsell Recreation Center, 60 Hartsell School Road, at noon. Cost is $5 per player. You must have a partner and provide proof of vaccination.

Got news or events?

Does your community group or nonprofit agency have an upcoming event that would be of interest to the public? Email it to mplemmons@independenttribune.com.
NASCAR owner and Hall of Famer Richard Childress told Fox News yesterday that he will donate a million rounds of ammunition to Ukraine forces fighting off the Russian invasion.

Childress said during an interview on Fox & Friends with Brian Kilmeade and Joey Jones that he heard Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy say he didnt want out, he needed ammunition.

Childress said he contacted his good friend Fred Wagenhals, chairman of AMMO, Inc.

Childress said he told Wagenhals, Fred, weve got to help these people. They need ammunition and he stepped right up.

Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24.

Childress is a former NASCAR driver and now owner of Childress Racing. After he retired from driving, NASCAR legend Dale Earnhardt signed on with his team. Earnhardt died in a crash on the last lap of the Daytona 500 on Feb. 18, 2001. Childress was inducted into the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America in 2016.

Childress told Kilmeade yesterday, This is a wake-up call for America, why we have our second amendment. ... Its terrible to see the lives that are being lost over there. I felt that with AMMo we were doing the right thing and we are going to get that ammunition as quick as we can to them.

Childress said they are working with a private company to get the ammunition to the Ukrainians.

***

PHOTO GALLERY

2022 Advance Local Media LLC. Visit pennlive.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
DURHAM  The American economy is emerging strong from nearly two years of pandemic-induced disruptions and losses, and the best way forward is to create more jobs that allow workers to organize for better wages and save more money, Vice President Kamala Harris said Wednesday.

In her third trip to North Carolina since taking office, Harris came to Durham, having most recently visited the Triangle while campaigning in 2020. For this visit, she was joined by Gov. Roy Cooper and Durham Mayor Elaine ONeal along with Democratic state lawmakers and members of Congress at Durham Technical Community College.

She spoke about the Biden administrations efforts to create more good-paying, union jobs throughout the country and promote collective bargaining in both the public and private sectors. Accompanying her from Washington was U.S. Labor Secretary Marty Walsh, as well as U.S. Reps. David Price and G.K. Butterfield.

As a nation we have made real progress in our fight to end this pandemic and get our economy back to normal. And with more than 215 million people vaccinated, our communities are more protected from this virus than theyve ever been before, Harris said to a small crowd of invited guests at Durham Tech. And that said, the president and I know the fight is not yet won.

Traveling across the country over the past year, the Democratic vice president said she had met several people who were struggling to pay their heating bills, fill their cars with gas or afford groceries. People are understandably tired and frustrated, Harris said, but theyre also determined to return to work, school and a sense of normalcy.

What I see most clearly, is neither the fear nor the fatigue, but resilience, Harris said. The resilience of the American people, and the determination of the American people to always build a better future.

The status of the COVID-19 pandemic and the cost of living could be key factors in whether voters keep Democrats in control of Congress in the 2022 midterms or deliver a blow to President Joe Bidens agenda by voting for Republicans.

The vice presidents visit was part of a travel blitz by administration officials following Bidens State of the Union address on Tuesday night. Biden touched briefly on community colleges, jobs and wages.

Before her speech, Harris toured the IBEW local 553 apprentice program at Durham Tech along with a handful of dignitaries. Students in the program, which trains them to become union electricians, demonstrated equipment for the vice president. Tara Schmitt, a third-year apprentice at Durham Tech, introduced Harris.

You are a face and image of the future of labor in America, Harris said to Schmitt.

The vice president later said union workers are helping build critical infrastructure including solar panels that will combat climate change, fiber optic cables to deliver high-speed internet and new pipes necessary for safe drinking water.

North Carolina has long had the second lowest union membership rate in the country, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, although the state has seen some increase during the pandemic. The states ban on collective bargaining for public sector workers has been in place for more than half a century. The average national union membership rate is 10.3%. North Carolinas rate is 2.6%.

The Biden administration is committed to empowering workers to organize, Harris said, and is deeply proud to be the most pro-labor administration in the history of our country.

Walsh, the Secretary of Labor, said part of that commitment is $45 million in new spending by the federal government on grant programs to bolster community colleges. The grants will connect people to training and good-paying jobs, and will help bring more working people into the middle class. The program will be focused on women and people of color, he added.

Harris said the Durham Tech students she met on Wednesday will be part of a new era of the American labor movement.

Every person should be able to benefit from the power of solidarity, because every person in our nation, no matter where they start, deserves an opportunity to succeed, Harris said. That is the future we are fighting for.

Takeila Hannah and her 8-year-old daughter Tatum came to Durham Tech hoping to see Harris speak. Hannah donated to Harriss own presidential campaign before she dropped out and joined the Democratic ticket as Bidens running mate.

We wanted to see her up close and personal, Hannah said. We support her message and were just overall supporters of the Biden administration.

Asked what she liked about Harris, Tatum said she looks like me.
CHARLESTON - The Eastern Illinois University community was the target of anti-Semitic, racist and homophobic fliers that were found throughout campus earlier this week.

According to EIU's University Police Department, fliers containing anti-Semitic stereotypes and links to propaganda websites were found in plastic bags with rocks across campus as late as Wednesday afternoon.

EIU President David Glassman released a statement Wednesday condemning the fliers.

It goes without saying that such materials have no place on our campus or in society, as they categorically contradict the universitys deep commitments to diversity and inclusivity. EIU unconditionally condemns the hatred, propaganda, and  quite frankly  profound ignorance these materials espouse, Glassman said in an email to the campus community. Along those lines, EIUs administration remains unapologetically proud of the work EIU and its students and employees do every day to develop responsible citizens and leaders committed to fairness, equity, and opportunity for all.

Anti-semitic messages have also been found recently in the parking lots at Lake Land College and across the University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana campus.

The EIU University Police Department is asking anyone who finds such propaganda on campus to call 217-581-3213.

"EIU leaders will continue to work alongside all members of our campus and community to confront these challenges and to foster a true sense of belonging for all. Hatred and bigotry will never be given safe harbor at EIU," Glassman said in the email.

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SPRINGFIELD  A third person has been arrested in the shooting deaths of three people whose bodies were found in a Springfield house last summer, officials said.

Larry McClain Jr., of Springfield, was arrested on Wednesday by the Springfield police and the U.S. marshals assigned to the Great Lakes Fugitive Task Force, The (Springfield) State Journal-Register reported.

McClain is charged with three counts of first-degree murder and two counts of obstruction of justice in the August shooting deaths of Savante English, 27, and Keyera Gant, 25, both of Springfield, and Bryant K. Williams, 27, of Houston. The three were killed in a house rented by English, with authorities saying all three were shot multiple times.

McClain appeared in court on Thursday and a judge ordered that his bond remain at $5 million, according to Sangamon County State's Attorney Dan Wright. The attorney who represented McClain at the hearing, Mark Wykoff, did not immediately return a call for comment.

McClain's arrest comes just days after two residents of nearby Jacksonville  21-year-old Kelton C. Galmore and 33-year-old Joseph W. Hembrough  were arrested in Morgan County and also charged with three counts of first-degree murder.

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